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• Create a Slide Show in Windows 7 Media Center

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Are you looking for a nice way to create and display a slide show from your photo collection? Today we’ll show you how to create a slide show, how to add music to it, and watch it from the comfort of your couch in Windows 7 Media Center. Create Slide Show Launch Windows 7 Media Center and click on the Picture Library tile found under Pictures and Videos.   In the Pictures Library, scroll across to slide shows and click on Create Slide show.   Enter a name for the slide show and click Next.   If you are using a Windows Media Center remote, click on the OK button to bring up the onscreen keyboard. Use the directional buttons to navigate across the keyboard and press OK to select each letter. Click Done when finished. Select Picture Library and click Next. Select the pictures to include in your slide show. If using a remote, navigate through the images and press OK to select. If you are using a mouse, simply click on the selections. When you are finished, click Next.    Now, we can review and edit the slide show. Click the up or down pointing arrows to move pictures up and down in the order.  (more intuitive titles would be helpful in this case as opposed to the randomly generated titles in the example below) If you are finished, click Create. You can also choose to go back and add music to your slide show. (or even more pictures) We’ll take a look at adding some music in our example. Click on the Add More button.   Add Music to Your Slide Show Here we’ll select Music Library to add a song. Click Next.   You’ll now be able to browse your Music Library to select songs for your slide show. Select your songs and click Next.   When you are finished adding Music and Pictures click Create.   Once your slide show is saved, you can play it any time by going to clicking on slide shows in the Picture Library, then selecting the slide show title. Select play slide show when you’re ready to enjoy your new production.   If you ever want to edit or delete the slide show, select it in the Picture Library, and scroll to Actions. You’ll see those option under additional commands. You have the option to Edit Slide Show, Burn a CD/DVD, or Delete. Editing Slide Show Settings Within Media Center, go to Tasks… Click on Pictures…   Then choose Slide Shows. From the Slide Show settings you have the option to Show pictures in random order, Show picture information, Show song information, and Use Pan and zoom effect. You can also adjust the length of time to display each picture, and change the background color. Be sure to click Save to apply and changes before exiting. If you choose to show picture information, the picture title, date, and star rating will be displayed in the top right.   If your slide show is accompanied by music and you choose to show song information, you will get a translucent overlay for a few seconds at the beginning of each song to indicate the song, album, and artist. One of the really cool things about creating a slide show in Windows 7 Media Center is you can complete the entire process using just a Media Center remote. Can’t get enough slide shows? Check out how to turn your desktop into a picture slide show in Windows 7. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Add Color Coding to Windows 7 Media Center Program GuideIntegrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7Schedule Updates for Windows Media CenterTurn Your Desktop into a Picture Slideshow in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites Restore Hidden Updates in Windows 7 & Vista Iceland an Insurance Job? Find Downloads and Add-ins for Outlook Recycle ! Find That Elusive Icon with FindIcons

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• Weekend reading: Microsoft/Oracle and SkyDrive based code-editor

  - by jamiet

  A couple of news item caught my eye this weekend that I think are worthy of comment. Microsoft/Oracle partnership to be announced tomorrow (24/06/2013) According to many news site Microsoft and Oracle are about to announce a partnership (Oracle set for major Microsoft, Salesforce, Netsuite partnerships) and they all seem to be assuming that it will be something to do with “the cloud”. I wouldn’t disagree with that assessment, Microsoft are heavily pushing Azure and Oracle seem (to me anyway) to be rather lagging behind in the cloud game. More specifically folks seem to be assuming that Oracle’s forthcoming 12c database release will be offered on Azure. I did a bit of reading about Oracle 12c and one of its key pillars appears to be that it supports multi-tenant topologies and multi-tenancy is a common usage scenario for databases in the cloud. I’m left wondering then, if Microsoft are willing to push a rival’s multi-tenant solution what is happening to its own cloud-based multi-tenant offering – SQL Azure Federations. We haven’t heard anything about federations for what now seems to be a long time and moreover the main Program Manager behind the technology, Cihan Biyikoglu, recently left Microsoft to join Twitter. Furthermore, a Principle Architect for SQL Server, Conor Cunningham, recently presented the opening keynote at SQLBits 11 where he talked about multi-tenant solutions on SQL Azure and not once did he mention federations. All in all I don’t have a warm fuzzy feeling about the future of SQL Azure Federations so I hope that that question gets asked at some point following the Microsoft/Oracle announcement. Text Editor on SkyDrive with coding-specific features Liveside.net got a bit of a scoop this weekend with the news (Exclusive: SkyDrive.com to get web-based text file editing features) that Microsoft’s consumer-facing file storage service is going to get a new feature – a web-based code editor. Here’s Liveside’s screenshot: I’ve long had a passing interest in online code editors, indeed back in December 2009 I wondered out loud on this blog site: I started to wonder when the development tools that we use would also become cloud-based. After all, if we’re using cloud-based services does it not make sense to have cloud-based tools that work with them? I think it does. Project Houston Since then the world has moved on. Cloud 9 IDE (https://c9.io/) have blazed a trail in the fledgling world of online code editors and I have been wondering when Microsoft were going to start playing catch-up. I had no doubt that an online code editor was in Microsoft’s future; its an obvious future direction, why would I want to have to download and install a bloated text editor (which, arguably, is exactly what Visual Studio amounts to) and have to continually update it when I can simply open a web browser and have ready access to all of my code from wherever I am. There are signs that Microsoft is already making moves in this direction, after all the URL for their new offering Team Foundation Service doesn’t mention TFS at all – my own personalised URL for Team Foundation Service is http://jamiet.visualstudio.com – using “Visual Studio” as the domain name for a service that isn’t strictly speaking part of Visual Studio leads me to think that there’s a much bigger play here and that one day http://visualstudio.com will house an online code editor. With that in mind then I find Liveside’s revelation rather intriguing, why would a code editing tool show up in Skydrive? Perhaps SkyDrive is going to get integrated more tightly into TFS, I’m very interested to see where this goes. The larger question playing on my mind though is whether an online code editor from Microsoft will support SQL Server developers. I have opined before (see The SQL developer gap) about the shoddy treatment that SQL Server developers have to experience from Microsoft and I haven’t seen any change in Microsoft’s attitude in the three and a half years since I wrote that post. I’m constantly bewildered by the lack of investment in SQL Server developer productivity compared to the riches that are lavished upon our appdev brethren. When you consider that SQL Server is Microsoft’s third biggest revenue stream it is, frankly, rather insulting. SSDT was a step in the right direction but the hushed noises I hear coming out of Microsoft of late in regard to SSDT don’t bode fantastically well for its future. So, will an online code editor from Microsoft support T-SQL development? I have to assume not given the paucity of investment on us lowly SQL Server developers over the last few years, but I live in hope! Your thoughts in the comments section please. I would be very interested in reading them. @Jamiet

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• ORA-4030 Troubleshooting

  - by [email protected]

  QUICKLINK: Note 399497.1 FAQ ORA-4030 Note 1088087.1 : ORA-4030 Diagnostic Tools [Video]   Have you observed an ORA-0430 error reported in your alert log? ORA-4030 errors are raised when memory or resources are requested from the Operating System and the Operating System is unable to provide the memory or resources.   The arguments included with the ORA-4030 are often important to narrowing down the problem. For more specifics on the ORA-4030 error and scenarios that lead to this problem, see Note 399497.1 FAQ ORA-4030.   Looking for the best way to diagnose? There are several available diagnostic tools (error tracing, 11g Diagnosibility, OCM, Process Memory Guides, RDA, OSW, diagnostic scripts) that collectively can prove powerful for identifying the cause of the ORA-4030.    Error Tracing   The ORA-4030 error usually occurs on the client workstation and for this reason, a trace file and alert log entry may not have been generated on the server side.  It may be necessary to add additional tracing events to get initial diagnostics on the problem. To setup tracing to trap the ORA-4030, on the server use the following in SQLPlus: alter system set events '4030 trace name heapdump level 536870917;name errorstack level 3';Once the error reoccurs with the event set, you can turn off  tracing using the following command in SQLPlus:alter system set events '4030 trace name context off; name context off';NOTE:   See more diagnostics information to collect in Note 399497.1  11g DiagnosibilityStarting with Oracle Database 11g Release 1, the Diagnosability infrastructure was introduced which places traces and core files into a location controlled by the DIAGNOSTIC_DEST initialization parameter when an incident, such as an ORA-4030 occurs.  For earlier versions, the trace file will be written to either USER_DUMP_DEST (if the error was caught in a user process) or BACKGROUND_DUMP_DEST (if the error was caught in a background process like PMON or SMON). The trace file may contain vital information about what led to the error condition.    Note 443529.1 11g Quick Steps to Package and Send Critical Error Diagnostic Informationto Support[Video]  Oracle Configuration Manager (OCM) Oracle Configuration Manager (OCM) works with My Oracle Support to enable proactive support capability that helps you organize, collect and manage your Oracle configurations. Oracle Configuration Manager Quick Start Guide Note 548815.1: My Oracle Support Configuration Management FAQ Note 250434.1: BULLETIN: Learn More About My Oracle Support Configuration Manager    General Process Memory Guides   An ORA-4030 indicates a limit has been reached with respect to the Oracle process private memory allocation.    Each Operating System will handle memory allocations with Oracle slightly differently. Solaris     Note 163763.1Linux       Note 341782.1IBM AIX   Notes 166491.1 and 123754.1HP           Note 166490.1Windows Note 225349.1, Note 373602.1, Note 231159.1, Note 269495.1, Note 762031.1Generic    Note 169706.1   RDAThe RDA report will show more detailed information about the database and Server Configuration. Note 414966.1 RDA Documentation Index Download RDA -- refer to Note 314422.1 Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) 4 - Getting Started OS Watcher (OSW)This tool is designed to gather Operating System side statistics to compare with the findings from the database.  This is a key tool in cases where memory usage is higher than expected on the server while not experiencing ORA-4030 errors currently. Reference more details on setup and usage in Note 301137.1 OS Watcher User Guide Diagnostic Scripts   Refer to Note 1088087.1 : ORA-4030 Diagnostic Tools [Video] Common Causes/Solutions The ORA-4030 can occur for a variety of reasons.  Some common causes are:   * OS Memory limit reached such as physical memory and/or swap/virtual paging.   For instance, IBM AIX can experience ORA-4030 issues related to swap scenarios.  See Note 740603.1 10.2.0.4 not using large pages on AIX for more on that problem. Also reference Note 188149.1 for pointers on 10g and stack size issues.* OS limits reached (kernel or user shell limits) that limit overall, user level or process level memory * OS limit on PGA memory size due to SGA attach address           Reference: Note 1028623.6 SOLARIS How to Relocate the SGA* Oracle internal limit on functionality like PL/SQL varrays or bulk collections. ORA-4030 errors will include arguments like "pl/sql vc2" "pmucalm coll" "pmuccst: adt/re".  See Coding Pointers for pointers on application design to get around these issues* Application design causing limits to be reached* Bug - space leaks, heap leaks   ***For reference to the content in this blog, refer to Note.1088267.1 Master Note for Diagnosing ORA-4030

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• Using the Static Code Analysis feature of Visual Studio (Premium/Ultimate) to find memory leakage problems

  - by terje

  Memory for managed code is handled by the garbage collector, but if you use any kind of unmanaged code, like native resources of any kind, open files, streams and window handles, your application may leak memory if these are not properly handled.  To handle such resources the classes that own these in your application should implement the IDisposable interface, and preferably implement it according to the pattern described for that interface. When you suspect a memory leak, the immediate impulse would be to start up a memory profiler and start digging into that.   However, before you follow that impulse, do a Static Code Analysis run with a ruleset tuned to finding possible memory leaks in your code.  If you get any warnings from this, fix them before you go on with the profiling. How to use a ruleset In Visual Studio 2010 (Premium and Ultimate editions) you can define your own rulesets containing a list of Static Code Analysis checks.   I have defined the memory checks as shown in the lists below as ruleset files, which can be downloaded – see bottom of this post.  When you get them, you can easily attach them to every project in your solution using the Solution Properties dialog. Right click the solution, and choose Properties at the bottom, or use the Analyze menu and choose “Configure Code Analysis for Solution”: In this dialog you can now choose the Memorycheck ruleset for every project you want to investigate.  Pressing Apply or Ok opens every project file and changes the projects code analysis ruleset to the one we have specified here. How to define your own ruleset  (skip this if you just download my predefined rulesets) If you want to define the ruleset yourself, open the properties on any project, choose Code Analysis tab near the bottom, choose any ruleset in the drop box and press Open Clear out all the rules by selecting “Source Rule Sets” in the Group By box, and unselect the box Change the Group By box to ID, and select the checks you want to include from the lists below. Note that you can change the action for each check to either warning, error or none, none being the same as unchecking the check.   Now go to the properties window and set a new name and description for your ruleset. Then save (File/Save as) the ruleset using the new name as its name, and use it for your projects as detailed above. It can also be wise to add the ruleset to your solution as a solution item. That way it’s there if you want to enable Code Analysis in some of your TFS builds.   Running the code analysis In Visual Studio 2010 you can either do your code analysis project by project using the context menu in the solution explorer and choose “Run Code Analysis”, you can define a new solution configuration, call it for example Debug (Code Analysis), in for each project here enable the Enable Code Analysis on Build   In Visual Studio Dev-11 it is all much simpler, just go to the Solution root in the Solution explorer, right click and choose “Run code analysis on solution”.     The ruleset checks The following list is the essential and critical memory checks.  CheckID Message Can be ignored ? Link to description with fix suggestions CA1001 Types that own disposable fields should be disposable No  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182172.aspx CA1049 Types that own native resources should be disposable Only if the pointers assumed to point to unmanaged resources point to something else  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182173.aspx CA1063 Implement IDisposable correctly No  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms244737.aspx CA2000 Dispose objects before losing scope No  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182289.aspx CA2115 1 Call GC.KeepAlive when using native resources See description  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182300.aspx CA2213 Disposable fields should be disposed If you are not responsible for release, of if Dispose occurs at deeper level  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182328.aspx CA2215 Dispose methods should call base class dispose Only if call to base happens at deeper calling level  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182330.aspx CA2216 Disposable types should declare a finalizer Only if type does not implement IDisposable for the purpose of releasing unmanaged resources  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182329.aspx CA2220 Finalizers should call base class finalizers No  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182341.aspx Notes: 1) Does not result in memory leak, but may cause the application to crash   The list below is a set of optional checks that may be enabled for your ruleset, because the issues these points too often happen as a result of attempting to fix up the warnings from the first set.   ID Message Type of fault Can be ignored ? Link to description with fix suggestions CA1060 Move P/invokes to NativeMethods class Security No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182161.aspx CA1816 Call GC.SuppressFinalize correctly Performance Sometimes, see description http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182269.aspx CA1821 Remove empty finalizers Performance No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb264476.aspx CA2004 Remove calls to GC.KeepAlive Performance and maintainability Only if not technically correct to convert to SafeHandle http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182293.aspx CA2006 Use SafeHandle to encapsulate native resources Security No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182294.aspx CA2202 Do not dispose of objects multiple times Exception (System.ObjectDisposedException) No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182334.aspx CA2205 Use managed equivalents of Win32 API Maintainability and complexity Only if the replace doesn’t provide needed functionality http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182365.aspx CA2221 Finalizers should be protected Incorrect implementation, only possible in MSIL coding No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182340.aspx   Downloadable ruleset definitions I have defined three rulesets, one called Inmeta.Memorycheck with the rules in the first list above, and Inmeta.Memorycheck.Optionals containing the rules in the second list, and the last one called Inmeta.Memorycheck.All containing the sum of the two first ones.  All three rulesets can be found in the  zip archive  “Inmeta.Memorycheck” downloadable from here.   Links to some other resources relevant to Static Code Analysis MSDN Magazine Article by Mickey Gousset on Static Code Analysis in VS2010 MSDN :  Analyzing Managed Code Quality by Using Code Analysis, root of the documentation for this Preventing generated code from being analyzed using attributes Online training course on Using Code Analysis with VS2010 Blogpost by Tatham Oddie on custom code analysis rules How to write custom rules, from Microsoft Code Analysis Team Blog Microsoft Code Analysis Team Blog

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• Task-It Webinar - Source Code

  Last week I presented a webinar called "Building a real-world application with RadControls for Silverlight 4". For those that didn't get to see the webinar, you can view it here: Building a read-world application with RadControls for Silverlight 4 Since the webinar I've received several requests asking if I could post the source code for the simple application I showed demonstrating some of the techniques used in the development of Task-It, such as MVVM, Commands and Internationalization. This source code is now available for downloadhere. After downloading the source: Extract it to the location of your choice on your hard-drive Open the solution Right-click ModuleProject.Web and selecte 'Set as StartUp Project'. Right-click ProjectTestPage.aspx and selected 'Set as Start Page' Create a database in SQL Server called WebinarProject. Navigate to the Database folder under the WebinarProject directory and run the .sql script against your WebinarProject database. The last two steps are necessary only for the Tasks page to work properly (using WCF RIA Services). Now some notes about each page: Code-behind This is not the way I recommend coding a line-of-business application in Silverlight, but simply wanted to show how the code-behind approach would look. Command This page introduces MVVM and Commands. You'll notice in the XAML that the Command property of theRadMenuItem and the Button are both bound to a SaveCommand. That comes from the view model. If you look in the code- behind of the user control you'll see that an instance of a CommandViewModel is instantiated and set as the DataContext of the UserControl.There is also a listener for the view model's SaveCompleted event. When this is fired, it tells the view (UserControl) to display the MessageBox. Internationalization This sample is similar to the previous one, but instead of using hard-coded strings in the UI, the strings are obtained via binding toview model properties. The view model gets the strings from the .resx files (Strings.resx or Strings.de.resx) under Assets/Resources. If you uncomment the call to ShowGerman() in App.xaml.cs's Application_Startup method and re-run the application, you will see the UI in German. Note that this code, which sets the CurrentCulture and CurrentUICulture on the current thread to "de" (German) is for testing purposes only. RadWindow Once again, very similar to the previous example.The difference is that we are now using a RadWindow to display the 'Saved' message instead of a MessageBox. The advantage here is that we do not have to hold on to a reference to the view model in our code behind so that we can get the 'Saved' message from it. The RadWindow's DataContext is now also bound to the view model, so within its XAML we can bind directly to properties in the view model. Much nicer, and cleaner. One other thing I introduced in this example is the use of spacer Rectangles. Rather than setting a width and/or height on the rectangles for spacing, I am now referencing a style in my ResourceDictionary called StandardSpacerStyle. I like doing this better than using margins or padding because now I have a reusable way to create space between elements, the Rectangle does not show (because I have not set its Fill color), and I can change my spacing throughout the user interface in one place if I'd like. Tasks This page is quite a bit different than the other four. It is a very simple, stripped-down version of the Tasks page in the Task-It application. The Tasks.xaml UserControl has a ContentControl, and the Content of that control is set based on whether we are looking at the list of tasks or editing a task. So it displays one of two child UserControls, which are called List and Details. List has the RadGridView, Details has the form. In the code-behind of the Tasks UserControl I am once again setting its DataContext to a view model class. The nice thing is, whichever child UserControl is being displayed (List or Details) inherits its DataContext from its parent control (Tasks), so I do not have to explicitly set it. The List UserControl simply displays a RadGridView whose ItemsSource is bound to a property in the view model called Tasks, and its SelectedItem property is bound to a property in the view model called SelectedItem. The SelectedItem binding must be TwoWay so that the view is notified when the SelectedItem changes in the view model, and the view model is notified when something changes in the view (like when a user changes the Name and/or DueDate in the form). You'll also notice that the form's TextBox and RadDatePicker are also TwoWay bound to the SelectedItem property in the view model. You can experiment with the binding by removing TwoWay and see how changes in the form do not show up in the RadGridView. So here we have an example of two different views (List and Details) that are both bound to the same view model...and actually, so is the Tasks UserControl, so it is really three views. WCF RIA Services By the way, I am using WCF RIA Services to retrieve data for the RadGridView and save the data when the user clicks the Save button in the form. I created a really simple ADO.NET Entity Data Model in WebinarProject.Web called DataModel.edmx. I also created a simple Domain Data Service called DataService that has methods for retrieving data, inserting, updating and deleting. However I am only using the retrieval and update methods in this sample. Note that I do not currently have any validation in place on the form, as I wanted to keep the sample as simple as possible. Wrap up Technically, I should move the calls to WCF RIA Services out of the view model and put them into a separate layer, but this works for now, and that is a topic for another day! Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• UserAppDataPath in WPF

  - by psheriff

  In Windows Forms applications you were able to get to your user's roaming profile directory very easily using the Application.UserAppDataPath property. This folder allows you to store information for your program in a custom folder specifically for your program. The format of this directory looks like this: C:\Users\YOUR NAME\AppData\Roaming\COMPANY NAME\APPLICATION NAME\APPLICATION VERSION For example, on my Windows 7 64-bit system, this folder would look like this for a Windows Forms Application: C:\Users\PSheriff\AppData\Roaming\PDSA, Inc.\WindowsFormsApplication1\1.0.0.0 For some reason Microsoft did not expose this property from the Application object of WPF applications. I guess they think that we don't need this property in WPF? Well, sometimes we still do need to get at this folder. You have two choices on how to retrieve this property. Add a reference to the System.Windows.Forms.dll to your WPF application and use this property directly. Or, you can write your own method to build the same path. If you add a reference to the System.Windows.Forms.dll you will need to use System.Windows.Forms.Application.UserAppDataPath to access this property. Create a GetUserAppDataPath Method in WPF If you want to build this path you can do so with just a few method calls in WPF using Reflection. The code below shows this fairly simple method to retrieve the same folder as shown above. C#using System.Reflection; public string GetUserAppDataPath(){  string path = string.Empty;  Assembly assm;  Type at;  object[] r;   // Get the .EXE assembly  assm = Assembly.GetEntryAssembly();  // Get a 'Type' of the AssemblyCompanyAttribute  at = typeof(AssemblyCompanyAttribute);  // Get a collection of custom attributes from the .EXE assembly  r = assm.GetCustomAttributes(at, false);  // Get the Company Attribute  AssemblyCompanyAttribute ct =                 ((AssemblyCompanyAttribute)(r[0]));  // Build the User App Data Path  path = Environment.GetFolderPath(              Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData);  path += @"\" + ct.Company;  path += @"\" + assm.GetName().Version.ToString();   return path;} Visual BasicPublic Function GetUserAppDataPath() As String  Dim path As String = String.Empty  Dim assm As Assembly  Dim at As Type  Dim r As Object()   ' Get the .EXE assembly  assm = Assembly.GetEntryAssembly()  ' Get a 'Type' of the AssemblyCompanyAttribute  at = GetType(AssemblyCompanyAttribute)  ' Get a collection of custom attributes from the .EXE assembly  r = assm.GetCustomAttributes(at, False)  ' Get the Company Attribute  Dim ct As AssemblyCompanyAttribute = _                 DirectCast(r(0), AssemblyCompanyAttribute)  ' Build the User App Data Path  path = Environment.GetFolderPath( _                 Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData)  path &= "\" & ct.Company  path &= "\" & assm.GetName().Version.ToString()   Return pathEnd Function Summary Getting the User Application Data Path folder in WPF is fairly simple with just a few method calls using Reflection. Of course, there is absolutely no reason you cannot just add a reference to the System.Windows.Forms.dll to your WPF application and use that Application object. After all, System.Windows.Forms.dll is a part of the .NET Framework and can be used from WPF with no issues at all. NOTE: Visit http://www.pdsa.com/downloads to get more tips and tricks like this one. Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **We frequently offer a FREE gift for readers of my blog. Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for your FREE gift!

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• Pella Increases Online Appointment Scheduling and Rapidly Personalizes and Updates Marketing Initiatives

  - by Michael Snow

  Originally posted on Oracle Customers page.Oracle Customer: Pella CorporationLocation:  Pella, IowaIndustry: Industrial Manufacturing Employees:  7,100 Pella Corporation is an innovative leader in creating a better view for homes and businesses by designing, testing, manufacturing, and installing quality windows and doors for new construction, remodeling, and replacement applications. A family-owned company, Pella has an 88-year history of innovation and, today, is the second-largest manufacturer in the country of windows and doors, including patio, entry, and storm doors. The company has 10 manufacturing facilities in United States and window and door showrooms across the United States and Canada. In-home consultations are an important part of Pella’s sales process. Several years ago, the company launched an online appointment scheduling tool to improve customer convenience. While the functionality worked well, the company wanted to increase online conversion rates and decrease the number of incomplete, online appointment schedules. It also wanted to give its business analysts and other line-of-business personnel the ability to update the scheduling tool and interface quickly, without needing IT team intervention and recoding, to better capitalize on opportunities and personalize the interface for specific markets. Pella also looked to reduce IT complexity by selecting a system that integrated easily with its Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 enterprise applications.Pella, which has a large Oracle footprint, selected Oracle WebCenter Sites as the foundation for its new, real-time appointment scheduling application. It used the solution to re-engineer the scheduling process and the information required to set up an appointment. Just a few months after launch, it is seeing improvement in the number of appointments booked online and experiencing fewer abandoned appointments during the scheduling process. As important, Pella can now quickly and easily make changes to images, video, and content displayed on the scheduling tool interface, delivering greater business agility. Previously, such changes required a developer and weeks of coding and testing. Today, a member of Pella’s business analyst team can complete the changes in hours. This capability enables Pella to personalize the Web experience for customers. For example, it can display different products or images for clients in different regions.The solution is also highly scalable. Pella is using Oracle WebCenter Sites for appointment scheduling now and plans to migrate Pella.com, its configurator tool, and dealer microsites onto the platform. Further, Pella plans to leverage the solution to optimize mobile devices. “Moving ahead, we expect to extensively leverage Oracle WebCenter Sites to gain greater flexibility in updating the Web experience, thanks to the ability to make updates quickly without developer resources. Segmentation and targeting capabilities will allow us to create a more personalized experience across both traditional and mobile platforms,” said Teri Lancaster, IT manager, customer experience applications, Pella Corporation. A word from Pella Corporation "Oracle WebCenter Sites?from the start?delivered important benefits. We’ve redesigned the online scheduling process and are seeing more potential customers completing consultation bookings online. More important, the solution opens a world of other possibilities as we plan to migrate Pella.com and our dealer microsites to the platform, and leverage it to optimize the Web experience for our mobile devices.” – Teri Lancaster, IT Manager, Customer Experience Applications, Pella Corporation Oracle Product and Services Oracle WebCenter Sites Why Oracle Pella has a long-standing relationship with Oracle. “We look to Oracle first for a solution. Our Oracle account team came to us with several solutions, and Oracle WebCenter Sites delivered the scalability, ease-of-use, flexibility, and scalability that we required for the appointment scheduling initiative and other Web projects on the horizon, including migrating Pella.com and optimizing our site for mobile platforms,”said Teri Lancaster, IT manager, customer experience applications, Pella Corporation. Implementation Process The Pella implementation team, working with Oracle partner Element Solutions, LLC, integrated the appointment setting application with Pella.com as well as the company’s Oracle E-Business Suite customer relationship management applications. Using Oracle WebCenter Site’s development tools and subversion capabilities to develop the application, the Element Solutions and Pella teams could work remotely and collaboratively, accelerating deployment. Pella went live with the new scheduling tool in just six months. Partner Oracle PartnerElement Solutions, LLC Element Solutions was instrumental at every major stage of the project, including design creation and approval, development, training, and rollout. “Element Solutions was a vital partner for our Oracle WebCenter Sites initiative. The team provided guidance, and more important, critical knowledge transfer at every stage?which equipped us to get the most out of this powerful and versatile solution. We were definitely collaboration partners,” Lancaster said. Resources Pella Corporation Upgrades Enterprise Applications to Continue to Improve Manufacturing Efficiency Thousands of Customers Successfully and Smoothly Upgrade to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 for New Functionality, Lower Operating Costs and Improved Shared Operations Managing the Virtual World

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• Windows Azure End to End Examples

  - by BuckWoody

  I’m fascinated by the way people learn. I’m told there are several methods people use to understand new information, from reading to watching, from experiencing to exploring. Personally, I use multiple methods of learning when I encounter a new topic, usually starting with reading a bit about the concepts. I quickly want to put those into practice, however, especially in the technical realm. I immediately look for examples where I can start trying out the concepts. But I often want a “real” example – not just something that represents the concept, but something that is real-world, showing some feature I could actually use. And it’s no different with the Windows Azure platform – I like finding things I can do now, and actually use. So when I started learning Windows Azure, I of course began with the Windows Azure Training Kit – which has lots of examples and labs, presentations and so on. But from there, I wanted more examples I could learn from, and eventually teach others with. I was asked if I would write a few of those up, so here are the ones I use. CodePlex CodePlex is Microsoft’s version of an “Open Source” repository. Anyone can start a project, add code, documentation and more to it and make it available to the world, free of charge, using various licenses as they wish. Microsoft also uses this location for most of the examples we publish, and sample databases for SQL Server. If you search in CodePlex for “Azure”, you’ll come back with a list of projects that folks have posted, including those of us at Microsoft. The source code and documentation are there, so you can learn using actual examples of code that will do what you need. There’s everything from a simple table query to a full project that is sort of a “Corporate Dropbox” that uses Windows Azure Storage. The advantage is that this code is immediately usable. It’s searchable, and you can often find a complete solution to meet your needs. The disadvantage is that the code is pretty specific – it may not cover a huge project like you’re looking for. Also, depending on the author(s), you might not find the documentation level you want. Link: http://azureexamples.codeplex.com/site/search?query=Azure&ac=8    Tailspin Microsoft Patterns and Practices is a group here that does an amazing job at sharing standard ways of doing IT – from operations to coding. If you’re not familiar with this resource, make sure you read up on it. Long before I joined Microsoft I used their work in my daily job – saved a ton of time. It has resources not only for Windows Azure but other Microsoft software as well. The Patterns and Practices group also publishes full books – you can buy these, but many are also online for free. There’s an end-to-end example for Windows Azure using a company called “Tailspin”, and the work covers not only the code but the design of the full solution. If you really want to understand the thought that goes into a Platform-as-a-Service solution, this is an excellent resource. The advantages are that this is a book, it’s complete, and it includes a discussion of design decisions. The disadvantage is that it’s a little over a year old – and in “Cloud” years that’s a lot. So many things have changed, improved, and have been added that you need to treat this as a resource, but not the only one. Still, highly recommended. Link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff728592.aspx Azure Stock Trader Sometimes you need a mix of a CodePlex-style application, and a little more detail on how it was put together. And it would be great if you could actually play with the completed application, to see how it really functions on the actual platform. That’s the Azure Stock Trader application. There’s a place where you can read about the application, and then it’s been published to Windows Azure – the production platform – and you can use it, explore, and see how it performs. I use this application all the time to demonstrate Windows Azure, or a particular part of Windows Azure. The advantage is that this is an end-to-end application, and online as well. The disadvantage is that it takes a bit of self-learning to work through.  Links: Learn it: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/bb499684 Use it: https://azurestocktrader.cloudapp.net/

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• Do You Develop Your PL/SQL Directly in the Database?

  - by thatjeffsmith

  I know this sounds like a REALLY weird question for many of you. Let me make one thing clear right away though, I am NOT talking about creating and replacing PLSQL objects directly into a production environment. Do we really need to talk about developers in production again? No, what I am talking about is a developer doing their work from start to finish in a development database. These are generally available to a development team for building the next and greatest version of your databases and database applications. And of course you are using a third party source control system, right? Last week I was in Tampa, FL presenting at the monthly Suncoast Oracle User’s Group meeting. Had a wonderful time, great questions and back-and-forth. My favorite heckler was there, @oraclenered, AKA Chet Justice.  I was in the middle of talking about how it’s better to do your PLSQL work in the Procedure Editor when Chet pipes up - Don’t do it that way, that’s wrong Just press play to edit the PLSQL directly in the database Or something along those lines. I didn’t get what the heck he was talking about. I had been showing how the Procedure Editor gives you much better feedback and support when working with PLSQL. After a few back-and-forths I got to what Chet’s main objection was, and again I’m going to paraphrase: You should develop offline in your SQL worksheet. Don’t do anything in the database until it’s done. I didn’t understand. Were developers expected to be able to internalize and mentally model the PL/SQL engine, see where their errors were, etc in these offline scripts? No, please give Chet more credit than that. What is the ideal Oracle Development Environment? If I were back in the ‘real world’ of database development, I would do all of my development outside of the ‘dev’ instance. My development process looks a little something like this: Do I have a program that already does something like this – copy and paste Has some smart person already written something like this – copy and paste Start typing in the white-screen-of-panic and bungle along until I get something that half-works Tweek, debug, test until I have fooled my subconscious into thinking that it’s ‘good’ As you might understand, I don’t want my co-workers to see the evolution of my code. It would seriously freak them out and I probably wouldn’t have a job anymore (don’t remind me that I already worked myself out of development.) So here’s what I like to do: Run a Local Instance of Oracle on my Machine and Develop My Code Privately I take a copy of development – that’s what source control is for afterall – and run it where no one else can see it. I now get to be my own DBA. If I need a trace – no problem. If I want to run an ASH report, no worries. If I need to create a directory or run some DataPump jobs, that’s all on me. Now when I get my code ‘up to snuff,’ then I will check it into source control and compile it into the official development instance. So my teammates suddenly go from seeing no program, to a mostly complete program. Is this right? If not, it doesn’t seem wrong to me. And after talking to Chet in the car on the way to the local cigar bar, it seems that he’s of the same opinion. So what’s so wrong with coding directly into a development instance? I think ‘wrong’ is a bit strong here. But there are a few pitfalls that you might want to look out for. A few come to mind – and I’m sure Chet could add many more as my memory fails me at the moment. But here goes: Development instance isn’t properly backed up – would hate to lose that work Development is wiped once a week and copied over from Prod – don’t laugh Someone clobbers your code You accidentally on purpose clobber someone else’s code The more developers you have in a single fish pond, the greater chance something ‘bad’ will happen This Isn’t One of Those Posts Where I Tell You What You Should Be Doing I realize many shops won’t be open to allowing developers to stage their own local copies of Oracle. But I would at least be aware that many of your developers are probably doing this anyway – with or without your tacit approval. SQL Developer can do local file tracking, but you should be using Source Control too! I will say that I think it’s imperative that you control your source code outside the database, even if your development team is comprised of a single developer. Store your source code in a file, and control that file in something like Subversion. You would be shocked at the number of teams that do not use a source control system. I know I continue to be shocked no matter how many times I meet another team running by the seat-of-their-pants. I’d love to hear how your development process works. And of course I want to know how SQL Developer and the rest of our tools can better support your processes. And one last thing, if you want a fun and interactive presentation experience, be sure to have Chet in the room

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• MVVM Light V4 preview 2 (BL0015) #mvvmlight

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  Over the past few weeks, I have worked hard on a few new features for MVVM Light V4. Here is a second early preview (consider this pre-alpha if you wish). The features are unit-tested, but I am now looking for feedback and there might be bugs! Bug correction: Messenger.CleanupList is now thread safe This was an annoying bug that is now corrected: In some circumstances, an exception could be thrown when the Messenger’s recipients list was cleaned up (i.e. the “dead” instances were removed). The method is called now and then and the exception was thrown apparently at random. In fact it was really a multi-threading issue, which is now corrected. Bug correction: AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers prevents EventToCommand to work This is a particularly annoying regression bug that was introduced in BL0014. In order to allow MVVM Light to work in XBAPs too, I added the AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers attribute to the assemblies. However, we just found out that this causes issues when using EventToCommand. In order to allow EventToCommand to continue working, I reverted to the previous state by removing the AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers attribute for now. I will work with my friends at Microsoft to try and find a solution. Stay tuned. Bug correction: XML documentation file is now generated in Release configuration The XML documentation file was not generated for the Release configuration. This was a simple flag in the project file that I had forgotten to set. This is corrected now. Applying EventToCommand to non-FrameworkElements This feature has been requested in order to be able to execute a command when a Storyboard is completed. I implemented this, but unfortunately found out that EventToCommand can only be added to Storyboards in Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4, but not in WPF or in Windows Phone 7. This obviously limits the usefulness of this change, but I decided to publish it anyway, because it is pretty damn useful in Silverlight… Why not in WPF? In WPF, Storyboards added to a resource dictionary are frozen. This is a feature of WPF which allows to optimize certain objects for performance: By freezing them, it is a contract where we say “this object will not be modified anymore, so do your perf optimization on them without worrying too much”. Unfortunately, adding a Trigger (such as EventTrigger) to an object in resources does not work if this object is frozen… and unfortunately, there is no way to tell WPF not to freeze the Storyboard in the resources… so there is no way around that (at least none I can see. In Silverlight, objects are not frozen, so an EventTrigger can be added without problems. Why not in WP7? In Windows Phone 7, there is a totally different issue: Adding a Trigger can only be done to a FrameworkElement, which Storyboard is not. Here I think that we might see a change in a future version of the framework, so maybe this small trick will work in the future. Workaround? Since you cannot use the EventToCommand on a Storyboard in WPF and in WP7, the workaround is pretty obvious: Handle the Completed event in the code behind, and call the Command from there on the ViewModel. This object can be obtained by casting the DataContext to the ViewModel type. This means that the View needs to know about the ViewModel, but I never had issues with that anyway. New class: NotifyPropertyChanged Sometimes when you implement a model object (for example Customer), you would like to have it implement INotifyPropertyChanged, but without having all the frills of a ViewModelBase. A new class named NotifyPropertyChanged allows you to do that. This class is a simple implementation of INotifyPropertyChaned (with all the overloads of RaisePropertyChanged that were implemented in BL0014). In fact, ViewModelBase inherits NotifyPropertyChanged. ViewModelBase does not implement IDisposable anymore The IDisposable interface and the Dispose method had been marked obsolete in the ViewModelBase class already in V3. Now they have been removed. Note: By this, I do not mean that IDisposable is a bad interface, or that it shouldn’t be used on viewmodels. In the contrary, I know that this interface is very useful in certain circumstances. However, I think that having it by default on every instance of ViewModelBase was sending a wrong message. This interface has a strong meaning in .NET: After Dispose has been executed, the instance should not be used anymore, and should be ready for garbage collection. What I really wanted to have on ViewModelBase was rather a simple cleanup method, something that can be executed now and then during runtime. This is fulfilled by the ICleanup interface and its Cleanup method. If your ViewModels need IDisposable, you can still use it! You will just have to implement the interface on the class itself, because it is not available on ViewModelBase anymore. What’s next? I have a couple exciting new features implemented already but that need more testing before they go live… Just stay tuned and by MIX11 (12-14 April 2011), we should see at least a major addition to MVVM Light Toolkit, as well as another smaller feature which is pretty cool nonetheless More about this later! Happy Coding Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• User Experience Fundamentals

  - by ultan o'broin

  Understanding what user experience means in the modern work environment is central to building great-looking usable applications on the desktop or mobile devices. What better place to start a series of blog posts on such Applications User Experience team enablement for customers and partners than by sharing what the term really means, writes team member Karen Scipi. Applications UX have gained valuable insights into developing a user experience that reflects the experience of today’s worker. We have observed real workers performing real tasks in real work environments, and we have developed a set of new standards of application design that have been scientifically proven to be beneficial to enable today’s workers. We share such expertise to enable our customers and partners to benefit from our insights and to further their return on investment when building Oracle applications. So, What is User Experience? ?The user interface (UI) is about the on-screen user context provided by the layout of widgets (such as icons, fields, and buttons and more) and the visual impact of colors, typographic choices, and so on. The UI comprises the “look and feel” of the application that users interact with, and reflects, in essence, the most immediate aspects of usability we can now all relate to.  User experience, on the other hand, is about understanding the whole context of the world of work, how workers go about completing tasks, crossing all sorts of boundaries along the way. It is a study of how business processes and workers goals coincide, how users work with technology or other tools to get their jobs done, their interactions with other users, and their response to the technical, physical, and cultural environment around them. User experience is all about how users work—their work environments, office layouts, desk tools, types of devices, their working day, and more. Even their job aids, such as sticky notes, offer insight for UX innovation. User experience matters because businesses needs to be efficient, work must be productive, and users now demand to be satisfied by the applications they work with. In simple terms, tasks finished quickly and accurately for a business evokes organization and worker satisfaction, which in turn makes workers feel good and more than willing to use the application again tomorrow. Design Principles for the Enterprise Worker The consumerization of information technology has raised the bar for enterprise applications. Applications must be consistent, simple, intuitive, but above all contextual, reflecting how and when workers work, in the office or on the go. For example, the Google search experience with its type-ahead keyword-prompting feature is how workers expect to be able to discover enterprise information, too. Type-ahead in PeopleSoft 9.1 To build software that enables workers to be productive, our design principles meet modern work requirements about consistency, with well-organized, context-driven information, geared for a working world of discovery and collaboration. Our applications must also behave in a simple, web-like way just like Amazon, Google, and Apple products that workers use at home or on the go. Our user experience must also reflect workers’ needs for flexibility and well-loved enterprise practices such as using popular desktop tools like Microsoft Excel or Outlook as required. Building User Experience Productively The building blocks of Oracle Fusion Applications are the user experience design patterns. Based on the Oracle Fusion Middleware technology used to build Oracle Fusion Applications, the patterns are reusable solutions to common usability challenges that ADF developers typically face as they build applications, extensions, and integrations. Developers use the patterns as part of their Oracle toolkits to realize great usability consistently and in a productive way. Our design pattern creation process is informed by user experience research and science, an understanding of our technology’s capabilities, the demands for simplification and intuitiveness from users, and the best of Oracle’s acquisitions strategy (an injection of smart people and smart innovation). The patterns are supported by usage guidelines and are tested in our labs and assembled into a library of proven resources we used to build own Oracle Fusion Applications and other Oracle applications user experiences. The design patterns library is now available to the ADF community and to our partners and customers, for free. Developers with ADF skills and other technology skills can now offer more than just coding and functionality and still use the best in enterprise methodologies to ensure that a great user experience is easily applied, scaled, and maintained, whether it be for SaaS or on-premise deployments for Oracle Fusion Applications, for applications coexistence, or for partner integrations scenarios.  Oracle partners and customers already using our design patterns to build solutions and win business in smart and productive ways are now sharing their experiences and insights on pattern use to benefit your entire business. Applications UX is going global with the message and the means. Our hands-on user experience enablement through ADF  is expanding. So, stay tuned to Misha Vaughan's Voice of User Experience (VOX) blog and follow along on Twitter at @usableapps for news of outreach events and other learning opportunities. Interested in Learning More? Oracle Fusion Applications User Experience Patterns and Guidelines Library Shout-outs for Oracle UX Design Patterns Oracle Fusion Applications User Experience Design Patterns: Productivity Realized

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• Towards an F# .NET Reflector add-in

  - by CliveT

  When I had the opportunity to spent some time during Red Gate's recent "down tools" week on a project of my choice, the obvious project was an F# add-in for Reflector . To be honest, this was a bit of a misnomer as the amount of time in the designated week for coding was really less than three days, so it was always unlikely that very much progress would be made in such a small amount of time (and that certainly proved to be the case), but I did learn some things from the experiment. Like lots of problems, one useful technique is to take examples, get them to work, and then generalise to get something that works across the board. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to do the last stage. The obvious first step is to take a few function definitions, starting with the obvious hello world, moving on to a non-recursive function and finishing with the ubiquitous recursive Fibonacci function. let rec printMessage message  =     printfn  message let foo x  =    (x + 1) let rec fib x  =     if (x >= 2) then (fib (x - 1) + fib (x - 2)) else 1 The major problem in decompiling these simple functions is that Reflector has an in-memory object model that is designed to support object-oriented languages. In particular it has a return statement that allows function bodies to finish early. I used some of the in-built functionality to take the IL and produce an in-memory object model for the language, but then needed to write a transformer to push the return statements to the top of the tree to make it easy to render the code into a functional language. This tree transform works in some scenarios, but not in others where we simply regenerate code that looks more like CPS style. The next thing to get working was library level bindings of values where these values are calculated at runtime. let x = [1 ; 2 ; 3 ; 4] let y = List.map  (fun x -> foo x) x The way that this is translated into a set of classes for the underlying platform means that the code needs to follow references around, from the property exposing the calculated value to the class in which the code for generating the value is embedded. One of the strongest selling points of functional languages is the algebraic datatypes, which allow definitions via standard mathematical-style inductive definitions across the union cases. type Foo =     | Something of int     | Nothing type 'a Foo2 =     | Something2 of 'a     | Nothing2 Such a definition is compiled into a number of classes for the cases of the union, which all inherit from a class representing the type itself. It wasn't too hard to get such a de-compilation happening in the cases I tried. What did I learn from this? Firstly, that there are various bits of functionality inside Reflector that it would be useful for us to allow add-in writers to access. In particular, there are various implementations of the Visitor pattern which implement algorithms such as calculating the number of references for particular variables, and which perform various substitutions which could be more generally useful to add-in writers. I hope to do something about this at some point in the future. Secondly, when you transform a functional language into something that runs on top of an object-based platform, you lose some fidelity in the representation. The F# compiler leaves attributes in place so that tools can tell which classes represent classes from the source program and which are there for purposes of the implementation, allowing the decompiler to regenerate these constructs again. However, decompilation technology is a long way from being able to take unannotated IL and transform it into a program in a different language. For a simple function definition, like Fibonacci, I could write a simple static function and have it come out in F# as the same function, but it would be practically impossible to take a mass of class definitions and have a decompiler translate it automatically into an F# algebraic data type. What have we got out of this? Some data on the feasibility of implementing an F# decompiler inside Reflector, though it's hard at the moment to say how long this would take to do. The work we did is included the 6.5 EAP for Reflector that you can get from the EAP forum. All things considered though, it was a useful way to gain more familiarity with the process of writing an add-in and understand difficulties other add-in authors might experience. If you'd like to check out a video of Down Tools Week, click here.

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• Windows Azure End to End Examples

  - by BuckWoody

  I’m fascinated by the way people learn. I’m told there are several methods people use to understand new information, from reading to watching, from experiencing to exploring. Personally, I use multiple methods of learning when I encounter a new topic, usually starting with reading a bit about the concepts. I quickly want to put those into practice, however, especially in the technical realm. I immediately look for examples where I can start trying out the concepts. But I often want a “real” example – not just something that represents the concept, but something that is real-world, showing some feature I could actually use. And it’s no different with the Windows Azure platform – I like finding things I can do now, and actually use. So when I started learning Windows Azure, I of course began with the Windows Azure Training Kit – which has lots of examples and labs, presentations and so on. But from there, I wanted more examples I could learn from, and eventually teach others with. I was asked if I would write a few of those up, so here are the ones I use. CodePlex CodePlex is Microsoft’s version of an “Open Source” repository. Anyone can start a project, add code, documentation and more to it and make it available to the world, free of charge, using various licenses as they wish. Microsoft also uses this location for most of the examples we publish, and sample databases for SQL Server. If you search in CodePlex for “Azure”, you’ll come back with a list of projects that folks have posted, including those of us at Microsoft. The source code and documentation are there, so you can learn using actual examples of code that will do what you need. There’s everything from a simple table query to a full project that is sort of a “Corporate Dropbox” that uses Windows Azure Storage. The advantage is that this code is immediately usable. It’s searchable, and you can often find a complete solution to meet your needs. The disadvantage is that the code is pretty specific – it may not cover a huge project like you’re looking for. Also, depending on the author(s), you might not find the documentation level you want. Link: http://azureexamples.codeplex.com/site/search?query=Azure&ac=8    Tailspin Microsoft Patterns and Practices is a group here that does an amazing job at sharing standard ways of doing IT – from operations to coding. If you’re not familiar with this resource, make sure you read up on it. Long before I joined Microsoft I used their work in my daily job – saved a ton of time. It has resources not only for Windows Azure but other Microsoft software as well. The Patterns and Practices group also publishes full books – you can buy these, but many are also online for free. There’s an end-to-end example for Windows Azure using a company called “Tailspin”, and the work covers not only the code but the design of the full solution. If you really want to understand the thought that goes into a Platform-as-a-Service solution, this is an excellent resource. The advantages are that this is a book, it’s complete, and it includes a discussion of design decisions. The disadvantage is that it’s a little over a year old – and in “Cloud” years that’s a lot. So many things have changed, improved, and have been added that you need to treat this as a resource, but not the only one. Still, highly recommended. Link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff728592.aspx Azure Stock Trader Sometimes you need a mix of a CodePlex-style application, and a little more detail on how it was put together. And it would be great if you could actually play with the completed application, to see how it really functions on the actual platform. That’s the Azure Stock Trader application. There’s a place where you can read about the application, and then it’s been published to Windows Azure – the production platform – and you can use it, explore, and see how it performs. I use this application all the time to demonstrate Windows Azure, or a particular part of Windows Azure. The advantage is that this is an end-to-end application, and online as well. The disadvantage is that it takes a bit of self-learning to work through.  Links: Learn it: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/bb499684 Use it: https://azurestocktrader.cloudapp.net/

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• Use WLST to Delete All JMS Messages From a Destination

  - by james.bayer

  I got a question today about whether WebLogic Server has any tools to delete all messages from a JMS Queue.  It just so happens that the WLS Console has this capability already.  It’s available on the screen after the “Show Messages” button is clicked on a destination’s Monitoring tab as seen in the screen shot below. The console is great for something ad-hoc, but what if I want to automate this?  Well it just so happens that the console is just a weblogic application layered on top of the JMX Management interface.  If you look at the MBean Reference, you’ll find a JMSDestinationRuntimeMBean that includes the operation deleteMessages that takes a JMS Message Selector as an argument.  If you pass an empty string, that is essentially a wild card that matches all messages. Coding a stand-alone JMX client for this is kind of lame, so let’s do something more suitable to scripting.  In addition to the console, WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) based on Jython is another way to browse and invoke MBeans, so an equivalent interactive shell session to delete messages from a destination would looks like this: D:\Oracle\fmw11gr1ps3\user_projects\domains\hotspot_domain\bin>setDomainEnv.cmd D:\Oracle\fmw11gr1ps3\user_projects\domains\hotspot_domain>java weblogic.WLST   Initializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ...   Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting Shell   Type help() for help on available commands   wls:/offline> connect('weblogic','welcome1','t3://localhost:7001') Connecting to t3://localhost:7001 with userid weblogic ... Successfully connected to Admin Server 'AdminServer' that belongs to domain 'hotspot_domain'.   Warning: An insecure protocol was used to connect to the server. To ensure on-the-wire security, the SSL port or Admin port should be used instead.   wls:/hotspot_domain/serverConfig> serverRuntime() Location changed to serverRuntime tree. This is a read-only tree with ServerRuntimeMBean as the root. For more help, use help(serverRuntime)   wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime> cd('JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0') wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime/JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0> ls() dr-- DurableSubscribers   -r-- BytesCurrentCount 0 -r-- BytesHighCount 174620 -r-- BytesPendingCount 0 -r-- BytesReceivedCount 253548 -r-- BytesThresholdTime 0 -r-- ConsumersCurrentCount 0 -r-- ConsumersHighCount 0 -r-- ConsumersTotalCount 0 -r-- ConsumptionPaused false -r-- ConsumptionPausedState Consumption-Enabled -r-- DestinationInfo javax.management.openmbean.CompositeDataSupport(compositeType=javax.management.openmbean.CompositeType(name=DestinationInfo,items=((itemName=ApplicationName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=ModuleName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.Boolean)),(itemName=SerializedDestination,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=ServerName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=Topic,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.Boolean)),(itemName=VersionNumber,itemType=javax.management.op ule-0!Queue-0, Queue=true, SerializedDestination=rO0ABXNyACN3ZWJsb2dpYy5qbXMuY29tbW9uLkRlc3RpbmF0aW9uSW1wbFSmyJ1qZfv8DAAAeHB3kLZBABZTeXN0ZW1Nb2R1bGUtMCFRdWV1ZS0wAAtKTVNTZXJ2ZXItMAAOU3lzdGVtTW9kdWxlLTABAANBbGwCAlb6IS6T5qL/AAAACgEAC0FkbWluU2VydmVyAC2EGgJW+iEuk+ai/wAAAAsBAAtBZG1pblNlcnZlcgAthBoAAQAQX1dMU19BZG1pblNlcnZlcng=, ServerName=JMSServer-0, Topic=false, VersionNumber=1}) -r-- DestinationType Queue -r-- DurableSubscribers null -r-- InsertionPaused false -r-- InsertionPausedState Insertion-Enabled -r-- MessagesCurrentCount 0 -r-- MessagesDeletedCurrentCount 3 -r-- MessagesHighCount 2 -r-- MessagesMovedCurrentCount 0 -r-- MessagesPendingCount 0 -r-- MessagesReceivedCount 3 -r-- MessagesThresholdTime 0 -r-- Name SystemModule-0!Queue-0 -r-- Paused false -r-- ProductionPaused false -r-- ProductionPausedState Production-Enabled -r-- State advertised_in_cluster_jndi -r-- Type JMSDestinationRuntime   -r-x closeCursor Void : String(cursorHandle) -r-x deleteMessages Integer : String(selector) -r-x getCursorEndPosition Long : String(cursorHandle) -r-x getCursorSize Long : String(cursorHandle) -r-x getCursorStartPosition Long : String(cursorHandle) -r-x getItems javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Long(start),Integer(count) -r-x getMessage javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(cursorHandle),Long(messageHandle) -r-x getMessage javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(cursorHandle),String(messageID) -r-x getMessage javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(messageID) -r-x getMessages String : String(selector),Integer(timeout) -r-x getMessages String : String(selector),Integer(timeout),Integer(state) -r-x getNext javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Integer(count) -r-x getPrevious javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Integer(count) -r-x importMessages Void : javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[],Boolean(replaceOnly) -r-x moveMessages Integer : String(java.lang.String),javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData,Integer(java.lang.Integer) -r-x moveMessages Integer : String(selector),javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData -r-x pause Void : -r-x pauseConsumption Void : -r-x pauseInsertion Void : -r-x pauseProduction Void : -r-x preDeregister Void : -r-x resume Void : -r-x resumeConsumption Void : -r-x resumeInsertion Void : -r-x resumeProduction Void : -r-x sort Long : String(cursorHandle),Long(start),String[](fields),Boolean[](ascending)   wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime/JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0> cmo.deleteMessages('') 2 where the domain name is “hotspot_domain”, the JMS Server name is “JMSServer-0”, the Queue name is “Queue-0” and the System Module is named “SystemModule-0”.  To invoke the operation, I use the “cmo” object, which is the “Current Management Object” that represents the currently navigated to MBean.  The 2 indicates that two messages were deleted.  Combining this WLST code with a recent post by my colleague Steve that shows you how to use an encrypted file to store the authentication credentials, you could easily turn this into a secure automated script.  If you need help with that step, a long while back I blogged about some WLST basics.  Happy scripting.

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• Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge Winners

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. Now that OpenWorld 2012 has wrapped, I have time to tell you all about what happened. Maybe you recall that Noel (@noelportugal) and I were running a modified hackathon during the show, the Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge. Without further ado, congratulations to Dimitri Gielis (@dgielis) and Martin Giffy D’Souza (@martindsouza) on their winning entry, an integration between Oracle APEX and Oracle Social Network that integrates feedback and bug submission with Oracle Social Network Conversations, allowing developers, end-users and project leaders to view and discuss the feedback on their APEX applications from within Oracle Social Network. Update: Bob Rhubart of OTN (@brhubart) interviewed Dimitri and Martin right after their big win. Money quote from Dimitri when asked what he’d buy with the $500 in Amazon gift cards, “Oracle Social Network.” Nice one. In their own words: In the developers perspective it’s important to get feedback soon, so after a first iteration and end-users start to test, they can give feedback of the application. Previously it stopped there, and it was up to the developer to communicate further with email, phone etc. With OSN every feedback and communication gets logged and other people can see the discussion immediately as well. For the end users perspective he can now communicate in a more efficient way to not only the developers, but also between themselves. Maybe many end-users (in different locations) would like to change some behaviour, by using OSN they can see the entry somebody put in with a screenshot and they can just start to chat about it. Some key technical end users can have lighten the tasks of the development team by looking at the feedback first and start to communicate with their peers. For the project manager he has now the ability to really see what communication has taken place in certain areas and can make decisions on that. Later, if things come up again, he can always go back in OSN and see what was said at that moment in time. Integrating OSN in the APEX applications enhances the user experience, makes the lives of the developers easier and gives a better overview to project managers. Incidentally, you may already know Dimitri and Martin, since both are Oracle Ace Directors. I ran into Martin at the Ace Director briefings Friday before the conference started, and at that point, he wasn’t sure he’d have time to enter the Challenge. After some coaxing, he and Dimitri agreed to give it a go and banged out their entry on Tuesday night, or more accurately, very early Wednesday morning, the day of the Challenge judging. I think they said it took them about four hours of hardcore coding to get it done, very much like a traditional hackathon, which is essentially a code sprint from idea to finished product. Here are some screenshots of the workflow they built. #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } I love this idea, i.e. closing the loop between web developers and users, a very common pain point, and so did our judges. Speaking of, special thanks to our panel of three judges: Reggie Bradford (@reggiebradford), serial entrepreneur, founder of Vitrue and SVP of Cloud Product Development at Oracle Robert Hipps (@roberthipps), VP of Development for Oracle Social Network and my former boss Roland Smart (@rsmartx), VP of Social Marketing and the brains behind the Oracle Social Developer Community Finally, thanks to everyone who made this possible, including: The three other teams from HarQen (@harqen), TEAM Informatics (@teaminformatics) and Fishbowl Solutions (@fishbowle20) featuring Friend of the ‘Lab John Sim (@jrsim_uix), who finished and presented entries. I’ll be posting the details of their work this week. The one guy who finished an entry, but couldn’t make the judging, Bex Huff (@bex). Bex rallied from a hospitalization due to an allergic reaction during the show; he’s fine, don’t worry. I’ll post details of his work next week, too. The 40-plus people who registered to compete in the Challenge. Noel for all his hard work, sample code, and flying monkey target, more on that to come. The Oracle Social Network development team for supporting this event. Everyone in legal and the beta program office for their help. And finally, the Oracle Technology Network (@oracletechnet) for hosting the event and providing countless hours of operational and moral support. Sorry if I’ve missed some people, since this was a huge team effort. This event was a big success, and we plan to do similar events in the future. Stay tuned to this channel for more. 

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• Shadow mapping with deffered shading for directional lights - shadow map projection problem

  - by Harry

  I'm trying to implement shadow mapping to my engine. I started with directional lights because they seemed to be the easiest one, but I was wrong :) I have implemented deferred shading and I retrieve position from depth. I think that there is the biggest problem but code looks ok for me. Now more about problem: Shadow map projected onto meshes looks bad scaled and translated and also some informations from shadow map texture aren't visible. You can see it on this screen: http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/2254/93dn.png Yelow frustum is light frustum and I have mixed shadow map preview and actual scene. As you can see shadows are in wrong place and shadow of cone and sphere aren't visible. Could you look at my codes and tell me where I have a mistake? // create shadow map if(!_shd)glGenTextures(1, &_shd); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, _shd); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT, 1024, 1024, 0, GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT, GL_FLOAT,NULL); // shadow map size glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glFramebufferTexture2D(GL_DRAW_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_DEPTH_ATTACHMENT, GL_TEXTURE_2D, _shd, 0); glDrawBuffer(GL_NONE); // setting camera Vector dire=Vector(0,0,1); ACamera.setLookAt(dire,Vector(0)); ACamera.setPerspectiveView(60.0f,1,0.1f,10.0f); // currently needed for proper frustum corners calculation Vector min(ACamera._point[0]),max(ACamera._point[0]); for(int i=0;i<8;i++){ max=Max(max,ACamera._point[i]); min=Min(min,ACamera._point[i]); } ACamera.setOrthogonalView(min.x,max.x,min.y,max.y,-max.z,-min.z); glBindFramebuffer(GL_DRAW_FRAMEBUFFER, _s_buffer); // framebuffer for shadow map // rendering to depth buffer glBindFramebuffer(GL_DRAW_FRAMEBUFFER, _g_buffer); Shaders["DirLight"].set(true); Matrix4 bias; bias.x.set(0.5,0.0,0.0,0.0); bias.y.set(0.0,0.5,0.0,0.0); bias.z.set(0.0,0.0,0.5,0.0); bias.w.set(0.5,0.5,0.5,1.0); Shaders["DirLight"].set("textureMatrix",ACamera.matrix*Projection3D*bias); // order of multiplications are 100% correct, everything gives mi the same result as using glm glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE5); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D,_shd); lightDir(dir); // light calculations Vertex Shader makes nothing related to shadow calculatons Pixel shader function which calculates if pixel is in shadow or not: float readShadowMap(vec3 eyeDir) { // retrieve depth of pixel float z = texture2D(depth, gl_FragCoord.xy/screen).z; vec3 pos = vec3(gl_FragCoord.xy/screen, z); // transform by the projection and view inverse vec4 worldSpace = inverse(View)*inverse(ProjectionMatrix)*vec4(pos*2-1,1); worldSpace /= worldSpace.w; vec4 coord=textureMatrix*worldSpace; float vis=1.0f; if(texture2D(shadow, coord.xy).z < coord.z-0.001)vis=0.2f; return vis; } I also have question about shadows specifically for directional light. Currently I always look at 0,0,0 position and in further implementation I have to move light frustum along to camera frustum. I've found how to do this here: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/505893-orthographic-projection-for-shadow-mapping/ but it doesn't give me what I want. Maybe because of problems mentioned above, but I want know your opinion. EDIT: vec4 worldSpace is position read from depht of the scene (not shadow map). Maybe I wasn't precise so I'll try quick explain what is what: View is camera view matrix, ProjectionMatrix is camera projection,. First I try to get world space position from depth map and then multiply it by textureMatrix which is light view *light projection*bias. Rest of code is the same as in many tutorials. I can't use vertex shader to make something like gl_Position=textureMatrix*gl_Vertex and get it interpolated in fragment shader because of deffered rendering use so I want get it from depht buffer. EDIT2: I also tried make it as in Coding Labs tutorial about Shadow Mapping with Deferred Rendering but unfortunately this either works wrong.

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• Execute TSQL statement with ExecuteStoreQuery in entity framework 4.0

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  I was playing with entity framework in recent days and I was searching something that how we can execute TSQL statement in entity framework. And I have found one great way to do that with entity framework ‘ExecuteStoreQuery’ method. It’s executes a TSQL statement against data source given enity framework context and returns strongly typed result. You can find more information about ExcuteStoreQuery from following link. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd487208.aspx So let’s examine how it works. So Let’s first create a table against which we are going to execute TSQL statement. So I have added a SQL Express database as following. Now once we are done with adding a database let’s add a table called Client like following. Here you can see above Client table is very simple. There are only two fields ClientId and ClientName where ClientId is primary key and ClientName is field where we are going to store client name. Now it’s time to add some data to the table. So I have added some test data like following. Now it’s time to add entity framework model class. So right click project->Add new item and select ADO.NET entity model as following. After clicking on add button a wizard will start it will ask whether we need to create model classes from database or not but we already have our client table ready so I have selected generate from database as following. Once you process further in wizard it will be presented a screen where we can select the our table like following. Now once you click finish it will create model classes with for us. Now we need a gridview control where we need to display those data. So in Default.aspx page I have added a grid control like following. <%@ Page Title="Home Page" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Site.master" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="EntityFramework._Default" %> <asp:Content ID="HeaderContent" runat="server" ContentPlaceHolderID="HeadContent"> </asp:Content> <asp:Content ID="BodyContent" runat="server" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent"> <h2> Welcome to ASP.NET! </h2> <p> To learn more about ASP.NET visit <a href="http://www.asp.net" title="ASP.NET Website">www.asp.net</a>. </p> <p> You can also find <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=152368&amp;clcid=0x409" title="MSDN ASP.NET Docs">documentation on ASP.NET at MSDN</a>. <asp:GridView ID="grdClient" runat="server"> </asp:GridView> </p> </asp:Content> Now once we are done with adding Gridview its time to write code for server side. So I have written following code in Page_load event of default.aspx page. protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (!Page.IsPostBack) { using (var context = new EntityFramework.TestEntities()) { ObjectResult<Client> result = context.ExecuteStoreQuery<Client>("Select * from Client"); grdClient.DataSource = result; grdClient.DataBind(); } } } Here in the above code you can see that I have written create a object of our entity model and then with the help of the ExecuteStoreQuery method I have execute a simple select TSQL statement which will return a object result. I have bind that object result with gridview to display data. So now we are done with coding.So let’s run application in browser. Following is output as expected. That’s it. Hope you like it. Stay tuned for more..Till then happy programming.

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• Day 4 - Game Sprites In Action

  - by dapostolov

  Yesterday I drew an image on the screen. Most exciting, but ... I spent more time blogging about it then actual coding. So this next little while I'm going to streamline my game and research and simply post key notes. Quick notes on the last session: The most important thing I wanted to point out were the following methods:           spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend);           spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White);           spriteBatch.End(); The spriteBatch object is used to draw Textures and a 2D texture is called a Sprite A texture is generally an image, which is called an Asset in XNA The Draw Method in the Game1.cs is looped (until exit) and utilises the spriteBatch object to draw a Scene To begin drawing a Scene you call the Begin Method. To end a Scene you call the End Method. And to place an image on the Scene you call the Draw method. The most simple implementation of the draw method is:           spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White); 1) sprite - the 2D texture you loaded to draw 2) position - the 2d vector, a set of x & y coordinates 3) Color.White - the tint to apply to the texture, in this case, white light = nothing, nada, no tint. Game Sprites In Action! Today, I played around with Draw methods to get comfortable with their "quirks". The following is an example of the above draw method, but with more parameters available for us to use. Let's investigate!             spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position2, null, Color.White, MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), new Vector2(sprite.Width / 2, sprite.Height / 2), 1.0F, SpriteEffects.None, 0.0F); The parameters (in order): 1) sprite  the texture to display 2) position2 the position on the screen / scene this can also be a rectangle 3) null the portion of the image to display within an image null = display full image this is generally used for animation strips / grids (more on this below) 4) Color.White Texture tinting White = no tint 5) MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f) rotation of the object, in this case 45 degrees rotates from the set plotting point. 6) new Vector(0,0) the plotting point in this case the top left corner the image will rotate from the top left of the texture in the code above, the point is set to the middle of the image. 7) 1.0f Image scaling (1x) 8) SpriteEffects.None you can flip the image horizontally or vertically 9) 0.0f The z index of the image. 0 = closer, 1 behind? And playing around with different combinations I was able to come up with the following whacky display:   Checking off Yesterdays Intention List: learn game development terminology (in progress) - We learned sprite, scene, texture, and asset. how to place and position (rotate) a static image on the screen (completed) - The thing to note was, it's was in radians and I found a cool helper method to convert degrees into radians. Also, the image rotates from it's specified point. how to layer static images on the screen (completed) - I couldn't seem to get the zIndex working, but one things for sure, the order you draw the image in also determines how it is rendered on the screen. understand image scaling (in progress) - I'm not sure I have this fully covered, but for the most part plug a number in the scaling field and the image grows / shrinks accordingly. can we reuse images? (completed) - yes, I loaded one image and plotted the bugger all over the screen. understand how framerate is handled in XNA (in progress) - I hacked together some code to display the framerate each second. A framerate of 60 appears to be the standard. Interesting to note, the GameTime object does provide you with some cool timing capabilities, such as...is the game running slow? Need to investigate this down the road. how to display text , basic shapes, and colors on the screen (in progress) - i got text rendered on the screen, and i understand containing rectangles. However, I didn't display "shapes" & "colors" how to interact with an image (collision of user input?) (todo) how to animate an image and understand basic animation techniques (in progress) - I was able to create a stripe animation of numbers ranging from 1 - 4, each block was 40 x 40 pixles for a total stripe size of 160 x 40. Using the portion (source Rectangle) parameter, i limited this display to each section at varying intervals. It was interesting to note my first implementation animated at rocket speed. I then tried to create a smoother animation by limiting the redraw capacity, which seemed to work. I guess a little more research will have to be put into this for animating characters / scenes. how to detect colliding images or screen edges (todo) - but the rectangle object can detect collisions I believe. how to manipulate the image, lets say colors, stretching (in progress) - I haven't figured out how to modify a specific color to be another color, but the tinting parameter definately could be used. As for stretching, use the rectangle object as the positioning and the image will stretch to fit! how to focus on a segment of an image...like only displaying a frame on a film reel (completed) - as per basic animation techniques what's the best way to manage images (compression, storage, location, prevent artwork theft, etc.) (todo) Tomorrows Intention Tomorrow I am going to take a stab at rendering a game menu and from there I'm going to investigate how I can improve upon the code and techniques. Intention List: Render a menu, fancy or not Show the mouse cursor Hook up click event A basic animation of somesort Investigate image / menu techniques D.

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• Common usecases and techniques when integrating a 3rd party application with Oracle Sales Cloud

  - by asantaga

  Over the last year or so I've see a lot of partners migrating and integrate their applications with Oracle Sales Cloud. Interestingly I'd say 60% of the partners use the same set of design patterns over and over again. Most of the time I see that they want to embed their application into Oracle Sales Cloud, within a tab usually, perhaps click on a link to their application (passing some piece of data + credentials) and then within their application update sales cloud again using webservices. Here are some examples of the different use-cases I've seen , and how partners are embedding their applications into Sales Cloud, NB : The following examples use the "Desktop" User Interface rather than the Newer "Simplified User Interface", I'll update the sample application soon but the integration patterns are precisely the same Use Case 1 :  Navigator "Link out" to third party application This is an example of where the developer has added a link to the global navigator and this links out to the 3rd Party Application. Typically one doesn't pass any contextual data with the exception of perhaps user credentials, or better still JWT Token. Techniques Used   Adding Link to Menu Item Using JWT Token in Sales Cloud Use Case 2 : Application Embedded within the Sales Cloud Dashboard Within the Oracle Sales Cloud application there is a tab called "Sales", within this tab its possible to embed a SubTab and embed a iFrame pointing to your application. To do this the developer simply needs to edit the page in customization mode, add the tab and then add the iFrame, simples! The developer can pass credentials/JWT Token and some other pieces of data but not object data (ie the current OpportunityID etc)  Techniques Used Adding a page to the dashboard  Using JWT Token in Sales Cloud  Use Case 3 : Embedding a Tab and Context Linking out from a Sales Cloud object to the 3rd party application In this usecase the developer embeds two components into Oracle Sales Cloud. The first is a SubTab showing summary data to the user (a quote in our case) and then secondly a hyperlink, (although it could be a button) which when clicked navigates the user to the 3rd party application. In this case the developer almost always passes context specific data (i.e. the opportunityId) and a security token (username password combo or JWT Token). The third party application usually takes the data, perhaps queries more data using the Sales Cloud SOAP/WebService interface and then displays the resulting mashup to the user for further processing. When the user has finished their work in the 3rd party application they normally navigate back to Oracle Sales Cloud using what's called a "DeepLink", ie taking them back to the object [opportunity in our case] they came from. This image visually shows a "Happy Path" a user may follow, and combines linking out to an application , webservice calls and deep linking back to Sales Cloud. Techniques Used Extending a SalesCloud application with a custom button Using JWT Token in Sales Cloud Extending Oracle Sales Cloud [Opportnity] with a custom tab exposing External Content Retrieving Data from Oracle Sales cloud using WebServices Coding some groovy script to generate the URLs required (Doc 1571200.1 on MyOracle Support) DeepLinking to specific Oracle Sales Cloud Pages (Doc 1516151.1 on My Oracle Support) Use-Case 4 :  Server Side processing/synchronization This usecase focuses on the Server Side processing of data, in this case synchronizing data. Here the 3rd party application is running on a "timer", e.g. cron or similar, and when triggered it queries data from Oracle Sales Cloud, then it queries data from the 3rd party application, determines the deltas and then inserts the data where required. Specifically here we are calling Oracle Sales Cloud using SOAP/WebServices and the 3rd party application is being communicated to using the REST API, for Oracle Sales Cloud one would use standard JAX-WS WebService calls and for REST one would use the JAX-RS api and perhap the Jackson api for managing JSON objects.. This is a very common use case and one which specifically lends itself to using the Oracle Java Cloud Service as the ideal application server where to host the mediator between the two applications.  Techniques Used Using JWT Token in Sales Cloud Integrating with the Oracle Java Cloud Service Retrieving Data from Oracle Sales cloud using WebServices General Resources The above is just a small set of techniques and use-cases which are used today. There are plenty of other sources of documentation and resources available on the internet but to get you started here are a few of my favourite places  Sales Cloud General Documentation Sales Cloud Customize Tab is useful for general customization of Sales Cloud Sales Cloud Integration Tab focuses on the 3rd party integration techniques  Official Oracle Fusion Developer Relations Blog Official Oracle Fusion Developer Relations YouTube Channel Enjoy integrating! 

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• Alternative Grid Layout for Silverlight suggestion

  - by brainbox

  I've proposed a suggestion to create alternative grid layout for Silverlight. Please vote for it if also faced the same problems. As i write before current Silverlight Grid Layout breakes best practices of HTML and Adobe Flex Grid layouts. Current defention based approach have following disadvantages that makes xaml coding very hard: 1. It is very hard to create new row. In that case you should rewriteall Grid.Row and Grid.Columns for all rows inserted below.2. Defenitions are static by their nature and because of it, it isimpossible to use grid for dynamic forms. Currently even in toolkit DataFormMicrosoft is using StackPanel. But StackPanel is not designed for multicolumn layout that have dataform. Here is a sample code of AdobeFlex datagrid, which incorporates bestpractices of HTML. <mx:Grid id="myGrid">        <!-- Define Row 1. -->       <mx:GridRow id="row1">           <!-- Define the first cell of Row 1. -->           <mx:GridItem>               <mx:Button label="Button 1"/>           </mx:GridItem>           <!-- Define the second cell of Row 1. -->           <mx:GridItem>               <mx:Button label="2"/>           </mx:GridItem>           <!-- Define the third cell of Row 1. -->           <mx:GridItem>               <mx:Button label="Button 3"/>           </mx:GridItem>       </mx:GridRow>        <!-- Define Row 2. -->       <mx:GridRow id="row2">           <!-- Define a single cell to span three columns of Row 2. -->           <mx:GridItem colSpan="3" horizontalAlign="center">               <mx:Button label="Long-Named Button 4"/>           </mx:GridItem>       </mx:GridRow>        <!-- Define Row 3. -->       <mx:GridRow id="row3">           <!-- Define an empty first cell of Row 3. -->           <mx:GridItem/>           <!-- Define a cell to span columns 2 and 3 of Row 3. -->           <mx:GridItem colSpan="2" horizontalAlign="center">               <mx:Button label="Button 5"/>           </mx:GridItem>       </mx:GridRow>    </mx:Grid>

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #053 – Final Post in Series

  - by Pinal Dave

  It has been a fantastic journey to write memory lane series for an entire year. This series gave me the opportunity to go back and see what I have contributed to this blog throughout the last 7 years. This was indeed fantastic series as this provided me the opportunity to witness how technology has grown throughout the year and how I have progressed in my career while writing this blog post. This series was indeed fantastic experience readers as many joined during the last few years and were not sure what they have missed in recent years. Let us continue with the final episode of the Memory Lane Series. Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Get Current User – Get Logged In User Here is the straight script which list logged in SQL Server users. Disable All Triggers on a Database – Disable All Triggers on All Servers Question : How to disable all the triggers for a database? Additionally, how to disable all the triggers for all servers? For answer execute the script in the blog post. Importance of Master Database for SQL Server Startup I have received following questions many times. I will list all the questions here and answer them together. What is the purpose of Master database? Should our backup Master database? Which database is must have database for SQL Server for startup? Which are the default system database created when SQL Server 2005 is installed for the first time? What happens if Master database is corrupted? Answers to all of the questions are very much related. 2008 DECLARE Multiple Variables in One Statement SQL Server is a great product and it has many features which are very unique to SQL Server. Regarding feature of SQL Server where multiple variable can be declared in one statement, it is absolutely possible to do. 2009 How to Enable Index – How to Disable Index – Incorrect syntax near ‘ENABLE’ Many times I have seen that the index is disabled when there is a large update operation on the table. Bulk insert of very large file updates in any table using SSIS is usually preceded by disabling the index and followed by enabling the index. I have seen many developers running the following query to disable the index. 2010 List of all the Views from Database Many emails I received suggesting that they have hundreds of the view and now have no clue what is going on and how many of them have indexes and how many does not have an index. Some even asked me if there is any way they can get a list of the views with the property of Index along with it. Here is the quick script which does exactly the same. You can also include many other columns from the same view. Minimum Maximum Memory – Server Memory Options I was recently reading about SQL Server Memory Options over here. While reading this one line really caught my attention is minimum value allowed for maximum memory options. The default setting for min server memory is 0, and the default setting for max server memory is 2147483647. The minimum amount of memory you can specify for max server memory is 16 megabytes (MB). 2011 Fundamentals of Columnstore Index There are two kinds of storage in a database. Row Store and Column Store. Row store does exactly as the name suggests – stores rows of data on a page – and column store stores all the data in a column on the same page. These columns are much easier to search – instead of a query searching all the data in an entire row whether the data are relevant or not, column store queries need only to search a much lesser number of the columns. How to Ignore Columnstore Index Usage in Query In summary the question in simple words “How can we ignore using the column store index in selective queries?” Very interesting question – you can use I can understand there may be the cases when the column store index is not ideal and needs to be ignored the same. You can use the query hint IGNORE_NONCLUSTERED_COLUMNSTORE_INDEX to ignore the column store index. The SQL Server Engine will use any other index which is best after ignoring the column store index. 2012 Storing Variable Values in Temporary Array or Temporary List SQL Server does not support arrays or a dynamic length storage mechanism like list. Absolutely there are some clever workarounds and few extra-ordinary solutions but everybody can;t come up with such solution. Additionally, sometime the requirements are very simple that doing extraordinary coding is not required. Here is the simple case. Move Database Files MDF and LDF to Another Location It is not common to keep the Database on the same location where OS is installed. Usually Database files are in SAN, Separate Disk Array or on SSDs. This is done usually for performance reason and manageability perspective. Now the challenges comes up when database which was installed at not preferred default location and needs to move to a different location. Here is the quick tutorial how you can do it. UNION ALL and ORDER BY – How to Order Table Separately While Using UNION ALL If your requirement is such that you want your top and bottom query of the UNION resultset independently sorted but in the same result set you can add an additional static column and order by that column. Let us re-create the same scenario. Copy Data from One Table to Another Table – SQL in Sixty Seconds #031 – Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVWIA-ACMNo Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• How to structure game states in an entity/component-based system

  - by Eva

  I'm making a game designed with the entity-component paradigm that uses systems to communicate between components as explained here. I've reached the point in my development that I need to add game states (such as paused, playing, level start, round start, game over, etc.), but I'm not sure how to do it with my framework. I've looked at this code example on game states which everyone seems to reference, but I don't think it fits with my framework. It seems to have each state handling its own drawing and updating. My framework has a SystemManager that handles all the updating using systems. For example, here's my RenderingSystem class: public class RenderingSystem extends GameSystem { private GameView gameView_; /** * Constructor * Creates a new RenderingSystem. * @param gameManager The game manager. Used to get the game components. */ public RenderingSystem(GameManager gameManager) { super(gameManager); } /** * Method: registerGameView * Registers gameView into the RenderingSystem. * @param gameView The game view registered. */ public void registerGameView(GameView gameView) { gameView_ = gameView; } /** * Method: triggerRender * Adds a repaint call to the event queue for the dirty rectangle. */ public void triggerRender() { Rectangle dirtyRect = new Rectangle(); for (GameObject object : getRenderableObjects()) { GraphicsComponent graphicsComponent = object.getComponent(GraphicsComponent.class); dirtyRect.add(graphicsComponent.getDirtyRect()); } gameView_.repaint(dirtyRect); } /** * Method: renderGameView * Renders the game objects onto the game view. * @param g The graphics object that draws the game objects. */ public void renderGameView(Graphics g) { for (GameObject object : getRenderableObjects()) { GraphicsComponent graphicsComponent = object.getComponent(GraphicsComponent.class); if (!graphicsComponent.isVisible()) continue; GraphicsComponent.Shape shape = graphicsComponent.getShape(); BoundsComponent boundsComponent = object.getComponent(BoundsComponent.class); Rectangle bounds = boundsComponent.getBounds(); g.setColor(graphicsComponent.getColor()); if (shape == GraphicsComponent.Shape.RECTANGULAR) { g.fill3DRect(bounds.x, bounds.y, bounds.width, bounds.height, true); } else if (shape == GraphicsComponent.Shape.CIRCULAR) { g.fillOval(bounds.x, bounds.y, bounds.width, bounds.height); } } } /** * Method: getRenderableObjects * @return The renderable game objects. */ private HashSet<GameObject> getRenderableObjects() { return gameManager.getGameObjectManager().getRelevantObjects( getClass()); } } Also all the updating in my game is event-driven. I don't have a loop like theirs that simply updates everything at the same time. I like my framework because it makes it easy to add new GameObjects, but doesn't have the problems some component-based designs encounter when communicating between components. I would hate to chuck it just to get pause to work. Is there a way I can add game states to my game without removing the entity-component design? Does the game state example actually fit my framework, and I'm just missing something? EDIT: I might not have explained my framework well enough. My components are just data. If I was coding in C++, they'd probably be structs. Here's an example of one: public class BoundsComponent implements GameComponent { /** * The position of the game object. */ private Point pos_; /** * The size of the game object. */ private Dimension size_; /** * Constructor * Creates a new BoundsComponent for a game object with initial position * initialPos and initial size initialSize. The position and size combine * to make up the bounds. * @param initialPos The initial position of the game object. * @param initialSize The initial size of the game object. */ public BoundsComponent(Point initialPos, Dimension initialSize) { pos_ = initialPos; size_ = initialSize; } /** * Method: getBounds * @return The bounds of the game object. */ public Rectangle getBounds() { return new Rectangle(pos_, size_); } /** * Method: setPos * Sets the position of the game object to newPos. * @param newPos The value to which the position of the game object is * set. */ public void setPos(Point newPos) { pos_ = newPos; } } My components do not communicate with each other. Systems handle inter-component communication. My systems also do not communicate with each other. They have separate functionality and can easily be kept separate. The MovementSystem doesn't need to know what the RenderingSystem is rendering to move the game objects correctly; it just need to set the right values on the components, so that when the RenderingSystem renders the game objects, it has accurate data. The game state could not be a system, because it needs to interact with the systems rather than the components. It's not setting data; it's determining which functions need to be called. A GameStateComponent wouldn't make sense because all the game objects share one game state. Components are what make up objects and each one is different for each different object. For example, the game objects cannot have the same bounds. They can have overlapping bounds, but if they share a BoundsComponent, they're really the same object. Hopefully, this explanation makes my framework less confusing.

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• Sort Data in Windows Phone using Collection View Source

  - by psheriff

  When you write a Windows Phone application you will most likely consume data from a web service somewhere. If that service returns data to you in a sort order that you do not want, you have an easy alternative to sort the data without writing any C# or VB code. You use the built-in CollectionViewSource object in XAML to perform the sorting for you. This assumes that you can get the data into a collection that implements the IEnumerable or IList interfaces.For this example, I will be using a simple Product class with two properties, and a list of Product objects using the Generic List class. Try this out by creating a Product class as shown in the following code:public class Product {  public Product(int id, string name)   {    ProductId = id;    ProductName = name;  }  public int ProductId { get; set; }  public string ProductName { get; set; }}Create a collection class that initializes a property called DataCollection with some sample data as shown in the code below:public class Products : List<Product>{  public Products()  {    InitCollection();  }  public List<Product> DataCollection { get; set; }  List<Product> InitCollection()  {    DataCollection = new List<Product>();    DataCollection.Add(new Product(3,        "PDSA .NET Productivity Framework"));    DataCollection.Add(new Product(1,        "Haystack Code Generator for .NET"));    DataCollection.Add(new Product(2,        "Fundamentals of .NET eBook"));    return DataCollection;  }}Notice that the data added to the collection is not in any particular order. Create a Windows Phone page and add two XML namespaces to the Page.xmlns:scm="clr-namespace:System.ComponentModel;assembly=System.Windows"xmlns:local="clr-namespace:WPSortData"The 'local' namespace is an alias to the name of the project that you created (in this case WPSortData). The 'scm' namespace references the System.Windows.dll and is needed for the SortDescription class that you will use for sorting the data. Create a phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources section in your Windows Phone page that looks like the following:<phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources>  <local:Products x:Key="products" />  <CollectionViewSource x:Key="prodCollection"      Source="{Binding Source={StaticResource products},                       Path=DataCollection}">    <CollectionViewSource.SortDescriptions>      <scm:SortDescription PropertyName="ProductName"                           Direction="Ascending" />    </CollectionViewSource.SortDescriptions>  </CollectionViewSource></phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources>The first line of code in the resources section creates an instance of your Products class. The constructor of the Products class calls the InitCollection method which creates three Product objects and adds them to the DataCollection property of the Products class. Once the Products object is instantiated you now add a CollectionViewSource object in XAML using the Products object as the source of the data to this collection. A CollectionViewSource has a SortDescriptions collection that allows you to specify a set of SortDescription objects. Each object can set a PropertyName and a Direction property. As you see in the above code you set the PropertyName equal to the ProductName property of the Product object and tell it to sort in an Ascending direction.All you have to do now is to create a ListBox control and set its ItemsSource property to the CollectionViewSource object. The ListBox displays the data in sorted order by ProductName and you did not have to write any LINQ queries or write other code to sort the data!<ListBox    ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource prodCollection}}"   DisplayMemberPath="ProductName" />SummaryIn this blog post you learned that you can sort any data without having to change the source code of where the data comes from. Simply feed the data into a CollectionViewSource in XAML and set some sort descriptions in XAML and the rest is done for you! This comes in very handy when you are consuming data from a source where the data is given to you and you do not have control over the sorting.NOTE: You can download this article and many samples like the one shown in this blog entry at my website. http://www.pdsa.com/downloads. Select “Tips and Tricks”, then “Sort Data in Windows Phone using Collection View Source” from the drop down list.Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **We frequently offer a FREE gift for readers of my blog. Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for your FREE gift!

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• Why enumerator structs are a really bad idea

  - by Simon Cooper

  If you've ever poked around the .NET class libraries in Reflector, I'm sure you would have noticed that the generic collection classes all have implementations of their IEnumerator as a struct rather than a class. As you will see, this design decision has some rather unfortunate side effects... As is generally known in the .NET world, mutable structs are a Very Bad Idea; and there are several other blogs around explaining this (Eric Lippert's blog post explains the problem quite well). In the BCL, the generic collection enumerators are all mutable structs, as they need to keep track of where they are in the collection. This bit me quite hard when I was coding a wrapper around a LinkedList<int>.Enumerator. It boils down to this code: sealed class EnumeratorWrapper : IEnumerator<int> { private readonly LinkedList<int>.Enumerator m_Enumerator; public EnumeratorWrapper(LinkedList<int> linkedList) { m_Enumerator = linkedList.GetEnumerator(); } public int Current { get { return m_Enumerator.Current; } } object System.Collections.IEnumerator.Current { get { return Current; } } public bool MoveNext() { return m_Enumerator.MoveNext(); } public void Reset() { ((System.Collections.IEnumerator)m_Enumerator).Reset(); } public void Dispose() { m_Enumerator.Dispose(); } } The key line here is the MoveNext method. When I initially coded this, I thought that the call to m_Enumerator.MoveNext() would alter the enumerator state in the m_Enumerator class variable and so the enumeration would proceed in an orderly fashion through the collection. However, when I ran this code it went into an infinite loop - the m_Enumerator.MoveNext() call wasn't actually changing the state in the m_Enumerator variable at all, and my code was looping forever on the first collection element. It was only after disassembling that method that I found out what was going on The MoveNext method above results in the following IL: .method public hidebysig newslot virtual final instance bool MoveNext() cil managed { .maxstack 1 .locals init ( [0] bool CS$1$0000, [1] valuetype [System]System.Collections.Generic.LinkedList`1/Enumerator CS$0$0001) L_0000: nop L_0001: ldarg.0 L_0002: ldfld valuetype [System]System.Collections.Generic.LinkedList`1/Enumerator EnumeratorWrapper::m_Enumerator L_0007: stloc.1 L_0008: ldloca.s CS$0$0001 L_000a: call instance bool [System]System.Collections.Generic.LinkedList`1/Enumerator::MoveNext() L_000f: stloc.0 L_0010: br.s L_0012 L_0012: ldloc.0 L_0013: ret } Here, the important line is 0002 - m_Enumerator is accessed using the ldfld operator, which does the following: Finds the value of a field in the object whose reference is currently on the evaluation stack. So, what the MoveNext method is doing is the following: public bool MoveNext() { LinkedList<int>.Enumerator CS$0$0001 = this.m_Enumerator; bool CS$1$0000 = CS$0$0001.MoveNext(); return CS$1$0000; } The enumerator instance being modified by the call to MoveNext is the one stored in the CS$0$0001 variable on the stack, and not the one in the EnumeratorWrapper class instance. Hence why the state of m_Enumerator wasn't getting updated. Hmm, ok. Well, why is it doing this? If you have a read of Eric Lippert's blog post about this issue, you'll notice he quotes a few sections of the C# spec. In particular, 7.5.4: ...if the field is readonly and the reference occurs outside an instance constructor of the class in which the field is declared, then the result is a value, namely the value of the field I in the object referenced by E. And my m_Enumerator field is readonly! Indeed, if I remove the readonly from the class variable then the problem goes away, and the code works as expected. The IL confirms this: .method public hidebysig newslot virtual final instance bool MoveNext() cil managed { .maxstack 1 .locals init ( [0] bool CS$1$0000) L_0000: nop L_0001: ldarg.0 L_0002: ldflda valuetype [System]System.Collections.Generic.LinkedList`1/Enumerator EnumeratorWrapper::m_Enumerator L_0007: call instance bool [System]System.Collections.Generic.LinkedList`1/Enumerator::MoveNext() L_000c: stloc.0 L_000d: br.s L_000f L_000f: ldloc.0 L_0010: ret } Notice on line 0002, instead of the ldfld we had before, we've got a ldflda, which does this: Finds the address of a field in the object whose reference is currently on the evaluation stack. Instead of loading the value, we're loading the address of the m_Enumerator field. So now the call to MoveNext modifies the enumerator stored in the class rather than on the stack, and everything works as expected. Previously, I had thought enumerator structs were an odd but interesting feature of the BCL that I had used in the past to do linked list slices. However, effects like this only underline how dangerous mutable structs are, and I'm at a loss to explain why the enumerators were implemented as structs in the first place. (interestingly, the SortedList<TKey, TValue> enumerator is a struct but is private, which makes it even more odd - the only way it can be accessed is as a boxed IEnumerator!). I would love to hear people's theories as to why the enumerators are implemented in such a fashion. And bonus points if you can explain why LinkedList<int>.Enumerator.Reset is an explicit implementation but Dispose is implicit... Note to self: never ever ever code a mutable struct.

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• My First Weeks at Red Gate

  - by Jess Nickson

  Hi, my name’s Jess and early September 2012 I started working at Red Gate as a Software Engineer down in The Agency (the Publishing team). This was a bit of a shock, as I didn’t think this team would have any developers! I admit, I was a little worried when it was mentioned that my role was going to be different from normal dev. roles within the company. However, as luck would have it, I was placed within a team that was responsible for the development and maintenance of Simple-Talk and SQL Server Central (SSC). I felt rather unprepared for this role. I hadn’t used many of the technologies involved and of those that I had, I hadn’t looked at them for quite a while. I was, nevertheless, quite excited about this turn of events. As I had predicted, the role has been quite challenging so far. I expected that I would struggle to get my head round the large codebase already in place, having never used anything so much as a fraction of the size of this before. However, I was perhaps a bit naive when it came to how quickly things would move. I was required to start learning/remembering a number of different languages and technologies within time frames I would never have tried to set myself previously. Having said that, my first week was pretty easy. It was filled with meetings that were designed to get the new starters up to speed with the different departments, ideals and rules within the company. I also attended some lightning talks being presented by other employees, which were pretty useful. These occur once a fortnight and normally consist of around four speakers. In my spare time, we set up the Simple-Talk codebase on my computer and I started exploring it and worked on my first feature – redirecting requests for URLs that used incorrect casing! It was also during this time that I was given my first introduction to test-driven development (TDD) with Michael via a code kata. Although I had heard of the general ideas behind TDD, I had definitely never tried it before. Indeed, I hadn’t really done any automated testing of code before, either. The session was therefore very useful and gave me insights as to some of the coding practices used in my team. Although I now understand the importance of TDD, it still seems odd in my head and I’ve yet to master how to sensibly step up the functionality of the code a bit at a time. The second week was both easier and more difficult than the first. I was given a new project to work on, meaning I was no longer using the codebase already in place. My job was to take some designs, a WordPress theme, and some initial content and build a page that allowed users of the site to read provided resources and give feedback. This feedback could include their thoughts about the resource, the topics covered and the page design itself. Although it didn’t sound the most challenging of projects when compared to fixing bugs in our current codebase, it nevertheless provided a few sneaky problems that had me stumped. I really enjoyed working on this project as it allowed me to play around with HTML, CSS and JavaScript; all things that I like working with but rarely have a chance to use. I completed the aims for the project on time and was happy with the final outcome – though it still needs a good designer to take a look at it! I am now into my third week at Red Gate and I have temporarily been pulled off the website from week 2. I am again back to figuring out the Simple-Talk codebase. Monday provided me with the chance to learn a bunch of new things: system level testing, Selenium and Python. I was set the challenge of testing a bug fix dealing with the search bars in Simple-Talk. The exercise was pretty fun, although Mike did have to point me in the right direction when I started making the tests a bit too complex. The rest of the week looks set to be focussed on pair programming with Mike as we work together on a new feature. I look forward to the challenges that still face me and hope that I will be able to get up to speed quickly. *fingers crossed*

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