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• ConcurrentDictionary and updating values

  - by rboarman

  Hello, After searching via Google and coming up empty, I decided to ask the gurus here on StackOverflow. I am trying to update entries in a ConcurrentDictionary something like this: class Class1 { public int Counter { get; set; } } class Test { private ConcurrentDictionary<int, Class1> dict = new ConcurrentDictionary<int, Class1>(); public void TestIt() { foreach (var foo in dict) { foo.Value.Counter = foo.Value.Counter + 1; // Simplified example } } } Essentially I need to iterate over the dictionary and update a field on each Value. I understand from the documentation that I need to avoid using the Value property. Instead I think I need to use TryUpdate except that I don’t want to replace my whole object. Instead, I want to update a field on the object. After reading this: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pfxteam/archive/2010/01/08/9945809.aspx Perhaps I need to use AddOrUpdate and simply do nothing in the add delegate. Does anyone have any insight as to how to do this? Thank you, Rick

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• DynamicObject and WCF support

  - by rboarman

  Hi, I was wondering if anyone has had any luck getting a DynamicObject to serialize and work with WCF? Here’s my little test: [DataContract] class MyDynamicObject : DynamicObject { [DataMember] private Dictionary<string, object> _attributes = new Dictionary<string, object>(); public override bool TryGetMember(GetMemberBinder binder, out object result) { string key = binder.Name; result = null; if (_attributes.ContainsKey(key)) result = _attributes[key]; return true; } public override bool TrySetMember(SetMemberBinder binder, object value) { _attributes.Add(binder.Name, value); return true; } } var dy = new MyDynamicObject(); var ser = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(MyDynamicObject)); var mem = new MemoryStream(); ser.WriteObject(mem, dy); The error I get is: System.Runtime.Serialization.InvalidDataContractException was unhandled Message=Type 'ElasticTest1.MyDynamicObject' cannot inherit from a type that is not marked with DataContractAttribute or SerializableAttribute. Consider marking the base type 'System.Dynamic.DynamicObject' with DataContractAttribute or SerializableAttribute, or removing them from the derived type. Any suggestions? Thanks, Rick

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• WCF service with Factory attribute on .svc is not working on web server (IIS6), but is locally using

  - by Jessica

  I am working on implementing a non web.config approach of WCF services using the factory attribute on the .svc file per Rick Strahl's blog post: Factory="System.ServiceModel.Activation.WebScriptServiceHostFactory" Locally, I am running IIS7 in Visual Studio 2008 and have no problem, but when I deploy to my web server (currently running IIS6), I am getting an authentication error in the event log: Exception: System.ServiceModel.ServiceActivationException: The service '/Services/ResourcesService.svc' cannot be activated due to an exception during compilation. The exception message is: IIS specified authentication schemes 'IntegratedWindowsAuthentication, Anonymous', but the binding only supports specification of exactly one authentication scheme. Valid authentication schemes are Digest, Negotiate, NTLM, Basic, or Anonymous. Change the IIS settings so that only a single authentication scheme is used.. --- System.InvalidOperationException: IIS specified authentication schemes 'IntegratedWindowsAuthentication, Anonymous', but the binding only supports specification of exactly one authentication scheme. Valid authentication schemes are Digest, Negotiate, NTLM, Basic, or Anonymous. Change the IIS settings so that only a single authentication scheme is used. at System.ServiceModel.Web.WebServiceHost.SetBindingCredentialBasedOnHostedEnvironment(ServiceEndpoint serviceEndpoint, AuthenticationSchemes supportedSchemes) at System.ServiceModel.Web.WebServiceHost.AddAutomaticWebHttpBindingEndpoints(ServiceHost host, IDictionary`2 implementedContracts, String multipleContractsErrorMessage) at System.ServiceModel.WebScriptServiceHost.OnOpening() at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open() at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.ActivateService(String normalizedVirtualPath) at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.EnsureServiceAvailable(String normalizedVirtualPath) After doing some Googling, I changed my authentication settings on the .svc folder within my project (on the server) to only anonymous authentication, but it did not work. I still get web service failed on the calls. IIS7 by default only had anonymous. I do not have any entries in my web.config for the services (I stripped them out per this pattern). I am using a nant script to deploy the website to the server and use this also locally to verify the script was not causing the issue. Any known issue with this? IIS 6 not able to handle?

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• MVC controller is being called twice

  - by rboarman

  Hello, I have a controller that is being called twice from an ActionLink call. My home page has a link, that when clicked calls the Index method on the Play controller. An id of 100 is passed into the method. I think this is what is causing the issue. More on this below. Here are some code snippets: Home page: <%= Html.ActionLink(“Click Me”, "Index", "Play", new { id = 100 }, null) %> Play Controller: public ActionResult Index(int? id) { var settings = new Dictionary<string, string>(); settings.Add("Id", id.ToString()); ViewData["InitParams"] = settings.ToInitParams(); return View(); } Play view: <%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage" %> (html <head> omitted for brevity) <body> <form id="form1" runat="server" style="height:100%"> Hello </form> </body> If I get rid of the parameter to the Index method, everything is fine. If I leave the parameter in place, then the Index method is called with 100 as the id. After returning the View, the method is called a second time with a parameter of null. I can’t seem to figure out what is triggering the second call. My first thought was to add a specific route like this: routes.MapRoute( "Play", // Route name "Play/{id}", // URL with parameters new {controller = "Play", action = "Index"} // Parameter defaults ); This had no effect other than making a prettier looking link. I am not sure where to go from here. Thank you in advance. Rick

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• Fluent config not generating mapping files

  - by rboarman

  Hello, I am trying to get Fluent nHibernate to generate mappings so I can take a look at the files and the sql. My code is based on this post and on what I can glean from the documentation. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1375146/fluent-mapping-entities-and-classmaps-in-different-assemblies I am using the latest code from git. Here’s my config code: Configuration cfg = new Configuration(); var ft = Fluently.Configure(cfg); //DbConnection by fluent ft.Database ( MsSqlConfiguration .MsSql2008 .ConnectionString("……") .ShowSql() .UseReflectionOptimizer() ); //get mapping files. ft.Mappings(m => { //set up the mapping locations m.FluentMappings.AddFromAssemblyOf<Entity>() .ExportTo(@"C:\temp"); m.Apply(cfg); }); I also tried: var sessionFactory = Fluently.Configure() .Database(MsSqlConfiguration .MsSql2008 .ShowSql() .ConnectionString(“……")) .Mappings(p => p.FluentMappings .AddFromAssemblyOf<Entity>() .ExportTo(@"c:\temp\")) .BuildSessionFactory(); I have verified that the connection string is correct. The issue is that no mapping files show up in the ExportTo folder and no sql code shows up in the output window or in the log file. No errors or exceptions are generated either. I have no idea where to go from here. Thank you in advance. Rick

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• When *not* to use prepared statements?

  - by Ben Blank

  I'm re-engineering a PHP-driven web site which uses a minimal database. The original version used "pseudo-prepared-statements" (PHP functions which did quoting and parameter replacement) to prevent injection attacks and to separate database logic from page logic. It seemed natural to replace these ad-hoc functions with an object which uses PDO and real prepared statements, but after doing my reading on them, I'm not so sure. PDO still seems like a great idea, but one of the primary selling points of prepared statements is being able to reuse them… which I never will. Here's my setup: The statements are all trivially simple. Most are in the form SELECT foo,bar FROM baz WHERE quux = ? ORDER BY bar LIMIT 1. The most complex statement in the lot is simply three such selects joined together with UNION ALLs. Each page hit executes at most one statement and executes it only once. I'm in a hosted environment and therefore leery of slamming their servers by doing any "stress tests" personally. Given that using prepared statements will, at minimum, double the number of database round-trips I'm making, am I better off avoiding them? Can I use PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_DIRECT_QUERY to avoid the overhead of multiple database trips while retaining the benefit of parametrization and injection defense? Or do the binary calls used by the prepared statement API perform well enough compared to executing non-prepared queries that I shouldn't worry about it? EDIT: Thanks for all the good advice, folks. This is one where I wish I could mark more than one answer as "accepted" — lots of different perspectives. Ultimately, though, I have to give rick his due… without his answer I would have blissfully gone off and done the completely Wrong Thing even after following everyone's advice. :-) Emulated prepared statements it is!

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• Linq join two dictionaries using a common key

  - by rboarman

  Hello, I am trying to join two Dictionary collections together based on a common lookup value. var idList = new Dictionary<int, int>(); idList.Add(1, 1); idList.Add(3, 3); idList.Add(5, 5); var lookupList = new Dictionary<int, int>(); lookupList.Add(1, 1000); lookupList.Add(2, 1001); lookupList.Add(3, 1002); lookupList.Add(4, 1003); lookupList.Add(5, 1004); lookupList.Add(6, 1005); lookupList.Add(7, 1006); // Something like this: var q = from id in idList.Keys join entry in lookupList on entry.Key equals id select entry.Value; The Linq statement above is only an example and does not compile. For each entry in the idList, pull the value from the lookupList based on matching Keys. The result should be a list of Values from lookupList (1000, 1002, 1004). What’s the easiest way to do this using Linq? Thank you, Rick

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• Getting identity from Ado.Net Update command

  - by rboarman

  My scenario is simple. I am trying to persist a DataSet and have the identity column filled in so I can add child records. Here's what I've got so far: using (SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection(connStr)) { SqlDataAdapter adapter = new SqlDataAdapter("select * from assets where 0 = 1", connection); adapter.MissingMappingAction = MissingMappingAction.Passthrough; adapter.MissingSchemaAction = MissingSchemaAction.AddWithKey; SqlCommandBuilder cb = new SqlCommandBuilder(adapter); var insertCmd = cb.GetInsertCommand(true); insertCmd.Connection = connection; connection.Open(); adapter.InsertCommand = insertCmd; adapter.InsertCommand.CommandText += "; set ? = SCOPE_IDENTITY()"; adapter.InsertCommand.UpdatedRowSource = UpdateRowSource.OutputParameters; var param = new SqlParameter("RowId", SqlDbType.Int); param.SourceColumn = "RowId"; param.Direction = ParameterDirection.Output; adapter.InsertCommand.Parameters.Add(param); SqlTransaction transaction = connection.BeginTransaction(); insertCmd.Transaction = transaction; try { assetsImported = adapter.Update(dataSet.Tables["Assets"]); transaction.Commit(); } catch (Exception ex) { transaction.Rollback(); // Log an error } connection.Close(); } The first thing that I noticed, besides the fact that the identity value is not making its way back into the DataSet, is that my change to add the scope_identity select statement to the insert command is not being executed. Looking at the query using Profiler, I do not see my addition to the insert command. Questions: 1) Why is my addition to the insert command not making its way to the sql being executed on the database? 2) Is there a simpler way to have my DataSet refreshed with the identity values of the inserted rows? 3) Should I use the OnRowUpdated callback to add my child records? My plan was to loop through the rows after the Update() call and add children as needed. Thank you in advance. Rick

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• IIS6 compressing static files, but not JSON requests

  - by user500038

  I have IIS6 compression setup, and static content is being compressed correctly as per Coding Horror. Example of a static file: Response Headers Content-Length 55513 Content-Type application/x-javascript Content-Encoding gzip Last-Modified Mon, 20 Dec 2010 15:31:58 GMT Accept-Ranges bytes Vary Accept-Encoding Server Microsoft-IIS/6.0 X-Powered-By ASP.NET Date Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:37:23 GMT Request Headers Accept */* Accept-Language en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding gzip,deflate Accept-Charset ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive 115 Connection keep-alive As you can see, the response is correctly compressed. However with a JSON call you'll see the request with the gzip parameter correctly set: Accept application/json, text/javascript, */*; q=0.01 Accept-Language en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding gzip,deflate Accept-Charset ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive 115 Connection keep-alive X-Requested-With XMLHttpRequest Then for the response: Cache-Control private Content-Length 6811 Content-Type application/json; charset=utf-8 Server Microsoft-IIS/6.0 X-Powered-By ASP.NET X-AspNet-Version 2.0.50727 X-AspNetMvc-Version 2.0 No gzip! I found this article by Rick Stahl, which outlines how to compress in your code, but I'd like IIS to handle this. Is this possible with IIS6?

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• missing rake tasks ??

  - by richard moss

  hi I have ran gem install rails and am running 2.3.4 but i am missing some rake tasks like 'db' and 'gems' if i run rake -T i get the following tasks. How can i get all the others ? rake apache2 # Build Apache 2 module rake clean # Remove compiled files rake clobber # Remove all generated files rake default # Build everything rake doc # Generate all documentation rake doxygen # Generate Doxygen C++ API documentation if ... rake doxygen:clobber # Remove generated Doxygen C++ API documenta... rake doxygen:force # Force generation of Doxygen C++ API docume... rake fakeroot # Create a fakeroot, useful for building nat... rake nginx # Build Nginx helper server rake package # Build all the packages rake package:clean # Remove package products rake package:debian # Create a Debian package rake package:force # Force a rebuild of the package files rake package:gem # Build the gem file passenger-2.2.4.gem rake rdoc # Build the rdoc HTML Files rake rdoc:clobber # Remove rdoc products rake rdoc:force # Force a rebuild of the RDOC files rake sloccount # Run 'sloccount' to see how much code Passe... rake test # Run all unit tests and integration tests rake test:cxx # Run unit tests for the Apache 2 and Nginx ... rake test:integration # Run all integration tests rake test:integration:apache2 # Run Apache 2 integration tests rake test:integration:nginx # Run Nginx integration tests rake test:oxt # Run unit tests for the OXT library rake test:rcov # Run coverage tests for the Ruby libraries rake test:restart # Run the 'restart' integration test infinit... rake test:ruby If anyone knows why this has happened, how i can fix it or anything else that could help, please let me know thanks alot rick

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• Parsing the Youtube API with DOM

  - by Kirk

  I'm using the Youtube API and I can retrieve the date information without a problem, but don't know how to retrieve the description information. My Code: <?php $v = "dQw4w9WgXcQ"; $url = "http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/". $v; $doc = new DOMDocument; $doc->load($url); $pub = $doc->getElementsByTagName("published")->item(0)->nodeValue; $desc = $doc->getElementsByTagName("media:description")->item(0)->nodeValue; echo "<b>Video Uploaded:</b> "; echo date( "F jS, Y", strtotime( $pub ) ); echo '<br>'; if (isset ($desc)) { echo "<b>Description:</b> "; echo $desc; echo '<br>'; } ?> Here's a link to the feed: http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/dQw4w9WgXcQ?prettyprint=true And the excerpt of code I don't know how to retrieve data from: <media:group> <media:description type='plain'>Music video by Rick Astley performing Never Gonna Give You Up. (C) 1987 PWL</media:description> </media:group> Thanks in advance.

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• Dec 5th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, jQuery, Silverlight, Visual Studio

  - by ScottGu

  Here is the latest in my link-listing series.  Also check out my VS 2010 and .NET 4 series for another on-going blog series I’m working on. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] ASP.NET ASP.NET Code Samples Collection: J.D. Meier has a great post that provides a detailed round-up of ASP.NET code samples and tutorials from a wide variety of sources.  Lots of useful pointers. Slash your ASP.NET compile/load time without any hard work: Nice article that details a bunch of optimizations you can make to speed up ASP.NET project load and compile times. You might also want to read my previous blog post on this topic here. 10 Essential Tools for Building ASP.NET Websites: Great article by Stephen Walther on 10 great (and free) tools that enable you to more easily build great ASP.NET Websites.  Highly recommended reading. Optimize Images using the ASP.NET Sprite and Image Optimization Framework: A nice article by 4GuysFromRolla that discusses how to use the open-source ASP.NET Sprite and Image Optimization Framework (one of the tools recommended by Stephen in the previous article).  You can use this to significantly improve the load-time of your pages on the client. Formatting Dates, Times and Numbers in ASP.NET: Scott Mitchell has a great article that discusses formatting dates, times and numbers in ASP.NET.  A very useful link to bookmark.  Also check out James Michael’s DateTime is Packed with Goodies blog post for other DateTime tips. Examining ASP.NET’s Membership, Roles and Profile APIs (Part 18): Everything you could possibly want to known about ASP.NET’s built-in Membership, Roles and Profile APIs must surely be in this tutorial series. Part 18 covers how to store additional user info with Membership. ASP.NET with jQuery An Introduction to jQuery Templates: Stephen Walther has written an outstanding introduction and tutorial on the new jQuery Template plugin that the ASP.NET team has contributed to the jQuery project. Composition with jQuery Templates and jQuery Templates, Composite Rendering, and Remote Loading: Dave Ward has written two nice posts that talk about composition scenarios with jQuery Templates and some cool scenarios you can enable with them. Using jQuery and ASP.NET to Build a News Ticker: Scott Mitchell has a nice tutorial that demonstrates how to build a dynamically updated “news ticker” style UI with ASP.NET and jQuery. Checking All Checkboxes in a GridView using jQuery: Scott Mitchell has a nice post that covers how to use jQuery to enable a checkbox within a GridView’s header to automatically check/uncheck all checkboxes contained within rows of it. Using jQuery to POST Form Data to an ASP.NET AJAX Web Service: Rick Strahl has a nice post that discusses how to capture form variables and post them to an ASP.NET AJAX Web Service (.asmx). ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC Diagnostics Using NuGet: Phil Haack has a nice post that demonstrates how to easily install a diagnostics page (using NuGet) that can help identify and diagnose common configuration issues within your apps. ASP.NET MVC 3 JsonValueProviderFactory: James Hughes has a nice post that discusses how to take advantage of the new JsonValueProviderFactory support built into ASP.NET MVC 3.  This makes it easy to post JSON payloads to MVC action methods. Practical jQuery Mobile with ASP.NET MVC: James Hughes has another nice post that discusses how to use the new jQuery Mobile library with ASP.NET MVC to build great mobile web applications. Credit Card Validator for ASP.NET MVC 3: Benjii Me has a nice post that demonstrates how to build a [CreditCard] validator attribute that can be used to easily validate credit card numbers are in the correct format with ASP.NET MVC. Silverlight Silverlight FireStarter Keynote and Sessions: A great blog post from John Papa that contains pointers and descriptions of all the great Silverlight content we published last week at the Silverlight FireStarter.  You can watch all of the talks online.  More details on my keynote and Silverlight 5 announcements can be found here. 31 Days of Windows Phone 7: 31 great tutorials on how to build Windows Phone 7 applications (using Silverlight).  Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit Update: David Anson has a nice post that discusses some of the additional controls provided with the Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit. Visual Studio JavaScript Editor Extensions: A nice (and free) Visual Studio plugin built by the web tools team that significantly improves the JavaScript intellisense support within Visual Studio. HTML5 Intellisense for Visual Studio: Gil has a blog post that discusses a new extension my team has posted to the Visual Studio Extension Gallery that adds HTML5 schema support to Visual Studio 2008 and 2010. Team Build + Web Deployment + Web Deploy + VS 2010 = Goodness: Visual blogs about how to enable a continuous deployment system with VS 2010, TFS 2010 and the Microsoft Web Deploy framework.  Visual Studio 2010 Emacs Emulation Extension and VIM Emulation Extension: Check out these two extensions if you are fond of Emacs and VIM key bindings and want to enable them within Visual Studio 2010. Hope this helps, Scott

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• The Winds of Change are a Blowin&rsquo;

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  For six years I have been an avid and outspoken fan and paying customer of SourceGear products…from Vault to Dragnet to Fortress and on to Vault Professional, but that is all changing now.  Not the fan part, but the paying customer part.  I’m still a huge fan.  I think that SourceGear does a great job with their product and support has been fantastic when needed (which is not very often).  I think that Eric Sink has done a fine job building a quality company and products, and I appreciate his contributions to the tech community through this blogging and books.  I still think their products are high quality and do a fantastic job of what they do.  But there’s the rub…what they do is no longer enough for me. As I have rebuilt our development team over the last couple of years, and we have begun to investigate Scrum and Kanban, I realize that I need more visibility into the progress of the team.  I need better project management tools, and this is where Vault Professional lags behind several other tools.  Granted, in the latest release (Vault 6.0) they added a nice time tracking feature, but I want more.  (Note, I did contact SourceGear about my quest for more, but apparently, the rest of their customer base has not been clamoring for this and so they have not built it.  Granted, I wasn’t clamoring for it either until just recently, but unfortunately for SourceGear, I want it now and don’t want to wait for them to build it into their system.) Ironically, it was SourceGear themselves who started to turn me on to the possibilities of other tools.  They built a limited integration with Axosoft OnTime which I read about several times on their support site (I used to regularly read and occasionally comment on their Support Forum).  I decided to check out OnTime and was very impressed with the tool for work item tracking and project management (not to mention their great Scrum Master in 10 Minutes video).  I fell in love with the capabilities of OnTime.  Unfortunately, the integration with Vault for source control management was, as I mentioned, limited.  I could have forfeited the integration between work items and source code, but there is too much benefit to linking check-ins to work items for me to give that up.  So then I did what was previously unthinkable for me, I considered switching not just the work tracking tool, but also the source code management tool.  This was really stepping outside my comfort zone because source code is Gold, and not to be trifled with.  When you find a good weapon to protect your gold, stick with it. I looked at Git and Tortoise SVN, but the integration methods for those was pretty rough compared to what I was used to.  The recommended tool from Axosoft’s point of view appeared to be RocketSVN, but I really wasn’t sure I wanted to go the “flavor of Subversion” route.  Then I started thinking about that other tool I liked back when I first chose to go with Vault, but couldn’t afford:  Team Foundation Server.  And what do you know…Microsoft has not only radically improved it over that version from back in 2006, but they also came to their senses about how it should be licensed, and it is much more affordable now.  So I started looking into the latest capabilities in the 2012 version, and I fell in love all over again. I really went deep on checking out the tools.  I watched numerous webcasts from Microsoft partners, went to a beta preview on Microsoft’s campus, and watched a lot of Channel 9 videos on the new ALM features (oooh…shiny).  Frankly, I was very impressed with the capabilities of the newest version, and figured this was probably our direction.  As an interesting twist of fate, one of my employees crossed paths with an ALM Consultant from Northwest Cadence, a local Microsoft Partner, and one of the companies that produced several of the webcasts that I had been watching.  So I gave Bryon a call and started grilling him to see if he really knew anything or was just another guy who couldn’t find a job so he called himself a consultant.  It turns out Bryon actually knows a lot, especially in an area that was becoming a frustration point for us: Branching strategies and automated builds (that’s probably a whole separate blog entry).  As we talked, Bryon suggested we look into doing a DTDPS (Developer Tools Deployment Planning Services) session with his company.  This is a service that can be paid for by Microsoft Enterprise Agreement planning services credits or SA training benefits, and, again, coincidentally, we had several that were just about to expire, so I put them to good use. The DTDPS sessions were great; and Bryon, Rick, and the rest of the folks at Northwest Cadence have been a pleasure to work with.  We have just purchased a new server for our TFS rollout and are planning the steps and options right now.  This is still a big project ahead of us to not only install and configure TFS, but also to load all of our source code (many different systems, not just one program) and transition to the new way of life with TFS, but I am convinced that it is the right move for my team at this point in time.  We need the new capabilities that are in alignment with Scrum and Kanban methodologies in order to more efficiently manage all the different projects that we have going on at one time. I would still wholeheartedly endorse SourceGear’s products and Axosoft’s OnTime for those whose needs are met by those tools, but for me and my team, I think that TFS is the right fit, and I am looking forward to the change.

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• Back Up to Tape the Way You Shop For Groceries

  - by rickramsey

  Imagine if this was how you shopped for groceries: From the end of the aisle sprint to the point where you reach the ketchup. Pull a bottle from the shelf and yell at the top of your lungs, “Got it!” Sprint back to the end of the aisle. Start again and sprint down the same aisle to the mustard, pull a bottle from the shelf and again yell for the whole store to hear, “Got it!” Sprint back to the end of the aisle. Repeat this procedure for every item you need in the aisle. Proceed to the next aisle and follow the same steps for the list of items you need from that aisle. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Not only is it horribly inefficient, it’s exhausting and can lead to wear out failures on your grocery cart, or worse, yourself. This is essentially how NetApp and some other applications write NDMP backups to tape. In the analogy, the ketchup and mustard are the files to be written, yelling “Got it!” is the equivalent of a sync mark at the end of a file, and the sprint back to the end of an aisle is the process most commonly called a “backhitch” where the drive has to back up on a tape to start writing again. Writing to tape in this way results in very slow tape drive performance and imposes unnecessary wear on the tape drive and the media, especially when writing small files. The good news is not all tape drives behave this way when writing small files. Unlike midrange LTO drives, Oracle’s StorageTek T10000D tape drive is designed to handle this scenario efficiently. The difference between the two drive types is that the T10000D drive gives you the ability to write files in a NetApp NDMP backup environment the way you would normally shop for groceries. With grocery shopping, you essentially stream through aisles picking up items as you go, and then after checking out, yell, “Got it!”, though you might do that last step silently. With the T10000D, it has a feature called the Tape Application Accelerator, which prevents the drive from having to stop after each file is written to notify NetApp or another application that the write was successful. When enabled in the T10000D tape drive, Tape Application Accelerator causes the tape drive to respond to tape mark and file sync commands differently than when disabled: A tape mark received by the tape drive is treated as a buffered tape mark. A file sync received by the tape drive is treated as a no op command. Since buffered tape marks and no op commands do not cause the tape drive to empty the contents of its buffer to tape and backhitch, the data is written to tape in significantly less time. Oracle has emulated NetApp environments with a number of different file sizes and found the following when comparing the T10000D with the Tape Application Accelerator enabled versus LTO6 tape drives. Notice how the T10000D is not only monumentally faster, but also remarkably consistent? In addition, the writing of the 50 GB of files is done without a single backhitch. The LTO6 drive, meanwhile, will perform as many as 3,800 backhitches! At the end of writing the entire set of files, the T10000D tape drive reports back to the application, in this case NetApp, that the write was successful via a tape mark. So if the Tape Application Accelerator dramatically improves performance and reliability, why wouldn’t you always have it enabled? The reason is because tape drive buffers are meant to be just temporary data repositories so in the event of a power loss, there could be data loss in certain environments for the files that resided in the buffer. Fortunately, we do have best practices depending on your environment to avoid this from happening. I highly recommend reading Maximizing Tape Performance with StorageTek T10000 Tape Drives (pdf) to decide which best practice is right for you. The white paper also digs deeper into the benefits of the Tape Application Accelerator. The white paper is free, and after downloading it you can decide for yourself whether you want to yell “Got it!” out loud or just silently to yourself. Customer Advisory Panel One final link: Oracle has started up a Customer Advisory Panel program to collect feedback from customers on their current experiences with Oracle products, as well as desires for future product development. If you would like to participate in the program, go to this link at oracle.com. photo taken on Idaho's Sacajewea Historic Biway by Rick Ramsey - Brian Zents Follow OTN on Blog | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

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• Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition Recap and Photos

  - by Brian Jackett

  If you’ve noticed my blogging activity has reduced in frequency and technical content lately it’s primarily due to all of the conferences I’ve been attending, speaking at, or planning in the past few months.  This past Friday myself and six other dedicated individuals put on Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition as the culmination of a few months of hard work.  For those unfamiliar, Stir Trek is a web developer conference that was founded last year as an event to showcase content from Microsoft’s MIX conference and end the day with a private showing of the then just-released Star Trek movie.  This year’s conference expanded from 2 to 4 content tracks and upped the number of tickets from 350 to 600.  Even more amazing was the fact that we had 592 people show up day of the event for the lowest drop-off percentage of any conference I’ve been to before.   Nerd Dinner and Swag Bags     The night before Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition we hosted a nerd dinner at the Polaris Shopping mall food court with about 30 in attendance.  Nerd dinners are a great time to meet others passionate about technology and socialize before the whirlwind of the conference hits.  After the nerd dinner 20+ volunteers headed to the conference location and helped us stuff swag bags.  This in and of itself was a monumental task of putting together 600 swag bags with numerous leaflets, sponsor items, and t-shirts.  A big thanks goes out to all who assisted us that night so that we could finish in just under 2 hours instead of taking all night.  My sleep schedule also thanks you. Morning of Stir Trek     After getting a decent amount of sleep I arrived at Marcus Crosswoods theater at 6am to begin setting up for the day.  Myself and Jody Morgan were in charge of registration so we got tables set up, laid out swag bags, and organized our volunteer crew to assist with checking-in attendees.  Despite having 600+ people registration went fairly smoothly and got the day off to a great start.  I especially appreciated the 3+ cups of coffee from Crimson Cup, a local coffee shop.  For any of you that know me you’ll know that I rarely drink coffee except a few times a year when I really need the energy, so that says a lot about how good their coffee is.   Conference Starts     Once registration was completed the day kicked off with Molly Holzschlag keynoting.  Unfortunately Molly suffered from an ear infection and wasn’t able to fly so she had a virtual keynote and a session later in the day.  I was working behind the scenes on various tasks so I was only able to drop in very briefly on the keynote and rest of the morning sessions.  Throughout the day I tried to grab at least 1 or 2 pics of each presenter.  See my album below for the full set of pics.      For lunch we ordered around 150 pizzas from Mellow Mushroom, a local pizza place (notice the theme of supporting local businesses.)  Early on we were concerned about Mellow Mushroom being able to supply that many pizzas and get them delivered (still hot) to the theater, but they did an excellent job day of the event.  I wish I had gotten some pictures of the old school VW van they delivered the pizza in, but I was just a bit busy running around trying to get theaters ready for lunch.  We had attendees from last year who specifically requested that we have Mellow Mushroom supply lunch this year and I’m glad everything worked out being able to use them again.     During the afternoon I was able to attend a few sessions and hear some great content from various speakers.  It was also nice to just sit down and get off my feet for a bit.  After the last sessions the day concluded with a raffle.  There were a few logistical and technical issues that hampered our ability to smoothly conduct the raffle.  To those of you that agree the raffle wasn’t the smoothest experience I would like to say that the Stir Trek planning committee has already begun meeting to discuss ways of improving the conference for next year.  We are also accepting feedback (both positive and negative) at the following link: click here.  If you don’t wish to use the Joind In site you can also email me directly and I’ll be sure to pass along the feedback.   Iron Man 2 Movie     Last but not least, what Stir Trek event would be complete without the feature movie.  This year’s movie was Iron Man 2.  The theater had some really cool props and promotions (see pic below) for the movie.  I really enjoyed Iron Man 2, but I would recommend brushing up on the Iron Man comics and Marvel’s plans for future movies to understand some of the plot elements that come up.  Also make sure you stay through to the end of the movie credits to see a sneak peak of something special, that’s all I’ll say. Conclusion     Again a big thanks goes out to all of the speakers, sponsors, attendees, movie theater staff, volunteers, and everyone else involved in making this event great.  Also big thanks to my fellow Stir Trek planning committee members: Jeff Blankenburg, Matt Casto, Carey Payette, Jody Morgan, Rick Kierner, and Sarah Dutkiewitcz.  I am grateful for everything I learned while helping plan this event and look forward to being involved again next year.  For those interested we are currently targeting Thor as our movie theme for 2011 and then The Avengers for 2012.  These are tentative based on release dates that could shift as we get closer, but for now look solid.   Photos Pics on Facebook (includes tagging)     Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition photos on Facebook Pics on Live site (higher res)      View Full Album         -Frog Out

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• SQLAuthority News – #SQLPASS 2012 Seattle Update – Memorylane 2009, 2010, 2011

  - by pinaldave

  Today is the first day of the SQLPASS 2012 and I will be soon posting SQL Server 2012 experience over here. Today when I landed in Seattle, I got the nostalgia feeling. I used to stay in the USA. I stayed here for more than 7 years – I studied here and I worked in USA. I had lots of friends in Seattle when I used to stay in the USA. I always wanted to visit Seattle because it is THE place. I remember once I purchased a ticket to travel to Seattle through Priceline (well it was the cheapest option and I was a student) but could not fly because of an interesting issue. I used to be Teaching Assistant of an advanced course and the professor asked me to build a pop-quiz for the course. I unfortunately had to cancel the trip. Before I returned to India – I pretty much covered every city existed in my list to must visit, except one – Seattle. It was so interesting that I never made it to Seattle even though I wanted to visit, when I was in USA. After that one time I never got a chance to travel to Seattle. After a few years I also returned to India for good. Once on Television I saw “Sleepless in Seattle” movie playing and I immediately changed the channel as it reminded me that I never made it to Seattle before. However, destiny has its own way to handle decisions. After I returned to India – I visited Seattle total of 5 times and this is my 6th visit to Seattle in less than 3 years. I was here for 3 previous SQLPASS events – 2009, 2010, and 2011 as well two Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Summit in 2009 and 2010. During these five trips I tried to catch up with all of my all friends but I realize that time has its own way of doing things. Many moved out of Seattle and many were too busy revive the old friendship but there were few who always make a point to meet me when I travel to the city. During the course of my visits I have made few fantastic new friends – Rick Morelan (Joes 2 Pros) and Greg Lynch. Every time I meet them I feel that I know them for years. I think city of Seattle has played very important part in our relationship that I got these fantastic friends. SQLPASS is the event where I find all of my SQL Friends and I look for this event for an entire year. This year’s my goal is to meet as many as new friends I can meet. If you are going to be at SQLPASS – FIND ME. I want to have a photo with you. I want to remember each name as I believe this is very important part of our life – making new friends and sustaining new friendship. Here are few of the pointers where you can find me. All Keynotes – Blogger’s Table Exhibition Booth Joes 2 Pros Booth #117 – Do not forget to stop by at the booth – I might have goodies for you – limited editions. Book Signing Events – Check details in tomorrow’s blog or stop by Booth #117 Evening Parties 6th Nov – Welcome Reception Evening Parties 7th Nov - Exhibitor Reception – Do not miss Booth #117 Evening Parties 8th Nov - Community Appreciation Party Additionally at few other locations – Embarcadero Booth In Coffee shops in Convention Center If you are SQLPASS – make sure that I find an opportunity to meet you at the event. Reserve a little time and lets have a coffee together. I will be continuously tweeting about my where about on twitter so let us stay connected on twitter. Here is my experience of my earlier experience of attending SQLPASS. SQLAuthority News – Book Signing Event – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log SQLAuthority News – Meeting SQL Friends – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log SQLAuthority News – Story of Seattle – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log SQLAuthority News – SQLPASS Nov 8-11, 2010-Seattle – An Alternative Look at Experience SQLAuthority News – Notes of Excellent Experience at SQL PASS 2009 Summit, Seattle Let us meet! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)   Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Global Perspective: Oracle AppAdvantage Does its Stage Debut in the UK

  - by Tanu Sood

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Global Perspective is a monthly series that brings experiences, business needs and real-world use cases from regions across the globe. This month’s feature is a follow-up from last month’s Global Perspective note from a well known ACE Director based in EMEA. My first contribution to this blog was before Oracle Open World and I was quite excited about where this initiative would take me in my understanding of the value of Oracle Fusion Middleware. Rimi Bewtra from the Oracle AppAdvantage team came as promised to the Oracle ACE Director briefings and explained what this initiative was all about and I then asked the directors to take part in the new survey. The story was really well received and then at the SOA advisory board that many of these ACE Directors already take part in there was a further discussion on how this initiative will help customers understand the benefits of adoption. A few days later Rick Beers launched the program at a lunch of invited customer executives which included one from Pella who talked about their projects (a quick recap on that here). I wasn’t able to stay for the whole event but what really interested me was that these executives who understood the technology but where looking for how they could use them to drive their businesses. Lots of ideas were bubbling up in my head about how we can use this in user groups to help our members, and the timing was fantastic as just three weeks later we had UKOUG_Apps13, our flagship Applications conference in the UK. We had independently working with Oracle marketing in the UK on an initiative called Apps Transformation to help our members look beyond just the application they use today. We have had a Fusion community page but felt the options open are now much wider than Fusion Applications, there are acquired applications, social, mobility and of course the underlying technology, Oracle Fusion Middleware. I was really pleased to be allowed to give the Oracle AppAdvantage story as a session in our conference and we are planning a special Apps Transformation event in March where I hope the Oracle AppAdvantage team will take part and we will have the results of the survey to discuss. But, life also came full circle for me. In my first post, I talked about Andrew Sutherland and his original theory that Oracle Fusion Middleware adoption had technical drivers. Well, Andrew was a speaker at our event and he gave a potted, tech-talk free update on Oracle Open World. Andrew talked about the Prevailing Technology Winds, and what is driving this today and he talked about that in the past it was the move from simply automating processes (ERP etc), through the altering of those processes (SOA) and onto consolidation. The next drivers are around the need to predict, both faster and more accurately; how to better exploit the information that we have available. He went on to talk about The Nexus of Forces: Social, Mobile, Cloud and Information – harnessing these forces of change with Oracle technology. Gartner really likes this concept and if you want to know more you can get their paper here. All this has made me think, and I hope it will make you too. Technology can help us drive our businesses better and understanding your needs can be the first step on your journey, which was the theme of our event in the UK. I spoke to a number of the delegates and I hope to share some of their stories in later posts. If you have a story to share, the survey is at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/P335DD3 About the Author: Debra Lilley, Fujitsu Fusion Champion, UKOUG Board Member, Fusion User Experience Advocate and ACE Director. Debra has 18 years experience with Oracle Applications, with E Business Suite since 9.4.1, moving to Business Intelligence Team Leader and then Oracle Alliance Director. She has spoken at over 100 conferences worldwide and posts at debrasoraclethoughts Editor’s Note: Debra has kindly agreed to share her musings and experience in a monthly column on the Fusion Middleware blog so do stay tuned…

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• Best Method For Evaluating Existing Software or New Software

  How many of us have been faced with having to decide on an off-the-self or a custom built component, application, or solution to integrate in to an existing system or to be the core foundation of a new system? What is the best method for evaluating existing software or new software still in the design phase? One of the industry preferred methodologies to use is the Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs (ARID) evaluation process.  ARID is a hybrid mixture of the Active Design Review (ADR) methodology and the Architectural Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM). So what is ARID? ARD’s main goal is to ensure quality, detailed designs in software. One way in which it does this is by empowering reviewers by assigning generic open ended survey questions. This approach attempts to remove the possibility for allowing the standard answers such as “Yes” or “No”. The ADR process ignores the “Yes”/”No” questions due to the fact that they can be leading based on how the question is asked. Additionally these questions tend to receive less thought in comparison to more open ended questions. Common Active Design Review Questions What possible exceptions can occur in this component, application, or solution? How should exceptions be handled in this component, application, or solution? Where should exceptions be handled in this component, application, or solution? How should the component, application, or solution flow based on the design? What is the maximum execution time for every component, application, or solution? What environments can this component, application, or solution? What data dependencies does this component, application, or solution have? What kind of data does this component, application, or solution require? Ok, now I know what ARID is, how can I apply? Let’s imagine that your organization is going to purchase an off-the-shelf (OTS) solution for its customer-relationship management software. What process would we use to ensure that the correct purchase is made? If we use ARID, then we will have a series of 9 steps broken up by 2 phases in order to ensure that the correct OTS solution is purchases. Phase 1 Identify the Reviewers Prepare the Design Briefing Prepare the Seed Scenarios Prepare the Materials When identifying reviewers for a design it is preferred that they be pulled from a candidate pool comprised of developers that are going to implement the design. The believe is that developers actually implementing the design will have more a vested interest in ensuring that the design is correct prior to the start of code. Design debriefing consist of a summary of the design, examples of the design solving real world examples put in to use and should be no longer than two hours typically. The primary goal of this briefing is to adequately summarize the design so that the review members could actually implement the design. In the example of purchasing an OTS product I would attempt to review my briefing prior to its distribution with the review facilitator to ensure that nothing was excluded that should have not been. This practice will also allow me to test the length of the briefing to ensure that can be delivered in an appropriate about of time. Seed Scenarios are designed to illustrate conceptualized scenarios when applied with a set of sample data. These scenarios can then be used by the reviewers in the actual evaluation of the software, All materials needed for the evaluation should be prepared ahead of time so that they can be reviewed prior to and during the meeting. Materials Included: Presentation Seed Scenarios Review Agenda Phase 2 Present ARID Present Design Brainstorm and prioritize scenarios Apply scenarios Summarize Prior to the start of any ARID review meeting the Facilitator should define the remaining steps of ARID so that all the participants know exactly what they are doing prior to the start of the review process. Once the ARID rules have been laid out, then the lead designer presents an overview of the design which typically takes about two hours. During this time no questions about the design or rational are allowed to be asked by the review panel as a standard, but they are written down for use latter in the process. After the presentation the list of compiled questions is then summarized and sent back to the lead designer as areas that need to be addressed further. In the example of purchasing an OTS product issues could arise regarding security, the implementation needed or even if this is this the correct product to solve the needed solution. After the Design presentation a brainstorming and prioritize scenarios process begins by reducing the seed scenarios down to just the highest priority scenarios.  These will then be used to test the design for suitability. Once the selected scenarios have been defined the reviewers apply the examples provided in the presentation to the scenarios. The intended output of this process is to provide code or pseudo code that makes use of the examples provided while solving the selected seed scenarios. As a standard rule, the designers of the systems are not allowed to help the review board unless they all become stuck. When this occurs it is documented and along with the reason why the designer needed to help the review panel back on track. Once all of the scenarios have been completed the review facilitator reviews with the group issues that arise during the process. Then the reviewers will be polled as to efficacy of the review experience. References: Clements, Paul., Kazman, Rick., Klien, Mark. (2002). Evaluating Software Architectures: Methods and Case Studies Indianapolis, IN: Addison-Wesley

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• About Solaris 11 and UltraSPARC II/III/IV/IV+

  - by nospam(at)example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp)

  I know that I will get the usual amount of comments like "Oh, Jörg ? you can't be negative about Oracle" for this article. However as usual I want to explain the logic behind my reasoning. Yes ? I know that there is a lot of UltraSPARC III, IV and IV+ gear out there. But there are some very basic questions: Does your application you are currently running on this gear stops running just because you can't run Solaris 11 on it? What is the need to upgrade a system already in production to Solaris 11? I have the impression, that some people think that the systems get useless in the moment Oracle releases Solaris 11. I know that Sun sold UltraSPARC IV+ systems until 2009. The Sun SF490 introduced 2004 for example, that was a Sun SF480 with UltraSPARC IV and later with UltraSPARC IV+. And yes, Sun made some speedbumps. At that time the systems of the UltraSPARC III to IV+ generations were supported on Solaris 8, on Solaris 9 and on Solaris 10. However from my perspective we sold them to customers, which weren't able to migrate to Solaris 10 because they used applications not supported on Solaris 9 or who just didn't wanted to migrate to Solaris 10. Believe it or not ? I personally know two customers that migrated core systems to Solaris 10 in ? well 2008/9. This was especially true when the M3000 was announced in 2008 when it closed the darned single socket gap. It may be different at you site, however that's what I remember about that time when talking with customers. At first: Just because there is no Solaris 11 for UltraSPARC III, IV and IV+, it doesn't mean that Solaris 10 will go away anytime soon. I just want to point you to "Expect Lifetime Support - Hardware and Operating Systems". It states about Premier Support:Maintenance and software upgrades are included for Oracle operating systems and Oracle VM for a minimum of eight years from the general availability date.GA for Solaris 10 was in 2005. Plus 8 years ? 2013 ? at minimum. Then you can still opt for 3 years of "Extended Support" ? 2016 ? at minimum. 2016 your systems purchased in 2009 are 7 years old. Even on systems purchased at the very end of the lifetime of that system generation. That are the rules as written in the linked document. I said minimum The actual dates are even further in the future: Premier Support for Solaris 10 ends in 2015, Extended support ends 2018. Sustaining support ? indefinite. You will find this in the document "Oracle Lifetime Support Policy: Oracle Hardware and Operating Systems".So I don't understand when some people write, that Oracle is less protective about hardware investments than Sun. And for hardware it's the same as with Sun: Service 5 years after EOL as part of Premier Support. I would like to write about a different perspective as well: I have to be a little cautious here, because this is going in the roadmap area, so I will mention the public sources here: John Fowler told last year that we have to expect at at least 3x the single thread performance of T3 for T4. We have 8 cores in T4, as stated by Rick Hetherington. Let's assume for a moment that a T4 core will have the performance of a UltraSPARC core (just to simplify math and not to disclosing anything about the performance, all existing SPARC cores are considered equal). So given this pieces of information, you could consolidate 8 V215, 4 or 8 V245, 2 full blown V445,2 full blown 490, 2 full blown M3000 on a single T4 SPARC processor. The Fowler roadmap prezo talked about 4-socket systems with T4. So 32 V215, 16 to 8 V245, 8 fullblown V445, 8 full blown V490, 8 full blown M3000 in a system image. I think you get the idea. That said, most of the systems we are talking about have already amortized and perhaps it's just time to invest in new systems to yield other advantages like reduced space consumptions, like reduced power consumption, like some of the neat features sun4v gives you, and yes ? reduced number of processor licenses for Oracle and less money for Oracle HW/SW support. As much as I dislike it myself that my own UltraSPARC III and UltraSPARC II based systems won't run on Solaris 11 (and I have quite a few of them in my personal lab), I really think that the impact on production environments will be much less than most people think now. By the way: The reason for this move is a quite significant new feature. I will tell you that it was this feature, when it's out. I assume, telling just a word more could lead to much more time to blog.

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• Is READ UNCOMMITTED / NOLOCK safe in this situation?

  - by Ben Challenor

  I know that snapshot isolation would fix this problem, but I'm wondering if NOLOCK is safe in this specific case so that I can avoid the overhead. I have a table that looks something like this: drop table Data create table Data ( Id BIGINT NOT NULL, Date BIGINT NOT NULL, Value BIGINT, constraint Cx primary key (Date, Id) ) create nonclustered index Ix on Data (Id, Date) There are no updates to the table, ever. Deletes can occur but they should never contend with the SELECT because they affect the other, older end of the table. Inserts are regular and page splits to the (Id, Date) index are extremely common. I have a deadlock situation between a standard INSERT and a SELECT that looks like this: select top 1 Date, Value from Data where Id = @p0 order by Date desc because the INSERT acquires a lock on Cx (Date, Id; Value) and then Ix (Id, Date), but the SELECT acquires a lock on Ix (Id, Date) and then Cx (Date, Id; Value). This is because the SELECT first seeks on Ix and then joins to a seek on Cx. Swapping the clustered and non-clustered index would break this cycle, but it is not an acceptable solution because it would introduce cycles with other (more complex) SELECTs. If I add NOLOCK to the SELECT, can it go wrong in this case? Can it return: More than one row, even though I asked for TOP 1? No rows, even though one exists and has been committed? Worst of all, a row that doesn't satisfy the WHERE clause? I've done a lot of reading about this online, but the only reproductions of over- or under-count anomalies I've seen (one, two) involve a scan. This involves only seeks. Jeff Atwood has a post about using NOLOCK that generated a good discussion. I was particularly interested in a comment by Rick Townsend: Secondly, if you read dirty data, the risk you run is of reading the entirely wrong row. For example, if your select reads an index to find your row, then the update changes the location of the rows (e.g.: due to a page split or an update to the clustered index), when your select goes to read the actual data row, it's either no longer there, or a different row altogether! Is this possible with inserts only, and no updates? If so, then I guess even my seeks on an insert-only table could be dangerous. Update: I'm trying to figure out how snapshot isolation works. It seems to be row-based, where transactions read the table (with no shared lock!), find the row they are interested in, and then see if they need to get an old version of the row from the version store in tempdb. But in my case, no row will have more than one version, so the version store seems rather pointless. And if the row was found with no shared lock, how is it different to just using NOLOCK?

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• Is there a standard way to encode a .NET string into javascript string for use in MS AJAX?

  - by Rich Andrews

  I'm trying to pass the output of a SQL Server exception to the client using the RegisterStartUpScript method of the MS ScriptManager. This works fine for some errors but when the exception contains single quotes the alert fails. I dont want to only escape single quotes though - Is there a standard function i can call to escape any special chars for use in Javascript? string scriptstring = "alert('" + ex.Message + "');"; ScriptManager.RegisterStartupScript(this, this.GetType(), "Alert", scriptstring , true); Thanks tpeczek, the code almost worked for me :) but with a slight amendment (the escaping of single quotes) it works a treat. I've included my amended version here... public class JSEncode { /// <summary> /// Encodes a string to be represented as a string literal. The format /// is essentially a JSON string. /// /// The string returned includes outer quotes /// Example Output: "Hello \"Rick\"!\r\nRock on" /// </summary> /// <param name="s"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static string EncodeJsString(string s) { StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); sb.Append("\""); foreach (char c in s) { switch (c) { case '\'': sb.Append("\\\'"); break; case '\"': sb.Append("\\\""); break; case '\\': sb.Append("\\\\"); break; case '\b': sb.Append("\\b"); break; case '\f': sb.Append("\\f"); break; case '\n': sb.Append("\\n"); break; case '\r': sb.Append("\\r"); break; case '\t': sb.Append("\\t"); break; default: int i = (int)c; if (i < 32 || i > 127) { sb.AppendFormat("\\u{0:X04}", i); } else { sb.Append(c); } break; } } sb.Append("\""); return sb.ToString(); } } As mentioned below - original source: here

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• Simple way of converting server side objects into client side using JSON serialization for asp.net websites

  - by anil.kasalanati

   Introduction:- With the growth of Web2.0 and the need for faster user experience the spotlight has shifted onto javascript based applications built using REST pattern or asp.net AJAX Pagerequest manager. And when we are working with javascript wouldn’t it be much better if we could create objects in an OOAD way and easily push it to the client side.  Following are the reasons why you would push the server side objects onto client side -          Easy availability of the complex object. -          Use C# compiler and rick intellisense to create and maintain the objects but use them in the javascript. You could run code analysis etc. -          Reduce the number of calls we make to the server side by loading data on the pageload.   I would like to explain about the 3rd point because that proved to be highly beneficial to me when I was fixing the performance issues of a major website. There could be a scenario where in you be making multiple AJAX based webrequestmanager calls in order to get the same response in a single page. This happens in the case of widget based framework when all the widgets are independent but they need some common information available in the framework to load the data. So instead of making n multiple calls we could load the data needed during pageload. The above picture shows the scenario where in all the widgets need the common information and then call GetData webservice on the server side. Ofcourse the result can be cached on the client side but a better solution would be to avoid the call completely.  In order to do that we need to JSONSerialize the content and send it in the DOM.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Example:- I have developed a simple application to demonstrate the idea and I would explaining that in detail here. The class called SimpleClass would be sent as serialized JSON to the client side .   And this inherits from the base class which has the implementation for the GetJSONString method. You can create a single base class and all the object which need to be pushed to the client side can inherit from that class. The important thing to note is that the class should be annotated with DataContract attribute and the methods should have the Data Member attribute. This is needed by the .Net DataContractSerializer and this follows the opt-in mode so if you want to send an attribute to the client side then you need to annotate the DataMember attribute. So if I didn’t want to send the Result I would simple remove the DataMember attribute. This is default WCF/.Net 3.5 stuff but it provides the flexibility of have a fullfledged object on the server side but sending a smaller object to the client side. Sometimes you may hide some values due to security constraints. And thing you will notice is that I have marked the class as Serializable so that it can be stored in the Session and used in webfarm deployment scenarios. Following is the implementation of the base class –  This implements the default DataContractJsonSerializer and for more information or customization refer to following blogs – http://softcero.blogspot.com/2010/03/optimizing-net-json-serializing-and-ii.html http://weblogs.asp.net/gunnarpeipman/archive/2010/12/28/asp-net-serializing-and-deserializing-json-objects.aspx The next part is pretty simple, I just need to inject this object into the aspx page.   And in the aspx markup I have the following line – <script type="text/javascript"> var data =(<%=SimpleClassJSON  %>);   alert(data.ResultText); </script>   This will output the content as JSON into the variable data and this can be any element in the DOM. And you can verify the element by checking data in the Firebug console.    Design Consideration – If you have a lot of javascripts then you need to think about using Script # and you can write javascript in C#. Refer to Nikhil’s blog – http://projects.nikhilk.net/ScriptSharp Ensure that you are taking security into consideration while exposing server side objects on to client side. I have seen application exposing passwords, secret key so it is not a good practice.   The application can be tested using the following url – http://techconsulting.vpscustomer.com/Samples/JsonTest.aspx The source code is available at http://techconsulting.vpscustomer.com/Source/HistoryTest.zip

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• Speaker at the German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2004

  The following is an excerpt from the UniversalThread conference coverage of the German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2004 written by Hans-Otto Lochmann, Armin Neudert and myself. TRACK Active FoxPro Pages Back in 1996 Peter Herzog invented a FoxPro based solution to provide intranet capabilities for one of his customers. Nearly at the same time Rick Strahl had the same task and created WestWind Web Connection (WWWC). The aspect that developers have to have a full Visual FoxPro development environment to create WWWC solutions was the starting point of a "personal sportive competition" of Peter to write his own solution. But the main aspect has to be that it doesn't rely on a full VFP version in order to run. The VFP runtime should enough and the source code has to be compiled and interpreted on the fly. So, as Microsoft released Active Server Pages a name for Peter's solution was found: Active FoxPro Pages (AFP). During the years many drawbacks, design aspects as well as technological hassles forced ProLib Software to refactor the product. This way many limits like DCOM configuration, file-based information transfer between Web server and AFP, missing features (like upload forms or other Web servers than IIS) and extensibility were eliminated. As a consequence ProLib Software decided to rewrite Active FoxPro Pages in mid of 2002 completely. Christof Wollenhaupt, before his marriage known as Christof Lange, and Jochen Kirstätter had to solve this task. AFP 3.0 was officially released at German Devcon in November 2002. Today AFP has six distributors world-wide and there is a lot more information available online than before version 3.0. Directly after a short welcome speech by Rainer Becker, Jochen Kirstätter - aka JoKi - opened today's AFP track and introduced the basic concepts how Active FoxPro Pages works in general, explained the AFP terminilogy and every single component, and presented a small Walk-Through about how to write an AFP-based Web solution. Actually his presentation slides themselves were an AFP Web application. This way it was easy to integrate accompanying AFP samples on the fly. Additionally it was shown that no Visual FoxPro development environment is needed to create a Web application. A simple text editor like NotePad or any WYSIWYG editor on the market is usable to fullfil customer's requirements.Welcome at least two new speakers - Nina Schwanzer and Bernhard Reiter. Both are working at ProLib Software and this year's conference is their first time as speakers. And they did their job very well. The whole session was kind of a "ping pong" game and those two complemented each other to keep the audience in tension. First, they described typical requirements a modern desktop application should fullfil - online registration and activation, auto-update capabilities, or even frontend to administer a Web application on a remote system via internet, and explained how possible solutions like Web Services (using the SOAP interface), DCOM, and even .NET might solve those requirements. But any of those ways has different drawbacks like complicated installation or configuration, or extraordinary download sizes. Next, they introduced a technology they developed and used in a customer's project: Active FoxPro Pages Remote Procedure Call (AFP RPC). [...]   In the next session JoKi described how to extend Active FoxPro Pages. On the one hand AFP provides a plugin interface, and on the other hand any addon for Visual FoxPro might be usable as well. During the first half he spoke about the plugin interface and wrote live a new AFP extension - the Devcon plugin. Later he questioned any former step and showed that a single AFP document may solve the problem as well. So, developing extensions is only interesting if they are re-usable and generic. At the end he talked about multiple interfaces for the same business logic. For instance plain VFP class, COM server and .NET integration. Currently there are several specialized AFP extensions for sending mail, for using cryptographic routines (ie. based on .NET classes), or enhanced methods to handle HTML/XML strings.Rainer Becker and Peter Herzog introduced a new development for Visual Extend (VFX) - an AFP form builder. With this builder creating an AFP Web form designed with Visual FoxPro's form designer was a matter of seconds. The builder itself is currently in pre-release status and will be part of the VFX framework in the future. It was very impressive to see that the whole design of a form as well as most parts of its functionality were exported to a combination of HTML, JavaScript and Active FoxPro Pages. At half-time Jürgen "wOOdy" Wondzinski and JoKi changed places with Rainer and Peter, and presented some Web solutions in AFP. [...] Visual FoxPro 9.0 und Linux Is Linux still a topic for Visual FoxPro developers based on the activities during this year? In his session Jochen Kirstätter - aka JoKi - went not through the technical steps and requirements on how to setup and run FoxPro on a Linux client. Instead, he explained what Linux actually is, and talked about the high variety of distributions. In fact there are a lot of distributions around but since some several years there are some specialized ones available: Live Distributions (aka LiveCDs).The intension of LiveCDs is to run a full-featured Linux operating system on any personal computer directly from a bootable medium, like CD, DVD, or even USB memory stick, without installation on a hard disk. One of the first Linux LiveCDs was made by Klaus Knopper and is well-known as Knoppix. Today, many other LiveCDs are based on the concepts of Knoppix. During the session Jochen booted Morphix, a very light-weighted LiveCD, on his notebook, and actually showed the attendees that testing and playing around with Linux is absolutely easy. Running a text processing application swept away most of the contrary aspects the audience had. Okay, where is the part about FoxPro? Well, there are several scenarios a customer might require usage of Linux, and actually with all of them FoxPro could deal with. I guess that one of the more common ones is the situation that a customer has a heterogeneous intranet with Windows clients and Linux servers, i.e. Windows XP Professional and any Linux distribution on their servers. Even in this scenario there are two variants hidden! Why? Well, on the one hand there is a software package called Samba, that provides Windows server capabilities to a Linux system, and on the other hand there are several SQL servers for Linux, like PostgreSQL, DB2 and MySQL. Either way, FoxPro is able to deal with these scenarios, but you as developer have to know what you are talking about with your customers. And even if there's no Windows operating system, you are able to provide a FoxPro-based solution. Using the wine library - wine stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator - you are able to run your VFP applications on Linux clients, too; but not without reading VFP's EULA. Licenses were also part the session, and Jochen discussed the meaning of Open Source and its misunderstanding throughout most developers. Open Source does not mean that it's without a fee. Instead, it stands for access to the source code of an application or tool. And, VFP itself is one of the best samples to explain Open Source due to fact that since years, VFP is shipped with the xSource.zip archive. [...]

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• The APEX of Business Value...or...the Business Value of APEX? Oracle Cloud Takes Oracle APEX to New Heights!

  - by Gene Eun

  The attraction of Oracle Application Express (APEX) has increased tremendously with the recent launch of the Oracle Cloud. APEX already supported departmental development and deployment of business applications with minimal involvement from the IT department. Positioned as the ideal replacement for MS Access, APEX probably has managed better to capture the eye of developers and was used for enterprise application development at least as much as for the kind of tactical applications that Oracle strategically positioned it for. With APEX as PaaS from the Oracle Cloud, a leap is made to a much higher level of business value. Now the IT department is not even needed to make infrastructure available with a database running  on it. All the business needs is a credit card. And the business application that is developed, managed and used from the cloud through a standard browser can now just as easily be accessed by users from around the world as by users from the business department itself. As a bonus – the development of the APEX application is also done in the cloud – with no special demands on the location or the enterprise access privileges of the developers. To sum it up: APEX from Oracle Cloud Database Service get the development environment up and running in minutes no involvement from the internal IT department required (not for infrastructure, platform, or development) superior availability and scalability is offered by Oracle users from anywhere in the world can be invited to access the application developers from anywhere in the world can participate in creating and maintaining the application In addition: because the Oracle Cloud platform is the same as the on-premise platform, you can still decide to move the APEX application between the cloud and the local environment – and back again. The REST-ful services that are available through APEX allow programmatic interaction with the database under the APEX application. That means that this database can be synchronized with on premise databases or data stores in (other) clouds. Through the Oracle Cloud Messaging Service, the APEX application can easily enter into asynchronous conversations with other APEX applications, Fusion Middleware applications (ADF, SOA, BPM) and any other type of REST-enabled application. In my opinion, now, for the first time perhaps, APEX offers the attraction to the business that has been suggested before: because of the cloud, all the business needs is  a credit card (a budget of $175 per month), an internet-connection and a browser. Not like before, with a PC hidden under a desk or a database running somewhere in the data center. No matter how unattended: equipment is needed, power is consumed, the database needs to be kept running and if Oracle Database XE does not suffice, software licenses are required as well. And this set up always has a security challenge associated with it. The cloud fee for the Oracle Cloud Database Service includes infrastructure, power, licenses, availability, platform upgrades, a collection of reusable application components and the development and runtime environments containing the APEX platform. Of course this not only means that business departments can move quickly without having to convince their IT colleagues to move along – it also means that small organizations that do not even have IT colleagues can do the same. Getting tailored applications or applications up and running to get in touch with users and customers all over the world is now within easy reach for small outfits – without any investment. My misunderstanding For a long time, I was under the impression that the essence of APEX was that the business could create applications themselves – meaning that business ‘people’ would actually go into APEX to create the application. To me APEX was too much of a developers’ tool to see that happen – apart from the odd business analyst who missed his or her calling as an IT developer. Having looked at various other cloud based development offerings – including Force.com, Mendix, WaveMaker, WorkXpress, OrangeScape, Caspio and Cordys- I have come to realize my mistake. All these platforms are positioned for 'the business' but require a fair amount of coding and technical expertise. However, they make the business happy nevertheless, because they allow the  business to completely circumvent the IT department. That is the essence. Not having to go through the red tape, not having to wait for IT staff who (justifiably) need weeks or months to provide an environment, not having to deal with administrators (again, justifiably) refusing to take on that 'strange environment'. Being able to think of an initiative and turn into action right away. The business does not have to build the application - it can easily hire some external developers or even that nerdy boy next door. They can get started, get an application up and running and invite users in – especially external users such as customers. They will worry later about upgrades and life cycle management and integration. To get applications up and running quickly and start turning ideas into action and results rightaway. That is the key selling point for all these cloud offerings, including APEX from the Cloud. And it is a compelling story. For APEX probably even more so than for the others. While I consider APEX a somewhat proprietary framework compared with ‘regular’ Java/JEE web development (or even .NET and PHP  development), it is still far more open than most cloud environments. APEX is SQL and PL/SQL based – nothing special about those languages – and can run just as easily on site as in the cloud. It has been around since 2004 (that is not including several predecessors that fed straight into APEX) so it can be considered pretty mature. Oracle as a company seems pretty stable – so investments in its technology are bound to last for some time to come. By the way: neither APEX nor the other Cloud DevaaS offerings are targeted at creating applications with enormous life times. They fit into a trend of agile development and rapid life cycle management, with fairly light weight user interfaces that quickly adapt to taste, technology trends and functional requirements and that are easily replaced. APEX and ADF – a match made in heaven?! (or at least in the sky) Note that using APEX only for cloud based database with REST-ful Services is also a perfectly viable scenario: any UI – mobile or browser based – capable of consuming REST-ful services can be created against such a business tier. Creating an ADF Mobile application for example that runs aginst REST-ful services is a best practice for mobile development. Such REST-ful services can be consumed from any service provider – including the Cloud based APEX powered REST-ful services running against the Oracle Cloud Database Service! The ADF Mobile architecture overview can easily be morphed to fit the APEX services in – allowing for a cloud based mobile app: Want to learn more about Oracle Database Cloud Service or Oracle Cloud, just visit cloud.oracle.com  or oracle.com/cloud. Repost of a blog entry by Rick Greenwald, Director of Product Management, Oracle Database Cloud Service.

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• Thoughts on the Nomination Committee Campaign 2014

  - by Testas

  Congratulations to Erin, Andy and Allen on making the Nomination Committee for 2014. As Mark Broadbent (@retracement) stated in his tweet, there’s a great set of individuals for the Nom Com, and I could not agree more. I know Erin and Allen, and I know how much value they will bring to the process. I don’t know Andy as well, but I am sure he will do a great job and I hope I can meet him at PASS soon. The final candidate appointed by the PASS board is Rick Bolesta, who brings a wealth of experience to the process. I also want to take the opportunity to thank all who have voted. Not just for me, but for all the candidates during the election. Your contribution is greatly appreciated. Would I apply for the Nom Com again?  Yes I would. My first election experience has been a learning experience in itself. So I accept the result and look forward to applying next year. Moving on from this, I do want to express my opinion about the lack of international representation in the election process. One of the tweets that I saw after the result was from Adam Machanic (@AdamMachanic) who commented on the lack of international members on the Nom Com. If truth be told, I was disappointed – when the candidate list was released -- that for the second time in recent elections there was a lack of international candidates on the candidate list. It feels that only Brits and Americans partake in such elections. This is a real shame, and I can’t help thinking why this is the case. Hugo Kornelis (@Hugo_Kornelis) wrote a blog here to express his thoughts. He did raise some valid points. I don’t know why there is an absence of international candidates. I know that the team at PASS are looking to improve the situation, so I do not want to give the impression that PASS are doing nothing. For reference please see Bill Graziano’ s article here to see how PASS are addressing the situation. There is a clear direction to change the rules within PASS to give greater inclusion of international members. In addition to this, I wanted to explore a couple of potential approaches to address the situation. I am not saying that they are the right answer, but when I see challenges, I like to bring potential solutions to the table. 1.       Use the PASS mission statement to define a tactical objective that engages community leaders into the election process. If you are not familiar with the PASS mission statement, let me provide it here as laid out on the PASS website. “Empower data professionals who leverage Microsoft technologies to connect, share, and learn through networking, knowledge sharing, and peer-based learning” PASS fulfil this mission statement regularly. Whether you attend SQL Saturday, SQLRally, SQLPASS and BA conference itself. The biggest value of PASS is the ability to bring our profession together. And the 24 hour hop allows you to learn from the comfort of your own office/home. This mission should be extended to define a tactical objectives that bring greater networking and knowledge sharing between PASS Chapter leaders/Regional Mentors and PASS HQ. It should help educate the leaders about the opportunities of elections and how leaders can become involved. I know PASS engage with Chapter leaders on a regular basis to discuss community matters for the benefit of PASS members. How could this be achieved? Perhaps PASS could perform a quarterly virtual meeting that specifically looks at helping leaders become more involved with the election process 2.       Evolve the Global Growth Strategy into a Global Engagement Strategy. One of the remits of the PASS board over the last couple of years is the Global Growth strategy. This has been very successful as we have seen the massive growth of events across the world. For that, I congratulate the board for this success. Perhaps the time is now right to look at solidifying this success, through a Global Engagement Strategy that starts with the collaboration of Chapter Leaders, Regional Mentors and Evangelists in their respective Countries or Regions. The engagement strategy should look at increasing collaboration between community leaders for the benefit of their respective communities. It should also provide a channel for encouraging leaders to put themselves forward for the elections. How could this be achieved? In the UK, there has been a big growth in PASS Chapters and SQL Server Events that was approaching saturation point. The introduction of the Community Engagement Day -- channelled through the SQLBits conference -- has enabled Chapter Leaders to collaborate, connect and share with PASS, Sponsors and Microsoft. It also provides the ability for Chapter Leaders to speak directly to the PASS representatives from PASSHQ. This brings with it the ability for PASS community evangelists to communicate PASS objectives. It has also been the event where we have found out; and/or encouraged, Chapter Leaders to put themselves forward for elections. People like encouragement and validation when going for something like an election, and being able to discuss this with peers at a dedicated event provides a useful platform. PASS has the people in place already to facilitate such an event. Regional Mentors could potentially help organise such events on an annual basis, with PASSHQ providing support in providing a room/Lync access for the event to take place. It would be really good if a PASSHQ representative could attend in person as well.   3.       Restrict candidates to serve only a limited number of terms. A frequent comment I saw on social networking was that the elections can be seen by some as a popularity conference. Perhaps by limiting the number of terms that an individual can serve on either the Nom Com or the BOD, other candidates may be encouraged to be more actively involved within the PASS election process. I don’t think that the current byelaws deal with this particular suggestion. I also saw a couple of tweets that stated that more active community members did not apply for the Nom Com. I struggled to understand how the individuals of the tweets measured “more active”. It just also further solidified the subjective nature of elections. In the absence of how candidates are put forward for the elections. Then a restriction of terms enables the opportunity to be extended to others. How could this be achieved? Set a resolution that is put to a community vote as to the viability of such a solution. For example, the questions for the vote could be: Should individuals in the Nom Com and BoD be limited to a certain number of terms?  Yes/No. What is the maximum number of terms a candidate could serve?   It would be simple to execute such a vote, and the community will have an opportunity to have a say in an important aspect of the PASS organisation. And is the change is successful, then add it as a byelaw.   So there are some of my thoughts. I am not saying they are right or wrong. But I do hope that there is a concerted effort to encourage more candidates from other reaches of the Globe to become involved with future elections.   It would be good to hear your thoughts   Thanks   Chris

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