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• ORM Profiler v1.1 has been released!

  - by FransBouma

  We've released ORM Profiler v1.1, which has the following new features: Real time profiling A real time viewer (RTV) has been added, which gives insight in the activity as it is received by the client, in two views: a chronological connection overview and an activity graph overview. This RTV allows the user to directly record to a snapshot using record buttons, pause the view, mark a range to create a snapshot from that range, and view graphs about the # of connection open actions and # of commands per second. The RTV has a 'range' in which it keeps live data and auto-cleans data that's older than this range. Screenshot of the activity graphs part of the real-time viewer: Low-level activity tab A new tab has been added to the Application tabs: the Low-level activity tab. This tab shows the main activity as it has been received over the named pipe. It can help to get insight in the chronological activity without the grouping over connections, so multiple connections at the same time per thread are easier to spot. Clicking a command will sync the rest of the application tabs, clicking a row will show the details below the splitter bar, as it is done with the other application tabs as well. Default application name in interceptor When an empty string or null is passed for application name to the Initialize method of the interceptor, the AppDomain's friendly name is used instead. Copy call stack to clipboard A call stack viewed in a grid in various parts of the UI is now copyable to the clipboard by clicking a button. Enable/Disable interceptor from the config file It's now possible to enable/disable the interceptor Initialization from the application's config file, using: Code: <appSettings> <add key="ORMProfilerEnabled" value="true"/> </appSettings> if value is true, the interceptor's Initialize method will proceed. If the value is false, the interceptor's Initialize method will not proceed and initialization won't be performed, meaning no interception will take place. If the setting is absent, or misconfigured, the Initialize method will proceed as normal and perform the initialization. Stored procedure calls for select databases are now properly displayed as a call For the databases: SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, Sybase ASA, Sybase ASE and Informix a stored procedure call is displayed as an execute/call statement and copy to clipboard works as-is. I'm especially happy with the new real-time profiling feature in ORM Profiler, which is the flagship feature for this release: it offers a completely new way to use the profiler, namely directly during debugging: you can immediately see what's going on without the necessity of a snapshot. The activity graph feature combined with the auto-cleanup of older data, allows you to keep the profiler open for a long period of time and see any spike of activity on the profiled application.

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• Using Lazy<T> and abstract wrapper class to lazy-load complex system parameters

  - by DigiMortal

  .NET Framework 4.0 introduced new class called Lazy<T> and I wrote blog post about it: .Net Framework 4.0: Using System.Lazy<T>. One thing is annoying for me – we have to keep lazy loaded value and its value loader as separate things. In this posting I will introduce you my Lazy<T> wrapper for complex to get system parameters that uses template method to keep lazy value loader in parameter class. Problem with original implementation Here’s the sample code that shows you how Lazy<T> is usually used. This is just sample code, don’t focus on the fact that this is dummy console application. class Program {     static void Main(string[] args)     {         var temperature = new Lazy<int>(LoadMinimalTemperature);           Console.WriteLine("Minimal room temperature: " + temperature.Value);         Console.ReadLine();     }       protected static int LoadMinimalTemperature()     {         var returnValue = 0;           // Do complex stuff here           return true;     } } The problem is that our class with many lazy loaded properties will grow messy if it has all value loading code inside it. This code may be complex for more than one parameter and in this case it is better to use separate class for this parameter. Defining base class for parameters As a first step I will define base class for all lazy-loaded parameters. This class is wrapper around Lazy<T> and it also offers one template method that parameter classes have to override to provide loaded data. public abstract class LazyParameter<T> {     private Lazy<T> _lazyParam;       public LazyParameter()     {         _lazyParam = new Lazy<T>(Load);     }       protected abstract T Load();       public T Value     {         get { return _lazyParam.Value; }     } } It is also possible to extend Lazy<T> but I don’t prefer to do it as Lazy<T> has six constructors we have to take care of. Also I don’t like to expose Lazy<T> public interface to users of my parameter classes. Creating parameter class Now it’s time to create our first parameter class. Notice how few stuff we have in this class besides overridden Load() method. public class MinimalRoomTemperature : LazyParameter<int> {     protected override int Load()     {         var returnValue = 0;           // Do complex stuff here           return returnValue;     } } Using parameter class is simple. Here’s my test code. class Program {     static void Main(string[] args)     {         var parameter = new MinimalRoomTemperature();         Console.WriteLine("Minimal room temperature: " + parameter.Value);         Console.ReadLine();     } } Conclusion Lazy<T> is useful class that you usually don’t want to use outside from API-s. I like this class but I don’t like when people are using this class directly in application code. In this posting I showed you how to use Lazy<T> with wrapper class to get complex parameter loading code out from classes that use this parameter. We ended up with generic base class for parameters that you can also use as base for other similar classes (you have to find better name to base class in this case).

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• Application for taking pretty screenshots (like OS X does)

  - by Oli

  I've been building a website for a guy who uses Mac OS X and occasionally he sends me screenshots of bugs. They come out looking like this: This is fairly typical of Mac screenshots. You get the window decorations, the shadow from the window and a white or transparent background (not the desktop wallpaper -- I've checked). Compare this to an Ubuntu window-shot (Alt+Print screen): It's impossible to keep a straight face and say the Ubuntu one anywhere near as elegant. My question is: Is there an application that can do this in Ubuntu? Edit: Follow up: Is there an application that can do this in one move? Shutter is pretty good but running the plugin for every screenshot is pretty tiresome as it doesn't seem to remember my preference (I want south-shadow and that requires selecting south, then clicking refresh, then save) and it's more clicks than I'd like. Is there a simple way of telling shutter I want south-shadow for all screenshots (except entire desktop and area-selection)?

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• T-4 Templates for ASP.NET Web Form Databound Control Friendly Logical Layers

  - by joycsharp

  I just released an open source project at codeplex, which includes a set of T-4 templates to enable you to build logical layers (i.e. DAL/BLL) with just few clicks! The logical layers implemented here are  based on Entity Framework 4.0, ASP.NET Web Form Data Bound control friendly and fully unit testable. In this open source project you will get Entity Framework 4.0 based T-4 templates for following types of logical layers: Data Access Layer: Entity Framework 4.0 provides excellent ORM data access layer. It also includes support for T-4 templates, as built-in code generation strategy in Visual Studio 2010, where we can customize default structure of data access layer based on Entity Framework. default structure of data access layer has been enhanced to get support for mock testing in Entity Framework 4.0 object model. Business Logic Layer: ASP.NET web form based data bound control friendly business logic layer, which will enable you few clicks to build data bound web applications on top of ASP.NET Web Form and Entity Framework 4.0 quickly with great support of mock testing. Download it to make your web development productive. Enjoy!

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• Distinguishing repetitive code with the same implementation

  - by KyelJmD

  Given this sample code import java.util.ArrayList; import blackjack.model.items.Card; public class BlackJackPlayer extends Player { private double bet; private Hand hand01 = new Hand(); private Hand hand02 = new Hand(); public void addCardToHand01(Card c) { hand01.addCard(c); } public void addCardToHand02(Card c) { hand02.addCard(c); } public void bustHand01() { hand01.setBust(true); } public void bustHand02() { hand02.setBust(true); } public void standHand01() { hand01.setStand(true); } public void standHand02() { hand02.setStand(true); } public boolean isHand01Bust() { return hand01.isBust(); } public boolean isHand02Bust() { return hand02.isBust(); } public boolean isHand01Standing() { return hand01.isStanding(); } public boolean isHand02Standing() { return hand02.isStanding(); } public int getHand01Score(){ return hand01.getCardScore(); } public int getHand02Score(){ return hand02.getCardScore(); } } Is this considered as a repetitive code? providing that each method is operating a seperate field but doing the same implementation ? Note that hand01 and hand02 should be distinct. if this is considered as repetitive code, how would I address this? providing that each hand is a seperate entity

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• Creating Entity as an aggregation

  - by Jamie Dixon

  I recently asked about how to separate entities from their behaviour and the main answer linked to this article: http://cowboyprogramming.com/2007/01/05/evolve-your-heirachy/ The ultimate concept written about here is that of: OBJECT AS A PURE AGGREGATION. I'm wondering how I might go about creating game entities as pure aggregation using C#. I've not quite grasped the concept of how this might work yet. (Perhaps the entity is an array of objects implementing a certain interface or base type?) My current thinking still involves having a concrete class for each entity type that then implements the relevant interfaces (IMoveable, ICollectable, ISpeakable etc). How can I go about creating an entity purely as an aggregation without having any concrete type for that entity?

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• I tried to transplant the wireless_tools to Android4.0 system, but I have a problem with Java

  - by Chen Guoli

  My Linux system is Ubuntu Kylin, a new branch of Ubuntu spreading mainly in China. I have changed some files, such as wireless.22.h, ifrename.c and iwlib.h, in wireless_tools.29/ which is located in Android4.0 root directory. Then I followed these steps: $ cd ~/Android4.0 $ su $[key](change to root) root# source build/envsetup.sh root# cd ~/Android4.0/wireless_tools.2.9/ root# mm Then I got a message telling me that: Your version is: java version "1.7.0_21". The correct version is: Java SE 1.6. Then I did as How can I uninstall my current java and install sun java 1.6 The java was installed successfully, but when i tried mm again: Your version is: java version "1.6.0_27". The correct version is: Java SE 1.6. Then I tried https://source.android.com/source/initializing.html , but it didn't work. How can I install "java SE 1.6." correctly?

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• The ugly evolution of running a background operation in the context of an ASP.NET app

  - by Jeff

  If you’re one of the two people who has followed my blog for many years, you know that I’ve been going at POP Forums now for over almost 15 years. Publishing it as an open source app has been a big help because it helps me understand how people want to use it, and having it translated to six languages is pretty sweet. Despite this warm and fuzzy group hug, there has been an ugly hack hiding in there for years. One of the things we find ourselves wanting to do is hide some kind of regular process inside of an ASP.NET application that runs periodically. The motivation for this has always been that a lot of people simply don’t have a choice, because they’re running the app on shared hosting, or don’t otherwise have access to a box that can run some kind of regular background service. In POP Forums, I “solved” this problem years ago by hiding some static timers in an HttpModule. Truthfully, this works well as long as you don’t run multiple instances of the app, which in the cloud world, is always a possibility. With the arrival of WebJobs in Azure, I’m going to solve this problem. This post isn’t about that. The other little hacky problem that I “solved” was spawning a background thread to queue emails to subscribed users of the forum. This evolved quite a bit over the years, starting with a long running page to mail users in real-time, when I had only a few hundred. By the time it got into the thousands, or tens of thousands, I needed a better way. What I did is launched a new thread that read all of the user data in, then wrote a queued email to the database (as in, the entire body of the email, every time), with the properly formatted opt-out link. It was super inefficient, but it worked. Then I moved my biggest site using it, CoasterBuzz, to an Azure Website, and it stopped working. So let’s start with the first stupid thing I was doing. The new thread was simply created with delegate code inline. As best I can tell, Azure Websites are more aggressive about garbage collection, because that thread didn’t queue even one message. When the calling server response went out of scope, so went the magic background thread. Duh, all I had to do was move the thread to a private static variable in the class. That’s the way I was able to keep stuff running from the HttpModule. (And yes, I know this is still prone to failure, particularly if the app recycles. For as infrequently as it’s used, I have not, however, experienced this.) It was still failing, but this time I wasn’t sure why. It would queue a few dozen messages, then die. Running in Azure, I had to turn on the application logging and FTP in to see what was going on. That led me to a helper method I was using as delegate to build the unsubscribe links. The idea here is that I didn’t want yet another config entry to describe the base URL, appended with the right path that would match the routing table. No, I wanted the app to figure it out for you, so I came up with this little thing: public static string FullUrlHelper(this Controller controller, string actionName, string controllerName, object routeValues = null) { var helper = new UrlHelper(controller.Request.RequestContext); var requestUrl = controller.Request.Url; if (requestUrl == null) return String.Empty; var url = requestUrl.Scheme + "://"; url += requestUrl.Host; url += (requestUrl.Port != 80 ? ":" + requestUrl.Port : ""); url += helper.Action(actionName, controllerName, routeValues); return url; } And yes, that should have been done with a string builder. This is useful for sending out the email verification messages, too. As clever as I thought I was with this, I was using a delegate in the admin controller to format these unsubscribe links for tens of thousands of users. I passed that delegate into a service class that did the email work: Func<User, string> unsubscribeLinkGenerator = user => this.FullUrlHelper("Unsubscribe", AccountController.Name, new { id = user.UserID, key = _profileService.GetUnsubscribeHash(user) }); _mailingListService.MailUsers(subject, body, htmlBody, unsubscribeLinkGenerator); Cool, right? Actually, not so much. If you look back at the helper, this delegate then will depend on the controller context to learn the routing and format for the URL. As you might have guessed, those things were turning null after a few dozen formatted links, when the original request to the admin controller went away. That this wasn’t already happening on my dedicated server is surprising, but again, I understand why the Azure environment might be eager to reclaim a thread after servicing the request. It’s already inefficient that I’m building the entire email for every user, but going back to check the routing table for the right link every time isn’t a win either. I put together a little hack to look up one generic URL, and use that as the basis for a string format. If you’re wondering why I didn’t just use the curly braces up front, it’s because they get URL formatted: var baseString = this.FullUrlHelper("Unsubscribe", AccountController.Name, new { id = "--id--", key = "--key--" }); baseString = baseString.Replace("--id--", "{0}").Replace("--key--", "{1}"); Func unsubscribeLinkGenerator = user => String.Format(baseString, user.UserID, _profileService.GetUnsubscribeHash(user)); _mailingListService.MailUsers(subject, body, htmlBody, unsubscribeLinkGenerator); And wouldn’t you know it, the new solution works just fine. It’s still kind of hacky and inefficient, but it will work until this somehow breaks too.

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• Understanding “Dispatcher” in WPF

  - by Pawan_Mishra

  Level : Beginner to intermediate Consider the following program MainWindow.xaml 1: < Window x:Class ="DispatcherTrial.MainWindow" 2: xmlns ="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" 3: xmlns:x ="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" 4: Title ="MainWindow" Height ="350" Width ="525" > 5: < Grid > 6: < Grid.RowDefinitions > 7: < RowDefinition /> 8: < RowDefinition /> 9: </ Grid.RowDefinitions...(read more)

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• Ms-PL Source Release for System.Web.Mvc 2

  - by Latest Microsoft Blogs

  Hot on the heels of the release of ASP.NET MVC 2 yesterday , I’m happy to announce that we are releasing the source code to ASP.NET MVC 2 under the Ms-PL license , an OSI approved Open Source license. This continues the trend from nearly a year ago when Read More......(read more)

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• Errors while updating Ubuntu 13.10

  - by santiago

  When I execute the updater it always throws the same error saying: Failed to download repository information. Check your internet connection. And when I run the sudo apt-get update I get these lines at the end: W: Failed to fetch cdrom://Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander - Release i386 (20131016.1)/dists/saucy/main/binary-i386/Packages Please use apt-cdrom to make this CD-ROM recognized by APT. apt-get update cannot be used to add new CD-ROMs W: Failed to fetch cdrom://Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander - Release i386 (20131016.1)/dists/saucy/restricted/binary-i386/Packages Please use apt-cdrom to make this CD-ROM recognized by APT. apt-get update cannot be used to add new CD-ROMs W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/tiheum/equinox/ubuntu/dists/saucy/main/source/Sources 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/tiheum/equinox/ubuntu/dists/saucy/main/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead

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• How to structure a XML-based order form using ASP.NET

  - by Brendan

  First question here; please help me if I'm doing something wrong. I'm a graphic designer who's trying to teach himself ASP.NET/C#. My server-side background is PHP/WordPress and some ASP Classic, and when I do code I've hand-coded just about everything since I started learning HTML. So, as I've started to learn .NET, my code has been very manual and procedural. I'm now trying to create a really basic order form that pulls from an XML file to populate the form; there's an image, a title, a price, and selectable quantities. If I was making this form as a static HTML file, I'd have each field named manually and so on postback I could query each field to get the values. But I'm trying to do this dynamically so that I can add/remove items from the form and not have to change the code. In terms of displaying the XML, I rolled my own by loading XmlDocument and using XmlNodeList and a bunch of foreach loops to get things displayed. Then, I learned about <asp:XmlDataSource> and <asp:Repeater>, which made displaying the XML simpler by a large margin. However, I've had a really hard time getting the data that's been submitted on postback (it was implied on SO that there are better ways to get data than nested RepeaterItems). So, what I've learned so far is that you can do things a bunch of different ways in .NET. that's why I thought it'd be good to ask for answers regarding the best way to use ASP.NET to display a XML document and dynamically capture the data that's submitted. Any help is appreciated! I'm using Notepad++ to code .NET 2.0.

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• A Simple Geo fencing using polygon method

  A Simple Geo fencing using polygon method

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• apt sources.list disabled on upgrade to 12.04

  - by user101089

  After a do-release-upgrade, I'm now running ubuntu 12.04 LTS, as indicated below > lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Release: 12.04 Codename: precise However, I find that all the entries in my /etc/apt/sources.list were commented out except for one. QUESTION: Is it safe for me to edit these, replacing the old 'lucid' with 'precise' in what is shown below? ## unixteam source list # deb http://debian.yorku.ca/ubuntu/ precise main main/debian-installer restricted restricted/debian-installer # disabled on upgrade to precise # deb-src http://debian.yorku.ca/ubuntu/ precise main restricted # disabled on upgrade to precise # deb http://debian.yorku.ca/ubuntu/ lucid-updates main restricted # disabled on upgrade to precise # deb-src http://debian.yorku.ca/ubuntu/ lucid-updates main restricted # disabled on upgrade to precise # deb http://debian.yorku.ca/ubuntu/ precise universe # disabled on upgrade to precise # deb-src http://debian.yorku.ca/ubuntu/ precise universe # disabled on upgrade to precise # deb http://debian.yorku.ca/ubuntu/ precise multiverse # disabled on upgrade to precise # deb-src http://debian.yorku.ca/ubuntu/ precise multiverse # disabled on upgrade to precise # deb http://debian.yorku.ca/ubuntu lucid-security main restricted # disabled on upgrade to precise # deb-src http://debian.yorku.ca/ubuntu lucid-security main restricted # disabled on upgrade to precise # deb http://debian.yorku.ca/ubuntu lucid-security universe # disabled on upgrade to precise # deb-src http://debian.yorku.ca/ubuntu lucid-security universe # disabled on upgrade to precise # deb http://debian.yorku.ca/ubuntu lucid-security multiverse # disabled on upgrade to precise # deb-src http://debian.yorku.ca/ubuntu lucid-security multiverse # disabled on upgrade to precise # R sources # see http://cran.us.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/ for details # deb http://probability.ca/cran/bin/linux/ubuntu lucid/ # disabled on upgrade to precise deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main multiverse universe

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• Microsoft OneNote alternative?

  - by YSN

  Hi folks! Is there any program for Linux that has about the same functionality and usability as Microsoft OneNote? At the moment I am checking out Basket (for KDE), that seems to point to the right direction, but still lacks much of the functionality of OneNote and is very buggy unfortunately. For those of you, who do not know OneNote and want to get an idea of what I am talking about, please see the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdi67tnx6nA Any alternative suggestions (including a combination of different tools or apps running in wine) are very much appreciated. Thanks, YSN

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• Using old code on new version of Visual Studio [migrated]

  - by Tu Tran

  I have a project which was started from 90s in C/C++. Therefore, it contains many old coding styles such as K&R-style function declaration, obsolete function, ... The project works fine in Visual Studio 2008, but now I want to use it in the new version of Visual Studio (specifically VS 2010) because we have other projects in Visual Studio 2010/2012. I don't want to have too many versions of Visual Studio on my machine. When I try to compile the old project, Visual Studio throws too many errors. I can fix all of them but I am scared to edit the source code and I want other people to be able to pen it in the old version of VS too. I want the project to remain backwards compatible with VS. My question is how to use the old code in Visual Studio 2010/2012 without changing the code. Or if necessary how do I just fix a few lines of code, but make sure it won't cause an error if someone else opens that code in the older version of VS. Is there a way to tell newer Visual Studio versions to use older compiler flags or something like that?

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• Should interfaces inherit interfaces

  - by dreza

  Although this is a general question it is also specific to a problem I am currently experiencing. I currently have an interface specified in my solution called public interface IContextProvider { IDataContext { get; set; } IAreaContext { get; set; } } This interface is often used throughout the program and hence I have easy access to the objects I need. However at a fairly low level of a part of my program I need access to another class that will use IAreaContext and perform some operations off it. So I have created another factory interface to do this creation called: public interface IEventContextFactory { IEventContext CreateEventContext(int eventId); } I have a class that implements the IContextProvider and is injected using NinJect. The problem I have is that the area where I need to use this IEventContextFactory has access to the IContextProvider only and itself uses another class which will need this new interface. I don't want to have to instantiate this implementation of IEventContextFactory at the low level and would rather work with the IEventContextFactory interface throughout. However I also don't want to have to inject another parameter through the constructors just to have it passed through to the class that needs it i.e. // example of problem public class MyClass { public MyClass(IContextProvider context, IEventContextFactory event) { _context = context; _event = event; } public void DoSomething() { // the only place _event is used in the class is to pass it through var myClass = new MyChildClass(_event); myClass.PerformCalculation(); } } So my main question is, would this be acceptable or is it even common or good practice to do something like this (interface inherit another an interface): public interface IContextProvider : IEventContextFactory or should I consider better alternatives to achieving what I need. If I have not provided enough information to give suggestions let me know and I can provide more.

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• Software Engineering Practices &ndash; Different Projects should have different maturity levels

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve had a lot of discussions at the office lately about the drastically different sets of software engineering practices used on our various projects, if what we are doing is appropriate, and what factors should you be considering when determining what practices are most appropriate in a given context. I wanted to write up my thoughts in a little more detail on this subject, so here we go: If you compare any two software projects (specifically comparing their codebases) you’ll often see very different levels of maturity in the software engineering practices employed. By software engineering practices, I’m specifically referring to the quality of the code and the amount of technical debt present in the project. Things such as Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Behavior Driven Development, proper adherence to the SOLID principles, etc. are all practices that you would expect at the mature end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum would be the quick-and-dirty solutions that are done using something like an Access Database, Excel Spreadsheet, or maybe some quick “drag-and-drop coding”. For this blog post I’m going to refer to this as the Software Engineering Maturity Spectrum (SEMS). I believe there is a time and a place for projects at every part of that SEMS. The risks and costs associated with under-engineering solutions have been written about a million times over so I won’t bother going into them again here, but there are also (unnecessary) costs with over-engineering a solution. Sometimes putting multiple layers, and IoC containers, and abstracting out the persistence, etc is complete overkill if a one-time use Access database could solve the problem perfectly well. A lot of software developers I talk to seem to automatically jump to the very right-hand side of this SEMS in everything they do. A common rationalization I hear is that it may seem like a small trivial application today, but these things always grow and stick around for many years, then you’re stuck maintaining a big ball of mud. I think this is a cop-out. Sure you can’t always anticipate how an application will be used or grow over its lifetime (can you ever??), but that doesn’t mean you can’t manage it and evolve the underlying software architecture as necessary (even if that means having to toss the code out and re-write it at some point…maybe even multiple times). My thoughts are that we should be making a conscious decision around the start of each project approximately where on the SEMS we want the project to exist. I believe this decision should be based on 3 factors: 1. Importance - How important to the business is this application? What is the impact if the application were to suddenly stop working? 2. Complexity - How complex is the application functionality? 3. Life-Expectancy - How long is this application expected to be in use? Is this a one-time use application, does it fill a short-term need, or is it more strategic and is expected to be in-use for many years to come? Of course this isn’t an exact science. You can’t say that Project X should be at the 73% mark on the SEMS and expect that to be helpful. My point is not that you need to precisely figure out what point on the SEMS the project should be at then translate that into some prescriptive set of practices and techniques you should be using. Rather my point is that we need to be aware that there is a spectrum, and that not everything is going to be (or should be) at the edges of that spectrum, indeed a large number of projects should probably fall somewhere within the middle; and different projects should adopt a different level of software engineering practices and maturity levels based on the needs of that project. To give an example of this way of thinking from my day job: Every couple of years my company plans and hosts a large event where ~400 of our customers all fly in to one location for a multi-day event with various activities. We have some staff whose job it is to organize the logistics of this event, which includes tracking which flights everybody is booked on, arranging for transportation to/from airports, arranging for hotel rooms, name tags, etc The last time we arranged this event all these various pieces of data were tracked in separate spreadsheets and reconciliation and cross-referencing of all the data was literally done by hand using printed copies of the spreadsheets and several people sitting around a table going down each list row by row. Obviously there is some room for improvement in how we are using software to manage the event’s logistics. The next time this event occurs we plan to provide the event planning staff with a more intelligent tool (either an Excel spreadsheet or probably an Access database) that can track all the information in one location and make sure that the various pieces of data are properly linked together (so for example if a person cancels you only need to delete them from one place, and not a dozen separate lists). This solution would fall at or near the very left end of the SEMS meaning that we will just quickly create something with very little attention paid to using mature software engineering practices. If we examine this project against the 3 criteria I listed above for determining it’s place within the SEMS we can see why: Importance – If this application were to stop working the business doesn’t grind to a halt, revenue doesn’t stop, and in fact our customers wouldn’t even notice since it isn’t a customer facing application. The impact would simply be more work for our event planning staff as they revert back to the previous way of doing things (assuming we don’t have any data loss). Complexity – The use cases for this project are pretty straightforward. It simply needs to manage several lists of data, and link them together appropriately. Precisely the task that access (and/or Excel) can do with minimal custom development required. Life-Expectancy – For this specific project we’re only planning to create something to be used for the one event (we only hold these events every 2 years). If it works well this may change (see below). Let’s assume we hack something out quickly and it works great when we plan the next event. We may decide that we want to make some tweaks to the tool and adopt it for planning all future events of this nature. In that case we should examine where the current application is on the SEMS, and make a conscious decision whether something needs to be done to move it further to the right based on the new objectives and goals for this application. This may mean scrapping the access database and re-writing it as an actual web or windows application. In this case, the life-expectancy changed, but let’s assume the importance and complexity didn’t change all that much. We can still probably get away with not adopting a lot of the so-called “best practices”. For example, we can probably still use some of the RAD tooling available and might have an Autonomous View style design that connects directly to the database and binds to typed datasets (we might even choose to simply leave it as an access database and continue using it; this is a decision that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis). At Anvil Digital we have aspirations to become a primarily product-based company. So let’s say we use this tool to plan a handful of events internally, and everybody loves it. Maybe a couple years down the road we decide we want to package the tool up and sell it as a product to some of our customers. In this case the project objectives/goals change quite drastically. Now the tool becomes a source of revenue, and the impact of it suddenly stopping working is significantly less acceptable. Also as we hold focus groups, and gather feedback from customers and potential customers there’s a pretty good chance the feature-set and complexity will have to grow considerably from when we were using it only internally for planning a small handful of events for one company. In this fictional scenario I would expect the target on the SEMS to jump to the far right. Depending on how we implemented the previous release we may be able to refactor and evolve the existing codebase to introduce a more layered architecture, a robust set of automated tests, introduce a proper ORM and IoC container, etc. More likely in this example the jump along the SEMS would be so large we’d probably end up scrapping the current code and re-writing. Although, if it was a slow phased roll-out to only a handful of customers, where we collected feedback, made some tweaks, and then rolled out to a couple more customers, we may be able to slowly refactor and evolve the code over time rather than tossing it out and starting from scratch. The key point I’m trying to get across is not that you should be throwing out your code and starting from scratch all the time. But rather that you should be aware of when and how the context and objectives around a project changes and periodically re-assess where the project currently falls on the SEMS and whether that needs to be adjusted based on changing needs. Note: There is also the idea of “spectrum decay”. Since our industry is rapidly evolving, what we currently accept as mature software engineering practices (the right end of the SEMS) probably won’t be the same 3 years from now. If you have a project that you were to assess at somewhere around the 80% mark on the SEMS today, but don’t touch the code for 3 years and come back and re-assess its position, it will almost certainly have changed since the right end of the SEMS will have moved farther out (maybe the project is now only around 60% due to decay). Developer Skills Another important aspect to this whole discussion is around the skill sets of your architects and lead developers. When talking about the progression of a developers skills from junior->intermediate->senior->… they generally start by only being able to write code that belongs on the left side of the SEMS and as they gain more knowledge and skill they become capable of working at a higher and higher level along the SEMS. We all realize that the learning never stops, but eventually you’ll get to the point where you can comfortably develop at the right-end of the SEMS (the exact practices and techniques that translates to is constantly changing, but that’s not the point here). A critical skill that I’d love to see more evidence of in our industry is the most senior guys not only being able to work at the right-end of the SEMS, but more importantly be able to consciously work at any point along the SEMS as project needs dictate. An even more valuable skill would be if you could make the conscious decision to move a projects code further right on the SEMS (based on changing needs) and do so in an incremental manner without having to start from scratch. An exercise that I’m planning to go through with all of our projects here at Anvil in the near future is to map out where I believe each project currently falls within this SEMS, where I believe the project *should* be on the SEMS based on the business needs, and for those that don’t match up (i.e. most of them) come up with a plan to improve the situation.

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• Show #14 DotNetNuke 5.6.1, Razor/Webmatrix and WebCamps

  - by Chris Hammond

  Once again, it’s been far too long since the last show, this time just over 4 months, For Show #14 I am joined by Joe Brinkman. Take a listen and see what has been going on in the DNN world. Length: 47:56 Size: 43.8mb MP3 Download Welcome back to DNNVoice Welcome to guest Joe Brinkman ( http://blog.theaccidentalgeek.com/ ) Introduction to Joe and Welcome back from Chris Hammond ( http://www.chrishammond.com ) and what he's been doing DotNetNuke Training Free Extensions Module Development Templates...(read more)

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• Adding a website link to the Member Directory in DotNetNuke 6.2

  - by Chris Hammond

  In case you missed it, DotNetNuke 6.2 was released today, check out Will Morgenweck’s blog post for more details on the release . With some of the new features DotNetNuke 6.2 makes it easier to start to customize the listing of members on your site, and also the Profile display for users on the website. I started implementing DotNetNuke 6.2 on one of my racing websites last night (yeah, so I upgraded before the release happened, a benefit of working for the corp ). In doing so I configured the profile...(read more)

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• A Quick Primer on SharePoint Customization

  - by PeterBrunone

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} This one goes out to all the people who have been asked to change the way a SharePoint site looks.  Management wants to know how long it will take, and you can whip that out by tomorrow, right?  If you don't have time to prepare a treatise on what's involved, or if you just want to lend some extra weight to your case by quoting a blogger who was an MVP for seven years, then dive right in; this post is for you. There are three main components of SharePoint visual customization:   1)       Theme – A theme encompasses all the standardized text formatting and coloring (borders, fonts, etc), including the background images of various sections. All told, there could be around 50 images involved, and a few hundred CSS (style) classes.  Installing a theme once it’s been created is no great feat.  Given the number of pieces, of course, creating a new theme could take anywhere from a day to a week… once decisions have been made about the desired appearance. 2)      Master Page – A master page provides the framework for page layout.  This includes all the top and side menus, where content shows up, et cetera.  Master pages have been around for a long time in ASP.NET (Microsoft’s web development platform), and they do require some .NET programming knowledge.  Beyond that, in SharePoint, there are a few dozen controls which the system expects find on a given page.  They’re not all used at once, but if they’re not there when they’re needed, chaos ensues.  Estimating a custom master page is difficult, as it depends on the level of customization.  I’ve been on projects where I was brought in simply to fix some problems and add a few finishing touches, and it took 2-3 weeks.  Master page customization requires a large amount of testing time to make sure that the HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and control placement all work well together. 3)      Individual page layout – Each page (ideally) uses a master page for its template, but within the content areas defined by the master page, web parts can be added, removed, and configured from within the browser.  The wireframe that Brent provided could most likely be completed simply by manipulating the content on the home page in this fashion, and we had allowed about a day of effort for the task.  If needed, further functionality can be provided by an experienced ASP.NET developer; custom forms are a common example.  This of course is a bit more in-depth than simple content manipulation and could take several days per page (or more; there’s really no way to quantify this without a set of requirements).   That’s basically it.  To recap:  Fonts and coloring are done with themes, and can take anywhere from a day to a week to create (not counting creative time); required technical skills include HTML, CSS, and image manipulation.  Templated layout is done with master pages, and generally requires a developer familiar with both ASP.NET and SharePoint in particular; it can have far-reaching consequences depending on the complexity of the changes, and could add weeks or months to a project.  Page layout can be as simple as content manipulation in the web browser, taking a few hours per page, or it can involve more detail, like custom forms, and can require programming expertise and significantly more development time.

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• .NET development on a “Retina” MacBook Pro

  - by Jeff

  The rumor that Apple would release a super high resolution version of its 15” laptop has been around for quite awhile, and one I watched closely. After more than three years with a 17” MacBook Pro, and all of the screen real estate it offered, I was ready to replace it with something much lighter. It was a fantastic machine, still doing 6 or 7 hours after 460 charge cycles, but I wanted lighter and faster. With the SSD I put in it, I was able to sell it for $750. The appeal of higher resolution goes way back, when I would plug into a projector and scale up. Consolas, as it turns out, is a nice looking font for code when it’s bigger. While I have mostly indifference for iOS, I have to admit that a higher dot pitch on the iPhone and iPad is pretty to look at. So I ordered the new 15” “Retina” model as soon as the Apple Store went live with it, and got it seven days later. I’ve been primarily using Parallels as my VM of choice from OS X for about five years. They recently put out an update for compatibility with the display, though I’m not entirely sure what that means. I figured there would have to be some messing around to get the VM to look right. The combination that seems to work best is this: Set the display in OS X to “more room,” which is roughly the equivalent of the 1920x1200 that my 17” did. It’s not as stunning as the text at the default 1440x900 equivalent (in OS X), but it’s still quite readable. Parallels still doesn’t entirely know what to do with the high resolution, though what it should do is somehow treat it as native. That flaw aside, I set the Windows 7 scaling to 125%, and it generally looks pretty good. It’s not really taking advantage of the display for sharpness, but hopefully that’s something that Parallels will figure out. Screen tweaking aside, I got the base model with 16 gigs of RAM, so I give the VM 8. I can boot a Windows 7 VM in 9 seconds. Nine seconds! The Windows Experience Index scores are all 7 and above, except for graphics, which are both at 6. Again, that’s in a VM. It’s hard to believe there’s something so fast in a little slim package like that. Hopefully this one gets me at least three years, like the last one.

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• Jetzt geht’s los - speaking in Germany!

  - by Hugo Kornelis

  It feels just like yesterday that I went to Munich for the very first German edition of SQL Saturday – and it was a great event. An agenda that was packed with three tracks of great sessions, and lots of fun with the organization, attendees, and other speakers. That was such a great time that I didn’t have to hesitate long before deciding that I wanted to repeat this event this year. Especially when I heard that it will be held in Rheinland, on July 13 – that is a distance I can travel by car! The...(read more)

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• Hang In There

  - by andyleonard

  Introduction This post is about persistence in the face of adversity. Losing Everything Isn't Losing When I was in Army Basic Training, I heard the senior drill sargeant tell a soldier "This is just a thing, and things can't hurt you." It seemed an odd thing to say. So odd that it stuck with me all these years since boot camp. I believe part of the reason was the truth in that statement. Things can't hurt you. Does fear of losing everything paralyze you? Have you ever lost everything? I have. Well,...(read more)

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• How can I back up my ubuntu system?

  - by Eloff

  I'm sure there's a lot of questions on here similar to this, and I've been reading them, but I still feel this warrants a new question. I want nightly, incremental backups (full disk images would waste a lot of space - unless compressed somehow.) Preferably rotating or deleting old backups when running out of space or after a fixed number of backups. I want to be able to quickly and painlessly restore my system from these backups. This is my first time running ubuntu as my main development machine and I know from my experience with it as a server and in virtual machines that I regularly manage to make it unbootable or damage it to the point of being unable to rescue it. So how would you recommend I do this? There are so many options out there I really don't know where to start. There seems to be a vocal school of thought that it's sufficient to backup your home directory and the list of installed packages from the package manager. I've already installed lots of things from source, or outside of the package manager (development tools, ides, compilers, graphics drivers, etc.) So at the very least, if I do not back up the operating system itself I need to grab all config files, all program binaries, all created but required files, etc. I'd rather backup too much than too little - an ubuntu install is tiny anyway. Also this drastically reduces the restore time, which would cost me more in my time than the extra storage space. I tried using Deja Dup to backup the root partition, excluding some things like /mnt /media /dev /proc etc. Although many websites assured me you can backup a running linux system this way - that seems to be false as it complained that it could not backup the following files: /boot/System.map-3.0.0-17-generic /boot/System.map-3.2.0-22-generic /boot/vmcoreinfo-3.0.0-17-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-17-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-22-generic /etc/.pwd.lock /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/LAN Connection /etc/apparmor.d/cache/lightdm-guest-session /etc/apparmor.d/cache/sbin.dhclient /etc/apparmor.d/cache/usr.bin.evince /etc/apparmor.d/cache/usr.lib.telepathy /etc/apparmor.d/cache/usr.sbin.cupsd /etc/apparmor.d/cache/usr.sbin.tcpdump /etc/apt/trustdb.gpg /etc/at.deny /etc/ati/inst_path_default /etc/ati/inst_path_override /etc/chatscripts /etc/cups/ssl /etc/cups/subscriptions.conf /etc/cups/subscriptions.conf.O /etc/default/cacerts /etc/fuse.conf /etc/group- /etc/gshadow /etc/gshadow- /etc/mtab.fuselock /etc/passwd- /etc/ppp/chap-secrets /etc/ppp/pap-secrets /etc/ppp/peers /etc/security/opasswd /etc/shadow /etc/shadow- /etc/ssl/private /etc/sudoers /etc/sudoers.d/README /etc/ufw/after.rules /etc/ufw/after6.rules /etc/ufw/before.rules /etc/ufw/before6.rules /lib/ufw/user.rules /lib/ufw/user6.rules /lost+found /root /run/crond.reboot /run/cups/certs /run/lightdm /run/lock/whoopsie/lock /run/udisks /var/backups/group.bak /var/backups/gshadow.bak /var/backups/passwd.bak /var/backups/shadow.bak /var/cache/apt/archives/lock /var/cache/cups/job.cache /var/cache/cups/job.cache.O /var/cache/cups/ppds.dat /var/cache/debconf/passwords.dat /var/cache/ldconfig /var/cache/lightdm/dmrc /var/crash/_usr_lib_x86_64-linux-gnu_colord_colord.102.crash /var/lib/apt/lists/lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock /var/lib/dpkg/triggers/Lock /var/lib/lightdm /var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db /var/lib/polkit-1 /var/lib/sudo /var/lib/urandom/random-seed /var/lib/ureadahead/pack /var/lib/ureadahead/run.pack /var/log/btmp /var/log/installer/casper.log /var/log/installer/debug /var/log/installer/partman /var/log/installer/syslog /var/log/installer/version /var/log/lightdm/lightdm.log /var/log/lightdm/x-0-greeter.log /var/log/lightdm/x-0.log /var/log/speech-dispatcher /var/log/upstart/alsa-restore.log /var/log/upstart/alsa-restore.log.1.gz /var/log/upstart/console-setup.log /var/log/upstart/console-setup.log.1.gz /var/log/upstart/container-detect.log /var/log/upstart/container-detect.log.1.gz /var/log/upstart/hybrid-gfx.log /var/log/upstart/hybrid-gfx.log.1.gz /var/log/upstart/modemmanager.log /var/log/upstart/modemmanager.log.1.gz /var/log/upstart/module-init-tools.log /var/log/upstart/module-init-tools.log.1.gz /var/log/upstart/procps-static-network-up.log /var/log/upstart/procps-static-network-up.log.1.gz /var/log/upstart/procps-virtual-filesystems.log /var/log/upstart/procps-virtual-filesystems.log.1.gz /var/log/upstart/rsyslog.log /var/log/upstart/rsyslog.log.1.gz /var/log/upstart/ureadahead.log /var/log/upstart/ureadahead.log.1.gz /var/spool/anacron/cron.daily /var/spool/anacron/cron.monthly /var/spool/anacron/cron.weekly /var/spool/cron/atjobs /var/spool/cron/atspool /var/spool/cron/crontabs /var/spool/cups

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