Search Results

Search found 31491 results on 1260 pages for 'simple talk'.

Page 138/1260 | < Previous Page | 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145  | Next Page >

  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 17, 2011

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 17, 2011Popular ReleasesSharpMap - Geospatial Application Framework for the CLR: SharpMap-0.9-AnyCPU-Trunk-2011.11.17: This is a build of SharpMap from the 0.9 development trunk as per 2011-11-17 For most applications the AnyCPU release is the recommended, but in case you need an x86 build that is included to. For some dataproviders (GDAL/OGR, SqLite, PostGis) you need to also referense the SharpMap.Extensions assembly For SqlServer Spatial you need to reference the SharpMap.SqlServerSpatial assemblySQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQLMon 4.1 alpha 5: 1. added basic schema support 2. added server instance name and process id 3. fixed problem with object search index out of range 4. improved version comparison with previous/next difference navigation 5. remeber main window spliter and object explorer spliter positionAJAX Control Toolkit: November 2011 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - November 2011 Release Version 51116November 2011 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 - Binary – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 - Binary – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - The current version of the AJAX Control Toolkit is not compatible with ASP.NET 2.0. The latest version that is compatible with ASP.NET 2.0 can be found h...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.5.5: Added: Now the DateRanteAttribute accepts complex expressions containing "Now" and "Today" as static minimum and maximum. Menu, MenuFor helpers capable of handling a "currently selected element". The developer can choose between using a standard nested menu based on a standard SimpleMenuItem class or specifying an item template based on a custom class. Added also helpers to build the tree structure containing all data items the menu takes infos from. Improved the pager. Now the developer ...SharpCompress - a fully native C# library for RAR, 7Zip, Zip, Tar, GZip, BZip2: SharpCompress 0.7: Reworked API to be more consistent. See Supported formats table. Added some more helper methods - e.g. OpenEntryStream (RarArchive/RarReader does not support this) Fixed up testsFiles Name Copier: 1.0.0.1: Files Name Copier is a simple easy to use utility that allows you to drag and drop any number of files onto it. The clipboard will now contain the list of files you dropped.Silverlight Toolkit: Windows Phone Toolkit - Nov 2011 (7.1 SDK): This release is coming soon! What's new ListPicker once again works in a ScrollViewer LongListSelector bug fixes around OutOfRange exceptions, wrong ordering of items, grouping issues, and scrolling events. ItemTuple is now refactored to be the public type LongListSelectorItem to provide users better access to the values in selection changed handlers. PerformanceProgressBar binding fix for IsIndeterminate (item 9767 and others) There is no longer a GestureListener dependency with the C...DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 06.01.01: Major Highlights Fixed problem with the core skin object rendering CSS above the other framework inserted files, which caused problems when using core style skin objects Fixed issue with iFrames getting removed when content is saved Fixed issue with the HTML module removing styling and scripts from the content Fixed issue with inserting the link to jquery after the header of the page Security Fixesnone Updated Modules/Providers ModulesHTML version 6.1.0 ProvidersnoneDotNetNuke Performance Settings: 01.00.00: First release of DotNetNuke SQL update queries to set the DNN installation for optimimal performance. Please review and rate this release... (stars are welcome)SCCM Client Actions Tool: SCCM Client Actions Tool v0.8: SCCM Client Actions Tool v0.8 is currently the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Added "Wake On LAN" action. WOL.EXE is now included. Added new action "Get all active advertisements" to list all machine based advertisements on remote computers. Added new action "Get all active user advertisements" to list all user based advertisements for logged on users on remote computers. Added config.ini setting "enablePingTest" to control whether ping test is ru...QuickGraph, Graph Data Structures And Algorithms for .Net: 3.6.61116.0: Portable library build that allows to use QuickGraph in any .NET environment: .net 4.0, silverlight 4.0, WP7, Win8 Metro apps.Devpad: 4.7: Whats new for Devpad 4.7: New export to Rich Text New export to FlowDocument Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsC.B.R. : Comic Book Reader: CBR 0.3: New featuresAdd magnifier size and scale New file info view in the backstage Add dynamic properties on book and settings Sorting and grouping in the explorer with new design Rework on conversion : Images, PDF, Cbr/rar, Cbz/zip, Xps to the destination formats Images, Cbz and XPS ImprovmentsSuppress MainViewModel and ExplorerViewModel dependencies Add view notifications and Messages from MVVM Light for ViewModel=>View notifications Make thread better on open catalog, no more ihm freeze, less t...Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.2: This release remove the like and the broadcast buttons as Google Reader stopped supporting them (no, we don't like this decission...) Additionally and to have at least a small plus: the login window now automaitcally logs you in if you stored username and passwort (no more extra click needed) Finally added WebKit .NET to the about window and removed Awesomium MD5-Hash: 5fccf25a2fb4fecc1dc77ebabc8d3897 SHA-Hash: d44ff788b123bd33596ad1a75f3b9fa74a862fdbRDRemote: Remote Desktop remote configurator V 1.0.0: Remote Desktop remote configurator V 1.0.0Rawr: Rawr 4.2.7: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...VidCoder: 1.2.2: Updated Handbrake core to svn 4344. Fixed the 6-channel discrete mixdown option not appearing for AAC encoders. Added handling for possible exceptions when copying to the clipboard, added retries and message when it fails. Fixed issue with audio bitrate UI not appearing sometimes when switching audio encoders. Added extra checks to protect against reported crashes. Added code to upgrade encoding profiles on old queued items.Composite C1 CMS: Composite C1 3.0 RC3 (3.0.4332.33416): This is currently a Release Candidate. Upgrade guidelines and "what's new" are pending.Media Companion: MC 3.422b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) TV Show Resolutions... Made the TV Shows folder list sorted. Re-visibled 'Manually Add Path' in Root Folders. Sorted list to process during new tv episode search Rebuild Movies now processes thru folders alphabetically Fix for issue #208 - Display Missing Episodes is not popu...DotSpatial: DotSpatial Release Candidate: Supports loading extensions using System.ComponentModel.Composition. DemoMap compiled as x86 so that GDAL runs on x64 machines. How to: Use an Assembly from the WebBe aware that your browser may add an identifier to downloaded files which results in "blocked" dll files. You can follow the following link to learn how to "Unblock" files. Right click on the zip file before unzipping, choose properties, go to the general tab and click the unblock button. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library...New Projects#WP7_chameleon: Simple augmented reality app for WP7 that explores the new Mango webcam API. ASP.NET MVC Manialink Extensions: ASP.NET MVC Manialink extensions are a set of extensions for the Razor HtmlHelper class that programmatically generate Manialink XML elements. It's developed in C# (.NET 4.0) for the ASP.NET MVC 3 framework.Basic Text Games in C#: Have fun converting some old B.A.S.I.C. text games into C# using MEF for plug-in capabilities. This is a good project for beginners to learn how to follow logic and convert between languages.Chuanzhuo: Chuanzhuo projCountriesGame: A simple game, players needs to find a country starts with given letterDeployAssistant: You can use it to update you website EntSGE: SGEExtended Immediate Window Mark 2: An Extended Immediate Window for Visual Studio that can use multiple lines of code at a time rather then just one.Facebook Suite Connect Orchard module: Part of the Facebook Suite Orchard module that provides simple login functionality with Facebook ConnectGet TFS 2010 Users: Use this tool to read extended group membership of a TFS 2010 Server. GoogleTestAddin: GoogleTestAddin is an Add-In for Visual Studio 2010. It makes it easier to execute/debug googletest functions by selecting them. You'll no longer have to set the command arguments of your test application. The googletest output is redirected to the Visual Studio output window.Home Financial Manager: ;photel_organizer: Hotel organizer project from a group of students at the university deggendorfInfoCine: Aplicación en Windows Phone 7 para dar información acerca de la cartelera de los cines.Injection of values using Annotation and Reflection: Example of reflection and annotation to inject values in variables in java.Interviews: My implementation of some common problems asked at various interviews.iPipal: adsfadsfadISDS: Informacni systemy a datove skladyivvy vendor management CMS: This is vendor CMS module of the ivvy suite Ross BrodskiyKaartenASPApplicatie: ASP.Net applicatieMap Viet Nam: Control Map VietNamMoney Transfer: A project for rotating money. Software for brokering service.Music Renamer: Renames music files into the format of "00 Track Name.ext"NetOS: NetOS is an Operating System designed for Netbooks and Tablets.Orchard Audit: For Orchard CMS, a framework for logging common audit events such as viewing, editing, deleting content - allowing you to track who changed what and when, with an extensible API to audit any custom events, and configurable in admin with the Rules engine in Orchard 1.3.Orchard Layout Selector: A simple part for switching to different versions of Layout.cshtml when editing Orchard content items.PT Kurejas: This is a small tool to create image tests for web sites. Now is only available only in lithuanian language.Reactive State Machine: Reactive State Machine is a State Machine implementation based on Reactive Extensions. It plays nicely with the Visual State Manager of WPF.Root finding and related routines: C++ generic algorithms for finding roots of floating point functions.Shaping Menu Manager: Shaping Menu ManagerShuttleBus: ShuttleBus is a lightweight Service Bus implementation designed to be easily extensible and unobtrusive.silverlight ? flash? policy ??: silverlight? flash? policy socket server? ??Technical trading indicators: Small classes for computing indicators used in technical analysis.Umbraco Active Directory Role Provider: Active Directory Role Provider for umbraco membership (and sample user control) With this role provider, a user control and some IIS configuration you can do seamless authentication (no login prompt) onto your umbraco site and user the Active Directory roles insider umbraco.UtilityLibrary.Security: UtilityLibrary.SecurityUtilityLibrary.Serialize: UtilityLibrary.SerializeUtilityLibrary.StringOperator: UtilityLibrary.StringOperatorUtilityLibrary.Task: UtilityLibrary.TaskVSTweaker: VSTweaker allows you to modify the components that Visual Studio loads. This can lead to performance benefits by reducing the overhead of unused components. XNA Simple Game Engine: XNA Simple Game Engine is a small and simple engine that makes it easy to make simple projects with XNA 4.0r and C#.

    Read the article

  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 03, 2011

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 03, 2011Popular ReleasesDDRMenu: 01.99.00 (aka 2.0 beta 1): First beta of version 2.0.AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.6.0: Implemented 3D Model / Skin viewer Added JarvanIV and Maokai Fixed Renekton and Karma image sizes Added more hotkeys to Auto Chat Fix: Update information is now cached daily (instead of forever)Chirpy - VS Add In For Handling Js, Css, DotLess, and T4 Files: Margogype Chirpy (ver 2.0): Chirpy loves Americans. Chirpy hates Americanos.Document.Editor: 2011.9: Whats new for Document.Editor 2011.9: New Templates System New Plug-in System New Replace dialog New reset settings Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsTortoiseHg: TortoiseHg 2.0: TortoiseHg 2.0 is a complete rewrite of TortoiseHg 1.1, switching from PyGtk to PyQtSandcastle Help File Builder: SHFB v1.9.2.0 Release: This release supports the Sandcastle June 2010 Release (v2.6.10621.1). It includes full support for generating, installing, and removing MS Help Viewer files. This new release is compiled under .NET 4.0, supports Visual Studio 2010 solutions and projects as documentation sources, and adds support for projects targeting the Silverlight Framework. NOTE: The included help file and the online help have not been completely updated to reflect all changes in this release. A refresh will be issue...Network Monitor Open Source Parsers: Microsoft Network Monitor Parsers 3.4.2554: The Network Monitor Parsers packages contain parsers for more than 400 network protocols, including RFC based public protocols and protocols for Microsoft products defined in the Microsoft Open Specifications for Windows and SQL Server. NetworkMonitor_Parsers.msi is the base parser package which defines parsers for commonly used public protocols and protocols for Microsoft Windows. In this release, we have added 4 new protocol parsers and updated 79 existing parsers in the NetworkMonitor_Pa...Image Resizer for Windows: Image Resizer 3 Preview 1: Prepare to have your minds blown. This is the first preview of what will eventually become 39613. There are still a lot of rough edges and plenty of areas still under construction, but for your basic needs, it should be relativly stable. Note: You will need the .NET Framework 4 installed to use this version. Below is a status report of where this release is in terms of the overall goal for version 3. If you're feeling a bit technically ambitious and want to check out some of the features th...JSON Toolkit: JSON Toolkit 1.1: updated GetAllJsonObjects() method and GetAllProperties() methods to JsonObject and Properties propertiesFacebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 1.0: Refer to http://computerbeacon.net for Documentation and Tutorial New features:added FQL support added Expires property to Api object added support for publishing to a user's friend / Facebook Page added support for posting and removing comments on posts added support for adding and removing likes on posts and comments added static methods for Page class added support for Iframe Application Tab of Facebook Page added support for obtaining the user's country, locale and age in If...ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.7.1: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager small improvements for some helpers and AjaxDropdown has Data like the Lookup except it's value gets reset and list refilled if any element from data gets changedManaged Extensibility Framework: MEF 2 Preview 3: This release aims .net 4.0 and Silverlight 4.0. Accordingly, there are two solutions files. The assemblies are named System.ComponentModel.Composition.Codeplex.dll as a way to avoid clashing with the version shipped with the 4th version of the framework. Introduced CompositionOptions to container instantiation CompositionOptions.DisableSilentRejection makes MEF throw an exception on composition errors. Useful for diagnostics Support for open generics Support for attribute-less registr...PHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.6 Production: DonationsDonate via PayPal via PayPal. If you want to, we can also add your name / company on our Donation Acknowledgements page. PEAR channelWe now also have a full PEAR channel! Here's how to use it: New installation: pear channel-discover pear.pearplex.net pear install pearplex/PHPExcel Or if you've already installed PHPExcel before: pear upgrade pearplex/PHPExcel The official page can be found at http://pearplex.net. Want to contribute?Please refer the Contribute page.WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.4: Version: 2.0.0.4 (Milestone 4): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...VidCoder: 0.8.2: Updated auto-naming to handle seconds and frames ranges as well. Deprecated the {chapters} token for auto-naming in favor of {range}. Allowing file drag to preview window and enabling main window shortcut keys to work no matter what window is focused. Added option in config to enable giving custom names to audio tracks. (Note that these names will only show up certain players like iTunes or on the iPod. Players that support custom track names normally may not show them.) Added tooltips ...SQL Server Compact Toolbox: Standalone version 2.0 for SQL Server Compact 4.0: Download the Visual Studio add-in for SQL Server Compact 4.0 and 3.5 from here Standalone version of (most of) the same functionality as the add-in, for SQL Server Compact 4.0. Useful for anyone not having Visual Studio Professional or higher installed. Requires .NET 4.0. Any feedback much appreciated.Claims Based Identity & Access Control Guide: Drop 1 - Claims Identity Guide V2: Highlights of drop #1 This is the first drop of the new "Claims Identity Guide" edition. In this release you will find: All previous samples updated and enhanced. All code upgraded to .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010. Extensive cleanup. Refactored Simulated Issuers: each solution now gets its own issuers. This results in much cleaner and simpler to understand code. Added Single Sign Out support. Added first sample using ACS ("ACS as a Federation Provider"). This sample extends the ori...Simple Notify: Simple Notify Beta 2011-02-25: Feature: host the service with a single click in console Feature: host the service as a windows service Feature: notification cient application Feature: push client application Feature: push notifications from your powershell script Feature: C# wrapper libraries for your applicationsMono.Addins: Mono.Addins 0.6: The 0.6 release of Mono.Addins includes many improvements, bug fixes and new features: Add-in engine Add-in name and description can now be localized. There are new custom attributes for defining them, and can also be specified as xml elements in an add-in manifest instead of attributes. Support for custom add-in properties. It is now possible to specify arbitrary properties in add-ins, which can be queried at install time (using the Mono.Addins.Setup API) or at run-time. Custom extensio...Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.5: Now supports new Minecraft beta v1.3 map format, thanks to updated mcmap. Disabled biomes, until Minecraft Biome Extractor supports new format.New ProjectsARCHFORMEMVC - Just a reference MVC architecture for me and perhaps you: ARCHFORMEMVC stands for giving me (and perhaps you) a default architecture for handling Cross Cutting Concerns and a quick way to start new project using MVCBackupLib: SingularityShift.BackupLib provides a framework for an application's backup needs. It offers common interfaces, abstract implementations, and many base classes ready for use in any .NET application. It can be easily extended to use any backup method you might require.ComponentModel: ComponentModel provides a simple API for building an application based on a hierarchy of various types of components, which are then extended to fill essentially any need. It attempts to simplify much of the work of building such a system.DataModels: DataModels is a project which aims to allow for easy reuse of specific data models using a very simple API. euler 14 problem: euler 14 problemGameLib: GameLib is a library for rapid game tool development. It offers an API and many abstract/concrete implementations for referencing and managing a game and its modifications. It is the driving force behind FOMS (Fallout Mod Studio).GSH Reasoner: GSHR (Gloriously Slow Haskell Reasoner) is a simple, partially incomplete and very slow reasoner for OWL 2 ontologies which uses rules for inference and consistency checking. Written in Haskell.internal DataBase for C# and .Net/Mono: This Project will create a DataBase which can only be used intern in a programm, so there is no need to have a DB installed on the users pc. SQL Support will come too. So u can eaasily migrate existing projects.Morro.VPN: morro bay various netMovieManager: Movie manager is a tool to keep you updated about movie series you watch. First step is to create your movie series database. Next you select episodes you already watched. Program will automatically show you new episodes, air dates of the upcoming episodes.NHL.App: NHL.App makes it easier for people to browse news in the NHL and current standings in a format that is nice and easy on the eyes. It is developed in C# with Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone.RegexRenamer: RegexRenamer allows file moving and renaming using .NET regular expressions. It supports regular expression chains so files can be renamed/moved in multiple steps. It is developed in C# using .NET Framework 4 and WPF.Research: Personal research projectSAB BizTalk Archiving Pipeline Component: The SAB BizTalk Archiving Pipeline Component can be added to any stage of receive and send ports to archive processed messages to file locations.Simple Configuration Facade: SingularityShift.Preferences is an abstraction layer over any configuration library allowing you to keep whichever configuration library you choose out of your main code entirely, so you are free to change it later without repercussion or the need to make extensive code changes.Simple Dependency Injection Facade: SDIF allows decoupling not only from your dependencies, but also from the framework that injects them. It is a lightweight layer between your code and the DI framework that wires up your dependencies, so that you can easily adapt to other frameworks as necessary.Simple Json: A simple set of utilities for json and rest.SingularityShift.Common: SingularityShift.Common is where we put all of the code that we use in many or all of our other libraries and applications. This obviously helps us, but is also designed to help other developers by providing these common interfaces and classes for use in other projects as well.TLDRML: Python/JSON inspired markup language designed to be extremely terse.TripleA for Silverlight: Axis and allies port from the Java versionWCF Credentials Manager in WPF (MVVM): This is a WPF (MVVM) version of the IDesign WCF credentials manager. It provides a more responsive user interface for managing users and roles in applications that use the ASP.NET membership and role providers.Windawesome: A highly customizable dynamic window manager for Windows, which works on top of explorer.exe and NOT as a shell replacement. Written in C# and scriptable and pluggable in IronRuby, IronPython and any .NET language that compiles down to an assembly.Zack's Fiasco - eWallet to KeePass: Convert an eWallet export to a KeePass 2.x XML file, which can be imported into KeePass 2.x

    Read the article

  • How do read/interact with an old ActiveX SSUltraGrid using UIAutomation

    - by Nigel Thorne
    I am investigating automated testing of an old Win32 application that used ActiveX controls. I am spiking use White (from Thougthworks) that uses Microsoft UIAutomation. I can find the AutomationElement related to the control, but how do I interact with it? Spy++ sees the grid control as a single window, so I can't talk to rows, columns, or cells directly. How do I talk to the SSUltraGrid control from my test code? Cheers Nigel

    Read the article

  • SPAZ to connect to Laconica

    - by Linley
    I installed a local version of Laconica microblogging in my env. Then I downlowaded SPAZ (an AIR client) to try and talk to the Laconica app. I get an authenitcation error. I have put in the appropriate credentials - I think :) But I think that I have to alter the API and base URL for connecting. Ayone have any thoughts on how to make these two apps talk ? Thanks in advance, Linley

    Read the article

  • Open Source projects that use agile methods or have tried them

    - by Patrick Cornelissen
    I'm preparing a short talk for a conference in august and I'm looking for open source projects that are using agile methods internally or have tried them in the past. My goal is to talk about the things that work well and what won't work and promote the agile methods a little bit, because I think certain agile techniques are a good fit, but don't seem to be that common in real development. So does anyone know projects that have tried agile methods and techniques before? I'd like to contact them for a few questions.

    Read the article

  • problem with enabling remote management of hyper-v server 2008 r2

    - by Pai Gaudêncio
    Howdy, I just recently installed hyper-v server 2008 r2 on a dedicated server i have, but i'm having trouble enabling remote management. Running the HVRemote - http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/HVRemote - tool seems to have yielded some positive results, and all tests on the server pass (firewall, permissions, etc), but client-side things are not working. I'm stuck at this step : 5: - Simple query to root\cimv2 WMI namespace FAIL - Simple query failed Cannot perform simple query against root\cimv2 Anyone could help me figure this out? I'm almost giving up and installing XenServer... Thanks

    Read the article

  • Convert PowerPoint to Flash or Silverlight?

    - by Michael Stum
    I have a simple PowerPoint presentation and I would like to convert it to Flash or Silverlight. The presentation is a simple "Slide after Slide after Slide" and my first guess was to use OpenOffice Impress. Sadly, the picture quality is awful. I would need the presentation to be in a specific format (900 Pixels wide and as high as it needs to be, usually 675 pixels) Can you recommend any good, simple PowerPoint = Flash or Silverlight converter that does that?

    Read the article

  • How to change Content-Transfer-Encoding for email attachments?

    - by user1837811
    I have signed up for http://eudyptula-challenge.org/ challenge and this accepts email attachments only in simple text format. The files without extension (and also .zip file) are transferred with base64 encoding. I want to send email attachment in simple text. This is how my makefile is transferred :- Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; name="Makefile" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Makefile" b2JqLW0gKz0gaGVsbG8yLm8KCmFsbDoKCW1ha2UgLUMgL2xpYi9tb2R1bGVzLyQoc2hlbGwg dW5hbWUgLXIpL2J1aWxkIE09JChQV0QpIG1vZHVsZXMKCmNsZWFuOgoJbWFrZSAtQyAvbGli L21vZHVsZXMvJChzaGVsbCB1bmFtZSAtcikvYnVpbGQgTT0kKFBXRCkgY2xlYW4KCg== How to configure Thunderbird to send a attachment files in as simple text?? Or I should any other email server or tool to send email attachments in simple text??

    Read the article

  • Never getting a JSON response when running server-side PHP proxy script but I do with others

    - by Dohk
    I'm on PHP 5.3.4 and Apache 2.2 btw So I'm using (or trying to use) Simple PHP Proxy (Simple PHP Proxy) I enter a URL at his example page at SPP Example Page and it works fine, I see the JSON response and all the headers. However, when I copy the exact URL, only changing the URL to now have localhost, I get both empty headers and no JSON. Assuming that the script on his site is the same I downloaded, could this be due to a multitude of things or a setting in Apache and/or the PHP ini? So for example: benalman.com/code/projects/php-simple-proxy/ba-simple-proxy.php?url=http://github.com/&full_headers=1&full_status=1 That will get me a ton of info back Now changing to localhost http://localhost/ba-simple-proxy.php?url=http://github.com/&full_headers=1&full_status=1 {"headers":[],"status":{"url":"https:\/\/github.com\/","content_type":"text\/html","http_code":301,"header_size":194,"request_size":182,"filetime":-1,"ssl_verify_result":0,"redirect_count":1,"total_time":0.094,"namelookup_time":0,"connect_time":0.047,"pretransfer_time":0,"size_upload":0,"size_download":185,"speed_download":1968,"speed_upload":0,"download_content_length":185,"upload_content_length":0,"starttransfer_time":0,"redirect_time":0.047,"certinfo":[]},"contents":null} I even went basic and just used some curl and of course, empty objects being returned other than false for my content and the url I set in my JSON. Any help is deeply appreciated or any ideas.

    Read the article

  • How can use mod_rewrite to redirect a multiple specific URLs containing multiple query strings?

    - by Derek
    Hi there folks, we recently migrated a site from a custom CMS to drupal. In an effort to preserve some links that our users bookmarked (we have about 120 redirects) we would like to forward the original URLs to a new URL. I have been searching for a couple days, but can't seem to find anything simple to what I need. We have existing URLS that contain one or more query strings, for example: /article.php?issue_id=12&article_id=275 and we would like to forward to the new location: http://foobar.edu/content/super-happy-fun-article I started using: RewriteEngine On RewriteRule ^/article\.php?issue_id=12&article_id=275$ http://foobar.edu/content/super-happy-fun-article [R=301,L] This, however, does not work. A simple RewriteRule works: RewriteRule ^test\.php$ index.php It is unclear to me how I need to use {QUERY_STRING} with multiple Basically it's 120 simple redirects that go from one existing URL to a new one. I don't need ranges [0-9], because there is no sequential order to existing URLs. Perhaps I can do what I need with RewriteMap and a simple text file that contains a line like this: index.php?issue_id=12&articleType_section=0&articleType_id=65 http://foobar.edu/category/fall-2008 If anyone has any idea on using mod_rewrite to accomplish this or if there is a better, or more simple mod, I am open to that as well. Thanks!

    Read the article

  • Mbean registered but not found in mbean Server

    - by Prisco
    I have a problem about the mbeans. I have created a simple mbean and I have registered it on the default mBeanServer that is run (Via eclipse or java -jar mbean.jar) and in the same process if I try to fouund the mbean registered with a simple query: for (ObjectInstance instance : mbs.queryMBeans(ObjectNameMbean, null)) { System.out.println(instance.toString()); } the query retuerns my mbean, but if I start another process and try to search this mbean registered the mbeas is not found! why? The approch is : (Process that is running) public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { MBeanServer mbeanServer =ManagementFactory.getPlatformMBeanServer(); ObjectName objectName = new ObjectName(ObjectNameMbean); Simple simple = new Simple (1, 0); mbeanServer.registerMBean(simple, objectName); while (true) { wait (Is this necessary?) } } So this is the first process that is running (that has the only pourpose to registry the mbean, because there is another process that want to read these informations. So I start another process to search this mbean but nothing. I 'm not using jboss but the local Java virtual Machine but my scope is to deploy this simple application in one ejb (autostart) and another ejb will read all informations. All suggestions are really apprecciated. This example should be more useful : Object Hello: public class Hello implements HelloMBean { public void sayHello() { System.out.println("hello, world"); } public int add(int x, int y) { return x + y; } public String getName() { return this.name; } public int getCacheSize() { return this.cacheSize; } public synchronized void setCacheSize(int size) { this.cacheSize = size; System.out.println("Cache size now " + this.cacheSize); } private final String name = "Reginald"; private int cacheSize = DEFAULT_CACHE_SIZE; private static final int DEFAULT_CACHE_SIZE = 200; } Interface HelloBean (implemented by Hello) public interface HelloMBean { public void sayHello(); public int add(int x, int y); public String getName(); public int getCacheSize(); public void setCacheSize(int size); } Simple Main import java.lang.management.ManagementFactory; import java.util.logging.Logger; import javax.management.MBeanServer; import javax.management.ObjectName; public class Main { static Logger aLog = Logger.getLogger("MBeanTest"); public static void main(String[] args) { try{ MBeanServer mbs = ManagementFactory.getPlatformMBeanServer(); ObjectName name = new ObjectName("ApplicationDomain:type=Hello"); Hello mbean = new Hello(); mbs.registerMBean(mbean, name); // System.out.println(mbs.getAttribute(name, "Name")); aLog.info("Waiting forever..."); Thread.sleep(Long.MAX_VALUE); } catch(Exception x){ x.printStackTrace(); aLog.info("exception"); } } } So now I have exported this project as jar file and run it as "java -jar helloBean.jar" and by eclipse I have modified the main class to read informations of this read (Example "Name" attribute) by using the same objectname used to registry it . Main to read : public static void main(String[] args) { try{ MBeanServer mbs = ManagementFactory.getPlatformMBeanServer(); ObjectName name = new ObjectName("ApplicationDomain:type=Hello"); System.out.println(mbs.getAttribute(name, "Name")); } catch(Exception x){ x.printStackTrace(); aLog.info("exception"); } } But nothing, the bean is not found.

    Read the article

  • Taskbar Meters Turn Your Taskbar into a System Resource Monitor

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    If you’re looking for some simple hardware monitoring tools that don’t clutter up your screen real estate but are right in front of you when you need them, Taskbar Meters sit unobtrusively right on the Windows taskbar. Open source, lightweight, and portable Taskbar Meters is actually a set of three applications. There is one for monitoring memory use, one for CPU use, and one for disk activity. Using the application is as simple as running the specific app for the monitoring you want (we have all three running in the screenshot here) and adjusting the sliders to set the update frequency and the percent utilization at which the meters turn from green, to yellow, to red. If you’re testing software loads and benchmarking Taskbar Meters doesn’t offer the kind of fine-tooth-comb view into system performance that you’ll need but for casual “What’s going on with my machine?” monitoring, it’s unobtrusive and effective. Taskbar Meters is an open source set of portable applications, Windows 7 only. Taskbar Meters [Codeplex] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Macs Don’t Make You Creative! So Why Do Artists Really Love Apple? MacX DVD Ripper Pro is Free for How-To Geek Readers (Time Limited!) HTG Explains: What’s a Solid State Drive and What Do I Need to Know? How to Get Amazing Color from Photos in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Lakeside Sunset in the Mountains [Wallpaper] Taskbar Meters Turn Your Taskbar into a System Resource Monitor Create Shortcuts for Your Favorite or Most Used Folders in Ubuntu Create Custom Sized Thumbnail Images with Simple Image Resizer [Cross-Platform] Etch a Circuit Board using a Simple Homemade Mixture Sync Blocker Stops iTunes from Automatically Syncing

    Read the article

  • Ubuntu 12.04 does not see windows already install on my computer (dual installation)

    - by jacinta
    I was trying to install the ubuntu 12.4 along side windows 7 on my new HP Pavilion 64k desktop with windows 7 computer but Ubuntu said that ( This computer has no detected operating system) and some one said (I suggest you chkdsk your Windows partition. I also suggest you resize the NTFS in WIndows then install Ubuntu to the free space.) Therefore I did (To shrink a simple or spanned volume using the Windows interface In Disk Management, right-click the simple or spanned volume you want to shrink. Click Shrink Volume…. Follow the instructions on your screen.) Then When I try to install ubuntu 12.4 after doing this, I received the same error. I was going to undo what I did but I see that I lose 1g when I do that so now what do I do? it says I can do a new simple volume and maybe then the space will no longer be unallocated. Please help me. I think I have a bad cd (ubuntu 12.4) cause from my research I see that I am not suppose to get a screen saying that (The computer has no detected operating system) I think this is a bad cd and I hope I did not mess up my computer. Please help. .................................................................................... O k I think I am following what you said about how to edit my question irrational john. I did chkdsk as you and actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) told me to AND ALSO did a lot of other things before I found out how to chkdsk. No problems. Thank you. Then I put back the space (extended) I took from system. I still was only able to put back 15 and not 16 so it is up to 99mb not back to 100mb. Then I shrank HP (C) as you told me, to 10 13,240 mb which is (12.93gb Unallocated). I did not change it into NTSF by doing the (New Simple Volume Action) I just left it. Then I tried to install UBUNTU 12.04 live CD amd64 and it gave me the results it was sometimes giving me before which is result (THAT Ubuntu) does not tell me weather I have or have not an already installed windows7. It just goes to a window that would have showed me information on what I have and on the bottom (DEVICE FOR BOOT LOADER INSTALLATION /dev/sda ) and the option to go BACK, QUIT, or INSTALL. (I think it is the INSTALLATION TYPE window). Therefore I do what I have been doing and I QUIT. What do I do now? Sorry that it seems like I cannot do anything on my own. On the Youtube video how to install ubuntu dual-boot alongside windows UBUNTU is installed so easy. The installation option page gives 3 options including dual instillation and the disk even lets you use a slider to slide to the size of the partition size you want. Yet my UBUNTU live cd is a mess and I checked it as one of you guys told me and got back information that it is good. Oh well this guy says you should press a control key to tell which device you are using to install ubuntu before the screen comes up. I guess cause it is old. This page also shows you easy stuff that do not show up on my cd. how to dual-boot UBUNTU and windows 7 P.S.. I saw this on the windows 7 website windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Formatting-disks-and-drives-frequently-asked-questions CREATE A BOOT PARTITION I HAD TO LEAVE OUT THE HTTP STUFF CAUSE I AM ONLY ALLOWED 2 ON A PAGE IT SAID To create a boot partition Warning Warning If you are installing different versions of Windows, you must install the earliest version first. If you don't do this, your computer may become inoperable. Open Computer Management by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Security, clicking Administrative Tools, and then double-clicking Computer Management.? Administrator permission required If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation. In the left pane, under Storage, click Disk Management. Right-click an unallocated region on your hard disk, and then click New Simple Volume. In the New Simple Volume Wizard, click Next. Type the size of the volume you want to create in megabytes (MB) or accept the maximum default size, and then click Next. Accept the default drive letter or choose a different drive letter to identify the volume, and then click Next. In the Format Partition dialog box, do one of the following: If you don't want to format the volume right now, click Do not format this volume, and then click Next. To format the volume with the default settings, click Next. For more information about formatting, see Formatting disks and drives: frequently asked questions. Review your choices, and then click Finish. AND THIS ON ANOTHER PAGE. Formatting disks and drives: frequently asked questions Hard disks, the primary storage devices on your computer, need to be formatted before you can use them. When you format a disk, you configure it with a file system so that Windows can store information on the disk. Hard disks in new computers running Windows are already formatted. If you buy an additional hard disk to expand the storage of your computer, you might need to format it. Storage devices such as USB flash drives and flash memory cards usually come preformatted by the manufacturer, so you probably won't need to format them. CDs and DVDs, on the other hand, use different formats from hard disks and removable storage devices. For information about formatting CDs and DVDs, see Which CD or DVD format should I use? Warning Warning Formatting erases any existing files on a hard disk. If you format a hard disk that has files on it, the files will be deleted. WHAT I DID WAS I GOT TO COMPUTER MANAGEMENT SECTION THEN I CLICKED ON DRIVE HP(C) (it put stripes on to show it is selected) Then I click on ACTION selected ALL TASKS AND THEN selected SHRINK VOLUME and then chose how much space from what it was giving me that I wanted. (12.93gb) AND THAT WAS ALL I DID. THEN I TRIED TO INSTALL UBUNTU i NEVER GOT THE 3RD SCREEN THAT IS IN THE VIDEO I INCLUDED (THE YOUTUBE WITH THE ENGLISH GUY) INSTALLATION TYPE I ALSO DID NOT GET THE 4TH SCREEN THAT ALLOWS YOU TO SELECT PARTITION SIZE what i got next was the 2nd INSTILLATION TYPE window shown on the (LINUX BS DOS.COM) PAGE THAT I INCLUDED and it showed no information about any drives (no drives /partition or stuff was shown) only the Boot Loader statement and the dev/sda bar and that's why i did not press install but chose to QUIT. SORRY I JUST NOW SAW YOUR ANSWER IRRATIONAL JOHN. I SHRANK HP(C) BY 12.93GB MY UNALLOCATED SPACE IS NOW 12.93GB HP(C) = 907.17gb NTSF...YOU ARE CORRECT WITH EVERYTHING YOU SAID This is what i read on (http://)windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Create-a-boot-partition I am only allowed 2 links Create a boot partition You must be logged on as an administrator to perform these steps. A boot partition is a partition that contains the files for the Windows operating system. If you want to install a second operating system on your computer (called a dual-boot or multiboot configuration), you need to create another partition on the hard disk, and then install the additional operating system on the new partition. Your hard disk would then have one system partition and two boot partitions. (A system partition is the partition that contains the hardware-related files. These tell the computer where to look to start Windows.) To create a partition on a basic disk, there must be unallocated disk space on your hard disk. With Disk Management, you can create a maximum of three primary partitions on a hard disk. You can create extended partitions, which include logical drives within them, if you need more partitions on the disk. Picture of disk space in Computer ManagementUnallocated disk space If there is no unallocated space, you will either need to create space by shrinking or deleting an existing partition or by using a third-party partitioning tool to repartition your hard disk. For more information, see Can I repartition my hard disk? To create a boot partition Warning Warning If you are installing different versions of Windows, you must install the earliest version first. If you don't do this, your computer may become inoperable. Open Computer Management by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Security, clicking Administrative Tools, and then double-clicking Computer Management.? Administrator permission required If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation. In the left pane, under Storage, click Disk Management. Right-click an unallocated region on your hard disk, and then click New Simple Volume. In the New Simple Volume Wizard, click Next. Type the size of the volume you want to create in megabytes (MB) or accept the maximum default size, and then click Next. Accept the default drive letter or choose a different drive letter to identify the volume, and then click Next. In the Format Partition dialog box, do one of the following: If you don't want to format the volume right now, click Do not format this volume, and then click Next. To format the volume with the default settings, click Next. For more information about formatting, see Formatting disks and drives: frequently asked questions. Review your choices, and then click Finish. I did what you told me @irrational john and this is the screen shot. I ENTERED ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo os-prober computer did not respond so I entered ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get -y remove dmraid computer responded with Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages will be REMOVED: dmraid 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded. After this operation, 141 kB disk space will be freed. (Reading database ... 147515 files and directories currently installed.) Removing dmraid ... update-initramfs is disabled since running on read-only media Processing triggers for man-db ... I entered ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo os-prober Computer Responded with /dev/sda1:Windows 7 (loader):Windows:chain /dev/sda3:Windows Recovery Environment (loader):Windows1:chain ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ............... @obsessiveFOSS I don't know what is a Grub menu and I do not know what is the Ubuntu boot option The answer you gave to me was correct. This one {This apparently removes the dmraid metadata. After doing that, you can use the desktop icon Install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to start the Ubuntu installer. This time the Installation Type window should contain the option to Install Ubuntu alongside Windows 7.} This is what I decided to do. I did not see the rest of your help 'till now. Never the less. I think the best thing for me to do now is to get a cheap used laptop and either do a dual installation or just install Ubuntu on to it. This way if I have any issues that I cannot solve like the one I had here, at least I will still have a usable computer to work on and to use to get answers with because I am not an expert like the people on this forum. Thanks a lot I will try to keep learning and do research enough to some day help someone else.

    Read the article

  • What is a good basic/flexible cms for a small website? [closed]

    - by Samuel
    Possible Duplicate: Which Content Management System (CMS) should I use? I'm designing a very basic portfolio website for an artist. It features a blog, portfolio, cv and contact page. I've handcoded the basics of this site in php/java, as it is a very small website (and I like coding by hand). But I need a simple cms backend for the dynamic parts of the website (the blog/portfolio). The big systems (ruby, joomla, wordpress) are far too invasive for my liking (and frankly a bit beyond my capabilities). Wordpress for example, requires too much adaptation of the design to the wordpress structure, and ruby is far too extensive for a simple site like this (in my opinion). So what I'm looking for is a (preferably open source) cms that has a simple backend for the artist to use as a blogger, with a mysql database for the content, that will allow me to insert content with simple tags (using smarty tags for example), but is otherwise not too invasive or demanding in terms of the required page structure. Does anyone know of a good cms that fits this description? p.s.: I have tried phpnews and cmsmadesimple, but phpnews was a litte too basic (but very close too what I'm looking for) and cmsmadesimple was way too slow (but otherwise also pretty close too what I wanted, though a bit too extensive).

    Read the article

  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-09-27

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Understanding Oracle BI 11g Security vs Legacy Oracle BI 10g | Christian Screen "After conducting a large amount of Oracle BI 10g to Oracle BI 11g upgrades and after writing the Oracle BI 11g book," says Oracle ACE Christian Screen, "I still continually get asked one of the most basic questions regarding security in Oracle BI 11g; How does it compare to Oracle BI 10g? The trail of questions typically goes on to what are the differences? And, how do we leverage our current Oracle BI 10g security table schema in Oracle BI 11g?" Process Oracle OER Events using a simple Web Service | Bob Webster Bob Webster's post "provides an example of a simple web service that processes Oracle Enterprise Repository (OER) Events. The service receives events from OER and utilizes the OER REX API to implement simple OER automations for selected event types." Oracle Fusion Middleware Security: Attaching OWSM policies to JRF-based web services clients | Andre Correa "OWSM (Oracle Web Services Manager) is Oracle's recommended method for securing SOAP web services," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member Andre Correa. "It provides agents that encapsulate the necessary logic to interact with the underlying software stack on both service and client sides. Such agents have their behavior driven by policies. OWSM ships with a bunch of policies that are adequate to most common real world scenarios." His detailed post shows how to make it happen. WebCenter Content (WCC) Trace Sections | ECM Architect ECM Architect Kevin Smith shares a detailed technical post covering WebCenter Content (WCC) Trace sections. Thought for the Day "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked." — John Gall Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

    Read the article

  • Worker roles in Windows Azure to host a multiplayer server

    - by MrWiggels
    I've been doing research on where to host a simple multi-player backend for a simple game I'm developing. So as a first choice I downloaded the Windows Azure SDK, which provides a nice and simple emulator environment where you can test out your application before uploading. I also download the Azure Social Game Toolkit (Visit), and followed as far as my understanding can take me. So, down to the main question. Is there anybody with experience developing Azure applications. I'm developing a Action RPG game, in a similar vein to Diablo III. I was thinking of putting up Matchmaking, Friends Lists, etc. Is there another way to connect to Azure services via something like UDP or TCP for sending packets or does everything have to go through HTTP requests? Is it even possible to use HTTP request/response for something like this? All game commands will be simple. Because the game server and the clients will be kept in-sync and will have deterministic actions, I'm just going to send actions like "Use Primary Skill" and "Use Secondary Skill". Any hints, ideas, light bulbs or a smack-in-the-face presentation will be much appreciated.

    Read the article

  • Advice on software infrastructure for a FLOSS bounty site

    - by michaeljt
    I am planning to set up a simple web site where people can offer bounties for work on FLOSS projects. Unfortunately I have no experience at web development (I am a C/C++ developer), so I was hoping someone might be able to suggest out-of-the-box packages (preferably Debian ones) I could use to build the site from. My idea of how the site would work is to keep things as simple as possible. The person proposing a bounty would enter a description with relevant links (particularly to a bugtracker entry with the project the work is to be done on, where the real discussion and work would take place) and information and place an initial contribution. Other people would be able to add (donate, not pledge) contributions, but any discussion would take place on the project's bugtracker. I am also planning to run a mailing list rather than a forum (at least initially), so that is not a requirement. Paypal seems to me to be the handiest payment mechanism. So overall what I need is probably a simple interface with Paypal integration and a simple database backend. I hope this is the right place for my question, if not I would be grateful for pointers to somewhere better. And of course, this is purely about the technical side, though I am more than happy to discuss other aspects of the project elsewhere.

    Read the article

  • Tracking download of non-html (like pdf) downloads with jQuery and Google Analytics

    - by developerit
    Hi folks, it’s been quite calm at Developer IT’s this summer since we were all involved in other projects, but we are slowly comming back. In this post, we will present a simple way of tracking files download with Google Analytics with the help of jQuery. We work for a client that offers a lot of pdf files to download on their web site and wanted to know which one are the most popular. They use Google Analytics for a long time now and we did not want to have a second interface in order to present those stats to our client. So usign IIS logs was not a idea to consider. Since Google already offers us a splendid web interface and a powerful API, we deceided to hook up simple javascript code into the jQuery click event to notify Analytics that a pdf has been requested. (function ($) { function trackLink(e) { var url = $(this).attr('href'); //alert(url); // for debug purpose // old page tracker code pageTracker._trackPageview(url); // you can use the new one too _gaq.push(["_trackPageview",url]); //always return true, in order for the browser to continue its job return true; } // When DOM ready $(function () { // hook up the click event $('.pdf-links a').click(trackLink); }); })(jQuery); You can be more presice or even be sure not to miss one click by changing the selector which hooks up the click event. I have been usign this code to track AJAX requests and it works flawlessly.

    Read the article

  • Prepping a conference

    - by Laurent Bugnion
    I have had the chance to talk at many conferences these past few years, and came up with a way to prepare them which works really well for me. Most importantly, it would make it quite easy to overcome an emergency (for example if my laptop would suddenly lose data). The whole code as well as the slides and other documents are in the cloud. I also use source control for my demos, so that I always have the latest and the greatest, but also a history of changes I made to my demos. Finally I have a system of code snippets which works great, and I often had very positive remarks from the audience regarding that. Putting everything in the cloud The one thing I used to be the most scared of was a sudden crash of my laptop, and being unable to restore in time for a conference. Most conferences ask speakers to send slides a few days (or weeks…) in advance, but let's face it, we all have last minute changes to our talks and I always come in the conference with updated slides that I pass to the management team. The answer to that dilemma used to be working off memory sticks, and that worked not bad. However last year I started putting all the documents relating to a conference in a DropBox folder, and that works great too. Obviously DropBox works only if you have connectivity, so if I for instance update slides while on an international flight, I cannot save to the cloud. The obvious answer to that is to backup everything on a memory stick… but I have to admit, I have been trusting my luck and working off my laptop HD and then synching everything to the cloud after landing. Of course on some US national flights you get WiFi on board, so in that case it is even simpler :) Usually after the conference is done, I remove the files from DropBox and copy them to their "final destination". They are backed up from there to BackBlaze, the great online backup service I am using routinely (I currently have about 90GB of data in BackBlaze). Outlining the presentations I like to have a written outline of my presentations written somewhere. I keep it simple, just write the various sections of the presentation with timing. I guess it is a remnant of the time when I was a private pilot, and using checklists for flight preparation. For example: Demo about designability 15' (0:37) Switch to Blend Open MainPage.xaml Create a DataTemplate ... Here I can immediately see during the presentation if I am taking too much time for my demo (0:37 is where I need to be when I am done with this section of the presentation, and 15' is the time that this particular section takes). I keep these sections reasonable, I don't detail every step of the preparation. Typically I have one such section for every 10-15 minutes of my talks. Yes, I am timing my presentations. I keep adjusting these numbers when I rehearse, and this really helps to feel more confident during the presentations. This is especially important for presentations that are long, like my MIX11 demo which clocked at 57 minutes (I had a lot of stuff to show…). Such presentations are risky, because if anything goes wrong, you will have to cut stuff, so the answer to that is: Rehearse, rehearse and when you're done rehearsing, rehearse a little more. I also have a "Preparation" section where I outline what I need to do before a presentation. For instance: Preparation Reboot in VHD Make sure MSN and Twitter are not running. Open VS10 and load demo Open Blend and load demo Run the WP7 emulator ... I typically start preparing my laptop an hour before the talk, starting everything I need to start and then putting my laptop to sleep. Saving and printing the outline, Timing Printing is a real problem because it is really hard to find a printer at most conference venues, and also quite hard in hotels. To solve that, I simply write everything in OneNote (synched to the cloud, now you start to know what I like ;) and then I print it to a PDF (I use CutePDFWriter) that I save to my Kindle. During the presentation, I read the outline off the Kindle (I mostly just need a quick check to see how I am timing). For timing during the presentation, I use the free tool ChronoGPS on my Windows Phone 7, but of course any phone these days has a clock/chrono application. In some conferences, they even have timers that the presenters can see, but they tend to count down and I prefer to count up… so I just use my own :) Source control for demos For demos, I create a separate folder and use Mercurial as source control. Mercurial has the huge advantage (over SVN or TFS) to work offline too, so I can commit while on a plane, and all the history is saved. Then when I have connectivity I push everything to the cloud (I am using the fantastic Trunksapp.com for my private repositories). Here too the obvious downside is the risk of losing my last changes if my laptop crashes before I can push to the cloud, and here too the obvious answer would be to work from a memory stick… though I have to admit I didn't do that lately (except when I was writing Silverlight 4 Unleashed, where I was really paranoid…) And code snippets? I am one of these presenters who hates to type in front of an audience. I can type really fast (writing two books has this advantage, it really teaches you to touch type and be fast at it) but in the context of an audience, on a stage where it is often damn cold (an issue I had a lot in past conferences, air conditioning can freeze your fingers and make it really hard to type), it doesn't work as well. I don't know for you, but I really dislike seeing a presentation where the speaker uses the backspace key more often than others ;) To solve that, I like to have my code ready in snippets, and drag them to the screen. Then I can spend time explaining each code snippet, while highlighting portions of the code (always highlight what you talk about, the audience often doesn't even see the cursor and doesn't know where you are on the screen!) Over the years I have used various solutions for code snippets, and now I have one which works really well… if you take a few precautions! I use the Visual Studio Toolbox. Preparing the code snippets You can store code snippets in the Toolbox for anything, XAML, C# etc. I arrange the snippets in the order in which I need them, which is a great way to remember what comes next in the presentation. I also separate them by topic, to make it easier to find them, for example when I switch to the slides and then back to the code. Remember that no matter how experienced you are, you will feel more nervous on stage than while you are preparing, so any way to make it easier for you is going to be beneficial to the audience. To store a code snippet, I do the following: Open the final demo that you want to show to the audience in Visual Studio. In your code, select a snippet of code that you want to explain in particular. Make sure that the Visual Studio Toolbox is open (menu View, Toolbox or Ctrl-Alt-X). Drag the selected snippet from the code window to the toolbox. (if needed) drag the snippet to the correct location (for example between two other code snippets so that you can access it as you speak through the demo). Right click on the snippet and select Rename Item from the context menu. Select a meaningful name. For me I use the following conventions: If it is a method, I use the method's name. If it is not a whole method, I use a descriptive name. If it is the content of a method (i.e. the body only, without the method's signature), I use "-> MethodName". This reminds me during the presentation that this is only the body, and that I need to insert that into an existing signature. This is the case, for instance, when I use Visual Studio to automatically generate the members of an interface’s implementation; then I only need to insert my snippet inside the generated method body. Saving the snippets This is the most important!! It happened to me a few times that VS10 lost its settings. When that happens, the snippets are lost too! Yeah that really sucks, especially (as it happened once) when this is the case about an hour before a talk… Stress and sweat follows, not good conditions to start a talk in front of an audience believe me. Thankfully, saving snippets is really easy with the following steps: Select the menu Tools, Import and Export Settings. Select Export selected environment settings and press Next. Uncheck All Settings. Then expand General Settings and select Toolbox (only!). Press Next. Select your source control folder and save under a meaningful name (for instance Snippets.vssettings). Commit to source control and push to the cloud. By the way, this also has the advantage of applying source control to the snippets file (which is an XML file), so you get history for free on that file! Reimporting the snippets If VS loses its settings and you need to reimport the snippets, this can be done super easily and very fast. Make sure that the Toolbox is empty. When you import snippets, they are merged with existing ones, they do not replace the content of the Toolbox. Unless merging is really what you want, make sure that your Toolbox is clean before you import, it is really easier. Select the menu Tools, Import and Export Settings. Select Import selected environment settings and press Next. Select No, just import new settings and press Next. Press Browse and select the Snippets.vssettings file. Press Finish. Et voila, all your snippets appear again in the Toolbox. Whew, the worst was averted and you can start your demo without sweating! (I had to do that once literally 5 minutes before the start of a demo, while my laptop was already hooked to the projector, and it went just fine). What about special tools? When using special tools (for example beta versions of tools you have an early access to), or a special configuration of your laptop, things can get tricky because you cannot really be sure that you will get a laptop with the same tools and the same configuration at the conference. To solve that, I use the following precautions: I make my demos from a Virtual Hard Disk. The great John Papa made a very easy-to-follow web page where he explains how to create a VHD and install Win7 to it. This gives you the full power of your laptop (as fast as booting from the metal). For me, I have a basic configuration that I saved on a USB harddrive (Win7 plus drivers, basic settings for desktop, folder options, taskbar etc) and Visual Studio 2010 SP1 on it. When preparing, I start by copying this "basis VHD" to my laptop. I install additional tools and configurations. I save the VHD back to the USB harddrive in a different folder. This would allow me to reinstall my demo environment quite fast, for example in case of harddrive failure. Replace the harddrive, copy the VHD to it, configure the BCD and you can start. Unfortunately this only works if the laptop itself still works. In the worst case of total failure, my security is to back all the installers up: The installers I use are synched on all my laptops and backed up to BackBlaze. If the worst happens and my laptop is absolutely broken, I can download the installer from BackBlaze and install on another laptop. This of course takes some time, and if that happens 5 minutes before a presentation, well… I don't have an answer to that, except of course crossing my fingers. Still, all that gives me additional security. Conclusion Remember folks, talking to an audience, large or small, will make you nervous. Just ask Scott Hanselman :) The goal here is to create the best possible conditions for you, and to create an environment where everything is saved and easy to restore, where everything is well known and provides you with additional confidence. The cooler you feel before the presentation (and during ;)), the better your presentation will be. Here too, the goal is to provide the best user experience you can have, which in turn will make it more enjoyable for your audience! Happy presenting :) Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

    Read the article

  • DevConnections Session Slides, Samples and Links

    - by Rick Strahl
    Finally coming up for air this week, after catching up with being on the road for the better part of three weeks. Here are my slides, samples and links for my four DevConnections Session two weeks ago in Vegas. I ended up doing one extra un-prepared for session on WebAPI and AJAX, as some of the speakers were either delayed or unable to make it at all to Vegas due to Sandy's mayhem. It was pretty hectic in the speaker room as Erik (our event coordinator extrodinaire) was scrambling to fill session slots with speakers :-). Surprisingly it didn't feel like the storm affected attendance drastically though, but I guess it's hard to tell without actual numbers. The conference was a lot of fun - it's been a while since I've been speaking at one of these larger conferences. I'd been taking a hiatus, and I forgot how much I enjoy actually giving talks. Preparing - well not  quite so much, especially since I ended up essentially preparing or completely rewriting for all three of these talks and I was stressing out a bit as I was sick the week before the conference and didn't get as much time to prepare as I wanted to. But - as always seems to be the case - it all worked out, but I guess those that attended have to be the judge of that… It was great to catch up with my speaker friends as well - man I feel out of touch. I got to spend a bunch of time with Dan Wahlin, Ward Bell, Julie Lerman and for about 10 minutes even got to catch up with the ever so busy Michele Bustamante. Lots of great technical discussions including a fun and heated REST controversy with Ward and Howard Dierking. There were also a number of great discussions with attendees, describing how they're using the technologies touched in my talks in live applications. I got some great ideas from some of these and I wish there would have been more opportunities for these kinds of discussions. One thing I miss at these Vegas events though is some sort of coherent event where attendees and speakers get to mingle. These Vegas conferences are just like "go to sessions, then go out and PARTY on the town" - it's Vegas after all! But I think that it's always nice to have at least one evening event where everybody gets to hang out together and trade stories and geek talk. Overall there didn't seem to be much opportunity for that beyond lunch or the small and short exhibit hall events which it seemed not many people actually went to. Anyways, a good time was had. I hope those of you that came to my sessions learned something useful. There were lots of great questions and discussions after the sessions - always appreciate hearing the real life scenarios that people deal with in relation to the abstracted scenarios in sessions. Here are the Session abstracts, a few comments and the links for downloading slides and  samples. It's not quite like being there, but I hope this stuff turns out to be useful to some of you. I'll be following up a couple of these sessions with white papers in the following weeks. Enjoy. ASP.NET Architecture: How ASP.NET Works at the Low Level Abstract:Interested in how ASP.NET works at a low level? ASP.NET is extremely powerful and flexible technology, but it's easy to forget about the core framework that underlies the higher level technologies like ASP.NET MVC, WebForms, WebPages, Web Services that we deal with on a day to day basis. The ASP.NET core drives all the higher level handlers and frameworks layered on top of it and with the core power comes some complexity in the form of a very rich object model that controls the flow of a request through the ASP.NET pipeline from Windows HTTP services down to the application level. To take full advantage of it, it helps to understand the underlying architecture and model. This session discusses the architecture of ASP.NET along with a number of useful tidbits that you can use for building and debugging your ASP.NET applications more efficiently. We look at overall architecture, how requests flow from the IIS (7 and later) Web Server to the ASP.NET runtime into HTTP handlers, modules and filters and finally into high-level handlers like MVC, Web Forms or Web API. Focus of this session is on the low-level aspects on the ASP.NET runtime, with examples that demonstrate the bootstrapping of ASP.NET, threading models, how Application Domains are used, startup bootstrapping, how configuration files are applied and how all of this relates to the applications you write either using low-level tools like HTTP handlers and modules or high-level pages or services sitting at the top of the ASP.NET runtime processing chain. Comments:I was surprised to see so many people show up for this session - especially since it was the last session on the last day and a short 1 hour session to boot. The room was packed and it was to see so many people interested the abstracts of architecture of ASP.NET beyond the immediate high level application needs. Lots of great questions in this talk as well - I only wish this session would have been the full hour 15 minutes as we just a little short of getting through the main material (didn't make it to Filters and Error handling). I haven't done this session in a long time and I had to pretty much re-figure all the system internals having to do with the ASP.NET bootstrapping in light for the changes that came with IIS 7 and later. The last time I did this talk was with IIS6, I guess it's been a while. I love doing this session, mainly because in my mind the core of ASP.NET overall is so cleanly designed to provide maximum flexibility without compromising performance that has clearly stood the test of time in the 10 years or so that .NET has been around. While there are a lot of moving parts, the technology is easy to manage once you understand the core components and the core model hasn't changed much even while the underlying architecture that drives has been almost completely revamped especially with the introduction of IIS 7 and later. Download Samples and Slides   Introduction to using jQuery with ASP.NET Abstract:In this session you'll learn how to take advantage of jQuery in your ASP.NET applications. Starting with an overview of jQuery client features via many short and fun examples, you'll find out about core features like the power of selectors for document element selection, manipulating these elements with jQuery's wrapped set methods in a browser independent way, how to hook up and handle events easily and generally apply concepts of unobtrusive JavaScript principles to client scripting. The second half of the session then delves into jQuery's AJAX features and several different ways how you can interact with ASP.NET on the server. You'll see examples of using ASP.NET MVC for serving HTML and JSON AJAX content, as well as using the new ASP.NET Web API to serve JSON and hypermedia content. You'll also see examples of client side templating/databinding with Handlebars and Knockout. Comments:This session was in a monster of a room and to my surprise it was nearly packed, given that this was a 100 level session. I can see that it's a good idea to continue to do intro sessions to jQuery as there appeared to be quite a number of folks who had not worked much with jQuery yet and who most likely could greatly benefit from using it. Seemed seemed to me the session got more than a few people excited to going if they hadn't yet :-).  Anyway I just love doing this session because it's mostly live coding and highly interactive - not many sessions that I can build things up from scratch and iterate on in an hour. jQuery makes that easy though. Resources: Slides and Code Samples Introduction to jQuery White Paper Introduction to ASP.NET Web API   Hosting the Razor Scripting Engine in Your Own Applications Abstract:The Razor Engine used in ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Pages is a free-standing scripting engine that can be disassociated from these Web-specific implementations and can be used in your own applications. Razor allows for a powerful mix of code and text rendering that makes it a wonderful tool for any sort of text generation, from creating HTML output in non-Web applications, to rendering mail merge-like functionality, to code generation for developer tools and even as a plug-in scripting engine. In this session, we'll look at the components that make up the Razor engine and how you can bootstrap it in your own applications to hook up templating. You'll find out how to create custom templates and manage Razor requests that can be pre-compiled, detecting page changes and act in ways similar to a full runtime. We look at ways that you can pass data into the engine and retrieve both the rendered output as well as result values in a package that makes it easy to plug Razor into your own applications. Comments:That this session was picked was a bit of a surprise to me, since it's a bit of a niche topic. Even more of a surprise was that during the session quite a few people who attended had actually used Razor externally and were there to find out more about how the process works and how to extend it. In the session I talk a bit about a custom Razor hosting implementation (Westwind.RazorHosting) and drilled into the various components required to build a custom Razor Hosting engine and a runtime around it. This sessions was a bit of a chore to prepare for as there are lots of technical implementation details that needed to be dealt with and squeezing that into an hour 15 is a bit tight (and that aren't addressed even by some of the wrapper libraries that exist). Found out though that there's quite a bit of interest in using a templating engine outside of web applications, or often side by side with the HTML output generated by frameworks like MVC or WebForms. An extra fun part of this session was that this was my first session and when I went to set up I realized I forgot my mini-DVI to VGA adapter cable to plug into the projector in my room - 6 minutes before the session was about to start. So I ended up sprinting the half a mile + back to my room - and back at a full sprint. I managed to be back only a couple of minutes late, but when I started I was out of breath for the first 10 minutes or so, while trying to talk. Musta sounded a bit funny as I was trying to not gasp too much :-) Resources: Slides and Code Samples Westwind.RazorHosting GitHub Project Original RazorHosting Blog Post   Introduction to ASP.NET Web API for AJAX Applications Abstract:WebAPI provides a new framework for creating REST based APIs, but it can also act as a backend to typical AJAX operations. This session covers the core features of Web API as it relates to typical AJAX application development. We’ll cover content-negotiation, routing and a variety of output generation options as well as managing data updates from the client in the context of a small Single Page Application style Web app. Finally we’ll look at some of the extensibility features in WebAPI to customize and extend Web API in a number and useful useful ways. Comments:This session was a fill in for session slots not filled due MIA speakers stranded by Sandy. I had samples from my previous Web API article so decided to go ahead and put together a session from it. Given that I spent only a couple of hours preparing and putting slides together I was glad it turned out as it did - kind of just ran itself by way of the examples I guess as well as nice audience interactions and questions. Lots of interest - and also some confusion about when Web API makes sense. Both this session and the jQuery session ended up getting a ton of questions about when to use Web API vs. MVC, whether it would make sense to switch to Web API for all AJAX backend work etc. In my opinion there's no need to jump to Web API for existing applications that already have a good AJAX foundation. Web API is awesome for real externally consumed APIs and clearly defined application AJAX APIs. For typical application level AJAX calls, it's still a good idea, but ASP.NET MVC can serve most if not all of that functionality just as well. There's no need to abandon MVC (or even ASP.NET AJAX or third party AJAX backends) just to move to Web API. For new projects Web API probably makes good sense for isolation of AJAX calls, but it really depends on how the application is set up. In some cases sharing business logic between the HTML and AJAX interfaces with a single MVC API can be cleaner than creating two completely separate code paths to serve essentially the same business logic. Resources: Slides and Code Samples Sample Code on GitHub Introduction to ASP.NET Web API White Paper© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Conferences  ASP.NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

    Read the article

  • SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #051

    - by Pinal Dave
    Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Explanation and Understanding NOT NULL Constraint NOT NULL is integrity CONSTRAINT. It does not allow creating of the row where column contains NULL value. Most discussed questions about NULL is what is NULL? I will not go in depth analysis it. Simply put NULL is unknown or missing data. When NULL is present in database columns, it can affect the integrity of the database. I really do not prefer NULL in the database unless they are absolutely necessary. Three T-SQL Script to Create Primary Keys on Table I have always enjoyed writing about three topics Constraint and Keys, Backup and Restore and Datetime Functions. Primary Keys constraints prevent duplicate values for columns and provides a unique identifier to each column, as well it creates clustered index on the columns. 2008 Get Numeric Value From Alpha Numeric String – UDF for Get Numeric Numbers Only SQL is great with String operations. Many times, I use T-SQL to do my string operation. Let us see User Defined Function, which I wrote a few days ago, which will return only Numeric values from Alpha Numeric values. Introduction and Example of UNION and UNION ALL It is very much interesting when I get requests from blog reader to re-write my previous articles. I have received few requests to rewrite my article SQL SERVER – Union vs. Union All – Which is better for performance? with examples. I request you to read my previous article first to understand what is the concept and read this article to understand the same concept with an example. Downgrade Database for Previous Version The main questions is how they can downgrade the from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2000? The answer is : Not Possible. Get Common Records From Two Tables Without Using Join Following is my scenario, Suppose Table 1 and Table 2 has same column e.g. Column1 Following is the query, 1. Select column1,column2 From Table1 2. Select column1 From Table2 I want to find common records from these tables, but I don’t want to use the Join clause because for that I need to specify the column name for Join condition. Will you help me to get common records without using Join condition? I am using SQL Server 2005. Retrieve – Select Only Date Part From DateTime – Best Practice – Part 2 A year ago I wrote a post about SQL SERVER – Retrieve – Select Only Date Part From DateTime – Best Practice where I have discussed two different methods of getting the date part from datetime. Introduction to CLR – Simple Example of CLR Stored Procedure CLR is an abbreviation of Common Language Runtime. In SQL Server 2005 and later version of it database objects can be created which are created in CLR. Stored Procedures, Functions, Triggers can be coded in CLR. CLR is faster than T-SQL in many cases. CLR is mainly used to accomplish tasks which are not possible by T-SQL or can use lots of resources. The CLR can be usually implemented where there is an intense string operation, thread management or iteration methods which can be complicated for T-SQL. Implementing CLR provides more security to the Extended Stored Procedure. 2009 Comic Slow Query – SQL Joke Before Presentation After Presentation Enable Automatic Statistic Update on Database In one of the recent projects, I found out that despite putting good indexes and optimizing the query, I could not achieve an optimized performance and I still received an unoptimized response from the SQL Server. On examination, I figured out that the culprit was statistics. The database that I was trying to optimize had auto update of the statistics was disabled. Recently Executed T-SQL Query Please refer to blog post  query to recently executed T-SQL query on database. Change Collation of Database Column – T-SQL Script – Consolidating Collations – Extention Script At some time in your DBA career, you may find yourself in a position when you sit back and realize that your database collations have somehow run amuck, or are faced with the ever annoying CANNOT RESOLVE COLLATION message when trying to join data of varying collation settings. 2010 Visiting Alma Mater – Delivering Session on Database Performance and Career – Nirma Institute of Technology Everyone always dreams of visiting their school and college, where they have studied once. It is a great feeling to see the college once again – where you have spent the wonderful golden years of your time. College time is filled with studies, education, emotions and several plans to build a future. I consider myself fortunate as I got the opportunity to study at some of the best places in the world. Change Column DataTypes There are times when I feel like writing that I am a day older in SQL Server. In fact, there are many who are looking for a solution that is simple enough. Have you ever searched online for something very simple. I often do and enjoy doing things which are straight forward and easy to change. 2011 Three DMVs – sys.dm_server_memory_dumps – sys.dm_server_services – sys.dm_server_registry In this blog post we will see three new DMVs which are introduced in Denali. The DMVs are very simple and there is not much to describe them. So here is the simple game. I will be asking a question back to you after seeing the result of the each of the DMV and you help me to complete this blog post. A Simple Quiz – T-SQL Brain Trick If you have some time, I strongly suggest you try this quiz out as it is for sure twists your brain. 2012 List All The Column With Specific Data Types in Database 5 years ago I wrote script SQL SERVER – 2005 – List All The Column With Specific Data Types, when I read it again, it is very much relevant and I liked it. This is one of the script which every developer would like to keep it handy. I have upgraded the script bit more. I have included few additional information which I believe I should have added from the beginning. It is difficult to visualize the final script when we are writing it first time. Find First Non-Numeric Character from String The function PATINDEX exists for quite a long time in SQL Server but I hardly see it being used. Well, at least I use it and I am comfortable using it. Here is a simple script which I use when I have to identify first non-numeric character. Finding Different ColumnName From Almost Identitical Tables Well here is the interesting example of how we can use sys.column catalogue views and get the details of the newly added column. I have previously written about EXCEPT over here which is very similar to MINUS of Oracle. Storing Data and Files in Cloud – Dropbox – Personal Technology Tip I thought long and hard about doing a Personal Technology Tips series for this blog.  I have so many tips I’d like to share.  I am on my computer almost all day, every day, so I have a treasure trove of interesting tidbits I like to share if given the chance.  The only thing holding me back – which tip to share first?  The first tip obviously has the weight of seeming like the most important.  But this would mean choosing amongst my favorite tricks and shortcuts.  This is a hard task. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

    Read the article

  • Oracle Tutor: Top 10 to Implement Sustainable Policies and Procedures

    - by emily.chorba(at)oracle.com
    Overview Your organization (executives, managers, and employees) understands the value of having written business process documents (process maps, procedures, instructions, reference documents, and form abstracts). Policies and procedures should be documented because they help to reduce the range of individual decisions and encourage management by exception: the manager only needs to give special attention to unusual problems, not covered by a specific policy or procedure. As more and more procedures are written to cover recurring situations, managers will begin to make decisions which will be consistent from one functional area to the next.Companies should take a project management approach when implementing an environment for a sustainable documentation program and do the following:1. Identify an Executive Champion2. Put together a winning team3. Assign ownership4. Centralize publishing5. Establish the Document Maintenance Process Up Front6. Document critical activities only7. Document actual practice8. Minimize documentation9. Support continuous improvement10. Keep it simple 1. Identify an Executive ChampionAppoint a top down driver. Select one key individual to be a mentor for the procedure planning team. The individual should be a senior manager, such as your company president, CIO, CFO, the vice-president of quality, manufacturing, or engineering. Written policies and procedures can be important supportive aids when known to express the thinking for the chief executive officer and / or the president and to have his or her full support. 2. Put Together a Winning TeamChoose a strong Project Management Leader and staff the procedure planning team with management members from cross functional groups. Make sure team members have the responsibility - and the authority - to make things happen.The winning team should consist of the Documentation Project Manager, Document Owners (one for each functional area), a Document Controller, and Document Specialists (as needed). The Tutor Implementation Guide has complete job descriptions for these roles. 3. Assign Ownership It is virtually impossible to keep process documentation simple and meaningful if employees who are far removed from the activity itself create it. It is impossible to keep documentation up-to-date when responsibility for the document is not clearly understood.Key to the Tutor methodology, therefore, is the concept of ownership. Each document has a single owner, who is responsible for ensuring that the document is necessary and that it reflects actual practice. The owner must be a person who is knowledgeable about the activity and who has the authority to build consensus among the persons who participate in the activity as well as the authority to define or change the way an activity is performed. The owner must be an advocate of the performers and negotiate, not dictate practices.In the Tutor environment, a document's owner is the only person with the authority to approve an update to that document. 4. Centralize Publishing Although it is tempting (especially in a networked environment and with document management software solutions) to decentralize the control of all documents -- with each owner updating and distributing his own -- Tutor promotes centralized publishing by assigning the Document Administrator (gate keeper) to manage the updates and distribution of the procedures library. 5. Establish a Document Maintenance Process Up Front (and stick to it) Everyone in your organization should know they are invited to suggest changes to procedures and should understand exactly what steps to take to do so. Tutor provides a set of procedures to help your company set up a healthy document control system. There are many document management products available to automate some of the document change and maintenance steps. Depending on the size of your organization, a simple document management system can reduce the effort it takes to track and distribute document changes and updates. Whether your company decides to store the written policies and procedures on a file server or in a database, the essential tasks for maintaining documents are the same, though some tasks are automated. 6. Document Critical Activities Only The best way to keep your documentation simple is to reduce the number of process documents to a bare minimum and to include in those documents only as much detail as is absolutely necessary. The first step to reducing process documentation is to document only those activities that are deemed critical. Not all activities require documentation. In fact, some critical activities cannot and should not be standardized. Others may be sufficiently documented with an instruction or a checklist and may not require a procedure. A document should only be created when it enhances the performance of the employee performing the activity. If it does not help the employee, then there is no reason to maintain the document. Activities that represent little risk (such as project status), activities that cannot be defined in terms of specific tasks (such as product research), and activities that can be performed in a variety of ways (such as advertising) often do not require documentation. Sometimes, an activity will evolve to the point where documentation is necessary. For example, an activity performed by single employee may be straightforward and uncomplicated -- that is, until the activity is performed by multiple employees. Sometimes, it is the interaction between co-workers that necessitates documentation; sometimes, it is the complexity or the diversity of the activity.7. Document Actual Practices The only reason to maintain process documentation is to enhance the performance of the employee performing the activity. And documentation can only enhance performance if it reflects reality -- that is, current best practice. Documentation that reflects an unattainable ideal or outdated practices will end up on the shelf, unused and forgotten.Documenting actual practice means (1) auditing the activity to understand how the work is really performed, (2) identifying best practices with employees who are involved in the activity, (3) building consensus so that everyone agrees on a common method, and (4) recording that consensus.8. Minimize Documentation One way to keep it simple is to document at the highest level possible. That is, include in your documents only as much detail as is absolutely necessary.When writing a document, you should ask yourself, What is the purpose of this document? That is, what problem will it solve?By focusing on this question, you can target the critical information.• What questions are the end users likely to have?• What level of detail is required?• Is any of this information extraneous to the document's purpose? Short, concise documents are user friendly and they are easier to keep up to date. 9. Support Continuous Improvement Employees who perform an activity are often in the best position to identify improvements to the process. In other words, continuous improvement is a natural byproduct of the work itself -- but only if the improvements are communicated to all employees who are involved in the process, and only if there is consensus among those employees.Traditionally, process documentation has been used to dictate performance, to limit employees' actions. In the Tutor environment, process documents are used to communicate improvements identified by employees. How does this work? The Tutor methodology requires a process document to reflect actual practice, so the owner of a document must routinely audit its content -- does the document match what the employees are doing? If it doesn't, the owner has the responsibility to evaluate the process, to build consensus among the employees, to identify "best practices," and to communicate these improvements via a document update. Continuous improvement can also be an outgrowth of corrective action -- but only if the solutions to problems are communicated effectively. The goal should be to solve a problem once and only once, which means not only identifying the solution, but ensuring that the solution becomes part of the process. The Tutor system provides the method through which improvements and solutions are documented and communicated to all affected employees in a cost-effective, timely manner; it ensures that improvements are not lost or confined to a single employee. 10. Keep it Simple Process documents don't have to be complex and unfriendly. In fact, the simpler the format and organization, the more likely the documents will be used. And the simpler the method of maintenance, the more likely the documents will be kept up-to-date. Keep it simply by:• Minimizing skills and training required• Following the established Tutor document format and layout• Avoiding technology just for technology's sake No other rule has as major an impact on the success of your internal documentation as -- keep it simple. Learn More For more information about Tutor, visit Oracle.Com or the Tutor Blog. Post your questions at the Tutor Forum.   Emily Chorba Principle Product Manager Oracle Tutor & BPM 

    Read the article

  • DBCC CHECKDB on VVLDB and latches (Or: My Pain is Your Gain)

    - by Argenis
      Does your CHECKDB hurt, Argenis? There is a classic blog series by Paul Randal [blog|twitter] called “CHECKDB From Every Angle” which is pretty much mandatory reading for anybody who’s even remotely considering going for the MCM certification, or its replacement (the Microsoft Certified Solutions Master: Data Platform – makes my fingers hurt just from typing it). Of particular interest is the post “Consistency Options for a VLDB” – on it, Paul provides solid, timeless advice (I use the word “timeless” because it was written in 2007, and it all applies today!) on how to perform checks on very large databases. Well, here I was trying to figure out how to make CHECKDB run faster on a restored copy of one of our databases, which happens to exceed 7TB in size. The whole thing was taking several days on multiple systems, regardless of the storage used – SAS, SATA or even SSD…and I actually didn’t pay much attention to how long it was taking, or even bothered to look at the reasons why - as long as it was finishing okay and found no consistency errors. Yes – I know. That was a huge mistake, as corruption found in a database several days after taking place could only allow for further spread of the corruption – and potentially large data loss. In the last two weeks I increased my attention towards this problem, as we noticed that CHECKDB was taking EVEN LONGER on brand new all-flash storage in the SAN! I couldn’t really explain it, and were almost ready to blame the storage vendor. The vendor told us that they could initially see the server driving decent I/O – around 450Mb/sec, and then it would settle at a very slow rate of 10Mb/sec or so. “Hum”, I thought – “CHECKDB is just not pushing the I/O subsystem hard enough”. Perfmon confirmed the vendor’s observations. Dreaded @BlobEater What was CHECKDB doing all the time while doing so little I/O? Eating Blobs. It turns out that CHECKDB was taking an extremely long time on one of our frankentables, which happens to be have 35 billion rows (yup, with a b) and sucks up several terabytes of space in the database. We do have a project ongoing to purge/split/partition this table, so it’s just a matter of time before we deal with it. But the reality today is that CHECKDB is coming to a screeching halt in performance when dealing with this particular table. Checking sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks and sys.dm_os_latch_stats showed that LATCH_EX (DBCC_OBJECT_METADATA) was by far the top wait type. I remembered hearing recently about that wait from another post that Paul Randal made, but that was related to computed-column indexes, and in fact, Paul himself reminded me of his article via twitter. But alas, our pathologic table had no non-clustered indexes on computed columns. I knew that latches are used by the database engine to do internal synchronization – but how could I help speed this up? After all, this is stuff that doesn’t have a lot of knobs to tweak. (There’s a fantastic level 500 talk by Bob Ward from Microsoft CSS [blog|twitter] called “Inside SQL Server Latches” given at PASS 2010 – and you can check it out here. DISCLAIMER: I assume no responsibility for any brain melting that might ensue from watching Bob’s talk!) Failed Hypotheses Earlier on this week I flew down to Palo Alto, CA, to visit our Headquarters – and after having a great time with my Monkey peers, I was relaxing on the plane back to Seattle watching a great talk by SQL Server MVP and fellow MCM Maciej Pilecki [twitter] called “Masterclass: A Day in the Life of a Database Transaction” where he discusses many different topics related to transaction management inside SQL Server. Very good stuff, and when I got home it was a little late – that slow DBCC CHECKDB that I had been dealing with was way in the back of my head. As I was looking at the problem at hand earlier on this week, I thought “How about I set the database to read-only?” I remembered one of the things Maciej had (jokingly) said in his talk: “if you don’t want locking and blocking, set the database to read-only” (or something to that effect, pardon my loose memory). I immediately killed the CHECKDB which had been running painfully for days, and set the database to read-only mode. Then I ran DBCC CHECKDB against it. It started going really fast (even a bit faster than before), and then throttled down again to around 10Mb/sec. All sorts of expletives went through my head at the time. Sure enough, the same latching scenario was present. Oh well. I even spent some time trying to figure out if NUMA was hurting performance. Folks on Twitter made suggestions in this regard (thanks, Lonny! [twitter]) …Eureka? This past Friday I was still scratching my head about the whole thing; I was ready to start profiling with XPERF to see if I could figure out which part of the engine was to blame and then get Microsoft to look at the evidence. After getting a bunch of good news I’ll blog about separately, I sat down for a figurative smack down with CHECKDB before the weekend. And then the light bulb went on. A sparse column. I thought that I couldn’t possibly be experiencing the same scenario that Paul blogged about back in March showing extreme latching with non-clustered indexes on computed columns. Did I even have a non-clustered index on my sparse column? As it turns out, I did. I had one filtered non-clustered index – with the sparse column as the index key (and only column). To prove that this was the problem, I went and setup a test. Yup, that'll do it The repro is very simple for this issue: I tested it on the latest public builds of SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 (CU6) and SQL Server 2012 SP1 (CU4). First, create a test database and a test table, which only needs to contain a sparse column: CREATE DATABASE SparseColTest; GO USE SparseColTest; GO CREATE TABLE testTable (testCol smalldatetime SPARSE NULL); GO INSERT INTO testTable (testCol) VALUES (NULL); GO 1000000 That’s 1 million rows, and even though you’re inserting NULLs, that’s going to take a while. In my laptop, it took 3 minutes and 31 seconds. Next, we run DBCC CHECKDB against the database: DBCC CHECKDB('SparseColTest') WITH NO_INFOMSGS, ALL_ERRORMSGS; This runs extremely fast, as least on my test rig – 198 milliseconds. Now let’s create a filtered non-clustered index on the sparse column: CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [badBadIndex] ON testTable (testCol) WHERE testCol IS NOT NULL; With the index in place now, let’s run DBCC CHECKDB one more time: DBCC CHECKDB('SparseColTest') WITH NO_INFOMSGS, ALL_ERRORMSGS; In my test system this statement completed in 11433 milliseconds. 11.43 full seconds. Quite the jump from 198 milliseconds. I went ahead and dropped the filtered non-clustered indexes on the restored copy of our production database, and ran CHECKDB against that. We went down from 7+ days to 19 hours and 20 minutes. Cue the “Argenis is not impressed” meme, please, Mr. LaRock. My pain is your gain, folks. Go check to see if you have any of such indexes – they’re likely causing your consistency checks to run very, very slow. Happy CHECKDBing, -Argenis ps: I plan to file a Connect item for this issue – I consider it a pretty serious bug in the engine. After all, filtered indexes were invented BECAUSE of the sparse column feature – and it makes a lot of sense to use them together. Watch this space and my twitter timeline for a link.

    Read the article

  • Community Outreach - Where Should I Go

    - by Roger Brinkley
    A few days ago I was talking to person new to community development and they asked me what guidelines I used to determine the worthiness of a particular event. After our conversation was over I thought about it a little bit more and figured out there are three ways to determine if any event (be it conference, blog, podcast or other social medias) is worth doing: Transferability, Multiplication, and Impact. Transferability - Is what I have to say useful to the people that are going to hear it. For instance, consider a company that has product offering that can connect up using a number of languages like Scala, Grovey or Java. Sending a Scala expert to talk about Scala and the product is not transferable to a Java User Group, but a Java expert doing the same talk with a Java slant is. Similarly, talking about JavaFX to any Java User Group meeting in Brazil was pretty much a wasted effort until it was open sourced. Once it was open sourced it was well received. You can also look at transferability in relation to the subject matter that you're dealing with. How transferable is a presentation that I create. Can I, or a technical writer on the staff, turn it into some technical document. Could it be converted into some type of screen cast. If we have a regular podcast can we make a reference to the document, catch the high points or turn it into a interview. Is there a way of using this in the sales group. In other words is the document purely one dimensional or can it be re-purposed in other forms. Multiplication - On every trip I'm looking for 2 to 5 solid connections that I can make with developers. These are long term connections, because I know that once that relationship is established it will lead to another 2 - 5 from that connection and within a couple of years were talking about some 100 connections from just one developer. For instance, when I was working on JavaHelp in 2000 I hired a science teacher with a programming background. We've developed a very tight relationship over the year though we rarely see each other more than once a year. But at this JavaOne, one of his employees came up to me and said, "Richard (Rick Hard in Czech) told me to tell you that he couldn't make it to JavaOne this year but if I saw you to tell you hi". Another example is from my Mobile & Embedded days in Brasil. On our very first FISL trip about 5 years ago there were two university students that had created a project called "Marge". Marge was a Bluetooth framework that made connecting bluetooth devices easier. I invited them to a "Sun" dinner that evening. Originally they were planning on leaving that afternoon, but they changed their plans recognizing the opportunity. Their eyes were as big a saucers when they realized the level of engineers at the meeting. They went home started a JUG in Florianoplis that we've visited more than a couple of times. One of them went to work for Brazilian government lab like Berkley Labs, MIT Lab, John Hopkins Applied Physicas Labs or Lincoln Labs in the US. That presented us with an opportunity to show Embedded Java as a possibility for some of the work they were doing there. Impact - The final criteria is how life changing is what I'm going to say be to the individuals I'm reaching. A t-shirt is just a token, but when I reach down and tug at their developer hearts then I know I've succeeded. I'll never forget one time we flew all night to reach Joan Pasoa in Northern Brazil. We arrived at 2am went immediately to our hotel only to be woken up at 6 am to travel 2 hours by car to the presentation hall. When we arrived we were totally exhausted. Outside the facility there were 500 people lined up to hear 6 speakers for the day. That itself was uplifting.  I delivered one of my favorite talks on "I have passion". It was a talk on golf and embedded java development, "Find your passion". When we finished a couple of first year students came up to me and said how much my talk had inspired them. FISL is another great example. I had been about 4 years in a row. FISL is a very young group of developers so capturing their attention is important. Several of the students will come back 2 or 3 years later and ask me questions about research or jobs. And then there's Louis. Louis is one my favorite Brazilians. I can only describe him as a big Brazilian teddy bear. I see him every year at FISL. He works primarily in Java EE but he's attended every single one of my talks over the last 4 years. I can't tell you why, but he always greets me and gives me a hug. For some reason I've had a real impact. And of course when it comes to impact you don't just measure a presentation but every single interaction you have at an event. It's the hall way conversations, the booth conversations, but more importantly it's the conversations at dinner tables or in the cars when you're getting transported to an event. There's a good story that illustrates this. Last year in the spring I was traveling to Goiânia in Brazil. I've been there many times and leaders there no me well. One young man has picked me up at the airport on more than one occasion. We were going out to dinner one evening and he brought his girl friend along. One thing let to another and I eventually asked him, in front of her, "Why haven't you asked her to marry you?" There were all kinds of excuses and she just looked at him and smiled. When I came back in December for JavaOne he came and sought me. "I just want to tell you that I thought a lot about what you said, and I asked her to marry me. We're getting married next Spring." Sometimes just one presentation is all it takes to make an impact. Other times it takes years. Some impacts are directly related to the company and some are more personal in nature. It doesn't matter which it is because it's having the impact that matters.

    Read the article

  • PASS: SQLRally Thoughts

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

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145  | Next Page >