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• CSS3PIE issues in IE6 and 8

  - by Gordon

  I'm using CSS3PIE to apply some rounded corners to elements in Internet Explorer that will get them by stylesheet in other browsers. I've run into some issues with it though. In IE8, I discovered that any element that had the PIE behaviour would behave strangely. The container would jump a few pixels to the right, but the content would stay in its original position, giving the appearance that the content had all shifted left relative to its container. This would be especially problematic on elements with no or small amounts of padding. I was able to hack my way around the problem in IE8 by using X-UA-Compatible, but I'd rather avoid this solution if at all possible. I don't have access to IE9 for testing but my understanding hacks like PIE aren't necessary and it would be wasteful to force a compatibility mode in a browser that doesn't need it. I have worse issues in IE6, with the PIE layout breaking down completely on a list that is set up to use display:inline; zoom:1; list items (to simulate inline-block, which works in IE8 and the other browsers). Here the borders of the list items get rendered in completely the wrong place. So ideally, I'd like to have PIE work properly in IE6, and in IE8 without having to resort to compatibility mode. As far as IE6 goes, a graceful fallback where PIE is just not applied will do. IE7 is the only browser where the page displays as intended. I can't provide an example page just at the moment unfortunately, I can add one later though. Follow up: Here are some screen grabs made with IE Tester. I'm hoping they will make things a little more clear for everybody. As you can see, IE7 is fine. However, in IE8, the containers are offset to the left relative to their content, and in IE6 the list elements (with the rounded 1 pixel border) are a complete mess! Full size versions for IE8, IE7 and IE6 are also available

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• How to iterate JPA collections in Google App engine

  - by palto

  Hi I use Google App Engine with datanucleus and JPA. I'm having a real hard time grasping how I'm supposed to read stuff from data store and pass it to JSP. If I load a list of POJOs with entitymanager and pass it to JSP, it crashes to org.datanucleus.exceptions.NucleusUserException: Object Manager has been closed. I understand why this is happening. Obviously because I fetch the list, close the entity manager and pass it to JSP, at which point it will fail because the list is lazy. How do I make the list NOT lazy without resorting to hacks like calling size() or something like that? Here is what I'm trying to do: @Override protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp) throws ServletException, IOException { req.setAttribute("parties", getParties()); RequestDispatcher dispatcher = getServletContext().getRequestDispatcher("/WEB-INF/parties.jsp"); dispatcher.forward(req, resp); } private List<Party> getParties(){ EntityManager em = entityManagerProvider.get(); try{ Query query = em.createQuery("SELECT p FROM Party p"); return query.getResultList(); }finally{ em.close(); } }

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• iPhone development - app design patterns

  - by occulus

  There are tons of resources concerning coding on the iPhone. Most of them concern "how do I do X", e.g. "setup a navigation controller", or "download text from a URL". All good and fine. What I'm more interested in now are the questions that follow the simpler stuff - how to best structure your complex UI, or your app, or the common problems that arise. To illustrate: a book like "Beginning iPhone 3 Development" tells you how to set up a multi viewcontroller app with an top 'switcher' viewcontroller that switches between views owned by other view controllers. Fine, but you're only told how to do that, and nothing about the problems that can follow: for example, if I use their paradigm to switch to a UINavigationViewController, the Navigation bar ends up too low on the screen, because UINavigationViewController expects to be the topmost UIViewController (apparently). Also, delegate methods (e.g. relating to orientation changes) go to the top switcher view controller, not the actual controller responsible for the current view. I have fixes for these things but they feel like hacks which makes me unhappy and makes me feel like I'm missing something. One productive thing might be to look at some open source iPhone projects (see this question). But aside from that?

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• Abstracting the interpretation of MVC checkboxes values received by the FormsCollection object

  - by Simon_Weaver

  In ASP.NET MVC a checkbox is generated by the HtmlHelper code here: <%= Html.CheckBox("List_" + mailingList.Key, true) %> as this HTML: <input id="List_NEW_PRODUCTS" name="List_NEW_PRODUCTS" type="checkbox" value="true" /> <input name="List_NEW_PRODUCTS" type="hidden" value="false" /> In case you're wondering why is there an extra hidden field? - then read this. Its definitely a solution that makes you first think 'hmmmmm' but then you realize its a pretty elegant one. The problem I have is when I'm trying to parse the data on the backend. Well its not so much of a problem as a concern if anything in future were to change in the framework. If I'm using the built in binding everything is great - its all done for me. But in my case I'm dynamically generating checkboxes with unknown names and no corresponding properties in my model. So i end up having to write code like this : if (forms["List_RETAIL_NOTIFICATION"] == "true,false") { } or this: if (forms.GetValues("List_RETAIL_NOTIFICATION")[0] == "true") { } Both of which i still look at and cringe - especially since theres no guarantee this will always be the return value. I'm wondering if theres a way to access the layer of abstraction used by the model binders - or if I'm stuck with my controller 'knowing' this much about HTTP POST hacks. Yes I'm maybe being a little picky - but perhaps theres a better clever way using the model binders that I can employ to read dynamically created checkbox parameters. In addition i was hoping this this post might help others searcheing for : "true,false". Even though I knew why it does this I just forgot and it took me a little while to realize 'duh'. FYI: I tried another few things, and this is what I found : forms["List_RETAIL_NOTIFICATION"] evaluates to "true,false" forms.GetValues("List_RETAIL_NOTIFICATION")[0] evaluates to "true" (forms.GetValue("List_RETAIL_NOTIFICATION").RawValue as string[])[0] evaluates to "true" forms.GetValues("List_RETAIL_NOTIFICATION").FirstOrDefault() evaluates to "true"

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• How not to lose binding source updates?

  - by Fyodor Soikin

  Suppose I have a modal dialog with a textbox and OK/Cancel buttons. And it is built on MVVM - i.e. it has a ViewModel object with a string property that the textbox is bound to. Say, I enter some text in the textbox and then grab my mouse and click "OK". Everything works fine: at the moment of click, the textbox loses focus, which causes the binding engine to update the ViewModel's property. I get my data, everybody's happy. Now suppose I don't use my mouse. Instead, I just hit Enter on the keyboard. This also causes the "OK" button to "click", since it is marked as IsDefault="True". But guess what? The textbox doesn not lose focus in this case, and therefore, the binding engine remains innocently ignorant, and I don't get my data. Dang! Another variation of the same scenario: suppose I have a data entry form right in the main window, enter some data into it, and then hit Ctrl+S for "Save". Guess what? My latest entry doesn't get saved! This may be somewhat remedied by using UpdateSourceTrigger=PropertyChanged, but that is not always possible. One obvious case would be the use of StringFormat with binding - the text keeps jumping back into "formatted" state as I'm trying to enter it. And another case, which I have encountered myself, is when I have some time-consuming processing in the viewmodel's property setter, and I only want to perform it when the user is "done" entering text. This seems like an eternal problem: I remember trying to solve it systematically from ages ago, ever since I've started working with interactive interfaces, but I've never quite succeeded. In the past, I always ended up using some sort of hacks - like, say, adding an "EnsureDataSaved" method to every "presenter" (as in "MVP") and calling it at "critical" points, or something like that... But with all the cool technologies, as well as empty hype, of WPF, I expected they'd come up with some good solution.

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• CSS to create curved corner between two elements?

  - by Tauren

  My UI has an unordered list on the left. When a list item is selected, a div appears on the right of it. I'd like to have a curved outer corner where the <li> and the <div> meet. See the white arrow in the image below. To extend the blue <li> to the edge of the <ul>, I'm planning to do something like this: li { right-margin: 2em; border-radius: 8px; } li.active { right-margin: 0; border-bottom-right-radius: 0; border-top-right-radius: 0; } Is there a better way to extend the <li> to the edge of the <ul>? Obviously, I'll include the webkit and mozilla border radius CSS as well. The main thing I'm unsure about is that outer corner underneath the bottom right corner of the active <li>. I have some ideas, but they seem like hacks. Any suggestions? NOTE that the <ul> is indicated in grey, but it would be white in the real design. Also, I'm planning to use Javascript to position the <div> correctly when an <li> is selected.

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• C# How to create various objects at runtime that can hold strongly typed data?

  - by JL

  Is it possible to create objects at runtime without having to have hard coded class definitions, then populate properties with primitives or even strongly typed data types? For example: Lets say I want to an XML config file that could hold configuration values for connecting to various systems in an SOA application. In C# I read in these values, but for each system the properties are different (e.g: SQL might have a connection string, while SharePoint might need a username + password + domain + url, while yet an smtp server would need username + password + port + url) So instead of creating static classes as follows public class SharePointConfiguration or public class SQLConfiguration, then have each class with custom properties (this is cumbersome) Is there not a more preferred way to achieve this, without using 1990's methods, in otherwords it would still be nice to have intellisense and code completion and named properties. Since this collection of properties (object) would be passed within the class and possible to other classes from function to function I am also wondering where this class definition would get defined if its all happening at run time. Any recommendations, and hope the question was clear enough. Would like to use language features, not hacks. Thank you.

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• How can I tell when the Text of a System.Windows.Forms.GroupBox wraps to the next line?

  - by fre0n

  I'm creating a GroupBox at runtime and setting its Text property. Usually, the text is only on one line, but sometimes it wraps. The problem is that the controls contained in the GroupBox cover up the GroupBox's text. What I'd like to do is determine if and when the text wraps. Specifically, I'd like to determine how much extra height the wrapped text takes up as compared to a single line. That way, I can reposition the GroupBox's controls and adjust its height. Initially, I thought I'd do this by calling the GroupBox's CreateGraphics() method, and using the Graphics to measure the string. Something like this: private void SetGroupBoxText(GroupBox grp, string text) { const int somePadding = 10; Graphics g = grp.CreateGraphics(); SizeF textSize = g.MeasureString(text, grp.Font); if (textSize.Width > (grp.Width - somePadding)) { // Adjust height, etc. } } The problem is that the size generated by g.MeasureString(text, grp.Font) doesn't seem to be accurate. I determined that it wasn't accurate by putting enough of a single character to cause a wrap, then measuring the resulting string. For example, it took 86 pipes (|) to until a wrap happened. When I measured that string, its width was ~253. And it took 16 capital W's to force a wrap - its string had a width of ~164. These were the two extremes that I tested. My GroupBox's width was 189. (a's took 29 and had a width of ~180, O's took 22 and had a width of ~189) Does anyone have any ideas? (hacks, WinAPI, etc. are welcome solutions)

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• Why Can't Businesses Upgrade their Browsers from IE6/IE7?

  - by viatropos

  I have read lots these past few weeks on IE6, seeing if it was really that bad to make it look right. I have just learned HTML and CSS this past year so I've been spoiled to start with basically CSS3 and HTML5, and I can do some really cool stuff super fast. I'm no IE6 master and I don't have years of experience with IE. So I thought it'd take a little time to figure out all the hacks to IE6/7 discovered and just implement them. But it's way harder than that (or maybe just way too much work). I'd have to either completely rebuild my design using "Internet Explorer 'Principles'", or cut out a lot of the neat things I could do using more recent technologies. For a million and one other reasons, everyone who builds things online seems to think IE should die. My question is, why can't businesses upgrade their browsers? When I work with businesses, they almost always resist the first time I ask, but 5 seconds later I'll show them what it looks like on my computer and talk about how great the latest stuff is (how much more secure later browser are, all the famous IE security cases, how much smoother and faster they new browsers are, how the IE team has basically missed the boat entirely, how much smoother business processes run, etc.), and they get excited! And within a few seconds they're up and running with Chrome or something. So can businesses not upgrade for some reasons? What are the reasons a business cannot upgrade? The main reason I think of is because they have an old version of windows. But a) wasn't there a legal case against this? and b) somebody must have figured out how to install Chrome or Firefox on ancient versions of Windows by now.

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• Satisfying indirect references at runtime.

  - by automatic

  I'm using C# and VS2010. I have a dll that I reference in my project (as a dll reference not a project reference). That dll (a.dll) references another dll that my project doesn't directly use, let's call it b.dll. None of these are in the GAC. My project compiles fine, but when I run it I get an exception that b.dll can't be found. It's not being copied to the bin directory when my project is compiled. What is the best way to get b.dll into the bin directory so that it can be found at run time. I've thought of four options. Use a post compile step to copy b.dll to the bin directory Add b.dll to my project (as a file) and specify copy to output directory if newer Add b.dll as a dll reference to my project. Use ILMerge to combine b.dll with a.dll I don't like 3 at all because it makes b.dll visible to my project, the other two seem like hacks. Am I missing other solutions? Which is the "right" way? Would a dependency injection framework be able to resolve and load b.dll?

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• Inconsistent canvas drawing in Android browser

  - by user2943466

  In putting together a small canvas app I've stumbled across a weird behavior that only seems to occur in the default browser in Android. When drawing to a canvas that has the globalCompositeOperation set to 'destination-out' to act as the 'eraser' tool, Android browser sometimes acts as expected, sometimes does not update the pixels in the canvas at all. the setup: context.clearRect(0,0, canvas.width, canvas.height); context.drawImage(img, 0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height); context.globalCompositeOperation = 'destination-out'; draw a circle to erase pixels from the canvas: context.fillStyle = '#FFFFFF'; context.beginPath(); context.arc(x,y,25,0,TWO_PI,true); context.fill(); context.closePath(); a small demo to illustrate the issue can be seen here: http://gumbojuice.com/files/source-out/ and the javascript is here: http://gumbojuice.com/files/source-out/js/main.js this has been tested in multiple desktop and mobile browsers and behaves as expected. On Android native browser after refreshing the page sometimes it works, sometimes nothing happens. I've seen other hacks that move the canvas by a pixel in order to force a redraw but this is not an ideal solution.. Thanks all.

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• mailto: anchor links unloading html5 video in Chrome

  - by Robin Pyon

  I have a very simple page with a <video> tag and an email anchor link: http://jsfiddle.net/6GquX/3/ Clicking the email link in Chrome (OS X 10.8 + Win7, 23.0.1271.97) invokes the beforeunloadchange event and causes the video to unload, which isn't the desired outcome. Curiously enough, if I let the video buffer a bit and then click the email link, the video keeps playing and doesn't unload. To my knowledge this only occurs in Chrome and I'm truly at a loss. Visiting any HTML5 video player site (videojs, flowplayer etc), starting a HTML5 video and then immediately simulating an email click with document.location.href = "mailto:[email protected]" in the dev console yields the same error. However, I'm inclined to think it's the way in which the video has been encoded as I'm unable to recreate the above with a video downloaded from YouTube's HTML5 player: http://jsfiddle.net/6GquX/4/ (source) 1. Is it possible that YouTube are encoding their videos in a particular way to combat this? 2. Are there any strategies / hacks I can employ to get around this?

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• C++, inject additional data in a method

  - by justik

  I am adding the new modul in some large library. All methods here are implemented as static. Let mi briefly describe the simplified model: typedef std::vector<double> TData; double test ( const TData &arg ) { return arg ( 0 ) * sin ( arg ( 1 ) + ...;} double ( * p_test ) ( const TData> &arg) = &test; class A { public: static T f1 (TData &input) { .... //some computations B::f2 (p_test); } }; Inside f1() some computations are perfomed and a static method B::f2 is called. The f2 method is implemented by another author and represents some simulation algorithm (example here is siplified). class B { public: static double f2 (double ( * p_test ) ( const TData &arg ) ) { //difficult algorithm working p_test many times double res = p_test(arg); } }; The f2 method has a pointer to some weight function (here p_test). But in my case some additional parameters computed in f1 for test() methods are required double test ( const TData &arg, const TData &arg2, char *arg3.... ) { } How to inject these parameters into test() (and so to f2) to avoid changing the source code of the f2 methods (that is not trivial), redesign of the library and without dirty hacks :-) ? The most simple step is to override f2 static double f2 (double ( * p_test ) ( const TData &arg ), const TData &arg2, char *arg3.... ) But what to do later? Consider, that methods are static, so there will be problems with objects. Thanks for your help.

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• boost::function & boost::lambda - call site invocation & accessing _1 and _2 as the type

  - by John Dibling

  Sorry for the confusing title. Let me explain via code: #include <string> #include <boost\function.hpp> #include <boost\lambda\lambda.hpp> #include <iostream> int main() { using namespace boost::lambda; boost::function<std::string(std::string, std::string)> f = _1.append(_2); std::string s = f("Hello", "There"); std::cout << s; return 0; } I'm trying to use function to create a function that uses the labda expressions to create a new return value, and invoke that function at the call site, s = f("Hello", "There"); When I compile this, I get: 1>------ Build started: Project: hacks, Configuration: Debug x64 ------ 1>Compiling... 1>main.cpp 1>.\main.cpp(11) : error C2039: 'append' : is not a member of 'boost::lambda::lambda_functor<T>' 1> with 1> [ 1> T=boost::lambda::placeholder<1> 1> ] Using MSVC 9. My fundamental understanding of function and lambdas may be lacking. The tutorials and docs did not help so far this morning. How do I do what I'm trying to do?

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• Is it possible to submit data into a SQL database, wait for that to finish, and then return the ID g

  - by user322478

  I have an ASP form that needs to submit data to two different systems. First the data needs to go into an MS SQL database, which will get an ID. I then need to submit all that form data to an external system, along with that ID. Pretty much everything in the code works just fine, the data goes into the database, and the data will go to the external system. The problem is I am not getting my ID back from SQL when I execute that query. I am under the impression this is happening because of how fast everything occurs in the code. The database is adding it's row at the same time my post page runs it's query to get the ID back, I think. I need to know of a way to wait until SQL finished the insert or wait for a specific amount of time maybe. I already tried using the hacks to "sleep" with ASP, that did not help. I am sure I could accomplish this in .Net, my background is more .Net than ASP, but this is what I have to work with on my current project. Any ideas?

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• Reasons for missing IP info in `last` output on pts logins?

  - by Mike Pennington

  I have five CentOS 6 linux systems at work, and encountered a rather strange issue that only seems to happen with my userid across all the linux systems I have... This is an example of the problem from entries I excepted from the last command... mpenning pts/19 Fri Nov 16 10:32 - 10:35 (00:03) mpenning pts/17 Fri Nov 16 10:21 - 10:42 (00:21) bill pts/15 sol-bill.local Fri Nov 16 10:19 - 10:36 (00:16) mpenning pts/1 192.0.2.91 Fri Nov 16 10:17 - 10:49 (12+00:31) kkim14 pts/14 192.0.2.225 Thu Nov 15 18:02 - 15:17 (4+21:15) gduarte pts/10 192.0.2.135 Thu Nov 15 12:33 - 08:10 (11+19:36) gduarte pts/9 192.0.2.135 Thu Nov 15 12:31 - 08:10 (11+19:38) kkim14 pts/0 :0.0 Thu Nov 15 12:27 - 15:17 (5+02:49) gduarte pts/6 192.0.2.135 Thu Nov 15 11:44 - 08:10 (11+20:25) kkim14 pts/13 192.0.2.225 Thu Nov 15 09:56 - 15:17 (5+05:20) kkim14 pts/12 192.0.2.225 Thu Nov 15 08:28 - 15:17 (5+06:49) kkim14 pts/11 192.0.2.225 Thu Nov 15 08:26 - 15:17 (5+06:50) dspencer pts/8 192.0.2.130 Wed Nov 14 18:24 still logged in mpenning pts/18 alpha-console-1. Mon Nov 12 14:41 - 14:46 (00:04) You can see two of my pts login entries above that do not have a source IP address associated with them. My CentOS machines have as many as six other users that share the systems, but the mpenning userid is the only one that has this issue. Approximately 5% of my logins see this issue, but no other usernames exhibit this behavior. Questions Given the kind of scripts I keep on these systems (which control much of our network infrastructure), I'm a little spooked by this and would like to understand what would cause my logins to occasionally miss source addresses. Is there anything (other than malicious activity) that would reasonably explain the behavior? Other than bash history timestamping, are there other things I can do to track the issue down? Informational Since this started happening, I enabled bash history time-stamping (i.e. HISTTIMEFORMAT="%y-%m-%d %T " in .bash_profile) and also added a few other bash history hacks; however, that does not give clues to what happened during the previous occurrences. All the systems run CentOS 6.3... [mpenning@typo ~]$ uname -a Linux typo.local 2.6.32-279.9.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Sep 25 21:43:11 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux [mpenning@typo ~]$ EDIT If I use last -i mpenning, I see entries like this... mpenning pts/19 0.0.0.0 Fri Nov 16 10:32 - 10:35 (00:03) mpenning pts/17 0.0.0.0 Fri Nov 16 10:21 - 10:42 (00:21)

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• How can I reverse mouse movement (X & Y axis) system-wide? (Win 7 x64)

  - by Scivitri

  Short Version I'm looking for a way to reverse the X and Y mouse axis movements. The computer is running Windows 7, x64 and Logitech SetPoint 6.32. I would like a system-level, permanent fix; such as a mouse driver modification or a registry tweak. Does anyone know of a solid way of implementing this, or how to find the registry values to change this? I'll settle quite happily for how to enable the orientation feature in SetPoint 6.32 for mice as well as trackballs. Long Version People seem never to understand why I would want this, and I commonly hear "just use the mouse right-side up!" advice. Dyslexia is not something which can be cured by "just reading things right." While I appreciate the attempts to help, I'm hoping some background may help people understand. I have a user with an unusual form of dyslexia, for whom mouse movements are backward. If she wants to move her cursor left, she will move the mouse right. If she wants the cursor to move up, she'll move the mouse down. She used to hold her mouse upside-down, which makes sophisticated clicking difficult, is terrible for ergonomics, and makes multi-button mice completely useless. In olden times, mouse drivers included an orientation feature (typically a hot-air balloon you dragged upward to set the mouse movement orientation) which could be used to set the relationship between mouse movement and cursor movement. Several years ago, mouse drivers were "improved" and this feature has since been limited to trackballs. After losing the orientation feature she went back to upside-down mousing for a bit, until finding UberOptions, a tweak for Logitech SetPoint, which would enable all features for all pointing devices. This included the orientation feature. And there was much rejoicing. Now her mouse has died, and current Logitech mice require a newer version of SetPoint for which UberOptions has not been updated. We've also seen MAF-Mouse (the developer indicated the version for 64-bit Windows does not support USB mice, yet) and Sakasa (while it works, commentary on the web indicate it tends to break randomly and often. It's also just a running program, so not system-wide.). I have seen some very sophisticated registry hacks. For example, I used to use a hack which would change the codes created by the F1-F12 keys when the F-Lock key was invented and defaulted to screwing my keyboard up. I'm hoping there's a way to flip X and Y in the registry; or some other, similar, system-level tweak out there. Another solution could be re-enabling the orientation feature for mice, as well as trackballs. It's very frustrating that input device drivers include the functionality we desperately need for an accessibilty concern, but it's been disabled in the name of making the drivers more idiot-proof.

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• How To Replace Notepad in Windows 7

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  It used to be that Notepad was a necessary evil because it started up quickly and let us catch a quick glimpse of plain text files. Now, there are a bevy of capable Notepad replacements that are just as fast, but also have great feature sets. Before following the rest of this how-to, ensure that you’re logged into an account with Administrator access. Note: The following instructions involve modifying some Windows system folders. Don’t mess anything up while you’re in there! If you follow our instructions closely, you’ll be fine. Choose your replacement There are a ton of great Notepad replacements, including Notepad2, Metapad, and Notepad++. The best one for you will depend on what types of text files you open and what you do with them. We’re going to use Notepad++ in this how-to. The first step is to find the executable file that you’ll replace Notepad with. Usually this will be the only file with the .exe file extension in the folder where you installed your text editor. Copy the executable file to your desktop and try to open it, to make sure that it works when opened from a different folder. In the Notepad++ case, a special little .exe file is available for the explicit purpose of replacing Notepad.If we run it from the desktop, it opens up Notepad++ in all its glory. Back up Notepad You will probably never go back once you switch, but you never know. You can backup Notepad to a special location if you’d like, but we find it’s easiest to just keep a backed up copy of Notepad in the folders it was originally located. In Windows 7, Notepad resides in: C:\Windows C:\Windows\System32 C:\Windows\SysWOW64 in 64-bit versions only Navigate to each of those directories and copy Notepad. Paste it into the same folder. If prompted, choose to Copy, but keep both files. You can keep your backup as “notepad (2).exe”, but we prefer to rename it to “notepad.exe.bak”. Do this for all of the folders that have Notepad (2 total for 32-bit Windows 7, 3 total for 64-bit). Take control of Notepad and delete it Even if you’re on an administrator account, you can’t just delete Notepad – Microsoft has made some security gains in this respect. Fortunately for us, it’s still possible to take control of a file and delete it without resorting to nasty hacks like disabling UAC. Navigate to one of the directories that contain Notepad. Right-click on it and select Properties.   Switch to the Security tab, then click on the Advanced button. Note that the owner of the file is a user called “TrustedInstaller”. You can’t do much with files owned by TrustedInstaller, so let’s take control of it. Click the Edit… button. Select the desired owner (you could choose your own account, but we’re going to give any Administrator control) and click OK. You’ll get a message that you need to close and reopen the Properties windows to edit permissions. Before doing that, confirm that the owner has changed to what you selected. Click OK, then OK again to close the Properties window. Right-click on Notepad and click on Properties again. Switch to the Security tab. Click on Edit…. Select the appropriate group or user name in the list at the top, then add a checkmark in the checkbox beside Full control in the Allow column. Click OK, then Yes to the dialog box that pops up. Click OK again to close the Properties window. Now you can delete Notepad, by either selecting it and pressing Delete on the keyboard, or right-click on it and click Delete.   You’re now free from Notepad’s foul clutches! Repeat this procedure for the remaining folders (or folder, on 32-bit Windows 7). Drop in your replacement Copy your Notepad replacement’s executable, which should still be on your desktop. Browse to the two or three folders listed above and copy your .exe to those locations. If prompted for Administrator permission, click Continue. If your executable file was named something other than “notepad.exe”, rename it to “notepad.exe”. Don’t be alarmed if the thumbnail still shows the old Notepad icon. Double click on Notepad and your replacement should open. To make doubly sure that it works, press Win+R to bring up the Run dialog box and enter “notepad” into the text field. Press enter or click OK. Now you can allow Windows to open files with Notepad by default with little to no shame! All without restarting or having to disable UAC! 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• Commercial Drupal Modules & Themes

  - by Ravish

  A discussion at Drupal.org forums prompted me to give my input about commercial ecosystem around Open Source Content Management Systems. WordPress and Joomla have been growing rapidly since past few years. But, growth rate of Drupal seems to be almost flat. Despite being the most powerful CMS around, Drupal is still not being adopted by masses. Many people will argue that Drupal is not targeted towards masses, but developers. I agree, Drupal is more of a development platform than a consumer CMS. Drupal is ‘many things to many people’, and I can build almost any type of website with it. Drupal is being used for building blogs, corporate websites, Intranet portals, social networking and even a project management system. Looking at the wide array of Drupal implementations, it deserves to be the most widely adopted CMS. I believe there are few challenges that Drupal community needs to overcome. To understand these challenges, I surveyed some webmasters who use Joomla or WordPress but not Drupal. I asked them why they don’t want to use Drupal, following are the responses I got from them: Drupal is too complicated, takes time to learn. Drupal is great, but its admin panel is overwhelming. I couldn’t find any nice themes for Drupal. There is no WYSIWYG editor in Drupal. Most Drupal modules do not work out of the box. There aren’t enough modules like Ubercart which provides any out of the box functionality. I tried modules like CCK, Views and Panels. After wasting several hours struggling with them, I decided to give up on Drupal. I don’t use Drupal because of pushbutton and Garland theme. I had hard time trying to customize Garland and it messed up the whole layout. There are no premium modules and themes for Drupal. Joomla has tons of awesome themes and modules. I don’t want a million hacks like CCK, Views, Tokens, Pathauto, ImageCache and CTools just to run a simple website. Most of the complaints from users are related to the learning and development curve involved with Drupal, and the lack of ecosystem. While most of the problems will be gone in Drupal 7, ecosystem is something that needs to be built by the Drupal community. Drupal distributions are a great step forward. There are few awesome Drupal distributions available like Open Publish, Open Atrium and Drupal Commons. I predict, there will be a wave of many powerful Drupal distributions after Drupal 7 release. Many of them will be user-friendly and commercial supported. Following is my post at Drupal.org forums: Quote from: http://drupal.org/node/863776#comment-3313836 Brian Gardner (StudioPress) and Woo Themes launched premium WordPress themes in 2007, the developer community did not accept it at first. Moreover, they were not even GPL licensed. There was an outcry in WordPress community against them. Following that, most premium theme providers switched to GPL licensing. Despite controversies, users voted for premium theme and plugins by buying them. Inspired by their success, hundreds of other developers started to sell premium themes and plugins. It is now the acceptable and in fact most popular business model among WordPress community. Matt Mullenweg once told me, they would not support premium themes. If he supported, developers would no more give out free GPL themes & plugins. He pointed me towards Joomla, there were hardly any nice free themes & modules available. Now two years forward, premium products are not just accepted but embraced by the WordPress community – http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/commercial/ The quality and number of themes & modules has increased, even the free ones. This also helped to boost the adoption and ecosystem of WordPress. Today, state of Drupal is like WordPress was in 2007. There are hardly any out of the box solutions available for Drupal. Ubercart, Open Publish and Open Atrium are the only ones I can think of. Many of the popular Drupal modules are patches and hole-fillers. Thankfully, these hole-filler modules are going to be in Drupal 7 core. Drupal 7 and distributions will spawn a new array of solutions built upon Drupal. Soon, we will have more like Ubercarts and Open Atriums. If commercial solutions can help fuel this ecosystem and growth, Drupal community will accept them eventually. This debate will not stop your customers from buying your product. If your product is awesome, they will vote for you by buying your product.

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• Comments on Comments

  - by Joe Mayo

  I almost tweeted a reply to Capar Kleijne's question about comments on Twitter, but realized that my opinion exceeded 140 characters. The following is based upon my experience with extremes and approaches that I find useful in code comments. There are a couple extremes that I've seen and reasons why people go the distance in each approach. The most common extreme is no comments in the code at all.  A few bad reasons why this happens is because a developer is in a hurry, sloppy, or is interested in job preservation. The unfortunate result is that the code is difficult to understand and hard to maintain. The drawbacks to no comments in code are a primary reason why teachers drill the need for commenting code into our heads.  This viewpoint assumes the lack of comments are bad because the code is bad, but there is another reason for not commenting that is gaining more popularity. I've heard/and read that code should be self documenting. Following this thought pattern, if code is well written with meaningful names, there should not be a reason for comments.  An addendum to this argument is that comments are often neglected and get out-of-date, but the code is what is kept up-to-date. Presumably, if code contained very good naming, it would be easy to maintain.  This is a noble perspective and I like the practice of meaningful naming of identifiers. However, I think it's also an extreme approach that doesn't cover important cases.  i.e. If an identifier is named badly (subjective differences in opinion) or not changed appropriately during maintenance, then the badly named identifier is no more useful than a stale comment. These were the two no-comment extremes, so let's look at the too many comments extreme. On a regular basis, I'll see cases where the code is over-commented; not nearly as often as the no-comment scenarios, but still prevalent.  These are examples of where every single line in the code is commented.  These comments make the code harder to read because they get in the way of the algorithm.  In most cases, the comments parrot what each line of code does.  If a developer understands the language, then most statements are immediately intuitive.  i.e. what use is it to say that I'm assigning foo to bar when it's clear what the code is doing. I think that over-commenting code is a waste of time that slows down initial development and maintenance.  Understandably, the developer's intentions are admirable because they've had it beaten into their heads that they must comment. However, I think it's an extreme and prefer a more moderate approach. I don't think the extremes do justice to code because each can make maintenance harder.  No comments on bad code is obviously a problem, but the other two extremes are subtle and require qualification to address properly. The problem I see with the code-as-documentation approach is that it doesn't lift the developer out of the algorithm to identify dependencies, intentions, and hacks. Any developer can read code and follow an algorithm, but they still need to know where it fits into the big picture of the application. Because of indirections with language features like interfaces, delegates, and virtual members, code can become complex.  Occasionally, it's useful to point out a nuance or reason why a piece of code is there. i.e. If you've building an app that communicates via HTTP, you'll have certain headers to include for the endpoint, and it could be useful to point out why the code for setting those header values is there and how they affect the application. An argument against this could be that you should extract that code into a separate method with a meaningful name to describe the scenario.  My problem with such an approach would be that your code base becomes even more difficult to navigate and work with because you have all of this extra code just to make the code more meaningful. My opinion is that a simple and well-stated comment stating the reasons and intention for the code is more natural and convenient to the initial developer and maintainer.  I just don't agree with the approach of going out of the way to avoid making a comment.  I'm also concerned that some developers would take this approach as an excuse to not comment their bad code. Another area where I like comments is on documentation comments.  Java has it and so does C# and VB.  It's convenient because we can build automated tools that extract these comments.  These extracted comments are often much better than no documentation at all.  The "go read the code" answer always doesn't fulfill the need for a quick summary of an API. To summarize, I think that the extremes of no comments and too many comments are less than desirable approaches. I prefer documentation comments to explain each class and member (API level) and code comments as necessary to supplement well-written code. Joe

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• XNA Notes 005

  - by George Clingerman

  Another week and another crazy amount of activity going on in the XNA community. I’m fairly certain I missed over half of it. In fact, if I am missing things, make sure to email me and I’ll try and make sure I catch it next week! ([email protected]). Also, if you’ve got any advice, things you like/don’t like about the way these XNA Notes are going let me know. I always appreciate feedback (currently spammers are leaving me the nicest comments so you guys have work to do!) Without further ado, here’s this week’s notes! Time Critical XNA News The XNA Team Blob reminds us that February 7th is the last day to submit XNA 3.1 games to peer review! http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/01/31/7-days-left-to-submit-xna-gs-3-1-games-on-app-hub.aspx XNA MVPS Chris Williams kicks off the marketing campaign for our book http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2011/01/28/143680.aspx Catalin Zima posts the comparison cheat sheet for why Angry Birds is different than Chickens Can’t Fly http://www.amusedsloth.com/2011/02/comparison-cheat-sheet-for-chickens-cant-fly-and-angry-birds/ Jim Perry congratulates the developers selected by Game Developer Magazine for Best Xbox LIVE Indie Games of 2010 http://machxgames.com/blog/?p=24 @NemoKrad posts his XNAKUUG talks for all to enjoy http://twitter.com/NemoKrad/statuses/33142362502864896 http://xna-uk.net/blogs/randomchaos/archive/2011/02/03/xblig-uk-2011-january-amp-february-talk.aspx George  (that’s me!) preps for his XNA talk coming up on the 8th http://twitter.com/clingermangw/statuses/32669550554124288 http://www.portlandsilverlight.net/Meetings/Details/15 XNA Developers FireFly posts the last tutorial in his XNA Tower Defense tutorial series http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/26442/451460.aspx#451460 http://xnatd.blogspot.com/2011/01/tutorial-14-polishing-game.html @fredericmy posts the main difference when porting a game from Windows Phone 7 to Xbox 360 http://fairyengine.blogspot.com/2011/01/main-differences-when-porting-game-from.html @ElementCy creates a pretty rad video of a MineCraft type terrain created using XNA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Waw1f7wnl9I Andrew Russel gets the first XNA badge on gamedev.stackexchange http://twitter.com/_AndrewRussell/statuses/32322877004972032 http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=tags And his funding for ExEn has passed $7000 only $3000 to go http://twitter.com/_AndrewRussell/statuses/33042412804771840 Subodh Pushpak blogs about his Windows Phone 7 XNA talk http://geekswithblogs.net/subodhnpushpak/archive/2011/02/01/windows-phone-7-silverlight--xna-development-talk.aspx Slyprid releases the latest version of Transmute and needs more people to test http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/32452488418299904 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/ SpynDoctorGames celebrates the 1 year anniversary of Your Doodles Are Bugged! Congrats! http://twitter.com/SpynDoctorGames/statuses/32511689068908544 Noogy (creator of Dust the Elysian Tail) prepares his conversion to XNA 4.0 http://twitter.com/NoogyTweet/statuses/32522008449253376 @philippedasilva posts about the Indiefreaks Game Framework v0.2.0.0 Input management system http://twitter.com/philippedasilva/statuses/32763393957957632 http://indiefreaks.com/2011/02/02/behind-smart-input-system-feature/ Mommy’s Best Games debates what to do about High Scores with their new update http://mommysbest.blogspot.com/2011/02/high-score-shake-up.html @BinaryTweedDeej want to know if there’s anything the community needs to make XNA games for the PC. Give him some feedback! http://twitter.com/BinaryTweedDeej/status/32895453863354368 @mikebmcl promises to write us all a book (I can’t wait to read it!) http://twitter.com/mikebmcl/statuses/33206499102687233 @werezompire is going to live, LIVE, thanks to all the generosity and support from the community! http://twitter.com/werezompire/statuses/32840147644977153 Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG) Making money in Xbox 360 indie game development. Is it possible? http://www.bitmob.com/articles/making-money-in-xbox-360-indie-game-development-is-it-possible @AlejandroDaJ posts some thoughts abut the bitmob article http://twitter.com/AlejandroDaJ/statuses/31068552165330944 http://www.apathyworks.com/blog/view.php?id=00215 Kobun gets my respect as an XBLIG champion. I’m not sure who Kobun is, but if you’ve every read through the comment sections any time Kotaku writes about XBLIGs you’ll see a lot of confusion, disinformation in there. Kobun has been waging a secret war battling that lack of knowledge and he does it well. Also he’s running a pretty kick ass site for Xbox LIVE Indie Game reviews http://xboxindies.teamkobun.com/ @radiangames releases his last Xbox LIVE Indie Game...for now http://bit.ly/gMK6lE Playing Avaglide with the Kinect controller http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqAYbHww53o http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/30/kinect-hacks-take-to-the-skies-with-avaglide/ Luke Schneider of Radiangames interviewed in Edge magazine http://www.next-gen.biz/features/radiangames-venture Digital Quarters posts thoughts on why XBLIG’s online requirement kills certain genres http://digitalquarters.blogspot.com/2011/02/thoughts-why-xbligs-online-requirement.html Mommy’s Best Games shares the news that several XBLIGs were featured in the March 2011 issue of Famitsu 360 http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/33455/451487.aspx#451487 NaviFairy continues with his Indie-Game-A-Day http://gaygamer.net/2011/02/indie_game_a_day_epic_dungeon.html http://gaygamer.net/2011/02/indie_game_a_day_break_limit_r.html and more every day...that’s kind of the point! Keep your eye on this series! VVGTV continues with it’s awesome reviews/promotions for XBLIGs http://vvgtv.com/ http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/03/iredia-atrams-secret-xblig-review-2/ http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/02/poopocalypse-coming-soon-to-xblig/ ….and even more, you get the point. Magicka is an Indie Game doing really well on Steam AND it’s made using XNA http://www.magickagame.com/ http://twitter.com/Magickagame/statuses/32712762580799488 GameMarx reviews Antipole http://www.gamemarx.com/reviews/73/antipole-is-vvvvvvery-good.aspx Armless Octopus review Alpha Squad http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/28/xbox-indie-review-alpha-squad/ An interesting article about Kodu that Jim Perry found http://twitter.com/MachXGames/statuses/32848044105924608 http://www.develop-online.net/news/36915/10-year-old-Jordan-makes-games-The-UK-needs-more-like-her XNA Game Development Sgt. Conker posts about the Natur beta, a new book and whether you can make money with XBLIG http://www.sgtconker.com/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/a-new-book-on-the-block-and-a-new-natur-beta/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/making-money-in-xbox-360-indie-game-development-is-it-possible/ Tips for setting up SVN http://bit.ly/fKxgFh @bsimser found tons of royalty free music and soundfx for your XNA Games http://twitter.com/bsimser/statuses/31426632933711872 Post on the new features in the next Sunburn Editor http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/fivesidedbarrel/archive/2011/01/28/new-editor-features-prefabs-components-and-more.aspx @jasons_novaleaf posts source code for light pre-pass optimizations for #xna http://twitter.com/jasons_novaleaf/statuses/33348855403642880 http://jcoluna.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/xna-4-0-light-pre-pass-optimization-round-one/ I’ve been learning about doing an A.I. for turn based games and this article was a great resource. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1535/designing_ai_algorithms_for_.php?print=1

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• Tip #13 java.io.File Surprises

  - by ByronNevins

  There is an assumption that I've seen in code many times that is totally wrong.  And this assumption can easily bite you.  The assumption is: File.getAbsolutePath and getAbsoluteFile return paths that are not relative.  Not true!  Sort of.  At least not in the way many people would assume.  All they do is make sure that the beginning of the path is absolute.  The rest of the path can be loaded with relative path elements.  What do you think the following code will print? public class Main {    public static void main(String[] args) {        try {            File f = new File("/temp/../temp/../temp/../");            File abs  = f.getAbsoluteFile();            File parent = abs.getParentFile();            System.out.println("Exists: " + f.exists());            System.out.println("Absolute Path: " + abs);            System.out.println("FileName: " + abs.getName());            System.out.printf("The Parent Directory of %s is %s\n", abs, parent);            System.out.printf("The CANONICAL Parent Directory of CANONICAL %s is %s\n",                        abs, abs.getCanonicalFile().getParent());            System.out.printf("The CANONICAL Parent Directory of ABSOLUTE %s is %s\n",                        abs, parent.getCanonicalFile());            System.out.println("Canonical Path: " + f.getCanonicalPath());        }        catch (IOException ex) {            System.out.println("Got an exception: " + ex);        }    }} Output: Exists: trueAbsolute Path: D:\temp\..\temp\..\temp\..FileName: ..The Parent Directory of D:\temp\..\temp\..\temp\.. is D:\temp\..\temp\..\tempThe CANONICAL Parent Directory of CANONICAL D:\temp\..\temp\..\temp\.. is nullThe CANONICAL Parent Directory of ABSOLUTE D:\temp\..\temp\..\temp\.. is D:\tempCanonical Path: D:\ Notice how it says that the parent of d:\ is d:\temp !!!The file, f, is really the root directory.  The parent is supposed to be null. I learned about this the hard way! getParentXXX simply hacks off the final item in the path. You can get totally unexpected results like the above. Easily. I filed a bug on this behavior a few years ago[1].   Recommendations: (1) Use getCanonical instead of getAbsolute.  There is a 1:1 mapping of files and canonical filenames.  I.e each file has one and only one canonical filename and it will definitely not have relative path elements in it.  There are an infinite number of absolute paths for each file. (2) To get the parent file for File f do the following instead of getParentFile: File parent = new File(f, ".."); [1] http://bt2ws.central.sun.com/CrPrint?id=6687287

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• MSSQL: Copying data from one database to another

  - by DigiMortal

  I have database that has data imported from another server using import and export wizard of SQL Server Management Studio. There is also empty database with same tables but it also has primary keys, foreign keys and indexes. How to get data from first database to another? Here is the description of my crusade. And believe me – it is not nice one. Bugs in import and export wizard There is some awful bugs in import and export wizard that makes data imports and exports possible only on very limited manner: wizard is not able to analyze foreign keys, wizard wants to create tables always, whatever you say in settings. The result is faulty and useless package. Now let’s go step by step and make things work in our scenario. Database There are two databases. Let’s name them like this: PLAIN – contains data imported from remote server (no indexes, no keys, no nothing, just plain dumb data) CORRECT – empty database with same structure as remote database (indexes, keys and everything else but no data) Our goal is to get data from PLAIN to CORRECT. 1. Create import and export package In this point we will create faulty SSIS package using SQL Server Management Studio. Run import and export wizard and let it create SSIS package that reads data from CORRECT and writes it to, let’s say, CORRECT-2. Make sure you enable identity insert. Make sure there are no views selected. Make sure you don’t let package to create tables (you can miss this step because it wants to create tables anyway). Save package to SSIS. 2. Modify import and export package Now let’s clean up the package and remove all faulty crap. Connect SQL Server Management Studio to SSIS instance. Select the package you just saved and export it to your hard disc. Run Business Intelligence Studio. Create new SSIS project (DON’T MISS THIS STEP). Add package from disc as existing item to project and open it. Move to Control Flow page do one of following: Remove all preparation SQL-tasks and connect Data Flow tasks. Modify all preparation SQL-tasks so the existence of tables is checked before table is created (yes, you have to do it manually). Add new Execute-SQL task as first task in control flow: Open task properties. Assign destination connection as connection to use. Insert the following SQL as command:   EXEC sp_MSForEachTable 'ALTER TABLE ? NOCHECK CONSTRAINT ALL' GO   EXEC sp_MSForEachTable 'DELETE FROM ?' GO   Save task. Add new Execute-SQL task as last task in control flow: Open task properties. Assign destination connection as connection to use. Insert the following SQL as command:   EXEC sp_MSForEachTable 'ALTER TABLE ? CHECK CONSTRAINT ALL' GO   Save task Now connect first Execute-SQL task with first Data Flow task and last Data Flow task with second Execute-SQL task. Now move to Package Explorer tab and change connections under Connection Managers folder. Make source connection to use database PLAIN. Make destination connection to use database CORRECT. Save package and rebuilt the project. Update package using SQL Server Management Studio. Some hints: Make sure you take the package from solution folder because it is saved there now. Don’t overwrite existing package. Use numeric suffix and let Management Studio to create a new version of package. Now you are done with your package. Run it to test it and clean out all the errors you find. TRUNCATE vs DELETE You can see that I used DELETE FROM instead of TRUNCATE. Why? Because TRUNCATE has some nasty limits (taken from MSDN): “You cannot use TRUNCATE TABLE on a table referenced by a FOREIGN KEY constraint; instead, use DELETE statement without a WHERE clause. Because TRUNCATE TABLE is not logged, it cannot activate a trigger. TRUNCATE TABLE may not be used on tables participating in an indexed view.” As I am not sure what tables you have and how they are used I provided here the solution that should work for all scenarios. If you need better performance then in some cases you can use TRUNCATE table instead of DELETE. Conclusion My conclusion is bitter this time although I am very positive guy. It is A.D. 2010 and still we have to write stupid hacks for simple things. Simple tools that existed before are long gone and we have to live mysterious bloatware that is our only choice when using default tools. If you take a look at the length of this posting and the count of steps I had to do for one easy thing you should treat it as a signal that something has went wrong in last years. Although I got my job done I would be still more happy if out of box tools are more intelligent one day. References T-SQL Trick for Deleting All Data in Your Database (Mauro Cardarelli) TRUNCATE TABLE (MSDN Library) Error Handling in SQL 2000 – a Background (Erland Sommarskog) Disable/Enable Foreign Key and Check constraints in SQL Server (Decipher)

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• High Jinks, Hi Jacks, Exceptional DBA Awards and PASS

  - by Rodney

  The countdown to PASS has counted down.  The day after tomorrow I will board a plane, like many others, on my way for the 4th year in a row to SQL PASS Summit.  The anticipation has been excruciating but luckily I have this little thing called a day job as a DBA that has kept me busy and not thinking too much about the event. Well that is not exactly true since my beautiful wife works for PASS so we get to talk about SQL from the time we wake up until late in the evening. I would not have it any other way and I feel very fortunate to be a part of this great event and to have been chosen as the Exceptional DBA Award judge also for the 4th year in a row.  This year, I will have been again tasked with presenting the award to the winner, Mr. Jeff Moden and it will be a true honor to meet him in person as I have read many of his articles on SSC and have attended his session at PASS previously.  The speech is all ready but one item remains, which will be a surprise to all who attend the party on Tuesday night in Seattle (see links below).  Let's face it, Exceptional DBAs everywhere work very hard protecting our data stores, tuning queries, mentoring, saving money, installing clusters, etc and once in a while there is time to be exceptionally non-professional and have a bit of fun. Once incident that happened this year that falls under the High Jinks category was when my network admin asked if I could Telnet into a SQL instance and see if I could make the connection through the firewall that he had just configured. I was able to establish a connection on port 1433 and it occurred to me that it would be very interesting if I could actually run T-SQL queries via a Telnet session much like you might do with an SMTP server. With that thought, I proceeded to demonstrate this could be possible by convincing my senior DBA Shawn McGehee that I was able to do so. At first he did not believe me. It shook his world view.  It was inconceivable.  What I had done, behind the scenes, of course, was to copy and rename SQLCMD.exe to Telnet.exe and used it to connect and run a simple, "Select * from sys.databases" on the SQL instance. I think if it had been anyone other than Shawn I could have extended this ruse indefinitely but he caught on within 30 seconds. It was a fun thirty seconds though. On the High Jacks side of the house, which is really merged to be SQL HACKS, I finally, after several years of struggling with how to connect to an untrusted domain like in a DMZ with a windows account in SSMS, I stumbled upon a solution that does away with the requirement to use SQL Authentication.  While "Runas" is a great command to use to run an application with a higher privileged account, I had not previously been able to figure out how to connect to the remote domain with SSMS and "Runsas". It never connected and caused a login failure every time for the remote windows domain account. Then I ran across an option for "Runas",   "/netonly".  This option postpones the login until a connection is made and only then passes the remote login you supply when you first launch SSMS with the "Runas" command. So a typical shortcut would look like: "C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe /netonly /user:remotedomain.com\rodlandrum "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\VSShell\Common7\IDE\Ssms.exe" You will want to make sure the passwords are synced between the two domains, your local domain and the remote domain, otherwise you may have account lockout issues, but I have found in weeks of testing this is a stable solution. Now it is time to get ready to head for Seattle. Please, if you see me (@SQLBeat) or my wife (@Karlakay22) please run up and high five me (wait..High Jinks.High Jacks.High Fives.Need to change the title) or give me a big bear hug if you are strong enough to lift me off the ground. And if you do actually do that, I will think you are awesome and will not embarrass you by crying out for help or complaining of a broken back or sciatic nerve damage. And now the links to others who have all of the details. First, for the MVP Deep Dives 2, of which, like John, I was lucky enough to be able to participate in this year. http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/johnm/archive/2011/09/29/103577.aspx And the details of the SSC party where the Exceptional DBA of 2011, Jeff Moden, will be awarded. http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/rebecca_amos/archive/2011/10/05/103661.aspx   Cheers! Rodney

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• Myths about Coding Craftsmanship part 2

  - by tom

  Myth 3: The source of all bad code is inept developers and stupid people When you review code is this what you assume?  Shame on you.  You are probably making assumptions in your code if you are assuming so much already.  Bad code can be the result of any number of causes including but not limited to using dated techniques (like boxing when generics are available), not following standards (“look how he does the spacing between arguments!” or “did he really just name that variable ‘bln_Hello_Cats’?”), being redundant, using properties, methods, or objects in a novel way (like switching on button.Text between “Hello World” and “Hello World “ //clever use of space character… sigh), not following the SOLID principals, hacking around assumptions made in earlier iterations / hacking in features that should be worked into the overall design.  The first two issues, while annoying are pretty easy to spot and can be fixed so easily.  If your coding team is made up of experienced professionals who are passionate about staying current then these shouldn’t be happening.  If you work with a variety of skills, backgrounds, and experience then there will be some of this stuff going on.  If you have an opportunity to mentor such a developer who is receptive to constructive criticism don’t be a jerk; help them and the codebase will improve.  A little patience can improve the codebase, your work environment, and even your perspective. The novelty and redundancy I have encountered has often been the use of creativity when language knowledge was perceived as unavailable or too time consuming.  When developers learn on the job you get a lot of this.  Rather than going to MSDN developers will use what they know.  Depending on the constraints of their assignment hacking together what they know may seem quite practical.  This was not stupid though I often wonder how much time is actually “saved” by hacking.  These issues are often harder to untangle if we ever do.  They can also grow out of control as we write hack after hack to make it work and get back to some development that is satisfying. Hacking upon an existing hack is what I call “feeding the monster”.  Code monsters are anti-patterns and hacks gone wild.  The reason code monsters continue to get bigger is that they keep growing in scope, touching more and more of the application.  This is not the result of dumb developers. It is probably the result of avoiding design, not taking the time to understand the problems or anticipate or communicate the vision of the product.  If our developers don’t understand the purpose of a feature or product how do we expect potential customers to do so? Forethought and organization are often what is missing from bad code.  Developers who do not use the SOLID principals should be encouraged to learn these principals and be given guidance on how to apply them.  The time “saved” by giving hackers room to hack will be made up for and then some. Not as technical debt but as shoddy work that if not replaced will be struggled with again and again.  Bad code is not the result of dumb developers (usually) it is the result of trying to do too much without the proper resources and neglecting the right thing that needs doing with the first thoughtless thing that comes into our heads. Object oriented code is all about relationships between objects.  Coders who believe their coworkers are all fools tend to write objects that are difficult to work with, not eager to explain themselves, and perform erratically and irrationally.  If you constantly find you are surrounded by idiots you may want to ask yourself if you are being unreasonable, if you are being closed minded, of if you have chosen the right profession.  Opening your mind up to the idea that you probably work with rational, well-intentioned people will probably make you a better coder and it might even make you less grumpy.  If you are surrounded by jerks who do not engage in the exchange of ideas who do not care about their customers or the durability of the code you are building together then I suggest you find a new place to work.  Myth 4: Customers don’t care about “beautiful” code Craftsmanship is customer focused because it means that the job was done right, the product will withstand the abuse, modifications, and scrutiny of our customers.  Users can appreciate a predictable timeline for a release, a product delivered on time and on budget, a feature set that does not interfere with the task(s) it is supporting, quick turnarounds on exception messages, self healing issues, and less issues.  These are all hindered by skimping on craftsmanship.  When we write data access and when we write reusable code.   What do you think?  Does bad code come primarily from low IQ individuals?  Do customers care about beautiful code?

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