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• HDMI video connection cuts top and bottom borders of screen

  - by Luis Alvarado

  Ok this is an extension of another problem I had with a VGA connection and an Nvidia Geforce GT 440 card. Here is goes the explanation of this particular problem: I have a Soneview 32' TV. This TV has many connections including VGA (First reason I bought it), HDMI (Second reason but did not have a HDMI cable at that time) and DVI. I have had this TV for little over a month now, actually I had it to celebrate the release of Ubuntu 11.10 and started using it exactly on that date (I know too much fan there but hey, I like geek stuff). I started using it with the VGA cable. After 2 weeks I bought an Nvidia GT440 card. The previous 9500GT was working correctly with no problems whatsoever. I installed the GT440 and the first problem that I encountered using this latest card is mentioned here: Nvidia GT 440 black screen problem when loading lightdm greeter. The solution to this problem was to actually disconnect then connect again the VGA cable. This would result in the screen showing me the lightdm screen for my login. If I did not disconnect then connect the cable I could be there forever thinking that there is no video signal. I got tired of looking for answers that did not work and for solutions that made me literally have to install Ubuntu again. I just went and bought a HDMI cable and changed the VGA one for that one. It worked and I did not have to disconnect/connect the cable but now I have this problem when using any resolution. My normal resolution is 1920x1080 (This TV is 1080HD) so in VGA I could use this resolution with no problem, but on HDMI am getting the borders cut out. Here is a pic: As you can see from the PIC, the Launcher icons only show less than 50% of their witdh. Forget about the top and bottom parts, I can access them with the mouse but I can not visualize them in the screen. It is like it's outside of the TVs view. Basically there is like 20 to 30 pixels gone from all sides. I searched around and came to running xrand --verbose to see what it could detect from the TV. I got this: cyrex@cyrex:~$ xrandr --verbose xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default Screen 0: minimum 320 x 175, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 1920 x 1080 default connected 1920x1080+0+0 (0x164) normal (normal) 0mm x 0mm Identifier: 0x163 Timestamp: 465485 Subpixel: unknown Clones: CRTC: 0 CRTCs: 0 Transform: 1.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000 filter: 1920x1080 (0x164) 103.7MHz *current h: width 1920 start 0 end 0 total 1920 skew 0 clock 54.0KHz v: height 1080 start 0 end 0 total 1080 clock 50.0Hz 1920x1080 (0x165) 105.8MHz h: width 1920 start 0 end 0 total 1920 skew 0 clock 55.1KHz v: height 1080 start 0 end 0 total 1080 clock 51.0Hz 1920x1080 (0x166) 107.8MHz h: width 1920 start 0 end 0 total 1920 skew 0 clock 56.2KHz v: height 1080 start 0 end 0 total 1080 clock 52.0Hz 1920x1080 (0x167) 109.9MHz h: width 1920 start 0 end 0 total 1920 skew 0 clock 57.2KHz v: height 1080 start 0 end 0 total 1080 clock 53.0Hz 1920x1080 (0x168) 112.0MHz h: width 1920 start 0 end 0 total 1920 skew 0 clock 58.3KHz v: height 1080 start 0 end 0 total 1080 clock 54.0Hz 1920x1080 (0x169) 114.0MHz h: width 1920 start 0 end 0 total 1920 skew 0 clock 59.4KHz v: height 1080 start 0 end 0 total 1080 clock 55.0Hz 1680x1050 (0x16a) 98.8MHz h: width 1680 start 0 end 0 total 1680 skew 0 clock 58.8KHz v: height 1050 start 0 end 0 total 1050 clock 56.0Hz 1680x1050 (0x16b) 100.5MHz h: width 1680 start 0 end 0 total 1680 skew 0 clock 59.9KHz v: height 1050 start 0 end 0 total 1050 clock 57.0Hz 1600x1024 (0x16c) 95.0MHz h: width 1600 start 0 end 0 total 1600 skew 0 clock 59.4KHz v: height 1024 start 0 end 0 total 1024 clock 58.0Hz 1440x900 (0x16d) 76.5MHz h: width 1440 start 0 end 0 total 1440 skew 0 clock 53.1KHz v: height 900 start 0 end 0 total 900 clock 59.0Hz 1360x768 (0x171) 65.8MHz h: width 1360 start 0 end 0 total 1360 skew 0 clock 48.4KHz v: height 768 start 0 end 0 total 768 clock 63.0Hz 1360x768 (0x172) 66.8MHz h: width 1360 start 0 end 0 total 1360 skew 0 clock 49.2KHz v: height 768 start 0 end 0 total 768 clock 64.0Hz 1280x1024 (0x173) 85.2MHz h: width 1280 start 0 end 0 total 1280 skew 0 clock 66.6KHz v: height 1024 start 0 end 0 total 1024 clock 65.0Hz 1280x960 (0x176) 83.6MHz h: width 1280 start 0 end 0 total 1280 skew 0 clock 65.3KHz v: height 960 start 0 end 0 total 960 clock 68.0Hz 1280x960 (0x177) 84.8MHz h: width 1280 start 0 end 0 total 1280 skew 0 clock 66.2KHz v: height 960 start 0 end 0 total 960 clock 69.0Hz 1280x720 (0x178) 64.5MHz h: width 1280 start 0 end 0 total 1280 skew 0 clock 50.4KHz v: height 720 start 0 end 0 total 720 clock 70.0Hz 1280x720 (0x179) 65.4MHz h: width 1280 start 0 end 0 total 1280 skew 0 clock 51.1KHz v: height 720 start 0 end 0 total 720 clock 71.0Hz 1280x720 (0x17a) 66.4MHz h: width 1280 start 0 end 0 total 1280 skew 0 clock 51.8KHz v: height 720 start 0 end 0 total 720 clock 72.0Hz 1152x864 (0x17b) 72.7MHz h: width 1152 start 0 end 0 total 1152 skew 0 clock 63.1KHz v: height 864 start 0 end 0 total 864 clock 73.0Hz 1152x864 (0x17c) 73.7MHz h: width 1152 start 0 end 0 total 1152 skew 0 clock 63.9KHz v: height 864 start 0 end 0 total 864 clock 74.0Hz ....Many Resolutions later... 320x200 (0x1d1) 10.2MHz h: width 320 start 0 end 0 total 320 skew 0 clock 31.8KHz v: height 200 start 0 end 0 total 200 clock 159.0Hz 320x175 (0x1d2) 9.0MHz h: width 320 start 0 end 0 total 320 skew 0 clock 28.0KHz v: height 175 start 0 end 0 total 175 clock 160.0Hz 1920x1080 (0x1dd) 333.8MHz h: width 1920 start 0 end 0 total 1920 skew 0 clock 173.9KHz v: height 1080 start 0 end 0 total 1080 clock 161.0Hz If it helps, the Refresh Rate at 1920x1080 is 60. There is a flickering effect at this resolution using HDMI but not VGA which I imagine is related to the borders cut off issue am asking here. I have also done the following but this will only solve the problem on lower resolutions than 1920x1080 or on others TV (My father has a Sony TV where this problem is also solved): NVIDIA WAY Go to Nvidia-Settings and there will be an option that will have more features if a HDMI cable is connected. In the next pic the option is DFP-1 (CNDLCD) but this name changes depending on what device the PC is connected to: Uncheck Force Full GPU Scaling What this will do for resolutions LOWER than 1920x1080 (At least in my case) is solve the flickering problem and fix the borders cut by the monitor. Save to Xorg.conf file the changes made after changing to a resolution acceptable to your eyes. TV WAY If you TV has OSD Menu and this menu has options for scanning the screen resolution or auto adjusting to it, disable them. Specifically the option about SCAN. If you have an option for AV Mode disable it. Basically disable any option that needs to scan and scale the resolution. Test one by one. In the case of my father's TV this did it. In my case, the Nvidia solved it for lower resolutions. NOTE: In the case this is not solved in the next couple of weeks I will add this as the answer but take into consideration that the issue is still active with 1920x1080 resolutions.

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• Customize the Five Windows Folder Templates

  - by Mark Virtue

  Are you’re particular about the way Windows Explorer presents each folder’s contents? Here we show you how to take advantage of Explorer’s built-in templates, which cuts down the time it takes to do customizations. Note: The techniques in this article apply to Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. When opening a folder for the first time in Windows Explorer, we are presented with a standard default view of the files and folders in that folder. It may be that the items are presented are perfectly fine, but on the other hand, we may want to customize the view.  The aspects of it that we can customize are the following: The display type (list view, details, tiles, thumbnails, etc) Which columns are displayed, and in which order The widths of the visible columns The order in which the files and folders are sorted Any file groupings Thankfully, Windows offers us a shortcut.  A particular folder’s settings can be used as a “template” for other, similar folders.  In fact, we can store up to five separate sets of folder presentation configurations.  Once we save the settings for a particular template, that template can then be applied to other folders. Customize Your First Folder We’ll start by setting up the first of our templates – the default one.  Once we create this template and apply it, the vast majority of the folders in our file system will change to match it, so it’s important that we set it up very carefully.  The first step in creating and applying the template is to customize one folder with the settings that all the rest will have. Choose a folder that is typical of the folders that you wish to have this default template.  Select it in Windows Explorer.  To ensure that it is a suitable candidate, right-click the folder name and select Properties, then go to the Customize tab.  Ensure that this folder is marked as General Items.  If it is not, either choose a different folder or select General Items from the list. Click OK.  Now we’re ready to customize our first folder. Changing the way one single folder is presented is straightforward.  We start with the folder’s display type.  Click the Change your view button in the top-right corner of every Explorer window. Each time you click the button, the folder’s view cycles to the next view type.  Alternatively you can click the little down-arrow next to the button to see all the display types at once, and select the one you want. Click the view you want, or drag the slider next to the one you want. If you have chosen Details, then the next thing you may wish to change is which columns are displayed, and the order of these.  To choose which columns are displayed, simply right-click on any column heading.  A list of the columns currently being display appears. Simply uncheck a column if you don’t want it displayed, and check the columns that you want displayed.  If you want some information displayed about your files that is not listed here, then click the More… button for a full list of file attributes. There’s a lot of them! To change the order of the columns that are currently being displayed, simply click on a column heading and drag it to where you think it should be.  To change the width of a column, click the line that represents the right-hand edge of the column and drag it left or right. To sort by a column, click once on that column.  To reverse the sort-order, click that same column again. To change the groupings of the files in the folder, right-click in a blank area of the folder, select Group by, and select the appropriate column. Apply This Default Template to All Similar Folders Once you have the folder exactly the way you want it, we now use this folder as our default template for most of the folders in our file system.  To do this, ensure that you are still in the folder you just customized, and then, from the Organize menu in Explorer, click on Folder and search options. Then select the View tab and click the Apply to Folders button. After you’ve clicked OK, visit some of the other folders in your file system.  You should see that most have taken on these new settings. What we’ve just done, in effect, is we have customized the General Items template.  This is one of five templates that Windows Explorer uses to display folder contents.  The five templates are called (in Windows 7): General Items Documents Pictures Music Videos When a folder is opened, Windows Explorer examines the contents to see if it can automatically determine which folder template to use to display the folder contents.  If it is not obvious that the folder contents falls into any of the last four templates, then Windows Explorer chooses the General Items template.  That’s why most of the folders in your file system are shown using the General Items template. Changing the Other Four Templates If you want to adjust the other four templates, the process is very similar to what we’ve just done.  If you wanted to change the “Music” template, for example, the steps would be as follows: Select a folder that contains music items Apply the existing Music template to the folder (even if it doesn’t look like you want it to) Customize the folder to your personal preferences Apply the new template to all “Music” folders A fifth step would be:  When you open a folder that contains music items but is not automatically displayed using the Music template, you manually select the Music template for that folder. First, select a folder that contains music items.  It will probably be displayed using the existing Music template: Next, ensure that it is using the Music template.  If it’s not, then manually select the Music template. Next, customize the folder to suit your personal preferences (here we’ve added a couple of columns, and sorted by Artist). Now we can set this view to be our Music template.  Choose Organize, then the View tab, and click the Apply to Folders button. Note: The only folders that will inherit these settings are the ones that are currently (or will soon be) using the Music template. Now, if you have any folder that contains music items, and you want it to inherit all of these settings, then right-click the folder name, choose Properties, and select that this folder should use the Music template.  You can also cehck the box entitled Also apply this template to all subfolders if you want to save yourself even more time with all the sub-folders. Conclusion It’s neat to be able to set up templates for your folder views like this.  It’s a shame that Microsoft didn’t take the concept just a little further and allow you to create as many templates as you want. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fix For When Windows Explorer in Vista Stops Showing File NamesCustomize the Windows 7 or Vista Send To MenuFix for New Contact Group Button Not Displaying in VistaWhy Did Windows Vista’s Music Folder Icon Turn Yellow?Make Your Last Minute Holiday Cards with Microsoft Word TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7

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• Use Autoruns to Manually Clean an Infected PC

  - by Mark Virtue

  There are many anti-malware programs out there that will clean your system of nasties, but what happens if you’re not able to use such a program?  Autoruns, from SysInternals (recently acquired by Microsoft), is indispensable when removing malware manually. There are a few reasons why you may need to remove viruses and spyware manually: Perhaps you can’t abide running resource-hungry and invasive anti-malware programs on your PC You might need to clean your mom’s computer (or someone else who doesn’t understand that a big flashing sign on a website that says “Your computer is infected with a virus – click HERE to remove it” is not a message that can necessarily be trusted) The malware is so aggressive that it resists all attempts to automatically remove it, or won’t even allow you to install anti-malware software Part of your geek credo is the belief that anti-spyware utilities are for wimps Autoruns is an invaluable addition to any geek’s software toolkit.  It allows you to track and control all programs (and program components) that start automatically with Windows (or with Internet Explorer).  Virtually all malware is designed to start automatically, so there’s a very strong chance that it can be detected and removed with the help of Autoruns. We have covered how to use Autoruns in an earlier article, which you should read if you need to first familiarize yourself with the program. Autoruns is a standalone utility that does not need to be installed on your computer.  It can be simply downloaded, unzipped and run (link below).  This makes is ideally suited for adding to your portable utility collection on your flash drive. When you start Autoruns for the first time on a computer, you are presented with the license agreement: After agreeing to the terms, the main Autoruns window opens, showing you the complete list of all software that will run when your computer starts, when you log in, or when you open Internet Explorer: To temporarily disable a program from launching, uncheck the box next to it’s entry.  Note:  This does not terminate the program if it is running at the time – it merely prevents it from starting next time.  To permanently prevent a program from launching, delete the entry altogether (use the Delete key, or right-click and choose Delete from the context-menu)).  Note:  This does not remove the program from your computer – to remove it completely you need to uninstall the program (or otherwise delete it from your hard disk). Suspicious Software It can take a fair bit of experience (read “trial and error”) to become adept at identifying what is malware and what is not.  Most of the entries presented in Autoruns are legitimate programs, even if their names are unfamiliar to you.  Here are some tips to help you differentiate the malware from the legitimate software: If an entry is digitally signed by a software publisher (i.e. there’s an entry in the Publisher column) or has a “Description”, then there’s a good chance that it’s legitimate If you recognize the software’s name, then it’s usually okay.  Note that occasionally malware will “impersonate” legitimate software, but adopting a name that’s identical or similar to software you’re familiar with (e.g. “AcrobatLauncher” or “PhotoshopBrowser”).  Also, be aware that many malware programs adopt generic or innocuous-sounding names, such as “Diskfix” or “SearchHelper” (both mentioned below). Malware entries usually appear on the Logon tab of Autoruns (but not always!) If you open up the folder that contains the EXE or DLL file (more on this below), an examine the “last modified” date, the dates are often from the last few days (assuming that your infection is fairly recent) Malware is often located in the C:\Windows folder or the C:\Windows\System32 folder Malware often only has a generic icon (to the left of the name of the entry) If in doubt, right-click the entry and select Search Online… The list below shows two suspicious looking entries:  Diskfix and SearchHelper These entries, highlighted above, are fairly typical of malware infections: They have neither descriptions nor publishers They have generic names The files are located in C:\Windows\System32 They have generic icons The filenames are random strings of characters If you look in the C:\Windows\System32 folder and locate the files, you’ll see that they are some of the most recently modified files in the folder (see below) Double-clicking on the items will take you to their corresponding registry keys: Removing the Malware Once you’ve identified the entries you believe to be suspicious, you now need to decide what you want to do with them.  Your choices include: Temporarily disable the Autorun entry Permanently delete the Autorun entry Locate the running process (using Task Manager or similar) and terminating it Delete the EXE or DLL file from your disk (or at least move it to a folder where it won’t be automatically started) or all of the above, depending upon how certain you are that the program is malware. To see if your changes succeeded, you will need to reboot your machine, and check any or all of the following: Autoruns – to see if the entry has returned Task Manager (or similar) – to see if the program was started again after the reboot Check the behavior that led you to believe that your PC was infected in the first place.  If it’s no longer happening, chances are that your PC is now clean Conclusion This solution isn’t for everyone and is most likely geared to advanced users. Usually using a quality Antivirus application does the trick, but if not Autoruns is a valuable tool in your Anti-Malware kit. Keep in mind that some malware is harder to remove than others.  Sometimes you need several iterations of the steps above, with each iteration requiring you to look more carefully at each Autorun entry.  Sometimes the instant that you remove the Autorun entry, the malware that is running replaces the entry.  When this happens, we need to become more aggressive in our assassination of the malware, including terminating programs (even legitimate programs like Explorer.exe) that are infected with malware DLLs. Shortly we will be publishing an article on how to identify, locate and terminate processes that represent legitimate programs but are running infected DLLs, in order that those DLLs can be deleted from the system. Download Autoruns from SysInternals Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Autoruns Tool to Track Startup Applications and Add-onsHow To Get Detailed Information About Your PCSUPERAntiSpyware Portable is the Must-Have Spyware Removal Tool You NeedQuick Tip: Windows Vista Temp Files DirectoryClear Recent Commands From the Run Dialog in Windows XP TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox) OldTvShows.org – Find episodes of Hitchcock, Soaps, Game Shows and more Download Microsoft Office Help tab

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• How to use ULS in SharePoint 2010 for Custom Code Exception Logging?

  - by venkatx5

  What is ULS in SharePoint 2010? ULS stands for Unified Logging Service which captures and writes Exceptions/Logs in Log File(A Plain Text File with .log extension). SharePoint logs Each and every exceptions with ULS. SharePoint Administrators should know ULS and it's very useful when anything goes wrong. but when you ask any SharePoint 2007 Administrator to check log file then most of them will Kill you. Because read and understand the log file is not so easy. Imagine open a plain text file of 20 MB in NotePad and go thru line by line. Now Microsoft developed a tool "ULS Viewer" to view those Log files in easily readable format. This tools also helps to filter events based on exception priority. You can read on this blog to know in details about ULS Viewer . Where to get ULS Viewer? ULS Viewer is developed by Microsoft and available to download for free. URL : http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ULSViewer/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=3308 Note: Eventhought this tool developed by Microsoft, it's not supported by Microsoft. Means you can't support for this tool from Microsoft and use it on your own Risk. By the way what's the risk in viewing Log Files?! How to use ULS in SharePoint 2010 Custom Code? ULS can be extended to use in user solutions to log exceptions. In Detail, Developer can use ULS to log his own application errors and exceptions on SharePoint Log files. So now all in Single Place (That's why it's called "Unified Logging"). Well in this article I am going to use Waldek's Code (Reference Link). However the article is core and am writing container for that (Basically how to implement the code in Detail). Let's see the steps. Open Visual Studio 2010 -> File -> New Project -> Visual C# -> Windows -> Class Library -> Name : ULSLogger (Make sure you've selected .net Framework 3.5)   In Solution Explorer Panel, Rename the Class1.cs to LoggingService.cs   Right Click on References -> Add Reference -> Under .Net tab select "Microsoft.SharePoint"   Right Click on the Project -> Properties. Select "Signing" Tab -> Check "Sign the Assembly".   In the below drop down select <New> and enter "ULSLogger", uncheck the "Protect my key with a Password" option.   Now copy the below code and paste. (Or Just refer.. :-) ) using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.SharePoint; using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration; using System.Runtime.InteropServices; namespace ULSLogger { public class LoggingService : SPDiagnosticsServiceBase { public static string vsDiagnosticAreaName = "Venkats SharePoint Logging Service"; public static string CategoryName = "vsProject"; public static uint uintEventID = 700; // Event ID private static LoggingService _Current; public static LoggingService Current {  get   {    if (_Current == null)     {       _Current = new LoggingService();     }    return _Current;   } }private LoggingService() : base("Venkats SharePoint Logging Service", SPFarm.Local) {}protected override IEnumerable<SPDiagnosticsArea> ProvideAreas() { List<SPDiagnosticsArea> areas = new List<SPDiagnosticsArea>  {   new SPDiagnosticsArea(vsDiagnosticAreaName, new List<SPDiagnosticsCategory>    {     new SPDiagnosticsCategory(CategoryName, TraceSeverity.Medium, EventSeverity.Error)    })   }; return areas; }public static string LogErrorInULS(string errorMessage) { string strExecutionResult = "Message Not Logged in ULS. "; try  {   SPDiagnosticsCategory category = LoggingService.Current.Areas[vsDiagnosticAreaName].Categories[CategoryName];   LoggingService.Current.WriteTrace(uintEventID, category, TraceSeverity.Unexpected, errorMessage);   strExecutionResult = "Message Logged"; } catch (Exception ex) {  strExecutionResult += ex.Message; } return strExecutionResult; }public static string LogErrorInULS(string errorMessage, TraceSeverity tsSeverity) { string strExecutionResult = "Message Not Logged in ULS. "; try  {  SPDiagnosticsCategory category = LoggingService.Current.Areas[vsDiagnosticAreaName].Categories[CategoryName];  LoggingService.Current.WriteTrace(uintEventID, category, tsSeverity, errorMessage);  strExecutionResult = "Message Logged";  } catch (Exception ex)  {   strExecutionResult += ex.Message;   } return strExecutionResult;  } } }   Just build the solution and it's ready to use now. This ULS solution can be used in SharePoint Webparts or Console Application. Lets see how to use it in a Console Application. SharePoint Server 2010 must be installed in the same Server or the application must be hosted in SharPoint Server 2010 environment. The console application must be set to "x64" Platform target.   Create a New Console Application. (Visual Studio -> File -> New Project -> C# -> Windows -> Console Application) Right Click on References -> Add Reference -> Under .Net tab select "Microsoft.SharePoint" Open Program.cs add "using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration;" Right Click on References -> Add Reference -> Under "Browse" tab select the "ULSLogger.dll" which we created first. (Path : ULSLogger\ULSLogger\bin\Debug\) Right Click on Project -> Properties -> Select "Build" Tab -> Under "Platform Target" option select "x64". Open the Program.cs and paste the below code. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration; using ULSLogger; namespace ULSLoggerClient {  class Program   {   static void Main(string[] args)     {     Console.WriteLine("ULS Logging Started.");     string strResult = LoggingService.LogErrorInULS("My Application is Working Fine.");      Console.WriteLine("ULS Logging Info. Result : " + strResult);     string strResult = LoggingService.LogErrorInULS("My Application got an Exception.", TraceSeverity.High);     Console.WriteLine("ULS Logging Waring Result : " + strResult);      Console.WriteLine("ULS Logging Completed.");      Console.ReadLine();     }   } } Just build the solution and execute. It'll log the message on the log file. Make sure you are using Farm Administrator User ID. You can play with Message and TraceSeverity as required. Now Open ULS Viewer -> File -> Open From -> ULS -> Select First Option to open the default ULS Log. It's Uls RealTime and will show all log entries in readable table format. Right Click on a row and select "Filter By This Item". Select "Event ID" and enter value "700" that we used in the application. Click Ok and now you'll see the Exceptions/Logs which logged by our application.   If you want to see High Priority Messages only then Click Icons except Red Cross Icon on the Toolbar. The tooltip will tell what's the icons used for.

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• MVC Razor Engine For Beginners Part 1

  - by Humprey Cogay, C|EH, E|CSA

  I. What is MVC? a. http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/older-versions/overview/asp-net-mvc-overview II. Software Requirements for this tutorial a. Visual Studio 2010/2012. You can get your free copy here Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 b. MVC Framework Option 1 - Install using a standalone installer http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30683 Option 2 - Install using Web Platform Installer http://www.microsoft.com/web/handlers/webpi.ashx?command=getinstallerredirect&appid=MVC4VS2010_Loc III. Creating your first MVC4 Application a. On the Visual Studio click file new solution link b. Click Other Project Type>Visual Studio Solutions and on the templates window select blank solution and let us name our solution MVCPrimer. c. Now Click File>New and select Project d. Select Visual C#>Web> and select ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Application and Enter MyWebSite as Name e. Select Empty, Razor as view engine and uncheck Create a Unit test project f. You can now view a basic MVC 4 Application Structure on your solution explorer g. Now we will add our first controller by right clicking on the controllers folder on your solution explorer and select Add>Controller h. Change the name of the controller to HomeController and under the scaffolding options select Empty MVC Controller. i. You will now see a basic controller with an Index method that returns an ActionResult j. We will now add a new View Folder for our Home Controller. Right click on the views folder on your solution explorer and select Add> New Folder> and name this folder Home k. Add a new View by right clicking on Views>Home Folder and select Add View. l. Name the view Index, and select Razor(CSHTML) as View Engine, All checkbox should be unchecked for now and click add. m. Relationship between our HomeController and Home Views Sub Folder n. Add new HTML Contents to our newly created Index View o. Press F5 to run our MVC Application p. We will create our new model, Right click on the models folder of our solution explorer and select Add> Class. q. Let us name our class Customer r. Edit the Customer class with the following code s. Open the HomeController by double clickin HomeController of our Controllers folder and edit the HomeControllerusing System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.Mvc;   namespace MyWebSite.Controllers {     public class HomeController : Controller     {         //         // GET: /Home/           public ActionResult Index()         {             return View();         }           public ActionResult ListCustomers()         {             List<Models.Customer> customers = new List<Models.Customer>();               //Add First Customer to Our Collection             customers.Add(new Models.Customer()                     {                         Id = 1,                         CompanyName = "Volvo",                         ContactNo = "123-0123-0001",                         ContactPerson = "Gustav Larson",                         Description = "Volvo Car Corporation, or Volvo Personvagnar AB, is a Scandinavian automobile manufacturer founded in 1927"                     });                 //Add Second Customer to Our Collection             customers.Add(new Models.Customer()                     {                         Id = 2,                         CompanyName = "BMW",                         ContactNo = "999-9876-9898",                         ContactPerson = "Franz Josef Popp",                         Description = "Bayerische Motoren Werke AG,  (BMW; English: Bavarian Motor Works) is a " +                                       "German automobile, motorcycle and engine manufacturing company founded in 1917. "                     });                 //Add Third Customer to Our Collection             customers.Add(new Models.Customer()             {                 Id = 3,                 CompanyName = "Audi",                 ContactNo = "983-2222-1212",                 ContactPerson = "Karl Benz",                 Description = " is a multinational division of the German manufacturer Daimler AG,"             });               return View(customers);         }     } } t. Let us now create a view for this Class, But before continuing Press Ctrl + Shift + B to rebuild the solution, this will make the previously created model on the Model class drop down of the Add View Menu. Right click on the views>Home folder and select Add>View u. Let us name our View as ListCustomers, Select Razor(CSHTML) as View Engine, Put a check mark on Create a strongly-typed view, and select Customer (MyWebSite.Models) as model class. Slect List on the Scaffold Template and Click OK. v. Run the MVC Application by pressing F5, and on the address bar insert Home/ListCustomers, We should now see a web page similar below.   x. You can edit ListCustomers.CSHTML to remove and add HTML codes @model IEnumerable<MyWebSite.Models.Customer>   @{     Layout = null; }   <!DOCTYPE html>   <html> <head>     <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />     <title>ListCustomers</title> </head> <body>     <h2>List of Customers</h2>     <table border="1">         <tr>             <th>                 @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.CompanyName)             </th>             <th>                 @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Description)             </th>             <th>                 @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.ContactPerson)             </th>             <th>                 @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.ContactNo)             </th>         </tr>         @foreach (var item in Model) {         <tr>             <td>                 @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.CompanyName)             </td>             <td>                 @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Description)             </td>             <td>                 @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.ContactPerson)             </td>             <td>                 @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.ContactNo)             </td>                   </tr>     }         </table> </body> </html> y. Press F5 to run the MVC Application   z. You will notice some @HTML.DisplayFor codes. These are called HTML Helpers you can read more about HTML Helpers on this site http://www.w3schools.com/aspnet/mvc_htmlhelpers.asp   That’s all. You now have your first MVC4 Razor Engine Web Application . . .

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• howto only tunnel specific hosts route through openvpn client on tomato

  - by kcome

  I am relatively newbie in networking world although I did coding and know some sysadmin background for a long time. and here I'm only one step from my destination. The whole picture is : at home I use one LinkSys E3000 as the gateway(don't know yet if this is it's name), wireless AP and no other routing/switching devices. It serves 1 PC and 1 Mac with LAN, 1 Mac Mini + 1 iPad + 2 smartphones with WIFI. My goal is use an openvpn client on the E3000 (with tomato firmware) and make my iPad and smartphone's all WiFi traffic through it, and other devices route remain the same non-openvpn route. So far I'm able to connect openvpn client on E3000 to an openvpn server, tunnel all my devices' all traffic through that openvpn connection. What's left is howto selectively route by source IP (at least in my guessing) to the tunnel while don't bother others. I had learned some 'iptables' and 'route' in past few days however without much luck, so here comes my question. Here are some info which will help you get the structure. ifconfig -a output, some useless lines striped, and in the web interface C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:28 is WAN, C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:27 is LAN, C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:29 is 2.4G wifi AP, C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:2A is 5G wifi AP. root@router:/tmp/home/root# ifconfig -a br0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:27 inet addr:192.168.1.1 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:27 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:29 UP BROADCAST RUNNING ALLMULTI MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 eth2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:2A UP BROADCAST RUNNING ALLMULTI MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol inet addr:172.200.1.43 P-t-P:172.200.0.1 Mask:255.255.255.255 UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1480 Metric:1 vlan1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:27 UP BROADCAST RUNNING ALLMULTI MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 vlan2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:28 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 wl0.1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:29 BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 brctl show output root@router:/tmp/home/root# brctl show bridge name bridge id STP enabled interfaces br0 8000.c0c1c01ae027 no vlan1 eth1 eth2 before openvpn route-up script root@router:/tmp/home/root# route -n Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 172.200.0.1 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 ppp0 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 br0 127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo 0.0.0.0 172.200.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 ppp0 openvpn server push PUSH: Received control message: 'PUSH_REPLY,redirect-gateway,dhcp-option DNS 8.8.8.8,route 172.20.0.1,topology net30,ping 10,ping-restart 120,ifconfig 172.20.0.6 172.20.0.5' openvpn's stock route-up script Apr 24 14:52:06 router daemon.notice openvpn[1768]: /sbin/ifconfig tun11 172.20.0.6 pointopoint 172.20.0.5 mtu 1500 Apr 24 14:52:08 router daemon.notice openvpn[1768]: /sbin/route add -net 72.14.177.29 netmask 255.255.255.255 gw 172.200.0.1 Apr 24 14:52:08 router daemon.notice openvpn[1768]: /sbin/route add -net 0.0.0.0 netmask 128.0.0.0 gw 172.20.0.5 Apr 24 14:52:08 router daemon.notice openvpn[1768]: /sbin/route add -net 128.0.0.0 netmask 128.0.0.0 gw 172.20.0.5 Apr 24 14:52:08 router daemon.notice openvpn[1768]: /sbin/route add -net 172.20.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.255 gw 172.20.0.5 route after openvpn root@router:/tmp/home/root# route -n Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 172.20.0.5 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 tun11 72.14.177.29 172.200.0.1 255.255.255.255 UGH 0 0 0 ppp0 172.200.0.1 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 ppp0 172.20.0.1 172.20.0.5 255.255.255.255 UGH 0 0 0 tun11 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 br0 127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo 0.0.0.0 172.20.0.5 128.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 tun11 128.0.0.0 172.20.0.5 128.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 tun11 0.0.0.0 172.200.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 ppp0 something I had noticed and tried: * on the web interface of openvpn client there is an option "Create NAT on tunnel", if i check this, there is the following script (probably executed after openvpn connection established) root@router:/tmp/home/root# cat /tmp/etc/openvpn/fw/client1-fw.sh #!/bin/sh iptables -I INPUT -i tun11 -j ACCEPT iptables -I FORWARD -i tun11 -j ACCEPT iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING -s 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0 -o tun11 -j MASQUERADE if i uncheck this option, the last line will not appear. Then I guess probably the my issue will be solved by iptables and NAT related commands, I just haven't got enough knowledge to figure them out. I tried run iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING -s 192.168.1.6 -o tun11 -j MASQUERADE manually after openvpn connected (192.168.1.6 is the ip address of my iPad), then my iPad get internet with openvpn tunnel, however all other devices can't reach internet. in case if needed, here is the iptables about NAT root@router:/tmp/home/root# iptables -t nat -L -n Chain PREROUTING (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination DROP all -- 0.0.0.0/0 192.168.1.0/24 WANPREROUTING all -- 0.0.0.0/0 172.200.1.43 upnp all -- 0.0.0.0/0 172.200.1.43 Chain POSTROUTING (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination MASQUERADE all -- 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 SNAT all -- 192.168.1.0/24 192.168.1.0/24 to:192.168.1.1 Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination Chain WANPREROUTING (1 references) target prot opt source destination DNAT icmp -- 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 to:192.168.1.1 Chain upnp (1 references) target prot opt source destination DNAT udp -- 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:5353 to:192.168.1.3:5353 Thanks in advance for helping and read this so much, I hope i made every info you need to give a help :)

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• Class Issue (The type XXX is already defined )

  - by Android Stack

  I have listview app exploring cities each row point to diffrent city , in each city activity include button when clicked open new activity which is infinite gallery contains pics of that city , i add infinite gallery to first city and work fine , when i want to add it to the second city , it gave me red mark error in the class as follow : 1- The type InfiniteGalleryAdapter is already defined. 2-The type InfiniteGallery is already defined. i tried to change class name with the same result ,i delete R.jave and eclipse rebuild it with same result also i uncheck the java builder from project properties ,get same red mark error. please any help and advice will be appreciated thanks My Code : public class SecondCity extends Activity { /** Called when the activity is first created. */ @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); Boolean customTitleSupported = requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_CUSTOM_TITLE); // Set the layout to use setContentView(R.layout.main); if (customTitleSupported) { getWindow().setFeatureInt(Window.FEATURE_CUSTOM_TITLE,R.layout.custom_title); TextView tv = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.tv); Typeface face=Typeface.createFromAsset(getAssets(),"BFantezy.ttf"); tv.setTypeface(face); tv.setText("MY PICTURES"); } InfiniteGallery galleryOne = (InfiniteGallery) findViewById(R.id.galleryOne); galleryOne.setAdapter(new InfiniteGalleryAdapter(this)); } } class InfiniteGalleryAdapter extends BaseAdapter { **//red mark here (InfiniteGalleryAdapter)** private Context mContext; public InfiniteGalleryAdapter(Context c, int[] imageIds) { this.mContext = c; } public int getCount() { return Integer.MAX_VALUE; } public Object getItem(int position) { return position; } public long getItemId(int position) { return position; } private LayoutInflater inflater=null; public InfiniteGalleryAdapter(Context a) { this.mContext = a; inflater = (LayoutInflater)mContext.getSystemService ( Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE); } public class ViewHolder{ public TextView text; public ImageView image; } private int[] images = { R.drawable.pic_1, R.drawable.pic_2, R.drawable.pic_3, R.drawable.pic_4, R.drawable.pic_5 }; private String[] name = { "This is first picture (1) " , "This is second picture (2)", "This is third picture (3)", "This is fourth picture (4)", " This is fifth picture (5)", }; public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) { ImageView i = getImageView(); int itemPos = (position % images.length); try { i.setImageResource(images[itemPos]); ((BitmapDrawable) i.getDrawable()). setAntiAlias (true); } catch (OutOfMemoryError e) { Log.e("InfiniteGalleryAdapter", "Out of memory creating imageview. Using empty view.", e); } View vi=convertView; ViewHolder holder; if(convertView==null){ vi = inflater.inflate(R.layout.gallery_items, null); holder=new ViewHolder(); holder.text=(TextView)vi.findViewById(R.id.textView1); holder.image=(ImageView)vi.findViewById(R.id.image); vi.setTag(holder); } else holder=(ViewHolder)vi.getTag(); holder.text.setText(name[itemPos]); final int stub_id=images[itemPos]; holder.image.setImageResource(stub_id); return vi; } private ImageView getImageView() { ImageView i = new ImageView(mContext); return i; } } class InfiniteGallery extends Gallery { **//red mark here (InfiniteGallery)** public InfiniteGallery(Context context) { super(context); init(); } public InfiniteGallery(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) { super(context, attrs); init(); } public InfiniteGallery(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle) { super(context, attrs, defStyle); init(); } private void init(){ // These are just to make it look pretty setSpacing(25); setHorizontalFadingEdgeEnabled(false); } public void setResourceImages(int[] name){ setAdapter(new InfiniteGalleryAdapter(getContext(), name)); setSelection((getCount() / 2)); } }

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• infoWindow position and click/unclick controls - controlling KML groundoverlays

  - by wendysmith

  I've made a lot of progress on this project (with earlier help with forum member Eric Badger, thanks!!) but I now need help with fine-tuning the infoWindow. Presently, you checkbox one of the historic maps choices -- the map appears as a ground overlay, and if you click it, you get info about the map which appears in a div (yellow area at the bottom). I want the info to appear in a more traditional window on the map, just to the center-right of the overlay map. It should have a close-option (X at the top corner?) Also, if you uncheck one of the boxes -- the overlay map disappears but the info window should close as well.  As you see my javascript skills are very limited. I would very much appreciate your help with this. Here's the test webpage: Here's the script: function showphilpottsmap(philpottsmapcheck) { if (philpottsmapcheck.checked == true) { philpottsmap.setMap(map); } else { philpottsmap.setMap(null); } } function showbrownemap(brownemapcheck) { if (brownemapcheck.checked == true) { brownemap.setMap(map); } else { brownemap.setMap(null); } } function showchewettmap(chewettmapcheck) { if (chewettmapcheck.checked == true) { chewettmap.setMap(map); } else { chewettmap.setMap(null); } } function showjamescanemap(jamescanemapcheck) { if (jamescanemapcheck.checked == true) { jamescanemap.setMap(map); } else { jamescanemap.setMap(null); } } var infoWindow = new google.maps.InfoWindow(); function openIW(FTevent) { infoWindow.setContent(FTevent.infoWindowHtml); infoWindow.setPosition(FTevent.latLng); infoWindow.setOptions({ content: FTevent.infoWindowHtml, position: FTevent.latLng, pixelOffset: FTevent.pixelOffset }); infoWindow.open(map); } var philpottsmap; var brownemap; var chewettmap; var jamescanemap; function initialize() { var mylatlng = new google.maps.LatLng(43.65241745, -79.393923); var myOptions = { zoom: 11, center: mylatlng, streetViewControl: false, mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP, }; map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById("map_canvas"), myOptions); //End map parameters brownemap = new google.maps.KmlLayer('http://wendysmithtoronto.com/mapping/1851map_jdbrowne.kml', {preserveViewport:true, suppressInfoWindows:true}); google.maps.event.addListener(brownemap, 'click', function(kmlEvent) { document.getElementById('sidebarinfo').innerHTML = kmlEvent.featureData.description; }); chewettmap = new google.maps.KmlLayer('http://wendysmithtoronto.com/mapping/1802mapwilliamchewett.kml', {preserveViewport:true, suppressInfoWindows:true}); google.maps.event.addListener(chewettmap, 'click', function(kmlEvent) { document.getElementById('sidebarinfo').innerHTML = kmlEvent.featureData.description; }); philpottsmap = new google.maps.KmlLayer('http://wendysmithtoronto.com/mapping/1818map_phillpotts.kml', {preserveViewport:true, suppressInfoWindows:true}); google.maps.event.addListener(philpottsmap, 'click', function(kmlEvent) { document.getElementById('sidebarinfo').innerHTML = kmlEvent.featureData.description; }); jamescanemap = new google.maps.KmlLayer('http://wendysmithtoronto.com/mapping/1842jamescanemapd.kml', {preserveViewport:true, suppressInfoWindows:true}); google.maps.event.addListener(jamescanemap, 'click', function(kmlEvent) { document.getElementById('sidebarinfo').innerHTML = kmlEvent.featureData.description; }); } Thanks very much! Wendy

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• Run Windows in Ubuntu with VMware Player

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you an enthusiast who loves their Ubuntu Linux experience but still needs to use Windows programs?  Here’s how you can get the full Windows experience on Ubuntu with the free VMware Player. Linux has become increasingly consumer friendly, but still, the wide majority of commercial software is only available for Windows and Macs.  Dual-booting between Windows and Linux has been a popular option for years, but this is a frustrating solution since you have to reboot into the other operating system each time you want to run a specific application.  With virtualization, you’ll never have to make this tradeoff.  VMware Player makes it quick and easy to install any edition of Windows in a virtual machine.  With VMware’s great integration tools, you can copy and paste between your Linux and Windows programs and even run native Windows applications side-by-side with Linux ones. Getting Started Download the latest version of VMware Player for Linux, and select either the 32-bit or 64-bit version, depending on your system.  VMware Player is a free download, but requires registration.  Sign in with your VMware account, or create a new one if you don’t already have one. VMware Player is fairly easy to install on Linux, but you will need to start out the installation from the terminal.  First, enter the following to make sure the installer is marked as executable, substituting version/build_number for the version number on the end of the file you downloaded. chmod +x ./VMware-Player-version/build_number.bundle Then, enter the following to start the install, again substituting your version number: gksudo bash ./VMware-Player-version/build_number.bundle You may have to enter your administrator password to start the installation, and then the VMware Player graphical installer will open.  Choose whether you want to check for product updates and submit usage data to VMware, and then proceed with the install as normal. VMware Player installed in only a few minutes in our tests, and was immediately ready to run, no reboot required.  You can now launch it from your Ubuntu menu: click Applications \ System Tools \ VMware Player. You’ll need to accept the license agreement the first time you run it. Welcome to VMware Player!  Now you can create new virtual machines and run pre-built ones on your Ubuntu desktop. Install Windows in VMware Player on Ubuntu Now that you’ve got VMware setup, it’s time to put it to work.  Click the Create a New Virtual Machine as above to start making a Windows virtual machine. In the dialog that opens, select your installer disk or ISO image file that you want to install Windows from.  In this example, we’re select a Windows 7 ISO.  VMware will automatically detect the operating system on the disk or image.  Click Next to continue. Enter your Windows product key, select the edition of Windows to install, and enter your name and password. You can leave the product key field blank and enter it later.  VMware will ask if you want to continue without a product key, so just click Yes to continue. Now enter a name for your virtual machine and select where you want to save it.  Note: This will take up at least 15Gb of space on your hard drive during the install, so make sure to save it on a drive with sufficient storage space. You can choose how large you want your virtual hard drive to be; the default is 40Gb, but you can choose a different size if you wish.  The entire amount will not be used up on your hard drive initially, but the virtual drive will increase in size up to your maximum as you add files.  Additionally, you can choose if you want the virtual disk stored as a single file or as multiple files.  You will see the best performance by keeping the virtual disk as one file, but the virtual machine will be more portable if it is broken into smaller files, so choose the option that will work best for your needs. Finally, review your settings, and if everything looks good, click Finish to create the virtual machine. VMware will take over now, and install Windows without any further input using its Easy Install.  This is one of VMware’s best features, and is the main reason we find it the easiest desktop virtualization solution to use.   Installing VMware Tools VMware Player doesn’t include the VMware Tools by default; instead, it automatically downloads them for the operating system you’re installing.  Once you’ve downloaded them, it will use those tools anytime you install that OS.  If this is your first Windows virtual machine to install, you may be prompted to download and install them while Windows is installing.  Click Download and Install so your Easy Install will finish successfully. VMware will then download and install the tools.  You may need to enter your administrative password to complete the install. Other than this, you can leave your Windows install unattended; VMware will get everything installed and running on its own. Our test setup took about 30 minutes, and when it was done we were greeted with the Windows desktop ready to use, complete with drivers and the VMware tools.  The only thing missing was the Aero glass feature.  VMware Player is supposed to support the Aero glass effects in virtual machines, and although this works every time when we use VMware Player on Windows, we could not get it to work in Linux.  Other than that, Windows is fully ready to use.  You can copy and paste text, images, or files between Ubuntu and Windows, or simply drag-and-drop files between the two. Unity Mode Using Windows in a window is awkward, and makes your Windows programs feel out of place and hard to use.  This is where Unity mode comes in.  Click Virtual Machine in VMware’s menu, and select Enter Unity. Your Windows desktop will now disappear, and you’ll see a new Windows menu underneath your Ubuntu menu.  This works the same as your Windows Start Menu, and you can open your Windows applications and files directly from it. By default, programs from Windows will have a colored border and a VMware badge in the corner.  You can turn this off from the VMware settings pane.  Click Virtual Machine in VMware’s menu and select Virtual Machine Settings.  Select Unity under the Options tab, and uncheck the Show borders and Show badges boxes if you don’t want them. Unity makes your Windows programs feel at home in Ubuntu.  Here we have Word 2010 and IE8 open beside the Ubuntu Help application.  Notice that the Windows applications show up in the taskbar on the bottom just like the Linux programs.  If you’re using the Compiz graphics effects in Ubuntu, your Windows programs will use them too, including the popular wobbly windows effect. You can switch back to running Windows inside VMware Player’s window by clicking the Exit Unity button in the VMware window. Now, whenever you want to run Windows applications in Linux, you can quickly launch it from VMware Player. Conclusion VMware Player is a great way to run Windows on your Linux computer.  It makes it extremely easy to get Windows installed and running, lets you run your Windows programs seamlessly alongside your Linux ones.  VMware products work great in our experience, and VMware Player on Linux was no exception. If you’re a Windows user and you’d like to run Ubuntu on Windows, check out our article on how to Run Ubuntu in Windows with VMware Player. Link Download VMware Player 3 (Registration required) Download Windows 7 Enterprise 90-day trial Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Enable Copy and Paste from Ubuntu VMware GuestInstall VMware Tools on Ubuntu Edgy EftRestart the Ubuntu Gnome User Interface QuicklyHow to Add a Program to the Ubuntu Startup List (After Login)How To Run Ubuntu in Windows 7 with VMware Player TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor

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

  - by Hosam Kamel

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

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

  - by DigitalGeekery

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

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• Add Free Windows Live Apps to Your Website or Blog

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to use Hotmail, Office Web Apps, Messenger, and more on your website domain?  Here’s how you can add Windows Live to your website for free. Microsoft offers a popular suite of online communications products including Hotmail and Messenger.  Although Hotmail hasn’t been as popular in recent years as Gmail, it is getting a refresh this summer that might make it an even better email solution.  Additionally, the new Office Web Apps offer great compatibility with Office documents. While Skydrive offers 25Gb of free online file storage for all users, so Windows Live can make a great communications solution for your domain. Note: To signup for Windows Live for your domain, you will need to be able to add info to your WordPress.com blog or change Domain settings manually. Getting Started Open the Windows Live Custom Domains page (Link below) to get started adding Windows Live to your domain.  Your free Windows Live account will let you create up to 500 accounts, so it’s great for teams and groups that want to have customized email addresses in addition to those who just want an email account for their website. Enter your domain or subdomain you want to add to Windows Live in the box, and then select whether you want to setup Hotmail with this or now.  We want to add email to our domain, so select Set up Windows Live Hotmail for my domain and click Continue. You’ll need to sign in with a Windows Live ID to create the account, or choose to create a new Windows Live account associated with your domain.   Sign in with your Windows Live ID…this can be a Hotmail, Live Messenger, XBOX Live, Zune ID, or Microsoft.com account. Or, enter your information to create a new Windows Live ID if you selected the second option. Now, review your settings and make sure everything looks correct.  Click the I Accept button to setup your account.   Your account is now fully setup, but you’ll need to add or edit DNS information on your site.  The steps are slightly different depending if your site is hosted on WordPress.com, on your own server, or hosting service. We’ll show you how to do it on either one. First, though, note the information below this box.  You’ll see settings for your Mail setup…   Security settings…   And Messenger integration.  Make note of the settings, especially the circled ones, as we’ll need them in the next step. Integrate Windows Live with Your WordPress Blog If the domain you added to Windows Live is for your WordPress blog, login to your WordPress dashboard in a separate browser window or tab.  Click the arrow beside Upgrades, and select Domains from the menu. Click the Edit DNS link beside the domain name you’re adding to Windows Live. In the text box on this page, enter the following, replacing Your_info with your code from the Mail Setup box in your Windows Live Dashboard.  Note that this is the blurred section in our screenshots.  It should be a numerical code like 1234567890.pamx1.hotmail.com. MX 10 Your_info.pamx1.hotmail.com. TXT v=spf1 include:hotmail.com ~all CNAME Your_info domains.live.com. Click Save DNS records, and your settings are saved to WordPress.  Note that this will only integrate email with your WordPress account; you cannot integrate Messenger with a domain hosted on WordPress.com. Finally, return to your Windows Live Settings page and click Refresh.  If your settings are correct, you’ll now be ready to use Windows Live on your WordPress.com domain. Integrate Windows Live with Your Own Server If your website is hosted on your own server or hosting account, you’ll need to take a few more steps to add Windows Live to your domain.  This is fairly easy, but the steps may be different depending on your hosting company or registrar.  With some hosts, you may have to contact support to have them add the MX records for you.  Our site’s host uses the popular cPanel for website administration, so here’s how we added the MX Entries through cPanel. Login to your website’s cPanel, and select MX Entry under the Mail section. In the text box on this page, enter the following, replacing Your_info with your code from the Mail Setup box in your Windows Live Dashboard.  Note that this is the blurred section in our screenshots.  It should be a numerical code like 1234567890.pamx1.hotmail.com. MX 10 Your_info.pamx1.hotmail.com. Now, go back to your cPanel home, and select Advanced DNS Zone Editor under Domains. Here, add a TXT record with the following info: Name: yoursite.com. TTL: 3600 TXT Data: v=spf1 include:hotmail.com ~all Click Add Record and your Mail integration data is all configured. To integrate Messenger with your own domain, you’ll have to add an SRV entry to your DNS settings.  cPanel doesn’t have an option for this, so we had to contact our site’s hosting company and they added the entry for us.  Copy all of the information in the Messenger box and send it to your domain support, and they should be able to add this for you.  Alternately, if you don’t want or need Messenger, then you can simply skip this step. Once all of your settings are in place, return to your Windows Live Settings page and click Refresh.  If your settings are correct, you’ll now be ready to use Windows Live on your WordPress.com domain. Create a New Email Account On Your Domain Welcome to your new Windows Live admin page!  Now you can add email accounts so you and anyone else you want can access Hotmail and the other Windows Live apps with your domain.  Click Add to add an account. Enter an account name, which will be the email address of the account, e.g. [email protected].  Then enter the user’s name and a password for the account.  By default this will be a temporary password, and the user will have to change it on first log-in, but if you’re setting up this account for yourself, you can uncheck the box and keep this as your standard password. Now, go to www.mail.live.com, and sign in with your new email address and password.  Remember, your email address is your username previously entered followed by @yourdomain.com. To finish setting up the email account, enter your password, secret question and answer, alternate email, and location information.  Click I accept to finish setting up your new email account. Enter the characters in the Captcha to confirm you’re a human, and click Continue. Your new Hotmail inbox will now load, and you’ll have a welcome email in your inbox.  This works the same as normal Hotmail, except this time, your email address is with your own domain. You can now access any of the Windows Live services from the top-level menu. Here’s an Excel Spreadsheet open in the new Office Web Apps via SkyDrive on our new Windows Live account. If you setup Messenger access previously, you can now sign in to Windows Live Messenger using your new @yourdomain.com account as well. Important Links Accessing your Windows Live accounts is easy.  Simply go to any Windows Live site, such as www.hotmail.com or www.skydrive.com, and sign in with your new Windows Live ID from your domain as normal.  You don’t need a special address to access your account; it works just like the standard public Hotmail accounts. To administer your Windows Live for your domain, go to https://domains.live.com/ and sign in with the Windows Live ID you used to create the account.  Here you can add more users, change settings, and view usage details for the Windows Live accounts on your domain. Conclusion Windows Live is easy to add to your domain, and lets you create up to 500 email address for it.  With the upcoming updates to Hotmail and Office Web Apps coming this summer, this can be a nice way to make your domain even more useful.  And with 500 email accounts, you can easily let your team take advantage of your unique address as well. If you’d rather use Google’s online applications with your domain, check out our article on how to add free Google apps to your website or blog. Link Signup for Windows Live for Your Domain Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Tools to Help Post Content On Your WordPress BlogBackup Your Windows Live Writer SettingsInstall Windows Live Essentials In Windows 7Add Your Gmail To Windows Live MailMysticgeek Blog: A Look at Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 on Windows XP TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Backup Drivers With Driver Magician TubeSort: YouTube Playlist Organizer XPS file format & XPS Viewer Explained Microsoft Office Web Apps Guide Know if Someone Accessed Your Facebook Account Shop for Music with Windows Media Player 12

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• Configure TFS portal afterwards

  Update #1 January 8th, 2010: There is an updated post on this topic for Beta 2: http://www.ewaldhofman.nl/post/2009/12/10/Configure-TFS-portal-afterwards-Beta-2.aspx Update #2 October 10th, 2010: In the new Team Foundation Server Power Tools September 2010, there is now a command to create a portal. tfpt addprojectportal   Add or move portal for an existing team project Usage: tfpt addprojectportal /collection:uri                              /teamproject:"project name"                              /processtemplate:"template name"                              [/webapplication:"webappname"]                              [/relativepath:"pathfromwebapp"]                              [/validate]                              [/verbose] /collection Required. URL of Team Project Collection. /teamproject Required. Specifies the name of the team project. /processtemplate Required. Specifies that name of the process template. /webapplication The name of the SharePoint Web Application. Must also specify relativepath. /relativepath The path for the site relative to the root URL for the SharePoint Web Application. Must also specify webapplication. /validate Specifies that the user inputs are to be validated. If specified, only validation will be done and no portal setting will be changed. /verbose Switches on the verbose mode. I created a new Team Project in TFS 2010 Beta 1 and choose not to configure SharePoint during the creation of the Team Project. Of course I found out fairly quickly that a portal for TFS is very useful, especially the Iteration and the Product backlog workbooks and the dashboard reports. This blog describes how you can configure the sharepoint portal afterwards. Update: September 9th, 2009 Adding the portal afterwards is much easier as described below. Here are the steps Step 1: Create a new temporary project (with a SharePoint site for it). Open the Team Explorer Right click in the Team Explorer the root node (i.e. the project collection) Select "New team project" from the menu Walk throught he wizard and make sure you check the option to create the portal (which is by default checked) Step 2: Disable the site for the new project Open the Team Explorer Select the team project you created in step 1 In the menu click on Team -> Show Project Portal. In the menu click on Team -> Team Project Settings -> Portal Settings... The following dialog pops up Uncheck the option "Enable team project portal" Confirm the dialog with OK Step 3: Enable the site for the original one. Point it to the newly created site. Open the Team Explorer Select the team project you want to add the portal to In the menu open Team -> Team Project Settings -> Portal Settings... The same dialog as in step 2 pops up Check the option "Enable team project portal" Click on the "Configure URL" button The following dialog pops up   In the dialog select in the combobox of the web application the TFS server Enter in the Relative site path the text "sites/[Project Collection Name]/[Team Project Name created in step 1]" Confirm the "Specify an existing SharePoint Site" with OK Check the "Reports and dashboards refer to data for this team project" option Confirm the dialog "Project Portal Settings" with OK Step 4: Delete the temporary project you created. In Beta 1, I have found no way to delete a team project. Maybe it will be available in TFS 2010 Beta 2. Original post Step 1: Create new portal site Go to the sharepoint site of your project collection (/sites//default.aspx">/sites//default.aspx">http://<servername>/sites/<project_collection_name>/default.aspx) Click on the Site Actions at the left side of the screen and choose the option Site Settings In the site settings, choose the Sites and workspaces option Create a new site Enter the values for the Title, the description, the site address. And choose for the TFS2010 Agile Dashboard as template. Create the site, by clicking on the Create button Step 2: Integrate portal site with team project Open Visual Studio Open the Team Explorer (View -> Team Explorer) Select in the Team Explorer tool window the Team Project for which you are create a new portal Open the Project Portal Settings (Team -> Team Project Settings -> Portal Setings...) Check the Enable team project portal checkbox Click on Configure URL... You will get a new dialog as below Enter the url to the TFS server in the web application combobox And specify the relative site path: sites/<project collection>/<site name> Confirm with OK Check in the Project Portal Settings dialog the checkbox "Reports and dashboards refer to data for this team project" Confirm the settings with OK (this takes a while...) When you now browse to the portal, you will see that the dashboards are now showing up with the data for the current team project. Step 3: Download process template To get a copy of the documents that are default in a team project, we need to have a fresh set of files that are not attached to a team project yet. You can do that with the following steps. Start the Process Template Manager (Team -> Team Project Collection Settings -> Process Template Manager...) Choose the Agile process template and click on download Choose a folder to download Step 4: Add Product and Iteration backlog Go to the Team Explorer in Visual Studio Make sure the team project is in the list of team projects, and expand the team project Right click the Documents node, and choose New Document Library Enter "Shared Documents", and click on Add Right click the Shared Documents node and choose Upload Document Go the the file location where you stored the process template from step 3 and then navigate to the subdirectory "Agile Process Template 5.0\MSF for Agile Software Development v5.0\Windows SharePoint Services\Shared Documents\Project Management" Select in the Open Dialog the files "Iteration Backlog" and "Product Backlog", and click Open Step 5: Bind Iteration backlog workbook to the team project Right click on the "Iteration Backlog" file and select Edit, and confirm any warning messages Place your cursor in cell A1 of the Iteration backlog worksheet Switch to the Team ribbon and click New List. Select your Team Project and click Connect From the New List dialog, select the Iteration Backlog query in the Workbook Queries folder. The final step is to add a set of document properties that allow the workbook to communicate with the TFS reporting warehouse. Before we create the properties we need to collect some information about your project. The first piece of information comes from the table created in the previous step.  As you collect these properties, copy them into notepad so they can be used in later steps. Property How to retrieve the value? [Table name] Switch to the Design ribbon and select the Table Name value in the Properties portion of the ribbon [Project GUID] In the Visual Studio Team Explorer, right click your Team Project and select Properties.  Select the URL value and copy the GUID (long value with lots of characters) at the end of the URL [Team Project name] In the Properties dialog, select the Name field and copy the value [TFS server name] In the Properties dialog, select the Server Name field and copy the value [UPDATE] I have found that this is not correct: you need to specify the instance of your SQL Server. The value is used to create a connection to the TFS cube. Switch back to the Iteration Backlog workbook. Click the Office button and select Prepare – Properties. Click the Document Properties – Server drop down and select Advanced Properties. Switch to the Custom tab and add the following properties using the values you collected above. Variable name Value [Table name]_ASServerName [TFS server name] [Table name]_ASDatabase tfs_warehouse [Table name]_TeamProjectName [Team Project name] [Table name]_TeamProjectId [Project GUID] Click OK to close the properties dialog. It is possible that the Estimated Work (Hours) is showing the #REF! value. To resolve that change the formula with: =SUMIFS([Table name][Original Estimate]; [Table name][Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";[Table name][Area Path];AreaPath&"*";[Table name][Work Item Type]; "Task") For example =SUMIFS(VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Original Estimate]; VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Area Path];AreaPath&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Work Item Type]; "Task") Also the Total Remaining Work in the Individual Capacity table may contain #REF! values. To resolve that change the formula with: =SUMIFS([Table name][Remaining Work]; [Table name][Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";[Table name][Area Path];AreaPath&"*";[Table name][Assigned To];[Team Member];[Table name][Work Item Type]; "Task") For example =SUMIFS(VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Remaining Work]; VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Iteration Path];CurrentIteration&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Area Path];AreaPath&"*";VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Assigned To];[Team Member];VSTS_ab392b55_6647_439a_bae4_8c66e908bc0d[Work Item Type]; "Task") Save and close the workbook. Step 6: Bind Product backlog workbook to the team project Repeat the steps for binding the Iteration backlog for thiw workbook too. In the worksheet Capacity, the formula of the Storypoints might be missing. You can resolve it with: =IF([Iteration]="";"";SUMIFS([Table name][Story Points];[Table name][Iteration Path];[Iteration]&"*")) Example =IF([Iteration]="";"";SUMIFS(VSTS_487f1e4c_db30_4302_b5e8_bd80195bc2ec[Story Points];VSTS_487f1e4c_db30_4302_b5e8_bd80195bc2ec[Iteration Path];[Iteration]&"*"))

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• Do’s and Don’ts Building SharePoint Applications

  - by Bil Simser

  SharePoint is a great platform for building quick LOB applications. Simple things from employee time trackers to server and software inventory to full blown Help Desks can be crafted up using SharePoint from just customizing Lists. No programming necessary. However there are a few tricks I’ve painfully learned over the years that you can use for your own solutions. DO What’s In A Name? When you create a new list, column, or view you’ll commonly name it something like “Expense Reports”. However this has the ugly effect of creating a url to the list as “Expense%20Reports”. Or worse, an internal field name of “Expense_x0x0020_Reports” which is not only cryptic but hard to remember when you’re trying to find the column by internal name. While “Expense Reports 2011” is user friendly, “ExpenseReports2011” is not (unless you’re a programmer). So that’s not the solution. Well, not entirely. Instead when you create your column or list or view use the scrunched up name (I can’t think of the technical term for it right now) of “ExpenseReports2011”, “WomenAtTheOfficeThatAreMen” or “KoalaMeatIsGoodWhenBroiled”. After you’ve created it, go back and change the name to the more friendly “Silly Expense Reports That Nobody Reads”. The original internal name will be the url and code friendly one without spaces while the one used on data entry forms and view headers will be the human version. Smart Columns When building a view include columns that make sense. By default when you add a column the “Add to default view” is checked. Resist the urge to be lazy and leave it checked. Uncheck that puppy and decide consciously what columns should be included in the view. Pick columns that make sense to what the user is trying to do. This means you have to talk to the user. Yes, I know. That can be trying at times and even painful. Go ahead, talk to them. You might learn something. Find out what’s important to them and why. If they’re doing something repetitively as part of their job, try to make their life easier by including what’s most important to them. Do they really need to see the Created *and* Modified date of a document or do they just need the title and author? You’ll only find out after talking to them (or getting them drunk in a bar and leaving them in the back alley handcuffed to a garbage bin, don’t ask). Gotta Keep it Separated Hey, views are there for a reason. Use them. While “All Items” is a fine way to present a list of well, all items, it’s hardly sufficient to present a list of servers built before the Y2K bug hit. You’ll be scrolling the list for hours finally arriving at Page 387 of 12,591 and cursing that SharePoint guy for convincing you that putting your hardware into a list would be of any use to anyone. Next to collecting the data, presenting it is just as important. Views are often overlooked and many times ignored or misused. They’re the way you can slice and dice the data up so that you’re not trying to consume 3,000 years of human evolution on a single web page. Remember views can be filtered so feel free to create a view for each status or one for each operating system or one for each species of Information Worker you might be putting in that list or document library. Not only will it reduce the number of items someone sees at one time, it’ll also make the information that much more relevant. Also remember that each view is a separate page. Use it in navigation by creating a menu on the Quick Launch to each view. The discoverability of the Views menu isn’t overly obvious and if you violate the rule of columns (see Horizontally Scrolling below) the view menu doesn’t even show up until you shuffle the scroll bar to the left. Navigation links, big giant buttons, a screaming flashing “CLICK ME NOW” will help your users find their way. Sort It! Views are great so we’re building nice, rich views for the user. Awesomesauce. However sort is not very discoverable by the user. For example when you’re looking at a view how do you know if it’s ascending or descending and what is it sorted on. Maybe it’s sorted using two fields so what’s that all about? Help your users by letting them know the information they’re looking at is sorted. Maybe you name the view something appropriate like “Bogus Expense Claims Sorted By Deadbeats”. If you use the naming strategy just make sure you keep the name consistent with the description. In the previous example their better be a Deadbeat column so I can see the sort in action. Having a “Loser” column, while equally correct, is a little obtuse to the average Information Worker. Remember, they usually don’t use acronyms and even if they knew how to, it’s not immediately obvious to them that’s what you’re trying to convey. Another option is to simply drop a Content Editor Web Part above the list and explain exactly the view they’re looking at. Each view is it’s own page so one CEWP won’t be used across the board. Be descriptive in what the user is seeing but try to keep it brief. Dumping the first chapter of I, Claudius might be informative to the data but can gobble up screen real estate and miss the point of having the list. DO NOT Useless Attachments The attachments column is, in a word, useless. For the most part. Sure it indicates there’s an attachment on the list item but in the grand scheme of things that’s not overly informative. Maybe it is and by all means, if it makes sense to you include it. Colour it. Make it shine and stand like the Return of Clippy on every SharePoint list. Without it being functional it can be boring. EndUserSharePoint.com has an article to make the son of Clippy that much more useful so feel free to head over and check out this blog post by Paul Grenier on the task (Warning code ahead! Danger Will Robinson!) In any case, I would suggest you remove it from your views. Again if it’s important then include it but consider the jQuery solution above to make it functional. It’s added by default to views and one of things that people forget to clean up. Horizontal Scrolling Screen real estate is premium so building a list that contains 8,000 columns and stretches horizontally across 15 screens probably isn’t the most user friendly experience. Most users can’t figure out how to scroll vertically let alone horizontally so don’t make it even that more confusing for them. Take the Steve Krug approach in your view designs and try not to make the user think. Again views are your friend. Consider splitting up the data into views where one view contains 10 columns and other view contains the other 10. Okay, maybe your information doesn’t work that way but humans can only process 7 pieces of data at a time, 10 at most (then their heads explode and you don’t want to clean that mess up, especially on a Friday night before the big dance). It drives me batshit crazy when I see a view with 80 columns of data. I often ask the user “So what do you do with all this information”. The response is usually “With this data [the first 10 columns] I decide if I’m going to fire everyone, and with this data [the next 10 columns] I decide if I’m going to set the building on fire and collect the insurance”. It’s at that point I show them how to create two new views “People Who Are About To Get The Axe” and “Beach Time For The Executives”. Again, talk to your users and try to reason with them on cutting down the number of columns they see at once. Vertical Scrolling Another big faux pas I find is the use of multi-line comment fields in views. It’s not so bad when you have a statement like this in your view: “I really like, oh my god, thought I was going to scream when I saw this turtle then I decided what I was going to have for dinner and frankly I hate having to work late so when I was talking to the customer I thought, oh my god, what if the customer has turtles and then it appeared to me that I really was hungry so I'm going to have lunch now.” It’s fine if that’s the only column along with two or three others, but once you slap those 20 columns of data into the list, the comment field wraps and forms a new multi-page novel that takes up your entire screen. Do everyone a favour and just avoid adding the column to views. Train the user to just click through to the item if they need to see the contents. Duplicate Information Duplication is never good. Views and great as you can group data together. For example create a view of project status reports grouped by author. Then you can see what project manager is being a dip and not submitting their report. However if you group by author do you really need the Created By field as well in the view? Or if the view is grouped by Project then Author do you need both. Horizontal real estate is always at a premium so try not to clutter up the view with duplicate data like this. Oh  yeah, if you’re scratching your head saying “But Bil, if I don’t include the Project name in the view and I have a lot of items then how do I know which one I’m looking at”. That’s a hint that your grouping is too vague or you have too much data in the view based on that criteria. Filter it down a notch, create some views, and try to keep the group down to a single screen where you can see the group header at the top of the page. Again it’s just managing the information you have. Redundant, See Redundant This partially relates to duplicate information and smart columns but basically remember to not include the obvious in a view. Remember, don’t make me think. If you’ve gone to the trouble (and it was a lot of trouble wasn’t it?) to create separate views of your data by creating a “September Zombie Brain Sales”, “October Zombie Brain Sales”, etc. then please for the love of all that is holy do not include the Month and Product columns in your view. Similarly if you create a “My” view of anything (“My Favourite Brands of Spandex”, “My Co-Workers I Find The Urge To Disinfect”) then again, do not include the owner or author field (or whatever field you use to identify “My”). That’s just silly. Hope that helps! Happy customizing!

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• Move Files from a Failing PC with an Ubuntu Live CD

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  You’ve loaded the Ubuntu Live CD to salvage files from a failing system, but where do you store the recovered files? We’ll show you how to store them on external drives, drives on the same PC, a Windows home network, and other locations. We’ve shown you how to recover data like a forensics expert, but you can’t store recovered files back on your failed hard drive! There are lots of ways to transfer the files you access from an Ubuntu Live CD to a place that a stable Windows machine can access them. We’ll go through several methods, starting each section from the Ubuntu desktop – if you don’t yet have an Ubuntu Live CD, follow our guide to creating a bootable USB flash drive, and then our instructions for booting into Ubuntu. If your BIOS doesn’t let you boot using a USB flash drive, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! Use a Healthy Hard Drive If your computer has more than one hard drive, or your hard drive is healthy and you’re in Ubuntu for non-recovery reasons, then accessing your hard drive is easy as pie, even if the hard drive is formatted for Windows. To access a hard drive, it must first be mounted. To mount a healthy hard drive, you just have to select it from the Places menu at the top-left of the screen. You will have to identify your hard drive by its size. Clicking on the appropriate hard drive mounts it, and opens it in a file browser. You can now move files to this hard drive by drag-and-drop or copy-and-paste, both of which are done the same way they’re done in Windows. Once a hard drive, or other external storage device, is mounted, it will show up in the /media directory. To see a list of currently mounted storage devices, navigate to /media by clicking on File System in a File Browser window, and then double-clicking on the media folder. Right now, our media folder contains links to the hard drive, which Ubuntu has assigned a terribly uninformative label, and the PLoP Boot Manager CD that is currently in the CD-ROM drive. Connect a USB Hard Drive or Flash Drive An external USB hard drive gives you the advantage of portability, and is still large enough to store an entire hard disk dump, if need be. Flash drives are also very quick and easy to connect, though they are limited in how much they can store. When you plug a USB hard drive or flash drive in, Ubuntu should automatically detect it and mount it. It may even open it in a File Browser automatically. Since it’s been mounted, you will also see it show up on the desktop, and in the /media folder. Once it’s been mounted, you can access it and store files on it like you would any other folder in Ubuntu. If, for whatever reason, it doesn’t mount automatically, click on Places in the top-left of your screen and select your USB device. If it does not show up in the Places list, then you may need to format your USB drive. To properly remove the USB drive when you’re done moving files, right click on the desktop icon or the folder in /media and select Safely Remove Drive. If you’re not given that option, then Eject or Unmount will effectively do the same thing. Connect to a Windows PC on your Local Network If you have another PC or a laptop connected through the same router (wired or wireless) then you can transfer files over the network relatively quickly. To do this, we will share one or more folders from the machine booted up with the Ubuntu Live CD over the network, letting our Windows PC grab the files contained in that folder. As an example, we’re going to share a folder on the desktop called ToShare. Right-click on the folder you want to share, and click Sharing Options. A Folder Sharing window will pop up. Check the box labeled Share this folder. A window will pop up about the sharing service. Click the Install service button. Some files will be downloaded, and then installed. When they’re done installing, you’ll be appropriately notified. You will be prompted to restart your session. Don’t worry, this won’t actually log you out, so go ahead and press the Restart session button. The Folder Sharing window returns, with Share this folder now checked. Edit the Share name if you’d like, and add checkmarks in the two checkboxes below the text fields. Click Create Share. Nautilus will ask your permission to add some permissions to the folder you want to share. Allow it to Add the permissions automatically. The folder is now shared, as evidenced by the new arrows above the folder’s icon. At this point, you are done with the Ubuntu machine. Head to your Windows PC, and open up Windows Explorer. Click on Network in the list on the left, and you should see a machine called UBUNTU in the right pane. Note: This example is shown in Windows 7; the same steps should work for Windows XP and Vista, but we have not tested them. Double-click on UBUNTU, and you will see the folder you shared earlier! As well as any other folders you’ve shared from Ubuntu. Double click on the folder you want to access, and from there, you can move the files from the machine booted with Ubuntu to your Windows PC. Upload to an Online Service There are many services online that will allow you to upload files, either temporarily or permanently. As long as you aren’t transferring an entire hard drive, these services should allow you to transfer your important files from the Ubuntu environment to any other machine with Internet access. We recommend compressing the files that you want to move, both to save a little bit of bandwidth, and to save time clicking on files, as uploading a single file will be much less work than a ton of little files. To compress one or more files or folders, select them, and then right-click on one of the members of the group. Click Compress…. Give the compressed file a suitable name, and then select a compression format. We’re using .zip because we can open it anywhere, and the compression rate is acceptable. Click Create and the compressed file will show up in the location selected in the Compress window. Dropbox If you have a Dropbox account, then you can easily upload files from the Ubuntu environment to Dropbox. There is no explicit limit on the size of file that can be uploaded to Dropbox, though a free account begins with a total limit of 2 GB of files in total. Access your account through Firefox, which can be opened by clicking on the Firefox logo to the right of the System menu at the top of the screen. Once into your account, press the Upload button on top of the main file list. Because Flash is not installed in the Live CD environment, you will have to switch to the basic uploader. Click Browse…find your compressed file, and then click Upload file. Depending on the size of the file, this could take some time. However, once the file has been uploaded, it should show up on any computer connected through Dropbox in a matter of minutes. Google Docs Google Docs allows the upload of any type of file – making it an ideal place to upload files that we want to access from another computer. While your total allocation of space varies (mine is around 7.5 GB), there is a per-file maximum of 1 GB. Log into Google Docs, and click on the Upload button at the top left of the page. Click Select files to upload and select your compressed file. For safety’s sake, uncheck the checkbox concerning converting files to Google Docs format, and then click Start upload. Go Online – Through FTP If you have access to an FTP server – perhaps through your web hosting company, or you’ve set up an FTP server on a different machine – you can easily access the FTP server in Ubuntu and transfer files. Just make sure you don’t go over your quota if you have one. You will need to know the address of the FTP server, as well as the login information. Click on Places > Connect to Server… Choose the FTP (with login) Service type, and fill in your information. Adding a bookmark is optional, but recommended. You will be asked for your password. You can choose to remember it until you logout, or indefinitely. You can now browse your FTP server just like any other folder. Drop files into the FTP server and you can retrieve them from any computer with an Internet connection and an FTP client. Conclusion While at first the Ubuntu Live CD environment may seem claustrophobic, it has a wealth of options for connecting to peripheral devices, local computers, and machines on the Internet – and this article has only scratched the surface. Whatever the storage medium, Ubuntu’s got an interface for it! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Backup Your Windows Live Writer SettingsMove a Window Without Clicking the Titlebar in UbuntuRecover Deleted Files on an NTFS Hard Drive from a Ubuntu Live CDCreate a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive the Easy WayReset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CD TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Tech Fanboys Field Guide Check these Awesome Chrome Add-ons iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools Track Daily Goals With 42Goals

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• SQL SERVER – Repair a SQL Server Database Using a Transaction Log Explorer

  - by Pinal Dave

  In this blog, I’ll show how to use ApexSQL Log, a SQL Server transaction log viewer. You can download it for free, install, and play along. But first, let’s describe some disaster recovery scenarios where it’s useful. About SQL Server disaster recovery Along with database development and administration, you must work on a good recovery plan. Disasters do happen and no one’s immune. What you can do is take all actions needed to be ready for a disaster and go through it with minimal data loss and downtime. Besides creating a recovery plan, it’s necessary to have a list of steps that will be executed when a disaster occurs and to test them before a disaster. This way, you’ll know that the plan is good and viable. Testing can also be used as training for all team members, so they can all understand and execute it when the time comes. It will show how much time is needed to have your servers fully functional again and how much data you can lose in a real-life situation. If these don’t meet recovery-time and recovery-point objectives, the plan needs to be improved. Keep in mind that all major changes in environment configuration, business strategy, and recovery objectives require a new recovery plan testing, as these changes most probably induce a recovery plan changing and tweaking. What is a good SQL Server disaster recovery plan? A good SQL Server disaster recovery strategy starts with planning SQL Server database backups. An efficient strategy is to create a full database backup periodically. Between two successive full database backups, you can create differential database backups. It is essential is to create transaction log backups regularly between full database backups. Keep in mind that transaction log backups can be created only on databases in the full recovery model. In other words, a simple, but efficient backup strategy would be a full database backup every night, a transaction log backup every hour, or every 15 minutes. The frequency depends on how much data you can afford to lose and how busy the database is. Another option, instead of creating a full database backup every night, is to create a full database backup once a week (e.g. on Friday at midnight) and differential database backup every night until next Friday when you will create a full database backup again. Once you create your SQL Server database backup strategy, schedule the backups. You can do that easily using SQL Server maintenance plans. Why are transaction logs important? Transaction log backups contain transactions executed on a SQL Server database. They provide enough information to undo and redo the transactions and roll back or forward the database to a point in time. In SQL Server disaster recovery situations, transaction logs enable to repair a SQL Server database and bring it to the state before the disaster. Be aware that even with regular backups, there will be some data missing. These are the transactions made between the last transaction log backup and the time of the disaster. In some situations, to repair your SQL Server database it’s not necessary to re-create the database from its last backup. The database might still be online and all you need to do is roll back several transactions, such as wrong update, insert, or delete. The restore to a point in time feature is available in SQL Server, but for large databases, it is very time-consuming, as SQL Server first restores a full database backup, and then restores transaction log backups, one after another, up to the recovery point. During that time, the database is unavailable. This is where a SQL Server transaction log viewer can help. For optimal recovery, besides having a database in the full recovery model, it’s important that you haven’t manually truncated the online transaction log. This ensures that all transactions made after the last transaction log backup are still in the online transaction log. All you have to do is read and replay them. How to read a SQL Server transaction log? SQL Server doesn’t provide an option to read transaction logs. There are several SQL Server commands and functions that read the content of a transaction log file (fn_dblog, fn_dump_dblog, and DBCC PAGE), but they are undocumented. They require T-SQL knowledge, return a large number of not easy to read and understand columns, sometimes in binary or hexadecimal format. Another challenge is reading UPDATE statements, as it’s necessary to match it to a value in the MDF file. When you finally read the transactions executed, you have to create a script for it. How to easily repair a SQL database? The easiest solution is to use a transaction log reader that will not only read the transactions in the transaction log files, but also automatically create scripts for the read transactions. In the following example, I will show how to use ApexSQL Log to repair a SQL database after a crash. If a database has crashed and both MDF and LDF files are lost, you have to rely on the full database backup and all subsequent transaction log backups. In another scenario, the MDF file is lost, but the LDF file is available. First, restore the last full database backup on SQL Server using SQL Server Management Studio. I’ll name it Restored_AW2014. Then, start ApexSQL Log It will automatically detect all local servers. If not, click the icon right to the Server drop-down list, or just type in the SQL Server instance name. Select the Windows or SQL Server authentication type and select the Restored_AW2014 database from the database drop-down list. When all options are set, click Next. ApexSQL Log will show the online transaction log file. Now, click Add and add all transaction log backups created after the full database backup I used to restore the database. In case you don’t have transaction log backups, but the LDF file hasn’t been lost during the SQL Server disaster, add it using Add.   To repair a SQL database to a point in time, ApexSQL Log needs to read and replay all the transactions in the transaction log backups (or the LDF file saved after the disaster). That’s why I selected the Whole transaction log option in the Filter setup. ApexSQL Log offers a range of various filters, which are useful when you need to read just specific transactions. You can filter transactions by the time of the transactions, operation type (e.g. to read only data inserts), table name, SQL Server login that made the transaction, etc. In this scenario, to repair a SQL database, I’ll check all filters and make sure that all transactions are included. In the Operations tab, select all schema operations (DDL). If you omit these, only the data changes will be read so if there were any schema changes, such as a new function created, or an existing table modified, they will be ignored and database will not be properly repaired. The data repair for modified tables will fail. In the Tables tab, I’ll make sure all tables are selected. I will uncheck the Show operations on dropped tables option, to reduce the number of transactions. Click Next. ApexSQL Log offers three options. Select Open results in grid, to get a user-friendly presentation of the transactions. As you can see, details are shown for every transaction, including the old and new values for updated columns, which are clearly highlighted. Now, select them all and then create a redo script by clicking the Create redo script icon in the menu.   For a large number of transactions and in a critical situation, when acting fast is a must, I recommend using the Export results to file option. It will save some time, as the transactions will be directly scripted into a redo file, without showing them in the grid first. Select Generate reconstruction (REDO) script , change the output path if you want, and click Finish. After the redo T-SQL script is created, ApexSQL Log shows the redo script summary: The third option will create a command line statement for a batch file that you can use to schedule execution, which is not really applicable when you repair a SQL database, but quite useful in daily auditing scenarios. To repair your SQL database, all you have to do is execute the generated redo script using an integrated developer environment tool such as SQL Server Management Studio or any other, against the restored database. You can find more information about how to read SQL Server transaction logs and repair a SQL database on ApexSQL Solution center. There are solutions for various situations when data needs to be recovered, restored, or transactions rolled back. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, March 26, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, March 26, 2012Popular ReleasesQuick Performance Monitor: Version 1.8.1: Added option to set main window to be 'Always On Top'. Use context (right-click) menu on graph to toggle..Net Rest API for Kayako Fusion 4: kayako_rest_api_2012.03.26: Added ability to search for users via organisation/email. This is much quicker than getting all users then filtering.GeoMedia PostGIS data server: PostGIS GDO 1.0.1.1: This is a new version of GeoMeda PostGIS data server which supports user rights. It means that only those feature classes, which the current user has rights to select, are visible in GeoMedia. Issues fixed in this release Fixed a problem when gdo.gfeaturesbase table has been visible in GeoMedia. To hide this table, run the previous version of Database Utilities and uncheck this table in the feature classes list. Then load the new release. Fixed a problem when coordinate system list has not...Silverlight 4 & 5 Persian DatePicker: Silverlight 4 and 5 Persian DatePicker: Added Silverlight 5 support.Y.Music: Y.Music v.1.0: ?????? ?????? ?????????. ????????: ????? ???? ????, ??????? ?????? ? ??? - Beta.Asp.NET Url Router: v1.0: build for .net 2.0 and .net 4.0menu4web: menu4web 0.0.3: menu4web 0.0.3ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap: ArcGIS Editor for OSM 2.0 Final: This release installs both the ArcGIS Editor for OSM Server Component and/or ArcGIS Editor for OSM Desktop components. The Desktop tools allow you to download data from the OpenStreetMap servers and store it locally in a geodatabase. You can then use the familiar editing environment of ArcGIS Desktop to create, modify, or delete data. Once you are done editing, you can post back the edit changes to OSM to make them available to all OSM users. The Server Component allows you to quickly create...Craig's Utility Library: Craig's Utility Library 3.1: This update adds about 60 new extension methods, a couple of new classes, and a number of fixes including: Additions Added DateSpan class Added GenericDelimited class Random additions Added static thread friendly version of Random.Next called ThreadSafeNext. AOP Manager additions Added Destroy function to AOPManager (clears out all data so system can be recreated. Really only useful for testing...) ORM additions Added PagedCommand and PageCount functions to ObjectBaseClass (same as M...XNA Electric Effect: Jason Electric Effect v1.1: The library now includes 3 effect types: Line, Bezier, CatmullRom, providing different look and feel.DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.1: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components are available as NuGet pa...Change default Share-site group SharePoint Online (Office 365): Change default Share-site group SharePoint Online: As default when we share a site collection or site with external users, SharePoint Online show default SharePoint groups which are Visitors and Members. By using this feature, you will get a link which you can use to customize the default groups to your custom groups and other default groups.Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - a centralized code sample library: C++, .NET Coding Guideline: Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework Coding Guideline This document describes the coding style guideline for native C++ and .NET (C# and VB.NET) programming used by the Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework project team.Working with Social Data: Tag Cloud Customization: http://swatipoint.blogspot.com/2011/10/sharepoint-2010-social-featurestagging.htmlWebDAV for WHS: Version 1.0.67: - Added: Check whether the Remote Web Access is turned on or not; - Added: Check for Add-In updates;Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0 (March 2012) for .NET 4.0: March release of Phalanger 3.0 significantly enhances performance, adds new features and fixes many issues. See following for the list of main improvements: New features: Phalanger Tools installable for Visual Studio 2011 Beta "filter" extension with several most used filters implemented DomDocument HTML parser, loadHTML() method mail() PHP compatible function PHP 5.4 T_CALLABLE token PHP 5.4 "callable" type hint PCRE: UTF32 characters in range support configuration supports <c...Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v8.0: Version 8.0 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine, containing new features: Internationalization Custom authentication provider Access control list for forums and threads Webdeploy package checksum: abc62990189cf0d488ef915d4a55e4b14169bc01 Visit Roadmap for more details.BIDS Helper: BIDS Helper 1.6: This beta release is the first to support SQL Server 2012 (in addition to SQL Server 2005, 2008, and 2008 R2). Since it is marked as a beta release, we are looking for bug reports in the next few months as you use BIDS Helper on real projects. In addition to getting all existing BIDS Helper functionality working appropriately in SQL Server 2012 (SSDT), the following features are new... Analysis Services Tabular Smart Diff Tabular Actions Editor Tabular HideMemberIf Tabular Pre-Build ...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 1: New feature - Windows 8 Metro build New feature - JsonTextReader automatically reads ISO strings as dates New feature - Added DateFormatHandling to control whether dates are written in the MS format or ISO format, with ISO as the default New feature - Added DateTimeZoneHandling to control reading and writing DateTime time zone details New feature - Added async serialize/deserialize methods to JsonConvert New feature - Added Path to JsonReader/JsonWriter/ErrorContext and exceptions w...New ProjectsASIVeste: No description availableAuthor-it Sync Headings Plug-in: Author-it plug-in that allows the user to synchronize the Print, Help, and Web headings with the Description for each selected topic.BlogEngine.Web: BlogEngine.Web is a BlogEngine.Net converted to use Web Application Project model (WAP).Code Writer Helper: A quick solution to help code generator writers.CodeUITest: Practise CodeUI automation.DAX Studio: Excel Add-In for PowerPivot and Analysis Services Tabular projects that will include an Object Browser, query editing and execution, formula and measure editing ,syntax highlighting, integrated tracing and query execution breakdowns.Fated: Fated is an isometric-viewed, tile-based tactical RPG developed in C# using XNA to be deployed to XBox. This includes a character generation core, graphics engine, and storyline parser.iSufe???: “iSufe???”??????????????????????????????。???????????、????、?????????，??????????????。??，????iOS/Android/WAP???????，???????????????。????GPLv2??，?????????????。Kinect test project: Basic project for my kinect test applicationLoLTimers: LoLTimers by Christian Schubert 2012. Version 1.0.0.0 This is a small app that lets you keep track of the most important creep camp cooldowns. Developed in Visual Studio C#.London Priority Security Services Ltd: LPSS - London Priority Security Services LtdNMCNPM: code nhóm nmcnpmOffice 365 Anonymous Access Manager Sandbox Solution: The sandbox solution enables you to manage anonymous access of lists on Office 365. It allows setting read, modifying and adding rights. Additionally the configuration page adds the necessary events to be able to use moderations, when anonymous users are creating a list item. The second feature in the solution enables anonymous access on blogs sites, it allows to enable anonymous users to comment on a blog.Office 365 Google Analytics: This sandbox solution enables google analytics everywhere in your site collection. This allows you to use the google analytics reporting on all your Office 365 sites.Office 365 Mobile Access Enables for Public Sites & Blogs: This sandbox solution enables mobile access on Office 365 sites.OwnMFCSolution: MFC test solution.People Data Generator: Need to load a bunch of test data to represent people (e.g. name, address, phone, etc.)? Wish it looked realistic? People Data Generator is what you need. Features: *Realistic names *Realistic addresses, using real towns and postal codes *Realistic phone numbers and emails *Very ExtensibleProventi: Met dit programma kan je je voorraad van je onderneming beheren. Dit programma zal in eerste instantie gebruikt worden binnen de minionderneming Proventi. Het programma is geschreven in VB.Net en maakt gebruik van SQL Server CE voor de gegevensopslag.qCommerce: ??????????? ???????, ???????????? ??? ????? qSoftwareQuanLyOTo: Ð? án môn h?c C# qu?n lý garage ô tôRoyaSoft.ir Resources: i am use this project for my personal web site :)SGPF: The team does not have nothing to declare here!SharePoint 2010 Autocomplete Lookup Field: Autocomplete Lookup field allows type ahead functionality while entering lookup values in list items.Sharing Photos using SignalR: An MVC application using SignalR that can be used to share photos between friends and get realtime updates. An user connected to the website can upload a photo which will be automatically broadcasted to all clients connected at that point.Sistema Hoteleiro: Sistema Hoteleiro é o meu trabalho final da disciplina Arquitetura de Aplicativos Ambiente .NET da 4a turma do curso de pós-graduação de especialização em Arquitetura de Sistemas Distribuídos oferecido pelo Instituto de Educação Continuada da Pontifícia Universidade Católica de MSoftware Revolution: This project is core information site of Software Revolution named company which provides software solutions.tgryi: tgyrivbWSUS: Really decide which and when to install updates from a centralized server, globally or per host : - installation schedule - updates to install - email results - configure extra Windows Update parameters Works with WSUS server or Windows Update from Microsoft. See README.txt for more informations ! :) Current official website is http://sourceforge.net/projects/vbwsus/XamlCombine: Combines multiple XAML resource dictionaries in one. Replaces DynamicResources to StaticResources. And sort them in order of usage.XNA Shader-free Linear Burn effect: Sample demonstrating a Linear Burn effect in XNA without using custom shaderszhCms: zhCmszhtest: my test project

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• Import Data from Excel sheet to DB Table through OAF page

  - by PRajkumar

  1. Create a New Workspace and Project File > New > General > Workspace Configured for Oracle Applications File Name – PrajkumarImportxlsDemo   Automatically a new OA Project will also be created   Project Name -- ImportxlsDemo Default Package -- prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.importxlsdemo   2. Add JAR file jxl-2.6.3.jar to Apache Library Download jxl-2.6.3.jar from following link – http://www.findjar.com/jar/net.sourceforge.jexcelapi/jars/jxl-2.6.jar.html   Steps to add jxl.jar file in Local Machine Right Click on ImportxlsDemo > Project Properties > Libraries > Add jar/Directory and browse to directory where jxl-2.6.3.jar has been downloaded and select the JAR file            Steps to add jxl.jar file at EBS middle tier On your EBS middile tier copy jxl.jar at $FND_TOP/java/3rdparty/standalone Add $FND_TOP/java/3rdparty/standalone\jxl.jar to custom classpath in Jser.properties file which is at $IAS_ORACLE_HOME/Apache/Jserv/etc wrapper.classpath=/U01/oracle/dev/devappl/fnd/11.5.0/java/3rdparty/stdalone/jxl.jar Bounce Apache Server   3. Create a New Application Module (AM) Right Click on ImportxlsDemo > New > ADF Business Components > Application Module Name -- ImportxlsAM Package -- prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.importxlsdemo.server   Check Application Module Class: ImportxlsAMImpl Generate JavaFile(s)   4. Create Test Table in which we will insert data from excel CREATE TABLE xx_import_excel_data_demo (    -- --------------------      -- Data Columns      -- --------------------      column1                 VARCHAR2(100),      column2                 VARCHAR2(100),      column3                 VARCHAR2(100),      column4                 VARCHAR2(100),      column5                 VARCHAR2(100),      -- --------------------      -- Who Columns      -- --------------------      last_update_date   DATE         NOT NULL,      last_updated_by    NUMBER   NOT NULL,      creation_date         DATE         NOT NULL,      created_by             NUMBER    NOT NULL,      last_update_login  NUMBER );   5. Create a New Entity Object (EO) Right click on ImportxlsDemo > New > ADF Business Components > Entity Object Name – ImportxlsEO Package -- prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.importxlsdemo.schema.server Database Objects -- XX_IMPORT_EXCEL_DATA_DEMO   Note – By default ROWID will be the primary key if we will not make any column to be primary key Check the Accessors, Create Method, Validation Method and Remove Method   6. Create a New View Object (VO) Right click on ImportxlsDemo > New > ADF Business Components > View Object Name -- ImportxlsVO Package -- prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.importxlsdemo.server   In Step2 in Entity Page select ImportxlsEO and shuttle it to selected list In Step3 in Attributes Window select all columns and shuttle them to selected list   In Java page Uncheck Generate Java file for View Object Class: ImportxlsVOImpl Select Generate Java File for View Row Class: ImportxlsVORowImpl -> Generate Java File -> Accessors   7. Add Your View Object to Root UI Application Module Right click on ImportxlsAM > Edit ImportxlsAM > Data Model > Select ImportxlsVO and shuttle to Data Model list   8. Create a New Page Right click on ImportxlsDemo > New > Web Tier > OA Components > Page Name -- ImportxlsPG Package -- prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.importxlsdemo.webui   9. Select the ImportxlsPG and go to the strcuture pane where a default region has been created   10. Select region1 and set the following properties:   Attribute Property ID PageLayoutRN AM Definition prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.importxlsdemo.server.ImportxlsAM Window Title Import Data From Excel through OAF Page Demo Window Title Import Data From Excel through OAF Page Demo   11. Create messageComponentLayout Region Under Page Layout Region Right click PageLayoutRN > New > Region   Attribute Property ID MainRN Item Style messageComponentLayout   12. Create a New Item messageFileUpload Bean under MainRN Right click on MainRN > New > messageFileUpload Set Following Properties for New Item --   Attribute Property ID MessageFileUpload Item Style messageFileUpload   13. Create a New Item Submit Button Bean under MainRN Right click on MainRN > New > messageLayout Set Following Properties for messageLayout --   Attribute Property ID ButtonLayout   Right Click on ButtonLayout > New > Item   Attribute Property ID Go Item Style submitButton Attribute Set /oracle/apps/fnd/attributesets/Buttons/Go   14. Create Controller for page ImportxlsPG Right Click on PageLayoutRN > Set New Controller Package Name: prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.importxlsdemo.webui Class Name: ImportxlsCO   Write Following Code in ImportxlsCO in processFormRequest import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.OAApplicationModule; import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.OAException; import java.io.Serializable; import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.webui.OAControllerImpl; import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.webui.OAPageContext; import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.webui.beans.OAWebBean; import oracle.cabo.ui.data.DataObject; import oracle.jbo.domain.BlobDomain; public void processFormRequest(OAPageContext pageContext, OAWebBean webBean) {  super.processFormRequest(pageContext, webBean);  if (pageContext.getParameter("Go") != null)  {   DataObject fileUploadData = (DataObject)pageContext.getNamedDataObject("MessageFileUpload");   String fileName = null;                 try   {    fileName = (String)fileUploadData.selectValue(null, "UPLOAD_FILE_NAME");   }   catch(NullPointerException ex)   {    throw new OAException("Please Select a File to Upload", OAException.ERROR);   }   BlobDomain uploadedByteStream = (BlobDomain)fileUploadData.selectValue(null, fileName);   try   {    OAApplicationModule oaapplicationmodule = pageContext.getRootApplicationModule();    Serializable aserializable2[] = {uploadedByteStream};    Class aclass2[] = {BlobDomain.class };    oaapplicationmodule.invokeMethod("ReadExcel", aserializable2,aclass2);   }   catch (Exception ex)   {    throw new OAException(ex.toString(), OAException.ERROR);   }  } }     Write Following Code in ImportxlsAMImpl.java import java.io.IOException; import java.io.InputStream; import jxl.Cell; import jxl.CellType; import jxl.Sheet; import jxl.Workbook; import jxl.read.biff.BiffException; import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.server.OAApplicationModuleImpl; import oracle.jbo.Row; import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.OAViewObject; import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.server.OAViewObjectImpl; import oracle.jbo.domain.BlobDomain; public void createRecord(String[] excel_data) {   OAViewObject vo = (OAViewObject)getImportxlsVO1();            if (!vo.isPreparedForExecution())    {   vo.executeQuery();      }                      Row row = vo.createRow();  try  {   for (int i=0; i < excel_data.length; i++)   {    row.setAttribute("Column" +(i+1) ,excel_data[i]);   }  }  catch(Exception e)  {   System.out.println(e.getMessage());   }  vo.insertRow(row);  getTransaction().commit(); }      public void ReadExcel(BlobDomain fileData) throws IOException {  String[] excel_data  = new String[5];  InputStream inputWorkbook = fileData.getInputStream();  Workbook w;          try  {   w = Workbook.getWorkbook(inputWorkbook);                       // Get the first sheet   Sheet sheet = w.getSheet(0);                       for (int i = 0; i < sheet.getRows(); i++)   {    for (int j = 0; j < sheet.getColumns(); j++)    {     Cell cell = sheet.getCell(j, i);     CellType type = cell.getType();     if (cell.getType() == CellType.LABEL)     {      System.out.println("I got a label " + cell.getContents());      excel_data[j] = cell.getContents();     }     if (cell.getType() == CellType.NUMBER)     {        System.out.println("I got a number " + cell.getContents());      excel_data[j] = cell.getContents();     }    }    createRecord(excel_data);   }  }              catch (BiffException e)  {   e.printStackTrace();  } }   15. Congratulation you have successfully finished. Run Your page and Test Your Work   Consider Excel PRAJ_TEST.xls with following data --       Lets Try to import this data into DB Table --          

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• Continuous Integration for SQL Server Part II – Integration Testing

  - by Ben Rees

  My previous post, on setting up Continuous Integration for SQL Server databases using GitHub, Bamboo and Red Gate’s tools, covered the first two parts of a simple Database Continuous Delivery process: Putting your database in to a source control system, and, Running a continuous integration process, each time changes are checked in. However there is, of course, a lot more to to Continuous Delivery than that. Specifically, in addition to the above: Putting some actual integration tests in to the CI process (otherwise, they don’t really do much, do they!?), Deploying the database changes with a managed, automated approach, Monitoring what you’ve just put live, to make sure you haven’t broken anything. This post will detail how to set up a very simple pipeline for implementing the first of these (continuous integration testing). NB: A lot of the setup in this post is built on top of the configuration from before, so it might be difficult to implement this post without running through part I first. There’ll then be a third post on automated database deployment followed by a final post dealing with the last item – monitoring changes on the live system. In the previous post, I used a mixture of Red Gate products and other 3rd party software – GitHub and Atlassian Bamboo specifically. This was partly because I believe most people work in an heterogeneous environment, using software from different vendors to suit their purposes and I wanted to show how this could work for this process. For example, you could easily substitute Atlassian’s BitBucket or Stash for GitHub, depending on your needs, or use an alternative CI server such as TeamCity, TFS or Jenkins. However, in this, post, I’ll be mostly using Red Gate products only (other than tSQLt). I would do this, firstly because I work for Red Gate. However, I also think that in the area of Database Delivery processes, nobody else has the offerings to implement this process fully – so I didn’t have any choice!   Background on Continuous Delivery For me, a great source of information on what makes a proper Continuous Delivery process is the Jez Humble and David Farley classic: Continuous Delivery – Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation This book is not of course, primarily about databases, and the process I outline here and in the previous article is a gross simplification of what Jez and David describe (not least because it’s that much harder for databases!). However, a lot of the principles that they describe can be equally applied to database development and, I would argue, should be. As I say however, what I describe here is a very simple version of what would be required for a full production process. A couple of useful resources on handling some of these complexities can be found in the following two references: Refactoring Databases – Evolutionary Database Design, by Scott J Ambler and Pramod J. Sadalage Versioning Databases – Branching and Merging, by Scott Allen In particular, I don’t deal at all with the issues of multiple branches and merging of those branches, an issue made particularly acute by the use of GitHub. The other point worth making is that, in the words of Martin Fowler: Continuous Delivery is about keeping your application in a state where it is always able to deploy into production.   I.e. we are not talking about continuously delivery updates to the production database every time someone checks in an amendment to a stored procedure. That is possible (and what Martin calls Continuous Deployment). However, again, that’s more than I describe in this article. And I doubt I need to remind DBAs or Developers to Proceed with Caution!   Integration Testing Back to something practical. The next stage, building on our set up from the previous article, is to add in some integration tests to the process. As I say, the CI process, though interesting, isn’t enormously useful without some sort of test process running. For this we’ll use the tSQLt framework, an open source framework designed specifically for running SQL Server tests. tSQLt is part of Red Gate’s SQL Test found on http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-test/ or can be downloaded separately from www.tsqlt.org - though I’ll provide a step-by-step guide below for setting this up. Getting tSQLt set up via SQL Test Click on the link http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-test/ and click on the blue Download button to download the Red Gate SQL Test product, if not already installed. Follow the install process for SQL Test to install the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) plugin on to your machine, if not already installed. Open SSMS. You should now see SQL Test under the Tools menu:   Clicking this link will give you the basic SQL Test dialogue: As yet, though we’ve installed the SQL Test product we haven’t yet installed the tSQLt test framework on to any particular database. To do this, we need to add our RedGateApp database using this dialogue, by clicking on the + Add Database to SQL Test… link, selecting the RedGateApp database and clicking the Add Database link:   In the next screen, SQL Test describes what will be installed on the database for the tSQLt framework. Also in this dialogue, uncheck the “Add SQL Cop tests” option (shown below). SQL Cop is a great set of pre-defined tests that work within the tSQLt framework to check the general health of your SQL Server database. However, we won’t be using them in this particular simple example: Once you’ve clicked on the OK button, the changes described in the dialogue will be made to your database. Some of these are shown in the left-hand-side below: We’ve now installed the framework. However, we haven’t actually created any tests, so this will be the next step. But, before we proceed, we’ve made an update to our database so should, again check this in to source control, adding comments as required:   Also worth a quick check that your build still runs with the new additions!: (And a quick check of the RedGateAppCI database shows that the changes have been made).   Creating and Testing a Unit Test There are, of course, a lot of very interesting unit tests that you could and should set up for a database. The great thing about the tSQLt framework is that you can write these in SQL. The example I’m going to use here is pretty Mickey Mouse – our database table is going to include some email addresses as reference data and I want to check whether these are all in a correct email format. Nothing clever but it illustrates the process and hopefully shows the method by which more interesting tests could be set up. Adding Reference Data to our Database To start, I want to add some reference data to my database, and have this source controlled (as well as the schema). First of all I need to add some data in to my solitary table – this can be done a number of ways, but I’ll do this in SSMS for simplicity: I then add some reference data to my table: Currently this reference data just exists in the database. For proper integration testing, this needs to form part of the source-controlled version of the database – and so needs to be added to the Git repository. This can be done via SQL Source Control, though first a Primary Key needs to be added to the table. Right click the table, select Design, then right-click on the first “id” row. Then click on “Set Primary Key”: NB: once this change is made, click Save to save the change to the table. Then, to source control this reference data, right click on the table (dbo.Email) and selecting the following option:   In the next screen, link the data in the Email table, by selecting it from the list and clicking “save and close”: We should at this point re-commit the changes (both the addition of the Primary Key, and the data) to the Git repo. NB: From here on, I won’t show screenshots for the GitHub side of things – it’s the same each time: whenever a change is made in SQL Source Control and committed to your local folder, you then need to sync this in the GitHub Windows client (as this is where the build server, Bamboo is taking it from). An interesting point to note here, when these changes are committed in SQL Source Control (right-click database and select “Commit Changes to Source Control..”): The display gives a warning about possibly needing a migration script for the “Add Primary Key” step of the changes. This isn’t actually necessary in this case, but this mechanism would allow you to create override scripts to replace the default change scripts created by the SQL Compare engine (which runs underneath SQL Source Control). Ignoring this message (!), we add a comment and commit the changes to Git. I then sync these, run a build (or the build gets run automatically), and check that the data is being deployed over to the target RedGateAppCI database:   Creating and Running the Test As I mention, the test I’m going to use here is a very simple one - are the email addresses in my reference table valid? This isn’t of course, a full test of email validation (I expect the email addresses I’ve chosen here aren’t really the those of the Fab Four) – but just a very basic check of format used. I’ve taken the relevant SQL from this Stack Overflow article. In SSMS select “SQL Test” from the Tools menu, then click on + New Test: In the next screen, give your new test a name, and also enter a name in the Test Class box (test classes are schemas that help you keep things organised). Also check that the database in which the test is going to be created is correct – RedGateApp in this example: Click “Create Test”. After closing a couple of subsequent dialogues, you’ll see a dummy script for the test, that needs filling in:   We now need to define the SQL for our test. As mentioned before, tSQLt allows you to write your unit tests in T-SQL, and the code I’m going to use here is as below. This needs to be copied and pasted in to the query window, to replace the default given by tSQLt: –  Basic email check test ALTER PROCEDURE [MyChecks].[test Check Email Addresses] AS BEGIN SET NOCOUNT ON         Declare @Output VarChar(max)     Set @Output = ”       SELECT  @Output = @Output + Email +Char(13) + Char(10) FROM dbo.Email WHERE email NOT LIKE ‘%_@__%.__%’       If @Output > ”         Begin             Set @Output = Char(13) + Char(10)                           + @Output             EXEC tSQLt.Fail@Output         End   END;   Once this script is entered, hit execute to add the Stored Procedure to the database. Before committing the test to source control,  it’s worth just checking that it works! For a positive test, click on “SQL Test” from the Tools menu, then click Run Tests. You should see output like the following: - a green tick to indicate success! But of course, what we also need to do is test that this is actually doing something by showing a failed test. Edit one of the email addresses in your table to an incorrect format: Now, re-run the same SQL Test as before and you’ll see the following: Great – we now know that our test is really doing something! You’ll also see a useful error message at the bottom of SSMS: (leave the email address as invalid for now, for the next steps). The next stage is to check this new test in to source control again, by right-clicking on the database and checking in the changes with a commit message (and not forgetting to sync in the GitHub client):   Checking that the Tests are Running as Integration Tests After the changes above are made, and after a build has run on Bamboo (manual or automatic), looking at the Stored Procedures for the RedGateAppCI, the SPROC for the new test has been moved over to the database. However this is not exactly what we were after. We didn’t want to just copy objects from one database to another, but actually run the tests as part of the build/integration test process. I.e. we’re continuously checking any changes we make (in this case, to the reference data emails), to ensure we’re not breaking a test that we’ve set up. The behaviour we want to see is that, if we check in static data that is incorrect (as we did in step 9 above) and we have the tSQLt test set up, then our build in Bamboo should fail. However, re-running the build shows the following: - sadly, a successful build! To make sure the tSQLt tests are run as part of the integration test, we need to amend a switch in the Red Gate CI config file. First, navigate to file sqlCI.targets in your working folder: Edit this document, make the following change, save the document, then commit and sync this change in the GitHub client: <!-- tSQLt tests --> <!-- Optional --> <!-- To run tSQLt tests in source control for the database, enter true. --> <enableTsqlt>true</enableTsqlt> Now, if we re-run the build in Bamboo (NB: I’ve moved to a new server here, hence different address and build number): - superb, a broken build!! The error message isn’t great here, so to get more detailed info, click on the full build log link on this page (below the fold). The interesting part of the log shown is towards the bottom. Pulling out this part:   21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 Build FAILED. 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 "C:\Users\Administrator\bamboo-home\xml-data\build-dir\RGA-RGP-JOB1\sqlCI.proj" (default target) (1) -> 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 (sqlCI target) -> 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 EXEC : sqlCI error occurred: RedGate.Deploy.SqlServerDbPackage.Shared.Exceptions.InvalidSqlException: Test Case Summary: 1 test case(s) executed, 0 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 errored. [C:\Users\Administrator\bamboo-home\xml-data\build-dir\RGA-RGP-JOB1\sqlCI.proj] 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 EXEC : sqlCI error occurred: [MyChecks].[test Check Email Addresses] failed: [C:\Users\Administrator\bamboo-home\xml-data\build-dir\RGA-RGP-JOB1\sqlCI.proj] 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 EXEC : sqlCI error occurred: ringo.starr@beatles [C:\Users\Administrator\bamboo-home\xml-data\build-dir\RGA-RGP-JOB1\sqlCI.proj] 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 EXEC : sqlCI error occurred: [C:\Users\Administrator\bamboo-home\xml-data\build-dir\RGA-RGP-JOB1\sqlCI.proj] 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 EXEC : sqlCI error occurred: +----------------------+ [C:\Users\Administrator\bamboo-home\xml-data\build-dir\RGA-RGP-JOB1\sqlCI.proj] 21-Jun-2013 11:35:19 EXEC : sqlCI error occurred: |Test Execution Summary| [C:\Users\Administrator\bamboo-home\xml-data\build-dir\RGA-RGP-JOB1\sqlCI.proj]   As a final check, we should make sure that, if we now fix this error, the build succeeds. So in SSMS, I’m going to correct the invalid email address, then check this change in to SQL Source Control (with a comment), commit to GitHub, and re-run the build:   This should have fixed the build: It worked! Summary This has been a very quick run through the implementation of CI for databases, including tSQLt tests to test whether your database updates are working. The next post in this series will focus on automated deployment – we’ve tested our database changes, how can we now deploy these to target sites?  

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• Dynamic XAP loading in Task-It - Part 1

  Download Source Code NOTE 1: The source code provided is running against the RC versions of Silverlight 4 and VisualStudio 2010, so you will need to update to those bits to run it. NOTE 2: After downloading the source, be sure to set the .Web project as the StartUp Project, and Default.aspx as the Start Page In my MEF into post, MEF to the rescue in Task-It, I outlined a couple of issues I was facing and explained why I chose MEF (the Managed Extensibility Framework) to solve these issues. Other posts to check out There are a few other resources out there around dynamic XAP loading that you may want to review (by the way, Glenn Block is the main dude when it comes to MEF): Glenn Blocks 3-part series on a dynamically loaded dashboard Glenn and John Papas Silverlight TV video on dynamic xap loading These provide some great info, but didnt exactly cover the scenario I wanted to achieve in Task-Itand that is dynamically loading each of the apps pages the first time the user enters a page. The code In the code I provided for download above, I created a simple solution that shows the technique I used for dynamic XAP loading in Task-It, but without all of the other code that surrounds it. Taking all that other stuff away should make it easier to grasp. Having said that, there is still a fair amount of code involved. I am always looking for ways to make things simpler, and to achieve the desired result with as little code as possible, so if I find a better/simpler way I will blog about it, but for now this technique works for me. When I created this solution I started by creating a new Silverlight Navigation Application called DynamicXAP Loading. I then added the following line to my UriMappings in MainPage.xaml: <uriMapper:UriMapping Uri="/{assemblyName};component/{path}" MappedUri="/{assemblyName};component/{path}"/> In the section of MainPage.xaml that produces the page links in the upper right, I kept the Home link, but added a couple of new ones (page1 and page 2). These are the pages that will be dynamically (lazy) loaded: <StackPanel x:Name="LinksStackPanel" Style="{StaticResource LinksStackPanelStyle}">      <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" NavigateUri="/Home" TargetName="ContentFrame" Content="home"/>      <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>      <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 1" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage1}"/>      <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>      <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 2" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage2}"/>  </StackPanel> In App.xaml.cs I added a bit of MEF code. In Application_Startup I call a method called InitializeContainer, which creates a PackageCatalog (a MEF thing), then I create a CompositionContainer and pass it to the CompositionHost.Initialize method. This is boiler-plate MEF stuff that allows you to do 'composition' and import 'packages'. You're welcome to do a bit more MEF research on what is happening here if you'd like, but for the purpose of this example you can just trust that it works. :-) private void Application_Startup(object sender, StartupEventArgs e) {     InitializeContainer();     this.RootVisual = new MainPage(); }   private static void InitializeContainer() {     var catalog = new PackageCatalog();     catalog.AddPackage(Package.Current);     var container = new CompositionContainer(catalog);     container.ComposeExportedValue(catalog);     CompositionHost.Initialize(container); } Infrastructure In the sample code you'll notice that there is a project in the solution called DynamicXAPLoading.Infrastructure. This is simply a Silverlight Class Library project that I created just to move stuff I considered application 'infrastructure' code into a separate place, rather than cluttering the main Silverlight project (DynamicXapLoading). I did this same thing in Task-It, as the amount of this type of code was starting to clutter up the Silverlight project, and it just seemed to make sense to move things like Enums, Constants and the like off to a separate place. In the DynamicXapLoading.Infrastructure project you'll see 3 classes: Enums - There is only one enum in here called ModuleEnum. We'll use these later. PageMetadata - We will use this class later to add metadata to a new dynamically loaded project. ViewModelBase - This is simply a base class for view models that we will use in this, as well as future samples. As mentioned in my MVVM post, I will be using the MVVM pattern throughout my code for reasons detailed in the post. By the way, the ViewModelExtension class in there allows me to do strongly-typed property changed notification, so rather than OnPropertyChanged("MyProperty"), I can do this.OnPropertyChanged(p => p.MyProperty). It's just a less error-prown approach, because if you don't spell "MyProperty" correctly using the first method, nothing will break, it just won't work. Adding a new page We currently have a couple of pages that are being dynamically (lazy) loaded, but now let's add a third page. 1. First, create a new Silverlight Application project: In this example I call it Page3. In the future you may prefer to use a different name, like DynamicXAPLoading.Page3, or even DynamicXAPLoading.Modules.Page3. It can be whatever you want. In my Task-It application I used the latter approach (with 'Modules' in the name). I do think of these application as 'modules', but Prism uses the same term, so some folks may not like that. Use whichever naming convention you feel is appropriate, but for now Page3 will do. When you change the name to Page3 and click OK, you will be presented with the Add New Project dialog: It is important that you leave the 'Host the Silverlight application in a new or existing Web site in the solution' checked, and the .Web project will be selected in the dropdown below. This will create the .xap file for this project under ClientBin in the .Web project, which is where we want it. 2. Uncheck the 'Add a test page that references the application' checkbox, and leave everything else as is. 3. Once the project is created, you can delete App.xaml and MainPage.xaml. 4. You will need to add references your new project to the following: DynamicXAPLoading.Infrastructure.dll (this is a Project reference) DynamicNavigation.dll (this is in the Libs directory under the DynamicXAPLoading project) System.ComponentModel.Composition.dll System.ComponentModel.Composition.Initialization.dll System.Windows.Controls.Navigation.dll If you have installed the latest RC bits you will find the last 3 dll's under the .NET tab in the Add Referenced dialog. They live in the following location, or if you are on a 64-bit machine like me, it will be Program Files (x86).       C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\Libraries\Client Now let's create some UI for our new project. 5. First, create a new Silverlight User Control called Page3.dyn.xaml 6. Paste the following code into the xaml: <dyn:DynamicPageShim xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"     xmlns:dyn="clr-namespace:DynamicNavigation;assembly=DynamicNavigation"     xmlns:my="clr-namespace:Page3;assembly=Page3">     <my:Page3Host /> </dyn:DynamicPageShim> This is just a 'shim', part of David Poll's technique for dynamic loading. 7. Expand the icon next to Page3.dyn.xaml and delete the code-behind file (Page3.dyn.xaml.cs). 8. Next we will create a control that will 'host' our page. Create another Silverlight User Control called Page3Host.xaml and paste in the following XAML: <dyn:DynamicPage x:Class="Page3.Page3Host"     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"     xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"     xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"     xmlns:dyn="clr-namespace:DynamicNavigation;assembly=DynamicNavigation"     xmlns:Views="clr-namespace:Page3.Views"      mc:Ignorable="d"     d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400"     Title="Page 3">       <Views:Page3/>   </dyn:DynamicPage> 9. Now paste the following code into the code-behind for this control: using DynamicXAPLoading.Infrastructure;   namespace Page3 {     [PageMetadata(NavigateUri = "/Page3;component/Page3.dyn.xaml", Module = Enums.Page3)]     public partial class Page3Host     {         public Page3Host()         {             InitializeComponent();         }     } } Notice that we are now using that PageMetadata custom attribute class that we created in the Infrastructure project, and setting its two properties. NavigateUri - This tells it that the assembly is called Page3 (with a slash beforehand), and the page we want to load is Page3.dyn.xaml...our 'shim'. That line we added to the UriMapper in MainPage.xaml will use this information to load the page. Module - This goes back to that ModuleEnum class in our Infrastructure project. However, setting the Module to ModuleEnum.Page3 will cause a compilation error, so... 10. Go back to that Enums.cs under the Infrastructure project and add a 3rd entry for Page3: public enum ModuleEnum {     Page1,     Page2,     Page3 } 11. Now right-click on the Page3 project and add a folder called Views. 12. Right-click on the Views folder and create a new Silverlight User Control called Page3.xaml. We won't bother creating a view model for this User Control as I did in the Page 1 and Page 2 projects, just for the sake of simplicity. Feel free to add one if you'd like though, and copy the code from one of those other projects. Right now those view models aren't really doing anything anyway...though they will in my next post. :-) 13. Now let's replace the xaml for Page3.xaml with the following: <dyn:DynamicPage x:Class="Page3.Views.Page3"     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"     xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"     xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"     xmlns:dyn="clr-namespace:DynamicNavigation;assembly=DynamicNavigation"     mc:Ignorable="d"     d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400"     Style="{StaticResource PageStyle}">       <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">         <ScrollViewer x:Name="PageScrollViewer" Style="{StaticResource PageScrollViewerStyle}">             <StackPanel x:Name="ContentStackPanel">                 <TextBlock x:Name="HeaderText" Style="{StaticResource HeaderTextStyle}" Text="Page 3"/>                 <TextBlock x:Name="ContentText" Style="{StaticResource ContentTextStyle}" Text="Page 3 content"/>             </StackPanel>         </ScrollViewer>     </Grid>   </dyn:DynamicPage> 14. And in the code-behind remove the inheritance from UserControl, so it should look like this: namespace Page3.Views {     public partial class Page3     {         public Page3()         {             InitializeComponent();         }     } } One thing you may have noticed is that the base class for the last two User Controls we created is DynamicPage. Once again, we are using the infrastructure that David Poll created. 15. OK, a few last things. We need a link on our main page so that we can access our new page. In MainPage.xaml let's update our links to look like this: <StackPanel x:Name="LinksStackPanel" Style="{StaticResource LinksStackPanelStyle}">     <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" NavigateUri="/Home" TargetName="ContentFrame" Content="home"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>     <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 1" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage1}"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>     <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 2" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage2}"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>     <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 3" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage3}"/> </StackPanel> 16. Next, we need to add the following at the bottom of MainPageViewModel in the ViewModels directory of our DynamicXAPLoading project: public ModuleEnum ModulePage3 {     get { return ModuleEnum.Page3; } } 17. And at last, we need to add a case for our new page to the switch statement in MainPageViewModel: switch (module) {     case ModuleEnum.Page1:         DownloadPackage("Page1.xap");         break;     case ModuleEnum.Page2:         DownloadPackage("Page2.xap");         break;     case ModuleEnum.Page3:         DownloadPackage("Page3.xap");         break;     default:         break; } Now fire up the application and click the page 1, page 2 and page 3 links. What you'll notice is that there is a 2-second delay the first time you hit each page. That is because I added the following line to the Navigate method in MainPageViewModel: Thread.Sleep(2000); // Simulate a 2 second initial loading delay The reason I put this in there is that I wanted to simulate a delay the first time the page loads (as the .xap is being downloaded from the server). You'll notice that after the first hit to the page though that there is no delay...that's because the .xap has already been downloaded. Feel free to comment out this 2-second delay, or remove it if you'd like. I just wanted to show how subsequent hits to the page would be quicker than the initial one. By the way, you may want to display some sort of BusyIndicator while the .xap is loading. I have that in my Task-It appplication, but for the sake of simplicity I did not include it here. In the future I'll blog about how I show and hide the BusyIndicator using events (I'm currently using the eventing framework in Prism for that, but may move to the one in the MVVM Light Toolkit some time soon). Whew, that felt like a lot of steps, but it does work quite nicely. As I mentioned earlier, I'll try to find ways to simplify the code (I'd like to get away from having things like hard-coded .xap file names) and will blog about it in the future if I find a better way. In my next post, I'll talk more about what is actually happening with the code that makes this all work.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Generating EF Code First model classes from an existing database

  - by Jon Galloway

  Entity Framework Code First is a lightweight way to "turn on" data access for a simple CLR class. As the name implies, the intended use is that you're writing the code first and thinking about the database later. However, I really like the Entity Framework Code First works, and I want to use it in existing projects and projects with pre-existing databases. For example, MVC Music Store comes with a SQL Express database that's pre-loaded with a catalog of music (including genres, artists, and songs), and while it may eventually make sense to load that seed data from a different source, for the MVC 3 release we wanted to keep using the existing database. While I'm not getting the full benefit of Code First - writing code which drives the database schema - I can still benefit from the simplicity of the lightweight code approach. Scott Guthrie blogged about how to use entity framework with an existing database, looking at how you can override the Entity Framework Code First conventions so that it can work with a database which was created following other conventions. That gives you the information you need to create the model classes manually. However, it turns out that with Entity Framework 4 CTP 5, there's a way to generate the model classes from the database schema. Once the grunt work is done, of course, you can go in and modify the model classes as you'd like, but you can save the time and frustration of figuring out things like mapping SQL database types to .NET types. Note that this template requires Entity Framework 4 CTP 5 or later. You can install EF 4 CTP 5 here. Step One: Generate an EF Model from your existing database The code generation system in Entity Framework works from a model. You can add a model to your existing project and delete it when you're done, but I think it's simpler to just spin up a separate project to generate the model classes. When you're done, you can delete the project without affecting your application, or you may choose to keep it around in case you have other database schema updates which require model changes. I chose to add the Model classes to the Models folder of a new MVC 3 application. Right-click the folder and select "Add / New Item..."   Next, select ADO.NET Entity Data Model from the Data Templates list, and name it whatever you want (the name is unimportant).   Next, select "Generate from database." This is important - it's what kicks off the next few steps, which read your database's schema.   Now it's time to point the Entity Data Model Wizard at your existing database. I'll assume you know how to find your database - if not, I covered that a bit in the MVC Music Store tutorial section on Models and Data. Select your database, uncheck the "Save entity connection settings in Web.config" (since we won't be using them within the application), and click Next.   Now you can select the database objects you'd like modeled. I just selected all tables and clicked Finish.   And there's your model. If you want, you can make additional changes here before going on to generate the code.   Step Two: Add the DbContext Generator Like most code generation systems in Visual Studio lately, Entity Framework uses T4 templates which allow for some control over how the code is generated. K Scott Allen wrote a detailed article on T4 Templates and the Entity Framework on MSDN recently, if you'd like to know more. Fortunately for us, there's already a template that does just what we need without any customization. Right-click a blank space in the Entity Framework model surface and select "Add Code Generation Item..." Select the Code groupt in the Installed Templates section and pick the ADO.NET DbContext Generator. If you don't see this listed, make sure you've got EF 4 CTP 5 installed and that you're looking at the Code templates group. Note that the DbContext Generator template is similar to the EF POCO template which came out last year, but with "fix up" code (unnecessary in EF Code First) removed.   As soon as you do this, you'll two terrifying Security Warnings - unless you click the "Do not show this message again" checkbox the first time. It will also be displayed (twice) every time you rebuild the project, so I checked the box and no immediate harm befell my computer (fingers crossed!).   Here's the payoff: two templates (filenames ending with .tt) have been added to the project, and they've generated the code I needed.   The "MusicStoreEntities.Context.tt" template built a DbContext class which holds the entity collections, and the "MusicStoreEntities.tt" template build a separate class for each table I selected earlier. We'll customize them in the next step. I recommend copying all the generated .cs files into your application at this point, since accidentally rebuilding the generation project will overwrite your changes if you leave them there. Step Three: Modify and use your POCO entity classes Note: I made a bunch of tweaks to my POCO classes after they were generated. You don't have to do any of this, but I think it's important that you can - they're your classes, and EF Code First respects that. Modify them as you need for your application, or don't. The Context class derives from DbContext, which is what turns on the EF Code First features. It holds a DbSet for each entity. Think of DbSet as a simple List, but with Entity Framework features turned on.   //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ // <auto-generated> // This code was generated from a template. // // Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if // the code is regenerated. // </auto-generated> //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace EF_CodeFirst_From_Existing_Database.Models { using System; using System.Data.Entity; public partial class Entities : DbContext { public Entities() : base("name=Entities") { } public DbSet<Album> Albums { get; set; } public DbSet<Artist> Artists { get; set; } public DbSet<Cart> Carts { get; set; } public DbSet<Genre> Genres { get; set; } public DbSet<OrderDetail> OrderDetails { get; set; } public DbSet<Order> Orders { get; set; } } } It's a pretty lightweight class as generated, so I just took out the comments, set the namespace, removed the constructor, and formatted it a bit. Done. If I wanted, though, I could have added or removed DbSets, overridden conventions, etc. using System.Data.Entity; namespace MvcMusicStore.Models { public class MusicStoreEntities : DbContext { public DbSet Albums { get; set; } public DbSet Genres { get; set; } public DbSet Artists { get; set; } public DbSet Carts { get; set; } public DbSet Orders { get; set; } public DbSet OrderDetails { get; set; } } } Next, it's time to look at the individual classes. Some of mine were pretty simple - for the Cart class, I just need to remove the header and clean up the namespace. //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ // // This code was generated from a template. // // Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if // the code is regenerated. // //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace EF_CodeFirst_From_Existing_Database.Models { using System; using System.Collections.Generic; public partial class Cart { // Primitive properties public int RecordId { get; set; } public string CartId { get; set; } public int AlbumId { get; set; } public int Count { get; set; } public System.DateTime DateCreated { get; set; } // Navigation properties public virtual Album Album { get; set; } } } I did a bit more customization on the Album class. Here's what was generated: //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ // // This code was generated from a template. // // Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if // the code is regenerated. // //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace EF_CodeFirst_From_Existing_Database.Models { using System; using System.Collections.Generic; public partial class Album { public Album() { this.Carts = new HashSet(); this.OrderDetails = new HashSet(); } // Primitive properties public int AlbumId { get; set; } public int GenreId { get; set; } public int ArtistId { get; set; } public string Title { get; set; } public decimal Price { get; set; } public string AlbumArtUrl { get; set; } // Navigation properties public virtual Artist Artist { get; set; } public virtual Genre Genre { get; set; } public virtual ICollection Carts { get; set; } public virtual ICollection OrderDetails { get; set; } } } I removed the header, changed the namespace, and removed some of the navigation properties. One nice thing about EF Code First is that you don't have to have a property for each database column or foreign key. In the Music Store sample, for instance, we build the app up using code first and start with just a few columns, adding in fields and navigation properties as the application needs them. EF Code First handles the columsn we've told it about and doesn't complain about the others. Here's the basic class: using System.ComponentModel; using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations; using System.Web.Mvc; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace MvcMusicStore.Models { public class Album { public int AlbumId { get; set; } public int GenreId { get; set; } public int ArtistId { get; set; } public string Title { get; set; } public decimal Price { get; set; } public string AlbumArtUrl { get; set; } public virtual Genre Genre { get; set; } public virtual Artist Artist { get; set; } public virtual List OrderDetails { get; set; } } } It's my class, not Entity Framework's, so I'm free to do what I want with it. I added a bunch of MVC 3 annotations for scaffolding and validation support, as shown below: using System.ComponentModel; using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations; using System.Web.Mvc; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace MvcMusicStore.Models { [Bind(Exclude = "AlbumId")] public class Album { [ScaffoldColumn(false)] public int AlbumId { get; set; } [DisplayName("Genre")] public int GenreId { get; set; } [DisplayName("Artist")] public int ArtistId { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "An Album Title is required")] [StringLength(160)] public string Title { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Price is required")] [Range(0.01, 100.00, ErrorMessage = "Price must be between 0.01 and 100.00")] public decimal Price { get; set; } [DisplayName("Album Art URL")] [StringLength(1024)] public string AlbumArtUrl { get; set; } public virtual Genre Genre { get; set; } public virtual Artist Artist { get; set; } public virtual List<OrderDetail> OrderDetails { get; set; } } } The end result was that I had working EF Code First model code for the finished application. You can follow along through the tutorial to see how I built up to the finished model classes, starting with simple 2-3 property classes and building up to the full working schema. Thanks to Diego Vega (on the Entity Framework team) for pointing me to the DbContext template.

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• 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

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• Handling HumanTask attachments in Oracle BPM 11g PS4FP+ (II)

  - by ccasares

  Retrieving uploaded attachments -UCM- As stated in my previous blog entry, Oracle BPM 11g 11.1.1.5.1 (aka PS4FP) introduced a new cool feature whereby you can use Oracle WebCenter Content (previously known as Oracle UCM) as the repository for the human task attached documents. For more information about how to use or enable this feature, have a look here. The attachment scope (either TASK or PROCESS) also applies to UCM-attachments. But even with this other feature, one question might arise when using UCM attachments. How can I get them from within the process? The first answer would be to use the same getTaskAttachmentContents() XPath function already explained in my previous blog entry. In fact, that's the way it should be. But in Oracle BPM 11g 11.1.1.5.1 (PS4FP) and 11.1.1.6.0 (PS5) there's a bug that prevents you to do that. If you invoke such function against a UCM-attachment, you'll get a null content response (bug#13907552). Even if the attachment was correctly uploaded. While this bug gets fixed, next I will show a workaround that lets me to retrieve the UCM-attached documents from within a BPM process. Besides, the sample will show how to interact with WCC API from within a BPM process.Aside note: I suggest you to read my previous blog entry about Human Task attachments where I briefly describe some concepts that are used next, such as the execData/attachment[] structure. Sample Process I will be using the following sample process: A dummy UserTask using "HumanTask2" Human Task, followed by an Embedded Subprocess that will retrieve the attachments payload. In this case, and here's the key point of the sample, we will retrieve such payload using WebCenter Content WebService API (IDC): and once retrieved, we will write each of them back to a file in the server using a File Adapter service: In detail:  We will use the same attachmentCollection XSD structure and same BusinessObject definition as in the previous blog entry. However we create a separate variable, named attachmentUCM, based on such BusinessObject. We will still need to keep a copy of the HumanTask output's execData structure. Therefore we need to create a new variable of type TaskExecutionData (different one than the other used for non-UCM attachments): As in the non-UCM attachments flow, in the output tab of the UserTask mapping, we'll keep a copy of the execData structure: Now we get into the embedded subprocess that will retrieve the attachments' payload. First, and using an XSLT transformation, we feed the attachmentUCM variable with the following information: The name of each attachment (from execData/attachment/name element) The WebCenter Content ID of the uploaded attachment. This info is stored in execData/attachment/URI element with the format ecm://<id>. As we just want the numeric <id>, we need to get rid of the protocol prefix ("ecm://"). We do so with some XPath functions as detailed below: with these two functions being invoked, respectively: We, again, set the target payload element with an empty string, to get the <payload></payload> tag created. The complete XSLT transformation is shown below. Remember that we're using the XSLT for-each node to create as many target structures as necessary.  Once we have fed the attachmentsUCM structure and so it now contains the name of each of the attachments along with each WCC unique id (dID), it is time to iterate through it and get the payload. Therefore we will use a new embedded subprocess of type MultiInstance, that will iterate over the attachmentsUCM/attachment[] element: In each iteration we will use a Service activity that invokes WCC API through a WebService. Follow these steps to create and configure the Partner Link needed: Login to WCC console with an administrator user (i.e. weblogic). Go to Administration menu and click on "Soap Wsdls" link. We will use the GetFile service to retrieve a file based on its dID. Thus we'll need such service WSDL definition that can be downloaded by clicking the GetFile link. Save the WSDL file in your JDev project folder. In the BPM project's composite view, drag & drop a WebService adapter to create a new External Reference, based on the just added GetFile.wsdl. Name it UCM_GetFile. WCC services are secured through basic HTTP authentication. Therefore we need to enable the just created reference for that: Right-click the reference and click on Configure WS Policies. Under the Security section, click "+" to add the "oracle/wss_username_token_client_policy" policy The last step is to set the credentials for the security policy. For the sample we will use the admin user for WCC (weblogic/welcome1). Open the composite.xml file and select the Source view. Search for the UCM_GetFile entry and add the following highlighted elements into it:   <reference name="UCM_GetFile" ui:wsdlLocation="GetFile.wsdl">     <interface.wsdl interface="http://www.stellent.com/GetFile/#wsdl.interface(GetFileSoap)"/>     <binding.ws port="http://www.stellent.com/GetFile/#wsdl.endpoint(GetFile/GetFileSoap)"                 location="GetFile.wsdl" soapVersion="1.1">       <wsp:PolicyReference URI="oracle/wss_username_token_client_policy"                            orawsp:category="security" orawsp:status="enabled"/>       <property name="weblogic.wsee.wsat.transaction.flowOption"                 type="xs:string" many="false">WSDLDriven</property>       <property name="oracle.webservices.auth.username"                 type="xs:string">weblogic</property>       <property name="oracle.webservices.auth.password"                 type="xs:string">welcome1</property>     </binding.ws>   </reference> Now the new external reference is ready: Once the reference has just been created, we should be able now to use it from our BPM process. However we find here a problem. The WCC GetFile service operation that we will use, GetFileByID, accepts as input a structure similar to this one, where all element tags are optional: <get:GetFileByID xmlns:get="http://www.stellent.com/GetFile/">    <get:dID>?</get:dID>   <get:rendition>?</get:rendition>   <get:extraProps>      <get:property>         <get:name>?</get:name>         <get:value>?</get:value>      </get:property>   </get:extraProps></get:GetFileByID> and we need to fill up just the <get:dID> tag element. Due to some kind of restriction or bug on WCC, the rest of the tag elements must NOT be sent, not even empty (i.e.: <get:rendition></get:rendition> or <get:rendition/>). A sample request that performs the query just by the dID, must be in the following format: <get:GetFileByID xmlns:get="http://www.stellent.com/GetFile/">   <get:dID>12345</get:dID></get:GetFileByID> The issue here is that the simple mapping in BPM does create empty tags being a sample result as follows: <get:GetFileByID xmlns:get="http://www.stellent.com/GetFile/"> <get:dID>12345</get:dID> <get:rendition/> <get:extraProps/> </get:GetFileByID> Although the above structure is perfectly valid, it is not accepted by WCC. Therefore, we need to bypass the problem. The workaround we use (many others are available) is to add a Mediator component between the BPM process and the Service that simply copies the input structure from BPM but getting rid of the empty tags. Follow these steps to configure the Mediator: Drag & drop a new Mediator component into the composite. Uncheck the creation of the SOAP bindings and use the Interface Definition from WSDL template and select the existing GetFile.wsdl Double click in the mediator to edit it. Add a static routing rule to the GetFileByID operation, of type Service and select References/UCM_GetFile/GetFileByID target service: Create the request and reply XSLT mappers: Make sure you map only the dID element in the request: And do an Auto-mapper for the whole response: Finally, we can now add and configure the Service activity in the BPM process. Drag & drop it to the embedded subprocess and select the NormalizedGetFile service and getFileByID operation: Map both the input: ...and the output: Once this embedded subprocess ends, we will have all attachments (name + payload) in the attachmentsUCM variable, which is the main goal of this sample. But in order to test everything runs fine, we finish the sample writing each attachment to a file. To that end we include a final embedded subprocess to concurrently iterate through each attachmentsUCM/attachment[] element: On each iteration we will use a Service activity that invokes a File Adapter write service. In here we have two important parameters to set. First, the payload itself. The file adapter awaits binary data in base64 format (string). We have to map it using XPath (Simple mapping doesn't recognize a String as a base64-binary valid target): Second, we must set the target filename using the Service Properties dialog box: Again, note how we're making use of the loopCounter index variable to get the right element within the embedded subprocess iteration. Final blog entry about attachments will handle how to inject documents to Human Tasks from the BPM process and how to share attachments between different User Tasks. Will come soon. Again, once I finish will all posts on this matter, I will upload the whole sample project to java.net.

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• Creating Item Templates as Visual Studio 2010 Extensions

  - by maziar

  Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2010 Extension,T4 Template,VSIX,Item Template Wizard This blog post briefly introduces creation of an item template as a Visual studio 2010 extension. Problem specification Assume you are writing a Framework for data-oriented applications and you decide to include all your application messages in a SQL server database table. After creating the table, your create a class in your framework for getting messages with a string key specified.   var message = FrameworkMessages.Get("ChangesSavedSuccess");   Everyone would say this code is so error prone, because message keys are not strong-typed, and might create errors in application that are not caught in tests. So we think of a way to make it strong-typed, i.e. create a class to use it like this:   var message = Messages.ChangesSavedSuccess; in Messages class the code looks like this: public string ChangesSavedSuccess {     get { return FrameworkMessages.Get("ChangesSavedSuccess"); } }   And clearly, we are not going to create the Messages class manually; we need a class generator for it.   Again assume that the application(s) that intend to use our framework, contain multiple sub-systems. So each sub-system need to have it’s own strong-typed message class that call FrameworkMessages.Get method. So we would like to make our code generator an Item Template so that each developer would easily add the item to his project and no other works would be necessary.   Solution We create a T4 Text Template to generate our strong typed class from database. Then create a Visual Studio Item Template with this generator and publish it.   What Are T4 Templates You might be already familiar with T4 templates. If it’s so, you can skip this section. T4 Text Template is a fine Visual Studio file type (.tt) that generates output text. This file is a mixture of text blocks and code logic (in C# or VB). For example, you can generate HTML files, C# classes, Resource files and etc with use of a T4 template.   Syntax highlighting In Visual Studio 2010 a T4 Template by default will no be syntax highlighted and no auto-complete is supported for it. But there is a fine visual studio extension named ‘Visual T4’ which can be downloaded free from VisualStudioGallery. This tool offers IntelliSense, syntax coloring, validation, transformation preview and more for T4 templates.     How Item Templates work in Visual Studio Visual studio extensions allow us to add some functionalities to visual studio. In our case we need to create a .vsix file that adds a template to visual studio item templates. Item templates are zip files containing the template file and a meta-data file with .vstemplate extension. This .vstemplate file is an XML file that provides some information about the template. A .vsix file also is a zip file (renamed to .vsix) that are open with visual studio extension installer. (Re-installing a vsix file requires that old one to be uninstalled from VS: Tools > Extension Manager.) Installing a vsix will need Visual Studio to be closed and re-opened to take effect. Visual studio extension installer will easily find the item template’s zip file and copy it to visual studio’s template items folder. You can find other visual studio templates in [<VS Install Path>\Common7\IDE\ItemTemplates] and you can edit them; but be very careful with VS default templates.   How Can I Create a VSIX file 1. Visual Studio SDK depending on your Visual Studio’s version, you need to download Microsoft Visual Studio SDK. Note that if you have VS 2010 SP1, you will need to download and install VS 2010 SP1 SDK; VS 2010 SDK will not be installed (unless you change registry value that indicated your service pack number). Here is the link for VS 2010 SP1 SDK. After downloading, Run it and follow the wizard to complete the installation.   2. Create the file you want to make it an Item Template Create a project (or use an existing one) and add you file, edit it to make it work fine.   Back to our own problem, we need to create a T4 (.tt) template. VS-Prok: Add > New Item > General > Text Template Type a file name, ex. Message.tt, and press Add. Create the T4 template file (in this blog I do not intend to include T4 syntaxes so I just write down the code which is clear enough for you to understand)   <#@ template debug="false" hostspecific="true" language="C#" #> <#@ output extension=".cs" #> <#@ Assembly Name="System.Data" #> <#@ Import Namespace="System.Data.SqlClient" #> <#@ Import Namespace="System.Text" #> <#@ Import Namespace="System.IO" #> <#     var connectionString = "server=Maziar-PC; Database=MyDatabase; Integrated Security=True";     var systemName = "Sys1";     var builder = new StringBuilder();     using (var connection = new SqlConnection(connectionString))     {         connection.Open();         var command = connection.CreateCommand();         command.CommandText = string.Format("SELECT [Key] FROM [Message] WHERE System = '{0}'", systemName);         var reader = command.ExecuteReader();         while (reader.Read())         {             builder.AppendFormat("        public static string {0} {{ get {{ return FrameworkMessages.Get(\"{0}\"); }} }}\r\n", reader[0]);         }     } #> namespace <#= System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.CallContext.LogicalGetData("NamespaceHint") #> {     public static class <#= Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(Host.TemplateFile) #>     { <#= builder.ToString() #>     } } As you can see the T4 template connects to a database, reads message keys and generates a class. Here is the output: namespace MyProject.MyFolder {     public static class Messages     {         public static string ChangesSavedSuccess { get { return FrameworkMessages.Get("ChangesSavedSuccess"); } }         public static string ErrorSavingChanges { get { return FrameworkMessages.Get("ErrorSavingChanges"); } }     } }   The output looks fine but there is one problem. The connectionString and systemName are hard coded. so how can I create an flexible item template? One of features of item templates in visual studio is that you can create a designer wizard for your item template, so I can get connection information and system name there. now lets go on creating the vsix file.   3. Create Template In visual studio click on File > Export Template a wizard will show up. if first step click on Item Template on in the combo box select the project that contains Messages.tt. click next. Select Messages.tt from list in second step. click next. In the third step, you should choose References. For this template, System and System.Data are needed so choose them. click next. write down template name, description, if you like add a .ico file as the icon file and also preview image. Uncheck automatically add the templare … . Copy the output location in clip board. click finish.     4. Create VSIX Project In VS, Click File > New > Project > Extensibility > VSIX Project Type a name, ex. FrameworkMessages, Location, etc. The project will include a .vsixmanifest file. Fill in fields like Author, Product Name, Description, etc.   In Content section, click on Add Content. choose content type as Item Template. choose source as file. remember you have the template file address in clipboard? now paste it in front of file. click OK.     5. Build VSIX Project That’s it, build the project and go to output directory. You see a .vsix file. you can run it now. After restarting VS, if you click on a project > Add > New Item, you will see your item in list and you can add it. When you add this item to a project, if it has not references to System and System.Data they will be added. but the problem mentioned in step 2 is seen now.     6. Create Design Wizard for your Item Template Create a project i.e. Windows Application named ‘Framework.Messages.Design’, but better change its output type to Class Library. Add References to Microsoft.VisualStudio.TemplateWizardInterface and envdte Add a class Named MessagesDesigner in your project and Implement IWizard interface in it. This is what you should write: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TemplateWizard; using EnvDTE; namespace Framework.Messages.Design {     class MessageDesigner : IWizard     {         private bool CanAddProjectItem;         public void RunStarted(object automationObject, Dictionary<string, string> replacementsDictionary, WizardRunKind runKind, object[] customParams)         {             // Prompt user for Connection String and System Name in a Windows form (ShowDialog) here             // (try to provide good interface)             // if user clicks on cancel of your windows form return;             string connectionString = "connection;string"; // Set value from the form             string systemName = "system;name"; // Set value from the form             CanAddProjectItem = true;             replacementsDictionary.Add("$connectionString$", connectionString);             replacementsDictionary.Add("$systemName$", systemName);         }         public bool ShouldAddProjectItem(string filePath)         {             return CanAddProjectItem;         }         public void BeforeOpeningFile(ProjectItem projectItem)         {         }         public void ProjectFinishedGenerating(Project project)         {         }         public void ProjectItemFinishedGenerating(ProjectItem projectItem)         {         }         public void RunFinished()         {         }     } }   before your code runs  replacementsDictionary contains list of default template parameters. After that, two other parameters are added. Now build this project and copy the output assembly to [<VS Install Path>\Common7\IDE] folder.   your designer is ready.     The template that you had created is now added to your VSIX project. In windows explorer open your template zip file (extract it somewhere). open the .vstemplate file. first of all remove <ProjectItem SubType="Code" TargetFileName="$fileinputname$.cs" ReplaceParameters="true">Messages.cs</ProjectItem> because the .cs file is not to be intended to be a part of template and it will be generated. change value of ReplaceParameters for your .tt file to true to enable parameter replacement in this file. now right after </TemplateContent> end element, write this: <WizardExtension>   <Assembly>Framework.Messages.Design</Assembly>   <FullClassName>Framework.Messages.Design.MessageDesigner</FullClassName> </WizardExtension>   one other thing that you should do is to edit your .tt file and remove your .cs file. Lines 8 and 9 of your .tt file should be:     var connectionString = "$connectionString$";     var systemName = "$systemName$"; this parameters will be replaced when the item is added to a project. Save the contents to a zip file with same file name and replace the original file.   now again build your VSIX project, uninstall your extension. close VS. now run .vsix file. open vs, add an item of type messages to your project, bingo, your wizard form will show up. fill the fields and click ok, values are replaced in .tt file added.     that’s it. tried so hard to make this post brief, hope it was not so long…   Cheers Maziar

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• Google Web Toolkit Deferred Binding Issue

  - by snctln

  I developed a web app using GWT about 2 years ago, since then the application has evolved. In its current state it relies on fetching a single XML file and parsing the information from it. Overall this works great. A requirement of this app is that it needs to be able to be ran from the filesystem (file:///..) as well as the traditional model of running from a webserver (http://...) Fetching this file from a webserver works exactly as expected using a RequestBuilder object. When running the app from the filesystem Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Chrome all behave as expected. When running the app from the filesystem using IE7 or IE8 the RequestBuilder.send() call fails, the information about the error suggests that there is a problem accessing the file due to violating the same origin policy. The app worked as expected in IE6 but not in IE7 or IE8. So I looked at the source code of RequestBuilder.java and saw that the actual request was being executed with an XMLHttpRequest GWT object. So I looked at the source code for XMLHttpRequest.java and found out some information. Here is the code (starts at line 83 in XMLHttpRequest.java) public static native XMLHttpRequest create() /*-{ if ($wnd.XMLHttpRequest) { return new XMLHttpRequest(); } else { try { return new ActiveXObject('MSXML2.XMLHTTP.3.0'); } catch (e) { return new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); } } }-*/; So basically if an XMLHttpRequest cannot be created (like in IE6 because it is not available) an ActiveXObject is used instead. I read up a little bit more on the IE implementation of XMLHttpRequest, and it appears that it is only supported for interacting with files on a webserver. I found a setting in IE8 (Tools-Internet Options-Advanced-Security-Enable native XMLHTTP support), when I uncheck this box my app works. I assume this is because I am more of less telling IE to not use their implementation of XmlHttpRequest, so GWT just uses an ActiveXObject because it doesn't think the native XmlHttpRequest is available. This fixes the problem, but is hardly a long term solution. I can currently catch a failed send request and verify that it was trying to fetch the XML file from the filesystem using normal GWT. What I would like to do in this case is catch the IE7 and IE8 case and have them use a ActiveXObject instead of a native XmlHttpRequest object. There was a posting on the GWT google group that had a supposed solution for this problem (link). Looking at it I can tell that it was created for an older version of GWT. I am using the latest release and think that this is more or less what I would like to do (use GWT deferred binding to detect a specific browser type and run my own implementation of XMLHttpRequest.java in place of the built in GWT implementation). Here is the code that I am trying to use package com.mycompany.myapp.client; import com.google.gwt.xhr.client.XMLHttpRequest; public class XMLHttpRequestIE7or8 extends XMLHttpRequest { // commented out the "override" so that eclipse and the ant build script don't throw errors //@Override public static native XMLHttpRequest create() /*-{ try { return new ActiveXObject('MSXML2.XMLHTTP.3.0'); } catch (e) { return new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); } }-*/; // have an empty protected constructor so the ant build script doesn't throw errors // the actual XMLHttpRequest constructor is empty as well so this shouldn't cause any problems protected XMLHttpRequestIE7or8() { } }; And here are the lines that I added to my module xml <replace-with class="com.mycompany.myapp.client.XMLHttpRequestIE7or8"> <when-type-is class="com.google.gwt.xhr.client.XMLHttpRequest"/> <any> <when-property-is name="user.agent" value="ie7" /> <when-property-is name="user.agent" value="ie8" /> </any> </replace-with> From what I can tell this should work, but my code never runs. Does anyone have any idea of what I am doing wrong? Should I not do this via deferred binding and just use native javascript when I catch the fail case instead? Is there a different way of approaching this problem that I have not mentioned? All replies are welcome.

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