Search Results

Search found 5313 results on 213 pages for 'steve care'.

Page 208/213 | < Previous Page | 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213  | Next Page >

• Clusterware 11gR2 &ndash; Setting up an Active/Passive failover configuration

  - by Gilles Haro

  Oracle is providing a large range of interesting solutions to ensure High Availability of the database. Dataguard, RAC or even both configurations (as recommended by Oracle for a Maximum Available Architecture - MAA) are the most frequently found and used solutions. But, when it comes to protecting a system with an Active/Passive architecture with failover capabilities, people often thinks to other expensive third party cluster systems. Oracle Clusterware technology, which comes along at no extra-cost with Oracle Database or Oracle Unbreakable Linux, is - in the knowing of most people - often linked to Oracle RAC and therefore, is seldom used to implement failover solutions. Oracle Clusterware 11gR2  (a part of Oracle 11gR2 Grid Infrastructure)  provides a comprehensive framework to setup automatic failover configurations. It is actually possible to make "failover-able'", and then to protect, almost any kind of application (from the simple xclock to the most complex Application Server). Quoting Oracle: “Oracle Clusterware is a portable cluster software that allows clustering of single servers so that they cooperate as a single system. Oracle Clusterware also provides the required infrastructure for Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC). In addition Oracle Clusterware enables the protection of any Oracle application or any other kind of application within a cluster.” In the next couple of lines, I will try to present the different steps to achieve this goal : Have a fully operational 11gR2 database protected by automatic failover capabilities. I assume you are fluent in installing Oracle Database 11gR2, Oracle Grid Infrastructure 11gR2 on a Linux system and that ASM is not a problem for you (as I am using it as a shared storage). If not, please have a look at Oracle Documentation. As often, I made my tests using an Oracle VirtualBox environment. The scripts are tested and functional on my system. Unfortunately, there can always be a typo or a mistake. This blog entry does not replace a course around the Clusterware Framework. I just hope it will let you see how powerful it is and that it will give you the whilst to go further with it...  Note : This entry has been revised (rev.2) following comments from Philip Newlan. Prerequisite 2 Linux boxes (OELCluster01 and OELCluster02) at the same OS level. I used OEL 5 Update 5 with an Enterprise Kernel. Shared Storage (SAN). On my VirtualBox system, I used Openfiler to simulate the SAN Oracle 11gR2 Database (11.2.0.1) Oracle 11gR2 Grid Infrastructure (11.2.0.1)   Step 1 - Install the software Using asmlib, create 3 ASM disks (ASM_CRS, ASM_DTA and ASM_FRA) Install Grid Infrastructure for a cluster (OELCluster01 and OELCluster02 are the 2 nodes of the cluster) Use ASM_CRS to store Voting Disk and OCR. Use SCAN. Install Oracle Database Standalone binaries on both nodes. Use asmca to check/mount the disk groups on 2 nodes Use dbca to create and configure a database on the primary node Let's name it DB11G. Copy the pfile, password file to the second node. Create adump directoty on the second node.   Step 2 - Setup the resource to be protected After its creation with dbca, the database is automatically protected by the Oracle Restart technology available with Grid Infrastructure. Consequently, it restarts automatically (if possible) after a crash (ex: kill -9 smon). A database resource has been created for that in the Cluster Registry. We can observe this with the command : crsctl status resource that shows and ora.dba11g.db entry. Let's save the definition of this resource, for future use : mkdir -p /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts chown oracle:oinstall /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts crsctl status resource ora.db11g.db -p > /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/myResource.txt Although very interesting, Oracle Restart is not cluster aware and cannot restart the database on any other node of the cluster. So, let's remove it from the OCR definitions, we don't need it ! srvctl stop database -d DB11G srvctl remove database -d DB11G Instead of it, we need to create a new resource of a more general type : cluster_resource. Here are the steps to achieve this : Create an action script :  /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/my_ActivePassive_Cluster.sh #!/bin/bash export ORACLE_HOME=/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1 export ORACLE_SID=DB11G case $1 in 'start')   $ORACLE_HOME/bin/sqlplus /nolog <<EOF   connect / as sysdba   startup EOF   RET=0   ;; 'stop')   $ORACLE_HOME/bin/sqlplus /nolog <<EOF   connect / as sysdba   shutdown immediate EOF   RET=0   ;; 'clean')   $ORACLE_HOME/bin/sqlplus /nolog <<EOF   connect / as sysdba   shutdown abort    ##for i in `ps -ef | grep -i $ORACLE_SID | awk '{print $2}' ` ;do kill -9 $i; done EOF   RET=0   ;; 'check')    ok=`ps -ef | grep smon | grep $ORACLE_SID | wc -l`    if [ $ok = 0 ]; then      RET=1    else      RET=0    fi    ;; '*')      RET=0   ;; esac if [ $RET -eq 0 ]; then    exit 0 else    exit 1 fi   This script must provide, at least, methods to start, stop, clean and check the database. It is self-explaining and contains nothing special. Just be aware that it must be runnable (+x), it runs as Oracle user (because of the ACL property - see later) and needs to know about the environment. Also make sure it exists on every node of the cluster. Moreover, as of 11.2, the clean method is mandatory. It must provide the “last gasp clean up”, for example, a shutdown abort or a kill –9 of all the remaining processes. chmod +x /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/my_ActivePassive_Cluster.sh scp  /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/my_ActivePassive_Cluster.sh   oracle@OELCluster02:/crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts Create a new resource file, based on the information we got from previous  myResource.txt . Name it myNewResource.txt. myResource.txt  is shown below. As we can see, it defines an ora.database.type resource, named ora.db11g.db. A lot of properties are related to this type of resource and do not need to be used for a cluster_resource. NAME=ora.db11g.db TYPE=ora.database.type ACL=owner:oracle:rwx,pgrp:oinstall:rwx,other::r-- ACTION_FAILURE_TEMPLATE= ACTION_SCRIPT= ACTIVE_PLACEMENT=1 AGENT_FILENAME=%CRS_HOME%/bin/oraagent%CRS_EXE_SUFFIX% AUTO_START=restore CARDINALITY=1 CHECK_INTERVAL=1 CHECK_TIMEOUT=600 CLUSTER_DATABASE=false DB_UNIQUE_NAME=DB11G DEFAULT_TEMPLATE=PROPERTY(RESOURCE_CLASS=database) PROPERTY(DB_UNIQUE_NAME= CONCAT(PARSE(%NAME%, ., 2), %USR_ORA_DOMAIN%, .)) ELEMENT(INSTANCE_NAME= %GEN_USR_ORA_INST_NAME%) DEGREE=1 DESCRIPTION=Oracle Database resource ENABLED=1 FAILOVER_DELAY=0 FAILURE_INTERVAL=60 FAILURE_THRESHOLD=1 GEN_AUDIT_FILE_DEST=/oracle/admin/DB11G/adump GEN_USR_ORA_INST_NAME= GEN_USR_ORA_INST_NAME@SERVERNAME(oelcluster01)=DB11G HOSTING_MEMBERS= INSTANCE_FAILOVER=0 LOAD=1 LOGGING_LEVEL=1 MANAGEMENT_POLICY=AUTOMATIC NLS_LANG= NOT_RESTARTING_TEMPLATE= OFFLINE_CHECK_INTERVAL=0 ORACLE_HOME=/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1 PLACEMENT=restricted PROFILE_CHANGE_TEMPLATE= RESTART_ATTEMPTS=2 ROLE=PRIMARY SCRIPT_TIMEOUT=60 SERVER_POOLS=ora.DB11G SPFILE=+DTA/DB11G/spfileDB11G.ora START_DEPENDENCIES=hard(ora.DTA.dg,ora.FRA.dg) weak(type:ora.listener.type,uniform:ora.ons,uniform:ora.eons) pullup(ora.DTA.dg,ora.FRA.dg) START_TIMEOUT=600 STATE_CHANGE_TEMPLATE= STOP_DEPENDENCIES=hard(intermediate:ora.asm,shutdown:ora.DTA.dg,shutdown:ora.FRA.dg) STOP_TIMEOUT=600 UPTIME_THRESHOLD=1h USR_ORA_DB_NAME=DB11G USR_ORA_DOMAIN=haroland USR_ORA_ENV= USR_ORA_FLAGS= USR_ORA_INST_NAME=DB11G USR_ORA_OPEN_MODE=open USR_ORA_OPI=false USR_ORA_STOP_MODE=immediate VERSION=11.2.0.1.0 I removed database type related entries from myResource.txt and modified some other to produce the following myNewResource.txt. Notice the NAME property that should not have the ora. prefix Notice the TYPE property that is not ora.database.type but cluster_resource. Notice the definition of ACTION_SCRIPT. Notice the HOSTING_MEMBERS that enumerates the members of the cluster (as returned by the olsnodes command). NAME=DB11G.db TYPE=cluster_resource DESCRIPTION=Oracle Database resource ACL=owner:oracle:rwx,pgrp:oinstall:rwx,other::r-- ACTION_SCRIPT=/crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/my_ActivePassive_Cluster.sh PLACEMENT=restricted ACTIVE_PLACEMENT=0 AUTO_START=restore CARDINALITY=1 CHECK_INTERVAL=10 DEGREE=1 ENABLED=1 HOSTING_MEMBERS=oelcluster01 oelcluster02 LOGGING_LEVEL=1 RESTART_ATTEMPTS=1 START_DEPENDENCIES=hard(ora.DTA.dg,ora.FRA.dg) weak(type:ora.listener.type,uniform:ora.ons,uniform:ora.eons) pullup(ora.DTA.dg,ora.FRA.dg) START_TIMEOUT=600 STOP_DEPENDENCIES=hard(intermediate:ora.asm,shutdown:ora.DTA.dg,shutdown:ora.FRA.dg) STOP_TIMEOUT=600 UPTIME_THRESHOLD=1h Register the resource. Take care of the resource type. It needs to be a cluster_resource and not a ora.database.type resource (Oracle recommendation) .   crsctl add resource DB11G.db  -type cluster_resource -file /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/myNewResource.txt Step 3 - Start the resource crsctl start resource DB11G.db This command launches the ACTION_SCRIPT with a start and a check parameter on the primary node of the cluster. Step 4 - Test this We will test the setup using 2 methods. crsctl relocate resource DB11G.db This command calls the ACTION_SCRIPT  (on the two nodes)  to stop the database on the active node and start it on the other node. Once done, we can revert back to the original node, but, this time we can use a more "MS$ like" method :Turn off the server on which the database is running. After short delay, you should observe that the database is relocated on node 1. Conclusion Once the software installed and the standalone database created (which is a rather common and usual task), the steps to reach the objective are quite easy : Create an executable action script on every node of the cluster. Create a resource file. Create/Register the resource with OCR using the resource file. Start the resource. This solution is a very interesting alternative to licensable third party solutions. References Clusterware 11gR2 documentation Oracle Clusterware Resource Reference Clusterware for Unbreakable Linux Using Oracle Clusterware to Protect A Single Instance Oracle Database 11gR1 (to have an idea of complexity) Oracle Clusterware on OTN   Gilles Haro Technical Expert - Core Technology, Oracle Consulting   

  Read the article

• New release of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is available for download - March 2011

  - by Jialiang

  A new release of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is available on March 8th. Download address: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62267#DownloadId=215627 You can download individual code samples or browse code samples grouped by technology in the updated code sample index. If it’s the first time that you hear about Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, please read this Microsoft News Center article http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2011/jan11/01-13codeframework.mspx, or watch the introduction video on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO5Li3APU58, or read the introduction on our homepage http://1code.codeplex.com/. -------------- New Silverlight code samples CSSLTreeViewCRUDDragDrop Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215808 The code sample was created by Amit Dey. It demonstrates a custom TreeView with added functionalities of CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) and drag-and-drop operations. Silverlight TreeView control with CRUD and drag & drop is a frequently asked programming question in Silverlight  forums. Many customers also requested this code sample in our code sample request service. We hope that this sample can reduce developers' efforts in handling this typical programming scenario. The following blog article introduces the sample in detail: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/codefx/archive/2011/02/15/silverlight-treeview-control-with-crud-and-drag-amp-drop.aspx. CSSL4FileDragDrop and VBSL4FileDragDrop Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215809 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215810 The code sample demonstrates the new drag&drop feature of Silverlight 4 to implement dragging picures from the local file system to a Silverlight application.   Sometimes we want to change SiteMapPath control's titles and paths according to Query String values. And sometimes we want to create the SiteMapPath dynamically. This code sample shows how to achieve these goals by handling SiteMap.SiteMapResolve event. CSASPNETEncryptAndDecryptConfiguration, VBASPNETEncryptAndDecryptConfiguration Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215027 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215106 In this sample, we encrypt and decrypt some sensitive information in the config file of a web application by using the RSA asymmetric encryption. This project contains two snippets. The first one demonstrates how to use RSACryptoServiceProvider to generate public key and the corresponding private key and then encrypt/decrypt string value on page. The second part shows how to use RSA configuration provider to encrypt and decrypt configuration section in web.config of web application. connectionStrings section in plain text: Encrypted connectionString:  Note that if you store sensitive data in any of the following configuration sections, we cannot encrypt it by using a protected configuration provider <processModel> <runtime> <mscorlib> <startup> <system.runtime.remoting> <configProtectedData> <satelliteassemblies> <cryptographySettings> <cryptoNameMapping> CSASPNETFileUploadStatus Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215028 I believe ASP.NET programmers will like this sample, because in many cases we need customers know the current status of the uploading files, including the upload speed and completion percentage and so on. Under normal circumstances, we need to use COM components to accomplish this function, such as Flash, Silverlight, etc. The uploading data can be retrieved in two places, the client-side and the server-side. For the client, for the safety factors, the file upload status information cannot be got from JavaScript or server-side code, so we need COM component, like Flash and Silverlight to accomplish this, I do not like this approach because the customer need to install these components, but also we need to learn another programming framework. For the server side, we can get the information through coding, but the key question is how to tell the client results. In this case, We will combine custom HTTPModule and AJAX technology to illustrate how to analyze the HTTP protocol, how to break the file request packets, how to customize the location of the server-side file caching, how to return the file uploading status back to the client and so on . CSASPNETHighlightCodeInPage, VBASPNETHighlightCodeInPage Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215029 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215108 This sample imitates a system that needs display the highlighted code in an ASP.NET page . As a matter of fact, sometimes we input code like C# or HTML in a web page and we need these codes to be highlighted for a better reading experience. It is convenient for us to keep the code in mind if it is highlighted. So in this case, the sample shows how to highlight the code in an ASP.NET page. It is not difficult to highlight the code in a web page by using String.Replace method directly. This  method can return a new string in which all occurrences of a specified string in the current instance are replaced with another specified string. However, it may not be a good idea, because it's not extremely fast, in fact, it's pretty slow. In addition, it is hard to highlight multiple keywords by using String.Replace method directly. Sometimes we need to copy source code from visual studio to a web page, for readability purpose, highlight the code is important while set the different types of keywords to different colors in a web page by using String.Replace method directly is not available. To handle this issue, we need to use a hashtable variable to store the different languages of code and their related regular expressions with matching options. Furthermore, define the css styles which used to highlight the code in a web page. The sample project can auto add the style object to the matching string of code. A step-by-step guide illustrating how to highlight the code in an ASP.NET page: 1. the HighlightCodePage.aspx page Choose a type of language in the dropdownlist control and paste the code in the textbox control, then click the HighLight button. 2.  Display the highlighted code in an ASP.NET page After user clicks the HighLight button, the highlighted code will be displayed at right side of the page.        CSASPNETPreventMultipleWindows Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215032 This sample demonstrates a step-by-step guide illustrating how to detect and prevent multiple windows or tab usage in Web Applications. The sample imitates a system that need to prevent multiple windows or tabs to solve some problems like sharing sessions, protect duplicated login, data concurrency, etc. In fact, there are many methods achieving this goal. Here we give a solution of use JavaScript, Sample shows how to use window.name property check the correct links and throw other requests to invalid pages. This code-sample use two user controls to make a distinction between base page and target page, user only need drag different controls to appropriate web form pages. so user need not write repetitive code in every page, it will make coding work lightly and convenient for modify your code.  JSVirtualKeyboard Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215093 This article describes an All-In-One framework sample that demonstrates a step-by-step guide illustrating how to build a virtual keyboard in your HTML page. Sometimes we may need to offer a virtual keyboard to let users input something without their real keyboards. This scenario often occurs when users will enter their password to get access to our sites and we want to protect the password from some kinds of back-door software, a Key-logger for example, and we will find a virtual keyboard on the page will be a good choice here. To create a virtual keyboard, we firstly need to add some buttons to the page. And when users click on a certain button, the JavaScript function handling the onclick event will input an appropriated character to the textbox. That is the simple logic of this feature. However, if we indeed want a virtual keyboard to substitute for the real keyboard completely, we will need more advanced logic to handle keys like Caps-Lock and Shift etc. That will be a complex work to achieve. CSASPNETDataListImageGallery Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62261#DownloadId=215267 This code sample demonstrates how to create an Image Gallery application by using the DataList control in ASP.NET. You may find the Image Gallery is widely used in many social networking sites, personal websites and E-Business websites. For example, you may use the Image Gallery to show a library of personal uploaded images on a personal website. Slideshow is also a popular tool to display images on websites. This code sample demonstrates how to use the DataList and ImageButton controls in ASP.NET to create an Image Gallery with image navigation. You can click on a thumbnail image in the Datalist control to display a larger version of the image on the page. This sample code reads the image paths from a certain directory into a FileInfo array. Then, the FileInfo array is used to populate a custom DataTable object which is bound to the Datalist control. This code sample also implements a custom paging system that allows five images to be displayed horizontally on one page. The following link buttons are used to implement a custom paging system:   •     First •     Previous •     Next •     Last Note We recommend that you use this method to load no more than five images at a time. You can also set the SelectedIndex property for the DataList control to limit the number of the thumbnail images that can be selected. To indicate which image is selected, you can set the SelectedStyle property for the DataList control. VBASPNETSearchEngine Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215112 This sample shows how to implement a simple search engine in an ASP.NET web site. It uses LIKE condition in SQL statement to search database. Then it highlights keywords in search result by using Regular Expression and JavaScript. New Windows General code samples CSCheckEXEType, VBCheckEXEType Downloads: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215045 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215120 The sample demonstrates how to check an executable file type.  For a given executable file, we can get 1 whether it is a console application 2 whether it is a .Net application 3 whether it is a 32bit native application. 4 The full display name of a .NET application, e.g. System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089, processorArchitecture=MSIL New Internet Explorer code samples CSIEExplorerBar, VBIEExplorerBar Downloads: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215060 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215133 The sample demonstrates how to create and deploy an IE Explorer Bar which could list all the images in a web page. CSBrowserHelperObject, VBBrowserHelperObject Downloads: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215044 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215119 The sample demonstrates how to create and deploy a Browser Helper Object,  and the BHO in this sample is used to disable the context menu in IE. New Windows Workflow Foundation code samples CSWF4ActivitiesCorrelation Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215085 Consider that there are two such workflow instances:       start                                   start          |                                           | Receive activity      Receive activity         |                                           | Receive2 activity      Receive2 activity         |                                           | A WCF request comes to call the second Receive2 activity. Which one should take care of the request? The answer is Correlation. This sample will show you how to correlate two workflow service to work together. -------------- New ASP.NET code samples CSASPNETBreadcrumbWithQueryString Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215022

  Read the article

• ASP.NET: Using conditionals in data binding expressions

  - by DigiMortal

  ASP.NET 2.0 has no support for using conditionals in data binding expressions but it will change in ASP.NET 4.0. In this posting I will show you how to implement Iif() function for ASP.NET 2.0 and how ASP.NET 4.0 solves this problem smoothly without any code. Problem Let’s say we have simple repeater. <asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="itemsList">     <HeaderTemplate>         <table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5">     </HeaderTemplate>     <ItemTemplate>         <tr>         <td align="right"><%# Container.ItemIndex + 1 %>.</td>         <td><%# Eval("Title") %></td>         </tr>     </ItemTemplate>     <FooterTemplate>         </table>     </FooterTemplate> </asp:Repeater> Repeater is bound to data when form loads. protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {     var items = new[] {                     new { Id = 1, Title = "Headline 1" },                     new { Id = 2, Title = "Headline 2" },                     new { Id = 2, Title = "Headline 3" },                     new { Id = 2, Title = "Headline 4" },                     new { Id = 2, Title = "Headline 5" }                 };     itemsList.DataSource = items;     itemsList.DataBind(); } We need to format even and odd rows differently. Let’s say we want even rows to be with whitesmoke background and odd rows with white background. Just like shown on screenshot on right. Our first thought is to use some simple expression to avoid writing custom methods. We cannot use construct like this <%# Container.ItemIndex % 2==0 ? "white" : "whitesmoke"  %> because all we get are template compilation errors. ASP.NET 2.0: Iif() method For ASP.NET 2.0 pages and controls we can create Iif() method and call it from our templates. This is out Iif() method. protected object Iif(bool condition, object trueResult, object falseResult) {     return condition ? trueResult : falseResult; } And here you can see how to use it. <asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="itemsList">   <HeaderTemplate>     <table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5">     </HeaderTemplate>   <ItemTemplate>     <tr style='background-color:'       <%# Iif(Container.ItemIndex % 2==0 ? "white" : "whitesmoke") %>'>       <td align="right">         <%# Container.ItemIndex + 1 %>.</td>       <td>         <%# Eval("Title") %></td>     </tr>   </ItemTemplate>   <FooterTemplate>     </table>   </FooterTemplate> </asp:Repeater> This method does not care about types because it works with all objects (and value-types). I had to define this method in code-behind file of my user control because using this method as extension method made it undetectable for ASP.NET template engine. ASP.NET 4.0: Conditionals are supported In ASP.NET 4.0 we will write … hmm … we will write nothing special. Here is solution. <asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="itemsList">   <HeaderTemplate>     <table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5">     </HeaderTemplate>   <ItemTemplate>     <tr style='background-color:'       <%# Container.ItemIndex % 2==0 ? "white" : "whitesmoke" %>'>       <td align="right">         <%# Container.ItemIndex + 1 %>.</td>       <td>         <%# Eval("Title") %></td>     </tr>   </ItemTemplate>   <FooterTemplate>     </table>   </FooterTemplate> </asp:Repeater> Yes, it works well. :)

  Read the article

• Code Reuse is (Damn) Hard

  - by James Michael Hare

  Being a development team lead, the task of interviewing new candidates was part of my job.  Like any typical interview, we started with some easy questions to get them warmed up and help calm their nerves before hitting the hard stuff. One of those easier questions was almost always: “Name some benefits of object-oriented development.”  Nearly every time, the candidate would chime in with a plethora of canned answers which typically included: “it helps ease code reuse.”  Of course, this is a gross oversimplification.  Tools only ease reuse, its developers that ultimately can cause code to be reusable or not, regardless of the language or methodology. But it did get me thinking…  we always used to say that as part of our mantra as to why Object-Oriented Programming was so great.  With polymorphism, inheritance, encapsulation, etc. we in essence set up the concepts to help facilitate reuse as much as possible.  And yes, as a developer now of many years, I unquestionably held that belief for ages before it really struck me how my views on reuse have jaded over the years.  In fact, in many ways Agile rightly eschews reuse as taking a backseat to developing what's needed for the here and now.  It used to be I was in complete opposition to that view, but more and more I've come to see the logic in it.  Too many times I've seen developers (myself included) get lost in design paralysis trying to come up with the perfect abstraction that would stand all time.  Nearly without fail, all of these pieces of code become obsolete in a matter of months or years. It’s not that I don’t like reuse – it’s just that reuse is hard.  In fact, reuse is DAMN hard.  Many times it is just a distraction that eats up architect and developer time, and worse yet can be counter-productive and force wrong decisions.  Now don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of reusable code when it makes sense.  These are in the few cases where you are designing something that is inherently reusable.  The problem is, most business-class code is inherently unfit for reuse! Furthermore, the code that is reusable will often fail to be reused if you don’t have the proper framework in place for effective reuse that includes standardized versioning, building, releasing, and documenting the components.  That should always be standard across the board when promoting reusable code.  All of this is hard, and it should only be done when you have code that is truly reusable or you will be exerting a large amount of development effort for very little bang for your buck. But my goal here is not to get into how to reuse (that is a topic unto itself) but what should be reused.  First, let’s look at an extension method.  There’s many times where I want to kick off a thread to handle a task, then when I want to reign that thread in of course I want to do a Join on it.  But what if I only want to wait a limited amount of time and then Abort?  Well, I could of course write that logic out by hand each time, but it seemed like a great extension method: 1: public static class ThreadExtensions 2: { 3: public static bool JoinOrAbort(this Thread thread, TimeSpan timeToWait) 4: { 5: bool isJoined = false; 6:  7: if (thread != null) 8: { 9: isJoined = thread.Join(timeToWait); 10:  11: if (!isJoined) 12: { 13: thread.Abort(); 14: } 15: } 16: return isJoined; 17: } 18: } 19:  When I look at this code, I can immediately see things that jump out at me as reasons why this code is very reusable.  Some of them are standard OO principles, and some are kind-of home grown litmus tests: Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) – The only reason this extension method need change is if the Thread class itself changes (one responsibility). Stable Dependencies Principle (SDP) – This method only depends on classes that are more stable than it is (System.Threading.Thread), and in itself is very stable, hence other classes may safely depend on it. It is also not dependent on any business domain, and thus isn't subject to changes as the business itself changes. Open-Closed Principle (OCP) – This class is inherently closed to change. Small and Stable Problem Domain – This method only cares about System.Threading.Thread. All-or-None Usage – A user of a reusable class should want the functionality of that class, not parts of that functionality.  That’s not to say they most use every method, but they shouldn’t be using a method just to get half of its result. Cost of Reuse vs. Cost to Recreate – since this class is highly stable and minimally complex, we can offer it up for reuse very cheaply by promoting it as “ready-to-go” and already unit tested (important!) and available through a standard release cycle (very important!). Okay, all seems good there, now lets look at an entity and DAO.  I don’t know about you all, but there have been times I’ve been in organizations that get the grand idea that all DAOs and entities should be standardized and shared.  While this may work for small or static organizations, it’s near ludicrous for anything large or volatile. 1: namespace Shared.Entities 2: { 3: public class Account 4: { 5: public int Id { get; set; } 6:  7: public string Name { get; set; } 8:  9: public Address HomeAddress { get; set; } 10:  11: public int Age { get; set;} 12:  13: public DateTime LastUsed { get; set; } 14:  15: // etc, etc, etc... 16: } 17: } 18:  19: ... 20:  21: namespace Shared.DataAccess 22: { 23: public class AccountDao 24: { 25: public Account FindAccount(int id) 26: { 27: // dao logic to query and return account 28: } 29:  30: ... 31:  32: } 33: } Now to be fair, I’m not saying there doesn’t exist an organization where some entites may be extremely static and unchanging.  But at best such entities and DAOs will be problematic cases of reuse.  Let’s examine those same tests: Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) – The reasons to change for these classes will be strongly dependent on what the definition of the account is which can change over time and may have multiple influences depending on the number of systems an account can cover. Stable Dependencies Principle (SDP) – This method depends on the data model beneath itself which also is largely dependent on the business definition of an account which can be very inherently unstable. Open-Closed Principle (OCP) – This class is not really closed for modification.  Every time the account definition may change, you’d need to modify this class. Small and Stable Problem Domain – The definition of an account is inherently unstable and in fact may be very large.  What if you are designing a system that aggregates account information from several sources? All-or-None Usage – What if your view of the account encompasses data from 3 different sources but you only care about one of those sources or one piece of data?  Should you have to take the hit of looking up all the other data?  On the other hand, should you have ten different methods returning portions of data in chunks people tend to ask for?  Neither is really a great solution. Cost of Reuse vs. Cost to Recreate – DAOs are really trivial to rewrite, and unless your definition of an account is EXTREMELY stable, the cost to promote, support, and release a reusable account entity and DAO are usually far higher than the cost to recreate as needed. It’s no accident that my case for reuse was a utility class and my case for non-reuse was an entity/DAO.  In general, the smaller and more stable an abstraction is, the higher its level of reuse.  When I became the lead of the Shared Components Committee at my workplace, one of the original goals we looked at satisfying was to find (or create), version, release, and promote a shared library of common utility classes, frameworks, and data access objects.  Now, of course, many of you will point to nHibernate and Entity for the latter, but we were looking at larger, macro collections of data that span multiple data sources of varying types (databases, web services, etc). As we got deeper and deeper in the details of how to manage and release these items, it quickly became apparent that while the case for reuse was typically a slam dunk for utilities and frameworks, the data access objects just didn’t “smell” right.  We ended up having session after session of design meetings to try and find the right way to share these data access components. When someone asked me why it was taking so long to iron out the shared entities, my response was quite simple, “Reuse is hard...”  And that’s when I realized, that while reuse is an awesome goal and we should strive to make code maintainable, often times you end up creating far more work for yourself than necessary by trying to force code to be reusable that inherently isn’t. Think about classes the times you’ve worked in a company where in the design session people fight over the best way to implement a class to make it maximally reusable, extensible, and any other buzzwordable.  Then think about how quickly that design became obsolete.  Many times I set out to do a project and think, “yes, this is the best design, I can extend it easily!” only to find out the business requirements change COMPLETELY in such a way that the design is rendered invalid.  Code, in general, tends to rust and age over time.  As such, writing reusable code can often be difficult and many times ends up being a futile exercise and worse yet, sometimes makes the code harder to maintain because it obfuscates the design in the name of extensibility or reusability. So what do I think are reusable components? Generic Utility classes – these tend to be small classes that assist in a task and have no business context whatsoever. Implementation Abstraction Frameworks – home-grown frameworks that try to isolate changes to third party products you may be depending on (like writing a messaging abstraction layer for publishing/subscribing that is independent of whether you use JMS, MSMQ, etc). Simplification and Uniformity Frameworks – To some extent this is similar to an abstraction framework, but there may be one chosen provider but a development shop mandate to perform certain complex items in a certain way.  Or, perhaps to simplify and dumb-down a complex task for the average developer (such as implementing a particular development-shop’s method of encryption). And what are less reusable? Application and Business Layers – tend to fluctuate a lot as requirements change and new features are added, so tend to be an unstable dependency.  May be reused across applications but also very volatile. Entities and Data Access Layers – these tend to be tuned to the scope of the application, so reusing them can be hard unless the abstract is very stable. So what’s the big lesson?  Reuse is hard.  In fact it’s damn hard.  And much of the time I’m not convinced we should focus too hard on it. If you’re designing a utility or framework, then by all means design it for reuse.  But you most also really set down a good versioning, release, and documentation process to maximize your chances.  For anything else, design it to be maintainable and extendable, but don’t waste the effort on reusability for something that most likely will be obsolete in a year or two anyway.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, October 21, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, October 21, 2011Popular ReleasesCodekicker.BBCode: CodeKicker.BBCode-Parser-5.0: This is the best and newest version.Self-Tracking Entity Generator for WPF and Silverlight: Self-Tracking Entity Generator v 0.9.9: Self-Tracking Entity Generator v 0.9.9 for Entity Framework 4.0Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 5.0 CMS Alpha 3: Umbraco 5 Alpha 3Umbraco 5 (aka Jupiter) will be the next version of everyone's favourite, friendly ASP.NET CMS that already powers over 100,000 websites worldwide. Try out the Alpha of v5 today! If you're new to Umbraco and would like to get a low-down on our popular and easy-to-learn approach to content management, check out our intro video. What's Alpha 3?This is our third Alpha release. It's intended for developers looking to become familiar with the codebase & architecture, or for thos...thinktecture IdentityServer: IdentityServer RC: This is the RC of Thinktecture.IdentityServerWebForms.ControlExtender: WebForms.ControlExtender 1.0.0.0 (binary): Initial release.Windows Phone 7 Skydrive Library: Skydrive WP7 rel. 1: Till the Rest Api gets out of beta you can use this release You can: - browse the folders -download files It uses WebDAVVkontakte WP: Vkontakte: source codeDotNet.Framework.Common: DotNetFramework.Common?????: DotNetFramework.Common?????Way2Sms Applications for Android, Desktop/Laptop & Java enabled phones: Way2SMS Desktop App v2.0: 1. Fixed issue with sending messages due to changes to Way2Sms site 2. Updated the character limit to 160 from 140GART - Geo Augmented Reality Toolkit: 1.0.1: About Release 1.0.1 Release 1.0.1 is a service release that addresses several issues and improves performance. As always, check the Documentation tab for instructions on how to get started. If you don't have the Windows Phone SDK yet, grab it here. Breaking Change Please note: There is a breaking change in this release. As noted below, the WorldCalculationMode property of ARItem has been replaced by a user-definable function. ARItem is now automatically wired up with a function that perform...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.32: Fix for issue #16710 - string literals in "constant literal operations" which contain ASP.NET substitutions should not be considered "constant." Move the JS1284 error (Misplaced Function Declaration) so it only fires when in strict mode. I got a couple complaints that people didn't like that error popping up in their existing code when they could verify that the location of that function, although not strict JS, still functions as expected cross-browser.Naked Objects: Naked Objects Release 4.0.110.0: Corresponds to the packaged version 4.0.110.0 available via NuGet. Please note that the easiest way to install and run the Naked Objects Framework is via the NuGet package manager: just search the Official NuGet Package Source for 'nakedobjects'. It is only necessary to download the source code (from here) if you wish to modify or re-build the framework yourself. If you do wish to re-build the framework, consul the file HowToBuild.txt in the release. Documentation Please note that after ...myCollections: Version 1.5: New in this version : Added edit type for selected elements Added clean for selected elements Added Amazon Italia Added Amazon China Added TVDB Italia Added TVDB China Added Turkish language You can now manually add artist Added Order by Rating Improved Add by Media Improved Artist Detail Upgrade Sqlite engine View, Zoom, Grouping, Filter are now saved by category Added group by Artist Added CubeCover View BugFixingFacebook C# SDK: 5.3: This is a BETA release which adds new features and bug fixes to v5.2.1. removed dependency from Code Contracts enabled Task Parallel Support in .NET 4.0+ added support for early preview for .NET 4.5 added additional method overloads for .NET 4.5 to support IProgress<T> for upload progress added new CS-WinForms-AsyncAwait.sln sample demonstrating the use of async/await, upload progress report using IProgress<T> and cancellation support Query/QueryAsync methods uses graph api instead...IronPython: 2.7.1 RC: This is the first release candidate of IronPython 2.7.1. Like IronPython 54498, this release requires .NET 4 or Silverlight 4. This release will replace any existing IronPython installation. If there are no showstopping issues, this will be the only release candidate for 2.7.1, so please speak up if you run into any roadblocks. The highlights of 2.7.1 are: Updated the standard library to match CPython 2.7.2. Add the ast, csv, and unicodedata modules. Fixed several bugs. IronPython To...Rawr: Rawr 4.2.6: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...Home Access Plus+: v7.5: Change Log: New Booking System (out of Beta) New Help Desk (out of Beta) New My Files (Developer Preview) Token now saved into Cookie so the system doesn't TIMEOUT as much File Changes: ~/bin/hap.ad.dll ~/bin/hap.web.dll ~/bin/hap.data.dll ~/bin/hap.web.configuration.dll ~/bookingsystem/admin/default.aspx ~/bookingsystem/default.aspx REMOVED ~/bookingsystem/bookingpopup.ascx REMOVED ~/bookingsystem/daylist.ascx REMOVED ~/bookingsystem/new.aspx ~/helpdesk/default.aspx ...Visual Micro - Arduino for Visual Studio: Arduino for Visual Studio 2008 and 2010: Arduino for Visual Studio 2010 has been extended to support Visual Studio 2008. The same functionality and configuration exists between the two versions. The 2010 addin runs .NET4 and the 2008 addin runs .NET3.5, both are installed using a single msi and both share the same configuration settings. The only known issue in 2008 is that the button and menu icons are missing. Please logon to the visual micro forum and let us know if things are working or not. Read more about this Visual Studio ...DotSpatial: Release: Moved IExtension to a separate assembly.Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.1 (October 2011) for .NET 4.0: October 2011 release of Phalanger - the PHP compiler for .NET 4.0 - introduces following: Performance enhancements several duplicitous runtime checks omitted New functionality 31586 __toString() magic method compile time check hash_update_stream() supports second argument Issue fixes 31455 PCRE named groups addcslashes() with second argument fix 31577 31575, 31567 31566 31484 Note if you need Phalanger running on .NET 2.0, please use Phalanger 2.0. For the full list of cha...New Projects#foo SqlServer: Useful Sql Server extensionsBaufQuery: Material de la presentación que voy a realizar en Baufest sobre jQueryBoringColorPicker: A simple color picker i created on a busy Saturday morning, and i couldn't stress myself calculating color codes. I hope someone finds it useful. Developed in c#, for desktop use.Charity Social Network1: ????? ??? ?????? ??? ?????2 devianARTGallery: <devianART Gallery> makes it easier for <artist, graphic designer, art, web designer, interface design> to<following news images, graphics, vectors and new resouces for your needs at this application in your hands>. It's developing in<C# windows phone 7>Diving: MVC Application for testingDotNet.Framework.Common: .NET ??????????Drama-AddictFeed: Retrieve feed a top siteDuckWorld: Logica architect courseEasy Monitor: ??ASP.NET_MVC4???????????????，????。 Server, Monitoring, ASP.net, mvc, mvc4, svg, vml, KVDB, WebsiteEvent_Manager: Event Manager V 2FETCH! Go Fetch that remote task. Good task doogie!: Email sent, task accomplished. This little task execution agent can be a remote domain support's best friend. Save time on late night and off hours administration tasks. When there is no time to RDP, send Fetch an email and he'll take care of it quick. Secure, reliable. InQuestaRed UTN: Proyecto de UTNInsert from Windows Live Image Search: Allows you to do an image search using Windows Live Search and put the resulting image into a blog entry.ioak: iOakLibertyJournal free diary journal software: LibertyJournal - A freeware personal diary software/journal software/program, could become your personal digital diary and journal software to record your daily events and memories, in your creative words. Runs on Desktop PCs, and Netbooks too.memcachedext - .NET library: A .NET library providing support for advanced caching scenarios, including memcached server.myWebfetion: my web fetionNuMetaheuristics: NuMetaheuristics is a general framework for optimization developed in C#. It is capable of supporting any optimization paradigm (local search, naturally inspired, multi-objective, etc.). It supports extensions to allow for new genotypes, operators, and algorithms.Oil Prices: Application about Thailand's oil pricesOnline Ontology Editor: Online Ontology BuilderOrchard Documentation: Orchard Documentation repository.QuipuxConnector: QuipuxConnector es el primer Addins para word que permite enviar documentos a QuipuxSignature Recognition: An application that authenticates scanned signature images.SmartFramework: SmartFramework là n?n t?ng xây d?ng các h? th?ng l?n connect t?i các ngu?n CSDL khác nhau, d?c bi?t là các h? th?ng online, real-time.smartKin: Studienarbeit TIT 09 - Kinect / Robotik Zum räumlichen Sehen von Robotern mit Kinect: Initiale Experimente für 3D-Szenen Rekonstruktion, Steuerung durch natürliche GestenTAudioPlayer: TAudioPlayer would take more facility in your aural comprehension exercise. It most conspicuous function is comfortably add time-tags to an audio file which is playing and you can jump to the position you defined easily. It also provides various hotkey setting and you can define most of the operation hotkey by yourself. The project is developed in C# with Visual Studio 2010.Watin - TestEasy: WatiN - TestEasy is the idea to make WatiN based test generation and excution easier. Mainly it will provide interface to data driven automation using WatiN.WebForms.ControlExtender: WebForms.ControlExtender simplify the creation of components which extend (or adds) their own properties to other controls or components in the Visual Studio ASP.NET designer.Windows Phone 7 Skydrive Library: Use this library if you need to access Skydrive from Windows PhonezDBA: SQL Server 2008 tookit!

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, September 24, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, September 24, 2012Popular ReleasesMetodología General Ajustada - MGA: 03.01.09: Cambios Parmenio: Envio actualizaciones al formato 3 de programación, actualizar botones en edición. Cambios John: Integración de código con cambios enviados por Parmenio Bonilla. Generación de instaladores. Soporte técnico por correo electrónico, telefónico y en sitio.JSLint for Visual Studio 2010: 1.4.0: VS2012 support is alphaBlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.2: 2012.09.23 Ver5.7.2 (1)InetTest?? (2)HTTP?????????????????100???????????Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 6): IMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 5 Added separate samples download with .vsix dependencies instead of source dependencies Support for FreeWheel SmartXML ad responses Support for Smooth Streaming SDK DownloaderPlugins Support for VMAP and TTML polling for live scenarios Support for custom smooth streaming byte stream and scheme handlers Support for new play time and position tracking plugin Added IsLiveChanged event Added AdaptivePlugin.MaxBitrate property Add...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.8: Version: 2.5.0.8 (Milestone 8): 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 Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete WAF: Mark the class DataModel as serializable. InfoMan: Minor improvements. InfoMan: Add unit tests for all modules. Othe...LogicCircuit: LogicCircuit 2.12.9.20: Logic Circuit - is educational software for designing and simulating logic circuits. Intuitive graphical user interface, allows you to create unrestricted circuit hierarchy with multi bit buses, debug circuits behavior with oscilloscope, and navigate running circuits hierarchy. Changes of this versionToolbars on text note dialog are more flexible now. You can select font face, size, color, and background of text you are typing. RAM now can be initialized to one of the following: random va...Symphony Framework: Symphony Framework v2.0.0.2: Symphony Framework version 2.0.0.2. General note: If you install Symphony Framework 2.0.0.2 you must also install CodeGen 4.1.10 because a number of templates now utilise new features added to the tool. Added the user token PROJECTNAMESPACE to the “Symphony_Content.tpl” template to ensure that we can correctly reference the collection classes of the selection lists. Also added the ability to create object references to fields defined as having selection windows assigned. This enhancement ...Community xPress MDS: Initial MDS and DQS Models: Initial MDS & DQS ModelsSiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.1.2020.421): New features: Disable a specific part of SiteMap to keep the data without displaying them in the CRM application. It simply comments XML part of the sitemap (thanks to rboyers for this feature request) Right click an item and click on "Disable" to disable it Items disabled are greyed and a suffix "- disabled" is added Right click an item and click on "Enable" to enable it Refresh list of web resources in the web resources pickerAJAX Control Toolkit: September 2012 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - September 2012 Release Version 60919September 2012 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - The current version of the AJAX Control Toolkit is not compatible with ...Sense/Net CMS - Enterprise Content Management: SenseNet 6.1.2 Community Edition: Sense/Net 6.1.2 Community EditionMain new featuresOur current release brings a lot of bugfixes, including the resolution of js/css editing cache issues, xlsx file handling from Office, expense claim demo workspace fixes and much more. Besides fixes 6.1.2 introduces workflow start options and other minor features like a reusable Reject client button for approval scenarios and resource editor enhancements. We have also fixed an issue with our install package to bring you a flawless installation...WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.3: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...Python Tools for Visual Studio: 1.5 RC: PTVS 1.5RC Available! We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.5 RC. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, HPC, IPython, etc. support. The primary new feature for the 1.5 release is Django including Azure support! The http://www.djangoproject.com is a pop...Launchbar: Lanchbar 4.0.0: This application requires .NET 4.5 which you can find here: www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/downloadsAssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.4 -: Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we try to package for those OSes. Try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your own for Linux (source included) Changelog: New logo Improved airstrike! Reset nukes...Extended WPF Toolkit: Extended WPF Toolkit - 1.7.0: Want an easier way to install the Extended WPF Toolkit?The Extended WPF Toolkit is available on Nuget. What's new in the 1.7.0 Release?New controls Zoombox Pie New features / bug fixes PropertyGrid.ShowTitle property added to allow showing/hiding the PropertyGrid title. Modifications to the PropertyGrid.EditorDefinitions collection will now automatically be applied to the PropertyGrid. Modifications to the PropertyGrid.PropertyDefinitions collection will now be reflected automaticaly...JayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.2: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript to CRUD + Query data from different sources like OData, MongoDB, WebSQL, SqLite, Facebook or YQL. The library can be integrated with Knockout.js or Sencha Touch 2 and can be used on Node.js as well. See it in action in this 6 minutes video Sencha Touch 2 example app using JayData: Netflix browser. What's new in JayData 1.2 For detailed release notes check the release notes. JayData core: all async operations now support promises JayDa...????????API for .Net SDK: SDK for .Net ??? Release 4: 2012?9?17??? ?????，???????????????。 ?????Release 3??????，???????，???，??? ??????????????????SDK，????????。 ??，??????? That's all.VidCoder: 1.4.0 Beta: First Beta release! Catches up to HandBrake nightlies with SVN 4937. Added PGS (Blu-ray) subtitle support. Additional framerates available: 30, 50, 59.94, 60 Additional sample rates available: 8, 11.025, 12 and 16 kHz Additional higher bitrates available for audio. Same as Source Constant Framerate available. Added Apple TV 3 preset. Added new Bob deinterlacing option. Introduced process isolation for encodes. Now if HandBrake crashes, VidCoder will keep running and continue pro...DNN Metro7 style Skin package: Metro7 style Skin for DotNetNuke 06.02.01: Stabilization release fixed this issues: Links not worked on FF, Chrome and Safari Modified packaging with own manifest file for install and source package. Moved the user Image on the Login to the left side. Moved h2 font-size to 24px. Note : This release Comes w/o source package about we still work an a solution. Who Needs the Visual Studio source files please go to source and download it from there. Known 16 CSS issues that related to the skin.css. All others are DNN default o...New ProjectsAndroid Hello World - Modified: SummaryAOXING: ??????CSharp WPF base64 coder-decoder: CSharp WPF base64 coder-decoder.D3 Loot Tracker: A Diablo 3 item drop tracking utility.EPiCloner: Working with EPiServer, you might need to clone site tree in a different language. EPiCloner will help you with this task taking care of updating pagereferencesGDAL SSIS: GDAL SSIS is a collection of geospatial components for SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) that leverages GDAL to support a large number of GIS data formats.Mw3Launcher: Play Activision MW3 Multiplayer without using steam!Orchard Contrib.Navigation: This Orchard module adds additional features to the Orchard.Navigation module. Currently the module provides the following features: ActionLink menu item: map Oxygen: OxygenPSEOnline: Nothing SpecialPython Digital Circuit Simulator: This is the Digital Logical Circuit Simulator built using Python.QuickerClicker (Adapted for Gamers): A automated Clicker for Gamers.SerialPortStream: An independent implementation of System.IO.Ports.SerialPort and SerialStream for better reliability and maintainability.SERS: SERSSharePoint WarmUp: A SharePoint solution leveraging the Application Initialization module for IIS 7.5.Simple PM - Project Management Simplified !: Simple PM is a simple and easy to use Project Management Tool. It focuses on better project management for individuals working alone on a project or small team.TestCzrejzyn: dsadsadTestMercurial: sadsadasdasTrip Calculator: This is a class trip calculator.UDP_Hole_Punching: ??UDP??User Group Labs: Group Meta Data: This module allows you to create and manage generic meta data for the social groups in DotNetNuke.

  Read the article

• C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Nullable static class

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Today we’re going to look at an interesting Little Wonder that can be used to mitigate what could be considered a Little Pitfall.  The Little Wonder we’ll be examining is the System.Nullable static class.  No, not the System.Nullable<T> class, but a static helper class that has one useful method in particular that we will examine… but first, let’s look at the Little Pitfall that makes this wonder so useful. Little Pitfall: Comparing nullable value types using <, >, <=, >= Examine this piece of code, without examining it too deeply, what’s your gut reaction as to the result? 1: int? x = null; 2:  3: if (x < 100) 4: { 5: Console.WriteLine("True, {0} is less than 100.", 6: x.HasValue ? x.ToString() : "null"); 7: } 8: else 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("False, {0} is NOT less than 100.", 11: x.HasValue ? x.ToString() : "null"); 12: } Your gut would be to say true right?  It would seem to make sense that a null integer is less than the integer constant 100.  But the result is actually false!  The null value is not less than 100 according to the less-than operator. It looks even more outrageous when you consider this also evaluates to false: 1: int? x = null; 2:  3: if (x < int.MaxValue) 4: { 5: // ... 6: } So, are we saying that null is less than every valid int value?  If that were true, null should be less than int.MinValue, right?  Well… no: 1: int? x = null; 2:  3: // um... hold on here, x is NOT less than min value? 4: if (x < int.MinValue) 5: { 6: // ... 7: } So what’s going on here?  If we use greater than instead of less than, we see the same little dilemma: 1: int? x = null; 2:  3: // once again, null is not greater than anything either... 4: if (x > int.MinValue) 5: { 6: // ... 7: } It turns out that four of the comparison operators (<, <=, >, >=) are designed to return false anytime at least one of the arguments is null when comparing System.Nullable wrapped types that expose the comparison operators (short, int, float, double, DateTime, TimeSpan, etc.).  What’s even odder is that even though the two equality operators (== and !=) work correctly, >= and <= have the same issue as < and > and return false if both System.Nullable wrapped operator comparable types are null! 1: DateTime? x = null; 2: DateTime? y = null; 3:  4: if (x <= y) 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("You'd think this is true, since both are null, but it's not."); 7: } 8: else 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("It's false because <=, <, >, >= don't work on null."); 11: } To make matters even more confusing, take for example your usual check to see if something is less than, greater to, or equal: 1: int? x = null; 2: int? y = 100; 3:  4: if (x < y) 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("X is less than Y"); 7: } 8: else if (x > y) 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("X is greater than Y"); 11: } 12: else 13: { 14: // We fall into the "equals" assumption, but clearly null != 100! 15: Console.WriteLine("X is equal to Y"); 16: } Yes, this code outputs “X is equal to Y” because both the less-than and greater-than operators return false when a Nullable wrapped operator comparable type is null.  This violates a lot of our assumptions because we assume is something is not less than something, and it’s not greater than something, it must be equal.  So keep in mind, that the only two comparison operators that work on Nullable wrapped types where at least one is null are the equals (==) and not equals (!=) operators: 1: int? x = null; 2: int? y = 100; 3:  4: if (x == y) 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("False, x is null, y is not."); 7: } 8:  9: if (x != y) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("True, x is null, y is not."); 12: } Solution: The Nullable static class So we’ve seen that <, <=, >, and >= have some interesting and perhaps unexpected behaviors that can trip up a novice developer who isn’t expecting the kinks that System.Nullable<T> types with comparison operators can throw.  How can we easily mitigate this? Well, obviously, you could do null checks before each check, but that starts to get ugly: 1: if (x.HasValue) 2: { 3: if (y.HasValue) 4: { 5: if (x < y) 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine("x < y"); 8: } 9: else if (x > y) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("x > y"); 12: } 13: else 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine("x == y"); 16: } 17: } 18: else 19: { 20: Console.WriteLine("x > y because y is null and x isn't"); 21: } 22: } 23: else if (y.HasValue) 24: { 25: Console.WriteLine("x < y because x is null and y isn't"); 26: } 27: else 28: { 29: Console.WriteLine("x == y because both are null"); 30: } Yes, we could probably simplify this logic a bit, but it’s still horrendous!  So what do we do if we want to consider null less than everything and be able to properly compare Nullable<T> wrapped value types? The key is the System.Nullable static class.  This class is a companion class to the System.Nullable<T> class and allows you to use a few helper methods for Nullable<T> wrapped types, including a static Compare<T>() method of the. What’s so big about the static Compare<T>() method?  It implements an IComparer compatible comparison on Nullable<T> types.  Why do we care?  Well, if you look at the MSDN description for how IComparer works, you’ll read: Comparing null with any type is allowed and does not generate an exception when using IComparable. When sorting, null is considered to be less than any other object. This is what we probably want!  We want null to be less than everything!  So now we can change our logic to use the Nullable.Compare<T>() static method: 1: int? x = null; 2: int? y = 100; 3:  4: if (Nullable.Compare(x, y) < 0) 5: { 6: // Yes! x is null, y is not, so x is less than y according to Compare(). 7: Console.WriteLine("x < y"); 8: } 9: else if (Nullable.Compare(x, y) > 0) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("x > y"); 12: } 13: else 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine("x == y"); 16: } Summary So, when doing math comparisons between two numeric values where one of them may be a null Nullable<T>, consider using the System.Nullable.Compare<T>() method instead of the comparison operators.  It will treat null less than any value, and will avoid logic consistency problems when relying on < returning false to indicate >= is true and so on. Tweet   Technorati Tags: C#,C-Sharp,.NET,Little Wonders,Little Pitfalls,Nulalble

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 31, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 31, 2012Popular ReleasesAuto-LiMPoT: Auto-LiMPoT - v.1.1 - binary: Changelog: +Now patches updater-script with correct packager name and version number +Added option to choose position of java.exe manually if not found automaticallyExtended WPF Toolkit: Extended WPF Toolkit - 1.6.0: Want an easier way to install the Extended WPF Toolkit?The Extended WPF Toolkit is available on Nuget. What's in the 1.6.0 Release?BusyIndicator ButtonSpinner Calculator CalculatorUpDown CheckListBox - Breaking Changes CheckComboBox - New Control ChildWindow CollectionEditor CollectionEditorDialog ColorCanvas ColorPicker DateTimePicker DateTimeUpDown DecimalUpDown DoubleUpDown DropDownButton IntegerUpDown Magnifier MaskedTextBox MessageBox MultiLineTex...ScriptIDE: Release 4.4: ...Media Companion: MC 3.434b Release: General This release should be the last beta for 3.4xx. If there are no major problems, by the end of the week it will upgraded to 3.500 Stable! The latest mc_com.exe should be included too! TV Bug fix - crash when using XBMC scraper for TV episodes. Bug fix - episode count update when adding new episodes. Bug fix - crash when actors name was missing. Enhanced TV scrape progress text. Enhancements made to missing episodes display. Movies Bug fix - hide "Play Trailer" when multisaev...Better Explorer: Better Explorer 2.0.0.831 Alpha: - A new release with: - many bugfixes - changed icon - added code for more failsafe registry usage on x64 systems - not needed regfix anymore - added ribbon shortcut keys - Other fixes Note: If you have problems opening system libraries, a suggestion was given to copy all of these libraries and then delete the originals. Thanks to Gaugamela for that! (see discussion here: 349015 ) Note2: I was upload again the setup due to missing file!XAML Dialect Comparer Tool: Beta 1: This is a first beta version of this tool (as shown at DevConncetions in Vegas, March 2012). Community participation and suggestions are appreciated.LINQ Extensions Library: 1.0.2.7: Append and Prepend extensions (1.0.2.7) IndexOf extensions (1.0.2.7) New Align/Match extensions (1.0.2.6) Ready to use stable code with comprehensive unit tests and samples New Pivot extensions New Filter ExtensionsMonoGame - Write Once, Play Everywhere: MonoGame 2.5: The MonoGame team are pleased to announce that MonoGame v2.5 has been released. This release contains important bug fixes, implements optimisations and adds key features. MonoGame now has the capability to use OpenGLES 2.0 on Android and iOS devices, meaning it now supports custom shaders across mobile and desktop platforms. Also included in this release are native orientation animations on iOS devices and better Orientation support for Android. There have also been a lot of bug fixes since t...callisto: callisto 2.0.23: Patched Script static class and peak user count bug fix.Circuit Diagram: Circuit Diagram 2.0 Alpha 3: New in this release: Added components: Microcontroller Demultiplexer Flip & rotate components Open XML files from older versions of Circuit Diagram Text formatting for components New CDDX syntax Other fixesUmbraco CMS: Umbraco 5.1 CMS (Beta): Beta build for testing - please report issues at issues.umbraco.org (Latest uploaded: 5.1.0.123) What's new in 5.1? The full list of changes is on our http://progress.umbraco.org task tracking page. It shows items complete for 5.1, and 5.1 includes items for 5.0.1 and 5.0.2 listed there too. Here's two headline acts: Members5.1 adds support for backoffice editing of Members. We support the pairing up of our content type system in Hive with regular ASP.NET Membership providers (we ship a def...51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.2.11: One Click Install from NuGet Changes to Version 2.1.2.11Code Changes 1. The project is now licenced under the Mozilla Public Licence 2. 2. User interface control and associated data access layer classes have been added to aid developers integrating 51Degrees.mobi into wider projects such as content management systems or web hosting management solutions. Use the following in a web form or user control to access these new UI components. <%@ Register Assembly="FiftyOne.Foundation" Namespace="...JSON Toolkit: JSON Toolkit 3.1: slight performance improvement (5% - 10%) new JsonException classPicturethrill: Version 2.3.28.0: Straightforward image selection. New clean UI look. Super stable. Simplified user experience.SQL Monitor - managing sql server performance: SQL Monitor 4.2 alpha 16: 1. finally fixed problem with logic fault checking for temporary table name... I really mean finally ...ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.5: A slew of bug-fixes with a few new features sprinkled in. This release also upgrades the SciLexer and SciLexer64 DLLs to version 3.0.4. The official stuff: Issue # Title 32402 32402 27137 27137 31548 31548 30179 30179 24932 24932 29701 29701 31238 31238 26875 26875 30052 30052 Mugen MVVM Toolkit: Mugen MVVM Toolkit ver 1.1: Added Design mode support.Harness: Harness 2.0.2: change to .NET Framework Client Profile bug fix the download dialog auto answer. bug fix setFocus command. add "SendKeys" command. remove "closeAll" command. minor bugs fixed.BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 0.9.161: Below is a list of fixes in this release. Bug BGN-2092 - Link in Email "visit your profile" not functional BGN-2083 - Manager of bugnet can not edit project when it is not public BGN-2080 - clicking on a link in the project summary causes error (0.9.152.0) BGN-2070 - Missing Functionality On Feed.aspx BGN-2069 - Calendar View does not work BGN-2068 - Time tracking totals not ok BGN-2067 - Issues List Page Size Bug: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the si...YAF.NET (aka Yet Another Forum.NET): v1.9.6.1 RTW: v1.9.6.1 FINAL is .NET v4.0 ONLY v1.9.6.1 has: Performance Improvements .NET v4.0 improvements Improved FaceBook Integration KNOWN ISSUES WITH THIS RELEASE: ON INSTALL PLEASE DON'T CHECK "Upgrade BBCode Extensions...". More complete change list and discussion here: http://forum.yetanotherforum.net/yaf_postst14201_v1-9-6-1-RTW-Dated--3-26-2012.aspxNew ProjectsAlloCiné API: API AlloCiné v3 This is a library to use the API of AlloCiné. It covers the version 3 of the AlloCiné service as described here GroWiki API AlloCiné v3. The data-interchange format used behind the scene is JSON. Auto-LiMPoT: An automated tool to convert an N1 MIUI Rom to an AcerLiquid-compatible Rom.Azure Management API (via F#): This lib is a wrapper for Azure Management REST API. Can be used by .Net languages but adapted for F# (used asyncs and other). Supported operations: AffinityGroups (all), HostedServices (all), StorageServices (all), Azure Sql (all = manage server + firewall rules), AsyncOperationCraigsPack: This is a Light weight and Expandable library that helps search through craigslist ads but not bound to only one website. It includes interfaces and base classes to help create custom web providers for other specific websites. Written in c#Cygnus v3: Cygnus internal.DataHelperCS: Porject about DataHelper for rapid development and Simplist Architectur Model.Datewise Picture Arranger: Arranges/Renames pictures based on the date taken. d? án web: Ð? án môn phát tri?n ?ng d?ng webDrawbot: IRC Bot for /r/sketchdaily on reddit.FONIS prezenter: FONIS prezenter je aplikacija koja omogucava korisniku da odredenom kombinacijom sa tastature pozove odgovarajucu PowerPoint prezentaciju. Program je razvijen u C#. Za instaliranje i pokretanje ovog programa, potrebno je instalirati .NET Framework 4. Grammars: Grammars makes it easy to design regular, context-free and context-dependent grammars and apply various tools for parsing and language analysis. It is developed in C# and provides a BNF-like syntax with operator overloading and semantic rules as delegates, allowing you to design and code your grammar right in the middle of your C# code. It fleets with a fully-functional LR parser generator.iConference: Conference Management System.IQCare: IQCare is a Open Source, data capture and reporting system with patient management tools designed to measure patient outcomes. Having the ability to analyze data and then use the resulting analysis to provide improved care is the end goal of IQCare. IQCare has all of the key features needed to collect clean data and to do patient and facility analysis and reporting.Memory Management: General purpose memory management in C++ with policy-based architecture.Metro Style App Study Project: Metro Style App demos from QQ Group 95331609OpenNETCF CAB Installer SDK: The OpenNETCF CAB Installer SDK provides programmatic access to the extraction of CAB files under Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Windows Embedded Compact and Windows Embedded HandheldOrchard Private Content: Allows content items to be displayed by only users with roles that have permission.Pete Brown NETMF and Gadgeteer Code: Module drivers and other code for my .NET Micro Framework projects.QuanLyBanHang-Nhom100: Qu?n lý bán hàng - nhóm 100 Bùi vi?t sang Nguy?n van longRegeXml: This is about a Framework that allow you to transform a bunch of dirty data into a one and well formated XML.SSIS Row Number Component: This Rownumber component allows you to add a rownumber in the case your destination doesn't support auto-increment.Sunburn XNA advanced help custom samples: This project will include samples I do using sunburns engine. If you use it correctly it is a very powerful engine i found out. I will post samples for things that people have been trying to do in xna 4 and above with sunburn for awhile. THE webpage: gffgfgdhhgghdj91Transbin for anyone: Transbin makes it easier to contorl your computer anywhere.Wazzup module for DotNetNuke: Wazzup is a simple module for the DotNetNuke CMS to display the newest content added to your site. It leverage's DNN's search indexer and displays a simple link with publishing date and text summary. Developed in VB. Fits well into narrow vertical content areasWLCompus: WLCompusXNA Game Studio 3.0 Unleashed Book Source Code: C# Source Code and Assets from the XNA Game Studio 3.0 Unleashed book. The code is released under the Ms-PL license.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 12, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 12, 2011Popular ReleasesSizeOnDisk: 1.0.8.4: Fix: Contextual menu failures. Switch to ShellExecuteEx of Win32Api.Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.1 (June 2011) for .NET 4.0: Release of Phalanger 2.1 - the opensource PHP compiler for .NET framework 4.0. Installation package also includes basic version of Phalanger Tools for Visual Studio 2010. This allows you to easily create, build and debug Phalanger web or application inside this ultimate integrated development environment. You can even install the tools into the free Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Integrated). To improve the performance of your application using MySQL, please use Managed MySQL Extension for Phala...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.7: Version: 2.0.0.7 (Milestone 7): 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 ...SimplePlanner: v2.0b: For 2011-2012 Sem 1 ???2011-2012 ????Visual Studio 2010 Help Downloader: 1.0.0.3: Domain name support for proxy Cleanup old packages bug Writing to EventLog with UAC enabled bug Small fixes & RefactoringMedia Companion: MC 3.406b weekly: With this version change a movie rebuild is required when first run -else MC will lock up on exit. Extract the entire archive to a folder which has user access rights, eg desktop, documents etc. Refer to the documentation on this site for the Installation & Setup Guide Important! If you find MC not displaying movie data properly, please try a 'movie rebuild' to reload the data from the nfo's into MC's cache. Fixes Movies Readded movie preference to rename invalid or scene nfo's to info ext...Windows Azure VM Assistant: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5 (Debug) - Test Release VersionNetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.9: Changes: - fix examples (include issue 16026) - add new examples - 32Bit/64Bit Walkthrough is now available in technical Documentation. Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:..............................................................COM Proxy Management, Events, etc. - Examples in C# and VB.Net:............................................................Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access - COMAddi...Reusable Library: V1.1.3: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developerClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.54.0: New on this release: 1) Mayor performance improvements. 2) AdjustToContents now take into account the text rotation. 3) Fixed issues 6782, 6784, 6788HTML-IDEx: HTML-IDEx .15 ALPHA: This release fixes line counting a little bit and adds the masshighlight() sub, which highlights pasted and inserted code.AutoLoL: AutoLoL v2.0.3: - Improved summoner spells are now displayed - Fixed some of the startup errors people got - Double clicking an item selects it - Some usability changes that make using AutoLoL just a little easier - Bug fixes AutoLoL v2 is not an update, but an entirely new version! Please install to a different directory than AutoLoL v1Host Profiles: Host Profiles 1.0: Host Profiles 1.0 Release Quickly modify host file Automatically flush dnsVidCoder: 0.9.2: Updated to HandBrake 4024svn. This fixes problems with mpeg2 sources: corrupted previews, incorrect progress indicators and encodes that incorrectly report as failed. Fixed a problem that prevented target sizes above 2048 MB.SharePoint Search XSL Samples: SharePoint 2010 Samples: I have updated some of the samples from the 2007 release. These all work in SharePoint 2010. I removed the Pivot on File Extension because SharePoint 2010 search has refiners that perform the same function.AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta5: ??AcDown?????????????，??????????????，????、????。?????Acfun????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??v3.0 Beta5 ?????????? ???? ?? ???????? ???"????????"?? ????????????? ????????/???? ?? ???"????"??? ?? ??????????? ?? ?? ??????????? ?? ?????????????????? ??????????????????? ???????????????? ????????????Discussions???????? ????AcDown??????????????VFPX: GoFish 4 Beta 1: Current beta is Build 144 (released 2011-06-07 ) See the GoFish4 info page for details and video link: http://vfpx.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=GoFishShowUI: Write-UI -in PowerShell: ShowUI: ShowUI is a PowerShell module to help you write rich user interfaces in script.SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack: SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack 1.0.3: Fixed User Management screen when "RequiresQuestionAndAnswer" set to true Reply to Email Address can now be customized User Management page now only displays users that reside in the membership database Web parts have been changed to inherit from System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart, so that they will display on anonymous application pages For installation and configuration steps see here.Babylon Toolkit: Babylon.Toolkit v1.0.4: Note about samples: In order to run samples, you need to configure visual studio to run them as an "Out-of-browser application". in order to do that, go to the property page of a sample project, go to the Debug tab, and check the "Out-of-browser application" radio. New features : New Effects BasicEffect3Lights (3 dir lights instead of 1 position light) CartoonEffect (work in progress) SkinnedEffect (with normal and specular map support) SplattingEffect (for multi-texturing with smooth ...New ProjectsAnything Over Anything (Network Tunneling): Tunneling software created using the Reactive Extensions framework! Rx is not just for events!!!BDDocs - Behavior Driven Documentation: An alternative tool to enable project collaboration between stakeholders in a BDD environment. Focuses more on the domain and its implementation then the technical details of the testing framework.Checkin Policies for TFS 2010: More check-in policies for TFS 2010cheese: Projet d'études sur les jeux d'échecs http://davcha.wordpress.comCodeCrusade: Code Crusade is a programming game based around Lua and C#.Dimensional Values: Dimensional Values is a class library that defines units like inch, foot, meter, second, minute, hour, Newton, Pascal, Hertz, etc. that qualify values stored in classes of different dimensions such as the length dimension, the time dimension, the force dimension, etc. The library takes care of unit conversion automatically and produces higher dimension class objects from the mathematical operators (for example, dividing a length dimensional value by a time dimensional value automatically y...Enlight Adventures: Enlight Adventures is a Windows Phone 7 game that is based on the activities of the Enlight Fountain Control Group at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.Expression Tree Serializer: .NET 4.0 and Silverlight 4 class library that serializes and deserializes Expression instances. Also: a WCF IQueryable LINQ Provider and Web Http (REST) client for Silverlight that provides a simplified REST client API (i.e. WCF's WebChannelFactory) that's easier to use than WebClient.F# and C# ASP.NET MVC 3 (Razor) VSIX Project Template Example: This project provides an example of how to create a F# and C# VSIX Project Template made up of a C# ASP.NET MVC 3 web application, a F# Library that contains controllers, models, etc., and a F# Library that can be used to contain unit tests. FreeForm - SilverLight Dynamic Form Builder: FreeForm is a SilverLight4 Dynamic Forms Designer. It is enterprise forms for gathering information and making tools, include a lot of Silverlight4 interface control. Now Give Up InfoPath! TO Use FreeForm! First version online DEMO: http://crmwin.com/TestPage.html?Type=tempInternational Geek Developer Alliance: Take it easy!Kouak - HTTP File Share Server: Kouak is a basic portable file share server over http. He let you share easily files in eterogenous environements and in just few click. He don't need installation and run on every machine from windows xp s2 to windows 7.MARK: MARK is an interpreted programming language, written in PHP, for beginners to learn the fundamentals of programming paradigms. To make learning easier this language cuts the syntactic learning curve out that can hinder learning - hence allowing any beginner to learn the fundamentals of programming easily, whilst having fun with an easy-to-write, powerful programming language.Movie Manager: A tool for personal Movie CollectionNairc: This is a telescope control system project of Nairc.NPD: NPD Trading SystemObjects Library: OLib is a list of objects for programming, Programmers don't have to make alot of own classes anymoreProgressbar Field: The progress bar is typically used when an application performs tasks such as project progress or sales activity. Users of an application might consider an application non-informative if there is no visual cue.PTask: PTask is an API built on the .NET Task API that simplifies the execution in parrallel of dependent units of work. It provides a fluent API for building node dependency structures and executes those structures with the maximum level of parralelization using the thread pool.Quant: quantSharpAuctioneer: A set of classes to parse and read the World of Warcraft Auctioneer Add-On scan data.SimplePlanner: NTU Simple PlannerSiteUnity Framework: SiteUnity Framework makes it easier to build website. The target of framework, write less and simple code to build complex website. For that purpose there are some modules for viewing and managing page. It's develop in Asp.NET using C#, Mssql and Jquery.SMTP Proxy for GMail and Windows Live Mail/Hotmail: GMail and Microsoft Live Mail require encrypted connections (SSL/TLS), but not all software supports SSL/TLS. SmtpProxy accepts unencrypted connections and forwards them to GMail/Live. It runs as a Windows Service and supports ALL email clients. It's developed in C#/.NET4.WipeTouch, a jQuery plugin for touch devices: jQuery plugin for touch wipe events. Detects when user wipes on all 9 directions (top, bottom, left, right and diagonals) and triggers the desired event.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, August 02, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, August 02, 2014Popular ReleasesRecaptcha for .NET: Recaptcha for .NET v1.5.1: Added support for HTTPS. Signed the assemblies.PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit: PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit v3.1.5: *Added Send-Keys function to send a sequence of keys to an application window (Thanks to mmashwani) *Added 3 optimization/stability improvements to Execute-Process following MS best practice (Thanks to mmashwani) *Fixed issue where Execute-MSI did not use value from XML file for uninstall but instead ran all uninstalls silently by default *Fixed error on 1641 exit code (should be a success like 3010) *Fixed issue with error handling in Invoke-SCCMTask *Fixed issue with deferral dates where th...AutoUpdater.NET : Auto update library for VB.NET and C# Developer: AutoUpdater.NET 1.3: Fixed problem in DownloadUpdateDialog where download continues even if you close the dialog. Added support for new url field for 64 bit application setup. AutoUpdater.NET will decide which download url to use by looking at the value of IntPtr.Size. Added German translation provided by Rene Kannegiesser. Now developer can handle update logic herself using event suggested by ricorx7. Added italian translation provided by Gianluca Mariani. Fixed bug that prevents Application from exiti...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.041.012 Release 1: Added voxel material textures to read in with mods. Fixed missing texture replacements for mods. Fixed rounding issue in raytrace code. Fixed repair issue with corrupt checkpoint file. Fixed issue with updated SE binaries 01.041.012 using new container configuration.Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.9.601: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.9.6 Breaking changes: - Changed arguments for the Map method of MagickImage. - QuantizeSettings uses Riemersma by default.SharePoint Real Time Log Viewer: SharePoint Real Time Log Viewer - Source: Source codeModern Audio Tagger: Modern Audio Tagger 1.0.0.0: Modern Audio Tagger is bornQuickMon: Version 3.20: Added a 'Directory Services Query' collector agent. This collector allows for querying Active Directory using simple DirectorySearcher queries.Grunndatakvalitet: Initial working: Show Altinn metadata in Excel. To get a live list you need to run the sql script on a server and update the connection string in ExcelMultiple Threads TCP Server: Project: this Project is based on VS 2013, .net freamwork 4.0, you can open it by vs 2010 or laterAccesorios de sitios Torrent en Español para Synology Download Station: Pack de Torrents en Español 6.0.0: Agregado los módulos de DivXTotal, el módulo de búsqueda depende del de alojamiento para bajar las series Utiliza el rss: http://www.divxtotal.com/rss.php DbEntry.Net (Leafing Framework): DbEntry.Net 4.2: DbEntry.Net is a lightweight Object Relational Mapping (ORM) database access compnent for .Net 4.0+. It has clearly and easily programing interface for ORM and sql directly, and supoorted Access, Sql Server, MySql, SQLite, Firebird, PostgreSQL and Oracle. It also provide a Ruby On Rails style MVC framework. Asp.Net DataSource and a simple IoC. DbEntry.Net.v4.2.Setup.zip include the setup package. DbEntry.Net.v4.2.Src.zip include source files and unit tests. DbEntry.Net.v4.2.Samples.zip ...Azure Storage Explorer: Azure Storage Explorer 6 Preview 1: Welcome to Azure Storage Explorer 6 Preview 1 This is the first release of the latest Azure Storage Explorer, code-named Phoenix. What's New?Here are some important things to know about version 6: Open Source Now being run as a full open source project. Full source code on CodePlex. Collaboration encouraged! Updated Code Base Brand-new code base (WPF/C#/.NET 4.5) Visual Studio 2013 solution (previously VS2010) Uses the Task Parallel Library (TPL) for asynchronous background operat...Wsus Package Publisher: release v1.3.1407.29: Updated WPP to recognize the very latest console version. Some files was missing into the latest release of WPP which lead to crash when trying to make a custom update. Add a workaround to avoid clipboard modification when double-clicking on a label when creating a custom update. Add the ability to publish detectoids. (This feature is still in a BETA phase. Packages relying on these detectoids to determine which computers need to be updated, may apply to all computers).VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.32: changes NEW: Added Support for 'ImgMega.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgCandy.net' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgPit.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'Img.yt' links FIXED: 'Radikal.ru' links FIXED: 'ImageTeam.org' links FIXED: 'ImgSee.com' links FIXED: 'Img.yt' linksAsp.Net MVC-4,Entity Framework and JQGrid Demo with Todo List WebApplication: Asp.Net MVC-4,Entity Framework and JQGrid Demo: Asp.Net MVC-4,Entity Framework and JQGrid Demo with simple Todo List WebApplication, Overview TodoList is a simple web application to create, store and modify Todo tasks to be maintained by the users, which comprises of following fields to the user (Task Name, Task Description, Severity, Target Date, Task Status). TodoList web application is created using MVC - 4 architecture, code-first Entity Framework (ORM) and Jqgrid for displaying the data.Waterfox: Waterfox 31.0 Portable: New features in Waterfox 31.0: Added support for Unicode 7.0 Experimental support for WebCL New features in Firefox 31.0:New Add the search field to the new tab page Support of Prefer:Safe http header for parental control mozilla::pkix as default certificate verifier Block malware from downloaded files Block malware from downloaded files audio/video .ogg and .pdf files handled by Firefox if no application specified Changed Removal of the CAPS infrastructure for specifying site-sp...SuperSocket, an extensible socket server framework: SuperSocket 1.6.3: The changes below are included in this release: fixed an exception when collect a server's status but it has been stopped fixed a bug that can cause an exception in case of sending data when the connection dropped already fixed the log4net missing issue for a QuickStart project fixed a warning in a QuickStart projectYnote Classic: Ynote Classic 2.8.5 Beta: Several Changes - Multiple Carets and Multiple Selections - Improved Startup Time - Improved Syntax Highlighting - Search Improvements - Shell Command - Improved StabilityTEBookConverter: 1.2: Fixed: Could not start convertion in some cases Fixed: Progress show during convertion was truncated Fixed: Stopping convertion didn't reset program titleNew ProjectsCoder Camps Troop 64 7-28: Place for group projectsEasyMR: ????EasyMR???????????????????????????????，?????，????，????，????????，??????????????????????，????????????。??????Hadoop?????????，EasyMR???????，??????????????????。FlexGraph: A simple chart control for Windows delivered in form of a function DLL. Tested in C++ (MFC, QT), C# and VB.Net.Grunndatakvalitet: Project is meant to open up the Altinn national data hub for Access from other systems and eg self-service like ExcelKinect Avateering V2 SDK migration: Kinect V2 (new version with XBOX1) SDK Avatar Avateering sample migration from version 1.8SDK. lqwe: just devlzsoft-cdn: this is a projectMin Heap: MinHeap project provides a MinHeap implementation in C# for use in Dijkstra's algorithm for computing shortest path distances for non-negative edge lengths.Modern Audio Tagger: Modern Audio Tagger is a powerful, easy and extreme fast tool to reorganize your music libraryMultiple Threads TCP Server: A multi-threaded tcp server. Using a queue with multiple threads to handle large numbers of client requests.newTeamProject1: Game Minesweeper on Console ApplicationO(1): Scale-able partitioned pure .NET Property Graph Database intended to handle large complex graphs and provide high performance OLTP property graph capabilities.Orchard Single Page Application Theme: Orchard Single Page Application ( SPA ) ThemePersonal Assistance Suite (PAS): This C# project aims to set up a modular platform for private use. Microsoft Prism Library 5.0 for WPF is used to implement this modularity.PokitDok Platform API Client for C#: The PokitDok API allows you to perform X12 transactions, find healthcare providers, and get information on health care procedure pricing. REST, JSON, Oauth2.Powershell DSC Resource - cXML: Powershell DSC Resource Module for managing XML element in a text file.Powershell Uninstall Java: Identifies and uninstalls Java software from the local machine using WMI. The query to locate the installed software interogates the WIN32_Products claSharePoint Real Time Log Viewer: SharePoint Real Time Log Viewer is a winform application that allows you to view the logs generated by SharePoint.sqldataexporter: this is a projectVAK: we are trying to create an application that will be a place people can discuss IT related topics and also try to integrate lync 2013Windows Phone 8 DropBox API: Windows Phone REST API for DropBoxYet Another Steam Mover (YASM): Yet Another Steam Mover (YASM) is a Microsoft.NET Windows Forms application for moving large digital games across different volumes.

  Read the article

• Clusterware 11gR2 &ndash; Setting up an Active/Passive failover configuration

  - by Gilles Haro

  Oracle provides many interesting ways to ensure High Availability. Dataguard configurations, RAC configurations or even both (as recommended for a Maximum Available Architecture - MAA) are the most frequently found. But when it comes to protecting a system with an Active/Passive architecture with failover capabilities, one often thinks to expensive third party cluster systems. Oracle Clusterware technology, which comes free with Oracle Database, is – in the knowing of most people - often linked to Oracle RAC and therefore, is rarely used to implement failover solutions. 11gR2 Clusterware – which is part of Oracle Grid Infrastructure - provides a comprehensive framework to setup automatic failover configurations. It is actually possible to make “failover-able'” and, therefore to protect, almost every kind of application (from xclock to the more complex Application Server) In the next couple of lines, I will try to present the different steps to achieve this goal : Have a fully operational 11gR2 database protected by automatic failover capabilities. I assume you are fluent in installing Oracle Database 11gR2, Oracle Grid Infrastructure 11gR2 on a Linux system and that ASM is not a problem for you (as I am using it as a shared storage). If not, please have a look at Oracle Documentation. As often, I made my tests using an Oracle VirtualBox environment. The scripts are tested and functional. Unfortunately, there can always be a typo or a mistake. This blog entry is not a course around the Clusterware Framework. I just hope it will let you see how powerful it is and that it will give you the whilst to go further with it…   Prerequisite 2 Linux boxes (OELCluster01 and OELCluster02) at the same OS level. I used OEL 5 Update 5 with Enterprise Kernel. Shared Storage (SAN). On my VirtualBox system, I used Openfiler to simulate the SAN Oracle 11gR2 Database (11.2.0.1) Oracle 11gR2 Grid Infrastructure (11.2.0.1)   Step 1 – Install the software Using asmlib, create 3 ASM disks (ASM_CRS, ASM_DTA and ASM_FRA) Install Grid Infrastructure for a cluster (OELCluster01 and OELCluster02 are the 2 nodes of the cluster) Use ASM_CRS to store Voting Disk and OCR. Use SCAN. Install Oracle Database Standalone binaries on both nodes. Use asmca to check/mount the disk groups on 2 nodes Use dbca to create and configure a database on the primary node Let’s name it DB11G. Copy the pfile, password file to the second node. Create adump directoty on the second node.   Step 2 - Setup the resource to be protected After its creation with dbca, the database is automatically protected by the Oracle Restart technology available with Grid Infrastructure. Consequently, it restarts automatically (if possible) after a crash (ex: kill –9 smon). A database resource has been created for that in the Cluster Registry. We can observe this with the command : crsctl status resource that shows and ora.dba11g.db entry. Let’s save the definition of this resource, for future use : mkdir –p /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts chown oracle:oinstall /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts crsctl status resource ora.db11g.db -p > /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/myResource.txt Although very interesting, Oracle Restart is not cluster aware and cannot restart the database on any other node of the cluster. So, let’s remove it from the OCR definitions, we don’t need it ! srvctl stop database -d DB11G srvctl remove database -d DB11G Instead of it, we need to create a new resource of a more general type : cluster_resource. Here are the steps to achieve this : Create an action script :  /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/my_ActivePassive_Cluster.sh #!/bin/bash export ORACLE_HOME=/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1 export ORACLE_SID=DB11G case $1 in 'start')   $ORACLE_HOME/bin/sqlplus /nolog <<EOF   connect / as sysdba   startup EOF   RET=0   ;; 'stop')   $ORACLE_HOME/bin/sqlplus /nolog <<EOF   connect / as sysdba   shutdown immediate EOF   RET=0   ;; 'check')    ok=`ps -ef | grep smon | grep $ORACLE_SID | wc -l`    if [ $ok = 0 ]; then      RET=1    else      RET=0    fi    ;; '*')      RET=0   ;; esac if [ $RET -eq 0 ]; then    exit 0 else    exit 1 fi   This script must provide, at least, methods to start, stop and check the database. It is self-explaining and contains nothing special. Just be aware that it is run as Oracle user (because of the ACL property – see later) and needs to know about the environment. It also needs to be present on every node of the cluster. chmod +x /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/my_ActivePassive_Cluster.sh scp  /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/my_ActivePassive_Cluster.sh   oracle@OELCluster02:/crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts Create a new resource file, based on the information we got from previous  myResource.txt . Name it myNewResource.txt. myResource.txt  is shown below. As we can see, it defines an ora.database.type resource, named ora.db11g.db. A lot of properties are related to this type of resource and do not need to be used for a cluster_resource. NAME=ora.db11g.db TYPE=ora.database.type ACL=owner:oracle:rwx,pgrp:oinstall:rwx,other::r-- ACTION_FAILURE_TEMPLATE= ACTION_SCRIPT= ACTIVE_PLACEMENT=1 AGENT_FILENAME=%CRS_HOME%/bin/oraagent%CRS_EXE_SUFFIX% AUTO_START=restore CARDINALITY=1 CHECK_INTERVAL=1 CHECK_TIMEOUT=600 CLUSTER_DATABASE=false DB_UNIQUE_NAME=DB11G DEFAULT_TEMPLATE=PROPERTY(RESOURCE_CLASS=database) PROPERTY(DB_UNIQUE_NAME= CONCAT(PARSE(%NAME%, ., 2), %USR_ORA_DOMAIN%, .)) ELEMENT(INSTANCE_NAME= %GEN_USR_ORA_INST_NAME%) DEGREE=1 DESCRIPTION=Oracle Database resource ENABLED=1 FAILOVER_DELAY=0 FAILURE_INTERVAL=60 FAILURE_THRESHOLD=1 GEN_AUDIT_FILE_DEST=/oracle/admin/DB11G/adump GEN_USR_ORA_INST_NAME= GEN_USR_ORA_INST_NAME@SERVERNAME(oelcluster01)=DB11G HOSTING_MEMBERS= INSTANCE_FAILOVER=0 LOAD=1 LOGGING_LEVEL=1 MANAGEMENT_POLICY=AUTOMATIC NLS_LANG= NOT_RESTARTING_TEMPLATE= OFFLINE_CHECK_INTERVAL=0 ORACLE_HOME=/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1 PLACEMENT=restricted PROFILE_CHANGE_TEMPLATE= RESTART_ATTEMPTS=2 ROLE=PRIMARY SCRIPT_TIMEOUT=60 SERVER_POOLS=ora.DB11G SPFILE=+DTA/DB11G/spfileDB11G.ora START_DEPENDENCIES=hard(ora.DTA.dg,ora.FRA.dg) weak(type:ora.listener.type,uniform:ora.ons,uniform:ora.eons) pullup(ora.DTA.dg,ora.FRA.dg) START_TIMEOUT=600 STATE_CHANGE_TEMPLATE= STOP_DEPENDENCIES=hard(intermediate:ora.asm,shutdown:ora.DTA.dg,shutdown:ora.FRA.dg) STOP_TIMEOUT=600 UPTIME_THRESHOLD=1h USR_ORA_DB_NAME=DB11G USR_ORA_DOMAIN=haroland USR_ORA_ENV= USR_ORA_FLAGS= USR_ORA_INST_NAME=DB11G USR_ORA_OPEN_MODE=open USR_ORA_OPI=false USR_ORA_STOP_MODE=immediate VERSION=11.2.0.1.0 I removed database type related entries from myResource.txt and modified some other to produce the following myNewResource.txt. Notice the NAME property that should not have the ora. prefix Notice the TYPE property that is not ora.database.type but cluster_resource. Notice the definition of ACTION_SCRIPT. Notice the HOSTING_MEMBERS that enumerates the members of the cluster (as returned by the olsnodes command). NAME=DB11G.db TYPE=cluster_resource DESCRIPTION=Oracle Database resource ACL=owner:oracle:rwx,pgrp:oinstall:rwx,other::r-- ACTION_SCRIPT=/crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/my_ActivePassive_Cluster.sh PLACEMENT=restricted ACTIVE_PLACEMENT=0 AUTO_START=restore CARDINALITY=1 CHECK_INTERVAL=10 DEGREE=1 ENABLED=1 HOSTING_MEMBERS=oelcluster01 oelcluster02 LOGGING_LEVEL=1 RESTART_ATTEMPTS=1 START_DEPENDENCIES=hard(ora.DTA.dg,ora.FRA.dg) weak(type:ora.listener.type,uniform:ora.ons,uniform:ora.eons) pullup(ora.DTA.dg,ora.FRA.dg) START_TIMEOUT=600 STOP_DEPENDENCIES=hard(intermediate:ora.asm,shutdown:ora.DTA.dg,shutdown:ora.FRA.dg) STOP_TIMEOUT=600 UPTIME_THRESHOLD=1h Register the resource. Take care of the resource type. It needs to be a cluster_resource and not a ora.database.type resource (Oracle recommendation) .   crsctl add resource DB11G.db  -type cluster_resource -file /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/myNewResource.txt Step 3 - Start the resource crsctl start resource DB11G.db This command launches the ACTION_SCRIPT with a start and a check parameter on the primary node of the cluster. Step 4 - Test this We will test the setup using 2 methods. crsctl relocate resource DB11G.db This command calls the ACTION_SCRIPT  (on the two nodes)  to stop the database on the active node and start it on the other node. Once done, we can revert back to the original node, but, this time we can use a more “MS$ like” method :Turn off the server on which the database is running. After short delay, you should observe that the database is relocated on node 1. Conclusion Once the software installed and the standalone database created (which is a rather common and usual task), the steps to reach the objective are quite easy : Create an executable action script on every node of the cluster. Create a resource file. Create/Register the resource with OCR using the resource file. Start the resource. This solution is a very interesting alternative to licensable third party solutions.   References Clusterware 11gR2 documentation Oracle Clusterware Resource Reference   Gilles Haro Technical Expert - Core Technology, Oracle Consulting   

  Read the article

• What&rsquo;s new in MVVM Light V3

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  V3 of the MVVM Light Toolkit was released during MIX10, after quite a long alpha stage. This post lists the new features in MVVM Light V3. Compatibility MVVM Light Toolkit V3 can be installed for the following tools and framework versions: Visual Studio 2008 SP1, Expression Blend 3 Windows Presentation Foundation 3.5 SP1 Silverlight 3 Visual Studio 2010 RC, Expression Blend 4 beta Windows Presentation Foundation 3.5 SP1 Windows Presentation Foundation 4 RC Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 RC For more information about installing the MVVM Light Toolkit V3, please visit this page. For cleaning up existing installation, see this page. New in V3 RTM The following features have been added after V3 alpha3: Project template for the Windows Phone 7 series (Silverlight) This new template allows you to create a new MVVM Light application in Visual Studio 2010 RC and to run it in the Windows Phone 7 series emulator. This template uses the Silverlight 3 version of the MVVM Light Toolkit V3. At this time, only the essentials features of the GalaSoft.MvvmLight.dll assembly are supported on the phone. New in V3 alpha3 The following features have been added after V3 alpha2: New logo An awesome logo has been designed for MVVM Light by Philippe Schutz. DispatcherHelper class (in GalaSoft.MvvmLight.Extras.dll) This class is useful when you work on multi-threaded WPF or Silverlight applications. Initializing: The DispatcherHelper class must be initialized in the UI thread. For example, you can initialize the class in a Silverlight application’s Application_Startup event handler, or in the WPF application’s static App constructor (in App.xaml). // Initializing in Silverlight (in App.xaml) private void Application_Startup( object sender, StartupEventArgs e) { RootVisual = new MainPage(); DispatcherHelper.Initialize(); } // Initializing in WPF (in App.xaml) static App() { DispatcherHelper.Initialize(); } Verifying if a property exists The ViewModelBase.RaisePropertyChanged method now checks if a given property name exists on the ViewModel class, and throws an exception if that property cannot be found. This is useful to detect typos in a property name, for example during a refactoring. Note that the check is only done in DEBUG mode. Replacing IDisposable with ICleanup The IDisposable implementation in the ViewModelBase class has been marked obsolete. Instead, the ICleanup interface (and its Cleanup method) has been added. Implementing IDisposable in a ViewModel is still possible, but must be done explicitly. IDisposable in ViewModelBase was a bad practice, because it supposes that the ViewModel is garbage collected after Dispose is called. instead, the Cleanup method does not have such expectation. The ViewModelLocator class (created when an MVVM Light project template is used in Visual Studio or Expression Blend) exposes a static Cleanup method, which should in turn call each ViewModel’s Cleanup method. The ViewModel is free to override the Cleanup method if local cleanup must be performed. Passing EventArgs to command with EventToCommand The EventToCommand class is used to bind any event to an ICommand (typically on the ViewModel). In this case, it can be useful to pass the event’s EventArgs parameter to the command in the ViewModel. For example, for the MouseEnter event, you can pass the MouseEventArgs to a RelayCommand<MouseEventArgs> as shown in the next listings. Note: Bringing UI specific classes (such as EventArgs) into the ViewModel reduces the testability of the ViewModel, and thus should be used with care. Setting EventToCommand and PassEventArgsToCommand: <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <i:Interaction.Triggers> <i:EventTrigger EventName="MouseEnter"> <cmd:EventToCommand Command="{Binding MyCommand}" PassEventArgsToCommand="True" /> </i:EventTrigger> </i:Interaction.Triggers> </Grid> Getting the EventArgs in the command public RelayCommand<MouseEventArgs> MyCommand { get; private set; } public MainViewModel() { MyCommand = new RelayCommand<MouseEventArgs>(e => { // e is of type MouseEventArgs }); } Changes to templates Various changes have been made to project templates and item templates to make them more compatible with Silverlight 4 and to improve their visibility in Visual Studio and Expression Blend. Bug corrections When a message is sent through the Messenger class using the method Messenger.Default.Send<T>(T message, object token), and the token is a simple value (for example int), the message was not sent correctly. This bug is now corrected. New in V3 The following features have been added after V2. Sending messages with callback Certain classes have been added to the GalaSoft.MvvmLight.Messaging namespace, allowing sending a message and getting a callback from the recipient. These classes are: NotificationMessageWithCallback: Base class for messages with callback. NotificationMessageAction: A class with string notification, and a parameterless callback. NotificationMessageAction<T>: A class with string notification, and a callback with a parameter of type T. To send a message with callback, use the following code: var message = new NotificationMessageAction<bool>( "Hello world", callbackMessage => { // This is the callback code if (callbackMessage) { // ... } }); Messenger.Default.Send(message); To register and receive a message with callback, use the following code: Messenger.Default.Register<NotificationMessageAction<bool>>( this, message => { // Do something // Execute the callback message.Execute(true); }); Messenger.Default can be overriden The Messenger.Default property can also be replaced, for example for unit testing purposes, by using the Messenger.OverrideDefault method. All the public methods of the Messenger class have been made virtual, and can be overridden in the test messenger class. Sending messages to interfaces In V2, it was possible to deliver messages targeted to instances of a given class. in V3 it is still possible, but in addition you can deliver a message to instances that implement a certain interface. The message will not be delivered to other recipients. Use the overload Messenger.Default.Send<TMessage, TTarget>(TMessage message) where TTarget is, in fact, an interface (for example IDisposable). Of course the recipient must register to receive the type of message TMessage. Sending messages with a token Messages can now be sent through the Messenger with a token. To send a message with token, use the method overload Send<TMessage>(TMessage message, object token). To receive a message with token, use the methods Register<TMessage>(object recipient, object token, Action<TMessage> action) or Register<TMessage>(object recipient, object token, bool receiveDerivedMessagesToo, Action<TMessage> action) The token can be a simple value (int, string, etc…) or an instance of a class. The message is not delivered to recipients who registered with a different token, or with no token at all. Renaming CommandMessage to NotificationMessage To avoid confusion with ICommand and RelayCommand, the CommandMessage class has been renamed to NotificationMessage. This message class can be used to deliver a notification (of type string) to a recipient. ViewModelBase constructor with IMessenger The ViewModelBase class now accepts an IMessenger parameter. If this constructor is used instead of the default empty constructor, the IMessenger passed as parameter will be used to broadcast a PropertyChangedMessage when the method RaisePropertyChanged<T>(string propertyName, T oldValue, T newValue, bool broadcast) is used. In the default ViewModelBase constructor is used, the Messenger.Default instance will be used instead. EventToCommand behavior The EventToCommand behavior has been added in V3. It can be used to bind any event of any FrameworkElement to any ICommand (for example a RelayCommand located in the ViewModel). More information about the EventToCommand behavior can be found here and here. Updated the project templates to remove the sample application The project template has been updated to remove the sample application that was created every time that a new MVVM Light application was created in Visual Studio or Blend. This makes the creation of a new application easier, because you don’t need to remove code before you can start writing code. Bug corrections Some bugs that were in Version 2 have been corrected: In some occasions, an exception could be thrown when a recipient was registered for a message at the same time as a message was received. New names for DLLs If you upgrade an existing installation, you will need to change the reference to the DLLs in C:\Program Files\Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft)\Mvvm Light Toolkit\Binaries. The assemblies have been moved, and the versions for Silverlight 4 and for WPF4 have been renamed, to avoid some confusion. It is now easier to make sure that you are using the correct DLL. WPF3.5SP1, Silverlight 3 When using the DLLs, make sure that you use the correct versions. WPF4, Silverlight 4 When using the DLLs, make sure that you use the correct versions.   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

  Read the article

• alot questings since i wanted to make a new SSB game or mario game(that use 3d models) [closed]

  - by user20465

  i have just started to study programming and i know already ppl will say why make a so big project like as a SSB game for a noob game development? cuz i always wanted a SSB engine like as Mugen is a fighter game engine but is not like as SSB´s gameplay + is not using 3d models too so i will call it SSBmugen(until i find a better title for it i got afew ideas for titles) also i wanted to make this game so it can use SSBbrawl files(models+animations mainly) the moveset+Stage coding files i wanted to redo cuz so anything can be possible like make a teleporter or a pipe teleporter(like as Super mario bros game) on a stag e or make some stuff there is impossible in SSBbrawl for moveset coding but is not in SSBmugen like make so a char. summon a Clone and the clone will do a attack and then is gone or some attacks/moves also i will make a moveset/stage Coding editor so it will be really easy to make moveset/stages coding for yours 3d models/animations moveset+stage Coding i mean: hitboxes/hurtboxes/moving Stuff/moving bones like cape or hair bones that is moving by wind effects or falling or other stuff like that/other stuff that needed to be coded i have planed to make a editor(for moveset/char. coding) or add the editor in brawlbox for my game so other ppl can easy make moveset/stages Coding to they´s models/animations so it will be easy so even kids can make a custom movesets/stages why using SSBbrawl files?: cuz ppl have made alot of models or textures/custom movesets/custom stages like goku/other anime/not brawl stuff for super smash bros brawl hacking(a.k.a modding) so ppl dont have to redo anything if they wanted to have the custom models or textures/custom movesets/custom stages from SSBbrawl to SSBmugen +there is the program named brawlbox that can open brawl files like model/animations and can edit models or animations and import models from 3ds max to be the right model format for SSBbrawl and i also wanted it so easy to add(a.k.a installer) Recolours or alt. models(like as oneslot doctor mario model over mario´s boneset) or textures/Movesets/new char. slots/new stages so easy so you only needing to download themplace them in right foldername them the right nameStart the gameRecolours or alt. models or textures/Movesets/new char. slots/new stages works an loading right so you wont needing to edit any files for add something so kids/not so smart ppl can easy use the mods other ppl is making/uploading for this game here is the file format i wanted to know if they can be readed/opened if making a game that use these files: .mld0(brawl model file) .chr0(model animation for moving/scale/rota the bones) .srt0(animations for texture like moving eyes or blinking) .vis0(Animations for get polygons to hide/show with visibilitybones on the model there is also some polygons there ) .brres(a file format where stuff like model files or textures or animations is inside) .pac(a file format where the .brres is inside to keep model+textures+model for the shadow in 1 file) .wav (for SoundFX effects or voices to char. or stages) i am sure that one is possible the .wav files is inside a other file format for brawl but that file can´t you add more .wav files inside only replace so i wanted the .wav files outside so its easy to add/replace/remove SoundFX effects or voices to char. or stages .brstm(brawl music file so the music is looped perfect so it loop in middel of the music and not start over again then the music is done) afew more file formats (mainly for the Graphics effects like fire/aura/hit effects if not needing to redo them)so only coding in the editor i will make is needed to be done for port a SSBB hack(a.k.a mod)(moveset/stage coding) to this game wanted the game to be able to load these files and load them right like if loading wait1.chr0(idle animation) it will also load at same time wait1.srt0/wait1.vis0 and all kinda of animations is inside the same .brres file i am needing since it to be able to load the file format i wanted cuz: -the animations can´t be converted to any other animation file format and i dont think ppl want to redo these animations(inc. me for Goku to SSBbrawl) -models can be converted but then they lose all the shader/materials stuff like a shine effect or lighting on the model -.brstm can be converted to .wav but then there will be no loop so i prefer it can load this file format too for the music to stage/menu -brawlbox is really easy to use for make animation for the char. and import models from 3ds max so even around "not too stupid" 10 year kids can make SSBB mods(not try to be rude but to say how easy it is) also i wanted the folder setup for characters/stages/moveset/other stuff to be like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2oolm5z5ri234tz/SSBmugen%20Folder%20setup.txt just uploaded a txt file since it is a wall of text and this post is already a wall of test so it easy to place stuff (if not i do a program for to that so it auto place the stuff on right place) not 100% sure what to use of game engine to make this possible but i got a dll file from that brawlbox program that can open/read/edit these file formats if that helps i also got open source of brawlbox i have kinda learned programming(since its kinda the same thing but still not 100% same) from Super smash bros modding/hacking like coding a moveset for the new animations/models + have readed alittle about it but i am soon starting for real to study it for ppl who is alittle confuse for what i am asking for here is the list: -what game engine should i use to make a SSB clone? but at same time to make all this stuff i just said possible so ppl can make they own mods and share them and use the already made mods from SSBbrawl? and easy to use aswell so noob programmors can use it? -where to learning programming on internet to be even more ready to make a game like this? and dont wanted to start in the small like making small boring 2d games that no one care about anyway ps. i am also planing a other project like as SSBmugen but it will be Super mario bros open (again tittle unsure but open means open source) i will make a Mario game engine that also use 3d models and can have 2d or 3d gameplay with any mario powerups/gameplay(from any mario platform games) there is ever made multiplayer like as in New super mario bros wii maybe multiplay over lan or online but for now over 1 PC also alittle planed for that to my SSBmugen a Level/world map editor for it too(easy to use so even kids can use it and make levels for it) so it just place the objects/enemies and options for them enemies since they are not 100% same AI in all mario game like to choose a goomba have AI from SM64 the Editor will be able to change the gameplay on a level while have a other gameplay on a other level like this: 1 level have Super mario bros 3 gameplay (then it will be a 3d model remake) a other level have super mario galaxy gameplay but in a Super mario 3d land level yet a other level have super mario 64 gameplay but with powerups from a other mario game like powerups from mario 3d land or can ride on Yoshi so you can easy remake your fav. level from a old mario game in this mario engine/editor or just make a custom one with yours fav. mario gameplay/powerups so it will be like turn off/on: walljump/triple jump/other kinda or jumps/2x punch and 1 kick+Air kick/SMG spin attack/Fludd/other stuff like that so you can make the gameplay from the first mario game to the newest or make custom gameplay on a level also the star(from 64/sunshine/galaxy) will be replaced with the flag from new super mario bros/mario 3d land since the game is not so much about getting stars its more about making/download the levels you wanted and share them to other ppl and play these level so after have killed like the boss from SM64 bomb omb field(if one have made that) you will get the flag instead of star since i wanted it to be simple to make levels in the editor to make the bosses/new enemies/new powerups/custom char. idk what to do to make that simple yet also thinking the mario game will use brawl files since it almost already got all needed animations/models for this since i dont wanted to redo animations/models and if needing more animations i can just make them easy in brawlbox since thats the program i am most used to make animations but that will be after my SSBmugen project if not this game will be easyer then SSBmugen to make since i am planing then 1 of them is done i use the that game as base to make the other (since both is kinda platfrom games and possible using same file format for both) also wanted to ask what is best to start with out of these 2 games? also will maybe make a DLC site(or ingame) for both of these games if they get done so it wont end up like as Mugen where you needing to look all over the internet to find the stuff you wanted but for my game all the mods for my game is on same place not sure about online mode for SSBmugen or super mario bros open but i can always add that then i get better at programming both games also need to have options on controls/if using joystick also that i have planed these game for a long time and got even more ideas for them but first i wanted to get them to work so i can add the other stuff later(like DLC or online mode or some other stuff later) right now i know 0,0001% to programming(in my option) maybe i know more then that since i have been study it alittle but i learning while making stuff like this that was also my plan for make these game learn while making them and get better to programming so again i say it i kinda dont want to hear dont do these projects cuz i already know it will be hard so dont wanted so much to heard stuff like: you can´t do it since you just started learning programming or this project will fail since somewhere i needing to get started with programming and this is where i want to start to make my dream games(possible other´s dream games too) and i dont think this project will fail if i work hard on it (as i possible will) and ppl will maybe help i think this was all my questing/ideas for now (sorry for it sounds more like ideas then questings) but i needing to say my ideas so you ppl can see what i needing to use for make this possible

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, July 28, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, July 28, 2013Popular ReleasesMedia Companion: Media Companion MC3.574b: Some good bug fixes been going on with the new XBMC-Link function. Thanks to all who were able to do testing and gave feedback. New:* Added some adhoc extra General movie filters, one of which is Plot = Outline (see fixes above). To see the filters, add the following line to your config.xml: <ShowExtraMovieFilters>True</ShowExtraMovieFilters>. The others are: Imdb in folder name, Imdb in not folder name & Imdb not in folder name & year mismatch. * Movie - display <tag> list on browser tab ...Outlook 2013 Backup Add-In: Outlook Backup Add-In 1.0: Users who don't care about compiling the sources on his/her own can download the compiled version. Requirements: - .Net Framework 4.5 - Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office Runtime see: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39290 - Installed Outlook 2013OfflineBrowser: Preview Release with Search: I've added search to this release.Dynamics CRM 2011 EasyPlugins: EasyPlugins-1.2.3.0-managed: v1.2.3.0 - Bug Fix : Twice plugins execution. - New Abort action - Depth Plugin Execution management on each action - Turn On/Off EasyPlugins feature (can be useful in some cases of imports) ----------------------------- v1.2.0.0 Associate / Disassociate actions are now available Import / Export features Better management of Lookups Trigger NamingMemory Teaser Game: Full Release 1.1.0: -> Fixed Memory leak issue. -> Restart game button issue. -> Added Splash screen. -> Changed Release Icon. This is the version 1.1.0.0VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.46: changes FIXED LoginFIM 2010 GoogleApps MA: GoogleAppsMA1.1.2: Fixed bug during import. - Fixed following bug. - In some condition, 'dn is missing' error occur.Install Verify Tool: Install Verify Tool V 1.0 With Client: Use a windows service to do a remote validation work. QA can use this tool to verify daily build installation.C# Intellisense for Notepad++: 'Namespace resolution' release: Auto-Completion from "empty spot" Add missing "using" statementsOpen Source SAAS Job board: Version X3: Full version of job board, didn't have monies to fund it so it's free.DSeX DragonSpeak eXtended Editor: Version 1.0.116.0726: Cleaned up Wizard Interface Added Functionality for RTF UndoRedo IE Inserting Text from Wizard output to the Tabbed Editor Added Sanity Checks to Search/Replace Dialog to prevent crashes Fixed Template and Paste undoredo Fix Undoredo Blank spots Added New_FileTag Const = "(New FIle)" Added Filename to Modified FileClose queries (Thanks Lothus Marque)Math.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.6.0: What's New in Math.NET Numerics 2.6 - Announcement, Explanations and Sample Code. New: Linear Curve Fitting Linear least-squares fitting (regression) to lines, polynomials and linear combinations of arbitrary functions. Multi-dimensional fitting. Also works well in F# with the F# extensions. New: Root Finding Brent's method. ~Candy Chiu, Alexander Täschner Bisection method. ~Scott Stephens, Alexander Täschner Broyden's method, for multi-dimensional functions. ~Alexander Täschner ...AJAX Control Toolkit: July 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - July 2013 Release Version 7.0725July 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - Instructions for using the AJAX Control Toolkit with ASP.NET 4.5 can be found at...MJP's DirectX 11 Samples: Specular Antialiasing Sample: Sample code to complement my presentation that's part of the Physically Based Shading in Theory and Practice course at SIGGRAPH 2013, entitled "Crafting a Next-Gen Material Pipeline for The Order: 1886". Demonstrates various methods of preventing aliasing from specular BRDF's when using high-frequency normal maps. The zip file contains source code as well as a pre-compiled x64 binary.Kartris E-commerce: Kartris v2.5003: This fixes an issue where search engines appear to identify as IE and so trigger the noIE page if there is not a non-responsive skin specified.GoAgent GUI: GoAgent GUI 1.3.5 Alpha (20130723): ????????Alpha?，???????????，?????????????。 ??????????GoAgent???（???phus lu?GitHub??????GoAgent??????，??????????????????） ????????????????????????Bug ?????????。??????????????。 ????issue????，????????，????????????????。LogicCircuit: LogicCircuit 2.13.07.22: Logic Circuit - is educational software for designing and simulating logic circuits. Intuitive graphical user interface, allows you to create unrestricted circuit hierarchy with multi bit buses, debug circuits behavior with oscilloscope, and navigate running circuits hierarchy. Changes of this versionYou can make visual elements of the circuit been visible on its symbols. This way you can build composite displays, keyboards and reuse them. Please read about displays for more details http://ww...Microsoft .NET SDK For Hadoop: v 0.9.4951.25594: Bug fixesLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.08: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.4.3: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.4.3 ?? ??Bilibili????????????? ???????????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2.10?...New ProjectsAM2013: Unexpected GameChekad: This is a simple small project.DataBaseSchema: DataBase Schema Management!edirAuth: edirAuth is a .NET library for LDAP authentication to NetIQ (formerly Novell©) eDirectory. If you are a NetIQ Identity Management user you are probably using Gimme Rainbows: This is a simple project that can be used to generate Rainbow table from a given dictionary and given salt file. Hashes of various formats can be generated.Heavy Bomber: Heavy Bomber XNA GameIRIS Toolbox [I Rest, IRIS Solves...]: IRIS is a Matlab toolbox for macroeconomic modeling.OpenZapper: OpenZapper is an open source Zapper project. It is mainly a Frequency generator.Sponge - SharePoint Framework: Sponge is a SharePoint Frameworks that contains centralized logging and configuration, as well as other useful Controls, Web Parts and Application Pages.wangyexin: ?????wupantest: atwelltestYemek Menusu: Yemek Menusu

  Read the article

• Solving Big Problems with Oracle R Enterprise, Part II

  - by dbayard

  Part II – Solving Big Problems with Oracle R Enterprise In the first post in this series (see https://blogs.oracle.com/R/entry/solving_big_problems_with_oracle), we showed how you can use R to perform historical rate of return calculations against investment data sourced from a spreadsheet.  We demonstrated the calculations against sample data for a small set of accounts.  While this worked fine, in the real-world the problem is much bigger because the amount of data is much bigger.  So much bigger that our approach in the previous post won’t scale to meet the real-world needs. From our previous post, here are the challenges we need to conquer: The actual data that needs to be used lives in a database, not in a spreadsheet The actual data is much, much bigger- too big to fit into the normal R memory space and too big to want to move across the network The overall process needs to run fast- much faster than a single processor The actual data needs to be kept secured- another reason to not want to move it from the database and across the network And the process of calculating the IRR needs to be integrated together with other database ETL activities, so that IRR’s can be calculated as part of the data warehouse refresh processes In this post, we will show how we moved from sample data environment to working with full-scale data.  This post is based on actual work we did for a financial services customer during a recent proof-of-concept. Getting started with the Database At this point, we have some sample data and our IRR function.  We were at a similar point in our customer proof-of-concept exercise- we had sample data but we did not have the full customer data yet.  So our database was empty.  But, this was easily rectified by leveraging the transparency features of Oracle R Enterprise (see https://blogs.oracle.com/R/entry/analyzing_big_data_using_the).  The following code shows how we took our sample data SimpleMWRRData and easily turned it into a new Oracle database table called IRR_DATA via ore.create().  The code also shows how we can access the database table IRR_DATA as if it was a normal R data.frame named IRR_DATA. If we go to sql*plus, we can also check out our new IRR_DATA table: At this point, we now have our sample data loaded in the database as a normal Oracle table called IRR_DATA.  So, we now proceeded to test our R function working with database data. As our first test, we retrieved the data from a single account from the IRR_DATA table, pull it into local R memory, then call our IRR function.  This worked.  No SQL coding required! Going from Crawling to Walking Now that we have shown using our R code with database-resident data for a single account, we wanted to experiment with doing this for multiple accounts.  In other words, we wanted to implement the split-apply-combine technique we discussed in our first post in this series.  Fortunately, Oracle R Enterprise provides a very scalable way to do this with a function called ore.groupApply().  You can read more about ore.groupApply() here: https://blogs.oracle.com/R/entry/analyzing_big_data_using_the1 Here is an example of how we ask ORE to take our IRR_DATA table in the database, split it by the ACCOUNT column, apply a function that calls our SimpleMWRR() calculation, and then combine the results. (If you are following along at home, be sure to have installed our myIRR package on your database server via  “R CMD INSTALL myIRR”). The interesting thing about ore.groupApply is that the calculation is not actually performed in my desktop R environment from which I am running.  What actually happens is that ore.groupApply uses the Oracle database to perform the work.  And the Oracle database is what actually splits the IRR_DATA table by ACCOUNT.  Then the Oracle database takes the data for each account and sends it to an embedded R engine running on the database server to apply our R function.  Then the Oracle database combines all the individual results from the calls to the R function. This is significant because now the embedded R engine only needs to deal with the data for a single account at a time.  Regardless of whether we have 20 accounts or 1 million accounts or more, the R engine that performs the calculation does not care.  Given that normal R has a finite amount of memory to hold data, the ore.groupApply approach overcomes the R memory scalability problem since we only need to fit the data from a single account in R memory (not all of the data for all of the accounts). Additionally, the IRR_DATA does not need to be sent from the database to my desktop R program.  Even though I am invoking ore.groupApply from my desktop R program, because the actual SimpleMWRR calculation is run by the embedded R engine on the database server, the IRR_DATA does not need to leave the database server- this is both a performance benefit because network transmission of large amounts of data take time and a security benefit because it is harder to protect private data once you start shipping around your intranet. Another benefit, which we will discuss in a few paragraphs, is the ability to leverage Oracle database parallelism to run these calculations for dozens of accounts at once. From Walking to Running ore.groupApply is rather nice, but it still has the drawback that I run this from a desktop R instance.  This is not ideal for integrating into typical operational processes like nightly data warehouse refreshes or monthly statement generation.  But, this is not an issue for ORE.  Oracle R Enterprise lets us run this from the database using regular SQL, which is easily integrated into standard operations.  That is extremely exciting and the way we actually did these calculations in the customer proof. As part of Oracle R Enterprise, it provides a SQL equivalent to ore.groupApply which it refers to as “rqGroupEval”.  To use rqGroupEval via SQL, there is a bit of simple setup needed.  Basically, the Oracle Database needs to know the structure of the input table and the grouping column, which we are able to define using the database’s pipeline table function mechanisms. Here is the setup script: At this point, our initial setup of rqGroupEval is done for the IRR_DATA table.  The next step is to define our R function to the database.  We do that via a call to ORE’s rqScriptCreate. Now we can test it.  The SQL you use to run rqGroupEval uses the Oracle database pipeline table function syntax.  The first argument to irr_dataGroupEval is a cursor defining our input.  You can add additional where clauses and subqueries to this cursor as appropriate.  The second argument is any additional inputs to the R function.  The third argument is the text of a dummy select statement.  The dummy select statement is used by the database to identify the columns and datatypes to expect the R function to return.  The fourth argument is the column of the input table to split/group by.  The final argument is the name of the R function as you defined it when you called rqScriptCreate(). The Real-World Results In our real customer proof-of-concept, we had more sophisticated calculation requirements than shown in this simplified blog example.  For instance, we had to perform the rate of return calculations for 5 separate time periods, so the R code was enhanced to do so.  In addition, some accounts needed a time-weighted rate of return to be calculated, so we extended our approach and added an R function to do that.  And finally, there were also a few more real-world data irregularities that we needed to account for, so we added logic to our R functions to deal with those exceptions.  For the full-scale customer test, we loaded the customer data onto a Half-Rack Exadata X2-2 Database Machine.  As our half-rack had 48 physical cores (and 96 threads if you consider hyperthreading), we wanted to take advantage of that CPU horsepower to speed up our calculations.  To do so with ORE, it is as simple as leveraging the Oracle Database Parallel Query features.  Let’s look at the SQL used in the customer proof: Notice that we use a parallel hint on the cursor that is the input to our rqGroupEval function.  That is all we need to do to enable Oracle to use parallel R engines. Here are a few screenshots of what this SQL looked like in the Real-Time SQL Monitor when we ran this during the proof of concept (hint: you might need to right-click on these images to be able to view the images full-screen to see the entire image): From the above, you can notice a few things (numbers 1 thru 5 below correspond with highlighted numbers on the images above.  You may need to right click on the above images and view the images full-screen to see the entire image): The SQL completed in 110 seconds (1.8minutes) We calculated rate of returns for 5 time periods for each of 911k accounts (the number of actual rows returned by the IRRSTAGEGROUPEVAL operation) We accessed 103m rows of detailed cash flow/market value data (the number of actual rows returned by the IRR_STAGE2 operation) We ran with 72 degrees of parallelism spread across 4 database servers Most of our 110seconds was spent in the “External Procedure call” event On average, we performed 8,200 executions of our R function per second (110s/911k accounts) On average, each execution was passed 110 rows of data (103m detail rows/911k accounts) On average, we did 41,000 single time period rate of return calculations per second (each of the 8,200 executions of our R function did rate of return calculations for 5 time periods) On average, we processed over 900,000 rows of database data in R per second (103m detail rows/110s) R + Oracle R Enterprise: Best of R + Best of Oracle Database This blog post series started by describing a real customer problem: how to perform a lot of calculations on a lot of data in a short period of time.  While standard R proved to be a very good fit for writing the necessary calculations, the challenge of working with a lot of data in a short period of time remained. This blog post series showed how Oracle R Enterprise enables R to be used in conjunction with the Oracle Database to overcome the data volume and performance issues (as well as simplifying the operations and security issues).  It also showed that we could calculate 5 time periods of rate of returns for almost a million individual accounts in less than 2 minutes. In a future post, we will take the same R function and show how Oracle R Connector for Hadoop can be used in the Hadoop world.  In that next post, instead of having our data in an Oracle database, our data will live in Hadoop and we will how to use the Oracle R Connector for Hadoop and other Oracle Big Data Connectors to move data between Hadoop, R, and the Oracle Database easily.

  Read the article

• A Look Inside JSR 360 - CLDC 8

  - by Roger Brinkley

  If you didn't notice during JavaOne the Java Micro Edition took a major step forward in its consolidation with Java Standard Edition when JSR 360 was proposed to the JCP community. Over the last couple of years there has been a focus to move Java ME back in line with it's big brother Java SE. We see evidence of this in JCP itself which just recently merged the ME and SE/EE Executive Committees into a single Java Executive Committee. But just before that occurred JSR 360 was proposed and approved for development on October 29. So let's take a look at what changes are now being proposed. In a way JSR 360 is returning back to the original roots of Java ME when it was first introduced. It was indeed a subset of the JDK 4 language, but as Java progressed many of the language changes were not implemented in the Java ME. Back then the tradeoff was still a functionality, footprint trade off but the major market was feature phones. Today the market has changed and CLDC, while it will still target feature phones, will have it primary emphasis on embedded devices like wireless modules, smart meters, health care monitoring and other M2M devices. The major changes will come in three areas: language feature changes, library changes, and consolidating the Generic Connection Framework.  There have been three Java SE versions that have been implemented since JavaME was first developed so the language feature changes can be divided into changes that came in JDK 5 and those in JDK 7, which mostly consist of the project Coin changes. There were no language changes in JDK 6 but the changes from JDK 5 are: Assertions - Assertions enable you to test your assumptions about your program. For example, if you write a method that calculates the speed of a particle, you might assert that the calculated speed is less than the speed of light. In the example code below if the interval isn't between 0 and and 1,00 the an error of "Invalid value?" would be thrown. private void setInterval(int interval) { assert interval > 0 && interval <= 1000 : "Invalid value?" } Generics - Generics add stability to your code by making more of your bugs detectable at compile time. Code that uses generics has many benefits over non-generic code with: Stronger type checks at compile time. Elimination of casts. Enabling programming to implement generic algorithms. Enhanced for Loop - the enhanced for loop allows you to iterate through a collection without having to create an Iterator or without having to calculate beginning and end conditions for a counter variable. The enhanced for loop is the easiest of the new features to immediately incorporate in your code. In this tip you will see how the enhanced for loop replaces more traditional ways of sequentially accessing elements in a collection. void processList(Vector<string> list) { for (String item : list) { ... Autoboxing/Unboxing - This facility eliminates the drudgery of manual conversion between primitive types, such as int and wrapper types, such as Integer.  Hashtable<Integer, string=""> data = new Hashtable<>(); void add(int id, String value) { data.put(id, value); } Enumeration - Prior to JDK 5 enumerations were not typesafe, had no namespace, were brittle because they were compile time constants, and provided no informative print values. JDK 5 added support for enumerated types as a full-fledged class (dubbed an enum type). In addition to solving all the problems mentioned above, it allows you to add arbitrary methods and fields to an enum type, to implement arbitrary interfaces, and more. Enum types provide high-quality implementations of all the Object methods. They are Comparable and Serializable, and the serial form is designed to withstand arbitrary changes in the enum type. enum Season {WINTER, SPRING, SUMMER, FALL}; } private Season season; void setSeason(Season newSeason) { season = newSeason; } Varargs - Varargs eliminates the need for manually boxing up argument lists into an array when invoking methods that accept variable-length argument lists. The three periods after the final parameter's type indicate that the final argument may be passed as an array or as a sequence of arguments. Varargs can be used only in the final argument position. void warning(String format, String... parameters) { .. for(String p : parameters) { ...process(p);... } ... } Static Imports -The static import construct allows unqualified access to static members without inheriting from the type containing the static members. Instead, the program imports the members either individually or en masse. Once the static members have been imported, they may be used without qualification. The static import declaration is analogous to the normal import declaration. Where the normal import declaration imports classes from packages, allowing them to be used without package qualification, the static import declaration imports static members from classes, allowing them to be used without class qualification. import static data.Constants.RATIO; ... double r = Math.cos(RATIO * theta); Annotations - Annotations provide data about a program that is not part of the program itself. They have no direct effect on the operation of the code they annotate. There are a number of uses for annotations including information for the compiler, compiler-time and deployment-time processing, and run-time processing. They can be applied to a program's declarations of classes, fields, methods, and other program elements. @Deprecated public void clear(); The language changes from JDK 7 are little more familiar as they are mostly the changes from Project Coin: String in switch - Hey it only took us 18 years but the String class can be used in the expression of a switch statement. Fortunately for us it won't take that long for JavaME to adopt it. switch (arg) { case "-data": ... case "-out": ... Binary integral literals and underscores in numeric literals - Largely for readability, the integral types (byte, short, int, and long) can also be expressed using the binary number system. and any number of underscore characters (_) can appear anywhere between digits in a numerical literal. byte flags = 0b01001111; long mask = 0xfff0_ff08_4fff_0fffl; Multi-catch and more precise rethrow - A single catch block can handle more than one type of exception. In addition, the compiler performs more precise analysis of rethrown exceptions than earlier releases of Java SE. This enables you to specify more specific exception types in the throws clause of a method declaration. catch (IOException | InterruptedException ex) { logger.log(ex); throw ex; } Type Inference for Generic Instance Creation - Otherwise known as the diamond operator, the type arguments required to invoke the constructor of a generic class can be replaced with an empty set of type parameters (<>) as long as the compiler can infer the type arguments from the context.  map = new Hashtable<>(); Try-with-resource statement - The try-with-resources statement is a try statement that declares one or more resources. A resource is an object that must be closed after the program is finished with it. The try-with-resources statement ensures that each resource is closed at the end of the statement.  try (DataInputStream is = new DataInputStream(...)) { return is.readDouble(); } Simplified varargs method invocation - The Java compiler generates a warning at the declaration site of a varargs method or constructor with a non-reifiable varargs formal parameter. Java SE 7 introduced a compiler option -Xlint:varargs and the annotations @SafeVarargs and @SuppressWarnings({"unchecked", "varargs"}) to supress these warnings. On the library side there are new features that will be added to satisfy the language requirements above and some to improve the currently available set of APIs.  The library changes include: Collections update - New Collection, List, Set and Map, Iterable and Iteratator as well as implementations including Hashtable and Vector. Most of the work is too support generics String - New StringBuilder and CharSequence as well as a Stirng formatter. The javac compiler  now uses the the StringBuilder instead of String Buffer. Since StringBuilder is synchronized there is a performance increase which has necessitated the wahat String constructor works. Comparable interface - The comparable interface works with Collections, making it easier to reuse. Try with resources - Closeable and AutoCloseable Annotations - While support for Annotations is provided it will only be a compile time support. SuppressWarnings, Deprecated, Override NIO - There is a subset of NIO Buffer that have been in use on the of the graphics packages and needs to be pulled in and also support for NIO File IO subset. Platform extensibility via Service Providers (ServiceLoader) - ServiceLoader interface dos late bindings of interface to existing implementations. It helpe to package an interface and behavior of the implementation at a later point in time.Provider classes must have a zero-argument constructor so that they can be instantiated during loading. They are located and instantiated on demand and are identified via a provider-configuration file in the METAINF/services resource directory. This is a mechansim from Java SE. import com.XYZ.ServiceA; ServiceLoader<ServiceA> sl1= new ServiceLoader(ServiceA.class); Resources: META-INF/services/com.XYZ.ServiceA: ServiceAProvider1 ServiceAProvider2 ServiceAProvider3 META-INF/services/ServiceB: ServiceBProvider1 ServiceBProvider2 From JSR - I would rather use this list I think The Generic Connection Framework (GCF) was previously specified in a number of different JSRs including CLDC, MIDP, CDC 1.2, and JSR 197. JSR 360 represents a rare opportunity to consolidated and reintegrate parts that were duplicated in other specifications into a single specification, upgrade the APIs as well provide new functionality. The proposal is to specify a combined GCF specification that can be used with Java ME or Java SE and be backwards compatible with previous implementations. Because of size limitations as well as the complexity of the some features like InvokeDynamic and Unicode 6 will not be included. Additionally, any language or library changes in JDK 8 will be not be included. On the upside, with all the changes being made, backwards compatibility will still be maintained. JSR 360 is a major step forward for Java ME in terms of platform modernization, language alignment, and embedded support. If you're interested in following the progress of this JSR see the JSR's java.net project for details of the email lists, discussions groups.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, August 30, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, August 30, 2012Popular ReleasesCoevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0: This is the first alpha release of Coevery.ExpressProfiler: Initial release of ExpressProfiler v1.2: This is initial release of ExpressProfilerNabu Library: 2012-08-29, 14: .Net Framework 4.0, .Net Framework 4.5 Debug and Release builds.Math.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.2.1: Major linear algebra rework since v2.1, now available on Codeplex as well (previous versions were only available via NuGet). Since v2.2.0: Student-T density more robust for very large degrees of freedom Sparse Kronecker product much more efficient (now leverages sparsity) Direct access to raw matrix storage implementations for advanced extensibility Now also separate package for signed core library with a strong name (we dropped strong names in v2.2.0) Also available as NuGet packages...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks Databases – 2012, 2008R2 and 2008: About this release This release consolidates AdventureWorks databases for SQL Server 2012, 2008R2 and 2008 versions to one page. Each zip file contains an mdf database file and ldf log file. This should make it easier to find and download AdventureWorks databases since all OLTP versions are on one page. There are no database schema changes. For each release of the product, there is a light-weight and full version of the AdventureWorks sample database. The light-weight version is denoted by ...ImageServer: v1.1: This is the first version releasedChristoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke Project Templates V1.1 for VS2012: This release is specifically for Visual Studio 2012 Support, distributed through the Visual Studio Extensions gallery at http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/ After you build in Release mode the installable packages (source/install) can be found in the INSTALL folder now, within your module's folder, not the packages folder anymore Check out the blog post for all of the details about this release. http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Resources/Blogs/EntryId/3471/New-Visual-Studio-2012-Projec...Home Access Plus+: v8.0: v8.0828.1800 RELEASE CHANGED TO BETA Any issues, please log them on http://www.edugeek.net/forums/home-access-plus/ This is full release, NO upgrade ZIP will be provided as most files require replacing. To upgrade from a previous version, delete everything but your AppData folder, extract all but the AppData folder and run your HAP+ install Documentation is supplied in the Web Zip The Quota Services require executing a script to register the service, this can be found in there install di...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0.0.3406 (September 2012): New features: Extended ReflectionClass libxml error handling, constants DateTime::modify(), DateTime::getOffset() TreatWarningsAsErrors MSBuild option OnlyPrecompiledCode configuration option; allows to use only compiled code Fixes: ArgsAware exception fix accessing .NET properties bug fix ASP.NET session handler fix for OutOfProc mode DateTime methods (WordPress posting fix) Phalanger Tools for Visual Studio: Visual Studio 2010 & 2012 New debugger engine, PHP-like debugging ...NougakuDoCompanion: v1.1.0: Add temp folder of local resource, Resize local resource. Change launch ruby commnadline args from rack to bundle. 1.NougakuDoCompanion v1.1.0 cspkg.zip - cspkg and ServiceConfiguration.xml (small , medium, large, extra large vm) - include NougakudoSetupTool.exe and readme.txt 2.NougakuDoCompanion v1.1.0.zip - Source code. include NougakudoSetupTool.exe - include activerecord-sqlserver-adapter patch in paches folder. 3.Depends tools. - Windows Azure SDK for .NET June 2012(1.7SP1) - Windows ...WatchersNET CKEditor™ Provider for DotNetNuke®: CKEditor Provider 1.14.06: Whats New Added CKEditor 3.6.4 oEmbed Plugin can now handle short urls changes The Template File can now parsed from an xml file instead of js (More Info...) Style Sets can now parsed from an xml file instead of js (More Info...) Fixed Showing wrong Pages in Child Portal in the Link Dialog Fixed Urls in dnnpages Plugin Fixed Issue #6969 WordCount Plugin Fixed Issue #6973 File-Browser: Fixed Deleting of Files File-Browser: Improved loading time File-Browser: Improved the loa...MabiCommerce: MabiCommerce 1.0.1: What's NewSetup now creates shortcuts Fix spelling errors Minor enhancement to the Map window.VFPX: Data Explorer 3: This release is the first alpha release for DX3. Even though great care has been taken, the project manager highly recommends you work with test data and you regularly back up the DataExplorer.DBF found in your HOME(7) folder. New features are documented on the project home page. IMPORTANT Once installed, make sure to go to the Data Explorer Options page, click the Restore to Default button. This brings up a dialog asking if you want to maintain connections and customizations that were done...ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.5.2: This release has been built from the 2.5 branch. Version 2.5.2 is functionally identical to the 2.5.1 release but also includes the XML documentation comments file generated by Visual Studio. It is not 100% comprehensive but it will give you Visual Studio IntelliSense for a large part of the API. Just make sure the ScintillaNET.xml file is in the same folder as the ScintillaNET.dll reference you're using in your projects. (The XML file does not need to be distributed with your application)....Facebook Web Parts for SharePoint 2010: Version 1.0.1 - WSP: SharePoint 2010 solution (WSP) Resolved a bug from Version 1.0 - WSP where user profile names would not properly update.Contactor: GSMContactorProgram V1.0 - Source Code: This is the source code for the program, For Visual Studio 2012 RCTouchInjector: TouchInjector 1.1: Version 1.1: fixed a bug with the autorun optionWinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.0: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.1: 2012.08.25 Ver5.7.1 (1)?????·?????LING?????????????? (2)SMTP???（????）????、?????\?????????????????????Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Branching and Merging Guide: v2 - Visual Studio 2012: Welcome to the Branching and Merging Guide Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has been through an independent technical review Documentation has been reviewed by the quality and recording team All critical bugs have been resolved Known Issues / Bugs Spelling, grammar and content revisions are in progress. Hotfix will be published.New ProjectsAd Specific Redirect Generator: Ad Specific Redirect Generatorargsv, command line argument processors: Two libraries to process command line options, one(argsvCPython) is written for Python applications and other one(the argsvCPP) is for C++ applications.AutomationML Export Import Mapper: This Tool supports the mapping between SystemUnitClass-Libraries, used to exchange data in the AutomationML Format between Exporters and Importers.BioPathSearch: Tool for probibalistic biochemical networks construction from input substrete to required product based on information from KEGG databasebuidingapp: i am buiding app but i not sure public because i don't code finish. then i upload code and pulish my application,. thank you for reading mynote. see you next tiCatalogo de Empresas y Productos: Este es el catalogo de empresas y productos asociadas a la produccion agricola en CRclarktestcodeplex: test codeplexDatabase Clean-up Engine - DataWashroom: Database Clean-up Rules EngineEdEx: edexExpense Management System: Expense Management SystemFinger Tracking with Kinect SDK for XBOX: This project explained step by step how to perform finger and hand tracking with the Kinect for XBOX with the official Kinect SDK.Flower - Workflow Engine: Flower is a simple yet powerful workflow engine allowing to develop workflows in C#.Grid: Copyright 2011 Badkid development. All rights reserved. Play Grid the the retro style arcade puzzle game. Join lines between the gids to create boxes to get pHeadSprings Assignment: A program to create custom tokens using class FizzBuzz programming. Ice Scream: IcescreamiD Commerce + Logistics: iD Commerce + Logistics is a company based outside of Chicago, Illinois specializing in fulfillment solutions and custom development.Mido: Mido is a simple utility that adds text or images watermarks to your photos, images and pictures.MLSTest: MLSTest is a Windows based software for the analysis of Multilocus Sequence Data for euckaryotic organisms My Project Foundation Library: A foundation library for asp.net web project, including easy-to-use data access layer and other utility code.MyTestProject001: ?????codeplex，??????????。MyTestProject2: My Test projectNEF - Native Extensibility Framework: NEF is an open source IoC extensibility framework targetting C++. It is modeled after the more useful features of MEF in C#.RazorSpy: A simple toy/tool for exploring the output of the Razor Parser for a particular document.Relay Command for WinRT: A simple RelayCommand for WinRT (sans and entire MVVM framework).Rocca. Store: Document storage with email capabilitiesScrabble Nights: Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a game board marked with a 15-by-15 gridSlFrame: SlFrameSmart Data Access layer: WE ARE USING SMART DATA ACCESS LAYER MEANS ITS TIME TO FORGET ABOUT SYSTEM.DATA.SQLCLIENT NAMESPACE.SportSlot: This project allows you to search for available sport venuesSwitcher 2012: Allows for fast switching between source and header file in Visual Studio 2012testddtfs2908201201: satime tracking: coming soonTradePlatform.NET: TradePlatform.NET is addition to MetaTrader 4 client terminal which extends trading experience, MQL language and provides .NET world communication bridge.WaMa-SkyDriveClient: Project Description WaMa-SkyDriveClient is a Windows Skydrive-client, with Live authentication.Web Optimization: The ASP.NET Web optimization framework provides services to improve the performance of your ASP.NET Web applications.Web Pocket: Web tool for rapid application development of mobile software WinRT Toolkit: The purpose of WinRT Toolkit is to provide efficient and developer friendly instruments (API / Components...).Xcel Directory Service: Xcel Directory Service is an Excel 2010 add-in used to retrieve data from Active Directory using an import utility and user defined functions.zhangfacai: this project is based on ASP.NET MVC 4 and HTML5. It's a website to integrate public web services like amazon, live, facebook, etc. By using these services, mak

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 15, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 15, 2013Popular ReleasesNuPattern: NuPattern 1.3.22.0: Just download the 'NuPattern Installer.msi' above to install NuPattern for both VS2010 and VS2012. All the extensions listed above are included within this installer. This release includes a version of the 'NuPattern Toolkit Builder' tools and 'NuPattern Toolkit Builder Hands-On Labs' VSIXes for both VS2010 and for VS2012. Both of these extensions are installed in to both VS2010 and VS2012 in the combined MSI installer. Once NuPattern has been installed, please go to the Getting Started pag...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.1: 2013.06.13 Ver5.9.1 (1) Web??????SSI?#include???、CGI?????????????????????? (2) ???????????????????????????Lakana - WPF Framework: Lakana V2.1 RTM: - Dynamic text localization - A new application wide message busFree language translator and file converter: Free Language Translator 3.3: some bug fixes and a new link to video tutorials on Youtube.Pokemon Battle Online: ETV: ETV???2012?12??????，????，???????$/PBO/branches/PrivateBeta??。 ???????bug???????。 ???? Server??????，?????。 ?????????，?????????????，?????????。 ????????，????，?????????，???????????（??）??。 ???? ????????????。 ???????。 ???PP????，????????????????????PP????，??3。 ?????????????，??????????。 ???????? ??? ?? ???? ??? ???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??? ??? ??? ???????? ???? ???? ???????????????、???????????，??“???????”??。 ???bug ???Web Pages CMS: 0.5.0.5: Added empty media directoryModern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.4: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. Related downloads NuGet ModernUI for WPF is also available as NuGet package in the NuGet gallery, id: ModernUI.WPF Download Modern UI for WPF Templates A Visual Studio 2012 extension containing a collection of project and item templates for Modern UI for WPF. The extension includes the ModernUI.WPF NuGet package. DownloadToolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011: XrmToolBox (v1.2013.6.11): XrmToolbox improvement Add exception handling when loading plugins Updated information panel for displaying two lines of text Tools improvementMetadata Document Generator (v1.2013.6.10)New tool Web Resources Manager (v1.2013.6.11)Retrieve list of unused web resources Retrieve web resources from a solution All tools listAccess Checker (v1.2013.2.5) Attribute Bulk Updater (v1.2013.1.17) FetchXml Tester (v1.2013.3.4) Iconator (v1.2013.1.17) Metadata Document Generator (v1.2013.6.10) Privilege...Document.Editor: 2013.23: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.23: New Insert Emoticon support Improved Format support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsChristoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke 7 Project Templates V2.4 for VS2012: V2.4 - Release Date 6/10/2013 Items addressed in this 2.4 release Updated MSBuild Community Tasks reference to 1.4.0.61 Setting up your DotNetNuke Module Development Environment Installing Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Templates Customizing the latest DotNetNuke Module Development Project TemplatesLayered Architecture Sample for .NET: Leave Sample - June 2013 (for .NET 4.5): Thank You for downloading Layered Architecture Sample. Please read the accompanying README.txt file for setup and installation instructions. This is the first set of a series of revised samples that will be released to illustrate the layered architecture design pattern. This version is only supported on Visual Studio 2012. This set contains 2 samples that illustrates the use of: ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET Model Binding, Windows Communications Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (W...Papercut: Papercut 2013-6-10: Feature: Shows From, To, Date and Subject of Email. Feature: Async UI and loading spinner. Enhancement: Improved speed when loading large attachments. Enhancement: Decoupled SMTP server into secondary assembly. Enhancement: Upgraded to .NET v4. Fix: Messages lost when received very fast. Fix: Email encoding issues on display/Automatically detect message Encoding Installation Note:Installation is copy and paste. Incoming messages are written to the start-up directory of Papercut. If you do n...Supporting Guidance and Whitepapers: v1.BETA Unit test Generator Documentation: Welcome to the Unit Test Generator Once you’ve moved to Visual Studio 2012, what’s a dev to do without the Create Unit Tests feature? Based on the high demand on User Voice for this feature to be restored, the Visual Studio ALM Rangers have introduced the Unit Test Generator Visual Studio Extension. The extension adds the “create unit test” feature back, with a focus on automating project creation, adding references and generating stubs, extensibility, and targeting of multiple test framewor...MapWindow 4: MapWindow GIS v4.8.8 - Release Candidate - 32Bit: Download the release notes here: http://svn.mapwindow.org/svnroot/MapWindow4Dev/Bin/MapWindowNotes.rtfLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.06: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.VR Player: VR Player 0.3.1 ALPHA: New plugin system with individual folders TrackIR support Maya and 3ds max formats support Dual screen support Mono layouts (left and right) Cylinder height parameter Barel effect factor parameter Razer hydra filter parameter VRPN bug fixes UI improvements Performances improvements Stabilization and logging with Log4Net New default values base on users feedback CTRL key to open menuSimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8 New features: Import BMP color palettes for vehicles Import RASTER file (uncompressed 8.8.8.8 DDS files) View different channels of RASTER files or preview of all layers combined Find text in javascripts TGA viewer Ground textures added to lot editor Many additional identified instances and propertiesWsus Package Publisher: Release v1.2.1306.09: Add more verifications on certificate validation. WPP will not let user to try publishing an update until the certificate is valid. Add certificate expiration date on the 'About' form. Filter Approbation to avoid a user to try to approve an update for uninstallation when the update do not support uninstallation. Add the server and console version on the 'About' form. WPP will not let user to publish an update until the server and console are not at the same level. WPP do not let user ...AJAX Control Toolkit: June 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - June 2013 Release Version 7.0607June 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - Instructions for using the AJAX Control Toolkit with ASP.NET 4.5 can be found at...Rawr: Rawr 5.2.1: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...New Projects3000????C?????????: 3000??C??????????AspTestPage: asp test Chiroredactie voor MS Word 2010: Chiroredactie voor MS Word dient om medewerkers en vrijwilligers van de Chiro te helpen wanneer ze teksten schrijven en/of eindredactie doen.Coastal Climbing: Coastal Climbing is the best bouldering gym in the south east!Data Moving Plug-in Examples: Examples of usage of the Data Moving Plug-in, of the Mvc Controls toolkit. The Data Moving Plug-in is an advanced set of controls and tools for Asp.net Mvc.Dynamics AX Admin Utilities: Dynamics AX Admin Utilities provide the utilities missing for Dynamics AX 2012: silent install, client and server configuration, AOS and Model Store management.Epilog Blogging Framework: A customisable, editable blogging framework based on MVC4 and written in C#.fashion photomania: fashion photomaniaGetemp: Gerenciador do Tempo de ProduçãoGlobal Tracker: Solução para rastreamento de dispositivos móveis composta por: - Uma Aplicação ASP.NET; - Um Web Service; - Uma Aplicação utilizando o plugin Xamarin.HyperLinkTagEditor: URL Appender using regexisotopos2: otra vez se borro, dejate de joder codeplexxlatex-tools: Latex supports, including syntax highlight.Lighter: Text to Braille: Lighter is an extensible and flexible Thai/English and further language translation to Braille format.Lock Screen Switcher: Change your Windows Logon or Lock Screen background image. Specify a directory and it will choose an image from that directory for your background.Patient Database Planning: The Patient Information Database will lower design costs for the Health Care Industry and the software will be user to use / understand for the average user.PERRS: perrsPHPReport: PHP ReportrapSharp: lightweight Audio PlayerRedmine Task List: Redmine Task List Visual Studio Package.RoHuay - 2013: Desarrollo del sistema web logistico para RoHuaySkautSIS: SkautSIS is a web based information system for Czech scouting centers which helps them manage their agenda and present their activities on the Web.test061501jabbr: testThorMVR: ThorMVRWindows Azure Cloud Sensor Sample for Windows Embedded Compact 2013: Windows Azure Cloud Sensor Sample for Windows Embedded Compact 2013, Windows CEWindows Phone 8 Mapping Samples: This project contains a set of code for basic location acquisition, location updates and mapping in Windows Phone 8.

  Read the article

• Software development is (mostly) a trade, and what to do about it

  - by Jeff

  (This is another cross-post from my personal blog. I don’t even remember when I first started to write it, but I feel like my opinion is well enough baked to share.) I've been sitting on this for a long time, particularly as my opinion has changed dramatically over the last few years. That I've encountered more crappy code than maintainable, quality code in my career as a software developer only reinforces what I'm about to say. Software development is just a trade for most, and not a huge academic endeavor. For those of you with computer science degrees readying your pitchforks and collecting your algorithm interview questions, let me explain. This is not an assault on your way of life, and if you've been around, you know I'm right about the quality problem. You also know the HR problem is very real, or we wouldn't be paying top dollar for mediocre developers and importing people from all over the world to fill the jobs we can't fill. I'm going to try and outline what I see as some of the problems, and hopefully offer my views on how to address them. The recruiting problem I think a lot of companies are doing it wrong. Over the years, I've had two kinds of interview experiences. The first, and right, kind of experience involves talking about real life achievements, followed by some variation on white boarding in pseudo-code, drafting some basic system architecture, or even sitting down at a comprooder and pecking out some basic code to tackle a real problem. I can honestly say that I've had a job offer for every interview like this, save for one, because the task was to debug something and they didn't like me asking where to look ("everyone else in the company died in a plane crash"). The other interview experience, the wrong one, involves the classic torture test designed to make the candidate feel stupid and do things they never have, and never will do in their job. First they will question you about obscure academic material you've never seen, or don't care to remember. Then they'll ask you to white board some ridiculous algorithm involving prime numbers or some kind of string manipulation no one would ever do. In fact, if you had to do something like this, you'd Google for a solution instead of waste time on a solved problem. Some will tell you that the academic gauntlet interview is useful to see how people respond to pressure, how they engage in complex logic, etc. That might be true, unless of course you have someone who brushed up on the solutions to the silly puzzles, and they're playing you. But here's the real reason why the second experience is wrong: You're evaluating for things that aren't the job. These might have been useful tactics when you had to hire people to write machine language or C++, but in a world dominated by managed code in C#, or Java, people aren't managing memory or trying to be smarter than the compilers. They're using well known design patterns and techniques to deliver software. More to the point, these puzzle gauntlets don't evaluate things that really matter. They don't get into code design, issues of loose coupling and testability, knowledge of the basics around HTTP, or anything else that relates to building supportable and maintainable software. The first situation, involving real life problems, gives you an immediate idea of how the candidate will work out. One of my favorite experiences as an interviewee was with a guy who literally brought his work from that day and asked me how to deal with his problem. I had to demonstrate how I would design a class, make sure the unit testing coverage was solid, etc. I worked at that company for two years. So stop looking for algorithm puzzle crunchers, because a guy who can crush a Fibonacci sequence might also be a guy who writes a class with 5,000 lines of untestable code. Fashion your interview process on ways to reveal a developer who can write supportable and maintainable code. I would even go so far as to let them use the Google. If they want to cut-and-paste code, pass on them, but if they're looking for context or straight class references, hire them, because they're going to be life-long learners. The contractor problem I doubt anyone has ever worked in a place where contractors weren't used. The use of contractors seems like an obvious way to control costs. You can hire someone for just as long as you need them and then let them go. You can even give them the work that no one else wants to do. In practice, most places I've worked have retained and budgeted for the contractor year-round, meaning that the $90+ per hour they're paying (of which half goes to the person) would have been better spent on a full-time person with a $100k salary and benefits. But it's not even the cost that is an issue. It's the quality of work delivered. The accountability of a contractor is totally transient. They only need to deliver for as long as you keep them around, and chances are they'll never again touch the code. There's no incentive for them to get things right, there's little incentive to understand your system or learn anything. At the risk of making an unfair generalization, craftsmanship doesn't matter to most contractors. The education problem I don't know what they teach in college CS courses. I've believed for most of my adult life that a college degree was an essential part of being successful. Of course I would hold that bias, since I did it, and have the paper to show for it in a box somewhere in the basement. My first clue that maybe this wasn't a fully qualified opinion comes from the fact that I double-majored in journalism and radio/TV, not computer science. Eventually I worked with people who skipped college entirely, many of them at Microsoft. Then I worked with people who had a masters degree who sucked at writing code, next to the high school diploma types that rock it every day. I still think there's a lot to be said for the social development of someone who has the on-campus experience, but for software developers, college might not matter. As I mentioned before, most of us are not writing compilers, and we never will. It's actually surprising to find how many people are self-taught in the art of software development, and that should reveal some interesting truths about how we learn. The first truth is that we learn largely out of necessity. There's something that we want to achieve, so we do what I call just-in-time learning to meet those goals. We acquire knowledge when we need it. So what about the gaps in our knowledge? That's where the most valuable education occurs, via our mentors. They're the people we work next to and the people who write blogs. They are critical to our professional development. They don't need to be an encyclopedia of jargon, but they understand the craft. Even at this stage of my career, I probably can't tell you what SOLID stands for, but you can bet that I practice the principles behind that acronym every day. That comes from experience, augmented by my peers. I'm hell bent on passing that experience to others. Process issues If you're a manager type and don't do much in the way of writing code these days (shame on you for not messing around at least), then your job is to isolate your tradespeople from nonsense, while bringing your business into the realm of modern software development. That doesn't mean you slap up a white board with sticky notes and start calling yourself agile, it means getting all of your stakeholders to understand that frequent delivery of quality software is the best way to deal with change and evolving expectations. It also means that you have to play technical overlord to make sure the education and quality issues are dealt with. That's why I make the crack about sticky notes, because without the right technique being practiced among your code monkeys, you're just a guy with sticky notes. You're asking your business to accept frequent and iterative delivery, now make sure that the folks writing the code can handle the same thing. This means unit testing, the right instrumentation, integration tests, automated builds and deployments... all of the stuff that makes it easy to see when change breaks stuff. The prognosis I strongly believe that education is the most important part of what we do. I'm encouraged by things like The Starter League, and it's the kind of thing I'd love to see more of. I would go as far as to say I'd love to start something like this internally at an existing company. Most of all though, I can't emphasize enough how important it is that we mentor each other and share our knowledge. If you have people on your staff who don't want to learn, fire them. Seriously, get rid of them. A few months working with someone really good, who understands the craftsmanship required to build supportable and maintainable code, will change that person forever and increase their value immeasurably.

  Read the article

• Navigation in Win8 Metro Style applications

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  In Windows 8, Touch is, as they say, a first class citizen. Now, to be honest: they also said that in Windows 7. However in Win8 this is actually true. Applications are meant to be used by touch. Yes, you can still use mouse, keyboard and pen and your apps should take that into account but touch is where you should focus on initially. Will all users have touch enabled devices? No, not in the first place. I don’t think touchscreens will be on every device sold next year. But in 5 years? Who knows? Don’t forget: if your app is successful it will be around for a long time and by that time touchscreens will be everywhere. Another reason to embrace touch is that it’s easier to develop a touch-oriented app and then to make sure that keyboard, nouse and pen work as doing it the other way around. Porting a mouse-based application to a touch based application almost never works. The reverse gives you much more chances for success. That being said, there are some things that you need to think about. Most people have more than one finger, while most users only use one mouse at the time. Still, most touch-developers translate their mouse-knowledge to the touch and think they did a good job. Martin Tirion from Microsoft said that since Touch is a new language people face the same challenges they do when learning a new real spoken language. The first thing people try when learning a new language is simply replace the words in their native language to the newly learned words. At first they don’t care about grammar. To a native speaker of that other language this sounds all wrong but they still will be able to understand what the intention was. If you don’t believe me: try Google translate to translate something for you from your language to another and then back and see what happens. The same thing happens with Touch. Most developers translate a mouse-click into a tap-event and think they’re done. Well matey, you’re not done. Not by far. There are things you can do with a mouse that you cannot do with touch. Think hover. A mouse has the ability to ‘slide’ over UI elements. Touch doesn’t (I know: with Pen you can do this but I’m talking about actual fingers here). A touch is either there or it isn’t. And right-click? Forget about it. A click is a click.  Yes, you have more than one finger but the machine doesn’t know which finger you use… The other way around is also true. Like I said: most users only have one mouse but they are likely to have more than one finger. So how do we take that into account? Thinking about this is really worth the time: you might come up with some surprisingly good ideas! Still: don’t forget that not every user has touch-enabled hardware so make sure your app is useable for both groups. Keep this in mind: we’re going to need it later on! Now. Apps should be easy to use. You don’t want your user to read through pages and pages of documentation before they can use the app. Imagine that spotter next to an airfield suddenly seeing a prototype of a Concorde 2 landing on the nearby runway. He probably wants to enter that information in our app NOW and not after he’s taken a 3 day course. Even if he still has to download the app, install it for the first time and then run it he should be on his way immediately. At least, fast enough to note down the details of that unique, rare and possibly exciting sighting he just did. So.. How do we do this? Well, I am not talking about games here. Games are in a league of their own. They fall outside the scope of the apps I am describing. But all the others can roughly be characterized as being one of two flavors: the navigation is either flat or hierarchical. That’s it. And if it’s hierarchical it’s no more than three levels deep. Not more. Your users will get lost otherwise and we don’t want that. Flat is simple. Just imagine we have one screen that is as high as our physical screen is and as wide as you need it to be. Don’t worry if it doesn’t fit on the screen: people can scroll to the right and left. Don’t combine up/down and left/right scrolling: it’s confusing. Next to that, since most users will hold their device in landscape mode it’s very natural to scroll horizontal. So let’s use that when we have a flat model. The same applies to the hierarchical model. Try to have at most three levels. If you need more space, find a way to group the items in such a way that you can fit it in three, very wide lanes. At the highest level we have the so called hub level. This is the entry point of the app and as such it should give the user an immediate feeling of what the app is all about. If your app has categories if items then you might show these categories here. And while you’re at it: also show 2 or 3 of the items itself here to give the user a taste of what lies beneath. If the user selects a category you go to the section part. Here you show several sections (again, go as wide as you need) with again some detail examples. After that: the details layer shows each item. By giving some samples of the underlaying layer you achieve several things: you make the layer attractive by showing several different things, you show some highlights so the user sees actual content and you provide a shortcut to the layers underneath. The image below is borrowed from the http://design.windows.com website which has tons and tons of examples: For our app we’ll use this layout. So what will we show? Well, let’s see what sorts of features our app has to offer. I’ll repeat them here: Note planes Add pictures of that plane Notify friends of new spots Share new spots on social media Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down the runway they take I am sure you can think of some more items but for now we'll use these. In the hub we’ll show something that represents “Spots”, “Friends”, “Social”. Apparently we have an inner list of spotter-friends that are in the app, while we also have to whole world in social. In the layer below we show something else, depending on what the user choose. When they choose “Spots” we’ll display the last spots, last spots by our friends (so we can actually jump from this category to the one next to it) and so on. When they choose a “spot” (or press the + icon in the App bar, which I’ll talk about next time) they go to the lowest and final level that shows details about that spot, including a picture, date and time and the notes belonging to that entry. You’d be amazed at how easy it is to organize your app this way. If you don’t have enough room in these three layers you probably could easily get away with grouping items. Take a look at our hub: we have three completely different things in one place. If you still can’t fit it all in in a logical and consistent way, chances are you are trying to do too much in this app. Go back to your mission statement, determine if it is specific enough and if your feature list helps that statement or makes it unclear. Go ahead. Give it a go! Next time we’ll talk about the look and feel, the charms and the app-bar….

  Read the article

• Project Jigsaw: Late for the train: The Q&A

  - by Mark Reinhold

  I recently proposed, to the Java community in general and to the SE 8 (JSR 337) Expert Group in particular, to defer Project Jigsaw from Java 8 to Java 9. I also proposed to aim explicitly for a regular two-year release cycle going forward. Herewith a summary of the key questions I’ve seen in reaction to these proposals, along with answers. Making the decision Q Has the Java SE 8 Expert Group decided whether to defer the addition of a module system and the modularization of the Platform to Java SE 9? A No, it has not yet decided. Q By when do you expect the EG to make this decision? A In the next month or so. Q How can I make sure my voice is heard? A The EG will consider all relevant input from the wider community. If you have a prominent blog, column, or other communication channel then there’s a good chance that we’ve already seen your opinion. If not, you’re welcome to send it to the Java SE 8 Comments List, which is the EG’s official feedback channel. Q What’s the overall tone of the feedback you’ve received? A The feedback has been about evenly divided as to whether Java 8 should be delayed for Jigsaw, Jigsaw should be deferred to Java 9, or some other, usually less-realistic, option should be taken. Project Jigsaw Q Why is Project Jigsaw taking so long? A Project Jigsaw started at Sun, way back in August 2008. Like many efforts during the final years of Sun, it was not well staffed. Jigsaw initially ran on a shoestring, with just a handful of mostly part-time engineers, so progress was slow. During the integration of Sun into Oracle all work on Jigsaw was halted for a time, but it was eventually resumed after a thorough consideration of the alternatives. Project Jigsaw was really only fully staffed about a year ago, around the time that Java 7 shipped. We’ve added a few more engineers to the team since then, but that can’t make up for the inadequate initial staffing and the time lost during the transition. Q So it’s really just a matter of staffing limitations and corporate-integration distractions? A Aside from these difficulties, the other main factor in the duration of the project is the sheer technical difficulty of modularizing the JDK. Q Why is modularizing the JDK so hard? A There are two main reasons. The first is that the JDK code base is deeply interconnected at both the API and the implementation levels, having been built over many years primarily in the style of a monolithic software system. We’ve spent considerable effort eliminating or at least simplifying as many API and implementation dependences as possible, so that both the Platform and its implementations can be presented as a coherent set of interdependent modules, but some particularly thorny cases remain. Q What’s the second reason? A We want to maintain as much compatibility with prior releases as possible, most especially for existing classpath-based applications but also, to the extent feasible, for applications composed of modules. Q Is modularizing the JDK even necessary? Can’t you just put it in one big module? A Modularizing the JDK, and more specifically modularizing the Java SE Platform, will enable standard yet flexible Java runtime configurations scaling from large servers down to small embedded devices. In the long term it will enable the convergence of Java SE with the higher-end Java ME Platforms. Q Is Project Jigsaw just about modularizing the JDK? A As originally conceived, Project Jigsaw was indeed focused primarily upon modularizing the JDK. The growing demand for a truly standard module system for the Java Platform, which could be used not just for the Platform itself but also for libraries and applications built on top of it, later motivated expanding the scope of the effort. Q As a developer, why should I care about Project Jigsaw? A The introduction of a modular Java Platform will, in the long term, fundamentally change the way that Java implementations, libraries, frameworks, tools, and applications are designed, built, and deployed. Q How much progress has Project Jigsaw made? A We’ve actually made a lot of progress. Much of the core functionality of the module system has been prototyped and works at both compile time and run time. We’ve extended the Java programming language with module declarations, worked out a structure for modular source trees and corresponding compiled-class trees, and implemented these features in javac. We’ve defined an efficient module-file format, extended the JVM to bootstrap a modular JRE, and designed and implemented a preliminary API. We’ve used the module system to make a good first cut at dividing the JDK and the Java SE API into a coherent set of modules. Among other things, we’re currently working to retrofit the java.util.ServiceLoader API to support modular services. Q I want to help! How can I get involved? A Check out the project page, read the draft requirements and design overview documents, download the latest prototype build, and play with it. You can tell us what you think, and follow the rest of our work in real time, on the jigsaw-dev list. The Java Platform Module System JSR Q What’s the relationship between Project Jigsaw and the eventual Java Platform Module System JSR? A At a high level, Project Jigsaw has two phases. In the first phase we’re exploring an approach to modularity that’s markedly different from that of existing Java modularity solutions. We’ve assumed that we can change the Java programming language, the virtual machine, and the APIs. Doing so enables a design which can strongly enforce module boundaries in all program phases, from compilation to deployment to execution. That, in turn, leads to better usability, diagnosability, security, and performance. The ultimate goal of the first phase is produce a working prototype which can inform the work of the Module-System JSR EG. Q What will happen in the second phase of Project Jigsaw? A The second phase will produce the reference implementation of the specification created by the Module-System JSR EG. The EG might ultimately choose an entirely different approach than the one we’re exploring now. If and when that happens then Project Jigsaw will change course as necessary, but either way I think that the end result will be better for having been informed by our current work. Maven & OSGi Q Why not just use Maven? A Maven is a software project management and comprehension tool. As such it can be seen as a kind of build-time module system but, by its nature, it does nothing to support modularity at run time. Q Why not just adopt OSGi? A OSGi is a rich dynamic component system which includes not just a module system but also a life-cycle model and a dynamic service registry. The latter two facilities are useful to some kinds of sophisticated applications, but I don’t think they’re of wide enough interest to be standardized as part of the Java SE Platform. Q Okay, then why not just adopt the module layer of OSGi? A The OSGi module layer is not operative at compile time; it only addresses modularity during packaging, deployment, and execution. As it stands, moreover, it’s useful for library and application modules but, since it’s built strictly on top of the Java SE Platform, it can’t be used to modularize the Platform itself. Q If Maven addresses modularity at build time, and the OSGi module layer addresses modularity during deployment and at run time, then why not just use the two together, as many developers already do? A The combination of Maven and OSGi is certainly very useful in practice today. These systems have, however, been built on top of the existing Java platform; they have not been able to change the platform itself. This means, among other things, that module boundaries are weakly enforced, if at all, which makes it difficult to diagnose configuration errors and impossible to run untrusted code securely. The prototype Jigsaw module system, by contrast, aims to define a platform-level solution which extends both the language and the JVM in order to enforce module boundaries strongly and uniformly in all program phases. Q If the EG chooses an approach like the one currently being taken in the Jigsaw prototype, will Maven and OSGi be made obsolete? A No, not at all! No matter what approach is taken, to ensure wide adoption it’s essential that the standard Java Platform Module System interact well with Maven. Applications that depend upon the sophisticated features of OSGi will no doubt continue to use OSGi, so it’s critical that implementations of OSGi be able to run on top of the Java module system and, if suitably modified, support OSGi bundles that depend upon Java modules. Ideas for how to do that are currently being explored in Project Penrose. Java 8 & Java 9 Q Without Jigsaw, won’t Java 8 be a pretty boring release? A No, far from it! It’s still slated to include the widely-anticipated Project Lambda (JSR 335), work on which has been going very well, along with the new Date/Time API (JSR 310), Type Annotations (JSR 308), and a set of smaller features already in progress. Q Won’t deferring Jigsaw to Java 9 delay the eventual convergence of the higher-end Java ME Platforms with Java SE? A It will slow that transition, but it will not stop it. To allow progress toward that convergence to be made with Java 8 I’ve suggested to the Java SE 8 EG that we consider specifying a small number of Profiles which would allow compact configurations of the SE Platform to be built and deployed. Q If Jigsaw is deferred to Java 9, would the Oracle engineers currently working on it be reassigned to other Java 8 features and then return to working on Jigsaw again after Java 8 ships? A No, these engineers would continue to work primarily on Jigsaw from now until Java 9 ships. Q Why not drop Lambda and finish Jigsaw instead? A Even if the engineers currently working on Lambda could instantly switch over to Jigsaw and immediately become productive—which of course they can’t—there are less than nine months remaining in the Java 8 schedule for work on major features. That’s just not enough time for the broad review, testing, and feedback which such a fundamental change to the Java Platform requires. Q Why not ship the module system in Java 8, and then modularize the platform in Java 9? A If we deliver a module system in one release but don’t use it to modularize the JDK until some later release then we run a big risk of getting something fundamentally wrong. If that happens then we’d have to fix it in the later release, and fixing fundamental design flaws after the fact almost always leads to a poor end result. Q Why not ship Jigsaw in an 8.5 release, less than two years after 8? Or why not just ship a new release every year, rather than every other year? A Many more developers work on the JDK today than a couple of years ago, both because Oracle has dramatically increased its own investment and because other organizations and individuals have joined the OpenJDK Community. Collectively we don’t, however, have the bandwidth required to ship and then provide long-term support for a big JDK release more frequently than about every other year. Q What’s the feedback been on the two-year release-cycle proposal? A For just about every comment that we should release more frequently, so that new features are available sooner, there’s been another asking for an even slower release cycle so that large teams of enterprise developers who ship mission-critical applications have a chance to migrate at a comfortable pace.

  Read the article

• Cannot update, apt-get cannot fetch index files

  - by Evan

  I have a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.10 from the iso 'ubuntu-11.10-desktop-amd64.iso'. I installed this in VMWare Fusion 4.1.1 running on OSX 10.7.3. When setting up the VM, I allowed easy install to take care of creating my user and installing VMWare tools. No problems during installation, everything seems to be working great. The problem is that apt-get will NOT update, so I can't do software updates or install any software with apt-get install. I have been searching high and low, and have found several threads covering similar issues. How to fix a ruined package catalog? is one, Update manager generates 404 error while attempting update. Will not update is another, Ubuntu 11.10 Update issue (failed to fetch...) is a third I have tried changing my software source download location to "Main Server" rather than "Server for United States", to no avail. Same errors. Tried sudo apt-get clean, sudo apt-get autoclean, Have done a sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/*, still having the exact same problem. As I said, this is a brand new installation as of yesterday evening. Since I know it will be needed, here is my output from a sudo apt-get update: evan@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get update Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric InRelease Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates InRelease Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports InRelease Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security InRelease Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric Release.gpg Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates Release.gpg Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports Release.gpg Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security Release.gpg Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric Release Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates Release Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports Release Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security Release Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/main TranslationIndex Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/multiverse TranslationIndex Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/restricted TranslationIndex Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/universe TranslationIndex Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/main TranslationIndex Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/multiverse TranslationIndex Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/restricted TranslationIndex Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/universe TranslationIndex Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/main TranslationIndex Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/multiverse TranslationIndex Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/restricted TranslationIndex Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/universe TranslationIndex Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/main TranslationIndex Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/multiverse TranslationIndex Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/restricted TranslationIndex Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/universe TranslationIndex Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/main Sources 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/restricted Sources 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/universe Sources 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/multiverse Sources 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/main amd64 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/restricted amd64 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/universe amd64 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/multiverse amd64 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/main i386 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/restricted i386 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/universe i386 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/multiverse i386 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/main Sources 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/restricted Sources 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/universe Sources 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/multiverse Sources 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/main amd64 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/restricted amd64 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/universe amd64 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/multiverse amd64 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/main i386 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/restricted i386 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/universe i386 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/multiverse i386 Packages 404 Not Found Ign http://extras.ubuntu.com oneiric InRelease Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/main Sources 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/restricted Sources 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/universe Sources 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/multiverse Sources 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/main amd64 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/restricted amd64 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/universe amd64 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/multiverse amd64 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/main i386 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/restricted i386 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/universe i386 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/multiverse i386 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/main Sources 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/restricted Sources 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/universe Sources 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/multiverse Sources 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/main amd64 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/restricted amd64 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/universe amd64 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/multiverse amd64 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/main i386 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/restricted i386 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/universe i386 Packages 404 Not Found Err http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/multiverse i386 Packages 404 Not Found Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/main Translation-en_US Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/main Translation-en Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/multiverse Translation-en_US Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/multiverse Translation-en Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/restricted Translation-en_US Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/restricted Translation-en Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/universe Translation-en_US Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/universe Translation-en Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/main Translation-en_US Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/main Translation-en Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/multiverse Translation-en_US Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/multiverse Translation-en Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/restricted Translation-en_US Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/restricted Translation-en Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/universe Translation-en_US Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/universe Translation-en Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/main Translation-en_US Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/main Translation-en Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/multiverse Translation-en_US Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/multiverse Translation-en Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/restricted Translation-en_US Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/restricted Translation-en Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/universe Translation-en_US Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/universe Translation-en Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/main Translation-en_US Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/main Translation-en Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/multiverse Translation-en_US Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/multiverse Translation-en Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/restricted Translation-en_US Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/restricted Translation-en Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/universe Translation-en_US Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/universe Translation-en Hit http://extras.ubuntu.com oneiric Release.gpg Hit http://extras.ubuntu.com oneiric Release Hit http://extras.ubuntu.com oneiric/main Sources Hit http://extras.ubuntu.com oneiric/main amd64 Packages Hit http://extras.ubuntu.com oneiric/main i386 Packages Ign http://extras.ubuntu.com oneiric/main TranslationIndex Ign http://extras.ubuntu.com oneiric/main Translation-en_US Ign http://extras.ubuntu.com oneiric/main Translation-en W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric/main/source/Sources 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric/restricted/source/Sources 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric/universe/source/Sources 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric/multiverse/source/Sources 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric/main/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric/restricted/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric/universe/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric/multiverse/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric/main/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric/restricted/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric/universe/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric/multiverse/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-updates/main/source/Sources 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-updates/restricted/source/Sources 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-updates/universe/source/Sources 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-updates/multiverse/source/Sources 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-updates/main/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-updates/restricted/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-updates/universe/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-updates/multiverse/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-updates/main/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-updates/restricted/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-updates/universe/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-updates/multiverse/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-backports/main/source/Sources 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-backports/restricted/source/Sources 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-backports/universe/source/Sources 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-backports/multiverse/source/Sources 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-backports/main/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-backports/restricted/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-backports/universe/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-backports/multiverse/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-backports/main/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-backports/restricted/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-backports/universe/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-backports/multiverse/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-security/main/source/Sources 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-security/restricted/source/Sources 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-security/universe/source/Sources 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-security/multiverse/source/Sources 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-security/main/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-security/restricted/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-security/universe/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-security/multiverse/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-security/main/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-security/restricted/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-security/universe/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-security/multiverse/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead. Here is my /etc/apt/source.list: evan@ubuntu:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list # deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 11.10 _Oneiric Ocelot_ - Release amd64 (20111012)]/ dists/oneiric/main/binary-i386/ # deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 11.10 _Oneiric Ocelot_ - Release amd64 (20111012)]/ oneiric main restricted # See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to # newer versions of the distribution. deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric main restricted deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric main restricted ## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the ## distribution. deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-updates main restricted deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-updates main restricted ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive any ## review or updates from the Ubuntu security team. deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric universe deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric universe deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-updates universe deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-updates universe ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to ## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in ## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu ## security team. deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric multiverse deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric multiverse deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-updates multiverse deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-updates multiverse ## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as ## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes ## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features. ## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review ## or updates from the Ubuntu security team. deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-backports main restricted universe multiverse deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-backports main restricted universe multiverse deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security main restricted deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security main restricted deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security universe deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security universe deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security multiverse deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security multiverse ## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's ## 'partner' repository. ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the ## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users. # deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu oneiric partner # deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu oneiric partner ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by third-party ## developers who want to ship their latest software. deb http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric main deb-src http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric main And here is my output from lsb_release -a: evan@ubuntu:~$ lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 11.10 Release: 11.10 Codename: oneiric If anyone could help me out here, that would be wonderful!

  Read the article

• Using an alternate JSON Serializer in ASP.NET Web API

  - by Rick Strahl

  The new ASP.NET Web API that Microsoft released alongside MVC 4.0 Beta last week is a great framework for building REST and AJAX APIs. I've been working with it for quite a while now and I really like the way it works and the complete set of features it provides 'in the box'. It's about time that Microsoft gets a decent API for building generic HTTP endpoints into the framework. DataContractJsonSerializer sucks As nice as Web API's overall design is one thing still sucks: The built-in JSON Serialization uses the DataContractJsonSerializer which is just too limiting for many scenarios. The biggest issues I have with it are: No support for untyped values (object, dynamic, Anonymous Types) MS AJAX style Date Formatting Ugly serialization formats for types like Dictionaries To me the most serious issue is dealing with serialization of untyped objects. I have number of applications with AJAX front ends that dynamically reformat data from business objects to fit a specific message format that certain UI components require. The most common scenario I have there are IEnumerable query results from a database with fields from the result set rearranged to fit the sometimes unconventional formats required for the UI components (like jqGrid for example). Creating custom types to fit these messages seems like overkill and projections using Linq makes this much easier to code up. Alas DataContractJsonSerializer doesn't support it. Neither does DataContractSerializer for XML output for that matter. What this means is that you can't do stuff like this in Web API out of the box:public object GetAnonymousType() { return new { name = "Rick", company = "West Wind", entered= DateTime.Now }; } Basically anything that doesn't have an explicit type DataContractJsonSerializer will not let you return. FWIW, the same is true for XmlSerializer which also doesn't work with non-typed values for serialization. The example above is obviously contrived with a hardcoded object graph, but it's not uncommon to get dynamic values returned from queries that have anonymous types for their result projections. Apparently there's a good possibility that Microsoft will ship Json.NET as part of Web API RTM release.  Scott Hanselman confirmed this as a footnote in his JSON Dates post a few days ago. I've heard several other people from Microsoft confirm that Json.NET will be included and be the default JSON serializer, but no details yet in what capacity it will show up. Let's hope it ends up as the default in the box. Meanwhile this post will show you how you can use it today with the beta and get JSON that matches what you should see in the RTM version. What about JsonValue? To be fair Web API DOES include a new JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray type that allow you to address some of these scenarios. JsonValue is a new type in the System.Json assembly that can be used to build up an object graph based on a dictionary. It's actually a really cool implementation of a dynamic type that allows you to create an object graph and spit it out to JSON without having to create .NET type first. JsonValue can also receive a JSON string and parse it without having to actually load it into a .NET type (which is something that's been missing in the core framework). This is really useful if you get a JSON result from an arbitrary service and you don't want to explicitly create a mapping type for the data returned. For serialization you can create an object structure on the fly and pass it back as part of an Web API action method like this:public JsonValue GetJsonValue() { dynamic json = new JsonObject(); json.name = "Rick"; json.company = "West Wind"; json.entered = DateTime.Now; dynamic address = new JsonObject(); address.street = "32 Kaiea"; address.zip = "96779"; json.address = address; dynamic phones = new JsonArray(); json.phoneNumbers = phones; dynamic phone = new JsonObject(); phone.type = "Home"; phone.number = "808 123-1233"; phones.Add(phone); phone = new JsonObject(); phone.type = "Home"; phone.number = "808 123-1233"; phones.Add(phone); //var jsonString = json.ToString(); return json; } which produces the following output (formatted here for easier reading):{ name: "rick", company: "West Wind", entered: "2012-03-08T15:33:19.673-10:00", address: { street: "32 Kaiea", zip: "96779" }, phoneNumbers: [ { type: "Home", number: "808 123-1233" }, { type: "Mobile", number: "808 123-1234" }] } If you need to build a simple JSON type on the fly these types work great. But if you have an existing type - or worse a query result/list that's already formatted JsonValue et al. become a pain to work with. As far as I can see there's no way to just throw an object instance at JsonValue and have it convert into JsonValue dictionary. It's a manual process. Using alternate Serializers in Web API So, currently the default serializer in WebAPI is DataContractJsonSeriaizer and I don't like it. You may not either, but luckily you can swap the serializer fairly easily. If you'd rather use the JavaScriptSerializer built into System.Web.Extensions or Json.NET today, it's not too difficult to create a custom MediaTypeFormatter that uses these serializers and can replace or partially replace the native serializer. Here's a MediaTypeFormatter implementation using the ASP.NET JavaScriptSerializer:using System; using System.Net.Http.Formatting; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Web.Script.Serialization; using System.Json; using System.IO; namespace Westwind.Web.WebApi { public class JavaScriptSerializerFormatter : MediaTypeFormatter { public JavaScriptSerializerFormatter() { SupportedMediaTypes.Add(new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/json")); } protected override bool CanWriteType(Type type) { // don't serialize JsonValue structure use default for that if (type == typeof(JsonValue) || type == typeof(JsonObject) || type== typeof(JsonArray) ) return false; return true; } protected override bool CanReadType(Type type) { if (type == typeof(IKeyValueModel)) return false; return true; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Taskobject OnReadFromStreamAsync(Type type, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext) { var task = Taskobject.Factory.StartNew(() = { var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); string json; using (var sr = new StreamReader(stream)) { json = sr.ReadToEnd(); sr.Close(); } object val = ser.Deserialize(json,type); return val; }); return task; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Task OnWriteToStreamAsync(Type type, object value, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext, System.Net.TransportContext transportContext) { var task = Task.Factory.StartNew( () = { var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); var json = ser.Serialize(value); byte[] buf = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(json); stream.Write(buf,0,buf.Length); stream.Flush(); }); return task; } } } Formatter implementation is pretty simple: You override 4 methods to tell which types you can handle and then handle the input or output streams to create/parse the JSON data. Note that when creating output you want to take care to still allow JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray types to be handled by the default serializer so those objects serialize properly - if you let either JavaScriptSerializer or JSON.NET handle them they'd try to render the dictionaries which is very undesirable. If you'd rather use Json.NET here's the JSON.NET version of the formatter:// this code requires a reference to JSON.NET in your project #if true using System; using System.Net.Http.Formatting; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Web.Script.Serialization; using System.Json; using Newtonsoft.Json; using System.IO; using Newtonsoft.Json.Converters; namespace Westwind.Web.WebApi { public class JsonNetFormatter : MediaTypeFormatter { public JsonNetFormatter() { SupportedMediaTypes.Add(new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/json")); } protected override bool CanWriteType(Type type) { // don't serialize JsonValue structure use default for that if (type == typeof(JsonValue) || type == typeof(JsonObject) || type == typeof(JsonArray)) return false; return true; } protected override bool CanReadType(Type type) { if (type == typeof(IKeyValueModel)) return false; return true; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Taskobject OnReadFromStreamAsync(Type type, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext) { var task = Taskobject.Factory.StartNew(() = { var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings() { NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore, }; var sr = new StreamReader(stream); var jreader = new JsonTextReader(sr); var ser = new JsonSerializer(); ser.Converters.Add(new IsoDateTimeConverter()); object val = ser.Deserialize(jreader, type); return val; }); return task; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Task OnWriteToStreamAsync(Type type, object value, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext, System.Net.TransportContext transportContext) { var task = Task.Factory.StartNew( () = { var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings() { NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore, }; string json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(value, Formatting.Indented, new JsonConverter[1] { new IsoDateTimeConverter() } ); byte[] buf = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(json); stream.Write(buf,0,buf.Length); stream.Flush(); }); return task; } } } #endif   One advantage of the Json.NET serializer is that you can specify a few options on how things are formatted and handled. You get null value handling and you can plug in the IsoDateTimeConverter which is nice to product proper ISO dates that I would expect any Json serializer to output these days. Hooking up the Formatters Once you've created the custom formatters you need to enable them for your Web API application. To do this use the GlobalConfiguration.Configuration object and add the formatter to the Formatters collection. Here's what this looks like hooked up from Application_Start in a Web project:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Action based routing (used for RPC calls) RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "StockApi", routeTemplate: "stocks/{action}/{symbol}", defaults: new { symbol = RouteParameter.Optional, controller = "StockApi" } ); // WebApi Configuration to hook up formatters and message handlers // optional RegisterApis(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration); } public static void RegisterApis(HttpConfiguration config) { // Add JavaScriptSerializer formatter instead - add at top to make default //config.Formatters.Insert(0, new JavaScriptSerializerFormatter()); // Add Json.net formatter - add at the top so it fires first! // This leaves the old one in place so JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray still are handled config.Formatters.Insert(0, new JsonNetFormatter()); } One thing to remember here is the GlobalConfiguration object which is Web API's static configuration instance. I think this thing is seriously misnamed given that GlobalConfiguration could stand for anything and so is hard to discover if you don't know what you're looking for. How about WebApiConfiguration or something more descriptive? Anyway, once you know what it is you can use the Formatters collection to insert your custom formatter. Note that I insert my formatter at the top of the list so it takes precedence over the default formatter. I also am not removing the old formatter because I still want JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray to be handled by the default serialization mechanism. Since they process in sequence and I exclude processing for these types JsonValue et al. still get properly serialized/deserialized. Summary Currently DataContractJsonSerializer in Web API is a pain, but at least we have the ability with relatively limited effort to replace the MediaTypeFormatter and plug in our own JSON serializer. This is useful for many scenarios - if you have existing client applications that used MVC JsonResult or ASP.NET AJAX results from ASMX AJAX services you can plug in the JavaScript serializer and get exactly the same serializer you used in the past so your results will be the same and don't potentially break clients. JSON serializers do vary a bit in how they serialize some of the more complex types (like Dictionaries and dates for example) and so if you're migrating it might be helpful to ensure your client code doesn't break when you switch to ASP.NET Web API. Going forward it looks like Microsoft is planning on plugging in Json.Net into Web API and make that the default. I think that's an awesome choice since Json.net has been around forever, is fast and easy to use and provides a ton of functionality as part of this great library. I just wish Microsoft would have figured this out sooner instead of now at the last minute integrating with it especially given that Json.Net has a similar set of lower level JSON objects JsonValue/JsonObject etc. which now will end up being duplicated by the native System.Json stuff. It's not like we don't already have enough confusion regarding which JSON serializer to use (JavaScriptSerializer, DataContractJsonSerializer, JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray and now Json.net). For years I've been using my own JSON serializer because the built in choices are both limited. However, with an official encorsement of Json.Net I'm happily moving on to use that in my applications. Let's see and hope Microsoft gets this right before ASP.NET Web API goes gold.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api  AJAX  ASP.NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

  Read the article

• Where does ASP.NET Web API Fit?

  - by Rick Strahl

  With the pending release of ASP.NET MVC 4 and the new ASP.NET Web API, there has been a lot of discussion of where the new Web API technology fits in the ASP.NET Web stack. There are a lot of choices to build HTTP based applications available now on the stack - we've come a long way from when WebForms and Http Handlers/Modules where the only real options. Today we have WebForms, MVC, ASP.NET Web Pages, ASP.NET AJAX, WCF REST and now Web API as well as the core ASP.NET runtime to choose to build HTTP content with. Web API definitely squarely addresses the 'API' aspect - building consumable services - rather than HTML content, but even to that end there are a lot of choices you have today. So where does Web API fit, and when doesn't it? But before we get into that discussion, let's talk about what a Web API is and why we should care. What's a Web API? HTTP 'APIs' (Microsoft's new terminology for a service I guess)  are becoming increasingly more important with the rise of the many devices in use today. Most mobile devices like phones and tablets run Apps that are using data retrieved from the Web over HTTP. Desktop applications are also moving in this direction with more and more online content and synching moving into even traditional desktop applications. The pending Windows 8 release promises an app like platform for both the desktop and other devices, that also emphasizes consuming data from the Cloud. Likewise many Web browser hosted applications these days are relying on rich client functionality to create and manipulate the browser user interface, using AJAX rather than server generated HTML data to load up the user interface with data. These mobile or rich Web applications use their HTTP connection to return data rather than HTML markup in the form of JSON or XML typically. But an API can also serve other kinds of data, like images or other binary files, or even text data and HTML (although that's less common). A Web API is what feeds rich applications with data. ASP.NET Web API aims to service this particular segment of Web development by providing easy semantics to route and handle incoming requests and an easy to use platform to serve HTTP data in just about any content format you choose to create and serve from the server. But .NET already has various HTTP Platforms The .NET stack already includes a number of technologies that provide the ability to create HTTP service back ends, and it has done so since the very beginnings of the .NET platform. From raw HTTP Handlers and Modules in the core ASP.NET runtime, to high level platforms like ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, ASP.NET AJAX and the WCF REST engine (which technically is not ASP.NET, but can integrate with it), you've always been able to handle just about any kind of HTTP request and response with ASP.NET. The beauty of the raw ASP.NET platform is that it provides you everything you need to build just about any type of HTTP application you can dream up from low level APIs/custom engines to high level HTML generation engine. ASP.NET as a core platform clearly has stood the test of time 10+ years later and all other frameworks like Web API are built on top of this ASP.NET core. However, although it's possible to create Web APIs / Services using any of the existing out of box .NET technologies, none of them have been a really nice fit for building arbitrary HTTP based APIs. Sure, you can use an HttpHandler to create just about anything, but you have to build a lot of plumbing to build something more complex like a comprehensive API that serves a variety of requests, handles multiple output formats and can easily pass data up to the server in a variety of ways. Likewise you can use ASP.NET MVC to handle routing and creating content in various formats fairly easily, but it doesn't provide a great way to automatically negotiate content types and serve various content formats directly (it's possible to do with some plumbing code of your own but not built in). Prior to Web API, Microsoft's main push for HTTP services has been WCF REST, which was always an awkward technology that had a severe personality conflict, not being clear on whether it wanted to be part of WCF or purely a separate technology. In the end it didn't do either WCF compatibility or WCF agnostic pure HTTP operation very well, which made for a very developer-unfriendly environment. Personally I didn't like any of the implementations at the time, so much so that I ended up building my own HTTP service engine (as part of the West Wind Web Toolkit), as have a few other third party tools that provided much better integration and ease of use. With the release of Web API for the first time I feel that I can finally use the tools in the box and not have to worry about creating and maintaining my own toolkit as Web API addresses just about all the features I implemented on my own and much more. ASP.NET Web API provides a better HTTP Experience ASP.NET Web API differentiates itself from the previous Microsoft in-box HTTP service solutions in that it was built from the ground up around the HTTP protocol and its messaging semantics. Unlike WCF REST or ASP.NET AJAX with ASMX, it’s a brand new platform rather than bolted on technology that is supposed to work in the context of an existing framework. The strength of the new ASP.NET Web API is that it combines the best features of the platforms that came before it, to provide a comprehensive and very usable HTTP platform. Because it's based on ASP.NET and borrows a lot of concepts from ASP.NET MVC, Web API should be immediately familiar and comfortable to most ASP.NET developers. Here are some of the features that Web API provides that I like: Strong Support for URL Routing to produce clean URLs using familiar MVC style routing semantics Content Negotiation based on Accept headers for request and response serialization Support for a host of supported output formats including JSON, XML, ATOM Strong default support for REST semantics but they are optional Easily extensible Formatter support to add new input/output types Deep support for more advanced HTTP features via HttpResponseMessage and HttpRequestMessage classes and strongly typed Enums to describe many HTTP operations Convention based design that drives you into doing the right thing for HTTP Services Very extensible, based on MVC like extensibility model of Formatters and Filters Self-hostable in non-Web applications  Testable using testing concepts similar to MVC Web API is meant to handle any kind of HTTP input and produce output and status codes using the full spectrum of HTTP functionality available in a straight forward and flexible manner. Looking at the list above you can see that a lot of functionality is very similar to ASP.NET MVC, so many ASP.NET developers should feel quite comfortable with the concepts of Web API. The Routing and core infrastructure of Web API are very similar to how MVC works providing many of the benefits of MVC, but with focus on HTTP access and manipulation in Controller methods rather than HTML generation in MVC. There’s much improved support for content negotiation based on HTTP Accept headers with the framework capable of detecting automatically what content the client is sending and requesting and serving the appropriate data format in return. This seems like such a little and obvious thing, but it's really important. Today's service backends often are used by multiple clients/applications and being able to choose the right data format for what fits best for the client is very important. While previous solutions were able to accomplish this using a variety of mixed features of WCF and ASP.NET, Web API combines all this functionality into a single robust server side HTTP framework that intrinsically understands the HTTP semantics and subtly drives you in the right direction for most operations. And when you need to customize or do something that is not built in, there are lots of hooks and overrides for most behaviors, and even many low level hook points that allow you to plug in custom functionality with relatively little effort. No Brainers for Web API There are a few scenarios that are a slam dunk for Web API. If your primary focus of an application or even a part of an application is some sort of API then Web API makes great sense. HTTP ServicesIf you're building a comprehensive HTTP API that is to be consumed over the Web, Web API is a perfect fit. You can isolate the logic in Web API and build your application as a service breaking out the logic into controllers as needed. Because the primary interface is the service there's no confusion of what should go where (MVC or API). Perfect fit. Primary AJAX BackendsIf you're building rich client Web applications that are relying heavily on AJAX callbacks to serve its data, Web API is also a slam dunk. Again because much if not most of the business logic will probably end up in your Web API service logic, there's no confusion over where logic should go and there's no duplication. In Single Page Applications (SPA), typically there's very little HTML based logic served other than bringing up a shell UI and then filling the data from the server with AJAX which means the business logic required for data retrieval and data acceptance and validation too lives in the Web API. Perfect fit. Generic HTTP EndpointsAnother good fit are generic HTTP endpoints that to serve data or handle 'utility' type functionality in typical Web applications. If you need to implement an image server, or an upload handler in the past I'd implement that as an HTTP handler. With Web API you now have a well defined place where you can implement these types of generic 'services' in a location that can easily add endpoints (via Controller methods) or separated out as more full featured APIs. Granted this could be done with MVC as well, but Web API seems a clearer and more well defined place to store generic application services. This is one thing I used to do a lot of in my own libraries and Web API addresses this nicely. Great fit. Mixed HTML and AJAX Applications: Not a clear Choice  For all the commonality that Web API and MVC share they are fundamentally different platforms that are independent of each other. A lot of people have asked when does it make sense to use MVC vs. Web API when you're dealing with typical Web application that creates HTML and also uses AJAX functionality for rich functionality. While it's easy to say that all 'service'/AJAX logic should go into a Web API and all HTML related generation into MVC, that can often result in a lot of code duplication. Also MVC supports JSON and XML result data fairly easily as well so there's some confusion where that 'trigger point' is of when you should switch to Web API vs. just implementing functionality as part of MVC controllers. Ultimately there's a tradeoff between isolation of functionality and duplication. A good rule of thumb I think works is that if a large chunk of the application's functionality serves data Web API is a good choice, but if you have a couple of small AJAX requests to serve data to a grid or autocomplete box it'd be overkill to separate out that logic into a separate Web API controller. Web API does add overhead to your application (it's yet another framework that sits on top of core ASP.NET) so it should be worth it .Keep in mind that MVC can generate HTML and JSON/XML and just about any other content easily and that functionality is not going away, so just because you Web API is there it doesn't mean you have to use it. Web API is not a full replacement for MVC obviously either since there's not the same level of support to feed HTML from Web API controllers (although you can host a RazorEngine easily enough if you really want to go that route) so if you're HTML is part of your API or application in general MVC is still a better choice either alone or in combination with Web API. I suspect (and hope) that in the future Web API's functionality will merge even closer with MVC so that you might even be able to mix functionality of both into single Controllers so that you don't have to make any trade offs, but at the moment that's not the case. Some Issues To think about Web API is similar to MVC but not the Same Although Web API looks a lot like MVC it's not the same and some common functionality of MVC behaves differently in Web API. For example, the way single POST variables are handled is different than MVC and doesn't lend itself particularly well to some AJAX scenarios with POST data. Code Duplication I already touched on this in the Mixed HTML and Web API section, but if you build an MVC application that also exposes a Web API it's quite likely that you end up duplicating a bunch of code and - potentially - infrastructure. You may have to create authentication logic both for an HTML application and for the Web API which might need something different altogether. More often than not though the same logic is used, and there's no easy way to share. If you implement an MVC ActionFilter and you want that same functionality in your Web API you'll end up creating the filter twice. AJAX Data or AJAX HTML On a recent post's comments, David made some really good points regarding the commonality of MVC and Web API's and its place. One comment that caught my eye was a little more generic, regarding data services vs. HTML services. David says: I see a lot of merit in the combination of Knockout.js, client side templates and view models, calling Web API for a responsive UI, but sometimes late at night that still leaves me wondering why I would no longer be using some of the nice tooling and features that have evolved in MVC ;-) You know what - I can totally relate to that. On the last Web based mobile app I worked on, we decided to serve HTML partials to the client via AJAX for many (but not all!) things, rather than sending down raw data to inject into the DOM on the client via templating or direct manipulation. While there are definitely more bytes on the wire, with this, the overhead ended up being actually fairly small if you keep the 'data' requests small and atomic. Performance was often made up by the lack of client side rendering of HTML. Server rendered HTML for AJAX templating gives so much better infrastructure support without having to screw around with 20 mismatched client libraries. Especially with MVC and partials it's pretty easy to break out your HTML logic into very small, atomic chunks, so it's actually easy to create small rendering islands that can be used via composition on the server, or via AJAX calls to small, tight partials that return HTML to the client. Although this is often frowned upon as to 'heavy', it worked really well in terms of developer effort as well as providing surprisingly good performance on devices. There's still plenty of jQuery and AJAX logic happening on the client but it's more manageable in small doses rather than trying to do the entire UI composition with JavaScript and/or 'not-quite-there-yet' template engines that are very difficult to debug. This is not an issue directly related to Web API of course, but something to think about especially for AJAX or SPA style applications. Summary Web API is a great new addition to the ASP.NET platform and it addresses a serious need for consolidation of a lot of half-baked HTTP service API technologies that came before it. Web API feels 'right', and hits the right combination of usability and flexibility at least for me and it's a good fit for true API scenarios. However, just because a new platform is available it doesn't meant that other tools or tech that came before it should be discarded or even upgraded to the new platform. There's nothing wrong with continuing to use MVC controller methods to handle API tasks if that's what your app is running now - there's very little to be gained by upgrading to Web API just because. But going forward Web API clearly is the way to go, when building HTTP data interfaces and it's good to see that Microsoft got this one right - it was sorely needed! Resources ASP.NET Web API AspConf Ask the Experts Session (first 5 minutes) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

  Read the article

• Q1 2010 New Feature: Paging with RadGridView for Silverlight and WPF

  We are glad to announce that the Q1 2010 Release has added another weapon to RadGridViews growing arsenal of features. This is the brand new RadDataPager control which provides the user interface for paging through a collection of data. The good news is that RadDataPager can be used to page any collection. It does not depend on RadGridView in any way, so you will be free to use it with the rest of your ItemsControls if you chose to do so. Before you read on, you might want to download the samples solution that I have attached. It contains a sample project for every scenario that I will discuss later on. Looking at the code while reading will make things much easier for you. There is something for everyone among the 10 Visual Studio projects that are included in the solution. So go and grab it. I. Paging essentials The single most important piece of software concerning paging in Silverlight is the System.ComponentModel.IPagedCollectionView interface. Those of you who are on the WPF front need not worry though. As you might already know, Teleriks Silverlight and WPF controls is share the same code-base. Since WPF does not contain a similar interface, Telerik has provided its own Telerik.Windows.Data.IPagedCollectionView. The IPagedCollectionView interface contains several important members which are used by RadGridView to perform the actual paging. Silverlight provides a default implementation of this interface which, naturally, is called PagedCollectionView. You should definitely take a look at its source code in case you are interested in what is going on under the hood. But this is not a prerequisite for our discussion. The WPF default implementation of the interface is Teleriks QueryableCollectionView which, among many other interfaces, implements IPagedCollectionView. II. No Paging In order to gradually build up my case, I will start with a very simple example that lacks paging whatsoever. It might sound stupid, but this will help us build on top of this paging-devoid example. Let us imagine that we have the simplest possible scenario. That is a simple IEnumerable and an ItemsControl that shows its contents. This will look like this: No Paging IEnumerable itemsSource = Enumerable.Range(0, 1000); this.itemsControl.ItemsSource = itemsSource; XAML <Border Grid.Row="0" BorderBrush="Black" BorderThickness="1" Margin="5">     <ListBox Name="itemsControl"/> </Border> <Border Grid.Row="1" BorderBrush="Black" BorderThickness="1" Margin="5">     <TextBlock Text="No Paging"/> </Border> Nothing special for now. Just some data displayed in a ListBox. The two sample projects in the solution that I have attached are: NoPaging_WPF NoPaging_SL3 With every next sample those two project will evolve in some way or another. III. Paging simple collections The single most important property of RadDataPager is its Source property. This is where you pass in your collection of data for paging. More often than not your collection will not be an IPagedCollectionView. It will either be a simple List<T>, or an ObservableCollection<T>, or anything that is simply IEnumerable. Unless you had paging in mind when you designed your project, it is almost certain that your data source will not be pageable out of the box. So what are the options? III. 1. Wrapping the simple collection in an IPagedCollectionView If you look at the constructors of PagedCollectionView and QueryableCollectionView you will notice that you can pass in a simple IEnumerable as a parameter. Those two classes will wrap it and provide paging capabilities over your original data. In fact, this is what RadGridView does internally. It wraps your original collection in an QueryableCollectionView in order to easily perform many useful tasks such as filtering, sorting, and others, but in our case the most important one is paging. So let us start our series of examples with the most simplistic one. Imagine that you have a simple IEnumerable which is the source for an ItemsControl. Here is how to wrap it in order to enable paging: Silverlight IEnumerable itemsSource = Enumerable.Range(0, 1000); var pagedSource = new PagedCollectionView(itemsSource); this.radDataPager.Source = pagedSource; this.itemsControl.ItemsSource = pagedSource; WPF IEnumerable itemsSource = Enumerable.Range(0, 1000); var pagedSource = new QueryableCollectionView(itemsSource); this.radDataPager.Source = pagedSource; this.itemsControl.ItemsSource = pagedSource; XAML <Border Grid.Row="0"         BorderBrush="Black"         BorderThickness="1"         Margin="5">     <ListBox Name="itemsControl"/> </Border> <Border Grid.Row="1"         BorderBrush="Black"         BorderThickness="1"         Margin="5">     <telerikGrid:RadDataPager Name="radDataPager"                               PageSize="10"                              IsTotalItemCountFixed="True"                              DisplayMode="All"/> This will do the trick. It is quite simple, isnt it? The two sample projects in the solution that I have attached are: PagingSimpleCollectionWithWrapping_WPF PagingSimpleCollectionWithWrapping_SL3 III. 2. Binding to RadDataPager.PagedSource In case you do not like this approach there is a better one. When you assign an IEnumerable as the Source of a RadDataPager it will automatically wrap it in a QueryableCollectionView and expose it through its PagedSource property. From then on, you can attach any number of ItemsControls to the PagedSource and they will be automatically paged. Here is how to do this entirely in XAML: Using RadDataPager.PagedSource <Border Grid.Row="0"         BorderBrush="Black"         BorderThickness="1" Margin="5">     <ListBox Name="itemsControl"              ItemsSource="{Binding PagedSource, ElementName=radDataPager}"/> </Border> <Border Grid.Row="1"         BorderBrush="Black"         BorderThickness="1"         Margin="5">     <telerikGrid:RadDataPager Name="radDataPager"                               Source="{Binding ItemsSource}"                              PageSize="10"                              IsTotalItemCountFixed="True"                              DisplayMode="All"/> The two sample projects in the solution that I have attached are: PagingSimpleCollectionWithPagedSource_WPF PagingSimpleCollectionWithPagedSource_SL3 IV. Paging collections implementing IPagedCollectionView Those of you who are using WCF RIA Services should feel very lucky. After a quick look with Reflector or the debugger we can see that the DomainDataSource.Data property is in fact an instance of the DomainDataSourceView class. This class implements a handful of useful interfaces: ICollectionView IEnumerable INotifyCollectionChanged IEditableCollectionView IPagedCollectionView INotifyPropertyChanged Luckily, IPagedCollectionView is among them which lets you do the whole paging in the server. So lets do this. We will add a DomainDataSource control to our page/window and connect the items control and the pager to it. Here is how to do this: MainPage <riaControls:DomainDataSource x:Name="invoicesDataSource"                               AutoLoad="True"                               QueryName="GetInvoicesQuery">     <riaControls:DomainDataSource.DomainContext>         <services:ChinookDomainContext/>     </riaControls:DomainDataSource.DomainContext> </riaControls:DomainDataSource> <Border Grid.Row="0"         BorderBrush="Black"         BorderThickness="1"         Margin="5">     <ListBox Name="itemsControl"              ItemsSource="{Binding Data, ElementName=invoicesDataSource}"/> </Border> <Border Grid.Row="1"         BorderBrush="Black"         BorderThickness="1"         Margin="5">     <telerikGrid:RadDataPager Name="radDataPager"                               Source="{Binding Data, ElementName=invoicesDataSource}"                              PageSize="10"                              IsTotalItemCountFixed="True"                              DisplayMode="All"/> By the way, you can replace the ListBox from the above code snippet with any other ItemsControl. It can be RadGridView, it can be the MS DataGrid, you name it. Essentially, RadDataPager is sending paging commands to the the DomainDataSource.Data. It does not care who, what, or how many different controls are bound to this same Data property of the DomainDataSource control. So if you would like to experiment with this, you can throw in any number of other ItemsControls next to the ListBox, bind them in the same manner, and all of them will be paged by our single RadDataPager. Furthermore, you can throw in any number of RadDataPagers and bind them to the same property. Then when you page with any one of them will automatically update all of the rest. The whole picture is simply beautiful and we can do all of this thanks to WCF RIA Services. The two sample projects (Silverlight only) in the solution that I have attached are: PagingIPagedCollectionView PagingIPagedCollectionView.Web IV. Paging RadGridView While you can replace the ListBox in any of the above examples with a RadGridView, RadGridView offers something extra. Similar to the DomainDataSource.Data property, the RadGridView.Items collection implements the IPagedCollectionView interface. So you are already thinking: Then why not bind the Source property of RadDataPager to RadGridView.Items? Well thats exactly what you can do and you will start paging RadGridView out-of-the-box. It is as simple as that, no code-behind is involved: MainPage <Border Grid.Row="0"         BorderBrush="Black"         BorderThickness="1" Margin="5">     <telerikGrid:RadGridView Name="radGridView"                              ItemsSource="{Binding ItemsSource}"/> </Border> <Border Grid.Row="1"         BorderBrush="Black"         BorderThickness="1"         Margin="5">     <telerikGrid:RadDataPager Name="radDataPager"                               Source="{Binding Items, ElementName=radGridView}"                              PageSize="10"                              IsTotalItemCountFixed="True"                              DisplayMode="All"/> The two sample projects in the solution that I have attached are: PagingRadGridView_SL3 PagingRadGridView_WPF With this last example I think I have covered every possible paging combination. In case you would like to see an example of something that I have not covered, please let me know. Also, make sure you check out those great online examples: WCF RIA Services with DomainDataSource Paging Configurator Endless Paging Paging Any Collection Paging RadGridView Happy Paging! Download Full Source Code 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.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213  | Next Page >