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Dynamically alter outter div as inner one gets bigger.

- by Razor Storm

I have two divs, one inside another. The outter one is called #wrapper, while the inner one is called #pad. Now #pad allows user input, and I have a javascript (jQuery) function that changes the content of #pad based on what the user input is. Sometimes, because of this function, #pad's content will cause the div to become more elongated than before. Now obviously I would wish for #wrapper to grow longer as well to accommodate this change in #pad's length. However, this does not occur. #wrapper { clear:both; padding-top:0.5em; /*padding-left:50px;*/ height: 100%; background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.4); -moz-border-radius: 20px 20px 0px 0px; -webkit-border-radius: 20px 20px 0px 0px; border-radius: 20px 20px 0px 0px; } #pad { margin-top: 25px; -moz-border-radius: 5px; border: solid 1px #DDD; margin-left:25px; padding-left:25px; margin-right:25px; padding-right:25px; margin-bottom:2em; } This is the javascript function: function preview() { var id1=$("#input1").val(); var id2=$("#input2").val(); var id3=$("#input3").val(); var id4=$("#input4").val(); var id5=$("#input5").val(); if(id1!= null && id1!="") { if( $("#preview1").attr("src")!=id1) { $("#preview1").attr("src",id1); $("#preview1").fadeIn("slow"); } } else { $("#preview1").attr("src",""); $("#preview1").fadeOut("slow"); } if(id2!= null && id2!="") { if( $("#preview2").attr("src")!=id2) { $("#preview2").attr("src",id2); $("#preview2").fadeIn("slow"); } } else { $("#preview2").attr("src",""); $("#preview2").fadeOut("slow"); } if(id3!= null && id3!="") { if( $("#preview3").attr("src")!=id3) { $("#preview3").attr("src",id3); $("#preview3").fadeIn("slow"); } } else { $("#preview3").attr("src",""); $("#preview3").fadeOut("slow"); } if(id4!= null && id4!="") { if( $("#preview4").attr("src")!=id4) { $("#preview4").attr("src",id4); $("#preview4").fadeIn("slow"); } } else { $("#preview4").attr("src",""); $("#preview4").fadeOut("slow"); } if(id5!= null && id5!="") { if( $("#preview5").attr("src")!=id5) { $("#preview5").attr("src",id5); $("#preview5").fadeIn("slow"); } } else { $("#preview5").attr("src",""); $("#preview5").fadeOut("slow"); } setTimeout("preview()",1000); $("#wrapper").attr("height",$(document).attr("height")); } http://surveys.mylifeisberkeley.com/

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How to use XSLT to tag specific nodes with unique, sequential, increasing integer ids?

- by ~otakuj462

Hi, I'm trying to use XSLT to transform a document by tagging a group of XML nodes with integer ids, starting at 0, and increasing by one for each node in the group. The XML passed into the stylesheet should be echoed out, but augmented to include this extra information. Just to be clear about what I am talking about, here is how this transformation would be expressed using DOM: states = document.getElementsByTagName("state"); for( i = 0; i < states.length; i++){ states.stateNum = i; } This is very simple with DOM, but I'm having much more trouble doing this with XSLT. The current strategy I've devised has been to start with the identity transformation, then create a global variable which selects and stores all of the nodes that I wish to number. I then create a template that matches that kind of node. The idea, then, is that in the template, I would look up the matched node's position in the global variable nodelist, which would give me a unique number that I could then set as an attribute. The problem with this approach is that the position function can only be used with the context node, so something like the following is illegal: <template match="state"> <variable name="stateId" select="@id"/> <variable name="uniqueStateNum" select="$globalVariable[@id = $stateId]/position()"/> </template> The same is true for the following: <template match="state"> <variable name="stateId" select="@id" <variable name="stateNum" select="position($globalVariable[@id = $stateId])/"/> </template> In order to use position() to look up the position of an element in $globalVariable, the context node must be changed. I have found a solution, but it is highly suboptimal. Basically, in the template, I use for-each to iterate through the global variable. For-each changes the context node, so this allows me to use position() in the way I described. The problem is that this turns what would normally be an O(n) operation into an O(n^2) operation, where n is the length of the nodelist, as this require iterating through the whole list whenever the template is matched. I think that there must be a more elegant solution. Altogether, here is my current (slightly simplified) xslt stylesheet: <?xml version="1.0"?> <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:s="http://www.w3.org/2005/07/scxml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/07/scxml" xmlns:c="http://msdl.cs.mcgill.ca/" version="1.0"> <xsl:output method="xml"/>  <xsl:variable name="states" select="//s:state" />  <xsl:template match="@*|node()"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="s:state"> <xsl:variable name="stateId"> <xsl:value-of select="@id"/> </xsl:variable> <xsl:copy> <xsl:apply-templates select="@*"/> <xsl:for-each select="$states"> <xsl:if test="@id = $stateId"> <xsl:attribute name="stateNum" namespace="http://msdl.cs.mcgill.ca/"> <xsl:value-of select="position()"/> </xsl:attribute> </xsl:if> </xsl:for-each> <xsl:apply-templates select="node()"/> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> I'd appreciate any advice anyone can offer. Thanks.

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Reordering Variadic Parameters

- by void-pointer

I have come across the need to reorder a variadic list of parameters that is supplied to the constructor of a struct. After being reordered based on their types, the parameters will be stored as a tuple. My question is how this can be done so that a modern C++ compiler (e.g. g++-4.7) will not generate unnecessary load or store instructions. That is, when the constructor is invoked with a list of parameters of variable size, it efficiently pushes each parameter into place based on an ordering over the parameters' types. Here is a concrete example. Assume that the base type of every parameter (without references, rvalue references, pointers, or qualifiers) is either char, int, or float. How can I make it so that all the parameters of base type char appear first, followed by all of those of base type int (which leaves the parameters of base type float last). The relative order in which the parameters were given should not be violated within sublists of homogeneous base type. Example: foo::foo() is called with arguments float a, char&& b, const float& c, int&& d, char e. The tuple tupe is std::tuple<char, char, int, float, float>, and it is constructed like so: tuple_type{std::move(b), e, std::move(d), a, c}. Consider the struct defined below, and assume that the metafunction deduce_reordered_tuple_type is already implemented. How would you write the constructor so that it works as intended? If you think that the code for deduce_reodered_tuple_type, would be useful to you, I can provide it; it's a little long. template <class... Args> struct foo { // Assume that the metafunction deduce_reordered_tuple_type is defined. typedef typename deduce_reordered_tuple_type<Args...>::type tuple_type; tuple_type t_; foo(Args&&... args) : t_{reorder_and_forward_parameters<Args>(args)...} {} }; Edit 1 The technique I describe above does have applications in mathematical frameworks that make heavy use of expression templates, variadic templates, and metaprogramming in order to perform aggressive inlining. Suppose that you wish to define an operator that takes the product of several expressions, each of which may be passed by reference, reference to const, or rvalue reference. (In my case, the expressions are conditional probability tables and the operation is the factor product, but something like matrix multiplication works suitably as well.) You need access to the data provided by each expression in order to evaluate the product. Consequently, you must move the expressions passed as rvalue references, copy the expressions passed by reference to const, and take the addresses of expressions passed by reference. Using the technique I describe above now poses several benefits. Other expressions can use uniform syntax to access data elements from this expression, since all of the heavy-lifting metaprogramming work is done beforehand, within the class. We can save stack space by grouping the pointers together and storing the larger expressions towards the end of the tuple. Implementing certain types of queries becomes much easier (e.g. check whether any of the pointers stored in the tuple aliases a given pointer). Thank you very much for your help!

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Trying to packetize TCP with non-blocking IO is hard! Am I doing something wrong?

- by Ricket

Oh how I wish TCP was packet-based like UDP is! But alas, that's not the case, so I'm trying to implement my own packet layer. Here's the chain of events so far (ignoring writing packets) Oh, and my Packets are very simply structured: two unsigned bytes for length, and then byte[length] data. (I can't imagine if they were any more complex, I'd be up to my ears in if statements!) Server is in an infinite loop, accepting connections and adding them to a list of Connections. PacketGatherer (another thread) uses a Selector to figure out which Connection.SocketChannels are ready for reading. It loops over the results and tells each Connection to read(). Each Connection has a partial IncomingPacket and a list of Packets which have been fully read and are waiting to be processed. On read(): Tell the partial IncomingPacket to read more data. (IncomingPacket.readData below) If it's done reading (IncomingPacket.complete()), make a Packet from it and stick the Packet into the list waiting to be processed and then replace it with a new IncomingPacket. There are a couple problems with this. First, only one packet is being read at a time. If the IncomingPacket needs only one more byte, then only one byte is read this pass. This can of course be fixed with a loop but it starts to get sorta complicated and I wonder if there is a better overall way. Second, the logic in IncomingPacket is a little bit crazy, to be able to read the two bytes for the length and then read the actual data. Here is the code, boiled down for quick & easy reading: int readBytes; // number of total bytes read so far byte length1, length2; // each byte in an unsigned short int (see getLength()) public int getLength() { // will be inaccurate if readBytes < 2 return (int)(length1 << 8 | length2); } public void readData(SocketChannel c) { if (readBytes < 2) { // we don't yet know the length of the actual data ByteBuffer lengthBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(2 - readBytes); numBytesRead = c.read(lengthBuffer); if(readBytes == 0) { if(numBytesRead >= 1) length1 = lengthBuffer.get(); if(numBytesRead == 2) length2 = lengthBuffer.get(); } else if(readBytes == 1) { if(numBytesRead == 1) length2 = lengthBuffer.get(); } readBytes += numBytesRead; } if(readBytes >= 2) { // then we know we have the entire length variable // lazily-instantiate data buffers based on getLength() // read into data buffers, increment readBytes // (does not read more than the amount of this packet, so it does not // need to handle overflow into the next packet's data) } } public boolean complete() { return (readBytes > 2 && readBytes == getLength()+2); } Basically I need feedback on my code. Please suggest any improvements. Even overhauling my entire system would be okay, if you have suggestions for how better to implement the whole thing. Book recommendations are welcome too; I love books. I just get the feeling that something isn't quite right.

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Android Sqlite - obtaining the correct database row id

- by Dan_Dan_Man

I'm working on an app that allows the user to create notes while rehearsing a play. The user can view the notes they have created in a listview, and edit and delete them if they wish. Take for example the user creates 3 notes. In the database, the row_id's will be 1, 2 and 3. So when the user views the notes in the listview, they will also be in the order 1, 2, 3 (intially 0, 1, 2 before I increment the values). So the user can view and delete the correct row from the database. The problem arises when the user decides to delete a note. Say the user deletes the note in position 2. Thus our database will have row_id's 1 and 3. But in the listview, they will be in the position 1 and 2. So if the user clicks on the note in position 2 in the listview it should return the row in the database with row_id 3. However it tries to look for the row_id 2 which doesn't exist, and hence crashes. I need to know how to obtain the corresponding row_id, given the user's selection in the listview. Here is the code below that does this: // When the user selects "Delete" in context menu public boolean onContextItemSelected(MenuItem item) { AdapterContextMenuInfo info = (AdapterContextMenuInfo) item .getMenuInfo(); switch (item.getItemId()) { case DELETE_ID: deleteNote(info.id + 1); return true; } return super.onContextItemSelected(item); } // This method actually deletes the selected note private void deleteNote(long id) { Log.d(TAG, "Deleting row: " + id); mNDbAdapter.deleteNote(id); mCursor = mNDbAdapter.fetchAllNotes(); startManagingCursor(mCursor); fillData(); // TODO: Update play database if there are no notes left for a line. } // When the user clicks on an item, display the selected note protected void onListItemClick(ListView l, View v, int position, long id) { super.onListItemClick(l, v, position, id); viewNote(id, "", "", true); } // This is where we display the note in a custom alert dialog. I've ommited // the rest of the code in this method because the problem lies in this line: // "mCursor = mNDbAdapter.fetchNote(newId);" // I need to replace "newId" with the row_id in the database. private void viewNote(long id, String defaultTitle, String defaultNote, boolean fresh) { final int lineNumber; String title; String note; id++; final long newId = id; Log.d(TAG, "Returning row: " + newId); mCursor = mNDbAdapter.fetchNote(newId); lineNumber = (mCursor.getInt(mCursor.getColumnIndex("number"))); title = (mCursor.getString(mCursor.getColumnIndex("title"))); note = (mCursor.getString(mCursor.getColumnIndex("note"))); . . . } Let me know if you would like me to show anymore code. It seems like something so simple but I just can't find a solution. Thanks!

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JQuery works on JsFiddle but not in project

- by DanielNova

Here is the JsFiddle I created: http://jsfiddle.net/ShHVy/ Everything works fine - different data is displayed in the column row to the right as I wish.. However, even having this exact code in my Project won't make it work The page in question is a popup view and it looks like this: <style type="text/css"> .highlighted { background-color: Orange; color: White; } </style> <script> var chosen = []; $("td").click(function () { var idx = $(this).index() + 1; $("td:nth-child(" + idx + ")").removeClass("highlighted"); $(this).addClass("highlighted"); chosen[idx] = $(this).parent("tr").index(); }); var data = { "Differdange": ["Differdange 1", "Differdange 2", "Differdange 3", "Differdange 4"], "Dippach": ["Dippach 1", "Dippach 2", "Dippach 3", "Dippach 4", ] }; function pushData(id, col) { $("#datachange table td:nth-child(" + 2 + ")").each(function (i, v) { $(this).html(data[id][i]) }); } $(function () { $("#datachange td").click(function () { var idx = $(this).index() + 1; $("td:nth-child(" + idx + ")").removeClass("highlighted"); $(this).addClass("highlighted"); pushData($(".highlighted").html(), 2); }); }); </script> <html> <head><title>Table Data Change</title></head> <body id="datachange" class="demo"> <table> <thead> <tr> <th>ID</th> <th>DATA</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>Differdange</td> <td></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Dippach</td> <td></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Dippach</td> <td></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Differdange</td> <td></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </body> </html> Can anyone tell me why this small piece of JQuery doesn't work on mine (it's nothing to do with libraries as the top "td" function works 100% fine)

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Prolog Cut Not Working

- by user2295607

Im having a problem with Prolog since cut is not doing what (i believe) its supposed to do: % line-column handlers checkVallEle(_, _, 6, _):- write('FAIL'), !, fail. checkVallEle(TABULEIRO, VALUE, LINE, COLUMN):- COLUMN>5, NL is LINE+1, checkVallEle(TABULEIRO, VALUE, NL, 0). % if this fails, it goes to the next checkVallEle(TABULEIRO, VALUE, LINE, COLUMN):- (checkHorizontal(TABULEIRO, VALUE, LINE, COLUMN, 0), write('HORIZONTAL '); checkVertical(TABULEIRO, VALUE, LINE, COLUMN, 0), write('VERTICAL'); checkDiagonalRight(TABULEIRO, VALUE, LINE, COLUMN, 0), write('DIAGONALRIGHT'); checkDiagonalLeft(TABULEIRO, VALUE, LINE, COLUMN, 0), write('DIAGONALLEFT')), write('WIN'). % goes to the next if above fails checkVallEle(TABULEIRO, VALUE, LINE, COLUMN):- NC is COLUMN+1, checkVallEle(TABULEIRO, VALUE, LINE, NC). What I wish to do is that if the code ever reaches the first statement, that is, if the line is ever 6, it fails (since it went out of range), without checking for more possibilities. But what happens is, when it reaches the first statement, it keeps going to the below statements and ignores the cut symbol, and I dont see why. I just want the statement to fail when it reaches the first line. I also made an experience... run(6):-write('done'), !, fail. run(X):-X1 is X+1, run(X1). And this is what i get from tracing: | ?- run(0). 1 1 Call: run(0) ? 2 2 Call: _1079 is 0+1 ? 2 2 Exit: 1 is 0+1 ? 3 2 Call: run(1) ? 4 3 Call: _3009 is 1+1 ? 4 3 Exit: 2 is 1+1 ? 5 3 Call: run(2) ? 6 4 Call: _4939 is 2+1 ? 6 4 Exit: 3 is 2+1 ? 7 4 Call: run(3) ? 8 5 Call: _6869 is 3+1 ? 8 5 Exit: 4 is 3+1 ? 9 5 Call: run(4) ? 10 6 Call: _8799 is 4+1 ? 10 6 Exit: 5 is 4+1 ? 11 6 Call: run(5) ? 12 7 Call: _10729 is 5+1 ? 12 7 Exit: 6 is 5+1 ? 13 7 Call: run(6) ? 14 8 Call: write(done) ? done 14 8 Exit: write(done) ? 13 7 Fail: run(6) ? 11 6 Fail: run(5) ? 9 5 Fail: run(4) ? 7 4 Fail: run(3) ? 5 3 Fail: run(2) ? 3 2 Fail: run(1) ? 1 1 Fail: run(0) ? no What are all those Fails after the write? is it still backtracing to previous answers? Is this behaviour the reason why cut is failing in my first code? Please enlighten me.

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Remotely Schedule and Stream Recorded TV in Windows 7 Media Center

- by DigitalGeekery

Have you ever been away from home and suddenly realized you forgot to record your favorite program? Now Windows 7 Media Center, users can schedule recordings remotely from their phones or mobile devices with Remote Potato. How it Works Remote Potato installs server software on the host computer running Windows 7 Media Center. Once the software is installed, we’ll need to do some port forwarding on the router and setup an optional dynamic DNS address. When setup is completed, we will access the application through a web based interface. Silverlight is required for Streaming recorded TV, but scheduling recordings can be done through an HTML interface. Installing Remote Potato Download and install Remote Potato on the Media Center PC. (See download link below) If you plan to stream any Recorded TV, you’ll also want to install the streaming pack located on the same page. It isn’t required to stream all shows, only shows that require the AC3 audio codec. Click Yes to allow Remote Potato to add rules to the Windows Firewall for remote access. You’ll likely need to accept a few UAC prompts. When notified that the rules were added, click OK. Remote Potato will then prompt you to allow administrator privileges to reserve a URL for it’s web server. Click Yes. Remote Potato server will start. Click on the configuration button at the right to to reveal the settings tabs. One the General tab, you’ll have the option to run Remote Potato on startup and minimized in the System Tray. If you’re running Media Center on a dedicated HTPC, you’ll probably want to enable both startup options. Forwarding Ports on Your Router You’ll need to forward a couple ports on your router. By default, these will be ports 9080 and 9081. In this example we’re using a Linksys WRT54GL router, however, the steps for port forwarding will vary from router to router. On the Linksys configuration page, click on the Applications & Gaming Tab, and then the Port Range Forward tab. Under Application, type in a name of your choosing. In both the Start and End boxes, type the port number 9080. Enter the local IP address of your Media Center computer in the IP address column. Click the check box under Enable. Repeat the process on the next line, but this time use port 9081. When finished, click the Save Settings button. Note: It’s highly recommended that you configure the home computer running Media Center & Remote Potato with a static IP address. Find your IP Address You’ll need to find the IP address assigned to your router from your ISP. There are many ways to do this but a quick and easy way is to visit a site like checkip.dyndns.org (link available below) The current external IP address of your router will be displayed in the browser. Dynamic DNS This is an optional step, but it’s highly recommended. Many routers, such as the Linksys WRT54GL we are using, support Dynamic DNS (DDNS). What Dynamic DNS allows you to do is affiliate your home router’s external IP address to a domain name. Every time your home router is assigned a a new IP address by your ISP, the domain name is updated to point to your new IP address. Remote Potato’s user interface is accessed over the Internet is by connecting to your router’s IP address followed by a colon and the port number. (Ex: XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:9080) Instead of constantly having to look up and remember an IP address, you can use DDNS along with a 3rd party provider like DynDNS.com, to sign up for a free domain name and configure it to be updated each time your router is assigned a new IP address. Go to the DynDNS.com website (See link at the end of the article) and sign up for a free Domain name. You’ll need to register and confirm by email. Once you’ve signed in and selected your domain name click Activate Services. You’ll get a confirmation message that your domain name has been activated. On the Linksys WRT54GL click on the Setup tab an then DDNS. Select DynDNS.org, or TZO.com if you prefer to use their service, from the drop down list. With DynDNS, you’ll need to fill in your username and password you signed up with at the DynDNS website and the hostname you chose. Note: You can connect over your local network with the IP Address of the computer running Remote Potato followed by a colon and the port number. Ex: 192.168.1.2:9080 Logging in Remote Potato and Recording a Show Once you connect, you’ll see the start page. To view the TV listings, click on TV Guide. You’ll then see your guide listings. There are a few ways to navigate the listings. At the top left, you can click on any of the preset time buttons to jump to the listings at that time of the day. Click on the arrows to the right and left of the day and date at the top center to proceed to the previous or next day. Or, jump to a specific day with the date and date buttons at the top right. To setup a recording, click on a program. You can choose to record the individual show or the entire series by clicking on Record Show or Record Series. Remote Potato on Mobile Devices Perhaps the coolest feature of Remote Potato is the ability to schedule recording from your phone or mobile device. Note: For any devices or computers without Silverlight, you will be prompted to view the HTML page. Select Browse Listings. Select your program to record. In the Program Details, select Record Show to record the single episode or Record Series to record all instances of the series. You will then see a red dot on the program listing to indicate that the show is scheduled for recording. Streaming Recorded TV Click on Recorded TV from the home screen to access your previously recorded TV programs. Click on the selection you wish to stream. Click on Play. If you receive this error message, you’ll need to install the streaming pack for Remote Potato. This is found on the same download page as installation files. (See link below) The Begin from slider allows you to start playback from the start (by default) or a different time of the program by moving the slider. The Quality (bitrate) setting allows you to choose the quality of the playback. We found the video quality on the Normal setting to be pretty lousy, and Low was just pointless. High was the best overall viewing experience as it provided smooth quality video playback. We experienced significant stuttering during playback using the Ultra High setting. Click Start when you are ready to begin. When playback begins you’ll see a slider at the top right. Move the slider left or right to increase or decrease the size of the video. There’s also a button to switch to full screen. Media Center users who travel frequently or are always on the go will likely find Remote Potato to be a blessing. Since being released earlier this year, updates for Remote Potato have come fast and furious. The latest beta release includes support for streaming music and photos. If you like those nice network TV logos, check out our article on adding TV channel logos to Windows Media Center. Downloads and Links Download Remote Potato and Streaming Pack Find your IP address Sign Up for a Domain Name at DynDNS.com Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Schedule Updates for Windows Media CenterUsing Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Add a Sleep Timer to Windows 7 Media CenterStartup Customizations for Media Center in Windows 7Enable Media Streaming in Windows Home Server to Windows Media Player 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos

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WiX 3 Tutorial: Understanding main WXS and WXI file

- by Mladen Prajdic

In the previous post we’ve taken a look at the WiX solution/project structure and project properties. We’re still playing with our super SuperForm application and today we’ll take a look at the general parts of the main wxs file, SuperForm.wxs, and the wxi include file. For wxs file we’ll just go over the general description of what each part does in the code comments. The more detailed descriptions will be in future posts about features themselves. WXI include file Include files are exactly what their name implies. To include a wxi file into the wxs file you have to put the wxi at the beginning of each .wxs file you wish to include it in. If you’ve ever worked with C++ you can think of the include files as .h files. For example if you include SuperFormVariables.wxi into the SuperForm.wxs, the variables in the wxi won’t be seen in FilesFragment.wxs or RegistryFragment.wxs. You’d have to include it manually into those two wxs files too. For preprocessor variable $(var.VariableName) to be seen by every file in the project you have to include them in the WiX project properties->Build->“Define preprocessor variables” textbox. This is why I’ve chosen not to go this route because in multi developer teams not everyone has the same directory structure and having a single variable would mean each developer would have to checkout the wixproj file to edit the variable. This is pretty much unacceptable by my standards. This is why we’ve added a System Environment variable named SuperFormFilesDir as is shown in the previous Wix Tutorial post. Because the FilesFragment.wxs is autogenerated on every project build we don’t want to change it manually each time by adding the include wxi at the beginning of the file. This way we couldn’t recreate it in each pre-build event. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><Include>  <?define MajorVersion="1" ?> <?define MinorVersion="0" ?> <?define BuildVersion="0" ?>  <?define Revision="0" ?>  <?define VersionNumber="$(var.MajorVersion).$(var.MinorVersion).$(var.BuildVersion).$(var.Revision)" ?>  <?define UpgradeCode="YOUR-GUID-HERE" ?>  <?define ResourcesDir="$(var.ProjectDir)\Resources" ?>  <?define ExeProcessName="SuperForm.MainApp.exe" ?></Include> For now there’s no way to tell WiX in Visual Studio to have a wxi include file available to the whole project, so you have to include it in each file separately. Only variables set in “Define preprocessor variables” or System Environment variables are accessible to the whole project for now. The main WXS file: SuperForm.wxs We’ll only take a look at the general structure of the main SuperForm.wxs and not its the details. We’ll cover the details in future posts. The code comments should provide plenty info about what each part does in general. Basically there are 5 major parts. The update part, the conditions and actions part, the UI install sequence, the directory structure and the features we want to include. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><Wix xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/wi" xmlns:util="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/UtilExtension">  <?include $(sys.CURRENTDIR)Includes\SuperFormVariables.wxi ?>  <Product Id="*" Name="!(loc.ProductName) $(var.VersionNumber)" Language="!(loc.LANG)" Version="$(var.VersionNumber)" Manufacturer="!(loc.ManufacturerName)" UpgradeCode="$(var.UpgradeCode)">  <Package InstallerVersion="300" Compressed="yes" InstallScope="perMachine"/> <Media Id="1" Cabinet="media1.cab" EmbedCab="yes" />  <Upgrade Id="$(var.UpgradeCode)"> <UpgradeVersion OnlyDetect="yes" Minimum="$(var.VersionNumber)" IncludeMinimum="no" Property="NEWER_VERSION_FOUND" /> <UpgradeVersion Minimum="0.0.0.0" IncludeMinimum="yes" Maximum="$(var.VersionNumber)" IncludeMaximum="no" Property="OLDER_VERSION_FOUND" /> </Upgrade>  <PropertyRef Id="NETFRAMEWORK35"/>  <Condition Message="!(loc.DotNetFrameworkNeeded)"> <![CDATA[Installed OR NETFRAMEWORK35]]> </Condition> <Condition Message="!(loc.AppNotSupported)"> <![CDATA[Installed OR ((VersionNT >= 501 AND ServicePackLevel >= 2) OR (VersionNT >= 502))]]> </Condition>  <CustomAction Id="NewerVersionFound" Error="!(loc.SuperFormNewerVersionInstalled)" /> <InstallExecuteSequence>  <Custom Action="NewerVersionFound" After="FindRelatedProducts"> <![CDATA[NEWER_VERSION_FOUND]]> </Custom>  <RemoveExistingProducts After="InstallInitialize"/>  <Custom Action="WixCloseApplications" Before="InstallInitialize" /> </InstallExecuteSequence>  <util:CloseApplication Id="CloseSuperForm" CloseMessage="no" Description="!(loc.MustCloseSuperForm)" ElevatedCloseMessage="no" RebootPrompt="no" Target="$(var.ExeProcessName)" />  <UIRef Id="WixUI_InstallDir" /> <UI>  <DialogRef Id="FilesInUse" /> <DialogRef Id="MsiRMFilesInUse" />  </UI>  <Icon Id="SuperFormIcon.ico" SourceFile="$(var.ResourcesDir)\Exclam.ico" /> <Property Id="ARPPRODUCTICON" Value="SuperFormIcon.ico" />   <Directory Id="TARGETDIR" Name="SourceDir"> <Directory Id="ProgramFilesFolder"> <Directory Id="INSTALLLOCATION" Name="!(loc.ProductName)" /> </Directory> </Directory>  <Property Id="WIXUI_INSTALLDIR" Value="INSTALLLOCATION" />  <Feature Id="SuperFormFeature" Title="!(loc.ProductName)" Level="1"> <ComponentGroupRef Id="SuperFormFiles" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmpVersionInRegistry" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmpIsThisUpdateInRegistry" /> </Feature> </Product></Wix> For more info on what certain attributes mean you should look into the WiX Documentation. WiX 3 tutorial by Mladen Prajdic navigation WiX 3 Tutorial: Solution/Project structure and Dev resources WiX 3 Tutorial: Understanding main wxs and wxi file WiX 3 Tutorial: Generating file/directory fragments with Heat.exe

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Run Windows in Ubuntu with VMware Player

- by Matthew Guay

Are you an enthusiast who loves their Ubuntu Linux experience but still needs to use Windows programs? Here’s how you can get the full Windows experience on Ubuntu with the free VMware Player. Linux has become increasingly consumer friendly, but still, the wide majority of commercial software is only available for Windows and Macs. Dual-booting between Windows and Linux has been a popular option for years, but this is a frustrating solution since you have to reboot into the other operating system each time you want to run a specific application. With virtualization, you’ll never have to make this tradeoff. VMware Player makes it quick and easy to install any edition of Windows in a virtual machine. With VMware’s great integration tools, you can copy and paste between your Linux and Windows programs and even run native Windows applications side-by-side with Linux ones. Getting Started Download the latest version of VMware Player for Linux, and select either the 32-bit or 64-bit version, depending on your system. VMware Player is a free download, but requires registration. Sign in with your VMware account, or create a new one if you don’t already have one. VMware Player is fairly easy to install on Linux, but you will need to start out the installation from the terminal. First, enter the following to make sure the installer is marked as executable, substituting version/build_number for the version number on the end of the file you downloaded. chmod +x ./VMware-Player-version/build_number.bundle Then, enter the following to start the install, again substituting your version number: gksudo bash ./VMware-Player-version/build_number.bundle You may have to enter your administrator password to start the installation, and then the VMware Player graphical installer will open. Choose whether you want to check for product updates and submit usage data to VMware, and then proceed with the install as normal. VMware Player installed in only a few minutes in our tests, and was immediately ready to run, no reboot required. You can now launch it from your Ubuntu menu: click Applications \ System Tools \ VMware Player. You’ll need to accept the license agreement the first time you run it. Welcome to VMware Player! Now you can create new virtual machines and run pre-built ones on your Ubuntu desktop. Install Windows in VMware Player on Ubuntu Now that you’ve got VMware setup, it’s time to put it to work. Click the Create a New Virtual Machine as above to start making a Windows virtual machine. In the dialog that opens, select your installer disk or ISO image file that you want to install Windows from. In this example, we’re select a Windows 7 ISO. VMware will automatically detect the operating system on the disk or image. Click Next to continue. Enter your Windows product key, select the edition of Windows to install, and enter your name and password. You can leave the product key field blank and enter it later. VMware will ask if you want to continue without a product key, so just click Yes to continue. Now enter a name for your virtual machine and select where you want to save it. Note: This will take up at least 15Gb of space on your hard drive during the install, so make sure to save it on a drive with sufficient storage space. You can choose how large you want your virtual hard drive to be; the default is 40Gb, but you can choose a different size if you wish. The entire amount will not be used up on your hard drive initially, but the virtual drive will increase in size up to your maximum as you add files. Additionally, you can choose if you want the virtual disk stored as a single file or as multiple files. You will see the best performance by keeping the virtual disk as one file, but the virtual machine will be more portable if it is broken into smaller files, so choose the option that will work best for your needs. Finally, review your settings, and if everything looks good, click Finish to create the virtual machine. VMware will take over now, and install Windows without any further input using its Easy Install. This is one of VMware’s best features, and is the main reason we find it the easiest desktop virtualization solution to use. Installing VMware Tools VMware Player doesn’t include the VMware Tools by default; instead, it automatically downloads them for the operating system you’re installing. Once you’ve downloaded them, it will use those tools anytime you install that OS. If this is your first Windows virtual machine to install, you may be prompted to download and install them while Windows is installing. Click Download and Install so your Easy Install will finish successfully. VMware will then download and install the tools. You may need to enter your administrative password to complete the install. Other than this, you can leave your Windows install unattended; VMware will get everything installed and running on its own. Our test setup took about 30 minutes, and when it was done we were greeted with the Windows desktop ready to use, complete with drivers and the VMware tools. The only thing missing was the Aero glass feature. VMware Player is supposed to support the Aero glass effects in virtual machines, and although this works every time when we use VMware Player on Windows, we could not get it to work in Linux. Other than that, Windows is fully ready to use. You can copy and paste text, images, or files between Ubuntu and Windows, or simply drag-and-drop files between the two. Unity Mode Using Windows in a window is awkward, and makes your Windows programs feel out of place and hard to use. This is where Unity mode comes in. Click Virtual Machine in VMware’s menu, and select Enter Unity. Your Windows desktop will now disappear, and you’ll see a new Windows menu underneath your Ubuntu menu. This works the same as your Windows Start Menu, and you can open your Windows applications and files directly from it. By default, programs from Windows will have a colored border and a VMware badge in the corner. You can turn this off from the VMware settings pane. Click Virtual Machine in VMware’s menu and select Virtual Machine Settings. Select Unity under the Options tab, and uncheck the Show borders and Show badges boxes if you don’t want them. Unity makes your Windows programs feel at home in Ubuntu. Here we have Word 2010 and IE8 open beside the Ubuntu Help application. Notice that the Windows applications show up in the taskbar on the bottom just like the Linux programs. If you’re using the Compiz graphics effects in Ubuntu, your Windows programs will use them too, including the popular wobbly windows effect. You can switch back to running Windows inside VMware Player’s window by clicking the Exit Unity button in the VMware window. Now, whenever you want to run Windows applications in Linux, you can quickly launch it from VMware Player. Conclusion VMware Player is a great way to run Windows on your Linux computer. It makes it extremely easy to get Windows installed and running, lets you run your Windows programs seamlessly alongside your Linux ones. VMware products work great in our experience, and VMware Player on Linux was no exception. If you’re a Windows user and you’d like to run Ubuntu on Windows, check out our article on how to Run Ubuntu in Windows with VMware Player. Link Download VMware Player 3 (Registration required) Download Windows 7 Enterprise 90-day trial Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Enable Copy and Paste from Ubuntu VMware GuestInstall VMware Tools on Ubuntu Edgy EftRestart the Ubuntu Gnome User Interface QuicklyHow to Add a Program to the Ubuntu Startup List (After Login)How To Run Ubuntu in Windows 7 with VMware Player 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 Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor

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Azure - Part 4 - Table Storage Service in Windows Azure

- by Shaun

In Windows Azure platform there are 3 storage we can use to save our data on the cloud. They are the Table, Blob and Queue. Before the Chinese New Year Microsoft announced that Azure SDK 1.1 had been released and it supports a new type of storage – Drive, which allows us to operate NTFS files on the cloud. I will cover it in the coming few posts but now I would like to talk a bit about the Table Storage. Concept of Table Storage Service The most common development scenario is to retrieve, create, update and remove data from the data storage. In the normal way we communicate with database. When we attempt to move our application over to the cloud the most common requirement should be have a storage service. Windows Azure provides a in-build service that allow us to storage the structured data, which is called Windows Azure Table Storage Service. The data stored in the table service are like the collection of entities. And the entities are similar to rows or records in the tradtional database. An entity should had a partition key, a row key, a timestamp and set of properties. You can treat the partition key as a group name, the row key as a primary key and the timestamp as the identifer for solving the concurrency problem. Different with a table in a database, the table service does not enforce the schema for tables, which means you can have 2 entities in the same table with different property sets. The partition key is being used for the load balance of the Azure OS and the group entity transaction. As you know in the cloud you will never know which machine is hosting your application and your data. It could be moving based on the transaction weight and the number of the requests. If the Azure OS found that there are many requests connect to your Book entities with the partition key equals “Novel” it will move them to another idle machine to increase the performance. So when choosing the partition key for your entities you need to make sure they indecate the category or gourp information so that the Azure OS can perform the load balance as you wish. Consuming the Table Although the table service looks like a database, you cannot access it through the way you are using now, neither ADO.NET nor ODBC. The table service exposed itself by ADO.NET Data Service protocol, which allows you can consume it through the RESTful style by Http requests. The Azure SDK provides a sets of classes for us to connect it. There are 2 classes we might need: TableServiceContext and TableServiceEntity. The TableServiceContext inherited from the DataServiceContext, which represents the runtime context of the ADO.NET data service. It provides 4 methods mainly used by us: CreateQuery: It will create a IQueryable instance from a given type of entity. AddObject: Add the specified entity into Table Service. UpdateObject: Update an existing entity in the Table Service. DeleteObject: Delete an entity from the Table Service. Beofre you operate the table service you need to provide the valid account information. It’s something like the connect string of the database but with your account name and the account key when you created the storage service on the Windows Azure Development Portal. After getting the CloudStorageAccount you can create the CloudTableClient instance which provides a set of methods for using the table service. A very useful method would be CreateTableIfNotExist. It will create the table container for you if it’s not exsited. And then you can operate the eneities to that table through the methods I mentioned above. Let me explain a bit more through an exmaple. We always like code rather than sentence. Straightforward Accessing to the Table Here I would like to build a WCF service on the Windows Azure platform, and for now just one requirement: it would allow the client to create an account entity on the table service. The WCF service would have a method named Register and accept an instance of the account which the client wants to create. After perform some validation it will add the entity into the table service. So the first thing I should do is to create a Cloud Application on my VIstial Studio 2010 RC. (The Azure SDK 1.1 only supports VS2008 and VS2010 RC.) The solution should be like this below. Then I added a configuration items for the storage account through the Settings section under the cloud project. (Double click the Services file under Roles folder and navigate to the Setting section.) This setting will be used when to retrieve my storage account information. Since for now I just in the development phase I will select “UseDevelopmentStorage=true”. And then I navigated to the WebRole.cs file under my WCF project. If you have read my previous posts you would know that this file defines the process when the application start, and terminate on the cloud. What I need to do is to when the application start, set the configuration publisher to load my config file with the config name I specified. So the code would be like below. I removed the original service and contract created by the VS template and add my IAccountService contract and its implementation class - AccountService. And I add the service method Register with the parameters: email, password and it will return a boolean value to indicates the result which is very simple. At this moment if I press F5 the application will be established on my local development fabric and I can see my service runs well through the browser. Let’s implement the service method Rigister, add a new entity to the table service. As I said before the entities you want to store in the table service must have 3 properties: partition key, row key and timespan. You can create a class with these 3 properties. The Azure SDK provides us a base class for that named TableServiceEntity in Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient namespace. So what we need to do is more simply, create a class named Account and let it derived from the TableServiceEntity. And I need to add my own properties: Email, Password, DateCreated and DateDeleted. The DateDeleted is a nullable date time value to indecate whether this entity had been deleted and when. Do you notice that I missed something here? Yes it’s the partition key and row key I didn’t assigned. The TableServiceEntity base class defined 2 constructors one was a parameter-less constructor which will be used to fill values into the properties from the table service when retrieving data. The other was one with 2 parameters: partition key and row key. As I said below the partition key may affect the load balance and the row key must be unique so here I would like to use the email as the parition key and the email plus a Guid as the row key. OK now we finished the entity class we need to store onto the table service. The next step is to create a data access class for us to add it. Azure SDK gives us a base class for it named TableServiceContext as I mentioned below. So let’s create a class for operate the Account entities. The TableServiceContext need the storage account information for its constructor. It’s the combination of the storage service URI that we will create on Windows Azure platform, and the relevant account name and key. The TableServiceContext will use this information to find the related address and verify the account to operate the storage entities. Hence in my AccountDataContext class I need to override this constructor and pass the storage account into it. All entities will be saved in the table storage with one or many tables which we call them “table containers”. Before we operate an entity we need to make sure that the table container had been created on the storage. There’s a method we can use for that: CloudTableClient.CreateTableIfNotExist. So in the constructor I will perform it firstly to make sure all method will be invoked after the table had been created. Notice that I passed the storage account enpoint URI and the credentials to specify where my storage is located and who am I. Another advise is that, make your entity class name as the same as the table name when create the table. It will increase the performance when you operate it over the cloud especially querying. Since the Register WCF method will add a new account into the table service, here I will create a relevant method to add the account entity. Before implement, I should add a reference - System.Data.Services.Client to the project. This reference provides some common method within the ADO.NET Data Service which can be used in the Windows Azure Table Service. I will use its AddObject method to create my account entity. Since the table service are not fully implemented the ADO.NET Data Service, there are some methods in the System.Data.Services.Client that TableServiceContext doesn’t support, such as AddLinks, etc. Then I implemented the serivce method to add the account entity through the AccountDataContext. You can see in the service implmentation I load the storage account information through my configuration file and created the account table entity from the parameters. Then I created the AccountDataContext. If it’s my first time to invoke this method the constructor of the AccountDataContext will create a table container for me. Then I use Add method to add the account entity into the table. Next, let’s create a farely simple client application to test this service. I created a windows console application and added a service reference to my WCF service. The metadata information of the WCF service cannot be retrieved if it’s deployed on the Windows Azure even though the <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/> had been set. If we need to get its metadata we can deploy it on the local development service and then changed the endpoint to the address which is on the cloud. In the client side app.config file I specified the endpoint to the local development fabric address. And the just implement the client to let me input an email and a password then invoke the WCF service to add my acocunt. Let’s run my application and see the result. Of course it should return TRUE to me. And in the local SQL Express I can see the data had been saved in the table. Summary In this post I explained more about the Windows Azure Table Storage Service. I also created a small application for demostration of how to connect and consume it through the ADO.NET Data Service Managed Library provided within the Azure SDK. I only show how to create an eneity in the storage service. In the next post I would like to explain about how to query the entities with conditions thruogh LINQ. I also would like to refactor my AccountDataContext class to make it dyamic for any kinds of entities. Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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Parallelism in .NET – Part 3, Imperative Data Parallelism: Early Termination

- by Reed

Although simple data parallelism allows us to easily parallelize many of our iteration statements, there are cases that it does not handle well. In my previous discussion, I focused on data parallelism with no shared state, and where every element is being processed exactly the same. Unfortunately, there are many common cases where this does not happen. If we are dealing with a loop that requires early termination, extra care is required when parallelizing. Often, while processing in a loop, once a certain condition is met, it is no longer necessary to continue processing. This may be a matter of finding a specific element within the collection, or reaching some error case. The important distinction here is that, it is often impossible to know until runtime, what set of elements needs to be processed. In my initial discussion of data parallelism, I mentioned that this technique is a candidate when you can decompose the problem based on the data involved, and you wish to apply a single operation concurrently on all of the elements of a collection. This covers many of the potential cases, but sometimes, after processing some of the elements, we need to stop processing. As an example, lets go back to our previous Parallel.ForEach example with contacting a customer. However, this time, we’ll change the requirements slightly. In this case, we’ll add an extra condition – if the store is unable to email the customer, we will exit gracefully. The thinking here, of course, is that if the store is currently unable to email, the next time this operation runs, it will handle the same situation, so we can just skip our processing entirely. The original, serial case, with this extra condition, might look something like the following: foreach(var customer in customers) { // Run some process that takes some time... DateTime lastContact = theStore.GetLastContact(customer); TimeSpan timeSinceContact = DateTime.Now - lastContact; // If it's been more than two weeks, send an email, and update... if (timeSinceContact.Days > 14) { // Exit gracefully if we fail to email, since this // entire process can be repeated later without issue. if (theStore.EmailCustomer(customer) == false) break; customer.LastEmailContact = DateTime.Now; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Here, we’re processing our loop, but at any point, if we fail to send our email successfully, we just abandon this process, and assume that it will get handled correctly the next time our routine is run. If we try to parallelize this using Parallel.ForEach, as we did previously, we’ll run into an error almost immediately: the break statement we’re using is only valid when enclosed within an iteration statement, such as foreach. When we switch to Parallel.ForEach, we’re no longer within an iteration statement – we’re a delegate running in a method. This needs to be handled slightly differently when parallelized. Instead of using the break statement, we need to utilize a new class in the Task Parallel Library: ParallelLoopState. The ParallelLoopState class is intended to allow concurrently running loop bodies a way to interact with each other, and provides us with a way to break out of a loop. In order to use this, we will use a different overload of Parallel.ForEach which takes an IEnumerable<T> and an Action<T, ParallelLoopState> instead of an Action<T>. Using this, we can parallelize the above operation by doing: Parallel.ForEach(customers, (customer, parallelLoopState) => { // Run some process that takes some time... DateTime lastContact = theStore.GetLastContact(customer); TimeSpan timeSinceContact = DateTime.Now - lastContact; // If it's been more than two weeks, send an email, and update... if (timeSinceContact.Days > 14) { // Exit gracefully if we fail to email, since this // entire process can be repeated later without issue. if (theStore.EmailCustomer(customer) == false) parallelLoopState.Break(); else customer.LastEmailContact = DateTime.Now; } }); There are a couple of important points here. First, we didn’t actually instantiate the ParallelLoopState instance. It was provided directly to us via the Parallel class. All we needed to do was change our lambda expression to reflect that we want to use the loop state, and the Parallel class creates an instance for our use. We also needed to change our logic slightly when we call Break(). Since Break() doesn’t stop the program flow within our block, we needed to add an else case to only set the property in customer when we succeeded. This same technique can be used to break out of a Parallel.For loop. That being said, there is a huge difference between using ParallelLoopState to cause early termination and to use break in a standard iteration statement. When dealing with a loop serially, break will immediately terminate the processing within the closest enclosing loop statement. Calling ParallelLoopState.Break(), however, has a very different behavior. The issue is that, now, we’re no longer processing one element at a time. If we break in one of our threads, there are other threads that will likely still be executing. This leads to an important observation about termination of parallel code: Early termination in parallel routines is not immediate. Code will continue to run after you request a termination. This may seem problematic at first, but it is something you just need to keep in mind while designing your routine. ParallelLoopState.Break() should be thought of as a request. We are telling the runtime that no elements that were in the collection past the element we’re currently processing need to be processed, and leaving it up to the runtime to decide how to handle this as gracefully as possible. Although this may seem problematic at first, it is a good thing. If the runtime tried to immediately stop processing, many of our elements would be partially processed. It would be like putting a return statement in a random location throughout our loop body – which could have horrific consequences to our code’s maintainability. In order to understand and effectively write parallel routines, we, as developers, need a subtle, but profound shift in our thinking. We can no longer think in terms of sequential processes, but rather need to think in terms of requests to the system that may be handled differently than we’d first expect. This is more natural to developers who have dealt with asynchronous models previously, but is an important distinction when moving to concurrent programming models. As an example, I’ll discuss the Break() method. ParallelLoopState.Break() functions in a way that may be unexpected at first. When you call Break() from a loop body, the runtime will continue to process all elements of the collection that were found prior to the element that was being processed when the Break() method was called. This is done to keep the behavior of the Break() method as close to the behavior of the break statement as possible. We can see the behavior in this simple code: var collection = Enumerable.Range(0, 20); var pResult = Parallel.ForEach(collection, (element, state) => { if (element > 10) { Console.WriteLine("Breaking on {0}", element); state.Break(); } Console.WriteLine(element); }); If we run this, we get a result that may seem unexpected at first: 0 2 1 5 6 3 4 10 Breaking on 11 11 Breaking on 12 12 9 Breaking on 13 13 7 8 Breaking on 15 15 What is occurring here is that we loop until we find the first element where the element is greater than 10. In this case, this was found, the first time, when one of our threads reached element 11. It requested that the loop stop by calling Break() at this point. However, the loop continued processing until all of the elements less than 11 were completed, then terminated. This means that it will guarantee that elements 9, 7, and 8 are completed before it stops processing. You can see our other threads that were running each tried to break as well, but since Break() was called on the element with a value of 11, it decides which elements (0-10) must be processed. If this behavior is not desirable, there is another option. Instead of calling ParallelLoopState.Break(), you can call ParallelLoopState.Stop(). The Stop() method requests that the runtime terminate as soon as possible , without guaranteeing that any other elements are processed. Stop() will not stop the processing within an element, so elements already being processed will continue to be processed. It will prevent new elements, even ones found earlier in the collection, from being processed. Also, when Stop() is called, the ParallelLoopState’s IsStopped property will return true. This lets longer running processes poll for this value, and return after performing any necessary cleanup. The basic rule of thumb for choosing between Break() and Stop() is the following. Use ParallelLoopState.Stop() when possible, since it terminates more quickly. This is particularly useful in situations where you are searching for an element or a condition in the collection. Once you’ve found it, you do not need to do any other processing, so Stop() is more appropriate. Use ParallelLoopState.Break() if you need to more closely match the behavior of the C# break statement. Both methods behave differently than our C# break statement. Unfortunately, when parallelizing a routine, more thought and care needs to be put into every aspect of your routine than you may otherwise expect. This is due to my second observation: Parallelizing a routine will almost always change its behavior. This sounds crazy at first, but it’s a concept that’s so simple its easy to forget. We’re purposely telling the system to process more than one thing at the same time, which means that the sequence in which things get processed is no longer deterministic. It is easy to change the behavior of your routine in very subtle ways by introducing parallelism. Often, the changes are not avoidable, even if they don’t have any adverse side effects. This leads to my final observation for this post: Parallelization is something that should be handled with care and forethought, added by design, and not just introduced casually.

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Complete Guide to Symbolic Links (symlinks) on Windows or Linux

- by Matthew Guay

Want to easily access folders and files from different folders without maintaining duplicate copies? Here’s how you can use Symbolic Links to link anything in Windows 7, Vista, XP, and Ubuntu. So What Are Symbolic Links Anyway? Symbolic links, otherwise known as symlinks, are basically advanced shortcuts. You can create symbolic links to individual files or folders, and then these will appear like they are stored in the folder with the symbolic link even though the symbolic link only points to their real location. There are two types of symbolic links: hard and soft. Soft symbolic links work essentially the same as a standard shortcut. When you open a soft link, you will be redirected to the folder where the files are stored. However, a hard link makes it appear as though the file or folder actually exists at the location of the symbolic link, and your applications won’t know any different. Thus, hard links are of the most interest in this article. Why should I use Symbolic Links? There are many things we use symbolic links for, so here’s some of the top uses we can think of: Sync any folder with Dropbox – say, sync your Pidgin Profile Across Computers Move the settings folder for any program from its original location Store your Music/Pictures/Videos on a second hard drive, but make them show up in your standard Music/Pictures/Videos folders so they’ll be detected my your media programs (Windows 7 Libraries can also be good for this) Keep important files accessible from multiple locations And more! If you want to move files to a different drive or folder and then symbolically link them, follow these steps: Close any programs that may be accessing that file or folder Move the file or folder to the new desired location Follow the correct instructions below for your operating system to create the symbolic link. Caution: Make sure to never create a symbolic link inside of a symbolic link. For instance, don’t create a symbolic link to a file that’s contained in a symbolic linked folder. This can create a loop, which can cause millions of problems you don’t want to deal with. Seriously. Create Symlinks in Any Edition of Windows in Explorer Creating symlinks is usually difficult, but thanks to the free Link Shell Extension, you can create symbolic links in all modern version of Windows pain-free. You need to download both Visual Studio 2005 redistributable, which contains the necessary prerequisites, and Link Shell Extension itself (links below). Download the correct version (32 bit or 64 bit) for your computer. Run and install the Visual Studio 2005 Redistributable installer first. Then install the Link Shell Extension on your computer. Your taskbar will temporally disappear during the install, but will quickly come back. Now you’re ready to start creating symbolic links. Browse to the folder or file you want to create a symbolic link from. Right-click the folder or file and select Pick Link Source. To create your symlink, right-click in the folder you wish to save the symbolic link, select “Drop as…”, and then choose the type of link you want. You can choose from several different options here; we chose the Hardlink Clone. This will create a hard link to the file or folder we selected. The Symbolic link option creates a soft link, while the smart copy will fully copy a folder containing symbolic links without breaking them. These options can be useful as well. Here’s our hard-linked folder on our desktop. Notice that the folder looks like its contents are stored in Desktop\Downloads, when they are actually stored in C:\Users\Matthew\Desktop\Downloads. Also, when links are created with the Link Shell Extension, they have a red arrow on them so you can still differentiate them. And, this works the same way in XP as well. Symlinks via Command Prompt Or, for geeks who prefer working via command line, here’s how you can create symlinks in Command Prompt in Windows 7/Vista and XP. In Windows 7/Vista In Windows Vista and 7, we’ll use the mklink command to create symbolic links. To use it, we have to open an administrator Command Prompt. Enter “command” in your start menu search, right-click on Command Prompt, and select “Run as administrator”. To create a symbolic link, we need to enter the following in command prompt: mklink /prefix link_path file/folder_path First, choose the correct prefix. Mklink can create several types of links, including the following: /D – creates a soft symbolic link, which is similar to a standard folder or file shortcut in Windows. This is the default option, and mklink will use it if you do not enter a prefix. /H – creates a hard link to a file /J – creates a hard link to a directory or folder So, once you’ve chosen the correct prefix, you need to enter the path you want for the symbolic link, and the path to the original file or folder. For example, if I wanted a folder in my Dropbox folder to appear like it was also stored in my desktop, I would enter the following: mklink /J C:\Users\Matthew\Desktop\Dropbox C:\Users\Matthew\Documents\Dropbox Note that the first path was to the symbolic folder I wanted to create, while the second path was to the real folder. Here, in this command prompt screenshot, you can see that I created a symbolic link of my Music folder to my desktop. And here’s how it looks in Explorer. Note that all of my music is “really” stored in C:\Users\Matthew\Music, but here it looks like it is stored in C:\Users\Matthew\Desktop\Music. If your path has any spaces in it, you need to place quotes around it. Note also that the link can have a different name than the file it links to. For example, here I’m going to create a symbolic link to a document on my desktop: mklink /H “C:\Users\Matthew\Desktop\ebook.pdf” “C:\Users\Matthew\Downloads\Before You Call Tech Support.pdf” Don’t forget the syntax: mklink /prefix link_path Target_file/folder_path In Windows XP Windows XP doesn’t include built-in command prompt support for symbolic links, but we can use the free Junction tool instead. Download Junction (link below), and unzip the folder. Now open Command Prompt (click Start, select All Programs, then Accessories, and select Command Prompt), and enter cd followed by the path of the folder where you saved Junction. Junction only creates hard symbolic links, since you can use shortcuts for soft ones. To create a hard symlink, we need to enter the following in command prompt: junction –s link_path file/folder_path As with mklink in Windows 7 or Vista, if your file/folder path has spaces in it make sure to put quotes around your paths. Also, as usual, your symlink can have a different name that the file/folder it points to. Here, we’re going to create a symbolic link to our My Music folder on the desktop. We entered: junction -s “C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\Music” “C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\My Music” And here’s the contents of our symlink. Note that the path looks like these files are stored in a Music folder directly on the Desktop, when they are actually stored in My Documents\My Music. Once again, this works with both folders and individual files. Please Note: Junction would work the same in Windows 7 or Vista, but since they include a built-in symbolic link tool we found it better to use it on those versions of Windows. Symlinks in Ubuntu Unix-based operating systems have supported symbolic links since their inception, so it is straightforward to create symbolic links in Linux distros such as Ubuntu. There’s no graphical way to create them like the Link Shell Extension for Windows, so we’ll just do it in Terminal. Open terminal (open the Applications menu, select Accessories, and then click Terminal), and enter the following: ln –s file/folder_path link_path Note that this is opposite of the Windows commands; you put the source for the link first, and then the path second. For example, let’s create a symbolic link of our Pictures folder in our Desktop. To do this, we entered: ln -s /home/maguay/Pictures /home/maguay/Desktop Once again, here is the contents of our symlink folder. The pictures look as if they’re stored directly in a Pictures folder on the Desktop, but they are actually stored in maguay\Pictures. Delete Symlinks Removing symbolic links is very simple – just delete the link! Most of the command line utilities offer a way to delete a symbolic link via command prompt, but you don’t need to go to the trouble. Conclusion Symbolic links can be very handy, and we use them constantly to help us stay organized and keep our hard drives from overflowing. Let us know how you use symbolic links on your computers! Download Link Shell Extension for Windows 7, Vista, and XP Download Junction for XP Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Symlinks in Windows VistaHow To Figure Out Your PC’s Host Name From the Command PromptInstall IceWM on Ubuntu LinuxAdd Color Coding to Windows 7 Media Center Program GuideSync Your Pidgin Profile Across Multiple PCs with Dropbox 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow

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Using a WPF ListView as a DataGrid

- by psheriff

Many people like to view data in a grid format of rows and columns. WPF did not come with a data grid control that automatically creates rows and columns for you based on the object you pass it. However, the WPF Toolkit can be downloaded from CodePlex.com that does contain a DataGrid control. This DataGrid gives you the ability to pass it a DataTable or a Collection class and it will automatically figure out the columns or properties and create all the columns for you and display the data.The DataGrid control also supports editing and many other features that you might not always need. This means that the DataGrid does take a little more time to render the data. If you want to just display data (see Figure 1) in a grid format, then a ListView works quite well for this task. Of course, you will need to create the columns for the ListView, but with just a little generic code, you can create the columns on the fly just like the WPF Toolkit’s DataGrid. Figure 1: A List of Data using a ListView A Simple ListView ControlThe XAML below is what you would use to create the ListView shown in Figure 1. However, the problem with using XAML is you have to pre-define the columns. You cannot re-use this ListView except for “Product” data. <ListView x:Name="lstData" ItemsSource="{Binding}"> <ListView.View> <GridView> <GridViewColumn Header="Product ID" Width="Auto" DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Path=ProductId}" /> <GridViewColumn Header="Product Name" Width="Auto" DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Path=ProductName}" /> <GridViewColumn Header="Price" Width="Auto" DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Path=Price}" /> </GridView> </ListView.View></ListView> So, instead of creating the GridViewColumn’s in XAML, let’s learn to create them in code to create any amount of columns in a ListView. Create GridViewColumn’s From Data TableTo display multiple columns in a ListView control you need to set its View property to a GridView collection object. You add GridViewColumn objects to the GridView collection and assign the GridView to the View property. Each GridViewColumn object needs to be bound to a column or property name of the object that the ListView will be bound to. An ADO.NET DataTable object contains a collection of columns, and these columns have a ColumnName property which you use to bind to the GridViewColumn objects. Listing 1 shows a sample of reading and XML file into a DataSet object. After reading the data a GridView object is created. You can then loop through the DataTable columns collection and create a GridViewColumn object for each column in the DataTable. Notice the DisplayMemberBinding property is set to a new Binding to the ColumnName in the DataTable. C#private void FirstSample(){ // Read the data DataSet ds = new DataSet(); ds.ReadXml(GetCurrentDirectory() + @"\Xml\Product.xml"); // Create the GridView GridView gv = new GridView(); // Create the GridView Columns foreach (DataColumn item in ds.Tables[0].Columns) { GridViewColumn gvc = new GridViewColumn(); gvc.DisplayMemberBinding = new Binding(item.ColumnName); gvc.Header = item.ColumnName; gvc.Width = Double.NaN; gv.Columns.Add(gvc); } // Setup the GridView Columns lstData.View = gv; // Display the Data lstData.DataContext = ds.Tables[0];} VB.NETPrivate Sub FirstSample() ' Read the data Dim ds As New DataSet() ds.ReadXml(GetCurrentDirectory() & "\Xml\Product.xml") ' Create the GridView Dim gv As New GridView() ' Create the GridView Columns For Each item As DataColumn In ds.Tables(0).Columns Dim gvc As New GridViewColumn() gvc.DisplayMemberBinding = New Binding(item.ColumnName) gvc.Header = item.ColumnName gvc.Width = [Double].NaN gv.Columns.Add(gvc) Next ' Setup the GridView Columns lstData.View = gv ' Display the Data lstData.DataContext = ds.Tables(0)End SubListing 1: Loop through the DataTable columns collection to create GridViewColumn objects A Generic Method for Creating a GridViewInstead of having to write the code shown in Listing 1 for each ListView you wish to create, you can create a generic method that given any DataTable will return a GridView column collection. Listing 2 shows how you can simplify the code in Listing 1 by setting up a class called WPFListViewCommon and create a method called CreateGridViewColumns that returns your GridView. C#private void DataTableSample(){ // Read the data DataSet ds = new DataSet(); ds.ReadXml(GetCurrentDirectory() + @"\Xml\Product.xml"); // Setup the GridView Columns lstData.View = WPFListViewCommon.CreateGridViewColumns(ds.Tables[0]); lstData.DataContext = ds.Tables[0];} VB.NETPrivate Sub DataTableSample() ' Read the data Dim ds As New DataSet() ds.ReadXml(GetCurrentDirectory() & "\Xml\Product.xml") ' Setup the GridView Columns lstData.View = _ WPFListViewCommon.CreateGridViewColumns(ds.Tables(0)) lstData.DataContext = ds.Tables(0)End SubListing 2: Call a generic method to create GridViewColumns. The CreateGridViewColumns MethodThe CreateGridViewColumns method will take a DataTable as a parameter and create a GridView object with a GridViewColumn object in its collection for each column in your DataTable. C#public static GridView CreateGridViewColumns(DataTable dt){ // Create the GridView GridView gv = new GridView(); gv.AllowsColumnReorder = true; // Create the GridView Columns foreach (DataColumn item in dt.Columns) { GridViewColumn gvc = new GridViewColumn(); gvc.DisplayMemberBinding = new Binding(item.ColumnName); gvc.Header = item.ColumnName; gvc.Width = Double.NaN; gv.Columns.Add(gvc); } return gv;} VB.NETPublic Shared Function CreateGridViewColumns _ (ByVal dt As DataTable) As GridView ' Create the GridView Dim gv As New GridView() gv.AllowsColumnReorder = True ' Create the GridView Columns For Each item As DataColumn In dt.Columns Dim gvc As New GridViewColumn() gvc.DisplayMemberBinding = New Binding(item.ColumnName) gvc.Header = item.ColumnName gvc.Width = [Double].NaN gv.Columns.Add(gvc) Next Return gvEnd FunctionListing 3: The CreateGridViewColumns method takes a DataTable and creates GridViewColumn objects in a GridView. By separating this method out into a class you can call this method anytime you want to create a ListView with a collection of columns from a DataTable. SummaryIn this blog you learned how to create a ListView that acts like a DataGrid. You are able to use a DataTable as both the source of the data, and for creating the columns for the ListView. In the next blog entry you will learn how to use the same technique, but for Collection classes. NOTE: You can download the complete sample code (in both VB and C#) at my website. http://www.pdsa.com/downloads. Choose Tips & Tricks, then "WPF ListView as a DataGrid" from the drop-down. Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for a free eBook on "Fundamentals of N-Tier".

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Parallelism in .NET – Part 4, Imperative Data Parallelism: Aggregation

- by Reed

In the article on simple data parallelism, I described how to perform an operation on an entire collection of elements in parallel. Often, this is not adequate, as the parallel operation is going to be performing some form of aggregation. Simple examples of this might include taking the sum of the results of processing a function on each element in the collection, or finding the minimum of the collection given some criteria. This can be done using the techniques described in simple data parallelism, however, special care needs to be taken into account to synchronize the shared data appropriately. The Task Parallel Library has tools to assist in this synchronization. The main issue with aggregation when parallelizing a routine is that you need to handle synchronization of data. Since multiple threads will need to write to a shared portion of data. Suppose, for example, that we wanted to parallelize a simple loop that looked for the minimum value within a dataset: double min = double.MaxValue; foreach(var item in collection) { double value = item.PerformComputation(); min = System.Math.Min(min, value); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This seems like a good candidate for parallelization, but there is a problem here. If we just wrap this into a call to Parallel.ForEach, we’ll introduce a critical race condition, and get the wrong answer. Let’s look at what happens here: // Buggy code! Do not use! double min = double.MaxValue; Parallel.ForEach(collection, item => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); min = System.Math.Min(min, value); }); This code has a fatal flaw: min will be checked, then set, by multiple threads simultaneously. Two threads may perform the check at the same time, and set the wrong value for min. Say we get a value of 1 in thread 1, and a value of 2 in thread 2, and these two elements are the first two to run. If both hit the min check line at the same time, both will determine that min should change, to 1 and 2 respectively. If element 1 happens to set the variable first, then element 2 sets the min variable, we’ll detect a min value of 2 instead of 1. This can lead to wrong answers. Unfortunately, fixing this, with the Parallel.ForEach call we’re using, would require adding locking. We would need to rewrite this like: // Safe, but slow double min = double.MaxValue; // Make a "lock" object object syncObject = new object(); Parallel.ForEach(collection, item => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); lock(syncObject) min = System.Math.Min(min, value); }); This will potentially add a huge amount of overhead to our calculation. Since we can potentially block while waiting on the lock for every single iteration, we will most likely slow this down to where it is actually quite a bit slower than our serial implementation. The problem is the lock statement – any time you use lock(object), you’re almost assuring reduced performance in a parallel situation. This leads to two observations I’ll make: When parallelizing a routine, try to avoid locks. That being said: Always add any and all required synchronization to avoid race conditions. These two observations tend to be opposing forces – we often need to synchronize our algorithms, but we also want to avoid the synchronization when possible. Looking at our routine, there is no way to directly avoid this lock, since each element is potentially being run on a separate thread, and this lock is necessary in order for our routine to function correctly every time. However, this isn’t the only way to design this routine to implement this algorithm. Realize that, although our collection may have thousands or even millions of elements, we have a limited number of Processing Elements (PE). Processing Element is the standard term for a hardware element which can process and execute instructions. This typically is a core in your processor, but many modern systems have multiple hardware execution threads per core. The Task Parallel Library will not execute the work for each item in the collection as a separate work item. Instead, when Parallel.ForEach executes, it will partition the collection into larger “chunks” which get processed on different threads via the ThreadPool. This helps reduce the threading overhead, and help the overall speed. In general, the Parallel class will only use one thread per PE in the system. Given the fact that there are typically fewer threads than work items, we can rethink our algorithm design. We can parallelize our algorithm more effectively by approaching it differently. Because the basic aggregation we are doing here (Min) is communitive, we do not need to perform this in a given order. We knew this to be true already – otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to parallelize this routine in the first place. With this in mind, we can treat each thread’s work independently, allowing each thread to serially process many elements with no locking, then, after all the threads are complete, “merge” together the results. This can be accomplished via a different set of overloads in the Parallel class: Parallel.ForEach<TSource,TLocal>. The idea behind these overloads is to allow each thread to begin by initializing some local state (TLocal). The thread will then process an entire set of items in the source collection, providing that state to the delegate which processes an individual item. Finally, at the end, a separate delegate is run which allows you to handle merging that local state into your final results. To rewriting our routine using Parallel.ForEach<TSource,TLocal>, we need to provide three delegates instead of one. The most basic version of this function is declared as: public static ParallelLoopResult ForEach<TSource, TLocal>( IEnumerable<TSource> source, Func<TLocal> localInit, Func<TSource, ParallelLoopState, TLocal, TLocal> body, Action<TLocal> localFinally ) The first delegate (the localInit argument) is defined as Func<TLocal>. This delegate initializes our local state. It should return some object we can use to track the results of a single thread’s operations. The second delegate (the body argument) is where our main processing occurs, although now, instead of being an Action<T>, we actually provide a Func<TSource, ParallelLoopState, TLocal, TLocal> delegate. This delegate will receive three arguments: our original element from the collection (TSource), a ParallelLoopState which we can use for early termination, and the instance of our local state we created (TLocal). It should do whatever processing you wish to occur per element, then return the value of the local state after processing is completed. The third delegate (the localFinally argument) is defined as Action<TLocal>. This delegate is passed our local state after it’s been processed by all of the elements this thread will handle. This is where you can merge your final results together. This may require synchronization, but now, instead of synchronizing once per element (potentially millions of times), you’ll only have to synchronize once per thread, which is an ideal situation. Now that I’ve explained how this works, lets look at the code: // Safe, and fast! double min = double.MaxValue; // Make a "lock" object object syncObject = new object(); Parallel.ForEach( collection, // First, we provide a local state initialization delegate. () => double.MaxValue, // Next, we supply the body, which takes the original item, loop state, // and local state, and returns a new local state (item, loopState, localState) => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); return System.Math.Min(localState, value); }, // Finally, we provide an Action<TLocal>, to "merge" results together localState => { // This requires locking, but it's only once per used thread lock(syncObj) min = System.Math.Min(min, localState); } ); Although this is a bit more complicated than the previous version, it is now both thread-safe, and has minimal locking. This same approach can be used by Parallel.For, although now, it’s Parallel.For<TLocal>. When working with Parallel.For<TLocal>, you use the same triplet of delegates, with the same purpose and results. Also, many times, you can completely avoid locking by using a method of the Interlocked class to perform the final aggregation in an atomic operation. The MSDN example demonstrating this same technique using Parallel.For uses the Interlocked class instead of a lock, since they are doing a sum operation on a long variable, which is possible via Interlocked.Add. By taking advantage of local state, we can use the Parallel class methods to parallelize algorithms such as aggregation, which, at first, may seem like poor candidates for parallelization. Doing so requires careful consideration, and often requires a slight redesign of the algorithm, but the performance gains can be significant if handled in a way to avoid excessive synchronization.

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Turn Photos and Home Videos into Movies with Windows Live Movie Maker

- by DigitalGeekery

Are you looking for an easy way to take your digital photos and videos and turn them into a movie or slideshow? Today we’ll take a detailed look at how to do use Windows Live Movie Maker. Installation Windows Live Movie Maker comes bundled as part of the Windows Live Essentials suite (link below). However, you don’t have to install any of the programs you may not want. Take notice of the You’re almost done screen. Before clicking Continue, be sure to uncheck the boxes to set your search provider and homepage. Adding Pictures and Videos Open Windows Live Movie Maker. You can add videos or photos by simply dragging and dropping them onto the storyboard area. You can also click on the storyboard area or on the Add videos and photos button on the Home tab to browse for videos and photos. Windows Live Movie Maker supports most video, image, and audio file types. Select your files and add click Open to add them to Windows Live Movie Maker. By default WLMM doesn’t allow you to add files from network locations…so check out our article on how to add network support to Windows Live MovieMaker if the files you want to add are on a network drive. Layout All of your added clips will appear in the storyboard area on the right, while the currently selected clip will appear in the preview window on the left. You can adjust the size of the two areas by clicking and dragging the dividing line in the middle. Make the clips on the storyboard bigger or smaller by clicking on the thumbnail size icon. The slider at the lower right adjusts the zoom time scale. Previewing your Movie At any time, you can playback your movie and preview how it will look in the Preview window by clicking the space bar, or by pushing the play button under the preview window. You can also manually move the preview bar slider across the storyboard to view the clips as the video progresses. Adjusting Clips on the Storyboard You can click and drag clips on the storyboard to change the order in which the photos and videos appear. Adding Music Nothing brings a movie to life quite like music. Selecting Add music will add your music to the beginning of the movie. Select Add music at the current point to include it in the movie to the current location of your preview bar slider, then browse for your music clip. WLMM supports many common audio files such as WAV, MP3, M4A, WMA, AIFF, and ASF. The music clip will appear above the video / photos clips on the storyboard. You can change the location of music clips by clicking and dragging them to a different location on the storyboard. Add Titles, Captions, and Credits To add a Title screen to your movie, click the Title button on the Home tab. Type your title directly into the text box on the preview screen. The title will be placed at the location of the preview slider on the storyboard. However, you can change the location by clicking and dragging title to other areas of the storyboard. On the Format tab, there are a handful of text settings. You can change the font, color, size, alignment, and transparency. The Adjust group allows you to change the background color, edit the text, and set the length of time the Title will appear in the movie. The Effects group on the Format tab allows you to select an effect for your title screen. By hovering your cursor over each option, you will get a live preview of how each effect will appear in the preview window. Click to apply any of the effects. For captions, select where you want your caption to appear with the preview slider on the storyboard, then click the captions button on the Home tab. Just like the title, you type your caption directly into the text box on the preview screen, and you can make any adjustments by using the Font and Paragraph, Adjust, and Effects groups above. Credits are done the same as titles and captions, except they are automatically placed at the end of the movie. Transitions Go to the Animation tab on the ribbon to apply transitions. Select a clip from the storyboard and hover over one of the transition to see it in the preview window. Click on the transition to apply it to the clip. You can apply transitions separately to clips or hold down Ctrl button while clicking to select multiple clips to which to apply the same transition. Pan and zoom effects are also located on the Animations tab, but can be applied to photos only. Like transition, you can apply them individually to a clip or hold down Ctrl button while clicking to select multiple clips to which to apply the same pan and zoom effect. Once applied, you can adjust the duration of the transitions and pan and zoom effects. You can also click the dropdown for additional transitions or effects. Visual Effects Similar to Pan and Zoom and Transitions, you can apply a variety of Visual Effects to individual or multiple clips. Editing Video and Music Note: This does not actually edit the original video you imported into your Windows Live Movie Maker project, only how it appears in your WLMM project. There are some very basic editing tools located on the Home tab. The Rotate left and Rotate right button will adjust any clip that may be oriented incorrectly. The Fit to music button will automatically adjust the duration of the photos (if you have any in your project) to fit the length of the music in your movie. Audio mix allows you to change the volume level You can also do some slightly more advanced editing from the Edit tab. Select the video clip on the storyboard and click the Trim tool to edit or remove portions of a video clip. Next, click and drag the sliders in the preview windows to select the are you wish to keep. For example, the area outside the sliders is the area trimmed from the movie. The area inside is the section that is kept in the movie. You can also adjust the Start and End points manually on the ribbon. When you are finished, click Save trim. You can also split your video clips. Move the preview slider to the location in the video clip where you’d like to split it, and select Split. Your video will be split into separate sections. Now you can apply different effects or move them to different locations on the storyboard. Editing Music Clips Select the music clip on the storyboard and then the Options tab on the ribbon. You can adjust the music volume by moving the slider right and left. You can also choose to have your music clip fade in or out at the beginning and end of your movie. From the Fade in and Fade out dropdowns, select None, Slow, Medium, or Fast. To adjust the sound of your audio clips, click on the Edit tab, select the Video volume button, and adjust the slider. Move it all the way to the left to mute any background noise in your video clips. AutoMovie As you have seen, Windows Live Movie Maker allows you to add effects, transitions, titles, and more. If you don’t want to do any of that stuff yourself, AutoMovie will automatically add title, credits, cross fade transitions between items, pan and zoom effects to photos, and fit your project to the music. Just select the AutoMovie button on the Home tab. You can go from zero to movie in literally a couple minutes. Uploading to YouTube You can share your video on YouTube directly from Windows Live Movie Maker. Click on the YouTube icon in the Sharing group on the Home tab. You’ll be prompted for your YouTube username and password. Fill in the details about your movie and click Publish. The movie will be converted to WMV before being uploaded to YouTube. As soon as the YouTube conversion is complete, you’re new movie is live and ready to be viewed. Saving your Movie as a Video File Select the icon at the top left, then select Save movie. As you hover your mouse over each of the options, you will see the output display size, aspect ratio, and estimated file size per minute of video. All of these settings will output your movie as a WMV file. (Unfortunately, the only option is to save a movie as a WMV file.) The only difference is how they are encoded based on preset common settings. The Burn to DVD option also outputs a WMV file, but then opens Windows DVD Maker and walks you through the process of creating and burning a DVD. If you choose the Burn to DVD option, close this window when the WMV file conversion is complete and the Windows DVD Maker will prompt you to begin. When your movie is finished, it’s time to relax and enjoy. Conclusion Windows Live Movie Maker makes it easy for the average person to quickly churn out nice looking movies and slideshows from there own pictures and videos. However, long time users of previous editions (formerly called Windows Movie Maker) will likely be disappointed by some features missing in Windows Live Movie Maker that existed in earlier editions. Looking for details on burning your new project to DVD, check out our article on how to create and author DVDs with Windows DVD Maker. Download Windows Live Movie Maker Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Family Fun: Share Photos with Photo Gallery and Windows Live SpacesCreate and Author DVDs in Windows 7Rotate a Video 90 degrees with VLC or Windows Live Movie MakerInstall Windows Live Essentials In Windows 7How to Make/Edit a movie with Windows Movie Maker in Windows Vista 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 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010

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Issue 15: Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ Oracle OpenWorld

- by rituchhibber

ORACLE FOCUS Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange@ ORACLE OpenWorld Sylvie MichouSenior DirectorPartner Marketing & Communications and Strategic Programs RESOURCES -- Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld Registration Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange SpecializationTest Fest Oracle OpenWorld Schedule Builder Oracle OpenWorld Promotional Toolkit for Partners Oracle Partner Events Oracle Partner Webcasts Oracle EMEA Partner News SUBSCRIBE FEEDBACK PREVIOUS ISSUES If you are attending our forthcoming Oracle OpenWorld 2012 conference in San Francisco from 30 September to 4 October, you will discover a new dedicated programme of keynotes and sessions tailored especially for you, our valued partners. Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld has been created to enhance the opportunities for you to learn from and network with Oracle executives and experts. The programme also provides more informal opportunities than ever throughout the week to meet up with the people who are most important to your business: customers, prospects, colleagues and the Oracle EMEA Alliances & Channels management team. Oracle remains fully focused on building the industry's most admired partner ecosystem—which today spans over 25,000 partners. This new OPN Exchange programme offers an exciting change of pace for partners throughout the conference. Now it will be possible to enjoy a fully-integrated, partner-dedicated session schedule throughout the week, as well as key social events such as the Sunday night Welcome Reception, networking lunches from Monday to Thursday at the Howard Street Tent, and a fantastic closing event on the last Thursday afternoon. In addition to the regular Oracle OpenWorld conference schedule, if you have registered for the Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld programme, you will be invited to attend a much anticipated global partner keynote presentation, plus more than 40 conference sessions aimed squarely at what's most important to you, as partners. Prominent topics for discussion will include: Oracle technologies and roadmaps and how they fit with partners' business plans; business development; regional distinctions in business practices; and much more. Each session will provide plenty of food for thought ahead of the numerous networking opportunities throughout the week, encouraging the knowledge exchange with Oracle executives, customers, prospects, and colleagues that will make this conference of even greater value for you. At Oracle we always work closely with our partners to deliver solution offerings that improve business value, simplify the IT experience and drive innovation and efficiencies for joint customers. The most important element of our new OPN Exchange is content that helps you get more from technology investments, more from your peer-to-peer connections, and more from your interactions with customers. To this end we've created some partner-specific tools which can be used by OPN members ahead of the conference itself. Crucially, a comprehensive Content Catalog already lists and organises details of every OPN Exchange session, speaker, exhibitor, demonstration and related materials. This Content Catalog can be used by all our partners to identify interesting content that you can add to your own personalised Oracle OpenWorld Schedule Builder, allowing more effective planning and pre-enrolment for vital sessions. There are numerous highlights that you will definitely want to include in those personal schedules. On Sunday morning, 30 September we will start the week with partner dedicated OPN Exchange sessions, following our Global Partner Keynote at 13:00 with Judson Althoff, SVP, Worldwide Alliances & Channels and Embedded Sales and senior executives, giving insight into Oracle's partner vision, strategy, and resources—all designed to help build and strengthen market opportunities for you. This will be followed by a number of OPN Exchange general sessions, the Oracle OpenWorld Opening Keynote with Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle and concluded with the OPN Exchange AfterDark Welcome Reception, starting at 19:30 at the Metreon. From Monday 1 to Thursday 4 October, you can attend the OPN Exchange sessions that are most relevant to your business today and over the coming year. Oracle's top product and sales leaders will be on hand to discuss Oracle's strategic direction in 40+ targeted and in-depth sessions focussing on critical success factors to develop your business. Oracle's dedication to innovation, specialization, enablement and engineering provides Oracle partners with a huge opportunity to create new services and solutions, differentiate themselves and deliver extreme value to joint customers across the globe. Oracle will even be helping over 1000 partners to earn OPN Specialization certification during the Oracle OpenWorld OPN Exchange Test Fest, which will be providing all the study materials and exams required to drive Specialization for free at the conference. You simply need to check the list of current certification tracks available, and make sure you pre-register to reserve a seat in one of the ten sessions being offered free to OPN Exchange registered attendees. And finally, let's not forget those all-important networking opportunities, which can so often provide partners with valuable long-term alliances as well as exciting new business leads. The Oracle PartnerNetwork Lounge, located at Moscone South, exhibition hall, room 100 is the place where partners can meet formally or informally with colleagues, customers, prospects, and other industry professionals. OPN Specialized partners with OPN Exchange passes can also visit the OPN Video Blogging room to record and share ideas, and at the OPN Information Station you will find consultants available to answer your questions. "For the first time ever we will have a full partner conference within OpenWorld. OPN Exchange @ OpenWorld will kick-off on the first Sunday and run the entire week. We'll have over 40 sessions throughout that time and partners will hear from our top development executives, with special sessions dedicated to partnering throughout. It's going to be a phenomenal event, and we look forward to seeing our partners there." Judson Althoff, SVP, Oracle Worldwide Alliances & Channels and Embedded Sales So if you haven't done so already, please register for Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld today or add OPN Exchange to your existing registration for just $100 through My Account. And if you have any further questions regarding partner activities at Oracle OpenWorld, please don't hesitate to contact the Oracle PartnerNetwork team at [email protected] will be on hand to share the very latest information about: Oracle's SPARC Superclusters: the latest Engineered Systems from Oracle, delivering radically improved performance, faster deployment and greatly reduced operational costs for mixed database and enterprise application consolidation Oracle's SPARC T4 servers: with the newly developed T4 processor and Oracle Solaris providing up to five times the single threaded performance and better overall system throughput for expanded application versatility Oracle Database Appliance: a new way to take advantage of the world's most popular database, Oracle Database 11g, in a single, easy-to-deploy and manage system. It's a complete package engineered to deliver simple, reliable and affordable database services to small and medium size businesses and departmental systems. All hardware and software components are supported together and offer customers unique pay-as-you-grow software licensing to quickly scale from two to 24 processor cores without incurring the costs and downtime usually associated with hardware upgrades Oracle Exalogic: the world's only integrated cloud machine, featuring server hardware and middleware software engineered together for maximum performance with minimum set-up and operational cost Oracle Exadata Database Machine: the only database machine that provides extreme performance for both data warehousing and online transaction processing (OLTP) applications, making it the ideal platform for consolidating onto grids or private clouds. It is a complete package of servers, storage, networking and software that is massively scalable, secure and redundant Oracle Sun ZFS Storage Appliances: providing enterprise-class NAS performance, price-performance, manageability and TCO by combining third-generation software with high-performance controllers, flash-based caches and disks Oracle Pillar Axiom Quality-of-Service: confidently consolidate storage for multiple applications into a single datacentre storage solution Oracle Solaris 11: delivering secure enterprise cloud deployments with the ability to run hundreds of virtual application with no overhead and co-engineered with other Oracle software products to provide the highest levels of security, manageability and performance Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: Oracle's integrated enterprise IT management product, providing the industry's only complete, integrated and business-driven enterprise cloud management solution Oracle VM 3.0: the latest release of Oracle's server virtualisation and management solution, helping to move datacentres beyond server consolidation to improve application deployment and management. Register today and ensure your place at the Extreme Performance Tour! Extreme Performance Tour events are free to attend, but places are limited. To make sure that you don't miss out, please visit Oracle's Extreme Performance Tour website, select the city that you'd be interest in attending an event in, and then click on the 'Register Now' button for that city to secure your interest. Each individual city page also contains more in-depth information about your local event, including logistics, agenda and maybe even a preview of VIP guest speakers. -- Oracle OpenWorld 2010 Whether you attended Oracle OpenWorld 2009 or not, don't forget to save the date now for Oracle OpenWorld 2010. The event will be held a little earlier next year, from 19th-23rd September, so please don't miss out. With thousands of sessions and hundreds of exhibits and demos already lined up, there's no better place to learn how to optimise your existing systems, get an inside line on upcoming technology breakthroughs, and meet with your partner peers, Oracle strategists and even the developers responsible for the products and services that help you get better results for your end customers. Register Now for Oracle OpenWorld 2010! Perhaps you are interested in learning more about Oracle OpenWorld 2010, but don't wish to register at this time? Great! Please just enter your contact information here and we will contact you at a later date. How to Exhibit at Oracle OpenWorld 2010 Sponsorship Opportunities at Oracle OpenWorld 2010 Advertising Opportunities at Oracle OpenWorld 2010 -- Back to the welcome page

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The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like)

- by The Geek

Welcome to the very first How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide, where we’ve put together a list of our absolute favorites to help you weed through all of the junk out there to pick the perfect gift for anybody. Though really, it’s just a list of the geeky stuff we want. We’ve got a whole range of items on the list, from cheaper gifts that most anybody can afford, to the really expensive stuff that we’re pretty sure nobody is giving us. Stocking Stuffers Here’s a couple of ideas for items that won’t break the bank. LED Keychain Micro-Light Magcraft 1/8-Inch Rare Earth Cube Magnets Best little LED keychain light around. If they don’t need the penknife of the above item this is the perfect gift. I give them out by the handfuls and nobody ever says anything but good things about them. I’ve got ones that are years old and still running on the same battery. Price: $8 Geeks cannot resist magnets. Jason bought this pack for his fridge because he was sick of big clunky magnets… these things are amazing. One tiny magnet, smaller than an Altoid mint, can practically hold a clipboard right to the fridge. Amazing. I spend more time playing with them on the counter than I do actually hanging stuff. Price: $10 Lots of Geeky Mugs Astronomy Powerful Green Laser Pointer There’s loads of fun, geeky mugs you can find on Amazon or anywhere else—and they are great choices for the geek who loves their coffee. You can get the Caffeine mug pictured here, or go with an Atari one, Canon Lens, or the Aperture mug based on Portal. Your choice. Price: $7 No, it’s not a light saber, but it’s nearly bright enough to be one—you can illuminate low flying clouds at night or just blind some aliens on your day off. All that for an extremely low price. Loads of fun. Price: $15 Geeky TV Shows and Books Sometimes you just want to relax and enjoy a some TV or a good book. Here’s a few choices. The IT Crowd Fourth Season Doctor Who, Complete Fifth Series Ridiculous, funny show about nerds in the IT department, loved by almost all the geeks here at HTG. Justin even makes this required watching for new hires in his office so they’ll get his jokes. You can pre-order the fourth season, or pick up seasons one, two, or three for even cheaper. Price: $13 It doesn’t get any more nerdy than Eric’s pick, the fifth all-new series of Doctor Who, where the Daleks are hatching a new master plan from the heart of war-torn London. There’s also alien vampires, humanoid reptiles, and a lot more. Price: $52 Battlestar Galactica Complete Series MAKE: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery Watch the epic fight to save the human race by finding the fabled planet Earth while being hunted by the robotic Cylons. You can grab the entire series on DVD or Blu-ray, or get the seasons individually. This isn’t your average sci-fi TV show. Price: $150 for Blu-ray. Want to learn the fundamentals of electronics in a fun, hands-on way? The Make:Electronics book helps you build the circuits and learn how it all works—as if you had any more time between all that registry hacking and loading software on your new PC. Price: $21 Geeky Gadgets for the Gadget-Loving Geek Here’s a few of the items on our gadget list, though lets be honest: geeks are going to love almost any gadget, especially shiny new ones. Klipsch Image S4i Premium Noise-Isolating Headset with 3-Button Apple Control GP2X Caanoo MAME/Console Emulator If you’re a real music geek looking for some serious quality in the headset for your iPhone or iPod, this is the pair that Alex recommends. They aren’t terribly cheap, but you can get the less expensive S3 earphones instead if you prefer. Price: $50-100 Eric says: “As an owner of an older version, I can say the GP2X is one of my favorite gadgets ever. Touted a “Retro Emulation Juggernaut,” GP2X runs Linux and may be the only open source software console available. Sounds too good to be true, but isn’t.” Price: $150 Roku XDS Streaming Player 1080p Western Digital WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player If you do a lot of streaming over Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon’s Video on Demand, Pandora, and others, the Roku box is a great choice to get your content on your TV without paying a lot of money. It’s also got Wireless-N built in, and it supports full 1080P HD. Price: $99 If you’ve got a home media collection sitting on a hard drive or a network server, the Western Digital box is probably the cheapest way to get that content on your TV, and it even supports Netflix streaming too. It’ll play loads of formats in full HD quality. Price: $99 Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 Color Mobile Scanner Doxie, the amazing scanner for documents Trevor said: “This wonderful little scanner has become absolutely essential to me. My desk used to just be a gigantic pile of papers that I didn’t need at the moment, but couldn’t throw away ‘just in case.’ Now, every few weeks, I’ll run that paper pile through this and then happily shred the originals!” Price: $300 If you don’t scan quite as often and are looking for a budget scanner you can throw into your bag, or toss into a drawer in your desk, the Doxie scanner is a great alternative that I’ve been using for a while. It’s half the price, and while it’s not as full-featured as the Fujitsu, it might be a better choice for the very casual user. Price: $150 (Expensive) Gadgets Almost Anybody Will Love If you’re not sure that one of the more geeky presents is gonna work, here’s some gadgets that just about anybody is going to love, especially if they don’t have one already. Of course, some of these are a bit on the expensive side—but it’s a wish list, right? Amazon Kindle The Kindle weighs less than a paperback book, the screen is amazing and easy on the eyes, and get ready for the kicker: the battery lasts at least a month. We aren’t kidding, either—it really lasts that long. If you don’t feel like spending money for books, you can use it to read PDFs, and if you want to get really geeky, you can hack it for custom screensavers. Price: $139 iPod Touch or iPad You can’t go wrong with either of these presents—the iPod Touch can do almost everything the iPhone can do, including games, apps, and music, and it has the same Retina display as the iPhone, HD video recording, and a front-facing camera so you can use FaceTime. Price: $229+, depending on model. The iPad is a great tablet for playing games, browsing the web, or just using on your coffee table for guests. It’s well worth buying one—but if you’re buying for yourself, keep in mind that the iPad 2 is probably coming out in 3 months. Price: $500+ MacBook Air The MacBook Air comes in 11” or 13” versions, and it’s an amazing little machine. It’s lightweight, the battery lasts nearly forever, and it resumes from sleep almost instantly. Since it uses an SSD drive instead of a hard drive, you’re barely going to notice any speed problems for general use. So if you’ve got a lot of money to blow, this is a killer gift. Price: $999 and up. Stuck with No Idea for a Present? Gift Cards! Yeah, you’re not going to win any “thoughtful present” awards with these, but you might just give somebody what they really want—the new Angry Birds HD for their iPad, Cut the Rope, or anything else they want. ITunes Gift Card Amazon.com Gift Card Somebody in your circle getting a new iPod, iPhone, or iPad? You can get them an iTunes gift card, which they can use to buy music, games or apps. Yep, this way you can gift them a copy of Angry Birds if they don’t already have it. Or even Cut the Rope. No clue what to get somebody on your list? Amazon gift cards let them buy pretty much anything they want, from organic weirdberries to big screen TVs. Yeah, it’s not as thoughtful as getting them a nice present, but look at the bright side: maybe they’ll get you an Amazon gift card and it’ll balance out. That’s the highlights from our lists—got anything else to add? Share your geeky gift ideas in the comments. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Our Favorite Tech: What We’re Thankful For at How-To Geek The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 7: Design and Typography Happy Snow Bears Theme for Chrome and Iron [Holiday] Download Full Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun Game for Free Scorched Cometary Planet Wallpaper Quick Fix: Add the RSS Button Back to the Firefox Awesome Bar Dropbox Desktop Client 1.0.0 RC for Windows, Linux, and Mac Released Hang in There Scrat! – Ice Age Wallpaper

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, March 15, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, March 15, 2010New ProjectsAT Accounts: AT Accounts helps developers to intergrate accounting functionality in their applications. It has both the WPF userinterface and SilverlightChild page list(for dnn4/5): A free module which can display sub pages list for a selected tab. It is template based and support options like Recursive/Child tab prefix/link...dashCommerce: dashCommerce is the leading ASP.NET e-commerce platform.Fire Utilities: My Development Utiltites and base classes: New Zealand Bank Account ValidatorFlyCatch (Bugtracking System): A simple webbased Bugtracking System.fracback: Fractal feedback concepts, based on video feedbackftc3650: code for ftc 3650Google AJAX Search Services for jQuery: This plug-in encapsulates part of the Google AJAX Search API to streamline the process of Google Search integration.Little Black Book DB: This is the Database for the following Projects: SQL Azure PHP Connection SQL Azure Ruby Connection SQL Azure Python Connection SQL Azure .NE...MediaCommMVC: MediaCommMVC is a community platform focusing on photos, videos and discussions. It's based on ASP.NET MVC and uses (fluent) nhibernate, jquery an...Miracle OS: The Miracle OS is an OS from Fox. We work on it, but it isn't ready. Do you want help us? Please send a mail to victor@fox.fi.stMultiwfn: (1)Plotting various graph(filled color/contour/relief map...) (2)Generate Cube file (3)Manipulate & analyze wavefunction Supportting lots of proper...MySpace DataRelay: Data Relay is the foundation of MySpace's middle tier. At its heart, it is a messaging system for relaying information both between clients and ser...NinjaCMS: Ninja CMS is an asp.net based content management system which provides a designer friendly, developer friendly interface to work with. It's flexibl...open gaze and mouse analyzer: Ogama allows recording and analyzing eye- and mouse-tracking data from slideshow eyetracking experiments in parallel. It´s developed in C#.NET and ...Özkasoft.Net | E-Commerce: Özkasoft's E-Commerce ProjectProfiCV: Profi CVpyTarget: Implement a powerful iscsi target in python, and easily use under most popular systems. It also includes the following features: multi-target, mult...SharePoint Platform Extensions: SharePoint Platform Extensions by Espora. Sorting Algorithm Visualization: Sorting Algorithm Visualization Displays Bead Sort, Binary Tree Sort, Bubble Sort, Bucket Sort, Cocktail Sort, Counting Sort, Gnome Sort, In Place ...Specify: A framework for creating executable specifications in .NET. Spell Corrector: A spell corrector that uses Bayes algorithm and BK (Burkhard-Keller) tree.SQL Azure Ruby Connection: This is a demo to show how to connect to SQL Azure with Ruby on Rails.uManage - AD Self-Service Portal: uManage is an Active Directory Self-Service Portal as well as Help Desk web application designed for use on intranet systems. It allows users to u...Winforms Rounded Group Box Control: Rounded Group Box - A Grouping control with Rounded Corners, Gradients, and Drop ShadowWizard Engine: Host application agnostic wizard engine platform, that allows you to fluently define complex conditional flows and provides means for execution of ...WS-Transfer based File Upload: WS-Transer based upload of large files in multiple partsXAMLStylePad: XAMLStylePad - is a simple in use styles and templates XAML-editor. It designed for comfortable coding in XAML with real-time preview result on aut...Your Twitt Engine: Ovo je aplikacija za sve ljude koji su na svom radnom mjestu pod prismotrom poslodavca ili sefa, koji kontroliraju njihov monitor. Tako uz ovu apl...New ReleasesAmiBroker Plug-ins with C#. A non official AmiBroker Plug-in SDK: AniBroker Plug-in SDK v0.0.5: Removed dependency on .NET 4.0, now it works fine with .NET 2.0BeerMath.net: 0.1: Version 0.1Initial set of calculations supported: IBUs Color ABV/ABWChild page list(for dnn4/5): Child Page List 2.6: Source code is also include in module package.dashCommerce: dashCommerce Releases: You can download both Source and WebReady packages at http://www.dashcommerce.org. If you wish to submit patches, then use the Source Code tab her...ExcelDna: ExcelDna Version 0.23: ExcelDna Version 0.23 2010/03/14 - Packing and other features This release adds a number of features to ExcelDna: Add ExplicitExports attribute to ...Family Tree Analyzer: Version 1.0.7.1: Version 1.0.7.0 Update Census form to show family totals Fix England and Wales Lost Cousins reports to be England OR Wales Problems with Gedcom in...Foursquare BlogEngine Widget: foursquare widget for BlogEngine.NET Version 0.2: To see the changes which have been made, visit http://philippkueng.ch/post/Foursquare-BlogEngineNET-Widget-Version-02.aspx For installation instruc...GLB Virtual Player Builder: 0.4.0 Official Archetypes Release: Updated for new archetypes. The builder still includes the old player formats, and you can still import your old players' builds. Please PM me an...Home Access Plus+: v3.1.4.0: Version 3.1.3.1 Release Change Log: Added Breadcrumbs to My Computer File Changes: ~/bin/CHS Extranet.dll ~/bin/CHS Extranet.pdb ~/images/arro...Little Black Book DB: Little Black Book R1: This is the first release of the Little black book presentation I presented at Confoo. I decided to package the Database along with the Windows Az...mite.net - .NET API for mite: Version 1.2.1: Added Support for budget type Modified TimerMapper to return timers Fixed Encoding issue in xml conversionMultiwfn: multiwfn1.0: multiwfn1.0Multiwfn: multiwfn1.0_source: multiwfn1.0_sourceMultiwfn: multiwfn1.1: multiwfn1.1Multiwfn: multiwfn1.1_source: multiwfn1.1_sourceMultiwfn: multiwfn1.2: 1.2 2010-FEB-9 *加入了对10f型轨道的支持。 *新支持非限制性Post-HF波函数用以计算自旋密度。 *新增加直接读入高斯03/09的fch文件的支持，可以观看NBO轨道，详见readme实例4.10。 *绘制平面图时允许通过输入三个点坐标定义平面，允许自定义平面的原点与平移向...Multiwfn: multiwfn1.2_source: Include all the file that needed by compilation in CVF6.5PowerShell Community Extensions: 2.0 Beta 2: Release NotesThis is a pretty close to final release. We have eliminated all of the names that ran afound of the module loading mechanism which me...pyTarget: pyTarget.binary-for-windows-x86.rar: pyTarget.binary-for-windows-x86.rarpyTarget: pyTarget.src.tar.bz2: pyTarget.src.tar.bz2RedBulb for XNA Framework: RedBulbConsole (Console, Menu and TrackHUD Sample): http://bayimg.com/image/jalhmaacd.jpgScrum Sprint Monitor: 1.0.0.45262 (.NET 4.0 RC): Tested against TFS 2010 RC. For the .NET 3.5 SP1 platform, use the .NET 3.5 SP1 download. What is new in this release? Major performance increase ...sELedit: sELedit v1.1: Removed: Clone and Delete Button Added: Context Menu to Item List Added: Clone and Delete button to Context Menu Added: Export / Import Item ...Sorting Algorithm Visualization: Beta 1: Sorting Algorithm VisualizationSpecify: Version 1.0: Version 1.0Spell Corrector: Spell Corrector 0.1: A basic version that supports basic functionality.Spell Corrector: Spell Corrector 0.1 Source Code: Source code of version 0.1Spiral Architecture Driven Development (SADD): SADD v.0.9: Pre-final release with the NEW materials now all in English ! The Final release is coming soon. After guest column for SADD publication in MS Ar...Spiral Architecture Driven Development (SADD) for Russian: SADD v.0.9: Pre-final release with the NEW materials now all in English ! The Final release is coming soon. After guest column for SADD publication in MS Ar...SQL Azure Ruby Connection: Little Black Book Ruby R1: This is the Ruby Demo that I demostrated at Confoo. Special Thanks to Tony Thompson for putting this demo together. To check out Tony's Portfolio ...The Scrum Factory: The Scrum Factory Server - V1a: This is the newest version of the server. Some minor bugs from version v1 were fixed, and some slighted changed were made some database views.twNowplaying: twNowplaying 1.0.0.4: Please note that the user has to press the Twitter logo to log in the first time the application is started.uManage - AD Self-Service Portal: uManage - v1.0 (.NET 4.0 RC): Initial Release of uManage. NOTE: Designed for ASP.NET and .NET 4.0 RC ONLY! This is the initial release of uManage and covers the first phase of ...Virtu: Virtu 0.8: Source Requirements.NET Framework 3.5 with Service Pack 1 Visual Studio 2008 with Service Pack 1, or Visual C# 2008 Express Edition with Service Pa...Visual Studio DSite: Speech Synthesizer (Text to Speech) in Visual C++: A very simple text to speech program written in visual c 2008.White Tiger: 0.0.4.0: *now you can disable the file security checks *winforms aplications created to manage tablesWinforms Rounded Group Box Control: Release 1.0: To use this control simply add the class to your project and compile it. It will then show up in the projects components section in the toolbox. ...WS-Transfer based File Upload: 0.5: Implements the binary file transfer mechanism onlyXsltDb - DotNetNuke XSLT module: 01.00.89: Super modules configuration names. 16767 - Fixed more bug fixes...Yakiimo3D: DirectX11 Rheinhard Tonemapping Source and Binary: DirectX11 Rheinhard tonemapping source and binary.Your Twitt Engine: test: Slobodno probajte sa vasim twitter korisničkim računomMost Popular ProjectsMetaSharpWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETLiveUpload to FacebookMost Active ProjectsLINQ to TwitterRawrN2 CMSBlogEngine.NETpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibrarySharePoint Team-MailerjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightFarseer Physics EngineCalcium: A modular application toolset leveraging Prism

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WPF ListView as a DataGrid – Part 2

- by psheriff

In my last blog post I showed you how to create GridViewColumn objects on the fly from the meta-data in a DataTable. By doing this you can create columns for a ListView at runtime instead of having to pre-define each ListView for each different DataTable. Well, many of us use collections of our classes and it would be nice to be able to do the same thing for our collection classes as well. This blog post will show you one approach for using collection classes as the source of the data for your ListView. Figure 1: A List of Data using a ListView Load Property NamesYou could use reflection to gather the property names in your class, however there are two things wrong with this approach. First, reflection is too slow, and second you may not want to display all your properties from your class in the ListView. Instead of reflection you could just create your own custom collection class of PropertyHeader objects. Each PropertyHeader object will contain a property name and a header text value at a minimum. You could add a width property if you wanted as well. All you need to do is to create a collection of property header objects where each object represents one column in your ListView. Below is a simple example: PropertyHeaders coll = new PropertyHeaders(); coll.Add(new PropertyHeader("ProductId", "Product ID"));coll.Add(new PropertyHeader("ProductName", "Product Name"));coll.Add(new PropertyHeader("Price", "Price")); Once you have this collection created, you could pass this collection to a method that would create the GridViewColumn objects based on the information in this collection. Below is the full code for the PropertyHeader class. Besides the PropertyName and Header properties, there is a constructor that will allow you to set both properties when the object is created. C#public class PropertyHeader{ public PropertyHeader() { } public PropertyHeader(string propertyName, string headerText) { PropertyName = propertyName; HeaderText = headerText; } public string PropertyName { get; set; } public string HeaderText { get; set; }} VB.NETPublic Class PropertyHeader Public Sub New() End Sub Public Sub New(ByVal propName As String, ByVal header As String) PropertyName = propName HeaderText = header End Sub Private mPropertyName As String Private mHeaderText As String Public Property PropertyName() As String Get Return mPropertyName End Get Set(ByVal value As String) mPropertyName = value End Set End Property Public Property HeaderText() As String Get Return mHeaderText End Get Set(ByVal value As String) mHeaderText = value End Set End PropertyEnd Class You can use a Generic List class to create a collection of PropertyHeader objects as shown in the following code. C#public class PropertyHeaders : List<PropertyHeader>{} VB.NETPublic Class PropertyHeaders Inherits List(Of PropertyHeader)End Class Create Property Header Objects You need to create a method somewhere that will create and return a collection of PropertyHeader objects that will represent the columns you wish to add to your ListView prior to binding your collection class to that ListView. Below is a sample method called GetProperties that builds a list of PropertyHeader objects with properties and headers for a Product object. C#public PropertyHeaders GetProperties(){ PropertyHeaders coll = new PropertyHeaders(); coll.Add(new PropertyHeader("ProductId", "Product ID")); coll.Add(new PropertyHeader("ProductName", "Product Name")); coll.Add(new PropertyHeader("Price", "Price")); return coll;} VB.NETPublic Function GetProperties() As PropertyHeaders Dim coll As New PropertyHeaders() coll.Add(New PropertyHeader("ProductId", "Product ID")) coll.Add(New PropertyHeader("ProductName", "Product Name")) coll.Add(New PropertyHeader("Price", "Price")) Return collEnd Function WPFListViewCommon Class Now that you have a collection of PropertyHeader objects you need a method that will create a GridView and a collection of GridViewColumn objects based on this PropertyHeader collection. Below is a static/Shared method that you might put into a class called WPFListViewCommon. C#public static GridView CreateGridViewColumns( PropertyHeaders properties){ GridView gv; GridViewColumn gvc; // Create the GridView gv = new GridView(); gv.AllowsColumnReorder = true; // Create the GridView Columns foreach (PropertyHeader item in properties) { gvc = new GridViewColumn(); gvc.DisplayMemberBinding = new Binding(item.PropertyName); gvc.Header = item.HeaderText; gvc.Width = Double.NaN; gv.Columns.Add(gvc); } return gv;} VB.NETPublic Shared Function CreateGridViewColumns( _ ByVal properties As PropertyHeaders) As GridView Dim gv As GridView Dim gvc As GridViewColumn ' Create the GridView gv = New GridView() gv.AllowsColumnReorder = True ' Create the GridView Columns For Each item As PropertyHeader In properties gvc = New GridViewColumn() gvc.DisplayMemberBinding = New Binding(item.PropertyName) gvc.Header = item.HeaderText gvc.Width = [Double].NaN gv.Columns.Add(gvc) Next Return gvEnd Function Build the Product Screen To build the window shown in Figure 1, you might write code like the following: C#private void CollectionSample(){ Product prod = new Product(); // Setup the GridView Columns lstData.View = WPFListViewCommon.CreateGridViewColumns( prod.GetProperties()); lstData.DataContext = prod.GetProducts();} VB.NETPrivate Sub CollectionSample() Dim prod As New Product() ' Setup the GridView Columns lstData.View = WPFListViewCommon.CreateGridViewColumns( _ prod.GetProperties()) lstData.DataContext = prod.GetProducts()End Sub The Product class contains a method called GetProperties that returns a PropertyHeaders collection. You pass this collection to the WPFListViewCommon’s CreateGridViewColumns method and it will create a GridView for the ListView. When you then feed the DataContext property of the ListView the Product collection the appropriate columns have already been created and data bound. Summary In this blog you learned how to create a ListView that acts like a DataGrid using a collection class. While it does take a little code to do this, it is an alternative to creating each GridViewColumn in XAML. This gives you a lot of flexibility. You could even read in the property names and header text from an XML file for a truly configurable ListView. NOTE: You can download the complete sample code (in both VB and C#) at my website. http://www.pdsa.com/downloads. Choose Tips & Tricks, then "WPF ListView as a DataGrid – Part 2" from the drop-down. Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for a free eBook on "Fundamentals of N-Tier".

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Transactional Messaging in the Windows Azure Service Bus

- by Alan Smith

Introduction I’m currently working on broadening the content in the Windows Azure Service Bus Developer Guide. One of the features I have been looking at over the past week is the support for transactional messaging. When using the direct programming model and the WCF interface some, but not all, messaging operations can participate in transactions. This allows developers to improve the reliability of messaging systems. There are some limitations in the transactional model, transactions can only include one top level messaging entity (such as a queue or topic, subscriptions are no top level entities), and transactions cannot include other systems, such as databases. As the transaction model is currently not well documented I have had to figure out how things work through experimentation, with some help from the development team to confirm any questions I had. Hopefully I’ve got the content mostly correct, I will update the content in the e-book if I find any errors or improvements that can be made (any feedback would be very welcome). I’ve not had a chance to look into the code for transactions and asynchronous operations, maybe that would make a nice challenge lab for my Windows Azure Service Bus course. Transactional Messaging Messaging entities in the Windows Azure Service Bus provide support for participation in transactions. This allows developers to perform several messaging operations within a transactional scope, and ensure that all the actions are committed or, if there is a failure, none of the actions are committed. There are a number of scenarios where the use of transactions can increase the reliability of messaging systems. Using TransactionScope In .NET the TransactionScope class can be used to perform a series of actions in a transaction. The using declaration is typically used de define the scope of the transaction. Any transactional operations that are contained within the scope can be committed by calling the Complete method. If the Complete method is not called, any transactional methods in the scope will not commit. // Create a transactional scope. using (TransactionScope scope = new TransactionScope()) { // Do something. // Do something else. // Commit the transaction. scope.Complete(); } In order for methods to participate in the transaction, they must provide support for transactional operations. Database and message queue operations typically provide support for transactions. Transactions in Brokered Messaging Transaction support in Service Bus Brokered Messaging allows message operations to be performed within a transactional scope; however there are some limitations around what operations can be performed within the transaction. In the current release, only one top level messaging entity, such as a queue or topic can participate in a transaction, and the transaction cannot include any other transaction resource managers, making transactions spanning a messaging entity and a database not possible. When sending messages, the send operations can participate in a transaction allowing multiple messages to be sent within a transactional scope. This allows for “all or nothing” delivery of a series of messages to a single queue or topic. When receiving messages, messages that are received in the peek-lock receive mode can be completed, deadlettered or deferred within a transactional scope. In the current release the Abandon method will not participate in a transaction. The same restrictions of only one top level messaging entity applies here, so the Complete method can be called transitionally on messages received from the same queue, or messages received from one or more subscriptions in the same topic. Sending Multiple Messages in a Transaction A transactional scope can be used to send multiple messages to a queue or topic. This will ensure that all the messages will be enqueued or, if the transaction fails to commit, no messages will be enqueued. An example of the code used to send 10 messages to a queue as a single transaction from a console application is shown below. QueueClient queueClient = messagingFactory.CreateQueueClient(Queue1); Console.Write("Sending"); // Create a transaction scope. using (TransactionScope scope = new TransactionScope()) { for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { // Send a message BrokeredMessage msg = new BrokeredMessage("Message: " + i); queueClient.Send(msg); Console.Write("."); } Console.WriteLine("Done!"); Console.WriteLine(); // Should we commit the transaction? Console.WriteLine("Commit send 10 messages? (yes or no)"); string reply = Console.ReadLine(); if (reply.ToLower().Equals("yes")) { // Commit the transaction. scope.Complete(); } } Console.WriteLine(); messagingFactory.Close(); The transaction scope is used to wrap the sending of 10 messages. Once the messages have been sent the user has the option to either commit the transaction or abandon the transaction. If the user enters “yes”, the Complete method is called on the scope, which will commit the transaction and result in the messages being enqueued. If the user enters anything other than “yes”, the transaction will not commit, and the messages will not be enqueued. Receiving Multiple Messages in a Transaction The receiving of multiple messages is another scenario where the use of transactions can improve reliability. When receiving a group of messages that are related together, maybe in the same message session, it is possible to receive the messages in the peek-lock receive mode, and then complete, defer, or deadletter the messages in one transaction. (In the current version of Service Bus, abandon is not transactional.) The following code shows how this can be achieved. using (TransactionScope scope = new TransactionScope()) { while (true) { // Receive a message. BrokeredMessage msg = q1Client.Receive(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1)); if (msg != null) { // Wrote message body and complete message. string text = msg.GetBody<string>(); Console.WriteLine("Received: " + text); msg.Complete(); } else { break; } } Console.WriteLine(); // Should we commit? Console.WriteLine("Commit receive? (yes or no)"); string reply = Console.ReadLine(); if (reply.ToLower().Equals("yes")) { // Commit the transaction. scope.Complete(); } Console.WriteLine(); } Note that if there are a large number of messages to be received, there will be a chance that the transaction may time out before it can be committed. It is possible to specify a longer timeout when the transaction is created, but It may be better to receive and commit smaller amounts of messages within the transaction. It is also possible to complete, defer, or deadletter messages received from more than one subscription, as long as all the subscriptions are contained in the same topic. As subscriptions are not top level messaging entities this scenarios will work. The following code shows how this can be achieved. try { using (TransactionScope scope = new TransactionScope()) { // Receive one message from each subscription. BrokeredMessage msg1 = subscriptionClient1.Receive(); BrokeredMessage msg2 = subscriptionClient2.Receive(); // Complete the message receives. msg1.Complete(); msg2.Complete(); Console.WriteLine("Msg1: " + msg1.GetBody<string>()); Console.WriteLine("Msg2: " + msg2.GetBody<string>()); // Commit the transaction. scope.Complete(); } } catch (Exception ex) { Console.WriteLine(ex.Message); } Unsupported Scenarios The restriction of only one top level messaging entity being able to participate in a transaction makes some useful scenarios unsupported. As the Windows Azure Service Bus is under continuous development and new releases are expected to be frequent it is possible that this restriction may not be present in future releases. The first is the scenario where messages are to be routed to two different systems. The following code attempts to do this. try { // Create a transaction scope. using (TransactionScope scope = new TransactionScope()) { BrokeredMessage msg1 = new BrokeredMessage("Message1"); BrokeredMessage msg2 = new BrokeredMessage("Message2"); // Send a message to Queue1 Console.WriteLine("Sending Message1"); queue1Client.Send(msg1); // Send a message to Queue2 Console.WriteLine("Sending Message2"); queue2Client.Send(msg2); // Commit the transaction. Console.WriteLine("Committing transaction..."); scope.Complete(); } } catch (Exception ex) { Console.WriteLine(ex.Message); } The results of running the code are shown below. When attempting to send a message to the second queue the following exception is thrown: No active Transaction was found for ID '35ad2495-ee8a-4956-bbad-eb4fedf4a96e:1'. The Transaction may have timed out or attempted to span multiple top-level entities such as Queue or Topic. The server Transaction timeout is: 00:01:00..TrackingId:947b8c4b-7754-4044-b91b-4a959c3f9192_3_3,TimeStamp:3/29/2012 7:47:32 AM. Another scenario where transactional support could be useful is when forwarding messages from one queue to another queue. This would also involve more than one top level messaging entity, and is therefore not supported. Another scenario that developers may wish to implement is performing transactions across messaging entities and other transactional systems, such as an on-premise database. In the current release this is not supported. Workarounds for Unsupported Scenarios There are some techniques that developers can use to work around the one top level entity limitation of transactions. When sending two messages to two systems, topics and subscriptions can be used. If the same message is to be sent to two destinations then the subscriptions would have the default subscriptions, and the client would only send one message. If two different messages are to be sent, then filters on the subscriptions can route the messages to the appropriate destination. The client can then send the two messages to the topic in the same transaction. In scenarios where a message needs to be received and then forwarded to another system within the same transaction topics and subscriptions can also be used. A message can be received from a subscription, and then sent to a topic within the same transaction. As a topic is a top level messaging entity, and a subscription is not, this scenario will work.

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Data Profiling without SSIS

Strangely enough for a predominantly SSIS blog, this post is all about how to perform data profiling without using SSIS. Whilst the Data Profiling Task is a worthy addition, there are a couple of limitations I’ve encountered of late. The first is that it requires SQL Server 2008, and not everyone is there yet. The second is that it can only target SQL Server 2005 and above. What about older systems, which are the ones that we probably need to investigate the most, or other vendor databases such as Oracle? With these limitations in mind I did some searching to find a quick and easy alternative to help me perform some data profiling for a project I was working on recently. I only had SQL Server 2005 available, and anyway most of my target source systems were Oracle, and of course I had short timescales. I looked at several options. Some never got beyond the download stage, they failed to install or just did not run, and others provided less than I could have produced myself by spending 2 minutes writing some basic SQL queries. In the end I settled on an open source product called DataCleaner. To quote from their website: DataCleaner is an Open Source application for profiling, validating and comparing data. These activities help you administer and monitor your data quality in order to ensure that your data is useful and applicable to your business situation. DataCleaner is the free alternative to software for master data management (MDM) methodologies, data warehousing (DW) projects, statistical research, preparation for extract-transform-load (ETL) activities and more. DataCleaner is developed in Java and licensed under LGPL. As quoted above it claims to support profiling, validating and comparing data, but I didn’t really get past the profiling functions, so won’t comment on the other two. The profiling whilst not prefect certainly saved some time compared to the limited alternatives. The ability to profile heterogeneous data sources is a big advantage over the SSIS option, and I found it overall quite easy to use and performance was good. I could see it struggling at times, but actually for what it does I was impressed. It had some data type niggles with Oracle, and some metrics seem a little strange, although thankfully they were easy to augment with some SQL queries to ensure a consistent picture. The report export options didn’t do it for me, but copy and paste with a bit of Excel magic was sufficient. One initial point for me personally is that I have had limited exposure to things of the Java persuasion and whilst I normally get by fine, sometimes the simplest things can throw me. For example installing a JDBC driver, why do I have to copy files to make it all work, has nobody ever heard of an MSI? In case there are other people out there like me who have become totally indoctrinated with the Microsoft software paradigm, I’ve written a quick start guide that details every step required. Steps 1- 5 are the key ones, the rest is really an excuse for some screenshots to show you the tool. Quick Start Guide Step 1 - Download Data Cleaner. The Microsoft Windows zipped exe option, and I chose the latest stable build, currently DataCleaner 1.5.3 (final). Extract the files to a suitable location. Step 2 - Download Java. If you try and run datacleaner.exe without Java it will warn you, and then open your default browser and take you to the Java download site. Follow the installation instructions from there, normally just click Download Java a couple of times and you’re done. Step 3 - Download Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver. You may have SQL Server installed, but you won’t have a JDBC driver. Version 3.0 is the latest as of April 2010. There is no real installer, we are in the Java world here, but run the exe you downloaded to extract the files. The default Unzip to folder is not much help, so try a fully qualified path such as C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver 3.0\ to ensure you can find the files afterwards. Step 4 - If you wish to use Windows Authentication to connect to your SQL Server then first we need to copy a file so that Data Cleaner can find it. Browse to the JDBC extract location from Step 3 and drill down to the file sqljdbc_auth.dll. You will have to choose the correct directory for your processor architecture. e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver 3.0\sqljdbc_3.0\enu\auth\x86\sqljdbc_auth.dll. Now copy this file to the Data Cleaner extract folder you chose in Step 1. An alternative method is to edit datacleaner.cmd in the data cleaner extract folder as detailed in this data cleaner wiki topic, but I find copying the file simpler. Step 5 – Now lets run Data Cleaner, just run datacleaner.exe from the extract folder you chose in Step 1. Step 6 – Complete or skip the registration screen, and ignore the task window for now. In the main window click settings. Step 7 – In the Settings dialog, select the Database drivers tab, then click Register database driver and select the Local JAR file option. Step 8 – Browse to the JDBC driver extract location from Step 3 and drill down to select sqljdbc4.jar. e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver 3.0\sqljdbc_3.0\enu\sqljdbc4.jar Step 9 – Select the Database driver class as com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver, and then click the Test and Save database driver button. Step 10 - You should be back at the Settings dialog with a the list of drivers that includes SQL Server. Just click Save Settings to persist all your hard work. Step 11 – Now we can start to profile some data. In the main Data Cleaner window click New Task, and then Profile from the task window. Step 12 – In the Profile window click Open Database Step 13 – Now choose the SQL Server connection string option. Selecting a connection string gives us a template like jdbc:sqlserver://<hostname>:1433;databaseName=<database>, but obviously it requires some details to be entered for example jdbc:sqlserver://localhost:1433;databaseName=SQLBits. This will connect to the database called SQLBits on my local machine. The port may also have to be changed if using such as when you have a multiple instances of SQL Server running. If using SQL Server Authentication enter a username and password as required and then click Connect to database. You can use Window Authentication, just add integratedSecurity=true to the end of your connection string. e.g jdbc:sqlserver://localhost:1433;databaseName=SQLBits;integratedSecurity=true. If you didn’t complete Step 4 above you will need to do so now and restart Data Cleaner before it will work. Manually setting the connection string is fine, but creating a named connection makes more sense if you will be spending any length of time profiling a specific database. As highlighted in the left-hand screen-shot, at the bottom of the dialog it includes partial instructions on how to create named connections. In the folder shown C:\Users\<Username>\.datacleaner\1.5.3, open the datacleaner-config.xml file in your editor of choice add your own details. You’ll see a sample connection in the file already, just add yours following the same pattern. e.g.  <bean class="dk.eobjects.datacleaner.gui.model.NamedConnection"> <property name="name" value="SQLBits Local Connection" /> <property name="driverClass" value="com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver" /> <property name="connectionString" value="jdbc:sqlserver://localhost:1433;databaseName=SQLBits;integratedSecurity=true" /> <property name="tableTypes"> <list> <value>TABLE</value> <value>VIEW</value> </list> </property> </bean> Step 14 – Once back at the Profile window, you should now see your schemas, tables and/or views listed down the left hand side. Browse this tree and double-click a table to select it for profiling. You can then click Add profile, and choose some profiling options, before finally clicking Run profiling. You can see below a sample output for three of the most common profiles, click the image for full size. I hope this has given you a taster for DataCleaner, and should help you get up and running pretty quickly.

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SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Jonathan Kehayias – Wait Type – Day 16 of 28

- by pinaldave

Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter) is a MCITP Database Administrator and Developer, who got started in SQL Server in 2004 as a database developer and report writer in the natural gas industry. After spending two and a half years working in TSQL, in late 2006, he transitioned to the role of SQL Database Administrator. His primary passion is performance tuning, where he frequently rewrites queries for better performance and performs in depth analysis of index implementation and usage. Jonathan blogs regularly on SQLBlog, and was a coauthor of Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting. On a personal note, I think Jonathan is extremely positive person. In every conversation with him I have found that he is always eager to help and encourage. Every time he finds something needs to be approved, he has contacted me without hesitation and guided me to improve, change and learn. During all the time, he has not lost his focus to help larger community. I am honored that he has accepted to provide his views on complex subject of Wait Types and Queues. Currently I am reading his series on Extended Events. Here is the guest blog post by Jonathan: SQL Server troubleshooting is all about correlating related pieces of information together to indentify where exactly the root cause of a problem lies. In my daily work as a DBA, I generally get phone calls like, “So and so application is slow, what’s wrong with the SQL Server.” One of the funny things about the letters DBA is that they go so well with Default Blame Acceptor, and I really wish that I knew exactly who the first person was that pointed that out to me, because it really fits at times. A lot of times when I get this call, the problem isn’t related to SQL Server at all, but every now and then in my initial quick checks, something pops up that makes me start looking at things further. The SQL Server is slow, we see a number of tasks waiting on ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION, IO_COMPLETION, or PAGEIOLATCH_* waits in sys.dm_exec_requests and sys.dm_exec_waiting_tasks. These are also some of the highest wait types in sys.dm_os_wait_stats for the server, so it would appear that we have a disk I/O bottleneck on the machine. A quick check of sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats() and tempdb shows a high write stall rate, while our user databases show high read stall rates on the data files. A quick check of some performance counters and Page Life Expectancy on the server is bouncing up and down in the 50-150 range, the Free Page counter consistently hits zero, and the Free List Stalls/sec counter keeps jumping over 10, but Buffer Cache Hit Ratio is 98-99%. Where exactly is the problem? In this case, which happens to be based on a real scenario I faced a few years back, the problem may not be a disk bottleneck at all; it may very well be a memory pressure issue on the server. A quick check of the system spec’s and it is a dual duo core server with 8GB RAM running SQL Server 2005 SP1 x64 on Windows Server 2003 R2 x64. Max Server memory is configured at 6GB and we think that this should be enough to handle the workload; or is it? This is a unique scenario because there are a couple of things happening inside of this system, and they all relate to what the root cause of the performance problem is on the system. If we were to query sys.dm_exec_query_stats for the TOP 10 queries, by max_physical_reads, max_logical_reads, and max_worker_time, we may be able to find some queries that were using excessive I/O and possibly CPU against the system in their worst single execution. We can also CROSS APPLY to sys.dm_exec_sql_text() and see the statement text, and also CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan() to get the execution plan stored in cache. Ok, quick check, the plans are pretty big, I see some large index seeks, that estimate 2.8GB of data movement between operators, but everything looks like it is optimized the best it can be. Nothing really stands out in the code, and the indexing looks correct, and I should have enough memory to handle this in cache, so it must be a disk I/O problem right? Not exactly! If we were to look at how much memory the plan cache is taking by querying sys.dm_os_memory_clerks for the CACHESTORE_SQLCP and CACHESTORE_OBJCP clerks we might be surprised at what we find. In SQL Server 2005 RTM and SP1, the plan cache was allowed to take up to 75% of the memory under 8GB. I’ll give you a second to go back and read that again. Yes, you read it correctly, it says 75% of the memory under 8GB, but you don’t have to take my word for it, you can validate this by reading Changes in Caching Behavior between SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 RTM and SQL Server 2005 SP2. In this scenario the application uses an entirely adhoc workload against SQL Server and this leads to plan cache bloat, and up to 4.5GB of our 6GB of memory for SQL can be consumed by the plan cache in SQL Server 2005 SP1. This in turn reduces the size of the buffer cache to just 1.5GB, causing our 2.8GB of data movement in this expensive plan to cause complete flushing of the buffer cache, not just once initially, but then another time during the queries execution, resulting in excessive physical I/O from disk. Keep in mind that this is not the only query executing at the time this occurs. Remember the output of sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats() showed high read stalls on the data files for our user databases versus higher write stalls for tempdb? The memory pressure is also forcing heavier use of tempdb to handle sorting and hashing in the environment as well. The real clue here is the Memory counters for the instance; Page Life Expectancy, Free List Pages, and Free List Stalls/sec. The fact that Page Life Expectancy is fluctuating between 50 and 150 constantly is a sign that the buffer cache is experiencing constant churn of data, once every minute to two and a half minutes. If you add to the Page Life Expectancy counter, the consistent bottoming out of Free List Pages along with Free List Stalls/sec consistently spiking over 10, and you have the perfect memory pressure scenario. All of sudden it may not be that our disk subsystem is the problem, but is instead an innocent bystander and victim. Side Note: The Page Life Expectancy counter dropping briefly and then returning to normal operating values intermittently is not necessarily a sign that the server is under memory pressure. The Books Online and a number of other references will tell you that this counter should remain on average above 300 which is the time in seconds a page will remain in cache before being flushed or aged out. This number, which equates to just five minutes, is incredibly low for modern systems and most published documents pre-date the predominance of 64 bit computing and easy availability to larger amounts of memory in SQL Servers. As food for thought, consider that my personal laptop has more memory in it than most SQL Servers did at the time those numbers were posted. I would argue that today, a system churning the buffer cache every five minutes is in need of some serious tuning or a hardware upgrade. Back to our problem and its investigation: There are two things really wrong with this server; first the plan cache is excessively consuming memory and bloated in size and we need to look at that and second we need to evaluate upgrading the memory to accommodate the workload being performed. In the case of the server I was working on there were a lot of single use plans found in sys.dm_exec_cached_plans (where usecounts=1). Single use plans waste space in the plan cache, especially when they are adhoc plans for statements that had concatenated filter criteria that is not likely to reoccur with any frequency. SQL Server 2005 doesn’t natively have a way to evict a single plan from cache like SQL Server 2008 does, but MVP Kalen Delaney, showed a hack to evict a single plan by creating a plan guide for the statement and then dropping that plan guide in her blog post Geek City: Clearing a Single Plan from Cache. We could put that hack in place in a job to automate cleaning out all the single use plans periodically, minimizing the size of the plan cache, but a better solution would be to fix the application so that it uses proper parameterized calls to the database. You didn’t write the app, and you can’t change its design? Ok, well you could try to force parameterization to occur by creating and keeping plan guides in place, or we can try forcing parameterization at the database level by using ALTER DATABASE <dbname> SET PARAMETERIZATION FORCED and that might help. If neither of these help, we could periodically dump the plan cache for that database, as discussed as being a problem in Kalen’s blog post referenced above; not an ideal scenario. The other option is to increase the memory on the server to 16GB or 32GB, if the hardware allows it, which will increase the size of the plan cache as well as the buffer cache. In SQL Server 2005 SP1, on a system with 16GB of memory, if we set max server memory to 14GB the plan cache could use at most 9GB [(8GB*.75)+(6GB*.5)=(6+3)=9GB], leaving 5GB for the buffer cache. If we went to 32GB of memory and set max server memory to 28GB, the plan cache could use at most 16GB [(8*.75)+(20*.5)=(6+10)=16GB], leaving 12GB for the buffer cache. Thankfully we have SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2, 3, and 4 these days which include the changes in plan cache sizing discussed in the Changes to Caching Behavior between SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 RTM and SQL Server 2005 SP2 blog post. In real life, when I was troubleshooting this problem, I spent a week trying to chase down the cause of the disk I/O bottleneck with our Server Admin and SAN Admin, and there wasn’t much that could be done immediately there, so I finally asked if we could increase the memory on the server to 16GB, which did fix the problem. It wasn’t until I had this same problem occur on another system that I actually figured out how to really troubleshoot this down to the root cause. I couldn’t believe the size of the plan cache on the server with 16GB of memory when I actually learned about this and went back to look at it. SQL Server is constantly telling a story to anyone that will listen. As the DBA, you have to sit back and listen to all that it’s telling you and then evaluate the big picture and how all the data you can gather from SQL about performance relate to each other. One of the greatest tools out there is actually a free in the form of Diagnostic Scripts for SQL Server 2005 and 2008, created by MVP Glenn Alan Berry. Glenn’s scripts collect a majority of the information that SQL has to offer for rapid troubleshooting of problems, and he includes a lot of notes about what the outputs of each individual query might be telling you. When I read Pinal’s blog post SQL SERVER – ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 11 of 28, I noticed that he referenced Checking Memory Related Performance Counters in his post, but there was no real explanation about why checking memory counters is so important when looking at an I/O related wait type. I thought I’d chat with him briefly on Google Talk/Twitter DM and point this out, and offer a couple of other points I noted, so that he could add the information to his blog post if he found it useful. Instead he asked that I write a guest blog for this. I am honored to be a guest blogger, and to be able to share this kind of information with the community. The information contained in this blog post is a glimpse at how I do troubleshooting almost every day of the week in my own environment. SQL Server provides us with a lot of information about how it is running, and where it may be having problems, it is up to us to play detective and find out how all that information comes together to tell us what’s really the problem. This blog post is written by Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter). Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: MVP, Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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Customize the Windows Media Center Start Menu with Media Center Studio

- by DigitalGeekery

Do you ever wish you could change the WMC start menu? Maybe move some of the tiles and strips around to different locations, add new ones, or eliminate some altogether? Today we look at how to do it using Media Center Studio. Download and install Media Center Studio. (Download link below) You’ll also want to make sure you have Windows Media Center closed before running Media Center Studio. Many of the actions cannot be performed with Media Center open. Once installed, you can open Media Center Studio from the Windows Start Menu. When you first open Media Center Studio you’ll be on the Themes tab. Click on the Start Menu tab. It should be noted that Media Center Studio is a Beta application, and it did crash on us a few times, so it’s a good idea to save your work frequently. You can save your changes by selecting Save on the Home tab, or by clicking the small disk icon at the top left. We also found that that trying to launch Media Center from the Start Media Center button on the application ribbon typically didn’t work. Opening Windows Media Center from the Windows Start Menu is preferred. When you’re on the Start Menu tab you will see the Windows Media Center menu strips and tiles. Click the arrows located at the right, left, top, and bottom of the screen to scroll through the various menu strips. Hiding and Removing Tiles and Menu Strips. If there is an entire menu strip that you never use and would like to remove from Media Center, simply uncheck the box to the left of the the title above that menu strip. If you’d like to hide individual tiles, uncheck the box next to the name of the individual tile. Renaming Tiles and Strips To rename a tile or menu strip, click on the small notepad icon next to the title. Note: If you do not see a small notepad icon next to the title, then the title is not editable. This applies to many of the “Promo” tiles. The title will turn into a text input box so that you can edit the name. Click away from the text box when finished. Here we will change the title of the default Movie strip to “Flicks.” Change the Default Tile and Menu Strip The Default menu strip is the strip that is highlighted, or on focus, when you open Media Center. To change the default strip, simply click once on another strip to highlight it, and then save your work. In our example, I’m going to make our newly renamed “Flicks” strip the default. Each menu strip has a default tile. This is the tile that is active, or on focus, when you select the menu strip. To change the default tile on a strip, click once on the tile. You will see it outlined in light blue. Now just simply save your changes. In our example below, we’ve changed the default tile on the TV strip to “guide.” Moving Tiles and Menu Strips You can move an entire Menu Strip up or down on the screen. When you hover your mouse over the a menu strip, you will see up and down arrows appear to the right and left of the title. Click on the arrows to move the strip up or down. You will see the menu strip appear in it’s new position. To move a tile to a new menu strip, click and drag the tile you’d like to move. When you begin to drag the tile, green plus (+) signs will appear in between the tiles. Drag and drop the tile onto to any of these green plus signs to move it to that location. When you’ve dragged the tile over an acceptable position, you’ll see the red “Move” label next to your cursor turn to a blue “Move to” label. Now you can drop the tile into position. You’ll see the tile located in it’s new position. Adding a New Custom Menu Strip Click on the Start Menu tab and then select the Menu Strip button. You will see a new Custom Menu strip appear on your Start Menu with the default name of Custom menu. You can change the name by clicking on the notepad icon just as we did earlier. For our example, we’ll change the name of the new strip to Add-ins. To add a new tile, click on Entry Points at the lower left of the application window. This will reveal all of your available Entry Points that can be added to the Media Center Menu. You should see the built-in Media Center Games and any Media Center Plug-ins you have added to your system. You can then drag and drop any of the Entry Points onto any of the Menu Strips. Below we’ve added Media Browser to our custom Add-ins menu strip. You can also add additional applications to launch directly from Media Center. Click on the Application button on the Start Menu tab. Note: Many applications may not work with your remote, but with keyboard and mouse only. Type in a title which will appear under the tile in Media Center, and then type the path to the application. In our example, we will add Internet Explorer 8. Note: Be sure to add the actual path to the application and not just a link on the desktop. Click any of the check boxes to select any options under Required Capabilities. You can also browse to choose an image if you don’t care for the image that appears automatically. Next, you can select keyboard strokes to press to exit the application and return to Media Center. Click the green plus (+) button. When prompted, press a key you’ll use to close the program. Repeat the process if you’d also like to select a keystroke to kill the program. You’ll see your button programs listed below. When you’re finished, save your work and close out of Media Center Studio. Now your new program entry point will appear in the Entry Points section. Drag the icon to the desired position on the Start Menu and save again before exiting Media Center Studio. When you open Media Center you will see your new application on the start menu. Click the tile to open the application just as you would any other tile. The application will open and minimize Media Center. When you press the key you choose to close the program, Windows Media Center will automatically be restored. Note: You can also exit the application through normal methods by clicking the red “X” or File > Exit. Conclusion Media Center Studio is a Beta application which the developer freely admits still has some bugs. Despite it’s flaws Media Center Studio is a powerful tool, and when it comes to customizing your Media Center start menu, it’s pretty much the only game in town. It works with both Vista and Windows 7, and according to the developer, has not been officially tested with extenders. Media Center Studio can also be used to add custom themes to Windows 7 Media Center and we’ll be covering that in a future article. Looking for more ways to customize your Media Center experience? Be sure to check out our earlier posts on Media Browser, as well as how to add Hulu, Boxee, and weather conditions your Windows 7 Media Center. Download Media Center Studio Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)How To Rip a Music CD in Windows 7 Media CenterSchedule Updates for Windows Media CenterStartup Customizations for Media Center in Windows 7Automatically Start Windows 7 Media Center in Live TV Mode 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 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Video Toolbox is a Superb Online Video Editor Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall

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Stream Media and Live TV Across the Internet with Orb

- by DigitalGeekery

Looking for a way to stream your media collection across the Internet? Or perhaps watch and record TV remotely? Today we are going to look at how to do all that and more with Orb. Requirements Windows XP / Vista / 7 or Intel based Mac w/ OS X 10.5 or later. 1 GB RAM or more Pentium 4 2.4 GHz or higher / AMD Athlon 3200+ Broadband connections TV Tuner for streaming and recording live TV (optional) Note: Slower internet connections may result in stuttering during playback. Installation and Setup Download and install Orb on your home computer. (Download link below) You’ll want to take the defaults for the initial portion of the install. When we get to the Orb Account setup portion of the install is when we will have to enter information and make some decisions. Choose your language and click Next. We’ll need to create and user account and password. A valid email address is required as we’ll need to confirm the account later. Click Next. Now you’ll want to choose your media sources. Orb will automatically look for folders that may contain media files. You can add or remove folders click on the (+) or (-) buttons. To remove a folder, click on it once to select it from the list and then click the minus (-) button. To add a folder, click the plus (+) button and browse for the folder. You can add local folders as well as shared folders from networked computers and USB attached storage. Note: Both the host computer running Orb and the networked computer will need to be running to access shared network folders remotely. When you’ve selected all your media files, click Next. Orb will proceed to index your media files… When the indexing is complete, click Next. Orb TV Setup Note: Streaming Live TV to Macs is not currently supported. If you have a TV tuner card connected to your PC, you can opt to configure Orb to stream live or recorded TV. Click Next to configure TV. Or, choose Skip if you don’t wish to configure Orb for TV. If you have a Digital tuner card, type in your Zip Code and click Get List to pull your channel listings. Select a TV provider from the list and click Next. If not, click Skip. You can select or deselect any channels by checking or un-checking the box to each channel. Select Auto Scan to let Orb find more channels or disable the ones with no reception. Click Next when finished. Next choose an analog provider, if necessary, and click Next. Select “Yes” or “No” for a set top box and click Next. Just as we did with the Digital tuner, select or deselect any channels by checking or un-checking the box to each channel. Select Auto Scan to let Orb find more channels or disable the ones with no reception. Click Next when finished. Now we’re finished with the setup. Click Close. Accessing your Media Remotely Media files are accessed through a web-based interface. Before we go any further, however, we’ll need to confirm our username and password. Check your inbox for an email from Orb Networks. Click the enclosed confirmation link. You’ll be prompted to enter the username and password you selected in your browser then click Next. Your account will be confirmed. Now, we’re ready to enjoy our media remotely. To get started, point your browser to the MyCast website from your remote computer. (See link below) Enter your credentials and click Log In. Once logged in, you’ll be presented with the MyCast Home screen. By default you’ll see a handful of “channels” such as a TV program guide, random audio and photos, video favorites, and weather. You can add, remove, or customize channels. To add additional channels, click on Add Channels at the top right… …and select from the dropdown list. To access your full media libraries, click Open Application at the top left and select from one of the options. Live and Recorded TV If you have a TV tuner card you configured for Orb, you’ll see your program guide on the TV / Webcams screen. To watch or record a show, click on the program listing to bring up a detail box. Then click the red button to record, or the green button to play. When recording a show, you’ll see a pulsating red icon at the top right of the listing in the program guide. If you want to watch Live TV, you may be prompted to choose your media player, depending on your browser and settings. Playback should begin shortly. Note for Windows Media Center Users If you try to stream live TV in Orb while Windows Media Center is running on your PC, you’ll get an error message. Click the Stop MediaCenter button and then try again. Audio On the Audio screen, you’ll find your music files indexed by genre, artist, and album. You can play a selection by clicking once and then clicking the green play button, or by simply double-clicking. Playback will begin in the default media player for the streaming format. Video Video works essentially the same as audio. Click on a selection and press the green play button, or double-click on the video title. Video playback will begin in the default media player for the streaming format. Streaming Formats You can change the default streaming format in the control panel settings. To access the Control Panel, click on Open Applications and select Control Panel. You can also click Settings at the top right. Select General from the drop down list and then click on the Streaming Formats tab. You are provided four options. Flash, Windows Media, .SDP, and .PLS. Creating Playlists To create playlists, drag and drop your media title to the playlist work area on the right, or click Add to playlist on the top menu. Click Save when finished. Sharing your Media Orb allows you to share media playlists across the Internet with friends and family. There are a few ways to accomplish this. We’ll start by click the Share button at the bottom of the playlist work area after you’ve compiled your playlist. You’ll be prompted to choose a method by which to share your playlist. You’ll have the option to share your playlist publicly or privately. You can share publically through links, blogs, or on your Orb public profile. By choosing the Public Profile option, Orb will automatically create a profile page for you with a URL like http://public.orb.com/username that anyone can easily access on the Internet. The private sharing option allows you to invite friends by email and requires recipients to register with Orb. You can also give your playlist a custom name, or accept the auto-generated title. Click OK when finished. Users who visit your public profile will be able to view and stream any of your shared playlists to their computer or supported device. Portable Media Devices and Smartphones Orb can stream media to many portable devices and 3G phones. Streaming audio is supported on the iPhone and iPod Touch through the Safari browser. However, video and live TV streaming requires the Orb Live iPhone App. Orb Live is available in the App store for $9.99. To stream media to your portable device, go to the MyCast website in your mobile browser and login. Browse for your media or playlist. Make a selection and play the media. Playback will begin. We found streaming music to both the Droid and the iPhone to work quite nicely. Video playback on the Droid, however, left a bit to be desired. The video looked good, but the audio tended to be out of sync. System Tray Control Panel By default Orb runs in the system tray on start up. To access the System Tray Control Panel, right-click on the Orb icon in the system tray and select Control Panel. Login with your Orb username and password and click OK. From here you can add or remove media sources, add manage accounts, change your password, and more. If you’d rather not run Orb on Startup, click the General icon. Unselect the checkbox next to Start Orb when the system starts. Conclusion It may seem like a lot of steps, but getting Orb up and running isn’t terribly difficult. Orb is available for both Windows and Intel based Macs. It also supports streaming to many Game Consoles such as the Wii, PS3, and XBox 360. If you are running Windows 7 on multiple computers, you may want to check out our write-up on how to stream music and video over the Internet with Windows Media Player 12. Downloads Download Orb Logon to MyCast Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Stream Music and Video Over the Internet with Windows Media Player 12Enable Media Streaming in Windows Home Server to Windows Media PlayerStream Media from Windows 7 to XP with VLC Media PlayerShare Digital Media With Other Computers on a Home Network with Windows 7Automatically Start Windows 7 Media Center in Live TV Mode 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Looking for Good Windows Media Player 12 Plug-ins? Find Out the Celebrity You Resemble With FaceDouble Whoa ! Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems Icelandic Volcano Webcams Open Multiple Links At One Go

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