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  • Is there any way to get the combine two xml into one xml in Linux.

    - by user28167
    XML one is something like that: <dict> <key>2</key> <array> <string>A</string> <string>B</string> </array> <key>3</key> <array> <string>C</string> <string>D</string> <string>E</string> </array> </dict> XML Two is something like that: <dict> <key>A</key> <array> <string>A1</string> <false/> <false/> <array> <string>Apple</string> <string>This is an apple</string> </array> <array> <string>Apple Pie</string> <string>I love Apple Pie.</string> </array> </array> <key>B</key> <array> <string>B7</string> <false/> <false/> <array> <string>Boy</string> <string>I am a boy.</string> </array> </array> </dict> I want to convert to this: <dict> <key>2</key> <array> <string>A, Apple, Apple Pie</string> <string>B, Boy</string> </array> ... </dict>

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  • Linux filesystem with inodes close on the disk

    - by pts
    I'd like to make the ls -laR /media/myfs on Linux as fast as possible. I'll have 1 million files on the filesystem, 2TB of total file size, and some directories containing as much as 10000 files. Which filesystem should I use and how should I configure it? As far as I understand, the reason why ls -laR is slow because it has to stat(2) each inode (i.e. 1 million stat(2)s), and since inodes are distributed randomly on the disk, each stat(2) needs one disk seek. Here are some solutions I had in mind, none of which I am satisfied with: Create the filesystem on an SSD, because the seek operations on SSDs are fast. This wouldn't work, because a 2TB SSD doesn't exist, or it's prohibitively expensive. Create a filesystem which spans on two block devices: an SSD and a disk; the disk contains file data, and the SSD contains all the metadata (including directory entries, inodes and POSIX extended attributes). Is there a filesystem which supports this? Would it survive a system crash (power outage)? Use find /media/myfs on ext2, ext3 or ext4, instead of ls -laR /media/myfs, because the former can the advantage of the d_type field (see in the getdents(2) man page), so it doesn't have to stat. Unfortunately, this doesn't meet my requirements, because I need all file sizes as well, which find /media/myfs doesn't print. Use a filesystem, such as VFAT, which stores inodes in the directory entries. I'd love this one, but VFAT is not reliable and flexible enough for me, and I don't know of any other filesystem which does that. Do you? Of course, storing inodes in the directory entries wouldn't work for files with a link count more than 1, but that's not a problem since I have only a few dozen such files in my use case. Adjust some settings in /proc or sysctl so that inodes are locked to system memory forever. This would not speed up the first ls -laR /media/myfs, but it would make all subsequent invocations amazingly fast. How can I do this? I don't like this idea, because it doesn't speed up the first invocation, which currently takes 30 minutes. Also I'd like to lock the POSIX extended attributes in memory as well. What do I have to do for that? Use a filesystem which has an online defragmentation tool, which can be instructed to relocate inodes to the the beginning of the block device. Once the relocation is done, I can run dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/null bs=1M count=256 to get the beginning of the block device fetched to the kernel in-memory cache without seeking, and then the stat(2) operations would be fast, because they read from the cache. Is there a way to lock those inodes and/or blocks into memory once they have been read? Which filesystem has such a defragmentation tool?

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  • How to get the best LINPACK result and conquer the Top500?

    - by knweiss
    Given a large Linux HPC cluster with hundreds/thousands of nodes. What are your best practices to get the best possible LINPACK benchmark (HPL) result to submit for the Top500 supercomputer list? To give you an idea what kind of answers I would appreciate here are some sub-questions (with links): How to you tune the parameters (N, NB, P, Q, memory-alignment, etc) for the HPL.dat file (without spending too much time trying each possible permutation - esp with large problem sizes N)? Are there any Top500 submission rules to be aware of? What is allowed, what isn't? Which MPI product, which version? Does it make a difference? Any special host order in your MPI machine file? Do you use CPU pinning? How to you configure your interconnect? Which interconnect? Which BLAS package do you use for which CPU model? (Intel MKL, AMD ACML, GotoBLAS2, etc.) How do you prepare for the big run (on all nodes)? Start with small runs on a subset of nodes and then scale up? Is it really necessary to run LINPACK with a big run on all of the nodes (or is extrapolation allowed)? How do you optimize for the latest Intel/AMD CPUs? Hyperthreading? NUMA? Is it worth it to recompile the software stack or do you use precompiled binaries? Which settings? Which compiler optimizations, which compiler? (What about profile-based compilation?) How to get the best result given only a limited amount of time to do the benchmark run? (You can block a huge cluster forever) How do you prepare the individual nodes (stopping system daemons, freeing memory, etc)? How do you deal with hardware faults (ruining a huge run)? Are there any must-read documents or websites about this topic? E.g. I would love to hear about some background stories of some of the current Top500 systems and how they did their LINPACK benchmark. I deliberately don't want to mention concrete hardware details or discuss hardware recommendations because I don't want to limit the answers. However, feel free to mention hints e.g. for specific CPU models.

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  • Change Logon DPI setting in Windows 8.1

    - by jmc302005
    I love how M$ keeps making decisions for me about how I want my desktop to look. Now they have added per-user dpi settings. The problem this has created is that there is no adjustable dpi setting for the Lock/Logon screen. Let me explain. you can change the dpi setting to be the same across all displays and this does affect the icons and font on the lock/logon screen. However it does not affect any app/program that can run on the lock/logon screen. Ex. I use a 44" flat screen tv for my monitor on my desktop. Big enough for me to sit in my recliner and use my comp. But I don't have a wireless keyboard. And it sucks having the wire from the keyboard running across the floor. Plus I really don't want to keep a keyboard next to me. So I use the on screen keyboard for logging in and quick typing (search, web address, etc.) So the problem is that with the new dpi setup my on screen keyboard takes up nearly half the screen. Does M$ think we are all blind? Oh no I remember they think desktops should look like tablets and phones. I tried looking through the registry to see if I could find a setting for it. In the key HKEY_USERS.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop there is a string value named "LogicalDPIOverride" with a value of -1. I have a feeling this is where I can fix the issue. I tried changing the value to 0 and to 1 with no change in the result. Instead I noticed that after logging out and back in the -1 value was back in the registry. So now M$ has also added a way for us to not be able to change a setting in the registry. They are making it harder and harder for us power users to be able to do anything with the settings in windows. Soon we will all have the same exact Windows with absolutely no customization. ok sorry for the quick rant. The real question here is. How can I change this defualt dpi crap? Can I use the LogPixels string that worked for dpi in Windows 7? Here are 2 Screen shots 1 of the Lock Screen and 1 of the Logon Screen http://i.imgur.com/6RM5ufE.jpg http://i.imgur.com/cnY5bmm.jpg Please any help will be appreciated.

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  • Rebasing a branch which is public

    - by Dror
    I'm failing to understand how to use git-rebase, and I consider the following example. Let's start a repository in ~/tmp/repo: $ git init Then add a file foo $ echo "hello world" > foo which is then added and committed: $ git add foo $ git commit -m "Added foo" Next, I started a remote repository. In ~/tmp/bare.git I ran $ git init --bare In order to link repo to bare.git I ran $ git remote add origin ../bare.git/ $ git push --set-upstream origin master Next, lets branch, add a file and set an upstream for the new branch b1: $ git checkout -b b1 $ echo "bar" > foo2 $ git add foo2 $ git commit -m "add foo2 in b1" $ git push --set-upstream origin b1 Now it is time to switch back to master and change something there: $ echo "change foo" > foo $ git commit -a -m "changed foo in master" $ git push At this point in master the file foo contain changed foo, while in b1 it is still hello world. Finally, I want to sync b1 with the progress made in master. $ git checkout b1 $ git fetch origin $ git rebase origin/master At this point git st returns: # On branch b1 # Your branch and 'origin/b1' have diverged, # and have 2 and 1 different commit each, respectively. # (use "git pull" to merge the remote branch into yours) # nothing to commit, working directory clean At this point the content of foo in the branch b1 is change foo as well. So what does this warning mean? I expected I should do a git push, git suggests to do git pull... According to this answer, this is more or less it, and in his comment @FrerichRaabe explicitly say that I don't need to do a pull. What's going on here? What is the danger, how should one proceed? How should the history be kept consistent? What is the interplay between the case described above and the following citation: Do not rebase commits that you have pushed to a public repository. taken from pro git book. I guess it is somehow related, and if not I would love to know why. What's the relation between the above scenario and the procedure I described in this post.

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  • Mysql Servers for Attendance System

    - by foo
    I'm building an attendance system. There are about 20 places where people will check in and check out using Mifare 1K Card. It will use MySQL as the database. The system will display something like "#ID IN: 800AM" when the first time the user checks in and "#ID OUT: 400PM" when the user checks out. For this to work, all the databases need to be synchronized with each other all the times. For an example, if user A went to location #1 to check in but by the time he wants to return home, the server at location #1 went down, he needs to go to location #2 or the nearest server to check out. The server at location #2 should display '#ID OUT: 400PM" and not "#ID IN: 400PM" since he's already checked in. So, what should I use to ensure this idea will work? My main concern is with the network (other department manages it) which is very unpredictable. It just love to go down anytime it wants to. Update LOL, didn't realize my question is not clear, just noticed it when you guys pointed it out, sorry about that. My real question is, how can I configure my MySQL to be synchronized with each other (20 servers)? MySQL cluster ? (tried reading about it, but I'm not sure if it's the right thing to do) My current setup (first phase): Local database for each server OS: Slackware A main server that keeps track which staff is at which server A web based front end for the user to see their history (which connects to the server based on their records) Main Pros No worries about network problems since it is a local database Main Cons A user can only check in and out at the same server. Databases/Servers are not connected with each others. Have to add the user to each server if the users want to check in at different locations. Which means, if he wants to go to location A, he must be checked out from location A first and then check in at location B. The server at location B didn't know that the user has checked in before at A. By the way, I've already centralized my NTP to a local server. About the network, let's just say, I don't have the authority to make changes so that the network will be better. The network won't effect all 20 servers at once, usually, just a few of them for several times a week. If there are anything else you would like me to answer, please just ask.

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  • I want to virtualize my workstation (Tier 1), Looking for Bare Metal Hypervisor for consumer grade components

    - by Chase Florell
    I find myself in this similar bind at least once a year. The bind whereby I'm either upgrading a motherboard, or an OS hard drive. It drives me crazy to have to reinstall Windows, Visual Studio, all my addins, reconfigure my settings etc... every single time. I have a layout and I like and I want to stick with it. My question is... Is there a Bare Metal Hypervisor on the market that will enable me to virtualize my consumer grade workstation? I really want to avoid Host/Client virtualization. Bare Metal is definitely a better way to go for my needs. Is this a good approach, or am I going to suffer some other undesirable side effects by doing this? Clarification My machine has very limited purposes. My primary use is Visual Studio 2010 Professional where I develop ASP.NET MVC Web Applications. The second piece of software that I use (that's system intensive) is Photoshop CS3. Beyond that, my applications are limited to Outlook, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, LinqPad, and various other (small) apps. Beyond this, I'm considering working on a node.js project and might run ubuntu on the same hypervisor if possible. System Specs: Gigabyte Motherboard Intel i7 920 12 GB Ram basic 500GB 7200RPM HDD for OS 4 VelociRaptors in Raid 1/0 for build disk Dual GTS250 (512MB) Graphics cards (non SLI) for quad monitors On a side note I also wouldn't be opposed to an alternative suggestion if the limitations are too great. I could install the ESXi (or Zen Server) on my box, and build a separate "thin client" to RDP into the virtual machine. It appears as though RDP supports dual monitors. Edit (Dec 9, 2011) It's been nearly a year since I first asked this question. Since then, there have been a lot of great strides in Hypervisor technology... AND MokaFive is now released for corporate use. I'd love to dig into this question a little more and find out if there is a solid BareMetal Hypervisor for workstations running consumer grade components (IE: not Dell, HP, Lenovo, Etc).

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  • PC will POST whenever feels likes it

    - by kyrpas
    I'm really sick of my PC and I'd love to throw it off the 5th floor but unfortunately I don't have this luxury right now. The issues started when I moved to a new house about 2 months ago. I didn't have this problem before. Case: Arctic Cooling Silentium T1 with embedded Fusion 550 Eco 80 PSU. M/B: ASRock A790GMH/128M Gfx: ATI Radeon HD 5770 Here's what's happening almost on a daily basis: I wake up in the morning, switch on the PC and all the fans start spinning. 9/10 the graphics fan stays on 100% and I know it won't post. If I'm lucky, ATI's fan stays on full power for a second, then goes back to normal and I get a normal post but that doesn't happen often. No, instead it's just drives me crazy. When I get no POST I'm trying a lot of different things and what bothers me the most is that they all work. But not always. No... That way I could find out what the hell is going on and we don't want that.. right? So, sometimes it manages to POST if I: remove the keyboard remove the power cable for a few minutes remove the graphics card remove the HDD cables do nothing, just turn it on and off a few times Sometimes it doesn't POST even if I do all of the above. And I end up removing all power cables from the M/B, and connecting all the stuff one by one. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and I just have to pray and wait. What the hell is that? I'm getting pissed of again just thinking about it. The only solution is to leave it on 24/7 but I don't want to do that. It should be able to turn on and off when I press the power button. I'm not asking much. I'm starting to think there's some weird electricity/power issue but I really don't understand what it is. There's no logical explanation about it. At least I can't find one. Any ideas?

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  • Pushing Large Files to 500+ Computers [closed]

    - by WMIF
    I work with a team to manage 500-600 rented Windows 7 computers for an annual conference. We have a large amount of data that needs to be synced to these computers, up to 1 TiB. The computers are divided into rooms and connected through unmanaged gigabit switches. We prepare these computers ahead of time with the Windows installation and configuration, plus any files that we have available to us before we send the base image in for replication by the rental company. Every year, we have presenters approach on site with up to gigs of data that need to be pushed to the room that they will be presenting in. Sometimes they only have a few files that are small sizes, such as a slide PDF, but can sometimes be much larger 5 GiB. Our current strategy for pushing these files is using batch scripts and RoboCopy. For the large pushes, we actually use a BitTorrent client to generate a torrent file, and then we use the batch-RoboCopy to push the torrent into a folder on the remote machines that is being monitored by an installed BT client. Often times, this data needs to be pushed immediately with a small time window. We have several machines in a control room that are identical to the machines on the floor that we use for these pushes. We occasionally have a need to execute a program on the remote machines, and we currently use batch and PSexec to handle this task. We would love to be able to respond to these last minute pushes with "sorry, your own fault", but it won't happen. The BT method has allowed us to have a much faster response time, but the whole batch process can get messy when there are multiple jobs being pushed. We use Enterprise Ghost for other processes, and it doesn't work well in this large of scale, plus it is really quite expensive for a once-a-year task like this. EDIT: There is a hard requirement that the remote machines on the floor are running Windows. The control machines do not have a hard OS requirement. I would really like to stay away from Multicast because of complications with upstream routers. Is Multicast or BitTorrent the better way to go on this? Is there another protocol that might work better?

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  • Is this right in the use case of exec method of child_process? is there away to cody the envirorment along with the require module too?

    - by L2L2L
    I'm learning node. I am using child_process to move data to another script to be executed. But it seem that it does not copy the hold environment or I could be doing something wrong. To copy the hold environment --require modules too-- or is this when I use spawn, I'm not so clear or understanding spawn exec and execfile --although execfile is like what I'm doing at the bottom, but with exec... right?-- And I would just love to have some clarity on this matter. Please anyone? Thank you. parent.js - "use strict"; var fs, path, _err; fs = require("fs"), path = require("path"), _err = require("./err.js"); var url; url= process.argv[1]; var dirname, locate_r; dirname = path.dirname(url); locate_r = dirname + "/" + "test.json";//path.join(dirname,"/", "test.json"); var flag, str; flag = "r", str = ""; fs.open(locate_r, flag, function opd(error, fd){ if (error){_err(error, function(){ fs.close(fd,function(){ process.stderr.write("\n" + "In Finally Block: File Closed!" + "\n");});})} var readBuff, buffOffset, buffLength, filePos; readBuff = new Buffer(15), buffOffset = 0, buffLength = readBuff.length, filePos = 0; fs.read(fd, readBuff, buffOffset, buffLength, filePos, function rd(error, readBytes){ error&&_err(error, fd); str = readBuff.toString("utf8"); process.env.str = str; process.stdout.write("str: "+ str + "\n" + "readBuff: " + readBuff + "\n"); fs.close(fd, function(){process.stdout.write( "Read and Closed File." + "\n" )}); //write(str); //run test for process.exec** var env, varName, envCopy, exec; env = process.env, varName, envCopy = {}, exec = require("child_process").exec; for(varName in env){ envCopy[varName] = env[varName]; } process.env.fs = fs, process.env.path = path, process.env.dirname = dirname, process.env.flag = flag, process.env.str = str, process.env._err = _err; process.env.fd = fd; exec("node child.js", env, function(error, stdout, stderr){ if(error){throw (new Error(error));} }); }); }); child.js - "use strict"; var fs, path, _err; fs = require("fs"), path = require("path"), _err = require("./err.js"); var fd, fs, flag, path, dirname, str, _err; fd = process.env.fd, //fs = process.env.fs, //path = process.env.path, dirname = process.env.dirname, flag = process.env.flag, str = process.env.str, _err = process.env._err; var url; url= process.argv[1]; var locate_r; dirname = path.dirname(url); locate_r = dirname + "/" + "test.json";//path.join(dirname,"/", "test.json"); //function write(str){ var locate_a; locate_a = dirname + "/" + "test.json"; //path.join(dirname,"/", "test.json"); flag = "a"; fs.open(locate_a, flag, function opd(error, fd){ error&&_err(error, fs, fd); var writeBuff, buffPos, buffLgh, filePs; writeBuff = new Buffer(str), process.stdout.write( "writeBuff: " + writeBuff + "\n" + "str: " + str + "\n"), buffPos = 0, buffLgh = writeBuff.length, filePs = buffLgh;//null; fs.write(fd, writeBuff, buffPos, buffLgh, filePs-3, function(error, written){ error&&_err(error, function(){ fs.close(fd,function(){ process.stderr.write("\n" + "In Finally Block: File Closed!" + "\n"); }); }); fs.close(fd, function(){process.stdout.write( "Written and Closed File." + "\n");}); }); }); //} err.js - "use strict"; var fs; fs = require("fs"); module.exports = function _err(err, scp, cd){ try{ throw (new Error(err)); }catch(e){ process.stderr.write(e + "\n"); }finally{ cd; } }

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  • SQL SERVER – Beginning SQL Server: One Step at a Time – SQL Server Magazine

    - by pinaldave
    I am glad to announce that along with SQLAuthority.com, I will be blogging on the prominent site of SQL Server Magazine. My very first blog post there is already live; read here: Beginning SQL Server: One Step at a Time. My association with SQL Server Magazine has been quite long, I have written nearly 7 to 8 SQL Server articles for the print magazine and it has been a great experience. I used to stay in the United States at that time. I moved back to India for good, and during this process, I had put everything on hold for a while. Just like many things, “temporary” things become “permanent” – coming back to SQLMag was on hold for long time. Well, this New Year, things have changed – once again, I am back with my online presence at SQLMag.com. Everybody is a beginner at every task or activity at some point of his/her life: spelling words for the first time; learning how to drive for the first time, etc. No one is perfect at the start of any task, but every human is different. As time passes, we all develop our interests and begin to study our subject of interest. Most of us dream to get a job in the area of our study – however things change as time passes. I recently read somewhere online (I could not find the link again while writing this one) that all the successful people in various areas have never studied in the area in which they are successful. After going through a formal learning process of what we love, we refuse to stop learning, and we finally stop changing career and focus areas. We move, we dare and we progress. IT field is similar to our life. New IT professionals come to this field every day. There are two types of beginners – a) those who are associated with IT field but not familiar with other technologies, and b) those who are absolutely new to the IT field. Learning a new technology is always exciting and overwhelming for enthusiasts. I am working with database (in particular) for SQL Server for more than 7 years but I am still overwhelmed with so many things to learn. I continue to learn and I do not think that I should ever stop doing so. Just like everybody, I want to be in the race and get ahead in learning the technology. For the same, I am always looking for good guidance. I always try to find a good article, blog or book chapter, which can teach me what I really want to learn at this stage in my career and can be immensely helpful. Quite often, I prefer to read the material where the author does not judge me or assume my understanding. I like to read new concepts like a child, who takes his/her first steps of learning without any prior knowledge. Keeping my personal philosophy and preference in mind, I will be blogging on SQL Server Magazine site. I will be blogging on the beginners stuff. I will be blogging for them, who really want to start and make a mark in this area. I will be blogging for all those who have an extreme passion for learning. I am happy that this is a good start for this year. One of my resolutions is to help every beginner. It is totally possible that in future they all will grow and find the same article quite ‘easy‘ – well when that happens, it indicates the success of the article and material! Well, I encourage everybody to read my SQL Server Magazine blog – I will be blogging there frequently on various topics. To begin, we will be talking about performance tuning, and I assure that I will not shy away from other multiple areas. Read my SQL Server Magazine Blog: Beginning SQL Server: One Step at a Time I think the title says it all. Do leave your comments and feedback to indicate your preference of subject and interest. I am going to continue writing on subject, and the aim is of course to help grow in this field. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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  • Associating File Types with AutoVue Desktop Deployment

    - by [email protected]
    Windows users take for granted that when they double click on a document or design, that it will open up in its application automatically. One of the questions I'm commonly asked is "How can I get the same behavior with AutoVue Desktop Deployment?". It's pretty easy, but there are a few tricks to doing it. Step 1: Download new jvue_direct.bat and icon The first thing you'll need to do is download a slightly modified version of jvue_direct.bat. You can find it here (Document 1075784.1) on Oracle's Support Portal. You also want to download the AV.ico file. This is the icon that will be used for all file types associated with AutoVue. Place both of these files in your <AutoVueInstallDirectory>\bin directory. Step 2: Associate File Types With AutoVue There are two ways to do this. You can do this through the Windows user interface, or you can set up a batch file to do this. Associating File Types Through Windows The way most people associate file types to an application is using the Windows user interface. You've probably tried to open a file type that Windows doesn't recognize and seen this window pop up: Although you can use this dialog to associate that file type with AutoVue, I don't recommend it. I much prefer using a batch file to associate file types with AutoVue. Associating File Types Using A Batch File There are a few good reasons to associate file types using a batch file instead of using the pop-up dialog method: If you have several file types to associate with AutoVue, it's much easier to use a batch file to do them all at once. Doing it through the Windows user interface requires having files of each type available. Using a batch file doesn't require having the files you're associating. Associating file types through the dialog may work well for one person, but what if you're an administrator doing an enterprise wide deployment of AutoVue Desktop Deployment for several hundred users? You don't want to do this manually for each user. You can have one simple batch file that's run on each user's PC to set up all the file types. You can easily associate an icon with the file types you're opening with AutoVue. To use the batch file method follow these steps: Create a file called filetype.bat using a text editor and copy and paste the following into it: @assoc .dwg=AVFile @assoc .jpg=AVFile @assoc .doc=AVFile @ftype AVFile="%~dp0jvue_direct.bat" "%%1" @reg add HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AVFile\DefaultIcon /v "" /f /d "%~dp0AV.ico" Change the lines starting with @assoc. Each of these lines associates a file extension with AutoVue. You can have as many @assoc lines as you want. Save this file in your <AutoVueInstallDirectory>\bin directory. Double click this file, or run it from a command prompt. Restart Windows to get the icons to show up. How Does This Work? The first three lines are creating a file type called AVFile. We are associating the extensions .dwg, .jpg, and .doc with this file type. You will want to change these lines when creating your own batch file. For example, to associate Microstation designs, which have extension .dgn, you should delete the @assoc lines above and add the line: @assoc .dgn=AVfile The line beginning with @ftype tells Windows that all AVFile type files should be opened using AutoVue Desktop Deployment. The final line associates the AutoVue icon with these file types. You may need to restart Windows to see the new icons. Warning: One Size Doesn't Fit All When deciding which file types should be associated with AutoVue, remember that there are different types of users using it. Your engineers may be pretty surprised to find that after installing AutoVue, double clicking their .dwg file opens up AutoVue instead of AutoCAD. If you have more than one type of AutoVue user, make sure you've considered what file types each user group will and will not want to be associated with AutoVue. If necessary, create a separate file association batch file for each user type. So that's it. In two simple steps you can double click your favorite designs and have them open automatically in AutoVue Desktop Deployment. I'd love to hear how are you using AutoVue Desktop Deployment. What other deployment tips would you be interested in learning about?

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  • C#: System.Lazy&lt;T&gt; and the Singleton Design Pattern

    - by James Michael Hare
    So we've all coded a Singleton at one time or another.  It's a really simple pattern and can be a slightly more elegant alternative to global variables.  Make no mistake, Singletons can be abused and are often over-used -- but occasionally you find a Singleton is the most elegant solution. For those of you not familiar with a Singleton, the basic Design Pattern is that a Singleton class is one where there is only ever one instance of the class created.  This means that constructors must be private to avoid users creating their own instances, and a static property (or method in languages without properties) is defined that returns a single static instance. 1: public class Singleton 2: { 3: // the single instance is defined in a static field 4: private static readonly Singleton _instance = new Singleton(); 5:  6: // constructor private so users can't instantiate on their own 7: private Singleton() 8: { 9: } 10:  11: // read-only property that returns the static field 12: public static Singleton Instance 13: { 14: get 15: { 16: return _instance; 17: } 18: } 19: } This is the most basic singleton, notice the key features: Static readonly field that contains the one and only instance. Constructor is private so it can only be called by the class itself. Static property that returns the single instance. Looks like it satisfies, right?  There's just one (potential) problem.  C# gives you no guarantee of when the static field _instance will be created.  This is because the C# standard simply states that classes (which are marked in the IL as BeforeFieldInit) can have their static fields initialized any time before the field is accessed.  This means that they may be initialized on first use, they may be initialized at some other time before, you can't be sure when. So what if you want to guarantee your instance is truly lazy.  That is, that it is only created on first call to Instance?  Well, there's a few ways to do this.  First we'll show the old ways, and then talk about how .Net 4.0's new System.Lazy<T> type can help make the lazy-Singleton cleaner. Obviously, we could take on the lazy construction ourselves, but being that our Singleton may be accessed by many different threads, we'd need to lock it down. 1: public class LazySingleton1 2: { 3: // lock for thread-safety laziness 4: private static readonly object _mutex = new object(); 5:  6: // static field to hold single instance 7: private static LazySingleton1 _instance = null; 8:  9: // property that does some locking and then creates on first call 10: public static LazySingleton1 Instance 11: { 12: get 13: { 14: if (_instance == null) 15: { 16: lock (_mutex) 17: { 18: if (_instance == null) 19: { 20: _instance = new LazySingleton1(); 21: } 22: } 23: } 24:  25: return _instance; 26: } 27: } 28:  29: private LazySingleton1() 30: { 31: } 32: } This is a standard double-check algorithm so that you don't lock if the instance has already been created.  However, because it's possible two threads can go through the first if at the same time the first time back in, you need to check again after the lock is acquired to avoid creating two instances. Pretty straightforward, but ugly as all heck.  Well, you could also take advantage of the C# standard's BeforeFieldInit and define your class with a static constructor.  It need not have a body, just the presence of the static constructor will remove the BeforeFieldInit attribute on the class and guarantee that no fields are initialized until the first static field, property, or method is called.   1: public class LazySingleton2 2: { 3: // because of the static constructor, this won't get created until first use 4: private static readonly LazySingleton2 _instance = new LazySingleton2(); 5:  6: // Returns the singleton instance using lazy-instantiation 7: public static LazySingleton2 Instance 8: { 9: get { return _instance; } 10: } 11:  12: // private to prevent direct instantiation 13: private LazySingleton2() 14: { 15: } 16:  17: // removes BeforeFieldInit on class so static fields not 18: // initialized before they are used 19: static LazySingleton2() 20: { 21: } 22: } Now, while this works perfectly, I hate it.  Why?  Because it's relying on a non-obvious trick of the IL to guarantee laziness.  Just looking at this code, you'd have no idea that it's doing what it's doing.  Worse yet, you may decide that the empty static constructor serves no purpose and delete it (which removes your lazy guarantee).  Worse-worse yet, they may alter the rules around BeforeFieldInit in the future which could change this. So, what do I propose instead?  .Net 4.0 adds the System.Lazy type which guarantees thread-safe lazy-construction.  Using System.Lazy<T>, we get: 1: public class LazySingleton3 2: { 3: // static holder for instance, need to use lambda to construct since constructor private 4: private static readonly Lazy<LazySingleton3> _instance 5: = new Lazy<LazySingleton3>(() => new LazySingleton3()); 6:  7: // private to prevent direct instantiation. 8: private LazySingleton3() 9: { 10: } 11:  12: // accessor for instance 13: public static LazySingleton3 Instance 14: { 15: get 16: { 17: return _instance.Value; 18: } 19: } 20: } Note, you need your lambda to call the private constructor as Lazy's default constructor can only call public constructors of the type passed in (which we can't have by definition of a Singleton).  But, because the lambda is defined inside our type, it has access to the private members so it's perfect. Note how the Lazy<T> makes it obvious what you're doing (lazy construction), instead of relying on an IL generation side-effect.  This way, it's more maintainable.  Lazy<T> has many other uses as well, obviously, but I really love how elegant and readable it makes the lazy Singleton.

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  • Ask How-To Geek: Dropbox in the Start Menu, Understanding Symlinks, and Ripping TV Series DVDs

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    This week we take a look at how to incorporate Dropbox into your Windows Start Menu, understanding and using symbolic links, and how to rip your TV series DVDs right to unique and high-quality episode files. Once a week we dip into our reader mailbag and help readers solve their problems, sharing the useful solutions with you in the process. Read on to see our fixes for this week’s reader dilemmas. Add Drobox to Your Start Menu Dear How-To Geek, I use Dropbox all the time and would like to add it right onto my start menu along side the other major shortcuts like Documents, Pictures, etc. It seems like adding Dropbox into the menu should be part of the Dropbox installation package! Sincerely, Dropboxing in Des Moines Dear Dropboxing, We agree, it would be a nice installation option. As it stands you’re going to have to do a little simple hacking to get Dropbox nestled neatly into your start menu. The hack isn’t super elegant but when you’re done you’ll have the link you want and it’ll look like it was there all along. Check out this step-by-step guide here in order to take an existing Library shortcut and rework it to be a Dropbox link. Understanding and Using Symbolic Links Dear How-To Geek, I was talking to a coworker the other day about an issue I’d been having with a media center application I’m running. He suggested using symbolic links to better organize my media and make it easier for the application to access my collection. I had no idea what he was talking about and never got a chance to bug him about it later. Can you clear up this whole symbolic links business for me? I’ve been using computers for years and I’ve never even heard of it! Sincerely, Symbolic Who? Dear Symbolic, Symbolic links aren’t commonly used by many Windows users which is why you likely haven’t run into the concept. Symbolic links are essentially supercharged shortcuts—the newly introduced Windows library system is really just a type of symbolic link system. You can use symbolic links to do all sorts of neat stuff like link folders to your Dropbox folder, organize media, and more. The concept of symbolic links is pretty simple but the execution can be really tricky. We’d suggest reading over our guide to creating symbolic links in Windows 7, Windows XP, and Ubunutu to get a clearer idea what you’re getting into. Rip Your TV DVDs into Handy Episode Files Dear How-To Geek, My wife got me an iPod for Christmas and I still haven’t got around to filling it up. I have tons of entire TV show seasons on DVD and would like to get them on the iPod but I have absolutely no idea where to start. How do I get the shows off the discs? I thought it would be as easy to import the TV shows into iTunes as it is to import tracks off a CD but I was totally wrong. I tried downloading some applications to rip them but those didn’t work at all. Very frustrating! Surely there is an easy and/or automated way to do this, right? Sincerely, Free My DVDs Dear DVDs, Oh man is this a frustration we can relate to. It’s inordinately difficult to get movies and TV shows off physical media and into digital (and portable media player-friendly) formats. There are a multitude of ways to rip DVDs and quite a few applications out there (some good, some mediocre, and some outright malware). We’d recommend a two-part punch to solve your ripping woes. You’ll need a copy of DVDFab to strip away the protections on the discs and rip the disc and Handbrake to load the disc image and convert the files. It’s not quite as smooth as the CD-to-iTunes workflow but it’s still pretty easy. Check out all the steps and settings you’ll want to toggle here. Have a question you want to put before the How-To Geek staff? Shoot us an email at [email protected] and then keep an eye out for a solution in the Ask How-To Geek column. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines Google’s New Personal Blocklist Extension Kills Search Engine Spam KeyCounter Tracks Your Keystrokes and Mouse Clicks Add Custom LED Ambient Lighting to Your PC or Media Center The Trackor Monitors Amazon Prices; Integrates with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari Four Awesome TRON Legacy Themes for Chrome and Iron Anger is Illogical – Old School Style Instructional Video [Star Trek Mashup]

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  • XNA Notes 007

    - by George Clingerman
    Every week I keep wondering if there’s going to be enough activity in the community to keep doing these notes on a weekly basis and every week I’m reminded of just how awesome and active the XNA community is. There’s engines being made, tutorials being created, games being crafted. There’s information being shared, questions being answered and then there’s another whole community around the Xbox LIVE Indie Games themselves. It’s really incredibly to just watch all that’s going on and I’m glad I’m playing a small part in all of this. So here’s what I noticed happening in the XNA community last week. If there’s things I’m missing, always feel free to let me know. I love learning about new corners of the XNA community that I wasn’t aware of or just have been missing! XNA Developers: Uditha Bandara held an XNA Game Development Workshops at Singapore Universities http://uditha.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/xna-game-development-workshops-at-singapore-universities-event-update/ Binary Tweed gives his talks about Indie City and gives his opinion on the false promise of digital distribution http://www.develop-online.net/news/37053/OPINION-The-false-promise-of-digital-distribution Kris Steele posts his Trivia or Die postmortem http://www.krissteele.net/blogdetails.aspx?id=246 @MadNinjaSkills (James Johnston) posts his feelings on testing for XBLIG http://www.ezmuze.co.uk/101 Simon (@DDReaper) posts hints and tips for XNA developers to help get the size of their projects down http://twitter.com/#!/DDReaper/status/38279440924545024 http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgenesis/archive/2011/02/17/look-at-the-size-of-that-thing.aspx Michael B. McLaughlin proving why he should be an XNA MVP posts the list of commonly used value types in XNA games http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/17/list-of-commonly-used-value-types-in-xna-games.aspx http://twitter.com/#!/mikebmcl/status/38166541354811392 Paul Powell (@ITSligoPaul) posts about a common sprite batch as a game service http://itspaulsblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/xna-common-sprite-batch-as-game-service.html @SigilXNA (John Defenbaugh) posts his new level editor video for the sequel to Opac’s Journey http://twitter.com/SigilXNA/statuses/36548174373982209 http://twitter.com/#!/SigilXNA/status/36548174373982209 http://youtu.be/QHbmxB_2AW8 @jwatte updates kW Animation for XNA 4.0 http://www.enchantedage.com/xna-animation @DSebJ posts Blender to SunBurn http://twitter.com/#!/DSebJ/status/36564920224976896 http://dsebj.evolvingsoftware.com/?p=187 Ads and WP7 Games - @mechaghost shares his revenue data for his ad based games http://www.occasionalgamer.com/2011/02/09/ads-and-wp7-games/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): Steven Hurdle posts day 100 of his quest to find a fantastic XBLIG purchase every day http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/2011/02/17/day-100-radiangames-ballistic/ Xbox 360 Indie Game Buying Guide - 12 games for $60 including several Xbox LIVE Indie games! (although if the XNA community was asked we could have recommended 60 games for $60...) http://www.indiegamemag.com/xbox360-indie-games-buying-guide/ The best selling Xbox LIVE Indie games of 2010 http://www.1up.com/news/xbox-live-most-popular-games I’d buy that for a dollar! - the California Literary Review points out a few gems on the XBLIG marketplace (and other places) where you can game on the cheap. http://calitreview.com/14125 Armless Octopus Episode 39 - The Indie Gem Octocast http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/02/17/armless-octocast-episode-39-the-indie-gem-octocast/ Ska Studios posts a plethora of updates http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/11/good-morning-gato-49/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/14/vampire-smile-valentines/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/16/the-dishwasher-vs-finds-a-home/ Kotaku posts about the Xbox LIVE Indie Game that makes you go Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew http://kotaku.com/#!5760632/the-game-that-makes-you-go-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew GameMarx continues to be active and doing a ton for the XBLIG community reviews and Top 5 indie games of the week 2/4-2/10 http://www.gamemarx.com/video/the-show/22/ep-9-february-11-2010.aspx a new podcast Xbox Indie New Releases http://twitter.com/#!/gamemarx/status/36888849107910656 http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/13/a-new-podcast-xbox-indie-new-releases.aspx @MasterBlud uploads Indocalypse XBLIG Collections #2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzCZSv075mc&feature=youtu.be&a http://twitter.com/#!/MasterBlud/status/37100029697064960 Just Press Start interviews Michael Hicks from MichaelArts, 18 year old creator of Honor in Vengeance http://justpressstart.net/?p=465 Achievement Locked interviews Kris Steele of FunInfused Games http://xboxindies.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/interview-fun-infused-games/ XNA Game Development: XNA -UK launches their XAP test service to help the XNA community http://xna-uk.net/blogs/news/archive/2011/02/18/xna-uk-xap-test-service-now-live.aspx Transmute shows off a video of the standard character editor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqH6gErG948&feature=youtu.be Microsoft Tech Student introduces their first tech student of the month.  Meet Daniel Van Tassel from the University of Utah and learn how he created an Xbox LIVE Indie Game using XNA Studio http://blogs.msdn.com/b/techstudent/archive/2010/12/22/introducing-our-first-tech-student-of-the-month-daniel-van-tassel.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 3 - Animation (transforms) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-3-Animation-transforms.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 4 - Animation (frame based) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-4-Animation-frame-based.aspx @suhinini tweets about an XNA Sprite Font generation tool http://twitter.com/#!/suhinini/status/36841370131890176 http://www.nubik.com/SpriteFont/ XNATouch 1.5 is out and in it’s words is faster, simpler, more reliable and has the XNA 4.0 API http://monogame.codeplex.com/releases/view/60815 IndieCity is hosting marketing workshops for Indie Developers (UK and US) http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/75197/457654.aspx#457654 New York Students - Learn XNA and Silverlight for Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/72753/456964.aspx#456964 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/learn-to-build-your-own-games-for-xbox-360-and-windows-phone-7.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/build-a-game-in-48-hours-win-a-kinect-or-windows-phone-7.aspx Extra Credits: Videogame Music http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2019-Videogame-Music Steve Pavlina posts an article with useful information for all XNA/XBLIG developers http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2011/02/completion-vs-perfection/

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  • SQLAuthority News – A Successful Community TechDays at Ahmedabad – December 11, 2010

    - by pinaldave
    We recently had one of the best community events in Ahmedabad. We were fortunate that we had SQL Experts from around the world to have presented at this event. This gathering was very special because besides Jacob Sebastian and myself, we had two other speakers traveling all the way from Florida (Rushabh Mehta) and Bangalore (Vinod Kumar).There were a total of nearly 170 attendees and the event was blast. Here are the details of the event. Pinal Dave Presenting at Community Tech Days On the day of the event, it seemed to be the coldest day in Ahmedabad but I was glad to see hundreds of people waiting for the doors to be opened some hours before. We started the day with hot coffee and cookies. Yes, food first; and it was right after my keynote. I could clearly see that the coffee did some magic right away; the hall was almost full after the coffee break. Jacob Sebastian Presenting at Community Tech Days Jacob Sebastian, an SQL Server MVP and a close friend of mine, had an unusual job of surprising everybody with an innovative topic accompanied with lots of question-and-answer portions. That’s definitely one thing to love Jacob, that is, the novelty of the subject. His presentation was entitled “Best Database Practices for the .Net”; it really created magic on the crowd. Pinal Dave Presenting at Community Tech Days Next to Jacob Sebastian, I presented “Best Database Practices for the SharePoint”. It was really fun to present Database with the perspective of the database itself. The main highlight of my presentation was when I talked about how one can speed up the database performance by 40% for SharePoint in just 40 seconds. It was fun because the most important thing was to convince people to use the recommendation as soon as they walk out of the session. It was really amusing and the response of the participants was remarkable. Pinal Dave Presenting at Community Tech Days My session was followed by the most-awaited session of the day: that of Rushabh Mehta. He is an international BI expert who traveled all the way from Florida to present “Self Service BI” session. This session was funny and truly interesting. In fact, no one knew BI could be this much entertaining and fascinating. Rushabh has an appealing style of presenting the session; he instantly got very much interaction from the audience. Rushabh Mehta Presenting at Community Tech Days We had a networking lunch break in-between, when we talked about many various topics. It is always interesting to get in touch with the Community and feel a part of it. I had a wonderful time during the break. Vinod Kumar Presenting at Community Tech Days After lunch was apparently the most difficult session for the presenter as during this time, many people started to fall sleep and get dizzy. This spot was requested by Microsoft SQL Server Evangelist Vinod Kumar himself. During our discussion he suggested that if he gets this slot he would make sure people are up and more interactive than during the morning session. Just like always, this session was one of the best sessions ever. Vinod is true to his word as he presented the subject of “Time Management for Developer”. This session was the biggest hit in the event because the subject was instilled in the mind of every participant. Vinod Kumar Presenting at Community Tech Days Vinod’s session was followed by his own small session. Due to “insistent public demand”, he presented an interesting subject, “Tricks and Tips of SQL Server“. In 20 minutes he has done another awesome job and all attendees wanted more of the tricks. Just as usual he promised to do that next time for us. Vinod’s session was succeeded by Prabhjot Singh Bakshi’s session. He presented an appealing Silverlight concept. Just the same, he did a great job and people cheered him. Prabhjot Presenting at Community Tech Days We had a special invited speaker, Dhananjay Kumar, traveling all the way from Pune. He always supports our cause to help the Community in empowering participants. He presented the topic about Win7 Mobile and SharePoint integration. This was something many did not even expect to be possible. Kudos to Dhananjay for doing a great job. Dhananjay Kumar Presenting at Community Tech Days All in all, this event was one of the best in the Community Tech Days series in Ahmedabad. We were fortunate that legends from the all over the world were present here to present to the Community. I’d say never underestimate the power of the Community and its influence over the direction of the technology. Vinod Kumar Presenting trophy to Pinal Dave Vinod Kumar Presenting trophy to Pinal Dave This event was a very special gathering to me personally because of your support to the vibrant Community. The following awards were won for last year’s performance: Ahmedabad SQL Server User Group (President: Jacob Sebastian; Leader: Pinal Dave) – Best Tier 2 User Group Best Development Community Individual Contributor – Pinal Dave Speakers I was very glad to receive the award for our entire Community. Attendees at Community Tech Days I want to say thanks to Rushabh Mehta, Vinod Kumar and Dhananjay Kumar for visiting the city and presenting various technology topics in Community Tech Days. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: MVP, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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  • The Challenge with HTML5 – In Pictures

    - by dwahlin
    I love working with Web technologies and am looking forward to the new functionality that HTML5 will ultimately bring to the table (some of which can be used today). Having been through the div versus layer battle back in the IE4 and Netscape 4 days I think we’re headed down that road again as a result of browsers implementing features differently. I’ve been spending a lot of time researching and playing around with HTML5 samples and features (mainly because we’re already seeing demand for training on HTML5) and there’s a lot of great stuff there that will truly revolutionize web applications as we know them. However, browsers just aren’t there yet and many people outside of the development world don’t really feel a need to upgrade their browser if it’s working reasonably well (Mom and Dad come to mind) so it’s going to be awhile. There’s a nice test site at http://www.HTML5Test.com that runs through different HTML5 features and scores how well they’re supported. They don’t test for everything and are very clear about that on the site: “The HTML5 test score is only an indication of how well your browser supports the upcoming HTML5 standard and related specifications. It does not try to test all of the new features offered by HTML5, nor does it try to test the functionality of each feature it does detect. Despite these shortcomings we hope that by quantifying the level of support users and web developers will get an idea of how hard the browser manufacturers work on improving their browsers and the web as a development platform. The score is calculated by testing for the many new features of HTML5. Each feature is worth one or more points. Apart from the main HTML5 specification and other specifications created the W3C HTML Working Group, this test also awards points for supporting related drafts and specifications. Some of these specifications were initially part of HTML5, but are now further developed by other W3C working groups. WebGL is also part of this test despite not being developed by the W3C, because it extends the HTML5 canvas element with a 3d context. The test also awards bonus points for supporting audio and video codecs and supporting SVG or MathML embedding in a plain HTML document. These test do not count towards the total score because HTML5 does not specify any required audio or video codec. Also SVG and MathML are not required by HTML5, the specification only specifies rules for how such content should be embedded inside a plain HTML file. Please be aware that the specifications that are being tested are still in development and could change before receiving an official status. In the future new tests will be added for the pieces of the specification that are currently still missing. The maximum number of points that can be scored is 300 at this moment, but this is a moving goalpost.” It looks like their tests haven’t been updated since June, but the numbers are pretty scary as a developer because it means I’m going to have to do a lot of browser sniffing before assuming a particular feature is available to use. Not that much different from what we do today as far as browser sniffing you say? I’d have to disagree since HTML5 takes it to a whole new level. In today’s world we have script libraries such as jQuery (my personal favorite), Prototype, script.aculo.us, YUI Library, MooTools, etc. that handle the heavy lifting for us. Until those libraries handle all of the key HTML5 features available it’s going to be a challenge. Certain features such as Canvas are supported fairly well across most of the major browsers while other features such as audio and video are hit or miss depending upon what codec you want to use. Run the tests yourself to see what passes and what fails for different browsers. You can also view the HTML5 Test Suite Conformance Results at http://test.w3.org/html/tests/reporting/report.htm (a work in progress). The table below lists the scores that the HTML5Test site returned for different browsers I have installed on my desktop PC and laptop. A specific list of tests run and features supported are given when you go to the site. Note that I went ahead and tested the IE9 beta and it didn’t do nearly as good as I expected it would, but it’s not officially out yet so I expect that number will change a lot. Am I opposed to HTML5 as a result of these tests? Of course not - I’m actually really excited about what it offers.  However, I’m trying to be realistic and feel it'll definitely add a new level of headache to the Web application development process having been through something like this many years ago. On the flipside, developers that are able to target a specific browser (typically Intranet apps) or master the cross-browser issues are going to release some pretty sweet applications. Check out http://html5gallery.com/ for a look at some of the more cutting-edge sites out there that use HTML5. Also check out the http://www.beautyoftheweb.com site that Microsoft put together to showcase IE9. Chrome 8 Safari 5 for Windows     Opera 10 Firefox 3.6     Internet Explorer 9 Beta (Note that it’s still beta) Internet Explorer 8

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  • The ASP.NET Daily Community Spotlight - How posts get there, and how to make it your Visual Studio Start Page

    - by Jon Galloway
    One really cool part of my job is selecting the articles for the Daily Community Spotlight, on the home page of the ASP.NET website. The spotlight highlights a new post about ASP.NET development every day from a member of the ASP.NET community. You can find it on the home page of the ASP.NET site, at http://asp.net These posts aren't automatically drawn from a pool of RSS feeds or anything - I pick a new post for each day of the year. How I pick the posts I have a few important selection criteria: Interesting to well rounded ASP.NET developers The ASP.NET website has a lot of material for all skill and experience levels, from download / get started to advanced. I try to select community spotlight posts to round that out with fresh and timely information that working ASP.NET developers can really use. Posts highlight solutions to common problems, clever projects and code that helps you leverage ASP.NET, and important announcements about things you can use today. As part of that, I try to mix between ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, and Web Pages (a.k.a. WebMatrix). As a professional developer, I want to keep on top of all of my options for ASP.NET development, and the common platform base they all share generally means that good ASP.NET code is good ASP.NET code. Exposing new and non-Microsoft community members as much as possible The exercise of selecting good ASP.NET community posts every day of the year has made me think about what the community is. Given the choice, I'll always favor non-Microsoft employees, but since Microsoft often hires ASP.NET community members and MVP's (myself included), I really think that the ASP.NET community includes developers who are using and writing about ASP.NET, both inside and outside of Microsoft. I'm especially excited about the opportunity to highlight new and lesser known bloggers. Usually being featured on the ASP.NET Community Spotlight gives a pretty good traffic bump, and I love being able to both provide great content to the community and encourage lesser known community members by giving them some (much deserved) attention. Announcements only when they're useful to working developers - not marketing Some of the posts are announcements about new releases, such as Scott Hanselman's post on ASP.NET Universal Providers for Session, Memebership, and Roles. I include those when I think they're interesting and of immediate use to you on projects. I occasionally get asked to link to new content from a team at Microsoft; if it's useful and timely content I'll ask them to point me to a blog post by an actual person rather than a faceless team. How the posts are managed This feed used to be managed by an internal spreadsheet on a Sharepoint site, which was painful for a lot of reasons. I took a cue from Jon Udell, who uses of a public Delicious feed feed for his Elm City project, and we moved the management of these posts over to a Delicious feed as well. You can hear more about Jon's use of Delicious in Elm City in our Herding Code interview - still one of my favorite interviews. We ended up with a simpler scenario, but Note: I watched the Yahoo/Delicious news over the past year and was happy to see that Delicious was recently acquired by the founders of YouTube. I investigated several other Delicious competitors, but am happy with Delicious for now. My Delicious feed here: http://www.delicious.com/jon_galloway You can also browse through this past year's ASP.NET Community Spotlight posts using the (pretty cool) Delicious Browse Bar Submitting articles I'm always on the lookout for new articles to feature. The best way to get them to me is to share them via Delicious. It's pretty easy - sign up for an account, then you can add a post and share it to me. Alternatively, you can send them to me via Twitter (@jongalloway) or e-mail (). If you do e-mail me, it helps to include a short description and your full name so I can credit you. Way too many developer blogs don't include names and pictures; if I can't find them I can't feature the post. Subscribing to the Community Spotlight feed The Community Spotlight is available as an RSS feed, so you might want to subscribe to it: http://www.asp.net/rss/spotlight Setting the ASP.NET Community Spotlight feed as your Visual Studio start page If you're an ASP.NET developer, you might consider setting the ASP.NET Community Spotlight as the content for your Visual Studio Start Page. It's really easy - here's how to do it in Visual Studio 2010: Display the Visual Studio Start Page if it's not already showing (View / Start Page) Click on the Latest News tab and enter the following RSS URL: http://www.asp.net/rss/spotlight If you didn't previously have RSS feeds enabled for your start page, click the Enable RSS Feed button Now, every time you start up Visual Studio you'll see great content from members of the ASP.NET community: You can also configure - and disable, if you'd like - the Visual Studio start page in the Tools / Options / Environment / Startup dialog. Credits I'll do a follow-up highlighting some places I commonly find great content for the feed, but I'd like to specifically point out two of them: Elijah Manor posts a lot of great content, which is available in his Twitter feed at @elijahmanor, on his Delicious feed, and on a dedicated website - Web Dev Tweets Chris Alcock's The Morning Brew is a must-read blog which highlights each day's best blog posts across the .NET community. He's an absolute machine, and no matter how obscure the post I find, I can guarantee he'll find it as well if he hasn't already. Did I say must read?

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  • Interview with Tomas Ulin at the MySQL Innovation Day

    - by Monica Kumar
    MySQL Innovation Day held on June 5, 2012 was a great event for the MySQL engineers, users and customers to gather, share and network. I was able to get a few minutes with Tomas Ulin, Vice President of MySQL Engineering at Oracle, to ask him some questions. Here are the highlights of my interview with Tomas. Monica: This was the first MySQL Innovation Day, correct?  Why now, what was the strategy behind hosting this kind of event? Tomas: In the last year, we have rolled out an incredible number of MySQL events worldwide – some targeted at developers that are new to MySQL and others for the MySQL savvy. At the MySQL Innovation Day, our first event of this kind,, we had a number of our key engineers presenting lightning talks delivering previews of key new features as well as discussing roadmap. Our goal is to keep an open dialogue with the MySQL community. In fact, we are hosting a two-day conference, another first, for the MySQL community called MySQL Connect on Sept. 29-30 in San Francisco. If you attended the MySQL Innovation Day and liked what we did, you are going to love MySQL Connect. We’ll have a lot more of our engineers and many users and community members presenting hour long sessions and hands on labs. Our engineers will be presenting new MySQL features as well offer previews of upcoming enhancements. Monica: What's the big take-away from today's MySQL Innovation Day? Tomas: I hope the most important takeaway for attendees was to see that Oracle has been driving, and continues to drive MySQL innovation with a steady stream of new great GA and Development Milestone releases. Monica: What were attendees most interested in? What feedback did they have? Tomas: Feedback from attendees was incredibly positive and encouraging. In particular, they liked the interaction with the MySQL engineers and were also excited about the new early access features in MySQL 5.6 and MySQL Cluster 7.3. In addition, sessions delivered by MySQL users like Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter were very well received. For example, Pinterest talked about using MySQL to scale from 0 to billions of page views/month, Twitter talked about “Scaling twitter with MySQL” and Facebook discussed the many options to implement MySQL master failover solutions. The presentations are already available for download while some of the session videos will be made available on the MySQL Innovation Day web page shortly. Monica: How would you distinguish the use of MySQL vs. Oracle Database? What key factors should customers consider? Tomas: MySQL and Oracle Database complement each other. They are very different products, best suited to different use cases. Customers can choose world-class solutions from Oracle to fulfill a variety of needs. MySQL is a great choice for enterprise web-based, custom and embedded apps. Oracle Database is the leading choice for enterprise packaged applications such as ERP, CRM as well as high-end data warehousing and business intelligence applications. Monica: What are the highlights of the current MySQL 5.6 Development Milestone Release and early access features for MySQL Cluster 7.3? Tomas: MySQL 5.6 development milestone release builds on MySQL 5.5 by improving: Optimizer for better Performance, Scalability Performance Schema for better instrumentation InnoDB for better transactional throughput Replication for higher availability, data integrity NoSQL options for more flexibility We announced some new early access features in MySQL 5.6, including binary log group commit. We also announced early access features in MySQL Cluster 7.3 including support for foreign key constraints. Monica: How do people get these releases? Tomas: You can access development milestone releases by going to: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysqlThen select the “Development Release” tab. The MySQL Cluster 7.3 and other early access features can be downloaded at: http://labs.mysql.com Monica: What's coming up next for MySQL? Tomas: Our development team is working in overdrive, cranking out new features with community feedback. Don’t miss the MySQL Connect conference being held in San Francisco on Sept. 29 and 30th. My team and I will be there. I hope you can join us! Monica: Thank you for your time, Tomas. I look forward to seeing you at the MySQL Connect conference. To our followers, I hope you found this interview informative. I welcome your comments. Please stay tuned here for more updates on MySQL. Note: Monica Kumar is Senior Director of product marketing for Linux, Virtualization and MySQL at Oracle.

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  • Book Review Charlene Li's New Book: Open Leadership

    - by david.talamelli
    A few weeks ago, I was surprised when I looked in our mail box. I had received an Advance Copy of Charlene Li's new book titled "Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead". Charlene sent a tweet a while back asking anyone interested in receiving the book to submit their details. I sent off my details and didn't think I would hear anything back, so it was a pleasant surprise. With that I almost feel bad that it has taken me 3 weeks to read her book. It took this long mainly because it has been hard to fit in some quality reading time for myself with work, the kids, volunteering, etc..... I am happy to report I have finished her book and wanted to run through my initial thoughts with you. I first came across Charlene Li after reading her book "Groundswell" a few years ago, her latest book "Open Leadership" is a follow on from Groundswell and to me it seems like a natural progression from the question "Ok the business landscape is changing, what do we do now?" For me these two books have a different writing style to them. Groundswell from memory spoke about broad social media concepts and adoption and alerted us to some of the changes taking place in the SM landscape. Open Leadership seems to be focussed on taking those broad concepts and finding ways to implement them into your environment. That is breaking broad concepts down into individual action items that can be measured and analysed. As the business world changes Leaders must change their approach and let go of control to more control. One of the things I love reading about is seeing real life examples of how people and organisations are making these things happen. In this book Charlene has collected some great collateral and case studies from companies such as Cisco, Best Buy, The Red Cross and The State Bank of India (as a side-note, I wish now that I submitted my input for the Leaders I work with here at Oracle - there are some great examples here of people who empower their staff). As society becomes more adept at using social media it is inevitable that Leaders must become open with their employees, clients and partners. From the book some of the key points I took away are (I actually took away a lot more from this book, this is just an overview) : 1) Organisations should encourage risk taking. Without being a "hacker", how can we improve ourselves, our processes, our business, etc... The old saying you only fail by not trying applies here. If Leaders create a culture where people are afraid to stick their neck out - how will you innovate? 2) Leaders need to lead by example - if you want to promote an open and transparent business, a Leader needs to exemplify the traits they would like to see out of their employees. 3) The definition of a Leader is changing, open leadership is about being a catalyst to change that uses networks to spread a vision as opposed to traditional leadership that is viewed as a role. 4) There is a cultural and business shift taking place. Information is more wide-spread and is being disseminated faster than any other time in the past. Leaders who are open and transparent will thrive in this new business environment. 5) Leadership is not defined by a title - it is defined by a person's actions. Also anyone can be a Leader or has Leadership potential in them- it is a matter of drawing that out of people. I found this book useful and I also found myself looking at my own actions and the actions of others around me (including my management) to see how open and transparent I am in my work. For me I am glad I read this book as it validated my own thoughts of the changes we are seeing take place. This book has certainly given me some new ideas and helped me push my own boundaries of what I can do. The book has a number of action plans at the end of some of the chapters such as "Conducting you Openness Audit" that I think have helped me take thoughts and ideas and turn them into concrete action items. I have included a link to the introduction of the book here if anyone wants to have a read of it. If anyone else has read this book, it would be great to hear your thoughts/comments/review. Leave your comments below. This article was originally posted on David Talamelli's Blog - David's Journal on Tap

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  • SSAS Compare: an intern’s journey

    - by Red Gate Software BI Tools Team
    About a month ago, David mentioned an intern working in the BI Tools Team. That intern happens to be me! In five weeks’ time, I’ll start my second year of Computer Science at the University of Cambridge and be a full-time student again, but for the past eight weeks, I’ve been living a completely different life. As Jon mentioned before, the teams here at Red Gate are small and everyone (including the interns!) is responsible for the product as a whole. I’ve attended planning sessions, UX tests, daily meetings, and everything else a full-time member of the team would; I had as much say in where we would go next with the product as anyone; I was able to see that what I was doing was an important part of the product from the feedback we got in the UX tests. All these things almost made me forget that this is just an internship and not my full-time job. First steps at Red Gate Being based in Cambridge, Red Gate has many Cambridge university graduates working for them. They also hire some Cambridge undergraduates for internships each summer. With its popularity with university graduates and its great working environment, Red Gate has managed to build up a great reputation. When I thought of doing an internship here in Cambridge, Red Gate just seemed to be the obvious choice for my first real work experience. On my first day at Red Gate, David, the lead developer for SSAS Compare, helped me settle in and explained what I’d be doing. My task was to improve the user experience of displaying differences between MDX scripts by syntax highlighting, script formatting, and improving the difference identification in the first place. David suggested how I should approach the problem, but left all the details and design decisions to me. That was when I realised how much independence and responsibility I’d have. What I’ve done If you launch the latest version of SSAS Compare and drill down to an MDX script difference, you can see the changes that have been made. In earlier versions, you could only see the scripts in plain text on both sides — either in black or grey, depending on whether they were the same or not. However, you couldn’t see exactly where the scripts were different, which was especially annoying when the two scripts were large – as they often are. Furthermore, if parts of the two scripts were formatted differently, they seemed to be different but were actually the same, which caused even more confusion and made it difficult to see where the differences were. All these issues have been fixed now. The two scripts are automatically formatted by the tool so that if two things are syntactically equivalent, they look the same – including case differences in keywords! The actual difference is highlighted in grey, which makes them easy to spot. The difference identification has been improved as well, so two scripts aren’t identified as different if there’s just a difference in meaningless whitespace characters, or when you have “select” on one side and “SELECT” on the other. We also have syntax highlighting, which makes it easier to read the scripts. How I did it In order to do the formatting properly, we decided to parse the MDX scripts. After some investigation into parser builders, I decided to go with the GOLD Parser builder and the bsn-goldparser .NET engine. GOLD Parser builder provides a fairly nice GUI to write, build, and test grammar in. We also liked the idea of separating the grammar building from parsing a text. The bsn-goldparser is one of many .NET engines for GOLD, and although it doesn’t support the newest features of GOLD Parser, it has “the ability to map semantic action classes to terminals or reduction rules, so that a completely functional semantic AST can be created directly without intermediate token AST representation, and without the need for glue code.” That makes it much easier for us to change the implementation in our program when we change the grammar. As bsn-goldparser is open source, and I wanted some more features in it, I contributed two new features which have now been merged to the project. Unfortunately, there wasn’t an MDX grammar written for GOLD already, so I had to write it myself. I was referencing MSDN to get the formal grammar specification, but the specification was all over the place, so it wasn’t that easy to implement and find. We’re aware that we don’t yet fully support all valid MDX, so sometimes you’ll just see the MDX script difference displayed the old way. In that case, there is some grammar construct we don’t yet recognise. If you come across something SSAS Compare doesn’t recognise, we’d love to hear about it so we can add it to our grammar. When some MDX script gets parsed, a tree is produced. That tree can then be processed into a list of inlines which deal with the correct formatting and can be outputted to the screen. Doing all this has led me to many new technologies and projects I haven’t worked with before. This was my first experience with C# and Visual Studio, although I have done things in Java before. I have learnt how to unit test with NUnit, how to do dependency injection with Ninject, how to source-control code with SVN and Mercurial, how to build with TeamCity, how to use GOLD, and many other things. What’s coming next Sadly, my internship comes to an end this week, so there will be less development on MDX difference view for a while. But the team is going to work on marking the differences better and making it consistent with difference indication in the top part of comparison window, and will keep adding support for more MDX grammar so you can see the differences easily in every comparison you make. So long! And maybe I’ll see you next summer!

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  • Use Advanced Font Ligatures in Office 2010

    - by Matthew Guay
    Fonts can help your documents stand out and be easier to read, and Office 2010 helps you take your fonts even further with support for OpenType ligatures, stylistic sets, and more.  Here’s a quick look at these new font features in Office 2010. Introduction Starting with Windows 7, Microsoft has made an effort to support more advanced font features across their products.  Windows 7 includes support for advanced OpenType font features and laid the groundwork for advanced font support in programs with the new DirectWrite subsystem.  It also includes the new font Gabriola, which includes an incredible number of beautiful stylistic sets and ligatures. Now, with the upcoming release of Office 2010, Microsoft is bringing advanced typographical features to the Office programs we love.  This includes support for OpenType ligatures, stylistic sets, number forms, contextual alternative characters, and more.  These new features are available in Word, Outlook, and Publisher 2010, and work the same on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Please note that Windows does include several OpenType fonts that include these advanced features.  Calibri, Cambria, Constantia, and Corbel all include multiple number forms, while Consolas, Palatino Linotype, and Gabriola (Windows 7 only) include all the OpenType features.  And, of course, these new features will work great with any other OpenType fonts you have that contain advanced ligatures, stylistic sets, and number forms. Using advanced typography in Word To use the new font features, open a new document, select an OpenType font, and enter some text.  Here we have Word 2010 in Windows 7 with some random text in the Gabriola font.  Click the arrow on the bottom of the Font section of the ribbon to open the font properties. Alternately, select the text and click Font. Now, click on the Advanced tab to see the OpenType features. You can change the ligatures setting… Choose Proportional or Tabular number spacing… And even select Lining or Old-style number forms. Here’s a comparison of Lining and Old-style number forms in Word 2010 with the Calibri font. Finally, you can choose various Stylistic sets for your font.  The dialog always shows 20 styles, whether or not your font includes that many.  Most include only 1 or 2; Gabriola includes 6. Here’s lorem ipsum text, using the Gabriola font with Stylistic set 6. Impressive, huh?  The font ligatures change based on context, so they will automatically change as you are typing.  Watch the transition as we typed the word Microsoft in Word with Gabriola stylistic set 6. Here’s another example, showing the fi and tt ligatures in Calibri. These effects work great in Word 2010 in XP, too. And, since Outlook uses Word as it’s editing engine, you can use the same options in Outlook 2010.  Note that these font effects may not show up the same if the recipient’s email client doesn’t support advanced OpenType typography.  It will, of course, display perfectly if the recipient is using Outlook 2010. Using advanced typography in Publisher 2010 Publisher 2010 includes the same advanced font features.  This is especially nice for those using Publisher for professional layout and design.  Simply insert a text box, enter some text, select it, and click the arrow on the bottom of the font box as in Word to open the font properties. This font options dialog is actually more advanced than Word’s font options.  You can preview your font changes on sample text right in the properties box.  You can also choose to add or remove a swash from your characters.   Conclusion Advanced typographical effects are a welcome addition to Word and Publisher 2010, and they are very impressive when coupled with modern fonts such as Gabriola.  From designing elegant headers to using old-style numbers, these features are very useful and fun. Do you have a favorite OpenType font that includes advanced typographical features?  Let us know in the comments! More Reading Advances in typography in Windows 7 – Engineering 7 Blog New features in Microsoft Word 2010 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Change the Default Font in Excel 2007Ask the Readers: Do You Use a Laptop, Desktop, or Both?Keep Websites From Using Tiny Fonts in SafariAdd or Remove Apps from the Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 SuiteFriday Fun: Desktop Tower Defense Pro TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional SpeedyFox Claims to Speed up your Firefox Beware Hover Kitties Test Drive Mobile Phones Online With TryPhone Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10 New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users

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  • Troubleshooting Application Timeouts in SQL Server

    - by Tara Kizer
    I recently received the following email from a blog reader: "We are having an OLTP database instance, using SQL Server 2005 with little to moderate traffic (10-20 requests/min). There are also bulk imports that occur at regular intervals in this DB and the import duration ranges between 10secs to 1 min, depending on the data size. Intermittently (2-3 times in a week), we face an issue, where queries get timed out (default of 30 secs set in application). On analyzing, we found two stored procedures, having queries with multiple table joins inside them of taking a long time (5-10 mins) in getting executed, when ideally the execution duration ranges between 5-10 secs. Execution plan of the same displayed Clustered Index Scan happening instead of Clustered Index Seek. All required Indexes are found to be present and Index fragmentation is also minimal as we Rebuild Indexes regularly alongwith Updating Statistics. With no other alternate options occuring to us, we restarted SQL server and thereafter the performance was back on track. But sometimes it was still giving timeout errors for some hits and so we also restarted IIS and that stopped the problem as of now." Rather than respond directly to the blog reader, I thought it would be more interesting to share my thoughts on this issue in a blog. There are a few things that I can think of that could cause abnormal timeouts: Blocking Bad plan in cache Outdated statistics Hardware bottleneck To determine if blocking is the issue, we can easily run sp_who/sp_who2 or a query directly on sysprocesses (select * from master..sysprocesses where blocking <> 0).  If blocking is present and consistent, then you'll need to determine whether or not to kill the parent blocking process.  Killing a process will cause the transaction to rollback, so you need to proceed with caution.  Killing the parent blocking process is only a temporary solution, so you'll need to do more thorough analysis to figure out why the blocking was present.  You should look into missing indexes and perhaps consider changing the database's isolation level to READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT. The blog reader mentions that the execution plan shows a clustered index scan when a clustered index seek is normal for the stored procedure.  A clustered index scan might have been chosen either because that is what is in cache already or because of out of date statistics.  The blog reader mentions that bulk imports occur at regular intervals, so outdated statistics is definitely something that could cause this issue.  The blog reader may need to update statistics after imports are done if the imports are changing a lot of data (greater than 10%).  If the statistics are good, then the query optimizer might have chosen to scan rather than seek in a previous execution because the scan was determined to be less costly due to the value of an input parameter.  If this parameter value is rare, then its execution plan in cache is what we call a bad plan.  You want the best plan in cache for the most frequent parameter values.  If a bad plan is a recurring problem on your system, then you should consider rewriting the stored procedure.  You might want to break up the code into multiple stored procedures so that each can have a different execution plan in cache. To remove a bad plan from cache, you can recompile the stored procedure.  An alternative method is to run DBCC FREEPROCACHE which drops the procedure cache.  It is better to recompile stored procedures rather than dropping the procedure cache as dropping the procedure cache affects all plans in cache rather than just the ones that were bad, so there will be a temporary performance penalty until the plans are loaded into cache again. To determine if there is a hardware bottleneck occurring such as slow I/O or high CPU utilization, you will need to run Performance Monitor on the database server.  Hopefully you already have a baseline of the server so you know what is normal and what is not.  Be on the lookout for I/O requests taking longer than 12 milliseconds and CPU utilization over 90%.  The servers that I support typically are under 30% CPU utilization, but your baseline could be higher and be within a normal range. If restarting the SQL Server service fixes the problem, then the problem was most likely due to blocking or a bad plan in the procedure cache.  Rather than restarting the SQL Server service, which causes downtime, the blog reader should instead analyze the above mentioned things.  Proceed with caution when restarting the SQL Server service as all transactions that have not completed will be rolled back at startup.  This crash recovery process could take longer than normal if there was a long-running transaction running when the service was stopped.  Until the crash recovery process is completed on the database, it is unavailable to your applications. If restarting IIS fixes the problem, then the problem might not have been inside SQL Server.  Prior to taking this step, you should do analysis of the above mentioned things. If you can think of other reasons why the blog reader is facing this issue a few times a week, I'd love to hear your thoughts via a blog comment.

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  • SQLAuthority News – Meeting SQL Friends – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log

    - by pinaldave
    One of the biggest reason I go to SQLPASS is that my friends are going there too. There are so many friends with whom I often talk on Facebook and Twitter but I rarely get time to meet them as well talk with them. One thing I am usually sure that many fo them will be for sure attend SQLPASS. This is one event which every SQL Server Enthusiast should attend. Just like everybody I had pleasant time to meet many of my SQL friends. There were so many friends that I met and I did not click photo. There were so many friends who clicked photo in their camera and I do not have them. Here are 1% of the photos which I have. If you are not in the photo, it does not mean I have less respect to our friendship. Please post link to our photo together :) I was very fortunate that I was able to snap a quick photograph with Pinal Dave with Dr. David DeWitt. I stood outside of the hall waiting for Dr. to show up and when he was heading down from convention center I requested him if I can have one photo for my memory lane and very politely he agreed to have one. It indeed made my day! Pinal Dave with Dr. David DeWitt Every single time I met Steve, I make sure I have one photo for my memory. Steve is so kind every single time. If you know SQL and do not know Steve Jones, you do not know SQL (IMHO). Following is the photograph with Michael McLean. More details about this photo in future blog post! Pinal Dave, Michael McLean, and Rick Morelan Arnie always shares his wisdom with me. I still remember when I very first time visited USA, I was standing alone in corner and Arnie walked to me and introduced to every single person he know. Talking to Arnie is always pleasure and inspiring. Arnie Rowland and Pinal Dave I am now published author and have written two books so far. I am fortunate to have Rick Morelan as Co-author of both of my books. He is great guy and very easy to become friends with. I am very much impressed by him and his kindness during book co-authoring. Here is very first of our photograph together at SQLPASS. Rick Morelan and Pinal Dave Diego Nogare and I have been talking for long time on twitter and on various social media channels. I finally got chance to meet my friend from Brazil. It was excellent experience to meet a friend whom one wants to meet for long time and had never got chance earlier. Buck Woody – who does not know Buck. He is funny, kind and most important friends of every one. Buck is so kind that he does not hesitate to approach people even though he is famous and most known in community. Every time I meet him I learn something. He is always smiling and approachable. Pinal Dave and Buck Woddy Rushabh Mehta is current SQL PASS president and personal friend. He has always smiling face and tremendous love for SQL community. I often wonder where he gets all the time for all the time and efforts he puts in for community. I never miss a chance to meet and greet him. Even though he is renowned SQL Guru and extremely busy person – every single time I meet him he always asks me – “How is Nupur and Shaivi?” He even remembers my wife and daughters name. I am touched. Rushabh Mehta and Pinal Dave Nigel Sammy has extremely well sense of humor and passion from community. We have excellent synergy while we are together. The attached photo is taken while I was talking to him on Seattle Shoreline about SQL. Pinal Dave and Nigel Sammy Rick Morelan wanted my this trip to be memorable. I am vegetarian and I told him that I do not like Seafood. Well, to prove the point, he took me to fantastic Seafood restaurant in Seattle and treated me with mouth watering vegetarian dishes. I think when I go to Seattle next time, I am going to make him to take me again to the same place. Rick, Rushabh, Pinal and Paras Well, this is a short summary of few of the friends I met at Seattle. What is the life without friends, eh? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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  • Why Software Sucks...and What You Can Do About It – book review

    - by DigiMortal
        How do our users see the products we are writing for them and how happy they are with our work? Are they able to get their work done without fighting with cool features and crashes or are they just switching off resistance part of their brain to survive our software? Yeah, the overall picture of software usability landscape is not very nice. Okay, it is not even nice. But, fortunately, Why Software Sucks...and What You Can Do About It by David S. Platt explains everything. Why Software Sucks… is book for software users but I consider it as a-must reading also for developers and specially for their managers whose politics often kills all usability topics as soon as they may appear. For managers usability is soft topic that can be manipulated the way it is best in current state of project. Although developers are not UI designers and usability experts they are still very often forced to deal with these topics and this is how usability problems start (of course, also designers are able to produce designs that are stupid and too hard to use for users, but this blog here is about development). I found this book to be very interesting and funny reading. It is not humor book but it explains you all so you remember later very well what you just read. It took me about three evenings to go through this book and I am still enjoying what I found and how author explains our weird young working field to end users. I suggest this book to all developers – while you are demanding your management to hire or outsource usability expert you are at least causing less pain to end users. So, go and buy this book, just like I did. And… they thanks to mr. Platt :) There is one book more I suggest you to read if you are interested in usability - Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition by Steve Krug. Editorial review from Amazon Today’s software sucks. There’s no other good way to say it. It’s unsafe, allowing criminal programs to creep through the Internet wires into our very bedrooms. It’s unreliable, crashing when we need it most, wiping out hours or days of work with no way to get it back. And it’s hard to use, requiring large amounts of head-banging to figure out the simplest operations. It’s no secret that software sucks. You know that from personal experience, whether you use computers for work or personal tasks. In this book, programming insider David Platt explains why that’s the case and, more importantly, why it doesn’t have to be that way. And he explains it in plain, jargon-free English that’s a joy to read, using real-world examples with which you’re already familiar. In the end, he suggests what you, as a typical user, without a technical background, can do about this sad state of our software—how you, as an informed consumer, don’t have to take the abuse that bad software dishes out. As you might expect from the book’s title, Dave’s expose is laced with humor—sometimes outrageous, but always dead on. You’ll laugh out loud as you recall incidents with your own software that made you cry. You’ll slap your thigh with the same hand that so often pounded your computer desk and wished it was a bad programmer’s face. But Dave hasn’t written this book just for laughs. He’s written it to give long-overdue voice to your own discovery—that software does, indeed, suck, but it shouldn’t. Table of contents Acknowledgments xiii Introduction Chapter 1: Who’re You Calling a Dummy? Where We Came From Why It Still Sucks Today Control versus Ease of Use I Don’t Care How Your Program Works A Bad Feature and a Good One Stopping the Proceedings with Idiocy Testing on Live Animals Where We Are and What You Can Do Chapter 2: Tangled in the Web Where We Came From How It Works Why It Still Sucks Today Client-Centered Design versus Server-Centered Design Where’s My Eye Opener? It’s Obvious—Not! Splash, Flash, and Animation Testing on Live Animals What You Can Do about It Chapter 3: Keep Me Safe The Way It Was Why It Sucks Today What Programmers Need to Know, but Don’t A Human Operation Budgeting for Hassles Users Are Lazy Social Engineering Last Word on Security What You Can Do Chapter 4: Who the Heck Are You? Where We Came From Why It Still Sucks Today Incompatible Requirements OK, So Now What? Chapter 5: Who’re You Looking At? Yes, They Know You Why It Sucks More Than Ever Today Users Don’t Know Where the Risks Are What They Know First Milk You with Cookies? Privacy Policy Nonsense Covering Your Tracks The Google Conundrum Solution Chapter 6: Ten Thousand Geeks, Crazed on Jolt Cola See Them in Their Native Habitat All These Geeks Who Speaks, and When, and about What Selling It The Next Generation of Geeks—Passing It On Chapter 7: Who Are These Crazy Bastards Anyway? Homo Logicus Testosterone Poisoning Control and Contentment Making Models Geeks and Jocks Jargon Brains and Constraints Seven Habits of Geeks Chapter 8: Microsoft: Can’t Live With ’Em and Can’t Live Without ’Em They Run the World Me and Them Where We Came From Why It Sucks Today Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t We Love to Hate Them Plus ça Change Growing-Up Pains What You Can Do about It The Last Word Chapter 9: Doing Something About It 1. Buy 2. Tell 3. Ridicule 4. Trust 5. Organize Epilogue About the Author

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