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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, November 26, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, November 26, 2010Popular ReleasesMath.NET Numerics: Beta 1: First beta of Math.NET Numerics. Only contains the managed linear algebra provider. Beta 2 will include the native linear algebra providers along with better documentation and examples.WatchersNET.SiteMap: WatchersNET.SiteMap 01.03.02: Whats NewNew Tax Filter, You can now select which Terms you want to Use.TextGen - Another Template Based Text Generator: TextGen v0.2: This is the first version of TextGen exposing its core functionality to COM. See the Access demo (Access 2000 file format) included in the package. For installation and usage instructions see ReadMe.txt. Have fun and provide feedback!Minecraft GPS: Minecraft GPS 1.1: 1.1 Release New Features Compass! New style. Set opacity on main window to allow overlay of Minecraft.Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2010 Code Samples 2010-11-25: Code samples for Visual Studio 2010Typps (formerly jiffycms) wysiwyg rich text HTML editor for ASP.NET AJAX: Typps 2.9: -When uploading files (not images), through the file uploader and the multi-file uploader, FileUploaded and MultiFileUploaded event handlers were reporting an empty event argument, this is fixed now. -Fixed also url field not updating when uploading a file ( not image)Wii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 0.8.5 Beta: - WBFS repair (default) options fixed - Transfer to image fixed - Settings ui widget names fixed - Some little bug fixes You need to reset the settings! Delete WiiBaFu's config file or registry entries on windows: Linux: ~/.config/WiiBaFu/wiibafu.conf Windows: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WiiBaFu\wiibafu Mac OS X: ~/Library/Preferences/com.wiibafu.wiibafu.plist Caution: This is a BETA version! Errors, crashes and data loss not impossible! Use in test environments only, not on productive syste...Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.3: Added process count and world size calculation progress to the status bar. Added View->'Status Bar' menu item to show/hide the status bar. Status bar is automatically shown when loading a world. Added a prompt, when loading a world, to use or clear cached images.SQL Monitor: SQL Monitor 1.4: 1.added automatically load sql server instances 2.added friendly wait cursor 3.fixed problem with 4.0 fx 4.added exception handlingLateBindingApi.Excel: LateBindingApi.Excel Release 0.7f (fixed): Unterschiede zur Vorgängerversion: - XlConverter.ToRgb umbenannt zu XlConverter.ToDouble - XlConverter.GetFileExtension hinzugefügt (.xls oder .xlsx) - Insert Methoden+Overloads für Range und ShapeNodes - Xml Doku im Code entfernt Release+Samples V0.7f: - Enthält Laufzeit DLL und Beispielprojekte Beispielprojekte: COMAddinExample - Demonstriert ein versionslos angebundenes COMAddin Example01 - Background Colors und Borders für Cells Example02 - Font Attributes undAlignment für Cells Examp...Deep Zoom for WPF: First Release: This first release of the Deep Zoom control has the same source code, binaries and demos as the CodeProject article (http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/DeepZoom.aspx).BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.0 RC: This is a Release Candidate version for BlogEngine.NET 2.0. The most current, stable version of BlogEngine.NET is version 1.6. Find out more about the BlogEngine.NET 2.0 RC here. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. To get started, be sure to check out our installation documentation and the installation screencast. If you are upgrading from a previous version, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.0 instructions. As this ...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel Template, version 1.0.1.156: The NodeXL Excel template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 workbook. What's NewThis release adds a feature for aggregating the overall metrics in a folder full of NodeXL workbooks, adds geographical coordinates to the Twitter import features, and fixes a memory-related bug. See the Complete NodeXL Release History for details. Please Note: There is a new option in the setup program to install for "Just Me" or "Everyone." Most people...VFPX: FoxBarcode v.0.11: FoxBarcode v.0.11 - Released 2010.11.22 FoxBarcode is a 100% Visual FoxPro class that provides a tool for generating images with different bar code symbologies to be used in VFP forms and reports, or exported to other applications. Its use and distribution is free for all Visual FoxPro Community. Whats is new? Added a third parameter to the BarcodeImage() method Fixed some minor bugs History FoxBarcode v.0.10 - Released 2010.11.19 - 85 Downloads Project page: FoxBarcodeDotNetAge -a lightweight Mvc jQuery CMS: DotNetAge 1.1.0.5: What is new in DotNetAge 1.1.0.5 ?Document Library features and template added. Resolve issues of templates Improving publishing service performance Opml support added. What is new in DotNetAge 1.1 ? D.N.A Core updatesImprove runtime performance , more stabilize. The DNA core objects model added. Personalization features added that allows users create the personal website, manage their resources, store personal data DynamicUIFixed the PageManager could not move page node bug. ...ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome (jQuery Ajax helpers): 1.3.1 and demos: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form and Pager tested on mozilla, safari, chrome, opera, ie 9b/8/7/6MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.24.6966: Fixed Updater; Fixed minor bugs;WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.1: Version: 2.0.0.1 (Milestone 1): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ....NET Extensions - Extension Methods Library for C# and VB.NET: Release 2011.01: Added new extensions for - object.CountLoopsToNull Added new extensions for DateTime: - DateTime.IsWeekend - DateTime.AddWeeks Added new extensions for string: - string.Repeat - string.IsNumeric - string.ExtractDigits - string.ConcatWith - string.ToGuid - string.ToGuidSave Added new extensions for Exception: - Exception.GetOriginalException Added new extensions for Stream: - Stream.Write (overload) And other new methods ... Release as of dotnetpro 01/2011Free language translator and file converter: Free Language Translator 2.2: Starting with version 2.0, the translator encountered a major redesign that uses MEF based plugins and .net 4.0. I've also fixed some bugs and added support for translating subtitles that can show up in video media players. Version 2.1 shows the context menu 'Translate' in Windows Explorer on right click. Version 2.2 has links to start the media file with its associated subtitle. Download the zip file and expand it in a temporary location on your local disk. At a minimum , you should uninstal...New Projects.NET DroneController: The .NET DroneController makes it easy to write applications that allow you to control an ARDrone quadricopter. BELT (A PowerShell Snapin for IE Browser Automation): BELT is a PowerShell snapin for IE browser automation. BELT makes it easier to control IE by PowerShell. "BELT" originally stands for "Browser Element Locating Tool".BusStationInfo: BusStationInfoDadaist: Dadaist is a random natural language generator that allows creation of random yet understandable (and often crazy) placeholder text for web designers. It could one day replace "Lorem ipsum" altogether! It is developed in C# and is a console application.Darskade LMS: Darskade is a kind of Learning Management System (LMS as a branch of CMS) and its main goal is to help professors and teacher assistants to manage classes, communicate with students, upload course contents ,put assignments and grades on it and more.ESRI for TableTops: An extension of the ESRI Api for use on digital tabletops and multitouch surfaces.Execute a SQL Server Agent Job - SSIS Package: The focus of SSMSAGENTJOBVBS is to explain how you can execute a SQL Server Agent Job remotely with the SSIS package, or DTSX file, as a job step. Look at the source code and dissect. Format.NET: Format.NET is an easy to use library to enable advanced and smart object formatting in .NET projects. Extends the default String.Format(...) allowing property resolution, custom formatting and text alignment.Gallery.net: Gallery.net is a tag-based image management solution, initially targeting for High Schools to manage and organize their large digital image assets. It is developed in C#, ASP.Net MVC3. GroupChallenge: GroupChallenge is a trivia game for one or more simultaneous players to interactively answer questions and submit questions to a hosted game server. Source code includes a WCF Data Service (OData) server, Windows Phone client, and a Silverlight client. Great for User Groups.GSWork: Manage clients and events in your company in a fast and efficient, without relying on a physical file. Ideal for companies with workers with no need to be in the same place.hermesystest1: ????? test ???.HTC Sense Util: Windows Mobile application for managing HTC Sense Tabs. The application will control sense and manage the tab control file.IdentityChecker: IdentityCheckerIndexed Material Splatting for Terrain Rendering Demo: This project is a demo using Indexed Material Splatting technique for terrain renderingIntegra: PFCKinet SDK: Kinect SDKLyra 3: Lyra is a small Windows Application to create and manage song-books. Each song-book may contain an arbitrary number of songs which can be created or edited within Lyra and projected using any screen device (e.g. a beamer). Support for full text search and presentation templates.NETWorking: NETWorking allows developers to easily integrate Internet connectivity into their applications. Be it a fault-tolerant distributed cluster or a peer-to-peer system, NETWorking exposes high-performance classes to facilitate application needs in a concise and understandable manner.RAD Platform: Rapid Application Development (RAD) Platform is a free run time report/form/chart designer and generator engine and multi-platform web/windows application servers. New generation of database independent .Net software framework. Design once, run at once on web and windows. Enjoy!Razor Repository Engine: <project name>RazorRepository</project> <programming language>C#</programming language> <activity>Finished</activity>Scientific Calculator: HTML 5 and CSS 3: Online SCIENTIFIC CALCULATOR implements latest features, available in HTML 5, CSS 3 and jQuery. Developed as Rich Internet Application (RIA) w/extremely small footprint (<20kb), it demonstrates best scripting techniques and coding practices; does not require any image files.Seguimiento Facon: Control de seguimiento faconSharePoint Social: Have you ever needed to show the facebook, twitter updates of your organization on your sharepoint portal ? If yes, this project is for you. Simple auto update tool: Makes a easy way to auto update your client software.SteelBattalion.NET: .NET-based library for interfacing with the original Steel Battalion X-Box controller. Utilizes LibUSB drivers. Works on 32-bit and 64-bit platforms, including Windows 7.SystemTimeFreezer: Freezes system datetime to some value you've selectedTeam Explorer Remover: Utility to completely remove TFS Team Explorer from VS.NET 2010. * Removes all registry entries regarding Team Explorer. * Removes all files related to Team Explorer. * Removes all VS.NET commands, menu items and hyperlinks related to Team Explorer (incl. one on StartUp page)TIMESHARE-SELLERS: TIMESHARE-SELLERSVsi Builder 2010: Vsi Builder is an extension for Visual Studio 2010 which allows packaging code snippets and old-style add-ins into .Vsi redistributable packagesWCF Peer Resolver: WCF Peer Resolver is an very extendable and simplified resolver framework to use instead of the built in CurstomPeerResolver in .Net Framework. It is completely developed in C# with .Net Framework 3.5.wsPDV2010: Primeiro desenvolvimento experimental de PDV.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, January 07, 2011

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, January 07, 2011Popular ReleasesAutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.2: Implemented the Auto Updater Fix: Your settings will no longer be cleared with new releases of AutoLoL The mastery Editor and Browser now have their own tabs instead of nested tabs The Browser tab will only show the masteries matching ALL filters instead of just one Added a 'Browse' button in the Mastery Editor tab to open the Masteries Directory The Browser tab now shows a message when there are no mastery files in the Masteries Directory Fix: Fixed the Save As dialog again, for ...Ionics Isapi Rewrite Filter: 2.1 latest stable: V2.1 is stable, and is in maintenance mode. This is v2.1.1.25. It is a bug-fix release. There are no new features. 28629 29172 28722 27626 28074 29164 27659 27900 many documentation updates and fixes proper x64 build environment. This release includes x64 binaries in zip form, but no x64 MSI file. You'll have to manually install x64 servers, following the instructions in the documentation.StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.14980.000: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes: - StyleCop's new ObjectBasedEnvironment object does not resolve the StyleCop installation path, thus it does not return the correct path ...VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.1: New release with bug fixes and updates for performance.SSH.NET Library: 2011.1.6: Fixes CommandTimeout default value is fixed to infinite. Port Forwarding feature improvements Memory leaks fixes New Features Add ErrorOccurred event to handle errors that occurred on different thread New and improve SFTP features SftpFile now has more attributes and some operations Most standard operations now available Allow specify encoding for command execution KeyboardInteractiveConnectionInfo class added for "keyboard-interactive" authentication. Add ability to specify bo....NET Extensions - Extension Methods Library for C# and VB.NET: Release 2011.03: Added lot's of new extensions and new projects for MVC and Entity Framework. object.FindTypeByRecursion Int32.InRange String.RemoveAllSpecialCharacters String.IsEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.IsNotEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.IfEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.ToUpperFirstLetter String.GetBytes String.ToTitleCase String.ToPlural DateTime.GetDaysInYear DateTime.GetPeriodOfDay IEnumberable.RemoveAll IEnumberable.Distinct ICollection.RemoveAll IList.Join IList.Match IList.Cast Array.IsNullOrEmpty Array.W...VidCoder: 0.8.0: Added x64 version. Made the audio output preview more detailed and accurate. If the chosen encoder or mixdown is incompatible with the source, the fallback that will be used is displayed. Added "Auto" to the audio mixdown choices. Reworked non-anamorphic size calculation to work better with non-standard pixel aspect ratios and cropping. Reworked Custom anamorphic to be more intuitive and allow display width to be set automatically (Thanks, Statick). Allowing higher bitrates for 6-ch....NET Voice Recorder: Auto-Tune Release: This is the source code and binaries to accompany the article on the Coding 4 Fun website. It is the Auto Tuner release of the .NET Voice Recorder application.BloodSim: BloodSim - 1.3.2.0: - Simulation Log is now automatically disabled and hidden when running 10 or more iterations - Hit and Expertise are now entered by Rating, and include option for a Racial Expertise bonus - Added option for boss to use a periodic magic ability (Dragon Breath) - Added option for boss to periodically Enrage, gaining a Damage/Attack Speed buffASP.NET MVC CMS ( Using CommonLibrary.NET ): CommonLibrary.NET CMS 0.9.5 Alpha: CommonLibrary CMSA simple yet powerful CMS system in ASP.NET MVC 2 using C# 4.0. ActiveRecord based components for Blogs, Widgets, Pages, Parts, Events, Feedback, BlogRolls, Links Includes several widgets ( tag cloud, archives, recent, user cloud, links twitter, blog roll and more ) Built using the http://commonlibrarynet.codeplex.com framework. ( Uses TDD, DDD, Models/Entities, Code Generation ) Can run w/ In-Memory Repositories or Sql Server Database See Documentation tab for Ins...AllNewsManager.NET: AllNewsManager.NET 1.2.1: AllNewsManager.NET 1.2.1 It is a minor update from version 1.2EnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.9 BETA: 2.2.9 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in the Gobl...xUnit.net - Unit Testing for .NET: xUnit.net 1.7 Beta: xUnit.net release 1.7 betaBuild #1533 Important notes for Resharper users: Resharper support has been moved to the xUnit.net Contrib project. Important note for TestDriven.net users: If you are having issues running xUnit.net tests in TestDriven.net, especially on 64-bit Windows, we strongly recommend you upgrade to TD.NET version 3.0 or later. This release adds the following new features: Added support for ASP.NET MVC 3 Added Assert.Equal(double expected, double actual, int precision)...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.0 Release 1: New feature - Added Windows Phone 7 project New feature - Added dynamic support to LINQ to JSON New feature - Added dynamic support to serializer New feature - Added INotifyCollectionChanged to JContainer in .NET 4 build New feature - Added ReadAsDateTimeOffset to JsonReader New feature - Added ReadAsDecimal to JsonReader New feature - Added covariance to IJEnumerable type parameter New feature - Added XmlSerializer style Specified property support New feature - Added ...DbDocument: DbDoc Initial Version: DbDoc Initial versionASP .NET MVC CMS (Content Management System): Atomic CMS 2.1.2: Atomic CMS 2.1.2 release notes Atomic CMS installation guide N2 CMS: 2.1: N2 is a lightweight CMS framework for ASP.NET. It helps you build great web sites that anyone can update. Major Changes Support for auto-implemented properties ({get;set;}, based on contribution by And Poulsen) All-round improvements and bugfixes File manager improvements (multiple file upload, resize images to fit) New image gallery Infinite scroll paging on news Content templates First time with N2? Try the demo site Download one of the template packs (above) and open the proj...Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 0.1.11.10: IMPORTANT CHANGESThis release changes the way some WURFL capabilities and attributes are exposed to .NET developers. If you cast MobileCapabilities to return some values then please read the Release Note before implementing this release. The following code snippet can be used to access any WURFL capability. For instance, if the device is a tablet: string capability = Request.Browser["is_tablet"]; SummaryNew attributes have been added to the redirect section: originalUrlAsQueryString If se...Wii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 1.0: - Norwegian translation - French translation - German translation - WBFS dump for analysis - Scalable full HQ cover - Support for log file - Load game images improved - Support for image splitting - Diff for images after transfer - Support for scrubbing modes - Search functionality for log - Recurse depth for Files/Load - Show progress while downloading game cover - Supports more databases for cover download - Game cover loading routines improvedBlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.0: Get DotNetBlogEngine for 3 Months Free! Click Here for More Info 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.0 instructions. To get started, be sure to check out our installatio...New Projects9192631770: This project is created for learning .net 3.5 personally. However it may not suffice for anyone to give a start point. (9192631770) is equivalent to 1 sec in atomic clock.AGS: AGSAll-In-One Code Framework Prerelease: All-In-One Code Framework PrereleaseAwait Events with "yield": This is a library that allows you to stop running the code wherever you want in order to await an event using the functionality of "yield" sentence. It's useful when you want to await asynchronous events or when you have to deal with many events in a sequential way.Battle.net SDK: This is a SDK that retrieves it's information from the Battle.Net community site. At the moment blizzard only supports this for World of Warcraft, so that's what our main aim is at the momeen.t C++ Hash Container Benchmark: C++ Hash Container Benchmark for STL map, C++0x unordered map, Boost unordered map, ATL map and ATL hash map for STL wide string and ATL CString.Colour Lovers .NET: A .NET library for the Colour Lovers API.DatingGame: Course to teach high-school aged girls basic T-SQL using a fun scenario - querying to find the hottest boys! Used at Microsoft DigiGirlz and TKP events. Included DDL script, CSV for bcp with data, PPTX, T-SQL Cheat Sheet and teaching tips. Enjoy!do-Dots open .NET SDK: The do-Dots open SDK brings developers a full set of classes that allow to build applications based on do-Dots, a framework for M2M communication. It's developed in C#. EFMVC - ASP.NET MVC 3 and EF Code First: Demo web app using ASP.NET MVC 3 and EF Code FirstGS1: D is a 2D game demo written in C++ and using an API : HAPI for the graphic part and the audio part. All the xml files are handled with tinyXML. It is a vertical scrolling shoot'em up where the player controls a dragon flying in Central Park.GS2: In Zombies, you are a wizard, the most powerful wizard in the world, and two days ago, the Devil forces began to attack our world. The only person capable of stopping them is you, this is why the Devil himself came to you and took your powers. You're now alone, without any weaponIPProvider: DFGiwtfly: ????iwtfly26050: iwtfly2Knowledge Exchange .Net: This is my learning experience with creating an enterprise scale .NET application with tools such as Tortoise SVN, NANT, and Linq to SQLLinqPad Data Context Driver for SharePoint: The SharePoint Data Context Driver for LinqPad makes it easer for SharePoint 2010 Developers to develop, maintain and just play around with Linq To SharePoint statements via LinqPad. It is developed in C# and enables SharePoint 2010 Support to LinqPad.MaxLeafWebSiteK3: MaxLeafWebSiteK3Open ASP.NET CMS: Open ASP.NET 3.5 CMS Plug 'N Play Settings Manager: Plug 'N Play Settings Manager will be an application to configure settings on a windows computer by waiting for a usb thumbstick with a configuration file to be inserted, the application would then read and apply those settings. The early focus will be applying network settings.project windy: Windy - enhanced window manager. windy does window management a breeze. It started as a windows alternative to divvy, but now it has evolved with into its own. Thanks to the generous feedback from you folks. whats different from divvy? - first - its free. - has divvy likeRiaMVVM : MVVM Friendly WCF Ria Services: Simple, light-weight, MVVM friendly access to WCF Ria Services. Written in C# for use with Silverlight 4.SharePoint Designer 2007 Policy: Enable or Disable SharePoint Designer 2007 per site web application and per site colleciton. Spruckus - SharePoint ReUsable Content Keystamp Usage Search: Adds a keystamp to all html type items in the SharePoint Reusable Content list and adds a context item to the reusable content list that will find usages of that reusable content in your site using search.Student Insiders: Student InsidersTea: Tea Web Operator SystemVegas.NET: Projeto teste de TransportadoraXNA 4 Game state management system: XNA 4 Game State Management??????: aa

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  • Running OpenStack Icehouse with ZFS Storage Appliance

    - by Ronen Kofman
    Couple of months ago Oracle announced the support for OpenStack Cinder plugin with ZFS Storage Appliance (aka ZFSSA).  With our recent release of the Icehouse tech preview I thought it is a good opportunity to demonstrate the ZFSSA plugin working with Icehouse. One thing that helps a lot to get started with ZFSSA is that it has a VirtualBox simulator. This simulator allows users to try out the appliance’s features before getting to a real box. Users can test the functionality and design an environment even before they have a real appliance which makes the deployment process much more efficient. With OpenStack this is especially nice because having a simulator on the other end allows us to test the complete set of the Cinder plugin and check the entire integration on a single server or even a laptop. Let’s see how this works Installing and Configuring the Simulator To get started we first need to download the simulator, the simulator is available here, unzip it and it is ready to be imported to VirtualBox. If you do not already have VirtualBox installed you can download it from here according to your platform of choice. To import the simulator go to VirtualBox console File -> Import Appliance , navigate to the location of the simulator and import the virtual machine. When opening the virtual machine you will need to make the following changes: - Network – by default the network is “Host Only” , the user needs to change that to “Bridged” so the VM can connect to the network and be accessible. - Memory (optional) – the VM comes with a default of 2560MB which may be fine but if you have more memory that could not hurt, in my case I decided to give it 8192 - vCPU (optional) – the default the VM comes with 1 vCPU, I decided to change it to two, you are welcome to do so too. And here is how the VM looks like: Start the VM, when the boot process completes we will need to change the root password and the simulator is running and ready to go. Now that the simulator is up and running we can access simulated appliance using the URL https://<IP or DNS name>:215/, the IP is showing on the virtual machine console. At this stage we will need to configure the appliance, in my case I did not change any of the default (in other words pressed ‘commit’ several times) and the simulated appliance was configured and ready to go. We will need to enable REST access otherwise Cinder will not be able to call the appliance we do that in Configuration->Services and at the end of the page there is ‘REST’ button, enable it. If you are a more advanced user you can set additional features in the appliance but for the purpose of this demo this is sufficient. One final step will be to create a pool, go to Configuration -> Storage and add a pool as shown below the pool is named “default”: The simulator is now running, configured and ready for action. Configuring Cinder Back to OpenStack, I have a multi node deployment which we created according to the “Getting Started with Oracle VM, Oracle Linux and OpenStack” guide using Icehouse tech preview release. Now we need to install and configure the ZFSSA Cinder plugin using the README file. In short the steps are as follows: 1. Copy the file from here to the control node and place them at: /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/cinder/volume/drivers/zfssa 2. Configure the plugin, editing /etc/cinder/cinder.conf # Driver to use for volume creation (string value) #volume_driver=cinder.volume.drivers.lvm.LVMISCSIDriver volume_driver=cinder.volume.drivers.zfssa.zfssaiscsi.ZFSSAISCSIDriver zfssa_host = <HOST IP> zfssa_auth_user = root zfssa_auth_password = <ROOT PASSWORD> zfssa_pool = default zfssa_target_portal = <HOST IP>:3260 zfssa_project = test zfssa_initiator_group = default zfssa_target_interfaces = e1000g0 3. Restart the cinder-volume service: service openstack-cinder-volume restart 4. Look into the log file, this will tell us if everything works well so far. If you see any errors fix them before continuing. 5. Install iscsi-initiator-utils package, this is important since the plugin uses iscsi commands from this package: yum install -y iscsi-initiator-utils The installation and configuration are very simple, we do not need to have a “project” in the ZFSSA but we do need to define a pool. Creating and Using Volumes in OpenStack We are now ready to work, to get started lets create a volume in OpenStack and see it showing up on the simulator: #  cinder create 2 --display-name my-volume-1 +---------------------+--------------------------------------+ |       Property      |                Value                 | +---------------------+--------------------------------------+ |     attachments     |                  []                  | |  availability_zone  |                 nova                 | |       bootable      |                false                 | |      created_at     |      2014-08-12T04:24:37.806752      | | display_description |                 None                 | |     display_name    |             my-volume-1              | |      encrypted      |                False                 | |          id         | df67c447-9a36-4887-a8ff-74178d5d06ee | |       metadata      |                  {}                  | |         size        |                  2                   | |     snapshot_id     |                 None                 | |     source_volid    |                 None                 | |        status       |               creating               | |     volume_type     |                 None                 | +---------------------+--------------------------------------+ In the simulator: Extending the volume to 5G: # cinder extend df67c447-9a36-4887-a8ff-74178d5d06ee 5 In the simulator: Creating templates using Cinder Volumes By default OpenStack supports ephemeral storage where an image is copied into the run area during instance launch and deleted when the instance is terminated. With Cinder we can create persistent storage and launch instances from a Cinder volume. Booting from volume has several advantages, one of the main advantages of booting from volumes is speed. No matter how large the volume is the launch operation is immediate there is no copying of an image to a run areas, an operation which can take a long time when using ephemeral storage (depending on image size). In this deployment we have a Glance image of Oracle Linux 6.5, I would like to make it into a volume which I can boot from. When creating a volume from an image we actually “download” the image into the volume and making the volume bootable, this process can take some time depending on the image size, during the download we will see the following status: # cinder create --image-id 487a0731-599a-499e-b0e2-5d9b20201f0f --display-name ol65 2 # cinder list +--------------------------------------+-------------+--------------+------+-------------+ |                  ID                  |    Status   | Display Name | Size | Volume Type | … +--------------------------------------+-------------+--------------+------+------------- | df67c447-9a36-4887-a8ff-74178d5d06ee |  available  | my-volume-1  |  5   |     None    | … | f61702b6-4204-4f10-8bdf-7da792f15c28 | downloading |     ol65     |  2   |     None    | … +--------------------------------------+-------------+--------------+------+-------------+ After the download is complete we will see that the volume status changed to “available” and that the bootable state is “true”. We can use this new volume to boot an instance from or we can use it as a template. Cinder can create a volume from another volume and ZFSSA can replicate volumes instantly in the back end. The result is an efficient template model where users can spawn an instance from a “template” instantly even if the template is very large in size. Let’s try replicating the bootable volume with the Oracle Linux 6.5 on it creating additional 3 bootable volumes: # cinder create 2 --source-volid f61702b6-4204-4f10-8bdf-7da792f15c28 --display-name ol65-bootable-1 # cinder create 2 --source-volid f61702b6-4204-4f10-8bdf-7da792f15c28 --display-name ol65-bootable-2 # cinder create 2 --source-volid f61702b6-4204-4f10-8bdf-7da792f15c28 --display-name ol65-bootable-3 # cinder list +--------------------------------------+-----------+-----------------+------+-------------+----------+-------------+ |                  ID                  |   Status  |   Display Name  | Size | Volume Type | Bootable | Attached to | +--------------------------------------+-----------+-----------------+------+-------------+----------+-------------+ | 9bfe0deb-b9c7-4d97-8522-1354fc533c26 | available | ol65-bootable-2 |  2   |     None    |   true   |             | | a311a855-6fb8-472d-b091-4d9703ef6b9a | available | ol65-bootable-1 |  2   |     None    |   true   |             | | df67c447-9a36-4887-a8ff-74178d5d06ee | available |   my-volume-1   |  5   |     None    |  false   |             | | e7fbd2eb-e726-452b-9a88-b5eee0736175 | available | ol65-bootable-3 |  2   |     None    |   true   |             | | f61702b6-4204-4f10-8bdf-7da792f15c28 | available |       ol65      |  2   |     None    |   true   |             | +--------------------------------------+-----------+-----------------+------+-------------+----------+-------------+ Note that the creation of those 3 volume was almost immediate, no need to download or copy, ZFSSA takes care of the volume copy for us. Start 3 instances: # nova boot --boot-volume a311a855-6fb8-472d-b091-4d9703ef6b9a --flavor m1.tiny ol65-instance-1 --nic net-id=25b19746-3aea-4236-8193-4c6284e76eca # nova boot --boot-volume 9bfe0deb-b9c7-4d97-8522-1354fc533c26 --flavor m1.tiny ol65-instance-2 --nic net-id=25b19746-3aea-4236-8193-4c6284e76eca # nova boot --boot-volume e7fbd2eb-e726-452b-9a88-b5eee0736175 --flavor m1.tiny ol65-instance-3 --nic net-id=25b19746-3aea-4236-8193-4c6284e76eca Instantly replicating volumes is a very powerful feature, especially for large templates. The ZFSSA Cinder plugin allows us to take advantage of this feature of ZFSSA. By offloading some of the operations to the array OpenStack create a highly efficient environment where persistent volume can be instantly created from a template. That’s all for now, with this environment you can continue to test ZFSSA with OpenStack and when you are ready for the real appliance the operations will look the same. @RonenKofman

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  • Office 2010: It&rsquo;s not just DOC(X) and XLS(X)

    - by andrewbrust
    Office 2010 has released to manufacturing.  The bits have left the (product team’s) building.  Will you upgrade? This version of Office is officially numbered 14, a designation that correlates with the various releases, through the years, of Microsoft Word.  There were six major versions of Word for DOS, during whose release cycles came three 16-bit Windows versions.  Then, starting with Word 95 and counting through Word 2007, there have been six more versions – all for the 32-bit Windows platform.  Skip version 13 to ward off folksy bad luck (and, perhaps, the bugs that could come with it) and that brings us to version 14, which includes implementations for both 32- and 64-bit Windows platforms.  We’ve come a long way baby.  Or have we? As it does every three years or so, debate will now start to rage on over whether we need a “14th” version the PC platform’s standard word processor, or a “13th” version of the spreadsheet.  If you accept the premise of that question, then you may be on a slippery slope toward answering it in the negative.  Thing is, that premise is valid for certain customers and not others. The Microsoft Office product has morphed from one that offered core word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and email functionality to a suite of applications that provides unique, new value-added features, and even whole applications, in the context of those core services.  The core apps thus grow in mission: Excel is a BI tool.  Word is a collaborative editorial system for the production of publications.  PowerPoint is a media production platform for for live presentations and, increasingly, for delivering more effective presentations online.  Outlook is a time and task management system.  Access is a rich client front-end for data-driven self-service SharePoint applications.  OneNote helps you capture ideas, corral random thoughts in a semi-structured way, and then tie them back to other, more rigidly structured, Office documents. Google Docs and other cloud productivity platforms like Zoho don’t really do these things.  And there is a growing chorus of voices who say that they shouldn’t, because those ancillary capabilities are over-engineered, over-produced and “under-necessary.”  They might say Microsoft is layering on superfluous capabilities to avoid admitting that Office’s core capabilities, the ones people really need, have become commoditized. It’s hard to take sides in that argument, because different people, and the different companies that employ them, have different needs.  For my own needs, it all comes down to three basic questions: will the new version of Office save me time, will it make the mundane parts of my job easier, and will it augment my services to customers?  I need my time back.  I need to spend more of it with my family, and more of it focusing on my own core capabilities rather than the administrative tasks around them.  And I also need my customers to be able to get more value out of the services I provide. Help me triage my inbox, help me get proposals done more quickly and make them easier to read.  Let me get my presentations done faster, make them more effective and make it easier for me to reuse materials from other presentations.  And, since I’m in the BI and data business, help me and my customers manage data and analytics more easily, both on the desktop and online. Those are my criteria.  And, with those in mind, Office 2010 is looking like a worthwhile upgrade.  Perhaps it’s not earth-shattering, but it offers a combination of incremental improvements and a few new major capabilities that I think are quite compelling.  I provide a brief roundup of them here.  It’s admittedly arbitrary and not comprehensive, but I think it tells the Office 2010 story effectively. Across the Suite More than any other, this release of Office aims to give collaboration a real workout.  In certain apps, for the first time, documents can be opened simultaneously by multiple users, with colleagues’ changes appearing in near real-time.  Web-browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will be available to extend collaboration to contributors who are off the corporate network. The ribbon user interface is now more pervasive (for example, it appears in OneNote and in Outlook’s main window).  It’s also customizable, allowing users to add, easily, buttons and options of their choosing, into new tabs, or into new groups within existing tabs. Microsoft has also taken the File menu (which was the “Office Button” menu in the 2007 release) and made it into a full-screen “Backstage” view where document-wide operations, like saving, printing and online publishing are performed. And because, more and more, heavily formatted content is cut and pasted between documents and applications, Office 2010 makes it easier to manage the retention or jettisoning of that formatting right as the paste operation is performed.  That’s much nicer than stripping it off, or adding it back, afterwards. And, speaking of pasting, a number of Office apps now make it especially easy to insert screenshots within their documents.  I know that’s useful to me, because I often document or critique applications and need to show them in action.  For the vast majority of users, I expect that this feature will be more useful for capturing snapshots of Web pages, but we’ll have to see whether this feature becomes popular.   Excel At first glance, Excel 2010 looks and acts nearly identically to the 2007 version.  But additional glances are necessary.  It’s important to understand that lots of people in the working world use Excel as more of a database, analytics and mathematical modeling tool than merely as a spreadsheet.  And it’s also important to understand that Excel wasn’t designed to handle such workloads past a certain scale.  That all changes with this release. The first reason things change is that Excel has been tuned for performance.  It’s been optimized for multi-threaded operation; previously lengthy processes have been shortened, especially for large data sets; more rows and columns are allowed and, for the first time, Excel (and the rest of Office) is available in a 64-bit version.  For Excel, this means users can take advantage of more than the 2GB of memory that the 32-bit version is limited to. On the analysis side, Excel 2010 adds Sparklines (tiny charts that fit into a single cell and can therefore be presented down an entire column or across a row) and Slicers (a more user-friendly filter mechanism for PivotTables and charts, which visually indicates what the filtered state of a given data member is).  But most important, Excel 2010 supports the new PowerPIvot add-in which brings true self-service BI to Office.  PowerPivot allows users to import data from almost anywhere, model it, and then analyze it.  Rather than forcing users to build “spreadmarts” or use corporate-built data warehouses, PowerPivot models function as true columnar, in-memory OLAP cubes that can accommodate millions of rows of data and deliver fast drill-down performance. And speaking of OLAP, Excel 2010 now supports an important Analysis Services OLAP feature called write-back.  Write-back is especially useful in financial forecasting scenarios for which Excel is the natural home.  Support for write-back is long overdue, but I’m still glad it’s there, because I had almost given up on it.   PowerPoint This version of PowerPoint marks its progression from a presentation tool to a video and photo editing and production tool.  Whether or not it’s successful in this pursuit, and if offering this is even a sensible goal, is another question. Regardless, the new capabilities are kind of interesting.  A greatly enhanced set of slide transitions with 3D effects; in-product photo and video editing; accommodation of embedded videos from services such as YouTube; and the ability to save a presentation as a video each lay testimony to PowerPoint’s transformation into a media tool and away from a pure presentation tool. These capabilities also recognize the importance of the Web as both a source for materials and a channel for disseminating PowerPoint output. Congruent with that is PowerPoint’s new ability to broadcast a slide presentation, using a quickly-generated public URL, without involving the hassle or expense of a Web meeting service like GoToMeeting or Microsoft’s own LiveMeeting.  Slides presented through this broadcast feature retain full color fidelity and transitions and animations are preserved as well.   Outlook Microsoft’s ubiquitous email/calendar/contact/task management tool gains long overdue speed improvements, especially against POP3 email accounts.  Outlook 2010 also supports multiple Exchange accounts, rather than just one; tighter integration with OneNote; and a new Social Connector providing integration with, and presence information from, online social network services like LinkedIn and Facebook (not to mention Windows Live).  A revamped conversation view now includes messages that are part of a given thread regardless of which folder they may be stored in. I don’t know yet how well the Social Connector will work or whether it will keep Outlook relevant to those who live on Facebook and LinkedIn.  But among the other features, there’s very little not to like.   OneNote To me, OneNote is the part of Office that just keeps getting better.  There is one major caveat to this, which I’ll cover in a moment, but let’s first catalog what new stuff OneNote 2010 brings.  The best part of OneNote, is the way each of its versions have managed hierarchy: Notebooks have sections, sections have pages, pages have sub pages, multiple notes can be contained in either, and each note supports infinite levels of indentation.  None of that is new to 2010, but the new version does make creation of pages and subpages easier and also makes simple work out of promoting and demoting pages from sub page to full page status.  And relationships between pages are quite easy to create now: much like a Wiki, simply typing a page’s name in double-square-brackets (“[[…]]”) creates a link to it. OneNote is also great at integrating content outside of its notebooks.  With a new Dock to Desktop feature, OneNote becomes aware of what window is displayed in the rest of the screen and, if it’s an Office document or a Web page, links the notes you’re typing, at the time, to it.  A single click from your notes later on will bring that same document or Web page back on-screen.  Embedding content from Web pages and elsewhere is also easier.  Using OneNote’s Windows Key+S combination to grab part of the screen now allows you to specify the destination of that bitmap instead of automatically creating a new note in the Unfiled Notes area.  Using the Send to OneNote buttons in Internet Explorer and Outlook result in the same choice. Collaboration gets better too.  Real-time multi-author editing is better accommodated and determining author lineage of particular changes is easily carried out. My one pet peeve with OneNote is the difficulty using it when I’m not one a Windows PC.  OneNote’s main competitor, Evernote, while I believe inferior in terms of features, has client versions for PC, Mac, Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone, iPad and Web browsers.  Since I have an Android phone and an iPad, I am practically forced to use it.  However, the OneNote Web app should help here, as should a forthcoming version of OneNote for Windows Phone 7.  In the mean time, it turns out that using OneNote’s Email Page ribbon button lets you move a OneNote page easily into EverNote (since every EverNote account gets a unique email address for adding notes) and that Evernote’s Email function combined with Outlook’s Send to OneNote button (in the Move group of the ribbon’s Home tab) can achieve the reverse.   Access To me, the big change in Access 2007 was its tight integration with SharePoint lists.  Access 2010 and SharePoint 2010 continue this integration with the introduction of SharePoint’s Access Services.  Much as Excel Services provides a SharePoint-hosted experience for viewing (and now editing) Excel spreadsheet, PivotTable and chart content, Access Services allows for SharePoint browser-hosted editing of Access data within the forms that are built in the Access client itself. To me this makes all kinds of sense.  Although it does beg the question of where to draw the line between Access, InfoPath, SharePoint list maintenance and SharePoint 2010’s new Business Connectivity Services.  Each of these tools provide overlapping data entry and data maintenance functionality. But if you do prefer Access, then you’ll like  things like templates and application parts that make it easier to get off the blank page.  These features help you quickly get tables, forms and reports built out.  To make things look nice, Access even gets its own version of Excel’s Conditional Formatting feature, letting you add data bars and data-driven text formatting.   Word As I said at the beginning of this post, upgrades to Office are about much more than enhancing the suite’s flagship word processing application. So are there any enhancements in Word worth mentioning?  I think so.  The most important one has to be the collaboration features.  Essentially, when a user opens a Word document that is in a SharePoint document library (or Windows Live SkyDrive folder), rather than the whole document being locked, Word has the ability to observe more granular locks on the individual paragraphs being edited.  Word also shows you who’s editing what and its Save function morphs into a sync feature that both saves your changes and loads those made by anyone editing the document concurrently. There’s also a new navigation pane that lets you manage sections in your document in much the same way as you manage slides in a PowerPoint deck.  Using the navigation pane, you can reorder sections, insert new ones, or promote and demote sections in the outline hierarchy.  Not earth shattering, but nice.   Other Apps and Summarized Findings What about InfoPath, Publisher, Visio and Project?  I haven’t looked at them yet.  And for this post, I think that’s fine.  While those apps (and, arguably, Access) cater to specific tasks, I think the apps we’ve looked at in this post service the general purpose needs of most users.  And the theme in those 2010 apps is clear: collaboration is key, the Web and productivity are indivisible, and making data and analytics into a self-service amenity is the way to go.  But perhaps most of all, features are still important, as long as they get you through your day faster, rather than adding complexity for its own sake.  I would argue that this is true for just about every product Microsoft makes: users want utility, not complexity.

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  • Parsing Concerns

    - by Jesse
    If you’ve ever written an application that accepts date and/or time inputs from an external source (a person, an uploaded file, posted XML, etc.) then you’ve no doubt had to deal with parsing some text representing a date into a data structure that a computer can understand. Similarly, you’ve probably also had to take values from those same data structure and turn them back into their original formats. Most (all?) suitably modern development platforms expose some kind of parsing and formatting functionality for turning text into dates and vice versa. In .NET, the DateTime data structure exposes ‘Parse’ and ‘ToString’ methods for this purpose. This post will focus mostly on parsing, though most of the examples and suggestions below can also be applied to the ToString method. The DateTime.Parse method is pretty permissive in the values that it will accept (though apparently not as permissive as some other languages) which makes it pretty easy to take some text provided by a user and turn it into a proper DateTime instance. Here are some examples (note that the resulting DateTime values are shown using the RFC1123 format): DateTime.Parse("3/12/2010"); //Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT DateTime.Parse("2:00 AM"); //Sat, 01 Jan 2011 02:00:00 GMT (took today's date as date portion) DateTime.Parse("5-15/2010"); //Sat, 15 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT DateTime.Parse("7/8"); //Fri, 08 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT DateTime.Parse("Thursday, July 1, 2010"); //Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT Dealing With Inaccuracy While the DateTime struct has the ability to store a date and time value accurate down to the millisecond, most date strings provided by a user are not going to specify values with that much precision. In each of the above examples, the Parse method was provided a partial value from which to construct a proper DateTime. This means it had to go ahead and assume what you meant and fill in the missing parts of the date and time for you. This is a good thing, especially when we’re talking about taking input from a user. We can’t expect that every person using our software to provide a year, day, month, hour, minute, second, and millisecond every time they need to express a date. That said, it’s important for developers to understand what assumptions the software might be making and plan accordingly. I think the assumptions that were made in each of the above examples were pretty reasonable, though if we dig into this method a little bit deeper we’ll find that there are a lot more assumptions being made under the covers than you might have previously known. One of the biggest assumptions that the DateTime.Parse method has to make relates to the format of the date represented by the provided string. Let’s consider this example input string: ‘10-02-15’. To some people. that might look like ‘15-Feb-2010’. To others, it might be ‘02-Oct-2015’. Like many things, it depends on where you’re from. This Is America! Most cultures around the world have adopted a “little-endian” or “big-endian” formats. (Source: Date And Time Notation By Country) In this context,  a “little-endian” date format would list the date parts with the least significant first while the “big-endian” date format would list them with the most significant first. For example, a “little-endian” date would be “day-month-year” and “big-endian” would be “year-month-day”. It’s worth nothing here that ISO 8601 defines a “big-endian” format as the international standard. While I personally prefer “big-endian” style date formats, I think both styles make sense in that they follow some logical standard with respect to ordering the date parts by their significance. Here in the United States, however, we buck that trend by using what is, in comparison, a completely nonsensical format of “month/day/year”. Almost no other country in the world uses this format. I’ve been fortunate in my life to have done some international travel, so I’ve been aware of this difference for many years, but never really thought much about it. Until recently, I had been developing software for exclusively US-based audiences and remained blissfully ignorant of the different date formats employed by other countries around the world. The web application I work on is being rolled out to users in different countries, so I was recently tasked with updating it to support different date formats. As it turns out, .NET has a great mechanism for dealing with different date formats right out of the box. Supporting date formats for different cultures is actually pretty easy once you understand this mechanism. Pulling the Curtain Back On the Parse Method Have you ever taken a look at the different flavors (read: overloads) that the DateTime.Parse method comes in? In it’s simplest form, it takes a single string parameter and returns the corresponding DateTime value (if it can divine what the date value should be). You can optionally provide two additional parameters to this method: an ‘System.IFormatProvider’ and a ‘System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles’. Both of these optional parameters have some bearing on the assumptions that get made while parsing a date, but for the purposes of this article I’m going to focus on the ‘System.IFormatProvider’ parameter. The IFormatProvider exposes a single method called ‘GetFormat’ that returns an object to be used for determining the proper format for displaying and parsing things like numbers and dates. This interface plays a big role in the globalization capabilities that are built into the .NET Framework. The cornerstone of these globalization capabilities can be found in the ‘System.Globalization.CultureInfo’ class. To put it simply, the CultureInfo class is used to encapsulate information related to things like language, writing system, and date formats for a certain culture. Support for many cultures are “baked in” to the .NET Framework and there is capacity for defining custom cultures if needed (thought I’ve never delved into that). While the details of the CultureInfo class are beyond the scope of this post, so for now let me just point out that the CultureInfo class implements the IFormatInfo interface. This means that a CultureInfo instance created for a given culture can be provided to the DateTime.Parse method in order to tell it what date formats it should expect. So what happens when you don’t provide this value? Let’s crack this method open in Reflector: When no IFormatInfo parameter is provided (i.e. we use the simple DateTime.Parse(string) overload), the ‘DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo’ is used instead. Drilling down a bit further we can see the implementation of the DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo property: From this property we can determine that, in the absence of an IFormatProvider being specified, the DateTime.Parse method will assume that the provided date should be treated as if it were in the format defined by the CultureInfo object that is attached to the current thread. The culture specified by the CultureInfo instance on the current thread can vary depending on several factors, but if you’re writing an application where a single instance might be used by people from different cultures (i.e. a web application with an international user base), it’s important to know what this value is. Having a solid strategy for setting the current thread’s culture for each incoming request in an internationally used ASP .NET application is obviously important, and might make a good topic for a future post. For now, let’s think about what the implications of not having the correct culture set on the current thread. Let’s say you’re running an ASP .NET application on a server in the United States. The server was setup by English speakers in the United States, so it’s configured for US English. It exposes a web page where users can enter order data, one piece of which is an anticipated order delivery date. Most users are in the US, and therefore enter dates in a ‘month/day/year’ format. The application is using the DateTime.Parse(string) method to turn the values provided by the user into actual DateTime instances that can be stored in the database. This all works fine, because your users and your server both think of dates in the same way. Now you need to support some users in South America, where a ‘day/month/year’ format is used. The best case scenario at this point is a user will enter March 13, 2011 as ‘25/03/2011’. This would cause the call to DateTime.Parse to blow up since that value doesn’t look like a valid date in the US English culture (Note: In all likelihood you might be using the DateTime.TryParse(string) method here instead, but that method behaves the same way with regard to date formats). “But wait a minute”, you might be saying to yourself, “I thought you said that this was the best case scenario?” This scenario would prevent users from entering orders in the system, which is bad, but it could be worse! What if the order needs to be delivered a day earlier than that, on March 12, 2011? Now the user enters ‘12/03/2011’. Now the call to DateTime.Parse sees what it thinks is a valid date, but there’s just one problem: it’s not the right date. Now this order won’t get delivered until December 3, 2011. In my opinion, that kind of data corruption is a much bigger problem than having the Parse call fail. What To Do? My order entry example is a bit contrived, but I think it serves to illustrate the potential issues with accepting date input from users. There are some approaches you can take to make this easier on you and your users: Eliminate ambiguity by using a graphical date input control. I’m personally a fan of a jQuery UI Datepicker widget. It’s pretty easy to setup, can be themed to match the look and feel of your site, and has support for multiple languages and cultures. Be sure you have a way to track the culture preference of each user in your system. For a web application this could be done using something like a cookie or session state variable. Ensure that the current user’s culture is being applied correctly to DateTime formatting and parsing code. This can be accomplished by ensuring that each request has the handling thread’s CultureInfo set properly, or by using the Format and Parse method overloads that accept an IFormatProvider instance where the provided value is a CultureInfo object constructed using the current user’s culture preference. When in doubt, favor formats that are internationally recognizable. Using the string ‘2010-03-05’ is likely to be recognized as March, 5 2011 by users from most (if not all) cultures. Favor standard date format strings over custom ones. So far we’ve only talked about turning a string into a DateTime, but most of the same “gotchas” apply when doing the opposite. Consider this code: someDateValue.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy"); This will output the same string regardless of what the current thread’s culture is set to (with the exception of some cultures that don’t use the Gregorian calendar system, but that’s another issue all together). For displaying dates to users, it would be better to do this: someDateValue.ToString("d"); This standard format string of “d” will use the “short date format” as defined by the culture attached to the current thread (or provided in the IFormatProvider instance in the proper method overload). This means that it will honor the proper month/day/year, year/month/day, or day/month/year format for the culture. Knowing Your Audience The examples and suggestions shown above can go a long way toward getting an application in shape for dealing with date inputs from users in multiple cultures. There are some instances, however, where taking approaches like these would not be appropriate. In some cases, the provider or consumer of date values that pass through your application are not people, but other applications (or other portions of your own application). For example, if your site has a page that accepts a date as a query string parameter, you’ll probably want to format that date using invariant date format. Otherwise, the same URL could end up evaluating to a different page depending on the user that is viewing it. In addition, if your application exports data for consumption by other systems, it’s best to have an agreed upon format that all systems can use and that will not vary depending upon whether or not the users of the systems on either side prefer a month/day/year or day/month/year format. I’ll look more at some approaches for dealing with these situations in a future post. If you take away one thing from this post, make it an understanding of the importance of knowing where the dates that pass through your system come from and are going to. You will likely want to vary your parsing and formatting approach depending on your audience.

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  • DD-WRT/openwrt question (TP-Link WR1043N)

    - by Shiki
    Can I squeeze more speed out of my router (when it comes to USB attached storage device on it) with open/DD wrt? (Sorry I don't really know such firmwares.) (Guess it works with ntfs-3g? I don't know.) Feel free to make this a real question. Basically the question: Does the change worth it in the terms of speed?

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  • Static IP on FEDORA12

    - by Diego Castro
    I'm trying to get my FEDORA12 to have an STATIC IP - inside virtualbox - inside Ubuntu Let me rephrase that. I have an Ubuntu 9.04 system with vitualbox and a FEDORA12 vm there and I would like to put the fedora with an STATIC IP (amahi needs it), but I'm getting stuck... I'm using NAT (if that's any help) I tryid a few tutorials, but no go. I'm kind of new to the *nix world but I'm old school on M$

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  • Internet Explorer keeps asking for NTLM credentials in Intranet zone

    - by Tomalak
    Long text, sorry for that. I'm trying to be as specific as possible. I'm on Windows 7 and I experience a very frustrating Internet Explorer 8 behavior. I'm in a company LAN with some intranet servers and a proxy for connecting with the outside world. On sites that are clearly recognized as being "Local Intranet" (as indicated in the IE status bar) I keep getting "Windows Security" dialog boxes that ask me to log in. These pages are served off an IIS6 with "Integrated Windows Security" enabled, NTFS permits Everyone:Read on the files themselves. If I enter my Windows credentials, the page loads fine. However, the dialog boxes will be popping up the next time, regardless if I ticked "Remember my credentials" or not. (Credentials are stored in the "Credential Manager" but that does not make any difference as to how often these login boxes appear.) If I click "Cancel", one of two things can happen: Either the page loads with certain resources missing (images, styleheets, etc), or it does not load at all and I get HTTP 401.2 (Unauthorized: Logon Failed Due to Server Configuration). This depends on whether the logon box was triggered by the page itself, or a referenced resource. The behavior appears to be completely erratic, sometimes the pages load smoothly, sometimes one resource triggers a logon message, sometimes it does not. Even simply re-loading the page can result in changed behavior. I'm using WPAD as my proxy detection mechanism. All Intranet hosts do bypass the proxy in the PAC file. I've checked every IE setting I can think of, entered host patterns, individual host names, IP ranges in every thinkable configuration to the "Local Intranet" zone, ticked "Include all sites that bypass the proxy server", you name it. It boils down to "sometimes it just does not work", and slowly I'm losing my mind. ;-) I'm aware that this is related to IE not automatically passing my NTLM credentials to the webserver but asking me instead. Usually this should only happen for NTLM-secured sites that are not recognized as being in the "Intranet" zone. As explained, this is not the case here. Especially since half of a page can load perfectly and without interruption and some page's resources (coming from the same server!) trigger the login message. I've looked at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303650, which gives the impression of describing the problem, but nothing there seems to work. And frankly, I'm not certain if "manually editing the registry" is the right solution for this kind of problem. I'm not the only person in the world with an IE/intranet/IIS configuration, after all. I'm at a loss, can somebody give me a hint?

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  • Unable to install ExchangeCdo with Outlook 2010

    - by MrStatic
    We recently got the Blackberry Express Server for our small home business and linked it in with our Exchange 2010 server. All is well except for calendar syncing. From what I can tell I require the ExchangeCdo patch. Except when I go to install it, it errors saying I require Outlook 2007. I have Outlook 2010 on the server and have no real way of getting 2007 on instead. Any suggestions?

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  • What is the difference between uninstalling a program through Control Panel, and uninstalling via th

    - by sunpech
    What is the difference between uninstalling a program through Control Panel, and uninstalling via the Program's uninstall.exe? Example: C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\uninstall.exe In general, I read that it's better to uninstall a program via window's Control Panel. But for the programs that have their own uninstall.exe, is there any real difference between the un-installations? Is the Control Panel's cleaner in removing dependencies?

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  • What is the § ± key for on Mac keyboards?

    - by Pat Wallace
    Apple's keyboards have a new key, with § and ± symbols on it. Can somebody tell me what these keys are for, and where I should use them? I am aware the symbols have mathematical uses, but I assume they must do something important as well to be on the core keyboard. Or are they just the 'Scroll Lock' of the Apple world?

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  • Outlook 2007 won't close

    - by Scott Weinstein
    I use Outlook 2007 at home as an IMAP client and RSS feed reader. I have a problem that when I close outlook, the window exits, but the process remains running. This prevents me from opening outlook again and on Win7 prevents rapid shutdown of my computer. How can I have Outlook 2007 exit for real? Edit: Here's what the addins dialog reports Active: None Inactive: MS Outlook Mobile Service, MS VBA for Outlook, OneNote Notes for Outlook Items, Outlook Change Notifier, Windows Search Email indexer.

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  • SBS domain name choice

    - by sandymac
    We are about to set up SBS 2011 at my small company < 10 users. My collaborator wants to name the SBS domain "example.local" . I'm of the opinion we should name the SBS domain "corp.example.com" and setup DNS so the "corp" record is a NS record to the SBS server's private IP. FYI: "Example.com" isn't the real domain name and while the website is hosted outside our office, email will be stored on the SBS server in our office after passing though a spam filtering smart host hosted elsewhere too.

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  • Adding Hyper-V Role Errors

    - by Brian
    Hello, I have a Win 2008 R2 Data Center machine, and when I added the Hyper-V role, I got the following errors: 'Hypervisor' driver required by the Virtual Machine Management service is not installed or is disabled. Check your settings or try reinstalling the Hyper-V role. Hyper-V launch failed; Either VMX not present or not enabled in BIOS. ANy help would be appreciated as I am a n00b to the server world. Thanks.

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  • Website for facilitating interactive discussion ?

    - by shan23
    I had heard of websites that would allow two or more people to share a common text editor, so that changes to the text can be made and simultaneously viewed by all participants in real time - this kind of websites is ostensibly used for conducting interviews online. I know they exist (I had read of them in a tech magazine), but I can't seem to find the right search term for google to throw me a correct link. So, I'm asking you guys, as you might have used it before, or know what I'm talking about.

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  • Who uses Zimbra Collaboration Suite and why?

    - by AlberT
    I am really curious about other people experiences and choices. After a long scouting, I found ZCS to be a really impressive solution, maybe the only real alternative to M$ Exchange. I'm very interested in opinions and case histories from users having already deployed Zimbra on their infrastructure or planning to do it. Both Community and Network edition cases are appreciated, pro and cons explained too :) Zimlets, addons, useful skins, Zimbra Desktop and other apps or mobile integration use case too of course.

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  • PSTN Trunk TDM400P Install on Asterisk / Trixbox

    - by Jona
    Hey All, I'm trying to get a TDM400P card with FXO module to connect to our PSTN line. The card is correctly detected by Linux: [trixbox1.localdomain asterisk]# lspci 00:09.0 Communication controller: Tiger Jet Network Inc. Tiger3XX Modem/ISDN interface And asterisk can see the channel: > trixbox1*CLI> dahdi show channel 1 > Channel: 1LI> File Descriptor: 14 > Span: 11*CLI> Extension: I> Dialing: > noI> Context: from-pstn Caller ID: I> > Calling TON: 0 Caller ID name: > Mailbox: none Destroy: 0LI> InAlarm: > 1LI> Signalling Type: FXS Kewlstart > Radio: 0*CLI> Owner: <None> Real: > <None>> Callwait: <None> Threeway: > <None> Confno: -1LI> Propagated > Conference: -1 Real in conference: 0 > DSP: no1*CLI> Busy Detection: no TDD: > no1*CLI> Relax DTMF: no > Dialing/CallwaitCAS: 0/0 Default law: > ulaw Fax Handled: no Pulse phone: no > DND: no1*CLI> Echo Cancellation: > trixbox1128 taps trixbox1(unless TDM > bridged) currently OFF Actual > Confinfo: Num/0, Mode/0x0000 Actual > Confmute: No > Hookstate (FXS only): Onhook I have configured a "ZAP Trunk (DAHDI compatibility Mode)" with the ZAP identifier 1 and an outbound route, but when ever I try to make an external call via it I get the "All Circuits are busy now, please try your call again later message". The FXO module is directly connected to our phone line from BT via a BT-RJ11 cable. I'm guessing I've missed a configuration step somewhere but no idea where, any help greatly appreciated.

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  • BOINC permissions issue running as non-admin on Windows PC

    - by sunpech
    I installed BOINC (running World Community Grid) on a PC (running Vista) under an administrator's account. When logged in as a standard user, and BOINC is set to run as a screensaver, it fails to connect and run properly. Only when the program is run as an administrator, does it actually run in the standard user's account. What is the correct way to install and run BOINC for standard users (non-admin) on Windows? -- Not specific to Vista necessarily.

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  • Is quoted-printable enough to make a mail compliant with the line-length-restriction posed in RFC 2822?

    - by Mnementh
    In RFC 2822 (defining E-Mail) is defined, that no line SHOULD be longer than 78 chars (excluding CRLF) and MUST not longer than 998 characters. With quoted-printable longer lines will be broken into more lines, ending each with a '=' until the real linebreak is reached. Conforms a mail to the standard, if it contains lines longer than 78 (or 998) characters but is encoded with quoted-printable? There are arguments, that this isn't compliant, because the receiving mail-client has longer lines after decoding the quoted-printable message.

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