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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 15, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 15, 2012Popular ReleasesAssaultCube Reloaded: 2.4.1 Valor: POSSIBLE KNIFE CRASH FIX Codename Valor as suggested by LMFAO! on the forums Weapon tweaks Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, download the Linux package. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your own for linux (source included)callisto: callisto 2.0.25: removed 2 ip ranges from hotspot shield black list.KBCsv: KBCsv V1.4.0.0: #11872 (skipping records with delimited text can break parser) #11873 (globalization support in CsvWriter) #11185 (more versatile constructor and method overloads)National Geographic Photo of the Day Wallpaper Changer: Photo of the Day Wallpaper Changer v2.0: National Geographic - Photo of the Day Wallpaper Changer v2.0 is an improved version. It has some new features like improved GUI, automatic update and date to date photo archiver etc. please check out the user guide for more information. Please copy the exe in a directory and run. Its that simple to use :).Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.5.6: Bug Fixes nuget was broken for Timespan and complete build due to how i did the target. Corrected and made all 3 match. Color Slider (and by default Color Picker) didn't respect view state for being disabled depending on how it was set. Test application now has test cases.Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 3: Change - DefaultContractResolver.IgnoreSerializableAttribute is now true by default Fix - Fixed MaxDepth on JsonReader recursively throwing an error Fix - Fixed SerializationBinder.BindToName not being called with full assembly namesVisual Studio Team Foundation Server Branching and Merging Guide: v2 - For Visual Studio 11: Welcome to the BETA of the Branching and Merging Guide preview As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has not been through an independent technical review Documentation has been reviewed by the quality and recording te...Media Companion: MC 3.435b Release: This release should be the last beta for 3.4xx. A handful of problems have been sorted out since last weeks release. If there are no major problems this time, it will upgraded to 3.500 Stable at the end of the week! General The .NET Framework has been modified to use the Client profile, as provided by normal Windows updates; no longer is there a requirement to download and install the Full profile! mc_com.exe has been worked on to mimic proper Media Companion output (a big thanks to vbat99...Wholemy.LinkedLists: wholemy.linkedlists.2012.04.12.38: libs and srcTHE NVL Maker: The NVL Maker Ver 3.12: SIM??????，TRA??????，ZIP????。 ????????????????，??????~（??????????????????） ??????? simpatch1440x900 trapatch1440x900 ?????1400x900??1440x900，?????????????Data.xp3。 ???? ?????3.12?EXE????????????????， ??????????????，??Tool/krkrconf.exe，??Editor.exe， ???????????????「??????」。 ?????Editor.exe??????。 ???? ???? http://etale.us/gameupload/THE_NVL_Maker_ver3.12_sim.zip ???? http://www.mediafire.com/?je51683g22bz8vo ??Infinite Creation?? http://bbs.etale.us/forum.php ?????? ???? 3.12 ??? ???、????...Quick Performance Monitor: Version 1.8.2: Version 1.8.2. Add the ability for qpmset files to also store the Window location/size so predefined 'sets' can be forced to always open on the same place of the screen.SnmpMessenger: 0.1.1.1: Project Description SnmpMessenger, a messenger. Using the SNMP protocol to exchange messages. It's developed in C#. SnmpMessenger For .Net 4.0, Mono 2.8. Support SNMP V1, V2, V3. Features Send get, set and other requests and get the response. Send and receive traps. Handle requests and return the response. Note This library is compliant with the Common Language Specification(CLS). The latest version is 0.1.1.1. It is only a messenger, does not involve VACM. Any problems, Please mailto: wa...Python Tools for Visual Studio: 1.1.1: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.1.1. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including: • Supports CPython and IronPython • Python editor with advanced member and signature intellisense • Code navigation: “Find all refs”, goto definition, and object browser • Local and remote debugging • Profiling with multiple view...Supporting Guidance and Whitepapers: v1 - Team Foundation Service Whitepapers: Welcome to the BETA release of the Team Foundation Service Whitepapers preview As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has been through an independent technical review All critical bugs have been resolved Known Issue...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.24: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, and Client Profile. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also available via NuGet.Kendo UI ASP.NET Sample Applications: Sample Applications (2012-04-11): Sample application(s) demonstrating the use of Kendo UI in ASP.NET applications.SCCM Client Actions Tool: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.12: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.12 is the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Improved WMI date conversion to be aware of timezone differences and DST. Fixed new version check. The tool is downloadable as a ZIP file that contains four files: ClientActionsTool.hta – The tool itself. Cmdkey.exe – command line tool for managing cached credentials. This is needed for alternate credentials feature when running the HTA on Windows XP. Cmdkey.exe is natively availab...Dual Browsing: Dual Browser: Please note the following: I setup the address bar temporarily to only accepts http:// .com addresses. Just type in the name of the website excluding: http://, www., and .com; (Ex: for www.youtube.com just type: youtube then click OK). The page splitter can be grabbed by holding down your left mouse button and move left or right. By right clicking on the page background, you can choose to refresh, go back a page and so on. Demo video: http://youtu.be/L7NTFVM3JUYLiberty: v3.2.0.1 Release 9th April 2012: Change Log-Fixed -Reach Fixed a bug where the object editor did not work on non-English operating systemsPath Copy Copy: 10.1: This release addresses the following work items: 11357 11358 11359 This release is a recommended upgrade, especially for users who didn't install the 10.0.1 version.New ProjectsADENA: This project consists in the development of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for a proof assistant for Propositional Classical Logic based on Natural Deduction method.Alternity Warships Editor: This is a tool designed to easy the process of creating a new spaceship for Alternity using the Warship rules.BigBallz: Projeto de site de Bolões para campeonatos diversos. A princípio pensado para copa do mundo de futebol de 2010Crescent: bunch of mac scriptsDemoVasquez: Demo Proyecto 1Didrotuos: DidrotuosEat Out Advocate: Eat Out Advocate --------------------Kuttiflow: A simple implementation of Workflow for .NetLuan Van Cuoi Khoa: Lu?n van cu?i khoa ÐH Tây Nguyênmapaconwindowsphone: probar un mapa de bing mapsMovie Renamer: Is your movie collection a mess? No idea which movie is which? This tool easily renames movies based on the title and the year of the movie. Helps you sort out that movie collection! It will download from IMDB the closest matches based on the name of the file. Very simple written in WPF, so it will need the .NET 4 framework. At the moment you cannot set how you want to movie to be renamed, it will always be: "MovieTitle (Year).ext".Online Math Calculator: This is an Online Math Calculator. What this does is take your equation in the usual form and convert every variable to x, y, and every constant to a, b, c, d, e, etc... use wolfram|alpha and then convert back to the input format. This allows to input most equations.Orchard on Windows Azure with Dynamic Deploy: Dynamic Deploy is a cloud deployment platform. This project includes the Orchard source code that was used to create a Windows Azure build. The original source has not been modified. We have just added more themes and modules and modified web.config with a machine key. visit httppcvvpes: pcvvpesPesquisa de Satisfacao: PesquisaPit of Despair: An XNA 4.0 game in C# focused on learning to write overhead dungeon crawl games. Inpired from games such as Zelda, Wizardy, perhaps some original Final Fantasy.Prova Branquinho: Prova BranquinhoRibHat: RibHat is a framework for building websites, forums, blogs, and web-based information systems. It is a set of libraries that help the programmer to get rid from the immobility of CMS, obtaining a maximum level of customization.SetupWizard: a SetupWizard, install windows service, create IIS site, create database during installation.SharkOS: This operating system is the system Arkadia OS but with a GUI, it is created in c #, it will be fast and no lag.Shopping List: Shopping List is a simple WP7 application that enables tracking of items to buy when going for groceries.Sim Cricket: Cricket simulation game.. For cricket and C# fans.. Simple InterNET Daemon: Simple InterNET DaemonSteggy: Steganography project. SychevIgor Win8 Apps Source Code: SychevIgor Win8 Apps Source Codetest53768492156478: nothingTool to change monitor display frequency on HTPC: This is a small application that can change the monitors refresh-rate by simply running one of the applications for the desired refresh-rate. It was developed to make it easy to change the refresh rate, when launching external media players from XBMC and so on... And it was published here, so that others can see how easily it can be done.TravelSaver: Hajj Umrah USA, Travel SaverUpdateBot: UpdateBot is a GUI application that simplifies and automates the downloading and parsing of FileHippo.com's Update Checker result pages.

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• Special thanks to everyone that helped me in 2010.

  - by mbcrump

  2010 has been a very good year for me and I wanted to create a list and thank everyone for what they have done for me.  I also wanted to thank everyone for reading and subscribing to my blog. It is hard to believe that people actually want to read what I write. I feel like I owe a huge thanks to everyone listed below. Looking back upon 2010, I feel that I’ve grown as a developer and you are part of that reason. Sometimes we get caught up in day to day work and forget to give thanks to those that helped us along the way. The list below is mine, it includes people and companies. This list is obviously not going to include everyone that has helped, just those that have stood out in my mind. When I think back upon 2010, their names keep popping up in my head. So here goes, in no particular order.  People Dave Campbell – For everything he has done for the Silverlight Community with his Silverlight Cream blog. I can’t think of a better person to get recognition at the Silverlight FireStarter event. I also wanted to thank him for spending several hours of his time helping me track down a bug in my feedburner account. Victor Gaudioso – For his large collection of video tutorials on his blog and the passion and enthusiasm he has for Silverlight. We have talked on the phone and I’ve never met anyone so fired up for Silverlight. Kunal Chowdhury – Kunal has always been available for me to bounce ideas off of. Kunal has also answered a lot of questions that stumped me. His blog and CodeProject article have green a great help to me and the Silverlight Community. Glen Gordon – I was looking frantically for a Windows Phone 7 several months before release and Glen found one for me. This allowed me to start a blog series on the Windows Phone 7 hardware and developing an application from start to finish that Scott Guthrie retweeted.  Jeff Blankenburg – For listening to my complaints in the early stages of Windows Phone 7. Jeff was always very polite and gave me his cell phone number to talk it over. He also walked me through several problems that I was having early on. Pete Brown – For writing Silverlight 4 in Action. This book is definitely a labor of love. I followed Pete on Twitter as he was writing it and he spent a lot of late nights and weekends working on it. I felt a lot smarter after reading it the first time. The second time was even better. John Papa – For all of his work on the Silverlight Firestarter and the Silverlight community in general. He has also helped me on a personal level with several things. Daniel Heisler – For putting up with me the past year while we worked on many .NET projects together in 2010. Alvin Ashcraft – For publishing a daily blog post on the best of .NET links. He has linked to my site many times and I really appreciate what he does for the community. Chris Alcock – For publishing the Morning Brew every weekday. I remember when I first appeared on his site, I started getting hundreds of hits on my site and wondered if I was getting a DOS attack or something. It was great to find out that Chris had linked to one of my articles. Joel Cochran – For spending a week teaching “Blend-O-Rama”. This was my one of my favorite sessions of this year. I learned a lot about Expression Blend from it and the best part was that it was free and during lunchtime. Jeremy Likness – Jeremy is smart – very smart. I have learned a lot from Jeremy over the past year. He is also involved in the Silverlight community in every way possible, from forums to blog post to screencast to open source. It goes on and on. The people that I met at VSLive Orlando 2010. I had a great time chatting with Walt Ritscher, Wallace McClure, Tim Huckabee and David Platt. Also a special thanks to all of my friends on Twitter like @wilhil, @DBVaughan, @DataArtist, @wbm, @DirkStrauss and @rsringeri and many many more. Software Companies / Events / May of gave me FREE stuff. =) Microsoft (3) – I was sent a free coupon code by Microsoft to take the Silverlight 4 Beta Exam. I jumped on the offer and took the exam. It was great being selected to try out the exam before it goes public even though Microsoft eventually published a universal coupon code for everyone. I am still waiting to find out if I passed the exam. My fingers are crossed. Microsoft reaching out to me with some questions regarding the .NET Community. I’ve never had a company contact me with such interest in the community. Having a contest where 75 people could win a $100 gift certificate and a T-Shirt for submitting a Windows Phone 7 app. I submitted my app and won. All of the free launch events this year (Windows Phone 7, Visual Studio 2010, ASP.NET MVC). Wintellect – For providing an awesome day of free technical training called T.E.N. Where else can you get free training from some of the best programmers in the world? I also won a contest from them that included a NETAdvantage Ultimate License from Infragistics. VSLive – I attended the Orlando 2010 Conference and it was the best developer’s conference that I have ever attended. I got to know a lot of people at this conference and hang out with many wonderful speakers. I live tweeted the event and while it may have annoyed some, the organizers of VSLive loved it. I won the contest on Twitter and they invited me back to the 2011 session of my choice. This is a very nice gift and I really appreciate the generosity. BarcodeLib.com – For providing free barcode generating tools for a Non-Profit ASP.NET project that I was working on. Their third party controls really made this a breeze compared to my existing solution. NDepend – It is absolutely the best tool to improve code quality. The product is extremely large and I would recommend heading over to their site to check it out. Silverlight Spy – I was writing a blog post on Silverlight Spy and Koen Zwikstra provided a FREE license to me. If you ever wanted to peek inside of a Silverlight Application then this is the tool for you. He is also working on a version that will support OOB and Windows Phone 7. I would recommend checking out his site. Birmingham .NET Users Group / Silverlight Nights User Group – It takes a lot of time to put together a user group meeting every month yet it always seems to happen. I don’t want to name names for fear of leaving someone out but both of these User Groups are excellent if you live in the Birmingham, Alabama area. Publishing Companies Manning Publishing – For giving me early access to Silverlight 4 in Action by Pete Brown. It was really nice to be able to read this awesome book while Pete was writing it. I was also one of the first people to publish a review of the book. Sams Publishing and DZone – For providing a copy of Silverlight 4 Unleashed by Laurent Bugnion for me to review for their site. The review is coming in January 2011. Special Shoutout to the following 3rd Party Silverlight Controls It has been a great pleasure to work with the following companies on 3rd Party Control Giveaways every month. It always amazes me how every 3rd Party Control company is so eager to help out the community. I’ve never been turned down by any of these companies! These giveaways have sparked a lot of interest in Silverlight and hopefully I can continue giving away a new set every month. If you are a 3rd Party Control company and are interested in participating in these giveaways then please email me at mbcrump29[at]gmail[d0t].com. The companies below have already participated in my giveaways: Infragistics (December 2010) - Win a set of Infragistics Silverlight Controls with Data Visualization!  Mindscape (November 2010) - Mindscape Silverlight Controls + Free Mega Pack Contest Telerik (October 2010) - Win Telerik RadControls for Silverlight! ($799 Value) Again, I just wanted to say Thanks to everyone for helping me grow as a developer.  Subscribe to my feed

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• When Your Boss Doesn't Want you to Succeed

  - by Phil Factor

  You're working hard to get an application finished. You are programming long into the evenings sometimes, and eating sandwiches at your desk instead of taking a lunch break. Then one day you glance up at the IT manager, serene in his mysterious round of meetings, and think 'Does he actually care whether this project succeeds or not?'. The question may seem absurd. Of course the project must succeed. The truth, as always, is often far more complex. Your manager may even be doing his best to make sure you don't succeed. Why? There have always been rich pickings for the unscrupulous in IT.  In extreme cases, where administrators struggle with scarcely-comprehended technical issues, huge sums of money can be lost and gained without any perceptible results. In a very few cases can fraud be proven: most of the time, the intricacies of the 'game' are such that one can do little more than harbor suspicion.  Where does over-enthusiastic salesmanship end and fraud begin? The Business of Information Technology provides rich opportunities for White-collar crime. The poor developer has his, or her, hands full with the task of wrestling with the sheer complexity of building an application. He, or she, has no time for following the complexities of the chicanery of the management that is directing affairs.  Most likely, the developers wouldn't even suspect that their company management had ulterior motives. I'll illustrate what I mean with an entirely fictional, hypothetical, example. The Opportunist and the Aged Charities often do good, unexciting work that is funded by the income from a bequest that dates back maybe hundreds of years.  In our example, it isn't exciting work, for it involves the welfare of elderly people who have fallen on hard times.  Volunteers visit, giving a smile and a chat, and check that they are all right, but are able to spend a little money on their discretion to ameliorate any pressing needs for these old folk.  The money is made to work very hard and the charity averts a great deal of suffering and eases the burden on the state. Daisy hears the garden gate creak as Mrs Rainer comes up the path. She looks forward to her twice-weekly visit from the nice lady from the trust. She always asked ‘is everything all right, Love’. Cheeky but nice. She likes her cheery manner. She seems interested in hearing her memories, and talking about her far-away family. She helps her with those chores in the house that she couldn’t manage and once even paid to fill the back-shed with coke, the other year. Nice, Mrs. Rainer is, she thought as she goes to open the door. The trustees are getting on in years themselves, and worry about the long-term future of the charity: is it relevant to modern society? Is it likely to attract a new generation of workers to take it on. They are instantly attracted by the arrival to the board of a smartly dressed University lecturer with the ear of the present Government. Alain 'Stalin' Jones is earnest, persuasive and energetic. The trustees welcome him to the board and quickly forgive his humorless political-correctness. He talks of 'diversity', 'relevance', 'social change', 'equality' and 'communities', but his eye is on that huge bequest. Alain first came to notice as a Trotskyite union official, who insinuated himself into one of the duller Trades Unions and turned it, through his passionate leadership, into a radical, headline-grabbing organization.  Middle age, and the rise of European federal socialism, had brought him quiet prosperity and charcoal suits, an ear in the current government, and a wide influence as a member of various Quangos (government bodies staffed by well-paid unelected courtiers).  He was employed as a 'consultant' by several organizations that relied on government contracts. After gaining the confidence of the trustees, and showing a surprising knowledge of mundane processes and the regulatory framework of charities, Alain launches his plan.  The trust will expand their work by means of a bold IT initiative that will coordinate the interventions of several 'caring agencies', and provide  emergency cover, a special Website so anxious relatives can see how their elderly charges are doing, and a vastly more efficient way of coordinating the work of the volunteer carers. It will also provide a special-purpose site that gives 'social networking' facilities, rather like Facebook, to the few elderly folk on the lists with access to the internet. The trustees perk up. Their own experience of the internet is restricted to the occasional scanning of railway timetables, but they can see that it is 'relevant'. In his next report to the other trustees, Alain proudly announces that all this glamorous and exciting technology can be paid for by a grant from the government. He admits darkly that he has influence. True to his word, the government promises a grant of a size that is an order of magnitude greater than any budget that the trustees had ever handled. There was the understandable proviso that the company that would actually do the IT work would have to be one of the government's preferred suppliers and the work would need to be tendered under EU competition rules. The only company that tenders, a multinational IT company with a long track record of government work, quotes ten million pounds for the work. A trustee questions the figure as it seems enormous for the reasonably trivial internet facilities being built, but the IT Salesmen dazzle them with presentations and three-letter acronyms until they subside into quiescent acceptance. After all, they can’t stay locked in the Twentieth century practices can they? The work is put in hand with a large project team, in a splendid glass building near west London. The trustees see rooms of programmers working diligently at screens, and who talk with enthusiasm of the project. Paul, the project manager, looked through his resource schedule with growing unease. His initial excitement at being given his first major project hadn’t lasted. He’d been allocated a lackluster team of developers whose skills didn’t seem right, and he was allowed only a couple of contractors to make good the deficit. Strangely, the presentation he’d given to his management, where he’d saved time and resources with a OTS solution to a great deal of the development work, and a sound conservative architecture, hadn’t gone down nearly as big as he’d hoped. He almost got the feeling they wanted a more radical and ambitious solution. The project starts slipping its dates. The costs build rapidly. There are certain uncomfortable extra charges that appear, such as the £600-a-day charge by the 'Business Manager' appointed to act as a point of liaison between the charity and the IT Company.  When he appeared, his face permanently split by a 'Mr Sincerity' smile, they'd thought he was provided at the cost of the IT Company. Derek, the DBA, didn’t have to go to the server room quite some much as he did: but It got him away from the poisonous despair of the development group. Wave after wave of events had conspired to delay the project.  Why the management had imposed hideous extra bureaucracy to cover ISO 9000 and 9001:2008 accreditation just as the project was struggling to get back on-schedule was  beyond belief.  Then  the Business manager was coming back with endless changes in scope, sorrowing saying that the Trustees were very insistent, though hopelessly out in touch with the reality of technical challenges. Suddenly, the costs mount to the point of consuming the government grant in its entirety. The project remains tantalizingly just out of reach. Alain Jones gives an emotional rallying speech at the trustees review meeting, urging them not to lose their nerve. Sadly, the trustees dip into the accumulated capital of the trust, the seed-corn of all their revenues, in order to save the IT project. A few months later it is all over. The IT project is never delivered, even though it had seemed so incredibly close.  With the trust's capital all gone, the activities it funded have to be terminated and the trust becomes just a shell. There aren't even the funds to mount a legal challenge against the IT company, even had the trust's solicitor advised such a foolish thing. Alain leaves as suddenly as he had arrived, only to pop up a few months later, bronzed and rested, at another charity. The IT workers who were permanent employees are dispersed to other projects, and the contractors leave to other contracts. Within months the entire project is but a vague memory. One or two developers remain  puzzled that their managers had been so obstructive when they should have welcomed progress toward completion of the project, but they put it down to incompetence and testosterone. Few suspected that they were actively preventing the project from getting finished. The relationships between the IT consultancy, and the government of the day are intricate, and made more complex by the Private Finance initiatives and political patronage.  The losers in this case were the taxpayers, and the beneficiaries of the trust, and, perhaps the soul of the original benefactor of the trust, whose bid to give his name some immortality had been scuppered by smooth-talking white-collar political apparatniks.  Even now, nobody is certain whether a crime was ever committed. The perfect heist, I guess. Where’s the victim? "I hear that Daisy’s cottage is up for sale. She’s had to go into a care home.  She didn’t want to at all, but then there is nobody to keep an eye on her since she had that minor stroke a while back.  A charity used to help out. The ‘social’ don’t have the funding, evidently for community care. Yes, her old cat was put down. There was a good clearout, and now the house is all scrubbed and cleared ready for sale. The skip was full of old photos and letters, memories. No room in her new ‘home’."

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• Hello Operator, My Switch Is Bored

  - by Paul White

  This is a post for T-SQL Tuesday #43 hosted by my good friend Rob Farley. The topic this month is Plan Operators. I haven’t taken part in T-SQL Tuesday before, but I do like to write about execution plans, so this seemed like a good time to start. This post is in two parts. The first part is primarily an excuse to use a pretty bad play on words in the title of this blog post (if you’re too young to know what a telephone operator or a switchboard is, I hate you). The second part of the post looks at an invisible query plan operator (so to speak). 1. My Switch Is Bored Allow me to present the rare and interesting execution plan operator, Switch: Books Online has this to say about Switch: Following that description, I had a go at producing a Fast Forward Cursor plan that used the TOP operator, but had no luck. That may be due to my lack of skill with cursors, I’m not too sure. The only application of Switch in SQL Server 2012 that I am familiar with requires a local partitioned view: CREATE TABLE dbo.T1 (c1 int NOT NULL CHECK (c1 BETWEEN 00 AND 24)); CREATE TABLE dbo.T2 (c1 int NOT NULL CHECK (c1 BETWEEN 25 AND 49)); CREATE TABLE dbo.T3 (c1 int NOT NULL CHECK (c1 BETWEEN 50 AND 74)); CREATE TABLE dbo.T4 (c1 int NOT NULL CHECK (c1 BETWEEN 75 AND 99)); GO CREATE VIEW V1 AS SELECT c1 FROM dbo.T1 UNION ALL SELECT c1 FROM dbo.T2 UNION ALL SELECT c1 FROM dbo.T3 UNION ALL SELECT c1 FROM dbo.T4; Not only that, but it needs an updatable local partitioned view. We’ll need some primary keys to meet that requirement: ALTER TABLE dbo.T1 ADD CONSTRAINT PK_T1 PRIMARY KEY (c1);   ALTER TABLE dbo.T2 ADD CONSTRAINT PK_T2 PRIMARY KEY (c1);   ALTER TABLE dbo.T3 ADD CONSTRAINT PK_T3 PRIMARY KEY (c1);   ALTER TABLE dbo.T4 ADD CONSTRAINT PK_T4 PRIMARY KEY (c1); We also need an INSERT statement that references the view. Even more specifically, to see a Switch operator, we need to perform a single-row insert (multi-row inserts use a different plan shape): INSERT dbo.V1 (c1) VALUES (1); And now…the execution plan: The Constant Scan manufactures a single row with no columns. The Compute Scalar works out which partition of the view the new value should go in. The Assert checks that the computed partition number is not null (if it is, an error is returned). The Nested Loops Join executes exactly once, with the partition id as an outer reference (correlated parameter). The Switch operator checks the value of the parameter and executes the corresponding input only. If the partition id is 0, the uppermost Clustered Index Insert is executed, adding a row to table T1. If the partition id is 1, the next lower Clustered Index Insert is executed, adding a row to table T2…and so on. In case you were wondering, here’s a query and execution plan for a multi-row insert to the view: INSERT dbo.V1 (c1) VALUES (1), (2); Yuck! An Eager Table Spool and four Filters! I prefer the Switch plan. My guess is that almost all the old strategies that used a Switch operator have been replaced over time, using things like a regular Concatenation Union All combined with Start-Up Filters on its inputs. Other new (relative to the Switch operator) features like table partitioning have specific execution plan support that doesn’t need the Switch operator either. This feels like a bit of a shame, but perhaps it is just nostalgia on my part, it’s hard to know. Please do let me know if you encounter a query that can still use the Switch operator in 2012 – it must be very bored if this is the only possible modern usage! 2. Invisible Plan Operators The second part of this post uses an example based on a question Dave Ballantyne asked using the SQL Sentry Plan Explorer plan upload facility. If you haven’t tried that yet, make sure you’re on the latest version of the (free) Plan Explorer software, and then click the Post to SQLPerformance.com button. That will create a site question with the query plan attached (which can be anonymized if the plan contains sensitive information). Aaron Bertrand and I keep a close eye on questions there, so if you have ever wanted to ask a query plan question of either of us, that’s a good way to do it. The problem The issue I want to talk about revolves around a query issued against a calendar table. The script below creates a simplified version and adds 100 years of per-day information to it: USE tempdb; GO CREATE TABLE dbo.Calendar ( dt date NOT NULL, isWeekday bit NOT NULL, theYear smallint NOT NULL,   CONSTRAINT PK__dbo_Calendar_dt PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (dt) ); GO -- Monday is the first day of the week for me SET DATEFIRST 1;   -- Add 100 years of data INSERT dbo.Calendar WITH (TABLOCKX) (dt, isWeekday, theYear) SELECT CA.dt, isWeekday = CASE WHEN DATEPART(WEEKDAY, CA.dt) IN (6, 7) THEN 0 ELSE 1 END, theYear = YEAR(CA.dt) FROM Sandpit.dbo.Numbers AS N CROSS APPLY ( VALUES (DATEADD(DAY, N.n - 1, CONVERT(date, '01 Jan 2000', 113))) ) AS CA (dt) WHERE N.n BETWEEN 1 AND 36525; The following query counts the number of weekend days in 2013: SELECT Days = COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.Calendar AS C WHERE theYear = 2013 AND isWeekday = 0; It returns the correct result (104) using the following execution plan: The query optimizer has managed to estimate the number of rows returned from the table exactly, based purely on the default statistics created separately on the two columns referenced in the query’s WHERE clause. (Well, almost exactly, the unrounded estimate is 104.289 rows.) There is already an invisible operator in this query plan – a Filter operator used to apply the WHERE clause predicates. We can see it by re-running the query with the enormously useful (but undocumented) trace flag 9130 enabled: Now we can see the full picture. The whole table is scanned, returning all 36,525 rows, before the Filter narrows that down to just the 104 we want. Without the trace flag, the Filter is incorporated in the Clustered Index Scan as a residual predicate. It is a little bit more efficient than using a separate operator, but residual predicates are still something you will want to avoid where possible. The estimates are still spot on though: Anyway, looking to improve the performance of this query, Dave added the following filtered index to the Calendar table: CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX Weekends ON dbo.Calendar(theYear) WHERE isWeekday = 0; The original query now produces a much more efficient plan: Unfortunately, the estimated number of rows produced by the seek is now wrong (365 instead of 104): What’s going on? The estimate was spot on before we added the index! Explanation You might want to grab a coffee for this bit. Using another trace flag or two (8606 and 8612) we can see that the cardinality estimates were exactly right initially: The highlighted information shows the initial cardinality estimates for the base table (36,525 rows), the result of applying the two relational selects in our WHERE clause (104 rows), and after performing the COUNT_BIG(*) group by aggregate (1 row). All of these are correct, but that was before cost-based optimization got involved :) Cost-based optimization When cost-based optimization starts up, the logical tree above is copied into a structure (the ‘memo’) that has one group per logical operation (roughly speaking). The logical read of the base table (LogOp_Get) ends up in group 7; the two predicates (LogOp_Select) end up in group 8 (with the details of the selections in subgroups 0-6). These two groups still have the correct cardinalities as trace flag 8608 output (initial memo contents) shows: During cost-based optimization, a rule called SelToIdxStrategy runs on group 8. It’s job is to match logical selections to indexable expressions (SARGs). It successfully matches the selections (theYear = 2013, is Weekday = 0) to the filtered index, and writes a new alternative into the memo structure. The new alternative is entered into group 8 as option 1 (option 0 was the original LogOp_Select): The new alternative is to do nothing (PhyOp_NOP = no operation), but to instead follow the new logical instructions listed below the NOP. The LogOp_GetIdx (full read of an index) goes into group 21, and the LogOp_SelectIdx (selection on an index) is placed in group 22, operating on the result of group 21. The definition of the comparison ‘the Year = 2013’ (ScaOp_Comp downwards) was already present in the memo starting at group 2, so no new memo groups are created for that. New Cardinality Estimates The new memo groups require two new cardinality estimates to be derived. First, LogOp_Idx (full read of the index) gets a predicted cardinality of 10,436. This number comes from the filtered index statistics: DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS (Calendar, Weekends) WITH STAT_HEADER; The second new cardinality derivation is for the LogOp_SelectIdx applying the predicate (theYear = 2013). To get a number for this, the cardinality estimator uses statistics for the column ‘theYear’, producing an estimate of 365 rows (there are 365 days in 2013!): DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS (Calendar, theYear) WITH HISTOGRAM; This is where the mistake happens. Cardinality estimation should have used the filtered index statistics here, to get an estimate of 104 rows: DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS (Calendar, Weekends) WITH HISTOGRAM; Unfortunately, the logic has lost sight of the link between the read of the filtered index (LogOp_GetIdx) in group 22, and the selection on that index (LogOp_SelectIdx) that it is deriving a cardinality estimate for, in group 21. The correct cardinality estimate (104 rows) is still present in the memo, attached to group 8, but that group now has a PhyOp_NOP implementation. Skipping over the rest of cost-based optimization (in a belated attempt at brevity) we can see the optimizer’s final output using trace flag 8607: This output shows the (incorrect, but understandable) 365 row estimate for the index range operation, and the correct 104 estimate still attached to its PhyOp_NOP. This tree still has to go through a few post-optimizer rewrites and ‘copy out’ from the memo structure into a tree suitable for the execution engine. One step in this process removes PhyOp_NOP, discarding its 104-row cardinality estimate as it does so. To finish this section on a more positive note, consider what happens if we add an OVER clause to the query aggregate. This isn’t intended to be a ‘fix’ of any sort, I just want to show you that the 104 estimate can survive and be used if later cardinality estimation needs it: SELECT Days = COUNT_BIG(*) OVER () FROM dbo.Calendar AS C WHERE theYear = 2013 AND isWeekday = 0; The estimated execution plan is: Note the 365 estimate at the Index Seek, but the 104 lives again at the Segment! We can imagine the lost predicate ‘isWeekday = 0’ as sitting between the seek and the segment in an invisible Filter operator that drops the estimate from 365 to 104. Even though the NOP group is removed after optimization (so we don’t see it in the execution plan) bear in mind that all cost-based choices were made with the 104-row memo group present, so although things look a bit odd, it shouldn’t affect the optimizer’s plan selection. I should also mention that we can work around the estimation issue by including the index’s filtering columns in the index key: CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX Weekends ON dbo.Calendar(theYear, isWeekday) WHERE isWeekday = 0 WITH (DROP_EXISTING = ON); There are some downsides to doing this, including that changes to the isWeekday column may now require Halloween Protection, but that is unlikely to be a big problem for a static calendar table ;)  With the updated index in place, the original query produces an execution plan with the correct cardinality estimation showing at the Index Seek: That’s all for today, remember to let me know about any Switch plans you come across on a modern instance of SQL Server! Finally, here are some other posts of mine that cover other plan operators: Segment and Sequence Project Common Subexpression Spools Why Plan Operators Run Backwards Row Goals and the Top Operator Hash Match Flow Distinct Top N Sort Index Spools and Page Splits Singleton and Range Seeks Bitmaps Hash Join Performance Compute Scalar © 2013 Paul White – All Rights Reserved Twitter: @SQL_Kiwi

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• That Escalated Quickly

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2014/05/17/that-escalated-quickly.aspxI have been working remotely out of my home for over 4 years now. All of my coworkers during that time have also worked remotely. Lots of folks have written about the challenges inherent in facilitating communication on remote teams and strategies for overcoming them. A popular theme around this topic is the notion of “escalating communication”. In this context “escalating” means taking a conversation from one mode of communication to a different, higher fidelity mode of communication. Here are the five modes of communication I use at work in order of increasing fidelity: Email – This is the “lowest fidelity” mode of communication that I use. I usually only check it a few times a day (and I’m trying to check it even less frequently than that) and I only keep items in my inbox if they represent an item I need to take action on that I haven’t tracked anywhere else. Forums / Message boards – Being a developer, I’ve gotten into the habit of having other people look over my code before it becomes part of the product I’m working on. These code reviews often happen in “real time” via screen sharing, but I also always have someone else give all of the changes another look using pull requests. A pull request takes my code and lets someone else see the changes I’ve made side-by-side with the existing code so they can see if I did anything dumb. Pull requests can facilitate a conversation about the code changes in an online-forum like style. Some teams I’ve worked on also liked using tools like Trello or Google Groups to have on-going conversations about a topic or task that was being worked on. Chat & Instant Messaging  - Chat and instant messaging are the real workhorses for communication on the remote teams I’ve been a part of. I know some teams that are co-located that also use it pretty extensively for quick messages that don’t warrant walking across the office to talk with someone but reqire more immediacy than an e-mail. For the purposes of this post I think it’s important to note that the terms “chat” and “instant messaging” might insinuate that the conversation is happening in real time, but that’s not always true. Modern chat and IM applications maintain a searchable history so people can easily see what might have been discussed while they were away from their computers. Voice, Video and Screen sharing – Everyone’s got a camera and microphone on their computers now, and there are an abundance of services that will let you use them to talk to other people who have cameras and microphones on their computers. I’m including screen sharing here as well because, in my experience, these discussions typically involve one or more people showing the other participants something that’s happening on their screen. Obviously, this mode of communication is much higher-fidelity than any of the ones listed above. Scheduled meetings are typically conducted using this mode of communication. In Person – No matter how great communication tools become, there’s no substitute for meeting with someone face-to-face. However, opportunities for this kind of communcation are few and far between when you work on a remote team. When a conversation gets escalated that usually means it moves up one or more positions on this list. A lot of people advocate jumping to #4 sooner than later. Like them, I used to believe that, if it was possible, organizing a call with voice and video was automatically better than any kind of text-based communication could be. Lately, however, I’m becoming less convinced that escalating is always the right move. Working Asynchronously Last year I attended a talk at our local code camp given by Drew Miller. Drew works at GitHub and was talking about how they use GitHub internally. Many of the folks at GitHub work remotely, so communication was one of the main themes in Drew’s talk. During the talk Drew used the phrase, “asynchronous communication” to describe their use of chat and pull request comments. That phrase stuck in my head because I hadn’t heard it before but I think it perfectly describes the way in which remote teams often need to communicate. You don’t always know when your co-workers are at their computers or what hours (if any) they are working that day. In order to work this way you need to assume that the person you’re talking to might not respond right away. You can’t always afford to wait until everyone required is online and available to join a voice call, so you need to use text-based, persistent forms of communication so that people can receive and respond to messages when they are available. Going back to my list from the beginning of this post for a second, I characterize items #1-3 as being “asynchronous” modes of communication while we could call items #4 and #5 “synchronous”. When communication gets escalated it’s almost always moving from an asynchronous mode of communication to a synchronous one. Now, to the point of this post: I’ve become increasingly reluctant to escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication for two primary reasons: 1 – You can often find a higher fidelity way to convey your message without holding a synchronous conversation 2 - Asynchronous modes of communication are (usually) persistent and searchable. You Don’t Have to Broadcast Live Let’s start with the first reason I’ve listed. A lot of times you feel like you need to escalate to synchronous communication because you’re having difficulty describing something that you’re seeing in words. You want to provide the people you’re conversing with some audio-visual aids to help them understand the point that you’re trying to make and you think that getting on Skype and sharing your screen with them is the best way to do that. Firing up a screen sharing session does work well, but you can usually accomplish the same thing in an asynchronous manner. For example, you could take a screenshot and annotate it with some text and drawings to illustrate what it is you’re seeing. If a screenshot won’t work, taking a short screen recording while your narrate over it and posting the video to your forum or chat system along with a text-based description of what’s in the recording that can be searched for later can be a great way to effectively communicate with your team asynchronously. I Said What?!? Now for the second reason I listed: most asynchronous modes of communication provide a transcript of what was said and what decisions might have been made during the conversation. There have been many occasions where I’ve used the search feature of my team’s chat application to find a conversation that happened several weeks or months ago to remember what was decided. Unfortunately, I think the benefits associated with the persistence of communicating asynchronously often get overlooked when people decide to escalate to a in-person meeting or voice/video call. I’m becoming much more reluctant to suggest a voice or video call if I suspect that it might lead to codifying some kind of design decision because everyone involved is going to hang up the call and immediately forget what was decided. I recognize that you can record and archive these types of interactions, but without being able to search them the recordings aren’t terribly useful. When and How To Escalate I don’t mean to imply that communicating via voice/video or in person is never a good idea. I probably jump on a Skype call with a co-worker at least once a day to quickly hash something out or show them a bit of code that I’m working on. Also, meeting in person periodically is really important for remote teams. There’s no way around the fact that sometimes it’s easier to jump on a call and show someone my screen so they can see what I’m seeing. So when is it right to escalate? I think the simplest way to answer that is when the communication starts to feel painful. Everyone’s tolerance for that pain is different, but I think you need to let it hurt a little bit before jumping to synchronous communication. When you do escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication, there are a couple of things you can do to maximize the effectiveness of the communication: Takes notes – This is huge and yet I’ve found that a lot of teams don’t do this. If you’re holding a meeting with  > 2 people you should have someone taking notes. Taking notes while participating in a meeting can be difficult but there are a few strategies to deal with this challenge that probably deserve a short post of their own. After the meeting, make sure the notes are posted to a place where all concerned parties (including those that might not have attended the meeting) can review and search them. Persist decisions made ASAP – If any decisions were made during the meeting, persist those decisions to a searchable medium as soon as possible following the conversation. All the teams I’ve worked on used a web-based system for tracking the on-going work and a backlog of work to be done in the future. I always try to make sure that all of the cards/stories/tasks/whatever in these systems always reflect the latest decisions that were made as the work was being planned and executed. If held a quick call with your team lead and decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to build real-time validation into that new UI you were working on, go and codify that decision in the story associated with that work immediately after you hang up. Even better, write it up in the story while you are both still on the phone. That way when the folks from your QA team pick up the story to test a few days later they’ll know why the real-time validation isn’t there without having to invoke yet another conversation about the work. Communicating Well is Hard At this point you might be thinking that communicating asynchronously is more difficult than having a live conversation. You’re right: it is more difficult. In order to communicate effectively this way you need to very carefully think about the message that you’re trying to convey and craft it in a way that’s easy for your audience to understand. This is almost always harder than just talking through a problem in real time with someone; this is why escalating communication is such a popular idea. Why wouldn’t we want to do the thing that’s easier? Easier isn’t always better. If you and your team can get in the habit of communicating effectively in an asynchronous manner you’ll find that, over time, all of your communications get less painful because you don’t need to re-iterate previously made points over and over again. If you communicate right the first time, you often don’t need to rehash old conversations because you can go back and find the decisions that were made laid out in plain language. You’ll also find that you get better at doing things like writing useful comments in your code, creating written documentation about how the feature that you just built works, or persuading your team to do things in a certain way.

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• Craftsmanship is ALL that Matters

  - by Wayne Molina

  Today, I'm going to talk about a touchy subject: the notion of working in a company that doesn't use the prescribed "best practices" in its software development endeavours.  Over the years I have, using a variety of pseudonyms, asked this question on popular programming forums.  Although I always add in some minor variation of the story to avoid suspicion that it's the same person posting, the crux of the tale remains the same: A Programmer’s Tale A junior software developer has just started a new job at an average company, creating average line-of-business applications for internal use (the most typical scenario programmers find themselves in).  This hypothetical newbie has spent a lot of time reading up on the "theory" of software development, devouring books, blogs and screencasts from well-known and respected software developers in the community in order to broaden his knowledge and "do what the pros do".  He begins his new job, eager to apply what he's learned on a real-world project only to discover that his new teammates doesn't use any of those concepts and techniques.  They hack their way through development, or in a best-case scenario use some homebrew, thrown-together semblance of a framework for their applications that follows not one of the best practices suggested by the “elite” in the software community - things like TDD (TDD as a "best practice" is the only subjective part of this post, but it's included here due to a very large following of respected developers who consider it one), the SOLID principles, well-known and venerable tools, even version control in a worst case and truly nightmarish scenario.  Our protagonist is frustrated that he isn't doing things the "proper" way - a way he's spent personal time digesting and learning about and, more importantly, a way that some of the top developers in the industry advocate - and turns to a forum to ask the advice of his peers. Invariably the answer I, in the guise of the concerned newbie, will receive is that A) I don't know anything and should just shut my mouth and sling code the bad way like everybody else on the team, and B) These "best practices" are fade or a joke, and the only thing that matters is shipping software to your customers. I am here today to say that anyone who says this, or anything like it, is not only full of crap but indicative of exactly the type of “developer” that has helped to give our industry a bad name.  Here is why: One Who Knows Nothing, Understands Nothing On one hand, you have the cognoscenti of the .NET development world.  Guys like James Avery, Jeremy Miller, Ayende Rahien and Rob Conery; all well-respected and noted programmers that are pretty much our version of celebrities.  These guys write blogs, books, and post videos outlining the "correct" way of writing software to make sure it not only works but is maintainable and extensible and a joy to work with.  They tout the virtues of the SOLID principles, or of using TDD/BDD, or using a mature ORM like NHibernate, Subsonic or even Entity Framework. On the other hand, you have Joe Everyman, Lead Software Developer at Initrode Corporation - in our hypothetical story Joe is the junior developer's new boss.  Joe's been with Initrode for 10 years, starting as the company’s very first programmer and over the years building up a little fiefdom of his own until at the present he’s in charge of all Initrode’s software development.  Joe writes code the same way he always has, without bothering to learn much, if anything.  He looked at NHibernate once and found it was "too hard", so he uses a primitive implementation of the TableDataGateway pattern as a wrapper around SqlClient.SqlConnection and SqlClient.SqlCommand instead of an actual ORM (or, in a better case scenario, has created his own ORM); the thought of using LINQ or Entity Framework or really anything other than his own hastily homebrew solution has never occurred to him.  He doesn't understand TDD and considers “testing” to be using the .NET debugger to step through code, or simply loading up an app and entering some values to see if it works.  He doesn't really understand SOLID, and he doesn't care to.  He's worked as a programmer for years, and that's all that counts.  Right?  WRONG. Who would you rather trust?  Someone with years of experience and who writes books, creates well-known software and is akin to a celebrity, or someone with no credibility outside their own minute environment who throws around their clout and company seniority as the "proof" of their ability?  Joe Everyman may have years of experience at Initrode as a programmer, and says to do things "his way" but someone like Jeremy Miller or Ayende Rahien have years of experience at companies just like Initrode, THEY know ten times more than Joe Everyman knows or could ever hope to know, and THEY say to do things "this way". Here's another way of thinking about it: If you wanted to get into politics and needed advice on the best way to do it, would you rather listen to the mayor of Hicktown, USA or Barack Obama?  One is a small-time nobody while the other is very well-known and, as such, would probably have much more accurate and beneficial advice. NOTE: The selection of Barack Obama as an example in no way, shape, or form suggests a political affiliation or political bent to this post or blog, and no political innuendo should be mistakenly read from it; the intent was merely to compare a small-time persona with a well-known persona in a non-software field.  Feel free to replace the name "Barack Obama" with any well-known Congressman, Senator or US President of your choice. DIY Considered Harmful I will say right now that the homebrew development environment is the WORST one for an aspiring programmer, because it relies on nothing outside it's own little box - no useful skill outside of the small pond.  If you are forced to use some half-baked, homebrew ORM created by your Director of Software, you are not learning anything valuable you can take with you in the future; now, if you plan to stay at Initrode for 10 years like Joe Everyman, this is fine and dandy.  However if, like most of us, you want to advance your career outside a very narrow space you will do more harm than good by sticking it out in an environment where you, to be frank, know better than everybody else because you are aware of alternative and, in almost most cases, better tools for the job.  A junior developer who understands why the SOLID principles are good to follow, or why TDD is beneficial, or who knows that it's better to use NHibernate/Subsonic/EF/LINQ/well-known ORM versus some in-house one knows better than a senior developer with 20 years experience who doesn't understand any of that, plain and simple.  Anyone who disagrees is either a liar, or someone who, just like Joe Everyman, Lead Developer, relies on seniority and tenure rather than adapting their knowledge as things evolve. In many cases, the Joe Everymans of the world act this way out of fear - they cannot possibly fathom that a “junior” could know more than them; after all, they’ve spent 10 or more years in the same company, doing the same job, cranking out the same shoddy software.  And here comes a newbie who hasn’t spent 10+ years doing the same things, with a fresh and often radical take on the craft, and Joe Everyman is afraid he might have to put some real effort into his career again instead of just pointing to his 10 years of service at Initrode as “proof” that he’s good, or that he might have to learn something new to improve; in most cases the problem is Joe Everyman, and by extension Initrode itself, has a mentality of just being “good enough”, and mediocrity is the rule of the day. A Thorn Bush is No Place for a Phoenix My advice is that if you work on a team where they don't use the best practices that some of the most famous developers in our field say is the "right" way to do things (and have legions of people who agree), and YOU are aware of these practices and can see why they work, then LEAVE the company.  Find a company where they DO care about quality, and craftsmanship, otherwise you will never be happy.  There is no point in "dumbing" yourself down to the level of your co-workers and slinging code without care to craftsmanship.  In 95% of these situations there will be no point in bringing it to the attention of Joe Everyman because he won't listen; he might even get upset that someone is trying to "upstage" him and fire the newbie, and replace someone with loads of untapped potential with a drone that will just nod affirmatively and grind out the tasks assigned without question. Find a company that has people smart enough to listen to the "best and brightest", and be happy.  Do not, I repeat, DO NOT waste away in a job working for ignorant people.  At the end of the day software development IS a craft, and a level of craftsmanship is REQUIRED for any serious professional.  When you have knowledgeable people with the credibility to back it up saying one thing, and small-time people who are, to put it bluntly, nobodies in the field saying and doing something totally different because they can't comprehend it, leave the nobodies to their own devices to fade into obscurity.  Work for a company that uses REAL software engineering techniques and really cares about craftsmanship.  The biggest issue affecting our career, and the reason software development has never been the respected, white-collar career it was meant to be, is because hacks and charlatans can pass themselves off as professional programmers without following a lick of good advice from programmers much better at the craft than they are.  These modern day snake-oil salesmen entrench themselves in companies by hoodwinking non-technical businesspeople and customers with their shoddy wares, end up in senior/lead/executive positions, and push their lack of knowledge on everybody unfortunate enough to work with/for/under them, crushing any dissent or voices of reason and change under their tyrannical heel and leaving behind a trail of dismayed and, often, unemployed junior developers who were made examples of to keep up the facade and avoid the shadow of doubt being cast upon them. To sum this up another way: If you surround yourself with learned people, you will learn.  Surround yourself with ignorant people who can't, as the saying goes, see the forest through the trees, and you'll learn nothing of any real value.  There is more to software development than just writing code, and the end goal should not be just "shipping software", it should be shipping software that is extensible, maintainable, and above all else software whose creation has broadened your knowledge in some capacity, even if a minor one.  An eager newbie who knows theory and thirsts for knowledge can easily be moulded and taught the advanced topics, but the same can't be said of someone who only cares about the finish line.  This industry needs more people espousing the benefits of software craftsmanship and proper software engineering techniques, and less Joe Everymans who are unwilling to adapt or foster new ways of thinking. Conclusion - I Cast “Protection from Fire” I am fairly certain this post will spark some controversy and might even invite the flames.  Please keep in mind these are opinions and nothing more.  A little healthy rant and subsequent flamewar can be good for the soul once in a while.  To paraphrase The Godfather: It helps to get rid of the bad blood.

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• C#: My World Clock

  - by Bruce Eitman

  [Placeholder:  I will post the entire project soon] I have been working on cleaning my office of 8 years of stuff from several engineers working on many projects.  It turns out that we have a few extra single board computers with displays, so at the end of the day last Friday I though why not create a little application to display the time, you know, a clock.  How difficult could that be?  It turns out that it is quite simple – until I decided to gold plate the project by adding time displays for our offices around the world. I decided to use C#, which actually made creating the main clock quite easy.   The application was simply a text box and a timer.  I set the timer to fire a couple of times a second, and when it does use a DateTime object to get the current time and retrieve a string to display. And I could have been done, but of course that gold plating came up.   Seems simple enough, simply offset the time from the local time to the location that I want the time for and display it.    Sure enough, I had the time displayed for UK, Italy, Kansas City, Japan and China in no time at all. But it is October, and for those of us still stuck with Daylight Savings Time, we know that the clocks are about to change.   My first attempt was to simply check to see if the local time was DST or Standard time, then change the offset for China.  China doesn’t have Daylight Savings Time. If you know anything about the time changes around the world, you already know that my plan is flawed – in a big way.   It turns out that the transitions in and out of DST take place at different times around the world.   If you didn’t know that, do a quick search for “Daylight Savings” and you will find many WEB sites dedicated to tracking the time changes dates, and times. Now the real challenge of this application; how do I programmatically find out when the time changes occur and handle them correctly?  After a considerable amount of research it turns out that the solution is to read the data from the registry and parse it to figure out when the time changes occur. Reading Time Change Information from the Registry Reading the data from the registry is simple, using the data is a little more complicated.  First, reading from the registry can be done like:             byte[] binarydata = (byte[])Registry.GetValue("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Time Zones\\Eastern Standard Time", "TZI", null);   Where I have hardcoded the registry key for example purposes, but in the end I will use some variables.   We now have a binary blob with the data, but it needs to be converted to use the real data.   To start we will need a couple of structs to hold the data and make it usable.   We will need a SYSTEMTIME and REG_TZI_FORMAT.   You may have expected that we would need a TIME_ZONE_INFORMATION struct, but we don’t.   The data is stored in the registry as a REG_TZI_FORMAT, which excludes some of the values found in TIME_ZONE_INFORMATION.     struct SYSTEMTIME     {         internal short wYear;         internal short wMonth;         internal short wDayOfWeek;         internal short wDay;         internal short wHour;         internal short wMinute;         internal short wSecond;         internal short wMilliseconds;     }       struct REG_TZI_FORMAT     {         internal long Bias;         internal long StdBias;         internal long DSTBias;         internal SYSTEMTIME StandardStart;         internal SYSTEMTIME DSTStart;     }   Now we need to convert the binary blob to a REG_TZI_FORMAT.   To do that I created the following helper functions:         private void BinaryToSystemTime(ref SYSTEMTIME ST, byte[] binary, int offset)         {             ST.wYear = (short)(binary[offset + 0] + (binary[offset + 1] << 8));             ST.wMonth = (short)(binary[offset + 2] + (binary[offset + 3] << 8));             ST.wDayOfWeek = (short)(binary[offset + 4] + (binary[offset + 5] << 8));             ST.wDay = (short)(binary[offset + 6] + (binary[offset + 7] << 8));             ST.wHour = (short)(binary[offset + 8] + (binary[offset + 9] << 8));             ST.wMinute = (short)(binary[offset + 10] + (binary[offset + 11] << 8));             ST.wSecond = (short)(binary[offset + 12] + (binary[offset + 13] << 8));             ST.wMilliseconds = (short)(binary[offset + 14] + (binary[offset + 15] << 8));         }             private REG_TZI_FORMAT ConvertFromBinary(byte[] binarydata)         {             REG_TZI_FORMAT RTZ = new REG_TZI_FORMAT();               RTZ.Bias = binarydata[0] + (binarydata[1] << 8) + (binarydata[2] << 16) + (binarydata[3] << 24);             RTZ.StdBias = binarydata[4] + (binarydata[5] << 8) + (binarydata[6] << 16) + (binarydata[7] << 24);             RTZ.DSTBias = binarydata[8] + (binarydata[9] << 8) + (binarydata[10] << 16) + (binarydata[11] << 24);             BinaryToSystemTime(ref RTZ.StandardStart, binarydata, 4 + 4 + 4);             BinaryToSystemTime(ref RTZ.DSTStart, binarydata, 4 + 16 + 4 + 4);               return RTZ;         }   I am the first to admit that there may be a better way to get the settings from the registry and into the REG_TXI_FORMAT, but I am not a great C# programmer which I have said before on this blog.   So sometimes I chose brute force over elegant. Now that we have the Bias information and the start date information, we can start to make sense of it.   The bias is an offset, in minutes, from local time (if already in local time for the time zone in question) to get to UTC – or as Microsoft defines it: UTC = local time + bias.  Standard bias is an offset to adjust for standard time, which I think is usually zero.   And DST bias is and offset to adjust for daylight savings time. Since we don’t have the local time for a time zone other than the one that the computer is set to, what we first need to do is convert local time to UTC, which is simple enough using:                 DateTime.Now.ToUniversalTime(); Then, since we have UTC we need to do a little math to alter the formula to: local time = UTC – bias.  In other words, we need to subtract the bias minutes. I am ahead of myself though, the standard and DST start dates really aren’t dates.   Instead they indicate the month, day of week and week number of the time change.   The dDay member of SYSTEM time will be set to the week number of the date change indicating that the change happens on the first, second… day of week of the month.  So we need to convert them to dates so that we can determine which bias to use, and when to change to a different bias.   To do that, I wrote the following function:         private DateTime SystemTimeToDateTimeStart(SYSTEMTIME Time, int Year)         {             DayOfWeek[] Days = { DayOfWeek.Sunday, DayOfWeek.Monday, DayOfWeek.Tuesday, DayOfWeek.Wednesday, DayOfWeek.Thursday, DayOfWeek.Friday, DayOfWeek.Saturday };             DateTime InfoTime = new DateTime(Year, Time.wMonth, Time.wDay == 1 ? 1 : ((Time.wDay - 1) * 7) + 1, Time.wHour, Time.wMinute, Time.wSecond, DateTimeKind.Utc);             DateTime BestGuess = InfoTime;             while (BestGuess.DayOfWeek != Days[Time.wDayOfWeek])             {                 BestGuess = BestGuess.AddDays(1);             }             return BestGuess;         }   SystemTimeToDateTimeStart gets two parameters; a SYSTEMTIME and a year.   The reason is that we will try this year and next year because we are interested in start dates that are in the future, not the past.  The function starts by getting a new Datetime with the first possible date and then looking for the correct date. Using the start dates, we can then determine the correct bias to use, and the next date that time will change:             NextTimeChange = StandardChange;             CurrentBias = TimezoneSettings.Bias + TimezoneSettings.DSTBias;             if (DSTChange.Year != 1 && StandardChange.Year != 1)             {                 if (DSTChange.CompareTo(StandardChange) < 0)                 {                     NextTimeChange = DSTChange;                     CurrentBias = TimezoneSettings.StdBias + TimezoneSettings.Bias;                 }             }             else             {                 // I don't like this, but it turns out that China Standard Time                 // has a DSTBias of -60 on every Windows system that I tested.                 // So, if no DST transitions, then just use the Bias without                 // any offset                 CurrentBias = TimezoneSettings.Bias;             }   Note that some time zones do not change time, in which case the years will remain set to 1.   Further, I found that the registry settings are actually wrong in that the DST Bias is set to -60 for China even though there is not DST in China, so I ignore the standard and DST bias for those time zones. There is one thing that I have not solved, and don’t plan to solve.  If the time zone for this computer changes, this application will not update the clock using the new time zone.  I tell  you this because you may need to deal with it – I do not because I won’t let the user get to the control panel applet to change the timezone. Copyright © 2012 – Bruce Eitman All Rights Reserved

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• Surface RT: To Be Or Not To Be (Part 1)

  - by smehaffie

  So the Surface RT has been out for 9 months and Microsoft just declared a $900 million dollar write-down. So how did this happen and what does it mean for Microsoft’s efforts to break into the tablet market? I have been thinking a lot about most of the information below since the Surface product line was released. If you are looking for a “Microsoft Is Dead” story, then don’t read any further. But if you want an honest look at what I think led Microsoft to this point and what I think can be done to make Surface RT devices better, then please continue reading. What Led Microsoft To The $900 Million Write-Down Surface Unveiling:Microsoft totally missed the boat when they unveiled the Surface product line on June 18th, 2012. Microsoft should’ve been ready to post the specifications of both devices that night. Microsoft should’ve had a site up and running right after the event so people could pre-order the devices. This would have given them a good idea what the interest was in each device.  They could also have used this data to make a better estimate for the number of units to to have available for the launch and beyond.  They also lost out on taking advantage of the excitement generated by the Surface RT and Surface Pro announcement. They could have thrown in a free touch keyboard to anyone who pre-ordered. The advertising should have started right after the announcement and gotten bigger as launch day approached. Push for as many pre-order as possible and build excitement for the launch. Actual Launch (Surface RT): By this time all excitement was gone from the initial announcement, except for the Micorsoft faithful. Microsoft should have been ready to sell the Surface in as many markets as possible at launch. The limited market release was a real letdown for a lot of people.  A limited release right after the initial announce is understandable, but not at the official launch of the product. Microsoft overpriced the device and now they are lowering it to what it should have been to start with. The $349 price is within the range I suggested it should be at before pricing was announced. (Surface Tablets: The Price Must Be Right). Limited ordering options online was also a killer. User should have been able to buy the base unit of each device and then add on whatever keyboard they wanted to (this applies more to the Surface Pro).  There should have also been a place where users could order any additional add-ins that they wanted to buy (covers, extra power supplies, etc.) Marketing was better and the dancing “Click In” commercial was cool, but the ads comparing the iPad with Siri should have been on the air from day one of the announcement (or at least the launch).  Consumers want to know why you tablet is better, not just that is has a clickable keyboard and built-in kickstand. They could have also compared it to some of the other mid-range tablets if they had not overprices it to begin with. Stock Applications (Mail, People, Calendar, Music, Video, Reader and IE): This is where Microsoft really blew it. They had all the time in the world to make these applications the best of breed and instead we got applications that seemed thrown together.  Some updates have made these application better, but they are all still lacking in features that should have been there from day one. This did not help to enhance a new users experience any. ** I will admit that the applications that were data driven were first class citizen’s and that makes it even more perplexing why MS could knock it out of the park with the Weather, Travel, Finance, Bing, etc.) and fail so miserably on the core applications users would use the most on a tablet. Desktop on Tablet: The desktop just is so out of place on the tablet  I understand it was needed for Office but think it would have been better to not have the desktop in Windows RT, but instead open up the Office applications in full screen mode, in a desktop shell (same goes for  IE11).That way the user wouldn’t realize they are leaving Metro and going to the desktop. The other option would have been to just not include Office on Windows RT devices. Instead they could have made awesome Widows Store Apps for Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint. In addition, they could have made the stock Mail, People, and Calendar applications contain all the functions that Outlook gives desktop users. Having some of the settings in desktop mode and others under “Change PC Settings” made Windows RT seemed unfinished and rushed to market. What Can Be Done To Make Windows RT Based Tablets Better (At least in my opinion) Either eliminate the desktop all together from Windows RT or at least make the user experience better by hiding the fact the user is running Office/IE in the desktop. Personally I ‘d like them to totally get rid of it and just make awesome Windows Store Application version of Word, Excel PowerPoint & OneNote.  This might also make the OS smaller and give the user more available disk space. I doubt there will ever be a Windows Store App versions of Office, but I still think it is a good idea. Make is so users can easily direct their documents, picture, videos and music to their extra storage and can access these files from the standard libraries.  A user should not have to create a VM on their microSD card or create symbolic links to get this to work properly. Most consumers would not be able to do this. Then users get frustrated when they run out or room on their main storage because nothing is automatically save to their microSD card when saved to libraries.  This is a major bug that needs to be fixed, otherwise Microsoft’s selling point of having a microSD slot is worthless. Allows users to uninstall and re-install any of the Office product that come with the Surface. That way people can free up storage space by uninstalling the Office applications they do not need. Everyone’s needs are different, so make the options flexible. Don’t take up storage space for applications the user will not use. Make the Core applications the “Cream of the Crop” Windows App Store applications. The should set the bar for all other Store applications. Improve performance as much as possible, if it seems to be sluggish on a tablet consumer will not buy it. They need to price the next line of Surface product very aggressive to undercut not only iPad but also Android low end tablets (Nook, Kindle Fire, and Nexus, etc.) Give developers incentives to write quality applications for the devices. Don’t reward developers for cranking out cookie cutter, low quality applications. I’d even suggest Microsoft consider implementing some new store certification guideline to stop these type of applications being published. Allow users to easily move the recover disk “partition between their microSD card and main storage. My Predictions for the Surface RT and Windows RT I honestly think even with all the missteps MS has made since the announcement  about the Surface product line, that they are on the right path. I was excited the Surface tablets when they were announced, and I still am. The truth be told, Windows 8 on a tablet (aka: Windows RT) is better than both iOS and Android. My nephew who is an Apple fan boy told me after he saw and used Windows 8 (he got the beta running on his iPad), that Windows 8 kicked Apples butt as a tablet OS. So there is hope for all Windows RT based tablets. I agree with my nephew and that is why whenever anyone asks me about my Surface, I love showing it off and recommend it. The 6 keys to gaining market share in the tablet market are; Aggressive pricing by both Microsoft and their OEM’s Good quality devices put out by Microsoft and their OEM’s (there are some out there, but not enough) Marketing, Marketing, Marketing from both Microsoft and their OEM’s (Need more ads showing why windows based tablets are better than iPads and Android tablets) Getting Widows tablets in retails stores all over, and giving sales people incentive to sell them. Consumers like to try electronics out before they buy them, and most will listen to what the sales person suggest. Microsoft needs sales people in retail stores directing people to buy windows based tablets over iPads and Android tablets. I think the Microsoft Stores within Best Buy is a good start, but they also need to get prominent displays in Walmart, Target, etc.. Release a smaller form factor Surface, Hopefully the 8”-10” next generation Surface is not a rumor. Make “Surface” the brand name for all Microsoft tablets and hybrid devices that they come out with. They cannot change the name with each new release.  Make Surface synonymous with quality, the same way that iPad  is for Apple. Well, that is my 2 cents on the subject. Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment below. Soon to follow will be my thought on the Surface Pro, so keep an eye out for it. var addthis_pub="smehaffie"; var addthis_options="email, print, digg, slashdot, delicious, twitter, live, myspace, facebook, google, stumbleupon, newsvine";

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• How I Work: A Cloud Developer's Workstation

  - by BuckWoody

  I've written here a little about how I work during the day, including things like using a stand-up desk (still doing that, by the way). Inspired by a Twitter conversation yesterday, I thought I might explain how I set up my computing environment. First, a couple of important points. I work in Cloud Computing, specifically (but not limited to) Windows Azure. Windows Azure has features to run a Virtual Machine (IaaS), run code without having to control a Virtual Machine (PaaS) and use databases, video streaming, Hadoop and more (a kind of SaaS for tech pros). As such, my designs run the gamut of on-premises, VM's in the Cloud, and software that I write for a platform. I focus on data primarily, meaning that I design a lot of systems that use an RDBMS (like SQL Server or Windows Azure Databases) or a NoSQL approach (MongoDB on Azure or large-scale Key-Value Pairs in Table storage) and even Hadoop and R, and also Cloud Numerics in F#. All that being said, those things inform my choices below. Hardware I have a Lenovo X220 tablet/laptop which I really like a great deal - it's a light, tough, extremely fast system. When I travel, that's the system I take. It has 8GB of RAM, and an SSD drive. I sometimes use that to develop or work at a client's site, on the road, or in the living room when I'm not in my home office. My main system is a GateWay DX430017 - I've maxed it out on RAM, and I have two 1TB drives in it. It's not only my workstation for work; I leave it on all the time and it streams our videos, music and books. I have about 3400 e-books, and I've just started using Calibre to stream the library. I run Windows 8 on it so I can set up Hyper-V images, since Windows Azure allows me to move regular Hyper-V disks back and forth to the Cloud. That's where all my "servers" are, when I have to use an IaaS approach. The reason I use a desktop-style system rather than a laptop only approach is that a good part of my job is setting up architectures to solve really big, complex problems. That means I have to simulate entire networks on-premises, along with the Hybrid Cloud approach I use a lot. I need a lot of disk space and memory for that, and I use two huge monitors on my stand-up desk. I could probably use 10 monitors if I had the room for them. Also, since it's our home system as well, I leave it on all the time and it doesn't travel.   Software For the software for my systems, it's important to keep in mind that I not only write code, but I design databases, teach, present, and create Linux and other environments. Windows 8 - While the jury is out for me on the new interface, the context-sensitive search, integrated everything, and speed is just hands-down the right choice. I've evaluated a server OS, Linux, even an Apple, but I just am not as efficient on those as I am with Windows 8. Visual Studio Ultimate - I develop primarily in .NET (C# and F# mostly) and I use the Team Foundation Server in the cloud, and I'm asked to do everything from UI to Services, so I need everything. Windows Azure SDK, Windows Azure Training Kit - I need the first to set up my Azure PaaS coding, and the second has all the info I need for PaaS, IaaS and SaaS. This is primarily how I get paid. :) SQL Server Developer Edition - While I might install Oracle, MySQL and Postgres on my VM's, the "outside" environment is SQL Server for an RDBMS. I install the Developer Edition because it has the same features as Enterprise Edition, and comes with all the client tools and documentation. Microsoft Office -  Even if I didn't work here, this is what I would use. I've just grown too accustomed to doing business this way to change, so my advice is always "use what works", and this does. The parts I use are: OneNote (and a Math Add-in) - I do almost everything - and I mean everything in OneNote. I can code, do high-end math, present, design, collaborate and more. All my notebooks are on my Skydrive. I can use them from any system, anywhere. If you take the time to learn this program, you'll be hooked. Excel with PowerPivot - Don't make that face. Excel is the world's database, and every Data Scientist I know - even the ones where I teach at the University of Washington - know it, use it, and love it.  Outlook - Primary communications, CRM and contact tool. I have all of my social media hooked up to it, so when I get an e-mail from you, I see everything, see all the history we've had on e-mail, find you on a map and more. Lync - I was fine with LiveMeeting, although it has it's moments. For me, the Lync client is tres-awesome. I use this throughout my day, present on it, stay in contact with colleagues and the folks on the dev team (who wish I didn't have it) and more.  PowerPoint - Once again, don't make that face. Whenever I see someone complaining about PowerPoint, I have 100% of the time found they don't know how to use it. If you suck at presenting or creating content, don't blame PowerPoint. Works great on my machine. :) Zoomit - Magnifier - On Windows 7 (and 8 as well) there's a built-in magnifier, but I install Zoomit out of habit. It enlarges the screen. If you don't use one of these tools (or their equivalent on some other OS) then you're presenting/teaching wrong, and you should stop presenting/teaching until you get them and learn how to show people what you can see on your tiny, tiny monitor. :) Cygwin - Unix for Windows. OK, that's not true, but it's mostly that. I grew up on mainframes and Unix (IBM and HP, thank you) and I can't imagine life without  sed, awk, grep, vim, and bash. I also tend to take a lot of the "Science" and "Development" and "Database" packages in it as well. PuTTY - Speaking of Unix, when I need to connect to my Linux VM's in Windows Azure, I want to do it securely. This is the tool for that. Notepad++ - Somewhere between torturing myself in vim and luxuriating in OneNote is Notepad++. Everyone has a favorite text editor; this one is mine. Too many features to name, and it's free. Browsers - I install Chrome, Firefox and of course IE. I know it's in vogue to rant on IE, but I tend to think for myself a great deal, and I've had few (none) problems with it. The others I have for the haterz that make sites that won't run in IE. Visio - I've used a lot of design packages, but none have the extreme meta-data edit capabilities of Visio. I don't use this all the time - it can be rather heavy, but what it does it does really well. I also present this way when I'm not using PowerPoint. Yup, I just bring up Visio and diagram away as I'm chatting with clients. Depending on what we're covering, this can be the right tool for that. Tweetdeck - The AIR one, not that new disaster they came out with. I live on social media, since you, dear readers, are my cube-mates. When I get tired of you all, I close Tweetdeck. When I need help or someone needs help from me, or if I want to see a picture of a cat while I'm coding, I bring it up. It's up most all day and night. Windows Media Player - I listen to Trance or Classical when I code, and I find music managers overbearing and extra. I just use what comes in the box, and it works great for me. R - F# and Cloud Numerics now allows me to load in R libraries (yay!) and I use this for statistical work on big data loads. Microsoft Math - One of the most amazing, free, rich, amazing, awesome, amazing calculators out there. I get the 64-bit version for quick math conversions, plots and formula-checks. Python - I know, right? Who knew that the scientific community loved Python so much. But they do. I use 2.7; not as much runs with 3+. I also use IronPython in Visual Studio, or I edit in Notepad++ Camstudio recorder - Windows PSR - In much of my training, and all of my teaching at the UW, I need to show a process on a screen. Camstudio records screen and voice, and it's free. If I need to make static training, I use the Windows PSR tool that's built right in. It's ostensibly for problem duplication, but I use it to record for training.   OK - your turn. Post a link to your blog entry below, and tell me how you set your system up.  

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• Web API, JavaScript, Chrome &amp; Cross-Origin Resource Sharing

  - by Brian Lanham

  The team spent much of the week working through this issues related to Chrome running on Windows 8 consuming cross-origin resources using Web API.  We thought it was resolved on day 2 but it resurfaced the next day.  We definitely resolved it today though.  I believe I do not fully understand the situation but I am going to explain what I know in an effort to help you avoid and/or resolve a similar issue. References We referenced many sources during our trial-and-error troubleshooting.  These are the links we reference in order of applicability to the solution: Zoiner Tejada JavaScript and other material from -> http://www.devproconnections.com/content1/topic/microsoft-azure-cors-141869/catpath/windows-azure-platform2/page/3 WebDAV Where I learned about “Accept” –>  http://www-jo.se/f.pfleger/cors-and-iis? IT Hit Tells about NOT using ‘*’ –> http://www.webdavsystem.com/ajax/programming/cross_origin_requests Carlos Figueira Sample back-end code (newer) –> http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/Implementing-CORS-support-a677ab5d (older version) –> http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/CORS-support-in-ASPNET-Web-01e9980a   Background As a measure of protection, Web designers (W3C) and implementers (Google, Microsoft, Mozilla) made it so that a request, especially a JSON request (but really any URL), sent from one domain to another will only work if the requestee “knows” about the requester and allows requests from it. So, for example, if you write a ASP.NET MVC Web API service and try to consume it from multiple apps, the browsers used may (will?) indicate that you are not allowed by showing an “Access-Control-Allow-Origin” error indicating the requester is not allowed to make requests. Internet Explorer (big surprise) is the odd-hair-colored step-child in this mix. It seems that running locally at least IE allows this for development purposes.  Chrome and Firefox do not.  In fact, Chrome is quite restrictive.  Notice the images below. IE shows data (a tabular view with one row for each day of a week) while Chrome does not (trust me, neither does Firefox).  Further, the Chrome developer console shows an XmlHttpRequest (XHR) error. Screen captures from IE (left) and Chrome (right). Note that Chrome does not display data and the console shows an XHR error. Why does this happen? The Web browser submits these requests and processes the responses and each browser is different. Okay, so, IE is probably the only one that’s truly different.  However, Chrome has a specific process of performing a “pre-flight” check to make sure the service can respond to an “Access-Control-Allow-Origin” or Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) request.  So basically, the sequence is, if I understand correctly:  1)Page Loads –> 2)JavaScript Request Processed by Browser –> 3)Browsers Prepares to Submit Request –> 4)[Chrome] Browser Submits Pre-Flight Request –> 5)Server Responds with HTTP 200 –> 6)Browser Submits Request –> 7)Server Responds with Data –> 8)Page Shows Data This situation occurs for both GET and POST methods.  Typically, GET methods are called with query string parameters so there is no data posted.  Instead, the requesting domain needs to be permitted to request data but generally nothing more is required.  POSTs on the other hand send form data.  Therefore, more configuration is required (you’ll see the configuration below).  AJAX requests are not friendly with this (POSTs) either because they don’t post in a form. How to fix it. The team went through many iterations of self-hair removal and we think we finally have a working solution.  The trial-and-error approach eventually worked and we referenced many sources for the information.  I indicate those references above.  There are basically three (3) tasks needed to make this work. Assumptions: You are using Visual Studio, Web API, JavaScript, and have Cross-Origin Resource Sharing, and several browsers. 1. Configure the client Joel Cochran centralized our “cors-oriented” JavaScript (from here). There are two calls including one for GET and one for POST function(url, data, callback) {             console.log(data);             $.support.cors = true;             var jqxhr = $.post(url, data, callback, "json")                 .error(function(jqXhHR, status, errorThrown) {                     if ($.browser.msie && window.XDomainRequest) {                         var xdr = new XDomainRequest();                         xdr.open("post", url);                         xdr.onload = function () {                             if (callback) {                                 callback(JSON.parse(this.responseText), 'success');                             }                         };                         xdr.send(data);                     } else {                         console.log(">" + jqXhHR.status);                         alert("corsAjax.post error: " + status + ", " + errorThrown);                     }                 });         }; The GET CORS JavaScript function (credit to Zoiner Tejada) function(url, callback) {             $.support.cors = true;             var jqxhr = $.get(url, null, callback, "json")                 .error(function(jqXhHR, status, errorThrown) {                     if ($.browser.msie && window.XDomainRequest) {                         var xdr = new XDomainRequest();                         xdr.open("get", url);                         xdr.onload = function () {                             if (callback) {                                 callback(JSON.parse(this.responseText), 'success');                             }                         };                         xdr.send();                     } else {                         alert("CORS is not supported in this browser or from this origin.");                     }                 });         }; The POST CORS JavaScript function (credit to Zoiner Tejada) Now you need to call these functions to get and post your data (instead of, say, using $.Ajax). Here is a GET example: corsAjax.get(url, function(data) { if (data !== null && data.length !== undefined) { // do something with data } }); And here is a POST example: corsAjax.post(url, item); Simple…except…you’re not done yet. 2. Change Web API Controllers to Allow CORS There are actually two steps here.  Do you remember above when we mentioned the “pre-flight” check?  Chrome actually asks the server if it is allowed to ask it for cross-origin resource sharing access.  So you need to let the server know it’s okay.  This is a two-part activity.  a) Add the appropriate response header Access-Control-Allow-Origin, and b) permit the API functions to respond to various methods including GET, POST, and OPTIONS.  OPTIONS is the method that Chrome and other browsers use to ask the server if it can ask about permissions.  Here is an example of a Web API controller thus decorated: NOTE: You’ll see a lot of references to using “*” in the header value.  For security reasons, Chrome does NOT recognize this is valid. [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "http://localhost:51234")] [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Credentials", "true")] [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "ACCEPT, PROPFIND, PROPPATCH, COPY, MOVE, DELETE, MKCOL, LOCK, UNLOCK, PUT, GETLIB, VERSION-CONTROL, CHECKIN, CHECKOUT, UNCHECKOUT, REPORT, UPDATE, CANCELUPLOAD, HEAD, OPTIONS, GET, POST")] [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "Accept, Overwrite, Destination, Content-Type, Depth, User-Agent, X-File-Size, X-Requested-With, If-Modified-Since, X-File-Name, Cache-Control")] [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Max-Age", "3600")] public abstract class BaseApiController : ApiController {     [HttpGet]     [HttpOptions]     public IEnumerable<foo> GetFooItems(int id)     {         return foo.AsEnumerable();     }     [HttpPost]     [HttpOptions]     public void UpdateFooItem(FooItem fooItem)     {         // NOTE: The fooItem object may or may not         // (probably NOT) be set with actual data.         // If not, you need to extract the data from         // the posted form manually.         if (fooItem.Id == 0) // However you check for default...         {             // We use NewtonSoft.Json.             string jsonString = context.Request.Form.GetValues(0)[0].ToString();             Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer js = new Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer();             fooItem = js.Deserialize<FooItem>(new Newtonsoft.Json.JsonTextReader(new System.IO.StringReader(jsonString)));         }         // Update the set fooItem object.     } } Please note a few specific additions here: * The header attributes at the class level are required.  Note all of those methods and headers need to be specified but we find it works this way so we aren’t touching it. * Web API will actually deserialize the posted data into the object parameter of the called method on occasion but so far we don’t know why it does and doesn’t. * [HttpOptions] is, again, required for the pre-flight check. * The “Access-Control-Allow-Origin” response header should NOT NOT NOT contain an ‘*’. 3. Headers and Methods and Such We had most of this code in place but found that Chrome and Firefox still did not render the data.  Interestingly enough, Fiddler showed that the GET calls succeeded and the JSON data is returned properly.  We learned that among the headers set at the class level, we needed to add “ACCEPT”.  Note that I accidentally added it to methods and to headers.  Adding it to methods worked but I don’t know why.  We added it to headers also for good measure. [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "ACCEPT, PROPFIND, PROPPA... [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "Accept, Overwrite, Destin... Next Steps That should do it.  If it doesn’t let us know.  What to do next?  * Don’t hardcode the allowed domains.  Note that port numbers and other domain name specifics will cause problems and must be specified.  If this changes do you really want to deploy updated software?  Consider Miguel Figueira’s approach in the following link to writing a custom HttpHeaderAttribute class that allows you to specify the domain names and then you can do it dynamically.  There are, of course, other ways to do it dynamically but this is a clean approach. http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/Implementing-CORS-support-a677ab5d

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• Data Integration 12c Raising the Big Data Roof at Oracle OpenWorld

  - by Tanu Sood

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";} Author: Dain Hansen, Director, Oracle It was an exciting OpenWorld 2013 for us in the Data Integration track. Our theme this year was all about ‘being future ready’ - previewing one of our biggest releases this year: Oracle Data Integration 12c. Just this week we followed up with this preview by announcing the general availability of 12c release for Oracle’s key data integration products: Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c. The new release delivers extreme performance, increase IT productivity, and simplify deployment, while helping IT organizations to keep pace with new data-oriented technology trends including cloud computing, big data analytics, real-time business intelligence. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";} Mark Hurd's keynote on day one set the tone for the Data Integration sessions. Mark focused on big data analytics and the changing consumer expectations. Especially real-time insight is a key theme for Oracle overall and data integration products. In Mark Hurd's keynote we heard from key customers, such as Airbus and Thomson Reuters, how real-time analysis of operational data including machine data creates value, in some cases even saves lives. Thomas Kurian gave a deeper look into Oracle's big data and fast data solutions. In the initial lead Data Integration track session - Brad Adelberg, VP of Development, presented Oracle’s Data Integration 12c product strategy based on key trends from the initial OpenWorld keynotes. Brad talked about how Oracle's data integration products address the new data integration requirements that evolved with cloud computing, big data, and changing consumer expectations and how they set the key themes in our products’ road map. Brad explained why and how fast-time to value, high-performance and future-ready solutions is the top focus areas for product development. If you were not able to attend OpenWorld or this session I recommend reading the white paper: Five New Data Integration Requirements and How to Meet them with Oracle Data Integration, which provides an in-depth look into how Oracle addresses the new trends in the DI market. Following Brad’s session, Nick Wagner provided in depth review of Oracle GoldenGate’s latest features and roadmap. Nick discussed how Oracle GoldenGate’s tight integration with Oracle Database sets the product apart from the competition. We also heard that heterogeneity of the product is still a major focus for GoldenGate’s development and there will be more news on that front when there is a major release. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";} After GoldenGate’s product strategy session, Denis Gray from the PM team presented Oracle Data Integrator’s product strategy session, talking about the latest and greatest on ODI. Another good session was delivered by long-time GoldenGate users, Comcast.  Jason Hurd and Amit Patel of Comcast talked about the various use cases they deploy Oracle GoldenGate throughout their enterprise, from database upgrades, feeding reporting systems, to active-active database synchronization.  The Comcast team shared many good tips on how to use GoldenGate for both zero downtime upgrades and active-active replication with conflict management requirement. One of our other important goals we had this year for the Data Integration track at OpenWorld was hearing from our customers. We ended day 1 on just that, with a wonderful award ceremony for Oracle Excellence Awards for Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation. The ceremony was held in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Congratulations to Royal Bank of Scotland and Yalumba Wine Company, the winners in the Data Integration category. You can find more information on the award and the winners in our previous blog post: 2013 Oracle Excellence Awards for Fusion Middleware Innovation… Selected for their innovation use of Oracle’s Data Integration products; the winners for the Data Integration Category are Royal Bank of Scotland and The Yalumba Wine Company. Congratulations!!! Royal Bank of Scotland’s Market and International Banking division provides clients across the globe with seamless trading and competitive pricing, underpinned by a deep knowledge of risk management across the full spectrum of financial products. They handle millions of transactions daily to keep the lifeblood of their clients’ businesses flowing – whether through payment management solutions or through bespoke trade finance solutions. Royal Bank of Scotland is leveraging Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Data Integrator along with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and the Oracle Database for a variety of solutions. Mainly, Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Data Integrator are used to feed their data warehouse – providing a real-time data integration solution that feeds transactional data to their analytics system in minutes to enable improved decision making with timely, accurate data for their business users. Oracle Data Integrator’s in-database transformation capabilities and its ability to integrate with Oracle GoldenGate for real-time data capture is the foundation of this implementation. This solution makes it such that changes happening in the analytics systems are available the same day they are deployed on the operational system with 100% data quality guaranteed. Additionally, the solution has helped to reduce their operational database size from 150GB to 10GB. Impressive! Now what if I told you this solution was built in 3 months and had a less than 6 month return on investment? That’s outstanding! The Yalumba Wine Company is situated in the Barossa Valley of Australia. It is the oldest family owned winery in Australia with a unique way of aging their wines in specially crafted 100 liter barrels. Did you know that “Yalumba” is Aboriginal for “all the land around”? The Yalumba Wine Company is growing rapidly, and was in need of introducing a more modern standard to the existing manufacturing processes to meet globalization demands, overall time-to-market, and better operational efficiency objectives of product development. The Yalumba Wine Company worked with a partner, Bristlecone to develop a unique solution whereby Oracle Data Integrator is leveraged to pull data from Salesforce.com and JD Edwards, in addition to their other pre-existing source systems, for consumption into their data warehouse. They have emphasized the overall ease of developing integration workflows with Oracle Data Integrator. The solution has brought better visibility for the business users, shorter data loading and transformation performance to their data warehouse with rapid incorporation of new data sources, and a solid future-proof foundation for their organization. Moving forward, they plan on leveraging more from Oracle’s Data Integration portfolio. Terrific! In addition to these two customers on Tuesday we featured many other important Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate customers. On Tuesday the GoldenGate panel included: Land O’Lakes, Smuckers, and Veolia Water. Besides giving us yummy nutrition and healthy water, these companies have another aspect in common. They all use GoldenGate to boost their ERP application. Please read the recap by Irem Radzik. On Wednesday, the ODI Panel included: Barry Ralston and Ryan Weber of Infinity Insurance, Paul Stracke of Paychex Inc., and Ian Wall of Vertex Pharmaceuticals for a session filled with interesting projects, use cases and approaches to leveraging Oracle Data Integrator. Please read the recap by Sandrine Riley for more. Thanks to everyone who joined with us and we hope to stay connected! To hear more about our Data Integration12c products join us in an upcoming webcast to learn more. Follow us www.twitter.com/ORCLGoldenGate or goto our website at www.oracle.com/goto/dataintegration

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, July 23, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, July 23, 2013Popular ReleasesHome Access Plus+: v9.3: UPDATED RELEASE Fixed: Issue with enabling LDAP encryption Added: Encrypted/Signed LDAP Queries Fixed: Wrong Modernizr reference on the setup page Changed: Code on the AD Tree Picker Upgraded: Dynatree Fixed: Removed Dynatree Debug Data Added: Time bar for the current day Added: Code to block booking/removing of bookings after the lesson time has past Fixed: New sidebar position issue Added: Decode for the NotesMagelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 2.4: Magelia WebStore version 2.4 introduces new and improved features: Basket and order calculation have been redesigned with a more modular approach geographic zone algorithms for tax and shipping calculations have been re-developed. The Store service has been split in three services (store, basket, order). Product start and end dates have been added. For variant products a unique code has been introduced for the top (variable) product, product attributes can now be defined at the top ...GoAgent GUI: GoAgent GUI 1.3.0 Beta: ??????????： Windows XP SP3 Windows Vista SP1 Windows 7 Windows 8 Windows 8.1 ??Windows 8.1???????????? ????： .Net Framework 4.0 http://59.111.20.19/download/17718/33240761/4/exe/69/54/17718_1/dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package http://59.111.20.23/download/4894298/8555584/1/exe/28/176/1348305610524_944/vcredist_x86.exe ???????????????。 ?????????????，??????????，??????????????（????） ?????Windows XP?Windows 7????，???????????，?issue??????。uygw@outlook.comLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.08: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.AndroidCopyAndPaste: Capood: Erstes Release für Evaluation --> Changeset 26675fastJSON: v2.0.17: 2.0.17 - added serialization of static fields and properties - added dynamic object support and testKartris E-commerce: Kartris v2.5002: This is the release version of Kartris with the responsive interface based on Zurb's Foundation framework. It will work on any screen size, down to and including mobile devices such as the iphone. We've also fixed issues with Apple iOS products being treated by ASP.NET as 'downscale' devices, which broke some functionality in Kartris. This release also includes native Bitcoin support (no third party services required - it communicates directly with the standard Bitcoin client via a JSON API)...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.15: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImgChili.net" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgBabes.com" linksAcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.4.3: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.4.3 ?? ??Bilibili????????????? ???????????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2.10?...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.6.601: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.6.6. These zip files are also available as a NuGet package: https://nuget.org/profiles/dlemstra/C# Intellisense for Notepad++: Initial release: Members auto-complete Integration with native Notepad++ Auto-Completion Auto "open bracket" for methods Right-arrow to accept suggestions51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.19.4: One Click Install from NuGet This release introduces the 51Degrees.mobi IIS Vary Header Fix. When Compression and Caching is used in IIS, the Vary header is overwritten, making intelligent caching with dynamic content impossible. Find out more about installing the Vary Header fix. Changes to Version 2.1.19.4Handlers now have a ‘Count’ property. This is an integer value that shows how many devices in the dataset that use that handler. Provider.cs -> GetDeviceInfoByID to address a problem w...Centrify DirectControl PowerShell Module: 1.5.709: -fix- Computer password is correctly set when preparing Computer account for Self-Service join and hostname is longer than 14 charsDLog: DLog v1.0: Log v1.0SalarDbCodeGenerator: SalarDbCodeGenerator v2.1.2013.0719: Version 2.1.2013.0719 2013/7/19 Pattern Changes: * DapperContext pattern is added. * All patterns are updated to work with one-to-one relations. Changes: * One-to-one relation is supported. * Minor bug fixes.Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows and WP (v1.3 beta 2): Includes all changes in v1.3 beta 1 Additional support for Windows 8.1 Preview New API (JS): addTextTrack New API (JS): msKeys New API (JS): msPlayToPreferredSourceUri New API (JS): msSetMediaKeys New API (JS): onmsneedkey New API (Xaml): SetMediaStreamSource method New API (Xaml): Stretch property New API (Xaml): StretchChanged event New API (Xaml): AreTransportControlsEnabled property New API (Xaml): IsFullWindow property New API (Xaml): PlayToPreferredSourceUri proper...Outlook 2013 Add-In: Multiple Calendars: As per popular request, this new version includes: - Support for multiple calendars. This can be enabled in the configuration by choosing which ones to show/hide appointments from. In some cases (public folders) it may time out and crash, and so far it only supports "My Calendars", so not shared ones yet. Also they're currently shown in the same font/color so there are no confusions with color categories, but please drop me a line on any suggestions you'd like to see implemented. - Added fri...Circuit Diagram: Circuit Diagram 2.0 Beta 2: New in this release: Show grid in editor Cut/copy/paste support Bug fixesOrchard Project: Orchard 1.7 RC: Planning releasedTerminals: Version 3.1 - Release: Changes since version 3.0:15992 Unified usage of icons in user interface Added context menu in Organize favorites grid Fixed:34219 34210 34223 33981 34209 Install notes:No changes in database (use database from release 3.0) No upgrade of configuration, passwords, credentials or favorites See also upgrade notes for release 3.0New ProjectsAerCloud.net FaceTools Client - Python, Linux & Windows: This project source code provides a step by step guide for using AerCloud.net Framework as a Service API. For more information please visit http://www.aercloudCode Snippet Manager: It is a simple Code Snippet Manager.. that I use when presenting tutorials. Features: - Insert a code snippet from the clipboard into program - Delete code sniDeutschWortSammler: A tiny English-German dictionary.DNN Testimonials: Virtual Essentials is a custom software development company. We strive to put joy back into the lives of people by removing the pain points through technologyDXWTEC: legsGoldenDream TeamWork: CourseWork for DB Course in Telerik Academy. Kpaint: Our work with Kpaint has proven to have provide highly accurate results mostly with the exception of occasion jittery of the paint brush. The voice recognition LAura: LAura checks the presence status of the currently signed in User and colorizes the Windows Window Color.MAPIFolders: MAPIFolders is intended as a successor to PFDAVAdmin and ExFolders.Microsoft Lab of Things Analytics: This is a project by students at University College London. We are creating analytics that will add value to home automation leveraging Microsoft Lab of Things.MySitelongdream: My siteMyTestSolution: this is a solution used just for laboratory purposeOrchestrator EventLog Integration Pack: Orchestrator Integration Pack to write spezific events in any Event Log.Planter's Supermarket: sdfResize images before upload: It will resize all images in folder recursively and store them in a store accountsampletranscodeffmpeg: a project for transcode for joyseeSCSM Perf Test Harness: Source Code for Travis Wright's LoadGen Tool for Service Manager. Simple Compression: Simple Compression is a .Net library that provides compression methods for use in an application.The Memory Game: This was my first WPF application.What day of the week is your birthday?: A program that can find the day of the week you were born!!!!!Windows Recovery Software: Recover Data Software for windows helps you to recover all type of data which has been lost due to several reasons.Xjs: Javascript framework to allow faster web development on the browser side

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• Big GRC: Turning Data into Actionable GRC Intelligence

  - by Jenna Danko

  While it’s no longer headline news that Governments have carried out large scale data-mining programmes aimed at terrorism detection and identifying other patterns of interest across a wide range of digital data sources, the debate over the ethics and justification over this action, will clearly continue for some time to come. What is becoming clear is that these programmes are a framework for the collation and aggregation of massive amounts of unstructured data and from this, the creation of actionable intelligence from analyses that allowed the analysts to explore and extract a variety of patterns and then direct resources. This data included audio and video chats, phone calls, photographs, e-mails, documents, internet searches, social media posts and mobile phone logs and connections. Although Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) professionals are not looking at the implementation of such programmes, there are many similar GRC “Big data” challenges to be faced and potential lessons to be learned from these high profile government programmes that can be applied a lot closer to home. For example, how can GRC professionals collect, manage and analyze an enormous and disparate volume of data to create and manage their own actionable intelligence covering hidden signs and patterns of criminal activity, the early or retrospective, violation of regulations/laws/corporate policies and procedures, emerging risks and weakening controls etc. Not exactly the stuff of James Bond to be sure, but it is certainly more applicable to most GRC professional’s day to day challenges. So what is Big Data and how can it benefit the GRC process? Although it often varies, the definition of Big Data largely refers to the following types of data: Traditional Enterprise Data – includes customer information from CRM systems, transactional ERP data, web store transactions, and general ledger data. Machine-Generated /Sensor Data – includes Call Detail Records (“CDR”), weblogs and trading systems data. Social Data – includes customer feedback streams, micro-blogging sites like Twitter, and social media platforms like Facebook. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that data volume is growing 40% per year, and will grow 44x between 2009 and 2020. But while it’s often the most visible parameter, volume of data is not the only characteristic that matters. In fact, according to sources such as Forrester there are four key characteristics that define big data: Volume. Machine-generated data is produced in much larger quantities than non-traditional data. This is all the data generated by IT systems that power the enterprise. This includes live data from packaged and custom applications – for example, app servers, Web servers, databases, networks, virtual machines, telecom equipment, and much more. Velocity. Social media data streams – while not as massive as machine-generated data – produce a large influx of opinions and relationships valuable to customer relationship management as well as offering early insight into potential reputational risk issues. Even at 140 characters per tweet, the high velocity (or frequency) of Twitter data ensures large volumes (over 8 TB per day) need to be managed. Variety. Traditional data formats tend to be relatively well defined by a data schema and change slowly. In contrast, non-traditional data formats exhibit a dizzying rate of change. Without question, all GRC professionals work in a dynamic environment and as new services, new products, new business lines are added or new marketing campaigns executed for example, new data types are needed to capture the resultant information.  Value. The economic value of data varies significantly. Typically, there is good information hidden amongst a larger body of non-traditional data that GRC professionals can use to add real value to the organisation; the greater challenge is identifying what is valuable and then transforming and extracting that data for analysis and action. For example, customer service calls and emails have millions of useful data points and have long been a source of information to GRC professionals. Those calls and emails are critical in helping GRC professionals better identify hidden patterns and implement new policies that can reduce the amount of customer complaints.   Now on a scale and depth far beyond those in place today, all that unstructured call and email data can be captured, stored and analyzed to reveal the reasons for the contact, perhaps with the aggregated customer results cross referenced against what is being said about the organization or a similar peer organization on social media. The organization can then take positive actions, communicating to the market in advance of issues reaching the press, strengthening controls, adjusting risk profiles, changing policy and procedures and completely minimizing, if not eliminating, complaints and compensation for that specific reason in the future. In this one example of many similar ones, the GRC team(s) has demonstrated real and tangible business value. Big Challenges - Big Opportunities As pointed out by recent Forrester research, high performing companies (those that are growing 15% or more year-on-year compared to their peers) are taking a selective approach to investing in Big Data.  "Tomorrow's winners understand this, and they are making selective investments aimed at specific opportunities with tangible benefits where big data offers a more economical solution to meet a need." (Forrsights Strategy Spotlight: Business Intelligence and Big Data, Q4 2012) As pointed out earlier, with the ever increasing volume of regulatory demands and fines for getting it wrong, limited resource availability and out of date or inadequate GRC systems all contributing to a higher cost of compliance and/or higher risk profile than desired – a big data investment in GRC clearly falls into this category. However, to make the most of big data organizations must evolve both their business and IT procedures, processes, people and infrastructures to handle these new high-volume, high-velocity, high-variety sources of data and be able integrate them with the pre-existing company data to be analyzed. GRC big data clearly allows the organization access to and management over a huge amount of often very sensitive information that although can help create a more risk intelligent organization, also presents numerous data governance challenges, including regulatory compliance and information security. In addition to client and regulatory demands over better information security and data protection the sheer amount of information organizations deal with the need to quickly access, classify, protect and manage that information can quickly become a key issue  from a legal, as well as technical or operational standpoint. However, by making information governance processes a bigger part of everyday operations, organizations can make sure data remains readily available and protected. The Right GRC & Big Data Partnership Becomes Key  The "getting it right first time" mantra used in so many companies remains essential for any GRC team that is sponsoring, helping kick start, or even overseeing a big data project. To make a big data GRC initiative work and get the desired value, partnerships with companies, who have a long history of success in delivering successful GRC solutions as well as being at the very forefront of technology innovation, becomes key. Clearly solutions can be built in-house more cheaply than through vendor, but as has been proven time and time again, when it comes to self built solutions covering AML and Fraud for example, few have able to scale or adapt appropriately to meet the changing regulations or challenges that the GRC teams face on a daily basis. This has led to the creation of GRC silo’s that are causing so many headaches today. The solutions that stand out and should be explored are the ones that can seamlessly merge the traditional world of well-known data, analytics and visualization with the new world of seemingly innumerable data sources, utilizing Big Data technologies to generate new GRC insights right across the enterprise.Ultimately, Big Data is here to stay, and organizations that embrace its potential and outline a viable strategy, as well as understand and build a solid analytical foundation, will be the ones that are well positioned to make the most of it. A Blueprint and Roadmap Service for Big Data Big data adoption is first and foremost a business decision. As such it is essential that your partner can align your strategies, goals, and objectives with an architecture vision and roadmap to accelerate adoption of big data for your environment, as well as establish practical, effective governance that will maintain a well managed environment going forward. Key Activities: While your initiatives will clearly vary, there are some generic starting points the team and organization will need to complete: Clearly define your drivers, strategies, goals, objectives and requirements as it relates to big data Conduct a big data readiness and Information Architecture maturity assessment Develop future state big data architecture, including views across all relevant architecture domains; business, applications, information, and technology Provide initial guidance on big data candidate selection for migrations or implementation Develop a strategic roadmap and implementation plan that reflects a prioritization of initiatives based on business impact and technology dependency, and an incremental integration approach for evolving your current state to the target future state in a manner that represents the least amount of risk and impact of change on the business Provide recommendations for practical, effective Data Governance, Data Quality Management, and Information Lifecycle Management to maintain a well-managed environment Conduct an executive workshop with recommendations and next steps There is little debate that managing risk and data are the two biggest obstacles encountered by financial institutions.  Big data is here to stay and risk management certainly is not going anywhere, and ultimately financial services industry organizations that embrace its potential and outline a viable strategy, as well as understand and build a solid analytical foundation, will be best positioned to make the most of it. Matthew Long is a Financial Crime Specialist for Oracle Financial Services. He can be reached at matthew.long AT oracle.com.

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• Software development is (mostly) a trade, and what to do about it

  - by Jeff

  (This is another cross-post from my personal blog. I don’t even remember when I first started to write it, but I feel like my opinion is well enough baked to share.) I've been sitting on this for a long time, particularly as my opinion has changed dramatically over the last few years. That I've encountered more crappy code than maintainable, quality code in my career as a software developer only reinforces what I'm about to say. Software development is just a trade for most, and not a huge academic endeavor. For those of you with computer science degrees readying your pitchforks and collecting your algorithm interview questions, let me explain. This is not an assault on your way of life, and if you've been around, you know I'm right about the quality problem. You also know the HR problem is very real, or we wouldn't be paying top dollar for mediocre developers and importing people from all over the world to fill the jobs we can't fill. I'm going to try and outline what I see as some of the problems, and hopefully offer my views on how to address them. The recruiting problem I think a lot of companies are doing it wrong. Over the years, I've had two kinds of interview experiences. The first, and right, kind of experience involves talking about real life achievements, followed by some variation on white boarding in pseudo-code, drafting some basic system architecture, or even sitting down at a comprooder and pecking out some basic code to tackle a real problem. I can honestly say that I've had a job offer for every interview like this, save for one, because the task was to debug something and they didn't like me asking where to look ("everyone else in the company died in a plane crash"). The other interview experience, the wrong one, involves the classic torture test designed to make the candidate feel stupid and do things they never have, and never will do in their job. First they will question you about obscure academic material you've never seen, or don't care to remember. Then they'll ask you to white board some ridiculous algorithm involving prime numbers or some kind of string manipulation no one would ever do. In fact, if you had to do something like this, you'd Google for a solution instead of waste time on a solved problem. Some will tell you that the academic gauntlet interview is useful to see how people respond to pressure, how they engage in complex logic, etc. That might be true, unless of course you have someone who brushed up on the solutions to the silly puzzles, and they're playing you. But here's the real reason why the second experience is wrong: You're evaluating for things that aren't the job. These might have been useful tactics when you had to hire people to write machine language or C++, but in a world dominated by managed code in C#, or Java, people aren't managing memory or trying to be smarter than the compilers. They're using well known design patterns and techniques to deliver software. More to the point, these puzzle gauntlets don't evaluate things that really matter. They don't get into code design, issues of loose coupling and testability, knowledge of the basics around HTTP, or anything else that relates to building supportable and maintainable software. The first situation, involving real life problems, gives you an immediate idea of how the candidate will work out. One of my favorite experiences as an interviewee was with a guy who literally brought his work from that day and asked me how to deal with his problem. I had to demonstrate how I would design a class, make sure the unit testing coverage was solid, etc. I worked at that company for two years. So stop looking for algorithm puzzle crunchers, because a guy who can crush a Fibonacci sequence might also be a guy who writes a class with 5,000 lines of untestable code. Fashion your interview process on ways to reveal a developer who can write supportable and maintainable code. I would even go so far as to let them use the Google. If they want to cut-and-paste code, pass on them, but if they're looking for context or straight class references, hire them, because they're going to be life-long learners. The contractor problem I doubt anyone has ever worked in a place where contractors weren't used. The use of contractors seems like an obvious way to control costs. You can hire someone for just as long as you need them and then let them go. You can even give them the work that no one else wants to do. In practice, most places I've worked have retained and budgeted for the contractor year-round, meaning that the $90+ per hour they're paying (of which half goes to the person) would have been better spent on a full-time person with a $100k salary and benefits. But it's not even the cost that is an issue. It's the quality of work delivered. The accountability of a contractor is totally transient. They only need to deliver for as long as you keep them around, and chances are they'll never again touch the code. There's no incentive for them to get things right, there's little incentive to understand your system or learn anything. At the risk of making an unfair generalization, craftsmanship doesn't matter to most contractors. The education problem I don't know what they teach in college CS courses. I've believed for most of my adult life that a college degree was an essential part of being successful. Of course I would hold that bias, since I did it, and have the paper to show for it in a box somewhere in the basement. My first clue that maybe this wasn't a fully qualified opinion comes from the fact that I double-majored in journalism and radio/TV, not computer science. Eventually I worked with people who skipped college entirely, many of them at Microsoft. Then I worked with people who had a masters degree who sucked at writing code, next to the high school diploma types that rock it every day. I still think there's a lot to be said for the social development of someone who has the on-campus experience, but for software developers, college might not matter. As I mentioned before, most of us are not writing compilers, and we never will. It's actually surprising to find how many people are self-taught in the art of software development, and that should reveal some interesting truths about how we learn. The first truth is that we learn largely out of necessity. There's something that we want to achieve, so we do what I call just-in-time learning to meet those goals. We acquire knowledge when we need it. So what about the gaps in our knowledge? That's where the most valuable education occurs, via our mentors. They're the people we work next to and the people who write blogs. They are critical to our professional development. They don't need to be an encyclopedia of jargon, but they understand the craft. Even at this stage of my career, I probably can't tell you what SOLID stands for, but you can bet that I practice the principles behind that acronym every day. That comes from experience, augmented by my peers. I'm hell bent on passing that experience to others. Process issues If you're a manager type and don't do much in the way of writing code these days (shame on you for not messing around at least), then your job is to isolate your tradespeople from nonsense, while bringing your business into the realm of modern software development. That doesn't mean you slap up a white board with sticky notes and start calling yourself agile, it means getting all of your stakeholders to understand that frequent delivery of quality software is the best way to deal with change and evolving expectations. It also means that you have to play technical overlord to make sure the education and quality issues are dealt with. That's why I make the crack about sticky notes, because without the right technique being practiced among your code monkeys, you're just a guy with sticky notes. You're asking your business to accept frequent and iterative delivery, now make sure that the folks writing the code can handle the same thing. This means unit testing, the right instrumentation, integration tests, automated builds and deployments... all of the stuff that makes it easy to see when change breaks stuff. The prognosis I strongly believe that education is the most important part of what we do. I'm encouraged by things like The Starter League, and it's the kind of thing I'd love to see more of. I would go as far as to say I'd love to start something like this internally at an existing company. Most of all though, I can't emphasize enough how important it is that we mentor each other and share our knowledge. If you have people on your staff who don't want to learn, fire them. Seriously, get rid of them. A few months working with someone really good, who understands the craftsmanship required to build supportable and maintainable code, will change that person forever and increase their value immeasurably.

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• Create a Customized Tab on the Office 2010 Ribbon

  - by Mysticgeek

  Some MS Office users were put off a bit by the Ribbon feature in 2007 for being cumbersome and confusing. Today we look at a cool new feature in Office 2010 that allows you to create your own custom tabs with specific commands for easier document creation. Create a Customized Tab In our example we’re using Word, but you can create a custom tab in the other Office apps as well. To do so, right-click on the Ribbon and select Customize the Ribbon. The Word Options screen opens up and from here you can manage a lot of customization options. We want to create a new customized tab, so click on the New Tab button.   Now give it a name… Now just drag the commands you want to add from the left column over to your new custom group. You have every command available to choose from. You can select specific groups or all commands from the dropdown menu on the left. That is all there is to it…now you have your own customized tab with the commands you use most often to help you work more efficiently. In this example We didn’t add a whole lot of commands, but you can customize it with as many as you need. You can also create other tabs with different sets of commands too. When you create a customized tab in one application, it’s only going to be in that app. For example if you create on in Word, it’s not going to show in Excel as commands differ between apps. If you want a custom tab in another Office app you’ll need to create one for it. Another very cool thing you can do is export the customizations to use on another machine or pass them to a coworker. To export the customizations, go to the Customize Ribbon section and at the bottom of the right field click Import/Export then Export all customizations. Then save the file to a location on your hard drive.   To import the settings to another machine, go into Ribbon Customizations and select Import customizations file… then browse the the file you exported. You’ll be prompted to confirm you want to import he customizations… After confirming the choice now you’ll see the customization show up on the other machine. This is very handy if you work on several machines throughout the day and want to easily bring your customized tabs with you. If you find yourself using a lot of specific commands throughout the day, creating your own customized tab will help access them more quickly. If you want to test out Office 2010 it’s currently in Public Beta and can be downloaded for free. Download Office 2010 Beta Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Maximize Space by "Auto-Hiding" the Ribbon in Office 2007Make Learning Office 2007 & 2010 Fun with Ribbon HeroAdd or Remove Apps from the Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 SuiteHow To Bring Back the Old Menus in Office 2007How To Take Screenshots with Word 2010 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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• Create a Customized Tab on the Office 2010 Ribbon

  - by Mysticgeek

  Some MS Office users were put off a bit by the Ribbon feature in 2007 for being cumbersome and confusing. Today we look at a cool new feature in Office 2010 that allows you to create your own custom tabs with specific commands for easier document creation. Create a Customized Tab In our example we’re using Word, but you can create a custom tab in the other Office apps as well. To do so, right-click on the Ribbon and select Customize the Ribbon. The Word Options screen opens up and from here you can manage a lot of customization options. We want to create a new customized tab, so click on the New Tab button.   Now give it a name… Now just drag the commands you want to add from the left column over to your new custom group. You have every command available to choose from. You can select specific groups or all commands from the dropdown menu on the left. That is all there is to it…now you have your own customized tab with the commands you use most often to help you work more efficiently. In this example We didn’t add a whole lot of commands, but you can customize it with as many as you need. You can also create other tabs with different sets of commands too. When you create a customized tab in one application, it’s only going to be in that app. For example if you create on in Word, it’s not going to show in Excel as commands differ between apps. If you want a custom tab in another Office app you’ll need to create one for it. Another very cool thing you can do is export the customizations to use on another machine or pass them to a coworker. To export the customizations, go to the Customize Ribbon section and at the bottom of the right field click Import/Export then Export all customizations. Then save the file to a location on your hard drive.   To import the settings to another machine, go into Ribbon Customizations and select Import customizations file… then browse the the file you exported. You’ll be prompted to confirm you want to import he customizations… After confirming the choice now you’ll see the customization show up on the other machine. This is very handy if you work on several machines throughout the day and want to easily bring your customized tabs with you. If you find yourself using a lot of specific commands throughout the day, creating your own customized tab will help access them more quickly. If you want to test out Office 2010 it’s currently in Public Beta and can be downloaded for free. Download Office 2010 Beta Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Maximize Space by "Auto-Hiding" the Ribbon in Office 2007Make Learning Office 2007 & 2010 Fun with Ribbon HeroAdd or Remove Apps from the Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 SuiteHow To Bring Back the Old Menus in Office 2007How To Take Screenshots with Word 2010 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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• JavaOne Latin America 2012 is a wrap!

  - by arungupta

  Third JavaOne in Latin America (2010, 2011) is now a wrap! Like last year, the event started with a Geek Bike Ride. I could not attend the bike ride because of pre-planned activities but heard lots of good comments about it afterwards. This is a great way to engage with JavaOne attendees in an informal setting. I highly recommend you joining next time! JavaOne Blog provides a a great coverage for the opening keynotes. I talked about all the great set of functionality that is coming in the Java EE 7 Platform. Also shared the details on how Java EE 7 JSRs are willing to take help from the Adopt-a-JSR program. glassfish.org/adoptajsr bridges the gap between JUGs willing to participate and looking for areas on where to help. The different specification leads have identified areas on where they are looking for feedback. So if you are JUG is interested in picking a JSR, I recommend to take a look at glassfish.org/adoptajsr and jump on the bandwagon. The main attraction for the Tuesday evening was the GlassFish Party. The party was packed with Latin American JUG leaders, execs from Oracle, and local community members. Free flowing food and beer/caipirinhas acted as great lubricant for great conversations. Some of them were considering the migration from Spring -> Java EE 6 and replacing their primary app server with GlassFish. Locaweb, a local hosting provider sponsored a round of beer at the party as well. They are planning to come with Java EE hosting next year and GlassFish would be a logical choice for them ;) I heard lots of positive feedback about the party afterwards. Many thanks to Bruno Borges for organizing a great party! Check out some more fun pictures of the party! Next day, I gave a presentation on "The Java EE 7 Platform: Productivity and HTML 5" and the slides are now available: With so much new content coming in the plaform: Java Caching API (JSR 107) Concurrency Utilities for Java EE (JSR 236) Batch Applications for the Java Platform (JSR 352) Java API for JSON (JSR 353) Java API for WebSocket (JSR 356) And JAX-RS 2.0 (JSR 339) and JMS 2.0 (JSR 343) getting major updates, there is definitely lot of excitement that was evident amongst the attendees. The talk was delivered in the biggest hall and had about 200 attendees. Also spent a lot of time talking to folks at the OTN Lounge. The JUG leaders appreciation dinner in the evening had its usual share of fun. Day 3 started with a session on "Building HTML5 WebSocket Apps in Java". The slides are now available: The room was packed with about 150 attendees and there was good interaction in the room as well. A collaborative whiteboard built using WebSocket was very well received. The following tweets made it more worthwhile: A WebSocket speek, by @ArunGupta, was worth every hour lost in transit. #JavaOneBrasil2012, #JavaOneBr @arungupta awesome presentation about WebSockets :) The session was immediately followed by the hands-on lab "Developing JAX-RS Web Applications Utilizing Server-Sent Events and WebSocket". The lab covers JAX-RS 2.0, Jersey-specific features such as Server-Sent Events, and a WebSocket endpoint using JSR 356. The complete self-paced lab guide can be downloaded from here. The lab was planned for 2 hours but several folks finished the entire exercise in about 75 mins. The wonderfully written lab material and an added incentive of Java EE 6 Pocket Guide did the trick ;-) I also spoke at "The Java Community Process: How You Can Make a Positive Difference". It was really great to see several JUG leaders talking about Adopt-a-JSR program and other activities that attendees can do to participate in the JCP. I shared details about Adopt a Java EE 7 JSR as well. The community keynote in the evening was looking fun but I had to leave in between to go through the peak Sao Paulo traffic time :) Enjoy the complete set of pictures in the album:

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• Java Spotlight Episode 108: Patrick Curran and Heather VanCura on JCP.Next @jcp_org

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Interview with Patrick Curran and Heather VanCura on JCP.Next. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link:  Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News Welcome to the newly merged JCP EC! The November/December issue of Java Magazine is now out Red Hat announces intent to contribute to OpenJFX New OpenJDK JEPs: JEP 168: Network Discovery of Manageable Java Processes JEP 169: Value Objects Java EE 7 Survey Latest Java EE 7 Status GlassFish 4.0 Embedded (via @agoncal) Events Nov 13-17, Devoxx, Antwerp, Belgium Nov 20, JCP Public Meeting (see details below) Nov 20-22, DOAG 2012, Nuremberg, Germany Dec 3-5, jDays, Göteborg, Sweden Dec 4-6, JavaOne Latin America, Sao Paolo, Brazil Dec 14-15, IndicThreads, Pune, India Feature InterviewPatrick Curran is Chair of the Java Community Process organization. In this role he oversees the activities of the JCP's Program Management Office including evolving the process and the organization, managing its membership, guiding specification leads and experts through the process, chairing Executive Committee meetings, and managing the JCP.org web site.Patrick has worked in the software industry for more than 25 years, and at Sun and then Oracle for 20 years. He has a long-standing record in conformance testing, and before joining the JCP he led the Java Conformance Engineering team in Sun's Client Software Group. He was also chair of Sun's Conformance Council, which was responsible for defining Sun's policies and strategies around Java conformance and compatibility.Patrick has participated actively in several consortia and communities including the W3C (as a member of the Quality Assurance Working Group and co-chair of the Quality Assurance Interest Group), and OASIS (as co-chair of the Test Assertions Guidelines Technical Committee). Patrick's blog is here.Heather VanCura manages the JCP Program Office and is responsible for the day-to-day nurturing, support, and leadership of the community. She oversees the JCP.org web site, JSR management and posting, community building, events, marketing, communications, and growth of the membership through new members and renewals.  Heather has a front row seat for studying trends within the community and recommending changes. Several changes to the program in recent years have included enabling broader participation, increased transparency and agility in JSR development.  When Heather joined the PMO staff in a community building marketing manager role for the JCP program, she was responsible for establishing the JCP brand logo programs, the JCP.org site, and engaging the community in online surveys and usability studies. She also developed marketing reward programs,  campaigns, sponsorships, and events for the JCP program, including the community gathering at the annual JavaOne Conference.   Before arriving at the JCP community in 2000, Heather worked with various technology companies.  Heather enjoys speaking at conferences, such as Devoxx, Java Zone, and the JavaOne Conferences. She maintains the JCP Blog, Twitter feed (@jcp_org) and Facebook page.  Heather resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, California USA. JCP Executive Committee Public Meeting Details Date & Time Tuesday November 20, 2012, 3:00 - 4:00 pm PST Location Teleconference Dial-in +1 (866) 682-4770 Conference code: 627-9803 Security code: 52732 ("JCPEC" on your phone handset) For global access numbers see http://www.intercall.com/oracle/access_numbers.htm Or +1 (408) 774-4073 WebEx Browse for the meeting from https://jcp.webex.com No registration required (enter your name and email address) Password: JCPEC Agenda JSR 355 (the EC merge) implementation report JSR 358 (JCP.next.3) status report 2.8 status update and community audit program Discussion/Q&A Note The call will be recorded and the recording published on jcp.org, so those who are unable to join in real-time will still be able to participate. September 2012 EC meeting PMO report with JCP 2.8 statistics.JSR 358 Project page What’s Cool Sweden: Hot Java in the Winter GE Engergy using Invoke Daynamic for embedded development

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• Developer Training – Importance and Significance – Part 1

  - by pinaldave

  Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 Can anyone remember their final day of schooling?  This is probably a silly question because – of course you can!  Many people mark this as the most exciting, happiest day of their life.  It marks the end of testing, the end of following rules set by teachers, and the beginning of finally being able to earn money and work in your chosen field. Beginning in Real World However, many former-students will be disappointed to find out that once they become employees, learning is not over.  Many companies are discovering the importance and benefits to training their employees.  You can breathe a sigh of relief, though, because much for this kind of training there are not usually tests! We often think that we go to school for our younger years so that we do all our learning all at once, and then for the rest of our lives we use that knowledge.  But in so many cases, but especially for developers, the opposite is true.  It takes many years of schools to learn the basics of a field, and then our careers are spent learning to become experts. For this, and so many other reasons, training is very important.  Example one: developer training leads to better employees.  A company is only as good as the people it employs, and one way to ensure that you have employed the right candidate is through training.  Training can take a regular “stone” and polish it into a “diamond.”  Employees who have been well-trained will be better at their jobs and produce a better product. Most Expensive Resource Did you know that one of the most expensive operating costs for any company is not buying goods, or advertising, but its employees – especially having to hire new employees.  Bringing in new people, getting them up to speed, and providing them with perks to attract them to a company is a huge cost for companies.  So employee retention – keep the employees you already have, and keeping them happy – is incredibly important from a business aspect.  And research shows that a well-trained employee is a happy employee.  They feel more confident in their job, happier with their position, and more cared-about – and therefore less likely to leave in search of a better job.  Employee training leads to better retention. Good Moral On the subject of keeping employees happy in order to keep them at a company, the complement to that research shows that happier employees are more efficient and overall better at their jobs.  You don’t have to be a scientist to figure out why this is true.  An employee who feel that his company cares about him and his educational future will work harder for the company.  He or she will put in that extra hour during the busy season that makes all the difference in the end.  Good morale is good for the company. If good morale is better for the company, you know that it goes hand-in-hand with something even better – better efficiency.  An employee who is well trained obviously knows more about their job and all the technical aspects.  That means when a problem crops up – and they inevitably do – this employee will be well-equipped to deal with that problem with fewer problems, and no need to go searching for help from higher up.  When employees are well trained, companies run more smoothly. A Better Product Of course, all of these “pros” for employee training are leading up to the one thing that companies truly care about – a better product.  We have shown that employees who have been trained to be competitive in the market are happier at the company, they are more efficient, and their morale is better.  The overall result is that the company’s product – whether it is a database, piece of equipment, or even a physical good – is better.  And a better product will always be more competitive on the market. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Developer Training, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• List of blogs - year 2010

  - by hajan

  This is the last day of year 2010 and I would like to add links to all blogs I have posted in this year. First, I would like to mention that I started blogging in ASP.NET Community in May / June 2010 and have really enjoyed writing for my favorite technologies, such as: ASP.NET, jQuery/JavaScript, C#, LINQ, Web Services etc. I also had great feedback either through comments on my blogs or in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn where I met many new experts just as a result of my blog posts. Thanks to the interesting topics I have in my blog, I became DZone MVB. Here is the list of blogs I made in 2010 in my ASP.NET Community Weblog: (newest to oldest) Great library of ASP.NET videos – Pluralsight! NDepend – Code Query Language (CQL) NDepend tool – Why every developer working with Visual Studio.NET must try it! jQuery Templates in ASP.NET - Blogs Series jQuery Templates - XHTML Validation jQuery Templates with ASP.NET MVC jQuery Templates - {Supported Tags} jQuery Templates – tmpl(), template() and tmplItem() Introduction to jQuery Templates ViewBag dynamic in ASP.NET MVC 3 - RC 2 Today I had a presentation on "Deep Dive into jQuery Templates in ASP.NET" jQuery Data Linking in ASP.NET How do you prefer getting bundles of technologies?? Case-insensitive XPath query search on XML Document in ASP.NET jQuery UI Accordion in ASP.NET MVC - feed with data from database (Part 3) jQuery UI Accordion in ASP.NET WebForms - feed with data from database (Part 2) jQuery UI Accordion in ASP.NET – Client side implementation (Part 1) Using Images embedded in Project’s Assembly Macedonian Code Camp 2010 event has finished successfully Tips and Tricks: Deferred execution using LINQ Using System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch class to measure the elapsed time Speaking at Macedonian Code Camp 2010 URL Routing in ASP.NET 4.0 Web Forms Conflicts between ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanels & jQuery functions Integration of jQuery DatePicker in ASP.NET Website – Localization (part 3) Why not to use HttpResponse.Close and HttpResponse.End Calculate Business Days using LINQ Get Distinct values of an Array using LINQ Using CodeRun browser-based IDE to create ASP.NET Web Applications Using params keyword – Methods with variable number of parameters Working with Code Snippets in VS.NET  Working with System.IO.Path static class Calculating GridView total using JavaScript/JQuery The new SortedSet<T> Collection in .NET 4.0 JavaScriptSerializer – Dictionary to JSON Serialization and Deserialization Integration of jQuery DatePicker in ASP.NET Website – JS Validation Script (part 2) Integration of jQuery DatePicker in ASP.NET Website (part 1) Transferring large data when using Web Services Forums dedicated to WebMatrix Microsoft WebMatrix – Short overview & installation Working with embedded resources in Project's assembly Debugging ASP.NET Web Services Save and Display YouTube Videos on ASP.NET Website Hello ASP.NET World... In addition, I would like to mention that I have big list of blog posts in CodeASP.NET Community (total 60 blogs) and the local MKDOT.NET Community (total 61 blogs). You may find most of my weblogs.asp.net/hajan blogs posted there too, but there you can find many others. In my blog on MKDOT.NET Community you can find most of my ASP.NET Weblog posts translated in Macedonian language, some of them posted in English and some other blogs that were posted only there. By reading my blogs, I hope you have learnt something new or at least have confirmed your knowledge. And also, if you haven't, I encourage you to start blogging and share your Microsoft Tech. thoughts with all of us... Sharing and spreading knowledge is definitely one of the noblest things which we can do in our life. "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime" HAPPY NEW 2011 YEAR!!! Best Regards, Hajan

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• I’m a Phoenix… and I’m miffed

  - by Stan Spotts

  For personal reasons, almost 30 years ago I left school to enter the workforce. I decided late 2008 to go back to school and finish my degree. After the expected loss of credits for a transfer, from Temple University to University of Phoenix, I'm now about 75% done. The experience has been interesting. Classes are time compressed, only 5 weeks each. Because I have a family and a full time job, I'm taking one at a time. Even so, I've written more papers in these classes than I ever wrote at Temple. My own papers are one thing, but the team papers give me heartburn since I can't completely control what goes into them. Not a big deal except that they make up 30% of our grade. In any case, most of the class facilitators have been great. I had great ones for Accounting, Finance, and frankly most others. I've had a few (4, maybe) cases where I was less than 2 points from an A, and asked the facilitator if I could get any of my work reviewed to see if I could get those extra points. I figured it was worth a shot, and there were no extenuating circumstances to help make my case. I think that only one facilitator decided after a review of one paper that my interpretation was good, just not what he expected, and gave me another point, which gave me an A. So while none are pushovers, they've all been open to discussion, which is as much as I should expect. Overall, good experience. That is, until my last class. On the second week, the day I was due to hand in my personal assignment for the week, I was in an accident. An SUV creamed my little Ford Focus, and totaled it (estimated repair over $11K). I was pretty banged up, especially my left shoulder. I was scheduled for rotator cuff surgery for two weeks later, and getting hit against the door really made it worse. After dealing with the police, the EMT, the tow truck, and the Percocet and Flexeril for the pain, I crashed for the night and didn't get to upload my paper until the next day. The instructor took 30% off for it being late, even after I supplied photos of the car, my arm (huge bruises), and offered to supply the police report number. I figured I'd be okay since that's 2.7 points, and I could lose up to 5 before jeopardizing an A grade. Well, that wasn't the case as we lost more points than I expected on our team paper in Week 5. I ended up with a 94.3. Yes, 7/10 of a point from an A. Of course I asked the instructor to review the issue with the accident and give me just the 0.7 points I needed for the A. That got me a short response of "I have received your emails and review your work over the last five weeks. Your current grade will stand. If you would like to dispute your grade then please feel free to contact your academic advisor. I wish you much success in your professional and academic career." Brrrr….! So I asked my academic advisor to file a dispute. If it wasn't that a pretty bad car accident was the cause, I wouldn't have. Without the grade reduction, I would have had a 97 for the class, so I'll argue that I was performing at the A level throughout the class. Why her purported "review" of my work didn't then warrant such a minor adjustment, I don't know. An A- drops my GPA, and this ticked me off. Now I have to wait and see what the school says about the grade dispute.

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• View Weather Underground Forecasts in Google Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  If you like a simple straightforward interface for keeping up with weather forecasts then join us as we look at the Weather Underground extension for Google Chrome. Weather Underground in Action As soon as you click on the “Toolbar Icon” you will need to enter a location. Keep in mind that you will need to enter the “city and country” if using that option. Going with less information will yield an “error”. Note: The extension did not work for some Asian locations during our tests. In honor of the Olympics we chose Vancouver, Canada. You can hover over the “Toolbar Button” to see the current conditions or click to view the current day’s conditions, the current day’s forecast, and the forecast for the following three days. It is a simple straightforward interface. Note: There are no options to worry with. Clicking on the “Detailed Forecast Link” in the drop-down window will take you to the Weather Underground webpage for your location. Clicking on the “Weather Underground Link” in the drop-down window will take you to the Weather Underground U.S. Homepage. Additional Weather Underground Fun Since we were focusing on Weather Underground we have an extra bit of fun for you. If you love being able to view a “large scale” map of your location with current conditions and forecast combined then you might want to have a look at Weather Underground’s “wxmap webpage”. Using the link below you can access the basic starting page where you will be asked to enter your location. Once you have entered the information you will see the default “Terrain View” for your location and a “Current Conditions & Forecast Window” in the lower left corner. You can modify how your map looks by choosing from “Temperature, Precipitation, Clouds, Satellite, Hybrid, & Terrain” views. Going full screen in your browser with this gives your monitor a wonderful and unique look that will have your family & friends asking you how you did it. Note: Terrain View shown here. Clicking on the “Settings Link” in the upper left corner will let you tweak your map view very nicely. Conclusion If you love using Weather Underground for your weather forecasts then you can add a “double dose” of goodness to your browser. Links Download the Weather Underground extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Access the Full Screen Weather Underground Map & Forecast for your area Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Weather Forecasts to Google ChromeMonitor the Weather for Your Location in ChromeView the Time & Date in Chrome When Hiding Your TaskbarView Maps and Get Directions in Google ChromeGoogle Image Search Quick Fix TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver Optimize your computer the Microsoft way Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data Geek Parents – Did you try Parental Controls in Windows 7? Change DNS servers on the fly with DNS Jumper

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• Windows Phone–A beautiful phone which I admire but I don’t recommend to friends and family

  - by Gopinath

  Microsoft’s Windows Phones are the most beautiful phones I’ve seen. Look at the photo which Microsoft shared on their Facebook page today. It’s gorgeous. Windows Phones come in vibrant colors and the user interface is very lively. When you keep an iPhone, Android Phone & a Windows Phone on a table, Windows Phone definitely stands out. Android and iOS interfaces are routine – a bunch of apps icons arranged in rows and multiple screens. Windows Phone is very different, the live tiles concept mesmerizes us. I love Windows Phone, but neither I buy one nor I recommend to family/friends! Why? Because it does not have all the Apps I need. Microsoft advertises that Windows Phone has 100K apps on its Windows Market Place. It’s true, there are 100K+ apps available for Windows Phone but not many of them are really useful and most of the popular Apps I use on Android are not available. When I say this to my friends at Microsoft, they don’t agree and one of them asked me list the apps that are not available. For him today I spent an hour quickly scanning through the apps installed on my Google Nexus and searched for same apps on Windows Market Place. As expected many of them are not available. Here is the list of my favorite Android apps that are not available for Windows Phone Mint – I use this app more than any of the Banking Apps I’ve installed on my mobile. It’s one app to keep a tab on all the expenses and income, the best money management and tracking app. Google Chrome – Web without Google Chrome is too boring, either on Desktop or on mobile. IE is too heavy and Firefox is loosing its grip. Chrome is the new darling of web. Pulse, Flipboard – Flipboard and Pulse are one of the best apps for reading news and following content of favorite blogs. Dropbox – Sync content across devices and provides access to your content on any device.It really does not matter what is your gadget – mobile, tablet or computer; Dropbox lets you access your content. GMail, Google Maps – Should I say how important are these two apps in our day to day life!! Vonage Extension – For around 30 bucks a month, Vonage provide landline service in USA + unlimited calls to India and many other countries + Vonage Extension App that lets Android/iOS mobile to make unlimited international calls for free. Without Vonage Extension app, I’m almost cutoff from my family and friends back home in India. Instagram – The most popular camera app used from a common man to celebrities. Raaga, Dhingana  – Music is part and parcel of life and these two apps are the most like popular apps to listen to Indian music. Quora – Quora is the place where most of the sensible discussions happen on web. Google Analytics, Google Adsense – I’m a blogger and these two apps mean a lot to me The list goes on and on! There are many useful apps that are not available on Windows Phone – TuneIn, MyTWC, Chrome To Phone, Google Voice, etc. Without all these apps, Windows Phone is just another old Nokia phone. Even though Windows Phone is the most beautiful phone, it needs Apps to attract customers. Without apps a smartphone is more or less a dumb feature phone which we loved to use before release of iPhone. Wish in an year or two the beautiful Windows Phone may have all the missing Apps. When it happens I’ll buy a phone for myself and recommend it to my family & friends. But till then I prefer to stay away.

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• My ASP.NET news sources

  - by Jon Galloway

  I just posted about the ASP.NET Daily Community Spotlight. I was going to list a bunch of my news sources at the end, but figured this deserves a separate post. I've been following a lot of development blogs for a long time - for a while I subscribed to over 1500 feeds and read them all. That doesn't scale very well, though, and it's really time consuming. Since the community spotlight requires an interesting ASP.NET post every day of the year, I've come up with a few sources of ASP.NET news. Top Link Blogs Chris Alcock's The Morning Brew is a must-read blog which highlights each day's best blog posts across the .NET community. He covers the entire Microsoft development, but generally any of the top ASP.NET posts I see either have already been listed on The Morning Brew or will be there soon. Elijah Manor posts a lot of great content, which is available in his Twitter feed at @elijahmanor, on his Delicious feed, and on a dedicated website - Web Dev Tweets. While not 100% ASP.NET focused, I've been appreciating Joe Stagner's Weekly Links series, partly since he includes a lot of links that don't show up on my other lists. Twitter Over the past few years, I've been getting more and more of my information from my Twitter network (as opposed to RSS or other means). Twitter is as good as your network, so if getting good information off Twitter sounds crazy, you're probably not following the right people. I already mentioned Elijah Manor (@elijahmanor). I follow over a thousand people on Twitter, so I'm not going to try to pick and choose a list, but one good way to get started building out a Twitter network is to follow active Twitter users on the ASP.NET team at Microsoft: @scottgu (well, not on the ASP.NET team, but their great grand boss, and always a great source of ASP.NET info) @shanselman @haacked @bradwilson @davidfowl @InfinitiesLoop @davidebbo @marcind @DamianEdwards @stevensanderson @bleroy @humancompiler @osbornm @anurse I'm sure I'm missing a few, and I'll update the list. Building a Twitter network that follows topics you're interested in allows you to use other tools like Cadmus to automatically summarize top content by leveraging the collective input of many users. Twitter Search with Topsy You can search Twitter for hashtags (like #aspnet, #aspnetmvc, and #webmatrix) to get a raw view of what people are talking about on Twitter. Twitter's search is pretty poor; I prefer Topsy. Here's an example search for the #aspnetmvc hashtag: http://topsy.com/s?q=%23aspnetmvc You can also do combined queries for several tags: http://topsy.com/s?q=%23aspnetmvc+OR+%23aspnet+OR+%23webmatrix Paper.li Paper.li is a handy service that builds a custom daily newspaper based on your social network. They've turned a lot of people off by automatically tweeting "The SuperDevFoo Daily is out!!!" messages (which can be turned off), but if you're ignoring them because of those message, you're missing out on a handy, free service. My paper.li page includes content across a lot of interests, including ASP.NET: http://paper.li/jongalloway When I want to drill into a specific tag, though, I'll just look at the Paper.li post for that hashtag. For example, here's the #aspnetmvc paper.li page: http://paper.li/tag/aspnetmvc Delicious I mentioned previously that I use Delicious for managing site links. I also use their network and search features. The tag based search is pretty good: Even better, though, is that I can see who's bookmarked these links, and add them to my Delicious network. After having built out a network, I can optimize by doing less searching and more leaching leveraging of collective intelligence. Community Sites I scan DotNetKicks, the weblogs.asp.net combined feed, and the ASP.NET Community page, CodeBetter, Los Techies,  CodeProject,  and DotNetSlackers from time to time. They're hit and miss, but they do offer more of an opportunity for finding original content which others may have missed. Terms of Enrampagement When someone's on a tear, I just manually check their sites more often. I could use RSS for that, but it changes pretty often. I just keep a mental note of people who are cranking out a lot of good content and check their sites more often. What works for you?

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• Easily Add Facebook Chat to Pidgin

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to keep in touch with your Facebook friends throughout the day?  Here we’ll show you how to easily add Facebook chat to the popular multi-protocol chat client Pidgin. Facebook has recently added support for XMPP chat, which means you can easily add it to popular chat clients such as Pidgin.  Previously you could only add Facebook chat to Pidgin through a plug-in that didn’t always work correctly.  Here we’ll walk you through setting up your Facebook account in Pidgin. Getting Started First, make sure you have a username for your Facebook account (link below).  This is a relatively new feature for Facebook, so if you’ve had your account for a while you may need to choose one.    If you already have one, you should see it listed instead. Now, open Pidgin, and click Manage Accounts. Click Add… Then select XMPP from the Protocol list. Now, enter your Facebook username without the facebook.com part (e.g your.facebook.username, not http://www.facebook.com/your.user.name).  Then, enter chat.facebook.com for the Domain, and enter your standard Facebook password.  You can check the “Remember password” box if you’d like Pidgin to automatically sign in to Facebook chat. Now, click on the Advanced tab, and uncheck the “Require SSL/TLS” box.  Also, make sure the Connect port is 5222.  Click Add, and your Facebook account is added to Pidgin. Now Facebook will show up in your list of accounts, with the username [email protected]. Your Facebook friends will show up directly in your Buddy list, complete with their full name and Facebook profile picture.  Any users that are not in a group will show under your standard list, while ones in a Facebook group will be shown in a separate group.  You can move which groups your Facebook friends show up in, just like you can with other chat contacts.   And no matter if your friend is logged in on the standard Facebook website or through another chat application, it will work the same as always.   This is a great way to keep in touch with your Facebook friends throughout the day.  If you like Facebook chat and already use Pidgin, now you can keep from switching between programs and just chat with all your friends from a central location. Links: Download Pidgin Set your Facebook username Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips The How-To Geek is No Longer on FacebookWin a Free iPod Touch in the How-To Geek Facebook Giveaway!Block Those Irritating Facebook Quiz & Application MessagesPut Your Pidgin Buddy List into the Windows Vista SidebarHow to Lock Down Your Facebook Account TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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