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  • Generating HTML Programmatically in C#, Targeting Printed Reports

    - by John Passaniti
    I've taken over a C# (2.0) code base that has the ability to print information. The code to do this is insanely tedious. Elements are drawn onto each page, with magic constants representing positioning. I imagine the programmer sitting with a ruler, designing each page by measuring and typing in the positions. And yes, one could certainly come up with some nice abstractions to make this approach rational. But I am looking at a different method. The idea is that I'll replace the current code that prints with code that generates static HTML pages, saves them to a file, and then launches the web browser on that file. The most obvious benefit is that I don't have to deal with formatting-- I can let the web browser do that for me with tags and CSS. So what I am looking for is a very lightweight set of classes that I can use to help generate HTML. I don't need anything as heavyweight as HTMLTextWriter. What I'm looking for is something to avoid fragments like this: String.Format("<tr><td>{0}</td><td>{1}</td></tr>", foo, bar); And instead take have this kind of feel: ... table(). tr(). td(foo). td(bar) Or something like that. I've seen lightweight classes like that for other languages but can't find the equivalent (or better) for C#. I can certainly write it myself, but I'm a firm believer in not reinventing wheels. Know anything like this? Know anything better than this?

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  • PHP include taking too long

    - by wxiiir
    I have a php file with around 100mb which is full of arrays (only arrays). I've made a script that includes this file (for processing), first it exhausted the default Xampp 128mb memory limit, i've raised it to 1024mb but it just takes forever and doesn't do anything. I'm sure the problem is being created by the sheer size of the file because i've tried removing all lines of code and just leaving the include and an echo for me to know when it finishes executing, and it does the same thing (which is taking forever), i've also tried to run the 100mb file in separate and same thing again. A 10mb file is taking forever as well but a similar 1mb file is almost instantly read and executed so the problem must be more than just the file size. I was avoiding using c++ for a simple project as this and would rather not to as php is easier for me and the task that will be executed doesn't need to benefit from the added speed that it would have if it had been done in c++ but if i have no luck in solving this problem i guess i'll have to. EDIT Reasons for not using a database: 1-Whoever made it didn't used a database and it will be pretty hard to store this in an organized database if i'm not able to do something with it first, like just reading it, copying parts from it or putting in memory or something. 2-I don't have experience working with databases as pretty much all stuff i've ever done in php didn't needed large amounts of stored data, 50kb at best, if i was thinking about a big project or huge chunks of data as this one, i definitely would, but i didn't made this mess to start with and now i have to undo it. 3-The logic for having to store a small portion of data like 10mb in hard drive when now every computer has pretty much enough ram to fit the whole OS in it is pretty much incomprehensible unless someone gives a good explanation about it, if i had to access a lot of said files simultaneously i would understand but like i said, this is a simple project, this is the only file that will be accessed at a given time this isn't even to make some kind of website, it's to run a few times and be done with it.

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  • Creation of model in core data on the fly

    - by user1740045
    How can we create a model in core data on the fly? I.e getting the schema of database from somewhere and then creating a Core Data Object graph? *QuesTion:* Yes thats fine, agreed with all the advantages. But, can anybody can tell practically, what is the benefit of integrating Core Data into project instead of using SQL directly. 1.No need to write SQL boiler plate code [but need to learn Core Data Model (steep curve)] 2.WE can undo and redo changes [but practically who needs it] 3.we can migrate to another schema [that can be done by SQLite as well jus need to add another field into table] 4.For say aggregation on some field in table,in Core Data we need to loop through Core Data Objects whereas in SQLite we need to first write SQLite Boiler Plate Code and then the basic aggregation SQL query,which is easy to write,only length of code will increase...But in case of Core Data (need to learn a lot). So apart from reducing the length of Code,does it actually adds value to project? or in terms of Memory Efficiency,Performance,etc.. PS: If anybody has actualy worked on Core Data(Model Creation On the Fly) , if possible share and gve pointers..thanks!

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  • What are the benefits of a classical structure over a prototyple one?

    - by Rixius
    I have only recently started programming significantly, and being completely self-taught, I unfortunately don't have the benefits of a detailed Computer science course. I've been reading a lot about JavaScript lately, and I'm trying to find the benefit in classes over the prototype nature of JavaScript. The question seems to be drawn down the middle of which one is better, and I want to see the classical side of it. When I look at the prototype example: var inst_a = { "X": 123, "Y": 321, add: function () { return this.X+this.Y; } }; document.write(inst_a.add()); And then the classical version function A(x,y){ this.X = x; this.Y = y; this.add = function(){ return this.X+this.Y; }; }; var inst_a = new A(123,321); document.write(inst_a.add()); I begun thinking about this because I'm looking at the new ecmascript revision 5 and a lot of people seem up in arms that they didn't add a Class system.

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  • Picture Box and Form Transparency

    - by Qu1nncunxIV
    Maybe I am missing something, but is it the case that when you set a pictureboxes background to transparent, all it really does is set it to the same color as the forms background? What I am trying to do is draw an animation for the benefit of this, a bouncing ball - which I paint on the form, then overlay that with a picture frame. End result should be a bouncing ball in a picture frame, I should mention that the picture frame does not have a straight edge, so it is not possible to arrange 4 picture boxes in a frame. The ball needs to vanish behind the frame to change color and then magically bounce back out. I have tried: 1.Setting the picture box background to pink and then key out the same pink, this basically cuts away everything, including that which is behind the picture box 2.Setting the picture box to transparent, this just displays the picture box background as the same color as the forms background. 3.I have tried painting the image in a rectangle, this had the same effect as drawing it in a picture box. I am not sure what I am doing wrong, I am wondering if there is any other ways I could try or if someone has made a custom control or library that supports transparency?

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  • Patterns to deal with with functions that can have different kinds of results.

    - by KaptajnKold
    Suppose you have an method on an object that given the some input alters the objects state if the input validates according to some complex logic. Now suppose that when the input doesn't validate, it can be due to several different things, each of which we would like to be able to deal with in different ways. I'm sure many of you are thinking: That's what exceptions are for! I've thought of this also. But my reservation against using exceptions is that in some cases there is nothing exceptional about the input not validating and I really would like to avoid using exceptions to control what is really just in the expected flow of the program. If there were only one interpretation possible, I could simply choose to return a boolean value indicating whether or not the operation resulted in a state change or not and the respond appropriately when it did not. There is of course also the option to return a status code which the client can then choose to interpret or not. I don't like this much either because there is nothing semantic about status codes. The solution I have so far is to always check for each possible situation which I am able to handle before I call the method which then returns a boolean to inform the client if the object changed state. This leaves me the flexibility to handle as few or as many as the possible situations as I wish depending on the context I am in. It also has the benefit of making the method I am calling simpler to write. The drawback is that there is quite a lot of duplication in the client code wherever I call the method. Which of these solutions do you prefer and why? What other patterns do people use for providing meaningful feedback from functions? I know that some languages support multiple return values, and I if I had that option I would surely prefer it.

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  • JS best practice for member functions

    - by MickMalone1983
    I'm writing a little mobile games library, and I'm not sure the best practice for declaring member functions of instantiated function objects. For instance, I might create a simple object with one property, and a method to print it: function Foo(id){ this.id = id; this.print = function(){ console.log(this.id); }; }; However, a function which does not need access to 'private' members of the function does not need to be declared in the function at all. I could equally have written: function print(){ console.log(this.id); }; function Foo(id){ this.id = id; this.print = print; }; When the function is invoked through an instance of Foo, the instance becomes the context for this, so the output is the same in either case. I'm not entirely sure how memory is allocated with JS, and I can't find anything that I can understand about something this specific, but it seems to me that with the first example all members of Foo, including the print function, are duplicated each time it is instantiated - but with the second, it just gets a pointer to one, pre-declared function, which would save any more memory having to be allocated as more instances of Foo are created. Am I correct, and if I am, is there any memory/performance benefit to doing this?

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  • Part 2&ndash;Load Testing In The Cloud

    - by Tarun Arora
    Welcome to Part 2, In Part 1 we discussed the advantages of creating a Test Rig in the cloud, the Azure edge and the Test Rig Topology we want to get to. In Part 2, Let’s start by understanding the components of Azure we’ll be making use of followed by manually putting them together to create the test rig, so… let’s get down dirty start setting up the Test Rig.  What Components of Azure will I be using for building the Test Rig in the Cloud? To run the Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Compute and to enable communication between Test Controller and Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Connect.  Azure Connect The Test Controller is on premise and the Test Agents are in the cloud (How will they talk?). To enable communication between the two, we’ll make use of Windows Azure Connect. With Windows Azure Connect, you can use a simple user interface to configure IPsec protected connections between computers or virtual machines (VMs) in your organization’s network, and roles running in Windows Azure. With this you can now join Windows Azure role instances to your domain, so that you can use your existing methods for domain authentication, name resolution, or other domain-wide maintenance actions. For more details refer to an overview of Windows Azure connect. A very useful video explaining everything you wanted to know about Windows Azure connect.  Azure Compute Windows Azure compute provides developers a platform to host and manage applications in Microsoft’s data centres across the globe. A Windows Azure application is built from one or more components called ‘roles.’ Roles come in three different types: Web role, Worker role, and Virtual Machine (VM) role, we’ll be using the Worker role to set up the Test Agents. A very nice blog post discussing the difference between the 3 role types. Developers are free to use the .NET framework or other software that runs on Windows with the Worker role or Web role. Developers can also create applications using languages such as PHP and Java. More on Windows Azure Compute. Each Windows Azure compute instance represents a virtual server... Virtual Machine Size CPU Cores Memory Cost Per Hour Extra Small Shared 768 MB $0.04 Small 1 1.75 GB $0.12 Medium 2 3.50 GB $0.24 Large 4 7.00 GB $0.48 Extra Large 8 14.00 GB $0.96   You might want to review the Windows Azure Pricing FAQ. Let’s Get Started building the Test Rig… Configuration Machine Role Comments VM – 1 Domain Controller for Playpit.com On Premise VM – 2 TFS, Test Controller On Premise VM – 3 Test Agent Cloud   In this blog post I would assume that you have the domain, Team Foundation Server and Test Controller Installed and set up already. If not, please refer to the TFS 2010 Installation Guide and this walkthrough on MSDN to set up your Test Controller. You can also download a preconfigured TFS 2010 VM from Brian Keller's blog, Brian also has some great hands on Labs on TFS 2010 that you may want to explore. I. Lets start building VM – 3: The Test Agent Download the Windows Azure SDK and Tools Open Visual Studio and create a new Windows Azure Project using the Cloud Template                   Choose the Worker Role for reasons explained in the earlier post         The WorkerRole.cs implements the Run() and OnStart() methods, no code changes required. You should be able to compile the project and run it in the compute emulator (The compute emulator should have been installed as part of the Windows Azure Toolkit) on your local machine.                   We will only be making changes to WindowsAzureProject, open ServiceDefinition.csdef. Ensure that the vmsize is small (remember the cost chart above). Import the “Connect” module. I am importing the Connect module because I need to join the Worker role VM to the Playpit domain. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="WorkerRole1" vmsize="Small"> <Imports> <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" /> <Import moduleName="Connect"/> </Imports> </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition> Go to the ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg and note that settings with key ‘Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.%%%%’ have been added to the configuration file. This is because you decided to import the connect module. See the config below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>             Let’s go step by step and understand all the highlighted parameters and where you can find the values for them.       osFamily – By default this is set to 1 (Windows Server 2008 SP2). Change this to 2 if you want the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system. The Advantage of using osFamily = “2” is that you get Powershell 2.0 rather than Powershell 1.0. In Powershell 2.0 you could simply use “powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted ./myscript.ps1” and it will work while in Powershell 1.0 you will have to change the registry key by including the following in your command file “reg add HKLM\Software\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\ShellIds\Microsoft.PowerShell /v ExecutionPolicy /d Unrestricted /f” before you can execute any power shell. The other reason you might want to move to os2 is if you wanted IIS 7.5.       Activation Token – To enable communication between the on premise machine and the Windows Azure Worker role VM both need to have the same token. Log on to Windows Azure Management Portal, click on Connect, click on Get Activation Token, this should give you the activation token, copy the activation token to the clipboard and paste it in the configuration file. Note – Later in the blog I’ll be showing you how to install connect on the on premise machine.                       EnableDomainJoin – Set the value to true, ofcourse we want to join the on windows azure worker role VM to the domain.       DomainFQDN, DomainControllerFQDN, DomainAccountName, DomainPassword, DomainOU, Administrators – This information is specific to your domain. I have extracted this information from the ‘service manager’ and ‘Active Directory Users and Computers’. Also, i created a new Domain-OU namely ‘CloudInstances’ so all my cloud instances joined to my domain show up here, this is optional. You can encrypt the DomainPassword – refer to the instructions here. Or hold fire, I’ll be covering that when i come to certificates and encryption in the coming section.       Now once you have filled all this information up, the configuration file should look something like below, <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="2" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="45f55fea-f194-4fbc-b36e-25604faac784" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="WIN-KUDQMQFGQOL.play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="************************" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="OU=CloudInstances, DC=Play, DC=Pit, DC=com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="Playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration> Next we will be enabling the Remote Desktop module in to the ServiceDefinition.csdef, we could make changes manually or allow a beautiful wizard to help us make changes. I prefer the second option. So right click on the Windows Azure project and choose Publish       Now once you get the publish wizard, if you haven’t already you would be asked to import your Windows Azure subscription, this is simply the Msdn subscription activation key xml. Once you have done click Next to go to the Settings page and check ‘Enable Remote Desktop for all roles’.       As soon as you do that you get another pop up asking you the details for the user that you would be logging in with (make sure you enter a reasonable expiry date, you do not want the user account to expire today). Notice the more information tag at the bottom, click that to get access to the certificate section. See screen shot below.       From the drop down select the option to create a new certificate        In the pop up window enter the friendly name for your certificate. In my case I entered ‘WAC – Test Rig’ and click ok. This will create a new certificate for you. Click on the view button to see the certificate details. Do you see the Thumbprint, this is the value that will go in the config file (very important). Now click on the Copy to File button to copy the certificate, we will need to import the certificate to the windows Azure Management portal later. So, make sure you save it a safe location.                                Click Finish and enter details of the user you would like to create with permissions for remote desktop access, once you have entered the details on the ‘Remote desktop configuration’ screen click on Ok. From the Publish Windows Azure Wizard screen press Cancel. Cancel because we don’t want to publish the role just yet and Yes because we want to save all the changes in the config file.       Now if you go to the ServiceDefinition.csdef file you will see that the RemoteAccess and RemoteForwarder roles have been imported for you. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="WorkerRole1" vmsize="Small"> <Imports> <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" /> <Import moduleName="Connect" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteAccess" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteForwarder" /> </Imports> </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition> Now go to the ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg file and you see a whole bunch for setting “Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.%%%” values added for you. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="2" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="45f55fea-f194-4fbc-b36e-25604faac784" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="WIN-KUDQMQFGQOL.play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="************************" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="OU=CloudInstances, DC=Play, DC=Pit, DC=com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="Playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.Enabled" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountUsername" value="Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountEncryptedPassword" value="MIIBnQYJKoZIhvcNAQcDoIIBjjCCAYoCAQAxggFOMIIBSgIBADAyMB4xHDAaBgNVBAMME1dpbmRvd 3MgQXp1cmUgVG9vbHMCEGa+B46voeO5T305N7TSG9QwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQAEggEABg4ol5Xol66Ip6QKLbAPWdmD4ae ADZ7aKj6fg4D+ATr0DXBllZHG5Umwf+84Sj2nsPeCyrg3ZDQuxrfhSbdnJwuChKV6ukXdGjX0hlowJu/4dfH4jTJC7sBWS AKaEFU7CxvqYEAL1Hf9VPL5fW6HZVmq1z+qmm4ecGKSTOJ20Fptb463wcXgR8CWGa+1w9xqJ7UmmfGeGeCHQ4QGW0IDSBU6ccg vzF2ug8/FY60K1vrWaCYOhKkxD3YBs8U9X/kOB0yQm2Git0d5tFlIPCBT2AC57bgsAYncXfHvPesI0qs7VZyghk8LVa9g5IqaM Cp6cQ7rmY/dLsKBMkDcdBHuCTAzBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwFAYIKoZIhvcNAwcECDRVifSXbA43gBApNrp40L1VTVZ1iGag+3O1" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountExpiration" value="2012-11-27T23:59:59.0000000+00:00" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteForwarder.Enabled" value="true" /> </ConfigurationSettings> <Certificates> <Certificate name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.PasswordEncryption" thumbprint="AA23016CF0BDFC344400B5B82706B608B92E4217" thumbprintAlgorithm="sha1" /> </Certificates> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>          Okay let’s look at them one at a time,       Enabled - Yes, we would like to enable Remote Access.       AccountUserName – This is the user name you entered while you were on the publish windows azure role screen, as detailed above.       AccountEncrytedPassword – Try and decode that, the certificate is used to encrypt the password you specified for the user account. Remember earlier i said, either use the instructions or wait and i’ll be showing you encryption, now the user account i am using for rdp has the same password as my domain password, so i can simply copy the value of the AccountEncryptedPassword to the DomainPassword as well.       AccountExpiration – This is the expiration as you specified in the wizard earlier, make sure your account does not expire today.       Remote Forwarder – Check out the documentation, below is how I understand it, -- One role in an application that implements a remote desktop connection must import the RemoteForwarder module. The two modules work together to enable the remote desktop connections to role instances. -- If you have multiple roles defined in the service model, it does not matter which role you add the RemoteForwarder module to, but you must add it to only one of the role definitions.       Certificate – Remember the certificate thumbprint from the wizard, the on premise machine and windows azure role machine that need to speak to each other must have the same thumbprint. More on that when we install Windows Azure connect Endpoints on the on premise machine. As i said earlier, in this blog post, I’ll be showing you the manual process so i won’t be scripting any star up tasks to install the test agent or register the test agent with the TFS Server. I’ll be showing you all this cool stuff in the next blog post, that’s because it’s important to understand the manual side of it, it becomes easier for you to troubleshoot in case something fails. Having said that, the changes we have made are sufficient to spin up the Windows Azure Worker Role aka Test Agent VM, have it connected with the play.pit.com domain and have remote access enabled on it. Before we deploy the Test Agent VM we need to set up Windows Azure Connect on the TFS Server. II. Windows Azure Connect: Setting up Connect on VM – 2 i.e. TFS & Test Controller Glad you made it so far, now to enable communication between the on premise TFS/Test Controller and Azure-ed Test Agent we need to enable communication. We have set up the Azure connect module in the Test Agent configuration, now the connect end points need to be enabled on the on premise machines, let’s have a look at how we can do this. Log on to VM – 2 running the TFS Server and Test Controller Log on to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on Virtual Network Click on Virtual Network, if you already have a subscription you should see the below screen shot, if not, you would be asked to complete the subscription first        Click on Install Local Endpoints from the top left on the panel and you get a url appended with a token id in it, remember the token i showed you earlier, in theory the token you get here should match the token you added to the Test Agent config file.        Copy the url to the clip board and paste it in IE explorer (important, the installation at present only works out of IE and you need to have cookies enabled in order to complete the installation). As stated in the pop up, you can NOT download and run the software later, you need to run it as is, since it contains a token. Once the installation completes you should see the Windows Azure connect icon in the system tray.                         Right click the Azure Connect icon, choose Diagnostics and refer to this link for diagnostic detail terminology. NOTE – Unfortunately I could not see the Windows Azure connect icon in the system tray, a bit of binging with Google revealed that the azure connect icon is only shown when the ‘Windows Azure Connect Endpoint’ Service is started. So go to services.msc and make sure that the service is started, if not start it, unfortunately again, the service did not start for me on a manual start and i realised that one of the dependant services was disabled, you can look at the service dependencies and start them and then start windows azure connect. Bottom line, you need to start Windows Azure connect service before you can proceed. Please refer here on MSDN for more on Troubleshooting Windows Azure connect. (Follow the next step as well)   Now go back to the Windows Azure Management Portal and from Groups and Roles create a new group, lets call it ‘Test Rig’. Make sure you add the VM – 2 (the TFS Server VM where you just installed the endpoint).       Now if you go back to the Azure Connect icon in the system tray and click ‘Refresh Policy’ you will notice that the disconnected status of the icon should change to ready for connection. III. Importing Certificate in to Windows Azure Management Portal But before that you need to import the certificate you created in Step I in to the Windows Azure Management Portal. Log on to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on ‘Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN’ and then ‘Management Certificates’ followed by Add Certificates as shown in the screen shot below        Browse to the location where you saved the certificate earlier, remember… Refer to Step I in case you forgot.        Now you should be able to see the imported certificate here, make sure the thumbprint of the certificate matches the one you inserted in the config files        IV. Publish Windows Azure Worker Role aka Test Agent Having completed I, II and III, you are ready to publish the Test Agent VM – 3 to the cloud. Go to Visual Studio and right click the Windows Azure project and select Publish. Verify the infomration in the wizard, from the advanced settings tab, you can also enabled capture of intellitrace or profiling information.         Click Next and Click Publish! From the view menu bar select the Windows Azure Activity Log window.       Now you should be able to see the deployment progress in real time.             In the Windows Azure Management Portal, you should also be able to see the progress of creation of a new Worker Role.       Once the deployment is complete you should be able to RDP (go to run prompt type mstsc and in the pop up the machine name) in to the Test Agent Worker Role VM from the Playpit network using the domain admin user account. In case you are unable to log in to the Test Agent using the domain admin user account it means the process of joining the Test Agent to the domain has failed! But the good news is, because you imported the connect module, you can connect to the Test Agent machine using Windows Azure Management Portal and troubleshoot the reason for failure, you will be able to log in with the user name and password you specified in the config file for the keys ‘RemoteAccess.AccountUsername, RemoteAccess.EncryptedPassword (just that enter the password unencrypted)’, fix it or manually join the machine to the domain. Once you have managed to Join the Test Agent VM to the Domain move to the next step.      So, log in to the Test Agent Worker Role VM with the Playpit Domain Administrator and verify that you can log in, the machine is connected to the domain and the connect service is successfully running. If yes, give your self a pat on the back, you are 80% mission accomplished!         Go to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on Virtual Network, click on Groups and Roles and click on Test Rig, click Edit Group, the edit the Test Rig group you created earlier. In the Connect to section, click on Add to select the worker role you have just deployed. Also, check the ‘Allow connections between endpoints in the group’ with this you will enable to communication between test controller and test agents and test agents/test agents. Click Save.      Now, you are ready to deploy the Test Agent software on the Worker Role Test Agent VM and configure it to work with the Test Controller. V. Configuring VM – 3: Installing Test Agent and Associating Test Agent to Controller Log in to the Worker Role Test Agent VM that you have just successfully deployed, make sure you log in with the domain administrator account. Download the All Agents software from MSDN, ‘en_visual_studio_agents_2010_x86_x64_dvd_509679.iso’, extract the iso and navigate to where you have extracted the iso. In my case, i have extracted the iso to “C:\Resources\Temp\VsAgentSetup”. Open the Test Agent folder and double click on setup.exe. Once you have installed the Test Agent you should reach the configuration window. If you face any issues installing TFS Test Agent on the VM, refer to the walkthrough on MSDN.       Once you have successfully installed the Test Agent software you will need to configure the test agent. Right click the test agent configuration tool and run as a different user. i.e. an Administrator. This is really to run the configuration wizard with elevated privileges (you might have UAC block something's otherwise).        In the run options, you can select ‘service’ you do not need to run the agent as interactive un less you are running coded UI tests. I have specified the domain administrator to connect to the TFS Test Controller. In real life, i would never do that, i would create a separate test user service account for this purpose. But for the blog post, we are using the most powerful user so that any policies or restrictions don’t block you.        Click the Apply Settings button and you should be all green! If not, the summary usually gives helpful error messages that you can resolve and proceed. As per my experience, you may run in to either a permission or a firewall blocking communication issue.        And now the moment of truth! Go to VM –2 open up Visual Studio and from the Test Menu select Manage Test Controller       Mission Accomplished! You should be able to see the Test Agent that you have just configured here,         VI. Creating and Running Load Tests on your brand new Azure-ed Test Rig I have various blog posts on Performance Testing with Visual Studio Ultimate, you can follow the links and videos below, Blog Posts: - Part 1 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - Part 2 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - Part 3 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Videos: - Test Tools Configuration & Settings in Visual Studio - Why & How to Record Web Performance Tests in Visual Studio Ultimate - Goal Driven Load Testing using Visual Studio Ultimate Now that you have created your load tests, there is one last change you need to make before you can run the tests on your Azure Test Rig, create a new Test settings file, and change the Test Execution method to ‘Remote Execution’ and select the test controller you have configured the Worker Role Test Agent against in our case VM – 2 So, go on, fire off a test run and see the results of the test being executed on the Azur-ed Test Rig. Review and What’s next? A quick recap of the benefits of running the Test Rig in the cloud and what i will be covering in the next blog post AND I would love to hear your feedback! Advantages Utilizing the power of Azure compute to run a heavy virtual user load. Benefiting from the Azure flexibility, destroy Test Agents when not in use, takes < 25 minutes to spin up a new Test Agent. Most important test Network Latency, (network latency and speed of connection are two different things – usually network latency is very hard to test), by placing the Test Agents in Microsoft Data centres around the globe, one can actually test the lag in transferring the bytes not because of a slow connection but because the page has been requested from the other side of the globe. Next Steps The process of spinning up the Test Agents in windows Azure is not 100% automated. I am working on the Worker process and power shell scripts to make the role deployment, unattended install of test agent software and registration of the test agent to the test controller automated. In the next blog post I will show you how to make the complete process unattended and automated. Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Hope you enjoyed this post, I would love to hear your feedback! If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment. See you in Part III.   Share this post : CodeProject

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  • JVM process resident set size "equals" max heap size, not current heap size

    - by Volune
    After a few reading about jvm memory (here, here, here, others I forgot...), I am expecting the resident set size of my java process to be roughly equal to the current heap space capacity. That's not what the numbers are saying, it seems to be roughly equal to the max heap space capacity: Resident set size: # echo 0 $(cat /proc/1/smaps | grep Rss | awk '{print $2}' | sed 's#^#+#') | bc 11507912 # ps -C java -O rss | gawk '{ count ++; sum += $2 }; END {count --; print "Number of processes =",count; print "Memory usage per process =",sum/1024/count, "MB"; print "Total memory usage =", sum/1024, "MB" ;};' Number of processes = 1 Memory usage per process = 11237.8 MB Total memory usage = 11237.8 MB Java heap # jmap -heap 1 Attaching to process ID 1, please wait... Debugger attached successfully. Server compiler detected. JVM version is 24.55-b03 using thread-local object allocation. Garbage-First (G1) GC with 18 thread(s) Heap Configuration: MinHeapFreeRatio = 10 MaxHeapFreeRatio = 20 MaxHeapSize = 10737418240 (10240.0MB) NewSize = 1363144 (1.2999954223632812MB) MaxNewSize = 17592186044415 MB OldSize = 5452592 (5.1999969482421875MB) NewRatio = 2 SurvivorRatio = 8 PermSize = 20971520 (20.0MB) MaxPermSize = 85983232 (82.0MB) G1HeapRegionSize = 2097152 (2.0MB) Heap Usage: G1 Heap: regions = 2560 capacity = 5368709120 (5120.0MB) used = 1672045416 (1594.586769104004MB) free = 3696663704 (3525.413230895996MB) 31.144272834062576% used G1 Young Generation: Eden Space: regions = 627 capacity = 3279945728 (3128.0MB) used = 1314914304 (1254.0MB) free = 1965031424 (1874.0MB) 40.089514066496164% used Survivor Space: regions = 49 capacity = 102760448 (98.0MB) used = 102760448 (98.0MB) free = 0 (0.0MB) 100.0% used G1 Old Generation: regions = 147 capacity = 1986002944 (1894.0MB) used = 252273512 (240.5867691040039MB) free = 1733729432 (1653.413230895996MB) 12.702574926293766% used Perm Generation: capacity = 39845888 (38.0MB) used = 38884120 (37.082786560058594MB) free = 961768 (0.9172134399414062MB) 97.58628042120682% used 14654 interned Strings occupying 2188928 bytes. Are my expectations wrong? What should I expect? I need the heap space to be able to grow during spikes (to avoid very slow Full GC), but I would like to have the resident set size as low as possible the rest of the time, to benefit the other processes running on the server. Is there a better way to achieve that? Linux 3.13.0-32-generic x86_64 java version "1.7.0_55" Running in Docker version 1.1.2 Java is running elasticsearch 1.2.0: /usr/bin/java -Xms5g -Xmx10g -XX:MinHeapFreeRatio=10 -XX:MaxHeapFreeRatio=20 -Xss256k -Djava.awt.headless=true -XX:+UseG1GC -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=350 -XX:InitiatingHeapOccupancyPercent=45 -XX:+AggressiveOpts -XX:+UseCompressedOops -XX:-OmitStackTraceInFastThrow -XX:+PrintGCDetails -XX:+PrintGCTimeStamps -XX:+PrintClassHistogram -XX:+PrintTenuringDistribution -XX:+PrintGCApplicationStoppedTime -XX:+PrintGCApplicationConcurrentTime -Xloggc:/opt/elasticsearch/logs/gc.log -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -XX:HeapDumpPath=/opt elasticsearch/logs/heapdump.hprof -XX:ErrorFile=/opt/elasticsearch/logs/hs_err.log -Des.logger.port=99999 -Des.logger.host=999.999.999.999 -Delasticsearch -Des.foreground=yes -Des.path.home=/opt/elasticsearch -cp :/opt/elasticsearch/lib/elasticsearch-1.2.0.jar:/opt/elasticsearch/lib/*:/opt/elasticsearch/lib/sigar/* org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch There actually are 5 elasticsearch nodes, each in a different docker container. All have about the same memory usage. Some stats about the index: size: 9.71Gi (19.4Gi) docs: 3,925,398 (4,052,694)

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  • How to grow to be global sysadmin of an organization?

    - by user64729
    Bit of a non-technical question but I have seen questions of the career development type on here before so hopefully it is fine. I work for a fast growing but still small organization (~65 employees). I have been their external sysadmin for a while now, looking after hosted Linux servers and infrastructure. In the past 12 months I have been transforming into the internal sysadmin for our office too. I'm currently studying Cisco CCNA to cover the demands of being an internal sysadmin and looking after the office LAN, routers, switches and VPNs. Now they want me to look after the global sysadmin function of the organization as a whole. The organization has 3 offices in total, 2 in the UK and 1 in the US. I work in one of the UK offices. The other offices are primarily Windows desktops with AD domain shops. My office is primarily a Linux shop with a file-server and NFS/NIS (no AD domain for the Windows desktops yet but it's in the works). Each other office has a sysadmin which in theory I am supposed to supervise but in reality each is independent. I have a very competent junior sysadmin working with me who shares the day-to-day tasks and does some of the longer term projects with my supervision. My boss has asked me how to grow from being the external sysadmin to the global sysadmin. I am to ponder this and then report back to him on how to achieve this. My current thoughts are: Management training or professional development - eg. reading books such as "Influencer" and "7 Habits". Also I feel I should take steps to improving communication skills since a senior person is expected to talk and speak out more often. Learn more about Windows and Active Directory - I'm an LPI-certified guy and have a lot of experience in Linux (Ubuntu or desktop, Debian/Ubuntu as server). Since the other offices are mainly Windows-domains it makes sense to skill-up in that area so I can understand what the other admins are talking about. Talk to previous colleagues who have are are in this role already - to try and get the benefit of their experience. Produce an "IT Roadmap" or similar that maps out where we want the organization to be and when, plotted out over the next couple of years with regards to internal and external infrastructure. I have produced a "Security roadmap" already which does cover some of these things. I guess this can summed up as "thinking more strategically"? I'd appreciate comments from anyone who has been through a similar situation, thanks.

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  • Detach current session and attach to another session, done with one script, can I?

    - by Jimm Chen
    After reading the vague official doc of GNU screen( http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/manual/screen.html ) and asking quite some questions at this site. I still cannot figure out how to accomplish such a task with a shell script. This task costs some words to describe. Assume I'm using PuTTY to telnet into my Linux server. ?STEP 1? Launch 2 telnet connections . From putty window 1 (PTWIN1),telnet into Linux Bash shell, execute screen -RR to launch a screen session, and get session name 21385.pts-4.linux-ic37 . From putty window 2 (PTWIN2), do that same as in PTWIN1, but this time, I get session name 22041.pts-9.linux-ic37 . Now, we have two screen sessions running simultaneously. We can check this: $ screen -ls There are screens on: 22041.pts-9.linux-ic37 (Attached) 21385.pts-4.linux-ic37 (Attached) 2 Sockets in /var/run/uscreens/S-chj2. ?STEP 2? Assume that for some reason, PTWIN1's TCP connection is lost abnormally(but server doesn't know that), and an urgent work is pending on session 21385 and I want to quickly regain control of it. Fortunately, we know the 21385 session is still there, so, I want to have PTWIN2 attach to session 21385. Because I hate to remember the esoteric screen option all the time, so I decide to write a script called sttach. I hope that sttach 21385.pts-4.linux-ic37 can let me attach to session 21385(for PTWIN2). Now, let's say sttach works well and I take control of 21385 on PTWIN2. ?STEP 3? Some minutes later. I want to go back to work on session 22041. Here, please allow me to have PTWIN2 remain associated with session 21385. What I would like to do is to launch another putty window (PTWIN3), telnet into server, and execute sttach 22041.pts-9.linux-ic37 in hope that I can resume session 22041 on PTWIN3 . You can see the benefit of sttach: as long as I know the target session name, I can call it to have my PuTTY window switch to that session, regardless whether the target session is "(Attached)" or "(Detached)", and regardless whether the running context is inside a screen session or not. Now the question: How to write the (Bash) script sttach? I mean, run screen with appropriate options in sttach to accomplish the goal. Waiting for your kind answer. Thank you. My previous questions regarding GNU screen: GNU screen, how to get current sessionname programmatically Is it possible to change GNU screen session name after created? How do I know I'm running inside a linux "screen" or not? My env: openSUSE Linux 11.3, GNU screen 4.00.03 (FAU) 23-Oct-06

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  • RAID 50 24Port Fast Writes Slow Reads - Ubuntu

    - by James
    What is going on here?! I am baffled. serveradmin@FILESERVER:/Volumes/MercuryInternal/test$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/Volumes/MercuryInternal/test/test.fs bs=4096k count=10000 10000+0 records in 10000+0 records out 41943040000 bytes (42 GB) copied, 57.0948 s, 735 MB/s serveradmin@FILESERVER:/Volumes/MercuryInternal/test$ sudo dd if=/Volumes/MercuryInternal/test/test.fs of=/dev/null bs=4096k count=10000 10000+0 records in 10000+0 records out 41943040000 bytes (42 GB) copied, 116.189 s, 361 MB/s OF NOTE: My RAID50 is 3 sets of 8 disks. - This might not be the best config for SPEED. OS: Ubuntu 12.04.1 x64 Hardware Raid: RocketRaid 2782 - 24 Port Controller HardDriveType: Seagate Barracuda ES.2 1TB Drivers: v1.1 Open Source Linux Drivers. So 24 x 1TB drives, partitioned using parted. Filesystem is ext4. I/O scheduler WAS noop but have changed it to deadline with no seemingly performance benefit/cost. serveradmin@FILESERVER:/Volumes/MercuryInternal/test$ sudo gdisk -l /dev/sdb GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.1 Partition table scan: MBR: protective BSD: not present APM: not present GPT: present Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT. Disk /dev/sdb: 41020686336 sectors, 19.1 TiB Logical sector size: 512 bytes Disk identifier (GUID): 95045EC6-6EAF-4072-9969-AC46A32E38C8 Partition table holds up to 128 entries First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 41020686302 Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries Total free space is 5062589 sectors (2.4 GiB) Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name 1 2048 41015625727 19.1 TiB 0700 primary To me this should be working fine. I can't think of anything that would be causing this other then fundamental driver errors? I can't seem to get much/if any higher then the 361MB a second, is this hitting the "SATA2" link speed, which it shouldn't given it is a PCIe2.0 card. Or maybe some cacheing quirk - I do have Write Back enabled. Does anyone have any suggestions? Tests for me to perform? Or if you require more information, I am happy to provide it! This is a video fileserver for editing machines, so we have a preference for FAST reads over writes. I was just expected more from RAID 50 and 24 drives together... EDIT: (hdparm results) serveradmin@FILESERVER:/Volumes/MercuryInternal$ sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sdb /dev/sdb: Timing cached reads: 17458 MB in 2.00 seconds = 8735.50 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 884 MB in 3.00 seconds = 294.32 MB/sec EDIT2: (config details) Also, I am using a RAID block size of 256K. I was told a larger block size is better for larger (in my case large video) files. EDIT3: (Bonnie++ Results. Would love some guidance with this!)

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  • Need Windows XP VGA driver for i3 Haswell

    - by AFH
    Background: I have recently upgraded my hardware because the previous Pentium system started failing to the point that it would not run long enough to boot. It was obviously a hardware fault, but I had no way of knowing whether it was in the motherboard, CPU or memory. Not all the components were now available, so I decided to replace all three. In order to get some benefit from the expenditure, I though I would put in faster components, and for future-proofing went for recently released ones: MSI Z87-G41-PCMate and Intel i3-4130 with 4400 HD graphics. The system performs excellently with Ubuntu 13.10, so I know there are no hardware problems, but I need to continue running XP because it runs several thousand pounds (UK) worth of software, which meets my needs more than adequately: in some cases there is no longer support for later Windows releases, and in most others an expensive and to me unnecessary upgrade is required. Problem: The motherboard specifications claim Windows XP support for the live driver update utility, which misled me into believing that XP drivers were available. Not true: Intel have apparently refused to provide XP drivers for Haswell chips. The update program runs on XP, but finds no suitable Intel drivers. The system is more or less running on the default fail-safe VGA driver, but DirectX will not load, which stops a number of my applications from running. I have been trawling the internet for a month now, but I have not found a graphics driver which will load successfully: all show "This device cannot start. (code 10)". I don't need HDMI support: my monitor is 1280x1024 and connected through the VGA port, so all I need is a driver which will handle this resolution well enough to support DirectX. Has anyone found a driver which will do this? Please don't reply with information found from internet searches, unless you have actually solved this problem: be assured that I have been all round the houses looking at solutions which others have reported as working, but none of them does for me. Incidentally, I did find an Intel HD sound driver which XP accepts (winxp_145111.exe from Intel), though without connecting to an HDMI port on a TV or sound system I have no idea if it works in practice. However, the graphics section of the same driver fails, like all the others I've tried.

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  • Authoritative sources about Database vs. Flatfile decision

    - by FastAl
    <tldr>looking for a reference to a book or other undeniably authoritative source that gives reasons when you should choose a database vs. when you should choose other storage methods. I have provided an un-authoritative list of reasons about 2/3 of the way down this post.</tldr> I have a situation at my company where a database is being used where it would be better to use another solution (in this case, an auto-generated piece of source code that contains a static lookup table, searched by binary sort). Normally, a database would be an OK solution even though the problem does not require a database, e.g, none of the elements of ACID are needed, as it is read-only data, updated about every 3-5 years (also requiring other sourcecode changes), and fits in memory, and can be keyed into via binary search (a tad faster than db, but speed is not an issue). The problem is that this code runs on our enterprise server, but is shared with several PC platforms (some disconnected, some use a central DB, etc.), and parts of it are managed by multiple programming units, parts by the DBAs, parts even by mathematicians in another department, etc. These hit their own platform’s version of their databases (containing their own copy of the static data). What happens is that every implementation, every little change, something different goes wrong. There are many other issues as well. I can’t even use a flatfile, because one mode of running on our enterprise server does not have permission to read files (only databases, and of course, its own literal storage, e.g., in-source table). Of course, other parts of the system use databases in proper, less obscure manners; there is no problem with those parts. So why don’t we just change it? I don’t have administrative ability to force a change. But I’m affected because sometimes I have to help fix the problems, but mostly because it causes outages and tons of extra IT time by other programmers and d*mmit that makes me mad! The reason neither management, nor the designers of the system, can see the problem is that they propose a solution that won’t work: increase communication; implement more safeguards and standards; etc. But every time, in a different part of the already-pared-down but still multi-step processes, a few different diligent, hard-working, top performing IT personnel make a unique subtle error that causes it to fail, sometimes after the last round of testing! And in general these are not single-person failures, but understandable miscommunications. And communication at our company is actually better than most. People just don't think that's the case because they haven't dug into the matter. However, I have it on very good word from somebody with extensive formal study of sociology and psychology that the relatively small amount of less-than-proper database usage in this gigantic cross-platform multi-source, multi-language project is bureaucratically un-maintainable. Impossible. No chance. At least with Human Beings in the loop, and it can’t be automated. In addition, the management and developers who could change this, though intelligent and capable, don’t understand the rigidity of this ‘how humans are’ issue, and are not convincible on the matter. The reason putting the static data in sourcecode will solve the problem is, although the solution is less sexy than a database, it would function with no technical drawbacks; and since the sharing of sourcecode already works very well, you basically erase any database-related effort from this section of the project, along with all the drawbacks of it that are causing problems. OK, that’s the background, for the curious. I won’t be able to convince management that this is an unfixable sociological problem, and that the real solution is coding around these limits of human nature, just as you would code around a bug in a 3rd party component that you can’t change. So what I have to do is exploit the unsuitableness of the database solution, and not do it using logic, but rather authority. I am aware of many reasons, and posts on this site giving reasons for one over the other; I’m not looking for lists of reasons like these (although you can add a comment if I've miss a doozy): WHY USE A DATABASE? instead of flatfile/other DB vs. file: if you need... Random Read / Transparent search optimization Advanced / varied / customizable Searching and sorting capabilities Transaction/rollback Locks, semaphores Concurrency control / Shared users Security 1-many/m-m is easier Easy modification Scalability Load Balancing Random updates / inserts / deletes Advanced query Administrative control of design, etc. SQL / learning curve Debugging / Logging Centralized / Live Backup capabilities Cached queries / dvlp & cache execution plans Interleaved update/read Referential integrity, avoid redundant/missing/corrupt/out-of-sync data Reporting (from on olap or oltp db) / turnkey generation tools [Disadvantages:] Important to get right the first time - professional design - but only b/c it's meant to last s/w & h/w cost Usu. over a network, speed issue (best vs. best design vs. local=even then a separate process req's marshalling/netwk layers/inter-p comm) indicies and query processing can stand in the way of simple processing (vs. flatfile) WHY USE FLATFILE: If you only need... Sequential Row processing only Limited usage append only (no reading, no master key/update) Only Update the record you're reading (fixed length recs only) Too big to fit into memory If Local disk / read-ahead network connection Portability / small system Email / cut & Paste / store as document by novice - simple format Low design learning curve but high cost later WHY USE IN-MEMORY/TABLE (tables, arrays, etc.): if you need... Processing a single db/ff record that was imported Known size of data Static data if hardcoding the table Narrow, unchanging use (e.g., one program or proc) -includes a class that will be shared, but encapsulates its data manipulation Extreme speed needed / high transaction frequency Random access - but search is dependent on implementation Following are some other posts about the topic: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1499239/database-vs-flat-text-file-what-are-some-technical-reasons-for-choosing-one-over http://stackoverflow.com/questions/332825/are-flat-file-databases-any-good http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2356851/database-vs-flat-files http://stackoverflow.com/questions/514455/databases-vs-plain-text/514530 What I’d like to know is if anybody could recommend a hard, authoritative source containing these reasons. I’m looking for a paper book I can buy, or a reputable website with whitepapers about the issue (e.g., Microsoft, IBM), not counting the user-generated content on those sites. This will have a greater change to elicit a change that I’m looking for: less wasted programmer time, and more reliable programs. Thanks very much for your help. You win a prize for reading such a large post!

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  • Amazon Elastic Terms and Conditions

    - by PP
    WARNING: Have you really read Amazon's Terms and Conditions? Would anybody seriously agree to this term on Amazon's Elastic services sign up page? 6.2. Restrictions with Respect to Use of Marks. Your use of any trademarks, service marks, service or trade names, logos, and other designations of AWS and its affiliates or licensors, hereinafter "Marks", shall strictly comply with the following provisions. You may use the Marks in conjunction with the display of the AWS Content and for the purpose of indicating that your Application was created using the Services. You may use the Marks only in the form in which we make them available to you and not in any manner that disparages Amazon, its affiliates or its licensors, or that otherwise dilutes any Mark. Other than your limited right to use the Marks as provided in this Agreement, we and our licensors retain all right, title, and interest in and to the Marks. You will not at any time now or in the future challenge or assist others to challenge the validity of the Marks, or attempt to register confusingly similar trademarks, trade names, service marks or logos. You agree to follow our the Trademark Use Guidelines posted on the Amazon Web Services™ Trademark Guidelines page (the "Trademark Guidelines") as those guidelines may change from time to time. The Trademark Guidelines are incorporated herein by reference. You must immediately discontinue use of any Mark as specified by us at any time in writing. We may modify any Marks provided to you at any time, and upon notice, you will use only the modified Marks and not the old Marks. Other than as specified in this Agreement, you may not use any trademark, service mark, trade name or other business identifier of Amazon or its affiliates unless you obtain Amazon's or its affiliates' prior written consent. The foregoing prohibition includes the use of "amazon," any other trademark of AWS, Amazon or its affiliates, or variations or misspellings of any of them, in the name of an Application or in a URL to the left of the top-level domain name (e.g., ".com", ".net", "co.uk", etc.)-for example, a URL such as "amazon.mydomain.com", "amaozn.com" or "amazonauctions.net" are expressly prohibited. Any use you make of the Marks shall inure to our benefit and you hereby irrevocably assign to us all right, title and interest in the same. In addition, you agree not to misrepresent or embellish the relationship between us and you, for example by implying that we support, sponsor, endorse, or contribute money to you or your business endeavors. If you are a large company and you want to use Amazon's services you must agree that: you may not use the word "amazon" in any domain name you control (even if you are a forestry company) you may not use any word Amazon choose to trademark in any domain you control (regardless of whether the name has a different meaning/purpose in your industry) from now until forever you will never dispute any claim Amazon makes on any word you or anybody else uses Seriously, who would sign such a thing?

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  • How do I prove I should put a table of values in source code instead of a database table?

    - by FastAl
    <tldr>looking for a reference to a book or other undeniably authoritative source that gives reasons when you should choose a database vs. when you should choose other storage methods. I have provided an un-authoritative list of reasons about 2/3 of the way down this post.</tldr> I have a situation at my company where a database is being used where it would be better to use another solution (in this case, an auto-generated piece of source code that contains a static lookup table, searched by binary sort). Normally, a database would be an OK solution even though the problem does not require a database, e.g, none of the elements of ACID are needed, as it is read-only data, updated about every 3-5 years (also requiring other sourcecode changes), and fits in memory, and can be keyed into via binary search (a tad faster than db, but speed is not an issue). The problem is that this code runs on our enterprise server, but is shared with several PC platforms (some disconnected, some use a central DB, etc.), and parts of it are managed by multiple programming units, parts by the DBAs, parts even by mathematicians in another department, etc. These hit their own platform’s version of their databases (containing their own copy of the static data). What happens is that every implementation, every little change, something different goes wrong. There are many other issues as well. I can’t even use a flatfile, because one mode of running on our enterprise server does not have permission to read files (only databases, and of course, its own literal storage, e.g., in-source table). Of course, other parts of the system use databases in proper, less obscure manners; there is no problem with those parts. So why don’t we just change it? I don’t have administrative ability to force a change. But I’m affected because sometimes I have to help fix the problems, but mostly because it causes outages and tons of extra IT time by other programmers and d*mmit that makes me mad! The reason neither management, nor the designers of the system, can see the problem is that they propose a solution that won’t work: increase communication; implement more safeguards and standards; etc. But every time, in a different part of the already-pared-down but still multi-step processes, a few different diligent, hard-working, top performing IT personnel make a unique subtle error that causes it to fail, sometimes after the last round of testing! And in general these are not single-person failures, but understandable miscommunications. And communication at our company is actually better than most. People just don't think that's the case because they haven't dug into the matter. However, I have it on very good word from somebody with extensive formal study of sociology and psychology that the relatively small amount of less-than-proper database usage in this gigantic cross-platform multi-source, multi-language project is bureaucratically un-maintainable. Impossible. No chance. At least with Human Beings in the loop, and it can’t be automated. In addition, the management and developers who could change this, though intelligent and capable, don’t understand the rigidity of this ‘how humans are’ issue, and are not convincible on the matter. The reason putting the static data in sourcecode will solve the problem is, although the solution is less sexy than a database, it would function with no technical drawbacks; and since the sharing of sourcecode already works very well, you basically erase any database-related effort from this section of the project, along with all the drawbacks of it that are causing problems. OK, that’s the background, for the curious. I won’t be able to convince management that this is an unfixable sociological problem, and that the real solution is coding around these limits of human nature, just as you would code around a bug in a 3rd party component that you can’t change. So what I have to do is exploit the unsuitableness of the database solution, and not do it using logic, but rather authority. I am aware of many reasons, and posts on this site giving reasons for one over the other; I’m not looking for lists of reasons like these (although you can add a comment if I've miss a doozy): WHY USE A DATABASE? instead of flatfile/other DB vs. file: if you need... Random Read / Transparent search optimization Advanced / varied / customizable Searching and sorting capabilities Transaction/rollback Locks, semaphores Concurrency control / Shared users Security 1-many/m-m is easier Easy modification Scalability Load Balancing Random updates / inserts / deletes Advanced query Administrative control of design, etc. SQL / learning curve Debugging / Logging Centralized / Live Backup capabilities Cached queries / dvlp & cache execution plans Interleaved update/read Referential integrity, avoid redundant/missing/corrupt/out-of-sync data Reporting (from on olap or oltp db) / turnkey generation tools [Disadvantages:] Important to get right the first time - professional design - but only b/c it's meant to last s/w & h/w cost Usu. over a network, speed issue (best vs. best design vs. local=even then a separate process req's marshalling/netwk layers/inter-p comm) indicies and query processing can stand in the way of simple processing (vs. flatfile) WHY USE FLATFILE: If you only need... Sequential Row processing only Limited usage append only (no reading, no master key/update) Only Update the record you're reading (fixed length recs only) Too big to fit into memory If Local disk / read-ahead network connection Portability / small system Email / cut & Paste / store as document by novice - simple format Low design learning curve but high cost later WHY USE IN-MEMORY/TABLE (tables, arrays, etc.): if you need... Processing a single db/ff record that was imported Known size of data Static data if hardcoding the table Narrow, unchanging use (e.g., one program or proc) -includes a class that will be shared, but encapsulates its data manipulation Extreme speed needed / high transaction frequency Random access - but search is dependent on implementation Following are some other posts about the topic: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1499239/database-vs-flat-text-file-what-are-some-technical-reasons-for-choosing-one-over http://stackoverflow.com/questions/332825/are-flat-file-databases-any-good http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2356851/database-vs-flat-files http://stackoverflow.com/questions/514455/databases-vs-plain-text/514530 What I’d like to know is if anybody could recommend a hard, authoritative source containing these reasons. I’m looking for a paper book I can buy, or a reputable website with whitepapers about the issue (e.g., Microsoft, IBM), not counting the user-generated content on those sites. This will have a greater change to elicit a change that I’m looking for: less wasted programmer time, and more reliable programs. Thanks very much for your help. You win a prize for reading such a large post!

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  • Is it safe to enable forced ASLR via EMET on Windows?

    - by D.W.
    I'd like to enable forced ASLR for all DLLs on Windows. Is this safe? Background: ASLR is an important security mechanism that helps defend against code injection attacks. DLLs can opt into ASLR, and most do, but some DLLs have not opted into ASLR. If a program loads even a single non-ASLRized DLL, then the program doesn't get the benefit/protection of ASLR. This is a problem, because there are a non-trivial number of DLLs that haven't opted into ASLR. For instance, it was recently revealed that Dropbox injects a DLL into a bunch of processes, and the Dropbox DLL doesn't have ASLR turned on, which negates any ASLR protection they otherwise would have had. Unfortunately, there are many other widely used DLLs that haven't opted into ASLR. This is bad for system security. Microsoft provides several ways to turn on ASLR for all DLLs, even ones that haven't opted into ASLR: On Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008, you can enable "Force ASLR" in the registry. On all Windows versions, you can use Microsoft's EMET tool and enable EMET's "Mandatory ASLR" option. These methods are possible because all DLLs are compiled as position-independent code and they can be relocated to a random location even if they haven't opted into ASLR. These options will ensure that ASLR is turned on, even if the developers of the DLL forgot to opt into ASLR. Thus, forcing on ASLR systemwide may help system security. In principle, turning on forced ASLR could potentially break a poorly-written DLL, so there is some risk of breakage. I'm interested in finding out just significant this risk is. I have the suspicion that this kind of breakage might be extremely rare. Here's what I've been able to find: Microsoft has done compatibility testing with several dozen widely used applications. The only one they found where Mandatory ASLR causes problems is Windows Media Player. All the other applications continue working fine. (See pp.39-41 of this document.) I've seen some anecdotal reports that enabling "Mandatory ASLR"/"Force ASLR" is fine and unlikely to cause problems. CERT reports that AMD and ATI video drivers used to crash if you enabled forced ASLR, but their latest drivers have now fixed this problem. They don't show any other drivers with this problem. A forum post from Microsoft shows no other applications with compatibility problems if ASLR is forced on, as of 2011. A user reports that borderlands.exe, a video game by Gearbox Software, crashes if you turn on mandatory ASLR. What else should I know? Is it relatively safe to turn on Force ASLR / Mandatory ASLR systemwide to harden the secuity of my system, or will I be in for a world of pain and broken applications? How significant is the risk of compatibility problems and broken applications?

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  • Is Samba Server what I'm looking for, and if so, what do I need? (currently on DD-WRT Micro)

    - by Anthony
    I am really confused as to what Samba actually does and how it works. Here's what I'm hoping it does: I set up a Samba server on my LAN, and everyone will be able to see each other's shared files and swap them. But some of the documentation makes it sound like it will just allow Mac/Linux computers to see Windows computers. Other bits of the documentation make it sound more like a local server, where a Linux machine would install Samba and they would see everyone and be visible to everyone, but that won't change if anybody else can see each other. While still other things I've read make it seem more like a file-server, where everyone sees each other but file transfers are not peer-to-peer but instead need a host disk for files to act as go between. So, assuming I'm even in the right ballpark of what Samba does in terms of my goal of total cross-visibility on the network, I am left with needing to know what I'd need to set up the server and whether it can be done and is worth it... DD-WRT's article on Samba is a bit ambiguous. One second it sounds as if I can run the server on micro as long as it's set up on a usb drive, but then it also sounds like micro can't run it at all, etc. If I can run it from a usb-connected drive, I still need to know if the files are actually stored on that drive. The dd-wrt article mentions: You can run a Samba server on your main computer and run a client on your router (thus gaining writable storage for the router) or you can use Samba to share a drive connected (typically by USB) to the router among all the computers connected to your network. That one part "to share a drive...among all the computers" makes it sound like the only benefit I get from Samba is a share drive that any OS on the network can see, but they still won't see each other. But I'm very hopeful I'm misreading this. If the computers can see each other but still need the disk, how much space is generally a good idea? I'm basing this on the idea that the drive is a temporary store point. Obviously I'd have to get a drive big enough to store everything people wanted to share if the drive is a full-on file server. If I do have this all wrong, is there any software that achieves what I have in mind? Something that connects to the main router to bridge all clients?

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  • NFS4 / ZFS: revert ACL to clean/inherited state

    - by Keiichi
    My problem is identical to this Windows question, but pertains NFS4 (Linux) and the underlying ZFS (OpenIndiana) we are using. We have this ZFS shared via NFS4 and CIFS for Linux and Windows users respectively. It would be nice for both user groups to benefit from ACLs, but the one missing puzzle piece goes thusly: Each user has a home, where he sets a top-level, inherited ACL. He can later on refine permissions for the contained files/folders iteratively. Over time, sometimes permissions need to be generalized again to avoid increasing pollution of ACL entries. You can tweak the ACL of every single file if need be to obtain the wanted permissions, but that defeats the purpose of inherited ACLs. So, how can an ACL be completely cleared like in the question linked above? I have found nothing about what a blank, inherited ACL should look like. This usecase simply does not seem to exist. In fact, the solaris chmod manpage clearly states A- Removes all ACEs for current ACL on file and replaces current ACL with new ACL that represents only the current mode of the file. I.e. we get three new ACL entries filled with stuff representing the permission bits, which is rather useless for cleaning up. If I try to manually remove every ACE, on the last one I get chmod A0- <file> chmod: ERROR: Can't remove all ACL entries from a file Which by the way makes me think: and why not? In fact, I really want the whole file-specific ACL gone. The same holds for linux, which enumerates ACEs starting with 1(!), and verbalizes its woes less diligently nfs4_setacl -x 1 <file> Failed setxattr operation: Unknown error 524 So, what is the idea behind ACLs under Solaris/NFS? Can they never be cleaned up? Why does the recursion option for the ACL setting commands pollute all children instead of setting a single ACL and making the children inherit? Is this really the intention of the designers? I can clean up the ACLs using a windows client perfectly well, but am I supposed to tell the linux users they have to switch OS just to consolidate permissions?

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  • What Sort of Server Setup Am I Likely to Need? - School A/V streaming

    - by DeathMagus
    My prior experience with servers has generally been limited to home file-sharing servers, low-traffic web-servers, and the like. This leaves me with the technical knowledge of how to set up a system, but little experience in terms of scaling said system. My current project, however, has me as the technical lead in setting up a school for online audio and video streaming. The difficulty I'm running into is that I don't quite have the experience to guess what they'll need, and they don't have the experience to tell me - so I've tried to ask as many pertinent questions about what they want to do with their server, and here's what I found out: About 1000 simultaneous users, and hoping to expand (possibly significantly) Both video and audio streaming, at obviously the highest quality possible Support for both live and playlist-based streaming. Probably only one channel, but as it's an educational opportunity, I imagine letting them have a few more wouldn't hurt. No word on whether they're locked into Windows or whether Linux is acceptable. Approximate budget - $7000. It may actually be about $2k less than this, because of a mishap with another technology firm (they ordered a $7000 DV tape deck for some reason, and now the company wants them to pay a 30% restocking fee). The tentative decisions I've already made: I'm planning on using Icecast 2 for my streaming server, fed by VLC Shoutcast encoding. Since the school already has a DMZ set up, I plan on placing the Icecast server in there, and feeding it through their intranet from a simple workstation computer in their studios. This system isn't in any way mission critical - it's an education tool (they're a media magnet school), so I figure redundancy is not worthwhile to them from a cost:benefit perspective. What I don't know is this: How powerful of a server will I need? What is likely to be my major throttle - bandwidth? How can I mitigate that? Will I need anything special for the encoding workstation other than professional video and audio capture cards and a copy of VLC? Are there any other considerations that I'm simply missing? Thanks a lot for any help - if there's more information you need, let me know and I'll tell you all I can.

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  • Triple (3) Monitors under Linux

    - by widgisoft
    I have a 3 monitor setup (each 1680x1050) via an Nvidia NVS440 (2 GPUs, 2 outputs per GPU totalling 4 outputs); this works fine under Windows XP,7 but caused considerable headaches under Linux (Ubuntu 9.04). I had previously used an XFX 9600GT and the onboard XFX 9300GS to produce the same result but the card was noisy and power hungry and I was hoping that there was some magical switch in the NVS4400 that got rid of this annoying problem - turns out the NVS440 is just 2 cards on one physical PCB :-p (I searched the net high and low for people using this card under Linux but found nothing, if anything the card uses less power and is fan less so I was to benefit from it either way) Anyway, using either set up there were 5 solutions available: Have 3 separate X instances, all un joined Have 3 separate X instances, adjoined by Xinerama Have 2 separate X instances - One using twin-view, both adjoined by Xinerama Have 2 separate X instances - One using twin-view but no Xinerama Have a single Twin-view setup and leave the 3rd screen unplugged :-p The 4rd option, using 2 separate X instances and twinview (but no xinerama) was the best balance in terms of performance and usability but caused 2 really annoying issues You couldn't control (without altering the shortcuts) which screen an application opened onto - and once it was opened you couldn't move it to another screen without opening up terminal and forcing it to move Nvidia's overriding or falsifying of Xinerama breaks and the 2 screens joined by Twin view behave like a single huge screen causing popups to open in the middle of both screens and maximising of windows stretches to the width of the first 2 screens Firefox can only run one instance as the same user so having multiple firefox windows requires at least 2 users The second option "feels" like the right option, but OpenGL is basically disabled and playing any sort of game or even running anything graphical causes a huge performance drop and instability - even trying to run a basic emulator for gba or gens just causes the system to fall over. It works just enough to stare at your desktop and do nothing but as soon as you start doing some work - opening windows, dragging things around - running multiple copies of firefox it just really feels slow. The last open, only going dual screen works perfectly and everything performs as required, full GPU acceleration - two logical screen spaces - perfect, just make it work across GPUs like windows! :-p Anyway, I know RandR was supposed to pick up the slack when it would introduced GPU objects of sorts to allow multiple GPUs to be stitched together to create one huge desktop at a much deeper layer than Xinerama. I was wondering if this has now been fixed (I noticed X server 1.7 is out) and whether anyone has got it running successfully? Again, my requirements are: One huge desktop to drag any window across Maximising of windows to each screen (as XP does) Running fullscreen apps on the primary screen and disabling the mouse from moving onto the others or on all 3 stretched Finally as a side note; I am aware of the Matrox triple (and dual) head splitter but even the price they go for on eBay is more than I can afford atm, my argument: I shouldn't have to buy extra hardware to get something to work on Linux when it's something that's existed in the windows world for a long time (can you tell I don't get on with X :-p); If I had the cash I'd have bought the latest version of this box already (the new version finally supports large resolutions as the displays I have 1680x1050 each).

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  • Sycronizing/deploying scripts across several systems

    - by otto
    I have a few time consuming tasks that I like to spread across several computers. These tasks require running an identical ruby or python script (or series of scripts that call each other) on each machine. The machines will a separate config file telling the script what portion of the task to complete. I want to figure out the best way to syncronize the scripts on these machines prior to running them. Up until now, I have been making changes to a copy of the script on a network share and then copying a fresh copy to each machine when I want to run it. But this is cumbersome and leaves a chance for error ( e.g missing a file on the copy or not clicking "copy and replace"). Lets assume the systems are standard windows machines that are not dedicated to this task and I don't need to run these scripts all the time (so I don't want a solution that runs 24/7 and always keeps them up to date, I'd prefer something that pushes/pulls on command). My thoughts on various options: Simple adaptation of my current workflow: Keep the originals on the network drive, but write a batch file that copies over the latest version of the scripts so everything is a one-click operation. Requires action on each system, but that's not the end of the world (since each one usually needs their configuration file changed slightly too). Put everything in a Mercurial/Git reposotory and pull a fresh copy onto each node. Going straight to the repo from each machine would guarantee a current version (and would have the fringe benefit of allowing edits to the script to be made from any machine). Cons would be that it requires VCS to be installed on each machine and there might be some pains dealing with authentication since I wouldn't use a public repo. Open up write access on a shared folder and write a script to use rsync (or similar) to push the changes out to all of the machines at once. This gets a current version on every machine (though you would have to change the script if you want to omit a machine or add a new one). Possible issue would be that each computer has to allow write access. Dropbox is a reasonable suggestion (and could work well) but I dont want to use an external service and I'd prefer not to have to have dropbox running 24/7 on systems that would normally not need it. Is there something simple that I am missing? Some tool designed expressly for doing this kind of thing? Otherwise I am leaning toward just tying all of the systems into Mercurial since, while it requires extra software, it is a little more robust than writing a batch file (e.g. if I split part of a script into a separate module, Mercurial will know what to do whereas I would have to add a line to the batch file).

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  • If Nvidia Shield can stream a game via wifi, why can I not do the same via ethernet to any other PC?

    - by Enigma
    I think it absurd that a wireless game streaming solution is the *first to hit the market when a 1000mbps+ Ethernet connection would accomplish the same feat with roughly 6x the available bandwidth. I can only assume that there must be some reason behind this or a limitation preventing this, but what? 150mbps wifi is in no way superior to a 1000mbps LAN connection aside from well wireless mobility. Not only that but I have a secondary laptop and desktop which should by hardware comparison completely outperform anything the Tegra in the Nvidia Shield can do. Is this all just a marketing scheme to force people to buy the shield for the streaming benefit? Chief among these is that NVIDIA’s Shield handheld game console will be getting a microconsole-like mode, dubbed “Shield Console Mode”, that will allow the handheld to be converted into a more traditional TV-connected console. In console mode Shield can be controlled with a Bluetooth controller, and in accordance with the higher resolution of TVs will accept 1080p game streaming from a suitably equipped PC, versus 720p in handheld mode. With that said 1080p streaming will require additional bandwidth, and while 720p can be done over WiFi NVIDIA will be requiring a hardline GigE connection for 1080p streaming (note that Shield doesn’t have Ethernet, so this is presumably being done over USB). Streaming aside, in console mode Shield will also support its traditional local gaming/application functionality. - http://www.anandtech.com/show/7435/nvidia-consolidates-game-streaming-tech-under-gamestream-brand-announces-shield-console-mode ^ This is not acceptable for me for a number of reasons not to mention the ridiculousness of having a little screen+controller unit sitting there while using a secondary controller and screen instead. That kind of redundant absurdity exemplifies how wrong of a solution that is. They need a second product for this solution without the screen or controller for it to make sense... at which point your just buying a little computer that does what most other larger computers do better. All that is required, by my understanding, is the ability to decode H.264 video compression and transmit control/feedback so by any logical comparison, one (Nvidia especially) should have no difficulty in creating an application for PC's (win32/64 environment) that does the exact same thing their android app does. I have 2 video cards capable of streaming (encoding) H.264 so by right they must be capable of decoding it I would think. I haven't found anything stating plans to allow non-shield owners to do this. Can a third party create this software or does it hinge on some limitation that only Nvidia can overcome? (*) - perhaps this isn't the first but afaik it is the first complete package.

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  • Aggregate SharePoint Event/Items into your Calendar view using Calendar Overlay

    - by eJugnoo
    One of the most common features I have seen in common use for SharePoint (prior to 2010) in Intranet environments for Team site is Calendar’s. Not only the Calendar list type, but also the ability to add a Calendar view to any list that has the desired columns to construct a Calendar – such as Start, End, Title etc. While this was all great for a single site/calendar, the problem of having to track numerous calendar’s remained. With introduction of Outlook 2007 bi-directional integration with SharePoint, and particularly the ability of Outlook to overlay calendar helped bridge the gap. Now one could connect to number of team sites, and setup Calendar overlays in Outlook using varying colours, to easily identify event source and yet benefit from the plotting of events on single Calendar view. This was all good, but each user in your Enterprise was supposed to setup in a “pull” fashion. This is good for flexibility, not so good when you need to “push” consistency and productivity (re-use). So, what was missing on SharePoint is the ability to have server-side overlay’s that everyone can see – in a single place, aggregating multiple sources. Until SharePoint 2010 arrived! Calendars Overlay in SharePoint 2010 There are Calendar lists and Calendar views. View can be created for almost all lists, as far as you have desired column’s in a list like Start, End, Title etc. to be able to describe and plot an item in a Calendar format. In SharePoint 2010, create a new Calendar list. Go to Calendar ribbon tab, and click Calendar Overlay. You get the screen with list of existing Overlay’s associated with current Calendar (list – in our case). Click on “New Calendar”… Notice the breadcrumb! You are adding Overlay to existing list (Team Calendar – in our case). You have choice of “pulling” Calendar info from an existing Calendar (list/view) in SharePoint or even from Exchange! Set standard info like a name, description and decide the colour you want for the items in aggregated Calendar overlay. Select the source site/list/view, anywhere in farm. When you select Exchange as source of Calendar, you get option to add OWA and Exchange Web Service url. I will cover details of connecting with Exchange in another post, and focus on Overlay’s with SharePoint for this one. Once you have added a new Calendar overlay to existing Calendar veiw, you get something like below for Day view, Week view, and Month view respectively Notice the Overlay colours: Now, if you decide to connect this Calendar to Outlook to sync the items, it will only sync items from main view, and not from Overlay source. So such Overlay of calendar’s is server-side aggregation only. That increases my curiosity, so I try adding the Calendar list view as a web-part on a new page. As you see, this instance of view didn’t include item from source that we had added to default Calendar view. This is – probably – due to the fact that this is a new web-part view for the page. If you want to add overlay to this one, you have to redo that from Ribbon. This also means, subject to purpose and context you get the flexibility to decide what overlay is suited. Also you can only add 10 Overlay’s to an existing view instance. Conclusion Calendar Overlay is clearly a very useful feature that fills a gap of not being able to aggregate information from multiple sources into a Calendar view within context of current items. Source of items can be existing SharePoint calendar views on any site, or even Exchange (via OWA/Exchange web services). List type for source doesn’t matter, it just need a Calendar view type available. You can have 10 overlays. Overlays are for the specific view only, and are server-side only – which means they do not get synced in Outlook. While you can drag-drop current list items, you cannot edit overlay items as they are read-only within scope of current Calendar view. You can of course click on source Overlay item to edit at the source. I’d like to hear, how you think Overlay’s will help you in your case, or how you are already using them... Enjoy SharePoint! --Sharad

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  • SQL SERVER – Disable Clustered Index and Data Insert

    - by pinaldave
    Earlier today I received following email. “Dear Pinal, [Removed unrelated content] We looked at your script and found out that in your script of disabling indexes, you have only included non-clustered index during the bulk insert and missed to disabled all the clustered index. Our DBA[name removed] has changed your script a bit and included all the clustered indexes. Since our application is not working. When DBA [name removed] tried to enable clustered indexes again he is facing error incorrect syntax error. We are in deep problem [word replaced] [Removed Identity of organization and few unrelated stuff ]“ I have replied to my client and helped them fixed the problem. What really came to my attention is the concept of disabling clustered index. Let us try to learn a lesson from this experience. In this case, there was no need to disable clustered index at all. I had done necessary work when I was called in to work on tuning project. I had removed unused indexes, created few optimal indexes and wrote a script to disable few selected high cost indexes when bulk insert (and similar) operations are performed. There was another script which rebuild all the indexes as well. The solution worked till they included clustered index in disabling the script. Clustered indexes are in fact original table (or heap) physically ordered (any more things – not scope of this article) according to one or more keys(columns). When clustered index is disabled data rows of the disabled clustered index cannot be accessed. This means there will be no insert possible. When non clustered indexes are disabled all the data related to physically deleted but the definition of the index is kept in the system. Due to the same reason even reorganization of the index is not possible till the clustered index (which was disabled) is rebuild. Now let us come to the second part of the question, regarding receiving the error when clustered index is ‘enabled’. This is very common question I receive on the blog. (The following statement is written keeping the syntax of T-SQL in mind) Clustered indexes can be disabled but can not be enabled, they have to rebuild. It is intuitive to think that something which we have ‘disabled’ can be ‘enabled’ but the syntax for the same is ‘rebuild’. This issue has been explained here: SQL SERVER – How to Enable Index – How to Disable Index – Incorrect syntax near ‘ENABLE’. Let us go over this example where inserting the data is not possible when clustered index is disabled. USE AdventureWorks GO -- Create Table CREATE TABLE [dbo].[TableName]( [ID] [int] NOT NULL, [FirstCol] [varchar](50) NULL, CONSTRAINT [PK_TableName] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([ID] ASC) ) GO -- Create Nonclustered Index CREATE UNIQUE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [IX_NonClustered_TableName] ON [dbo].[TableName] ([FirstCol] ASC) GO -- Populate Table INSERT INTO [dbo].[TableName] SELECT 1, 'First' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'Second' UNION ALL SELECT 3, 'Third' GO -- Disable Nonclustered Index ALTER INDEX [IX_NonClustered_TableName] ON [dbo].[TableName] DISABLE GO -- Insert Data should work fine INSERT INTO [dbo].[TableName] SELECT 4, 'Fourth' UNION ALL SELECT 5, 'Fifth' GO -- Disable Clustered Index ALTER INDEX [PK_TableName] ON [dbo].[TableName] DISABLE GO -- Insert Data will fail INSERT INTO [dbo].[TableName] SELECT 6, 'Sixth' UNION ALL SELECT 7, 'Seventh' GO /* Error: Msg 8655, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 The query processor is unable to produce a plan because the index 'PK_TableName' on table or view 'TableName' is disabled. */ -- Reorganizing Index will also throw an error ALTER INDEX [PK_TableName] ON [dbo].[TableName] REORGANIZE GO /* Error: Msg 1973, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Cannot perform the specified operation on disabled index 'PK_TableName' on table 'dbo.TableName'. */ -- Rebuliding should work fine ALTER INDEX [PK_TableName] ON [dbo].[TableName] REBUILD GO -- Insert Data should work fine INSERT INTO [dbo].[TableName] SELECT 6, 'Sixth' UNION ALL SELECT 7, 'Seventh' GO -- Clean Up DROP TABLE [dbo].[TableName] GO I hope this example is clear enough. There were few additional posts I had written years ago, I am listing them here. SQL SERVER – Enable and Disable Index Non Clustered Indexes Using T-SQL SQL SERVER – Enabling Clustered and Non-Clustered Indexes – Interesting Fact Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Constraint and Keys, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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