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• Silverlight Firestarter thoughts, and thanks to one and all!

  - by Dave Campbell

  A few metrics that of course got out of hand, but some may find interesting:   1/2 My share of the MVP of the Year award in February of 2009 with Laurent Bugnion 2 Number of degrees I hold: B.S., M.S. Electrical Engineering 3 Number of years in the U.S. Army 3.5 Number of years SilverlighCream has been posted 4 Number of times awarded MVP 6 Number of professional positions I've worked: Antenna Rigger, Boilermaker, Musician, Electronic Technician, Hardware Engineer, Software Engineer 16 Number of companies I've worked for during my career as an Engineer 19 Age at which I turned my first line of code 28 Age at which I hit the workforce as an Engineer 33 Number of years working as an Engineer 43 Number of years writing code 62 Number of years since instantiation 116 Number of tags to search SilverlightCream with 645 Number of blogs I view to find articles (at this moment) 664 Number of articles tagged wp7dev at SilverlightCream right now 700 Number of Twitter followers for WynApse 981 Number of individual bloggers in the SilverlightCream database 1002 Number of SilverlightCream blogposts 1100 Number of people live in Redmond for the Firestarter (I think) 1428 Number of total blogposts at GeeksWithBlogs (not counting this one) 4200 Number of Feedburner subscribers (approximately) 6500 Number of Twitter followers for SilverlightNews (approximately) 7087 Number of posts tagged and aggregated at SilverlightCream right now 13000 Number of people registered to watch the Firestarter online (I think) The overwhelming feeling I have returning from the Silverlight Firestarter: Priceless There is absolutely no way that I could personally thank everyone that over the last few years has held their hand out and offered me a step up to get to the point that Scott Guthrie called me out in his keynote. So I'm just going to hit the highlights here... Scott Guthrie Thanks for not only being the level you are at Microsoft, but for being so approachable, easy to talk to, willing to help everyone, and above all knowledgable. My first level manager at my last position asked if Visual Studio was a graphics program... and you step up to a laptop at a conference and type "File->New Program" ... 'nuff said... oh yeah, thanks for the shoutout! John Papa Thanks for being a good friend, ramroding the Firestarter, being a great guy to be around, and for the poster... holy crap is that cool. Tim Heuer Thanks for all you did as a great DE in Phoenix, and for helping out so many of us, of course being a great guy, and for the poster as well... I think you and John shared that task. In no order at all my buddy Michael Washington, Laurent Bugnion (the other half of the first Silverlight MVP of the Year) Tim Sneath, Mike Harsh, Chad Campbell and Bryant Likes (from back in the day), Adam Kinney, Jesse Liberty, Jeff Paries, Pete Brown, András Velvárt, David Kelly, Michael Palermo, Scott Cate, Erik Mork, and on and on... don't feel bad if your name didn't appear, I have simply too many supporters to name. Silverlight Firestarter Indeed All the people mentioned here, and all the MVPs knew Silverlight was NOT dead, but because of a very unfortunate circumstance, the popular media opinion became that. Consequently the Firestarter exploded from a laid-back event to a global conference. People worked their ass off getting bits ready and presentations using those bits. All to stem the flow of misinformation. All involved please accept my personal thanks for an absolutely awesome job. I had the priviledge of watching the 'prep' on Wednesday afternoon, and was blown away the first time I saw the 3D demo... and have been blown away every time I've seen it since. Not to mention all the other goodness in Silverlight 5. Yes I hit 1000 on my blog, but more importantly, all of you are blogging and using Silverlight, and Microsoft hit one completely out of the park... no... they knocked it out of the neighborhood with the Firestarter. It was amazing to be there for it, and it will be awesome to use the new bits as we get them. Keep reading, there's tons more to come with Silverlight and SilverlightCream following along behind. As usual, this old hacker is humbled to be allowed to play with all the cool kids... Thanks one and all for everything, and Stay in the 'Light

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• Select Union Query problem

  - by Krishma

  I have 2 tables Table A id name ------------ 1 Scott 2 Dan 3 Sam Table B id name ------------ 1 Dan 2 Andi 3 Jess Result needs to be Id Name Found 1 Scott A 2 Dan C i.e. found in both 3 Sam A 2 Andi B 3 Jess B I am able to do UNION to fetch the result but how i generate column Founds. Any idea ?? Thank you in advance :)

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• Maze Navigation in Player Stage with Roomba

  - by Scott

  Here is my code: /* Scott Landau Robot Lab Assignment 1 */ // Standard Java Libs import java.io.*; // Player/Stage Libs import javaclient2.*; import javaclient2.structures.*; import javaclient2.structures.sonar.*; // Begin public class SpinningRobot { public static Position2DInterface pos = null; public static LaserInterface laser = null; public static void main(String[] args) { PlayerClient robot = new PlayerClient("localhost", 6665); laser = robot.requestInterfaceLaser(0, PlayerConstants.PLAYER_OPEN_MODE); pos = robot.requestInterfacePosition2D(0,PlayerConstants.PLAYER_OPEN_MODE); robot.runThreaded (-1, -1); pos.setSpeed(0.5f, -0.25f); // end pos float x, y; x = 46.0f; y = -46.0f; boolean done = false; while( !done ){ if(laser.isDataReady()) { float[] laser_data = laser.getData().getRanges(); System.out.println("== IR Sensor =="); System.out.println("Left Wall Distance: "+laser_data[360]); System.out.println("Right Wall Distance: " +laser_data[0]); // if laser doesn't reach left wall, move to detect it // so we can guide using left wall if ( laser_data[360] < 0.6f ) { while ( laser_data[360] < 0.6f ) { pos.setSpeed(0.5f, -0.5f); } } else if ( laser_data[0] < 0.6f ) { while(laser_data[0<0.6f) { pos.setSpeed(0.5f, 0.5f); } } pos.setSpeed(0.5f, -0.25f); // end pos? done = ( (pos.getX() == x) && (pos.getY() == y) ); } } } } // End I was trying to have the Roomba go continuously at a slight right curve, quickly turning away from each wall it came to close to if it recognized it with it's laser. I can only use laser_data[360] and laser_data[0] for this one robot. I think this would eventually navigate the maze. However, I am using the Player Stage platform, and Stage freezes when the Roomba comes close to a wall using this code, I have no idea why. Also, if you can think of a better maze navigation algorithm, please let me know. Thank you!

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• How to eager load sibling data using LINQ to SQL?

  - by Scott

  The goal is to issue the fewest queries to SQL Server using LINQ to SQL without using anonymous types. The return type for the method will need to be IList<Child1>. The relationships are as follows: Parent Child1 Child2 Grandchild1 Parent Child1 is a one-to-many relationship Child1 Grandchild1 is a one-to-n relationship (where n is zero to infinity) Parent Child2 is a one-to-n relationship (where n is zero to infinity) I am able to eager load the Parent, Child1 and Grandchild1 data resulting in one query to SQL Server. This query with load options eager loads all of the data, except the sibling data (Child2): DataLoadOptions loadOptions = new DataLoadOptions(); loadOptions.LoadWith<Child1>(o => o.GrandChild1List); loadOptions.LoadWith<Child1>(o => o.Parent); dataContext.LoadOptions = loadOptions; IQueryable<Child1> children = from child in dataContext.Child1 select child; I need to load the sibling data as well. One approach I have tried is splitting the query into two LINQ to SQL queries and merging the result sets together (not pretty), however upon accessing the sibling data it is lazy loaded anyway. Adding the sibling load option will issue a query to SQL Server for each Grandchild1 and Child2 record (which is exactly what I am trying to avoid): DataLoadOptions loadOptions = new DataLoadOptions(); loadOptions.LoadWith<Child1>(o => o.GrandChild1List); loadOptions.LoadWith<Child1>(o => o.Parent); loadOptions.LoadWith<Parent>(o => o.Child2List); dataContext.LoadOptions = loadOptions; IQueryable<Child1> children = from child in dataContext.Child1 select child; exec sp_executesql N'SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Child2] AS [t0] WHERE [t0].[ForeignKeyToParent] = @p0',N'@p0 int',@p0=1 exec sp_executesql N'SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Child2] AS [t0] WHERE [t0].[ForeignKeyToParent] = @p0',N'@p0 int',@p0=2 exec sp_executesql N'SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Child2] AS [t0] WHERE [t0].[ForeignKeyToParent] = @p0',N'@p0 int',@p0=3 exec sp_executesql N'SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Child2] AS [t0] WHERE [t0].[ForeignKeyToParent] = @p0',N'@p0 int',@p0=4 I've also written LINQ to SQL queries to join in all of the data in hopes that it would eager load the data, however when the LINQ to SQL EntitySet of Child2 or Grandchild1 are accessed it lazy loads the data. The reason for returning the IList<Child1> is to hydrate business objects. My thoughts are I am either: Approaching this problem the wrong way. Have the option of calling a stored procedure? My organization should not be using LINQ to SQL as an ORM? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you, -Scott

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• adding users, membership, and roles to site

  - by Alexander

  I have followed scott's gu tutorial here I uploaded the whole database to my site. Before doing what Scott's says I had one username stored in the membership. How can I create an additional user now that the table is in the web host? I can see that there's aspnet_Membership, aspnet_Applications, etc..etc

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• Creating directory?

  - by Vineet

  When iam creating directory using sytem as user create directory emp_dir1 AS "'C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\vin.txt"; vin.txt is my file it creates it. same when i do using user Scott it gives an error for path of file that "Identifier is too long" but when i put this file path in single quotes instead of double quotes for scott, it creates it. What is the reason behind?

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• When should I use Areas in TFS instead of Team Projects

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Well, it depends…. If you are a small company that creates a finite number of internal projects then you will find it easier to create a single project for each of your products and have TFS do the heavy lifting with reporting, SharePoint sites and Version Control. But what if you are not… Update 9th March 2010 Michael Fourie gave me some feedback which I have integrated. Ed Blankenship via @edblankenship offered encouragement and a nice quote. Ewald Hofman gave me a couple of Cons, and maybe a few more soon. Ewald’s company, Avanade, currently uses Areas, but it looks like the manual management is getting too much and the project is getting cluttered. What if you are likely to have hundreds of projects, possibly with a multitude of internal and external projects? You might have 1 project for a customer or 10. This is the situation that most consultancies find themselves in and thus they need a more sustainable and maintainable option. What I am advocating is that we should have 1 “Team Project” per customer, and use areas to create “sub projects” within that single “Team Project”. "What you describe is what we generally do internally and what we recommend. We make very heavy use of area path to categorize the work within a larger project." - Brian Harry, Microsoft Technical Fellow & Product Unit Manager for Team Foundation Server   "We tend to use areas to segregate multiple projects in the same team project and it works well." - Tiago Pascoal, Visual Studio ALM MVP   "In general, I believe this approach provides consistency [to multi-product engagements] and lowers the administration and maintenance costs. All good." - Michael Fourie, Visual Studio ALM MVP   “@MrHinsh BTW, I'm very much a fan of very large, if not huge, team projects in TFS. Just FYI :) Use Areas & Iterations.” Ed Blankenship, Visual Studio ALM MVP   This would mean that SSW would have a single Team Project called “SSW” that contains all of our internal projects and consequently all of the Areas and Iteration move down one hierarchy to accommodate this. Where we would have had “\SSW\Sprint 1” we now have “\SSW\SqlDeploy\Sprint1” with “SqlDeploy” being our internal project. At the moment SSW has over 70 internal projects and more than 170 total projects in TFS. This method has long term benefits that help to simplify the support model for companies that often have limited internal support time and many projects. But, there are implications as TFS does not provide this model “out-of-the-box”. These implications stretch across Areas, Iterations, Queries, Project Portal and Version Control. Michael made a good comment, he said: I agree with your approach, assuming that in a multi-product engagement with a client, they are happy to adopt the same process template across all products. If they are not, then it’ll either be easy to convince them or there is a valid reason for having a different template - Michael Fourie, Visual Studio ALM MVP   At SSW we have a standard template that we use and this is applied across the board, to all of our projects. We even apply any changes to the core process template to all of our existing projects as well. If you have multiple projects for the same clients on multiple templates and you want to keep it that way, then this approach will not work for you. However, if you want to standardise as we have at SSW then this approach may benefit you as well. Implications around Areas Areas should be used for topological classification/isolation of work items. You can think of this as architecture areas, organisational areas or even the main features of your application. In our scenario there is an additional top level item that represents the Project / Product that we want to chop our Team Project into. Figure: Creating a sub area to represent a product/project is easy. <teamproject> <teamproject>\<Functional Area/module whatever> Becomes: <teamproject> <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\ <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\<Functional Area/module whatever> Implications around Iterations Iterations should be used for chronological classification/isolation of work items. This could include isolated time boxes, milestones or release timelines and really depends on the logical flow of your project or projects. Due to the new level in Area we need to add the same level to Iteration. This is primarily because it is unlikely that the sprints in each of your projects/products will start and end at the same time. This is just a reality of managing multiple projects. Figure: Adding the same Area value to Iteration as the top level item adds flexibility to Iteration. <teamproject>\Sprint 1 Or <teamproject>\Release 1\Sprint 1 Becomes: <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\Sprint 1 Or <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\Release 1\Sprint 1 Implications around Queries Queries are used to filter your work items based on a specified level of granularity. There are a number of queries that are built into a project created using the MSF Agile 5.0 template, but we now have multiple projects and it would be a pain to have to edit all of the work items every time we changed project, and that would only allow one team to work on one project at a time.   Figure: The Queries that are created in a normal MSF Agile 5.0 project do not quite suit our new needs. In order for project contributors to be able to query based on their project we need a couple of things. The first thing I did was to create an “_Area Template” folder that has a copy of the project layout with all the queries setup to filter based on the “_Area Template” Area and the “_Sprint template” you can see in the Area and Iteration views. Figure: The template is currently easily drag and drop, but you then need to edit the queries to point at the right Area and Iteration. This needs a tool. I then created an “Areas” folder to hold all of the area specific queries. So, when you go to create a new TFS Sub-Project you just drag “_Area Template” while holding “Ctrl” and drop it onto “Areas”. There is a little setup here. That said I managed it in around 10 minutes which is not so bad, and I can imagine it being quite easy to build a tool to create these queries Figure: These new queries can be configured in around 10 minutes, which includes setting up the Area and Iteration as well. Version Control What about your source code? Well, that is the easiest of the lot. Just create a sub folder for each of your projects/products.   Figure: Creating sub folders in source control is easy as “Right click | Create new folder”. <teamproject>\DEV\Main\ Becomes: <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\DEV\Main\ Conclusion I think it is up to each company to make a call on how you want to configure your Team Projects and it depends completely on how many projects/products you are going to have for each customer including yourself. If we decide to utilise this route it will require some configuration to get our 170+ projects into this format, and I will probably be writing some tools to help. Pros You only have one project to upgrade when a process template changes – After going through an upgrade of over 170 project prior to the changes in the RC I can tell you that that many projects is no fun. Standardises your Process Template – You will always have the same Process implementation across projects/products without exception You get tighter control over the permissions – Yes, you can do this on a standard Team Project, but it gets a lot easier with practice. You can “move” work items from one “product” to another – Have we not always wanted to do that. You can rename your projects – Wahoo: everyone wants to do this, now you can. One set of Reporting Services reports to manage – You set an area and iteration to run reports anyway, so you may as well set both. Simplified Check-In Policies– There is only one set of check-in policies per client. This simplifies administration of policies. Simplified Alerts – As alerts are applied across multiple projects this simplifies your alert rules as per client. Cons All of these cons could be mitigated by a custom tool that helps automate creation of “Sub-projects” within Team Projects. This custom tool could create areas, Iteration, permissions, SharePoint and queries. It just does not exist yet :) You need to configure the Areas and Iterations You need to configure the permissions You may need to configure sub sites for SharePoint (depends on your requirement) – If you have two projects/products in the same Team Project then you will not see the burn down for each one out-of-the-box, but rather a cumulative for the Team Project. This is not really that much of a problem as you would have to configure your burndown graphs for your current iteration anyway. note: When you create a sub site to a TFS linked portal it will inherit the settings of its parent site :) This is fantastic as it means that you can easily create sub sites and then set the Area and Iteration path in each of the reports to be the correct one. Every team wants their own customization (via Ewald Hofman) - small teams of 2 persons against teams of 30 – or even outsourcing – need their own process, you cannot allow that because everybody gets the same work item types. note: Luckily at SSW this is not a problem as our template is standardised across all projects and customers. Large list of builds (via Ewald Hofman) – As the build list in Team Explorer is just a flat list it can get very cluttered. note: I would mitigate this by removing any build that has not been run in over 30 days. The build template and workflow will still be available in version control, but it will clean the list. Feedback Now that I have explained this method, what do you think? What other pros and cons can you see? What do you think of this approach? Will you be using it? What tools would you like to support you?   Technorati Tags: Visual Studio ALM,TFS Administration,TFS,Team Foundation Server,Project Planning,TFS Customisation

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• Change Data Capture Webinar

  I am going to be doing a webinar with our friends at Attunity on Change Data Capture.  Attunity have a good story around this technology and you can use it in your SSIS loads to great effect. Join Attunity and Konesans/SQLIS for a Webinar on 17 September Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/693735512 Want increased efficiency and real-time speed when conducting ETL loads? Need lower implementation costs while minimizing system impact? Learn how change data capture (CDC) technologies can reduce ETL load times. Allan Mitchell, Principal Consultant at Konesans and SQLServer MVP specialising in ETL, will explain CDC concepts and benefits and how CDC can dramatically reduce ETL load times. Ian Archibald, Pre-Sales Director EMEA for Attunity, will present and demonstrate Attunity's award-winning Oracle-CDC for SSIS, a fully-integrated SSIS solution for designing, deploying and managing Oracle CDC processes. Title: Change Data Capture - Reducing ETL Load Times Date: Thursday, September 17, 2009 Time: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM BST ABOUT THE SPEAKERS: Allan Mitchell is the joint owner of Konesans Ltd, a UK based consultancy specializing in SQL Server, and most importantly SQL Server Integration Services. Having been working with SQL Server from 6.5 onwards, he has extensive experience in many aspects of SQL Server, but now focuses on the BI suite of tools. He is a SQL Server MVP, a frequent poster on the MS SSIS/DTS newsgroups, and runs the sqldts.com and sqlis.com resource sites. Ian Archibald, Attunity Pre-Sales Director EMEA, has worked in Attunity’s UK Office for 17 years. An expert in Attunity solutions, Ian has extensive knowledge of Attunity’s products and data integration & CDC technologies. After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar. System Requirements PC-based attendees Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista Macintosh®-based attendees Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

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• Change Data Capture Webinar

  I am going to be doing a webinar with our friends at Attunity on Change Data Capture.  Attunity have a good story around this technology and you can use it in your SSIS loads to great effect. Join Attunity and Konesans/SQLIS for a Webinar on 17 September Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/693735512 Want increased efficiency and real-time speed when conducting ETL loads? Need lower implementation costs while minimizing system impact? Learn how change data capture (CDC) technologies can reduce ETL load times. Allan Mitchell, Principal Consultant at Konesans and SQLServer MVP specialising in ETL, will explain CDC concepts and benefits and how CDC can dramatically reduce ETL load times. Ian Archibald, Pre-Sales Director EMEA for Attunity, will present and demonstrate Attunity's award-winning Oracle-CDC for SSIS, a fully-integrated SSIS solution for designing, deploying and managing Oracle CDC processes. Title: Change Data Capture - Reducing ETL Load Times Date: Thursday, September 17, 2009 Time: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM BST ABOUT THE SPEAKERS: Allan Mitchell is the joint owner of Konesans Ltd, a UK based consultancy specializing in SQL Server, and most importantly SQL Server Integration Services. Having been working with SQL Server from 6.5 onwards, he has extensive experience in many aspects of SQL Server, but now focuses on the BI suite of tools. He is a SQL Server MVP, a frequent poster on the MS SSIS/DTS newsgroups, and runs the sqldts.com and sqlis.com resource sites. Ian Archibald, Attunity Pre-Sales Director EMEA, has worked in Attunity’s UK Office for 17 years. An expert in Attunity solutions, Ian has extensive knowledge of Attunity’s products and data integration & CDC technologies. After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar. System Requirements PC-based attendees Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista Macintosh®-based attendees Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

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• Some SharePoint NDA Information

  - by Sahil Malik

  Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). Many years ago, at the last to last to last MVP summit, Microsoft was kind enough to share with us what they were thinking wayyyyyyyyyyyy ahead! I specially remember John Durant talking about the specific enhancements planned for SharePoint 2010 development experience. If you haven’t seen John Durant talking on stage, the guy has more enthusiasm than tiger woods in Amsterdam! The energy of his presentations is simply amazing. So, I pulled out my phone, and I snapped a picture! And, I emailed that picture to everyone in the MVP land, and Microsoft land, saying “We have evidence”, i.e. here are the promises that were made, and dammit we’ll see by the time you release SP2010 how many of these do you actually release. Here is the picture ladies and gentlemen -     It’s a good karate chop action shot isn’t it? Of course, we were all immediately warned not to share any of this seriously strictly NDA information at the time. Well, now that the information is out in the world, I can finally share now, this small tidbit of how far ahead Microsoft is thinking in their plans. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised, if today that they have a very clear idea what SharePoint vNext will be all about, or should I say vNextvNext? Have fun! Comment on the article ....

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• Free CodeSmith License!

  - by Randy Walker

  The catch?  Attend the Ozarks .Net User Group meeting on April 1st. Here’s a list of the other prizes for the event GRAND PRIZE 1 - iPad (Wi-Fi 16GB) THIRD PARTY COMPONENTS 6 - Telerik Premium Collection 5 - Infragistics NetAdvantage for .NET 1 - Nevron Chart for .NET Lite DevExpress Xceed PRODUCTIVITY 2 - CodeRush with Refactor! Pro 2 - ReSharper CodeSmith GAMES 3 - Halo3 ODST (XBox 360) 3 - Forza Motorsport (Xbox 360) OTHER SOFTWARE 3 - Windows 7 Ultimate 2 - Microsoft Office Standard 2007 HARDWARE 2 - Microsoft Arc Mouse BOOKS 12 - OReilly eBooks 12 - Microsoft Press books 5 - Apress books 3 - Addison-Wesley books 2 - Manning books 2 - Sams books The Info: "Be a Professional Developer and Write Clean Code!" by Claudio Lassala on April 1, 2010 PRESENTATION TOPIC "Be a Professional Developer and Write Clean Code!" - by Claudio Lassala Poorly written code can be created quickly, but it comes at a cost of high maintenance. Most of the time, code can be improved easily by following some simple practices. Professional developers should know these practices and tools and apply it to their work every day. This session will cover the importance of writing clean code, the kind of attitude all developers should have towards the code they produce, as well as the practices and tools that can be used to aid you in becoming a better developer. BIOGRAPHY Claudio Lassala is a Senior Developer at EPS Software Corp. He has presented several lectures at Microsoft events such as PDC Brazil and various other Microsoft seminars, as well as several conferences and user groups across North America and Brazil. He is a multiple winner of the Microsoft MVP Award since 2001 (for Visual FoxPro in 2001-2002, and for C# ever since), an INETA speaker, and also holds the MCSD for .NET certification. He has articles published on several magazines, such as MSDN Brazil Magazine, CoDe Magazine, UTMag, Developers Magazine, and FoxPro Advisor. More detailed information regarding his presentations and articles can be found in his MVP Profile. You can also read more about Claudio on his blog or on Twitter Schedule 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM Social Networking 6:30 PM - 7:00 PM  Prizes 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM Presentation:  "Be a Professional Developer and Write Clean Code!" by Claudio Lassala 8:30 PM - 9:00 PM Wrap-Up

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• With WPF and Silverlight against cancer

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  MVPs are well known for their good heart (like the GeekGive initiative shows) and Client App Dev MVP Gregor Biswanger is no exception. At the latest MVP summit (beginning of March 2011), he took over a DVD about WPF 4 and Silverlight 4 and asked a few Microsoft superstars to sign it. Right now, the DVD is auctioned on eBay and of course the proceeds will go to a charitable work: The German League against Cancer (Deutsche Krebshilfe). The post is in German and English (scroll down for the English text). This sounds like a great idea, and considering who signed it, it is going to be a real collectible: Scott Hanselman (Principal Program Manager Lead in Server and Tools Online) Tim Heuer (Program Manager for Microsoft Silverlight) Rob Relyea (Principal Program Manager Lead - Client Platform WPF & Silverlight) Pete Brown (Developer Division Community Program Manager - Windows Client) Eric Fabricant (Program Manager WPF) Jeff Wilcox (Silverlight Senior SDE) Jeffrey R Ferman (SDET Visual Studio Client Dev Tools) Chan Verbeck (Expression Blend Team) Yaniv Feinberg (Expression Blend Team) Douglas Olson (Director Dev Expression) Samuel W. Bent (Principal Software Design Engineer WPF) John Papa (Technical Evangelist for Silverlight) So if you feel that you could do a generous gesture, go ahead and take a look at the auction, and talk about it around you. Let’s prove again that geeks rule, also when it comes to giving to a good cause! Cheers! Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Win a Free License for Windows 7 Ultimate or Silverlight Spy at Our West Palm Beach .Net User Group

  - by Sam Abraham

  Shervin Shakibi, Microsoft Regional Director, ASP.Net MVP and Microsoft Certified Trainer will be our speaker at our West Palm Beach .Net User Group May meeting,  Shervin founded the FlaDotNet Users Group Network to which our West Palm Beach .Net User Group belongs. Shervin will be talking to us about the new features of Silverlight 4.0. I am personally looking forward to attending this event as I have always found Shervin's talks fun and a great learning experience.   At the end of our meeting, we will be having a free raffle. We will be giving away 1 free Windows 7 Ultimate license and 2 free Silverlight Spy licenses as well as several books and other giveaways. Usually, everybody goes home with a freebie.  We will also continue having ample networking time while enjoying free pizza/soda sponsored by Sherlock Technology and SISCO Corporation who is a new sponsor of our group.   Koen Zwikstra, Silverlight MVP and Founder of First Floor Software has kindly offered the West Palm Beach .Net User Group several free licenses of Silverlight Spy to raffle during our meetings. We will start by raffling two copies during our May meeting.   Silverlight Spy is a very valuable tool in debugging Silverlight applications. It has been mentioned at MIX10 ( http://firstfloorsoftware.com/blog/silverlight-spy-at-mix10/) as well as by Microsoft Community Leaders (http://blogs.msdn.com/chkoenig/archive/2008/08/29/silverlight-spy.aspx)   I am using Silverlight Spy myself and will probably be using it to demonstrate Silverlight internals during my talks. I think Koen's gift to our group will bring great value to our fortunate members who end up winning the licenses. Thank you Koen for your kind gift and looking forward to meeting you all on May 25th 2010 6:30 PM at CompTec (http://www.fladotnet.com/Reg.aspx?EventID=462)   Sam Abraham Site Director - West Palm Beach .Net User Group

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• MIX 2010 Covert Operations Day 2 Silverlight + Windows 7 Phone

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

  Left the Circus Circus and headed to the geek circus at Mandalay Bay.  Got in, got some breakfast, met a few more people and headed to the keynote. Upon arriving the crew I was hanging with at the event; Erik Mork, Beth Murray, and Brian Henderson and I were entertained with several other thousand geeks by the wicked yo-yoing. The first video demo of something was of Bing Maps and various aspects of Microsoft Research integrated together.  Namely the pictures, put in place, on real 3d element maps of various environments. Silverlight Scott Guthrie, as one would guess, kicked off the keynote.  His first point was that user experience has become a priority at Microsoft.  This can be seen by any observant soul with the release and push of Expression, Silverlight, and the other tools.  This is even more apparent when one takes note of Microsoft bringing in people that can actually do good design and putting them at the forefront. The next thing Scott brought up was a few key points about Silverlight.  Currently Silverlight is a little over 2 years old and has achieved a pretty solid 60% penetration.  Silverlight has all sorts of capabilities that have been developed and are now provided as open source including;  ad injection, smoothing, playback editing, and more.  Another thing he showed, which really struck me as awesome being in the analytics space, was the Olympics and a quick glimpse of the ad statistics, viewer experience, video playback performance, audience trends, and overall viewer participation.  All of it rendered in Silverlight in beautiful detail. The key piece of Scott's various points were all punctuated with the fact that all of this code is available as open source.  Not only is Microsoft really delving into this design element of things, they're getting involved in the right ways. One of the last points I'll bring up about Silverlight 4 is the ability to have HD video on a monitor, and an entirely different activity being done on the other monitor, effectively making Silverlight the only RIA framework that supports multi-monitor support.  Overall, Silverlight is continuing to impress – providing superior capabilities tit-for-tat with the competition. Windows 7 Phone The Windows 7 Phone has 3 primary buttons (yes, more than the iPhone, don't let your mind explode!!).  Start, Search, and Back control all of the needed functionality of the phone.  At the same time, of course, there is the multi-touch, touch, and other interactive abilities of the interface.  The intent, once start is pressed is to have all the information that a phone owner wants displayed immediately.  Avoiding the scrolling through pages of apps or rolling a ball to get through multitudes of other non-interactive phone interfaces.  The Windows 7 Phone simply has the data right in front of you, basically a phone dashboard.  From there it is easy to dive into the interactive areas of the phone. Each area of the interface of the phone is broken into hubs.  These hubs include applications, data, and other things based on a relative basis.  This basis being determined by the user.  These applications interact on many other levels, and form a kind of relationship between each other adding more and more meta-data to the phone user, their interactions between the applications, and of course the social element of their interactions on the phone.  This makes this phone a practical must have for a marketer involved in social media.  The level of wired together interaction is massive, and of course, if you've seen Office Outlook 2010 you know that the power that is pulled into the phone by being tied to Outlook is massive. Joe Belfiore also showed several UI & specifically UX elements of the phone interface that allows paging to be instinctual by simple clipped items, flipping page to page, and other excellent user experience advances for phone devices.  Belfiore's also showed how his people hub had a massive list of people, with pictures, all from various different social networks and other associated relations.  The rendering, speed, and viewing of these people's, their pictures, their social network information, and other characteristics was smooth and in some situations unbelievably rendered.  This demo showed some of the great power of the beta phone, which isn't even as powerful as the planned end device. Joe finished up by jumping into the music, videos, and other media with the Zune Component of the Windows 7 Mobile Phone.  This was all good stuff, but I'll get to what really sold me on the media element in a moment. When Joe was done, Scott Guthrie stepped back up to walk through building a Windows 7 Mobile Phone.  This is were I have to give serious props.  He built this application, in Visual Studio 2010, in front of 2000+ people.  That was cool, but what really was amazing that he build the application in about 2 minutes.  The IDE, side by side design that is standard in Visual Studio is light years ahead of x-Code or any of the iPhone IDEs.  The Windows 7 Mobile System, if it can get market penetration, poses a technologically superior development and phone platform over anything on the market right now.  The biggest problem with the phone, is it just isn't available yet.  I personally can't wait for a chance to build some apps for the new Windows Phone. Netflix, I May Start Up an Account Again! When I get my Windows 7 Phone device, I am absolutely getting a Netflix account again.  The Vertigo crew, as I wrote on Twitter "#MIX10 Props @seesharp on @netflix demo", displayed an application on the phone for Netflix that actually ran HD Video of Rescue Me (with Dennis Leary).  The video played back smooth as it would on a dedicated computer, I was instantly sold.  So this didn't actually sell me on the phone, because I'm already sold, but it did sell me whole heartedly on the media capabilities of the pending phone. Anyway, I try not to do this but I may double post today.  Lunch is over and I'm off to another session very near and dear to the heart of my occupation, Analytics Tracking.  Stay tuned and I should have that post up by the end of the day. Original Post – Check out my other blog for even more technical ramblings and reads.

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• LobsterPot Solutions in the USA

  - by Rob Farley

  We’re expanding! I’m thrilled to announce that Microsoft Gold Partner LobsterPot Solutions has started another branch appointing the amazing Ted Krueger (5-time SQL MVP awardee) as the US lead. Ted is well-known in the SQL Server world, having written books on indexing, consulting and on being a DBA (not to mention contributing chapters to both MVP Deep Dives books). He is an expert on replication and high availability, and strong in the Business Intelligence space – vast experience which is both broad and deep. Ted is based in the south east corner of Wisconsin, just north of Chicago. He has been a consultant for eons and has helped many clients with their projects and problems, taking the role as both technical lead and consulting lead. He is also tireless in supporting and developing the SQL Server community, presenting at conferences across America, and helping people through his blog, Twitter and more. Despite all this – it’s neither his technical excellence with SQL Server nor his consulting skill that made me want him to lead LobsterPot’s US venture. I wanted Ted because of his values. In the time I’ve known Ted, I’ve found his integrity to be excellent, and found him to be morally beyond reproach. This is the biggest priority I have when finding people to represent the LobsterPot brand. I have no qualms in recommending Ted’s character or work ethic. It’s not just my thoughts on him – all my trusted friends that know Ted agree about this. So last week, LobsterPot Solutions LLC was formed in the United States, and in a couple of weeks, we will be open for business! LobsterPot Solutions can be contacted via email at [email protected], on the web at either www.lobsterpot.com.au or www.lobsterpotsolutions.com, and on Twitter as @lobsterpot_au and @lobsterpot_us. Ted Kruger blogs at LessThanDot, and can also be found on Twitter and LinkedIn. This post is cross-posted from http://lobsterpotsolutions.com/lobsterpot-solutions-in-the-usa

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• Visual Studio Talk Show #116 is now online - Les nouveautés de la conférence MIX 2010 (French)

  - by guybarrette

  http://www.visualstudiotalkshow.com Laurent Duveau: Les nouveautés de la conférence MIX 2010 Nous discutons avec Laurent Duveau des nouveautés annoncées dans le cadre de la conférence MIX 2010 à laquelle Laurent a assisté. MIX est une conférence tenue annuellement pour les développeurs et les designers Web qui présente les dernières nouveautés produites par Microsoft pour la programmation Internet. Laurent Duveau est un consultant et formateur pour la firme RunAtServer Consulting. Il se spécialise dans un domaine qu'il adore: les applications web avec Silverlight et l'outillage Microsoft Expression. Laurent est certifié MCSD.NET, MCTS, MCPD et MCT. Il participe fréquemment aux activités de la Communauté .NET de Montréal. Il est également l'auteur d'articles techniques pour TechHeadBrothers et asp.net et contribue activement aux forums asp.net. Pour la quatrième année consécutive, il a obtenu de Microsoft le titre de MVP. Et cette année, il est parmi les premiers récipiendaire de la reconnaissance MVP Silverlight. Suivez son blog ou il écrit sur les nouveautés de Silverlight. Télécharger l'émission Si vous désirez un accès direct au fichier audio en format MP3, nous vous invitons à télécharger le fichier en utilisant un des boutons ci-dessous. Si vous désirez utiliser le feed RSS pour télécharger l'émission, nous vous invitons à vous abonnez en utilisant le bouton ci-dessous. Si vous désirez utiliser le répertoire iTunes Podcast pour télécharger l'émission, nous vous encourageons à vous abonnez en utilisant le bouton ci-dessous. var addthis_pub="guybarrette";

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• Azure Florida Association

  - by Dave Noderer

  Herve Roggero, SQL Azure MVP,  has created a virtual community to focus on Azure. Here is the outline from Herve:   User Group Name:  Azure Florida Association Purpose: Start a virtual Florida user group that targets the Azure platform Venues: Most meetings will be virtual; however I plan to host a few physical events across Florida if possible from time to time; physical events may be a few hours long with potentially more than one speaker Possible Topics: The topics will touch Azure generally speaking, but can have a wide array of concern such as Integration, Data Migration, Hosting, Security, Scalability, Mobile Device integration, successful ventures/lessons learned, cross cloud integration patterns, testing in the cloud, deployment management, reporting… Target Members: Architects, Developers, IT Managers Membership: Membership will be free; virtual events will be free; physical events may involve a minimal cover charge Speakers: If you are interested in speaking or if you have topic ideas, please let me know Frequency: Initially these meetings will be held every other month   The first meeting will be held on January 25, 2012 at 4PM EST. Vikas Sahni, SQL Azure MVP, will be presenting on Demystifying SQL Azure. Vikas will introduce SQL Azure, value proposition, usage scenarios, concepts and architecture, what is there and what is not, including Tips and Tricks.  The actual meeting link will be available in January but please join the linked in group now to be kept informed of this and future events: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=4177626.

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• Agile Testing Days 2012 – Day 3 – Agile or agile?

  - by Chris George

  Another early start for my last Lean Coffee of the conference, and again it was not wasted. We had some really interesting discussions around how to determine what test automation is useful, if agile is not faster, why do it? and a rather existential discussion on whether unicorns exist! First keynote of the day was entitled “Fast Feedback Teams” by Ola Ellnestam. Again this relates nicely to the releasing faster talk on day 2, and something that we are looking at and some teams are actively trying. Introducing the notion of feedback, Ola describes a game he wrote for his eldest child. It was a simple game where every time he clicked a button, it displayed “You’ve Won!”. He then changed it to be a Win-Lose-Win-Lose pattern and watched the feedback from his son who then twigged the pattern and got his younger brother to play, alternating turns… genius! (must do that with my children). The idea behind this was that you need that feedback loop to learn and progress. If you are not getting the feedback you need to close that loop. An interesting point Ola made was to solve problems BEFORE writing software. It may be that you don’t have to write anything at all, perhaps it’s a communication/training issue? Perhaps the problem can be solved another way. Writing software, although it’s the business we are in, is expensive, and this should be taken into account. He again mentions frequent releases, and how they should be made as soon as stuff is ready to be released, don’t leave stuff on the shelf cause it’s not earning you anything, money or data. I totally agree with this and it’s something that we will be aiming for moving forwards. “Exceptions, Assumptions and Ambiguity: Finding the truth behind the story” by David Evans started off very promising by making references to ‘Grim up North’ referring to the north of England. Not sure it was appreciated by most of the audience, but it made me laugh! David explained how there are always risks associated with exceptions, giving the example of a one-way road near where he lives, with an exception sign giving rights to coaches to go the wrong way. Therefore you could merrily swing around the corner of the one way road straight into a coach! David showed the danger in making assumptions with lyrical quotes from Lola by The Kinks “I’m glad I’m a man, and so is Lola” and with a picture of a toilet flush that needed instructions to operate the full and half flush. With this particular flush, you pulled the handle all the way down to half flush, and half way down to full flush! hmmm, a bit of a crappy user experience methinks! Then through a clever use of a passage from the Jabberwocky, David then went onto show how mis-translation/ambiguity is the can completely distort the original meaning of something, and this is a real enemy of software development. This was all helping to demonstrate that the term Story is often heavily overloaded in the Agile world, and should really be stripped back to what it is really for, stating a business problem, and offering a technical solution. Therefore a story could be worded as “In order to {make some improvement}, we will { do something}”. The first ‘in order to’ statement is stakeholder neutral, and states the problem through requesting an improvement to the software/process etc. The second part of the story is the verb, the doing bit. So to achieve the ‘improvement’ which is not currently true, we will do something to make this true in the future. My PM is very interested in this, and he’s observed some of the problems of overloading stories so I’m hoping between us we can use some of David’s suggestions to help clarify our stories better. The second keynote of the day (and our last) proved to be the most entertaining and exhausting of the conference for me. “The ongoing evolution of testing in agile development” by Scott Barber. I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing Scott before… OMG I would love to have even half of the energy he has! What struck me during this presentation was Scott’s explanation of how testing has become the role/job that it is (largely) today, and how this has led to the need for ‘methodologies’ to make dev and test work! The argument that we should be trying to converge the roles again is a very valid one, and one that a couple of the teams at work are actively doing with great results. Making developers as responsible for quality as testers is something that has been lost over the years, but something that we are now striving to achieve. The idea that we (testers) should be testing experts/specialists, not testing ‘union members’, supports this idea so the entire team works on all aspects of a feature/product, with the ‘specialists’ taking the lead and advising/coaching the others. This leads to better propagation of information around the team, a greater holistic understanding of the project and it allows the team to continue functioning if some of it’s members are off sick, for example. Feeling somewhat drained from Scott’s keynote (but at the same time excited that alot of the points he raised supported actions we are taking at work), I headed into my last presentation for Agile Testing Days 2012 before having to make my way to Tegel to catch the flight home. “Thinking and working agile in an unbending world” with Pete Walen was a talk I was not going to miss! Having spoken to Pete several times during the past few days, I was looking forward to hearing what he was going to say, and I was not disappointed. Pete started off by trying to separate the definitions of ‘Agile’ as in the methodology, and ‘agile’ as in the adjective by pronouncing them the ‘english’ and ‘american’ ways. So Agile pronounced (Ajyle) and agile pronounced (ajul). There was much confusion around what the hell he was talking about, although I thought it was quite clear. Agile – Software development methodology agile – Marked by ready ability to move with quick easy grace; Having a quick resourceful and adaptable character. Anyway, that aside (although it provided a few laughs during the presentation), the point was that many teams that claim to be ‘Agile’ but are not, in fact, ‘agile’ by nature. Implementing ‘Agile’ methodologies that are so prescriptive actually goes against the very nature of Agile development where a team should anticipate, adapt and explore. Pete made a valid point that very few companies intentionally put up roadblocks to impede work, so if work is being blocked/delayed, why? This is where being agile as a team pays off because the team can inspect what’s going on, explore options and adapt their processes. It is through experimentation (and that means trying and failing as well as trying and succeeding) that a team will improve and grow leading to focussing on what really needs to be done to achieve X. So, that was it, the last talk of our conference. I was gutted that we had to miss the closing keynote from Matt Heusser, as Matt was another person I had spoken too a few times during the conference, but the flight would not wait, and just as well we left when we did because the traffic was a nightmare! My Takeaway Triple from Day 3: Release often and release small – don’t leave stuff on the shelf Keep the meaning of the word ‘agile’ in mind when working in ‘Agile Look at testing as more of a skill than a role  

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• Problem when trying to use simple Shaders + VBOs

  - by Mr.Gando

  Hello I'm trying to convert the following functions to a VBO based function for learning purposes, it displays a static texture on screen. I'm using OpenGL ES 2.0 with shaders on the iPhone (should be almost the same than regular OpenGL in this case), this is what I got working: //Works! - (void) drawAtPoint:(CGPoint)point depth:(CGFloat)depth { GLfloat coordinates[] = { 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0 }; GLfloat width = (GLfloat)_width * _maxS, height = (GLfloat)_height * _maxT; GLfloat vertices[] = { -width / 2 + point.x, -height / 2 + point.y, width / 2 + point.x, -height / 2 + point.y, -width / 2 + point.x, height / 2 + point.y, width / 2 + point.x, height / 2 + point.y, }; glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, _name); //Attrib position and attrib_tex coord are handles for the shader attributes glVertexAttribPointer(ATTRIB_POSITION, 2, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, vertices); glEnableVertexAttribArray(ATTRIB_POSITION); glVertexAttribPointer(ATTRIB_TEXCOORD, 2, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, coordinates); glEnableVertexAttribArray(ATTRIB_TEXCOORD); glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP, 0, 4); } I tried to do this to convert to a VBO however I don't see anything displaying on-screen with this version: //Doesn't display anything - (void) drawAtPoint:(CGPoint)point depth:(CGFloat)depth { GLfloat width = (GLfloat)_width * _maxS, height = (GLfloat)_height * _maxT; GLfloat position[] = { -width / 2 + point.x, -height / 2 + point.y, width / 2 + point.x, -height / 2 + point.y, -width / 2 + point.x, height / 2 + point.y, width / 2 + point.x, height / 2 + point.y, }; //Texture on-screen position ( each vertex is x,y in on-screen coords ) GLfloat coordinates[] = { 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0 }; // Texture coords from 0 to 1 glBindVertexArrayOES(vao); glGenVertexArraysOES(1, &vao); glGenBuffers(2, vbo); //Buffer 1 glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vbo[0]); glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, 8 * sizeof(GLfloat), position, GL_STATIC_DRAW); glEnableVertexAttribArray(ATTRIB_POSITION); glVertexAttribPointer(ATTRIB_POSITION, 2, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, position); //Buffer 2 glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vbo[1]); glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, 8 * sizeof(GLfloat), coordinates, GL_DYNAMIC_DRAW); glEnableVertexAttribArray(ATTRIB_TEXCOORD); glVertexAttribPointer(ATTRIB_TEXCOORD, 2, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, coordinates); //Draw glBindVertexArrayOES(vao); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, _name); glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP, 0, 4); } In both cases I'm using this simple Vertex Shader //Vertex Shader attribute vec2 position;//Bound to ATTRIB_POSITION attribute vec4 color; attribute vec2 texcoord;//Bound to ATTRIB_TEXCOORD varying vec2 texcoordVarying; uniform mat4 mvp; void main() { //You CAN'T use transpose before in glUniformMatrix4fv so... here it goes. gl_Position = mvp * vec4(position.x, position.y, 0.0, 1.0); texcoordVarying = texcoord; } The gl_Position is equal to product of mvp * vec4 because I'm simulating glOrthof in 2D with that mvp And this Fragment Shader //Fragment Shader uniform sampler2D sampler; varying mediump vec2 texcoordVarying; void main() { gl_FragColor = texture2D(sampler, texcoordVarying); } I really need help with this, maybe my shaders are wrong for the second case ? thanks in advance.

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• April 14th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web API and Visual Studio

  - by ScottGu

  Here is the latest in my link-listing blog series: ASP.NET Easily overlooked features in VS 11 Express for Web: Good post by Scott Hanselman that highlights a bunch of easily overlooked improvements that are coming to VS 11 (and specifically the free express editions) for web development: unit testing, browser chooser/launcher, IIS Express, CSS Color Picker, Image Preview in Solution Explorer and more. Get Started with ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms: Good 5-part tutorial that walks-through building an application using ASP.NET Web Forms and highlights some of the nice improvements coming with ASP.NET 4.5. What is New in Razor V2 and What Else is New in Razor V2: Great posts by Andrew Nurse, a dev on the ASP.NET team, about some of the new improvements coming with ASP.NET Razor v2. ASP.NET MVC 4 AllowAnonymous Attribute: Nice post from David Hayden that talks about the new [AllowAnonymous] filter introduced with ASP.NET MVC 4. Introduction to the ASP.NET Web API: Great tutorial by Stephen Walher that covers how to use the new ASP.NET Web API support built-into ASP.NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4. Comprehensive List of ASP.NET Web API Tutorials and Articles: Tugberk Ugurlu links to a huge collection of articles, tutorials, and samples about the new ASP.NET Web API capability. Async Mashups using ASP.NET Web API: Nice post by Henrik on how you can use the new async language support coming with .NET 4.5 to easily and efficiently make asynchronous network requests that do not block threads within ASP.NET. ASP.NET and Front-End Web Development Visual Studio 11 and Front End Web Development - JavaScript/HTML5/CSS3: Nice post by Scott Hanselman that highlights some of the great improvements coming with VS 11 (including the free express edition) for front-end web development. HTML5 Drag/Drop and Async Multi-file Upload with ASP.NET Web API: Great post by Filip W. that demonstrates how to implement an async file drag/drop uploader using HTML5 and ASP.NET Web API. Device Emulator Guide for Mobile Development with ASP.NET: Good post from Rachel Appel that covers how to use various device emulators with ASP.NET and VS to develop cross platform mobile sites. Fixing these jQuery: A Guide to Debugging: Great presentation by Adam Sontag on debugging with JavaScript and jQuery.  Some really good tips, tricks and gotchas that can save a lot of time. ASP.NET and Open Source Getting Started with ASP.NET Web Stack Source on CodePlex: Fantastic post by Henrik (an architect on the ASP.NET team) that provides step by step instructions on how to work with the ASP.NET source code we recently open sourced. Contributing to ASP.NET Web Stack Source on CodePlex: Follow-on to the post above (also by Henrik) that walks-through how you can submit a code contribution to the ASP.NET MVC, Web API and Razor projects. Overview of the WebApiContrib project: Nice post by Pedro Reys on the new open source WebApiContrib project that has been started to deliver cool extensions and libraries for use with ASP.NET Web API. Entity Framework Entity Framework 5 Performance Improvements and Performance Considerations for EF5:  Good articles that describes some of the big performance wins coming with EF5 (which will ship with both .NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4). Automatic compilation of LINQ queries will yield some significant performance wins (up to 600% faster). ASP.NET MVC 4 and EF Database Migrations: Good post by David Hayden that covers the new database migrations support within EF 4.3 which allows you to easily update your database schema during development - without losing any of the data within it. Visual Studio What's New in Visual Studio 11 Unit Testing: Nice post by Peter Provost (from the VS team) that talks about some of the great improvements coming to VS11 for unit testing - including built-in VS tooling support for a broad set of unit test frameworks (including NUnit, XUnit, Jasmine, QUnit and more) Hope this helps, Scott

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• What is Agile Modeling and why do I need it?

  What is Agile Modeling and why do I need it? Agile Modeling is an add-on to existing agile methodologies like Extreme programming (XP) and Rational Unified Process (RUP). Agile Modeling enables developers to develop a customized software development process that actually meets their current development needs and is flexible enough to adjust in the future. According to Scott Ambler, Agile Modeling consists of five core values that enable this methodology to be effective and light weight Agile Modeling Core Values: Communication Simplicity Feedback Courage Humility Communication is a key component to any successful project. Open communication between stakeholder and the development team is essential when developing new applications or maintaining legacy systems. Agile models promote communication amongst software development teams and stakeholders. Furthermore, Agile Models provide a common understanding of an application for members of a software development team allowing them to have a universal common point of reference. The use of simplicity in Agile Models enables the exploration of new ideas and concepts through the use of basic diagrams instead of investing the time in writing tens or hundreds of lines of code. Feedback in regards to application development is essential. Feedback allows a development team to confirm that the development path is on track. Agile Models allow for quick feedback from shareholders because minimal to no technical expertise is required to understand basic models. Courage is important because you need to make important decisions and be able to change direction by either discarding or refactoring your work when some of your decisions prove inadequate, according to Scott Ambler. As a member of a development team, we must admit that we do not know everything even though some of us think we do. This is where humility comes in to play. Everyone is a knowledge expert in their own specific domain. If you need help with your finances then you would consult an accountant. If you have a problem or are in need of help with a topic why would someone not consult with a subject expert? An effective approach is to assume that everyone involved with your project has equal value and therefore should be treated with respect. Agile Model Characteristics: Purposeful Understandable Sufficiently Accurate Sufficiently Consistent Sufficiently Detailed Provide Positive Value Simple as Possible Just Fulfill Basic Requirements According to Scott Ambler, Agile models are the most effective possible because the time that is invested in the model is just enough effort to complete the job. Furthermore, if a model isn’t good enough yet then additional effort can be invested to get more value out of the model. However if a model is good enough, for the current needs, or surpass the current needs, then any additional work done on the model would be a waste. It is important to remember that good enough is in the eye of the beholder, so this can be tough. In order for Agile Models to work effectively Active Stakeholder need to participation in the modeling process. Finally it is also very important to model with others, this allows for additionally input ensuring that all the shareholders needs are reflected in the models. How can Agile Models be incorporated in to our projects? Agile Models can be incorporated in to our project during the requirement gathering and design phases. As requirements are gathered the models should be updated to incorporate the new project details as they are defined and updated. Additionally, the Agile Models created during the requirement phase can be the bases for the models created during the design phase.  It is important to only add to the model when the changes fit within the agile model characteristics and they do not over complicate the design.

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• ODI 11g – Oracle Multi Table Insert

  - by David Allan

  With the IKM Oracle Multi Table Insert you can generate Oracle specific DML for inserting into multiple target tables from a single query result – without reprocessing the query or staging its result. When designing this to exploit the IKM you must split the problem into the reusable parts – the select part goes in one interface (I named SELECT_PART), then each target goes in a separate interface (INSERT_SPECIAL and INSERT_REGULAR). So for my statement below… /*INSERT_SPECIAL interface */ insert  all when 1=1 And (INCOME_LEVEL > 250000) then into SCOTT.CUSTOMERS_NEW (ID, NAME, GENDER, BIRTH_DATE, MARITAL_STATUS, INCOME_LEVEL, CREDIT_LIMIT, EMAIL, USER_CREATED, DATE_CREATED, USER_MODIFIED, DATE_MODIFIED) values (ID, NAME, GENDER, BIRTH_DATE, MARITAL_STATUS, INCOME_LEVEL, CREDIT_LIMIT, EMAIL, USER_CREATED, DATE_CREATED, USER_MODIFIED, DATE_MODIFIED) /* INSERT_REGULAR interface */ when 1=1  then into SCOTT.CUSTOMERS_SPECIAL (ID, NAME, GENDER, BIRTH_DATE, MARITAL_STATUS, INCOME_LEVEL, CREDIT_LIMIT, EMAIL, USER_CREATED, DATE_CREATED, USER_MODIFIED, DATE_MODIFIED) values (ID, NAME, GENDER, BIRTH_DATE, MARITAL_STATUS, INCOME_LEVEL, CREDIT_LIMIT, EMAIL, USER_CREATED, DATE_CREATED, USER_MODIFIED, DATE_MODIFIED) /*SELECT*PART interface */ select        CUSTOMERS.EMAIL EMAIL,     CUSTOMERS.CREDIT_LIMIT CREDIT_LIMIT,     UPPER(CUSTOMERS.NAME) NAME,     CUSTOMERS.USER_MODIFIED USER_MODIFIED,     CUSTOMERS.DATE_MODIFIED DATE_MODIFIED,     CUSTOMERS.BIRTH_DATE BIRTH_DATE,     CUSTOMERS.MARITAL_STATUS MARITAL_STATUS,     CUSTOMERS.ID ID,     CUSTOMERS.USER_CREATED USER_CREATED,     CUSTOMERS.GENDER GENDER,     CUSTOMERS.DATE_CREATED DATE_CREATED,     CUSTOMERS.INCOME_LEVEL INCOME_LEVEL from    SCOTT.CUSTOMERS   CUSTOMERS where    (1=1) Firstly I create a SELECT_PART temporary interface for the query to be reused and in the IKM assignment I state that it is defining the query, it is not a target and it should not be executed. Then in my INSERT_SPECIAL interface loading a target with a filter, I set define query to false, then set true for the target table and execute to false. This interface uses the SELECT_PART query definition interface as a source. Finally in my final interface loading another target I set define query to false again, set target table to true and execute to true – this is the go run it indicator! To coordinate the statement construction you will need to create a package with the select and insert statements. With 11g you can now execute the package in simulation mode and preview the generated code including the SQL statements. Hopefully this helps shed some light on how you can leverage the Oracle MTI statement. A similar IKM exists for Teradata. The ODI IKM Teradata Multi Statement supports this multi statement request in 11g, here is an extract from the paper at www.teradata.com/white-papers/born-to-be-parallel-eb3053/ Teradata Database offers an SQL extension called a Multi-Statement Request that allows several distinct SQL statements to be bundled together and sent to the optimizer as if they were one. Teradata Database will attempt to execute these SQL statements in parallel. When this feature is used, any sub-expressions that the different SQL statements have in common will be executed once, and the results shared among them. It works in the same way as the ODI MTI IKM, multiple interfaces orchestrated in a package, each interface contributes some SQL, the last interface in the chain executes the multi statement.

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• Microsoft Cloud Day - the ups and downs

  - by Charles Young

  The term ‘cloud’ can sometimes obscure the obvious.  Today’s Microsoft Cloud Day conference in London provided a good example.  Scott Guthrie was halfway through what was an excellent keynote when he lost network connectivity.  This proved very disruptive to his presentation which centred on a series of demonstrations of the Azure platform in action.  Great efforts were made to find a solution, but no quick fix presented itself.  The venue’s IT facilities were dreadful – no WiFi, poor 3G reception (forget 4G…this is the UK) and, unbelievably, no-one on hand from the venue staff to help with infrastructure issues.  Eventually, after an unscheduled break, a solution was found and Scott managed to complete his demonstrations.  Further connectivity issues occurred during the day. I can say that the cause was prosaic.  A member of the venue staff had interfered with a patch board and inadvertently disconnected Scott Guthrie’s machine from the network by pulling out a cable. I need to state the obvious here.  If your PC is disconnected from the network it can’t communicate with other systems.  This could include a machine under someone’s desk, a mail server located down the hall, a server in the local data centre, an Internet search engine or even, heaven forbid, a role running on Azure. Inadvertently disconnecting a PC from the network does not imply a fundamental problem with the cloud or any specific cloud platform.  Some of the tweeted comments I’ve seen today are analogous to suggesting that, if you accidently unplug your microwave from the mains, this suggests some fundamental flaw with the electricity supply to your house.   This is poor reasoning, to say the least. As far as the conference was concerned, the connectivity issue in the keynote, coupled with some later problems in a couple of presentations, served to exaggerate the perception of poor organisation.   Software problems encountered before the conference prevented the correct set-up of a smartphone app intended to convey agenda information to attendees.  Although some information was available via this app, the organisers decided to print out an agenda at the last moment.  Unfortunately, the agenda sheet did not convey enough information, and attendees were forced to approach conference staff through the day to clarify locations of the various presentations. Despite these problems, the overwhelming feedback from conference attendees was very positive.  There was a real sense of excitement in the morning keynote.  For many, this was their first sight of new Azure features delivered in the ‘spring’ release.  The most common reaction I heard was amazement and appreciation that Azure’s new IaaS features deliver built-in template support for several flavours of Linux from day one.  This coupled with open source SDKs and several presentations on Azure’s support for Java, node.js, PHP, MongoDB and Hadoop served to communicate that the Azure platform is maturing quickly.  The new virtual network capabilities also surprised many attendees, and the much improved portal experience went down very well. So, despite some very irritating and disruptive problems, the event served its purpose well, communicating the breadth and depth of the newly upgraded Azure platform.  I enjoyed the day very much.

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• F1 Pit Pragmatics

  - by mikef

  "I hate computers. No, really, I hate them. I love the communications they facilitate, I love the conveniences they provide to my life. but I actually hate the computers themselves." - Scott Merrill, 'I hate computers: confessions of a Sysadmin' If Scott's goal was to polarize opinion and trigger raging arguments over the 'real reasons why computers suck', then he certainly succeeded. Impassioned vitriol sits side-by-side with rational debate. Yet Scott's fundamental point is absolutely on the money - Computers are a means to an end. The IT industry is finally starting to put weight behind the notion that good User Experience is an absolutely crucial goal, a cause championed by the likes of Microsoft's Bill Buxton, and which Apple's increasingly ubiquitous touch screen interface exemplifies. However, that doesn't change the fact that, occasionally, you just have to man up and deal with complex systems. In fact, sometimes you just need to sacrifice everything else in the name of performance. You'll find a perfect example of this Faustian bargain in Trevor Clarke's fascinating look into the (diabolical) IT infrastructure of modern F1 racing - high performance, high availability. high everything. To paraphrase, each car has up to 100 sensors, transmitting around 30Gb of data over the course of a race (70% in real-time). This data is then processed by no less than 3 servers (per car) so that the engineers in the pit have access to telemetry, strategy information, timing feeds, a connection back to the operations room in the team's home base - the list goes on. All of this while the servers are exposed "to carbon dust, oil, vibration, rain, heat, [and] variable power". Now, this is admittedly an extreme context where there's no real choice but to use complex systems where ease-of-use is, at best, a secondary concern. The flip-side is seen in small-scale personal computing such as that seen in Apple's iDevices, which are incredibly intuitive but limited in their scope. In terms of what kinds of systems they prefer to use, I suspect that most SysAdmins find themselves somewhere along this axis of Power vs. Usability, and which end of this axis you resonate with also hints at where you think the IT industry should focus its energy. Do you see yourself in the F1 pit, making split-second decisions, wrestling with information flows and reticent hardware to bend them to your will? If so, I imagine you feel that computers are subtle tools which need to be tuned and honed, using the advanced knowledge possessed only by responsible SysAdmins (If you have an iPhone, I suspect it's jail-broken). If the machines throw enigmatic errors, it's the price of flexibility and raw power. Alternatively, would you prefer to have your role more accessible, with users empowered by knowledge, spreading the load of managing IT environments? In that case, then you want hardware and software to have User Experience as their primary focus, and are of the "means to an end" school of thought (you're probably also fed up with users not listening to you when you try and help). At its heart, the dichotomy is between raw power (which might be difficult to use) and ease-of-use (which might have some limitations, but you can be up and running immediately). Of course, the ultimate goal is a fusion of flexibility, power and usability all in one system. It's achievable in specific software environments, and Red Gate considers it a target worth aiming for, but in other cases it's a goal right up there with cold fusion. I think it'll be a long time before we see it become ubiquitous. In the meantime, are you Power-Hungry or a Champion of Usability? Cheers, Michael Francis Simple Talk SysAdmin Editor

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• Kill all the project files!

  - by jamiet

  Like many folks I’m a keen podcast listener and yesterday my commute was filled by listening to Scott Hunter being interviewed on .Net Rocks about the next version of ASP.Net. One thing Scott said really struck a chord with me. I don’t remember the full quote but he was talking about how the ASP.Net project file (i.e. the .csproj file) is going away. The rationale being that the main purpose of that file is to list all the other files in the project, and that’s something that the file system is pretty good at. In Scott’s own words (that someone helpfully put in the comments): A file that lists files is really redundant when the OS already does this Romeliz Valenciano correctly pointed out on Twitter that there will still be a project.json file however no longer will there be a need to keep a list of files in a project file. I suspect project.json will simply contain a list of exclusions where necessary rather than the current approach where the project file is a list of inclusions. On the face of it this seems like a pretty good idea. I’ve long been a fan of convention over configuration and this is a great example of that. Instead of listing all the files in a separate file, just treat all the files in the directory as being part of the project. Ostensibly the approach is if its in the directory, its part of the project. Simple. Now I’m not an ASP.net developer, far from it, but it did occur to me that the same approach could be applied to the two Visual Studio project types that I am most familiar with, SSIS & SSDT. Like many people I’ve long been irritated by SSIS projects that display a faux file system inside Solution Explorer. As you can see in the screenshot below the project has Miscellaneous and Connection Managers folders but no such folders exist on the file system: This may seem like a minor thing but it means useful Solution Explorer features like Show All Files and Open Folder in Windows Explorer don’t work and quite frankly it makes me feel like a second class citizen in the Microsoft ecosystem. I’m a developer, treat me like one. Don’t try and hide the detail of how a project works under the covers, show it to me. I’m a big boy, I can handle it! Would it not be preferable to simply treat all the .dtsx files in a directory as being part of a project? I think it would, that’s pretty much all the .dtproj file does anyway (that, and present things in a non-alphabetic order – something else that wildly irritates me), so why not just get rid of the .dtproj file? In the case of SSDT the .sqlproj actually does a whole lot more than simply list files because it also states the BuildAction of each file (Build, NotInBuild, Post-Deployment, etc…) but I see no reason why the convention over configuration approach can’t help us there either. Want to know which is the Post-deployment script? Well, its the one called Post-DeploymentScript.sql! Simple! So that’s my new crusade. Let’s kill all the project files (well, the .dtproj & .sqlproj ones anyway). Are you with me? @Jamiet

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