Search Results

Search found 7399 results on 296 pages for 'character entities'.

Page 181/296 | < Previous Page | 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188  | Next Page >

  • From release to business

    - by geneotech
    So let's say that I've finished programming a simple, indie MMO game similiar to Tibia. I've got a stable server application that is ready to launch, i've got a tested bug-free working client application that is ready to play and the game's official website (ready to host) with payment system and client that is ready to download for free. Let's say none of them break copyright laws, and no matter how impossible it sounds, let's for now say it's true. My game divides accounts into two groups - free and premium. If someone gets premium, he's granted access to all possible game features, that of course, need server authorisation to work properly. Let's say that the "premium account" can be bought on the website for a fixed money/month. Free accounts mean that everyone can actually play, but without paying, you get limited access. This is what the mentioned payment system will be for. Well, I'm completely novice to these business entities issues, so in short: what, in terms of law, are steps from here to the state where my game earns money in a fully legal way ? Also, is there for example, something like verification if game gives the user what it actually offers when paying on its website ? I live in Europe, if it changes something.

    Read the article

  • Predictive firing (in a tile-based game)

    - by n00bster
    I have a (turn-based) tile-based game, in which you can shoot at entities. You can move around with mouse and keyboard, it's all tile-based, except that bullets move "freely". I've got it all working just fine except that when I move, and the creatures shoot towards the player, they shoot towards the previous tiles.. resulting in ugly looking "miss hits" or lag. I think I need to implement some kind of predictive firing based on the bullet speed and the distance, but I don't quite know how to implement such a thing... Here's a simplified snip of my firing code. class Weapon { public void fire(int x, int y) { ... ... ... Creature owner = getOwner(); Tile targetTile = Zone.getTileAt(x, y); float dist = Vector.distance(owner.getCenterPosition(), targetTile.getCenterPosition()); Bullet b = new Bullet(); b.setPosition(owner.getCenterPosition()); // Take dist into account in the duration to get constant speed regardless of distance float duration = dist / 600f; // Moves the bullet to the centre of the target tile in the given amount of time (in seconds) b.moveTo(targetTile.getCenterPosition(), duration); // This is what I'm after // Vector v = predict the position // b.moveTo(v, duration); Zone.add(bullet); // Now the bullet gets "ticked" and moveTo will be implemented } } Movement of creatures is as simple as setting the position variable. If you need more information, just ask.

    Read the article

  • Need some critique on .NET/WCF SOA architecture plan

    - by user998101
    I am working on a refactoring of some services and would appreciate some critique on my general approach. I am working with three back-end data systems and need to expose an authenticated front-end API over http binding, JSON, and REST for internal apps as well as 3rd party integration. I've got a rough idea below that's a hybrid of what I have and where I intend to wind up. I intend to build guidance extensions to support this architecture so that devs can build this out quickly. Here's the current idea for our structure: Front-end WCF routing service (spread across multiple IIS servers via hardware load balancer) Load balancing of services behind routing is handled within routing service, probably round-robin One of the services will be a token Multiple bindings per-service exposed to address JSON, REST, and whatever else comes up later All in/out is handled via POCO DTOs Use unity to scan for what services are available and expose them The front-end services behind the routing service do nothing more than expose the API and do conversion of DTO<-Entity Unity inject service implementation to allow mocking automapper for DTO/Entity conversion Invoke WF services where response required immediately Queue to ESB for async WF -- ESB will invoke WF later Business logic WF layer Expose same api as front-end services Implement business logic Wrap transaction context where needed Call out to composite/atomic services Composite/Atomic Services Exposed as WCF One service per back-end system Standard atomic CRUD operations plus composite operations Supports transaction context The questions I have are: Are the separation of concerns outlined above beneficial? Current thought is each layer below is its own project, except the backend stuff, where each system gets one project. The project has a servicehost and all the services are under a services folder. Interfaces live in a separate project at each layer. DTO and Entities are in two separate projects under a shared folder. I am currently planning to build dedicated services for shared functionality such as logging and overload things like tracelistener to call those services. Is this a valid approach? Any other suggestions/comments?

    Read the article

  • [LINQ] Master &ndash; Detail Same Record(II)

    - by JTorrecilla
    In my previous post, I introduced my problem, but I didn’t explain the problem with Entity Framework When you try the solution indicated you will take the following error: LINQ to Entities don’t recognize the method 'System.String Join(System.String, System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1[System.String])’ of the method, and this method can’t be translated into a stored expression. The query that produces that error was: 1: var consulta = (from TCabecera cab in 2: contexto_local.TCabecera 3: let Detalle = (from TDetalle detalle 4: in cab.TDetalle 5: select detalle.Nombre) 6: let Nombres = string.Join(",",Detalle ) 7: select new 8: { 9: cab.Campo1, 10: cab.Campo2, 11: Nombres 12: }).ToList(); 13: grid.DataSource=consulta;   Why is this error happening? This error happens when the query couldn’t be translated into T-SQL. Solutions? To quit that error, we need to execute the query on 2 steps: 1: var consulta = (from TCabecera cab in 2: contexto_local.TCabecera 3: let Detalle = (from TDetalle detalle 4: in cab.TDetalle 5: select detalle.Nombre) 6: select new 7: { 8: cab.Campo1, 9: cab.Campo2, 10: Detalle 11: }).ToList(); 12: var consulta2 = (from dato in consulta 13: let Nombes = string.Join(",",dato.Detalle) 14: select new 15: { 16: dato.Campo1, 17: dato.Campo2, 18: Nombres 19: }; 20: grid.DataSource=consulta2.ToList(); Curiously This problem happens with Entity Framework but, the same problem can’t be reproduced on LINQ – To – SQL, that it works fine in one unique step. Hope It’s helpful Best Regards

    Read the article

  • ASP.NET MVC 3: Implicit and Explicit code nuggets with Razor

    - by ScottGu
    This is another in a series of posts I’m doing that cover some of the new ASP.NET MVC 3 features: New @model keyword in Razor (Oct 19th) Layouts with Razor (Oct 22nd) Server-Side Comments with Razor (Nov 12th) Razor’s @: and <text> syntax (Dec 15th) Implicit and Explicit code nuggets with Razor (today) In today’s post I’m going to discuss how Razor enables you to both implicitly and explicitly define code nuggets within your view templates, and walkthrough some code examples of each of them.  Fluid Coding with Razor ASP.NET MVC 3 ships with a new view-engine option called “Razor” (in addition to the existing .aspx view engine).  You can learn more about Razor, why we are introducing it, and the syntax it supports from my Introducing Razor blog post. Razor minimizes the number of characters and keystrokes required when writing a view template, and enables a fast, fluid coding workflow. Unlike most template syntaxes, you do not need to interrupt your coding to explicitly denote the start and end of server blocks within your HTML. The Razor parser is smart enough to infer this from your code. This enables a compact and expressive syntax which is clean, fast and fun to type. For example, the Razor snippet below can be used to iterate a collection of products and output a <ul> list of product names that link to their corresponding product pages: When run, the above code generates output like below: Notice above how we were able to embed two code nuggets within the content of the foreach loop.  One of them outputs the name of the Product, and the other embeds the ProductID within a hyperlink.  Notice that we didn’t have to explicitly wrap these code-nuggets - Razor was instead smart enough to implicitly identify where the code began and ended in both of these situations.  How Razor Enables Implicit Code Nuggets Razor does not define its own language.  Instead, the code you write within Razor code nuggets is standard C# or VB.  This allows you to re-use your existing language skills, and avoid having to learn a customized language grammar. The Razor parser has smarts built into it so that whenever possible you do not need to explicitly mark the end of C#/VB code nuggets you write.  This makes coding more fluid and productive, and enables a nice, clean, concise template syntax.  Below are a few scenarios that Razor supports where you can avoid having to explicitly mark the beginning/end of a code nugget, and instead have Razor implicitly identify the code nugget scope for you: Property Access Razor allows you to output a variable value, or a sub-property on a variable that is referenced via “dot” notation: You can also use “dot” notation to access sub-properties multiple levels deep: Array/Collection Indexing: Razor allows you to index into collections or arrays: Calling Methods: Razor also allows you to invoke methods: Notice how for all of the scenarios above how we did not have to explicitly end the code nugget.  Razor was able to implicitly identify the end of the code block for us. Razor’s Parsing Algorithm for Code Nuggets The below algorithm captures the core parsing logic we use to support “@” expressions within Razor, and to enable the implicit code nugget scenarios above: Parse an identifier - As soon as we see a character that isn't valid in a C# or VB identifier, we stop and move to step 2 Check for brackets - If we see "(" or "[", go to step 2.1., otherwise, go to step 3  Parse until the matching ")" or "]" (we track nested "()" and "[]" pairs and ignore "()[]" we see in strings or comments) Go back to step 2 Check for a "." - If we see one, go to step 3.1, otherwise, DO NOT ACCEPT THE "." as code, and go to step 4 If the character AFTER the "." is a valid identifier, accept the "." and go back to step 1, otherwise, go to step 4 Done! Differentiating between code and content Step 3.1 is a particularly interesting part of the above algorithm, and enables Razor to differentiate between scenarios where an identifier is being used as part of the code statement, and when it should instead be treated as static content: Notice how in the snippet above we have ? and ! characters at the end of our code nuggets.  These are both legal C# identifiers – but Razor is able to implicitly identify that they should be treated as static string content as opposed to being part of the code expression because there is whitespace after them.  This is pretty cool and saves us keystrokes. Explicit Code Nuggets in Razor Razor is smart enough to implicitly identify a lot of code nugget scenarios.  But there are still times when you want/need to be more explicit in how you scope the code nugget expression.  The @(expression) syntax allows you to do this: You can write any C#/VB code statement you want within the @() syntax.  Razor will treat the wrapping () characters as the explicit scope of the code nugget statement.  Below are a few scenarios where we could use the explicit code nugget feature: Perform Arithmetic Calculation/Modification: You can perform arithmetic calculations within an explicit code nugget: Appending Text to a Code Expression Result: You can use the explicit expression syntax to append static text at the end of a code nugget without having to worry about it being incorrectly parsed as code: Above we have embedded a code nugget within an <img> element’s src attribute.  It allows us to link to images with URLs like “/Images/Beverages.jpg”.  Without the explicit parenthesis, Razor would have looked for a “.jpg” property on the CategoryName (and raised an error).  By being explicit we can clearly denote where the code ends and the text begins. Using Generics and Lambdas Explicit expressions also allow us to use generic types and generic methods within code expressions – and enable us to avoid the <> characters in generics from being ambiguous with tag elements. One More Thing….Intellisense within Attributes We have used code nuggets within HTML attributes in several of the examples above.  One nice feature supported by the Razor code editor within Visual Studio is the ability to still get VB/C# intellisense when doing this. Below is an example of C# code intellisense when using an implicit code nugget within an <a> href=”” attribute: Below is an example of C# code intellisense when using an explicit code nugget embedded in the middle of a <img> src=”” attribute: Notice how we are getting full code intellisense for both scenarios – despite the fact that the code expression is embedded within an HTML attribute (something the existing .aspx code editor doesn’t support).  This makes writing code even easier, and ensures that you can take advantage of intellisense everywhere. Summary Razor enables a clean and concise templating syntax that enables a very fluid coding workflow.  Razor’s ability to implicitly scope code nuggets reduces the amount of typing you need to perform, and leaves you with really clean code. When necessary, you can also explicitly scope code expressions using a @(expression) syntax to provide greater clarity around your intent, as well as to disambiguate code statements from static markup. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

    Read the article

  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 30, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 30, 2012Popular ReleasesCAPTCHA Solver: Initial Release: This is the initial Release :) Still very much a WIP.MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.2.17: Reccomended update to 2.2.16 Changelog for 2.2.17 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Fixed bugs around thread synchronization with new remote model (fixes cause the app to crash or hang) 2. Updated UPnP code base, faster and more reliable now 3. Now you can get audio/video properties for multiple files on main page. Selected multiple files and right click, all selected files properties will be shown. 4. Fix a bug, not able to enter a conversion task name in the GUIAggravation: Version 1.0: This version 1.0 release is pretty stable. You need the Silverlight 4 runtime, developer tools, and Experssion Blend 4 installed.Readable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.7.1: See the KeePass Plugin Step By Step Guide for instructions on how to install the plugin. Changes Built against KeePass 2.20Windows 8 Toolkit - Charts and More: Beta 1.0: The First Compiled Version of my LibraryPDF.NET: PDF.NET.Ver4.5-OpenSourceCode: PDF.NET Ver4.5 ????,????Web??????。 PDF.NET Ver4.5 Open Source Code,include a sample Web application project.D3 Loot Tracker: 1.4: Session name is displayed in the UI. Changes data directory for clickonce deployment so that sessions files are persisted between versions. Added a delete button in the sessions list window. Allow opening of the sessions local folder from the session list widow. Display the session name in the main window Ability to select which diablo process to hook up to when pressing new () function BUT only if multi-process support is selected in the generals settings tab menu. Session picker...CRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor 1.1 Beta: Visual Ribbon Editor 1.1 Beta What's New: Fixed scrolling issue in UnHide dialog Added support for connecting via ADFS / IFD Added support for more than one action for a button Added support for empty StringParameter for Javascript functions Fixed bug in rule CrmClientTypeRule when selecting Outlook option Extended Prefix field in New Button dialogVisual Studio Icon Patcher: Version 1.5.2: This version contains no new images from v1.5.1 Contains the following improvements: Better support for detecting the installed languages The extract & inject commands won’t run if Visual Studio is running You may now run in extract or inject mode The p/invoke code was cleaned up based on Code Analysis recommendations When a p/invoke method fails the Win32 error message is now displayed Error messages use red text Status messages use green textZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.9.0.0: On the way to a release 1.0 the API should be stable now with this version. sync with rev. 2393 of the java version improved api better Unity support Windows RT binaries Windows CE binaries new Windows Service demo new WPF demo WindowsCE Hotfix: Fixes an error with ISO8859-1 encoding and scannning of QR-Codes. The hotfix is only needed for the WindowsCE platform.C.B.R. : Comic Book Reader: CBR 0.7: Synthesis since 0.6 : ePUB : Complete refactoring Add a new dedicated feed viewer for opds stream PDF conversion : improved with image merge Make all backstage panel scrollable Integrate the new AvalonDock 2 library. Support multi-document. Library explorer and Table of content are now toolboxes Designer for dynamic books is now mvvm and much better New BrowserForControl Customized xps viewer to suppress toolbars and bind it to cbr commands Add quick start manual and button ...menu4web: menu4web 1.0 - free javascript menu for web sites: menu4web 1.0 has been tested with all major browsers: Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera and Safari. Minified m4w.js library is less than 9K. Includes 21 menu examples of different styles. Can be freely distributed under The MIT License (MIT).Rawr: Rawr 5.0.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.26: The zh-CN issue has been solved. We also add a project management module.VidCoder: 1.4.1 Beta: Updated to HandBrake 4971. This should fix some issues with stuck PGS subtitles. Fixed build break which prevented pre-compiled XML serializers from showing up. Fixed problem where a preset would get errantly marked as modified when re-opening the encode settings window or importing a new preset.Snake!: Snake 1.0: Version 1 StablePaging SharePoint ListItems using listitems position: Paginglistitems V1.0: This is a console application which has two methods both on CSOM and SOM to display the listitems in a paged manner.SharePoint Move Discussion Threads: SharePoint Move Discussion Threads ver 0.1: ver 0.1NTCPMSG: V1.1.1.0: increase the performance. Support .net framework 4.0.BlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.2: 2012.09.23 Ver5.7.2 (1)InetTest?? (2)HTTP?????????????????100???????????New Projects2D Sprite Editor: This is a 2d sprite editor. Import your sprite sheet, trace your animations frame and export the coordinates points in a simple txt file, ready to import.caifenweb1: test project.CatchThatException: This is a small logging library We created at developerpath.com to help us log exceptions. It write it to a text file and you can easilay open that txt.FsxWs - WebServices for Microsoft FSX: WebServices for MS Flight Simulator. Get flights data as JSON, KML. !! Still in SetUp phase - be patient !!GetTPB: Some training in downloading and parsing web pages, with multithreading too.JSON-RPC Client Generator (for XBMC): The goal of this project is to provide a .Net client for the XBMC JSONRPC API. The main part is not XBMC dependent and may be used for any JSON-RPC client.matlab-silhouette-pose-wtf: Whatevermfp: this is random codeMVC Grid: MVC Grid ExampleMyWebSocketTry: sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssNetduino Console: Netduino Console is an interface with built in messaging layers that allows you as a developer to dynamically create plugins following a provided interface to iSharePoint ASP.NET Verifier: Project will allow to verify SharePoint 2010 components using ASP.NET web applicationSharepoint Custom Upload: This is a SharePoint solution that allows an administrator to customize the upload page individually for each document library in a site.. It allows you to makeWinWeb Browser Deluxe: WinWeb Browser Deluxe es un navegador web de código abierto basado en Internet Explorer hecho en Visual Basic .NET. Descargalo ya!writethatoutput: This is the official release page for WriteThatOutPut from developerpath.com

    Read the article

  • SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #051

    - by Pinal Dave
    Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Explanation and Understanding NOT NULL Constraint NOT NULL is integrity CONSTRAINT. It does not allow creating of the row where column contains NULL value. Most discussed questions about NULL is what is NULL? I will not go in depth analysis it. Simply put NULL is unknown or missing data. When NULL is present in database columns, it can affect the integrity of the database. I really do not prefer NULL in the database unless they are absolutely necessary. Three T-SQL Script to Create Primary Keys on Table I have always enjoyed writing about three topics Constraint and Keys, Backup and Restore and Datetime Functions. Primary Keys constraints prevent duplicate values for columns and provides a unique identifier to each column, as well it creates clustered index on the columns. 2008 Get Numeric Value From Alpha Numeric String – UDF for Get Numeric Numbers Only SQL is great with String operations. Many times, I use T-SQL to do my string operation. Let us see User Defined Function, which I wrote a few days ago, which will return only Numeric values from Alpha Numeric values. Introduction and Example of UNION and UNION ALL It is very much interesting when I get requests from blog reader to re-write my previous articles. I have received few requests to rewrite my article SQL SERVER – Union vs. Union All – Which is better for performance? with examples. I request you to read my previous article first to understand what is the concept and read this article to understand the same concept with an example. Downgrade Database for Previous Version The main questions is how they can downgrade the from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2000? The answer is : Not Possible. Get Common Records From Two Tables Without Using Join Following is my scenario, Suppose Table 1 and Table 2 has same column e.g. Column1 Following is the query, 1. Select column1,column2 From Table1 2. Select column1 From Table2 I want to find common records from these tables, but I don’t want to use the Join clause because for that I need to specify the column name for Join condition. Will you help me to get common records without using Join condition? I am using SQL Server 2005. Retrieve – Select Only Date Part From DateTime – Best Practice – Part 2 A year ago I wrote a post about SQL SERVER – Retrieve – Select Only Date Part From DateTime – Best Practice where I have discussed two different methods of getting the date part from datetime. Introduction to CLR – Simple Example of CLR Stored Procedure CLR is an abbreviation of Common Language Runtime. In SQL Server 2005 and later version of it database objects can be created which are created in CLR. Stored Procedures, Functions, Triggers can be coded in CLR. CLR is faster than T-SQL in many cases. CLR is mainly used to accomplish tasks which are not possible by T-SQL or can use lots of resources. The CLR can be usually implemented where there is an intense string operation, thread management or iteration methods which can be complicated for T-SQL. Implementing CLR provides more security to the Extended Stored Procedure. 2009 Comic Slow Query – SQL Joke Before Presentation After Presentation Enable Automatic Statistic Update on Database In one of the recent projects, I found out that despite putting good indexes and optimizing the query, I could not achieve an optimized performance and I still received an unoptimized response from the SQL Server. On examination, I figured out that the culprit was statistics. The database that I was trying to optimize had auto update of the statistics was disabled. Recently Executed T-SQL Query Please refer to blog post  query to recently executed T-SQL query on database. Change Collation of Database Column – T-SQL Script – Consolidating Collations – Extention Script At some time in your DBA career, you may find yourself in a position when you sit back and realize that your database collations have somehow run amuck, or are faced with the ever annoying CANNOT RESOLVE COLLATION message when trying to join data of varying collation settings. 2010 Visiting Alma Mater – Delivering Session on Database Performance and Career – Nirma Institute of Technology Everyone always dreams of visiting their school and college, where they have studied once. It is a great feeling to see the college once again – where you have spent the wonderful golden years of your time. College time is filled with studies, education, emotions and several plans to build a future. I consider myself fortunate as I got the opportunity to study at some of the best places in the world. Change Column DataTypes There are times when I feel like writing that I am a day older in SQL Server. In fact, there are many who are looking for a solution that is simple enough. Have you ever searched online for something very simple. I often do and enjoy doing things which are straight forward and easy to change. 2011 Three DMVs – sys.dm_server_memory_dumps – sys.dm_server_services – sys.dm_server_registry In this blog post we will see three new DMVs which are introduced in Denali. The DMVs are very simple and there is not much to describe them. So here is the simple game. I will be asking a question back to you after seeing the result of the each of the DMV and you help me to complete this blog post. A Simple Quiz – T-SQL Brain Trick If you have some time, I strongly suggest you try this quiz out as it is for sure twists your brain. 2012 List All The Column With Specific Data Types in Database 5 years ago I wrote script SQL SERVER – 2005 – List All The Column With Specific Data Types, when I read it again, it is very much relevant and I liked it. This is one of the script which every developer would like to keep it handy. I have upgraded the script bit more. I have included few additional information which I believe I should have added from the beginning. It is difficult to visualize the final script when we are writing it first time. Find First Non-Numeric Character from String The function PATINDEX exists for quite a long time in SQL Server but I hardly see it being used. Well, at least I use it and I am comfortable using it. Here is a simple script which I use when I have to identify first non-numeric character. Finding Different ColumnName From Almost Identitical Tables Well here is the interesting example of how we can use sys.column catalogue views and get the details of the newly added column. I have previously written about EXCEPT over here which is very similar to MINUS of Oracle. Storing Data and Files in Cloud – Dropbox – Personal Technology Tip I thought long and hard about doing a Personal Technology Tips series for this blog.  I have so many tips I’d like to share.  I am on my computer almost all day, every day, so I have a treasure trove of interesting tidbits I like to share if given the chance.  The only thing holding me back – which tip to share first?  The first tip obviously has the weight of seeming like the most important.  But this would mean choosing amongst my favorite tricks and shortcuts.  This is a hard task. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

    Read the article

  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 18, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 18, 2010New ProjectsBare Bones Email Trace Listener: Bare Bones Email Trace Listener is about the simplest email trace listener you can have. No bells, no whistles, and no good if you need authenticat...Cartellino: Scopo del progetto è la realizzazione di un software in grado di rilevare i dati dai rilevatori 3Tec (www.3tec.it) e stampare i cartellini presenza...Castle Windsor app.config Properties: The Castle Windsor app.config Properties library makes it possible for users of Castle Windsor to reference appSettings values in Windsor's XML pro...DeskD: This is a simple desktop dictionary application(something like WordWeb) created in Java using Netbeans IDE. Since i am new to codeplex all updates ...FunPokerMakerOnline: It is a play of poker online with a game editor. It is done with .net 4 and WPF and SOAP or WCF. KLOCS Team GIN Project: This is a Master's Degree program group project. It may have academic interest, but won't be maintained after June 2010KNN: This is KNN projectProject Santa: Program to organize teams using mysql databases and c# in a clean and robust task and group system. For more information see my blog post at http:/...ProjetoIntegradoJuridico: Sistema Integrado de Acompanhamento JurídicoRSSR for Windows Phone 7: This is a simple RSS reader application, the project aims to show people that it is easy to build application for windows phones. The applicatio...Simple Rcon: Simple Rcon is a simple lightweight rcon client for HL1/HL2 Servers. It is developed in C# and WPFTAB METHOD SQL Create a data dictionary from your Transact SQL code: TABMETHODSQL makes it easier for data/information workers to document their work. Create a data governance solution that maps sql data process, inc...TM BF Tournament: WPF software to manage Trackmania tournament with Battle France RulesviBlog: visinia plugin, this plugin is used to add blogging facility in visinia cmsviNews: visinia plugin, this plugin can be used to create a news portal like cnn.com nytimeVolumeMaster: VolumeMaster is an On Screen Display (OSD) that gets activated whenever the volume changes. It's written in WPF and uses Vista Core Audio API by Ra...WiiCIS.NET: This is a managed port of WiiCIS, which is a Nintendo Wiimote library originally created by TheOboeNerd and posted on Sourceforge.New ReleasesCastle Windsor app.config Properties: Version 1.0: Initial release.Code for Rapid C# Windows Development eBook: Enumerable Debugger Visualizer Version 1.1: Second release of the Enumerable Debugger Visualizer. There are more classes registered and it is more robust. The list of classes I have register...Convection Game Engine (Basic Edition): Convection Basic (40223): Compiled version of Convection Basic change set 40223.CycleMania Starter Kit EAP - ASP.NET 4 Problem - Design - Solution: Cyclemania 0.08.59: See Source Code tab for recent change history.DbEntry.Net (Lephone Framework): DbEntry.Net 3.9: DbEntry.Net is a lightweight Object Relational Mapping (ORM) database access compnent for .Net 3.5. It has clearly and easily programing interface ...Hash Calculator: HashCalculator 2.0: Upgraded to .NET Framework 4.0 Added support to calculate CRC32 hash function Added "Cancel" button in the Windows 7 taskbar thumbnailHKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201004172120): New features: Added jump links at top of page of message. Bug fix: Fixed page count bug. Improvements: HKGolden Express now uses DocumentBuild...HTML Ruby: 6.21.4: Styles added to override those on some sites for better rendering of ruby Fix regression on complex ruby annotation rendering Better spacingHTML Ruby: 6.21.5: Removed debug code in preference handling Status bar indicator now resets for each action Replace ruby in place without using document fragment...IceChat: IceChat 2009 Alpha 12.4 EXE Update: This is simply an update to the main IceChat program files and DLL. Simpply overwrite the ones in the place where IceChat 2009 is installed.IceChat: IceChat 2009 Alpha 12.4 Full Install: Build Alpha 12.4 - April 17 2010 Added IceChatScript.dll , needs to be added in same folder with EXE and IPluginIceChat.dll Added Self Notice in ...PokeIn Comet Ajax Library: PokeIn Library v05 x64: With this version, PokeIn library has become a stable. Numerous tests have completed. This is the first release candidate of PokeIn. Cheers!PokeIn Comet Ajax Library: PokeIn Library v05 x86: PokeIn Library version 0.5 (x86) With this version, PokeIn library has become a stable. Numerous tests have completed. This is the first release c...Project Santa: Project Santa V1.0: The first initial release of my project manager program, for more information see http://coderplex.blogspot.com/2010/04/project-manager-using-mysq...Salient: TestingWithVSDevServer v1: Using code from Salient, I have assembled a few strategies for programmatic contol of the Visual Studio Development Server (WebDev.WebServer.exe). ...SharePoint Navigation Menu: spNavigationMenu 1.1: Changed the CAML query so it will order by Link Order, then Title. Added the ability to override the On Hover event on the parent menu to use On ...Simple Rcon: Simple Rcon Version 1: Version 1TAB METHOD SQL Create a data dictionary from your Transact SQL code: RELEASE 1: TESTING THE RELEASE SYSTEMTribe.Cache: Tribe.Cache Beta 0.1: Beta release of Tribe.Cache - Now with cache expiration serviceviBlog: viBlog_beta: visinia plugin to add blogging facility in visinia cmsviNews: viNews_beta: visinia plugin.visinia: visinia_beta2: visinia beta 2 released with many new feature.Visual Studio DSite: Visual C++ 2008 Login Form: A simple login form made in visual c 2008. Source code only.WiiCIS.NET: WiiCIS.NET v0.11: 0.11 Removed an unnecessary function from the Wiimote class, and improved the demo. You will need the latest version of SlimDX to compile the sourc...WinControls TreeListView: TreeListView 1.5.1: -fixes issue #5837 -Preliminary feature #5874WoW Character Viewer: Viewer Setup: Finally, I've brought out the next setup of WoW Viewer. Most loose ends have been tied up. Loading and Saving of character files has been fixed.Most Popular ProjectsRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseMicrosoft SQL Server Community & Samplespatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcelFacebook Developer ToolkitBlogEngine.NETMvcContrib: a Codeplex Foundation projectIronPythonMost Active ProjectsRawrpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryIndustrial DashboardFarseer Physics EnginejQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationProxi [Proxy Interface]BlogEngine.NETCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and Silverlight

    Read the article

  • Conversion of BizTalk Projects to Use the New WCF-SAP Adaptor

    - by Geordie
    We are in the process of upgrading our BizTalk Environment from BizTalk 2006 R2 to BizTalk 2010. The SAP adaptor in BizTalk 2010 is an all new and more powerful WCF-SAP adaptor. When my colleagues tested out the new adaptor they discovered that the format of the data extracted from SAP was not identical to the old adaptor. This is not a big deal if the structure of the messages from SAP is simple. In this case we were receiving the delivery and invoice iDocs. Both these structures are complex especially the delivery document. Over the past few years I have tweaked the delivery mapping to remove bugs from original mapping. The idea of redoing these maps did not appeal and due to the current work load was not even an option. I opted for a rather crude alternative of pulling in the iDoc in the new typed format and then adding a static map at the start of the orchestration to convert the data to the old schema.  Note WCF-SAP data formats (on the binding tab of the configuration dialog box is the ‘RecieiveIdocFormat’ field): Typed:  Returns a XML document with the hierarchy represented in XML and all fields being represented by XML tags. RFC: Returns an XML document with the hierarchy represented in XML but the iDoc lines in flat file format. String: This returns the iDoc in a format that is closest to the original flat file format but is still wrapped with some top level XML tags. The files also contained some strange characters at the end of each line. I started with the invoice document and it was quite straight forward to add the mapping but this is where my problems started. The orchestrations for these documents are dynamic and so require the identity of the partner to be able to correctly configure the orchestration. The partner identity is in the EDI_DC40 segment of the iDoc. In the old project the RECPRN node of the segment was promoted. The code to set a variable to the partner ID was now failing. After lot of head scratching I discovered the problem was due to the addition of Namespaces to the fields in the EDI_DC40 segment. To overcome this I needed to use an xPath query with a Namespace Manager. This had to be done in custom code. I now tried to repeat the process with the delivery document. Unfortunately when we tried to get sample typed data from SAP an exception was thrown. The adapter "WCF-SAP" raised an error message. Details "Microsoft.ServiceModel.Channels.Common.XmlReaderGenerationException: The segment or group definition E2EDKA1001 was not found in the IDoc metadata. The UniqueId of the IDoc type is: IDOCTYP/3/DESADV01/ZASNEXT1/640. For Receive operations, the SAP adapter does not support unreleased segments.   Our guess is that when the WCF-SAP adaptor tries to down load the data it retrieves a data schema from SAP. For some reason the schema does not match the data. This may be due to the version of SAP we are running or due to a customization. Either way resolving this problem did not look easy. When doing some research on this problem I found an article showing me how to get the data from SAP using the WCF-SAP adaptor without any XML tags. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/adapters/archive/2007/10/05/receiving-idocs-getting-the-raw-idoc-data.aspx Reproduction of Mustansir blog: Since the WCF based SAP Adapter is ... well, WCF based, all data flowing in and out of the adapter is encapsulated within a SOAP message. Which means there are those pesky xml tags all over the place. If you want to receive an Idoc from SAP, you can receive it in "Typed" format (in which case each column in each segment of the idoc appears within its own xml tag), or you can receive it in "String" format (in which case there are just 2 xml tags at the top, the raw xml data in string/flat file format, and the 2 closing xml tags). In "String" format, an incoming idoc (for ORDERS05, containing 5 data records) would look like: <ReceiveIdoc ><idocData>EDI_DC40 8000000000001064985620 E2EDK01005 800000000000106498500000100000001 E2EDK14 8000000000001064985000002000000020111000 E2EDK14 8000000000001064985000003000000020081000 E2EDK14 80000000000010649850000040000000200710 E2EDK14 80000000000010649850000050000000200600</idocData></ReceiveIdoc> (I have trimmed part of the control record so that it fits cleanly here on one line). Now, you're only interested in the IDOC data, and don't care much for the XML tags. It isn't that difficult to write your own pipeline component, or even some logic in the orchestration to remove the tags, right? Well, you don't need to write any extra code at all - the WCF Adapter can help you here! During the configuration of your one-way Receive Location using WCF-Custom, navigate to the Messages tab. Under the section "Inbound BizTalk Messge Body", select the "Path" radio button, and: (a) Enter the body path expression as: /*[local-name()='ReceiveIdoc']/*[local-name()='idocData'] (b) Choose "String" for the Node Encoding. What we've done is, used an XPATH to pull out the value of the "idocData" node from the XML. Your Receive Location will now emit text containing only the idoc data. You can at this point, for example, put the Flat File Pipeline component to convert the flat text into a different xml format based on some other schema you already have, and receive your version of the xml formatted message in your orchestration.   This was potentially a much easier solution than adding the static maps to the orchestrations and overcame the issue with ‘Typed’ delivery documents. Not quite so fast… Note: When I followed Mustansir’s blog the characters at the end of each line disappeared. After configuring the adaptor and passing the iDoc data into the original flat file receive pipelines I was receiving exceptions. There was a failure executing the receive pipeline: "PAPINETPipelines.DeliveryFlatFileReceive, CustomerIntegration2.PAPINET.Pipelines, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=4ca3635fbf092bbb" Source: "Pipeline " Receive Port: "recSAP_Delivery" URI: "D:\CustomerIntegration2\SAP\Delivery\*.xml" Reason: An error occurred when parsing the incoming document: "Unexpected data found while looking for: 'Z2EDPZ7' The current definition being parsed is E2EDP07GRP. The stream offset where the error occured is 8859. The line number where the error occured is 23. The column where the error occured is 0.". Although the new flat file looked the same as the old one there was a differences. In the original file all lines in the document were exactly 1064 character long. In the new file all lines were truncated to the last alphanumeric character. The final piece of the puzzle was to add a custom pipeline component to pad all the lines to 1064 characters. This component was added to the decode node of the custom delivery and invoice flat file disassembler pipelines. Execute method of the custom pipeline component: public IBaseMessage Execute(IPipelineContext pc, IBaseMessage inmsg) { //Convert Stream to a string Stream s = null; IBaseMessagePart bodyPart = inmsg.BodyPart;   // NOTE inmsg.BodyPart.Data is implemented only as a setter in the http adapter API and a //getter and setter for the file adapter. Use GetOriginalDataStream to get data instead. if (bodyPart != null) s = bodyPart.GetOriginalDataStream();   string newMsg = string.Empty; string strLine; try { StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(s); strLine = sr.ReadLine(); while (strLine != null) { //Execute padding code if (strLine != null) strLine = strLine.PadRight(1064, ' ') + "\r\n"; newMsg += strLine; strLine = sr.ReadLine(); } sr.Close(); } catch (IOException ex) { throw new Exception("Error occured trying to pad the message to 1064 charactors"); }   //Convert back to stream and set to Data property inmsg.BodyPart.Data = new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(newMsg)); ; //reset the position of the stream to zero inmsg.BodyPart.Data.Position = 0; return inmsg; }

    Read the article

  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, July 01, 2013

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, July 01, 2013Popular ReleasesQuickMon: Version 2.10.3: Mainly just a service release - no major changes. Toolbar buttons on main and config window can now be re-arrange (using ALT key) Added property to disable corrective scriptsDotNetNuke® IFrame: IFrame 04.05.00: New DNN6/7 Manifest file and Azure Compatibility.VidCoder: 1.5.2 Beta: Fixed crash on presets with an invalid bitrate.Roadkill - .NET Wiki engine: Roadkill v1.7: New features in 1.7: New file manager: Multiple file uploads Drag and drop uploads Delete folders (admins only) Delete files (admins only) (Experimental) Syntaxhighlighting custom variable (using https://github.com/alexgorbatchev/SyntaxHighlighter) - use [[[code lang=c#|your code here]]] (Experimental) MathJax custom variable - use [[[Mathjax]]] and $$your tex$$ on the page. Improved black bar theme Site speed improvements for Javascript/CSS files - now just two files files ea...Download Sharepoint Solution package: Release 4: version updated for SP2013WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.5: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8.0 and 8.1 Preview SDKs. Do not download the source code from here if you are looking for latest updates! You can download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features Attachable Behaviors AwaitableUI extensions Composition library for visual tree rende...Gardens Point LEX: Gardens Point LEX version 1.2.1: The main distribution is a zip file. This contains the binary executable, documentation, source code and the examples. ChangesVersion 1.2.1 has new facilities for defining and manipulating character classes. These changes make the construction of large Unicode character classes more convenient. The runtime code for performing automaton backup has been re-implemented, and is now faster for scanners that need backup. Source CodeThe distribution contains a complete VS2010 project for the appli...ZXMAK2: Version 2.7.5.7: - fix TZX emulation (Bruce Lee, Zynaps) - fix ATM 16 colors for border - add memory module PROFI 512K; add PROFI V03 rom image; fix PROFI 3.XX configTwitter image Downloader: Twitter Image Downloader 2 with Installer: Application file with Install shield and Dot Net 4.0 redistributableUltimate Music Tagger: Ultimate Music Tagger 1.0.0.0: First release of Ultimate Music TaggerBlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.2: 2013.06.28 Ver5.9.2 (1) ??????????(????SMTP?????)?????????? (2) HTTPS???????????Outlook 2013 Add-In: Configuration Form: This new version includes the following changes: - Refactored code a bit. - Removing configuration from main form to gain more space to display items. - Moved configuration to separate form. You can click the little "gear" icon to access the configuration form (still very simple). - Added option to show past day appointments from the selected day (previous in time, that is). - Added some tooltips. You will have to uninstall the previous version (add/remove programs) if you had installed it ...Terminals: Version 3.0 - Release: Changes since version 2.0:Choose 100% portable or installed version Removed connection warning when running RDP 8 (Windows 8) client Fixed Active directory search Extended Active directory search by LDAP filters Fixed single instance mode when running on Windows Terminal server Merged usage of Tags and Groups Added columns sorting option in tables No UAC prompts on Windows 7 Completely new file persistence data layer New MS SQL persistence layer (Store data in SQL database)...NuGet: NuGet 2.6: Released June 26, 2013. Release notes: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/release-notes/nuget-2.6Python Tools for Visual Studio: 2.0 Beta: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.0 Beta. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, HPC, IPython, and cross platform debugging support. For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuewiStN...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 and WP8 (v1.3 beta): Preview: New MPEG DASH adaptive streaming plugin for Windows Azure Media Services Preview: New Ultraviolet CFF plugin. Preview: New WP7 version with WP8 compatibility. (source code only) Source code is now available via CodePlex Git Misc bug fixes and improvements: WP8 only: Added optional fullscreen and mute buttons to default xaml JS only: protecting currentTime from returning infinity. Some videos would cause currentTime to be infinity which could cause errors in plugins expectin...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.8: SERVER OWNERS: note that the default maprot has changed once again. Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we continue to try to package for those OSes. Or better yet, try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compi...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.95: update parser to allow for CSS3 calc( function to nest. add recognition of -pponly (Preprocess-Only) switch in AjaxMinManifestTask build task. Fix crashing bug in EXE when processing a manifest file using the -xml switch and an error message needs to be displayed (like a missing input file). Create separate Clean and Bundle build tasks for working with manifest files (AjaxMinManifestCleanTask and AjaxMinBundleTask). Removed the IsCleanOperation from AjaxMinManifestTask -- use AjaxMinMan...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.44: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImgChili.net" links FIXED: Auto UpdaterDocument.Editor: 2013.25: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.25: Improved Spell Check support Improved User Interface Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsNew ProjectsAerCloud.net Client - Java, Linux & Windows: This project source code provides a step by step guide for using AerCloud.net Framework as a Service API. For more information please visit http://www.aercloudAmiClient – Asterisk Manager Interface (AMI) client based on the Rx Framework: Asterisk Manager Interface (AMI) client based on the Rx Frameworkbaidupan: cdcddddC#??????: C#??????ImageHelper: imagehelperIP switcher: IP switcher is a simple tool for switching settings, and store presets, on networkadapters.MastersProject: A MS project with a goal of creating a fully Code Contracts verified physics engine and a relatively simple game that uses it.Multiplatform card game: Example multipatform project.PhoneTools: A collection of tools designed to help developers create beautiful Windows Phone 8 apps.rodidexter: lllSharePoint 2013 List Item Encryption: This coding exercise project enables you to encrypt/decrypt list item text field in the browser using industry standard algorithms.tvaSoft: simulation, rotor dynamics, Finite Element Analisys, FEM, ODE, torsional vibration, flexural vibrationX3DML Project: X3DML is an xml-based markup language that defines rules for modeling 3D scenes from a tag-based document. It may be usefull in 3D web design and VR.zhuang-tfs: zhuang tfs

    Read the article

  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 17, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 17, 2010New Projects.NET Essentials Course: .NET Essentials course @ Telerik Academy Training project for the studentsAU/NZ Office 2010 Launch Demos: The AU/NZ Office 2010 Launch Demos are a collection of code samples that were used as part of the Office/SharePoint 2010 launch parties in Australi...CybennyCMS: Very simple CMS system for building sites with ASP.NET with templates for lay-out, content pages with only html content and a xml file for the site...essionPIM: essionPIMGIStance: A library for finding "nearest neighbor" among an in-memory set of positions, in C# and F#. A radius must be specified for making a meaningful s...IP Informer: IP Informer is IP Informer.Kurumsal Ofis Paketi: Kurumsal Ofis Paketi (KOP), Microsoft Ofis 2010 ürünleri için geliştirilmiş eklenti yazılımıdır. KOP, Word ve Excel’de bulunan işlevlerinin genişle...Mockup to XAML: Convert Balsamiq Mockups to XAML. This project supports BMML mockup control conversion using plugins. A standard set of controls are included wit...Open XML Validator: This WPF app give you a brief resume about errors in your Open XML documents.Paint.NET Bulk Image Processor: PDNBulkUpdater is a plug-in for Paint.NET that allows you to efficiently perform operations such as resizing and converting multiple images at the ...PiPiBugNet: PiPiBugNet是一套全新的开源Bug管理系统Roleplay character generator: The roleplay character generator allows the creation of characters for different roleplaying gamesSharePoint User Search WebParts: This project contains SharePoint webparts which provide advanced search configuration and experience for SharePoint 2007. It will be upgrade in few...Spodi: Spodi is created on 22-04-2010TfsPolicyPack: This project will provide a few checkin policies for VS 2010.vccodesandobx: vccodesandobxvccodesandobxvccodesandobxWhiteNile: test project using codeplexNew ReleasesAnimeStore.Net: 1.0.3.0: Build 1.0.3.0 Changes Move some functionality to features (MEF) Filter / Search functionality. Anime hard-copy records storage (e.g Disk Storage ...AU/NZ Office 2010 Launch Demos: Twitter map web part: This is the main twitter map web part download, see the Twitter Map web part page for all the information.Blueset Studio Opensource Projects: 推来: 稳定版本BUtil: BUtil 5.0 Alpha2: The initial implementation of multitasking (except ghost)CassiniDev - Cassini 3.5/4.0 Developers Edition: CassiniDev 3.5.1 and 4.0.1 beta: Beta 2 is released here: url http://cassinidev.codeplex.com/releases/view/45456 New in CassiniDev v3.5.1.0/v4.0.1.0 Added .Net 4 / VS10 build. ...CBM-Command: 2010-05-16: Release Notes - 2010-05-16New Features New navigation options: Page Up, Page Down, Top of Directory, Bottom of Directory. See documentation (http:...CCNet Conditional Plugin: CCNet Conditional for CCNet 1.5: A (quick) build of the plugin for CCNet 1.5 to fix the 17365 bug reported by Beakster. This also adds a new condition "timeCondition"CybennyCMS: Cybenny CMS beta 1: The first beta. Includes a small demo site.Data Extracting SDK: Data Extracting SDK v.1.1 RTM: RTM version of Data Extracting SDK.Duckworth Lewis Professional Edition Calculator: DLcalc 2.0: This software can perform all D/L calculations 100% accurately. From version 2.0 onwards, tables for par scores can also be produced.EPiServer CMS Page Type Builder: Page Type Builder 1.2: Release notes can be found in this blog post.Floe IRC Client: Floe IRC Client 2010-05 R5: - Many new context menu options for @s - Ability to select multiple users in the nick list for some operations (kick, ban) - Bunch of minor bug fix...Graffiti CMS Events Plugin: Version 1.0.1: Minor update to previous version to fix bug where deleted posts were still showing in the calendar.Microsoft Research Boogie: 2010-05-16: Binary release of Boogie and Dafny. (Note, Chalice is not pre-built as part of this binary release. To obtain it, you need to build it yourself f...MSBuild Launch Pad (mPad): 1.0 Beta 2: Basic support for sln, csproj, vbproj, vcxproj, shfbproj, ccproj, oxygene and proj files are added. Basic settings (Show Prompt, and Auto Hide) are...Multi-Language Words Memorizer: Memorizer 1.1: Issues fix, XML db update with new words.NShader - HLSL - GLSL - CG - Shader Syntax Highlighter AddIn for Visual Studio: NShader 1.1: New release of NShader! New : - a Visual Studio 2010 port can be installed through the new extension manager : you just have to download NShaderV...PHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.3 Production: Want to contribute?Please refer the Contribute page. DonationsDonate via PayPal. If you want to, we can also add your name / company on our Donati...Rollback - A social backup tool.: Rollback Setup 0.5.1.2 Build 48360: Bug fixes for backing up files which are hidden/system. Changes to make builds on 64 bit Windows 7 using VS 2010 Express edition.Rollback - A social backup tool.: Rollback Setup 0.5.1.3: Updated version number.Shake - C# Make: Shake v0.1.20: New: Simple console logger Changes: Command line params helper writes out syntax and samples (like msbuild) Fixes: Assembly info, file task and r...SharePoint User Search WebParts: v0.1 Friendly MOSS 2007 Search WebPart: Very first version of this webpart. A more stabilized version will follow in few days.Team Deploy: Team Deploy 2010 Beta 1: This is the initial release for Team Deploy 2010 for TFS Team Build 2010. All features from Team Build 2.x are functional in this version. Comp...Team Foundation Server Administration Tool: 2.0: TFS Administration Tool 2.0 TFS Administration Tool 2.0 is built on top of the Team Foundation Server 2008 object model and in order to connect to...The Ping Master: v0.9.0.0: Installer for The Ping Master binariesUseful Office Macros: All Macro Downloads: Please find above the downloads related to this project. Each Excel Workbook below works independently of the others, so you only need to download...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30516.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: Advanced Digital Board Game (Visual C++ 2008): An advanced digital board game made in visual c 2008.YUI Compressor Custom Tool for Visual Studio: YUI Compressor Custom Tool Full Version: Version 1.0 The following changes have been made: Merged classes to automatically sense if the target file is Javascript or CSS. Cleaned up setu...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelASP.NETMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcelBlogEngine.NETRawrMicrosoft Biology FoundationCustomer Portal Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRMWindows Azure Command-line Tools for PHP DevelopersDotNetZip LibraryCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightSQL Server PowerShell Extensions

    Read the article

  • SQL SERVER – Using expressor Composite Types to Enforce Business Rules

    - by pinaldave
    One of the features that distinguish the expressor Data Integration Platform from other products in the data integration space is its concept of composite types, which provide an effective and easily reusable way to clearly define the structure and characteristics of data within your application.  An important feature of the composite type approach is that it allows you to easily adjust the content of a record to its ultimate purpose.  For example, a record used to update a row in a database table is easily defined to include only the minimum set of columns, that is, a value for the key column and values for only those columns that need to be updated. Much like a class in higher level programming languages, you can also use the composite type as a way to enforce business rules onto your data by encapsulating a datum’s name, data type, and constraints (for example, maximum, minimum, or acceptable values) as a single entity, which ensures that your data can not assume an invalid value.  To what extent you use this functionality is a decision you make when designing your application; the expressor design paradigm does not force this approach on you. Let’s take a look at how these features are used.  Suppose you want to create a group of applications that maintain the employee table in your human resources database. Your table might have a structure similar to the HumanResources.Employee table in the AdventureWorks database.  This table includes two columns, EmployeID and rowguid, that are maintained by the relational database management system; you cannot provide values for these columns when inserting new rows into the table. Additionally, there are columns such as VacationHours and SickLeaveHours that you might choose to update for all employees on a monthly basis, which justifies creation of a dedicated application. By creating distinct composite types for the read, insert and update operations against this table, you can more easily manage this table’s content. When developing this application within expressor Studio, your first task is to create a schema artifact for the database table.  This process is completely driven by a wizard, only requiring that you select the desired database schema and table.  The resulting schema artifact defines the mapping of result set records to a record within the expressor data integration application.  The structure of the record within the expressor application is a composite type that is given the default name CompositeType1.  As you can see in the following figure, all columns from the table are included in the result set and mapped to an identically named attribute in the default composite type. If you are developing an application that needs to read this table, perhaps to prepare a year-end report of employees by department, you would probably not be interested in the data in the rowguid and ModifiedDate columns.  A typical approach would be to drop this unwanted data in a downstream operator.  But using an alternative composite type provides a better approach in which the unwanted data never enters your application. While working in expressor  Studio’s schema editor, simply create a second composite type within the same schema artifact, which you could name ReadTable, and remove the attributes corresponding to the unwanted columns. The value of an alternative composite type is even more apparent when you want to insert into or update the table.  In the composite type used to insert rows, remove the attributes corresponding to the EmployeeID primary key and rowguid uniqueidentifier columns since these values are provided by the relational database management system. And to update just the VacationHours and SickLeaveHours columns, use a composite type that includes only the attributes corresponding to the EmployeeID, VacationHours, SickLeaveHours and ModifiedDate columns. By specifying this schema artifact and composite type in a Write Table operator, your upstream application need only deal with the four required attributes and there is no risk of unintentionally overwriting a value in a column that does not need to be updated. Now, what about the option to use the composite type to enforce business rules?  If you review the composition of the default composite type CompositeType1, you will note that the constraints defined for many of the attributes mirror the table column specifications.  For example, the maximum number of characters in the NationaIDNumber, LoginID and Title attributes is equivalent to the maximum width of the target column, and the size of the MaritalStatus and Gender attributes is limited to a single character as required by the table column definition.  If your application code leads to a violation of these constraints, an error will be raised.  The expressor design paradigm then allows you to handle the error in a way suitable for your application.  For example, a string value could be truncated or a numeric value could be rounded. Moreover, you have the option of specifying additional constraints that support business rules unrelated to the table definition. Let’s assume that the only acceptable values for marital status are S, M, and D.  Within the schema editor, double-click on the MaritalStatus attribute to open the Edit Attribute window.  Then click the Allowed Values checkbox and enter the acceptable values into the Constraint Value text box. The schema editor is updated accordingly. There is one more option that the expressor semantic type paradigm supports.  Since the MaritalStatus attribute now clearly specifies how this type of information should be represented (a single character limited to S, M or D), you can convert this attribute definition into a shared type, which will allow you to quickly incorporate this definition into another composite type or into the description of an output record from a transform operator. Again, double-click on the MaritalStatus attribute and in the Edit Attribute window, click Convert, which opens the Share Local Semantic Type window that you use to name this shared type.  There’s no requirement that you give the shared type the same name as the attribute from which it was derived.  You should supply a name that makes it obvious what the shared type represents. In this posting, I’ve overviewed the expressor semantic type paradigm and shown how it can be used to make your application development process more productive.  The beauty of this feature is that you choose when and to what extent you utilize the functionality, but I’m certain that if you opt to follow this approach your efforts will become more efficient and your work will progress more quickly.  As always, I encourage you to download and evaluate expressor Studio for your current and future data integration needs. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: CodeProject, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Documentation, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

    Read the article

  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, July 02, 2013

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, July 02, 2013Popular ReleasesMastersign.Expressions: Mastersign.Expressions v0.4.2: added support for if(<cond>, <true-part>, <false-part>) fixed multithreading issue with rand() improved demo applicationNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module: NB_Store v2.3.6 Rel0: v2.3.6 Is now DNN6 and DNN7 compatible Important : During update this install with overwrite the menu.xml setting, if you have changed this then make a backup before you upgrade and reapply your changes after the upgrade. Please view the following documentation if you are installing and configuring this module for the first time System Requirements Skill requirements Downloads and documents Step by step guide to a working store Please ask all questions in the Discussions tab. Document.Editor: 2013.26: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.26: New Insert Chart Improved User Interface Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsWsus Package Publisher: Release V1.2.1307.01: Fix an issue in the UI, approvals are not shown correctly in the 'Report' tabDirectX Tool Kit: July 2013: July 1, 2013 VS 2013 Preview projects added and updates for DirectXMath 3.05 vectorcall Added use of sRGB WIC metadata for JPEG, PNG, and TIFF SaveToWIC functions updated with new optional setCustomProps parameter and error check with optional targetFormatCore Server 2012 Powershell Script Hyper-v Manager: new_root.zip: Verison 1.0JSON Toolkit: JSON Toolkit 4.1.736: Improved strinfigy performance New serializing feature New anonymous type support in constructorsDotNetNuke® IFrame: IFrame 04.05.00: New DNN6/7 Manifest file and Azure Compatibility.VidCoder: 1.5.2 Beta: Fixed crash on presets with an invalid bitrate.Gardens Point LEX: Gardens Point LEX version 1.2.1: The main distribution is a zip file. This contains the binary executable, documentation, source code and the examples. ChangesVersion 1.2.1 has new facilities for defining and manipulating character classes. These changes make the construction of large Unicode character classes more convenient. The runtime code for performing automaton backup has been re-implemented, and is now faster for scanners that need backup. Source CodeThe distribution contains a complete VS2010 project for the appli...ZXMAK2: Version 2.7.5.7: - fix TZX emulation (Bruce Lee, Zynaps) - fix ATM 16 colors for border - add memory module PROFI 512K; add PROFI V03 rom image; fix PROFI 3.XX configTwitter image Downloader: Twitter Image Downloader 2 with Installer: Application file with Install shield and Dot Net 4.0 redistributableUltimate Music Tagger: Ultimate Music Tagger 1.0.0.0: First release of Ultimate Music TaggerBlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.2: 2013.06.28 Ver5.9.2 (1) ??????????(????SMTP?????)?????????? (2) HTTPS???????????Outlook 2013 Add-In: Configuration Form: This new version includes the following changes: - Refactored code a bit. - Removing configuration from main form to gain more space to display items. - Moved configuration to separate form. You can click the little "gear" icon to access the configuration form (still very simple). - Added option to show past day appointments from the selected day (previous in time, that is). - Added some tooltips. You will have to uninstall the previous version (add/remove programs) if you had installed it ...Terminals: Version 3.0 - Release: Changes since version 2.0:Choose 100% portable or installed version Removed connection warning when running RDP 8 (Windows 8) client Fixed Active directory search Extended Active directory search by LDAP filters Fixed single instance mode when running on Windows Terminal server Merged usage of Tags and Groups Added columns sorting option in tables No UAC prompts on Windows 7 Completely new file persistence data layer New MS SQL persistence layer (Store data in SQL database)...NuGet: NuGet 2.6: Released June 26, 2013. Release notes: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/release-notes/nuget-2.6Python Tools for Visual Studio: 2.0 Beta: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.0 Beta. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, HPC, IPython, and cross platform debugging support. For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuewiStN...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 and WP8 (v1.3 beta): Preview: New MPEG DASH adaptive streaming plugin for Windows Azure Media Services Preview: New Ultraviolet CFF plugin. Preview: New WP7 version with WP8 compatibility. (source code only) Source code is now available via CodePlex Git Misc bug fixes and improvements: WP8 only: Added optional fullscreen and mute buttons to default xaml JS only: protecting currentTime from returning infinity. Some videos would cause currentTime to be infinity which could cause errors in plugins expectin...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.8: SERVER OWNERS: note that the default maprot has changed once again. Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we continue to try to package for those OSes. Or better yet, try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compi...New ProjectsALM Rangers DevOps Tooling and Guidance: Practical tooling and guidance that will enable teams to realize a faster deployment based on continuous feedback.Core Server 2012 Powershell Script Hyper-v Manager: Free core Server 2012 powershell scripts and batch files that replace the non-existent hyper-v manager, vmconnect and mstsc.Enhanced Deployment Service (EDS): EDS is a web service based utility designed to extend the deployment capabilities of administrators with the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit.ExtendedDialogBox: Libreria DialogBoxJazdy: This project is here only because we wanted to take advantage of a public git server.Mon Examen: This web interface is meant to make examinationsneet: summaryOrchard Multi-Choice Voting: A multiple choice voting Orchard module.Particle Swarm Optimization Solving Quadratic Assignment Problem: This project is submitted for the solving of QAP using PSO algorithms with addition of some modification Porjects: 23123123PPL Power Pack: PPL Power PackProperty Builder: Visual Studio tool for speeding up process of coding class properties getters and setters.RedRuler for Redline: I tried some on-screen rulers, none of them help me measure the UI element quickly based on the Redline. So I decided to created this handy RedRuler tool. Royale Living: Mahindra Royale Community PortalSearch and booking Hotel or Tours: Ð? án nghiên c?u c?a sinh viên tdt theo mô hình mvc 4SystemBuilder.Show: This tool is a helper after you create your project in visual studio to create the respective objects and interface. TalentDesk: new ptojectTcmplex: The Training Center teaches many different kind of course such as English, French, Computer hardware and computer softwareTFS Reporting Guide: Provides guidance and samples to enable TFS users to generate reports based on WIT data.Umbraco AdaptiveImages: Adaptive Images Package for UmbracoVirtualNet - A ILcode interpreter/emulator written in C++/Assembly: VirtualNet is a interpreter/emulator for running .net code in native without having to install the .Net FrameWorkVisual Blocks: Visual Blocks ????IDE ????? ??????? ????? ????/?? Visual Studio and Cloud Based Mobile Device Testing: Practical guidance enabling field to remove blockers to adoption and to use and extend the Perfecto Mobile Cloud Device testing within the context of VS.Windows 8 Time Picker for Windows Phone: A Windows Phone implementation of the Time Picker control found in the Windows 8.1 Alarms app.???? - SmallBasic?: ?????????

    Read the article

  • OpenGL font rendering

    - by DEElekgolo
    I am trying to make an openGL text rendering class using FreeType. I was originally following this code but it doesn't seem to work out for me. I get nothing reguardless of what parameters I put for Draw(). class Font { public: Font() { if (FT_Init_FreeType(&ftLibrary)) { printf("Could not initialize FreeType library\n"); return; } glGenBuffers(1,&iVerts); } bool Load(std::string sFont, unsigned int Size = 12.0f) { if (FT_New_Face(ftLibrary,sFont.c_str(),0,&ftFace)) { printf("Could not open font: %s\n",sFont.c_str()); return true; } iSize = Size; FT_Set_Pixel_Sizes(ftFace,0,(int)iSize); FT_GlyphSlot gGlyph = ftFace->glyph; //Generating the texture atlas. //Rather than some amazing rectangular packing method, I'm just going //to have one long strip of letters with the height being that of the font size. int width = 0; int height = 0; for (int i = 32; i < 128; i++) { if (FT_Load_Char(ftFace,i,FT_LOAD_RENDER)) { printf("Error rendering letter %c for font %s.\n",i,sFont.c_str()); } width += gGlyph->bitmap.width; height += std::max(height,gGlyph->bitmap.rows); } //Generate the openGL texture glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE0); //if I texture exists then delete it. iTexture ? glDeleteBuffers(1,&iTexture):0; glGenTextures(1,&iTexture); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D,iTexture); glPixelStorei(GL_UNPACK_ALIGNMENT,1); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D,0,GL_ALPHA,width,height,0,GL_ALPHA,GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE,0); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); //load the glyphs and set the glyph data int x = 0; for (int i = 32; i < 128; i++) { if (FT_Load_Char(ftFace,i,FT_LOAD_RENDER)) { //if it cant load the character continue; } //load the glyph map into the texture glTexSubImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D,0,x,0, gGlyph->bitmap.width, gGlyph->bitmap.rows, GL_ALPHA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, gGlyph->bitmap.buffer); //move the "pen" down the strip x += gGlyph->bitmap.width; chars[i].ax = (float)(gGlyph->advance.x >> 6); chars[i].ay = (float)(gGlyph->advance.y >> 6); chars[i].bw = (float)gGlyph->bitmap.width; chars[i].bh = (float)gGlyph->bitmap.rows; chars[i].bl = (float)gGlyph->bitmap_left; chars[i].bt = (float)gGlyph->bitmap_top; chars[i].tx = (float)x/width; } printf("Loaded font: %s\n",sFont.c_str()); return true; } void Draw(std::string sString,Vector2f vPos = Vector2f(0,0),Vector2f vScale = Vector2f(1,1)) { struct pPoint { pPoint() { x = y = s = t = 0; } pPoint(float a,float b,float c,float d) { x = a; y = b; s = c; t = d; } float x,y; float s,t; }; pPoint* cCoordinates = new pPoint[6*sString.length()]; int n = 0; for (const char *p = sString.c_str(); *p; p++) { float x2 = vPos.x() + chars[*p].bl * vScale.x(); float y2 = -vPos.y() - chars[*p].bt * vScale.y(); float w = chars[*p].bw * vScale.x(); float h = chars[*p].bh * vScale.y(); float x = vPos.x() + chars[*p].ax * vScale.x(); float y = vPos.y() + chars[*p].ay * vScale.y(); //skip characters with no pixels //still advances though if (!w || !h) { continue; } //triangle one cCoordinates[n++] = pPoint( x2 , -y2 , chars[*p].tx , 0); cCoordinates[n++] = pPoint( x2+w , -y2 , chars[*p].tx + chars[*p].bw / w , 0); cCoordinates[n++] = pPoint( x2 , -y2-h , chars[*p].tx , chars[*p].bh / h); cCoordinates[n++] = pPoint( x2+w , -y2 , chars[*p].tx + chars[*p].bw / w , 0); cCoordinates[n++] = pPoint( x2 , -y2-h , chars[*p].tx , chars[*p].bh / h); cCoordinates[n++] = pPoint( x2+w , -y2-h , chars[*p].tx + chars[*p].bw / w , chars[*p].bh / h); } glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER,iVerts); glBindBuffer(GL_TEXTURE_2D,iTexture); //Vertices glEnableClientState(GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); glVertexPointer(2,GL_FLOAT,sizeof(pPoint),&cCoordinates[0].x); //TexCoord 0 glClientActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE0); glEnableClientState(GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); glTexCoordPointer(2,GL_FLOAT,sizeof(pPoint),&cCoordinates[0].s); glCullFace(GL_NONE); glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER,6*sString.length(),cCoordinates,GL_DYNAMIC_DRAW); glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES,0,n); glCullFace(GL_BACK); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER,0); glBindBuffer(GL_TEXTURE_2D,0); glDisableClientState(GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); glDisableClientState(GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); } ~Font() { glDeleteBuffers(1,&iVerts); glDeleteBuffers(1,&iTexture); } private: unsigned int iSize; //openGL texture atlas unsigned int iTexture; //openGL geometry buffer; unsigned int iVerts; FT_Library ftLibrary; FT_Face ftFace; struct Character { float ax,ay;//Advance float bw,bh;//bitmap size float bl,bt;//bitmap left and top float tx; } chars[128]; };

    Read the article

  • Top 10 Browser Productivity Tips

    - by Renso
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/renso/archive/2013/10/14/top-10-browser-productivity-tips.aspxYou don’t have to be a geek to be a productive browser user. The tips below have been selected by actions users take most of the time to navigate a web-site but use long-standing keyboard or mouse actions to get them done, when there are keyboard short-cuts you can use instead. Since you hands are already on the keyboard it is almost always faster to sue a keyboard shortcut to get something done that you usually used the mouse for. For example right-clicking on something to copy it and then doing to same for pasting something is very time consuming, keyboard shortcuts have been created that simplify the task. All it takes are a few memory brain cells to remember them. Here are the tips, in no particular order:   Tip 1 Hold down the spacebar on your keyboard to page to the end of your web page rather than using your mouse. This is really a slow way of doing it. If you want to page one page at a time, hit the spacebar once, and again to page again. But if you want to page all the way to the end of the web page simply hit Ctrl+End (that is hold down the Ctrl key and hit the End button on your keyboard). To get to the top of your web page, simply hit Ctrl + Home to go all the way to the top of your web page. Tip 2 Where are my downloads? Some folks run downloads again-and-again because they do not know where the last one went and they do not see the popup, or browser note on their web page in the footer, etc. Simply hit Ctrl+J. Works in most browsers. Tip 3 Selecting a US state from a drop down box. Don’t use the mouse, takes just way too long to scroll. When you tab to the drop down box or click on it with your mouse, simply hit the first character of the state and it will be selected. For Texas for example hit the letter “T” twice on your keyboard to get to it. The same concept can be applied to any drop down box that is alphabetical or numerically sorted. Tip 4 Fixing spelling errors. All modern-day browsers support this now. You see the red wavy lines underscoring a word, yes it is a spelling error. How do you fix it? Don’t overtype it or try and fix it manually, fist right-click on it and a list of suggestions comes up. If it does not show up, like my name “Renso” and you know how to spell your name as in this example, look further down the list of options (the little window popup that appears when you right click) and you should see an option to “Add to Dictionary”. Be warned, when you add it, it only adds it to the browser you’re using’s dictionary. If you use Google Chrome, Firefox and IE, each one will have their own list. Tip 5 So you have trouble seeing the text on the screen. Or you are looking at a photo, for example in Facebook. You want to zoom in to read better or zoom into a photo a bit more. Hit Ctrl++ (hold down Ctrl key and hit the plus key – actually it’s the equal key but it is easier to remember that it is plus for bigger). Hit the minus to zoom out. Now you can’t remember what the original size was since you were so excited to hit it 20 times, or was that 21… Simply hit Ctrl+0 (that is zero) and it will reset it to the default. Tip 6 So you closed a couple of tabs in your browser. Suddenly you remember something you wanted to double-check something on one of the tabs, you cannot remember the URL ad the tab is gone forever, or is it? Simply hit Ctrl+Shift+t and it will bring back your tabs one by one each time you click the T. This has also been a great way for me to quickly close some tabs because I don’t want my boss to see I’m shopping and then hitting Ctrl+Shift+t to quickly get it back and complete my check-put and purchase. Or, for parents, when you walk into your daughter’s room and you see she quickly clicks and closes a window/tab in here browser. Not to worry my little darling, daddy will Ctrl+Shift+t and see what boys on Facebook you were talking too… Tip 7 The web browser is frozen on your PC/Laptop/Whatever, in this example it may be your Internet Explorer browser. I don’t mention Firefox or Chrome here because it probably never happens in their world. You cannot close it, it won’t respond to anything you have done s far except for the next step you are about to take, which is throw your two-day old coffee on your keyboard. This happens especially on sites that want to force you to complete a purchase order. Hit Ctrl+Alt+Del on your keyboard on any version of windows, select TASK MANAGER. In the  First Tab, which is the Process Tab, look for the item in question. In this example you should see Internet Explorer. Right-click it and select “End Task”. It will force the thread out of memory and terminate that process. You can of course do this with any program running under your account. Tip 8 This is a personal favorite of mine. To select words in the paragraph without using the mouse. You don’t want to select one character at a time like when you use the Ctrl+arrows as it can be very slow if you want to select a lot of text. You also want to select whole words. Simply use the Ctrl+Shift_arrow (right or left depending which direction you want to go. Tip 9 I was a bit reluctant to add this one, but being in the professional services industry still come across many-a-folk that simply can’t copy-and-paste them-all text or images that reside on them screens, y’all. Ctrl+c to copy and Ctrl+v to paste it. Works a lot faster than using the mouse. You may be asking: “Well why in the devil did they not use Ctrl+p for paste…. because that is for printing. This is of course not limited to the browser world, it applies to almost any piece of software running on PC or Mac. Go try it on an image on your browser, right-click it and select copy. Open a word document and Ctrl+v to paste the image in there. Please consider copyright laws. Tip 10 Getting rid of annoying ads. Now this only works when you load a web page, meaning when you get back to the same page later you will have to do this again and you will need to learn a tool to do it, WELL WORTH IT. For example, I use GrooveShark to listen to music but I don’t like the ads they show. Install a tool like Firebug for Firefox or use the Ctrl+Shift+I on Chrome to bring up the developer toolbar. Shows at the bottom of the page. With Firefox, once you have installed Firebug as an add-on, a yellow bug should appear on the top right-hand-side of your browser, click on it to display the developer toolbar. You will need to learn how to use it, but once you know how to select an item/section on the window (usually just right-click the add you don’t want to see and select “Inspect Element”, the developer toolbar will appear (if not already there)) and then simply hit delete and it will remove the add from the screen. If you don’t know HTML you may need to play with it a bit, but once you understand how it works can open up a whole new world for you on how web pages actually work. If you can think of any others that have saved you a ton of time please let me know so I can add them to a top 99 list.

    Read the article

  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 29, 2013

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 29, 2013Popular ReleasesAudioWordsDownloader: AudioWordsDownloader 1.1 build 88: New features -------- list of words (mp3 files) is available upon typing when a download path is defined list of download paths is added paths history settings added Bug fixed ----- case mismatch in word search field fixed path not exist bug fixed when history has been used path, when filled from dialog, not stored refresh autocomplete list after path change word sought is deleted when path is changed at the end sought word list is deleted word list not refreshed download end...Activity Viewer 2012: Activity Viewer 2012 V 5.0.0.3: Planning to add new features: 1. Import/Export rules 2. Tabular mode multi servers connections.Tweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Alpha 0.8.3.0: Version 0.8.3.0 emphasis on the FIlteredStream and ease how to manage Exceptions that can occur due to the network or any other issue you might encounter. Will be available through nuget the 29/09/2013. FilteredStream Features provided by the Twitter Stream API - Ability to track specific keywords - Ability to track specific users - Ability to track specific locations Additional features - Detect the reasons the tweet has been retrieved from the Filtered API. You have access to both the ma...AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.5: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????,????,?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????,??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??,????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.5 ???? AcPlay????????v3.5 ????????,???????????30% ?? ???????GoodManga.net???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??Acfun?????????? ??Bilibili??????????? ?????????flvcd???????? ??SfAcg????????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ????32...OfflineBrowser: Release v1.2: This release includes some multi-threading support, a better progress bar, more JavaScript fixes, and a help system. This release is also portable (can run with no issues from a flash drive).CtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.0.0.34288 Release: This release of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer includes the following significant features: Stereoscopic 3D display support. Based on Firestorm viewer 4.4.2 codebase. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-0-0-34288-release Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/privacy Disclaimer: This software is not provided or supported by Linden Lab, the makers of ...CrmSvcUtil Generate Attribute Constants: Generate Attribute Constants (1.0.5018.28159): Built against version 5.0.15 of the CRM SDK Fixed issue where constant for primary key attribute was being duplicated in all entity classes Added ability to override base class for entity classesC# Intellisense for Notepad++: Release v1.0.6.0: Added support for classless scripts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.CS-Script for Notepad++: Release v1.0.6.0: Added support for classless scripts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.SimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.02: SourceCode and SampleMagick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.7.001: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.7.0. Breaking changes: - ToBitmap method of MagickImage returns a png instead of a bmp. - Changed the value for full transparency from 255(Q8)/65535(Q16) to 0. - MagickColor now uses floats instead of Byte/UInt16.Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.578b: With the feedback received over the renaming of Movie Folders, and files, there has been some refinement done. As well as I would like to introduce Blu-Ray movie folder support, for Pre-Frodo and Frodo onwards versions of XBMC. To start with, Context menu option for renaming movies, now has three sub options: Movie & Folder, Movie only & Folder only. The option Manual Movie Rename needs to be selected from Movie Preferences, but the autoscrape boxes do not need to be selected. Blu Ray Fo...WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen v2.1.3.api release: This is for the brave at heart, this is the maint release to update to the new movie api. please send feedback on fix requests.FFXIV Crafting Simulator: Crafting Simulator 2.3: - Major refactoring of the code behind. - Added a current durability and a current CP textbox.DNN CMS Platform: 07.01.02: Major HighlightsAdded the ability to manage the Vanity URL prefix Added the ability to filter members in the member directory by role Fixed issue where the user could inadvertently click the login button multiple times Fixed issues where core classes could not be used in out of process cache provider Fixed issue where profile visibility submenu was not displayed correctly Fixed issue where the member directory was broken when Convert URL to lowercase setting was enabled Fixed issu...Rawr: Rawr 5.4.1: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Sample MVC4 EF Codefirst Architecture: RazMVCWebApp ver 1.1: Signal R sample is added.CODE Framework: 4.0.30923.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new. Note: If you download the class reference help file with, you have to right-click the file, pick "Properties", and then unblock the file, as many browsers flag the file as blocked during download (for security reasons) and thus hides all content.JayData -The unified data access library for JavaScript: JayData 1.3.2 - Indian Summer Edition: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript to CRUD + Query data from different sources like WebAPI, OData, MongoDB, WebSQL, SQLite, HTML5 localStorage, Facebook or YQL. The library can be integrated with KendoUI, Angular.js, Knockout.js or Sencha Touch 2 and can be used on Node.js as well. See it in action in this 6 minutes video KendoUI examples: JayData example site Examples for map integration JayData example site What's new in JayData 1.3.2 - Indian Summer Edition For detai...ZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.12.0.0: sync with rev. 2892 of the java version new PDF417 decoder improved Aztec decoder global speed improvements direct Kinect support for ColorImageFrame better Structured Append support many other small bug fixes and improvementsNew ProjectsCACHEDB: CLIENT-DATABASE || CLIENT_CACHEDB-DATABASEClassic WiX Burn Theme: A WiX Burn theme inspired by the classic WiX wizard user interface.CryptStr.Fody: A post-build weaver that encrypts literal strings in your .NET assemblies without breaking ClickOnce.Easy Code: A setting framework.EduSoft: This is a school eg.GameStuff: GameStuff is a library of Physics and Geometrics concepts for video game. Nekora Test Project: Nekora test projectPopCorn Console Game: Simple console gameRadioController: This project started from people installing Tablets in Mustangs. You would typically loose most control of the radio. This projects brings that back!Random searcher i pochodne: Wyszukiwarka plików multimedialnych i czego dusza zapragnie.SporkRandom: A .NET (C#, Visual Basic) interface for the true random number generator service of random.org

    Read the article

  • 5 Lessons learnt in localization / multi language support in WPF

    - by MarkPearl
    For the last few months I have been secretly working away at the second version of an application that we initially released a few years ago. It’s called MaxCut and it is a free panel/cut optimizer for the woodwork, glass and metal industry. One of the motivations for writing MaxCut was to get an end to end experience in developing an application for general consumption. From the early days of v1 of MaxCut I would get the odd email thanking me for the software and then listing a few suggestions on how to improve it. Two of the most dominant suggestions that we received were… Support for imperial measurements (the original program only supported the metric system) Multi language support (we had someone who volunteered to translate the program into Japanese for us). I am not going to dive into the Imperial to Metric support in todays blog post, but I would like to cover a few brief lessons we learned in adding support for multi-language functionality in the software. I have sectioned them below under different lessons. Lesson 1 – Build multi-language support in from the start So the first lesson I learnt was if you know you are going to do multi language support – build it in from the very beginning! One of the power points of WPF/Silverlight is data binding in XAML and so while it wasn’t to painful to retro fit multi language support into the programing, it was still time consuming and a bit tedious to go through mounds and mounds of views and would have been a minor job to have implemented this while the form was being designed. Lesson 2 – Accommodate for varying word lengths using Grids The next lesson was a little harder to learn and was learnt a bit further down the road in the development cycle. We developed everything in English, assuming that other languages would have similar character length words for equivalent meanings… don’t!. A word that is short in your language may be of varying character lengths in other languages. Some language like Dutch and German allow for concatenation of nouns which has the potential to create really long words. We picked up a few places where our views had been structured incorrectly so that if a word was to long it would get clipped off or cut out. To get around this we began using the WPF grid extensively with column widths that would automatically expand if they needed to. Generally speaking the grid replacement got round this hurdle, and if in future you have a choice between a stack panel or a grid – think twice before going for the easier option… often the grid will be a bit more work to setup, but will be more flexible. Lesson 3 – Separate the separators Our initial run through moving the words to a resource dictionary led us to make what I thought was one potential mistake. If we had a label like the following… “length : “ In the resource dictionary we put it as a single entry. This is fine until you start using a word more than once. For instance in our scenario we used the word “length’ frequently. with different variations of the word with grammar and separators included in the resource we ended up having what I would consider a bloated dictionary. When we removed the separators from the words and put them as their own resources we saw a dramatic reduction in dictionary size… so something that looked like this… “length : “ “length. “ “length?” Was reduced to… “length” “:” “?” “.” While this may not seem like a reduction at first glance, consider that the separators “:?.” are used everywhere and suddenly you see a real reduction in bloat. Lesson 4 – Centralize the Language Dictionary This lesson was learnt at the very end of the project after we had already had a release candidate out in the wild. Because our translations would be done on a volunteer basis and remotely, we wanted it to be really simple for someone to translate our program into another language. As a common design practice we had tiered the application so that we had a business logic layer, a ui layer, etc. The problem was in several of these layers we had resource files specific for that layer. What this resulted in was us having multiple resource files that we would need to send to our translators. To add to our problems, some of the wordings were duplicated in different resource files, which would result in additional frustration from our translators as they felt they were duplicating work. Eventually the workaround was to make a separate project in VS2010 with just the language translations. We then exposed the dictionary as public within this project and made it as a reference to the other projects within the solution. This solved out problem as now we had a central dictionary and could remove any duplication's. Lesson 5 – Make a dummy translation file to test that you haven’t missed anything The final lesson learnt about multi language support in WPF was when checking if you had forgotten to translate anything in the inline code, make a test resource file with dummy data. Ideally you want the data for each word to be identical. In our instance we made one which had all the resource key values pointing to a value of test. This allowed us point the language file to our test resource file and very quickly browse through the program and see if we had missed any linking. The alternative to this approach is to have two language files and swap between the two while running the program to make sure that you haven’t missed anything, but the downside of dual language file approach is that it is much a lot harder spotting a mistake if everything is different – almost like playing Where’s Wally / Waldo. It is much easier spotting variance in uniformity – meaning when you put the “test’ keyword for everything, anything that didn’t say “test” stuck out like a sore thumb. So these are my top five lessons learnt on implementing multi language support in WPF. Feel free to make any suggestions in the comments section if you feel maybe something is more important than one of these or if I got it wrong!

    Read the article

  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, September 28, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, September 28, 2012Popular ReleasesWPUtils: WPUtils 1.2: Just fixed an issue related to isolated storage path for ChoosePhotoBehavior. Specifically CreateDirectory method only accepts relative path, but was given a "/photos/" path which would result in exception. Please make sure you have this fix if you are using ChoosePhotoBehavior! NOTE: Windows Phone SDK 7.1 or higher is required.TFS Timesheets: TFS Timesheets 2.0: New features: Visual Studio 2012 support Bug fixes: Scaling mode inherited rather than font scalingCRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor 1.1 Beta: Visual Ribbon Editor 1.1 Beta What's New: Fixed scrolling issue in UnHide dialog Added support for connecting via ADFS / IFD Added support for more than one action for a button Added support for empty StringParameter for Javascript functions Fixed bug in rule CrmClientTypeRule when selecting Outlook option Extended Prefix field in New Button dialogFree Aspx Image Gallery: Free Aspx Image Gallery Release V1: This is first basic release of my free aspx image gallery project. It is free to use and modify by the user without any need of providing any credit to me.Simple Microsoft Excel Document Converter (Convert To XLS, XLSX, PDF, XPS): ExcelDocConverter 0.1 Beta: Initial Release Microsoft Excel Documents Converter. Microsoft Excel 1997-2003 (XLS) Microsoft Excel 2007/2010 (XLSX) Portable Document Format (PDF) Microsoft XPS Document (XPS) Difference between NET2.0 and NET3.5 This program uses .NET Framework runtime library to run. Basically, they are no differences. Only the runtime library version is different. For older computers, i.e. Windows XP, might not have .NET Framework 3.5 installed, then use NET2.0 in stead. But, some Windows XP SP2 mig...Office File Properties: Office File Properties 3.3.1: Bug fix. Convert file extension to lowercase before checking.LoBDb.NET: LoBDb.NET 1.0.9: Centido.Core library: 1) SQL Server script bug fix: an error when changing the MaxLength property of an indexed string column or when changing the Precision-Scale properties of a decimal column. LobDb.NET Manager: 1) Changing the Precision, Scale, Default Value, Minimum and Maximum properties of a decimal column now enables the Save button. 2) The MaxLength property of a string column and the Precision+Scale values of a decimal column are now displayed in the column list. 3) Changing the Min...Chaos games: Chaos games: Small app for generating fractals using chaos gamesVisual Studio Icon Patcher: Version 1.5.2: This version contains no new images from v1.5.1 Contains the following improvements: Better support for detecting the installed languages The extract & inject commands won’t run if Visual Studio is running You may now run in extract or inject mode The p/invoke code was cleaned up based on Code Analysis recommendations When a p/invoke method fails the Win32 error message is now displayed Error messages use red text Status messages use green textMCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.2.16: Changelog for 2.2.16 (32bit and 64bit) Now a standalone remote client also available to control the Engine remotely. 1. Added support for remote connections for status and configuration. MCEBuddy now uses port 23332. The remote server name, remote server port and local server port can be updated from the MCEBuddy.conf file BUT the Service or GUI needs to be restarted (i.e. reboot or restart service or restart program) for it to take effect. Refer to documentation for more details http://mce...ZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.9.0.0: On the way to a release 1.0 the API should be stable now with this version. sync with rev. 2393 of the java version improved api better Unity support Windows RT binaries Windows CE binaries new Windows Service demo new WPF demo WindowsCE Hotfix: Fixes an error with ISO8859-1 encoding and scannning of QR-Codes. The hotfix is only needed for the WindowsCE platform.SSIS GoogleAnalyticsSource: Version 1.1 Alpha 2: The component uses now the Google API V2.4 including the management API.MVC Bootstrap: MVC Boostrap 0.5.1: A small demo site, based on the default ASP.NET MVC 3 project template, showing off some of the features of MVC Bootstrap. This release uses Entity Framework 5 for data access and Ninject 3 for dependency injection. If you download and use this project, please give some feedback, good or bad!menu4web: menu4web 1.0 - free javascript menu for web sites: menu4web 1.0 has been tested with all major browsers: Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera and Safari. Minified m4w.js library is less than 9K. Includes 21 menu examples of different styles. Can be freely distributed under The MIT License (MIT).Rawr: Rawr 5.0.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.26: The zh-CN issue has been solved. We also add a project management module.VidCoder: 1.4.1 Beta: Updated to HandBrake 4971. This should fix some issues with stuck PGS subtitles. Fixed build break which prevented pre-compiled XML serializers from showing up. Fixed problem where a preset would get errantly marked as modified when re-opening the encode settings window or importing a new preset.JSLint for Visual Studio 2010: 1.4.0: VS2012 support is alphaBlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.2: 2012.09.23 Ver5.7.2 (1)InetTest?? (2)HTTP?????????????????100???????????Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 6): IMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 5 Added separate samples download with .vsix dependencies instead of source dependencies Support for FreeWheel SmartXML ad responses Support for Smooth Streaming SDK DownloaderPlugins Support for VMAP and TTML polling for live scenarios Support for custom smooth streaming byte stream and scheme handlers Support for new play time and position tracking plugin Added IsLiveChanged event Added AdaptivePlugin.MaxBitrate property Add...New ProjectsChaos games: Small app to generating fractals using chaos gamesDocument Digitalization System: This system will allow the users with on one or more PCs to digitalize pdf files and store it or export it to other file formats.ExternalTokenAnalysisOffline: SPUser?UserToken????????????????。FinalProjectSeniorProject: ***Unfinished*** Senior project build GL Ponpes Selamat Kendal: Aplikasi Akuntansi Sekolah Pondok Pesantren Modern Selamat KendalHealth Care Manager: One of keynote planned for the Brazzaville Microsoft event coming soon.Orchard Commerce History with PayPal: Project expands on Nwazet.Commerce module (and is required for this module to work). Adds a purchase history, product role associations, and PayPal.PDF.NET: PWMIS ?????? Ver 4.5 ???? SMS Egypt: This project is intended to make it easy for people to send SMS to their customers using SMS gateways inside and outside Egypt. Strong Caml: Use the familiar CAML syntax, but now do it in strongly-typed, dynamic code. Just follow Visual Studio's IntelliSense, and your CAML query can't go wrong!TrainingFrameWork: TrainingFrameWork

    Read the article

  • C to C++ Conversion [closed]

    - by Annalyne
    Can someone convert this code to C++, pretty please? :( #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <time.h> #define WEAPON_ROPE 10 #define WEAPON_REVOLVER 20 #define WEAPON_LEADPIPE 30 #define WEAPON_CANDLESTICK 40 #define WEAPON_KNIFE 50 #define WEAPON_WRENCH 60 #define PEOPLE_MRGREEN 100 #define PEOPLE_MSSCARLET 200 #define PEOPLE_CONLMUSTARD 300 #define PEOPLE_PROFPLUM 400 #define PEOPLE_MISPEACOCK 500 #define PEOPLE_MISWHITE 600 #define PLACE_KITCHEN 1 #define PLACE_HALL 2 #define PLACE_POOLROOM 3 #define PLACE_STUDY 4 #define PLACE_LOUNG 5 #define PLACE_LIBRARY 6 #define PLACE_CONSERVATORY 7 #define PLACE_DINING 8 #define PLACE_BILLIARDS 9 int main() { int die = 0; int players[6][9] = {{0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}}; int allCards[] = {WEAPON_ROPE, WEAPON_REVOLVER, WEAPON_LEADPIPE, WEAPON_CANDLESTICK, WEAPON_CANDLESTICK, WEAPON_KNIFE, WEAPON_WRENCH, PEOPLE_MRGREEN, PEOPLE_MSSCARLET, PEOPLE_CONLMUSTARD, PEOPLE_CONLMUSTARD, PEOPLE_PROFPLUM, PEOPLE_MISPEACOCK, PEOPLE_MISWHITE, PLACE_KITCHEN, PLACE_HALL, PLACE_POOLROOM, PLACE_STUDY, PLACE_LOUNG, PLACE_LIBRARY, PLACE_CONSERVATORY, PLACE_DINING, PLACE_BILLIARDS}; int deckSize = 23; // number of cards in allCards array int count; for (count = 0; count < deckSize; ++count) { printf(", %d", allCards[count]); } // End for // These three array's are so you can put a card back, if need be... int weaponCards[] = {WEAPON_ROPE, WEAPON_REVOLVER, WEAPON_LEADPIPE, WEAPON_CANDLESTICK, WEAPON_CANDLESTICK, WEAPON_KNIFE, WEAPON_WRENCH}; int weaponDeckSize = 7; int peopleCards[] = {PEOPLE_MRGREEN, PEOPLE_MSSCARLET, PEOPLE_CONLMUSTARD, PEOPLE_CONLMUSTARD, PEOPLE_PROFPLUM, PEOPLE_MISPEACOCK, PEOPLE_MISWHITE}; int peopleDeckSize = 7; int placeCards[] = {PLACE_KITCHEN, PLACE_HALL, PLACE_POOLROOM, PLACE_STUDY, PLACE_LOUNG, PLACE_LIBRARY, PLACE_CONSERVATORY, PLACE_DINING, PLACE_BILLIARDS}; int placeDeckSize = 9; srand(clock()); // seed rand() using clock() which gives // the current tick your processor is at... int killer[3]; // no need to initialize yet. killer[0-2] will initialize int deckShuffle = rand() % weaponDeckSize; // picks one number out of the deck killer[0] = weaponCards[deckShuffle]; allCards[deckShuffle] = 0; // Card drawn. No longer exists in deck deckShuffle = rand() % peopleDeckSize; // picks another random card out of the deck killer[1] = peopleCards[deckShuffle]; allCards[deckShuffle + weaponDeckSize] = 0; // Card drawn. No longer exists in deck deckShuffle = rand() % placeDeckSize; // randomly picks the last card needed killer[2] = placeCards[deckShuffle]; allCards[deckShuffle + weaponDeckSize + peopleDeckSize] = 0; // Card drawn. No longer exists in deck int numberOfCards = 0; printf("CLUE\n"); printf("written by John Schintone\n"); printf("Origonal game delvoped by Hasbro\n"); int numberOfPlayers = 0; while ((numberOfPlayers < 3) || (numberOfPlayers > 6)) { printf("How many players are Going to play :\n"); printf("[number] > "); scanf("%d",&numberOfPlayers); // A very fast if statement which only uses integers/char's switch(numberOfPlayers) { case 6: { numberOfCards = 3; } break; case 5: { numberOfCards = 4; } break; case 4: { numberOfCards = 5; } break; case 3: { numberOfCards = 6; } break; default: { printf("You must enter a number between 3 and 6...\n"); } // End default } // End switch } // End while int index1, index2; // Note: ++index1; is faster than index1++; and will almost always // produce better code (index1++ happens after this statement line. // ++index1 increments index1 before this statement line) for (index1 = 0; index1 < numberOfPlayers; ++index1) { printf("Player %d", index1); for (index2 = 0; index2 < numberOfCards; ++index2) { // Remember that allCards[deckShuffle] == 0 because we removed that // card ages ago... works out well, just don't forget you did that : ) while (allCards[deckShuffle] == 0) { deckShuffle = rand() % deckSize; } // End while players[index1][index2] = allCards[deckShuffle]; allCards[deckShuffle] = 0; // Card removed for after loop... printf(", %d", players[index1][index2]); switch(players[index1][index2]) { case WEAPON_ROPE: { } break; // Add more... case PEOPLE_MRGREEN: { } break; // Add more... case PLACE_KITCHEN: { } break; // Add more... default: { printf("Program has caught player %d cheating...", index1); } // End default } // End switch } // End for printf("\n"); } // End for printf("The killer is %d, with the %d, and in the %d \n\n", killer[0], killer[1], killer[2]); printf("Type h for this help... \n"); printf("Type e to escape... \n"); printf("Type r to roll the die... \n"); char command = '\0'; // \0 represents zero, or the null character while (command != 'e') { printf("[one character] > "); scanf("%c", &command); if (command == 'r') { die = rand() % 6 + 1; printf("Your number is: %d \n", die); } // end while if (command == 'h') { printf("Type h for this help... \n"); printf("Type e to escape... \n"); printf("Type r to roll the die... \n"); } // End if printf("\n"); } // End while return(0); // Success. Program worked ok } // End main() Function

    Read the article

  • How to support 3-byte UTF-8 Characters in ANT

    - by efelton
    I am trying to support UTF-8 characters in my ANT script. As long as the character string are made up of 2-byte UTF-8 characters, such as: Lògìñ Ùsèr ÌÐ Then things work fine. When I use Unicode Han Character: ? Which, according to this site: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/6211/index.htm Has a UTF-8 encoding of 0xE6 0x88 0x91 I can see in UltraEdit, my input properties file has the values "E6 88 91" all in a row, so I'm fairly confident that my input is correct. And When I open the same file in Notepad++ I can see all the characters correctly. Here is my Build Script: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <project name="utf8test" default="all" basedir="."> <target name="all"> <loadproperties encoding="UTF-8" srcfile="./apps.properties.all.txt" /> <echo>No encoding ${common.app.name}</echo> <echo encoding="UTF-8">UTF-8 ${common.app.name}</echo> <echo encoding="UnicodeLittle">UnicodeLittle ${common.app.name}</echo> <echo encoding="UnicodeLittleUnmarked">UnicodeLittleUnmarked ${common.app.name}</echo> <echo>${common.app.ServerName}</echo> <echo>${bb.vendor}</echo> <echo>No encoding ${common.app.UserIdText}</echo> <echo encoding="UTF-8">UTF-8 ${common.app.UserIdText}</echo> <echo encoding="UnicodeLittle">UnicodeLittle ${common.app.UserIdText}</echo> <echo encoding="UnicodeLittleUnmarked">UnicodeLittleUnmarked ${common.app.UserIdText}</echo> <echoproperties /> </target> </project> And here is my properties file: common.app=VrvPsLTst common.app.name=?? common.app.description=Pseudo Loc Test App for Build Script testing common.app.ServerName=http://Vèrìvò.com bb.vendor=Vèrìvò common.app.PasswordText=Pàsswòrð bb.override.list=MP_COPYRIGHTTEXT, "Çòpÿrìght 2012 Vèrívó Bùîlð TéàM" common.app.LoginButtonText=Lògìñ common.app.UserIdText=Ùsèr ÌÐ bb.SMSSuccess=Mèssàgéß Sùççêssfúllÿ Sëñt common.app.LoginScreenMessage=WèlçòMé Mêssàgë common.app.LoginProgressMessage=Àùthèñtìçàtíòñ îñ prógréss... ios.RegistrationText=Règìstràtíòñ Téxt ios.RegistrationURL=http://www.josscrowcroft.com/2011/code/utf-8-multibyte-characters-in-url-parameters-%E2%9C%93/ Here is what the output looks like: Buildfile: C:\Temp\utf8\build.xml all: [echo] No encoding ?? [echo] UTF-8 ?? [echo] ÿþU n i c o d e L i t t l e ? ? [echo] U n i c o d e L i t t l e U n m a r k e d ? ? [echo] http://Vèrìvò.com [echo] Vèrìvò [echo] No encoding Ùsèr ÌÐ [echo] UTF-8 Ùsèr ÃŒÃ? [echo] ÿþU n i c o d e L i t t l e Ù s è r Ì Ð [echo] U n i c o d e L i t t l e U n m a r k e d Ù s è r Ì Ð [echoproperties] #Ant properties [echoproperties] #Mon Jun 18 15:25:13 EDT 2012 [echoproperties] ant.core.lib=C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant.jar [echoproperties] ant.file=C\:\\Temp\\utf8\\build.xml [echoproperties] ant.file.type=file [echoproperties] ant.file.type.utf8test=file [echoproperties] ant.file.utf8test=C\:\\Temp\\utf8\\build.xml [echoproperties] ant.home=c\:\\ant\\bin\\.. [echoproperties] ant.java.version=1.6 [echoproperties] ant.library.dir=C\:\\ant\\lib [echoproperties] ant.project.default-target=all [echoproperties] ant.project.invoked-targets=all [echoproperties] ant.project.name=utf8test [echoproperties] ant.version=Apache Ant version 1.8.1 compiled on April 30 2010 [echoproperties] awt.toolkit=sun.awt.windows.WToolkit [echoproperties] basedir=C\:\\Temp\\utf8 [echoproperties] bb.SMSSuccess=M\u00E8ss\u00E0g\u00E9\u00DF S\u00F9\u00E7\u00E7\u00EAssf\u00FAll\u00FF S\u00EB\u00F1t [echoproperties] bb.override.list=MP_COPYRIGHTTEXT, "\u00C7\u00F2p\u00FFr\u00ECght 2012 V\u00E8r\u00EDv\u00F3 B\u00F9\u00EEl\u00F0 T\u00E9\u00E0?" [echoproperties] bb.vendor=V\u00E8r\u00ECv\u00F2 [echoproperties] common.app=VrvPsLTst [echoproperties] common.app.LoginButtonText=L\u00F2g\u00EC\u00F1 [echoproperties] common.app.LoginProgressMessage=\u00C0\u00F9th\u00E8\u00F1t\u00EC\u00E7\u00E0t\u00ED\u00F2\u00F1 \u00EE\u00F1 pr\u00F3gr\u00E9ss... [echoproperties] common.app.LoginScreenMessage=W\u00E8l\u00E7\u00F2?\u00E9 M\u00EAss\u00E0g\u00EB [echoproperties] common.app.PasswordText=P\u00E0ssw\u00F2r\u00F0 [echoproperties] common.app.ServerName=http\://V\u00E8r\u00ECv\u00F2.com [echoproperties] common.app.UserIdText=\u00D9s\u00E8r \u00CC\u00D0 [echoproperties] common.app.description=Pseudo Loc Test App for Build Script testing [echoproperties] common.app.name=?? [echoproperties] file.encoding=Cp1252 [echoproperties] file.encoding.pkg=sun.io [echoproperties] file.separator=\\ [echoproperties] ios.RegistrationText=R\u00E8g\u00ECstr\u00E0t\u00ED\u00F2\u00F1 T\u00E9xt [echoproperties] ios.RegistrationURL=http\://www.josscrowcroft.com/2011/code/utf-8-multibyte-characters-in-url-parameters-%E2%9C%93/ [echoproperties] java.awt.graphicsenv=sun.awt.Win32GraphicsEnvironment [echoproperties] java.awt.printerjob=sun.awt.windows.WPrinterJob [echoproperties] java.class.path=c\:\\ant\\bin\\..\\lib\\ant-launcher.jar;C\:\\Temp\\utf8\\.\\;C\:\\Program Files (x86)\\Java\\jre7\\lib\\ext\\QTJava.zip;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-antlr.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-apache-bcel.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-apache-bsf.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-apache-log4j.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-apache-oro.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-apache-regexp.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-apache-resolver.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-apache-xalan2.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-commons-logging.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-commons-net.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-contrib-1.0b3.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-jai.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-javamail.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-jdepend.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-jmf.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-jsch.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-junit.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-launcher.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-netrexx.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-nodeps.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-starteam.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-stylebook.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-swing.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-testutil.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-trax.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant-weblogic.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\ant.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\bb-ant-tools.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\xercesImpl.jar;C\:\\ant\\lib\\xml-apis.jar;C\:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7\\lib\\tools.jar [echoproperties] java.class.version=51.0 [echoproperties] java.endorsed.dirs=C\:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7\\lib\\endorsed [echoproperties] java.ext.dirs=C\:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7\\lib\\ext;C\:\\Windows\\Sun\\Java\\lib\\ext [echoproperties] java.home=C\:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7 [echoproperties] java.io.tmpdir=C\:\\Users\\efelton\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\ [echoproperties] java.library.path=C\:\\Windows\\SYSTEM32;C\:\\Windows\\Sun\\Java\\bin;C\:\\Windows\\system32;C\:\\Windows;C\:\\Windows\\SYSTEM32;C\:\\Windows;C\:\\Windows\\SYSTEM32\\WBEM;C\:\\Windows\\SYSTEM32\\WINDOWSPOWERSHELL\\V1.0\\;C\:\\PROGRAM FILES\\INTEL\\WIFI\\BIN\\;C\:\\PROGRAM FILES\\COMMON FILES\\INTEL\\WIRELESSCOMMON\\;C\:\\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\\MICROSOFT SQL SERVER\\100\\TOOLS\\BINN\\;C\:\\PROGRAM FILES\\MICROSOFT SQL SERVER\\100\\TOOLS\\BINN\\;C\:\\PROGRAM FILES\\MICROSOFT SQL SERVER\\100\\DTS\\BINN\\;C\:\\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\\MICROSOFT SQL SERVER\\100\\TOOLS\\BINN\\VSSHELL\\COMMON7\\IDE\\;C\:\\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\\MICROSOFT SQL SERVER\\100\\DTS\\BINN\\;C\:\\Program Files\\ThinkPad\\Bluetooth Software\\;C\:\\Program Files\\ThinkPad\\Bluetooth Software\\syswow64;C\:\\Program Files (x86)\\QuickTime\\QTSystem\\;C\:\\Program Files (x86)\\AccuRev\\bin;C\:\\Program Files\\Java\\jdk1.7.0_04\\bin;C\:\\Program Files (x86)\\IDM Computer Solutions\\UltraEdit\\;. [echoproperties] java.runtime.name=Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment [echoproperties] java.runtime.version=1.7.0_04-b22 [echoproperties] java.specification.name=Java Platform API Specification [echoproperties] java.specification.vendor=Oracle Corporation [echoproperties] java.specification.version=1.7 [echoproperties] java.vendor=Oracle Corporation [echoproperties] java.vendor.url=http\://java.oracle.com/ [echoproperties] java.vendor.url.bug=http\://bugreport.sun.com/bugreport/ [echoproperties] java.version=1.7.0_04 [echoproperties] java.vm.info=mixed mode [echoproperties] java.vm.name=Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM [echoproperties] java.vm.specification.name=Java Virtual Machine Specification [echoproperties] java.vm.specification.vendor=Oracle Corporation [echoproperties] java.vm.specification.version=1.7 [echoproperties] java.vm.vendor=Oracle Corporation [echoproperties] java.vm.version=23.0-b21 [echoproperties] line.separator=\r\n [echoproperties] os.arch=amd64 [echoproperties] os.name=Windows 7 [echoproperties] os.version=6.1 [echoproperties] path.separator=; [echoproperties] sun.arch.data.model=64 [echoproperties] sun.boot.class.path=C\:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7\\lib\\resources.jar;C\:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7\\lib\\rt.jar;C\:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7\\lib\\sunrsasign.jar;C\:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7\\lib\\jsse.jar;C\:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7\\lib\\jce.jar;C\:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7\\lib\\charsets.jar;C\:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7\\lib\\jfr.jar;C\:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7\\classes [echoproperties] sun.boot.library.path=C\:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7\\bin [echoproperties] sun.cpu.endian=little [echoproperties] sun.cpu.isalist=amd64 [echoproperties] sun.desktop=windows [echoproperties] sun.io.unicode.encoding=UnicodeLittle [echoproperties] sun.java.command=org.apache.tools.ant.launch.Launcher -cp .;C\:\\Program Files (x86)\\Java\\jre7\\lib\\ext\\QTJava.zip [echoproperties] sun.java.launcher=SUN_STANDARD [echoproperties] sun.jnu.encoding=Cp1252 [echoproperties] sun.management.compiler=HotSpot 64-Bit Tiered Compilers [echoproperties] sun.os.patch.level=Service Pack 1 [echoproperties] user.country=US [echoproperties] user.dir=C\:\\Temp\\utf8 [echoproperties] user.home=C\:\\Users\\efelton [echoproperties] user.language=en [echoproperties] user.name=efelton [echoproperties] user.script= [echoproperties] user.timezone= [echoproperties] user.variant= BUILD SUCCESSFUL Total time: 1 second Thank you for your help EDIT\UPDATE 6/19/2012 I am developing in a Windows environment. I have installed a TTF from: http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/CJKUnifonts/Download I have updated UltraEdit to use the TTF and I can see the Chinese characters. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <project name="utf8test" default="all" basedir="."> <target name="all"> <echo>??</echo> <echo encoding="ISO-8859-1">ISO-8859-1 ??</echo> <echo encoding="UTF-8">UTF-8 ??</echo> <echo file="echo_output.txt" append="true" >?? ${line.separator}</echo> <echo file="echo_output.txt" append="true" encoding="ISO-8859-1">ISO-8859-1 ?? ${line.separator}</echo> <echo file="echo_output.txt" append="true" encoding="UTF-8">UTF-8 ?? ${line.separator}</echo> <echo file="echo_output.txt" append="true" encoding="UnicodeLittle">UnicodeLittle ?? ${line.separator}</echo> <echo file="echo_output.txt" append="true" encoding="UnicodeLittleUnmarked">UnicodeLittleUnmarked ?? ${line.separator}</echo> </target> </project> The output captured by running inside UltraEdit is: Buildfile: E:\temp\utf8\build.xml all: [echo] ?? [echo] ISO-8859-1 ?? [echo] UTF-8 ?? BUILD SUCCESSFUL Total time: 1 second And the echo_output.txt file shows up like this: ?? ISO-8859-1 ?? UTF-8 ?? ÿþU n i c o d e L i t t l e ? ? U n i c o d e L i t t l e U n m a r k e d ? ? So there appears to be somehting fundamentally wrong with how my ANT environment is set up since I cannot simply echo the character to the screen or to a file.

    Read the article

  • Parsing concatenated, non-delimited XML messages from TCP-stream using C#

    - by thaller
    I am trying to parse XML messages which are send to my C# application over TCP. Unfortunately, the protocol can not be changed and the XML messages are not delimited and no length prefix is used. Moreover the character encoding is not fixed but each message starts with an XML declaration <?xml>. The question is, how can i read one XML message at a time, using C#. Up to now, I tried to read the data from the TCP stream into a byte array and use it through a MemoryStream. The problem is, the buffer might contain more than one XML messages or the first message may be incomplete. In these cases, I get an exception when trying to parse it with XmlReader.Read or XmlDocument.Load, but unfortunately the XmlException does not really allow me to distinguish the problem (except parsing the localized error string). I tried using XmlReader.Read and count the number of Element and EndElement nodes. That way I know when I am finished reading the first, entire XML message. However, there are several problems. If the buffer does not yet contain the entire message, how can I distinguish the XmlException from an actually invalid, non-well-formed message? In other words, if an exception is thrown before reading the first root EndElement, how can I decide whether to abort the connection with error, or to collect more bytes from the TCP stream? If no exception occurs, the XmlReader is positioned at the start of the root EndElement. Casting the XmlReader to IXmlLineInfo gives me the current LineNumber and LinePosition, however it is not straight forward to get the byte position where the EndElement really ends. In order to do that, I would have to convert the byte array into a string (with the encoding specified in the XML declaration), seek to LineNumber,LinePosition and convert that back to the byte offset. I try to do that with StreamReader.ReadLine, but the stream reader gives no public access to the current byte position. All this seams very inelegant and non robust. I wonder if you have ideas for a better solution. Thank you. EDIT: I looked around and think that the situation is as follows (I might be wrong, corrections are welcome): I found no method so that the XmlReader can continue parsing a second XML message (at least not, if the second message has an XmlDeclaration). XmlTextReader.ResetState could do something similar, but for that I would have to assume the same encoding for all messages. Therefor I could not connect the XmlReader directly to the TcpStream. After closing the XmlReader, the buffer is not positioned at the readers last position. So it is not possible to close the reader and use a new one to continue with the next message. I guess the reason for this is, that the reader could not successfully seek on every possible input stream. When XmlReader throws an exception it can not be determined whether it happened because of an premature EOF or because of a non-wellformed XML. XmlReader.EOF is not set in case of an exception. As workaround I derived my own MemoryBuffer, which returns the very last byte as a single byte. This way I know that the XmlReader was really interested in the last byte and the following exception is likely due to a truncated message (this is kinda sloppy, in that it might not detect every non-wellformed message. However, after appending more bytes to the buffer, sooner or later the error will be detected. I could cast my XmlReader to the IXmlLineInfo interface, which gives access to the LineNumber and the LinePosition of the current node. So after reading the first message I remember these positions and use it to truncate the buffer. Here comes the really sloppy part, because I have to use the character encoding to get the byte position. I am sure you could find test cases for the code below where it breaks (e.g. internal elements with mixed encoding). But up to now it worked for all my tests. The parser class follows here -- may it be useful (I know, its very far from perfect...) class XmlParser { private byte[] buffer = new byte[0]; public int Length { get { return buffer.Length; } } // Append new binary data to the internal data buffer... public XmlParser Append(byte[] buffer2) { if (buffer2 != null && buffer2.Length > 0) { // I know, its not an efficient way to do this. // The EofMemoryStream should handle a List<byte[]> ... byte[] new_buffer = new byte[buffer.Length + buffer2.Length]; buffer.CopyTo(new_buffer, 0); buffer2.CopyTo(new_buffer, buffer.Length); buffer = new_buffer; } return this; } // MemoryStream which returns the last byte of the buffer individually, // so that we know that the buffering XmlReader really locked at the last // byte of the stream. // Moreover there is an EOF marker. private class EofMemoryStream: Stream { public bool EOF { get; private set; } private MemoryStream mem_; public override bool CanSeek { get { return false; } } public override bool CanWrite { get { return false; } } public override bool CanRead { get { return true; } } public override long Length { get { return mem_.Length; } } public override long Position { get { return mem_.Position; } set { throw new NotSupportedException(); } } public override void Flush() { mem_.Flush(); } public override long Seek(long offset, SeekOrigin origin) { throw new NotSupportedException(); } public override void SetLength(long value) { throw new NotSupportedException(); } public override void Write(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count) { throw new NotSupportedException(); } public override int Read(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count) { count = Math.Min(count, Math.Max(1, (int)(Length - Position - 1))); int nread = mem_.Read(buffer, offset, count); if (nread == 0) { EOF = true; } return nread; } public EofMemoryStream(byte[] buffer) { mem_ = new MemoryStream(buffer, false); EOF = false; } protected override void Dispose(bool disposing) { mem_.Dispose(); } } // Parses the first xml message from the stream. // If the first message is not yet complete, it returns null. // If the buffer contains non-wellformed xml, it ~should~ throw an exception. // After reading an xml message, it pops the data from the byte array. public Message deserialize() { if (buffer.Length == 0) { return null; } Message message = null; Encoding encoding = Message.default_encoding; //string xml = encoding.GetString(buffer); using (EofMemoryStream sbuffer = new EofMemoryStream (buffer)) { XmlDocument xmlDocument = null; XmlReaderSettings settings = new XmlReaderSettings(); int LineNumber = -1; int LinePosition = -1; bool truncate_buffer = false; using (XmlReader xmlReader = XmlReader.Create(sbuffer, settings)) { try { // Read to the first node (skipping over some element-types. // Don't use MoveToContent here, because it would skip the // XmlDeclaration too... while (xmlReader.Read() && (xmlReader.NodeType==XmlNodeType.Whitespace || xmlReader.NodeType==XmlNodeType.Comment)) { }; // Check for XML declaration. // If the message has an XmlDeclaration, extract the encoding. switch (xmlReader.NodeType) { case XmlNodeType.XmlDeclaration: while (xmlReader.MoveToNextAttribute()) { if (xmlReader.Name == "encoding") { encoding = Encoding.GetEncoding(xmlReader.Value); } } xmlReader.MoveToContent(); xmlReader.Read(); break; } // Move to the first element. xmlReader.MoveToContent(); // Read the entire document. xmlDocument = new XmlDocument(); xmlDocument.Load(xmlReader.ReadSubtree()); } catch (XmlException e) { // The parsing of the xml failed. If the XmlReader did // not yet look at the last byte, it is assumed that the // XML is invalid and the exception is re-thrown. if (sbuffer.EOF) { return null; } throw e; } { // Try to serialize an internal data structure using XmlSerializer. Type type = null; try { type = Type.GetType("my.namespace." + xmlDocument.DocumentElement.Name); } catch (Exception e) { // No specialized data container for this class found... } if (type == null) { message = new Message(); } else { // TODO: reuse the serializer... System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer ser = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(type); message = (Message)ser.Deserialize(new XmlNodeReader(xmlDocument)); } message.doc = xmlDocument; } // At this point, the first XML message was sucessfully parsed. // Remember the lineposition of the current end element. IXmlLineInfo xmlLineInfo = xmlReader as IXmlLineInfo; if (xmlLineInfo != null && xmlLineInfo.HasLineInfo()) { LineNumber = xmlLineInfo.LineNumber; LinePosition = xmlLineInfo.LinePosition; } // Try to read the rest of the buffer. // If an exception is thrown, another xml message appears. // This way the xml parser could tell us that the message is finished here. // This would be prefered as truncating the buffer using the line info is sloppy. try { while (xmlReader.Read()) { } } catch { // There comes a second message. Needs workaround for trunkating. truncate_buffer = true; } } if (truncate_buffer) { if (LineNumber < 0) { throw new Exception("LineNumber not given. Cannot truncate xml buffer"); } // Convert the buffer to a string using the encoding found before // (or the default encoding). string s = encoding.GetString(buffer); // Seek to the line. int char_index = 0; while (--LineNumber > 0) { // Recognize \r , \n , \r\n as newlines... char_index = s.IndexOfAny(new char[] {'\r', '\n'}, char_index); // char_index should not be -1 because LineNumber>0, otherwise an RangeException is // thrown, which is appropriate. char_index++; if (s[char_index-1]=='\r' && s.Length>char_index && s[char_index]=='\n') { char_index++; } } char_index += LinePosition - 1; var rgx = new System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex(xmlDocument.DocumentElement.Name + "[ \r\n\t]*\\>"); System.Text.RegularExpressions.Match match = rgx.Match(s, char_index); if (!match.Success || match.Index != char_index) { throw new Exception("could not find EndElement to truncate the xml buffer."); } char_index += match.Value.Length; // Convert the character offset back to the byte offset (for the given encoding). int line1_boffset = encoding.GetByteCount(s.Substring(0, char_index)); // remove the bytes from the buffer. buffer = buffer.Skip(line1_boffset).ToArray(); } else { buffer = new byte[0]; } } return message; } }

    Read the article

  • Inheritance Mapping Strategies with Entity Framework Code First CTP5: Part 3 – Table per Concrete Type (TPC) and Choosing Strategy Guidelines

    - by mortezam
    This is the third (and last) post in a series that explains different approaches to map an inheritance hierarchy with EF Code First. I've described these strategies in previous posts: Part 1 – Table per Hierarchy (TPH) Part 2 – Table per Type (TPT)In today’s blog post I am going to discuss Table per Concrete Type (TPC) which completes the inheritance mapping strategies supported by EF Code First. At the end of this post I will provide some guidelines to choose an inheritance strategy mainly based on what we've learned in this series. TPC and Entity Framework in the Past Table per Concrete type is somehow the simplest approach suggested, yet using TPC with EF is one of those concepts that has not been covered very well so far and I've seen in some resources that it was even discouraged. The reason for that is just because Entity Data Model Designer in VS2010 doesn't support TPC (even though the EF runtime does). That basically means if you are following EF's Database-First or Model-First approaches then configuring TPC requires manually writing XML in the EDMX file which is not considered to be a fun practice. Well, no more. You'll see that with Code First, creating TPC is perfectly possible with fluent API just like other strategies and you don't need to avoid TPC due to the lack of designer support as you would probably do in other EF approaches. Table per Concrete Type (TPC)In Table per Concrete type (aka Table per Concrete class) we use exactly one table for each (nonabstract) class. All properties of a class, including inherited properties, can be mapped to columns of this table, as shown in the following figure: As you can see, the SQL schema is not aware of the inheritance; effectively, we’ve mapped two unrelated tables to a more expressive class structure. If the base class was concrete, then an additional table would be needed to hold instances of that class. I have to emphasize that there is no relationship between the database tables, except for the fact that they share some similar columns. TPC Implementation in Code First Just like the TPT implementation, we need to specify a separate table for each of the subclasses. We also need to tell Code First that we want all of the inherited properties to be mapped as part of this table. In CTP5, there is a new helper method on EntityMappingConfiguration class called MapInheritedProperties that exactly does this for us. Here is the complete object model as well as the fluent API to create a TPC mapping: public abstract class BillingDetail {     public int BillingDetailId { get; set; }     public string Owner { get; set; }     public string Number { get; set; } }          public class BankAccount : BillingDetail {     public string BankName { get; set; }     public string Swift { get; set; } }          public class CreditCard : BillingDetail {     public int CardType { get; set; }     public string ExpiryMonth { get; set; }     public string ExpiryYear { get; set; } }      public class InheritanceMappingContext : DbContext {     public DbSet<BillingDetail> BillingDetails { get; set; }              protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)     {         modelBuilder.Entity<BankAccount>().Map(m =>         {             m.MapInheritedProperties();             m.ToTable("BankAccounts");         });         modelBuilder.Entity<CreditCard>().Map(m =>         {             m.MapInheritedProperties();             m.ToTable("CreditCards");         });                 } } The Importance of EntityMappingConfiguration ClassAs a side note, it worth mentioning that EntityMappingConfiguration class turns out to be a key type for inheritance mapping in Code First. Here is an snapshot of this class: namespace System.Data.Entity.ModelConfiguration.Configuration.Mapping {     public class EntityMappingConfiguration<TEntityType> where TEntityType : class     {         public ValueConditionConfiguration Requires(string discriminator);         public void ToTable(string tableName);         public void MapInheritedProperties();     } } As you have seen so far, we used its Requires method to customize TPH. We also used its ToTable method to create a TPT and now we are using its MapInheritedProperties along with ToTable method to create our TPC mapping. TPC Configuration is Not Done Yet!We are not quite done with our TPC configuration and there is more into this story even though the fluent API we saw perfectly created a TPC mapping for us in the database. To see why, let's start working with our object model. For example, the following code creates two new objects of BankAccount and CreditCard types and tries to add them to the database: using (var context = new InheritanceMappingContext()) {     BankAccount bankAccount = new BankAccount();     CreditCard creditCard = new CreditCard() { CardType = 1 };                      context.BillingDetails.Add(bankAccount);     context.BillingDetails.Add(creditCard);     context.SaveChanges(); } Running this code throws an InvalidOperationException with this message: The changes to the database were committed successfully, but an error occurred while updating the object context. The ObjectContext might be in an inconsistent state. Inner exception message: AcceptChanges cannot continue because the object's key values conflict with another object in the ObjectStateManager. Make sure that the key values are unique before calling AcceptChanges. The reason we got this exception is because DbContext.SaveChanges() internally invokes SaveChanges method of its internal ObjectContext. ObjectContext's SaveChanges method on its turn by default calls AcceptAllChanges after it has performed the database modifications. AcceptAllChanges method merely iterates over all entries in ObjectStateManager and invokes AcceptChanges on each of them. Since the entities are in Added state, AcceptChanges method replaces their temporary EntityKey with a regular EntityKey based on the primary key values (i.e. BillingDetailId) that come back from the database and that's where the problem occurs since both the entities have been assigned the same value for their primary key by the database (i.e. on both BillingDetailId = 1) and the problem is that ObjectStateManager cannot track objects of the same type (i.e. BillingDetail) with the same EntityKey value hence it throws. If you take a closer look at the TPC's SQL schema above, you'll see why the database generated the same values for the primary keys: the BillingDetailId column in both BankAccounts and CreditCards table has been marked as identity. How to Solve The Identity Problem in TPC As you saw, using SQL Server’s int identity columns doesn't work very well together with TPC since there will be duplicate entity keys when inserting in subclasses tables with all having the same identity seed. Therefore, to solve this, either a spread seed (where each table has its own initial seed value) will be needed, or a mechanism other than SQL Server’s int identity should be used. Some other RDBMSes have other mechanisms allowing a sequence (identity) to be shared by multiple tables, and something similar can be achieved with GUID keys in SQL Server. While using GUID keys, or int identity keys with different starting seeds will solve the problem but yet another solution would be to completely switch off identity on the primary key property. As a result, we need to take the responsibility of providing unique keys when inserting records to the database. We will go with this solution since it works regardless of which database engine is used. Switching Off Identity in Code First We can switch off identity simply by placing DatabaseGenerated attribute on the primary key property and pass DatabaseGenerationOption.None to its constructor. DatabaseGenerated attribute is a new data annotation which has been added to System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace in CTP5: public abstract class BillingDetail {     [DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGenerationOption.None)]     public int BillingDetailId { get; set; }     public string Owner { get; set; }     public string Number { get; set; } } As always, we can achieve the same result by using fluent API, if you prefer that: modelBuilder.Entity<BillingDetail>()             .Property(p => p.BillingDetailId)             .HasDatabaseGenerationOption(DatabaseGenerationOption.None); Working With The Object Model Our TPC mapping is ready and we can try adding new records to the database. But, like I said, now we need to take care of providing unique keys when creating new objects: using (var context = new InheritanceMappingContext()) {     BankAccount bankAccount = new BankAccount()      {          BillingDetailId = 1                          };     CreditCard creditCard = new CreditCard()      {          BillingDetailId = 2,         CardType = 1     };                      context.BillingDetails.Add(bankAccount);     context.BillingDetails.Add(creditCard);     context.SaveChanges(); } Polymorphic Associations with TPC is Problematic The main problem with this approach is that it doesn’t support Polymorphic Associations very well. After all, in the database, associations are represented as foreign key relationships and in TPC, the subclasses are all mapped to different tables so a polymorphic association to their base class (abstract BillingDetail in our example) cannot be represented as a simple foreign key relationship. For example, consider the the domain model we introduced here where User has a polymorphic association with BillingDetail. This would be problematic in our TPC Schema, because if User has a many-to-one relationship with BillingDetail, the Users table would need a single foreign key column, which would have to refer both concrete subclass tables. This isn’t possible with regular foreign key constraints. Schema Evolution with TPC is Complex A further conceptual problem with this mapping strategy is that several different columns, of different tables, share exactly the same semantics. This makes schema evolution more complex. For example, a change to a base class property results in changes to multiple columns. It also makes it much more difficult to implement database integrity constraints that apply to all subclasses. Generated SQLLet's examine SQL output for polymorphic queries in TPC mapping. For example, consider this polymorphic query for all BillingDetails and the resulting SQL statements that being executed in the database: var query = from b in context.BillingDetails select b; Just like the SQL query generated by TPT mapping, the CASE statements that you see in the beginning of the query is merely to ensure columns that are irrelevant for a particular row have NULL values in the returning flattened table. (e.g. BankName for a row that represents a CreditCard type). TPC's SQL Queries are Union Based As you can see in the above screenshot, the first SELECT uses a FROM-clause subquery (which is selected with a red rectangle) to retrieve all instances of BillingDetails from all concrete class tables. The tables are combined with a UNION operator, and a literal (in this case, 0 and 1) is inserted into the intermediate result; (look at the lines highlighted in yellow.) EF reads this to instantiate the correct class given the data from a particular row. A union requires that the queries that are combined, project over the same columns; hence, EF has to pad and fill up nonexistent columns with NULL. This query will really perform well since here we can let the database optimizer find the best execution plan to combine rows from several tables. There is also no Joins involved so it has a better performance than the SQL queries generated by TPT where a Join is required between the base and subclasses tables. Choosing Strategy GuidelinesBefore we get into this discussion, I want to emphasize that there is no one single "best strategy fits all scenarios" exists. As you saw, each of the approaches have their own advantages and drawbacks. Here are some rules of thumb to identify the best strategy in a particular scenario: If you don’t require polymorphic associations or queries, lean toward TPC—in other words, if you never or rarely query for BillingDetails and you have no class that has an association to BillingDetail base class. I recommend TPC (only) for the top level of your class hierarchy, where polymorphism isn’t usually required, and when modification of the base class in the future is unlikely. If you do require polymorphic associations or queries, and subclasses declare relatively few properties (particularly if the main difference between subclasses is in their behavior), lean toward TPH. Your goal is to minimize the number of nullable columns and to convince yourself (and your DBA) that a denormalized schema won’t create problems in the long run. If you do require polymorphic associations or queries, and subclasses declare many properties (subclasses differ mainly by the data they hold), lean toward TPT. Or, depending on the width and depth of your inheritance hierarchy and the possible cost of joins versus unions, use TPC. By default, choose TPH only for simple problems. For more complex cases (or when you’re overruled by a data modeler insisting on the importance of nullability constraints and normalization), you should consider the TPT strategy. But at that point, ask yourself whether it may not be better to remodel inheritance as delegation in the object model (delegation is a way of making composition as powerful for reuse as inheritance). Complex inheritance is often best avoided for all sorts of reasons unrelated to persistence or ORM. EF acts as a buffer between the domain and relational models, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore persistence concerns when designing your classes. SummaryIn this series, we focused on one of the main structural aspect of the object/relational paradigm mismatch which is inheritance and discussed how EF solve this problem as an ORM solution. We learned about the three well-known inheritance mapping strategies and their implementations in EF Code First. Hopefully it gives you a better insight about the mapping of inheritance hierarchies as well as choosing the best strategy for your particular scenario. Happy New Year and Happy Code-Firsting! References ADO.NET team blog Java Persistence with Hibernate book a { color: #5A99FF; } a:visited { color: #5A99FF; } .title { padding-bottom: 5px; font-family: Segoe UI; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold; padding-top: 15px; } .code, .typeName { font-family: consolas; } .typeName { color: #2b91af; } .padTop5 { padding-top: 5px; } .padTop10 { padding-top: 10px; } .exception { background-color: #f0f0f0; font-style: italic; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 5px; padding-top: 5px; padding-right: 5px; }

    Read the article

  • Using an alternate search platform in Commerce Server 2009

    - by Lewis Benge
    Although Microsoft Commerce Server 2009's architecture is built upon Microsoft SQL Server, and has the full power of the SQL Full Text Indexing Search Platform, there are time however when you may require a richer or alternate search platform. One of these scenarios if when you want to implement a faceted (refinement) search into your site, which provides dynamic refinements based on the search results dataset. Faceted search is becoming popular in most online retail environments as a way of providing an enhanced user experience when browsing a larger catalogue. This is powerful for two reasons, firstly with a traditional search it is down to a user to think of a search term suitable for the product they are trying to find. This typically will not return similar products or help in any way to refine a larger dataset. Faceted searches on the other hand provide a comprehensive list of product properties, grouped together by similarity to help the user narrow down the results returned, as the user progressively restricts the search criteria by selecting additional criteria to search again, these facets needs to continually refresh. The whole experience allows users to explore alternate brands, price-ranges, or find products they hadn't initially thought of or where looking for in a bid to enhance cross sell in the retail environment. The second advantage of this type of search from a business perspective is also to harvest the search result to start to profile your user. Even though anonymous users may routinely visit your site, and will not necessarily register or complete a transaction to build up marketing data- profiling, you can still achieve the same result by recording search facets used within the search sequence. Below is a faceted search scenario generated from eBay using the search term "server". By creating a search profile of clicking through Computer & Networking -> Servers -> Dell - > New and recording this information against my user profile you can start to predict with a lot more certainty what types of products I am interested in. This will allow you to apply shopping-cart analysis against your search data and provide great cross-sale or advertising opportunity, or personalise the user experience based on your prediction of what the user may be interested in. This type of search is extremely beneficial in e-Commerce environments but achieving it out of the box with Commerce Server and SQL Full Text indexing can be challenging. In many deployments it is often easier to use an alternate search platform such as Microsoft's FAST, Apache SOLR, or Endecca, however you still want these products to integrate natively into Commerce Server to ensure that up-to-date inventory information is presented, profile information is generated, and you provide a consistant API. To do so we make the most of the Commerce Server extensibilty points called operation sequence components. In this example I will be talking about Apache Solr hosted on Apache Tomcat, in this specific example I have used the SolrNet C# library to interface to the Java platform. Also I am not going to talk about Solr configuration of indexing – but in a production envionrment this would typically happen by using Powershell to call the Commerce Server management webservice to export your catalog as XML, apply an XSLT transform to the file to make it conform to SOLR and use a simple HTTP Post to send it to the search enginge for indexing. Essentially a sequance component is a step in a serial workflow used to call a data repository (which in most cases is usually the Commerce Server pipelines or databases) and map to and from a Commerce Entity object whilst enforcing any business rules. So the first step in the process is to add a new class library to your existing Commerce Server site. You will need to use a new library as Sequence Components will need to be strongly named to be deployed. Once you are inside of your new project, add a new class file and add a reference to the Microsoft.Commerce.Providers, Microsoft.Commerce.Contracts and the Microsoft.Commerce.Broker assemblies. Now make your new class derive from the base object Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Components.OperationSequanceComponent and overide the ExecuteQueryMethod. Your screen will then look something similar ot this: As all we are doing on this component is conducting a search we are only interested in the ExecuteQuery method. This method accepts three arguments, queryOperation, operationCache, and response. The queryOperation will be the object in which we receive our search parameters, the cache allows access to the Commerce Server cache allowing us to store regulary accessed information, and the response object is the object which we will return the result of our search upon. Inside this method is simply where we are going to inject our logic for our third party search platform. As I am not going to explain the inner-workings of actually making a SOLR call, I'll simply provide the sample code here. I would highly recommend however looking at the SolrNet wiki as they have some great explinations of how the API works. What you will find however is that there are some further extensions required when attempting to integrate a custom search provider. Firstly you out of the box the CommerceQueryOperation you will receive into the method when conducting a search against a catalog is specifically geared towards a SQL Full Text Search with properties such as a Where clause. To make the operation you receive more relevant you will need to create another class, this time derived from Microsoft.Commerce.Contract.Messages.CommerceSearchCriteria and within this you need to detail the properties you will require to allow you to submit as parameters to the SOLR search API. My exmaple looks like this: [DataContract(Namespace = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/microsoft-multi-channel-commerce-foundation/types/2008/03")] public class CommerceCatalogSolrSearch : CommerceSearchCriteria { private Dictionary<string, string> _facetQueries;   public CommerceCatalogSolrSearch() { _facetQueries = new Dictionary<String, String>();   }     public Dictionary<String, String> FacetQueries { get { return _facetQueries; } set { _facetQueries = value; } }   public String SearchPhrase{ get; set; } public int PageIndex { get; set; } public int PageSize { get; set; } public IEnumerable<String> Facets { get; set; }   public string Sort { get; set; }   public new int FirstItemIndex { get { return (PageIndex-1)*PageSize; } }   public int LastItemIndex { get { return FirstItemIndex + PageSize; } } }  To allow you to construct a CommerceQueryOperation call within the API you will also need to construct another class to derived from Microsoft.Commerce.Common.MessageBuilders.CommerceSearchCriteriaBuilder and is simply used to construct an instance of the CommerceQueryOperation you have just created and expose the properties you want set. My Message builder looks like this: public class CommerceCatalogSolrSearchBuilder : CommerceSearchCriteriaBuilder { private CommerceCatalogSolrSearch _solrSearch;   public CommerceCatalogSolrSearchBuilder() { _solrSearch = new CommerceCatalogSolrSearch(); }   public String SearchPhrase { get { return _solrSearch.SearchPhrase; } set { _solrSearch.SearchPhrase = value; } }   public int PageIndex { get { return _solrSearch.PageIndex; } set { _solrSearch.PageIndex = value; } }   public int PageSize { get { return _solrSearch.PageSize; } set { _solrSearch.PageSize = value; } }   public Dictionary<String,String> FacetQueries { get { return _solrSearch.FacetQueries; } set { _solrSearch.FacetQueries = value; } }   public String[] Facets { get { return _solrSearch.Facets.ToArray(); } set { _solrSearch.Facets = value; } } public override CommerceSearchCriteria ToSearchCriteria() { return _solrSearch; } }  Once you have these two classes in place you can now safely cast the CommerceOperation you receive as an argument of the overidden ExecuteQuery method in the SequenceComponent to the CommerceCatalogSolrSearch operation you have just created, e.g. public CommerceCatalogSolrSearch TryGetSearchCriteria(CommerceOperation operation) { var searchCriteria = operation as CommerceQueryOperation; if (searchCriteria == null) throw new Exception("No search criteria present");   var local = (CommerceCatalogSolrSearch) searchCriteria.SearchCriteria; if (local == null) throw new Exception("Unexpected Search Criteria in Operation");   return local; }  Now you have all of your search parameters present, you can go off an call the external search platform API. You will of-course get proprietry objects returned, so the next step in the process is to convert the results being returned back into CommerceEntities. You do this via another extensibility point within the Commerce Server API called translatators. Translators are another separate class, this time derived inheriting the interface Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Translators.IToCommerceEntityTranslator . As you can imaginge this interface is specific for the conversion of the object TO a CommerceEntity, you will need to implement a separate interface if you also need to go in the opposite direction. If you implement the required method for the interace you will get a single translate method which has a source onkect, destination CommerceEntity, and a collection of properties as arguments. For simplicity sake in this example I have hard-coded the mappings, however best practice would dictate you map the objects using your metadatadefintions.xml file . Once complete your translator would look something like the following: public class SolrEntityTranslator : IToCommerceEntityTranslator { #region IToCommerceEntityTranslator Members   public void Translate(object source, CommerceEntity destinationCommerceEntity, CommercePropertyCollection propertiesToReturn) { if (source.GetType().Equals(typeof (SearchProduct))) { var searchResult = (SearchProduct) source;   destinationCommerceEntity.Id = searchResult.ProductId; destinationCommerceEntity.SetPropertyValue("DisplayName", searchResult.Title); destinationCommerceEntity.ModelName = "Product";   } }  Once you have a translator in place you can then safely map the results of your search platform into Commerce Entities and attach them on to the CommerceResponse object in a fashion similar to this: foreach (SearchProduct result in matchingProducts) { var destinationEntity = new CommerceEntity(_returnModelName);   Translator.ToCommerceEntity(result, destinationEntity, _queryOperation.Model.Properties); response.CommerceEntities.Add(destinationEntity); }  In SOLR I actually have two objects being returned – a product, and a collection of facets so I have an additional translator for facet (which maps to a custom facet CommerceEntity) and my facet response from SOLR is passed into the Translator helper class seperatley. When all of this is pieced together you have sucessfully completed the extensiblity point coding. You would have created a new OperationSequanceComponent, a custom SearchCritiera object and message builder class, and translators to convert the objects into Commerce Entities. Now you simply need to configure them, and can start calling them in your code. Make sure you sign you assembly, compile it and identiy its signature. Next you need to put this a reference of your new assembly into the Channel.Config configuration file replacing that of the existing SQL Full Text component: You will also need to add your translators to the Translators node of your Channel.Config too: Lastly add any custom CommerceEntities you have developed to your MetaDataDefintions.xml file. Your configuration is now complete, and you should now be able to happily make a call to the Commerce Foundation API, which will act as a proxy to your third party search platform and return back CommerceEntities of your search results. If you require data to be enriched, or logged, or any other logic applied then simply add further sequence components into the OperationSequence (obviously keeping the search response first) to the node of your Channel.Config file. Now to call your code you simply request it as per any other CommerceQuery operation, but taking into account you may be receiving multiple types of CommerceEntity returned: public KeyValuePair<FacetCollection ,List<Product>> DoFacetedProductQuerySearch(string searchPhrase, string orderKey, string sortOrder, int recordIndex, int recordsPerPage, Dictionary<string, string> facetQueries, out int totalItemCount) { var products = new List<Product>(); var query = new CommerceQuery<CatalogEntity, CommerceCatalogSolrSearchBuilder>();   query.SearchCriteria.PageIndex = recordIndex; query.SearchCriteria.PageSize = recordsPerPage; query.SearchCriteria.SearchPhrase = searchPhrase; query.SearchCriteria.FacetQueries = facetQueries;     totalItemCount = 0; CommerceResponse response = SiteContext.ProcessRequest(query.ToRequest()); var queryResponse = response.OperationResponses[0] as CommerceQueryOperationResponse;   // No results. Return the empty list if (queryResponse != null && queryResponse.CommerceEntities.Count == 0) return new KeyValuePair<FacetCollection, List<Product>>();   totalItemCount = (int)queryResponse.TotalItemCount;   // Prepare a multi-operation to retrieve the product variants var multiOperation = new CommerceMultiOperation();     //Add products to results foreach (Product product in queryResponse.CommerceEntities.Where(x => x.ModelName == "Product")) { var productQuery = new CommerceQuery<Product>(Product.ModelNameDefinition); productQuery.SearchCriteria.Model.Id = product.Id; productQuery.SearchCriteria.Model.CatalogId = product.CatalogId;   var variantQuery = new CommerceQueryRelatedItem<Variant>(Product.RelationshipName.Variants);   productQuery.RelatedOperations.Add(variantQuery);   multiOperation.Add(productQuery); }   CommerceResponse variantsResponse = SiteContext.ProcessRequest(multiOperation.ToRequest()); foreach (CommerceQueryOperationResponse queryOpResponse in variantsResponse.OperationResponses) { if (queryOpResponse.CommerceEntities.Count() > 0) products.Add(queryOpResponse.CommerceEntities[0]); }   //Get facet collection FacetCollection facetCollection = queryResponse.CommerceEntities.Where(x => x.ModelName == "FacetCollection").FirstOrDefault();     return new KeyValuePair<FacetCollection, List<Product>>(facetCollection, products); }    ..And that is it – simply a few classes and some configuration will allow you to extend the Commerce Server query operations to call a third party search platform, whilst still maintaing a unifed API in the remainder of your code. This logic stands for any extensibility within CommerceServer, which requires excution in a serial fashioon such as call to LOB systems or web service to validate or enrich data. Feel free to use this example on other applications, and if you have any questions please feel free to e-mail and I'll help out where I can!

    Read the article

  • Is your team is a high-performing team?

    As a child I can remember looking out of the car window as my father drove along the Interstate in Florida while seeing prisoners wearing bright orange jump suits and prison guards keeping a watchful eye on them. The prisoners were taking part in a prison road gang. These road gangs were formed to help the state maintain the state highway infrastructure. The prisoner’s primary responsibilities are to pick up trash and debris from the roadway. This is a prime example of a work group or working group used by most prison systems in the United States. Work groups or working groups can be defined as a collection of individuals or entities working together to achieve a specific goal or accomplish a specific set of tasks. Typically these groups are only established for a short period of time and are dissolved once the desired outcome has been achieved. More often than not group members usually feel as though they are expendable to the group and some even dread that they are even in the group. "A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they are mutually accountable." (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993) So how do you determine that a team is a high-performing team?  This can be determined by three base line criteria that include: consistently high quality output, the promotion of personal growth and well being of all team members, and most importantly the ability to learn and grow as a unit. Initially, a team can successfully create high-performing output without meeting all three criteria, however this will erode over time because team members will feel detached from the group or that they are not growing then the quality of the output will decline. High performing teams are similar to work groups because they both utilize a collection of individuals or entities to accomplish tasks. What distinguish a high-performing team from a work group are its characteristics. High-performing teams contain five core characteristics. These characteristics are what separate a group from a team. The five characteristics of a high-performing team include: Purpose, Performance Measures, People with Tasks and Relationship Skills, Process, and Preparation and Practice. A high-performing team is much more than a work group, and typically has a life cycle that can vary from team to team. The standard team lifecycle consists of five states and is comparable to a human life cycle. The five states of a high-performing team lifecycle include: Formulating, Storming, Normalizing, Performing, and Adjourning. The Formulating State of a team is first realized when the team members are first defined and roles are assigned to all members. This initial stage is very important because it can set the tone for the team and can ultimately determine its success or failure. In addition, this stage requires the team to have a strong leader because team members are normally unclear about specific roles, specific obstacles and goals that my lay ahead of them.  Finally, this stage is where most team members initially meet one another prior to working as a team unless the team members already know each other. The Storming State normally arrives directly after the formulation of a new team because there are still a lot of unknowns amongst the newly formed assembly. As a general rule most of the parties involved in the team are still getting used to the workload, pace of work, deadlines and the validity of various tasks that need to be performed by the group.  In this state everything is questioned because there are so many unknowns. Items commonly questioned include the credentials of others on the team, the actual validity of a project, and the leadership abilities of the team leader.  This can be exemplified by looking at the interactions between animals when they first meet.  If we look at a scenario where two people are walking directly toward each other with their dogs. The dogs will automatically enter the Storming State because they do not know the other dog. Typically in this situation, they attempt to define which is more dominating via play or fighting depending on how the dogs interact with each other. Once dominance has been defined and accepted by both dogs then they will either want to play or leave depending on how the dogs interacted and other environmental variables. Once the Storming State has been realized then the Normalizing State takes over. This state is entered by a team once all the questions of the Storming State have been answered and the team has been tested by a few tasks or projects.  Typically, participants in the team are filled with energy, and comradery, and a strong alliance with team goals and objectives.  A high school football team is a perfect example of the Normalizing State when they start their season.  The player positions have been assigned, the depth chart has been filled and everyone is focused on winning each game. All of the players encourage and expect each other to perform at the best of their abilities and are united by competition from other teams. The Performing State is achieved by a team when its history, working habits, and culture solidify the team as one working unit. In this state team members can anticipate specific behaviors, attitudes, reactions, and challenges are seen as opportunities and not problems. Additionally, each team member knows their role in the team’s success, and the roles of others. This is the most productive state of a group and is where all the time invested working together really pays off. If you look at an Olympic figure skating team skate you can easily see how the time spent working together benefits their performance. They skate as one unit even though it is comprised of two skaters. Each skater has their routine completely memorized as well as their partners. This allows them to anticipate each other’s moves on the ice makes their skating look effortless. The final state of a team is the Adjourning State. This state is where accomplishments by the team and each individual team member are recognized. Additionally, this state also allows for reflection of the interactions between team members, work accomplished and challenges that were faced. Finally, the team celebrates the challenges they have faced and overcome as a unit. Currently in the workplace teams are divided into two different types: Co-located and Distributed Teams. Co-located teams defined as the traditional group of people working together in an office, according to Andy Singleton of Assembla. This traditional type of a team has dominated business in the past due to inadequate technology, which forced workers to primarily interact with one another via face to face meetings.  Team meetings are primarily lead by the person with the highest status in the company. Having personally, participated in meetings of this type, usually a select few of the team members dominate the flow of communication which reduces the input of others in group discussions. Since discussions are dominated by a select few individuals the discussions and group discussion are skewed in favor of the individuals who communicate the most in meetings. In addition, Team members might not give their full opinions on a topic of discussion in part not to offend or create controversy amongst the team and can alter decision made in meetings towards those of the opinions of the dominating team members. Distributed teams are by definition spread across an area or subdivided into separate sections. That is exactly what distributed teams when compared to a more traditional team. It is common place for distributed teams to have team members across town, in the next state, across the country and even with the advances in technology over the last 20 year across the world. These teams allow for more diversity compared to the other type of teams because they allow for more flexibility regarding location. A team could consist of a 30 year old male Italian project manager from New York, a 50 year old female Hispanic from California and a collection of programmers from India because technology allows them to communicate as if they were standing next to one another.  In addition, distributed team members consult with more team members prior to making decisions compared to traditional teams, and take longer to come to decisions due to the changes in time zones and cultural events. However, team members feel more empowered to speak out when they do not agree with the team and to notify others of potential issues regarding the work that the team is doing. Virtual teams which are a subset of the distributed team type is changing organizational strategies due to the fact that a team can now in essence be working 24 hrs a day because of utilizing employees in various time zones and locations.  A primary example of this is with customer services departments, a company can have multiple call centers spread across multiple time zones allowing them to appear to be open 24 hours a day while all a employees work from 9AM to 5 PM every day. Virtual teams also allow human resources departments to go after the best talent for the company regardless of where the potential employee works because they will be a part of a virtual team all that is need is the proper technology to be setup to allow everyone to communicate. In addition to allowing employees to work from home, the company can save space and resources by not having to provide a desk for every team member. In fact, those team members that randomly come into the office can actually share one desk amongst multiple people. This is definitely a cost cutting plus given the current state of the economy. One thing that can turn a team into a high-performing team is leadership. High-performing team leaders need to focus on investing in ongoing personal development, provide team members with direction, structure, and resources needed to accomplish their work, make the right interventions at the right time, and help the team manage boundaries between the team and various external parties involved in the teams work. A team leader needs to invest in ongoing personal development in order to effectively manage their team. People have said that attitude is everything; this is very true about leaders and leadership. A team takes on the attitudes and behaviors of its leaders. This can potentially harm the team and the team’s output. Leaders must concentrate on self-awareness, and understanding their team’s group dynamics to fully understand how to lead them. In addition, always learning new leadership techniques from other effective leaders is also very beneficial. Providing team members with direction, structure, and resources that they need to accomplish their work collectively sounds easy, but it is not.  Leaders need to be able to effectively communicate with their team on how their work helps the company reach for its organizational vision. Conversely, the leader needs to allow his team to work autonomously within specific guidelines to turn the company’s vision into a reality.  This being said the team must be appropriately staffed according to the size of the team’s tasks and their complexity. These tasks should be clear, and be meaningful to the company’s objectives and allow for feedback to be exchanged with the leader and the team member and the leader and upper management. Now if the team is properly staffed, and has a clear and full understanding of what is to be done; the company also must supply the workers with the proper tools to achieve the tasks that they are asked to do. No one should be asked to dig a hole without being given a shovel.  Finally, leaders must reward their team members for accomplishments that they achieve. Awards could range from just a simple congratulatory email, a party to close the completion of a large project, or other monetary rewards. Managing boundaries is very important for team leaders because it can alter attitudes of team members and can add undue stress to the team which will force them to loose focus on the tasks at hand for the group. Team leaders should promote communication between team members so that burdens are shared amongst the team and solutions can be derived from hearing the opinions of multiple sources. This also reinforces team camaraderie and working as a unit. Team leaders must manage the type and timing of interventions as to not create an even bigger mess within the team. Poorly timed interventions can really deflate team members and make them question themselves. This could really increase further and undue interventions by the team leader. Typically, the best time for interventions is when the team is just starting to form so that all unproductive behaviors are removed from the team and that it can retain focus on its agenda. If an intervention is effectively executed the team will feel energized about the work that they are doing, promote communication and interaction amongst the group and improve moral overall. High-performing teams are very import to organizations because they consistently produce high quality output and develop a collective purpose for their work. This drive to succeed allows team members to utilize specific talents allowing for growth in these areas.  In addition, these team members usually take on a sense of ownership with their projects and feel that the other team members are irreplaceable. References: http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/3127/Three-ways-to-organize-your-team-co-located-outsourced-or-global.aspx Katzenbach, J.R. & Smith, D.K. (1993). The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-performance Organization. Boston: Harvard Business School.

    Read the article

  • 10 Essential Tools for building ASP.NET Websites

    - by Stephen Walther
    I recently put together a simple public website created with ASP.NET for my company at Superexpert.com. I was surprised by the number of free tools that I ended up using to put together the website. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to create a list of essential tools for building ASP.NET websites. These tools work equally well with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. Performance Tools After reading Steve Souders two (very excellent) books on front-end website performance High Performance Web Sites and Even Faster Web Sites, I have been super sensitive to front-end website performance. According to Souders’ Performance Golden Rule: “Optimize front-end performance first, that's where 80% or more of the end-user response time is spent” You can use the tools below to reduce the size of the images, JavaScript files, and CSS files used by an ASP.NET application. 1. Sprite and Image Optimization Framework CSS sprites were first described in an article written for A List Apart entitled CSS sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death. When you use sprites, you combine multiple images used by a website into a single image. Next, you use CSS trickery to display particular sub-images from the combined image in a webpage. The primary advantage of sprites is that they reduce the number of requests required to display a webpage. Requesting a single large image is faster than requesting multiple small images. In general, the more resources – images, JavaScript files, CSS files – that must be moved across the wire, the slower your website. However, most people avoid using sprites because they require a lot of work. You need to combine all of the images and write just the right CSS rules to display the sub-images. The Microsoft Sprite and Image Optimization Framework enables you to avoid all of this work. The framework combines the images for you automatically. Furthermore, the framework includes an ASP.NET Web Forms control and an ASP.NET MVC helper that makes it easy to display the sub-images. You can download the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework from CodePlex at http://aspnet.codeplex.com/releases/view/50869. The Sprite and Image Optimization Framework was written by Morgan McClean who worked in the office next to mine at Microsoft. Morgan was a scary smart Intern from Canada and we discussed the Framework while he was building it (I was really excited to learn that he was working on it). Morgan added some great advanced features to this framework. For example, the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework supports something called image inlining. When you use image inlining, the actual image is stored in the CSS file. Here’s an example of what image inlining looks like: .Home_StephenWalther_small-jpg { width:75px; height:100px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAEsAAABkCAIAAABB1lpeAAAAB GdBTUEAALGOfPtRkwAAACBjSFJNAACHDwAAjA8AAP1SAACBQAAAfXkAAOmLAAA85QAAGcxzPIV3AAAKL s+zNfREAAAAASUVORK5CYII=) no-repeat 0% 0%; } The actual image (in this case a picture of me that is displayed on the home page of the Superexpert.com website) is stored in the CSS file. If you visit the Superexpert.com website then very few separate images are downloaded. For example, all of the images with a red border in the screenshot below take advantage of CSS sprites: Unfortunately, there are some significant Gotchas that you need to be aware of when using the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework. There are workarounds for these Gotchas. I plan to write about these Gotchas and workarounds in a future blog entry. 2. Microsoft Ajax Minifier Whenever possible you should combine, minify, compress, and cache with a far future header all of your JavaScript and CSS files. The Microsoft Ajax Minifier makes it easy to minify JavaScript and CSS files. Don’t confuse minification and compression. You need to do both. According to Souders, you can reduce the size of a JavaScript file by an additional 20% (on average) by minifying a JavaScript file after you compress the file. When you minify a JavaScript or CSS file, you use various tricks to reduce the size of the file before you compress the file. For example, you can minify a JavaScript file by replacing long JavaScript variables names with short variables names and removing unnecessary white space and comments. You can minify a CSS file by doing such things as replacing long color names such as #ffffff with shorter equivalents such as #fff. The Microsoft Ajax Minifier was created by Microsoft employee Ron Logan. Internally, this tool was being used by several large Microsoft websites. We also used the tool heavily on the ASP.NET team. I convinced Ron to publish the tool on CodePlex so that everyone in the world could take advantage of it. You can download the tool from the ASP.NET Ajax website and read documentation for the tool here. I created the installer for the Microsoft Ajax Minifier. When creating the installer, I also created a Visual Studio build task to make it easy to minify all of your JavaScript and CSS files whenever you do a build within Visual Studio automatically. Read the Ajax Minifier Quick Start to learn how to configure the build task. 3. ySlow The ySlow tool is a free add-on for Firefox created by Yahoo that enables you to test the front-end of your website. For example, here are the current test results for the Superexpert.com website: The Superexpert.com website has an overall score of B (not perfect but not bad). The ySlow tool is not perfect. For example, the Superexpert.com website received a failing grade of F for not using a Content Delivery Network even though the website using the Microsoft Ajax Content Delivery Network for JavaScript files such as jQuery. Uptime After publishing a website live to the world, you want to ensure that the website does not encounter any issues and that it stays live. I use the following tools to monitor the Superexpert.com website now that it is live. 4. ELMAH ELMAH stands for Error Logging Modules and Handlers for ASP.NET. ELMAH enables you to record any errors that happen at your website so you can review them in the future. You can download ELMAH for free from the ELMAH project website. ELMAH works great with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. You can configure ELMAH to store errors in a number of different stores including XML files, the Event Log, an Access database, a SQL database, an Oracle database, or in computer RAM. You also can configure ELMAH to email error messages to you when they happen. By default, you can access ELMAH by requesting the elmah.axd page from a website with ELMAH installed. Here’s what the elmah page looks like from the Superexpert.com website (this page is password-protected because secret information can be revealed in an error message): If you click on a particular error message, you can view the original Yellow Screen ASP.NET error message (even when the error message was never displayed to the actual user). I installed ELMAH by taking advantage of the new package manager for ASP.NET named NuGet (originally named NuPack). You can read the details about NuGet in the following blog entry by Scott Guthrie. You can download NuGet from CodePlex. 5. Pingdom I use Pingdom to verify that the Superexpert.com website is always up. You can sign up for Pingdom by visiting Pingdom.com. You can use Pingdom to monitor a single website for free. At the Pingdom website, you configure the frequency that your website gets pinged. I verify that the Superexpert.com website is up every 5 minutes. I have the Pingdom service verify that it can retrieve the string “Contact Us” from the website homepage. If your website goes down, you can configure Pingdom so that it sends an email, Twitter, SMS, or iPhone alert. I use the Pingdom iPhone app which looks like this: 6. Host Tracker If your website does go down then you need some way of determining whether it is a problem with your local network or if your website is down for everyone. I use a website named Host-Tracker.com to check how badly a website is down. Here’s what the Host-Tracker website displays for the Superexpert.com website when the website can be successfully pinged from everywhere in the world: Notice that Host-Tracker pinged the Superexpert.com website from 68 locations including Roubaix, France and Scranton, PA. Debugging I mean debugging in the broadest possible sense. I use the following tools when building a website to verify that I have not made a mistake. 7. HTML Spell Checker Why doesn’t Visual Studio have a built-in spell checker? Don’t know – I’ve always found this mysterious. Fortunately, however, a former member of the ASP.NET team wrote a free spell checker that you can use with your ASP.NET pages. I find a spell checker indispensible. It is easy to delude yourself that you are capable of perfect spelling. I’m always super embarrassed when I actually run the spell checking tool and discover all of my spelling mistakes. The fastest way to add the HTML Spell Checker extension to Visual Studio is to select the menu option Tools, Extension Manager within Visual Studio. Click on Online Gallery and search for HTML Spell Checker: 8. IIS SEO Toolkit If people cannot find your website through Google then you should not even bother to create it. Microsoft has a great extension for IIS named the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit that you can use to identify issue with your website that would hurt its page rank. You also can use this tool to quickly create a sitemap for your website that you can submit to Google or Bing. You can even generate the sitemap for an ASP.NET MVC website. Here’s what the report overview for the Superexpert.com website looks like: Notice that the Sueprexpert.com website had plenty of violations. For example, there are 65 cases in which a page has a broken hyperlink. You can drill into these violations to identity the exact page and location where these violations occur. 9. LinqPad If your ASP.NET website accesses a database then you should be using LINQ to Entities with the Entity Framework. Using LINQ involves some magic. LINQ queries written in C# get converted into SQL queries for you. If you are not careful about how you write your LINQ queries, you could unintentionally build a really badly performing website. LinqPad is a free tool that enables you to experiment with your LINQ queries. It even works with Microsoft SQL CE 4 and Azure. You can use LinqPad to execute a LINQ to Entities query and see the results. You also can use it to see the resulting SQL that gets executed against the database: 10. .NET Reflector I use .NET Reflector daily. The .NET Reflector tool enables you to take any assembly and disassemble the assembly into C# or VB.NET code. You can use .NET Reflector to see the “Source Code” of an assembly even when you do not have the actual source code. You can download a free version of .NET Reflector from the Redgate website. I use .NET Reflector primarily to help me understand what code is doing internally. For example, I used .NET Reflector with the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework to better understand how the MVC Image helper works. Here’s part of the disassembled code from the Image helper class: Summary In this blog entry, I’ve discussed several of the tools that I used to create the Superexpert.com website. These are tools that I use to improve the performance, improve the SEO, verify the uptime, or debug the Superexpert.com website. All of the tools discussed in this blog entry are free. Furthermore, all of these tools work with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. Let me know if there are any tools that you use daily when building ASP.NET websites.

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188  | Next Page >