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• Elastic versus Distributed in caching.

  - by Mike Reys

  Until now, I hadn't heard about Elastic Caching yet. Today I read Mike Gualtieri's Blog entry. I immediately thought about Oracle Coherence and got a little scare throughout the reading. Elastic Caching is the next step after Distributed Caching. As we've always positioned Coherence as a Distributed Cache, I thought for a brief instance that Oracle had missed a new trend/technology. But then I started reading the characteristics of an Elastic Cache. Forrester definition: Software infrastructure that provides application developers with data caching services that are distributed across two or more server nodes that consistently perform as volumes grow can be scaled without downtime provide a range of fault-tolerance levels Hey wait a minute, doesn't Coherence fullfill all these requirements? Oh yes, I think it does! The next defintion in the article is about Elastic Application Platforms. This is mainly more of the same with the addition of code execution. Now there is analytics functionality in Oracle Coherence. The analytics capability provides data-centric functions like distributed aggregation, searching and sorting. Coherence also provides continuous querying and event-handling. I think that when it comes to providing an Elastic Application Platform (as in the Forrester definition), Oracle is close, nearly there. And what's more, as Elastic Platform is the next big thing towards the big C word, Oracle Coherence makes you cloud-ready ;-) There you go! Find more info on Oracle Coherence here.

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• How to learn ASP.NET MVC without learning ASP.NET Web forms

  - by Naif

  First of all, I am not a web developer but I can say that I understand in general the difference between PHP, ASP.NET, etc. I have played a little with ASP.NET and C# as well, however, I didn't continue the learning path. Now I'd like to learn ASP.NET MVC but there is no a book for a beginner in ASP.NET MVC so I had a look at the tutorials but it seems that I need to learn C# first and SQL Server and HTML, am I right? So please tell me how can I learn ASP.NET MVC directly (I mean without learning ASP.NET Web forms). What do I need to learn (You can assume that I am an absolute beginner). Update: It is true that i can find ASP.NET MVC tutorial that explain ASP.NET MVC, but I used to find ASP.NET web forms books that explain SQL and C# at the same time and take you step by step. In ASP.NET MVC I don't know how can I start! How can I learn SQL in its own and C# in its own and then combine them with ASP.NET MVC!

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• SPARC64 VII+ Processor Core License Factor Reduced by 33%

  - by john.shell

  The Oracle processor core license factor has been a popular topic the last few months.  For those partners new to Oracle software licensing, the processor core license factor determines the number licensed CPUs that are required when running Oracle software (those charged on a per-CPU basis) on multi-core processors.My last entry talked about the core factor reduction for our T3 processor.  The core license factor for our newly announced SPARC64 VII+ processor is 0.5, which is a 33% reduction from the 0.75 rate used with our SPARC64 VI and VII processors.What does this mean for our partners?  Increased opportunity.  This change, similar to our T3-based systems, means that our hardware is the preferred platform for Oracle software. Still a little dizzy on the breadth of Oracle's software offering?  Do a simple scan of Oracle's software price lists. Consider this your target market.This change allows you to focus on total solution price or price/performance, not server prices or per core performance (a standard IBM sales tactic). That's the offensive side of the game.  Don't forget your defense.  One of the biggest customer benefits around the M-Series is investment protection.  The combination of a simple processor/board upgrade, along with a reduction in processor core license factor, makes upgrading one of the best financial moves for our customers.    One reminder.  The update to the processor core license factor only applies to the new VII+ processor - NOT the SPARC64 VI or VII processors.  You can find the official table here.

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• Desktop Fun: Beaches Theme Wallpapers

  - by Asian Angel

  Is your vacation still a few weeks or months away? Make the waiting a little easier by adding some of that vacation scenery to your desktop with our Beaches Theme Wallpapers collection. Note: Click on the picture to see the full-size image—these wallpapers vary in size so you may need to crop, stretch, or place them on a colored background in order to best match them to your screen’s resolution.                       For more fun wallpapers be certain to visit our new Desktop Fun section. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Windows 7 Welcome Screen Taking Forever? Here’s the Fix (Maybe)Desktop Fun: Starship Theme WallpapersDesktop Fun: Underwater Theme WallpapersDesktop Fun: Forest Theme WallpapersDesktop Fun: Fantasy Theme Wallpapers TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Run Command Missing in Windows 7? Share High Res Photos using Divvyshot Draw Online using Harmony How to Browse Privately in Firefox Kill Processes Quickly with Process Assassin Need to Come Up with a Good Name? Try Wordoid

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• OpenGL ES 2 shaders for drawing buildings and roads like Google Maps does

  - by Pris

  I'm trying to create a shader that'll give me an effect similar to what buildings and roads look like on 3D Google Maps. You can see the effect interactively if you enable WebGL at maps.google.com, and I also found a couple of screenshots that illustrate what I'm trying to achieve: Thing I noticed: There's some kind of transparency thing going on with the roads/ground and the buildings, but not between the buildings themselves. It might be that they're rendering the ground and roads after the buildings with the right blend functions to achieve that effect. If you look closely, you'll see parts of the building profiles have an outline. The roads also have nice clean outlines. There are a lot of techniques for outlining things with shaders... but I'm curious to find out what might have been used in this case considering mobile hardware and a large number of entities with outlines (roads and buildings) I'm assuming that for the lighting, some sort of simple diffuse per-vertex shader is being used for the buildings though I could be wrong. I'm especially curious about the 'look' they achieved with buildings (clean, precise outlines/shading). It reminds me a little of what you'd see when designing stuff with CAD applications like SolidWorks: I'd appreciate any advice on achieving this kind of look with ES 2 shaders.

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• The fastest way to resize images from ASP.NET. And it’s (more) supported-ish.

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  I’ve shown before how to resize images using GDI, which is fairly common but is explicitly unsupported because we know of very real problems that this can cause. Still, many sites still use that method because those problems are fairly rare, and because most people assume it’s the only way to get the job done. Plus, it works in medium trust. More recently, I’ve shown how you can use WPF APIs to do the same thing and get JPEG thumbnails, only 2.5 times faster than GDI (even now that GDI really ultimately uses WIC to read and write images). The boost in performance is great, but it comes at a cost, that you may or may not care about: it won’t work in medium trust. It’s also just as unsupported as the GDI option. What I want to show today is how to use the Windows Imaging Components from ASP.NET APIs directly, without going through WPF. The approach has the great advantage that it’s been tested and proven to scale very well. The WIC team tells me you should be able to call support and get answers if you hit problems. Caveats exist though. First, this is using interop, so until a signed wrapper sits in the GAC, it will require full trust. Second, the APIs have a very strong smell of native code and are definitely not .NET-friendly. And finally, the most serious problem is that older versions of Windows don’t offer MTA support for image decoding. MTA support is only available on Windows 7, Vista and Windows Server 2008. But on 2003 and XP, you’ll only get STA support. that means that the thread safety that we so badly need for server applications is not guaranteed on those operating systems. To make it work, you’d have to spin specialized threads yourself and manage the lifetime of your objects, which is outside the scope of this article. We’ll assume that we’re fine with al this and that we’re running on 7 or 2008 under full trust. Be warned that the code that follows is not simple or very readable. This is definitely not the easiest way to resize an image in .NET. Wrapping native APIs such as WIC in a managed wrapper is never easy, but fortunately we won’t have to: the WIC team already did it for us and released the results under MS-PL. The InteropServices folder, which contains the wrappers we need, is in the WicCop project but I’ve also included it in the sample that you can download from the link at the end of the article. In order to produce a thumbnail, we first have to obtain a decoding frame object that WIC can use. Like with WPF, that object will contain the command to decode a frame from the source image but won’t do the actual decoding until necessary. Getting the frame is done by reading the image bytes through a special WIC stream that you can obtain from a factory object that we’re going to reuse for lots of other tasks: var photo = File.ReadAllBytes(photoPath); var factory = (IWICComponentFactory)new WICImagingFactory(); var inputStream = factory.CreateStream(); inputStream.InitializeFromMemory(photo, (uint)photo.Length); var decoder = factory.CreateDecoderFromStream( inputStream, null, WICDecodeOptions.WICDecodeMetadataCacheOnLoad); var frame = decoder.GetFrame(0); We can read the dimensions of the frame using the following (somewhat ugly) code: uint width, height; frame.GetSize(out width, out height); This enables us to compute the dimensions of the thumbnail, as I’ve shown in previous articles. We now need to prepare the output stream for the thumbnail. WIC requires a special kind of stream, IStream (not implemented by System.IO.Stream) and doesn’t directlyunderstand .NET streams. It does provide a number of implementations but not exactly what we need here. We need to output to memory because we’ll want to persist the same bytes to the response stream and to a local file for caching. The memory-bound version of IStream requires a fixed-length buffer but we won’t know the length of the buffer before we resize. To solve that problem, I’ve built a derived class from MemoryStream that also implements IStream. The implementation is not very complicated, it just delegates the IStream methods to the base class, but it involves some native pointer manipulation. Once we have a stream, we need to build the encoder for the output format, which could be anything that WIC supports. For web thumbnails, our only reasonable options are PNG and JPEG. I explored PNG because it’s a lossless format, and because WIC does support PNG compression. That compression is not very efficient though and JPEG offers good quality with much smaller file sizes. On the web, it matters. I found the best PNG compression option (adaptive) to give files that are about twice as big as 100%-quality JPEG (an absurd setting), 4.5 times bigger than 95%-quality JPEG and 7 times larger than 85%-quality JPEG, which is more than acceptable quality. As a consequence, we’ll use JPEG. The JPEG encoder can be prepared as follows: var encoder = factory.CreateEncoder( Consts.GUID_ContainerFormatJpeg, null); encoder.Initialize(outputStream, WICBitmapEncoderCacheOption.WICBitmapEncoderNoCache); The next operation is to create the output frame: IWICBitmapFrameEncode outputFrame; var arg = new IPropertyBag2[1]; encoder.CreateNewFrame(out outputFrame, arg); Notice that we are passing in a property bag. This is where we’re going to specify our only parameter for encoding, the JPEG quality setting: var propBag = arg[0]; var propertyBagOption = new PROPBAG2[1]; propertyBagOption[0].pstrName = "ImageQuality"; propBag.Write(1, propertyBagOption, new object[] { 0.85F }); outputFrame.Initialize(propBag); We can then set the resolution for the thumbnail to be 96, something we weren’t able to do with WPF and had to hack around: outputFrame.SetResolution(96, 96); Next, we set the size of the output frame and create a scaler from the input frame and the computed dimensions of the target thumbnail: outputFrame.SetSize(thumbWidth, thumbHeight); var scaler = factory.CreateBitmapScaler(); scaler.Initialize(frame, thumbWidth, thumbHeight, WICBitmapInterpolationMode.WICBitmapInterpolationModeFant); The scaler is using the Fant method, which I think is the best looking one even if it seems a little softer than cubic (zoomed here to better show the defects): Cubic Fant Linear Nearest neighbor We can write the source image to the output frame through the scaler: outputFrame.WriteSource(scaler, new WICRect { X = 0, Y = 0, Width = (int)thumbWidth, Height = (int)thumbHeight }); And finally we commit the pipeline that we built and get the byte array for the thumbnail out of our memory stream: outputFrame.Commit(); encoder.Commit(); var outputArray = outputStream.ToArray(); outputStream.Close(); That byte array can then be sent to the output stream and to the cache file. Once we’ve gone through this exercise, it’s only natural to wonder whether it was worth the trouble. I ran this method, as well as GDI and WPF resizing over thirty twelve megapixel images for JPEG qualities between 70% and 100% and measured the file size and time to resize. Here are the results: Size of resized images   Time to resize thirty 12 megapixel images Not much to see on the size graph: sizes from WPF and WIC are equivalent, which is hardly surprising as WPF calls into WIC. There is just an anomaly for 75% for WPF that I noted in my previous article and that disappears when using WIC directly. But overall, using WPF or WIC over GDI represents a slight win in file size. The time to resize is more interesting. WPF and WIC get similar times although WIC seems to always be a little faster. Not surprising considering WPF is using WIC. The margin of error on this results is probably fairly close to the time difference. As we already knew, the time to resize does not depend on the quality level, only the size does. This means that the only decision you have to make here is size versus visual quality. This third approach to server-side image resizing on ASP.NET seems to converge on the fastest possible one. We have marginally better performance than WPF, but with some additional peace of mind that this approach is sanctioned for server-side usage by the Windows Imaging team. It still doesn’t work in medium trust. That is a problem and shows the way for future server-friendly managed wrappers around WIC. The sample code for this article can be downloaded from: http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bleroy/Samples/WicResize.zip The benchmark code can be found here (you’ll need to add your own images to the Images directory and then add those to the project, with content and copy if newer in the properties of the files in the solution explorer): http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bleroy/Samples/WicWpfGdiImageResizeBenchmark.zip WIC tools can be downloaded from: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wictools To conclude, here are some of the resized thumbnails at 85% fant:

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• Time management and self improvement

  - by Filip

  Hi, I hope I can open a discussion on this topic as this is not a specific problem. It's a topic I hope to get some ideas on how people in similar situation as mine manage their time. OK, I'm a single developer on a software project for the last 6-8 months. The project I'm working on uses several technologies, mainly .net stuff: WPF, WF, NHibernate, WCF, MySql and other third party SDKs relevant for the project nature. My experience and knowledge vary, for example I have a lot of experience in WPF but much less in WCF. I work full time on the project and im curios on how other programmers which need to multi task in many areas manage their time. I'm a very applied type of person and prefer to code instead of doing research. I feel that doing research "might" slow down the progress of the project while I recognize that research and learning more in areas which I'm not so strong will ultimately make me more productive. How would you split up your daily time in productive coding time and time to and experiment, read blogs, go through tutorials etc. I would say that Im coding about 90%+ of my day and devoting some but very little time in research and acquiring new knowledge.

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• dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.04, black screen when loading Windows

  - by Sean

  I am proficient with Windows and not so much with Linux. Here is my story: Original system came with Windows 7, got openSUSE installed on the second hard drive, and dual boot for this setup worked fine. Wanted to switch to Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.04 dual boot so I did a Windows system recovery and it appeared to give me back a fresh Windows 7 install. I then go to install Ubuntu 11.04 and the installer informs me I have multiple operating systems already installed. I go to the advanced partitioning option and sure enough Windows 7 is on /sda while openSUSE is still on /sdb. From here I followed this guide (How to dual-boot Linux and Ubuntu with two hard drives) after I had deleted all the openSUSE partitions on /sdb through the Allocate Drive Space tab of the installer. I make the /boot, swap, /, and /home partitions and set the GRUB into the MBR of the second disk (/dev/sdb). Everything installs fine. I reboot, Windows loads automatically, install EasyBCD and add an entry for Ubuntu into the Windows Boot Manager while assigning the type as GRUB2. Reboot the system and it now shows dual booting options for both Windows and Ubuntu. Problem is: while I can use Ubuntu fine when I try to boot into Windows it just gives me a black screen and after a little while the fans start running crazy. If I restart the computer I will sometimes get the message that my system was put into hibernation mode because the temperature got too high (90C) which I presume is in accordance with the fans going crazy. I have linked the output from the Boot Info Script below, any suggestions on how to fix this issue would be greatly appreciated! UPDATED SCRIPT OUTPUT Boot Info Script output: http://paste.ubuntu.com/682152/

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• Java Spotlight Episode 35: JVM Performance and Quality

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Tweet Interview with Vladimir Ivanov, Ivan Krylov, Sergey Kuksenko on the JDK 7 Java Virtual Machine performance and quality. Joining us this week on the Java All Star Developer Panel are Dalibor Topic, Java Free and Open Source Software Ambassador, and Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine, Java EE Developer Advocate. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link: Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News Java 7 Launch Event GlassFish 3.1.1 re-planning done, first RC on July 7th, lots of component updates following customer and community feedback Mojarra 2.1.2 is here, just a little ahead of the GlassFish 3.1.1 release. In other JSF-related news, JSF 2.0 has a first expert draft New OpenJDK Project proposed: JDK 7 Update Events June 20-23 JAX, San Jose, CA June 21 Java + MySQL Webinar at 9:00 AM PDT June 21-23 JaZoon, Zurich, Switzerland June 22nd and 28th GlassFish Webinars (one in Portuguese) June 29-July 2 12th Forum Internatioal Software Livre, Porto Alegre, Brazil July 3, Sao Jose do Rio Preto, Brazil July 5, Brasilia, Brazil (DFJUG) July 6, Goiania, Brazil (GOJava) July 6-10 The Developers Conference, Sao Paulo, Brazil July 7 Java 7 Launch Event live in Redwood Shores, CA; Sao Paulo, BR; London, England. July 9, Joao Pessoa, Brazil (PBJUG) July 11, Natal, Brazil (JavaRN) July 14, Fortaleza, Brazil (CEJUG) July 16, Salvador, Brazil (JavaBahia) July 19, Toledo, Brazil (UNIPAR) July 21, Maringa, Brazil (RedFoot) Feature interview This weeks feature interview is with Vladimir Ivanov, HotSpot JVM Quality Engingeer;  Ivan Krylov, Licensee Engineering;  and Sergey Kuksenko, Java SE Performance Team on the JDK 7 Java Virtual Machine peformance and quality. What's Cool Ongoing OpenJDK Bylaws ratification results Show Transcripts Transcript for this show is available here when available

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• Entity Framework &amp; Transactions

  - by Sudheer Kumar

  There are many instances we might have to use transactions to maintain data consistency. With Entity Framework, it is a little different conceptually. Case 1 – Transaction b/w multiple SaveChanges(): here if you just use a transaction scope, then Entity Framework (EF) will use distributed transactions instead of local transactions. The reason is that, EF closes and opens the connection when ever required only, which means, it used 2 different connections for different SaveChanges() calls. To resolve this, use the following method. Here we are opening a connection explicitly so as not to span across multipel connections.   using (TransactionScope ts = new TransactionScope()) {     context.Connection.Open();     //Operation1 : context.SaveChanges();     //Operation2 :  context.SaveChanges()     //At the end close the connection     ts.Complete(); } catch (Exception ex) {       //Handle Exception } finally {       if (context.Connection.State == ConnectionState.Open)       {            context.Connection.Close();       } }   Case 2 – Transaction between DB & Non-DB operations: For example, assume that you have a table that keeps track of Emails to be sent. Here you want to update certain details like DataSent once if the mail was successfully sent by the e-mail client. Email eml = GetEmailToSend(); eml.DateSent = DateTime.Now; using (TransactionScope ts = new TransactionScope()) {    //Update DB    context.saveChanges();   //if update is successful, send the email using smtp client   smtpClient.Send();   //if send was successful, then commit   ts.Complete(); }   Here since you are dealing with a single context.SaveChanges(), you just need to use the TransactionScope, just before saving the context only.   Hope this was helpful!

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• Book Review - Programming Windows Azure by Siriram Krishnan

  - by BuckWoody

  As part of my professional development, I’ve created a list of books to read throughout the year, starting in June of 2011. This a review of the first one, called Programming Windows Azure by Siriram Krishnan. You can find my entire list of books I’m reading for my career here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/06/07/head-in-the-clouds-eyes-on-the-books.aspx  Why I Chose This Book: As part of my learning style, I try to read multiple books about a single subject. I’ve found that at least 3 books are necessary to get the right amount of information to me. This is a “technical” work, meaning that it deals with technology and not business, writing or other facets of my career. I’ll have a mix of all of those as I read along. I chose this work in addition to others I’ve read since it covers everything from an introduction to more advanced topics in a single book. It also has some practical examples of actually working with the product, particularly on storage. Although it’s dated, many examples normally translate. I also saw that it had pretty good reviews. What I learned: I learned a great deal about storage, and many useful code snippets. I do think that there could have been more of a focus on the application fabric - but of course that wasn’t as mature a feature when this book was written. I learned some great architecture examples, and in one section I learned more about encryption. In that example, however, I would rather have seen the examples go the other way - the book focused on moving data from on-premise to Azure storage in an encrypted fashion. Using the Application Fabric I would rather see sensitive data left in a hybrid fashion on premise, and connect to for the Azure application. Even so, the examples were very useful. If you’re looking for a good “starter” Azure book, this is a good choice. I also recommend the last chapter as a quick read for a DBA, or Database Administrator. It’s not very long, but useful. Note that the limits described are incorrect - which is one of the dangers of reading a book about any cloud offering. The services offered are updated so quickly that the information is in constant danger of being “stale”. Even so, I found this a useful book, which I believe will help me work with Azure better. Raw Notes: I take notes as I read, calling that process “reading with a pencil”. I find that when I do that I pay attention better, and record some things that I need to know later. I’ll take these notes, categorize them into a OneNote notebook that I synchronize in my Live.com account, and that way I can search them from anywhere. I can even read them on the web, since the Live.com has a OneNote program built in. Note that these are the raw notes, so they might not make a lot of sense out of context - I include them here so you can watch my though process. Programming Windows Azure by Siriram Krishnan: Learning about how to select applications suitable for Distributed Technology. Application Fabric gets the least attention; probably because it was newer at the time. Very clear (Chapter One) Good foundation Background and history, but not too much I normally arrange my descriptions differently, starting with the use-cases and moving to physicality, but this difference helps me. Interesting that I am reading this using Safari Books Online, which uses many of these concepts. Taught me some new aspects of a Hypervisor – very low-level information about the Azure Fabric (not to be confused with the Application Fabric feature) (Chapter Two) Good detail of what is included in the SDK. Even more is available now. CS = Cloud Service (Chapter 3) Place Storage info in the configuration file, since it can be streamed in-line with a running app. Ditto for logging, and keep separated configs for staging and testing. Easy-switch in and switch out.  (Chapter 4) There are two Runtime API’s, one of external and one for internal. Realizing how powerful this paradigm really is. Some places seem light, and to drop off but perhaps that’s best. Managing API is not charged, which is nice. I don’t often think about the price, until it comes to an actual deployment (Chapter 5) Csmanage is something I want to dig into deeper. API requires package moves to Blob storage first, so it needs a URL. Csmanage equivalent can be written in Unix scripting using openssl. Upgrades are possible, and you use the upgradeDomainCount attribute in the Service-Definition.csdef file  Always use a low-privileged account to test on the dev fabric, since Windows Azure runs in partial trust. Full trust is available, but can be dangerous and must be well-thought out. (Chapter 6) Learned how to run full CMD commands in a web window – not that you would ever do that, but it was an interesting view into those links. This leads to a discussion on hosting other runtimes (such as Java or PHP) in Windows Azure. I got an expanded view on this process, although this is where the book shows its age a little. Books can be a problem for Cloud Computing for this reason – things just change too quickly. Windows Azure storage is not eventually consistent – it is instantly consistent with multi-phase commit. Plumbing for this is internal, not required to code that. (Chapter 7) REST API makes the service interoperable, hybrid, and consistent across code architectures. Nicely done. Use affinity groups to keep data and code together. Side note: e-book readers need a common “notes” feature. There’s a decent quick description of REST in this chapter. Learned about CloudDrive code – PowerShell sample that mounts Blob storage as a local provider. Works against Dev fabric by default, can be switched to Account. Good treatment in the storage chapters on the differences between using Dev storage and Azure storage. These can be mitigated. No, blobs are not of any size or number. Not a good statement (Chapter 8) Blob storage is probably Azure’s closest play to Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas). Blob change operations must be authenticated, even when public. Chapters on storage are pretty in-depth. Queue Messages are base-64 encoded (Chapter 9) The visibility timeout ensures processing of message in a disconnected system. Order is not guaranteed for a message, so if you need that set an increasing number in the queue mechanism. While Queues are accessible via REST, they are not public and are secured by default. Interesting – the header for a queue request includes an estimated count. This can be useful to create more worker roles in a dynamic system. Each Entity (row) in the Azure Table service is atomic – all or nothing. (Chapter 10) An entity can have up to 255 Properties  Use “ID” for the class to indicate the key value, or use the [DataServiceKey] Attribute.  LINQ makes working with the Azure Table Service much easier, although Interop is certainly possible. Good description on the process of selecting the Partition and Row Key.  When checking for continuation tokens for pagination, include logic that falls out of the check in case you are at the last page.  On deleting a storage object, it is instantly unavailable, however a background process is dispatched to perform the physical deletion. So if you want to re-create a storage object with the same name, add retry logic into the code. Interesting approach to deleting an index entity without having to read it first – create a local entity with the same keys and apply it to the Azure system regardless of change-state.  Although the “Indexes” description is a little vague, it’s interesting to see a Folding and Stemming discussion a-la the Porter Stemming Algorithm. (Chapter 11)  Presents a better discussion of indexes (at least inverted indexes) later in the chapter. Great treatment for DBA’s in Chapter 11. We need to work on getting secondary indexes in Table storage. There is a limited form of transactions called “Entity Group Transactions” that, although they have conditions, makes a transactional system more possible. Concurrency also becomes an issue, but is handled well if you’re using Data Services in .NET. It watches the Etag and allows you to take action appropriately. I do not recommend using Azure as a location for secure backups. In fact, I would rather have seen the examples in (Chapter 12) go the other way, showing how data could be brought back to a local store as a DR or HA strategy. Good information on cryptography and so on even so. Chapter seems out of place, and should be combined with the Blob chapter.  (Chapter 13) on SQL Azure is dated, although the base concepts are OK.  Nice example of simple ADO.NET access to a SQL Azure (or any SQL Server Really) database.  

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• Gparted resize of an extended partition fails with error "can't have overlapping partitions".

  - by Marcus

  I just decided to install Ubuntu 12.04 alongside Windows 7 on my Dell laptop. However I didn't do this manually but instead used the "Install Ubuntu alongside Windows 7" option during the installation. Now the partition that Ubuntu runs in has very little space and I am getting warning messages. I'm trying to use gparted 0.12.1-5 (via a live CD) to give Windows less space and give Ubuntu more. I've managed to remove 100GB from the Windows partition so I now have some unallocated space between Windows and Ubuntu. This is what it looks like inside Ubuntu (not using the live CD, since it won't let me mount a USB to save a screenshot): So first I take sda4 (extended?) and resize it to the left so it takes up all the unallocated space. Then I resize sda5 (ext4) as well so it takes up all the new space. However, when I hit apply, it fails on the first action (resizing sd4) with the error message can't have overlapping partitions. Any ideas as to why this happens? I also tried resizing sda4 by just a few MB so that it definitely didn't overlap anything, but I still got the same error message. To clarify, I am using gparted from the LiveCD, I just took the screenshot from Ubuntu. I couldn't attach the details file containing the error information from gparted because I can't mount a USB drive when I'm running from the LiveCD. I'm tried following the guide on the gparted website but it says Invalid argument or something like that. If the gparted details are needed, I may need some hints on how to solve the USB issue as well. :)

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• Does HTML 5 &ldquo;Rich vs. Reach&rdquo; a False Choice?

  - by andrewbrust

  The competition between the Web and proprietary rich platforms, including Windows, Mac OS, iPhone/iPad, Adobe’s Flash/AIR and Microsoft’s Silverlight, is not new. But with the emergence of HTML 5 and imminent support for it in the next release of the major Web browsers, the battle is heating up. And with the announcements made Wednesday at Google's I/O conference, it's getting kicked up yet another notch. The impact of this platform battle on companies in the media and advertising world, and the developers who serve them, is significant. The most prominent question is whether video and rich media online will shift towards pure HTML and away from plug-ins like Flash and Silverlight. In fact, certain features in HTML 5 make it suitable for development for line of business applications as well, further threatening those plug-in technologies. So what's the deal? Is this real or hype? To answer that question, I've done my own research into HTML 5's features and talked to several media-focused, New York area developers to get their opinions. I present my findings to you in this post. Before bearing down into HTML 5 specifics and practitioners’ quotes, let's set the context. To understand what HTML 5 can do, take a look at this video of Sports Illustrated’s HTML 5 prototype. This should start to get you bought into the idea that HTML 5 could be a game-changer. Next, if you happen to have installed the beta version of Google's Chrome 5 browser, take a look at the page linked to below, and in that page, click on any of the game thumbnails to see what's possible, without a plug-in, in this brave new world. (Note, although the instructions for each game tell you to press the A key to start, press the Z key instead.). Here's the link: http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara As an adjunct to what's enabled by HTML 5, consider the various transforms that are part of CSS 3. If you're running Safari as your browser, the following link will showcase this live; if not, you'll see a bitmap that will give you an idea of what's possible: http://webkit.org/blog/386/3d-transforms Are you starting to get the picture (literally)? What has up until now required browser plug-ins and other patches to HTML, most typically Flash, will soon be renderable, natively, in all major browsers. Moreover, it's looking likely that developers will be able to deliver such content and experiences in these browsers using one base of markup and script code (using straight JavaScript and/or jQuery), without resorting to browser-specific code and workarounds. If you're skeptical of this, I wouldn't blame you, especially with respect to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. However, i can tell you with confidence that even Microsoft is dedicated to full-on HTML 5 support in version 9 of that browser, which is currently under development. So what’s new in HTML 5, specifically, that makes sites like this possible?  The specification documents go into deep detail, and there’s no sense in rehashing them here, but a summary is probably in order.   Here is a non-authoritative, but useful, list of the major new feature areas in HTML 5: 2D drawing capabilities and 3D transforms. 2D drawing instructions can be embedded statically into a Web page; application interactivity and animation can be achieved through script.  As mentioned above, 3D transforms are technically part of version 3 of the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) spec, rather than HTML 5, but they can nonetheless be thought of as part of the bundle.  They allow for rendering of 3D images and animations that, together with 2D drawing, make HTML-based games much more feasible than they are presently, as the links above demonstrate. Embedded audio and video. A media player can appear directly in a rendered Web page, using HTML markup and no plug-ins. Alternately, player controls can be hidden and the content can play automatically. Major enhancements to form-based input. This includes such things as specification of required fields, embedding of text “hints” into a control, limiting valid input on a field to dates, email addresses or a list of values.  There’s more to this, but the gist is that line-of-business applications, with complicated input and data validation, are supported directly Offline caching, local storage and client-side SQL database. These facilities allow Web applications to function more like native apps, even if no internet connection is available. User-defined data. Data (or metadata – data about data) can easily be embedded statically and/or retrieved and updated with Javascript code. This avoids having to embed that data in a separate file, or within script code. Taken together, these features position HTML to compete with, and perhaps overtake, Adobe’s Flash/AIR (and Microsoft’s Silverlight) as a viable Web platform for media, RIAs (rich internet applications – apps that function more like desktop software than Web sites) and interactive Web content, including games. What do players in the media world think about this?  From the embedded video above, we know what Sports Illustrated (and, therefore, Time Warner) think.  Hulu, the major Internet site for broadcast TV content, is on record as saying HTML5 video does not pass muster with them, at least not yet.  YouTube, on the other hand, already has an experimental HTML 5-based version of their site.  TechCrunch has reported that NetFlix is flirting with HTML 5 too, especially as it pertains to embedded browsers in TV-based devices.  And the New York Times’ Web site now embeds some video clips without resorting to Flash.  They have to – otherwise iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users couldn’t see them in the Mobile Safari browser. What do media-focused developers think about all this?  I talked to several to get their opinions. Michael Pinto is CEO and Founder of Very Memorable Design whose primary focus has been to help marketing directors get traction online.  The firm’s client roster includes the likes Time, Inc., Scholastic and PBS.  Pinto predicts that “More and more microsites that were done entirely in Flash will be done more and more using jQuery. I can also see slideshows and video now being done without Flash. However if you needed to create a game or highly interactive activity Flash would still be the way to go for the web.” A dissenting view comes from Jesse Erlbaum, CEO of The Erlbaum Group, LLC, which serves numerous clients in the magazine publishing sector.  When I asked Erlbaum whether he thought HTML 5 and jQuery/JavaScript would steal significant market share from Flash, he responded “Not at all!  In particular, not for media and advertising customers!  These sectors are not generally in the business of making highly functional applications, which is the one place where HTML5/jQuery/etc really shines.” Ironically, Pinto’s firm is a heavy user of Flash for its projects and Erlbaum’s develops atop the “LAMP” (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl) stack.  For whatever reason, each firm seems to see the other’s toolset as a more viable choice.  But both agree that the developer tool story around HTML 5 is deficient.  Pinto explains “What’s lost with [HTML 5 and Javascript] techniques is that there isn’t a single widely favored easy-to-use tool of choice for authoring. So with Flash you can get up and running right away and not worry about what is different from one browser to the next.“  Erlbaum agrees, saying: “HTML5/Javascript lacks a sophisticated integrated development environment (IDE) which is an essential part of Flash.  If what someone is trying to make is primarily animation, it's a waste of time…to do this in Javascript.  It can be done much more easily in Flash, and with greater cross-browser compatibility and consistency due to the ubiquity of Flash.” Adobe (maker of Flash since its 2005 acquisition of Macromedia) likely agrees.  And for better or worse, they’ve decided to address this shortcoming of HTML 5, even at risk of diminishing their Flash platfrom. Yesterday Adobe announced that their hugely popular Deamweaver Web design authoring tool would directly support HTML 5 and CSS 3 development.  In fact, the Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 HTML5 Pack is downloadable now from Adobe Labs. Maybe Adobe is bowing to pressure from ardent Web professionals like Scott Kellum, Lead Designer at Channel V Media,  a digital and offline branding firm, serving the media and marketing sectors, among others.  Kellum told me that HTML 5 “…will definitely move people away from Flash. It has many of the same functionalities with faster load times and better accessibility. HTML5 will help Flash as well: with the new caching methods you can now even run Flash apps offline.” Although all three Web developers I interviewed would agree that Flash is still required for more sophisticated applications, Kellum seems to have put his finger on why HTML 5 may nonetheless dominate.  In his view, much of the Web development out there has little need for high-end capabilities: “Most people want to add a little punch to a navigation bar or some video and now you can get the biggest bang for your buck with HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript.” I’ve already mentioned that Google’s ongoing I/O conference, at the Moscone West center in San Francisco, is driving the HTML 5 news cycle, big time.  And Google made many announcements of their own, including the open sourcing of their VP8 video codec, new enterprise-oriented capabilities for its App Engine cloud offering, and the creation of the Chrome Web Store, which the company says will make it easier to find and “install” Web applications, in a fashion similar to  the way users procure native apps on various mobile platforms. HTML 5 looks to be disruptive, especially to the media world.  And even if the technology ends up disappointing, the chatter around it alone is causing big changes in the technology world.  If the richness it promises delivers, then magazine publishers and non-text digital advertisers may indeed have a platform for creating compelling content that loads quickly, is standards-based and will render identically in (the newest versions of) all major Web browsers.  Can this development in the digital arena save the titans of the print world?  I can’t predict, but it’s going to be fun to watch, and the competitive innovation from all players in both industries will likely be immense.

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• Permission issues causes Unity Segmentation fault

  - by Dj Gilcrease

  I upgraded from 13.04 to 13.10 and I can boot to the unity-greeter and login just fine, but after login I just get a black screen with a cursor. I have tried following http://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI http://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver and the manual install of the downloaded AMD drivers. All have the same affect. Also I have read Black screen after login with cursor I get a black screen after logging in ubuntu 13.04 black screen after login Ubuntu 13.10 - Black screen after login session Ubuntu 13.04 - Black screen with unresponsive cursor Upgrade to Ubuntu 13.04 Problem - Boots into Blank Black Screen All of which were no further help then the two support articles about ATI drivers So I switched back to the default drivers and went a little further into debugging, when I do ctrl+alt+F1 and login and try unity --debug > unity_start.log then ctrl+alt+F8 the screen stays black with a cursor and when I switch back ctrl+alt+F1 the contents of the log output are http://pastebin.com/rdQG4Hb0 However when I try sudo unity --debug > unity_start_root.log then ctrl+alt+F8, unity starts and the output of the log is http://pastebin.com/Yv4RD2j7 The fact that it starts as root tells be it is either a permissions issue of some required file or there is some setting that is specific to my user that is causing the SIGSEGV. So to narrow this down I activated the guest account and tried to login and got the same black screens with only a mouse cursor, so this tells me that it is not a configuration issue, but a permissions issue, so how do I narrow down which file has the wrong permissions? Also is there anything further that may help debug this issue? Ok after a few more hours of googling I found that if I add myself to the video group I can login and see the desktop, but there are lots of other permission related issues, so I am thinking something went wonky with PolicyKit during the upgrade, is there a way to reset PolicyKit settings for a user?

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

  - by Dylan Smith

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

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• Page Zipper Unpacks Multi-Page Articles for Single-Page Display

  - by ETC

  It’s annoying when you find an article worth reading but it’s diced up into little segments. Skip clicking next-next-next to read; use Page Zipper to unpack multi-page articles and read them all on one page. Page Zipper is available as both a bookmarklet and a Firefox extension. You simply click on the bookmarklet (or extension icon) when you’re looking at a segmented article or gallery. Page Zipper renders the page with all the individual pages laid out for easy reading. No more clicking next a dozen times to get to the end of the article or gallery. In addition unpacking long articles it also rocks keyboard shortcuts for viewing galleries and automatically resizes images to best-fit your browser window. Check the video above to see the article and gallery features in action. Visit the link below to read more and grab a copy of Page Zipper for your browser. Page Zipper [PrintWhatYouLike] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Get Amazing Color from Photos in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? Page Zipper Unpacks Multi-Page Articles for Single-Page Display Minty Bug: Build an FM Bug Inside a Mint Container Get the MakeUseOf eBook Guide to Hacker Proofing Your PC Sync Your Windows Computer with Your Ubuntu One Account [Desktop Client] Awesome 10 Meter Curved Touchscreen at the University of Groningen [Video] TV Antenna Helper Makes HDTV Antenna Calibration a Snap

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• Using Table-Valued Parameters With SQL Server Reporting Services

  - by Jesse

  In my last post I talked about using table-valued parameters to pass a list of integer values to a stored procedure without resorting to using comma-delimited strings and parsing out each value into a TABLE variable. In this post I’ll extend the “Customer Transaction Summary” report example to see how we might leverage this same stored procedure from within an SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) report. I’ve worked with SSRS off and on for the past several years and have generally found it to be a very useful tool for building nice-looking reports for end users quickly and easily. That said, I’ve been frustrated by SSRS from time to time when seemingly simple things are difficult to accomplish or simply not supported at all. I thought that using table-valued parameters from within a SSRS report would be simple, but unfortunately I was wrong. Customer Transaction Summary Example Let’s take the “Customer Transaction Summary” report example from the last post and try to plug that same stored procedure into an SSRS report. Our report will have three parameters: Start Date – beginning of the date range for which the report will summarize customer transactions End Date – end of the date range for which the report will summarize customer transactions Customer Ids – One or more customer Ids representing the customers that will be included in the report The simplest way to get started with this report will be to create a new dataset and point it at our Customer Transaction Summary report stored procedure (note that I’m using SSRS 2012 in the screenshots below, but there should be little to no difference with SSRS 2008): When you initially create this dataset the SSRS designer will try to invoke the stored procedure to determine what the parameters and output fields are for you automatically. As part of this process the following dialog pops-up: Obviously I can’t use this dialog to specify a value for the ‘@customerIds’ parameter since it is of the IntegerListTableType user-defined type that we created in the last post. Unfortunately this really throws the SSRS designer for a loop, and regardless of what combination of Data Type, Pass Null Value, or Parameter Value I used here, I kept getting this error dialog with the message, "Operand type clash: nvarchar is incompatible with IntegerListTableType". This error message makes some sense considering that the nvarchar type is indeed incompatible with the IntegerListTableType, but there’s little clue given as to how to remedy the situation. I don’t know for sure, but I think that behind-the-scenes the SSRS designer is trying to give the @customerIds parameter an nvarchar-typed SqlParameter which is causing the issue. When I first saw this error I figured that this might just be a limitation of the dataset designer and that I’d be able to work around the issue by manually defining the parameters. I know that there are some special steps that need to be taken when invoking a stored procedure with a table-valued parameter from ADO .NET, so I figured that I might be able to use some custom code embedded in the report  to create a SqlParameter instance with the needed properties and value to make this work, but the “Operand type clash" error message persisted. The Text Query Approach Just because we’re using a stored procedure to create the dataset for this report doesn’t mean that we can’t use the ‘Text’ Query Type option and construct an EXEC statement that will invoke the stored procedure. In order for this to work properly the EXEC statement will also need to declare and populate an IntegerListTableType variable to pass into the stored procedure. Before I go any further I want to make one point clear: this is a really ugly hack and it makes me cringe to do it. Simply put, I strongly feel that it should not be this difficult to use a table-valued parameter with SSRS. With that said, let’s take a look at what we’ll have to do to make this work. Manually Define Parameters First, we’ll need to manually define the parameters for report by right-clicking on the ‘Parameters’ folder in the ‘Report Data’ window. We’ll need to define the ‘@startDate’ and ‘@endDate’ as simple date parameters. We’ll also create a parameter called ‘@customerIds’ that will be a mutli-valued Integer parameter: In the ‘Available Values’ tab we’ll point this parameter at a simple dataset that just returns the CustomerId and CustomerName of each row in the Customers table of the database or manually define a handful of Customer Id values to make available when the report runs. Once we have these parameters properly defined we can take another crack at creating the dataset that will invoke the ‘rpt_CustomerTransactionSummary’ stored procedure. This time we’ll choose the ‘Text’ query type option and put the following into the ‘Query’ text area: 1: exec('declare @customerIdList IntegerListTableType ' + @customerIdInserts + 2: ' EXEC rpt_CustomerTransactionSummary 3: @startDate=''' + @startDate + ''', 4: @endDate='''+ @endDate + ''', 5: @customerIds=@customerIdList')   By using the ‘Text’ query type we can enter any arbitrary SQL that we we want to and then use parameters and string concatenation to inject pieces of that query at run time. It can be a bit tricky to parse this out at first glance, but from the SSRS designer’s point of view this query defines three parameters: @customerIdInserts – This will be a Text parameter that we use to define INSERT statements that will populate the @customerIdList variable that is being declared in the SQL. This parameter won’t actually ever get passed into the stored procedure. I’ll go into how this will work in a bit. @startDate – This is a simple date parameter that will get passed through directly into the @startDate parameter of the stored procedure on line 3. @endDate – This is another simple data parameter that will get passed through into the @endDate parameter of the stored procedure on line 4. At this point the dataset designer will be able to correctly parse the query and should even be able to detect the fields that the stored procedure will return without needing to specify any values for query when prompted to. Once the dataset has been correctly defined we’ll have a @customerIdInserts parameter listed in the ‘Parameters’ tab of the dataset designer. We need to define an expression for this parameter that will take the values selected by the user for the ‘@customerIds’ parameter that we defined earlier and convert them into INSERT statements that will populate the @customerIdList variable that we defined in our Text query. In order to do this we’ll need to add some custom code to our report using the ‘Report Properties’ dialog: Any custom code defined in the Report Properties dialog gets embedded into the .rdl of the report itself and (unfortunately) must be written in VB .NET. Note that you can also add references to custom .NET assemblies (which could be written in any language), but that’s outside the scope of this post so we’ll stick with the “quick and dirty” VB .NET approach for now. Here’s the VB .NET code (note that any embedded code that you add here must be defined in a static/shared function, though you can define as many functions as you want): 1: Public Shared Function BuildIntegerListInserts(ByVal variableName As String, ByVal paramValues As Object()) As String 2: Dim insertStatements As New System.Text.StringBuilder() 3: For Each paramValue As Object In paramValues 4: insertStatements.AppendLine(String.Format("INSERT {0} VALUES ({1})", variableName, paramValue)) 5: Next 6: Return insertStatements.ToString() 7: End Function   This method takes a variable name and an array of objects. We use an array of objects here because that is how SSRS will pass us the values that were selected by the user at run-time. The method uses a StringBuilder to construct INSERT statements that will insert each value from the object array into the provided variable name. Once this method has been defined in the custom code for the report we can go back into the dataset designer’s Parameters tab and update the expression for the ‘@customerIdInserts’ parameter by clicking on the button with the “function” symbol that appears to the right of the parameter value. We’ll set the expression to: 1: =Code.BuildIntegerListInserts("@customerIdList ", Parameters!customerIds.Value)   In order to invoke our custom code method we simply need to invoke “Code.<method name>” and pass in any needed parameters. The first parameter needs to match the name of the IntegerListTableType variable that we used in the EXEC statement of our query. The second parameter will come from the Value property of the ‘@customerIds’ parameter (this evaluates to an object array at run time). Finally, we’ll need to edit the properties of the ‘@customerIdInserts’ parameter on the report to mark it as a nullable internal parameter so that users aren’t prompted to provide a value for it when running the report. Limitations And Final Thoughts When I first started looking into the text query approach described above I wondered if there might be an upper limit to the size of the string that can be used to run a report. Obviously, the size of the actual query could increase pretty dramatically if you have a parameter that has a lot of potential values or you need to support several different table-valued parameters in the same query. I tested the example Customer Transaction Summary report with 1000 selected customers without any issue, but your mileage may vary depending on how much data you might need to pass into your query. If you think that the text query hack is a lot of work just to use a table-valued parameter, I agree! I think that it should be a lot easier than this to use a table-valued parameter from within SSRS, but so far I haven’t found a better way. It might be possible to create some custom .NET code that could build the EXEC statement for a given set of parameters automatically, but exploring that will have to wait for another post. For now, unless there’s a really compelling reason or requirement to use table-valued parameters from SSRS reports I would probably stick with the tried and true “join-multi-valued-parameter-to-CSV-and-split-in-the-query” approach for using mutli-valued parameters in a stored procedure.

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• Add a Search Box to the Drop-Down Tab List in Firefox

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you have a lot of tabs open no matter what time of day it is and find sorting through the tabs list frustrating? Then get control back with the List All Tabs Menu extension for Firefox. Before If you have a large number of tabs open using the “Tab List Menu” can start to become a little awkward. You can use your mouse’s middle button to scroll through the list or the tiny arrow button at the bottom but there needs to be a better way to deal with this. After Once you have installed the extension you will notice two differences in the “Tab List Menu”. There will be a search box available and a nice scrollbar for those really long lists. A closer look at the search box and scrollbar setup… Depending on your style you can use the scrollbar to look for a particular page or enter a search term and watch that list become extremely manageable. A closer look at our much shorter list after conducting a search. Definitely not hard to find what we were looking for at all. Conclusion If you are someone who has lots of tabs open at once throughout the day then the List All Tabs Menu extension might be the perfect tool to help you sort and manage those tabs. Links Download the List All Tabs Menu extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Organize Your Firefox Search Engines Into FoldersAdd Search Forms to the Firefox Search BarGain Access to a Search Box in Google ChromeWhy Doesn’t Tab Work for Drop-down Controls in Firefox on OS X?Quick Tip: Spell Check Firefox Text Input Fields TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data Geek Parents – Did you try Parental Controls in Windows 7? Change DNS servers on the fly with DNS Jumper Live PDF Searches PDF Files and Ebooks Converting Mp4 to Mp3 Easily Use Quick Translator to Translate Text in 50 Languages (Firefox)

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• Have you changed your coding style recently? It wasn't hard wasn't it?

  - by Ernelli

  I've used to write code in C-like languages using the Allman style, regarding the position of braces. void foo(int bar) { if(bar) { //... } else return; //... } Now the last two years I have been working mostly in JavaScript and when we adopted jslint as part of our QA process, I had to adopt to the Crockford way of doing things. So I had to change the coding style into: function foo(bar) { if (bar) { //... } else { return; } //... } Now apart from comparing a C/C++ example with JavaScript, I must say that my JavaScript-Crockford-coding style now has spread into my C/C++/Java coding when I revise old projects and work on code in those languages that for example has no problem with single line statements or ambiguous newline insertion. I used to consider the later format very awkward, I have never had any problems with adapting my coding style to the one chosen by my predecessors, except for when I was a Junior developer mostly being the solve developer on legacy projects and the first thing I did was to change the indenting style. But now after a couple of months I consider the Allman style a little bit too spacious and feel more comfortable with the K&R-like style. Have you changed your coding style during your career?

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• Accessing and Updating Data in ASP.NET: Filtering Data Using a CheckBoxList

  Filtering Database Data with Parameters, an earlier installment in this article series, showed how to filter the data returned by ASP.NET's data source controls. In a nutshell, the data source controls can include parameterized queries whose parameter values are defined via parameter controls. For example, the SqlDataSource can include a parameterized SelectCommand, such as: SELECT * FROM Books WHERE Price > @Price. Here, @Price is a parameter; the value for a parameter can be defined declaratively using a parameter control. ASP.NET offers a variety of parameter controls, including ones that use hard-coded values, ones that retrieve values from the querystring, and ones that retrieve values from session, and others. Perhaps the most useful parameter control is the ControlParameter, which retrieves its value from a Web control on the page. Using the ControlParameter we can filter the data returned by the data source control based on the end user's input. While the ControlParameter works well with most types of Web controls, it does not work as expected with the CheckBoxList control. The ControlParameter is designed to retrieve a single property value from the specified Web control, but the CheckBoxList control does not have a property that returns all of the values of its selected items in a form that the CheckBoxList control can use. Moreover, if you are using the selected CheckBoxList items to query a database you'll quickly find that SQL does not offer out of the box functionality for filtering results based on a user-supplied list of filter criteria. The good news is that with a little bit of effort it is possible to filter data based on the end user's selections in a CheckBoxList control. This article starts with a look at how to get SQL to filter data based on a user-supplied, comma-delimited list of values. Next, it shows how to programmatically construct a comma-delimited list that represents the selected CheckBoxList values and pass that list into the SQL query. Finally, we'll explore creating a custom parameter control to handle this logic declaratively. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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• Best Practices for MVC Architecture

  - by Mystere Man

  There are a number of questions on StackOverflow regard MVC best practices, but most of those seem to revolve around things like using Dependancy Injection, or creating helper functions, or do's and don'ts of what to do in views and controllers. My question is more about how to architect an MVC application. For example, we are encouraged to use DI with the Repository pattern to decouple data access from the controller, however very little is said on HOW to do that specifically for MVC. Where would we place the Repository classes, for instance? They don't seem to be model related specifically, since the model should likewise be relatively decoupled from the actual data access technologies. A second question involves how to structure the layers or tiers. Most example applications (Nerd dinner, Music Store, etc..) all seem to use a single tier, 2 layer approach (not counting tests) that typically has controllers directly calling L2S or EF code. If I want to create a multi-tier/layer aplication what are some of the best practices there in regards to MVC? This question is one-part standard q-a, but another part best-practices, so it could go either here or programmers.se, I am marking it CW. If you feel it would be better suited to programmers.se then it can be migrated. EDIT: What happened to the Community Wiki option? It seems to be gone.

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• Lucky Kid Gets Playable Angry Birds Cake [Video]

  - by ETC

  If you’re a six-year-old that loves Angry Birds we’re not sure you could get a better cake than a playable Angry Birds mock-up. It’s one thing to make a static Angry Birds cake, that takes a certain level of cake baking skill. It’s another thing altogether to make a cake that is a playable mock-up of the game, complete with slingshot and avian projectiles. It’s become a family tradition that I make increasingly ridiculous birthday cakes for my kids each year. So with my little boy Ben turning 6-years-old over the weekend, and appreciating his love of Angry Birds, I thought I’d have a shot a making him a playable Angry Birds birthday cake with working catapult and iced birds as ammunition. [...] It took 10 hours to make and 2 minutes to destroy. Angry Birds Cake [Electric Pig via Mashable] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Lucky Kid Gets Playable Angry Birds Cake [Video] See the Lord of the Rings Epic from the Perspective of Mordor [eBook] Smart Taskbar Is a Thumb Friendly Android Task Launcher Comix is an Awesome Comics Archive Viewer for Linux Get the MakeUseOf eBook Guide to Speeding Up Windows for Free Need Tech Support? Call the Star Wars Help Desk! [Video Classic]

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• Podcasting vs Stack Overflow vs Geekswithblogs

  - by MarkPearl

  For a few years now I have been looking for effective ways to be involved in the “community”. While there are a few community programming events in my area (Johannesberg), there isn’t too much face to face stuff – which has caused me to turn to the internet. My internet attempts have been varied – at first I took the passive approach of listening to tech podcasts. This was great for a while, but soon the content became semi-repetitive and a little boring. It seemed that the podcasts I was listening to all went round the same themes and speakers and while I am still a keen listener to several tech podcasts – it didn’t quench my thirst. So I began to be a bit more active – starting with stack overflow – where I would scan the site for questions that were in the realm of my ability to answer. It worked for a while but soon it began to be discouraging – there seems to be so many people that know so much more than me and are quicker at typing that I felt fairly ineffective. So while I still use Stack Overflow when I am in a pickle and need some help – it feels more like me taking from the community than giving anything. Which brought me to Geeks with blogs. Till I found GWB I hadn’t felt like I was an active part of a community. I had blogged before on Blogspot and Wordpress but hadn’t felt associated to the community. Now when I get a comment from someone on one of my GWB posts either thanking me or adding a bit more or correcting me, it makes me feel like I am contributing to a community. So well done GWB. Thanks for making a spot that makes me feel at home!

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• Aging vs. Coding Skills

  - by Renan Malke Stigliani

  A little background, since it can be part of my point fo view. I'm a C#/Java programmer with age of 23, coding since my 18's. I started studying C and working with Cobol, and after 1 year I quickly moved to C#/Java Web Development, and have worked with it in about 3/4 companies. (I've just moved again) In my (brief) professional career I encountered some older programmers, all the times it was very hard to work with them, since I was way better programmer than they. And it is not about just the language skills, some of them had seriously problems understanding basic logic. Now I wonder how theese programmer get jobs on the market since (I imagine) they have more expenses, and thus have to make more money, and are really counter-productives. In theese examples, others project member have to constantly keep stoping for helping them out. All the times, they eventually quit... So I wonder... May the aging process slow down the learning rate and logic thinking? Does the programmer has to, or at least should, move to a management area before getting old? Please, my intention is not to be disrespectful with older persons. I am fully aware that this is NOT the case of all older programmers, I often see around very good old programmers on the net, I just never met them for close.

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• On contract work, obligations to said contract, and looking out for yourself…

  - by jlnorsworthy

  Without boring you all with details, my last two contract assignments were cut short; I was given 3 days notice on one, and 4 weeks notice on the other. Neither of these were due to performance – they both basically came down budget issues. On my second contract, I got the feeling that I may not have been a great place to stay for the duration of my contract. Because of money/time spent getting me in the door, and the possible negative effect of my employer/recruiter, I decided to stay at least for a few months (and start looking several weeks before the end of my supposedly “extendable” contract). These experiences have left me a little wary of contract work. It seems that if I land a bad contract, that my recruiter would take a hit (reputation or otherwise) if I quickly found another job. But on the other hand, the client company won’t think twice of ending the contract early for any reason. I know that the counter argument to this is “maybe your recruiter shouldn’t have put you into a crappy assignment”… either way, it seems that since I am relying on him to provide me with work, that I should try to not damage his reputation with client companies. I’m basically brand new to contracting (these were my first two contracts) so these concerns are new to me. TLDR: Is contract work, by its very nature, largely unstable? Am I worried too much about my recruiter? Should I be quicker to start looking for a new job even after just weeks at a new company (when the environment seems unstable)? If so, do I look through my recruiter or just find another position by any means necessary?

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