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• DBA Best Practices - A Blog Series: Episode 1 - Backups

  - by Argenis

    This blog post is part of the DBA Best Practices series, on which various topics of concern for daily database operations are discussed. Your feedback and comments are very much welcome, so please drop by the comments section and be sure to leave your thoughts on the subject. Morning Coffee When I was a DBA, the first thing I did when I sat down at my desk at work was checking that all backups have completed successfully. It really was more of a ritual, since I had a dual system in place to check for backup completion: 1) the scheduled agent jobs to back up the databases were set to alert the NOC in failure, and 2) I had a script run from a central server every so often to check for any backup failures. Why the redundancy, you might ask. Well, for one I was once bitten by the fact that database mail doesn't work 100% of the time. Potential causes for failure include issues on the SMTP box that relays your server email, firewall problems, DNS issues, etc. And so to be sure that my backups completed fine, I needed to rely on a mechanism other than having the servers do the taking - I needed to interrogate the servers and ask each one if an issue had occurred. This is why I had a script run every so often. Some of you might have monitoring tools in place like Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) or similar 3rd party products that would track all these things for you. But at that moment, we had no resort but to write our own Powershell scripts to do it. Now it goes without saying that if you don't have backups in place, you might as well find another career. Your most sacred job as a DBA is to protect the data from a disaster, and only properly safeguarded backups can offer you peace of mind here. "But, we have a cluster...we don't need backups" Sadly I've heard this line more than I would have liked to. You need to understand that a cluster is comprised of shared storage, and that is precisely your single point of failure. A cluster will protect you from an issue at the Operating System level, and also under an outage of any SQL-related service or dependent devices. But it will most definitely NOT protect you against corruption, nor will it protect you against somebody deleting data from a table - accidentally or otherwise. Backup, fine. How often do I take a backup? The answer to this is something you will hear frequently when working with databases: it depends. What does it depend on? For one, you need to understand how much data your business is willing to lose. This is what's called Recovery Point Objective, or RPO. If you don't know how much data your business is willing to lose, you need to have an honest and realistic conversation about data loss expectations with your customers, internal or external. From my experience, their first answer to the question "how much data loss can you withstand?" will be "zero". In that case, you will need to explain how zero data loss is very difficult and very costly to achieve, even in today's computing environments. Do you want to go ahead and take full backups of all your databases every hour, or even every day? Probably not, because of the impact that taking a full backup can have on a system. That's what differential and transaction log backups are for. Have I answered the question of how often to take a backup? No, and I did that on purpose. You need to think about how much time you have to recover from any event that requires you to restore your databases. This is what's called Recovery Time Objective. Again, if you go ask your customer how long of an outage they can withstand, at first you will get a completely unrealistic number - and that will be your starting point for discussing a solution that is cost effective. The point that I'm trying to get across is that you need to have a plan. This plan needs to be practiced, and tested. Like a football playbook, you need to rehearse the moves you'll perform when the time comes. How often is up to you, and the objective is that you feel better about yourself and the steps you need to follow when emergency strikes. A backup is nothing more than an untested restore Backups are files. Files are prone to corruption. Put those two together and realize how you feel about those backups sitting on that network drive. When was the last time you restored any of those? Restoring your backups on another box - that, by the way, doesn't have to match the specs of your production server - will give you two things: 1) peace of mind, because now you know that your backups are good and 2) a place to offload your consistency checks with DBCC CHECKDB or any of the other DBCC commands like CHECKTABLE or CHECKCATALOG. This is a great strategy for VLDBs that cannot withstand the additional load created by the consistency checks. If you choose to offload your consistency checks to another server though, be sure to run DBCC CHECKDB WITH PHYSICALONLY on the production server, and if you're using SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 CU4 and above, be sure to enable traceflags 2562 and/or 2549, which will speed up the PHYSICALONLY checks further - you can read more about this enhancement here. Back to the "How Often" question for a second. If you have the disk, and the network latency, and the system resources to do so, why not backup the transaction log often? As in, every 5 minutes, or even less than that? There's not much downside to doing it, as you will have to clear the log with a backup sooner than later, lest you risk running out space on your tlog, or even your drive. The one drawback to this approach is that you will have more files to deal with at restore time, and processing each file will add a bit of extra time to the entire process. But it might be worth that time knowing that you minimized the amount of data lost. Again, test your plan to make sure that it matches your particular needs. Where to back up to? Network share? Locally? SAN volume? This is another topic where everybody has a favorite choice. So, I'll stick to mentioning what I like to do and what I consider to be the best practice in this regard. I like to backup to a SAN volume, i.e., a drive that actually lives in the SAN, and can be easily attached to another server in a pinch, saving you valuable time - you wouldn't need to restore files on the network (slow) or pull out drives out a dead server (been there, done that, it’s also slow!). The key is to have a copy of those backup files made quickly, and, if at all possible, to a remote target on a different datacenter - or even the cloud. There are plenty of solutions out there that can help you put such a solution together. That right there is the first step towards a practical Disaster Recovery plan. But there's much more to DR, and that's material for a different blog post in this series.

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• “It’s only test code…”

  - by Chris George

  “Let me hack this in, it’s only test code”, “Don’t worry about getting it reviewed, it’s only test code”, “It doesn’t have to be elegant or efficient, it’s only test code”… do these phrases sound familiar? Chances are if you’ve working with test automation, at one point or other you will have heard these phrases, you have probably even used them yourself! What is certain is that code written under this “it’s only test code” mantra will come back and bite you in the arse! I’ve recently encountered a case where a test was giving a false positive, therefore hiding a real product bug because that test code was very badly written. Firstly it was very difficult to understand what the test was actually trying to achieve let alone how it was doing it, and this complexity masked a simple logic error. These issues are real and they do happen. Let’s take a step back from this and look at what we are trying to do. We are writing test code that tests product code, and we do this to create a suite of tests that will help protect our software against regressions. This test code is making sure that the product behaves as it should by employing some sort of expected result verification. The simple cases of these are generally not a problem. However, automation allows us to explore more complex scenarios in many more permutations. As this complexity increases then so does the complexity of the test code. It is at this point that code which has not been architected properly will cause problems.   Keep your friends close… So, how do we make sure we are doing it right? The development teams I have worked on have always had Test Engineers working very closely with their Software Engineers. This is something that I have always tried to take full advantage of. They are coding experts! So run your ideas past them, ask for advice on how to structure your code, help you design your data structures. This may require a shift in your teams viewpoint, as contrary to this section title and folklore, Software Engineers are not actually the mortal enemy of Test Engineers. As time progresses, and test automation becomes more and more ingrained in what we do, the two roles are converging more than ever. Over the 16 years I have spent as a Test Engineer, I have seen the grey area between the two roles grow significantly larger. This serves to strengthen the relationship and common bond between the two roles which helps to make test code activities so much easier!   Pair for the win Possibly the best thing you could do to write good test code is to pair program on the task. This will serve a few purposes. you will get the benefit of the Software Engineers knowledge and experience the Software Engineer will gain knowledge on the testing process. Sharing the love is a wonderful thing! two pairs of eyes are always better than one… And so are two brains. Between the two of you, I will guarantee you will derive more useful test cases than if it was just one of you.   Code reviews Another policy which certainly pays dividends is the practice of code reviews. By having one of your peers review your code before you commit it serves two purposes. Firstly, it forces you to explain your code. Just the act of doing this will often pick up errors in your code. Secondly, it gets yet another pair of eyes on your code! I cannot stress enough how important code reviews are. The benefits they offer apply as much to product code as test code. In short, Software and Test Engineers should all be doing them! It can be extended even further by getting test code reviewed by a Software Engineer and a Test Engineer, and likewise product code. This serves to keep both functions in the loop with changes going on within your code base.   Learn from your devs I briefly touched on this earlier but I’d like to go into more detail here. Pairing with your Software Engineers when writing your test code is such an amazing opportunity to improve your coding skills. As I sit here writing this article waiting to be called into court for jury service, it reminds me that it takes a lot of patience to be a Test Engineer, almost as much as it takes to be a juror! However tempting it is to go rushing in and start writing your automated tests, resist that urge. Discuss what you want to achieve then talk through the approach you’re going to take. Then code it up together. I find it really enlightening to ask questions like ‘is there a better way to do this?’ Or ‘is this how you would code it?’ The latter question, especially, is where I learn the most. I’ve found that most Software Engineers will be reluctant to show you the ‘right way’ to code something when writing tests because they perceive the ‘right way’ to be too complicated for the Test Engineer (e.g. not mentioning LINQ and instead doing something verbose). So by asking how THEY would code it, it unleashes their true dev-ness and advanced code usually ensues! I would like to point out, however, that you don’t have to accept their method as the final answer. On numerous occasions I have opted for the more simple/verbose solution because I found the code written by the Software Engineer too advanced and therefore I would find it unreadable when I return to the code in a months’ time! Always keep the target audience in mind when writing clever code, and in my case that is mostly Test Engineers.  

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• Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 10 &ndash; In Depth TCP/IP Networking

  - by MarkPearl

  After reading this section you should be able to Understand methods of network design unique to TCP/IP networks, including subnetting, CIDR, and address translation Explain the differences between public and private TCP/IP networks Describe protocols used between mail clients and mail servers, including SMTP, POP3, and IMAP4 Employ multiple TCP/IP utilities for network discovery and troubleshooting Designing TCP/IP-Based Networks The following sections explain how network and host information in an IPv4 address can be manipulated to subdivide networks into smaller segments. Subnetting Subnetting separates a network into multiple logically defined segments, or subnets. Networks are commonly subnetted according to geographic locations, departmental boundaries, or technology types. A network administrator might separate traffic to accomplish the following… Enhance security Improve performance Simplify troubleshooting The challenges of Classful Addressing in IPv4 (No subnetting) The simplest type of IPv4 is known as classful addressing (which was the Class A, Class B & Class C network addresses). Classful addressing has the following limitations. Restriction in the number of usable IPv4 addresses (class C would be limited to 254 addresses) Difficult to separate traffic from various parts of a network Because of the above reasons, subnetting was introduced. IPv4 Subnet Masks Subnetting depends on the use of subnet masks to identify how a network is subdivided. A subnet mask indicates where network information is located in an IPv4 address. The 1 in a subnet mask indicates that corresponding bits in the IPv4 address contain network information (likewise 0 indicates the opposite) Each network class is associated with a default subnet mask… Class A = 255.0.0.0 Class B = 255.255.0.0 Class C = 255.255.255.0 An example of calculating  the network ID for a particular device with a subnet mask is shown below.. IP Address = 199.34.89.127 Subnet Mask = 255.255.255.0 Resultant Network ID = 199.34.89.0 IPv4 Subnetting Techniques Subnetting breaks the rules of classful IPv4 addressing. Read page 490 for a detailed explanation Calculating IPv4 Subnets Read page 491 – 494 for an explanation Important… Subnetting only applies to the devices internal to your network. Everything external looks at the class of the IP address instead of the subnet network ID. This way, traffic directed to your network externally still knows where to go, and once it has entered your internal network it can then be prioritized and segmented. CIDR (classless Interdomain Routing) CIDR is also known as classless routing or supernetting. In CIDR conventional network class distinctions do not exist, a subnet boundary can move to the left, therefore generating more usable IP addresses on your network. A subnet created by moving the subnet boundary to the left is known as a supernet. With CIDR also came new shorthand for denoting the position of subnet boundaries known as CIDR notation or slash notation. CIDR notation takes the form of the network ID followed by a forward slash (/) followed by the number of bits that are used for the extended network prefix. To take advantage of classless routing, your networks routers must be able to interpret IP addresses that don;t adhere to conventional network class parameters. Routers that rely on older routing protocols (i.e. RIP) are not capable of interpreting classless IP addresses. Internet Gateways Gateways are a combination of software and hardware that enable two different network segments to exchange data. A gateway facilitates communication between different networks or subnets. Because on device cannot send data directly to a device on another subnet, a gateway must intercede and hand off the information. Every device on a TCP/IP based network has a default gateway (a gateway that first interprets its outbound requests to other subnets, and then interprets its inbound requests from other subnets). The internet contains a vast number of routers and gateways. If each gateway had to track addressing information for every other gateway on the Internet, it would be overtaxed. Instead, each handles only a relatively small amount of addressing information, which it uses to forward data to another gateway that knows more about the data’s destination. The gateways that make up the internet backbone are called core gateways. Address Translation An organizations default gateway can also be used to “hide” the organizations internal IP addresses and keep them from being recognized on a public network. A public network is one that any user may access with little or no restrictions. On private networks, hiding IP addresses allows network managers more flexibility in assigning addresses. Clients behind a gateway may use any IP addressing scheme, regardless of whether it is recognized as legitimate by the Internet authorities but as soon as those devices need to go on the internet, they must have legitimate IP addresses to exchange data. When a clients transmission reaches the default gateway, the gateway opens the IP datagram and replaces the client’s private IP address with an Internet recognized IP address. This process is known as NAT (Network Address Translation). TCP/IP Mail Services All Internet mail services rely on the same principles of mail delivery, storage, and pickup, though they may use different types of software to accomplish these functions. Email servers and clients communicate through special TCP/IP application layer protocols. These protocols, all of which operate on a variety of operating systems are discussed below… SMTP (Simple Mail transfer Protocol) The protocol responsible for moving messages from one mail server to another over TCP/IP based networks. SMTP belongs to the application layer of the ODI model and relies on TCP as its transport protocol. Operates from port 25 on the SMTP server Simple sub-protocol, incapable of doing anything more than transporting mail or holding it in a queue MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) The standard message format specified by SMTP allows for lines that contain no more than 1000 ascii characters meaning if you relied solely on SMTP you would have very short messages and nothing like pictures included in an email. MIME us a standard for encoding and interpreting binary files, images, video, and non-ascii character sets within an email message. MIME identifies each element of a mail message according to content type. MIME does not replace SMTP but works in conjunction with it. Most modern email clients and servers support MIME POP (Post Office Protocol) POP is an application layer protocol used to retrieve messages from a mail server POP3 relies on TCP and operates over port 110 With POP3 mail is delivered and stored on a mail server until it is downloaded by a user Disadvantage of POP3 is that it typically does not allow users to save their messages on the server because of this IMAP is sometimes used IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) IMAP is a retrieval protocol that was developed as a more sophisticated alternative to POP3 The single biggest advantage IMAP4 has over POP3 is that users can store messages on the mail server, rather than having to continually download them Users can retrieve all or only a portion of any mail message Users can review their messages and delete them while the messages remain on the server Users can create sophisticated methods of organizing messages on the server Users can share a mailbox in a central location Disadvantages of IMAP are typically related to the fact that it requires more storage space on the server. Additional TCP/IP Utilities Nearly all TCP/IP utilities can be accessed from the command prompt on any type of server or client running TCP/IP. The syntaxt may differ depending on the OS of the client. Below is a list of additional TCP/IP utilities – research their use on your own! Ipconfig (Windows) & Ifconfig (Linux) Netstat Nbtstat Hostname, Host & Nslookup Dig (Linux) Whois (Linux) Traceroute (Tracert) Mtr (my traceroute) Route

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• Let your Signature Experience drive IT-decision making

  - by Tania Le Voi

  Today’s CIO job description:  ‘’Align IT infrastructure and solutions with business goals and objectives ; AND while doing so reduce costs; BUT ALSO, be innovative, ensure the architectures are adaptable and agile as we need to act today on the changes that we may request tomorrow.”   Sound like an unachievable request? The fact is, reality dictates that CIO’s are put under this type of pressure to deliver more with less. In a past career phase I spent a few years as an IT Relationship Manager for a large Insurance company. This is a role that we see all too infrequently in many of our customers, and it’s a shame.  The purpose of this role was to build a bridge, a relationship between IT and the business. Key to achieving that goal was to ensure the same language was being spoken and more importantly that objectives were commonly understood - hence service and projects were delivered to time, to budget and actually solved the business problems. In reality IT and the business are already married, but the relationship is most often defined as ‘supplier’ of IT rather than a ‘trusted partner’. To deliver business value they need to understand how to work together effectively to attain this next level of partnership. The Business cannot compete if they do not get a new product to market ahead of the competition, or for example act in a timely manner to address a new industry problem such as a legislative change. An even better example is when the Application or Service fails and the Business takes a hit by bad publicity, being trending topics on social media and losing direct revenue from online channels. For this reason alone Business and IT need the alignment of their priorities and deliverables now more than ever! Take a look at Forrester’s recent study that found ‘many IT respondents considering themselves to be trusted partners of the business but their efforts are impaired by the inadequacy of tools and organizations’.  IT Meet the Business; Business Meet IT So what is going on? We talk about aligning the business with IT but the reality is it’s difficult to do. Like any relationship each side has different goals and needs and language can be a barrier; business vs. technology jargon! What if we could translate the needs of both sides into actionable information, backed by data both sides understand, presented in a meaningful way?  Well now we can with the Business-Driven Application Management capabilities in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12cR2! Enterprise Manager’s Business-Driven Application Management capabilities provide the information that IT needs to understand the impact of its decisions on business criteria.  No longer does IT need to be focused solely on speeds and feeds, performance and throughput – now IT can understand IT’s impact on business KPIs like inventory turns, order-to-cash cycle, pipeline-to-forecast, and similar.  Similarly, now the line of business can understand which IT services are most critical for the KPIs they care about. There are a good deal of resources on Oracle Technology Network that describe the functionality of these products, so I won’t’ rehash them here.  What I want to talk about is what you do with these products. What’s next after we meet? Where do you start? Step 1:  Identify the Signature Experience. This is THE business process (or set of processes) that is core to the business, the one that drives the economic engine, the process that a customer recognises the company brand for, reputation, the customer experience, the process that a CEO would state as his number one priority. The crème de la crème of your business! Once you have nailed this it gets easy as Enterprise Manager 12c makes it easy. Step 2:  Map the Signature Experience to underlying IT.  Taking the signature experience, map out the touch points of the components that play a part in ensuring this business transaction is successful end to end, think of it like mapping out a critical path; the applications, middleware, databases and hardware. Use the wealth of Enterprise Manager features such as Systems, Services, Business Application Targets and Business Transaction Management (BTM) to assist you. Adding Real User Experience Insight (RUEI) into the mix will make the end to end customer satisfaction story transparent. Work with the business and define meaningful key performance indicators (KPI’s) and thresholds to enable you to report and action upon. Step 3:  Observe the data over time.  You now have meaningful insight into every step enabling your signature experience and you understand the implication of that experience on your underlying IT.  Watch if for a few months, see what happens and reconvene with your business stakeholders and set clear and measurable targets which can re-define service levels.  Step 4:  Change the information about which you and the business communicate.  It’s amazing what happens when you and the business speak the same language.  You’ll be able to make more informed business and IT decisions. From here IT can identify where/how budget is spent whether on the level of support, performance, capacity, HA, DR, certification etc. IT SLA’s no longer need be focused on metrics such as %availability but structured around business process requirements. The power of this way of thinking doesn’t end here. IT staff get to see and understand how their own role contributes to the business making them accountable for the business service. Take a step further and appraise your staff on the business competencies that are linked to the service availability. For the business, the language barrier is removed by producing targeted reports on the signature experience core to the business and therefore key to the CEO. Chargeback or show back becomes easier to justify as the ‘cost of day per outage’ can be more easily calculated; the business will be able to translate the cost to the business to the cost/value of the underlying IT that supports it. Used this way, Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c is a key enabler to a harmonious relationship between the end customer the business and IT to deliver ultimate service and satisfaction. Just engage with the business upfront, make the signature experience visible and let Enterprise Manager 12c do the rest. In the next blog entry we will cover some of the Enterprise Manager features mentioned to enable you to implement this new way of working.  

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• Benefits of Behavior Driven Development

  - by Aligned

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Aligned/archive/2013/07/26/benefits-of-behavior-driven-development.aspxContinuing my previous article on BDD, I wanted to point out some benefits of BDD and since BDD is an extension of Test Driven Development (TDD), you get those as well. I’ll add another article on some possible downsides of this approach. There are many articles about the benefits of TDD and they apply to BDD. I’ve pointed out some here and copied some of the main points for each article, but there are many more including the book The Art of Unit Testing by Roy Osherove. http://geekswithblogs.net/leesblog/archive/2008/04/30/the-benefits-of-test-driven-development.aspx (Lee Brandt) Stability Accountability Design Ability Separated Concerns Progress Indicator http://tddftw.com/benefits-of-tdd/ Help maintainers understand the intention behind the code Bring validation and proper data handling concerns to the forefront. Writing the tests first is fun. Better APIs come from writing testable code. TDD will make you a better developer. http://www.slideshare.net/dhelper/benefit-from-unit-testing-in-the-real-world (from Typemock). Take a look at the slides, especially the extra time required for TDD (slide 10) and the next one of the bugs avoided using TDD (slide 11). Less bugs (slide 11) about testing and development (13) Increase confidence in code (14) Fearlessly change your code (14) Document Requirements (14) also see http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2013/06/01/roc-rocks.aspx Discover usability issues early (14) All these points and articles are great and there are many more. The following are my additions to the benefits of BDD from using it in real projects for my company. July 2013 on MSDN - Behavior-Driven Design with SpecFlow Scott Allen did a very informative TDD and MVC module, but to me he is doing BDDCompile and Execute Requirements in Microsoft .NET ~ Video from TechEd 2012 Communication I was working through a complicated task that the decision tree kept growing. After writing out the Given, When, Then of the scenario, I was able tell QA what I had worked through for their initial test cases. They were able to add from there. It is also useful to use this language with other developers, managers, or clients to help make informed decisions on if it meets the requirements or if it can simplified to save time (money). Thinking through solutions, before starting to code This was the biggest benefit to me. I like to jump into coding to figure out the problem. Many times I don't understand my path well enough and have to do some parts over. A past supervisor told me several times during reviews that I need to get better at seeing "the forest for the trees". When I sit down and write out the behavior that I need to implement, I force myself to think things out further and catch scenarios before they get to QA. A co-worker that is new to BDD and we’ve been using it in our new project for the last 6 months, said “It really clarifies things”. It took him awhile to understand it all, but now he’s seeing the value of this approach (yes there are some downsides, but that is a different issue). Developers’ Confidence This is huge for me. With tests in place, my confidence grows that I won’t break code that I’m not directly changing. In the past, I’ve worked on projects with out tests and we would frequently find regression bugs (or worse the users would find them). That isn’t fun. We don’t catch all problems with the tests, but when QA catches one, I can write a test to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s also good for Releasing code, telling your manager that it’s good to go. As time goes on and the code gets older, how confident are you that checking in code won’t break something somewhere else? Merging code - pre release confidence If you’re merging code a lot, it’s nice to have the tests to help ensure you didn’t merge incorrectly. Interrupted work I had a task that I started and planned out, then was interrupted for a month because of different priorities. When I started it up again, and un-shelved my changes, I had the BDD specs and it helped me remember what I had figured out and what was left to do. It would have much more difficult without the specs and tests. Testing and verifying complicated scenarios Sometimes in the UI there are scenarios that get tricky, because there are a lot of steps involved (click here to open the dialog, enter the information, make sure it’s valid, when I click cancel it should do {x}, when I click ok it should close and do {y}, then do this, etc….). With BDD I can avoid some of the mouse clicking define the scenarios and have them re-run quickly, without using a mouse. UI testing is still needed, but this helps a bunch. The same can be true for tricky server logic. Documentation of Assumptions and Specifications The BDD spec tests (Jasmine or SpecFlow or other tool) also work as documentation and show what the original developer was trying to accomplish. It’s not a different Word document, so developers will keep this up to date, instead of letting it become obsolete. What happens if you leave the project (consulting, new job, etc) with no specs or at the least good comments in the code? Sometimes I think of a new scenario, so I add a failing spec and continue in the same stream of thought (don’t forget it because it was on a piece of paper or in a notepad). Then later I can come back and handle it and have it documented. Jasmine tests and JavaScript –> help deal with the non-typed system I like JavaScript, but I also dislike working with JavaScript. I miss C# telling me if a property doesn’t actually exist at build time. I like the idea of TypeScript and hope to use it more in the future. I also use KnockoutJs, which has observables that need to be called with ending (), since the observable is a function. It’s hard to remember when to use () or not and the Jasmine specs/tests help ensure the correct usage.   This should give you an idea of the benefits that I see in using the BDD approach. I’m sure there are more. It talks a lot of practice, investment and experimentation to figure out how to approach this and to get comfortable with it. I agree with Scott Allen in the video I linked above “Remember that TDD can take some practice. So if you're not doing test-driven design right now? You can start and practice and get better. And you'll reach a point where you'll never want to get back.”

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• ANTS CLR and Memory Profiler In Depth Review (Part 2 of 2 &ndash; Memory Profiler)

  - by ToStringTheory

  One of the things that people might not know about me, is my obsession to make my code as efficient as possible. Many people might not realize how much of a task or undertaking that this might be, but it is surely a task as monumental as climbing Mount Everest, except this time it is a challenge for the mind… In trying to make code efficient, there are many different factors that play a part – size of project or solution, tiers, language used, experience and training of the programmer, technologies used, maintainability of the code – the list can go on for quite some time. I spend quite a bit of time when developing trying to determine what is the best way to implement a feature to accomplish the efficiency that I look to achieve. One program that I have recently come to learn about – Red Gate ANTS Performance (CLR) and Memory profiler gives me tools to accomplish that job more efficiently as well. In this review, I am going to cover some of the features of the ANTS memory profiler set by compiling some hideous example code to test against. Notice As a member of the Geeks With Blogs Influencers program, one of the perks is the ability to review products, in exchange for a free license to the program. I have not let this affect my opinions of the product in any way, and Red Gate nor Geeks With Blogs has tried to influence my opinion regarding this product in any way. Introduction – Part 2 In my last post, I reviewed the feature packed Red Gate ANTS Performance Profiler.  Separate from the Red Gate Performance Profiler is the Red Gate ANTS Memory Profiler – a simple, easy to use utility for checking how your application is handling memory management…  A tool that I wish I had had many times in the past.  This post will be focusing on the ANTS Memory Profiler and its tool set. The memory profiler has a large assortment of features just like the Performance Profiler, with the new session looking nearly exactly alike: ANTS Memory Profiler Memory profiling is not something that I have to do very often…  In the past, the few cases I’ve had to find a memory leak in an application I have usually just had to trace the code of the operations being performed to look for oddities…  Sadly, I have come across more undisposed/non-using’ed IDisposable objects, usually from ADO.Net than I would like to ever see.  Support is not fun, however using ANTS Memory Profiler makes this task easier.  For this round of testing, I am going to use the same code from my previous example, using the WPF application. This time, I will choose the ‘Profile Memory’ option from the ANTS menu in Visual Studio, which launches the solution in its currently configured state/start-up project, and then launches the ANTS Memory Profiler to help.  It prepopulates all of the fields with the current project information, and all I have to do is select the ‘Start Profiling’ option. When the window comes up, it is actually quite barren, just giving ideas on how to work the profiler.  You start by getting to the point in your application that you want to profile, and then taking a ‘Memory Snapshot’.  This performs a full garbage collection, and snapshots the managed heap.  Using the same WPF app as before, I will go ahead and take a snapshot now. As you can see, ANTS is already giving me lots of information regarding the snapshot, however this is just a snapshot.  The whole point of the profiler is to perform an action, usually one where a memory problem is being noticed, and then take another snapshot and perform a diff between them to see what has changed.  I am going to go ahead and generate 5000 primes, and then take another snapshot: As you can see, ANTS is already giving me a lot of new information about this snapshot compared to the last.  Information such as difference in memory usage, fragmentation, class usage, etc…  If you take more snapshots, you can use the dropdown at the top to set your actual comparison snapshots. If you beneath the timeline, you will see a breadcrumb trail showing how best to approach profiling memory using ANTS.  When you first do the comparison, you start on the Summary screen.  You can either use the charts at the bottom, or switch to the class list screen to get to the next step.  Here is the class list screen: As you can see, it lists information about all of the instances between the snapshots, as well as at the bottom giving you a way to filter by telling ANTS what your problem is.  I am going to go ahead and select the Int16[] to look at the Instance Categorizer Using the instance categorizer, you can travel backwards to see where all of the instances are coming from.  It may be hard to see in this image, but hopefully the lightbox (click on it) will help: I can see that all of these instances are rooted to the application through the UI TextBlock control.  This image will probably be even harder to see, however using the ‘Instance Retention Graph’, you can trace an objects memory inheritance up the chain to see its roots as well.  This is a simple example, as this is simply a known element.  Usually you would be profiling an actual problem, and comparing those differences.  I know in the past, I have spotted a problem where a new context was created per page load, and it was rooted into the application through an event.  As the application began to grow, performance and reliability problems started to emerge.  A tool like this would have been a great way to identify the problem quickly. Overview Overall, I think that the Red Gate ANTS Memory Profiler is a great utility for debugging those pesky leaks.  3 Biggest Pros: Easy to use interface with lots of options for configuring profiling session Intuitive and helpful interface for drilling down from summary, to instance, to root graphs ANTS provides an API for controlling the profiler. Not many options, but still helpful. 2 Biggest Cons: Inability to automatically snapshot the memory by interval Lack of complete integration with Visual Studio via an extension panel Ratings Ease of Use (9/10) – I really do believe that they have brought simplicity to the once difficult task of memory profiling.  I especially liked how it stepped you further into the drilldown by directing you towards the best options. Effectiveness (10/10) – I believe that the profiler does EXACTLY what it purports to do.  Features (7/10) – A really great set of features all around in the application, however, I would like to see some ability for automatically triggering snapshots based on intervals or framework level items such as events. Customer Service (10/10) – My entire experience with Red Gate personnel has been nothing but good.  their people are friendly, helpful, and happy! UI / UX (9/10) – The interface is very easy to get around, and all of the options are easy to find.  With a little bit of poking around, you’ll be optimizing Hello World in no time flat! Overall (9/10) – Overall, I am happy with the Memory Profiler and its features, as well as with the service I received when working with the Red Gate personnel.  Thank you for reading up to here, or skipping ahead – I told you it would be shorter!  Please, if you do try the product, drop me a message and let me know what you think!  I would love to hear any opinions you may have on the product. Code Feel free to download the code I used above – download via DropBox

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• PASS: SQLRally Thoughts

  - by Bill Graziano

  The PASS Board recently decided that we wouldn’t put another US-based SQLRally on the calendar until we had a chance to review the program. I wanted to provide some of my thinking around this. Keep in mind that this is the opinion of one Board member. The Board committed to complete two SQLRally events to determine if an event modeled between SQL Saturday and the Summit was viable. We’ve completed the two events and now it’s time to step back and review the program. This is my seventh year on the PASS Board. Over that time people have asked me why PASS does certain things. Many, many times my answer has been “Because that’s the way we did it last year”. And I am tired of giving that answer. We need to take a step back and review the US-based SQLRally before we schedule another one. It would be irresponsible for me as a Board member to commit resources to this without validating that what we’re doing makes sense for the organization and our members. I have no doubt that this was a great event for the attendees. We just need to validate it’s the best use of our resources. Please keep in mind that we haven’t cancelled the event. We’ve just said we need to review it before scheduling another one. My opinion is that some fairly serious changes are needed to the model before we consider it again – IF we do it again. I’ve come to that conclusion after speaking with the Dallas organizers, our HQ team, our Marketing team, other Board members (including one of the Orlando organizers), attendees in Orlando and Dallas and visiting other similar events. I should point out that their views aren’t unanimous on nearly any part of this event -- which is one of the reasons I want to take some time and think about this before continuing. I think it’s helpful to look at the original goals of what we were trying to accomplish. Andy Warren wrote these up in August of 2010. My summary of these goals and some thoughts on each one is below. Many of these thoughts revolve around the growth of SQL Saturdays. In the two years since that document was written these events have grown significantly. The largest SQL Saturdays are now over 500 people which mean they are nearly the same size as our recent SQLRally. Our goals included: Geographic diversity. We wanted an event in an area of the country that was away from any given Summit location. I think that’s still a valid goal. But we also have SQL Saturdays all over the country. What does SQLRally bring to this that SQLSaturday doesn’t? Speaker growth. One of the stated goals was to build a “farm club” for speakers. This gives us a way for speakers to work up to speaking at Summit by speaking in front of larger crowds. What does SQLRally bring to this that the larger SQL Saturdays aren’t providing? Pre-Conference speakers is one obvious answer here. Lower price. On a per-day basis, SQLRally is roughly 1/4th the price of the Summit. We wanted a way for people to experience something Summit-like at a lower price point. The challenge is that we are very budget constrained at that lower price point. International Event Model.  (I need to write more about this but I’m out of time.  I’ll cover it in the next installment.) There are a number of things I really like about SQLRally. I love the smaller conferences. They give me a chance to meet more people than at something the size of Summit. I like the two day format. That gives you two evenings to be at social events with people. Seeing someone a second day is a great way to build a bond with that person. That’s more difficult to do at a SQL Saturday. We also need to talk about the financial aspects of the event. Last year generated a small $17,000 profit on revenues of $200,000. Percentage-wise that’s reasonable but on an absolute basis it’s not a huge amount in our budget. We think this year will lose between $30,000 and $50,000 and take roughly 1,000 hours of HQ time. We don’t have detailed financials back yet but that’s our best guess at this point. Part of that was driven by using a convention center instead of a hotel. Until we get detailed financials back we won’t have the full picture around the financial impact. This event also takes time and mindshare from our Marketing team. This may sound like a small thing but please don’t underestimate it. Our original vision for this was something that would take very little time from our Marketing team and just a few mentions in the Connector. It turned out to need more than that. And all those mentions and emails take up space we could use to talk about other events and other programs. Last I wanted to talk about some of the things I’m thinking about. I don’t think it’s as simple as saying if we just fix “X” it all gets better. Is this that much better of an event than SQL Saturdays? What if we gave a few SQL Saturdays some extra resources? When SQL Saturdays were around 250 people that wasn’t as viable. With some of those events over 500 we need to reconsider this. We need to get back to a hotel venue. That will help with cost and networking. Is this the best use of the 1,000 HQ hours that we invested in the event? Is our price-point correct? I’m leaning toward raising our price closer to Summit on a per-day basis. I think this will let us put on a higher quality event and alleviate much of the budget pressure. Should growing speakers be a focus? Having top-line pre-conference speakers helps market the event. It will also have an impact on pricing and overall profit. We should also ask if it actually does grow speakers. How many of these people will eventually register for Summit? Attend chapters? Is SQLRally a driver into PASS or is it something that chapters, etc. drive people to? Should we have one paid day and one free instead of two paid days? This is a very interesting model that is used by SQLBits in the UK. This gives you the two day aspect as well as offering options for paid and free attendees. I’m very intrigued by this. Should we focus on a topic? Buried in the minutes is a discussion of whether PASS should have a Business Analytics conference separate from Summit. This is an interesting question to consider. Would making SQLRally be focused on a particular topic make it more attractive? Would that even be a SQLRally? Can PASS effectively manage the two events? (FYI - Probably not.) Would it help differentiate it from Summit and SQL Saturday? These are all questions that I think should be asked and answered before we do this event again. And we can’t do that if we don’t take time to have the discussion. I wanted to get this published before I take off for a few days of vacation. When I get back I’d like to write more about why the international events are different and talk about where we go from here.

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• Combining Shared Secret and Certificates

  - by Michael Stephenson

  As discussed in the introduction article this walkthrough will explain how you can implement WCF security with the Windows Azure Service Bus to ensure that you can protect your endpoint in the cloud with a shared secret but also combine this with certificates so that you can identify the sender of the message.   Prerequisites As in the previous article before going into the walk through I want to explain a few assumptions about the scenario we are implementing but to keep the article shorter I am not going to walk through all of the steps in how to setup some of this. In the solution we have a simple console application which will represent the client application. There is also the services WCF application which contains the WCF service we will expose via the Windows Azure Service Bus. The WCF Service application in this example was hosted in IIS 7 on Windows 2008 R2 with AppFabric Server installed and configured to auto-start the WCF listening services. I am not going to go through significant detail around the IIS setup because it should not matter in relation to this article however if you want to understand more about how to configure WCF and IIS for such a scenario please refer to the following paper which goes into a lot of detail about how to configure this. The link is: http://tinyurl.com/8s5nwrz   Setting up the Certificates To keep the post and sample simple I am going to use the local computer store for all certificates but this bit is really just the same as setting up certificates for an example where you are using WCF without using Windows Azure Service Bus. In the sample I have included two batch files which you can use to create the sample certificates or remove them. Basically you will end up with: A certificate called PocServerCert in the personal store for the local computer which will be used by the WCF Service component A certificate called PocClientCert in the personal store for the local computer which will be used by the client application A root certificate in the Root store called PocRootCA with its associated revocation list which is the root from which the client and server certificates were created   For the sample Im just using development certificates like you would normally, and you can see exactly how these are configured and placed in the stores from the batch files in the solution using makecert and certmgr.   The Service Component To begin with let's look at the service component and how it can be configured to listen to the service bus using a shared secret but to also accept a username token from the client. In the sample the service component is called Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.Cert.Services. It has a single service which is the Visual Studio template for a WCF service when you add a new WCF Service Application so we have a service called Service1 with its Echo method. Nothing special so far!.... The next step is to look at the web.config file to see how we have configured the WCF service. In the services section of the WCF configuration you can see I have created my service and I have created a local endpoint which I simply used to do a little bit of diagnostics and to check it was working, but more importantly there is the Windows Azure endpoint which is using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding (note that this should also work just the same if your using netTcpRelayBinding). The key points to note on the above picture are the service behavior called MyServiceBehaviour and the service bus endpoints behavior called MyEndpointBehaviour. We will go into these in more detail later.   The Relay Binding The relay binding for the service has been configured to use the TransportWithMessageCredential security mode. This is the important bit where the transport security really relates to the interaction between the service and listening to the Azure Service Bus and the message credential is where we will use our certificate like we have specified in the message/clientCrentialType attribute. Note also that we have left the relayClientAuthenticationType set to RelayAccessToken. This means that authentication will be made against ACS for accessing the service bus and messages will not be accepted from any sender who has not been authenticated by ACS.   The Endpoint Behaviour In the below picture you can see the endpoint behavior which is configured to use the shared secret client credential for accessing the service bus and also for diagnostic purposes I have included the service registry element.     Hopefully if you are familiar with using Windows Azure Service Bus relay feature the above is very familiar to you and this is a very common setup for this section. There is nothing specific to the username token implementation here. The Service Behaviour Now we come to the bit with most of the certificate stuff in it. When you configure the service behavior I have included the serviceCredentials element and then setup to use the clientCertificate check and also specifying the serviceCertificate with information on how to find the servers certificate in the store.     I have also added a serviceAuthorization section where I will implement my own authorization component to perform additional security checks after the service has validated that the message was signed with a good certificate. I also have the same serviceSecurityAudit configuration to log access to my service. My Authorization Manager The below picture shows you implementation of my authorization manager. WCF will eventually hand off the message to my authorization component before it calls the service code. This is where I can perform some logic to check if the identity is allowed to access resources. In this case I am simple rejecting messages from anyone except the PocClientCertificate.     The Client Now let's take a look at the client side of this solution and how we can configure the client to authenticate against ACS but also send a certificate over to the service component so it can implement additional security checks on-premise. I have a console application and in the program class I want to use the proxy generated with Add Service Reference to send a message via the Azure Service Bus. You can see in my WCF client configuration below I have setup my details for the azure service bus url and am using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding.   Next is my configuration for the relay binding. You can see below I have configured security to use TransportWithMessageCredential so we will flow the token from a certificate with the message and also the RelayAccessToken relayClientAuthenticationType which means the component will validate against ACS before being allowed to access the relay endpoint to send a message.     After the binding we need to configure the endpoint behavior like in the below picture. This contains the normal transportClientEndpointBehaviour to setup the ACS shared secret configuration but we have also configured the clientCertificate to look for the PocClientCert.     Finally below we have the code of the client in the console application which will call the service bus. You can see that we have created our proxy and then made a normal call to a WCF in exactly the normal way but the configuration will jump in and ensure that a token is passed representing the client certificate.     Conclusion As you can see from the above walkthrough it is not too difficult to configure a service to use both a shared secret and certificate based token at the same time. This gives you the power and protection offered by the access control service in the cloud but also the ability to flow additional tokens to the on-premise component for additional security features to be implemented. Sample The sample used in this post is available at the following location: https://s3.amazonaws.com/CSCBlogSamples/Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.Cert.zip

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• Adventures in Windows 8: Working around the navigation animation issues in LayoutAwarePage

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  LayoutAwarePage is a pretty cool add-on to Windows 8 apps, which facilitates greatly the implementation of orientation-aware (portrait, landscape) as well as state-aware (snapped, filled, fullscreen) apps. It has however a few issues that are obvious when you use transformed elements on your page. Adding a LayoutAwarePage to your application If you start with a blank app, the MainPage is a vanilla Page, with no such feature. In order to have a LayoutAwarePage into your app, you need to add this class (and a few helpers) with the following operation: Right click on the Solution and select Add, New Item from the context menu. From the dialog, select a Basic Page (not a Blank Page, which is another vanilla page). If you prefer, you can also use Split Page, Items Page, Item Detail Page, Grouped Items Page or Group Detail Page which are all LayoutAwarePages. Personally I like to start with a Basic Page, which gives me more creative freedom. Adding this new page will cause Visual Studio to show a prompt asking you for permission to add additional helper files to the Common folder. One of these helpers in the LayoutAwarePage class, which is where the magic happens. LayoutAwarePage offers some help for the detection of orientation and state (which makes it a pleasure to design for all these scenarios in Blend, by the way) as well as storage for the navigation state (more about that in a future article). Issue with LayoutAwarePage When you use UI elements such as a background picture, a watermark label, logos, etc, it is quite common to do a few things with those: Making them partially transparent (this is especially true for background pictures; for instance I really like a black Page background with a half transparent picture placed on top of it). Transforming them, for instance rotating them a bit, scaling them, etc. Here is an example with a picture of my two beautiful daughters in the Bird Park in Kuala Lumpur, as well as a transformed TextBlock. The image has an opacity of 40% and the TextBlock a simple RotateTransform. If I create an application with a MainPage that navigates to this LayoutAwarePage, however, I will have a very annoying effect: The background picture appears with an Opacity of 100%. The TextBlock is not rotated. This lasts only for less than a second (during the navigation animation) before the elements “snap into place” and get their desired effect. Here is the XAML that cause the annoying effect: <common:LayoutAwarePage x:Name="pageRoot" x:Class="App13.BasicPage1" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:common="using:App13.Common" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d"> <Grid Style="{StaticResource LayoutRootStyle}"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="140" /> <RowDefinition Height="*" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Image Source="Assets/el20120812025.jpg" Stretch="UniformToFill" Opacity="0.4" Grid.RowSpan="2" /> <Grid> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="*" /> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <Button x:Name="backButton" Click="GoBack" IsEnabled="{Binding Frame.CanGoBack, ElementName=pageRoot}" Style="{StaticResource BackButtonStyle}" /> <TextBlock x:Name="pageTitle" Grid.Column="1" Text="Welcome" Style="{StaticResource PageHeaderTextStyle}" /> </Grid> <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Center" TextWrapping="Wrap" Text="Welcome to my Windows 8 Application" Grid.Row="1" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" FontFamily="Segoe UI Light" FontSize="70" FontWeight="Light" TextAlignment="Center" Foreground="#FFFFA200" RenderTransformOrigin="0.5,0.5" UseLayoutRounding="False" d:LayoutRounding="Auto" Margin="0,0,0,153"> <TextBlock.RenderTransform> <CompositeTransform Rotation="-6.545" /> </TextBlock.RenderTransform> </TextBlock> <VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups> [...] </VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups> </Grid> </common:LayoutAwarePage> Solving the issue In order to solve this “snapping” issue, the solution is to wrap the elements that are transformed into an empty Grid. Honestly, to me it sounds like a bug in the LayoutAwarePage navigation animation, but thankfully the workaround is not that difficult: Simple change the main Grid as follows: <Grid Style="{StaticResource LayoutRootStyle}"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="140" /> <RowDefinition Height="*" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Grid Grid.RowSpan="2"> <Image Source="Assets/el20120812025.jpg" Stretch="UniformToFill" Opacity="0.4" /> </Grid> <Grid> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="*" /> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <Button x:Name="backButton" Click="GoBack" IsEnabled="{Binding Frame.CanGoBack, ElementName=pageRoot}" Style="{StaticResource BackButtonStyle}" /> <TextBlock x:Name="pageTitle" Grid.Column="1" Text="Welcome" Style="{StaticResource PageHeaderTextStyle}" /> </Grid> <Grid Grid.Row="1"> <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Center" TextWrapping="Wrap" Text="Welcome to my Windows 8 Application" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" FontFamily="Segoe UI Light" FontSize="70" FontWeight="Light" TextAlignment="Center" Foreground="#FFFFA200" RenderTransformOrigin="0.5,0.5" UseLayoutRounding="False" d:LayoutRounding="Auto" Margin="0,0,0,153"> <TextBlock.RenderTransform> <CompositeTransform Rotation="-6.545" /> </TextBlock.RenderTransform> </TextBlock> </Grid> <VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups> [...] </Grid> Hopefully this will help a few people, I banged my head on the wall for a while before someone at Microsoft pointed me to the solution ;) Happy coding, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• b2Body moves without stopping

  - by SentineL

  I got a quite strange bug. It is difficult to explain it in two words, but i'll try to do this in short. My b2Body has restitution, friction, density, mass and collision group. I controlling my b2Body via setting linear velocity to it (called on every iteration): (void)moveToDirection:(CGPoint)direction onlyHorizontal:(BOOL)horizontal { b2Vec2 velocity = [controlledObject getBody]-GetLinearVelocity(); double horizontalSpeed = velocity.x + controlledObject.acceleration * direction.x; velocity.x = (float32) (abs((int) horizontalSpeed) < controlledObject.runSpeed ? horizontalSpeed : controlledObject.maxSpeed * direction.x); if (!horizontal) { velocity.y = velocity.y + controlledObject.runSpeed * direction.y; } [controlledObject getBody]->SetLinearVelocity(velocity); } My floor is static b2Body, it has as restitution, friction, density, mass and same collision group in some reason, I'm setting b2Body's friction of my Hero to zero when it is moving, and returning it to 1 when he stops. When I'm pushing run button, hero runs. when i'm releasing it, he stops. All of this works perfect. On jumping, I'm setting linear velocity to my Hero: (void)jump { b2Vec2 velocity = [controlledObject getBody]->GetLinearVelocity(); velocity.y = velocity.y + [[AppDel cfg] getHeroJumpVlelocity]; [controlledObject getBody]->SetLinearVelocity(velocity); } If I'll run, jump, and release run button, while he is in air, all will work fine. And here is my problem: If I'll run, jump, and continue running on landing (or when he goes from one static body to another: there is small fall, probably), Hero will start move, like he has no friction, but he has! I checked this via beakpoints: he has friction, but I can move left of right, and he will never stop, until i'll jump (or go from one static body to another), with unpressed running button. I allready tried: Set friction to body on every iteration double-check am I setting friction to right fixture. set Linear Damping to Hero: his move slows down on gugged moveing. A little more code: I have a sensor and body fixtures in my hero: (void) addBodyFixture { b2CircleShape dynamicBox; dynamicBox.m_radius = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroRadius]; b2FixtureDef bodyFixtureDef; bodyFixtureDef.shape = &dynamicBox; bodyFixtureDef.density = 1.0f; bodyFixtureDef.friction = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroFriction]; bodyFixtureDef.restitution = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroRestitution]; bodyFixtureDef.filter.categoryBits = 0x0001; bodyFixtureDef.filter.maskBits = 0x0001; bodyFixtureDef.filter.groupIndex = 0; bodyFixtureDef.userData = [NSNumber numberWithInt:FIXTURE_BODY]; [physicalBody addFixture:bodyFixtureDef]; } (void) addSensorFixture { b2CircleShape sensorBox; sensorBox.m_radius = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroRadius] * 0.95; sensorBox.m_p.Set(0, -[[AppDel cfg] getHeroRadius] / 10); b2FixtureDef sensor; sensor.shape = &sensorBox; sensor.filter.categoryBits = 0x0001; sensor.filter.maskBits = 0x0001; sensor.filter.groupIndex = 0; sensor.isSensor = YES; sensor.userData = [NSNumber numberWithInt:FIXTURE_SENSOR]; [physicalBody addFixture:sensor]; } Here I'm tracking is hero in air: void FixtureContactListener::BeginContact(b2Contact* contact) { // We need to copy out the data because the b2Contact passed in // is reused. Squirrel *squirrel = (Squirrel *)contact->GetFixtureB()->GetBody()->GetUserData(); if (squirrel) { [squirrel addContact]; } } void FixtureContactListener::EndContact(b2Contact* contact) { Squirrel *squirrel = (Squirrel *)contact->GetFixtureB()->GetBody()->GetUserData(); if (squirrel) { [squirrel removeContact]; } } here is Hero's logic on contacts: - (void) addContact { if (contactCount == 0) [self landing]; contactCount++; } - (void) removeContact { contactCount--; if (contactCount == 0) [self flying]; if (contactCount <0) contactCount = 0; } - (void)landing { inAir = NO; acceleration = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroRunAcceleration]; [sprite stopAllActions]; (running ? [sprite runAction:[self runAction]] : [sprite runAction:[self standAction]]); } - (void)flying { inAir = YES; acceleration = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroAirAcceleration]; [sprite stopAllActions]; [self flyAction]; } here is Hero's moving logic: - (void)stop { running = NO; if (!inAir) { [sprite stopAllActions]; [sprite runAction:[self standAction]]; } } - (void)left { [physicalBody setFriction:0]; if (!running && !inAir) { [sprite stopAllActions]; [sprite runAction:[self runAction]]; } running = YES; moveingDirection = NO; [bodyControls moveToDirection:CGPointMake(-1, 0) onlyHorizontal:YES]; } - (void)right { [physicalBody setFriction:0]; if (!running && !inAir) { [sprite stopAllActions]; [sprite runAction:[self runAction]]; } running = YES; moveingDirection = YES; [bodyControls moveToDirection:CGPointMake(1, 0) onlyHorizontal:YES]; } - (void)jump { if (!inAir) { [bodyControls jump]; } } and here is my update method (called on every iteration): - (void)update:(NSMutableDictionary *)buttons { if (!isDead) { [self updateWithButtonName:BUTTON_LEFT inButtons:buttons whenPressed:@selector(left) whenUnpressed:@selector(stop)]; [self updateWithButtonName:BUTTON_RIGHT inButtons:buttons whenPressed:@selector(right) whenUnpressed:@selector(stop)]; [self updateWithButtonName:BUTTON_UP inButtons:buttons whenPressed:@selector(jump) whenUnpressed:@selector(nothing)]; [self updateWithButtonName:BUTTON_DOWN inButtons:buttons whenPressed:@selector(nothing) whenUnpressed:@selector(nothing)]; [sprite setFlipX:(moveingDirection)]; } [self checkPosition]; if (!running) [physicalBody setFriction:[[AppDel cfg] getHeroFriction]]; else [physicalBody setFriction:0]; } - (void)updateWithButtonName:(NSString *)buttonName inButtons:(NSDictionary *)buttons whenPressed:(SEL)pressedSelector whenUnpressed:(SEL)unpressedSelector { NSNumber *buttonNumber = [buttons objectForKey:buttonName]; if (buttonNumber == nil) return; if ([buttonNumber boolValue]) [self performSelector:pressedSelector]; else [self performSelector:unpressedSelector]; } - (void)checkPosition { b2Body *body = [self getBody]; b2Vec2 position = body->GetPosition(); CGPoint inWorldPosition = [[AppDel cfg] worldMeterPointFromScreenPixel:CGPointMake(position.x * PTM_RATIO, position.y * PTM_RATIO)]; if (inWorldPosition.x < 0 || inWorldPosition.x > WORLD_WIDGH / PTM_RATIO || inWorldPosition.y <= 0) { [self kill]; } }

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• How do I use C# and ADO.NET to query an Oracle table with a spatial column of type SDO_GEOMETRY?

  - by John Donahue

  My development machine is running Windows 7 Enterprise, 64-bit version. I am using Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate. I am connecting to an Oracle 11g Enterprise server version 11.1.0.7.0. I had a difficult time locating Oracle client software that is made for 64-bit Windows systems and eventually landed here to download what I assume is the proper client connectivity software. I added a reference to "Oracle.DataAccess" which is version 2.111.6.0 (Runtime Version is v2.0.50727). I am targeting .NET CLR version 4.0 since all properties of my VS Solution are defaults and this is 2010 RC. I was then able to write a console application in C# that established connectivity, executed a SELECT statement, and properly returned data when the table in question does NOT contain a spatial column. My problem is that this no longer works when the table I query has a column of type SDO_GEOMETRY in it. Below is the simple console application I am trying to run that reproduces the problem. When the code gets to the line with the "ExecuteReader" command, an exception is raised and the message is "Unsupported column datatype". using System; using System.Data; using Oracle.DataAccess.Client; namespace ConsoleTestOracle { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { string oradb = string.Format("Data Source={0};User Id={1};Password={2};", "hostname/servicename", "login", "password"); try { using (OracleConnection conn = new OracleConnection(oradb)) { conn.Open(); OracleCommand cmd = new OracleCommand(); cmd.Connection = conn; cmd.CommandText = "select * from SDO_8307_2D_POINTS"; cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text; OracleDataReader dr = cmd.ExecuteReader(); } } catch (Exception e) { string error = e.Message; } } } } The fact that this code works when used against a table that does not contain a spatial column of type SDO_GEOMETRY makes me think I have my windows 7 machine properly configured so I am surprised that I get this exception when the table contains different kinds of columns. I don't know if there is some configuration on my machine or the Oracle machine that needs to be done, or if the Oracle client software I have installed is wrong, or old and needs to be updated. Here is the SQL I used to create the table, populate it with some rows containing points in the spatial column, etc. if you want to try to reproduce this exactly. SQL Create Commands: create table SDO_8307_2D_Points (ObjectID number(38) not null unique, TestID number, shape SDO_GEOMETRY); Insert into SDO_8307_2D_Points values (1, 1, SDO_GEOMETRY(2001, 8307, null, SDO_ELEM_INFO_ARRAY(1, 1, 1), SDO_ORDINATE_ARRAY(10.0, 10.0))); Insert into SDO_8307_2D_Points values (2, 2, SDO_GEOMETRY(2001, 8307, null, SDO_ELEM_INFO_ARRAY(1, 1, 1), SDO_ORDINATE_ARRAY(10.0, 20.0))); insert into user_sdo_geom_metadata values ('SDO_8307_2D_Points', 'SHAPE', SDO_DIM_ARRAY(SDO_DIM_ELEMENT('Lat', -180, 180, 0.05), SDO_DIM_ELEMENT('Long', -90, 90, 0.05)), 8307); create index SDO_8307_2D_Point_indx on SDO_8307_2D_Points(shape) indextype is mdsys.spatial_index PARAMETERS ('sdo_indx_dims=2' ); Any advice or insights would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

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• Eclipse buildtime and runtime classpaths for easy execution of junit test cases

  - by emeraldjava

  Hey, I've a large eclipse project with multiple junit classes. I'm trying to strike a balance between adding runtime resources to the eclipse project classpath, and the need to configure mutliple junit launch configurations. I realise the default eclipse build classpath is inherited by all unit test configurations, but some of my tests require extra runtime resources. I could add these resources to the build classpath, but this does slow my overall project build time (since it has to keep more files in synch). I don't like the idea of including * resources and jars on the runtime classpath. The two options that i have are these, the positive and negative cases as i see it are listed 1 : Add all runtime resources to eclipse classpath. POS I can select a unit test and run it without having to configure the test classpath. POS Extra resources on build classpath means eclipse slows down. NEG More difficult to ensure each test uses the correct resources. 2 : Configure the classpath of each unit test POS I know exactly what resources are being used by a test. POS Smaller build classpath means quicker build and execution by eclipse. NEG Its a pain having to setup multiple separate junit runtime classpaths. Ideally i'd like to configure one base junit runtime configuration, which takes the default eclipse build classpath, adds extra runtime jars and resources. This configuration could then be reused by the specific junit test cases, Is anything like this possible? Looking at a specific junit launch configuration which can be exported to a share project file <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?> <launchConfiguration type="org.eclipse.jdt.junit.launchconfig"> <stringAttribute key="bad_container_name" value="/CR-3089_5_1_branch."/> <listAttribute key="org.eclipse.debug.core.MAPPED_RESOURCE_PATHS"> <listEntry value="/CR-3089_5_1_branch/src/com/x/y/z/ParserJUnitTest.java"/> </listAttribute> <listAttribute key="org.eclipse.debug.core.MAPPED_RESOURCE_TYPES"> <listEntry value="1"/> </listAttribute> <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.jdt.junit.CONTAINER" value=""/> <booleanAttribute key="org.eclipse.jdt.junit.KEEPRUNNING_ATTR" value="false"/> <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.jdt.junit.TESTNAME" value=""/> <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.jdt.junit.TEST_KIND" value="org.eclipse.jdt.junit.loader.junit4"/> <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.jdt.launching.MAIN_TYPE" value="com.x.y.z.ParserJUnitTest"/> <stringAttribute key="org.eclipse.jdt.launching.PROJECT_ATTR" value="CR-3089_5_1_branch"/> </launchConfiguration> is it possible to extend/reuse this configuration, and parameterise the 'org.eclipse.jdt.launching.MAIN_TYPE' value? I'm aware of the commons launch and jar manifest file solutions to configuring the classpath, but they both seem to assume that an ant build is run before the test can execute. I want to avoid any eclipse dependency on calling an ant target when refactoting code and executing tests. Basically - What is the the easiest way to seperate and maintain the eclipse buildtime classpath and junit runtime classpaths?

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• Spring 3 simple extentionless url mappings with annotation-based mapping - impossible?

  - by caerphilly

  Hi, I'm using Spring 3, and trying to set up a simple web-app using annotations to define controller mappings. This seems to be incredibly difficult without peppering all the urls with *.form or *.do Because part of the site needs to be password protected, these urls are all under /secure. There is a <security-constraint> in the web.xml protecting everything under that root. I want to map all the Spring controllers to /secure/app/. Example URLs would be: /secure/app/landingpage /secure/app/edit/customer/{id} each of which I would handle with an appropriate jsp/xml/whatever. So, in web.xml I have this: <servlet> <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name> <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class> <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup> </servlet> <servlet-mapping> <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name> <url-pattern>/secure/app/*</url-pattern> </servlet-mapping> And in despatcher-servlet.xml I have this: <context:component-scan base-package="controller" /> In the Controller package I have a controller class: package controller; import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller; import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping; import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod; import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView; import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest; @Controller @RequestMapping("/secure/app/main") public class HomePageController { public HomePageController() { } @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET) public ModelAndView getPage(HttpServletRequest request) { ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView(); mav.setViewName("main"); return mav; } } Under /WEB-INF/jsp I have a "main.jsp", and a suitable view resolver set up to point to this. I had things working when mapping the despatcher using *.form, but can't get anything working using the above code. When Spring starts up it appears to map everything correctly: 13:22:36,762 INFO main annotation.DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping:399 - Mapped URL path [/secure/app/main] onto handler [controller.HomePageController@2a8ab08f] I also noticed this line, which looked suspicious: 13:25:49,578 DEBUG main servlet.DispatcherServlet:443 - No HandlerMappings found in servlet 'dispatcher': using default And at run time any attempt to view /secure/app/main just returns a 404 error in Tomcat, with this log output: 13:25:53,382 DEBUG http-8080-1 servlet.DispatcherServlet:842 - DispatcherServlet with name 'dispatcher' determining Last-Modified value for [/secure/app/main] 13:25:53,383 DEBUG http-8080-1 servlet.DispatcherServlet:850 - No handler found in getLastModified 13:25:53,390 DEBUG http-8080-1 servlet.DispatcherServlet:690 - DispatcherServlet with name 'dispatcher' processing GET request for [/secure/app/main] 13:25:53,393 WARN http-8080-1 servlet.PageNotFound:962 - No mapping found for HTTP request with URI [/secure/app/main] in DispatcherServlet with name 'dispatcher' 13:25:53,393 DEBUG http-8080-1 servlet.DispatcherServlet:677 - Successfully completed request So... Spring maps a URL, and then "forgets" about that mapping a second later? What is going on? Thanks.

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• Game loop and time tracking

  - by David Brown

  Maybe I'm just an idiot, but I've been trying to implement a game loop all day and it's just not clicking. I've read literally every article I could find on Google, but the problem is that they all use different timing mechanisms, which makes them difficult to apply to my particular situation (some use milliseconds, other use ticks, etc). Basically, I have a Clock object that updates each time the game loop executes. internal class Clock { public static long Timestamp { get { return Stopwatch.GetTimestamp(); } } public static long Frequency { get { return Stopwatch.Frequency; } } private long _startTime; private long _lastTime; private TimeSpan _totalTime; private TimeSpan _elapsedTime; /// <summary> /// The amount of time that has passed since the first step. /// </summary> public TimeSpan TotalTime { get { return _totalTime; } } /// <summary> /// The amount of time that has passed since the last step. /// </summary> public TimeSpan ElapsedTime { get { return _elapsedTime; } } public Clock() { Reset(); } public void Reset() { _startTime = Timestamp; _lastTime = 0; _totalTime = TimeSpan.Zero; _elapsedTime = TimeSpan.Zero; } public void Tick() { long currentTime = Timestamp; if (_lastTime == 0) _lastTime = currentTime; _totalTime = TimestampToTimeSpan(currentTime - _startTime); _elapsedTime = TimestampToTimeSpan(currentTime - _lastTime); _lastTime = currentTime; } public static TimeSpan TimestampToTimeSpan(long timestamp) { return TimeSpan.FromTicks( (timestamp * TimeSpan.TicksPerSecond) / Frequency); } } I based most of that on the XNA GameClock, but it's greatly simplified. Then, I have a Time class which holds various times that the Update and Draw methods need to know. public class Time { public TimeSpan ElapsedVirtualTime { get; internal set; } public TimeSpan ElapsedRealTime { get; internal set; } public TimeSpan TotalVirtualTime { get; internal set; } public TimeSpan TotalRealTime { get; internal set; } internal Time() { } internal Time(TimeSpan elapsedVirtualTime, TimeSpan elapsedRealTime, TimeSpan totalVirutalTime, TimeSpan totalRealTime) { ElapsedVirtualTime = elapsedVirtualTime; ElapsedRealTime = elapsedRealTime; TotalVirtualTime = totalVirutalTime; TotalRealTime = totalRealTime; } } My main class keeps a single instance of Time, which it should constantly update during the game loop. So far, I have this: private static void Loop() { do { Clock.Tick(); Time.TotalRealTime = Clock.TotalTime; Time.ElapsedRealTime = Clock.ElapsedTime; InternalUpdate(Time); InternalDraw(Time); } while (!_exitRequested); } The real time properties of the time class turn out great. Now I'd like to get a proper update/draw loop working so that the state is updated a variable number of times per frame, but at a fixed timestep. At the same time, the Time.TotalVirtualTime and Time.ElapsedVirtualTime should be updated accordingly. In addition, I intend for this to support multiplayer in the future, in case that makes any difference to the design of the game loop. Any tips or examples on how I could go about implementing this (aside from links to articles)?

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• How do I use Sketchflow sample data for a ListBoxItem Template at design time?

  - by Boris Nikolaevich

  I am using Expression Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 to create a Sketchflow prototype. I have a Sample Data collection and a ListBox that is bound to it. This displays as I would expect both at design time and at run time. However, the ListBoxItem template it just complex enough that I wanted to pull it out into its own XAML file. Even though the items still render as expected in the main ListBox where the template is used, when I open the template itself, all of the databound controls are empty. If I add a DataContext to the template, I can see and work with the populated objects while in the template, but then that local DataContext overrides the DataContext set on the listbox. A bit of code will illustrate. Start by creating a Sketchflow project (I am using Silverlight, but it should work the same for WPF), then add a project data source called SampleDataSource. Add a collection called ListData, with a single String property called Title. Here is the (scaled down) code for the main Sketchflow screen, which we'll call Main.xaml: <UserControl xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:local="clr-namespace:DemoScreens" mc:Ignorable="d" x:Class="DemoScreens.Main" Width="800" Height="600"> <UserControl.Resources> <ResourceDictionary> <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> <ResourceDictionary Source="ProjectDataSources.xaml"/> </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> <DataTemplate x:Key="ListBoxItemTemplate"> <local:DemoListBoxItemTemplate d:IsPrototypingComposition="True" Margin="0,0,5,0" Width="748"/> </DataTemplate> </ResourceDictionary> </UserControl.Resources> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="#5c87b2" DataContext="{Binding Source={StaticResource SampleDataSource}}"> <ListBox Background="White" x:Name="DemoList" Style="{StaticResource ListBox-Sketch}" Margin="20,100,20,20" ItemTemplate="{StaticResource ListBoxItemTemplate}" ItemsSource="{Binding ListData}" ScrollViewer.HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Disabled"/> </Grid> </UserControl> You can see that it references the DemoListBoxItemTemplate, which is defined in its own DemoListBoxItemTemplate.xaml: <UserControl xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:local="clr-namespace:DemoScreens" mc:Ignorable="d" x:Class="DemoScreens.DemoListBoxItemTemplate"> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Title}" Style="{StaticResource BasicTextBlock-Sketch}" Width="150"/> </Grid> </UserControl> Obviously, this is way simpler than my actual listbox, but it should be enough to illustrate my problem. When you open Main.xaml in the Expression designer, the list box is populated with sample data. But when you open DemoListBoxItemTemplate.xaml, there is no data context and therefore no data to display—which makes it more difficult to identify controls visually. How can I have sample data displayed when I am working with the template, while still allowing the larger set of sample data to be used for the ListBox itself?

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• Using DateTime in a SqlParameter for Stored Procedure, format error

  - by Matt

  I'm trying to call a stored procedure (on a SQL 2005 server) from C#, .NET 2.0 using DateTime as a value to a SqlParameter. The SQL type in the stored procedure is 'datetime'. Executing the sproc from SQL Management Studio works fine. But everytime I call it from C# I get an error about the date format. When I run SQL Profiler to watch the calls, I then copy paste the exec call to see whats going on. These are my observations and notes about what I've attempted: 1) If I pass the DateTime in directly as a DateTime or converted to SqlDateTime, the field is surrounding by a PAIR of single quotes, such as @Date_Of_Birth=N''1/8/2009 8:06:17 PM'' 2) If I pass the DateTime in as a string, I only get the single quotes 3) Using SqlDateTime.ToSqlString() does not result in a UTC formatted datetime string (even after converting to universal time) 4) Using DateTime.ToString() does not result in a UTC formatted datetime string. 5) Manually setting the DbType for the SqlParameter to DateTime does not change the above observations. So, my questions then, is how on earth do I get C# to pass the properly formatted time in the SqlParameter? Surely this is a common use case, why is it so difficult to get working? I can't seem to convert DateTime to a string that is SQL compatable (e.g. '2009-01-08T08:22:45') EDIT RE: BFree, the code to actually execute the sproc is as follows: using (SqlCommand sprocCommand = new SqlCommand(sprocName)) { sprocCommand.Connection = transaction.Connection; sprocCommand.Transaction = transaction; sprocCommand.CommandType = System.Data.CommandType.StoredProcedure; sprocCommand.Parameters.AddRange(parameters.ToArray()); sprocCommand.ExecuteNonQuery(); } To go into more detail about what I have tried: parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Date_Of_Birth", DOB)); parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Date_Of_Birth", DOB.ToUniversalTime())); parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Date_Of_Birth", DOB.ToUniversalTime().ToString())); SqlParameter param = new SqlParameter("@Date_Of_Birth", System.Data.SqlDbType.DateTime); param.Value = DOB.ToUniversalTime(); parameters.Add(param); SqlParameter param = new SqlParameter("@Date_Of_Birth", SqlDbType.DateTime); param.Value = new SqlDateTime(DOB.ToUniversalTime()); parameters.Add(param); parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Date_Of_Birth", new SqlDateTime(DOB.ToUniversalTime()).ToSqlString())); Additional EDIT The one I thought most likely to work: SqlParameter param = new SqlParameter("@Date_Of_Birth", System.Data.SqlDbType.DateTime); param.Value = DOB; Results in this value in the exec call as seen in the SQL Profiler @Date_Of_Birth=''2009-01-08 15:08:21:813'' If I modify this to be @Date_Of_Birth='2009-01-08T15:08:21' It works, but it won't parse with pair of single quotes, and it wont convert to a datetime correctly with the space between the date and time and with the milliseconds on the end. Update and Success First and foremost, thank you everyone for the answers. I post this for the sake of completeness and accuracy on SO - because I certainly do not do it for my pride... I had copy/pasted the code above after the request from below. I trimmed things here and there to be concise. Turns out my problem was in the code I left out, which I'm sure any one of you would have spotted in an instant. I had wrapped my sproc calls inside a transaction. Turns out that I was simply not doing transaction.Commit()!!!!! I'm ashamed to say it, but there you have it. I still don't know what's going on with the syntax I get back from the profiler. A coworker watched with his own instance of the profiler from his computer, and it returned proper syntax. Watching the very SAME executions from my profiler showed the incorrect syntax. It acted as a red-herring, making me believe there was a query syntax problem instead of the much more simple and true answer, which was that I need to commit the transaction! I marked an answer below as correct, and threw in some up-votes on others because they did, after all, answer the question, even if they didn't fix my specific (brain lapse) issue. Thanks again for the help.

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• ASMX Web Services with SOAP Extension

  - by digitall

  I am in the process of setting up a web service for an external client to connect to my client's application and update some information. I went the ASMX route (the rest of the application runs on WCF) because I knew the external client could be very difficult to deal with and I was trying to keep everything as simple as possible. They also aren't a .Net shop which makes things worse. After getting the service setup for them I provided the ASMX URL for them to see how to format the SOAP headers/message content. They have since come back and told me their tool is unable to send them in the format required by .Net and I can either come up with a different way to accept messages or we have to go with FTP. Based on this I have been researching how to intercept their message, reformat it the way my service requires it (which means adding two lines), and then let it process. This path led me to SOAP Extensions which I have been trying to work with but can't seem to figure out. When I have my sample application call the web service from the generated code Add Web Reference provides everything works great until I add in my extension. All it currently does is override ChainStream setting an internal stream equal to the one being passed in and returning a new stream, like this: private Stream newStream = null; private Stream oldStream = null; public override Stream ChainStream(Stream stream) { this.oldStream = stream; this.newStream = new MemoryStream(); return newStream; } I also override ProcessMessage and in it take the contents of oldStream and set newStream equal to that and then write to a different stream with an XmlWriter. I take that new stream and using a StreamReader read it into a string, with the end goal being manipulating it here and setting newStream (which is being used by ChainStream) equal to the contents of this. Here is that piece: public override void ProcessMessage(SoapMessage message) { switch (message.Stage) { case SoapMessageStage.BeforeDeserialize: this.Process(); break; default: break; } } private void Process() { this.newStream.Position = 0L; XmlTextReader reader = new XmlTextReader(this.oldStream); MemoryStream outStream = new MemoryStream(); using (XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(outStream)) { do { writer.WriteNode(reader, true); } while (reader.Read()); writer.Flush(); } outStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin); StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(outStream); string message = streamReader.ReadToEnd(); newStream = outStream; newStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin); streamReader.Close(); } By running this, which seems to me like it would be fine, my test application gets a 400 Bad Request back from the service. If I either don't use the extension or I don't do anything in ProcessMessage everything seems fine. Any suggestions to this? As a side note, once I get this working with the generated code from the WSDL I will be moving to a WebRequest to try sending the message to the service. Currently that bombs out with a 415 Unsupported Media Type response. I'm trying to keep this post to one question but if anyone has any tips with using a WebRequest to connect to an ASMX service it would be much appreciated!

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• Vertical textes inside of table headers with respect of a JavaScript based on SVG library

  - by Oleg

  I use jqGrid with many columns contains Boolean information, which are displayed as checkboxes inside of table (see http://www.ok-soft-gmbh.com/VerticalHeaders/TestFixedO.htm as an example). To display information more compact I use vertical column headers. It works very well and works in jqGrid in all browsers (see my discussion with Tony Tomov in jqGrid forum http://www.trirand.com/blog/?page_id=393/feature-request/headers-with-vertical-orientation/), but in IE vertical texts looks not nice enough. I was asked from users why the texted displayed so strange. So I think about using a JavaScript based SVG library like SVG Web ( http://code.google.com/p/svgweb/ ) or Raphaël ( http://raphaeljs.com/ ). SVG is very powerful and it is difficult to find a good example is not very easy. I need only display vertical texts (-90 grad, from bottom to up) and use if possible without working in mode of absolute position. So one more times my question: I need have a possibility to display vertical texts (-90 grad rotation) inside of <td> element of table header. I want use a JavaScript based SVG library like SVG Web or Raphaël. The solution must support on IE6. Have somebody a good reference to example which could help me to do this? If somebody post a whole solution of the problem I would be happy. To be exact here is my current solution: I define .rotate { -webkit-transform: rotate(-90deg); /* Safari, Chrome */ -moz-transform: rotate(-90deg); /* Firefox */ -o-transform: rotate(-90deg); /* Opera starting with 10.50 */ /* Internet Explorer: */ filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.BasicImage(rotation=3); } define RotateCheckboxColumnHeaders function var RotateCheckboxColumnHeaders = function (grid, headerHeight) { // we use grid as context (if one have more as one table on tnhe page) var trHead = $("thead:first tr", grid.hdiv); var cm = grid.getGridParam("colModel"); $("thead:first tr th").height(headerHeight); headerHeight = $("thead:first tr th").height(); for (var iCol = 0; iCol < cm.length; iCol++) { var cmi = cm[iCol]; if (cmi.formatter === 'checkbox') { // we must set width of column header div BEFOR adding class "rotate" to // prevent text cutting based on the current column width var headDiv = $("th:eq(" + iCol + ") div", trHead); headDiv.width(headerHeight).addClass("rotate"); if (!$.browser.msie) { if ($.browser.mozilla) { headDiv.css("left", (cmi.width - headerHeight) / 2 + 3).css("bottom", 7); } else { headDiv.css("left", (cmi.width - headerHeight) / 2); } } else { var ieVer = jQuery.browser.version.substr(0, 3); // Internet Explorer if (ieVer !== "6.0" && ieVer !== "7.0") { headDiv.css("left", cmi.width / 2 - 4).css("bottom", headerHeight / 2); $("span", headDiv).css("left", 0); } else { headDiv.css("left", 3); } } } } }; And include a call like RotateCheckboxColumnHeaders(grid, 110); after creating jqGrid.

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• Is this question too hard for a seasoned C++ architect?

  - by Monomer

  Background Information We're looking to hire a seasoned C++ architect (10+years dev, of which at least 6years must be C++ ) for a high frequency trading platform. Job advert says STL, Boost proficiency is a must with preferences to modern uses of C++. The company I work for is a Fortune 500 IB (aka finance industry), it requires passes in all the standard SHL tests (numeric, vocab, spatial etc) before interviews can commence. Everyone on the team was given the task of coming up with one question to ask the candidates during a written/typed test, please note this is the second test provided to the candidates, the first being Advanced IKM C++ test, done in the offices supervised and without internet access. People passing that do the second test. After roughly 70 candidates, my question has been determined to be statistically the worst performing - aka least number of people attempted it, furthermore even less people were able to give meaningful answers. Please note, the second test is not timed, the candidate can literally take as long as they like (we've had one person take roughly 10.5hrs) My question to SO is this, after SHL and IKM adv c++ tests, backed up with at least 6+ years C++ development experience, is it still ok not to be able to even comment about let alone come up with some loose strategy for solving the following question. The Question There is a class C with methods foo, boo, boo_and_foo and foo_and_boo. Each method takes i,j,k and l clock cycles respectively, where i < j, k < i+j and l < i+j. class C { public: int foo() {...} int boo() {...} int boo_and_foo() {...} int foo_and_boo() {...} }; In code one might write: C c; . . int i = c.foo() + c.boo(); But it would be better to have: int i = c.foo_and_boo(); What changes or techniques could one make to the definition of C, that would allow similar syntax of the original usage, but instead have the compiler generate the latter. Note that foo and boo are not commutative. Possible Solution We were basically looking for an expression templates based approach, and were willing to give marks to anyone who had even hinted or used the phrase or related terminology. We got only two people that used the wording, but weren't able to properly describe how they accomplish the task in detail. We use such techniques all over the place, due to the use of various mathematical operators for matrix and vector based calculations, for example to decide when to use IPP or hand woven implementations at compile time for a particular architecture and many other things. The particular area of software development requires microsecond response times. I believe could/should be able to teach a junior such techniques, but given the assumed caliber of candidates I expected a little more. Is this really a difficult question? Should it be removed? Or are we just not seeing the right candidates?

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• NHibernate, VS 2010

  - by ??????

  ????????????, ANRY! ?????? ??????? ??? ??????????? ???????? ?? ????????????, ?????????? ? NHibernate. ??? ?? ???????? ???? ?????? "Hello NHibernate!". ???????????? ??????????? ????? ??????? ????????: ?? ????, ???? ?????, ??????, ?????. ?????????????? ?????? 4 ??????? ? MSSQL 2010: ?????(id_??????, ????????, ????), ??????(id_???????, ???, ???????), ?????(id_??????, id_???????, ?????????) ? ?????? ??????(id_?????? ??????, id_??????, id_??????, ??????????). ??????????????, ?????? 4 ??????: ?????, ??????, ?????, ?????? ??????. ?????? ??? ?????: ????? ?? ????????? 4 mapping-?????, ??? ?? ????? ???????????? ?????? ? ????? ???? Debug ???????? ????????? ??????: "Could not compile the mapping document: Sklad.products.hbm.xml". ?????? "????????" ?????????, ??? ??????. ? ??? ????? ???? ???????? ? ??? ?? ????? ??????? ? ?????????, ??????. P.S. ???? ?? ??????, ?????? ???????? ?? ?????: [email protected] Google translation (I cleaned this up a but, don't don't speak russian, someone else please improve if it's wrong) Hello, ANRY! Most recently, during the passage of the practice of the university, faced with NHibernate. I read your article "Hello NHibernate!". Took to implement something like a store: that is, a product, the customer order. Accordingly created 4 tables in MSSQL 2010: Goods (id_tovara, name, price) Client (id_klienta, name, surname) Order (id_zakaza, id_klienta, cost) Order Line (id_stroki order id_zakaza, id_tovara, quantity) Accordingly, created 4 classes: Product, Customer, Order, Order Line. my question is this: whether you want to create 4 mapping-file, or you can make only one? And when there is a Debug gives the following error: "Could not compile the mapping document: Sklad.products.hbm.xml. And "Build" is normal, no errors. In what may be the problem and how it can solve? Regards, Andrew. PS if not difficult, you can reply to e-mail: [email protected]

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• Psychology researcher wants to learn new language

  - by user273347

  I'm currently considering R, matlab, or python, but I'm open to other options. Could you help me pick the best language for my needs? Here are the criteria I have in mind (not in order): Simple to learn. I don't really have a lot of free time, so I'm looking for something that isn't extremely complicated and/or difficult to pick up. I know some C, FWIW. Good for statistics/psychometrics. I do a ton of statistics and psychometrics analysis. A lot of it is basic stuff that I can do with SPSS, but I'd like to play around with the more advanced stuff too (bootstrapping, genetic programming, data mining, neural nets, modeling, etc). I'm looking for a language/environment that can help me run my simpler analyses faster and give me more options than a canned stat package like SPSS. If it can even make tables for me, then it'll be perfect. I also do a fair bit of experimental psychology. I use a canned experiment "programming" software (SuperLab) to make most of my experiments, but I want to be able to program executable programs that I can run on any computer and that can compile the data from the experiments in a spreadsheet. I know python has psychopy and pyepl and matlab has psychtoolbox, but I don't know which one is best. If R had something like this, I'd probably be sold on R already. I'm looking for something regularly used in academe and industry. Everybody else here (including myself, so far) uses canned stat and experiment programming software. One of the reasons I'm trying to learn a programming language is so that I can keep up when I move to another lab. Looking forward to your comments and suggestions. Thank you all for your kind and informative replies. I appreciate it. It's still a tough choice because of so many strong arguments for each language. Python - Thinking about it, I've forgotten so much about C already (I don't even remember what to do with an array) that it might be better for me to start from scratch with a simple program that does what it's supposed to do. It looks like it can do most of the things I'll need it to do, though not as cleanly as R and MATLAB. R - I'm really liking what I'm reading about R. The packages are perfect for my statistical work now. Given the purpose of R, I don't think it's suited to building psychological experiments though. To clarify, what I mean is making a program that presents visual and auditory stimuli to my specifications (hundreds of them in a preset and/or randomized sequence) and records the response data gathered from participants. MATLAB - It's awesome that cognitive and neuro folk are recommending MATLAB, because I'm preparing for the big leap from social and personality psychology to cognitive neuro. The problem is the Uni where I work doesn't have MATLAB licenses (and 3750 GBP for a compiler license is not an option for me haha). Octave looks like a good alternative. PsychToolbox is compatible with Octave, thankfully. SQL - Thanks for the tip. I'll explore that option, too. Python will be the least backbreaking and most useful in the short term. R is well suited to my current work. MATLAB is well suited to my prospective work. It's a tough call, but I think I am now equipped to make a more well-informed decision about where to go next. Thanks again!

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• Xcode - "Preference Pane" project - how to access bundle?

  - by Nippysaurus

  I have created a "Preference Pane" project. In this project I would like to load an image from my bundles resources folder. This seems difficult because "[NSBundle mainBundle]" seems to return the following: 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </Applications/System Preferences.app> (loaded) Iterating through "[NSBundle allBundles]" reveals that my projects bundle appears, but does not appear to be loaded: 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/Mouse.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/Sound.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/Spotlight.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/TimeMachine.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </Library/PreferencePanes/DivX.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/Trackpad.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/UniversalAccessPref.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/Dock.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/DateAndTime.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/Keyboard.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/MobileMe.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/FibreChannel.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/Appearance.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/DigiHubDiscs.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/Ink.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/Security.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/EnergySaver.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/Speech.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </Users/michael/Library/PreferencePanes/MyPrefPane.prefPane> (loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </Users/michael/Code/MyPrefPane/build/Debug/MyPrefPane.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/SharingPref.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/Expose.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/SoftwareUpdate.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/ParentalControls.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/PrintAndFax.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/Accounts.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/DesktopScreenEffectsPref.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/Bluetooth.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/Localization.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/StartupDisk.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/Network.prefPane> (not yet loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </Applications/System Preferences.app> (loaded) 27/12/10 9:24:18 PM System Preferences[5076] NSBundle </System/Library/PreferencePanes/Displays.prefPane> (not yet loaded) I'm not sure whats going on here. How can I access my prefpane bundle?

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• Databinding to ObservableCollection in a different UserControl - how to preserve current selections?

  - by Dave

  Scope of question expanded on 2010-03-25 I ended up figuring out my problem, but here's a new problem that came up as a result of solving the original question, because I want to be able to award the bounty to someone!!! Once I figured out my problem, I soon found out that when the ObservableCollection updates, the databound ComboBox has its contents repopulated, but most of the selections have been blanked out. I assume that in this case, MVVM is going to make it difficult for me to remember the last selected item. I have an idea, but it seems a little nasty. I'll award the bounty to whomever comes up with a nice solution for this! Question re-written on 2010-03-24 I have two UserControls, where one is a dialog that has a TabControl, and the other is one that appears within said TabControl. I'll just call them CandyDialog and CandyNameViewer for simplicity's sake. There's also a data management class called Tracker that manages information storage, which for all intents and purposes just exposes a public property that is an ObservableCollection. I display the CandyNameViewer in CandyDialog via code behind, like this: private void CandyDialog_Loaded( object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { _candyviewer = new CandyViewer(); _candyviewer.DataContext = _tracker; candy_tab.Content = _candyviewer; } The CandyViewer's XAML looks like this (edited for kaxaml): <Page xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"> <Page.Resources> <DataTemplate x:Key="CandyItemTemplate"> <Grid> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="120"></ColumnDefinition> <ColumnDefinition Width="150"></ColumnDefinition> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <TextBox Grid.Column="0" Text="{Binding CandyName}" Margin="3"></TextBox> <!-- just binding to DataContext ends up using InventoryItem as parent, so we need to get to the UserControl --> <ComboBox Grid.Column="1" SelectedItem="{Binding SelectedCandy, Mode=TwoWay}" ItemsSource="{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource FindAncestor, AncestorType={x:Type UserControl}}, Path=DataContext.CandyNames}" Margin="3"></ComboBox> </Grid> </DataTemplate> </Page.Resources> <Grid> <ListBox DockPanel.Dock="Top" ItemsSource="{Binding CandyBoxContents, Mode=TwoWay}" ItemTemplate="{StaticResource CandyItemTemplate}" /> </Grid> </Page> Now everything works fine when the controls are loaded. As long as CandyNames is populated first, and then the consumer UserControl is displayed, all of the names are there. I obviously don't get any errors in the Output Window or anything like that. The issue I have is that when the ObservableCollection is modified from the model, those changes are not reflected in the consumer UserControl! I've never had this problem before; all of my previous uses of ObservableCollection updated fine, although in those cases I wasn't databinding across assemblies. Although I am currently only adding and removing candy names to/from the ObservableCollection, at a later date I will likely also allow renaming from the model side. Is there something I did wrong? Is there a good way to actually debug this? Reed Copsey indicates here that inter-UserControl databinding is possible. Unfortunately, my favorite Bea Stollnitz article on WPF databinding debugging doesn't suggest anything that I could use for this particular problem.

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• What is the coolest thing you can do in <10 lines of simple code? Help me inspire beginners!

  - by Tom Ritter

  I'm looking for the coolest thing you can do in a few lines of simple code. I'm sure you can write a Mandelbrot set in Haskell in 15 lines but it's difficult to follow. My goal is to inspire students that programming is cool. We know that programming is cool because you can create anything you imagine - it's the ultimate creative outlet. I want to inspire these beginners and get them over as many early-learning humps as I can. Now, my reasons are selfish. I'm teaching an Intro to Computing course to a group of 60 half-engineering, half business majors; all freshmen. They are the students who came from underprivileged High schools. From my past experience, the group is generally split as follows: a few rock-stars, some who try very hard and kind of get it, the few who try very hard and barely get it, and the few who don't care. I want to reach as many of these groups as effectively as I can. Here's an example of how I'd use a computer program to teach: Here's an example of what I'm looking for: a 1-line VBS script to get your computer to talk to you: CreateObject("sapi.spvoice").Speak InputBox("Enter your text","Talk it") I could use this to demonstrate order of operations. I'd show the code, let them play with it, then explain that There's a lot going on in that line, but the computer can make sense of it, because it knows the rules. Then I'd show them something like this: 4(5*5) / 10 + 9(.25 + .75) And you can see that first I need to do is (5*5). Then I can multiply for 4. And now I've created the Object. Dividing by 10 is the same as calling Speak - I can't Speak before I have an object, and I can't divide before I have 100. Then on the other side I first create an InputBox with some instructions for how to display it. When I hit enter on the input box it evaluates or "returns" whatever I entered. (Hint: 'oooooo' makes a funny sound) So when I say Speak, the right side is what to Speak. And I get that from the InputBox. So when you do several things on a line, like: x = 14 + y; You need to be aware of the order of things. First we add 14 and y. Then we put the result (what it evaluates to, or returns) into x. That's my goal, to have a bunch of these cool examples to demonstrate and teach the class while they have fun. I tried this example on my roommate and while I may not use this as the first lesson, she liked it and learned something. Some cool mathematica programs that make beautiful graphs or shapes that are easy to understand would be good ideas and I'm going to look into those. Here are some complicated actionscript examples but that's a bit too advanced and I can't teach flash. What other ideas do you have?

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• An "elegant" way of identifying a field?

  - by Alix

  Hi. I'm writing a system that underlies programmer applications and that needs to detect their access to certain data. I can mostly do so with properties, like this: public class NiceClass { public int x { get; set; } } Then I go in and tweak the get and set accessors so that they handle the accesses appropriately. However this requires that the users (application programmers) define all of their data as properties. If the users want to use pre-existing classes that have "normal" fields (as opposed to properties), I cannot detect those accesses. Example: public class NotSoNiceClass { public int y; } I cannot detect accesses to y. However, I want to allow the use of pre-existing classes. As a compromise the users are responsible for notifying me whenever an access to that kind of data occurs. For example: NotSoNiceClass notSoNice; ... Write(notSoNice.y, 0); // (as opposed to notSoNice.y = 0;) Something like that. Believe me, I've researched this very thoroughly and even directly analysing the bytecode to detect accesses isn't reliable due to possible indirections, etc. I really do need the users to notify me. And now my question: could you recommend an "elegant" way to perform these notifications? (Yes, I know this whole situation isn't "elegant" to begin with; I'm trying not to make it worse ;) ). How would you do it? This is a problem for me because actually the situation is like this: I have the following class: public class SemiNiceClass { public NotSoNiceClass notSoNice { get; set; } public int z { get; set; } } If the user wants to do this: SemiNiceClass semiNice; ... semiNice.notSoNice.y = 0; They must instead do something like this: semiNice.Write("notSoNice").y = 0; Where Write will return a clone of notSoNice, which is what I wanted the set accessor to do anyway. However, using a string is pretty ugly: if later they refactor the field they'll have to go over their Write("notSoNice") accesses and change the string. How can we identify the field? I can only think of strings, ints and enums (i.e., ints again). But: We've already discussed the problem with strings. Ints are a pain. They're even worse because the user needs to remember which int corresponds to which field. Refactoring is equally difficult. Enums (such as NOT_SO_NICE and Z, i.e., the fields of SemiNiceClass) ease refactoring, but they require the user to write an enum per class (SemiNiceClass, etc), with a value per field of the class. It's annoying. I don't want them to hate me ;) So why, I hear you ask, can we not do this (below)? semiNice.Write(semiNice.notSoNice).y = 0; Because I need to know what field is being accessed, and semiNice.notSoNice doesn't identify a field. It's the value of the field, not the field itself. Sigh. I know this is ugly. Believe me ;) I'll greatly appreciate suggestions. Thanks in advance! (Also, I couldn't come up with good tags for this question. Please let me know if you have better ideas, and I'll edit them)

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