Search Results

Search found 23323 results on 933 pages for 'worst is better'.

Page 163/933 | < Previous Page | 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170  | Next Page >

• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #033

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Spatial Database Definition and Research Documents Here is the definition from Wikipedia about spatial database : A spatial database is a database that is optimized to store and query data related to objects in space, including points, lines and polygons. While typical databases can understand various numeric and character types of data, additional functionality needs to be added for databases to process spatial data types. Select Only Date Part From DateTime – Best Practice A very common question which I receive is how to only get Date or Time part from datetime value. In this blog post I explain the same in very simple words. T-SQL Paging Query Technique Comparison (OVER and ROW_NUMBER()) – CTE vs. Derived Table I have received few emails and comments about my post SQL SERVER – T-SQL Paging Query Technique Comparison – SQL 2000 vs SQL 2005. The main question was is this can be done using CTE? Absolutely! What about Performance? It is identical! Please refer above mentioned article for the history of paging. SQL SERVER – Cannot resolve collation conflict for equal to operation One of the very first error I ever encountered in my career was to resolve this conflict. I have blogged about it and I have realized that many others like me who are facing this error. LEN and DATALENGTH of NULL Simple Example Here is the question for you what is the LEN of NULL value? Well it is very easy – just read the blog. Recovery Models and Selection Very simple and easy explanation of the Database Backup Recovery Model and how to select the best option for you. Explanation SQL SERVER Hash Join Hash join gives best performance when two more join tables are joined and at-least one of them have no index or is not sorted. It is also expected that smaller of the either of table can be read in memory completely (though not necessary). Easy Sequence of SELECT FROM JOIN WHERE GROUP BY HAVING ORDER BY SELECT yourcolumns FROM tablenames JOIN tablenames WHERE condition GROUP BY yourcolumns HAVING aggregatecolumn condition ORDER BY yourcolumns NorthWind Database or AdventureWorks Database – Samples Databases In this blog post we learn how to install Northwind database. I also shared the source where one can download this database as that is used in many examples on MSDN help files. sp_HelpText for sp_HelpText – Puzzle A simple quick puzzle – do you know the answer of it? If not, go ahead and read the blog. 2008 SQL SERVER – 2008 – Step By Step Installation Guide With Images When SQL Server 2008 was newly introduced lots of people had no clue how to install SQL Server 2008 and the amount of the question which I used to receive were so much. I wrote this blog post with the spirit that this will help all the newbies to install SQL Server 2008 with the help of images. Still today this blog post has been bible for all of the people who are confused with SQL Server installation. Inline Variable Assignment I loved this feature. I have always wanted this feature to be present in SQL Server. The last time when I met developers from Microsoft SQL Server, I had talked about this feature. I think this feature saves some time but make the code more readable. Introduction to Policy Management – Enforcing Rules on SQL Server If our company policy is to create all the Stored Procedure with prefix ‘usp’ that developers should be just prevented to create Stored Procedure with any other prefix. Let us see a small tutorial how to create conditions and policy which will prevent any future SP to be created with any other prefix. 2009 Performance Counters from System Views – By Kevin Mckenna Many of you are not aware of this fact that access to performance information is readily available in SQL Server and that too without querying performance counters using a custom application or via perfmon. Till now, this fact has remained undisclosed but through this post I would like to explain you can easily access SQL Server performance counter information. Without putting much effort you will come across the system viewsys.dm_os_performance_counters. As the name suggests, this provides you easy access to the SQL Server performance counter information that is passed on to perfmon, but you can get at it via tsql. Customize Toolbar – Remove Debug Button from Toolbar I was fond of SQL Server Debugger feature in SQL Server 2000. To my utter disappointment, this feature was withdrawn from SQL Server 2005. The button of the debugger is similar to a play button and is used to run debugging commands of Visual Studio. Because of this reason, it gets very much infuriating for developers when they are developing on both – Visual Studio and SSMS. Let us now see how we can remove debugging button from SQL Server Management Studio. Effect of Normalization on Index and Performance A very interesting conversation which started from twitter. If you want to read one link this is the link I encourage you to read it. SSMS Feature – Multi-server Queries Using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) DBAs can now query multiple servers from one window. It is quite common for DBAs with large amount of servers to maintain and gather information from multiple SQL Servers and create report. This feature is a blessing for the DBAs, as they can now assemble all the information instantaneously without going anywhere. Query Optimizer Hint ROBUST PLAN – Question to You “ROBUST PLAN” is a kind of query hint which works quite differently than other hints. It does not improve join or force any indexes to use; it just makes sure that a query does not crash due to over the limit size of row. Let me elaborate upon it in the blog post. 2010 Do you really know the difference between various date functions available in SQL Server 2012? Here is a three part story where we explored the same with examples: Fastest Way to Restore the Database Difference Between DATETIME and DATETIME2 Difference Between DATETIME and DATETIME2 – WITH GETDATE Shrinking NDF and MDF Files – Readers’ Opinion Shrinking Database always creates performance degradation and increases fragmentation in the database. I suggest that you keep that in mind before you start reading the following comment. If you are going to say Shrinking Database is bad and evil, here I am saying it first and loud. Now, the comment of Imran is written while keeping in mind only the process showing how the Shrinking Database Operation works. Imran has already explained his understanding and requests further explanation. I have removed the Best Practices section from Imran’s comments, as there are a few corrections. 2011 Solution – Puzzle – SELECT * vs SELECT COUNT(*) This is very interesting question and I am very confident that not every one knows the answer to this question. Let me ask you again – Which will be faster SELECT* or SELECT COUNT (*) or do you think this is apples and oranges comparison. 2012 Service Broker and CAP_CPU_PERCENT – Limiting SQL Server Instances to CPU Usage In SQL Server 2012 there are a few enhancements with regards to SQL Server Resource Governor. One of the enhancement is how the resources are allocated. Let me explain you with examples. Let us understand the entire discussion with the help of three different examples. Finding Size of a Columnstore Index Using DMVs One of the very common question I often see is need of the list of columnstore index along with their size and corresponding table name. I quickly re-wrote a script using DMVs sys.indexes and sys.dm_db_partition_stats. This script gives the size of the columnstore index on disk only. I am sure there will be advanced script to retrieve details related to components associated with the columnstore index. However, I believe following script is sufficient to start getting an idea of columnstore index size. Developer Training Resources and Summary Roundup Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 In this part we discussed the importance of training in the real world. The most important and valuable resource any company is its employee. Employees who have been well-trained will be better at their jobs and produce a better product.  An employee who is well trained obviously knows more about their job and all the technical aspects. I have a very high opinion about training employees and it is the most important task. Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 In this part we discussed the most crucial components of training. Often employees are expecting the company to pay for their training and the company expresses no interest in training the employee. Quite often training expenses are the real issue for both the employee and employer. Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 This part was the most difficult to write as I tried to address a few difficult questions and answers. Training is such a sensitive issue that many developers when not receiving chance for training think about leaving the organization. Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 In this part I tried to explore a few methods and options for training. The generic feedback I received on this blog post was short and I should have explored each of the subject of the training in details. I believe there are two big buckets of training 1) Instructor Lead Training and 2) Self Lead Training. Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 There is no better motivation than a personal desire to learn new technology. Honestly there is nothing more personal learning. That “change is the only constant” and “adapt & overcome” are the essential lessons of life. One cannot stop the learning and resist the change. In the IT industry “ego of knowing all” and the “resistance to change” are the most challenging issues. A Quick Look at Logging and Ideas around Logging Question: What is the first thing comes to your mind when you hear the word “Logging”? Strange enough I got a different answer every single time. Let me just list what answer I got from my friends. Let us go over them one by one. Beginning Performance Tuning with SQL Server Execution Plan Solution of Puzzle – Swap Value of Column Without Case Statement Earlier this week I asked a question where I asked how to Swap Values of the column without using CASE Statement. Read here: SQL SERVER – A Puzzle – Swap Value of Column Without Case Statement. I have proposed 3 different solutions in the blog posts itself. I had requested the help of the community to come up with alternate solutions and honestly I am stunned and amazed by the qualified entries. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• Dotfuscator Deep Dive with WP7

  - by Bil Simser

  I thought I would share some experience with code obfuscation (specifically the Dotfuscator product) and Windows Phone 7 apps. These days twitter is a buzz with black hat and white operations coming out about how the marketplace is insecure and Microsoft failed, blah, blah, blah. So it’s that much more important to protect your intellectual property. You should protect it no matter what when releasing apps into the wild but more so when someone is paying for them. You want to protect the time and effort that went into your code and have some comfort that the casual hacker isn’t going to usurp your next best thing. Enter code obfuscation. Code obfuscation is one tool that can help protect your IP. Basically it goes into your compiled assemblies, rewrites things at an IL level (like renaming methods and classes and hiding logic flow) and rewrites it back so that the assembly or executable is still fully functional but prying eyes using a tool like ILDASM or Reflector can’t see what’s going on.  You can read more about code obfuscation here on Wikipedia. A word to the wise. Code obfuscation isn’t 100% secure. More so on the WP7 platform where the OS expects certain things to be as they were meant to be. So don’t expect 100% obfuscation of every class and every method and every property. It’s just not going to happen. What this does do is give you some level of protection but don’t put all your eggs in one basket and call it done. Like I said, this is just one step in the process. There are a few tools out there that provide code obfuscation and support the Windows Phone 7 platform (see links to other tools at the end of this post). One such tool is Dotfuscator from PreEmptive solutions. The thing about Dotfuscator is that they’ve struck a deal with Microsoft to provide a *free* copy of their commercial product for Windows Phone 7. The only drawback is that it only runs until March 31, 2010. However it’s a good place to start and the focus of this article. Getting Started When you fire up Dotfuscator you’re presented with a dialog to start a new project or load a previous one. We’ll start with a new project. You’re then looking at a somewhat blank screen that shows an Input tab (among others) and you’re probably wondering what to do? Click on the folder icon (first one) and browse to where your xap file is. At this point you can save the project and click on the arrow to start the process. Bam! You’re done. Right? Think again. The program did indeed run and create a new version of your xap (doing it’s thing and rewriting back your *obfuscated* assemblies) but let’s take a look at the assembly in Reflector to see the end result. Remember a xap file is really just a glorified zip file (or cab file if you prefer). When you ran Dotfuscator for the first time with the default settings you’ll see it created a new version of your xap in a folder under “My Documents” called “Dotfuscated” (you can configure the output directory in settings). Here’s the new xap file. Since a xap is just a zip, rename it to .cab or .zip or something and open it with your favorite unarchive program (I use WinRar but it doesn’t matter as long as it can unzip files). If you already have the xap file associated with your unarchive tool the rename isn’t needed. Once renamed extract the contents of the xap to your hard drive: Now you’ll have a folder with the contents of the xap file extracted: Double click or load up your assembly (WindowsPhoneDataBoundApplication1.dll in the example) in Reflector and let’s see the results: Hmm. That doesn’t look right. I can see all the methods and the code is all there for my LoadData method I wanted to protect. Product failure. Let’s return it for a refund. Hold your horses. We need to check out the settings in the program first. Remember when we loaded up our xap file. It started us on the Input tab but there was a settings tab before that. Wonder what it does? Here’s the default settings: Renaming Taking a closer look, all of the settings in Feature are disabled. WTF? Yeah, it leaves me scratching my head why an obfuscator by default doesn’t obfuscate. However it’s a simple fix to change these settings. Let’s enable Renaming as it sounds like a good start. Renaming obscures code by renaming methods and fields to names that are not understandable. Great. Run the tool again and go through the process of unzipping the updated xap and let’s take a look in Reflector again at our project. This looks a lot better. Lots of methods named a, b, c, d, etc. That’ll help slow hackers down a bit. What about our logic that we spent days weeks on? Let’s take a look at the LoadData method: What gives? We have renaming enabled but all of our code is still there. If you look through all your methods you’ll find it’s still sitting there out in the open. Control Flow Back to the settings page again. Let’s enable Control Flow now. Control Flow obfuscation synthesizes branching, conditional, and iterative constructs (such as if, for, and while) that produce valid executable logic, but yield non-deterministic semantic results when decompilation is attempted. In other words, the code runs as before, but decompilers cannot reproduce the original code. Do the dance again and let’s see the results in Reflector. Ahh, that’s better. Methods renamed *and* nobody can look at our LoadData method now. Life is good. More than Minimum This is the bare minimum to obfuscate your xap to at least a somewhat comfortable level. However I did find that while this worked in my Hello World demo, it didn’t work on one of my real world apps. I had to do some extra tweaking with that. Below are the screens that I used on one app that worked. I’m not sure what it was about the app that the approach above didn’t work with (maybe the extra assembly?) but it works and I’m happy with it. YMMV. Remember to test your obfuscated app on your device first before submitting to ensure you haven’t obfuscated the obfuscator. settings tab: rename tab: string encryption tab: premark tab: A few final notes Play with the settings and keep bumping up the bar to try to get as much obfuscation as you can. The more the better but remember you can overdo it. Always (always, always, always) deploy your obfuscated xap to your device and test it before submitting to the marketplace. I didn’t and got rejected because I had gone overboard with the obfuscation so the app wouldn’t launch at all. Not everything is going to be obfuscated. Specifically I don’t see a way to obfuscate auto properties and a few other language features. Again, if you crank the settings up you might hide these but I haven’t spent a lot of time optimizing the process. Some people might say to obfuscate your xaml using string encryption but again, test, test, test. Xaml is picky so too much obfuscation (or any) might disable your app or produce odd rendering effets. Remember, obfuscation is not 100% secure! Don’t rely on it as a sole way of protecting your assets. Other Tools Dotfuscator is one just product and isn’t the end-all be-all to obfuscation so check out others below. For example, Crypto can make it so Reflector doesn’t even recognize the app as a .NET one and won’t open it. Others can encrypt resources and Xaml markup files. Here are some other obfuscators that support the Windows Phone 7 platform. Feel free to give them a try and let people know your experience with them! Dotfuscator Windows Phone Edition Crypto Obfuscator for .NET DeepSea Obfuscation

  Read the article

• Do I need to match hardware on a Mac to my PC to get the same user experience?

  - by Darth

  I've been playing around with the thought of moving from a PC to a Mac. if you don't want to read this, skip to the "upgrade options" My current setup Most of my time I spent moving back and forth between Linux and Windows. During the last upgrade to Vista, I got myself pc with Core 2 Quad, 8GB of RAM and GeForce 9800GTX+. Currently I'm running dual boot between Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows Vista x64. Most of my work, around 80%, I can do on Ubuntu, which is mostly Ruby/Java programming. If that was all I needed, Ubuntu would be really great. However, I also do quite a lot of Photography and Design, which forces me to use Adobe software (not only Photoshop). I also work with Wacom Intuos4 tablet, which doesn't really have great support on Linux machines. I've tried virtualization both ways (Linux in Win and Win in Linux), but neither was anywhere near satisfying. These are those of many many reasons I want to move to OS X. Upgrade options This is how I see my upgrade options: Mac Mini - cheapest solution, but worst performance iMac - more expensive, better performing with second LCD for free Mac Pro - could match my current PC performance, currently outside of the price range When I compare the Mac hardware vs my current PC, it will be always worse, unless I decide to pump in a lot of money. The question that comes to my head, do I need to match my current PC hardware to get the same user experience with a Mac? If I look at it from the Vista point of view, 2GB RAM is as low as it gets, 4GB is usable ... and the 8GB runs very smoothly. PC HW != Mac HW? If I bought the Mac Mini for roughly the same price I paid for my PC (Core 2 Quad with 8GB RAM), I'd get Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM. But I don't want to run Vista on it, so I can't compare the hardware directly. Say that I want to do the same things on the Mac Mini as I do on my PC, eg. open up 50 tabs in Google Chrome and start working with a large PSD in Photoshop (couple hundred MB), would running on Mac OS X compensate for the lower hardware performance? My point is, that if I'm about to upgrade, I wouldn't like to upgrade to hardware that runs a lot slower. Good analogy for this is Vista vs Ubuntu, where you can run Ubuntu smoothly on a low end laptop, but in Vista, you'd be happy to open a browser. Does the same principle apply to OS X?

  Read the article

• On Turning 30&hellip;

  - by MOSSLover

  I know I am not a wise old sage like some people in the community.  I just turned 30 however I feel like all my years looking back have changed me.  My collective experiences and thoughts have given me a different perspective on life recently.  Seven months ago my head was in a gutter and since then a lot of things have happened.  I was always the weird kid in the corner reading Star Trek books.  When I was in elementary school I thought that kids would throw me birthday parties out of pity because I was the poor kid who everyone hated.  I am no longer that person.  I realized that during the worst possible period between my 29th and 30th year when I hit rock bottom.  You all know the insane story as I’ve told it two billion times over.  Honestly it was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life time, because many things would not have happened.  My friends came through for me at every given moment people from all over were checking up on me all over the world.  I fell and I landed on a bunch of people it was awesome.  I landed on family and friends who I thought I was never close enough to talk about these things.  They helped me realize I had a ton of unfulfilled dreams.  I got to move to New York City one of the greatest cities in the universe.  I got to do whatever I wanted without judgment from anyone.  I got to meet some great people at a few meetup groups in the past few months.  I got to meet an awesome person that I have been dating for 3 months.  I am trying to run for the 8 billionth time and keep up with it.  I got to go to Europe and next week for the first time New Orleans.  I got renewed for MVP for 2012.  I am grateful for all the people and things in my life.  I understand that sometimes when things seem bad you can always seek friends and family.  They will always help me.  I have to learn to lean on people sometimes just how they occasionally lean on me.  That is the biggest thing I have learned from the decade of 20 to 30.  I hope that 30 to 40 will be the best decade.  I hope that I can continue to grow.  I will catch you all later. Technorati Tags: Turning 30,Wisdom

  Read the article

• Book Review - Programming Windows Azure by Siriram Krishnan

  - by BuckWoody

  As part of my professional development, I’ve created a list of books to read throughout the year, starting in June of 2011. This a review of the first one, called Programming Windows Azure by Siriram Krishnan. You can find my entire list of books I’m reading for my career here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/06/07/head-in-the-clouds-eyes-on-the-books.aspx  Why I Chose This Book: As part of my learning style, I try to read multiple books about a single subject. I’ve found that at least 3 books are necessary to get the right amount of information to me. This is a “technical” work, meaning that it deals with technology and not business, writing or other facets of my career. I’ll have a mix of all of those as I read along. I chose this work in addition to others I’ve read since it covers everything from an introduction to more advanced topics in a single book. It also has some practical examples of actually working with the product, particularly on storage. Although it’s dated, many examples normally translate. I also saw that it had pretty good reviews. What I learned: I learned a great deal about storage, and many useful code snippets. I do think that there could have been more of a focus on the application fabric - but of course that wasn’t as mature a feature when this book was written. I learned some great architecture examples, and in one section I learned more about encryption. In that example, however, I would rather have seen the examples go the other way - the book focused on moving data from on-premise to Azure storage in an encrypted fashion. Using the Application Fabric I would rather see sensitive data left in a hybrid fashion on premise, and connect to for the Azure application. Even so, the examples were very useful. If you’re looking for a good “starter” Azure book, this is a good choice. I also recommend the last chapter as a quick read for a DBA, or Database Administrator. It’s not very long, but useful. Note that the limits described are incorrect - which is one of the dangers of reading a book about any cloud offering. The services offered are updated so quickly that the information is in constant danger of being “stale”. Even so, I found this a useful book, which I believe will help me work with Azure better. Raw Notes: I take notes as I read, calling that process “reading with a pencil”. I find that when I do that I pay attention better, and record some things that I need to know later. I’ll take these notes, categorize them into a OneNote notebook that I synchronize in my Live.com account, and that way I can search them from anywhere. I can even read them on the web, since the Live.com has a OneNote program built in. Note that these are the raw notes, so they might not make a lot of sense out of context - I include them here so you can watch my though process. Programming Windows Azure by Siriram Krishnan: Learning about how to select applications suitable for Distributed Technology. Application Fabric gets the least attention; probably because it was newer at the time. Very clear (Chapter One) Good foundation Background and history, but not too much I normally arrange my descriptions differently, starting with the use-cases and moving to physicality, but this difference helps me. Interesting that I am reading this using Safari Books Online, which uses many of these concepts. Taught me some new aspects of a Hypervisor – very low-level information about the Azure Fabric (not to be confused with the Application Fabric feature) (Chapter Two) Good detail of what is included in the SDK. Even more is available now. CS = Cloud Service (Chapter 3) Place Storage info in the configuration file, since it can be streamed in-line with a running app. Ditto for logging, and keep separated configs for staging and testing. Easy-switch in and switch out.  (Chapter 4) There are two Runtime API’s, one of external and one for internal. Realizing how powerful this paradigm really is. Some places seem light, and to drop off but perhaps that’s best. Managing API is not charged, which is nice. I don’t often think about the price, until it comes to an actual deployment (Chapter 5) Csmanage is something I want to dig into deeper. API requires package moves to Blob storage first, so it needs a URL. Csmanage equivalent can be written in Unix scripting using openssl. Upgrades are possible, and you use the upgradeDomainCount attribute in the Service-Definition.csdef file  Always use a low-privileged account to test on the dev fabric, since Windows Azure runs in partial trust. Full trust is available, but can be dangerous and must be well-thought out. (Chapter 6) Learned how to run full CMD commands in a web window – not that you would ever do that, but it was an interesting view into those links. This leads to a discussion on hosting other runtimes (such as Java or PHP) in Windows Azure. I got an expanded view on this process, although this is where the book shows its age a little. Books can be a problem for Cloud Computing for this reason – things just change too quickly. Windows Azure storage is not eventually consistent – it is instantly consistent with multi-phase commit. Plumbing for this is internal, not required to code that. (Chapter 7) REST API makes the service interoperable, hybrid, and consistent across code architectures. Nicely done. Use affinity groups to keep data and code together. Side note: e-book readers need a common “notes” feature. There’s a decent quick description of REST in this chapter. Learned about CloudDrive code – PowerShell sample that mounts Blob storage as a local provider. Works against Dev fabric by default, can be switched to Account. Good treatment in the storage chapters on the differences between using Dev storage and Azure storage. These can be mitigated. No, blobs are not of any size or number. Not a good statement (Chapter 8) Blob storage is probably Azure’s closest play to Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas). Blob change operations must be authenticated, even when public. Chapters on storage are pretty in-depth. Queue Messages are base-64 encoded (Chapter 9) The visibility timeout ensures processing of message in a disconnected system. Order is not guaranteed for a message, so if you need that set an increasing number in the queue mechanism. While Queues are accessible via REST, they are not public and are secured by default. Interesting – the header for a queue request includes an estimated count. This can be useful to create more worker roles in a dynamic system. Each Entity (row) in the Azure Table service is atomic – all or nothing. (Chapter 10) An entity can have up to 255 Properties  Use “ID” for the class to indicate the key value, or use the [DataServiceKey] Attribute.  LINQ makes working with the Azure Table Service much easier, although Interop is certainly possible. Good description on the process of selecting the Partition and Row Key.  When checking for continuation tokens for pagination, include logic that falls out of the check in case you are at the last page.  On deleting a storage object, it is instantly unavailable, however a background process is dispatched to perform the physical deletion. So if you want to re-create a storage object with the same name, add retry logic into the code. Interesting approach to deleting an index entity without having to read it first – create a local entity with the same keys and apply it to the Azure system regardless of change-state.  Although the “Indexes” description is a little vague, it’s interesting to see a Folding and Stemming discussion a-la the Porter Stemming Algorithm. (Chapter 11)  Presents a better discussion of indexes (at least inverted indexes) later in the chapter. Great treatment for DBA’s in Chapter 11. We need to work on getting secondary indexes in Table storage. There is a limited form of transactions called “Entity Group Transactions” that, although they have conditions, makes a transactional system more possible. Concurrency also becomes an issue, but is handled well if you’re using Data Services in .NET. It watches the Etag and allows you to take action appropriately. I do not recommend using Azure as a location for secure backups. In fact, I would rather have seen the examples in (Chapter 12) go the other way, showing how data could be brought back to a local store as a DR or HA strategy. Good information on cryptography and so on even so. Chapter seems out of place, and should be combined with the Blob chapter.  (Chapter 13) on SQL Azure is dated, although the base concepts are OK.  Nice example of simple ADO.NET access to a SQL Azure (or any SQL Server Really) database.  

  Read the article

• How did I get here? My route to Android, iPhone, Windows Phone 7, and interest in Mobile Devices

  - by Wallym

  I get asked all the time how/why I got interested in mobile and jumped on this fairly early.  I tend to give half answers because it wasn't just one thing that took me to mobile, but a whole host of separate ivents culminating in a specific event where I wasdoing market research in May/June 2008.  Let me throw out the events and the facts about me: I tend to like new, different, cool stuff.  I jumped on .NET early on.  I jumped on Ajax early on.  I don't jump on every new technology that comes down the road, I'm probably the only person on the planet that doesn't "get" MVC, though I acknowledge that a lot of people do and it solves a number of problems in the default settings of ASP.NET WebForms. I remember buying an early Windows CE device. It was interesting, but dang, this stylus thing sucks. After I lost my third stylus, i just gave up.  I got my first mobile phone in early 1999.  Reception was crappy, but I could see the value in being mobile. In 1999, I worked on a manufacturing systems project.  One piece of the projects was a set of handheld devices on the shop floor.  While the UI was a crappy DOS based, yes I said DOS as in Disk Operating System Version 6.22, I could see that the wireless world was a direction I wanted to be in. In 2000, Microsoft released the first public alpha of .NET.  Very cool stuff indeed.  One piece of the puzzle was a set of mobile controls for ASP.NET.  I build numerous test apps as well as mobile version using these mobile controls.  Now, the mobile UIs of the time were based on WML, which was crap. I could real all the analysis of mobile and read all about growth rates.  Now, you have to realize that growth rates can be impressive when dealing with small numbers, but I knew it was a comer. In our first book, I got talked out of mobile because of the line from the publisher "Wally, mobile doesn't sell." Blackberry was the dominant device of the mid 2000s.  Its users were referred to as "Crackberry addicts."  Unfortunately, the mobile development experience for native apps was crap and the web experience was fairly rough as well, but if they could get the ecosystem started, other phones and better blackberryies would come out.  I finally jumped into using a blackberry. Sometime around 2006, I heard "Wally, mobile doesn't sell" again.  Now, anyone that knows me knows that someone saying something like this to me means I'll keep trying it. The phones of the mid 2000s were moving to be more graphical, but there were too many that had this idea that they had to use a stylus.  Stylus suck.  They get lost too easily. I worked on a project in 2007 and 2008 for a startup trying to answer the question of "What is there to do where I am at?"  For some reason, they wanted to be tied to PCs.  As it became obvious that they were having problems, their investor asked us to do some market research and to figure out what the marketplace did want.  One of the important things that I figured out was the we lived in a mobile world and if you had a mobile app, it need to be on a mobile device, not tied to a desktop/laptop/netbook device.  If there was any single event, this was it - I was doing some market research and sat and talked to people in a bar/restaurant in Atlanta called "The Grove" on Lavista.  The consensus of the people that I talked to was that they wanted their data where ever they were at, laptop, pc, mobile, whereever. In 2007, Apple released the iPhone.  Wow, what an impressive device, even with all the problems of a 1st generation device.  I bought an iPod Touch 1st generation to understand touch better, one of the best decisions I ever made. I decided in late 2008, to make a move into cloud, for a number of reasons.  I was working on an example app.  In April, 2009, one of my friends at Microsoft said "don't mention my name with this, but you need an iPhone front end for this app."  How do you get on the iPhone.  Well, there are a number of ways including: ObjectiveC.  Its hard to teach an old dog new tricks, and this dog knows .NET, not ObjectiveC. HTML, web, javascript optimized interface.  yeah, this is possible. PhoneGap.  Now, this is interesting, take an html interface and get it to run on the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and other platforms.  I thought that this way made the most sense for me until......... MonoTouch.  In May/June 2009, Novell announced a way for .NET/c# developers to write apps for the iPhone.  This is the way that made the most sense to me. Titanium by Appcelerator.  This is similar in concept to PhoneGap.  I haven't played with this much but do want to learn more about it. In July, 2009, I emailed one of my contacts at Wrox to see if they would be interested in a short MonoTouch ebook in their Wrox Blox format.  I fully expected another  response along the lines of "Wally, mobile doesn't sell."  The response I got was "Wally, iPhone is H O T, get started immediately, can you have this to me before Labor Day."  Not quite the response I expected.  Thankfully, we didn't make the Labor Day, first draft date. I kept pushing back because I had a feeling that things were not going to be quite as polished and feature rich as necessary.  After all, Novell doesn't have the resouces of Microsoft's developer division. The ebook shipped on November 30, 2009. On about December, 15, 2009, my editor emailed and said "Your ebook is selling really well, lets do a full book and it by March 1 so get started."  Thankfully, guys like Craig Dunn and Chris Hardy were interested along with Martin and Ror joinged us later on. I bought my wife an iPhone 3Gs in early 2010 to go along with all my iPod Touch devices. I tried to pretend in 2010 that I wasn't that interested in mobile and still had interest in the desktop technologies.  I love the technologies and continue to use them today, but that isn't where my interest is right now.  I'm just about all mobile all the time with my energies.  Our book shipped in the beginning of July, 2010 right in the middle of the Apple FUD.I've been looking at Mobile Web as a way around the AppStores and Apple FUD problems of 2010. With all the Apple self FUD, we became interested in Android.I went up to Dino Esposito at DevConnections in Las Vegas at introduced myself. I've always tried to keep up with what Dino has been doing. I was shocked, he wanted to meet me.  We must have talked for 1.5 hours. It was way more time than I deserved. If you get a chance, go and introduce yourself to Dino. He's a great guy. Microsoft released Windows Phone 7 in the Fall of 2010.  I'm not doing development on that platform at this time.  I think they have a very interesting user interface.  The devices are being positively reviewed.  For my purposes, the devices are limited at this point in time.  We'll see what 2011 brings as far as updates to the operating system.  I need multitasking/background processing and html5 in the browser. Add that as well as acceptance in the marketplace and I'll be more interested in the device. Obviosuly, I'm now working on a MonoDroid book . I own Android and iPhone/iOS devices.  I am currently working on some startup ideas and am exploring as much in that area as I can. For 2011, I'm planning on speaking at Android Developer's Conference (AnDevCon) and Mobile Connections.  I'm really excited about this. I have a couple of magazine articles coming out in 2011 on Android and iPhone development with the Mono technologies.is Mono "The Answer"? What's "The Question?" I think it will work for me.  It might work for you, it might not.  it depends on your situation.  Its the current horse that I am riding. I might find a better horse tomorrow. So, that's how I got here.  I'm in love with mobile.  Mobile native apps on the device as well as mobile web.  I'm into all this cool stuff.  Where are you at?

  Read the article

• Fair Comments

  - by Tony Davis

  To what extent is good code self-documenting? In one of the most entertaining sessions I saw at the recent PASS summit, Jeremiah Peschka (blog | twitter) got a laugh out of a sleepy post-lunch audience with the following remark: "Some developers say good code is self-documenting; I say, get off my team" I silently applauded the sentiment. It's not that all comments are useful, but that I mistrust the basic premise that "my code is so clearly written, it doesn't need any comments". I've read many pieces describing the road to self-documenting code, and my problem with most of them is that they feed the myth that comments in code are a sign of weakness. They aren't; in fact, used correctly I'd say they are essential. Regardless of how far intelligent naming can get you in describing what the code does, or how well any accompanying unit tests can explain to your fellow developers why it works that way, it's no excuse not to document fully the public interfaces to your code. Maybe I just mixed with the wrong crowd while learning my favorite language, but when I open a stored procedure I lose the will even to read it unless I see a big Phil Factor- or Jeff Moden-style header summarizing in plain English what the code does, how it fits in to the broader application, and a usage example. This public interface describes the high-level process and should explain the role of the code, clearly, for fellow developers, language non-experts, and even any non-technical stake holders in the project. When you step into the body of the code, the low-level details, then I agree that the rules are somewhat different; especially when code is subject to frequent refactoring that can quickly render comments redundant or misleading. At their worst, here, inline comments are sticking plaster to cover up the scars caused by poor naming conventions, failure in clarity when mapping a complex domain into code, or just by not entirely understanding the problem (/ this is the clever part). If you design and refactor your code carefully so that it is as simple as possible, your functions do one thing only, you avoid having two completely different algorithms in the same piece of code, and your functions, classes and variables are intelligently named, then, yes, the need for inline comments should be minimal. And yet, even given this, I'd still argue that many languages (T-SQL certainly being one) just don't lend themselves to readability when performing even moderately-complex tasks. If the algorithm is complex, I still like to see the occasional helpful comment. Please, therefore, be as liberal as you see fit in the detail of the comments you apply to this editorial, for like code it is bound to increase its' clarity and usefulness. Cheers, Tony.

  Read the article

• Microsoft Channel 9 Interviews Mei Liang to Introduce Sample Browser Extension for Visual Studio 2012 and 2010

  - by Jialiang

  This morning, Microsoft Channel 9 interviewed Mei Liang - Group Manager of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - to introduce the newest Sample Browser extension for Visual Studio 2012 &2010.   This extension provides a way for developers to search and download more than 4500 code samples from within Visual Studio, including over 700 Windows 8 samples and more than 1000 All-In-One Code Framework customer-driven code samples. Mei shows us not only the extension, but also the standalone version of the Sample Browser.   http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Visual-Studio-Toolbox/Sample-Browser-Visual-Studio-Extension   Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, working in close partnership with the Visual Studio product team and MSDN Samples Gallery, developed the Sample Browser extension for both Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2010.  As an effort to evolve the code sample use experience and improve developers' productivity, the Sample Browser allows programmers to search, download and open over 4500 code samples from within Visual Studio with just a few simple clicks.  If no existing code sample can meet the needs, developers can even request a code sample easily from Microsoft thanks to the free “Sample Request Service” offered by Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework.  Through innovations, the teams hope to put the power of tens of thousands of code samples at developers’ fingertips. In short 3 months, the Sample Browser Visual Studio Extension has been installed by 100K global users.  It is also selected as one of the six most highly regarded and commonly used tools for Visual Studio that will make your programming experience feel like never before.   Got to love the All-In-One Code Framework team! You guys know this is THE go to source for code samples. Get this extension and you'll never need to leave VS2012 (well except for bathroom trips, but that's TMI anyway... ;) Read More... From: Greg Duncan (Author of CoolThingOfTheDay) 9/6/2011 12:00 AM The one software design pattern that I have used in just about every application I’ve written is “cut-and-paste,” so the new “Sample Browser” – read sample as a noun not an adjective – is a great boon to my productivity. Read More... From: Jim O'Neil (Microsoft Developer Evangelist) 9/28/2011 12:00 AM Install: http://aka.ms/samplebrowservsx Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework also offers the standalone version of Sample Browser.   The standalone version is particularly useful to Visual Studio Express edition or Visual Studio 2008 users, who cannot install the Sample Browser Visual Studio extension.   From Grassroots’ Passion for Developers to the Innovation of Sample Browser This Sample Browser has come a very long way improving the code sample use experience.  The history can be traced back to a grass-root innovation three years ago.   In early 2009, a few MSDN forum support engineers observed that lots of developers were struggling to work in Visual Studio without adequate code samples. Programming tasks seem harder than they should be when you only read through the documentation.  Just a couple of lines of sample code could answer a lot of questions.   They had a brilliant idea: What if we produce code samples based on developers’ frequently asked programming tasks in forums, social networks and support incidents, and then aggregate all our sample code in a one-stop library to benefit developers?  And what if developers can request code samples directly from Microsoft, free of charge?  This small group of grassroots at Microsoft devoted their nights and weekends to prototyping such a customer-driven code sample library.  This simple idea eventually turned into “Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework”, aka. OneCode.  With the support from more and more passionate developers at Microsoft and the leaders in the Community and Online Support team and Microsoft Commercial Technical Services (CTS), the idea has become a continually growing library with over 1000 customer-driven code samples covering almost all Microsoft development technologies.  These code samples originated from developers’ common pains and needs should be able to help many developers.  However, if developers cannot easily discover the code samples, the effort would still be in vain.  So in early 2010, the team started the idea of Sample Browser to ease the discovery and access of these samples.  In just two months, the first version of Sample Browser was finished and released by a passionate developer.  It was a very simple application, only supporting the basic sample offline search.  Users had to download the whole 100MB sample package containing all samples first, and run the Sample Browser to search locally.   Though developers could not search and download samples on-demand, this simple application laid a solid foundation for the team’s continuous innovations of Sample Browsing experience. In 2011, MSDN Samples Gallery had a big refresh.  The online sample experience was brought to a new level thanks to its PM Steven Wilssens and the gallery team’s effort.  Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework Team saw the opportunity to realize the “on-demand” sample search and download feature with the new gallery.  The two teams formed a strong partnership to upload all the customer-driven code samples to MSDN Samples Gallery, and released the new version of Sample Browser to support “on-demand” sample downloading in April, 2011.  Mei Liang, the Group Manager of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, was interviewed by Channel 9 to demo the Sample Browser.  Customers love the effort and the innovation!!  This can be clearly seen from the user comments in the publishing page.   It was very encouraging to the team of All-In-One Code Framework. The team continues innovating and evolving the Sample Browser.  They found the Visual Studio product team this time, and integrated the Sample Browsing experience into the latest Visual Studio 2012.  The newly released Sample Browser Visual Studio extension makes good use of Visual Studio 2012 IDE such as the new Quick Launch bar, the code editor, the toolbar and menus to offer easy access to thousands of code samples from within the development environment.   The Visual Studio Senior Program Manager Lead - Anthony Cangialosi, the Program Manager - Murali Krishna Hosabettu Kamalesha, the MSDN Samples Gallery PM – Steven Wilssens, and the Visual Studio Senior Escalation Engineer - Ed Dore shared lots of insightful suggestions with the team.  Thanks to the brilliant cross-group collaboration inside Microsoft, tens of new features including “Local Language Support” and “Favorite Samples”, as well as a face-lifted user interface, were added to further enhance the user experience. Since the new Sample Browser Visual Studio extension was released, it has received over 100 thousand downloads and five-star ratings.  A customer told the team that he officially falls in LOVE with Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework.   The Sample Browser Innovation for Developers Never Stops! The teams would never stop improving the Sample Browser for developers’ easier lives.   The Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, Visual Studio and MSDN Samples Gallery teams are working closely to develop the next version of Sample Browser.  Here are the key functions in development or in discussion.  We hope to learn your feedback of the effort.  You can submit your suggestions to the official Visual Studio UserVoice site.  We look forward to hearing from you! 1) Offline Sample Search This is one of the top feature requests that we have received for Sample Browser.   The Sample Browser will support the offline search mode so that developers can search downloaded code samples when they do not have internet access.  This is particularly useful to developers in Enterprises with strict proxy settings. 2) Code Snippet Support and Visual Studio Editor Integration Today, the Sample Browser supports downloading and opening sample project.   However, when developers are searching for code samples, a better user experience would be to see the code snippets in the search result first.  Developers can quickly decide if the code snippet is relevant.   They can also drag and drop the code snippet into the Visual Studio Editor to solve some simple programming tasks.  If developers want to learn more about the sample, they can then choose to download the sample project and open it in Visual Studio. 3) Enterprise Sample Sharing and Searching Large enterprises have many code samples for their own internal tools and APIs that are not appropriate to be shared publicly in MSDN Samples Gallery.   In that case, today’s Sample Browser and MSDN Samples Gallery cannot help these Enterprise developers.  The idea is to create a Code Sample Repository in TFS, and provide an additional Visual Studio extension for Enterprise developers to quickly share code samples to TFS.  The Sample Browser can be configured to connect to the TFS Code Sample Repository to search for and download code samples.  This would potentially enable the Enterprise developers to be more productive. 4) Windows Store Sample Browser With the upcoming release of Windows RT and Microsoft Surface, developers are facing a completely new world of application platform.   Not like laptop, people would often use Microsoft Surface in commute and in travel.  Internet may not be available.  Today’s Visual Studio cannot be installed and run on Windows RT, however, our enthusiastic developers would hope to spend every minute on code.  They love code!   The idea is to create a Windows Store version of Sample Browser. Search and download samples from the online Samples Gallery when the user has internet access. Browse the sample code files and learn the sample documentation of downloaded samples with or without internet access.   In addition to the "browse” function, the Sample Browser could further support “bookmark”, “learning notes”, “code review”, and “quick social sharing". Make full use of the new touch and Windows Store App UI to give developers a new “relaxing” code browsing and learning experience, anytime, anywhere. With Windows Store Sample Browser, developers can enjoy A new relaxing and enjoyable experience for developers to learn code samples You do not have to sit in front of desk and formally open Visual Studio to read code samples.  Many developers get sub-health due to staying in front of desk for a very long time.  With Windows RT, Microsoft Surface and this Windows Store Sample Browser combining with the online MSDN Samples Gallery, developers can sit in a sofa, relaxingly hold the tablet and enjoy to learn their beloved sample code with detailed documentation. Anytime, anywhere Whether you have internet access or not, whether you are at home, in office, or in commute/airplane, developers can always easily access and browse the sample code. Lightweight and fast Particularly for learning a small sample project, the Windows Store Sample Browser would be more lightweight and faster to open and browse the sample code. Please submit your feedback and suggestion to Visual Studio UserVoice.  We look forward to hearing from you and deliver a better and better sample use experience.  Happy Coding!   Special Thanks to People working behind the latest release of Sample Browser Visual Studio Extension and the great partnerships!

  Read the article

• Windows 8 Will be Here Tomorrow; but Should Silverlight be Gone Today?

  - by andrewbrust

  The software industry lives within an interesting paradox. IT in the enterprise moves slowly and cautiously, upgrading only when safe and necessary.  IT interests intentionally live in the past.  On the other hand, developers, and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) not only want to use the latest and greatest technologies, but this constituency prides itself on gauging tech’s future, and basing its present-day strategy upon it.  Normally, we as an industry manage this paradox with a shrug of the shoulder and musings along the lines of “it takes all kinds.”  Different subcultures have different tendencies.  So be it. Microsoft, with its Windows operating system (OS), can’t take such a laissez-faire view of the world though.  Redmond relies on IT to deploy Windows and (at the very least) influence its procurement, but it also relies on developers to build software for Windows, especially software that has a dependency on features in new versions of the OS.  It must indulge and nourish developers’ fetish for an early birthing of the next generation of software, even as it acknowledges the IT reality that the next wave will arrive on-schedule in Redmond and will travel very slowly to end users. With the move to Windows 8, and the corresponding shift in application development models, this paradox is certainly in place. On the one hand, the next version of Windows is widely expected sometime in 2012, and its full-scale deployment will likely push into 2014 or even later.  Meanwhile, there’s a technology that runs on today’s Windows 7, will continue to run in the desktop mode of Windows 8 (the next version’s codename), and provides absolutely the best architectural bridge to the Windows 8 Metro-style application development stack.  That technology is Silverlight.  And given what we now know about Windows 8, one might think, as I do, that Microsoft ecosystem developers should be flocking to it. But because developers are trying to get a jump on the future, and since many of them believe the impending v5.0 release of Silverlight will be the technology’s last, not everyone is flocking to it; in fact some are fleeing from it.  Is this sensible?  Is it not unprecedented?  What options does it lead to?  What’s the right way to think about the situation? Is v5.0 really the last major version of the technology called Silverlight?  We don’t know.  But Scott Guthrie, the “father” and champion of the technology, left the Developer Division of Microsoft months ago to work on the Windows Azure team, and he took his people with him.  John Papa, who was a very influential Redmond-based evangelist for Silverlight (and is a Visual Studio Magazine author), left Microsoft completely.  About a year ago, when initial suspicion of Silverlight’s demise reached significant magnitude, Papa interviewed Guthrie on video and their discussion served to dispel developers’ fears; but now they’ve moved on. So read into that what you will and let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, speculation that Silverlight’s days of major revision and iteration are over now is correct.  Let’s assume the shine and glimmer has dimmed.  Let’s assume that any Silverlight application written today, and that therefore any investment of financial and human resources made in Silverlight development today, is destined for rework and extra investment in a few years, if the application’s platform needs to stay current. Is this really so different from any technology investment we make?  Every framework, language, runtime and operating system is subject to change, to improvement, to flux and, yes, to obsolescence.  What differs from project to project, is how near-term that obsolescence is and how disruptive the change will be.  The shift from .NET 1.1. to 2.0 was incremental.  Some of the further changes were too.  But the switch from Windows Forms to WPF was major, and the change from ASP.NET Web Services (asmx) to Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) was downright fundamental. Meanwhile, the transition to the .NET development model for Windows 8 Metro-style applications is actually quite gentle.  The finer points of this subject are covered nicely in Magenic’s excellent white paper “Assessing the Windows 8 Development Platform.” As the authors of that paper (including Rocky Lhotka)  point out, Silverlight code won’t just “port” to Windows 8.  And, no, Silverlight user interfaces won’t either; Metro always supports XAML, but that relationship is not commutative.  But the concepts, the syntax, the architecture and developers’ skills map from Silverlight to Windows 8 Metro and the Windows Runtime (WinRT) very nicely.  That’s not a coincidence.  It’s not an accident.  This is a protected transition.  It’s not a slap in the face. There are few things that are unnerving about this transition, which make it seem markedly different from others: The assumed end of the road for Silverlight is something many think they can see.  Instead of being ignorant of the technology’s expiration date, we believe we know it.  If ignorance is bliss, it would seem our situation lacks it. The new technology involving WinRT and Metro involves a name change from Silverlight. .NET, which underlies both Silverlight and the XAML approach to WinRT development, has just about reached 10 years of age.  That’s equivalent to 80 in human years, or so many fear. My take is that the combination of these three factors has contributed to what for many is a psychologically compelling case that Silverlight should be abandoned today and HTML 5 (the agnostic kind, not the Windows RT variety) should be embraced in its stead.  I understand the logic behind that.  I appreciate the preemptive, proactive, vigilant conscientiousness involved in its calculus.  But for a great many scenarios, I don’t agree with it.  HTML 5 clients, no matter how impressive their interactivity and the emulation of native application interfaces they present may be, are still second-class clients.  They are getting better, especially when hardware acceleration and fast processors are involved.  But they still lag.  They still feel like they’re emulating something, like they’re prototypes, like they’re not comfortable in their own skins.  They are based on compromise, and they feel compromised too. HTML 5/JavaScript development tools are getting better, and will get better still, but they are not as productive as tools for other environments, like Flash, like Silverlight or even more primitive tooling for iOS or Android.  HTML’s roots as a document markup language, rather than an application interface, create a disconnect that impedes productivity.  I do not necessarily think that problem is insurmountable, but it’s here today. If you’re building line-of-business applications, you need a first-class client and you need productivity.  Lack of productivity increases your costs and worsens your backlog.  A second class client will erode user satisfaction, which is never good.  Worse yet, this erosion will be inconspicuous, rather than easily identified and diagnosed, because the inferiority of an HTML 5 client over a native one is hard to identify and, notably, doing so at this juncture in the industry is unpopular.  Why would you fault a technology that everyone believes is revolutionary?  Instead, user disenchantment will remain latent and yet will add to the malaise caused by slower development. If you’re an ISV and you’re coveting the reach of running multi-platform, it’s a different story.  You’ve likely wanted to move to HTML 5 already, and the uncertainty around Silverlight may be the only remaining momentum or pretext you need to make the shift.  You’re deploying many more copies of your application than a line-of-business developer is anyway; this makes the economic hit from lower productivity less impactful, and the wider potential installed base might even make it profitable. But no matter who you are, it’s important to take stock of the situation and do it accurately.  Continued, but merely incremental changes in a development model lead to conservatism and general lack of innovation in the underlying platform.  Periods of stability and equilibrium are necessary, but permanence in that equilibrium leads to loss of platform relevance, market share and utility.  Arguably, that’s already happened to Windows.  The change Windows 8 brings is necessary and overdue.  The marked changes in using .NET if we’re to build applications for the new OS are inevitable.  We will ultimately benefit from the change, and what we can reasonably hope for in the interim is a migration path for our code and skills that is navigable, logical and conceptually comfortable. That path takes us to a place called WinRT, rather than a place called Silverlight.  But considering everything that is changing for the good, the number of disruptive changes is impressively minimal.  The name may be changing, and there may even be some significance to that in terms of Microsoft’s internal management of products and technologies.  But as the consumer, you should care about the ingredients, not the name.  Turkish coffee and Greek coffee are much the same. Although you’ll find plenty of interested parties who will find the names significant, drinkers of the beverage should enjoy either one.  It’s all coffee, it’s all sweet, and you can tell your fortune from the grounds that are left at the end.  Back on the software side, it’s all XAML, and C# or VB .NET, and you can make your fortune from the product that comes out at the end.  Coffee drinkers wouldn’t switch to tea.  Why should XAML developers switch to HTML?

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 01, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 01, 2011Popular ReleasesVidCoder: 0.9.1: Added color coding to the Log window. Errors are highlighted in red, HandBrake logs are in black and VidCoder logs are in dark blue. Moved enqueue button to the right with the other control buttons. Added logic to report failures when errors are logged during the encode or when the encode finishes prematurely. Added Copy button to Log window. Adjusted audio track selection box to always show the full track name. Changed encode job progress bar to also be colored yellow when the enco...Terraria Map Generator: TerrariaMapTool 1.0.0.3 Beta: 1) Catch all exception from the gui app. 2) Fixed the use of the graphics device to really use reach.AutoLoL: AutoLoL v2.0.1: - Fixed a small bug in Auto Login - Fixed the updaterEPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the server: EPPlus 2.9.0.1: EPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the server This version has been updated to .Net Framework 3.5 New Features Data Validation. PivotTables (Basic functionalliy...) Support for worksheet data sources. Column, Row, Page and Data fields. Date and Numeric grouping Build in styles. ...and more And some minor new features... Ranges Text-Property|Get the formated value AutofitColumns-method to set the column width from the content of the range LoadFromCollection-metho...jQuery ASP.Net MVC Controls: Version 1.4.0.0: Version 1.4.0.0 contains the following additions: Upgraded to MVC 3.0 Upgraded to jQuery 1.6.1 (Though the project supports all jQuery version from 1.4.x onwards) Upgraded to jqGrid 3.8 Better Razor View-Engine support Better Pager support, includes support for custom pagers Added jqGrid toolbar buttons support Search module refactored, with full suport for multiple filters and ordering And Code cleanup, bug-fixes and better controller configuration support.Restbucks on .Net: RestBucks Alpha 1: This is the first release of the application.Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v6.0: Version 6.0 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine, containing new features: Authentication using Membership Provider for SQL Server and MySql Spam prevention: Flood Control Moderation: Flag messages Content management: Pages: Create pages (about us/contact/texts) through web administration Allow nearforums to run as an IIS subapp Migrated Facebook Connect to OAuth 2.0 Visit the project Roadmap for more details.NetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.8b: Changes: - fix critical issue 15922(AccessViolationException) once and for all update is strongly recommended Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:..............................................................COM Proxy Management, Events, etc. - Examples in C# and VB.Net:............................................................Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access - COMAddin Examples in C# and VB....Facebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 1.5.4186: Updates the API in response to Facebook's recent change of policy: All Graph Api accessing feeds or posts must provide a AccessToken.SharePoint Farm Poster: SharePoint Farm Poster: SharePoint Farm Poster is generated by a PowerShell Script. Run this script under the Farm Admin Account. After downloading, unblock the file in the Property Window. Current version is beta : v0.3.4Serviio for Windows Home Server: Beta Release 0.5.2.0: Ready for widespread beta. Synchronized build number to Serviio version to avoid confusion.AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta4: ??AcDown?????????????，??????????????，????、????。?????Acfun????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??v3.0 Beta4 2011-5-31?? ???Bilibili.us????? ???? ?? ???"????" ???Bilibili.us??? ??????? ?? ??????? ?? ???????? ?? ?? ???Bilibili.us?????(??????????????????) ??????(6.cn)?????(????) ?? ?????Acfun?????????? ?????????????? ???QQ???????? ????????????Discussion...EnhSim: EnhSim 2.4.5 ALPHA: 2.4.5 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.1 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in the T12 s...TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v2.4.1: Added Piggy Bank editor and fixed some minor bugs.Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.02: What is new in kooboo cms 3.02 The most important updates of this version is the Kooboo site builder, an unique and creative web design tool, design an professional website and export to Kooboo CMS. See: http://www.sitekin.com Add Version contorl on View, Layout and other elements. Add user CMS language selection, user can select a language to use on their CMS backend. Add User profile provider, you can use now stop website user information on a SQL database. Previously it stored on XML...mojoPortal: 2.3.6.6: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2366-released Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code. To download the source code see the Source Code Tab I recommend getting the latest source code using TortoiseHG, you can get the source code corresponding to this release here.Terraria World Creator: Terraria World Creator: Version 1.01 Fixed a bug that would cause the application to crash. Re-named the Application.Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - a centralized code sample library: All-In-One Code Framework 2011-05-26: Alternatively, you can install Sample Browser or Sample Browser VS extension, and download the code samples from Sample Browser. Improved and Newly Added Examples:For an up-to-date code sample index, please refer to All-In-One Code Framework Sample Catalog. NEW Samples for Dynamics Sample Description Owner CSDynamicsNAVWebServices The code sample shows syntax for calling Dynamics NAV Web Services. Lars Lohndorf-Larsen NEW Samples for WPF Sample Description Owner CSWPFDataGridCustomS...Terraria World Viewer: Version 1.1: Update May 26th Added Chest Filtering, this allows chests only containing certain items to have their symbol drawn. (Its under advanced settings tab) GUI elements (checkboxes/etc) are persistant between uses of the application Beta Worlds (i.e. Release #38) will work properly Symbols can be enabled or disabled on a per symbol basis Chest Information tab which is just a dump of the current chest information Meterorite is now visible as a bright magenta pink Application defaults to ...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.1 RC: *Added: Compatibility with jQuery 1.6.1 Rendering of enumerables with images and/or customizable strings improved the client side tempate engine added new parameters to the template definition binding all new knockout bindings helpers have been fully implemented added a new overload for defining the client-side ViewModel The SetTme method has the option to store the theme in a permanent cookie If no CSS class is provided for the watermark of a TypedTextBox the watermark class of the current t...New ProjectsAlumnus SI Machung: ExSis Alumnus Website makes it easier for Alumni of Ma Chung University, that located at Malang, East Java, Indonesia. You'll no longer have to find your friend that separated in so many years. It's developed in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. Check our website at kriswanto90.charlezzzz.comb9b18a35-a80a-440c-bb8c-195be0225cfa: b9b18a35-a80a-440c-bb8c-195be0225cfaCustomer Care Portal - SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites: The Customer Care Portal demonstrates cooperation of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 with several technologies, such as: • Silverlight • Windows Server AppFabric • Business Data Connectivity • Microsoft InfoPath 2010 DBServer Folder Browser: DBServer Folder Browser It's developed in C#Dual Development: A place for colloboration.EVMDOCS ASP.NET: EVMDOCS project for ECM.VSTU.RU FCNS.Money: FCNS.Money?????????????。???，?????????????，??????????????。???????????????? ??，?FCNS.Money??????????????，???????????，????????????????，??????????，???? ???????????。HDBMS: Attempt to implement a hierarchical database that can participate in a distributed 2PCHRO: 3D FPS in a secret underwater soviet bunkerIstream: Istream is a new web browser for windows computers. We have designed the browser so you have everything right at your fingertips. Download it today and discover a new browsing experience, we have a range of features avaialble just now and its only the first release. istream.imLaptop Battery Usage Pattern: Figures out battery discharge and recharge pattern. Suggests estimated discharge time and recharge time based on past history. Also alerts when it detects considerable degradation of battery life. Mediawiki tools for Office: The current version installs an Outlook 2007 plugin. This plugin adds a send to wiki command to the outlook context menu. The functionality is very similar to the behavior of the One Note plugin which is installed in office 2007. PW API Library: The PW API Library provides a .NET interface to the ProgrammableWeb's API library. This is a personal project built using the ProgrammableWeb internal API and is not provided by the ProgrammableWeb team. It's developed in C# using .NET 4.0 framework.Restbucks on .Net: Implementation of the RestBucks example; from the book "Rest on Practice" on the .Net plattaform.SharePoint Farm Poster: View the entire SharePoint Farm configuration as a single HTML Poster.Simple Silverlight Bounce Effect: Simple bounce effect in Silverlight. A demo of this project can be seen at http://www.voltar.ch/en/results/technologieSistema Gestor Escolar: Aquesta aplicacio permet gestionar activitats pròpies d'una escolaSmart WCF Client Wrapper: This is a smart WCF client wrapper that keeps your code clean, and hides common beginner mistakes from the end user. This code handles - EventHandler Cleanup - Exception Managment - Reliable and efficient reuse of the proxy - Cleanup of the proxy - Clean "using(...)" methodSSIS Extensions - SFTP Task, PGP Task, Zip Task: A set of custom tasks to extend SSIS. Includes a SFTP task, PGP encryption task and zip/unzip task.TFS On The Road: TFS On The Road is a TFS client for Windows Phone 7. With it you can have a good view from your TFS even if you are "on the road". It allows you to access projects, work items(including attachments), changesets, builds, branches, and work item queries.Todo.txt .NET: .NET version of Todo.txt. The project goals are a Windows application as well as a PowerShell commands.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, April 03, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, April 03, 2012Popular ReleasesWiX Toolset: WiX v3.6 RC0: WiX v3.6 RC0 (3.6.2803.0) provides support for VS11 and a more stable Burn engine. For more information see Rob's blog post about the release: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2012/4/3/WiX-v3.6-Release-Candidate-Zero-availableSageFrame: SageFrame 2.0: Sageframe is an open source ASP.NET web development framework developed using ASP.NET 3.5 with service pack 1 (sp1) technology. It is designed specifically to help developers build dynamic website by providing core functionality common to most web applications.Lightbox Gallery Module for DotNetNuke: 01.11.00: This version of the Lightbox Gallery Module adds the following features/bug fixes: Feature: Read image EXIF information Bug Fix: URL parsing bug for any folder provider Minimum System Requirements Please ensure that your environment meets or exceeds the following system requirements: DotNetNuke® Version 06.00.00 or higher SQL Server 2005 or later .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 or laterClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.65.0: Aside from many bug fixes we now have Conditional Formatting The conditional formatting was sponsored by http://www.bewing.nl (big thanks)callisto: callisto 2.0.24: Implemented ares encryption protocol for supported clients. Also changed script loading method to read direct from source files.sb0t: sb0t 4.61: Added packet encryption protocol for supported clients.iTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.5.4475: Fix to parse empty playlists in iTunes LibraryExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.1: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-04-02 v3.1.1 +????????，?????????????，????????????（...Document.Editor: 2012.2: Whats New for Document.Editor 2012.2: New Save Copy support New Page Setup support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsVidCoder: 1.3.2: Added option for the minimum title length to scan. Added support to enable or disable LibDVDNav. Added option to prompt to delete source files after clearing successful completed items. Added option to disable remembering recent files and folders. Tweaked number box to only select all on a quick click.MJP's DirectX 11 Samples: Light Indexed Deferred Rendering: Implements light indexed deferred using per-tile light lists calculated in a compute shader, as well as a traditional deferred renderer that uses a compute shader for per-tile light culling and per-pixel shading.Pcap.Net: Pcap.Net 0.9.0 (66492): Pcap.Net - March 2012 Release Pcap.Net is a .NET wrapper for WinPcap written in C++/CLI and C#. It Features almost all WinPcap features and includes a packet interpretation framework. Version 0.9.0 (Change Set 66492)March 31, 2012 release of the Pcap.Net framework. Follow Pcap.Net on Google+Follow Pcap.Net on Google+ Files Pcap.Net.DevelopersPack.0.9.0.66492.zip - Includes all the tutorial example projects source files, the binaries in a 3rdParty directory and the documentation. It include...Extended WPF Toolkit: Extended WPF Toolkit - 1.6.0: Want an easier way to install the Extended WPF Toolkit?The Extended WPF Toolkit is available on Nuget. What's in the 1.6.0 Release?BusyIndicator ButtonSpinner Calculator CalculatorUpDown CheckListBox - Breaking Changes CheckComboBox - New Control ChildWindow CollectionEditor CollectionEditorDialog ColorCanvas ColorPicker DateTimePicker DateTimeUpDown DecimalUpDown DoubleUpDown DropDownButton IntegerUpDown Magnifier MaskedTextBox MessageBox MultiLineTex...Media Companion: MC 3.434b Release: General This release should be the last beta for 3.4xx. If there are no major problems, by the end of the week it will upgraded to 3.500 Stable! The latest mc_com.exe should be included too! TV Bug fix - crash when using XBMC scraper for TV episodes. Bug fix - episode count update when adding new episodes. Bug fix - crash when actors name was missing. Enhanced TV scrape progress text. Enhancements made to missing episodes display. Movies Bug fix - hide "Play Trailer" when multisaev...Better Explorer: Better Explorer 2.0.0.831 Alpha: - A new release with: - many bugfixes - changed icon - added code for more failsafe registry usage on x64 systems - not needed regfix anymore - added ribbon shortcut keys - Other fixes Note: If you have problems opening system libraries, a suggestion was given to copy all of these libraries and then delete the originals. Thanks to Gaugamela for that! (see discussion here: 349015 ) Note2: I was upload again the setup due to missing file!MonoGame - Write Once, Play Everywhere: MonoGame 2.5: The MonoGame team are pleased to announce that MonoGame v2.5 has been released. This release contains important bug fixes, implements optimisations and adds key features. MonoGame now has the capability to use OpenGLES 2.0 on Android and iOS devices, meaning it now supports custom shaders across mobile and desktop platforms. Also included in this release are native orientation animations on iOS devices and better Orientation support for Android. There have also been a lot of bug fixes since t...Circuit Diagram: Circuit Diagram 2.0 Alpha 3: New in this release: Added components: Microcontroller Demultiplexer Flip & rotate components Open XML files from older versions of Circuit Diagram Text formatting for components New CDDX syntax Other fixesUmbraco CMS: Umbraco 5.1 CMS (Beta): Beta build for testing - please report issues at issues.umbraco.org (Latest uploaded: 5.1.0.123) What's new in 5.1? The full list of changes is on our http://progress.umbraco.org task tracking page. It shows items complete for 5.1, and 5.1 includes items for 5.0.1 and 5.0.2 listed there too. Here's two headline acts: Members5.1 adds support for backoffice editing of Members. We support the pairing up of our content type system in Hive with regular ASP.NET Membership providers (we ship a def...51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.2.11: One Click Install from NuGet Changes to Version 2.1.2.11Code Changes 1. The project is now licenced under the Mozilla Public Licence 2. 2. User interface control and associated data access layer classes have been added to aid developers integrating 51Degrees.mobi into wider projects such as content management systems or web hosting management solutions. Use the following in a web form or user control to access these new UI components. <%@ Register Assembly="FiftyOne.Foundation" Namespace="...ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.5: A slew of bug-fixes with a few new features sprinkled in. This release also upgrades the SciLexer and SciLexer64 DLLs to version 3.0.4. The official stuff: Issue # Title 32402 32402 27137 27137 31548 31548 30179 30179 24932 24932 29701 29701 31238 31238 26875 26875 30052 30052 New Projects3DTweet: 3Dtweet is an effort to make tweets appear in a aesthetic manner to the users of windows phone.Its developed using VS2010 expresss.Alay Plugin for Windows Live Writer: a project for creating an alay languageAuthor-it Copy Folder Plug-in: The Copy Folder Plug-in is an Author-it plug-in that allows the user to create a duplicate of a folder and its contents, including subfolders and objects.Author-it Dependencies Plug-in: The Word Count Plug-in is an Author-it plug-in that allows the user to drill down into object relationships to find objects that selected Author-it objects depend on.Author-it Word Count Plug-in: The Word Count Plug-in is an Author-it plug-in that allows the user to get word counts for selected topics.Azure Configuration File Comparer: Compares two Azure configuration files and highlights the differencesBootstrap Footer Sticker: Bootstrap extensions for footer to stick at the bottomBulk Approval Webpart: This webpart can be added to any list, or document library that requires approval. When the button is clicked it will approve all items. It will also kick start any workflows attached to the list / library that are set to start when an item has been changed. CodeTimer: Code Execute TimeCRM 2011 - WinForm based User Settings Console: This is Windows Form based Utility to do bulk management of User Settings in CRM 2011Emergency System: An Imagine Cup projectFalafel Solution Rename Script: The Falafel Software Solution Rename PowerShell Script makes it easy to reuse an existing solution/project by performing a global rename. If you have a solution named ExampleSolution and want to reuse it as WidgetSolution, this script will rename everything for you.Gadgeteer Bluetooth Module: BETA Drivers for the .NET Gadgeteer Bluetooth modulesGreg's Channel 9 Utilities and Helpers: Utilities and helpers for Microsoft's Channel 9 (C9) site. These are utilities I've created to make my C9 work faster and easierHB's First Time: My first project hereHOMMFrame: Studying project about frames.ICNInformaticaCenter: * ICNInformaticaCenter *Insert a Favorite (Bookmark) plugin for Windows Live Writer: This Windows Live Writer plugin allows you to select a Favorite (Bookmark) and insert it into your blog entry.Kinect your Metro Style App: The main idea is to tell Metro Style App communicate with external environment via Kinect Sensor.Memo: Memo Intellegence SystemMGR.CommandLineParser: MGR.CommandLineParser is a multi-command line parser. It uses System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations to declare and validate the commands.MusicStoreMVC3: ?????MVC3??????????，????????（???????）??? 1.EF4.1 2.MVC3 3.MvcPager 4.Linq ?????? NN Crew Calculator: Calculator project to help learn C#Reporte Ciudadano: Aplicación para que los ciudadanos reporten los problemas al ayuntamiento.Sejrssedler: This is a school project made, by four student in Aarhus, Denmark. During the Datamatiker study(2nd year).smartcamera: smart cameraSpecEx: Speculative ExecutionStructure Copier: This small program is supposed to copy tree structure of directory.TFS2010 Service Provider: Web Service (asmx) is a provider of Team Foundation Server 2010 object model. Was developed to enable the implementation of client application for Android and etc. platforms, which receives data from the server via Web services.totalem: totalem - free file manager for WindowsWebSharperWithTypeProviders: WebSharper project with Visual Studio 2011 Beta, .Net 4.5 and F# 3.0 with TypeProviders

  Read the article

• Appropriate response when client empowered with CMS destroys content to his own will

  - by dukeofgaming

  So, I just recently closed a website project that pretty much was The Oatmeals' Design Hell, but with content. The client loved the site at the beginning but started getting other people involved and mercilessly bombarding us with their opinions. We served a carefully thought content strategy (which the client approved) and extremely curated copywriting that took us four months after at least 5 requirement changes (new content, new objectives for the business, changed offerings, new mindfaps, etc.) that required us to rewrite the content about 3 times. The client never gave timely feedback even though we kept the process open for him and his people to see (content being developed transparently in Google Docs). Near the end of the project he still wanted to make changes but wanted us to finish already (there are not enough words in the world to even try to make sense of this). So I explained to him the obvious implications of the never-ending requirement changes and advised him to take the time to gather his thoughts with his own team and see the new content introduced as a new content maintenance project. He happily accepted, but on the day of training/delivery things went very wrong and we have no idea why. The client didn't even allow the site to be out for a week with the content we developed for him and quickly replaced us with a Joomla savvy intern so that he completely destroy the content with shallow, unstructured, tasteless and plain wordsmithing (and I'm not even being visceral). Worst insult of all, he revoked our access from his server and the deployed CMS not even having passed 10 minutes of being given his administrator account (we realized the day after that he did it in our own office, the nerve!). Everybody involved in the team is enraged and insulted. I never want to see this happen again. So, to try to make sense of this situation and avoid it in the future with new clients I have two concrete questions: Is there even an appropriate course of action with a client like this?, or is he just not worth the trouble of analyzing (blindly hoping this never repeats again). In the exercise to try and blame ourselves instead of the client and take this as a lesson of... something, how should we set expectations for new clients about the working terms, process and final product so that they are discouraged from mauling the content to their own contempt once they get the codes to the nukes (access to the CMS)?

  Read the article

• The First Annual Crappy Code Games

  - by Testas

  SQLBits announced some super-exciting news! A tie-up with our platinum sponsor, Fusion-io. Together we'll be running a series of events called "The Crappy Code Games" where SQL Server developers will compete to write the worst-performing code and win some very cool prizes including:   •        Gold: A hands-on, high performance flying day for two at Ultimate High plus Fusion-io flight jackets•        Silver: One day racing experience at Palmer Sports where you will drive seven different high performance cars•        Bronze: Pure Tech Racing 10 person package at PTR’s F1 racing facility includes FI tees, food and drinks. …plus iPods, Windows Mobile phones, X-box 360s, t-shirts and much more. There will be two qualifying events in Manchester on March 17th and London on March 31st, and the third qualifier as well as the grand finale will be held in the evening of Thursday April 7th at SQLBits. And if that isn’t cool enough, Fusion-io's Chief Scientist Steve Wozniak (yes, that Steve Wozniak, tech industry legend and co-founder of Apple) will be on hand in Brighton to hand out the prizes! If you'd like to take part you'll need to register, and since places are limited we recommend you do so right away. For more details and to register, go to http://www.crappycodegames.com/ The Games: In conjunction with SQL Bits, dbA-thletes (that’s you) will compete  head-to-head in one of three separate qualifying events to be held in Manchester, London and Brighton.  Four separate SQL  rounds make up the evening’s Games, and will challenge you to write code that pushes the boundaries of SQL performance.  The four events are: ?  The High Jump: Generate the highest I/O per second ?  The 100 m dash: Cumulative highest number of I/O’s in 60 seconds ?  The SSIS-athon: Load one billion row fact table in the shortest time ?  The Marathon: Generate the highest MB per second in 60 seconds

  Read the article

• What is Database Continuous Integration?

  - by David Atkinson

  Although not everyone is practicing continuous integration, many have at least heard of the concept. A recent poll on www.simple-talk.com indicates that 40% of respondents are employing the technique. It is widely accepted that the earlier issues are identified in the development process, the lower the cost to the development process. The worst case scenario, of course, is for the bug to be found by the customer following the product release. A number of Agile development best practices have evolved to combat this problem early in the development process, including pair programming, code inspections and unit testing. Continuous integration is one such Agile concept that tackles the problem at the point of committing a change to source control. This can alternatively be run on a regular schedule. This triggers a sequence of events that compiles the code and performs a variety of tests. Often the continuous integration process is regarded as a build validation test, and if issues were to be identified at this stage, the testers would simply not 'waste their time ' and touch the build at all. Such a ‘broken build’ will trigger an alert and the development team’s number one priority should be to resolve the issue. How application code is compiled and tested as part of continuous integration is well understood. However, this isn’t so clear for databases. Indeed, before I cover the mechanics of implementation, we need to decide what we mean by database continuous integration. For me, database continuous integration can be implemented as one or more of the following: 1)      Your application code is being compiled and tested. You therefore need a database to be maintained at the corresponding version. 2)      Just as a valid application should compile, so should the database. It should therefore be possible to build a new database from scratch. 3)     Likewise, it should be possible to generate an upgrade script to take your already deployed databases to the latest version. I will be covering these in further detail in future blogs. In the meantime, more information can be found in the whitepaper linked off www.red-gate.com/ci If you have any questions, feel free to contact me directly or post a comment to this blog post.

  Read the article

• What is Database Continuous Integration?

  - by SQLDev

  Although not everyone is practicing continuous integration, many have at least heard of the concept. A recent poll on www.simple-talk.com indicates that 40% of respondents are employing the technique. It is widely accepted that the earlier issues are identified in the development process, the lower the cost to the development process. The worst case scenario, of course, is for the bug to be found by the customer following the product release. A number of Agile development best practices have evolved to combat this problem early in the development process, including pair programming, code inspections and unit testing. Continuous integration is one such Agile concept that tackles the problem at the point of committing a change to source control. This can alternatively be run on a regular schedule. This triggers a sequence of events that compiles the code and performs a variety of tests. Often the continuous integration process is regarded as a build validation test, and if issues were to be identified at this stage, the testers would simply not 'waste their time ' and touch the build at all. Such a ‘broken build’ will trigger an alert and the development team’s number one priority should be to resolve the issue. How application code is compiled and tested as part of continuous integration is well understood. However, this isn’t so clear for databases. Indeed, before I cover the mechanics of implementation, we need to decide what we mean by database continuous integration. For me, database continuous integration can be implemented as one or more of the following: 1)      Your application code is being compiled and tested. You therefore need a database to be maintained at the corresponding version. 2)      Just as a valid application should compile, so should the database. It should therefore be possible to build a new database from scratch. 3)     Likewise, it should be possible to generate an upgrade script to take your already deployed databases to the latest version. I will be covering these in further detail in future blogs. In the meantime, more information can be found in the whitepaper linked off www.red-gate.com/ci If you have any questions, feel free to contact me directly or post a comment to this blog post.

  Read the article

• Hey You! Stop Using the Apply Button and Just Click OK! [Geek Rants]

  - by The Geek

  As a computer geek, I often find myself helping people, and watching them change settings on their PC… and they almost always click the Apply button, and then the OK button. Why? Whenever you encounter a dialog box in Windows, there are the standard OK, Cancel, Apply buttons—but you don’t actually have to click the Apply button first. The OK button does the same thing, saves the settings, and then closes the dialog box… saving you an extra click. Don’t believe me? Try it out for yourself. Only the worst possible application won’t behave that way, and you probably don’t want to use that type of application to begin with. The only exception to this rule is a multiple tab dialog box, on a badly written application. Sometimes… your settings on one tab won’t stick unless you click Apply. Note that in this particular case, you can make changes in any one of the tabs, and they will carry through without having to click Apply, because this dialog window is well written. We’re just using the screenshot as an example of a multiple tab setting interface. So now that you know better, you can tell us… do you always use the Apply button first? Have you ever found an instance where it behaves differently? Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Got Awesome Skills? Why Not Write for How-To Geek?Customize Your Windows Vista Logon ScreenUse Outlook Rules to Prevent "Oh No!" After Sending EmailsGot Awesome Geek Skills? The How-To Geek is Looking for WritersQuick Firefox UI Tweaks 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Recycle ! Find That Elusive Icon with FindIcons Looking for Good Windows Media Player 12 Plug-ins? Find Out the Celebrity You Resemble With FaceDouble Whoa ! Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems

  Read the article

• Space partitioning when everything is moving

  - by Roy T.

  Background Together with a friend I'm working on a 2D game that is set in space. To make it as immersive and interactive as possible we want there to be thousands of objects freely floating around, some clustered together, others adrift in empty space. Challenge To unburden the rendering and physics engine we need to implement some sort of spatial partitioning. There are two challenges we have to overcome. The first challenge is that everything is moving so reconstructing/updating the data structure has to be extremely cheap since it will have to be done every frame. The second challenge is the distribution of objects, as said before there might be clusters of objects together and vast bits of empty space and to make it even worse there is no boundary to space. Existing technologies I've looked at existing techniques like BSP-Trees, QuadTrees, kd-Trees and even R-Trees but as far as I can tell these data structures aren't a perfect fit since updating a lot of objects that have moved to other cells is relatively expensive. What I've tried I made the decision that I need a data structure that is more geared toward rapid insertion/update than on giving back the least amount of possible hits given a query. For that purpose I made the cells implicit so each object, given it's position, can calculate in which cell(s) it should be. Then I use a HashMap that maps cell-coordinates to an ArrayList (the contents of the cell). This works fairly well since there is no memory lost on 'empty' cells and its easy to calculate which cells to inspect. However creating all those ArrayLists (worst case N) is expensive and so is growing the HashMap a lot of times (although that is slightly mitigated by giving it a large initial capacity). Problem OK so this works but still isn't very fast. Now I can try to micro-optimize the JAVA code. However I'm not expecting too much of that since the profiler tells me that most time is spent in creating all those objects that I use to store the cells. I'm hoping that there are some other tricks/algorithms out there that make this a lot faster so here is what my ideal data structure looks like: The number one priority is fast updating/reconstructing of the entire data structure Its less important to finely divide the objects into equally sized bins, we can draw a few extra objects and do a few extra collision checks if that means that updating is a little bit faster Memory is not really important (PC game)

  Read the article

• What Is Nuclear Meltdown?

  - by Gopinath

  Japan was first hit by a massive earth quake, then a ruthless tsunami washed away thousands of homes and now they fear the worst – meltdown of nuclear power stations in the quake hit year. Nuclear meltdowns are horrifying – remember the Chernobyl incident in Russia? The Chernobyl reactor meltdown released 400 times more radio active material than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The effects of nuclear meltdowns are beyond imagination of a common man, thousands of people loose their lives and many more lakhs of people suffer with radiation related diseases for many years. Nuclear Meltdowns are dangerous, but how do they happen? What causes a nuclear meltdown? In simple terms – Nuclear meltdown is an accident that happens due to severe overheating of a nuclear reactor and results in release of nuclear radiation into the environment.  How A Nuclear Meltdown Happens? According to Wikipedia A meltdown occurs when a severe failure of a nuclear power plant system prevents proper cooling of the reactor core, to the extent that the nuclear fuel assemblies overheat and melt. A meltdown is considered very serious because of the potential that radioactive materials could be released into the environment. The fuel assemblies in a reactor core can melt if heat is not removed. A nuclear reactor does not have to remain critical for a core damage incident to occur, because decay heat continues to heat the reactor fuel assemblies after the reactor has shut down, though this heat decreases with time. A core damage accident is caused by the loss of sufficient cooling for the nuclear fuel within the reactor core. The reason may be one of several factors, including a loss of pressure control accident, a loss of coolant accident (LOCA), an uncontrolled power excursion or, in some types, a fire within the reactor core. Failures in control systems may cause a series of events resulting in loss of cooling. Contemporary safety principles of defense in depth, ensure that multiple layers of safety systems are always present to make such accidents unlikely. Video – What Causes Nuclear Meltdown AlJazeera news has a good analysis on feared nuclear meltdown of Japan’s nuclear plants and also an animation on what causes Nuclear Meltdown. cc image credit: flickr/jtjdt This article titled,What Is Nuclear Meltdown?, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

  Read the article

• Brendan Gregg's "Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud"

  - by user12608550

  Long ago, the prerequisite UNIX performance book was Adrian Cockcroft's 1994 classic, Sun Performance and Tuning: Sparc & Solaris, later updated in 1998 as Java and the Internet. As Solaris evolved to include the invaluable DTrace observability features, new essential performance references have been published, such as Solaris Performance and Tools: DTrace and MDB Techniques for Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris (2006)  by McDougal, Mauro, and Gregg, and DTrace: Dynamic Tracing in Oracle Solaris, Mac OS X and FreeBSD (2011), also by Mauro and Gregg. Much has occurred in Solaris Land since those books appeared, notably Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2010 and the demise of the OpenSolaris community. But operating system technologies have continued to improve markedly in recent years, driven by stunning advances in multicore processor architecture, virtualization, and the massive scalability requirements of cloud computing. A new performance reference was needed, and I eagerly waited for something that thoroughly covered modern, distributed computing performance issues from the ground up. Well, there's a new classic now, authored yet again by Brendan Gregg, former Solaris kernel engineer at Sun and now Lead Performance Engineer at Joyent. Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud is a modern, very comprehensive guide to general system performance principles and practices, as well as a highly detailed reference for specific UNIX and Linux observability tools used to examine and diagnose operating system behaviour.  It provides thorough definitions of terms, explains performance diagnostic Best Practices and "Worst Practices" (called "anti-methods"), and covers key observability tools including DTrace, SystemTap, and all the traditional UNIX utilities like vmstat, ps, iostat, and many others. The book focuses on operating system performance principles and expands on these with respect to Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, and CentOS are cited), and to Solaris and its derivatives [1]; it is not directed at any one OS so it is extremely useful as a broad performance reference. The author goes beyond the intricacies of performance analysis and shows how to interpret and visualize statistical information gathered from the observability tools.  It's often difficult to extract understanding from voluminous rows of text output, and techniques are provided to assist with summarizing, visualizing, and interpreting the performance data. Gregg includes myriad useful references from the system performance literature, including a "Who's Who" of contributors to this great body of diagnostic tools and methods. This outstanding book should be required reading for UNIX and Linux system administrators as well as anyone charged with diagnosing OS performance issues.  Moreover, the book can easily serve as a textbook for a graduate level course in operating systems [2]. [1] Solaris 11, of course, and Joyent's SmartOS (developed from OpenSolaris) [2] Gregg has taught system performance seminars for many years; I have also taught such courses...this book would be perfect for the OS component of an advanced CS curriculum.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 19, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 19, 2014Popular ReleasesLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v3.0.3: Supports .NET 4.5x, Windows Phone 8.x, Windows 8.x, Windows Azure, Xamarin.Android, and Xamarin.iOS. New features include Status/Lookup, Mute APIs, and bug fixes. 100% Twitter API v1.1 coverage, Async, Portable Class Library (PCL).CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.26.0: Added access to the Release Notes during 'Check for Updates...'' Debug panels Added support for generic types members Members are grouped into 'Raw View' and 'Non-Public members' categories Implemented dedicated (array-like) view for Lists and Dictionaries http://download-codeplex.sec.s-msft.com/Download?ProjectName=csscriptnpp&DownloadId=846498ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.70.0: A lot of fixes. See history.SFDL.NET: SFDL.NET (2.2.9.2): Changelog: Neues Icon Xup.in CnL Plugin BugfixSEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.030.008 Release 1: Fixed cube editor failing to apply color to cubes. Added to cube editor, replace cube dialog, and Build Percent dialog. Corrected for hidden asteroid ore, allowing rare ore to show when importing an asteroid, or converting a 3d model to an asteroid (still appears to be limitations on rare ore in small asteroids). Allowed ore selection to Asteroid file import. (Can copy/import and convert existing asteroid to another ore). Added progress bars to common long running operations. Fixed ...Better Robocopy GUI: Command Line GUI for Robocopy: Better Robocopy GUI had become the primary plugin in Command Line GUI built on .NET 4Mini SQL Query: Mini SQL Query (1.0.71.456): Minor fixes and template corrections.HMS_TEST: ??1: ?? ???????TFS Planning and Disaster Recovery Avoidance Guide: v1.4.BETA - TFS, DR and Azure IaaS Planning Guides: Welcome to the TFS Planning and DR Avoidance Guidance What is new? A new crisper, more compact style, which is easier to consume on multiple devices without sacrificing any content. Also included are the new TFS on Azure IaaS guide and supplementary guides. Note Capacity planning workbook and posters are included in the Everything Zip package. Quality-Bar Detail Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has been through an independent technical review ...CRM Web API Lead Capture Example: CRM Web API Lead Capture Example: Sample Visual Studio 2013 project that provides an example of how you could use Web API and Microsoft Azure (could be deployed anywhere) to capture simple HTML form data into Dynamics CRM without directly having to integrate a .NET component.MB Tools: MDT Monitor Tool v1.4: This tool is used to connect to an MDT 2013 Monitor Webservice. The purpose is to provide an alternative to the MDT Deployment Workbench. Update: New in v1.4: Fixed bug where Dart Remote Viewer didnt work Option to show client local time instead of UTC, edit config.xml to enable/disable New in v1.2: Fixed Dart Remote Viewer not connection to full ip Issue: 1222 New in v1.1: Added timers for autorefresh of webservice info Added some better errorchecking and cleaned up the code a bit ...Bob The Simple Text Game: Bob The Simple Text Game: Bob The Simple Text GameWinAudit: WinAudit Freeware v3.0: WinAudit.exe v3.0 MD5: 88750CCF49FF7418199B2645755830FA Known Issues: 1. Report creation can be very slow when right-to-left (Hebrew) characters are present. 2. Emsisoft Anti-Malware may stop and/or quarantine WinAudit. This happens when WinAudit attempts to obtain a list if running programmes. You will need to set an exception rule in Emsisoft to allow WinAudit to run.crashme: crashme source tarball 2.7: Updated for 64-bit Linux environments with a system call to change the default no-execute-data protection. This tarball is equivalent to committed source revision 108727LUA for Windows CE: LUA 5.2.3 for Windows CE 5.0 (ARMV4I): LUA for Windows CE This is a preliminary porting of the latest LUA release (5.2.3) to the Windows CE platform. Command-line compiler, interpreter, dynamic-link-library, and import-library (both static and dynamic stubs) are provided as a binary release. In this release, the Windows CE compatibility CRT static library has been added, in order to embed statically the LUA interpreter. Moreover, the include files are present in the distribution archive, too.Jquery Dirty Flag: Beta Version 1.0: Simple Way to Manage Dirty Flag @ Client SideProView: ProView-2: Added a new short-cut key: Ctrl+D copies the value from the above cell to the current cell. The key combination Shift+NumPadMinus makes an underscore character Fixed a bug during renaming that displayed the message "The file is in use by another process" The spread sheet can now be customized with a highlighting row color for the currently displayed image.TerraMap (Terraria World Map Viewer): TerraMap 1.0.4: Added support for the new Terraria v1.2.4 update. New items, walls, and tiles Fixed Issue 35206: Hightlight/Find doesn't work for Demon Altars Fixed finding Demon Hearts/Shadow Orbs Added ability to find Enchanted Swords (in the stone) and Water Bolt books Fixed installer not uninstalling older versions The setup file will make sure .NET 4 is installed, install TerraMap, create desktop and start menu shortcuts, add a .wld file association, and launch TerraMap. If you prefer the zip ...WPF Localization Extension: v2.2.1: Issue #9277 Issue #9292 Issue #9311 Issue #9312 Issue #9313 Issue #9314CtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.2.1.41167 Release: This release of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer includes the following significant features: Oculus Rift support. Stereoscopic 3D display support. Variable walking / flying speed. Xbox 360 Controller support. Kinect for Windows support. Based on Firestorm viewer 4.6.5 codebase. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-2-1-41167-release Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http:/...New Projects.NET Development Library: .NET Development LibraryBizTalk Flow Visualizer: This tool has been designed to help BizTalk developers and administrators visualize the flow of messages through their implementation of BizTalk Server.BlackSwan: Provides tools for value investingCamel Case Parser: Simple method with unit tests for splitting an up or down camel cased word into the words that comprise it.eukota_sandbox: really just a repository for practicing with some students i mentor.Hyperlapse: Software repository for Hyperlapse, a Universal Store App for Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1, National Level entry in code.fun.do hackathon by Microsoft.Informiamoci Partecipando: Progetto presentato al #code4italyKipLink: MVC5 Web Api 2 EF DB First Oracle 11g Custom MembershipMatAcademyPlayground: MatAcademy 2014 playgroundOgCRM: Proyecto OgCRMPowerSYDI: This is an re-engineering of SYDI vbscript created by Patrick Ogenstad in PowerShell. SharpLightReporting: SharpLightReporting is a reporting system for .Net developers, based on open source SpreadsheetLight excel/spreadsheet automation system. T4 Template to pre-generate views for Entity Framework 5.0, .NET 4.5: T4 Template to pre-generate views for Entity Framework 6.0, .NET 4.5Task Board: Simple TaskboardWentex OS: Wentex das kostenfrei Betriebssystem für alleWinldTunnel - VIPBrowserProject: NoneWintcy: Wintcy's only function is to disable taskbar transparency that Microsoft for some reason has left in Windows 8.????????-????????【??】????????????: ????????????????????????,??????????,????,????,?????????、??????,??????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????,?????????????? ??。????????、????、????、?????????? ???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????????????:????、????、??????????????,????????。????????! ??????-【??】??????????: ???????????????????,????,????,????,???????,?????,?????.??????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????????????:???????,??????,????,????,????,?????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????,??,??,??,??? ?,??,,??,??,??,??,??,??,????????,??????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,?????????????。????????????,???????,???????,?????,?????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????? ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ??????? ?????，????????????????. ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????、????、????、??????、????、????????,????????、?????????,?????。 ???????-???????【??】???????????: ?????????????????????,??????????,????????、????,??????????,??????????。 ???????-???????【??】???????????: ???????????????????、????,??100%????,??????,????????????,???????????! ???????-???????【??】???????????: ?????????,??????:?????,?????,??????,??????????,????????。????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????【.????.????.????.????.】??【??】:、??、??、??、??、??、??、??、??、??、??、?????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????,????,??.??.??.??.??.??.??.???，????，???????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????、????、??????、????????,????????????,???????????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,???????????????。???????????,??????:????、????、???????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????????,????,????,??????????。???????????????,??,??,??????????,??????... ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????,?????????????,????,?????????,?????????????,?????,?????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????，???????、???????????，????????、????、????、??????、????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????、?????,????????????????????,????,????,??????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????:??????、????、????、????、????、??????、??????，???????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????? ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ??????? ?????，????????????????. ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????:?????? ???? ??????,???????,??????,???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????,????,??????????? ???? ???? ?????????,???,??,?????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????,????,????,??????,????“????、????、????、????”????????,??????. ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????、????、????、??????、????、????????,????????、?????????,?????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,?????????????。????????????,???????,???????,?????,?????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????????????????、????、????、???????????,????,????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????6?,???????????????????????????,??????????????,?????????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????8?，????????,????????,??????????,?????,????? ,????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,??????????????、???????、???????、???????、?????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????????????,???????????,????????,?????????????????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????,????????????????,????????????????,??????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????,????,??????????? ???? ???? ?????????,???,??,?????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????????????????,???????????????????????,???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????:?????? ???? ??????,???????,??????,???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????、???、??、??????????????????????????????,????????????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????,????????:??、??、???,?????????????????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????,?????,???????????,???????,????,????,????,?????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????,????,???????、???????????,???????????,????,?????,???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????,???????????,??????????????,??????????，??????????????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????,?????????????? ??。??????????、????、????、?????????? ???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????,??????????、??????,??????????、????、????、???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????、??????????????????,????????,?????,??????,????,????,????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????????,????????,??????????,?????,????? ,????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????,????????,?????,???,???????????,???????????,?????,??????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????,??????????????????????,???????????????,?????????????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????????，?????????/?,,???????????,??????????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????,?????????、??、??、????,??????????,?????????????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????、????、????、??????????,???,?????,???????????????. ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????????,?????, ... ????????????,????,????,?????,???????。

  Read the article

• Which web framework to use under Backbonejs?

  - by egidra

  For a previous project, I was using Backbonejs alongside Django, but I found out that I didn't use many features from Django. So, I am looking for a lighter framework to use underneath a Backbonejs web app. I never used Django built in templates. When I did, it was to set up the initial index page, but that's all. I did use the user management system that Django provided. I used the models.py, but never views.py. I used urls.py to set up which template the user would hit upon visiting the site. I noticed that the two features that I used most from Django was South and Tastypie, and they aren't even included with Django. Particularly, django-tastypie made it easy for me to link up my frontend models to my backend models. It made it easy to JSONify my front end models and send them to Tastypie. Although, I found myself overriding a lot of tastypie's methods for GET, PUT, POST requests, so it became useless. South made it easy to migrate new changes to the database. Although, I had so much trouble with South. Is there a framework with an easier way of handling database modifications than using South? When using South with multiple people, we had the worse time keeping our databases synced. When someone added a new table and pushed their migration to git, the other two people would spend days trying to use South's automatic migration, but it never worked. I liked how Rails had a manual way of migrating databases. Even though I used Tastypie and South a lot, I found myself not actually liking them because I ended up overriding most Tastypie methods for each Resource, and I also had the worst trouble migrating new tables and columns with South. So, I would like a framework that makes that process easier. Part of my problem was that they are too "magical". Which framework should I use? Nodejs or a lighter Python framework? Which works best with my above criteria?

  Read the article

• A tale from a Stalker

  - by Peter Larsson

  Today I thought I should write something about a stalker I've got. Don't get me wrong, I have way more fans than stalkers, but this stalker is particular persistent towards me. It all started when I wrote about Relational Division with Sets late last year(http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/peterl/archive/2010/07/02/Proper-Relational-Division-With-Sets.aspx) and no matter what he tried, he didn't get a better performing query than me. But this I didn't click until later into this conversation. He must have saved himself for 9 months before posting to me again. Well... Some days ago I get an email from someone I thought i didn't know. Here is his first email Hi, I want a proper solution for achievement the result. The solution must be standard query, means no using as any native code like TOP clause, also the query should run in SQL Server 2000 (no CTE use). We have a table with consecutive keys (nbr) that is not exact sequence. We need bringing all values related with nearest key in the current key row. See the DDL: CREATE TABLE Nums(nbr INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, val INTEGER NOT NULL); INSERT INTO Nums(nbr, val) VALUES (1, 0),(5, 7),(9, 4); See the Result: pre_nbr     pre_val     nbr         val         nxt_nbr     nxt_val ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- NULL        NULL        1           0           5           7 1           0           5           7           9           4 5           7           9           4           NULL        NULL The goal is suggesting most elegant solution. I would like see your best solution first, after that I will send my best (if not same with yours)   Notice there is no name, no please or nothing polite asking for my help. So, on the top of my head I sent him two solutions, following the rule "Work on SQL Server 2000 and only standard non-native code".     -- Peso 1 SELECT               pre_nbr,                              (                                                           SELECT               x.val                                                           FROM                dbo.Nums AS x                                                           WHERE              x.nbr = d.pre_nbr                              ) AS pre_val,                              d.nbr,                              d.val,                              d.nxt_nbr,                              (                                                           SELECT               x.val                                                           FROM                dbo.Nums AS x                                                           WHERE              x.nbr = d.nxt_nbr                              ) AS nxt_val FROM                (                                                           SELECT               (                                                                                                                     SELECT               MAX(x.nbr) AS nbr                                                                                                                     FROM                dbo.Nums AS x                                                                                                                     WHERE              x.nbr < n.nbr                                                                                        ) AS pre_nbr,                                                                                        n.nbr,                                                                                        n.val,                                                                                        (                                                                                                                     SELECT               MIN(x.nbr) AS nbr                                                                                                                     FROM                dbo.Nums AS x                                                                                                                     WHERE              x.nbr > n.nbr                                                                                        ) AS nxt_nbr                                                           FROM                dbo.Nums AS n                              ) AS d -- Peso 2 CREATE TABLE #Temp                                                         (                                                                                        ID INT IDENTITY(1, 1) PRIMARY KEY,                                                                                        nbr INT,                                                                                        val INT                                                           )   INSERT                                            #Temp                                                           (                                                                                        nbr,                                                                                        val                                                           ) SELECT                                            nbr,                                                           val FROM                                             dbo.Nums ORDER BY         nbr   SELECT                                            pre.nbr AS pre_nbr,                                                           pre.val AS pre_val,                                                           t.nbr,                                                           t.val,                                                           nxt.nbr AS nxt_nbr,                                                           nxt.val AS nxt_val FROM                                             #Temp AS pre RIGHT JOIN      #Temp AS t ON t.ID = pre.ID + 1 LEFT JOIN         #Temp AS nxt ON nxt.ID = t.ID + 1   DROP TABLE    #Temp Notice there are no indexes on #Temp table yet. And here is where the conversation derailed. First I got this response back Now my solutions: --My 1st Slt SELECT T2.*, T1.*, T3.*   FROM Nums AS T1        LEFT JOIN Nums AS T2          ON T2.nbr = (SELECT MAX(nbr)                         FROM Nums                        WHERE nbr < T1.nbr)        LEFT JOIN Nums AS T3          ON T3.nbr = (SELECT MIN(nbr)                         FROM Nums                        WHERE nbr > T1.nbr); --My 2nd Slt SELECT MAX(CASE WHEN N1.nbr > N2.nbr THEN N2.nbr ELSE NULL END) AS pre_nbr,        (SELECT val FROM Nums WHERE nbr = MAX(CASE WHEN N1.nbr > N2.nbr THEN N2.nbr ELSE NULL END)) AS pre_val,        N1.nbr AS cur_nbr, N1.val AS cur_val,        MIN(CASE WHEN N1.nbr < N2.nbr THEN N2.nbr ELSE NULL END) AS nxt_nbr,        (SELECT val FROM Nums WHERE nbr = MIN(CASE WHEN N1.nbr < N2.nbr THEN N2.nbr ELSE NULL END)) AS nxt_val   FROM Nums AS N1,        Nums AS N2  GROUP BY N1.nbr, N1.val;   /* My 1st Slt Table 'Nums'. Scan count 7, logical reads 14 My 2nd Slt Table 'Nums'. Scan count 4, logical reads 23 Peso 1 Table 'Nums'. Scan count 9, logical reads 28 Peso 2 Table '#Temp'. Scan count 0, logical reads 7 Table 'Nums'. Scan count 1, logical reads 2 Table '#Temp'. Scan count 3, logical reads 16 */  To this, I emailed him back asking for a scalability test What if you try with a Nums table with 100,000 rows? His response to that started to get nasty.  I have to say Peso 2 is not acceptable. As I said before the solution must be standard, ORDER BY is not part of standard SELECT. Try this without ORDER BY:  Truncate Table Nums INSERT INTO Nums (nbr, val) VALUES (1, 0),(9,4), (5, 7)  So now we have new rules. No ORDER BY because it's not standard SQL! Of course I asked him  Why do you have that idea? ORDER BY is not standard? To this, his replies went stranger and stranger Standard Select = Set-based (no any cursor) It’s free to know, just refer to Advanced SQL Programming by Celko or mail to him if you accept comments from him. What the stalker probably doesn't know, is that I and Mr Celko occasionally are involved in some conversation and thus we exchange emails. I don't know if this reference to Mr Celko was made to intimidate me either. So I answered him, still polite, this What do you mean? The SELECT itself has a ”cursor under the hood”. Now the stalker gets rude  But however I mean the solution must no containing any order by, top... No problem, I do not like Peso 2, it’s very non-intelligent and elementary. Yes, Peso 2 is elementary but most performing queries are... And now is the time where I started to feel the stalker really wanted to achieve something else, so I wrote to him So what is your goal? Have a query that performs well, or a query that is super-portable? My Peso 2 outperforms any of your code with a factor of 100 when using more than 100,000 rows. While I awaited his answer, I posted him this query Ok, here is another one -- Peso 3 SELECT             MAX(CASE WHEN d = 1 THEN nbr ELSE NULL END) AS pre_nbr,                    MAX(CASE WHEN d = 1 THEN val ELSE NULL END) AS pre_val,                    MAX(CASE WHEN d = 0 THEN nbr ELSE NULL END) AS nbr,                    MAX(CASE WHEN d = 0 THEN val ELSE NULL END) AS val,                    MAX(CASE WHEN d = -1 THEN nbr ELSE NULL END) AS nxt_nbr,                    MAX(CASE WHEN d = -1 THEN val ELSE NULL END) AS nxt_val FROM               (                              SELECT    nbr,                                        val,                                        ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY nbr) AS SeqID                              FROM      dbo.Nums                    ) AS s CROSS JOIN         (                              VALUES    (-1),                                        (0),                                        (1)                    ) AS x(d) GROUP BY           SeqID + x.d HAVING             COUNT(*) > 1 And here is the stats Table 'Nums'. Scan count 1, logical reads 2, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. It beats the hell out of your queries…. Now I finally got a response from my stalker and now I also clicked who he was. This is his reponse Why you post my original method with a bit change under you name? I do not like it. See: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic468501-362-14.aspx ;WITH C AS ( SELECT seq_nbr, k,        DENSE_RANK() OVER(ORDER BY seq_nbr ASC) + k AS grp_fct   FROM [Sample]         CROSS JOIN         (VALUES (-1), (0), (1)         ) AS D(k) ) SELECT MIN(seq_nbr) AS pre_value,        MAX(CASE WHEN k = 0 THEN seq_nbr END) AS current_value,        MAX(seq_nbr) AS next_value   FROM C GROUP BY grp_fct HAVING min(seq_nbr) < max(seq_nbr); These posts: Posted Tuesday, April 12, 2011 10:04 AM Posted Tuesday, April 12, 2011 1:22 PM Why post a solution where will not work in SQL Server 2000? Wait a minute! His own solution is using both a CTE and a ranking function so his query will not work on SQL Server 2000! Bummer... The reference to "Me not like" are my exact words in a previous topic on SQLTeam.com and when I remembered the phrasing, I also knew who he was. See this topic http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=159262 where he writes a query and posts it under my name, as if I wrote it. So I answered him this (less polite). Like I keep track of all topics in the whole world… J So you think you are the only one coming up with this idea? Besides, “M S solution” doesn’t work.   This is the result I get pre_value        current_value                             next_value 1                           1                           5 1                           5                           9 5                           9                           9   And I did nothing like you did here, where you posted a solution which you “thought” I should write http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=159262 So why are you yourself using ranking function when this was not allowed per your original email, and no cte? You use CTE in your link above, which do not work in SQL Server 2000. All this makes no sense to me, other than you are trying your best to once in a lifetime create a better performing query than me? After a few hours I get this email back. I don't fully understand it, but it's probably a language barrier. >>Like I keep track of all topics in the whole world… J So you think you are the only one coming up with this idea?<< You right, but do not think you are the first creator of this.   >>Besides, “M S Solution” doesn’t work. This is the result I get <<   Why you get so unimportant mistake? See this post to correct it: Posted 4/12/2011 8:22:23 PM >> So why are you yourself using ranking function when this was not allowed per your original email, and no cte? You use CTE in your link above, which do not work in SQL Server 2000. <<  Again, why you get some unimportant incompatibility? You offer that solution for current goals not me  >> All this makes no sense to me, other than you are trying your best to once in a lifetime create a better performing query than me? <<  No, I only wanted to know who you will solve it. Now I know you do not have a special solution. No problem. No problem for me either. So I just answered him I am not the first, and you are not the first to come up with this idea. So what is your problem? I am pretty sure other people have come up with the same idea before us. I used this technique all the way back to 2007, see http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=93911 Let's see if he returns...  He did! >> So what is your problem? << Nothing Thanks for all replies; maybe we have some competitions in future, maybe. Also I like you but you do not attend it. Your behavior with me is not friendly. Not any meeting… Regards //Peso

  Read the article

• Best Ati Radeon x1200 drivers for 12.10

  - by Jaclyn

  [Long story short is at the bottom if you don't care about my ranting] Ok, well, I have the unfortunate distinction of having an Acer Extensa 4420 (Yes, the model with the faulty motherboard, and no, I do not know how it is still working either). Long story short I need the best drivers for my Ati Radeon x1200 integrated graphics card. The Ati Propriatary drivers for 12.10 no longer supports my video card. Currently when I try to play Minecraft, or any game really, the framerate is quite terrible despite the fact that my handy dandy system load monitor says that I have plenty of memory and CPU power (Mind you, this is when I'm not playing minecraft; that kind of uses up all of my resources unless it's on the worst graphical settings, and even then I have terrible framerate, but plenty of resources left over). I tried the fglrx through a workaround guide, and it completely killed my display and I had to uninstall it. I'm considering just trying to install fglrx through synaptic, but I am hesitant to do so since I don't want a repeat of the BSBDD!!! (Black Screen of Bad Drivers 'o DOOOM!!!), so I will wait until after I get some input from you fine ladies and gentlemen on to what your advice it. ok, so I'm running xubuntu 12.10 64 bit. I upgraded from 10.10 to 11.04. Then about a month ago I went from natty to quantal via the update option in the package updater, and then I decided that I was sick of gnome so I installed xfce. I did not install new drivers from natty to when I wound up at 12.10, so that shouldn't have changed, and they were indeed quite terrible back then, but now I'm using xubuntu as my main os, so I actually need good drivers. uuuugh. Anyway, long story short: I need to know what are the best drivers available for my card, and how to install them, because I am a linux novice, and I have tried everything that I can think of, including search google. Small edit: I forgot to note that since I upgraded to 12.10, my VGA out does not work (I haven't had a chance to try the s-video yet), and possibly related, the USB port on that side of my laptop does not work anymore either.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 31, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 31, 2012Popular ReleasesAuto-LiMPoT: Auto-LiMPoT - v.1.1 - binary: Changelog: +Now patches updater-script with correct packager name and version number +Added option to choose position of java.exe manually if not found automaticallyExtended WPF Toolkit: Extended WPF Toolkit - 1.6.0: Want an easier way to install the Extended WPF Toolkit?The Extended WPF Toolkit is available on Nuget. What's in the 1.6.0 Release?BusyIndicator ButtonSpinner Calculator CalculatorUpDown CheckListBox - Breaking Changes CheckComboBox - New Control ChildWindow CollectionEditor CollectionEditorDialog ColorCanvas ColorPicker DateTimePicker DateTimeUpDown DecimalUpDown DoubleUpDown DropDownButton IntegerUpDown Magnifier MaskedTextBox MessageBox MultiLineTex...ScriptIDE: Release 4.4: ...Media Companion: MC 3.434b Release: General This release should be the last beta for 3.4xx. If there are no major problems, by the end of the week it will upgraded to 3.500 Stable! The latest mc_com.exe should be included too! TV Bug fix - crash when using XBMC scraper for TV episodes. Bug fix - episode count update when adding new episodes. Bug fix - crash when actors name was missing. Enhanced TV scrape progress text. Enhancements made to missing episodes display. Movies Bug fix - hide "Play Trailer" when multisaev...Better Explorer: Better Explorer 2.0.0.831 Alpha: - A new release with: - many bugfixes - changed icon - added code for more failsafe registry usage on x64 systems - not needed regfix anymore - added ribbon shortcut keys - Other fixes Note: If you have problems opening system libraries, a suggestion was given to copy all of these libraries and then delete the originals. Thanks to Gaugamela for that! (see discussion here: 349015 ) Note2: I was upload again the setup due to missing file!XAML Dialect Comparer Tool: Beta 1: This is a first beta version of this tool (as shown at DevConncetions in Vegas, March 2012). Community participation and suggestions are appreciated.LINQ Extensions Library: 1.0.2.7: Append and Prepend extensions (1.0.2.7) IndexOf extensions (1.0.2.7) New Align/Match extensions (1.0.2.6) Ready to use stable code with comprehensive unit tests and samples New Pivot extensions New Filter ExtensionsMonoGame - Write Once, Play Everywhere: MonoGame 2.5: The MonoGame team are pleased to announce that MonoGame v2.5 has been released. This release contains important bug fixes, implements optimisations and adds key features. MonoGame now has the capability to use OpenGLES 2.0 on Android and iOS devices, meaning it now supports custom shaders across mobile and desktop platforms. Also included in this release are native orientation animations on iOS devices and better Orientation support for Android. There have also been a lot of bug fixes since t...callisto: callisto 2.0.23: Patched Script static class and peak user count bug fix.Circuit Diagram: Circuit Diagram 2.0 Alpha 3: New in this release: Added components: Microcontroller Demultiplexer Flip & rotate components Open XML files from older versions of Circuit Diagram Text formatting for components New CDDX syntax Other fixesUmbraco CMS: Umbraco 5.1 CMS (Beta): Beta build for testing - please report issues at issues.umbraco.org (Latest uploaded: 5.1.0.123) What's new in 5.1? The full list of changes is on our http://progress.umbraco.org task tracking page. It shows items complete for 5.1, and 5.1 includes items for 5.0.1 and 5.0.2 listed there too. Here's two headline acts: Members5.1 adds support for backoffice editing of Members. We support the pairing up of our content type system in Hive with regular ASP.NET Membership providers (we ship a def...51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.2.11: One Click Install from NuGet Changes to Version 2.1.2.11Code Changes 1. The project is now licenced under the Mozilla Public Licence 2. 2. User interface control and associated data access layer classes have been added to aid developers integrating 51Degrees.mobi into wider projects such as content management systems or web hosting management solutions. Use the following in a web form or user control to access these new UI components. <%@ Register Assembly="FiftyOne.Foundation" Namespace="...JSON Toolkit: JSON Toolkit 3.1: slight performance improvement (5% - 10%) new JsonException classPicturethrill: Version 2.3.28.0: Straightforward image selection. New clean UI look. Super stable. Simplified user experience.SQL Monitor - managing sql server performance: SQL Monitor 4.2 alpha 16: 1. finally fixed problem with logic fault checking for temporary table name... I really mean finally ...ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.5: A slew of bug-fixes with a few new features sprinkled in. This release also upgrades the SciLexer and SciLexer64 DLLs to version 3.0.4. The official stuff: Issue # Title 32402 32402 27137 27137 31548 31548 30179 30179 24932 24932 29701 29701 31238 31238 26875 26875 30052 30052 Mugen MVVM Toolkit: Mugen MVVM Toolkit ver 1.1: Added Design mode support.Harness: Harness 2.0.2: change to .NET Framework Client Profile bug fix the download dialog auto answer. bug fix setFocus command. add "SendKeys" command. remove "closeAll" command. minor bugs fixed.BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 0.9.161: Below is a list of fixes in this release. Bug BGN-2092 - Link in Email "visit your profile" not functional BGN-2083 - Manager of bugnet can not edit project when it is not public BGN-2080 - clicking on a link in the project summary causes error (0.9.152.0) BGN-2070 - Missing Functionality On Feed.aspx BGN-2069 - Calendar View does not work BGN-2068 - Time tracking totals not ok BGN-2067 - Issues List Page Size Bug: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the si...YAF.NET (aka Yet Another Forum.NET): v1.9.6.1 RTW: v1.9.6.1 FINAL is .NET v4.0 ONLY v1.9.6.1 has: Performance Improvements .NET v4.0 improvements Improved FaceBook Integration KNOWN ISSUES WITH THIS RELEASE: ON INSTALL PLEASE DON'T CHECK "Upgrade BBCode Extensions...". More complete change list and discussion here: http://forum.yetanotherforum.net/yaf_postst14201_v1-9-6-1-RTW-Dated--3-26-2012.aspxNew ProjectsAlloCiné API: API AlloCiné v3 This is a library to use the API of AlloCiné. It covers the version 3 of the AlloCiné service as described here GroWiki API AlloCiné v3. The data-interchange format used behind the scene is JSON. Auto-LiMPoT: An automated tool to convert an N1 MIUI Rom to an AcerLiquid-compatible Rom.Azure Management API (via F#): This lib is a wrapper for Azure Management REST API. Can be used by .Net languages but adapted for F# (used asyncs and other). Supported operations: AffinityGroups (all), HostedServices (all), StorageServices (all), Azure Sql (all = manage server + firewall rules), AsyncOperationCraigsPack: This is a Light weight and Expandable library that helps search through craigslist ads but not bound to only one website. It includes interfaces and base classes to help create custom web providers for other specific websites. Written in c#Cygnus v3: Cygnus internal.DataHelperCS: Porject about DataHelper for rapid development and Simplist Architectur Model.Datewise Picture Arranger: Arranges/Renames pictures based on the date taken. d? án web: Ð? án môn phát tri?n ?ng d?ng webDrawbot: IRC Bot for /r/sketchdaily on reddit.FONIS prezenter: FONIS prezenter je aplikacija koja omogucava korisniku da odredenom kombinacijom sa tastature pozove odgovarajucu PowerPoint prezentaciju. Program je razvijen u C#. Za instaliranje i pokretanje ovog programa, potrebno je instalirati .NET Framework 4. Grammars: Grammars makes it easy to design regular, context-free and context-dependent grammars and apply various tools for parsing and language analysis. It is developed in C# and provides a BNF-like syntax with operator overloading and semantic rules as delegates, allowing you to design and code your grammar right in the middle of your C# code. It fleets with a fully-functional LR parser generator.iConference: Conference Management System.IQCare: IQCare is a Open Source, data capture and reporting system with patient management tools designed to measure patient outcomes. Having the ability to analyze data and then use the resulting analysis to provide improved care is the end goal of IQCare. IQCare has all of the key features needed to collect clean data and to do patient and facility analysis and reporting.Memory Management: General purpose memory management in C++ with policy-based architecture.Metro Style App Study Project: Metro Style App demos from QQ Group 95331609OpenNETCF CAB Installer SDK: The OpenNETCF CAB Installer SDK provides programmatic access to the extraction of CAB files under Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Windows Embedded Compact and Windows Embedded HandheldOrchard Private Content: Allows content items to be displayed by only users with roles that have permission.Pete Brown NETMF and Gadgeteer Code: Module drivers and other code for my .NET Micro Framework projects.QuanLyBanHang-Nhom100: Qu?n lý bán hàng - nhóm 100 Bùi vi?t sang Nguy?n van longRegeXml: This is about a Framework that allow you to transform a bunch of dirty data into a one and well formated XML.SSIS Row Number Component: This Rownumber component allows you to add a rownumber in the case your destination doesn't support auto-increment.Sunburn XNA advanced help custom samples: This project will include samples I do using sunburns engine. If you use it correctly it is a very powerful engine i found out. I will post samples for things that people have been trying to do in xna 4 and above with sunburn for awhile. THE webpage: gffgfgdhhgghdj91Transbin for anyone: Transbin makes it easier to contorl your computer anywhere.Wazzup module for DotNetNuke: Wazzup is a simple module for the DotNetNuke CMS to display the newest content added to your site. It leverage's DNN's search indexer and displays a simple link with publishing date and text summary. Developed in VB. Fits well into narrow vertical content areasWLCompus: WLCompusXNA Game Studio 3.0 Unleashed Book Source Code: C# Source Code and Assets from the XNA Game Studio 3.0 Unleashed book. The code is released under the Ms-PL license.

  Read the article

• TechEd 2010 Day Three: The Database Designer (Isn't)

  - by BuckWoody

  Yesterday at TechEd 2010 here in New Orleans I worked the front-booth, answering general SQL Server questions for the masses. I was actually a little surprised to find most of the questions I got were from folks that wanted to know more about Stream Insight and Master Data Services. In past conferences I've been asked a lot of "free consulting" questions, about problems folks have had from older products. I don't mind that a bit - in fact, I'm always happy to help in any way I can. But this time people are really interested in the new features in the product, and I like that they are thinking ahead, not just having to solve problems in production. My presentation was on "Database Design in an Hour". We had the usual fun, and SideShow Bob made an appearance - I kid you not. The guy in the back of the room looked just like Sideshow Bob, so I quickly held a "bes thair" contest, and he won. Duing the presentation, I explain the tools you can use to design databases. I also explain that the "Database Designer" tool in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) isn't truly a desinger - it uses non-standard notation, doesn't have a meta-data dictionary, and worst of all, it works at the physical level. In other words, whatever you do in SSMS will automatically change the field/table/relationship structures in the database. We fixed this in SSMS 2008 and higher by adding an option to block that, but the tool is not a good design function nonetheless. To be fair, no one I know of at Microsoft recommends that it is - but I was shocked to hear so many developers in the room defending it as a good tool. I think the main issue for someone who doesn't have to work with Relational Systems a great deal is that it can be difficult to figure out Foreign Keys. The syntax makes them look "backwards", so it's just easier to grab a field and place it on the table you want to point to. There are options. You can download a couple of free tools (CA has a community edition of ER-WIN, Quest has one, and Embarcadero also has one) and if you design more than one or two databases a year, it may be worth buying a true design tool. For years I used Visio, but we changed it so that it doesn't forward-engineer (create the DDL) any more, so it isn't a true design tool either. So investigate those free and not-so-free tools. You'll find they help you in your job - but stay away from the Database Designer in SSMS. Or I'll send Sideshow Bob over there to straighten you out. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170  | Next Page >