Search Results

Search found 3758 results on 151 pages for 'efficient'.

Page 148/151 | < Previous Page | 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151  | Next Page >

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, August 07, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, August 07, 2014Popular ReleasesSharePoint 2013 Lync Presence using jQuery: jQuery Lync Presence: I have fixed the same user multiple times on page issue in this release (Issue # 1506)Dynamics AX IEIDE Project Explorer: IEIDE.1.1.40803.1: Installing the project: 1. Install the ax model file; do this by running the following commands on the machine having the AX Management Tools: 1.a. cmd (depending if you have UAC enabled, you may want to Run as administrator); 1.b. net stop aos60$01 (wait until you have your AOS stopped); 1.c. cd "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics AX\60\ManagementUtili ties\" 1.d. axutil import /file:c:\IEIDE.1.1.40806.1.axmodel /verbose 1.e. net start aos60$01 1.f. start the client and select Skip 2. Per...JSLint.NET: JSLint.NET 1.6.4: Bugs: #38: MSBuild task support for linked settings file. #40: Explicitly typed imports / exports required in some Visual Studio environments.AD4 Application Designer for flow based .NET applications: AD4.AppDesigner.23.24: AD4.Iteration.23.24(Advanced Rendering Features) DesignAttribute parameter LabelPosition to define position of flow pin label: AD4_SyntaxDefinition extended by parameter LabelPosition FileExtension extended to parse value of parameter LabelPosition AppDesignAttribute extended by LabelPosition RaiseAlarmFlow of AlarmClockSample.10 extended to test the new attribute RenderFlowChartPinCaptions improved to handle LabelPosition parameter ToDo: Some tutorials are unfinished but coming soon...Instant Beautiful Browsing: IBB 14.3 Alpha: An alpha release of IBB. After 3 years of the last release this version is made from scratch, with tons of new features like: Make your own IBB aps. HTML 5. Better UI. Extreme Windows 8 resemblance. Photos. Store. Movement TONS of times smother compared to previous versions. Remember that this is AN ALPHA release, I hope I will have "IBB 14" finished by December. The documentation on how to create a new application for IBB will come next monthjQuery List DragSort: jQuery List DragSort 0.5.2: Fixed scrollContainer removing deprecated use of $.browser so should now work with latest version of jQuery. Added the ability to return false in dragEnd to revert sort order Project changes Added nuget package for dragsort https://www.nuget.org/packages/dragsort Converted repository from SVN to MercurialForms 7 - A lightweight InfoPath alternative for SharePoint: Forms7 0.0.07 Alpha Release: Minor bug fixes for repeating content functionality and modifications so that Forms7 will work with older versions of Internet ExplorerEASTester: EASTester 1.4: This release has several new features: •You can set proxy server settings. This means you can point it to Fiddler and see more details on the requests and responses. The default is 127.0.0.8 and port 8888 – which is what Fiddler’s proxy defaults to. •There is limited ability for the application to lookup helpful information on the first status code in the response – you will see it displayed in the lowest text box of the Conversation window. This will make the Conversation window a lot easi...Lexisnexis directory of corporate affiliates Text Analyzer: Lexisnexis Text Analyzer: This version has functions below.Standards to analyze, columns, keywords editing Import of document Export to CSV and Microsoft Excel fileWix# (WixSharp) - managed interface for WiX: Release 1.0.0.0: Release 1.0.0.0 Custom UI Custom MSI Dialog Custom CLR Dialog External UIRecaptcha for .NET: Recaptcha for .NET v1.6.0: What's New?Bug fixes Optimized codeMath.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v3.2.0: Linear Algebra: Vector.Map2 (map2 in F#), storage-optimized Linear Algebra: fix RemoveColumn/Row early index bound check (was not strict enough) Statistics: Entropy ~Jeff Mastry Interpolation: use Array.BinarySearch instead of local implementation ~Candy Chiu Resources: fix a corrupted exception message string Portable Build: support .Net 4.0 as well by using profile 328 instead of 344. .Net 3.5: F# extensions now support .Net 3.5 as well .Net 3.5: NuGet package now contains pro...Virto Commerce Enterprise Open Source eCommerce Platform (asp.net mvc): Virto Commerce 1.11: Virto Commerce Community Edition version 1.11. To install the SDK package, please refer to SDK getting started documentation To configure source code package, please refer to Source code getting started documentation This release includes many bug fixes and minor improvements. More details about this release can be found on our blog at http://blog.virtocommerce.com.BoxStarter: Boxstarter 2.4.80: Running the Setup.bat file will install Chocolatey if not present and then install the Boxstarter modules.ProjkyAddin ssms addin script shortcut ssmsaddin: projkyaddin source code and msi files.: projkyaddin source code and msi files.Json.NET: Json.NET 6.0 Release 4: New feature - Added Merge to LINQ to JSON New feature - Added JValue.CreateNull and JValue.CreateUndefined New feature - Added Windows Phone 8.1 support to .NET 4.0 portable assembly New feature - Added OverrideCreator to JsonObjectContract New feature - Added support for overriding the creation of interfaces and abstract types New feature - Added support for reading UUID BSON binary values as a Guid New feature - Added MetadataPropertyHandling.Ignore New feature - Improv...VidCoder: 1.5.24 Beta: Added NL-Means denoiser. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 6254. Added extra error handling to DVD player code to avoid a crash when the player was moved.PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit: PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit v3.1.5: *Added Send-Keys function to send a sequence of keys to an application window (Thanks to mmashwani) *Added 3 optimization/stability improvements to Execute-Process following MS best practice (Thanks to mmashwani) *Fixed issue where Execute-MSI did not use value from XML file for uninstall but instead ran all uninstalls silently by default *Fixed error on 1641 exit code (should be a success like 3010) *Fixed issue with error handling in Invoke-SCCMTask *Fixed issue with deferral dates where th...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.041.012 Release 1: Added voxel material textures to read in with mods. Fixed missing texture replacements for mods. Fixed rounding issue in raytrace code. Fixed repair issue with corrupt checkpoint file. Fixed issue with updated SE binaries 01.041.012 using new container configuration.Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.9.601: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.9.6 Breaking changes: - Changed arguments for the Map method of MagickImage. - QuantizeSettings uses Riemersma by default.New ProjectsADShop: Project ADShop Categoty : Shop / Bussiness Dev : Andy Nguy?n Create : 7/13/2014 Notes : This source is for students . Don't use for marketing online !Aspose Java for Docx4j: Comparison Between Docx4j And AsposeCode Coverage With Visual Studio: This is going to be Code Coverage Plugin for Visual StudioEuler circuit: Initial releaseLexisnexis directory of corporate affiliates Text Analyzer: The program is made for analyzing documents, Lexisnexis directory of corporate affiliates.Manipulator: It's an HTML tool that provides you some functions. Written in javascript.MicroJSON - Lightweight JSON library: MicroJSON is a lightweight JSON library that provides methods to create and read JSON objects and strings. It is useful for .Net Micro Framework.Ollies MSCRM Tools: Useful tools for your working life with MSCRMOnline: This is a demo appPESS2: nothing particularPrivateScriptLanguage: PSL is a simple Script-Language which can be used for custom shell-development or low-level scripting in applications. You can easily integrate it in any app!QuickDAL: QDAL provides a simple and efficient Data Access Layer between business entities and a T-SQL compatible database.Regular delaunay triangulation: Initial releaseSimpleWebService: This application should provide a simple platform to simulate all kinds of Web-API and/or network services, to provide a good testing environment for developersThe Mario Kart 8 App: Well hello there people! Today I bring to you a new working project for Mario Kart 8 called The Mario Kart 8 App!Visual Studio Online REST API: Visual Studio Online Work Item Tracking REST API sample client written in C#.

  Read the article

• Project Jigsaw: Late for the train: The Q&A

  - by Mark Reinhold

  I recently proposed, to the Java community in general and to the SE 8 (JSR 337) Expert Group in particular, to defer Project Jigsaw from Java 8 to Java 9. I also proposed to aim explicitly for a regular two-year release cycle going forward. Herewith a summary of the key questions I’ve seen in reaction to these proposals, along with answers. Making the decision Q Has the Java SE 8 Expert Group decided whether to defer the addition of a module system and the modularization of the Platform to Java SE 9? A No, it has not yet decided. Q By when do you expect the EG to make this decision? A In the next month or so. Q How can I make sure my voice is heard? A The EG will consider all relevant input from the wider community. If you have a prominent blog, column, or other communication channel then there’s a good chance that we’ve already seen your opinion. If not, you’re welcome to send it to the Java SE 8 Comments List, which is the EG’s official feedback channel. Q What’s the overall tone of the feedback you’ve received? A The feedback has been about evenly divided as to whether Java 8 should be delayed for Jigsaw, Jigsaw should be deferred to Java 9, or some other, usually less-realistic, option should be taken. Project Jigsaw Q Why is Project Jigsaw taking so long? A Project Jigsaw started at Sun, way back in August 2008. Like many efforts during the final years of Sun, it was not well staffed. Jigsaw initially ran on a shoestring, with just a handful of mostly part-time engineers, so progress was slow. During the integration of Sun into Oracle all work on Jigsaw was halted for a time, but it was eventually resumed after a thorough consideration of the alternatives. Project Jigsaw was really only fully staffed about a year ago, around the time that Java 7 shipped. We’ve added a few more engineers to the team since then, but that can’t make up for the inadequate initial staffing and the time lost during the transition. Q So it’s really just a matter of staffing limitations and corporate-integration distractions? A Aside from these difficulties, the other main factor in the duration of the project is the sheer technical difficulty of modularizing the JDK. Q Why is modularizing the JDK so hard? A There are two main reasons. The first is that the JDK code base is deeply interconnected at both the API and the implementation levels, having been built over many years primarily in the style of a monolithic software system. We’ve spent considerable effort eliminating or at least simplifying as many API and implementation dependences as possible, so that both the Platform and its implementations can be presented as a coherent set of interdependent modules, but some particularly thorny cases remain. Q What’s the second reason? A We want to maintain as much compatibility with prior releases as possible, most especially for existing classpath-based applications but also, to the extent feasible, for applications composed of modules. Q Is modularizing the JDK even necessary? Can’t you just put it in one big module? A Modularizing the JDK, and more specifically modularizing the Java SE Platform, will enable standard yet flexible Java runtime configurations scaling from large servers down to small embedded devices. In the long term it will enable the convergence of Java SE with the higher-end Java ME Platforms. Q Is Project Jigsaw just about modularizing the JDK? A As originally conceived, Project Jigsaw was indeed focused primarily upon modularizing the JDK. The growing demand for a truly standard module system for the Java Platform, which could be used not just for the Platform itself but also for libraries and applications built on top of it, later motivated expanding the scope of the effort. Q As a developer, why should I care about Project Jigsaw? A The introduction of a modular Java Platform will, in the long term, fundamentally change the way that Java implementations, libraries, frameworks, tools, and applications are designed, built, and deployed. Q How much progress has Project Jigsaw made? A We’ve actually made a lot of progress. Much of the core functionality of the module system has been prototyped and works at both compile time and run time. We’ve extended the Java programming language with module declarations, worked out a structure for modular source trees and corresponding compiled-class trees, and implemented these features in javac. We’ve defined an efficient module-file format, extended the JVM to bootstrap a modular JRE, and designed and implemented a preliminary API. We’ve used the module system to make a good first cut at dividing the JDK and the Java SE API into a coherent set of modules. Among other things, we’re currently working to retrofit the java.util.ServiceLoader API to support modular services. Q I want to help! How can I get involved? A Check out the project page, read the draft requirements and design overview documents, download the latest prototype build, and play with it. You can tell us what you think, and follow the rest of our work in real time, on the jigsaw-dev list. The Java Platform Module System JSR Q What’s the relationship between Project Jigsaw and the eventual Java Platform Module System JSR? A At a high level, Project Jigsaw has two phases. In the first phase we’re exploring an approach to modularity that’s markedly different from that of existing Java modularity solutions. We’ve assumed that we can change the Java programming language, the virtual machine, and the APIs. Doing so enables a design which can strongly enforce module boundaries in all program phases, from compilation to deployment to execution. That, in turn, leads to better usability, diagnosability, security, and performance. The ultimate goal of the first phase is produce a working prototype which can inform the work of the Module-System JSR EG. Q What will happen in the second phase of Project Jigsaw? A The second phase will produce the reference implementation of the specification created by the Module-System JSR EG. The EG might ultimately choose an entirely different approach than the one we’re exploring now. If and when that happens then Project Jigsaw will change course as necessary, but either way I think that the end result will be better for having been informed by our current work. Maven & OSGi Q Why not just use Maven? A Maven is a software project management and comprehension tool. As such it can be seen as a kind of build-time module system but, by its nature, it does nothing to support modularity at run time. Q Why not just adopt OSGi? A OSGi is a rich dynamic component system which includes not just a module system but also a life-cycle model and a dynamic service registry. The latter two facilities are useful to some kinds of sophisticated applications, but I don’t think they’re of wide enough interest to be standardized as part of the Java SE Platform. Q Okay, then why not just adopt the module layer of OSGi? A The OSGi module layer is not operative at compile time; it only addresses modularity during packaging, deployment, and execution. As it stands, moreover, it’s useful for library and application modules but, since it’s built strictly on top of the Java SE Platform, it can’t be used to modularize the Platform itself. Q If Maven addresses modularity at build time, and the OSGi module layer addresses modularity during deployment and at run time, then why not just use the two together, as many developers already do? A The combination of Maven and OSGi is certainly very useful in practice today. These systems have, however, been built on top of the existing Java platform; they have not been able to change the platform itself. This means, among other things, that module boundaries are weakly enforced, if at all, which makes it difficult to diagnose configuration errors and impossible to run untrusted code securely. The prototype Jigsaw module system, by contrast, aims to define a platform-level solution which extends both the language and the JVM in order to enforce module boundaries strongly and uniformly in all program phases. Q If the EG chooses an approach like the one currently being taken in the Jigsaw prototype, will Maven and OSGi be made obsolete? A No, not at all! No matter what approach is taken, to ensure wide adoption it’s essential that the standard Java Platform Module System interact well with Maven. Applications that depend upon the sophisticated features of OSGi will no doubt continue to use OSGi, so it’s critical that implementations of OSGi be able to run on top of the Java module system and, if suitably modified, support OSGi bundles that depend upon Java modules. Ideas for how to do that are currently being explored in Project Penrose. Java 8 & Java 9 Q Without Jigsaw, won’t Java 8 be a pretty boring release? A No, far from it! It’s still slated to include the widely-anticipated Project Lambda (JSR 335), work on which has been going very well, along with the new Date/Time API (JSR 310), Type Annotations (JSR 308), and a set of smaller features already in progress. Q Won’t deferring Jigsaw to Java 9 delay the eventual convergence of the higher-end Java ME Platforms with Java SE? A It will slow that transition, but it will not stop it. To allow progress toward that convergence to be made with Java 8 I’ve suggested to the Java SE 8 EG that we consider specifying a small number of Profiles which would allow compact configurations of the SE Platform to be built and deployed. Q If Jigsaw is deferred to Java 9, would the Oracle engineers currently working on it be reassigned to other Java 8 features and then return to working on Jigsaw again after Java 8 ships? A No, these engineers would continue to work primarily on Jigsaw from now until Java 9 ships. Q Why not drop Lambda and finish Jigsaw instead? A Even if the engineers currently working on Lambda could instantly switch over to Jigsaw and immediately become productive—which of course they can’t—there are less than nine months remaining in the Java 8 schedule for work on major features. That’s just not enough time for the broad review, testing, and feedback which such a fundamental change to the Java Platform requires. Q Why not ship the module system in Java 8, and then modularize the platform in Java 9? A If we deliver a module system in one release but don’t use it to modularize the JDK until some later release then we run a big risk of getting something fundamentally wrong. If that happens then we’d have to fix it in the later release, and fixing fundamental design flaws after the fact almost always leads to a poor end result. Q Why not ship Jigsaw in an 8.5 release, less than two years after 8? Or why not just ship a new release every year, rather than every other year? A Many more developers work on the JDK today than a couple of years ago, both because Oracle has dramatically increased its own investment and because other organizations and individuals have joined the OpenJDK Community. Collectively we don’t, however, have the bandwidth required to ship and then provide long-term support for a big JDK release more frequently than about every other year. Q What’s the feedback been on the two-year release-cycle proposal? A For just about every comment that we should release more frequently, so that new features are available sooner, there’s been another asking for an even slower release cycle so that large teams of enterprise developers who ship mission-critical applications have a chance to migrate at a comfortable pace.

  Read the article

• Stumbling Through: Visual Studio 2010 (Part III)

  The last post ended with us just getting started on stumbling into text template file customization, a task that required a Visual Studio extension (Tangible T4 Editor) to even have a chance at completing.  Despite the benefits of the Tangible T4 Editor, I still had a hard time putting together a solid text template that would be easy to explain.  This is mostly due to the way the files allow you to mix code (encapsulated in <# #>) with straight-up text to generate.  It is effective to be sure, but not very readable.  Nevertheless, I will try and explain what was accomplished in my custom tt file, though the details of which are not really the point of this article (my way of saying dont criticize my crappy code, and certainly dont use it in any somewhat real application.  You may become dumber just by looking at this code.  You have been warned really the footnote I should put at the end of all of my blog posts). To begin with, there were two basic requirements that I needed the code generator to satisfy:  Reading one to many entity framework files, and using the entities that were found to write one to many class files.  Thankfully, using the Entity Object Generator as a starting point gave us an example on how to do exactly that by using the MetadataLoader and EntityFrameworkTemplateFileManager you include references to these items and use them like so: // Instantiate an entity framework file reader and file writer MetadataLoader loader = new MetadataLoader(this); EntityFrameworkTemplateFileManager fileManager = EntityFrameworkTemplateFileManager.Create(this); // Load the entity model metadata workspace MetadataWorkspace metadataWorkspace = null; bool allMetadataLoaded =loader.TryLoadAllMetadata("MFL.tt", out metadataWorkspace); EdmItemCollection ItemCollection = (EdmItemCollection)metadataWorkspace.GetItemCollection(DataSpace.CSpace); // Create an IO class to contain the 'get' methods for all entities in the model fileManager.StartNewFile("MFL.IO.gen.cs"); Next, we want to be able to loop through all of the entities found in the model, and then each property for each entity so we can generate classes and methods for each.  The code for that is blissfully simple: // Iterate through each entity in the model foreach (EntityType entity in ItemCollection.GetItems<EntityType>().OrderBy(e => e.Name)) {     // Iterate through each primitive property of the entity     foreach (EdmProperty edmProperty in entity.Properties.Where(p => p.TypeUsage.EdmType is PrimitiveType && p.DeclaringType == entity))     {         // TODO:  Create properties     }     // Iterate through each relationship of the entity     foreach (NavigationProperty navProperty in entity.NavigationProperties.Where(np => np.DeclaringType == entity))     {         // TODO:  Create associations     } } There really isnt anything more advanced than that going on in the text template the only thing I had to blunder through was realizing that if you want the generator to interpret a line of code (such as our iterations above), you need to enclose the code in <# and #> while if you want the generator to interpret the VALUE of code, such as putting the entity name into the class name, you need to enclose the code in <#= and #> like so: public partial class <#=entity.Name#> To make a long story short, I did a lot of repetition of the above to come up with a text template that generates a class for each entity based on its properties, and a set of IO methods for each entity based on its relationships.  The two work together to provide lazy-loading for hierarchical data (such getting Team.Players) so it should be pretty intuitive to use on a front-end.  This text template is available here you can tweak the inputFiles array to load one or many different edmx models and generate the basic xml IO and class files, though it will probably only work correctly in the simplest of cases, like our MFL model described in the previous post.  Additionally, there is no validation, logging or error handling which is something I want to handle later by stumbling through the enterprise library 5.0. The code that gets generated isnt anything special, though using the LINQ to XML feature was something very new and exciting for me I had only worked with XML in the past using the DOM or XML Reader objects along with XPath, and the LINQ to XML model is just so much more elegant and supposedly efficient (something to test later).  For example, the following code was generated to create a Player object for each Player node in the XML:         return from element in GetXmlData(_PlayerDataFile).Descendants("Player")             select new Player             {                 Id = int.Parse(element.Attribute("Id").Value)                 ,ParentName = element.Parent.Name.LocalName                 ,ParentId = long.Parse(element.Parent.Attribute("Id").Value)                 ,Name = element.Attribute("Name").Value                 ,PositionId = int.Parse(element.Attribute("PositionId").Value)             }; It is all done in one line of code, no looping needed.  Even though GetXmlData loads the entire xml file just like the old XML DOM approach would have, it is supposed to be much less resource intensive.  I will definitely put that to the test after we develop a user interface for getting at this data.  Speaking of the data where IS the data?  Weve put together a pretty model and a bunch of code around it, but we dont have any data to speak of.  We can certainly drop to our favorite XML editor and crank out some data, but if it doesnt totally match our model, it will not load correctly.  To help with this, Ive built in a method to generate xml at any given layer in the hierarchy.  So for us to get the closest possible thing to real data, wed need to invoke MFL.IO.GenerateTeamXML and save the results to file.  Doing so should get us something that looks like this: <Team Id="0" Name="0">   <Player Id="0" Name="0" PositionId="0">     <Statistic Id="0" PassYards="0" RushYards="0" Year="0" />   </Player> </Team> Sadly, it is missing the Positions node (havent thought of a way to generate lookup xml yet) and the data itself isnt quite realistic (well, as realistic as MFL data can be anyway).  Lets manually remedy that for now to give us a decent starter set of data.  Note that this is TWO xml files Lookups.xml and Teams.xml: <Lookups Id=0>   <Position Id="0" Name="Quarterback"/>   <Position Id="1" Name="Runningback"/> </Lookups> <Teams Id=0>   <Team Id="0" Name="Chicago">     <Player Id="0" Name="QB Bears" PositionId="0">       <Statistic Id="0" PassYards="4000" RushYards="120" Year="2008" />       <Statistic Id="1" PassYards="4200" RushYards="180" Year="2009" />     </Player>     <Player Id="1" Name="RB Bears" PositionId="1">       <Statistic Id="2" PassYards="0" RushYards="800" Year="2007" />       <Statistic Id="3" PassYards="0" RushYards="1200" Year="2008" />       <Statistic Id="4" PassYards="3" RushYards="1450" Year="2009" />     </Player>   </Team> </Teams> Ok, so we have some data, we have a way to read/write that data and we have a friendly way of representing that data.  Now, what remains is the part that I have been looking forward to the most: present the data to the user and give them the ability to add/update/delete, and doing so in a way that is very intuitive (easy) from a development standpoint.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

  Read the article

• Stumbling Through: Visual Studio 2010 (Part III)

  The last post ended with us just getting started on stumbling into text template file customization, a task that required a Visual Studio extension (Tangible T4 Editor) to even have a chance at completing.  Despite the benefits of the Tangible T4 Editor, I still had a hard time putting together a solid text template that would be easy to explain.  This is mostly due to the way the files allow you to mix code (encapsulated in <# #>) with straight-up text to generate.  It is effective to be sure, but not very readable.  Nevertheless, I will try and explain what was accomplished in my custom tt file, though the details of which are not really the point of this article (my way of saying dont criticize my crappy code, and certainly dont use it in any somewhat real application.  You may become dumber just by looking at this code.  You have been warned really the footnote I should put at the end of all of my blog posts). To begin with, there were two basic requirements that I needed the code generator to satisfy:  Reading one to many entity framework files, and using the entities that were found to write one to many class files.  Thankfully, using the Entity Object Generator as a starting point gave us an example on how to do exactly that by using the MetadataLoader and EntityFrameworkTemplateFileManager you include references to these items and use them like so: // Instantiate an entity framework file reader and file writer MetadataLoader loader = new MetadataLoader(this); EntityFrameworkTemplateFileManager fileManager = EntityFrameworkTemplateFileManager.Create(this); // Load the entity model metadata workspace MetadataWorkspace metadataWorkspace = null; bool allMetadataLoaded =loader.TryLoadAllMetadata("MFL.tt", out metadataWorkspace); EdmItemCollection ItemCollection = (EdmItemCollection)metadataWorkspace.GetItemCollection(DataSpace.CSpace); // Create an IO class to contain the 'get' methods for all entities in the model fileManager.StartNewFile("MFL.IO.gen.cs"); Next, we want to be able to loop through all of the entities found in the model, and then each property for each entity so we can generate classes and methods for each.  The code for that is blissfully simple: // Iterate through each entity in the model foreach (EntityType entity in ItemCollection.GetItems<EntityType>().OrderBy(e => e.Name)) {     // Iterate through each primitive property of the entity     foreach (EdmProperty edmProperty in entity.Properties.Where(p => p.TypeUsage.EdmType is PrimitiveType && p.DeclaringType == entity))     {         // TODO:  Create properties     }     // Iterate through each relationship of the entity     foreach (NavigationProperty navProperty in entity.NavigationProperties.Where(np => np.DeclaringType == entity))     {         // TODO:  Create associations     } } There really isnt anything more advanced than that going on in the text template the only thing I had to blunder through was realizing that if you want the generator to interpret a line of code (such as our iterations above), you need to enclose the code in <# and #> while if you want the generator to interpret the VALUE of code, such as putting the entity name into the class name, you need to enclose the code in <#= and #> like so: public partial class <#=entity.Name#> To make a long story short, I did a lot of repetition of the above to come up with a text template that generates a class for each entity based on its properties, and a set of IO methods for each entity based on its relationships.  The two work together to provide lazy-loading for hierarchical data (such getting Team.Players) so it should be pretty intuitive to use on a front-end.  This text template is available here you can tweak the inputFiles array to load one or many different edmx models and generate the basic xml IO and class files, though it will probably only work correctly in the simplest of cases, like our MFL model described in the previous post.  Additionally, there is no validation, logging or error handling which is something I want to handle later by stumbling through the enterprise library 5.0. The code that gets generated isnt anything special, though using the LINQ to XML feature was something very new and exciting for me I had only worked with XML in the past using the DOM or XML Reader objects along with XPath, and the LINQ to XML model is just so much more elegant and supposedly efficient (something to test later).  For example, the following code was generated to create a Player object for each Player node in the XML:         return from element in GetXmlData(_PlayerDataFile).Descendants("Player")             select new Player             {                 Id = int.Parse(element.Attribute("Id").Value)                 ,ParentName = element.Parent.Name.LocalName                 ,ParentId = long.Parse(element.Parent.Attribute("Id").Value)                 ,Name = element.Attribute("Name").Value                 ,PositionId = int.Parse(element.Attribute("PositionId").Value)             }; It is all done in one line of code, no looping needed.  Even though GetXmlData loads the entire xml file just like the old XML DOM approach would have, it is supposed to be much less resource intensive.  I will definitely put that to the test after we develop a user interface for getting at this data.  Speaking of the data where IS the data?  Weve put together a pretty model and a bunch of code around it, but we dont have any data to speak of.  We can certainly drop to our favorite XML editor and crank out some data, but if it doesnt totally match our model, it will not load correctly.  To help with this, Ive built in a method to generate xml at any given layer in the hierarchy.  So for us to get the closest possible thing to real data, wed need to invoke MFL.IO.GenerateTeamXML and save the results to file.  Doing so should get us something that looks like this: <Team Id="0" Name="0">   <Player Id="0" Name="0" PositionId="0">     <Statistic Id="0" PassYards="0" RushYards="0" Year="0" />   </Player> </Team> Sadly, it is missing the Positions node (havent thought of a way to generate lookup xml yet) and the data itself isnt quite realistic (well, as realistic as MFL data can be anyway).  Lets manually remedy that for now to give us a decent starter set of data.  Note that this is TWO xml files Lookups.xml and Teams.xml: <Lookups Id=0>   <Position Id="0" Name="Quarterback"/>   <Position Id="1" Name="Runningback"/> </Lookups> <Teams Id=0>   <Team Id="0" Name="Chicago">     <Player Id="0" Name="QB Bears" PositionId="0">       <Statistic Id="0" PassYards="4000" RushYards="120" Year="2008" />       <Statistic Id="1" PassYards="4200" RushYards="180" Year="2009" />     </Player>     <Player Id="1" Name="RB Bears" PositionId="1">       <Statistic Id="2" PassYards="0" RushYards="800" Year="2007" />       <Statistic Id="3" PassYards="0" RushYards="1200" Year="2008" />       <Statistic Id="4" PassYards="3" RushYards="1450" Year="2009" />     </Player>   </Team> </Teams> Ok, so we have some data, we have a way to read/write that data and we have a friendly way of representing that data.  Now, what remains is the part that I have been looking forward to the most: present the data to the user and give them the ability to add/update/delete, and doing so in a way that is very intuitive (easy) from a development standpoint.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

  Read the article

• What’s new in ASP.NET 4.0: Core Features

  - by Rick Strahl

  Microsoft released the .NET Runtime 4.0 and with it comes a brand spanking new version of ASP.NET – version 4.0 – which provides an incremental set of improvements to an already powerful platform. .NET 4.0 is a full release of the .NET Framework, unlike version 3.5, which was merely a set of library updates on top of the .NET Framework version 2.0. Because of this full framework revision, there has been a welcome bit of consolidation of assemblies and configuration settings. The full runtime version change to 4.0 also means that you have to explicitly pick version 4.0 of the runtime when you create a new Application Pool in IIS, unlike .NET 3.5, which actually requires version 2.0 of the runtime. In this first of two parts I'll take a look at some of the changes in the core ASP.NET runtime. In the next edition I'll go over improvements in Web Forms and Visual Studio. Core Engine Features Most of the high profile improvements in ASP.NET have to do with Web Forms, but there are a few gems in the core runtime that should make life easier for ASP.NET developers. The following list describes some of the things I've found useful among the new features. Clean web.config Files Are Back! If you've been using ASP.NET 3.5, you probably have noticed that the web.config file has turned into quite a mess of configuration settings between all the custom handler and module mappings for the various web server versions. Part of the reason for this mess is that .NET 3.5 is a collection of add-on components running on top of the .NET Runtime 2.0 and so almost all of the new features of .NET 3.5 where essentially introduced as custom modules and handlers that had to be explicitly configured in the config file. Because the core runtime didn't rev with 3.5, all those configuration options couldn't be moved up to other configuration files in the system chain. With version 4.0 a consolidation was possible, and the result is a much simpler web.config file by default. A default empty ASP.NET 4.0 Web Forms project looks like this: <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration> <system.web> <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0" /> </system.web> </configuration> Need I say more? Configuration Transformation Files to Manage Configurations and Application Packaging ASP.NET 4.0 introduces the ability to create multi-target configuration files. This means it's possible to create a single configuration file that can be transformed based on relatively simple replacement rules using a Visual Studio and WebDeploy provided XSLT syntax. The idea is that you can create a 'master' configuration file and then create customized versions of this master configuration file by applying some relatively simplistic search and replace, add or remove logic to specific elements and attributes in the original file. To give you an idea, here's the example code that Visual Studio creates for a default web.Release.config file, which replaces a connection string, removes the debug attribute and replaces the CustomErrors section: <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration xmlns:xdt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/XML-Document-Transform"> <connectionStrings> <add name="MyDB" connectionString="Data Source=ReleaseSQLServer;Initial Catalog=MyReleaseDB;Integrated Security=True" xdt:Transform="SetAttributes" xdt:Locator="Match(name)"/> </connectionStrings> <system.web> <compilation xdt:Transform="RemoveAttributes(debug)" /> <customErrors defaultRedirect="GenericError.htm" mode="RemoteOnly" xdt:Transform="Replace"> <error statusCode="500" redirect="InternalError.htm"/> </customErrors> </system.web> </configuration> You can see the XSL transform syntax that drives this functionality. Basically, only the elements listed in the override file are matched and updated – all the rest of the original web.config file stays intact. Visual Studio 2010 supports this functionality directly in the project system so it's easy to create and maintain these customized configurations in the project tree. Once you're ready to publish your application, you can then use the Publish <yourWebApplication> option on the Build menu which allows publishing to disk, via FTP or to a Web Server using Web Deploy. You can also create a deployment package as a .zip file which can be used by the WebDeploy tool to configure and install the application. You can manually run the Web Deploy tool or use the IIS Manager to install the package on the server or other machine. You can find out more about WebDeploy and Packaging here: http://tinyurl.com/2anxcje. Improved Routing Routing provides a relatively simple way to create clean URLs with ASP.NET by associating a template URL path and routing it to a specific ASP.NET HttpHandler. Microsoft first introduced routing with ASP.NET MVC and then they integrated routing with a basic implementation in the core ASP.NET engine via a separate ASP.NET routing assembly. In ASP.NET 4.0, the process of using routing functionality gets a bit easier. First, routing is now rolled directly into System.Web, so no extra assembly reference is required in your projects to use routing. The RouteCollection class now includes a MapPageRoute() method that makes it easy to route to any ASP.NET Page requests without first having to implement an IRouteHandler implementation. It would have been nice if this could have been extended to serve *any* handler implementation, but unfortunately for anything but a Page derived handlers you still will have to implement a custom IRouteHandler implementation. ASP.NET Pages now include a RouteData collection that will contain route information. Retrieving route data is now a lot easier by simply using this.RouteData.Values["routeKey"] where the routeKey is the value specified in the route template (i.e., "users/{userId}" would use Values["userId"]). The Page class also has a GetRouteUrl() method that you can use to create URLs with route data values rather than hardcoding the URL: <%= this.GetRouteUrl("users",new { userId="ricks" }) %> You can also use the new Expression syntax using <%$RouteUrl %> to accomplish something similar, which can be easier to embed into Page or MVC View code: <a runat="server" href='<%$RouteUrl:RouteName=user, id=ricks %>'>Visit User</a> Finally, the Response object also includes a new RedirectToRoute() method to build a route url for redirection without hardcoding the URL. Response.RedirectToRoute("users", new { userId = "ricks" }); All of these routines are helpers that have been integrated into the core ASP.NET engine to make it easier to create routes and retrieve route data, which hopefully will result in more people taking advantage of routing in ASP.NET. To find out more about the routing improvements you can check out Dan Maharry's blog which has a couple of nice blog entries on this subject: http://tinyurl.com/37trutj and http://tinyurl.com/39tt5w5. Session State Improvements Session state is an often used and abused feature in ASP.NET and version 4.0 introduces a few enhancements geared towards making session state more efficient and to minimize at least some of the ill effects of overuse. The first improvement affects out of process session state, which is typically used in web farm environments or for sites that store application sensitive data that must survive AppDomain restarts (which in my opinion is just about any application). When using OutOfProc session state, ASP.NET serializes all the data in the session statebag into a blob that gets carried over the network and stored either in the State server or SQL Server via the Session provider. Version 4.0 provides some improvement in this serialization of the session data by offering an enableCompression option on the web.Config <Session> section, which forces the serialized session state to be compressed. Depending on the type of data that is being serialized, this compression can reduce the size of the data travelling over the wire by as much as a third. It works best on string data, but can also reduce the size of binary data. In addition, ASP.NET 4.0 now offers a way to programmatically turn session state on or off as part of the request processing queue. In prior versions, the only way to specify whether session state is available is by implementing a marker interface on the HTTP handler implementation. In ASP.NET 4.0, you can now turn session state on and off programmatically via HttpContext.Current.SetSessionStateBehavior() as part of the ASP.NET module pipeline processing as long as it occurs before the AquireRequestState pipeline event. Output Cache Provider Output caching in ASP.NET has been a very useful but potentially memory intensive feature. The default OutputCache mechanism works through in-memory storage that persists generated output based on various lifetime related parameters. While this works well enough for many intended scenarios, it also can quickly cause runaway memory consumption as the cache fills up and serves many variations of pages on your site. ASP.NET 4.0 introduces a provider model for the OutputCache module so it becomes possible to plug-in custom storage strategies for cached pages. One of the goals also appears to be to consolidate some of the different cache storage mechanisms used in .NET in general to a generic Windows AppFabric framework in the future, so various different mechanisms like OutputCache, the non-Page specific ASP.NET cache and possibly even session state eventually can use the same caching engine for storage of persisted data both in memory and out of process scenarios. For developers, the OutputCache provider feature means that you can now extend caching on your own by implementing a custom Cache provider based on the System.Web.Caching.OutputCacheProvider class. You can find more info on creating an Output Cache provider in Gunnar Peipman's blog at: http://tinyurl.com/2vt6g7l. Response.RedirectPermanent ASP.NET 4.0 includes features to issue a permanent redirect that issues as an HTTP 301 Moved Permanently response rather than the standard 302 Redirect respond. In pre-4.0 versions you had to manually create your permanent redirect by setting the Status and Status code properties – Response.RedirectPermanent() makes this operation more obvious and discoverable. There's also a Response.RedirectToRoutePermanent() which provides permanent redirection of route Urls. Preloading of Applications ASP.NET 4.0 provides a new feature to preload ASP.NET applications on startup, which is meant to provide a more consistent startup experience. If your application has a lengthy startup cycle it can appear very slow to serve data to clients while the application is warming up and loading initial resources. So rather than serve these startup requests slowly in ASP.NET 4.0, you can force the application to initialize itself first before even accepting requests for processing. This feature works only on IIS 7.5 (Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2) and works in combination with IIS. You can set up a worker process in IIS 7.5 to always be running, which starts the Application Pool worker process immediately. ASP.NET 4.0 then allows you to specify site-specific settings by setting the serverAutoStartEnabled on a particular site along with an optional serviceAutoStartProvider class that can be used to receive "startup events" when the application starts up. This event in turn can be used to configure the application and optionally pre-load cache data and other information required by the app on startup.  The configuration settings need to be made in applicationhost.config: <sites> <site name="WebApplication2" id="1"> <application path="/" serviceAutoStartEnabled="true" serviceAutoStartProvider="PreWarmup" /> </site> </sites> <serviceAutoStartProviders> <add name="PreWarmup" type="PreWarmupProvider,MyAssembly" /> </serviceAutoStartProviders> Hooking up a warm up provider is optional so you can omit the provider definition and reference. If you do define it here's what it looks like: public class PreWarmupProvider System.Web.Hosting.IProcessHostPreloadClient { public void Preload(string[] parameters) { // initialization for app } } This code fires and while it's running, ASP.NET/IIS will hold requests from hitting the pipeline. So until this code completes the application will not start taking requests. The idea is that you can perform any pre-loading of resources and cache values so that the first request will be ready to perform at optimal performance level without lag. Runtime Performance Improvements According to Microsoft, there have also been a number of invisible performance improvements in the internals of the ASP.NET runtime that should make ASP.NET 4.0 applications run more efficiently and use less resources. These features come without any change requirements in applications and are virtually transparent, except that you get the benefits by updating to ASP.NET 4.0. Summary The core feature set changes are minimal which continues a tradition of small incremental changes to the ASP.NET runtime. ASP.NET has been proven as a solid platform and I'm actually rather happy to see that most of the effort in this release went into stability, performance and usability improvements rather than a massive amount of new features. The new functionality added in 4.0 is minimal but very useful. A lot of people are still running pure .NET 2.0 applications these days and have stayed off of .NET 3.5 for some time now. I think that version 4.0 with its full .NET runtime rev and assembly and configuration consolidation will make an attractive platform for developers to update to. If you're a Web Forms developer in particular, ASP.NET 4.0 includes a host of new features in the Web Forms engine that are significant enough to warrant a quick move to .NET 4.0. I'll cover those changes in my next column. Until then, I suggest you give ASP.NET 4.0 a spin and see for yourself how the new features can help you out. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 18, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 18, 2010Popular ReleasesSitefinity Migration Tool: Sitefinity Migration Tool 0.2 Alpha: - Improvements for the Sitefinity RC releaseMiniTwitter: 1.57: MiniTwitter 1.57 ???? ?? ?????????????????? ?? User Streams ????????????????????? ???????????????·??????·???????VFPX: VFP2C32 2.0.0.7: fixed a bug in AAverage - NULL values in the array corrupted the result removed limitation in ASum, AMin, AMax, AAverage - the functions were limited to 65000 elements, now they're limited to 65000 rows ASplitStr now returns a 1 element array with an empty string when an empty string is passed (behaves more like ALINES) internal code cleanup and optimization: optimized FoxArray class - results in a speedup of 10-20% in many functions which return the result in an array - like AProcesses...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks 2008R2 SR1: Sample Databases for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2 (SR1)This release is dedicated to the sample databases that ship for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2. See Database Prerequisites for SQL Server 2008R2 for feature configurations required for installing the sample databases. See Installing SQL Server 2008R2 Databases for step by step installation instructions. The SR1 release contains minor bug fixes to the installer used to create the sample databases. There are no changes to the databases them...VidCoder: 0.7.2: Fixed duplicated subtitles when running multiple encodes off of the same title.Razor Templating Engine: Razor Template Engine v1.1: Release 1.1 Changes: ADDED: Signed assemblies with strong name to allow assemblies to be referenced by other strongly-named assemblies. FIX: Filter out dynamic assemblies which causes failures in template compilation. FIX: Changed ASCII to UTF8 encoding to support UTF-8 encoded string templates. FIX: Corrected implementation of TemplateBase adding ITemplate interface.Prism Training Kit: Prism Training Kit - 1.1: This is an updated version of the Prism training Kit that targets Prism 4.0 and fixes the bugs reported in the version 1.0. This release consists of a Training Kit with Labs on the following topics Modularity Dependency Injection Bootstrapper UI Composition Communication Note: Take into account that this is a Beta version. If you find any bugs please report them in the Issue Tracker PrerequisitesVisual Studio 2010 Microsoft Word 2007/2010 Microsoft Silverlight 4 Microsoft S...Craig's Utility Library: Craig's Utility Library Code 2.0: This update contains a number of changes, added functionality, and bug fixes: Added transaction support to SQLHelper. Added linked/embedded resource ability to EmailSender. Updated List to take into account new functions. Added better support for MAC address in WMI classes. Fixed Parsing in Reflection class when dealing with sub classes. Fixed bug in SQLHelper when replacing the Command that is a select after doing a select. Fixed issue in SQL Server helper with regard to generati...MFCMAPI: November 2010 Release: Build: 6.0.0.1023 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the tool, get the executable. If you want to debug it, get the symbol file and the source. The 64 bit build will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit build, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeDotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.00: Major HighlightsAdded automatic portal alias creation for single portal installs Updated the file manager upload page to allow user to upload multiple files without returning to the file manager page. Fixed issue with Event Log Email Notifications. Fixed issue where Telerik HTML Editor was unable to upload files to secure or database folder. Fixed issue where registration page is not set correctly during an upgrade. Fixed issue where Sendmail stripped HTML and Links from emails...mVu Mobile Viewer: mVu Mobile Viewer 0.7.10.0: Tube8 fix.EPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the server: EPPlus 2.8.0.1: EPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the serverNew Features Improved chart support Different chart-types series on the same chart Support for secondary axis and a lot of new properties Better styling Encryption and Workbook protection Table support Import csv files Array formulas ...and a lot of bugfixesAutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.4.2: Added support for more clients (French and Russian) Settings are now stored sepperatly for each user on a computer Auto Login is much faster now Auto Login detects and handles caps lock state properly nowTailspinSpyworks - WebForms Sample Application: TailspinSpyworks-v0.9: Contains a number of bug fixes and additional tutorial steps as well as complete database implementation details.ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome (rich jQuery AJAX helpers): 1.3 and demos: a library with mvc helpers and a demo project that demonstrates an awesome way of doing asp.net mvc. tested on mozilla, safari, chrome, opera, ie 9b/8/7/6 new stuff in 1.3 Autocomplete helper Autocomplete and AjaxDropdown can have parentId and be filled with data depending on the value of the parent PopupForm besides Content("ok") on success can also return Json(data) and use 'data' in a client side function Awesome demo improved (cruder, builder, added service layer)Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v4.1: Version 4.1 of the ASP.NET MVC forum engine, with great improvements: TinyMCE added as visual editor for messages (removed CKEditor). Integrated AntiSamy for cleaner html user post and add more prevention to potential injections. Admin status page: a page for the site admin to check the current status of the configuration / db / etc. View Roadmap for more details.UltimateJB: UltimateJB 2.01 PL3 KakaRoto + PSNYes by EvilSperm: Voici une version attendu avec impatience pour beaucoup : - La Version PSNYes pour pouvoir jouer sur le PSN avec une PS3 Jailbreaker. - Pour l'instant le PSNYes n'est disponible qu'avec les PS3 en firmwares 3.41 !!! - La version PL3 KAKAROTO intégre ses dernières modification et prépare a l'intégration du Firmware 3.30 !!! Conclusion : - UltimateJB PSNYes => Valide l'utilisation du PSN : Uniquement compatible avec les 3.41 - ultimateJB DEFAULT => Pas de PSN mais disponible pour les PS3 sui...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.0: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.0(supports .NET 4.0 RTM and .NET 3.5) Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples (only for .NET 4.0) Foundation (Tabs, Groups, Contextual Tabs, Quick Access Toolbar, Backstage) Resizing (ribbon reducing & enlarging principles) Galleries (Gallery in ContextMenu, InRibbonGallery) MVVM (shows how to use this library with Model-View-ViewModel pattern) KeyTips ScreenTips Toolbars ColorGallery NEW! *Walkthrough (documenta...patterns & practices: Prism: Prism 4 Documentation: This release contains the Prism 4 documentation in Help 1.0 (CHM) format and PDF format. The documentation is also included with the full download of the guidance. Note: If you cannot view the content of the CHM, using Windows Explorer, select the properties for the file and then click Unblock on the General tab. Note: The PDF version of the guidance is provided for printing and reading in book format. The online version of the Prism 4 documentation can be read here.Farseer Physics Engine: Farseer Physics Engine 3.1: DonationsIf you like this release and would like to keep Farseer Physics Engine running, please consider a small donation. What's new?We bring a lot of new features in Farseer Physics Engine 3.1. Just to name a few: New Box2D core Rope joint added More stable CCD algorithm YuPeng clipper Explosives logic New Constrained Delaunay Triangulation algorithm from the Poly2Tri project. New Flipcode triangulation algorithm. Silverlight 4 samples Silverlight 4 debug view XNA 4.0 relea...New Projectsbizicosoft crm: crmBlog Migrator: The Blog Migrator tool is an all purpose utility designed to help transition a blog from one platform to another. It leverages XML-RPC, BlogML, and WordPress WXR formats. It also provides the ability to "rewrite" your posts on your old blog to point to the new location.bzr-tfs integration tests: Used to test bzr-tfs integrationC++ Open Source Advanced Operating System: C++ Open Source Advanced Operating System is a project which allows starter developers create their own OS. For now it is at a really initial stage.Chavah - internet radio for Yeshua's disciples: Chavah (pronounced "ha-vah") is internet radio for Yeshua's disciples. Inspired by Pandora, Chavah is a Silverlight application that brings community-driven Messianic Jewish tunes for the Lord over the web to your eager ears.CodePoster: An add-in for Visual Studio which allows you to post code directly from Visual Studio to your blog. CRM 2011 Plugin Testing Tools: This solution is meant to make unit testing of plugins in CRM 2011 a simpler and more efficient process. This solution serializes the objects that the CRM server passes to a plugin on execution and then offers a library that allows you to deserialize them in a unit test.Edinamarry Free Tarot Software for Windows: A freeware yet an advanced Tarot reading divinity Software for Psychics and for all those who practice Divinity and Spirituality. This software includes Tarot Spread Designer, Tarot Deck Designer, Tarot Cards Gallery, Client & Customer Profile, Word Editor, Tarot Reader, etc.EPiSocial: Social addons for EPiServer.first team foundation project: this is my first project for the student to teach them about the ms visual studio 201o and team foundation serverFKTdev: Proyecto donde subiremos las pruebas, códigos de ejemplo y demás recursos en nuestro aprendizaje en XNA, hasta que comencemos un desarrollo estable.Gardens Point Component Pascal: Gardens Point Component Pascal is an implementation for .NET of the Component Pascal Language (CP). CP is an object oriented version of Pascal, and shares many design features with Oberon-2. Geoinformatics: geoinformaticsGREENHOUSEMANAGER: GREENHOUSE es un proyecto universitario para manejar los distintos aspectos de un invernadero. El sistema esta desarrollado en c# con interfaz grafica en WPFHousing: This project is only for the asp.net learning. HR-XML.NET: A .NET HR-XML Serialization Library. Also supports the Dutch SETU standard and some proprietary extensions used in the Netherlands. The project is currently targeting HR-XML version 2.5 and Setu standard 2008-01.InternetShop2: ShopLesson4: Lesson4 for M.Logical Synchronous Circuit Simulator: As part of a student project, we are trying to make a logic synchronous circuit simulator, with the ultimate goal of simulating a processor and a digital clock running on it.MediaOwl: MediaOwl is a music (albums, artists, tracks, tags) and movie (movies, series, actors, directors, genres) search engine, but above all, it is a Microsoft Silverlight 4 application (C#), that shows how to use Caliburn Micro.N2F Yverdon Solar Flare Reflector: The solar flare reflector provides minimal base-range protection for your N2F Yverdon installation against solar flare interference.Netduino Plus Home Automation Toolkit: The Netduino Plus Home Automation project is designed to proivde a communication platform from various consumer based home automation products that offer a common web service endpoint. This will hopefully create a low cost DIY alternative to the expensive ethernet interfaces.NRapid: NRapidOfficeHelper: Wrapper around the open xml office package. You can easily create xlsx documents based on a template xlsx document and reuse parts from that document, if you mark them as named ranges (i.e. "names").OffProjects: This is a private project which for my dev investigationParis Velib Stations for Windows Mobile: Allow to find the closest Velib bike station in Paris on a Windows Mobile Phone (6.5)/ Permet de trouver la station de Vélib la plus proche dans Paris ainsi que ses informations sur un smartphone Windows MobilePolarConverter: Adjust the measured distance of HRM files created by Polar Heart Rate monitorsSexy Select: a jQuery plugin that allows for easy manipulation of select options. Allows for adding, removing, sorting, validation and custom skinningSilverlight Progress Feedback: Demonstrates how to get progress feedback from slow running WPF processes in Silverlight.Silverlight Tabbed Panel: Tabbed Panel based on Silverlight targeted for both developers and designers audience. Tabbed Control is used in this project. This is a basic application. More features will be added in further releases. XAML has been used to design this panel. slabhid: SLABHIDDevice.dll is used for the SLAB MCU example code on PC, the original source code is written by C++. This wrapper class brings SLABHIDDevice.dll to the .Net world, so it will be possible to make some quick solution for firmware testing purpose.SuperWebSocket: A .NET server side implementation of WebSocket protocol.test1-jjoiner: just a test projectTotem Alpha Developer Framework For .Net: ????tadf??VS.NET???????????，????jtadf???????????????。 ?????????tadf??????????????J2EE???????VS.NET?????????，??tadf?????.NET??，???????????，????????????，??????C#??????????Java???????，??????。 tadf?????????????，????HTML???????????，???????，?????????，?????。tadf???????????，????????RICH UI?????WEB??。??????，??。 tadf?????????????????????，????WEB??????????。???????，???????????，?Ajax???????，????????????????，????????，????????????????。???????????，???????????????????????????????，?xml??????，?????????????xml...Ukázkové projekty: Obsahuje ukázkové projekty uživatele TenCoKaciStromy.WPFDemo: This Peoject is only for the WPF learning.Xinx TimeIt!: TinyAlarm is a small utility that allows you to configure an Alarm so that you can opt for 1. Shutdown computer 2. Play a sound 3. Show a note with sound 4. Disconnect a dial-up connection 5. Connect via dial-up connection

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 16, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 16, 2010New ProjectsAAPL-MySQL (a MySql implementation of the Agile ADO.Net Persistence Layer): Using the code conventions and code of the Agile ADO.Net Persistence Layer to build a MySql implementationAddress Book: Address Book is simple and easy to use application for storing and editing contacts. It has many features like search and grouping. It's developed ...Airplanes: Airplanes GameAJAX Fax document viewer: The AJAX Fax document viewer is an ASP.net 4.0 project which uses a Seadragon control to display Tiff/Tif files inside the browser. Since it's base...AxeFrog Core: This project contains the foundational code used in several other projects.Bolão: O objetivo deste projeto é estimular a troca de informações e experiências sobre arquitetura e desenvolvimento de software na prática, através do d...Caramel Engine: This is designed to be a logic engine for developing a wide variety of games. To include card logic, dice logic, territories, players, and even man...DotNetNuke® Skin BrandWorks: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Business" category by M Perakakis & M Siganou (e-bilab). A very minimal look sk...DotNetNuke® Skin Reasonable: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Ralph Williams of Architech Solutions. A clean, classy, professi...DotNetNuke® Skin Seasons: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Atul Handa and Kevin McCusker of Mercer. This skin is a generic ...File Eraser: File Eraser make it esasier for IT Administrator or Advanced Users to administer files and eliminate long addresses, even UNC. It's developed in VB...GreenEyes: My project for IT personalHulu Launcher: Hulu Launcher is a simple Windows Media Center add-in that attempts to launch Hulu Desktop and manage the windows as seamlessly as possible.Imenik: Imenik makes it easier for users to organise their contacts!KharaPOS: KharaPOS is an Exemplar application for Silverlight 4, WCF RIA Services and .NET Framework 4.Mantas Cryptography: Pequena biblioteca de criptografia com suporte aos algorítmos DES, RC2, Rexor e TripleDES. Gera hashes HMAC-MD5, HMAC-RIPEMD160, HMAC-SHA (SHA1, S...MapWindow3D: A C# DirectX library that extends the MapWindow 6.0 geospatial software library by adding an external map. The map supports rotation and tilting i...Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework: Extensible Web Analytics Framework for Microsoft Silverlight Applications.Moq Examples: Unit tests demonstrating Moq features.Ncqrs: Framework that helps you to create Command-Query Responsibility Segregation based applications easily.NoLedge - Notetaking and knowledge database: NoLedge is an easy knowledge gathering and notetaking freeware with a simple interface. You can link a note with different titles and can retrieve ...Numina Application Framework: The framework is a set of tools that help facilitate authentication, authorization, and access control. It is much more than a SSO. It is a central...OData SDK for PHP: OData SDK for PHP is a library to facilitate the connection with OData Services.patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: p&p site for Windows Azure related guidance.projecteuler.net: Exploring projecteuler.net using F#ResumeTracker: Small and easy to use tool that helps to track your job applications. To report bugs or for suggestions please email kirunchik@gmail.com.Selection Maker: Have you ever create a collection of music files? Imagine you just want to pick best of them by your choice. you should go to several folder,play...ShureValidation: Multilingual model validation library. Supports fluent validations, attribute validations and own custom validations.Simple Phonebook: Simple phonebook allows you to store contacts. It also allows you to export the contacts to .txt or .csv. This application is written in C#, but it...SoftUpd: A usefull library which provides an Update feature to any .Net software.sTASKedit: This program can modify and export Perfect World tasks.data files...Tigie: Tigie is a simple CMS system for basic website. It's simple, easy to customize. you'll have a very basic cms to start with and expand for it. All c...toapp: ap hwUltiLogger: UltiLogger is a fast, lightweight logging library programmed in C#. It is meant as a fast, easy, and efficient way for developers to access a relia...Unnme: UnnmeVisual Studio 2008 NUnit snippets: A simple set of useful NUnit snippets, for Visual studio 2008.webdama: italian checkers game c#XBrowser - Headless Browser for .Net: XBrowser is a "headless" web browser written for .Net applications using C#. It is designed to allow automated, remote controlled and test-based br...XML Integrator: XML integration, collaborative toolNew ReleasesAddress Book: Address Book: Address BookAddress Book: Address Book - Source: Address Book source code.AJAX Fax document viewer: AJAXTiff_Source 1.0: Source project for the AJAX Tiff viewer v1.0. Written in Visual Studio 2010 RC using ASP.net 4.0ASP.Net Routing Configuration: mal.Web.Routing v1.0.0.0: mal.Web.Routing v1.0.0.0ASP.NET Wiki Control: Release 1.0: Includes VS2010 Solution and Project files but targets the 3.5 framework so can still be used with VS2008 if new project files are created.BingPaper: Beta: BingPaper Beta Release This Beta release contains quite a few improvements: This Beta release contains a complate overhaul of the replacement tok...Bolão: teste: testeDotNetNuke® Skin Reasonable: Reasonable Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Ralph Williams of Architech Solutions. A clean, classy, professi...DotNetNuke® Skin Seasons: Seasons Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Atul Handa and Kevin McCusker of Mercer. This skin is a generic ...dylan.NET: dylan.NET v. 9.2: In TFS Serverdylan.NET Apps: dylan.NET Apps v. 1.1: First version of dnu.dll together with v.9.2 of dylan.NETFamily Tree Analyzer: Version 1.1.0.0: Version 1.1.0.0 Census report now shows in bold those individuals you KNOW to be alive at the date of the census. Direct Ancestors on census repor...GLB Virtual Player Builder: 0.4.1: Minor change to reset non-major/minor attr to 8.Hulu Launcher: HuluLauncher Release 1.0.1.1: HuluLauncher Release 1.0.1.1 is the initial, barely-tested release of this Windows Media Center add-in. It should work in Vista Media Center and 7 ...Imenik: Imenik: Imenik is now available!jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services: SPServices 0.5.3: NOTE: While I work on new releases, I post alpha versions. Usually the alpha versions are here to address a particular need. I DO NOT recommend usi...KeelKit: KeelKit 1.0.3800: 更新内容如下: 优化了DBHelper的一些机制 修正一些BUG 支持Mysql PHP代理，使得能通过Web代理的方式远程访问数据库服务器 添加Model实例化方法，支持所有非自动计算字段的参数实例化、支持所有非空字段实例化 添加Model中的常量，使用这些常量可以获得表名称。 添加了自...Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) Contrib: MefContrib 0.9.0.0: Updated to MEF Preview 9 Moved MefContrib.Extensions.Generics to MefContrib.Hosting.Generics Moved MefContrib.Extensions.Generics.Tests to MefC...MooiNooi MVC2LINQ2SQL Web Databinder: MooiNooi MVC2LINQ2SQL Web Databinder v0.1.1: Repaired a problem with collections... only index number under 10 were allowed... Please send me your comments and rate the project. Sorry.Mouse Gestures for .NET: Mouse Gestures 1.0: Improved version of the component + sample application. Version 1.0 is not backward compatible.MoviesForMyBlog: MoviesForMyBlog V1.0: This is version 1.0Nito.KitchenSink: Version 1: The first release of Nito.KitchenSink, which uses Nito.Linq 0.1. Please report any issues via the Issue Tracker.Nito.LINQ: Beta (v0.1): This is the first official public release of Nito.Linq. This release only supports .NET 3.5 SP1 with the Microsoft Rx libraries. The documentation...Nito.LINQ: Beta (v0.2): Added ListSource.Generate overloads that take a delegate for counting the list elements.OData SDK for PHP: OData SDK for PHP: This is an updated version of the ADO.NET Data Services toolkit for PHP. It includes full support for OData Protocol V2.0 specification, better pro...Orchard Project: Orchard Latest Build (0.1.2010.0312): This is a technical preview release of Orchard. Our intent with this release is to demonstrate representative experiences for our audiences (end-us...patterns & practices – Enterprise Library: Enterprise Library 5.0 - Beta2: This is a preliminary release of the code and documentation that may potentially be incomplete, and may change prior to the final release of Enterp...patterns & practices - Unity: Unity 2.0 - Beta2: This is a preliminary release of the code and documentation that may potentially be incomplete, and may change prior to the final release of Unity ...patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: Code drop - 1: This initial version is the before the cloud baseline application, so you won’t find anything related to Windows Azure here. Next iteration, we'l...Rawr: Rawr 2.3.12: - First, a note about Rawr3. Rawr3 has been in development for quite a while now, and we know that everyone's eager to get it. It's been held back ...ResumeTracker: Resume Tracker v1.0: First release.Selection Maker: Selection Maker 1.0: This is just the first release of this programSevenZipSharp: SevenZipSharp 0.61: Added: Windows Mobile support bool Check() method for Extractor to test archives integrity FileExtractionFinished now returns FileInfoEventArgs...Silverlight 3.0 Advanced ToolTipService: Advanced ToolTipService v2.0.1: This release is compiled against the Silverlight 3.0 runtime. A demonstration on how to set the ToolTip content to a property of the DataContext o...Silverlight Flow Layouts library: SL and WPF Flow Layouts library March 2010: This release indtroduces some bug fixes, performance improvements, Silverlight 4 RC and WPF 4.0 RC support. Flow Layouts Library is a control libra...Simple Phonebook: SimplePhonebook Visual Studio 2010 Solution: Ovo je cijeli projekt u kojem se nalaze svi source fileovi koje sam koristio u izradi ove aplikacije. Za pokretanje je potreban Visual Studio 2010....Simple Phonebook: SimplePhonebook.rar: U ovoj .rar datoteci nalaze se izvršni fileovi. _ In this .rar file you can find .exe file needed for executing the application.SLARToolkit - Silverlight Augmented Reality Toolkit: SLARToolkit 1.0.1.0: Updated to Silverlight 4 Release Candidate. Introduces the new GenericMarkerDetector which uses the IXrgbReader interface. See the Marker Detecto...sPWadmin: pwAdmin v1.0: Fixed: Templates can now be saved server restart persistant (wait at least 60 seconds between saving and restarting)SQL Director for Dependencies & Indexes: SDD CTP 1.0: SQL Director for Dependencies allows you to view dependencies between tables, views, function, stored procedures and jobs. Newest Testing build, f...SqlCeViewer: SeasonStar Database Management 0.7.0.2: Update the user interface to help user understand clearly how to use .UltiLogger: Initial alpha release: Important! This is not a feature-complete release! It contains the logging priorities, and an interface for building logging systems from. THERE IS...Visual Studio 2008 NUnit snippets: Version 1.0: First stable release.Zeta Resource Editor: Source Code Release 2010-03-16: New source code. Binary setup is also available.Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETLiveUpload to FacebookMost Active ProjectsLINQ to TwitterOData SDK for PHPRawrN2 CMSpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryDirectQBlogEngine.NETMapWindow6SharePoint Team-MailerNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module

  Read the article

• Passing multiple POST parameters to Web API Controller Methods

  - by Rick Strahl

  ASP.NET Web API introduces a new API for creating REST APIs and making AJAX callbacks to the server. This new API provides a host of new great functionality that unifies many of the features of many of the various AJAX/REST APIs that Microsoft created before it - ASP.NET AJAX, WCF REST specifically - and combines them into a whole more consistent API. Web API addresses many of the concerns that developers had with these older APIs, namely that it was very difficult to build consistent REST style resource APIs easily. While Web API provides many new features and makes many scenarios much easier, a lot of the focus has been on making it easier to build REST compliant APIs that are focused on resource based solutions and HTTP verbs. But  RPC style calls that are common with AJAX callbacks in Web applications, have gotten a lot less focus and there are a few scenarios that are not that obvious, especially if you're expecting Web API to provide functionality similar to ASP.NET AJAX style AJAX callbacks. RPC vs. 'Proper' REST RPC style HTTP calls mimic calling a method with parameters and returning a result. Rather than mapping explicit server side resources or 'nouns' RPC calls tend simply map a server side operation, passing in parameters and receiving a typed result where parameters and result values are marshaled over HTTP. Typically RPC calls - like SOAP calls - tend to always be POST operations rather than following HTTP conventions and using the GET/POST/PUT/DELETE etc. verbs to implicitly determine what operation needs to be fired. RPC might not be considered 'cool' anymore, but for typical private AJAX backend operations of a Web site I'd wager that a large percentage of use cases of Web API will fall towards RPC style calls rather than 'proper' REST style APIs. Web applications that have needs for things like live validation against data, filling data based on user inputs, handling small UI updates often don't lend themselves very well to limited HTTP verb usage. It might not be what the cool kids do, but I don't see RPC calls getting replaced by proper REST APIs any time soon.  Proper REST has its place - for 'real' API scenarios that manage and publish/share resources, but for more transactional operations RPC seems a better choice and much easier to implement than trying to shoehorn a boatload of endpoint methods into a few HTTP verbs. In any case Web API does a good job of providing both RPC abstraction as well as the HTTP Verb/REST abstraction. RPC works well out of the box, but there are some differences especially if you're coming from ASP.NET AJAX service or WCF Rest when it comes to multiple parameters. Action Routing for RPC Style Calls If you've looked at Web API demos you've probably seen a bunch of examples of how to create HTTP Verb based routing endpoints. Verb based routing essentially maps a controller and then uses HTTP verbs to map the methods that are called in response to HTTP requests. This works great for resource APIs but doesn't work so well when you have many operational methods in a single controller. HTTP Verb routing is limited to the few HTTP verbs available (plus separate method signatures) and - worse than that - you can't easily extend the controller with custom routes or action routing beyond that. Thankfully Web API also supports Action based routing which allows you create RPC style endpoints fairly easily:RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "AlbumRpcApiAction", routeTemplate: "albums/{action}/{title}", defaults: new { title = RouteParameter.Optional, controller = "AlbumApi", action = "GetAblums" } ); This uses traditional MVC style {action} method routing which is different from the HTTP verb based routing you might have read a bunch about in conjunction with Web API. Action based routing like above lets you specify an end point method in a Web API controller either via the {action} parameter in the route string or via a default value for custom routes. Using routing you can pass multiple parameters either on the route itself or pass parameters on the query string, via ModelBinding or content value binding. For most common scenarios this actually works very well. As long as you are passing either a single complex type via a POST operation, or multiple simple types via query string or POST buffer, there's no issue. But if you need to pass multiple parameters as was easily done with WCF REST or ASP.NET AJAX things are not so obvious. Web API has no issue allowing for single parameter like this:[HttpPost] public string PostAlbum(Album album) { return String.Format("{0} {1:d}", album.AlbumName, album.Entered); } There are actually two ways to call this endpoint: albums/PostAlbum Using the Model Binder with plain POST values In this mechanism you're sending plain urlencoded POST values to the server which the ModelBinder then maps the parameter. Each property value is matched to each matching POST value. This works similar to the way that MVC's  ModelBinder works. Here's how you can POST using the ModelBinder and jQuery:$.ajax( { url: "albums/PostAlbum", type: "POST", data: { AlbumName: "Dirty Deeds", Entered: "5/1/2012" }, success: function (result) { alert(result); }, error: function (xhr, status, p3, p4) { var err = "Error " + " " + status + " " + p3; if (xhr.responseText && xhr.responseText[0] == "{") err = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText).message; alert(err); } }); Here's what the POST data looks like for this request: The model binder and it's straight form based POST mechanism is great for posting data directly from HTML pages to model objects. It avoids having to do manual conversions for many operations and is a great boon for AJAX callback requests. Using Web API JSON Formatter The other option is to post data using a JSON string. The process for this is similar except that you create a JavaScript object and serialize it to JSON first.album = { AlbumName: "PowerAge", Entered: new Date(1977,0,1) } $.ajax( { url: "albums/PostAlbum", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify(album), success: function (result) { alert(result); } }); Here the data is sent using a JSON object rather than form data and the data is JSON encoded over the wire. The trace reveals that the data is sent using plain JSON (Source above), which is a little more efficient since there's no UrlEncoding that occurs. BTW, notice that WebAPI automatically deals with the date. I provided the date as a plain string, rather than a JavaScript date value and the Formatter and ModelBinder both automatically map the date propertly to the Entered DateTime property of the Album object. Passing multiple Parameters to a Web API Controller Single parameters work fine in either of these RPC scenarios and that's to be expected. ModelBinding always works against a single object because it maps a model. But what happens when you want to pass multiple parameters? Consider an API Controller method that has a signature like the following:[HttpPost] public string PostAlbum(Album album, string userToken) Here I'm asking to pass two objects to an RPC method. Is that possible? This used to be fairly straight forward either with WCF REST and ASP.NET AJAX ASMX services, but as far as I can tell this is not directly possible using a POST operation with WebAPI. There a few workarounds that you can use to make this work: Use both POST *and* QueryString Parameters in Conjunction If you have both complex and simple parameters, you can pass simple parameters on the query string. The above would actually work with: /album/PostAlbum?userToken=sekkritt but that's not always possible. In this example it might not be a good idea to pass a user token on the query string though. It also won't work if you need to pass multiple complex objects, since query string values do not support complex type mapping. They only work with simple types. Use a single Object that wraps the two Parameters If you go by service based architecture guidelines every service method should always pass and return a single value only. The input should wrap potentially multiple input parameters and the output should convey status as well as provide the result value. You typically have a xxxRequest and a xxxResponse class that wraps the inputs and outputs. Here's what this method might look like:public PostAlbumResponse PostAlbum(PostAlbumRequest request) { var album = request.Album; var userToken = request.UserToken; return new PostAlbumResponse() { IsSuccess = true, Result = String.Format("{0} {1:d} {2}", album.AlbumName, album.Entered,userToken) }; } with these support types:public class PostAlbumRequest { public Album Album { get; set; } public User User { get; set; } public string UserToken { get; set; } } public class PostAlbumResponse { public string Result { get; set; } public bool IsSuccess { get; set; } public string ErrorMessage { get; set; } }   To call this method you now have to assemble these objects on the client and send it up as JSON:var album = { AlbumName: "PowerAge", Entered: "1/1/1977" } var user = { Name: "Rick" } var userToken = "sekkritt"; $.ajax( { url: "samples/PostAlbum", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify({ Album: album, User: user, UserToken: userToken }), success: function (result) { alert(result.Result); } }); I assemble the individual types first and then combine them in the data: property of the $.ajax() call into the actual object passed to the server, that mimics the structure of PostAlbumRequest server class that has Album, User and UserToken properties. This works well enough but it gets tedious if you have to create Request and Response types for each method signature. If you have common parameters that are always passed (like you always pass an album or usertoken) you might be able to abstract this to use a single object that gets reused for all methods, but this gets confusing too: Overload a single 'parameter' too much and it becomes a nightmare to decipher what your method actual can use. Use JObject to parse multiple Property Values out of an Object If you recall, ASP.NET AJAX and WCF REST used a 'wrapper' object to make default AJAX calls. Rather than directly calling a service you always passed an object which contained properties for each parameter: { parm1: Value, parm2: Value2 } WCF REST/ASP.NET AJAX would then parse this top level property values and map them to the parameters of the endpoint method. This automatic type wrapping functionality is no longer available directly in Web API, but since Web API now uses JSON.NET for it's JSON serializer you can actually simulate that behavior with a little extra code. You can use the JObject class to receive a dynamic JSON result and then using the dynamic cast of JObject to walk through the child objects and even parse them into strongly typed objects. Here's how to do this on the API Controller end:[HttpPost] public string PostAlbum(JObject jsonData) { dynamic json = jsonData; JObject jalbum = json.Album; JObject juser = json.User; string token = json.UserToken; var album = jalbum.ToObject<Album>(); var user = juser.ToObject<User>(); return String.Format("{0} {1} {2}", album.AlbumName, user.Name, token); } This is clearly not as nice as having the parameters passed directly, but it works to allow you to pass multiple parameters and access them using Web API. JObject is JSON.NET's generic object container which sports a nice dynamic interface that allows you to walk through the object's properties using standard 'dot' object syntax. All you have to do is cast the object to dynamic to get access to the property interface of the JSON type. Additionally JObject also allows you to parse JObject instances into strongly typed objects, which enables us here to retrieve the two objects passed as parameters from this jquery code:var album = { AlbumName: "PowerAge", Entered: "1/1/1977" } var user = { Name: "Rick" } var userToken = "sekkritt"; $.ajax( { url: "samples/PostAlbum", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify({ Album: album, User: user, UserToken: userToken }), success: function (result) { alert(result); } }); Summary ASP.NET Web API brings many new features and many advantages over the older Microsoft AJAX and REST APIs, but realize that some things like passing multiple strongly typed object parameters will work a bit differently. It's not insurmountable, but just knowing what options are available to simulate this behavior is good to know. Now let me say here that it's probably not a good practice to pass a bunch of parameters to an API call. Ideally APIs should be closely factored to accept single parameters or a single content parameter at least along with some identifier parameters that can be passed on the querystring. But saying that doesn't mean that occasionally you don't run into a situation where you have the need to pass several objects to the server and all three of the options I mentioned might have merit in different situations. For now I'm sure the question of how to pass multiple parameters will come up quite a bit from people migrating WCF REST or ASP.NET AJAX code to Web API. At least there are options available to make it work.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 30, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 30, 2011Popular ReleasesASP.NET Comet Ajax Library (Reverse Ajax - Server Push): Reverse Ajax Samples v1.53: 16 Comprehensive ASP.NET Ajax / Reverse Ajax / WCF / MVC / Mono samplesReactive Extensions - Extensions (Rxx): Rxx 1.1: What's NewRelated Work Items Please read the latest release notes for details about what's new. About LabsAll "Labs" downloads include the Rxx.dll assembly, so only a single download is required. To start RxxLabs.exe, right-mouse click and select Run as Administrator; otherwise, do not run the Reactive WebClient lab because it will crash the program. RxxLabs.exe requires administrator privileges for the Reactive WebClient lab to register a local HTTP port. To launch the Silverlight labs...CommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET - 0.9.7 Final: A collection of very reusable code and components in C# 4.0 ranging from ActiveRecord, Csv, Command Line Parsing, Configuration, Holiday Calendars, Logging, Authentication, and much more. Samples in <root>\src\Lib\CommonLibrary.NET\Samples CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.7Documentation 6738 6503 New 6535 Enhancements 6759 6748 6583 6737datajs - JavaScript Library for data-centric web applications: datajs version 1.0.0: datajs is a cross-browser and UI agnostic JavaScript library that enables data-centric web applications with the following features: OData client that enables CRUD operations including batching and metadata support using both ATOM and JSON payloads. Single store abstraction that provides a common API on top of HTML5 local storage technologies. Data cache component that allows reading data ranges from a collection and storing them locally to reduce the number of network requests. Changes...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.4.4: Fix for http://coding4fun.codeplex.com/workitem/6869 was incomplete. Back button wouldn't return app bar. Corrected now. High impact bugSiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.0.528.279): Added keyboard shortcuts: - Cut (CTRL+X) - Copy (CTRL+C) - Paste (CTRL+V) - Delete (CTRL+D) - Move up (CTRL+UP ARROW) - Move down (CTRL+DOWN ARROW) Added ability to save/load SiteMap from/to a Xml file on disk Bug fix: - Connect to a server through the status bar was throwing error "Object Reference not set to an instance of an object" - Rename TreeNode.Name after changing TreeNode.TextMicrosoft - Domain Oriented N-Layered .NET 4.0 App Sample: V2.01 ALPHA N-Layered SampleApp .NET 4.0 and EF4.1: V2.0.01 - ALPHARequired Software (Microsoft Base Software needed for Development environment) Visual Studio 2010 RTM & .NET 4.0 RTM (Final Versions) Expression Blend 4 SQL Server 2008 R2 Express/Standard/Enterprise Unity Application Block 2.0 - Published May 5th 2010 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=2D24F179-E0A6-49D7-89C4-5B67D939F91B&displaylang=en http://unity.codeplex.com/releases/view/31277 PEX & MOLES 0.94.51023.0, 29/Oct/2010 - Visual Studio 2010 Power ...Mosaic Project: Mosaic Alpha build 261: - Fixed crash when pinning applications in x64 OS - Added Hub to video widget. It shows videos from Video library (only .wmv and .avi). Can work slow if there are too much files. - Fixed some issues with scrolling - Fixed bug with html widgets - Fixed bug in Gmail widget - Added html today widget missed in previous release - Now Mosaic saves running widgets if you restarting from optionsEnhSim: EnhSim 2.4.9 BETA: 2.4.9 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.2 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in some of th....NET Reflector Add-Ins: Reflector V7 Add-Ins: All the add-ins compiled for Reflector V7TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v4.1 [4.0 Bug Fixes]: Version 4.1 ChangelogChanged how users will Open Player files (This change makes it much easier) This allowed me to remove the "Current player file" labels that were present Changed file control icons Added submit bug button Various Bug Fixes Fixed crashes related to clicking on buffs before a character is loaded Fixed crashes related to selecting "No Buff" when choosing a new buff Fixed crashes related to clicking on a "Max" button on the buff tab before a character is loaded Cor...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta8: ??AcDown???????????????，?????????????????????。????????????????????，??Acfun、Bilibili、???、???、?????，???????????、???????。 AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 AcDown???????C#??，?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDown?????"????????? ??v3.0 Beta8 ?? ??????????????? ???????????????(??????????) ???????...BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.5: Get DotNetBlogEngine for 3 Months Free! Click Here for More Info 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.5 instructions. To get started, be sure to check out our installatio...PHP Manager for IIS: PHP Manager 1.2 for IIS 7: This release contains all the functionality available in 62183 plus the following additions: Command Line Support via PowerShell - now it is possible to manage and script PHP installations on IIS by using Windows PowerShell. More information is available at Managing PHP installations with PHP Manager command line. Detection and alert when using local PHP handler - if a web site or a directory has a local copy of PHP handler mapping then the configuration changes made on upper configuration ...MiniTwitter: 1.71: MiniTwitter 1.71 ???? ?? OAuth ???????????? ????????、??????????????????? ???????????????????????SizeOnDisk: 1.0.10.0: Fix: issue 327: size format error when save settings Fix: some UI bindings trouble (sorting, refresh) Fix: user settings file deletion when corrupted Feature: TreeView virtualization (better speed with many folders) Feature: New file type DataGrid column Feature: In KByte view, show size of file < 1024B and > 0 with 3 decimal Feature: New language: Italian Task: Cleanup for speedRawr: Rawr 4.2.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...N2 CMS: 2.2: * Web platform installer support available ** Nuget support available What's newDinamico Templates (beta) - an MVC3 & Razor based template pack using the template-first! development paradigm Boilerplate CSS & HTML5 Advanced theming with css comipilation (concrete, dark, roadwork, terracotta) Template-first! development style Content, news, listing, slider, image sizes, search, sitemap, globalization, youtube, google map Display Tokens - replaces text tokens with rendered content (usag...KinectNUI: Jun 25 Alpha Release: Initial public version. No installer needed, just run the EXE.Terraria World Viewer: Version 1.5: Update June 24th Made compatible with the new tiles found in Terraria 1.0.5New Projects{Adjunct} functionality for the .NET framework: A project to provide Ingots for the .NET framework.3Webee.net: 3Webee.net is the First Navigator dedicated to Web.3.0 by P2P. Developped in C# for DotNet-3.5 or Mono.net, compatible with Linux ready. Website.fr : http://3webee.net/ Download Win32 : http://3webee.net/Download/3Webee.net.beta.0.0.Win32.exe AB Donor Choose Planner: The goal of this doantion planner is to allow you to coordinate the completion of one or more Donors Choose projects. The tool gives you a portfolio view of the donations you would like to invest in by targeting your investments in a location/regional focused manner.appperu1: asdasdsaddas: ColinTestingasdfFindClone: Find clone files, find duplicate files, remove duplicate filesfirstcpapp: This is my appForecast Parser: The NOAA hosts forecast data accessible over the web. These libraries download and parse seven day hourly forecast data and encapsulates the data in an easy to use class.Future Apple Osx: Future Apple Osx, Is a free operating system to use. It was built from the ground up with the help of Cosmos. It is free to use and download. So please check it out today.Glimpse: Glimpse is a web debugger and diagnostics tool for ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC. You can find out more at getGlimpse.comiAdm: ?? iToday ??? wince 6 R2 ?????ImagineCup Worldwide Finals Tracker: An open-source Windows Phone application that is used to track the events going on at the ImagineCup Worldwide Finals.John Owl: John OwlLAM - Local Area Messaging: A VB.NET local area chat application. Finds the lan clients and communicates through the lan with old Ms-Winsock Interop.MessyBrain: Organize your tasks in an efficient way. Assign tasks to members of your team. Create workflows for your team. Written in C# and ASP.NET MVC. Why did I start this project? Making mistakes is part of the learning process. They can be painful especially when they are made at work; there’s a cost attached to it. Why not start a project on my own? Mistakes will be less painful (only my ego will be damaged), I learn something new and there isn’t a cost attached to it. I can share the code ...Navigation Light Toolkit: Navigation Light add support for View Navigation in WPF and SilverlightRight Click Calculator: a mini calculator with numpad that opens in a dialogbox. it can combined with a textbox. bir textbox üzerinde sag tus ile açabileceginiz ufak bir hesap makinesi örnegi.Shaaps & Ladders: It's a modern software implementation of the popular classic board game Snakes & Ladders. The Bengali translation of "Snakes" pronounces "Shaaps" and thus the name of the game is such. The game is being developed on top of the Shaaps & Ladders GDK. Source for both are released.SharePoint PowerShell Scripts: Usefull PowerShell scripts written for SharePoint that helps organizations with governance.Smith Web Tools: Smith Web Tools are some useful controls to help to build web application. They are written in pure JavaScript and CSS without introducing any other JavaScript framework. At present, the Smith Calendar, Smith Editor, and Smith Dialog are available.SSAS Query Log Decoder & Analyzer: The Crisp description for the project will be "CUBE FOR CUBE". This is an end-to-end BI solution for analyzing the Query log created by SSAS Server. The Query Log data is loaded into a dimensional model and a cube is built on top of it for analysis of cube usage.takcandmansys: takcandmansysTestHG1: TestHG1TESTProjHG: TESTProjHGTestTFS1: TestTFS1TESTTFSAAA: TESTTFSAAATower: tower showTransit Feed Generator: Library for help the integration with Google Transit. This library generates the zipped file with data for Google Transit Feed, in the GTFS formatVRE Collaborator Search Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE Collaborator Search Kit for SharePoint 2010VRE Content Archiving Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE Content Archiving Kit for SharePoint 2010VRE Document Review Workflow Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE Document Review Workflow Kit for SharePoint 2010 VRE Literature Review Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE Literature Review Kit for SharePoint 2010 VRE Researcher and Project Templates for SharePoint 2010: VRE Researcher and Project Templates for SharePoint 2010 VRE RSS Feeds Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE RSS Feeds Kit for SharePoint 2010 VRE User Administration (FBA) Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE User Administration (FBA) Kit for SharePoint 2010 WebPart Collapser: WebPart Collapser is a lightweight, customizable jQuery plugin for SharePoint 2007 that allows visitors to expand/collapse WebParts. Through the use of cookies, the collapsed state of any webparts will be saved and collapsed each time a user visits a page. WPF Hex Editor: hex editor which is created with WPF with a xaml designed UI.Xoorscript: A proprietary scripting language created by Jared Thomson for the purpose of script defining an easy to use make system. The plans for this project are minimal for now, but if things go well I may expand it. This is low priority for me.

  Read the article

• Transformation of Product Management in Telecommunications for Rapid Launch of Next Generation Products

  - by raul.goycoolea

  @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } The Telecom industry continues to evolve through disruptive products, uncertain markets, shorter product lifecycles and convergence of technologies. Today’s market has moved from network centric to consumer centric and focuses primarily on the customer experience. It has resulted in several product management challenges such as an increased complexity and volume of offerings, creating product variants, accelerating time-to-market, ability to provide multiple product views for varied stakeholders, leveraging OSS intelligence to BSS layer, product co-creation and increasing audit and security concerns for service providers. The document discusses how enterprise product management enabled by PLM-based product catalogue solutions helps to launch next generation products rapidly in the context of the Telecommunication Industry.   1.0.       Introduction   Figure 1: Business Scenario   Modern business demands the launch of complex products in a very short timeframe and effecting changes in the price plan faster without IT intervention. One of the key transformation initiatives companies are focusing on is in the area of product management transformation and operational efficiency improvement. As part of these initiatives, companies are investing in best- in-class COTs-based Product Management solutions developed on industry-wide standards.   The new COTs packages are planned to integrate with existing or new B/OSS systems to provide a strategic end-to-end agile solution for reduced time-to-market and order journey time. In addition, system rationalization is being undertaken to phase out legacy systems and migrate to strategic systems.   2.0.       An Overview of Product Management in Telecom   Product data in telecom is multi- dimensional and difficult to manage. It increased significantly due to the complexity of the product, product offerings on the converged network, increased volume of offerings, bundled offering structures and ever increasing regulatory requirements.   In addition, the shrinking product lifecycle in telecom makes it difficult to manage the dynamic product data. Mergers and acquisitions coupled with organic growth pose major challenges in product portfolio management. It is a roadblock in the journey towards becoming an agile organization.       Figure 2: Complexity in Product Management   Network Technology’ is the new dimension in telecom product management where the same products are realized through different networks i.e., Soiled network to Converged network. Consequently, the product solution is different.     Figure 3: Current Scenario - Pain Points in Product Management   The major business implications arising out of the current scenario are slow time-to-market and an inefficient process that affects innovation.   3.0. Transformation of Next Generation Product Management   Companies must focus on their Product Management Transformation Journey in the areas of:   ·       Management of single truth of product information across the organization/geographies which is currently managed in heterogeneous systems   ·       Management of the Intellectual Property (IP) on the product concept and partnership in the design of discrete components to integrate into the system   ·       Leveraging structured and unstructured product data within the extended enterprise to extract consumer insights and drive innovation   ·       Management of effective operational separation to comply with regulatory bodies   ·       Reuse of existing designs and add relevant features such as value-added services to enable effective product bundling     Figure 4: Next generation needs   PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions efficiently address the above requirements and act as an enabler towards product management transformation and rapid product launch.   4.0. PLM-based Enterprise Product Management     Figure 5: PLM-based Enterprise Product Mastering   Enterprise Product Management (EPM) enables the business to manage complex product attributes of data in complex environments. Product Mastering helps create a 'single view' of the product by creating a business-driven, IT-supported environment where a global 'single truth record' is created, managed and reused.   4.1 The Business Case for Telco PLM-based solutions for Enterprise Product Management   ·       Telco PLM-based Product Mastering solutions provide a centralized authoring environment for product definition and control of all product data and rules   ·       PLM packages are designed to support multiple perspectives of product data (ordering perspective, billing perspective, provisioning perspective)   ·       Maintains relationships/links between different elements of the entire product definition   ·       Telco PLM packages are specialized in next generation lifecycle management requirements of products such as revision and state management, test and release management, role management and impact analysis)   ·       Takes into consideration all aspects of OSS product requirements compared to CRM product catalogue solutions where the product data managed is mostly order oriented and transactional     ·       New breed of Telco PLM packages are designed with 'open' standards such as SID and eTOM. They are interoperable, support integration frameworks such as subscription and notification.   ·       Telco PLM packages have developed good collaboration frameworks to integrate suppliers and partners into the product development value chain   4.2 Various Architectures/Approaches for Product Mastering using Telco PLM systems   4. 2.a Single Central Product Management (Mastering) Approach   Figure 6: Single Central Product Management (Master) Approach       This approach is implemented across verticals such as aerospace and automotive. It focuses on a physically centralized product master to which other sources are dependent on. The product definition data (Product bundles, service bundles, price plans, offers and discounts, product configuration rules and market campaigns) is created and maintained physically in a centralized environment. In addition, the product definition/authoring environment is centralized. The existing legacy product definition data available in CRM product catalogue, billing catalogue and the legacy product catalogue is migrated to the centralized PLM-based Enterprise Product Management solution.   Architectural changes must be made in the existing business landscape of applications to create and revise data because the applications have to refer to the central repository for approvals and validation of product configurations. It is achieved by modifying how the applications write data or how the applications can be adapted to use the rules to be managed and published.   Complete product configuration validation will be done in enterprise / central product catalogue and final configuration will be sent to the B/OSS system through the SOA compliant product distribution architecture. The approach/architecture enables greater control in terms of product data management and product data governance.   4.2.b Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture     Figure 7: Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture   In the federated product mastering approach, the basic unique product definition data (product id, description product hierarchy, basic price plans and simple product design rules) will be centrally created and will be maintained. And, the advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers & discount plans) will be created in respective down stream OSS systems. The advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers and discount plans) will be created in respective downstream OSS systems.   For example, basic product definitions such as attributes, product hierarchy and basic price plans will be created and maintained in Enterprise/Central product reference catalogue and distributed to downstream OSS systems. Respective downstream OSS systems build product bundles, promotions, advanced price plans over the basic product definition and master the advanced product definition. Central reference database accesses the respective other source product master data and assembles a point-in-time consolidated view of the product. The approach is typically adapted in some merger and acquisition scenarios where there is a low probability of a central physical authority managing the data. In addition, the migration effort in this case is minimal and there are no big architectural changes to the organization application landscape. However, this approach will not result in better product data management and data governance.   5.0 Customer Scenario – Before EPC deployment   A leading global telecommunications service provider wanted to launch a quad play and triple play service offering in the shortest possible lead time. The service provider was offering Broadband and VoIP services to customers. The company wanted to reuse a majority of the Broadband services and price plans and bundle them with new wireless and IPTV services for quad play and triple play. The challenges in launching the new service offerings were:       Figure 8: Triple Play Plan   ·       Broadband product data was stored in multiple product catalogues (CRM catalogue, Billing catalogue, spread sheets)   ·       Product managers spent a lot of time performing tasks involving duplication or re-keying of data. Manual effort caused errors, cost and time over-runs.   ·       No effective product and price data governance mechanism. Price change issues arising from the lack of data consistency across systems resulted in leakage of customer value and revenue.   ·       Product data had re-usability issues and was not in a structured format. It resulted in uncontrolled product portfolio creation and product management issues.   ·       Lack of enterprise product model resulted into product distribution challenges and thus delays in product launch.   ·       Designers are constrained by existing legacy product management solutions to model product/service requirements and product configuration rules such as upgrading, downgrading and cross selling.    5.1 Customer Scenario - After EPC deployment     Figure 9: SOA-based end-to-end EPC Solution   The company deployed PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions to launch quad play service after evaluating various product catalogues. The broadband product offering, service and price data were migrated to the new system, and the product and price plan hierarchy for new offerings were created using the entities defined in the Enterprise Product Model. Supplier product catalogue data such as routers and set up boxes were loaded onto the new solution through SOA-based web service. Price plans and configuration rules were built in the new system. The validated final product configurations were extracted from the product catalogue in a SID format and were distributed to the downstream B/OSS systems through exposed SOA-based web services. The transformations required for the B/OSS system were handled using the transformation layer as part of the solution.   6.0 How PLM enabled Product Management Transformation         Figure 10: Product Management Transformation     PLM-based Product Catalogue Solution helped the customer reduce the product launch cycle time by 30% and enable transformation of Product Management for next generation services.   7.0 Conclusion   On the one hand, the telecom industry is undergoing changes due to disruptions, uncertain product markets and increased complexity of products. On the other hand, the ARPU is decreasing year-on-year. Communications Service Providers are embarking on convergence, bundled service offerings, flexibility to cross-sell and up-sell, introduce new value-added services, leverage Web 2.0 concepts and network capabilities. Consequently, large scale IT transformation initiatives to improve their ARPU supporting network and business transformations are a business imperative. Product Management has become a focus area. Companies are investing in best-in- class COTS solutions to reduce time-to-market, ensure rapid service delivery and improve operational efficiency. An efficient PLM-based enterprise product mastering solution plays a key role in achieving zero touch automation and rapid product launch.   References:   1.     Preston G.Smith, Donald G.Reineristsem, Van Nostrand Reinhold “Developing Products in Half the time”.   2.     John G. Innes, "Achieving Successful Product Change", Pitman Publishing.   3.     D T Pham and R M Setchi (16th Jan, 2001) "Authoring environment for documentation development" University of Wales Cardiff, U.K., Proceedings on Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Vol. 215, Part B.   4.     Oracle Product Hub for Communications:   http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/master-data-management/product-hub-082059.html  

  Read the article

• Is Social Media The Vital Skill You Aren’t Tracking?

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By Mark Bennett - Originally featured in Talent Management Excellence The ever-increasing presence of the workforce on social media presents opportunities as well as risks for organizations. While on the one hand, we read about social media embarrassments happening to organizations, on the other we see that social media activities by workers and candidates can enhance a company’s brand and provide insight into what individuals are, or can become, influencers in the social media sphere. HR can play a key role in helping organizations make the most value out of the activities and presence of workers and candidates, while at the same time also helping to manage the risks that come with the permanence and viral nature of social media. What is Missing from Understanding Our Workforce? “If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three-times more productive.”  Lew Platt, Former Chairman, President, CEO, Hewlett-Packard  What Lew Platt recognized was that organizations only have a partial understanding of what their workforce is capable of. This lack of understanding impacts the company in several negative ways: 1. A particular skill that the company needs to access in one part of the organization might exist somewhere else, but there is no record that the skill exists, so the need is unfulfilled. 2. As market conditions change rapidly, the company needs to know strategic options, but some options are missed entirely because the company doesn’t know that sufficient capability already exists to enable those options. 3. Employees may miss out on opportunities to demonstrate how their hidden skills could create new value to the company. Why don’t companies have that more complete picture of their workforce capabilities – that is, not know what they know? One very good explanation is that companies put most of their efforts into rating their workforce according to the jobs and roles they are filling today. This is the essence of two important talent management processes: recruiting and performance appraisals.  In recruiting, a set of requirements is put together for a job, either explicitly or indirectly through a job description. During the recruiting process, much of the attention is paid towards whether the candidate has the qualifications, the skills, the experience and the cultural fit to be successful in the role. This makes a lot of sense.  In the performance appraisal process, an employee is measured on how well they performed the functions of their role and in an effort to help the employee do even better next time, they are also measured on proficiency in the competencies that are deemed to be key in doing that job. Again, the logic is impeccable.  But in both these cases, two adages come to mind: 1. What gets measured is what gets managed. 2. You only see what you are looking for. In other words, the fact that the current roles the workforce are performing are the basis for measuring which capabilities the workforce has, makes them the only capabilities to be measured. What was initially meant to be a positive, i.e. identify what is needed to perform well and measure it, in order that it can be managed, comes with the unintended negative consequence of overshadowing the other capabilities the workforce has. This also comes with an employee engagement price, for the measurements and management of workforce capabilities is to typically focus on where the workforce comes up short. Again, it makes sense to do this, since improving a capability that appears to result in improved performance benefits, both the individual through improved performance ratings and the company through improved productivity. But this is based on the assumption that the capabilities identified and their required proficiencies are the only attributes of the individual that matter. Anything else the individual brings that results in high performance, while resulting in a desired performance outcome, often goes unrecognized or underappreciated at best. As social media begins to occupy a more important part in current and future roles in organizations, businesses must incorporate social media savvy and innovation into job descriptions and expectations. These new measures could provide insight into how well someone can use social media tools to influence communities and decision makers; keep abreast of trends in fast-moving industries; present a positive brand image for the organization around thought leadership, customer focus, social responsibility; and coordinate and collaborate with partners. These measures should demonstrate the “social capital” the individual has invested in and developed over time. Without this dimension, “short cut” methods may generate a narrow set of positive metrics that do not have real, long-lasting benefits to the organization. How Workforce Reputation Management Helps HR Harness Social Media With hundreds of petabytes of social media data flowing across Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, businesses are tapping technology solutions to effectively leverage social for HR. Workforce reputation management technology helps organizations discover, mobilize and retain talent by providing insight into the social reputation and influence of the workforce while also helping organizations monitor employee social media policy compliance and mitigate social media risk.  There are three major ways that workforce reputation management technology can play a strategic role to support HR: 1. Improve Awareness and Decisions on Talent Many organizations measure the skills and competencies that they know they need today, but are unaware of what other skills and competencies their workforce has that could be essential tomorrow. How about whether your workforce has the reputation and influence to make their skills and competencies more effective? Many organizations don’t have insight into the social media “reach” their workforce has, which is becoming more critical to business performance. These features help organizations, managers, and employees improve many talent processes and decision making, including the following: Hiring and Assignments. People and teams with higher reputations are considered more valuable and effective workers. Someone with high reputation who refers a candidate also can have high credibility as a source for hires.   Training and Development. Reputation trend analysis can impact program decisions regarding training offerings by showing how reputation and influence across the workforce changes in concert with training. Worker reputation impacts development plans and goal choices by helping the individual see which development efforts result in improved reputation and influence.   Finding Hidden Talent. Managers can discover hidden talent and skills amongst employees based on a combination of social profile information and social media reputation. Employees can improve their personal brand and accelerate their career development.  2. Talent Search and Discovery The right technology helps organizations find information on people that might otherwise be hidden. By leveraging access to candidate and worker social profiles as well as their social relationships, workforce reputation management provides companies with a more complete picture of what their knowledge, skills, and attributes are and what they can in turn access. This more complete information helps to find the right talent both outside the organization as well as the right, perhaps previously hidden talent, within the organization to fill roles and staff projects, particularly those roles and projects that are required in reaction to fast-changing opportunities and circumstances. 3. Reputation Brings Credibility Workforce reputation management technology provides a clearer picture of how candidates and workers are viewed by their peers and communities across a wide range of social reputation and influence metrics. This information is less subject to individual bias and can impact critical decision-making. Knowing the individual’s reputation and influence enables the organization to predict how well their capabilities and behaviors will have a positive effect on desired business outcomes. Many roles that have the highest impact on overall business performance are dependent on the individual’s influence and reputation. In addition, reputation and influence measures offer a very tangible source of feedback for workers, providing them with insight that helps them develop themselves and their careers and see the effectiveness of those efforts by tracking changes over time in their reputation and influence. The following are some examples of the different reputation and influence measures of the workforce that Workforce Reputation Management could gather and analyze: Generosity – How often the user reposts other’s posts. Influence – How often the user’s material is reposted by others.  Engagement – The ratio of recent posts with references (e.g. links to other posts) to the total number of posts.  Activity – How frequently the user posts. (e.g. number per day)  Impact – The size of the users’ social networks, which indicates their ability to reach unique followers, friends, or users.   Clout – The number of references and citations of the user’s material in others’ posts.  The Vital Ingredient of Workforce Reputation Management: Employee Participation “Nothing about me, without me.” Valerie Billingham, “Through the Patient’s Eyes”, Salzburg Seminar Session 356, 1998 Since data resides primarily in social media, a question arises: what manner is used to collect that data? While much of social media activity is publicly accessible (as many who wished otherwise have learned to their chagrin), the social norms of social media have developed to put some restrictions on what is acceptable behavior and by whom. Disregarding these norms risks a repercussion firestorm. One of the more recognized norms is that while individuals can follow and engage with other individual’s public social activity (e.g. Twitter updates) fairly freely, the more an organization does this unprompted and without getting permission from the individual beforehand, the more likely the organization risks a totally opposite outcome from the one desired. Instead, the organization must look for permission from the individual, which can be met with resistance. That resistance comes from not knowing how the information will be used, how it will be shared with others, and not receiving enough benefit in return for granting permission. As the quote above about patient concerns and rights succinctly states, no one likes not feeling in control of the information about themselves, or the uncertainty about where it will be used. This is well understood in consumer social media (i.e. permission-based marketing) and is applicable to workforce reputation management. However, asking permission leaves open the very real possibility that no one, or so few, will grant permission, resulting in a small set of data with little usefulness for the company. Connecting Individual Motivation to Organization Needs So what is it that makes an individual decide to grant an organization access to the data it wants? It is when the individual’s own motivations are in alignment with the organization’s objectives. In the case of workforce reputation management, when the individual is motivated by a desire for increased visibility and career growth opportunities to advertise their skills and level of influence and reputation, they are aligned with the organizations’ objectives; to fill resource needs or strategically build better awareness of what skills are present in the workforce, as well as levels of influence and reputation. Individuals can see the benefit of granting access permission to the company through multiple means. One is through simple social awareness; they begin to discover that peers who are getting more career opportunities are those who are signed up for workforce reputation management. Another is where companies take the message directly to the individual; we think you would benefit from signing up with our workforce reputation management solution. Another, more strategic approach is to make reputation management part of a larger Career Development effort by the company; providing a wide set of tools to help the workforce find ways to plan and take action to achieve their career aspirations in the organization. An effective mechanism, that facilitates connecting the visibility and career growth motivations of the workforce with the larger context of the organization’s business objectives, is to use game mechanics to help individuals transform their career goals into concrete, actionable steps, such as signing up for reputation management. This works in favor of companies looking to use workforce reputation because the workforce is more apt to see how it fits into achieving their overall career goals, as well as seeing how other participation brings additional benefits.  Once an individual has signed up with reputation management, not only have they made themselves more visible within the organization and increased their career growth opportunities, they have also enabled a tool that they can use to better understand how their actions and behaviors impact their influence and reputation. Since they will be able to see their reputation and influence measurements change over time, they will gain better insight into how reputation and influence impacts their effectiveness in a role, as well as how their behaviors and skill levels in turn affect their influence and reputation. This insight can trigger much more directed, and effective, efforts by the individual to improve their ability to perform at a higher level and become more productive. The increased sense of autonomy the individual experiences, in linking the insight they gain to the actions and behavior changes they make, greatly enhances their engagement with their role as well as their career prospects within the company. Workforce reputation management takes the wide range of disparate data about the workforce being produced across various social media platforms and transforms it into accessible, relevant, and actionable information that helps the organization achieve its desired business objectives. Social media holds untapped insights about your talent, brand and business, and workforce reputation management can help unlock them. Imagine - if you could find the hidden secrets of your businesses, how much more productive and efficient would your organization be? Mark Bennett is a Director of Product Strategy at Oracle. Mark focuses on setting the strategic vision and direction for tools that help organizations understand, shape, and leverage the capabilities of their workforce to achieve business objectives, as well as help individuals work effectively to achieve their goals and navigate their own growth. His combination of a deep technical background in software design and development, coupled with a broad knowledge of business challenges and thinking in today’s globalized, rapidly changing, technology accelerated economy, has enabled him to identify and incorporate key innovations that are central to Oracle Fusion’s unique value proposition. Mark has over the course of his career been in charge of the design, development, and strategy of Talent Management products and the design and development of cutting edge software that is better equipped to handle the increasingly complex demands of users while also remaining easy to use. Follow him @mpbennett

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, December 31, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, December 31, 2010Popular ReleasesFree Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.6.6 Released: Hi, Today we are releasing final version of Visifire, v3.6.6 with the following new feature: * TextDecorations property is implemented in Title for Chart. * TitleTextDecorations property is implemented in Axis. * MinPointHeight property is now applicable for Column and Bar Charts. Also this release includes few bug fixes: * ToolTipText property of DataSeries was not getting applied from Style. * Chart threw exception if IndicatorEnabled property was set to true and Too...Windows Weibo all in one for Sina Sohu and QQ: WeiBee V0.1: WeiBee is an all in one Twitter tool, which can update Wei Bo at the same time for websites. It intends to support t.sohu.com, t.sina.com.cn and t.qq.com.cn. If you have WeiBo at SOHU, SINA and QQ, you can try this tool to help you save time to open all the webpages to update your status. For any business opportunity, such as put advertise on China Twitter market, and to build a custom WeiBo tool, please reach my email box qq1800@gmail.com My official WeiBo is http://mediaroom.t.sohu.comStyleCop Compliant Visual Studio Code Snippets: Visual Studio Code Snippets - January 2011: StyleCop Compliant Visual Studio Code Snippets Visual Studio 2010 provides C# developers with 38 code snippets, enhancing developer productivty and increasing the consistency of the code. Within this project the original code snippets have been refactored to provide StyleCop compliant versions of the original code snippets while also adding many new code snippets. Within the January 2011 release you'll find 82 code snippets to make you more productive and the code you write more consistent!...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.2: Version: 2.0.0.2 (Milestone 2): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...eCompany: eCompany v0.2.0 Build 63: Version 0.2.0 Build 63: Added Splash screen & about box Added downloading of currencies when eCompany launched for the first time (must close any bug caused by no currency rate existing) Added corp creation when eCompany launched for the first time (for now, you didn't need to edit the company.xml file manually) You just need to decompress file "eCompany v0.2.0.63.zip" into your current eCompany install directory.SQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQL Monitor 3.0 alpha 8: 1. added truncate table/defrag index/check db functions 2. improved alert 3. fixed problem with alert causing config file corrupted(hopefully)Analysis Services Stored Procedure Project: 1.3.5 Release: This release includes the following fixes and new functionality: Updates to GetCubeLastProcessedDate to work with perspectives Fixes to reports that call Discover functions improving drillthrough functions against perspectives improving ExecuteDrillthroughAndFixColumns logic fixing situation where MDX query calling certain ASSP sprocs which opened external connections caused deadlock to SSAS processing small fix to Partition code when DbColumnName property doesn't exist changes...DocX: DocX v1.0.0.11: Building Examples projectTo build the Examples project, download DocX.dll and add it as a reference to the project. OverviewThis version of DocX contains many bug fixes, it is a serious step towards a stable release. Added1) Unit testing project, 2) Examples project, 3) To many bug fixes to list here, see the source code change list history.Cosmos (C# Open Source Managed Operating System): 71406: This is the second release supporting the full line of Visual Studio 2010 editions. Changes since release 71246 include: Debug info is now stored in a single .cpdb file (which is a Firebird database) Keyboard input works now (using Console.ReadLine) Console colors work (using Console.ForegroundColor and .BackgroundColor)AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.0: Added the all new Masteries Browser which replaces the Quick Open combobox AutoLoL will now attemt to create file associations for mastery (*.lolm) files Each Mastery Build can now contain keywords that the Masteries Browser will use for filtering Changed the way AutoLoL detects if another instance is already running Changed the format of the mastery files to allow more information stored in* Dialogs will now focus the Ok or Cancel button which allows the user to press Return to clo...Paint.NET PSD Plugin: 1.6.0: Handling of layer masks has been greatly improved. Improved reliability. Many PSD files that previously loaded in as garbage will now load in correctly. Parallelized loading. PSD files containing layer masks will load in a bit quicker thanks to the removal of the sequential bottleneck. Hidden layers are no longer made visible on save. Many thanks to the users who helped expose the layer masks problem: Rob Horowitz, M_Lyons10. Please keep sending in those bug reports and PSD repro files!Facebook C# SDK: 4.1.1: From 4.1.1 Release: Authentication bug fix caused by facebook change (error with redirects in Safari) Authenticator fix, always returning true From 4.1.0 Release Lots of bug fixes Removed Dynamic Runtime Language dependencies from non-dynamic platforms. Samples included in release for ASP.NET, MVC, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, WPF, WinForms, and one Visual Basic Sample Changed internal serialization to use Json.net BREAKING CHANGE: Canvas Session is no longer supported. Use Signed...Catel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.0.0: And there it is, the final release of Catel, and it is no longer a beta version!EnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.7 ALPHA: 2.2.7 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Mongoose has bee...Euro for Windows XP: ChangeRegionalSettings 1..0: *Rocket Framework (.Net 4.0): Rocket Framework for Windows V 1.0.0: Architecture is reviewed and adjusted in a way so that I can introduce the Web version and WPF version of this framework next. - Rocket.Core is introduced - Controller button functions revisited and updated - DB is renewed to suite the implemented features - Create New button functionality is changed - Add Question Handling featuresFlickr Wallpaper Rotator (for Windows desktop): Wallpaper Flickr 1.1: Some minor bugfixes (mostly covering when network connection is flakey, so I discovered them all while at my parents' house for Christmas).NoSimplerAccounting: NoSimplerAccounting 6.0: -Fixed a bug in expense category report.NHibernate Mapping Generator: NHibernate Mapping Generator 2.0: Added support for Postgres (Thanks to Angelo)NewLife XCode: XCode v6.5.2010.1223 ????（????v3.5??）: XCode v6.5.2010.1223 ????，??： NewLife.Core ??? NewLife.Net ??? XControl ??? XTemplate ????，??C#?????? XAgent ???? NewLife.CommonEnitty ??????（???，XCode??????） XCode?? ?????????，??????????????????，?????95% XCode v3.5.2009.0714 ??，?v3.5?v6.0???????????????，?????????。v3.5???????????，??????????????。 XCoder ??XTemplate?????????，????????XCode??? XCoder_Src ???????（????XTemplate????），??????????????????New Projects1i2m3i4s5e6r7p: 1i2m3i4s5e6r7pA3 Fashion Web: A complete e-commerce siteAfonsoft Blog - Blog de teste: Blog para teste de desenvolvimento em MySQL ou SQLServer com ASP.NET 3.5AnyGrid for ASP.NET MVC: Which grid component should you use for your ASP.NET MVC project? How about all of them? AnyGrid makes it easy to switch between grid implementations, allowing a single action to, e.g., use two different grids for desktop and mobile views. It also supports DataAnnnotations.BizTalk Map Test Framework: The Map Test Framework makes it easier for BizTalk developers to test their maps. You'll no longer have to maintain a whole bunch of XML files for your tests. The use of template files and xpath queries to perform tests will increase your productivity tremendously.BlogResult.NET: A simple Blogging starter kit using S#harp Architecture. This project was originally course material sample code for an MVC class, but we decided to open source it and make it available to the community.Caro: Code demo caro game.Ecozany Skin for DotNetNuke: This Ecozany package contains three sample skins and a collection of containers for use in your DotNetNuke web sites.Enhanced lookup field: Enhanced lookup field makes it easier for end users to create filters. You'll no longer have to use a custom field or javascript to have a parent child lookup for example. It's developed in C#. - Parent/multiple child lookups - Advanced filters options - Easy to usejobglance: This is job siteMaxLeafWeb_K3: MaxLeafWeb_K3Miage Kart: Projet java M1msystem: MVC. Net web systemNetController: Controle sem teclas de direção, usando acelerômentro e .NET micro Framework.Pencils - A Blog Site framework: Another Blog site frameworkPICTShell: PICT is an efficient way to design test cases and test configurations for software systems. PICT Shell is the GUI for PICT.Portal de Solicitação de Serviços: O Portal de Solicitação de Serviços é uma solução que atende diversas empresas prestadores de serviços. Inicialmente desenvolvido para atender empresa de informática, mas o objetivo é que com a publicação do fonte, ele seja extendido à diversos tipos de prestadoras.Runery: Runery RSPSsCut4s: sCut4sSumacê Jogava Caxangá?: sumace makes it easier for gamers to play. You'll no longer have to play. It's developed in XNA.Supply_Chain_FInance: Supply Chain Finance thrives these years all over the world. In exploring the inner working mechanism ,we can sought to have a way to embed an information system in it. We develop the system to suit the domesticated supply chain finace .TestAmir: ??? ????? ??? ???The Cosmos: School project on a SOA based system (Loan system)Time zone: A c# library for manage time changes for any time zone in the world. Based on olson database.Validate: Validate is a collection of extension methods that let you add validations to any object and display validations in a user/developer friendly format. Its an extremely light weight validation framework with a zero learning curve.Windows Phone 7 Silverlight ListBox with CheckBox Control: A Windows Phone 7 ListBox control, providing CheckBoxes for item selection when in "Choose State" and no CheckBoxes in "Normal State", like the built-in Email app, with nice transition. To switch between states, set the "IsInChooseState" property. The control inherits ListBox.XQSOFT.WF.Designer: this is workflow designerzhanghai: my test project

  Read the article

• SOA Community Newsletter: nouvelle lettre !

  - by mseika

  SOA PARTNER COMMUNITY NEWSLETTERAUGUST 2012 Dear SOA partner community member Have you submitted your feedback on SOA Partner Community Survey 2012? This is the last chance to participate in the survey. We recommend you to complete the survey and help us to improve our SOA Community. Thanks to all attendees and trainers for their participation in the excellent Fusion Middleware Summer Camps held in Lisbon and Munich. I would also like to thank you for the great feedback and the nice reports provided by AMIS Technology Blog & Middleware by Link Consulting. Most of our courses have been overbooked, if you did not get a chance or missed it, we offer a wide range of online training and the course material. Key take-away from the advanced BPM course is to become an expert in ADF. Here is the course from Grant Ronald Learn Advanced ADF online available. The Link Consulting Team became experts in SOA Governance with EAMS and Oracle Enterprise Repository! We always encourage our community members to share their best practices and are very keen to publish it. Please let us know if you want to share your best practices through this medium.We encourage you to make use of the Specialization benefits - this month we are giving an opportunity to Promote Your SOA & BPM Events. Jürgen KressOracle SOA & BPM Partner Adoption EMEA NEW CONTENT Presentations & Training material OFM Summer CampsPromote Your SOA & BPM Events Advanced ADF Online, For Free By Grant BPM 11g Customer Stories & Solution Catalog & Process Accelerators Delivering SOA Governance with EAMS by Link Consulting Team WebLogic Server Provisioning and Patching News from our Partners & CommunityUpdated material by Oracle Connect and Network SOA Blogs SOA on Facebook SOA on LinkedIn SOA on Twitter Mix SOA Forum SOA Workspace PRESENTATIONS & TRAINING MATERIAL OFM SUMMER CAMPS Thanks to all attendees who invested their time and utilized the opportunity to attend the Summer Camps! Due to high demand of our most of the trainings, we had a long waiting list with more numbers of partners who are keen to attend it. We would like to give our special thanks to all trainers, who delivered excellent workshops! Most of the presentations and course material have been posted on our SOA Community Workspaceand WebLogic Community Workspace. You can access the content only if you are a registered community member. To register for the SOA Community please click here. You can register for the WebLogic Community here. To find out the first impressions of the event please visit our Facebook pages:www.facebook.com/WebLogicCommunity &www.facebook.com/soacommunity or Picasa AlbumThanks for the excellent blog posts from AMIS Technology Blog & Middleware by Link Consulting. Let us know if you published a twitter blog on@soacommunity & @wlscommunity. We will be pleased to publish it in our Newsletters. BPM Course Quotes “Its always easy, if you know, what you are doing” - Torsten Winterberg, Opitz“ The best ideas are the ideas from the best” - Filipe Sequeria, Primesoft “Best invest in the education in the last 12 months” - Richard Schaller, IPT “Practice best practice with the best instructor” - Graham Lamond Capgemini “If you have basic BPM knowledge, this is the course to really mater it” - Diogo Henriques Link Consulting “Very good trainers lot of work. Lot of fun as well” - Matthias Gris Workflow Factory “If you like to accelerate in Oracle come to the training to bring it all together” - Marcel van der Glind, Amis ADF Course Quotes "Excellent training, great opportunity to network!" - Frank Houweling, Amis "Lots of fun and good ideas" - Ana Santiago, GFI "Learn ADF, worth it Fusion Apps is the future" - Miguel Delgadillo, STO Consulting "The best way to learn Fusion Middleware from the #1" Alexandro Montantes, STO Consulting "Be advanced to to be the first” - Dimitar Petrov Fadata "Great opportunity to suck all the knowledge out of some very experienced product managers” - Wilfred von der Deijl, The Future Group WebLogic Course Quotes “Oracle trainings are the best” - Pedro Neto Novobas“ "Excellent training, well organized” - Pedro Antunh, Capgemini “This course dives you into Oracle WebLogic giving you a quick start on benefiting from Fusion Apps” - Leonardo Fernandes, Outsystems Additional Quotes “Thanks a lot again for organizing such a great and informative Summer Camp. Both training and networking were organized very professionally. I have gained tons of very useful Info, which will definitely help to increase quality of our future projects.” - Daniel Fasko fss-group.com I didn’t get the chance yesterday to thank you for a most enjoyable and thoroughly educational time I had in Munich over the last few days.” - Jeroen Bakker Ordina “Just to congratulate you on a great event, not only today but also in the previous days of training. As we know, a very good organization and, as a native Portuguese that knows Lisbon very good, a nice choice of places to visit. Looking forward to come again next year.” Pedro Miguel Neto, Novobase PROMOTE YOUR SOA & BPM EVENTS The Partner Event Publisher has just been made available to all SOA & BPM specialized partners in EMEA. Partners now have the opportunity to publish their events to theOracle.com/events site and spread the word on their upcoming live in-person and/or live webcast events. See the demo below and click here to read more information. ADVANCED ADF ONLINE, FOR FREE BY GRANT The second part of the advanced ADF online eCourse is Live now! This covers the advanced topics of region and region interaction as well as getting down and dirty with some of the layout features of ADF Faces, skinning and DVT components. The aim of this course is to give you a self-paced learning aid which covers the more advanced topics of ADF development. The content is developed by Product Management and our Curriculum development teams and is based on advanced training material we have been running internally for about 18 months. We will get started on the next chapter, but in the meantime, please have a look at chapters one and two. Back to top BPM 11G CUSTOMER STORIES & SOLUTION CATALOG & PROCESS ACCELERATORS Stories Everyone loves a good story on planning or implementing a BPM strategy. Everyone wants to hear how it was done before?, what worked?, what was achieved? If you have achieved success with BPM, we are very keen to hear your stories and examples of how your customers use it. We receive lots of requests from people who are thinking of using BPM to solve a specific problem or in combination with a specific technology to talk to someone who has done it before. These stories are invaluable. Drop down the details of anything you think is relevant with a bit of detail and we will follow up on it. As one good deed deserves another, we will do our best to give you stories if you need them to show that where you are going, others have treaded before. Send your stories to us using this e-mail link and we will share them among other like minded people. Solution Catalogue This summer, Oracle is launching a solution catalogue specifically intended for partners. If you have delivered a successful implementation in BPM and think it could be reused and applied again in a similar scenario in the same industry or in a similar environment, then we ware keen to know about it and will add it to the solution catalogue. The solution catalogue will showcase successful BPM solutions both inside and outside Oracle. Be in touch with us on this e-mail link and we will make sure to add your solution. Process AcceleratorsFinally if you have specific processes that you are expert on, you have implemented at a customer and you want to work with us on getting these productised, then we would love to know about it. The process accelerator programme is explained in the most recent SOA/BPM Community Newsletter but again feel free to contact us if you want to get involved. Good luck with BPM and let us know how we can help. Barry O'Reilly Director BPM [email protected] DELIVERING SOA GOVERNANCE WITH EAMS BY LINK CONSULTING TEAM In the last 12 years Link Consulting has been making its presence in specific areas such as Governance and Architecture, both in terms of practices and methodologies, products, know-how and technological expertise. The Enterprise Architecture Management System - Oracle Enterprise Edition (EAMS - OER Edition) is the result of this experience and combines the architecture management solution with OER in order to deliver a product specialized for SOA Governance that gathers the better of two worlds in solution that enables SOA Governance projects, initiatives and programs. Enterprise Architecture Management System Enterprise Architecture Management System (EAMS), is an automation based solution that enables the efficient management of Enterprise Architectures. The solution uses configured enterprise repositories and takes advantages of its features to provide automation capabilities to the users. EAMS provides capabilities to create/customize/analyze repository data, architectural blueprints, reports and analytic charts. Oracle Enterprise Repository Oracle Enterprise Repository (OER) is one of the major and central elements of the Oracle SOA Governance solution. Oracle Enterprise Repository provides the tools to manage and govern the metadata for any type of software asset, from business processes and services to patterns, frameworks, applications, components, and models. OER maps the relationships and inter-dependencies that connect those assets to improve impact analysis, promote and optimize their reuse, and measure their impact on the bottom line. It provides the visibility, feedback, controls, and analytics to keep your SOA on track to deliver business value. The intense focus on automation helps to overcome barriers to SOA adoption and streamline governance throughout the lifecycle. Core capabilities of the OER include: Asset Management Asset Lifecycle Management Usage Tracking Service Discovery Version Management Dependency Analysis Portfolio Management EAMS - OER Edition The solution takes the advantages and features from both products and combines them in a symbiotic tool that enhances the quality of SOA Governance Initiatives and Programs. EAMS is able to produce a vast number of outputs by combining its analytical engine, SOA-specific configurations and the assets in OER and other related tools, catalogs and repositories. The configurations encompass not only the extendable parametrization of the metadata but also fully configurable blueprints, PowerPoint reports, charts and queries. The SOA blueprints The solution comes with a set of predefined architectural representations that help the organization better perceive their SOA landscape. More blueprints can be easily created in order to accommodate the organizations needs in terms of detail, audience and metadata. Charts & Dashboards The solution encompasses a set of predefined charts and dashboards that promote a more agile way to control and explore the assets. Time Based Visualization All representations are time bound, and with EAMS - OER you can truly govern SOA with a complete view of the Past, Present and Future; The solution delivers Gap Analysis, a project oriented approach while taking into consideration the As-Was, As-Is an To-Be. Time based visualization differentiating factors: Extensive automation and maintenance of architectural representations Organization wide solution. Easy access and navigation to and between all architectural artifacts and representations. Flexible meta-model, customization and extensibility capabilities. Lifecycle management and enforcement of the time dimension over all the repository content. Profile based customization. Comprehensive visibility Architectural alignment Friendly and striking user interfaces For more information on EAMS visit us here. For more information on SOA visit us here. WEBLOGIC SERVER PROVISIONING AND PATCHING For access to the Oracle demo systems please visit OPN and talk to your Partner Expert.SOA Suite and BPM Suite runs on WebLogic! We are pleased to announce the availability of a WebLogic Server Management demo that showcases some of the key provisioning and patching capabilities of WebLogic Server Management Pack Enterprise Edition (EE). To learn more about these features - as well as other features of the pack - please visit the pack's saleskit page.Demo Highlights The demo showcases the following capabilities: Patching Oracle WebLogic Servers Standardizing WebLogic Server Patch Rollouts Creating a WebLogic Domain Provisioning Profile Cloning a WebLogic Domain from a Provisioning Profile Deploying a Java EE Application Scaling Out an Oracle WebLogic Cluster Demo Instructions Go to the DSS website for Oracle Partners. On the Standard Demo Launchpad page, under the “Software Lifecycle Automation” section, click on the link “EM Cloud Control 12c WLS Provisioning and Patching” (tagged as “NEW”). Specific demo launchpad page contains a link to the detailed demo script with instructions on how to show the demo.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, June 08, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, June 08, 2010New ProjectsAD CMS: CMS software project still in its initial development and design stage.Animated panel: Animated Panel is a WPF control that supports animation of its content on resize. Can be used in item controls (ListBox for example) as ItemsPanelT...Anurag Pallaprolu's Code Repository: Hi there, this is Anurag P.'s public repository which contains most of c++ language examples and many command line(only) applications. Well , plea...atfas: atfasBibleNotes: A small application that uses BibleGateway to lookup scripture and add notes to themCarRental: How to Rent A Car.Food Innovation: This is the Food Innovation project.Generic Validation.NET: Generic Validation.NET is a flexible lightweight validation library for .NET, that can be used by any .NET project: ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC,...Komoi: Komoi is an app that will bring on a new form of web comic delivery.Liekhus Entity Framework XAF Extensions: Entity Framework extensions to support DevExpress eXpress Application Framework (XAF) code generation by Patrick Liekhus.Marketing: Desing Automation Marketing FlowMediaCoder.NET: MediaCoder.NET makes it easy for normal PC users to convert media files to other formats. It is developed in Visual Basic.NETMemetic NPC Behavior Toolkit: This is a library based on the NeverWinter Nights' Memetic AI Toolkit by William Bull. This is an attempt at creating a C# edition of this brillia...MeVisLab QT VR Export: -Mudbox: This project for personal test. Prog2: wi ss10 2010 PSAdmin: PSAdmin is a web based administration tool that allows the easy execution of Windows PowerShell scripts within your environment.RIA Services Essentials: The RIA Services Essentials project contains sample applications/extensions demonstrating using and extending WCF RIA Services v1.SCSM Service Request: The Service Request project defines a new work item class called 'Service Request' and the corresponding form for that work item class. It is a go...SFTP Component for .NET CSharp, VB.NET, and ASP.NET: The Ultimate SSH Secure File Transfer (SFTP) .NET Component offers a comprehensive interface for SFTP, enabling you to quickly and easily incorpora...shitcore: Application demonstrating how to turn a crappy application into something useful. Read more about the refactoring in http://blog.gauffin.com (sear...SystemCentered Operations Manager Reporting: SystemCentered Reporting give Microsoft System Center Operations Manager administrators an extended set of performance reports aimed towards all us...TokyoTyrantClient: makes it easier for c# developer to write code to connect the tokyo tyrant. it support: 1.utf-8 encode 2.tcpClient pool 3.rich setting about tc...Ultimate FTP Component for .NET C#, VB.NET and ASP.NET: Ultimate FTP is a 100%-managed .NET class library that adds powerful and comprehensive File Transfer capabilities to your .NET applications. WCF 4 Templates for Visual Studio 2010: WCF 4 templates for Visual Studio 2010 providing a scenario-driven starting point.XCube: XCube is a basic command line interface, with support for files, user accounts(only in the GUI), and variables(only in DevMode). It is developed in...New ReleasesAdd-ons for EPiServer Relate+: EPiXternal.RelatePlus.Properties 0.1.0.0 Alpha: This is the Alpha release of EPiXternal.RelatePlus.Properties. The download is in the form of an .epimodule file that you can install with EPiServe...Add-ons for EPiServer Relate+: EPiXternal.RelatePlus.WebControl 0.1.0.0 Alpha: This is the Alpha release of EPiXternal.RelatePlus.WebControls. The download is in the form of an .epimodule file that you can install with EPiServ...Animated panel: AnimatedPanel v1: First version of AnimatedPanel.Anurag Pallaprolu's Code Repository: C.L.O.S.E - V3: C.L.O.S.E - V3 Smaller than ever. More Useful than ever Run only CLOSEV3.exeAnurag Pallaprolu's Code Repository: FLTK - 1.3.X: The Fast Lightining Tool Kit is back. This is the FLTK 1.3.X Tar ballAnurag Pallaprolu's Code Repository: KBHIT Function Code: This is a sample to teach about kbhit()Browser Gallese: Browser 1.0.0.15: Continua l'era del browser opensource con una novità:ho impiantato il P2P online. Adesso il browser ha bisogno di Java. Se non lo avete,cliccate qu...CC.Hearts Screen Saver: CC.Hearts Screen Saver 1.0.10.607: This is the initial release of CC.Hearts Screen Saver. Marking as stable but limited testing at this point so feedback is greatly welcomed.Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V32: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...DotNetNuke® Skins: Default.css (beta): About The team has put together a cleaned up and optimized default.css file as a first step in moving toward more efficient CSS usage. Ideally, th...Dynamic Survey Forms - SharePoint Web Part: Code Fix 06-07-2010: Fix for editing existing forms Add: Requiered field option Add: Requiered field validation on submitFloe IRC Client: Floe 1.0 (2010-06): NOTE: You may have to uninstall your existing version for this installer to work properly. - Added /QUOTE command - Fixed bug where new message in...Folder Bookmarks: Folder Bookmarks 1.6.2.1: The latest version of Folder Bookmarks (1.6.2.1), with new Mini-Menu UI changes (1.3). Once you have extracted the file, do not delete any files/f...Food Innovation: Food Innovation 1.0: This is the V1.0 release.HERB.IQ: Alpha 0.1 Source code release 7: Alpha 0.1 Source code release 7 (skipped uploading 6)Liekhus Entity Framework XAF Extensions: Version 1.1.0: Initial project release. Ported the XAFDSL tool into the Entity Framework and made it work with the Visual Studio 2010 extensions.LogikBug's IoC Container: LogikBug's IoC Container v 1.1: In this release, I add the ability to extend the container using the LogikBug.Injection.Extensibility namespace.MediaCoder.NET: MediaCoder.NET v1.0 beta Source Code: Source code for MediaCoder.NET v1.0 beta it includes everything - also the installer.Memetic NPC Behavior Toolkit: Wandering Meme Test: This was a code spike to see the first custom meme in action. The first meme chosen was the "Wander" meme. This is a Visual Studio 2010 solution. ...Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework: Silverlight Media Framework v2 (RC1): This is the first release candidate for the Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework v2. Note: The IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit assem...mwNSPECT: mwNSPECT Beta: mwNSPECT Mapwindow plugin dll. Place in your MapWindow or BASINS plugins directory. Presently for testing everything, though very much known issu...mwNSPECT: mwNSPECT Beta Installer: Simplistic mwNSPECT Mapwindow plugin installer using Inno setup. Installs all the files you'll need for NSPECT into the C:\NSPECT folder and insta...Near forums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Release 1: First release of the SEO friendly ASP.NET MVC forum engine.NLog - Advanced .NET Logging: Nightly Build 2010.06.07.001: Changes since the last build:2010-06-06 22:13:02 Jarek Kowalski Added unit tests for common target behaviors. 2010-06-06 19:36:44 Jarek Kowalski c...patterns & practices – Enterprise Library: Enterprise Library 5.0 - Dev Guide (RC): This is a Release Candidate of the Developer's Guide, C# EditionPSAdmin: 1.0.0.0: This is an alpha release of PSAdmin and should be tested before putting into a production environment. This package is pre-compiled and ready for ...Refix - .NET dependency management: Refix v0.1.0.59 ALPHA: Still a very early version. Functional changes: Added new pre (prebuild) and fix commands (rfx help pre and rfx help fix for explanations).SCSM Service Request: Service Request Management Pack v0.1: !This is an ALPHA release. Please use for testing purposes only.! The management pack is not sealed which means that when a new version of the Se...SFTP Component for .NET CSharp, VB.NET, and ASP.NET: SFTP WinForms Client: SFTP WinForms ClientSharePoint Feature - Version history list Export to Excel: Export Item List Version 1.1: - allows you to select columns to export - multilanguage support Czech, English - some bug fix Install: "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft S...SharePoint Outlook Connector: Source Code for Version 1.2.4.3: Source Code for Version 1.2.4.3SharePoint PowerRSS: v1.0: Easy/Clean way to get SharePoint list data via more standard RSS feed. I found CleanRSS.aspx as part of SPRSS: Enhanced RSS Functionality for WSS ...Smith Async .NET Memcached Client: Smith.Amc 0.7.3810.36347: Smith Async Memcached client release 0.7.3810.36347 available First public release available. All memcached operations has been implemented except...Star Trooper for XNA 2D Tutorial: Lesson five content: Here is Lesson five original content for the StarTrooper 2D XNA tutorial. The blog tutorial has now started over on http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkge...Star Trooper for XNA 2D Tutorial: Lesson six content: Here is Lesson six original content for the StarTrooper 2D XNA tutorial. The blog tutorial has now started over on http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgen...Stripper: Stripper.exe version 0.1.0: Stripper Remove Diacritics and other unwanted caracters to fabric a more standardized file naming. Especially French caracter and maybe other lang...SystemCentered Operations Manager Reporting: SystemCentered Reports V1: Reports Windows Computer General Performance When troubleshooting performance problems there are typically a set of "go to" performance counters t...TFS Buddy: TFS Buddy Beta 1.1: Minor changes +Added repeat function in action tab to simplyfy creating actions +Added app manifest to make the exe require run as Admin ~How the I...Thumbnail creator and image resizer: ThumbnailCreator1.2.1: ThumbnailCreator1.2.1 added importing of namespaces to .vb(previously in web.config)TokyoTyrantClient: TokyoTyrantClient release: 该客户端有如下特点： 1.支持TcpClient连接池 2.支持UTF-8编码 3.支持初始化链接数，链接过期时间，最大空闲时间，最长工作时间等设置。Ultimate FTP Component for .NET C#, VB.NET and ASP.NET: Build 519: New Release Download setup package at: http://www.componentsoft.net/component/download/?name=UltimateFtp Product Home Page: http://www.componentsof...visinia: visinia_1.2: The new stable version of visinia cms is out, it is visinia 1.2. It has many new features like the admin is one more time is given a new look. the ...WCF 4 Templates for Visual Studio 2010: AnonymousOverHttp: This template generates a WCF service application that exposes a BasicHttpBinding endpoint with maxed message size and reader quotas to provide an ...WhiteMoon: WhiteMoon 0.2.10 Source: The Source code of WhiteMoon 0.2 build 10Most Popular ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeASP.NET MVC Time PlannerMoonyDesk (windows desktop widgets)NeatUploadOutSyncViperWorks IgnitionAgUnit - Silverlight unit testing with ReSharperSmith Async .NET Memcached ClientASP.NET MVC ExtensionsAviva Solutions C# Coding GuidelinesMost Active ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationN2 CMSStyleCopsmark C# LibraryBlogEngine.NET

  Read the article

• How to create a new WCF/MVC/jQuery application from scratch

  - by pjohnson

  As a corporate developer by trade, I don't get much opportunity to create from-the-ground-up web sites; usually it's tweaks, fixes, and new functionality to existing sites. And with hobby sites, I often don't find the challenges I run into with enterprise systems; usually it's starting from Visual Studio's boilerplate project and adding whatever functionality I want to play around with, rarely deploying outside my own machine. So my experience creating a new enterprise-level site was a bit dated, and the technologies to do so have come a long way, and are much more ready to go out of the box. My intention with this post isn't so much to provide any groundbreaking insights, but to just tie together a lot of information in one place to make it easy to create a new site from scratch. Architecture One site I created earlier this year had an MVC 3 front end and a WCF 4-driven service layer. Using Visual Studio 2010, these project types are easy enough to add to a new solution. I created a third Class Library project to store common functionality the front end and services layers both needed to access, for example, the DataContract classes that the front end uses to call services in the service layer. By keeping DataContract classes in a separate project, I avoided the need for the front end to have an assembly/project reference directly to the services code, a bit cleaner and more flexible of an SOA implementation. Consuming the service Even by this point, VS has given you a lot. You have a working web site and a working service, neither of which do much but are great starting points. To wire up the front end and the services, I needed to create proxy classes and WCF client configuration information. I decided to use the SvcUtil.exe utility provided as part of the Windows SDK, which you should have installed if you installed VS. VS also provides an Add Service Reference command since the .NET 1.x ASMX days, which I've never really liked; it creates several .cs/.disco/etc. files, some of which contained hardcoded URL's, adding duplicate files (*1.cs, *2.cs, etc.) without doing a good job of cleaning up after itself. I've found SvcUtil much cleaner, as it outputs one C# file (containing several proxy classes) and a config file with settings, and it's easier to use to regenerate the proxy classes when the service changes, and to then maintain all your configuration in one place (your Web.config, instead of the Service Reference files). I provided it a reference to a copy of my common assembly so it doesn't try to recreate the data contract classes, had it use the type List<T> for collections, and modified the output files' names and .NET namespace, ending up with a command like: svcutil.exe /l:cs /o:MyService.cs /config:MyService.config /r:MySite.Common.dll /ct:System.Collections.Generic.List`1 /n:*,MySite.Web.ServiceProxies http://localhost:59999/MyService.svc I took the generated MyService.cs file and drop it in the web project, under a ServiceProxies folder, matching the namespace and keeping it separate from classes I coded manually. Integrating the config file took a little more work, but only needed to be done once as these settings didn't often change. A great thing Microsoft improved with WCF 4 is configuration; namely, you can use all the default settings and not have to specify them explicitly in your config file. Unfortunately, SvcUtil doesn't generate its config file this way. If you just copy & paste MyService.config's contents into your front end's Web.config, you'll copy a lot of settings you don't need, plus this will get unwieldy if you add more services in the future, each with its own custom binding. Really, as the only mandatory settings are the endpoint's ABC's (address, binding, and contract) you can get away with just this: <system.serviceModel>  <client>    <endpoint address="http://localhost:59999/MyService.svc" binding="wsHttpBinding" contract="MySite.Web.ServiceProxies.IMyService" />  </client></system.serviceModel> By default, the services project uses basicHttpBinding. As you can see, I switched it to wsHttpBinding, a more modern standard. Using something like netTcpBinding would probably be faster and more efficient since the client & service are both written in .NET, but it requires additional server setup and open ports, whereas switching to wsHttpBinding is much simpler. From an MVC controller action method, I instantiated the client, and invoked the method for my operation. As with any object that implements IDisposable, I wrapped it in C#'s using() statement, a tidy construct that ensures Dispose gets called no matter what, even if an exception occurs. Unfortunately there are problems with that, as WCF's ClientBase<TChannel> class doesn't implement Dispose according to Microsoft's own usage guidelines. I took an approach similar to Technology Toolbox's fix, except using partial classes instead of a wrapper class to extend the SvcUtil-generated proxy, making the fix more seamless from the controller's perspective, and theoretically, less code I have to change if and when Microsoft fixes this behavior. User interface The MVC 3 project template includes jQuery and some other common JavaScript libraries by default. I updated the ones I used to the latest versions using NuGet, available in VS via the Tools > Library Package Manager > Manage NuGet Packages for Solution... > Updates. I also used this dialog to remove packages I wasn't using. Given that it's smart enough to know the difference between the .js and .min.js files, I was hoping it would be smart enough to know which to include during build and publish operations, but this doesn't seem to be the case. I ended up using Cassette to perform the minification and bundling of my JavaScript and CSS files; ASP.NET 4.5 includes this functionality out of the box. The web client to web server link via jQuery was easy enough. In my JavaScript function, unobtrusively wired up to a button's click event, I called $.ajax, corresponding to an action method that returns a JsonResult, accomplished by passing my model class to the Controller.Json() method, which jQuery helpfully translates from JSON to a JavaScript object.$.ajax calls weren't perfectly straightforward. I tried using the simpler $.post method instead, but ran into trouble without specifying the contentType parameter, which $.post doesn't have. The url parameter is simple enough, though for flexibility in how the site is deployed, I used MVC's Url.Action method to get the URL, then sent this to JavaScript in a JavaScript string variable. If the request needed input data, I used the JSON.stringify function to convert a JavaScript object with the parameters into a JSON string, which MVC then parses into strongly-typed C# parameters. I also specified "json" for dataType, and "application/json; charset=utf-8" for contentType. For success and error, I provided my success and error handling functions, though success is a bit hairier. "Success" in this context indicates whether the HTTP request succeeds, not whether what you wanted the AJAX call to do on the web server was successful. For example, if you make an AJAX call to retrieve a piece of data, the success handler will be invoked for any 200 OK response, and the error handler will be invoked for failed requests, e.g. a 404 Not Found (if the server rejected the URL you provided in the url parameter) or 500 Internal Server Error (e.g. if your C# code threw an exception that wasn't caught). If an exception was caught and handled, or if the data requested wasn't found, this would likely go through the success handler, which would need to do further examination to verify it did in fact get back the data for which it asked. I discuss this more in the next section. Logging and exception handling At this point, I had a working application. If I ran into any errors or unexpected behavior, debugging was easy enough, but of course that's not an option on public web servers. Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 filled this gap nicely, with its Logging and Exception Handling functionality. First I installed Enterprise Library; NuGet as outlined above is probably the best way to do so. I needed a total of three assembly references--Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.ExceptionHandling, Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.ExceptionHandling.Logging, and Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging. VS links with the handy Enterprise Library 5.0 Configuration Console, accessible by right-clicking your Web.config and choosing Edit Enterprise Library V5 Configuration. In this console, under Logging Settings, I set up a Rolling Flat File Trace Listener to write to log files but not let them get too large, using a Text Formatter with a simpler template than that provided by default. Logging to a different (or additional) destination is easy enough, but a flat file suited my needs. At this point, I verified it wrote as expected by calling the Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging.Logger.Write method from my C# code. With those settings verified, I went on to wire up Exception Handling with Logging. Back in the EntLib Configuration Console, under Exception Handling, I used a LoggingExceptionHandler, setting its Logging Category to the category I already had configured in the Logging Settings. Then, from code (e.g. a controller's OnException method, or any action method's catch block), I called the Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.ExceptionHandling.ExceptionPolicy.HandleException method, providing the exception and the exception policy name I had configured in the Exception Handling Settings. Before I got this configured correctly, when I tried it out, nothing was logged. In working with .NET, I'm used to seeing an exception if something doesn't work or isn't set up correctly, but instead working with these EntLib modules reminds me more of JavaScript (before the "use strict" v5 days)--it just does nothing and leaves you to figure out why, I presume due in part to the listener pattern Microsoft followed with the Enterprise Library. First, I verified logging worked on its own. Then, verifying/correcting where each piece wires up to the next resolved my problem. Your C# code calls into the Exception Handling module, referencing the policy you pass the HandleException method; that policy's configuration contains a LoggingExceptionHandler that references a logCategory; that logCategory should be added in the loggingConfiguration's categorySources section; that category references a listener; that listener should be added in the loggingConfiguration's listeners section, which specifies the name of the log file. One final note on error handling, as the proper way to handle WCF and MVC errors is a whole other very lengthy discussion. For AJAX calls to MVC action methods, depending on your configuration, an exception thrown here will result in ASP.NET'S Yellow Screen Of Death being sent back as a response, which is at best unnecessarily and uselessly verbose, and at worst a security risk as the internals of your application are exposed to potential hackers. I mitigated this by overriding my controller's OnException method, passing the exception off to the Exception Handling module as above. I created an ErrorModel class with as few properties as possible (e.g. an Error string), sending as little information to the client as possible, to both maximize bandwidth and mitigate risk. I then return an ErrorModel in JSON format for AJAX requests: if (filterContext.HttpContext.Request.IsAjaxRequest()){    filterContext.Result = Json(new ErrorModel(...));    filterContext.ExceptionHandled = true;} My $.ajax calls from the browser get a valid 200 OK response and go into the success handler. Before assuming everything is OK, I check if it's an ErrorModel or a model containing what I requested. If it's an ErrorModel, or null, I pass it to my error handler. If the client needs to handle different errors differently, ErrorModel can contain a flag, error code, string, etc. to differentiate, but again, sending as little information back as possible is ideal. Summary As any experienced ASP.NET developer knows, this is a far cry from where ASP.NET started when I began working with it 11 years ago. WCF services are far more powerful than ASMX ones, MVC is in many ways cleaner and certainly more unit test-friendly than Web Forms (if you don't consider the code/markup commingling you're doing again), the Enterprise Library makes error handling and logging almost entirely configuration-driven, AJAX makes a responsive UI more feasible, and jQuery makes JavaScript coding much less painful. It doesn't take much work to get a functional, maintainable, flexible application, though having it actually do something useful is a whole other matter.

  Read the article

• Windows Azure: Announcing release of Windows Azure SDK 2.2 (with lots of goodies)

  - by ScottGu

  Earlier today I blogged about a big update we made today to Windows Azure, and some of the great new features it provides. Today I’m also excited to also announce the release of the Windows Azure SDK 2.2. Today’s SDK release adds even more great features including: Visual Studio 2013 Support Integrated Windows Azure Sign-In support within Visual Studio Remote Debugging Cloud Services with Visual Studio Firewall Management support within Visual Studio for SQL Databases Visual Studio 2013 RTM VM Images for MSDN Subscribers Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET Updated Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets and ScriptCenter The below post has more details on what’s available in today’s Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release.  Also head over to Channel 9 to see the new episode of the Visual Studio Toolbox show that will be available shortly, and which highlights these features in a video demonstration. Visual Studio 2013 Support Version 2.2 of the Window Azure SDK is the first official version of the SDK to support the final RTM release of Visual Studio 2013. If you installed the 2.1 SDK with the Preview of Visual Studio 2013 we recommend that you upgrade your projects to SDK 2.2.  SDK 2.2 also works side by side with the SDK 2.0 and SDK 2.1 releases on Visual Studio 2012: Integrated Windows Azure Sign In within Visual Studio Integrated Windows Azure Sign-In support within Visual Studio is one of the big improvements added with this Windows Azure SDK release.  Integrated sign-in support enables developers to develop/test/manage Windows Azure resources within Visual Studio without having to download or use management certificates.  You can now just right-click on the “Windows Azure” icon within the Server Explorer inside Visual Studio and choose the “Connect to Windows Azure” context menu option to connect to Windows Azure: Doing this will prompt you to enter the email address of the account you wish to sign-in with: You can use either a Microsoft Account (e.g. Windows Live ID) or an Organizational account (e.g. Active Directory) as the email.  The dialog will update with an appropriate login prompt depending on which type of email address you enter: Once you sign-in you’ll see the Windows Azure resources that you have permissions to manage show up automatically within the Visual Studio Server Explorer (and you can start using them): With this new integrated sign in experience you are now able to publish web apps, deploy VMs and cloud services, use Windows Azure diagnostics, and fully interact with your Windows Azure services within Visual Studio without the need for a management certificate.  All of the authentication is handled using the Windows Azure Active Directory associated with your Windows Azure account (details on this can be found in my earlier blog post). Integrating authentication this way end-to-end across the Service Management APIs + Dev Tools + Management Portal + PowerShell automation scripts enables a much more secure and flexible security model within Windows Azure, and makes it much more convenient to securely manage multiple developers + administrators working on a project.  It also allows organizations and enterprises to use the same authentication model that they use for their developers on-premises in the cloud.  It also ensures that employees who leave an organization immediately lose access to their company’s cloud based resources once their Active Directory account is suspended. Filtering/Subscription Management Once you login within Visual Studio, you can filter which Windows Azure subscriptions/regions are visible within the Server Explorer by right-clicking the “Filter Services” context menu within the Server Explorer.  You can also use the “Manage Subscriptions” context menu to mange your Windows Azure Subscriptions: Bringing up the “Manage Subscriptions” dialog allows you to see which accounts you are currently using, as well as which subscriptions are within them: The “Certificates” tab allows you to continue to import and use management certificates to manage Windows Azure resources as well.  We have not removed any functionality with today’s update – all of the existing scenarios that previously supported management certificates within Visual Studio continue to work just fine.  The new integrated sign-in support provided with today’s release is purely additive. Note: the SQL Database node and the Mobile Service node in Server Explorer do not support integrated sign-in at this time. Therefore, you will only see databases and mobile services under those nodes if you have a management certificate to authorize access to them.  We will enable them with integrated sign-in in a future update. Remote Debugging Cloud Resources within Visual Studio Today’s Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release adds support for remote debugging many types of Windows Azure resources. With live, remote debugging support from within Visual Studio, you are now able to have more visibility than ever before into how your code is operating live in Windows Azure.  Let’s walkthrough how to enable remote debugging for a Cloud Service: Remote Debugging of Cloud Services To enable remote debugging for your cloud service, select Debug as the Build Configuration on the Common Settings tab of your Cloud Service’s publish dialog wizard: Then click the Advanced Settings tab and check the Enable Remote Debugging for all roles checkbox: Once your cloud service is published and running live in the cloud, simply set a breakpoint in your local source code: Then use Visual Studio’s Server Explorer to select the Cloud Service instance deployed in the cloud, and then use the Attach Debugger context menu on the role or to a specific VM instance of it: Once the debugger attaches to the Cloud Service, and a breakpoint is hit, you’ll be able to use the rich debugging capabilities of Visual Studio to debug the cloud instance remotely, in real-time, and see exactly how your app is running in the cloud. Today’s remote debugging support is super powerful, and makes it much easier to develop and test applications for the cloud.  Support for remote debugging Cloud Services is available as of today, and we’ll also enable support for remote debugging Web Sites shortly. Firewall Management Support with SQL Databases By default we enable a security firewall around SQL Databases hosted within Windows Azure.  This ensures that only your application (or IP addresses you approve) can connect to them and helps make your infrastructure secure by default.  This is great for protection at runtime, but can sometimes be a pain at development time (since by default you can’t connect/manage the database remotely within Visual Studio if the security firewall blocks your instance of VS from connecting to it). One of the cool features we’ve added with today’s release is support that makes it easy to enable and configure the security firewall directly within Visual Studio.  Now with the SDK 2.2 release, when you try and connect to a SQL Database using the Visual Studio Server Explorer, and a firewall rule prevents access to the database from your machine, you will be prompted to add a firewall rule to enable access from your local IP address: You can simply click Add Firewall Rule and a new rule will be automatically added for you. In some cases, the logic to detect your local IP may not be sufficient (for example: you are behind a corporate firewall that uses a range of IP addresses) and you may need to set up a firewall rule for a range of IP addresses in order to gain access. The new Add Firewall Rule dialog also makes this easy to do.  Once connected you’ll be able to manage your SQL Database directly within the Visual Studio Server Explorer: This makes it much easier to work with databases in the cloud. Visual Studio 2013 RTM Virtual Machine Images Available for MSDN Subscribers Last week we released the General Availability Release of Visual Studio 2013 to the web.  This is an awesome release with a ton of new features. With today’s Windows Azure update we now have a set of pre-configured VM images of VS 2013 available within the Windows Azure Management Portal for use by MSDN customers.  This enables you to create a VM in the cloud with VS 2013 pre-installed on it in with only a few clicks: Windows Azure now provides the fastest and easiest way to get started doing development with Visual Studio 2013. Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET (Preview) Having the ability to automate the creation, deployment, and tear down of resources is a key requirement for applications running in the cloud.  It also helps immensely when running dev/test scenarios and coded UI tests against pre-production environments. Today we are releasing a preview of a new set of Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET.  These new libraries make it easy to automate tasks using any .NET language (e.g. C#, VB, F#, etc).  Previously this automation capability was only available through the Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets or to developers who were willing to write their own wrappers for the Windows Azure Service Management REST API. Modern .NET Developer Experience We’ve worked to design easy-to-understand .NET APIs that still map well to the underlying REST endpoints, making sure to use and expose the modern .NET functionality that developers expect today: Portable Class Library (PCL) support targeting applications built for any .NET Platform (no platform restriction) Shipped as a set of focused NuGet packages with minimal dependencies to simplify versioning Support async/await task based asynchrony (with easy sync overloads) Shared infrastructure for common error handling, tracing, configuration, HTTP pipeline manipulation, etc. Factored for easy testability and mocking Built on top of popular libraries like HttpClient and Json.NET Below is a list of a few of the management client classes that are shipping with today’s initial preview release: .NET Class Name Supports Operations for these Assets (and potentially more) ManagementClient Locations Credentials Subscriptions Certificates ComputeManagementClient Hosted Services Deployments Virtual Machines Virtual Machine Images & Disks StorageManagementClient Storage Accounts WebSiteManagementClient Web Sites Web Site Publish Profiles Usage Metrics Repositories VirtualNetworkManagementClient Networks Gateways Automating Creating a Virtual Machine using .NET Let’s walkthrough an example of how we can use the new Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET to fully automate creating a Virtual Machine. I’m deliberately showing a scenario with a lot of custom options configured – including VHD image gallery enumeration, attaching data drives, network endpoints + firewall rules setup - to show off the full power and richness of what the new library provides. We’ll begin with some code that demonstrates how to enumerate through the built-in Windows images within the standard Windows Azure VM Gallery.  We’ll search for the first VM image that has the word “Windows” in it and use that as our base image to build the VM from.  We’ll then create a cloud service container in the West US region to host it within: We can then customize some options on it such as setting up a computer name, admin username/password, and hostname.  We’ll also open up a remote desktop (RDP) endpoint through its security firewall: We’ll then specify the VHD host and data drives that we want to mount on the Virtual Machine, and specify the size of the VM we want to run it in: Once everything has been set up the call to create the virtual machine is executed asynchronously In a few minutes we’ll then have a completely deployed VM running on Windows Azure with all of the settings (hard drives, VM size, machine name, username/password, network endpoints + firewall settings) fully configured and ready for us to use: Preview Availability via NuGet The Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET are now available via NuGet. Because they are still in preview form, you’ll need to add the –IncludePrerelease switch when you go to retrieve the packages. The Package Manager Console screen shot below demonstrates how to get the entire set of libraries to manage your Windows Azure assets: You can also install them within your .NET projects by right clicking on the VS Solution Explorer and using the Manage NuGet Packages context menu command.  Make sure to select the “Include Prerelease” drop-down for them to show up, and then you can install the specific management libraries you need for your particular scenarios: Open Source License The new Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET make it super easy to automate management operations within Windows Azure – whether they are for Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, Storage Accounts, Web Sites, and more.  Like the rest of the Windows Azure SDK, we are releasing the source code under an open source (Apache 2) license and it is hosted at https://github.com/WindowsAzure/azure-sdk-for-net/tree/master/libraries if you wish to contribute. PowerShell Enhancements and our New Script Center Today, we are also shipping Windows Azure PowerShell 0.7.0 (which is a separate download). You can find the full change log here. Here are some of the improvements provided with it: Windows Azure Active Directory authentication support Script Center providing many sample scripts to automate common tasks on Windows Azure New cmdlets for Media Services and SQL Database Script Center Windows Azure enables you to script and automate a lot of tasks using PowerShell.  People often ask for more pre-built samples of common scenarios so that they can use them to learn and tweak/customize. With this in mind, we are excited to introduce a new Script Center that we are launching for Windows Azure. You can learn about how to scripting with Windows Azure with a get started article. You can then find many sample scripts across different solutions, including infrastructure, data management, web, and more: All of the sample scripts are hosted on TechNet with links from the Windows Azure Script Center. Each script is complete with good code comments, detailed descriptions, and examples of usage. Summary Visual Studio 2013 and the Windows Azure SDK 2.2 make it easier than ever to get started developing rich cloud applications. Along with the Windows Azure Developer Center’s growing set of .NET developer resources to guide your development efforts, today’s Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release should make your development experience more enjoyable and efficient. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, May 17, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, May 17, 2012Popular ReleasesWatchersNET.UrlShorty: WatchersNET.UrlShorty 01.03.03: changes Fixed Url & Error History when urls contain line breaksAspxCommerce: AspxCommerce1.1: AspxCommerce - 'Flexible and easy eCommerce platform' offers a complete e-Commerce solution that allows you to build and run your fully functional online store in minutes. You can create your storefront; manage the products through categories and subcategories, accept payments through credit cards and ship the ordered products to the customers. We have everything set up for you, so that you can only focus on building your own online store. Note: To login as a superuser, the username and pass...SiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.1.1616.403): BUG FIX Hide save button when Titles or Descriptions element is selectedVisual C++ 2010 Directories Editor: Visual C++ 2010 Directories Editor (x32_x64): release v1.3MapWindow 6 Desktop GIS: MapWindow 6.1.2: Looking for a .Net GIS Map Application?MapWindow 6 Desktop GIS is an open source desktop GIS for Microsoft Windows that is built upon the DotSpatial Library. This release requires .Net 4 (Client Profile). Are you a software developer?Instead of downloading MapWindow for development purposes, get started with with the DotSpatial template. The extensions you create from the template can be loaded in MapWindow.DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.2: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Tutorials are available. Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components ...Mugen Injection: Mugen Injection 2.2.1 (WinRT supported): Added ManagedScopeLifecycle. Increase performance. Added support for resolve 'params'.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.52: Make preprocessor comment-statements nestable; add the ///#IFNDEF statement. (Discussion #355785) Don't throw an error for old-school JScript event handlers, and don't rename them if they aren't global functions.DotNetNuke® Events: 06.00.00: This is a serious release of Events. DNN 6 form pattern - We have take the full route towards DNN6: most notably the incorporation of the DNN6 form pattern with streamlined UX/UI. We have also tried to change all formatting to a div based structure. A daunting task, since the Events module contains a lot of forms. Roger has done a splendid job by going through all the forms in great detail, replacing all table style layouts into the new DNN6 div class="dnnForm XXX" type of layout with chang...LogicCircuit: LogicCircuit 2.12.5.15: Logic Circuit - is educational software for designing and simulating logic circuits. Intuitive graphical user interface, allows you to create unrestricted circuit hierarchy with multi bit buses, debug circuits behavior with oscilloscope, and navigate running circuits hierarchy. Changes of this versionThis release is fixing one but nasty bug. Two functions XOR and XNOR when used with 3 or more inputs were incorrectly evaluating their results. If you have a circuit that is using these functions...SharpCompress - a fully native C# library for RAR, 7Zip, Zip, Tar, GZip, BZip2: SharpCompress 0.8.1: Two fixes: Rar Decompression bug fixed. Error only occurred on some files Rar Decompression will throw an exception when another volume isn't found but one is expected.?????????? - ????????: All-In-One Code Framework ??? 2012-05-14: http://download.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1codechs&DownloadId=216140 ???OneCode??????，??????????6????Microsoft OneCode Sample，????2?Data Platform Sample?4?WPF Sample。???????????。 ????，?????。http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=128165 Data Platform Sample CSUseADO CppUseADO WPF Sample CSWPFMasterDetailBinding VBWPFMasterDetailBinding CSWPFThreading VBWPFThreading ....... ???????????blog： http://blog.csd...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.25: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Client Profile, and Windows 8. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also available via NuGet! Follow @JoeMayo.BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.6: Get DotNetBlogEngine for 3 Months Free! Click Here for More Info BlogEngine.NET Hosting - 3 months free! Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here!! Click Here for More Info Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.2: 2012.05.07 Ver5.6.2 (1)　Web???????、????????·????????? (2)　Web???????、?????????? COMSPEC PATHEXT WINDIR SERVERADDR SERVERPORT DOCUMENTROOT SERVERADMIN REMOTE_PORT HTTPACCEPTCHRSET HTTPACCEPTLANGUAGE HTTPACCEPTEXCODINGGardens Point Parser Generator: Gardens Point Parser Generator version 1.5.0: ChangesVersion 1.5.0 contains a number of changes. Error messages are now MSBuild and VS-friendly. The default encoding of the *.y file is Unicode, with an automatic fallback to the previous raw-byte interpretation. The /report option has been improved, as has the automaton tracing facility. New facilities are included that allow multiple parsers to share a common token type. A complete change-log is available as a separate documentation file. The source project has been upgraded to Visual...Media Companion: Media Companion 3.502b: It has been a slow week, but this release addresses a couple of recent bugs: Movies Multi-part Movies - Existing .nfo files that differed in name from the first part, were missed and scraped again. Trailers - MC attempted to scrape info for existing trailers. TV Shows Show Scraping - shows available only in the non-default language would not show up in the main browser. The correct language can now be selected using the TV Show Selector for a single show. General Will no longer prompt for ...NewLife XCode ??????: XCode v8.5.2012.0508、XCoder v4.7.2012.0320: X????： 1，????For .Net 4.0?? XCoder????： 1，???????，????X????，?????? XCode????： 1，Insert/Update/Delete???????????????，???SQL???? 2，IEntityOperate?????? 3，????????IEntityTree 4，????????????????? 5，?????????? 6，??????????????Google Book Downloader: Google Books Downloader Lite 1.0: Google Books Downloader Lite 1.0Python Tools for Visual Studio: 1.5 Alpha: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.5 Alpha. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including: • Supports Cpython, IronPython, Jython and Pypy • Python editor with advanced member, signature intellisense and refactoring • Code navigation: “Find all refs”, goto definition, and object browser • Local and remote debugging...New ProjectsAmlak: Amlak projectApparat: An Open Source Game/Simulation Engine made with C# and SlimDX.CarShop emulator: carshopDynaMaxx Server Backend: DynaMaxx Server BackendEntry-Level C# Password Generator: The Entry-Level C# Password Generator is a piece of software written for two purposes. To be kept as simple as possible for newcomers to the langauge to understand how to use the language and to help people make a new secure password for themselves.faccipractica: ESTA ES LA CAPA DE DATOSFACCIULEAM: ESTE ES UN PROYECTO DE PRACTICAFast C++ Math Expression Parser: The C++ Mathematical Expression Library (ExprTk) is a simple to use, easy to integrate and extremely efficient and fast mathematical expression parsing and evaluation engine. The parsing engine supports various kinds of functional and logic processing semantics and is very easily extendible.Font Data Catalog: A tool to store font dataGraffiti: Graffiti is a high-performance rendering engine built specifically for the Reach profile on top of XNA/Monogame with a very specific feature set * Support for the Reach profile * CPU/GPU vertex transformation (using SkinnedEffect) * Quake 3 shader style effects (Multi-pass) for anything Graffiti can render * Keyframed/procedural animation framework * Primitive rendering (antialiased, variable-sized points and lines) * Particle system using complex/primitive objects *Text rendering (w...homeland: A simple form Engine for Rails app.HTML5 for SharePoint 2010: HTML5 for SharePoint 2010 is a package of controls and webparts that allows using HTML5 controls in SharePoint. Image Cropper 4 Umbraco 5: Image cropper for Umbraco 5.IPickMovies: This is project for IPick Movies from Mezanmi Technologies.JFrame: jframeJustForTest: For Testkxcxw: This is a website project. Latence: projectLive: this is Live project.MASMYTEST: fdfMP3 player: Project for MUL.MSI Validation: MSI ValidationMyWp: wp applicationOpen Waves Activity Feed: Activity Feed component to be used in ASP.NET projects based on EPiServer CMS, SP, and other.pComboBox: Script ComboBox - Initial versions complete and functional ( current version is 1.54) program and documentation available on justcode.ca - http://www.justcode.ca/justwindowscode/ Source will be available at pcombobox.codeplex.com The basic functionality is shown in the below batch file to call this combobox was coded as follows pcombobox /p:one,"# two",three,4 /t:"title" echo %ERRORLEVEL% Basically you can call this combobox dialog window from a batch file or a vbscript an...Periodic.Net: Periodic.Net is a Periodic Table layout for Windows based on WPF and the .Net Framework 3.5 SP1, More info coming soon.Pob-Pong: A simple Pong game - the first Project of Elsor and Zakk.PodcastCasting: Podcast casting system for Podcasters that use voice talents in their storiesresolvendo.net: Projeto desenvolvido na 3 etapa do S2BSharepoint for TFS: Custom control to integrate files from Sharepoint to TFSShutdownAB: Windows service to shutdown computer after a backup.SSIS Restart Framework: A framework that provides restartability for SSIS 2012 projects. It is very much work in progress so at the current time, use at your own peril.Standalone Encrypted Sign In Library: The ECL library is a standalone connection library !stunserver: New version 1.1. This is the source code to STUNTMAN - an open source STUN server and client code by john selbie. Compliant with the latest RFCs including 5389, 5769, and 5780. Also includes backwards compatibility for RFC 3489. The stun server code is part of a larger personal project involving P2P file sharing and NAT traversal. Version 1.1 compiles on Linux, MacOS, BSD, and Solaris. Additional features are in development. www.stunprotocol.orgTask Scheduler Assistant: This is a very simple Windows service that watches folders/files and triggers an associated Scheduled Task accordingly. A simple * wildcard scheme is used for file triggers. Wildcards can only be in the filename and not in the path. This was initially built to be a Task Scheduler trigger from import processes from clients, providing the missing Trigger type from Window's Task Scheduler.Tech4WPF: Tech4WPF make it easier for developers to create technical applications. You will no longer have to create your own user controlls like knobs, gauges and simple charts. It's developed in C#/WPF. This project was inspirated by Qwt - Qt Widgets for Technical Applications http://qwt.sourceforge.net/. It's not port, but similar project, creating controls for technical aplications using .NET framework, WPF and all benefits of this platform like binding etc. Tech4WPF was created as a bachelo...TestProject_Git: git projectVS Templates for generating Duet Workspace sites: This project provides VS templates to easily create Duet Enterprise workspace sites.WinTest: This is a winform application. It need net framework 3.5 or higher version.WPF Progressive FizzBuzz Coding Assignment: Classic "FizzBuzz".YahalomProject: YahalomProject is for testing and using codeplex , tfs...Zorbo: Zorbo Server library was designed to add a unique twist to the Ares Galaxy P2P community. It features a large and detailed plugin architecture that allows developers to create rich chatroom experiences while being light-weight and fast.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, March 23, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, March 23, 2012Popular ReleasesSSIS Multiple Hash: Multiple Hash V1.4.1: This is a feature release. It adds the ability to select multiple rows, and change the selection of these with a single click in the check box. All lists with check boxes have this ability. It is backwards compatible with previous versions. Please ensure that you select the appropriate download file based on the version of SQL Server that you will be using. If you have used the Denali installer from V1.4 for packages that you wish to now use the SQL 2012 release version, then you MUST ma...SQL Monitor - managing sql server performance: SQLMon 4.2 alpha 14: 1. improved accuracy of logic fault checking in analysisMetodología General Ajustada - MGA: 02.02.02: Cambios John: Cambios en los cálculos del Flujo de Caja, Flujo Económico y Resumen EF y ES. Se visualiza el reporte de Resumen EF y ES en Grilla. Se ajustan formularios de llamado. Cambios Parmenio: Cambios en el formularios de Programaciòn.MapWindow 6 Desktop GIS: MapWindow 6.1.1: MapWindow 6 Desktop GIS is an open source desktop GIS for Microsoft Windows that is built upon the DotSpatial Library. This release requires .Net 4 (Client Profile). Are you a software developer?Instead of downloading MapWindow for development purposes, get started with with the DotSpatial templateDotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.1: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components are available as NuGet pa...Telerik CAB Enabling Kit for RadControls for WinForms: TCEK 2012.1.321.20: major update, new Workspaces and UIAdapters Workspaces: - RadDockWorkspace - RadPageViewWorkspace - RadFormWorkspace - RadFormMdiWorkspace - RadTabbedMdiWorkspace UI Adapters: - RadCommandBarUIAdapter - RadRibbonBarUIAdapter - RadTreeNodeUiAdapter - RadTreeViewUIAdapter - RadItemCollectionUIAdapter - (RadMenu, RadStatusStrip, all controls that support RadItem collections)Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - a centralized code sample library: C++, .NET Coding Guideline: Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework Coding Guideline This document describes the coding style guideline for native C++ and .NET (C# and VB.NET) programming used by the Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework project team.WebDAV for WHS: Version 1.0.67: - Added: Check whether the Remote Web Access is turned on or not; - Added: Check for Add-In updates;Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0 (March 2012) for .NET 4.0: March release of Phalanger 3.0 significantly enhances performance, adds new features and fixes many issues. See following for the list of main improvements: New features: Phalanger Tools installable for Visual Studio 2011 Beta "filter" extension with several most used filters implemented DomDocument HTML parser, loadHTML() method mail() PHP compatible function PHP 5.4 T_CALLABLE token PHP 5.4 "callable" type hint PCRE: UTF32 characters in range support configuration supports <c...Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v8.0: Version 8.0 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine, containing new features: Internationalization Custom authentication provider Access control list for forums and threads Webdeploy package checksum: abc62990189cf0d488ef915d4a55e4b14169bc01 Visit Roadmap for more details.BIDS Helper: BIDS Helper 1.6: This beta release is the first to support SQL Server 2012 (in addition to SQL Server 2005, 2008, and 2008 R2). Since it is marked as a beta release, we are looking for bug reports in the next few months as you use BIDS Helper on real projects. In addition to getting all existing BIDS Helper functionality working appropriately in SQL Server 2012 (SSDT), the following features are new... Analysis Services Tabular Smart Diff Tabular Actions Editor Tabular HideMemberIf Tabular Pre-Build ...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 1: New feature - Windows 8 Metro build New feature - JsonTextReader automatically reads ISO strings as dates New feature - Added DateFormatHandling to control whether dates are written in the MS format or ISO format, with ISO as the default New feature - Added DateTimeZoneHandling to control reading and writing DateTime time zone details New feature - Added async serialize/deserialize methods to JsonConvert New feature - Added Path to JsonReader/JsonWriter/ErrorContext and exceptions w...SCCM Client Actions Tool: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.11: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.11 is the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Fixed a bug when ping and cmd.exe kept running in endless loop after action progress was finished. Fixed update checking from Codeplex RSS feed. The tool is downloadable as a ZIP file that contains four files: ClientActionsTool.hta – The tool itself. Cmdkey.exe – command line tool for managing cached credentials. This is needed for alternate credentials feature when running the HTA...WebSocket4Net: WebSocket4Net 0.5: Changes in this release fixed the wss's default port bug improved JsonWebSocket supported set client access policy protocol for silverlight fixed a handshake issue in Silverlight fixed a bug that "Host" field in handshake hadn't contained port if the port is not default supported passing in Origin parameter for handshaking supported reacting pings from server side fixed a bug in data sending fixed the bug sending a closing handshake with no message which would cause an excepti...SuperWebSocket, a .NET WebSocket Server: SuperWebSocket 0.5: Changes included in this release: supported closing handshake queue checking improved JSON subprotocol supported sending ping from server to client fixed a bug about sending a closing handshake with no message refactored the code to improve protocol compatibility fixed a bug about sub protocol configuration loading in Mono improved BasicSubProtocol added JsonWebSocketSessionSurvey™ - web survey & form engine: Survey™ 2.0: The new stable Survey™ Project 2.0.0.1 version contains many new features like: Technical changes: - Use of Jquery, ASTreeview, Tabs, Tooltips and new menuprovider Features & Bugfixes: Survey list and search function Folder structure for surveys New Menustructure Library list New Library fields User list and search functions Layout options for a survey with CSS, page header and footer New IP filter security feature Enhanced Token Management New Question fields as ID, Alias...Speed up Printer migration using PrintBrm and it's configuration files: BRMC.EXE: Run the tool from the extracted directory of the printbrm backup. You can use the following command to extract a backup file to a directory - PRINTBRM.EXE -R -D C:\TEMP\EXPAND -F C:\TEMP\PRINTERBACKUP.PRINTEREXPORTAppBarUtils for Windows Phone SDK 7.1: AppBarUtils 1.2: This release contains IconUri dependency property for both AppBarItemCommand and AppBarItemTrigger as requested by shawnoster at http://appbarutils.codeplex.com/discussions/321745. When using this IconUri dependency property, please be sure to set the Type property to AppBarItemType.Button or just omit this property entirely, because it is only for app bar icon button. The demo has been updated to show how to use this new IconUri dependency property with a new lock button on the app bar. Wh...Offline Navigation for Windows Phone 7: 0.1 Alpha: This is the 0.1 alpha release of source code.SmartNet: V1.0.0.0: DY SmartNet ?????? V1.0New Projects2Sexy Content for DotNetNuke - great looking and animated content: 2Sexy Content is a DotNetNuke Extension to create attractive and designed content. It solves the common problem, allowing the web designer to create designed templates for different content elements, so that the user must only fill in fields and receive a perfectly designed and animated output. AgileMapper: AgileMapper????????????????????，?????????dto?do???????AksiMata: Berita terbaru dan peristiwa terkini di sekitar Anda... Langsung dari TKP!Caprice: Engineering adaptive privacy: Caprice is a tool aimed at supporting software engineers in the design of applications that appropriately adapt their behaviour to mitigate privacy threats. This tool helps provide software engineers design-time insight on the functional behaviour a system and associated runtime context changes that can threaten privacy.Change default Share-site group SharePoint Online (Office 365): As default when we share a site collection or site with external users, SharePoint Online show default SharePoint groups which are Visitors and Members. By using this feature, you will get a link which you can use to customize the default groups to your custom groups and other default groups. CodePlex Test Project: This is just to test how well CodePlex handles Git.Find Work Items For Source Items (Visual Studio Extension): work4source is a Visual Studio 2010 tool window which finds and lists all TFS work items associated with a specific source control file or folder, avoiding the need to view the details for every changeset. It also includes "versioned item" links which otherwise cannot be found from the source side of the link using Visual Studio. To install run the VSIX package, restart Visual Studio, then select View --> Other Windows --> "Find Work Items for Source Items" and either leave the window ...FSProject: FSProjectGit c9 Test: testing git to c9 integration possibilitiesImage 3D Viewer: A Image 3D Viewer with WPF.Jakarta Guide: Jakarta news featuring up-to-date information on attractions, hotels, restaurants, nightlife, travel tips and more.LinqLucene: Due to the fact to the original LinqToLucene project seems to have died, I have created this new project to carry on it's workLuskyCode: Just some codemaouidatest: testMarktplace: NLocalize MarketplaceMemoryLifter: MemoryLifter - the fastest way to memorize * is a virtual flashcard system, scientifically based on the Leitner card box algorithm * enables the user to lift any kind of information into long term memory * maximizes study efficiency with automation, controlled repetitionMemoryTributary - A replacement for MemoryStream: MemoryTributary is a replacement for MemoryStream that uses multiple memory chunks as its backing store, as opposed to the single byte array used by MemoryStream. The result is it can handle much larger streams and the initial allocations are more efficient. It's developed in C#.my career muse: Project configured for simultaneous use with other developersMyMusicBox: Mini-Projet MBDS Web 2.0 Michel BuffaNucleo.NET ORM: These components provide a unit of work interface that works with LINQ to SQL, Entity Framework, and Entity Framework Code First, with more ORMs to come. The idea is to create one common wrapper and base framework to make it easier to work with the various ORM products.Orchard QnA: A lightweight discussions module for the Orchard CMS.Orchard Shoutbox: A lightweight shoutbox module for the Orchard CMS:PAIN: My projects from PAIN labs, semester 2012L, department of electronics of Warsaw University of Technology.Reactifier: This project is for the windows 8 Shoutcast MediaStreamSource: Shoutcast MediaStreamSource is a MediaStreamSource implementation of the Shoutcast protocol for Silverlight. This MediaStreamSource allows both Silverlight 4+ OOB and Windows Phone 7 applications to consume a Shoutcast stream using a MediaElement. Currently, Mp3 and AAC+ Shoutcast streams are supported on Windows Phone. However, ONLY Mp3 is supported on Desktop Silverlight. There is also limited (i.e. somewhat untested) M3u and PLS playlist support. Please report any issues playing...Simple Task Manager: Politechnika Wroclawska Team Project - 2012SkyGo Media Commander: SkyGo Media Commander permette di usare le frecce della tastiera per cambiare canale e il tasto invio per aprire il menu : "Telecomando". Utile se si usa un telecomando. Perfettamente funzionante con il telecomando CIR del notebook HP DV6 2137el.sunshine Design: sunshinetesting: testing projecttesttom032012git01: testtom032012git01testtom03222012hg01: testtom03222012hg01testtom03222012tfs01: testtom03222012tfs01testtom03222012tfs02: testtom03222012tfs02TileSet Map Editor: a small side project of a tileset map editorTraffic Light Simulation Application: Traffic Light Simulation application simulates traffic on a 2D plane under different traffic light control schemes. The interface will display a 10x10 grid where each street allows one-way traffic and there is one traffic light at each intersection.Type08ScreenCapture: Type08ScreenCapture brings Windows 8-like desktop capture function to Windows 7. If you type [Windows]+[PrintScreen], it capture a main display area and save the bitmap to your picture folder. It's developed in C#/WPF.WikiPlex – a Regex Wiki Engine: A regular expression based wiki engine allowing developers to integrate a wiki experience into an existing .NET applicationWindowsQR: Windows QR is a proof of concept about capturing a qr code using a webcam in a WPF application runinng in a desktop computer with Windows 7 or similars. It uses AForge.Vision to wrap the DirectShow complexity and zxing library to decode the qr code.Working with Social Data: 1)Customizing Tag Cloud By Accountname 2)RatingWPF 3D-Model Viewer: WPF 3D-Model Viewer

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 15, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 15, 2012Popular ReleasesPulse: Pulse Beta 4: This version is still in development but should include: Logging and error handling have been greatly improved. If you run into an error or Pulse crashes make sure to check the Log folder for a recently modified log file so you can report the details of the issue A bunch of new features for the Wallbase.cc provider. Cleaner separation between inputs, downloading and output. Input and downloading are fairly clean now but outputs are still mixed up in the mix which I'm trying to resolve ...Google Books Downloader for Windows: Google Books Downloader-2.0.0.0.: Google Books DownloaderFinestra Virtual Desktops: 2.5.4501: This is a very minor update release. Please see the information about the 2.5 and 2.5.4500 releases for more information on recent changes. This update did not even have an automatic update triggered for it. Adds error checking and reporting to all threads, not only those with message loopsAcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.9.2: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????，????1M，????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDo...C.B.R. : Comic Book Reader: CBR 0.6: 20 Issue trackers are closed and a lot of bugs too Localize view is now MVVM and delete is working. Added the unused flag (take care that it goes to true only when displaying screen elements) Backstage - new input/output format choice control for the conversion Backstage - Add display, behaviour and register file type options in the extended options dialog Explorer list view has been transformed to a custom control. New group header, colunms order and size are saved Single insta...Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Prv: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Preview Release v 1.2.0 Please download this for Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 functionality on Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The core features of the toolkit include: Automated Install – Scripted install of all dependencies including Visual Studio 2010 Express and the Windows Azure SDK on Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Project Templates – Windows 8 Metro Style app project templates in Dev 11 in both XAML/C# and HTML5/JS with a suppor...CODE Framework: 4.0.20312.0: This version includes significant improvements in the WPF system (and the WPF MVVM/MVC system). This includes new styles for Metro controls and layouts. Improved color handling. It also includes an improved theme/style swapping engine down to active (open) views. There also are various other enhancements and small fixes throughout the entire framework.ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.4: 3/12/2012 Jacob Slusser Added support for annotations. Issues Fixed with this Release Issue # Title 25012 25012 25018 25018 25023 25023 25014 25014 Visual Studio ALM Quick Reference Guidance: v3 - For Visual Studio 11: RELEASE README Welcome to the BETA release of the Quick Reference Guide preview As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has not been through an independent technical review Documentation ...AvalonDock: AvalonDock 2.0.0345: Welcome to early alpha release of AvalonDock 2.0 I've completely rewritten AvalonDock in order to take full advantage of the MVVM pattern. New version also boost a lot of new features: 1) Deep separation between model and layout. 2) Full WPF binding support thanks to unified logical tree between main docking manager, auto-hide windows and floating windows. 3) Support for Aero semi-maximized windows feature. 4) Support for multiple panes in the same floating windows. For a short list of new f...Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets: Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets 2.2.2: Changes Added Start Menu Item for Easy Startup Added Link to Getting Started Document Added Ability to Persist Subscription Data to Disk Fixed Get-Deployment to not throw on empty slot Simplified numerous default values for cmdlets Breaking Changes: -SubscriptionName is now mandatory in Set-Subscription. -DefaultStorageAccountName and -DefaultStorageAccountKey parameters were removed from Set-Subscription. Instead, when adding multiple accounts to a subscription, each one needs to be added ...IronPython: 2.7.2.1: On behalf of the IronPython team, I'm happy to announce the final release IronPython 2.7.2. This release includes everything from IronPython 54498 and 62475 as well. Like all IronPython 2.7-series releases, .NET 4 is required to install it. Installing this release will replace any existing IronPython 2.7-series installation. Unlike previous releases, the assemblies for all supported platforms are included in the installer as well as the zip package, in the "Platforms" directory. IronPython 2...Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.2.0.0: Breaking changes: When upgrade from previous versions, MUST reset the all the content type templates, otherwise the content manager might get a compile error. New features Integrate with Windows azure. See: http://wiki.kooboo.com/?wiki=Kooboo CMS on Azure Complete solution to deploy on load balance servers. See: http://wiki.kooboo.com/?wiki=Kooboo CMS load balance Update Jquery and Jquery ui to the lastest version(Jquery 1.71, Jquery UI 1.8.16). Tree style text content editing. See:h...SubExtractor: Release 1026: Fix: multi-colored bluray subs will no longer result in black blob for OCR Fix: dvds with no language specified will not cause exception in name creation of subtitle files Fix: Root directory Dvds will use volume label as their directory nameExtensions for Reactive Extensions (Rxx): Rxx 1.3: Please read the latest release notes for details about what's new. Related Work Items Content SummaryRxx provides the following features. See the Documentation for details. Many IObservable<T> extension methods and IEnumerable<T> extension methods. Many wrappers that convert asynchronous Framework Class Library APIs into observables. Many useful types such as ListSubject<T>, DictionarySubject<T>, CommandSubject, ViewModel, ObservableDynamicObject, Either<TLeft, TRight>, Maybe<T>, Scala...Skype Auto Recorder: SkypeAutoRecorder 1.2: Fixed the issue when application doesn't record MP3-file for some reason. Implemented support of Skype disconnects and connection problems during conversation. Implemented {duration} placeholder. Improved settings loading. Several code improvements and optimizations. Read more about changes on my blogPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 Metro (Preview): Player Framework for HTML/JavaScript and XAML/C# Metro Style Applications. Additional DownloadsIIS Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows 8WPF Application Framework (WAF): WAF for .NET 4.5 (Experimental): Version: 2.5.0.440 (Experimental): This is an experimental release! It can be used to investigate the new .NET Framework 4.5 features. The ideas shown in this release might come in a future release (after 2.5) of the WPF Application Framework (WAF). More information can be found in this dicussion post. Requirements .NET Framework 4.5 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 11) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 11 Professional Changelog All: Upgrade all proje...SSH.NET Library: 2012.3.9: There are still few outstanding issues I wanted to include in this release but since its been a while and there are few new features already I decided to create a new release now. New Features Add SOCKS4, SOCKS5 and HTTP Proxy support when connecting to remote server. For silverlight only IP address can be used for server address when using proxy. Add dynamic port forwarding support using ForwardedPortDynamic class. Add new ShellStream class to work with SSH Shell. Add supports for mu...Test Case Import Utilities for Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 11 Beta: V1.2 RTM: This release (V1.2 RTM) includes: Support for connecting to Hosted Team Foundation Server Preview. Support for connecting to Team Foundation Server 11 Beta. Fix to issue with read-only attribute being set for LinksMapping-ReportFile which may have led to problems when saving the report file. Fix to issue with “related links” not being set properly in certain conditions. Fix to ensure that tool works fine when the Excel file contained rich text data. Note: Data is still imported in pl...New ProjectsAjayLabs: ajaylabsAltairStudios.Core: AltairStudios.Core is a MVC framework extension with utils and administrationBdRise: BdRiseBenchmark.NET: Benchmark.NET makes it easier to measure the execution time of a piece of code. Internally it uses System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch so it is of higher precision that querying System.DateTime.Now. Instead of var sw = Stopwatch.StartNew(); int i; for(i = 0; i < 1000; i++) { TestSomePieceOfCode(); } sw.Stop(); var ticksPerIteration = sw.Elapsed.Ticks / i; you can just var result = Benchmark.Sequentially(()=>TestSomePieceOfCode()); Also, you can do parallel benchmarks, use...CodedUITest OrderedTest BatchRunner: CUITBatchRunner makes it easier to create a suite of CodedUITest orderedtests and execute for desired iterations(re-iterates only for failed tests). Execute CUIT orderedtests unattended with or without VSTS 2010 (at least Test Agent) installed. It's developed using C#/.NET 4.0CoseaCRM: Cosea CRM (CRM especializado en empresas de Recursos Humanos)CoseaRecluta2: Sistema de reclutamiento de personal CoseaRH: Sistema de Recursos Humanos InternoDevme.Diagnostics: Diagnostics tools collection for .NETDiplomová práce: Diplomová práceDynamics AX (Axapta) Sync AutoFix: A Dynamics AX 2012 class that will change the IDs of the tables from the SQLDictionary to match the AOT IDs.EHS Parents' Guild Cafeteria Volunteer Reminder System: EHS has a large group of volunteers who assist during lunch time at the school. Volunteers are assigned a specific day of the month, such as the 2nd Monday or the 3rd Friday. There is a need for a reminder email to be sent to volunteers 3-4 days in advance.EladPlus Source Code: EladPlus Source Code Offical EladPlus makes it easier for Everyone to Open Things On your PC. You'll no longer have to Search Things On Your Computer. It's developed in C#. EladPlus 1.0.1 Beta 2 ChangeLog: 1.Spotlight - Search Things Fastly On The Web And On EladPlus 2.EladPlus Utilties System Requirements: Windows 8Dev/Consumer Windows 7 Windows Vista - May Work Slowly Windows XP Adobe Flash Player 10.0 IE 7eSheet - H? th?ng qu?n lý n?i dung: eSheet - H? th?ng qu?n lý n?i dungEwk.Math: Math libraryIndonesia News: Menyajikan berita nasional dan informasi terkini tentang berbagai peristiwa yang terjadi di Indonesia.Liuyi.Phone.StartTileGroup: Liuyi.Phone.StartTileGroup 2012 LiuyiMDX Query Reader: Mdx Query Reader can read mdx queries in ssrs report rdl files with parameters replaced by default values. That way you can transfer your query to ssms and run it without rewriting parameter values manually. Works without installing and is extremely simple to use.Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell: Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell (Script Explorer) allows users to search for scripts in local and online script repositories such as the TechNet Script Center and PoshCode. Available scripts returned by searching are organized by category, and you can also search for scripts from local and trusted community repositories by applying filters based on focus areas. Search results return code samples, information about script usage, and articles about the scripts. When you find th...Orchard Simple Media Picker: A simple way to fill an input field with the url for a media file in Orchard CMS. POSSchemas: Aplicación Windows Form para generar codigo SQL y codigo C# a partir de tablas en SQL Serverpvmapper: PVMapper is an open source project focused on developing web tools for mapping locations for photovoltaic energy development.Skeleton.NET: Skeleton.NET is targeted to be a RAD Framework for Desktop and Web Applications. It will contain several blocks that are used in application development, like logging ,repository, crud, messaging, ....Softcenter Ado Library: This library can be used to implement runtime polymorphism to support any registered ADO.NET DataProvider. SPBSU IFMO schedule parser ^_^: ?????? ?????????? ? ????? ifmo.ruSudoku Library: Sudoku Library will provide a .Net library capable of creating and solving sudoku puzzles. The goal of this project is to be; light weight, efficient, and fast. This will not include an implementation of the game that is playable.System.Windows.Explorer.ContextMenu: This project aims to make developing Windows Explorer Context Menu shell extensions as simple as possible. The resulting code is event driven and hides all of the Win32 API and Shell Interfaces away from the developer.test2: test2 projektTime Sheet Management: Project personalTvUnit: TvUnit?TvRock????????、??????·???????々?????????????Windows???????????。???????.NET Framework 4.0????????。Vincent: Test projectWPF Table View: WPF DataGrid replacement. Simple WPF control to display a table of data with improved performance. Developed in C#.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, February 16, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, February 16, 2011Popular Releasesthinktecture WSCF.blue: WSCF.blue V1 Update (1.0.11): Features Added a new option that allows properties on data contract types to be marked as virtual. Bug Fixes Fixed a bug caused by certain project properties not being available on Web Service Software Factory projects. Fixed a bug that could result in the WrapperName value of the MessageContractAttribute being incorrect when the Adjust Casing option is used. The menu item code now caters for CommandBar instances that are not available. For example the Web Item CommandBar does not exist ...Document.Editor: 2011.5: Whats new for Document.Editor 2011.5: New export to email New export to image New document background color Improved Tooltips Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsTerminals: Version 2 - RC1: The "Clean Install" will overwrite your log4net configuration (if you have one). If you run in a Portable Environment, you can use the "Clean Install" and target your portable folder. Tested and it works fine. Changes for this release: Re-worked on the Toolstip settings are done, just to avoid the vs.net clash with auto-generating files for .settings files. renamed it to .settings.config Packged both log4net and ToolStripSettings files into the installer Upgraded the version inform...Export Test Cases From TFS: Test Case Export to Excel 1.0: Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 enables the users to manage test cases as Work Item(s). The complete description of the test case along with steps can be managed as single Work Item in TFS 2010. Before migrating to TFS 2010 many test teams will be using MS Excel to manage the test cases (or test scripts). However, after migrating to TFS 2010, test teams can manage the test cases in the server but there may be need to get the test cases into excel sheet like approval from Business Analysts ...AllNewsManager.NET: AllNewsManager.NET 1.3: AllNewsManager.NET 1.3. This new version provide several new features, improvements and bug fixes. Some new features: Online Users. Avatars. Copy function (to create a new article from another one). SEO improvements (friendly urls). New admin buttons. And more...Facebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 0.8: Version 0.8 (15 Feb 2011)moved to Beta stage publish photo feature "email" field of User object added new Graph Api object: Group, Event new Graph Api connection: likes, groups, eventsDJME - The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC: DJME2 -The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC beta2: The source code and runtime library for DJME2. For more product info you can goto http://www.dotnetage.com/djme.html What is new ?The Grid extension added The ModelBinder added which helping you create Bindable data Action. The DnaFor() control factory added that enabled Model bindable extensions. Enhance the ListBox , ComboBox data binding.Jint - Javascript Interpreter for .NET: Jint - 0.9.0: New CLR interoperability features Many bugfixesBuild Version Increment Add-In Visual Studio: Build Version Increment v2.4.11046.2045: v2.4.11046.2045 Fixes and/or Improvements:Major: Added complete support for VC projects including .vcxproj & .vcproj. All padding issues fixed. A project's assembly versions are only changed if the project has been modified. Minor Order of versioning style values is now according to their respective positions in the attributes i.e. Major, Minor, Build, Revision. Fixed issue with global variable storage with some projects. Fixed issue where if a project item's file does not exist, a ...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.1: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.1 release. Bug fixes and minor feature requests addedTV4Home - The all-in-one TV solution!: 0.1.0.0 Preview: This is the beta preview release of the TV4Home software.Finestra Virtual Desktops: 1.2: Fixes a few minor issues with 1.1 including the broken per-desktop backgrounds Further improves the speed of switching desktops A few UI performance improvements Added donations linksNuGet: NuGet 1.1: NuGet is a free, open source developer focused package management system for the .NET platform intent on simplifying the process of incorporating third party libraries into a .NET application during development. This release is a Visual Studio 2010 extension and contains the the Package Manager Console and the Add Package Dialog. The URL to the package OData feed is: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=206669 To see the list of issues fixed in this release, visit this our issues listEnhSim: EnhSim 2.4.0: 2.4.0This release supports WoW patch 4.06 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 Changes since 2.3.0 - Upd...Sterling Isolated Storage Database with LINQ for Silverlight and Windows Phone 7: Sterling OODB v1.0: Note: use this changeset to download the source example that has been extended to show database generation, backup, and restore in the desktop example. Welcome to the Sterling 1.0 RTM. This version is not backwards-compatible with previous versions of Sterling. Sterling is also available via NuGet. This product has been used and tested in many applications and contains a full suite of unit tests. You can refer to the User's Guide for complete documentation, and use the unit tests as guide...PDF Rider: PDF Rider 0.5.1: Changes from the previous version * Use dynamic layout to better fit text in other languages * Includes French and Spanish localizations Prerequisites * Microsoft Windows Operating Systems (XP - Vista - 7) * Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 runtime * A PDF rendering software (i.e. Adobe Reader) that can be opened inside Internet Explorer. Installation instructionsChoose one of the following methods: 1. Download and run the "pdfRider0.5.1-setup.exe" (reccomended) 2. Down...Snoop, the WPF Spy Utility: Snoop 2.6.1: This release is a bug fixing release. Most importantly, issues have been seen around WPF 4.0 applications not always showing up in the app chooser. Hopefully, they are fixed now. I thought this issue warranted a minor release since more and more people are going WPF 4.0 and I don't want anyone to have any problems. Dan Hanan also contributes again with several usability features. Thanks Dan! Happy Snooping! p.s. By request, I am also attaching a .zip file ... so that people can install it ...SharePoint Learning Kit: 1.5: SharePoint Learning Kit 1.5 has the following new functionality: *Support for SharePoint 2010 *E-Learning Actions can be localised *Two New Document Library Edit Options *Automatically add the Assignment List Web Part to the Web Part Gallery *Various Bug Fixes for the Drop Box There are 2 downloads for this release SLK-1.5-2010.zip for SharePoint 2010 SLK-1.5-2007.zip for SharePoint 2007 (WSS3 & MOSS 2007)Facebook C# SDK: 5.0.3 (BETA): This is fourth BETA release of the version 5 branch of the Facebook C# SDK. Remember this is a BETA build. Some things may change or not work exactly as planned. We are absolutely looking for feedback on this release to help us improve the final 5.X.X release. For more information about this release see the following blog posts: Facebook C# SDK - Writing your first Facebook Application Facebook C# SDK v5 Beta Internals Facebook C# SDK V5.0.0 (BETA) Released We have spend time trying ...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel Template, version 1.0.1.161: The NodeXL Excel template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 workbook. What's NewThis release adds a new Twitter List network importer, makes some minor feature improvements, and fixes a few bugs. See the Complete NodeXL Release History for details. Installation StepsFollow these steps to install and use the template: Download the Zip file. Unzip it into any folder. Use WinZip or a similar program, or just right-click the Zip file...New Projects(OSV) On Screen Volume Library (VB6): OSV was written in VB6. The library shows a LED display when you change the master volume level. The OSV LED window is fully customizable which means you can choose your own colors and transparency. Supports Mute features. Requires CoreAudio Type Library. Ada: Automatic Download Agent: Ada is a C# newsgroup binary downloader targeting the Mono runtime. The project is separated into 3 sections, the core class library, the WCF service host, and the administration clients (Currently, only an ASP.NET client is in progress, though the design allows for others)Advanced Explorer for Wp7: With Advanced Explorer for Wp7 you can finally share files with your Desktop Pc. Features: - File managment - Send files from PC to the phone and from the phone to the PC. - Edit / Browse the registry - Use ProvisionXml Of course Advanced Explorer for Wp7 is written in C#. Author-it Post Publishing Processing Project: The Author-it Post Publishing Processing Project is a utility that makes changes to content after the content is published from Author-it.Baka MPlayer: Baka MPlayerBizTalk ESB Silverlight Portal: Silverlight Portal replacement for ESB toolkit portal.Cellz: Functional Silverlight Spreadsheet written in F# and bound to the DataGrid control.Comet - Visual Studio 2010 Add-In: Visual Studio Add-In for C# that helps to generate constructors from field/properties and constructors of the superclass. The commands are accessible from the text editor's context menu. Comet is developed in C#.Conway's Game of Life: A Windows C# app that implements a cellular automaton. Give an initial seed by clicking on the grid and making cells live or by letting the app create a random seed. Observe it evolve, control the speed of the simulation, stop it, save it or load previously saved confingurations.DACU: It's small app to use vkontakte. It's developed in C# (Visual Studio 2010) and use .Net 4.0 WPF technology.dWebBot: Web Bot for simply desight bots for online games etc.Enhanced Social Features for SharePoint 2010: Enhanced Social Features for SharePoint 2010Express Market: Express Market E-commerce project v1.0 Payment , Module xml moduleFatBaby(???): ??Solr???（javabin)Feedbacky: Feedbacky is an OpenSource alternative to services like Getsatisfaction and UserVoice. Feedbacky will let you to create and merge your own Feedback service within your website/webapp without paying anything, letting your users to give their opinion about your service.FT.Architecture: Data Access Layer framework with an NHibernate implementation. The framework is design to be completely independent from its implementation (NHibernate or otherwise). It brings entities equality, repositories, independent query language, and many other things for free.FusionDotNet: .Net client library for Google Fusion Tables. Wraps the REST-based API in a set of managed classes and integrates the results into ADO.Net objects. Also includes a set of Activities for use with Workflow Foundation 4.0Glyphx: Glyphx underlays your transparent taskbar with glyphs from the matrix and cyberspace, this projection makes your monitor emit a certain frequency, these waves infiltrate your brain and boosts your alpha waves, making you more productive and an efficient hacker.Hint Based Cooperative Caching: Project to simulate hint based cooperative caching schemes and try to find optimization for specific scenarios.Hydrator: Flexible Test Data Generator: Hydrator is a highly configurable test data generatorIQP Demosite: Demonstration site of IQP Ajax FrameworkIridium: Iridium Game Engine C++ OpenGL using FreeGlutMinecraft Applications!: <minecraft> <users> <gamers> <application> <crafting>MP3 Year Finder: This project is to try and find the release year of mp3 tracks using Wikipedia.Mr.Dev: A Day at the Office: XNA platform game. Inspired by Monty's Revenge and Battle Kid. This project will serve as an example of how to code a platform game in C# using the XNA framework. Features include: Gamestory, Bosses, Enemies, Simple 2D Physics, ...MVC N-Tier EMR Sample: A Sample MVC N-Tier EMR application that uses MVC3 for presentation, WCF, and Entity Framework Code First (CTP5).MyCodeplex: This is a project on somethingNHR Portal Development: NHR Portal Development Project All Project Related materials for initial Alpha Release (working prototype) are available in the download tab. Important discussions that are beneficial to the development team are in the Discussions Tab.Orchard Keep Alive: This Orchard module prevents the application from unloading by pingging periodically a specific page.PingStatistic: PingStatistic, PingPlanz: Planz™ provides a single, integrative document-like overlay to a windows file system. This overlay provides a context in which to create to-do list, notes, files, and links to Outlook email messages, files and web pages. It is flexible enough to implement a GTD system.Practicing Managed DirectX 9: My Test ProjectSPEx - SharePoint Javascript library extended: SPEx is a Javascript library, which extends some of the existing out of box functionality of SharePoint.Watcher: Boolean assertion guardian: Flexible boolean assertion guardian.WebAdvert: WebAdvert is an ASP.NET MVC 3 application. It is intended to demonstrate the basics and principles of ASP.NET MVC and Entity Framework 4 to the learners.WebSharpCompiler: Simple Web application that compiles the code in a textbox in C# and displays compilation messages as a resultWP7 Backup Service: WP7 Backup Service aims to create a very simple backup mechanism for your application data that reside inside the IsolatedStorage. It is application independent and allows for multiple backup and restore points.

  Read the article

• How to Run Low-Cost Minecraft on a Raspberry Pi for Block Building on the Cheap

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  We’ve shown you how to run your own blocktastic personal Minecraft server on a Windows/OSX box, but what if you crave something lighter weight, more energy efficient, and always ready for your friends? Read on as we turn a tiny Raspberry Pi machine into a low-cost Minecraft server you can leave on 24/7 for around a penny a day. Why Do I Want to Do This? There’s two aspects to this tutorial, running your own Minecraft server and specifically running that Minecraft server on a Raspberry Pi. Why would you want to run your own Minecraft server? It’s a really great way to extend and build upon the Minecraft play experience. You can leave the server running when you’re not playing so friends and family can join and continue building your world. You can mess around with game variables and introduce mods in a way that isn’t possible when you’re playing the stand-alone game. It also gives you the kind of control over your multiplayer experience that using public servers doesn’t, without incurring the cost of hosting a private server on a remote host. While running a Minecraft server on its own is appealing enough to a dedicated Minecraft fan, running it on the Raspberry Pi is even more appealing. The tiny little Pi uses so little resources that you can leave your Minecraft server running 24/7 for a couple bucks a year. Aside from the initial cost outlay of the Pi, an SD card, and a little bit of time setting it up, you’ll have an always-on Minecraft server at a monthly cost of around one gumball. What Do I Need? For this tutorial you’ll need a mix of hardware and software tools; aside from the actual Raspberry Pi and SD card, everything is free. 1 Raspberry Pi (preferably a 512MB model) 1 4GB+ SD card This tutorial assumes that you have already familiarized yourself with the Raspberry Pi and have installed a copy of the Debian-derivative Raspbian on the device. If you have not got your Pi up and running yet, don’t worry! Check out our guide, The HTG Guide to Getting Started with Raspberry Pi, to get up to speed. Optimizing Raspbian for the Minecraft Server Unlike other builds we’ve shared where you can layer multiple projects over one another (e.g. the Pi is more than powerful enough to serve as a weather/email indicator and a Google Cloud Print server at the same time) running a Minecraft server is a pretty intense operation for the little Pi and we’d strongly recommend dedicating the entire Pi to the process. Minecraft seems like a simple game, with all its blocky-ness and what not, but it’s actually a pretty complex game beneath the simple skin and required a lot of processing power. As such, we’re going to tweak the configuration file and other settings to optimize Rasbian for the job. The first thing you’ll need to do is dig into the Raspi-Config application to make a few minor changes. If you’re installing Raspbian fresh, wait for the last step (which is the Raspi-Config), if you already installed it, head to the terminal and type in “sudo raspi-config” to launch it again. One of the first and most important things we need to attend to is cranking up the overclock setting. We need all the power we can get to make our Minecraft experience enjoyable. In Raspi-Config, select option number 7 “Overclock”. Be prepared for some stern warnings about overclocking, but rest easy knowing that overclocking is directly supported by the Raspberry Pi foundation and has been included in the configuration options since late 2012. Once you’re in the actual selection screen, select “Turbo 1000MhHz”. Again, you’ll be warned that the degree of overclocking you’ve selected carries risks (specifically, potential corruption of the SD card, but no risk of actual hardware damage). Click OK and wait for the device to reset. Next, make sure you’re set to boot to the command prompt, not the desktop. Select number 3 “Enable Boot to Desktop/Scratch”  and make sure “Console Text console” is selected. Back at the Raspi-Config menu, select number 8 “Advanced Options’. There are two critical changes we need to make in here and one option change. First, the critical changes. Select A3 “Memory Split”: Change the amount of memory available to the GPU to 16MB (down from the default 64MB). Our Minecraft server is going to ruin in a GUI-less environment; there’s no reason to allocate any more than the bare minimum to the GPU. After selecting the GPU memory, you’ll be returned to the main menu. Select “Advanced Options” again and then select A4 “SSH”. Within the sub-menu, enable SSH. There is very little reason to keep this Pi connected to a monitor and keyboard, by enabling SSH we can remotely access the machine from anywhere on the network. Finally (and optionally) return again to the “Advanced Options” menu and select A2 “Hostname”. Here you can change your hostname from “raspberrypi” to a more fitting Minecraft name. We opted for the highly creative hostname “minecraft”, but feel free to spice it up a bit with whatever you feel like: creepertown, minecraft4life, or miner-box are all great minecraft server names. That’s it for the Raspbian configuration tab down to the bottom of the main screen and select “Finish” to reboot. After rebooting you can now SSH into your terminal, or continue working from the keyboard hooked up to your Pi (we strongly recommend switching over to SSH as it allows you to easily cut and paste the commands). If you’ve never used SSH before, check out how to use PuTTY with your Pi here. Installing Java on the Pi The Minecraft server runs on Java, so the first thing we need to do on our freshly configured Pi is install it. Log into your Pi via SSH and then, at the command prompt, enter the following command to make a directory for the installation: sudo mkdir /java/ Now we need to download the newest version of Java. At the time of this publication the newest release is the OCT 2013 update and the link/filename we use will reflect that. Please check for a more current version of the Linux ARMv6/7 Java release on the Java download page and update the link/filename accordingly when following our instructions. At the command prompt, enter the following command: sudo wget --no-check-certificate http://www.java.net/download/jdk8/archive/b111/binaries/jdk-8-ea-b111-linux-arm-vfp-hflt-09_oct_2013.tar.gz Once the download has finished successfully, enter the following command: sudo tar zxvf jdk-8-ea-b111-linux-arm-vfp-hflt-09_oct_2013.tar.gz -C /opt/ Fun fact: the /opt/ directory name scheme is a remnant of early Unix design wherein the /opt/ directory was for “optional” software installed after the main operating system; it was the /Program Files/ of the Unix world. After the file has finished extracting, enter: sudo /opt/jdk1.8.0/bin/java -version This command will return the version number of your new Java installation like so: java version "1.8.0-ea" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0-ea-b111) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 25.0-b53, mixed mode) If you don’t see the above printout (or a variation thereof if you’re using a newer version of Java), try to extract the archive again. If you do see the readout, enter the following command to tidy up after yourself: sudo rm jdk-8-ea-b111-linux-arm-vfp-hflt-09_oct_2013.tar.gz At this point Java is installed and we’re ready to move onto installing our Minecraft server! Installing and Configuring the Minecraft Server Now that we have a foundation for our Minecraft server, it’s time to install the part that matter. We’ll be using SpigotMC a lightweight and stable Minecraft server build that works wonderfully on the Pi. First, grab a copy of the the code with the following command: sudo wget http://ci.md-5.net/job/Spigot/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/Spigot-Server/target/spigot.jar This link should remain stable over time, as it points directly to the most current stable release of Spigot, but if you have any issues you can always reference the SpigotMC download page here. After the download finishes successfully, enter the following command: sudo /opt/jdk1.8.0/bin/java -Xms256M -Xmx496M -jar /home/pi/spigot.jar nogui Note: if you’re running the command on a 256MB Pi change the 256 and 496 in the above command to 128 and 256, respectively. Your server will launch and a flurry of on-screen activity will follow. Be prepared to wait around 3-6 minutes or so for the process of setting up the server and generating the map to finish. Future startups will take much less time, around 20-30 seconds. Note: If at any point during the configuration or play process things get really weird (e.g. your new Minecraft server freaks out and starts spawning you in the Nether and killing you instantly), use the “stop” command at the command prompt to gracefully shutdown the server and let you restart and troubleshoot it. After the process has finished, head over to the computer you normally play Minecraft on, fire it up, and click on Multiplayer. You should see your server: If your world doesn’t popup immediately during the network scan, hit the Add button and manually enter the address of your Pi. Once you connect to the server, you’ll see the status change in the server status window: According to the server, we’re in game. According to the actual Minecraft app, we’re also in game but it’s the middle of the night in survival mode: Boo! Spawning in the dead of night, weaponless and without shelter is no way to start things. No worries though, we need to do some more configuration; no time to sit around and get shot at by skeletons. Besides, if you try and play it without some configuration tweaks first, you’ll likely find it quite unstable. We’re just here to confirm the server is up, running, and accepting incoming connections. Once we’ve confirmed the server is running and connectable (albeit not very playable yet), it’s time to shut down the server. Via the server console, enter the command “stop” to shut everything down. When you’re returned to the command prompt, enter the following command: sudo nano server.properties When the configuration file opens up, make the following changes (or just cut and paste our config file minus the first two lines with the name and date stamp): #Minecraft server properties #Thu Oct 17 22:53:51 UTC 2013 generator-settings= #Default is true, toggle to false allow-nether=false level-name=world enable-query=false allow-flight=false server-port=25565 level-type=DEFAULT enable-rcon=false force-gamemode=false level-seed= server-ip= max-build-height=256 spawn-npcs=true white-list=false spawn-animals=true texture-pack= snooper-enabled=true hardcore=false online-mode=true pvp=true difficulty=1 player-idle-timeout=0 gamemode=0 #Default 20; you only need to lower this if you're running #a public server and worried about loads. max-players=20 spawn-monsters=true #Default is 10, 3-5 ideal for Pi view-distance=5 generate-structures=true spawn-protection=16 motd=A Minecraft Server In the server status window, seen through your SSH connection to the pi, enter the following command to give yourself operator status on your Minecraft server (so that you can use more powerful commands in game, without always returning to the server status window). op [your minecraft nickname] At this point things are looking better but we still have a little tweaking to do before the server is really enjoyable. To that end, let’s install some plugins. The first plugin, and the one you should install above all others, is NoSpawnChunks. To install the plugin, first visit the NoSpawnChunks webpage and grab the download link for the most current version. As of this writing the current release is v0.3. Back at the command prompt (the command prompt of your Pi, not the server console–if your server is still active shut it down) enter the following commands: cd /home/pi/plugins sudo wget http://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/586/974/NoSpawnChunks.jar Next, visit the ClearLag plugin page, and grab the latest link (as of this tutorial, it’s v2.6.0). Enter the following at the command prompt: sudo wget http://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/743/213/Clearlag.jar Because the files aren’t compressed in a .ZIP or similar container, that’s all there is to it: the plugins are parked in the plugin directory. (Remember this for future plugin downloads, the file needs to be whateverplugin.jar, so if it’s compressed you need to uncompress it in the plugin directory.) Resart the server: sudo /opt/jdk1.8.0/bin/java -Xms256M -Xmx496M -jar /home/pi/spigot.jar nogui Be prepared for a slightly longer startup time (closer to the 3-6 minutes and much longer than the 30 seconds you just experienced) as the plugins affect the world map and need a minute to massage everything. After the spawn process finishes, type the following at the server console: plugins This lists all the plugins currently active on the server. You should see something like this: If the plugins aren’t loaded, you may need to stop and restart the server. After confirming your plugins are loaded, go ahead and join the game. You should notice significantly snappier play. In addition, you’ll get occasional messages from the plugins indicating they are active, as seen below: At this point Java is installed, the server is installed, and we’ve tweaked our settings for for the Pi.  It’s time to start building with friends!     

  Read the article

• The Incremental Architect&acute;s Napkin - #2 - Balancing the forces

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/06/02/the-incremental-architectacutes-napkin---2---balancing-the-forces.aspxCategorizing requirements is the prerequisite for ecconomic architectural decisions. Not all requirements are created equal. However, to truely understand and describe the requirement forces pulling on software development, I think further examination of the requirements aspects is varranted. Aspects of Functionality There are two sides to Functionality requirements. It´s about what a software should do. I call that the Operations it implements. Operations are defined by expressions and control structures or calls to frameworks of some sort, i.e. (business) logic statements. Operations calculate, transform, aggregate, validate, send, receive, load, store etc. Operations are about behavior; they take input and produce output by considering state. I´m not using the term “function” here, because functions - or methods or sub-programs - are not necessary to implement Operations. Functions belong to a different sub-aspect of requirements (see below). Operations alone are not enough, though, to make a customer happy with regard to his/her Functionality requirements. Only correctly implemented Operations provide full value. This should make clear, why testing is so important. And not just manual tests during development of some operational feature, but automated tests. Because only automated tests scale when over time the number of operations increases. Without automated tests there is no guarantee formerly correct operations are still correct after more got added. To retest all previous operations manually is infeasible. So whoever relies just on manual tests is not really balancing the two forces Operations and Correctness. With manual tests more weight is put on the side of the scale of Operations. That might be ok for a short period of time - but in the long run it will bite you. You need to plan for Correctness in the long run from the first day of your project on. Aspects of Quality As important as Functionality is, it´s not the driver for software development. No software has ever been written to just implement some operation in code. We don´t need computers just to do something. All computers can do with software we can do without them. Well, at least given enough time and resources. We could calculate the most complex formulas without computers. We could do auctions with millions of people without computers. The only reason we want computers to help us with this and a million other Operations is… We don´t want to wait for the results very long. Or we want less errors. Or we want easier accessability to complicated solutions. So the main reason for customers to buy/order software is some Quality. They want some Functionality with a higher Quality (e.g. performance, scalability, usability, security…) than without the software. But Qualities come in at least two flavors: Most important are Primary Qualities. That´s the Qualities software truely is written for. Take an online auction website for example. Its Primary Qualities are performance, scalability, and usability, I´d say. Auctions should come within reach of millions of people; setting up an auction should be very easy; finding a suitable auction and bidding on it should be as fast as possible. Only if those Qualities have been implemented does security become relevant. A secure auction website is important - but not as important as a fast auction website. Nobody would want to use the most secure auction website if it was unbearably slow. But there would be people willing to use the fastest auction website even it was lacking security. That´s why security - with regard to online auction software - is not a Primary Quality, but just a Secondary Quality. It´s a supporting quality, so to speak. It does not deliver value by itself. With a password manager software this might be different. There security might be a Primary Quality. Please get me right: I don´t want to denigrate any Quality. There´s a long list of non-functional requirements at Wikipedia. They are all created equal - but that does not mean they are equally important for all software projects. When confronted with Quality requirements check with the customer which are primary and which are secondary. That will help to make good economical decisions when in a crunch. Resources are always limited - but requirements are a bottomless ocean. Aspects of Security of Investment Functionality and Quality are traditionally the requirement aspects cared for most - by customers and developers alike. Even today, when pressure rises in a project, tunnel vision will focus on them. Any measures to create and hold up Security of Investment (SoI) will be out of the window pretty quickly. Resistance to customers and/or management is futile. As long as SoI is not placed on equal footing with Functionality and Quality it´s bound to suffer under pressure. To look closer at what SoI means will help to become more conscious about it and make customers and management aware of the risks of neglecting it. SoI to me has two facets: Production Efficiency (PE) is about speed of delivering value. Customers like short response times. Short response times mean less money spent. So whatever makes software development faster supports this requirement. This must not lead to duct tape programming and banging out features by the dozen, though. Because customers don´t just want Operations and Quality, but also Correctness. So if Correctness gets compromised by focussing too much on Production Efficiency it will fire back. Customers want PE not just today, but over the whole course of a software´s lifecycle. That means, it´s not just about coding speed, but equally about code quality. If code quality leads to rework the PE is on an unsatisfactory level. Also if code production leads to waste it´s unsatisfactory. Because the effort which went into waste could have been used to produce value. Rework and waste cost money. Rework and waste abound, however, as long as PE is not addressed explicitly with management and customers. Thanks to the Agile and Lean movements that´s increasingly the case. Nevertheless more could and should be done in many teams. Each and every developer should keep in mind that Production Efficiency is as important to the customer as Functionality and Quality - whether he/she states it or not. Making software development more efficient is important - but still sooner or later even agile projects are going to hit a glas ceiling. At least as long as they neglect the second SoI facet: Evolvability. Delivering correct high quality functionality in short cycles today is good. But not just any software structure will allow this to happen for an indefinite amount of time.[1] The less explicitly software was designed the sooner it´s going to get stuck. Big ball of mud, monolith, brownfield, legacy code, technical debt… there are many names for software structures that have lost the ability to evolve, to be easily changed to accomodate new requirements. An evolvable code base is the opposite of a brownfield. It´s code which can be easily understood (by developers with sufficient domain expertise) and then easily changed to accomodate new requirements. Ideally the costs of adding feature X to an evolvable code base is independent of when it is requested - or at least the costs should only increase linearly, not exponentially.[2] Clean Code, Agile Architecture, and even traditional Software Engineering are concerned with Evolvability. However, it seems no systematic way of achieving it has been layed out yet. TDD + SOLID help - but still… When I look at the design ability reality in teams I see much room for improvement. As stated previously, SoI - or to be more precise: Evolvability - can hardly be measured. Plus the customer rarely states an explicit expectation with regard to it. That´s why I think, special care must be taken to not neglect it. Postponing it to some large refactorings should not be an option. Rather Evolvability needs to be a core concern for every single developer day. This should not mean Evolvability is more important than any of the other requirement aspects. But neither is it less important. That´s why more effort needs to be invested into it, to bring it on par with the other aspects, which usually are much more in focus. In closing As you see, requirements are of quite different kinds. To not take that into account will make it harder to understand the customer, and to make economic decisions. Those sub-aspects of requirements are forces pulling in different directions. To improve performance might have an impact on Evolvability. To increase Production Efficiency might have an impact on security etc. No requirement aspect should go unchecked when deciding how to allocate resources. Balancing should be explicit. And it should be possible to trace back each decision to a requirement. Why is there a null-check on parameters at the start of the method? Why are there 5000 LOC in this method? Why are there interfaces on those classes? Why is this functionality running on the threadpool? Why is this function defined on that class? Why is this class depending on three other classes? These and a thousand more questions are not to mean anything should be different in a code base. But it´s important to know the reason behind all of these decisions. Because not knowing the reason possibly means waste and having decided suboptimally. And how do we ensure to balance all requirement aspects? That needs practices and transparency. Practices means doing things a certain way and not another, even though that might be possible. We´re dealing with dangerous tools here. Like a knife is a dangerous tool. Harm can be done if we use our tools in just any way at the whim of the moment. Over the centuries rules and practices have been established how to use knifes. You don´t put them in peoples´ legs just because you´re feeling like it. You hand over a knife with the handle towards the receiver. You might not even be allowed to cut round food like potatos or eggs with it. The same should be the case for dangerous tools like object-orientation, remote communication, threads etc. We need practices to use them in a way so requirements are balanced almost automatically. In addition, to be able to work on software as a team we need transparency. We need means to share our thoughts, to work jointly on mental models. So far our tools are focused on working with code. Testing frameworks, build servers, DI containers, intellisense, refactoring support… That´s all nice and well. I don´t want to miss any of that. But I think it´s not enough. We´re missing mental tools, tools for making thinking and talking about software (independently of code) easier. You might think, enough of such tools already exist like all those UML diagram types or Flow Charts. But then, isn´t it strange, hardly any team is using them to design software? Or is that just due to a lack of education? I don´t think so. It´s a matter value/weight ratio: the current mental tools are too heavy weight compared to the value they deliver. So my conclusion is, we need lightweight tools to really be able to balance requirements. Software development is complex. We need guidance not to forget important aspects. That´s like with flying an airplane. Pilots don´t just jump in and take off for their destination. Yes, there are times when they are “flying by the seats of their pants”, when they are just experts doing thing intuitively. But most of the time they are going through honed practices called checklist. See “The Checklist Manifesto” for very enlightening details on this. Maybe then I should say it like this: We need more checklists for the complex businss of software development.[3] But that´s what software development mostly is about: changing software over an unknown period of time. It needs to be corrected in order to finally provide promised operations. It needs to be enhanced to provide ever more operations and qualities. All this without knowing when it´s going to stop. Probably never - until “maintainability” hits a wall when the technical debt is too large, the brownfield too deep. Software development is not a sprint, is not a marathon, not even an ultra marathon. Because to all this there is a foreseeable end. Software development is like continuously and foreever running… ? And sometimes I dare to think that costs could even decrease over time. Think of it: With each feature a software becomes richer in functionality. So with each additional feature the chance of there being already functionality helping its implementation increases. That should lead to less costs of feature X if it´s requested later than sooner. X requested later could stand on the shoulders of previous features. Alas, reality seems to be far from this despite 20+ years of admonishing developers to think in terms of reusability.[1] ? Please don´t get me wrong: I don´t want to bog down the “art” of software development with heavyweight practices and heaps of rules to follow. The framework we need should be lightweight. It should not stand in the way of delivering value to the customer. It´s purpose is even to make that easier by helping us to focus and decreasing waste and rework. ?

  Read the article

• A jQuery Plug-in to monitor Html Element CSS Changes

  - by Rick Strahl

  Here's a scenario I've run into on a few occasions: I need to be able to monitor certain CSS properties on an HTML element and know when that CSS element changes. The need for this arose out of wanting to build generic components that could 'attach' themselves to other objects and monitor changes on the ‘parent’ object so the dependent object can adjust itself accordingly. What I wanted to create is a jQuery plug-in that allows me to specify a list of CSS properties to monitor and have a function fire in response to any change to any of those CSS properties. The result are the .watch() and .unwatch() jQuery plug-ins. Here’s a simple example page of this plug-in that demonstrates tracking changes to an element being moved with draggable and closable behavior: http://www.west-wind.com/WestWindWebToolkit/samples/Ajax/jQueryPluginSamples/WatcherPlugin.htm Try it with different browsers – IE and FireFox use the DOM event handlers and Chrome, Safari and Opera use setInterval handlers to manage this behavior. It should work in all of them but all but IE and FireFox will show a bit of lag between the changes in the main element and the shadow. The relevant HTML for this example is this fragment of a main <div> (#notebox) and an element that is to mimic a shadow (#shadow). <div class="containercontent"> <div id="notebox" style="width: 200px; height: 150px;position: absolute; z-index: 20; padding: 20px; background-color: lightsteelblue;"> Go ahead drag me around and close me! </div> <div id="shadow" style="background-color: Gray; z-index: 19;position:absolute;display: none;"> </div> </div> The watcher plug in is then applied to the main <div> and shadow in sync with the following plug-in code: <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function () { var counter = 0; $("#notebox").watch("top,left,height,width,display,opacity", function (data, i) { var el = $(this); var sh = $("#shadow"); var propChanged = data.props[i]; var valChanged = data.vals[i]; counter++; showStatus("Prop: " + propChanged + " value: " + valChanged + " " + counter); var pos = el.position(); var w = el.outerWidth(); var h = el.outerHeight(); sh.css({ width: w, height: h, left: pos.left + 5, top: pos.top + 5, display: el.css("display"), opacity: el.css("opacity") }); }) .draggable() .closable() .css("left", 10); }); </script> When you run this page as you drag the #notebox element the #shadow element will maintain and stay pinned underneath the #notebox element effectively keeping the shadow attached to the main element. Likewise, if you hide or fadeOut() the #notebox element the shadow will also go away – show the #notebox element and the shadow also re-appears because we are assigning the display property from the parent on the shadow. Note we’re attaching the .watch() plug-in to the #notebox element and have it fire whenever top,left,height,width,opacity or display CSS properties are changed. The passed data element contains a props[] and vals[] array that holds the properties monitored and their current values. An index passed as the second parm tells you which property has changed and what its current value is (propChanged/valChanged in the code above). The rest of the watcher handler code then deals with figuring out the main element’s position and recalculating and setting the shadow’s position using the jQuery .css() function. Note that this is just an example to demonstrate the watch() behavior here – this is not the best way to create a shadow. If you’re interested in a more efficient and cleaner way to handle shadows with a plug-in check out the .shadow() plug-in in ww.jquery.js (code search for fn.shadow) which uses native CSS features when available but falls back to a tracked shadow element on browsers that don’t support it, which is how this watch() plug-in came about in the first place :-) How does it work? The plug-in works by letting the user specify a list of properties to monitor as a comma delimited string and a handler function: el.watch("top,left,height,width,display,opacity", function (data, i) {}, 100, id) You can also specify an interval (if no DOM event monitoring isn’t available in the browser) and an ID that identifies the event handler uniquely. The watch plug-in works by hooking up to DOMAttrModified in FireFox, to onPropertyChanged in Internet Explorer, or by using a timer with setInterval to handle the detection of changes for other browsers. Unfortunately WebKit doesn’t support DOMAttrModified consistently at the moment so Safari and Chrome currently have to use the slower setInterval mechanism. In response to a changed property (or a setInterval timer hit) a JavaScript handler is fired which then runs through all the properties monitored and determines if and which one has changed. The DOM events fire on all property/style changes so the intermediate plug-in handler filters only those hits we’re interested in. If one of our monitored properties has changed the specified event handler function is called along with a data object and an index that identifies the property that’s changed in the data.props/data.vals arrays. The jQuery plugin to implement this functionality looks like this: (function($){ $.fn.watch = function (props, func, interval, id) { /// <summary> /// Allows you to monitor changes in a specific /// CSS property of an element by polling the value. /// when the value changes a function is called. /// The function called is called in the context /// of the selected element (ie. this) /// </summary> /// <param name="prop" type="String">CSS Properties to watch sep. by commas</param> /// <param name="func" type="Function"> /// Function called when the value has changed. /// </param> /// <param name="interval" type="Number"> /// Optional interval for browsers that don't support DOMAttrModified or propertychange events. /// Determines the interval used for setInterval calls. /// </param> /// <param name="id" type="String">A unique ID that identifies this watch instance on this element</param> /// <returns type="jQuery" /> if (!interval) interval = 100; if (!id) id = "_watcher"; return this.each(function () { var _t = this; var el$ = $(this); var fnc = function () { __watcher.call(_t, id) }; var data = { id: id, props: props.split(","), vals: [props.split(",").length], func: func, fnc: fnc, origProps: props, interval: interval, intervalId: null }; // store initial props and values $.each(data.props, function (i) { data.vals[i] = el$.css(data.props[i]); }); el$.data(id, data); hookChange(el$, id, data); }); function hookChange(el$, id, data) { el$.each(function () { var el = $(this); if (typeof (el.get(0).onpropertychange) == "object") el.bind("propertychange." + id, data.fnc); else if ($.browser.mozilla) el.bind("DOMAttrModified." + id, data.fnc); else data.intervalId = setInterval(data.fnc, interval); }); } function __watcher(id) { var el$ = $(this); var w = el$.data(id); if (!w) return; var _t = this; if (!w.func) return; // must unbind or else unwanted recursion may occur el$.unwatch(id); var changed = false; var i = 0; for (i; i < w.props.length; i++) { var newVal = el$.css(w.props[i]); if (w.vals[i] != newVal) { w.vals[i] = newVal; changed = true; break; } } if (changed) w.func.call(_t, w, i); // rebind event hookChange(el$, id, w); } } $.fn.unwatch = function (id) { this.each(function () { var el = $(this); var data = el.data(id); try { if (typeof (this.onpropertychange) == "object") el.unbind("propertychange." + id, data.fnc); else if ($.browser.mozilla) el.unbind("DOMAttrModified." + id, data.fnc); else clearInterval(data.intervalId); } // ignore if element was already unbound catch (e) { } }); return this; } })(jQuery); Note that there’s a corresponding .unwatch() plug-in that can be used to stop monitoring properties. The ID parameter is optional both on watch() and unwatch() – a standard name is used if you don’t specify one, but it’s a good idea to use unique names for each element watched to avoid overlap in event ids especially if you’re monitoring many elements. The syntax is: $.fn.watch = function(props, func, interval, id) props A comma delimited list of CSS style properties that are to be watched for changes. If any of the specified properties changes the function specified in the second parameter is fired. func The function fired in response to a changed styles. Receives this as the element changed and an object parameter that represents the watched properties and their respective values. The first parameter is passed in this structure: { id: watcherId, props: [], vals: [], func: thisFunc, fnc: internalHandler, origProps: strPropertyListOnWatcher }; A second parameter is the index of the changed property so data.props[i] or data.vals[i] gets the property and changed value. interval The interval for setInterval() for those browsers that don't support property watching in the DOM. In milliseconds. id An optional id that identifies this watcher. Required only if multiple watchers might be hooked up to the same element. The default is _watcher if not specified. It’s been a Journey I started building this plug-in about two years ago and had to make many modifications to it in response to changes in jQuery and also in browser behaviors. I think the latest round of changes made should make this plug-in fairly future proof going forward (although I hope there will be better cross-browser change event notifications in the future). One of the big problems I ran into had to do with recursive change notifications – it looks like starting with jQuery 1.44 and later, jQuery internally modifies element properties on some calls to some .css()  property retrievals and things like outerHeight/Width(). In IE this would cause nasty lock up issues at times. In response to this I changed the code to unbind the events when the handler function is called and then rebind when it exits. This also makes user code less prone to stack overflow recursion as you can actually change properties on the base element. It also means though that if you change one of the monitors properties in the handler the watch() handler won’t fire in response – you need to resort to a setTimeout() call instead to force the code to run outside of the handler: $("#notebox") el.watch("top,left,height,width,display,opacity", function (data, i) { var el = $(this); … // this makes el changes work setTimeout(function () { el.css("top", 10) },10); }) Since I’ve built this component I’ve had a lot of good uses for it. The .shadow() fallback functionality is one of them. Resources The watch() plug-in is part of ww.jquery.js and the West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit. You’re free to use this code here or the code from the toolkit. West Wind Web Toolkit Latest version of ww.jquery.js (search for fn.watch) watch plug-in documentation © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET  JavaScript  jQuery  

  Read the article

• Abstracting functionality

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/08/22/abstracting-functionality.aspxWhat is more important than data? Functionality. Yes, I strongly believe we should switch to a functionality over data mindset in programming. Or actually switch back to it. Focus on functionality Functionality once was at the core of software development. Back when algorithms were the first thing you heard about in CS classes. Sure, data structures, too, were important - but always from the point of view of algorithms. (Niklaus Wirth gave one of his books the title “Algorithms + Data Structures” instead of “Data Structures + Algorithms” for a reason.) The reason for the focus on functionality? Firstly, because software was and is about doing stuff. Secondly because sufficient performance was hard to achieve, and only thirdly memory efficiency. But then hardware became more powerful. That gave rise to a new mindset: object orientation. And with it functionality was devalued. Data took over its place as the most important aspect. Now discussions revolved around structures motivated by data relationships. (John Beidler gave his book the title “Data Structures and Algorithms: An Object Oriented Approach” instead of the other way around for a reason.) Sure, this data could be embellished with functionality. But nevertheless functionality was second. When you look at (domain) object models what you mostly find is (domain) data object models. The common object oriented approach is: data aka structure over functionality. This is true even for the most modern modeling approaches like Domain Driven Design. Look at the literature and what you find is recommendations on how to get data structures right: aggregates, entities, value objects. I´m not saying this is what object orientation was invented for. But I´m saying that´s what I happen to see across many teams now some 25 years after object orientation became mainstream through C++, Delphi, and Java. But why should we switch back? Because software development cannot become truly agile with a data focus. The reason for that lies in what customers need first: functionality, behavior, operations. To be clear, that´s not why software is built. The purpose of software is to be more efficient than the alternative. Money mainly is spent to get a certain level of quality (e.g. performance, scalability, security etc.). But without functionality being present, there is nothing to work on the quality of. What customers want is functionality of a certain quality. ASAP. And tomorrow new functionality needs to be added, existing functionality needs to be changed, and quality needs to be increased. No customer ever wanted data or structures. Of course data should be processed. Data is there, data gets generated, transformed, stored. But how the data is structured for this to happen efficiently is of no concern to the customer. Ask a customer (or user) whether she likes the data structured this way or that way. She´ll say, “I don´t care.” But ask a customer (or user) whether he likes the functionality and its quality this way or that way. He´ll say, “I like it” (or “I don´t like it”). Build software incrementally From this very natural focus of customers and users on functionality and its quality follows we should develop software incrementally. That´s what Agility is about. Deliver small increments quickly and often to get frequent feedback. That way less waste is produced, and learning can take place much easier (on the side of the customer as well as on the side of developers). An increment is some added functionality or quality of functionality.[1] So as it turns out, Agility is about functionality over whatever. But software developers’ thinking is still stuck in the object oriented mindset of whatever over functionality. Bummer. I guess that (at least partly) explains why Agility always hits a glass ceiling in projects. It´s a clash of mindsets, of cultures. Driving software development by demanding small increases in functionality runs against thinking about software as growing (data) structures sprinkled with functionality. (Excuse me, if this sounds a bit broad-brush. But you get my point.) The need for abstraction In the end there need to be data structures. Of course. Small and large ones. The phrase functionality over data does not deny that. It´s not functionality instead of data or something. It´s just over, i.e. functionality should be thought of first. It´s a tad more important. It´s what the customer wants. That´s why we need a way to design functionality. Small and large. We need to be able to think about functionality before implementing it. We need to be able to reason about it among team members. We need to be able to communicate our mental models of functionality not just by speaking about them, but also on paper. Otherwise reasoning about it does not scale. We learned thinking about functionality in the small using flow charts, Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams, pseudo code, or UML sequence diagrams. That´s nice and well. But it does not scale. You can use these tools to describe manageable algorithms. But it does not work for the functionality triggered by pressing the “1-Click Order” on an amazon product page for example. There are several reasons for that, I´d say. Firstly, the level of abstraction over code is negligible. It´s essentially non-existent. Drawing a flow chart or writing pseudo code or writing actual code is very, very much alike. All these tools are about control flow like code is.[2] In addition all tools are computationally complete. They are about logic which is expressions and especially control statements. Whatever you code in Java you can fully (!) describe using a flow chart. And then there is no data. They are about control flow and leave out the data altogether. Thus data mostly is assumed to be global. That´s shooting yourself in the foot, as I hope you agree. Even if it´s functionality over data that does not mean “don´t think about data”. Right to the contrary! Functionality only makes sense with regard to data. So data needs to be in the picture right from the start - but it must not dominate the thinking. The above tools fail on this. Bottom line: So far we´re unable to reason in a scalable and abstract manner about functionality. That´s why programmers are so driven to start coding once they are presented with a problem. Programming languages are the only tool they´ve learned to use to reason about functional solutions. Or, well, there might be exceptions. Mathematical notation and SQL may have come to your mind already. Indeed they are tools on a higher level of abstraction than flow charts etc. That´s because they are declarative and not computationally complete. They leave out details - in order to deliver higher efficiency in devising overall solutions. We can easily reason about functionality using mathematics and SQL. That´s great. Except for that they are domain specific languages. They are not general purpose. (And they don´t scale either, I´d say.) Bummer. So to be more precise we need a scalable general purpose tool on a higher than code level of abstraction not neglecting data. Enter: Flow Design. Abstracting functionality using data flows I believe the solution to the problem of abstracting functionality lies in switching from control flow to data flow. Data flow very naturally is not about logic details anymore. There are no expressions and no control statements anymore. There are not even statements anymore. Data flow is declarative by nature. With data flow we get rid of all the limiting traits of former approaches to modeling functionality. In addition, nomen est omen, data flows include data in the functionality picture. With data flows, data is visibly flowing from processing step to processing step. Control is not flowing. Control is wherever it´s needed to process data coming in. That´s a crucial difference and needs some rewiring in your head to be fully appreciated.[2] Since data flows are declarative they are not the right tool to describe algorithms, though, I´d say. With them you don´t design functionality on a low level. During design data flow processing steps are black boxes. They get fleshed out during coding. Data flow design thus is more coarse grained than flow chart design. It starts on a higher level of abstraction - but then is not limited. By nesting data flows indefinitely you can design functionality of any size, without losing sight of your data. Data flows scale very well during design. They can be used on any level of granularity. And they can easily be depicted. Communicating designs using data flows is easy and scales well, too. The result of functional design using data flows is not algorithms (too low level), but processes. Think of data flows as descriptions of industrial production lines. Data as material runs through a number of processing steps to be analyzed, enhances, transformed. On the top level of a data flow design might be just one processing step, e.g. “execute 1-click order”. But below that are arbitrary levels of flows with smaller and smaller steps. That´s not layering as in “layered architecture”, though. Rather it´s a stratified design à la Abelson/Sussman. Refining data flows is not your grandpa´s functional decomposition. That was rooted in control flows. Refining data flows does not suffer from the limits of functional decomposition against which object orientation was supposed to be an antidote. Summary I´ve been working exclusively with data flows for functional design for the past 4 years. It has changed my life as a programmer. What once was difficult is now easy. And, no, I´m not using Clojure or F#. And I´m not a async/parallel execution buff. Designing the functionality of increments using data flows works great with teams. It produces design documentation which can easily be translated into code - in which then the smallest data flow processing steps have to be fleshed out - which is comparatively easy. Using a systematic translation approach code can mirror the data flow design. That way later on the design can easily be reproduced from the code if need be. And finally, data flow designs play well with object orientation. They are a great starting point for class design. But that´s a story for another day. To me data flow design simply is one of the missing links of systematic lightweight software design. There are also other artifacts software development can produce to get feedback, e.g. process descriptions, test cases. But customers can be delighted more easily with code based increments in functionality. ? No, I´m not talking about the endless possibilities this opens for parallel processing. Data flows are useful independently of multi-core processors and Actor-based designs. That´s my whole point here. Data flows are good for reasoning and evolvability. So forget about any special frameworks you might need to reap benefits from data flows. None are necessary. Translating data flow designs even into plain of Java is possible. ?

  Read the article

• 64-bit Archives Needed

  - by user9154181

  A little over a year ago, we received a question from someone who was trying to build software on Solaris. He was getting errors from the ar command when creating an archive. At that time, the ar command on Solaris was a 32-bit command. There was more than 2GB of data, and the ar command was hitting the file size limit for a 32-bit process that doesn't use the largefile APIs. Even in 2011, 2GB is a very large amount of code, so we had not heard this one before. Most of our toolchain was extended to handle 64-bit sized data back in the 1990's, but archives were not changed, presumably because there was no perceived need for it. Since then of course, programs have continued to get larger, and in 2010, the time had finally come to investigate the issue and find a way to provide for larger archives. As part of that process, I had to do a deep dive into the archive format, and also do some Unix archeology. I'm going to record what I learned here, to document what Solaris does, and in the hope that it might help someone else trying to solve the same problem for their platform. Archive Format Details Archives are hardly cutting edge technology. They are still used of course, but their basic form hasn't changed in decades. Other than to fix a bug, which is rare, we don't tend to touch that code much. The archive file format is described in /usr/include/ar.h, and I won't repeat the details here. Instead, here is a rough overview of the archive file format, implemented by System V Release 4 (SVR4) Unix systems such as Solaris: Every archive starts with a "magic number". This is a sequence of 8 characters: "!<arch>\n". The magic number is followed by 1 or more members. A member starts with a fixed header, defined by the ar_hdr structure in/usr/include/ar.h. Immediately following the header comes the data for the member. Members must be padded at the end with newline characters so that they have even length. The requirement to pad members to an even length is a dead giveaway as to the age of the archive format. It tells you that this format dates from the 1970's, and more specifically from the era of 16-bit systems such as the PDP-11 that Unix was originally developed on. A 32-bit system would have required 4 bytes, and 64-bit systems such as we use today would probably have required 8 bytes. 2 byte alignment is a poor choice for ELF object archive members. 32-bit objects require 4 byte alignment, and 64-bit objects require 64-bit alignment. The link-editor uses mmap() to process archives, and if the members have the wrong alignment, we have to slide (copy) them to the correct alignment before we can access the ELF data structures inside. The archive format requires 2 byte padding, but it doesn't prohibit more. The Solaris ar command takes advantage of this, and pads ELF object members to 8 byte boundaries. Anything else is padded to 2 as required by the format. The archive header (ar_hdr) represents all numeric values using an ASCII text representation rather than as binary integers. This means that an archive that contains only text members can be viewed using tools such as cat, more, or a text editor. The original designers of this format clearly thought that archives would be used for many file types, and not just for objects. Things didn't turn out that way of course — nearly all archives contain relocatable objects for a single operating system and machine, and are used primarily as input to the link-editor (ld). Archives can have special members that are created by the ar command rather than being supplied by the user. These special members are all distinguished by having a name that starts with the slash (/) character. This is an unambiguous marker that says that the user could not have supplied it. The reason for this is that regular archive members are given the plain name of the file that was inserted to create them, and any path components are stripped off. Slash is the delimiter character used by Unix to separate path components, and as such cannot occur within a plain file name. The ar command hides the special members from you when you list the contents of an archive, so most users don't know that they exist. There are only two possible special members: A symbol table that maps ELF symbols to the object archive member that provides it, and a string table used to hold member names that exceed 15 characters. The '/' convention for tagging special members provides room for adding more such members should the need arise. As I will discuss below, we took advantage of this fact to add an alternate 64-bit symbol table special member which is used in archives that are larger than 4GB. When an archive contains ELF object members, the ar command builds a special archive member known as the symbol table that maps all ELF symbols in the object to the archive member that provides it. The link-editor uses this symbol table to determine which symbols are provided by the objects in that archive. If an archive has a symbol table, it will always be the first member in the archive, immediately following the magic number. Unlike member headers, symbol tables do use binary integers to represent offsets. These integers are always stored in big-endian format, even on a little endian host such as x86. The archive header (ar_hdr) provides 15 characters for representing the member name. If any member has a name that is longer than this, then the real name is written into a special archive member called the string table, and the member's name field instead contains a slash (/) character followed by a decimal representation of the offset of the real name within the string table. The string table is required to precede all normal archive members, so it will be the second member if the archive contains a symbol table, and the first member otherwise. The archive format is not designed to make finding a given member easy. Such operations move through the archive from front to back examining each member in turn, and run in O(n) time. This would be bad if archives were commonly used in that manner, but in general, they are not. Typically, the ar command is used to build an new archive from scratch, inserting all the objects in one operation, and then the link-editor accesses the members in the archive in constant time by using the offsets provided by the symbol table. Both of these operations are reasonably efficient. However, listing the contents of a large archive with the ar command can be rather slow. Factors That Limit Solaris Archive Size As is often the case, there was more than one limiting factor preventing Solaris archives from growing beyond the 32-bit limits of 2GB (32-bit signed) and 4GB (32-bit unsigned). These limits are listed in the order they are hit as archive size grows, so the earlier ones mask those that follow. The original Solaris archive file format can handle sizes up to 4GB without issue. However, the ar command was delivered as a 32-bit executable that did not use the largefile APIs. As such, the ar command itself could not create a file larger than 2GB. One can solve this by building ar with the largefile APIs which would allow it to reach 4GB, but a simpler and better answer is to deliver a 64-bit ar, which has the ability to scale well past 4GB. Symbol table offsets are stored as 32-bit big-endian binary integers, which limits the maximum archive size to 4GB. To get around this limit requires a different symbol table format, or an extension mechanism to the current one, similar in nature to the way member names longer than 15 characters are handled in member headers. The size field in the archive member header (ar_hdr) is an ASCII string capable of representing a 32-bit unsigned value. This places a 4GB size limit on the size of any individual member in an archive. In considering format extensions to get past these limits, it is important to remember that very few archives will require the ability to scale past 4GB for many years. The old format, while no beauty, continues to be sufficient for its purpose. This argues for a backward compatible fix that allows newer versions of Solaris to produce archives that are compatible with older versions of the system unless the size of the archive exceeds 4GB. Archive Format Differences Among Unix Variants While considering how to extend Solaris archives to scale to 64-bits, I wanted to know how similar archives from other Unix systems are to those produced by Solaris, and whether they had already solved the 64-bit issue. I've successfully moved archives between different Unix systems before with good luck, so I knew that there was some commonality. If it turned out that there was already a viable defacto standard for 64-bit archives, it would obviously be better to adopt that rather than invent something new. The archive file format is not formally standardized. However, the ar command and archive format were part of the original Unix from Bell Labs. Other systems started with that format, extending it in various often incompatible ways, but usually with the same common shared core. Most of these systems use the same magic number to identify their archives, despite the fact that their archives are not always fully compatible with each other. It is often true that archives can be copied between different Unix variants, and if the member names are short enough, the ar command from one system can often read archives produced on another. In practice, it is rare to find an archive containing anything other than objects for a single operating system and machine type. Such an archive is only of use on the type of system that created it, and is only used on that system. This is probably why cross platform compatibility of archives between Unix variants has never been an issue. Otherwise, the use of the same magic number in archives with incompatible formats would be a problem. I was able to find information for a number of Unix variants, described below. These can be divided roughly into three tribes, SVR4 Unix, BSD Unix, and IBM AIX. Solaris is a SVR4 Unix, and its archives are completely compatible with those from the other members of that group (GNU/Linux, HP-UX, and SGI IRIX). AIX AIX is an exception to rule that Unix archive formats are all based on the original Bell labs Unix format. It appears that AIX supports 2 formats (small and big), both of which differ in fundamental ways from other Unix systems: These formats use a different magic number than the standard one used by Solaris and other Unix variants. They include support for removing archive members from a file without reallocating the file, marking dead areas as unused, and reusing them when new archive items are inserted. They have a special table of contents member (File Member Header) which lets you find out everything that's in the archive without having to actually traverse the entire file. Their symbol table members are quite similar to those from other systems though. Their member headers are doubly linked, containing offsets to both the previous and next members. Of the Unix systems described here, AIX has the only format I saw that will have reasonable insert/delete performance for really large archives. Everyone else has O(n) performance, and are going to be slow to use with large archives. BSD BSD has gone through 4 versions of archive format, which are described in their manpage. They use the same member header as SVR4, but their symbol table format is different, and their scheme for long member names puts the name directly after the member header rather than into a string table. GNU/Linux The GNU toolchain uses the SVR4 format, and is compatible with Solaris. HP-UX HP-UX seems to follow the SVR4 model, and is compatible with Solaris. IRIX IRIX has 32 and 64-bit archives. The 32-bit format is the standard SVR4 format, and is compatible with Solaris. The 64-bit format is the same, except that the symbol table uses 64-bit integers. IRIX assumes that an archive contains objects of a single ELFCLASS/MACHINE, and any archive containing ELFCLASS64 objects receives a 64-bit symbol table. Although they only use it for 64-bit objects, nothing in the archive format limits it to ELFCLASS64. It would be perfectly valid to produce a 64-bit symbol table in an archive containing 32-bit objects, text files, or anything else. Tru64 Unix (Digital/Compaq/HP) Tru64 Unix uses a format much like ours, but their symbol table is a hash table, making specific symbol lookup much faster. The Solaris link-editor uses archives by examining the entire symbol table looking for unsatisfied symbols for the link, and not by looking up individual symbols, so there would be no benefit to Solaris from such a hash table. The Tru64 ld must use a different approach in which the hash table pays off for them. Widening the existing SVR4 archive symbol tables rather than inventing something new is the simplest path forward. There is ample precedent for this approach in the ELF world. When ELF was extended to support 64-bit objects, the approach was largely to take the existing data structures, and define 64-bit versions of them. We called the old set ELF32, and the new set ELF64. My guess is that there was no need to widen the archive format at that time, but had there been, it seems obvious that this is how it would have been done. The Implementation of 64-bit Solaris Archives As mentioned earlier, there was no desire to improve the fundamental nature of archives. They have always had O(n) insert/delete behavior, and for the most part it hasn't mattered. AIX made efforts to improve this, but those efforts did not find widespread adoption. For the purposes of link-editing, which is essentially the only thing that archives are used for, the existing format is adequate, and issues of backward compatibility trump the desire to do something technically better. Widening the existing symbol table format to 64-bits is therefore the obvious way to proceed. For Solaris 11, I implemented that, and I also updated the ar command so that a 64-bit version is run by default. This eliminates the 2 most significant limits to archive size, leaving only the limit on an individual archive member. We only generate a 64-bit symbol table if the archive exceeds 4GB, or when the new -S option to the ar command is used. This maximizes backward compatibility, as an archive produced by Solaris 11 is highly likely to be less than 4GB in size, and will therefore employ the same format understood by older versions of the system. The main reason for the existence of the -S option is to allow us to test the 64-bit format without having to construct huge archives to do so. I don't believe it will find much use outside of that. Other than the new ability to create and use extremely large archives, this change is largely invisible to the end user. When reading an archive, the ar command will transparently accept either form of symbol table. Similarly, the ELF library (libelf) has been updated to understand either format. Users of libelf (such as the link-editor ld) do not need to be modified to use the new format, because these changes are encapsulated behind the existing functions provided by libelf. As mentioned above, this work did not lift the limit on the maximum size of an individual archive member. That limit remains fixed at 4GB for now. This is not because we think objects will never get that large, for the history of computing says otherwise. Rather, this is based on an estimation that single relocatable objects of that size will not appear for a decade or two. A lot can change in that time, and it is better not to overengineer things by writing code that will sit and rot for years without being used. It is not too soon however to have a plan for that eventuality. When the time comes when this limit needs to be lifted, I believe that there is a simple solution that is consistent with the existing format. The archive member header size field is an ASCII string, like the name, and as such, the overflow scheme used for long names can also be used to handle the size. The size string would be placed into the archive string table, and its offset in the string table would then be written into the archive header size field using the same format "/ddd" used for overflowed names.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151  | Next Page >