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  • Need help looping through text file in Objective-C and looping through multidimensional array of dat

    - by Fulvio
    I have a question regarding an iPhone game I'm developing. At the moment, below is the code I'm using to currently I loop through my multidimensional array and position bricks accordingly on my scene. Instead of having multiple two dimensional arrays within my code as per the following (gameLevel1). Ideally, I'd like to read from a text file within my project and loop through the values in that instead. Please take into account that I'd like to have more than one level within my game (possibly 20) so my text file would have to have some sort of separator line item to determine what level I want to render. I was then thinking of having some sort of method that I call and that method would take the level number I'm interested in rendering. e.g. Method to call level based on separator? -(void)renderLevel:(NSString) levelNumber; e.g. Text file example? #LEVEL_ONE# 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 #LEVEL_TWO# 1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1 Code that I'm currently using: int gameLevel[17][9] = { { 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 } }; for (int row=0; row < 17; row++) { for (int col=0; col < 9; col++) { thisBrickValue = gameLevel[row][col]; xOffset = 35 * floor(col); yOffset = 22 * floor(row); switch (thisBrickValue) { case 0: brick = [[CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"block0.png"] autorelease]; break; case 1: brick = [[CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"block1.png"] autorelease]; break; } brick.position = ccp(xOffset, yOffset); [self addChild:brick]; } }

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  • Technology to communicate with someone with expressive aphasia?

    - by rascher
    A family member had a stroke a few years back and now has expressive aphasia. She understands what is said to her, is cognitive of what is going on, but cannot express herself. She is able to respond to yes/no questions (do you want to go shopping? are you looking for your earrings?) She is not, however, able to read (English is not her native language and she hasn't read Hindi for decades.) I am the technologist in the family, and I intend to come up with something to help us communicate. The idea is to have some sort of picture book where she can point to what she wants. My first question: does some sort of assistive technology for people with expressive aphasia already exist? These can be hardware or software devices? If not, then such a software doesn't seem difficult to write. My initial thought is to have an interface with pictures - maybe separated by category (food, shopping) - where she can point to an individual picture to indicate what she needs. We could easily add more items with such a software, and we could have an interface where she (or we) could "flip pages". Which suggests that the best solution would use a touch screen rather than a mouse. It would be really difficult to train her to aim a mouse or find keys on a keyboard. We're thinking of maybe getting a tablet and writing some basic software. But tablets computers are expensive and fragile - I'm not sure if it would be able to stand spills or being knocked about in a nursing home. So my next question: what kind of tablet-like devices are out there which I can program on? I don't know anything about hardware, but if there is something then we could special-order it. What would be safe and durable for such a project? We could do something on an iPod or cell phone, but I feel like that interface would be too small. Finally, does anyone here have experience with this kind of assistive technology? Things I might not anticipate when designing such a system? edit I've added a (pretty hefty!) bounty. I'd kinda like to open this question up to any suggestions, comments, and experiences that people might have. This is a pretty real and important project, so while we will (are working on) a solution, any insights would be particularly helpful. Right now the plan is to mount a screen in her room. We'll either teach her to use a trackball or use a touch-screen panel, after seeing what she is able to use with a simple prototype. Then software akin to an old "hypercard" deck: ---------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------- -------------- | | | Clothes | | Food | ... | | -------------- -------------- | | | | Pic of item 1 Pic of item 2 Pic of item 3 | | | | | | | | | | Pic of item 4 Pic of item 5 Pic of item 6 | | | | | | | | | | <-Back Next-> | ---------------------------------------------------------------- commentcommentcomment!

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  • How can I implement the Gale-Shapley stable marriage algorithm in Perl?

    - by srk
    Problem : We have equal number of men and women.each men has a preference score toward each woman. So do the woman for each man. each of the men and women have certain interests. Based on the interest we calculate the preference scores. So initially we have an input in a file having x columns. First column is the person(men/woman) id. id are nothing but 0.. n numbers.(first half are men and next half woman) the remaining x-1 columns will have the interests. these are integers too. now using this n by x-1 matrix... we have come up with a n by n/2 matrix. the new matrix has all men and woman as their rows and scores for opposite sex in columns. We have to sort the scores in descending order, also we need to know the id of person related to the scores after sorting. So here i wanted to use hash table. once we get the scores we need to make up pairs.. for which we need to follow some rules. My trouble is with the second matrix of n by n/2 that needs to give information of which man/woman has how much preference on a woman/man. I need these scores sorted so that i know who is the first preferred woman/man, 2nd preferred and so on for a man/woman. I hope to get good suggestions on the data structures i use.. I prefer php or perl. Thank you in advance Hey guys this is not an home work. This a little modified version of stable marriage algorithm. I have working solution. I am only working on optimizing my code. more info: It is very similar to stable marriage problem but here we need to calculate the scores based on the interests they share. So i have implemented it as the way you see in the wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_marriage_problem. my problem is not solving the problem. i solved it and can run it. I am just trying to have a better solution. so i am asking suggestions on the type of data structure to use. Conceptually I tried using an array of hashes. where the array index give the person id and the hash in it gives the id's <= score's in sorted manner. I initially start with an array of hashes. now i sort the hashes on values, but i could not store the sorted hashes back in an array.So just stored the keys after sorting and used these to get the values from my initial unsorted hashes. Can we store the hashes after sorting ? Can you suggest a better structure ?

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  • SQL Server 2005 Blocking Problem (ASYNC_NETWORK_IO)

    - by ivankolo
    I am responsible for a third-party application (no access to source) running on IIS and SQL Server 2005 (500 concurrent users, 1TB data, 8 IIS servers). We have recently started to see significant blocking on the database (after months of running this application in production with no problems). This occurs at random intervals during the day, approximately every 30 minutes, and affects between 20 and 100 sessions each time. All of the sessions eventually hit the application time out and the sessions abort. The problem disappears and then gradually re-emerges. The SPID responsible for the blocking always has the following features: WAIT TYPE = ASYNC_NETWORK_IO The SQL being run is “(@claimid varchar(15))SELECT claimid, enrollid, status, orgclaimid, resubclaimid, primaryclaimid FROM claim WHERE primaryclaimid = @claimid AND primaryclaimid < claimid)”. This is relatively innocuous SQL that should only return one or two records, not a large dataset. NO OTHER SQL statements have been implicated in the blocking, only this SQL statement. This is parameterized SQL for which an execution plan is cached in sys.dm_exec_cached_plans. This SPID has an object-level S lock on the claim table, so all UPDATEs/INSERTs to the claim table are also blocked. HOST ID varies. Different web servers are responsible for the blocking sessions. E.g., sometimes we trace back to web server 1, sometimes web server 2. When we trace back to the web server implicated in the blocking, we see the following: There is always some sort of application related error in the Event Log on the web server, linked to the Host ID and Host Process ID from the SQL Session. The error messages vary, usually some sort of SystemOutofMemory. (These error messages seem to be similar to error messages that we have seen in the past without such dramatic consequences. We think was happening before, but didn’t lead to blocking. Why now?) No known problems with the network adapters on either the web servers or the SQL server. (In any event the record set returned by the offending query would be small.) Things ruled out: Indexes are regularly defragmented. Statistics regularly updated. Increased sample size of statistics on claim.primaryclaimid. Forced recompilation of the cached execution plan. Created a compound index with primaryclaimid, claimid. No networking problems. No known issues on the web server. No changes to application software on web servers. We hypothesize that the chain of events goes something like this: Web server process submits SQL above. SQL server executes the SQL, during which it acquires a lock on the claim table. Web server process gets an error and dies. SQL server session is hung waiting for the web server process to read the data set. SQL Server sessions that need to get X locks on parts of the claim table (anyone processing claims) are blocked by the lock on the claim table and remain blocked until they all hit the application time out. Any suggestions for troubleshooting while waiting for the vendor's assistance would be most welcome. Is there a way to force SQL Server to lock at the row/page level for this particular SQL statement only? Is there a way to set a threshold on ASYNC_NETWORK_IO waits only?

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  • iPhone game reading plist file and looping through multi dimensional array.

    - by Fulvio
    I have a question regarding an iPhone game I'm developing. At the moment, below is the code I'm using to currently I loop through my multidimensional array and position bricks accordingly on my scene. Instead of having multiple two dimensional arrays within my code as per the following (gameLevel1). Ideally, I'd like to read from a .plist file within my project and loop through the values in that instead. Please take into account that I'd like to have more than one level within my game (possibly 20) so my .plist file would have to have some sort of separator line item to determine what level I want to render. I was then thinking of having some sort of method that I call and that method would take the level number I'm interested in rendering. e.g. Method? +(void)renderLevel:(NSString levelNumber); e.g. .plist file? #LEVEL_ONE# 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 #LEVEL_TWO# 1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1 Code that I'm currently using: int gameLevel[17][9] = { { 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 } }; for (int row=0; row < 17; row++) { for (int col=0; col < 9; col++) { thisBrickValue = gameLevel[row][col]; xOffset = 35 * floor(col); yOffset = 22 * floor(row); switch (thisBrickValue) { case 0: brick = [[CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"block0.png"] autorelease]; break; case 1: brick = [[CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"block1.png"] autorelease]; break; } brick.position = ccp(xOffset, yOffset); [self addChild:brick]; } }

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  • Random Complete System Unresponsiveness Running Mathematical Functions

    - by Computer Guru
    I have a program that loads a file (anywhere from 10MB to 5GB) a chunk at a time (ReadFile), and for each chunk performs a set of mathematical operations (basically calculates the hash). After calculating the hash, it stores info about the chunk in an STL map (basically <chunkID, hash>) and then writes the chunk itself to another file (WriteFile). That's all it does. This program will cause certain PCs to choke and die. The mouse begins to stutter, the task manager takes 2 min to show, ctrl+alt+del is unresponsive, running programs are slow.... the works. I've done literally everything I can think of to optimize the program, and have triple-checked all objects. What I've done: Tried different (less intensive) hashing algorithms. Switched all allocations to nedmalloc instead of the default new operator Switched from stl::map to unordered_set, found the performance to still be abysmal, so I switched again to Google's dense_hash_map. Converted all objects to store pointers to objects instead of the objects themselves. Caching all Read and Write operations. Instead of reading a 16k chunk of the file and performing the math on it, I read 4MB into a buffer and read 16k chunks from there instead. Same for all write operations - they are coalesced into 4MB blocks before being written to disk. Run extensive profiling with Visual Studio 2010, AMD Code Analyst, and perfmon. Set the thread priority to THREAD_MODE_BACKGROUND_BEGIN Set the thread priority to THREAD_PRIORITY_IDLE Added a Sleep(100) call after every loop. Even after all this, the application still results in a system-wide hang on certain machines under certain circumstances. Perfmon and Process Explorer show minimal CPU usage (with the sleep), no constant reads/writes from disk, few hard pagefaults (and only ~30k pagefaults in the lifetime of the application on a 5GB input file), little virtual memory (never more than 150MB), no leaked handles, no memory leaks. The machines I've tested it on run Windows XP - Windows 7, x86 and x64 versions included. None have less than 2GB RAM, though the problem is always exacerbated under lower memory conditions. I'm at a loss as to what to do next. I don't know what's causing it - I'm torn between CPU or Memory as the culprit. CPU because without the sleep and under different thread priorities the system performances changes noticeably. Memory because there's a huge difference in how often the issue occurs when using unordered_set vs Google's dense_hash_map. What's really weird? Obviously, the NT kernel design is supposed to prevent this sort of behavior from ever occurring (a user-mode application driving the system to this sort of extreme poor performance!?)..... but when I compile the code and run it on OS X or Linux (it's fairly standard C++ throughout) it performs excellently even on poor machines with little RAM and weaker CPUs. What am I supposed to do next? How do I know what the hell it is that Windows is doing behind the scenes that's killing system performance, when all the indicators are that the application itself isn't doing anything extreme? Any advice would be most welcome.

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  • Join and sum not compatible matrices through data.table

    - by leodido
    My goal is to "sum" two not compatible matrices (matrices with different dimensions) using (and preserving) row and column names. I've figured this approach: convert the matrices to data.table objects, join them and then sum columns vectors. An example: > M1 1 3 4 5 7 8 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 0 0 0 0 1 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 > M2 1 3 4 5 8 1 0 0 1 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 4 1 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 > M1 %ms% M2 1 3 4 5 7 8 1 0 0 2 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 2 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 0 0 0 0 1 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 This is my code: M1 <- matrix(c(0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0), byrow = TRUE, ncol = 6) colnames(M1) <- c(1,3,4,5,7,8) M2 <- matrix(c(0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0), byrow = TRUE, ncol = 5) colnames(M2) <- c(1,3,4,5,8) # to data.table objects DT1 <- data.table(M1, keep.rownames = TRUE, key = "rn") DT2 <- data.table(M2, keep.rownames = TRUE, key = "rn") # join and sum of common columns if (nrow(DT1) > nrow(DT2)) { A <- DT2[DT1, roll = TRUE] A[, list(X1 = X1 + X1.1, X3 = X3 + X3.1, X4 = X4 + X4.1, X5 = X5 + X5.1, X7, X8 = X8 + X8.1), by = rn] } That outputs: rn X1 X3 X4 X5 X7 X8 1: 1 0 0 2 0 0 0 2: 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 3: 4 2 0 0 0 0 0 4: 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 5: 7 0 0 0 0 1 0 6: 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 Then I can convert back this data.table to a matrix and fix row and column names. The questions are: how to generalize this procedure? I need a way to automatically create list(X1 = X1 + X1.1, X3 = X3 + X3.1, X4 = X4 + X4.1, X5 = X5 + X5.1, X7, X8 = X8 + X8.1) because i want to apply this function to matrices which dimensions (and row/columns names) are not known in advance. In summary I need a merge procedure that behaves as described. there are other strategies/implementations that achieve the same goal that are, at the same time, faster and generalized? (hoping that some data.table monster help me) to what kind of join (inner, outer, etc. etc.) is assimilable this procedure? Thanks in advance. p.s.: I'm using data.table version 1.8.2 EDIT - SOLUTIONS @Aaron solution. No external libraries, only base R. It works also on list of matrices. add_matrices_1 <- function(...) { a <- list(...) cols <- sort(unique(unlist(lapply(a, colnames)))) rows <- sort(unique(unlist(lapply(a, rownames)))) out <- array(0, dim = c(length(rows), length(cols)), dimnames = list(rows,cols)) for (m in a) out[rownames(m), colnames(m)] <- out[rownames(m), colnames(m)] + m out } @MadScone solution. Used reshape2 package. It works only on two matrices per call. add_matrices_2 <- function(m1, m2) { m <- acast(rbind(melt(M1), melt(M2)), Var1~Var2, fun.aggregate = sum) mn <- unique(colnames(m1), colnames(m2)) rownames(m) <- mn colnames(m) <- mn m } BENCHMARK (100 runs with microbenchmark package) Unit: microseconds expr min lq median uq max 1 add_matrices_1 196.009 257.5865 282.027 291.2735 549.397 2 add_matrices_2 13737.851 14697.9790 14864.778 16285.7650 25567.448 No need to comment the benchmark: @Aaron solution wins. I'll continue to investigate a similar solution for data.table objects. I'll add other solutions eventually reported or discovered.

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  • Parallel processing via multithreading in Java

    - by Robz
    There are certain algorithms whose running time can decrease significantly when one divides up a task and gets each part done in parallel. One of these algorithms is merge sort, where a list is divided into infinitesimally smaller parts and then recombined in a sorted order. I decided to do an experiment to test whether or not I could I increase the speed of this sort by using multiple threads. I am running the following functions in Java on a Quad-Core Dell with Windows Vista. One function (the control case) is simply recursive: // x is an array of N elements in random order public int[] mergeSort(int[] x) { if (x.length == 1) return x; // Dividing the array in half int[] a = new int[x.length/2]; int[] b = new int[x.length/2+((x.length%2 == 1)?1:0)]; for(int i = 0; i < x.length/2; i++) a[i] = x[i]; for(int i = 0; i < x.length/2+((x.length%2 == 1)?1:0); i++) b[i] = x[i+x.length/2]; // Sending them off to continue being divided mergeSort(a); mergeSort(b); // Recombining the two arrays int ia = 0, ib = 0, i = 0; while(ia != a.length || ib != b.length) { if (ia == a.length) { x[i] = b[ib]; ib++; } else if (ib == b.length) { x[i] = a[ia]; ia++; } else if (a[ia] < b[ib]) { x[i] = a[ia]; ia++; } else { x[i] = b[ib]; ib++; } i++; } return x; } The other is in the 'run' function of a class that extends thread, and recursively creates two new threads each time it is called: public class Merger extends Thread { int[] x; boolean finished; public Merger(int[] x) { this.x = x; } public void run() { if (x.length == 1) { finished = true; return; } // Divide the array in half int[] a = new int[x.length/2]; int[] b = new int[x.length/2+((x.length%2 == 1)?1:0)]; for(int i = 0; i < x.length/2; i++) a[i] = x[i]; for(int i = 0; i < x.length/2+((x.length%2 == 1)?1:0); i++) b[i] = x[i+x.length/2]; // Begin two threads to continue to divide the array Merger ma = new Merger(a); ma.run(); Merger mb = new Merger(b); mb.run(); // Wait for the two other threads to finish while(!ma.finished || !mb.finished) ; // Recombine the two arrays int ia = 0, ib = 0, i = 0; while(ia != a.length || ib != b.length) { if (ia == a.length) { x[i] = b[ib]; ib++; } else if (ib == b.length) { x[i] = a[ia]; ia++; } else if (a[ia] < b[ib]) { x[i] = a[ia]; ia++; } else { x[i] = b[ib]; ib++; } i++; } finished = true; } } It turns out that function that does not use multithreading actually runs faster. Why? Does the operating system and the java virtual machine not "communicate" effectively enough to place the different threads on different cores? Or am I missing something obvious?

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  • data not reloading into tableview from core data on minor update

    - by Martin KS
    I've got a basic photo album application, on the first view a list of albums is displayed with a subtitle showing how many images are in each album. I've got everything working to add albums, and add images to albums. The problem is that the image count lines are accurate whenever the app loads, but I can't get them to update during execution. The following viewdidload correctly populates all lines of the tableview when the app loads: - (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; // Set the title. self.title = @"Photo albums"; // Configure the add and edit buttons. self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem = self.editButtonItem; addButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithBarButtonSystemItem:UIBarButtonSystemItemAdd target:self action:@selector(addAlbum)]; addButton.enabled = YES; self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem = addButton; /* Fetch existing albums. Create a fetch request; find the Album entity and assign it to the request; add a sort descriptor; then execute the fetch. */ NSFetchRequest *request = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init]; NSEntityDescription *entity = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:@"Album" inManagedObjectContext:managedObjectContext]; [request setEntity:entity]; // Order the albums by name. NSSortDescriptor *sortDescriptor = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"albumName" ascending:NO]; NSArray *sortDescriptors = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:sortDescriptor, nil]; [request setSortDescriptors:sortDescriptors]; [sortDescriptor release]; [sortDescriptors release]; // Execute the fetch -- create a mutable copy of the result. NSError *error = nil; NSMutableArray *mutableFetchResults = [[managedObjectContext executeFetchRequest:request error:&error] mutableCopy]; if (mutableFetchResults == nil) { // Handle the error. } LocationsAppDelegate *mainDelegate = (LocationsAppDelegate *)[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate]; // Set master albums array to the mutable array, then clean up. [mainDelegate setAlbumsArray:mutableFetchResults]; [mutableFetchResults release]; [request release]; } But when I run similar code inside viewdidappear, nothing happens: { /* Fetch existing albums. Create a fetch request; find the Album entity and assign it to the request; add a sort descriptor; then execute the fetch. */ NSFetchRequest *request = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init]; NSEntityDescription *entity = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:@"Album" inManagedObjectContext:managedObjectContext]; [request setEntity:entity]; // Order the albums by creation date, most recent first. NSSortDescriptor *sortDescriptor = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"albumName" ascending:NO]; NSArray *sortDescriptors = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:sortDescriptor, nil]; [request setSortDescriptors:sortDescriptors]; [sortDescriptor release]; [sortDescriptors release]; // Execute the fetch -- create a mutable copy of the result. NSError *error = nil; NSMutableArray *mutableFetchResults = [[managedObjectContext executeFetchRequest:request error:&error] mutableCopy]; if (mutableFetchResults == nil) { // Handle the error. } LocationsAppDelegate *mainDelegate = (LocationsAppDelegate *)[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate]; // Set master albums array to the mutable array, then clean up. [mainDelegate setAlbumsArray:mutableFetchResults]; [self.tableView reloadData]; [mutableFetchResults release]; [request release]; } Apologies if I've missed the answer to this question elsewhere, but what am I missing?

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  • iPhone game and reading plist file and looping through multidimensional array.

    - by Fulvio
    I have a question regarding an iPhone game I'm developing. At the moment, below is the code I'm using to currently I loop through my multidimensional array and position bricks accordingly on my scene. Instead of having multiple two dimensional arrays within my code as per the following (gameLevel1). Ideally, I'd like to read from a .plist file within my project and loop through the values in that instead. Please take into account that I'd like to have more than one level within my game (possibly 20) so my .plist file would have to have some sort of separator line item to determine what level I want to render. I was then thinking of having some sort of method that I call and that method would take the level number I'm interested in rendering. e.g. Method? +(void)renderLevel:(NSString levelNumber); e.g. .plist file? #LEVEL_ONE# 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 #LEVEL_TWO# 1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1 Code that I'm currently using: int gameLevel[17][9] = { { 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 } }; for (int row=0; row < 17; row++) { for (int col=0; col < 17; col++) { thisBrickValue = gameLevel[row][col]; xOffset = 35 * floor(col); yOffset = 22 * floor(row); switch (thisBrickValue) { case 0: brick = [[CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"block1.png"] autorelease]; break; case 1: brick = [[CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"block0.png"] autorelease]; break; } brick.position = ccp(xOffset, yOffset); [self addChild:brick]; } }

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  • Why doesn't PHP's oci_connect return false?

    - by absolethe
    I have a situation in which we have two production databases that synchronize with one other. Server One is considered the primary. Sometimes due to maintenance or a disaster Server Two will become primary. In some of our code that means we have to manually go in and edit the server name for database connections. I find this annoying, so the last thing I wrote I put the server information for both and set up a loop. If oci_connect failed on the Server One 3 times it would move on to Server Two. If Server Two failed 3 times it would notify the user a connection couldn't be made. This has worked fine most times we've had the situation of switching the servers. Yesterday, for example, it worked fine. Today it didn't. It just sat and spun endlessly. No error in the PHP error log. No failure to move on from. No error output to the screen. Nothing for 5 minutes. So then I had to manually edit the stupid config file. I asked what could possibly be different and I was told "yesterday the database was down, but not the server. today the server is down." Okay...? But I don't see a distinction. I would expect oci_connect to return false if it can't establish any sort of communication with the server. I'd expect it to timeout and error. Not just pass it on when it receives an error code from the server. What if there's a network problem, for example? Is this a bug in oci_connect or is there a possibility that something in our PHP configuration gives oci_connect a crazily long timeout? If it is a sort of "bug" is there some way I can check to see if the server is up first? Like a ping? (Of course when I did a ping through the command prompt I got a response from Server One and then was told, "it's back now" although I am skeptical about the timing on that.) Anyway, if anyone could shed some light on why oci_connect might run endlessly without failing and how to keep it from doing so I'd be grateful. -- Edit: My code looks like the examples on PHP.net only in some loops. $count = count($servers); for($i = 0; $i < $count; $i++){ if((!isset($connection)) || ($connection == false)){ // Attempt to connect to the oracle database $connection = @oci_connect($servers[$i]["user"], $servers[$i]["pass"], $servers[$i]["conid"]) or ($conn_error = oracle_error()); // Try again if there was a failure if(($connection == false) || (isset($con_error))){ // Three (two more) tries per alternative for($j = $st; $j < $fn; $j++){ // Try again to connect $connection = @oci_connect($servers[$i]["user"], $servers[$i]["pass"], $servers[$i]["conid"]) or ($conn_error = oracle_error()); } // for($j = 2; $j < 4; $j++) } // if($connection == false) } // if(!isset($connection) || ($connection == false)) } // for($i = 0; $i < $count; $i++)

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  • Mallocing an unsigned char array to store ints

    - by Max Desmond
    I keep getting a segmentation fault when i test the following code. I am currently unable to find an answer after having searched the web. a = (byte *)malloc(sizeof(byte) * x ) ; for( i = 0 ; i < x-1 ; i++ ) { scanf("%d", &y ) ; a[i] = y ; } Both y and x are initialized. X is the size of the array determined by the user. The segmentation fault is on the second to last integer to be added, i found this by adding printf("roar") ; before setting a[i] to y and entering one number at a time. Byte is a typedef of an unsigned char. Note: I've also tried using a[i] = (byte)y ; A is ininitalized as follows byte *a ; If you need to view the entire code it is this: #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include "sort.h" int p_cmp_f () ; int main( int argc, char *argv[] ) { int x, y, i, choice ; byte *a ; while( choice !=2 ) { printf( "Would you like to sort integers?\n1. Yes\n2. No\n" ) ; scanf("%d", &choice ) ; switch(choice) { case 1: printf( "Enter the length of the array: " ) ; scanf( "%d", &x ) ; a = (byte *)malloc(sizeof( byte ) * x ) ; printf( "Enter %d integers to add to the array: ", x ) ; for( i = 0 ; i < x -1 ; i++ ) { scanf( "%d", &y ) ; a[i] = y ; } switch( choice ) { case 1: bubble_sort( a, x, sizeof(int), p_cmp_f ) ; for( i = 0 ; i < x ; i++ ) printf( "%d", a[i] ; break ; case 2: selection_sort( a, x, sizeof(int), p_cmp_f ) ; for( i = 0 ; i < x; i++ ) printf( "%d", a[i] ; break ; case 3: insertion_sort( a, x, sizeof(int), p_cmp_f ) ; for( i = 0 ; i < x ; i++ ) printf( "%d", a[i] ; break ; case 4: merge_sort( a, x, sizeof(int), p_cmp_f ) ; for( i = 0 ; i < x ; i++ ) printf( "%d", a[i] ; break ; case 5: quick_sort( a, x, sizeof(int), p_cmp_f ) ; for( i = 0 ; i < x ; i++ ) printf( "%d", a[i] ; break ; default: printf("Enter either 1,2,3,4, or 5" ) ; break ; } case 2: printf( "Thank you for using this program\n" ) ; return 0 ; break ; default: printf( "Enter either 1 or 2: " ) ; break ; } } free(a) ; return 0 ; } int p_cmp_f( byte *element1, byte *element2 ) { return *((int *)element1) - *((int *)element2) ; }

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  • Alphabetically Ordering an array of words

    - by Genesis
    I'm studying C on my own in preparation for my upcoming semester of school and was wondering what I was doing wrong with my code so far. If Things look weird it is because this is part of a much bigger grab bag of sorting functions I'm creating to get a sense of how to sort numbers,letters,arrays,and the like! I'm basically having some troubles with the manipulation of strings in C currently. Also, I'm quite limited in my knowledge of C at the moment! My main Consists of this: #include <stdio.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> int numbers[10]; int size; int main(void){ setvbuf(stdout,NULL,_IONBF,0); //This is magical code that allows me to input. int wordNumber; int lengthOfWord = 50; printf("How many words do you want to enter: "); scanf("%i", &wordNumber); printf("%i\n",wordNumber); char words[wordNumber][lengthOfWord]; printf("Enter %i words:",wordNumber); int i; for(i=0;i<wordNumber+1;i++){ //+1 is because my words[0] is blank. fgets(&words[i], 50, stdin); } for(i=1;i<wordNumber+1;i++){ // Same as the above comment! printf("%s", words[i]); //prints my words out! } alphabetize(words,wordNumber); //I want to sort these arrays with this function. } My sorting "method" I am trying to construct is below! This function is seriously flawed, but I'd thought I'd keep it all to show you where my mind was headed when writing this. void alphabetize(char a[][],int size){ // This wont fly. size = size+1; int wordNumber; int lengthOfWord; char sortedWords[wordNumber][lengthOfWord]; //In effort for the for loop int i; int j; for(i=1;i<size;i++){ //My effort to copy over this array for manipulation for(j=1;j<size;j++){ sortedWords[i][j] = a[i][j]; } } //This should be kinda what I want when ordering words alphabetically, right? for(i=1;i<size;i++){ for(j=2;j<size;j++){ if(strcmp(sortedWords[i],sortedWords[j]) > 0){ char* temp = sortedWords[i]; sortedWords[i] = sortedWords[j]; sortedWords[j] = temp; } } } for(i=1;i<size;i++){ printf("%s, ",sortedWords[i]); } } I guess I also have another question as well... When I use fgets() it's doing this thing where I get a null word for the first spot of the array. I have had other issues recently trying to scanf() char[] in certain ways specifically spacing my input word variables which "magically" gets rid of the first null space before the character. An example of this is using scanf() to write "Hello" and getting " Hello" or " ""Hello"... Appreciate any thoughts on this, I've got all summer to study up so this doesn't need to be answered with haste! Also, thank you stack overflow as a whole for being so helpful in the past. This may be my first post, but I have been a frequent visitor for the past couple of years and it's been one of the best places for helpful advice/tips.

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  • (This is for a project, so yes it is homework) How would I finish this java code?

    - by user2924318
    The task is to create arrays using user input (which I was able to do), then for the second part, use a separate method to sort the array in ascending order then output it. I have gotten it to do everything I need except I don't know how I would get it to sort. The directions say to use a while loop from 0 to the length to find the minimum value then swap that with the 1st, but I don't know how to do this. This is what I have so far: public static void main(String[] args) { Scanner in = new Scanner(System.in); int storage = getNumDigits(in); if(storage == 0){ System.out.print("No digits to store? OK, goodbye!"); System.exit(0); } int []a = new int [storage]; a = getDigits(a, in); displayDigits(a); selectionSort(a); } private static int getNumDigits(Scanner inScanner) { System.out.print("Please enter the number of digits to be stored: "); int stored = inScanner.nextInt(); while(stored < 0){ System.out.println("ERROR! You must enter a non-negative number of digits!"); System.out.println(); System.out.print("Please enter the number of digits to be stored: "); stored = inScanner.nextInt(); } return stored; } private static int[] getDigits(int[] digits, Scanner inScanner) { int length = digits.length; int count = 0; int toBeStored = 0; while(count < length){ System.out.print("Enter integer " +count +": "); toBeStored = inScanner.nextInt(); digits[count] = toBeStored; count++; } return digits; } private static void displayDigits(int[] digits) { int len = digits.length; System.out.println(); System.out.println("Array before sorting:"); System.out.println("Number of digits in array: " +len); System.out.print("Digits in array: "); for(int cnt = 0; cnt < len-1; cnt++){ System.out.print(digits[cnt] + ", "); } System.out.println(digits[len-1]); } private static void selectionSort(int[] digits) { int l = digits.length; System.out.println(); System.out.println("Array after sorting:"); System.out.println("Number of digits in array: " +l); System.out.print("Digits in array: "); int index = 0; int value = digits[0]; int indVal = digits[index]; while(index < l){ indVal = digits[index]; if(indVal <= value){ indVal = value; digits[index] = value; index++; } else if(value < indVal){ index++; } System.out.print(value); //This is where I don't know what to do. } }

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  • file doesn't open, running outside of debugger results in seg fault (c++)

    - by misterich
    Hello (and thanks in advance) I'm in a bit of a quandry, I cant seem to figure out why I'm seg faulting. A couple of notes: It's for a course -- and sadly I am required to use use C-strings instead of std::string. Please dont fix my code (I wont learn that way and I will keep bugging you). please just point out the flaws in my logic and suggest a different function/way. platform: gcc version 4.4.1 on Suse Linux 11.2 (2.6.31 kernel) Here's the code main.cpp: // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // INCLUDES (C/C++ Std Library) #include <cstdlib> /// EXIT_SUCCESS, EXIT_FAILURE #include <iostream> /// cin, cout, ifstream #include <cassert> /// assert // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // DEPENDENCIES (custom header files) #include "dict.h" /// Header for the dictionary class // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // PRE-PROCESSOR CONSTANTS #define ENTER '\n' /// Used to accept new lines, quit program. #define SPACE ' ' /// One way to end the program // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // CUSTOM DATA TYPES /// File Namespace -- keep it local namespace { /// Possible program prompts to display for the user. enum FNS_Prompts { fileName_, /// prints out the name of the file noFile_, /// no file was passed to the program tooMany_, /// more than one file was passed to the program noMemory_, /// Not enough memory to use the program usage_, /// how to use the program word_, /// ask the user to define a word. notFound_, /// the word is not in the dictionary done_, /// the program is closing normally }; } // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Namespace using namespace std; /// Nothing special in the way of namespaces // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // FUNCTIONS /** prompt() prompts the user to do something, uses enum Prompts for parameter. */ void prompt(FNS_Prompts msg /** determines the prompt to use*/) { switch(msg) { case fileName_ : { cout << ENTER << ENTER << "The file name is: "; break; } case noFile_ : { cout << ENTER << ENTER << "...Sorry, a dictionary file is needed. Try again." << endl; break; } case tooMany_ : { cout << ENTER << ENTER << "...Sorry, you can only specify one dictionary file. Try again." << endl; break; } case noMemory_ : { cout << ENTER << ENTER << "...Sorry, there isn't enough memory available to run this program." << endl; break; } case usage_ : { cout << "USAGE:" << endl << " lookup.exe [dictionary file name]" << endl << endl; break; } case done_ : { cout << ENTER << ENTER << "like Master P says, \"Word.\"" << ENTER << endl; break; } case word_ : { cout << ENTER << ENTER << "Enter a word in the dictionary to get it's definition." << ENTER << "Enter \"?\" to get a sorted list of all words in the dictionary." << ENTER << "... Press the Enter key to quit the program: "; break; } case notFound_ : { cout << ENTER << ENTER << "...Sorry, that word is not in the dictionary." << endl; break; } default : { cout << ENTER << ENTER << "something passed an invalid enum to prompt(). " << endl; assert(false); /// something passed in an invalid enum } } } /** useDictionary() uses the dictionary created by createDictionary * - prompts user to lookup a word * - ends when the user enters an empty word */ void useDictionary(Dictionary &d) { char *userEntry = new char; /// user's input on the command line if( !userEntry ) // check the pointer to the heap { cout << ENTER << MEM_ERR_MSG << endl; exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } do { prompt(word_); // test code cout << endl << "----------------------------------------" << endl << "Enter something: "; cin.getline(userEntry, INPUT_LINE_MAX_LEN, ENTER); cout << ENTER << userEntry << endl; }while ( userEntry[0] != NIL && userEntry[0] != SPACE ); // GARBAGE COLLECTION delete[] userEntry; } /** Program Entry * Reads in the required, single file from the command prompt. * - If there is no file, state such and error out. * - If there is more than one file, state such and error out. * - If there is a single file: * - Create the database object * - Populate the database object * - Prompt the user for entry * main() will return EXIT_SUCCESS upon termination. */ int main(int argc, /// the number of files being passed into the program char *argv[] /// pointer to the filename being passed into tthe program ) { // EXECUTE /* Testing code * / char tempFile[INPUT_LINE_MAX_LEN] = {NIL}; cout << "enter filename: "; cin.getline(tempFile, INPUT_LINE_MAX_LEN, '\n'); */ // uncomment after successful debugging if(argc <= 1) { prompt(noFile_); prompt(usage_); return EXIT_FAILURE; /// no file was passed to the program } else if(argc > 2) { prompt(tooMany_); prompt(usage_); return EXIT_FAILURE; /// more than one file was passed to the program } else { prompt(fileName_); cout << argv[1]; // print out name of dictionary file if( !argv[1] ) { prompt(noFile_); prompt(usage_); return EXIT_FAILURE; /// file does not exist } /* file.open( argv[1] ); // open file numEntries >> in.getline(file); // determine number of dictionary objects to create file.close(); // close file Dictionary[ numEntries ](argv[1]); // create the dictionary object */ // TEMPORARY FILE FOR TESTING!!!! //Dictionary scrabble(tempFile); Dictionary scrabble(argv[1]); // creaate the dicitonary object //*/ useDictionary(scrabble); // prompt the user, use the dictionary } // exit return EXIT_SUCCESS; /// terminate program. } Dict.h/.cpp #ifndef DICT_H #define DICT_H // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // DEPENDENCIES (Custom header files) #include "entry.h" /// class for dictionary entries // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // PRE-PROCESSOR MACROS #define INPUT_LINE_MAX_LEN 256 /// Maximum length of each line in the dictionary file class Dictionary { public : // // Do NOT modify the public section of this class // typedef void (*WordDefFunc)(const char *word, const char *definition); Dictionary( const char *filename ); ~Dictionary(); const char *lookupDefinition( const char *word ); void forEach( WordDefFunc func ); private : // // You get to provide the private members // // VARIABLES int m_numEntries; /// stores the number of entries in the dictionary Entry *m_DictEntry_ptr; /// points to an array of class Entry // Private Functions }; #endif ----------------------------------- // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // INCLUDES (C/C++ Std Library) #include <iostream> /// cout, getline #include <fstream> // ifstream #include <cstring> /// strchr // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // DEPENDENCIES (custom header files) #include "dict.h" /// Header file required by assignment //#include "entry.h" /// Dicitonary Entry Class // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // PRE-PROCESSOR MACROS #define COMMA ',' /// Delimiter for file #define ENTER '\n' /// Carriage return character #define FILE_ERR_MSG "The data file could not be opened. Program will now terminate." #pragma warning(disable : 4996) /// turn off MS compiler warning about strcpy() // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Namespace reference using namespace std; // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // PRIVATE MEMBER FUNCTIONS /** * Sorts the dictionary entries. */ /* static void sortDictionary(?) { // sort through the words using qsort } */ /** NO LONGER NEEDED?? * parses out the length of the first cell in a delimited cell * / int getWordLength(char *str /// string of data to parse ) { return strcspn(str, COMMA); } */ // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // PUBLIC MEMBER FUNCTIONS /** constructor for the class * - opens/reads in file * - creates initializes the array of member vars * - creates pointers to entry objects * - stores pointers to entry objects in member var * - ? sort now or later? */ Dictionary::Dictionary( const char *filename ) { // Create a filestream, open the file to be read in ifstream dataFile(filename, ios::in ); /* if( dataFile.fail() ) { cout << FILE_ERR_MSG << endl; exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } */ if( dataFile.is_open() ) { // read first line of data // TEST CODE in.getline(dataFile, INPUT_LINE_MAX_LEN) >> m_numEntries; // TEST CODE char temp[INPUT_LINE_MAX_LEN] = {NIL}; // TEST CODE dataFile.getline(temp,INPUT_LINE_MAX_LEN,'\n'); dataFile >> m_numEntries; /** Number of terms in the dictionary file * \todo find out how many lines in the file, subtract one, ingore first line */ //create the array of entries m_DictEntry_ptr = new Entry[m_numEntries]; // check for valid memory allocation if( !m_DictEntry_ptr ) { cout << MEM_ERR_MSG << endl; exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } // loop thru each line of the file, parsing words/def's and populating entry objects for(int EntryIdx = 0; EntryIdx < m_numEntries; ++EntryIdx) { // VARIABLES char *tempW_ptr; /// points to a temporary word char *tempD_ptr; /// points to a temporary def char *w_ptr; /// points to the word in the Entry object char *d_ptr; /// points to the definition in the Entry int tempWLen; /// length of the temp word string int tempDLen; /// length of the temp def string char tempLine[INPUT_LINE_MAX_LEN] = {NIL}; /// stores a single line from the file // EXECUTE // getline(dataFile, tempLine) // get a "word,def" line from the file dataFile.getline(tempLine, INPUT_LINE_MAX_LEN); // get a "word,def" line from the file // Parse the string tempW_ptr = tempLine; // point the temp word pointer at the first char in the line tempD_ptr = strchr(tempLine, COMMA); // point the def pointer at the comma *tempD_ptr = NIL; // replace the comma with a NIL ++tempD_ptr; // increment the temp def pointer // find the string lengths... +1 to account for terminator tempWLen = strlen(tempW_ptr) + 1; tempDLen = strlen(tempD_ptr) + 1; // Allocate heap memory for the term and defnition w_ptr = new char[ tempWLen ]; d_ptr = new char[ tempDLen ]; // check memory allocation if( !w_ptr && !d_ptr ) { cout << MEM_ERR_MSG << endl; exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } // copy the temp word, def into the newly allocated memory and terminate the strings strcpy(w_ptr,tempW_ptr); w_ptr[tempWLen] = NIL; strcpy(d_ptr,tempD_ptr); d_ptr[tempDLen] = NIL; // set the pointers for the entry objects m_DictEntry_ptr[ EntryIdx ].setWordPtr(w_ptr); m_DictEntry_ptr[ EntryIdx ].setDefPtr(d_ptr); } // close the file dataFile.close(); } else { cout << ENTER << FILE_ERR_MSG << endl; exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } } /** * cleans up dynamic memory */ Dictionary::~Dictionary() { delete[] m_DictEntry_ptr; /// thou shalt not have memory leaks. } /** * Looks up definition */ /* const char *lookupDefinition( const char *word ) { // print out the word ---- definition } */ /** * prints out the entire dictionary in sorted order */ /* void forEach( WordDefFunc func ) { // to sort before or now.... that is the question } */ Entry.h/cpp #ifndef ENTRY_H #define ENTRY_H // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // INCLUDES (C++ Std lib) #include <cstdlib> /// EXIT_SUCCESS, NULL // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // PRE-PROCESSOR MACROS #define NIL '\0' /// C-String terminator #define MEM_ERR_MSG "Memory allocation has failed. Program will now terminate." // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // CLASS DEFINITION class Entry { public: Entry(void) : m_word_ptr(NULL), m_def_ptr(NULL) { /* default constructor */ }; void setWordPtr(char *w_ptr); /// sets the pointer to the word - only if the pointer is empty void setDefPtr(char *d_ptr); /// sets the ponter to the definition - only if the pointer is empty /// returns what is pointed to by the word pointer char getWord(void) const { return *m_word_ptr; } /// returns what is pointed to by the definition pointer char getDef(void) const { return *m_def_ptr; } private: char *m_word_ptr; /** points to a dictionary word */ char *m_def_ptr; /** points to a dictionary definition */ }; #endif -------------------------------------------------- // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // DEPENDENCIES (custom header files) #include "entry.h" /// class header file // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // PUBLIC FUNCTIONS /* * only change the word member var if it is in its initial state */ void Entry::setWordPtr(char *w_ptr) { if(m_word_ptr == NULL) { m_word_ptr = w_ptr; } } /* * only change the def member var if it is in its initial state */ void Entry::setDefPtr(char *d_ptr) { if(m_def_ptr == NULL) { m_word_ptr = d_ptr; } }

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  • Loading jQuery Consistently in a .NET Web App

    - by Rick Strahl
    One thing that frequently comes up in discussions when using jQuery is how to best load the jQuery library (as well as other commonly used and updated libraries) in a Web application. Specifically the issue is the one of versioning and making sure that you can easily update and switch versions of script files with application wide settings in one place and having your script usage reflect those settings in the entire application on all pages that use the script. Although I use jQuery as an example here, the same concepts can be applied to any script library - for example in my Web libraries I use the same approach for jQuery.ui and my own internal jQuery support library. The concepts used here can be applied both in WebForms and MVC. Loading jQuery Properly From CDN Before we look at a generic way to load jQuery via some server logic, let me first point out my preferred way to embed jQuery into the page. I use the Google CDN to load jQuery and then use a fallback URL to handle the offline or no Internet connection scenario. Why use a CDN? CDN links tend to be loaded more quickly since they are very likely to be cached in user's browsers already as jQuery CDN is used by many, many sites on the Web. Using a CDN also removes load from your Web server and puts the load bearing on the CDN provider - in this case Google - rather than on your Web site. On the downside, CDN links gives the provider (Google, Microsoft) yet another way to track users through their Web usage. Here's how I use jQuery CDN plus a fallback link on my WebLog for example: <!DOCTYPE HTML> <html> <head> <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.4/jquery.min.js"></script> <script> if (typeof (jQuery) == 'undefined') document.write(unescape("%3Cscript " + "src='/Weblog/wwSC.axd?r=Westwind.Web.Controls.Resources.jquery.js' %3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <title>Rick Strahl's Web Log</title> ... </head>   You can see that the CDN is referenced first, followed by a small script block that checks to see whether jQuery was loaded (jQuery object exists). If it didn't load another script reference is added to the document dynamically pointing to a backup URL. In this case my backup URL points at a WebResource in my Westwind.Web  assembly, but the URL can also be local script like src="/scripts/jquery.min.js". Important: Use the proper Protocol/Scheme for  for CDN Urls [updated based on comments] If you're using a CDN to load an external script resource you should always make sure that the script is loaded with the same protocol as the parent page to avoid mixed content warnings by the browser. You don't want to load a script link to an http:// resource when you're on an https:// page. The easiest way to use this is by using a protocol relative URL: <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.4/jquery.min.js"></script> which is an easy way to load resources from other domains. This URL syntax will automatically use the parent page's protocol (or more correctly scheme). As long as the remote domains support both http:// and https:// access this should work. BTW this also works in CSS (with some limitations) and links. BTW, I didn't know about this until it was pointed out in the comments. This is a very useful feature for many things - ah the benefits of my blog to myself :-) Version Numbers When you use a CDN you notice that you have to reference a specific version of jQuery. When using local files you may not have to do this as you can rename your private copy of jQuery.js, but for CDN the references are always versioned. The version number is of course very important to ensure you getting the version you have tested with, but it's also important to the provider because it ensures that cached content is always correct. If an existing file was updated the updates might take a very long time to get past the locally cached content and won't refresh properly. The version number ensures you get the right version and not some cached content that has been changed but not updated in your cache. On the other hand version numbers also mean that once you decide to use a new version of the script you now have to change all your script references in your pages. Depending on whether you use some sort of master/layout page or not this may or may not be easy in your application. Even if you do use master/layout pages, chances are that you probably have a few of them and at the very least all of those have to be updated for the scripts. If you use individual pages for all content this issue then spreads to all of your pages. Search and Replace in Files will do the trick, but it's still something that's easy to forget and worry about. Personaly I think it makes sense to have a single place where you can specify common script libraries that you want to load and more importantly which versions thereof and where they are loaded from. Loading Scripts via Server Code Script loading has always been important to me and as long as I can remember I've always built some custom script loading routines into my Web frameworks. WebForms makes this fairly easy because it has a reasonably useful script manager (ClientScriptManager and the ScriptManager) which allow injecting script into the page easily from anywhere in the Page cycle. What's nice about these components is that they allow scripts to be injected by controls so components can wrap up complex script/resource dependencies more easily without having to require long lists of CSS/Scripts/Image includes. In MVC or pure script driven applications like Razor WebPages  the process is more raw, requiring you to embed script references in the right place. But its also more immediate - it lets you know exactly which versions of scripts to use because you have to manually embed them. In WebForms with different controls loading resources this often can get confusing because it's quite possible to load multiple versions of the same script library into a page, the results of which are less than optimal… In this post I look a simple routine that embeds jQuery into the page based on a few application wide configuration settings. It returns only a string of the script tags that can be manually embedded into a Page template. It's a small function that merely a string of the script tags shown at the begging of this post along with some options on how that string is comprised. You'll be able to specify in one place which version loads and then all places where the help function is used will automatically reflect this selection. Options allow specification of the jQuery CDN Url, the fallback Url and where jQuery should be loaded from (script folder, Resource or CDN in my case). While this is specific to jQuery you can apply this to other resources as well. For example I use a similar approach with jQuery.ui as well using practically the same semantics. Providing Resources in ControlResources In my Westwind.Web Web utility library I have a class called ControlResources which is responsible for holding resource Urls, resource IDs and string contants that reference those resource IDs. The library also provides a few helper methods for loading common scriptscripts into a Web page. There are specific versions for WebForms which use the ClientScriptManager/ScriptManager and script link methods that can be used in any .NET technology that can embed an expression into the output template (or code for that matter). The ControlResources class contains mostly static content - references to resources mostly. But it also contains a few static properties that configure script loading: A Script LoadMode (CDN, Resource, or script url) A default CDN Url A fallback url They are  static properties in the ControlResources class: public class ControlResources { /// <summary> /// Determines what location jQuery is loaded from /// </summary> public static JQueryLoadModes jQueryLoadMode = JQueryLoadModes.ContentDeliveryNetwork; /// <summary> /// jQuery CDN Url on Google /// </summary> public static string jQueryCdnUrl = "//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.4/jquery.min.js"; /// <summary> /// jQuery CDN Url on Google /// </summary> public static string jQueryUiCdnUrl = "//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8.16/jquery-ui.min.js"; /// <summary> /// jQuery UI fallback Url if CDN is unavailable or WebResource is used /// Note: The file needs to exist and hold the minimized version of jQuery ui /// </summary> public static string jQueryUiLocalFallbackUrl = "~/scripts/jquery-ui.min.js"; } These static properties are fixed values that can be changed at application startup to reflect your preferences. Since they're static they are application wide settings and respected across the entire Web application running. It's best to set these default in Application_Init or similar startup code if you need to change them for your application: protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Force jQuery to be loaded off Google Content Network ControlResources.jQueryLoadMode = JQueryLoadModes.ContentDeliveryNetwork; // Allow overriding of the Cdn url ControlResources.jQueryCdnUrl = "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.2/jquery.min.js"; // Route to our own internal handler App.OnApplicationStart(); } With these basic settings in place you can then embed expressions into a page easily. In WebForms use: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head runat="server"> <%= ControlResources.jQueryLink() %> <script src="scripts/ww.jquery.min.js"></script> </head> In Razor use: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> @Html.Raw(ControlResources.jQueryLink()) <script src="scripts/ww.jquery.min.js"></script> </head> Note that in Razor you need to use @Html.Raw() to force the string NOT to escape. Razor by default escapes string results and this ensures that the HTML content is properly expanded as raw HTML text. Both the WebForms and Razor output produce: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.2/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> if (typeof (jQuery) == 'undefined') document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='/WestWindWebToolkitWeb/WebResource.axd?d=-b6oWzgbpGb8uTaHDrCMv59VSmGhilZP5_T_B8anpGx7X-PmW_1eu1KoHDvox-XHqA1EEb-Tl2YAP3bBeebGN65tv-7-yAimtG4ZnoWH633pExpJor8Qp1aKbk-KQWSoNfRC7rQJHXVP4tC0reYzVw2&t=634535391996872492' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));</script> <script src="scripts/ww.jquery.min.js"></script> </head> which produces the desired effect for both CDN load and fallback URL. The implementation of jQueryLink is pretty basic of course: /// <summary> /// Inserts a script link to load jQuery into the page based on the jQueryLoadModes settings /// of this class. Default load is by CDN plus WebResource fallback /// </summary> /// <param name="url"> /// An optional explicit URL to load jQuery from. Url is resolved. /// When specified no fallback is applied /// </param> /// <returns>full script tag and fallback script for jQuery to load</returns> public static string jQueryLink(JQueryLoadModes jQueryLoadMode = JQueryLoadModes.Default, string url = null) { string jQueryUrl = string.Empty; string fallbackScript = string.Empty; if (jQueryLoadMode == JQueryLoadModes.Default) jQueryLoadMode = ControlResources.jQueryLoadMode; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(url)) jQueryUrl = WebUtils.ResolveUrl(url); else if (jQueryLoadMode == JQueryLoadModes.WebResource) { Page page = new Page(); jQueryUrl = page.ClientScript.GetWebResourceUrl(typeof(ControlResources), ControlResources.JQUERY_SCRIPT_RESOURCE); } else if (jQueryLoadMode == JQueryLoadModes.ContentDeliveryNetwork) { jQueryUrl = ControlResources.jQueryCdnUrl; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(jQueryCdnUrl)) { // check if jquery loaded - if it didn't we're not online and use WebResource fallbackScript = @"<script type=""text/javascript"">if (typeof(jQuery) == 'undefined') document.write(unescape(""%3Cscript src='{0}' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E""));</script>"; fallbackScript = string.Format(fallbackScript, WebUtils.ResolveUrl(ControlResources.jQueryCdnFallbackUrl)); } } string output = "<script src=\"" + jQueryUrl + "\" type=\"text/javascript\"></script>"; // add in the CDN fallback script code if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(fallbackScript)) output += "\r\n" + fallbackScript + "\r\n"; return output; } There's one dependency here on WebUtils.ResolveUrl() which resolves Urls without access to a Page/Control (another one of those features that should be in the runtime, not in the WebForms or MVC engine). You can see there's only a little bit of logic in this code that deals with potentially different load modes. I can load scripts from a Url, WebResources or - my preferred way - from CDN. Based on the static settings the scripts to embed are composed to be returned as simple string <script> tag(s). I find this extremely useful especially when I'm not connected to the internet so that I can quickly swap in a local jQuery resource instead of loading from CDN. While CDN loading with the fallback works it can be a bit slow as the CDN is probed first before the fallback kicks in. Switching quickly in one place makes this trivial. It also makes it very easy once a new version of jQuery rolls around to move up to the new version and ensure that all pages are using the new version immediately. I'm not trying to make this out as 'the' definite way to load your resources, but rather provide it here as a pointer so you can maybe apply your own logic to determine where scripts come from and how they load. You could even automate this some more by using configuration settings or reading the locations/preferences out of some sort of data/metadata store that can be dynamically updated instead via recompilation. FWIW, I use a very similar approach for loading jQuery UI and my own ww.jquery library - the same concept can be applied to any kind of script you might be loading from different locations. Hopefully some of you find this a useful addition to your toolset. Resources Google CDN for jQuery Full ControlResources Source Code ControlResource Documentation Westwind.Web NuGet This method is part of the Westwind.Web library of the West Wind Web Toolkit or you can grab the Web library from NuGet and add to your Visual Studio project. This package includes a host of Web related utilities and script support features. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET  jQuery   Tweet (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Working with PivotTables in Excel

    - by Mark Virtue
    PivotTables are one of the most powerful features of Microsoft Excel.  They allow large amounts of data to be analyzed and summarized in just a few mouse clicks. In this article, we explore PivotTables, understand what they are, and learn how to create and customize them. Note:  This article is written using Excel 2010 (Beta).  The concept of a PivotTable has changed little over the years, but the method of creating one has changed in nearly every iteration of Excel.  If you are using a version of Excel that is not 2010, expect different screens from the ones you see in this article. A Little History In the early days of spreadsheet programs, Lotus 1-2-3 ruled the roost.  Its dominance was so complete that people thought it was a waste of time for Microsoft to bother developing their own spreadsheet software (Excel) to compete with Lotus.  Flash-forward to 2010, and Excel’s dominance of the spreadsheet market is greater than Lotus’s ever was, while the number of users still running Lotus 1-2-3 is approaching zero.  How did this happen?  What caused such a dramatic reversal of fortunes? Industry analysts put it down to two factors:  Firstly, Lotus decided that this fancy new GUI platform called “Windows” was a passing fad that would never take off.  They declined to create a Windows version of Lotus 1-2-3 (for a few years, anyway), predicting that their DOS version of the software was all anyone would ever need.  Microsoft, naturally, developed Excel exclusively for Windows.  Secondly, Microsoft developed a feature for Excel that Lotus didn’t provide in 1-2-3, namely PivotTables.  The PivotTables feature, exclusive to Excel, was deemed so staggeringly useful that people were willing to learn an entire new software package (Excel) rather than stick with a program (1-2-3) that didn’t have it.  This one feature, along with the misjudgment of the success of Windows, was the death-knell for Lotus 1-2-3, and the beginning of the success of Microsoft Excel. Understanding PivotTables So what is a PivotTable, exactly? Put simply, a PivotTable is a summary of some data, created to allow easy analysis of said data.  But unlike a manually created summary, Excel PivotTables are interactive.  Once you have created one, you can easily change it if it doesn’t offer the exact insights into your data that you were hoping for.  In a couple of clicks the summary can be “pivoted” – rotated in such a way that the column headings become row headings, and vice versa.  There’s a lot more that can be done, too.  Rather than try to describe all the features of PivotTables, we’ll simply demonstrate them… The data that you analyze using a PivotTable can’t be just any data – it has to be raw data, previously unprocessed (unsummarized) – typically a list of some sort.  An example of this might be the list of sales transactions in a company for the past six months. Examine the data shown below: Notice that this is not raw data.  In fact, it is already a summary of some sort.  In cell B3 we can see $30,000, which apparently is the total of James Cook’s sales for the month of January.  So where is the raw data?  How did we arrive at the figure of $30,000?  Where is the original list of sales transactions that this figure was generated from?  It’s clear that somewhere, someone must have gone to the trouble of collating all of the sales transactions for the past six months into the summary we see above.  How long do you suppose this took?  An hour?  Ten?  Probably. If we were to track down the original list of sales transactions, it might look something like this: You may be surprised to learn that, using the PivotTable feature of Excel, we can create a monthly sales summary similar to the one above in a few seconds, with only a few mouse clicks.  We can do this – and a lot more too! How to Create a PivotTable First, ensure that you have some raw data in a worksheet in Excel.  A list of financial transactions is typical, but it can be a list of just about anything:  Employee contact details, your CD collection, or fuel consumption figures for your company’s fleet of cars. So we start Excel… …and we load such a list… Once we have the list open in Excel, we’re ready to start creating the PivotTable. Click on any one single cell within the list: Then, from the Insert tab, click the PivotTable icon: The Create PivotTable box appears, asking you two questions:  What data should your new PivotTable be based on, and where should it be created?  Because we already clicked on a cell within the list (in the step above), the entire list surrounding that cell is already selected for us ($A$1:$G$88 on the Payments sheet, in this example).  Note that we could select a list in any other region of any other worksheet, or even some external data source, such as an Access database table, or even a MS-SQL Server database table.  We also need to select whether we want our new PivotTable to be created on a new worksheet, or on an existing one.  In this example we will select a new one: The new worksheet is created for us, and a blank PivotTable is created on that worksheet: Another box also appears:  The PivotTable Field List.  This field list will be shown whenever we click on any cell within the PivotTable (above): The list of fields in the top part of the box is actually the collection of column headings from the original raw data worksheet.  The four blank boxes in the lower part of the screen allow us to choose the way we would like our PivotTable to summarize the raw data.  So far, there is nothing in those boxes, so the PivotTable is blank.  All we need to do is drag fields down from the list above and drop them in the lower boxes.  A PivotTable is then automatically created to match our instructions.  If we get it wrong, we only need to drag the fields back to where they came from and/or drag new fields down to replace them. The Values box is arguably the most important of the four.  The field that is dragged into this box represents the data that needs to be summarized in some way (by summing, averaging, finding the maximum, minimum, etc).  It is almost always numerical data.  A perfect candidate for this box in our sample data is the “Amount” field/column.  Let’s drag that field into the Values box: Notice that (a) the “Amount” field in the list of fields is now ticked, and “Sum of Amount” has been added to the Values box, indicating that the amount column has been summed. If we examine the PivotTable itself, we indeed find the sum of all the “Amount” values from the raw data worksheet: We’ve created our first PivotTable!  Handy, but not particularly impressive.  It’s likely that we need a little more insight into our data than that. Referring to our sample data, we need to identify one or more column headings that we could conceivably use to split this total.  For example, we may decide that we would like to see a summary of our data where we have a row heading for each of the different salespersons in our company, and a total for each.  To achieve this, all we need to do is to drag the “Salesperson” field into the Row Labels box: Now, finally, things start to get interesting!  Our PivotTable starts to take shape….   With a couple of clicks we have created a table that would have taken a long time to do manually. So what else can we do?  Well, in one sense our PivotTable is complete.  We’ve created a useful summary of our source data.  The important stuff is already learned!  For the rest of the article, we will examine some ways that more complex PivotTables can be created, and ways that those PivotTables can be customized. First, we can create a two-dimensional table.  Let’s do that by using “Payment Method” as a column heading.  Simply drag the “Payment Method” heading to the Column Labels box: Which looks like this: Starting to get very cool! Let’s make it a three-dimensional table.  What could such a table possibly look like?  Well, let’s see… Drag the “Package” column/heading to the Report Filter box: Notice where it ends up…. This allows us to filter our report based on which “holiday package” was being purchased.  For example, we can see the breakdown of salesperson vs payment method for all packages, or, with a couple of clicks, change it to show the same breakdown for the “Sunseekers” package: And so, if you think about it the right way, our PivotTable is now three-dimensional.  Let’s keep customizing… If it turns out, say, that we only want to see cheque and credit card transactions (i.e. no cash transactions), then we can deselect the “Cash” item from the column headings.  Click the drop-down arrow next to Column Labels, and untick “Cash”: Let’s see what that looks like…As you can see, “Cash” is gone. Formatting This is obviously a very powerful system, but so far the results look very plain and boring.  For a start, the numbers that we’re summing do not look like dollar amounts – just plain old numbers.  Let’s rectify that. A temptation might be to do what we’re used to doing in such circumstances and simply select the whole table (or the whole worksheet) and use the standard number formatting buttons on the toolbar to complete the formatting.  The problem with that approach is that if you ever change the structure of the PivotTable in the future (which is 99% likely), then those number formats will be lost.  We need a way that will make them (semi-)permanent. First, we locate the “Sum of Amount” entry in the Values box, and click on it.  A menu appears.  We select Value Field Settings… from the menu: The Value Field Settings box appears. Click the Number Format button, and the standard Format Cells box appears: From the Category list, select (say) Accounting, and drop the number of decimal places to 0.  Click OK a few times to get back to the PivotTable… As you can see, the numbers have been correctly formatted as dollar amounts. While we’re on the subject of formatting, let’s format the entire PivotTable.  There are a few ways to do this.  Let’s use a simple one… Click the PivotTable Tools/Design tab: Then drop down the arrow in the bottom-right of the PivotTable Styles list to see a vast collection of built-in styles: Choose any one that appeals, and look at the result in your PivotTable:   Other Options We can work with dates as well.  Now usually, there are many, many dates in a transaction list such as the one we started with.  But Excel provides the option to group data items together by day, week, month, year, etc.  Let’s see how this is done. First, let’s remove the “Payment Method” column from the Column Labels box (simply drag it back up to the field list), and replace it with the “Date Booked” column: As you can see, this makes our PivotTable instantly useless, giving us one column for each date that a transaction occurred on – a very wide table! To fix this, right-click on any date and select Group… from the context-menu: The grouping box appears.  We select Months and click OK: Voila!  A much more useful table: (Incidentally, this table is virtually identical to the one shown at the beginning of this article – the original sales summary that was created manually.) Another cool thing to be aware of is that you can have more than one set of row headings (or column headings): …which looks like this…. You can do a similar thing with column headings (or even report filters). Keeping things simple again, let’s see how to plot averaged values, rather than summed values. First, click on “Sum of Amount”, and select Value Field Settings… from the context-menu that appears: In the Summarize value field by list in the Value Field Settings box, select Average: While we’re here, let’s change the Custom Name, from “Average of Amount” to something a little more concise.  Type in something like “Avg”: Click OK, and see what it looks like.  Notice that all the values change from summed totals to averages, and the table title (top-left cell) has changed to “Avg”: If we like, we can even have sums, averages and counts (counts = how many sales there were) all on the same PivotTable! Here are the steps to get something like that in place (starting from a blank PivotTable): Drag “Salesperson” into the Column Labels Drag “Amount” field down into the Values box three times For the first “Amount” field, change its custom name to “Total” and it’s number format to Accounting (0 decimal places) For the second “Amount” field, change its custom name to “Average”, its function to Average and it’s number format to Accounting (0 decimal places) For the third “Amount” field, change its name to “Count” and its function to Count Drag the automatically created field from Column Labels to Row Labels Here’s what we end up with: Total, average and count on the same PivotTable! Conclusion There are many, many more features and options for PivotTables created by Microsoft Excel – far too many to list in an article like this.  To fully cover the potential of PivotTables, a small book (or a large website) would be required.  Brave and/or geeky readers can explore PivotTables further quite easily:  Simply right-click on just about everything, and see what options become available to you.  There are also the two ribbon-tabs: PivotTable Tools/Options and Design.  It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake – it’s easy to delete the PivotTable and start again – a possibility old DOS users of Lotus 1-2-3 never had. We’ve included an Excel that should work with most versions of Excel, so you can download to practice your PivotTable skills. Download Our Practice Excel File Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Magnify Selected Cells In Excel 2007Share Access Data with Excel in Office 2010Make Excel 2007 Print Gridlines In Workbook FileMake Excel 2007 Always Save in Excel 2003 FormatConvert Older Excel Documents to Excel 2007 Format TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10 New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users Get News Quick and Precise With Newser Scan for Viruses in Ubuntu using ClamAV Replace Your Windows Task Manager With System Explorer

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  • Solaris 11.1: Changes to included FOSS packages

    - by alanc
    Besides the documentation changes I mentioned last time, another place you can see Solaris 11.1 changes before upgrading is in the online package repository, now that the 11.1 packages have been published to http://pkg.oracle.com/solaris/release/, as the “0.175.1.0.0.24.2” branch. (Oracle Solaris Package Versioning explains what each field in that version string means.) When you’re ready to upgrade to the packages from either this repo, or the support repository, you’ll want to first read How to Update to Oracle Solaris 11.1 Using the Image Packaging System by Pete Dennis, as there are a couple issues you will need to be aware of to do that upgrade, several of which are due to changes in the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) packages included with Solaris, as I’ll explain in a bit. Solaris 11 can update more readily than Solaris 10 In the Solaris 10 and older update models, the way the updates were built constrained what changes we could make in those releases. To change an existing SVR4 package in those releases, we created a Solaris Patch, which applied to a given version of the SVR4 package and replaced, added or deleted files in it. These patches were released via the support websites (originally SunSolve, now My Oracle Support) for applying to existing Solaris 10 installations, and were also merged into the install images for the next Solaris 10 update release. (This Solaris Patches blog post from Gerry Haskins dives deeper into that subject.) Some of the restrictions of this model were that package refactoring, changes to package dependencies, and even just changing the package version number, were difficult to do in this hybrid patch/OS update model. For instance, when Solaris 10 first shipped, it had the Xorg server from X11R6.8. Over the first couple years of update releases we were able to keep it up to date by replacing, adding, & removing files as necessary, taking it all the way up to Xorg server release 1.3 (new version numbering begun after the X11R7 split of the X11 tree into separate modules gave each module its own version). But if you run pkginfo on the SUNWxorg-server package, you’ll see it still displayed a version number of 6.8, confusing users as to which version was actually included. We stopped upgrading the Xorg server releases in Solaris 10 after 1.3, as later versions added new dependencies, such as HAL, D-Bus, and libpciaccess, which were very difficult to manage in this patching model. (We later got libpciaccess to work, but HAL & D-Bus would have been much harder due to the greater dependency tree underneath those.) Similarly, every time the GNOME team looked into upgrading Solaris 10 past GNOME 2.6, they found these constraints made it so difficult it wasn’t worthwhile, and eventually GNOME’s dependencies had changed enough it was completely infeasible. Fortunately, this worked out for both the X11 & GNOME teams, with our management making the business decision to concentrate on the “Nevada” branch for desktop users - first as Solaris Express Desktop Edition, and later as OpenSolaris, so we didn’t have to fight to try to make the package updates fit into these tight constraints. Meanwhile, the team designing the new packaging system for Solaris 11 was seeing us struggle with these problems, and making this much easier to manage for both the development teams and our users was one of their big goals for the IPS design they were working on. Now that we’ve reached the first update release to Solaris 11, we can start to see the fruits of their labors, with more FOSS updates in 11.1 than we had in many Solaris 10 update releases, keeping software more up to date with the upstream communities. Of course, just because we can more easily update now, doesn’t always mean we should or will do so, it just removes the package system limitations from forcing the decision for us. So while we’ve upgraded the X Window System in the 11.1 release from X11R7.6 to 7.7, the Solaris GNOME team decided it was not the right time to try to make the jump from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3, though they did update some individual components of the desktop, especially those with security fixes like Firefox. In other parts of the system, decisions as to what to update were prioritized based on how they affected other projects, or what customer requests we’d gotten for them. So with all that background in place, what packages did we actually update or add between Solaris 11.0 and 11.1? Core OS Functionality One of the FOSS changes with the biggest impact in this release is the upgrade from Grub Legacy (0.97) to Grub 2 (1.99) for the x64 platform boot loader. This is the cause of one of the upgrade quirks, since to go from Solaris 11.0 to 11.1 on x64 systems, you first need to update the Boot Environment tools (such as beadm) to a new version that can handle boot environments that use the Grub2 boot loader. System administrators can find the details they need to know about the new Grub in the Administering the GRand Unified Bootloader chapter of the Booting and Shutting Down Oracle Solaris 11.1 Systems guide. This change was necessary to be able to support new hardware coming into the x64 marketplace, including systems using UEFI firmware or booting off disk drives larger than 2 terabytes. For both platforms, Solaris 11.1 adds rsyslog as an optional alternative to the traditional syslogd, and OpenSCAP for checking security configuration settings are compliant with site policies. Note that the support repo actually has newer versions of BIND & fetchmail than the 11.1 release, as some late breaking critical fixes came through from the community upstream releases after the Solaris 11.1 release was frozen, and made their way to the support repository. These are responsible for the other big upgrade quirk in this release, in which to upgrade a system which already installed those versions from the support repo, you need to either wait for those packages to make their way to the 11.1 branch of the support repo, or follow the steps in the aforementioned upgrade walkthrough to let the package system know it's okay to temporarily downgrade those. Developer Stack While Solaris 11.0 included Python 2.7, many of the bundled python modules weren’t packaged for it yet, limiting its usability. For 11.1, many more of the python modules include 2.7 versions (enough that I filtered them out of the below table, but you can always search on the package repository server for them. For other language runtimes and development tools, 11.1 expands the use of IPS mediated links to choose which version of a package is the default when the packages are designed to allow multiple versions to install side by side. For instance, in Solaris 11.0, GNU automake 1.9 and 1.10 were provided, and developers had to run them as either automake-1.9 or automake-1.10. In Solaris 11.1, when automake 1.11 was added, also added was a /usr/bin/automake mediated link, which points to the automake-1.11 program by default, but can be changed to another version by running the pkg set-mediator command. Mediated links were also used for the Java runtime & development kits in 11.1, changing the default versions to the Java 7 releases (the 1.7.0.x package versions), while allowing admins to switch links such as /usr/bin/javac back to Java 6 if they need to for their site, to deal with Java 7 compatibility or other issues, without having to update each usage to use the full versioned /usr/jdk/jdk1.6.0_35/bin/javac paths for every invocation. Desktop Stack As I mentioned before, we upgraded from X11R7.6 to X11R7.7, since a pleasant coincidence made the X.Org release dates line up nicely with our feature & code freeze dates for this release. (Or perhaps it wasn’t so coincidental, after all, one of the benefits of being the person making the release is being able to decide what schedule is most convenient for you, and this one worked well for me.) For the table below, I’ve skipped listing the packages in which we use the X11 “katamari” version for the Solaris package version (mainly packages combining elements of multiple upstream modules with independent version numbers), since they just all changed from 7.6 to 7.7. In the graphics drivers, we worked with Intel to update the Intel Integrated Graphics Processor support to support 3D graphics and kernel mode setting on the Ivy Bridge chipsets, and updated Nvidia’s non-FOSS graphics driver from 280.13 to 295.20. Higher up in the desktop stack, PulseAudio was added for audio support, and liblouis for Braille support, and the GNOME applications were built to use them. The Mozilla applications, Firefox & Thunderbird moved to the current Extended Support Release (ESR) versions, 10.x for each, to bring up-to-date security fixes without having to be on Mozilla’s agressive 6 week feature cycle release train. Detailed list of changes This table shows most of the changes to the FOSS packages between Solaris 11.0 and 11.1. As noted above, some were excluded for clarity, or to reduce noise and duplication. All the FOSS packages which didn't change the version number in their packaging info are not included, even if they had updates to fix bugs, security holes, or add support for new hardware or new features of Solaris. Package11.011.1 archiver/unrar 3.8.5 4.1.4 audio/sox 14.3.0 14.3.2 backup/rdiff-backup 1.2.1 1.3.3 communication/im/pidgin 2.10.0 2.10.5 compress/gzip 1.3.5 1.4 compress/xz not included 5.0.1 database/sqlite-3 3.7.6.3 3.7.11 desktop/remote-desktop/tigervnc 1.0.90 1.1.0 desktop/window-manager/xcompmgr 1.1.5 1.1.6 desktop/xscreensaver 5.12 5.15 developer/build/autoconf 2.63 2.68 developer/build/autoconf/xorg-macros 1.15.0 1.17 developer/build/automake-111 not included 1.11.2 developer/build/cmake 2.6.2 2.8.6 developer/build/gnu-make 3.81 3.82 developer/build/imake 1.0.4 1.0.5 developer/build/libtool 1.5.22 2.4.2 developer/build/makedepend 1.0.3 1.0.4 developer/documentation-tool/doxygen 1.5.7.1 1.7.6.1 developer/gnu-binutils 2.19 2.21.1 developer/java/jdepend not included 2.9 developer/java/jdk-6 1.6.0.26 1.6.0.35 developer/java/jdk-7 1.7.0.0 1.7.0.7 developer/java/jpackage-utils not included 1.7.5 developer/java/junit 4.5 4.10 developer/lexer/jflex not included 1.4.1 developer/parser/byaccj not included 1.14 developer/parser/java_cup not included 0.10 developer/quilt 0.47 0.60 developer/versioning/git 1.7.3.2 1.7.9.2 developer/versioning/mercurial 1.8.4 2.2.1 developer/versioning/subversion 1.6.16 1.7.5 diagnostic/constype 1.0.3 1.0.4 diagnostic/nmap 5.21 5.51 diagnostic/scanpci 0.12.1 0.13.1 diagnostic/wireshark 1.4.8 1.8.2 diagnostic/xload 1.1.0 1.1.1 editor/gnu-emacs 23.1 23.4 editor/vim 7.3.254 7.3.600 file/lndir 1.0.2 1.0.3 image/editor/bitmap 1.0.5 1.0.6 image/gnuplot 4.4.0 4.6.0 image/library/libexif 0.6.19 0.6.21 image/library/libpng 1.4.8 1.4.11 image/library/librsvg 2.26.3 2.34.1 image/xcursorgen 1.0.4 1.0.5 library/audio/pulseaudio not included 1.1 library/cacao 2.3.0.0 2.3.1.0 library/expat 2.0.1 2.1.0 library/gc 7.1 7.2 library/graphics/pixman 0.22.0 0.24.4 library/guile 1.8.4 1.8.6 library/java/javadb 10.5.3.0 10.6.2.1 library/java/subversion 1.6.16 1.7.5 library/json-c not included 0.9 library/libedit not included 3.0 library/libee not included 0.3.2 library/libestr not included 0.1.2 library/libevent 1.3.5 1.4.14.2 library/liblouis not included 2.1.1 library/liblouisxml not included 2.1.0 library/libtecla 1.6.0 1.6.1 library/libtool/libltdl 1.5.22 2.4.2 library/nspr 4.8.8 4.8.9 library/openldap 2.4.25 2.4.30 library/pcre 7.8 8.21 library/perl-5/subversion 1.6.16 1.7.5 library/python-2/jsonrpclib not included 0.1.3 library/python-2/lxml 2.1.2 2.3.3 library/python-2/nose not included 1.1.2 library/python-2/pyopenssl not included 0.11 library/python-2/subversion 1.6.16 1.7.5 library/python-2/tkinter-26 2.6.4 2.6.8 library/python-2/tkinter-27 2.7.1 2.7.3 library/security/nss 4.12.10 4.13.1 library/security/openssl 1.0.0.5 (1.0.0e) 1.0.0.10 (1.0.0j) mail/thunderbird 6.0 10.0.6 network/dns/bind 9.6.3.4.3 9.6.3.7.2 package/pkgbuild not included 1.3.104 print/filter/enscript not included 1.6.4 print/filter/gutenprint 5.2.4 5.2.7 print/lp/filter/foomatic-rip 3.0.2 4.0.15 runtime/java/jre-6 1.6.0.26 1.6.0.35 runtime/java/jre-7 1.7.0.0 1.7.0.7 runtime/perl-512 5.12.3 5.12.4 runtime/python-26 2.6.4 2.6.8 runtime/python-27 2.7.1 2.7.3 runtime/ruby-18 1.8.7.334 1.8.7.357 runtime/tcl-8/tcl-sqlite-3 3.7.6.3 3.7.11 security/compliance/openscap not included 0.8.1 security/nss-utilities 4.12.10 4.13.1 security/sudo 1.8.1.2 1.8.4.5 service/network/dhcp/isc-dhcp 4.1 4.1.0.6 service/network/dns/bind 9.6.3.4.3 9.6.3.7.2 service/network/ftp (ProFTPD) 1.3.3.0.5 1.3.3.0.7 service/network/samba 3.5.10 3.6.6 shell/conflict 0.2004.9.1 0.2010.6.27 shell/pipe-viewer 1.1.4 1.2.0 shell/zsh 4.3.12 4.3.17 system/boot/grub 0.97 1.99 system/font/truetype/liberation 1.4 1.7.2 system/library/freetype-2 2.4.6 2.4.9 system/library/libnet 1.1.2.1 1.1.5 system/management/cim/pegasus 2.9.1 2.11.0 system/management/ipmitool 1.8.10 1.8.11 system/management/wbem/wbemcli 1.3.7 1.3.9.1 system/network/routing/quagga 0.99.8 0.99.19 system/rsyslog not included 6.2.0 terminal/luit 1.1.0 1.1.1 text/convmv 1.14 1.15 text/gawk 3.1.5 3.1.8 text/gnu-grep 2.5.4 2.10 web/browser/firefox 6.0.2 10.0.6 web/browser/links 1.0 1.0.3 web/java-servlet/tomcat 6.0.33 6.0.35 web/php-53 not included 5.3.14 web/php-53/extension/php-apc not included 3.1.9 web/php-53/extension/php-idn not included 0.2.0 web/php-53/extension/php-memcache not included 3.0.6 web/php-53/extension/php-mysql not included 5.3.14 web/php-53/extension/php-pear not included 5.3.14 web/php-53/extension/php-suhosin not included 0.9.33 web/php-53/extension/php-tcpwrap not included 1.1.3 web/php-53/extension/php-xdebug not included 2.2.0 web/php-common not included 11.1 web/proxy/squid 3.1.8 3.1.18 web/server/apache-22 2.2.20 2.2.22 web/server/apache-22/module/apache-sed 2.2.20 2.2.22 web/server/apache-22/module/apache-wsgi not included 3.3 x11/diagnostic/xev 1.1.0 1.2.0 x11/diagnostic/xscope 1.3 1.3.1 x11/documentation/xorg-docs 1.6 1.7 x11/keyboard/xkbcomp 1.2.3 1.2.4 x11/library/libdmx 1.1.1 1.1.2 x11/library/libdrm 2.4.25 2.4.32 x11/library/libfontenc 1.1.0 1.1.1 x11/library/libfs 1.0.3 1.0.4 x11/library/libice 1.0.7 1.0.8 x11/library/libsm 1.2.0 1.2.1 x11/library/libx11 1.4.4 1.5.0 x11/library/libxau 1.0.6 1.0.7 x11/library/libxcb 1.7 1.8.1 x11/library/libxcursor 1.1.12 1.1.13 x11/library/libxdmcp 1.1.0 1.1.1 x11/library/libxext 1.3.0 1.3.1 x11/library/libxfixes 4.0.5 5.0 x11/library/libxfont 1.4.4 1.4.5 x11/library/libxft 2.2.0 2.3.1 x11/library/libxi 1.4.3 1.6.1 x11/library/libxinerama 1.1.1 1.1.2 x11/library/libxkbfile 1.0.7 1.0.8 x11/library/libxmu 1.1.0 1.1.1 x11/library/libxmuu 1.1.0 1.1.1 x11/library/libxpm 3.5.9 3.5.10 x11/library/libxrender 0.9.6 0.9.7 x11/library/libxres 1.0.5 1.0.6 x11/library/libxscrnsaver 1.2.1 1.2.2 x11/library/libxtst 1.2.0 1.2.1 x11/library/libxv 1.0.6 1.0.7 x11/library/libxvmc 1.0.6 1.0.7 x11/library/libxxf86vm 1.1.1 1.1.2 x11/library/mesa 7.10.2 7.11.2 x11/library/toolkit/libxaw7 1.0.9 1.0.11 x11/library/toolkit/libxt 1.0.9 1.1.3 x11/library/xtrans 1.2.6 1.2.7 x11/oclock 1.0.2 1.0.3 x11/server/xdmx 1.10.3 1.12.2 x11/server/xephyr 1.10.3 1.12.2 x11/server/xorg 1.10.3 1.12.2 x11/server/xorg/driver/xorg-input-keyboard 1.6.0 1.6.1 x11/server/xorg/driver/xorg-input-mouse 1.7.1 1.7.2 x11/server/xorg/driver/xorg-input-synaptics 1.4.1 1.6.2 x11/server/xorg/driver/xorg-input-vmmouse 12.7.0 12.8.0 x11/server/xorg/driver/xorg-video-ast 0.91.10 0.93.10 x11/server/xorg/driver/xorg-video-ati 6.14.1 6.14.4 x11/server/xorg/driver/xorg-video-cirrus 1.3.2 1.4.0 x11/server/xorg/driver/xorg-video-dummy 0.3.4 0.3.5 x11/server/xorg/driver/xorg-video-intel 2.10.0 2.18.0 x11/server/xorg/driver/xorg-video-mach64 6.9.0 6.9.1 x11/server/xorg/driver/xorg-video-mga 1.4.13 1.5.0 x11/server/xorg/driver/xorg-video-openchrome 0.2.904 0.2.905 x11/server/xorg/driver/xorg-video-r128 6.8.1 6.8.2 x11/server/xorg/driver/xorg-video-trident 1.3.4 1.3.5 x11/server/xorg/driver/xorg-video-vesa 2.3.0 2.3.1 x11/server/xorg/driver/xorg-video-vmware 11.0.3 12.0.2 x11/server/xserver-common 1.10.3 1.12.2 x11/server/xvfb 1.10.3 1.12.2 x11/server/xvnc 1.0.90 1.1.0 x11/session/sessreg 1.0.6 1.0.7 x11/session/xauth 1.0.6 1.0.7 x11/session/xinit 1.3.1 1.3.2 x11/transset 0.9.1 1.0.0 x11/trusted/trusted-xorg 1.10.3 1.12.2 x11/x11-window-dump 1.0.4 1.0.5 x11/xclipboard 1.1.1 1.1.2 x11/xclock 1.0.5 1.0.6 x11/xfd 1.1.0 1.1.1 x11/xfontsel 1.0.3 1.0.4 x11/xfs 1.1.1 1.1.2 P.S. To get the version numbers for this table, I ran a quick perl script over the output from: % pkg contents -H -r -t depend -a type=incorporate -o fmri \ `pkg contents -H -r -t depend -a type=incorporate -o fmri [email protected],5.11-0.175.1.0.0.24` \ | sort /tmp/11.1 % pkg contents -H -r -t depend -a type=incorporate -o fmri \ `pkg contents -H -r -t depend -a type=incorporate -o fmri [email protected],5.11-0.175.0.0.0.2` \ | sort /tmp/11.0

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  • Ops Center 12c - Provisioning Solaris Using a Card-Based NIC

    - by scottdickson
    It's been a long time since last I added something here, but having some conversations this last week, I got inspired to update things. I've been spending a lot of time with Ops Center for managing and installing systems these days.  So, I suspect a number of my upcoming posts will be in that area. Today, I want to look at how to provision Solaris using Ops Center when your network is not connected to one of the built-in NICs.  We'll talk about how this can work for both Solaris 10 and Solaris 11, since they are pretty similar.  In both cases, WANboot is a key piece of the story. Here's what I want to do:  I have a Sun Fire T2000 server with a Quad-GbE nxge card installed.  The only network is connected to port 2 on that card rather than the built-in network interfaces.  I want to install Solaris on it across the network, either Solaris 10 or Solaris 11.  I have met with a lot of customers lately who have a similar architecture.  Usually, they have T4-4 servers with the network connected via 10GbE connections. Add to this mix the fact that I use Ops Center to manage the systems in my lab, so I really would like to add this to Ops Center.  If possible, I would like this to be completely hands free.  I can't quite do that yet. Close, but not quite. WANBoot or Old-Style NetBoot? When a system is installed from the network, it needs some help getting the process rolling.  It has to figure out what its network configuration (IP address, gateway, etc.) ought to be.  It needs to figure out what server is going to help it boot and install, and it needs the instructions for the installation.  There are two different ways to bootstrap an installation of Solaris on SPARC across the network.   The old way uses a broadcast of RARP or more recently DHCP to obtain the IP configuration and the rest of the information needed.  The second is to explicitly configure this information in the OBP and use WANBoot for installation WANBoot has a number of benefits over broadcast-based installation: it is not restricted to a single subnet; it does not require special DHCP configuration or DHCP helpers; it uses standard HTTP and HTTPS protocols which traverse firewalls much more easily than NFS-based package installation.  But, WANBoot is not available on really old hardware and WANBoot requires the use o Flash Archives in Solaris 10.  Still, for many people, this is a great approach. As it turns out, WANBoot is necessary if you plan to install using a NIC on a card rather than a built-in NIC. Identifying Which Network Interface to Use One of the trickiest aspects to this process, and the one that actually requires manual intervention to set up, is identifying how the OBP and Solaris refer to the NIC that we want to use to boot.  The OBP already has device aliases configured for the built-in NICs called net, net0, net1, net2, net3.  The device alias net typically points to net0 so that when you issue the command  "boot net -v install", it uses net0 for the boot.  Our task is to figure out the network instance for the NIC we want to use.  We will need to get to the OBP console of the system we want to install in order to figure out what the network should be called.  I will presume you know how to get to the ok prompt.  Once there, we have to see what networks the OBP sees and identify which one is associated with our NIC using the OBP command show-nets. SunOS Release 5.11 Version 11.0 64-bit Copyright (c) 1983, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. {4} ok banner Sun Fire T200, No Keyboard Copyright (c) 1998, 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. OpenBoot 4.30.4.b, 32640 MB memory available, Serial #69057548. Ethernet address 0:14:4f:1d:bc:c, Host ID: 841dbc0c. {4} ok show-nets a) /pci@7c0/pci@0/pci@2/network@0,1 b) /pci@7c0/pci@0/pci@2/network@0 c) /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,3 d) /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2 e) /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,1 f) /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0 g) /pci@780/pci@0/pci@1/network@0,1 h) /pci@780/pci@0/pci@1/network@0 q) NO SELECTION Enter Selection, q to quit: d /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2 has been selected. Type ^Y ( Control-Y ) to insert it in the command line. e.g. ok nvalias mydev ^Y for creating devalias mydev for /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2 {4} ok devalias ... net3 /pci@7c0/pci@0/pci@2/network@0,1 net2 /pci@7c0/pci@0/pci@2/network@0 net1 /pci@780/pci@0/pci@1/network@0,1 net0 /pci@780/pci@0/pci@1/network@0 net /pci@780/pci@0/pci@1/network@0 ... name aliases By looking at the devalias and the show-nets output, we can see that our Quad-GbE card must be the device nodes starting with  /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0.  The cable for our network is plugged into the 3rd slot, so the device address for our network must be /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2. With that, we can create a device alias for our network interface.  Naming the device alias may take a little bit of trial and error, especially in Solaris 11 where the device alias seems to matter more with the new virtualized network stack. So far in my testing, since this is the "next" network interface to be used, I have found success in naming it net4, even though it's a NIC in the middle of a card that might, by rights, be called net6 (assuming the 0th interface on the card is the next interface identified by Solaris and this is the 3rd interface on the card).  So, we will call it net4.  We need to assign a device alias to it: {4} ok nvalias net4 /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2 {4} ok devalias net4 /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2 ... We also may need to have the MAC for this particular interface, so let's get it, too.  To do this, we go to the device and interrogate its properties. {4} ok cd /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2 {4} ok .properties assigned-addresses 82060210 00000000 03000000 00000000 01000000 82060218 00000000 00320000 00000000 00008000 82060220 00000000 00328000 00000000 00008000 82060230 00000000 00600000 00000000 00100000 local-mac-address 00 21 28 20 42 92 phy-type mif ... From this, we can see that the MAC for this interface is  00:21:28:20:42:92.  We will need this later. This is all we need to do at the OBP.  Now, we can configure Ops Center to use this interface. Network Boot in Solaris 10 Solaris 10 turns out to be a little simpler than Solaris 11 for this sort of a network boot.  Since WANBoot in Solaris 10 fetches a specified In order to install the system using Ops Center, it is necessary to create a OS Provisioning profile and its corresponding plan.  I am going to presume that you already know how to do this within Ops Center 12c and I will just cover the differences between a regular profile and a profile that can use an alternate interface. Create a OS Provisioning profile for Solaris 10 as usual.  However, when you specify the network resources for the primary network, click on the name of the NIC, probably GB_0, and rename it to GB_N/netN, where N is the instance number you used previously in creating the device alias.  This is where the trial and error may come into play.  You may need to try a few instance numbers before you, the OBP, and Solaris all agree on the instance number.  Mark this as the boot network. For Solaris 10, you ought to be able to then apply the OS Provisioning profile to the server and it should install using that interface.  And if you put your cards in the same slots and plug the networks into the same NICs, this profile is reusable across multiple servers. Why This Works If you watch the console as Solaris boots during the OSP process, Ops Center is going to look for the device alias netN.  Since WANBoot requires a device alias called just net, Ops Center uses the value of your netN device alias and assigns that device to the net alias.  That means that boot net will automatically use this device.  Very cool!  Here's a trace from the console as Ops Center provisions a server: Sun Sun Fire T200, No KeyboardCopyright (c) 1998, 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.OpenBoot 4.30.4.b, 32640 MB memory available, Serial #69057548.Ethernet address 0:14:4f:1d:bc:c, Host ID: 841dbc0c.auto-boot? =            false{0} ok  {0} ok printenv network-boot-argumentsnetwork-boot-arguments =  host-ip=10.140.204.234,router-ip=10.140.204.1,subnet-mask=255.255.254.0,hostname=atl-sewr-52,client-id=0100144F1DBC0C,file=http://10.140.204.22:5555/cgi-bin/wanboot-cgi{0} ok {0} ok devalias net net                      /pci@780/pci@0/pci@1/network@0{0} ok devalias net4 net4                     /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2{0} ok devalias net /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2{0} ok setenv network-boot-arguments host-ip=10.140.204.234,router-ip=10.140.204.1,subnet-mask=255.255.254.0,hostname=atl-sewr-52,client-id=0100144F1DBC0C,file=http://10.140.204.22:8004/cgi-bin/wanboot-cginetwork-boot-arguments =  host-ip=10.140.204.234,router-ip=10.140.204.1,subnet-mask=255.255.254.0,hostname=atl-sewr-52,client-id=0100144F1DBC0C,file=http://10.140.204.22:8004/cgi-bin/wanboot-cgi{0} ok {0} ok boot net - installBoot device: /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2  File and args: - install/pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2: 1000 Mbps link up<time unavailable> wanboot info: WAN boot messages->console<time unavailable> wanboot info: configuring /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2 See what happened?  Ops Center looked for the network device alias called net4 that we specified in the profile, took the value from it, and made it the net device alias for the boot.  Pretty cool! WANBoot and Solaris 11 Solaris 11 requires an additional step since the Automated Installer in Solaris 11 uses the MAC address of the network to figure out which manifest to use for system installation.  In order to make sure this is available, we have to take an extra step to associate the MAC of the NIC on the card with the host.  So, in addition to creating the device alias like we did above, we also have to declare to Ops Center that the host has this new MAC. Declaring the NIC Start out by discovering the hardware as usual.  Once you have discovered it, take a look under the Connectivity tab to see what networks it has discovered.  In the case of this system, it shows the 4 built-in networks, but not the networks on the additional cards.  These are not directly visible to the system controller.  In order to add the additional network interface to the hardware asset, it is necessary to Declare it.  We will declare that we have a server with this additional NIC, but we will also  specify the existing GB_0 network so that Ops Center can associate the right resources together.  The GB_0 acts as sort of a key to tie our new declaration to the old system already discovered.  Go to the Assets tab, select All Assets, and then in the Actions tab, select Add Asset.  Rather than going through a discovery this time, we will manually declare a new asset. When we declare it, we will give the hostname, IP address, system model that match those that have already been discovered.  Then, we will declare both GB_0 with its existing MAC and the new GB_4 with its MAC.  Remember that we collected the MAC for GB_4 when we created its device alias. After you declare the asset, you will see the new NIC in the connectivity tab for the asset.  You will notice that only the NICs you listed when you declared it are seen now.  If you want Ops Center to see all of the existing NICs as well as the additional one, declare them as well.  Add the other GB_1, GB_2, GB_3 links and their MACs just as you did GB_0 and GB_4.  Installing the OS  Once you have declared the asset, you can create an OS Provisioning profile for Solaris 11 in the same way that you did for Solaris 10.  The only difference from any other provisioning profile you might have created already is the network to use for installation.  Again, use GB_N/netN where N is the interface number you used for your device alias and in your declaration.  And away you go.  When the system boots from the network, the automated installer (AI) is able to see which system manifest to use, based on the new MAC that was associated, and the system gets installed. {0} ok {0} ok printenv network-boot-argumentsnetwork-boot-arguments =  host-ip=10.140.204.234,router-ip=10.140.204.1,subnet-mask=255.255.254.0,hostname=atl-sewr-52,client-id=01002128204292,file=http://10.140.204.22:5555/cgi-bin/wanboot-cgi{0} ok {0} ok devalias net net                      /pci@780/pci@0/pci@1/network@0{0} ok devalias net4 net4                     /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2{0} ok devalias net /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2{0} ok setenv network-boot-arguments host-ip=10.140.204.234,router-ip=10.140.204.1,subnet-mask=255.255.254.0,hostname=atl-sewr-52,client-id=01002128204292,file=http://10.140.204.22:5555/cgi-bin/wanboot-cginetwork-boot-arguments =  host-ip=10.140.204.234,router-ip=10.140.204.1,subnet-mask=255.255.254.0,hostname=atl-sewr-52,client-id=01002128204292,file=http://10.140.204.22:5555/cgi-bin/wanboot-cgi{0} ok {0} ok boot net - installBoot device: /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2  File and args: - install/pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2: 1000 Mbps link up<time unavailable> wanboot info: WAN boot messages->console<time unavailable> wanboot info: configuring /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2...SunOS Release 5.11 Version 11.0 64-bitCopyright (c) 1983, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.Remounting root read/writeProbing for device nodes ...Preparing network image for useDownloading solaris.zlib--2012-02-17 15:10:17--  http://10.140.204.22:5555/var/js/AI/sparc//solaris.zlibConnecting to 10.140.204.22:5555... connected.HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OKLength: 126752256 (121M) [text/plain]Saving to: `/tmp/solaris.zlib'100%[======================================>] 126,752,256 28.6M/s   in 4.4s    2012-02-17 15:10:21 (27.3 MB/s) - `/tmp/solaris.zlib' saved [126752256/126752256] Conclusion So, why go to all of this trouble?  More and more, I find that customers are wiring their data center to only use higher speed networks - 10GbE only to the hosts.  Some customers are moving aggressively toward consolidated networks combining storage and network on CNA NICs.  All of this means that network-based provisioning cannot rely exclusively on the built-in network interfaces.  So, it's important to be able to provision a system using other than the built-in networks.  Turns out, that this is pretty straight-forward for both Solaris 10 and Solaris 11 and fits into the Ops Center deployment process quite nicely. Hopefully, you will be able to use this as you build out your own private cloud solutions with Ops Center.

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  • ASP.NET and HTML5 Local Storage

    - by Stephen Walther
    My favorite feature of HTML5, hands-down, is HTML5 local storage (aka DOM storage). By taking advantage of HTML5 local storage, you can dramatically improve the performance of your data-driven ASP.NET applications by caching data in the browser persistently. Think of HTML5 local storage like browser cookies, but much better. Like cookies, local storage is persistent. When you add something to browser local storage, it remains there when the user returns to the website (possibly days or months later). Importantly, unlike the cookie storage limitation of 4KB, you can store up to 10 megabytes in HTML5 local storage. Because HTML5 local storage works with the latest versions of all modern browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari), you can start taking advantage of this HTML5 feature in your applications right now. Why use HTML5 Local Storage? I use HTML5 Local Storage in the JavaScript Reference application: http://Superexpert.com/JavaScriptReference The JavaScript Reference application is an HTML5 app that provides an interactive reference for all of the syntax elements of JavaScript (You can read more about the application and download the source code for the application here). When you open the application for the first time, all of the entries are transferred from the server to the browser (all 300+ entries). All of the entries are stored in local storage. When you open the application in the future, only changes are transferred from the server to the browser. The benefit of this approach is that the application performs extremely fast. When you click the details link to view details on a particular entry, the entry details appear instantly because all of the entries are stored on the client machine. When you perform key-up searches, by typing in the filter textbox, matching entries are displayed very quickly because the entries are being filtered on the local machine. This approach can have a dramatic effect on the performance of any interactive data-driven web application. Interacting with data on the client is almost always faster than interacting with the same data on the server. Retrieving Data from the Server In the JavaScript Reference application, I use Microsoft WCF Data Services to expose data to the browser. WCF Data Services generates a REST interface for your data automatically. Here are the steps: Create your database tables in Microsoft SQL Server. For example, I created a database named ReferenceDB and a database table named Entities. Use the Entity Framework to generate your data model. For example, I used the Entity Framework to generate a class named ReferenceDBEntities and a class named Entities. Expose your data through WCF Data Services. I added a WCF Data Service to my project and modified the data service class to look like this:   using System.Data.Services; using System.Data.Services.Common; using System.Web; using JavaScriptReference.Models; namespace JavaScriptReference.Services { [System.ServiceModel.ServiceBehavior(IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults = true)] public class EntryService : DataService<ReferenceDBEntities> { // This method is called only once to initialize service-wide policies. public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config) { config.UseVerboseErrors = true; config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.All); config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2; } // Define a change interceptor for the Products entity set. [ChangeInterceptor("Entries")] public void OnChangeEntries(Entry entry, UpdateOperations operations) { if (!HttpContext.Current.Request.IsAuthenticated) { throw new DataServiceException("Cannot update reference unless authenticated."); } } } }     The WCF data service is named EntryService. Notice that it derives from DataService<ReferenceEntitites>. Because it derives from DataService<ReferenceEntities>, the data service exposes the contents of the ReferenceEntitiesDB database. In the code above, I defined a ChangeInterceptor to prevent un-authenticated users from making changes to the database. Anyone can retrieve data through the service, but only authenticated users are allowed to make changes. After you expose data through a WCF Data Service, you can use jQuery to retrieve the data by performing an Ajax call. For example, I am using an Ajax call that looks something like this to retrieve the JavaScript entries from the EntryService.svc data service: $.ajax({ dataType: "json", url: “/Services/EntryService.svc/Entries”, success: function (result) { var data = callback(result["d"]); } });     Notice that you must unwrap the data using result[“d”]. After you unwrap the data, you have a JavaScript array of the entries. I’m transferring all 300+ entries from the server to the client when the application is opened for the first time. In other words, I transfer the entire database from the server to the client, once and only once, when the application is opened for the first time. The data is transferred using JSON. Here is a fragment: { "d" : [ { "__metadata": { "uri": "http://superexpert.com/javascriptreference/Services/EntryService.svc/Entries(1)", "type": "ReferenceDBModel.Entry" }, "Id": 1, "Name": "Global", "Browsers": "ff3_6,ie8,ie9,c8,sf5,es3,es5", "Syntax": "object", "ShortDescription": "Contains global variables and functions", "FullDescription": "<p>\nThe Global object is determined by the host environment. In web browsers, the Global object is the same as the windows object.\n</p>\n<p>\nYou can use the keyword <code>this</code> to refer to the Global object when in the global context (outside of any function).\n</p>\n<p>\nThe Global object holds all global variables and functions. For example, the following code demonstrates that the global <code>movieTitle</code> variable refers to the same thing as <code>window.movieTitle</code> and <code>this.movieTitle</code>.\n</p>\n<pre>\nvar movieTitle = \"Star Wars\";\nconsole.log(movieTitle === this.movieTitle); // true\nconsole.log(movieTitle === window.movieTitle); // true\n</pre>\n", "LastUpdated": "634298578273756641", "IsDeleted": false, "OwnerId": null }, { "__metadata": { "uri": "http://superexpert.com/javascriptreference/Services/EntryService.svc/Entries(2)", "type": "ReferenceDBModel.Entry" }, "Id": 2, "Name": "eval(string)", "Browsers": "ff3_6,ie8,ie9,c8,sf5,es3,es5", "Syntax": "function", "ShortDescription": "Evaluates and executes JavaScript code dynamically", "FullDescription": "<p>\nThe following code evaluates and executes the string \"3+5\" at runtime.\n</p>\n<pre>\nvar result = eval(\"3+5\");\nconsole.log(result); // returns 8\n</pre>\n<p>\nYou can rewrite the code above like this:\n</p>\n<pre>\nvar result;\neval(\"result = 3+5\");\nconsole.log(result);\n</pre>", "LastUpdated": "634298580913817644", "IsDeleted": false, "OwnerId": 1 } … ]} I worried about the amount of time that it would take to transfer the records. According to Google Chome, it takes about 5 seconds to retrieve all 300+ records on a broadband connection over the Internet. 5 seconds is a small price to pay to avoid performing any server fetches of the data in the future. And here are the estimated times using different types of connections using Fiddler: Notice that using a modem, it takes 33 seconds to download the database. 33 seconds is a significant chunk of time. So, I would not use the approach of transferring the entire database up front if you expect a significant portion of your website audience to connect to your website with a modem. Adding Data to HTML5 Local Storage After the JavaScript entries are retrieved from the server, the entries are stored in HTML5 local storage. Here’s the reference documentation for HTML5 storage for Internet Explorer: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc197062(VS.85).aspx You access local storage by accessing the windows.localStorage object in JavaScript. This object contains key/value pairs. For example, you can use the following JavaScript code to add a new item to local storage: <script type="text/javascript"> window.localStorage.setItem("message", "Hello World!"); </script>   You can use the Google Chrome Storage tab in the Developer Tools (hit CTRL-SHIFT I in Chrome) to view items added to local storage: After you add an item to local storage, you can read it at any time in the future by using the window.localStorage.getItem() method: <script type="text/javascript"> window.localStorage.setItem("message", "Hello World!"); </script>   You only can add strings to local storage and not JavaScript objects such as arrays. Therefore, before adding a JavaScript object to local storage, you need to convert it into a JSON string. In the JavaScript Reference application, I use a wrapper around local storage that looks something like this: function Storage() { this.get = function (name) { return JSON.parse(window.localStorage.getItem(name)); }; this.set = function (name, value) { window.localStorage.setItem(name, JSON.stringify(value)); }; this.clear = function () { window.localStorage.clear(); }; }   If you use the wrapper above, then you can add arbitrary JavaScript objects to local storage like this: var store = new Storage(); // Add array to storage var products = [ {name:"Fish", price:2.33}, {name:"Bacon", price:1.33} ]; store.set("products", products); // Retrieve items from storage var products = store.get("products");   Modern browsers support the JSON object natively. If you need the script above to work with older browsers then you should download the JSON2.js library from: https://github.com/douglascrockford/JSON-js The JSON2 library will use the native JSON object if a browser already supports JSON. Merging Server Changes with Browser Local Storage When you first open the JavaScript Reference application, the entire database of JavaScript entries is transferred from the server to the browser. Two items are added to local storage: entries and entriesLastUpdated. The first item contains the entire entries database (a big JSON string of entries). The second item, a timestamp, represents the version of the entries. Whenever you open the JavaScript Reference in the future, the entriesLastUpdated timestamp is passed to the server. Only records that have been deleted, updated, or added since entriesLastUpdated are transferred to the browser. The OData query to get the latest updates looks like this: http://superexpert.com/javascriptreference/Services/EntryService.svc/Entries?$filter=(LastUpdated%20gt%20634301199890494792L) If you remove URL encoding, the query looks like this: http://superexpert.com/javascriptreference/Services/EntryService.svc/Entries?$filter=(LastUpdated gt 634301199890494792L) This query returns only those entries where the value of LastUpdated > 634301199890494792 (the version timestamp). The changes – new JavaScript entries, deleted entries, and updated entries – are merged with the existing entries in local storage. The JavaScript code for performing the merge is contained in the EntriesHelper.js file. The merge() method looks like this:   merge: function (oldEntries, newEntries) { // concat (this performs the add) oldEntries = oldEntries || []; var mergedEntries = oldEntries.concat(newEntries); // sort this.sortByIdThenLastUpdated(mergedEntries); // prune duplicates (this performs the update) mergedEntries = this.pruneDuplicates(mergedEntries); // delete mergedEntries = this.removeIsDeleted(mergedEntries); // Sort this.sortByName(mergedEntries); return mergedEntries; },   The contents of local storage are then updated with the merged entries. I spent several hours writing the merge() method (much longer than I expected). I found two resources to be extremely useful. First, I wrote extensive unit tests for the merge() method. I wrote the unit tests using server-side JavaScript. I describe this approach to writing unit tests in this blog entry. The unit tests are included in the JavaScript Reference source code. Second, I found the following blog entry to be super useful (thanks Nick!): http://nicksnettravels.builttoroam.com/post/2010/08/03/OData-Synchronization-with-WCF-Data-Services.aspx One big challenge that I encountered involved timestamps. I originally tried to store an actual UTC time as the value of the entriesLastUpdated item. I quickly discovered that trying to work with dates in JSON turned out to be a big can of worms that I did not want to open. Next, I tried to use a SQL timestamp column. However, I learned that OData cannot handle the timestamp data type when doing a filter query. Therefore, I ended up using a bigint column in SQL and manually creating the value when a record is updated. I overrode the SaveChanges() method to look something like this: public override int SaveChanges(SaveOptions options) { var changes = this.ObjectStateManager.GetObjectStateEntries( EntityState.Modified | EntityState.Added | EntityState.Deleted); foreach (var change in changes) { var entity = change.Entity as IEntityTracking; if (entity != null) { entity.LastUpdated = DateTime.Now.Ticks; } } return base.SaveChanges(options); }   Notice that I assign Date.Now.Ticks to the entity.LastUpdated property whenever an entry is modified, added, or deleted. Summary After building the JavaScript Reference application, I am convinced that HTML5 local storage can have a dramatic impact on the performance of any data-driven web application. If you are building a web application that involves extensive interaction with data then I recommend that you take advantage of this new feature included in the HTML5 standard.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, February 24, 2011

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, February 24, 2011Popular ReleasesInstant Feature Builder for Visual Studio 2010: Instant Feature Builder 1.2: This is the binary version of the Instant Feature Builder. Once downloaded, double click to install into Visual Studio. Version 1.2 fixes: Rename FX to IFB to shorten path lengths Fix issue in ExecuteCommand Fix issue to workaround problem with VS Template writer The Instant Feature Builder is a tool which enables you, via drag-and-drop, to build a specific type of Visual Studio extension (VSIX) known as a Feature Extension. A Feature Extension packages project and/or item templates,...DirectQ: Release 1.8.7 (Beta): Beta release of 1.8.7 to get feedback on what works well, what doesn't work well, and what doesn't work at all. D3D9 hardware with ps2.0 a must. Faster, more streamlined and more integrated rendering capabilities with additional MP features and support.Smartkernel: Smartkernel: ????,??????Chiave File Encryption: Chiave 0.9.1: Application for file encryption and decryption using 512 Bit rijndael encyrption algorithm with simple to use UI. Its written in C# and compiled in .Net version 3.5. It incorporates features of Windows 7 like Jumplists, Taskbar progress and Aero Glass. Change Log from 0.9 Beta to 0.9.1: ======================= >Added option for system shutdown, sleep, hibernate after operation completed. >Minor Changes to the UI. >Numerous Bug fixes. Feedbacks are Welcome!....DotNetNuke® Store: 03.00.00: What's New in this release? IMPORTANT: this version requires DotNetNuke 04.06.02 or higher! DO NOT REPORT BUGS HERE IN THE ISSUE TRACKER, INSTEAD USE THE DotNetNuke Store Forum! This version is the same code base as the version 02.01.51 RC, just some cleaning and source code release before submition to the release tracker for "official" release.ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.45.2: New on this release: 1) Added data validation. See Data Validation 2) Deleting or clearing cells deletes the hyperlinks too. New on v0.45.1 1) Fixed issues 6237, 6240 New on v0.45.2 1) Fixed issues 6257, 6266 New Examples Data ValidationOMEGA CMS: OMEGA CMA - Alpha 0.2: A few fixes for OMEGA Framework (DLL) A few tweeks for OMEGA CMSCoding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.2: New control, Toast Prompt! Removed progress bar since Silverlight Toolkit Feb 2010 has it.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.7: Service release fixing 31 issues. A full changelog will be available with the final stable release of 4.7 Important when upgradingUpgrade as if it was a patch release (update /bin, /umbraco and /umbraco_client). For general upgrade information follow the guide found at http://our.umbraco.org/wiki/install-and-setup/upgrading-an-umbraco-installation 4.7 requires the .NET 4.0 framework Web.Config changes Update the web web.config to include the 4 changes found in (they're clearly marked in...HubbleDotNet - Open source full-text search engine: V1.1.0.0: Add Sqlite3 DBAdapter Add App Report when Query Cache is Collecting. Improve the performance of index through Synchronize. Add top 0 feature so that we can only get count of the result. Improve the score calculating algorithm of match. Let the score of the record that match all items large then others. Add MySql DBAdapter Improve performance for multi-fields sort . Using hash table to access the Payload data. The version before used bin search. Using heap sort instead of qui...Xen: Graphics API for XNA: Xen 2.0: This is the final release of Xen; Xen 2.0. Xen 2.0 supports PC and Xbox 360 running XNA 4. The documentation download is coming soon Due to restrictions in XNA 4, Building Xen requires a DirectX 10 capable video card (Xen applications can still run on Windows Xp and DirectX 9 video cards)Silverlight????[???]: silverlight????[???]2.0: ???????,?????,????????silverlight??????。DBSourceTools: DBSourceTools_1.3.0.0: Release 1.3.0.0 Changed editors from FireEdit to ICSharpCode.TextEditor. Complete re-vamp of Intellisense ( further testing needed). Hightlight Field and Table Names in sql scripts. Added field dropdown on all tables and views in DBExplorer. Added data option for viewing data in Tables. Fixed comment / uncomment bug as reported by tareq. Included Synonyms in scripting engine ( nickt_ch ).IronPython: 2.7 Release Candidate 1: We are pleased to announce the first Release Candidate for IronPython 2.7. This release contains over two dozen bugs fixed in preparation for 2.7 Final. See the release notes for 60193 for details and what has already been fixed in the earlier 2.7 prereleases. - IronPython TeamCaliburn Micro: A Micro-Framework for WPF, Silverlight and WP7: Caliburn.Micro 1.0 RC: This is the official Release Candicate for Caliburn.Micro 1.0. The download contains the binaries, samples and VS templates. VS Templates The templates included are designed for situations where the Caliburn.Micro source needs to be embedded within a single project solution. This was targeted at government and other organizations that expressed specific requirements around using an open source project like this. NuGet This release does not have a corresponding NuGet package. The NuGet pack...Caliburn: A Client Framework for WPF and Silverlight: Caliburn 2.0 RC: This is the official Release Candidate for Caliburn 2.0. It contains all binaries, samples and generated code docs.Rawr: Rawr 4.0.20 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Trac...MiniTwitter: 1.66: MiniTwitter 1.66 ???? ?? ?????????? 2 ??????????????????? User Streams ?????????Windows Phone 7 Isolated Storage Explorer: WP7 Isolated Storage Explorer v1.0 Beta: Current release features:WPF desktop explorer client Visual Studio integrated tool window explorer client (Visual Studio 2010 Professional and above) Supported operations: Refresh (isolated storage information), Add Folder, Add Existing Item, Download File, Delete Folder, Delete File Explorer supports operations running on multiple remote applications at the same time Explorer detects application disconnect (1-2 second delay) Explorer confirms operation completed status Explorer d...Silverlight Toolkit: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit - Feb 2011: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit OverviewSilverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit offers developers additional controls for Windows Phone application development, designed to match the rich user experience of the Windows Phone 7. Suggestions? Features? Questions? Ask questions in the Create.msdn.com forum. Add bugs or feature requests to the Issue Tracker. Help us shape the Silverlight Toolkit with your feedback! Please clearly indicate that the work items and issues are for the phone t...New ProjectsCompetition Management Platform: Paragliding Competition Management PlatformCS424 B2 Group - Car Management: CS424 B2 Group - Car ManagementEMS: The main aim of the system to perform environment inventorization.EVVA: EVVA ist ein Softwareprojekt zur Unterstützung privater Arbeitsvermittler FileSocialVB: A library to work with the filesocial.com web site and API through VB.NET. This is actually an offshoot of the http://twittervb.codeplex.com project. Though smaller, this will lead to a more compact library.Hash Crack - IGProgram: Hash Crack is a software program for hashes and passwords cracking. Hash Crack use dictionary or set of symbols for hashes cracking, and also support pwdump file format for Windows passwords cracking NTHash MD4. MD2, MD4, MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512Imail Spammer Killer: Bots seem to love picking off the weak passwords of IpSwitch IMail v10 users and using SMTP auth to spam the world with their new found account access. This project is a windows service to isolate and stop this activity by disabling the violated user account as it occurs.JVS2USB: Montage permettant de relier une IO ( capcom / Sega ) sur un PC via l'USB !!Library Reminder: Library ReminderMAVI: mobile application for the visually impaired: bill recognition & tag and recognize objects based on a specific stickerMessage splliting without envelope in Biztalk 2009: Message splitting without envelope in Biztalk 2009. The project contains: - Source Code - Examples Article describing how to make it:Microsoft translator: Language translator designed to test Microsoft Translator web service API In Windows Phone 7 developed using Visual Studio 2010 in C#mrmuffin: Mr Muffin WP7 game for childrenNetwork Monitor: Simple application with a vu-meter style display of recent incoming network traffic. - Requires .NET 4, - Requires WinPCap (http://www.winpcap.org/) - Only tested to run under Windows 7NPhysics: NPhysics - Physical Data Types for .NETOpen SimRacing Results: Open SimRacing Results aims to provide an open standard for race results of PC SimRacing games (like iRacing, rFactor, NR2003, ...), allowing developers of league management systems to use a unique interface to get the results from, regardless of the simulation used.Orchard Image Gallery: Orchard Image Gallery project is intented to provide a Image Gallery content part and/or widget for the Orchard Project.Planning Poker for Windows Phone 7: Play planning poker on your Windows Phone 7.Publishing and consuming WCF in Biztalk 2009 and Visual Studio 2008: The file contains: Biztalk 2009 Project, C# Console Project, Example. Push Notification for Windows Phone 7 in php: WindowsPhonePushNotification enables you to use Microsoft Push Notification Service in phpQuksace Agjke: For more information, please visit <http://students.cs.tamu.edu/abe/IS_and_R/HW3/quksace%20agjke.html>. http://students.cs.tamu.edu/abe/IS_and_R/HW3/quksace%20agjke.html Read: a "GNU Make"-like utility for viewing Readme files: Read is a simple program to easily load and read README files on a UNIX-compliant system. It works in a similar way to GNU Make by searching a directory for a compatible file, in this case a Readme file, and loading it for reading using a text editor or viewer.SQL CE 3.5 persistence mapper for ECO IV: May need some adjustments for ECO V/VI, definitely needs some rewrite to support SQL CE 4.0 fullySQL Server Job Failure Notification System: A simple means of ensuring you know when SQLAgent jobs fail.SuperQuery: SuperQuery makes it easy to run the same batch of SQL across several databases on different SQL servers. SuperQuery supports all editions and versions of SQL Server from 2000 onwards. It is developed in C# using .NET 4 Client Profile.System.Net.Mail Extended: An Extension to the System.Net.Mail Namespace, adding a POP3 Client, Enhanced SMTP Client, IMAP Client, POP3 Server, SMTP Server, and IMAP Serve, all written in Visual C#.wow-combatlogs: A PowerShell module for working with combat logs generated by World of Warcraft.WPF UndoManager: WPF UndoManager provides a simple Undomanager on the base of WPF's CommandPattern. It use an implementation of the ICommand-interface to manage a history of actions.XO / TicTacToe game: Dynamic sized XO / TicTacToe game for Windows Phone 7 Build using Visual Studio 2010 and C#

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, October 24, 2013

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, October 24, 2013Popular ReleasesX-tee.NET: X-tee.NET 1.0.4: Few code generation bug fixes.VsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 32 Beta: Note: This release does not work with custom VsTortoise toolbars. These get removed every time when you shutdown Visual Studio. (#7940) This release has been tested with Visual Studio 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2013, using TortoiseSVN 1.6, 1.7 and 1.8. It should also still work with Visual Studio 2005, but I couldn't find anyone to test it in VS2005. Build 32 (beta) changelogNew: Added Visual Studio 2013 support New: Added Visual Studio 2012 support New: Added SVN 1.8 support New: Added 'Ch...ABCat: ABCat v.2.0.1a: ?????????? ???????? ? ?????????? ?????? ???? ??? Win7. ????????? ?????? ????????? ?? ???????. ????? ?????, ???? ????? ???????? ????????? ?????????? ????????? "?? ??????? ????? ???????????? ?????????? ??????...", ?? ?????????? ??????? ? ?????????? ?????? Microsoft SQL Ce ?? ????????? ??????: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17876. ???????? ?????? x64 ??? x86 ? ??????????? ?? ?????? ???????????? ???????. ??? ??????? ????????? ?? ?????????? ?????? Entity Framework, ? ???? ...NB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module: NB_Store v2.3.8 Rel3: vv2.3.8 Rel3 updates the version number in the ManagerMenuDefault.xml. Simply update the version setting in the Back Office to 02.03.08 if you have already installed Rel2. v2.3.8 Is now DNN6 and DNN7 compatible NOTE: NB_Store v2.3.8 is NOT compatible with DNN5. SOURCE CODE : https://github.com/leedavi/NB_Store (Source code has been moved to GitHub, due to issues with codeplex SVN and the inability to move easily to GIT on codeplex)patterns & practices: Data Access Guidance: Data Access Guidance 2013: This is the 2013 release of Data Access Guidance. The documentation for this RI is also available on MSDN: Data Access for Highly-Scalable Solutions: Using SQL, NoSQL, and Polyglot Persistence: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn271399.aspxMedia Companion: Media Companion MC3.584b: IMDB changes fixed. Fixed* mc_com.exe - Fixed to using new profile entries. * Movie - fixed rename movie and folder if use foldername selected. * Movie - Alt Edit Movie, trailer url check if changed and confirm valid. * Movie - Fixed IMDB poster scraping * Movie - Fixed outline and Plot scraping, including removal of Hyperlink's. * Movie Poster refactoring, attempts to catch gdi+ errors Revision HistoryTerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v7.2 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: Added "Check for Update" button Hopefully fixed Windows XP issue You can now backspace in Item stack fieldsDirectXTex texture processing library: October 2013: October 21, 2013 Updated for Visual Studio 2013 and Windows 8.1 SDK RTM PremultiplyAlpha updated with new 'flags' parameter and to use sRGB correct blending Fixed colorspace conversion issue with DirectCompute compressor when compressing for BC7 SRGBSimple Injector: Simple Injector v2.3.6: This patch releases fixes one bug concerning resolving open generic types that contain nested generic type arguments. Nested generic types were handled incorrectly in certain cases. This affects RegisterOpenGeneric and RegisterDecorator. (work item 20332)Virtual Wifi Hotspot for Windows 7 & 8: Virtual Router Plus 2.6.0: Virtual Router Plus 2.6.0Fast YouTube Downloader: Fast YouTube Downloader 2.3.0: Fast YouTube DownloaderMagick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.7.101: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.7.1. Breaking changes: - Renamed Matrix classes: MatrixColor = ColorMatrix and MatrixConvolve = ConvolveMatrix. - Renamed Depth method with Channels parameter to BitDepth and changed the other method into a property.VidCoder: 1.5.9 Beta: Added Rip DVD and Rip Blu-ray AutoPlay actions for Windows: now you can have VidCoder start up and scan a disc when you insert it. Go to Start -> AutoPlay to set it up. Added error message for Windows XP users rather than letting it crash. Removed "quality" preset from list for QSV as it currently doesn't offer much improvement. Changed installer to ignore version number when copying files over. Should reduce the chances of a bug from me forgetting to increment a version number. Fixed ...MSBuild Extension Pack: October 2013: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack October 2013 release provides a collection of over 480 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GUI...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.49: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageTeam.org links NEW: Added Support for "ImgNext.com" links NEW: Added Support for "HostUrImage.com" links NEW: Added Support for "3XVintage.com" linksmyCollections: Version 2.8.7.0: New in this version : Added Public Rating Added Collection Number Added Order by Collection Number Improved XBMC integrations Play on music item will now launch default player. Settings are now saved in database. Tooltip now display sort information. Fix Issue with Stars on card view. Fix Bug with PDF Export. Fix Bug with technical information's. Fix HotMovies Provider. Improved Performance on Save. Bug FixingMoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.3.1: Release 1.11.3.1 ================ = New Features = ================ Added markers for Copper Cache, Silver Cache and the Enchanted Sword. ============= = Bug Fixes = ============= Use Official Colors now no longer tries to change the Draw Wires option instead. World reading was breaking for people with a stock 1.2 Terraria version. Changed world name reading so it does not crash the program if you load MoreTerra while Terraria is saving the world. =================== = Feature Removal = =...patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: Cloud Design Patterns: 1st drop of Cloud Design Patterns project. It contains 14 patterns with 6 related guidance.Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows and WP (v1.3): Includes all changes in v1.3 beta 1 and v1.3 beta 2 Support for Windows 8.1 RTM and VS2013 RTM Xaml: New property: AutoLoadPluginTypes to help control which stock plugins are loaded by default (requires AutoLoadPlugins = true). Support for SystemMediaTransportControls on Windows 8.1 JS: Support for visual markers in the timeline. JS: Support for markers collection and markerreached event. JS: New ChaptersPlugin to automatically populate timeline with chapter tracks. JS: Audio an...Json.NET: Json.NET 5.0 Release 8: Fix - Fixed not writing string quotes when QuoteName is falseNew ProjectsActive shape models for .net: Library to find Facial critical points (contour, nose, eyes, mouth) based on active shape models(wrapper for code.google.com/p/asmlibrary). Not support 64bit.Benson's Project: The Task1 project in ASP.NET calculates the sum of two numbers entered in two textboxes and give the output by label when the button "calculate sum" is clicked.cassan: asp.net mvc 4.5 build boostrap3 websiteCoreRG: This project is a Free GNU, its to fast development.Fractals Explorer: A Windows Phone 7 application for exploring a simple collection of fractals.GingerFight: Some test gameGirapong: Girapong is a game for Windows Phone that consist of an original approach to handle the classical sort of games like Pong, using the accelerometer of the phone.Headlight: -KeyWielder: Simple token generatorMDIContainer: MDIContainer extends WPF to support MDI. It displays your user control as window in a container.MocuGame Library: The MocuGame Library is a set of JavaScript classes made for handling every part of making an HTML5-based game, from audio, to graphics, to input.multi: Make creating multi machine environments simple. MvvmCrystalTool: Library for easy work with MVVM pattern in WP8PeerBlock For Android: PeerBlock For Android lets you control who your phone 'talks to' on the Internet. By selecting appropriate lists of 'known bad' computers, you can block...Pescar2013-Shop-Kristo-Giselle-Grecia: Tp para presentarlo el 10/10 PHP to Dynamics CRM 2011 Online: Connect you PHP webSite to Dynamics CRM 2011 Online throw WebServices. You can: - Create Entities - Update Entities - Delete Entities - Use Fetch QueriesProductive Production: Core functionality for a system to manage the entry of production in a manufacturing environment. The intent will be to provide some base functionality and intProject Of DreamTeam: Space Invaders windows phone / windowsTVShows-EF5: Proyecto básico de integración con diferentes tecnologías.Validation Engine: Validation Engine for WinForms. Engine provides powerful, flexible and easy to use rule based validation for your application. DevExpress and Net.Spring ready.WCF Events: Vis Stud 2010 C# WCF events Demo Solution??? ?, ??? ?.: ??? ?, ??? ?.

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  • Stored Procedures with SSRS? Hmm… not so much

    - by Rob Farley
    Little Bobby Tables’ mother says you should always sanitise your data input. Except that I think she’s wrong. The SQL Injection aspect is for another post, where I’ll show you why I think SQL Injection is the same kind of attack as many other attacks, such as the old buffer overflow, but here I want to have a bit of a whinge about the way that some people sanitise data input, and even have a whinge about people who insist on using stored procedures for SSRS reports. Let me say that again, in case you missed it the first time: I want to have a whinge about people who insist on using stored procedures for SSRS reports. Let’s look at the data input sanitisation aspect – except that I’m going to call it ‘parameter validation’. I’m talking about code that looks like this: create procedure dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) as begin     /* First check that @eomdate is a valid date */     if isdate(@eomdate) != 1     begin         select 'Please enter a valid date' as ErrorMessage;         return;     end     /* Then check that time has passed since @eomdate */     if datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) < 5     begin         select 'Sorry - EOM is not complete yet' as ErrorMessage;         return;     end         /* If those checks have succeeded, return the data */     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)         and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     order by SalesPersonID; end Notice that the code checks that a date has been entered. Seriously??!! This must only be to check for NULL values being passed in, because anything else would have to be a valid datetime to avoid an error. The other check is maybe fair enough, but I still don’t like it. The two problems I have with this stored procedure are the result sets and the small fact that the stored procedure even exists in the first place. But let’s consider the first one of these problems for starters. I’ll get to the second one in a moment. If you read Jes Borland (@grrl_geek)’s recent post about returning multiple result sets in Reporting Services, you’ll be aware that Reporting Services doesn’t support multiple results sets from a single query. And when it says ‘single query’, it includes ‘stored procedure call’. It’ll only handle the first result set that comes back. But that’s okay – we have RETURN statements, so our stored procedure will only ever return a single result set.  Sometimes that result set might contain a single field called ErrorMessage, but it’s still only one result set. Except that it’s not okay, because Reporting Services needs to know what fields to expect. Your report needs to hook into your fields, so SSRS needs to have a way to get that information. For stored procs, it uses an option called FMTONLY. When Reporting Services tries to figure out what fields are going to be returned by a query (or stored procedure call), it doesn’t want to have to run the whole thing. That could take ages. (Maybe it’s seen some of the stored procedures I’ve had to deal with over the years!) So it turns on FMTONLY before it makes the call (and turns it off again afterwards). FMTONLY is designed to be able to figure out the shape of the output, without actually running the contents. It’s very useful, you might think. set fmtonly on exec dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson '20030401'; set fmtonly off Without the FMTONLY lines, this stored procedure returns a result set that has three columns and fourteen rows. But with FMTONLY turned on, those rows don’t come back. But what I do get back hurts Reporting Services. It doesn’t run the stored procedure at all. It just looks for anything that could be returned and pushes out a result set in that shape. Despite the fact that I’ve made sure that the logic will only ever return a single result set, the FMTONLY option kills me by returning three of them. It would have been much better to push these checks down into the query itself. alter procedure dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) as begin     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where     /* Make sure that @eomdate is valid */         isdate(@eomdate) = 1     /* And that it's sufficiently past */     and datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) >= 5     /* And now use it in the filter as appropriate */     and OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)     and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     order by SalesPersonID; end Now if we run it with FMTONLY turned on, we get the single result set back. But let’s consider the execution plan when we pass in an invalid date. First let’s look at one that returns data. I’ve got a semi-useful index in place on OrderDate, which includes the SalesPersonID and TotalDue fields. It does the job, despite a hefty Sort operation. …compared to one that uses a future date: You might notice that the estimated costs are similar – the Index Seek is still 28%, the Sort is still 71%. But the size of that arrow coming out of the Index Seek is a whole bunch smaller. The coolest thing here is what’s going on with that Index Seek. Let’s look at some of the properties of it. Glance down it with me… Estimated CPU cost of 0.0005728, 387 estimated rows, estimated subtree cost of 0.0044385, ForceSeek false, Number of Executions 0. That’s right – it doesn’t run. So much for reading plans right-to-left... The key is the Filter on the left of it. It has a Startup Expression Predicate in it, which means that it doesn’t call anything further down the plan (to the right) if the predicate evaluates to false. Using this method, we can make sure that our stored procedure contains a single query, and therefore avoid any problems with multiple result sets. If we wanted, we could always use UNION ALL to make sure that we can return an appropriate error message. alter procedure dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) as begin     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales, /*Placeholder: */ '' as ErrorMessage     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where     /* Make sure that @eomdate is valid */         isdate(@eomdate) = 1     /* And that it's sufficiently past */     and datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) >= 5     /* And now use it in the filter as appropriate */     and OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)     and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     /* Now include the error messages */     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Please enter a valid date' as ErrorMessage     where isdate(@eomdate) != 1     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Sorry - EOM is not complete yet' as ErrorMessage     where datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) < 5     order by SalesPersonID; end But still I don’t like it, because it’s now a stored procedure with a single query. And I don’t like stored procedures that should be functions. That’s right – I think this should be a function, and SSRS should call the function. And I apologise to those of you who are now planning a bonfire for me. Guy Fawkes’ night has already passed this year, so I think you miss out. (And I’m not going to remind you about when the PASS Summit is in 2012.) create function dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) returns table as return (     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales, '' as ErrorMessage     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where     /* Make sure that @eomdate is valid */         isdate(@eomdate) = 1     /* And that it's sufficiently past */     and datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) >= 5     /* And now use it in the filter as appropriate */     and OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)     and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Please enter a valid date' as ErrorMessage     where isdate(@eomdate) != 1     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Sorry - EOM is not complete yet' as ErrorMessage     where datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) < 5 ); We’ve had to lose the ORDER BY – but that’s fine, as that’s a client thing anyway. We can have our reports leverage this stored query still, but we’re recognising that it’s a query, not a procedure. A procedure is designed to DO stuff, not just return data. We even get entries in sys.columns that confirm what the shape of the result set actually is, which makes sense, because a table-valued function is the right mechanism to return data. And we get so much more flexibility with this. If you haven’t seen the simplification stuff that I’ve preached on before, jump over to http://bit.ly/SimpleRob and watch the video of when I broke a microphone and nearly fell off the stage in Wales. You’ll see the impact of being able to have a simplifiable query. You can also read the procedural functions post I wrote recently, if you didn’t follow the link from a few paragraphs ago. So if we want the list of SalesPeople that made any kind of sales in a given month, we can do something like: select SalesPersonID from dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomonth) order by SalesPersonID; This doesn’t need to look up the TotalDue field, which makes a simpler plan. select * from dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomonth) where SalesPersonID is not null order by SalesPersonID; This one can avoid having to do the work on the rows that don’t have a SalesPersonID value, pushing the predicate into the Index Seek rather than filtering the results that come back to the report. If we had joins involved, we might see some of those being simplified out. We also get the ability to include query hints in individual reports. We shift from having a single-use stored procedure to having a reusable stored query – and isn’t that one of the main points of modularisation? Stored procedures in Reporting Services are just a bit limited for my liking. They’re useful in plenty of ways, but if you insist on using stored procedures all the time rather that queries that use functions – that’s rubbish. @rob_farley

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  • Stop Spinning Your Wheels&hellip; Sage Advice for Aspiring Developers

    - by Mark Rackley
    So… lately I’ve been tasked with helping bring some non-developers over the hump and become full-fledged, all around, SharePoint developers. Well, only time will tell if I’m successful or a complete failure. Good thing about failures though, you know what NOT to do next time! Anyway, I’ve been writing some sort of code since I was about 10 years old; so I sometimes take for granted the effort some people have to go through to learn a new technology. I guess if I had to say I was an “expert” in one thing it would be learning (and getting “stuff” done) in new technologies. Maybe that’s why I’ve embraced SharePoint and the SharePoint community. SharePoint is the first technology I haven’t been able to master or get everything done without help from other people. I KNOW I’ll never know it all and I learn something new every day.  It keeps it interesting, it keeps me motivated, and keeps me involved. So, what some people may consider a downside of SharePoint, I definitely consider a plus. Crap.. I’m rambling. Where was I? Oh yeah… me trying to be helpful. Like I said, I am able to quickly and effectively pick up new languages, technology, etc. and put it to good use. Am I just brilliant? Well, my mom thinks so.. but maybe not. Maybe I’ve just been doing it for a long time…. 25 years in some form or fashion… wow I’m old… Anyway, what I lack in depth I make up for in breadth and being the “go-to” guy wherever I work when someone needs to “get stuff done”.  Let’s see if I can take some of that experience and put it to practical use to help new people get up to speed faster, learn things more effectively, and become that go-to guy. First off…  make sure you… Know The Basics I don’t have the time to teach new developers the basics, but you gotta know them. I’ve only been “taught” two languages.. Fortran 77 and C… everything else I’ve picked up from “doing”. I HAD to know the basics though, and all new developers need to understand the very basics of development.  97.23% of all languages will have the following: Variables Functions Arrays If statements For loops / While loops If you think about it, most development is “if this, do this… or while this, do this…”.  “This” may be some unique method to your language or something you develop, but the basics are the basics. YES there are MANY other development topics you need to understand, but you shouldn’t be scratching your head trying to figure out what a ”for loop” is… (Also learn about classes and hashtables as quickly as possible). Once you have the basics down it makes it much easier to… Learn By Doing This may just apply to me and my warped brain.  I don’t learn a new technology by reading or hearing someone speak about it. I learn by doing. It does me no good to try and learn all of the intricacies of a new language or technology inside-and-out before getting my hands dirty. Just show me how to do one thing… let me get that working… then show me how to do the next thing.. let me get that working… Now, let’s see what I can figure out on my own. Okay.. now it starts to make sense. I see how the language works, I can step through the code, and before you know it.. I’m productive in a new technology. Be careful here though…. make sure you… Don’t Reinvent The Wheel People have been writing code for what… 50+ years now? So, why are you trying to tackle ANYTHING without first Googling it with Bing to see what others have done first? When I was first learning C# (I had come from a Java background) I had to call a web service.  Sure! No problem! I’d done this many times in Java. So, I proceeded to write an HTTP Handler, called the Web Service and it worked like a charm!!!  Probably about 2.3 seconds after I got it working completely someone says to me “Why didn’t you just add a Web Reference?” Really? You can do that?  oops… I just wasted a lot of time. Before undertaking the development of any sort of utility method in a new language, make sure it’s not already handled for you… Okay… you are starting to write some code and are curious about the possibilities? Well… don’t just sit there… Try It And See What Happens This is actually one of my biggest pet peeves. “So… ‘x++’ works in C#, but does it also work in JavaScript?”   Really? Did you just ask me that? In the time it spent for you to type that email, press the send button, me receive the email, get around to reading it, and replying with “yes” you could have tested it 47 times and know the answer! Just TRY it! See what happens! You aren’t doing brain surgery. You aren’t going to kill anyone, and you BETTER not be developing in production. So, you are not going to crash any production systems!! Seriously! Get off your butt and just try it yourself. The extra added benefit is that it doesn’t work, the absolute best way to learn is to… Learn From Your Failures I don’t know about you… but if I screw up and something doesn’t work, I learn A LOT more debugging my problem than if everything magically worked. It’s okay that you aren’t perfect! Not everyone can be me? In the same vein… don’t ask someone else to debug your problem until you have made a valiant attempt to do so yourself. There’s nothing quite like stepping through code line by line to see what it’s REALLY doing… and you’ll never feel more stupid sometimes than when you realize WHY it’s not working.. but you realize... you learn... and you remember. There is nothing wrong with failure as long as you learn from it. As you start writing more and more and more code make sure that you ALWAYS… Develop for Production You will soon learn that the “prototype” you wrote last week to show as a “proof of concept” is going to go directly into production no matter how much you beg and plead and try to explain it’s not ready to go into production… it’s going to go straight there.. and it’s like herpes.. it doesn’t go away and there’s no fixing it once it’s in there.  So, why not write ALL your code like it will be put in production? It MIGHT take a little longer, but in the long run it will be easier to maintain, get help on, and you won’t be embarrassed that it’s sitting on a production server for everyone to use and see. So, now that you are getting comfortable and writing code for production it is important to to remember the… KISS Principle… Learn It… Love It… Keep It Simple Stupid Seriously.. don’t try to show how smart you are by writing the most complicated code in history. Break your problem up into discrete steps and write each step. If it turns out you have some redundancy, you can always go back and tweak your code later.  How bad is it when you write code that LOOKS cocky? I’ve seen it before… some of the most abstract and complicated classes when a class wasn’t even needed! Or the most elaborate unreadable code jammed into one really long line when it could have been written in three lines, performed just as well, and been SOOO much easier to maintain. Keep it clear and simple.. baby steps people. This will help you learn the technology, debug problems, AND it will help others help you find your problems if they don’t have to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls just to figure out what you are trying to do…. Really.. don’t be that guy… try to curb your ego and… Keep an Open Mind No matter how smart you are… how fast you type… or how much you get paid, don’t let your ego get in the way. There is probably a better way to do everything you’ve ever done. Don’t become so cocky that you can’t think someone knows more than you. There’s a lot of brilliant, helpful people out there willing to show you tricks if you just give them a chance. A very super-awesome developer once told me “So what if you’ve been writing code for 10 years or more! Does your code look basically the same? Are you not growing as a developer?” Those 10 years become pretty meaningless if you just “know” that you are right and have not picked up new tips, tricks, methods, and patterns along the way. Learn from others and find out what’s new in development land (you know you don’t have to specifically use pointers anymore??). Along those same lines… If it’s not working, first assume you are doing something wrong. You have no idea how much it annoys people who are trying to help you when you first assume that the help they are trying to give you is wrong. Just MAYBE… you… the person learning is making some small mistake? Maybe you didn’t describe your problem correctly? Maybe you are using the wrong terminology? “I did exactly what you said and it didn’t work.”  Oh really? Are you SURE about that? “Your solution doesn’t work.”  Well… I’m pretty sure it works, I’ve used it 200 times… What are you doing differently? First try some humility and appreciation.. it will go much further, especially when it turns out YOU are the one that is wrong. When all else fails…. Try Professional Training Some people just don’t have the mindset to go and figure stuff out. It’s a gift and not everyone has it. If everyone could do it I wouldn’t have a job and there wouldn’t be professional training available.  So, if you’ve tried everything else and no light bulbs are coming on, contact the experts who specialize in training. Be careful though, there is bad training out there. Want to know the names of some good places? Just shoot me a message and I’ll let you know. I’m boycotting endorsing Andrew Connell anymore until I get that free course dangit!! So… that’s it.. that’s all I got right now. Maybe you thought all of this is common sense, maybe you think I’m smoking crack. If so, don’t just sit there, there’s a comments section for a reason. Finally, what about you? What tips do you have to help this aspiring to learn the dark arts??

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 17, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 17, 2012Popular ReleasesAutoSPEditor: AutoSPEditor Installer: Installs the current version of the AutoSPEditor using ClickOnce. Your application will be updated automatically.Javascript .NET: Javascript .NET v0.6: Upgraded to the latest stable branch of v8 (/tags/3.9.18), and switched to using their scons build system. We no longer include v8 source code as part of this project's source code. Simultaneous multithreaded use of v8 now supported (v8 Isolates), although different contexts may not share objects or call each other. 64-bit .Net 4.0 DLL now included. (Download now includes x86 and x64 for both .Net 3.5 and .Net 4.0.)MyRouter (Virtual WiFi Router): MyRouter 1.0.6: This release should be more stable there were a few bug fixes including the x64 issue as well as an error popping up when MyRouter started this was caused by a NULL valuePulse: Pulse Beta 4: This version is still in development but should include: Logging and error handling have been greatly improved. If you run into an error or Pulse crashes make sure to check the Log folder for a recently modified log file so you can report the details of the issue A bunch of new features for the Wallbase.cc provider. Cleaner separation between inputs, downloading and output. Input and downloading are fairly clean now but outputs are still mixed up in the mix which I'm trying to resolve ...Google Books Downloader for Windows: Google Books Downloader-2.0.0.0.: Google Books DownloaderFinestra Virtual Desktops: 2.5.4501: This is a very minor update release. Please see the information about the 2.5 and 2.5.4500 releases for more information on recent changes. This update did not even have an automatic update triggered for it. Adds error checking and reporting to all threads, not only those with message loopsAcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.9.2: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????,????1M,????,????,?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。??????AcPlay?????,??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????,???,???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??,????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ????????????? ??:????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86),?????"?????????"??? ??????????????,??????????: ??"AcDo...ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap: ArcGIS Editor for OSM 2.0 Release Candidate: Your feedback is welcome - and this is your last chance to get your fixes in for this version! Includes installer for both Feature Server extension and Desktop extension, enhanced functionality for the Desktop tools, and enhanced built-in Javascript Editor for the Feature Server component. This release candidate includes fixes to beta 4 that accommodate domain users for setting up the Server Component, and fixes for reporting/uploading references tracked in the revision table. See Code In-P...C.B.R. : Comic Book Reader: CBR 0.6: 20 Issue trackers are closed and a lot of bugs too Localize view is now MVVM and delete is working. Added the unused flag (take care that it goes to true only when displaying screen elements) Backstage - new input/output format choice control for the conversion Backstage - Add display, behaviour and register file type options in the extended options dialog Explorer list view has been transformed to a custom control. New group header, colunms order and size are saved Single insta...Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Prv: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Preview Release v1.2.1Minor updates to setup experience: Check for WebPI before install Dependency Check updated to support the following VS 11 and VS 2010 SKUs Ultimate, Premium, Professional and Express Certs Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Preview Release v1.2.0 Please download this for Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 functionality on Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The core features of the toolkit include:...Facebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 3.0: ships with JSON Toolkit v3.0, offering parse speed up to 10 times of last version supports Facebook's new auth dialog supports new extend access token endpoint new example Page Tab app filter Graph Api connections using dates fixed bugs in Page Tab appsCODE Framework: 4.0.20312.0: This version includes significant improvements in the WPF system (and the WPF MVVM/MVC system). This includes new styles for Metro controls and layouts. Improved color handling. It also includes an improved theme/style swapping engine down to active (open) views. There also are various other enhancements and small fixes throughout the entire framework.ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.4: 3/12/2012 Jacob Slusser Added support for annotations. Issues Fixed with this Release Issue # Title 25012 25012 25018 25018 25023 25023 25014 25014 Visual Studio ALM Quick Reference Guidance: v3 - For Visual Studio 11: RELEASE README Welcome to the BETA release of the Quick Reference Guide preview As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has not been through an independent technical review Documentation ...AvalonDock: AvalonDock 2.0.0345: Welcome to early alpha release of AvalonDock 2.0 I've completely rewritten AvalonDock in order to take full advantage of the MVVM pattern. New version also boost a lot of new features: 1) Deep separation between model and layout. 2) Full WPF binding support thanks to unified logical tree between main docking manager, auto-hide windows and floating windows. 3) Support for Aero semi-maximized windows feature. 4) Support for multiple panes in the same floating windows. For a short list of new f...Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets: Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets 2.2.2: Changes Added Start Menu Item for Easy Startup Added Link to Getting Started Document Added Ability to Persist Subscription Data to Disk Fixed Get-Deployment to not throw on empty slot Simplified numerous default values for cmdlets Breaking Changes: -SubscriptionName is now mandatory in Set-Subscription. -DefaultStorageAccountName and -DefaultStorageAccountKey parameters were removed from Set-Subscription. Instead, when adding multiple accounts to a subscription, each one needs to be added ...IronPython: 2.7.2.1: On behalf of the IronPython team, I'm happy to announce the final release IronPython 2.7.2. This release includes everything from IronPython 54498 and 62475 as well. Like all IronPython 2.7-series releases, .NET 4 is required to install it. Installing this release will replace any existing IronPython 2.7-series installation. Unlike previous releases, the assemblies for all supported platforms are included in the installer as well as the zip package, in the "Platforms" directory. IronPython 2...Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.2.0.0: Breaking changes: When upgrade from previous versions, MUST reset the all the content type templates, otherwise the content manager might get a compile error. New features Integrate with Windows azure. See: http://wiki.kooboo.com/?wiki=Kooboo CMS on Azure Complete solution to deploy on load balance servers. See: http://wiki.kooboo.com/?wiki=Kooboo CMS load balance Update Jquery and Jquery ui to the lastest version(Jquery 1.71, Jquery UI 1.8.16). Tree style text content editing. See:h...Extensions for Reactive Extensions (Rxx): Rxx 1.3: Please read the latest release notes for details about what's new. Related Work Items Content SummaryRxx provides the following features. See the Documentation for details. Many IObservable<T> extension methods and IEnumerable<T> extension methods. Many wrappers that convert asynchronous Framework Class Library APIs into observables. Many useful types such as ListSubject<T>, DictionarySubject<T>, CommandSubject, ViewModel, ObservableDynamicObject, Either<TLeft, TRight>, Maybe<T>, Scala...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.47: Properly output escaped characters in CSS identifiers throw an EOF error when parsing a CSS selector that doesn't end in a declaration block chased down a stack-overflow issue with really large JS sources. Needed to flatten out the AST tree for adjacent expression statements that the application merges into a single expression statement, or that already contain large, comma-separated expressions in the original source. fix issue #17569: tie together the -debug switch with the DEBUG defi...New ProjectsCOBOL Bubble Sort: The famous Bubble Sort algorithm using COBOLCross Site Media Dashboard (webpart) for SharePoint video content: View video content in easy to configure dashboard structure. Supports a vast range of video formatsDataObjects.Net Samples: DataObjects.Net SamplesDev Tracking Tool: Dev Tracking Tool is thought to help software developers keeping track of their activities in a fast way, and use these informations for later update of tasks in other informatic systems (i.e.: tracking tasks in TFS and/or other tracking tools).Governance Checklist - Create/manage your Governance Checklist: Governance Checklist - Create/manage your Governance Checklist. SharePoint Governance Checklist generated as a starting point however you can update to your own criteria. Visual Guages to show the status of your governance progresslibspotify.NET - a managed interop library for libspotify: libspotify.NET is a simple interop wrapper library for libspotify written in C#. It enables .NET developers to write applications that can browse, search, and stream digital music from the Spotify platform. This project is compatible with libspotify API version 10.1.16. Requires libspotify.dll, a Spotify premium account, and an application API key. More info on the libspotify API at http://developer.spotify.com/en/libspotify/overview/ Media.Net: All-In-One Media Player for Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.MisTutoriales: MisTutoriales Ejemplos de programación.mobile video: mobile videoMugen MVVM Toolkit: Mugen MVVM Toolkit makes it easier to develop Silverlight, WPF and WP7 applications using the Model-View-ViewModel design pattern. It is very easy to use. It combines the pattern of DI (dependency injection) and MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel).Project SIMPLE Orca: SIMPLE makes it easier for non-programmers to create simple applications. You'll no longer have to learn an entire language in order to create that simple application you've been stressing over. S imple And I deal M acroed P rogramming L anguage For E aseRelational data Transfer Application: Relational data Transfer Application helps to move data scenarios from One relational database to other Relational database without moving entire tables. Basically this applciation moves a given data row along with its relational data to destination database. rGUI: rGUI is an open source .NET front-end for Robocopy written in C#. It is designed for users already familiar with the Robocopy command-line switches and what they do, but who want the command parameters presented in a visual way.S#: Spontaneous Sharp: A mix of very easy to use c# libraries, born out of spontaneous needs to simplify a large number of programming tasks in .NET C#.SDF - Smart Document Framework: Smart Document Framework offers an alternative to the FlowDocument which provides a simpler rendering engine and allows for better pagination.Shatong: Shatong SystemSPD 2007 Custom Activity Pause Until CheckOut = None: This activity can be added to the beginning of a SharePoint Designer 2007 workflow to pause the workflow until the item is no longer checked out (soft or hard checkout)Spontaneous XNA Library (SXL): Yet another XNA Library that has arisen from various spontaneous needs. Hopefully it can be as helpful to others as it has been to me.TeaFiles.Net - time series storage: TeaFiles.Net is an API for TeaFiles that makes it easy to store and exchange time series data between .Net programs and C++, Python, R and other applications. Written in C#. Find more details about the file specification, other APIs and tools at discretelogics.comTypePipe: TypePipe allows you to modify existing CLR types using a simple, expression-based API. Modifications from several tools and libraries (AOP, IoC etc.) can be combined. Types are generated via Reflection.Emit or user-defined back-ends.UCB_12_1: This is a research projectUCB_12_2: UCB_12_2UCB_12_3: UCB_12_3UCB_12_4: UCB_12_4UCB_12_Common: UCB_12_CommonVG Task Manager: task manager demo project created by Vivek Gupta.WP7 Map Control: Lightweight universal map control for Windows Phone 7xRM#: xRM# is focused on boosting productivity while developing JavaScript customizations for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. xRM# provided a platform to scribble code in C# and translating them to JavaScript snippet for xRM customizations. Developers can benefit from structural and coherent flow of using existing C# coding guidelines. Pseudo data types, IntelliSense and Code Documentation reduce code look-ups and increase productivity. xRM# also supports deploying generated scripts as minified ver...

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