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• Virtualized data centre&ndash;Part three: Architecture

  - by marc dekeyser

  Having the basics (like discussed in the previous articles) is all good and well, but how do we get started on this?! It can be quite daunting after all!   From my own point of view I can absolutely confirm your worries and concerns, but also tell you that it is not as hard as it seems! Deciding on what kind of motherboard to buy, processor and how much memory is an activity you will spend quite some time doing research on. And that is not even mentioning storage! All in all it comes down to setting you expectations and your budget. Probably adjusting your expectations according to your budget :). Processors As a rule of thumb you want VT-D (virtualization) technology built in to the processor allowing you to have 64 bit machines running on your host. Memory The more the better! If you are building a home lab don’t bother with ECC unless you are going to run machines that absolutely should be on all the time and your comfort depends on it! Motherboard Depends on what you are going to do with storage: If you are going the NAS way then the number of SATA port/RAID capabilities do not really matter. If you decide to have a single server with lots of dedicated storage it obviously matters how much SATA ports you will have, alternatively you could use a RAID controller (but these set you back a pretty penny if you want one. DELL 6i’s are usually available for a good bargain if you can find one!). Easiest is to get one with a built-in graphics card (on-board) as you are just adding more heat, power usage and possible points of failure. Networking Just like your choice of motherboard the networking side tends to depend on how you want to go. A single virtualization  host with local storage can usually get away with having a single network card, a cluster or server which uses iSCSI storage tends to have more than one teamed up :). Storage The dreaded beast from the dark! The horror which lives in the forest! The most difficult decision you are going to make in the building of your lab. Why you might ask? Simple my friend, having the right choice of storage can make or break your virtualization solution. The performance of you storage choice will have an important impact on the responsiveness of your virtual machines and the deployment of new machines. It also makes a run with your budget! If you decide to go the NAS route you will be dropping a lot more money than if you would be having just a bunch of disks sitting in a server and manually distributing the virtual machines over the disks. Platform I’m a Microsoftee so Hyper-V is a dead giveaway for me. If you are interested in using VMware I won’t stop you but the rest of my posts will be oriented on Server 2012 Hyper-V (aka 3.0)! What did I use? Before someone asks me this in the comments I’ll give you a quick run down of what I am using. - Intel 2.4 quad core processors (i something something) - 24 GB DDR3 Memory - Single disk in each server (might look at this as I move the servers to 2012) - Synology DS1812+ NAS - 3 network interfaces where possible - HP1800 procurve managed switch I decided to spring for the NAS as I will also be using it for backups and media storage (which is working out quite nicely with my Xbox 360 I must say). At the time of building my 2 boxes (over a year and a half ago) these set me back about 900 euros each so I can image you can build the same or better for a lower price. Next article will be diagramming what I want to achieve and starting a build on the Hyper V 3.0 cluster!

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• What's Bringing SharePoint 2007 Server to a hault?

  - by juanlarios

  I've been having issues with my teste environment and I'm hoping someone has run into this problem and can point me in the right direction. I noticed: SharePoint Server Memory is through the roof at times and so is the CPU usage. Most of CPU usage is a sql proccess. Running out of disk space all the time. I looked in the Logs located in the 12 hive and sure enough I have 1G log files that are hard to open because of the size. The following are the 3 error messages that are flooding my SharePoint logs:   04/05/2010 16:02:36.99     OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0B94)                       0x0BA4    Windows SharePoint Services       Timer                             5uuf    Monitorable    The previous instance of the timer job 'Variations Propagate Page Job Definition', id '{F9A73EB4-90FE-4574-AD99-B4034056F915}' for service '{F89169F9-707B-4588-9ED0-E6D399FE5E3D}' is still running, so the current instance will be skipped.  Consider increasing the interval between jobs.    04/05/2010 15:59:51.51     OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0B94)                       0x0BA4    Windows SharePoint Services       Timer                             5uuf    Monitorable    The previous instance of the timer job 'Profile Synchronization', id '{A05E3439-8DCD-449A-9D9E-46D601CACAA2}' for service '{F89169F9-707B-4588-9ED0-E6D399FE5E3D}' is still running, so the current instance will be skipped.  Consider increasing the interval between jobs.     04/05/2010 15:56:25.53     OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0B94)                       0x0BA4    Windows SharePoint Services       Timer                             5uuf    Monitorable    The previous instance of the timer job 'Scheduled Unpublish', id '{6298F93F-388D-46B9-809E-CEDBB8659661}' for service '{F89169F9-707B-4588-9ED0-E6D399FE5E3D}' is still running, so the current instance will be skipped.  Consider increasing the interval between jobs.     04/05/2010 15:54:14.73     OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0B94)                       0x0BA4    Windows SharePoint Services       Timer                             5uuf    Monitorable    The previous instance of the timer job 'Config Refresh', id '{C42DA970-3DA3-4AA2-94E5-8499C5B80A3E}' for service '{7F6D2CBE-8071-4A30-B313-7C9989FC2D87}' is still running, so the current instance will be skipped.  Consider increasing the interval between jobs.       I'm googling around but haven't found much. I know one other person posted something about this back in 2008, but no answers were reached. I have already checked the databases to see if any of them have gone offline for whatever reason, but from SQL everything is fine. I recently re-created an SSP and deleted an old ssp. So I thought maybe that was causing it, and who knows? maybe that causes some of the problems or maybe all. I'm running configuration wizard and see if anything changes. Please if someone has had similar issues let me know.

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• Silverlight 4 &ndash; Coded UI Framework Video Tutorial

  - by mbcrump

  With the release of Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2, Microsoft included the Coded UI Test framework. With this release it is possible to create automated test with just a few mouse clicks. This is a very powerful feature that all Silverlight developers need to learn. Instead of my normal blog post, I have created a video tutorial that walks you through it starting from “File” –> New Project. I hope you enjoy and please leave feedback. Video Tutorial (short 9 minute video): Slides from the demo (only 3): Silverlight 4 – Coded UI Testing Code for the MainPage.xaml that was used in the Demo. For the sake of time, I did not go into the AutomationProperties.Name that I used for the TextBox or Button. I added that for each element . <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White" Height="100" Width="350"> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition/> <ColumnDefinition/> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition/> <RowDefinition/> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <TextBlock Padding="15" Grid.Column="0" TextAlignment="Right">Name</TextBlock> <TextBox AutomationProperties.Name="txtAP" Grid.Column="1" Height="25" TextAlignment="Right" Name="txtName" /> <Button AutomationProperties.Name="btnAP" Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1" Content="Click for Name" x:Name="btnMessage" Click="btnMessage_Click" /> </Grid>  Subscribe to my feed

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• Live Webcasts of the Transit of Venus

  - by TATWORTH

  Space.com have published a list of webcams for the Transit of Venus at http://www.space.com/14568-venus-transits-sun-2012-skywatching.htmlLive Webcasts Around the World Here is a list of observatories and organizations providing live webcasts on June 5 of the Venus transit of 2012: NASA webcast from Mauna Kea, Hawaii: http://venustransit.nasa.gov/2012/transit/webcast.php Exploratorium (in San Francisco, Calif.) webcast from Mauna Loa, Hawaii: http://www.exploratorium.edu/venus/ Slooh Space Camera telescope feed from around the world: http://www.slooh.com/transit-of-venus/ Astronomers Without Borders webcast from the Mount Wilson Observatory in California: http://www.astronomerswithoutborders.org/projects/transit-of-venus.htmlI intend to publish a single list later.

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• How to retrieve Sharepoint data from a Windows Forms Application.

  - by Michael M. Bangoy

  In this demo I'm going to demonstrate how to retrieve Sharepoint data and display it on a Windows Forms Application. 1. Open Visual Studio 2010 and create a new Project. 2. In the project template select Windows Forms Application. 3. In order to communicate with Sharepoint from a Windows Forms Application we need to add the 2 Sharepoint Client DLL located in c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI. 4. Select the Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.dll and Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.Runtime.dll. That's it we're ready to write our codes. Note: In this example I've added to controls on the form, the controls are Button, TextBox, Label and DataGridView. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Data; using System.Data.Objects; using System.Drawing; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Security; using System.Windows.Forms; using SP = Microsoft.SharePoint.Client; namespace ClientObjectModel { public partial class Form1 : Form { // declare string url of the Sharepoint site string _context = "theurlofyoursharepointsite"; public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); } private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { } private void getsitetitle() {    SP.ClientContext context = new SP.ClientContext(_context);    SP.Web _site = context.Web;    context.Load(_site);    context.ExecuteQuery();    txttitle.Text = _site.Title;    context.Dispose(); } private void loadlist() { using (SP.ClientContext _clientcontext = new SP.ClientContext(_context)) {    SP.Web _web = _clientcontext.Web;    SP.ListCollection _lists = _clientcontext.Web.Lists;    _clientcontext.Load(_lists);    _clientcontext.ExecuteQuery();    DataTable dt = new DataTable();    DataColumn column;    DataRow row;    column = new DataColumn();    column.DataType = Type.GetType("System.String");    column.ColumnName = "List Title";    dt.Columns.Add(column);    foreach (SP.List listitem in _lists)    {       row = dt.NewRow();       row["List Title"] = listitem.Title;       dt.Rows.Add(row);    }       dataGridView1.DataSource = dt;    } private void cmdload_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { getsitetitle(); loadlist(); } } That's it. Running the application and clicking the Load Button will retrieve the Title of the Sharepoint site and display it on the TextBox and also it will retrieve ALL of the Sharepoint List on that site and populate the DataGridView with the List Title. Hope this helps. Thank you.

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• Setup and configure a MVC4 project for Cloud Service(web role) and SQL Azure

  - by MagnusKarlsson

  I aim at keeping this blog post updated and add related posts to it. Since there are a lot of these out there I link to others that has done kind of the same before me, kind of a blog-DRY pattern that I'm aiming for. I also keep all mistakes and misconceptions for others to see. As an example; if I hit a stacktrace I will google it if I don't directly figure out the reason for it. I will then probably take the most plausible result and try it out. If it fails because I misinterpreted the error I will not delete it from the log but keep it for future reference and for others to see. That way people that finds this blog can see multiple solutions for indexed stacktraces and I can better remember how to do stuff. To avoid my errors I recommend you to read through it all before going from start to finish.The steps:Setup project in VS2012. (msdn blog)Setup Azure Services (half of mpspartners.com blog)Setup connections strings and configuration files (msdn blog + notes)Export certificates.Create Azure package from vs2012 and deploy to staging (same steps as for production).Connections string error Set up the visual studio project:http://blogs.msdn.com/b/avkashchauhan/archive/2011/11/08/developing-asp-net-mvc4-based-windows-azure-web-role.aspx Then login in to Azure to setup the services:Stop following this guide at the "publish website" part since we'll be uploading a package.http://www.mpspartners.com/2012/09/ConfiguringandDeployinganMVC4applicationasaCloudServicewithAzureSQLandStorage/ When set up (connection strings for debug and release and all), follow this guide to set up the configuration files:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh369931.aspxTrying to package our application at this step will generate the following warning:3>MvcWebRole1(0,0): warning WAT170: The configuration setting 'Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString' is set up to use the local storage emulator for role 'MvcWebRole1' in configuration file 'ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg'. To access Windows Azure storage services, you must provide a valid Windows Azure storage connection string. Right click the web role under roles in solution manager and choose properties. Choose "Service configuration: Cloud". At "specify storage account credentials" we will copy/paste our account name and key from the Azure management platform.3.1 4. Right click Remote desktop Configuration and select certificate and export to file. We need to allow it in Portal manager.4.15 Now right click the cloud project and select package.5.1 Showing dialogue box. 5.2 Package success Now copy the path to the packaged file and go to management portal again. Click your web role and choose staging (or production). Upload. 5.3Tick the box about the single instance if that's what you want or you don't know what it means. Otherwise the following will happen (see image 4.6)5.4 Dialogue box When you have clicked the symbol for accept- button you will see the following screen with some green indicators down at the right corner. Click them if you want to see status.5.5 Information screen.5.6 "Failed to deploy application. The upload application has at least one role with only one instance. We recommend that you deploy at least two instances per role to ensure high availability in case one of the instances becomes unavailable. "To fix, go to step 5.4If you forgot to (or just didn't know you were supposed to) export your certificates. The following error will occur. Side note, the following thread suggests. To prevent: "Enable Remote Desktop for all roles" when right-clicking BIAB and choosing "Package". But in my case it was the not so present certificates. I fund the solution here.http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/dotnetstocktradersampleapplication/thread/0e94c2b5-463f-4209-86b9-fc257e0678cd5.75.8 Success! 5.9 Nice URL n' all. (More on that at another blog post).6. If you try to login and getWhen this error occurs many web sites suggest this is because you need:http://nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.AspNet.Providers.LocalDBOr : http://nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.AspNet.ProvidersBut it can also be that you don't have the correct setup for converting connectionstrings between your web.config to your debug.web.config(or release.web.config, whichever your using).Run as suggested in the "ordinary project in your solution. Go to the management portal and click update.

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• Gems In The Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit &ndash; Introduction to MEF: Learning Labs

  - by Jim Duffy

  No, this post doesn’t have anything to do with cooking up illegal drugs in some rundown shack outside of town. That, my friends, would be a meth lab and fortunately that is waaaaay outside my area of expertise. Now I can talk Kentucky bourbon, or as Homer Simpson would say “mmmmmmmmmmm bourbon”, with you but please refrain from asking me meth questions. :-) Anyway, what I’m talking about are the MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework) Learning Labs contained in the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit. Not sure what MEF is and need an overview? Then start here or here. Ok, so you’ve read a bit about MEF or heard about MEF and you’re thinking it might be something you and your development team might want to take a hands-on look at. I have good news then because contained in the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit is a series of hands-on learning labs for MEF. I’ve added working my way through them to my “things I want to take a closer look at” list. Have a day. :-|

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• Q&amp;A: Will my favourite ORM Foo work with SQL Azure?

  - by Eric Nelson

  short answer: Quite probably, as SQL Azure is very similar to SQL Server longer answer: Object Relational Mappers (ORMs) that work with SQL Server are likely but not guaranteed to work with SQL Azure. The differences between the RDBMS versions are small – but may cause problems, for example in tools used to create the mapping between objects and tables or in generated SQL from the ORM which expects “certain things” :-) More specifically: ADO.NET Entity Framework / LINQ to Entities can be used with SQL Azure, but the Visual Studio designer does not currently work. You will need to point the designer at a version of your database running of SQL Server to create the mapping, then change the connection details to run against SQL Azure. LINQ to SQL has similar issues to ADO.NET Entity Framework above NHibernate can be used against SQL Azure DevExpress XPO supports SQL Azure from version 9.3 DataObjects.Net supports SQL Azure Open Access from Telerik works “seamlessly”  - their words not mine :-) The list above is by no means comprehensive – please leave a comment with details of other ORMs that work (or do not work) with SQL Azure. Related Links: General guidelines and limitations of SQL Azure SQL Azure vs SQL Server

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• Do you know how to move the Team Foundation Server cache

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  There are a number of reasons why you may want to change the folder that you store the TFS Cache. It can take up “some” amount of room so moving it to another drive can be beneficial. This is the source control Cache that TFS uses to cache data from the database. Moving the Cache is pretty easy and should allow you to organise your server space a little more efficiently. You may also get a performance improvement (although small) by putting it on another drive.. Create a new directory to store the Cache. e.g. “d:\TfsCache\” Figure: Create a new folder Give the local TFS WPG group full control of the directory   Figure: You need to use the App Tier Service WPG In the application tier web.config (~\Application Tier\Web Services\web.config) add the following setting (to the appSettings section). Figure: The web.config for TFS is stored in the application folder <appsettings> ... <add value="D:\" key="dataDirectory" /> ... </appsettings> Figure: Adding this to the web.config will trigger a restart of the app pool Figure: Your web.config should look something like this The app pool will automatically recycle and Team Web Access will start using the new location.  If you then download a file (not via a proxy) a folder with a GUID should be created immediately in the folder from #1.  If the folder doesn’t appear, then you probably don’t have permissions set up properly.

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• Do you know how to move the Team Foundation Server cache

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  There are a number of reasons why you may want to change the folder that you store the TFS Cache. It can take up “some” amount of room so moving it to another drive can be beneficial. This is the source control Cache that TFS uses to cache data from the database. Moving the Cache is pretty easy and should allow you to organise your server space a little more efficiently. You may also get a performance improvement (although small) by putting it on another drive.. Create a new directory to store the Cache. e.g. “d:\TfsCache\” Give the local TFS WPG group full control of the directory Figure: You need to use the App Tier service WPG In the application tier web.config (~\Application Tier\Web Services\web.config) add the following setting (to the appSettings section). <appsettings> ... <add value="D:\" key="dataDirectory" /> ... </appsettings> The app pool will automatically recycle and Team Web Access will start using the new location.  If you then download a file (not via a proxy) a folder with a GUID should be created immediately in the folder from #1.  If the folder doesn’t appear, then you probably don’t have permissions set up properly.

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• Creating a Podcast

  - by Matt Christian

  Hopefully in the next week I will begin developing a new podcast for your listening pleasure.  Actually, it'll probably be quite horrible as I'm not a great speaker and I don't know what kind of content I'll have, but damnit I'll produce something. Anyone out there have any tips or suggestions for a new podcaster?

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• BizTalk 2010 Beta Now Available for Download

  - by Christopher House

  Get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0f852e77-f792-4784-b2d4-95113d40db64&displaylang=en#filelist

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• Profiling Startup Of VS2012 &ndash; YourKit Profiler

  - by Alois Kraus

  The YourKit (v7.0.5) profiler is interesting in terms of price (79€ single place license, 409€ + 1 year support and upgrades) and feature set. You do get a performance and memory profiler in one package for which you normally need also to pay extra from the other vendors. As an interesting side note the profiler UI is written in Java because they do also sell Java profilers with the same feature set. To get all methods of a VS startup you need first to configure it to include System* in the profiled methods and you need to configure * to measure wall clock time. By default it does record only CPU times which allows you to optimize CPU hungry operations. But you will never see a Thread.Sleep(10000) in the profiler blocking the UI in this mode. It can profile as all others processes started from within the profiler but it can also profile the next or all started processes. As usual it can profile in sampling and tracing mode. But since it is a memory profiler as well it does by default also record all object allocations > 1MB. With allocation recording enabled VS2012 did crash but without allocation recording there were no problems. The CPU tab contains the time line of the application and when you click in the graph you the call stacks of all threads at this time. This is really a nice feature. When you select a time region you the CPU Usage estimation for this time window. I have seen many applications consuming 100% CPU only because they did create garbage like crazy. For this is the Garbage Collection tab interesting in conjunction with a time range. This view is like the CPU table only that the CPU graph (green) is missing. All relevant information except for GCs/s is already visible in the CPU tab. Very handy to pinpoint excessive GC or CPU bound issues. The Threads tab does show the thread names and their lifetime. This is useful to see thread interactions or which thread is hottest in terms of CPU consumption. On the CPU tab the call tree does exist in a merged and thread specific view. When you click on a method you get below a list of all called methods. There you can sort for methods with a high own time which are worth optimizing. In the Method List you can select which scope you want to see. Back Traces are the methods which did call you. Callees ist the list of methods called directly or indirectly by your method as a flat list. This is not a call stack but still very useful to see which methods were slow so you can see the “root” cause quite quickly without the need to click trough long call stacks. The last view Merged Calles is a call stacked view of the previous view. This does help a lot to understand did call each method at run time. You would get the same view with a debugger for one call invocation but here you get the full statistics (invocation count) as well. Since YourKit is also a memory profiler you can directly see which objects you have on your managed heap and which objects do hold most of your precious memory. You can in in the Object Explorer view also examine the contents of your objects (strings or whatsoever) to get a better understanding which objects where potentially allocating this stuff.   YourKit is a very easy to use combined memory and performance profiler in one product. The unbeatable single license price makes it very attractive to straightly buy it. Although it is a Java UI it is very responsive and the memory consumption is considerably lower compared to dotTrace and ANTS profiler. What I do really like is to start the YourKit ui and then start the processes I want to profile as usual. There is no need to alter your own application code to be able to inject a profiler into your new started processes. For performance and memory profiling you can simply select the process you want to investigate from the list of started processes. That's the way I like to use profilers. Just get out of the way and let the application run without any special preparations.   Next: Telerik JustTrace

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• Microsoft BUILD 2013&ndash;Day 1 Summary

  - by Tim Murphy

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/27/microsoft-build-2013ndashday-1-summary.aspx I’m happy to be at BUILD this week, mainly because my flights finally got me here late on Tuesday.  My biggest complaints so far are the flights and the hotel.  It seems that almost every flight into San Francisco were delayed multiple hours.  The Sequester so lovingly forced on America by congress means that the airport was short controllers.   That, along with poor weather and airport construction meant most people were 2-3 hours late arriving.  Add on top of that the fact that the hotel that I picked durring registration is absolutely horrid.  It looks like something out of a ghost hunters show and smells like it too.  I think if Microsoft is going to select a hotel they need to make sure that it is adequate. Rant over! So what happened the first day?  Steve Balmer started off the keynote along with Julie Larson-Green and a cast of others.  We finally found out that there were around six thousand people attending BUILD and that the focus this year would be Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Azure.  For the rest of the keynote I am going to have a separate post. You can’t have a Microsoft conference without some fun.  This year they have a hunt for pins that represent different gestures in Windows 8.  I got all of mine.  Now they just need to pull my name. The sessions I attended were really good. They covered live tiles, what’s new in XAML and building Windows Phone UIs presented by Kraig Brockschmidt, Tim Heuer and Shawn Oster respectively.  These will also be covered in separate posts. The exhibit area was interesting, but somewhat disappointing.  TechEd 2012 I think was better organized and better staffed by the vendors.  It also seemed that the Microsoft teams’ booths were also in need of some organization and staffing. Overall it was a really fun day capped off by all six thousand attendees standing in like to get their Acer 8” tables and Surface Pros.  What a day!  Stay tuned for follow up posts. del.icio.us Tags: BUILD 2013,Windows 8.1,Winodws Phone,XAML,Keynote

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• Discovering Your Project

  - by Tim Murphy

  The discovery phase of any project is both exciting and critical to the project’s success.  There are several key points that you need to keep in mind as you navigate this process. The first thing you need to understand is who the players in the project are and what their motivations are for the project.  Leaving out a key stakeholder in the resulting product is one of the easiest ways to doom your project to fail.  The better the quality of the input you have at this early phase the better chance you will have of creating a well accepted deliverable. The next task you should tackle is to gather the goals for the project.  Specifically, what does the company expect to get for the money they are about to layout.  This seems like a common sense task, but you would be surprised how many teams to straight to building the system.  Even if you are following an agile methodology I believe that this is critical. Inventorying the resources that already exists gives you an idea what you are going to have to build and what you can leverage at lower risk.  This list should include documentation, servers, code repositories, databases, languages, security systems and supporting teams.  All of these are “resources” that can effect the cost and delivery schedule of your project. Finally, you need to verify what you have found and documented with the stakeholders and subject matter experts.  Documentation that has not been reviewed is actually a list of assumptions and we all know that assumptions are the mother of all screw ups. If you give the discovery phase of your project the attention that it deserves your project has a much better chance of success. I would love to hear what other people find important for this phase.  Please leave comments on this post so we can share the knowledge. del.icio.us Tags: Project discovery,documentation,business analysis,architecture

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• Welcome to my blog!

  - by Thomas Mason

  I am a 21 year old Web Developer, with over five years experience in the PHP field. Covering Javascript - jQuery & Ajax, mySQL, JSON and CSS. Out of the five years experience, three have been as a freelancer, the rest commercial work. (I have to say freelance is more comfortable whereas commercial really does get you to do things out of the box.) This blog will cover problems I come across and the solutions I came up with. Bringing ideas into reality - even if it's never been done before! Overall I hope to bring new ideas and my experience to developers old and new.

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• Agile Data Book from O'Reilly Media

  - by Compudicted

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2013/07/01/153309.aspxAs part of my ongoing self-education and approaching of some free time, yeah, both is a must for every IT person and geek! I have carefully examined the latest trends in the Computersphere with whatever tools I had at my disposal (nothing really fancy was used) and came to a conclusion that for a database pro the *hottest* topic today is undoubtedly the #BigData and all the rapidly growing and spawning ecosystem around it. Having recently immersed myself into the NoSQL world (let me tell here right away NoSQL means Not Only SQL) one book really stood out of the crowd: Book site: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920025054.doDespite being a new book I am sure it will end up on the tables of many Big Data Generalists.In a few dozen words, it is primarily for two reasons:1) The author understands that a  typical business today cannot wait for a Data Scientist for too long to deliver results demanding as usual a very quick turnaround on investments (ROI), and 2) The book covers all the needed and proven modern brick and mortar offerings to get the job done by a relatively newcomer to the Big Data World.It certainly enables such a professional to grow and expand based on the acquired knowledge, and one can truly do it very fast.

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• New versions of Firefox, Fiddler and SVN

  - by TATWORTH

  There are new versions of Fiddler and Tortoise SVN at: http://www.fiddlertool.com/fiddler/version.asp http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads.html  Fiddler is an excellent tool for montoring web service traffic. It also will capture traffic to and from your browser. Firefox needs no introduction from me, just be sure to go in firefox, Help, Check for Updates and make sure you have the latest. Since various browser exploits are about to be publicly discussed, there has been a recent flurry of browser updates, please be sure to get the latest in advance of exploits being made public.

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• Installing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  As has become customary when the product team releases a new patch, SP or version I like to document the install. This post seams almost redundant as I had no problems, but I think that is as valuable to other thinking of installing the Service Pack as all the problems that we sometimes get. As per Brian's post I am Installing Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1 first and indeed as this is a single server local deployment I need to install both. If I only install one it will leave the other product broken. Figure: Hopefully this will be more uneventful It takes a little while for your system to be checked to see what components need updating. On my main computer this was pretty quick, but on the laptop it took some time. Figure: There are a lot of components to update With this update also comes an update to .NET as well as many other components. Figure: I downloaded the full 1.5GB’s, but you could do a web install It depends on how good you internet connection is to how long it would take to download, but as I am now in the US I decided not to trust the internet connection speeds. It took around 30-40 minutes to download the full thing which is a little slow. Figure: I did not need to download, but that would increase the install time So on my main computer again this was fast, but again on my netbook this took a little while. Figure: The actual install took around 30-40 minutes (2 hours on netbook) I was pretty impressed with the speed of the install, and as Team Explore is now out of the box with Visual Studio 2010 I don’t get the problem of the SP being installed before Team Explorer and having a disjointed experience Figure: As I suspected, no problems with the install Figure: Checking in Visual Studio shows that all the servicing points were successful This was an easy experience even if the SP was over 1.5GB’s to download Hopefully I will be discovering things that work better for a good while to come, as well as not seeing holes in the product that I had no encountered yet. What were your experiences of installing Visual Studio 2010 Service pack 1?

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• Using BizTalk to bridge SQL Job and Human Intervention (Requesting Permission)

  - by Kevin Shyr

  I start off the process with either a BizTalk Scheduler (http://biztalkscheduledtask.codeplex.com/releases/view/50363) or a manual file drop of the XML message.  The manual file drop is to allow the SQL  Job to call a "File Copy" SSIS step to copy the trigger file for the next process and allows SQL  Job to be linked back into BizTalk processing. The Process Trigger XML looks like the following.  It is basically the configuration hub of the business process <ns0:MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive xmlns:ns0="urn:com:something something">   <ns0:IsProcessAsync>YES</ns0:IsProcessAsync>   <ns0:IsPermissionRequired>YES</ns0:IsPermissionRequired>   <ns0:BusinessProcessName>Data Push</ns0:BusinessProcessName>   <ns0:EmailFrom>[email protected]</ns0:EmailFrom>   <ns0:EmailRecipientToList>[email protected]</ns0:EmailRecipientToList>   <ns0:EmailRecipientCCList>[email protected]</ns0:EmailRecipientCCList>   <ns0:EmailMessageBodyForPermissionRequest>This message was sent to request permission to start the Data Push process.  The SQL Job to be run is WeeklyProcessing_DataPush</ns0:EmailMessageBodyForPermissionRequest>   <ns0:SQLJobName>WeeklyProcessing_DataPush</ns0:SQLJobName>   <ns0:SQLJobStepName>Push_To_Production</ns0:SQLJobStepName>   <ns0:SQLJobMinToWait>1</ns0:SQLJobMinToWait>   <ns0:PermissionRequestTriggerPath>\\server\ETL-BizTalk\Automation\TriggerCreatedByBizTalk\</ns0:PermissionRequestTriggerPath>   <ns0:PermissionRequestApprovedPath>\\server\ETL-BizTalk\Automation\Approved\</ns0:PermissionRequestApprovedPath>   <ns0:PermissionRequestNotApprovedPath>\\server\ETL-BizTalk\Automation\NotApproved\</ns0:PermissionRequestNotApprovedPath> </ns0:MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive>   Every node of this schema was promoted to a distinguished field so that the values can be used for decision making in the orchestration.  The first decision made is on the "IsPermissionRequired" field.     If permission is required (IsPermissionRequired=="YES"), BizTalk will use the configuration info in the XML trigger to format the email message.  Here is the snippet of how the email message is constructed. SQLJobEmailMessage.EmailBody     = new Eai.OrchestrationHelpers.XlangCustomFormatters.RawString(         MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.EmailMessageBodyForPermissionRequest +         "<br><br>" +         "By moving the file, you are either giving permission to the process, or disapprove of the process." +         "<br>" +         "This is the file to move: \"" + PermissionTriggerToBeGenereatedHere +         "\"<br>" +         "(You may find it easier to open the destination folder first, then navigate to the sibling folder to get to this file)" +         "<br><br>" +         "To approve, move(NOT copy) the file here: " + MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.PermissionRequestApprovedPath +         "<br><br>" +         "To disapprove, move(NOT copy) the file here: " + MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.PermissionRequestNotApprovedPath +         "<br><br>" +         "The file will be IMMEDIATELY picked up by the automated process.  This is normal.  You should receive a message soon that the file is processed." +         "<br>" +         "Thank you!"     ); SQLJobSendNotification(Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes.Address) = "mailto:" + MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.EmailRecipientToList; SQLJobEmailMessage.EmailBody(Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes.ContentType) = "text/html"; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.Subject) = "Requesting Permission to Start the " + MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.BusinessProcessName; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.From) = MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.EmailFrom; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.CC) = MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.EmailRecipientCCList; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.EmailBodyFileCharset) = "UTF-8"; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.SMTPHost) = "localhost"; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.MessagePartsAttachments) = 2;   After the Permission request email is sent, the next step is to generate the actual Permission Trigger file.  A correlation set is used here on SQLJobName and a newly generated GUID field. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><ns0:SQLJobAuthorizationTrigger xmlns:ns0="somethingsomething"><SQLJobName>Data Push</SQLJobName><CorrelationGuid>9f7c6b46-0e62-46a7-b3a0-b5327ab03753</CorrelationGuid></ns0:SQLJobAuthorizationTrigger> The end user (the human intervention piece) will either grant permission for this process, or deny it, by moving the Permission Trigger file to either the "Approved" folder or the "NotApproved" folder.  A parallel Listen shape is waiting for either response.   The next set of steps decide how the SQL Job is to be called, or whether it is called at all.  If permission denied, it simply sends out a notification.  If permission is granted, then the flag (IsProcessAsync) in the original Process Trigger is used.  The synchonous part is not really synchronous, but a loop timer to check the status within the calling stored procedure (for more information, check out my previous post:  http://geekswithblogs.net/LifeLongTechie/archive/2010/11/01/execute-sql-job-synchronously-for-biztalk-via-a-stored-procedure.aspx)  If it's async, then the sp starts the job and BizTalk sends out an email.   And of course, some error notification:   Footnote: The next version of this orchestration will have an additional parallel line near the Listen shape with a Delay built in and a Loop to send out a daily reminder if no response has been received from the end user.  The synchronous part is used to gather results and execute a data clean up process so that the SQL Job can be re-tried.  There are manu possibilities here.

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• AppFabric &ndash; where are all the monitoring events?

  - by Shawn Cicoria

  When you’ve just gone through a setup of AppFabric and you’ve got some WF/WCF things happening, if you start looking at the Dashboard and you see nothing, it might be as simple as restarting SQL Agent. I generally don’t reboot my system for several days and after installing AppFabric the SQL Agent jobs didn’t start firing right away.  Yes, even running a boot to VHD, you can still put the machine to sleep (just logoff and click on Sleep)… So, after spending time looking through the SQL monitoring DB that AppFabric was configured to use, I saw a bunch of records in the [AppFabric_Monitoring].[dbo].[ASStagingTable] table.  This table is the stopping point before the SQL Agent job (or Service Broker in SQL Express) pushes the items to their final resting place. This post goes through a few things to check on AppFabric monitoring http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/appfabric-items-to-check-when-configuring-appfabric-monitoring.aspx Of course, during development you might want to clean up regularly For that there’s the PowerShell command Clear-AsMonitoringSqlDatabase -Database AppFabric_Monitoring

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• The only metric with any value

  - by Malcolm Anderson

  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:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; 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;} There's a lot of talk in the Scrum world about metrics. What's the velocity? How big is a story point?  How many story points is that team producing per man hour?   People are sadly missing the whole point.  Take your measurements up a level or two.  When you get down to it, the only metric that makes any difference, is ROI.   The problem is that often times, the developers work in a dark hole, far removed from the realities of how exactly they get paid.  A bigger problem is that mid-level managers tend to be further removed from the realities of ROI.  A lot of times mid-level managers get tasked with tracking their teams "productivity" using things like, "lines of code", or "completeness of the productivity reports."   Monetize your projects and then track your velocity against business value (real dollars).    When your development teams can say, "Last year, our team cost the business 2 million dollars and we know that because of our efforts, the company saved 2 million dollars in waste and increased revenues by another 4 million dollars." At that point you have just moved your development team from a cost center, to a profit center.  You might have to give them a raise, but they have demonstrated that they have earned it.

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• Testing Workflows &ndash; Test-First

  - by Timothy Klenke

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TimothyK/archive/2014/05/30/testing-workflows-ndash-test-first.aspxThis is the second of two posts on some common strategies for approaching the job of writing tests.  The previous post covered test-after workflows where as this will focus on test-first.  Each workflow presented is a method of attack for adding tests to a project.  The more tools in your tool belt the better.  So here is a partial list of some test-first methodologies. Ping Pong Ping Pong is a methodology commonly used in pair programing.  One developer will write a new failing test.  Then they hand the keyboard to their partner.  The partner writes the production code to get the test passing.  The partner then writes the next test before passing the keyboard back to the original developer. The reasoning behind this testing methodology is to facilitate pair programming.  That is to say that this testing methodology shares all the benefits of pair programming, including ensuring multiple team members are familiar with the code base (i.e. low bus number). Test Blazer Test Blazing, in some respects, is also a pairing strategy.  The developers don’t work side by side on the same task at the same time.  Instead one developer is dedicated to writing tests at their own desk.  They write failing test after failing test, never touching the production code.  With these tests they are defining the specification for the system.  The developer most familiar with the specifications would be assigned this task. The next day or later in the same day another developer fetches the latest test suite.  Their job is to write the production code to get those tests passing.  Once all the tests pass they fetch from source control the latest version of the test project to get the newer tests. This methodology has some of the benefits of pair programming, namely lowering the bus number.  This can be good way adding an extra developer to a project without slowing it down too much.  The production coder isn’t slowed down writing tests.  The tests are in another project from the production code, so there shouldn’t be any merge conflicts despite two developers working on the same solution. This methodology is also a good test for the tests.  Can another developer figure out what system should do just by reading the tests?  This question will be answered as the production coder works there way through the test blazer’s tests. Test Driven Development (TDD) TDD is a highly disciplined practice that calls for a new test and an new production code to be written every few minutes.  There are strict rules for when you should be writing test or production code.  You start by writing a failing (red) test, then write the simplest production code possible to get the code working (green), then you clean up the code (refactor).  This is known as the red-green-refactor cycle. The goal of TDD isn’t the creation of a suite of tests, however that is an advantageous side effect.  The real goal of TDD is to follow a practice that yields a better design.  The practice is meant to push the design toward small, decoupled, modularized components.  This is generally considered a better design that large, highly coupled ball of mud. TDD accomplishes this through the refactoring cycle.  Refactoring is only possible to do safely when tests are in place.  In order to use TDD developers must be trained in how to look for and repair code smells in the system.  Through repairing these sections of smelly code (i.e. a refactoring) the design of the system emerges. For further information on TDD, I highly recommend the series “Is TDD Dead?”.  It discusses its pros and cons and when it is best used. Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) Whereas TDD focuses on small unit tests that concentrate on a small piece of the system, Acceptance Tests focuses on the larger integrated environment.  Acceptance Tests usually correspond to user stories, which come directly from the customer. The unit tests focus on the inputs and outputs of smaller parts of the system, which are too low level to be of interest to the customer. ATDD generally uses the same tools as TDD.  However, ATDD uses fewer mocks and test doubles than TDD. ATDD often complements TDD; they aren’t competing methods.  A full test suite will usually consist of a large number of unit (created via TDD) tests and a smaller number of acceptance tests. Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) BDD is more about audience than workflow.  BDD pushes the testing realm out towards the client.  Developers, managers and the client all work together to define the tests. Typically different tooling is used for BDD than acceptance and unit testing.  This is done because the audience is not just developers.  Tools using the Gherkin family of languages allow for test scenarios to be described in an English format.  Other tools such as MSpec or FitNesse also strive for highly readable behaviour driven test suites. Because these tests are public facing (viewable by people outside the development team), the terminology usually changes.  You can’t get away with the same technobabble you can with unit tests written in a programming language that only developers understand.  For starters, they usually aren’t called tests.  Usually they’re called “examples”, “behaviours”, “scenarios”, or “specifications”. This may seem like a very subtle difference, but I’ve seen this small terminology change have a huge impact on the acceptance of the process.  Many people have a bias that testing is something that comes at the end of a project.  When you say we need to define the tests at the start of the project many people will immediately give that a lower priority on the project schedule.  But if you say we need to define the specification or behaviour of the system before we can start, you’ll get more cooperation.   Keep these test-first and test-after workflows in your tool belt.  With them you’ll be able to find new opportunities to apply them.

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• Build 2012, the first post

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Yes, I was one of the lucky few who made it to Build. Build, formerly known as the Professional Developers Conference (or PDC) is the place to be if you are a developer on the Microsoft platform. Since I take my job seriously I took out some time on my busy schedule, sighed at the thought of not seeing my family for another week and signed up for it. Now, before I talk about the amazing Surface devices (yes, this posting is written on one of them), the great Lumia 920 we all got, the long deserved love for touch, NUI and other things I have been talking about for years, I need to do some ranting. So if you are anxious to read about the technical goodies you’ll have to wait until the next post. Still here? Good. When I signed up for the Build conference during my holidays this summer it was pretty obvious that demand would be high. Therefor I made sure I was on time. But even though I registered only 7 minutes after the initial opening time the Early Bird discount for the first 500 attendees was already sold out. I later learned that registration actually started 5 minutes before the scheduled time but even though it is still impressive how fast things went. The whole event sold out in 57 minutes Or so they say… A lot of people got put on the waiting list. There was room for about 1500 attendees and I heard that at least 1000 people were on that waiting list, including a lot of people I know. Strangely, all of them got tickets assigned after 2 weeks. Here at the conference I heard from a guy from Nokia that they had shipped 2500 Lumia 920 phones. That number matches the rumors that the organization added 1000 extra tickets. This, of course is no problem. I am not an elitist and I think large crowds have a special atmosphere that I quite like. But…. The Microsoft Campus is not equipped for that sheer volume of visitors. That was painfully obvious during on-site registration where people had to stand in line for over 2 hours. The conference is spread out over 2 buildings, divided by a 15 minute busride (yes, the campus is that big). I have seen queues of over 200 people waiting for the bus and when that arrived it had a capacity of 16. I can assure you: that doesn’t fit. This of course means that travelling from one site to the other might take about 30 minutes. So you arrive at the session room just in time, only to find out it’s full. Since you can’ get into that session you try to find another one but now you’re even more late so you have no chance at all of entering. The doors are closed and you’re told: “Well, you can watch the live stream online”. Mmmm… So I spend thousands of dollars, a week away from home, family and work to be told I can also watch the sessions online? Are you fricking kidding me? I could go on but I won’t. You get the idea. It’s jus badly organized, something I am not really used to in my 20 years of experience at Microsoft events. Yes, I am disappointed. I hope a lot of people here in Redmond will also fill in the evals and that the organization next year will do a better job. Really, Build deserves better. </rantmode>

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• Don't Call it a Comeback

  - by Chris Haaker

  I received the email like most of you about Jeff and crew stepping down and selling the blog to another company. That it is a long time associate and friend of the team we have all grown to know and love, I feel much better about the move. Who cares, Chris, you haven't blogged religiously in ages! I know, and its a crime. Blame life, Twitter, my kids, laziness or whatever else you can think of. I always tell myself I am going to make a comeback - - "Don't call it a comeback - I been here for years." But after a few posts I seem to lose my steam. Its hard to explain, hell, I can't explain it. But we'll see what happens this time. Just don't call it a comeback.  2012 rMBP 15" Quad Core 2.33 GHz 16GB Memory 258GB SSDMarsEdit 3.5 (Please Microsoft Live Team - Make LiveWriter for OS X)

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