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• BATCH - wait for executable to finish before starting next result

  - by user3697573

  I'm pretty much a noob at this, so any help is appreciated. I'm trying to run the video transcoding executable REDline on all .R3D files in a given folder. REDline only accepts single files, which is the issue. I finally got it to search recursively for the files I need, but my problem is the search function passes the next result to REDline before the first one is finished transcoding. I have the search results that need to run in a variable inside REDline. Here's the code: for /r D:\folder\ %%a in (*) do ( "C:/Program Files/REDCINE-X PRO 64-bit/REDLine.exe" --exportPreset "Prores_Intermediate" --i "%%~dpnxa" --useRSX 2 --masterRMDFolder "" -s 0 -e 95 ) After about .7 seconds, REDline reports 'received stop message from client'. I don't think this is a REDline error, as I have been able to transcode single files successfully. Thanks.

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• Bash - replacing targeted files with a specific file, whitespace in directory names

  - by Dispelwolf

  I have a large directory tree of files, and am using the following script to list and replace a searched-for name with a specific file. Problem is, I don't know how to write the createList() for-loop correctly to account for whitespace in a directory name. If all directories don't have spaces, it works fine. The output is a list of files, and then a list of "cp" commands, but reports directories with spaces in them as individual dirs. aindex=1 files=( null ) [ $# -eq 0 ] && { echo "Usage: $0 filename" ; exit 500; } createList(){ f=$(find . -iname "search.file" -print) for i in $f do files[$aindex]=$(echo "${i}") aindex=$( expr $aindex + 1 ) done } writeList() { for (( i=1; i<$aindex; i++ )) do echo "#$i : ${files[$i]}" done for (( i=1; i<$aindex; i++ )) do echo "/usr/bin/cp /cygdrive/c/testscript/TheCorrectFile.file ${files[$filenumber]}" done } createList writeList

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• Limiting Subscriptions to be emailed using SSRS

  - by Graeme

  Currently, our system will do a "foreach" over all Subscriptions which are returned from the ListSubscriptions method of ReportingService and fire a Timed Subscription event so that they receive the report as an email. In our dev environment, I don't want every subscription of these reports to be sent out when we are testing. Is there a way I can create a new subscription with my own email address being used so that I receive the report? The temp subscription could then be deleted after sending. Any ideas on how to do this?

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• Mysql question about UPDATE

  - by Beck

  UPDATE counter_reports SET `counter`=`counter`+1,`date`=? WHERE report_id IN( (SELECT report_id FROM counter_reports WHERE report_name="emails_sent" AND `year`=1 ORDER BY report_id DESC LIMIT 1), (SELECT report_id FROM counter_reports WHERE report_name="emails_sent" AND `month`=1 ORDER BY report_id DESC LIMIT 1), (SELECT report_id FROM counter_reports WHERE report_name="emails_sent" AND `week`=1 ORDER BY report_id DESC LIMIT 1), (SELECT report_id FROM counter_reports WHERE report_name="emails_sent" AND `day`=1 ORDER BY report_id DESC LIMIT 1) ) Is there any alternative for such sql? I need to update(increment by 1) last counter reports for day,week,month and year. If I'm adding manually, sql works fine, but with subqueries it fails to launch. Thanks. :)

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• MS Access Crashed an now all Form objects and code modules are missing

  - by owlie

  I was adding a form to our Access 07 db. I copied an existing form to use as a template, renamed it, and saved it. I opened a different form to check something and Access crashed. When I reopened the database it says: "Access has detected that this database is in an inconsistent state, and will attempt to recover the database." etc. When it reopened - all forms and reports were missing. Saved queries remain. The error message states that object recovery failures will be noted in a Recovery Errors table - but this table wasn't created. The links to the be database remained intact. The database is split - I was experimenting with a form on a front-end copy which might have something to do with it. Any ideas what would cause this (I can see loosing recent work - but nixing all form objects?!) And is there any chance of recovery?

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• SQL Server Reporting Services using of pictures with dynamic links

  - by YvesR

  I have setup a SSRS 2008 and building reports. So far so good. Now there is a picture control in SSRS where you can set the picture as external link reference. There you can choose to use a link. When I use a weblink (http://anyurl/download_picture.aspx?id=123) it dont' work for me. Calling the url in the web browser (all tested IE, Safari, Chrome, FF) the pictures is delivered, Header is ok, content type, too. Does it work in general in SSRS ? Or do I have to copy the picture to a temp folder and link the url like http://anyurl/mypicture.jpg.

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• The glutKeyboardFunc does not react to key presses immediately

  - by Nibirue

  I have a function glutKeyboardFunc(keyboard), where keyboard has: void keyboard(unsigned char key, int x, int y){ float alpha = 1.0; switch(key){ case 'c': glClearColor(1,0,0,alpha); printf("success"); break; } } This is a summary of the function; it works properly, but only once some other action has occurred. For instance, the printf statement reports success immediately on keystroke 'c', but the background color does not become active until I click somewhere else on the canvas. I want all keystrokes to have an immediate effect.

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• RoR: Condition Always False - Why?

  - by Matt Hollingsworth

  Working in RoR 2.3.x. My quiz_results table has a row for user_id (3907) and result (0.1), and two users I'm looking at with no rows in the quiz_results table. This line keeps returining false: -if QuizResult.find_by_user_id(@user_id).present? But if I change it to anything that returns true, the next line reports an error on the * method: ="#{(QuizResult.average('score', :conditions => 'user_id = #{@user.id}') * 100).round}%" The beginning of the code is a loop: [email protected] do |user| Any ideas how to fix? Have tried unsuccessfully all day.

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• Is there any way around the Chrome 5 breakage of Ajax for local files?

  - by nikow

  The recent Chrome 5.0 release completely blocks XMLHTTPRequest requests for local files comming from a local file. Here is just one of the many related bug reports and here is the code change (there is also a SO question caused by this). This breaks a lot of production code, e.g. for documentation systems. Users must be able to browse local documentation without the need to install anything or run executables. My question is if there is any way around this restriction? I'm only interested in solutions that don't require any fancy actions on the users side (nothing beyond a confirmation dialog). Is there any way the HTML5 File API could be used, or maybe postMessage()? Of course this whole issue is very frustrating for many people. Firefox takes a fare more reasonable approach and allows requests inside the directory. So it seems unlikely that other browser vendors will follow Chrome.

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• discrepancy in google analytics pageview totals when tracking subdomains

  - by frabjousB

  We are using the old urchin.js and are tracking 2 subdomains under the same profile. We have a “track subdomains” advanced filter defined (as per http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55524) as well as 2 segments for presenting data in the reports: hostname matches exactly subdomain1.domain-name.com and hostname matches exactly subdomain2.domain-name.com When I apply these segments to our Top Content Overview report, the All Visits total for PageViews does not correspond to the # of visits reported for each subdomain. For example: All Visits = 53 subdomain1 = 24 subdomain2 = 32 Is there any reason as to why we would be seeing this discrepancy in numbers?

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• Retrieve data like rework %, schedule and effort varience from Microsoft Project

  - by Ram

  Hi, I need to generate various metric from my MS project file for the period of one month. I need to generate following reports Schedule Variance Effort Variance Rework Percentage Wasted Efforts For rework percentage, I am using condition like the task.Start date should be greater than or equal to the start date and task.Finish date should be less than or equal to finish date. but I am concerned about the tasks those are starting before the start date and ending before the end date. In such situation I only need the rework % for the number of hrs spent during start and end and not for the hrs spent before start date. Same thing applies to the task which are starting before end date but ending after end date. Any pointer would be great help. Thanks

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• Failure connecting to Dell MD3200i from XenServer 6.2 pool

  - by Tom Sparrow

  This question also asked at Citrix Forums http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=332289 I have a MD3200i that is currently working fine with my Xen5.6 pool, but I cannot get a connection to the new 6.2 pool to work. I previously had a problem with a 6.0 upgrade (which is why the old pool is still on 5.6), but rolled back rather than fix it as it wasn't urgent at the time. This install is on new machines - I tried 6.1 first (which had the same problems) then 6.2 was released the second day after installation so I switched to that. I've not installed anything from the Dell resource DVD at this point - I can't find anything saying I should, and everything I have read suggests it shouldn't be necessary. I can ping all 8 ip addresses from both servers in the pool, iscsiadm -m discovery works fine, I can login to the nodes and iscsiadm reports the sessions active correctly. I've added the required sections to multipath.conf, but multipath -ll reports DM multipath kernel driver not loaded immediately after boot. The following is a log of a test session immediately after boot. root@xen3 ~]# iscsiadm -m node --loginall=all Logging in to [iface: default, target: iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91, portal: 192.168.130.101,3260] Logging in to [iface: default, target: iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91, portal: 192.168.131.101,3260] Logging in to [iface: default, target: iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91, portal: 192.168.131.104,3260] Logging in to [iface: default, target: iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91, portal: 192.168.131.102,3260] Logging in to [iface: default, target: iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91, portal: 192.168.130.103,3260] Logging in to [iface: default, target: iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91, portal: 192.168.130.104,3260] Logging in to [iface: default, target: iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91, portal: 192.168.130.102,3260] Logging in to [iface: default, target: iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91, portal: 192.168.131.103,3260] Login to [iface: default, target: iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91, portal: 192.168.130.101,3260]: successful Login to [iface: default, target: iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91, portal: 192.168.131.101,3260]: successful Login to [iface: default, target: iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91, portal: 192.168.131.104,3260]: successful Login to [iface: default, target: iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91, portal: 192.168.131.102,3260]: successful Login to [iface: default, target: iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91, portal: 192.168.130.103,3260]: successful Login to [iface: default, target: iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91, portal: 192.168.130.104,3260]: successful Login to [iface: default, target: iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91, portal: 192.168.130.102,3260]: successful Login to [iface: default, target: iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91, portal: 192.168.131.103,3260]: successful [root@xen3 ~]# iscsiadm -m session tcp: [1] 192.168.130.101:3260,1 iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91 tcp: [2] 192.168.131.101:3260,1 iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91 tcp: [3] 192.168.131.104:3260,2 iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91 tcp: [4] 192.168.131.102:3260,2 iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91 tcp: [5] 192.168.130.103:3260,1 iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91 tcp: [6] 192.168.130.104:3260,2 iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91 tcp: [7] 192.168.130.102:3260,2 iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91 tcp: [8] 192.168.131.103:3260,1 iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91 [root@xen3 ~]# service multipathd restart ok Stopping multipathd daemon: [ OK ] Starting multipathd daemon: [ OK ] [root@xen3 ~]# multipath Jul 04 09:58:47 | DM multipath kernel driver not loaded Jul 04 09:58:47 | DM multipath kernel driver not loaded [root@xen3 ~]# multipath -ll Jul 04 09:59:03 | DM multipath kernel driver not loaded Jul 04 09:59:03 | DM multipath kernel driver not loaded [ root@xen3 ~]# modprobe dm_multipath [root@xen3 ~]# multipath Jul 04 10:19:50 | 36b8ca3a0e7024800194a0bd11891cd14: ignoring map create: 1Dell_Internal_Dual_SD_0123456789AB undef Dell,Internal Dual SD size=1.9G features='0' hwhandler='0' wp=undef `-+- policy='round-robin 0' prio=1 status=undef `- 7:0:0:0 sdb 8:16 undef ready running [root@xen3 ~]# multipath -ll 1Dell_Internal_Dual_SD_0123456789AB dm-1 Dell,Internal Dual SD size=1.9G features='0' hwhandler='0' wp=rw `-+- policy='round-robin 0' prio=1 status=enabled `- 7:0:0:0 sdb 8:16 active ready running [root@xen3 ~]# iscsiadm -m session tcp: [1] 192.168.130.101:3260,1 iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91 tcp: [2] 192.168.131.101:3260,1 iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91 tcp: [3] 192.168.131.104:3260,2 iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91 tcp: [4] 192.168.131.102:3260,2 iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91 tcp: [5] 192.168.130.103:3260,1 iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91 tcp: [6] 192.168.130.104:3260,2 iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91 tcp: [7] 192.168.130.102:3260,2 iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91 tcp: [8] 192.168.131.103:3260,1 iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91 [root@xen3 ~]# dmesg | tail -n 50 [ 1161.881010] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdf] Unhandled error code [ 1161.881013] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdf] Result: hostbyte=DID_TRANSPORT_DISRUPTED driverbyte=DRIVER_OK [ 1161.881017] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdf] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 [ 1161.881024] end_request: I/O error, dev sdf, sector 0 [ 1161.881031] Buffer I/O error on device sdf, logical block 0 [ 1161.881045] sd 15:0:0:0: [sdi] Unhandled error code [ 1161.881048] sd 15:0:0:0: [sdi] Result: hostbyte=DID_TRANSPORT_DISRUPTED driverbyte=DRIVER_OK [ 1161.881052] sd 15:0:0:0: [sdi] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 [ 1161.881058] end_request: I/O error, dev sdi, sector 0 [ 1161.881065] Buffer I/O error on device sdi, logical block 0 [ 1161.881122] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdg] Unhandled error code [ 1161.881124] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdg] Result: hostbyte=DID_TRANSPORT_DISRUPTED driverbyte=DRIVER_OK [ 1161.881126] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdg] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 [ 1161.881132] end_request: I/O error, dev sdg, sector 0 [ 1161.881140] Buffer I/O error on device sdg, logical block 0 [ 1168.220951] connection6:0: ping timeout of 15 secs expired, recv timeout 10, last rx 84060, last ping 85060, now 86560 [ 1168.220957] connection7:0: ping timeout of 15 secs expired, recv timeout 10, last rx 84060, last ping 85060, now 86560 [ 1168.220967] connection7:0: detected conn error (1011) [ 1168.220969] connection4:0: ping timeout of 15 secs expired, recv timeout 10, last rx 84060, last ping 85060, now 86560 [ 1168.220973] connection4:0: detected conn error (1011) [ 1168.220975] connection3:0: ping timeout of 15 secs expired, recv timeout 10, last rx 84060, last ping 85060, now 86560 [ 1168.220978] connection3:0: detected conn error (1011) [ 1168.220985] connection6:0: detected conn error (1011) [ 1168.480994] sd 14:0:0:0: [sde] Unhandled error code [ 1168.480998] sd 14:0:0:0: [sde] Result: hostbyte=DID_TRANSPORT_DISRUPTED driverbyte=DRIVER_OK [ 1168.481001] sd 14:0:0:0: [sde] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 [ 1168.481009] end_request: I/O error, dev sde, sector 0 [ 1168.481015] Buffer I/O error on device sde, logical block 0 [ 1168.481076] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdc] Unhandled error code [ 1168.481078] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdc] Result: hostbyte=DID_TRANSPORT_DISRUPTED driverbyte=DRIVER_OK [ 1168.481080] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdc] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 [ 1168.481087] end_request: I/O error, dev sdc, sector 0 [ 1168.481092] Buffer I/O error on device sdc, logical block 0 [ 1168.481144] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdd] Unhandled error code [ 1168.481147] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdd] Result: hostbyte=DID_TRANSPORT_DISRUPTED driverbyte=DRIVER_OK [ 1168.481150] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdd] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 [ 1168.481156] end_request: I/O error, dev sdd, sector 0 [ 1168.481163] Buffer I/O error on device sdd, logical block 0 [ 1168.481168] sd 13:0:0:0: [sdj] Unhandled error code [ 1168.481170] sd 13:0:0:0: [sdj] Result: hostbyte=DID_TRANSPORT_DISRUPTED driverbyte=DRIVER_OK [ 1168.481172] sd 13:0:0:0: [sdj] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 [ 1168.481178] end_request: I/O error, dev sdj, sector 0 [ 1168.481184] Buffer I/O error on device sdj, logical block 0 [ 1457.105996] device-mapper: multipath round-robin: version 1.0.0 loaded [ 1457.106155] device-mapper: multipath: Cannot access device path 8:0: -16 [ 1457.106164] device-mapper: table: 252:1: multipath: error getting device [ 1457.106172] device-mapper: ioctl: error adding target to table [ 1457.171292] device-mapper: multipath: Cannot access device path 8:0: -16 [ 1457.171299] device-mapper: table: 252:1: multipath: error getting device [ 1457.171304] device-mapper: ioctl: error adding target to table [root@xen3 ~]# fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 299.4 GB, 299439751168 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 36404 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 5 40131 de Dell Utility /dev/sda2 * 6 528 4194304 83 Linux Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary. /dev/sda3 528 1050 4194304 83 Linux /dev/sda4 1050 36404 283986359+ 8e Linux LVM Disk /dev/sdb: 2040 MB, 2040528896 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 248 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 1 248 1992028+ 83 Linux Disk /dev/dm-1: 2040 MB, 2040528896 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 248 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/dm-1p1 1 248 1992028+ 83 Linux [root@xen3 ~]# xe sr-probe type=lvmoiscsi device-config:target=192.168.130.101 device-config:targetIQN=iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3200i.6782bcb0006bd850000000004ed88b91 Error code: SR_BACKEND_FAILURE_107 Error parameters: , The SCSIid parameter is missing or incorrect, <?xml version="1.0" ?> <iscsi-target/> Note: the xml ends there correctly on the last line - it doesn't ever return a list of LUNs (and there is one in the group on the SAN for those servers.

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• Why did my flash drive become "read only" and (how) can I fix it?

  - by Bob

  I have a brand new flash drive (one week old) that has become marked as read only, by Windows, Kubuntu and a bootable partitioner. Why did this happen? Is it fixable? If it is, how can I fix this? The problem Firstly, this drive is new. It's certainly not been used enough to die from normal wear and tear, though I would not discount defective components. The drive itself has somehow become locked in a read only state. Windows' Disk management: Diskpart: Generic Flash Disk USB Device Disk ID: 33FA33FA Type : USB Status : Online Path : 0 Target : 0 LUN ID : 0 Location Path : UNAVAILABLE Current Read-only State : Yes Read-only : No Boot Disk : No Pagefile Disk : No Hibernation File Disk : No Crashdump Disk : No Clustered Disk : No What really confuses me is Current Read-only State : Yes and Read-only : No. Attempted solutions So far, I've tried: Formatting it in Windows (in Disk management, the format options are greyed out when right clicking). DiskPart Clean (CLEAN - Clear the configuration information, or all information, off the disk.): DISKPART> clean DiskPart has encountered an error: The media is write protected. See the System Event Log for more information. There was nothing in the event log. Windows command line format >format G: Insert new disk for drive G: and press ENTER when ready... The type of the file system is FAT32. Verifying 7740M Cannot format. This volume is write protected. Windows chkdsk: see below for details Kubuntu fsck (through VirtualBox USB passthrough): see below for details Acronis True Image to format, to convert to GPT, to destroy and rebuild MBR, basically anything: failed (could not write to MBR) Details (and a nice story) Background This was a brand new, generic, 8GB flash drive I wanted to create a multiboot flash drive with. It came formatted as FAT32, though oddly a little larger than most 8 GIGAbyte flash drives I've come across. Approximately 127MB was listed as "used" by Windows. I never discovered why. The end usable space was about what I normally expect from a 8GB drive (approx 7.4 GIBIbytes). I had thrown quite a few Linux distros on, along with a copy of Hiren's. They would all boot perfectly. They were put on with YUMI. When I tried to put the Knoppix DVD on, YUMI added an odd video option to its boot comman which caused Knoppix to boot with a black screen on X. ttys 1 through 6 still worked as text only interfaces. A few days later, I took some time to take that odd video option off, making the boot command match the one that comes with Knoppix. On the attempt to boot, Knoppix reported some form of LZMA corruption. Leading up to the current issue I was thinking the Knoppix files may have been corrupted somehow, so I tried reloading it. The drive was nearly full (45MB free), so I deleted a generic ISO that also was not booting. That went fine. I then went through YUMI to 'uninstall' Knoppix, i.e. delete files and remove from the menus. The files went first, then the menus were cleared successfully. However, the free space was stuck at about 700MB, same as it was before removing Knoppix. In the old Knoppix folder, there was a 0 byte file named KNOPPIX that could not be deleted. I tried reinserting the drive to delete this file - without safely removing, if that made a difference (hey, first time for everything). Running the standard Windows chkdsk scan without /r or /f reported errors found. Running with /r just got it stuck. I decided to give fsck a shot, so I loaded up my Kubuntu VM and attached the drive to it with VirtualBox's USB 2.0 passthrough. I umounted it (/dev/sda1) and ran a fsck. There are differences between boot sector and its backup. I chose No action. It told me FATs differ and asked me to select either the first or second FAT. Whichever I selected, I got a notice of Free cluster summary wrong. If I chose Correct, it gave a list of incorrect file names. To try to fix something, at least, I ran it with the -p option. Halfway through fixing the files, the VM froze - I ended its process about ten minutes later. Cause? My next attempt was to use YUMI, again, to rebuild the whole drive. I used YUMI's built in reformat (to FAT32) option and installed a Kubuntu ISO (700MB). The format was successful, however, the extract and copy of Kubuntu (which YUMI uses a 7zip binary for) froze at about 60% done. After waiting for about fifteen minutes (longer than the 3.5GB Knoppix ISO took last time), I pulled the drive out. The drive at this point was already formatted, SYSLINUX already installed, just waiting on the unpacking of an ISO and the modifying of the boot menus. Plugging it back in, it came up as normal - however, any write action would fail. Disk management reported it as read only. On reconnect, it would come up as normal but a write operation would cause it to go read only again. After a few attempts, it started coming up as read only on insertion. Attempts to fix This is when I ran through the attempts listed above, to try and reformat it in case of a faulty format. However the inability to do so even on a bootable disk indicated something more serious is wrong. chkdsk now reports nothing is wrong, and fsck still reports MBR inconsistencies, but now always chooses first FAT automatically after telling me FATs differ. It still does the same Free cluster summary wrong afterwards. I cannot run with -p anymore because it is now marked as read only. It also managed to corrupt my VM's disk somehow on the first attempt (yes, I'm sure I chose sda, which is mapped to a 7.4GB drive - I triple checked). Thank god for snapshots? I'm just about out of ideas. To my inexperienced mind it looks like something in the drive's firmware set it to read only "permanently" somehow - is there any way to reset this? I don't particularly care about keeping data, considering I've reformatted it twice. Also, fixes that keep me in Windows are better; it reduces the risk of me accidentally nuking my main hard drive. Update 1: I pulled apart the drive out of curiosity. As you can see, there are no obvious write protect switches. There is an IC on the other side, ALCOR branded labelled AU6989HL, if that matters. If there appears to be no way to fix this, I'll probably pull out the (glued down) card and put it in a card reader to check if it's the card or the controller that died. Update 2: I've pulled the card off, Windows detects the drive as a card reader now. The contacts on the card don't appear to be used, and there are several rows of holes on the card itself. Putting it into the card reader only detects about 30MB total, RAW. It's probably either the reader incorrectly reporting the card as faulty (as if a real SD card's write protect was switched on) or a bad contact somewhere. If nothing else, I have a spare 8GB Micro SD card now... as soon as I figure out how to format it as 8GB.

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Timeout static class

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. When I started the “Little Wonders” series, I really wanted to pay homage to parts of the .NET Framework that are often small but can help in big ways.  The item I have to discuss today really is a very small item in the .NET BCL, but once again I feel it can help make the intention of code much clearer and thus is worthy of note. The Problem - Magic numbers aren’t very readable or maintainable In my first Little Wonders Post (Five Little Wonders That Make Code Better) I mention the TimeSpan factory methods which, I feel, really help the readability of constructed TimeSpan instances. Just to quickly recap that discussion, ask yourself what the TimeSpan specified in each case below is 1: // Five minutes? Five Seconds? 2: var fiveWhat1 = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 5); 3: var fiveWhat2 = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 5, 0); 4: var fiveWhat3 = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 5, 0, 0); You’d think they’d all be the same unit of time, right?  After all, most overloads tend to tack additional arguments on the end.  But this is not the case with TimeSpan, where the constructor forms are:     TimeSpan(int hours, int minutes, int seconds);     TimeSpan(int days, int hours, int minutes, int seconds);     TimeSpan(int days, int hours, int minutes, int seconds, int milliseconds); Notice how in the 4 and 5 parameter version we suddenly have the parameter days slipping in front of hours?  This can make reading constructors like those above much harder.  Fortunately, there are TimeSpan factory methods to help make your intention crystal clear: 1: // Ah! Much clearer! 2: var fiveSeconds = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5); These are great because they remove all ambiguity from the reader!  So in short, magic numbers in constructors and methods can be ambiguous, and anything we can do to clean up the intention of the developer will make the code much easier to read and maintain. Timeout – Readable identifiers for infinite timeout values In a similar way to TimeSpan, let’s consider specifying timeouts for some of .NET’s (or our own) many methods that allow you to specify timeout periods. For example, in the TPL Task class, there is a family of Wait() methods that can take TimeSpan or int for timeouts.  Typically, if you want to specify an infinite timeout, you’d just call the version that doesn’t take a timeout parameter at all: 1: myTask.Wait(); // infinite wait But there are versions that take the int or TimeSpan for timeout as well: 1: // Wait for 100 ms 2: myTask.Wait(100); 3:  4: // Wait for 5 seconds 5: myTask.Wait(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5); Now, if we want to specify an infinite timeout to wait on the Task, we could pass –1 (or a TimeSpan set to –1 ms), which what the .NET BCL methods with timeouts use to represent an infinite timeout: 1: // Also infinite timeouts, but harder to read/maintain 2: myTask.Wait(-1); 3: myTask.Wait(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(-1)); However, these are not as readable or maintainable.  If you were writing this code, you might make the mistake of thinking 0 or int.MaxValue was an infinite timeout, and you’d be incorrect.  Also, reading the code above it isn’t as clear that –1 is infinite unless you happen to know that is the specified behavior. To make the code like this easier to read and maintain, there is a static class called Timeout in the System.Threading namespace which contains definition for infinite timeouts specified as both int and TimeSpan forms: Timeout.Infinite An integer constant with a value of –1 Timeout.InfiniteTimeSpan A static readonly TimeSpan which represents –1 ms (only available in .NET 4.5+) This makes our calls to Task.Wait() (or any other calls with timeouts) much more clear: 1: // intention to wait indefinitely is quite clear now 2: myTask.Wait(Timeout.Infinite); 3: myTask.Wait(Timeout.InfiniteTimeSpan); But wait, you may say, why would we care at all?  Why not use the version of Wait() that takes no arguments?  Good question!  When you’re directly calling the method with an infinite timeout that’s what you’d most likely do, but what if you are just passing along a timeout specified by a caller from higher up?  Or perhaps storing a timeout value from a configuration file, and want to default it to infinite? For example, perhaps you are designing a communications module and want to be able to shutdown gracefully, but if you can’t gracefully finish in a specified amount of time you want to force the connection closed.  You could create a Shutdown() method in your class, and take a TimeSpan or an int for the amount of time to wait for a clean shutdown – perhaps waiting for client to acknowledge – before terminating the connection.  So, assume we had a pub/sub system with a class to broadcast messages: 1: // Some class to broadcast messages to connected clients 2: public class Broadcaster 3: { 4: // ... 5:  6: // Shutdown connection to clients, wait for ack back from clients 7: // until all acks received or timeout, whichever happens first 8: public void Shutdown(int timeout) 9: { 10: // Kick off a task here to send shutdown request to clients and wait 11: // for the task to finish below for the specified time... 12:  13: if (!shutdownTask.Wait(timeout)) 14: { 15: // If Wait() returns false, we timed out and task 16: // did not join in time. 17: } 18: } 19: } We could even add an overload to allow us to use TimeSpan instead of int, to give our callers the flexibility to specify timeouts either way: 1: // overload to allow them to specify Timeout in TimeSpan, would 2: // just call the int version passing in the TotalMilliseconds... 3: public void Shutdown(TimeSpan timeout) 4: { 5: Shutdown(timeout.TotalMilliseconds); 6: } Notice in case of this class, we don’t assume the caller wants infinite timeouts, we choose to rely on them to tell us how long to wait.  So now, if they choose an infinite timeout, they could use the –1, which is more cryptic, or use Timeout class to make the intention clear: 1: // shutdown the broadcaster, waiting until all clients ack back 2: // without timing out. 3: myBroadcaster.Shutdown(Timeout.Infinite); We could even add a default argument using the int parameter version so that specifying no arguments to Shutdown() assumes an infinite timeout: 1: // Modified original Shutdown() method to add a default of 2: // Timeout.Infinite, works because Timeout.Infinite is a compile 3: // time constant. 4: public void Shutdown(int timeout = Timeout.Infinite) 5: { 6: // same code as before 7: } Note that you can’t default the ShutDown(TimeSpan) overload with Timeout.InfiniteTimeSpan since it is not a compile-time constant.  The only acceptable default for a TimeSpan parameter would be default(TimeSpan) which is zero milliseconds, which specified no wait, not infinite wait. Summary While Timeout.Infinite and Timeout.InfiniteTimeSpan are not earth-shattering classes in terms of functionality, they do give you very handy and readable constant values that you can use in your programs to help increase readability and maintainability when specifying infinite timeouts for various timeouts in the BCL and your own applications. Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,Timeout,Task

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• The True Cost of a Solution

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I had a Twitter chat recently with someone suggesting Oracle and SQL Server were losing out to OSS (Open Source Software) in the enterprise due to their issues with scaling or being too generic (one size fits all). I challenged that a bit, as my experience with enterprise sized clients has been different – adverse to OSS but receptive to an established vendor. The response I got was: Found it easier to influence change by showing how X can’t solve our problems or X is extremely costly to scale. Money talks. I think this is definitely the right approach for anyone pitching an alternate or alien technology as part of a solution: identify the issue, identify the solution, then present pros and cons including a cost/benefit analysis. What can happen though is we get tunnel vision and don’t present a full view of the costs associated with a solution. An “Acura”te Example (I’m so clever…) This is my dream vehicle, a Crystal Black Pearl coloured Acura MDX with the SH-AWD package! We’re a family of 4 (5 if my daughters ever get their wish of adding a dog), and I’ve always wanted a luxury type of vehicle, so this is a perfect replacement in a few years when our Rav 4 has hit the 8 – 10 year mark. MSRP – $62,890 But as we all know, that’s not *really* the cost of the vehicle. There’s taxes and fees added on, there’s the extended warranty if I choose to purchase it, there’s the finance rate that needs to be factored in… MSRP –   $62,890 Taxes –      $7,546 Warranty - $2,500 SubTotal – $72,936 Finance Charge – $ 1094.04 Grand Total – $74,030 Well! Glad we did that exercise – we discovered an extra $11k added on to the MSRP! Well now we have our true price…or do we? Lifetime of the Vehicle I’m expecting to have this vehicle for 7 – 10 years. While the hard cost of the vehicle is known and dealt with, the costs to run and maintain the vehicle are on top of this. I did some research, and here’s what I’ve found: Fuel and Mileage Gas prices are high as it is for regular fuel, but getting into an MDX will require that I *only* purchase premium fuel, which comes at a premium price. I need to expect my bill at the pump to be higher. Comparing the MDX to my 2007 Rav4 also shows I’ll be gassing up more often. The Rav4 has a city MPG of 21, while the MDX plummets to 16! The MDX does have a bigger fuel tank though, so all in all the number of times I hit the pumps might even out. Still, I estimate I’ll be spending approximately $8000 – $10000 more on gas over a 10 year period than my current Rav4. Service Options Limited Although I have options with my Toyota here in Winnipeg (we have 4 Toyota dealerships), I do go to my original dealer for any service work. Still, I like the fact that I have options. However, there’s only one Acura dealership in all of Winnipeg! So if, for whatever reason, I’m not satisfied with the level of service I’m stuck. Non Warranty Service Work Also let’s not forget that there’s a bulk of work required every year that is *not* covered under warranty – oil changes, tire rotations, brake pads, etc. I expect I’ll need to get new tires at the 5 years mark as well, which can easily be $1200 – $1500 (I just paid $1000 for new tires for the Rav4 and we’re at the 5 year mark). Now these aren’t going to be *new* costs that I’m not used to from our existing vehicles, but they should still be factored in. I’d budget $500/year, or $5000 over the 10 years I’ll own the vehicle. Final Assessment So let’s re-assess the true cost of my dream MDX: MSRP                    $62,890 Taxes                       $7,546 Warranty                 $2,500 Finance Charge         $1094 Gas                        $10,000 Service Work            $5000 Grand Total           $89,030 So now I have a better idea of 10 year cost overall, and I’ve identified some concerns with local service availability. And there’s now much more to consider over the original $62,890 price tag. Tying This Back to Technology Solutions The process that we just went through is no different than what organizations do when considering implementing a new system, technology, or technology based solution, within their environments. It’s easy to tout the short term cost savings of particular product/platform/technology in a vacuum. But its when you consider the wider impact that the true cost comes into play. Let’s create a scenario: A company is not happy with its current data reporting suite. An employee suggests moving to an open source solution. The selling points are: - Because its open source its free - The organization would have access to the source code so they could alter it however they wished - It provided features not available with the current reporting suite At first this sounds great to the management and executive, but then they start asking some questions and uncover more information: - The OSS product is built on a technology not used anywhere within the organization - There are no vendors offering product support for the OSS product - The OSS product requires a specific server platform to operate on, one that’s not standard in the organization All of a sudden, the true cost of implementing this solution is starting to become clearer. The company might save money on licensing costs, but their training costs would increase significantly – developers would need to learn how to develop in the technology the OSS solution was built on, IT staff must learn how to set up and maintain a new server platform within their existing infrastructure, and if a problem was found there was no vendor to contact for support. The true cost of implementing a “free” OSS solution is actually spinning up a project to implement it within the organization – no small cost. And that’s just the short-term cost. Now the organization must ensure they maintain trained staff who can make changes to the OSS reporting solution and IT staff that will stay knowledgeable in the new server platform. If those skills are very niche, then higher labour costs could be incurred if those people are hard to find or if trained employees use that knowledge as leverage for higher pay. Maybe a vendor exists that will contract out support, but then there are those costs to consider as well. And let’s not forget end-user training – in our example, anyone that runs reports will need to be trained on how to use the new system. Here’s the Point We still tend to look at software in an “off the shelf” kind of way. It’s very easy to say “oh, this product is better than vendor x’s product – and its free because its OSS!” but the reality is that implementing any new technology within an organization has a cost regardless of the retail price of the product. Training, integration, support – these are real costs that impact an organization and span multiple departments. Whether you’re pitching an improved business process, a new system, or a new technology, you need to consider the bigger picture costs of implementation. What you define as success (in our example, having better reporting functionality) might not be what others define as success if implementing your solution causes them issues. A true enterprise solution needs to consider the entire enterprise.

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• Why JSF Matters (to You)

  - by reza_rahman

        "Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge."                                                                                                    – Lao Tzu You may have noticed Thoughtworks recently crowned the likes AngularJS, etc imminent successors to server-side web frameworks. They apparently also deemed it necessary to single out JSF for righteous scorn. I have to say as I was reading the analysis I couldn't help but remember they also promptly jumped on the Ruby, Rails, Clojure, etc bandwagon a good few years ago seemingly similarly crowing these dynamic languages imminent successors to Java. I remember thinking then as I do now whether the folks at Thoughtworks are really that much smarter than me or if they are simply more prone to the Hipster buzz of the day. I'll let you make the final call on that one. I also noticed mention of "J2EE" in the context of JSF and had to wonder how up-to-date or knowledgeable the person writing the analysis actually was given that the term was basically retired almost a decade ago. There's one thing that I am absolutely sure about though - as a long time pretty happy user of JSF, I had no choice but to speak up on what I believe JSF offers. If you feel the same way, I would encourage you to support the team behind JSF whose hard work you may have benefited from over the years. True to his outspoken character PrimeFaces lead Cagatay Civici certainly did not mince words making the case for the JSF ecosystem - his excellent write-up is well worth a read. He specifically pointed out the practical problems in going whole hog with bare metal JavaScript, CSS, HTML for many development teams. I'll admit I had to smile when I read his closing sentence as well as the rather cheerful comments to the post from actual current JSF/PrimeFaces users that are apparently supposed to be on a gloomy death march. In a similar vein, OmniFaces developer Arjan Tijms did a great job pointing out the fact that despite the extremely competitive server-side Java Web UI space, JSF seems to manage to always consistently come out in either the number one or number two spot over many years and many data sources - do give his well-written message in the JAX-RS user forum a careful read. I don't think it's really reasonable to expect this to be the case for so many years if JSF was not at least a capable if not outstanding technology. If fact if you've ever wondered, Oracle itself is one of the largest JSF users on the planet. As Oracle's Shay Shmeltzer explains in a recent JSF Central interview, many of Oracle's strategic products such as ADF, ADF Mobile and Fusion Applications itself is built on JSF. There are well over 3,000 active developers working on these codebases. I don't think anyone can think of a more compelling reason to make sure that a technology is as effective as possible for practical development under real world conditions. Standing on the shoulders of the above giants, I feel like I can be pretty brief in making my own case for JSF: JSF is a powerful abstraction that brings the original Smalltalk MVC pattern to web development. This means cutting down boilerplate code to the bare minimum such that you really can think of just writing your view markup and then simply wire up some properties and event handlers on a POJO. The best way to see what this really means is to compare JSF code for a pretty small case to other approaches. You should then multiply the additional work for the typical enterprise project to try to understand what the productivity trade-offs are. This is reason alone for me to personally never take any other approach seriously as my primary web UI solution unless it can match the sheer productivity of JSF. Thanks to JSF's focus on components from the ground-up JSF has an extremely strong ecosystem that includes projects like PrimeFaces, RichFaces, OmniFaces, ICEFaces and of course ADF Faces/Mobile. These component libraries taken together constitute perhaps the largest widget set ever developed and optimized for a single web UI technology. To begin to grasp what this really means, just briefly browse the excellent PrimeFaces showcase and think about the fact that you can readily use the widgets on that showcase by just using some simple markup and knowing near to nothing about AJAX, JavaScript or CSS. JSF has the fair and legitimate advantage of being an open vendor neutral standard. This means that no single company, individual or insular clique controls JSF - openness, transparency, accountability, plurality, collaboration and inclusiveness is virtually guaranteed by the standards process itself. You have the option to choose between compatible implementations, escape any form of lock-in or even create your own compatible implementation! As you might gather from the quote at the top of the post, I am not a fan of crystal ball gazing and certainly don't want to engage in it myself. Who knows? However far-fetched it may seem maybe AngularJS is the only future we all have after all. If that is the case, so be it. Unlike what you might have been told, Java EE is about choice at heart and it can certainly work extremely well as a back-end for AngularJS. Likewise, you are also most certainly not limited to just JSF for working with Java EE - you have a rich set of choices like Struts 2, Vaadin, Errai, VRaptor 4, Wicket or perhaps even the new action-oriented web framework being considered for Java EE 8 based on the work in Jersey MVC... Please note that any views expressed here are my own only and certainly does not reflect the position of Oracle as a company.

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• Fastest way to parse XML files in C#?

  - by LifeH2O

  I have to load many XML files from internet. But for testing with better speed i downloaded all of them (more than 500 files) of the following format. <player-profile> <personal-information> <id>36</id> <fullname>Adam Gilchrist</fullname> <majorteam>Australia</majorteam> <nickname>Gilchrist</nickname> <shortName>A Gilchrist</shortName> <dateofbirth>Nov 14, 1971</dateofbirth> <battingstyle>Left-hand bat</battingstyle> <bowlingstyle>Right-arm offbreak</bowlingstyle> <role>Wicket-Keeper</role> <teams-played-for>Western Australia, New South Wales, ICC World XI, Deccan Chargers, Australia</teams-played-for> <iplteam>Deccan Chargers</iplteam> </personal-information> <batting-statistics> <odi-stats> <matchtype>ODI</matchtype> <matches>287</matches> <innings>279</innings> <notouts>11</notouts> <runsscored>9619</runsscored> <highestscore>172</highestscore> <ballstaken>9922</ballstaken> <sixes>149</sixes> <fours>1000+</fours> <ducks>0</ducks> <fifties>55</fifties> <catches>417</catches> <stumpings>55</stumpings> <hundreds>16</hundreds> <strikerate>96.95</strikerate> <average>35.89</average> </odi-stats> <test-stats> . . . </test-stats> <t20-stats> . . . </t20-stats> <ipl-stats> . . . </ipl-stats> </batting-statistics> <bowling-statistics> <odi-stats> . . . </odi-stats> <test-stats> . . . </test-stats> <t20-stats> . . . </t20-stats> <ipl-stats> . . . </ipl-stats> </bowling-statistics> </player-profile> I am using XmlNodeList list = _document.SelectNodes("/player-profile/batting-statistics/odi-stats"); And then loop this list with foreach as foreach (XmlNode stats in list) { _btMatchType = GetInnerString(stats, "matchtype"); //it returns null string if node not availible . . . . _btAvg = Convert.ToDouble(stats["average"].InnerText); } Even i am loading all files offline, parsing is very slow Is there any good faster way to parse them? Or is it problem with SQL? I am saving all extracted data from XML to database using DataSets, TableAdapters with insert command. I

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• ASP.NET MVC 2 Released

  - by ScottGu

  I’m happy to announce that the final release of ASP.NET MVC 2 is now available for VS 2008/Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with ASP.NET 3.5.  You can download and install it from the following locations: Download ASP.NET MVC 2 using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer Download ASP.NET MVC 2 from the Download Center The final release of VS 2010 and Visual Web Developer 2010 will have ASP.NET MVC 2 built-in – so you won’t need an additional install in order to use ASP.NET MVC 2 with them.  ASP.NET MVC 2 We shipped ASP.NET MVC 1 a little less than a year ago.  Since then, almost 1 million developers have downloaded and used the final release, and its popularity has steadily grown month over month. ASP.NET MVC 2 is the next significant update of ASP.NET MVC. It is a compatible update to ASP.NET MVC 1 – so all the knowledge, skills, code, and extensions you already have with ASP.NET MVC continue to work and apply going forward. Like the first release, we are also shipping the source code for ASP.NET MVC 2 under an OSI-compliant open-source license. ASP.NET MVC 2 can be installed side-by-side with ASP.NET MVC 1 (meaning you can have some apps built with V1 and others built with V2 on the same machine).  We have instructions on how to update your existing ASP.NET MVC 1 apps to use ASP.NET MVC 2 using VS 2008 here.  Note that VS 2010 has an automated upgrade wizard that can automatically migrate your existing ASP.NET MVC 1 applications to ASP.NET MVC 2 for you. ASP.NET MVC 2 Features ASP.NET MVC 2 adds a bunch of new capabilities and features.  I’ve started a blog series about some of the new features, and will be covering them in more depth in the weeks ahead.  Some of the new features and capabilities include: New Strongly Typed HTML Helpers Enhanced Model Validation support across both server and client Auto-Scaffold UI Helpers with Template Customization Support for splitting up large applications into “Areas” Asynchronous Controllers support that enables long running tasks in parallel Support for rendering sub-sections of a page/site using Html.RenderAction Lots of new helper functions, utilities, and API enhancements Improved Visual Studio tooling support You can learn more about these features in the “What’s New in ASP.NET MVC 2” document on the www.asp.net/mvc web-site.  We are going to be posting a lot of new tutorials and videos shortly on www.asp.net/mvc that cover all the features in ASP.NET MVC 2 release.  We will also post an updated end-to-end tutorial built entirely with ASP.NET MVC 2 (much like the NerdDinner tutorial that I wrote that covers ASP.NET MVC 1).  Summary The ASP.NET MVC team delivered regular V2 preview releases over the last year to get feedback on the feature set.  I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who tried out the previews and sent us suggestions/feedback/bug reports.  We hope you like the final release! Scott

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• Integrating HTML into Silverlight Applications

  - by dwahlin

  Looking for a way to display HTML content within a Silverlight application? If you haven’t tried doing that before it can be challenging at first until you know a few tricks of the trade.  Being able to display HTML is especially handy when you’re required to display RSS feeds (with embedded HTML), SQL Server Reporting Services reports, PDF files (not actually HTML – but the techniques discussed will work), or other HTML content.  In this post I'll discuss three options for displaying HTML content in Silverlight applications and describe how my company is using these techniques in client applications. Displaying HTML Overlays If you need to display HTML over a Silverlight application (such as an RSS feed containing HTML data in it) you’ll need to set the Silverlight control’s windowless parameter to true. This can be done using the object tag as shown next: <object data="data:application/x-silverlight-2," type="application/x-silverlight-2" width="100%" height="100%"> <param name="source" value="ClientBin/HTMLAndSilverlight.xap"/> <param name="onError" value="onSilverlightError" /> <param name="background" value="white" /> <param name="minRuntimeVersion" value="4.0.50401.0" /> <param name="autoUpgrade" value="true" /> <param name="windowless" value="true" /> <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149156&v=4.0.50401.0" style="text-decoration:none"> <img src="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=161376" alt="Get Microsoft Silverlight" style="border-style:none"/> </a> </object> By setting the control to “windowless” you can overlay HTML objects by using absolute positioning and other CSS techniques. Keep in mind that on Windows machines the windowless setting can result in a performance hit when complex animations or HD video are running since the plug-in content is displayed directly by the browser window. It goes without saying that you should only set windowless to true when you really need the functionality it offers. For example, if I want to display my blog’s RSS content on top of a Silverlight application I could set windowless to true and create a user control that grabbed the content and output it using a DataList control: <style type="text/css"> a {text-decoration:none;font-weight:bold;font-size:14pt;} </style> <div style="margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px;margin-right:5px;"> <asp:DataList ID="RSSDataList" runat="server" DataSourceID="RSSDataSource"> <ItemTemplate> <a href='<%# XPath("link") %>'><%# XPath("title") %></a> <br /> <%# XPath("description") %> <br /> </ItemTemplate> </asp:DataList> <asp:XmlDataSource ID="RSSDataSource" DataFile="http://weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin/rss.aspx" XPath="rss/channel/item" CacheDuration="60" runat="server" /> </div> The user control can then be placed in the page hosting the Silverlight control as shown below. This example adds a Close button, additional content to display in the overlay window and the HTML generated from the user control. <div id="RSSDiv"> <div style="background-color:#484848;border:1px solid black;height:35px;width:100%;"> <img alt="Close Button" align="right" src="Images/Close.png" onclick="HideOverlay();" style="cursor:pointer;" /> </div> <div style="overflow:auto;width:800px;height:565px;"> <div style="float:left;width:100px;height:103px;margin-left:10px;margin-top:5px;"> <img src="http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/dwahlin/dan2008.jpg" style="border:1px solid Gray" /> </div> <div style="float:left;width:300px;height:103px;margin-top:5px;"> <a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin" style="margin-left:10px;font-size:20pt;">Dan Wahlin's Blog</a> </div> <br /><br /><br /> <div style="clear:both;margin-top:20px;"> <uc:BlogRoller ID="BlogRoller" runat="server" /> </div> </div> </div> Of course, we wouldn’t want the RSS HTML content to be shown until requested. Once it’s requested the absolute position of where it should show above the Silverlight control can be set using standard CSS styles. The following ID selector named #RSSDiv handles hiding the overlay div shown above and determines where it will be display on the screen. #RSSDiv { background-color:White; position:absolute; top:100px; left:300px; width:800px; height:600px; border:1px solid black; display:none; } Now that the HTML content to display above the Silverlight control is set, how can we show it as a user clicks a HyperlinkButton or other control in the application? Fortunately, Silverlight provides an excellent HTML bridge that allows direct access to content hosted within a page. The following code shows two JavaScript functions that can be called from Siverlight to handle showing or hiding HTML overlay content. The two functions rely on jQuery (http://www.jQuery.com) to make it easy to select HTML objects and manipulate their properties: function ShowOverlay() { rssDiv.css('display', 'block'); } function HideOverlay() { rssDiv.css('display', 'none'); } Calling the ShowOverlay function is as simple as adding the following code into the Silverlight application within a button’s Click event handler: private void OverlayHyperlinkButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { HtmlPage.Window.Invoke("ShowOverlay"); } The result of setting the Silverlight control’s windowless parameter to true and showing the HTML overlay content is shown in the following screenshot:   Thinking Outside the Box to Show HTML Content Setting the windowless parameter to true may not be a viable option for some Silverlight applications or you may simply want to go about showing HTML content a different way. The next technique I’ll show takes advantage of simple HTML, CSS and JavaScript code to handle showing HTML content while a Silverlight application is running in the browser. Keep in mind that with Silverlight’s HTML bridge feature you can always pop-up HTML content in a new browser window using code similar to the following: System.Windows.Browser.HtmlPage.Window.Navigate( new Uri("http://silverlight.net"), "_blank"); For this example I’ll demonstrate how to hide the Silverlight application while maximizing a container div containing the HTML content to show. This allows HTML content to take up the full screen area of the browser without having to set windowless to true and when done right can make the user feel like they never left the Silverlight application. The following HTML shows several div elements that are used to display HTML within the same browser window as the Silverlight application: <div id="JobPlanDiv"> <div style="vertical-align:middle"> <img alt="Close Button" align="right" src="Images/Close.png" onclick="HideJobPlanIFrame();" style="cursor:pointer;" /> </div> <div id="JobPlan_IFrame_Container" style="height:95%;width:100%;margin-top:37px;"></div> </div> The JobPlanDiv element acts as a container for two other divs that handle showing a close button and hosting an iframe that will be added dynamically at runtime. JobPlanDiv isn’t visible when the Silverlight application loads due to the following ID selector added into the page: #JobPlanDiv { position:absolute; background-color:#484848; overflow:hidden; left:0; top:0; height:100%; width:100%; display:none; } When the HTML content needs to be shown or hidden the JavaScript functions shown next can be used: var jobPlanIFrameID = 'JobPlan_IFrame'; var slHost = null; var jobPlanContainer = null; var jobPlanIFrameContainer = null; var rssDiv = null; $(document).ready(function () { slHost = $('#silverlightControlHost'); jobPlanContainer = $('#JobPlanDiv'); jobPlanIFrameContainer = $('#JobPlan_IFrame_Container'); rssDiv = $('#RSSDiv'); }); function ShowJobPlanIFrame(url) { jobPlanContainer.css('display', 'block'); $('<iframe id="' + jobPlanIFrameID + '" src="' + url + '" style="height:100%;width:100%;" />') .appendTo(jobPlanIFrameContainer); slHost.css('width', '0%'); } function HideJobPlanIFrame() { jobPlanContainer.css('display', 'none'); $('#' + jobPlanIFrameID).remove(); slHost.css('width', '100%'); } ShowJobPlanIFrame() handles showing the JobPlanDiv div and adding an iframe into it dynamically. Once JobPlanDiv is shown, the Silverlight control host has its width set to a value of 0% to allow the control to stay alive while making it invisible to the user. I found that this technique works better across multiple browsers as opposed to manipulating the Silverlight control host div’s display or visibility properties. Now that you’ve seen the code to handle showing and hiding the HTML content area, let’s switch focus to the Silverlight application. As a user clicks on a link such as “View Report” the ShowJobPlanIFrame() JavaScript function needs to be called. The following code handles that task: private void ReportHyperlinkButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { ShowBrowser(_BaseUrl + "/Report.aspx"); } public void ShowBrowser(string url) { HtmlPage.Window.Invoke("ShowJobPlanIFrame", url); } Any URL can be passed into the ShowBrowser() method which handles invoking the JavaScript function. This includes standard web pages or even PDF files. We’ve used this technique frequently with our SmartPrint control (http://www.smartwebcontrols.com) which converts Silverlight screens into PDF documents and displays them. Here’s an example of the content generated:   Silverlight 4’s WebBrowser Control Both techniques shown to this point work well when Silverlight is running in-browser but not so well when it’s running out-of-browser since there’s no host page that you can access using the HTML bridge. Fortunately, Silverlight 4 provides a WebBrowser control that can be used to perform the same functionality quite easily. We’re currently using it in client applications to display PDF documents, SSRS reports and standard HTML content. Using the WebBrowser control simplifies the application quite a bit since no JavaScript is required if the application only runs out-of-browser. Here’s a simple example of defining the WebBrowser control in XAML. I typically define it in MainPage.xaml when a Silverlight Navigation template is used to create the project so that I can re-use the functionality across multiple screens. <Grid x:Name="WebBrowserGrid" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" Visibility="Collapsed"> <StackPanel HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch"> <Border Background="#484848" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Height="40"> <Image x:Name="WebBrowserImage" Width="100" Height="33" Cursor="Hand" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Source="/HTMLAndSilverlight;component/Assets/Images/Close.png" MouseLeftButtonDown="WebBrowserImage_MouseLeftButtonDown" /> </Border> <WebBrowser x:Name="JobPlanReportWebBrowser" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" /> </StackPanel> </Grid> Looking through the XAML you can see that a close image is defined along with the WebBrowser control. Because the URL that the WebBrowser should navigate to isn’t known at design time no value is assigned to the control’s Source property. If the XAML shown above is left “as is” you’ll find that any HTML content assigned to the WebBrowser doesn’t display properly. This is due to no height or width being set on the control. To handle this issue the following code is added into the XAML’s code-behind file to dynamically determine the height and width of the page and assign it to the WebBrowser. This is done by handling the SizeChanged event. void MainPage_SizeChanged(object sender, SizeChangedEventArgs e) { WebBrowserGrid.Height = JobPlanReportWebBrowser.Height = ActualHeight; WebBrowserGrid.Width = JobPlanReportWebBrowser.Width = ActualWidth; } When the user wants to view HTML content they click a button which executes the code shown in next: public void ShowBrowser(string url) { if (Application.Current.IsRunningOutOfBrowser) { JobPlanReportWebBrowser.NavigateToString("<html><body><iframe src='" + url + "' style='width:100%;height:97%;' /></body></html>"); WebBrowserGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Visible; } else { HtmlPage.Window.Invoke("ShowJobPlanIFrame", url); } } private void WebBrowserImage_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { WebBrowserGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed; }   Looking through the code you’ll see that it checks to see if the Silverlight application is running out-of-browser and then either displays the WebBrowser control or runs the JavaScript function discussed earlier. Although the WebBrowser control’s Source property could be assigned the URI of the page to navigate to, by assigning HTML content using the NavigateToString() method and adding an iframe, content can be shown from any site including cross-domain sites. This is especially handy when you need to grab a page from a reporting site that’s in a different domain than the Silverlight application. Here’s an example of viewing  PDF file inside of an out-of-browser application. The first image shows the application running out-of-browser before the user clicks a PDF HyperlinkButton.  The second image shows the PDF being displayed.   While there are certainly other techniques that can be used, the ones shown here have worked well for us in different applications and provide the ability to display HTML content in-browser or out-of-browser. Feel free to add a comment if you have another tip or trick you like to use when working with HTML content in Silverlight applications.   Download Code Sample   For more information about onsite, online and video training, mentoring and consulting solutions for .NET, SharePoint or Silverlight please visit http://www.thewahlingroup.com.

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• Dell Vostro 3560 bluetooth doesn't work

  - by Shein

  I installed the wireless driver using this instruction How do I install BCM43142 wireless drivers for Dell Vostro 3460/3560 and I have WiFi working. No problems here. But unfortunately the bluetooth doesn't work. The ubuntu bar shows the bluetooth sign and I can turn the bluetooth on/off but I can't discover any devices. And I can't find my laptop when I turn visibility On. So, obviously bluetooth doesn't work. I couldn't find the reports that blutooth can actually work with this adapter in Ubuntu. So, my question is: Is there anyone with BCM43142 adapter that have bluetooth working? Thank You in advance. PS. Ubuntu 12.10 x64 Update: After some fiddling around with different drivers from different sources I managed to get bluetooth working. Not flawlessly but at least I can pair a device. Bluetooth started working after installation of this package bt-bcm43142-onereic_0.0+20111116somerville2_amd64.deb Originally I found this package on the disk with Ubuntu which came with the Laptop. What this package does, it installs a firmware loader and a firmware itself. This firmware needs to get bluetooth working. Still bluetooth sometimes doesn't work even with this package. But manual loading the firmware helps. brcm_patchram_plus_usb --patchram /lib/firmware/BCM43142A0_001.001.011.0028.0036.hcd hci0 Also I found it strange that this package writes all different ids into /sys/bus/usb/drivers/btusb/new_id because only one from the list matches my device ID bcm43142.conf: install btusb /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install btusb && echo '0a5c 21d3' > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/btusb/new_id && echo '0a5c 21d7' > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/btusb/new_id && echo '0a5c 21e1' > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/btusb/new_id && echo '0a5c 21e3' > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/btusb/new_id && hciconfig hci0 up && /usr/bin/brcm_patchram_plus_usb --patchram /lib/firmware/BCM43142A0_001.001.011.0028.0036.hcd hci0 & My lsusb: ... Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0a5c:21d7 Broadcom Corp. In conclusion: bluetooth works not nearly as good as in windows :( once I even got a complete crash of the system because of the btusb module. Luckily WiFi works perfectly :)

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• SQL SERVER – Remove Debug Button in SSMS – SQL in Sixty Seconds #020 – Video

  - by pinaldave

  SQL in Sixty Seconds is indeed tremendous fun to do. Every week, we try to come up with some new learning which we can share in Sixty Seconds. In this busy world, we all have sixty seconds to learn something new – no matter how much busy we are. In this episode of the series, we talk about another interesting feature of SQL Server Management Studio. In SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) we have two button side by side. 1) Execute (!) and 2) Debug (>). It is quite confusing to a few developers. The debug button which looks like a play button encourages developers to click on the same thinking it will execute the code. Also developer with a Visual Studio background often click it because of their habit. However, Debug button is not the same as Execute button. In most of the cases developers want to click on Execute to run the query but by mistake they click on Debug and it wastes their valuable time. It is very easy to fix this. If developers are not frequently using a debug feature in SQL Server they should hide it from the toolbar itself. This will reduce the chances to incorrectly click on the debug button greatly as well save lots of time for developer as invoking debug processes and turning it off takes a few extra moments. In this Sixty second video we will discuss how one can hide the debug button and avoid confusion regarding execution button. I personally use function key F5 to execute the T-SQL code so I do not face this problem that often. More on Removing Debug Button in SSMS: SQL SERVER – Read Only Files and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) SQL SERVER – Standard Reports from SQL Server Management Studio – SQL in Sixty Seconds #016 – Video SQL SERVER – Discard Results After Query Execution – SSMS SQL SERVER – Tricks to Comment T-SQL in SSMS – SQL in Sixty Seconds #019 – Video SQL SERVER – Right Aligning Numerics in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) I encourage you to submit your ideas for SQL in Sixty Seconds. We will try to accommodate as many as we can. If we like your idea we promise to share with you educational material. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL in Sixty Seconds, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology, Video

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• Why do apache2 upgrades remove and not re-install libapache2-mod-php5?

  - by nutznboltz

  We repeatedly see that when an apache2 update arrives and is installed it causes the libapache2-mod-php5 package to be removed and does not subsequently re-install it automatically. We must subsequently re-install the libapache2-mod-php5 manually in order to restore functionality to our web server. Please see the following github gist, it is a contiguous section of our server's dpkg.log showing the November 14, 2011 update to apache2: https://gist.github.com/1368361 it includes 2011-11-14 11:22:18 remove libapache2-mod-php5 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.10 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.10 Is this a known issue? Do other people see this too? I could not find any launchpad bug reports about it. Platform details: $ lsb_release -ds Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS $ uname -srvm Linux 2.6.38-12-virtual #51~lucid1-Ubuntu SMP Thu Sep 29 20:27:50 UTC 2011 x86_64 $ dpkg -l | awk '/ii.*apache/ {print $2 " " $3 }' apache2 2.2.14-5ubuntu8.7 apache2-mpm-prefork 2.2.14-5ubuntu8.7 apache2-utils 2.2.14-5ubuntu8.7 apache2.2-bin 2.2.14-5ubuntu8.7 apache2.2-common 2.2.14-5ubuntu8.7 libapache2-mod-authnz-external 3.2.4-2+squeeze1build0.10.04.1 libapache2-mod-php5 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.10 Thanks At a high-level the update process looks like: package package_name do action :upgrade case node[:platform] when 'centos', 'redhat', 'scientific' options '--disableplugin=fastestmirror' when 'ubuntu' options '-o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confdef" -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confold"' end end But at a lower level def install_package(name, version) run_command_with_systems_locale( :command = "apt-get -q -y#{expand_options(@new_resource.options)} install #{name}=#{version}", :environment = { "DEBIAN_FRONTEND" = "noninteractive" } ) end def upgrade_package(name, version) install_package(name, version) end So Chef is using "install" to do "update". This sort of moves the question around to "how does apt-get safe-upgrade" remember to re-install libapache-mod-php5? The exact sequence of packages that triggered this was: apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-mpm-worker apache2-utils apache2.2-bin apache2.2-common But the code is attempting to run checks to make sure the packages in that list are installed already before attempting to "upgrade" them. case node[:platform] when 'debian', 'centos', 'fedora', 'redhat', 'scientific', 'ubuntu' # first primitive way is to define the updates in the recipe # data bags will be used later %w/ apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-mpm-worker apache2-utils apache2.2-bin apache2.2-common /.each{ |package_name| Chef::Log.debug("is #{package_name} among local packages available for changes?") next unless node[:packages][:changes].keys.include?(package_name) Chef::Log.debug("is #{package_name} available for upgrade?") next unless node[:packages][:changes][package_name][:action] == 'upgrade' package package_name do action :upgrade case node[:platform] when 'centos', 'redhat', 'scientific' options '--disableplugin=fastestmirror' when 'ubuntu' options '-o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confdef" -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confold"' end end tag('upgraded') } # after upgrading everything, run yum cache updater if tagged?('upgraded') # Remove old orphaned dependencies and kernel images and kernel headers etc. # Remove cached deb files. case node[:platform] when 'ubuntu' execute 'apt-get -y autoremove' execute 'apt-get clean' # Re-check what updates are available soon. when 'centos', 'fedora', 'redhat', 'scientific' node[:packages][:last_time_we_looked_at_yum] = 0 end untag('upgraded') end end But it's clear that it fails since the dpkg.log has 2011-11-14 11:22:25 install apache2-mpm-worker 2.2.14-5ubuntu8.7 on a system which does not currently have apache2-mpm-worker. I will have to discuss this with the author, thanks again.

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• Windows Azure: Backup Services Release, Hyper-V Recovery Manager, VM Enhancements, Enhanced Enterprise Management Support

  - by ScottGu

  This morning we released a huge set of updates to Windows Azure.  These new capabilities include: Backup Services: General Availability of Windows Azure Backup Services Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Public preview of Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Configuration Active Directory: Securely manage hundreds of SaaS applications Enterprise Management: Use Active Directory to Better Manage Windows Azure Windows Azure SDK 2.2: A massive update of our SDK + Visual Studio tooling support All of these improvements are now available to use immediately.  Below are more details about them. Backup Service: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Backup Today we are releasing Windows Azure Backup Service as a general availability service.  This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. Windows Azure Backup is a cloud based backup solution for Windows Server which allows files and folders to be backed up and recovered from the cloud, and provides off-site protection against data loss. The service provides IT administrators and developers with the option to back up and protect critical data in an easily recoverable way from any location with no upfront hardware cost. Windows Azure Backup is built on the Windows Azure platform and uses Windows Azure blob storage for storing customer data. Windows Server uses the downloadable Windows Azure Backup Agent to transfer file and folder data securely and efficiently to the Windows Azure Backup Service. Along with providing cloud backup for Windows Server, Windows Azure Backup Service also provides capability to backup data from System Center Data Protection Manager and Windows Server Essentials, to the cloud. All data is encrypted onsite before it is sent to the cloud, and customers retain and manage the encryption key (meaning the data is stored entirely secured and can’t be decrypted by anyone but yourself). Getting Started To get started with the Windows Azure Backup Service, create a new Backup Vault within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Click New->Data Services->Recovery Services->Backup Vault to do this: Once the backup vault is created you’ll be presented with a simple tutorial that will help guide you on how to register your Windows Servers with it: Once the servers you want to backup are registered, you can use the appropriate local management interface (such as the Microsoft Management Console snap-in, System Center Data Protection Manager Console, or Windows Server Essentials Dashboard) to configure the scheduled backups and to optionally initiate recoveries. You can follow these tutorials to learn more about how to do this: Tutorial: Schedule Backups Using the Windows Azure Backup Agent This tutorial helps you with setting up a backup schedule for your registered Windows Servers. Additionally, it also explains how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to set up a custom backup schedule. Tutorial: Recover Files and Folders Using the Windows Azure Backup Agent This tutorial helps you with recovering data from a backup. Additionally, it also explains how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to do the same tasks. Below are some of the key benefits the Windows Azure Backup Service provides: Simple configuration and management. Windows Azure Backup Service integrates with the familiar Windows Server Backup utility in Windows Server, the Data Protection Manager component in System Center and Windows Server Essentials, in order to provide a seamless backup and recovery experience to a local disk, or to the cloud. Block level incremental backups. The Windows Azure Backup Agent performs incremental backups by tracking file and block level changes and only transferring the changed blocks, hence reducing the storage and bandwidth utilization. Different point-in-time versions of the backups use storage efficiently by only storing the changes blocks between these versions. Data compression, encryption and throttling. The Windows Azure Backup Agent ensures that data is compressed and encrypted on the server before being sent to the Windows Azure Backup Service over the network. As a result, the Windows Azure Backup Service only stores encrypted data in the cloud storage. The encryption key is not available to the Windows Azure Backup Service, and as a result the data is never decrypted in the service. Also, users can setup throttling and configure how the Windows Azure Backup service utilizes the network bandwidth when backing up or restoring information. Data integrity is verified in the cloud. In addition to the secure backups, the backed up data is also automatically checked for integrity once the backup is done. As a result, any corruptions which may arise due to data transfer can be easily identified and are fixed automatically. Configurable retention policies for storing data in the cloud. The Windows Azure Backup Service accepts and implements retention policies to recycle backups that exceed the desired retention range, thereby meeting business policies and managing backup costs. Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Now Available in Public Preview I’m excited to also announce the public preview of a new Windows Azure Service – the Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager (HRM). Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager helps protect your business critical services by coordinating the replication and recovery of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 private clouds at a secondary location. With automated protection, asynchronous ongoing replication, and orderly recovery, the Hyper-V Recovery Manager service can help you implement Disaster Recovery and restore important services accurately, consistently, and with minimal downtime. Application data in an Hyper-V Recovery Manager scenarios always travels on your on-premise replication channel. Only metadata (such as names of logical clouds, virtual machines, networks etc.) that is needed for orchestration is sent to Azure. All traffic sent to/from Azure is encrypted. You can begin using Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery today by clicking New->Data Services->Recovery Services->Hyper-V Recovery Manager within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can read more about Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager in Brad Anderson’s 9-part series, Transform the datacenter. To learn more about setting up Hyper-V Recovery Manager follow our detailed step-by-step guide. Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Today’s Windows Azure release includes a number of nice updates to Windows Azure Virtual Machines.  These improvements include: Ability to Delete both VM Instances + Attached Disks in One Operation Prior to today’s release, when you deleted VMs within Windows Azure we would delete the VM instance – but not delete the drives attached to the VM.  You had to manually delete these yourself from the storage account.  With today’s update we’ve added a convenience option that now allows you to either retain or delete the attached disks when you delete the VM:   We’ve also added the ability to delete a cloud service, its deployments, and its role instances with a single action. This can either be a cloud service that has production and staging deployments with web and worker roles, or a cloud service that contains virtual machines.  To do this, simply select the Cloud Service within the Windows Azure Management Portal and click the “Delete” button: Warnings on Availability Sets with Only One Virtual Machine In Them One of the nice features that Windows Azure Virtual Machines supports is the concept of “Availability Sets”.  An “availability set” allows you to define a tier/role (e.g. webfrontends, databaseservers, etc) that you can map Virtual Machines into – and when you do this Windows Azure separates them across fault domains and ensures that at least one of them is always available during servicing operations.  This enables you to deploy applications in a high availability way. One issue we’ve seen some customers run into is where they define an availability set, but then forget to map more than one VM into it (which defeats the purpose of having an availability set).  With today’s release we now display a warning in the Windows Azure Management Portal if you have only one virtual machine deployed in an availability set to help highlight this: You can learn more about configuring the availability of your virtual machines here. Configuring SQL Server Always On SQL Server Always On is a great feature that you can use with Windows Azure to enable high availability and DR scenarios with SQL Server. Today’s Windows Azure release makes it even easier to configure SQL Server Always On by enabling “Direct Server Return” endpoints to be configured and managed within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Previously, setting this up required using PowerShell to complete the endpoint configuration.  Starting today you can enable this simply by checking the “Direct Server Return” checkbox: You can learn more about how to use direct server return for SQL Server AlwaysOn availability groups here. Active Directory: Application Access Enhancements This summer we released our initial preview of our Application Access Enhancements for Windows Azure Active Directory.  This service enables you to securely implement single-sign-on (SSO) support against SaaS applications (including Office 365, SalesForce, Workday, Box, Google Apps, GitHub, etc) as well as LOB based applications (including ones built with the new Windows Azure AD support we shipped last week with ASP.NET and VS 2013). Since the initial preview we’ve enhanced our SAML federation capabilities, integrated our new password vaulting system, and shipped multi-factor authentication support. We've also turned on our outbound identity provisioning system and have it working with hundreds of additional SaaS Applications: Earlier this month we published an update on dates and pricing for when the service will be released in general availability form.  In this blog post we announced our intention to release the service in general availability form by the end of the year.  We also announced that the below features would be available in a free tier with it: SSO to every SaaS app we integrate with – Users can Single Sign On to any app we are integrated with at no charge. This includes all the top SAAS Apps and every app in our application gallery whether they use federation or password vaulting. Application access assignment and removal – IT Admins can assign access privileges to web applications to the users in their active directory assuring that every employee has access to the SAAS Apps they need. And when a user leaves the company or changes jobs, the admin can just as easily remove their access privileges assuring data security and minimizing IP loss User provisioning (and de-provisioning) – IT admins will be able to automatically provision users in 3rd party SaaS applications like Box, Salesforce.com, GoToMeeting, DropBox and others. We are working with key partners in the ecosystem to establish these connections, meaning you no longer have to continually update user records in multiple systems. Security and auditing reports – Security is a key priority for us. With the free version of these enhancements you'll get access to our standard set of access reports giving you visibility into which users are using which applications, when they were using them and where they are using them from. In addition, we'll alert you to un-usual usage patterns for instance when a user logs in from multiple locations at the same time. Our Application Access Panel – Users are logging in from every type of devices including Windows, iOS, & Android. Not all of these devices handle authentication in the same manner but the user doesn't care. They need to access their apps from the devices they love. Our Application Access Panel will support the ability for users to access access and launch their apps from any device and anywhere. You can learn more about our plans for application management with Windows Azure Active Directory here.  Try out the preview and start using it today. Enterprise Management: Use Active Directory to Better Manage Windows Azure Windows Azure Active Directory provides the ability to manage your organization in a directory which is hosted entirely in the cloud, or alternatively kept in sync with an on-premises Windows Server Active Directory solution (allowing you to seamlessly integrate with the directory you already have).  With today’s Windows Azure release we are integrating Windows Azure Active Directory even more within the core Windows Azure management experience, and enabling an even richer enterprise security offering.  Specifically: 1) All Windows Azure accounts now have a default Windows Azure Active Directory created for them.  You can create and map any users you want into this directory, and grant administrative rights to manage resources in Windows Azure to these users. 2) You can keep this directory entirely hosted in the cloud – or optionally sync it with your on-premises Windows Server Active Directory.  Both options are free.  The later approach is ideal for companies that wish to use their corporate user identities to sign-in and manage Windows Azure resources.  It also ensures that if an employee leaves an organization, his or her access control rights to the company’s Windows Azure resources are immediately revoked. 3) The Windows Azure Service Management APIs have been updated to support using Windows Azure Active Directory credentials to sign-in and perform management operations.  Prior to today’s release customers had to download and use management certificates (which were not scoped to individual users) to perform management operations.  We still support this management certificate approach (don’t worry – nothing will stop working).  But we think the new Windows Azure Active Directory authentication support enables an even easier and more secure way for customers to manage resources going forward.  4) The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release (which is also shipping today) includes built-in support for the new Service Management APIs that authenticate with Windows Azure Active Directory, and now allow you to create and manage Windows Azure applications and resources directly within Visual Studio using your Active Directory credentials.  This, combined with updated PowerShell scripts that also support Active Directory, enables an end-to-end enterprise authentication story with Windows Azure. Below are some details on how all of this works: Subscriptions within a Directory As part of today’s update, we have associated all existing Window Azure accounts with a Windows Azure Active Directory (and created one for you if you don’t already have one). When you login to the Windows Azure Management Portal you’ll now see the directory name in the URI of the browser.  For example, in the screen-shot below you can see that I have a “scottgu” directory that my subscriptions are hosted within: Note that you can continue to use Microsoft Accounts (formerly known as Microsoft Live IDs) to sign-into Windows Azure.  These map just fine to a Windows Azure Active Directory – so there is no need to create new usernames that are specific to a directory if you don’t want to.  In the scenario above I’m actually logged in using my @hotmail.com based Microsoft ID which is now mapped to a “scottgu” active directory that was created for me.  By default everything will continue to work just like you used to before. Manage your Directory You can manage an Active Directory (including the one we now create for you by default) by clicking the “Active Directory” tab in the left-hand side of the portal.  This will list all of the directories in your account.  Clicking one the first time will display a getting started page that provides documentation and links to perform common tasks with it: You can use the built-in directory management support within the Windows Azure Management Portal to add/remove/manage users within the directory, enable multi-factor authentication, associate a custom domain (e.g. mycompanyname.com) with the directory, and/or rename the directory to whatever friendly name you want (just click the configure tab to do this).  You can also setup the directory to automatically sync with an on-premises Active Directory using the “Directory Integration” tab. Note that users within a directory by default do not have admin rights to login or manage Windows Azure based resources.  You still need to explicitly grant them co-admin permissions on a subscription for them to login or manage resources in Windows Azure.  You can do this by clicking the Settings tab on the left-hand side of the portal and then by clicking the administrators tab within it. Sign-In Integration within Visual Studio If you install the new Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release, you can now connect to Windows Azure from directly inside Visual Studio without having to download any management certificates.  You can now just right-click on the “Windows Azure” icon within the Server Explorer and choose the “Connect to Windows Azure” context menu option to do so: Doing this will prompt you to enter the email address of the username you wish to sign-in with (make sure this account is a user in your directory with co-admin rights on a subscription): You can use either a Microsoft Account (e.g. Windows Live ID) or an Active Directory based Organizational account as the email.  The dialog will update with an appropriate login prompt depending on which type of email address you enter: Once you sign-in you’ll see the Windows Azure resources that you have permissions to manage show up automatically within the Visual Studio server explorer and be available to start using: No downloading of management certificates required.  All of the authentication was handled using your Windows Azure Active Directory! Manage Subscriptions across Multiple Directories If you have already have multiple directories and multiple subscriptions within your Windows Azure account, we have done our best to create a good default mapping of your subscriptions->directories as part of today’s update.  If you don’t like the default subscription-to-directory mapping we have done you can click the Settings tab in the left-hand navigation of the Windows Azure Management Portal and browse to the Subscriptions tab within it: If you want to map a subscription under a different directory in your account, simply select the subscription from the list, and then click the “Edit Directory” button to choose which directory to map it to.  Mapping a subscription to a different directory takes only seconds and will not cause any of the resources within the subscription to recycle or stop working.  We’ve made the directory->subscription mapping process self-service so that you always have complete control and can map things however you want. Filtering By Directory and Subscription Within the Windows Azure Management Portal you can filter resources in the portal by subscription (allowing you to show/hide different subscriptions).  If you have subscriptions mapped to multiple directory tenants, we also now have a filter drop-down that allows you to filter the subscription list by directory tenant.  This filter is only available if you have multiple subscriptions mapped to multiple directories within your Windows Azure Account:   Windows Azure SDK 2.2 Today we are also releasing a major update of our Windows Azure SDK.  The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release adds some great new features including: Visual Studio 2013 Support Integrated Windows Azure Sign-In support within Visual Studio Remote Debugging Cloud Services with Visual Studio Firewall Management support within Visual Studio for SQL Databases Visual Studio 2013 RTM VM Images for MSDN Subscribers Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET Updated Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets and ScriptCenter I’ll post a follow-up blog shortly with more details about all of the above. Additional Updates In addition to the above enhancements, today’s release also includes a number of additional improvements: AutoScale: Richer time and date based scheduling support (set different rules on different dates) AutoScale: Ability to Scale to Zero Virtual Machines (very useful for Dev/Test scenarios) AutoScale: Support for time-based scheduling of Mobile Service AutoScale rules Operation Logs: Auditing support for Service Bus management operations Today we also shipped a major update to the Windows Azure SDK – Windows Azure SDK 2.2.  It has so much goodness in it that I have a whole second blog post coming shortly on it! :-) Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a bunch of great new scenarios, and enables a much richer enterprise authentication offering. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• MODx character encoding

  - by Piet

  Ahhh character encodings. Don’t you just love them? Having character issues in MODx? Then probably the MODx manager character encoding, the character encoding of the site itself, your database’s character encoding, or the encoding MODx/php uses to talk to MySQL isn’t correct. The Website Encoding Your MODx site’s character encoding can be configured in the manager under Tools/Configuration/Site/Character encoding. This is the encoding your website’s visitors will get. The Manager’s Encoding The manager’s encoding can be changed by setting $modx_manager_charset at manager/includes/lang/<language>.inc.php like this (for example): $modx_manager_charset = 'iso-8859-1'; To find out what language you’re using (and thus was file you need to change), check Tools/Configuration/Site/Language (1 line above the character encoding setting). This needs to be the same encoding as your site. You can’t have your manager in utf8 and your site in iso-8859-1. Your Database’s Encoding The charset MODx/php uses to talk to your database can be set by changing $database_connection_charset in manager/includes/config.inc.php. This needs to be the same as your database’s charset. Make sure you use the correct corresponding charset, for iso-8859-1 you need to use ‘latin1′. Utf8 is just utf8. Example: $database_connection_charset = 'latin1'; Now, if you check Reports/System info, the ‘Database Charset’ might say something else. This is because the mysql variable ‘character_set_database’ is displayed here, which contains the character set used by the default database and not the one for the current database/connection. However, if you’d change this to display ‘character_set_connection’, it could still say something else because the ’set character set’ statement used by MODx doesn’t change this value either. The ’set names’ statement does, but since it turns out my MODx install works now as expected I’ll just leave it at this before I get a headache. If I saved you a potential headache or you think I’m totally wrong or overlooked something, let me know in the comments. btw: I want to be able to use a real editor with MODx. Somehow.

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• Scrum in 5 Minutes

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to explain the basic concepts of Scrum in less than five minutes. You learn how Scrum can help a team of developers to successfully complete a complex software project. Product Backlog and the Product Owner Imagine that you are part of a team which needs to create a new website – for example, an e-commerce website. You have an overwhelming amount of work to do. You need to build (or possibly buy) a shopping cart, install an SSL certificate, create a product catalog, create a Facebook page, and at least a hundred other things that you have not thought of yet. According to Scrum, the first thing you should do is create a list. Place the highest priority items at the top of the list and the lower priority items lower in the list. For example, creating the shopping cart and buying the domain name might be high priority items and creating a Facebook page might be a lower priority item. In Scrum, this list is called the Product Backlog. How do you prioritize the items in the Product Backlog? Different stakeholders in the project might have different priorities. Gary, your division VP, thinks that it is crucial that the e-commerce site has a mobile app. Sally, your direct manager, thinks taking advantage of new HTML5 features is much more important. Multiple people are pulling you in different directions. According to Scrum, it is important that you always designate one person, and only one person, as the Product Owner. The Product Owner is the person who decides what items should be added to the Product Backlog and the priority of the items in the Product Backlog. The Product Owner could be the customer who is paying the bills, the project manager who is responsible for delivering the project, or a customer representative. The critical point is that the Product Owner must always be a single person and that single person has absolute authority over the Product Backlog. Sprints and the Sprint Backlog So now the developer team has a prioritized list of items and they can start work. The team starts implementing the first item in the Backlog — the shopping cart — and the team is making good progress. Unfortunately, however, half-way through the work of implementing the shopping cart, the Product Owner changes his mind. The Product Owner decides that it is much more important to create the product catalog before the shopping cart. With some frustration, the team switches their developmental efforts to focus on implementing the product catalog. However, part way through completing this work, once again the Product Owner changes his mind about the highest priority item. Getting work done when priorities are constantly shifting is frustrating for the developer team and it results in lower productivity. At the same time, however, the Product Owner needs to have absolute authority over the priority of the items which need to get done. Scrum solves this conflict with the concept of Sprints. In Scrum, a developer team works in Sprints. At the beginning of a Sprint the developers and the Product Owner agree on the items from the backlog which they will complete during the Sprint. This subset of items from the Product Backlog becomes the Sprint Backlog. During the Sprint, the Product Owner is not allowed to change the items in the Sprint Backlog. In other words, the Product Owner cannot shift priorities on the developer team during the Sprint. Different teams use Sprints of different lengths such as one month Sprints, two-week Sprints, and one week Sprints. For high-stress, time critical projects, teams typically choose shorter sprints such as one week sprints. For more mature projects, longer one month sprints might be more appropriate. A team can pick whatever Sprint length makes sense for them just as long as the team is consistent. You should pick a Sprint length and stick with it. Daily Scrum During a Sprint, the developer team needs to have meetings to coordinate their work on completing the items in the Sprint Backlog. For example, the team needs to discuss who is working on what and whether any blocking issues have been discovered. Developers hate meetings (well, sane developers hate meetings). Meetings take developers away from their work of actually implementing stuff as opposed to talking about implementing stuff. However, a developer team which never has meetings and never coordinates their work also has problems. For example, Fred might get stuck on a programming problem for days and never reach out for help even though Tom (who sits in the cubicle next to him) has already solved the very same problem. Or, both Ted and Fred might have started working on the same item from the Sprint Backlog at the same time. In Scrum, these conflicting needs – limiting meetings but enabling team coordination – are resolved with the idea of the Daily Scrum. The Daily Scrum is a meeting for coordinating the work of the developer team which happens once a day. To keep the meeting short, each developer answers only the following three questions: 1. What have you done since yesterday? 2. What do you plan to do today? 3. Any impediments in your way? During the Daily Scrum, developers are not allowed to talk about issues with their cat, do demos of their latest work, or tell heroic stories of programming problems overcome. The meeting must be kept short — typically about 15 minutes. Issues which come up during the Daily Scrum should be discussed in separate meetings which do not involve the whole developer team. Stories and Tasks Items in the Product or Sprint Backlog – such as building a shopping cart or creating a Facebook page – are often referred to as User Stories or Stories. The Stories are created by the Product Owner and should represent some business need. Unlike the Product Owner, the developer team needs to think about how a Story should be implemented. At the beginning of a Sprint, the developer team takes the Stories from the Sprint Backlog and breaks the stories into tasks. For example, the developer team might take the Create a Shopping Cart story and break it into the following tasks: · Enable users to add and remote items from shopping cart · Persist the shopping cart to database between visits · Redirect user to checkout page when Checkout button is clicked During the Daily Scrum, members of the developer team volunteer to complete the tasks required to implement the next Story in the Sprint Backlog. When a developer talks about what he did yesterday or plans to do tomorrow then the developer should be referring to a task. Stories are owned by the Product Owner and a story is all about business value. In contrast, the tasks are owned by the developer team and a task is all about implementation details. A story might take several days or weeks to complete. A task is something which a developer can complete in less than a day. Some teams get lazy about breaking stories into tasks. Neglecting to break stories into tasks can lead to “Never Ending Stories” If you don’t break a story into tasks, then you can’t know how much of a story has actually been completed because you don’t have a clear idea about the implementation steps required to complete the story. Scrumboard During the Daily Scrum, the developer team uses a Scrumboard to coordinate their work. A Scrumboard contains a list of the stories for the current Sprint, the tasks associated with each Story, and the state of each task. The developer team uses the Scrumboard so everyone on the team can see, at a glance, what everyone is working on. As a developer works on a task, the task moves from state to state and the state of the task is updated on the Scrumboard. Common task states are ToDo, In Progress, and Done. Some teams include additional task states such as Needs Review or Needs Testing. Some teams use a physical Scrumboard. In that case, you use index cards to represent the stories and the tasks and you tack the index cards onto a physical board. Using a physical Scrumboard has several disadvantages. A physical Scrumboard does not work well with a distributed team – for example, it is hard to share the same physical Scrumboard between Boston and Seattle. Also, generating reports from a physical Scrumboard is more difficult than generating reports from an online Scrumboard. Estimating Stories and Tasks Stakeholders in a project, the people investing in a project, need to have an idea of how a project is progressing and when the project will be completed. For example, if you are investing in creating an e-commerce site, you need to know when the site can be launched. It is not enough to just say that “the project will be done when it is done” because the stakeholders almost certainly have a limited budget to devote to the project. The people investing in the project cannot determine the business value of the project unless they can have an estimate of how long it will take to complete the project. Developers hate to give estimates. The reason that developers hate to give estimates is that the estimates are almost always completely made up. For example, you really don’t know how long it takes to build a shopping cart until you finish building a shopping cart, and at that point, the estimate is no longer useful. The problem is that writing code is much more like Finding a Cure for Cancer than Building a Brick Wall. Building a brick wall is very straightforward. After you learn how to add one brick to a wall, you understand everything that is involved in adding a brick to a wall. There is no additional research required and no surprises. If, on the other hand, I assembled a team of scientists and asked them to find a cure for cancer, and estimate exactly how long it will take, they would have no idea. The problem is that there are too many unknowns. I don’t know how to cure cancer, I need to do a lot of research here, so I cannot even begin to estimate how long it will take. So developers hate to provide estimates, but the Product Owner and other product stakeholders, have a legitimate need for estimates. Scrum resolves this conflict by using the idea of Story Points. Different teams use different units to represent Story Points. For example, some teams use shirt sizes such as Small, Medium, Large, and X-Large. Some teams prefer to use Coffee Cup sizes such as Tall, Short, and Grande. Finally, some teams like to use numbers from the Fibonacci series. These alternative units are converted into a Story Point value. Regardless of the type of unit which you use to represent Story Points, the goal is the same. Instead of attempting to estimate a Story in hours (which is doomed to failure), you use a much less fine-grained measure of work. A developer team is much more likely to be able to estimate that a Story is Small or X-Large than the exact number of hours required to complete the story. So you can think of Story Points as a compromise between the needs of the Product Owner and the developer team. When a Sprint starts, the developer team devotes more time to thinking about the Stories in a Sprint and the developer team breaks the Stories into Tasks. In Scrum, you estimate the work required to complete a Story by using Story Points and you estimate the work required to complete a task by using hours. The difference between Stories and Tasks is that you don’t create a task until you are just about ready to start working on a task. A task is something that you should be able to create within a day, so you have a much better chance of providing an accurate estimate of the work required to complete a task than a story. Burndown Charts In Scrum, you use Burndown charts to represent the remaining work on a project. You use Release Burndown charts to represent the overall remaining work for a project and you use Sprint Burndown charts to represent the overall remaining work for a particular Sprint. You create a Release Burndown chart by calculating the remaining number of uncompleted Story Points for the entire Product Backlog every day. The vertical axis represents Story Points and the horizontal axis represents time. A Sprint Burndown chart is similar to a Release Burndown chart, but it focuses on the remaining work for a particular Sprint. There are two different types of Sprint Burndown charts. You can either represent the remaining work in a Sprint with Story Points or with task hours (the following image, taken from Wikipedia, uses hours). When each Product Backlog Story is completed, the Release Burndown chart slopes down. When each Story or task is completed, the Sprint Burndown chart slopes down. Burndown charts typically do not always slope down over time. As new work is added to the Product Backlog, the Release Burndown chart slopes up. If new tasks are discovered during a Sprint, the Sprint Burndown chart will also slope up. The purpose of a Burndown chart is to give you a way to track team progress over time. If, halfway through a Sprint, the Sprint Burndown chart is still climbing a hill then you know that you are in trouble. Team Velocity Stakeholders in a project always want more work done faster. For example, the Product Owner for the e-commerce site wants the website to launch before tomorrow. Developers tend to be overly optimistic. Rarely do developers acknowledge the physical limitations of reality. So Project stakeholders and the developer team often collude to delude themselves about how much work can be done and how quickly. Too many software projects begin in a state of optimism and end in frustration as deadlines zoom by. In Scrum, this problem is overcome by calculating a number called the Team Velocity. The Team Velocity is a measure of the average number of Story Points which a team has completed in previous Sprints. Knowing the Team Velocity is important during the Sprint Planning meeting when the Product Owner and the developer team work together to determine the number of stories which can be completed in the next Sprint. If you know the Team Velocity then you can avoid committing to do more work than the team has been able to accomplish in the past, and your team is much more likely to complete all of the work required for the next Sprint. Scrum Master There are three roles in Scrum: the Product Owner, the developer team, and the Scrum Master. I’v e already discussed the Product Owner. The Product Owner is the one and only person who maintains the Product Backlog and prioritizes the stories. I’ve also described the role of the developer team. The members of the developer team do the work of implementing the stories by breaking the stories into tasks. The final role, which I have not discussed, is the role of the Scrum Master. The Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring that the team is following the Scrum process. For example, the Scrum Master is responsible for making sure that there is a Daily Scrum meeting and that everyone answers the standard three questions. The Scrum Master is also responsible for removing (non-technical) impediments which the team might encounter. For example, if the team cannot start work until everyone installs the latest version of Microsoft Visual Studio then the Scrum Master has the responsibility of working with management to get the latest version of Visual Studio as quickly as possible. The Scrum Master can be a member of the developer team. Furthermore, different people can take on the role of the Scrum Master over time. The Scrum Master, however, cannot be the same person as the Product Owner. Using SonicAgile SonicAgile (SonicAgile.com) is an online tool which you can use to manage your projects using Scrum. You can use the SonicAgile Product Backlog to create a prioritized list of stories. You can estimate the size of the Stories using different Story Point units such as Shirt Sizes and Coffee Cup sizes. You can use SonicAgile during the Sprint Planning meeting to select the Stories that you want to complete during a particular Sprint. You can configure Sprints to be any length of time. SonicAgile calculates Team Velocity automatically and displays a warning when you add too many stories to a Sprint. In other words, it warns you when it thinks you are overcommitting in a Sprint. SonicAgile also includes a Scrumboard which displays the list of Stories selected for a Sprint and the tasks associated with each story. You can drag tasks from one task state to another. Finally, SonicAgile enables you to generate Release Burndown and Sprint Burndown charts. You can use these charts to view the progress of your team. To learn more about SonicAgile, visit SonicAgile.com. Summary In this post, I described many of the basic concepts of Scrum. You learned how a Product Owner uses a Product Backlog to create a prioritized list of tasks. I explained why work is completed in Sprints so the developer team can be more productive. I also explained how a developer team uses the daily scrum to coordinate their work. You learned how the developer team uses a Scrumboard to see, at a glance, who is working on what and the state of each task. I also discussed Burndown charts. You learned how you can use both Release and Sprint Burndown charts to track team progress in completing a project. Finally, I described the crucial role of the Scrum Master – the person who is responsible for ensuring that the rules of Scrum are being followed. My goal was not to describe all of the concepts of Scrum. This post was intended to be an introductory overview. For a comprehensive explanation of Scrum, I recommend reading Ken Schwaber’s book Agile Project Management with Scrum: http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Project-Management-Microsoft-Professional/dp/073561993X/ref=la_B001H6ODMC_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345224000&sr=1-1

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