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• Multiple possible jsp views for a request

  - by Karl Walsh

  I'm looking to offer the user some way of changing how a single page looks based on some pre-defined jsps. i.e. Two or more jsp's contain similar information, and would be backed by a single controller method. The controller would decide which view to return. Is there a common way of achieving this? At the moment I have some administration screens where I control a list of possible views. The user can then choose which one to see from a drop-down. My current issue is that I don't know how to confirm (at the admin screen) that the view is valid. Is there a way of asking spring for all possible views so I can filter them and resent a drop-down on the admin screen rather than a free text field? If not is there a way of asking spring if a single view is valid? All these views will reside under a common directory, so it would probably be possible to scan recursively from that point and build a list of possible views. This goes beyond simply changing the css, since the page content might be different despite being backed by the same model.

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• The future for Microsoft

  - by Scott Dorman

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/archive/2013/10/16/the-future-for-microsoft.aspxMicrosoft is in the process of reinventing itself. While some may argue that it’s “too little, too late” or that their growing consumer-focused strategy is wrong, the truth of the situation is that Microsoft is reinventing itself into a new company. While Microsoft is now calling themselves a “devices and services” company, that’s not entirely accurate. Let’s look at some facts: Microsoft will always (for the long-term foreseeable future) be financially split into the following divisions: Windows/Operating Systems, which for FY13 made up approximately 24% of overall revenue. Server and Tools, which for FY13 made up approximately 26% of overall revenue. Enterprise/Business Products, which for FY13 made up approximately 32% of overall revenue. Entertainment and Devices, which for FY13 made up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Online Services, which for FY13 made up approximately 4% of overall revenue. It is important to realize that hardware products like the Surface fall under the Windows/Operating Systems division while products like the Xbox 360 fall under the Entertainment and Devices division. (Presumably other hardware, such as mice, keyboards, and cameras, also fall under the Entertainment and Devices division.) It’s also unclear where Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Nokia’s handset division will fall, but let’s assume that it will be under Entertainment and Devices as well. Now, for the sake of argument, let’s assume a slightly different structure that I think is more in line with how Microsoft presents itself and how the general public sees it: Consumer Products and Devices, which would probably make up approximately 9% of overall revenue. Developer Tools, which would probably make up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Enterprise Products and Devices, which would probably make up approximately 47% of overall revenue. Entertainment, which would probably make up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Online Services, which would probably make up approximately 17% of overall revenue. (Just so we’re clear, in this structure hardware products like the Surface, a portion of Windows sales, and other hardware fall under the Consumer Products and Devices division. I’m assuming that more of the income for the Windows division is coming from enterprise/volume licenses so 15% of that income went to the Enterprise Products and Devices division. Most of the enterprise services, like Azure, fall under the Online Services division so half of the Server and Tools income went there as well.) No matter how you look at it, the bulk of Microsoft’s income still comes from not just the enterprise but also software sales, and this really shouldn’t surprise anyone. So, now that the stage is set…what’s the future for Microsoft? The future I see for Microsoft (again, this is just my prediction based on my own instinct, gut-feel and publicly available information) is this: Microsoft is becoming a consumer-focused enterprise company. Let’s look at it a different way. Microsoft is an enterprise-focused company trying to create a larger consumer presence.  To a large extent, this is the exact opposite of Apple, who is really a consumer-focused company trying to create a larger enterprise presence. The major reason consumer-focused companies (like Apple) have started making in-roads into the enterprise is the “bring your own device” phenomenon. Yes, Apple has created some “game-changing” products but their enterprise influence is still relatively small. Unfortunately (for this blog post at least), Apple provides revenue in terms of hardware products rather than business divisions, so it’s not possible to do a direct comparison. However, in the interest of transparency, from Apple’s Quarterly Report (filed 24 July 2013), their revenue breakdown is: iPhone, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 51% of revenue. iPad, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 18% of revenue. Mac, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 14% of revenue. iPod, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 2% of revenue. iTunes, Software, and Services, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 11% of revenue. Accessories, which for the 3 months ending 29 July 2013 made up approximately 3% of revenue. From this, it’s pretty clear that Apple is a consumer-and-hardware-focused company. At this point, you may be asking yourself “Where is all of this going?” The answer to that lies in Microsoft’s shift in company focus. They are becoming more consumer focused, but what exactly does that mean? The biggest change (at least that’s been in the news lately) is the pending purchase of Nokia’s handset division. This, in combination with their Surface line of tablets and the Xbox, will put Microsoft squarely in the realm of a hardware-focused company in addition to being a software-focused company. That can (and most likely will) shift the revenue split to looking at revenue based on software sales (both consumer and enterprise) and also hardware sales (mostly on the consumer side). If we look at things strictly from a Windows perspective, Microsoft clearly has a lot of irons in the fire at the moment. Discounting the various product SKUs available and painting the picture with broader strokes, there are currently 5 different Windows-based operating systems: Windows Phone Windows Phone 7.x, which runs on top of the Windows CE kernel Windows Phone 8.x+, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Windows RT The ARM-based version of Windows 8, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Windows (Pro) The Intel-based version of Windows 8, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Xbox The Xbox 360, which runs it’s own proprietary OS. The Xbox One, which runs it’s own proprietary OS, a version of Windows running on top of the Windows 8 kernel and a proprietary “manager” OS which manages the other two. Over time, Windows Phone 7.x devices will fade so that really leaves 4 different versions. Looking at Windows RT and Windows Phone 8.x paints an interesting story. Right now, all mobile phone devices run on some sort of ARM chip and that doesn’t look like it will change any time soon. That means Microsoft has two different Windows based operating systems for the ARM platform. Long term, it doesn’t make sense for Microsoft to continue supporting that arrangement. I have long suspected (since the Surface was first announced) that Microsoft will unify these two variants of Windows and recent speculation from some of the leading Microsoft watchers lends credence to this suspicion. It is rumored that upcoming Windows Phone releases will include support for larger screen sizes, relax the requirement to have a hardware-based back button and will continue to improve API parity between Windows Phone and Windows RT. At the same time, Windows RT will include support for smaller screen sizes. Since both of these operating systems are based on the same core Windows kernel, it makes sense (both from a financial and development resource perspective) for Microsoft to unify them. The user interfaces are already very similar. So similar in fact, that visually it’s difficult to tell them apart. To illustrate this, here are two screen captures: Other than a few variations (the Bing News app, the picture shown in the Pictures tile and the spacing between the tiles) these are identical. The one on the left is from my Windows 8.1 laptop (which looks the same as on my Surface RT) and the one on the right is from my Windows Phone 8 Lumia 925. This pretty clearly shows that from a consumer perspective, there really is no practical difference between how these two operating systems look and how you interact with them. For the consumer, your entertainment device (Xbox One), phone (Windows Phone) and mobile computing device (Surface [or some other vendors tablet], laptop, netbook or ultrabook) and your desktop computing device (desktop) will all look and feel the same. While many people will denounce this consistency of user experience, I think this will be a good thing in the long term, especially for the upcoming generations. For example, my 5-year old son knows how to use my tablet, phone and Xbox because they all feature nearly identical user experiences. When Windows 8 was released, Microsoft allowed a Windows Store app to be purchased once and installed on as many as 5 devices. With Windows 8.1, this limit has been increased to over 50. Why is that important? If you consider that your phone, computing devices, and entertainment device will be running the same operating system (with minor differences related to physical hardware chipset), that means that I could potentially purchase my sons favorite Angry Birds game once and be able to install it on all of the devices I own. (And for those of you wondering, it’s only 7 [at the moment].) From an app developer perspective, the story becomes even more compelling. Right now there are differences between the different operating systems, but those differences are shrinking. The user interface technology for both is XAML but there are different controls available and different user experience concepts. Some of the APIs available are the same while some are not. You can’t develop a Windows Phone app that can also run on Windows (either Windows Pro or RT). With each release of Windows Phone and Windows RT, those difference become smaller and smaller. Add to this mix the Xbox One, which will also feature a Windows-based operating system and the same “modern” (tile-based) user interface and the visible distinctions between the operating systems will become even smaller. Unifying the operating systems means one set of APIs and one code base to maintain for an app that can run on multiple devices. One code base means it’s easier to add features and fix bugs and that those changes become available on all devices at the same time. It also means a single app store, which will increase the discoverability and reach of your app and consolidate revenue and app profile management. Now, the choice of what devices an app is available on becomes a simple checkbox decision rather than a technical limitation. Ultimately, this means more apps available to consumers, which is always good for the app ecosystem. Is all of this just rumor, speculation and conjecture? Of course, but it’s not unfounded. As I mentioned earlier, some of the prominent Microsoft watchers are also reporting similar rumors. However, Microsoft itself has even hinted at this future with their recent organizational changes and by telling developers “if you want to develop for Xbox One, start developing for Windows 8 now.” I think this pretty clearly paints the following picture: Microsoft is committed to the “modern” user interface paradigm. Microsoft is changing their release cadence (for all products, not just operating systems) to be faster and more modular. Microsoft is going to continue to unify their OS platforms both from a consumer perspective and a developer perspective. While this direction will certainly concern some people it will excite many others. Microsoft’s biggest failing has always been following through with a strong and sustained marketing strategy that presents a consistent view point and highlights what this unified and connected experience looks like and how it benefits consumers and enterprises. We’ve started to see some of this over the last few years, but it needs to continue and become more aggressive and consistent. In the long run, I think Microsoft will be able to pull all of these technologies and devices together into one seamless ecosystem. It isn’t going to happen overnight, but my prediction is that we will be there by the end of 2016. As both a consumer and a developer, I, for one, am excited about the future of Microsoft.

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• ODI 11g – How to override SQL at runtime?

  - by David Allan

  Following on from the posting some time back entitled ‘ODI 11g – Simple, Powerful, Flexible’ here we push the envelope even further. Rather than just having the SQL we override defined statically in the interface design we will have it configurable via a variable….at runtime. Imagine you have a well defined interface shape that you want to be fulfilled and that shape can be satisfied from a number of different sources that is what this allows - or the ability for one interface to consume data from many different places using variables. The cool thing about ODI’s reference API and this is that it can be fantastically flexible and useful. When I use the variable as the option value, and I execute the top level scenario that uses this temporary interface I get prompted (or can get prompted to be correct) for the value of the variable. Note I am using the <@=odiRef.getObjectName("L","EMP", "SCOTT","D")@> notation for the table reference, since this is done at runtime, then the context will resolve to the correct table name etc. Each time I execute, I could use a different source provider (obviously some dependencies on KMs/technologies here). For example, the following groovy snippet first executes and the query uses SCOTT model with EMP, the next time it is from BOB model and the datastore OTHERS. m=new Properties(); m.put("DEMO.SQLSTR", "select empno, deptno from <@=odiRef.getObjectName("L","EMP", "SCOTT","D")@>"); s=new StartupParams(m); runtimeAgent.startScenario("TOP", null, s, null, "GLOBAL", 5, null, true); m2=new Properties(); m2.put("DEMO.SQLSTR", "select empno, deptno from <@=odiRef.getObjectName("L","OTHERS", "BOB","D")@>"); s2=new StartupParams(m); runtimeAgent.startScenario("TOP", null, s2, null, "GLOBAL", 5, null, true); You’ll need a patch to 11.1.1.6 for this type of capability, thanks to my ole buddy Ron Gonzalez from the Enterprise Management group for help pushing the envelope!

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• Integrating NetBeans for Raspberry Pi Java Development

  - by speakjava

  Raspberry Pi IDE Java Development The Raspberry Pi is an incredible device for building embedded Java applications but, despite being able to run an IDE on the Pi it really pushes things to the limit.  It's much better to use a PC or laptop to develop the code and then deploy and test on the Pi.  What I thought I'd do in this blog entry was to run through the steps necessary to set up NetBeans on a PC for Java code development, with automatic deployment to the Raspberry Pi as part of the build process. I will assume that your starting point is a Raspberry Pi with an SD card that has one of the latest Raspbian images on it.  This is good because this now includes the JDK 7 as part of the distro, so no need to download and install a separate JDK.  I will also assume that you have installed the JDK and NetBeans on your PC.  These can be downloaded here. There are numerous approaches you can take to this including mounting the file system from the Raspberry Pi remotely on your development machine.  I tried this and I found that NetBeans got rather upset if the file system disappeared either through network interruption or the Raspberry Pi being turned off.  The following method uses copying over SSH, which will fail more gracefully if the Pi is not responding. Step 1: Enable SSH on the Raspberry Pi To run the Java applications you create you will need to start Java on the Raspberry Pi with the appropriate class name, classpath and parameters.  For non-JavaFX applications you can either do this from the Raspberry Pi desktop or, if you do not have a monitor connected through a remote command line.  To execute the remote command line you need to enable SSH (a secure shell login over the network) and connect using an application like PuTTY. You can enable SSH when you first boot the Raspberry Pi, as the raspi-config program runs automatically.  You can also run it at any time afterwards by running the command: sudo raspi-config This will bring up a menu of options.  Select '8 Advanced Options' and on the next screen select 'A$ SSH'.  Select 'Enable' and the task is complete. Step 2: Configure Raspberry Pi Networking By default, the Raspbian distribution configures the ethernet connection to use DHCP rather than a static IP address.  You can continue to use DHCP if you want, but to avoid having to potentially change settings whenever you reboot the Pi using a static IP address is simpler. To configure this on the Pi you need to edit the /etc/network/interfaces file.  You will need to do this as root using the sudo command, so something like sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces.  In this file you will see this line: iface eth0 inet dhcp This needs to be changed to the following: iface eth0 inet static     address 10.0.0.2     gateway 10.0.0.254     netmask 255.255.255.0 You will need to change the values in red to an appropriate IP address and to match the address of your gateway. Step 3: Create a Public-Private Key Pair On Your Development Machine How you do this will depend on which Operating system you are using: Mac OSX or Linux Run the command: ssh-keygen -t rsa Press ENTER/RETURN to accept the default destination for saving the key.  We do not need a passphrase so simply press ENTER/RETURN for an empty one and once more to confirm. The key will be created in the file .ssh/id_rsa.pub in your home directory.  Display the contents of this file using the cat command: cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub Open a window, SSH to the Raspberry Pi and login.  Change directory to .ssh and edit the authorized_keys file (don't worry if the file does not exist).  Copy and paste the contents of the id_rsa.pub file to the authorized_keys file and save it. Windows Since Windows is not a UNIX derivative operating system it does not include the necessary key generating software by default.  To generate the key I used puttygen.exe which is available from the same site that provides the PuTTY application, here. Download this and run it on your Windows machine.  Follow the instructions to generate a key.  I remove the key comment, but you can leave that if you want. Click "Save private key", confirm that you don't want to use a passphrase and select a filename and location for the key. Copy the public key from the part of the window marked, "Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file".  Use PuTTY to connect to the Raspberry Pi and login.  Change directory to .ssh and edit the authorized_keys file (don't worry if this does not exist).  Paste the key information at the end of this file and save it. Logout and then start PuTTY again.  This time we need to create a saved session using the private key.  Type in the IP address of the Raspberry Pi in the "Hostname (or IP address)" field and expand "SSH" under the "Connection" category.  Select "Auth" (see the screen shot below). Click the "Browse" button under "Private key file for authentication" and select the file you saved from puttygen. Go back to the "Session" category and enter a short name in the saved sessions field, as shown below.  Click "Save" to save the session. Step 4: Test The Configuration You should now have the ability to use scp (Mac/Linux) or pscp.exe (Windows) to copy files from your development machine to the Raspberry Pi without needing to authenticate by typing in a password (so we can automate the process in NetBeans).  It's a good idea to test this using something like: scp /tmp/foo [email protected]:/tmp on Linux or Mac or pscp.exe foo pi@raspi:/tmp on Windows (Note that we use the saved configuration name instead of the IP address or hostname so the public key is picked up). pscp.exe is another tool available from the creators of PuTTY. Step 5: Configure the NetBeans Build Script Start NetBeans and create a new project (or open an existing one that you want to deploy automatically to the Raspberry Pi). Select the Files tab in the explorer window and expand your project.  You will see a build.xml file.  Double click this to edit it. This file will mostly be comments.  At the end (but within the </project> tag) add the XML for <target name="-post-jar">, shown below Here's the code again in case you want to use cut-and-paste: <target name="-post-jar">   <echo level="info" message="Copying dist directory to remote Pi"/>   <exec executable="scp" dir="${basedir}">     <arg line="-r"/>     <arg value="dist"/>     <arg value="[email protected]:NetBeans/CopyTest"/>   </exec>  </target> For Windows it will be slightly different: <target name="-post-jar">   <echo level="info" message="Copying dist directory to remote Pi"/>   <exec executable="C:\pi\putty\pscp.exe" dir="${basedir}">     <arg line="-r"/>     <arg value="dist"/>     <arg value="pi@raspi:NetBeans/CopyTest"/>   </exec> </target> You will also need to ensure that pscp.exe is in your PATH (or specify a fully qualified pathname). From now on when you clean and build the project the dist directory will automatically be copied to the Raspberry Pi ready for testing.

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• Stir Trek: Thor Edition Registration Opens March 17th

  - by Brian Jackett

  Registration for Stir Trek: Thor Edition opens at 12:00am “Thors"day March 17th.  Stir Trek is now in its third year and this is the second year I’ve helped with planning.  For those unfamiliar the Stir Trek conference here is the description from the website. Stir Trek is an opportunity to learn about the newest advances and latest trends in Web and Mobile development. There will be 30 Sessions in six tracks, so you can pick the content that interests you the most. And the best part? At the end of the day you will be treated to a private screening of Thor on its opening day!     Last year Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition sold out well before the conference and had a long waitlist.  Based on CodeMash selling out in just 3.5 days earlier this year I highly recommend you register early.  We also have a star studded list of speakers ranging from international experts to local leaders.  This will be the best $35 you spend all year.   Easter Egg:  I originally had an idea that we should start selling tickets at 1:30am rather than 12:00am.  If you can figure out why I proposed 1:30am leave a comment below.  Any good sleuths will find this riddle elementary.         -Frog Out

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• problem installing mysql on ubuntu server 10.10 machine

  - by badperson

  Hi, I tried installing mysql a couple of times and I'm having problems. First of all, when I install it gives me a message that it's setting up and it just hangs. I can't ctl + c out of it, so I reboot the server and try to log into the db with sudo mysql -u root -p I enter my password and then get ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2) I restart the server: sudo /etc/init.d/mysql start Rather than invoking init scripts through /etc/init.d, use the service(8) utility, e.g. service mysql start Since the script you are attempting to invoke has been converted to an Upstart job, you may also use the start(8) utility, e.g. start mysql ~$ I try this: aptitude search mysql | grep ^i i A libdbd-mysql-perl - Perl5 database interface to the MySQL data i libmysql-java - Java database (JDBC) driver for MySQL i A libmysqlclient16 - MySQL database client library i mysql-client-5.1 - MySQL database client binaries i A mysql-client-core-5.1 - MySQL database core client binaries i mysql-common - MySQL database common files, e.g. /etc/mys i mysql-embedded - MySQL - embedded library i mysql-server-core-5.1 - MySQL database server binaries When I navigate to the folder to see if the *.sock file exists: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' it does not. I also try this: service mysql status status: Unable to connect to system bus: Failed to connect to socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: No such file or directory Any ideas? On my other machines installing mysql has been a snap, not sure what the problem is here. bp

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• Investigation: Can different combinations of components effect Dataflow performance?

  - by jamiet

  Introduction The Dataflow task is one of the core components (if not the core component) of SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) and often the most misunderstood. This is not surprising, its an incredibly complicated beast and we’re abstracted away from that complexity via some boxes that go yellow red or green and that have some lines drawn between them. Example dataflow In this blog post I intend to look under that facade and get into some of the nuts and bolts of the Dataflow Task by investigating how the decisions we make when building our packages can affect performance. I will do this by comparing the performance of three dataflows that all have the same input, all produce the same output, but which all operate slightly differently by way of having different transformation components. I also want to use this blog post to challenge a common held opinion that I see perpetuated over and over again on the SSIS forum. That is, that people assume adding components to a dataflow will be detrimental to overall performance. Its not surprising that people think this –it is intuitive to think that more components means more work- however this is not a view that I share. I have always been of the opinion that there are many factors affecting dataflow duration and the number of components is actually one of the less important ones; having said that I have never proven that assertion and that is one reason for this investigation. I have actually seen evidence that some people think dataflow duration is simply a function of number of rows and number of components. I’ll happily call that one out as a myth even without any investigation!  The Setup I have a 2GB datafile which is a list of 4731904 (~4.7million) customer records with various attributes against them and it contains 2 columns that I am going to use for categorisation: [YearlyIncome] [BirthDate] The data file is a SSIS raw format file which I chose to use because it is the quickest way of getting data into a dataflow and given that I am testing the transformations, not the source or destination adapters, I want to minimise external influences as much as possible. In the test I will split the customers according to month of birth (12 of those) and whether or not their yearly income is above or below 50000 (2 of those); in other words I will be splitting them into 24 discrete categories and in order to do it I shall be using different combinations of SSIS’ Conditional Split and Derived Column transformation components. The 24 datapaths that occur will each input to a rowcount component, again because this is the least resource intensive means of terminating a datapath. The test is being carried out on a Dell XPS Studio laptop with a quad core (8 logical Procs) Intel Core i7 at 1.73GHz and Samsung SSD hard drive. Its running SQL Server 2008 R2 on Windows 7. The Variables Here are the three combinations of components that I am going to test:     One Conditional Split - A single Conditional Split component CSPL Split by Month of Birth and income category that will use expressions on [YearlyIncome] & [BirthDate] to send each row to one of 24 outputs. This next screenshot displays the expression logic in use: Derived Column & Conditional Split - A Derived Column component DER Income Category that adds a new column [IncomeCategory] which will contain one of two possible text values {“LessThan50000”,”GreaterThan50000”} and uses [YearlyIncome] to determine which value each row should get. A Conditional Split component CSPL Split by Month of Birth and Income Category then uses that new column in conjunction with [BirthDate] to determine which of the same 24 outputs to send each row to. Put more simply, I am separating the Conditional Split of #1 into a Derived Column and a Conditional Split. The next screenshots display the expression logic in use: DER Income Category         CSPL Split by Month of Birth and Income Category       Three Conditional Splits - A Conditional Split component that produces two outputs based on [YearlyIncome], one for each Income Category. Each of those outputs will go to a further Conditional Split that splits the input into 12 outputs, one for each month of birth (identical logic in each). In this case then I am separating the single Conditional Split of #1 into three Conditional Split components. The next screenshots display the expression logic in use: CSPL Split by Income Category         CSPL Split by Month of Birth 1& 2       Each of these combinations will provide an input to one of the 24 rowcount components, just the same as before. For illustration here is a screenshot of the dataflow containing three Conditional Split components: As you can these dataflows have a fair bit of work to do and remember that they’re doing that work for 4.7million rows. I will execute each dataflow 10 times and use the average for comparison. I foresee three possible outcomes: The dataflow containing just one Conditional Split (i.e. #1) will be quicker There is no significant difference between any of them One of the two dataflows containing multiple transformation components will be quicker Regardless of which of those outcomes come to pass we will have learnt something and that makes this an interesting test to carry out. Note that I will be executing the dataflows using dtexec.exe rather than hitting F5 within BIDS. The Results and Analysis The table below shows all of the executions, 10 for each dataflow. It also shows the average for each along with a standard deviation. All durations are in seconds. I’m pasting a screenshot because I frankly can’t be bothered with the faffing about needed to make a presentable HTML table. It is plain to see from the average that the dataflow containing three conditional splits is significantly faster, the other two taking 43% and 52% longer respectively. This seems strange though, right? Why does the dataflow containing the most components outperform the other two by such a big margin? The answer is actually quite logical when you put some thought into it and I’ll explain that below. Before progressing, a side note. The standard deviation for the “Three Conditional Splits” dataflow is orders of magnitude smaller – indicating that performance for this dataflow can be predicted with much greater confidence too. The Explanation I refer you to the screenshot above that shows how CSPL Split by Month of Birth and salary category in the first dataflow is setup. Observe that there is a case for each combination of Month Of Date and Income Category – 24 in total. These expressions get evaluated in the order that they appear and hence if we assume that Month of Date and Income Category are uniformly distributed in the dataset we can deduce that the expected number of expression evaluations for each row is 12.5 i.e. 1 (the minimum) + 24 (the maximum) divided by 2 = 12.5. Now take a look at the screenshots for the second dataflow. We are doing one expression evaluation in DER Income Category and we have the same 24 cases in CSPL Split by Month of Birth and Income Category as we had before, only the expression differs slightly. In this case then we have 1 + 12.5 = 13.5 expected evaluations for each row – that would account for the slightly longer average execution time for this dataflow. Now onto the third dataflow, the quick one. CSPL Split by Income Category does a maximum of 2 expression evaluations thus the expected number of evaluations per row is 1.5. CSPL Split by Month of Birth 1 & CSPL Split by Month of Birth 2 both have less work to do than the previous Conditional Split components because they only have 12 cases to test for thus the expected number of expression evaluations is 6.5 There are two of them so total expected number of expression evaluations for this dataflow is 6.5 + 6.5 + 1.5 = 14.5. 14.5 is still more than 12.5 & 13.5 though so why is the third dataflow so much quicker? Simple, the conditional expressions in the first two dataflows have two boolean predicates to evaluate – one for Income Category and one for Month of Birth; the expressions in the Conditional Split in the third dataflow however only have one predicate thus they are doing a lot less work. To sum up, the difference in execution times can be attributed to the difference between: MONTH(BirthDate) == 1 && YearlyIncome <= 50000 and MONTH(BirthDate) == 1 In the first two dataflows YearlyIncome <= 50000 gets evaluated an average of 12.5 times for every row whereas in the third dataflow it is evaluated once and once only. Multiply those 11.5 extra operations by 4.7million rows and you get a significant amount of extra CPU cycles – that’s where our duration difference comes from. The Wrap-up The obvious point here is that adding new components to a dataflow isn’t necessarily going to make it go any slower, moreover you may be able to achieve significant improvements by splitting logic over multiple components rather than one. Performance tuning is all about reducing the amount of work that needs to be done and that doesn’t necessarily mean use less components, indeed sometimes you may be able to reduce workload in ways that aren’t immediately obvious as I think I have proven here. Of course there are many variables in play here and your mileage will most definitely vary. I encourage you to download the package and see if you get similar results – let me know in the comments. The package contains all three dataflows plus a fourth dataflow that will create the 2GB raw file for you (you will also need the [AdventureWorksDW2008] sample database from which to source the data); simply disable all dataflows except the one you want to test before executing the package and remember, execute using dtexec, not within BIDS. If you want to explore dataflow performance tuning in more detail then here are some links you might want to check out: Inequality joins, Asynchronous transformations and Lookups Destination Adapter Comparison Don’t turn the dataflow into a cursor SSIS Dataflow – Designing for performance (webinar) Any comments? Let me know! @Jamiet

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• HTG Explains: Do Non-Windows Platforms Like Mac, Android, iOS, and Linux Get Viruses?

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Viruses and other types of malware seem largely confined to Windows in the real world. Even on a Windows 8 PC, you can still get infected with malware. But how vulnerable are other operating systems to malware? When we say “viruses,” we’re actually talking about malware in general. There’s more to malware than just viruses, although the word virus is often used to talk about malware in general. Why Are All the Viruses For Windows? Not all of the malware out there is for Windows, but most of it is. We’ve tried to cover why Windows has the most viruses in the past. Windows’ popularity is definitely a big factor, but there are other reasons, too. Historically, Windows was never designed for security in the way that UNIX-like platforms were — and every popular operating system that’s not Windows is based on UNIX. Windows also has a culture of installing software by searching the web and downloading it from websites, whereas other platforms have app stores and Linux has centralized software installation from a secure source in the form of its package managers. Do Macs Get Viruses? The vast majority of malware is designed for Windows systems and Macs don’t get Windows malware. While Mac malware is much more rare, Macs are definitely not immune to malware. They can be infected by malware written specifically for Macs, and such malware does exist. At one point, over 650,000 Macs were infected with the Flashback Trojan. [Source] It infected Macs through the Java browser plugin, which is a security nightmare on every platform. Macs no longer include Java by default. Apple also has locked down Macs in other ways. Three things in particular help: Mac App Store: Rather than getting desktop programs from the web and possibly downloading malware, as inexperienced users might on Windows, they can get their applications from a secure place. It’s similar to a smartphone app store or even a Linux package manager. Gatekeeper: Current releases of Mac OS X use Gatekeeper, which only allows programs to run if they’re signed by an approved developer or if they’re from the Mac App Store. This can be disabled by geeks who need to run unsigned software, but it acts as additional protection for typical users. XProtect: Macs also have a built-in technology known as XProtect, or File Quarantine. This feature acts as a blacklist, preventing known-malicious programs from running. It functions similarly to Windows antivirus programs, but works in the background and checks applications you download. Mac malware isn’t coming out nearly as quick as Windows malware, so it’s easier for Apple to keep up. Macs are certainly not immune to all malware, and someone going out of their way to download pirated applications and disable security features may find themselves infected. But Macs are much less at risk of malware in the real world. Android is Vulnerable to Malware, Right? Android malware does exist and companies that produce Android security software would love to sell you their Android antivirus apps. But that isn’t the full picture. By default, Android devices are configured to only install apps from Google Play. They also benefit from antimalware scanning — Google Play itself scans apps for malware. You could disable this protection and go outside Google Play, getting apps from elsewhere (“sideloading”). Google will still help you if you do this, asking if you want to scan your sideloaded apps for malware when you try to install them. In China, where many, many Android devices are in use, there is no Google Play Store. Chinese Android users don’t benefit from Google’s antimalware scanning and have to get their apps from third-party app stores, which may contain infected copies of apps. The majority of Android malware comes from outside Google Play. The scary malware statistics you see primarily include users who get apps from outside Google Play, whether it’s pirating infected apps or acquiring them from untrustworthy app stores. As long as you get your apps from Google Play — or even another secure source, like the Amazon App Store — your Android phone or tablet should be secure. What About iPads and iPhones? Apple’s iOS operating system, used on its iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches, is more locked down than even Macs and Android devices. iPad and iPhone users are forced to get their apps from Apple’s App Store. Apple is more demanding of developers than Google is — while anyone can upload an app to Google Play and have it available instantly while Google does some automated scanning, getting an app onto Apple’s App Store involves a manual review of that app by an Apple employee. The locked-down environment makes it much more difficult for malware to exist. Even if a malicious application could be installed, it wouldn’t be able to monitor what you typed into your browser and capture your online-banking information without exploiting a deeper system vulnerability. Of course, iOS devices aren’t perfect either. Researchers have proven it’s possible to create malicious apps and sneak them past the app store review process. [Source] However, if a malicious app was discovered, Apple could pull it from the store and immediately uninstall it from all devices. Google and Microsoft have this same ability with Android’s Google Play and Windows Store for new Windows 8-style apps. Does Linux Get Viruses? Malware authors don’t tend to target Linux desktops, as so few average users use them. Linux desktop users are more likely to be geeks that won’t fall for obvious tricks. As with Macs, Linux users get most of their programs from a single place — the package manager — rather than downloading them from websites. Linux also can’t run Windows software natively, so Windows viruses just can’t run. Linux desktop malware is extremely rare, but it does exist. The recent “Hand of Thief” Trojan supports a variety of Linux distributions and desktop environments, running in the background and stealing online banking information. It doesn’t have a good way if infecting Linux systems, though — you’d have to download it from a website or receive it as an email attachment and run the Trojan. [Source] This just confirms how important it is to only run trusted software on any platform, even supposedly secure ones. What About Chromebooks? Chromebooks are locked down laptops that only run the Chrome web browser and some bits around it. We’re not really aware of any form of Chrome OS malware. A Chromebook’s sandbox helps protect it against malware, but it also helps that Chromebooks aren’t very common yet. It would still be possible to infect a Chromebook, if only by tricking a user into installing a malicious browser extension from outside the Chrome web store. The malicious browser extension could run in the background, steal your passwords and online banking credentials, and send it over the web. Such malware could even run on Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of Chrome, but it would appear in the Extensions list, would require the appropriate permissions, and you’d have to agree to install it manually. And Windows RT? Microsoft’s Windows RT only runs desktop programs written by Microsoft. Users can only install “Windows 8-style apps” from the Windows Store. This means that Windows RT devices are as locked down as an iPad — an attacker would have to get a malicious app into the store and trick users into installing it or possibly find a security vulnerability that allowed them to bypass the protection. Malware is definitely at its worst on Windows. This would probably be true even if Windows had a shining security record and a history of being as secure as other operating systems, but you can definitely avoid a lot of malware just by not using Windows. Of course, no platform is a perfect malware-free environment. You should exercise some basic precautions everywhere. Even if malware was eliminated, we’d have to deal with social-engineering attacks like phishing emails asking for credit card numbers. Image Credit: stuartpilbrow on Flickr, Kansir on Flickr     

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• Getting out of web-development before I make a huge investment? [closed]

  - by zhenka

  I am still in college. I've been doing web-app development for about a year now and I'm growing to hate it more and more. The whole thing feels like a huge hack and I am loosing my interest in programming because of it. Too much time is spent on learning tricks and libraries in javascript/css/html and battling the statelessness of it all. I don't so much mind back-end development, I just hate ALL of the frontend technology stack. What attracted me to programming was software architecture. I love design patterns, clean code, etc... I just feel like there is a lot more to play with in that regard in other forms of development. Moreover I feel like by becoming a Java or .Net expert I will be able to do A LOT more in terms of career choices. I would be able to do anything from server-side to desktop to mobile, but ruby, javascript, php, css etc... makes me completely unemployable in any other sub-domain of SE. Plus most of the learning on web seems to be technology tricks rather then becoming a better developer and expanding one's mind. Should I get out of it and start coding side mobile projects before I invest too much into it? Does anyone have any advice or perhaps share this feeling and moved out of it successfully? Thanks!

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• Teaching high school kids ASP.NET programming

  - by dotneteer

  During the 2011 Microsoft MVP Global Summit, I have been talking to people about teaching kids ASP.NET programming. I want to work with volunteer organizations to provide kids volunteer opportunities while learning technical skills that can be applied elsewhere. The goal is to teach motivated kids enough skill to be productive with no more than 6 hours of instruction. Based on my prior teaching experience of college extension courses and involvement with high school math and science competitions, I think this is quite doable with classic ASP but a challenge with ASP.NET. I don’t want to use ASP because it does not provide a good path into the future. After some considerations, I think this is possible with ASP.NET and here are my thoughts: · Create a framework within ASP.NET for kids programming. · Use existing editor. No extra compiler and intelligence work needed. · Using a subset of C# like a scripting language. Teaches data type, expression, statements, if/for/while/switch blocks and functions. Use existing classes but no class creation and OOP. · Linear rendering model. No complicated life cycle. · Bare-metal html with some MVC style helpers for widget creation; ASP.NET control is optional. I want to teach kids to understand something and avoid black boxes as much as possible. · Use SQL for CRUD with a helper class. Again, I want to teach understanding rather than black boxes. · Provide a template to encourage clean separation of concern. · Provide a conversion utility to convert the code that uses template to ASP.NET MVC. This will allow kids with AP Computer Science knowledge to step up to ASP.NET MVC. Let me know if you have thoughts or can help.

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• SSIS Prehistory video

  - by jamiet

  I’m currently wasting spending my Easter bank holiday putting together my presentation SSIS Dataflow Performance Tuning for the upcoming SQL Bits conference in London and in doing so I’m researching some old material about how the dataflow actually works. Boring as it is I’ve gotten easily sidelined and have chanced upon an old video on Channel 9 entitled Euan Garden - Tour of SQL Server Team (part I). Euan is a former member of the SQL Server team and in this series of videos he walks the halls of the SQL Server building on Microsoft’s Redmond campus talking to some of the various protagonists and in this one he happens upon the SQL Server Integration Services team. The video was shot in 2004 so this is a fascinating (to me anyway) glimpse into the development of SSIS from before it was ever shipped and if you’re a geek like me you’ll really enjoy this behind-the-scenes look into how and why the product was architected. The video is also notable for the presence of the cameraman – none other than the now-rather-more-famous-than-he-was-then Robert Scoble. See it at http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/TheChannel9Team/Euan-Garden-Tour-of-SQL-Server-Team-part-I/ Enjoy! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Nervous about the "real" world

  - by Randy

  I am currently majoring in Computer Science and minoring in mathematics (the minor is embedded in the major). The program has a strong C++ curriculum. We have done some UNIX and assembly language (not fun) and there is C and Java on the way in future classes that I must take. The program I am in did not use the STL, but rather a STL-ish design that was created from the ground up for the program. From what I have read on, the STL and what I have taken are very similar but what I used seemed more user friendly. Some of the programs that I had to write in C++ for assignments include: a password server that utilized hashing of the passwords for security purposes, a router simulator that used a hash table and maps, a maze solver that used depth first search, a tree traveler program that traversed a tree using levelorder, postorder, inorder, selection sort, insertion sort, bit sort, radix sort, merge sort, heap sort, quick sort, topological sort, stacks, queues, priority queues, and my least favorite, red-black trees. All of this was done in three semesters which was just enough time to code them up and turn them in. That being said, if I was told to use a stack to convert an equation to infix notation or something, I would be lost for a few hours. My main concern in writing this is when I graduate and land an interview, what are some of the questions posed to assess my skills? What are some of the most important areas of computer science that are prevalent in the field? I am currently trying to get some ideas of programs I can write in C++ that interest and challenge me to keep learning the language. A sodoku solver came to mind but am lost as to where to start. I apologize for the rant, but I'm just a wee bit nervous about the future. Any tips are appreciated.

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• Google Analytics setting cookies on static content despite being on entirely separate domain

  - by Donald Jenkins

  I recently decided to comply with the YSlow recommendation that static content is hosted on a cookieless domain. As I already use the root of my domain (donaldjenkins.com) to host my website—on which Google Analytics sets a few cookies—that meant I had to move the CNAME URL for the CDN serving the static files from cdn.donaldjenkins.com to an entirely separate, dedicated domain. I purchased cdn.dj (yes, it's a real Djibouti domain name), hosted the files on the root (which contains nothing else, other than a robots.txt file) and set a CNAME of e.cdn.dj for the CDN. This setup works, but I was rather surprised to find that YSlow was still flagging the static files for not being cookie-free: here's a screenshot: The cdn.djdomain was new, and was never used for anything other than hosting these static files. Running httpfox on the site shows the _utma and _utmz Google Analytics cookies are being set on the static files listed above—despite their being hosted on an entirely separate, dedicated domain. Here's my Google Analytics code: //Google Analytics tracking code var _gaq=[['_setAccount','UA-5245947-5'],['_trackPageview']]; (function(d,t){var g=d.createElement(t),s=d.getElementsByTagName(t)[0]; g.src=('https:'==location.protocol?'//ssl':'//www')+'.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; s.parentNode.insertBefore(g,s)}(document,'script')); // [END] Google Analytics tracking code I'm not obsessing about this issue—I know it's not really affecting server performance—but I'd like to just understand what is causing it not to go away...

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• Learning frameworks without learning languages

  - by Tom Morris

  I've been reading up on GUI frameworks including WPF, GTK and Cocoa (UIKit). I don't really do anything related to Windows (I'm a Mac and Linux guy) or .NET, but I'd like to be able to throw together GUIs for various operating systems. We are in the enviable position now of having high level scripting languages that work with all of the major GUI toolkits. If you are doing Linux GUI programming, you could use GTK in C, but why not just use PyGTK (or PyQt). Similarly, for Java, one can use JRuby. For Mac, there's MacRuby. And on .NET, there's IronRuby. This is all fine and good, and if you are building a serious project, there are tradeoffs that you might encounter when deciding whether to, say, build a WPF app in C# or in IronRuby, or whether you are going to use PyGTK or not. The subjective question I have is: what about learning those frameworks? Are there strong reasons why one should or should not learn something like WPF or Cocoa in a language one is familiar with rather than having to learn a new language as well? I'm not saying you should never learn the language. If you are building Windows applications and you don't know C#, that might be a bit of a problem. But do you think it is okay to learn the framework first? This is both a general question and a specific question. I've used some Cocoa classes from Ruby and Python using things like PyObjC and there always seems to be an impedance mismatch because of the way Objective C libraries get built. Experiences and strong opinions welcome!

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• Get the Information You Need. Delivered.

  - by Get Proactive Customer Adoption Team

  Untitled Document Don’t Take Chances with Alerts—Get Hot Topics When Oracle Support publishes an alert, how do you find out about it? I can see any number of ways you might stumble onto an alert that you need. For example, if you are visiting My Oracle Support in search of answers under the Knowledge tab and happen to notice, and click on, the Alert tab the under the Knowledge Article region, you might see an alert listed for one of the products you use. There are other ways… like subscribing to one of the Oracle Blogs and finding the alert in your RSS feed because the blogger decided to write up that topic for the latest post. I’m sure your colleagues sometimes pass on critical alerts for your products, I hope, giving you the information before you needed it. Well, no matter how you learn about an alert, the important point is that you get the correct information in a timely way. Right? I must admit, the ‘magic’ required to find out via these methods makes me nervous. Rather than leave it to chance, I think you need a more reliable way to stay informed and receive alerts for your products when Oracle publishes them. You may not be aware of it, but there is a better way. Oracle Premier Support Customers can leverage the “Hot Topics E-Mail.” You select the products and topics that interest you. Based on your choices, the system sends you the support related information when Oracle Support publishes it. This way you and I can both relax, knowing you’ll have ready access to the alerts you need, and enjoy the breadth of support related information you choose to subscribe to. This can include recently updated Knowledge base articles, new bugs, and product news. If I’ve convinced you, you will want to know how to set up and subscribe to the Hot Topics E-Mail. The complete guide, Doc ID 793436.1, is waiting for you. Follow the instructions in the document, and you will always stay on top of the latest information from Oracle Support.

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• Convert your Hash keys to object properties in Ruby

  - by kerry

  Being a Ruby noob (and having a background in Groovy), I was a little surprised that you can not access hash objects using the dot notation.  I am writing an application that relies heavily on XML and JSON data.  This data will need to be displayed and I would rather use book.author.first_name over book[‘author’][‘first_name’].  A quick search on google yielded this post on the subject. So, taking the DRYOO (Don’t Repeat Yourself Or Others) concept.  I came up with this: 1: class ::Hash 2:  3: # add keys to hash 4: def to_obj 5: self.each do |k,v| 6: if v.kind_of? Hash 7: v.to_obj 8: end 9: k=k.gsub(/\.|\s|-|\/|\'/, '_').downcase.to_sym 10: self.instance_variable_set("@#{k}", v) ## create and initialize an instance variable for this key/value pair 11: self.class.send(:define_method, k, proc{self.instance_variable_get("@#{k}")}) ## create the getter that returns the instance variable 12: self.class.send(:define_method, "#{k}=", proc{|v| self.instance_variable_set("@#{k}", v)}) ## create the setter that sets the instance variable 13: end 14: return self 15: end 16: end This works pretty well.  It converts each of your keys to properties of the Hash.  However, it doesn’t sit very well with me because I probably will not use 90% of the properties most of the time.  Why should I go through the performance overhead of creating instance variables for all of the unused ones? Enter the ‘magic method’ #missing_method: 1: class ::Hash 2: def method_missing(name) 3: return self[name] if key? name 4: self.each { |k,v| return v if k.to_s.to_sym == name } 5: super.method_missing name 6: end 7: end This is a much cleaner method for my purposes.  Quite simply, it checks to see if there is a key with the given symbol, and if not, loop through the keys and attempt to find one. I am a Ruby noob, so if there is something I am overlooking, please let me know.

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• Has "Killer Game Programming in Java" by Andrew Davison been rendered useless? What new tutorial should I follow? [duplicate]

  - by BDillan

  This question already has an answer here: Killer Game Programming [Java 3D] outdated? 5 answers Its pathetic how it was created in 2005 not so long ago when the Java 3D 1.31 API was released. Now after downloading the source code off the books website and implementing it onto my work-space it cant run. (The 3D Shooter Ch. 23) I downloaded Java 3D 1.5 API, installed it- went back to my source code and javax.media ect.., and EVERY imported class within the game simply couldn't be resolved... they are all outdated.. Please do not say how its meant for a positive curvature in your game development skills. No ~ I got the book to understand how to code 3D textures/particle systems/games. Without seeing results how can I learn? If there is still hope for this book please tell me. Otherwise what other books match this one in Game Programming? This one was very well organized, documented and long. I am not looking for a 3D game prog. book on Java. Rather one that has the same reputation as this one but is a bit newer..

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• C# via Java: Introduction

  - by Simon Cooper

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

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• C# via Java: Introduction

  - by simonc

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/simonc/archive/2013/11/08/c-via-java-introduction.aspxSo, I've recently changed jobs. Rather than working in .NET land, I've migrated over to Java land. But never fear! I'll continue to peer under the covers of .NET, but my next series will use my new experience in Java to explore the design decisions made in the development of the C# programming language. After all, the design of C# was based on Java 1.2, and both languages have continued to evolve since then, incorporating modern software engineering concepts and requirements. Exploring the differences and similarities between the two will (hopefully) give us a deeper understanding into why .NET is implemented the way it is, the trade-offs involved, and what choices were made when new features were designed and added to the language and framework. Among others, I'll be looking at differences in: Primitives Operators Generics Exceptions Accessibility Collections Delegates and inner classes Concurrency In my next post, I'll start off by looking at the type primitives available in each language, and how Java and C# actually incorporate two different concepts of primitive types in their fundamental language design and use. I'm also thinking of looking at the inner details of Java and the JVM in my blogs, as well as C# and the CLR. If you've got any comments or thoughts on this, please let me know.

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• Two Copies of Pete Brown's "Silverlight 5 In Action" to Give Away

  - by Dave Campbell

  Yes... you read that correctly... I have two copies of Pete Brown's excellent book "Silverlight 5 In Action" to give away... if you're not familiar with Pete's book, here is a short synopsis for a large book: Silverlight 5 in Action teaches you how to build desktop-quality applications you can deploy on the web. Beginners will appreciate the progression from simple examples to full applications that employ good design and coding practices. Seasoned . NET developers will love how the sample code embraces and extends what they already know. As with other give-aways I've done on my blog, rather than me trying to pick the most worthy 2 people of all submittals, what I'm going to do is randomly select 2 entries from those that are submitted. Email address for Submittals I have a special email address for submittals: mailto:[email protected]?Subject=Giveaway. Deadline for Submittals I will take submittals dated from the time this post hits until midnight Sunday night, June 17, 2012 - Arizona time. That means sometime Monday morning June 18th, I will announce the winners. Send in an email and good luck... it's a great book! But wait, there's more! If you don't want to wait until next Tuesday to get into Pete's book, or you don't figure you're that lucky to get one of the two I'm giving away, I also have a 39% off discount code for "Silverlight 5 In Action" if used at Manning.com!! Just order your book online, and use the discount code 12s5sc and you'll get the book on it's way immediately. Either way you go... you won't be disappointed. I've been reading this as it goes and it is a treasure-trove of information. Grab your copy, and Stay in the 'Light!

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• Formatting HTML lists using CSS

  - by pwaring

  I'm trying to recreate list in HTML which has clauses and subclauses like this: 1. Main Clause (a) Sub clause (b) Sub clause 2. Another main clause (a) Sub clause The problems I'm running into are: If I use the existing HTML elements (ol and li) there doesn't seem to be a list style for (a) - I can have a. b. c. or A. B. C. but not (a) (b) (c). If I don't use the existing HTML elements and start using span tags, then if a subclause runs beyond the end of the line it appears underneath the clause number, rather than being indented. Like so: (a) Very long subclause which goes over one line when what I really want is the behaviour from lists, which is: (a) Very long subclause which goes over one line Is there any way to get round these two problems at the same time? I'd prefer to use semantic HTML and CSS for styling, but having the clauses spaced correctly is more important than doing things 'the right way'. I may need subsubclauses at some point (i.e. (i), (ii) etc.), so I can't assume that (a) will be the maximum clause depth.

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• How I Work: A Cloud Developer's Workstation

  - by BuckWoody

  I've written here a little about how I work during the day, including things like using a stand-up desk (still doing that, by the way). Inspired by a Twitter conversation yesterday, I thought I might explain how I set up my computing environment. First, a couple of important points. I work in Cloud Computing, specifically (but not limited to) Windows Azure. Windows Azure has features to run a Virtual Machine (IaaS), run code without having to control a Virtual Machine (PaaS) and use databases, video streaming, Hadoop and more (a kind of SaaS for tech pros). As such, my designs run the gamut of on-premises, VM's in the Cloud, and software that I write for a platform. I focus on data primarily, meaning that I design a lot of systems that use an RDBMS (like SQL Server or Windows Azure Databases) or a NoSQL approach (MongoDB on Azure or large-scale Key-Value Pairs in Table storage) and even Hadoop and R, and also Cloud Numerics in F#. All that being said, those things inform my choices below. Hardware I have a Lenovo X220 tablet/laptop which I really like a great deal - it's a light, tough, extremely fast system. When I travel, that's the system I take. It has 8GB of RAM, and an SSD drive. I sometimes use that to develop or work at a client's site, on the road, or in the living room when I'm not in my home office. My main system is a GateWay DX430017 - I've maxed it out on RAM, and I have two 1TB drives in it. It's not only my workstation for work; I leave it on all the time and it streams our videos, music and books. I have about 3400 e-books, and I've just started using Calibre to stream the library. I run Windows 8 on it so I can set up Hyper-V images, since Windows Azure allows me to move regular Hyper-V disks back and forth to the Cloud. That's where all my "servers" are, when I have to use an IaaS approach. The reason I use a desktop-style system rather than a laptop only approach is that a good part of my job is setting up architectures to solve really big, complex problems. That means I have to simulate entire networks on-premises, along with the Hybrid Cloud approach I use a lot. I need a lot of disk space and memory for that, and I use two huge monitors on my stand-up desk. I could probably use 10 monitors if I had the room for them. Also, since it's our home system as well, I leave it on all the time and it doesn't travel.   Software For the software for my systems, it's important to keep in mind that I not only write code, but I design databases, teach, present, and create Linux and other environments. Windows 8 - While the jury is out for me on the new interface, the context-sensitive search, integrated everything, and speed is just hands-down the right choice. I've evaluated a server OS, Linux, even an Apple, but I just am not as efficient on those as I am with Windows 8. Visual Studio Ultimate - I develop primarily in .NET (C# and F# mostly) and I use the Team Foundation Server in the cloud, and I'm asked to do everything from UI to Services, so I need everything. Windows Azure SDK, Windows Azure Training Kit - I need the first to set up my Azure PaaS coding, and the second has all the info I need for PaaS, IaaS and SaaS. This is primarily how I get paid. :) SQL Server Developer Edition - While I might install Oracle, MySQL and Postgres on my VM's, the "outside" environment is SQL Server for an RDBMS. I install the Developer Edition because it has the same features as Enterprise Edition, and comes with all the client tools and documentation. Microsoft Office -  Even if I didn't work here, this is what I would use. I've just grown too accustomed to doing business this way to change, so my advice is always "use what works", and this does. The parts I use are: OneNote (and a Math Add-in) - I do almost everything - and I mean everything in OneNote. I can code, do high-end math, present, design, collaborate and more. All my notebooks are on my Skydrive. I can use them from any system, anywhere. If you take the time to learn this program, you'll be hooked. Excel with PowerPivot - Don't make that face. Excel is the world's database, and every Data Scientist I know - even the ones where I teach at the University of Washington - know it, use it, and love it.  Outlook - Primary communications, CRM and contact tool. I have all of my social media hooked up to it, so when I get an e-mail from you, I see everything, see all the history we've had on e-mail, find you on a map and more. Lync - I was fine with LiveMeeting, although it has it's moments. For me, the Lync client is tres-awesome. I use this throughout my day, present on it, stay in contact with colleagues and the folks on the dev team (who wish I didn't have it) and more.  PowerPoint - Once again, don't make that face. Whenever I see someone complaining about PowerPoint, I have 100% of the time found they don't know how to use it. If you suck at presenting or creating content, don't blame PowerPoint. Works great on my machine. :) Zoomit - Magnifier - On Windows 7 (and 8 as well) there's a built-in magnifier, but I install Zoomit out of habit. It enlarges the screen. If you don't use one of these tools (or their equivalent on some other OS) then you're presenting/teaching wrong, and you should stop presenting/teaching until you get them and learn how to show people what you can see on your tiny, tiny monitor. :) Cygwin - Unix for Windows. OK, that's not true, but it's mostly that. I grew up on mainframes and Unix (IBM and HP, thank you) and I can't imagine life without  sed, awk, grep, vim, and bash. I also tend to take a lot of the "Science" and "Development" and "Database" packages in it as well. PuTTY - Speaking of Unix, when I need to connect to my Linux VM's in Windows Azure, I want to do it securely. This is the tool for that. Notepad++ - Somewhere between torturing myself in vim and luxuriating in OneNote is Notepad++. Everyone has a favorite text editor; this one is mine. Too many features to name, and it's free. Browsers - I install Chrome, Firefox and of course IE. I know it's in vogue to rant on IE, but I tend to think for myself a great deal, and I've had few (none) problems with it. The others I have for the haterz that make sites that won't run in IE. Visio - I've used a lot of design packages, but none have the extreme meta-data edit capabilities of Visio. I don't use this all the time - it can be rather heavy, but what it does it does really well. I also present this way when I'm not using PowerPoint. Yup, I just bring up Visio and diagram away as I'm chatting with clients. Depending on what we're covering, this can be the right tool for that. Tweetdeck - The AIR one, not that new disaster they came out with. I live on social media, since you, dear readers, are my cube-mates. When I get tired of you all, I close Tweetdeck. When I need help or someone needs help from me, or if I want to see a picture of a cat while I'm coding, I bring it up. It's up most all day and night. Windows Media Player - I listen to Trance or Classical when I code, and I find music managers overbearing and extra. I just use what comes in the box, and it works great for me. R - F# and Cloud Numerics now allows me to load in R libraries (yay!) and I use this for statistical work on big data loads. Microsoft Math - One of the most amazing, free, rich, amazing, awesome, amazing calculators out there. I get the 64-bit version for quick math conversions, plots and formula-checks. Python - I know, right? Who knew that the scientific community loved Python so much. But they do. I use 2.7; not as much runs with 3+. I also use IronPython in Visual Studio, or I edit in Notepad++ Camstudio recorder - Windows PSR - In much of my training, and all of my teaching at the UW, I need to show a process on a screen. Camstudio records screen and voice, and it's free. If I need to make static training, I use the Windows PSR tool that's built right in. It's ostensibly for problem duplication, but I use it to record for training.   OK - your turn. Post a link to your blog entry below, and tell me how you set your system up.  

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• Silverlight Cream for December 23, 2010 -- #1014

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this 4-days loss to a sinus infection and all-submittal Issue.... and this only catches me up on submittals through last Sunday: Mark Monster, Sacha Barber, Rénald Nollet, Georgi Atanasov, and András Velvárt. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight with Facebook - a practical guide to integration" András Velvárt WP7: "RadDateSelector for Windows Phone 7 – Loaded within a standard in-browser Silverlight application" Georgi Atanasov MVVM: "Cinch - A Rich Full Featured WPF/SL MVVM Framework" Sacha Barber From SilverlightCream.com: Solving 3 problems with the ShellTileSchedule Mark Monster is discussing the Shell Tile Schedule, or rather problems therewith... 3 of them to be exact. He discusses them at lenght and describes solutions to each. Cinch - A Rich Full Featured WPF/SL MVVM Framework After Sacha Barber contacted me, I searched SilverlightCream and only found 1 reference to Cinch... what gives... this looks pretty good. If you're blogging about it let me know, if you're not, check it out! SQL Azure Database Manager – Part 2 : Now you’re in, take a tour Rénald Nollet has part 2 of his SQL AZure Database Manager up for us to look at, and this time out he's explaining the UI. RadDateSelector for Windows Phone 7 – Loaded within a standard in-browser Silverlight application. This is a cool post with a sort-of twist to it... Georgi Atanasov has a post up about using Telerik's WP7 RadDateSelector ... but in a SL4 app... and why not... if it works for SL3.x, it should work in SL4 right? Silverlight with Facebook - a practical guide to integration András Velvárt has a great post up (as usual) discussing 'harnessing the power of social networks' ... remember his great image of the soccer match where people could tag themselves? ... well, get some of the explanation here! (and some code) Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• SQL SERVER – Simple Installation of Master Data Services (MDS) and Sample Packages – Very Easy

  - by pinaldave

  I twitted recently about: ‘Installing #sql Server 2008 R2 – Master Data Services. Painless.‘ After doing so, I got quite a few emails from other users as to why I thought it was painless. The reason was very simple- I was able to install it rather quickly on my laptop without any issues. There were a few requests along with these emails sent to me, which regards to how to install MDS, as well sample databases. Please note that I am the admin of my machine and I installed this MDS as the admin as well. Talk to your network administrator to figure out the best suitable settings for better security of login users. Additionally, since MDS is only supported on a 64-bit machine, I had rebuilt my computer a week before with a 64-bit OS and 64-bit SQL Server to go with it. Here is a quick picture tour of the installation. First of all, go to your SQL Server 2008. Install self-extracted folder and find the .msi file for C:\1033_enu_lp\x64\setup\masterdataservices.msi. Once you clicked on the file, follow the image tour below. You can ask me any questions in case you are still confused with any of the steps of the installation. While searching the internet for a similar installation process, I have landed on the official blog of MDS team where they have many interesting posts about it. If any concept written on my posts are contradictory to the information on the official blog, I suggest that you should follow the advice of official blog. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• PHP Browser Game Question - Pretty General Language Suitability and Approach Question

  - by JimBadger

  I'm developing a browser game, using PHP, but I'm unsure if the way I'm going about doing it is to be encouraged anymore. It's basically one of those MMOs where you level up various buildings and what have you, but, you then commit some abstract fighting entity that the game gives you, to an automated battle with another player (producing a textual, but hopefully amusing and varied combat report). Basically, as soon as two players agree to fight, PHP functions on the "fight.php" page run queries against a huge MySQL database, looking up all sorts of complicated fight moves and outcomes. There are about three hundred thousand combinations of combat stance, attack, move and defensive stances, so obviously this is quite a resource hungry process, and, on the super cheapo hosted server I'm using for development, it rapidly runs out of memory. The PHP script for the fight logic currently has about a thousand lines of code in it, and I'd say it's about half-finished as I try to add a bit of AI into the fight script. Is there a better way to do something this massive than simply having some functions in a PHP file calling the MySQL Database? I taught myself a modicum of PHP a while ago, and most of the stuff I read online (ages ago) about similar games was all PHP-based. but a) am I right to be using PHP at all, and b) am I missing some clever way of doing things that will somehow reduce server resource requirements? I'd consider non PHP alternatives but, if PHP is suitable, I'd rather stick to that, so there's no overhead of learning something new. I think I'd bite that bullet if it's the best option for a better game, though.

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