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• XNA Notes 005

  - by George Clingerman

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

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• Brad's Sure DBA Checklist

  Sometimes, all a DBA needs, to help with day-to-day work, is a checklist of best-practices and dos and don’ts. It provides a handy reminder. Brad has come up with a new update to his famous checklist

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• Music before bells and whistles

  - by Tony Davis

  Why is it that Windows has so much difficulty in finding content on its file system? This is not an insurmountable technical problem; on my laptop, I have a database within which I can instantly find text or names within millions of records, within 300 milliseconds. I have a copy of Google Desktop that can find phrases within emails or documents, almost as quickly. It is an important, though mundane, part of an operating system to be able to find files. The first thing I notice within Windows is that the facility to find files or text within files is called 'search' rather than 'find'. Hmm. This doesn’t bode well. What’s this? It does a brute-force search for file names? Here we are in an age when we can breed mice that glow in the dark, and manufacture computers that fit in our shirt pockets, and we find an operating system that is still entirely innocent of managing and indexing content in hierarchical data. I can actually read the files of my PC into a database, mimic the directory/folder hierarchies and then find files in a flash; but when I do the same with Windows Vista, we are suddenly back in a 1960s time warp. Finding files based on their name is bad enough, but finding files based on the content that they contain is more or less asking for an opportunity to wait 20 minutes in order to see a "file not found" message. Sadly, with Windows 7, Microsoft seems to have fallen into the familiar trap of adding bells and whistles before finishing the song. It's certainly true that Microsoft has added new features and a certain polish to Windows Search 4.0, the latest incarnation. It works more like a web search and offers a new search syntax, called Advanced Query Syntax, which allows you to search on file author, file size, date ranges (e.g. date:=7/4/09still does not work reliably. I've experienced first-hand its stubborn refusal, despite a full index, to acknowledge the existence of a file I know exists, based on a search for a specific term within that file that I know is in there somewhere; a file that Google Desktop search, or old wingrep, finds in seconds. When users hark back to the halcyon days of Windows XP search, you know something is seriously amiss. Shouldn't applications get the functionality right before applying animated menus and Teletubby graphics, or is advancing age making me grumpy? I’d be pleased to hear your views, as always. Cheers, Tony.

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• Exitus Acta Probat: The Post-Processing Module

  - by Phil Factor

  Sometimes, one has to make certain ethical compromises to ensure the success of a corporate IT project. Exitus Acta Probat (literally 'the result validates the deeds' meaning that the ends justify the means)It was a while back, whilst working as a Technical Architect for a well-known international company, that I was given the task of designing the architecture of a rather specialized accounting system. We'd tried an off-the-shelf (OTS) Windows-based solution which crashed with dispiriting regularity, and didn't quite do what the business required. After a great deal of research and planning, we commissioned a Unux-based system that used X-terminals for the desktops of  the participating staff. X terminals are now obsolete, but were then hot stuff; stripped-down Unix workstations that provided client GUIs for networked applications long before the days of AJAX, Flash, Air and DHTML. I've never known a project go so smoothly: I'd been initially rather nervous about going the Unix route, believing then that  Unix programmers were excitable creatures who were prone to  indulge in role-play enactments of elves and wizards at the weekend, but the programmers I met from the company that did the work seemed to be rather donnish, earnest, people who quickly grasped our requirements and were faultlessly professional in their work.After thinking lofty thoughts for a while, there was considerable pummeling of keyboards by our suppliers, and a beautiful robust application was delivered to us ahead of dates.Soon, the department who had commissioned the work received shiny new X Terminals to replace their rather depressing lavatory-beige PCs. I modestly hung around as the application was commissioned and deployed to the department in order to receive the plaudits. They didn't come. Something was very wrong with the project. I couldn't put my finger on the problem, and the users weren't doing any more than desperately and futilely searching the application to find a fault with it.Many times in my life, I've come up against a predicament like this: The roll-out of an application goes wrong and you are hearing nothing that helps you to discern the cause but nit-*** noise. There is a limit to the emotional heat you can pack into a complaint about text being in the wrong font, or an input form being slightly cramped, but they tried their best. The answer is, of course, one that every IT executive should have tattooed prominently where they can read it in emergencies: In Vino Veritas (literally, 'in wine the truth', alcohol loosens the tongue. A roman proverb) It was time to slap the wallet and get the department down the pub with the tab in my name. It was an eye-watering investment, but hedged with an over-confident IT director who relished my discomfort. To cut a long story short, The real reason gushed out with the third round. We had deprived them of their PCs, which had been good for very little from the pure business perspective, but had provided them with many hours of happiness playing computer-based minesweeper and solitaire. There is no more agreeable way of passing away the interminable hours of wage-slavery than minesweeper or solitaire, and the employees had applauded the munificence of their employer who had provided them with the means to play it. I had, unthinkingly, deprived them of it.I held an emergency meeting with our suppliers the following day. I came over big with the notion that it was in their interests to provide a solution. They played it cool, probably knowing that it was my head on the block, not theirs. In the end, they came up with a compromise. they would temporarily descend from their lofty, cerebral stamping grounds  in order to write a server-based Minesweeper and Solitaire game for X Terminals, and install it in a concealed place within the system. We'd have to pay for it, though. I groaned. How could we do that? "Could we call it a 'post-processing module?" suggested their account executive.And so it came to pass. The application was a resounding success. Every now and then, the staff were able to indulge in some 'post-processing', with what turned out to be a very fine implementation of both minesweeper and solitaire. There were several refinements: A single click in a 'boss' button turned the games into what looked just like a financial spreadsheet.  They even threw in a multi-user version of Battleships. The extra payment for the post-processing module went through the change-control process without anyone untoward noticing, and peace once more descended. Only one thing niggles. Those games were good. Do they still survive, somewhere in a Linux library? If so, I'd like to claim a small part in their production.

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• The Legend of the Filtered Index

  - by Johnm

  Once upon a time there was a big and bulky twenty-nine million row table. He tempestuously hoarded data like a maddened shopper amid a clearance sale. Despite his leviathan nature and eager appetite he loved to share his treasures. Multitudes from all around would embark upon an epiphanous journey to sample contents of his mythical purse of knowledge. After a long day of performing countless table scans the table was overcome with fatigue. After a short period of unavailability, he decided that he needed to consider a new way to share his prized possessions in a more efficient manner. Thus, a non-clustered index was born. She dutifully directed the pilgrims that sought the table's data - no longer would those despicable table scans darken the doorsteps of this quaint village. and yet, the table's veracious appetite did not wane. Any bit or byte that wondered near him was consumed with vigor. His columns and rows continued to expand beyond the expectations of even the most liberal estimation. As his rows grew grander they became more difficult to organize and maintain. The once bright and cheerful disposition of the non-clustered index began to dim. The wait time for those who sought the table's treasures began to increase. Some of those who came to nibble upon the banquet of knowledge even timed-out and never realized their aspired enlightenment. After a period of heart-wrenching introspection, the table decided to drop the index and attempt another solution. At the darkest hour of the table's desperation came a grand flash of light. As his eyes regained their vision there stood several creatures who looked very similar to his former, beloved, non-clustered index. They all spoke in unison as they introduced themselves: "Fear not, for we come to organize your data and direct those who seek to partake in it. We are the filtered index." Immediately, the filtered indexes began to scurry about. One took control of the past quarter's data. Another took control of the previous quarter's data. All of the remaining filtered indexes followed suit. As the nearly gluttonous habits of the table scaled forward more filtered indexes appeared. Regardless of the table's size, all of the eagerly awaiting data seekers were delivered data as quickly as a Jimmy John's sandwich. The table was moved to tears. All in the land of data rejoiced and all lived happily ever after, at least until the next data challenge crept from the fearsome cave of the unknown. The End.

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• .NET Reflector 7.2 Early Access Build 1 Released

  - by Bart Read

  I've just posted up full details of this release on the .NET Reflector blog at http://www.reflector.net/2011/05/life-is-a-journey-not-a-destination-net-reflector-7-2-ea-1-has-been-released/ and, breaking with previous tradition, this includes a fairly extensive changelog. You can download this EA build from the .NET Reflector homepage at http://www.reflector.net/. Enjoy! (And please don't forget to tell us what you think on the forum, http://forums.reflector.net/, using the tags #7.2 and #eap.)...(read more)

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• High Performance Storage Systems for SQL Server

  Rod Colledge turns his pessimistic mindset to storage systems, and describes the best way to configure the storage systems of SQL Servers for both performance and reliability. Even Rod gets a glint in his eye when he then goes on to describe the dazzling speed of solid-state storage, though he is quick to identify the risks.

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• Book Review: The Art of XSD - SQL Server XML schemas

  The 14 chapters of "The Art of XSD”, written by MVP Jacob Sebastian, will take the reader step-by–step all the way from the basics of XML Schema design all the way to advanced topics on SQL Server XML Schema Collections. Reviewer Hima Bindu Vejella gives it an 8/10 rating, and gives us an excellent distilled description of what the book has to offer.

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• Using LogParser - part 3

  - by fatherjack

  This is the third part in a series of articles about using LogParser, specifically from a DBA point of view but there are many uses that any system administrator could put LogParser to in order to make their life easier. In Part 1 we downloaded, installed the software and ran a very basic query. In Part 2 we ran some queries and filtered in/out specific rows according to our requirements. In this part we will be looking at how to collect data from more than one location and from different sources...(read more)

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• C# via Java: Introduction

  - by Simon Cooper

  So, I’ve recently changed jobs. Rather than working in .NET land, I’ve migrated over to Java land. But never fear! I’ll continue to peer under the covers of .NET, but my next series will use my new experience in Java to explore the design decisions made in the development of the C# programming language. After all, the design of C# was based on Java 1.2, and both languages have continued to evolve since then, incorporating modern software engineering concepts and requirements. Exploring the differences and similarities between the two will (hopefully) give us a deeper understanding into why .NET is implemented the way it is, the trade-offs involved, and what choices were made when new features were designed and added to the language and framework. Among others, I’ll be looking at differences in: Primitives Operators Generics Exceptions Accessibility Collections Delegates and inner classes Concurrency In my next post, I’ll start off by looking at the type primitives available in each language, and how Java and C# actually incorporate two different concepts of primitive types in their fundamental language design and use. I’m also thinking of looking at the inner details of Java and the JVM in my blogs, as well as C# and the CLR. If you’ve got any comments or thoughts on this, please let me know.

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• Tuning Red Gate: #3 of Lots

  - by Grant Fritchey

  I'm drilling down into the metrics about SQL Server itself available to me in the Analysis tab of SQL Monitor to see what's up with our two problematic servers. In the previous post I'd noticed that rg-sql01 had quite a few CPU spikes. So one of the first things I want to check there is how much CPU is getting used by SQL Server itself. It's possible we're looking at some other process using up all the CPU Nope, It's SQL Server. I compared this to the rg-sql02 server: You can see that there is a more, consistently low set of CPU counters there. I clearly need to look at rg-sql01 and capture more specific data around the queries running on it to identify which ones are causing these CPU spikes. I always like to look at the Batch Requests/sec on a server, not because it's an indication of a problem, but because it gives you some idea of the load. Just how much is this server getting hit? Here are rg-sql01 and rg-sql02: Of the two, clearly rg-sql01 has a lot of activity. Remember though, that's all this is a measure of, activity. It doesn't suggest anything other than what it says, the number of requests coming in. But it's the kind of thing you want to know in order to understand how the system is used. Are you seeing a correlation between the number of requests and the CPU usage, or a reverse correlation, the number of requests drops as the CPU spikes? See, it's useful. Some of the details you can look at are Compilations/sec, Compilations/Batch and Recompilations/sec. These give you some idea of how the cache is getting used within the system. None of these showed anything interesting on either server. One metric that I like (even though I know it can be controversial) is the Page Life Expectancy. On the average server I expect see a series of mountains as the PLE climbs then drops due to a data load or something along those lines. That's not the case here: Those spikes back in January suggest that the servers weren't really being used much. The PLE on the rg-sql01 seems to be somewhat consistent growing to 3 hours or so then dropping, but the rg-sql02 PLE looks like it might be all over the map. Instead of continuing to look at this high level gathering data view, I'm going to drill down on rg-sql02 and see what it's done for the last week: And now we begin to see where we might have an issue. Memory on this system is getting flushed every 1/2 hour or so. I'm going to check another metric, scans: Whoa! I'm going back to the system real quick to look at some disk information again for rg-sql02. Here is the average disk queue length on the server: and the transfers Right, I think I have a guess as to what's up here. We're seeing memory get flushed constantly and we're seeing lots of scans. The disks are queuing, especially that F drive, and there are lots of requests that correspond to the scans and the memory flushes. In short, we've got queries that are scanning the data, a lot, so we either have bad queries or bad indexes. I'm going back to the server overview for rg-sql02 and check the Top 10 expensive queries. I'm modifying it to show me the last 3 days and the totals, so I'm not looking at some maintenance routine that ran 10 minutes ago and is skewing the results: OK. I need to look into these queries that are getting executed this much. They're generating a lot of reads, but which queries are generating the most reads: Ow, all still going against the same database. This is where I'm going to temporarily leave SQL Monitor. What I want to do is connect up to the server, validate that the Warehouse database is using the F:\ drive (which I'll put money down it is) and then start seeing what's up with these queries. Part 1 of the Series Part 2 of the Series

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• Write TSQL, win a Kindle.

  - by Fatherjack

  So recently Red Gate launched sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com and showed the world how to embed your own scripts harmoniously in a third party tool to get the details that you want about your SQL Server performance. The site has a way to submit your own metrics and take a copy of the ones that other people have submitted to build a library of code to keep track of key metrics of your servers performance. There have been several submissions already but they have now launched a competition to provide an incentive for you to get creative and show us what you can do with a bit of TSQL and the SQL Monitor framework*. What’s it worth? Well, if you are one of the 3 winners then you get to choose either a Kindle Fire or $199. How do you win? Simply write the T-SQL for a SQL Monitor custom metric and the relevant description and introduction for it and submit it via  sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com before 14th Sept 2012 and then sit back and wait while the judges review your code and your aims in writing the metric. Who are the judges and how will they judge the metrics? There are two judges for this competition, Steve Jones (Microsoft SQL Server MVP, co-founder of SQLServerCentral.com, author, blogger etc) and Jonathan Allen (um, yeah, Steve has done all the good stuff, I’m here by good fortune). We will be looking to rate the metrics on each of 3 criteria: how the metric can help with performance tuning SQL Server. how having the metric running enables DBA’s to meet best practice. how interesting /original the idea for the metric is. Our combined decision will be final etc etc **  What happens to my metric? Any metrics submitted to the competition will be automatically entered into the site library and become available for sharing once the competition is over. You’ll get full credit for metrics you submit regardless of the competition results. You can enter as many metrics as you like. How long does it take? Honestly? Once you have the T-SQL sorted then so long as you can type your name and your email address you are done : http://sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com/share-a-metric/ What can I monitor? If you really really want a Kindle or $199 (and let’s face it, who doesn’t? ) and are momentarily stuck for inspiration, take a look at these example custom metrics that have been written by Stuart Ainsworth, Fabiano Amorim, TJay Belt, Louis Davidson, Grant Fritchey, Brad McGehee and me  to start the library off. There are some great pieces of TSQL in those metrics gathering important stats about how SQL Server is performing.   * – framework may not be the best word here but I was under pressure and couldnt think of a better one. If you prefer try ‘engine’, or ‘application’? I don’t know, pick something that makes sense to you. ** – for the full (legal) version of the rules check the details on sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com or send us an email if you want any point clarified. Disclaimer – Jonathan is a Friend of Red Gate and as such, whenever they are discussed, will have a generally positive disposition towards Red Gate tools. Other tools are often available and you should always try others before you come back and buy the Red Gate ones. All code in this blog is provided “as is” and no guarantee, warranty or accuracy is applicable or inferred, run the code on a test server and be sure to understand it before you run it on a server that means a lot to you or your manager.

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• Mission Critical: Database Design

  There is nothing like a checklist to make sure you've completed all the tasks in designing a database, and there is absolutely nothing like Buck Woody's military-style Critical Task List

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• SQL Saturday 43 in Redmond

  - by AjarnMark

  I attended my first SQLSaturday a couple of days ago, SQLSaturday #43 in Redmond (at Microsoft).  I got there really early, primarily because I forgot how fast I can get there from my home when nobody else is on the road.  On a weekday in rush hour traffic, that would have taken two hours to get there.  I gave myself 90 minutes, and actually got there in about 45.  Crazy! I made the mistake of going to the main Microsoft campus, but that’s not where the event was being held.  Instead it was in a big Microsoft conference center on the other side of the highway.  Fortunately, I had the address with me and quickly realized my mistake.  When I got back on track, I noticed that there were bright yellow signs out on the street corner that looked like they said they were for SOL Saturday, which actually was appropriate since it was the sunniest day around here in a long time. Since I was there so early, the registration was just getting setup, so I found Greg Larsen who was coordinating things and offered to help.  He put me to work with a group of people organizing the pre-printed raffle tickets and stuffing swag bags. I had never been to a SQLSaturday before this one, so I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect even though I have read about a few on some blogs.  It makes sense that each one will be a little bit different since they are almost completely volunteer driven, and the whole concept is still in its early stages.  I have been to the PASS Summit for the last several years, and was hoping for a smaller version of that.  Now, it’s not really fair to compare one free day of training run entirely by volunteers with a multi-day, $1,000+ event put on under the direction of a professional event management company.  But there are some parallels. At this SQLSaturday, there was no opening general session, just coffee and pastries in the common area / expo hallway and straight into the first group of sessions.  I don’t know if that was because there was no single room large enough to hold everyone, or for other reasons.  This worked out okay, but the organization guy in me would have preferred to have even a 15 minute welcome message from the organizers with a little overview of the day.  Even something as simple as, “Thanks to persons X, Y, and Z for helping put this together…Sessions will start in 20 minutes and are all in rooms down this hallway…the bathrooms are on the other side of the conference center…lunch today is pizza and we would like to thank sponsor Q for providing it.”  It doesn’t need to be much, certainly not a full-blown Keynote like at the PASS Summit, but something to use as a rallying point to pull everyone together and get the day off to an official start would be nice.  Again, there may have been logistical reasons why that was not feasible here.  I’m just putting out my thoughts for other SQLSaturday coordinators to consider. The event overall was great.  I believe that there were over 300 in attendance, and everything seemed to run smoothly.  At least from an attendee’s point of view where there was plenty of muffins in the morning and pizza in the afternoon, with plenty of pop to drink.  And hey, if you’ve got the food and drink covered, a lot of other stuff could go wrong and people will be very forgiving.  But as I said, everything appeared to run pretty smoothly, at least until Buck Woody showed up in his Oracle shirt.  Other than that, the volunteers did a great job! I was a little surprised by how few people in my own backyard that I know.  It makes sense if you really think about it, given how many companies must be using SQL Server around here.  I guess I just got spoiled coming into the PASS Summit with a few contacts that I already knew would be there.  Perhaps I have been spending too much time with too few people at the Summits and I need to step out and meet more folks.  Of course, it also is different since the Summit is the big national event and a number of the folks I know are spread out across the country, so the Summit is the only time we’re all in the same place at the same time.  I did make a few new contacts at SQLSaturday, and bumped into a couple of people that I knew (and a couple others that I only knew from Twitter, and didn’t even realize that they were here in the area). Other than the sheer entertainment value of Buck Woody’s session, the one that was probably the greatest value for me was a quick introduction to PowerShell.  I have not done anything with it yet, but I think it will be a good tool to use to implement my plans for automated database recovery testing.  I saw just enough at the session to take away some of the intimidation factor, and I am getting ready to jump in and see what I can put together in the next few weeks.  And that right there made the investment worthwhile.  So I encourage you, if you have the opportunity to go to a SQLSaturday event near you, go for it!

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• GDC 2012: DXT is NOT ENOUGH! Advanced texture compression for games

  GDC 2012: DXT is NOT ENOUGH! Advanced texture compression for games (Pre-recorded GDC content) Tired of fighting to fit your textures on disk? Too many bad reviews on long download times? Fix it! Don't settle for putting your raw DXT files in a ZIP, instead, compress your DXT textures by an extra 50%-70%! This talk will cover various ways to increase the compression of your game textures to allow for smaller distributables without introducing error, and allowing for fast on-demand decompression at run time. We'll cover how to losslessly squeeze your data with Huffman, block expansion, vector quantization, and we'll even take a look at what MegaTexture is doing too. If you've ever fought to fit textures into memory, this is the talk for you. Speaker: Colt McAnlis From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 1132 21 ratings Time: 33:05 More in Science & Technology

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• Antenna Aligner Part 10: Updates and emails…

  - by Chris George

  Since my last post back in July, I’ve not done huge amounts of work on my app for two reasons. Firstly, no time! Secondly, I wanted to leave it out in the wild for a while and see what happened. Well, what happened?  over 1,300 users, that’s what’s happened!  This uptake is beyond my wildest expectations, and apart from a couple of issues that I’ll mention in a minute, most of the feedback has been very positive indeed! I’ve had several emails giving me feedback and reporting issues, all of which I have made a point of replying to immediately. This act alone has met with favourable replies! One of the main issues was with iPad. So it turns out that my app is only accurate in portrait mode. Turning it into landscape will offset the direction by +-90degrees! Whoops! I think I’ve fixed this by disabling the orientation switching, but I have not yet had an iPad to test this on. I had several emails from iPod Touch users claiming the app did not work for them. Specifically, the compass view did not work. On investigation, it turns out that the iPod Touch does not have the compass hardware required to do this. Unfortunately there is no way to exclude iPod Touch’s from the list of supported devices, so I’ve just had to make it very clear in the itunes description that the device is not fully supported.  You can still get the list of transmitters, but you then have to use a real compass to get the bearing. But that’s not the end of the world. Several customers have requested the aerial polarisation to be displayed in the app. I was already working on this, and the data was already there, it was just a case of displaying this in the UI. I have a solution now, and this will be in the next release. Of course, with the Digital switchover in full swing across the UK, there have been one set of data updates (in 1.0.3), and another is due shortly. This reflects the transmitters as they switch over the digital fully and their power output increased. So all in all I’m very pleased with the feedback I’ve had, and I’m looking to get the next release out there by early December (allowing for the 2-3 week Apple approval lag!)  

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• springTestContextBeforeTestMethod failed in Maven spring-test

  - by joejax

  I try to setup a project with spring-test using TestNg in Maven. The code is like: @ContextConfiguration(locations={"test-context.xml"}) public class AppTest extends AbstractTestNGSpringContextTests { @Test public void testApp() { assert true; } } A test-context.xml simply defined a bean: <bean id="app" class="org.sonatype.mavenbook.simple.App"/> I got error for Failed to load ApplicationContext when running mvn test from command line, seems it cannot find the test-context.xml file; however, I can get it run correctly inside Eclipse (with TestNg plugin). So, test-context.xml is under src/test/resources/, how do I indicate this in the pom.xml so that 'mvn test' command will work? Thanks, UPDATE: Thanks for the reply. Cannot load context file error was caused by I moved the file arround in different location since I though the classpath was the problem. Now I found the context file seems loaded from the Maven output, but the test is failed: Running TestSuite May 25, 2010 9:55:13 AM org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader loadBeanDefinitions INFO: Loading XML bean definitions from class path resource [test-context.xml] May 25, 2010 9:55:13 AM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext prepareRefresh INFO: Refreshing org.springframework.context.support.GenericApplicationContext@171bbc9: display name [org.springframework.context.support.GenericApplicationContext@171bbc9]; startup date [Tue May 25 09:55:13 PDT 2010]; root of context hierarchy May 25, 2010 9:55:13 AM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext obtainFreshBeanFactory INFO: Bean factory for application context [org.springframework.context.support.GenericApplicationContext@171bbc9]: org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory@1df8b99 May 25, 2010 9:55:13 AM org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory preInstantiateSingletons INFO: Pre-instantiating singletons in org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory@1df8b99: defining beans [app,org.springframework.context.annotation.internalCommonAnnotationProcessor,org.springframework.context.annotation.internalAutowiredAnnotationProcessor,org.springframework.context.annotation.internalRequiredAnnotationProcessor]; root of factory hierarchy Tests run: 3, Failures: 2, Errors: 0, Skipped: 1, Time elapsed: 0.63 sec <<< FAILURE! Results : Failed tests: springTestContextBeforeTestMethod(org.sonatype.mavenbook.simple.AppTest) springTestContextAfterTestMethod(org.sonatype.mavenbook.simple.AppTest) Tests run: 3, Failures: 2, Errors: 0, Skipped: 1 If I use spring-test version 3.0.2.RELEASE, the error becomes: org.springframework.test.context.testng.AbstractTestNGSpringContextTests.springTestContextPrepareTestInstance() is depending on nonexistent method null Here is the structure of the project: simple |-- pom.xml `-- src |-- main | `-- java `-- test |-- java `-- resources |-- test-context.xml `-- testng.xml testng.xml: <suite name="Suite" parallel="false"> <test name="Test"> <classes> <class name="org.sonatype.mavenbook.simple.AppTest"/> </classes> </test> </suite> test-context.xml: <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd" default-lazy-init="true"> <bean id="app" class="org.sonatype.mavenbook.simple.App"/> </beans> In the pom.xml, I add testng, spring, and spring-test artifacts, and plugin: <dependency> <groupId>org.testng</groupId> <artifactId>testng</artifactId> <version>5.1</version> <classifier>jdk15</classifier> <scope>test</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework</groupId> <artifactId>spring</artifactId> <version>2.5.6</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework</groupId> <artifactId>spring-test</artifactId> <version>2.5.6</version> <scope>test</scope> </dependency> <build> <finalName>simple</finalName> <plugins> <plugin> <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId> <configuration> <source>1.6</source> <target>1.6</target> </configuration> </plugin> <plugin> <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId> <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId> <configuration> <suiteXmlFiles> <suiteXmlFile>src/test/resources/testng.xml</suiteXmlFile> </suiteXmlFiles> </configuration> </plugin> </plugins> Basically, I replaced 'A Simple Maven Project' Junit with TestNg, hope it works. UPDATE: I think I got the problem (still don't know why) - Whenever I extends AbstractTestNGSpringContextTests or AbstractTransactionalTestNGSpringContextTests, the test will failed with this error: Failed tests: springTestContextBeforeTestMethod(org.sonatype.mavenbook.simple.AppTest) springTestContextAfterTestMethod(org.sonatype.mavenbook.simple.AppTest) So, eventually the error went away when I override the two methods. I don't think this is the right way, didn't find much info from spring-test doc. If you know spring test framework, please shred some light on this.

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• 62 miles up

  - by fatherjack

  RedGate are known for being a software company with a big personality and having a huge presence in the SQL Community. They run the annual Exceptional DBA competition, having held a party at the PASS summit last night to celebrate this years winner - Jeff Moden. They have also got a great attitude towards their staff as demonstrated on their website. Today, just after the PASS Summit keynote speech they made an announcement that is literally going to give one lucky winner the ride of their life....(read more)

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• Design a T-shirt for .NET Reflector Pro

  - by Laila

  Win a .NET Reflector Pro license, a box of Red Gate goodies, and a t-shirt printed with your design! Red Gate likes t-shirts. Each of our teams has one. In fact, each individual person has one, numbered according to when they joined the company: Red Gate's 1st, 2nd, and so on right up to Red Gate's 170th, with the slogan "More than just a number". Those t-shirts are important, chiefly because they remind the people wearing them that they are important. But that isn't enough. What really makes us great are the people who choose to use our tools. So we'd like to extend our tradition of t-shirts to include you and put the design of our next shirt entirely in your hands. We'd like you to come up with a witty slogan or create an inventive or simply beautiful t-shirt design for .NET Reflector Pro, our add-in for Visual Studio, which allows you to step into decompiled assemblies whilst debugging in Visual Studio. When you're done, post your masterpiece to Twitter with the hash tag #reflectortees, and @redgate will take a look! We'll pick the best design, and the winner will get a licensed copy of .NET Reflector Pro and a box of Red Gate goodies - not to mention a copy of their t-shirt. The winning design will go into production and be worn and given out at tradeshows, conferences, and user group events across the world, proudly bearing the name of their designer. We'll also pick three runners-up who will receive licenses for .NET Reflector Pro. Red Gate goodie box Interested? If you're up for the challenge, then we've got some resources to get you started. Inside the .zip file you'll find high-quality versions of the following: T-shirt templates: don't forget to design the front and the back! Different versions of the .NET Reflector Pro logo and Red Gate logo. Colour sheets to give you an easy reference to the Red Gate colours, including hex and RGB values. You can create and send us as many designs as you like, and each of them will be considered for the prize. To submit your designs, simply tweet including the competition hash tag, #reflectortees, and a link to somewhere we can see your design: either an image hosting site such as Twitpic, Flickr or Picasa, or a personal blog. You will need to create a Twitter account (which is free), if you don't already have one. You only have three limits: The background colour of the t-shirt should be one of our brand colours (red, light/dark grey or black), though you're welcome to use other colours in the rest of the design. You need to make use of either the .NET Reflector Pro logo OR the Red Gate logo (please keep them as they are) If you include any text or slogan, stick with just one or two colors for it. Apart from that, go wild. Go and do whatever it is you do when you get creative: whether you walk barefoot on the grass with a pencil and paper, sit cross-legged on a pile of cushions with a laptop, or simply close your eyes and float through a mist of ideas, now is your chance. Make sure you enjoy it. We're looking forward to seeing your creations. Terms and conditions 1. The closing date for entries is June 11th, 2010 (4 p.m. UK time). Red Gate Software Ltd reserves the right to extend the competition deadline at its discretion. If there is a revision, the revised date will be published on this blog and the date for announcing the results will be postponed accordingly. 2. The winning designer will be notified on June 14th, 2010 through Twitter. The winner must claim his/her prize by sending us a high-resolution image of their design via email (i.e. Illustrator EPS files or appropriate format, ideally at 300dpi). If the winner does not come forward within 3 days of the announcement, they will forfeit their prize and another winner will be selected from the runners-up. The names of the winner and runners-up will be posted on this blog by June 18th.  3. Entry is completed on the designer posting a link to their entry in a tweet with the correct hash tag, #reflectortees. 4. Red Gate Software needs to hold the rights to using the winning design in order to put the t-shirt into production. We will make sure that this is fine with the winner before we do so, but if you do not want us holding the rights to your design, please do not submit your designs. We reserve the right to slightly alter or adjust any artwork we decide to use (mainly to make it easier to print), but we will make sure we contact the winner for approval first. The winner will also need to allow us the use of his/her name for purposes of promoting your design. 5. Entries must be entirely your own original work and must not breach any copyright or third party rights. Red Gate Software Ltd will not be made partially or fully liable for any non-original work submitted by you. 6. This competition is free: you do not need to buy anything or be an existing customer to enter. 7. This competition is not open to employees of Red Gate Software Ltd, their families, or any other company directly connected with the administration of this promotion.

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• Meet Peter, 80 years old today

  - by AdamRG

  You have to arrive at the office early in the morning to meet Peter. He arrives at 5am and by 8:30am he's gone. Peter has been a cleaner here for several years. He is 80 years old today. Peter was born only a couple of km from our office in Cambridge, England and was for many years an Engineer for Pye Electronics. I'm lucky enough to arrive in the office early enough to catch Peter, dressed smarter than most of us in shirt and tie, and he tells stories of how Cambridge was years ago. He says the site of our office is on land between what would have been a prisoner of war camp (camp 1025), and a few hundred metres North, a camp of American allies. In February 1944, Peter was 13 years old. One night, a Dornier Do 217 heavy bomber heading towards London was hit by anti-aircraft fire and the crew of four parachuted from the plane. The plane however, continued on autopilot for over 50km. Gradually dropping lower and lower, narrowly missing the spires of Cambridge, it eventually came to land, largely intact, in allotment gardens by Peter's house near Milton Road. He told me that he was quick to the scene, along with some other young lads, and grabbed parts of the plane as souvenirs. It's one of many tales that Peter recounts, but I happened to discover a chapter about this particular plane crash in a history book called the War Torn Skies of Great Britain by Julian Evan-Hart. It reads: 'It slid to a halt in the allotment gardens of Milton Road. The cockpit ended up crumpled against a wooden fence and several incendiary bombs that had broken loose from their containers in the ruptured bomb bay were strewn over the ground behind the Dornier.' I smiled when I read the following line: 'Many residents came to see the Dornier in the allotments. Several lads made off with souvenirs' It seems a young Peter has been captured in print! For his birthday, among other things, we gave him a copy of the book. Working for a software company and rushing headlong through the 21st century, it's easy to forget even our recent history, or what feet stood on the same ground before us. That aircraft crashed only 700 metres from where our office now stands. The disused and overgrown railway line that runs down the side of the office closed to passengers 30 years ago. The industrial estate the other side was the site of a farm, Trinity Hall Farm, as recently as 60 years ago. Roman rings and Palaeolithic handaxes have been unearthed nearby. I suppose Peter will be one of the last people I'll ever hear talking first-hand about Cambridge during the war. It's a privilege to know him. Happy birthday Peter.

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• Inside Red Gate - Ricky Leeks

  - by Simon Cooper

  So, one of our profilers has a problem. Red Gate produces two .NET profilers - ANTS Performance Profiler (APP) and ANTS Memory Profiler (AMP). Both products help .NET developers solve problems they are virtually guaranteed to encounter at some point in their careers - slow code, and high memory usage, respectively. Everyone understands slow code - the symptoms are very obvious (an operation takes 2 hours when it should take 10 seconds), you know when you've solved it (the same operation now takes 15 seconds), and everyone understands how you can use a profiler like APP to help solve your particular problem. High memory usage is a much more subtle and misunderstood concept. How can .NET have memory leaks? The garbage collector, and how the CLR uses and frees memory, is one of the most misunderstood concepts in .NET. There's hundreds of blog posts out there covering various aspects of the GC and .NET memory, some of them helpful, some of them confusing, and some of them are just plain wrong. There's a lot of misconceptions out there. And, if you have got an application that uses far too much memory, it can be hard to wade through all the contradictory information available to even get an idea as to what's going on, let alone trying to solve it. That's where a memory profiler, like AMP, comes into play. Unfortunately, that's not the end of the issue. .NET memory management is a large, complicated, and misunderstood problem. Even armed with a profiler, you need to understand what .NET is doing with your objects, how it processes them, and how it frees them, to be able to use the profiler effectively to solve your particular problem. And that's what's wrong with AMP - even with all the thought, designs, UX sessions, and research we've put into AMP itself, some users simply don't have the knowledge required to be able to understand what AMP is telling them about how their application uses memory, and so they have problems understanding & solving their memory problem. Ricky Leeks This is where Ricky Leeks comes in. Created by one of the many...colourful...people in Red Gate, he headlines and promotes several tutorials, pages, and articles all with information on how .NET memory management actually works, with the goal to help educate developers on .NET memory management. And educating us all on how far you can push various vegetable-based puns. This, in turn, not only helps them understand and solve any memory issues they may be having, but helps them proactively code against such memory issues in their existing code. Ricky's latest outing is an interview on .NET Rocks, providing information on the Top 5 .NET Memory Management Gotchas, along with information on a free ebook on .NET Memory Management. Don't worry, there's loads more vegetable-based jokes where those came from...

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• Understanding each other in web development

  - by Pete Hotchkin

  During my career I have been lucky enough to work in several different roles within web development with many extremely talented people, from incredible designers who were passionate about the placement of every pixel right through to server administrators and DBAs who were always measuring the improvements they were making to their queries in the smallest possible unit. The problem I always faced was that more often than not I was stuck in the middle trying to mediate between these different functions and enable each side to understand the other’s point of view. The main areas of contention that there have always been between these functional groups in my experience have been at 2 key points: during the build phase and then when there is a problem post-build. During both of these times it is often easier for someone to pass the buck onto someone else than spend the time to understand the other person’s perspective. Below is a quick look at two upcoming tools that will not only speed up the build phase for each function, but  also help when it comes to the issues faced once a site has been pushed live. In my experience a web project goes through several phases of development. The first of these is design, generally handled as Photoshop files which are then passed onto a front-end developer. This is the first point at which heated discussions can arise. One problem I’ve seen several times is that the designer doesn’t fully understand the platform constraints that need to be considered, and as a result has designed something that does not translate very well or is simply not possible. Working at Red Gate, I am lucky enough to be able to meet some amazing people and this happened just the other day when I was introduced to Neil Kinnish and Pete Nelson, the creators of what I believe could be a great asset in this designer-developer relationship, Mixture. Mixture allows the front end developer to quickly prototype a web page with built-in frameworks such as bootstrap. It’s not an IDE however, it just sits there in the background and monitors the project files in the background so every time you save a file from your favorite IDE, it will compile things like LESS, compact your JavaScript and the automatically refresh your test browser so you can see the changes instantly. I think one of the best parts of this however is a single button that pushes the changed files up to the web so the designer can instantly see how far the developer has got and the problem that he is facing at that time without the need to spend time setting up a remote server. I can see this being a real asset to remote teams where there needs to be a compromise between the designer and the front-end developer, or just to allow the designer to see how the build is progressing and suggest small alterations. Once the design has been built into the front end the designer’s job is generally done and there are no other points of contention between the designer and the other functions involved in building these web projects. As the project moves into the stage of integrating it into the back end and deploying it to the production server other functions start to be pulled in and other issues arise such as the back-end developer understanding the frameworks that they are using such as the routes that are in place in an MVC application or the number of database calls that the ORM layer is actually making. There are many tools out there that can actually help with these problems such as mini profiler that gives you a quick snapshot of what is going on directly in the browser. For a slightly more in-depth look at what is happening and to gain a deeper understanding of an application you may be working on though, you may want to consider Glimpse. Created by Nik and Anthony, it is an application that sits at the bottom of your browser (installed via NuGet) which can show you information about how your application is pieced together and how the information on screen is being delivered as it happens. With a wealth of community-built plugins such as one for nHibernate and linq2SQL (full list of plugins on NuGet). It can be customized directly to your own setup to truly delve into the code to see what is happening, and can help to reduce the number of confusing moments about whether it is your code that is going wrong or whether there is something more sinister happening directly on the server. All the tools that I have mentioned in this post help to do one thing above all, and that is to ease the barrier of understanding between the different functions that are involved in building and maintaining a web application. In my experience it is very easy to say “Well, that’s not my problem”, simply because the two functions involved don’t truly understand the other’s point of view. Software should not only be seen as a way to streamline our own working process or as a debugging tool but also a communication aid to improve the entire lifecycle of a web project. Glimpse is actually the project that I am the designer on and I would love to get your feedback if you do decide to try it out or if you would like to share your own experiences of working on web projects please fill in your details at https://www.surveymk.com/s/joinGlimpse  or add a comment below and I will get in touch with you.

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• Who Tests the Tester?

  It is scarcely surprising that it can take up to five years to release a new version of SQL Server when one understands the extent of the effort required to test it. When enterprises depend on the reliability of an application or tool such as SQL Backup, the contribution of the tester is of paramount importance. It is an interesting and enjoyable role as well, as Andrew Clarke found out by chatting to testers at Red Gate.

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• Using QT to build a WYSIWYG Editor for a Custom Markup Language

  - by Aaron

  I'm new to QT, and am trying to figure out the best means of creating a WYSIWYG editor widget for a custom markup language that displays simple text, images, and links. I need to be able to propagate changes from the WYSIWYG editor to the custom markup representation. As a concrete example of the problem domain, imagine that the custom markup might have a "player" tag which contains a player name and a team name. The markup could look like this: Last week, <player id="1234"><name>Aaron Rodgers</name><team>Packers</team></player> threw a pass. This text would display in the editor as: Last week, Aaron Rodgers of the Packers threw a pass. The player name and the team name would be editable directly within the editor in standard WYSIWYG fashion, so that my users do not have to learn any markup. Also, when the player name is moused-over, a details pop-up will appear about that player, and similarly for the team. With that long introduction, I'm trying to figure out where to start with QT. It seems that the most logical option would be the Rich Text API using a QTextDocument. This approach seems less than ideal given the limitations of a QTextDocument: I can't figure out how to capture navigation events from clicking on links. Following links on click seems to only be enabled when the QTextEdit is readonly. Custom objects that implement QTextObjectInterface are ignored in copy-and-paste operations Any HTML-based markup that is passed to it as Rich Text is retranslated into a series of span tags and lots of other junk, making it extremely difficult to propagate changes from the editor back to the original custom markup. A second option appears to be QWebKit, which allows for live editing of HTML5 markup, so I could specify a two-way translation between the custom markup and HTML5. I'm not clear on how one would propagate changes from the editor back to the original markup in real-time without re-translating the entire document on every text change. The QWebKit solutions looks like awfully bulky to me (Learning WebKit along with QT) to what should be a relatively simple problem. I have also considered implementing the WYSIWYG with a custom class using native QT containers, labels, images, and other widgets manually. This seems like the most flexible approach, and the one most likely not to run into unresolvable problems. However, I'm pretty sure that implementing all the details of a normal text editor (selecting text, font changes, cut-and-paste support, undo/redo, dragging of objects, cursor placement, etc.) will be incredibly time consuming. So, finally, my question: are there any QT gurus out there with some advice on where to start with this sort of project? BTW, I am using QT because the application is a desktop application that needs platform independence.

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• Avoiding Flicker with JQuery Tabs

  - by Damon

  I am a huge fan of JQuery because it seems like every time I want to do something it has a plugin that already does it.  Adding a tabbed interface to a web page was always quite an annoyance, but JQuery UI offers a pretty descent tabs solution (click here to see it).  If you read through the documentation, you'll find that you can create a tabbed interface by calling the tabs() method on an element containing an unordered list.  The only problem that I've experienced with the method is that on slower machines you can see the unordered list render out in its original state before being updated into the final tabbed interface.  A quick way to fix that issues is to set the CSS display property of the element to none, then call the show() method directly after calling the tabs() method.  This keeps the element completely hidden while JQuery sets up the tabs interface and eliminates the flicker. <SCRIPT type="text/javascript">      $(function()      {           $("#tabs").tabs();           $("#tabs").show();      }); </SCRIPT> <div id="tabs" style="display:none;">     <ul>         <li><a href="#tabs-1">First Tab</a></li>         <li><a href="#tabs-2">Second Tab</a></li>         <li><a href="#tabs-3">Third Tab</a></li>     </ul>     ... </div>

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