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• Kill a tree, save your website? Content strategy in action, part III

  - by Roger Hart

  A lot has been written about how driving content strategy from within an organisation is hard. And that's true. Red Gate is pretty receptive to new ideas, so although I've not had a total walk in the park, it's been a hike with charming scenery. But I'm one of the lucky ones. Lots of people are involved in content, and depending on your organisation some of those people might be the kind who'll gleefully call themselves "stakeholders". People holding a stake generally want to stick it through something's heart and bury it at a crossroads. Winning them over is not always easy. (Richard Ingram has made a nice visual summary of how this can feel - Content strategy Snakes & ladders - pdf ) So yes, a lot of content strategy advocates are having a hard time. And sure, we've got a nice opportunity to get together and have a hug and a cry, but in the interim we could use a hand. What to do? My preferred approach is, I'll confess, brutal. I'd like nothing so much as to take a scorched earth approach to our website. Burn it, salt the ground, and build the new one right: focusing on clearly delineated business and user content goals, and instrumented so we can tell if we're doing it right. I'm never getting buy-in for that, but a boy can dream. So how about just getting buy-in for some small, tenable improvements? Easier, but still non-trivial. I sat down for a chat with our marketing and design guys. It seemed like a good place to start, even if they weren't up for my "Ctrl-A + Delete"  solution. We talked through some of this stuff, and we pretty much agreed that our content is a bit more broken than we'd ideally like. But to get everybody on board, the problems needed visibility. Doing a visual content inventory Print out the internet. Make a Wall Of Content. Seriously. If you've already done a content inventory, you know your architecture, and you know the scale of the problem. But it's quite likely that very few other people do. So make it big and visual. I'm going to carbon hell, but it seems to be working. This morning, I printed out a tiny, tiny part of our website: the non-support content pertaining to SQL Compare I made big, visual, A3 blowups of each page, and covered a wall with them. A page per web page, spread over something like 6M x 2M, with metrics, right in front of people. Even if nobody reads it (and they are doing) the sheer scale is shocking. 53 pages, all told. Some are redundant, some outdated, some trivial, a few fantastic, and frighteningly many that are great ideas delivered not-quite-right. You have to stand quite far away to get it all in your field of vision. For a lot of today, a whole bunch of folks have been gawping in amazement, talking each other through it, peering at the details, and generally getting excited about content. Developers, sales guys, our CEO, the marketing folks - they're engaged. Will it last? I make no promises. But this sort of wave of interest is vital to getting a content strategy project kicked off. While the content strategist is a saucer-eyed orphan in the cupboard under the stairs, they're not getting a whole lot done. Of course, just printing the site won't necessarily cut it. You have to know your content, and be able to talk about it. Ideally, you'll also have page view and time-on-page metrics. One of the most powerful things you can do is, when people are staring at your wall of content, ask them what they think half of it is for. Pretty soon, you've made a case for content strategy. We're also going to get folks to mark it up - cover it with notes and post-its, let us know how they feel about our content. I'll be blogging about how that goes, but it's exciting. Different business functions have different needs from content, so the more exposure the content gets, and the more feedback, the more you know about those needs. Fingers crossed for awesome.

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• Ingame menu is not working correctly

  - by Johnny

  The ingame menu opens when the player presses Escape during the main game. If the player presses Y in the ingame menu, the game switches to the main menu. Up to here, everything works. But: On the other hand, if the player presses N in the ingame menu, the game should switch back to the main game(should resume the main game). But that doesn't work. The game just rests in the ingame menu if the player presses N. I set a breakpoint in this line of the Ingamemenu class: KeyboardState kbState = Keyboard.GetState(); CurrentSate/currentGameState and LastState/lastGameState have the same state: IngamemenuState. But LastState/lastGameState should not have the same state than CurrentSate/currentGameState. What is wrong? Why is the ingame menu not working correctly? public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; SpriteBatch spriteBatch; IState lastState, currentState; public enum GameStates { IntroState = 0, MenuState = 1, MaingameState = 2, IngamemenuState = 3 } public void ChangeGameState(GameStates newState) { lastGameState = currentGameState; lastState = currentState; switch (newState) { case GameStates.IntroState: currentState = new Intro(this); currentGameState = GameStates.IntroState; break; case GameStates.MenuState: currentState = new Menu(this); currentGameState = GameStates.MenuState; break; case GameStates.MaingameState: currentState = new Maingame(this); currentGameState = GameStates.MaingameState; break; case GameStates.IngamemenuState: currentState = new Ingamemenu(this); currentGameState = GameStates.IngamemenuState; break; } currentState.Load(Content); } public void ChangeCurrentToLastGameState() { currentGameState = lastGameState; currentState = lastState; } public GameStates CurrentState { get { return currentGameState; } set { currentGameState = value; } } public GameStates LastState { get { return lastGameState; } set { lastGameState = value; } } private GameStates currentGameState = GameStates.IntroState; private GameStates lastGameState; public Game1() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; } protected override void Initialize() { ChangeGameState(GameStates.IntroState); base.Initialize(); } protected override void LoadContent() { spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); currentState.Load(Content); } protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { currentState.Update(gameTime); if ((lastGameState == GameStates.MaingameState) && (currentGameState == GameStates.IngamemenuState)) { lastState.Update(gameTime); } base.Update(gameTime); } protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue); spriteBatch.Begin(); if ((lastGameState == GameStates.MaingameState) && (currentGameState == GameStates.IngamemenuState)) { lastState.Render(spriteBatch); } currentState.Render(spriteBatch); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } } public interface IState { void Load(ContentManager content); void Update(GameTime gametime); void Render(SpriteBatch batch); } public class Intro : IState { Texture2D Titelbildschirm; private Game1 game1; public Intro(Game1 game) { game1 = game; } public void Load(ContentManager content) { Titelbildschirm = content.Load<Texture2D>("gruft"); } public void Update(GameTime gametime) { KeyboardState kbState = Keyboard.GetState(); if (kbState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space)) game1.ChangeGameState(Game1.GameStates.MenuState); } public void Render(SpriteBatch batch) { batch.Draw(Titelbildschirm, new Rectangle(0, 0, 1280, 720), Color.White); } } public class Menu:IState { Texture2D Choosescreen; private Game1 game1; public Menu(Game1 game) { game1 = game; } public void Load(ContentManager content) { Choosescreen = content.Load<Texture2D>("menubild"); } public void Update(GameTime gametime) { KeyboardState kbState = Keyboard.GetState(); if (kbState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Enter)) game1.ChangeGameState(Game1.GameStates.MaingameState); if (kbState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Escape)) game1.Exit(); } public void Render(SpriteBatch batch) { batch.Draw(Choosescreen, new Rectangle(0, 0, 1280, 720), Color.White); } } public class Maingame : IState { Texture2D Spielbildschirm, axe; Vector2 position = new Vector2(100,100); private Game1 game1; public Maingame(Game1 game) { game1 = game; } public void Load(ContentManager content) { Spielbildschirm = content.Load<Texture2D>("hauszombie"); axe = content.Load<Texture2D>("axxx"); } public void Update(GameTime gametime) { KeyboardState keyboardState = Keyboard.GetState(); float delta = (float)gametime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; position.X += 5 * delta; position.Y += 3 * delta; if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Escape)) game1.ChangeGameState(Game1.GameStates.IngamemenuState); } public void Render(SpriteBatch batch) { batch.Draw(Spielbildschirm, new Rectangle(0, 0, 1280, 720), Color.White); batch.Draw(axe, position, Color.White); } } public class Ingamemenu : IState { Texture2D Quitscreen; private Game1 game1; public Ingamemenu(Game1 game) { game1 = game; } public void Load(ContentManager content) { Quitscreen = content.Load<Texture2D>("quit"); } public void Update(GameTime gametime) { KeyboardState kbState = Keyboard.GetState(); if (kbState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Y)) game1.ChangeGameState(Game1.GameStates.MenuState); if (kbState.IsKeyDown(Keys.N)) game1.ChangeCurrentToLastGameState(); } public void Render(SpriteBatch batch) { batch.Draw(Quitscreen, new Rectangle(200, 200, 200, 200), Color.White); } }

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• LWJGL SlickUtil Texture Binding

  - by Matthew Dockerty

  I am making a 3D game using LWJGL and I have a texture class with static variables so that I only need to load textures once, even if I need to use them more than once. I am using Slick Util for this. When I bind a texture it works fine, but then when I try to render something else after I have rendered the model with the texture, the texture is still being bound. How do I unbind the texture and set the rendermode to the one that was in use before any textures were bound? Some of my code is below. The problem I am having is the player texture is being used in the box drawn around the player after it the model has been rendered. Model.java public class Model { public List<Vector3f> vertices = new ArrayList<Vector3f>(); public List<Vector3f> normals = new ArrayList<Vector3f>(); public ArrayList<Vector2f> textureCoords = new ArrayList<Vector2f>(); public List<Face> faces = new ArrayList<Face>(); public static Model TREE; public static Model PLAYER; public static void loadModels() { try { TREE = OBJLoader.loadModel(new File("assets/model/tree_pine_0.obj")); PLAYER = OBJLoader.loadModel(new File("assets/model/player.obj")); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } public void render(Vector3f position, Vector3f scale, Vector3f rotation, Texture texture, float shinyness) { glPushMatrix(); { texture.bind(); glColor3f(1, 1, 1); glTranslatef(position.x, position.y, position.z); glScalef(scale.x, scale.y, scale.z); glRotatef(rotation.x, 1, 0, 0); glRotatef(rotation.y, 0, 1, 0); glRotatef(rotation.z, 0, 0, 1); glMaterialf(GL_FRONT, GL_SHININESS, shinyness); glBegin(GL_TRIANGLES); { for (Face face : faces) { Vector2f t1 = textureCoords.get((int) face.textureCoords.x - 1); glTexCoord2f(t1.x, t1.y); Vector3f n1 = normals.get((int) face.normal.x - 1); glNormal3f(n1.x, n1.y, n1.z); Vector3f v1 = vertices.get((int) face.vertex.x - 1); glVertex3f(v1.x, v1.y, v1.z); Vector2f t2 = textureCoords.get((int) face.textureCoords.y - 1); glTexCoord2f(t2.x, t2.y); Vector3f n2 = normals.get((int) face.normal.y - 1); glNormal3f(n2.x, n2.y, n2.z); Vector3f v2 = vertices.get((int) face.vertex.y - 1); glVertex3f(v2.x, v2.y, v2.z); Vector2f t3 = textureCoords.get((int) face.textureCoords.z - 1); glTexCoord2f(t3.x, t3.y); Vector3f n3 = normals.get((int) face.normal.z - 1); glNormal3f(n3.x, n3.y, n3.z); Vector3f v3 = vertices.get((int) face.vertex.z - 1); glVertex3f(v3.x, v3.y, v3.z); } texture.release(); } glEnd(); } glPopMatrix(); } } Textures.java public class Textures { public static Texture FLOOR; public static Texture PLAYER; public static Texture SKYBOX_TOP; public static Texture SKYBOX_BOTTOM; public static Texture SKYBOX_FRONT; public static Texture SKYBOX_BACK; public static Texture SKYBOX_LEFT; public static Texture SKYBOX_RIGHT; public static void loadTextures() { try { FLOOR = TextureLoader.getTexture("PNG", new FileInputStream(new File("assets/model/floor.png"))); FLOOR.setTextureFilter(GL11.GL_NEAREST); PLAYER = TextureLoader.getTexture("PNG", new FileInputStream(new File("assets/model/tree_pine_0.png"))); PLAYER.setTextureFilter(GL11.GL_NEAREST); SKYBOX_TOP = TextureLoader.getTexture("PNG", new FileInputStream(new File("assets/textures/skybox_top.png"))); SKYBOX_TOP.setTextureFilter(GL11.GL_NEAREST); SKYBOX_BOTTOM = TextureLoader.getTexture("PNG", new FileInputStream(new File("assets/textures/skybox_bottom.png"))); SKYBOX_BOTTOM.setTextureFilter(GL11.GL_NEAREST); SKYBOX_FRONT = TextureLoader.getTexture("PNG", new FileInputStream(new File("assets/textures/skybox_front.png"))); SKYBOX_FRONT.setTextureFilter(GL11.GL_NEAREST); SKYBOX_BACK = TextureLoader.getTexture("PNG", new FileInputStream(new File("assets/textures/skybox_back.png"))); SKYBOX_BACK.setTextureFilter(GL11.GL_NEAREST); SKYBOX_LEFT = TextureLoader.getTexture("PNG", new FileInputStream(new File("assets/textures/skybox_left.png"))); SKYBOX_LEFT.setTextureFilter(GL11.GL_NEAREST); SKYBOX_RIGHT = TextureLoader.getTexture("PNG", new FileInputStream(new File("assets/textures/skybox_right.png"))); SKYBOX_RIGHT.setTextureFilter(GL11.GL_NEAREST); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } } Player.java public class Player { private Vector3f position; private float yaw; private float moveSpeed; public Player(float x, float y, float z, float yaw, float moveSpeed) { this.position = new Vector3f(x, y, z); this.yaw = yaw; this.moveSpeed = moveSpeed; } public void update() { if (Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_W)) walkForward(moveSpeed); if (Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_S)) walkBackwards(moveSpeed); if (Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_A)) strafeLeft(moveSpeed); if (Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_D)) strafeRight(moveSpeed); if (Mouse.isButtonDown(0)) yaw += Mouse.getDX(); LowPolyRPG.getInstance().getCamera().setPosition(-position.x, -position.y, -position.z); LowPolyRPG.getInstance().getCamera().setYaw(yaw); } public void walkForward(float distance) { position.setX(position.getX() + distance * (float) Math.sin(Math.toRadians(yaw))); position.setZ(position.getZ() - distance * (float) Math.cos(Math.toRadians(yaw))); } public void walkBackwards(float distance) { position.setX(position.getX() - distance * (float) Math.sin(Math.toRadians(yaw))); position.setZ(position.getZ() + distance * (float) Math.cos(Math.toRadians(yaw))); } public void strafeLeft(float distance) { position.setX(position.getX() + distance * (float) Math.sin(Math.toRadians(yaw - 90))); position.setZ(position.getZ() - distance * (float) Math.cos(Math.toRadians(yaw - 90))); } public void strafeRight(float distance) { position.setX(position.getX() + distance * (float) Math.sin(Math.toRadians(yaw + 90))); position.setZ(position.getZ() - distance * (float) Math.cos(Math.toRadians(yaw + 90))); } public void render() { Model.PLAYER.render(new Vector3f(position.x, position.y + 12, position.z), new Vector3f(3, 3, 3), new Vector3f(0, -yaw + 90, 0), Textures.PLAYER, 128); GL11.glPushMatrix(); GL11.glTranslatef(position.getX(), position.getY(), position.getZ()); GL11.glRotatef(-yaw, 0, 1, 0); GL11.glScalef(5.8f, 21, 2.2f); GL11.glDisable(GL11.GL_LIGHTING); GL11.glLineWidth(3); GL11.glBegin(GL11.GL_LINE_STRIP); GL11.glColor3f(1, 1, 1); glVertex3f(1f, 0f, -1f); glVertex3f(-1f, 0f, -1f); glVertex3f(-1f, 1f, -1f); glVertex3f(1f, 1f, -1f); glVertex3f(-1f, 0f, 1f); glVertex3f(1f, 0f, 1f); glVertex3f(1f, 1f, 1f); glVertex3f(-1f, 1f, 1f); glVertex3f(1f, 1f, -1f); glVertex3f(-1f, 1f, -1f); glVertex3f(-1f, 1f, 1f); glVertex3f(1f, 1f, 1f); glVertex3f(1f, 0f, 1f); glVertex3f(-1f, 0f, 1f); glVertex3f(-1f, 0f, -1f); glVertex3f(1f, 0f, -1f); glVertex3f(1f, 0f, 1f); glVertex3f(1f, 0f, -1f); glVertex3f(1f, 1f, -1f); glVertex3f(1f, 1f, 1f); glVertex3f(-1f, 0f, -1f); glVertex3f(-1f, 0f, 1f); glVertex3f(-1f, 1f, 1f); glVertex3f(-1f, 1f, -1f); GL11.glEnd(); GL11.glEnable(GL11.GL_LIGHTING); GL11.glPopMatrix(); } public Vector3f getPosition() { return new Vector3f(-position.x, -position.y, -position.z); } public float getX() { return position.getX(); } public float getY() { return position.getY(); } public float getZ() { return position.getZ(); } public void setPosition(Vector3f position) { this.position = position; } public void setPosition(float x, float y, float z) { this.position.setX(x); this.position.setY(y); this.position.setZ(z); } } Thanks for the help.

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• ORACLE RIGHTNOW DYNAMIC AGENT DESKTOP CLOUD SERVICE - Putting the Dynamite into Dynamic Agent Desktop

  - by Andreea Vaduva

  Untitled Document There’s a mountain of evidence to prove that a great contact centre experience results in happy, profitable and loyal customers. The very best Contact Centres are those with high first contact resolution, customer satisfaction and agent productivity. But how many companies really believe they are the best? And how many believe that they can be? We know that with the right tools, companies can aspire to greatness – and achieve it. Core to this is ensuring their agents have the best tools that give them the right information at the right time, so they can focus on the customer and provide a personalised, professional and efficient service. Today there are multiple channels through which customers can communicate with you; phone, web, chat, social to name a few but regardless of how they communicate, customers expect a seamless, quality experience. Most contact centre agents need to switch between lots of different systems to locate the right information. This hampers their productivity, frustrates both the agent and the customer and increases call handling times. With this in mind, Oracle RightNow has designed and refined a suite of add-ins to optimize the Agent Desktop. Each is designed to simplify and adapt the agent experience for any given situation and unify the customer experience across your media channels. Let’s take a brief look at some of the most useful tools available and see how they make a difference. Contextual Workspaces: The screen where agents do their job. Agents don’t want to be slowed down by busy screens, scrolling through endless tabs or links to find what they’re looking for. They want quick, accurate and easy. Contextual Workspaces are fully configurable and through workspace rules apply if, then, else logic to display only the information the agent needs for the issue at hand . Assigned at the Profile level, different levels of agent, from a novice to the most experienced, get a screen that is relevant to their role and responsibilities and ensures their job is done quickly and efficiently the first time round. Agent Scripting: Sometimes, agents need to deliver difficult or sensitive messages while maximising the opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell. After all, contact centres are now increasingly viewed as revenue generators. Containing sophisticated branching logic, scripting helps agents to capture the right level of information and guides the agent step by step, ensuring no mistakes, inconsistencies or missed opportunities. Guided Assistance: This is typically used to solve common troubleshooting issues, displaying a series of question and answer sets in a decision-tree structure. This means agents avoid having to bookmark favourites or rely on written notes. Agents find particular value in these guides - to quickly craft chat and email responses. What’s more, by publishing guides in answers on support pages customers, can resolve issues themselves, without needing to contact your agents. And b ecause it can also accelerate agent ramp-up time, it ensures that even novice agents can solve customer problems like an expert. Desktop Workflow: Take a step back and look at the full customer interaction of your agents. It probably spans multiple systems and multiple tasks. With Desktop Workflows you control the design workflows that span the full customer interaction from start to finish. As sequences of decisions and actions, workflows are unique in that they can create or modify different records and provide automation behind the scenes. This means your agents can save time and provide better quality of service by having the tools they need and the relevant information as required. And doing this boosts satisfaction among your customers, your agents and you – so win, win, win! I have highlighted above some of the tools which can be used to optimise the desktop; however, this is by no means an exhaustive list. In approaching your design, it’s important to understand why and how your customers contact you in the first place. Once you have this list of “whys” and “hows”, you can design effective policies and procedures to handle each category of problem, and then implement the right agent desktop user interface to support them. This will avoid duplication and wasted effort. Five Top Tips to take away: Start by working out “why” and “how” customers are contacting you. Implement a clean and relevant agent desktop to support your agents. If your workspaces are getting complicated consider using Desktop Workflow to streamline the interaction. Enhance your Knowledgebase with Guides. Agents can access them proactively and can be published on your web pages for customers to help themselves. Script any complex, critical or sensitive interactions to ensure consistency and accuracy. Desktop optimization is an ongoing process so continue to monitor and incorporate feedback from your agents and your customers to keep your Contact Centre successful.   Want to learn more? Having attending the 3-day Oracle RightNow Customer Service Administration class your next step is to attend the Oracle RightNow Customer Portal Design and 2-day Dynamic Agent Desktop Administration class. Here you’ll learn not only how to leverage the Agent Desktop tools but also how to optimise your self-service pages to enhance your customers’ web experience.   Useful resources: Review the Best Practice Guide Review the tune-up guide   About the Author: Angela Chandler joined Oracle University as a Senior Instructor through the RightNow Customer Experience Acquisition. Her other areas of expertise include Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management.  She currently delivers the following Oracle RightNow courses in the classroom and as a Live Virtual Class: RightNow Customer Service Administration (3 days) RightNow Customer Portal Design and Dynamic Agent Desktop Administration (2 days) RightNow Analytics (2 days) Rightnow Chat Cloud Service Administration (2 days)

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, July 16, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, July 16, 2013Popular ReleasesOsmSharp: OsmSharp v3.1.4840.2: Release notes: - Fixed issue: http://osmsharp.codeplex.com/workitem/1246 'Optimized route has zero TotalDistance' - Fixed lazy loading strategy for datasource routing. - Fixed precision bug in View. - Added unittests for instruction generation. - Added daily build nuget packages: Daily build packages at http://5.9.56.3:8080/guestAuth/app/nuget/v1/FeedService.svc/ - Fixed default direction on roundabout: roundabouts are always oneway. - Take average left+right turn. - Fixed UTF8 encoding issu...PMU Connection Tester: PMU Connection Tester v4.4.0: This is the current release build of the PMU Connection Tester, version 4.4.0 This version of the connection tester was released with openPDC 1.5 SP1 and openPDC 2.0 BETA. This application requires that .NET 4.0 already be installed on your system. Note this is the last release of the PMU Connection Tester that will built on .NET 4.0 using the TVA Code Library and the Time-series Framework. Future releases of the PMU Connection Tester will be built on .NET 4.5 (or later) using the Grid Sol...WatchersNET.SiteMap: WatchersNE​T.SiteMap 01.03.08: changes Localized Tab Name is now usedStackWalker - Walking the callstack: StackWalker - 2013-07-15: This project describes and implements the (documented) way to walk a callstack for any thread (own, other and remote). It has an abstraction layer, so the calling app does not need to know the internals. This release has some bugfixes for VC5/6.GoAgent GUI: GoAgent GUI 1.1.0 ???: ???????，??????????????，?????????????? ???????? ????： 1．1．0? ??? ?????????? ????????? ??：??cn/hk????，?????????????????????。Hosts??????google_hk。Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.2.1307.15: Fix a bug where WPP crash if 'ShowPendingUpdates' is start with wrong credentials. Fix a bug where WPP crash if ArrivalDateAfter and ArrivalDateBefore is equal in the ComputerView. Add a filter in the ComputerView. (Thanks to NorbertFe for this feature request) Add an option, when right-clicking on a computer, you can ask for display the current logon user of the remote computer. Add an option in settings to choose if WPP ping remote computers using IPv4, IPv6 or IPv6 and, if fail, IP...Lab Of Things: vBeta1: Initial release of LoTVidCoder: 1.4.23: New in 1.4.23 Added French translation. Fixed non-x264 video encoders not sticking in video tab. New in 1.4 Updated HandBrake core to 0.9.9 Blu-ray subtitle (PGS) support Additional framerates: 30, 50, 59.94, 60 Additional sample rates: 8, 11.025, 12 and 16 kHz Additional higher bitrates for audio Same as Source Constant Framerate 24-bit FLAC encoding Added Windows Phone 8 and Apple TV 3 presets Introduced process isolation for encodes. Now if HandBrake crashes, VidCoder will ...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.96: Fix for issue #19957: EXE should output the name of the file(s) being minified. Discussion #449181: throw a Sev-2 warning when trailing commas are detected on an Array literal. Perfectly legal to do so, but the behavior ends up working differently on different browsers, so throw a cross-browser warning. Add a few more known global names for improved ES6 compatibility update Nuget package to version 2.5 and automatically add the AjaxMin.targets to your project when you update the package...Outlook 2013 Add-In: Categories and Colors: This new version has a major change in the drawing of the list items: - Using owner drawn code to format the appointments using GDI (some flickering may occur, but it looks a little bit better IMHO, with separate sections). - Added category color support (if more than one category, only one color will be shown). Here, the colors Outlook uses are slightly different than the ones available in System.Drawing, so I did a first approach matching. ;-) - Added appointment status support (to show fr...TypePipe: 1.15.2.0 (.NET 4.5): This is build 1.15.2.0 of the TypePipe for .NET 4.5. Find the complete release notes for the build here: Release Notes.re-linq: 1.15.2.0 (.NET 4.5): This is build 1.15.2.0 of re-linq for .NET 4.5. Find the complete release notes for the build here: Release Notes To use re-linq with .NET 3.5, use a 1.13.x build.Columbus Remote Desktop: 2.0 Sapphire: Added configuration settings Added update notifications Added ability to disable GPU acceleration Fixed connection bugsDataDevelop: Beta 0.6.5: Hotfix bug in Python Table.ImportAll method Updated External Libraries Fixes in Excel Exportation Modify ConnectionString refreshes the Properties Window correctlyUser Group Labs: User Group Data: 01.00.00: This release has the following updates and new features: Initial release with a minimal feature set Easy to use (just add to the social group details page) Edit common user group properties System Requirements DNN v07.00.02 or newer .Net Framework v4.0 or newerCarrotCake, an ASP.Net WebForms CMS: Binaries and PDFs - Zip Archive (v. 4.3 20130713): Product documentation and additional templates for this version is included in the zip archive, or if you want individual files, visit the http://www.carrotware.com website. Templates, in addition to those found in the download, can be downloaded individually from the website as well. If you are coming from earlier versions, make a precautionary backup of your existing website files and database. When installing the update, the database update engine will create the new schema items (if you...Dalmatian Build Script: Dalmatian Build 0.1.3.0: -Minor bug fixes -Added Choose<T> and ChooseYesNo to Console objectPushover.NET: Pushover.NET - Stable Release 10 July 2013: This is the first stable release of Pushover.NET. It includes 14 overloads of the SendNotification method, giving you total flexibility of sending Pushover notifications from your client. Assembly is built to .NET 2.x so it can be called from .NET 2.x, 3.x and 4.x projects. Also available is the Test Harness. This is a small GUI that you can use to test calls to Pushover.NET's main DLL. It's almost fully functional--the sound effects haven't been fully configured so no matter what you pick ...MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.14: 2.3.14 BETA is available through the Early Access Program.Click here https://mcebuddy2x.codeplex.com/discussions/439439 for details and to get access to Early Access Program to download latest releases. Changelog for 2.3.14 (32bit and 64bit) NEW FEATURES: 1. ENHANCEMENTS: 2. Improved eMail notifications 3. Improved metrics details 4. Support for larger history (INI) file (about 45,000 sections, each section can have about 1500 entries) BUG FIXES: 5. Fix for extracting Movie release year from...Azure Depot: Flask: Flask Version 01New Projects(??：wwqgtxx-goagent)???goagent/??wallproxy???????????????: =*greatagent*(??：wwqgtxx-goagent)= = [downloads downloads??] = =[WhyMove ??????？]= ==???goagent/??wallproxy???????????????，?????goagent?wallproxy??????????，??Azure Anonymous SAS URL Generator: The Azure Anonymous SAS URL Generator allows you to generate anonymous Shared Access Signature URLs for individual Blobs stored within a given storage containerBizTalk ESB Toolkit Enterprise Library machine.config Toggler: This tool provides an instant on/off switch for the enterpriseLibrary.ConfigurationSource changes that the BizTalk ESB Toolkit makes to machine.config.Common .NET Utilities: Just some common utilities I've developed over the years that are shared among my various projects.DIY Online System: To create a Philippine Standard Online Payroll SystemDynamics Ax CipherLib: The Dynamics Ax CipherLib is a simple X.509 certificate based cipher implementation that allows to encrypt/decrypt S/MIME or XML messages with Dynamics Ax 4.0,GpsBox: We wanted to create a device which is sending the current position and any user is able to look up the current position of it.Ingenious Framework: Ingenious Framework is an easy to use, lightweight framework that hides semantic web technologies from you as a developer, but harnesses its benefits.Lab Of Things: Lab of Things is a flexible platform for experimental research that uses connected devices in homes. Orchard Deployment: Deployment and replication of content between one or more Orchard CMS instances. Move content individually, using workflows or custom subscriptions.PluginManagement.Net: .NET Plugin Loader Framework using MEF(Microsoft Extensibility Framework). It has a generic loader which loads plugin that implements generic interface IPlugin.QlikView Management API in vb.net: For more info see: http://community.qlikview.com/docs/DOC-3647 a conversion from c# to vb.net Recover Deleted Emails Microsoft Exchange Server: Get an effective way to recover deleted emails from Exchange server and browse it with MS Outlook or MS Exchange server depending upon the users requirement.Shindo's Race System: Special Edition: Shindo's Race System: Special EditionSP Solution Builder: Simple summary of project will be added latertestfailure0716: testTFS Build Custom Activities: TFS Build Custom extensions offers you a list of TFS build activities and a WorkFlow to use them.Upida.net: If you use Asp.net MVC and any NHibernate, than Upida is for you. Upida favors knockout.js. You can download example code, implemented with knockout.js.

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• Welcome to Jackstown

  - by fatherjack

  I live in a small town, the population count isn't that great but let me introduce you to some of the population. We'll start with Martin the Doc, he fixes up anything that gets poorly, so much so that he could be classed as the doctor, the vet and even the garage mechanic. He's got a reputation that he can fix anything and that hasn't been proved wrong yet. He's great friends with Brian (who gets called "Brains") the teacher who seems to have a sound understanding of any topic you care to pass his way. If he isn't sure he tells you and then goes to find out and comes back with a full answer real quick. Its good to have that sort of research capability close at hand. Brains is also great at encouraging anyone who needs a bit of support to get them up to speed and working on their jobs. Steve sees Brains regularly, that's because he is the librarian, he keeps all sorts of reading material and nowadays there's even video to watch about any topic you like. Steve keeps scouring all sorts of places to get the content that's needed and he keeps it in good order so that what ever is needed can be found quickly. He also has to make sure that old stuff gets marked as probably out of date so that anyone reading it wont get mislead. Over the road from him is Greg, he's the town crier. We don't have a newspaper here so Greg keeps us all informed of what's going on "out of town" - what new stuff we might make use of and what wont work in a small place like this. If we are interested he goes ahead and gets people in to demonstrate their products  and tell us about the details. Greg is pretty good at getting us discounts too. Now Greg's brother Ian works for the mayors office in the "waste management department" nowadays its all about the recycling but he still has to make sure that the stuff that cant be used any more gets disposed of properly. It depends on the type of waste he's dealing with that decides how it need to be treated and he has to know a lot about the different methods and when to use which ones. There are two people that keep the peace in town, Brent is the detective, investigating wrong doings and applying justice where necessary and Bart is the diplomat who smooths things over when any people have a dispute or disagreement. Brent is meticulous in his investigations and fair in the way he handles any situation he finds. Discretion is his byword. There's a rumour that Bart used to work for the United Nations but what ever his history there is no denying his ability to get apparently irreconcilable parties working together to their combined benefit. Someone who works closely with Bart is Brad, he is the translator in town. He has several languages that he can converse in but he can also explain things from someone's point of view or  and make it understandable to someone else. To keep things on the straight and narrow from a legal perspective is Ben the solicitor, making sure we all abide by the rules.Two people who make for an interesting evening's conversation if you get them together are Aaron and Grant, Aaron is the local planning inspector and Grant is an inventor of some reputation. Anything being constructed around here needs Aarons agreement. He's quite flexible in his rules though; if you can justify what you want to do with solid logic but he wont stand for any development going on without his inclusion. That gets a demolition notice and there's no argument. Grant as I mentioned is the inventor in town, if something can be improved or created then Grant is your man. He mainly works on his own but isnt averse to getting specific advice and assistance from specialist from out of town if they can help him finish his creations.There aren't too many people left for you to meet in the town, there's Rob, he's an ex professional sportsman. He played Hockey, Football, Cricket, you name it. He was in his element as goal keeper / wicket keeper and that shows in his personal life. He just goes about his business and people often don't even know that he's helped them. Really low profile, doesn't get any glory but saves people from lots of problems, even disasters on occasion. There goes Neil, he's a bit of an odd person, some people say he's gifted with special clairvoyant powers, personally I think he's got his ear to the ground and knows where to find out the important news as soon as its made public. Anyone getting a visit from Neil is best off to follow his advice though, he's usually spot on and you wont be caught by surprise if you follow his recommendations – wherever it comes from.Poor old Andrew is the last person to introduce you to. Andrew doesn't show himself too often but when he does it seems that people find a reason to blame him for their problems, whether he had anything to do with their predicament or not. In all honesty, without fail, and to his great credit, he takes it in good grace and never retaliates or gets annoyed when he's out and about.  It pays off too as its very often the case that those who were blaming him recently suddenly find they need his help and they readily forget the issues pretty rapidly.And then there's me, what do I do in town? Well, I'm just a DBA with a lot of hats. (Jackstown Pop. 1)

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• Refactoring an immediate drawing function into VBO, access violation error

  - by Alex

  I have a MD2 model loader, I am trying to substitute its immediate drawing function with a Vertex Buffer Object one.... I am getting a really annoying access violation reading error and I can't figure out why, but mostly I'd like an opinion as to whether this looks correct (never used VBOs before). This is the original function (that compiles ok) which calculates the keyframe and draws at the same time: glBegin(GL_TRIANGLES); for(int i = 0; i < numTriangles; i++) { MD2Triangle* triangle = triangles + i; for(int j = 0; j < 3; j++) { MD2Vertex* v1 = frame1->vertices + triangle->vertices[j]; MD2Vertex* v2 = frame2->vertices + triangle->vertices[j]; Vec3f pos = v1->pos * (1 - frac) + v2->pos * frac; Vec3f normal = v1->normal * (1 - frac) + v2->normal * frac; if (normal[0] == 0 && normal[1] == 0 && normal[2] == 0) { normal = Vec3f(0, 0, 1); } glNormal3f(normal[0], normal[1], normal[2]); MD2TexCoord* texCoord = texCoords + triangle->texCoords[j]; glTexCoord2f(texCoord->texCoordX, texCoord->texCoordY); glVertex3f(pos[0], pos[1], pos[2]); } } glEnd(); What I'd like to do is to calculate all positions before hand, store them in a Vertex array and then draw them. This is what I am trying to replace it with (in the exact same part of the program) int vCount = 0; for(int i = 0; i < numTriangles; i++) { MD2Triangle* triangle = triangles + i; for(int j = 0; j < 3; j++) { MD2Vertex* v1 = frame1->vertices + triangle->vertices[j]; MD2Vertex* v2 = frame2->vertices + triangle->vertices[j]; Vec3f pos = v1->pos * (1 - frac) + v2->pos * frac; Vec3f normal = v1->normal * (1 - frac) + v2->normal * frac; if (normal[0] == 0 && normal[1] == 0 && normal[2] == 0) { normal = Vec3f(0, 0, 1); } indices[vCount] = normal[0]; vCount++; indices[vCount] = normal[1]; vCount++; indices[vCount] = normal[2]; vCount++; MD2TexCoord* texCoord = texCoords + triangle->texCoords[j]; indices[vCount] = texCoord->texCoordX; vCount++; indices[vCount] = texCoord->texCoordY; vCount++; indices[vCount] = pos[0]; vCount++; indices[vCount] = pos[1]; vCount++; indices[vCount] = pos[2]; vCount++; } } totalVertices = vCount; glEnableClientState(GL_NORMAL_ARRAY); glEnableClientState(GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); glEnableClientState(GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); glNormalPointer(GL_FLOAT, 0, indices); glTexCoordPointer(2, GL_FLOAT, sizeof(float)*3, indices); glVertexPointer(3, GL_FLOAT, sizeof(float)*5, indices); glDrawElements(GL_TRIANGLES, totalVertices, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, indices); glDisableClientState(GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); // disable vertex arrays glEnableClientState(GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); glDisableClientState(GL_NORMAL_ARRAY); First of all, does it look right? Second, I get access violation error "Unhandled exception at 0x01455626 in Graphics_template_1.exe: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0xed5243c0" pointing at line 7 Vec3f pos = v1->pos * (1 - frac) + v2->pos * frac; where the two Vs seems to have no value in the debugger.... Till this point the function behaves in exactly the same way as the one above, I don't understand why this happens? Thanks for any help you may be able to provide!

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• Lessons learned from Word 2007 automation with c# 2008

  - by robertphyatt

  My organization has an ongoing project to take documents produced for internal regulations and such, change some of the formatting and then export it as PDF. Our requirements were that only one person would be doing this, but it has been painfully tedious and sometimes error-prone to do by hand. Enter the fearless developer to automate the situation! Since I am one of those guys that just plain does not like VB, I wanted to do the automation in the ever-so-much-more-familiar C#. While Microsoft had made a dll that makes such a task easier, documentation on MSDN is pretty lame and most of the forumns and posts on the internet had little to do with my task. So, I feel like I can give back to the community and make a post here of the things I have learned so far. I hope this is helpful to whoever stumbles upon it. Steps to do this: 1) First of all, make some sort of a project and use some sort of a means to get the filename of the word document you are trying to open. I got the filename the user wanted with an openFileDialog tied to a button that I labeled 'Browse':        private void btnBrowse_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)        {            try            {                DialogResult myResult = openFileDialog1.ShowDialog();                if (myResult.Equals(DialogResult.OK))                {                    if (openFileDialog1.SafeFileName.EndsWith(".doc"))                    {                        txtFileName.Text = openFileDialog1.SafeFileName;                        paramSourceDocPath = openFileDialog1.FileName;                        paramExportFilePath = openFileDialog1.FileName.Replace(".doc", ".pdf");                    }                    else                    {                        txtFileName.Text = "only something that end with .doc, please";                    }                }            }            catch (Exception err)            {                lblError.Text = err.Message;            }        }   2) Add in "using Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word;" after setting your project to reference Microsoft.Office.Core and Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word so that you don't have to add "Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word" to the front of everything. 3) Now you are ready to play. You will need to have a copy of word open and a copy of your word document that you want to modify open to be able to make the changes that are needed. The word interop dll likes using ref on all the parameters passed in, and likes to have them as objects. If you don't want to specify the parameter, you have to give it a "Type.Missing". I suggest creating some objects that you reuse all over the place to maintain sanity. object paramMissing = Type.Missing; ApplicationClass wordApplication = new ApplicationClass(); Document wordDocument = wordApplication.Documents.Open(                ref paramSourceDocPath, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing,                ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing,                ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing,                ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing,                ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing,                ref paramMissing); 4) There are many ways to modify the text of the inside of the word document. One of the ways that was most effective for me was to break it down by paragraph and then do things on each paragraph by what style the particular paragraph had.            foreach (Paragraph thisParagraph in wordDocument.Content.Paragraphs)            {                string strStyleName = ((Style)thisParagraph.get_Style()).NameLocal;                string strText = thisParagraph.Range.Text;                //Do whatever you need to do            } 5) Sometimes you want to insert a new line character somewhere in the text or insert text into the document, etc.  There are a few ways you can do this: you can either modify the text of a paragraph by doing something like this ('\r' makes a new paragraph, '\v' will make a newline without making a new paragraph. If you remove a '\r' from the text, it will eliminate the paragraph you removed it from): thisParagraph.Range.Text = "A\vNew Paragraph!\r" + thisParagraph.Range.Text; OR you could select where you want to insert it and have it act like you were typing in Word like any normal user (note: if you do not collapse the range first, you will overwrite the thing you got the range from) object oCollapseDirectionEnd = WdCollapseDirection.wdCollapseEnd; object oCollapseDirectionStart = WdCollapseDirection.wdCollapseStart; Range rangeInsertAtBeginning = thisParagraph.Range; Range rangeInsertAtEnd = thisParagraph.Range; rangeInsertAtBeginning.Collapse(ref oCollapseDirectionStart); rangeInsertAtEnd.Collapse(ref oCollapseDirectionEnd); rangeInsertAtBeginning.Select(); wordApplication.Selection.TypeText("Blah Blah Blah"); rangeInsertAtEnd.Select(); wordApplication.Selection.TypeParagraph(); 6) If you want to make text columns, like a newspaper or newsletter, you have to modify the page layout of the document or a section of the document to make it happen. In my case, I only wanted a particular section to have that, and I wanted to have a black line before and after the newspaper-like text columns. First you need to do a section break on either side of what you wanted, then you take the section and modify the page layout. Then you can modify the borders of the section (or another object in the word document). I also show here how to modify the alignment of a paragraph.            object oSectionBreak = WdBreakType.wdSectionBreakContinuous;            //These ranges were set while I was going through the paragraphs of my document, like I was showing earlier            rangeHeaderStart.InsertBreak(ref oSectionBreak);            rangeHeaderEnd.InsertBreak(ref oSectionBreak);            //change the alignment to justify            object oRangeHeaderStart = rangeStartJustifiedAlignment.Start;            object oRangeHeaderEnd = rangeHeaderEnd.End;            Range rangeHeader = wordDocument.Range(ref oRangeHeaderStart, ref oRangeHeaderEnd);            rangeHeader.Paragraphs.Alignment = WdParagraphAlignment.wdAlignParagraphJustify;            //find the section break and make it into triple text columns            foreach (Section mySection in wordDocument.Sections)            {                if (mySection.Range.Start == rangeHeaderStart.Start)                {                    mySection.PageSetup.TextColumns.Add(ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing);                    mySection.PageSetup.TextColumns.Add(ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing);                    //I didn't like the default spacing and column widths. This is how I adjusted them.                    foreach (TextColumn txtc in mySection.PageSetup.TextColumns)                    {                        try                        {                            txtc.SpaceAfter = 151.6f;                            txtc.Width = 7;                        }                        catch (Exception)                        {                            txtc.Width = 151.6f;                        }                    }                }            } That is all  I have time for today! I hope this was helpful to someone!

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• Maintaining packages with code - Adding a property expression programmatically

  Every now and then I've come across scenarios where I need to update a lot of packages all in the same way. The usual scenario revolves around a group of packages all having been built off the same package template, and something needs to updated to keep up with new requirements, a new logging standard for example.You'd probably start by updating your template package, but then you need to address all your existing packages. Often this can run into the hundreds of packages and clearly that's not a job anyone wants to do by hand. I normally solve the problem by writing a simple console application that looks for files and patches any package it finds, and it is an example of this I'd thought I'd tidy up a bit and publish here. This sample will look at the package and find any top level Execute SQL Tasks, and change the SQL Statement property to use an expression. It is very simplistic working on top level tasks only, so nothing inside a Sequence Container or Loop will be checked but obviously the code could be extended for this if required. The code that actually sets the expression is shown below, the rest is just wrapper code to find the package and to find the task. /// <summary> /// The CreationName of the Tasks to target, e.g. Execute SQL Task /// </summary> private const string TargetTaskCreationName = "Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Tasks.ExecuteSQLTask.ExecuteSQLTask, Microsoft.SqlServer.SQLTask, Version=9.0.242.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91"; /// <summary> /// The name of the task property to target. /// </summary> private const string TargetPropertyName = "SqlStatementSource"; /// <summary> /// The property expression to set. /// </summary> private const string ExpressionToSet = "@[User::SQLQueryVariable]"; .... // Check if the task matches our target task type if (taskHost.CreationName == TargetTaskCreationName) { // Check for the target property if (taskHost.Properties.Contains(TargetPropertyName)) { // Get the property, check for an expression and set expression if not found DtsProperty property = taskHost.Properties[TargetPropertyName]; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(property.GetExpression(taskHost))) { property.SetExpression(taskHost, ExpressionToSet); changeCount++; } } } This is a console application, so to specify which packages you want to target you have three options: Find all packages in the current folder, the default behaviour if no arguments are specified TaskExpressionPatcher.exe .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Find all packages in a specified folder, pass the folder as the argument TaskExpressionPatcher.exe C:\Projects\Alpha\Packages\ .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Find a specific package, pass the file path as the argument TaskExpressionPatcher.exe C:\Projects\Alpha\Packages\Package.dtsx The code was written against SQL Server 2005, but just change the reference to Microsoft.SQLServer.ManagedDTS to be the SQL Server 2008 version and it will work fine. If you get an error Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.DtsRuntimeException: The package failed to load due to error 0xC0011008… then check that the package is from the correct version of SSIS compared to the referenced assemblies, 2005 vs 2008 in other words. Download Sample Project TaskExpressionPatcher.zip (6 KB)

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• Open World Day 3

  - by Antony Reynolds

  A Day in the Life of an Oracle OpenWorld Attendee Part IV My third day was exhibition day for me!  I took the opportunity to wander around the JavaOne and OpenWorld exhibitions to see what might be useful for me when selling WebLogic, Coherence & SOA Suite.  I found a number of interesting vendors and thought I would share what I found here.  These are not necessarily endorsements, but observations on companies that I thought had interesting looking products that fill a need I have seen at customers. Highly Available EBS Upgrades A few years ago I worked with a customer that was a port authority.  They wanted to tie E-Business Suite into their operations to provide faster processing of cargo and passengers.  However they only had a 2 hour downtime window to perform upgrades.  This was not a problem for core database and middleware technology, this could accommodate those upgrade timescales easily.  It was a problem for EBS however so I intrigued to find Rapid E-Suite Inc offering an 11i to 12i upgrade service that claims to require no outage.  This could be a real boon to EBS customers like my port friends that need to upgrade without disruption to their business. Mobile on WebLogic I have come across a number of customers who want a comprehensive mobile solution, connected and disconnected operation and so forth.  ADF only addresses part of these requirements currently so I was excited to discover mFrontiers Inc offering an apparently comprehensive solution that should integrate easily with Oracle SOA Suite to mobile enable a SOA infrastructure.  The ability to operate without a network is important for many applications, particularly in industries that require their engineers to enter buildings to perform maintenance or repairs, because network access is not always available – many of my colleagues don’t have mobile access from their homes because they live in the middle of nowhere – and disconnected support is crucial in these situations. Sharepoint Connector for WebCenter Content Obviously Sharepoint is an evil pernicious intrusion into a companies IT estate but it is widely deployed and many people like it but also would like to take advantage of Oracle products such as WebCenter Content.  So I was encouraged to see that Fishbowl Solutions have created a connector for Sharepoint that allows it to bring in content from WebCenter, it looks like a valuable way to maintain the Sharepoint interface end users are used to but extend the range of content by pulling stuff (technical term for content) from WebCenter.   Load Balancing The Enterprise Deployment Guides are Oracles bible on building highly available FMW environments, and each of them requires a front end load balancer.  I have been asked to help configure F5 Load Balancers on a number of occasions over my time at Oracle and each time I come back to it I find more useful features have been added to the BigIP line of load balancers that F5 sell, many of their documents are tailored to FMW.  I like F5, they provide (relatively) easy to use products that do what they say on the side of the box.  They may not have all the bells and whistles of some of their more expensive competitors but they do the job and do it well!  Besides which I like their logo! Other Stuff I saw lots of other interesting products and services, such as a lightweight monitoring tool for Coherence, Forms migration services, JCAPS migration services and lots of cool freebies to take home to the children! A Quiet Night Wednesday night was the partner appreciation event and I had decided to go back to the hotel and have an early night.  I decided to attend the last session of the day – a Maven/Hudson/WebLogic tutorial.  I got the wrong hotel for the session and snuck in 20 minutes late at the back and starting working on the hands on workshop.  One of my co-attendees raised his hand for help and as the presenter came over to help he suddenly stopped and yelled – “Is that Antony”!  It was my old friend Steve Button who used to be based in Redwood Shores but is now a WebLogic guru PM in Australia.  It was good to catch up with him.  As he yelled out a guy with really bad posture turned around to see who he was talking to, this turned out to be my friend Simon Haslan, Oracle ACE from the UK.  After the tutorial Simon and I retired to the coffee shop to catch up and share stories.  2 and half hours later we decided it was time to retire, so much for an early night but great to renew old friendships and find out what real customers are worrying about.

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• SOA Suite 11g Dynamic Payload Testing with soapUI Free Edition

  - by Greg Mally

  Overview Many web service developers use soapUI for various tests like: smoke test, unit test, and load testing because you can get a free edition that is fairly robust. However, if you need to venture into more complex testing that requires a dynamic payload, then the free edition doesn't necessarily make it easy. This feature does exist in soapUI, but for obvious reasons it is in the Pro version. In this blog I will show you how to use soapUI free edition for dynamic payloads in a simplified example. Hopefully this will open the doors for you to expand into more complex scenarios. The following assumes that you have a working knowledge of soapUI and will not go into concepts like setting up a project etc. For the basics, please review the documentation for soapUI: http://www.soapui.org/Getting-Started/. Additionally, we will be using asynchronous web services and you can review the setup for this in my blog: SOA Suite 11g Asynchronous Testing with soapUI. Features in soapUI Free Edition Relating to this Topic The soapUI test tool provides a very feature rich environment that can do many things provided you are willing to go beyond point and click. For this example, we will be leveraging just a couple features for our dynamic payload example: Test Case Properties Scripting with Groovy Basically, we will be using a property as a global variable and we will manipulate that property using a Groovy script. Setting Up Our Property Properties are available throughout soapUI and here is a snippet from the soapUI website defining the locations: Projects : for handling Project scope values, for example a subscription ID TestSuite : for handling TestSuite scoped values, can be seen as "arguments" to a TestSuite TestCases : for handling TestCase scoped values, can be seen as "arguments" to a TestCase Properties TestStep : for providing local values/state within a TestCase Local TestStep properties : several TestStep types maintain their own list of properties specific to their functionality : DataSource, DataSink, Run TestCase MockServices : for handling MockService scoped values/arguments MockResponses : for handling MockResponse scoped values Global Properties : for handling Global properties, optionally from an external source For our example, we will be defining a custom property in a TestCase called SimpleAsyncPayload. The property can be created in either the Custom Properties tab located at the bottom of the Navigator panel when the TestCase is selected in the Navigator or the Properties label in the TestCase editor: Navigator Panel TestCase Editor You will notice that I set a value of “0” for the custom property. For this simplified example, we will need to retrieve that value and manipulate it prior to making the web service request invocation. In order to accomplish this, we will need to get Groovy ;) Let's Get Groovy We will now add a new Groovy Script step to the TestCase called Manipulate Payload: TestCase Editor > Append Step > Groovy Script Once we have added the Groovy Script step to our TestCase, we can open the Groovy Script editor to add the code to: Get the current value of the property we created called SimpleAsyncPayload. Convert the value of the property to an integer. Increment the value. Store the incremented value back into the TestCase property called SimpleAsyncPayload. The script should look something like the following: Groovy Script Editor – Manipulate Payload At this point we can test the script to see if it is working by simply running the TestCase (left-click on the green triangle in the upper left-hand corner of the TestCase editor). To verify if it ran correctly, we can look at the value of the SimpleAsyncPayload property which should now be 1: TestCase Editor – Run Results All that is left to complete the TestCase is to append another step of type Test Request. The information required to append the request is a name and an operation to invoke. In this example we will use the default name and select the SimpleAsyncBPELProcessBingd -> process as the operation (any other information being requested, simply use the defaults unless you are calling an asynchronous operation then do not add any assertions). We are now in familiar ground with the Test Request editor. Depending upon the type of operation you are invoking (synchronous or asynchronous), please update the request with the necessary information (e.g., callback information for asynchronous operations). We will now tweak the Test Request payload to retrieve the value of the SimpleAsyncPayload property. The soapUI editor makes this very simple: right-click in the payload and navigate to the property (e.g., right-click > Get Data.. > TestCase: [Groovy TestCase] > Property [SimpleAsyncPayload]): Test Request Editor – Insert Property Value Your payload should now look something like the following: Test Request Editor – Inserted Property Value Just like before, we are now ready to run the TestCase. If everything goes as expected we should see a response like the following: Message Viewer – Results of TestCase Run We are now setup to be able to run a stress test where the payload will change for each request. This simple example can be expanded to include multiple payload values, complex calculations in the scripts, or whatever can be done via the soapUI scripting. Hopefully you have found this useful and happy testing to you :)

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• 7 Reasons for Abandonment in eCommerce and the need for Contextual Support by JP Saunders

  - by Tuula Fai

  Shopper confidence, or more accurately the lack thereof, is the bane of the online retailer. There are a number of questions that influence whether a shopper completes a transaction, and all of those attributes revolve around knowledge. What products are available? What products are on offer? What would be the cost of the transaction? What are my options for delivery? In general, most online businesses do a good job of answering basic questions around the products as the shopper engages in the online journey, navigating the product catalog and working through the checkout process. The needs that are harder to address for the shopper are those that are less concerned with product specifics and more concerned with deciding whether the transaction met their needs and delivered value. A recent study by the Baymard Institute [1] finds that more than 60% of ecommerce site visitors will abandon their shopping cart. The study also identifies seven reasons for abandonment out of the commerce process [2]. Most of those reasons come down to poor usability within the commerce experience. Distractions. External distractions within the shopper’s external environment (TV, Children, Pets, etc.) or distractions on the eCommerce page can drive shopper abandonment. Ideally, the selection and check-out process should be straightforward. One common distraction is to drive the shopper away from the task at hand through pop-ups or re-directs. The shopper engaging with support information in the checkout process should not be directed away from the page to consume support. Though confidence may improve, the distraction also means abandonment may increase. Poor Usability. When the experience gets more complicated, buyer’s remorse can set in. While knowledge drives confidence, a lack of understanding erodes it. Therefore it is important that the commerce process is streamlined. In some cases, the number of clicks to complete a purchase is lengthy and unavoidable. In these situations, it is vital to ensure that the complexity of your experience can be explained with contextual support to avoid abandonment. If you can illustrate the solution to a complex action while the user is engaged in that action and address customer frustrations with your checkout process before they arise, you can decrease abandonment. Fraud. The perception of potential fraud can be enough to deter a buyer. Does your site look credible? Can shoppers trust your brand? Providing answers on the security of your experience and the levels of protection applied to profile information may play as big a role in ensuring the sale, as does the support you provide on the product offerings and purchasing process. Does it fit? If it is a clothing item or oversized furniture item, another common form of abandonment is for the shopper to question whether the item can be worn by the intended user. Providing information on the sizing applied to clothing, physical dimensions, and limitations on delivery/returns of oversized items will also assist the sale. A photo alone of the item will help, as it answers some of those questions, but won’t assuage all customer concerns about sizing and fit. Sometimes the customer doesn’t want to buy. Prospective buyers might be browsing through your catalog to kill time, or just might not have the money to purchase the item! You are unlikely to provide any information in contextual support to increase the likelihood to buy if the shopper already has no intentions of doing so. The customer will still likely abandon. Ensuring that any questions are proactively answered as they browse through your site can only increase their likelihood to return and buy at a future date. Can’t Buy. Errors or complexity at checkout can be another major cause of abandonment. Good contextual support is unlikely to help with severe errors caused by technical issues on your site, but it will have a big impact on customers struggling with complexity in the checkout process and needing a question answered prior to completing the sale. Embedded support within the checkout process to patiently explain how to complete a task will help increase conversion rates. Additional Costs. Tax, shipping and other costs or duties can dramatically increase the cost of the purchase and when unexpected, can increase abandonment, particularly if they can’t be adequately explained. Again, a lack of knowledge erodes confidence in the purchase, and cost concerns in particular, erode the perception of your brand’s trustworthiness. Again, providing information on what costs are additive and why they are being levied can decrease the likelihood that the customer will abandon out of the experience. Knowledge drives confidence and confidence drives conversion. If you’d like to understand best practices in providing contextual customer support in eCommerce to provide your shoppers with confidence, download the Oracle Cloud Service and Oracle Commerce - Contextual Support in Commerce White Paper. This white paper discusses the process of adding customer support, including a suggested process for finding where knowledge has the most influence on your shoppers and practical step-by-step illustrations on how contextual self-service can be added to your online commerce experience. Resources: [1] http://baymard.com/checkout-usability [2] http://baymard.com/blog/cart-abandonment

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• Red Gate in the Community

  - by Nick Harrison

  Much has been said recently about Red Gate's community involvement and commitment to the DotNet community. Much of this has been unduly negative. Before you start throwing stones and spewing obscenities, consider some additional facts: Red Gate's software is actually very good. I have worked on many projects where Red Gate's software was instrumental in finishing successfully. Red Gate is VERY good to the community. I have spoken at many user groups and code camps where Red Gate has been a sponsor. Red Gate consistently offers up money to pay for the venue or food, and they will often give away licenses as door prizes. There are many such community events that would not take place without Red Gate's support. All I have ever seen them ask for is to have their products mentioned or be listed as a sponsor. They don't insist on anyone following a specific script. They don't monitor how their products are showcased. They let their products speak for themselves. Red Gate sponsors the Simple Talk web site. I publish there regularly. Red Gate has never exerted editorial pressure on me. No one has ever told me we can't publish this unless you mention Red Gate products. No one has ever said, you need to say nice things about Red Gate products in order to be published. They have told me, "you need to make this less academic, so you don't alienate too many readers. "You need to actually write an introduction so people will know what you are talking about". "You need to write this so that someone who isn't a reflection nut will follow what you are trying to say." In short, they have been good editors worried about the quality of the content and what the readers are likely to be interested in. For me personally, Red Gate and Simple Talk have both been excellent to work with. As for the developer outrage… I am a little embarrassed by so much of the response that I am seeing. So much of the complaints remind me of little children whining "but you promised" Semantics aside. A promise is just a promise. It's not like they "pinky sweared". Sadly no amount name calling or "double dog daring" will change the economics of the situation. Red Gate is not a multibillion dollar corporation. They are a mid size company doing the best they can. Without a doubt, their pockets are not as deep as Microsoft's. I honestly believe that they did try to make the "freemium" model work. Sadly it did not. I have no doubt that they intended for it to work and that they tried to make it work. I also have no doubt that they labored over making this decision. This could not have been an easy decision to make. Many people are gleefully proclaiming a massive backlash against Red Gate swearing off their wonderful products and promising to bash them at every opportunity from now on. This is childish behavior that does not represent professionals. This type of behavior is more in line with bullies in the school yard than professionals in a professional community. Now for my own prediction… This back lash against Red Gate is not likely to last very long. We will all realize that we still need their products. We may look around for alternatives, but realize that they really do have the best in class for every product that they produce, and that they really are not exorbitantly priced. We will see them sponsoring Code Camps and User Groups and be reminded, "hey this isn't such a bad company". On the other hand, software shops like Red Gate, will remember this back lash and give a second thought to supporting open source projects. They will worry about getting involved when an individual wants to turn over control for a product that they developed but can no longer support alone. Who wants to run the risk of not being able to follow through on their best intentions. In the end we may all suffer, even the toddlers among us throwing the temper tantrum, "BUT YOU PROMISED!" Disclaimer Before anyone asks or jumps to conclusions, I do not get paid by Red Gate to say any of this. I have often written about their products, and I have long thought that they are a wonderful company with amazing products. If they ever open an office in the SE United States, I will be one of the first to apply.

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• Getting a handle on mobile data

  - by Eric Jensen

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} written by Ashok Joshi The proliferation of mobile devices in the corporate world is both a blessing as well as a challenge.  Mobile devices improve productivity and the velocity of business for the end users; on the other hand, IT departments need to manage the corporate data and applications that run on these devices. Oracle Database Mobile Server (DMS for short) provides a simple and effective way to deal with the management challenge.  DMS supports data synchronization between a central Oracle database server and data on mobile devices.  It also provides authentication, encryption and application and device management.  Finally, DMS is a highly scalable solution that can be used to manage hundreds of thousands of devices.   Here’s a simplified outline of how such a solution might work. Each device runs local sync and mgmt agents that handle bidirectional data flow with an Oracle enterprise backend, run remote commands, and provide status to the management console. For example, mobile admins could monitor multiple networks of mobile devices, upgrade their software remotely, and even destroy the local database on a compromised device. DMS supports either Oracle Berkeley DB or SQLite for device-local storage, and runs on a wide variety of mobile platforms. The schema for the device-local database is pretty simple – it contains the name of the application that’s installed on the device as well as details such as product name, version number, time of last access etc. Each mobile user has an account on the monitoring system.  DMS supports authentication via the Oracle database authentication mechanisms or alternately, via an external authentication server such as Oracle Identity Management. DMS also provides the option of encrypting the data on disk as well as while it is being synchronized. Whenever a device connects with DMS, it sends the list of all local application changes to the server; the server updates the central repository with this information.  Synchronization can be triggered on-demand, whenever there’s a change on the device (e.g. new application installed or an existing application removed) or via a rule-based schedule (e.g. every Saturday). Synchronization is very fast and efficient, since only the changes are propagated.  This includes resume capability; should synchronization be interrupted for any reason, the next synchronization will resume where the previous synchronization was interrupted. If the device should be lost or stolen, DMS has the capability to remove the applications and/or data from the device. This ability to control access to sensitive data and applications is critical in the corporate environment. The central repository also allows the IT manager to track the kinds of applications that mobile users use and recommend patches and upgrades, while still allowing the mobile user full control over what applications s/he downloads and uses on the device.  This is useful since most devices are used for corporate as well as personal information. In certain restricted use scenarios, the IT manager can also control whether a certain application can be installed on a mobile device.  Should an unapproved application be installed, it can easily be removed the next time the device connects with the central server. Oracle Database mobile server provides a simple, effective and highly secure and scalable solution for managing the data and applications for the mobile workforce.

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• TripleDES in Perl/PHP/ColdFusion

  - by Seidr

  Recently a problem arose regarding hooking up an API with a payment processor who were requesting a string to be encrypted to be used as a token, using the TripleDES standard. Our Applications run using ColdFusion, which has an Encrypt tag - that supports TripleDES - however the result we were getting back was not what the payment processor expected. First of all, here is the resulting token the payment processor were expecting. AYOF+kRtg239Mnyc8QIarw== And below is the snippet of ColdFusion we were using, and the resulting string. <!--- Coldfusion Crypt (here be monsters) ---> <cfset theKey="123412341234123412341234"> <cfset theString = "username=test123"> <cfset strEncodedEnc = Encrypt(theString, theKey, "DESEDE", "Base64")> <!--- resulting string(strEncodedEnc): tc/Jb7E9w+HpU2Yvn5dA7ILGmyNTQM0h ---> As you can see, this was not returning the string we were hoping for. Seeking a solution, we ditched ColdFusion for this process and attempted to reproduce the token in PHP. Now I'm aware that various languages implement encryption in different ways - for example in the past managing encryption between a C# application and PHP back-end, I've had to play about with padding in order to get the two to talk, but my experience has been that PHP generally behaves when it comes to encryption standards. Anyway, on to the PHP source we tried, and the resulting string. /* PHP Circus (here be Elephants) */ $theKey="123412341234123412341234"; $theString="username=test123"; $strEncodedEnc=base64_encode(mcrypt_ecb (MCRYPT_3DES, $theKey, $theString, MCRYPT_ENCRYPT)); /* resulting string(strEncodedEnc): sfiSu4mVggia8Ysw98x0uw== */ As you can plainly see, we've got another string that differs from both the string expected by the payment processor AND the one produced by ColdFusion. Cue head-against-wall integration techniques. After many to-and-fro communications with the payment processor (lots and lots of reps stating 'we can't help with coding issues, you must be doing it incorrectly, read the manual') we were finally escalated to someone with more than a couple of brain-cells to rub together, who was able to step back and actually look at and diagnose the issue. He agreed, our CF and PHP attempts were not resulting in the correct string. After a quick search, he also agreed that it was not neccesarily our source, but rather how the two languages implemented their vision of the TripleDES standard. Coming into the office this morning, we were met by an email with a snippet of source code, in Perl. This is was the code they were directly using on their end to produce the expected token. #!/usr/bin/perl # Perl Crypt Calamity (here be...something) use strict; use CGI; use MIME::Base64; use Crypt::TripleDES; my $cgi = CGI->new(); my $param = $cgi->Vars(); $param->{key} = "123412341234123412341234"; $param->{string} = "username=test123"; my $des = Crypt::TripleDES->new(); my $enc = $des->encrypt3($param->{string}, $param->{key}); $enc = encode_base64($enc); $enc =~ s/\n//gs; # resulting string (enc): AYOF+kRtg239Mnyc8QIarw== So, there we have it. Three languages, three implementations of what they quote in the documentation as TripleDES Standard Encryption, and three totally different resulting strings. My question is, from your experience of these three languages and their implementations of the TripleDES algorithm, have you been able to get any two of them to give the same response, and if so what tweaks to the code did you have to make in order to come to the result? I understand this is a very drawn out question, but I wanted to give clear and precise setting for each stage of testing that we had to perform. I'll also be performing some more investigatory work on this subject later, and will post any findings that I come up with to this question, so that others may avoid this headache.

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• Analyzing bitmaps produced by NSAffineTransform and CILineOverlay filters

  - by Adam

  I am trying to manipulate an image using a chain of CIFilters, and then examine each byte of the resulting image (bitmap). Long term, I do not need to display the resulting image (bitmap) -- I just need to "analyze" it in memory. But near-term I am displaying it on screen, to help with debugging. I have some "bitmap examination" code that works as expected when examining the NSImage (bitmap representation) I use as my input (loaded from a JPG file into an NSImage). And it SOMETIMES works as expected when I use it on the outputBitmap produced by the code below. More specifically, when I use an NSAffineTransform filter to create outputBitmap, then outputBitmap contains the data I would expect. But if I use a CILineOverlay filter to create the outputBitmap, none of the bytes in the bitmap have any data in them. I believe both of these filters are working as expected, because when I display their results on screen (via outputImageView), they look "correct." Yet when I examine the outputBitmaps, the one created from the CILineOverlay filter is "empty" while the one created from NSAffineTransfer contains data. Furthermore, if I chain the two filters together, the final resulting bitmap only seems to contain data if I run the AffineTransform last. Seems very strange, to me??? My understanding (from reading the CI programming guide) is that the CIImage should be considered an "image recipe" rather than an actual image, because the image isn't actually created until the image is "drawn." Given that, it would make sense that the CIimage bitmap doesn't have data -- but I don't understand why it has data after I run the NSAffineTransform but doesn't have data after running the CILineOverlay transform? Basically, I am trying to determine if creating the NSCIImageRep (ir in the code below) from the CIImage (myResult) is equivalent to "drawing" the CIImage -- in other words if that should force the bitmap to be populated? If someone knows the answer to this please let me know -- it will save me a few hours of trial and error experimenting! Finally, if the answer is "you must draw to a graphics context" ... then I have another question: would I need to do something along the lines of what is described in the Quartz 2D Programming Guide: Graphics Contexts, listing 2-7 and 2-8: drawing to a bitmap graphics context? That is the path down which I am about to head ... but it seems like a lot of code just to force the bitmap data to be dumped into an array where I can get at it. So if there is an easier or better way please let me know. I just want to take the data (that should be) in myResult and put it into a bitmap array where I can access it at the byte level. And since I already have code that works with an NSBitmapImageRep, unless doing it that way is a bad idea for some reason that is not readily apparent to me, then I would prefer to "convert" myResult into an NSBitmapImageRep. CIImage * myResult = [transform valueForKey:@"outputImage"]; NSImage *outputImage; NSCIImageRep *ir = [NSCIImageRep alloc]; ir = [NSCIImageRep imageRepWithCIImage:myResult]; outputImage = [[[NSImage alloc] initWithSize: NSMakeSize(inputImage.size.width, inputImage.size.height)] autorelease]; [outputImage addRepresentation:ir]; [outputImageView setImage: outputImage]; NSBitmapImageRep *outputBitmap = [[NSBitmapImageRep alloc] initWithCIImage: myResult]; Thanks, Adam

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• How do I call up values in PHP for user input in forms (radio buttons and selects)

  - by Derek

  Ok so my admin sets to edit a book which was created. I know how to bring in the values that were initially entered via a simple text field like 'bookname'. On the edit book page the book name field stores the currently assigned 'bookname' in the field (which is what I want! :) ) However I have other field types like selects and radio button entries...I'm having trouble calling in the already set value when the book was created. For example, there is a 'booklevel' field, which I have set as radio button entries as; Hard, Normal, and Easy. When the user goes to edit the book, I'm not too sure on how to have the current value drawn up (its stored as text) and the radio button being checked. I.e. 'Normal' is checked if this is what was set when the book was created. So far I have this as the code for the adding book level: <label>Book Level:</label> <label for="booklevel1" class="radio">Hard <input type="radio" name="booklevel" id="booklevel1" value="<?php echo 'Hard'; if (isset($_POST['booklevel'])); ?>"></label> <label for="booklevel2" class="radio">Medium<input type="radio" name="booklevel" id="booklevel2" value="<?php echo 'Normal'; if (isset($_POST['booklevel'])); ?>"></label> <label for="booklevel" class="radio">Low<input type="radio" name="booklevel" id="booklevel3" value="<?php echo 'Easy'; if (isset($_POST['booklevel'])); ?>"></label> This all works fine by the way when the user adds the book... But does anyone know how in my update book form, I can draw the value of what level has been set, and have the box checked?? To draw up the values in the text fields, I'm simply using: <?php echo $row['bookname']?> I also noticed a small issue when I call up the values for my Select options. I have the drop down select field display the currently set user (to read the book!), however, the drop down menu again displays the user in the list available options to select - basically meaning 2 of the same names appear in the list! Is there a way to eliminate the value of the SELECTED option? So far my setup for this is like: <select name="user_id" id="user_id"> <option value="<?php echo $row['user_id']?>" SELECTED><?php echo $row['fullname']?></option> <?php while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { ?> <option value="<?php echo $row['user_id']?>"><?php echo $row['name']?></option> <?php } ?> </select> If anyone can help me I'll be very greatful. Sorry for the incredibly long question!! :)

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 25, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 25, 2012Popular ReleasesAsp.NET Url Router: v1.0: build for .net 2.0 and .net 4.0menu4web: menu4web 0.0.3: menu4web 0.0.3Craig's Utility Library: Craig's Utility Library 3.1: This update adds about 60 new extension methods, a couple of new classes, and a number of fixes including: Additions Added DateSpan class Added GenericDelimited class Random additions Added static thread friendly version of Random.Next called ThreadSafeNext. AOP Manager additions Added Destroy function to AOPManager (clears out all data so system can be recreated. Really only useful for testing...) ORM additions Added PagedCommand and PageCount functions to ObjectBaseClass (same as M...MemoryLifter: MemoryLifter 2.4.1: KNOWN ISSUE: Sometime the automatic installation of SQL Compact Edition dependency does not work, when you are behind a proxy server. To solve that problem install SQL CE 3.5 SP2 manually from the following link: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5783SQL Monitor - managing sql server performance: SQLMon 4.2 alpha 14: 1. improved accuracy of logic fault checking in analysisDotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.1: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components are available as NuGet pa...Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - a centralized code sample library: C++, .NET Coding Guideline: Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework Coding Guideline This document describes the coding style guideline for native C++ and .NET (C# and VB.NET) programming used by the Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework project team.WebDAV for WHS: Version 1.0.67: - Added: Check whether the Remote Web Access is turned on or not; - Added: Check for Add-In updates;Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0 (March 2012) for .NET 4.0: March release of Phalanger 3.0 significantly enhances performance, adds new features and fixes many issues. See following for the list of main improvements: New features: Phalanger Tools installable for Visual Studio 2011 Beta "filter" extension with several most used filters implemented DomDocument HTML parser, loadHTML() method mail() PHP compatible function PHP 5.4 T_CALLABLE token PHP 5.4 "callable" type hint PCRE: UTF32 characters in range support configuration supports <c...Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v8.0: Version 8.0 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine, containing new features: Internationalization Custom authentication provider Access control list for forums and threads Webdeploy package checksum: abc62990189cf0d488ef915d4a55e4b14169bc01 Visit Roadmap for more details.BIDS Helper: BIDS Helper 1.6: This beta release is the first to support SQL Server 2012 (in addition to SQL Server 2005, 2008, and 2008 R2). Since it is marked as a beta release, we are looking for bug reports in the next few months as you use BIDS Helper on real projects. In addition to getting all existing BIDS Helper functionality working appropriately in SQL Server 2012 (SSDT), the following features are new... Analysis Services Tabular Smart Diff Tabular Actions Editor Tabular HideMemberIf Tabular Pre-Build ...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 1: New feature - Windows 8 Metro build New feature - JsonTextReader automatically reads ISO strings as dates New feature - Added DateFormatHandling to control whether dates are written in the MS format or ISO format, with ISO as the default New feature - Added DateTimeZoneHandling to control reading and writing DateTime time zone details New feature - Added async serialize/deserialize methods to JsonConvert New feature - Added Path to JsonReader/JsonWriter/ErrorContext and exceptions w...SCCM Client Actions Tool: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.11: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.11 is the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Fixed a bug when ping and cmd.exe kept running in endless loop after action progress was finished. Fixed update checking from Codeplex RSS feed. The tool is downloadable as a ZIP file that contains four files: ClientActionsTool.hta – The tool itself. Cmdkey.exe – command line tool for managing cached credentials. This is needed for alternate credentials feature when running the HTA...WebSocket4Net: WebSocket4Net 0.5: Changes in this release fixed the wss's default port bug improved JsonWebSocket supported set client access policy protocol for silverlight fixed a handshake issue in Silverlight fixed a bug that "Host" field in handshake hadn't contained port if the port is not default supported passing in Origin parameter for handshaking supported reacting pings from server side fixed a bug in data sending fixed the bug sending a closing handshake with no message which would cause an excepti...SuperWebSocket, a .NET WebSocket Server: SuperWebSocket 0.5: Changes included in this release: supported closing handshake queue checking improved JSON subprotocol supported sending ping from server to client fixed a bug about sending a closing handshake with no message refactored the code to improve protocol compatibility fixed a bug about sub protocol configuration loading in Mono improved BasicSubProtocol added JsonWebSocketSessionUltra Presenter Desktop: UltraPresenter Desktop Version 2012.03.18: New release with new interface design.LoU: LoU.Dungeons V0: LoU.Dungeons V0SSIS GoogleAnalyticsSource: Version 1.0.3 x64: Now it's possible to select 225 metrics and 93 dimensions and I have modified almost all of the data types.HTML to docx Converter: htmltodocx_0.5.1_alpha: Improved UTF-8 support. Please note, for proper UTF-8 support, there appears to be an issue with PHPWord that needs to be addressed. See: http://phpword.codeplex.com/discussions/261365 for a discussion.Daun Management Studio: Daun Management Studio 0.1 (Alpha Version): These are these the alpha application packages for Daun Management Studio to manage MongoDB Server. Please visit our official website http://www.daun-project.comNew ProjectsBundle Transformer: Bundle Transformer - a modular extension for System.Web.Optimization. Classes CssTransformer and JsTransformer, included in the core of Bundle Transformer, implement interface IBundleTransform. They are intended to replace the standard classes CssMinify and JsMinify.Catel fody plugin: Catel plugin for Fody. For more information about Fody, see http://code.google.com/p/fody/.CharsetConverter: CharsetConverter makes it easier to convert a bunch of files from one charset to another. Files are backuped and recoded. You will no longer need to convert one file after another. It's developed in VB.NET.FNSYS: ??GM Spriter: GM Spriter creates copy rectangle and scaling data for sprites that can drawn in pieces. Supporting a more advanced, optimized, and less resource intensive method.htty: htty is the HTTP TTY, a console application for interacting with web servers.menu4web: menu4web is lightweight javascript code for creating dynamic menus on web sites.mvcpractice2: mvcpractice2National Transportation Information Control Protocol Suite: A Standards Compliant Extensible NTCIP Software Solution. It is utilized in all federally funded projects in the world over. It contains utilities for encoding, decoding in various layer formats such as HDLC, PMPP, SNMP (BER, PER Etc.) There are also some proprietary features. This software was developed in my Free Time because the software in use by my organization was severely lacking and always required some type of major change for the smallest thing. After implementation and...OpenEMR: OpenEMR is an open source medical practice management application (EHR EMR PMS) featuring fully integrated electronic health records, scheduling, electronic billing, internationalization, free support, a vibrant community, and a whole lot more. Mirror of Sourceforge OpenEMR project.Opera Extension Creator: The program helps create extensions for Opera. You can write code in another editor (program can automatically checks for changes on the disk) and only one click to create .oex file and install it in Opera. It's developed in (V)C# 2005 and .NET 2.0. PADNUG Site Redesign: Bringing the PADNUG web site up to current technologies and giving it a facelift.Practico1: ejercicios de practico 1Roslyn and C#-Derived Languages: Roslyn and C#-Derived Languages(for example: Axum)Series Organiser: An app that organises tv series episodes based on the file name into a series folder structure.Silverlight socket component: Beetle.SL?????Silverlight socket?????,???????????,??????????tcp??;?????????????.Skylark: Skylark is an n-tier application to test drive different .NET technologies across various domain problems. It's developed in .NET C#

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• XSLT templates and recursion

  - by user333411

  Hi All, Im new to XSLT and am having some problems trying to format an XML document which has recursive nodes. My XML Code: Hopefully my XML shows: All <item> are nested with <items> An item can have either just attributes, or sub nodes The level to which <item> nodes are nested can be infinently deep <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> - <items> <item groupID="1" name="Home" url="//" /> - <item groupID="2" name="Guides" url="/Guides/"> - <items> - <item groupID="26" name="Online-Poker-Guide" url="/Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/"> - <items> - <item> <id>107</id> - <title> - <![CDATA[ Poker Betting - Online Poker Betting Structures ]]> </title> - <url> - <![CDATA[ /Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/online-poker-betting-structures ]]> </url> </item> - <item> <id>114</id> - <title> - <![CDATA[ Beginners&#39; Poker - Poker Hand Ranking ]]> </title> - <url> - <![CDATA[ /Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/online-poker-hand-ranking ]]> </url> </item> - <item> <id>115</id> - <title> - <![CDATA[ Poker Terms - 4th Street and 5th Street ]]> </title> - <url> - <![CDATA[ /Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/online-poker-poker-terms ]]> </url> </item> - <item> <id>116</id> - <title> - <![CDATA[ Popular Poker - The Popularity of Texas Hold&#39;em ]]> </title> - <url> - <![CDATA[ /Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/online-poker-popularity-texas-holdem ]]> </url> </item> - <item> <id>364</id> - <title> - <![CDATA[ The Impact of Traditional Poker on Online Poker (and vice versa) ]]> </title> - <url> - <![CDATA[ /Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/online-poker-tradional-vs-online ]]> </url> </item> - <item> <id>365</id> - <title> - <![CDATA[ The Ultimate, Absolute Online Poker Scandal ]]> </title> - <url> - <![CDATA[ /Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/online-poker-scandal ]]> </url> </item> </items> - <items> - <item groupID="27" name="Beginners-Poker" url="/Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/Beginners-Poker/"> - <items> + <item> <id>101</id> - <title> - <![CDATA[ Poker Betting - All-in On the Flop ]]> </title> - <url> - <![CDATA[ /Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/Beginners-Poker/poker-betting-all-in-on-the-flop ]]> </url> </item> + <item> <id>102</id> - <title> - <![CDATA[ Beginners&#39; Poker - Choosing an Online Poker Room ]]> </title> - <url> - <![CDATA[ /Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/Beginners-Poker/beginners-poker-choosing-a-room ]]> </url> </item> + <item> <id>105</id> - <title> - <![CDATA[ Beginners&#39; Poker - Choosing What Type of Poker to Play ]]> </title> - <url> - <![CDATA[ /Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/Beginners-Poker/beginners-poker-choosing-type-to-play ]]> </url> </item> + <item> <id>106</id> - <title> - <![CDATA[ Online Poker - Different Types of Online Poker ]]> </title> - <url> - <![CDATA[ /Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/Beginners-Poker/online-poker ]]> </url> </item> + <item> <id>109</id> - <title> - <![CDATA[ Online Poker - Opening an Account at an Online Poker Site ]]> </title> - <url> - <![CDATA[ /Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/Beginners-Poker/online-poker-opening-an-account ]]> </url> </item> + <item> <id>111</id> - <title> - <![CDATA[ Beginners&#39; Poker - Poker Glossary ]]> </title> - <url> - <![CDATA[ /Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/Beginners-Poker/beginners-poker-glossary ]]> </url> </item> + <item> <id>117</id> - <title> - <![CDATA[ Poker Betting - What is a Blind? ]]> </title> - <url> - <![CDATA[ /Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/Beginners-Poker/poker-betting-what-is-a-blind ]]> </url> </item> - <item> <id>118</id> - <title> - <![CDATA[ Poker Betting - What is an Ante? ]]> </title> - <url> - <![CDATA[ /Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/Beginners-Poker/poker-betting-what-is-an-ante ]]> </url> </item> + <item> <id>119</id> - <title> - <![CDATA[ Beginners Poker - What is Bluffing? ]]> </title> - <url> - <![CDATA[ /Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/Beginners-Poker/online-poker-what-is-bluffing ]]> </url> </item> - <item> <id>120</id> - <title> - <![CDATA[ Poker Games - What is Community Card Poker? ]]> </title> - <url> - <![CDATA[ /Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/Beginners-Poker/online-poker-what-is-community-card-poker ]]> </url> </item> - <item> <id>121</id> - <title> - <![CDATA[ Online Poker - What is Online Poker? ]]> </title> - <url> - <![CDATA[ /Guides/Online-Poker-Guide/Beginners-Poker/online-poker-what-is-online-poker ]]> </url> </item> </items> </item> </items> </item> </items> </item> </items> The XSL code: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output method="html" indent="yes"/> <xsl:template name="loop"> <xsl:for-each select="items/item"> <ul> <li><xsl:value-of select="@name" /></li> <xsl:if test="@name and child::node()"> <ul> <xsl:for-each select="items/item"> <li><xsl:value-of select="@name" />test</li> </xsl:for-each> </ul> <xsl:call-template name="loop" /> </xsl:if> <xsl:if test="child::node() and not(@name)"> <xsl:for-each select="/items"> <li><xsl:value-of select="id" /></li> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:if> </ul> </xsl:for-each> <xsl:for-each select="item/items/item"> <li>hi</li> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="/" name="test"> <xsl:call-template name="loop" /> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> Im trying to write the XSL so that every <items> node will render a <ul> and every <items> node will render an <li>. The XSL needs to be recursive because i cant tell how deep the nested nodes will go. Can anyone help? Regards, Al

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• Top ten things that don't make sense in The Walking Dead

  - by iamjames

  For those of you that don't know, The Walking Dead is a popular American TV show on AMC about a group of people trying to survive in a zombie-filled world.Here's the top ten eleven things that don't make sense on the show (and have never been explained) 1)  They never visit stores.  No Walmarts, Kmarts, Targets, shopping malls, pawn shops, gas stations, etc.  You'd think that would be the first place you'd visit for supplies, but they never have.  Not once.  There was a tiny corner store they visited in a small town, and while many products were already gone they did find several useful items.  2)  They never raid houses.  Why not?  One would imagine that they would want to search houses for useful items, but they don't.3)  They don't use 2 way radios.  Modern 2-way radios have a 36-mile range.  That's probably best possible range, but even if the range is only 10% of that, 3.6 miles, that's still more than enough for most situations, for the occasional "hey zombies attacking can you give me a hand?" or "there's zombies walking by stay inside until they leave" or "remember to pick up milk at the store love mom".  And yes they would need batteries or recharging, but they have been using gas-powered generators on the show and I'm sure a car charger would work.4)  They use gas-guzzling vehicles.  Every vehicle they have is from the 80s or 90s except for the new Kia SUV there for product placement.  Why?  They should all be driving new small SUVs or hybrids.  Visit a dealership and steal more fuel-efficient vehicles, because while the Walmart's might be empty from people raiding them for supplies, I'm sure most people weren't thinking "Gee, I should go car shopping" when the infection hit5)  They drive a motorcycle.  Seriously?  Let's find the least protective vehicle and drive that.  And while motorcycles get reasonable gas mileage, 5 people in a SUV gets better gas mileage per person than 5 people all driving motorcycles so it doesn't make economical sense either.6)  They drive loud vehicles.  The motorcycle used is commonly referred to as a chopper and is about as loud as a motorcycle can get.  The zombies are attracted to loud noise, so wouldn't it make more sense to drive vehicles that makes less sound?  Because as soon as you stop the bike and get off you're surrounded by zombies that heard you coming.  And it's not just the bike, the ~1980s Chevy SUV in the show is also very loud.7)  They never run out of food.  Seems like that would be a almost daily struggle, keeping enough food available for about a dozen people, yet I've never seen them visit a grocery store or local convenience store to stock up.8)  They don't carry swords, machetes, clubs, etc.  Let's face it, biting is not a very effective means of attack.  It's good for animals because they have fangs and little else, but humans have been finding better ways of killing each other since forever.  So why doesn't everyone on the show carry a sword or machete or at least a baseball bat?  Anything is better than wasting valuable bullets all the time.  Sure, dozen zombies approaching?  Shoot them.  One zombie approaching?  Save the bullet, cut off it's head.  9)  They do not wear protective clothing.  Human teeth are not exactly the sharpest teeth in the animal kingdom.  The leather shoes your dog ripped to shreds within minutes would probably take you days to bite through.  So why do they walk around half-naked?  Yes I know it's hot in Atlanta, but you'd think they'd at least have some tough leather coats or something for protection.  Maybe put a few small vent holes in the fabric if it's really hot.  Or better:  make your own chainmail.  Chainmail was used for thousands of years for protection from swords and is still used by scuba divers for protection from sharks.  If swords and sharks can't puncture it, human teeth don't stand a chance.  10)  They don't build barricades or dig trenches around properties.  In Season 2 they stayed at a farm in the middle of no where.  While being far away from people is a great way to stay far away from zombies, it would still make sense to build some sort of defenses.  Hordes of zombies would knock down almost any fence, but what about a trench or moat?  Maybe something not too wide so it can be jumped over easily but a zombie would fall into because I haven't seen too many jumping zombies on the show.  11)  They don't live in a mall or tall office building.  A mall would be perfect.  They have large security gates designed to keep even hundreds of people from breaking in and offer lots of supplies and food.  They're usually hundreds of thousands of square feet and fully enclosed, one could probably live their entire life happily in a mall.  Tall office building with on-site cafeteria would be another good choice.  They also usually offer good security and office furniture could be pushed out of the windows to crush approaching zombies, and the cafeteria is usually stocked to provide food for hundreds or thousands of office workers so food wouldn't be a problem for a long time. So there you have it, eleven things that don't make sense in The Walking Dead.  Have any of your own you'd like to add or were one of these things covered in the show?  Let me know in the comments.

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• Timeout Considerations for Solicit Response

  - by Michael Stephenson

  Background One of the clients I work with had been experiencing some issues for a while surrounding web service timeouts.  It's been a little challenging to work through the problems due to limitations in the diagnostic information available from one of the applications, but I learned some interesting things while troubleshooting the problem which don't seem to have been discussed much in the community so I thought I'd share my findings. In the scenario we have BizTalk trying to make calls to a .net web service which was exposed as a WSE 2 endpoint.  In the process BizTalk will try to make a large number of concurrent web service calls to the application, and the backend application has more than enough infrastructure and capability to handle the load. We have configured the <ConnectionManagement> section of the BizTalk configuration file to support up to 100 concurrent connections from each of our 2 BizTalk send servers to the web servers of the application. The problem we were facing was that the BizTalk side was reporting a significant number of timeouts when calling the web service.   One of the biggest issues was the challenge of being able to correlate a message from BizTalk to the IIS log in the .net application and the custom logs in the application especially when there was a fairly large number of servers hosting the web services.  However the key moment came when we were able to identify a specific call which had taken 40 seconds to execute on the server (yes a long time I know but that's a different story!).  Anyway we were able to identify that this had timed out on the BizTalk side.  Based on the normal 2 minute timeout we knew something unexpected was going on. From here I decided to do some experimentation and I wanted to start outside of BizTalk because my hunch was this was not a BizTalk behaviour but something which was being highlighted by BizTalk because of our large load.     Server-side - Sample Web Service To begin with I created a sample web service.  Nothing special just a vanilla asmx web service hosted in IIS6 on Windows 2003 Standard Edition.  The web service is just a hello world style web service as shown in the below picture.  The only key feature is that the server side web method has a 30 second sleep in it and will trace out some information before and after the thread is set to sleep.      In the configuration for this web service there again is nothing special it's pretty much the most plain simple web service you could build. Client-Side To begin looking at what was happening with our example I created a number of different ways to consume the web service. SoapHttpClientProtocol Example I created a small application which would use a normal proxy generated to call the web service.  It would iterate around a loop and make calls using the begin/end methods so I can do this asynchronously.  I would do a loop of 20 calls with the ConnectionManager configuration section supporting only 5 concurrent connections to the server.     <connectionManagement> <remove address="*"/> <add address = "*" maxconnection = "12" /> <add address = "http://<ServerName>" maxconnection = "5" />                         </connectionManagement> </system.net>     The below picture shows an example of the service calling code, key points are: I have configured the timeout of 40 seconds for the proxy I am using the asynchronous methods on the proxy to call the web service         The Test I would run the client and execute 21 calls to the web service.   The Results  Below is the client side trace showing what's happening on the client. In the below diagram is the web service side trace showing what's happening on the server Some observations on the results are: All of the calls were successful from the clients perspective You could see the next call starting on the server as soon as the previous one had completed Calls took significantly longer than 40 seconds from the start of our call to the return. In fact call 20 took 2 minutes and 30 seconds from the perspective of my code to execute even though I had set the timeout to 40 seconds     WSE 2 Sample In the second example I used the exact same code to call the web service again with a single exception that I modified the web service proxy to derive from WebServiceClient protocol which is part of WSE 2 (using SP3).  The below picture shows the basic code and the key points are: I have configured the timeout of 40 seconds for the proxy I am using the asynchronous methods on the proxy to call the web service        The Test This test would execute 21 calls from the client to the web service.   The Results  The below trace is from the client side: The below trace is from the server side:   Some observations on the trace results for this scenario are: With call 4 if you look at the server side trace it did not start executing on the server for a number of seconds after the other 4 initial calls which were accepted by the server. I re-ran the test and this happened a couple of times and not on most others so at this point I'm just putting this down to something unexpected happening on the development machine and we will leave this observation out of scope of this article. You can see that the client side trace statement executed almost immediately in all cases All calls after the initial few calls would timeout On the client side the calls that did timeout; timed out in a longer duration than the 40 seconds we set as the timeout You can see that as calls were completing on the server the next calls were starting to come through The calls that timed out on the client did actually connect to the server and their server side execution completed successfully     Elaboration on the findings Based on the above observations I have drawn the below sequence diagram to illustrate conceptually what is happening.  Everything except the final web service object is on the client side of the call. In the diagram below I've put two notes on the Web Service Proxy to show the two different places where the different base classes seem to start their timeout counters. From the earlier samples we can work out that the timeout counter for the WSE web service proxy starts before the one for the SoapHttpClientProtocol proxy and the WSE one includes the time to get a connection from the pool; whereas the Soap proxy timeout just covers the method execution. One interesting observation is if we rerun the above sample and increase the number of calls from 21 to 100,000 then for the WSE sample we will see a similar pattern where everything after the first few calls will timeout on the client as soon as it makes a connection to the server whereas the soap proxy will happily plug away and process all of the calls without a single timeout. I have actually set the sample running overnight and this did happen. At this point you are probably thinking the same thoughts I was at the time about the differences in behaviour and which is right and why are they different? I'm not sure there is a definitive answer to this in the documentation, or at least not that I could find! I think you just have to consider that they are different and they could have different effects depending on your messaging solution. In lots of situations this is just not an issue as your concurrent requests doesn't get to the situation where you end up throttling the web service calls on the client side, however this is definitely more common with an integration broker such as BizTalk where you often have high throughput requirements.  Some of the considerations you should make Based on this behaviour you should be aware of the following: In a .net application if you are making lots of concurrent web service calls from an application in an asynchronous manner your user may thing they are experiencing poor performance but you think your web service is working well. The problem could be that the client will have a default of 2 connections to remote servers so you should bear this in mind When you are developing a BizTalk solution or a .net solution with the WSE 2 stack you may experience timeouts under load and throttling the number of connections using the max connections element in the configuration file will not help you For an application using WSE2 or SoapHttpClientProtocol an expired timeout will not throw an error until after a connection to the server has been made so you should consider this in your transaction and durability patterns     Our Work Around In the short term for our specific scenario we know that we can handle this by just increasing our timeout value.  There is only a specific small window when we get lots of concurrent traffic that causes this scenario so we should be able to increase the timeout to take into consideration the additional client side wait, and on the odd occasion where we do get a timeout the BizTalk send port retry will handle this. What was causing our original problem was that for that short window we were getting a lot of retries which significantly increased the load on our send servers and highlighted the issue.  Longer Term Solution As a longer term solution this really gives us more ammunition to argue a migration to WCF. The application we are calling has some factors which limit the protocols we can use but with WCF we would have more control on the various timeout options because in WCF you can configure specific parts of the timeout. Summary I've had this blog post on my to do list for ages but hopefully it will be useful to some people to just understand this behaviour and to possibly help you with some performance issues you may have. I do not believe there is too much in the way of documentation particularly around WSE2 and ASMX in this area so again another bit of ammunition for migrating to WCF. I'll try to do a follow up post with the sample for WCF to show how this changes things.

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• Interview with Geoff Bones, developer on SQL Storage Compress

  - by red(at)work

  How did you come to be working at Red Gate? I've been working at Red Gate for nine months; before that I had been at a multinational engineering company. A number of my colleagues had left to work at Red Gate and spoke very highly of it, but I was happy in my role and thought, 'It can't be that great there, surely? They'll be back!' Then one day I visited to catch up them over lunch in the Red Gate canteen. I was so impressed with what I found there, that, three days later, I'd applied for a role as a developer. And how did you get into software development? My first job out of university was working as a systems programmer on IBM mainframes. This was quite a while ago: there was a lot of assembler and loading programs from tape drives and that kind of stuff. I learned a lot about how computers work, and this stood me in good stead when I moved over the development in the 90s. What's the best thing about working as a developer at Red Gate? Where should I start? One of the great things as a developer at Red Gate is the useful feedback and close contact we have with the people who use our products, either directly at trade shows and other events or through information coming through the product managers. The company's whole ethos is built around assisting the user, and this is in big contrast to my previous development roles. We aim to produce tools that people really want to use, that they enjoy using, and, as a developer, this is a great thing to aim for and a great feeling when we get it right. At Red Gate we also try to cut out the things that distract and stop us doing our jobs. As a developer, this means that I can focus on the code and the product I'm working on, knowing that others are doing a first-class job of making sure that the builds are running smoothly and that I'm getting great feedback from the testers. We keep our process light and effective, as we want to produce great software more than we want to produce great audit trails. Tell us a bit about the products you are currently working on. You mean HyperBac? First let me explain a bit about what HyperBac is. At heart it's a compression and encryption technology, but with a few added features that open up a wealth of really exciting possibilities. Right now we have the HyperBac technology in just three products: SQL HyperBac, SQL Virtual Restore and SQL Storage Compress, but we're only starting to develop what it can do. My personal favourite is SQL Virtual Restore; for example, I love the way you can use it to run independent test databases that are all backed by a single compressed backup. I don't think the market yet realises the kind of things you do once you are using these products. On the other hand, the benefits of SQL Storage Compress are straightforward: run your databases but use only 20% of the disk space. Databases are getting larger and larger, and, as they do, so does your ROI. What's a typical day for you? My days are pretty varied. We have our daily team stand-up meeting and then sometimes I will work alone on a current issue, or I'll be pair programming with one of my colleagues. From time to time we give half a day up to future planning with the team, when we look at the long and short term aims for the product and working out the development priorities. I also get to go to conferences and events, which is unusual for a development role and gives me the chance to meet and talk to our customers directly. Have you noticed anything different about developing tools for DBAs rather than other IT kinds of user? It seems to me that DBAs are quite independent minded; they know exactly what the problem they are facing is, and often have a solution in mind before they begin to look for what's on the market. This means that they're likely to cherry-pick tools from a range of vendors, picking the ones that are the best fit for them and that disrupt their environments the least. When I've met with DBAs, I've often been very impressed at their ability to summarise their set up, the issues, the obstacles they face when implementing a tool and their plans for their environment. It's easier to develop products for this audience as they give such a detailed overview of their needs, and I feel I understand their problems.

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• Playing with http page cycle using JustMock

  - by mehfuzh

  In this post , I will cover a test code that will mock the various elements needed to complete a HTTP page request and  assert the expected page cycle steps. To begin, i have a simple enumeration that has my predefined page steps: public enum PageStep {     PreInit,     Load,     PreRender,     UnLoad } Once doing so, i  first created the page object [not mocking]. Page page = new Page(); Here, our target is to fire up the page process through ProcessRequest call, now if we take a look inside the method with reflector.net,  the call trace will go like : ProcessRequest –> ProcessRequestWithNoAssert –> SetInstrinsics –> Finallly ProcessRequest. Inside SetInstrinsics ,  it requires calls from HttpRequest, HttpResponse and HttpBrowserCababilities. With this clue at hand, we can easily know the classes / calls  we need to mock in order to get through the expected call. Accordingly, for  HttpBrowserCapabilities our required test code will look like: Mock.Arrange(() => browser.PreferredRenderingMime).Returns("text/html"); Mock.Arrange(() => browser.PreferredResponseEncoding).Returns("UTF-8"); Mock.Arrange(() => browser.PreferredRequestEncoding).Returns("UTF-8"); Now, HttpBrowserCapabilities is get though [Instance]HttpRequest.Browser. Therefore, we create the HttpRequest mock: var request = Mock.Create<HttpRequest>(); Then , add the required get call : Mock.Arrange(() => request.Browser).Returns(browser); As, [instance]Browser.PerferrredResponseEncoding and [instance]Browser.PreferredResponseEncoding  are also set to the request object and to make that they are set properly, we can add the following lines as well [not required though]. bool requestContentEncodingSet = false; Mock.ArrangeSet(() => request.ContentEncoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("UTF-8")).DoInstead(() =>  requestContentEncodingSet = true); Similarly, for response we can write:  var response = Mock.Create<HttpResponse>();    bool responseContentEncodingSet = false;  Mock.ArrangeSet(() => response.ContentEncoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("UTF-8")).DoInstead(() => responseContentEncodingSet = true); Finally , I created a mock of HttpContext and set the Request and Response properties that will returns the mocked version. var context = Mock.Create<HttpContext>();   Mock.Arrange(() => context.Request).Returns(request); Mock.Arrange(() => context.Response).Returns(response); As, Page internally calls RenderControl method , we just need to replace that with our one and optionally we can check if  invoked properly: bool rendered = false; Mock.Arrange(() => page.RenderControl(Arg.Any<HtmlTextWriter>())).DoInstead(() => rendered = true); That’s  it, the rest of the code is simple,  where  i asserted the page cycle with the PageSteps that i defined earlier: var pageSteps = new Queue<PageStep>();   page.PreInit +=      delegate      {          pageSteps.Enqueue(PageStep.PreInit);      }; page.Load +=      delegate      {          pageSteps.Enqueue(PageStep.Load);      };   page.PreRender +=      delegate      {          pageSteps.Enqueue(PageStep.PreRender);      };   page.Unload +=      delegate      {          pageSteps.Enqueue(PageStep.UnLoad);      };   page.ProcessRequest(context);    Assert.True(requestContentEncodingSet);  Assert.True(responseContentEncodingSet);  Assert.True(rendered);    Assert.Equal(pageSteps.Dequeue(), PageStep.PreInit);  Assert.Equal(pageSteps.Dequeue(), PageStep.Load);  Assert.Equal(pageSteps.Dequeue(), PageStep.PreRender);  Assert.Equal(pageSteps.Dequeue(), PageStep.UnLoad);    Mock.Assert(request);  Mock.Assert(response);   You can get the test class shown in this post here to give a try by yourself with of course JustMock :-).   Enjoy!!

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• OpenGL-ES Texture Mapping. Texture is reversed?

  - by Feet

  I am trying to get my head around Texture mapping, I thought I had it the other day after asking this. However, I am having some trouble with my texture coordinates being flipped from what I am expecting. I am loading my texture like so int[] textures = new int[1]; gl.glGenTextures(1, textures, 0); _textureID = textures[0]; gl.glBindTexture(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, _textureID); Bitmap bmp = BitmapFactory.decodeResource( _context.getResources(), R.drawable.die_1); GLUtils.texImage2D(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, bmp, 0); gl.glTexParameterx(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL10.GL_LINEAR); gl.glTexParameterx(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL10.GL_LINEAR); bmp.recycle(); My cube is this float vertices[] = { // Front face -width, -height, depth, // 0 width, -height, depth, // 1 width, height, depth, // 2 -width, height, depth, // 3 // Back Face width, -height, -depth, // 4 -width, -height, -depth, // 5 -width, height, -depth, // 6 width, height, -depth, // 7 // Left face -width, -height, -depth, // 8 -width, -height, depth, // 9 -width, height, depth, // 10 -width, height, -depth, // 11 // Right face width, -height, depth, // 12 width, -height, -depth, // 13 width, height, -depth, // 14 width, height, depth, // 15 // Top face -width, height, depth, // 16 width, height, depth, // 17 width, height, -depth, // 18 -width, height, -depth, // 19 // Bottom face -width, -height, -depth, // 20 width, -height, -depth, // 21 width, -height, depth, // 22 -width, -height, depth, // 23 }; short indices[] = { // Front 0,1,2, 0,2,3, // Back 4,5,6, 4,6,7, // Left 8,9,10, 8,10,11, // Right 12,13,14, 12,14,15, // Top 16,17,18, 16,18,19, // Bottom 20,21,22, 20,22,23, }; float texCoords[] = { // Front face textured only, for simplicity 0.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f}; And it is drawn like so // Counter-clockwise winding. gl.glFrontFace(GL10.GL_CCW); // Enable face culling. gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_CULL_FACE); // What faces to remove with the face culling. gl.glCullFace(GL10.GL_BACK); // Enabled the vertices buffer for writing and to be used during // rendering. gl.glEnableClientState(GL10.GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); // Specifies the location and data format of an array of vertex // coordinates to use when rendering. gl.glVertexPointer(3, GL10.GL_FLOAT, 0, verticesBuffer); if (normalsBuffer != null) { // Enabled the normal buffer for writing and to be used during rendering. gl.glEnableClientState(GL10.GL_NORMAL_ARRAY); // Specifies the location and data format of an array of normals to use when rendering. gl.glNormalPointer(GL10.GL_FLOAT, 0, normalsBuffer); } // Set flat color gl.glColor4f(rgba[0], rgba[1], rgba[2], rgba[3]); // Smooth color if ( colorBuffer != null ) { // Enable the color array buffer to be used during rendering. gl.glEnableClientState(GL10.GL_COLOR_ARRAY); // Point out the where the color buffer is. gl.glColorPointer(4, GL10.GL_FLOAT, 0, colorBuffer); } // Use textures? if ( textureBuffer != null) { gl.glEnableClientState(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D); gl.glTexCoordPointer(2, GL10.GL_FLOAT, 0, textureBuffer); } // Translation and rotation before drawing gl.glTranslatef(x, y, z); gl.glRotatef(rx, 1, 0, 0); gl.glRotatef(ry, 0, 1, 0); gl.glRotatef(rz, 0, 0, 1); gl.glDrawElements(GL10.GL_TRIANGLES, numOfIndices, GL10.GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT, indicesBuffer); // Disable the vertices buffer. gl.glDisableClientState(GL10.GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); gl.glDisableClientState(GL10.GL_COLOR_ARRAY); gl.glDisableClientState(GL10.GL_NORMAL_ARRAY); gl.glDisableClientState(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); // Disable face culling. gl.glDisable(GL10.GL_CULL_FACE); However my front face looks like this I also add, I haven't got any normals set, are textures affected by normals? float texCoords[] = { // Front 1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f} It seems as if the texture is being flipped, so the coordinates don't match up properly?

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• Azure Mobile Services: available modules

  - by svdoever

  Azure Mobile Services has documented a set of objects available in your Azure Mobile Services server side scripts at their documentation page Mobile Services server script reference. Although the documented list is a nice list of objects for the common things you want to do, it will be sooner than later that you will look for more functionality to be included in your script, especially with the new provided feature that you can now create your custom API’s. If you use GIT it is now possible to add any NPM module (node package manager module, say the NuGet of the node world), but why include a module if it is already available out of the box. And you can only use GIT with Azure Mobile Services if you are an administrator on your Azure Mobile Service, not if you are a co-administrator (will be solved in the future). Until now I did some trial and error experimentation to test if a certain module was available. This is easiest to do as follows:   Create a custom API, for example named experiment. In this API use the following code: exports.get = function (request, response) { var module = "nonexistingmodule"; var m = require(module); response.send(200, "Module '%s' found.", module); }; You can now test your service with the following request in your browser: https://yourservice.azure-mobile.net/api/experiment If you get the result: {"code":500,"error":"Error: Internal Server Error"} you know that the module does not exist. In your logs you will find the following error: Error in script '/api/experiment.json'. Error: Cannot find module 'nonexistingmodule' [external code] atC:\DWASFiles\Sites\yourservice\VirtualDirectory0\site\wwwroot\App_Data\config\scripts\api\experiment.js:3:13[external code] If you require an existing (undocumented) module like the OAuth module in the following code, you will get success as a result: exports.get = function (request, response) { var module = "oauth"; var m = require(module); response.send(200, "Module '" + module + "' found."); }; If we look at the standard node.js documentation we see an extensive list of modules that can be used from your code. If we look at the list of files available in the Azure Mobile Services platform as documented in the blog post Azure Mobile Services: what files does it consist of? we see a folder node_modules with many more modules are used to build the Azure Mobile Services functionality on, but that can also be utilized from your server side node script code: apn - An interface to the Apple Push Notification service for Node.js. dpush - Send push notifications to Android devices using GCM. mpns - A Node.js interface to the Microsoft Push Notification Service (MPNS) for Windows Phone. wns - Send push notifications to Windows 8 devices using WNS. pusher - Node library for the Pusher server API (see also: http://pusher.com/) azure - Windows Azure Client Library for node. express - Sinatra inspired web development framework. oauth - Library for interacting with OAuth 1.0, 1.0A, 2 and Echo. Provides simplified client access and allows for construction of more complex apis and OAuth providers. request - Simplified HTTP request client. sax - An evented streaming XML parser in JavaScript sendgrid - A NodeJS implementation of the SendGrid Api. sqlserver – In node repository known as msnodesql - Microsoft Driver for Node.js for SQL Server. tripwire - Break out from scripts blocking node.js event loop. underscore - JavaScript's functional programming helper library. underscore.string - String manipulation extensions for Underscore.js javascript library. xml2js - Simple XML to JavaScript object converter. xmlbuilder - An XML builder for node.js. As stated before, many of these modules are used to provide the functionality of Azure Mobile Services platform, and in general should not be used directly. On the other hand, I needed OAuth badly to authenticate to the new v1.1 services of Twitter, and was very happy that a require('oauth') and a few lines of code did the job. Based on the above modules and a lot of code in the other javascript files in the Azure Mobile Services platform a set of global objects is provided that can be used from your server side node.js script code. In future blog posts I will go into more details with respect to how this code is built-up, all starting at the node.js express entry point app.js.

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