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• My View on ASP.NET Web Forms versus MVC

  - by Ricardo Peres

  Introduction A lot has been said on Web Forms and MVC, but since I was recently asked about my opinion on the subject, here it is. First, I have to say that I really like both technologies and I don’t think any is going away – just remember SharePoint, which is built on top of Web Forms. I see them as complementary, targeting different needs and leveraging different skills. Let’s go through some of their differences. Rapid Application Development Rapid Application Development (RAD) is the development process by which you have an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), a visual design surface and a toolbox, and you drag components from the toolbox to the design surface and set their properties through a property inspector. It was introduced with some of the earliest Windows graphical IDEs such as Visual Basic and Delphi. With Web Forms you have RAD out of the box. Visual Studio offers a generally good (and extensible) designer for the layout of pages and web user controls. Designing a page may simply be about dragging controls from the toolbox, setting their properties and wiring up some events to event handlers, which are implemented in code behind .NET classes. Most people will be familiar with this kind of development and enjoy it. You can see what you are doing from the beginning. MVC also has designable pages – called views in MVC terminology – the problem is that they can be built using different technologies, some of which, at the moment (MVC 4) do not support RAD – Razor, for example. I believe it is just a matter of time for that to be implemented in Visual Studio, but it will mostly consist on HTML editing, and until that day comes, you have to live with source editing. Development Model Web Forms features the same development model that you are used to from Windows Forms and other similar technologies: events fired by controls and automatic persistence of their properties between postbacks. For that, it uses concepts such as view state, which some may love and others may hate, because it may be misused quite easily, but otherwise does its job well. Another fundamental concept is data binding, by which a collection of data can be fed to a control and have it render that data somehow – just thing of the GridView control. The focus is on the page, that’s where it all starts, and you can place everything in the same code behind class: data access, business logic, layout, etc. The controls take care of generating a great part of the HTML and JavaScript for you. With MVC there is no free lunch when it comes to data persistence between requests, you have to implement it yourself. As for event handling, that is at the core of MVC, in the form of controllers and action methods, you just don’t think of them as event handlers. In MVC you need to think more in HTTP terms, so action methods such as POST and GET are relevant to you, and may write actions to handle one or the other. Also of crucial importance is model binding: the way by which MVC converts your posted data into a .NET class. This is something that ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms has introduced as well, but it is a cornerstone in MVC. MVC also has built-in validation of these .NET classes, which out of the box uses the Data Annotations API. You have full control of the generated HTML - except for that coming from the helper methods, usually small fragments - which requires a greater familiarity with the specifications. You normally rely much more on JavaScript APIs, they are even included in the Visual Studio template, that is because much less is done for you. Reuse It is difficult to accept a professional company/project that does not employ reuse. It can save a lot of time thus cutting costs significantly. Code reused in several projects matures as time goes by and helps developers learn from past experiences. ASP.NET Web Forms was built with reuse in mind, in the form of controls. Controls encapsulate functionality and are generally portable from project to project (with the notable exception of web user controls, those with an associated .ASCX markup file). ASP.NET has dozens of controls and it is very easy to develop new ones, so I believe this is a great advantage. A control can inject JavaScript code and external references as well as generate HTML an CSS. MVC on the other hand does not use controls – it is possible to use them, with some view engines like ASPX, but it is just not advisable because it breaks the flow – where do Init, Load, PreRender, etc, fit? The most similar to controls is extension methods, or helpers. They serve the same purpose – generating HTML, CSS or JavaScript – and can be reused between different projects. What differentiates them from controls is that there is no inheritance and no context – an extension method is just a static method which doesn’t know where it is being called. You also have partial views, which you can reuse in the same project, but there is no inheritance as well. This, in my view, is a weakness of MVC. Architecture Both technologies are highly extensible. I have writtenstarted writing a series of posts on ASP.NET Web Forms extensibility and will probably write another series on MVC extensibility as well. A number of scenarios are covered in any of these models, and some extensibility points apply to both, because, of course both stand upon ASP.NET. With Web Forms, if you’re like me, you start by defining you master pages, pages and controls, with some helper classes to glue everything. You may as well throw in some JavaScript, but probably you’re main work will be with plain old .NET code. The controls you define have the chance to inject JavaScript code and references, through either the ScriptManager or the page’s ClientScript object, as well as generating HTML and CSS code. The master page and page model with code behind classes offer a number of “hooks” by which you can change the normal way of things, for example, in a page you can access any control on the master page, add script or stylesheet references to its head and even change the page’s title. Also, with Web Forms, you typically have URLs in the form “/SomePath/SomePage.aspx?SomeParameter=SomeValue”, which isn’t really SEO friendly, no to mention the HTML that some controls produce, far from standards, optimization and best practices. In MVC, you also normally start by defining the master page (or layout) and views, which are the visible parts, and then define controllers on separate files. These controllers do not know anything about the views, except the names and types of the parameters that will be passed to and from them. The controller will be responsible for the data access and business logic, eventually relying on additional classes for this purpose. On a controller you only receive parameters and return a result, which may be a request for the rendering of a view, a redirection to another URL or a JSON object, to name just a few. The controller class does not know anything about the web, so you can effectively reuse it in a non-web project. This separation and the lack of programmatic access to the UI elements, makes it very difficult to implement, for example, something like SharePoint with MVC. OK, I know about Orchard, but it isn’t really a general purpose development framework, but instead, a CMS that happens to use MVC. Not having controls render HTML for you gives you in turn much more control over it – it is your responsibility to create it, which you can either consider a blessing or a curse, in the later case, you probably shouldn’t be using MVC at all. Also MVC URLs tend to be much more SEO-oriented, if you design your controllers and actions properly. Testing In a well defined architecture, you should separate business logic, data access logic and presentation logic, because these are all different things and it might even be the need to switch one implementation for another: for example, you might design a system which includes a data access layer, a business logic layer and two presentation layers, one on top of ASP.NET and the other with WPF; and the data access layer might be implemented first using NHibernate and later on switched for Entity Framework Code First. These changes are not that rare, so care should be taken in designing the system to make them possible. Web Forms are difficult to test, because it relies on event handlers which are only fired in web contexts, when a form is submitted or a page is requested. You can call them with reflection, but you have to set up a number of mocking objects first, HttpContext.Current first coming to my mind. MVC, on the other hand, makes testing controllers a breeze, so much that it even includes a template option for generating boilerplate unit test classes up from start. A well designed – from the unit test point of view - controller will receive everything it needs to work as parameters to its action methods, so you can pass whatever values you need very easily. That doesn’t mean, of course, that everything can be tested: views, for instance, are difficult to test without actually accessing the site, but MVC offers the possibility to compile views at build time, so that, at least, you know you don’t have syntax errors beforehand. Myths Some popular but unfounded myths around MVC include: You cannot use controls in MVC: not true, actually, you can, at least with the Web Forms (ASPX) view engine; the declaration and usage is exactly the same as with Web Forms; You cannot specify a base class for a view: with the ASPX view engine you can use the Inherits Page directive, with this and all the others you can use the pageBaseType and userControlBaseType attributes of the <page> element; MVC shields you from doing “bad things” on your views: well, you can place any code on a code block, at least with the ASPX view engine (you may be starting to see a pattern here), even data access code; The model is the entity model, tied to an O/RM: the model is actually any class that you use to pass values to a view, including (but generally not recommended) an entity model; Unit tests come with no cost: unit tests generally don’t cover the UI, although there are frameworks just for that (see WatiN, for example); also, for some tests, you will have to mock or replace either the HttpContext.Current property or the HttpContextBase class yourself; Everything is testable: views aren’t, without accessing the site; MVC relies on HTML5/some_cool_new_javascript_framework: there is no relation whatsoever, MVC renders whatever you want it to render and does not require any framework to be present. The thing is, the subsequent releases of MVC happened in a time when Microsoft has become much more involved in standards, so the files and technologies included in the Visual Studio templates reflect this, and it just happens to work well with jQuery, for example. Conclusion Well, this is how I see it. Some folks may think that I am being too rude on MVC, probably because I don’t like it, but that’s not true: like I said, I do like MVC and I am starting my new projects with it. I just don’t want to go along with that those that say that MVC is much superior to Web Forms, in fact, some things you can do much more easily with Web Forms than with MVC. I will be more than happy to hear what you think on this!

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• A Simple Approach For Presenting With Code Samples

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2013/07/31/a-simple-approach-for-presenting-with-code-samples.aspxI’ve been getting ready for a presentation and have been struggling a bit with the best way to show and execute code samples. I don’t present often (hardly ever), but when I do I like the presentation to have a lot of succinct and executable code snippets to help illustrate the points that I’m making. Depending on what the presentation is about, I might just want to build an entire sample application that I would run during the presentation. In other cases, however, building a full-blown application might not really be the best way to present the code. The presentation I’m working on now is for an open source utility library for dealing with dates and times. I could have probably cooked up a sample app for accepting date and time input and then contrived ways in which it could put the library through its paces, but I had trouble coming up with one app that would illustrate all of the various features of the library that I wanted to highlight. I finally decided that what I really needed was an approach that met the following criteria: Simple: I didn’t want the user interface or overall architecture of a sample application to serve as a distraction from the demonstration of the syntax of the library that the presentation is about. I want to be able to present small bits of code that are focused on accomplishing a single task. Several of these examples will look similar, and that’s OK. I want each sample to “stand on its own” and not rely much on external classes or methods (other than the library that is being presented, of course). “Debuggable” (not really a word, I know): I want to be able to easily run the sample with the debugger attached in Visual Studio should I want to step through any bits of code and show what certain values might be at run time. As far as I know this rules out something like LinqPad, though using LinqPad to present code samples like this is actually a very interesting idea that I might explore another time. Flexible and Selectable: I’m going to have lots of code samples to show, and I want to be able to just package them all up into a single project or module and have an easy way to just run the sample that I want on-demand. Since I’m presenting on a .NET framework library, one of the simplest ways in which I could execute some code samples would be to just create a Console application and use Console.WriteLine to output the pertinent info at run time. This gives me a “no frills” harness from which to run my code samples, and I just hit ‘F5’ to run it with the debugger. This satisfies numbers 1 and 2 from my list of criteria above, but item 3 is a little harder. By default, just running a console application is going to execute the ‘main’ method, and then terminate the program after all code is executed. If I want to have several different code samples and run them one at a time, it would be cumbersome to keep swapping the code I want in and out of the ‘main’ method of the console application. What I really want is an easy way to keep the console app running throughout the whole presentation and just have it run the samples I want when I want. I could setup a simple Windows Forms or WPF desktop application with buttons for the different samples, but then I’m getting away from my first criteria of keeping things as simple as possible. Infinite Loops To The Rescue I found a way to have a simple console application satisfy all three of my requirements above, and it involves using an infinite loop and some Console.ReadLine calls that will give the user an opportunity to break out and exit the program. (All programs that need to run until they are closed explicitly (or crash!) likely use similar constructs behind the scenes. Create a new Windows Forms project, look in the ‘Program.cs’ that gets generated, and then check out the docs for the Application.Run method that it calls.). Here’s how the main method might look: 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: do 4: { 5: Console.Write("Enter command or 'exit' to quit: > "); 6: var command = Console.ReadLine(); 7: if ((command ?? string.Empty).Equals("exit", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) 8: { 9: Console.WriteLine("Quitting."); 10: break; 11: } 12: 13: } while (true); 14: } The idea here is the app prompts me for the command I want to run, or I can type in ‘exit’ to break out of the loop and let the application close. The only trick now is to create a set of commands that map to each of the code samples that I’m going to want to run. Each sample is already encapsulated in a single public method in a separate class, so I could just write a big switch statement or create a hashtable/dictionary that maps command text to an Action that will invoke the proper method, but why re-invent the wheel? CLAP For Your Own Presentation I’ve blogged about the CLAP library before, and it turns out that it’s a great fit for satisfying criteria #3 from my list above. CLAP lets you decorate methods in a class with an attribute and then easily invoke those methods from within a console application. CLAP was designed to take the arguments passed into the console app from the command line and parse them to determine which method to run and what arguments to pass to that method, but there’s no reason you can’t re-purpose it to accept command input from within the infinite loop defined above and invoke the corresponding method. Here’s how you might define a couple of different methods to contain two different code samples that you want to run during your presentation: 1: public static class CodeSamples 2: { 3: [Verb(Aliases="one")] 4: public static void SampleOne() 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("This is sample 1"); 7: } 8:   9: [Verb(Aliases="two")] 10: public static void SampleTwo() 11: { 12: Console.WriteLine("This is sample 2"); 13: } 14: } A couple of things to note about the sample above: I’m using static methods. You don’t actually need to use static methods with CLAP, but the syntax ends up being a bit simpler and static methods happen to lend themselves well to the “one self-contained method per code sample” approach that I want to use. The methods are decorated with a ‘Verb’ attribute. This tells CLAP that they are eligible targets for commands. The “Aliases” argument lets me give them short and easy-to-remember aliases that can be used to invoke them. By default, CLAP just uses the full method name as the command name, but with aliases you can simply the usage a bit. I’m not using any parameters. CLAP’s main feature is its ability to parse out arguments from a command line invocation of a console application and automatically pass them in as parameters to the target methods. My code samples don’t need parameters ,and honestly having them would complicate giving the presentation, so this is a good thing. You could use this same approach to invoke methods with parameters, but you’d have a couple of things to figure out. When you invoke a .NET application from the command line, Windows will parse the arguments and pass them in as a string array (called ‘args’ in the boilerplate console project Program.cs). The parsing that gets done here is smart enough to deal with things like treating strings in double quotes as one argument, and you’d have to re-create that within your infinite loop if you wanted to use parameters. I plan on either submitting a pull request to CLAP to add this capability or maybe just making a small utility class/extension method to do it and posting that here in the future. So I now have a simple class with static methods to contain my code samples, and an infinite loop in my ‘main’ method that can accept text commands. Wiring this all up together is pretty easy: 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: do 4: { 5: try 6: { 7: Console.Write("Enter command or 'exit' to quit: > "); 8: var command = Console.ReadLine(); 9: if ((command ?? string.Empty).Equals("exit", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("Quitting."); 12: break; 13: } 14:   15: Parser.Run<CodeSamples>(new[] { command }); 16: Console.WriteLine("---------------------------------------------------------"); 17: } 18: catch (Exception ex) 19: { 20: Console.Error.WriteLine("Error: " + ex.Message); 21: } 22:   23: } while (true); 24: } Note that I’m now passing the ‘CodeSamples’ class into the CLAP ‘Parser.Run’ as a type argument. This tells CLAP to inspect that class for methods that might be able to handle the commands passed in. I’m also throwing in a little “----“ style line separator and some basic error handling (because I happen to know that some of the samples are going to throw exceptions for demonstration purposes) and I’m good to go. Now during my presentation I can just have the console application running the whole time with the debugger attached and just type in the alias of the code sample method that I want to run when I want to run it.

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• C#/.NET &ndash; Finding an Item&rsquo;s Index in IEnumerable&lt;T&gt;

  - by James Michael Hare

  Sorry for the long blogging hiatus.  First it was, of course, the holidays hustle and bustle, then my brother and his wife gave birth to their son, so I’ve been away from my blogging for two weeks. Background: Finding an item’s index in List<T> is easy… Many times in our day to day programming activities, we want to find the index of an item in a collection.  Now, if we have a List<T> and we’re looking for the item itself this is trivial: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // can find the exact item using IndexOf() 5: var pos = list.IndexOf(64); This will return the position of the item if it’s found, or –1 if not.  It’s easy to see how this works for primitive types where equality is well defined.  For complex types, however, it will attempt to compare them using EqualityComparer<T>.Default which, in a nutshell, relies on the object’s Equals() method. So what if we want to search for a condition instead of equality?  That’s also easy in a List<T> with the FindIndex() method: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // finds index of first even number or -1 if not found. 5: var pos = list.FindIndex(i => i % 2 == 0);   Problem: Finding an item’s index in IEnumerable<T> is not so easy... This is all well and good for lists, but what if we want to do the same thing for IEnumerable<T>?  A collection of IEnumerable<T> has no indexing, so there’s no direct method to find an item’s index.  LINQ, as powerful as it is, gives us many tools to get us this information, but not in one step.  As with almost any problem involving collections, there are several ways to accomplish the same goal.  And once again as with almost any problem involving collections, the choice of the solution somewhat depends on the situation. So let’s look at a few possible alternatives.  I’m going to express each of these as extension methods for simplicity and consistency. Solution: The TakeWhile() and Count() combo One of the things you can do is to perform a TakeWhile() on the list as long as your find condition is not true, and then do a Count() of the items it took.  The only downside to this method is that if the item is not in the list, the index will be the full Count() of items, and not –1.  So if you don’t know the size of the list beforehand, this can be confusing. 1: // a collection of extra extension methods off IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // Finds an item in the collection, similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: // note if item not found, result is length and not -1! 8: return list.TakeWhile(i => !finder(i)).Count(); 9: } 10: } Personally, I don’t like switching the paradigm of not found away from –1, so this is one of my least favorites.  Solution: Select with index Many people don’t realize that there is an alternative form of the LINQ Select() method that will provide you an index of the item being selected: 1: list.Select( (item,index) => do something here with the item and/or index... ) This can come in handy, but must be treated with care.  This is because the index provided is only as pertains to the result of previous operations (if any).  For example: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // you'd hope this would give you the indexes of the even numbers 5: // which would be 2, 3, 8, but in reality it gives you 0, 1, 2 6: list.Where(item => item % 2 == 0).Select((item,index) => index); The reason the example gives you the collection { 0, 1, 2 } is because the where clause passes over any items that are odd, and therefore only the even items are given to the select and only they are given indexes. Conversely, we can’t select the index and then test the item in a Where() clause, because then the Where() clause would be operating on the index and not the item! So, what we have to do is to select the item and index and put them together in an anonymous type.  It looks ugly, but it works: 1: // extensions defined on IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // finds an item in a collection, similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: // if you don't name the anonymous properties they are the variable names 8: return list.Select((item, index) => new { item, index }) 9: .Where(p => finder(p.item)) 10: .Select(p => p.index + 1) 11: .FirstOrDefault() - 1; 12: } 13: }     So let’s look at this, because i know it’s convoluted: First Select() joins the items and their indexes into an anonymous type. Where() filters that list to only the ones matching the predicate. Second Select() picks the index of the matches and adds 1 – this is to distinguish between not found and first item. FirstOrDefault() returns the first item found from the previous clauses or default (zero) if not found. Subtract one so that not found (zero) will be –1, and first item (one) will be zero. The bad thing is, this is ugly as hell and creates anonymous objects for each item tested until it finds the match.  This concerns me a bit but we’ll defer judgment until compare the relative performances below. Solution: Convert ToList() and use FindIndex() This solution is easy enough.  We know any IEnumerable<T> can be converted to List<T> using the LINQ extension method ToList(), so we can easily convert the collection to a list and then just use the FindIndex() method baked into List<T>. 1: // a collection of extension methods for IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // find the index of an item in the collection similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: return list.ToList().FindIndex(finder); 8: } 9: } This solution is simplicity itself!  It is very concise and elegant and you need not worry about anyone misinterpreting what it’s trying to do (as opposed to the more convoluted LINQ methods above). But the main thing I’m concerned about here is the performance hit to allocate the List<T> in the ToList() call, but once again we’ll explore that in a second. Solution: Roll your own FindIndex() for IEnumerable<T> Of course, you can always roll your own FindIndex() method for IEnumerable<T>.  It would be a very simple for loop which scans for the item and counts as it goes.  There’s many ways to do this, but one such way might look like: 1: // extension methods for IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // Finds an item matching a predicate in the enumeration, much like List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: int index = 0; 8: foreach (var item in list) 9: { 10: if (finder(item)) 11: { 12: return index; 13: } 14:  15: index++; 16: } 17:  18: return -1; 19: } 20: } Well, it’s not quite simplicity, and those less familiar with LINQ may prefer it since it doesn’t include all of the lambdas and behind the scenes iterators that come with deferred execution.  But does having this long, blown out method really gain us much in performance? Comparison of Proposed Solutions So we’ve now seen four solutions, let’s analyze their collective performance.  I took each of the four methods described above and run them over 100,000 iterations of lists of size 10, 100, 1000, and 10000 and here’s the performance results.  Then I looked for targets at the begining of the list (best case), middle of the list (the average case) and not in the list (worst case as must scan all of the list). Each of the times below is the average time in milliseconds for one execution as computer over the 100,000 iterations: Searches Matching First Item (Best Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0003 0.0003 0.0003 0.0003 Select 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 ToList 0.0002 0.0003 0.0013 0.0121 Manual 0.0001 0.0001 0.0001 0.0001   Searches Matching Middle Item (Average Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0004 0.0020 0.0191 0.1889 Select 0.0008 0.0042 0.0387 0.3802 ToList 0.0002 0.0007 0.0057 0.0562 Manual 0.0002 0.0013 0.0129 0.1255   Searches Where Not Found (Worst Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0006 0.0039 0.0381 0.3770 Select 0.0012 0.0081 0.0758 0.7583 ToList 0.0002 0.0012 0.0100 0.0996 Manual 0.0003 0.0026 0.0253 0.2514   Notice something interesting here, you’d think the “roll your own” loop would be the most efficient, but it only wins when the item is first (or very close to it) regardless of list size.  In almost all other cases though and in particular the average case and worst case, the ToList()/FindIndex() combo wins for performance, even though it is creating some temporary memory to hold the List<T>.  If you examine the algorithm, the reason why is most likely because once it’s in a ToList() form, internally FindIndex() scans the internal array which is much more efficient to iterate over.  Thus, it takes a one time performance hit (not including any GC impact) to create the List<T> but after that the performance is much better. Summary If you’re concerned about too many throw-away objects, you can always roll your own FindIndex() method, but for sheer simplicity and overall performance, using the ToList()/FindIndex() combo performs best on nearly all list sizes in the average and worst cases.    Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Litte Wonders,BlackRabbitCoder,Software,LINQ,List

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• C#: Why Decorate When You Can Intercept

  - by James Michael Hare

  We've all heard of the old Decorator Design Pattern (here) or used it at one time or another either directly or indirectly.  A decorator is a class that wraps a given abstract class or interface and presents the same (or a superset) public interface but "decorated" with additional functionality.   As a really simplistic example, consider the System.IO.BufferedStream, it itself is a descendent of System.IO.Stream and wraps the given stream with buffering logic while still presenting System.IO.Stream's public interface:   1: Stream buffStream = new BufferedStream(rawStream); Now, let's take a look at a custom-code example.  Let's say that we have a class in our data access layer that retrieves a list of products from a database:  1: // a class that handles our CRUD operations for products 2: public class ProductDao 3: { 4: ... 5:  6: // a method that would retrieve all available products 7: public IEnumerable<Product> GetAvailableProducts() 8: { 9: var results = new List<Product>(); 10:  11: // must create the connection 12: using (var con = _factory.CreateConnection()) 13: { 14: con.ConnectionString = _productsConnectionString; 15: con.Open(); 16:  17: // create the command 18: using (var cmd = _factory.CreateCommand()) 19: { 20: cmd.Connection = con; 21: cmd.CommandText = _getAllProductsStoredProc; 22: cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure; 23:  24: // get a reader and pass back all results 25: using (var reader = cmd.ExecuteReader()) 26: { 27: while(reader.Read()) 28: { 29: results.Add(new Product 30: { 31: Name = reader["product_name"].ToString(), 32: ... 33: }); 34: } 35: } 36: } 37: }            38:  39: return results; 40: } 41: } Yes, you could use EF or any myriad other choices for this sort of thing, but the germaine point is that you have some operation that takes a non-trivial amount of time.  What if, during the production day I notice that my application is performing slowly and I want to see how much of that slowness is in the query versus my code.  Well, I could easily wrap the logic block in a System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch and log the results to log4net or other logging flavor of choice: 1:     // a class that handles our CRUD operations for products 2:     public class ProductDao 3:     { 4:         private static readonly ILog _log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(ProductDao)); 5:         ... 6:         7:         // a method that would retrieve all available products 8:         public IEnumerable<Product> GetAvailableProducts() 9:         { 10:             var results = new List<Product>(); 11:             var timer = Stopwatch.StartNew(); 12:             13:             // must create the connection 14:             using (var con = _factory.CreateConnection()) 15:             { 16:                 con.ConnectionString = _productsConnectionString; 17:                 18:                 // and all that other DB code... 19:                 ... 20:             } 21:             22:             timer.Stop(); 23:             24:             if (timer.ElapsedMilliseconds > 5000) 25:             { 26:                 _log.WarnFormat("Long query in GetAvailableProducts() took {0} ms", 27:                     timer.ElapsedMillseconds); 28:             } 29:             30:             return results; 31:         } 32:     } In my eye, this is very ugly.  It violates Single Responsibility Principle (SRP), which says that a class should only ever have one responsibility, where responsibility is often defined as a reason to change.  This class (and in particular this method) has two reasons to change: If the method of retrieving products changes. If the method of logging changes. Well, we could “simplify” this using the Decorator Design Pattern (here).  If we followed the pattern to the letter, we'd need to create a base decorator that implements the DAOs public interface and forwards to the wrapped instance.  So let's assume we break out the ProductDAO interface into IProductDAO using your refactoring tool of choice (Resharper is great for this). Now, ProductDao will implement IProductDao and get rid of all logging logic: 1:     public class ProductDao : IProductDao 2:     { 3:         // this reverts back to original version except for the interface added 4:     } 5:  And we create the base Decorator that also implements the interface and forwards all calls: 1:     public class ProductDaoDecorator : IProductDao 2:     { 3:         private readonly IProductDao _wrappedDao; 4:         5:         // constructor takes the dao to wrap 6:         public ProductDaoDecorator(IProductDao wrappedDao) 7:         { 8:             _wrappedDao = wrappedDao; 9:         } 10:         11:         ... 12:         13:         // and then all methods just forward their calls 14:         public IEnumerable<Product> GetAvailableProducts() 15:         { 16:             return _wrappedDao.GetAvailableProducts(); 17:         } 18:     } This defines our base decorator, then we can create decorators that add items of interest, and for any methods we don't decorate, we'll get the default behavior which just forwards the call to the wrapper in the base decorator: 1:     public class TimedThresholdProductDaoDecorator : ProductDaoDecorator 2:     { 3:         private static readonly ILog _log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(TimedThresholdProductDaoDecorator)); 4:         5:         public TimedThresholdProductDaoDecorator(IProductDao wrappedDao) : 6:             base(wrappedDao) 7:         { 8:         } 9:         10:         ... 11:         12:         public IEnumerable<Product> GetAvailableProducts() 13:         { 14:             var timer = Stopwatch.StartNew(); 15:             16:             var results = _wrapped.GetAvailableProducts(); 17:             18:             timer.Stop(); 19:             20:             if (timer.ElapsedMilliseconds > 5000) 21:             { 22:                 _log.WarnFormat("Long query in GetAvailableProducts() took {0} ms", 23:                     timer.ElapsedMillseconds); 24:             } 25:             26:             return results; 27:         } 28:     } Well, it's a bit better.  Now the logging is in its own class, and the database logic is in its own class.  But we've essentially multiplied the number of classes.  We now have 3 classes and one interface!  Now if you want to do that same logging decorating on all your DAOs, imagine the code bloat!  Sure, you can simplify and avoid creating the base decorator, or chuck it all and just inherit directly.  But regardless all of these have the problem of tying the logging logic into the code itself. Enter the Interceptors.  Things like this to me are a perfect example of when it's good to write an Interceptor using your class library of choice.  Sure, you could design your own perfectly generic decorator with delegates and all that, but personally I'm a big fan of Castle's Dynamic Proxy (here) which is actually used by many projects including Moq. What DynamicProxy allows you to do is intercept calls into any object by wrapping it with a proxy on the fly that intercepts the method and allows you to add functionality.  Essentially, the code would now look like this using DynamicProxy: 1: // Note: I like hiding DynamicProxy behind the scenes so users 2: // don't have to explicitly add reference to Castle's libraries. 3: public static class TimeThresholdInterceptor 4: { 5: // Our logging handle 6: private static readonly ILog _log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(TimeThresholdInterceptor)); 7:  8: // Handle to Castle's proxy generator 9: private static readonly ProxyGenerator _generator = new ProxyGenerator(); 10:  11: // generic form for those who prefer it 12: public static object Create<TInterface>(object target, TimeSpan threshold) 13: { 14: return Create(typeof(TInterface), target, threshold); 15: } 16:  17: // Form that uses type instead 18: public static object Create(Type interfaceType, object target, TimeSpan threshold) 19: { 20: return _generator.CreateInterfaceProxyWithTarget(interfaceType, target, 21: new TimedThreshold(threshold, level)); 22: } 23:  24: // The interceptor that is created to intercept the interface calls. 25: // Hidden as a private inner class so not exposing Castle libraries. 26: private class TimedThreshold : IInterceptor 27: { 28: // The threshold as a positive timespan that triggers a log message. 29: private readonly TimeSpan _threshold; 30:  31: // interceptor constructor 32: public TimedThreshold(TimeSpan threshold) 33: { 34: _threshold = threshold; 35: } 36:  37: // Intercept functor for each method invokation 38: public void Intercept(IInvocation invocation) 39: { 40: // time the method invocation 41: var timer = Stopwatch.StartNew(); 42:  43: // the Castle magic that tells the method to go ahead 44: invocation.Proceed(); 45:  46: timer.Stop(); 47:  48: // check if threshold is exceeded 49: if (timer.Elapsed > _threshold) 50: { 51: _log.WarnFormat("Long execution in {0} took {1} ms", 52: invocation.Method.Name, 53: timer.ElapsedMillseconds); 54: } 55: } 56: } 57: } Yes, it's a bit longer, but notice that: This class ONLY deals with logging long method calls, no DAO interface leftovers. This class can be used to time ANY class that has an interface or virtual methods. Personally, I like to wrap and hide the usage of DynamicProxy and IInterceptor so that anyone who uses this class doesn't need to know to add a Castle library reference.  As far as they are concerned, they're using my interceptor.  If I change to a new library if a better one comes along, they're insulated. Now, all we have to do to use this is to tell it to wrap our ProductDao and it does the rest: 1: // wraps a new ProductDao with a timing interceptor with a threshold of 5 seconds 2: IProductDao dao = TimeThresholdInterceptor.Create<IProductDao>(new ProductDao(), 5000); Automatic decoration of all methods!  You can even refine the proxy so that it only intercepts certain methods. This is ideal for so many things.  These are just some of the interceptors we've dreamed up and use: Log parameters and returns of methods to XML for auditing. Block invocations to methods and return default value (stubbing). Throw exception if certain methods are called (good for blocking access to deprecated methods). Log entrance and exit of a method and the duration. Log a message if a method takes more than a given time threshold to execute. Whether you use DynamicProxy or some other technology, I hope you see the benefits this adds.  Does it completely eliminate all need for the Decorator pattern?  No, there may still be cases where you want to decorate a particular class with functionality that doesn't apply to the world at large. But for all those cases where you are using Decorator to add functionality that's truly generic.  I strongly suggest you give this a try!

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• Custom Content Pipeline with Automatic Serialization Load Error

  - by Direweasel

  I'm running into this error: Error loading "desert". Cannot find type TiledLib.MapContent, TiledLib, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null. at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ContentTypeReaderManager.InstantiateTypeReader(String readerTypeName, ContentReader contentReader, ContentTypeReader& reader) at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ContentTypeReaderManager.GetTypeReader(String readerTypeName, ContentReader contentReader, List1& newTypeReaders) at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ContentTypeReaderManager.ReadTypeManifest(Int32 typeCount, ContentReader contentReader) at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ContentReader.ReadHeader() at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ContentReader.ReadAsset[T]() at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ContentManager.ReadAsset[T](String assetName, Action1 recordDisposableObject) at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ContentManager.Load[T](String assetName) at TiledTest.Game1.LoadContent() in C:\My Documents\Dropbox\Visual Studio Projects\TiledTest\TiledTest\TiledTest\Game1.cs:line 51 at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game.Initialize() at TiledTest.Game1.Initialize() in C:\My Documents\Dropbox\Visual Studio Projects\TiledTest\TiledTest\TiledTest\Game1.cs:line 39 at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game.RunGame(Boolean useBlockingRun) at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game.Run() at TiledTest.Program.Main(String[] args) in C:\My Documents\Dropbox\Visual Studio Projects\TiledTest\TiledTest\TiledTest\Program.cs:line 15 When trying to run the game. This is a basic demo to try and utilize a separate project library called TiledLib. I have four projects overall: TiledLib (C# Class Library) TiledTest (Windows Game) TiledTestContent (Content) TMX CP Ext (Content Pipeline Extension Library) TiledLib contains MapContent which is throwing the error, however I believe this may just be a generic error with a deeper root problem. EMX CP Ext contains one file: MapProcessor.cs using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.Processors; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using TiledLib; namespace TMX_CP_Ext { // Each tile has a texture, source rect, and sprite effects. [ContentSerializerRuntimeType("TiledTest.Tile, TiledTest")] public class DemoMapTileContent { public ExternalReference<Texture2DContent> Texture; public Rectangle SourceRectangle; public SpriteEffects SpriteEffects; } // For each layer, we store the size of the layer and the tiles. [ContentSerializerRuntimeType("TiledTest.Layer, TiledTest")] public class DemoMapLayerContent { public int Width; public int Height; public DemoMapTileContent[] Tiles; } // For the map itself, we just store the size, tile size, and a list of layers. [ContentSerializerRuntimeType("TiledTest.Map, TiledTest")] public class DemoMapContent { public int TileWidth; public int TileHeight; public List<DemoMapLayerContent> Layers = new List<DemoMapLayerContent>(); } [ContentProcessor(DisplayName = "TMX Processor - TiledLib")] public class MapProcessor : ContentProcessor<MapContent, DemoMapContent> { public override DemoMapContent Process(MapContent input, ContentProcessorContext context) { // build the textures TiledHelpers.BuildTileSetTextures(input, context); // generate source rectangles TiledHelpers.GenerateTileSourceRectangles(input); // now build our output, first by just copying over some data DemoMapContent output = new DemoMapContent { TileWidth = input.TileWidth, TileHeight = input.TileHeight }; // iterate all the layers of the input foreach (LayerContent layer in input.Layers) { // we only care about tile layers in our demo TileLayerContent tlc = layer as TileLayerContent; if (tlc != null) { // create the new layer DemoMapLayerContent outLayer = new DemoMapLayerContent { Width = tlc.Width, Height = tlc.Height, }; // we need to build up our tile list now outLayer.Tiles = new DemoMapTileContent[tlc.Data.Length]; for (int i = 0; i < tlc.Data.Length; i++) { // get the ID of the tile uint tileID = tlc.Data[i]; // use that to get the actual index as well as the SpriteEffects int tileIndex; SpriteEffects spriteEffects; TiledHelpers.DecodeTileID(tileID, out tileIndex, out spriteEffects); // figure out which tile set has this tile index in it and grab // the texture reference and source rectangle. ExternalReference<Texture2DContent> textureContent = null; Rectangle sourceRect = new Rectangle(); // iterate all the tile sets foreach (var tileSet in input.TileSets) { // if our tile index is in this set if (tileIndex - tileSet.FirstId < tileSet.Tiles.Count) { // store the texture content and source rectangle textureContent = tileSet.Texture; sourceRect = tileSet.Tiles[(int)(tileIndex - tileSet.FirstId)].Source; // and break out of the foreach loop break; } } // now insert the tile into our output outLayer.Tiles[i] = new DemoMapTileContent { Texture = textureContent, SourceRectangle = sourceRect, SpriteEffects = spriteEffects }; } // add the layer to our output output.Layers.Add(outLayer); } } // return the output object. because we have ContentSerializerRuntimeType attributes on our // objects, we don't need a ContentTypeWriter and can just use the automatic serialization. return output; } } } TiledLib contains a large amount of files including MapContent.cs using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Globalization; using System.Xml; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline; namespace TiledLib { public enum Orientation : byte { Orthogonal, Isometric, } public class MapContent { public string Filename; public string Directory; public string Version = string.Empty; public Orientation Orientation; public int Width; public int Height; public int TileWidth; public int TileHeight; public PropertyCollection Properties = new PropertyCollection(); public List<TileSetContent> TileSets = new List<TileSetContent>(); public List<LayerContent> Layers = new List<LayerContent>(); public MapContent(XmlDocument document, ContentImporterContext context) { XmlNode mapNode = document["map"]; Version = mapNode.Attributes["version"].Value; Orientation = (Orientation)Enum.Parse(typeof(Orientation), mapNode.Attributes["orientation"].Value, true); Width = int.Parse(mapNode.Attributes["width"].Value, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture); Height = int.Parse(mapNode.Attributes["height"].Value, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture); TileWidth = int.Parse(mapNode.Attributes["tilewidth"].Value, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture); TileHeight = int.Parse(mapNode.Attributes["tileheight"].Value, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture); XmlNode propertiesNode = document.SelectSingleNode("map/properties"); if (propertiesNode != null) { Properties = new PropertyCollection(propertiesNode, context); } foreach (XmlNode tileSet in document.SelectNodes("map/tileset")) { if (tileSet.Attributes["source"] != null) { TileSets.Add(new ExternalTileSetContent(tileSet, context)); } else { TileSets.Add(new TileSetContent(tileSet, context)); } } foreach (XmlNode layerNode in document.SelectNodes("map/layer|map/objectgroup")) { LayerContent layerContent; if (layerNode.Name == "layer") { layerContent = new TileLayerContent(layerNode, context); } else if (layerNode.Name == "objectgroup") { layerContent = new MapObjectLayerContent(layerNode, context); } else { throw new Exception("Unknown layer name: " + layerNode.Name); } // Layer names need to be unique for our lookup system, but Tiled // doesn't require unique names. string layerName = layerContent.Name; int duplicateCount = 2; // if a layer already has the same name... if (Layers.Find(l => l.Name == layerName) != null) { // figure out a layer name that does work do { layerName = string.Format("{0}{1}", layerContent.Name, duplicateCount); duplicateCount++; } while (Layers.Find(l => l.Name == layerName) != null); // log a warning for the user to see context.Logger.LogWarning(string.Empty, new ContentIdentity(), "Renaming layer \"{1}\" to \"{2}\" to make a unique name.", layerContent.Type, layerContent.Name, layerName); // save that name layerContent.Name = layerName; } Layers.Add(layerContent); } } } } I'm lost as to why this is failing. Thoughts? -- EDIT -- After playing with it a bit, I would think it has something to do with referencing the projects. I'm already referencing the TiledLib within my main windows project (TiledTest). However, this doesn't seem to make a difference. I can place the dll generated from the TiledLib project into the debug folder of TiledTest, and this causes it to generate a different error: Error loading "desert". Cannot find ContentTypeReader for Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.ExternalReference`1[Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.Graphics.Texture2DContent]. at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ContentTypeReaderManager.GetTypeReader(Type targetType, ContentReader contentReader) at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ContentTypeReaderManager.GetTypeReader(Type targetType) at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ReflectiveReaderMemberHelper..ctor(ContentTypeReaderManager manager, FieldInfo fieldInfo, PropertyInfo propertyInfo, Type memberType, Boolean canWrite) at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ReflectiveReaderMemberHelper.TryCreate(ContentTypeReaderManager manager, Type declaringType, FieldInfo fieldInfo) at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ReflectiveReader1.Initialize(ContentTypeReaderManager manager) at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ContentTypeReaderManager.ReadTypeManifest(Int32 typeCount, ContentReader contentReader) at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ContentReader.ReadHeader() at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ContentReader.ReadAsset[T]() at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ContentManager.ReadAsset[T](String assetName, Action1 recordDisposableObject) at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ContentManager.Load[T](String assetName) at TiledTest.Game1.LoadContent() in C:\My Documents\Dropbox\Visual Studio Projects\TiledTest\TiledTest\TiledTest\Game1.cs:line 51 at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game.Initialize() at TiledTest.Game1.Initialize() in C:\My Documents\Dropbox\Visual Studio Projects\TiledTest\TiledTest\TiledTest\Game1.cs:line 39 at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game.RunGame(Boolean useBlockingRun) at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game.Run() at TiledTest.Program.Main(String[] args) in C:\My Documents\Dropbox\Visual Studio Projects\TiledTest\TiledTest\TiledTest\Program.cs:line 15 This is all incredibly frustrating as the demo doesn't appear to have any special linking properties. The TiledLib I am utilizing is from Nick Gravelyn, and can be found here: https://bitbucket.org/nickgravelyn/tiledlib. The demo it comes with works fine, and yet in recreating I always run into this error.

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #039

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 FQL – Facebook Query Language Facebook list following advantages of FQL: Condensed XML reduces bandwidth and parsing costs. More complex requests can reduce the number of requests necessary. Provides a single consistent, unified interface for all of your data. It’s fun! UDF – Get the Day of the Week Function The day of the week can be retrieved in SQL Server by using the DatePart function. The value returned by the function is between 1 (Sunday) and 7 (Saturday). To convert this to a string representing the day of the week, use a CASE statement. UDF – Function to Get Previous And Next Work Day – Exclude Saturday and Sunday While reading ColdFusion blog of Ben Nadel Getting the Previous Day In ColdFusion, Excluding Saturday And Sunday, I realize that I use similar function on my SQL Server Database. This function excludes the Weekends (Saturday and Sunday), and it gets previous as well as next work day. Complete Series of SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Introduction Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 1 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 2 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 3 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers Complete List Download 2008 Introduction to Log Viewer In SQL Server all the windows event logs can be seen along with SQL Server logs. Interface for all the logs is same and can be launched from the same place. This log can be exported and filtered as well. DBCC SHRINKFILE Takes Long Time to Run If you are DBA who are involved with Database Maintenance and file group maintenance, you must have experience that many times DBCC SHRINKFILE operations takes a long time but any other operations with Database are relatively quicker. mssqlsystemresource – Resource Database The purpose of resource database is to facilitates upgrading to the new version of SQL Server without any hassle. In previous versions whenever version of SQL Server was upgraded all the previous version system objects needs to be dropped and new version system objects to be created. 2009 Puzzle – Write Script to Generate Primary Key and Foreign Key In SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), there is no option to script all the keys. If one is required to script keys they will have to manually script each key one at a time. If database has many tables, generating one key at a time can be a very intricate task. I want to throw a question to all of you if any of you have scripts for the same purpose. Maximizing View of SQL Server Management Studio – Full Screen – New Screen I had explained the following two different methods: 1) Open Results in Separate Tab - This is a very interesting method as result pan shows up in a different tab instead of the splitting screen horizontally. 2) Open SSMS in Full Screen - This works always and to its best. Not many people are aware of this method; hence, very few people use it to enhance performance. 2010 Find Queries using Parallelism from Cached Plan T-SQL script gets all the queries and their execution plan where parallelism operations are kicked up. Pay attention there is TOP 10 is used, if you have lots of transactional operations, I suggest that you change TOP 10 to TOP 50 This is the list of the all the articles in the series of computed columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Storage This article talks about how computed columns are created and why they take more storage space than before. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Performance This article talks about how PERSISTED columns give better performance than non-persisted columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Performance – Part 2 This article talks about how non-persisted columns give better performance than PERSISTED columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column and Performance – Part 3 This article talks about how Index improves the performance of Computed Columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Storage – Part 2 This article talks about how creating index on computed column does not grow the row length of table. SQL SERVER – Computed Columns – Index and Performance This article summarized all the articles related to computed columns. 2011 SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 21 of 31 What is Data Warehousing? What is Business Intelligence (BI)? What is a Dimension Table? What is Dimensional Modeling? What is a Fact Table? What are the Fundamental Stages of Data Warehousing? What are the Different Methods of Loading Dimension tables? Describes the Foreign Key Columns in Fact Table and Dimension Table? What is Data Mining? What is the Difference between a View and a Materialized View? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 22 of 31 What is OLTP? What is OLAP? What is the Difference between OLTP and OLAP? What is ODS? What is ER Diagram? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 23 of 31 What is ETL? What is VLDB? Is OLTP Database is Design Optimal for Data Warehouse? If denormalizing improves Data Warehouse Processes, then why is the Fact Table is in the Normal Form? What are Lookup Tables? What are Aggregate Tables? What is Real-Time Data-Warehousing? What are Conformed Dimensions? What is a Conformed Fact? How do you Load the Time Dimension? What is a Level of Granularity of a Fact Table? What are Non-Additive Facts? What is a Factless Facts Table? What are Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD)? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 24 of 31 What is Hybrid Slowly Changing Dimension? What is BUS Schema? What is a Star Schema? What Snow Flake Schema? Differences between the Star and Snowflake Schema? What is Difference between ER Modeling and Dimensional Modeling? What is Degenerate Dimension Table? Why is Data Modeling Important? What is a Surrogate Key? What is Junk Dimension? What is a Data Mart? What is the Difference between OLAP and Data Warehouse? What is a Cube and Linked Cube with Reference to Data Warehouse? What is Snapshot with Reference to Data Warehouse? What is Active Data Warehousing? What is the Difference between Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence? What is MDS? Explain the Paradigm of Bill Inmon and Ralph Kimball. SQL SERVER – Azure Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Paras Doshi – Day 25 of 31 Paras Doshi has submitted 21 interesting question and answers for SQL Azure. 1.What is SQL Azure? 2.What is cloud computing? 3.How is SQL Azure different than SQL server? 4.How many replicas are maintained for each SQL Azure database? 5.How can we migrate from SQL server to SQL Azure? 6.Which tools are available to manage SQL Azure databases and servers? 7.Tell me something about security and SQL Azure. 8.What is SQL Azure Firewall? 9.What is the difference between web edition and business edition? 10.How do we synchronize On Premise SQL server with SQL Azure? 11.How do we Backup SQL Azure Data? 12.What is the current pricing model of SQL Azure? 13.What is the current limitation of the size of SQL Azure DB? 14.How do you handle datasets larger than 50 GB? 15.What happens when the SQL Azure database reaches Max Size? 16.How many databases can we create in a single server? 17.How many servers can we create in a single subscription? 18.How do you improve the performance of a SQL Azure Database? 19.What is code near application topology? 20.What were the latest updates to SQL Azure service? 21.When does a workload on SQL Azure get throttled? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Malathi Mahadevan – Day 26 of 31 Malachi had asked a simple question which has several answers. Each answer makes you think and ponder about the reality of the IT world. Look at the simple question – ‘What is the toughest challenge you have faced in your present job and how did you handle it’? and its various answers. Each answer has its own story. SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Rick Morelan – Day 27 of 31 Rick Morelan of Joes2Pros has written an excellent blog post on the subject how to find top N values. Most people are fully aware of how the TOP keyword works with a SELECT statement. After years preparing so many students to pass the SQL Certification I noticed they were pretty well prepared for job interviews too. Yes, they would do well in the interview but not great. There seemed to be a few questions that would come up repeatedly for almost everyone. Rick addresses similar questions in his lucid writing skills. 2012 Observation of Top with Index and Order of Resultset SQL Server has lots of things to learn and share. It is amazing to see how people evaluate and understand different techniques and styles differently when implementing. The real reason may be absolutely different but we may blame something totally different for the incorrect results. Read the blog post to learn more. How do I Record Video and Webcast How to Convert Hex to Decimal or INT Earlier I asked regarding a question about how to convert Hex to Decimal. I promised that I will post an answer with Due Credit to the author but never got around to post a blog post around it. Read the original post over here SQL SERVER – Question – How to Convert Hex to Decimal. Query to Get Unique Distinct Data Based on Condition – Eliminate Duplicate Data from Resultset The natural reaction will be to suggest DISTINCT or GROUP BY. However, not all the questions can be solved by DISTINCT or GROUP BY. Let us see the following example, where a user wanted only latest records to be displayed. Let us see the example to understand further. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 06, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 06, 2011Popular ReleasesIIS Tuner: IIS Tuner 1.0: IIS and ASP.NET performance optimization toolMinemapper: Minemapper v0.1.6: Once again supports biomes, thanks to an updated Minecraft Biome Extractor, which added support for the new Minecraft beta v1.3 map format. Updated mcmap to support new biome format.CRM 2011 OData Query Designer: CRM 2011 OData Query Designer: The CRM 2011 OData Query Designer is a Silverlight 4 application that is packaged as a Managed CRM 2011 Solution. This tool allows you to build OData queries by selecting filter criteria, select attributes and order by attributes. The tool also allows you to Execute the query and view the ATOM and JSON data returned. The look and feel of this component will improve and new functionality will be added in the near future so please provide feedback on your experience. Import this solution int...AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.6.4: It is now possible to run the clicker anyway when it can't detect the Masteries Window Fixed a critical bug in the open file dialog Removed the resize button Some UI changes 3D camera movement is now more intuitive (Trackball rotation) When an error occurs on the clicker it will attempt to focus AutoLoLYAF.NET (aka Yet Another Forum.NET): v1.9.5.5 RTW: YAF v1.9.5.5 RTM (Date: 3/4/2011 Rev: 4742) Official Discussion Thread here: http://forum.yetanotherforum.net/yaf_postsm47149_v1-9-5-5-RTW--Date-3-4-2011-Rev-4742.aspx Changes in v1.9.5.5 Rev. #4661 - Added "Copy" function to forum administration -- Now instead of having to manually re-enter all the access masks, etc, you can just duplicate an existing forum and modify after the fact. Rev. #4642 - New Setting to Enable/Disable Last Unread posts links Rev. #4641 - Added Arabic Language t...Snippet Designer: Snippet Designer 1.3.1: Snippet Designer 1.3.1 for Visual Studio 2010This is a bug fix release. Change logFixed bug where Snippet Designer would fail if you had the most recent Productivity Power Tools installed Fixed bug where "Export as Snippet" was failing in non-english locales Fixed bug where opening a new .snippet file would fail in non-english localesChiave File Encryption: Chiave 1.0: Final Relase for Chave 1.0 Stable: Application for file encryption and decryption using 512 Bit rijndael encyrption algorithm with simple to use UI. Its written in C# and compiled in .Net version 3.5. It incorporates features of Windows 7 like Jumplists, Taskbar progress and Aero Glass. Now with added support to Windows XP! Change Log from 0.9.2 to 1.0: ==================== Added: > Added Icon Overlay for Windows 7 Taskbar Icon. >Added Thumbnail Toolbar buttons to make the navigation easier...DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.02 Beta: Major HighlightsFixed issue where "My Folder" was not available in the URL control and the Telerik HTML Editor Fixed issue where HTML Editor dialogs were not displaying correctly in alternate languages Fixed issue with Regex for email validation Fixed race condition in the core scheduler Fixed issue where editing Host page settings would result in broken host menu Fixed issue where "Apply to All Modules" setting was not propogating settings correctly. Fixed issue where browser lan...DirectQ: Release 1.8.7 (RC1): Release candidate 1 of 1.8.7GoogleTrail: TrailMap Beta 1: Trailmap beta 1 release Now we have updated custom map builder. Now we have complete gpx file editor. Now we have elevation data update service for any gpx file. (currently supports only google only).Chirpy - VS Add In For Handling Js, Css, DotLess, and T4 Files: Margogype Chirpy (ver 2.0): Chirpy loves Americans. Chirpy hates Americanos.ASP.NET: Sprite and Image Optimization Preview 3: The ASP.NET Sprite and Image Optimization framework is designed to decrease the amount of time required to request and display a page from a web server by performing a variety of optimizations on the page’s images. This is the third preview of the feature and works with ASP.NET Web Forms 4, ASP.NET MVC 3, and ASP.NET Web Pages (Razor) projects. The binaries are also available via NuGet: AspNetSprites-Core AspNetSprites-WebFormsControl AspNetSprites-MvcAndRazorHelper It includes the foll...Sandcastle Help File Builder: SHFB v1.9.2.0 Release: This release supports the Sandcastle June 2010 Release (v2.6.10621.1). It includes full support for generating, installing, and removing MS Help Viewer files. This new release is compiled under .NET 4.0, supports Visual Studio 2010 solutions and projects as documentation sources, and adds support for projects targeting the Silverlight Framework. NOTE: The included help file and the online help have not been completely updated to reflect all changes in this release. A refresh will be issue...Network Monitor Open Source Parsers: Microsoft Network Monitor Parsers 3.4.2554: The Network Monitor Parsers packages contain parsers for more than 400 network protocols, including RFC based public protocols and protocols for Microsoft products defined in the Microsoft Open Specifications for Windows and SQL Server. NetworkMonitor_Parsers.msi is the base parser package which defines parsers for commonly used public protocols and protocols for Microsoft Windows. In this release, we have added 4 new protocol parsers and updated 79 existing parsers in the NetworkMonitor_Pa...Image Resizer for Windows: Image Resizer 3 Preview 1: Prepare to have your minds blown. This is the first preview of what will eventually become 39613. There are still a lot of rough edges and plenty of areas still under construction, but for your basic needs, it should be relativly stable. Note: You will need the .NET Framework 4 installed to use this version. Below is a status report of where this release is in terms of the overall goal for version 3. If you're feeling a bit technically ambitious and want to check out some of the features th...JSON Toolkit: JSON Toolkit 1.1: updated GetAllJsonObjects() method and GetAllProperties() methods to JsonObject and Properties propertiesFacebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 1.0: Refer to http://computerbeacon.net for Documentation and Tutorial New features:added FQL support added Expires property to Api object added support for publishing to a user's friend / Facebook Page added support for posting and removing comments on posts added support for adding and removing likes on posts and comments added static methods for Page class added support for Iframe Application Tab of Facebook Page added support for obtaining the user's country, locale and age in If...ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.7.1: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager small improvements for some helpers and AjaxDropdown has Data like the Lookup except it's value gets reset and list refilled if any element from data gets changedManaged Extensibility Framework: MEF 2 Preview 3: This release aims .net 4.0 and Silverlight 4.0. Accordingly, there are two solutions files. The assemblies are named System.ComponentModel.Composition.Codeplex.dll as a way to avoid clashing with the version shipped with the 4th version of the framework. Introduced CompositionOptions to container instantiation CompositionOptions.DisableSilentRejection makes MEF throw an exception on composition errors. Useful for diagnostics Support for open generics Support for attribute-less registr...PHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.6 Production: DonationsDonate via PayPal via PayPal. If you want to, we can also add your name / company on our Donation Acknowledgements page. PEAR channelWe now also have a full PEAR channel! Here's how to use it: New installation: pear channel-discover pear.pearplex.net pear install pearplex/PHPExcel Or if you've already installed PHPExcel before: pear upgrade pearplex/PHPExcel The official page can be found at http://pearplex.net. Want to contribute?Please refer the Contribute page.New Projectsasp.net mvc 3 simple cms: asp.net mvc3 cms for learling purpose.C++ Mini Framework: C++ Mini Framework is a simple and easy to use class library in source format to quickly do things you commonly need to do in native projects with the purpose to get you started specifically targeting new C++ developers hopping you will be productive from the very start.Community Megaphone Helpers: Community Megaphone Helpers is a project intended as a means of sharing and accepting contributions for reusable Razor helper modules for functionality used in the Community Megaphone events web application, including Bing maps and more. Supports Microsoft WebMatrix & MVC 3CRM 2011 OData Query Designer: The CRM 2011 OData Query Designer is a Silverlight 4 application that is packaged as a Managed CRM 2011 Solution. The tool allows you to build OData REST queries by selecting filter criteria, select attributes and order by attributes. The tool also allows you to Execute the queryFaceted Search: Implementation of faceted (advanced) search with composite client side UI. Abstraction interfaces for intagration with different server side technologies, implementation for ASP.NET MVC. FileRenamePro: FileRenamePro makes it easier for users to rename files using advanced rules and regular expressions. It's developed in C#.GT5 Mobile: Gran-Turismo Remote Racing mobile site wrapper.KAT: KAT - Knowledge Assessment Tool is a Solution from IndERP in order to automate Performance and Process Management for a Technology/Job Oriented Companies. monopoly game: Monopoly is an open source project for educational purposes. The project will incorporate XNA, Silverlight, WCF technologies. The project will also show good design patterns considerations, and integration into Facebook App. The project will be written in C#.MuDB: MuDB is an embedded object-oriented database for the .NET Micro Framework which provides a simple yet useful interface for managing data.NDataStructure: A library providing a handful of useful data structures omitted from the .NET framework.Set NuGet version number: A simple command line tool that makes it easy to set the version number within a NuGet .nuspec package configuration file. This is useful for when you want to automatically update and publish a NuGet package from your build system.Sightreader: Small application to aid in the wrote learning of basic musical notation.SSAS Operations Templates: SSAS Operations Templates includes SSIS packages, scripts and code samples for automating maintenance of SSAS in a production environment. Includes operations such as backup the current state of cube designs in production, scripting paritition creation, etc.Team Run Log: Team Run LogTEDHelper: Download TED movie's subtitle. ?? TED ?????。testprojectit339: project339Ultimate Resume Repository: A class library and application for storing resumes of multiple people with the ability to export a targeted resume in various, configurable formats. Further additions may include cover letters, browser add-ons to populate applications, job search engine integration, etc...Umbraco: Inspired DataTypes: New datatypes that are not in the default install to make Umbraco have some new controls such as Content/Media Treeview, Content/Media Drop Down List with Treeview. Controls have options to restrict DocumentTypes or MediaType and the start location to retreive fromUsing different schemas in the same Orchestration Receive Port: Using different schemas in the same Orchestration Receive PortWF4Host: Examples in re-hosting Workflow 4 designer.WMP Hotkeys: WMP Hotkeys is a windows media player plugin that enable users to use VLC player like keyboard shortcuts(e.g SPACE to play/pause) in Windows Media Player.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, July 03, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, July 03, 2012Popular ReleasesMini SQL Query: Mini SQL Query: Just a bug fix release for when the connections try to refresh after an edit. Make sure you read the http://pksoftware.net/Content/MiniSqlQuery/Help/MiniSqlQueryQuickStart.docx for an introduction.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.58: Fix for Issue #18296: provide "ALL" value to the -ignore switch to ignore all error and warning messages. Fix for issue #18293: if encountering EOF before a function declaration or expression is properly closed, throw an appropriate error and don't crash. Adjust the variable-renaming algorithm so it's very specific when renaming variables with the same number of references so a single source file ends up with the same minified names on different platforms. add the ability to specify kno...LogExpert: 1.4 build 4566: This release for the 1.4 version line contains various fixes which have been made some times ago. Until now these fixes were only available in the 1.5 alpha versions. It also contains a fix for: 710. Column finder (press F8 to show) Terminal server issues: Multiple sessions with same user should work now Settings Export/Import available via Settings Dialog still incomple (e.g. tab colors are not saved) maybe I change the file format one day no command line support yet (for importin...DynamicToSql: DynamicToSql 1.0.0 (beta): 1.0.0 beta versionCommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8.5 - Final Release: A collection of very reusable code and components in C# 4.0 ranging from ActiveRecord, Csv, Command Line Parsing, Configuration, Holiday Calendars, Logging, Authentication, and much more. FluentscriptCommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8 contains a scripting language called FluentScript. Releases notes for FluentScript located at http://fluentscript.codeplex.com/wikipage?action=Edit&title=Release%20Notes&referringTitle=Documentation Fluentscript - 0.9.8.5 - Final ReleaseApplication: FluentScript Versio...SharePoint 2010 Metro UI: SharePoint 2010 Metro UI8: Please review the documentation link for how to install. Installation takes some basic knowledge of how to upload and edit SharePoint Artifact files. Please view the discussions tab for ongoing FAQsBack-Propagation Neural Networks Simulation: Back-Propagation Neural Networks Simulation: This is the first release application for Back-Propagation Neural Networks Simulation. It is required .NET Framework 4.0. Check this to use http://backpronn.codeplex.comnopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.60: Highlight features & improvements: • Significant performance optimization. • Use AJAX for adding products to the cart. • New flyout mini-shopping cart. • Auto complete suggestions for product searching. • Full-Text support. • EU cookie law support. To see the full list of fixes and changes please visit the release notes page (http://www.nopCommerce.com/releasenotes.aspx).THE NVL Maker: The NVL Maker Ver 3.51: http://download.codeplex.com/Download?ProjectName=nvlmaker&DownloadId=371510 ????：http://115.com/file/beoef05k#THE-NVL-Maker-ver3.51-sim.7z ????：http://www.mediafire.com/file/6tqdwj9jr6eb9qj/THENVLMakerver3.51tra.7z ======================================== ???? ======================================== 3.51 beta ???： ·?????????????????????? ·?????????，?????????0，?????????????????????? ·??????????????????????????? ·?????????????TJS????（EXP??） ·??4:3???，???????????????，??????????? ·?????????...????: ????2.0.3: 1、???????????。 2、????????。 3、????????????。 4、bug??，????。Generic enumeration: Enumeration.zip: Generic enumeration dll with a test console application.Apworks: Apworks (v2.5.4563.21309, 30JUN2012): Installation Prerequisites: 1. Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 SP1 2. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 SP1 3. Other required libraries & assemblies are now included in the installation package so no more prerequisites needed Functional Updates: 1. Refactor the identity field of the IEntity interface from 'Id' to 'ID' 2. Changed the MySql Storage to use the MySql NetConnector version 6.4.4. 3. Implemented the paging support for the repositories. 4. Added the Eager Loading Property specification t...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5 Intrepid: Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, download the Linux package. Try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your own for Linux (source included) You should delete /home/config/saved.cfg to reset binds/other stuff If you us...WallSwitch: WallSwitch 1.0.4: Version 1.0.4 Changes: Changes in previous version broke hotkey support; fixed this. When minimizing the window to tray, if there are unsaved changes, then prompt to save first. When changing the path on a folder location, reset the file list. Fixed app not shutting down properly when closed externally. Improved installer to shut down app instead of requiring reboot. Clear History action now clears all history, rather than just the current theme.List Form Manipulation Framework (LFMF) for SharePoint 2010: LFMF v1.1: Added new SPFieldIO field type to reference filenamesSystem.Net.FtpClient: API Reference 2012.06.29: Updated with new file listing example as well as any API changes since the last release.Magelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 2.0: User Right Licensing ContentType version 2.0.267.1Designing Windows 8 Applications with C# and XAML: Chapters 1 - 7 Release Preview: Source code for all examples from Chapters 1 - 7 for the Release PreviewSQL Server FineBuild: Version 3.1.0: Top SQL Server FineBuild Version 3.1.0This is the stable version of FineBuild for SQL Server 2012, 2008 R2, 2008 and 2005 Documentation FineBuild Wiki containing details of the FineBuild process Known Issues Limitations with this release FineBuild V3.1.0 Release Contents List of changes included in this release Please DonateFineBuild is free, but please donate what you think FineBuild is worth as everything goes to charity. Tearfund is one of the UK's leading relief and de...EasySL: RapidSL V2: Rewrite RapidSL UI Framework, Using Silverlight 5.0 EF4.1 Code First Ria Service SP2 + Lastest Silverlight Toolkit.New Projects2DoTasks: This is a simple Dnn Module for Project/Tasks/time management. I hope you all found it useful.AOPify: AOPify lightweight fluent AOP framework that provides basic AOP features both before,after,onerror etc with fluent syntax..Capacitacion: This is my first Project - mvillasecoCLFiling: Client filing with search functionsContoso University MVC NTier: This is first version reference application for ASP.NET MVC NTier.DynamicToSql: DynamicToSql is a lightweight API that maps dynamically typed entities to a database and vice versa. It works against any database that has ADO.NET drivers.Enlightener: Deobfuscator target at Confuser. Child project of http://netdeob0.codeplex.com/Excel Adjacency List to Dot: Excel add-in to generate graphs in GraphViz dot file format from an adjacency list in Excel.FFXIV Job Bar: This is a little utility to help with Job changes in FFXIV. Gallery: A simple javascript/jquery based image gallery. Just include the Gallery.js and jquery in your html page.Grocery Droid: Transfer your P.C. designed shopping list to androidLOCOL: Locol is a internet medium to provide local information and services to district local residents.Meter: Log communal meters dataNthDownload: NthDownload is yet another attempt at a download manager.Paginacion de un objeto en un gridview: Como paginar un objeto con multiples resultados en un gridviewRunman game: "Runman" is port of "Pac-Man" game writing on C# and XNASB01: Project will be a startup for a warehouse management and easy to extend by any developer. Plug n play kind of setup.SC2Ranks API: A .NET 4.0 SC2Ranks APISharePoint 2010 Cookie Approval Control: If you need to comply with EU cookie law this control displays a message to each user that cookies are in use on the site and allows them to accept the messageSharePoint Advanced Visibility Options: Advanced Visibility Options - is an extension to SharePoint providing configurable List Field Iterator with PowerShell scripts.smtools2: Add-on tools for Service MonsterSparqube Picture Column Lite for SharePoint 2010: Sparqube Picture Column Lite is simple component for uploading and displaying images in SharePoint 2010 lists.SpudloFizzBuzz: This project is part of a job application process.SwiftMVVM: An extremely fast, easily refactorable implementation of INotifyPropertyChanged/ing, using dynamic proxy generation, as well as a robust change tracking engine.ZPL Converter: ZPL Converter converts Zune Playlists (.ZPL) easily and fast into other playlist formats, e.g. '.M3U' or '.PLS'.

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• Table Variables: an empirical approach.

  - by Phil Factor

  It isn’t entirely a pleasant experience to publish an article only to have it described on Twitter as ‘Horrible’, and to have it criticized on the MVP forum. When this happened to me in the aftermath of publishing my article on Temporary tables recently, I was taken aback, because these critics were experts whose views I respect. What was my crime? It was, I think, to suggest that, despite the obvious quirks, it was best to use Table Variables as a first choice, and to use local Temporary Tables if you hit problems due to these quirks, or if you were doing complex joins using a large number of rows. What are these quirks? Well, table variables have advantages if they are used sensibly, but this requires some awareness by the developer about the potential hazards and how to avoid them. You can be hit by a badly-performing join involving a table variable. Table Variables are a compromise, and this compromise doesn’t always work out well. Explicit indexes aren’t allowed on Table Variables, so one cannot use covering indexes or non-unique indexes. The query optimizer has to make assumptions about the data rather than using column distribution statistics when a table variable is involved in a join, because there aren’t any column-based distribution statistics on a table variable. It assumes a reasonably even distribution of data, and is likely to have little idea of the number of rows in the table variables that are involved in queries. However complex the heuristics that are used might be in determining the best way of executing a SQL query, and they most certainly are, the Query Optimizer is likely to fail occasionally with table variables, under certain circumstances, and produce a Query Execution Plan that is frightful. The experienced developer or DBA will be on the lookout for this sort of problem. In this blog, I’ll be expanding on some of the tests I used when writing my article to illustrate the quirks, and include a subsequent example supplied by Kevin Boles. A simplified example. We’ll start out by illustrating a simple example that shows some of these characteristics. We’ll create two tables filled with random numbers and then see how many matches we get between the two tables. We’ll forget indexes altogether for this example, and use heaps. We’ll try the same Join with two table variables, two table variables with OPTION (RECOMPILE) in the JOIN clause, and with two temporary tables. It is all a bit jerky because of the granularity of the timing that isn’t actually happening at the millisecond level (I used DATETIME). However, you’ll see that the table variable is outperforming the local temporary table up to 10,000 rows. Actually, even without a use of the OPTION (RECOMPILE) hint, it is doing well. What happens when your table size increases? The table variable is, from around 30,000 rows, locked into a very bad execution plan unless you use OPTION (RECOMPILE) to provide the Query Analyser with a decent estimation of the size of the table. However, if it has the OPTION (RECOMPILE), then it is smokin’. Well, up to 120,000 rows, at least. It is performing better than a Temporary table, and in a good linear fashion. What about mixed table joins, where you are joining a temporary table to a table variable? You’d probably expect that the query analyzer would throw up its hands and produce a bad execution plan as if it were a table variable. After all, it knows nothing about the statistics in one of the tables so how could it do any better? Well, it behaves as if it were doing a recompile. And an explicit recompile adds no value at all. (we just go up to 45000 rows since we know the bigger picture now)   Now, if you were new to this, you might be tempted to start drawing conclusions. Beware! We’re dealing with a very complex beast: the Query Optimizer. It can come up with surprises What if we change the query very slightly to insert the results into a Table Variable? We change nothing else and just measure the execution time of the statement as before. Suddenly, the table variable isn’t looking so much better, even taking into account the time involved in doing the table insert. OK, if you haven’t used OPTION (RECOMPILE) then you’re toast. Otherwise, there isn’t much in it between the Table variable and the temporary table. The table variable is faster up to 8000 rows and then not much in it up to 100,000 rows. Past the 8000 row mark, we’ve lost the advantage of the table variable’s speed. Any general rule you may be formulating has just gone for a walk. What we can conclude from this experiment is that if you join two table variables, and can’t use constraints, you’re going to need that Option (RECOMPILE) hint. Count Dracula and the Horror Join. These tables of integers provide a rather unreal example, so let’s try a rather different example, and get stuck into some implicit indexing, by using constraints. What unusual words are contained in the book ‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker? Here we get a table of all the common words in the English language (60,387 of them) and put them in a table. We put them in a Table Variable with the word as a primary key, a Table Variable Heap and a Table Variable with a primary key. We then take all the distinct words used in the book ‘Dracula’ (7,558 of them). We then create a table variable and insert into it all those uncommon words that are in ‘Dracula’. i.e. all the words in Dracula that aren’t matched in the list of common words. To do this we use a left outer join, where the right-hand value is null. The results show a huge variation, between the sublime and the gorblimey. If both tables contain a Primary Key on the columns we join on, and both are Table Variables, it took 33 Ms. If one table contains a Primary Key, and the other is a heap, and both are Table Variables, it took 46 Ms. If both Table Variables use a unique constraint, then the query takes 36 Ms. If neither table contains a Primary Key and both are Table Variables, it took 116383 Ms. Yes, nearly two minutes!! If both tables contain a Primary Key, one is a Table Variables and the other is a temporary table, it took 113 Ms. If one table contains a Primary Key, and both are Temporary Tables, it took 56 Ms.If both tables are temporary tables and both have primary keys, it took 46 Ms. Here we see table variables which are joined on their primary key again enjoying a  slight performance advantage over temporary tables. Where both tables are table variables and both are heaps, the query suddenly takes nearly two minutes! So what if you have two heaps and you use option Recompile? If you take the rogue query and add the hint, then suddenly, the query drops its time down to 76 Ms. If you add unique indexes, then you've done even better, down to half that time. Here are the text execution plans.So where have we got to? Without drilling down into the minutiae of the execution plans we can begin to create a hypothesis. If you are using table variables, and your tables are relatively small, they are faster than temporary tables, but as the number of rows increases you need to do one of two things: either you need to have a primary key on the column you are using to join on, or else you need to use option (RECOMPILE) If you try to execute a query that is a join, and both tables are table variable heaps, you are asking for trouble, well- slow queries, unless you give the table hint once the number of rows has risen past a point (30,000 in our first example, but this varies considerably according to context). Kevin’s Skew In describing the table-size, I used the term ‘relatively small’. Kevin Boles produced an interesting case where a single-row table variable produces a very poor execution plan when joined to a very, very skewed table. In the original, pasted into my article as a comment, a column consisted of 100000 rows in which the key column was one number (1) . To this was added eight rows with sequential numbers up to 9. When this was joined to a single-tow Table Variable with a key of 2 it produced a bad plan. This problem is unlikely to occur in real usage, and the Query Optimiser team probably never set up a test for it. Actually, the skew can be slightly less extreme than Kevin made it. The following test showed that once the table had 54 sequential rows in the table, then it adopted exactly the same execution plan as for the temporary table and then all was well. Undeniably, real data does occasionally cause problems to the performance of joins in Table Variables due to the extreme skew of the distribution. We've all experienced Perfectly Poisonous Table Variables in real live data. As in Kevin’s example, indexes merely make matters worse, and the OPTION (RECOMPILE) trick does nothing to help. In this case, there is no option but to use a temporary table. However, one has to note that once the slight de-skew had taken place, then the plans were identical across a huge range. Conclusions Where you need to hold intermediate results as part of a process, Table Variables offer a good alternative to temporary tables when used wisely. They can perform faster than a temporary table when the number of rows is not great. For some processing with huge tables, they can perform well when only a clustered index is required, and when the nature of the processing makes an index seek very effective. Table Variables are scoped to the batch or procedure and are unlikely to hang about in the TempDB when they are no longer required. They require no explicit cleanup. Where the number of rows in the table is moderate, you can even use them in joins as ‘Heaps’, unindexed. Beware, however, since, as the number of rows increase, joins on Table Variable heaps can easily become saddled by very poor execution plans, and this must be cured either by adding constraints (UNIQUE or PRIMARY KEY) or by adding the OPTION (RECOMPILE) hint if this is impossible. Occasionally, the way that the data is distributed prevents the efficient use of Table Variables, and this will require using a temporary table instead. Tables Variables require some awareness by the developer about the potential hazards and how to avoid them. If you are not prepared to do any performance monitoring of your code or fine-tuning, and just want to pummel out stuff that ‘just runs’ without considering namby-pamby stuff such as indexes, then stick to Temporary tables. If you are likely to slosh about large numbers of rows in temporary tables without considering the niceties of processing just what is required and no more, then temporary tables provide a safer and less fragile means-to-an-end for you.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 18, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 18, 2012Popular ReleasesRiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: RiP-Ripper 2.9.28: changes NEW: Added Support for "PixHub.eu" linksSmartNet: V1.0.0.0: DY SmartNet ?????? V1.0callisto: callisto 2.0.21: Added an option to disable local host detection.Javascript .NET: Javascript .NET v0.6: Upgraded to the latest stable branch of v8 (/tags/3.9.18), and switched to using their scons build system. We no longer include v8 source code as part of this project's source code. Simultaneous multithreaded use of v8 now supported (v8 Isolates), although different contexts may not share objects or call each other. 64-bit .Net 4.0 DLL now included. (Download now includes x86 and x64 for both .Net 3.5 and .Net 4.0.)MyRouter (Virtual WiFi Router): MyRouter 1.0.6: This release should be more stable there were a few bug fixes including the x64 issue as well as an error popping up when MyRouter started this was caused by a NULL valuePulse: 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...ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap: ArcGIS Editor for OSM 2.0 Release Candidate: Your feedback is welcome - and this is your last chance to get your fixes in for this version! Includes installer for both Feature Server extension and Desktop extension, enhanced functionality for the Desktop tools, and enhanced built-in Javascript Editor for the Feature Server component. This release candidate includes fixes to beta 4 that accommodate domain users for setting up the Server Component, and fixes for reporting/uploading references tracked in the revision table. See Code In-P...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 v1.2.1Minor updates to setup experience: Check for WebPI before install Dependency Check updated to support the following VS 11 and VS 2010 SKUs Ultimate, Premium, Professional and Express Certs Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Preview Release v1.2.0 Please download this for Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 functionality on Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The core features of the toolkit include:...Facebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 3.0: ships with JSON Toolkit v3.0, offering parse speed up to 10 times of last version supports Facebook's new auth dialog supports new extend access token endpoint new example Page Tab app filter Graph Api connections using dates fixed bugs in Page Tab appsCODE 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...New Projects4sr4ss1: Assignment 1 WDT Due date: 26 March 2012ADLN: Project to ADLNbook2guest: book2guestBundlingTweaks: BundlingTweaks makes it easier for developers to develop ASP.NET MVC 4 projects with Bundling/Minification support. You can now take advantage of Bundling, but still see non-minified JavaScript when debugging.COBOL SCREENSAVER: This project will show how to create a Windows screen saver using 1) an object-oriented isCOBOL GUI application, 2) an OpenCobol Windows native executable wrapper for the isCOBOL GUI, and 3) XML, XSLT, HTML5, and a Java FX 2.0 web browser component. Release 0.1 consists of a Java GUI application, the OpenCobol wrapper, and a README file detailing usage, system requirements, and installation of the recommended OpenCobol binaries for Windows.Colorado Time System Get CTS Results to Text File: This application will query a Colorado Time System 5, retrieve the lane results by event and heat. These can then be written to a text file.CommonEventLog: This project provides a simple means of logging messages and exceptions to a custom event log.ContainerTrack: Application for tracking container locationContent Widgets Orchard module: This Orchard module makes it possible to add arbitrary widgets to content types (with the option to disable per item).Cup of Badminton: This is a application for draw cup of badminton. You can insert, edit and delete player. You can choose many variant of draw.FSGREE: FSGREEKeepSafety: ??、??、?????????LibGrafx: LibGrafix is a C++ DLL that contains several classes useful when developing computer graphics applications, particularly OpenGL applications, in the Windows environment. It also includes a class that loads and displays the ModelX format exported by the XNA Model Viewer program. Linq to SQL code generator for Windows Phone: Linq to SQL code generator for Windows Phone is an add-in for Visual Studio 2010 or later to generate the Linq to SQL classes from a DBML diagram. Offline Navigation for Windows Phone 7: This is a simple implementation of offline navigation for windows phone 7 with map offset adjustment support.PayrollSystemRedux: Payroll case study book Robert Martin (Agile PPP in C#)PhoneFlipMenu Control for Windows Phone: A control that mimics the behaviour of the Email app's reply/reply all/forward menu.QTscenarist: QTscenarist makes it easier for Synfig animation to create Synfig movies. You can write scenaries and create your movie with it. It's developed in QT. recycle: This is a recycle web pageSharePoint 2010 Accordian Launch: SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint Foundation Quick Launch Accordian Solution.SharePoint 2010 JavaScript Registration Panel: The SharePoint 2010 JavaScript Registration Panel allows you to add JavaScript files to a site collection without SharePoint 2010 Designer intervention. This is helpful in scenarios where SharePoint Designer 2010 is disabled globally, but you have to add some JavaScript files (e.g. jQuery) to your site collection for every page load. The aim of this project is to provide following features: - load JavaScript files on every page load of your site collection - define the sequence for loadi...Sistema de Gestion Escolar: Projecto final monografico universidad dominicana O&MSmartNet: DYSmartNet????????????????????????。???TCP??，??????????，??????????... solution: solution team explorerTanmiaGrp: This is the tanmia base project library.VideoMobileSteraming: Will Update soonXNASter: XNASter is a short library that allows beginner developers to create simple XNA games. Right now it is in the very early stages of development. Included are the following parts: * 2D generic sprite-based object that supports movement, acceleration, etc. In the future, we are also planning to support: * KinectSkeleton controller Together with the project, there are also a few sample games that show how to use it.???WP: HateCoWP is Hatena Coco Client.???: ????????????????????。

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, July 04, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, July 04, 2012Popular ReleasesMVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 2.2.0: Added Modified all Mv4 related features to conform with the Mvc4 RC Now all items controls accept any IEnumerable<T>(before just List<T> were accepted by most of controls) retrievalManager class that retrieves automatically data from a data source whenever it catchs events triggered by filtering, sorting, and paging controls move method to the updatesManager to move one child objects from a father to another. The move operation can be undone like the insert, update and delete operatio...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.6: 2012.07.03 Ver5.6.6 (1) ???????????ftp://?????????、????LIST?????Mini SQL Query: Mini SQL Query (v1.0.68.441): Just a bug fix release for when the connections try to refresh after an edit. Make sure you read the Quickstart for an introduction.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.58: Fix for Issue #18296: provide "ALL" value to the -ignore switch to ignore all error and warning messages. Fix for issue #18293: if encountering EOF before a function declaration or expression is properly closed, throw an appropriate error and don't crash. Adjust the variable-renaming algorithm so it's very specific when renaming variables with the same number of references so a single source file ends up with the same minified names on different platforms. add the ability to specify kno...LogExpert: 1.4 build 4566: This release for the 1.4 version line contains various fixes which have been made some times ago. Until now these fixes were only available in the 1.5 alpha versions. It also contains a fix for: 710. Column finder (press F8 to show) Terminal server issues: Multiple sessions with same user should work now Settings Export/Import available via Settings Dialog still incomple (e.g. tab colors are not saved) maybe I change the file format one day no command line support yet (for importin...DynamicToSql: DynamicToSql 1.0.0 (beta): 1.0.0 beta versionCommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8.5 - Final Release: A collection of very reusable code and components in C# 4.0 ranging from ActiveRecord, Csv, Command Line Parsing, Configuration, Holiday Calendars, Logging, Authentication, and much more. FluentscriptCommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8 contains a scripting language called FluentScript. Releases notes for FluentScript located at http://fluentscript.codeplex.com/wikipage?action=Edit&title=Release%20Notes&referringTitle=Documentation Fluentscript - 0.9.8.5 - Final ReleaseApplication: FluentScript Versio...SharePoint 2010 Metro UI: SharePoint 2010 Metro UI8: Please review the documentation link for how to install. Installation takes some basic knowledge of how to upload and edit SharePoint Artifact files. Please view the discussions tab for ongoing FAQsnopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.60: Highlight features & improvements: • Significant performance optimization. • Use AJAX for adding products to the cart. • New flyout mini-shopping cart. • Auto complete suggestions for product searching. • Full-Text support. • EU cookie law support. To see the full list of fixes and changes please visit the release notes page (http://www.nopCommerce.com/releasenotes.aspx).THE NVL Maker: The NVL Maker Ver 3.51: http://download.codeplex.com/Download?ProjectName=nvlmaker&DownloadId=371510 ????：http://115.com/file/beoef05k#THE-NVL-Maker-ver3.51-sim.7z ????：http://www.mediafire.com/file/6tqdwj9jr6eb9qj/THENVLMakerver3.51tra.7z ======================================== ???? ======================================== 3.51 beta ???： ·?????????????????????? ·?????????，?????????0，?????????????????????? ·??????????????????????????? ·?????????????TJS????（EXP??） ·??4:3???，???????????????，??????????? ·?????????...????: ????2.0.3: 1、???????????。 2、????????。 3、????????????。 4、bug??，????。AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5 Intrepid: Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, download the Linux package. Try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your own for Linux (source included) You should delete /home/config/saved.cfg to reset binds/other stuff If you us...Magelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 2.0: User Right Licensing ContentType version 2.0.267.1Bongiozzo Photosite: Alpha: Just first stable releaseMDS MODELING WORKBOOK: MDS MODELING WORKBOOK: This is the initial release. Works with SQL 2008 R2 Master Data Services. Also works with SQL 2012 Master Data Services but has not been completely tested.Logon Screen Launcher: Logon Screen Launcher 1.3.0: FIXED - Minor handle leak issueBF3Rcon.NET: BF3Rcon.NET 25.0: This update brings the library up to server release R25, which includes the few additions from R21. There are also some minor bug fixes and a couple of other minor changes. In addition, many methods now take advantage of the RconResult class, which will give error information on failed requests; this replaces the bool returned by many methods. There is also an implicit conversion from RconResult to bool (both of which were true on success), so old code shouldn't break. ChangesAdded Player.S...TelerikMvcGridCustomBindingHelper: Version 1.0.15.183-RC: TelerikMvcGridCustomBindingHelper 1.0.15.183 RC This is a RC (release candidate) version, please test and report any error or problem you encounter. Warning: There are many changes in this release and some of them break backward compatibility. Release notes (since 0.5.0-Alpha version): Custom aggregates via an inherited class or inline fluent function Ignore group on aggregates for better performance Projections (restriction of the database columns queried) for an even better performa...PunkBuster™ Screenshot Viewer: PunkBuster™ Screenshot Viewer 1.0: First release of PunkBuster™ Screenshot ViewerDesigning Windows 8 Applications with C# and XAML: Chapters 1 - 7 Release Preview: Source code for all examples from Chapters 1 - 7 for the Release PreviewNew ProjectsAzureMVC4: hiBoonCraft Launcher: BoonCraft Launcher V2.0 See http://352n.dyndns.org for more info on BoonCraftC# to Javascript: Have you ever wanted to automagically have access to the enums you use in your .NET code in the javascript code you're writing for client-side?CMCIC payment gateway provider for NB_Store: CMCIC payment gateway provider for NB_StoreCOFE2 : Cloud Over IFileSystemInfo Entries Extensions: COFE2 enable user to access the user-defined file system on local or foreign computer, using a System.IO-like interface or a RESTful Web API.Directory access via LDAP: .NET library for managing a directory via LDAP.E-mail processing: .NET library for processing e-mail.FAST Search for SharePoint Query Statistics: F4SP Query Statistics scans the FAST for SharePoint Query Logs and presents statistics based on the logs. Total Queries, Top Queries, Queries per user etc...File Backup: This project is an open source windows azure cloud backup win forms application.HanxiaoFu's personal: This will help synchronizing my work done in home and at workLifekostyuk: This is my first project on TFSNet WebSocket Server: NetWebSocket Server is c# based hight performance and scalable Websocket server. Posroid for Windows 8: ?? ??????? ????? ?? ?? ????? ??? ?? ??? ??? ???? ? ? ???, ???8??? ???? ?? ??? ? ? ??? ??? ????? ?????.PowerRules: PowerRules is a group of scripts that help you audit your farm for Configuration Drift (Configuration changes over time)Projet Niloc TETRAS: Student Project to know how to manage and coordinating a team.proyectobanco: PROFE AQUI ESTA EL PROYECTO DISCULPE NOMAS ATT SANCANsheetengine - Isometric HTML5 JavaScript Display Engine: Sheetengine is an HTML5 canvas based isometric display engine for JavaScript. It features textures, z-ordering, shadows, intersecting sheets, object movements.Shiny2: GTS Spoofing program for Generation IV and V of Pokemon.SMS Backup & Restore XML to MySQL: The purpose is to take the XML files created by SMS Backup and Restore (Android) and importing them via a Dropbox/Google Drive synch into a MySQL dbStundenplan TSST: App für Windows Phone um die einzelnen Vertretungspläne der technischen Schule Steinfurt anzusehenswalmacenamiento: Proyecto para el almacenamiento de registrosTFS Work Item Association Check-in Policy: This policy requires TFS source control check-ins to be associated with a single, in-progress task that is assigned to you.TurboTemplate: TurboTemplate is a fast source code generation helper which quick transforms between your SQL database and some templated text of your choice.visblog: this is short summary of my projectVisualHG_fliedonion: This is fork of VisualHG. This will used by improve VisualHG for me. support only Visual Studio 2008 (not SP1). Wave Tag Library: A very simple and modest .wav file tag library. With this library you can load .wav files, edit the tags (equivalent to mp3's ID3 tags) and save back to file.Wordpress: WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.ZEAL-C02 Bluetooth module Driver for Netduino: A class library for the .NET Micro Framework to support the Zeal-C02 Bluetooth module for Netduino.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 19, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 19, 2012Popular ReleasesZXMAK2: Version 2.6.1.8: - fix download links with badly formatted content-disposition - little refactoring for AY8910 code - added Sprinter emulation pluginGhostBuster: GhostBuster Setup (91520): Added WMI based RestorePoint support Removed test code from program.cs Improved counting. Changed color of ghosted but unfiltered devices. Changed HwEntries into an ObservableCollection. Added Properties Form. Added Properties MenuItem to Context Menu. Added Hide Unfiltered Devices to Context Menu. If you like this tool, leave me a note, rate this project or write a review or Donate to Ghostbuster. Donate to GhostbusterProject Tracy: Tracy 2.1 Stable (2.1.4): 2.1.4 ???：?dll?????Bin??? ??AppData??????ACCESS 2007?SQL Server2008??、??、????????: DataPie_V3.2: V3.2, 2012?5?19? ????ORACLE??????。AvalonDock: AvalonDock 2.0.0795: Welcome to the Beta release of AvalonDock 2.0 After 4 months of hard work I'm ready to upload the beta version of AvalonDock 2.0. This new version boosts a lot of new features and now is stable enough to be deployed in production scenarios. For this reason I encourage everyone is using AD 1.3 or earlier to upgrade soon to this new version. The final version is scheduled for the end of June. What is included in Beta: 1) Stability! thanks to all users contribution I’ve corrected a lot of issues...myCollections: Version 2.1.0.0: New in this version : Improved UI New Metro Skin Improved Performance Added Proxy Settings New Music and Books Artist detail Lot of Bug FixingfastJSON: v1.9.8: v1.9.8 - added DeepCopy(obj) and DeepCopy<T>(obj) - refactored code to JSONParameters and removed the JSON overloads - added support to serialize anonymous types (deserialize is not possible at the moment) - bug fix $types output with non object rootAspxCommerce: 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 selectedMapWindow 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...Image Popup Module dotnetnuke: Image Pop-up In HTML Module Source: Image Pop-up In HTML Module is a module to show pop ups Please Follow the steps to use this module 1 Install the module and drop on your page where you want to show the pop up 2 In your HTML module editor add the token "{imagepopup}" 3 In your HTML module editor add class="popup-img" in your images which you want to show in popup.FileZilla Server Config File Editor: FileZillaConfig 1.0.0.1: Sorry for not including the config file with the previous release. It was a "lost in translation" when I was moving my local repository to CodePlex repository. Sorry for the rookie mistake.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 HTTPACCEPTEXCODINGNew ProjectsAsset Tracking: Bespoke inhouse solution for managing asset's within the organisation.Chsword Project: Chsword project is a collection of .net project.conjee: Conjee UI DesignDealKhuyenMaiV2.com: d? án web cu?i kì nhóm g2Devtm.ServiceModel: ServiceFactory The library provides easy access to all your services through the helper ServiceFactory. This way to consume your services requires absolutely no place the call to service in a block (try / finally) because all proxies provided by the helper "ServiceFactory" are dynamically generated for the contract as a parameter. This block is built into the code provided for each method.Dream Runtime Analyzer: Dream Runtime Analyzer is a tool made to help Furcadia dreamweavers test their dreams for bandwidth usage and optimize their dragonspeak performance. It allows you to see which DragonSpeak lines were transmitted the most and thus tell you which areas need to be optimized.DynamicsNAV Protocol Handler: Target of this project is to develop DYNAMICSNAV protocol handler which will solve problems of side-by-side installation of many NAV versions on one PC. Today only one version could be handled through the hyperlinks. from.js: Powerful and High-speed LINQ implementation for JavaScriptFurcadia Installer Browser: A program that can access files within a Furcadia installer and allow the user to open them from within the install package, extract some or all the files inside the package, check data integrity of each file and compare the content of two installers.Furcadia Map Normalizer: Furcadia Map Normalizer is a small tool that helps recover a damaged Furcadia map after a live-edit bug. It restores out-of-range elements within back to zero.Homework: TSU students in action :DHRASP: human resourcesiseebooks: this is book s website for self developmentITORG CMS: ITORG Simple Content Managment System ASP.NET MVC 3Kinesthesia (Kinect-based MIDI controller): A simple yet highly configurable Kinect-based MIDI controller with MIDI playback, gesture recognition and voice control.LameBT: A .NET Bluetooth 2.0 stack (HOST and ACL only) based on LibUSB, supporting multiple USB bluetooth dongles.pongISEN: projet de l'ISEN pongRadminPassword: ????????? ??? ??????????????? ????? ??????? ? ????????? ????????? ?????????? ?????????? ?? Radmin. A program to automatically enter the passwords in the famous PC remote control software Radmin.RicciWebSiteSystem: soon websiteScripted Deployment of a System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Secondary Site: In System Center 2012 Configuration Manager, you can no longer deploy a secondary site server using Setup (wizard or scripted). Instead, you must use the Configuration Manager console to create a new secondary site. This is less than ideal if you want to deploy several secondary sites or want to automate the process for any other reason. This project provides a script that will allow you to install a new System Center 2012 Configuration Manager secondary site server without using the Con...Snapshot: Snap is a screen and desktop capture application that automatically uploads your screen captures to a remote image host and leaves you their direct links.SOA based Open Source E-Commerce System: This project will be a new Ecommerce System, based on service oriented architecture.Symphony Framework: The Symphony Framework is a set of classes and capabilities that are designed to assist the Synergy/DE developer enhance the power of the Synergy .NET development environment and migrate their traditional Synergy/DE applications to a Windows Presentation Foundation desktop user experience.testddgit0518201201: ghtestddtfs0518201201: ertesttom05072012git01: fsdfdstesttom05182012git01: fdstesttom05182012hg01: Summarytesttom05182012tfs01: fdsfdsfdsVisualCron - web client: VisualCron, www.visualcron.com, is an advanced scheduler and automation tool. VisualCron has a WinForms interface built on the VisualCron API. This projects is a proof of concept web client built upon the VisualCron API. The project was originally built by VisualCron developers as a test to provide a realtime/responsive web client.

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• New release of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is available for download - March 2011

  - by Jialiang

  A new release of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is available on March 8th. Download address: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62267#DownloadId=215627 You can download individual code samples or browse code samples grouped by technology in the updated code sample index. If it’s the first time that you hear about Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, please read this Microsoft News Center article http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2011/jan11/01-13codeframework.mspx, or watch the introduction video on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO5Li3APU58, or read the introduction on our homepage http://1code.codeplex.com/. -------------- New Silverlight code samples CSSLTreeViewCRUDDragDrop Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215808 The code sample was created by Amit Dey. It demonstrates a custom TreeView with added functionalities of CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) and drag-and-drop operations. Silverlight TreeView control with CRUD and drag & drop is a frequently asked programming question in Silverlight  forums. Many customers also requested this code sample in our code sample request service. We hope that this sample can reduce developers' efforts in handling this typical programming scenario. The following blog article introduces the sample in detail: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/codefx/archive/2011/02/15/silverlight-treeview-control-with-crud-and-drag-amp-drop.aspx. CSSL4FileDragDrop and VBSL4FileDragDrop Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215809 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215810 The code sample demonstrates the new drag&drop feature of Silverlight 4 to implement dragging picures from the local file system to a Silverlight application.   Sometimes we want to change SiteMapPath control's titles and paths according to Query String values. And sometimes we want to create the SiteMapPath dynamically. This code sample shows how to achieve these goals by handling SiteMap.SiteMapResolve event. CSASPNETEncryptAndDecryptConfiguration, VBASPNETEncryptAndDecryptConfiguration Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215027 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215106 In this sample, we encrypt and decrypt some sensitive information in the config file of a web application by using the RSA asymmetric encryption. This project contains two snippets. The first one demonstrates how to use RSACryptoServiceProvider to generate public key and the corresponding private key and then encrypt/decrypt string value on page. The second part shows how to use RSA configuration provider to encrypt and decrypt configuration section in web.config of web application. connectionStrings section in plain text: Encrypted connectionString:  Note that if you store sensitive data in any of the following configuration sections, we cannot encrypt it by using a protected configuration provider <processModel> <runtime> <mscorlib> <startup> <system.runtime.remoting> <configProtectedData> <satelliteassemblies> <cryptographySettings> <cryptoNameMapping> CSASPNETFileUploadStatus Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215028 I believe ASP.NET programmers will like this sample, because in many cases we need customers know the current status of the uploading files, including the upload speed and completion percentage and so on. Under normal circumstances, we need to use COM components to accomplish this function, such as Flash, Silverlight, etc. The uploading data can be retrieved in two places, the client-side and the server-side. For the client, for the safety factors, the file upload status information cannot be got from JavaScript or server-side code, so we need COM component, like Flash and Silverlight to accomplish this, I do not like this approach because the customer need to install these components, but also we need to learn another programming framework. For the server side, we can get the information through coding, but the key question is how to tell the client results. In this case, We will combine custom HTTPModule and AJAX technology to illustrate how to analyze the HTTP protocol, how to break the file request packets, how to customize the location of the server-side file caching, how to return the file uploading status back to the client and so on . CSASPNETHighlightCodeInPage, VBASPNETHighlightCodeInPage Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215029 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215108 This sample imitates a system that needs display the highlighted code in an ASP.NET page . As a matter of fact, sometimes we input code like C# or HTML in a web page and we need these codes to be highlighted for a better reading experience. It is convenient for us to keep the code in mind if it is highlighted. So in this case, the sample shows how to highlight the code in an ASP.NET page. It is not difficult to highlight the code in a web page by using String.Replace method directly. This  method can return a new string in which all occurrences of a specified string in the current instance are replaced with another specified string. However, it may not be a good idea, because it's not extremely fast, in fact, it's pretty slow. In addition, it is hard to highlight multiple keywords by using String.Replace method directly. Sometimes we need to copy source code from visual studio to a web page, for readability purpose, highlight the code is important while set the different types of keywords to different colors in a web page by using String.Replace method directly is not available. To handle this issue, we need to use a hashtable variable to store the different languages of code and their related regular expressions with matching options. Furthermore, define the css styles which used to highlight the code in a web page. The sample project can auto add the style object to the matching string of code. A step-by-step guide illustrating how to highlight the code in an ASP.NET page: 1. the HighlightCodePage.aspx page Choose a type of language in the dropdownlist control and paste the code in the textbox control, then click the HighLight button. 2.  Display the highlighted code in an ASP.NET page After user clicks the HighLight button, the highlighted code will be displayed at right side of the page.        CSASPNETPreventMultipleWindows Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215032 This sample demonstrates a step-by-step guide illustrating how to detect and prevent multiple windows or tab usage in Web Applications. The sample imitates a system that need to prevent multiple windows or tabs to solve some problems like sharing sessions, protect duplicated login, data concurrency, etc. In fact, there are many methods achieving this goal. Here we give a solution of use JavaScript, Sample shows how to use window.name property check the correct links and throw other requests to invalid pages. This code-sample use two user controls to make a distinction between base page and target page, user only need drag different controls to appropriate web form pages. so user need not write repetitive code in every page, it will make coding work lightly and convenient for modify your code.  JSVirtualKeyboard Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215093 This article describes an All-In-One framework sample that demonstrates a step-by-step guide illustrating how to build a virtual keyboard in your HTML page. Sometimes we may need to offer a virtual keyboard to let users input something without their real keyboards. This scenario often occurs when users will enter their password to get access to our sites and we want to protect the password from some kinds of back-door software, a Key-logger for example, and we will find a virtual keyboard on the page will be a good choice here. To create a virtual keyboard, we firstly need to add some buttons to the page. And when users click on a certain button, the JavaScript function handling the onclick event will input an appropriated character to the textbox. That is the simple logic of this feature. However, if we indeed want a virtual keyboard to substitute for the real keyboard completely, we will need more advanced logic to handle keys like Caps-Lock and Shift etc. That will be a complex work to achieve. CSASPNETDataListImageGallery Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62261#DownloadId=215267 This code sample demonstrates how to create an Image Gallery application by using the DataList control in ASP.NET. You may find the Image Gallery is widely used in many social networking sites, personal websites and E-Business websites. For example, you may use the Image Gallery to show a library of personal uploaded images on a personal website. Slideshow is also a popular tool to display images on websites. This code sample demonstrates how to use the DataList and ImageButton controls in ASP.NET to create an Image Gallery with image navigation. You can click on a thumbnail image in the Datalist control to display a larger version of the image on the page. This sample code reads the image paths from a certain directory into a FileInfo array. Then, the FileInfo array is used to populate a custom DataTable object which is bound to the Datalist control. This code sample also implements a custom paging system that allows five images to be displayed horizontally on one page. The following link buttons are used to implement a custom paging system:   •     First •     Previous •     Next •     Last Note We recommend that you use this method to load no more than five images at a time. You can also set the SelectedIndex property for the DataList control to limit the number of the thumbnail images that can be selected. To indicate which image is selected, you can set the SelectedStyle property for the DataList control. VBASPNETSearchEngine Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215112 This sample shows how to implement a simple search engine in an ASP.NET web site. It uses LIKE condition in SQL statement to search database. Then it highlights keywords in search result by using Regular Expression and JavaScript. New Windows General code samples CSCheckEXEType, VBCheckEXEType Downloads: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215045 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215120 The sample demonstrates how to check an executable file type.  For a given executable file, we can get 1 whether it is a console application 2 whether it is a .Net application 3 whether it is a 32bit native application. 4 The full display name of a .NET application, e.g. System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089, processorArchitecture=MSIL New Internet Explorer code samples CSIEExplorerBar, VBIEExplorerBar Downloads: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215060 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215133 The sample demonstrates how to create and deploy an IE Explorer Bar which could list all the images in a web page. CSBrowserHelperObject, VBBrowserHelperObject Downloads: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215044 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215119 The sample demonstrates how to create and deploy a Browser Helper Object,  and the BHO in this sample is used to disable the context menu in IE. New Windows Workflow Foundation code samples CSWF4ActivitiesCorrelation Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215085 Consider that there are two such workflow instances:       start                                   start          |                                           | Receive activity      Receive activity         |                                           | Receive2 activity      Receive2 activity         |                                           | A WCF request comes to call the second Receive2 activity. Which one should take care of the request? The answer is Correlation. This sample will show you how to correlate two workflow service to work together. -------------- New ASP.NET code samples CSASPNETBreadcrumbWithQueryString Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215022

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• Windows Azure ASP.NET MVC 2 Role with Silverlight

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

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

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

  - by James Michael Hare

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

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• Timeout Considerations for Solicit Response

  - by Michael Stephenson

  Background One of the clients I work with had been experiencing some issues for a while surrounding web service timeouts.  It's been a little challenging to work through the problems due to limitations in the diagnostic information available from one of the applications, but I learned some interesting things while troubleshooting the problem which don't seem to have been discussed much in the community so I thought I'd share my findings. In the scenario we have BizTalk trying to make calls to a .net web service which was exposed as a WSE 2 endpoint.  In the process BizTalk will try to make a large number of concurrent web service calls to the application, and the backend application has more than enough infrastructure and capability to handle the load. We have configured the <ConnectionManagement> section of the BizTalk configuration file to support up to 100 concurrent connections from each of our 2 BizTalk send servers to the web servers of the application. The problem we were facing was that the BizTalk side was reporting a significant number of timeouts when calling the web service.   One of the biggest issues was the challenge of being able to correlate a message from BizTalk to the IIS log in the .net application and the custom logs in the application especially when there was a fairly large number of servers hosting the web services.  However the key moment came when we were able to identify a specific call which had taken 40 seconds to execute on the server (yes a long time I know but that's a different story!).  Anyway we were able to identify that this had timed out on the BizTalk side.  Based on the normal 2 minute timeout we knew something unexpected was going on. From here I decided to do some experimentation and I wanted to start outside of BizTalk because my hunch was this was not a BizTalk behaviour but something which was being highlighted by BizTalk because of our large load.     Server-side - Sample Web Service To begin with I created a sample web service.  Nothing special just a vanilla asmx web service hosted in IIS6 on Windows 2003 Standard Edition.  The web service is just a hello world style web service as shown in the below picture.  The only key feature is that the server side web method has a 30 second sleep in it and will trace out some information before and after the thread is set to sleep.      In the configuration for this web service there again is nothing special it's pretty much the most plain simple web service you could build. Client-Side To begin looking at what was happening with our example I created a number of different ways to consume the web service. SoapHttpClientProtocol Example I created a small application which would use a normal proxy generated to call the web service.  It would iterate around a loop and make calls using the begin/end methods so I can do this asynchronously.  I would do a loop of 20 calls with the ConnectionManager configuration section supporting only 5 concurrent connections to the server.     <connectionManagement> <remove address="*"/> <add address = "*" maxconnection = "12" /> <add address = "http://<ServerName>" maxconnection = "5" />                         </connectionManagement> </system.net>     The below picture shows an example of the service calling code, key points are: I have configured the timeout of 40 seconds for the proxy I am using the asynchronous methods on the proxy to call the web service         The Test I would run the client and execute 21 calls to the web service.   The Results  Below is the client side trace showing what's happening on the client. In the below diagram is the web service side trace showing what's happening on the server Some observations on the results are: All of the calls were successful from the clients perspective You could see the next call starting on the server as soon as the previous one had completed Calls took significantly longer than 40 seconds from the start of our call to the return. In fact call 20 took 2 minutes and 30 seconds from the perspective of my code to execute even though I had set the timeout to 40 seconds     WSE 2 Sample In the second example I used the exact same code to call the web service again with a single exception that I modified the web service proxy to derive from WebServiceClient protocol which is part of WSE 2 (using SP3).  The below picture shows the basic code and the key points are: I have configured the timeout of 40 seconds for the proxy I am using the asynchronous methods on the proxy to call the web service        The Test This test would execute 21 calls from the client to the web service.   The Results  The below trace is from the client side: The below trace is from the server side:   Some observations on the trace results for this scenario are: With call 4 if you look at the server side trace it did not start executing on the server for a number of seconds after the other 4 initial calls which were accepted by the server. I re-ran the test and this happened a couple of times and not on most others so at this point I'm just putting this down to something unexpected happening on the development machine and we will leave this observation out of scope of this article. You can see that the client side trace statement executed almost immediately in all cases All calls after the initial few calls would timeout On the client side the calls that did timeout; timed out in a longer duration than the 40 seconds we set as the timeout You can see that as calls were completing on the server the next calls were starting to come through The calls that timed out on the client did actually connect to the server and their server side execution completed successfully     Elaboration on the findings Based on the above observations I have drawn the below sequence diagram to illustrate conceptually what is happening.  Everything except the final web service object is on the client side of the call. In the diagram below I've put two notes on the Web Service Proxy to show the two different places where the different base classes seem to start their timeout counters. From the earlier samples we can work out that the timeout counter for the WSE web service proxy starts before the one for the SoapHttpClientProtocol proxy and the WSE one includes the time to get a connection from the pool; whereas the Soap proxy timeout just covers the method execution. One interesting observation is if we rerun the above sample and increase the number of calls from 21 to 100,000 then for the WSE sample we will see a similar pattern where everything after the first few calls will timeout on the client as soon as it makes a connection to the server whereas the soap proxy will happily plug away and process all of the calls without a single timeout. I have actually set the sample running overnight and this did happen. At this point you are probably thinking the same thoughts I was at the time about the differences in behaviour and which is right and why are they different? I'm not sure there is a definitive answer to this in the documentation, or at least not that I could find! I think you just have to consider that they are different and they could have different effects depending on your messaging solution. In lots of situations this is just not an issue as your concurrent requests doesn't get to the situation where you end up throttling the web service calls on the client side, however this is definitely more common with an integration broker such as BizTalk where you often have high throughput requirements.  Some of the considerations you should make Based on this behaviour you should be aware of the following: In a .net application if you are making lots of concurrent web service calls from an application in an asynchronous manner your user may thing they are experiencing poor performance but you think your web service is working well. The problem could be that the client will have a default of 2 connections to remote servers so you should bear this in mind When you are developing a BizTalk solution or a .net solution with the WSE 2 stack you may experience timeouts under load and throttling the number of connections using the max connections element in the configuration file will not help you For an application using WSE2 or SoapHttpClientProtocol an expired timeout will not throw an error until after a connection to the server has been made so you should consider this in your transaction and durability patterns     Our Work Around In the short term for our specific scenario we know that we can handle this by just increasing our timeout value.  There is only a specific small window when we get lots of concurrent traffic that causes this scenario so we should be able to increase the timeout to take into consideration the additional client side wait, and on the odd occasion where we do get a timeout the BizTalk send port retry will handle this. What was causing our original problem was that for that short window we were getting a lot of retries which significantly increased the load on our send servers and highlighted the issue.  Longer Term Solution As a longer term solution this really gives us more ammunition to argue a migration to WCF. The application we are calling has some factors which limit the protocols we can use but with WCF we would have more control on the various timeout options because in WCF you can configure specific parts of the timeout. Summary I've had this blog post on my to do list for ages but hopefully it will be useful to some people to just understand this behaviour and to possibly help you with some performance issues you may have. I do not believe there is too much in the way of documentation particularly around WSE2 and ASMX in this area so again another bit of ammunition for migrating to WCF. I'll try to do a follow up post with the sample for WCF to show how this changes things.

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• The Return Of __FILE__ And __LINE__ In .NET 4.5

  - by Alois Kraus

  Good things are hard to kill. One of the most useful predefined compiler macros in C/C++ were __FILE__ and __LINE__ which do expand to the compilation units file name and line number where this value is encountered by the compiler. After 4.5 versions of .NET we are on par with C/C++ again. It is of course not a simple compiler expandable macro it is an attribute but it does serve exactly the same purpose. Now we do get CallerLineNumberAttribute  == __LINE__ CallerFilePathAttribute        == __FILE__ CallerMemberNameAttribute  == __FUNCTION__ (MSVC Extension)   The most important one is CallerMemberNameAttribute which is very useful to implement the INotifyPropertyChanged interface without the need to hard code the name of the property anymore. Now you can simply decorate your change method with the new CallerMemberName attribute and you get the property name as string directly inserted by the C# compiler at compile time.   public string UserName { get { return _userName; } set { _userName=value; RaisePropertyChanged(); // no more RaisePropertyChanged(“UserName”)! } } protected void RaisePropertyChanged([CallerMemberName] string member = "") { var copy = PropertyChanged; if(copy != null) { copy(new PropertyChangedEventArgs(this, member)); } } Nice and handy. This was obviously the prime reason to implement this feature in the C# 5.0 compiler. You can repurpose this feature for tracing to get your hands on the method name of your caller along other stuff very fast now. All infos are added during compile time which is much faster than other approaches like walking the stack. The example on MSDN shows the usage of this attribute with an example public static void TraceMessage(string message, [CallerMemberName] string memberName = "", [CallerFilePath] string sourceFilePath = "", [CallerLineNumber] int sourceLineNumber = 0) { Console.WriteLine("Hi {0} {1} {2}({3})", message, memberName, sourceFilePath, sourceLineNumber); }   When I do think of tracing I do usually want to have a API which allows me to Trace method enter and leave Trace messages with a severity like Info, Warning, Error When I do print a trace message it is very useful to print out method and type name as well. So your API must either be able to pass the method and type name as strings or extract it automatically via walking back one Stackframe and fetch the infos from there. The first glaring deficiency is that there is no CallerTypeAttribute yet because the C# compiler team was not satisfied with its performance.   A usable Trace Api might therefore look like   enum TraceTypes { None = 0, EnterLeave = 1 << 0, Info = 1 << 1, Warn = 1 << 2, Error = 1 << 3 } class Tracer : IDisposable { string Type; string Method; public Tracer(string type, string method) { Type = type; Method = method; if (IsEnabled(TraceTypes.EnterLeave,Type, Method)) { } } private bool IsEnabled(TraceTypes traceTypes, string Type, string Method) { // Do checking here if tracing is enabled return false; } public void Info(string fmt, params object[] args) { } public void Warn(string fmt, params object[] args) { } public void Error(string fmt, params object[] args) { } public static void Info(string type, string method, string fmt, params object[] args) { } public static void Warn(string type, string method, string fmt, params object[] args) { } public static void Error(string type, string method, string fmt, params object[] args) { } public void Dispose() { // trace method leave } } This minimal trace API is very fast but hard to maintain since you need to pass in the type and method name as hard coded strings which can change from time to time. But now we have at least CallerMemberName to rid of the explicit method parameter right? Not really. Since any acceptable usable trace Api should have a method signature like Tracexxx(… string fmt, params [] object args) we not able to add additional optional parameters after the args array. If we would put it before the format string we would need to make it optional as well which would mean the compiler would need to figure out what our trace message and arguments are (not likely) or we would need to specify everything explicitly just like before . There are ways around this by providing a myriad of overloads which in the end are routed to the very same method but that is ugly. I am not sure if nobody inside MS agrees that the above API is reasonable to have or (more likely) that the whole talk about you can use this feature for diagnostic purposes was not a core feature at all but a simple byproduct of making the life of INotifyPropertyChanged implementers easier. A way around this would be to allow for variable argument arrays after the params keyword another set of optional arguments which are always filled by the compiler but I do not know if this is an easy one. The thing I am missing much more is the not provided CallerType attribute. But not in the way you would think of. In the API above I did add some filtering based on method and type to stay as fast as possible for types where tracing is not enabled at all. It should be no more expensive than an additional method call and a bool variable check if tracing for this type is enabled at all. The data is tightly bound to the calling type and method and should therefore become part of the static type instance. Since extending the CLR type system for tracing is not something I do expect to happen I have come up with an alternative approach which allows me basically to attach run time data to any existing type object in super fast way. The key to success is the usage of generics.   class Tracer<T> : IDisposable { string Method; public Tracer(string method) { if (TraceData<T>.Instance.Enabled.HasFlag(TraceTypes.EnterLeave)) { } } public void Dispose() { if (TraceData<T>.Instance.Enabled.HasFlag(TraceTypes.EnterLeave)) { } } public static void Info(string fmt, params object[] args) { } /// <summary> /// Every type gets its own instance with a fresh set of variables to describe the /// current filter status. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="T"></typeparam> internal class TraceData<UsingType> { internal static TraceData<UsingType> Instance = new TraceData<UsingType>(); public bool IsInitialized = false; // flag if we need to reinit the trace data in case of reconfigured trace settings at runtime public TraceTypes Enabled = TraceTypes.None; // Enabled trace levels for this type } } We do not need to pass the type as string or Type object to the trace Api. Instead we define a generic Api that accepts the using type as generic parameter. Then we can create a TraceData static instance which is due to the nature of generics a fresh instance for every new type parameter. My tests on my home machine have shown that this approach is as fast as a simple bool flag check. If you have an application with many types using tracing you do not want to bring the app down by simply enabling tracing for one special rarely used type. The trace filter performance for the types which are not enabled must be therefore the fasted code path. This approach has the nice side effect that if you store the TraceData instances in one global list you can reconfigure tracing at runtime safely by simply setting the IsInitialized flag to false. A similar effect can be achieved with a global static Dictionary<Type,TraceData> object but big hash tables have random memory access semantics which is bad for cache locality and you always need to pay for the lookup which involves hash code generation, equality check and an indexed array access. The generic version is wicked fast and allows you to add more features to your tracing Api with minimal perf overhead. But it is cumbersome to write the generic type argument always explicitly and worse if you do refactor code and move parts of it to other classes it might be that you cannot configure tracing correctly. I would like therefore to decorate my type with an attribute [CallerType] class Tracer<T> : IDisposable to tell the compiler to fill in the generic type argument automatically. class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { using (var t = new Tracer()) // equivalent to new Tracer<Program>() { That would be really useful and super fast since you do not need to pass any type object around but you do have full type infos at hand. This change would be breaking if another non generic type exists in the same namespace where now the generic counterpart would be preferred. But this is an acceptable risk in my opinion since you can today already get conflicts if two generic types of the same name are defined in different namespaces. This would be only a variation of this issue. When you do think about this further you can add more features like to trace the exception in your Dispose method if the method is left with an exception with that little trick I did write some time ago. You can think of tracing as a super fast and configurable switch to write data to an output destination or to execute alternative actions. With such an infrastructure you can e.g. Reconfigure tracing at run time. Take a memory dump when a specific method is left with a specific exception. Throw an exception when a specific trace statement is hit (useful for testing error conditions). Execute a passed delegate which e.g. dumps additional state when enabled. Write data to an in memory ring buffer and dump it when specific events do occur (e.g. method is left with an exception, triggered from outside). Write data to an output device. …. This stuff is really useful to have when your code is in production on a mission critical server and you need to find the root cause of sporadic crashes of your application. It could be a buggy graphics card driver which throws access violations into your application (ok with .NET 4 not anymore except if you enable a compatibility flag) where you would like to have a minidump or you have reached after two weeks of operation a state where you need a full memory dump at a specific point in time in the middle of an transaction. At my older machine I do get with this super fast approach 50 million traces/s when tracing is disabled. When I do know that tracing is enabled for this type I can walk the stack by using StackFrameHelper.GetStackFramesInternal to check further if a specific action or output device is configured for this method which is about 2-3 times faster than the regular StackTrace class. Even with one String.Format I am down to 3 million traces/s so performance is not so important anymore since I do want to do something now. The CallerMemberName feature of the C# 5 compiler is nice but I would have preferred to get direct access to the MethodHandle and not to the stringified version of it. But I really would like to see a CallerType attribute implemented to fill in the generic type argument of the call site to augment the static CLR type data with run time data.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, July 05, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, July 05, 2012Popular ReleasesTaskScheduler ASP.NET: Release 2 - 1.1.0.0: Release 2 - Version 1.1.0.0 In this version the following features were added to the library: Event fired on all tasks end The ASP.NET project takes a example of management of scheduled tasks.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.8.0 Beta: Whats newuComponents in the core Multi-Node Tree Picker, Multiple Textstring, Slider and XPath Lists Easier Lucene searching built in IFile providers for easier file handling Updated 3rd party libraries Applications / Trees moved out of the database SQL Azure support added Various bug fixes Getting Started A great place to start is with our Getting Started Guide: Getting Started Guide: http://umbraco.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?DownloadId=197051 Make sure to...CODE Framework: 4.0.20704.0: See CODE Framework (.NET) Change Log for changes in this version.?????????? - ????????: All-In-One Code Framework ??? 2012-07-04: http://download.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1codechs&DownloadId=216140 ???OneCode??????，??????????10????Microsoft OneCode Sample，????4?Windows Base Sample，2?XML Sample?4?ASP.NET Sample。???????????。 ????，?????。http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=128165 Windows Base Sample CSCheckOSBitness VBCheckOSBitness CSCheckOSVersion VBCheckOSVersion XML Sample CSXPath VBXPath ASP.NET Sample CSASPNETDataPager VBASPNET...sheetengine - Isometric HTML5 JavaScript Display Engine: sheetengine v1.0: The first release of sheetengine. See sheetengine.codeplex.com for a list of features and examples.AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.1 Intrepid Fixed: Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, download the Linux package. Try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your own for Linux (source included) If you use the default maprot or any maprot, you need to fix it Well, 2.5 was...xUnit.net - Unit testing framework for C# and .NET (a successor to NUnit): xUnit.net 1.9.1: xUnit.net release 1.9.1Build #1600 Important note for Resharper users: Resharper support has been moved to the xUnit.net Contrib project. Important note for TestDriven.net users: If you are having issues running xUnit.net tests in TestDriven.net, especially on 64-bit Windows, we strongly recommend you upgrade to TD.NET version 3.0 or later. Important note for VS2012 users: The VS2012 runner is in the Visual Studio Gallery now, and should be installed via Tools | Extension Manager from insi...NETDeob0: NETDeob 0.2.0: - Big structural changes - Safer signature identification - More accurate signatures - Minor bugs fixed - Minor compability issues fixedMVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 2.2.0: Added Modified all Mv4 related features to conform with the Mvc4 RC Now all items controls accept any IEnumerable<T>(before just List<T> were accepted by most of controls) retrievalManager class that retrieves automatically data from a data source whenever it catchs events triggered by filtering, sorting, and paging controls move method to the updatesManager to move one child objects from a father to another. The move operation can be undone like the insert, update and delete operatio...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.6: 2012.07.03 Ver5.6.6 (1) ???????????ftp://?????????、????LIST?????Mini SQL Query: Mini SQL Query (v1.0.68.441): Just a bug fix release for when the connections try to refresh after an edit. Make sure you read the Quickstart for an introduction.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.58: Fix for Issue #18296: provide "ALL" value to the -ignore switch to ignore all error and warning messages. Fix for issue #18293: if encountering EOF before a function declaration or expression is properly closed, throw an appropriate error and don't crash. Adjust the variable-renaming algorithm so it's very specific when renaming variables with the same number of references so a single source file ends up with the same minified names on different platforms. add the ability to specify kno...LogExpert: 1.4 build 4566: This release for the 1.4 version line contains various fixes which have been made some times ago. Until now these fixes were only available in the 1.5 alpha versions. It also contains a fix for: 710. Column finder (press F8 to show) Terminal server issues: Multiple sessions with same user should work now Settings Export/Import available via Settings Dialog still incomple (e.g. tab colors are not saved) maybe I change the file format one day no command line support yet (for importin...View Layout Replicator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: View Layout Replicator (1.0.1802.65): Add support for OSDP authenticationCommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8.5 - Final Release: A collection of very reusable code and components in C# 4.0 ranging from ActiveRecord, Csv, Command Line Parsing, Configuration, Holiday Calendars, Logging, Authentication, and much more. FluentscriptCommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8 contains a scripting language called FluentScript. Releases notes for FluentScript located at http://fluentscript.codeplex.com/wikipage?action=Edit&title=Release%20Notes&referringTitle=Documentation Fluentscript - 0.9.8.5 - Final ReleaseApplication: FluentScript Versio...SharePoint 2010 Metro UI: SharePoint 2010 Metro UI8: Please review the documentation link for how to install. Installation takes some basic knowledge of how to upload and edit SharePoint Artifact files. Please view the discussions tab for ongoing FAQsnopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.60: Highlight features & improvements: • Significant performance optimization. • Use AJAX for adding products to the cart. • New flyout mini-shopping cart. • Auto complete suggestions for product searching. • Full-Text support. • EU cookie law support. To see the full list of fixes and changes please visit the release notes page (http://www.nopCommerce.com/releasenotes.aspx).THE NVL Maker: The NVL Maker Ver 3.51: http://download.codeplex.com/Download?ProjectName=nvlmaker&DownloadId=371510 ????：http://115.com/file/beoef05k#THE-NVL-Maker-ver3.51-sim.7z ????：http://www.mediafire.com/file/6tqdwj9jr6eb9qj/THENVLMakerver3.51tra.7z ======================================== ???? ======================================== 3.51 beta ???： ·?????????????????????? ·?????????，?????????0，?????????????????????? ·??????????????????????????? ·?????????????TJS????（EXP??） ·??4:3???，???????????????，??????????? ·?????????...????: ????2.0.3: 1、???????????。 2、????????。 3、????????????。 4、bug??，????。Magelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 2.0: User Right Licensing ContentType version 2.0.267.1New Projects$ME: a new kind of javascript library.NET Micro Framework Driver Library: .NET Micro Framework Driver Library This is just a library of classes that I have created that can be used by Micro Framework Devices. aishe: ?????????BoogieTools: The goal of this project is to provide editors and additional tools to improve working with the Microsoft Boogie language and tools.BWAPI-CLI: .NET wrapper for the Broodwar API (BWAPI) and Broodwar Terrain Analyzer (BWTA) written in C++/CLICoffee Survey Framework: Coffee Survey Framework is an extensible, XML-based ASP.NET 4.0 framework for building and maintaining tabular survey pages. Dauphine SmartControls for K2 blackpearl: SmartControls for K2 blackpearl simplifies the integration of K2 blackpearl processes with ASP.NET web forms. It is a collection of ASP.NET web controls with both design-time and run-time capabilities for code-less integration to K2 blackpearl processes. The underlying framework of SmartControls for K2 blackpearl can also be used to extend existing ASP.NET web controls with the same K2 blackpearl integration capabilities that it offers.Easy Full-Text Search Queries: Very lightweight class to convert user-friendly search queries into Microsoft SQL Server Full-Text Search queries. Gracefully handles errors in input query.EnvironmentCheck: A Windows Forms application which will read from an XML config a number of checks which need to be performed to verify that a server meets pre-reqs.Lindeberg edge detector: Just a simple program I wrote for 'Image processing fundamentals' course MesanAnsatte: Prosjekt for utforskning av .net. Multi-Touch Scrum tool: This is a application use to support Scrum software development, based on Microsoft Surface SDK 2.0.MyWCFService: This project is a simple explanation for WCF service, that can help you understand how the WCF works!!race4fun engine: Open source driving simulator. Modable engine for easy use. SchoolManagerMVC: School Management System, written in MVC3 with unity framework, DI unity and unit testsSharePoint Managed Metadata Claims Provider: Custom Claims Provider implementation for SharePoint. Claims Playground.SQL data access: .NET library for accessing a Microsoft SQL Server database.sqlscriptmover: Exports stored procedures, function, views, tables and triggers to individual files or imports same and attempts to create in designated database.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, August 12, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, August 12, 2012Popular ReleasesThisismyusername's codeplex page.: Run! Thunderstorm! Classic Multiplatform: The classic edition now on any device, you don't have to get the touch edition for touch screens!SharePoint Developers & Admins: SPTaxCleaner Tool - Cleaner Taxonomy Data: For more information on the tool and how to use it: SPTaxCleaner Run the tool at your own risk!BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 1.1: This release includes bug fixes from the 1.0 release for email notifications, RSS feeds, and several other issues. Please see the change log for a full list of changes. http://support.bugnetproject.com/Projects/ReleaseNotes.aspx?pid=1&m=76 Upgrade Notes The following changes to the web.config in the profile section have occurred: Removed <add name="NotificationTypes" type="String" defaultValue="Email" customProviderData="NotificationTypes;nvarchar;255" />Added <add name="ReceiveEmailNotifi...Virtual Keyboard: Virtual Keyboard v2.0 Source Code: This release has a few added keys that were missing in the earlier versions.????: ????2.0.5: 1、?????????????。RiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.01: changes NEW: Added Support for Clipboard Function in Mono Version NEW: Added Support for "ImgBox.com" links FIXED: "PixHub.eu" links FIXED: "ImgChili.com" links FIXED: Kitty-Kats Forum loginPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 5): Support for Smooth Streaming SDK beta 2 Support for live playback New bitrate meter and SD/HD indicators Auto smooth streaming track restriction for snapped mode to conserve bandwidth New "Go Live" button and SeekToLive API Support for offset start times Support for Live position unique from end time Support for multiple audio streams (smooth and progressive content) Improved intellisense in JS version Support for Windows 8 RTM ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmooth Streaming Client SD...Media Companion: Media Companion 3.506b: This release includes an update to the XBMC scrapers, for those who prefer to use this method. There were a number of behind-the-scene tweaks to make Media Companion compatible with the new TMDb-V3 API, so it was considered important to get it out to the users to try it out. Please report back any important issues you might find. For this reason, unless you use the XBMC scrapers, there probably isn't any real necessity to download this one! The only other minor change was one to allow the mc...Avian Mortality Detection Entry Application: Detection Entry: The most recent and up-to-date version of the Detection Entry application. Please click on the CLICKONCE link above to install.NVorbis: NVorbis v0.3: Fix Ogg page reader to correctly handle "split" packets Fix "zero-energy" packet handling Fix packet reader to always merge packets when needed Add statistics properties to VorbisReader.Stats Add multi-stream API (for Ogg files containing multiple Vorbis streams)The Ftp Library - Most simple, full-featured .NET Ftp Library: TheFtpLibrary v1.0: First version. Please report any bug and discuss how to improve this library in 'Discussion' section.VisioAutomation: Visio Power Tools 2010 (Beta): Visio Power Tools 2010 An Add-in for Visio 2010. In Beta but should be very stable. Some Cool Features Import Colors - From Kuler, ColourLovers, or manually enter RGB values Create a Document containing images of all masters in multiple stencils Toggle text case Copy All text from all shapes Export document to XHTML (with embedded SVG) Export document to XAML Updates2012-08-10 - Fixed path handling when generating the HTML stencil catalogXBMC for LCDSmartie: v 0.7.1: Changes: Version 0.7.1 - Removed unused configuration options: You can remove the user and pass section from your LCDSmartie.exe.config Version 0.7.0 - Changed JSON-Protocol to TCP: This means the plugin will run much faster and chances that LCDSmartie will stutter are minimized Note: You will have to change some settings in your LCDSmartie.exe.config, as TCP uses a different port than HTTP (9090 is default in XBMC)WPF RSS Feed Reader: WPF RSS Feed Reader 4.1: WPF RSS Feed Reader 4.1.x This application has been developed using Visual Studio 2010 with .NET 4.0 and Microsoft Expression Blend. It makes use of the MVVM Light Toolkit, more information can be found here Fixed bug when first installed - handle null reference on _proxySetting Fixed bug if trying to open error log but error log doesn't exist yet Added strings to resources Moved AsssemblyInfo centrally and linked to other projectsScutex: Scutex 4th Preview Release 0.4: This is the fourth preview release for the new Scutex 0.4 Beta. This preview release is unstable and contains some UI issues that are being worked on due to an installation of a brand new GUI. The stable version of the 0.4 Beta will be out shortly as soon as this release passes QA. The following were fixed in this release *Fixed an issue with the Upload Product dialog that would cause it to throw an exception. Known Issues *The download service logs grid does not display properlySystem.Net.FtpClient: System.Net.FtpClient 2012.08.08: 2012.08.08 Release. Several changes, see commit notes in source code section. CHM help as well as source for this release are included in the download. Remember that Windows 7 by default (and possibly older versions) will block you from opening the CHM by default due to trust settings. To get around the problem, right click on the CHM, choose properties and click the Un-block button. Please note that this will be the last release tested to compile with the .net 2.0 framework. I will be remov...Isis2 Cloud Computing Library: Isis2 Alpha V1.1.967: This is an alpha pre-release of the August 2012 version of the system. I've been testing and fixing many problems and have also added a new group "lock" API (g.Lock("lock name")/g.Unlock/g.Holder/g.SetLockPolicy); with this, Isis2 can mimic Chubby, Google's locking service. I wouldn't say that the system is entirely stable yet, and I haven't rechecked every single problem I had seen in May/June, but I think it might be good to get some additional use of this release. By now it does seem to...JSON C# Class Generator: JSON CSharp Class Generator 1.3: Support for native JSON.net serializer/deserializer (POCO) New classes layout option: nested classes Better handling of secondary classesAxiom 3D Rendering Engine: v0.8.3376.12322: Changes Since v0.8.3102.12095 ===================================================================== Updated ndoc3 binaries to fix bug Added uninstall.ps1 to nuspec packages fixed revision component in version numbering Fixed sln referencing VS 11 Updated OpenTK Assemblies Added CultureInvarient to numeric parsing Added First Visual Studio 2010 Project Template (DirectX9) Updated SharpInputSystem Assemblies Backported fix for OpenGL Auto-created window not responding to input Fixed freeInterna...DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.3: 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 ...New ProjectsAppFabric Cache Admin Tool: Appfabric Admin tool is a GUI tool provided for Cache Administration. This tool can be used for both Appfabric 1.0 and 1.1 versions.Bootstrap XML Navigation: Bootstrap XML Navigation is an ASP.NET Server Control which provide the ability to off-load your Bootstrap navigation structure to external XML files.Classic MVC: Classic MVC is an MVC framework written entirely in JScript for Microsoft's Classic ASP. Separation of concerns, controllers, partial views and more.Component Spectrum: Component Spectrum is an E-Commerce Application project.Developments in Java: Free Develop JavaDongGPrj: DongGPrjEsShop: ???????，????。。。F# Indent Visual Studio addon: The addon to show how to use SmartIndent and change the indent behavior in F# content.FizzBuzzAssignment: This is HeadSpring assignment.hotfighter: a act game!!!iSoilHotel: It is a hotel management system that using Microsoft N-Layer Architecture as the primary thoughts.KVBL (K's VB6 library) VB6????,????????.: KVBL??VB6??????、???????，????????，??????，????VB????，??????????。????：??????、???、??、????、??、????、??、??、?????、?????、???????，???????……Meteorite: c# game 3d wp7 space ship meteoriteMetro App Helpers: Helper classes for building Metro style app on Windows 8.MobileShop: Mobile shop for Iphone & AndroidMomentum: this is q project pqrticipqtion between meir and david concerning student university project on physics.OneLine: dfgfdgPreflight: Summary HereResilient FileSystemWatcher for monitoring network folders: Drop in replacement for FileSystemWatcher that works for network folders and compensate for network outages, server restarts ect.SkyPoint: A Windows Phone 7 app aimed at novice astronomers.test20120811: summary of this projectVS Unbind Source Control: Remove Source Control bindings from Visual Studio Solution and Project FilesWcf SWA (SFTI) implementation: First releasewebstart: new web tech testwinform_framework: winform_frameworkwtopenapi: wtopen sina weibo sdk txweibosdk qzone sdk

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 11, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 11, 2012Popular ReleasesSubExtractor: 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...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.47: Properly output escaped characters in CSS identifiers throw an EOF error when parsing a CSS selector that doesn't end in a declaration block chased down a stack-overflow issue with really large JS sources. Needed to flatten out the AST tree for adjacent expression statements that the application merges into a single expression statement, or that already contain large, comma-separated expressions in the original source. fix issue #17569: tie together the -debug switch with the DEBUG defi...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 Metro (BETA): Player Framework for HTML/JavaScript and XAML/C# Metro Style Applications.WPF 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...EntitiesToDTOs - Entity Framework DTO Generator: EntitiesToDTOs.v2.1: Changelog Fixed template file access issue on Win7. Fix on configuration load when target project was not found and "Use project default namespace" was checked. Minor fix on loading latest configuration at startup. Minor fix in VisualStudioHelper class. DTO's properties accessors are now in one line. Improvements in PropertyHelper to get a cleaner and more performant code. Added Website project type as a not supported project type. Using Error List pane from VS IDE to show Enti...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.01.04: Major Highlights Fixed issue with loading the splash page skin in the login, privacy and terms of use pages Fixed issue when searching for words with special characters in them Fixed redirection issue when the user does not have permissions to access a resource Fixed issue when clearing the cache using the ClearHostCache() function Fixed issue when displaying the site structure in the link to page feature Fixed issue when inline editing the title of modules Fixed issue with ...Mayhem: Mayhem Developer Preview: This is the developer preview of Mayhem. Enjoy!Magelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 1.2: Medium trust compliant lot of small change for medium trust compliance full refactoring of user management refactoring of Client Refactoring of user management Magelia.WebStore.Client no longer reference Magelia.WebStore.Services.Contract Refactoring page category multi parent category added copy category feature added Refactoring page catalog copy catalog feature added variant management improvement ability to define a default variant for a variable product ability to ord...PDFsharp - A .NET library for processing PDF: PDFsharp and MigraDoc Foundation 1.32: PDFsharp and MigraDoc Foundation 1.32 is a stable version that fixes a few bugs that were found with version 1.31. Version 1.32 includes solutions for Visual Studio 2010 only (but it should be possible to add the project files to existing solutions for VS 2005 or VS 2008). Users of VS 2005 or VS 2008 can still download version 1.31 with the solutions for those versions that allow them to easily try the samples that are included. While it may create smaller PDF files than version 1.30 because...Mag-tools, Asherons Call Decal Plugin: Mag-SuitBuilder 1.0.0.1: This is a standalone windows application that can help you put together a suit of armor.Ruminate XNA 4.0 GUI: Release 1.0.7: Fixed multiple issues with the layout and input system. Fixed Scrollbars. Introduced new layout system that will be further utilized in future updates.FaST-LMM: FActored Spectrally Transformed Linear Mixed Models: FaSTLMM v1.07 Binaries for Windows and Linux: These files contain the files necessary to run FaSTLMM on Windows or Linux along with the license and users manual. To download FaSTLMM source code, please follow the changeset link located above to the Source Code tab. The FaSTLMM.Win.zip download contains both C++ and CSharp executable versions of FaSTLMM. No installer is required, just UnZip the file into a directory and run from there. Or put the installation directory on your path and run it from anywhere. The C++ version included r...Terminals: Version 2.0 - Release: Changes since version 1.9a:New art works New usability in Organize favorites window Improved usability of imports/exports and scans Large number of fixes Improvements in single instance mode Comparing November beta 4, this corrects: New application icons Doesn't show Logon error codes Fixed command line arguments exception for single instance mode Fixed detaching of tabs improved usability in detached window Fixed option settings for Capture manager Fixed system tray noti...MFCMAPI: March 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1032 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeTortoiseHg: TortoiseHg 2.3.1: bugfix releaseSense/Net CMS - Enterprise Content Management: SenseNet 6.0.8 Community Edition: Sense/Net 6.0.8 Community EditionMain new features:send emails to lists and libraries localize the UI with WYSIWYG string resource editor define allowed child types on content types. Our new release brings the most new features and optimizations in the history of Sense/Net Community Edition. Alongside the biggest features detailed below in this release you will find features like uploading or copy-pasting images, security enhancements, customizable login processes, customizable notificati...CommonLibrary: Code: CodePowerGUI Visual Studio Extension: PowerGUI VSX 1.5.2: Added support for PowerGUI 3.2.New ProjectsCRFSharp: CRFSharp is Conditional Random Fields implemented by .NET(C#), a machine learning algorithm for learning from labeled sequences of examples. It is widely used in Natural Language Process (NLP) tasks, for example: word breaker, postaging, named entity recognized and so on.Custom MsBuild Tasks: An attempt to write a custom task for MsBuild. Needed a task to remove comments from web.config. Downr: Downr is a super simple UI which forces the computer to shutdown after a certain time of the day. Included is a .ADMX and a .ADML file for controlling Downr through group policies.Excel Report: Easiest way to create reports in Microsoft Excel XML format using XML data and XSLThcr38550: hcr3850 TESTModular MediaStreamSource: Modular MediaStreamSource project. paidmailclicker: .Pivottable web part: Provide a highly configurable AJAX PivotTable for Display purposes across webs or across sites. SharePoint YouTube Video Web Part Suite: The available Web Parts helps you to integarte Videos from YouTube into your SharePoint site. In contrast to the out of the box Media Web part, the new Web Parts are designed especial for YouTube videos. Connect your YouTube channel and choose the videos you want to see.ShareTest: This C# project offers a small lightweight framework (and also guidance) on how it's possible to test SharePoint using selenium in a reusable and clean way. The project follows the "Page Object" design pattern, so that instead of having to parse css, ids, xpath etc, directly in your test cases, you can now deal with c# page objects to make testing more readable and reusable. Note! This project is only one week old and I am actively using it to test DocRead, so I will refine and improve as ...Simeranya Project: Simeranya ProjectSlime Keeper: A game where you buy and sell slimes. They tend to multiply on their own using simple genetics!SunamoBlogConverter: The program for converting export formats between Wordpress and Blogger with further work with them. The program converts yet only posts without comments and pages. The program was tested on parse my blog with 1,450 posts. Essential parts of the program is in EN,remaining in CS.webpart: Free webparts for Sharepoint 2007 and 2010WPF Shapes: A library of ready to use WPF shapes, such as hexagons, speech bubbles, triangles etc.YoutubeExtractor: YoutubeExtractor is a library for .NET, written in C#, to extract the download link from YouTube videos, download them, and/or extract their audio track. It is based on the youtubeFisher project (http://youtubefisher.codeplex.com/) and aims to create an API instead of a GUI application.??? "??????": ?????? ??? ???????????????? ??????: ??????????? ???????? ?????? ???????????? ??????

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• A Look Inside JSR 360 - CLDC 8

  - by Roger Brinkley

  If you didn't notice during JavaOne the Java Micro Edition took a major step forward in its consolidation with Java Standard Edition when JSR 360 was proposed to the JCP community. Over the last couple of years there has been a focus to move Java ME back in line with it's big brother Java SE. We see evidence of this in JCP itself which just recently merged the ME and SE/EE Executive Committees into a single Java Executive Committee. But just before that occurred JSR 360 was proposed and approved for development on October 29. So let's take a look at what changes are now being proposed. In a way JSR 360 is returning back to the original roots of Java ME when it was first introduced. It was indeed a subset of the JDK 4 language, but as Java progressed many of the language changes were not implemented in the Java ME. Back then the tradeoff was still a functionality, footprint trade off but the major market was feature phones. Today the market has changed and CLDC, while it will still target feature phones, will have it primary emphasis on embedded devices like wireless modules, smart meters, health care monitoring and other M2M devices. The major changes will come in three areas: language feature changes, library changes, and consolidating the Generic Connection Framework.  There have been three Java SE versions that have been implemented since JavaME was first developed so the language feature changes can be divided into changes that came in JDK 5 and those in JDK 7, which mostly consist of the project Coin changes. There were no language changes in JDK 6 but the changes from JDK 5 are: Assertions - Assertions enable you to test your assumptions about your program. For example, if you write a method that calculates the speed of a particle, you might assert that the calculated speed is less than the speed of light. In the example code below if the interval isn't between 0 and and 1,00 the an error of "Invalid value?" would be thrown. private void setInterval(int interval) { assert interval > 0 && interval <= 1000 : "Invalid value?" } Generics - Generics add stability to your code by making more of your bugs detectable at compile time. Code that uses generics has many benefits over non-generic code with: Stronger type checks at compile time. Elimination of casts. Enabling programming to implement generic algorithms. Enhanced for Loop - the enhanced for loop allows you to iterate through a collection without having to create an Iterator or without having to calculate beginning and end conditions for a counter variable. The enhanced for loop is the easiest of the new features to immediately incorporate in your code. In this tip you will see how the enhanced for loop replaces more traditional ways of sequentially accessing elements in a collection. void processList(Vector<string> list) { for (String item : list) { ... Autoboxing/Unboxing - This facility eliminates the drudgery of manual conversion between primitive types, such as int and wrapper types, such as Integer.  Hashtable<Integer, string=""> data = new Hashtable<>(); void add(int id, String value) { data.put(id, value); } Enumeration - Prior to JDK 5 enumerations were not typesafe, had no namespace, were brittle because they were compile time constants, and provided no informative print values. JDK 5 added support for enumerated types as a full-fledged class (dubbed an enum type). In addition to solving all the problems mentioned above, it allows you to add arbitrary methods and fields to an enum type, to implement arbitrary interfaces, and more. Enum types provide high-quality implementations of all the Object methods. They are Comparable and Serializable, and the serial form is designed to withstand arbitrary changes in the enum type. enum Season {WINTER, SPRING, SUMMER, FALL}; } private Season season; void setSeason(Season newSeason) { season = newSeason; } Varargs - Varargs eliminates the need for manually boxing up argument lists into an array when invoking methods that accept variable-length argument lists. The three periods after the final parameter's type indicate that the final argument may be passed as an array or as a sequence of arguments. Varargs can be used only in the final argument position. void warning(String format, String... parameters) { .. for(String p : parameters) { ...process(p);... } ... } Static Imports -The static import construct allows unqualified access to static members without inheriting from the type containing the static members. Instead, the program imports the members either individually or en masse. Once the static members have been imported, they may be used without qualification. The static import declaration is analogous to the normal import declaration. Where the normal import declaration imports classes from packages, allowing them to be used without package qualification, the static import declaration imports static members from classes, allowing them to be used without class qualification. import static data.Constants.RATIO; ... double r = Math.cos(RATIO * theta); Annotations - Annotations provide data about a program that is not part of the program itself. They have no direct effect on the operation of the code they annotate. There are a number of uses for annotations including information for the compiler, compiler-time and deployment-time processing, and run-time processing. They can be applied to a program's declarations of classes, fields, methods, and other program elements. @Deprecated public void clear(); The language changes from JDK 7 are little more familiar as they are mostly the changes from Project Coin: String in switch - Hey it only took us 18 years but the String class can be used in the expression of a switch statement. Fortunately for us it won't take that long for JavaME to adopt it. switch (arg) { case "-data": ... case "-out": ... Binary integral literals and underscores in numeric literals - Largely for readability, the integral types (byte, short, int, and long) can also be expressed using the binary number system. and any number of underscore characters (_) can appear anywhere between digits in a numerical literal. byte flags = 0b01001111; long mask = 0xfff0_ff08_4fff_0fffl; Multi-catch and more precise rethrow - A single catch block can handle more than one type of exception. In addition, the compiler performs more precise analysis of rethrown exceptions than earlier releases of Java SE. This enables you to specify more specific exception types in the throws clause of a method declaration. catch (IOException | InterruptedException ex) { logger.log(ex); throw ex; } Type Inference for Generic Instance Creation - Otherwise known as the diamond operator, the type arguments required to invoke the constructor of a generic class can be replaced with an empty set of type parameters (<>) as long as the compiler can infer the type arguments from the context.  map = new Hashtable<>(); Try-with-resource statement - The try-with-resources statement is a try statement that declares one or more resources. A resource is an object that must be closed after the program is finished with it. The try-with-resources statement ensures that each resource is closed at the end of the statement.  try (DataInputStream is = new DataInputStream(...)) { return is.readDouble(); } Simplified varargs method invocation - The Java compiler generates a warning at the declaration site of a varargs method or constructor with a non-reifiable varargs formal parameter. Java SE 7 introduced a compiler option -Xlint:varargs and the annotations @SafeVarargs and @SuppressWarnings({"unchecked", "varargs"}) to supress these warnings. On the library side there are new features that will be added to satisfy the language requirements above and some to improve the currently available set of APIs.  The library changes include: Collections update - New Collection, List, Set and Map, Iterable and Iteratator as well as implementations including Hashtable and Vector. Most of the work is too support generics String - New StringBuilder and CharSequence as well as a Stirng formatter. The javac compiler  now uses the the StringBuilder instead of String Buffer. Since StringBuilder is synchronized there is a performance increase which has necessitated the wahat String constructor works. Comparable interface - The comparable interface works with Collections, making it easier to reuse. Try with resources - Closeable and AutoCloseable Annotations - While support for Annotations is provided it will only be a compile time support. SuppressWarnings, Deprecated, Override NIO - There is a subset of NIO Buffer that have been in use on the of the graphics packages and needs to be pulled in and also support for NIO File IO subset. Platform extensibility via Service Providers (ServiceLoader) - ServiceLoader interface dos late bindings of interface to existing implementations. It helpe to package an interface and behavior of the implementation at a later point in time.Provider classes must have a zero-argument constructor so that they can be instantiated during loading. They are located and instantiated on demand and are identified via a provider-configuration file in the METAINF/services resource directory. This is a mechansim from Java SE. import com.XYZ.ServiceA; ServiceLoader<ServiceA> sl1= new ServiceLoader(ServiceA.class); Resources: META-INF/services/com.XYZ.ServiceA: ServiceAProvider1 ServiceAProvider2 ServiceAProvider3 META-INF/services/ServiceB: ServiceBProvider1 ServiceBProvider2 From JSR - I would rather use this list I think The Generic Connection Framework (GCF) was previously specified in a number of different JSRs including CLDC, MIDP, CDC 1.2, and JSR 197. JSR 360 represents a rare opportunity to consolidated and reintegrate parts that were duplicated in other specifications into a single specification, upgrade the APIs as well provide new functionality. The proposal is to specify a combined GCF specification that can be used with Java ME or Java SE and be backwards compatible with previous implementations. Because of size limitations as well as the complexity of the some features like InvokeDynamic and Unicode 6 will not be included. Additionally, any language or library changes in JDK 8 will be not be included. On the upside, with all the changes being made, backwards compatibility will still be maintained. JSR 360 is a major step forward for Java ME in terms of platform modernization, language alignment, and embedded support. If you're interested in following the progress of this JSR see the JSR's java.net project for details of the email lists, discussions groups.

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• PostgreSQL, Ubuntu, NetBeans IDE (Part 3)

  - by Geertjan

  To complete the picture, let's use the traditional (that is, old) Hibernate mechanism, i.e., via XML files, rather than via the annotations shown yesterday. It's definitely trickier, with many more places where typos can occur, but that's why it's the old mechanism. I do not recommend this approach. I recommend the approach shown yesterday. The other players in this scenario include PostgreSQL, as outlined in the previous blog entries in this series. Here's the structure of the module, replacing the code shown yesterday: Here's the Employee class, notice that it has no annotations: import java.io.Serializable; import java.util.Date; public class Employees implements Serializable {         private int employeeId;     private String firstName;     private String lastName;     private Date dateOfBirth;     private String phoneNumber;     private String junk;     public int getEmployeeId() {         return employeeId;     }     public void setEmployeeId(int employeeId) {         this.employeeId = employeeId;     }     public String getFirstName() {         return firstName;     }     public void setFirstName(String firstName) {         this.firstName = firstName;     }     public String getLastName() {         return lastName;     }     public void setLastName(String lastName) {         this.lastName = lastName;     }     public Date getDateOfBirth() {         return dateOfBirth;     }     public void setDateOfBirth(Date dateOfBirth) {         this.dateOfBirth = dateOfBirth;     }     public String getPhoneNumber() {         return phoneNumber;     }     public void setPhoneNumber(String phoneNumber) {         this.phoneNumber = phoneNumber;     }     public String getJunk() {         return junk;     }     public void setJunk(String junk) {         this.junk = junk;     } } And here's the Hibernate configuration file: <?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE hibernate-configuration PUBLIC       "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Configuration DTD 3.0//EN"     "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-configuration-3.0.dtd"> <hibernate-configuration>     <session-factory>         <property name="hibernate.connection.driver_class">org.postgresql.Driver</property>         <property name="hibernate.connection.url">jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/smithdb</property>         <property name="hibernate.connection.username">smith</property>         <property name="hibernate.connection.password">smith</property>         <property name="hibernate.connection.pool_size">1</property>         <property name="hibernate.default_schema">public"</property>         <property name="hibernate.transaction.factory_class">org.hibernate.transaction.JDBCTransactionFactory</property>         <property name="hibernate.current_session_context_class">thread</property>         <property name="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect</property>         <property name="hibernate.show_sql">true</property>         <mapping resource="org/db/viewer/employees.hbm.xml"/>     </session-factory> </hibernate-configuration> Next, the Hibernate mapping file: <?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE hibernate-mapping PUBLIC       "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Mapping DTD 3.0//EN"       "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-mapping-3.0.dtd"> <hibernate-mapping>     <class name="org.db.viewer.Employees"            table="employees"            schema="public"            catalog="smithdb">         <id name="employeeId" column="employee_id" type="int">             <generator class="increment"/>         </id>         <property name="firstName" column="first_name" type="string" />         <property name="lastName" column="last_name" type="string" />         <property name="dateOfBirth" column="date_of_birth" type="date" />         <property name="phoneNumber" column="phone_number" type="string" />         <property name="junk" column="junk" type="string" />             </class>     </hibernate-mapping> Then, the HibernateUtil file, for providing access to the Hibernate SessionFactory: import java.net.URL; import org.hibernate.cfg.AnnotationConfiguration; import org.hibernate.SessionFactory; public class HibernateUtil {     private static final SessionFactory sessionFactory;         static {         try {             // Create the SessionFactory from standard (hibernate.cfg.xml)             // config file.             String res = "org/db/viewer/employees.cfg.xml";             URL myURL = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().getResource(res);             sessionFactory = new AnnotationConfiguration().configure(myURL).buildSessionFactory();         } catch (Throwable ex) {             // Log the exception.             System.err.println("Initial SessionFactory creation failed." + ex);             throw new ExceptionInInitializerError(ex);         }     }         public static SessionFactory getSessionFactory() {         return sessionFactory;     }     } Finally, the "createKeys" in the ChildFactory: @Override protected boolean createKeys(List list) {     Session session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().getCurrentSession();     Transaction transac = null;     try {         transac = session.beginTransaction();         Query query = session.createQuery("from Employees");         list.addAll(query.list());     } catch (HibernateException he) {         Exceptions.printStackTrace(he);         if (transac != null){             transac.rollback();         }     } finally {         session.close();     }     return true; } Note that Constantine Drabo has a similar article here. Run the application and the result should be the same as yesterday.

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• Why unhandled exceptions are useful

  - by Simon Cooper

  It’s the bane of most programmers’ lives – an unhandled exception causes your application or webapp to crash, an ugly dialog gets displayed to the user, and they come complaining to you. Then, somehow, you need to figure out what went wrong. Hopefully, you’ve got a log file, or some other way of reporting unhandled exceptions (obligatory employer plug: SmartAssembly reports an application’s unhandled exceptions straight to you, along with the entire state of the stack and variables at that point). If not, you have to try and replicate it yourself, or do some psychic debugging to try and figure out what’s wrong. However, it’s good that the program crashed. Or, more precisely, it is correct behaviour. An unhandled exception in your application means that, somewhere in your code, there is an assumption that you made that is actually invalid. Coding assumptions Let me explain a bit more. Every method, every line of code you write, depends on implicit assumptions that you have made. Take this following simple method, that copies a collection to an array and includes an item if it isn’t in the collection already, using a supplied IEqualityComparer: public static T[] ToArrayWithItem( ICollection<T> coll, T obj, IEqualityComparer<T> comparer) { // check if the object is in collection already // using the supplied comparer foreach (var item in coll) { if (comparer.Equals(item, obj)) { // it's in the collection already // simply copy the collection to an array // and return it T[] array = new T[coll.Count]; coll.CopyTo(array, 0); return array; } } // not in the collection // copy coll to an array, and add obj to it // then return it T[] array = new T[coll.Count+1]; coll.CopyTo(array, 0); array[array.Length-1] = obj; return array; } What’s all the assumptions made by this fairly simple bit of code? coll is never null comparer is never null coll.CopyTo(array, 0) will copy all the items in the collection into the array, in the order defined for the collection, starting at the first item in the array. The enumerator for coll returns all the items in the collection, in the order defined for the collection comparer.Equals returns true if the items are equal (for whatever definition of ‘equal’ the comparer uses), false otherwise comparer.Equals, coll.CopyTo, and the coll enumerator will never throw an exception or hang for any possible input and any possible values of T coll will have less than 4 billion items in it (this is a built-in limit of the CLR) array won’t be more than 2GB, both on 32 and 64-bit systems, for any possible values of T (again, a limit of the CLR) There are no threads that will modify coll while this method is running and, more esoterically: The C# compiler will compile this code to IL according to the C# specification The CLR and JIT compiler will produce machine code to execute the IL on the user’s computer The computer will execute the machine code correctly That’s a lot of assumptions. Now, it could be that all these assumptions are valid for the situations this method is called. But if this does crash out with an exception, or crash later on, then that shows one of the assumptions has been invalidated somehow. An unhandled exception shows that your code is running in a situation which you did not anticipate, and there is something about how your code runs that you do not understand. Debugging the problem is the process of learning more about the new situation and how your code interacts with it. When you understand the problem, the solution is (usually) obvious. The solution may be a one-line fix, the rewrite of a method or class, or a large-scale refactoring of the codebase, but whatever it is, the fix for the crash will incorporate the new information you’ve gained about your own code, along with the modified assumptions. When code is running with an assumption or invariant it depended on broken, then the result is ‘undefined behaviour’. Anything can happen, up to and including formatting the entire disk or making the user’s computer sentient and start doing a good impression of Skynet. You might think that those can’t happen, but at Halting problem levels of generality, as soon as an assumption the code depended on is broken, the program can do anything. That is why it’s important to fail-fast and stop the program as soon as an invariant is broken, to minimise the damage that is done. What does this mean in practice? To start with, document and check your assumptions. As with most things, there is a level of judgement required. How you check and document your assumptions depends on how the code is used (that’s some more assumptions you’ve made), how likely it is a method will be passed invalid arguments or called in an invalid state, how likely it is the assumptions will be broken, how expensive it is to check the assumptions, and how bad things are likely to get if the assumptions are broken. Now, some assumptions you can assume unless proven otherwise. You can safely assume the C# compiler, CLR, and computer all run the method correctly, unless you have evidence of a compiler, CLR or processor bug. You can also assume that interface implementations work the way you expect them to; implementing an interface is more than simply declaring methods with certain signatures in your type. The behaviour of those methods, and how they work, is part of the interface contract as well. For example, for members of a public API, it is very important to document your assumptions and check your state before running the bulk of the method, throwing ArgumentException, ArgumentNullException, InvalidOperationException, or another exception type as appropriate if the input or state is wrong. For internal and private methods, it is less important. If a private method expects collection items in a certain order, then you don’t necessarily need to explicitly check it in code, but you can add comments or documentation specifying what state you expect the collection to be in at a certain point. That way, anyone debugging your code can immediately see what’s wrong if this does ever become an issue. You can also use DEBUG preprocessor blocks and Debug.Assert to document and check your assumptions without incurring a performance hit in release builds. On my coding soapbox… A few pet peeves of mine around assumptions. Firstly, catch-all try blocks: try { ... } catch { } A catch-all hides exceptions generated by broken assumptions, and lets the program carry on in an unknown state. Later, an exception is likely to be generated due to further broken assumptions due to the unknown state, causing difficulties when debugging as the catch-all has hidden the original problem. It’s much better to let the program crash straight away, so you know where the problem is. You should only use a catch-all if you are sure that any exception generated in the try block is safe to ignore. That’s a pretty big ask! Secondly, using as when you should be casting. Doing this: (obj as IFoo).Method(); or this: IFoo foo = obj as IFoo; ... foo.Method(); when you should be doing this: ((IFoo)obj).Method(); or this: IFoo foo = (IFoo)obj; ... foo.Method(); There’s an assumption here that obj will always implement IFoo. If it doesn’t, then by using as instead of a cast you’ve turned an obvious InvalidCastException at the point of the cast that will probably tell you what type obj actually is, into a non-obvious NullReferenceException at some later point that gives you no information at all. If you believe obj is always an IFoo, then say so in code! Let it fail-fast if not, then it’s far easier to figure out what’s wrong. Thirdly, document your assumptions. If an algorithm depends on a non-trivial relationship between several objects or variables, then say so. A single-line comment will do. Don’t leave it up to whoever’s debugging your code after you to figure it out. Conclusion It’s better to crash out and fail-fast when an assumption is broken. If it doesn’t, then there’s likely to be further crashes along the way that hide the original problem. Or, even worse, your program will be running in an undefined state, where anything can happen. Unhandled exceptions aren’t good per-se, but they give you some very useful information about your code that you didn’t know before. And that can only be a good thing.

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• Code Behaviour via Unit Tests

  - by Dewald Galjaard

  Normal 0 false false false EN-ZA X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Some four months ago my car started acting up. Symptoms included a sputtering as my car’s computer switched between gears intermittently. Imagine building up speed, then when you reach 80km/h the car magically and mysteriously decide to switch back to third or even second gear. Clearly it was confused! I managed to track down a technician, an expert in his field to help me out. As he fitted his handheld computer to some hidden port under the dash, he started to explain “These cars are quite intelligent, you know. When they sense something is wrong they run in a restrictive program which probably account for how you managed to drive here in the first place...”  I was surprised and thought this was certainly going to be an interesting test drive. The car ran smoothly down the first couple of stretches as the technician ran through routine checks. Then he said “Ok, all looking good. We need to start testing aspects of the gearbox. Inside the gearbox there are a couple of sensors. One of them is a speed sensor which talks to the computer, which in turn will decide which gear to switch to. The restrictive program avoid these sensors altogether and allow the computer to obtain its input from other [non-affected] sources”. Then, as soon as he forced the speed sensor to come back online the symptoms and ill behaviour re-emerged... What an incredible analogy for getting into a discussion on unit testing software? Besides I should probably put my ill fortune to some good use, right? This example provide a lot of insight into how and why we should conduct unit tests when writing code. More importantly, it captures what is easily and unfortunately often the most overlooked goal of writing unit tests by those new to the art and those who oppose it alike - The goal of writing unit tests is to test the behaviour of our code under predefined conditions. Although it is very possible to test the intrinsic workings of each and every component in your code, writing several tests for each method in practise will soon prove to be an exhausting and ultimately fruitless exercise given the certain and ever changing nature of business requirements. Consequently it is true and quite possible whilst conducting proper unit tests, to call any single method several times as you examine and contemplate different scenarios. Let’s write some code to demonstrate what I mean. In my example I make use of the Moq framework and NUnit to create my tests. Truly you can use whatever you’re comfortable with. First we’ll create an ISpeedSensor interface. This is to represent the speed sensor located in the gearbox.  Then we’ll create a Gearbox class which we’ll pass to a constructor when we instantiate an object of type Computer. All three are described below.   ISpeedSensor.cs namespace AutomaticVehicle {     public interface ISpeedSensor     {         int ReportCurrentSpeed();     } }   Gearbox.cs namespace AutomaticVehicle {      public class Gearbox     {         private ISpeedSensor _speedSensor;           public Gearbox( ISpeedSensor gearboxSpeedSensor )         {             _speedSensor = gearboxSpeedSensor;         }         /// <summary>         /// This method obtain it's reading from the speed sensor.         /// </summary>         /// <returns></returns>         public int ReportCurrentSpeed()         {             return _speedSensor.ReportCurrentSpeed();         }     } } Computer.cs namespace AutomaticVehicle {     public class Computer     {         private Gearbox _gearbox;         public Computer( Gearbox gearbox )         {                     }          public int GetCurrentSpeed()         {             return _gearbox.ReportCurrentSpeed( );         }     } } Since this post is about Unit testing, that is exactly what we’ll create next. Create a second project in your solution. I called mine AutomaticVehicleTests and I immediately referenced the respective nunit, moq and AutomaticVehicle dll’s. We’re going to write a test to examine what happens inside the Computer class. ComputerTests.cs namespace AutomaticVehicleTests {     [TestFixture]     public class ComputerTests     {         [Test]         public void Computer_Gearbox_SpeedSensor_DoesThrow()         {             // Mock ISpeedSensor in gearbox             Mock< ISpeedSensor > speedSensor = new Mock< ISpeedSensor >( );             speedSensor.Setup( n => n.ReportCurrentSpeed() ).Throws<Exception>();             Gearbox gearbox = new Gearbox( speedSensor.Object );               // Create Computer instance to test it's behaviour  towards an exception in gearbox             Computer carComputer = new Computer( gearbox );             // For simplicity let’s assume for now the car only travels at 60 km/h.             Assert.AreEqual( 60, carComputer.GetCurrentSpeed( ) );          }     } }   What is happening in this test? We have created a mocked object using the ISpeedsensor interface which we've passed to our Gearbox object. Notice that I created the mocked object using an interface, not the implementation. I’ll talk more about this in future posts but in short I do this to accentuate the fact that I'm not not really concerned with how SpeedSensor work internally at this particular point in time. Next I’ve gone ahead and created a scenario where I’ve declared the speed sensor in Gearbox to be faulty by forcing it to throw an exception should we ask Gearbox to report on its current speed. Sneaky, sneaky. This test is a simulation of how things may behave in the real world. Inevitability things break, whether it’s caused by mechanical failure, some logical error on your part or a fellow developer which didn’t consult the documentation (or the lack thereof ) - whether you’re calling a speed sensor, making a call to a database, calling a web service or just trying to write a file to disk. It’s a scenario I’ve created and this test is about how the code within the Computer instance will behave towards any such error as I’ve depicted. Now, if you’ve followed closely in my final assert method you would have noticed I did something quite unexpected. I might be getting ahead of myself now but I’m testing to see if the value returned is equal to what I expect it to be under perfect conditions – I’m not testing to see if an error has been thrown! Why is that? Well, in short this is TDD. Test Driven Development is about first writing your test to define the result we want, then to go back and change the implementation within your class to obtain the desired output (I need to make sure I can drive back to the repair shop. Remember? ) So let’s go ahead and run our test as is. It’s fails miserably... Good! Let’s go back to our Computer class and make a small change to the GetCurrentSpeed method.   Computer.cs public int GetCurrentSpeed() {   try   {     return _gearbox.ReportCurrentSpeed( );   }   catch   {     RunRestrictiveProgram( );   } }     This is a simple solution, I know, but it does provide a way to allow for different behaviour. You’re more than welcome to provide an implementation for RunRestrictiveProgram should you feel the need to. It's not within the scope of this post or related to the point I'm trying to make. What is important is to notice how the focus has shifted in our approach from how things can break - to how things behave when broken.   Happy coding!

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• Contract Work - Lessons Learned

  - by samerpaul

  I thought I would write a post of a different nature today, but still relevant to the tech world. I do a lot of contract jobs myself and really enjoy it. It's nice to keep jumping from project to project, and not having to go to an office or keep regular hours, etc. I really enjoy it. I have learned a lot in the past few years of doing it (both from experience and from help given to me from others, and the internet) so I thought I'd share some of that knowledge/experience today.So here's my own personal "lesson's learned" that hopefully will help you if you find yourself doing contract work:Should I take the job?Ok, so this is the first step. Assuming you were given sufficient information about what they want, then you should really think about what you're capable of doing and whether or not you should take this job. Personally, my rule is, if I know it's possible, I'll say yes, even if I don't yet know how to do it. That's because the internet is such a great help, it would be rare to run into an issue that you can't figure out with some help. So if your clients are asking for something that you don't yet know how to program, but you know you can do it on the platform then go for it. How else are you going to learn?Use this rule with some limitation, however. If you're really lacking the expertise or foundation in something, then unless you have tons of time to complete the project, then I wouldn't say yes. For example, I haven't personally done any 3d/openGL programming yet so I wouldn't say yes to a project that extensively uses it. OK, so I want the job, but how much do I charge?This part can be tricky. There is no set formula really, but I have some tips for pricing that will hopefully give you a better idea on how to confidently ask your price and have them accept. Here are some personal guidelinesHow much time do you have to complete the project? If it's shorter than average, then charge more. You can even make a subtle note about this (or not so subtle if they still don't get it.) If it seems too short of a time (i.e. near impossible to complete), be sure to say that. It looks bad to promise a time that you can't keep--and it makes it less likely for them to return to you for work.Your Hourly rate: How long have you been working in that language? Do you have existing projects to back you up? Or previous contacts that can vouch for your work? Are there very few people with your particular skill set? All of these things will lend themselves to setting an hourly rate. I'd also try out a quick google search of what your line of work is, to see what the industry standard is at that point in time.I wouldn't price too low, because you want to make your time worth it. You also want them to feel like they're paying for quality work (assuming you can deliver it :) ). Finally, think about your client. If it's a small business, then don't price it too high if you want the job. If it's an enterprise (like a Fortune company), then don't be afraid to price higher. They have the budget for it.Fixed price: If they want a fixed price project, then you need to think about how many hours it will take you to complete it and multiply it by the hourly rate you set for yourself. Then, honestly, I would add 10-20% on top of that. Why? Because nothing ever works exactly how you want it to. There are lots of times that something "trivial" is way harder than it should be, or something that "should work" doesn't for hours and it eats away at your hourly rate. I can't count the number of times I encountered a logical bug that took away an entire's day work because debuggers don't help in those cases. By adding that padding in, it's still OK to have those days where you don't get as much done as you want. And another useful tip: Depending on your client, and the scope, you most likely want to set that you both sign off on a specification sheet before doing any work, and that any changes will result in a re-evaulation of the price. This is to help protect you from being handed a huge new addition to the project half-way in, without any extra payment.Scope of project: Finally, is it a huge project? Is it really small/fast? This affects how much your client will be willing to pay. If it sounds big, they will be willing to pay more for it. If it seems really small, then you won't be able to get away with a large asking price (as easily).Ok, I priced it, now what?So now that you have the price, you want to make sure it feels justified to your client. I never set a price before I can really think about everything. For example, if you're still in your introduction phase, and they want a price, don't give one! Just comment that you will send them a proposal sheet with all the features outlined, and a price for everything. You don't want to shout out a low number and then deliver something that is way higher. You also don't want to shock them with a big number before they feel like they are getting a great product.Make up a proposal document in a word editor. Personally, I leave the price till the very end. Why? Because by the time they reach the end, you've already discussed all the great features you plan to implement, and how it's the best product they'll ever use, etc etc...so your price comes off as a steal! If you hit them up front with a price, they will read through the document with a negative bias. Think about those commercials on TV. They always go on about their product, then at the end, ask "What would you pay for something like this? $100? $50? How about $20!!". This is not by accident.Scenario: I finished the job way earlier than expectedYou have two options then. You can either polish the hell out of the application, and even throw in a few bonus features (assuming they are in-line with the customer's needs) or you can sit and wait on it until you near your deadline. Why don't you want to turn it in too early? Because you should treat that extra time as a surplus. If you said it is going to take you 3 weeks, and it took you only 1, you have a surplus of 2 weeks. I personally don't want to let them know that I can do a 3 week project in 1 week. Why not? Because that may not always be the case! I may later have a 3 week project that takes all 3 weeks, but if I set a precedent of delivering super early, then the pressure is on for that longer project. It also makes it harder to quote longer times if you keep delivering too early.Feel free to deliver early, but again, don't do it too early. They may also wonder why they paid you for 3 weeks of work if you're done in 1. They may further wonder if the product sucks, or what is wrong with it, if it's done so early, etc.I would just polish the application. Everyone loves polish in their applications. The smallest details are what make an application go from "functional" to "fantastic". And since you are still delivering on time, then they are still going to be very happy with you.Scenario: It's taking way too long to finish this, and the deadline is nearing/here!So this is not a fun scenario to be in, but it'll happen. Sometimes the scope of the project gets out of hand. The best policy here is OPENNESS/HONESTY. Tell them that the project is taking longer than expected, and give a reasonable time for when you think you'll have it done. I typically explain it in a way that makes it sound like it isn't something that I did wrong, but it's just something about the nature of the project. This really goes for any scenario, to be honest. Just continue to stay open and communicative about your progress. This doesn't mean that you should email them every five minutes (unless they want you to), but it does mean that maybe every few days or once a week, give them an update on where you're at, and what's next. They'll be happy to know they are paying for progress, and it'll make it easier to ask for an extension when something goes wrong, because they know that you've been working on it all along.Final tips and thoughts:In general, contract work is really fun and rewarding. It's nice to learn new things all the time, as mandated by the project ,and to challenge yourself to do things you may not have done before. The key is to build a great relationship with your clients for future work, and for recommendations. I am always very honest with them and I never promise something I can't deliver. Again, under promise, over deliver!I hope this has proved helpful!Cheers,samerpaul

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