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• TDD - beginner problems and stumbling blocks

  - by Noufal Ibrahim

  While I've written unit tests for most of the code I've done, I only recently got my hands on a copy of TDD by example by Kent Beck. I have always regretted certain design decisions I made since they prevented the application from being 'testable'. I read through the book and while some of it looks alien, I felt that I could manage it and decided to try it out on my current project which is basically a client/server system where the two pieces communicate via. USB. One on the gadget and the other on the host. The application is in Python. I started off and very soon got entangled in a mess of rewrites and tiny tests which I later figured didn't really test anything. I threw away most of them and and now have a working application for which the tests have all coagulated into just 2. Based on my experiences, I have a few questions which I'd like to ask. I gained some information from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1146218/new-to-tdd-are-there-sample-applications-with-tests-to-show-how-to-do-tdd but have some specific questions which I'd like answers to/discussion on. Kent Beck uses a list which he adds to and strikes out from to guide the development process. How do you make such a list? I initially had a few items like "server should start up", "server should abort if channel is not available" etc. but they got mixed and finally now, it's just something like "client should be able to connect to server" (which subsumed server startup etc.). How do you handle rewrites? I initially selected a half duplex system based on named pipes so that I could develop the application logic on my own machine and then later add the USB communication part. It them moved to become a socket based thing and then moved from using raw sockets to using the Python SocketServer module. Each time things changed, I found that I had to rewrite considerable parts of the tests which was annoying. I'd figured that the tests would be a somewhat invariable guide during my development. They just felt like more code to handle. I needed a client and a server to communicate through the channel to test either side. I could mock one of the sides to test the other but then the whole channel wouldn't be tested and I worry that I'd miss that. This detracted from the whole red/green/refactor rhythm. Is this just lack of experience or am I doing something wrong? The "Fake it till you make it" left me with a lot of messy code that I later spent a lot of time to refactor and clean up. Is this the way things work? At the end of the session, I now have my client and server running with around 3 or 4 unit tests. It took me around a week to do it. I think I could have done it in a day if I were using the unit tests after code way. I fail to see the gain. I'm looking for comments and advice from people who have implemented large non trivial projects completely (or almost completely) using this methodology. It makes sense to me to follow the way after I have something already running and want to add a new feature but doing it from scratch seems to tiresome and not worth the effort. P.S. : Please let me know if this should be community wiki and I'll mark it like that. Update 0 : All the answers were equally helpful. I picked the one I did because it resonated with my experiences the most. Update 1: Practice Practice Practice!

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• Recompiling an old fortran 2/4\66 program that was compiled for os\2 need it to run in dos

  - by Mike Hansen

  I am helping an old scientist with some problems and have 1 program that he found and modified about 20 yrs. ago, and runs fine as a 32 bit os\2 executable but i need it to run under dos! I am not a programmer but a good hardware & software man, so I'am pretty stupid about this problem, but here go's I have downloaded 6 different compilers watcom77,silverfrost ftn95,gfortran,2 versions of g77 and f80. Watcom says it is to old of program,find older compiler,silverfrost opens it,debugs, etc. but is changing all the subroutines from "real" to "complex" and vice-vesa,and the g77's seem to install perfectly (library links and etc.) but wont even compile the test.f programs.My problem is 1; to recompile "as is" or "upgrade" the code? PROGRAM xconvlv INTEGER N,N2,M PARAMETER (N=2048,N2=2048,M=128) INTEGER i,isign REAL data(n),respns(m),resp(n),ans(n2),t3(n),DUMMY OPEN(UNIT=1, FILE='C:\QKBAS20\FDATA1.DAT') DO 1 i=1,N READ(1,*) T3(i), data(i), DUMMY continue CLOSE(UNIT-1) do 12 i=1,N respns(i)=data(i) resp(i)=respns(i) continue isign=-1 call convlv(data,N,resp,M,isign,ans) OPEN(UNIT=1,FILE='C:\QKBAS20\FDATA9.DAT') DO 14 i=1,N WRITE(1,*) T3(i), ans(i) continue END SUBROUTINE CONVLV(data,n,respns,m,isign,ans) INTEGER isign,m,n,NMAX REAL data(n),respns(n) COMPLEX ans(n) PARAMETER (NMAX=4096) * uses realft, twofft INTEGER i,no2 COMPLEX fft (NMAX) do 11 i=1, (m-1)/2 respns(n+1-i)=respns(m+1-i) continue do 12 i=(m+3)/2,n-(m-1)/2 respns(i)=0.0 continue call twofft (data,respns,fft,ans,n) no2=n/2 do 13 i=1,no2+1 if (isign.eq.1) then ans(i)=fft(i)*ans(i)/no2 else if (isign.eq.-1) then if (abs(ans(i)) .eq.0.0) pause ans(i)=fft(i)/ans(i)/no2 else pause 'no meaning for isign in convlv' endif continue ans(1)=cmplx(real (ans(1)),real (ans(no2+1))) call realft(ans,n,-1) return END SUBROUTINE realft(data,n,isign) INTEGER isign,n REAL data(n) * uses four1 INTEGER i,i1,i2,i3,i4,n2p3 REAL c1,c2,hli,hir,h2i,h2r,wis,wrs DOUBLE PRECISION theta,wi,wpi,wpr,wr,wtemp theta=3.141592653589793d0/dble(n/2) cl=0.5 if (isign.eq.1) then c2=-0.5 call four1(data,n/2,+1) else c2=0.5 theta=-theta endif (etc.,etc., etc.) SUBROUTINE twofft(data,data2,fft1,fft2,n) INTEGER n REAL data1(n,data2(n) COMPLEX fft1(n), fft2(n) * uses four1 INTEGER j,n2 COMPLEX h1,h2,c1,c2 c1=cmplx(0.5,0.0) c2=cmplx(0.0,-0.5) do 11 j=1,n fft1(j)=cmplx(data1(j),data2(j) continue call four1 (fft1,n,1) fft2(1)=cmplx(aimag(fft1(1)),0.0) fft1(1)=cmplx(real(fft1(1)),0.0) n2=n+2 do 12 j=2,n/2+1 h1=c1*(fft1(j)+conjg(fft1(n2-j))) h2=c2*(fft1(j)-conjg(fft1(n2-j))) fft1(j)=h1 fft1(n2-j)=conjg(h1) fft2(j)=h2 fft2(n2-j)=conjg(h2) continue return END SUBROUTINE four1(data,nn,isign) INTEGER isign,nn REAL data(2*nn) INTEGER i,istep,j,m,mmax,n REAL tempi,tempr DOUBLE PRECISION theta, wi,wpi,wpr,wr,wtemp n=2*nn j=1 do 11 i=1,n,2 if(j.gt.i)then tempr=data(j) tempi=data(j+1) (etc.,etc.,etc.,) continue mmax=istep goto 2 endif return END There are 4 subroutines with this that are about 3 pages of code and whould be much easier to e-mail to someone if their able to help me with this.My e-mail is [email protected] , or if someone could tell me where to get a "working" compiler that could recompile this? THANK-YOU, THANK-YOU,and THANK-YOU for any help with this! The errors Iam getting are; 1.In a call to CONVLV from another procedure,the first argument was of a type REAL(kind=1), it is now a COMPLEX(kind=1) 2.In a call to REALFT from another procedure, ... COMPLEX(kind=1) it is now a REAL(kind=1) 3.In a call to TWOFFT from...COMPLEX(kind-1) it is now a REAL(kind=1) 4.In a previous call to FOUR1, the first argument was of a type REAL(kind=1) it is now a COMPLEX(kind=1).

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• Using RIA DomainServices with ASP.NET and MVC 2

  - by Bobby Diaz

  Recently, I started working on a new ASP.NET MVC 2 project and I wanted to reuse the data access (LINQ to SQL) and business logic methods (WCF RIA Services) that had been developed for a previous project that used Silverlight for the front-end.  I figured that I would be able to instantiate the various DomainService classes from within my controller’s action methods, because after all, the code for those services didn’t look very complicated.  WRONG!  I didn’t realize at first that some of the functionality is handled automatically by the framework when the domain services are hosted as WCF services.  After some initial searching, I came across an invaluable post by Joe McBride, which described how to get RIA Service .svc files to work in an MVC 2 Web Application, and another by Brad Abrams.  Unfortunately, Brad’s solution was for an earlier preview release of RIA Services and no longer works with the version that I am running (PDC Preview). I have not tried the RC version of WCF RIA Services, so I am not sure if any of the issues I am having have been resolved, but I wanted to come up with a way to reuse the shared libraries so I wouldn’t have to write a non-RIA version that basically did the same thing.  The classes I came up with work with the scenarios I have encountered so far, but I wanted to go ahead and post the code in case someone else is having the same trouble I had.  Hopefully this will save you a few headaches! 1. Querying When I first tried to use a DomainService class to perform a query inside one of my controller’s action methods, I got an error stating that “This DomainService has not been initialized.”  To solve this issue, I created an extension method for all DomainServices that creates the required DomainServiceContext and passes it to the service’s Initialize() method.  Here is the code for the extension method; notice that I am creating a sort of mock HttpContext for those cases when the service is running outside of IIS, such as during unit testing!     public static class ServiceExtensions     {         /// <summary>         /// Initializes the domain service by creating a new <see cref="DomainServiceContext"/>         /// and calling the base DomainService.Initialize(DomainServiceContext) method.         /// </summary>         /// <typeparam name="TService">The type of the service.</typeparam>         /// <param name="service">The service.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         public static TService Initialize<TService>(this TService service)             where TService : DomainService         {             var context = CreateDomainServiceContext();             service.Initialize(context);             return service;         }           private static DomainServiceContext CreateDomainServiceContext()         {             var provider = new ServiceProvider(new HttpContextWrapper(GetHttpContext()));             return new DomainServiceContext(provider, DomainOperationType.Query);         }           private static HttpContext GetHttpContext()         {             var context = HttpContext.Current;   #if DEBUG             // create a mock HttpContext to use during unit testing...             if ( context == null )             {                 var writer = new StringWriter();                 var request = new SimpleWorkerRequest("/", "/",                     String.Empty, String.Empty, writer);                   context = new HttpContext(request)                 {                     User = new GenericPrincipal(new GenericIdentity("debug"), null)                 };             } #endif               return context;         }     }   With that in place, I can use it almost as normally as my first attempt, except with a call to Initialize():     public ActionResult Index()     {         var service = new NorthwindService().Initialize();         var customers = service.GetCustomers();           return View(customers);     } 2. Insert / Update / Delete Once I got the records showing up, I was trying to insert new records or update existing data when I ran into the next issue.  I say issue because I wasn’t getting any kind of error, which made it a little difficult to track down.  But once I realized that that the DataContext.SubmitChanges() method gets called automatically at the end of each domain service submit operation, I could start working on a way to mimic the behavior of a hosted domain service.  What I came up with, was a base class called LinqToSqlRepository<T> that basically sits between your implementation and the default LinqToSqlDomainService<T> class.     [EnableClientAccess()]     public class NorthwindService : LinqToSqlRepository<NorthwindDataContext>     {         public IQueryable<Customer> GetCustomers()         {             return this.DataContext.Customers;         }           public void InsertCustomer(Customer customer)         {             this.DataContext.Customers.InsertOnSubmit(customer);         }           public void UpdateCustomer(Customer currentCustomer)         {             this.DataContext.Customers.TryAttach(currentCustomer,                 this.ChangeSet.GetOriginal(currentCustomer));         }           public void DeleteCustomer(Customer customer)         {             this.DataContext.Customers.TryAttach(customer);             this.DataContext.Customers.DeleteOnSubmit(customer);         }     } Notice the new base class name (just change LinqToSqlDomainService to LinqToSqlRepository).  I also added a couple of DataContext (for Table<T>) extension methods called TryAttach that will check to see if the supplied entity is already attached before attempting to attach it, which would cause an error! 3. LinqToSqlRepository<T> Below is the code for the LinqToSqlRepository class.  The comments are pretty self explanatory, but be aware of the [IgnoreOperation] attributes on the generic repository methods, which ensures that they will be ignored by the code generator and not available in the Silverlight client application.     /// <summary>     /// Provides generic repository methods on top of the standard     /// <see cref="LinqToSqlDomainService&lt;TContext&gt;"/> functionality.     /// </summary>     /// <typeparam name="TContext">The type of the context.</typeparam>     public abstract class LinqToSqlRepository<TContext> : LinqToSqlDomainService<TContext>         where TContext : System.Data.Linq.DataContext, new()     {         /// <summary>         /// Retrieves an instance of an entity using it's unique identifier.         /// </summary>         /// <typeparam name="TEntity">The type of the entity.</typeparam>         /// <param name="keyValues">The key values.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         [IgnoreOperation]         public virtual TEntity GetById<TEntity>(params object[] keyValues) where TEntity : class         {             var table = this.DataContext.GetTable<TEntity>();             var mapping = this.DataContext.Mapping.GetTable(typeof(TEntity));               var keys = mapping.RowType.IdentityMembers                 .Select((m, i) => m.Name + " = @" + i)                 .ToArray();               return table.Where(String.Join(" && ", keys), keyValues).FirstOrDefault();         }           /// <summary>         /// Creates a new query that can be executed to retrieve a collection         /// of entities from the <see cref="DataContext"/>.         /// </summary>         /// <typeparam name="TEntity">The type of the entity.</typeparam>         /// <returns></returns>         [IgnoreOperation]         public virtual IQueryable<TEntity> GetEntityQuery<TEntity>() where TEntity : class         {             return this.DataContext.GetTable<TEntity>();         }           /// <summary>         /// Inserts the specified entity.         /// </summary>         /// <typeparam name="TEntity">The type of the entity.</typeparam>         /// <param name="entity">The entity.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         [IgnoreOperation]         public virtual bool Insert<TEntity>(TEntity entity) where TEntity : class         {             //var table = this.DataContext.GetTable<TEntity>();             //table.InsertOnSubmit(entity);               return this.Submit(entity, null, DomainOperation.Insert);         }           /// <summary>         /// Updates the specified entity.         /// </summary>         /// <typeparam name="TEntity">The type of the entity.</typeparam>         /// <param name="entity">The entity.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         [IgnoreOperation]         public virtual bool Update<TEntity>(TEntity entity) where TEntity : class         {             return this.Update(entity, null);         }           /// <summary>         /// Updates the specified entity.         /// </summary>         /// <typeparam name="TEntity">The type of the entity.</typeparam>         /// <param name="entity">The entity.</param>         /// <param name="original">The original.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         [IgnoreOperation]         public virtual bool Update<TEntity>(TEntity entity, TEntity original)             where TEntity : class         {             if ( original == null )             {                 original = GetOriginal(entity);             }               var table = this.DataContext.GetTable<TEntity>();             table.TryAttach(entity, original);               return this.Submit(entity, original, DomainOperation.Update);         }           /// <summary>         /// Deletes the specified entity.         /// </summary>         /// <typeparam name="TEntity">The type of the entity.</typeparam>         /// <param name="entity">The entity.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         [IgnoreOperation]         public virtual bool Delete<TEntity>(TEntity entity) where TEntity : class         {             //var table = this.DataContext.GetTable<TEntity>();             //table.TryAttach(entity);             //table.DeleteOnSubmit(entity);               return this.Submit(entity, null, DomainOperation.Delete);         }           protected virtual bool Submit(Object entity, Object original, DomainOperation operation)         {             var entry = new ChangeSetEntry(0, entity, original, operation);             var changes = new ChangeSet(new ChangeSetEntry[] { entry });             return base.Submit(changes);         }           private TEntity GetOriginal<TEntity>(TEntity entity) where TEntity : class         {             var context = CreateDataContext();             var table = context.GetTable<TEntity>();             return table.FirstOrDefault(e => e == entity);         }     } 4. Conclusion So there you have it, a fully functional Repository implementation for your RIA Domain Services that can be consumed by your ASP.NET and MVC applications.  I have uploaded the source code along with unit tests and a sample web application that queries the Customers table from inside a Controller, as well as a Silverlight usage example. As always, I welcome any comments or suggestions on the approach I have taken.  If there is enough interest, I plan on contacting Colin Blair or maybe even the man himself, Brad Abrams, to see if this is something worthy of inclusion in the WCF RIA Services Contrib project.  What do you think? Enjoy!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, February 20, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, February 20, 2011Popular ReleasesView Layout Replicator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: View Layout Replicator (1.0.119.18): Initial releaseWindows Phone 7 Isolated Storage Explorer: WP7 Isolated Storage Explorer v1.0 Beta: Current release features:WPF desktop explorer client Visual Studio integrated tool window explorer client (Visual Studio 2010 Professional and above) Supported operations: Refresh (isolated storage information), Add Folder, Add Existing Item, Download File, Delete Folder, Delete File Explorer supports operations running on multiple remote applications at the same time Explorer detects application disconnect (1-2 second delay) Explorer confirms operation completed status Explorer d...Advanced Explorer for Wp7: Advanced Explorer for Wp7 Version 1.4 Test8: Added option to run under Lockscreen. Fixed a bug when you open a pdf/mobi file without starting adobe reader/amazon kindle first boost loading time for folders added \Windows directory (all devices) you can now interact with the filesystem while it is loading!Game Files Open - Map Editor: Game Files Open - Map Editor Beta 2 v1.0.0.0: The 2° beta release of the Map Editor, we have fixed a big bug of the files regen.Document.Editor: 2011.6: Whats new for Document.Editor 2011.6: New Left to Right and Left to Right support New Indent more/less support Improved Home tab Improved Tooltips/shortcut keys Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsCatel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.2: Catel history ============= (+) Added (*) Changed (-) Removed (x) Error / bug (fix) For more information about issues or new feature requests, please visit: http://catel.codeplex.com =========== Version 1.2 =========== Release date: ============= 2011/02/17 Added/fixed: ============ (+) DataObjectBase now supports Isolated Storage out of the box: Person.Save(myStream) stores a whole object graph in Silverlight (+) DataObjectBase can now be converted to Json via Person.ToJson(); (+)...??????????: All-In-One Code Framework ??? 2011-02-18: ?????All-In-One Code Framework?2011??????????！！http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=128165 ?????，?????AzureBingMaps??????，??Azure，WCF, Silverlight, Window Phone????????，????????????????????????。 ???： Windows Azure SQL Azure Windows Azure AppFabric Windows Live Messenger Connect Bing Maps ?????： ??????HTML??? ??Windows PC?Mac?Silverlight??? ??Windows Phone?Silverlight??? ?????：http://blog.csdn.net/sjb5201/archive/2011...Image.Viewer: 2011: First version of 2011Silverlight Toolkit: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit - Feb 2011: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit OverviewSilverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit offers developers additional controls for Windows Phone application development, designed to match the rich user experience of the Windows Phone 7. Suggestions? Features? Questions? Ask questions in the Create.msdn.com forum. Add bugs or feature requests to the Issue Tracker. Help us shape the Silverlight Toolkit with your feedback! Please clearly indicate that the work items and issues are for the phone t...VsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 29 Beta: Note: This release does not work with custom VsTortoise toolbars. These get removed every time when you shutdown Visual Studio. (#7940) Build 29 (beta)New: Added VsTortoise Solution Explorer integration for Web Project Folder, Web Folder and Web Item. Fix: TortoiseProc was called with invalid parameters, when using TSVN 1.4.x or older #7338 (thanks psifive) Fix: Add-in does not work, when "TortoiseSVN/bin" is not added to PATH environment variable #7357 Fix: Missing error message when ...Sense/Net CMS - Enterprise Content Management: SenseNet 6.0.3 Community Edition: Sense/Net 6.0.3 Community Edition We are happy to introduce you the latest version of Sense/Net with integrated ECM Workflow capabilities! In the past weeks we have been working hard to migrate the product to .Net 4 and include a workflow framework in Sense/Net built upon Windows Workflow Foundation 4. This brand new feature enables developers to define and develop workflows, and supports users when building and setting up complicated business processes involving content creation and response...thinktecture WSCF.blue: WSCF.blue V1 Update (1.0.11): Features Added a new option that allows properties on data contract types to be marked as virtual. Bug Fixes Fixed a bug caused by certain project properties not being available on Web Service Software Factory projects. Fixed a bug that could result in the WrapperName value of the MessageContractAttribute being incorrect when the Adjust Casing option is used. The menu item code now caters for CommandBar instances that are not available. For example the Web Item CommandBar does not exist ...Terminals: Version 2 - RC1: The "Clean Install" will overwrite your log4net configuration (if you have one). If you run in a Portable Environment, you can use the "Clean Install" and target your portable folder. Tested and it works fine. Changes for this release: Re-worked on the Toolstip settings are done, just to avoid the vs.net clash with auto-generating files for .settings files. renamed it to .settings.config Packged both log4net and ToolStripSettings files into the installer Upgraded the version inform...SQL Server Process Info Log: Release: releaseAllNewsManager.NET: AllNewsManager.NET 1.3: AllNewsManager.NET 1.3. This new version provide several new features, improvements and bug fixes. Some new features: Online Users. Avatars. Copy function (to create a new article from another one). SEO improvements (friendly urls). New admin buttons. And more...Facebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 0.8: Version 0.8 (15 Feb 2011)moved to Beta stage publish photo feature "email" field of User object added new Graph Api object: Group, Event new Graph Api connection: likes, groups, eventsDJME - The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC: DJME2 -The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC beta2: The source code and runtime library for DJME2. For more product info you can goto http://www.dotnetage.com/djme.html What is new ?The Grid extension added The ModelBinder added which helping you create Bindable data Action. The DnaFor() control factory added that enabled Model bindable extensions. Enhance the ListBox , ComboBox data binding.Jint - Javascript Interpreter for .NET: Jint - 0.9.0: New CLR interoperability features Many bugfixesBuild Version Increment Add-In Visual Studio: Build Version Increment v2.4.11046.2045: v2.4.11046.2045 Fixes and/or Improvements:Major: Added complete support for VC projects including .vcxproj & .vcproj. All padding issues fixed. A project's assembly versions are only changed if the project has been modified. Minor Order of versioning style values is now according to their respective positions in the attributes i.e. Major, Minor, Build, Revision. Fixed issue with global variable storage with some projects. Fixed issue where if a project item's file does not exist, a ...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.1: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.1 release. Bug fixes and minor feature requests addedNew Projects.NET Core Audio APIs: This project provides a lightweight set of .NET wrappers around each section of the Windows Core Audio APIs.Akwen: Akwen aspirantbigserve: made in load sof languages a serve ralternative to iis and apacheCathedral game framework: (Will eventually be) A framework for creating 2d region-based games in Silverlight.Gmail Like File Uploader In .NET: Many times I wounder, How does gmail uploads files and monitor the upload status. I suppose many of you also have gone through the same experience. Most of you knows that the Choose File button on the Gmail Page is actually a flash button but how about the progressbar? AJAX rightinicomInterface: ????ini???????COM??iOnlineExamCenter - Trung Tâm Thi Tr?c Tuy?n: Tìm hi?u các phuong pháp thi tr?c nghi?m . Áp d?ng xây d?ng trung tâm thi tr?c tuy?n. ?ng d?ng du?c xây d?ng d?a trên n?n t?ng - .NET Framework v4.0 - ASP.NET MVC v3 - Entity Framework v4 - Silverlight v4 - jQueryLee Utility Library: Lee Utility LibrarySocialCore: Social Core is a framework for developing Social applications using a distributed infrastructure. The focus of Social Core is on collaboration, security and transparency. Privacy is not dead, it just is not implemented correctly.TestAmazonCloud: tacTftp.Net: This projects implements the TFTP (Trivial File Transfer) protocol for .NET in an easy-to-use library. It allows you to integrate TFTP client and server functionality into your project. It is s table, unit-tested and comes with a sample TFTP client and server.Using the Repository Pattern and DI to switch between SQL and XML: This is an example application, showing how Dependency Injection and the Repository can be used to allow interchangeable persistence between XML and SQLWebForms Razor converter - WinForms: Telerik developed a command line "WebForms to Razor (CSHTML) conversion tool" and uploaded in git -https://github.com/telerik/razor-converter This project uses the same Telerik API, but the client is the GUI/WinForms and allow developer to convert multiple files in a one go.XNA and Dependency Injection: Test code sample for XNA and Dependency Injection.XNA and IoC Container: Test code sample for XNA and IoC Container.XNA and Unit Testing: Test code sample for XNA and Unit Testing.Xplore World: Xplore World es un navegador web avanzado disponible para Windows Xp/Vista/7 y actualmente solo está disponible en español. Con este navegador puedes hacer cosas maravillosas como ver imágenes de cualquier web a tu estilo, administrar los usuarios, modificar tus marcadores, etc.ZO (ZeroOne): ZeroOne is the editor for programmers who think in binary.

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• Dotfuscator Deep Dive with WP7

  - by Bil Simser

  I thought I would share some experience with code obfuscation (specifically the Dotfuscator product) and Windows Phone 7 apps. These days twitter is a buzz with black hat and white operations coming out about how the marketplace is insecure and Microsoft failed, blah, blah, blah. So it’s that much more important to protect your intellectual property. You should protect it no matter what when releasing apps into the wild but more so when someone is paying for them. You want to protect the time and effort that went into your code and have some comfort that the casual hacker isn’t going to usurp your next best thing. Enter code obfuscation. Code obfuscation is one tool that can help protect your IP. Basically it goes into your compiled assemblies, rewrites things at an IL level (like renaming methods and classes and hiding logic flow) and rewrites it back so that the assembly or executable is still fully functional but prying eyes using a tool like ILDASM or Reflector can’t see what’s going on.  You can read more about code obfuscation here on Wikipedia. A word to the wise. Code obfuscation isn’t 100% secure. More so on the WP7 platform where the OS expects certain things to be as they were meant to be. So don’t expect 100% obfuscation of every class and every method and every property. It’s just not going to happen. What this does do is give you some level of protection but don’t put all your eggs in one basket and call it done. Like I said, this is just one step in the process. There are a few tools out there that provide code obfuscation and support the Windows Phone 7 platform (see links to other tools at the end of this post). One such tool is Dotfuscator from PreEmptive solutions. The thing about Dotfuscator is that they’ve struck a deal with Microsoft to provide a *free* copy of their commercial product for Windows Phone 7. The only drawback is that it only runs until March 31, 2010. However it’s a good place to start and the focus of this article. Getting Started When you fire up Dotfuscator you’re presented with a dialog to start a new project or load a previous one. We’ll start with a new project. You’re then looking at a somewhat blank screen that shows an Input tab (among others) and you’re probably wondering what to do? Click on the folder icon (first one) and browse to where your xap file is. At this point you can save the project and click on the arrow to start the process. Bam! You’re done. Right? Think again. The program did indeed run and create a new version of your xap (doing it’s thing and rewriting back your *obfuscated* assemblies) but let’s take a look at the assembly in Reflector to see the end result. Remember a xap file is really just a glorified zip file (or cab file if you prefer). When you ran Dotfuscator for the first time with the default settings you’ll see it created a new version of your xap in a folder under “My Documents” called “Dotfuscated” (you can configure the output directory in settings). Here’s the new xap file. Since a xap is just a zip, rename it to .cab or .zip or something and open it with your favorite unarchive program (I use WinRar but it doesn’t matter as long as it can unzip files). If you already have the xap file associated with your unarchive tool the rename isn’t needed. Once renamed extract the contents of the xap to your hard drive: Now you’ll have a folder with the contents of the xap file extracted: Double click or load up your assembly (WindowsPhoneDataBoundApplication1.dll in the example) in Reflector and let’s see the results: Hmm. That doesn’t look right. I can see all the methods and the code is all there for my LoadData method I wanted to protect. Product failure. Let’s return it for a refund. Hold your horses. We need to check out the settings in the program first. Remember when we loaded up our xap file. It started us on the Input tab but there was a settings tab before that. Wonder what it does? Here’s the default settings: Renaming Taking a closer look, all of the settings in Feature are disabled. WTF? Yeah, it leaves me scratching my head why an obfuscator by default doesn’t obfuscate. However it’s a simple fix to change these settings. Let’s enable Renaming as it sounds like a good start. Renaming obscures code by renaming methods and fields to names that are not understandable. Great. Run the tool again and go through the process of unzipping the updated xap and let’s take a look in Reflector again at our project. This looks a lot better. Lots of methods named a, b, c, d, etc. That’ll help slow hackers down a bit. What about our logic that we spent days weeks on? Let’s take a look at the LoadData method: What gives? We have renaming enabled but all of our code is still there. If you look through all your methods you’ll find it’s still sitting there out in the open. Control Flow Back to the settings page again. Let’s enable Control Flow now. Control Flow obfuscation synthesizes branching, conditional, and iterative constructs (such as if, for, and while) that produce valid executable logic, but yield non-deterministic semantic results when decompilation is attempted. In other words, the code runs as before, but decompilers cannot reproduce the original code. Do the dance again and let’s see the results in Reflector. Ahh, that’s better. Methods renamed *and* nobody can look at our LoadData method now. Life is good. More than Minimum This is the bare minimum to obfuscate your xap to at least a somewhat comfortable level. However I did find that while this worked in my Hello World demo, it didn’t work on one of my real world apps. I had to do some extra tweaking with that. Below are the screens that I used on one app that worked. I’m not sure what it was about the app that the approach above didn’t work with (maybe the extra assembly?) but it works and I’m happy with it. YMMV. Remember to test your obfuscated app on your device first before submitting to ensure you haven’t obfuscated the obfuscator. settings tab: rename tab: string encryption tab: premark tab: A few final notes Play with the settings and keep bumping up the bar to try to get as much obfuscation as you can. The more the better but remember you can overdo it. Always (always, always, always) deploy your obfuscated xap to your device and test it before submitting to the marketplace. I didn’t and got rejected because I had gone overboard with the obfuscation so the app wouldn’t launch at all. Not everything is going to be obfuscated. Specifically I don’t see a way to obfuscate auto properties and a few other language features. Again, if you crank the settings up you might hide these but I haven’t spent a lot of time optimizing the process. Some people might say to obfuscate your xaml using string encryption but again, test, test, test. Xaml is picky so too much obfuscation (or any) might disable your app or produce odd rendering effets. Remember, obfuscation is not 100% secure! Don’t rely on it as a sole way of protecting your assets. Other Tools Dotfuscator is one just product and isn’t the end-all be-all to obfuscation so check out others below. For example, Crypto can make it so Reflector doesn’t even recognize the app as a .NET one and won’t open it. Others can encrypt resources and Xaml markup files. Here are some other obfuscators that support the Windows Phone 7 platform. Feel free to give them a try and let people know your experience with them! Dotfuscator Windows Phone Edition Crypto Obfuscator for .NET DeepSea Obfuscation

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 20, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 20, 2011Popular ReleasesBlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.5 RC: BlogEngine.NET Hosting - Click Here! 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! This is a Release Candidate version for BlogEngine.NET 2.5. The most current, stable version of BlogEngine.NET is version 2.0. Find out more about the BlogEngine.NET 2.5 RC here. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. Also, please note at this time the Mercurial source code repository on the Source Code tab is having issues, but will be fixed shortly. I...Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - a centralized code sample library: All-In-One Code Framework 2011-06-19: Alternatively, you can install Sample Browser or Sample Browser VS extension, and download the code samples from Sample Browser. Improved and Newly Added Examples:For an up-to-date code sample index, please refer to All-In-One Code Framework Sample Catalog. NEW Samples for Windows Azure Sample Description Owner CSAzureStartupTask The sample demonstrates using the startup tasks to install the prerequisites or to modify configuration settings for your environment in Windows Azure Rafe Wu ...Facebook C# SDK: 5.0.40: This is a RTW release which adds new features to v5.0.26 RTW. Support for multiple FacebookMediaObjects in one request. Allow FacebookMediaObjects in batch requests. Removes support for Cassini WebServer (visual studio inbuilt web server). Better support for unit testing and mocking. updated SimpleJson to v0.6 Refer to CHANGES.txt for details. For more information about this release see the following blog posts: Facebook C# SDK - Multiple file uploads in Batch Requests Faceb...Candescent NUI: Candescent NUI (7774): This is the binary version of the source code in change set 7774.Media Companion: MC 3.408b weekly: Some minor fixes..... Fixed messagebox coming up during batch scrape Added <originaltitle></originaltitle> to movie nfo's - when a new movie is scraped, the original title will be set as the returned title. The end user can of course change the title in MC, however the original title will not change. The original title can be seen by hovering over the movie title in the right pane of the main movie tab. To update all of your current nfo's to add the original title the same as your current ...NLog - Advanced .NET Logging: NLog 2.0 Release Candidate: Release notes for NLog 2.0 RC can be found at http://nlog-project.org/nlog-2-rc-release-notesGendering Add-In for Microsoft Office Word 2010: Gendering Add-In: This is the first stable Version of the Gendering Add-In. Unzip the package and start "setup.exe". The .reg file shows how to config an alternate path for suggestion table.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v3.1 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: This version adds tool tips. Almost every picture box you mouse over will tell you what item is in that box. I have also cleaned up the GUI a little more to make things easier on my end. There are various bug fixes including ones associated with opening different characters in the same instance of the program. As always, please bring any bugs you find to my attention.Kinect Paint: KinectPaint V1.0: This is version 1.0 of Kinect Paint. To run it, follow the steps: Install the Kinect SDK for Windows (available at http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/kinectsdk/download.aspx) Connect your Kinect device to the computer and to the power. Download the Zip file. Unblock the Zip file by right clicking on it, and pressing the Unblock button in the file properties (if available). Extract the content of the Zip file. Run KinectPaint.exe.CommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET - 0.9.7 Beta: A collection of very reusable code and components in C# 3.5 ranging from ActiveRecord, Csv, Command Line Parsing, Configuration, Holiday Calendars, Logging, Authentication, and much more. Samples in <root>\src\Lib\CommonLibrary.NET\Samples CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.7Documentation 6738 6503 New 6535 Enhancements 6583 6737DropBox Linker: DropBox Linker 1.2: Public sub-folders are now monitored for changes as well (thanks to mcm69) Automatic public sync folder detection (thanks to mcm69) Non-Latin and special characters encoded correctly in URLs Pop-ups are now slot-based (use first free slot and will never be overlapped — test it while previewing timeout) Public sync folder setting is hidden when auto-detected Timeout interval is displayed in popup previews A lot of major and minor code refactoring performed .NET Framework 4.0 Client...Terraria World Viewer: Version 1.3.1: Update June 20th Removed "Draw Markers" checkbox from main window because of redundancy/confusing. (Select all or no items from the Settings tab for the same effect.) Fixed Marker preferences not being saved. It is now possible to render more than one map without having to restart the application. World file will not be locked while the world is being rendered. Note: The World Viewer might render an inaccurate map or even crash if Terraria decides to modify the World file during the pro...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.1.5 RC: Added Extended Dropdown allows a prompt item to be inserted as first element. RequiredAttribute, if present, trggers if no element is chosen Client side javascript function to set/get the values of DateTimeInput, TypedTextBox, TypedEditDisplay, and to bind/unbind a "change" handler The selected page in the pager is applied the attribute selected-page="selected" that can be used in the definition of CSS rules to style the selected page items controls now interpret a null value as an empr...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco CMS 5.0 CTP 1: Umbraco 5 Community Technology Preview Umbraco 5 will be the next version of everyone's favourite, friendly ASP.NET CMS that already powers over 100,000 websites worldwide. Try out our first CTP of version 5 today! If you're new to Umbraco and would like to get a quick low-down on our popular and easy-to-learn approach to content management, check out our intro video here. What's in the v5 CTP box? This is a preview version of version 5 and includes support for the following familiar Umbr...Ribbon Browser for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Ribbon Browser (1.0.514.30): Initial releaseCoding4Fun Kinect Toolkit: Coding4Fun.Kinect Toolkit: Version 1.0Kinect Mouse Cursor: Kinect Mouse Cursor v1.0: The initial release of the Kinect Mouse Cursor project!patterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 11 - June 14, 2011: Changes from previous drop: Many code changes: please see the readme.mht for details. New "Client Data Management and Caching" chapter. Updated "Application Notifications" chapter. Updated "Architecture" chapter. Updated "jQuery UI Widget" chapter. Updated "Widget QuickStart" appendix and code. Guidance Chapters Ready for Review The Word documents for the chapters are included with the source code in addition to the CHM to help you provide feedback. The PDF is provided as a separat...Orchard Project: Orchard 1.2: Build: 1.2.41 Published: 6/14/2010 How to Install Orchard To install Orchard using Web PI, follow these instructions: http://www.orchardproject.net/docs/Installing-Orchard.ashx. Web PI will detect your hardware environment and install the application. Alternatively, to install the release manually, download the Orchard.Web.1.2.41.zip file. http://orchardproject.net/docs/Manually-installing-Orchard-zip-file.ashx The zip contents are pre-built and ready-to-run. Simply extract the contents o...Snippet Designer: Snippet Designer 1.4.0: Snippet Designer 1.4.0 for Visual Studio 2010 Change logSnippet Explorer ChangesReworked language filter UI to work better in the side bar. Added result count drop down which lets you choose how many results to see. Language filter and result count choices are persisted after Visual Studio is closed. Added file name to search criteria. Search is now case insensitive. Snippet Editor Changes Snippet Editor ChangesAdded menu option for the $end$ symbol which indicates where the c...New Projects.NET Dev Tools Dashboard: .NET Dev Tools Dashboard is a WPF application that implements the Prism 4 standards. Modules can be added at runtime and after install of the base Dashboard shell. The first module is a WPF Gui for NAnt based on Colin Svingen's Gui for NAnt open source app for Windows Forms.Chutzpah - A JavaScript Test Runner: Chutzpah helps you integrate JavaScript unit testing into your website. It enables you to run JavaScript unit tests from the command line and from inside of Visual Studio. It also supports running in the TeamCity continuous integration server.Cow connect: Ziel des Projektes Cow connect, ist es ein Tool zu schrieben das Verschiedene Datenbanken, unterschiedlicher Herdenmanagement Tool z.b: Helm Multikuh, Westfalia C21, Holdi,…. Synchron zu halten. oder eine neue Datenbank zu GenerrierenCqrs CWDNUG Demo: A very simple CQRS demo for a presentation at the Canary Wharf Dot Net User Group. Uses Ncqrs, ASP.NET MVC 3. Not best practices - just something to get your teeth into if you're new to CQRS and Event Sourcing.Down123: down123EssionCalendar: EssionCal EssionCalGuardian: Protects reference type parameters and return values from NULL values.Honest Flex Time Management System: A Japanese time management system to handle worker hourlies. Will include some basic reporting functions as well.iStatServer.NET: Server implementation for iPhone iStat app. Windows analogue to iStat Server on OS x or iStatd on linux/solaris. Keolis Service Wrapper: Keolis Service WrapperKinectContrib: A set of extensions and helpers that will facilitate the use of the Microsoft Kinect motion sensor with the Kinect SDK.kingdomwp7: kingdomwp7Laboratório de Engenharia de Software - Projeto: Criado para estudar e aplicar novas tecnologias web.Multi Touch Digit OCR With Matlab Neural Network Wpf Project: Multi Touch Digit OCR Project is a wpf project that works on multi touch devices but it works well on normal devices , this project uses matlab core , that creates 4 feed forward neural network and train them with Back Propagation Algorithm for detecting numbers that you draw .PhoneGap Extensions - Alpha Version: This project was created to solve some issues about PhoneGap. The first issue to solve is how to reuse HTML code through include files. SABnzbd UI: This application is a Windows 7 enabled UI for SABnzbd, so that you don't have to navigate to the website, but instead you can view a slick UI on your desktop.SP:Social: A community project for providing integration points between SharePoint and other social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Live etc.Whisk: An extremely simplistic but cross-platform network rending environment for Blender.Windows phone 7, Game framewok: Windows phone 7, Game framewokWP7 - Multi Select Wrapped ListBox: Its a WP 7.1 project which contains a list box that can wrap listBoxItems and can scroll vertically.

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• DocumentDB - Another Azure NoSQL Storage Service

  - by Shaun

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2014/08/25/documentdb---another-azure-nosql-storage-service.aspxMicrosoft just released a bunch of new features for Azure on 22nd and one of them I was interested in most is DocumentDB, a document NoSQL database service on the cloud.   Quick Look at DocumentDB We can try DocumentDB from the new azure preview portal. Just click the NEW button and select the item named DocumentDB to create a new account. Specify the name of the DocumentDB, which will be the endpoint we are going to use to connect later. Select the capacity unit, resource group and subscription. In resource group section we can select which region our DocumentDB will be located. Same as other azure services select the same location with your consumers of the DocumentDB, for example the website, web services, etc.. After several minutes the DocumentDB will be ready. Click the KEYS button we can find the URI and primary key, which will be used when connecting. Now let's open Visual Studio and try to use the DocumentDB we had just created. Create a new console application and install the DocumentDB .NET client library from NuGet with the keyword "DocumentDB". You need to select "Include Prerelase" in NuGet Package Manager window since this library was not yet released. Next we will create a new database and document collection under our DocumentDB account. The code below created an instance of DocumentClient with the URI and primary key we just copied from azure portal, and create a database and collection. And it also prints the document and collection link string which will be used later to insert and query documents. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: var endpoint = new Uri("https://shx.documents.azure.com:443/"); 4: var key = "LU2NoyS2fH0131TGxtBE4DW/CjHQBzAaUx/mbuJ1X77C4FWUG129wWk2oyS2odgkFO2Xdif9/ZddintQicF+lA=="; 5:  6: var client = new DocumentClient(endpoint, key); 7: Run(client).Wait(); 8:  9: Console.WriteLine("done"); 10: Console.ReadKey(); 11: } 12:  13: static async Task Run(DocumentClient client) 14: { 15:  16: var database = new Database() { Id = "testdb" }; 17: database = await client.CreateDatabaseAsync(database); 18: Console.WriteLine("database link = {0}", database.SelfLink); 19:  20: var collection = new DocumentCollection() { Id = "testcol" }; 21: collection = await client.CreateDocumentCollectionAsync(database.SelfLink, collection); 22: Console.WriteLine("collection link = {0}", collection.SelfLink); 23: } Below is the result from the console window. We need to copy the collection link string for future usage. Now if we back to the portal we will find a database was listed with the name we specified in the code. Next we will insert a document into the database and collection we had just created. In the code below we pasted the collection link which copied in previous step, create a dynamic object with several properties defined. As you can see we can add some normal properties contains string, integer, we can also add complex property for example an array, a dictionary and an object reference, unless they can be serialized to JSON. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: var endpoint = new Uri("https://shx.documents.azure.com:443/"); 4: var key = "LU2NoyS2fH0131TGxtBE4DW/CjHQBzAaUx/mbuJ1X77C4FWUG129wWk2oyS2odgkFO2Xdif9/ZddintQicF+lA=="; 5:  6: var client = new DocumentClient(endpoint, key); 7:  8: // collection link pasted from the result in previous demo 9: var collectionLink = "dbs/AAk3AA==/colls/AAk3AP6oFgA=/"; 10:  11: // document we are going to insert to database 12: dynamic doc = new ExpandoObject(); 13: doc.firstName = "Shaun"; 14: doc.lastName = "Xu"; 15: doc.roles = new string[] { "developer", "trainer", "presenter", "father" }; 16:  17: // insert the docuemnt 18: InsertADoc(client, collectionLink, doc).Wait(); 19:  20: Console.WriteLine("done"); 21: Console.ReadKey(); 22: } the insert code will be very simple as below, just provide the collection link and the object we are going to insert. 1: static async Task InsertADoc(DocumentClient client, string collectionLink, dynamic doc) 2: { 3: var document = await client.CreateDocumentAsync(collectionLink, doc); 4: Console.WriteLine(await JsonConvert.SerializeObjectAsync(document, Formatting.Indented)); 5: } Below is the result after the object had been inserted. Finally we will query the document from the database and collection. Similar to the insert code, we just need to specify the collection link so that the .NET SDK will help us to retrieve all documents in it. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: var endpoint = new Uri("https://shx.documents.azure.com:443/"); 4: var key = "LU2NoyS2fH0131TGxtBE4DW/CjHQBzAaUx/mbuJ1X77C4FWUG129wWk2oyS2odgkFO2Xdif9/ZddintQicF+lA=="; 5:  6: var client = new DocumentClient(endpoint, key); 7:  8: var collectionLink = "dbs/AAk3AA==/colls/AAk3AP6oFgA=/"; 9:  10: SelectDocs(client, collectionLink); 11:  12: Console.WriteLine("done"); 13: Console.ReadKey(); 14: } 15:  16: static void SelectDocs(DocumentClient client, string collectionLink) 17: { 18: var docs = client.CreateDocumentQuery(collectionLink + "docs/").ToList(); 19: foreach(var doc in docs) 20: { 21: Console.WriteLine(doc); 22: } 23: } Since there's only one document in my collection below is the result when I executed the code. As you can see all properties, includes the array was retrieve at the same time. DocumentDB also attached some properties we didn't specified such as "_rid", "_ts", "_self" etc., which is controlled by the service.   DocumentDB Benefit DocumentDB is a document NoSQL database service. Different from the traditional database, document database is truly schema-free. In a short nut, you can save anything in the same database and collection if it could be serialized to JSON. We you query the document database, all sub documents will be retrieved at the same time. This means you don't need to join other tables when using a traditional database. Document database is very useful when we build some high performance system with hierarchical data structure. For example, assuming we need to build a blog system, there will be many blog posts and each of them contains the content and comments. The comment can be commented as well. If we were using traditional database, let's say SQL Server, the database schema might be defined as below. When we need to display a post we need to load the post content from the Posts table, as well as the comments from the Comments table. We also need to build the comment tree based on the CommentID field. But if were using DocumentDB, what we need to do is to save the post as a document with a list contains all comments. Under a comment all sub comments will be a list in it. When we display this post we just need to to query the post document, the content and all comments will be loaded in proper structure. 1: { 2: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 3: "title": "xxxxx", 4: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 5: "postedOn": "08/25/2014 13:55", 6: "comments": 7: [ 8: { 9: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 10: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 11: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 14:00", 12: "commentedBy": "xxx" 13: }, 14: { 15: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 16: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 17: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 14:10", 18: "commentedBy": "xxx", 19: "comments": 20: [ 21: { 22: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 23: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 24: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 14:18", 25: "commentedBy": "xxx", 26: "comments": 27: [ 28: { 29: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 30: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 31: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 18:22", 32: "commentedBy": "xxx", 33: } 34: ] 35: }, 36: { 37: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 38: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 39: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 15:02", 40: "commentedBy": "xxx", 41: } 42: ] 43: }, 44: { 45: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 46: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 47: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 14:30", 48: "commentedBy": "xxx" 49: } 50: ] 51: }   DocumentDB vs. Table Storage DocumentDB and Table Storage are all NoSQL service in Microsoft Azure. One common question is "when we should use DocumentDB rather than Table Storage". Here are some ideas from me and some MVPs. First of all, they are different kind of NoSQL database. DocumentDB is a document database while table storage is a key-value database. Second, table storage is cheaper. DocumentDB supports scale out from one capacity unit to 5 in preview period and each capacity unit provides 10GB local SSD storage. The price is $0.73/day includes 50% discount. For storage service the highest price is $0.061/GB, which is almost 10% of DocumentDB. Third, table storage provides local-replication, geo-replication, read access geo-replication while DocumentDB doesn't support. Fourth, there is local emulator for table storage but none for DocumentDB. We have to connect to the DocumentDB on cloud when developing locally. But, DocumentDB supports some cool features that table storage doesn't have. It supports store procedure, trigger and user-defined-function. It supports rich indexing while table storage only supports indexing against partition key and row key. It supports transaction, table storage supports as well but restricted with Entity Group Transaction scope. And the last, table storage is GA but DocumentDB is still in preview.   Summary In this post I have a quick demonstration and introduction about the new DocumentDB service in Azure. It's very easy to interact through .NET and it also support REST API, Node.js SDK and Python SDK. Then I explained the concept and benefit of  using document database, then compared with table storage.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• How I understood monads, part 1/2: sleepless and self-loathing in Seattle

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  For some time now, I had been noticing some interest for monads, mostly in the form of unintelligible (to me) blog posts and comments saying “oh, yeah, that’s a monad” about random stuff as if it were absolutely obvious and if I didn’t know what they were talking about, I was probably an uneducated idiot, ignorant about the simplest and most fundamental concepts of functional programming. Fair enough, I am pretty much exactly that. Being the kind of guy who can spend eight years in college just to understand a few interesting concepts about the universe, I had to check it out and try to understand monads so that I too can say “oh, yeah, that’s a monad”. Man, was I hit hard in the face with the limitations of my own abstract thinking abilities. All the articles I could find about the subject seemed to be vaguely understandable at first but very quickly overloaded the very few concept slots I have available in my brain. They also seemed to be consistently using arcane notation that I was entirely unfamiliar with. It finally all clicked together one Friday afternoon during the team’s beer symposium when Louis was patient enough to break it down for me in a language I could understand (C#). I don’t know if being intoxicated helped. Feel free to read this with or without a drink in hand. So here it is in a nutshell: a monad allows you to manipulate stuff in interesting ways. Oh, OK, you might say. Yeah. Exactly. Let’s start with a trivial case: public static class Trivial { public static TResult Execute<T, TResult>( this T argument, Func<T, TResult> operation) { return operation(argument); } } This is not a monad. I removed most concepts here to start with something very simple. There is only one concept here: the idea of executing an operation on an object. This is of course trivial and it would actually be simpler to just apply that operation directly on the object. But please bear with me, this is our first baby step. Here’s how you use that thing: "some string" .Execute(s => s + " processed by trivial proto-monad.") .Execute(s => s + " And it's chainable!"); What we’re doing here is analogous to having an assembly chain in a factory: you can feed it raw material (the string here) and a number of machines that each implement a step in the manufacturing process and you can start building stuff. The Trivial class here represents the empty assembly chain, the conveyor belt if you will, but it doesn’t care what kind of raw material gets in, what gets out or what each machine is doing. It is pure process. A real monad will need a couple of additional concepts. Let’s say the conveyor belt needs the material to be processed to be contained in standardized boxes, just so that it can safely and efficiently be transported from machine to machine or so that tracking information can be attached to it. Each machine knows how to treat raw material or partly processed material, but it doesn’t know how to treat the boxes so the conveyor belt will have to extract the material from the box before feeding it into each machine, and it will have to box it back afterwards. This conveyor belt with boxes is essentially what a monad is. It has one method to box stuff, one to extract stuff from its box and one to feed stuff into a machine. So let’s reformulate the previous example but this time with the boxes, which will do nothing for the moment except containing stuff. public class Identity<T> { public Identity(T value) { Value = value; } public T Value { get; private set;} public static Identity<T> Unit(T value) { return new Identity<T>(value); } public static Identity<U> Bind<U>( Identity<T> argument, Func<T, Identity<U>> operation) { return operation(argument.Value); } } Now this is a true to the definition Monad, including the weird naming of the methods. It is the simplest monad, called the identity monad and of course it does nothing useful. Here’s how you use it: Identity<string>.Bind( Identity<string>.Unit("some string"), s => Identity<string>.Unit( s + " was processed by identity monad.")).Value That of course is seriously ugly. Note that the operation is responsible for re-boxing its result. That is a part of strict monads that I don’t quite get and I’ll take the liberty to lift that strange constraint in the next examples. To make this more readable and easier to use, let’s build a few extension methods: public static class IdentityExtensions { public static Identity<T> ToIdentity<T>(this T value) { return new Identity<T>(value); } public static Identity<U> Bind<T, U>( this Identity<T> argument, Func<T, U> operation) { return operation(argument.Value).ToIdentity(); } } With those, we can rewrite our code as follows: "some string".ToIdentity() .Bind(s => s + " was processed by monad extensions.") .Bind(s => s + " And it's chainable...") .Value; This is considerably simpler but still retains the qualities of a monad. But it is still pointless. Let’s look at a more useful example, the state monad, which is basically a monad where the boxes have a label. It’s useful to perform operations on arbitrary objects that have been enriched with an attached state object. public class Stateful<TValue, TState> { public Stateful(TValue value, TState state) { Value = value; State = state; } public TValue Value { get; private set; } public TState State { get; set; } } public static class StateExtensions { public static Stateful<TValue, TState> ToStateful<TValue, TState>( this TValue value, TState state) { return new Stateful<TValue, TState>(value, state); } public static Stateful<TResult, TState> Execute<TValue, TState, TResult>( this Stateful<TValue, TState> argument, Func<TValue, TResult> operation) { return operation(argument.Value) .ToStateful(argument.State); } } You can get a stateful version of any object by calling the ToStateful extension method, passing the state object in. You can then execute ordinary operations on the values while retaining the state: var statefulInt = 3.ToStateful("This is the state"); var processedStatefulInt = statefulInt .Execute(i => ++i) .Execute(i => i * 10) .Execute(i => i + 2); Console.WriteLine("Value: {0}; state: {1}", processedStatefulInt.Value, processedStatefulInt.State); This monad differs from the identity by enriching the boxes. There is another way to give value to the monad, which is to enrich the processing. An example of that is the writer monad, which can be typically used to log the operations that are being performed by the monad. Of course, the richest monads enrich both the boxes and the processing. That’s all for today. I hope with this you won’t have to go through the same process that I did to understand monads and that you haven’t gone into concept overload like I did. Next time, we’ll examine some examples that you already know but we will shine the monadic light, hopefully illuminating them in a whole new way. Realizing that this pattern is actually in many places but mostly unnoticed is what will enable the truly casual “oh, yes, that’s a monad” comments. Here’s the code for this article: http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bleroy/Samples/Monads.zip The Wikipedia article on monads: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monads_in_functional_programming This article was invaluable for me in understanding how to express the canonical monads in C# (interesting Linq stuff in there): http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wesdyer/archive/2008/01/11/the-marvels-of-monads.aspx

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• Monitoring SQL Server Agent job run times

  - by okeofs

  Introduction A few months back, I was asked how long a particular nightly process took to run. It was a super question and the one thing that struck me was that there were a plethora of factors affecting the processing time. This said, I developed a query to ascertain process run times, the average nightly run times and applied some KPI’s to the end query. The end goal being to enable me to quickly detect anomalies and processes that are running beyond their normal times. As many of you are aware, most of the necessary data for this type of query, lies within the MSDB database. The core portion of the query is shown below.select sj.name,sh.run_date, sh.run_duration, case when len(sh.run_duration) = 6 then convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration) when len(sh.run_duration) = 5 then '0' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration) when len(sh.run_duration) = 4 then '00' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration) when len(sh.run_duration) = 3 then '000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration) when len(sh.run_duration) = 2 then '0000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration) when len(sh.run_duration) = 1 then '00000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration) end as tt from dbo.sysjobs sj with (nolock) inner join dbo.sysjobHistory sh with (nolock) on sj.job_id = sh.job_id where sj.name = 'My Agent Job' and [sh.Message] like '%The job%') Run_date and run_duration are obvious fields. The field ‘Name’ is the name of the job that we wish to follow. The only major challenge was that the format of the run duration which was not as ‘user friendly’ as I would have liked. As an example, the run duration 1 hour 10 minutes and 3 seconds would be displayed as 11003; whereas I wanted it to display this in a more user friendly manner as 01:10:03. In order to achieve this effect, we need to add leading zeros to the run_duration based upon the case logic shown above. At this point what we need to do add colons between the hours and minutes and one between the minutes and seconds. To achieve this I nested the query shown above (in purple) within a ‘super’ query. Thus the run time ([Run Time]) is constructed concatenating a series of substrings (See below in Blue). select run_date,substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),1,2) + ':' +substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),3,2) + ':' +substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),5,2) as [run_time] from (select sj.name,sh.run_date, sh.run_duration,case when len(sh.run_duration) = 6 then convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration) = 5 then '0' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration) = 4 then '00' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration) = 3 then '000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration) = 2 then '0000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration) = 1 then '00000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)end as ttfrom dbo.sysjobs sj with (nolock)inner join dbo.sysjobHistory sh with (nolock) on sj.job_id = sh.job_id where sj.name = 'My Agent Job'and [sh.Message] like '%The job%') a Now that I had each nightly run time in hours, minutes and seconds (01:10:03), I decided that it would very productive to calculate a rolling run time average. To do this, I decided to do the calculations in base units of seconds. This said, I encapsulated the query shown above into a further ‘super’ query (see the code in RED below). This encapsulation is shown below. The astute reader will note that I used implied casting from integer to string, which is not the best method to use however it works. This said and if I were constructing the query again I would definitely do an explicit convert. To Recap: I now have a key field of ‘1’, each and every applicable run date and the total number of SECONDS that the process ran for each run date, all of this data within the #rawdata1 temporary table. Select 1 as keyy,run_date,(substring(b.run_time,1,2)*3600) + (substring(b.run_time,4,2)*60) + (substring(b.run_time,7,2)) as run_time_in_Seconds,run_time into #rawdata1 from ( select run_date,substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),1,2) + ':' + substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),3,2) + ':' +substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),5,2) as [run_time] from (select sj.name,sh.run_date, sh.run_duration, case when len(sh.run_duration) = 6 then convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration) = 5 then '0' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration) = 4 then '00' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration)    = 3 then '000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration)    = 2 then '0000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration) = 1 then '00000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)end as ttfrom dbo.sysjobs sj with (nolock)inner join dbo.sysjobHistory sh with (nolock)on sj.job_id = sh.job_id where sj.name = 'My Agent Job'and [sh.Message] like '%The job%') a )b   Calculating the average run time We now select each run time in seconds from #rawdata1 and place the values into another temporary table called #rawdata2. Once again we create a ‘key’, a hardwired ‘1’. select 1 as Keyy, run_time_in_Seconds into #rawdata2 from #rawdata1The purpose of doing so is to make the average time AVG() available to the query immediately without having to do adverse grouping. Applying KPI Logic At this point, we shall apply some logic to determine whether processing times are within the norms. We do this by applying colour names. Obviously, this example is a super one for SSRS and traffic light icons.select rd1.run_date, rd1.run_time, rd1.run_time_in_Seconds ,Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds) as Average_run_time_in_seconds,casewhenConvert(decimal(10,1),rd1.run_time_in_Seconds)/Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)<= 1.2 then 'Green' when Convert(decimal(10,1),rd1.run_time_in_Seconds)/Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)< 1.4 then 'Yellow' else 'Red'end as [color], Calculating the Average Run Time in Hours Minutes and Seconds and the end of the query. casewhen len(convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)/(3600))) = 1 then '0' + convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)/(3600))else convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)/(3600))end + ':' + case when len(convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%(3600)/60)) = 1 then '0' + convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%(3600)/60)else convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%(3600)/60)end + ':' + case when len(convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%60)) = 1 then '0' + convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%60)else convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%60)end as [Average Run Time HH:MM:SS] from #rawdata2 rd2 innerjoin #rawdata1 rd1on rd1.keyy = rd2.keyygroup by run_date,rd1.run_time ,rd1.run_time_in_Seconds order by run_date descThe complete code example use msdbgo/*drop table #rawdata1drop table #rawdata2go*/select 1 as keyy,run_date,(substring(b.run_time,1,2)*3600) + (substring(b.run_time,4,2)*60) + (substring(b.run_time,7,2)) as run_time_in_Seconds,run_time into #rawdata1 from (select run_date,substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),1,2) + ':' +substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),3,2) + ':' +substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),5,2) as [run_time] from (select name,run_date, run_duration, casewhenlen(run_duration) = 6 then convert(varchar(8),run_duration)whenlen(run_duration) = 5 then '0' + convert(varchar(8),run_duration)whenlen(run_duration) = 4 then '00' + convert(varchar(8),run_duration)whenlen(run_duration) = 3 then '000' + convert(varchar(8),run_duration)whenlen(run_duration) = 2 then '0000' + convert(varchar(8),run_duration)whenlen(run_duration) = 1 then '00000' + convert(varchar(8),run_duration)end as ttfrom dbo.sysjobs sj with (nolock)innerjoin dbo.sysjobHistory sh with (nolock) on sj.job_id = sh.job_id where name = 'My Agent Job'and [Message] like '%The job%') a ) bselect 1 as Keyy, run_time_in_Seconds into #rawdata2 from #rawdata1select rd1.run_date, rd1.run_time, rd1.run_time_in_Seconds ,Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds) as Average_run_time_in_seconds,casewhenConvert(decimal(10,1),rd1.run_time_in_Seconds)/Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)<= 1.2 then 'Green' when Convert(decimal(10,1),rd1.run_time_in_Seconds)/Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)< 1.4 then 'Yellow' else 'Red'end as [color],Case when len(convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)/(3600))) = 1 then '0' + convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)/(3600))else convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)/(3600))end + ':' + case when len(convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%(3600)/60)) = 1 then '0' + convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%(3600)/60)else convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%(3600)/60)end + ':' + case when len(convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%60)) = 1 then '0' + convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%60)else convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%60)end as [Average Run Time HH:MM:SS] from #rawdata2 rd2 innerjoin #rawdata1 rd1on rd1.keyy = rd2.keyygroup by run_date,rd1.run_time ,rd1.run_time_in_Seconds order by run_date desc  

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #049

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Two Connections Related Global Variables Explained – @@CONNECTIONS and @@MAX_CONNECTIONS @@CONNECTIONS Returns the number of attempted connections, either successful or unsuccessful since SQL Server was last started. @@MAX_CONNECTIONS Returns the maximum number of simultaneous user connections allowed on an instance of SQL Server. The number returned is not necessarily the number currently configured. Query Editor – Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio This post may be very simple for most of the users of SQL Server 2005. Earlier this year, I have received one question many times – Where is Query Analyzer in SQL Server 2005? I wrote small post about it and pointed many users to that post – SQL SERVER – 2005 Query Analyzer – Microsoft SQL SERVER Management Studio. Recently I have been receiving similar question. OUTPUT Clause Example and Explanation with INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE SQL Server 2005 has a new OUTPUT clause, which is quite useful. OUTPUT clause has access to insert and deleted tables (virtual tables) just like triggers. OUTPUT clause can be used to return values to client clause. OUTPUT clause can be used with INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE to identify the actual rows affected by these statements. OUTPUT clause can generate a table variable, a permanent table, or temporary table. Even though, @@Identity will still work with SQL Server 2005, however I find the OUTPUT clause very easy and powerful to use. Let us understand the OUTPUT clause using an example. Find Name of The SQL Server Instance Based on database server stored procedures has to run different logic. We came up with two different solutions. 1) When database schema is very much changed, we wrote completely new stored procedure and deprecated older version once it was not needed. 2) When logic depended on Server Name we used global variable @@SERVERNAME. It was very convenient while writing migrating script which depended on the server name for the same database. Explanation of TRY…CATCH and ERROR Handling With RAISEERROR Function One of the developers at my company thought that we can not use the RAISEERROR function in new feature of SQL Server 2005 TRY… CATCH. When asked for an explanation he suggested SQL SERVER – 2005 Explanation of TRY… CATCH and ERROR Handling article as excuse suggesting that I did not give example of RAISEERROR with TRY…CATCH. We all thought it was funny. Just to keep records straight, TRY… CATCH can sure use RAISEERROR function. Different Types of Cache Objects Serveral kinds of objects can be stored in the procedure cache: Compiled Plans: When the query optimizer finishes compiling a query plan, the principal output is compiled plan. Execution contexts: While executing a compiled plan, SQL Server has to keep track of information about the state of execution. Cursors: Cursors track the execution state of server-side cursors, including the cursor’s current location within a resultset. Algebrizer trees: The Algebrizer’s job is to produce an algebrizer tree, which represents the logic structure of a query. Open SSMS From Command Prompt – sqlwb.exe Example This article is written by request and suggestion of Sr. Web Developer at my organization. Due to the nature of this article most of the content is referred from Book On-Line. sqlwbcommand prompt utility which opens SQL Server Management Studio. Squib command does not run queries from the command prompt. sqlcmd utility runs queries from command prompt, read for more information. 2008 Puzzle – Solution – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation Just a day before I wrote article SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation which was inspired by SQL Server MVP Jacob Sebastian. I suggest that before continuing this article read the original puzzle question SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation.The question was if the computed column was of datatype TINYINT how to create a Computed Column of datatype INT? 2008 – Find If Index is Being Used in Database It is very often I get a query that how to find if any index is being used in the database or not. If any database has many indexes and not all indexes are used it can adversely affect performance. If the number of indices are higher it reduces the INSERT / UPDATE / DELETE operation but increase the SELECT operation. It is recommended to drop any unused indexes from table to improve the performance. 2009 Interesting Observation – Execution Plan and Results of Aggregate Concatenation Queries If you want to see what’s going on here, I think you need to shift your point of view from an implementation-centric view to an ANSI point of view. ANSI does not guarantee processing the order. Figure 2 is interesting, but it will be potentially misleading if you don’t understand the ANSI rule-set SQL Server operates under in most cases. Implementation thinking can certainly be useful at times when you really need that multi-million row query to finish before the backup fire off, but in this case, it’s counterproductive to understanding what is going on. SQL Server Management Studio and Client Statistics Client Statistics are very important. Many a times, people relate queries execution plan to query cost. This is not a good comparison. Both parameters are different, and they are not always related. It is possible that the query cost of any statement is less, but the amount of the data returned is considerably larger, which is causing any query to run slow. How do we know if any query is retrieving a large amount data or very little data? 2010 I encourage all of you to go through complete series and write your own on the subject. If you write an article and send it to me, I will publish it on this blog with due credit to you. If you write on your own blog, I will update this blog post pointing to your blog post. SQL SERVER – ORDER BY Does Not Work – Limitation of the View 1 SQL SERVER – Adding Column is Expensive by Joining Table Outside View – Limitation of the View 2 SQL SERVER – Index Created on View not Used Often – Limitation of the View 3 SQL SERVER – SELECT * and Adding Column Issue in View – Limitation of the View 4 SQL SERVER – COUNT(*) Not Allowed but COUNT_BIG(*) Allowed – Limitation of the View 5 SQL SERVER – UNION Not Allowed but OR Allowed in Index View – Limitation of the View 6 SQL SERVER – Cross Database Queries Not Allowed in Indexed View – Limitation of the View 7 SQL SERVER – Outer Join Not Allowed in Indexed Views – Limitation of the View 8 SQL SERVER – SELF JOIN Not Allowed in Indexed View – Limitation of the View 9 SQL SERVER – Keywords View Definition Must Not Contain for Indexed View – Limitation of the View 10 SQL SERVER – View Over the View Not Possible with Index View – Limitations of the View 11 SQL SERVER – Get Query Running in Session I was recently looking for syntax where I needed a query running in any particular session. I always remembered the syntax and ha d actually written it down before, but somehow it was not coming to mind quickly this time. I searched online and I ended up on my own article written last year SQL SERVER – Get Last Running Query Based on SPID. I felt that I am getting old because I forgot this really simple syntax. Find Total Number of Transaction on Interval In one of my recent Performance Tuning assignments I was asked how do someone know how many transactions are happening on a server during certain interval. I had a handy script for the same. Following script displays transactions happened on the server at the interval of one minute. You can change the WAITFOR DELAY to any other interval and it should work. 2011 Here are two DMV’s which are newly introduced in SQL Server 2012 and provides vital information about SQL Server. DMV – sys.dm_os_volume_stats – Information about operating system volume DMV – sys.dm_os_windows_info – Information about Operating System SQL Backup and FTP – A Quick and Handy Tool I have used this tool extensively since 2009 at numerous occasion and found it to be very impressive. What separates it from the crowd the most – it is it’s apparent simplicity and speed. When I install SQLBackupAndFTP and configure backups – all in 1 or 2 minutes, my clients are always impressed. Quick Note about JOIN – Common Questions and Simple Answers In this blog post we are going to talk about join and lots of things related to the JOIN. I recently started office hours to answer questions and issues of the community. I receive so many questions that are related to JOIN. I will share a few of the same over here. Most of them are basic, but note that the basics are of great importance. 2012 Importance of User Without Login Question: “In recent version of SQL Server we can create user without login. What is the use of it?” Great question indeed. Let me first attempt to answer this question but after reading my answer I need your help. I want you to help him as well with adding more value to it. Preserve Leading Zero While Coping to Excel from SSMS Earlier I wrote two articles about how to efficiently copy data from SSMS to Excel. Since I wrote that post there are plenty of interest generated on this subject. There are a few questions I keep on getting over this subject. One of the question is how to get the leading zero preserved while copying the data from SSMS to Excel. Well it is almost the same way as my earlier post SQL SERVER – Excel Losing Decimal Values When Value Pasted from SSMS ResultSet. The key here is in EXCEL and not in SQL Server. Solution – 2 T-SQL Puzzles – Display Star and Shortest Code to Display 1 Earlier on this blog we had asked two puzzles. The response from all of you is nothing but Amazing. I have received 350+ responses. Many are valid and many were indeed something I had not thought about it. I strongly suggest you read all the puzzles and their answers here - trust me if you start reading the comments you will not stop till you read every single comment. Seriously trust me on it. Personally I have learned a lot from it. Identify Most Resource Intensive Queries – SQL in Sixty Seconds #028 – Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvlYy-TGaaA Importance of User Without Login – T-SQL Demo Script Earlier I wrote a blog post about SQL SERVER – Importance of User Without Login and my friend and SQL Expert Vinod Kumar has written excellent follow up blog post about Contained Databases inside SQL Server 2012. Now lots of people asked me if I can also explain the same concept again so here is the small demonstration for it. Let me show you how login without user can help. Before we continue on this subject I strongly recommend that you read my earlier blog post here. In following demo I am going to demonstrate following situation. Login using the System Admin account Create a user without login Checking Access Impersonate the user without login Checking Access Revert Impersonation Give Permission to user without login Impersonate the user without login Checking Access Revert Impersonation Clean up Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Notes on Oracle BPM PS6 Adaptive Case Management

  - by gcolman

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} I have recently been looking at the  latest release of the BPM Case Management feature in the Oracle BPM PS6 release. I had put together some notes to help me gain a better understanding of the context of the PS6 BPM Case Management. Hopefully, this along with the other resources will enable you to gain a clear picture of the flexibility of this feature. Oracle BPM PS6 release includes Case Management capability. This initial release aims to provide: Case Management Framework Integration of Case Management with BPM & SOA suite It is best to regard the current PS6 case management feature as a case management framework. The framework provides the building blocks for creating a case management system that is fully integrated into Oracle BPM suite. As of the current PS6 release, no UI tooling exists to help manage cases or the case lifecycle. Mark Foster has written a good blog which outlines Case Management within PS6 in the following link. I wanted to provide more context on Case Management from my perspective in this blog. PS6 Case Management - High level View BPM PS6 includes “Case” as a first class component in a SOA Suite composite. The Case components (added to the SOA Composite) are created when a BPM process is assigned to a case in JDveloper. The SOA Case component is defined and configured within JDevloper, which allows us to specify the case data structures and metadata such as stakeholders, outcomes, milestones, document stores etc. "Activities" are associated with a case, and become available to be executed via the case apis. Activities are BPM processes, Human Activities or Java call outs. The PS6 release includes some additional database tables to store the case metadata and case instance data (data object, comments, etc…). These new tables are created within the SOA_INFRA schema and the documents associated with that case into a document repository that is configured with the case. One of the main features of Case Management is the control of the case logic through case events and case business rules. A PS6 Case has an associated business rule component, which can be configured to control the availability and execution of activities within the case. The business rules component is able to act upon events that the PS6 Case Management framework generates during the lifecycle of that case. Events are fired during the lifetime of the case (e.g. Case created, activity started, activity ended, note added, document uploaded.) Internal Case state The internal state of a case is represented by the diagram below. This shows the internal states and the transition paths for a Case from one state to the next Each transition in state will create an event that can be enacted upon via the Case rules engine. The internal case state lifecycle is defined as follows Defining a case A Case is created and defined as a component of a JDeveloper BPM project. When you create a Case as part of a BPM project, JDeveloper, creates the following components within the SCA composite: Case component Case component interfaces (WSDL etc) Case Rules component (Oracle Business Rules) Adds the Case Component and Case Rules Component to the BPM SOA composite Case Configuration The following section gives a high level overview of the items that can be configured for a BPM Case. Case Activities A Case is associated with a set of activities that are to be performed as part of that Case. Case activities can be: SOA Human Tasks BPM processes Custom Task (Java Class) Case activities are created from pre-existing BPM process or human tasks, which, once defined, can be configured additionally as Case activities in JDeveloper and made available within the lifecycle of a case. I've described the following configurable components of a case (very!) briefly as: Milestones Milestones are (optional) user defined logical milestones that can be achieved within a case. No activities are associates with a milestone, but milestone attainment can be programmatically set and events raised when milestones are reached Outcomes User defined status of a completed case. An event is fired when an outcome is attained. Case Data Defines the data that will be stored with a case XML schemas define the data that is stored with the case. Case Documents Defines the location of documents that are attached to a case (e.g. WebCenter Content) User Defined Events Optional user defined events that can be fired or captured to drive case processing rules Stakeholders Defines the actors who can participate in the case (roles, users, groups) Defines permissions for individual case permissions (read case, create document etc…) Business Rules Business rules are the main component controlling the flow of a Case Each case has an associated business ruleset Rules are fired on receiving Case events (or User defined events) Life cycle events Milestone events Activity events Data events Document events Comment events User event Managing the Case Managing the lifecycle of a case is achieved in two ways: Managing case logic with Business Rules Managing the case lifecycle via the Case APIs. A BPM Case can be viewed as a set of case data & documents along with the activities that can be performed within a case and also the case lifecycle state expressed as milestones and internal lifecycle state. The management of the case life is achieved though both the configuration of business rules and the “manual” interaction with a case instance through the Case APIs. Business Rules and Case Events A key component within the Case management framework is the event model. The BPM Case Management solution internally utilizes Oracle EDN (Event Delivery Network) to publish and subscribe to events generated by the Case framework. Events are generated by the Case framework on each of the processes and stages that a case instance will travel on its lifetime. The following case events are part of the BPM Case: Life cycle events Milestone events Activity events Data events Document events Comment events User event The Case business rules are configured to listen for these events, and business logic can be coded into the Case rules component to enact upon an event being received. Case API & Interaction Along with the business rules component, Cases can be managed via the Case API interfaces. These interfaces allow for the building of custom applications to integrate into case management framework. The API’s allow for updating case comments & documents, executing case activities, updating milestones etc. As there is no in built case management UI functions within the PS6 release, Cases need to be managed via a custom built UI, interacting with selected case instances, launching case activities, closing cases etc. (There is expected to be a UI component within subsequent releases) Logical Case Flow The diagram below is intended to depict a logical view of the case steps for a typical case. A UI or other service calls the Case interface to create a Case instance The case instance is created & database data inserted A lifecycle event is raised indicating a case activity (created) event The case business rules capture the event and decide on an action to take Additionally other parties can subscribe to Case events via EDN The business rules may handle the event, e.g. configured to execute a case activity on case creation event The BPM/Human Workflow/Custom activity is executed A case activity event is raised on the execute activity A case work UI or business service can inspect the case instance and call other actions to progress that case, such as: Execute activity Add Note Add document Add case data Update Milestone Raise user defined event Suspend case Resume case Close Case Summary Having had a little time to play around with the APIs and the case configuration, I really like the flexibility and power of combining Oracle Business Rules and the BPM Case Management event model. Creating something this flexible and powerful without BPM Case Management would take a lot of time and effort. This is hopefully going to save my customers a lot of time and effort! I may make amendments to this post as my understanding of Case Management increases! Take a look at the following links for official documentation etc. http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E28280_01/doc.1111/e15176/case_mgmt_bpmpd.htm https://blogs.oracle.com/bpm/entry/just_in_case 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:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";}

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, January 08, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, January 08, 2011Popular ReleasesExtended WPF Toolkit: Extended WPF Toolkit - 1.3.0: What's in the 1.3.0 Release?BusyIndicator ButtonSpinner ChildWindow ColorPicker - Updated (Breaking Changes) DateTimeUpDown - New Control Magnifier - New Control MaskedTextBox - New Control MessageBox NumericUpDown RichTextBox RichTextBoxFormatBar - Updated .NET 3.5 binaries and SourcePlease note: The Extended WPF Toolkit 3.5 is dependent on .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit. You must install .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit in order to use any features in the To...sNPCedit: sNPCedit v0.9d: added elementclient coordinate catcher to catch coordinates select a target (ingame) i.e. your char, npc or monster than click the button and coordinates+direction will be transfered to the selected row in the table corrected labels from Rot to Direction (because it is a vector)AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.2: Implemented the Auto Updater Fix: Your settings will no longer be cleared with new releases of AutoLoL The mastery Editor and Browser now have their own tabs instead of nested tabs The Browser tab will only show the masteries matching ALL filters instead of just one Added a 'Browse' button in the Mastery Editor tab to open the Masteries Directory The Browser tab now shows a message when there are no mastery files in the Masteries Directory Fix: Fixed the Save As dialog again, for ...Ionics Isapi Rewrite Filter: 2.1 latest stable: V2.1 is stable, and is in maintenance mode. This is v2.1.1.25. It is a bug-fix release. There are no new features. 28629 29172 28722 27626 28074 29164 27659 27900 many documentation updates and fixes proper x64 build environment. This release includes x64 binaries in zip form, but no x64 MSI file. You'll have to manually install x64 servers, following the instructions in the documentation.StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.14980.000: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes: - StyleCop's new ObjectBasedEnvironment object does not resolve the StyleCop installation path, thus it does not return the correct path ...VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.1: New release with bug fixes and updates for performance.SSH.NET Library: 2011.1.6: Fixes CommandTimeout default value is fixed to infinite. Port Forwarding feature improvements Memory leaks fixes New Features Add ErrorOccurred event to handle errors that occurred on different thread New and improve SFTP features SftpFile now has more attributes and some operations Most standard operations now available Allow specify encoding for command execution KeyboardInteractiveConnectionInfo class added for "keyboard-interactive" authentication. Add ability to specify bo....NET Extensions - Extension Methods Library for C# and VB.NET: Release 2011.03: Added lot's of new extensions and new projects for MVC and Entity Framework. object.FindTypeByRecursion Int32.InRange String.RemoveAllSpecialCharacters String.IsEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.IsNotEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.IfEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.ToUpperFirstLetter String.GetBytes String.ToTitleCase String.ToPlural DateTime.GetDaysInYear DateTime.GetPeriodOfDay IEnumberable.RemoveAll IEnumberable.Distinct ICollection.RemoveAll IList.Join IList.Match IList.Cast Array.IsNullOrEmpty Array.W...VidCoder: 0.8.0: Added x64 version. Made the audio output preview more detailed and accurate. If the chosen encoder or mixdown is incompatible with the source, the fallback that will be used is displayed. Added "Auto" to the audio mixdown choices. Reworked non-anamorphic size calculation to work better with non-standard pixel aspect ratios and cropping. Reworked Custom anamorphic to be more intuitive and allow display width to be set automatically (Thanks, Statick). Allowing higher bitrates for 6-ch....NET Voice Recorder: Auto-Tune Release: This is the source code and binaries to accompany the article on the Coding 4 Fun website. It is the Auto Tuner release of the .NET Voice Recorder application.BloodSim: BloodSim - 1.3.2.0: - Simulation Log is now automatically disabled and hidden when running 10 or more iterations - Hit and Expertise are now entered by Rating, and include option for a Racial Expertise bonus - Added option for boss to use a periodic magic ability (Dragon Breath) - Added option for boss to periodically Enrage, gaining a Damage/Attack Speed buffEnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.9 BETA: 2.2.9 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in the Gobl...xUnit.net - Unit Testing for .NET: xUnit.net 1.7 Beta: xUnit.net release 1.7 betaBuild #1533 Important notes for Resharper users: Resharper support has been moved to the xUnit.net Contrib project. Important note for TestDriven.net users: If you are having issues running xUnit.net tests in TestDriven.net, especially on 64-bit Windows, we strongly recommend you upgrade to TD.NET version 3.0 or later. This release adds the following new features: Added support for ASP.NET MVC 3 Added Assert.Equal(double expected, double actual, int precision)...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.0 Release 1: New feature - Added Windows Phone 7 project New feature - Added dynamic support to LINQ to JSON New feature - Added dynamic support to serializer New feature - Added INotifyCollectionChanged to JContainer in .NET 4 build New feature - Added ReadAsDateTimeOffset to JsonReader New feature - Added ReadAsDecimal to JsonReader New feature - Added covariance to IJEnumerable type parameter New feature - Added XmlSerializer style Specified property support New feature - Added ...DbDocument: DbDoc Initial Version: DbDoc Initial versionASP .NET MVC CMS (Content Management System): Atomic CMS 2.1.2: Atomic CMS 2.1.2 release notes Atomic CMS installation guide N2 CMS: 2.1: N2 is a lightweight CMS framework for ASP.NET. It helps you build great web sites that anyone can update. Major Changes Support for auto-implemented properties ({get;set;}, based on contribution by And Poulsen) All-round improvements and bugfixes File manager improvements (multiple file upload, resize images to fit) New image gallery Infinite scroll paging on news Content templates First time with N2? Try the demo site Download one of the template packs (above) and open the proj...Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 0.1.11.10: IMPORTANT CHANGESThis release changes the way some WURFL capabilities and attributes are exposed to .NET developers. If you cast MobileCapabilities to return some values then please read the Release Note before implementing this release. The following code snippet can be used to access any WURFL capability. For instance, if the device is a tablet: string capability = Request.Browser["is_tablet"]; SummaryNew attributes have been added to the redirect section: originalUrlAsQueryString If se...Wii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 1.0: - Norwegian translation - French translation - German translation - WBFS dump for analysis - Scalable full HQ cover - Support for log file - Load game images improved - Support for image splitting - Diff for images after transfer - Support for scrubbing modes - Search functionality for log - Recurse depth for Files/Load - Show progress while downloading game cover - Supports more databases for cover download - Game cover loading routines improvedBlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.0: Get DotNetBlogEngine for 3 Months Free! Click Here for More Info 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.0 instructions. To get started, be sure to check out our installatio...New Projects2011 Scripting Games: Track Changes for the 2011 Scripting Games to be hosted on PoshCode by the Microsoft Scripting Guys and the PowerShell community. ADO.NET Unit Testable Repository Generator: Generates a strongly-typed Object Context and POCO Entities from your EDMX file. Additionally a Repository and an abstract Unit Test for the Repository is created (with a mock for the ObjectContext and mock for the ObjectSets). Bases on the "ADO.NET C# POCO Entity Generator".AshpazKhone: ???AVAilable Rooms: AVAilable Rooms Can be used to show and book rooms on an exchange serverContentManager: Content Manger for SAP Kpro exports the data pool of a content-server by PHIOS-Lists (txt-files) into local binary files. Afterwards this files can be imported in a SAP content-repository . The whole List of the PHIOS Keys can also be downloaded an splitted in practical units.CSLauncher: CSLauncher is a small application providing a launching interface similar to Counter Strike's weapons selection menu. You can organize your favorite applications in CSLauncher in the order you wish, then launch them by remembering their numbers.DbMetadata: A simple lightweight library used to retrieve database metadata.DotNetSiemensPLCToolBoxLibrary: DotNetSiemensPLCToolBoxLibrary A Library for working with Siemens Step5 and Step7 Projects, connecting to S5 or S7 PLC's.EmptyX: EmptyX is a game developped with c# and xna for the XNA CHALLENGE in AlgeriaERASMUS: Erasmus šitFaceDeBouc: Simplebook, le nouveau Facebook CPE! Technlogies .NET Serveur: - BDD SQLServer - Logique métier - Web services Clients: - client lourd WPF - client léger ASP.NETFunction resolver: Application using .NET Expression trees to resolve a function for a set of numbersMLRobotic: Programme de gestion MLRobotic 2011 Sissa ProjectMS CRM Multiple Attachment Download Application: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 currently does not have a built in way for CRM Administrators to Export multiple attachments from the database and store it on a local directory on the Server or the local PC. This application allows you to do so.Open Data Publisher: Open Data Publisher is a C# MVC application that allows you to quickly and easily publish data from SQL Server tables and views using the OData protocol, and present data from OData and static sources to the public for download and exploration.OttawaZagreb1: Test projectPrague: ????? ?? ???? ??????PSSplunk: PSSplunk is a set of Powershell cmdlets that use the RESTFUL API provided by www.splunk.com The goal is provide access to all of Splunks configuration and search features from the CLI without having to have Splunk installed locally.Reactive C#: Reactive language extensions for C#SemanaWebcasts: Projeto para semana de webcasts.Steward: Personal StewardSVNUG.Tracker: SVNUG.Tracker is an example task tracking application used as a presentation project for the Sangamon Valley .NET User Group (svnug.com). The purpose of SVNUG.Tracker is to be a common problem domain for exercising new .NET technology. SVNUG.Tracker is written in C# 4.The Silverlight Cookbook - A Reference Application for Silverlight 4 LOB Apps: The Silverlight Cookbook is a .NET example application that demonstrates how to build a full-blown line-of-business app using the reference architecture explained at: http://www.dennisdoomen.net/search/label/Silverlight Vkontakte Wpf Client: This is a simple client for social network Vkontakte. It can send message to your friends, download audio files or play it,list user video. Also you can view user status and change yours.Windows Phone Multilingual Keyboard: Multilingual keyboard for Windows Phone 7WPF Controls & MVVM Practices: WPF Controls contains various controls that can be used in applications. Currently Featured * FilteredListBox (filter and selected items notification) * IsDirty functionality for a ViewModel model

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• Code Reuse is (Damn) Hard

  - by James Michael Hare

  Being a development team lead, the task of interviewing new candidates was part of my job.  Like any typical interview, we started with some easy questions to get them warmed up and help calm their nerves before hitting the hard stuff. One of those easier questions was almost always: “Name some benefits of object-oriented development.”  Nearly every time, the candidate would chime in with a plethora of canned answers which typically included: “it helps ease code reuse.”  Of course, this is a gross oversimplification.  Tools only ease reuse, its developers that ultimately can cause code to be reusable or not, regardless of the language or methodology. But it did get me thinking…  we always used to say that as part of our mantra as to why Object-Oriented Programming was so great.  With polymorphism, inheritance, encapsulation, etc. we in essence set up the concepts to help facilitate reuse as much as possible.  And yes, as a developer now of many years, I unquestionably held that belief for ages before it really struck me how my views on reuse have jaded over the years.  In fact, in many ways Agile rightly eschews reuse as taking a backseat to developing what's needed for the here and now.  It used to be I was in complete opposition to that view, but more and more I've come to see the logic in it.  Too many times I've seen developers (myself included) get lost in design paralysis trying to come up with the perfect abstraction that would stand all time.  Nearly without fail, all of these pieces of code become obsolete in a matter of months or years. It’s not that I don’t like reuse – it’s just that reuse is hard.  In fact, reuse is DAMN hard.  Many times it is just a distraction that eats up architect and developer time, and worse yet can be counter-productive and force wrong decisions.  Now don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of reusable code when it makes sense.  These are in the few cases where you are designing something that is inherently reusable.  The problem is, most business-class code is inherently unfit for reuse! Furthermore, the code that is reusable will often fail to be reused if you don’t have the proper framework in place for effective reuse that includes standardized versioning, building, releasing, and documenting the components.  That should always be standard across the board when promoting reusable code.  All of this is hard, and it should only be done when you have code that is truly reusable or you will be exerting a large amount of development effort for very little bang for your buck. But my goal here is not to get into how to reuse (that is a topic unto itself) but what should be reused.  First, let’s look at an extension method.  There’s many times where I want to kick off a thread to handle a task, then when I want to reign that thread in of course I want to do a Join on it.  But what if I only want to wait a limited amount of time and then Abort?  Well, I could of course write that logic out by hand each time, but it seemed like a great extension method: 1: public static class ThreadExtensions 2: { 3: public static bool JoinOrAbort(this Thread thread, TimeSpan timeToWait) 4: { 5: bool isJoined = false; 6:  7: if (thread != null) 8: { 9: isJoined = thread.Join(timeToWait); 10:  11: if (!isJoined) 12: { 13: thread.Abort(); 14: } 15: } 16: return isJoined; 17: } 18: } 19:  When I look at this code, I can immediately see things that jump out at me as reasons why this code is very reusable.  Some of them are standard OO principles, and some are kind-of home grown litmus tests: Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) – The only reason this extension method need change is if the Thread class itself changes (one responsibility). Stable Dependencies Principle (SDP) – This method only depends on classes that are more stable than it is (System.Threading.Thread), and in itself is very stable, hence other classes may safely depend on it. It is also not dependent on any business domain, and thus isn't subject to changes as the business itself changes. Open-Closed Principle (OCP) – This class is inherently closed to change. Small and Stable Problem Domain – This method only cares about System.Threading.Thread. All-or-None Usage – A user of a reusable class should want the functionality of that class, not parts of that functionality.  That’s not to say they most use every method, but they shouldn’t be using a method just to get half of its result. Cost of Reuse vs. Cost to Recreate – since this class is highly stable and minimally complex, we can offer it up for reuse very cheaply by promoting it as “ready-to-go” and already unit tested (important!) and available through a standard release cycle (very important!). Okay, all seems good there, now lets look at an entity and DAO.  I don’t know about you all, but there have been times I’ve been in organizations that get the grand idea that all DAOs and entities should be standardized and shared.  While this may work for small or static organizations, it’s near ludicrous for anything large or volatile. 1: namespace Shared.Entities 2: { 3: public class Account 4: { 5: public int Id { get; set; } 6:  7: public string Name { get; set; } 8:  9: public Address HomeAddress { get; set; } 10:  11: public int Age { get; set;} 12:  13: public DateTime LastUsed { get; set; } 14:  15: // etc, etc, etc... 16: } 17: } 18:  19: ... 20:  21: namespace Shared.DataAccess 22: { 23: public class AccountDao 24: { 25: public Account FindAccount(int id) 26: { 27: // dao logic to query and return account 28: } 29:  30: ... 31:  32: } 33: } Now to be fair, I’m not saying there doesn’t exist an organization where some entites may be extremely static and unchanging.  But at best such entities and DAOs will be problematic cases of reuse.  Let’s examine those same tests: Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) – The reasons to change for these classes will be strongly dependent on what the definition of the account is which can change over time and may have multiple influences depending on the number of systems an account can cover. Stable Dependencies Principle (SDP) – This method depends on the data model beneath itself which also is largely dependent on the business definition of an account which can be very inherently unstable. Open-Closed Principle (OCP) – This class is not really closed for modification.  Every time the account definition may change, you’d need to modify this class. Small and Stable Problem Domain – The definition of an account is inherently unstable and in fact may be very large.  What if you are designing a system that aggregates account information from several sources? All-or-None Usage – What if your view of the account encompasses data from 3 different sources but you only care about one of those sources or one piece of data?  Should you have to take the hit of looking up all the other data?  On the other hand, should you have ten different methods returning portions of data in chunks people tend to ask for?  Neither is really a great solution. Cost of Reuse vs. Cost to Recreate – DAOs are really trivial to rewrite, and unless your definition of an account is EXTREMELY stable, the cost to promote, support, and release a reusable account entity and DAO are usually far higher than the cost to recreate as needed. It’s no accident that my case for reuse was a utility class and my case for non-reuse was an entity/DAO.  In general, the smaller and more stable an abstraction is, the higher its level of reuse.  When I became the lead of the Shared Components Committee at my workplace, one of the original goals we looked at satisfying was to find (or create), version, release, and promote a shared library of common utility classes, frameworks, and data access objects.  Now, of course, many of you will point to nHibernate and Entity for the latter, but we were looking at larger, macro collections of data that span multiple data sources of varying types (databases, web services, etc). As we got deeper and deeper in the details of how to manage and release these items, it quickly became apparent that while the case for reuse was typically a slam dunk for utilities and frameworks, the data access objects just didn’t “smell” right.  We ended up having session after session of design meetings to try and find the right way to share these data access components. When someone asked me why it was taking so long to iron out the shared entities, my response was quite simple, “Reuse is hard...”  And that’s when I realized, that while reuse is an awesome goal and we should strive to make code maintainable, often times you end up creating far more work for yourself than necessary by trying to force code to be reusable that inherently isn’t. Think about classes the times you’ve worked in a company where in the design session people fight over the best way to implement a class to make it maximally reusable, extensible, and any other buzzwordable.  Then think about how quickly that design became obsolete.  Many times I set out to do a project and think, “yes, this is the best design, I can extend it easily!” only to find out the business requirements change COMPLETELY in such a way that the design is rendered invalid.  Code, in general, tends to rust and age over time.  As such, writing reusable code can often be difficult and many times ends up being a futile exercise and worse yet, sometimes makes the code harder to maintain because it obfuscates the design in the name of extensibility or reusability. So what do I think are reusable components? Generic Utility classes – these tend to be small classes that assist in a task and have no business context whatsoever. Implementation Abstraction Frameworks – home-grown frameworks that try to isolate changes to third party products you may be depending on (like writing a messaging abstraction layer for publishing/subscribing that is independent of whether you use JMS, MSMQ, etc). Simplification and Uniformity Frameworks – To some extent this is similar to an abstraction framework, but there may be one chosen provider but a development shop mandate to perform certain complex items in a certain way.  Or, perhaps to simplify and dumb-down a complex task for the average developer (such as implementing a particular development-shop’s method of encryption). And what are less reusable? Application and Business Layers – tend to fluctuate a lot as requirements change and new features are added, so tend to be an unstable dependency.  May be reused across applications but also very volatile. Entities and Data Access Layers – these tend to be tuned to the scope of the application, so reusing them can be hard unless the abstract is very stable. So what’s the big lesson?  Reuse is hard.  In fact it’s damn hard.  And much of the time I’m not convinced we should focus too hard on it. If you’re designing a utility or framework, then by all means design it for reuse.  But you most also really set down a good versioning, release, and documentation process to maximize your chances.  For anything else, design it to be maintainable and extendable, but don’t waste the effort on reusability for something that most likely will be obsolete in a year or two anyway.

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• Windows Azure ASP.NET MVC 2 Role with Silverlight

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

  I was working through some scenarios recently with Azure and Silverlight.  I immediately decided a quick walk through for setting up a Silverlight Application running in an ASP.NET MVC 2 Application would be a cool project. This walk through I have Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight 4, and the Azure SDK all installed.  If you need to download any of those go get em? now. Launch Visual Studio 2010 and start a new project.  Click on the section for cloud templates as shown below. After you name the project, the dialog for what type of Windows Azure Cloud Service Role will display.  I selected ASP.NET MVC 2 Web Role, which adds the MvcWebRole1 Project to the Cloud Service Solution. Since I selected the ASP.NET MVC 2 Project type, it immediately prompts for a unit test project.  Because I just want to get everything running first, I will probably be unit testing the Silverlight and just using the MVC Project as a host for the Silverlight for now, and because I would prefer to just add the unit test project later, I am going to select no here. Once you've created the ASP.NET MVC 2 project to host the Silverlight, then create another new project.  Select the Silverlight section under the Installed Templates in the Add New Project dialog.  Then select Silverlight Application. The next dialog that comes up will inquire about using the existing ASP.NET MVC Application I just created, which I do want it to use that so I leave it checked.  The options section however I do not want to check RIA Web Services, do not want a test page added to the project, and I want Silverlight debugging enabled so I leave that checked.  Once those options are appropriately set, just click on OK and the Silverlight Project will be added to the overall solution. The next steps now are to get the Silverlight object appropriately embedded in the web page.  First open up the Site.Master file in the ASP.NET MVC 2 Project located under the Veiws/Shared/ location.  After you open the file review the content of the <header></header> section.  In that section add another <contentplaceholder></contentplaceholder> tag as shown in the code snippet below. <head runat="server"> <title> <asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="TitleContent" runat="server" /> </title> <link href="../../Content/Site.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="HeaderContent" runat="server" /> </head> I usually put it toward the bottom of the header section.  It just seems the <title></title> should be on the top of the section and I like to keep it that way. Now open up the Index.aspx page under the ASP.NET MVC 2 Project located in the Views/Home/ directory.  When you open up that file add a <asp:Content><asp:Content> tag as shown in the next snippet. <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="TitleContent" runat="server"> Home Page </asp:Content>   <asp:Content ID=headerContent ContentPlaceHolderID=HeaderContent runat=server>   </asp:Content>   <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server"> <h2><%= Html.Encode(ViewData["Message"]) %></h2> <p> To learn more about ASP.NET MVC visit <a href="http://asp.net/mvc" title="ASP.NET MVC Website">http://asp.net/mvc</a>. </p> </asp:Content> In that center tag, I am now going to add what is needed to appropriately embed the Silverlight object into the page.  The first thing I needed is a reference to the Silverlight.js file. <script type="text/javascript" src="Silverlight.js"></script> After that comes a bit of nitty gritty Javascript.  I create another tag (and for those in the know, this is exactly like the generated code that is dumped into the *.html page generated with any Silverlight Project if you select to "add a test page that references the application".  The complete Javascript is below. function onSilverlightError(sender, args) { var appSource = ""; if (sender != null && sender != 0) { appSource = sender.getHost().Source; }   var errorType = args.ErrorType; var iErrorCode = args.ErrorCode;   if (errorType == "ImageError" || errorType == "MediaError") { return; }   var errMsg = "Unhandled Error in Silverlight Application " + appSource + "\n";   errMsg += "Code: " + iErrorCode + " \n"; errMsg += "Category: " + errorType + " \n"; errMsg += "Message: " + args.ErrorMessage + " \n";   if (errorType == "ParserError") { errMsg += "File: " + args.xamlFile + " \n"; errMsg += "Line: " + args.lineNumber + " \n"; errMsg += "Position: " + args.charPosition + " \n"; } else if (errorType == "RuntimeError") { if (args.lineNumber != 0) { errMsg += "Line: " + args.lineNumber + " \n"; errMsg += "Position: " + args.charPosition + " \n"; } errMsg += "MethodName: " + args.methodName + " \n"; }   throw new Error(errMsg); } I literally, since it seems to work fine, just use what is populated in the automatically generated page.  After getting the appropriate Javascript into place I put the actual Silverlight Object Embed code into the HTML itself.  Just so I know the positioning and for final verification when running the application I insert the embed code just below the Index.aspx page message.  As shown below. <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server"> <h2> <%= Html.Encode(ViewData["Message"]) %></h2> <p> To learn more about ASP.NET MVC visit <a href="http://asp.net/mvc" title="ASP.NET MVC Website"> http://asp.net/mvc</a>. </p> <div id="silverlightControlHost"> <object data="data:application/x-silverlight-2," type="application/x-silverlight-2" width="100%" height="100%"> <param name="source" value="ClientBin/CloudySilverlight.xap" /> <param name="onError" value="onSilverlightError" /> <param name="background" value="white" /> <param name="minRuntimeVersion" value="4.0.50401.0" /> <param name="autoUpgrade" value="true" /> <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149156&v=4.0.50401.0" style="text-decoration: none"> <img src="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=161376" alt="Get Microsoft Silverlight" style="border-style: none" /> </a> </object> <iframe id="_sl_historyFrame" style="visibility: hidden; height: 0px; width: 0px; border: 0px"></iframe> </div> </asp:Content> I then open up the Silverlight Project MainPage.xaml.  Just to make it visibly obvious that the Silverlight Application is running in the page, I added a button as shown below. <UserControl x:Class="CloudySilverlight.MainPage" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400">   <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White"> <Button Content="Button" Height="23" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="48,40,0,0" Name="button1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="75" Click="button1_Click" /> </Grid> </UserControl> Just for kicks, I added a message box that would popup, just to show executing functionality also. private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { MessageBox.Show("It runs in the cloud!"); } I then executed the ASP.NET MVC 2 and could see the Silverlight Application in page.  With a quick click of the button, I got a message box.  Success! Now the next step is getting the ASP.NET MVC 2 Project and Silverlight published to the cloud.  As of Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight 4, and the latest Azure SDK, this is actually a ridiculously easy process. Navigate to the Azure Cloud Services web site. Once that is open go back in Visual Studio and right click on the cloud project and select publish. This will publish two files into a directory.  Copy that directory so you can easily paste it into the Azure Cloud Services web site.  You'll have to click on the application role in the cloud (I will have another blog entry soon about where, how, and best practices in the cloud). In the text boxes shown, select the application package file and the configuration file and place them in the appropriate text boxes.  This is the part were it comes in handy to have copied the directory path of the file location.  That way when you click on browser you can just paste that in, then hit enter.  The two files will be listed and you can select the appropriate file. Once that is done, name the service deployment.  Then click on publish.  After a minute or so you will see the following screen. Now click on run.  Once the MvcWebRole1 goes green (the little light symbol to the left of the status) click on the Web Site URL.  Be patient during this process too, it could take a minute or two.  The Silverlight application should again come up just like you ran it on your local machine. Once staging is up and running, click on the circular icon with two arrows to move staging to production.  Once you are done make sure the green light is again go for the production deploy, then click on the Web Site URL to verify the site is working.  At this point I had a successful development, staging, and production deployment. Thanks for reading, hope this was helpful.  I have more Windows Azure and other cloud related material coming, so stay tuned. Original Entry

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Nullable static class

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Today we’re going to look at an interesting Little Wonder that can be used to mitigate what could be considered a Little Pitfall.  The Little Wonder we’ll be examining is the System.Nullable static class.  No, not the System.Nullable<T> class, but a static helper class that has one useful method in particular that we will examine… but first, let’s look at the Little Pitfall that makes this wonder so useful. Little Pitfall: Comparing nullable value types using <, >, <=, >= Examine this piece of code, without examining it too deeply, what’s your gut reaction as to the result? 1: int? x = null; 2:  3: if (x < 100) 4: { 5: Console.WriteLine("True, {0} is less than 100.", 6: x.HasValue ? x.ToString() : "null"); 7: } 8: else 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("False, {0} is NOT less than 100.", 11: x.HasValue ? x.ToString() : "null"); 12: } Your gut would be to say true right?  It would seem to make sense that a null integer is less than the integer constant 100.  But the result is actually false!  The null value is not less than 100 according to the less-than operator. It looks even more outrageous when you consider this also evaluates to false: 1: int? x = null; 2:  3: if (x < int.MaxValue) 4: { 5: // ... 6: } So, are we saying that null is less than every valid int value?  If that were true, null should be less than int.MinValue, right?  Well… no: 1: int? x = null; 2:  3: // um... hold on here, x is NOT less than min value? 4: if (x < int.MinValue) 5: { 6: // ... 7: } So what’s going on here?  If we use greater than instead of less than, we see the same little dilemma: 1: int? x = null; 2:  3: // once again, null is not greater than anything either... 4: if (x > int.MinValue) 5: { 6: // ... 7: } It turns out that four of the comparison operators (<, <=, >, >=) are designed to return false anytime at least one of the arguments is null when comparing System.Nullable wrapped types that expose the comparison operators (short, int, float, double, DateTime, TimeSpan, etc.).  What’s even odder is that even though the two equality operators (== and !=) work correctly, >= and <= have the same issue as < and > and return false if both System.Nullable wrapped operator comparable types are null! 1: DateTime? x = null; 2: DateTime? y = null; 3:  4: if (x <= y) 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("You'd think this is true, since both are null, but it's not."); 7: } 8: else 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("It's false because <=, <, >, >= don't work on null."); 11: } To make matters even more confusing, take for example your usual check to see if something is less than, greater to, or equal: 1: int? x = null; 2: int? y = 100; 3:  4: if (x < y) 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("X is less than Y"); 7: } 8: else if (x > y) 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("X is greater than Y"); 11: } 12: else 13: { 14: // We fall into the "equals" assumption, but clearly null != 100! 15: Console.WriteLine("X is equal to Y"); 16: } Yes, this code outputs “X is equal to Y” because both the less-than and greater-than operators return false when a Nullable wrapped operator comparable type is null.  This violates a lot of our assumptions because we assume is something is not less than something, and it’s not greater than something, it must be equal.  So keep in mind, that the only two comparison operators that work on Nullable wrapped types where at least one is null are the equals (==) and not equals (!=) operators: 1: int? x = null; 2: int? y = 100; 3:  4: if (x == y) 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("False, x is null, y is not."); 7: } 8:  9: if (x != y) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("True, x is null, y is not."); 12: } Solution: The Nullable static class So we’ve seen that <, <=, >, and >= have some interesting and perhaps unexpected behaviors that can trip up a novice developer who isn’t expecting the kinks that System.Nullable<T> types with comparison operators can throw.  How can we easily mitigate this? Well, obviously, you could do null checks before each check, but that starts to get ugly: 1: if (x.HasValue) 2: { 3: if (y.HasValue) 4: { 5: if (x < y) 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine("x < y"); 8: } 9: else if (x > y) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("x > y"); 12: } 13: else 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine("x == y"); 16: } 17: } 18: else 19: { 20: Console.WriteLine("x > y because y is null and x isn't"); 21: } 22: } 23: else if (y.HasValue) 24: { 25: Console.WriteLine("x < y because x is null and y isn't"); 26: } 27: else 28: { 29: Console.WriteLine("x == y because both are null"); 30: } Yes, we could probably simplify this logic a bit, but it’s still horrendous!  So what do we do if we want to consider null less than everything and be able to properly compare Nullable<T> wrapped value types? The key is the System.Nullable static class.  This class is a companion class to the System.Nullable<T> class and allows you to use a few helper methods for Nullable<T> wrapped types, including a static Compare<T>() method of the. What’s so big about the static Compare<T>() method?  It implements an IComparer compatible comparison on Nullable<T> types.  Why do we care?  Well, if you look at the MSDN description for how IComparer works, you’ll read: Comparing null with any type is allowed and does not generate an exception when using IComparable. When sorting, null is considered to be less than any other object. This is what we probably want!  We want null to be less than everything!  So now we can change our logic to use the Nullable.Compare<T>() static method: 1: int? x = null; 2: int? y = 100; 3:  4: if (Nullable.Compare(x, y) < 0) 5: { 6: // Yes! x is null, y is not, so x is less than y according to Compare(). 7: Console.WriteLine("x < y"); 8: } 9: else if (Nullable.Compare(x, y) > 0) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("x > y"); 12: } 13: else 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine("x == y"); 16: } Summary So, when doing math comparisons between two numeric values where one of them may be a null Nullable<T>, consider using the System.Nullable.Compare<T>() method instead of the comparison operators.  It will treat null less than any value, and will avoid logic consistency problems when relying on < returning false to indicate >= is true and so on. Tweet   Technorati Tags: C#,C-Sharp,.NET,Little Wonders,Little Pitfalls,Nulalble

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 12, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 12, 2011Popular ReleasesSizeOnDisk: 1.0.8.4: Fix: Contextual menu failures. Switch to ShellExecuteEx of Win32Api.Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.1 (June 2011) for .NET 4.0: Release of Phalanger 2.1 - the opensource PHP compiler for .NET framework 4.0. Installation package also includes basic version of Phalanger Tools for Visual Studio 2010. This allows you to easily create, build and debug Phalanger web or application inside this ultimate integrated development environment. You can even install the tools into the free Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Integrated). To improve the performance of your application using MySQL, please use Managed MySQL Extension for Phala...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.7: Version: 2.0.0.7 (Milestone 7): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...SimplePlanner: v2.0b: For 2011-2012 Sem 1 ???2011-2012 ????Visual Studio 2010 Help Downloader: 1.0.0.3: Domain name support for proxy Cleanup old packages bug Writing to EventLog with UAC enabled bug Small fixes & RefactoringMedia Companion: MC 3.406b weekly: With this version change a movie rebuild is required when first run -else MC will lock up on exit. Extract the entire archive to a folder which has user access rights, eg desktop, documents etc. Refer to the documentation on this site for the Installation & Setup Guide Important! If you find MC not displaying movie data properly, please try a 'movie rebuild' to reload the data from the nfo's into MC's cache. Fixes Movies Readded movie preference to rename invalid or scene nfo's to info ext...Windows Azure VM Assistant: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5 (Debug) - Test Release VersionNetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.9: Changes: - fix examples (include issue 16026) - add new examples - 32Bit/64Bit Walkthrough is now available in technical Documentation. Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:..............................................................COM Proxy Management, Events, etc. - Examples in C# and VB.Net:............................................................Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access - COMAddi...Reusable Library: V1.1.3: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developerClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.54.0: New on this release: 1) Mayor performance improvements. 2) AdjustToContents now take into account the text rotation. 3) Fixed issues 6782, 6784, 6788HTML-IDEx: HTML-IDEx .15 ALPHA: This release fixes line counting a little bit and adds the masshighlight() sub, which highlights pasted and inserted code.AutoLoL: AutoLoL v2.0.3: - Improved summoner spells are now displayed - Fixed some of the startup errors people got - Double clicking an item selects it - Some usability changes that make using AutoLoL just a little easier - Bug fixes AutoLoL v2 is not an update, but an entirely new version! Please install to a different directory than AutoLoL v1Host Profiles: Host Profiles 1.0: Host Profiles 1.0 Release Quickly modify host file Automatically flush dnsVidCoder: 0.9.2: Updated to HandBrake 4024svn. This fixes problems with mpeg2 sources: corrupted previews, incorrect progress indicators and encodes that incorrectly report as failed. Fixed a problem that prevented target sizes above 2048 MB.SharePoint Search XSL Samples: SharePoint 2010 Samples: I have updated some of the samples from the 2007 release. These all work in SharePoint 2010. I removed the Pivot on File Extension because SharePoint 2010 search has refiners that perform the same function.AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta5: ??AcDown?????????????，??????????????，????、????。?????Acfun????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??v3.0 Beta5 ?????????? ???? ?? ???????? ???"????????"?? ????????????? ????????/???? ?? ???"????"??? ?? ??????????? ?? ?? ??????????? ?? ?????????????????? ??????????????????? ???????????????? ????????????Discussions???????? ????AcDown??????????????VFPX: GoFish 4 Beta 1: Current beta is Build 144 (released 2011-06-07 ) See the GoFish4 info page for details and video link: http://vfpx.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=GoFishShowUI: Write-UI -in PowerShell: ShowUI: ShowUI is a PowerShell module to help you write rich user interfaces in script.SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack: SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack 1.0.3: Fixed User Management screen when "RequiresQuestionAndAnswer" set to true Reply to Email Address can now be customized User Management page now only displays users that reside in the membership database Web parts have been changed to inherit from System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart, so that they will display on anonymous application pages For installation and configuration steps see here.Babylon Toolkit: Babylon.Toolkit v1.0.4: Note about samples: In order to run samples, you need to configure visual studio to run them as an "Out-of-browser application". in order to do that, go to the property page of a sample project, go to the Debug tab, and check the "Out-of-browser application" radio. New features : New Effects BasicEffect3Lights (3 dir lights instead of 1 position light) CartoonEffect (work in progress) SkinnedEffect (with normal and specular map support) SplattingEffect (for multi-texturing with smooth ...New ProjectsAnything Over Anything (Network Tunneling): Tunneling software created using the Reactive Extensions framework! Rx is not just for events!!!BDDocs - Behavior Driven Documentation: An alternative tool to enable project collaboration between stakeholders in a BDD environment. Focuses more on the domain and its implementation then the technical details of the testing framework.Checkin Policies for TFS 2010: More check-in policies for TFS 2010cheese: Projet d'études sur les jeux d'échecs http://davcha.wordpress.comCodeCrusade: Code Crusade is a programming game based around Lua and C#.Dimensional Values: Dimensional Values is a class library that defines units like inch, foot, meter, second, minute, hour, Newton, Pascal, Hertz, etc. that qualify values stored in classes of different dimensions such as the length dimension, the time dimension, the force dimension, etc. The library takes care of unit conversion automatically and produces higher dimension class objects from the mathematical operators (for example, dividing a length dimensional value by a time dimensional value automatically y...Enlight Adventures: Enlight Adventures is a Windows Phone 7 game that is based on the activities of the Enlight Fountain Control Group at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.Expression Tree Serializer: .NET 4.0 and Silverlight 4 class library that serializes and deserializes Expression instances. Also: a WCF IQueryable LINQ Provider and Web Http (REST) client for Silverlight that provides a simplified REST client API (i.e. WCF's WebChannelFactory) that's easier to use than WebClient.F# and C# ASP.NET MVC 3 (Razor) VSIX Project Template Example: This project provides an example of how to create a F# and C# VSIX Project Template made up of a C# ASP.NET MVC 3 web application, a F# Library that contains controllers, models, etc., and a F# Library that can be used to contain unit tests. FreeForm - SilverLight Dynamic Form Builder: FreeForm is a SilverLight4 Dynamic Forms Designer. It is enterprise forms for gathering information and making tools, include a lot of Silverlight4 interface control. Now Give Up InfoPath! TO Use FreeForm! First version online DEMO: http://crmwin.com/TestPage.html?Type=tempInternational Geek Developer Alliance: Take it easy!Kouak - HTTP File Share Server: Kouak is a basic portable file share server over http. He let you share easily files in eterogenous environements and in just few click. He don't need installation and run on every machine from windows xp s2 to windows 7.MARK: MARK is an interpreted programming language, written in PHP, for beginners to learn the fundamentals of programming paradigms. To make learning easier this language cuts the syntactic learning curve out that can hinder learning - hence allowing any beginner to learn the fundamentals of programming easily, whilst having fun with an easy-to-write, powerful programming language.Movie Manager: A tool for personal Movie CollectionNairc: This is a telescope control system project of Nairc.NPD: NPD Trading SystemObjects Library: OLib is a list of objects for programming, Programmers don't have to make alot of own classes anymoreProgressbar Field: The progress bar is typically used when an application performs tasks such as project progress or sales activity. Users of an application might consider an application non-informative if there is no visual cue.PTask: PTask is an API built on the .NET Task API that simplifies the execution in parrallel of dependent units of work. It provides a fluent API for building node dependency structures and executes those structures with the maximum level of parralelization using the thread pool.Quant: quantSharpAuctioneer: A set of classes to parse and read the World of Warcraft Auctioneer Add-On scan data.SimplePlanner: NTU Simple PlannerSiteUnity Framework: SiteUnity Framework makes it easier to build website. The target of framework, write less and simple code to build complex website. For that purpose there are some modules for viewing and managing page. It's develop in Asp.NET using C#, Mssql and Jquery.SMTP Proxy for GMail and Windows Live Mail/Hotmail: GMail and Microsoft Live Mail require encrypted connections (SSL/TLS), but not all software supports SSL/TLS. SmtpProxy accepts unencrypted connections and forwards them to GMail/Live. It runs as a Windows Service and supports ALL email clients. It's developed in C#/.NET4.WipeTouch, a jQuery plugin for touch devices: jQuery plugin for touch wipe events. Detects when user wipes on all 9 directions (top, bottom, left, right and diagonals) and triggers the desired event.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 05, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 05, 2013Popular ReleasesQlikView Extension - Animated Scatter Chart: Animated Scatter Chart - v1.0: Version 1.0 including Source Code qar File Example QlikView application Tested With: Browser Firefox 20 (x64) Google Chrome 27 (x64) Internet Explorer 9 QlikView QlikView Desktop 11 - SR2 (x64) QlikView Desktop 11.2 - SR1 (x64) QlikView Ajax Client 11.2 - SR2 (based on x64)BarbaTunnel: BarbaTunnel 7.2: Warning: HTTP Tunnel is not compatible with version 6.x and prior, HTTP packet format has been changed. Check Version History for more information about this release.Web Pages CMS: 0.5: First public releaseHarvester - Debug Viewer for Trace, NLog & Log4Net: v2.0.1 (.NET 4.0): Minor Updates Fixed incorrect process naming being displayed if process ID reassigned before cache invalidated. Fixed incorrect event type/source for TraceListener.TraceData methods. Updated NLog package references. Official Documentation Moved to GitHub http://cbaxter.github.com/Harvester Official Source Moved to GitHub https://github.com/cbaxter/HarvesterSuperWebSocket, a .NET WebSocket Server: SuperWebSocket 0.8: This release includes these changes below: Upgrade SuperSocket to 1.5.3 which is much more stable Added handshake request validating api (WebSocketServer.ValidateHandshake(TWebSocketSession session, string origin)) Fixed a bug that the m_Filters in the SubCommandBase can be null if the command's method LoadSubCommandFilters(IEnumerable<SubCommandFilterAttribute> globalFilters) is not invoked Fixed the compatibility issue on Origin getting in the different version protocols Marked ISub...Impulse Media Player: Impulse Media Player 3.3.1.0: EchoNest Analyzer introduced Similar track feature (social tab) Last played tracks can be removed permanently pitch / tempo bar can be hiddenBlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.0: 2013.06.04 Ver5.9.0 (1) ?????????????????????????????????($Remote.ini Tmp.ini) (2) ThreadBaseTest?? (3) ????POP3??????SMTP???????????????? (4) Web???????、?????????URL??????????????? (5) Ftp???????、LIST?????????????? (6) ?????????????????????Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.569b: New* Movies - Autoscrape/Batch Rescrape extra fanart and or extra thumbs. * Movies - Alternative editor can add manually actors. * TV - Batch Rescraper, AutoScrape extrafanart, if option enabled. Fixed* Movies - Slow performance switching to movie tab by adding option 'Disable "Not Matching Rename Pattern"' to Movie Preferences - General. * Movies - Fixed only actors with images were scraped and added to nfo * Movies - Fixed filter reset if selected tab was above Home Movies. * Updated Medi...Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v9.0: Version 9.0 of Nearforums with great new features for users and developers: SQL Azure support Admin UI for Forum Categories Avoid html validation for certain roles Improve profile picture moderation and support Warn, suspend, and ban users Web administration of site settings Extensions support Visit the Roadmap for more details. Webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 9.0.0.0: e687ee0438cd2b1df1d3e95ecb9d66e7c538293b eReading: eReading: ????，??CPU???????。 ??????????。Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.93: Added -esc:BOOL switch (CodeSettings.AlwaysEscapeNonAscii property) to always force non-ASCII character (ch > 0x7f) to be escaped as the JavaScript \uXXXX sequence. This switch should be used if creating a Symbol Map and outputting the result to the a text encoding other than UTF-8 or UTF-16 (ASCII, for instance). Fixed a bug where a complex comma operation is the operand of a return statement, and it was looking at the wrong variable for possible optimization of = to just .VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.42: changes NEW: Added Support for "GatASexyCity.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgCloud.co" links NEW: Added Support for "ImGirl.info" links NEW: Added Support for "SexyImg.com" links FIXED: "ImageBam.com" linksDocument.Editor: 2013.22: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.22: Improved Bullet List support Improved Number List support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsCarrotCake, an ASP.Net WebForms CMS: Binaries and PDFs - Zip Archive (v. 4.3 20130528): Features include a content management system and a robust featured blogging engine. This includes configurable date based blog post URLs, blog post content association with categories and tags, assignment/customization of category and tag URL patterns, simple blog post feedback collection and review, blog post pagination/indexes, designation of default blog page (required to make search, category links, or tag links function), URL date formatting patterns, RSS feed support for posts and pages...PHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.9: See Change Log for details of the new features and bugfixes included in this release, and methods that are now deprecated.Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.10 Beta: Fixed issue with some people having a folder called "android-4.2.2" in their build-tools path. - 16223 patterns & practices: Data Access Guidance: Data Access Guidance Drop3 2013.05.31: Drop 3DotNet.Highcharts: DotNet.Highcharts 2.0 with Examples: DotNet.Highcharts 2.0 Tested and adapted to the latest version of Highcharts 3.0.1 Added new chart types: Arearange, Areasplinerange, Columnrange, Gauge, Boxplot, Waterfall, Funnel and Bubble Added new type PercentageOrPixel which represents value of number or number with percentage. Used for sizes, width, height, length, etc. Removed inheritances in YAxis option classes. Closed issues: 682: Missing property - XAxisPlotLinesLabel.Text 688: backgroundColor and plotBackgroundColor are...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 6.1.1: Source codeLooking for the source code? We're not uploading that as a zip file any more because you can already get it from CodePlex, click this link and hit the "Download" link. BlogRead the release blog post for 6.1.0. Read the release blog post for 6.1.1. Getting Started Read the installation documentation: http://our.umbraco.org/documentation/Installation/ Check the free foundation videos on how to get started building Umbraco sites. They're available from: Introduction for webmasters:...Composite C1 CMS - Open Source on .NET: Composite C1 4.0 (release candidate): Composite C1 4.0 (4.0.4897.31550) (release candidate) Write a review for this release Getting started If you are new to Composite C1 and want to install it: http://docs.composite.net/Getting-started What's new in Composite C1 4.0 The following are highlights of major changes since Composite C1 3.2: General user features: Uploads up to 512MB accepted in the media archive New “Block Selector” in Visual Editor – enable users to create styled div, blockquote etc. elements (not yet availabl...New ProjectsApiDoc: ApiDoc is a library for creating your own API documentation similar to the MSDN directly from your assembly and /// Xml comments without source code.Associativy Internal Link Graph Builder: Orchard module for automatically creating Associativy graphs (http://associativy.com/) from internal links.Azure Business App Scale Proof of Concepts: This is actually a series of proof of concept demo applications built to demonstrate scale of particular architecture or application designs. Badr: .Net Web Framework: Simple, Database-driven, Multiplatform, .Net web frameworkCalcolo di Integrali con approssimazioni: Integrali Metodo dei Trapezi Metodo dei Rettangoli Metodo delle Parabole Metodo di Montecarlo Integralsconfiguration: a full function configuration system based on .netCron Expression Descriptor: "Translate" a Cron Expression in a human readable format. Support databinding, and creation of the expression and Quartz.NET jobs schedulerDaphne Web Edition: The Daphne Web Edition of software for professional checkers players running in a browser.Entity framework T4 NHibernate mapping generator: This project contains T4 templates to create POCOs + NHibernate mappings from an Entity Framework Model (.edmx).EWS Streaming Notification Sample Application: Sample application showing how to handle multiple subscriptions using streaming notifications, specifically for Exchange 2013 (or Wave 15 of Office 365).EXACT_EXTENSION: This is project to support Account System in International SchoolsIPS Training: Playing around with Joe to teach some programming.jean0604wordpressmercurial: dfdafdaLenic.DI: Lenic.DI -- Another IOC Container Library Using DelegateManage Azure Srevice: This project is a windows form application to manage azure service and deployments.Microsoft dot Net Lab: This project concentrates into a Lab a large web project based on Microsoft Best Practices and info on “what works” and more what should be avoided in Prod env.Miris Human Milk Analyser: This is a DEMO project ONLYMultilingual call each other: Multilingual call each othernBlade: A Dependency Injection Container.nChart: A JavaScript Chart Library Base on D3.jsnCMS: A Content Management System.nReport: A JavaScript Report Library.nTemplate: A Template Engine.searchLocal: search localT4 Unit Test Constructor: T4 Unit Test Constructor is a Text Transform file that generates complete Unit Testing project based on siblings projects inside a solution.v3r137: m0l3cUL4r dyN4MiC2 5iMul47i0N u5IN9 V3Rl37 iN739r47I0N. vi5U4li23 p4R7ICL32 8y 0P3n9l P0iN7 5prI73. U23 0P3NMp 4nd 0p3NCl f0r 5p33D.Virtual Sport for Sport Team: This is the website to manage a sports team. Through this website you can manage the members of the team, from players to staff, schedules, and more. and for suWindows Azure MultiSite Role: This web role allows you to host multiple websites on the same VM instances, and synchronising the files automatically.WuvOverlay: An overlay for the game Guild Wars 2 to display useful information obtained from the public API.XYZ: XYZ

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• Using the OAM Mobile & Social SDK to secure native mobile apps - Part 2 : OAM Mobile & Social Server configuration

  - by kanishkmahajan

  Objective  In the second part of this blog post I'll now cover configuration of OAM to secure our sample native apps developed using the iOS SDK. First, here are some key server side concepts: Application Profiles: An application profile is a logical representation of your application within OAM server. It could be a web (html/javascript) or native (iOS or Android) application. Applications may have different requirements for AuthN/AuthZ, and therefore each application that interacts with OAM Mobile & Social REST services must be uniquely defined. Service Providers: Service providers represent the back end services that are accessed by applications. With OAM Mobile & Social these services are in the areas of authentication, authorization and user profile access. A Service Provider then defines a type or class of service for authentication, authorization or user profiles. For example, the JWTAuthentication provider performs authentication and returns JWT (JSON Web Tokens) to the application. In contrast, the OAMAuthentication also provides authentication but uses OAM SSO tokens Service Profiles:  A Service Profile is a logical envelope that defines a service endpoint URL for a service provider for the OAM Mobile & Social Service. You can create multiple service profiles for a service provider to define token capabilities and service endpoints. Each service provider instance requires atleast one corresponding service profile.The  OAM Mobile & Social Service includes a pre-configured service profile for each pre-configured service provider. Service Domains: Service domains bind together application profiles and service profiles with an optional security handler. So now let's configure the OAM server. Additional details are in the OAM Documentation and this post simply provides an outline of configuration tasks required to configure OAM for securing native apps.  Configuration  Create The Application Profile Log on to the Oracle Access Management console and from System Configuration -> Mobile and Social -> Mobile Services, select "Create" under Application Profiles. You would do this  step twice - once for each of the native apps - AvitekInventory and AvitekScheduler. Enter the parameters for the new Application profile: Name:  The application name. In this example we use 'InventoryApp' for the AvitekInventory app and 'SchedulerApp' for the AvitekScheduler app. The application name configured here must match the application name in the settings for the deployed iOS application. BaseSecret: Enter a password here. This does not need to match any existing password. It is used as an encryption key between the client and the OAM server.  Mobile Configuration: Enable this checkbox for any mobile applications. This enables the SDK to collect and send Mobile specific attributes to the OAM server.  Webview: Controls the type of browser that the iOS application will use. The embedded browser (default) will render the browser within the application. External will use the system standalone browser. External can sometimes be preferable for debugging URLScheme: The URL scheme associated with the iOS apps that is also used as a custom URL scheme to register O/S handlers that will take control when OAM transfers control to device. For the AvitekInventory and the AvitekScheduler apps I used osa:// and client:// respectively. You set this scheme in Xcode while developing your iOS Apps under Info->URL Types.  Bundle Identifier : The fully qualified name of your iOS application. You typically set this when you create a new Xcode project or under General->Identity in Xcode. For the AvitekInventory and AvitekScheduler apps these were com.us.oracle.AvitekInventory and com.us.oracle.AvitekScheduler respectively.  Create The Service Domain Select create under Service domains. Create a name for your domain (AvitekDomain is what I've used). The name configured must match the service domain set in the iOS application settings. Under "Application Profile Selection" click the browse button. Choose the application profiles that you created in the previous step one by one. Set the InventoryApp as the SSO agent (with an automatic priority of 1) and the SchedulerApp as the SSO client. This associates these applications with this service domain and configures them in a 'circle of trust'.  Advance to the next page of the wizard to configure the services for this domain. For this example we will use the following services:  Authentication:   This will use the JWT (JSON Web Token) format authentication provider. The iOS application upon successful authentication will receive a signed JWT token from OAM Mobile & Social service. This token will be used in subsequent calls to OAM. Use 'MobileOAMAuthentication' here. Authorization:  The authorization provider. The SDK makes calls to this provider endpoint to obtain authorization decisions on resource requests. Use 'OAMAuthorization' here. User Profile Service:  This is the service that provides user profile services (attribute lookup, attribute modification). It can be any directory configured as a data source in OAM.  And that's it! We're done configuring our native apps. In the next section, let's look at some additional features that were mentioned in the earlier post that are automated by the SDK for the app developer i.e. these are areas that require no additional coding by the app developer when developing with the SDK as they only require server side configuration: Additional Configuration  Offline Authentication Select this option in the service domain configuration to allow users to log in and authenticate to the application locally. Clear the box to block users from authenticating locally. Strong Authentication By simply selecting the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin while configuring mobile related Service Domains, the OAM Mobile&Social service allows sophisticated device and client application registration logic as well as the advanced risk and fraud analysis logic found in OAAM to be applied to mobile authentication. Let's look at some scenarios where the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin gets used. First, when we configure OAM and OAAM to integrate together using the TAP scheme, then that integration kicks off by selecting the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin in the mobile service domain. This is how the mobile device is now prompted for KBA,OTP etc depending on the TAP scheme integration and the OAM users registered in the OAAM database. Second, when we configured the service domain, there were claim attributes there that are already pre-configured in OAM Mobile&Social service and we simply accepted the default values- these are the set of attributes that will be fetched from the device and passed to the server during registration/authentication as device profile attributes. When a mobile application requests a token through the Mobile Client SDK, the SDK logic will send the Device Profile attributes as a part of an HTTP request. This set of Device Profile attributes enhances security by creating an audit trail for devices that assists device identification. When the OAAM Security Plug-in is used, a particular combination of Device Profile attribute values is treated as a device finger print, known as the Digital Finger Print in the OAAM Administration Console. Each finger print is assigned a unique fingerprint number. Each OAAM session is associated with a finger print and the finger print makes it possible to log (and audit) the devices that are performing authentication and token acquisition. Finally, if the jail broken option is selected while configuring an application profile, the SDK detects a device is jail broken based on configured policy and if the OAAM handler is configured the plug-in can allow or block access to client device depending on the OAAM policy as well as detect blacklisted, lost or stolen devices and send a wipeout command that deletes all the mobile &social relevant data and blocks the device from future access. 1024x768 Social Logins Finally, let's complete this post by adding configuration to configure social logins for mobile applications. Although the Avitek sample apps do not demonstrate social logins this would be an ideal exercise for you based on the sample code provided in the earlier post. I'll cover the server side configuration here (with Facebook as an example) and you can retrofit the code to accommodate social logins by following the steps outlined in "Invoking Authentication Services" and add code in LoginViewController and maybe create a new delegate - AvitekRPDelegate based on the description in the previous post. So, here all you will need to do is configure an application profile for social login, configure a new service domain that uses the social login application profile, register the app on Facebook and finally configure the Facebook OAuth provider in OAM with those settings. Navigate to Mobile and Social, click on "Internet Identity Services" and create a new application profile. Here are the relevant parameters for the new application profile (-also we're not registering the social user in OAM with this configuration below, however that is a key feature as well): Name:  The application name. This must match the name of the of mobile application profile created for your application under Mobile Services. We used InventoryApp for this example. SharedSecret: Enter a password here. This does not need to match any existing password. It is used as an encryption key between the client and the OAM Mobile and Social service.  Mobile Application Return URL: After the Relying Party (social) login, the OAM Mobile & Social service will redirect to the iOS application using this URI. This is defined under Info->URL type and we used 'osa', so we define this here as 'osa://' Login Type: Choose to allow only internet identity authentication for this exercise. Authentication Service Endpoint : Make sure that /internetidentityauthentication is selected. Login to http://developers.facebook.com using your Facebook account and click on Apps and register the app as InventoryApp. Note that the consumer key and API secret gets generated automatically by the Facebook OAuth server. Navigate back to OAM and under Mobile and Social, click on "Internet Identity Services" and edit the Facebook OAuth Provider. Add the consumer key and API secret from the Facebook developers site to the Facebook OAuth Provider: Navigate to Mobile Services. Click on New to create a new service domain. In this example we call the domain "AvitekDomainRP". The type should be 'Mobile Application' and the application credential type 'User Token'. Add the application "InventoryApp" to the domain. Advance the next page of the wizard. Select the  default service profiles but ensure that the Authentication Service is set to 'InternetIdentityAuthentication'. Finish the creation of the service domain.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 03, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 03, 2011Popular ReleasesFlagConsole: 1.0.1: BUGFIXES: - Fixed a bug, which caused the label not to draw a word, if it had the same length as the label's length.Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v7.0: Version 7.0 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine, containing new features: UI: Flexible layout to handle both list and table-like template layouts. Theming - Visual choice of themes: Deliver some templates on installation, export/import functionality, preview. Allow site owners to choose default list sort order for the forums. Forum latest activity. Visit the project Roadmap for more details.?????????? - ????????: All-In-One Code Framework ??? 2011-11-02: http://download.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1codechs&DownloadId=216140 ??????，11??，?????20????Microsoft OneCode Sample，????6?Program Language Sample，2?Windows Base Sample，2?GDI+ Sample，4?Internet Explorer Sample?6?ASP.NET Sample。?????????????。 ????，?????。http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=128165 Program Language CSImageFullScreenSlideShow VBImageFullScreenSlideShow CSDynamicallyBuildLambdaExpressionWithFie...Python Tools for Visual Studio: 1.1 Alpha: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.1 Alpha. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python programming language. This release includes new core IDE features, a couple of new sample libraries for interacting with Kinect and Excel, and many bug fixes for issues reported since the release of 1.0. For the core IDE features we’ve added many new features which improve the basic edit...BExplorer (Better Explorer): Better Explorer 2.0.0.631 Alpha: Changelog: Added: Some new functions in ribbon Added: Possibility to choose displayed columns Added: Basic Search Fixed: Some bugs after navigation Fixed: Attempt to fix slow navigation and slow start Known issues: - BreadcrumbBar fails on some situations - Basic search not work quite well in some situations Please if anyone find bugs be kind and report them at the Issue Tracker! Thanks!DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.04: Major Highlights Fixed issue with upgrades on systems that had upgraded the Telerik library to 6.0.0 Fixed issue with Razor Host upgrade to 5.6.3 The logic for module administration checks contains incorrect logic in 1 place, opening the possibility of a user with edit permissions gaining access to functionality they should not have through a particularly crafted url Security FixesBrowsers support the ability to remember common strings such as usernames/addresses etc. Code was adde...Terminals: Version 2.0 - Beta 2 Release: The team has finally put the nail into the official release date for version 2.0. As bugs are winding down on the 2.0 Roadmap we decided to push out another build - the first 2.0 Beta build. Please take time to use and abuse this release. We left logging in place, and this is a debug build so be sure to submit your logs on each bug reported, and please do report all bugs! Check the source code page on the site, this beta includes all commits since (and including) the 90428 check-in back i...iTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.4.4322: Added German (unverified, apologies if incorrect) Properly source invariant resources with correct resIDs Replaced obsolete lyric providers with working providers Fix Pseudolater to correctly morph every third char Fix null reference in CatalogBaseTrack Folder Changes: Track Folder Changes 1.0: Track Folder Changes 1.0 (binary)Devpad: 4.6: Whats new for Devpad 4.6: New Recent Files New Run in Safari Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsWindows Workflow Foundation on Codeplex: Microsoft.Activities v1.8.8: Microsoft.Activities Overview How do I install Microsoft.Activities? Updates in this release9318Technical Analysis Engine for .NET: Technical Analysis Engine 1.25: What's new in the 1.25 release (2011-11-01): - Added Williams %R indicator - Added Moving Average Envelopes indicatorBoxWorld: BoxWorld_2011.10.30: BoxWorld - 8.0.1110.30 This is the initial release of BoxWorld. I'd recommend downloading the installer as it contains the compiled code and everything all nicely contained. By default, you end up with this directory structure: C:\Program Files\ViperWorks\BoxWorld C:\Program Files\ViperWorks\BoxWorld\Data C:\Program Files\ViperWorks\BoxWorld\Interface C:\Program Files\ViperWorks\BoxWorld\Source In the root you have the compiled EXE files, one for the main release, one for the LITE release ...VidCoder: 1.2.1: Fixed a couple regressions: video encoder was blank in queue and crashes with the High Profile preset when opening the Settings window. Fixed problem with auto-update introduced in 1.2.0. If you have 1.2.0 you will need to update manually to get this.AssaultCube Reloaded: Release 2.3: THE RELEASE YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR! IT CAN NOW BE CONSIDERED STABLE Linux has Debian 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, download the Linux package. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your own for linux (source included) If you are using Windows and require the source code, download the source package!A Microblog API (SINA weibo.com open API in C#, .Net???????API): AMicroblogAPI v1.0: AMicroBlogAPI is a C# implementation, a strong-typed deep encapsulation, a easy-to-use .net wrapper of SINA microblog API v1.0. App developers no longer need to parse various HTTP responses -- all responses are parsed into strong types; No longer need to construt the request query strings -- just simply gives the values of parameters; No longer need to implement the OAuth -- a single call could logs the user on. In this release (AMicroblogAPI v1.0), all basic data APIs are implemented. For ...patterns & practices: Enterprise Library Contrib: Enterprise Library Contrib - 5.0 (Oct 2011): This release of Enterprise Library Contrib is based on the Microsoft patterns & practices Enterprise Library 5.0 core and contains the following: Common extensionsTypeConfigurationElement<T> - A Polymorphic Configuration Element without having to be part of a PolymorphicConfigurationElementCollection. AnonymousConfigurationElement - A Configuration element that can be uniquely identified without having to define its name explicitly. Data Access Application Block extensionsMySql Provider - ...Network Monitor Open Source Parsers: Network Monitor Parsers 3.4.2748: The Network Monitor Parsers packages contain parsers for more than 400 network protocols, including RFC based public protocols and protocols for Microsoft products defined in the Microsoft Open Specifications for Windows and SQL Server. NetworkMonitor_Parsers.msi is the base parser package which defines parsers for commonly used public protocols and protocols for Microsoft Windows. In this release, NetowrkMonitor_Parsers.msi continues to improve quality and fix bugs. It has included the fo...Duckworth Lewis Professional Edition Calculator: DLcalc 3.0: DLcalc 3.0 can perform Duckworth/Lewis Professional Edition calculations 100% accurately. It also produces over-by-over and ball-by-ball PAR score tables.Media Companion: MC 3.420b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Movies Fixed: Fanart and poster scraping issues TV Shows (Re)Added: Rebuild single show Fixed: Issue when shows are moved from original location Ability to handle " for actor nicknames Crash when episode name contains "<" (does not scrape yet) Clears fanart when switch...New ProjectsASP.NET MVC fluent validation framework: FluentMvc allow you to create validatable models without using any validation attributes.BeanPermutator: The BeanPermutator library provides a robust permutations engine. It was designed with framework API, optimal performance, and memory usage in mind. For performance, the implementation is modeled after STL's next_permutation; except with added support for conditional result sets.Cicero: Cicero is a library/application to programmatically analyze managed crash dumps. It provides a managed API to load dumps and look at managed objects, using [url:SOS|http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb190764.aspx] under the covers.CodePlex Windows Phone App: This project deals with how to browse efficently through codeplex website using windows phone capabilities.Collage: A photo collage screensaver.Docs Professional Archiving System: This application basically provides a professional audit compliant archiving system with storage service.EBSCOLunch: This app simply shows ebsco's lunch menu. It runs in the system tray and when clicked on shows today's cafeteria specials.Emesary: C# Interobject communication and application mssaging: Simple quick and efficient class based interobject communcation to allow decoupled disparate parts of a system to function together without knowing about each, e.g GUI, DB and business logic.Enterprise Data Entry, Reporting and Analysis Tool: This project will have app with different modules that will show the interface tools functions based on the designation of an employee as defined in Active Directory. Example: A team manager can view all the details regarding his immediate subordinates. Financial date and time libary: Date and time routines that know about holidays, rolling conventions, and day count fractions.Frame Work Model by Patán: Proyecto de modelado de FrameworkIttxa: Is in Alpha releaseKooboo CMS data sync module: Kooboo cms data export / import module.MetroBlog: A Windows 8 Metro inspired blog. Mosque: In the name of GOD this is a portalMPO tools: A .net library for parsing .mpo stereo images (in Multi-Picture Format).mytest5: my testtttttttttNetflix MVP Example: Example .NET movie application using the MVP pattern with windows forms and WPF. Uses the Netflix Odata service to get movie information.OpenStreetMap2Oracle: OpenStreetMap2Oracle is a windows application, which exports OpenStreetMap Data (*.osm - files) in an oracle database. The geometries will be stored in oracle's SDO_GEOMETRY datatype. It is developed in C Sharp with modern WPF - UI. PSRR - Remote Registry PowerShell 3.0 Module: Remote Registry PowerShell Module to manage the registry with Windows PowerShell. This version supports the new improvement in .NET 4 to specify a 32-bit or 64-bit view of the registry with the Microsoft.Win32.RegistryView enumeration when you open base keys.Raptor-Plus-Plus: CS240 class project Reset IPv6: Troubleshooting Pack to reset virtual IPv6 interfaces on Windows 7 (ISATAP, Teredo, IPHTTPS and 6to4)resurection: Game for WP7SharePoint 2010 Google Maps Web Part for Sandbox and Farm Solutions: The Google Maps Web Part lets you quickly and easily add Google Maps to your Microsoft SharePoint 2010 pages. Compatible with SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2010 SP1 and SharePoint Online, via Office 365.SPLight UTL Sharepoint 2010 BackUp / Restore UI: Sharepoint 2010 BackUp / Restore UI Sharepoint 2010 backUp restore user interface site collection backup restore graphical user interfaceVisual Image Processing: Visual Image processing for 2d or 3d real-time video or still image from camera or web cam or scanner ... XNA4LED: XNA 4.0 LED Billboard Example

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• How Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server enable Compliance

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  One of the things that makes Team Foundation Server (TFS) the most powerful Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform is the traceability it provides to those that use it. This traceability is crucial to enable many companies to adhere to many of the Compliance regulations to which they are bound (e.g. CFR 21 Part 11 or Sarbanes–Oxley.)   From something as simple as relating Tasks to Check-in’s or being able to see the top 10 files in your codebase that are causing the most Bugs, to identifying which Bugs and Requirements are in which Release. All that information is available and more in TFS. Although all of this tradability is available within TFS you do need to understand that it is not for free. Well… I say that, but if you are using TFS properly you will have this information with no additional work except for firing up the reporting. Using Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server you can relate every line of code changes all the way up to requirements and back down through Test Cases to the Test Results. Figure: The only thing missing is Build In order to build the relationship model below we need to examine how each of the relationships get there. Each member of your team from programmer to tester and Business Analyst to Business have their roll to play to knit this together. Figure: The relationships required to make this work can get a little confusing If Build is added to this to relate Work Items to Builds and with knowledge of which builds are in which environments you can easily identify what is contained within a Release. Figure: How are things progressing Along with the ability to produce the progress and trend reports the tractability that is built into TFS can be used to fulfil most audit requirements out of the box, and augmented to fulfil the rest. In order to understand the relationships, lets look at each of the important Artifacts and how they are associated with each other… Requirements – The root of all knowledge Requirements are the thing that the business cares about delivering. These could be derived as User Stories or Business Requirements Documents (BRD’s) but they should be what the Business asks for. Requirements can be related to many of the Artifacts in TFS, so lets look at the model: Figure: If the centre of the world was a requirement We can track which releases Requirements were scheduled in, but this can change over time as more details come to light. Figure: Who edited the Requirement and when There is also the ability to query Work Items based on the History of changed that were made to it. This is particularly important with Requirements. It might not be enough to say what Requirements were completed in a given but also to know which Requirements were ever assigned to a particular release. Figure: Some magic required, but result still achieved As an augmentation to this it is also possible to run a query that shows results from the past, just as if we had a time machine. You can take any Query in the system and add a “Asof” clause at the end to query historical data in the operational store for TFS. select <fields> from WorkItems [where <condition>] [order by <fields>] [asof <date>] Figure: Work Item Query Language (WIQL) format In order to achieve this you do need to save the query as a *.wiql file to your local computer and edit it in notepad, but one imported into TFS you run it any time you want. Figure: Saving Queries locally can be useful All of these Audit features are available throughout the Work Item Tracking (WIT) system within TFS. Tasks – Where the real work gets done Tasks are the work horse of the development team, but they only as useful as Excel if you do not relate them properly to other Artifacts. Figure: The Task Work Item Type has its own relationships Requirements should be broken down into Tasks that the development team work from to build what is required by the business. This may be done by a small dedicated group or by everyone that will be working on the software team but however it happens all of the Tasks create should be a Child of a Requirement Work Item Type. Figure: Tasks are related to the Requirement Tasks should be used to track the day-to-day activities of the team working to complete the software and as such they should be kept simple and short lest developers think they are more trouble than they are worth. Figure: Task Work Item Type has a narrower purpose Although the Task Work Item Type describes the work that will be done the actual development work involves making changes to files that are under Source Control. These changes are bundled together in a single atomic unit called a Changeset which is committed to TFS in a single operation. During this operation developers can associate Work Item with the Changeset. Figure: Tasks are associated with Changesets   Changesets – Who wrote this crap Changesets themselves are just an inventory of the changes that were made to a number of files to complete a Task. Figure: Changesets are linked by Tasks and Builds   Figure: Changesets tell us what happened to the files in Version Control Although comments can be changed after the fact, the inventory and Work Item associations are permanent which allows us to Audit all the way down to the individual change level. Figure: On Check-in you can resolve a Task which automatically associates it Because of this we can view the history on any file within the system and see how many changes have been made and what Changesets they belong to. Figure: Changes are tracked at the File level What would be even more powerful would be if we could view these changes super imposed over the top of the lines of code. Some people call this a blame tool because it is commonly used to find out which of the developers introduced a bug, but it can also be used as another method of Auditing changes to the system. Figure: Annotate shows the lines the Annotate functionality allows us to visualise the relationship between the individual lines of code and the Changesets. In addition to this you can create a Label and apply it to a version of your version control. The problem with Label’s is that they can be changed after they have been created with no tractability. This makes them practically useless for any sort of compliance audit. So what do you use? Branches – And why we need them Branches are a really powerful tool for development and release management, but they are most important for audits. Figure: One way to Audit releases The R1.0 branch can be created from the Label that the Build creates on the R1 line when a Release build was created. It can be created as soon as the Build has been signed of for release. However it is still possible that someone changed the Label between this time and its creation. Another better method can be to explicitly link the Build output to the Build. Builds – Lets tie some more of this together Builds are the glue that helps us enable the next level of tractability by tying everything together. Figure: The dashed pieces are not out of the box but can be enabled When the Build is called and starts it looks at what it has been asked to build and determines what code it is going to get and build. Figure: The folder identifies what changes are included in the build The Build sets a Label on the Source with the same name as the Build, but the Build itself also includes the latest Changeset ID that it will be building. At the end of the Build the Build Agent identifies the new Changesets it is building by looking at the Check-ins that have occurred since the last Build. Figure: What changes have been made since the last successful Build It will then use that information to identify the Work Items that are associated with all of the Changesets Changesets are associated with Build and change the “Integrated In” field of those Work Items . Figure: Find all of the Work Items to associate with The “Integrated In” field of all of the Work Items identified by the Build Agent as being integrated into the completed Build are updated to reflect the Build number that successfully integrated that change. Figure: Now we know which Work Items were completed in a build Now that we can link a single line of code changed all the way back through the Task that initiated the action to the Requirement that started the whole thing and back down to the Build that contains the finished Requirement. But how do we know wither that Requirement has been fully tested or even meets the original Requirements? Test Cases – How we know we are done The only way we can know wither a Requirement has been completed to the required specification is to Test that Requirement. In TFS there is a Work Item type called a Test Case Test Cases enable two scenarios. The first scenario is the ability to track and validate Acceptance Criteria in the form of a Test Case. If you agree with the Business a set of goals that must be met for a Requirement to be accepted by them it makes it both difficult for them to reject a Requirement when it passes all of the tests, but also provides a level of tractability and validation for audit that a feature has been built and tested to order. Figure: You can have many Acceptance Criteria for a single Requirement It is crucial for this to work that someone from the Business has to sign-off on the Test Case moving from the  “Design” to “Ready” states. The Second is the ability to associate an MS Test test with the Test Case thereby tracking the automated test. This is useful in the circumstance when you want to Track a test and the test results of a Unit Test designed to test the existence of and then re-existence of a a Bug. Figure: Associating a Test Case with an automated Test Although it is possible it may not make sense to track the execution of every Unit Test in your system, there are many Integration and Regression tests that may be automated that it would make sense to track in this way. Bug – Lets not have regressions In order to know wither a Bug in the application has been fixed and to make sure that it does not reoccur it needs to be tracked. Figure: Bugs are the centre of their own world If the fix to a Bug is big enough to require that it is broken down into Tasks then it is probably a Requirement. You can associate a check-in with a Bug and have it tracked against a Build. You would also have one or more Test Cases to prove the fix for the Bug. Figure: Bugs have many associations This allows you to track Bugs / Defects in your system effectively and report on them. Change Request – I am not a feature In the CMMI Process template Change Requests can also be easily tracked through the system. In some cases it can be very important to track Change Requests separately as an Auditor may want to know what was changed and who authorised it. Again and similar to Bugs, if the Change Request is big enough that it would require to be broken down into Tasks it is in reality a new feature and should be tracked as a Requirement. Figure: Make sure your Change Requests only Affect Requirements and not rewrite them Conclusion Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server together provide an exceptional Application Lifecycle Management platform that can help your team comply with even the harshest of Compliance requirements while still enabling them to be Agile. Most Audits are heavy on required documentation but most of that information is captured for you as long a you do it right. You don’t even need every team member to understand it all as each of the Artifacts are relevant to a different type of team member. Business Analysts manage Requirements and Change Requests Programmers manage Tasks and check-in against Change Requests and Bugs Testers manage Bugs and Test Cases Build Masters manage Builds Although there is some crossover there are still rolls or “hats” that are worn. Do you thing this is all achievable? Have I missed anything that you think should be there?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 28, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 28, 2012Popular ReleasesScreenShot: InstallScreenShot: This is the current stable release..Net Code Samples: Code Samples: Code samples (SLNs).LINQ_Koans: LinqKoans v.02: Cleaned up a bitKeelKit: KeelKit 3.0.7600.638: ?、??MySQL?Model?? Mysql ????? ? http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/ ??? mysql-connector-net-6.5.4.msi ???， VS???KeelKit ???????MySQL , ????????? ?? DemoMySQL.rar ???， ???????????MySqL??Model. ?????? C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Config\machine.config ??? ??????。 <system.data> <DbProviderFactories> <add name="MySQL Data Provider" invariant="MySql.Data.MySqlClient" description=".Net Framework Data Provider for MySQL" type="MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlC...TwitterOAuth: TwitterOauth 0.25.16.0116: Beta releasetesttom05242012git02: d1: d1testdd05242012git001: zxczxc: zxczxczxcCODE Framework: 4.0.20524.0: This release has quite a few enhancements for WPF applications and SOA features. See change logs for more details.CommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8 - Final Release: A collection of very reusable code and components in C# 4.0 ranging from ActiveRecord, Csv, Command Line Parsing, Configuration, Holiday Calendars, Logging, Authentication, and much more. FluentscriptCommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8 contains a scripting language called FluentScript. Application: FluentScript Version: 0.9.8 Build: 0.9.8.4 Changeset: 75050 ( CommonLibrary.NET ) Release date: May 24, 2012 Binaries: CommonLibrary.dll Namespace: ComLib.Lang Project site: http://fluentscript.codeplex.com...System Center Orchestrator Integration Packs: Active Directory 3.2: An integration pack enabling AD Automation 3.2 Updates LDAP Pathing updated to support cross forest scenarios Get Object Property Value Filtering efficiency enhancementsBunch of Small Tools: Mélangeur de vocabulaire japonais: Permet de générer des exercices de vocabulaire aléatoire à partir de listes de vocabulaire japonais. 22 listes sont fournies avec le programme.Expression Tree Visualizer for VS 2010: Expression Tree Visualizer Beta: This is a beta release, in this release some expression types are not handled and use a default visualization behavior. The first release will be published soon. Wait for it...Ulfi: Ulfi source: Build with Visual Studio 2010 Express C# or betterJayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.0 RC1 Refresh 2: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript developers to query and update data from different sources like webSQL, indexedDB, OData, Facebook or YQL. See it in action in this 6 minutes video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlJHgj1y0CU RC1 R2 Release highlights Knockout.js integrationUsing the Knockout.js module, your UI can be automatically refreshed when the data model changes, so you can develop the front-end of your data manager app even faster. Querying 1:N relations in W...Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: 00.00.08 for DNN6: BEFORE USE YOU need to install the MSBuild Community Tasks available from http://msbuildtasks.tigris.org For best results you should configure your development environment as described in this blog post Then read this latest blog post about customizing and using these custom templates. Installation is simple To use this template place the ZIP (not extracted) file in your My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#\Web OR for VB My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Te...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.53: fix issue #18106, where member operators on numeric literals caused the member part to be duplicated when not minifying numeric literals ADD NEW FEATURE: ability to create source map files! The first mapfile format to be supported is the Script# format. Use the new -map filename switch to create map files when building your sources.CreditAnalytics: CreditAnalytics Release 1.5: 22 May 2012 (v1.5) (Build 449) Regressor Framework: Implementation of the regressor set, tolerance check, curve scenario regressors, regression framework suite, and the eventual regression output. Discount Curve Regression: Regressing Base Curve Creation, scenario Curve creation, and calculation of spot/effective implied rates and discount factors. Credit Curve Regression: Regressing Base Curve Creation, scenario Curve creation, and calculation of spot/effective implied hazard rates, reco...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.3: 2012.05.22 Ver5.6.3 　(1) HTTP????????、ftp://??????????????????????LogicCircuit: LogicCircuit 2.12.5.22: Logic Circuit - is educational software for designing and simulating logic circuits. Intuitive graphical user interface, allows you to create unrestricted circuit hierarchy with multi bit buses, debug circuits behavior with oscilloscope, and navigate running circuits hierarchy. Changes of this versionThis release is fixing start up issue.Orchard Project: Orchard 1.4.2: This is a service release to address 1.4 and 1.4.1 bugs. Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.4.2: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-4-Release-NotesNew Projects.Net Code Samples: Various .Net code samples. AFSAspnetPusherV1: my new wns project lolAFSAspnetPusherV2: renewed version ofAFSAspnetPusherV4: renewed one v4AgileDesign Utilities Library: This library provides common functionality usable for most software projects: Logger - Asynchronous logging on top of new Microsoft logging class TraceSource with simplified API NameOf - Avoid using string names using static reflection Various reflection helpersAssociate Many to Many Relationship Entities Tool for Dynamics CRM 2011: Associate Many to many relationship tool is used for Dynamics CRM 2011 to associate or disassociate N:N relationship entities. This tool is dynamics crm 2011 solution, which consist of one entity and one plugin. Entity "Many to Many Relationship" record is used by Many to many relationship plugin to associate or disassociate entities. If many to many relationship entity record is created then plugin associate/disassociate entities from record data.Boxhead Multiplayer Server: A PHP dedicated server for my multiplayer version of Boxhead.CodedUITraceFiletoCSV: Console Application to parse the result file generated by Coded UI Test execution ".trx" into a comma separated file for more readable and detailed result.FlipExt: FlipExt is an easy to use image converter. It converts any image to .png .bmp .jpg .gif .tif .jpeg .tiff .ico. More extensions will be added soon.Foo Values Maker: Foo creates values for your test class variables so that you can write tests faster.FoodFree: Projeto de monitoramento de enchentesHouodeProject: ????ITLand of Dreams, Codename: Waterloo: We want to create a classical Live-MMORPG you can play on your smartphone (in the first step only “Windows Phone” will be supported) with the basic idea of Ultima Online or similiar games in our mind. You can create one or more characters, choose some name, gender, basic attributes (skin and hair color, …) a race (e.g. ‘Human’) and a profession (e.g. ‘fighter’ or ‘craftsman’). Now he can freely travel through the whole world, meeting other players, fighting monsters, absolving quests, tra...Makecert UI: Makecert UI is a shell layer application on top of the Microsoft makecert.exe utility. Makecert UI makes it easy for you to create self signed certificates, even from your own CA.MS CRM Rich Text box: Rich text box plug-in for MS CRM 2011. Hope it will be helpful for many of you. Thank you for using it and let me know if any further help needed.Nivo Slider Web Part SharePoint 2010: SharePoint 2010 implementation of Nivo Slider. Easy way to put Nivo slider on any page!!Office365 Weather WebPart: Office 365 WebPart that displays a 5 day weather forecast for a given location. The weather data is retrieved from the Met Office feed hosted on the Windows Azure Data Market. This is a free data feed that provides weather data for the UK only.Private Cloud Solution Design: This project is named “Training Cloud”. It provides an appropriate solution which can be used for technical audiences self learning with a hands-on-lab experience using Microsoft technology hosted in a virtualized environment built on System Center 2012. Since it depends on hardware, such as RAM, Sotrage, Network , etc. At last, the end user could have all labs ready which deloyed on private cloud. And it can be easily matain , setup labs with cloud’s function. pyUpdater: pyupdater provides a platform for updating python based applications.SharePoint Document Navigator: SP Document Navigator is a front-end solution for navigating a document library using jQuery and jQuery Mobile Trimetable: Train schedule for WP7Upload Master Pages & Page Layouts to Master Page Gallery using PowerShell: This document details the steps to upload Master pages and Page Layouts to Master Page Gallery using the “Upload Master Pages” Utility. 1- Download the .zip file 2- Edit the “UploadMasterPages.bat” file and Change the <<site collection url>> in the text below with respect to the environment. e.g. http://sitecollectionurl 3- Save the “UploadMasterPages.bat” file and close it. 4- Put all of your master pages and page layouts to Doc folder. 5- Run “UploadMasterPages.bat” file as Administrat...vivo: vivo Vietnamese Voice Vietnamese Voice recognition project thaihung.bkhn@gmail.com http://eking.vnvnv: VNV Vietnamese Voice Vietnamese Voice recognition project thaihung.bkhn@gmail.com http://eking.vnWindows Phone 7 User Guide Page: Take your app's users through a guided tour! Make your app's hidden gems shine, make users understand your app's logic and UX better.WP-FTS: This plugin for Wordpress replaces the default search engine, implemented using a simple "LIKE" operator, with the usage of the more powerful Full-Text Engine that comes with SQL Server.

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• Key ATG architecture principles

  - by Glen Borkowski

  Overview The purpose of this article is to describe some of the important foundational concepts of ATG.  This is not intended to cover all areas of the ATG platform, just the most important subset - the ones that allow ATG to be extremely flexible, configurable, high performance, etc.  For more information on these topics, please see the online product manuals. Modules The first concept is called the 'ATG Module'.  Simply put, you can think of modules as the building blocks for ATG applications.  The ATG development team builds the out of the box product using modules (these are the 'out of the box' modules).  Then, when a customer is implementing their site, they build their own modules that sit 'on top' of the out of the box ATG modules.  Modules can be very simple - containing minimal definition, and perhaps a small amount of configuration.  Alternatively, a module can be rather complex - containing custom logic, database schema definitions, configuration, one or more web applications, etc.  Modules generally will have dependencies on other modules (the modules beneath it).  For example, the Commerce Reference Store module (CRS) requires the DCS (out of the box commerce) module. Modules have a ton of value because they provide a way to decouple a customers implementation from the out of the box ATG modules.  This allows for a much easier job when it comes time to upgrade the ATG platform.  Modules are also a very useful way to group functionality into a single package which can be leveraged across multiple ATG applications. One very important thing to understand about modules, or more accurately, ATG as a whole, is that when you start ATG, you tell it what module(s) you want to start.  One of the first things ATG does is to look through all the modules you specified, and for each one, determine a list of modules that are also required to start (based on each modules dependencies).  Once this final, ordered list is determined, ATG continues to boot up.  One of the outputs from the ordered list of modules is that each module can contain it's own classes and configuration.  During boot, the ordered list of modules drives the unified classpath and configpath.  This is what determines which classes override others, and which configuration overrides other configuration.  Think of it as a layered approach. The structure of a module is well defined.  It simply looks like a folder in a filesystem that has certain other folders and files within it.  Here is a list of items that can appear in a module: MyModule: META-INF - this is required, along with a file called MANIFEST.MF which describes certain properties of the module.  One important property is what other modules this module depends on. config - this is typically present in most modules.  It defines a tree structure (folders containing properties files, XML, etc) that maps to ATG components (these are described below). lib - this contains the classes (typically in jarred format) for any code defined in this module j2ee - this is where any web-apps would be stored. src - in case you want to include the source code for this module, it's standard practice to put it here sql - if your module requires any additions to the database schema, you should place that schema here Here's a screenshots of a module: Modules can also contain sub-modules.  A dot-notation is used when referring to these sub-modules (i.e. MyModule.Versioned, where Versioned is a sub-module of MyModule). Finally, it is important to completely understand how modules work if you are going to be able to leverage them effectively.  There are many different ways to design modules you want to create, some approaches are better than others, especially if you plan to share functionality between multiple different ATG applications. Components A component in ATG can be thought of as a single item that performs a certain set of related tasks.  An example could be a ProductViews component - used to store information about what products the current customer has viewed.  Components have properties (also called attributes).  The ProductViews component could have properties like lastProductViewed (stores the ID of the last product viewed) or productViewList (stores the ID's of products viewed in order of their being viewed).  The previous examples of component properties would typically also offer get and set methods used to retrieve and store the property values.  Components typically will also offer other types of useful methods aside from get and set.  In the ProductViewed component, we might want to offer a hasViewed method which will tell you if the customer has viewed a certain product or not. Components are organized in a tree like hierarchy called 'nucleus'.  Nucleus is used to locate and instantiate ATG Components.  So, when you create a new ATG component, it will be able to be found 'within' nucleus.  Nucleus allows ATG components to reference one another - this is how components are strung together to perform meaningful work.  It's also a mechanism to prevent redundant configuration - define it once and refer to it from everywhere. Here is a screenshot of a component in nucleus:  Components can be extremely simple (i.e. a single property with a get method), or can be rather complex offering many properties and methods.  To be an ATG component, a few things are required: a class - you can reference an existing out of the box class or you could write your own a properties file - this is used to define your component the above items must be located 'within' nucleus by placing them in the correct spot in your module's config folder Within the properties file, you will need to point to the class you want to use: $class=com.mycompany.myclass You may also want to define the scope of the class (request, session, or global): $scope=session In summary, ATG Components live in nucleus, generally have links to other components, and provide some meaningful type of work.  You can configure components as well as extend their functionality by writing code. Repositories Repositories (a.k.a. Data Anywhere Architecture) is the mechanism that ATG uses to access data primarily stored in relational databases, but also LDAP or other backend systems.  ATG applications are required to be very high performance, and data access is critical in that if not handled properly, it could create a bottleneck.  ATG's repository functionality has been around for a long time - it's proven to be extremely scalable.  Developers new to ATG need to understand how repositories work as this is a critical aspect of the ATG architecture.   Repositories essentially map relational tables to objects in ATG, as well as handle caching.  ATG defines many repositories out of the box (i.e. user profile, catalog, orders, etc), and this is comprised of both the underlying database schema along with the associated repository definition files (XML).  It is fully expected that implementations will extend / change the out of the box repository definitions, so there is a prescribed approach to doing this.  The first thing to be sure of is to encapsulate your repository definition additions / changes within your own module (as described above).  The other important best practice is to never modify the out of the box schema - in other words, don't add columns to existing ATG tables, just create your own new tables.  These will help ensure you can easily upgrade your application at a later date. xml-combination As mentioned earlier, when you start ATG, the order of the modules will determine the final configpath.  Files within this configpath are 'layered' such that modules on top can override configuration of modules below it.  This is the same concept for repository definition files.  If you want to add a few properties to the out of the box user profile, you simply need to create an XML file containing only your additions, and place it in the correct location in your module.  At boot time, your definition will be combined (hence the term xml-combination) with the lower, out of the box modules, with the result being a user profile that contains everything (out of the box, plus your additions).  Aside from just adding properties, there are also ways to remove and change properties. types of properties Aside from the normal 'database backed' properties, there are a few other interesting types: transient properties - these are properties that are in memory, but not backed by any database column.  These are useful for temporary storage. java-backed properties - by nature, these are transient, but in addition, when you access this property (by called the get method) instead of looking up a piece of data, it performs some logic and returns the results.  'Age' is a good example - if you're storing a birth date on the profile, but your business rules are defined in terms of someones age, you could create a simple java-backed property to look at the birth date and compare it to the current date, and return the persons age. derived properties - this is what allows for inheritance within the repository structure.  You could define a property at the category level, and have the product inherit it's value as well as override it.  This is useful for setting defaults, with the ability to override. caching There are a number of different caching modes which are useful at different times depending on the nature of the data being cached.  For example, the simple cache mode is useful for things like user profiles.  This is because the user profile will typically only be used on a single instance of ATG at one time.  Simple cache mode is also useful for read-only types of data such as the product catalog.  Locked cache mode is useful when you need to ensure that only one ATG instance writes to a particular item at a time - an example would be a customers order.  There are many options in terms of configuring caching which are outside the scope of this article - please refer to the product manuals for more details. Other important concepts - out of scope for this article There are a whole host of concepts that are very important pieces to the ATG platform, but are out of scope for this article.  Here's a brief description of some of them: formhandlers - these are ATG components that handle form submissions by users. pipelines - these are configurable chains of logic that are used for things like handling a request (request pipeline) or checking out an order. special kinds of repositories (versioned, files, secure, ...) - there are a couple different types of repositories that are used in various situations.  See the manuals for more information. web development - JSP/ DSP tag library - ATG provides a traditional approach to developing web applications by providing a tag library called the DSP library.  This library is used throughout your JSP pages to interact with all the ATG components. messaging - a message sub-system used as another way for components to interact. personalization - ability for business users to define a personalized user experience for customers.  See the other blog posts related to personalization.

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• Working with Timelines with LINQ to Twitter

  - by Joe Mayo

  When first working with the Twitter API, I thought that using SinceID would be an effective way to page through timelines. In practice it doesn’t work well for various reasons. To explain why, Twitter published an excellent document that is a must-read for anyone working with timelines: Twitter Documentation: Working with Timelines This post shows how to implement the recommended strategies in that document by using LINQ to Twitter. You should read the document in it’s entirety before moving on because my explanation will start at the bottom and work back up to the top in relation to the Twitter document. What follows is an explanation of SinceID, MaxID, and how they come together to help you efficiently work with Twitter timelines. The Role of SinceID Specifying SinceID says to Twitter, “Don’t return tweets earlier than this”. What you want to do is store this value after every timeline query set so that it can be reused on the next set of queries.  The next section will explain what I mean by query set, but a quick explanation is that it’s a loop that gets all new tweets. The SinceID is a backstop to avoid retrieving tweets that you already have. Here’s some initialization code that includes a variable named sinceID that will be used to populate the SinceID property in subsequent queries: // last tweet processed on previous query set ulong sinceID = 210024053698867204; ulong maxID; const int Count = 10; var statusList = new List<status>(); Here, I’ve hard-coded the sinceID variable, but this is where you would initialize sinceID from whatever storage you choose (i.e. a database). The first time you ever run this code, you won’t have a value from a previous query set. Initially setting it to 0 might sound like a good idea, but what if you’re querying a timeline with lots of tweets? Because of the number of tweets and rate limits, your query set might take a very long time to run. A caveat might be that Twitter won’t return an entire timeline back to Tweet #0, but rather only go back a certain period of time, the limits of which are documented for individual Twitter timeline API resources. So, to initialize SinceID at too low of a number can result in a lot of initial tweets, yet there is a limit to how far you can go back. What you’re trying to accomplish in your application should guide you in how to initially set SinceID. I have more to say about SinceID later in this post. The other variables initialized above include the declaration for MaxID, Count, and statusList. The statusList variable is a holder for all the timeline tweets collected during this query set. You can set Count to any value you want as the largest number of tweets to retrieve, as defined by individual Twitter timeline API resources. To effectively page results, you’ll use the maxID variable to set the MaxID property in queries, which I’ll discuss next. Initializing MaxID On your first query of a query set, MaxID will be whatever the most recent tweet is that you get back. Further, you don’t know what MaxID is until after the initial query. The technique used in this post is to do an initial query and then use the results to figure out what the next MaxID will be.  Here’s the code for the initial query: var userStatusResponse = (from tweet in twitterCtx.Status where tweet.Type == StatusType.User && tweet.ScreenName == "JoeMayo" && tweet.SinceID == sinceID && tweet.Count == Count select tweet) .ToList(); statusList.AddRange(userStatusResponse); // first tweet processed on current query maxID = userStatusResponse.Min( status => ulong.Parse(status.StatusID)) - 1; The query above sets both SinceID and Count properties. As explained earlier, Count is the largest number of tweets to return, but the number can be less. A couple reasons why the number of tweets that are returned could be less than Count include the fact that the user, specified by ScreenName, might not have tweeted Count times yet or might not have tweeted at least Count times within the maximum number of tweets that can be returned by the Twitter timeline API resource. Another reason could be because there aren’t Count tweets between now and the tweet ID specified by sinceID. Setting SinceID constrains the results to only those tweets that occurred after the specified Tweet ID, assigned via the sinceID variable in the query above. The statusList is an accumulator of all tweets receive during this query set. To simplify the code, I left out some logic to check whether there were no tweets returned. If  the query above doesn’t return any tweets, you’ll receive an exception when trying to perform operations on an empty list. Yeah, I cheated again. Besides querying initial tweets, what’s important about this code is the final line that sets maxID. It retrieves the lowest numbered status ID in the results. Since the lowest numbered status ID is for a tweet we already have, the code decrements the result by one to keep from asking for that tweet again. Remember, SinceID is not inclusive, but MaxID is. The maxID variable is now set to the highest possible tweet ID that can be returned in the next query. The next section explains how to use MaxID to help get the remaining tweets in the query set. Retrieving Remaining Tweets Earlier in this post, I defined a term that I called a query set. Essentially, this is a group of requests to Twitter that you perform to get all new tweets. A single query might not be enough to get all new tweets, so you’ll have to start at the top of the list that Twitter returns and keep making requests until you have all new tweets. The previous section showed the first query of the query set. The code below is a loop that completes the query set: do { // now add sinceID and maxID userStatusResponse = (from tweet in twitterCtx.Status where tweet.Type == StatusType.User && tweet.ScreenName == "JoeMayo" && tweet.Count == Count && tweet.SinceID == sinceID && tweet.MaxID == maxID select tweet) .ToList(); if (userStatusResponse.Count > 0) { // first tweet processed on current query maxID = userStatusResponse.Min( status => ulong.Parse(status.StatusID)) - 1; statusList.AddRange(userStatusResponse); } } while (userStatusResponse.Count != 0 && statusList.Count < 30); Here we have another query, but this time it includes the MaxID property. The SinceID property prevents reading tweets that we’ve already read and Count specifies the largest number of tweets to return. Earlier, I mentioned how it was important to check how many tweets were returned because failing to do so will result in an exception when subsequent code runs on an empty list. The code above protects against this problem by only working with the results if Twitter actually returns tweets. Reasons why there wouldn’t be results include: if the first query got all the new tweets there wouldn’t be more to get and there might not have been any new tweets between the SinceID and MaxID settings of the most recent query. The code for loading the returned tweets into statusList and getting the maxID are the same as previously explained. The important point here is that MaxID is being reset, not SinceID. As explained in the Twitter documentation, paging occurs from the newest tweets to oldest, so setting MaxID lets us move from the most recent tweets down to the oldest as specified by SinceID. The two loop conditions cause the loop to continue as long as tweets are being read or a max number of tweets have been read.  Logically, you want to stop reading when you’ve read all the tweets and that’s indicated by the fact that the most recent query did not return results. I put the check to stop after 30 tweets are reached to keep the demo from running too long – in the console the response scrolls past available buffer and I wanted you to be able to see the complete output. Yet, there’s another point to be made about constraining the number of items you return at one time. The Twitter API has rate limits and making too many queries per minute will result in an error from twitter that LINQ to Twitter raises as an exception. To use the API properly, you’ll have to ensure you don’t exceed this threshold. Looking at the statusList.Count as done above is rather primitive, but you can implement your own logic to properly manage your rate limit. Yeah, I cheated again. Summary Now you know how to use LINQ to Twitter to work with Twitter timelines. After reading this post, you have a better idea of the role of SinceID - the oldest tweet already received. You also know that MaxID is the largest tweet ID to retrieve in a query. Together, these settings allow you to page through results via one or more queries. You also understand what factors affect the number of tweets returned and considerations for potential error handling logic. The full example of the code for this post is included in the downloadable source code for LINQ to Twitter.   @JoeMayo

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• How to make a player stay within bounds of world with 2D Camera

  - by Craig

  Im creating a simple top down survival game. At the moment, i have the sprite which is a ship and moves by rotating left or right then going forward in that direction. I have implemented a 2D camera, its always centered on the player. However, when i move towards the bounds of the world that the sprite is in it just keeps on going :( How to i sort it that it stops at the edge of the world and cant go beyond it? Cheers :) Below is the main game class using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GamerServices; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media; namespace GamesCoursework_1 { /// <summary> /// This is the main type for your game /// </summary> public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; SpriteBatch spriteBatch; // player variables Texture2D Ship; Vector2 Ship_Position; float Ship_Rotation = 0.0f; Vector2 Ship_Origin; Vector2 Ship_Velocity; const float tangentialVelocity = 4f; float friction = 0.05f; static Point CameraViewport = new Point(800, 800); Camera2d cam = new Camera2d((int)CameraViewport.X, (int)CameraViewport.Y); //Size of world static Point worldSize = new Point(1600, 1600); // Screen variables static Point worldCenter = new Point(worldSize.X / 2, worldSize.Y / 2); Rectangle playerBounds = new Rectangle(CameraViewport.X / 2, CameraViewport.Y / 2, worldSize.X - CameraViewport.X, worldSize.Y - CameraViewport.Y); Rectangle worldBounds = new Rectangle(0, 0, worldSize.X, worldSize.Y); Texture2D background; public Game1() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth = CameraViewport.X; graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight = CameraViewport.Y; Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to perform any initialization it needs to before starting to run. /// This is where it can query for any required services and load any non-graphic /// related content. Calling base.Initialize will enumerate through any components /// and initialize them as well. /// </summary> protected override void Initialize() { // TODO: Add your initialization logic here base.Initialize(); } /// <summary> /// LoadContent will be called once per game and is the place to load /// all of your content. /// </summary> protected override void LoadContent() { // Create a new SpriteBatch, which can be used to draw textures. spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); // TODO: use this.Content to load your game content here Ship = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Ship"); Ship_Origin.X = Ship.Width / 2; Ship_Origin.Y = Ship.Height / 2; background = Content.Load<Texture2D>("aus"); Ship_Position = new Vector2(worldCenter.X, worldCenter.Y); cam.Pos = Ship_Position; cam.Zoom = 1f; } /// <summary> /// UnloadContent will be called once per game and is the place to unload /// all content. /// </summary> protected override void UnloadContent() { // TODO: Unload any non ContentManager content here } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to run logic such as updating the world, /// checking for collisions, gathering input, and playing audio. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { // Allows the game to exit if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed) this.Exit(); // TODO: Add your update logic here Ship_Position = Ship_Velocity + Ship_Position; keyPressed(); base.Update(gameTime); } /// <summary> /// This is called when the game should draw itself. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue); // TODO: Add your drawing code here spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Deferred, BlendState.AlphaBlend, null, null, null,null, cam.get_transformation(GraphicsDevice)); spriteBatch.Draw(background, Vector2.Zero, Color.White); spriteBatch.Draw(Ship, Ship_Position, Ship.Bounds, Color.White, Ship_Rotation, Ship_Origin, 1.0f, SpriteEffects.None, 0f); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } private void Ship_Move(Vector2 move) { Ship_Position += move; } private void keyPressed() { KeyboardState keyState; // Move right keyState = Keyboard.GetState(); if (keyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right)) { Ship_Rotation = Ship_Rotation + 0.1f; } if (keyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) { Ship_Rotation = Ship_Rotation - 0.1f; } if (keyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up)) { Ship_Velocity.X = (float)Math.Cos(Ship_Rotation) * tangentialVelocity; Ship_Velocity.Y = (float)Math.Sin(Ship_Rotation) * tangentialVelocity; if ((int)Ship_Position.Y < playerBounds.Bottom && (int)Ship_Position.Y > playerBounds.Top) cam._pos.Y = Ship_Position.Y; if ((int)Ship_Position.X > playerBounds.Left && (int)Ship_Position.X < playerBounds.Right) cam._pos.X = Ship_Position.X; //tried world bounds here if (!worldBounds.Contains(new Point((int)Ship_Position.X, (int)Ship_Position.Y))) Ship_Position -= new Vector2(0.0f, -tangentialVelocity * 2); if (!worldBounds.Contains(new Point((int)Ship_Position.X, (int)Ship_Position.Y))) Ship_Position -= new Vector2(0.0f, 2 * tangentialVelocity); } else if(Ship_Velocity != Vector2.Zero) { float i = Ship_Velocity.X; float j = Ship_Velocity.Y; Ship_Velocity.X = i -= friction * i; Ship_Velocity.Y = j -= friction * j; if ((int)Ship_Position.Y < playerBounds.Bottom && (int)Ship_Position.Y > playerBounds.Top) cam._pos.Y = Ship_Position.Y; if ((int)Ship_Position.X > playerBounds.Left && (int)Ship_Position.X < playerBounds.Right) cam._pos.X = Ship_Position.X; } if (keyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Q)) { if (cam.Zoom < 2f) cam.Zoom += 0.05f; } if (keyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.A)) { if (cam.Zoom > 0.3f) cam.Zoom -= 0.05f; } } } } my 2d camera class using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; namespace GamesCoursework_1 { public class Camera2d { protected float _zoom; // Camera Zoom public Matrix _transform; // Matrix Transform public Vector2 _pos; // Camera Position protected float _rotation; // Camera Rotation public int _viewportWidth, _viewportHeight; // viewport size public Camera2d(int ViewportWidth, int ViewportHeight) { _zoom = 1.0f; _rotation = 0.0f; _pos = Vector2.Zero; _viewportWidth = ViewportWidth; _viewportHeight = ViewportHeight; } // Sets and gets zoom public float Zoom { get { return _zoom; } set { _zoom = value; if (_zoom < 0.1f) _zoom = 0.1f; } // Negative zoom will flip image } public float Rotation { get { return _rotation; } set { _rotation = value; } } // Auxiliary function to move the camera public void Move(Vector2 amount) { _pos += amount; } // Get set position public Vector2 Pos { get { return _pos; } set { _pos = value; } } public Matrix get_transformation(GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice) { _transform = // Thanks to o KB o for this solution Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(-_pos.X, -_pos.Y, 0)) * Matrix.CreateRotationZ(Rotation) * Matrix.CreateScale(new Vector3(Zoom, Zoom, 1)) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(_viewportWidth * 0.5f, _viewportHeight * 0.5f, 0)); return _transform; } } }

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• MVVM Light V4 preview (BL0014) release notes

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  I just pushed to Codeplex an update to the MVVM Light source code. This is an early preview containing some of the features that I want to release later under the version 4. If you find these features useful for your project, please download the source code and build the assemblies. I will appreciate greatly any issue report. This version is labeled “V4.0.0.0/BL0014”. The “BL” string is an old habit that we used in my days at Siemens Building Technologies, called a “base level”. Somehow I like this way of incrementing the “base level” independently of any other consideration (such as alpha, beta, CTP, RTM etc) and continue to use it to tag my software versions. In Microsoft parlance, you could say that this is an early CTP of MVVM Light V4. Caveat The code is unit tested, but as we all know this does not mean that there are no bugs This code has not yet been used in production. Again, your help in testing this is greatly appreciated, so please report all bugs to me! What’s new? The following features have been implemented: Misc Various “maintenance work”. All WPF assemblies (that is .NET35 and .NET4) now allow partially trusted callers. It means that you can use them in am XBAP in partial trust mode. Testing Various test updates Added Windows Phone 7 unit tests Note: For Windows Phone 7, due to an issue in the unit test framework, not all tests can be executed. I had to isolate those tests for the moment. The error was reported to Microsoft. ViewModelBase The constructor is now public to allow serialization (especially useful on the phone to tombstone the state). ViewModelBase.MessengerInstance now returns Messenger.Default unless it is set explicitly. Previously, MessengerInstance was returning null, which was complicating the code. Two new ways to raise the PropertyChanged event have been added. See below for details. Messenger Updated the IMessenger interface with all public members from the Messenger class. Previously some members were missing. A new Unregister method is now available, allowing to unregister a recipient for a given token. RelayCommand RaiseCanExecuteChanged now acts the same in Windows Presentation Foundation than in Silverlight. In previous versions, I was relying on the CommandManager to raise the CanExecuteChanged event in WPF. However, it was found to be too unreliable, and a more direct way of raising the event was found preferable. See below for details. Raising the PropertyChanged event A very much requested update is now included: the ability to raise the PropertyChanged event in a viewmodel without using “magic strings”. Personally, I don’t see strings as a major issue, thanks to two features of the MVVM Light Toolkit: In the DEBUG configuration, every time that the RaisePropertyChanged method is called, the name of the property is checked against all existing properties of the viewmodel. Should the property name be misspelled (because of a typo or refactoring), an exception is thrown, notifying the developer that something is wrong. To avoid impacting the performance, this check is only made in DEBUG configuration, but that should be enough to warn the developers in case they miss a rename. The property name is defined as a public constant in the “mvvminpc” code snippet. This allows checking the property name from another class (for example if the PropertyChanged event is handled in the view). It also allows changing the property name in one place only. However, these two safeguards didn’t satisfy some of the users, who requested another way to raise the PropertyChanged event. In V4, you can now do the following: Using lambdas private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(() => MyProperty); } } This raises the property changed event using a lambda expression instead of the property name. Light reflection is used to get the name. This supports Intellisense and can easily be refactored. You can also broadcast a PropertyChangedMessage using the Messenger.Default instance with: private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } var oldValue = _myProperty; _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(() => MyProperty, oldValue, value, true); } } Using no arguments When the RaisePropertyChanged method is called within a setter, you can also omit the property name altogether. This will fail if executed outside of the setter however. Also, to avoid confusion, there is no way to broadcast the PropertyChangedMessage using this syntax. private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(); } } The old way Of course the “old” way is still supported, without broadcast: public const string MyPropertyName = "MyProperty"; private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(MyPropertyName); } } And with broadcast: public const string MyPropertyName = "MyProperty"; private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } var oldValue = _myProperty; _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(MyPropertyName, oldValue, value, true); } } Performance considerations It is notorious that using reflection takes more time than using a string constant to get the property name. However, after measuring for all platforms, I found the differences to be very small. I will measure more and submit the results to the community for evaluation, because some of the results are actually surprising (for example, using the Messenger to broadcast a PropertyChangedMessage does not significantly increase the time taken to raise the PropertyChanged event and update the bindings). For now, I submit this code to you, and would be delighted to hear about your own results. Raising the CanExecuteChanged event manually In WPF, until now, the CanExecuteChanged event for a RelayCommand was raised automatically. Or rather, it was attempted to be raised, using a feature that is only available in WPF called the CommandManager. This class monitors the UI and when something occurs, it queries the state of the CanExecute delegate for all the commands. However, this proved unreliable for the purpose of MVVM: Since very often the value of the CanExecute delegate changes according to non-UI events (for example something changing in the viewmodel or in the model), raising the CanExecuteChanged event manually is necessary. In Silverlight, the CommandManager does not exist, so we had to raise the event manually from the start. This proved more reliable, and I now changed the WPF implementation of the RaiseCanExecuteChanged method to be the exact same in WPF than in Silverlight. For instance, if a command must be enabled when a string property is set to a value other than null or empty string, you can do: public MainViewModel() { MyTestCommand = new RelayCommand( () => DoSomething(), () => !string.IsNullOrEmpty(MyProperty)); } public const string MyPropertyName = "MyProperty"; private string _myProperty = string.Empty; public string MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(MyPropertyName); MyTestCommand.RaiseCanExecuteChanged(); } } Logo update I made a minor change to the logo: Some people found the lack of the word “light” (as in MVVM Light Toolkit) confusing. I thought it was cool, because the feather suggests the idea of lightness, however I can see the point. So I added the word “light” to the logo. Things should be quite clear now. What’s next? This is only the first of a series of releases that will bring MVVM Light to V4. In the next weeks, I will continue to add some very requested features and correct some issues in the code. I will probably continue this fashion of releasing the changes to the public as source code through Codeplex. I would be very interested to hear what you think of that, and to get feedback about the changes. Cheers, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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