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• What is the preferred way in C++ for converting a builtin type (int) to bool?

  - by Martin

  When programming with Visual C++, I think every developer is used to see the warning warning C4800: 'BOOL' : forcing value to bool 'true' or 'false' from time to time. The reason obviously is that BOOL is defined as int and directly assigning any of the built-in numerical types to bool is considered a bad idea. So my question is now, given any built-in numerical type (int, short, ...) that is to be interpreted as a boolean value, what is the/your preferred way of actually storing that value into a variable of type bool? Note: While mixing BOOL and bool is probably a bad idea, I think the problem will inevitably pop up whether on Windows or somewhere else, so I think this question is neither Visual-C++ nor Windows specific. Given int nBoolean; I prefer this style: bool b = nBoolean?true:false; The following might be alternatives: bool b = !!nBoolean; bool b = (nBoolean != 0); Is there a generally preferred way? Rationale? I should add: Since I only work with Visual-C++ I cannot really say if this is a VC++ specific question or if the same problem pops up with other compilers. So it would be interesting to specifically hear from g++ or users how they handle the int-bool case. Regarding Standard C++: As David Thornley notes in a comment, the C++ Standard does not require this behavior. In fact it seems to explicitly allow this, so one might consider this a VC++ weirdness. To quote the N3029 draft (which is what I have around atm.): 4.12 Boolean conversions [conv.bool] A prvalue of arithmetic, unscoped enumeration, pointer, or pointer to member type can be converted to a prvalue of type bool. A zero value, null pointer value, or null member pointer value is converted to false; any other value is converted to true. (...)

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• fullcalendar events from REST-ful php server.

  - by biagidp

  I've written a very simple RESTful php server (my first experiment with REST, so feel free to make suggestions) to respond to the fullcalendar events callback. It produces exactly the same string output as the json-events.php file in the fullcalendar json example, but for some reason fullcalendar will not accept my server's output. I've tried messing with the headers because they're different from the ones produced by json-events.php, but I'm not really sure what's awry there, if anything. The code for the server is below: <?php class Listener{ function __construct() { $this->getResource(); $this->buildResponse(); } function getResource(){ $parts = explode('/', $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]); $script_name = end(explode('/', $_SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"])); $this->resource = $parts[array_search($script_name, $parts) + 1]; $this->resource_id = $parts[array_search($script_name, $parts) + 2]; } function buildResponse(){ $method = strtolower($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"]); $this->response_string = $method . ucwords($this->resource); } function getResponse(){ return $this->response_string; } } $listener = new Listener(); $thing = $listener->getResponse(); #$thing(); function getEvents(){ $year = date('Y'); $month = date('m'); echo json_encode(array( array( 'id' => 111, 'title' => "Event1", 'start' => "$year-$month-10", 'url' => "http://yahoo.com/" ), array( 'id' => 222, 'title' => "Event2", 'start' => "$year-$month-20", 'end' => "$year-$month-22", 'url' => "http://yahoo.com/" ) )); } ?> Any input, help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, David

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• Return value from Object match

  - by Hito_kun

  I'm, by no means, JS fluent, so forgive me if im asking for some really basic stuff, but I've not being able to find a proper answer to my question. Im writting my first Node.js (plus Extra Framework and Socket.io) app and Im having some fun setting up the server side of a FB-like messenger (surprise!!!). So, let's say I have this data structure to store online users(This is a JSON Array, but I'm not sure it is the best way to do it or should I go with Javascript Objects): [ { "site": 45, "users": [ { "idUser": 5, "idSocket": "qwe87r7w8qwe", "name": "Carlos Ray Norris" }, { "idUser": 6, "idSocket": "v8d9d0fgfs7d", "name": "John Connor" } ] }, { "site": 48, "users": [ { "idUser": 22, "idSocket": "qwe87r7w8qwe", "name": "David Bowie" }, { "idUser": 23, "idSocket": "v8d9d0fgfs7d", "name": "Barack H. Obama" } ] } ] What I want to do is to search in the array for x value given y. In this case, retrieving the idSocket knowing the idUser WITHOUT having to run through the array values. So I have basically 2 questions: first, what would be the proper way to store users online? and secondly, how to find values matching with the values I already know (find the idSocket that has a given idUser). I would like a pure JS approach(or using some of the tools given by Node, Socket.io or Express), but if that's not possible then I can look for some JQuery.

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• Internet Explorer not incrementing number for non-sibling <li> elements

  - by biagidp

  I've got some html that looks like this: <ol> <div> <li>one</li> </div> <div> <li>two</li> </div> <div> <li>three</li> </div> </ol> Which looks like this in Chrome/Firefox: 1. one 2. two 3. three But looks like this in IE: 1. one 1. two 1. three If I change the code so that the li element is the parent of the div element instead of the other way around (so that all the li elements are siblings) IE renders it correctly. Anyone know what causes this or if this is the intended working behavior of IE? Furthermore is one way technically more correct than the other? <div><li></li></div> VS. <li><div></div></li> Thanks, David

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• What is the benefit of using ONLY OpenID authentication on a site?

  - by Peter

  From my experience with OpenID, I see a number of significant downsides: Adds a Single Point of Failure to the site It is not a failure that can be fixed by the site even if detected. If the OpenID provider is down for three days, what recourse does the site have to allow its users to login and access the information they own? Takes a user to another sites content and every time they logon to your site Even if the OpenID provider does not have an error, the user is re-directed to their site to login. The login page has content and links. So there is a chance a user will actually be drawn away from the site to go down the Internet rabbit hole. Why would I want to send my users to another company's website? [ Note: my provider no longer does this and seems to have fixed this problem (for now).] Adds a non-trivial amount of time to the signup To sign up with the site a new user is forced to read a new standard, chose a provider, and signup. Standards are something that the technical people should agree to in order to make a user experience frictionless. They are not something that should be thrust on the users. It is a Phisher's Dream OpenID is incredibly insecure and stealing the person's ID as they log in is trivially easy. [ taken from David Arno's Answer below ] For all of the downside, the one upside is to allow users to have fewer logins on the Internet. If a site has opt-in for OpenID then users who want that feature can use it. What I would like to understand is: What benefit does a site get for making OpenID mandatory?

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• WPF: Binding an integer to a TextBlock with TemplateBinding

  - by haagel

  I have a custom control in WPF. In this I have a DependencyProperty of the type integer. In the template for the custom control I have a TextBlock, I and would like to show the value of the integer in the TextBlock. But I can't get it to work. I'm using TemplateBinding. If I use the same code but change the type of the DependencyProperty to string it works fine. But I really want it to be an integer for the rest of my application to work. How can I do this? I've written simplified code that shows the problem. First the custom control: public class MyCustomControl : Control { static MyCustomControl() { DefaultStyleKeyProperty.OverrideMetadata(typeof(MyCustomControl), new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(typeof(MyCustomControl))); MyIntegerProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("MyInteger", typeof(int), typeof(MyCustomControl), new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(0)); } public int MyInteger { get { return (int)GetValue(MyCustomControl.MyIntegerProperty); } set { SetValue(MyCustomControl.MyIntegerProperty, value); } } public static readonly DependencyProperty MyIntegerProperty; } And this is my default template: <Style TargetType="{x:Type local:MyCustomControl}"> <Setter Property="Template"> <Setter.Value> <ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type local:MyCustomControl}"> <Border BorderThickness="1" CornerRadius="4" BorderBrush="Black" Background="Azure"> <StackPanel Orientation="Vertical"> <TextBlock Text="{TemplateBinding MyInteger}" HorizontalAlignment="Center" /> </StackPanel> </Border> </ControlTemplate> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style> What am I doing wrong? Thanks // David

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• VB.net XML Parser loop

  - by StealthRT

  Hey all i am new to XML parsing on VB.net. This is the code i am using to parse an XML file i have: Dim output As StringBuilder = New StringBuilder() Dim xmlString As String = _ "<ip_list>" & _ "<ip>" & _ "<ip>192.168.1.1</ip>" & _ "<ping>9 ms</ping>" & _ "<hostname>N/A</hostname>" & _ "</ip>" & _ "<ip>" & _ "<ip>192.168.1.6</ip>" & _ "<ping>0 ms</ping>" & _ "<hostname>N/A</hostname>" & _ "</ip>" & _ "</ip_list>" Using reader As XmlReader = XmlReader.Create(New StringReader(xmlString)) Do Until reader.EOF reader.ReadStartElement("ip_list") reader.ReadStartElement("ip") reader.ReadStartElement("ip") reader.MoveToFirstAttribute() Dim theIP As String = reader.Value.ToString reader.ReadToFollowing("ping") Dim thePing As String = reader.ReadElementContentAsString().ToString reader.ReadToFollowing("hostname") Dim theHN As String = reader.ReadElementContentAsString().ToString MsgBox(theIP & " " & thePing & " " & theHN) Loop End Using I put the "do until reader.EOF" myself but it does not seem to work. It keeps giving an error after the first go around. I must be missing something? David

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• Querying calender events even if they do not have any for the day

  - by StealthRT

  Hey everyone, i am trying to figure out a way of query my mysql server so that even if a company does not have anything posted for the day the user clicks on their logo, it still adds them to the list. That sounds a little confusing so let me try to explain it another way. Say i have 3 company's in my database: Comp1 Comp2 Comp3 And Comp1 & Comp3 have something for today on the calender but Comp2 does not. I still need it to populate and place that company on the page but have something along the lines of "nothing on the calender for today". The other 2 companys (Comp1 & Comp3) would show the calender posting for that day. This is the code i have right now: SELECT clientinfo.id, clientinfo.theCompName, clientinfo.theURL, clientinfo.picURL, clientinfo.idNumber, clientoffers.idNumber, clientoffers.theDateStart, clientoffers.theDateEnd FROM clientinfo, clientoffers WHERE clientinfo.accountStats = 'OPEN' AND clientinfo.idNumber = clientinfo.idNumber AND '2010-05-08' BETWEEN clientoffers.theDateStart AND clientoffers.theDateEnd GROUP BY clientinfo.idNumber ORDER BY clientinfo.theCompName ASC That executes just fine but for Comp2, it just places the calender info from Comp1 into it when it really doesn't have anything. The output looks like this: Comp1 | 2010-05-08 | this is the calender event 1 | etc etc Comp2 | 2010-05-08 | this is the calender event 1 | etc etc comp3 | 2010-05-09 | this is the calender event 2 | etc etc Any help would be great :o) David

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• Problem accessing private variables in jQuery like chainable design pattern

  - by novogeek

  Hi folks, I'm trying to create my custom toolbox which imitates jQuery's design pattern. Basically, the idea is somewhat derived from this post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2061501/jquery-plugin-design-pattern-common-practice-for-dealing-with-private-function (Check the answer given by "David"). So here is my toolbox function: (function(window){ var mySpace=function(){ return new PrivateSpace(); } var PrivateSpace=function(){ var testCache={}; }; PrivateSpace.prototype={ init:function(){ console.log('init this:', this); return this; }, ajax:function(){ console.log('make ajax calls here'); return this; }, cache:function(key,selector){ console.log('cache selectors here'); testCache[key]=selector; console.log('cached selector: ',testCache); return this; } } window.hmis=window.m$=mySpace(); })(window) Now, if I execute this function like: console.log(m$.cache('firstname','#FirstNameTextbox')); I get an error 'testCache' is not defined. I'm not able to access the variable "testCache" inside my cache function of the prototype. How should I access it? Basically, what I want to do is, I want to cache all my jQuery selectors into an object and use this object in the future.

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• Detect modification of variable at runtime in C/C++

  - by YuppieNetworking

  Hello, I am developing a library in C++ where users/programmer will extend a class BaseClass that has a method initArray. This method should be implemented by the user/programmer and it should normally initialize all elements of the array m_arr. Here is a snipplet, modified to this example: class BaseClass { public: BaseClass(int n) { m_arr = new double[n]; size = n; }; virtual ~BaseClass(); int size; double* m_arr; virtual int initArray(); }; Sometimes, the user/programmer implements a initArray that does not initialize some elements of m_arr. What I would like is to create a function in my library that checks if initArray did initialize all elements of m_arr. This function should be called by a sanity-check rutine at runtime. My question: is it possible to detect changes on this array? I can only think of initializing the array with some invalid values (like NaN or Inf), call initArray and check that all values have changed. Thanks for your ideas, David

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• Error with zoomStartTime and AnnotatedTimeLine

  - by user973025

  I'm a bit of a beginner with Javascript, but last month I had a working Google chart linked to a Google Docs file, which uses a start date for the graph at 90 days before the current date. I checked the page today and in Chrome I get the message "Object # has no method 'getTime'", and in Firefox I get the message "b.zoomStartTime[y] is not a function". Both stop the graph from loading. I have simplified the code to help me with the error, but I'm not getting anywhere... Here's the code: <script type="text/javascript"> var oldDate = new Date(); oldDate.setDate(oldDate.getDate() - 90); </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/static/modules/gviz/1.0/chart.js"> { "dataSourceUrl": "//docs.google.com/spreadsheet/tq?key=0AkQH6d2CUv_qdDhwd3gtZzdTVFlNX3AwX2xUSUVuclE&transpose=0&headers=-1&range=A1%3AB2436&gid=0&pub=1", "options": { "zoomStartTime": oldDate, "width": 650, "height": 371 }, "chartType": "AnnotatedTimeLine", } </script> Any ideas would be hugely appreciated. David.

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• Aliasing `T*` with `char*` is allowed. Is it also allowed the other way around?

  - by StackedCrooked

  Note: This question has been renamed and reduced to make it more focused and readable. Most of the comments refer to the old text. According to the standard objects of different type may not share the same memory location. So this would not be legal: int i = 0; short * s = reinterpret_cast<short*>(&i); // BAD! The standard however allows an exception to this rule: any object may be accessed through a pointer to char or unsigned char: int i = 0; char * c = reinterpret_cast<char*>(&i); // OK However, it is not clear to me if this is also allowed the other way around. For example: char * c = read_socket(...); unsigned * u = reinterpret_cast<unsigned*>(c); // huh? Summary of the answers The answer is NO for two reasons: You an only access an existing object as char*. There is no object in my sample code, only a byte buffer. The pointer address may not have the right alignment for the target object. In that case dereferencing it would result in undefined behavior. On the Intel and AMD platforms it will result performance overhead. On ARM it will trigger a CPU trap and your program will be terminated! This is a simplified explanation. For more detailed information see answers by @Luc Danton, @Cheers and hth. - Alf and @David Rodríguez.

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• Session in php are not enough clear to me

  - by Lulzim

  I find sessions in php kind of confusing, can anybody of you explain those to me. I have an example which is not working in my case: I register sessions this way, would you please tell me is this the right way of registering sessions //this is the page from where i register myusername in sessions if($count==1){ session_start(); $_SESSION['myusername'] = $_POST['myusername']; include("enterpincover.php"); } else { echo "Wrong Pin"; } here i check first whether the username is registered in sessions in oder to open his account , otherwise open again login. It works, if user is not loged in, it will show login page which is right, if user is loged it shows welcome message but not the Welcome the name of the user as I want. for ex: Welcome David <?php session_start(); if(isset($_SESSION['myusername'])) { echo 'Welcome '.$_SESSION['myusername']; } else { include("leftmodules.php"); include("rightmodules.php"); include("login.php"); } ?>

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• What is a good solution to log the deletion of a row in MySQL?

  - by hobodave

  Background I am currently logging deletion of rows from my tickets table at the application level. When a user deletes a ticket the following SQL is executed: INSERT INTO alert_log (user_id, priority, priorityName, timestamp, message) VALUES (9, 4, 'WARN', NOW(), "TICKET: David A. deleted ticket #6 from Foo"); Please do not offer schema suggestions for the alert_log table. Fields: user_id - User id of the logged in user performing the deletion priority - Always 4 priorityName - Always 'WARN' timestamp - Always NOW() message - Format: "[NAMESPACE]: [FullName] deleted ticket #[TicketId] from [CompanyName]" NAMESPACE - Always TICKET FullName - Full name of user identified by user_id above TicketId - Primary key ID of the ticket being deleted CompanyName - Ticket has a Company via tickets.company_id Situation/Questions Obviously this solution does not work if a ticket is deleted manually from the mysql command line client. However, now I need to. The issues I'm having are as follows: Should I use a PROCEDURE, FUNCTION, or TRIGGER? -- Analysis: TRIGGER - I don't think this will work because I can't pass parameters to it, and it would trigger when my application deleted the row too. PROCEDURE or FUNCTION - Not sure. Should I return the number of deleted rows? If so, that would require a FUNCTION right? How should I account for the absence of a logged in user? -- Possibilities: Using either a PROC or FUNC, require the invoker to pass in a valid user_id Require the user to pass in a string with the name Use the CURRENT_USER - meh Hard code the FullName to just be "Database Administrator" Could the name be an optional parameter? I'm rather green when it comes to sprocs. Assuming I went with the PROC/FUNC approach, is it possible to outright restrict regular DELETE calls to this table, yet still allow users to call this PROC/FUNC to do the deletion for them? Ideally the solution is usable by my application as well, so that my code is DRY.

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• Update php 5.2.0 to 5.2.4 with aptitude

  - by Kiva

  Hi guy, I would like to update my php 5 in my server. At this moment, I use php 5.2.0 so I want to update it to php 5.2.4 (not php 5.3). I tried to do this: aptitude update aptitude upgrade 63 packets were updated but not php which is always in 5.0 How can I update my php please ? Here is the output of commands asked by David in another post: aptitude search php5 p libapache-mod-php5 - server-side, HTML-embedded scripting langu i A libapache2-mod-php5 - server-side, HTML-embedded scripting langu i php5 - server-side, HTML-embedded scripting langu p php5-apache2-mod-bt - PHP bindings for mod_bt p php5-auth-pam - A PHP5 extension for PAM authentication i php5-cgi - server-side, HTML-embedded scripting langu p php5-clamavlib - PHP ClamAV Lib - ClamAV Interface for PHP5 p php5-cli - command-line interpreter for the php5 scri i A php5-common - Common files for packages built from the p i php5-curl - CURL module for php5 p php5-dev - Files for PHP5 module development i A php5-gd - GD module for php5 p php5-idn - PHP api for the IDNA library p php5-imagick - ImageMagick module for php5 p php5-imap - IMAP module for php5 p php5-interbase - interbase/firebird module for php5 p php5-json - JSON serialiser for PHP5 p php5-ldap - LDAP module for php5 p php5-mapscript - module for php5-cgi to use mapserver p php5-maxdb - PHP extension to access MaxDB databases fo i A php5-mcrypt - MCrypt module for php5 p php5-memcache - memcache extension module for PHP5 p php5-mhash - MHASH module for php5 p php5-ming - Ming module for php5 i A php5-mysql - MySQL module for php5 p php5-odbc - ODBC module for php5 p php5-pgsql - PostgreSQL module for php5 p php5-ps - ps module for PHP 5 p php5-pspell - pspell module for php5 p php5-radius - PECL radius module for PHP 5 p php5-recode - recode module for php5 p php5-snmp - SNMP module for php5 p php5-sqlite - SQLite module for php5 p php5-sqlite3 - SQLite3 module for php5 p php5-sqlrelay - SQL Relay PHP API p php5-suhosin - advanced protection module for php5 p php5-sybase - Sybase / MS SQL Server module for php5 p php5-tidy - tidy module for php5 p php5-uuid - OSSP uuid module for php5 p php5-xapian - Xapian search engine interface for PHP5 p php5-xcache - Fast, stable PHP opcode cacher p php5-xmlrpc - XML-RPC module for php5 p php5-xsl - XSL module for php5 aptitude show php5 | grep Version Version : 5.2.0-8+etch13 aptitude show php5-cgi | grep Version Version : 5.2.0-8+etch13 php5 --version -bash: php5: command not found php-cgi --version PHP 5.2.0-8+etch13 (cgi-fcgi) (built: Oct 2 2008 08:21:17) Copyright (c) 1997-2006 The PHP Group Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2006 Zend Technologies

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• l2tp server always 'sent [CCP ResetReq id=0x3]' when got compressed data request

  - by wilbur

  I have built a xl2tpd/ipsec server on my ubuntu 12.04.3, and I managed to make a l2tp vpn connection to the xl2tpd server from my android phone. The xl2tpd log said xl2tpd[10828]: Enabling IPsec SAref processing for L2TP transport mode SAs xl2tpd[10828]: IPsec SAref does not work with L2TP kernel mode yet, enabling forceuserspace=yes xl2tpd[10828]: setsockopt recvref[22]: Protocol not available xl2tpd[10828]: This binary does not support kernel L2TP. xl2tpd[10828]: xl2tpd version xl2tpd-1.2.8 started on atime.me PID:10828 xl2tpd[10828]: Written by Mark Spencer, Copyright (C) 1998, Adtran, Inc. xl2tpd[10828]: Forked by Scott Balmos and David Stipp, (C) 2001 xl2tpd[10828]: Inherited by Jeff McAdams, (C) 2002 xl2tpd[10828]: Forked again by Xelerance (www.xelerance.com) (C) 2006 xl2tpd[10828]: Listening on IP address 0.0.0.0, port 1701 xl2tpd[10828]: control_finish: Peer requested tunnel 39154 twice, ignoring second one. xl2tpd[10828]: Connection established to 117.136.8.59, 43149. Local: 25339, Remote: 39154 (ref=0/0). LNS session is 'default' However I cannot access the web in my browser. The pppd log said rcvd [Compressed data] 00 1d 82 c4 7c 04 d8 09 ... sent [CCP ResetReq id=0x7] I have googled a lot and found that this was mostly caused by a mppe decompression error. I have disabled BSD-Compress compression with nobsdcomp in /etc/ppp/xl2tpd-options but it did not work. I used openswan-2.6.33 and xl2tpd-1.2.8 which were built from source. And my configurations: /etc/ipsec.conf version 2.0 config setup nat_traversal=yes virtual_private=%v4:10.0.0.0/8,%v4:192.168.0.0/16,%v4:172.16.0.0/12 oe=off protostack=netkey conn L2TP-PSK-NAT rightsubnet=vhost:%priv also=L2TP-PSK-noNAT conn L2TP-PSK-noNAT authby=secret pfs=no auto=add keyingtries=3 rekey=no ikelifetime=8h keylife=1h type=transport left=106.186.121.214 leftprotoport=17/1701 right=%any rightprotoport=17/%any /etc/xl2tpd/xl2tpd.conf [global] ipsec saref = yes [lns default] local ip = 10.10.11.1 ip range = 10.10.11.2-10.10.11.245 refuse chap = yes refuse pap = yes require authentication = yes ppp debug = yes pppoptfile = /etc/ppp/xl2tpd-options length bit = yes /etc/ppp/xl2tpd-options require-mschap-v2 ms-dns 8.8.8.8 ms-dns 8.8.4.4 asyncmap 0 auth crtscts lock hide-password modem name l2tpd proxyarp lcp-echo-interval 30 lcp-echo-failure 4 debug nobsdcomp Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

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• Looking for personal scheduling software / todo list with rather particular requirements

  - by Cthulhu

  I've been scouring the web for a couple of (my boss') hours, looking for a piece of software that can organize my tasks in two ways. First, I have a list of bullet points / todo items I can do at any given time. Think of stuff like solve issue X, ask X about Y, write documentation about Z, etcetera. Second, I have a number of running projects I'd like to organize better, as in schedule for a certain part of a day of the week. Ideally (I think), my day would be organized as 50% spent on projects and 50% on the other small things. Now, I don't like most calendar applications (such as Outlook & friends), their UI is too 'official', not really easy to move stuff around (in my experience). I don't like most todo lists either, too static and things. I like new, fast and hip software. I've looked at GTD versions of Tiddlywiki, and I like mGSD for one particular feature. You can make lists of tasks and basically give them one of three statusses - Now (nothing required, you can do it right away), Waiting (you need someone or something before you can work on this), or the most gratifying of all, Done. I like that feature because it's a simple todo list, but indicates more accurately the things you can do right now and the things you depend on someone else for to do. Anyways, that's just a small aspect of that program - most of the other things in there I can't find a particularly good use for. If there's something like that (maybe something that works even snappier, cleaner UI), combined with an easy to use bit of scheduling software (optionally separated into two applications, but preferrably not), I think I'd like that. (Besides something like that, I also use several instances of Trac to monitor tasks and bugs and things for the various clients and projects I have to serve, and TaskCoach to monitor the amount of time I spend on each task / each client. An easy / low-maintenance time tracking software would be neat too) Of course, the software has to be free to use. I don't like shareware, trials, limited software and the like. I could develop my own too, but I'm lazy like that and there's a dozen other projects I'd like to do in my free time (neither of which I actually do). Edit: I like David Seah's printable CEO stuff, if something like that (with some video game / instant achievement / gratification) exists in software, it'd be awesome.

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• understanding my site's DNS records

  - by DaveM

  firstly apologies for using the word 'pointage' this is the word my french domain registrar uses so I may have used to wrong term. OK I would like to better understand what is going on on my 'pointage' record on my domain registrars site. for my (currently empty) web site it reports the following details... Type : Host : Destination A : www.mydomain.org : 62.210.176.146 A : mail.mydomain.org : 84.246.225.176 Mx : .mydomain.org : mail.mydomain.org I think I understand the MX record, that simply relays anything onto the mail.mydomain.org location. However why are the destination for the www and mail domains different. Even more confusing (for me) is the fact that if I ping either of www.mydomain.org or mail.mydomain.org the ping returns a different IP address. This IP address is consistent with that of my server (ie 92.39.247.92). So what exactly is going on ? I'm sure I could find the information on the web,I've read a few thing on the debianhelp site regarding DNS records, and it seems to suggest that the record should be a reverse lookup, but certains isn't the reverse of my servers IP ? but I don't what I should be looking for, so links to docs and search terms for google will be happily accepteed (even though they go against the grain of SO answers to question). thanks in advance. David. ps. I should add that everything seems to work just fine, and I've just descovered this part of the management page of my registrar. Edit: Addition of DNS records and ping results. The DNS record for the site. From what I've read there should only realy be a single 'A' record, so has something gone wrong ? should I change it (remove the extras and then just point www.facilitee.org - .facilitee.org and mail.facilitee.org - .facilitee.org here is the DNS record A www.facilitee.org ? 92.39.247.92 A .facilitee.org ? 92.39.247.92 A mail.facilitee.org ? 92.39.247.92 A webmail.facilitee.org ? 92.39.247.92 MX .facilitee.org ? mail.facilitee.org ping results... ~$ ping www.facilitee.org PING www.facilitee.org (92.39.247.92) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from vps4576-cloud.dns26.com (92.39.247.92): ~$ ping mail.facilitee.org PING mail.facilitee.org (92.39.247.92) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from vps4576-cloud.dns26.com (92.39.247.92): So the DNS and the ping correspond, but the 'pointage' doesn't. ~ how can I get a report of the pointage records other than from my registrar ?

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• Dec 5th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, jQuery, Silverlight, Visual Studio

  - by ScottGu

  Here is the latest in my link-listing series.  Also check out my VS 2010 and .NET 4 series for another on-going blog series I’m working on. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] ASP.NET ASP.NET Code Samples Collection: J.D. Meier has a great post that provides a detailed round-up of ASP.NET code samples and tutorials from a wide variety of sources.  Lots of useful pointers. Slash your ASP.NET compile/load time without any hard work: Nice article that details a bunch of optimizations you can make to speed up ASP.NET project load and compile times. You might also want to read my previous blog post on this topic here. 10 Essential Tools for Building ASP.NET Websites: Great article by Stephen Walther on 10 great (and free) tools that enable you to more easily build great ASP.NET Websites.  Highly recommended reading. Optimize Images using the ASP.NET Sprite and Image Optimization Framework: A nice article by 4GuysFromRolla that discusses how to use the open-source ASP.NET Sprite and Image Optimization Framework (one of the tools recommended by Stephen in the previous article).  You can use this to significantly improve the load-time of your pages on the client. Formatting Dates, Times and Numbers in ASP.NET: Scott Mitchell has a great article that discusses formatting dates, times and numbers in ASP.NET.  A very useful link to bookmark.  Also check out James Michael’s DateTime is Packed with Goodies blog post for other DateTime tips. Examining ASP.NET’s Membership, Roles and Profile APIs (Part 18): Everything you could possibly want to known about ASP.NET’s built-in Membership, Roles and Profile APIs must surely be in this tutorial series. Part 18 covers how to store additional user info with Membership. ASP.NET with jQuery An Introduction to jQuery Templates: Stephen Walther has written an outstanding introduction and tutorial on the new jQuery Template plugin that the ASP.NET team has contributed to the jQuery project. Composition with jQuery Templates and jQuery Templates, Composite Rendering, and Remote Loading: Dave Ward has written two nice posts that talk about composition scenarios with jQuery Templates and some cool scenarios you can enable with them. Using jQuery and ASP.NET to Build a News Ticker: Scott Mitchell has a nice tutorial that demonstrates how to build a dynamically updated “news ticker” style UI with ASP.NET and jQuery. Checking All Checkboxes in a GridView using jQuery: Scott Mitchell has a nice post that covers how to use jQuery to enable a checkbox within a GridView’s header to automatically check/uncheck all checkboxes contained within rows of it. Using jQuery to POST Form Data to an ASP.NET AJAX Web Service: Rick Strahl has a nice post that discusses how to capture form variables and post them to an ASP.NET AJAX Web Service (.asmx). ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC Diagnostics Using NuGet: Phil Haack has a nice post that demonstrates how to easily install a diagnostics page (using NuGet) that can help identify and diagnose common configuration issues within your apps. ASP.NET MVC 3 JsonValueProviderFactory: James Hughes has a nice post that discusses how to take advantage of the new JsonValueProviderFactory support built into ASP.NET MVC 3.  This makes it easy to post JSON payloads to MVC action methods. Practical jQuery Mobile with ASP.NET MVC: James Hughes has another nice post that discusses how to use the new jQuery Mobile library with ASP.NET MVC to build great mobile web applications. Credit Card Validator for ASP.NET MVC 3: Benjii Me has a nice post that demonstrates how to build a [CreditCard] validator attribute that can be used to easily validate credit card numbers are in the correct format with ASP.NET MVC. Silverlight Silverlight FireStarter Keynote and Sessions: A great blog post from John Papa that contains pointers and descriptions of all the great Silverlight content we published last week at the Silverlight FireStarter.  You can watch all of the talks online.  More details on my keynote and Silverlight 5 announcements can be found here. 31 Days of Windows Phone 7: 31 great tutorials on how to build Windows Phone 7 applications (using Silverlight).  Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit Update: David Anson has a nice post that discusses some of the additional controls provided with the Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit. Visual Studio JavaScript Editor Extensions: A nice (and free) Visual Studio plugin built by the web tools team that significantly improves the JavaScript intellisense support within Visual Studio. HTML5 Intellisense for Visual Studio: Gil has a blog post that discusses a new extension my team has posted to the Visual Studio Extension Gallery that adds HTML5 schema support to Visual Studio 2008 and 2010. Team Build + Web Deployment + Web Deploy + VS 2010 = Goodness: Visual blogs about how to enable a continuous deployment system with VS 2010, TFS 2010 and the Microsoft Web Deploy framework.  Visual Studio 2010 Emacs Emulation Extension and VIM Emulation Extension: Check out these two extensions if you are fond of Emacs and VIM key bindings and want to enable them within Visual Studio 2010. Hope this helps, Scott

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• Form, function and complexity in rule processing

  - by Charles Young

  Tim Bass posted on ‘Orwellian Event Processing’. I was involved in a heated exchange in the comments, and he has more recently published a post entitled ‘Disadvantages of Rule-Based Systems (Part 1)’. Whatever the rights and wrongs of our exchange, it clearly failed to generate any agreement or understanding of our different positions. I don't particularly want to promote further argument of that kind, but I do want to take the opportunity of offering a different perspective on rule-processing and an explanation of my comments. For me, the ‘red rag’ lay in Tim’s claim that “...rules alone are highly inefficient for most classes of (not simple) problems” and a later paragraph that appears to equate the simplicity of form (‘IF-THEN-ELSE’) with simplicity of function.   It is not the first time Tim has expressed these views and not the first time I have responded to his assertions.   Indeed, Tim has a long history of commenting on the subject of complex event processing (CEP) and, less often, rule processing in ‘robust’ terms, often asserting that very many other people’s opinions on this subject are mistaken.   In turn, I am of the opinion that, certainly in terms of rule processing, which is an area in which I have a specific interest and knowledge, he is often mistaken. There is no simple answer to the fundamental question ‘what is a rule?’ We use the word in a very fluid fashion in English. Likewise, the term ‘rule processing’, as used widely in IT, is equally difficult to define simplistically. The best way to envisage the term is as a ‘centre of gravity’ within a wider domain. That domain contains many other ‘centres of gravity’, including CEP, statistical analytics, neural networks, natural language processing and so much more. Whole communities tend to gravitate towards and build themselves around some of these centres. The term 'rule processing' is associated with many different technology types, various software products, different architectural patterns, the functional capability of many applications and services, etc. There is considerable variation amongst these different technologies, techniques and products. Very broadly, a common theme is their ability to manage certain types of processing and problem solving through declarative, or semi-declarative, statements of propositional logic bound to action-based consequences. It is generally important to be able to decouple these statements from other parts of an overall system or architecture so that they can be managed and deployed independently.  As a centre of gravity, ‘rule processing’ is no island. It exists in the context of a domain of discourse that is, itself, highly interconnected and continuous.   Rule processing does not, for example, exist in splendid isolation to natural language processing.   On the contrary, an on-going theme of rule processing is to find better ways to express rules in natural language and map these to executable forms.   Rule processing does not exist in splendid isolation to CEP.   On the contrary, an event processing agent can reasonably be considered as a rule engine (a theme in ‘Power of Events’ by David Luckham).   Rule processing does not live in splendid isolation to statistical approaches such as Bayesian analytics. On the contrary, rule processing and statistical analytics are highly synergistic.   Rule processing does not even live in splendid isolation to neural networks. For example, significant research has centred on finding ways to translate trained nets into explicit rule sets in order to support forms of validation and facilitate insight into the knowledge stored in those nets. What about simplicity of form?   Many rule processing technologies do indeed use a very simple form (‘If...Then’, ‘When...Do’, etc.)   However, it is a fundamental mistake to equate simplicity of form with simplicity of function.   It is absolutely mistaken to suggest that simplicity of form is a barrier to the efficient handling of complexity.   There are countless real-world examples which serve to disprove that notion.   Indeed, simplicity of form is often the key to handling complexity. Does rule processing offer a ‘one size fits all’. No, of course not.   No serious commentator suggests it does.   Does the design and management of large knowledge bases, expressed as rules, become difficult?   Yes, it can do, but that is true of any large knowledge base, regardless of the form in which knowledge is expressed.   The measure of complexity is not a function of rule set size or rule form.  It tends to be correlated more strongly with the size of the ‘problem space’ (‘search space’) which is something quite different.   Analysis of the problem space and the algorithms we use to search through that space are, of course, the very things we use to derive objective measures of the complexity of a given problem. This is basic computer science and common practice. Sailing a Dreadnaught through the sea of information technology and lobbing shells at some of the islands we encounter along the way does no one any good.   Building bridges and causeways between islands so that the inhabitants can collaborate in open discourse offers hope of real progress.

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• L2TP connection fails!

  - by a.toraby

  I've installed l2tp-ipsec-vpn but when I try to connect to the vpn server I get error 500. Here are the logs: Jun 17 12:54:37.449 ipsec_setup: Stopping Openswan IPsec... Jun 17 12:54:38.858 Stopping xl2tpd: xl2tpd. Jun 17 12:54:38.859 xl2tpd[1511]: death_handler: Fatal signal 15 received Jun 17 12:54:38.872 ipsec_setup: Starting Openswan IPsec U2.6.37/K3.2.0-23-generic... Jun 17 12:54:39.027 ipsec__plutorun: Starting Pluto subsystem... Jun 17 12:54:39.033 ipsec__plutorun: adjusting ipsec.d to /etc/ipsec.d Jun 17 12:54:39.037 recvref[30]: Protocol not available Jun 17 12:54:39.038 xl2tpd[2442]: This binary does not support kernel L2TP. Jun 17 12:54:39.038 xl2tpd[2444]: xl2tpd version xl2tpd-1.3.1 started on atp-ThinkPad-SL410 PID:2444 Jun 17 12:54:39.038 xl2tpd[2444]: Written by Mark Spencer, Copyright (C) 1998, Adtran, Inc. Jun 17 12:54:39.038 xl2tpd[2444]: Forked by Scott Balmos and David Stipp, (C) 2001 Jun 17 12:54:39.038 xl2tpd[2444]: Inherited by Jeff McAdams, (C) 2002 Jun 17 12:54:39.039 xl2tpd[2444]: Forked again by Xelerance (www.xelerance.com) (C) 2006 Jun 17 12:54:39.039 xl2tpd[2444]: Listening on IP address 0.0.0.0, port 1701 Jun 17 12:54:39.040 Starting xl2tpd: xl2tpd. Jun 17 12:54:39.062 ipsec__plutorun: 002 added connection description "L2TP" Jun 17 12:55:30.753 104 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I1: initiate Jun 17 12:55:30.754 010 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I1: retransmission; will wait 20s for response Jun 17 12:55:30.754 010 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I1: retransmission; will wait 40s for response Jun 17 12:55:30.754 003 "L2TP" #1: ignoring Vendor ID payload [MS NT5 ISAKMPOAKLEY 00000008] Jun 17 12:55:30.754 003 "L2TP" #1: received Vendor ID payload [RFC 3947] method set to=109 Jun 17 12:55:30.754 003 "L2TP" #1: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-02_n] meth=106, but already using method 109 Jun 17 12:55:30.755 003 "L2TP" #1: ignoring Vendor ID payload [FRAGMENTATION] Jun 17 12:55:30.755 003 "L2TP" #1: ignoring Vendor ID payload [MS-Negotiation Discovery Capable] Jun 17 12:55:30.755 003 "L2TP" #1: ignoring Vendor ID payload [IKE CGA version 1] Jun 17 12:55:30.755 106 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I2: sent MI2, expecting MR2 Jun 17 12:55:30.755 010 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I2: retransmission; will wait 20s for response Jun 17 12:55:30.755 003 "L2TP" #1: NAT-Traversal: Result using RFC 3947 (NAT-Traversal): i am NATed Jun 17 12:55:30.755 108 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I3: sent MI3, expecting MR3 Jun 17 12:55:30.756 004 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I4: ISAKMP SA established {auth=OAKLEY_PRESHARED_KEY cipher=oakley_3des_cbc_192 prf=oakley_sha group=modp1024} Jun 17 12:55:30.756 117 "L2TP" #2: STATE_QUICK_I1: initiate Jun 17 12:55:30.756 010 "L2TP" #2: STATE_QUICK_I1: retransmission; will wait 20s for response Jun 17 12:55:30.756 003 "L2TP" #2: ignoring informational payload, type IPSEC_RESPONDER_LIFETIME msgid=6b03ff69 Jun 17 12:55:30.756 003 "L2TP" #2: NAT-Traversal: received 2 NAT-OA. ignored because peer is not NATed Jun 17 12:55:30.756 003 "L2TP" #2: our client subnet returned doesn't match my proposal - us:192.168.1.3/32 vs them:109.162.174.235/32 Jun 17 12:55:30.757 003 "L2TP" #2: Allowing questionable proposal anyway [ALLOW_MICROSOFT_BAD_PROPOSAL] Jun 17 12:55:30.757 004 "L2TP" #2: STATE_QUICK_I2: sent QI2, IPsec SA established transport mode {ESP=>0x23af21f8 <0xdb4a87b6 xfrm=AES_128-HMAC_SHA1 NATOA=none NATD=none DPD=none} Jun 17 12:55:31.759 xl2tpd[2444]: Connecting to host x.x.x.x, port 1701 Jun 17 12:55:32.021 xl2tpd[2444]: Connection established to x.x.x.x, 1701. Local: 4720, Remote: 200 (ref=0/0). Jun 17 12:55:32.023 xl2tpd[2444]: Calling on tunnel 4720 Jun 17 12:55:32.454 xl2tpd[2444]: Call established with x.x.x.x, Local: 9667, Remote: 3, Serial: 1 (ref=0/0) Jun 17 12:55:32.456 xl2tpd[2444]: start_pppd: I'm running: Jun 17 12:55:32.456 xl2tpd[2444]: "/usr/sbin/pppd" Jun 17 12:55:32.457 xl2tpd[2444]: "passive" Jun 17 12:55:32.458 xl2tpd[2444]: "nodetach" Jun 17 12:55:32.458 xl2tpd[2444]: ":" Jun 17 12:55:32.459 xl2tpd[2444]: "file" Jun 17 12:55:32.459 xl2tpd[2444]: "/etc/ppp/L2TP.options.xl2tpd" Jun 17 12:55:32.460 xl2tpd[2444]: "ipparam" Jun 17 12:55:32.461 xl2tpd[2444]: "x.x.x.x" Jun 17 12:55:32.462 xl2tpd[2444]: "/dev/pts/1" Jun 17 12:55:32.583 pppd[2711]: Plugin passprompt.so loaded. Jun 17 12:55:32.583 pppd[2711]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0 Jun 17 12:55:32.619 pppd[2711]: Using interface ppp0 Jun 17 12:55:32.620 pppd[2711]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/pts/1 Jun 17 12:55:33.693 pppd[2711]: /usr/bin/L2tpIPsecVpn exited with code 0 Jun 17 12:55:34.454 [ERROR 404] Authentication failed: closing connection to 'L2TP' Jun 17 12:55:34.456 pppd[2711]: MS-CHAP authentication failed: E=691 Authentication failure Jun 17 12:55:34.457 pppd[2711]: CHAP authentication failed Jun 17 12:55:34.461 Stopping xl2tpd: xl2tpd. Jun 17 12:55:34.462 xl2tpd[2444]: death_handler: Fatal signal 15 received Jun 17 12:55:34.463 pppd[2711]: Modem hangup Jun 17 12:55:34.463 pppd[2711]: Connection terminated. Jun 17 12:55:34.474 ipsec_setup: Stopping Openswan IPsec... Jun 17 12:55:34.482 pppd[2711]: Exit. Jun 17 12:55:35.587 ipsec_setup: ERROR: Module xfrm4_mode_transport is in use Jun 17 12:55:35.665 ipsec_setup: ERROR: Module esp4 is in use I had this problem by ubuntu 11.10 though I can easily connect to the server from windows. I use ubuntu 12.0 64bit

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• Building The Right SharePoint Team For Your Organization

  - by Mark Rackley

  I see the question posted fairly often asking what kind SharePoint team an organization should have. How many people do I need? What roles do I need to fill? What is best for my organization? Well, just like every other answer in SharePoint, the correct answer is “it depends”. Do you ever get sick of hearing that??? I know I do… So, let me give you my thoughts and opinions based upon my experience and what I’ve seen and let you come to your own conclusions. What are the possible SharePoint roles? I guess the first thing you need to understand are the different roles that exist in SharePoint (and their are LOTS). Remember, SharePoint is a massive beast and you will NOT find one person who can do it all. If you are hoping to find that person you will be sorely disappointed. For the most part this is true in SharePoint 2007 and 2010. However, generally things are improved in 2010 and easier for junior individuals to grasp. SharePoint Administrator The absolutely positively only role that you should not be without no matter the size of your organization or SharePoint deployment is a SharePoint administrator. These guys are essential to keeping things running and figuring out what’s wrong when things aren’t running well. These unsung heroes do more before 10 am than I do all day. The bad thing is, when these guys are awesome, you don’t even know they exist because everything is running so smoothly. You should definitely invest some time and money here to make sure you have some competent if not rockstar help. You need an admin who truly loves SharePoint and will go that extra mile when necessary. Let me give you a real world example of what I’m talking about: We have a rockstar admin… and I’m sure she’s sick of my throwing her name around so she’ll just have to live with remaining anonymous in this post… sorry Lori… Anyway! A couple of weeks ago our Server teams came to us and said Hi Lori, I’m finalizing the MOSS servers and doing updates that require a restart; can I restart them? Seems like a harmless request from your server team does it not? Sure, go ahead and apply the patches and reboot during our scheduled maintenance window. No problem? right? Sounded fair to me… but no…. not to our fearless SharePoint admin… I need a complete list of patches that will be applied. There is an update that is out there that will break SharePoint… KB973917 is the patch that has been shown to cause issues. What? You mean Microsoft released a patch that would actually adversely affect SharePoint? If we did NOT have a rockstar admin, our server team would have applied these patches and then when some problem occurred in SharePoint we’d have to go through the fun task of tracking down exactly what caused the issue and resolve it. How much time would that have taken? If you have a junior SharePoint admin or an admin who’s not out there staying on top of what’s going on you could have spent days tracking down something so simple as applying a patch you should not have applied. I will even go as far to say the only SharePoint rockstar you NEED in your organization is a SharePoint admin. You can always outsource really complicated development projects or bring in a rockstar contractor every now and then to make sure you aren’t way off track in other areas. For your day-to-day sanity and to keep SharePoint running smoothly, you need an awesome Admin. Some rockstars in this category are: Ben Curry, Mike Watson, Joel Oleson, Todd Klindt, Shane Young, John Ferringer, Sean McDonough, and of course Lori Gowin. SharePoint Developer Another essential role for your SharePoint deployment is a SharePoint developer. Things do start to get a little hazy here and there are many flavors of “developers”. Are you writing custom code? using SharePoint Designer? What about SharePoint Branding?  Are all of these considered developers? I would say yes. Are they interchangeable? I’d say no. Development in SharePoint is such a large beast in itself. I would say that it’s not so large that you can’t know it all well, but it is so large that there are many people who specialize in one particular category. If you are lucky enough to have someone on staff who knows it all well, you better make sure they are well taken care of because those guys are ready-made to move over to a consulting role and charge you 3 times what you are probably paying them. :) Some of the all-around rockstars are Eric Shupps, Andrew Connell (go Razorbacks), Rob Foster, Paul Schaeflein, and Todd Bleeker SharePoint Power User/No-Code Solutions Developer These SharePoint Swiss Army Knives are essential for quick wins in your organization. These people can twist the out-of-the-box functionality to make it do things you would not even imagine. Give these guys SharePoint Designer, jQuery, InfoPath, and a little time and they will create views, dashboards, and KPI’s that will blow your mind away and give your execs the “wow” they are looking for. Not only can they deliver that wow factor, but they can mashup, merge, and really help make your SharePoint application usable and deliver an overall better user experience. Before you hand off a project to your SharePoint Custom Code developer, let one of these rockstars look at it and show you what they can do (in probably less time). I would say the second most important role you can fill in your organization is one of these guys. Rockstars in this category are Christina Wheeler, Laura Rogers, Jennifer Mason, and Mark Miller SharePoint Developer – Custom Code If you want to really integrate SharePoint into your legacy systems, or really twist it and make it bend to your will, you are going to have to open up Visual Studio and write some custom code.  Remember, SharePoint is essentially just a big, huge, ginormous .NET application, so you CAN write code to make it do ANYTHING, but do you really want to spend the time and effort to do so? At some point with every other form of SharePoint development you are going to run into SOME limitation (SPD Workflows is the big one that comes to mind). If you truly want to knock down all the walls then custom development is the way to go. PLEASE keep in mind when you are looking for a custom code developer that a .NET developer does NOT equal a SharePoint developer. Just SOME of the things these guys write are: Custom Workflows Custom Web Parts Web Service functionality Import data from legacy systems Export data to legacy systems Custom Actions Event Receivers Service Applications (2010) These guys are also the ones generally responsible for packaging everything up into solution packages (you are doing that, right?). Rockstars in this category are Phil Wicklund, Christina Wheeler, Geoff Varosky, and Brian Jackett. SharePoint Branding “But it LOOKS like SharePoint!” Somebody call the WAAAAAAAAAAAAHMbulance…   Themes, Master Pages, Page Layouts, Zones, and over 2000 styles in CSS.. these guys not only have to be comfortable with all of SharePoint’s quirks and pain points when branding, but they have to know it TWICE for publishing and non-publishing sites.  Not only that, but these guys really need to have an eye for graphic design and be able to translate the ramblings of business into something visually stunning. They also have to be comfortable with XSLT, XML, and be able to hand off what they do to your custom developers for them to package as solutions (which you are doing, right?). These rockstars include Heater Waterman, Cathy Dew, and Marcy Kellar SharePoint Architect SharePoint Architects are generally SharePoint Admins or Developers who have moved into more of a BA role? Is that fair to say? These guys really have a grasp and understanding for what SharePoint IS and what it can do. These guys help you structure your farms to meet your needs and help you design your applications the correct way. It’s always a good idea to bring in a rockstar SharePoint Architect to do a sanity check and make sure you aren’t doing anything stupid.  Most organizations probably do not have a rockstar architect on staff. These guys are generally brought in at the deployment of a farm, upgrade of a farm, or for large development projects. I personally also find architects very useful for sitting down with the business to translate their needs into what SharePoint can do. A good architect will be able to pick out what can be done out-of-the-box and what has to be custom built and hand those requirements to the development Staff. Architects can generally fill in as an admin or a developer when needed. Some rockstar architects are Rick Taylor, Dan Usher, Bill English, Spence Harbar, Neil Hodgkins, Eric Harlan, and Bjørn Furuknap. Other Roles / Specialties On top of all these other roles you also get these people who specialize in things like Reporting, BDC (BCS in 2010), Search, Performance, Security, Project Management, etc... etc... etc... Again, most organizations will not have one of these gurus on staff, they’ll just pay out the nose for them when they need them. :) SharePoint End User Everyone else in your organization that touches SharePoint falls into this category. What they actually DO in SharePoint is determined by your governance and what permissions you give these guys. Hopefully you have these guys on a fairly short leash and are NOT giving them access to tools like SharePoint Designer. Sadly end users are the ones who truly make your deployment a success by using it, but are also your biggest enemy in breaking it.  :)  We love you guys… really!!! Okay, all that’s fine and dandy, but what should MY SharePoint team look like? It depends! Okay… Are you just doing out of the box team sites with no custom development? Then you are probably fine with a great Admin team and a great No-Code Solution Development team. How many people do you need? Depends on how busy you can keep them. Sorry, can’t answer the question about numbers without knowing your specific needs. I can just tell you who you MIGHT need and what they will do for you. I’ll leave you with what my ideal SharePoint Team would look like for a particular scenario: Farm / Organization Structure Dev, QA, and 2 Production Farms. 5000 – 10000 Users Custom Development and Integration with legacy systems Team Sites, My Sites, Intranet, Document libraries and overall company collaboration Team Rockstar SharePoint Administrator 2-3 junior SharePoint Administrators SharePoint Architect / Lead Developer 2 Power User / No-Code Solution Developers 2-3 Custom Code developers Branding expert With a team of that size and skill set, they should be able to keep a substantial SharePoint deployment running smoothly and meet your business needs. This does NOT mean that you would not need to bring in contract help from time to time when you need an uber specialist in one area. Also, this team assumes there will be ongoing development for the life of your SharePoint farm. If you are just going to be doing sporadic custom development, it might make sense to partner with an awesome firm that specializes in that sort of work (I can give you the name of a couple if you are interested).  Again though, the size of your team depends on the number of requests you are receiving and how much active deployment you are doing. So, don’t bring in a team that looks like this and then yell at me because they are sitting around with nothing to do or are so overwhelmed that nothing is getting done. I do URGE you to take the proper time to asses your needs and determine what team is BEST for your organization. Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not skimp on the talent. When it comes to SharePoint you really do get what you pay for when it comes to employees, contractors, and software.  SharePoint can become absolutely critical to your business and because you skimped on hiring a developer he created a web part that brings down the farm because he doesn’t know what he’s doing, or you hire an admin who thinks it’s fine to stick everything in the same Content Database and then can’t figure out why people are complaining. SharePoint can be an enormous blessing to an organization or it’s biggest curse. Spend the time and money to do it right, or be prepared to spending even more time and money later to fix it.

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• ODI 12c's Mapping Designer - Combining Flow Based and Expression Based Mapping

  - by Madhu Nair

  post by David Allan ODI is renowned for its declarative designer and minimal expression based paradigm. The new ODI 12c release has extended this even further to provide an extended declarative mapping designer. The ODI 12c mapper is a fusion of ODI's new declarative designer with the familiar flow based designer while retaining ODI’s key differentiators of: Minimal expression based definition, The ability to incrementally design an interface and to extract/load data from any combination of sources, and most importantly Backed by ODI’s extensible knowledge module framework. The declarative nature of the product has been extended to include an extensible library of common components that can be used to easily build simple to complex data integration solutions. Big usability improvements through consistent interactions of components and concepts all constructed around the familiar knowledge module framework provide the utmost flexibility. Here is a little taster: So what is a mapping? A mapping comprises of a logical design and at least one physical design, it may have many. A mapping can have many targets, of any technology and can be arbitrarily complex. You can build reusable mappings and use them in other mappings or other reusable mappings. In the example below all of the information from an Oracle bonus table and a bonus file are joined with an Oracle employees table before being written to a target. Some things that are cool include the one-click expression cross referencing so you can easily see what's used where within the design. The logical design in a mapping describes what you want to accomplish  (see the animated GIF here illustrating how the above mapping was designed) . The physical design lets you configure how it is to be accomplished. So you could have one logical design that is realized as an initial load in one physical design and as an incremental load in another. In the physical design below we can customize how the mapping is accomplished by picking Knowledge Modules, in ODI 12c you can pick multiple nodes (on logical or physical) and see common properties. This is useful as we can quickly compare property values across objects - below we can see knowledge modules settings on the access points between execution units side by side, in the example one table is retrieved via database links and the other is an external table. In the logical design I had selected an append mode for the integration type, so by default the IKM on the target will choose the most suitable/default IKM - which in this case is an in-built Oracle Insert IKM (see image below). This supports insert and select hints for the Oracle database (the ANSI SQL Insert IKM does not support these), so by default you will get direct path inserts with Oracle on this statement. In ODI 12c, the mapper is just that, a mapper. Design your mapping, write to multiple targets, the targets can be in the same data server, in different data servers or in totally different technologies - it does not matter. ODI 12c will derive and generate a plan that you can use or customize with knowledge modules. Some of the use cases which are greatly simplified include multiple heterogeneous targets, multi target inserts for Oracle and writing of XML. Let's switch it up now and look at a slightly different example to illustrate expression reuse. In ODI you can define reusable expressions using user functions. These can be reused across mappings and the implementations specialized per technology. So you can have common expressions across Oracle, SQL Server, Hive etc. shielding the design from the physical aspects of the generated language. Another way to reuse is within a mapping itself. In ODI 12c expressions can be defined and reused within a mapping. Rather than replicating the expression text in larger expressions you can decompose into smaller snippets, below you can see UNIT_TAX AMOUNT has been defined and is used in two downstream target columns - its used in the TOTAL_TAX_AMOUNT plus its used in the UNIT_TAX_AMOUNT (a recording of the calculation).  You can see the columns that the expressions depend on (upstream) and the columns the expression is used in (downstream) highlighted within the mapper. Also multi selecting attributes is a convenient way to see what's being used where, below I have selected the TOTAL_TAX_AMOUNT in the target datastore and the UNIT_TAX_AMOUNT in UNIT_CALC. You can now see many expressions at once now and understand much more at the once time without needlessly clicking around and memorizing information. Our mantra during development was to keep it simple and make the tool more powerful and do even more for the user. The development team was a fusion of many teams from Oracle Warehouse Builder, Sunopsis and BEA Aqualogic, debating and perfecting the mapper in ODI 12c. This was quite a project from supporting the capabilities of ODI in 11g to building the flow based mapping tool to support the future. I hope this was a useful insight, there is so much more to come on this topic, this is just a preview of much more that you will see of the mapper in ODI 12c.

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• Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC Review

  - by Ben Griswold

  A few years back I started dallying with test-driven development, but I never fully committed to the practice. This wasn’t because I didn’t believe in the value of TDD; it was more a matter of not completely understanding how to incorporate “test first” into my everyday development. Back in my web forms days, I could point fingers at the framework for my ignorance and laziness. After all, web forms weren’t exactly designed for testability so who could blame me for not embracing TDD in those conditions, right? But when I switched to ASP.NET MVC and quickly found myself fresh out of excuses and it became instantly clear that it was time to get my head around red-green-refactor once and for all or I would regretfully miss out on one of the biggest selling points the new framework had to offer. I have previously written about how I learned ASP.NET MVC. It was primarily hands on learning but I did read a couple of ASP.NET MVC books along the way. The books I read dedicated a chapter or two to TDD and they certainly addressed the benefits of TDD and how MVC was designed with testability in mind, but TDD was merely an afterthought compared to, well, teaching one how to code the model, view and controller. This approach made some sense, and I learned a bunch about MVC from those books, but when it came to TDD the books were just a teaser and an opportunity missed.  But then I got lucky – Jonathan McCracken contacted me and asked if I’d review his book, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC, and it was just what I needed to get over the TDD hump. As the title suggests, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC takes a different approach to learning MVC as it focuses on testing right from the very start. McCracken wastes no time and swiftly familiarizes us with the framework by building out a trivial Quote-O-Matic application and then dedicates the better part of his book to testing first – first by explaining TDD and then coding a full-featured Getting Organized application inspired by David Allen’s popular book, Getting Things Done. If you are a learn-by-example kind of coder (like me), you will instantly appreciate and enjoy McCracken’s style – its fast-moving, pragmatic and focused on only the most relevant information required to get you going with ASP.NET MVC and TDD. The book continues with the test-first theme but McCracken moves away from the sample application and incorporates other practical skills like persisting models with NHibernate, leveraging Inversion of Control with the IControllerFactory and building a RESTful web service. What I most appreciated about this section was McCracken’s use of and praise for open source libraries like Rhino Mocks, SQLite and StructureMap (to name just a few) and productivity tools like ReSharper, Web Platform Installer and ASP.NET SQL Server Setup Wizard.  McCracken’s emphasis on real world, pragmatic development was clearly demonstrated in every tool choice, straight-forward code block and developer tip. Whether one is already familiar with the tools/tips or not, McCracken’s thought process is easily understood and appreciated. The final section of the book walks the reader through security and deployment – everything from error handling and logging with ELMAH, to ASP.NET Health Monitoring, to using MSBuild with automated builds, to the deployment  of ASP.NET MVC to various web environments. These chapters, like those prior, offer enough information and explanation to simply help you get the job done.  Do I believe Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC will turn you into an expert MVC developer overnight?  Well, no.  I don’t think any book can make that claim.  If that were possible, I think book list prices would skyrocket!  That said, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC provides a solid foundation and a unique (and dare I say necessary) approach to learning ASP.NET MVC.  Along the way McCracken shares loads of very practical software development tips and references numerous tools and libraries. The bottom line is it’s a great ASP.NET MVC primer – if you’re new to ASP.NET MVC it’s just what you need to get started.  Do I believe Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC will give you everything you need to start employing TDD in your everyday development?  Well, I used to think that learning TDD required a lot of practice and, if you’re lucky enough, the guidance of a mentor or coach.  I used to think that one couldn’t learn TDD from a book alone. Well, I’m still no pro, but I’m testing first now and Jonathan McCracken and his book, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC, played a big part in making this happen.  If you are an MVC developer and a TDD newb, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC is just the book for you.

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• Copying Columns from Grid to Clipboard in SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  There are several ways to get data from a query or a table|view to the clipboard. You know the tried and true, copy and paste. But what if you only want one or more columns, not every column? There are several ways to do this, let’s see if we can’t identify all of them. Write your query to only include the data you want Obvious? Yes. Needed to be said? Definitely. The best tuning tip is to only ask for the data you need, only when you absolutely need it. But let’s look at a few more practical ways to do this. Hide the unwanted columns Mouse right click on an column header. In the context menu, select ‘Columns.’ Hide the columns you don’t want. Copy and paste. WYSIWYG Grids, Hide Columns and Filter Rows Mouse select the columns Obvious, but a bit painful. For a very large dataset, you’ll be holding down the Shift and PageDown buttons – but it works. Remember to use Ctrl+Shift+C to get the column headers with the data. Use the Export Wizard This used to be called ‘Unload’ – agreed, not a great name. So, we changed it. In a grid, right mouse click on the data, and on the context menu, select ‘Export…’ Select your format – I suggest ‘delimited’ or ‘fixed’ for copying data to the clipboard. You can export to the clipboard, yes you can! Click ‘Next.’ Click in the Columns dialog, and choose the columns you want copied. Trim the columns you don't want copied Click ‘Finish.’ Alt or Ctrl tab to your window or application of choice. And Paste! "FIRST_NAME" "LAST_NAME" "Donald" "OConnell" "Douglas" "Grant" "Jennifer" "Whalen" "Pat" "Fay" "Susan" "Mavris" "William" "Gietz" "Alexander" "Hunold" "Bruce" "Ernst" "David" "Austin" "Valli" "Pataballa" "Diana" "Lorentz" "Daniel" "Faviet" "John" "Chen" "Ismael" "Sciarra" "Jose Manuel" "Urman" "Luis" "Popp" "Alexander" "Khoo" "Shelli" "Baida" "Sigal" "Tobias" "Guy" "Himuro" "Karen" "Colmenares" "Matthew" "Weiss" "Adam" "Fripp" "Payam" "Kaufling" "Shanta" "Vollman" "Kevin" "Mourgos" "Julia" "Nayer" "Irene" "Mikkilineni" ... There’s probably at least 2 or 3 more ways, but… But, try these and let me know how we can improve things. I’ve already gotten a request to be able to include the SQL text used to populate the dataset on the the copy to clipboard, and it’s now on our to-do list

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