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• Is this way the best solution to read and save images from Rss Feeds?

  - by Keyne

  Hi, I've build a "RSS Feed Reader" module to my application, and for every post with images in the content, I get the first that matches a specific size and then I save for future use as reference to the posts. When processing, everything works properly except when more then 10 images are saved at the same time (This value is variable). I got an 404 error after a while saving the images. Some images are saved, but not all of them. If I run the app in my local server, everything work as expected (using set_timeout(0) to avoid timeout errors). Currently my application is hosted at dreamhost and I'm using Zend Framework. I'm not sure if the problem is specif for Zend Framework applications, so I didn't put any tags about. I've had this problem another time with other projects hosted at dreamhost. They seems to limitate memory for operations like that. My question is: There is a better way to save images then this (maybe in background? a limited amount per operation?): require_once(APPLICATION_PATH . '/../library/simplehtmldom/simple_html_dom.php'); $TableFeeds = new Model_DbTable_Feeds(); $Feeds = $TableFeeds->fetchAll(); foreach($Feeds as $Feed) { $entries = Zend_Feed_Reader::import($Feed->link); $lastEntry = $this->getLastEntry($Feed->id); if($lastEntry) { $lastDate = new Zend_Date($lastEntry->created_at, Zend_Date::ISO_8601); } foreach ($entries as $entry) { if($lastDate) { if(strtotime($lastDate->get('y-M-d H:m:s')) >= strtotime($entry->getDateCreated()->get('y-M-d H:m:s'))) { break; } } $Category = new Model_DbTable_Categorias(); $availableCategories = $Category->getList('slug'); $categoria_id = false; foreach ($categories as $cat) { if(!empty($cat) && !$categoria_id) { $slug = Zf_Convert::slugfy($cat); if($availableCategories[$Feed->categoria_id] == $slug) { $categoria_id = $Feed->categoria_id; break; } if(in_array($slug,$availableCategories)) { $categoria_id = array_search($slug,$availableCategories); break; } } } if(!$categoria_id) { $categoria_id = $Feed->categoria_id; } // Cadastra a entrada $data = array( 'categoria_id' => $categoria_id, 'feed_id' => $Feed->id, 'titulo' => $entry->getTitle(), 'slug' => Zf_Convert::slugfy($entry->getTitle()), 'created_at' => $entry->getDateCreated()->get(Zend_Date::ISO_8601), 'link' => $entry->getLink(), 'html' => $entry->getContent(), 'tags' => $tags ); $entry_id = $this->insert($data); if($categoria_id == 2) { set_time_limit(0); $post_dom = str_get_dom($entry->getContent()); $img_tags = $post_dom->find('img'); $images = array(); foreach($img_tags as $image) { $images[] = $image->src; } if(count($images)) { $i = 0; $saved = false; while($images[$i] && !$saved) { $src = $images[$i]; $imagem = Zf_Image::create($src); $size = $imagem->getCurrentDimensions(); if($size['width'] >= 150 && $size['height'] >= 200) { $imagem->adaptiveResize(200,200); $imagem->save(PUBLIC_PATH . '/img/feeds/manchetes/' . $entry_id . '.jpg'); $saved = true; $this->update(array('imagemChamada' => 1),'id =' . $entry_id); } $i++; } } } } } }

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• Need help with memory leaks in RSS Reader

  - by Stilton

  I'm trying to write a simple RSS reader for the iPhone, and it appeared to be working fine, until I started working with Instruments, and discovered my App is leaking massive amounts of memory. I'm using the NSXMLParser class to parse an RSS feed. My memory leaks appear to be originating from the overridden delegate methods: - (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser foundCharacters:(NSString *)string and - (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didEndElement:(NSString *)elementName namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI qualifiedName:(NSString *)qName I'm also suspicious of the code that populates the cells from my parsed data, I've included the code from those methods and a few other key ones, any insights would be greatly appreciated. - (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser foundCharacters:(NSString *)string { if ([self.currentElement isEqualToString:@"title"]) { [self.currentTitle appendString:string]; } else if ([self.currentElement isEqualToString:@"link"]) { [self.currentURL appendString:string]; } else if ([self.currentElement isEqualToString:@"description"]) { [self.currentSummary appendString:string]; } } - (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didEndElement:(NSString *)elementName namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI qualifiedName:(NSString *)qName { if ([elementName isEqualToString:@"item"]) { //asdf NSMutableDictionary *item = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init]; [item setObject:currentTitle forKey:@"title"]; [item setObject:currentURL forKey:@"URL"]; [item setObject:currentSummary forKey:@"summary"]; [self.currentTitle release]; [self.currentURL release]; [self.currentSummary release]; [self.stories addObject:item]; [item release]; } } // Customize the appearance of table view cells. - (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"Cell"; UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier]; if (cell == nil) { cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier] autorelease]; } // Configure the cell. // Set up the cell int index = [indexPath indexAtPosition: [indexPath length] - 1]; CGRect contentRect = CGRectMake(8.0, 4.0, 260, 20); UILabel *textLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:contentRect]; if (self.currentLevel == 0) { textLabel.text = [self.categories objectAtIndex: index]; } else { textLabel.text = [[self.stories objectAtIndex: index] objectForKey:@"title"]; } textLabel.textColor = [UIColor blackColor]; textLabel.font = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:14]; [[cell contentView] addSubview: textLabel]; //[cell setText:[[stories objectAtIndex: storyIndex] objectForKey: @"title"]]; [textLabel autorelease]; return cell; } - (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didStartElement:(NSString *)elementName namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI qualifiedName:(NSString *)qName attributes:(NSDictionary *)attributeDict { if ([elementName isEqualToString:@"item"]) { self.currentTitle = [[NSMutableString alloc] init]; self.currentURL = [[NSMutableString alloc] init]; self.currentSummary = [[NSMutableString alloc] init]; } if (currentElement != nil) { [self.currentElement release]; } self.currentElement = [elementName copy]; } - (void)dealloc { [currentElement release]; [currentTitle release]; [currentURL release]; [currentSummary release]; [currentDate release]; [stories release]; [rssParser release]; [storyTable release]; [super dealloc]; } // Override to support row selection in the table view. - (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { // Navigation logic may go here -- for example, create and push another view controller. // AnotherViewController *anotherViewController = [[AnotherViewController alloc] initWithNibName:@"AnotherView" bundle:nil]; int index = [indexPath indexAtPosition: [indexPath length] - 1]; if (currentLevel == 1) { StoryViewController *storyViewController = [[StoryViewController alloc] initWithURL:[[stories objectAtIndex: index] objectForKey:@"URL"] nibName:@"StoryViewController" bundle:nil]; [self.navigationController pushViewController:storyViewController animated:YES]; [storyViewController release]; } else { RootViewController *rvController = [[RootViewController alloc] initWithNibName:@"RootViewController" bundle:nil]; rvController.currentLevel = currentLevel + 1; rvController.rssIndex = index; [self.navigationController pushViewController:rvController animated:YES]; [rvController release]; } }

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• Custom Template and Layered Navigation

  - by russjman

  I created a custom template for the category view that displays all subcategories for current category. When i set the current category as is_anchor = yes in the admin, the layered navigation filters show up in the side bar. The Sub categories is one of the filters are there as well, but when i click on one them the page still displays all subcategories. I would like to some how test for active filters in my custom template, which i assume there has to be a way to get this info from Magento. Below is my custom code. $_filters is how i am trying to access these filters, but it gives me nothing. Am i invoking this incorrectly, from the wrong place, in the wrong context? <?php $_helper = $this->helper('catalog/output'); $_filters = $this->getActiveFilters(); echo $_filters; if (!Mage::registry('current_category')) return ?> <?php $_categories=$this->getCurrentChildCategories() ?> <?php $_count = is_array($_categories)?count($_categories):$_categories->count(); ?> <?php if($_count): ?> <?php foreach ($_categories as $_category): ?> <?php if($_category->getIsActive()): ?> <?php $cur_category=Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($_category->getId()); $layer = Mage::getSingleton('catalog/layer'); $layer->setCurrentCategory($cur_category); $_imgHtml = ''; if ($_imgUrl = $this->getCurrentCategory()->getImageUrl()) { $_imgHtml = '<img src="'.$_imgUrl.'" alt="'.$this->htmlEscape($_category->getName()).'" title="'.$this->htmlEscape($_category->getName()).'" class="category-image" />'; $_imgHtml = $_helper->categoryAttribute($_category, $_imgHtml, 'image'); } echo $_category->getImageUrl(); ?> <div class="category-image-box"> <div class="category-description clearfix" > <div class="category-description-textbox" > <h2><span><?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_category->getName()) ?></span></h2> <p><?php echo $this->getCurrentCategory()->getDescription() ?></p> </div> <a href="<?php echo $this->getCategoryUrl($_category) ?>" class="collection-link<?php if ($this->isCategoryActive($_category)): ?> active<?php endif ?>" >See Entire Collection</a> <a href="<?php echo $this->getCategoryUrl($_category) ?>"><?php if($_imgUrl): ?><?php echo $_imgHtml ?><?php else: ?><img src="/store/skin/frontend/default/patio_theme/images/category-photo.jpg" class="category-image" alt="collection" /><?php endif; ?></a> </div> <?php echo '<pre>'.print_r($_category->getData()).'</pre>';?> </div> <?php endif; ?> <?php endforeach ?> <?php endif; ?>

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• The type '' was not mapped

  - by Mike

  I've been trying to fix this error for awhile now. I get this error any time my application tries to create an instance of my data context. Below is the code: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using RandomRentals.Models; using System.Data.Entity; namespace RandomRentals.Models { public class RentalContext : DbContext { public DbSet<Rental> Rentals { get; set; } public DbSet<Category> Categories { get; set; } public DbSet<Item> Items { get; set; } public DbSet<Billing> Billings { get; set; } public DbSet<User> Users { get; set; } public DbSet<Video> Videos { get; set; } public DbSet<Picture> Pictures { get; set; } public DbSet<ServiceType> ServiceTypes { get; set; } public DbSet<Rating> Ratings { get; set; } public DbSet<Business> Businesses { get; set; } public DbSet<BusinessHour> BusinessHours { get; set; } } } Here is the stack Trace: [InvalidOperationException: The type 'RandomRentals.Rental' was not mapped. Check that the type has not been explicitly excluded by using the Ignore method or NotMappedAttribute data annotation. Verify that the type was defined as a class, is not primitive, nested or generic, and does not inherit from EntityObject.] System.Data.Entity.Internal.DbSetDiscoveryService.GetSets() +706 System.Data.Entity.Internal.DbSetDiscoveryService.InitializeSets() +31 System.Data.Entity.DbContext.DiscoverAndInitializeSets() +56 System.Data.Entity.DbContext.InitializeLazyInternalContext(IInternalConnection internalConnection, DbCompiledModel model) +79 System.Data.Entity.DbContext..ctor() +99 RandomRentals.Models.RentalContext..ctor() +44 RandomRentals.Models.UserModel..ctor() in C:\Users\nikka\Desktop\RandomRentals\RandomRentals\Models\UserModel.cs:11 [TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.] System.RuntimeTypeHandle.CreateInstance(RuntimeType type, Boolean publicOnly, Boolean noCheck, Boolean& canBeCached, RuntimeMethodHandleInternal& ctor, Boolean& bNeedSecurityCheck) +0 System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceSlow(Boolean publicOnly, Boolean skipCheckThis, Boolean fillCache) +98 System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceDefaultCtor(Boolean publicOnly, Boolean skipVisibilityChecks, Boolean skipCheckThis, Boolean fillCache) +241 System.Activator.CreateInstance(Type type, Boolean nonPublic) +69 System.Web.Mvc.DefaultModelBinder.CreateModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext, Type modelType) +199 System.Web.Mvc.DefaultModelBinder.BindComplexModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext) +572 System.Web.Mvc.DefaultModelBinder.BindModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext) +449 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.GetParameterValue(ControllerContext controllerContext, ParameterDescriptor parameterDescriptor) +317 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.GetParameterValues(ControllerContext controllerContext, ActionDescriptor actionDescriptor) +117 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeAction(ControllerContext controllerContext, String actionName) +343 System.Web.Mvc.Controller.ExecuteCore() +116 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerBase.Execute(RequestContext requestContext) +97 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerBase.System.Web.Mvc.IController.Execute(RequestContext requestContext) +10 System.Web.Mvc.<>c__DisplayClassb.<BeginProcessRequest>b__5() +37 System.Web.Mvc.Async.<>c__DisplayClass1.<MakeVoidDelegate>b__0() +21 System.Web.Mvc.Async.<>c__DisplayClass8`1.<BeginSynchronous>b__7(IAsyncResult _) +12 System.Web.Mvc.Async.WrappedAsyncResult`1.End() +62 System.Web.Mvc.<>c__DisplayClasse.<EndProcessRequest>b__d() +50 System.Web.Mvc.SecurityUtil.<GetCallInAppTrustThunk>b__0(Action f) +7 System.Web.Mvc.SecurityUtil.ProcessInApplicationTrust(Action action) +22 System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult asyncResult) +60 System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.System.Web.IHttpAsyncHandler.EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult result) +9 System.Web.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +8970061 System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +184 Here is the full error text: The type 'RandomRentals.Rental' was not mapped. Check that the type has not been explicitly excluded by using the Ignore method or NotMappedAttribute data annotation. Verify that the type was defined as a class, is not primitive, nested or generic, and does not inherit from EntityObject. Any help would be greatly appreciated

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• Formatting Telerik Chart and Legend Labels in Silverlight

  - by Bryan

  I am trying to format a column called 'Month' using the 3-character month abbreviation in my data grid which is bound to a bar chart. My grid and chart are based on this demo example: http://demos.telerik.com/silverlight/#Chart/Aggregates. Basically, the grid compiles data and summarizes by Year, Quarter, Month, and then some other categories as well. For the Month column, I tried two different methods (for sorting purposes, I have to use an integer or some date value for the month). First, I just made Month an integer field and then used a converter mapped in the xaml for the 'Month' field to display 'JAN', 'FEB', etc. This worked fine for the grid, but the chart would display 1, 2, etc. instead of the month abbreviation. I researched this and was not able to come up with a solution to map the converter to the chart. So, I tried making the Month field a datetime and then set the value to 1/1/1900, 2/1/1900, etc. and specified the format of the field to 'MMM' in the xaml for the grid. I then used the following statement to set the the format in the chart when the user grouped by month: SalesAnalysisChart.DefaultView.ChartArea.AxisX.DefaultLabelFormat = "MMM"; This partially worked in that when the months were displayed across the x-axis they were labeled properly, but not when they appeared in the legend (the user, of course, can group by any of the columns which may or may not include month). I've tried setting LegendItemLabelFormat, ItemLabelFormat, etc. but without success. I'm not sure of the element on which to set the property. I only need to change the default format for just the Month column - all other columns should display normally when grouped. I also came across a class called 'LegendItemFormatConverter' which looks promising but I can't find any examples as to how to implement it. I would actually prefer the converter method because the converter I wrote displays the month abbreviation in all caps, whereas the 'MMM' format displays in upper/lower case. Here is the converter code that I originally used for the grid: using System; using System.Net; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows.Documents; using System.Windows.Ink; using System.Windows.Input; using System.Windows.Media; using System.Windows.Media.Animation; using System.Windows.Shapes; using System.Windows.Data; namespace ApolloSL { public class MonthConverter : IValueConverter { public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) { if (value != null) { DateTime date = new DateTime(1900, (Int32)value, 1); return date.ToString("MMM").ToUpper(); } else { return ""; } } public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) { return value.ToString(); } } } Please help... Thanks in advance for your assistance, Bryan

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• please help!!! this plugin to exclude Pages from the Front Page does not work.

  - by souravran

  add_action('admin_menu', 'pag_admin_menu'); add_filter('wp_list_pages_excludes','exclude_PAG'); function pag_admin_menu() { add_options_page('Exclude', 'Exclude Page', 'administrator', 2, 'Pages'); } function Pages() { if( $_POST[ 'xclu_pag' ] ) { $message = process_PAG(); } $options = PAG_get_options(); ?> <div class="wrap"> <h2>Exclude Categories</h2> <?php //echo $message ?> <p>Use this page to select the pages you want to exclude.</p> <form action="" method="post"> <table width="960px"> <thead> <tr> <th scope="col">Category</th> <th scope="col" align="left">Exclude from Front Page.</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody id="the-list"> <?php //print_r( get_categories() ); $pags = get_pages(); //echo $pags; $temp_pag = 0; foreach( $pags as $pag ) { ?> <tr<?php if ( $temp_pag == 1 ) { echo ' class="alternate"'; $temp_pag = 0; } else { $temp_pag = 1; } ?>> <th scope="row"><?php echo $pag->post_title; ?></th> <td> <input type="checkbox" name="exclude_paggg[]" value="-<?php echo $pag->ID ?>" <?php if ( in_array( '-' . $pag->ID, $options['exclude_paggg'] ) ) { echo 'checked="true" '; } ?>/> </td> </tr> <?php } ?> </table> <p class="submit"><input type="submit" value="Save Changes" /></p> <input type="hidden" name="xclu_pag" value="true" /> </form> </div> <?php } function process_PAG() { if( !$_POST[ 'exclude_paggg' ] ) { $_POST[ 'exclude_paggg' ] = array(); } $options['exclude_paggg'] = $_POST[ 'exclude_paggg' ]; update_option('PAGExcludes', $options); $message_pag = "<div class='updated'><p>Excludes successfully updated</p></div>"; // return $message_pag; } function PAG_get_options() { $defaults = array(); $defaults['exclude_paggg'] = array(); $options = get_option('PAGExcludes'); if (!is_array($options)) { $options = $defaults; update_option('PAGExcludes', $options); } return $options; } function exclude_PAG($query_pag) { $options = PAG_get_options(); if ($query_pag-is_home) { $query_pag-set('pag', implode( ', ', $options[ 'exclude_paggg' ] ) ); } return $query_pag; } Where should I make any change to make it work to exclude pages from the front page..? INPUT WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED....!! enter code here

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• How to allow multiple filters to be selected - pagination?

  - by NewSOuser

  Hey, I am still trying to allow multiple filters to be selected for my pagination script but not sure how to do it being very new to php and programing in general. So in my pagination, when a user clicks the 'marketing' button(link) it queries the database just for the category that = marketing. The same goes for the other 2 filter buttons as seen in the script below. (automotive, sports). The problem is, I want to be able to select multiple filters like only marketing and auomotive or automotive and sports, for example if I click the marketing filter and then the automotive, it would display the categories that equal marketing, and automotive. I have no idea how to accomplish this, so I have come to the experts to help me out. This is the script I am working on: <h3>Filter results by:</h3> <a href='pagi_test.php?category=marketing'>marketing</a> <a href='pagi_test.php?category=automotive'>automotive</a> <a href='pagi_test.php?category=sports'>sports</a> <br /> <h3>Results:</h3> <?php //connecting to the database $error = "Could not connect to the database"; mysql_connect('localhost','root','root') or die($error); mysql_select_db('ajax_demo') or die($error); //max displayed per page $per_page = 3; //get start variable $start = $_GET['start']; $category = mysql_real_escape_string($_GET['category']); //count records $record_count = mysql_num_rows(mysql_query("SELECT * FROM explore WHERE category='$category'")); //count max pages $max_pages = $record_count / $per_page; //may come out as decimal if (!$start) $start = 0; //display data $get = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM explore WHERE category='$category' LIMIT $start, $per_page"); ?> <table width="800px"> <?php while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($get)) { // get data $id = $row['id']; $site_name = $row['site_name']; $site_description = $row['site_description']; ?> <tr> <td><?php echo $id; ?></td> <td><?php echo $site_name; ?></td> <td><?php echo $site_description; ?></td> </tr> <?php } //setup prev and next variables $prev = $start - $per_page; $next = $start + $per_page; //show prev button if (!($start<=0)) echo "<a href='pagi_test.php?category=$category&start=$prev'>Prev</a> "; //show page numbers //set variable for first page $i=1; for ($x=0;$x<$record_count;$x=$x+$per_page) { if ($start!=$x) echo " <a href='pagi_test.php?category=$category&start=$x'>$i</a> "; else echo " <a href='pagi_test.php?category=$category&start=$x'><b>$i</b></a> "; $i++; } //show next button if (!($start>=$record_count-$per_page)) echo " <a href='pagi_test.php?category=$category&start=$next'>Next</a>"; ?> Any help on this would be great. Thank you. -- EDIT -- If anyone has a better method of doing a pagination system with multiple filters than the one above, please let me know.

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• jQuery , Trigger change event on newly created elements

  - by kwhohasamullet

  Hi Guys, I have a button in a form that when clicked adds another set of form fields, In these form fields there are 2 drop downs where the contents of the 2nd dropdown rely on what is selected in the first dropdown... What i want to do is when the new form field button is clicked for the new items to be added and then the change event to be triggered on the drop down that was created so what only that drop down changes and not all the drop downs with the same name currently in that form. THe first drop down is called product Category The code for the addFormField function is: function addFormField() { var id = document.getElementById("field_id").value; $("#products").append("<table width='600' cellpadding='5' cellspacing='0' class='Add_Products' id='row" + id + "'><td width='250' class='left'><label>Select Product Category</label></td><td class='right' ><label><select name='" + id + "' id='ProductCategory'><?php foreach($categories as $key=>$category){ echo "<option value=".$key.">".$category."</option>"; } ?></select></label></td></tr><tr><td width='250' class='left'><label>Select Product Template</label></td><td class='right' ><label><select name='data[QuoteItem][" + id + "][product_id]' id='QuoteItem" + id + "product_id' class='Product' title='" + id + "'></select></label></td></tr><tr ><td class='left'>Name</td><td class='right'><label><input name='data[QuoteItem][" + id + "][name]' type='text' id='QuoteItem" + id + "name' size='50' /></label></td></tr><tr ><td class='left'>Price (ex GST)</td><td class='right'><input type='text' name='data[QuoteItem][" + id + "][price]' id='QuoteItem" + id + "price' onchange='totalProductPrice();' class='quote-item-price' value='0' /></td></tr><tr><td class='left'>Description</td><td class='right'><label><textarea name='data[QuoteItem][" + id + "][description]' cols='38' rows='5' id='QuoteItem" + id + "description'></textarea></label></td></tr><tr><td><a href='#' onClick='removeFormField(\"#row" + id + "\"); return false;'>Remove</a></td></tr></table>"); $('#row' + id).highlightFade({ speed:1000 }); id = (id - 1) + 2; document.getElementById("field_id").value = id; } The code that detects change in ProductCategory dropdown and triggers the AJAX is below: $("select#ProductCategory").live('change', function(){ var url = base + "/quotes/productList/" + $(this).val() + ""; var id = $(this).attr('name'); $.getJSON(url,{id: $(this).val(), ajax: 'true'}, function(j){ var options = ''; options += '<option value="0">None</option>'; $.each(j, function(key, value){ options += '<option value="' + key + '">' + value + '</option>'; }) $("select#QuoteItem" + id + "product_id").html(options); }) }).trigger('change'); I have been trying all afternoon to work this out and the closest one i got to work applied the returned ajax values to all items. Currently using the live function people can add new fields and are able to use the drops down independant of each other dropdown but its only when the field is first added that i have trouble getting is populated Thanks in advance for any help

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• Magento Onepage Success Conversion Tracking Design Pattern

  - by user1734954

  My intent is to track conversions through multiple channels by inserting third party javascript (for example google analytics, optimizely, pricegrabber etc.) into the footer of onepage success . I've accomplished this by adding a block to the footer reference inside of the checkout success node within local.xml and everything works appropriately. My questions are more about efficiency and extensibility. It occurred to me that it would be better to combine all of the blocks into a single block reference and then use a various methods acting on a single call to the various related models to provide the data needed for insertion into the javascript for each of the conversion tracking scripts. Some examples of the common data that conversion tracking may rely on(pseudo): Order ID , Order Total, Order.LineItem.Name(foreach) and so on Currently for each of the scripts I've made a call to the appropriate model passing the customers last order id as the load value and the calling a get() assigning the return value to a variable and then iterating through the data to match the values with the expectations of the given third party service. All of the data should be pulled once when checkout is complete each third party services may expect different data in different formats Here is an example of one of the conversion tracking template files which loads at the footer of checkout success. $order = Mage::getModel('sales/order')->loadByIncrementId(Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session')->getLastRealOrderId()); $amount = number_format($order->getGrandTotal(),2); $customer = Mage::helper('customer')->getCustomer()->getData(); ?> <script type="text/javascript"> popup_email = '<?php echo($customer['email']);?>'; popup_order_number = '<?php echo $this->getOrderId() ?>'; </script> <!-- PriceGrabber Merchant Evaluation Code --> <script type="text/javascript" charset="UTF-8" src="https://www.pricegrabber.com/rating_merchrevpopjs.php?retid=<something>"></script> <noscript><a href="http://www.pricegrabber.com/rating_merchrev.php?retid=<something>" target=_blank> <img src="https://images.pricegrabber.com/images/mr_noprize.jpg" border="0" width="272" height="238" alt="Merchant Evaluation"></a></noscript> <!-- End PriceGrabber Code --> Having just a single piece of code like this is not that big of a deal, but we are doing similar things with a number of different third party services. Pricegrabber is one of the simpler examples. A more sophisticated tracking service expects a comma separated list of all of the product names, ids, prices, categories , order id etc. I would like to make it all more manageable so my idea to do the following: combine all of the template files into a single file Develop a helper class or library to deliver the data to the conversion template Goals Include Extensibility Minimal Model Calls Minimal Method Calls The Questions 1. Is a Mage helper the best route to take? 2. Is there any design pattern you may recommend for the "helper" class? 3. Why would this the design pattern you've chosen be best for this instance?

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• Right-aligning button in a grid with possibly no content - stretch grid to always fill the page

  - by Peter Perhác

  Hello people, I am losing my patience with this. I am working on a Windows Phone 7 application and I can't figure out what layout manager to use to achieve the following: Basically, when I use a Grid as the layout root, I can't make the grid to stretch to the size of the phone application page. When the main content area is full, all is well and the button sits where I want it to sit. However, in case the page content is very short, the grid is only as wide as to accommodate its content and then the button (which I am desperate to keep near the right edge of the screen) moves away from the right edge. If I replace the grid and use a vertically oriented stack panel for the layout root, the button sits where I want it but then the content area is capable of growing beyond the bottom edge. So, when I place a listbox full of items into the main content area, it doesn't adjust its height to be completely in view, but the majority of items in that listbox are just rendered below the bottom edge of the display area. I have tried using a third-party DockPanel layout manager and then docked the button in it's top section and set the button's HorizontalAlignment="Right" but the result was the same as with the grid, it also shrinks in size when there isn't enough content in the content area (or when title is short). How do I do this then? ==EDIT== I tried WPCoder's XAML, only I replaced the dummy text box with what I would have in a real page (stackpanel) and placed a listbox into the ContentPanel grid. I noticed that what I had before and what WPCoder is suggesting is very similar. Here's my current XAML and the page still doesn't grow to fit the width of the page and I get identical results to what I had before: <phone:PhoneApplicationPage x:Name="categoriesPage" x:Class="CatalogueBrowser.CategoriesPage" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:phone="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone" xmlns:shell="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Shell;assembly=Microsoft.Phone" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" FontFamily="{StaticResource PhoneFontFamilyNormal}" FontSize="{StaticResource PhoneFontSizeNormal}" Foreground="{StaticResource PhoneForegroundBrush}" SupportedOrientations="PortraitOrLandscape" Orientation="Portrait" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="480" d:DesignHeight="768" xmlns:ctrls="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit" shell:SystemTray.IsVisible="True"> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Transparent"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/> <RowDefinition Height="*"/> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Grid> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="*" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" /> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" VerticalAlignment="Center" > <TextBlock Text="Browsing:" Margin="10,10" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextTitle3Style}" /> <TextBlock x:Name="ListTitle" Text="{Binding DisplayName}" Margin="0,10" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextTitle3Style}" /> </StackPanel> <Button Grid.Column="1" x:Name="btnRefineSearch" Content="Refine Search" Style="{StaticResource buttonBarStyle}" FontSize="14" /> </Grid> <Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1"> <ListBox x:Name="CategoryList" ItemsSource="{Binding Categories}" Style="{StaticResource CatalogueList}" SelectionChanged="CategoryList_SelectionChanged"/> </Grid> </Grid> </phone:PhoneApplicationPage> This is what the page with the above XAML markup looks like in the emulator:

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• how to add multiple filters to pagination?

  - by ClarkSKent

  Hey, I am trying to allow multiple filters to be selected for my pagination script. So in my pagination, when a user clicks the 'marketing' button(link) it queries the database just for the category that = marketing. The same goes for the other 2 filter buttons as seen in the script below. (automotive, sports). The problem is, I want to be able to select multiple filters like only marketing and auomotive or automotive and sports, for example if I click the marketing filter and then the automotive, it would display the categories that equal marketing, and automotive. I have no idea how to accomplish this, so I have come to the experts to help me out. This is the script I am working on (I am very new to PHP and programming in general): <h3>Filter results by:</h3> <a href='pagi_test.php?category=marketing'>marketing</a> <a href='pagi_test.php?category=automotive'>automotive</a> <a href='pagi_test.php?category=sports'>sports</a> <br /> <h3>Results:</h3> <?php //connecting to the database $error = "Could not connect to the database"; mysql_connect('localhost','root','root') or die($error); mysql_select_db('ajax_demo') or die($error); //max displayed per page $per_page = 3; //get start variable $start = $_GET['start']; $category = mysql_real_escape_string($_GET['category']); //count records $record_count = mysql_num_rows(mysql_query("SELECT * FROM explore WHERE category='$category'")); //count max pages $max_pages = $record_count / $per_page; //may come out as decimal if (!$start) $start = 0; //display data $get = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM explore WHERE category='$category' LIMIT $start, $per_page"); ?> <table width="800px"> <?php while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($get)) { // get data $id = $row['id']; $site_name = $row['site_name']; $site_description = $row['site_description']; ?> <tr> <td><?php echo $id; ?></td> <td><?php echo $site_name; ?></td> <td><?php echo $site_description; ?></td> </tr> <?php } //setup prev and next variables $prev = $start - $per_page; $next = $start + $per_page; //show prev button if (!($start<=0)) echo "<a href='pagi_test.php?category=$category&start=$prev'>Prev</a> "; //show page numbers //set variable for first page $i=1; for ($x=0;$x<$record_count;$x=$x+$per_page) { if ($start!=$x) echo " <a href='pagi_test.php?category=$category&start=$x'>$i</a> "; else echo " <a href='pagi_test.php?category=$category&start=$x'><b>$i</b></a> "; $i++; } //show next button if (!($start>=$record_count-$per_page)) echo " <a href='pagi_test.php?category=$category&start=$next'>Next</a>"; ?>

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• Installing UCMA 3.0 and Creating a Communications Server "14"Trusted Application Pool

  A lot of setup and administration tasks have gotten a lot easier in Communications Server 14; one of them is building an application server to develop and run your UCMA 3.0 applications on. In this post, Ill walk you through installing the UCMA 3.0 Core SDK and creating a Trusted Application Pool on the server, thus adding it to the Communications Server 14 topology and allowing you to host and run UCMA 3.0 applications on it. Note: These instructions will change slightly as the bits get updated for the eventual Beta release I will update this post as soon as I get a chance to run this setup on a more recent build. Im doing the install on a simple Communications Server 14 topology consisting of the following Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V images: DC Domain Controller ExchangeUM Exchange Server 2010 CS-SE Microsoft Communications Server 2010 Standard Edition TS Development machine Ill walk through setting up UCMA 3.0 on the TS VM, which is a fully patched Windows Server 2008 R2 machine that is joined to the Fabrikam domain.   Im also running Visual Studio 2010 on this VM because I intend to use it as a development machine.  In a future post, Ill walk through installing just the UCMA 3.0 run time to build a true production UCMA application server. Im making a couple of assumptions here: You have an existing CS 2010 site and cluster configured(well look at this in a future post) Youre starting with a fully patched Windows Server 2008 R2 machine The machine is joined to your domain This walkthrough was done in my Fabrikam VM environment but can easily be modified for your own environment. Installing the UCMA 3.0 SDK Lets start by installing the UCMA 3.0 SDK.  Run UcmaSdkWebDownload.msi to kick off the SDK installer package extract process. The installed package is extracted to C: >> Program Files >> Microsoft UCMA 3.0 >> SDK Installer Package.  Browse there and run setup.exe. Click Install to install the UCMA 3.0 Core SDK and Workflow SDK. Install Communications Server Core Components UCMA 3.0 introduces a new concept called Auto-provisioning, which is most easily explained from the developer point of view.  Remember what your app.config looked it in UCMA 2.0?  You had to store the application GRUU, the trusted contact SIP Uri, the port for your application, and the name of the certificate authority. Thats all gone with auto-provisioning all you need in your app.config is your ApplicationId, e.g.: urn:application:MyApplication. How does CS 2010 do this? All of the applications configuration data is associated with the applications id.  UCMA also queries a replicated copy of the Central Management Database to retrieve the applications configuration data and also the configuration data for any endpoints. In this step, well run Bootstrapper.exe to install the CS Core components, this checked for the following components and installs them if they are not already present: VcRedist Sqlexpress Sqlnativeclient Sqlbackcompat Ucmaredist OcsCore.msi Open a command window at C: >> Program Files >> Microsoft Communications Server 2010 >> Deployment and run the following command: Bootstrapper.exe /BootstrapReplica /MinCache /SourceDirectory:"%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft UCMA 3.0\SDK Installer Package\Prereq\BootstrapperCache" Create a New Trusted Application Pool The next step is to create a new trusted application pool for the new server.  Fire up the Communications Server Management Shell from Start >> Microsoft Communications Server 2010 >> Communications Server Management Shell and enter the following PowerShell command: New-CsTrustedApplicationPool -Identity <FQDN of Server> -Registrar <FQDN of CS Server> -Site <CS Site Name> Verify that the new server was added to the CS topology by running the following PowerShell command: (Get-CsTopology -AsXml).ToString() > Topology.xml This created a file called Topology.xml in the directory that you ran the command from.  Open the file and find the Clusters section and look for a node for the new server. The Cluster Fqdn is the name of your server, and note the name of the Site that this Cluster is a part of. <Cluster Fqdn="appsrv.fabrikam.com" RequiresReplication="true" RequiresSetup="true"> <ClusterId SiteId="UcMarketing2" Number="5" /> <Machine OrdinalInCluster="1" Fqdn="appsrv.fabrikam.com"> <NetInterface InterfaceSide="Primary" InterfaceNumber="1" IPAddress="0.0.0.0" /> </Machine> </Cluster> Configure CS Management Store Replication At this point, we have the CS Core components installed and the server configured as a trusted application pool.  We now need to set up replication so that the Central Management Store replicates down to the new server. From the Communications Server Management Shell, run the following PowerShell command to enable the Replica service on the new server: Enable-CSReplica The Replica service is enabled, but hasn't done anything yet. This can be verified by running the following PowerShell command to check the replication status for the various servers in the topology: Get-CSManagementStoreReplicationStatus You can see in the screenshot below that the UpToDate property of the new server is still False Run the following PowerShell command to force the replication to run: Invoke-CSManagementStoreReplicationStatus Run Get-CSManagementStoreReplicationStatus again to verify that the new service is now up to date Request and Set a New Certificate The last step in the process is to request a new certificate from the certificate authority on the domain and assign it to the new server. From the Communications Server Management Shell, run the following PowerShell command to request a new certificate: Request-CSCertificate -Action new -Type default -CA <Domain Controller FQDN>\<Certificate Authority> Setting the -Verbose switch on the cmdlet creates an Xml file with its output. Open the Xml file and copy the thumbprint of the generated certificate. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Action Name="Request-CsCertificate" Time="20100512T212258"> <Action Name="Request-CsCertificate" Time="20100512T212258"> <Info Title="Connection" Time="20100512T212258">Data Source=(local)\rtclocal;Initial Catalog=xds;Integrated Security=True</Info> <Action Time="20100512T212258"> <Info Title="Certificate use" Time="20100512T212258">urn:certref:default</Info> <Info Title="Subject distinguished name" Time="20100512T212258">CN="appsrv2.fabrikam.com"</Info> <Info Time="20100512T212259">The certificate request is submitted to the Certification Authority dc.fabrikam.com\FabrikamCA.</Info> <Info Time="20100512T212259">The certificate was issued.</Info> <Info Time="20100512T212259">The certificate was imported with thumbprint AFC3C46E459C1A39AD06247676F3555826DBF705.</Info> <Complete Time="20100512T212259" /> </Action> <Info Title="command status" Time="20100512T212259">Command execution processing completed</Info> <Action Name="DeploymentXdsCmdlet.SaveCachedItems" Time="20100512T212259"> <Info Time="20100512T212259">0 updates</Info> <Complete Time="20100512T212259" /> </Action> <Info Title="command status" Time="20100512T212259">Command has completed</Info> </Action> </Action> Run the following PowerShell command to set the certificate: Set-CsCertificate -Type Default -Thumbprint <Thumbprint> Wrapping Up You now have a new UCMA 3.0 application server in your Communications Server 2010 server topology.  You can provision trusted applications and trusted application endpoints on the new server using the Communications Server 2010 Management Shell.  Well take a look at how to do that in another post. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Visual Studio 2013 Static Code Analysis in depth: What? When and How?

  - by Hosam Kamel

  In this post I'll illustrate in details the following points What is static code analysis? When to use? Supported platforms Supported Visual Studio versions How to use Run Code Analysis Manually Run Code Analysis Automatically Run Code Analysis while check-in source code to TFS version control (TFSVC) Run Code Analysis as part of Team Build Understand the Code Analysis results & learn how to fix them Create your custom rule set Q & A References What is static Rule analysis? Static Code Analysis feature of Visual Studio performs static code analysis on code to help developers identify potential design, globalization, interoperability, performance, security, and a lot of other categories of potential problems according to Microsoft's rules that mainly targets best practices in writing code, and there is a large set of those rules included with Visual Studio grouped into different categorized targeting specific coding issues like security, design, Interoperability, globalizations and others. Static here means analyzing the source code without executing it and this type of analysis can be performed through automated tools (like Visual Studio 2013 Code Analysis Tool) or manually through Code Review which already supported in Visual Studio 2012 and 2013 (check Using Code Review to Improve Quality video on Channel9) There is also Dynamic analysis which performed on executing programs using software testing techniques such as Code Coverage for example. When to use? Running Code analysis tool at regular intervals during your development process can enhance the quality of your software, examines your code for a set of common defects and violations is always a good programming practice. Adding that Code analysis can also find defects in your code that are difficult to discover through testing allowing you to achieve first level quality gate for you application during development phase before you release it to the testing team. Supported platforms .NET Framework, native (C and C++) Database applications. Support Visual Studio versions All version of Visual Studio starting Visual Studio 2013 (except Visual Studio Test Professional) check Feature comparisons Create and modify a custom rule set required Visual Studio Premium or Ultimate. How to use? Code Analysis can be run manually at any time from within the Visual Studio IDE, or even setup to automatically run as part of a Team Build or check-in policy for Team Foundation Server. Run Code Analysis Manually To run code analysis manually on a project, on the Analyze menu, click Run Code Analysis on your project or simply right click on the project name on the Solution Explorer choose Run Code Analysis from the context menu Run Code Analysis Automatically To run code analysis each time that you build a project, you select Enable Code Analysis on Build on the project's Property Page Run Code Analysis while check-in source code to TFS version control (TFSVC) Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) provides a way for organizations to enforce practices that lead to better code and more efficient group development through Check-in policies which are rules that are set at the team project level and enforced on developer computers before code is allowed to be checked in. (This is available only if you're using Team Foundation Server) Require permissions on Team Foundation Server: you must have the Edit project-level information permission set to Allow typically your account must be part of Project Administrators, Project Collection Administrators, for more information about Team Foundation permissions check http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms252587(v=vs.120).aspx In Team Explorer, right-click the team project name, point to Team Project Settings, and then click Source Control. In the Source Control dialog box, select the Check-in Policy tab. Click Add to create a new check-in policy. Double-click the existing Code Analysis item in the Policy Type list to change the policy. Check or Uncheck the policy option based on the configurations you need to perform as illustrated below: Enforce check-in to only contain files that are part of current solution: code analysis can run only on files specified in solution and project configuration files. This policy guarantees that all code that is part of a solution is analyzed. Enforce C/C++ Code Analysis (/analyze): Requires that all C or C++ projects be built with the /analyze compiler option to run code analysis before they can be checked in. Enforce Code Analysis for Managed Code: Requires that all managed projects run code analysis and build before they can be checked in. Check Code analysis rule set reference on MSDN What is Rule Set? Rule Set is a group of code analysis rules like the example below where Microsoft.Design is the rule set name where "Do not declare static members on generic types" is the code analysis rule Once you configured the Analysis rule the policy will be enabled for all the team member in this project whenever a team member check-in any source code to the TFSVC the policy section will highlight the Code Analysis policy as below TFS is a very extensible platform so you can simply implement your own custom Code Analysis Check-in policy, check this link for more details http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd492668.aspx but you have to be aware also about compatibility between different TFS versions check http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb907157.aspx Run Code Analysis as part of Team Build With Team Foundation Build (TFBuild), you can create and manage build processes that automatically compile and test your applications, and perform other important functions. Code Analysis can be enabled in the Build Definition file by selecting the correct value for the build process parameter "Perform Code Analysis" Once configure, Kick-off your build definition to queue a new build, Code Analysis will run as part of build workflow and you will be able to see code analysis warning as part of build report Understand the Code Analysis results & learn how to fix them Now after you went through Code Analysis configurations and the different ways of running it, we will go through the Code Analysis result how to understand them and how to resolve them. Code Analysis window in Visual Studio will show all the analysis results based on the rule sets you configured in the project file properties, let's dig deep into what each result item contains: 1 Check ID The unique identifier for the rule. CheckId and Category are used for in-source suppression of a warning.       2 Title The title of warning message       3 Description A description of the problem or suggested fix 4 File Name File name and the line of code number which violate the code analysis rule set 5 Category The code analysis category for this error 6 Warning /Error Depend on how you configure it in the rule set the default is Warning level 7 Action Copy: copy the warning information to the clipboard Create Work Item: If you're connected to Team Foundation Server you can create a work item most probably you may create a Task or Bug and assign it for a developer to fix certain code analysis warning Suppress Message: There are times when you might decide not to fix a code analysis warning. You might decide that resolving the warning requires too much recoding in relation to the probability that the issue will arise in any real-world implementation of your code. Or you might believe that the analysis that is used in the warning is inappropriate for the particular context. You can suppress individual warnings so that they no longer appear in the Code Analysis window. Two options available: In Source inserts a SuppressMessage attribute in the source file above the method that generated the warning. This makes the suppression more discoverable. In Suppression File adds a SuppressMessage attribute to the GlobalSuppressions.cs file of the project. This can make the management of suppressions easier. Note that the SuppressMessage attribute added to GlobalSuppression.cs also targets the method that generated the warning. It does not suppress the warning globally.       Visual Studio makes it very easy to fix Code analysis warning, all you have to do is clicking on the Check Id hyperlink if you are not aware how to fix the warring and you'll be directed to MSDN online or local copy based on the configuration you did while installing Visual Studio and you will find all the information about the warring including how to fix it. Create a Custom Code Analysis Rule Set The Microsoft standard rule sets provide groups of rules that are organized by function and depth. For example, the Microsoft Basic Design Guidelines Rules and the Microsoft Extended Design Guidelines Rules contain rules that focus on usability and maintainability issues, with added emphasis on naming rules in the Extended rule set, you can create and modify a custom rule set to meet specific project needs associated with code analysis. To create a custom rule set, you open one or more standard rule sets in the rule set editor. Create and modify a custom rule set required Visual Studio Premium or Ultimate. You can check How to: Create a Custom Rule Set on MSDN for more details http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd264974.aspx Q & A Visual Studio static code analysis vs. FxCop vs. StyleCpp http://www.excella.com/blog/stylecop-vs-fxcop-difference-between-code-analysis-tools/ Code Analysis for SharePoint Apps and SPDisposeCheck? This post lists some of the rule set you can run specifically for SharePoint applications and how to integrate SPDisposeCheck as well. Code Analysis for SQL Server Database Projects? This post illustrate how to run static code analysis on T-SQL through SSDT ReSharper 8 vs. Visual Studio 2013? This document lists some of the features that are provided by ReSharper 8 but are missing or not as fully implemented in Visual Studio 2013. References A Few Billion Lines of Code Later: Using Static Analysis to Find Bugs in the Real World http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/2/69354-a-few-billion-lines-of-code-later/fulltext What is New in Code Analysis for Visual Studio 2013 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2013/07/03/what-is-new-in-code-analysis-for-visual-studio-2013.aspx Analyze the code quality of Windows Store apps using Visual Studio static code analysis http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh441471.aspx [Hands-on-lab] Using Code Analysis with Visual Studio 2012 to Improve Code Quality http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/Using%20Code%20Analysis%20with%20Visual%20Studio%202012%20to%20Improve%20Code%20Quality.docx Originally posted at "Hosam Kamel| Developer & Platform Evangelist" http://blogs.msdn.com/hkamel

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

  - by mortezam

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

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• What You Need to Know About Windows 8.1

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Windows 8.1 is available to everyone starting today, October 19. The latest version of Windows improves on Windows 8 in every way. It’s a big upgrade, whether you use the desktop or new touch-optimized interface. The latest version of Windows has been dubbed “an apology” by some — it’s definitely more at home on a desktop PC than Windows 8 was. However, it also offers a more fleshed out and mature tablet experience. How to Get Windows 8.1 For Windows 8 users, Windows 8.1 is completely free. It will be available as a download from the Windows Store — that’s the “Store” app in the Modern, tiled interface. Assuming upgrading to the final version will be just like upgrading to the preview version, you’ll likely see a “Get Windows 8.1″ pop-up that will take you to the Windows Store and guide you through the download process. You’ll also be able to download ISO images of Windows 8.1, so can perform a clean install to upgrade. On any new computer, you can just install Windows 8.1 without going through Windows 8. New computers will start to ship with Windows 8.1 and boxed copies of Windows 8 will be replaced by boxed copies of Windows 8.1. If you’re using Windows 7 or a previous version of Windows, the update won’t be free. Getting Windows 8.1 will cost you the same amount as a full copy of Windows 8 — $120 for the standard version. If you’re an average Windows 7 user, you’re likely better off waiting until you buy a new PC with Windows 8.1 included rather than spend this amount of money to upgrade. Improvements for Desktop Users Some have dubbed Windows 8.1 “an apology” from Microsoft, although you certainly won’t see Microsoft referring to it this way. Either way, Steven Sinofsky, who presided over Windows 8′s development, left the company shortly after Windows 8 was released. Coincidentally, Windows 8.1 contains many features that Steven Sinofsky and Microsoft refused to implement. Windows 8.1 offers the following big improvements for desktop users: Boot to Desktop: You can now log in directly to the desktop, skipping the tiled interface entirely. Disable Top-Left and Top-Right Hot Corners: The app switcher and charms bar won’t appear when you move your mouse to the top-left or top-right corners of the screen if you enable this option. No more intrusions into the desktop. The Start Button Returns: Windows 8.1 brings back an always-present Start button on the desktop taskbar, dramatically improving discoverability for new Windows 8 users and providing a bigger mouse target for remote desktops and virtual machines. Crucially, the Start menu isn’t back — clicking this button will open the full-screen Modern interface. Start menu replacements will continue to function on Windows 8.1, offering more traditional Start menus. Show All Apps By Default: Luckily, you can hide the Start screen and its tiles almost entirely. Windows 8.1 can be configured to show a full-screen list of all your installed apps when you click the Start button, with desktop apps prioritized. The only real difference is that the Start menu is now a full-screen interface. Shut Down or Restart From Start Button: You can now right-click the Start button to access Shut down, Restart, and other power options in just as many clicks as you could on Windows 7. Shared Start Screen and Desktop Backgrounds; Windows 8 limited you to just a few Steven Sinofsky-approved background images for your Start screen, but Windows 8.1 allows you to use your desktop background on the Start screen. This can make the transition between the Start screen and desktop much less jarring. The tiles or shortcuts appear to be floating above the desktop rather than off in their own separate universe. Unified Search: Unified search is back, so you can start typing and search your programs, settings, and files all at once — no more awkwardly clicking between different categories when trying to open a Control Panel screen or search for a file. These all add up to a big improvement when using Windows 8.1 on the desktop. Microsoft is being much more flexible — the Start menu is full screen, but Microsoft has relented on so many other things and you’d never have to see a tile if you didn’t want to. For more information, read our guide to optimizing Windows 8.1 for a desktop PC. These are just the improvements specifically for desktop users. Windows 8.1 includes other useful features for everyone, such as deep SkyDrive integration that allows you to store your files in the cloud without installing any additional sync programs. Improvements for Touch Users If you have a Windows 8 or Windows RT tablet or another touch-based device you use the interface formerly known as Metro on, you’ll see many other noticeable improvements. Windows 8′s new interface was half-baked when it launched, but it’s now much more capable and mature. App Updates: Windows 8′s included apps were extremely limited in many cases. For example, Internet Explorer 10 could only display ten tabs at a time and the Mail app was a barren experience devoid of features. In Windows 8.1, some apps — like Xbox Music — have been redesigned from scratch, Internet Explorer allows you to display a tab bar on-screen all the time, while apps like Mail have accumulated quite a few useful features. The Windows Store app has been entirely redesigned and is less awkward to browse. Snap Improvements: Windows 8′s Snap feature was a toy, allowing you to snap one app to a small sidebar at one side of your screen while another app consumed most of your screen. Windows 8.1 allows you to snap two apps side-by-side, seeing each app’s full interface at once. On larger displays, you can even snap three or four apps at once. Windows 8′s ability to use multiple apps at once on a tablet is compelling and unmatched by iPads and Android tablets. You can also snap two of the same apps side-by-side — to view two web pages at once, for example. More Comprehensive PC Settings: Windows 8.1 offers a more comprehensive PC settings app, allowing you to change most system settings in a touch-optimized interface. You shouldn’t have to use the desktop Control Panel on a tablet anymore — or at least not as often. Touch-Optimized File Browsing: Microsoft’s SkyDrive app allows you to browse files on your local PC, finally offering a built-in, touch-optimized way to manage files without using the desktop. Help & Tips: Windows 8.1 includes a Help+Tips app that will help guide new users through its new interface, something Microsoft stubbornly refused to add during development. There’s still no “Modern” version of Microsoft Office apps (aside from OneNote), so you’ll still have to head to use desktop Office apps on tablets. It’s not perfect, but the Modern interface doesn’t feel anywhere near as immature anymore. Read our in-depth look at the ways Microsoft’s Modern interface, formerly known as Metro, is improved in Windows 8.1 for more information. In summary, Windows 8.1 is what Windows 8 should have been. All of these improvements are on top of the many great desktop features, security improvements, and all-around battery life and performance optimizations that appeared in Windows 8. If you’re still using Windows 7 and are happy with it, there’s probably no reason to race out and buy a copy of Windows 8.1 at the rather high price of $120. But, if you’re using Windows 8, it’s a big upgrade no matter what you’re doing. If you buy a new PC and it comes with Windows 8.1, you’re getting a much more flexible and comfortable experience. If you’re holding off on buying a new computer because you don’t want Windows 8, give Windows 8.1 a try — yes, it’s different, but Microsoft has compromised on the desktop while making a lot of improvements to the new interface. You just might find that Windows 8.1 is now a worthwhile upgrade, even if you only want to use the desktop.     

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, February 20, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, February 20, 2010New ProjectsBerkeliumDotNet: BerkeliumDotNet is a .NET wrapper for the Berkelium library written in C++/CLI. Berkelium provides off-screen browser rendering via Google's Chromi...BoxBinary Descriptive WebCacheManager Framework: Allows you to take a simple, different, and more effective method of caching items in ASP.NET. The developer defines descriptive categories to deco...CHS Extranet: CHS Extranet Project, working with the RM Community to build the new RM Easylink type applicationDbModeller: Generates one class having properties with the basic C# types aimed to serve as a business object by using reflection from the passed objects insta...Dice.NET: Dice.NET is a simple dice roller for those cases where you just kinda forgot your real dices. It's very simple in setup/use.EBI App with the SQL Server CE and websync: EBI App with the SQL Server CE and SQL Server DEV with Merge Replication(Web Synchronization) ere we are trying to develop an application which yo...Family Tree Analyzer: This project with be a c# project which aims to allow users to import their GEDCOM files and produce various data analysis reports such as a list o...Go! Embedded Device Builder: Go! is a complete software engineering environment for the creation of embedded Linux devices. It enables you to engineer, design, develop, build, ...HiddenWordsReadingPlan: HiddenWordsReadingPlanHtml to OpenXml: A library to convert simple or advanced html to plain OpenXml document.Jeffrey Palermo's shared source: This project contains multiple samples with various snippets and projects from blog posts, user group talks, and conference sessions.Krypton Palette Selectors: A small C# control library that allows for simplified palette selection and management. It makes use of and relies on Component Factory's excellen...OCInject: A DI container on a diet. This is a basic DI container that lives in your project not an external assembly with support for auto generated delegat...Photo Organiser: A small utility to sort photos into a new file structure based on date held in their XMP or EXIF tags (YYYY/MM/DD/hhmmss.jpg). Developed in C# / WPF.QPAPrintLib: Print every document by its recommended programmReusable Library: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developer.Runtime Intelligence Data Visualizer: WPF application used to visualize Runtime Intelligence data using the Data Query Service from the Runtime Intelligence Endpoint Starter Kit.ScreenRec: ScreenRec is program for record your desktop and save to images or save one picture.Silverlight Internet Desktop Application Guidance: SLIDA (Silverlight Internet Desktop Applications) provides process guidance for developers creating Silverlight applications that run exclusively o...WSUS Web Administration: Web Application to remotely manage WSUSNew Releases7zbackup - PowerShell Script to Backup Files with 7zip: 7zBackup v. 1.7.0 Stable: Bug Solved : Test-Path-Writable fails on root of system drive on Windows 7. Therefore the function now accepts an optional parameter to specify if ...aqq: sec 1.02: Projeto SEC - Sistema economico Comercial - em Visual FoxPro 9.0 OpenSource ou seja gratis e com fontes, licença GNU/GPL para maiores informações e...ASP.NET MVC Attribute Based Route Mapper: Attribute Based Routes v0.2: ASP.NET MVC Attribute Based Route MapperBoxBinary Descriptive WebCacheManager Framework: Initial release: Initial assembly release for anyone wanting the files referenced in my talk at Umbraco's 5th Birthday London meetup 16/Feb/2010 The code is fairly...Build Version Increment Add-In Visual Studio: Build Version Increment v2.2 Beta: 2.2.10050.1548Added support for custom increment schemes via pluginsBuild Version Increment Add-In Visual Studio: BuildVersionIncrement v2.1: 2.1.10050.1458Fix: Localization issues Feature: Unmanaged C support Feature: Multi-Monitor support Feature: Global/Default settings Fix: De...CHS Extranet: Beta 2.3: Beta 2.3 Release Change Log: Fixed the update my details not updating the department/form Tried to fix the issue when the ampersand (&) is in t...Cover Creator: CoverCreator 1.2.2: Resolved BUG: If there is only one CD entry in freedb.org application do nothing. Instalation instructions Just unzip CoverCreator and run CoverCr...Employee Scheduler: Employee Scheduler 2.3: Extract the files to a directory and run Lab Hours.exe. Add an employee. Double click an employee to modify their times. Please contact me through ...EnOceanNet: EnOceanNet v1.11: Recompiled for .NET Framework 4 RCFree Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts 3.0.3 beta 4 Released: Hi, This release contains fix for the following bugs: * DataBinding was not working as expected with RIA services. * DataSeries visual wa...Html to OpenXml: HtmlToOpenXml 0.1 Beta: This is a beta version for testing purpose.Jeffrey Palermo's shared source: Web Forms front controller: This code goes along with my blog post about adding code that executes before your web form http://jeffreypalermo.com/blog/add-post-backs-to-mvc-nd...Krypton Palette Selectors: Initial Release: The initial release. Contains only the KryptonPaletteDropButton control.LaunchMeNot: LaunchMeNot 1.10: Lots has been added in this release. Feel free, however, to suggest features you'd like on the forums. Changes in LaunchMeNot 1.10 (19th February ...Magellan: Magellan 1.1.36820.4796 Stable: This is a stable release. It contains a fix for a bug whereby the content of zones in a shared layout couldn't use element bindings (due to name sc...Magellan: Magellan 1.1.36883.4800 Stable: This release includes a couple of major changes: A new Forms object model. See this page for details. Magellan objects are now part of the defau...MAISGestão: LayerDiagram: LayerDiagramMatrix3DEx: Matrix3DEx 1.0.2.0: Fixes the SwapHandedness method. This release includes factory methods for all common transformation matrices like rotation, scaling, translation, ...MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.1.55880: Fixed bugs.NewLineReplacer: QPANewLineReplacer 1.1: Replace letter fast and easy in great textfilesOAuthLib: OAuthLib (1.5.0.1): Difference between 1.5.0.0 is just version number.OCInject: First Release: First ReleasePhoto Organiser: Installer alpha release: First release - contains known bugs, but works for the most part.Pinger: Pinger-1.0.0.0 Source: The Latest and First Source CodePinger: Pinger-1.0.0.2 Binary: Hi, This version can! work on Older versions of windows than 7 but i haven't test it! tnxPinger: Pinger-1.0.0.2 Source: Hi, It's the raw source!Reusable Library: v1.0: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developer.ScreenRec: Version 1: One version of this programSense/Net Enterprise Portal & ECMS: SenseNet 6.0 Beta 5: Sense/Net 6.0 Beta 5 Release Notes We are proud to finally present you Sense/Net 6.0 Beta 5, a major feature overhaul over beta43, and hopefully th...Silverlight Internet Desktop Application Guidance: v1: Project templates for Silverlight IDA and Silverlight Navigation IDA.SLAM! SharePoint List Association Manager: SLAM v1.3: The SharePoint List Association Manager is a platform for managing lists in SharePoint in a relational manner. The SLAM Hierarchy Extension works ...SQL Server PowerShell Extensions: 2.0.2 Production: Release 2.0.1 re-implements SQLPSX as PowersShell version 2.0 modules. SQLPSX consists of 8 modules with 133 advanced functions, 2 cmdlets and 7 sc...StoryQ: StoryQ 2.0.2 Library and Converter UI: Fixes: 16086 This release includes the following files: StoryQ.dll - the actual StoryQ library for you to reference StoryQ.xml - the xmldoc for ...Text to HTML: 0.4.0 beta: Cambios de la versión:Inclusión de los idiomas castellano, inglés y francés. Adición de una ventana de configuración. Carga dinámica de variabl...thor: Version 1.1: What's New in Version 1.1Specify whether or not to display the subject of appointments on a calendar Specify whether or not to use a booking agen...TweeVo: Tweet What Your TiVo Is Recording: TweeVo v1.0: TweeVo v1.0VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30219.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVFPnfe: Arquivo xml gerado manualmente: Segue um aquivo que gera o xml para NF-e de forma manual, estou trabalhando na versão 1.1 deste projeto, aguarde, enquanto isso baixe outro projeto...Windows Double Explorer: WDE v0.3.7: -optimization -locked tabs can be reset to locked directory (single & multi) -folder drag drop to tabcontrol creates new tab -splash screen -direcl...WPF ShaderEffect Generator: WPF ShaderEffect Generator 1.5: Visual Studio 2008 and RC 2010 are now supported. Different profiles can now be used to compile the shader with. ChangesVisual Studio RC 2010 is ...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)Image Resizer Powertoy Clone for WindowsASP.NETDotNetNuke® Community EditionMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsDinnerNow.netRawrSharpyBlogEngine.NETSharePoint ContribjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Modulepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcelFluent Ribbon Control Suite

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• Letter to Ballmer: Making Better Consumer Devices

  - by andrewbrust

  Last year, I wrote Steve Ballmer an email, and he was kind enough to write me back.  The email contained a scan of a column I wrote praising Microsoft’s BI strategy.  His reply contained three simple words: “Super nice  thanks.” Well, now I’d like to write to Steve again, in an open letter format, and this time the love may be a bit tougher.  But I’m still super earnest. The past two days have been eventful ones for Microsoft: The company announced the departure of company veterans Robbie Bach and J Allard and the market announced Apple is now besting Microsoft in market capitalization. Plus, announcements were made that make it plain that Ballmer will, in effect, be running Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division himself. With that in mind, I’d like to offer my list of a dozen things I think Microsoft’s CEO should do to improve that division’s offerings and, hopefully, its bottom line. So here goes:   1. On Windows Phone 7, Stay the Course The press is teeming with headlines and reader comments proclaiming the death-before-arrival of Windows Phone 7.  That’s plain silly.  You’ve got the makings of a great and unique SmartPhone platform, and you’re the only company (even considering RIM) that can offer full fidelity Exchange integration, not to mention implementing Office on the device.  Let the existing team finish this puppy and ship it. And then have them pump out a few updates, over-the-air, quickly.  Show them that Google Android’s not the only product that can do good, rapid dot releases. And another thing: make sure your OEMs’ devices have flawless touch screens.  If they don’t, then you shouldn’t certify them for delivery to customers.  Period. Oh, and kill the Kin, quietly.  It was DOA, and you know it.   2. Move Media Center to the Xbox Platform Media Center is, at its core, a good product.  But delivering a media distribution and DVR platform on a sophisticated PC operating system like Windows 7 just creates too many moving parts.  Xbox already functions as the best Media Center extender device – it should actually be the hub as well. Media Center is mostly based on .NET code – and XNA is a .NET environment for Xbox – find a way to bridge that small gap and make Media Center a joy to work with instead of a frustration.  Beating Apple TV out of this sub-market is the lowest hanging fruit on the tree (goofy pun, but it’s true).   3. Integrate Media Center with Mediaroom, or Kill the Latter You have two media products with almost identical names.  One is for standalone DVRs and the other is for IPTV cable set tops with DVR capabilities.  Can we merge these please?  My previous request of putting Media Center on Xbox would seem to tie into this nicely, since you’ve announced plans to do that with Mediaroom already.   4. Fix the Red Ring of Death People love the Xbox, but they really don’t love sending their consoles back every 18-24 months, when they get a bunch of red lights flashing on power up.  You’ve handled this defect about as gracefully as possible, but it’s been around for a long time now and it doesn’t seem to be fixed yet.  You can do better.  In fact, you must do better, or you insult your customers.   5. Add Blu Ray to Xbox I know, streaming movies are the future; physical media is legacy technology.  So if that’s true, why did you back HD DVD so hard?  You know why: for now, the film studios won’t allow a large selection of new release, HD, surround sound content be distributed on any medium other than Blu Ray or cable pay per view/on-demand.  Don’t you want home theater buffs to see the Xbox as a fantastic device for their rigs?  Don’t you want to put PlayStation 3 out of its misery?  And if you follow my suggestions above (move Media Center to the Xbox and fix the Red Ring problem), you’d have it all sewn up.  Do I think Blu Ray functionality will move a lot of units?  No.  Do I think that it would move more units with desperately needed influential home theater consumers?  You bet.  And you might sell more ZunePass subscriptions in the process. But while you’re at it, make the fan quieter, please.   6. Make More of Windows Home Server Home Server is a fantastic product.  And for reasons unknown to me, it seems like you’re letting it languish.  Development of the add-in ecosystem seems underfunded.  WHS’ unparalleled ease of use and reliability for home PC backup (and emergency restores) goes unsung.  Product cycles are slow.  Support for your OEMs, who are doing great work, especially in the green space with Atom CPUs, seems lacking.  You’ve married a trophy girl and you keep her cloistered at home!  That’s cruel, unusual and, um, incredibly ill-advised.  Make use of this ace card, and while you’re at it, give it real integration with Media Center.  The integration thus far proof-of-concept quality.  You should go way past that – both products will benefit immeasurably.   7. Set Up a Partner Platform for Custom Installers There’s a whole sub-industry of companies that install, integrate and configure home theater, security and connected home products.  They have an industry group. They are influential in the high-end of the consumer electronics industry, and so are their customers.  They love Media Center and they love Windows Home Server.  But I have talked to several of them at the Consumer Electronics Show and they tell me you don’t love them.  They find it very difficult to do business with Microsoft, even though they want nothing more than to sell and evangelize your platform.  This is a travesty.  Please fix it.  Get Allison Watson and the Microsoft Partner Network on board and have her hire someone who knows how to run a channel program for consumer electronics companies.  Problem solved.  Markets expanded.   8. Make Your Own Hardware In other areas, I know you love your partners.  I help run one, so I appreciate that.  But when it came to Xbox and Zune you built them it yourself (albeit on a contract basis, which is fine).  Windows Phone 7 has a chance to work as an OEM play, but it would work better if you produced the devices.  At least consider building a reference device that sells alongside your OEMs’ offerings.  That’s what Google did with the Nexxus One.  And while that phone was not itself a big seller, it catalyzed two wonderful things : (1) a quality bar was set and (2) partners exceeded it.  Before the Nexxus One, the best Android handset out there was the Motorola Droid. The Nexxus One was better, and the HTC Droid Incredible and Evo 4G are now even better than Google’s phone, which is why Verizon and Sprint decided not to carry it.  Imagine if all Windows Phone 6.x devices were on par with the HTC HD2.  I tend to believe you’d have a lot bigger market share than you do now.   9. Continue with Your Retail Initiative From what I hear, it sounds like it’s going well.  And this goes right along with making your own hardware.  When you build it, they will come.  And then it makes the likes of Best Buy and Staples do better.   10. Make an Acquisition (or Two) TiVo and/or Moxi look ripe for the picking.  With their ability to build stuff people love and your ability to run a business, you might just have something.  But do a better job than you did when you bought Danger.  Buy the ideas, not just the customers, eh?   11. Make Beautiful Stuff You’ve heard this one before, I know.  But I have some head-shrinking advice on this one.  You know that Apple obsesses over its industrial design.  You know that appeals to consumers.  But it seems you think doing so is Apple’s game exclusively and so you shouldn’t even try.  Bull dinky.  Come to New York and visit the Museum of Modern Art’s Architecture and Design gallery.  You’ll see that lots of companies and product categories have had very high design value well before Apple existed.  You can do this, and the Zune HD was a great start.  Now run with that.  Find those negative voices in your head that are telling you that you can’t and shut them up.  For good.   12. Burst the Bubble Some of the products you’ve built seem like they were conceived in a bizarro world.  That would appear to be the result of groupthink.  You must do better.  And there’s lots of people willing to advise you.  This includes just about everyone in the Regional Director program, and probably a bunch of MVPs.  Heck, I bet the guys at Engadget could help out too.  Imagine if you let them see the Kin before it shipped.  Talk to high-end gear consumers.  Talk to Best Buy and CostCo customers too.   Signing Off I hope this was of value to you.  As I wrote this I kept telling myself how obvious, even trite, some of these pieces of advice were and then, because of that, doubting they’d really help.  But I decided that they must not be obvious to Microsoft.  Sometimes when you get wrapped up in stuff, it’s hard to clear your head.  I think my head’s pretty clear here though (I’m wrapped up in other stuff), so maybe my perspective can help.  If not, well, then, I guess they all can’t be super nice.

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• Faceted search with Solr on Windows

  - by Dr.NETjes

  With over 10 million hits a day, funda.nl is probably the largest ASP.NET website which uses Solr on a Windows platform. While all our data (i.e. real estate properties) is stored in SQL Server, we're using Solr 1.4.1 to return the faceted search results as fast as we can.And yes, Solr is very fast. We did do some heavy stress testing on our Solr service, which allowed us to do over 1,000 req/sec on a single 64-bits Solr instance; and that's including converting search-url's to Solr http-queries and deserializing Solr's result-XML back to .NET objects! Let me tell you about faceted search and how to integrate Solr in a .NET/Windows environment. I'll bet it's easier than you think :-) What is faceted search? Faceted search is the clustering of search results into categories, allowing users to drill into search results. By showing the number of hits for each facet category, users can easily see how many results match that category. If you're still a bit confused, this example from CNET explains it all: The SQL solution for faceted search Our ("pre-Solr") solution for faceted search was done by adding a lot of redundant columns to our SQL tables and doing a COUNT(...) for each of those columns:   So if a user was searching for real estate properties in the city 'Amsterdam', our facet-query would be something like: SELECT COUNT(hasGarden), COUNT(has2Bathrooms), COUNT(has3Bathrooms), COUNT(etc...) FROM Houses WHERE city = 'Amsterdam' While this solution worked fine for a couple of years, it wasn't very easy for developers to add new facets. And also, performing COUNT's on all matched rows only performs well if you have a limited amount of rows in a table (i.e. less than a million). Enter Solr "Solr is an open source enterprise search server based on the Lucene Java search library, with XML/HTTP and JSON APIs, hit highlighting, faceted search, caching, replication, and a web administration interface." (quoted from Wikipedia's page on Solr) Solr isn't a database, it's more like a big index. Every time you upload data to Solr, it will analyze the data and create an inverted index from it (like the index-pages of a book). This way Solr can lookup data very quickly. To explain the inner workings of Solr is beyond the scope of this post, but if you want to learn more, please visit the Solr Wiki pages. Getting faceted search results from Solr is very easy; first let me show you how to send a http-query to Solr:    http://localhost:8983/solr/select?q=city:Amsterdam This will return an XML document containing the search results (in this example only three houses in the city of Amsterdam):    <response>     <result name="response" numFound="3" start="0">         <doc>            <long name="id">3203</long>            <str name="city">Amsterdam</str>            <str name="steet">Keizersgracht</str>            <int name="numberOfBathrooms">2</int>        </doc>         <doc>             <long name="id">3205</long>             <str name="city">Amsterdam</str>             <str name="steet">Vondelstraat</str>             <int name="numberOfBathrooms">3</int>          </doc>          <doc>             <long name="id">4293</long>             <str name="city">Amsterdam</str>             <str name="steet">Wibautstraat</str>             <int name="numberOfBathrooms">2</int>          </doc>       </result>   </response> By adding a facet-querypart for the field "numberOfBathrooms", Solr will return the facets for this particular field. We will see that there's one house in Amsterdam with three bathrooms and two houses with two bathrooms.    http://localhost:8983/solr/select?q=city:Amsterdam&facet=true&facet.field=numberOfBathrooms The complete XML response from Solr now looks like:    <response>      <result name="response" numFound="3" start="0">         <doc>            <long name="id">3203</long>            <str name="city">Amsterdam</str>            <str name="steet">Keizersgracht</str>            <int name="numberOfBathrooms">2</int>         </doc>         <doc>            <long name="id">3205</long>            <str name="city">Amsterdam</str>            <str name="steet">Vondelstraat</str>            <int name="numberOfBathrooms">3</int>         </doc>         <doc>            <long name="id">4293</long>            <str name="city">Amsterdam</str>            <str name="steet">Wibautstraat</str>            <int name="numberOfBathrooms">2</int>         </doc>      </result>      <lst name="facet_fields">         <lst name="numberOfBathrooms">            <int name="2">2</int>            <int name="3">1</int>         </lst>      </lst>   </response> Trying Solr for yourself To run Solr on your local machine and experiment with it, you should read the Solr tutorial. This tutorial really only takes 1 hour, in which you install Solr, upload sample data and get some query results. And yes, it works on Windows without a problem. Note that in the Solr tutorial, you're using Jetty as a Java Servlet Container (that's why you must start it using "java -jar start.jar"). In our environment we prefer to use Apache Tomcat to host Solr, which installs like a Windows service and works more like .NET developers expect. See the SolrTomcat page.Some best practices for running Solr on Windows: Use the 64-bits version of Tomcat. In our tests, this doubled the req/sec we were able to handle!Use a .NET XmlReader to convert Solr's XML output-stream to .NET objects. Don't use XPath; it won't scale well.Use filter queries ("fq" parameter) instead of the normal "q" parameter where possible. Filter queries are cached by Solr and will speed up Solr's response time (see FilterQueryGuidance)In my next post I’ll talk about how to keep Solr's indexed data in sync with the data in your SQL tables. Timestamps / rowversions will help you out here!

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• SQL SERVER – Guest Posts – Feodor Georgiev – The Context of Our Database Environment – Going Beyond the Internal SQL Server Waits – Wait Type – Day 21 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  This guest post is submitted by Feodor. Feodor Georgiev is a SQL Server database specialist with extensive experience of thinking both within and outside the box. He has wide experience of different systems and solutions in the fields of architecture, scalability, performance, etc. Feodor has experience with SQL Server 2000 and later versions, and is certified in SQL Server 2008. In this article Feodor explains the server-client-server process, and concentrated on the mutual waits between client and SQL Server. This is essential in grasping the concept of waits in a ‘global’ application plan. Recently I was asked to write a blog post about the wait statistics in SQL Server and since I had been thinking about writing it for quite some time now, here it is. It is a wide-spread idea that the wait statistics in SQL Server will tell you everything about your performance. Well, almost. Or should I say – barely. The reason for this is that SQL Server is always a part of a bigger system – there are always other players in the game: whether it is a client application, web service, any other kind of data import/export process and so on. In short, the SQL Server surroundings look like this: This means that SQL Server, aside from its internal waits, also depends on external waits and settings. As we can see in the picture above, SQL Server needs to have an interface in order to communicate with the surrounding clients over the network. For this communication, SQL Server uses protocol interfaces. I will not go into detail about which protocols are best, but you can read this article. Also, review the information about the TDS (Tabular data stream). As we all know, our system is only as fast as its slowest component. This means that when we look at our environment as a whole, the SQL Server might be a victim of external pressure, no matter how well we have tuned our database server performance. Let’s dive into an example: let’s say that we have a web server, hosting a web application which is using data from our SQL Server, hosted on another server. The network card of the web server for some reason is malfunctioning (think of a hardware failure, driver failure, or just improper setup) and does not send/receive data faster than 10Mbs. On the other end, our SQL Server will not be able to send/receive data at a faster rate either. This means that the application users will notify the support team and will say: “My data is coming very slow.” Now, let’s move on to a bit more exciting example: imagine that there is a similar setup as the example above – one web server and one database server, and the application is not using any stored procedure calls, but instead for every user request the application is sending 80kb query over the network to the SQL Server. (I really thought this does not happen in real life until I saw it one day.) So, what happens in this case? To make things worse, let’s say that the 80kb query text is submitted from the application to the SQL Server at least 100 times per minute, and as often as 300 times per minute in peak times. Here is what happens: in order for this query to reach the SQL Server, it will have to be broken into a of number network packets (according to the packet size settings) – and will travel over the network. On the other side, our SQL Server network card will receive the packets, will pass them to our network layer, the packets will get assembled, and eventually SQL Server will start processing the query – parsing, allegorizing, generating the query execution plan and so on. So far, we have already had a serious network overhead by waiting for the packets to reach our Database Engine. There will certainly be some processing overhead – until the database engine deals with the 80kb query and its 20 subqueries. The waits you see in the DMVs are actually collected from the point the query reaches the SQL Server and the packets are assembled. Let’s say that our query is processed and it finally returns 15000 rows. These rows have a certain size as well, depending on the data types returned. This means that the data will have converted to packages (depending on the network size package settings) and will have to reach the application server. There will also be waits, however, this time you will be able to see a wait type in the DMVs called ASYNC_NETWORK_IO. What this wait type indicates is that the client is not consuming the data fast enough and the network buffers are filling up. Recently Pinal Dave posted a blog on Client Statistics. What Client Statistics does is captures the physical flow characteristics of the query between the client(Management Studio, in this case) and the server and back to the client. As you see in the image, there are three categories: Query Profile Statistics, Network Statistics and Time Statistics. Number of server roundtrips–a roundtrip consists of a request sent to the server and a reply from the server to the client. For example, if your query has three select statements, and they are separated by ‘GO’ command, then there will be three different roundtrips. TDS Packets sent from the client – TDS (tabular data stream) is the language which SQL Server speaks, and in order for applications to communicate with SQL Server, they need to pack the requests in TDS packets. TDS Packets sent from the client is the number of packets sent from the client; in case the request is large, then it may need more buffers, and eventually might even need more server roundtrips. TDS packets received from server –is the TDS packets sent by the server to the client during the query execution. Bytes sent from client – is the volume of the data set to our SQL Server, measured in bytes; i.e. how big of a query we have sent to the SQL Server. This is why it is best to use stored procedures, since the reusable code (which already exists as an object in the SQL Server) will only be called as a name of procedure + parameters, and this will minimize the network pressure. Bytes received from server – is the amount of data the SQL Server has sent to the client, measured in bytes. Depending on the number of rows and the datatypes involved, this number will vary. But still, think about the network load when you request data from SQL Server. Client processing time – is the amount of time spent in milliseconds between the first received response packet and the last received response packet by the client. Wait time on server replies – is the time in milliseconds between the last request packet which left the client and the first response packet which came back from the server to the client. Total execution time – is the sum of client processing time and wait time on server replies (the SQL Server internal processing time) Here is an illustration of the Client-server communication model which should help you understand the mutual waits in a client-server environment. Keep in mind that a query with a large ‘wait time on server replies’ means the server took a long time to produce the very first row. This is usual on queries that have operators that need the entire sub-query to evaluate before they proceed (for example, sort and top operators). However, a query with a very short ‘wait time on server replies’ means that the query was able to return the first row fast. However a long ‘client processing time’ does not necessarily imply the client spent a lot of time processing and the server was blocked waiting on the client. It can simply mean that the server continued to return rows from the result and this is how long it took until the very last row was returned. The bottom line is that developers and DBAs should work together and think carefully of the resource utilization in the client-server environment. From experience I can say that so far I have seen only cases when the application developers and the Database developers are on their own and do not ask questions about the other party’s world. I would recommend using the Client Statistics tool during new development to track the performance of the queries, and also to find a synchronous way of utilizing resources between the client – server – client. Here is another example: think about similar setup as above, but add another server to the game. Let’s say that we keep our media on a separate server, and together with the data from our SQL Server we need to display some images on the webpage requested by our user. No matter how simple or complicated the logic to get the images is, if the images are 500kb each our users will get the page slowly and they will still think that there is something wrong with our data. Anyway, I don’t mean to get carried away too far from SQL Server. Instead, what I would like to say is that DBAs should also be aware of ‘the big picture’. I wrote a blog post a while back on this topic, and if you are interested, you can read it here about the big picture. And finally, here are some guidelines for monitoring the network performance and improving it: Run a trace and outline all queries that return more than 1000 rows (in Profiler you can actually filter and sort the captured trace by number of returned rows). This is not a set number; it is more of a guideline. The general thought is that no application user can consume that many rows at once. Ask yourself and your fellow-developers: ‘why?’. Monitor your network counters in Perfmon: Network Interface:Output queue length, Redirector:Network errors/sec, TCPv4: Segments retransmitted/sec and so on. Make sure to establish a good friendship with your network administrator (buy them coffee, for example J ) and get into a conversation about the network settings. Have them explain to you how the network cards are setup – are they standalone, are they ‘teamed’, what are the settings – full duplex and so on. Find some time to read a bit about networking. In this short blog post I hope I have turned your attention to ‘the big picture’ and the fact that there are other factors affecting our SQL Server, aside from its internal workings. As a further reading I would still highly recommend the Wait Stats series on this blog, also I would recommend you have the coffee break conversation with your network admin as soon as possible. This guest post is written by Feodor Georgiev. Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL

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• How to Use USER_DEFINED Activity in OWB Process Flow

  - by Jinggen He

  Process Flow is a very important component of Oracle Warehouse Builder. With Process Flow, we can create and control the ETL process by setting all kinds of activities in a well-constructed flow. In Oracle Warehouse Builder 11gR2, there are 28 kinds of activities, which fall into three categories: Control activities, OWB specific activities and Utility activities. For more information about Process Flow activities, please refer to OWB online doc. Most of those activities are pre-defined for some specific use. For example, the Mapping activity allows execution an OWB mapping in Process Flow and the FTP activity allows an interaction between the local host and a remote FTP server. Besides those activities for specific purposes, the User Defined activity enables you to incorporate into a Process Flow an activity that is not defined within Warehouse Builder. So the User Defined activity brings flexibility and extensibility to Process Flow. In this article, we will take an amazing tour of using the User Defined activity. Let's start. Enable execution of User Defined activity Let's start this section from creating a very simple Process Flow, which contains a Start activity, a User Defined activity and an End Success activity. Leave all parameters of activity USER_DEFINED unchanged except that we enter /tmp/test.sh into the Value column of the COMMAND parameter. Then let's create the shell script test.sh in /tmp directory. Here is the content of /tmp/test.sh (this article is demonstrating a scenario in Linux system, and /tmp/test.sh is a Bash shell script): echo Hello World! > /tmp/test.txt Note: don't forget to grant the execution privilege on /tmp/test.sh to OS Oracle user. For simplicity, we just use the following command. chmod +x /tmp/test.sh OK, it's so simple that we’ve almost done it. Now deploy the Process Flow and run it. For a newly installed OWB, we will come across an error saying "RPE-02248: For security reasons, activity operator Shell has been disabled by the DBA". See below. That's because, by default, the User Defined activity is DISABLED. Configuration about this can be found in <ORACLE_HOME>/owb/bin/admin/Runtime.properties: property.RuntimePlatform.0.NativeExecution.Shell.security_constraint=DISABLED The property can be set to three different values: NATIVE_JAVA, SCHEDULER and DISBALED. Where NATIVE_JAVA uses the Java 'Runtime.exec' interface, SCHEDULER uses a DBMS Scheduler external job submitted by the Control Center repository owner which is executed by the default operating system user configured by the DBA. DISABLED prevents execution via these operators. We enable the execution of User Defined activity by setting: property.RuntimePlatform.0.NativeExecution.Shell.security_constraint= NATIVE_JAVA Restart the Control Center service for the change of setting to take effect. cd <ORACLE_HOME>/owb/rtp/sql sqlplus OWBSYS/<password of OWBSYS> @stop_service.sql sqlplus OWBSYS/<password of OWBSYS> @start_service.sql And then run the Process Flow again. We will see that the Process Flow completes successfully. The execution of /tmp/test.sh successfully generated a file /tmp/test.txt, containing the line Hello World!. Pass parameters to User Defined Activity The Process Flow created in the above section has a drawback: the User Defined activity doesn't accept any information from OWB nor does it give any meaningful results back to OWB. That's to say, it lacks interaction. Maybe, sometimes such a Process Flow can fulfill the business requirement. But for most of the time, we need to get the User Defined activity executed according to some information prior to that step. In this section, we will see how to pass parameters to the User Defined activity and pass them into the to-be-executed shell script. First, let's see how to pass parameters to the script. The User Defined activity has an input parameter named PARAMETER_LIST. This is a list of parameters that will be passed to the command. Parameters are separated from one another by a token. The token is taken as the first character on the PARAMETER_LIST string, and the string must also end in that token. Warehouse Builder recommends the '?' character, but any character can be used. For example, to pass 'abc,' 'def,' and 'ghi' you can use the following equivalent: ?abc?def?ghi? or !abc!def!ghi! or |abc|def|ghi| If the token character or '\' needs to be included as part of the parameter, then it must be preceded with '\'. For example '\\'. If '\' is the token character, then '/' becomes the escape character. Let's configure the PARAMETER_LIST parameter as below: And modify the shell script /tmp/test.sh as below: echo $1 is saying hello to $2! > /tmp/test.txt Re-deploy the Process Flow and run it. We will see that the generated /tmp/test.txt contains the following line: Bob is saying hello to Alice! In the example above, the parameters passed into the shell script are static. This case is not so useful because: instead of passing parameters, we can directly write the value of the parameters in the shell script. To make the case more meaningful, we can pass two dynamic parameters, that are obtained from the previous activity, to the shell script. Prepare the Process Flow as below: The Mapping activity MAPPING_1 has two output parameters: FROM_USER, TO_USER. The User Defined activity has two input parameters: FROM_USER, TO_USER. All the four parameters are of String type. Additionally, the Process Flow has two string variables: VARIABLE_FOR_FROM_USER, VARIABLE_FOR_TO_USER. Through VARIABLE_FOR_FROM_USER, the input parameter FROM_USER of USER_DEFINED gets value from output parameter FROM_USER of MAPPING_1. We achieve this by binding both parameters to VARIABLE_FOR_FROM_USER. See the two figures below. In the same way, through VARIABLE_FOR_TO_USER, the input parameter TO_USER of USER_DEFINED gets value from output parameter TO_USER of MAPPING_1. Also, we need to change the PARAMETER_LIST of the User Defined activity like below: Now, the shell script is getting input from the Mapping activity dynamically. Deploy the Process Flow and all of its necessary dependees then run the Process Flow. We see that the generated /tmp/test.txt contains the following line: USER B is saying hello to USER A! 'USER B' and 'USER A' are two outputs of the Mapping execution. Write the shell script within Oracle Warehouse Builder In the previous section, the shell script is located in the /tmp directory. But sometimes, when the shell script is small, or for the sake of maintaining consistency, you may want to keep the shell script inside Oracle Warehouse Builder. We can achieve this by configuring these three parameters of a User Defined activity properly: COMMAND: Set the path of interpreter, by which the shell script will be interpreted. PARAMETER_LIST: Set it blank. SCRIPT: Enter the shell script content. Note that in Linux the shell script content is passed into the interpreter as standard input at runtime. About how to actually pass parameters to the shell script, we can utilize variable substitutions. As in the following figure, ${FROM_USER} will be replaced by the value of the FROM_USER input parameter of the User Defined activity. So will the ${TO_USER} symbol. Besides the custom substitution variables, OWB also provide some system pre-defined substitution variables. You can refer to the online document for that. Deploy the Process Flow and run it. We see that the generated /tmp/test.txt contains the following line: USER B is saying hello to USER A! Leverage the return value of User Defined activity All of the previous sections are connecting the User Defined activity to END_SUCCESS with an unconditional transition. But what should we do if we want different subsequent activities for different shell script execution results? 1.  The simplest way is to add three simple-conditioned out-going transitions for the User Defined activity just like the figure below. In the figure, to simplify the scenario, we connect the User Defined activity to three End activities. Basically, if the shell script ends successfully, the whole Process Flow will end at END_SUCCESS, otherwise, the whole Process Flow will end at END_ERROR (in our case, ending at END_WARNING seldom happens). In the real world, we can add more complex and meaningful subsequent business logic. 2.  Or we can utilize complex conditions to work with different results of the User Defined activity. Previously, in our script, we only have this line: echo ${FROM_USER} is saying hello to ${TO_USER}! > /tmp/test.txt We can add more logic in it and return different values accordingly. echo ${FROM_USER} is saying hello to ${TO_USER}! > /tmp/test.txt if CONDITION_1 ; then ...... exit 0 fi if CONDITION_2 ; then ...... exit 2 fi if CONDITION_3 ; then ...... exit 3 fi After that we can leverage the result by checking RESULT_CODE in condition expression of those out-going transitions. Let's suppose that we have the Process Flow as the following graph (SUB_PROCESS_n stands for more different further processes): We can set complex condition for the transition from USER_DEFINED to SUB_PROCESS_1 like this: Other transitions can be set in the same way. Note that, in our shell script, we return 0, 2 and 3, but not 1. As in Linux system, if the shell script comes across a system error like IO error, the return value will be 1. We can explicitly handle such a return value. Summary Let's summarize what has been discussed in this article: How to create a Process Flow with a User Defined activity in it How to pass parameters from the prior activity to the User Defined activity and finally into the shell script How to write the shell script within Oracle Warehouse Builder How to do variable substitutions How to let the User Defined activity return different values and in what way can we leverage

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• Run WordPress & Other Web Apps with Windows Web Platform

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to run WordPress or other web apps on your PC so you can easily test and design websites?  Here we’ll look at how you can get the latest web apps on your computer in only a few quick steps. Many web apps today, such as WordPress, MediaWiki, and more, are open source and can be run for free from any computer with even a simple local web server.  They are often very difficult to install on your computer, since they require a number of dependencies such as PHP and MySQL.  Microsoft has worked to make this easier, releasing the Windows Web Platform Installer.  This lets you install many popular web apps and free tools in Windows with only a few clicks. Here we’re going to look at how to install WordPress and the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express to edit web code with the Web Platform Installer.  But, if you’d rather install a different web app or tool, feel free to choose those as the installations are generally similar. Getting Started Head over to Microsoft’s Web development site and download the Web Platform Installer (link below).  This will download very quick, as it is just a small loader.  When you run this loader, it will download the Web Platform Installer files.  The Web Platform Installer works on XP, Vista, and Windows 7, as well as the related versions of Windows Server. After a couple moments, the Web Platform Installer will open and load information about the latest web offerings.    Now you can choose what you want to install.  You can quickly select the recommended products for several categories such as Web Server, Database, and more. Alternately, click Customize under the category and select exactly what you want to install.  Note that items already installed on your computer will be grayed out. We wanted to install Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, so select Customize under Tools, and select Visual Web Developer 2010 Express. Or, for more preset choices, select Options on the bottom of the window. You can choose to add Multimedia, Developer, and Enterprise tools to the lists, or add a new preset list from a feed. Choose Specific Web apps to Install We wanted to install WordPress, so instead of choosing a preset, select the Web Applications tab on the left.  Now you can choose from a variety of apps based on category, or you can view them all together in an A to Z, Most Popular, or Highest Rating list. Click the checkbox beside the app you want to install to select it, or click the “i” for more information. Here’s the More Information pane for WordPress.  If you’re ready to install it, click the checkbox. Now you can go back and add more web apps or tools to the install list if you like.  The Web Platform Installer will automatically find and select prerequisite apps such as MySQL, so you won’t need to worry about finding them. Once you’ve selected everything you want to install, click the Install button on the bottom of the window. The Web Platform Installer will now show you everything that’s selected, including components that it automatically selected.  Notice we only chose to install WordPress and Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, but it also has selected MySQL and PHP automatically.  Click I Accept to proceed. Enter an administrator password for MySQL before the setup begins. Now the Web Platform Installer will take over, automatically downloading, installing, and configuring all of your web apps.  It will also activate optional Windows components that may be needed on your computer.  This may take several minutes, depending on the components you selected and your internet speed.   Setting up Your Test Site Once the installation is finished, you’ll be asked to enter some information about your site.  You can simply accept the defaults or enter your own choices, and then click Continue. Now you’ll need to enter some information for your web apps.  When installing WordPress, you’ll need to choose a database and enter administrative usernames and passwords.  You may also be asked to enter extra information for additional security, but for a local-only test site this isn’t necessary.  Click Continue when you’re finished. You’ll need to wait a few more moments as it complete the setup of your web apps.  The good thing is, once it’s finished, they’ll be ready to go with only minimal configuration. And you’re finished!  The installer will let you know everything it installed, and if there were any problems.  In our test, Visual Web Developer 2010 Express failed to install successfully.  Often the problems may be with the download, so click Finish and then reselect the apps that didn’t install and run the installer again. Now you’re ready to run WordPress from your PC.  Click the Launch WordPress link or enter http://localhost:80/wordpress in your browser to get started. You’ll only have a little more setup to do on WordPress to get it running.  Once you’ve opened your WordPress page in your browser, enter a name for your blog and your email address, and click Install WordPress.   After a few seconds, you should see a Success! page with your username and a temporary password.  Copy the password, and then click Log In. Enter admin as the Username and paste the random generated password, and click Log In. WordPress will remind you to change the default password.  Click the Yes, Take me to my profile page link to do this. Enter something easier for you to remember, and click Update Profile. Now you’re ready to enjoy your new WordPress install on Windows.  You can add plugins and themes, and everything else you’d do with a normal WordPress site.  Here’s the dashboard running from localhost. And here’s the default blog running. Setting up Visual Web Developer 2010 Express As mentioned before, Visual Web Developer 2010 Express didn’t install correctly on our first try, but the second time it installed seamlessly.  Once it’s installed, launch it from your start menu as normal.  It may take a few minutes to load on the first run as it is finishing up setup. You may notice that the splash screen displayed while the program is loading says For Evaluation Purposes Only.  This is because you still need to register the program. You have 30 days to register the program, but let’s go ahead and do it to get this step out of the way.  Click Help in the menu bar, and select Register Product. Click Obtain a registration key online in the popup window. You’ll need to sign in with your Windows Live ID, and then fill out a quick form. When you’re done, copy the registration key displayed and paste it into the registration dialog in Visual Web Developer.   Now you’ve got a registered, free web development program with full standards compliance and IntelliSense to help you work smarter and faster.  And it works great with your local web apps, so you can create, tweak, and then deploy, all from your desktop with this simple installer! Install More Apps You can always run the Web Platform Installer again in the future and add more apps if you’d like.  The install adds a link to the Installer in the Start menu; just run it and repeat the steps above with your new selections. Also, from the installer, you can cleanup the setup files downloaded during the installation if you want.  Click the Options link in the bottom of the window, and then scroll down and select Delete installer cache folder. Uninstalling the apps is not as easy, unfortunately.  If you wish to uninstall the Web Platform Installer and everything you installed with it, you’ll need to uninstall each item individually.  One easy way to see what was all installed together is to sort the entries in Uninstall Programs by date.  In our case, we also installed some other applications on the same day, but it’s easier to see what was installed together. Or if you are not a fan of using Programs and Features to uninstall them, try out a program like Revo Uninstaller Pro. Conclusion Whether you’re a full-time web developer or just enjoy testing out the latest web apps, the Web Platform Installer makes it quick and easy to get your computer loaded up with the latest bits.  In fact, it’s easier to install these tools with all their dependencies than it is to install many standard boxed programs. If you’d like to take your web server anywhere you go and not have it confined to your desktop, then check out our article on how to Turn Your Flashdrive into a Portable Webserver. Link Download the Microsoft Web Platform Installer Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Linux QuickTip: Downloading and Un-tarring in One StepQuick Tip: Set a Future Date for a Post in WordPressHow-To Geek SoftwareAdd Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogHow-To Geek Software: WordPress Comment Moderation Notifier TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like) How to Forecast Weather, without Gadgets Outlook Tools, one stop tweaking for any Outlook version Zoofs, find the most popular tweeted YouTube videos Video preview of new Windows Live Essentials 21 Cursor Packs for XP, Vista & 7

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• Simple Branching and Merging with SVN

  Its a good idea not to do too much work without checking something into source control.  By too much work I mean typically on the order of a couple of hours at most, and certainly its a good practice to check in anything you have before you leave the office for the day.  But what if your changes break the build (on the build server you do have a build server dont you?) or would cause problems for others on your team if they get the latest code?  The solution with Subversion is branching and merging (incidentally, if youre using Microsoft Visual Studio Team System, you can shelve your changes and share shelvesets with others, which accomplishes many of the same things as branching and merging, but is a bit simpler to do). Getting Started Im going to assume you have Subversion installed along with the nearly ubiquitous client, TortoiseSVN.  See my previous post on installing SVN server if you want to get it set up real quick (you can put it on your workstation/laptop just to learn how it works easily enough). Overview When you know you are going to be working on something that you wont be able to check in quickly, its a good idea to start a branch.  Its also perfectly fine to create the branch after-the-fact (have you ever started something thinking it would be an hour and 4 hours later realized you were nowhere near done?).  In any event, the first thing you need to do is create a branch.  A branch is simply a copy of the current trunk (a typical subversion setup has root directories called trunk, tags, and branches its a good idea to keep this and to put your branches in the branches folder).  Once you have a new branch, you need to switch your working copy so that it is bound to your branch.  As you work,  you may want to merge in changes that are happening in the trunk to your branch, and ultimately when you are done youll want to merge your branch back into the trunk.  When done, you can delete your branch (or not, but it may add clutter).  To sum up: Create a new branch Switch your local working copy to the new branch Develop in the branch (commit changes, etc.) Merge changes from trunk into your branch Merge changes from branch into trunk Delete the branch Create a new branch From the root of your repository, right-click and select TortoiseSVN > Branch/tag as shown at right (click to enlarge).  This will bring up the Copy (Branch / Tag) interface.  By default the From WC at URL: should be pointing at the trunk of your repository.  I recommend (after ensuring that you have the latest version) that you choose to make the copy from the HEAD revision in the repository (the first radio button).  In the To URL: textbox, you should change the URL from /trunk to /branches/NAME_OF_BRANCH.  You can name the branch anything you like, but its often useful to give it your name (if its just for your use) or some useful information (such as a datestamp or a bug/issue ID from that it relates to, or perhaps just the name of the feature you are adding. When youre done with that, enter in a log message for your new branch.  If you want to immediately switch your local working copy to the new branch/tag, check the box at the bottom of the dialog (Switch working copy to new branch/tag).  You can see an example at right. Assuming everything works, you should very quickly see a window telling you the Copy finished, like the one shown below: Switch Local Working Copy to New Branch If you followed the instructions above and checked the box when you created your branch, you dont need to do this step.  However, if you have a branch that already exists and you would like to switch over to working on it, you can do so by using the Switch command.  Youll find it in the explorer context menu under TortoiseSVN > Switch: This brings up a dialog that shows you your current binding, and lets you enter in a new URL to switch to: In the screenshot above, you can see that Im currently bound to a branch, and so I could switch back to the trunk or to another branch.  If youre not sure what to enter here, you can click the [] next to the URL textbox to explore your repository and find the appropriate root URL to use.  Also, the dropdown will show you URLs that might be a good fit (such as the trunk of the current repository). Develop in the Branch Once you have created a branch and switched your working copy to use it,  you can make changes and Commit them as usual.  Your commits are now going into the branch, so they wont impact other users or the build server that are working off of the trunk (or their own branches).  In theory you can keep on doing this forever, but practically its a good idea to periodically merge the trunk into your branch, and/or keep your branches short-lived and merge them back into the trunk before they get too far out of sync. Merge Changes from Trunk into your Branch Once you have been working in a branch for a little while, change to the trunk will have occurred that youll want to merge into your branch.  Its much safer and easier to integrate changes in small increments than to wait for weeks or months and then try to merge in two very different codebases.  To perform the merge, simply go to the root of your branch working copy and right click, select TortoiseSVN->Merge.  Youll be presented with this dialog: In this case you want to leave the default setting, Merge a range of revisions.  Click Next.  Now choose the URL to merge from.  You should select the trunk of your current repository (which should be in the dropdownlist, or you can click the [] to browse your repository for the correct URL).  You can leave everything else blank since you want to merge everything: Click Next.  Again you can leave the default settings.  If you want to do something more granular than everything in the trunk, you can select a different Merge depth, to include merging just one item in the tree.  You can also perform a Test merge to see what changes will take place before you click Merge (which is often a good idea).  Heres what the dialog should look like before you click Merge: After clicking Merge (or Test merge) you should see a confirmation like this (it will say Test Only in the title if you click Test merge): Now you should build your solution, run all of your tests, and verify that your branch still works the way it should, given the updates that youve just integrated from the trunk.  Once everything works, Commit your changes, and then continue with your work on the branch.  Note that until you commit, nothing has actually changed in your branch on the server.  Other team members who may also be working in this branch wont be impacted, etc.  The Merge is purely a client-side operation until you perform a Commit. In a more real-world scenario, you may have conflicts.  When you do, youll be presented with a dialog like this one: Its up to you which option you want to go with.  The more frequently you Merge, the fewer of these youll have to deal with.  Also, be very sure that youre merging the right folders together.  If you try and merge your trunk with some subfolder in your branchs structure, youll end up with all kinds of conflicts and problems.  Fortunately, theyre only on your working copy (unless you commit them!) but if you see something like that, be sure to doublecheck your URL and your local file location. Merge Your Branch Back Into Trunk When youre done working in your branch, its time to pull it back into the trunk.  The first thing you should do is follow the previous steps instructions for merging the latest from the trunk into your branch.  This lets you ensure that what you have in your branch works correctly with the current trunk.  Once youve done that and committed your changes to your branch, youre ready to proceed with this step. Once youre confident your branch is good to go, you should go to its root folder and select TortoiseSVN->Merge (as above) from the explorer right-click menu.  This time, select Reintegrate a branch as shown below: Click Next.  Youll want it to merge with the trunk, which should be the default: Click Next. Leave the default settings: Click Test merge to see a test, and then if all looks good, click Merge.  Note that if you havent checked in your working copy changes, youll see something like this: If on the other hand things are successful: After this step, its likely you are finished working in your branch.  Dont forget to use the ToroiseSVN->Switch command to change your working copy back to the trunk. Delete the Branch You dont have to delete the branch, but over time your branches area of your repository will get cluttered, and in any event if theyre not actively being worked on the branches are just taking up space and adding to later confusion.  Keeping your branches limited to things youre actively working on is simply a good habit to get into, just like making sure your codebase itself remains tidy and not filled with old commented out bits of code. To delete the branch after youre finished with it, the simplest thing to do is choose TortoiseSVN->Repo Browser.  From there, assuming you did this from your branch, it should already be highlighted.  In any event, navigate to your branch in the treeview on the left, and then right-click and select Delete.  Enter a log message if youd like: Click OK, and its gone.  Dont be too afraid of this, though.  You can still get to the files by viewing the log for branches, and selecting a previous revision (anything before the delete action): If for some reason you needed something that was previously in this branch, you could easily get back to any changeset you checked in, so you should have absolutely no fear when it comes to deleting branches youre done with.   Resources If youre using Eclipse, theres a nice write-up of the steps required by Zach Cox that I found helpful here. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Migrating from SQL Trace to Extended Events

  - by extended_events

  In SQL Server codenamed “Denali” we are moving our diagnostic tracing capabilities forward by building a system on top of Extended Events. With every new system you face the specter of migration which is always a bit of a hassle. I’m obviously motivated to see everyone move their diagnostic tracing systems over to the new extended events based system, so I wanted to make sure we lowered the bar for the migration process to help ease your trials. In my initial post on Denali CTP 1 I described a couple tables that we created that will help map the existing SQL Trace Event Classes to the equivalent Extended Events events. In this post I’ll describe the tables in a bit more details, explain the relationship between the SQL Trace objects (Event Class & Column) and Extended Event objects (Events & Actions) and at the end provide some sample code for a managed stored procedure that will take an existing SQL Trace session (eg. a trace that you can see in sys.Traces) and converts it into event session DDL. Can you relate? In some ways, SQL Trace and Extended Events is kind of like the Standard and Metric measuring systems in the United States. If you spend too much time trying to figure out how to convert between the two it will probably make your head hurt. It’s often better to just use the new system without trying to translate between the two. That said, people like to relate new things to the things they’re comfortable with, so, with some trepidation, I will now explain how these two systems are related to each other. First, some terms… SQL Trace is made up of Event Classes and Columns. The Event Class occurs as the result of some activity in the database engine, for example, SQL:Batch Completed fires when a batch has completed executing on the server. Each Event Class can have any number of Columns associated with it and those Columns contain the data that is interesting about the Event Class, such as the duration or database name. In Extended Events we have objects named Events, EventData field and Actions. The Event (some people call this an xEvent but I’ll stick with Event) is equivalent to the Event Class in SQL Trace since it is the thing that occurs as the result of some activity taking place in the server. An  EventData field (from now on I’ll just refer to these as fields) is a piece of information that is highly correlated with the event and is always included as part of the schema of an Event. An Action is something that can be associated with any Event and it will cause some additional “action” to occur when ever the parent Event occurs. Actions can do a number of different things for example, there are Actions that collect additional data and, take memory dumps. When mapping SQL Trace onto Extended Events, Columns are covered by a combination of both fields and Actions. Knowing exactly where a Column is covered by a field and where it is covered by an Action is a bit of an art, so we created the mapping tables to make you an Artist without the years of practice. Let me draw you a map. Event Mapping The table dbo.trace_xe_event_map exists in the master database with the following structure: Column_name Type trace_event_id smallint package_name nvarchar xe_event_name nvarchar By joining this table sys.trace_events using trace_event_id and to the sys.dm_xe_objects using xe_event_name you can get a fair amount of information about how Event Classes are related to Events. The most basic query this lends itself to is to match an Event Class with the corresponding Event. SELECT     t.trace_event_id,     t.name [event_class],     e.package_name,     e.xe_event_name FROM sys.trace_events t INNER JOIN dbo.trace_xe_event_map e     ON t.trace_event_id = e.trace_event_id There are a couple things you’ll notice as you peruse the output of this query: For the most part, the names of Events are fairly close to the original Event Class; eg. SP:CacheMiss == sp_cache_miss, and so on. We’ve mostly stuck to a one to one mapping between Event Classes and Events, but there are a few cases where we have combined when it made sense. For example, Data File Auto Grow, Log File Auto Grow, Data File Auto Shrink & Log File Auto Shrink are now all covered by a single event named database_file_size_change. This just seemed like a “smarter” implementation for this type of event, you can get all the same information from this single event (grow/shrink, Data/Log, Auto/Manual growth) without having multiple different events. You can use Predicates if you want to limit the output to just one of the original Event Class measures. There are some Event Classes that did not make the cut and were not migrated. These fall into two categories; there were a few Event Classes that had been deprecated, or that just did not make sense, so we didn’t migrate them. (You won’t find an Event related to mounting a tape – sorry.) The second class is bigger; with rare exception, we did not migrate any of the Event Classes that were related to Security Auditing using SQL Trace. We introduced the SQL Audit feature in SQL Server 2008 and that will be the compliance and auditing feature going forward. Doing this is a very deliberate decision to support separation of duties for DBAs. There are separate permissions required for SQL Audit and Extended Events tracing so you can assign these tasks to different people if you choose. (If you’re wondering, the permission for Extended Events is ALTER ANY EVENT SESSION, which is covered by CONTROL SERVER.) Action Mapping The table dbo.trace_xe_action_map exists in the master database with the following structure: Column_name Type trace_column_id smallint package_name nvarchar xe_action_name nvarchar You can find more details by joining this to sys.trace_columns on the trace_column_id field. SELECT     c.trace_column_id,     c.name [column_name],     a.package_name,     a.xe_action_name FROM sys.trace_columns c INNER JOIN    dbo.trace_xe_action_map a     ON c.trace_column_id = a.trace_column_id If you examine this list, you’ll notice that there are relatively few Actions that map to SQL Trace Columns given the number of Columns that exist. This is not because we forgot to migrate all the Columns, but because much of the data for individual Event Classes is included as part of the EventData fields of the equivalent Events so there is no need to specify them as Actions. Putting it all together If you’ve spent a bunch of time figuring out the inner workings of SQL Trace, and who hasn’t, then you probably know that the typically set of Columns you find associated with any given Event Class in SQL Profiler is not fix, but is determine by the contents of the table sys.trace_event_bindings. We’ve used this table along with the mapping tables to produce a list of Event + Action combinations that duplicate the SQL Profiler Event Class definitions using the following query, which you can also find in the Books Online topic How To: View the Extended Events Equivalents to SQL Trace Event Classes. USE MASTER; GO SELECT DISTINCT    tb.trace_event_id,    te.name AS 'Event Class',    em.package_name AS 'Package',    em.xe_event_name AS 'XEvent Name',    tb.trace_column_id,    tc.name AS 'SQL Trace Column',    am.xe_action_name as 'Extended Events action' FROM (sys.trace_events te LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.trace_xe_event_map em    ON te.trace_event_id = em.trace_event_id) LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.trace_event_bindings tb    ON em.trace_event_id = tb.trace_event_id LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.trace_columns tc    ON tb.trace_column_id = tc.trace_column_id LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.trace_xe_action_map am    ON tc.trace_column_id = am.trace_column_id ORDER BY te.name, tc.name As you might imagine, it’s also possible to map an existing trace definition to the equivalent event session by judicious use of fn_trace_geteventinfo joined with the two mapping tables. This query extracts the list of Events and Actions equivalent to the trace with ID = 1, which is most likely the Default Trace. You can find this query, along with a set of other queries and steps required to migrate your existing traces over to Extended Events in the Books Online topic How to: Convert an Existing SQL Trace Script to an Extended Events Session. USE MASTER; GO DECLARE @trace_id int SET @trace_id = 1 SELECT DISTINCT el.eventid, em.package_name, em.xe_event_name AS 'event'    , el.columnid, ec.xe_action_name AS 'action' FROM (sys.fn_trace_geteventinfo(@trace_id) AS el    LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.trace_xe_event_map AS em       ON el.eventid = em.trace_event_id) LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.trace_xe_action_map AS ec    ON el.columnid = ec.trace_column_id WHERE em.xe_event_name IS NOT NULL AND ec.xe_action_name IS NOT NULL You’ll notice in the output that the list doesn’t include any of the security audit Event Classes, as I wrote earlier, those were not migrated. But wait…there’s more! If this were an infomercial there’d by some obnoxious guy next to me blogging “Well Mike…that’s pretty neat, but I’m sure you can do more. Can’t you make it even easier to migrate from SQL Trace?”  Needless to say, I’d blog back, in an overly excited way, “You bet I can' obnoxious blogger side-kick!” What I’ve got for you here is a Extended Events Team Blog only special – this tool will not be sold in any store; it’s a special offer for those of you reading the blog. I’ve wrapped all the logic of pulling the configuration information out of an existing trace and and building the Extended Events DDL statement into a handy, dandy CLR stored procedure. Once you load the assembly and register the procedure you just supply the trace id (from sys.traces) and provide a name for the event session. Run the procedure and out pops the DDL required to create an equivalent session. Any aspects of the trace that could not be duplicated are included in comments within the DDL output. This procedure does not actually create the event session – you need to copy the DDL out of the message tab and put it into a new query window to do that. It also requires an existing trace (but it doesn’t have to be running) to evaluate; there is no functionality to parse t-sql scripts. I’m not going to spend a bunch of time explaining the code here – the code is pretty well commented and hopefully easy to follow. If not, you can always post comments or hit the feedback button to send us some mail. Sample code: TraceToExtendedEventDDL   Installing the procedure Just in case you’re not familiar with installing CLR procedures…once you’ve compile the assembly you can load it using a script like this: -- Context to master USE master GO -- Create the assembly from a shared location. CREATE ASSEMBLY TraceToXESessionConverter FROM 'C:\Temp\TraceToXEventSessionConverter.dll' WITH PERMISSION_SET = SAFE GO -- Create a stored procedure from the assembly. CREATE PROCEDURE CreateEventSessionFromTrace @trace_id int, @session_name nvarchar(max) AS EXTERNAL NAME TraceToXESessionConverter.StoredProcedures.ConvertTraceToExtendedEvent GO Enjoy! -Mike

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, July 19, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, July 19, 2013Popular ReleasesuComponents: uComponents v5.5.0: Following on from our 101355 release, we bring you... v5.5.0! Resolved issues The following issues have been resolved in 5.5.0: 14634 14848 DataType Grid 14840 14842 14845 UpgradingThe best way to upgrade uComponents is to re-install via Umbraco's back-office package installer, (either from the package repository or a local package upload). Do not uninstall an existing uComponents package, as this may lead to data loss! Umbraco compatibilityThis release is compatible with Umbraco 4...51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.19.4: One Click Install from NuGet This release introduces the 51Degrees.mobi IIS Vary Header Fix. When Compression and Caching is used in IIS, the Vary header is overwritten, making intelligent caching with dynamic content impossible. Find out more about installing the Vary Header fix. Changes to Version 2.1.19.4Handlers now have a ‘Count’ property. This is an integer value that shows how many devices in the dataset that use that handler. Provider.cs -> GetDeviceInfoByID to address a problem w...SalarDbCodeGenerator: SalarDbCodeGenerator v2.1.2013.0719: Version 2.1.2013.0719 2013/7/19 Pattern Changes: * DapperContext pattern is added. * All patterns are updated to work with one-to-one relations. Changes: * One-to-one relation is supported. * Minor bug fixes.Scryber PDF Generation: Scryber.Installer.v0.8.3: This one has tables! A significant update to the scryber library, with the inclusion of tables. There is no column span, or row span, and nested tables are not fully supported. But - they overflow nicely and are well styled. And they can be data bound. Other updates The Link element has inner components directly as a child, rather than in a Content element. The existing files will still continue to work, but are invalid wrt the schema. Databinding is now supported at the document level, r...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows and WP (v1.3 beta 2): Includes all changes in v1.3 beta 1 Additional support for Windows 8.1 Preview New API (JS): addTextTrack New API (JS): msKeys New API (JS): msPlayToPreferredSourceUri New API (JS): msSetMediaKeys New API (JS): onmsneedkey New API (Xaml): SetMediaStreamSource method New API (Xaml): Stretch property New API (Xaml): StretchChanged event New API (Xaml): AreTransportControlsEnabled property New API (Xaml): IsFullWindow property New API (Xaml): PlayToPreferredSourceUri proper...Outlook 2013 Add-In: Multiple Calendars: As per popular request, this new version includes: - Support for multiple calendars. This can be enabled in the configuration by choosing which ones to show/hide appointments from. In some cases (public folders) it may time out and crash, and so far it only supports "My Calendars", so not shared ones yet. Also they're currently shown in the same font/color so there are no confusions with color categories, but please drop me a line on any suggestions you'd like to see implemented. - Added fri...GoAgent GUI: GoAgent GUI 1.2.0 ???: *???????，??????????????，?????????????? ????????* ????????(Beta) Beta????：https://goagent.codeplex.com/workitem/list/basic ??????：uygw@outlook.com ????：https://goagent.codeplex.com/documentation ?????????????????。Circuit Diagram: Circuit Diagram 2.0 Beta 2: New in this release: Show grid in editor Cut/copy/paste support Bug fixesAscend 3D: Ascend (2013-07-17): Ascend 2.1 Animation bugfixes and speed/robustness improvements Added compatibility for multiple top-level bones on armatures Ascend Blender Exporter 2.1 Removed need to create parent-child relationship between armature and skinning mesh Added support for exporting multiple top-level bones on armatures AscendViewer 1.0.4 Updated to use latest version of Ascend libraryCommunity TFS Build Extensions: July 2013: The July 2013 release contains VS2010 Activities(target .NET 4.0) VS2012 Activities (target .NET 4.5) VS2013 Activities (target .NET 4.5.1) Community TFS Build Manager VS2012 The Community TFS Build Manager can also be found in the Visual Studio Gallery here where updates will first become available. A version supporting VS2010 is also available in the Gallery here.smoketestgit1: new release: Wiki Markup Guide bold italics underline Heading 1 Heading 2 Bullet List Bullet List 2 Number List Number List 2 http://www.example.com Do not apply formattingsmoketesthg: new release: Wiki Markup Guide bold italics underline Heading 1 Heading 2 Bullet List Bullet List 2 Number List Number List 2 http://www.example.com Do not apply formattingsmoketesttfs: new release: Wiki Markup Guide bold italics underline Heading 1 Heading 2 Bullet List Bullet List 2 Number List Number List 2 http://www.example.com Do not apply formattingdatajs - JavaScript Library for data-centric web applications: datajs version 1.1.1: datajs is a cross-browser and UI agnostic JavaScript library that enables data-centric web applications with the following features: OData client that enables CRUD operations including batching and metadata support using both ATOM and JSON payloads. Single store abstraction that provides a common API on top of HTML5 local storage technologies. Data cache component that allows reading data ranges from a collection and storing them locally to reduce the number of network requests. Changes ...Orchard Project: Orchard 1.7 RC: Planning releasedTerminals: Version 3.1 - Release: Changes since version 3.0:15992 Unified usage of icons in user interface Added context menu in Organize favorites grid Fixed:34219 34210 34223 33981 34209 Install notes:No changes in database (use database from release 3.0) No upgrade of configuration, passwords, credentials or favorites See also upgrade notes for release 3.0Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.573b: XBMC Link - Let MC update your XBMC Library Fixes in place, Enjoy the XBMC Link function Well, Phil's been busy in the background, and come up with a Great new feature for Media Companion. Currently only implemented for movies. Once we're happy that's working with no issues, we'll extend the functionality to include TV shows. All the help for this is build into the application. Go to General Preferences - XBMC Link for details. Help us make it better* Currently only tested on local and ...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.2.1307.15: Fix a bug where WPP crash if 'ShowPendingUpdates' is start with wrong credentials. Fix a bug where WPP crash if ArrivalDateAfter and ArrivalDateBefore is equal in the ComputerView. Add a filter in the ComputerView. (Thanks to NorbertFe for this feature request) Add an option, when right-clicking on a computer, you can ask for display the current logon user of the remote computer. Add an option in settings to choose if WPP ping remote computers using IPv4, IPv6 or IPv6 and, if fail, IP...Lab Of Things: vBeta1: Initial release of LoTVidCoder: 1.4.23: New in 1.4.23 Added French translation. Fixed non-x264 video encoders not sticking in video tab. New in 1.4 Updated HandBrake core to 0.9.9 Blu-ray subtitle (PGS) support Additional framerates: 30, 50, 59.94, 60 Additional sample rates: 8, 11.025, 12 and 16 kHz Additional higher bitrates for audio Same as Source Constant Framerate 24-bit FLAC encoding Added Windows Phone 8 and Apple TV 3 presets Introduced process isolation for encodes. Now if HandBrake crashes, VidCoder will ...New Projects[C#]A Complete MySQL Manager Project: An open-source MySQL database manager oriented to multi-threading environments, supporting to create an entire database from scratch and edit it.bCal Javascript Calendar Generator: Using this simple javascript library, you can create simple navigable calendars in your website with just one line of user code.Better Network: Tools to delete network profile and network lists in Windows 8.C# Intellisense for Notepad++: 'CS-Script Intellisense' is a real C# intellisense solution based on CS-Script and ICSharpCode.NRefactory/Mono.Cecil.DARF: Dynamic Application Runtime Framework: A set of tools and libraries which help software developers create fully distributed and component-based applications. FeiXinV5: Just TestFollower Catcher: Game made for the 2012 Windows 8 Megathon. Second place in Madrid's local competition.MeeOS .NET: El primer sistema operativo GNU GPL en español.Music Vault: Music Vault is program to store your favorite music in one place, you can in any time move all your music library by moving only one file.MVC uTorrent: This is an ASP.NET MVC uTorrent front end, that utilises the uTorrent API. The main features: - Single page application - Can be hosted in IISMyTaskManager: This project Related to distribute the task to log in users OO2RDF: OO2RDF is a framework for data triplification. P(y)rotein Subcellular Location Image Database: A library that allows communication with an OMERO database, an open-source software for storage and manipulation of biological images.PE Toolbox: PE Toolbox ? ????? ?? ???????????, ????? ??????? ??? ??????????? ?? ?????. ???? ????? ??????????? ???????: - PE IFE (Importing from Excel) PeGscan: *PeGscan*ScriptZilla: ScriptZilla is an Free Editor for Windows with more Than 23 Languages.Sharepoint : Reconciliate SSRS Reports and Datasets with datasources Powershell: Powershell to link datasources to SSRS reports and datasetsSync-Moped: The idea behind the "Sync-Moped" is to synchronize two directories with backup functionality.System.Time: System.Time provides a type for .NET that allows the managing of a time in System.String, System.DateTime and System.TimeSpan form at the same time.Text Analytics: Project summary will be added later.Tibia Universal MC .NET: This tool was written as an attempt to port the [url:http://code.google.com/p/xenomc/] to the .NET Framework.VRFramework: VR Framework is a system for creating a virtual reality games using your PC, and Android smart phone, and Unity 3D.

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• NRF Online Merchandising Workshop: Where Online Retailers Are Focusing for Holiday and Beyond

  - by Rose Spicer-Oracle

  0 0 1 1204 6863 Oracle Corporation 57 16 8051 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Last month we attended the NRF Online Merchandising Workshop in LA, and it was a great opportunity to catch up with our customers, meet new retailers, and hear some great presentations from VF Corporation, Zazzle, Julep Beauty, Backcountry, eBags and more. The one-on-one conversations with Merchants and the keynote presentations carry the same themes across companies of all sizes and across verticals. With only 125 days left (and counting) until Black Friday, these conversations provided some great insight in to what’s top of mind for retailers during the most stressful time of their year, and a sneak peek in to what they will deliver this holiday season.  Some of the most popular topics were: When to start promoting for holiday: seems like a funny conversation to have in July, but a number of retailers said they already had their holiday shopping gift guides live on their site, and it was attracting a significant portion of their onsite traffic. When it comes to timing, most retailers were questioning when to begin their holiday promotions -- carefully balancing when to release pricing and specials, and knowing that customers are holding out for last-minute deals and price drops. Many retailers noted the frustrations around transparent pricing by Amazon and a few other mega-retailers last year, publishing their “lowest prices of the season” as early as October – ensuring shoppers that those prices were the best they could get all season long. Many retailers felt their hands were forced to drop prices. Others kept their set pricing with negative customer reaction, causing some to miss their holiday goals. The pressure is on, and most retailers identified November 1 as their target start date for the holiday promotions blitz. Some are even waiting for the big guys to release their “lowest prices of the season” guides and will then follow suit.      Attribution is tough – and a huge focus: understanding the path to conversion is a tough nut to crack, especially in the new omnichannel world where consumers use multiple touchpoints to make a single purchase, and internal management wants to know hard data. This has lead many retailers to invest in attribution; carefully tracking their online marketing efforts to determine what gets “credit” for the sale, instead of giving credit to the “last click.” Retailers noted that it is very difficult to determine the numbers when online and offline worlds collide – like when a shopper uses digital channels for research and then makes a purchase in a store. As one of the presenters from The North Face mentioned in her keynote, a key to enabling better customer service and satisfaction when it comes to converged online and offline sales is training the in-store staff, and creating a culture where it eventually “doesn’t matter what group gets the credit” if they all add to the sale. No doubt, the area of attribution will be a big area of retail investment in the coming years.      How to plan for the converged world: planning to ensure inventory gets where it needs to be was another concern. In conversations with retailers, we advised them to analyze customer patterns: where shoppers purchase items, where the items were sourced from and even where items are returned. This analysis is very valuable in determining inventory plans. From there, retailers can more accurately plan and allocate inventory to support both the online and offline customer behavior. As we head into the holiday season, the need for accurate enterprise-wide inventory visibility, and providing that information to associates, is even more critical to the brand-wide customer experience.       Improving the search / navigation / usability of the site(s): Aside from some of the big ideas and standard holiday pricing pressure, most conversations we had centered around continuing to improve the basics of the site. Reinvesting in search and navigation came up time and time again (FitForCommerce blogged about what a big topic it was at the event as well). Obviously getting shoppers on their path quickly and allowing them to find what they need fast is critical, but it was definitely interesting to hear just how much effort is still going in to honing the search and navigation experience. Adding new elements to search and navigation like typeahed, inventive navigation refinements, and new navigation categories like gift guides, specialized boutiques and flash sales were top of mind, in addition to searchandising and making search-driven product recommendations. (Oracle can help!)       Reducing cart abandonment: always a hot topic that is top of mind for every online retailer. Getting shoppers to the cart is often less then half the battle; getting them to click “buy” and complete the transaction is much more difficult. While retailers carefully study the checkout process and where shoppers tend to bounce, they know that how they design their checkout page is critical. We’re all online shoppers in our personal lives and we know how frustrating it can be when total prices are not transparent (i.e. shipping, processing, taxes is not included until the very last possible screen before clicking that buy button). Online retailers are struggling with where in the checkout process to surface the total price to be charged to reduce cart abandonment, while not showing the total figure too early in the process that it keeps shoppers from getting to checkout altogether. Recent research shows that providing total pricing prior to the checkout process dramatically reduces cart abandonment – as it serves as a filter to those shopping within a specific price band. Much of the cart abandonment discussion leads us to…       The free shipping / free returns question: it’s no secret that because of Amazon and programs like Prime, consumers expect free shipping, much to the chagrin of the smaller retailer. The reality is that if you’re not a mega-retailer, shipping is an expensive part of doing business that doesn’t allow most retailers to keep their prices low and offer free shipping. This has many retailers venturing out on the “free returns” path, especially in apparel. A number of retailers we spoke with are testing a flat rate shipping fee with free returns to see if they can crack the price threshold where shoppers are willing to pay for shipping with an added service. But, free shipping remains king.      Social ads and retargeting: they are working, but do they turn off consumers? That’s the big question. Every retailer we spoke with during a roundtable on the topic said that social ads and retargeting (where that pair of boots you’re been eyeing on a site magically follows you around the Internet) work and are meeting campaign goals. The larger question many retailers are asking is if this type of tactic is turning off a large number of shoppers, even if these campaigns are meeting their early goals. Retailers also mentioned that Facebook ads are working very well for them, especially when it comes to new customer acquisition, serving as a complimentary a channel to SEO when it comes to engaging new customers. While there are always new things to experiment with in retail, standard challenges are top of mind as retailers scramble to get ready for holiday. It will undoubtedly be another record-breaking online shopping season, but as retailers get more and more advanced with each Black Friday, expect some exciting things. This excitement needs to be backed by sound solutions and optimized operations. Then again, consumers are expecting more than ever, so I don’t doubt that retailers are already thinking about the possibilities of holiday 2015… and beyond. Customers who read this article, also found value in the following stories: Personalization for Retail: http://blogs.oracle.com/retail/entry/personalization_for_retailShop Direct User Experience Focus Drives Sales:https://blogs.oracle.com/retail/entry/shop_direct_user_experience_focusMaking Waves: Australian Online Retailer SurfStitch: https://blogs.oracle.com/oracleretail/entry/surf_stitchWhat’s new in Oracle Commerce v11.1 for RetailWhat the Content+Commerce Equation is Missing

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