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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 11, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 11, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET MVC Extensions: ASP.NET MVC Extensions is developed on top of ASP.NET MVC extensibility point, which allows your IoC Container to rule everywhere.Best practices in .NET: NMA is a collection of knowledges that I learned from my co-worker and Internet. It's built on Domain Driven Design theories. I used Struture Map,...BioRider: Project participant of the 1st National Award for InteroperabilityBSoft: that's the project for bsoftClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML makes it easier for developers to create OpenXML files for Excel 2007. It provides a nice object oriented way to manipulate the files (si...Dragon Master: A tool for all D&D masters that need to create Dragon NPCsFacturator - Create invoices easy and fast: Windows forms application for creating invoices based on a Word template. Including a simple workflow for send, payed and finished invoices and a q...FreeEPG: An Australian EPG using the Freeview online guide. All Freeview regions are supported and data can be exported in either XMLTV or Microsoft Media ...GreedyRSS: Convert everything to RSS FeedHByte: In honor of the heisenberg uncertainty principle. This is an implementation of a type who has byte semantics, but who's value and location can not...JSON RPC 2.0 - Javascript/.NET Implementation: JSON RPC 2.0 - Javascript/.NET Implementation - NOT READY YETMjollnir - Supplemental Library for BCL: Mjollnir is Supplements Library for BCL. Mjollnir is Compatible with .NET Framework 4 (or maybe later).Money Spinner: MoneySpinnerMSPY 2010 Open Extended Dictionary Building Tool: A tool to create Open Extend Dictionary for Microsoft Pinyin IME 2010, it is develped in C#Sharepoint Data Store: This is a small library that lets SharePoint developers store and manage custom application information in SharePoint.SharePointSlim: We are going to use it in conjunction with the PowerSlim projectSSTA: A Tool to Compare SQL Database Schema Versionstbeasy: tbeasyNew Releases8085 Microprocessor simulator: 8085 Instruction Set Simulator with source code: 8085 Instruction set simulator with windows installer plus complete source code and examplesAutoArchive: Site Template...: Slightly off topic, but take a looK!BioRider: Uptiva Dreams IT Entry: ==================================== National Interoperability Award ==================================== TEAM: Uptiva Dreams IT PROJECT: BioRide...C# Developer Utility Library: ScrimpNet.Core Library May 2010: Initial upload of project library. Contains only source files. Recommend adding extracted files to your project as a project reference.Coot: Beta 1: To install the screen saver: Extract the contents of the zip file (all three files) to C:\Windows\System32 Go to screen saver properties, select ...Deploy Workflow Manager: Deploy Workflow Manager v1: Recommend you test on your development environment first before implementing into production. Criteria to run the workflow is assumed to be inclu...Expression Encoder 3 Visual Basic Samples: Encoder 3 VB Samples: Zip file contains the Encoder 3 samples written in Visual Basic.FreeEPG: Debug Release: Initial Release. Run the application from the command line for options. If you choose to run the client as a Windows Service, then you will need t...FSharpChess: Alpha Release 0.197: This is just the latest version of the binaries. Note that there are two excecutables: FSharpChess includes a UI partially written in C# FSharpCh...GreedyRSS: GreedyRSS V2: V2与V1相比： 改进了插件架构 用数据库取代XML配置文件 用Web Services暴露了部分功能Headspring Labs: ASP.NET MVC 2 tips and tricks (code): Contains example app that demonstrates techniques in the Tips & Tricks powerpointHeadspring Labs: ASP.NET MVC tips and tricks PPT: Powerpoint file for the ASP.NET MVC tips and tricks talk.HouseFly controls: HouseFly controls beta 1.0.0.0: HouseFly controls release 1.0.0.0 betaiTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.2.3782: This production release of iTuner 1.2 allows you to synchronize one or more iTunes playlists to a USB MP3 player. It also provides the ability to ...JSON RPC 2.0 - Javascript/.NET Implementation: v0.7: Protocol implemented. Most of the extra features implemented.MapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 msi May 10, 2010: This version fixes a reproject bug where false_easting from .prj files was not being correctly converted into meters when the projection was in feet.Mouse Zoom - Visual Studio Extension: MouseZoom 1.7: Version 1.7 fixes a bug that can cause the keys to stick when leaving focus (e.g. opening a VS dialog box).Mouse Zoom - Visual Studio Extension: MouseZoom 1.8: Override mouse wheel scroll functionality to always scroll 25% no matter what zoom level you are on (by default, scrolling with the mouse wheel bec...MSPY 2010 Open Extended Dictionary Building Tool: 20100511build: First release. 1. Installation After you download it to your local disk, create a new folder and unzip it to the new folder, that's it. 2. run ...MSPY 2010 Open Extended Dictionary Building Tool: 20100511build2: First release. 1. Installation After you download it to your local disk, create a new folder and unzip it to the new folder, that's it. 2. run ...Multiwfn: multiwfn1.3.2: multiwfn1.3.2NASA Space Shuttle TV Schedule Transfer to Outlook Calendar: NASA Space Shuttle TV Schedule Release v1.4.132.1: Warning!There is a problem with the latest version of the program and rev 0 of STS-132 mission schedule. I am looking into the problem when the yea...NASA Space Shuttle TV Schedule Transfer to Outlook Calendar: NASA Space Shuttle TV Schedule Release v1.4.132.2: This release fixes a problem with rev 0 of the STS-132 mission schedule in recognizing the year of launch. NASA changed the year of launch to a fo...Object/Relational Mapper & Code Generator in Net 2.0 for Relational & XML Schema: 2.8: Switched compliation options to always run in 32-bit mode, to ensure it can connect to MSAccess & MSExcel on 64-bit machines. Updated parameterised...Open NFSe: OpenNFSe-Salvador v1.0.0: Atualização do OpenNFSe-Salvador para o novo schema utilizado pela prefeitura de Salvador.OpenSLIM: OpenSLIM-v373b0-20100509-0: Here is the list of new additions and improvements that this new major release incorporates: Systems Decommissioning Management. Improvements on...Pcap.Net: Pcap.Net 0.6.0 (44468): Pcap.Net - May 2010 Release Pcap.Net is a .NET wrapper for WinPcap written in C++/CLI and C#. It Features almost all WinPcap features and includes ...PowerShell Community Extensions: 2.0 Production: PowerShell Community Extensions 2.0 Release NotesMay 10, 2010 The primary purpose of the Pscx 2.0 release is to convert from the previous approach...Scrum Sprint Monitor: v1.0.0.47921 (.NET 4-TFS 2010): What is new in this release? Minor version over 1.0.0.47911 introducing CEIP (Customer Experience Improvement Program). This is taking advantage of...Sharepoint Data Store: 1.0: First ReleaseSPVisualDev - SharePoint Developer Tool: Version 2.2.0: Visual Studio 2010 is now supported. Note that this is only intended to be used for MOSS 2007 / WSS 3.0 development and not for SP 2010. Package SP...SQL Server PowerShell Extensions: 2.2.1 Production: Release 2.2 re-implements SQLPSX as PowersShell version 2.0 modules. SQLPSX consists of 9 modules with 133 advanced functions, 2 cmdlets and 7 scri...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30510.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30510.1: Automatic drop of latest buildVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30510.2: Automatic drop of latest buildVolumeMaster: Volume Master 2.0 Beta: First release of VolumeMaster. So if you're running Windows Vista / 7 you can have a handy Volume OSD and control your volume with the following sh...WabbitStudio Z80 Software Tools: SPASM2 32-Bit: A test release for SPASM2.Web Camera Shooter: 1.0.0.1: Video capturing: Touchless SDK -> AForge.Video. Main window shown in taskbar and not top most. Native images generated for all assemblies. Sm...Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NETPHPExcelMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMirror Testing SystemThe Information Literacy Education Learning Environment (ILE)RawrCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightwhiteBlogEngine.NETTweetSharpjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesIonics Isapi Rewrite Filter

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• Compelling Keynotes Coming: Oracle OpenWorld Latin America

  - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team

  Make your plans now for 4-6 December in São Paulo! Again this year there are informative and inspiring keynotes lined up for Oracle OpenWorld Latin America. For the opening keynote on 4 December, Oracle President Mark Hurd and Chief Technology Officer Edward Screven will talk about the many elements that are defining the convergence of business and information technology. The next day's keynote will focus on cloud computing, diving deeply into how mobile and social technologies play into this critical way of delivering services. Featured speakers are Oracle executives Thomas Kurian, Andrew Mendelsohn, and Robert Shimp. On Thursday, 6 December, Anthony Lye, Oracle senior vice president, will discuss the customer experience revolution and how the analysis of customer behavior can help shape companies' ability to understand and adapt more effectively to their customers' needs and wants. And, of course, Oracle partners always have interesting and exciting things to say. Be sure to come hear about innovations from Odebrecht, CTIS Tecnologia, and Intel do Brasil executives on topics including technology adoption that drives business results; the "Model School" revolution; and the role of the data center as technology advances. You can still enjoy Early Bird savings through 3 December, so register now!

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• Soft 404 error on redirected outbound links

  - by Techlands

  I have a redirect script on my site which sends visitors to an affiliate site. However in the last month I've noticed that Google webmaster tools is reporting my outbound links as a 404 error. Here is the breakdown on how its setup: My outbound links are coded like this: <a href="/f/c123" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Link Title</a> My redirect script will then perform a 302 redirect to the affiliate link Originally I had the affiliate links (CJ) directly in the HTML, however I noticed over time that this had some impact on my sites traffic. So I changed them to a redirect script and my traffic returned. This seemed to work with no issues for over 1 year but now I'm getting soft 404 errors in Google webmaster tools. I did try adding a rule in my robots.txt to block any links starting with /f/ but I'm not sure if this will help or Google will still report soft 404 errors. I am considering as possible options to change the a tag to a button tag and use an onclick event to load the link.

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• DevDays ‘00 The Netherlands day #2

  - by erwin21

  Day 2 of DevDays 2010 and again 5 interesting sessions at the World Forum in The Hague. The first session of the today in the big world forum theater was from Scott Hanselman, he gives a lap around .NET 4.0. In his way of presenting he talked about all kind of new features of .NET 4.0 like MEF, threading, parallel processing, changes and additions to the CLR and DLR, WPF and all new language features of .NET 4.0. After a small break it was ready for session 2 from Scott Allen about Tips, Tricks and Optimizations of LINQ. He talked about lazy and deferred executions, the difference between IQueryable and IEnumerable and the two flavors of LINQ syntax. The lunch was again very good prepared and delicious, but after that it was time for session 3 Web Vulnerabilities and Exploits from Alex Thissen. This was no normal session but more like a workshop, we decided what kind of subjects we discussed, the subjects where OWASP, XSS and other injections, validation, encoding. He gave some handy tips and tricks how to prevent such attacks. Session 4 was about the new features of C# 4.0 from Alex van Beek. He talked about Optional- en Named Parameters, Generic Co- en Contra Variance, Dynamic keyword and COM Interop features. He showed how to use them but also when not to use them. The last session of today and also the last session of DevDays 2010 was about WCF Best Practices from Gerben van Loon. He talked about 7 best practices that you must know when you are going to use WCF. With some quick demos he showed the problem and the solution for some common issues. It where two interesting days and next year i sure will be attending again.

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• Middleware Day at UK Oracle User Group Conference 2012

  - by JuergenKress

  Registration has opened for UK Oracle User Group Conference 2012, the UK’s largest Independent Oracle Technology & E-Business Suite conference from 3rd - 5th December, 2012. The conference will attract over 1,700 attendees from the UK and internationally. Spanning three days and featuring over 250 presentations which range from end-users telling their war stories to Oracle unveiling the latest product roadmaps. We have always been trusted to provide exceptional events with innovative content and renowned speakers and our 2012 event is no exception. It is just not our words, 95% of attendees from the last years conference, highly recommend the experience to other Oracle user. You can get an overview of the conference, listen what last year's delegates thought and explore the full agenda on the conference website: www.ukoug.org/ukoug2012. Join the UK Oracle User Group for ‘Middleware Sunday’ - an event packed with technical content for WebLogic administrators taking place on 2nd December the day before the start of UKOUG Conference 2012. The day has been organised by middleware enthusiasts Simon Haslam and Jacco Landlust and is free to UKOUG 2012 delegates. The content level will be pitched intermediate to advanced. So delegates are expected to be comfortable with WebLogic and its configuration terms, such as domains and managed servers. We will also have a fun, hands-on session for which you’ll need a quick laptop to join our mega-cluster! For more information visit the UKOUG 2012 website: www.ukoug.org/2012. WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. BlogTwitterLinkedInMixForumWiki Technorati Tags: simon Haslam,UK user group,middleware sunday,conference,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Creating the concept of Time

  - by Jamie Dixon

  So I've reached the point in my exploration of gaming where I'd like to impliment the concept of time into my little demo I've been building. What are some common methodologies for creating the concept of time passing within a game? My thoughts so far: My game loop tendes to spend a fair bit of time sitting around waiting or user input so any time system will likely need to be run in a seperate thread. What I've currently done is create a BackgroundWorker passing in a method that contains a loop triggering every second. This is working fine and I can output information to the console from here etc. Inside this loop I have a DateTime object that is incrimented by 1 minute for every realtime second. (the game begins in the year 01/01/01) Is this a standard way of acheiving this result or are there more tried and tested methods? I'm also curious about how to go about performing time based actions (reducing player energy, moving entities around the game board, life/death etc). Thanks for any pointers or advice. I've searched around however I'm not familiar enough with the terms and so my searches are yeilding little result on this one.

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• Get Ready to Meet Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2 at OpenWorld

  - by Irem Radzik

    Oracle GoldenGate 11g Release 2 could not come at a better time. At Oracle OpenWorld 2012 we have a great set of sessions and demos for Oracle GoldenGate users: deep dives into the new features of Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2, as well as great customer presentations from Comcast, Bank of America, Turk Telekom, Ticketmaster, St. Jude Medical Center, and more. Here are 3 must-attend sessions for GoldenGate users and for those who want to get to know GoldenGate’s capabilities: Real-World Zero-Downtime Operations with Oracle GoldenGate: Customer Panel Oct 1st 1:45 PM Moscone West – 3005 Oracle GoldenGate 11g Release 2 New Features Oct 1st 3:15 PM Moscone West – 3005 Real-World Operational Reporting with Oracle GoldenGate: Customer Panel Oct 2nd 11:45 AM Moscone West - 3005 For a full list of GoldenGate and data integration sessions, please check out our Focus-On for Data Integration. Similar to last year, Hands-on-Labs will be available for those who want to experience the power of GoldenGate first hand. One of these instructor-led sessions provides “Deep Dive into Oracle GoldenGate” will be held on Thursday Oct 4th 11:15am at Marriott Marquis - Salon ½. I expect the spots will fill out fast in this session. Oracle GoldenGate Demos will be running Monday through Wednesday in Moscone South in both Oracle Database and Oracle Fusion Middleware sections of the Oracle demo grounds. We will be showcasing: Monitoring Oracle GoldenGate for End-to-End Visibility Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2 New Features Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2: Real-Time, Transactional Database Replication Oracle GoldenGate Veridata Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture If you are not able to attend OpenWorld, you should not miss this week’s live webcast introducing Oracle GoldenGate 11g Release 2. On Wednesday the webcast will present the new features of GoldenGate and attendees will have a long, live Q&A panel session with the PM team.  I also recommend checking out the resources for GoldenGate to download new white papers. The whole team is looking forward to sharing with you the latest and greatest features of GoldenGate at the launch webcast and at OpenWorld.

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• IT Optimization Plan Pays Off For UK Retailer

  - by Brian Dayton

  I caught this article in ComputerworldUK yesterday. The headline talks about UK-based supermarket chain Morrisons is increasing their IT spend...OK, sounds good. Even nicer that Oracle is a big part of that. But what caught my eye were three things: 1) Morrison's truly has a long term strategy for IT. In this case, modernizing and optimizing how they use IT for business advantage.   2) Even in a tough economic climate, Morrison's views IT investments as contributing to and improving the bottom line. Specifically, "The investment in IT contributed to a 21 percent increase in Morrison's underlying profit.."   3) The phased, 3-year "Optimization Plan" took a holistic approach to their business--from CRM and Supply Chain systems to the underlying application infrastructure. On the infrastructure front, adopting a more flexible Service-Oriented Architecture enabled them to be more agile and adapt their business and Identity Management helped with sometimes mundane (but costly) issues like lost passwords and being able to document who has access to what.   Things don't always turn out so rosy. And I know it was a long and difficult process...but it's nice to see a happy ending every once in a while.  

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• Ask the Readers: How Fast is Your Internet Connection?

  - by Mysticgeek

  The federal government recently announced a broadband initiative that calls for 260 million homes to have 100Mbps Internet connections by the year 2020. This got us wondering, how fast is your current Internet connection? Photo by roland When it comes to the speed of our Internet connection, we all want the maximum possible. The FCC recently announced their National Broadband Plan, which is an initiative to improve the Internet infrastructure in the United States and provide higher speeds to everyone. You’ve also undoubtedly heard the news about Google getting into the mix with their program to bring ultra high-speed fiber broadband to 50,000 users in select cities. While we wait for those programs to come into fruition, we thought it would be cool to check out what kinds of speeds you’re getting now. Test Your Internet Connection Speed There are several sites out there you can use to test your Internet speeds, but probably the best site is Speedtest.net. It’s easy to use, and allows you test download and upload speeds to and from various locations in the US and throughout the world. If you already know the speeds you’re getting leave a comment and let us know. If you use Speedtest.com, just keep in mind that our comment system won’t allow you to copy their result links, but you can simply tell us what you get in the results. We’re especially interested in the results of those of you who have Verizon FIOS or Comcast’s “Ultra” service. Leave a comment and join in the discussion! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Configure How often Ubuntu checks for Automatic UpdatesMysticgeek Blog: A Look at Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 on Windows XPNorton Internet Security 2010 [Review]Disable Fast User Switching on Windows XPUnderstanding Vista’s New Network Connection Icons TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Converting Mp4 to Mp3 Easily Use Quick Translator to Translate Text in 50 Languages (Firefox) Get Better Windows Search With UltraSearch Scan News With NY Times Article Skimmer SpeedyFox Claims to Speed up your Firefox Beware Hover Kitties

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• Tools of the Trade

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  I got pretty excited a couple of days ago when my new laptop arrived. “The new phone books are here!  The new phone books are here!  I’m a somebody!” - Steve Martin in The Jerk It is a Dell Precision M4500 with an Intel i7 Core 2.8 GHZ running 64-bit Windows 7 with a 15.6” widescreen, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD.  For some of you high fliers, this may be nothing to write home about, but compared to the 32–bit Windows XP laptop with 2 GB of RAM and a regular hard disk that I’m coming from, it’s a really nice step forward.  I won’t even bore you with the details of the desktop PC I was first given when I started here 5 1/2 years ago.  Let’s just say that things have improved.  One really nice thing is that while we are definitely running a lean and mean department in terms of staffing, my boss believes in supporting that lean staff with good tools in order to stay lean instead of having to spend even more money on additional employees.  Of course, that only goes so far, and at some point you have to add more people in order to get more work done, which is why we are bringing on-board a new employee and a new contract developer next week.  But that’s a different story for a different time. But the main topic for this post is to highlight the variety of tools that I use in my job and that you might find useful, too.  This is easy to do right now because the process of building up my new laptop from scratch has forced me to assemble a list of software that had to be installed and configured.  Keep in mind as you look through this list that I play many roles in our company.  My official title is Software Engineering Manager, but in addition to managing the team, I am also an active ASP.NET and SQL developer, the Database Administrator, and 50% of the SAN Administrator team.  So, without further ado, here are the tools and some comments about why I use them: Tool Purpose Virtual Clone Drive Easily mount an ISO image as a DVD Drive.  This is particularly handy when you are downloading disk images from Microsoft for your tools. SQL Server 2008 R2 Developer Edition We are migrating all of our active systems to SQL 2008 R2.  Developer Edition has all the features of Enterprise Edition, but intended for development use. SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition (BIDS ONLY) The migration to SSRS 2008 R2 is just getting started, and in the meantime, maintenance work still has to be done on the reports on our SQL 2005 server.  For some reason, you can’t use BIDS from 2008 to write reports for a 2005 server.  There is some different format and when you open 2005 reports in 2008 BIDS, it forces you to upgrade, and they can no longer be uploaded to a 2005 server.  Hopefully Microsoft will fix this soon in some manner similar to Visual Studio now allows you to pick which version of the .NET Framework you are coding against. Visual Studio 2010 Premium All of our application development is in ASP.NET, and we might as well use the tool designed for it. I’ve used a version of Visual Studio going all the way back to VB 6.0 and Visual Interdev. Vault Professional Client Several years ago we replaced Visual Source Safe with SourceGear Vault (then Fortress, and now Vault Pro), and I love it.  It is very reliable with low overhead - perfect for a small to medium size development team.  And being a small ISV, their support is exceptional. Red-Gate Developer Bundle with the SQL Source Control update for Vault I first used, and fell in love with, SQL Prompt shortly before Red-Gate bought it, and then Red-Gate’s first release made me love it even more.  SQL Refactor (which has since been rolled into the latest version of SQL Prompt) has saved me many hours and migraine’s trying to understand somebody else’s code when their indenting was nonexistant, or worse, irrational.  SQL Compare has been awesome for troubleshooting potential schema issues between different instances of system databases.  SQL Data Compare helped us identify the cause behind a bug which appeared in PROD but could not be reproduced in a nearly (but not quite exactly) identical copy in UAT.  And the newest tool we are embracing: SQL Source Control.  I blogged about it here (and here, and here) last December.  This is really going to help us keep each developer’s copy of the database in sync with one another. Fiddler Helps you watch the whole traffic stream on web visits.  Haven’t used it a lot, but it did help me track down some odd 404 errors we were finding in our own application logs.  Has some other JavaScript troubleshooting capabilities, but some of its usefulness has been supplanted by the Developer Tools option in IE8. Funduc Search & Replace Find any string anywhere in a mound of source code really, really fast.  Does RegEx searches, if you understand that foreign language.  Has really helped with some refactoring work to pinpoint, for example, everywhere a particular stored procedure is referenced, whether in .NET code or other SQL procedures (which we have in script files).  Provides in-context preview of the search results.  Fantastic tool, and a bargain price. SciTE SciTE is a Scintilla based Text Editor and it is a fantastic, light-weight tool for quickly reviewing (or writing) program code, SQL scripts, and extract files.  It has language-specific syntax highlighting.  I used it to write several batch and CMD programs a year ago, and to examine data extract files for exchanging information with other systems.  Extremely handy are the options to View End of Line and View Whitespace.  Ever receive a file that is supposed to use CRLF as an end-of-line marker, but really only has CRs?  SciTE will quickly make that visible. Infragistics Controls We do a lot of ASP.NET development, and frequently use the WebGrid, WebTab, and date picker controls.  We will likely be implementing the Hierarchical Data Grid soon.  Infragistics has control suites for WebForms, WinForms, Silverlight, and coming soon MVC/JQuery. WinZip - WITH Command-Line add-in The classic compression program with a great command-line interface that allows me to build those CMD (and soon PowerShell) programs for automated compression jobs.  Our versioned Build packages are zip files. XML Notepad Haven’t used this a lot myself, but one of my team really likes it for examining large XML files. LINQPad Again, haven’t used this one a lot, but it was recommended to me for learning and practicing my LINQ skills which will come in handy as we implement Entity Framework. SQL Sentry Plan Explorer SQL Server Show Plan on steroids.  Great for helping you focus on the parts of a large query that are of most importance.  Also great for just compressing the graphical plan into more readable layout. Araxis Merge A great DIFF and Merge tool.  SourceGear provides a great tool called DiffMerge that we use all the time, but occasionally, I like the cross-edit capabilities of Araxis Merge.  For a while, we also produced DIFF reports in HTML that showed all the changes that occurred between two releases.  This was most important when we were putting out very small, but very important hot fixes on a very politically hot system.  The reports produced by Araxis Merge gave the Director of IS assurance that we were not accidentally introducing ripples throughout the system with our releases. Idera SQL Admin Toolset A great collection of tools including a password checker to help analyze your SQL Server for weak user passwords, a Backup Status tool to quickly scan a large list of servers and databases to identify any that are overdue for backups.  Particularly helpful for highlighting new databases that have been deployed without getting included in your backup processing.  I also like Space Analyzer to keep an eye on disk space consumed by database files. Idera SQL Job Manager This free tool provides a nice calendar view of SQL Server Job Schedules, but to a degree, you also get what you pay for.  We will be purchasing SQL Sentry Event Manager later this year as an even better job schedule reviewer/manager.  But in the meantime, this at least gives me a good view on potential resource conflicts across multiple instances of SQL Server. DBFViewer 2000 I inherited a couple of FoxPro databases that I have to keep an eye on occasionally and have not yet been able to migrate them to SQL Server. Balsamiq Mockups We are still in evaluation-mode on this tool, but I really like it as a quick UI mockup tool that does not require Visual Studio, so someone other than a programmer can do UI design.  The interface looks hand-drawn which definitely has some psychological benefits when communicating to users, too. FeedDemon I have to stay on top of my WAY TOO MANY blog subscriptions somehow.  I may read blogs on a couple of different computers, and FeedDemon’s integration with Google Reader allows me to keep them all in sync.  I don’t particularly like the Google Reader interface, or the fact that it always wanted to mark articles as read just because I scrolled past them.  FeedDemon solves this problem for me, and provides a multi-tabbed interface which is good because fairly frequently one blog will link to something else I want to read, and I can end up with a half-dozen open tabs all from one article. Synergy+ In my office, I run four monitors across two computers all with one mouse and keyboard.  Synergy is the magic software that makes this work. TweetDeck I’m not the most active Tweeter in the world, but when I want to check-in with the Twitterverse, this really helps.  I have found the #sqlhelp and #PoshHelp hash tags particularly useful, and I also have columns setup to make it easy to monitor #sqlpass, #PASSProfDev, and short term events like #sqlsat68.   Whew!  That’s a lot.  No wonder it took me a couple of days to get everything setup the way I wanted it.  Oh, that and actually getting some work accomplished at the same time.  Anyway, I know that is a huge dump of info, and most people never make it here to the end, so for those who did, let me say, CONGRATULATIONS, you made it! I hope you’ll find a new tool or two to make your work life a little easier.

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• A message to Denis Pitcher

  - by guybarrette

  Denis Pitcher, You posted this comment on my blog and some other blogs: Devteach's promotion for a one year MSDN subscription was not honoured and attempts to contact them result in a "we sent attendee info to MS, it's not our problem" response while attempts to contact Microsoft result in the suggestion that any queries should be redirect to Devteach. Hopefully not all attendees we're cheated though if you're considering attending a future Devteach it is recommended that you don't hold any expectation that they'll honour their promotions. I spoke to Jean-René Roy, DevTeach organizer and also to MSDN Canada folks.  Looks like the email you used to register for the conference is now bouncing (maybe a typo when you registered?).  That why you haven’t received any news about the offer.  The fact that you’re leaving the same comment on various blogs without your email address doesn’t help at all.  Thay want to contact you!  Also, looks like they never received your emails, maybe you used a the wrong email addresses. Anyway, please contact Jean-René Roy at [email protected] ASAP.

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• Oracle OpenWorld Series: Fusion Middleware Lineup

  - by Michelle Kimihira

  With Oracle OpenWorld just days away, I just wanted to highlight once again these three must-attend session: Monday, 10/1 10:45 AM – 11:45 AM GEN9504 - General Session: Innovation Platform for Oracle Apps, Including Fusion Applications Amit Zavery, Vice President, Fusion Middleware Product Management Strategy and roadmap session for Fusion Middleware for Enterprise Applications with customers, Boeing, Electronic Arts and Underwriters Laboratories Moscone West, 3002/3004 Tuesday, 10/2 10:15 AM – 11:15 AM GEN9394 - General Session: Oracle Fusion Middleware Strategies Driving Business Innovation Hasan Rizvi, Executive Vice President of Product Development Strategy and roadmap session for Fusion Middleware with customers, Nintendo, Los Angeles Dept. of Water & Power and Nike Moscone North, Hall D Tuesday, 10/2 11:45 AM – 12:45AM CON9162 – Oracle Fusion Middleware: Meet This Year’s Most Impressive Customer Projects Hear from the winners of the 2012 Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards and see which customers are taking home a trophy for the 2012 Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Award.  Read more about the Innovation Awards here. Moscone West, 3001 Be sure to check out the individual Focus On documents to serve as your roadmap to must-attend sessions and demos. All other Focus On documents can be found here. Best of Oracle Fusion Middleware Mobile Computing Fusion Middleware for Enterprise Applications Oracle ADF and Fusion Development Business Process Management Oracle Coherence Cloud Application Foundation Oracle WebLogic Server Data Integration SOA and BPM Exalogic Elastic Cloud SOA for Developers Identity Management Social Master Data Management WebCenter   We look forward to seeing you at Oracle OpenWorld and in our Fusion Middleware sessions! Additional Information ·         Relevant Blogs: Oracle OpenWorld Countdown Begins ,  Best of Oracle Fusion Middleware, Fusion Middleware for Enterprise Applications, Amit Zavery’s General Session, Hasan Rizvi’s General Session, All Things Mobile, Oracle OpenWorld Blog ·         Product Information on Oracle.com: Oracle Fusion Middleware ·         Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter ·         Follow us on Twitter and Facebook

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• Changing the BizTalk message output file name

  - by Bill Osuch

  By default, BizTalk creates the filename of the message dropped to a send port as %MessageID%, which is the unique identifier (GUID) of the message. What if you want to create your own filename? To start, create a simple schema, and a basic orchestration that will receive the message and send it right back out, like this: If you deploy this and wire up the ports, you can drop an xml file into your receive port and have it come out at your send port named something like {7A63CAF8-317B-49D5-871F-9FD57910C3A0}.xml. Now, we'll create a new message with a custom filename. First, create a new orchestration variable called NewFileName, of the type System.String. Next, create a second message using the same schema as the message you're receiving in the Receive shape. Now, drag a Construct Message shape to the orchestration. In the shape's properties, set Messages Constructed to be the new message you just created. Double click the Message Assignment shape (inside the Construct shape...) and paste in the following code: Message_2 = Message_1;   NewFileName = Message_1(FILE.ReceivedFileName); NewFileName = NewFileName.Replace(".xml","_"); NewFileName = NewFileName + "output_" + System.DateTime.Now.Year.ToString() + "-" + System.DateTime.Now.Month.ToString();   Message_2(FILE.ReceivedFileName) = NewFileName; Here we make a copy of the received message, get it's original file name (ReceivedFileName), replace its extension with an underscore, and date-stamp it. Finally, add a Send shape and a Port to the surface, and configure them to send the message you just created. You should wind up with an orchestration like this: Deploy it, and create a new send port. It should be just about identical to the first send port, except this time the file name will be "%SourceFileName%.xml" (without the quotes of course). Fire up the application, drop in a test file, and you should now get both the xml file named with a GUID, and a second file named something along the lines of "MySchemaTestFile_output_2011-6.xml".

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• Paper Gold Rush

  - by Chris G. Williams

  The last few days at the shop have been reminiscent of a marathon of Pawn Stars. Quite a few people have come in wanting to trade for store credit. Most of them have left disappointed. We did pick up a few things here and there (which hopefully I can sell.) The problem, in a nutshell, is that people get it in their head that a (YuGiOh) card is worth X amount because they looked it up 2-3 years a...go, or someone told them it was valuable... then they play it in their deck for a year without sleeves, and cram it in a binder covered in duct tape. By the time they bring the cards in to me, new sets have come out which often de-value the tournament usefulness of the card from $20 to *maybe* 50 cents, in mint condition. Which means I can offer them about 10-15 cents... only they are almost never in mint condition, which means I usually offer them nothing at all. Most of the time, you can watch their smile fade as I start going through their cards. It's kinda sad, really, since I know they think they've spent the last two years walking around with the keys to their own personal gold mine. I don't really enjoy seeing that look on a child's face. I like kids and I remember those moments when perception and reality crashed headlong into each other. It was seldom pretty. So, when I'm talking to a child, I try to take it easy on them and give them some suggestions on how to better preserve their cards. Sometimes though, it's an adult. Depending on the situation, my response to them varies pretty broadly. Most of the time though, I still feel pretty bad when it doesn't go their way.

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• Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 Now Available

  - by Paulo Folgado

  Delivering on Oracle's commitment to open source, Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 is now available, further enhancing the popular, open source, cross-platform virtualization software.   "Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 is the third major product release in just over a year, and adds to the many new product releases across the Oracle Virtualization product line, illustrating the investment and importance that Oracle places on providing a comprehensive desktop to datacenter virtualization solution," says Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president, Linux and Virtualization Engineering, Oracle. "With an improved user interface and added virtual hardware support, customers will find Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 provides a richer user experience." Part of Oracle's comprehensive portfolio of virtualization solutions, Oracle VM VirtualBox enables desktop or laptop computers to run multiple guest operating systems simultaneously, allowing users to get the most flexibility and utilization out of their PCs, and supports a variety of host operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, most popular flavors of Linux (including Oracle Linux), and Oracle Solaris. Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 delivers increased capacity and throughput to handle greater workloads, enhanced virtual appliance capabilities, and significant usability improvements. Support for the latest in virtual hardware, including chipsets supporting PCI Express, further extends the value delivered to customers, partners, and developers. Highlights of Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 include New Open Architecture - Oracle and community developers can now create extensions that customize Oracle VM VirtualBox and add features not previously available.Enhanced Usability - A new scalable display mode enables users to view more virtual displays on their existing monitors. Improvements to VM management, including visual VM previews, an optional attributes display, and easy launch shortcut creation enables administrators and power users to customize the interface to make it as simple or as comprehensive as required.Increased Capacity and Throughput - A new asynchronous I/O model for networked (iSCSI) and local storage delivers significant storage related performance improvements, while new optimizations allow larger datacenter-class workloads, such as Oracle's middeware, to be run on 32-bit Windows hosts for testing and demo purposes. Powerful Virtual Appliance Sharing Capabilities - Enhanced support for standards-compliant OVF appliances and added support for OVA format descriptors. All information about a VM may be stored in a single folder to facilitate easier direct sharing among VMs. Support for Latest Virtual Hardware - A new, modern virtual chipset supporting PCI Express and other hardware enhancements including high-definition audio devices helps ensure support for the most demanding virtual workloads.

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• The Future of Life Assurance Conference Recap

  - by [email protected]

  I recently wrote about the Life Insurance Conference held in Washington, DC last month. This week I was both an attendee and guest speaker the 13th Annual Future of Life Assurance Conference held at The Guoman Tower in London, UK. It's amazing that these two conferences were held on opposition sides of the Atlantic Ocean and addressed many of the same session topics and themes. Insurance is certainly a global industry! This year's conference was attended by many of the leading carriers and CEOs in the UK and across Europe.The sessions included a strong lineup of keynote speakers and panel discussions from carriers such as Legal & General, Skandia, Aviva, Standard Life, Friends Provident, LV=, Zurich UK, Barclays and Scottish Life. Sessions topics addressed a variety of business and regulatory issues including: Ensuring a profitable future Key priorities in regulation The future of advice The impact of the RDR on distribution Bancassurance Gaining control of the customer relationship Revitalizing product offerings In addition, Oracle speakers (Glenn Lottering and myself) led specific sessions on gearing up for Solvency II and speeding product development through adaptive rules-based systems. The main themes that played throughout many of the sessions included: change is here, focusing on customers, the current economic crisis has been challenging and the industry needs to get back to the basics and simplify - simplify - simplify. Additionally, it is clear that the UK Life & Pension markets will be going through some major changes as new RDR regulation related to advisor fees and commission and automatic enrollment are rolled out in 2012 Roger A.Soppe, CLU, LUTCF, is the Senior Director of Insurance Strategy, Oracle Insurance.

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• Remembering September 11 - 11 Years Later

  - by user12613380

  It's September 11 again and time to reminisce about that fateful day when the world came together as one. The attacks of that day touched everyone around the world as almost 3000 people from the United States and 38 other countries were killed. This year, I am finding it difficult to say anything other than what I have said in previous years. So, I will not try to "wax loquacious." Instead, I will simply say that I will never forgot. I will not forget where I was on that day. I will not forgot the people who died. I will not forget the people who gave their lives so that others might live. And I will not forget how our world changed on that day. And with that remembrance, we again return to our lives, using tragedy to drive us to build a world of peace and opportunity. My thanks go out again to the men and women, uniformed or not, who continue to protect us from harm. May we never again experience such human tragedy, on U.S. soil or elsewhere.

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• Turning on the wireless card freezes Ubuntu 12.04

  - by Ryan Schram

  I've been using Ubuntu 12.04 for close to a year. Occasionally after booting into Gnome 3, the desktop is unresponsive to cursor clicks. The mouse cursor moves but can't open menus. Also the network icon displays a red error badge instead of the usual gray x indicating that it is off. The only way I have found to solve this is to switch to a terminal shell (Ctrl-Alt-F5), login and kill gnome-session. This is an intermittent and occasional problem. Recently I moved house and set up this computer in my new apartment. Now I have for the first time a new and more difficult problem. Switching on the wireless card (wlan0) to connect to the wifi router causes the desktop to freeze. Switching to a terminal via Ctrl-Alt-F5 doesn't work. The only solution is a hard reboot from the power switch. How can I diagnose the second, more recent problem? Is there a solution? Cheers, Ryan

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• IOUG Webcast Series on Identity Management

  - by Tanu Sood

  Identity Management for Business Empowerment Identity Management has gone from the realm of IT tools to being a business solution. Security and Identity Management offer confidence in doing secure and compliant business. But more than that, Identity Management today contributes to business growth with secure social, cloud, mobile and internal & external ecosystem enablement. Cloud computing has heightened the interest in user access security, mobile computing brings access to information beyond the enterprise and a bring your own device culture in-house, social media has added a new dimension to user identity and increasing security compliance pressure has made organizations rethink their roles and entitlements strategy. To discuss the industry trends, maturity and framework for security, compliance and business empowerment with identity management, Oracle is proud to collaborate with IOUG to launch a series of live webcasts. Covering a span of topics from identity platform to entitlements managements, privilege access management and cloud, mobile and social security, these webcasts will provide direct access to subject matter experts and technology specialists. Hear first-hand about best practices, a pragmatic approach to security implementation, customer success stories and more. Register today for the individual webcasts or the series. And just a reminder that the conversation starts at COLLABORATE 12 in Las Vegas from April 22nd – 26th. In addition to our conference sessions, as an added value this year, we are offering a half-day deep dive session on Oracle Identity Management: Building a Security and Compliance Framework for Oracle Systems. The session is scheduled for Sunday, April 22nd from 9 am to 3 pm and will cover relevant topics such as: • A Primer on Identity Management • Security and Compliance with Oracle Identity Management • Security for Oracle Applications, Fusion Applications• Managing Identities in The Cloud and Mobile World • Best Practices: Building an Identity Roadmap and Getting Started To get a head start on your compliance and security program, pre-register for this session today.

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• Why do things change between using a LiveCD/LiveUSB and installing Ubuntu?

  - by ahow628

  Here have been a couple of weird experiences I've had with a Ubuntu LiveCD or LiveUSB: 1) I had one of the original Chromebooks (CR-48). I ended up wiping ChromeOS and installing only Ubuntu 12.04.0 just after it came out. It worked like a charm. About a year later, I broke something and reinstalled Ubuntu using 12.04.3 on a LiveUSB. The LiveUSB worked perfectly - screen resolution, wifi, trackpad all worked fine. I installed it (once installing updates, once stock from the USB drive) and both times screen resolution, wifi, and trackpad all broke. I ended up downloading 12.04.0 and installing it then upgrading to 12.04.3 after the fact and everything worked perfectly once again. 2) I purchased a Toshiba Portege z935 and the LiveUSB worked perfectly, namely the wifi. After install, wifi was extremely slow and basically couldn't load any pages. The answer was that Bluetooth conflicted somehow with wifi and Bluetooth had to be disabled to get wifi to work. Yet both could be enabled in the LiveUSB version, no problem. So my question is, why does this happen? Why does everything work perfectly from the LiveUSB version but then get broken when installed on the system? Is there a different way to install Ubuntu that would allow things to be installed over exactly as they were on the LiveUSB version (drivers, settings, etc)? Are there assumptions that the install makes that I could override somehow?

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• Change Password vs. Reset Password-Week 42

  - by OWScott

  You can find this week’s video here. The differences between change password and reset password are not well known. This week's video walks through the differences and shows them in action. Tune in to find out more about password management. It wasn’t until fairly recently that I realized that there is a difference between a change password and a reset password. One is safe, while the other not so much. I remember when Windows Server 2003 was first released and resetting a user’s password had a distinct warning about irreversible loss of information. I wondered why it wasn’t mentioned in previous operating systems, but I also wondered if it was true since I never personally noticed any impact. It wasn’t until about a year ago when I really dug in to understand this topic better. This week’s lesson covers the differences between a change password and a reset password. In this video we also take a look at it in action so that we have a solid understanding of the topic, and briefly discuss how it works for programming APIs too. This is now week 42 of a 52 week series for the web pro. You can view past and future weeks here: http://dotnetslackers.com/projects/LearnIIS7/ You can find this week’s video here.

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• Did you forget me?

  - by Ratman21

  I know it has been a long time since I last blogged. Still at it, looking for work in the “IT” field. Had another phone interview (only found out during the interview that it was for one year contract job, but I still would take it) for a Help Desk job. Didn’t get it, they thought I was not a application support person and more of a hardware support. Gee..I started out in “IT” as a programmer. Then a programmer/computer operator, then a Tandem/Lan operator and finally a Network operator. I had to deal with so many different operating systems, software and applications.   And they thought I was too hardware. Well I am working a temp day job with the U.S. Census. It gets me out of the house and out in the country. If find getting paid to check for living quarters not bad job, except for the many houses I find that are up for sale and looks like it was not the owners (former owners it seems) idea, with the kids toys still in the yards. Not good for some one with a over active imagine or for my truck. So far I have backed in to ditch (and had to be pulled out), in to power pole (no damage to pole and very little to truck) and a mail box (no damage to truck but mail box was leaning a little) in the last two weeks.   Oh an I have started reading/using “The Love Dare” book from the movie “Fireproof”. I restarted (yes I have had to go back to day one from day five) the dare this Sunday. Dare one dare/day one “Love Is Patient” and the first dare is (reading from the book is): “The first part of this dare is fairly simple. Although Love is communicated in a number of ways. Our words often reflect the condition of our heart. For the next day, resolve to demonstrate patience and to sys nothing negative to your spouse at all. If the temptation arises, choose not to say anything. It’s better to hold your tongue that to say something you’ll regret. “. This was almost too easy as I can hold back from saying anything bad to any one but, this can also be a problem in life (you hold back for so long and!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Boom). Check back for dare/day two “Love Is Kind”.

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• Window borders missing - gtk-window-decorator segmentation fault

  - by Balakrshnan Ramakrishnan

  I have been using Ubuntu for about 1 year now and I got a problem just two days ago. Suddenly I started experiencing a problem with the window borders (title bar with close, maximize, and minimize buttons). The problem : The window borders disappear I run "gtk-window-decorator --replace" For like 20 seconds everything is back to normal But it again returns to the problem. I searched over the Internet and found that my problem is similar to what is specified in this bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/814091 This bug report says that the "fix released". I updated everything using the Update Manager, but still the problem remains. Can anyone let me know whether the problem is fixed? If yes, can you please let me know how to do it? I have already tried normal replace/reset commands like unity --reset unity --replace compiz --replace The "window borders" plugin is on in CCSM (CompizConfig Settings Manager) and it points to "gtk-window-decorator". I use Ubuntu 11.10 on an Intel Core2Duo T6500 with AMD Mobility Radeon HD 4300 graphics card. If you need more information, please let me know.

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• Microsoft&rsquo;s new technical computing initiative

  - by Randy Walker

  I made a mental note from earlier in the year.  Microsoft literally buys computers by the truckload.  From what I understand, it’s a typical practice amongst large software vendors.  You plug a few wires in, you test it, and you instantly have mega tera tera flops (don’t hold me to that number).  Microsoft has been trying to plug away at their cloud services (named Azure).  Which, for the layman, means Microsoft runs your software on their computers, and as demand increases you can allocate more computing power on the fly. With this in mind, it doesn’t surprise me that I was recently sent an executive email concerning Microsoft’s new technical computing initiative.  I find it to be a great marketing idea with actual substance behind their real work.  From the programmer academic perspective, in college we dreamed about this type of processing power.  This has decades of computer science theory behind it. A copy of the email received.  (note that I almost deleted this email, thinking it was spam due to it’s length) We don't often think about how complex life really is. Take the relatively simple task of commuting to and from work: it is, in fact, a complicated interplay of variables such as weather, train delays, accidents, traffic patterns, road construction, etc. You can however, take steps to shorten your commute - using a good, predictive understanding of a few of these variables. In fact, you probably are already taking these inputs and instinctively building a predictive model that you act on daily to get to your destination more quickly. Now, when we apply the same method to very complex tasks, this modeling approach becomes much more challenging. Recent world events clearly demonstrated our inability to process vast amounts of information and variables that would have helped to more accurately predict the behavior of global financial markets or the occurrence and impact of a volcano eruption in Iceland. To make sense of issues like these, researchers, engineers and analysts create computer models of the almost infinite number of possible interactions in complex systems. But, they need increasingly more sophisticated computer models to better understand how the world behaves and to make fact-based predictions about the future. And, to do this, it requires a tremendous amount of computing power to process and examine the massive data deluge from cameras, digital sensors and precision instruments of all kinds. This is the key to creating more accurate and realistic models that expose the hidden meaning of data, which gives us the kind of insight we need to solve a myriad of challenges. We have made great strides in our ability to build these kinds of computer models, and yet they are still too difficult, expensive and time consuming to manage. Today, even the most complicated data-rich simulations cannot fully capture all of the intricacies and dependencies of the systems they are trying to model. That is why, across the scientific and engineering world, it is so hard to say with any certainty when or where the next volcano will erupt and what flight patterns it might affect, or to more accurately predict something like a global flu pandemic. So far, we just cannot collect, correlate and compute enough data to create an accurate forecast of the real world. But this is about to change. Innovations in technology are transforming our ability to measure, monitor and model how the world behaves. The implication for scientific research is profound, and it will transform the way we tackle global challenges like health care and climate change. It will also have a huge impact on engineering and business, delivering breakthroughs that could lead to the creation of new products, new businesses and even new industries. Because you are a subscriber to executive e-mails from Microsoft, I want you to be the first to know about a new effort focused specifically on empowering millions of the world's smartest problem solvers. Today, I am happy to introduce Microsoft's Technical Computing initiative. Our goal is to unleash the power of pervasive, accurate, real-time modeling to help people and organizations achieve their objectives and realize their potential. We are bringing together some of the brightest minds in the technical computing community across industry, academia and science at www.modelingtheworld.com to discuss trends, challenges and shared opportunities. New advances provide the foundation for tools and applications that will make technical computing more affordable and accessible where mathematical and computational principles are applied to solve practical problems. One day soon, complicated tasks like building a sophisticated computer model that would typically take a team of advanced software programmers months to build and days to run, will be accomplished in a single afternoon by a scientist, engineer or analyst working at the PC on their desktop. And as technology continues to advance, these models will become more complete and accurate in the way they represent the world. This will speed our ability to test new ideas, improve processes and advance our understanding of systems. Our technical computing initiative reflects the best of Microsoft's heritage. Ever since Bill Gates articulated the then far-fetched vision of "a computer on every desktop" in the early 1980's, Microsoft has been at the forefront of expanding the power and reach of computing to benefit the world. As someone who worked closely with Bill for many years at Microsoft, I am happy to share with you that the passion behind that vision is fully alive at Microsoft and is carried out in the creation of our new Technical Computing group. Enabling more people to make better predictions We have seen the impact of making greater computing power more available firsthand through our investments in high performance computing (HPC) over the past five years. Scientists, engineers and analysts in organizations of all sizes and sectors are finding that using distributed computational power creates societal impact, fuels scientific breakthroughs and delivers competitive advantages. For example, we have seen remarkable results from some of our current customers: Malaria strikes 300,000 to 500,000 people around the world each year. To help in the effort to eradicate malaria worldwide, scientists at Intellectual Ventures use software that simulates how the disease spreads and would respond to prevention and control methods, such as vaccines and the use of bed nets. Technical computing allows researchers to model more detailed parameters for more accurate results and receive those results in less than an hour, rather than waiting a full day. Aerospace engineering firm, a.i. solutions, Inc., needed a more powerful computing platform to keep up with the increasingly complex computational needs of its customers: NASA, the Department of Defense and other government agencies planning space flights. To meet that need, it adopted technical computing. Now, a.i. solutions can produce detailed predictions and analysis of the flight dynamics of a given spacecraft, from optimal launch times and orbit determination to attitude control and navigation, up to eight times faster. This enables them to avoid mistakes in any areas that can cause a space mission to fail and potentially result in the loss of life and millions of dollars. Western & Southern Financial Group faced the challenge of running ever larger and more complex actuarial models as its number of policyholders and products grew and regulatory requirements changed. The company chose an actuarial solution that runs on technical computing technology. The solution is easy for the company's IT staff to manage and adjust to meet business needs. The new solution helps the company reduce modeling time by up to 99 percent - letting the team fine-tune its models for more accurate product pricing and financial projections. Our Technical Computing direction Collaborating closely with partners across industry and academia, we must now extend the reach of technical computing even further to help predictive modelers and data explorers make faster, more accurate predictions. As we build the Technical Computing initiative, we will invest in three core areas: Technical computing to the cloud: Microsoft will play a leading role in bringing technical computing power to scientists, engineers and analysts through the cloud. Existing high- performance computing users will benefit from the ability to augment their on-premises systems with cloud resources that enable 'just-in-time' processing. This platform will help ensure processing resources are available whenever they are needed-reliably, consistently and quickly. Simplify parallel development: Today, computers are shipping with more processing power than ever, including multiple cores, but most modern software only uses a small amount of the available processing power. Parallel programs are extremely difficult to write, test and trouble shoot. However, a consistent model for parallel programming can help more developers unlock the tremendous power in today's modern computers and enable a new generation of technical computing. We are delivering new tools to automate and simplify writing software through parallel processing from the desktop... to the cluster... to the cloud. Develop powerful new technical computing tools and applications: We know scientists, engineers and analysts are pushing common tools (i.e., spreadsheets and databases) to the limits with complex, data-intensive models. They need easy access to more computing power and simplified tools to increase the speed of their work. We are building a platform to do this. Our development efforts will yield new, easy-to-use tools and applications that automate data acquisition, modeling, simulation, visualization, workflow and collaboration. This will allow them to spend more time on their work and less time wrestling with complicated technology. Thinking bigger There is so much left to be discovered and so many questions yet to be answered in the fascinating world around us. We believe the technical computing community will show us that we have not seen anything yet. Imagine just some of the breakthroughs this community could make possible: Better predictions to help improve the understanding of pandemics, contagion and global health trends. Climate change models that predict environmental, economic and human impact, accessible in real-time during key discussions and debates. More accurate prediction of natural disasters and their impact to develop more effective emergency response plans. With an ambitious charter in hand, this new team is ready to build on our progress to-date and execute Microsoft's technical computing vision over the months and years ahead. We will steadily invest in the right technologies, tools and talent, and work to bring together the technical computing community. I invite you to visit www.modelingtheworld.com today. We welcome your ideas and feedback. I look forward to making this journey with you and others who want to answer the world's biggest questions, discover solutions to problems that seem impossible and uncover a host of new opportunities to change the world we live in for the better. Bob

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• Getting SQL table row counts via sysindexes vs. sys.indexes

  - by Bill Osuch

  Among the many useful SQL snippets I regularly use is this little bit that will return row counts in a table: SELECT so.name as TableName, MAX(si.rows) as [RowCount] FROM sysobjects so JOIN sysindexes si ON si.id = OBJECT_ID(so.name) WHERE so.xtype = 'U' GROUP BY so.name ORDER BY [RowCount] DESC This is handy to find tables that have grown wildly, zero-row tables that could (possibly) be dropped, or other clues into the data. Right off the bat you may spot some "non-ideal" code - I'm using sysobjects rather than sys.objects. What's the difference? In SQL Server 2005 and later, sysobjects is no longer a table, but a "compatibility view", meant for backward compatibility only. SELECT * from each and you'll see the different data that each returns. Microsoft advises that sysindexes could be removed in a future version of SQL Server, but this has never really been an issue for me since my company is still using SQL 2000. However, there are murmurs that we may actually migrate to 2008 some year, so I might as well go ahead and start using an updated version of this snippet on the servers that can handle it: SELECT so.name as TableName, ddps.row_count as [RowCount] FROM sys.objects so JOIN sys.indexes si ON si.OBJECT_ID = so.OBJECT_ID JOIN sys.dm_db_partition_stats AS ddps ON si.OBJECT_ID = ddps.OBJECT_ID  AND si.index_id = ddps.index_id WHERE si.index_id < 2  AND so.is_ms_shipped = 0 ORDER BY ddps.row_count DESC

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