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• Java EE at JavaOne - A Few Picks from a Very Rich Line-up

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  A rich and diverse set of sessions cast a spotlight on Java EE at this year’s JavaOne, ranging from the popular Web Framework Smackdown, to Java EE 6 and Spring, to sessions exploring Java EE 7, and one on the implications of HTML5. Some of the world’s best EE architects and developers will be sharing their insight and expertise. If only I could be at ten places at once!BOF4149 - Web Framework Smackdown 2012    Markus Eisele - Principal IT Architect, msg systems ag    Graeme Rocher - Senior Staff Engineer, VMware    James Ward - Developer Evangelist, Heroku    Ed Burns - Consulting Member of Technical Staff, Oracle    Santiago Pericasgeertsen - Software Engineer, Oracle* Monday, Oct 1, 8:30 PM - 9:15 PM - Parc 55 - Cyril Magnin II/III Much has changed since the first Web framework smackdown, at JavaOne 2005. Or has it? The 2012 edition of this popular panel discussion surveys the current landscape of Web UI frameworks for the Java platform. The 2005 edition featured JSF, Webwork, Struts, Tapestry, and Wicket. The 2012 edition features representatives of the current crop of frameworks, with a special emphasis on frameworks that leverage HTML5 and thin-server architecture. Java Champion Markus Eisele leads the lively discussion with panelists James Ward (Play), Graeme Rocher (Grails), Edward Burns (JSF) and Santiago Pericasgeertsen (Avatar).CON6430 - Java EE and Spring Framework Panel Discussion    Richard Hightower - Developer, InfoQ    Bert Ertman - Fellow, Luminis    Gordon Dickens - Technical Architect, IT101, Inc.    Chris Beams - Senior Technical Staff, VMware    Arun Gupta - Technology Evangelist, Oracle* Tuesday, Oct 2, 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM - Parc 55 - Cyril Magnin II/III In the age of Java EE 6 and Spring 3, enterprise Java developers have many architectural choices, including Java EE 6 and Spring, but which one is right for your project? Many of us have heard the debate and seen the flame wars—it’s a topic with passionate community members, and it’s a vibrant debate. If you are looking for some level-headed discussion, grounded in real experience, by developers who have tried both, then come join this discussion. InfoQ’s Java editors moderate the discussion, and they are joined by independent consultants and representatives from both Java EE and VMWare/SpringSource.BOF4213 - Meet the Java EE 7 Specification Leads   Linda Demichiel - Consulting Member of Technical Staff, Oracle   Bill Shannon - Architect, Oracle* Tuesday, Oct 2, 5:30 PM - 6:15 PM – Parc 55 - Cyril Magnin II/III This is your chance to meet face-to-face with the engineers who are developing the next version of the Java EE platform. In this session, the specification leads for the leading technologies that are part of the Java EE 7 platform discuss new and upcoming features and answer your questions. Come prepared with your questions, your feedback, and your suggestions for new features in Java EE 7 and beyond.CON10656 - JavaEE.Next(): Java EE 7, 8, and Beyond    Ian Robinson - IBM Distinguished Engineer, IBM    Mark Little - JBoss CTO, NA    Scott Ferguson - Developer, Caucho Technology    Cameron Purdy - VP Development, Oracle*Wednesday, Oct 3, 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM - Parc 55 - Cyril Magnin II/IIIIn this session, hear from a distinguished panel of industry and open source luminaries regarding where they believe the Java EE community is headed, starting with Java EE 7. The focus of Java EE 7 and 8 is mostly on the cloud, specifically aiming to bring platform as a service (PaaS) providers and application developers together so that portable applications can be deployed on any cloud infrastructure and reap all its benefits in terms of scalability, elasticity, multitenancy, and so on. Most importantly, Java EE will leverage the modularization work in the underlying Java SE platform. Java EE will, of course, also update itself for trends such as HTML5, caching, NoSQL, ployglot programming, map/reduce, JSON, REST, and improvements to existing core APIs.CON7001 - HTML5 WebSocket and Java    Danny Coward - Java, Oracle*Wednesday, Oct 3, 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM - Parc 55 - Cyril Magnin IThe family of HTML5 technologies has pushed the pendulum away from rich client technologies and toward ever-more-capable Web clients running on today’s browsers. In particular, WebSocket brings new opportunities for efficient peer-to-peer communication, providing the basis for a new generation of interactive and “live” Web applications. This session examines the efforts under way to support WebSocket in the Java programming model, from its base-level integration in the Java Servlet and Java EE containers to a new, easy-to-use API and toolset that are destined to become part of the standard Java platform.

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• Modifying Service URLs with LINQ to Twitter

  - by Joe Mayo

  It’s funny that two posts so close together speak about flexibility with the LINQ to Twitter provider.  There are certain things you know from experience on when to make software more flexible and when to save time.  This is another one of those times when I got lucky and made the right choice up front. I’m talking about the ability to switch URLs. It only makes sense that Twitter should begin versioning their API as it matures.  In fact, most of the entire API has moved to the v1 URL at “https://api.twitter.com/1/”, except for search and trends.  Recently, Twitter introduced the available and local trends, but hung them off the new v1, and left the rest of the trends API on the old URL. To implement this, I muscled my way into the expression tree during CreateRequestProcessor to figure out which trend I was dealing with; perhaps not elegant, but the code is in the right place and that’s what factories are for.  Anyway, the point is that I wouldn’t have to do this kind of stuff (as much fun as it is), if Twitter would have more consistency. Having went to Chirp last week and seeing the evolution of the API, it looks like my wish is coming true.  …now if they would just get their stuff together on the mess they made with geo-location and places… but again, that’s all transparent if your using LINQ to Twitter because I pulled all of that together in a consistent way so that you don’t have to. Normally, when Twitter makes a change, code breaks and I have to scramble to get the fixes in-place.  This time, in the case of a URL change, the adjustment is easy and no-one has to wait for me.  Essentially, all you need to do is change the URL passed to the TwitterContext constructor.  Here’s an example of instantiating a TwitterContext now: using (var twitterCtx = new TwitterContext(auth, "https://api.twitter.com/1/", "https://search.twitter.com/")) The third parameter constructor is the SearchUrl, which is used for Search and Trend APIs. You probably know what’s coming next; another constructor, but with the SearchUrl parameter set to the new URL as follows: using (var twitterCtx = new TwitterContext(auth, "https://api.twitter.com/1/", "https://api.twitter.com/1/")) One consequence of setting the URL this way is that you set the URL for both Trends and Search.  Since Search is still using the old URL, this is going to break for Search queries. You could always instantiate a special TwitterContext instance for Search queries, with the old URL set. Alternatively, you can use the TwitterContext’s SearchUrl property. Here’s an example: twitterCtx.SearchUrl = "https://api.twitter.com/1/"; var trends = (from trend in twitterCtx.Trends where trend.Type == TrendType.Daily && trend.Date == DateTime.Now.AddDays(-2).Date select trend) .ToList(); Notice how I set the SearchUrl property just-in-time for the query. This allows you to target the URL for each specific query. Whichever way you prefer to configure the URL, it’s your choice. So, now you know how to set the URL to be used for Trend queries and how to prevent whacking your Search queries. I’ll be updating the Trend API to use same URL as all other APIs soon, so the only API left to use the SearchUrl will be Search, but for the short term, it’s Trends and Search. Until I make this change, you’ll have a viable work-around by setting the URL yourself, as explained above. These were the Search and Trend URLs, but you might be curious about the second parameter of the TwitterContext constructor; that’s the URL for all other APIs (the BaseUrl), except for Trend and Search. Similarly, you can use the TwitterContext’s BaseUrl property to set the BaseUrl. Setting the BaseUrl can be useful when communicating with other services. In addition to Twitter changing URLs, the Twitter API has been adopted by other companies, such as Identi.ca, Tumblr, and  WordPress.  This capability lets you use LINQ to Twitter with any of these services.  This is a testament to the success of the Twitter API and it’s popularity. No doubt we’ll have hills and valleys to traverse as the Twitter API matures, but hopefully there will be enough flexibility in LINQ to Twitter to make these changes as transparent as possible for you. @JoeMayo

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• Common usecases and techniques when integrating a 3rd party application with Oracle Sales Cloud

  - by asantaga

  Over the last year or so I've see a lot of partners migrating and integrate their applications with Oracle Sales Cloud. Interestingly I'd say 60% of the partners use the same set of design patterns over and over again. Most of the time I see that they want to embed their application into Oracle Sales Cloud, within a tab usually, perhaps click on a link to their application (passing some piece of data + credentials) and then within their application update sales cloud again using webservices. Here are some examples of the different use-cases I've seen , and how partners are embedding their applications into Sales Cloud, NB : The following examples use the "Desktop" User Interface rather than the Newer "Simplified User Interface", I'll update the sample application soon but the integration patterns are precisely the same Use Case 1 :  Navigator "Link out" to third party application This is an example of where the developer has added a link to the global navigator and this links out to the 3rd Party Application. Typically one doesn't pass any contextual data with the exception of perhaps user credentials, or better still JWT Token. Techniques Used   Adding Link to Menu Item Using JWT Token in Sales Cloud Use Case 2 : Application Embedded within the Sales Cloud Dashboard Within the Oracle Sales Cloud application there is a tab called "Sales", within this tab its possible to embed a SubTab and embed a iFrame pointing to your application. To do this the developer simply needs to edit the page in customization mode, add the tab and then add the iFrame, simples! The developer can pass credentials/JWT Token and some other pieces of data but not object data (ie the current OpportunityID etc)  Techniques Used Adding a page to the dashboard  Using JWT Token in Sales Cloud  Use Case 3 : Embedding a Tab and Context Linking out from a Sales Cloud object to the 3rd party application In this usecase the developer embeds two components into Oracle Sales Cloud. The first is a SubTab showing summary data to the user (a quote in our case) and then secondly a hyperlink, (although it could be a button) which when clicked navigates the user to the 3rd party application. In this case the developer almost always passes context specific data (i.e. the opportunityId) and a security token (username password combo or JWT Token). The third party application usually takes the data, perhaps queries more data using the Sales Cloud SOAP/WebService interface and then displays the resulting mashup to the user for further processing. When the user has finished their work in the 3rd party application they normally navigate back to Oracle Sales Cloud using what's called a "DeepLink", ie taking them back to the object [opportunity in our case] they came from. This image visually shows a "Happy Path" a user may follow, and combines linking out to an application , webservice calls and deep linking back to Sales Cloud. Techniques Used Extending a SalesCloud application with a custom button Using JWT Token in Sales Cloud Extending Oracle Sales Cloud [Opportnity] with a custom tab exposing External Content Retrieving Data from Oracle Sales cloud using WebServices Coding some groovy script to generate the URLs required (Doc 1571200.1 on MyOracle Support) DeepLinking to specific Oracle Sales Cloud Pages (Doc 1516151.1 on My Oracle Support) Use-Case 4 :  Server Side processing/synchronization This usecase focuses on the Server Side processing of data, in this case synchronizing data. Here the 3rd party application is running on a "timer", e.g. cron or similar, and when triggered it queries data from Oracle Sales Cloud, then it queries data from the 3rd party application, determines the deltas and then inserts the data where required. Specifically here we are calling Oracle Sales Cloud using SOAP/WebServices and the 3rd party application is being communicated to using the REST API, for Oracle Sales Cloud one would use standard JAX-WS WebService calls and for REST one would use the JAX-RS api and perhap the Jackson api for managing JSON objects.. This is a very common use case and one which specifically lends itself to using the Oracle Java Cloud Service as the ideal application server where to host the mediator between the two applications.  Techniques Used Using JWT Token in Sales Cloud Integrating with the Oracle Java Cloud Service Retrieving Data from Oracle Sales cloud using WebServices General Resources The above is just a small set of techniques and use-cases which are used today. There are plenty of other sources of documentation and resources available on the internet but to get you started here are a few of my favourite places  Sales Cloud General Documentation Sales Cloud Customize Tab is useful for general customization of Sales Cloud Sales Cloud Integration Tab focuses on the 3rd party integration techniques  Official Oracle Fusion Developer Relations Blog Official Oracle Fusion Developer Relations YouTube Channel Enjoy integrating! 

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• libgdx rotation (animation, arrays) issues and help needed

  - by johnny-b

  well i am a noob at java and libgdx. i got the homing bullet working with the help of someone. now i am smashing my head as to how i can make it rotate so it faces the ball (which is the main character) when it goes around it or when it is coming towards it. the bullet is facing <--- and the code below is what i have done so far. also i used sprites for the bullet and also animation method. Also how do i make it an array/arraylist which is best so i can have multiple bullets at random or placed places. i tried many things nothing workd :( thank you for the help. // below is the bullet or enemy if you want to call it. public class Bullet extends Sprite { public static final float BULLET_HOMING = 6000; public static final float BULLET_SPEED = 300; private Vector2 velocity; private float lifetime; public Bullet(float x, float y) { velocity = new Vector2(0, 0); setPosition(x, y); } public void update(float delta) { float targetX = GameWorld.getBall().getX(); float targetY = GameWorld.getBall().getY(); float dx = targetX - getX(); float dy = targetY - getY(); float distToTarget = (float) Math.sqrt(dx * dx + dy * dy); dx /= distToTarget; dy /= distToTarget; dx *= BULLET_HOMING; dy *= BULLET_HOMING; velocity.x += dx * delta; velocity.y += dy * delta; float vMag = (float) Math.sqrt(velocity.x * velocity.x + velocity.y * velocity.y); velocity.x /= vMag; velocity.y /= vMag; velocity.x *= BULLET_SPEED; velocity.y *= BULLET_SPEED; Vector2 v = velocity.cpy().scl(delta); setPosition(getX() + v.x, getY() + v.y); setOriginCenter(); setRotation(velocity.angle()); lifetime += delta; setRegion(AssetLoader.bulletAnimation.getKeyFrame(lifetime)); } } // this is where i load the images. public class AssetLoader { public static Animation bulletAnimation; public static Sprite bullet1, bullet2; public static void load() { texture = new Texture(Gdx.files.internal("SpriteN1.png")); texture.setFilter(TextureFilter.Nearest, TextureFilter.Nearest); bullet1 = new Sprite(texture, 380, 350, 45, 20); bullet1.flip(false, true); bullet2 = new Sprite(texture, 425, 350, 45, 20); bullet2.flip(false, true); Sprite[] bullets = { bullet1, bullet2 }; bulletAnimation = new Animation(0.06f, aims); bulletAnimation.setPlayMode(Animation.PlayMode.LOOP); } public static void dispose() { // We must dispose of the texture when we are finished. texture.dispose(); } // this is for the rendering of the images etc public class GameRenderer { private Bullet bullet; private Ball ball; public GameRenderer(GameWorld world) { myWorld = world; cam = new OrthographicCamera(); cam.setToOrtho(true, 480, 320); batcher = new SpriteBatch(); // Attach batcher to camera batcher.setProjectionMatrix(cam.combined); shapeRenderer = new ShapeRenderer(); shapeRenderer.setProjectionMatrix(cam.combined); // Call helper methods to initialize instance variables initGameObjects(); initAssets(); } private void initGameObjects() { ball = GameWorld.getBall(); bullet = myWorld.getBullet(); scroller = myWorld.getScroller(); } private void initAssets() { ballAnimation = AssetLoader.ballAnimation; bulletAnimation = AssetLoader.bulletAnimation; } public void render(float runTime) { Gdx.gl.glClearColor(0, 0, 0, 1); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL30.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); batcher.begin(); // Disable transparency // This is good for performance when drawing images that do not require // transparency. batcher.disableBlending(); // The ball needs transparency, so we enable that again. batcher.enableBlending(); batcher.draw(AssetLoader.ballAnimation.getKeyFrame(runTime), ball.getX(), ball.getY(), ball.getWidth(), ball.getHeight()); batcher.draw(AssetLoader.bulletAnimation.getKeyFrame(runTime), bullet.getX(), bullet.getY()); // End SpriteBatch batcher.end(); } } // this is to load the image etc on the screen i guess public class GameWorld { public static Ball ball; private Bullet bullet; private ScrollHandler scroller; public GameWorld() { ball = new Ball(480, 273, 32, 32); bullet = new Bullet(10, 10); scroller = new ScrollHandler(0); } public void update(float delta) { ball.update(delta); bullet.update(delta); scroller.update(delta); } public static Ball getBall() { return ball; } public ScrollHandler getScroller() { return scroller; } public Bullet getBullet() { return bullet; } } so there is the whole thing. the images are loaded via the AssetLoader then to the GameRenderer and GameWorld via the Bullet class. i am guessing that is how it is. sorry newbie so still learning. thank you in advace for the help or any advice.

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• How to Customize Fonts and Colors for Gnome Panels in Ubuntu Linux

  - by The Geek

  Earlier this week we showed you how to make the Gnome Panels totally transparent, but you really need some customized fonts and colors to make the effect work better. Here’s how to do it. This article is the first part of a multi-part series on how to customize the Ubuntu desktop, written by How-To Geek reader and ubergeek, Omar Hafiz. Changing the Gnome Colors the Easy Way You’ll first need to install Gnome Color Chooser which is available in the default repositories (the package name is gnome-color-chooser). Then go to System > Preferences > Gnome Color Chooser to launch the program. When you see all these tabs you immediately know that Gnome Color Chooser does not only change the font color of the panel, but also the color of the fonts all over Ubuntu, desktop icons, and many other things as well. Now switch to the panel tab, here you can control every thing about your panels. You can change font, font color, background and background color of the panels and start menus. Tick the “Normal” option and choose the color you want for the panel font. If you want you can change the hover color of the buttons on the panel by too. A little below the color option is the font options, this includes the font, font size, and the X and Y positioning of the font. The first two options are pretty straight forward, they change the typeface and the size. The X-Padding and Y-Padding may confuse you but they are interesting, they may give a nice look for your panels by increasing the space between items on your panel like this: X-Padding:   Y-Padding:   The bottom half of the window controls the look of your start menus which is the Applications, Places, and Systems menus. You can customize them just the way you did with the panel.   Alright, this was the easy way to change the font of your panels. Changing the Gnome Theme Colors the Command-Line Way The other hard (not so hard really) way will be changing the configuration files that tell your panel how it should look like. In your Home Folder, press Ctrl+H to show the hidden files, now find the file “.gtkrc-2.0”, open it and insert this line in it. If there are any other lines in the file leave them intact. include “/home/<username>/.gnome2/panel-fontrc” Don’t forget to replace the <user_name> with you user account name. When done close and save the file. Now navigate the folder “.gnome2” from your Home Folder and create a new file and name it “panel-fontrc”. Open the file you just created with a text editor and paste the following in it: style “my_color”{fg[NORMAL] = “#FF0000”}widget “*PanelWidget*” style “my_color”widget “*PanelApplet*” style “my_color” This text will make the font red. If you want other colors you’ll need to replace the Hex value/HTML Notation (in this case #FF0000) with the value of the color you want. To get the hex value you can use GIMP, Gcolor2 witch is available in the default repositories or you can right-click on your panel > Properties > Background tab then click to choose the color you want and copy the Hex value. Don’t change any other thing in the text. When done, save and close. Now press Alt+F2 and enter “killall gnome-panel” to force it to restart or you can log out and login again. Most of you will prefer the first way of changing the font and color for it’s ease of applying and because it gives you much more options but, some may not have the ability/will to download and install a new program on their machine or have reasons of their own for not to using it, that’s why we provided the two way. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools [Infographic] Add a Real-Time Earth Wallpaper App to Ubuntu with xplanetFX The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker

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• Deep in the Heart of Texas

  - by Applications User Experience

  Author: Erika Webb, Manager, Fusion Applications UX User Assistance When I was first working in the usability field, the only way I could consider conducting a usability study was to bring a potential user to a lab environment where I could show them whatever I was interested in learning more about and ask them questions. While I hate to reveal just how long I have been working in this field, let's just say that pads of paper and a stopwatch were key tools for any test I conducted. Over the years, I have worked in simple labs with basic video taping equipment and not much else, and I have worked in corporate environments with sophisticated usability labs and state-of-the-art equipment. Years ago, we conducted all usability studies at the location of the user. If we wanted to see if there were any differences between users in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, we went to those places to run the test. A lab environment is very useful for many test situations. However, there has always been a debate in the usability field about whether bringing someone into a lab environment, however friendly we make it, somehow intrinsically changes the behavior of the user as compared to having them work in their own environment, at their own desk, and on their own computer. We developed systems to create a portable usability lab, so that we could go to the users that we needed to test.  Do lab environments change user behavior patterns? Then 9/11 hit. You may not remember, but no planes flew for weeks afterwards. Companies all over the world couldn't fly-in employees for meetings. Suddenly, traveling to the location of the users had an additional difficulty. The company I was working for at the time had usability specialists stuck in New York for days before they could finally rent a car and drive home to Colorado. This changed the world pretty suddenly, and technology jumped on the change. Companies offering Internet meeting tools were strugglinguntil no one could travel. The Internet boomed with collaboration tools that enabled people to work together wherever they happened to be. This change in technology has made a huge difference in my world. We use collaborative tools to bring our product concepts and ideas to the user across the Internet. As a global company, we benefit from having users from all over the world inform our designs. We now run usability studies with users all over the world in a single day, a feat we couldn't have accomplished 10 years ago by plane! Other technology companies have started to do more of this type of usability testing, since the tools have improved so dramatically. Plus, in our busy world, it's not always easy to find users who can take the time away from their jobs to come to our labs. reaching users where it is convenient for them greatly improves the odds that people do participate. I manage a team of usability specialists who live in India and California, whlie I live in Colorado. We have wonderful labs that we bring users into to show them our products. But very often, we run our studies remotely. We used to take the lab to the users now we use the labs, but we let the users stay where they are. We gain users who might not have been able to leave work to come to our labs, and they get to use the system they are familiar with. And we gain users nearly anywhere that we can set up an Internet connection, as long as the users have a phone, a broadband connection, and a compatible Web browser (with no pop-up blockers). After we recruit participants in a traditional manner, we send them an invitation to participate through the use of a telephone conference call and Web conferencing tool. At Oracle, we use Oracle Web Conference part of Oracle Collaboration Suite, which enables us to give the user control of the mouse, while we present a prototype or wireframe pictures. We can record the sessions over the Web and phone conference. We send the users instructions, plus tips to ensure that we won't have problems sharing screens. In some cases, when time is tight, we even run a five-minute "test session" with users a day in advance to be sure that we can connect. Prior to the test, we send users a participant script that contains information about the study, including any questionnaires. This is exactly the same script we give to participants who come to the labs. We ask users to print this before the beginning of the session. We generally run these studies by having a usability engineer in our usability labs, so that we can record the session as though the user were in the lab with us. Roughly 80% of our application software usability testing at Oracle is performed using remote methods. The probability of getting a   remote test participant decreases the higher up the person is in the target organization. We have a methodology checklist available to help our usability engineers work through the remote processes.

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• Row Count Plus Transformation

  As the name suggests we have taken the current Row Count Transform that is provided by Microsoft in the Integration Services toolbox and we have recreated the functionality and extended upon it. There are two things about the current version that we thought could do with cleaning up Lack of a custom UI You have to type the variable name yourself In the Row Count Plus Transformation we solve these issues for you. Another thing we thought was missing is the ability to calculate the time taken between components in the pipeline. An example usage would be that you want to know how many rows flowed between Component A and Component B and how long it took. Again we have solved this issue. Credit must go to Erik Veerman of Solid Quality Learning for the idea behind noting the duration. We were looking at one of his packages and saw that he was doing something very similar but he was using a Script Component as a transformation. Our philosophy is that if you have to write or Copy and Paste the same piece of code more than once then you should be thinking about a custom component and here it is. The Row Count Plus Transformation populates variables with the values returned from; Counting the rows that have flowed through the path Returning the time in seconds between when it first saw a row come down this path and when it saw the final row. It is possible to leave both these boxes blank and the component will still work.   All input columns are passed through the transformation unaltered, you are not permitted to change or add to the inputs or outputs of this component. Optionally you can set the component to fire an event, which happens during the PostExecute phase of the execution. This can be useful to improve visibility of this information, such that it is captured in package logging, or can be used to drive workflow in the case of an error event. Properties Property Data Type Description OutputRowCountVariable String The name of the variable into which the amount of row read will be passed (Optional). OutputDurationVariable String The name of the variable into which the duration in seconds will be passed. (Optional). EventType RowCountPlusTransform.EventType The type of event to fire during post execute, included in which are the row count and duration values. RowCountPlusTransform.EventType Enumeration Name Value Description None 0 Do not fire any event. Information 1 Fire an Information event. Warning 2 Fire a Warning event. Error 3 Fire an Error event. Installation The component is provided as an MSI file which you can download and run to install it. This simply places the files on disk in the correct locations and also installs the assemblies in the Global Assembly Cache as per Microsoft’s recommendations. You may need to restart the SQL Server Integration Services service, as this caches information about what components are installed, as well as restarting any open instances of Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) / Visual Studio that you may be using to build your SSIS packages. For 2005/2008 Only - Finally you will have to add the transformation to the Visual Studio toolbox manually. Right-click the toolbox, and select Choose Items.... Select the SSIS Data Flow Items tab, and then check the Row Count Plus Transformation in the Choose Toolbox Items window. This process has been described in detail in the related FAQ entry for How do I install a task or transform component? We recommend you follow best practice and apply the current Microsoft SQL Server Service pack to your SQL Server servers and workstations, and this component requires a minimum of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1. Downloads The Row Number Transformation is available for SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008 (includes R2) and SQL Server 2012. Please choose the version to match your SQL Server version, or you can install multiple versions and use them side by side if you have more than one version of SQL Server installed. Row Count Plus Transformation for SQL Server 2005 Row Count Plus Transformation for SQL Server 2008 Row Count Plus Transformation for SQL Server 2012 Version History SQL Server 2012 Version 3.0.0.6 - SQL Server 2012 release. Includes upgrade support for both 2005 and 2008 packages to 2012. (5 Jun 2012) SQL Server 2008 Version 2.0.0.5 - SQL Server 2008 release. (15 Oct 2008) SQL Server 2005 Version 1.1.0.43 - Bug fix for duration. For long running processes the duration second count may have been incorrect. (8 Sep 2006) Version 1.1.0.42 - SP1 Compatibility Testing. Added the ability to raise an event with the count and duration data for easier logging or workflow. (18 Jun 2006) Version 1.0.0.1 - SQL Server 2005 RTM. Made available as general public release. (20 Mar 2006) Screenshot Troubleshooting Make sure you have downloaded the version that matches your version of SQL Server. We offer separate downloads for SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2012. If you get an error when you try and use the component along the lines of The component could not be added to the Data Flow task. Please verify that this component is properly installed.  ... The data flow object "Konesans ..." is not installed correctly on this computer, this usually indicates that the internal cache of SSIS components needs to be updated. This is held by the SSIS service, so you need restart the the SQL Server Integration Services service. You can do this from the Services applet in Control Panel or Administrative Tools in Windows. You can also restart the computer if you prefer. You may also need to restart any current instances of Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) / Visual Studio that you may be using to build your SSIS packages. Once installation is complete you need to manually add the task to the toolbox before you will see it and to be able add it to packages - How do I install a task or transform component?

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• VB Myth - Case Insensitivity is Awesome!

  - by Damon

  I was reading Andy Brown's article 10 Reasons Why Visual Basic is Better than C# and the first claim is that VB is superior because of case insensitivity.  I think the reasons he outlines are basically as follows: Your fingers get tired finding the shift key (e.g. typing PascalCase and camelCase members) You are much more likely to make mistakes while typing names When you accidentally leave caps lock on, it really matters These three arguments culminate in the conclusion: "It doesn't matter if you disagree with everything else in this article: case-sensitivity alone is sufficient reason to ditch C#!" Righto.  I've been using Visual Basic since version 5.0, I wrote a book about ASP.NET in Visual Basic, so I want everyone to know I'm definitely not a VB.NET hater.  I had to converted to C# because it was the language of preference at the places I've worked, so I'm used to both languages.  I love me some case sensitivity.  So first, let's debunk the claims. First, your fingers do not get tired of finding the shift key unless you are writing code in notepad and compiling everything on the command line.  Visual Studio pretty much takes away the need to use the shift key at all. For the most part, any programmer worth a damn doesn't have to type more than about 3-5 characters of any variable or method name before IntelliSense kicks in to help.  VB or C#, if you are not using the tab key for autocomplete then you are typing too much anyway, regardless of whether the shift key is involved or not.  Also, you've got to be a pretty hard-core candy ass if you're complaining at the end of the day that your little fingers are hurting from hitting the shift key. Second, I cannot logically refute the fact that if there are more stringent rules about case sensitivity it will lead to more mistakes.  As such, know that you will be more prone to mistakes in C#.  However, lets talk about the magnitude of the problem.  If you are using IntelliSense then you have auto-correction built in so you probably won't have much of a problem in the first place.  If you manage to bypass IntelliSense and type something wrong you normally are immediately presented with a red-squiggly to let you know something is amiss.  Normally, a person would look at the problem, figure out what the heck went wrong, and then avoid that problem again in the future.  Granted, I have met people who seem to lack this capability, but their problem is deeper than a decision between VB.NET and C#.  So let's make sure that we're all on the same page about this problem.  If you have two teams of developers, one that uses VB.NET and one that uses C#, do not expect to see the VB.NET team drinking beer at the end of the project in festive revelry while the C# team is crying over what the hell to do because their code is riddled with case-sensitivity problems that nobody can resolve. Lastly, if you leave your caps lock key on, turn it off.  Really, what kind of ass-hat would write an entire VB.NET application ENTIRELY IN CAPS?  I happen to be a fan of case sensitivity because it encourages precision and uniformity.  The last thing I need is a code base that looks like it was ransacked by LeEt HacKors wHo Can uSe wHateVer cASe tHey wanT.  I mean really, if you saw someone write this: PuBLIc Sub MyMethod . End Sub And upon asking them why BL was upper case, they responded "Oh, I accidentally hit the shift key there.  Fortunately for me VB.NET is a case insensitive language so I saved a couple of keystrokes by leaving it in there."  Or if you saw: PUBLIC SUB ANOTHERMETHOD . END SUB And the response to why it was uppercased was "Yeah, I accidentally had caps locks on, fortunately for me VB.NET doesn't care.  Really dodged a bullet there, glad I wasn't using C#."  Would you not think that a bit ridiculous?  If you want to convince C# developers that C# sucks, go for it.  But the case insensitivity argument is crap.

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• When does "proper" programming no longer matter?

  - by Kai Qing

  I've been a full time programmer for about 8 years now. Web based mostly, ranging in weird jobs for clients. Never anything I "want" to do. So my experience is limited to what I've been contracted to do, having no real incentive to master anything in particular. So here's my scenario and ultimately what I wonder about... I've been building an android game in my spare time. It's using the libgdx library so quite a bit of the heavy lifting is done for me. I don't read much of the docs cause unless it's in tutorial format I will just not care, and ultimately most of my questions have already been asked on stackoverflow. I get along fine and my game works as expected... Suspiciously well, even. So much so that I wonder why one should bother to be "proper" when coding if the end result is ultimately the same. To be more specific, I used a hashtable because I wanted something close to an associative array. Human readable key values. In other places to achieve similar things, I use a vector. I know libgdx has vector2 and vector3 classes, but I've never used them. When I come across weird problems and search stackoverflow for help, I see a lot of people just reaming the questions that use a certain datatype when another one is technically "proper." Like using an ArrayList because it does not require defined bounds versus re-defining an int[] with new known boundaries. Or even something trivial like this: for(int i = 0; i < items.length; i ++) { // do something } I know it evaluates item.length on every iteration. I just don't care. I know items will never be more than 15 to 20 items. So why bother caring if I evaluate items.length on every iteration? So I wonder - why does everyone get all up in arms over this? Who cares if I use a less efficient datatype to get the job done? I ran some tests to see how the app performs using the lazy, get it done fast and don't look back method I just described versus the proper, follow the tutorial and use the exact data types suggested by the community. The results: Same thing. Average 45 fps. I opened every app on the phone and galaxy tab. Same deal. No difference. My game is pretty graphic intensive. It's not like it's just a simple thing. I expected it to perform kind of badly since I don't care to optimize image assets or... well, you probably get the idea. I'm making the game for fun. As a joke, really. But in doing so I'm working outside the normal scope of my job, which is to always follow the rules and do it the right way. So to say, I am without bounds here and this has caused me to wonder why I ever really care to be "proper" So I guess my question to you is this: Is there a threshold when it no longer matters to be proper? Is there a lasting, longer term consequence to the lazy, get it done and don't look back route? Is it ok to say - "so long as it gets the job done, I don't care?" Disclaimer: When I program my game, I am almost always drunk. I do it to remember why I got into this stuff to begin with because the monotony of client based web work will make you hate being a programmer. I'm having a blast and my game is not crashing, tests well, performs well, looks good on all devices so far and has no noticeable negative impact on any of my testing devices. I expected failure because I was being so drunkenly careless with my code, but to my surprise, it had no noticeable impact. I am now starting to question the need to be careful. Help me regain the ability to care! ... or explain why it's not a bad thing to not care. Secondary disclaimer: I am aware of the benefits of maintainability. For myself and others. Agreed. But it's not like someone happening across my inefficient int[] loop won't know what it does. As an experienced programmer those kinds of things are just clear on sight. I document the complex stuff for myself knowing I was drunk and will probably need a reminder. Those notes would clarify any confusion for someone who might ever gaze upon my ridiculous game - though the reality is that either I maintain it myself or it fades into time. I'm ok with that. But if it doesn't slow the device down, or crash, then crossing the t's and dotting the i's might actually require more time than it's worth.

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• Design Pattern for Complex Data Modeling

  - by Aaron Hayman

  I'm developing a program that has a SQL database as a backing store. As a very broad description, the program itself allows a user to generate records in any number of user-defined tables and make connections between them. As for specs: Any record generated must be able to be connected to any other record in any other user table (excluding itself...the record, not the table). These "connections" are directional, and the list of connections a record has is user ordered. Moreover, a record must "know" of connections made from it to others as well as connections made to it from others. The connections are kind of the point of this program, so there is a strong possibility that the number of connections made is very high, especially if the user is using the software as intended. A record's field can also include aggregate information from it's connections (like obtaining average, sum, etc) that must be updated on change from another record it's connected to. To conserve memory, only relevant information must be loaded at any one time (can't load the entire database in memory at load and go from there). I cannot assume the backing store is local. Right now it is, but eventually this program will include syncing to a remote db. Neither the user tables, connections or records are known at design time as they are user generated. I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to design the backing store and the object model to best fit these specs. In my first design attempt on this, I had one object managing all a table's records and connections. I attempted this first because it kept the memory footprint smaller (records and connections were simple dicts), but maintaining aggregate and link information between tables became....onerous (ie...a huge spaghettified mess). Tracing dependencies using this method almost became impossible. Instead, I've settled on a distributed graph model where each record and connection is 'aware' of what's around it by managing it own data and connections to other records. Doing this increases my memory footprint but also let me create a faulting system so connections/records aren't loaded into memory until they're needed. It's also much easier to code: trace dependencies, eliminate cycling recursive updates, etc. My biggest problem is storing/loading the connections. I'm not happy with any of my current solutions/ideas so I wanted to ask and see if anybody else has any ideas of how this should be structured. Connections are fairly simple. They contain: fromRecordID, fromTableID, fromRecordOrder, toRecordID, toTableID, toRecordOrder. Here's what I've come up with so far: Store all the connections in one big table. If I do this, either I load all connections at once (one big db call) or make a call every time a user table is loaded. The big issue here: the size of the connections table has the potential to be huge, and I'm afraid it would slow things down. Store in separate tables all the outgoing connections for each user table. This is probably the worst idea I've had. Now my connections are 'spread out' over multiple tables (one for each user table), which means I have to make a separate DB called to each table (or make a huge join) just to find all the incoming connections for a particular user table. I've avoided making "one big ass table", but I'm not sure the cost is worth it. Store in separate tables all outgoing AND incoming connections for each user table (using a flag to distinguish between incoming vs outgoing). This is the idea I'm leaning towards, but it will essentially double the total DB storage for all the connections (as each connection will be stored in two tables). It also means I have to make sure connection information is kept in sync in both places. This is obviously not ideal but it does mean that when I load a user table, I only need to load one 'connection' table and have all the information I need. This also presents a separate problem, that of connection object creation. Since each user table has a list of all connections, there are two opportunities for a connection object to be made. However, connections objects (designed to facilitate communication between records) should only be created once. This means I'll have to devise a common caching/factory object to make sure only one connection object is made per connection. Does anybody have any ideas of a better way to do this? Once I've committed to a particular design pattern I'm pretty much stuck with it, so I want to make sure I've come up with the best one possible.

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• Your Next IT Job

  - by BuckWoody

  Some data professionals have worked (and plan to work) in the same place for a long time. In organizations large and small, the turnover rate just isn’t that high. This has not been my experience. About every 3-5 years I’ve changed either roles or companies. That might be due to the IT environment or my personality (or a mix of the two), but the point is that I’ve had many roles and worked for many companies large and small throughout my 27+ years in IT. At one point this might have been a detriment – a prospective employer looks at the resume and says “it seems you’ve moved around quite a bit.” But I haven’t found that to be the case all the time –in fact, in some cases the variety of jobs I’ve held has been an asset because I’ve seen what works (and doesn’t) in other environments, which can save time and money. So if you’re in the first camp – great! Stay where you are, and continue doing the work you love. but if you’re in the second, then this post might be useful. If you are planning on making a change, or perhaps you’ve hit a wall at your current location, you might start looking around for a better paying job – and there’s nothing wrong with that. We all try to make our lives better, and for some that involves more money. Money, however, isn’t always the primary motivator. I’ve gone to another job that doesn’t have as many benefits or has the same salary as the current job I’m working to gain more experience, get a better work/life balance and so on. It’s a mix of factors that only you know about. So I thought I would lay out a few advantages and disadvantages in the shops I’ve worked at. This post isn’t aimed at a single employer, but represents a mix of what I’ve experienced, and of course the opinions here are my own. You will most certainly have a different take – if so, please post a response! I also won’t mention a specific industry – I’ve worked everywhere from medical firms, legal offices, retail, billing centers, manufacturing, government, even to NASA. I’m focusing here mostly on size and composition. And I’m making some very broad generalizations here – I am fully aware that a small company might have great benefits and a large company might allow a lot of role flexibility.  your mileage may vary – and again, post those comments! Small Company To me a “small company” means around 100 people or less – sometimes a lot less. These can be really fun, frustrating places to to work. Advantages: a great deal of flexibility, a wide range of roles (often at the same time), a large degree of responsibility, immediate feedback, close relationships with co-workers, work directly with your customer. Disadvantages: Too much responsibility, little work/life balance, immature political structure, few (if any) benefits. If the business is family-owned, they can easily violate work/life boundaries. Medium Size company In my experience the next size company I would work for involves from a few hundred people to around five thousand. Advantages: Good mobility – fairly easy to get promoted, acceptable benefits, more defined responsibilities, better work/life balance, balanced load for expertise, but still the organizational structure is fairly simple to understand. Disadvantages: Pay is not always highest, rapid changes in structure as the organization grows, transient workforce. You may not be given the opportunity to work with another technology if someone already “owns” it. Politics are painful at this level as people try to learn how to do it. Large Company When you get into the tens of thousands of folks employed around the world, you’re in a large company. Advantages: Lots of room to move around – sometimes you can work (as I have) multiple jobs through the years and yet stay at the same company, building time for benefits, very defined roles, trained managers (yes, I know some of them are still awful – trust me – I DO know that), higher-end benefits, long careers possible, discounts at retailers and other “soft” benefits, prestige. For some, a higher level of politics (done professionally) is a good thing. Disadvantages: You could become another faceless name in the crowd, might not allow a great deal of flexibility,  large organizational changes might take away any control you have of your career. I’ve also seen large layoffs happen, and good people get let go while “dead weight” is retained. For some, a higher level of politics is distasteful. So what are your experiences? Share with the group! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Is this how dynamic language copes with dynamic requirement?

  - by Amumu

  The question is in the title. I want to have my thinking verified by experienced people. You can add more or disregard my opinion, but give me a reason. Here is an example requirement: Suppose you are required to implement a fighting game. Initially, the game only includes fighters, who can attack each other. Each fighter can punch, kick or block incoming attacks. Fighters can have various fighting styles: Karate, Judo, Kung Fu... That's it for the simple universe of the game. In an OO like Java, it can be implemented similar to this way: abstract class Fighter { int hp, attack; void punch(Fighter otherFighter); void kick(Fighter otherFighter); void block(Figther otherFighter); }; class KarateFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation...}; class JudoFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation... }; class KungFuFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation ... }; This is fine if the game stays like this forever. But, somehow the game designers decide to change the theme of the game: instead of a simple fighting game, the game evolves to become a RPG, in which characters can not only fight but perform other activities, i.e. the character can be a priest, an accountant, a scientist etc... At this point, to make it more generic, we have to change the structure of our original design: Fighter is not used to refer to a person anymore; it refers to a profession. The specialized classes of Fighter (KaraterFighter, JudoFighter, KungFuFighter) . Now we have to create a generic class named Person. However, to adapt this change, I have to change the method signatures of the original operations: class Person { int hp, attack; List<Profession> skillSet; }; abstract class Profession {}; class Fighter extends Profession { void punch(Person otherFighter); void kick(Person otherFighter); void block(Person otherFighter); }; class KarateFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation...}; class JudoFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation... }; class KungFuFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation ... }; class Accountant extends Profession { void calculateTax(Person p) { //...implementation...}; void calculateTax(Company c) { //...implementation...}; }; //... more professions... Here are the problems: To adapt to the method changes, I have to fix the places where the changed methods are called (refactoring). Every time a new requirement is introduced, the current structural design has to be broken to adapt the changes. This leads to the first problem. Rigid structure makes it hard for code reuse. A function can only accept the predefined types, but it cannot accept future unknown types. A written function is bound to its current universe and has no way to accommodate to the new types, without modifications or rewrite from scratch. I see Java has a lot of deprecated methods. OO is an extreme case because it has inheritance to add up the complexity, but in general for statically typed language, types are very strict. In contrast, a dynamic language can handle the above case as follow: ;;fighter1 punch fighter2 (defun perform-punch (fighter1 fighter2) ...implementation... ) ;;fighter1 kick fighter2 (defun perform-kick (fighter1 fighter2) ...implementation... ) ;;fighter1 blocks attacks from fighter2 (defun perform-block (fighter1 fighter2) ...implementation... ) fighter1 and fighter2 can be anything as long as it has the required data for calculation; or methods (duck typing). You don't have to change from the type Fighter to Person. In the case of Lisp, because Lisp only has a single data structure: list, it's even easier to adapt to changes. However, other dynamic languages can have similar behaviors as well. I work primarily with static languages (mainly C and Java, but working with Java was a long time ago). I started learning Lisp and some other dynamic languages this year. I can see how it helps improving my productivity.

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• SQL Table stored as a Heap - the dangers within

  - by MikeD

  Nearly all of the time I create a table, I include a primary key, and often that PK is implemented as a clustered index. Those two don't always have to go together, but in my world they almost always do. On a recent project, I was working on a data warehouse and a set of SSIS packages to import data from an OLTP database into my data warehouse. The data I was importing from the business database into the warehouse was mostly new rows, sometimes updates to existing rows, and sometimes deletes. I decided to use the MERGE statement to implement the insert, update or delete in the data warehouse, I found it quite performant to have a stored procedure that extracted all the new, updated, and deleted rows from the source database and dump it into a working table in my data warehouse, then run a stored proc in the warehouse that was the MERGE statement that took the rows from the working table and updated the real fact table. Use Warehouse CREATE TABLE Integration.MergePolicy (PolicyId int, PolicyTypeKey int, Premium money, Deductible money, EffectiveDate date, Operation varchar(5)) CREATE TABLE fact.Policy (PolicyKey int identity primary key, PolicyId int, PolicyTypeKey int, Premium money, Deductible money, EffectiveDate date) CREATE PROC Integration.MergePolicy as begin begin tran Merge fact.Policy as tgtUsing Integration.MergePolicy as SrcOn (tgt.PolicyId = Src.PolicyId) When not matched by Target then Insert (PolicyId, PolicyTypeKey, Premium, Deductible, EffectiveDate)values (src.PolicyId, src.PolicyTypeKey, src.Premium, src.Deductible, src.EffectiveDate) When matched and src.Operation = 'U' then Update set PolicyTypeKey = src.PolicyTypeKey,Premium = src.Premium,Deductible = src.Deductible,EffectiveDate = src.EffectiveDate When matched and src.Operation = 'D' then Delete ;delete from Integration.WorkPolicy commit end Notice that my worktable (Integration.MergePolicy) doesn't have any primary key or clustered index. I didn't think this would be a problem, since it was relatively small table and was empty after each time I ran the stored proc. For one of the work tables, during the initial loads of the warehouse, it was getting about 1.5 million rows inserted, processed, then deleted. Also, because of a bug in the extraction process, the same 1.5 million rows (plus a few hundred more each time) was getting inserted, processed, and deleted. This was being sone on a fairly hefty server that was otherwise unused, and no one was paying any attention to the time it was taking. This week I received a backup of this database and loaded it on my laptop to troubleshoot the problem, and of course it took a good ten minutes or more to run the process. However, what seemed strange to me was that after I fixed the problem and happened to run the merge sproc when the work table was completely empty, it still took almost ten minutes to complete. I immediately looked back at the MERGE statement to see if I had some sort of outer join that meant it would be scanning the target table (which had about 2 million rows in it), then turned on the execution plan output to see what was happening under the hood. Running the stored procedure again took a long time, and the plan output didn't show me much - 55% on the MERGE statement, and 45% on the DELETE statement, and table scans on the work table in both places. I was surprised at the relative cost of the DELETE statement, because there were really 0 rows to delete, but I was expecting to see the table scans. (I was beginning now to suspect that my problem was because the work table was being stored as a heap.) Then I turned on STATS_IO and ran the sproc again. The output was quite interesting.Table 'Worktable'. Scan count 0, logical reads 0, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0.Table 'Policy'. Scan count 0, logical reads 0, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0.Table 'MergePolicy'. Scan count 1, logical reads 433276, physical reads 60, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. I've reproduced the above from memory, the details aren't exact, but the essential bit was the very high number of logical reads on the table stored as a heap. Even just doing a SELECT Count(*) from Integration.MergePolicy incurred that sort of output, even though the result was always 0. I suppose I should research more on the allocation and deallocation of pages to tables stored as a heap, but I haven't, and my original assumption that a table stored as a heap with no rows would only need to read one page to answer any query was definitely proven wrong. It's likely that some sort of physical defragmentation of the table may have cleaned that up, but it seemed that the easiest answer was to put a clustered index on the table. After doing so, the execution plan showed a cluster index scan, and the IO stats showed only a single page read. (I aborted my first attempt at adding a clustered index on the table because it was taking too long - instead I ran TRUNCATE TABLE Integration.MergePolicy first and added the clustered index, both of which took very little time). I suspect I may not have noticed this if I had used TRUNCATE TABLE Integration.MergePolicy instead of DELETE FROM Integration.MergePolicy, since I'm guessing that the truncate operation does some rather quick releasing of pages allocated to the heap table. In the future, I will likely be much more careful to have a clustered index on every table I use, even the working tables. Mike  

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• Drawing on a webpage – HTML5 - IE9

  - by nmarun

  So I upgraded to IE9 and continued exploring HTML5. Now there’s this ‘thing’ called Canvas in HTML5 with which you can do some cool stuff. Alright what IS this Canvas thing anyways? The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group says this: “The canvas element provides scripts with a resolution-dependent bitmap canvas, which can be used for rendering graphs, game graphics, or other visual images on the fly.” The Canvas element has two only attributes – width and height and when not specified they take up the default values of 300 and 150 respectively. Below is what my HTML file looks like: 1: <!DOCTYPE html> 2: <html lang="en-US"> 3: <head> 4: <script type="text/javascript" src="CustomScript.js"></script> 5: <script src="jquery-1.4.4.js" type="text/javascript"></script 6:  7: <title>Draw on a webpage</title> 8: </head> 9: <body> 10: <canvas id="canvas" width="500" height="500"></canvas> 11: <br /> 12: <input type="submit" id="submit" value="Clear" /> 13: <h4 id="currentPosition"> 14: 0, 0 15: </h4> 16: <div id="mousedownCoords"></div> 17: </body> 18: </html> In case you’re wondering, this is not a MVC or any kind of web application. This is plain ol’ HTML even though I’m writing all this in VS 2010. You see this is a very simple, ‘gimmicks-free’ html page. I have declared a Canvas element on line 10 and a button on line 11 to clear the drawing board. I’m using jQuery / JavaScript show the current position of the mouse on the screen. This will get updated in the ‘currentPosition’ <h4> tag and I’m using the ‘mousedownCoords’ to write all the places where the mouse was clicked. This is what my page renders as: The rectangle with a background is our canvas. The coloring is due to some javascript (which we’ll see in a moment). Now let’s get to our CustomScript.js file. 1: jQuery(document).ready(function () { 2: var isFirstClick = true; 3: var canvas = document.getElementById("canvas"); 4: // getContext: Returns an object that exposes an API for drawing on the canvas 5: var canvasContext = canvas.getContext("2d"); 6: fillBackground(); 7:  8: $("#submit").click(function () { 9: clearCanvas(); 10: fillBackground(); 11: }); 12:  13: $(document).mousemove(function (e) { 14: $('#currentPosition').html(e.pageX + ', ' + e.pageY); 15: }); 16: $(document).mouseup(function (e) { 17: // on the first click 18: // set the moveTo 19: if (isFirstClick == true) { 20: canvasContext.beginPath(); 21: canvasContext.moveTo(e.pageX - 7, e.pageY - 7); 22: isFirstClick = false; 23: } 24: else { 25: // on subsequent clicks, draw a line 26: canvasContext.lineTo(e.pageX - 7, e.pageY - 7); 27: canvasContext.stroke(); 28: } 29:  30: $('#mousedownCoords').text($('#mousedownCoords').text() + '(' + e.pageX + ',' + e.pageY + ')'); 31: }); 32:  33: function fillBackground() { 34: canvasContext.fillStyle = '#a1b1c3'; 35: canvasContext.fillRect(0, 0, 500, 500); 36: canvasContext.fill(); 37: } 38:  39: function clearCanvas() { 40: // wipe-out the canvas 41: canvas.width = canvas.width; 42: // set the isFirstClick to true 43: // so the next shape can begin 44: isFirstClick = true; 45: // clear the text 46: $('#mousedownCoords').text(''); 47: } 48: })   The script only looks long and complicated, but is not. I’ll go over the main steps. Get a ‘hold’ of your canvas object and retrieve the ‘2d’ context out of it. On mousemove event, write the current x and y coordinates to the ‘currentPosition’ element. On mouseup event, check if this is the first time the user has clicked on the canvas. The coloring of the canvas is done in the fillBackground() function. We first need to start a new path. This is done by calling the beginPath() function on our context. The moveTo() function sets the starting point of our path. The lineTo() function sets the end point of the line to be drawn. The stroke() function is the one that actually draws the line on our canvas. So if you want to play with the demo, here’s how you do it. First click on the canvas (nothing visible happens on the canvas). The second click draws a line from the first click to the current coordinates and so on and so forth. Click on the ‘Clear’ button, to reset the canvas and to give your creativity a clean slate. Here’s a sample output: Happy drawing! Verdict: HTML5 and IE9 – I think we’re on to something big and great here!

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• Unable to fix broken packages with sudo apt-get install -f

  - by Bob

  Here's my result, of sudo apt-get install -f. i have Ran it twice and got negative result. I believe there is an error at "error in Version string '0:3.6.1-dates for language English Translation data updates for all supported packages for: English" This same statement "error in Version string, caused me three days of attempting to download version 12.04. There is a bug report concerning the quoted text as well. Is there anyway to download the version without the language packs, why would I corrupt version 11.10? Also, when attempting to download Synaptic using sudo apt-get install synaptic, I get the same error message. Again I point out the initial download problems and the same error message receipt. Thanks b0b@b0b-IC780M-A:~$ sudo apt-get install -f [sudo] password for b0b: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 298 not upgraded. b0b@b0b-IC780M-A:~$ sudo apt-get install -f Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 298 not upgraded. b0b@b0b-IC780M-A:~$ sudo apt-get upgrade install Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages have been kept back: linux-headers-generic software-center The following packages will be upgraded: accountsservice acpi-support acpid aisleriot alsa-utils app-install-data-partner appmenu-qt apport apport-gtk apt-transport-https apt-utils aptdaemon aptdaemon-data apturl apturl-common banshee banshee-extension-soundmenu banshee-extension-ubuntuonemusicstore baobab bind9-host binutils bluez-alsa bluez-cups bluez-gstreamer brasero brasero-cdrkit brasero-common checkbox checkbox-gtk command-not-found command-not-found-data compiz compiz-core compiz-gnome compiz-plugins-default compiz-plugins-main-default cups cups-bsd cups-client cups-common cups-ppdc deja-dup desktop-file-utils dnsutils empathy empathy-common eog evince evince-common evolution-data-server evolution-data-server-common file-roller firefox firefox-globalmenu firefox-gnome-support gbrainy gcalctool gconf2 gconf2-common gedit gedit-common ghostscript ghostscript-cups ghostscript-x gir1.2-atspi-2.0 gir1.2-gconf-2.0 gir1.2-gnomebluetooth-1.0 gir1.2-gtk-3.0 gir1.2-gtksource-3.0 gir1.2-totem-1.0 gir1.2-unity-4.0 gir1.2-webkit-3.0 gnome-accessibility-themes gnome-bluetooth gnome-control-center gnome-control-center-data gnome-desktop3-data gnome-font-viewer gnome-games-common gnome-icon-theme gnome-mahjongg gnome-online-accounts gnome-orca gnome-power-manager gnome-screenshot gnome-search-tool gnome-session gnome-session-bin gnome-session-canberra gnome-session-common gnome-settings-daemon gnome-sudoku gnome-system-log gnome-system-monitor gnome-utils-common gnomine gstreamer0.10-gconf gstreamer0.10-plugins-good gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio gvfs gvfs-backends gvfs-bin gvfs-fuse gwibber gwibber-service gwibber-service-facebook gwibber-service-identica gwibber-service-twitter hpijs hplip hplip-cups hplip-data indicator-datetime indicator-session indicator-sound isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common jockey-common jockey-gtk language-selector-common language-selector-gnome libaccountsservice0 libapt-inst1.3 libarchive1 libasound2-plugins libatk-adaptor libbind9-60 libbrasero-media3-1 libcamel-1.2-29 libcanberra-gtk-module libcanberra-gtk0 libcanberra-gtk3-0 libcanberra-gtk3-module libcanberra-pulse libcanberra0 libdecoration0 libdns69 libebackend-1.2-1 libebook1.2-12 libecal1.2-10 libedata-book-1.2-11 libedata-cal-1.2-13 libedataserver1.2-15 libedataserverui-3.0-1 libevince3-3 libgconf2-4 libgnome-bluetooth8 libgnome-control-center1 libgnome-desktop-3-2 libgoa-1.0-0 libgrip0 libgs9 libgs9-common libgtk-3-bin libgtksourceview-3.0-0 libgtksourceview-3.0-common libgweather-3-0 libgweather-common libgwibber-gtk2 libgwibber2 libhpmud0 libimobiledevice2 libisc62 libisccc60 libisccfg62 libjasper1 liblightdm-gobject-1-0 liblwres60 libmetacity-private0 libmission-control-plugins0 libmono-zeroconf1.0-cil libnautilus-extension1 libnm-glib-vpn1 libnm-glib4 libnm-util2 libnotify0.4-cil libnux-1.0-0 libnux-1.0-common libpam-gnome-keyring libreoffice-emailmerge libreoffice-style-human libsane-hpaio libsmbclient libsnmp-base libsnmp15 libsyncdaemon-1.0-1 libt1-5 libtotem0 libubuntuone-1.0-1 libubuntuone1.0-cil libunity-2d-private0 libunity-core-4.0-4 libunity6 libusbmuxd1 libwbclient0 libwebkitgtk-1.0-0 libwebkitgtk-1.0-common libwebkitgtk-3.0-0 libwebkitgtk-3.0-common libxml2 linux-generic linux-image-generic metacity metacity-common mobile-broadband-provider-info modemmanager mousetweaks multiarch-support nautilus nautilus-data nautilus-sendto-empathy network-manager nux-tools onboard openssl pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pulseaudio-module-gconf pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils python-apport python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-aptdaemon.gtk3widgets python-aptdaemon.gtkwidgets python-brlapi python-cups python-cupshelpers python-gobject-cairo python-httplib2 python-launchpadlib python-libxml2 python-pam python-papyon python-pkg-resources python-problem-report python-pyatspi2 python-software-properties python-ubuntuone-client python-ubuntuone-storageprotocol samba-common samba-common-bin seahorse shotwell simple-scan smbclient sni-qt software-properties-common software-properties-gtk sudo system-config-printer-common system-config-printer-gnome system-config-printer-udev telepathy-indicator telepathy-mission-control-5 thunderbird thunderbird-globalmenu thunderbird-gnome-support tomboy totem totem-common totem-mozilla totem-plugins ttf-opensymbol ubuntu-desktop ubuntu-minimal ubuntu-standard ubuntuone-client ubuntuone-client-gnome ubuntuone-couch unity unity-2d unity-2d-launcher unity-2d-panel unity-2d-places unity-2d-spread unity-common unity-lens-applications unity-services update-manager update-manager-core update-notifier update-notifier-common usbmuxd vim-common vim-tiny vinagre vino xorg xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xul-ext-ubufox 296 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded. Need to get 0 B/159 MB of archives. After this operation, 10.1 MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y Extracting templates from packages: 100% Preconfiguring packages ... dpkg: error: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 4131 package 'python-zope.interface': error in Version string '0:3.6.1-dates for language English Translation data updates for all supported packages for: English . language-pack-en-base provides the bulk of translation data and is updated only seldom. This package provides frequent translation updates.': version string has embedded spaces E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2) b0b@b0b-IC780M-A:~$

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• Many Different Things Rolled into a Ball

  - by MOSSLover

  Yeah I know I don’t blog much anymore, because life has taken me places that don’t involve the interwebs unfortunately.  I am in the midst of planning two events, starting a non for profit, creating more sessions for various conferences, submitting to various conferences, working a 40 hour a week job, attempting to hang out with boyfriend/friends/family.  So you can see that list does not include this blog sadly that’s how it goes sometimes.  The bottom piece very important over any of the top pieces.  I haven’t seen St. Louis in a while and I get to go back.  I was gone from home for MVP Summit and Best Practices Conference, so the boyfriend and cat didn’t get to see me either for a bit.  Then you have to add in the whole toilet being broken fiasco this week.  Maintenance really thought it would be cool to turn off the ability to flush.  I mean who does that?  Then when we call the owner he comes by turns it on and we figure it was an accident, because well the next day no one came by to tell us there was a leak.  It was all kinds of strangeness and involved me running to other people’s toilets.  As Dan Usher would say, I was a sad panda for a few days.  So I guess I wanted to post a few thoughts here just because I can.  I do not like multiple content editor webparts embedded with html files in numerous pages doing the same thing.  I will tell you why I don’t like these particular webparts and the way they are being used.  First off if you have a bunch of pages with script includes it’s about time you should just dump them into the masterpage.  Why bother finding all 20 pages and changing those pages when you can just use a single masterpage that already exists? The other thing that is bothering me days is screen scraping.  Just don’t do it, because in 2010 you will find the UI is substantially slower.  I understand you are new and you have no idea what to do.  You are also using 2007 am I right?  So then you need to go to codeplex.com and type in a search for SPServices.  Download it, use it, love it and then have it’s babies (well maybe don’t go so far this is not the GRID in Tron). If you have a ton of constants in your code why did you not go in and create a webpart with a bunch of properties and/or link to a configuration list hidden in the browser?  This type of property and list could help you out in the long run.  The power users and administrators can now change the control without you having to compile it over and over again.  It’s good stuff.  Also, you can change the control without compiling it, especially in 2007 where you have to do a farm solution.  In 2010 you can do a sandbox solution I guess, but shouldn’t you make it as easy and supportable as possible for other users? In conclusion I’m an angry person when it comes to viewing something repeatedly and analyzing it in a system.  Now we will move on to the next topic…MVP Summit…So yeah I can’t really talk about particulars, but I can talk about my experience as a person.  Don’t build something up to be cooler than it is only to be dropped from your 10,000 foot perch.  My experience was great, but the content overall was something to be desired.  It’s ok I got to meet a lot of people I would not have met if I had not gone.  Some of it was surreal, such as product group members showing up and talking to us.  It was pretty neat.  Plus I never had the chance to get to that mythical MS Office in Redmond.  Prior to Summit it was like Rainbow Brites unicorn trying taunting me on television when I was a kid.  So I guess with all that said I give it a B.  It was awesome in some way, but lacking in other ways.  The cool part is that I got to go.  Would I have lived without going? Yes, but it was still cool. I could prattle on about other things and make this post massive, but I’m going to pass and give myself a piece of Sunday to play Rockband and do 800 other things.  I hope the two of you who read this blog are well.  I’ll catch you all at another juncture.  Have a good weekend and varying holidays in between. Technorati Tags: SharePoint,MVP Summit,JQuery,Javascript

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• Odd company release cycle: Go Distributed Source Control?

  - by MrLane

  sorry about this long post, but I think it is worth it! I have just started with a small .NET shop that operates quite a bit differently to other places that I have worked. Unlike any of my previous positions, the software written here is targetted at multiple customers and not every customer gets the latest release of the software at the same time. As such, there is no "current production version." When a customer does get an update, they also get all of the features added to he software since their last update, which could be a long time ago. The software is highly configurable and features can be turned on and off: so called "feature toggles." Release cycles are very tight here, in fact they are not on a shedule: when a feature is complete the software is deployed to the relevant customer. The team only last year moved from Visual Source Safe to Team Foundation Server. The problem is they still use TFS as if it were VSS and enforce Checkout locks on a single code branch. Whenever a bug fix gets put out into the field (even for a single customer) they simply build whatever is in TFS, test the bug was fixed and deploy to the customer! (Myself coming from a pharma and medical devices software background this is unbeliveable!). The result is that half baked dev code gets put into production without being even tested. Bugs are always slipping into release builds, but often a customer who just got a build will not see these bugs if they don't use the feature the bug is in. The director knows this is a problem as the company is starting to grow all of a sudden with some big clients coming on board and more smaller ones. I have been asked to look at source control options in order to eliminate deploying of buggy or unfinished code but to not sacrifice the somewhat asyncronous nature of the teams releases. I have used VSS, TFS, SVN and Bazaar in my career, but TFS is where most of my experience has been. Previously most teams I have worked with use a two or three branch solution of Dev-Test-Prod, where for a month developers work directly in Dev and then changes are merged to Test then Prod, or promoted "when its done" rather than on a fixed cycle. Automated builds were used, using either Cruise Control or Team Build. In my previous job Bazaar was used sitting on top of SVN: devs worked in their own small feature branches then pushed their changes to SVN (which was tied into TeamCity). This was nice in that it was easy to isolate changes and share them with other peoples branches. With both of these models there was a central dev and prod (and sometimes test) branch through which code was pushed (and labels were used to mark builds in prod from which releases were made...and these were made into branches for bug fixes to releases and merged back to dev). This doesn't really suit the way of working here, however: there is no order to when various features will be released, they get pushed when they are complete. With this requirement the "continuous integration" approach as I see it breaks down. To get a new feature out with continuous integration it has to be pushed via dev-test-prod and that will capture any unfinished work in dev. I am thinking that to overcome this we should go down a heavily feature branched model with NO dev-test-prod branches, rather the source should exist as a series of feature branches which when development work is complete are locked, tested, fixed, locked, tested and then released. Other feature branches can grab changes from other branches when they need/want, so eventually all changes get absorbed into everyone elses. This fits very much down a pure Bazaar model from what I experienced at my last job. As flexible as this sounds it just seems odd to not have a dev trunk or prod branch somewhere, and I am worried about branches forking never to re-integrate, or small late changes made that never get pulled across to other branches and developers complaining about merge disasters... What are peoples thoughts on this? A second final question: I am somewhat confused about the exact definition of distributed source control: some people seem to suggest it is about just not having a central repository like TFS or SVN, some say it is about being disconnected (SVN is 90% disconnected and TFS has a perfectly functional offline mode) and others say it is about Feature Branching and ease of merging between branches with no parent-child relationship (TFS also has baseless merging!). Perhaps this is a second question!

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• In Social Relationship Management, the Spirit is Willing, but Execution is Weak

  - by Mike Stiles

  In our final talk in this series with Aberdeen’s Trip Kucera, we wanted to find out if enterprise organizations are actually doing anything about what they’re learning around the importance of communicating via social and using social listening for a deeper understanding of customers and prospects. We found out that if your brand is lagging behind, you’re not alone. Spotlight: How was Aberdeen able to find out if companies are putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to implementing social across the enterprise? Trip: One way to think about the relative challenges a business has in a given area is to look at the gap between “say” and “do.” The first of those words reveals the brand’s priorities, while the second reveals their ability to execute on those priorities. In Aberdeen’s research, we capture this by asking firms to rank the value of a set of activities from one on the low end to five on the high end. We then ask them to rank their ability to execute those same activities, again on a one to five, not effective to highly effective scale. Spotlight: And once you get their self-assessments, what is it you’re looking for? Trip: There are two things we’re looking for in this analysis. The first is we want to be able to identify the widest gaps between perception of value and execution. This suggests impediments to adoption or simply a high level of challenge, be it technical or otherwise. It may also suggest areas where we can expect future investment and innovation. Spotlight: So the biggest potential pain points surface, places where they know something is critical but also know they aren’t doing much about it. What’s the second thing you look for? Trip: The second thing we want to do is look at specific areas in which high-performing companies, the Leaders, are out-executing the Followers. This points to the business impact of these activities since Leaders are defined by a set of business performance metrics. Put another way, we’re correlating adoption of specific business competencies with performance, looking for what high-performers do differently. Spotlight: Ah ha, that tells us what steps the winners are taking that are making them winners. So what did you find out? Trip: Generally speaking, we see something of a glass curtain when it comes to the social relationship management execution gap. There isn’t a single social media activity in which more than 50% of respondents indicated effectiveness, which would be a 4 or 5 on that 1-5 scale. This despite the fact that 70% of firms indicate that generating positive social media mentions is valuable or very valuable, a 4 or 5 on our 1-5 scale. Spotlight: Well at least they get points for being honest. The verdict they’re giving themselves is that they just aren’t cutting it in these highly critical social development areas. Trip: And the widest gap is around directly engaging with customers and/or prospects on social networks, which 69% of firms rated as valuable but only 34% of companies say they are executing well. Perhaps even more interesting is that these two are interdependent since you’re most likely to generate goodwill on social through happy, engaged customers. This data also suggests that social is largely being used as a broadcast channel rather than for one-to-one engagement. As we’ve discussed previously, social is an inherently personal media. Spotlight: And if they’re still using it as a broadcast channel, that shows they still fail to understand the root of social and see it as just another outlet for their ads and push-messaging. That’s depressing. Trip: A second way to evaluate this data is by using Aberdeen’s performance benchmarking. The story is both a bit different, but consistent in its own way. The first thing we notice is that Leaders are more effective in their execution of several key social relationship management capabilities, namely generating positive mentions and engaging with “influencers” and customers. Based on the fact that Aberdeen uses a broad set of performance metrics to rank the respondents as either “Leaders” (top 35% in weighted performance) or “Followers” (bottom 65% in weighted performance), from website conversion to annual revenue growth, we can then correlated high social effectiveness with company performance. We can also connect the specific social capabilities used by Leaders with effectiveness. We spoke about a few of those key capabilities last time and also discuss them in a new report: Social Powers Activate: Engineering Social Engagement to Win the Hidden Sales Cycle. Spotlight: What all that tells me is there are rewards for making the effort and getting it right. That’s how you become a Leader. Trip: But there’s another part of the story, which is that overall effectiveness, even among Leaders, is muted. There’s just one activity in which more than a majority of Leaders cite high effectiveness, effectiveness being the generation of positive buzz. While 80% of Leaders indicate “directly engaging with customers” through social media channels is valuable, the highest rated activity among Leaders, only 42% say they’re effective. This gap even among Leaders shows the challenges still involved in effective social relationship management. @mikestilesPhoto: stock.xchng

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• ASP.NET: Using pickup directory for outgoing e-mails

  - by DigiMortal

  Sending e-mails out from web applications is very common task. When we are working on or test our systems with real e-mail addresses we don’t want recipients to receive e-mails (specially if we are using some subset of real data9. In this posting I will show you how to make ASP.NET SMTP client to write e-mails to disc instead of sending them out. SMTP settings for web application I have seen many times the code where all SMTP information is kept in app settings just to read them in code and give to SMTP client. It is not necessary because we can define all these settings under system.web => mailsettings node. If you are using web.config to keep SMTP settings then all you have to do in your code is just to create SmtpClient with empty constructor. var smtpClient = new SmtpClient(); Empty constructor means that all settings are read from web.config file. What is pickup directory? If you want drastically raise e-mail throughput of your SMTP server then it is not very wise plan to communicate with it using SMTP protocol. it adds only additional overhead to your network and SMTP server. Okay, clients make connections, send messages out and it is also overhead we can avoid. If clients write their e-mails to some folder that SMTP server can access then SMTP server has e-mail forwarding as only resource-eager task to do. File operations are way faster than communication over SMTP protocol. The directory where clients write their e-mails as files is called pickup directory. By example, Exchange server has support for pickup directories. And as there are applications with a lot of users who want e-mail notifications then .NET SMTP client supports writing e-mails to pickup directory instead of sending them out. How to configure ASP.NET SMTP to use pickup directory? Let’s say, it is more than easy. It is very easy. This is all you need. <system.net>   <mailSettings>     <smtp deliveryMethod="SpecifiedPickupDirectory">       <specifiedPickupDirectory pickupDirectoryLocation="c:\temp\maildrop\"/>     </smtp>   </mailSettings> </system.net> Now make sure you don’t miss come points: Pickup directory must physically exist because it is not created automatically. IIS (or Cassini) must have write permissions to pickup directory. Go through your code and look for hardcoded SMTP settings. Also take a look at all places in your code where you send out e-mails that there are not some custom settings used for SMTP! Also don’t forget that your mails will be written now to pickup directory and they are not sent out to recipients anymore. Advanced scenario: configuring SMTP client in code In some advanced scenarios you may need to support multiple SMTP servers. If configuration is dynamic or it is not kept in web.config you need to initialize your SmtpClient in code. This is all you need to do. var smtpClient = new SmtpClient(); smtpClient.DeliveryMethod = SmtpDeliveryMethod.SpecifiedPickupDirectory; smtpClient.PickupDirectoryLocation = pickupFolder; Easy, isn’t it? i like when advanced scenarios end up with simple and elegant solutions but not with rocket science. Note for IIS SMTP service SMTP service of IIS is also able to use pickup directory. If you have set up IIS with SMTP service you can configure your ASP.NET application to use IIS pickup folder. In this case you have to use the following setting for delivery method. SmtpDeliveryMethod.PickupDirectoryFromIis You can set this setting also in web.config file. <system.net>   <mailSettings>     <smtp deliveryMethod="PickupDirectoryFromIis" />   </mailSettings> </system.net> Conclusion Who was still using different methods to avoid sending e-mails out in development or testing environment can now remove all the bad code from application and live on mail settings of ASP.NET. It is easy to configure and you have less code to support e-mails when you use built-in e-mail features wisely.

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• Agile Executives

  - by Robert May

  Over the years, I have experienced many different styles of software development. In the early days, most of the development was Waterfall development. In the last few years, I’ve become an advocate of Scrum. As I talked about last month, many people have misconceptions about what Scrum really is. The reason why we do Scrum at Veracity is because of the difference it makes in the life of the team doing Scrum. Software is for people, and happy motivated people will build better software. However, not all executives understand Scrum and how to get the information from development teams that use Scrum. I think that these executives need a support system for managing Agile teams. Historical Software Management When Henry Ford pioneered the assembly line, I doubt he realized the impact he’d have on Management through the ages. Historically, management was about managing the process of building things. The people were just cogs in that process. Like all cogs, they were replaceable. Unfortunately, most of the software industry followed this same style of management. Many of today’s senior managers learned how to manage companies before software was a significant influence on how the company did business. Software development is a very creative process, but too many managers have treated it like an assembly line. Idea’s go in, working software comes out, and we just have to figure out how to make sure that the ideas going in are perfect, then the software will be perfect. Lean Manufacturing In the manufacturing industry, Lean manufacturing has revolutionized Henry Ford’s assembly line. Derived from the Toyota process, Lean places emphasis on always providing value for the customer. Anything the customer wouldn’t be willing to pay for is wasteful. Agile is based on similar principles. We’re building software for people, and anything that isn’t useful to them doesn’t add value. Waterfall development would have teams build reams and reams of documentation about how the software should work. Agile development dispenses with this work because excessive documentation doesn’t add value. Instead, teams focus on building documentation only when it truly adds value to the customer. Many other Agile principals are similar. Playing Catch-up Just like in the manufacturing industry, many managers in the software industry have yet to understand the value of the principles of Lean and Agile. They think they can wrap the uncertainties of software development up in a nice little package and then just execute, usually followed by failure. They spend a great deal of time and money trying to exactly predict the future. That expenditure of time and money doesn’t add value to the customer. Managers that understand that Agile know that there is a better way. They will instead focus on the priorities of the near term in detail, and leave the future to take care of itself. They have very detailed two week plans with less detailed quarterly plans. These plans are guided by a general corporate strategy that doesn’t focus on the exact implementation details. These managers also think in smaller features rather than large functionality. This adds a great deal of value to customers, since the features that matter most are the ones that the team focuses on in the near term and then are able to deliver to the customers that are paying for them. Agile managers also realize that stale software is very costly. They know that keeping the technology in their software current is much less expensive and risky than large rewrites that occur infrequently and schedule time in each release for refactoring of the existing software. Agile Executives Even though Agile is a better way, I’ve still seen failures using the Agile process. While some of these failures can be attributed to the team, most of them are caused by managers, not the team. Managers fail to understand what Agile is, how it works, and how to get the information that they need to make good business decisions. I think this is a shame. I’m very pleased that Veracity understands this problem and is trying to do something about it. Veracity is a key sponsor of Agile Executives. In fact, Galen is this year’s acting president for Agile Executives. The purpose of Agile Executives is to help managers better manage Agile teams and see better success. Agile Executives is trying to build a community of executives that range from managers interested in Agile to managers that have successfully adopted Agile. Together, these managers can form a community of support and ideas that will help make Agile teams more successful. Helping Your Team You can help too! Talk with your manager and get them involved in Agile Executives. Help Veracity build the community. If your manager understands Agile better, he’ll understand how to help his teams, which will result in software that adds more value for customers. If you have any questions about how you can be involved, please let me know. Technorati Tags: Agile,Agile Executives

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• GameplayScreen does not contain a definition for GraphicsDevice

  - by Dave Voyles

  Long story short: I'm trying to intergrate my game with Microsoft's Game State Management. In doing so I've run into some errors, and the latest one is in the title. I'm not able to display my HUD for the reasons listed above. Previously, I had much of my code in my Game.cs class, but the GSM has a bit of it in Game1, and most of what you have drawn for the main screen in your GameplayScreen class, and that is what is causing confusion on my part. I've created an instance of the GameplayScreen class to be used in the HUD class (as you can see below). Before integrating with the GSM however, I created an instance of my Game class, and all worked fine. It seems that I need to define my graphics device somewhere, but I am not sure of where exactly. I've left some code below to help you understand. public class GameStateManagementGame : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { #region Fields GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; ScreenManager screenManager; // Creates a new intance, which is used in the HUD class public static Game Instance; // By preloading any assets used by UI rendering, we avoid framerate glitches // when they suddenly need to be loaded in the middle of a menu transition. static readonly string[] preloadAssets = { "gradient", }; #endregion #region Initialization /// <summary> /// The main game constructor. /// </summary> public GameStateManagementGame() { Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth = 1280; graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight = 720; graphics.IsFullScreen = false; graphics.ApplyChanges(); // Create the screen manager component. screenManager = new ScreenManager(this); Components.Add(screenManager); // Activate the first screens. screenManager.AddScreen(new BackgroundScreen(), null); //screenManager.AddScreen(new MainMenuScreen(), null); screenManager.AddScreen(new PressStartScreen(), null); } namespace Pong { public class HUD { public void Update(GameTime gameTime) { // Used in the Draw method titleSafeRectangle = new Rectangle (GameplayScreen.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.TitleSafeArea.X, GameplayScreen.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.TitleSafeArea.Y, GameplayScreen.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.TitleSafeArea.Width, GameplayScreen.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.TitleSafeArea.Height); } } } class GameplayScreen : GameScreen { #region Fields ContentManager content; public static GameStates gamestate; private GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; public int screenWidth; public int screenHeight; private Texture2D backgroundTexture; private SpriteBatch spriteBatch; private Menu menu; private SpriteFont arial; private HUD hud; Animation player; // Creates a new intance, which is used in the HUD class public static GameplayScreen Instance; public GameplayScreen() { TransitionOnTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1.5); TransitionOffTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); } protected void Initialize() { lastScored = false; menu = new Menu(); resetTimer = 0; resetTimerInUse = true; ball = new Ball(content, new Vector2(screenWidth, screenHeight)); SetUpMulti(); input = new Input(); hud = new HUD(); // Places the powerup animation inside of the surrounding box // Needs to be cleaned up, instead of using hard pixel values player = new Animation(content.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/powerupSpriteSheet"), new Vector2(103, 44), 64, 64, 4, 5); // Used by for the Powerups random = new Random(); vec = new Vector2(100, 50); vec2 = new Vector2(100, 100); promptVec = new Vector2(50, 25); timer = 10000.0f; // Starting value for the cooldown for the powerup timer timerVector = new Vector2(10, 10); //JEP - one time creation of powerup objects playerOnePowerup = new Powerup(); playerOnePowerup.Activated += PowerupActivated; playerOnePowerup.Deactivated += PowerupDeactivated; playerTwoPowerup = new Powerup(); playerTwoPowerup.Activated += PowerupActivated; playerTwoPowerup.Deactivated += PowerupDeactivated; //JEP - moved from events since these only need set once activatedVec = new Vector2(100, 125); deactivatedVec = new Vector2(100, 150); powerupReady = false; }

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• Dealing with "I-am-cool-and-you-are-dumb" manager [closed]

  - by Software Guy

  I have been working with a software company for about 6 months now. I like the projects I work on there and I really like all the people there except for 1 guy. That guy is technically smart, and he is a co-founder of the company. He is an okay guy in person (the kind you wouldn't want to care about much) but things get tricky when he is your manager. In general I am all okay but there are times when I feel I am not being treated fairly: He doesn't give much thought to when he makes mistakes and when I do something similar, he is super critical. Recently he went as far as to say "I am not sure if I can trust you with this feature". The detais of this specific case are this: I was working on this feature, and I was already a couple of hours over my normal working hours, and then I decided to stop and continue tomorrow. We use git, and I like to commit changes locally and only push when I feel they are ready. This manager insists that I push all the changes to the central repo (in case my hard drive crashes). So I push the change, and the ticket is marked as "to be tested". Next day I come in, he sits next to me and starts complaining and says that I posted above. I really didn't know what to say, I tried to explain to him that the ticket is still being worked upon but he didn't seem to listen. He interrupts me in-between when I am coding, which I do not mind, but when I do that same, his face turns like this :| and reacts as if his work was super important and I am just wasting his time. He asks me to accumulate all questions, and then ask him altogether which is not always possible, as you need a clarification before you can continue on a feature implementation. And when I am coding, he talks on the phone with his customers next to me (when he can go to the meeting room with his laptop) and doesn't care. He made me switch to a whole new IDE (from Netbeans to a commercial IDE costing a lot of money) for a really tiny feature (which I later found out was in Netbeans as well!). I didn't make a big deal out of it as I am equally comfortable working with this new IDE, but I couldn't get the science behind his obsession. He said this feature makes sure that if any method is updated by a programmer, the IDE will turn the method name to red in places where it is used. I told him that I do not have a problem since I always search for method usage in the project and make sure its updated. IDEs even have refactoring features for exactly that, but... I recently implemented a feature for a project, and I was happy about it and considering him a senior, I asked him his comments about the implementation quality.. he thought long and hard, made a few funny faces, and when he couldn't find anything, he said "ummm, your program will crash if JS is disabled" - he was wrong, since I had made sure it would work fine with default values even if JS was disabled. I told him that and then he said "oh okay". BUT, the funny thing is, a few days back, he implemented something and I objected with "But that would not run if JS is disabled" and his response was "We don't have to care about people who disable JS" :-/ Once he asked me to investigate if there was a way to modify a CMS generated menu programmatically by extending the CMS, I did my research and told him that the only was is to inject a menu item using JavaScript / jQuery and his reaction was "ah that's ugly, and hacky, not acceptable" and two days later, I see that feature implemented in the same way as I had suggested. The point is, his reaction was not respectful at all, even if what I proposed was hacky, he should be respectful, that I know what's hacky and if I am suggesting something hacky, there must be a reason for it. There are plenty of other reasons / examples where I feel I am not being treated fairly. I want your advice as to what is it that I am doing wrong and how to deal with such a situation. The other guys in the team are actually very good people, and I do not want to leave the job either (although I could, if I want to). All I want is respect and equal treatment. I have thought about talking to this guy in a face to face meeting, but that worries me that his attitude might get worse and make things more difficult for me (since he doesn't seem to be the guy who thinks he can be wrong too). I am also considering talking to the other co-founder but I am not sure how he will take it (as both founders have been friends forever). Thanks for reading the long message, I really appreciate your help.

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• How Can I Safely Destroy Sensitive Data CDs/DVDs?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  You have a pile of DVDs with sensitive information on them and you need to safely and effectively dispose of them so no data recovery is possible. What’s the most safe and efficient way to get the job done? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader HaLaBi wants to know how he can safely destroy CDs and DVDs with personal data on them: I have old CDs/DVDs which have some backups, these backups have some work and personal files. I always had problems when I needed to physically destroy them to make sure no one will reuse them. Breaking them is dangerous, pieces could fly fast and may cause harm. Scratching them badly is what I always do but it takes long time and I managed to read some of the data in the scratched CDs/DVDs. What’s the way to physically destroy a CD/DVD safely? How should he approach the problem? The Answer SuperUser contributor Journeyman Geek offers a practical solution coupled with a slightly mad-scientist solution: The proper way is to get yourself a shredder that also handles cds – look online for cd shredders. This is the right option if you end up doing this routinely. I don’t do this very often – For small scale destruction I favour a pair of tin snips – they have enough force to cut through a cd, yet are blunt enough to cause small cracks along the sheer line. Kitchen shears with one serrated side work well too. You want to damage the data layer along with shearing along the plastic, and these work magnificently. Do it in a bag, cause this generates sparkly bits. There’s also the fun, and probably dangerous way – find yourself an old microwave, and microwave them. I would suggest doing this in a well ventilated area of course, and not using your mother’s good microwave. There’s a lot of videos of this on YouTube – such as this (who’s done this in a kitchen… and using his mom’s microwave). This results in a very much destroyed cd in every respect. If I was an evil hacker mastermind, this is what I’d do. The other options are better for the rest of us. Another contributor, Keltari, notes that the only safe (and DoD approved) way to dispose of data is total destruction: The answer by Journeyman Geek is good enough for almost everything. But oddly, that common phrase “Good enough for government work” does not apply – depending on which part of the government. It is technically possible to recover data from shredded/broken/etc CDs and DVDs. If you have a microscope handy, put the disc in it and you can see the pits. The disc can be reassembled and the data can be reconstructed — minus the data that was physically destroyed. So why not just pulverize the disc into dust? Or burn it to a crisp? While technically, that would completely eliminate the data, it leaves no record of the disc having existed. And in some places, like DoD and other secure facilities, the data needs to be destroyed, but the disc needs to exist. If there is a security audit, the disc can be pulled to show it has been destroyed. So how can a disc exist, yet be destroyed? Well, the most common method is grinding the disc down to destroy the data, yet keep the label surface of the disc intact. Basically, it’s no different than using sandpaper on the writable side, till the data is gone. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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• Invitation to the Oracle EDGE Applications Partner Roadshow

  - by Hartmut Wiese

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 This is a unique opportunity for any Oracle Alliance & Channel Managers & their Partners to connect with the Oracle Edge Sales and Management Team to understand the relevance and value of the entire Oracle Edge Portfolio of Applications in solving complex customer issues and supporting a variety of evolving Partner Go-To-Market business models. Oracle Edge Applications (PLM, VCE, VCP, MDM, GRC, OPA) With strong participation from the key Oracle Edge Applications Sales business leaders, attendees will get the opportunity to hear about the benefits of the Oracle Edge Solutions within three different value-added contexts: Value 1: Oracle Edge Application Strategy Value 2: Oracle Value Chain Transformation Vision Value 3: Individual Application Business Line Differentiators Following on from the morning presentations, Oracle Partners will also get the opportunity in the afternoon to challenge and discuss the value of Oracle Edge Applications in the context of their own Go-To-Market business models. These sensitive discussions will be managed via focused 1-2-1 breakout meetings with the relevant Oracle Edge Applications Sales Business Leaders. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} When Where To Register Tuesday, July 09th 2013 09 am to 04 pm Utrecht Register now Tuesday, July 16th 2013 09 am to 04 pm London Register now Wednesday, August 28th 2013 09 am to 04 pm Paris Register now IIMPORTANT NOTE: ONLY 60 ATTENDEE PLACES AVAILABLE PER LOCATION - BOOK NOW TO AVOID MISSING OUT. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} There is a strict limit to the number of people who can attend this event based on site logistics for the day. Please note that Partners will be given priority over Oracle personnel registrations. Partners however may only register a maximum of 2 personnel from their company plus the supporting local Oracle Alliance & Channel Manager /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Why do we use Pythagoras in game physics?

  - by Starkers

  I've recently learned that we use Pythagoras a lot in our physics calculations and I'm afraid I don't really get the point. Here's an example from a book to make sure an object doesn't travel faster than a MAXIMUM_VELOCITY constant in the horizontal plane: MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = <any number>; SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = MAXIMUM_VELOCITY * MAXIMUM_VELOCITY; function animate(){ var squared_horizontal_velocity = (x_velocity * x_velocity) + (z_velocity * z_velocity); if( squared_horizontal_velocity <= SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY ){ scalar = squared_horizontal_velocity / SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY; x_velocity = x_velocity / scalar; z_velocity = x_velocity / scalar; } } Let's try this with some numbers: An object is attempting to move 5 units in x and 5 units in z. It should only be able to move 5 units horizontally in total! MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = 5; SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = 5 * 5; SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = 25; function animate(){ var x_velocity = 5; var z_velocity = 5; var squared_horizontal_velocity = (x_velocity * x_velocity) + (z_velocity * z_velocity); var squared_horizontal_velocity = 5 * 5 + 5 * 5; var squared_horizontal_velocity = 25 + 25; var squared_horizontal_velocity = 50; // if( squared_horizontal_velocity <= SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY ){ if( 50 <= 25 ){ scalar = squared_horizontal_velocity / SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY; scalar = 50 / 25; scalar = 2.0; x_velocity = x_velocity / scalar; x_velocity = 5 / 2.0; x_velocity = 2.5; z_velocity = z_velocity / scalar; z_velocity = 5 / 2.0; z_velocity = 2.5; // new_horizontal_velocity = x_velocity + z_velocity // new_horizontal_velocity = 2.5 + 2.5 // new_horizontal_velocity = 5 } } Now this works well, but we can do the same thing without Pythagoras: MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = 5; function animate(){ var x_velocity = 5; var z_velocity = 5; var horizontal_velocity = x_velocity + z_velocity; var horizontal_velocity = 5 + 5; var horizontal_velocity = 10; // if( horizontal_velocity >= MAXIMUM_VELOCITY ){ if( 10 >= 5 ){ scalar = horizontal_velocity / MAXIMUM_VELOCITY; scalar = 10 / 5; scalar = 2.0; x_velocity = x_velocity / scalar; x_velocity = 5 / 2.0; x_velocity = 2.5; z_velocity = z_velocity / scalar; z_velocity = 5 / 2.0; z_velocity = 2.5; // new_horizontal_velocity = x_velocity + z_velocity // new_horizontal_velocity = 2.5 + 2.5 // new_horizontal_velocity = 5 } } Benefits of doing it without Pythagoras: Less lines Within those lines, it's easier to read what's going on ...and it takes less time to compute, as there are less multiplications Seems to me like computers and humans get a better deal without Pythagoras! However, I'm sure I'm wrong as I've seen Pythagoras' theorem in a number of reputable places, so I'd like someone to explain me the benefit of using Pythagoras to a maths newbie. Does this have anything to do with unit vectors? To me a unit vector is when we normalize a vector and turn it into a fraction. We do this by dividing the vector by a larger constant. I'm not sure what constant it is. The total size of the graph? Anyway, because it's a fraction, I take it, a unit vector is basically a graph that can fit inside a 3D grid with the x-axis running from -1 to 1, z-axis running from -1 to 1, and the y-axis running from -1 to 1. That's literally everything I know about unit vectors... not much :P And I fail to see their usefulness. Also, we're not really creating a unit vector in the above examples. Should I be determining the scalar like this: // a mathematical work-around of my own invention. There may be a cleverer way to do this! I've also made up my own terms such as 'divisive_scalar' so don't bother googling var divisive_scalar = (squared_horizontal_velocity / SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY); var divisive_scalar = ( 50 / 25 ); var divisive_scalar = 2; var multiplicative_scalar = (divisive_scalar / (2*divisive_scalar)); var multiplicative_scalar = (2 / (2*2)); var multiplicative_scalar = (2 / 4); var multiplicative_scalar = 0.5; x_velocity = x_velocity * multiplicative_scalar x_velocity = 5 * 0.5 x_velocity = 2.5 Again, I can't see why this is better, but it's more "unit-vector-y" because the multiplicative_scalar is a unit_vector? As you can see, I use words such as "unit-vector-y" so I'm really not a maths whiz! Also aware that unit vectors might have nothing to do with Pythagoras so ignore all of this if I'm barking up the wrong tree. I'm a very visual person (3D modeller and concept artist by trade!) and I find diagrams and graphs really, really helpful so as many as humanely possible please!

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