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  • Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: Box

    Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: Box We interviewed Box at the Google I/O Sandbox on May 11, 2011. They explained to us the benefits of integrating with the Chrome OS system. Box offers cloud-based content management for businesses and they recently unveiled a streamlined content upload process on the Chrome OS. For more information about developing on Chrome, visit: code.google.com For more information on Box, visit: www.box.net From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 20 0 ratings Time: 01:47 More in Science & Technology

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  • How to Choose an Ideal Laptop Case

    "The offer of laptops is enormous but the competition is even harder when it comes to laptop carrying cases. A laptop case is a virtually a must to protect the computer and priceless information it c... [Author: Jeremy Mezzi - Computers and Internet - May 29, 2010]

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  • Outsource SEO - A Strong Business Case

    Outsourcing became quite popular in the 1990's as companies raced to reduce costs by moving non-essential functions out of the corporate cost structure. One of the main methods for doing this was to outsource. The basic business case to move any function to a subcontract was quite simple. Subcontractors that focus only on one thing have probably developed a deeper technical understanding of the process and are more effective. Economies of scale allow the outsourcer to provide the same (or higher quality) service at a lower price.

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  • Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: DayZipping

    Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: DayZipping We interviewed DayZipping at the Google I/O Sandbox on May 10, 2011. They explained to us the benefits of integrating with Google Maps. DayZipping is a website where users can find and share day trips for a variety of popular destinations. For more information about developing on Google Maps, visit: code.google.com For more information on DayZipping, visit: www.dayzipping.com From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 33 0 ratings Time: 02:09 More in Science & Technology

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  • Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: GoAnimate

    Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: GoAnimate We interviewed GoAnimate at the Google I/O Sandbox on May 10, 2011 and they explained to us the benefits of using partnering with YouTube. GoAnimate is an video creation platform that lets users easily create animated videos and publish them on YouTube. For more information on developing on YouTube, visit: code.google.com For more information on GoAnimate, visit: goanimate.com From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 33 0 ratings Time: 02:17 More in Science & Technology

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  • Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: Evite

    Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: Evite We interviewed Evite at the Google I/O Sandbox on May 10, 2011 and they explained to us the benefits of using App Engine to build their website. Evite is the world's largest online personal invitations platform, allowing users to create customized invitations for any type of gathering. For more information on App Engine Developers, visit: code.google.com For more information on Evite, visit: www.evite.com From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 29 0 ratings Time: 01:51 More in Science & Technology

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  • Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: VectorUnit

    Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: VectorUnit We interviewed VectorUnit at the Google I/O Sandbox on May 11, 2011 and they explained to us the benefits of building for the Android Platform. VectorUnit creates console-quality video games for the Android. For more information on Android developers, visit: developers.android.com For more information on VectorUnit, visit vectorunit.com From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 13 0 ratings Time: 01:33 More in Science & Technology

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  • Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: Assistly

    Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: Assistly We interviewed Assistly at the Google I/O Sandbox on May 11, 2011. They explained to us the benefits of building on Google Apps. Assistly is a customer management system that helps companies deliver top-quality customer service. For more information about developing with Google Apps, visit: code.google.com For more information on Assistly, visit: www.assistly.com From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 21 0 ratings Time: 01:29 More in Science & Technology

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  • Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: CloudSherpas

    Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: CloudSherpas We interviewed CloudSherpas at the Google I/O Sandbox on May 10, 2011. They explained to us the benefits of integrating with Google Apps. CloudSherpas helps companies migrate to Google Apps and offers SherpaTools as an additional contact management solution for companies' administrators. For more information about developing with Google Apps, visit: code.google.com For more information on CloudSherpas, visit: www.cloudsherpas.com From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 406 13 ratings Time: 02:29 More in Science & Technology

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  • Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: MOVL

    Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: MOVL We interviewed MOVL at the Google I/O Sandbox on May 10, 2011 and they explained to us the benefits of developing on the Google TV Platform. MOVL develops gaming applications that people can play on their Google TV's, using their mobile phones as the controllers. For more information on developing on Google TV, visit: code.google.com For more information on MOVL, visit: movl.com From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 19 0 ratings Time: 02:03 More in Science & Technology

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  • Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: MobileASL

    Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: MobileASL We interviewed MobileASL at the Google I/O Sandbox on May 11, 2011 and they explained to us the benefits of developing their accessibility applications on the Android platform. MobileASL is a video compression project that aims to make sign language communication on mobile phones a reality. For more information on Accessibility Developers, visit: google.com For more information on MobileASL, visit: mobileasl.cs.washington.edu From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 14 0 ratings Time: 01:57 More in Science & Technology

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  • Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: Storify

    Google I/O Sandbox Case Study: Storify We interviewed Storify in the Google I/O Sandbox on May 10th, 2011 and they explained to us the benefits of integrating their product with YouTube. Storify is a platform that enables users to build stories from the news that gets published on social media and on YouTube. To learn more about YouTube Developers, visit: code.google.com To learn more about Storify, visit: www.storify.com From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 326 15 ratings Time: 01:59 More in Science & Technology

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  • Outsource SEO - A Strong Business Case

    Outsourcing became quite popular in the 1990's as companies raced to reduce costs by moving non-essential functions out of the corporate cost structure. One of the main methods for doing this was to outsource. The basic business case to move any function to a subcontract was quite simple. Subcontractors that focus only on one thing have probably developed a deeper technical understanding of the process and are more effective. Economies of scale allow the outsourcer to provide the same (or higher quality) service at a lower price.

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  • Is there a more efficient way to run enum values through a switch-case statement in C# than this?

    - by C Patton
    I was wondering if there was a more efficient (efficient as in simpler/cleaner code) way of making a case statement like the one below... I have a dictionary. Its key type is an Enum and its value type is a bool. If the boolean is true, I want to change the color of a label on a form. The variable names were changed for the example. Dictionary<String, CustomType> testDict = new Dictionary<String, CustomType>(); //populate testDict here... Dictionary<MyEnum, bool> enumInfo = testDict[someString].GetEnumInfo(); //GetEnumInfo is a function that iterates through a Dictionary<String, CustomType> //and returns a Dictionary<MyEnum, bool> foreach (KeyValuePair<MyEnum, bool> kvp in enumInfo) { switch (kvp.Key) { case MyEnum.Enum1: if (someDictionary[kvp.Key] == true) { Label1.ForeColor = Color.LimeGreen; } else { Label1.ForeColor = Color.Red; } break; case MyEnum.Enum2: if (someDictionary[kvp.Key] == true) { Label2.ForeColor = Color.LimeGreen; } else { Label2.ForeColor = Color.Red; } break; } } So far, MyEnum has 8 different values.. which means I have 8 different case statements.. I know there must be an easier way to do this, I just can't conceptualize it in my head. If anyone could help, I'd greatly appreciate it. I love C# and I learn new things every day.. I absorb it like a sponge :) -CP

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  • stored procedure issue, has to do with my where clause and if statement

    - by MyHeadHurts
    right now my stored procedure is returning 2 different result sets one for @booked and the other for @booked1 if you look closely my query is doing the same thing for each @booked and @booked but one is for a user selected year and the other for the current year. I don't want two different result sets, i want to join the selected year and the current year side by side by SDESCR(which is a column that they have in common) another hurdle i am facing is i am use @mode to decide whether the user wants netsales, sales... so on. I know i need sometype of join but, it isnt working because i have a where statement that says where dyyyy= @yeartoget which won't allow the current year data to work ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[test1] @mode varchar(20), @YearToGet int AS SET NOCOUNT ON Declare @Booked Int Set @Booked = CONVERT(int,DateAdd(year, @YearToGet - Year(getdate() + 1), DateAdd(day, DateDiff(day, 1, getdate()), 1) ) ) Declare @Booked1 Int Set @Booked1 = CONVERT(int,DateAdd(year, (year( getdate() )) - Year(getdate() + 1), DateAdd(day, DateDiff(day, 1, getdate()), 1) ) ) If @mode = 'Sales' Select Division, SDESCR, DYYYY, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked Then NetAmount End) ASofNetSales, SUM(NetAmount) AS YENetSales, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked Then PARTY End) AS ASofPAX, SUM(PARTY) AS YEPAX From dbo.B101BookingsDetails Where DYYYY = @YearToGet Group By SDESCR, DYYYY, Division Order By Division, SDESCR, DYYYY else if @mode = 'netsales' Select Division, SDESCR, DYYYY, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked Then NetAmount End) ASofNetSales, SUM(NetAmount) AS YENetSales, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked Then PARTY End) AS ASofPAX, SUM(PARTY) AS YEPAX From dbo.B101BookingsDetails Where DYYYY = @YearToGet Group By SDESCR, DYYYY, Division Order By Division, SDESCR, DYYYY If @mode = 'Sales' Select Division, SDESCR, DYYYY, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked1 Then NetAmount End) currentNetSales, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked1 Then PARTY End) AS currentPAX From dbo.B101BookingsDetails Where DYYYY = (year( getdate() )) Group By SDESCR, DYYYY, Division Order By Division, SDESCR, DYYYY else if @mode = 'netsales' Select Division, SDESCR, DYYYY, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked1 Then NetAmount End) currentNetSales, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked1 Then PARTY End) AS currentPAX From dbo.B101BookingsDetails Where DYYYY = (year( getdate() )) Group By SDESCR, DYYYY, Division Order By Division, SDESCR, DYYYY Else if @mode = 'Inssales' Select Division, SDESCR, DYYYY, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked1 Then InsAmount End) currentInsSales, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked1 Then PARTY End) AS currentPAX From dbo.B101BookingsDetails Where DYYYY = (year( getdate() )) Group By SDESCR, DYYYY, Division Order By Division, SDESCR, DYYYY

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  • Lucene case sensitive & insensitive search

    - by zvikico
    I have a Lucene index which is currently case sensitive. I want to add the option of having a case insensitive search as a fall-back. This means that results that match the case will get more weight and will appear first. For example, if the number of results is limited to 10, and there are 10 matches which match my case, this is enough. If I only found 7 results, I can add 3 more results from the case-insensitive search. My case is actually more complex, since I have items with different weights. Ideally, having a match with "wrong" case will add some weight. Needless to say, I do not want duplicate results. One possible approach is to have 2 indexes. One with case and one without and search both. Naturally, there's some redundancy here, since I need to index twice. Is there a better solution? Ideas?

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  • Making a Case For The Command Line

    - by Jesse Taber
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2013/06/30/making-a-case-for-the-command-line.aspxI have had an idea percolating in the back of my mind for over a year now that I’ve just recently started to implement. This idea relates to building out “internal tools” to ease the maintenance and on-going support of a software system. The system that I currently work on is (mostly) web-based, so we traditionally we have built these internal tools in the form of pages within the app that are only accessible by our developers and support personnel. These pages allow us to perform tasks within the system that, for one reason or another, we don’t want to let our end users perform (e.g. mass create/update/delete operations on data, flipping switches that turn paid modules of the system on or off, etc). When we try to build new tools like this we often struggle with the level of effort required to build them. Effort Required Creating a whole new page in an existing web application can be a fairly large undertaking. You need to create the page and ensure it will have a layout that is consistent with the other pages in the app. You need to decide what types of input controls need to go onto the page. You need to ensure that everything uses the same style as the rest of the site. You need to figure out what the text on the page should say. Then, when you figure out that you forgot about an input that should really be present you might have to go back and re-work the entire thing. Oh, and in addition to all of that, you still have to, you know, write the code that actually performs the task. Everything other than the code that performs the task at hand is just overhead. We don’t need a fancy date picker control in a nicely styled page for the vast majority of our internal tools. We don’t even really need a page, for that matter. We just need a way to issue a command to the application and have it, in turn, execute the code that we’ve written to accomplish a given task. All we really need is a simple console application! Plumbing Problems A former co-worker of mine, John Sonmez, always advocated the Unix philosophy for building internal tools: start with something that runs at the command line, and then build a UI on top of that if you need to. John’s idea has a lot of merit, and we tried building out some internal tools as simple Console applications. Unfortunately, this was often easier said that done. Doing a “File –> New Project” to build out a tool for a mature system can be pretty daunting because that new project is totally empty.  In our case, the web application code had a lot of of “plumbing” built in: it managed authentication and authorization, it handled database connection management for our multi-tenanted architecture, it managed all of the context that needs to follow a user around the application such as their timezone and regional/language settings. In addition, the configuration file for the web application  (a web.config in our case because this is an ASP .NET application) is large and would need to be reproduced into a similar configuration file for a Console application. While most of these problems are could be solved pretty easily with some refactoring of the codebase, building Console applications for internal tools still potentially suffers from one pretty big drawback: you’d have to execute them on a machine with network access to all of the needed resources. Obviously, our web servers can easily communicate the the database servers and can publish messages to our service bus, but the same is not true for all of our developer and support personnel workstations. We could have everyone run these tools remotely via RDP or SSH, but that’s a bit cumbersome and certainly a lot less convenient than having the tools built into the web application that is so easily accessible. Mix and Match So we need a way to build tools that are easily accessible via the web application but also don’t require the overhead of creating a user interface. This is where my idea comes into play: why not just build a command line interface into the web application? If it’s part of the web application we get all of the plumbing that comes along with that code, and we’re executing everything on the web servers which means we’ll have access to any external resources that we might need. Rather than having to incur the overhead of creating a brand new page for each tool that we want to build, we can create one new page that simply accepts a command in text form and executes it as a request on the web server. In this way, we can focus on writing the code to accomplish the task. If the tool ends up being heavily used, then (and only then) should we consider spending the time to build a better user experience around it. To be clear, I’m not trying to downplay the importance of building great user experiences into your system; we should all strive to provide the best UX possible to our end users. I’m only advocating this sort of bare-bones interface for internal consumption by the technical staff that builds and supports the software. This command line interface should be the “back end” to a highly polished and eye-pleasing public face. Implementation As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this is an idea that I’ve had for awhile but have only recently started building out. I’ve outlined some general guidelines and design goals for this effort as follows: Text in, text out: In the interest of keeping things as simple as possible, I want this interface to be purely text-based. Users will submit commands as plain text, and the application will provide responses in plain text. Obviously this text will be “wrapped” within the context of HTTP requests and responses, but I don’t want to have to think about HTML or CSS when taking input from the user or displaying responses back to the user. Task-oriented code only: After building the initial “harness” for this interface, the only code that should need to be written to create a new internal tool should be code that is expressly needed to accomplish the task that the tool is intended to support. If we want to encourage and enable ourselves to build good tooling, we need to lower the barriers to entry as much as possible. Built-in documentation: One of the great things about most command line utilities is the ‘help’ switch that provides usage guidelines and details about the arguments that the utility accepts. Our web-based command line utility should allow us to build the documentation for these tools directly into the code of the tools themselves. I finally started trying to implement this idea when I heard about a fantastic open-source library called CLAP (Command Line Auto Parser) that lets me meet the guidelines outlined above. CLAP lets you define classes with public methods that can be easily invoked from the command line. Here’s a quick example of the code that would be needed to create a new tool to do something within your system: 1: public class CustomerTools 2: { 3: [Verb] 4: public void UpdateName(int customerId, string firstName, string lastName) 5: { 6: //invoke internal services/domain objects/hwatever to perform update 7: } 8: } This is just a regular class with a single public method (though you could have as many methods as you want). The method is decorated with the ‘Verb’ attribute that tells the CLAP library that it is a method that can be invoked from the command line. Here is how you would invoke that code: Parser.Run(args, new CustomerTools()); Note that ‘args’ is just a string[] that would normally be passed passed in from the static Main method of a Console application. Also, CLAP allows you to pass in multiple classes that define [Verb] methods so you can opt to organize the code that CLAP will invoke in any way that you like. You can invoke this code from a command line application like this: SomeExe UpdateName -customerId:123 -firstName:Jesse -lastName:Taber ‘SomeExe’ in this example just represents the name of .exe that is would be created from our Console application. CLAP then interprets the arguments passed in order to find the method that should be invoked and automatically parses out the parameters that need to be passed in. After a quick spike, I’ve found that invoking the ‘Parser’ class can be done from within the context of a web application just as easily as it can from within the ‘Main’ method entry point of a Console application. There are, however, a few sticking points that I’m working around: Splitting arguments into the ‘args’ array like the command line: When you invoke a standard .NET console application you get the arguments that were passed in by the user split into a handy array (this is the ‘args’ parameter referenced above). Generally speaking they get split by whitespace, but it’s also clever enough to handle things like ignoring whitespace in a phrase that is surrounded by quotes. We’ll need to re-create this logic within our web application so that we can give the ‘args’ value to CLAP just like a console application would. Providing a response to the user: If you were writing a console application, you might just use Console.WriteLine to provide responses to the user as to the progress and eventual outcome of the command. We can’t use Console.WriteLine within a web application, so I’ll need to find another way to provide feedback to the user. Preferably this approach would allow me to use the same handler classes from both a Console application and a web application, so some kind of strategy pattern will likely emerge from this effort. Submitting files: Often an internal tool needs to support doing some kind of operation in bulk, and the easiest way to submit the data needed to support the bulk operation is in a file. Getting the file uploaded and available to the CLAP handler classes will take a little bit of effort. Mimicking the console experience: This isn’t really a requirement so much as a “nice to have”. To start out, the command-line interface in the web application will probably be a single ‘textarea’ control with a button to submit the contents to a handler that will pass it along to CLAP to be parsed and run. I think it would be interesting to use some javascript and CSS trickery to change that page into something with more of a “shell” interface look and feel. I’ll be blogging more about this effort in the future and will include some code snippets (or maybe even a full blown example app) as I progress. I also think that I’ll probably end up either submitting some pull requests to the CLAP project or possibly forking/wrapping it into a more web-friendly package and open sourcing that.

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  • Behavior of local variables in JavaScripts with()-statement

    - by thr
    I noticed some weird (and to my knowledge undefined behavior, by the ECMA 3.0 Spec at least), take the following snippet: var foo = { bar: "1", baz: "2" }; alert(bar); with(foo) { alert(bar); alert(bar); } alert(bar); It crashes in both Firefox and Chrome, because "bar" doesn't exist in the first alert(); statement, this is as expected. But if you add a declaration of bar inside the with()-statement, so it looks like this: var foo = { bar: "1", baz: "2" }; alert(bar); with(foo) { alert(bar); var bar = "g2"; alert(bar); } alert(bar); It will produce the following: undefined, 1, g2, undefined It seems as if you create a variable inside a with()-statement most browsers (tested on Chrome or Firefox) will make that variable exist outside that scope also, it's just set to undefined. Now from my perspective bar should only exist inside the with()-statement, and if you make the example even weirder: var foo = { bar: "1", baz: "2" }; var zoo; alert(bar); with(foo) { alert(bar); var bar = "g2"; zoo = function() { return bar; } alert(bar); } alert(bar); alert(zoo()); It will produce this: undefined, 1, g2, undefined, g2 So the bar inside the with()-statement does not exist outside of it, yet the runtime somehow "automagically" creates a variable named bar that is undefined in its top level scope (global or function) but this variable does not refer to the same one as inside the with()-statement, and that variable will only exist if a with()-statement has a variable named bar that is defined inside it. Very weird, and inconsistent. Anyone have an explanation for this behavior? There is nothing in the ECMA Spec about this.

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  • Super-silent (mid tower) case and fan combo

    - by Dennis G.
    I want to build a HTPC for music/video/blu-ray playback (no gaming). I don't need an expensive HTPC case but just want to go with a standard medium tower case. However, I want it to be super silent so it doesn't make any annoying fan/disk noises when I watch movies. Ideally, it shouldn't make any noticeable noise at all. I understand that choosing a board, CPU and graphic card that run cool and don't consume a lot of power is important for designing a quiet machine, and I think I got that covered. However, there are so many choices in regards to cases, fans and power supplies that it's hard to get started. What are your recommendations for a case/fan (cpu+case)/power supply combination that run absolutely silent and can cool a standard Intel system with a low-power (possibly passively cooled) graphic card? I'm usually a fan of Antec cases, would an Antec Mini P180 be a good starting point? If so, which case fans, CPU fan and power supply would you recommend?

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  • Windows Azure Use Case: Web Applications

    - by BuckWoody
    This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx  Description: Many applications have a requirement to be located outside of the organization’s internal infrastructure control. For instance, the company website for a brick-and-mortar retail company may want to post not only static but interactive content to be available to their external customers, and not want the customers to have access inside the organization’s firewall. There are also cases of pure web applications used for a great many of the internal functions of the business. This allows for remote workers, shared customer/employee workloads and data and other advantages. Some firms choose to host these web servers internally, others choose to contract out the infrastructure to an “ASP” (Application Service Provider) or an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) company. In any case, the design of these applications often resembles the following: In this design, a server (or perhaps more than one) hosts the presentation function (http or https) access to the application, and this same system may hold the computational aspects of the program. Authorization and Access is controlled programmatically, or is more open if this is a customer-facing application. Storage is either placed on the same or other servers, hosted within an RDBMS or NoSQL database, or a combination of the options, all coded into the application. High-Availability within this scenario is often the responsibility of the architects of the application, and by purchasing more hosting resources which must be built, licensed and configured, and manually added as demand requires, although some IaaS providers have a partially automatic method to add nodes for scale-out, if the architecture of the application supports it. Disaster Recovery is the responsibility of the system architect as well. Implementation: In a Windows Azure Platform as a Service (PaaS) environment, many of these architectural considerations are designed into the system. The Azure “Fabric” (not to be confused with the Azure implementation of Application Fabric - more on that in a moment) is designed to provide scalability. Compute resources can be added and removed programmatically based on any number of factors. Balancers at the request-level of the Fabric automatically route http and https requests. The fabric also provides High-Availability for storage and other components. Disaster recovery is a shared responsibility between the facilities (which have the ability to restore in case of catastrophic failure) and your code, which should build in recovery. In a Windows Azure-based web application, you have the ability to separate out the various functions and components. Presentation can be coded for multiple platforms like smart phones, tablets and PC’s, while the computation can be a single entity shared between them. This makes the applications more resilient and more object-oriented, and lends itself to a SOA or Distributed Computing architecture. It is true that you could code up a similar set of functionality in a traditional web-farm, but the difference here is that the components are built into the very design of the architecture. The API’s and DLL’s you call in a Windows Azure code base contains components as first-class citizens. For instance, if you need storage, it is simply called within the application as an object.  Computation has multiple options and the ability to scale linearly. You also gain another component that you would either have to write or bolt-in to a typical web-farm: the Application Fabric. This Windows Azure component provides communication between applications or even to on-premise systems. It provides authorization in either person-based or claims-based perspectives. SQL Azure provides relational storage as another option, and can also be used or accessed from on-premise systems. It should be noted that you can use all or some of these components individually. Resources: Design Strategies for Scalable Active Server Applications - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972349.aspx  Physical Tiers and Deployment  - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee658120.aspx

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  • Columnstore Case Study #1: MSIT SONAR Aggregations

    - by aspiringgeek
    Preamble This is the first in a series of posts documenting big wins encountered using columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 & 2014.  Many of these can be found in this deck along with details such as internals, best practices, caveats, etc.  The purpose of sharing the case studies in this context is to provide an easy-to-consume quick-reference alternative. Why Columnstore? If we’re looking for a subset of columns from one or a few rows, given the right indexes, SQL Server can do a superlative job of providing an answer. If we’re asking a question which by design needs to hit lots of rows—DW, reporting, aggregations, grouping, scans, etc., SQL Server has never had a good mechanism—until columnstore. Columnstore indexes were introduced in SQL Server 2012. However, they're still largely unknown. Some adoption blockers existed; yet columnstore was nonetheless a game changer for many apps.  In SQL Server 2014, potential blockers have been largely removed & they're going to profoundly change the way we interact with our data.  The purpose of this series is to share the performance benefits of columnstore & documenting columnstore is a compelling reason to upgrade to SQL Server 2014. App: MSIT SONAR Aggregations At MSIT, performance & configuration data is captured by SCOM. We archive much of the data in a partitioned data warehouse table in SQL Server 2012 for reporting via an application called SONAR.  By definition, this is a primary use case for columnstore—report queries requiring aggregation over large numbers of rows.  New data is refreshed each night by an automated table partitioning mechanism—a best practices scenario for columnstore. The Win Compared to performance using classic indexing which resulted in the expected query plan selection including partition elimination vs. SQL Server 2012 nonclustered columnstore, query performance increased significantly.  Logical reads were reduced by over a factor of 50; both CPU & duration improved by factors of 20 or more.  Other than creating the columnstore index, no special modifications or tweaks to the app or databases schema were necessary to achieve the performance improvements.  Existing nonclustered indexes were rendered superfluous & were deleted, thus mitigating maintenance challenges such as defragging as well as conserving disk capacity. Details The table provides the raw data & summarizes the performance deltas. Logical Reads (8K pages) CPU (ms) Durn (ms) Columnstore 160,323 20,360 9,786 Conventional Table & Indexes 9,053,423 549,608 193,903 ? x56 x27 x20 The charts provide additional perspective of this data.  "Conventional vs. Columnstore Metrics" document the raw data.  Note on this linear display the magnitude of the conventional index performance vs. columnstore.  The “Metrics (?)” chart expresses these values as a ratio. Summary For DW, reports, & other BI workloads, columnstore often provides significant performance enhancements relative to conventional indexing.  I have documented here, the first in a series of reports on columnstore implementations, results from an initial implementation at MSIT in which logical reads were reduced by over a factor of 50; both CPU & duration improved by factors of 20 or more.  Subsequent features in this series document performance enhancements that are even more significant. 

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  • How the SPARC T4 Processor Optimizes Throughput Capacity: A Case Study

    - by Ruud
    This white paper demonstrates the architected latency hiding features of Oracle’s UltraSPARC T2+ and SPARC T4 processors That is the first sentence from this technical white paper, but what does it exactly mean? Let's consider a very simple example, the computation of a = b + c. This boils down to the following (pseudo-assembler) instructions that need to be executed: load @b, r1 load @c, r2 add r1,r2,r3 store r3, @a The first two instructions load variables b and c from an address in memory (here symbolized by @b and @c respectively). These values go into registers r1 and r2. The third instruction adds the values in r1 and r2. The result goes into register r3. The fourth instruction stores the contents of r3 into the memory address symbolized by @a. If we're lucky, both b and c are in a nearby cache and the load instructions only take a few processor cycles to execute. That is the good case, but what if b or c, or both, have to come from very far away? Perhaps both of them are in the main memory and then it easily takes hundreds of cycles for the values to arrive in the registers. Meanwhile the processor is doing nothing and simply waits for the data to arrive. Actually, it does something. It burns cycles while waiting. That is a waste of time and energy. Why not use these cycles to execute instructions from another application or thread in case of a parallel program? That is exactly what latency hiding on the SPARC T-Series processors does. It is a hardware feature totally transparent to the user and application. As soon as there is a delay in the execution, the hardware uses these otherwise idle cycles to execute instructions from another process. As a result, the throughput capacity of the system improves because idle cycles are no longer wasted and therefore more jobs can be run per unit of time. This feature has been in the SPARC T-series from the beginning, so why this paper? The difference with previous publications on this topic is in the amount of detail given. How this all works under the hood is fully explained using two example programs. Starting from the assembly language instructions, it is demonstrated in what way these programs execute. To really see what is happening we go down to the processor pipeline level, where the gaps in the execution are, and show in what way these idle cycles are filled by other copies of the same program running simultaneously. Both the SPARC T4 as well as the older UltraSPARC T2+ processor are covered. You may wonder why the UltraSPARC T2+ is included. The focus of this work is on the SPARC T4 processor, but to explain the basic concept of latency hiding at this very low level, we start with the UltraSPARC T2+ processor because it is architecturally a much simpler design. From the single issue, in-order pipelines of this processor we then shift gears and cover how this all works on the much more advanced dual issue, out-of-order architecture of the T4. The analysis and performance experiments have been conducted on both processors. The results depend on the processor, but in all cases the theoretical estimates are confirmed by the experiments. If you're interested to read a lot more about this and find out how things really work under the hood, you can download a copy of the paper here. A paper like this could not have been produced without the help of several other people. I want to thank the co-author of this paper, Jared Smolens, for his very valuable contributions and our highly inspiring discussions. I'm also indebted to Thomas Nau (Ulm University, Germany), Shane Sigler and Mark Woodyard (both at Oracle) for their feedback on earlier versions of this paper. Karen Perkins (Perkins Technical Writing and Editing) and Rick Ramsey at Oracle were very helpful in providing editorial and publishing assistance.

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  • Columnstore Case Study #1: MSIT SONAR Aggregations

    - by aspiringgeek
    Preamble This is the first in a series of posts documenting big wins encountered using columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 & 2014.  Many of these can be found in this deck along with details such as internals, best practices, caveats, etc.  The purpose of sharing the case studies in this context is to provide an easy-to-consume quick-reference alternative. Why Columnstore? If we’re looking for a subset of columns from one or a few rows, given the right indexes, SQL Server can do a superlative job of providing an answer. If we’re asking a question which by design needs to hit lots of rows—DW, reporting, aggregations, grouping, scans, etc., SQL Server has never had a good mechanism—until columnstore. Columnstore indexes were introduced in SQL Server 2012. However, they're still largely unknown. Some adoption blockers existed; yet columnstore was nonetheless a game changer for many apps.  In SQL Server 2014, potential blockers have been largely removed & they're going to profoundly change the way we interact with our data.  The purpose of this series is to share the performance benefits of columnstore & documenting columnstore is a compelling reason to upgrade to SQL Server 2014. App: MSIT SONAR Aggregations At MSIT, performance & configuration data is captured by SCOM. We archive much of the data in a partitioned data warehouse table in SQL Server 2012 for reporting via an application called SONAR.  By definition, this is a primary use case for columnstore—report queries requiring aggregation over large numbers of rows.  New data is refreshed each night by an automated table partitioning mechanism—a best practices scenario for columnstore. The Win Compared to performance using classic indexing which resulted in the expected query plan selection including partition elimination vs. SQL Server 2012 nonclustered columnstore, query performance increased significantly.  Logical reads were reduced by over a factor of 50; both CPU & duration improved by factors of 20 or more.  Other than creating the columnstore index, no special modifications or tweaks to the app or databases schema were necessary to achieve the performance improvements.  Existing nonclustered indexes were rendered superfluous & were deleted, thus mitigating maintenance challenges such as defragging as well as conserving disk capacity. Details The table provides the raw data & summarizes the performance deltas. Logical Reads (8K pages) CPU (ms) Durn (ms) Columnstore 160,323 20,360 9,786 Conventional Table & Indexes 9,053,423 549,608 193,903 ? x56 x27 x20 The charts provide additional perspective of this data.  "Conventional vs. Columnstore Metrics" document the raw data.  Note on this linear display the magnitude of the conventional index performance vs. columnstore.  The “Metrics (?)” chart expresses these values as a ratio. Summary For DW, reports, & other BI workloads, columnstore often provides significant performance enhancements relative to conventional indexing.  I have documented here, the first in a series of reports on columnstore implementations, results from an initial implementation at MSIT in which logical reads were reduced by over a factor of 50; both CPU & duration improved by factors of 20 or more.  Subsequent features in this series document performance enhancements that are even more significant. 

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  • Windows Azure Use Case: Hybrid Applications

    - by BuckWoody
    This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx  Description: Organizations see the need for computing infrastructures that they can “rent” or pay for only when they need them. They also understand the benefits of distributed computing, but do not want to create this infrastructure themselves. However, they may have considerations that prevent them from moving all of their current IT investment to a distributed environment: Private data (do not want to send or store sensitive data off-site) High dollar investment in current infrastructure Applications currently running well, but may need additional periodic capacity Current applications not designed in a stateless fashion In these situations, a “hybrid” approach works best. In fact, with Windows Azure, a hybrid approach is an optimal way to implement distributed computing even when the stipulations above do not apply. Keeping a majority of the computing function in an organization local while exploring and expanding that footprint into Windows and SQL Azure is a good migration or expansion strategy. A “hybrid” architecture merely means that part of a computing cycle is shared between two architectures. For instance, some level of computing might be done in a Windows Azure web-based application, while the data is stored locally at the organization. Implementation: There are multiple methods for implementing a hybrid architecture, in a spectrum from very little interaction from the local infrastructure to Windows or SQL Azure. The patterns fall into two broad schemas, and even these can be mixed. 1. Client-Centric Hybrid Patterns In this pattern, programs are coded such that the client system sends queries or compute requests to multiple systems. The “client” in this case might be a web-based codeset actually stored on another system (which acts as a client, the user’s device serving as the presentation layer) or a compiled program. In either case, the code on the client requestor carries the burden of defining the layout of the requests. While this pattern is often the easiest to code, it’s the most brittle. Any change in the architecture must be reflected on each client, but this can be mitigated by using a centralized system as the client such as in the web scenario. 2. System-Centric Hybrid Patterns Another approach is to create a distributed architecture by turning on-site systems into “services” that can be called from Windows Azure using the service Bus or the Access Control Services (ACS) capabilities. Code calls from a series of in-process client application. In this pattern you move the “client” interface into the server application logic. If you do not wish to change the application itself, you can “layer” the results of the code return using a product (such as Microsoft BizTalk) that exposes a Web Services Definition Language (WSDL) endpoint to Windows Azure using the Application Fabric. In effect, this is similar to creating a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) environment, and has the advantage of de-coupling your computing architecture. If each system offers a “service” of the results of some software processing, the operating system or platform becomes immaterial, assuming it adheres to a service contract. There are important considerations when you federate a system, whether to Windows or SQL Azure or any other distributed architecture. While these considerations are consistent with coding any application for distributed computing, they are especially important for a hybrid application. Connection resiliency - Applications on-premise normally have low-latency and good connection properties, something you’re not always guaranteed in a distributed and hybrid application. Whether a centralized client or a distributed one, the code should be able to handle extended retry logic. Authorization and Access - In a single authorization environment like a Active Directory domain, security is handled at a user-password level. In a distributed computing environment, you have more options. You can mitigate this with  using The Windows Azure Application Fabric feature of ACS to make the Azure application aware of the App Fabric as an ADFS provider. However, a claims-based authentication structure is often a superior choice.  Consistency and Concurrency - When you have a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS), Consistency and Concurrency are part of the design. In a Service Architecture, you need to plan for sequential message handling and lifecycle. Resources: How to Build a Hybrid On-Premise/In Cloud Application: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ignitionshowcase/archive/2010/11/09/how-to-build-a-hybrid-on-premise-in-cloud-application.aspx  General Architecture guidance: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2010/12/21/windows-azure-learning-plan-architecture.aspx   

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  • The Case of the Extra Page: Rendering Reporting Services as PDF

    - by smisner
    I had to troubleshoot a problem with a mysterious extra page appearing in a PDF this week. My first thought was that it was likely to caused by one of the most common problems that people encounter when developing reports that eventually get rendered as PDF is getting blank pages inserted into the PDF document. The cause of the blank pages is usually related to sizing. You can learn more at Understanding Pagination in Reporting Services in Books Online. When designing a report, you have to be really careful with the layout of items in the body. As you move items around, the body will expand to accommodate the space you're using and you might eventually tighten everything back up again, but the body doesn't automatically collapse. One of my favorite things to do in Reporting Services 2005 - which I dubbed the "vacu-pack" method - was to just erase the size property of the Body and let it auto-calculate the new size, squeezing out all the extra space. Alas, that method no longer works beginning with Reporting Services 2008. Even when you make sure the body size is as small as possible (with no unnecessary extra space along the top, bottom, left, or right side of the body), it's important to calculate the body size plus header plus footer plus the margins and ensure that the calculated height and width do not exceed the report's height and width (shown as the page in the illustration above). This won't matter if users always render reports online, but they'll get extra pages in a PDF document if the report's height and width are smaller than the calculate space. Beginning the Investigation In the situation that I was troubleshooting, I checked the properties: Item Property Value Body Height 6.25in   Width 10.5in Page Header Height 1in Page Footer Height 0.25in Report Left Margin 0.1in   Right Margin 0.1in   Top Margin 0.05in   Bottom Margin 0.05in   Page Size - Height 8.5in   Page Size - Width 11in So I calculated the total width using Body Width + Left Margin + Right Margin and came up with a value of 10.7 inches. And then I calculated the total height using Body Height + Page Header Height + Page Footer Height + Top Margin + Bottom Margin and got 7.6 inches. Well, page sizing couldn't be the reason for the extra page in my report because 10.7 inches is smaller than the report's width of 11 inches and 7.6 inches is smaller than the report's height of 8.5 inches. I had to look elsewhere to find the culprit. Conducting the Third Degree My next thought was to focus on the rendering size of the items in the report. I've adapted my problem to use the Adventure Works database. At the top of the report are two charts, and then below each chart is a rectangle that contains a table. In the real-life scenario, there were some graphics present as a background for the tables which fit within the rectangles that were about 3 inches high so the visual space of the rectangles matched the visual space of the charts - also about 3 inches high. But there was also a huge amount of white space at the bottom of the page, and as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, a second page which was blank except for the footer that appeared at the bottom. Placing a textbox beneath the rectangles to see if they would appear on the first page resulted the textbox's appearance on the second page. For some reason, the rectangles wanted a buffer zone beneath them. What's going on? Taking the Suspect into Custody My next step was to see what was really going on with the rectangle. The graphic appeared to be correctly sized, but the behavior in the report indicated the rectangle was growing. So I added a border to the rectangle to see what it was doing. When I added borders, I could see that the size of each rectangle was growing to accommodate the table it contains. The rectangle on the right is slightly larger than the one on the left because the table on the right contains an extra row. The rectangle is trying to preserve the whitespace that appears in the layout, as shown below. Closing the Case Now that I knew what the problem was, what could I do about it? Because of the graphic in the rectangle (not shown), I couldn't eliminate the use of the rectangles and just show the tables. But fortunately, there is a report property that comes to the rescue: ConsumeContainerWhitespace (accessible only in the Properties window). I set the value of this property to True. Problem solved. Now the rectangles remain fixed at the configured size and don't grow vertically to preserve the whitespace. Case closed.

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