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CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, November 26, 2010

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

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 17, 2012

CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 17, 2012Popular ReleasesPaint.NET PSD Plugin: 2.2.0: Changes: Layer group visibility is now applied to all layers within the group. This greatly improves the visual fidelity of complex PSD files that have hidden layer groups. Layer group names are prefixed so that users can get an indication of the layer group hierarchy. (Paint.NET has a flat list of layers, so the hierarchy is flattened out on load.) The progress bar now reports status when saving PSD files, instead of showing an indeterminate rolling bar. Performance improvement of 1...Water Entity for SunBurn: Sunburn Water Entity For 2.0.1.8 (Deffered Only): Sunburn water entity for Sunburn 2.0.1.8 for deffered rendering only, forward water is not working yet. You need to download water normal maps, from Sunburn Reflection/Refraction example from Here.CRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor (1.3.1116.7): [IMPROVED] Detailed error message descriptions for FaultException [FIX] Fixed bug in rule CrmOfflineAccessStateRule which had incorrect State attribute name [FIX] Fixed bug in rule EntityPropertyRule which was missing PropertyValue attribute [FIX] Current connection information was not displayed in status bar while refreshing list of entitiesSuper Metroid Randomizer: Super Metroid Randomizer v5: v5 -Added command line functionality for automation purposes. -Implented Krankdud's change to randomize the Etecoon's item. NOTE: this version will not accept seeds from a previous version. The seed format has changed by necessity. v4 -Started putting version numbers at the top of the form. -Added a warning when suitless Maridia is required in a parsed seed. v3 -Changed seed to only generate filename-legal characters. Using old seeds will still work exactly the same. -Files can now be saved...Caliburn Micro: WPF, Silverlight, WP7 and WinRT/Metro made easy.: Caliburn.Micro v1.4: Changes This version includes many bug fixes across all platforms, improvements to nuget support and...the biggest news of all...full support for both WinRT and WP8. Download Contents Debug and Release Assemblies Samples Readme.txt License.txt Packages Available on Nuget Caliburn.Micro – The full framework compiled into an assembly. Caliburn.Micro.Start - Includes Caliburn.Micro plus a starting bootstrapper, view model and view. Caliburn.Micro.Container – The Caliburn.Micro invers...DirectX Tool Kit: November 15, 2012: November 15, 2012 Added support for WIC2 when available on Windows 8 and Windows 7 with KB 2670838 Cleaned up warning level 4 warningsDotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.05: Major Highlights Updated the system so that it supports nested folders in the App_Code folder Updated the Global Error Handling so that when errors within the global.asax handler happen, they are caught and shown in a page displaying the original HTTP error code Fixed issue that stopped users from specifying Link URLs that open on a new window Security FixesFixed issue in the Member Directory module that could show members to non authenticated users Fixed issue in the Lists modul...xUnit.net Contrib: xunitcontrib-resharper 0.7 (RS 7.1, 6.1.1): xunitcontrib release 0.6.1 (ReSharper runner) This release provides a test runner plugin for Resharper 7.1 RTM and 6.1.1, targetting all versions of xUnit.net. (See the xUnit.net project to download xUnit.net itself.) This release drops 7.0 support and targets the latest revisions of the last two major versions of ReSharper (namely 7.0 and 6.1.1). Copies of the plugin that support previous verions of ReSharper can be downloaded from this release. Also note that all builds work against ALL ...MVC Bootstrap: MVC Boostrap 0.5.6: A small demo site, based on the default ASP.NET MVC 3 project template, showing off some of the features of MVC Bootstrap. Added features to the Membership provider, a "lock out" feature to help fight brute force hacking of accounts. After a set number of log in attempts, the account is locked for a set time. If you download and use this project, please give some feedback, good or bad!Home Access Plus+: v8.4: This release only contains fixes for the 97576 release, you can download the v8.3 release files which aren't in this release from 97576 Changes: Fixed: Setup.aspx wrong jquery reference Fixed: Issue with loading the user's photo Changed: The JSON Urls to use a number of a date rather than a string Added: Code to hopefully, finally, fix the AD Browser not working some times File Changes: ~/bin/hap.ad.dll ~/bin/hap.web.dll ~/bin/hap.web.configuration.dll ~/bin/hap.web.livetiles.dl...OnTopReplica: Release 3.4: Update to the 3 version with major fixes and improvements. Compatible with Windows 8. Now runs (and requires) .NET Framework v.4.0. Added relative mode for region selection (allows the user to select regions as margins from the borders of the thumbnail, useful for windows which have a variable size but fixed size controls, like video players). Improved window seeking when restoring cloned thumbnail or cloning a window by title or by class. Improved settings persistence. Improved co...DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.4: 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 Tutorials are available. 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 ...WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.3.5: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features Attachable Behaviors AwaitableUI extensions Controls Converters Debugging helpers Extension methods Imaging helpers IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes Docum...AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.3: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2...????: ???? 1.0: ????Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office: Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office: Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office ??? ?????、Unicode IVS?????????????????Unicode IVS???????????????。??、??????????????、?????????????????????????????。Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.74: fix for issue #18836 - sometimes throws null-reference errors in ActivationObject.AnalyzeScope method. add back the Context object's 8-parameter constructor, since someone has code that's using it. throw a low-pri warning if an expression statement is == or ===; warn that the developer may have meant an assignment (=). if window.XXXX or window"XXXX" is encountered, add XXXX (as long as it's a valid JavaScript identifier) to the known globals so subsequent references to XXXX won't throw ...???????: Monitor 2012-11-11: This is the first releasehttpclient?????????: httpclient??????? 1.0: httpclient??????? （1）?????????? （2）????????? （3）??2012-11-06??，???????。VidCoder: 1.4.5 Beta: Removed the old Advanced user interface and moved x264 preset/profile/tune there instead. The functionality is still available through editing the options string. Added ability to specify the H.264 level. Added ability to choose VidCoder's interface language. If you are interested in translating, we can get VidCoder in your language! Updated WPF text rendering to use the better Display mode. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5045. Removed logic that forced the .m4v extension in certain ...New Projects40Fingers Page Language module for DotNetNuke: DotNetNuke module that allows you to overrule the language a specific page, without using any other localization solutions. Brought to you by 40FINGERSAnonymous Interfaces (by Stephen Cleary): A fluent API for dynamically creating an anonymous type implementing a specific interface.Asynk: Asynk is a framework/application that allows existing applications to easily be extended with an offloaded asynchronous worker layer. Asynk is developed using C#.BizTalkWCFOperationPromoteEncoder: If you seen the BizTalk error: " An action mapping was defined but BTS.Operation was not found in the Message context ", When you use the BizTalk WCF-Customer, bLaugh Plugin for Windows Live Writer: The bLaugh Plugin for Windows Live Writer provides a quick and easy way to find and insert bLaugh (www.blaugh.com) comics into a blog post.CaptureWebPage: Code Between The Lines @ http://www.codebetweenthelines.com Capture an Entire Web Page in a C# Console Application Sample application that fixes most problems.CF-Soft: this is my workspace to study C# programming.Cloud Backup Scheduler: Desktop utility to auto schedule online backups with popular cloud services. Cloud Giraffe: Cloud Giraffe is a library which provides easy collection and analysis of Windows Azure Diagnostics data.dbscript: dbscript is a simple scripting language for DBAs, devs, and others who have need to routinely deliver the results of SQL queries in Excel spreadsheet form.Drill: Drill is the Dependency Resolution and Instance Location Layer, an abstraction to DI containers, service locators and the like facilitating loose coupling.Drzewa decyzyjne WPF: Praca inzE-Commerce Gado: E commerce voltado para o mercado bovinoELearningTutorial: A list of tutorialsElmas Kitap: Kitapliginizi düzenleyebileceginiz bir program.Epi Info iOS Companion: iPad and iPhone companion for Epi Info 7.FreeBlokus: A simple version of Blokus Duo.g1: test GGCStatus: Global Gift Card by We Solve IT. Server Status ApplicationGiveGraph: Social Managed Resources Distribution SystemGlobal String Formatter: The Global String Formatter library allows developers to deal with conditional string formatting in an elegant fashion. Developers specify a predicate and a corresponding string output function for each case of the formatting. The library plays well with DI frameworks.HTWKAidStation: The HTWKAidStation shows schedules and the menu of local mensae in Leipzig, Germany.JsViewEngine - a ASP.NET View Engine using JsRender on both client and server: An ASP.NET View Engine that specializes in sharing partial views between client and server.Kexp.ShoutcastRunner: ShoutcastRunner is a quick and simple Windows service that runs the SHOUTcast DNAS 1.x mp3 server and provides some extra features. MDrive - Controlling Precision Electric Motors: This project demonstrates how to control MDrive(r) precision electric motors from Schneider Electric.MyNet Project: MyNet is an undergraduate project developed in the context of the Cloud Data Management cours at Grenoble INP.Passwords Thief: Sometimes you need to see what is behind asteriks in password edit box. It will help you to resolve this problem. Pet Shop Web: Projeto para gerenciamento de Pet Shop Desenvolvido em ASP.NET com Framework 4.0primeiros passos: aRCVersion: A smart tool to modify version information in RC file.recycling20: Recycling 2.0replaceSID: replaceSID replaces an SID in a SDDL fileshmapcha: Cool toolSMC (Social Media Connector): Social Media APIs are developed to provide Join-In Game providers to access Social Media Portal. Textline Processor: Textline processor is a utility to execute C# codes dynamically on each line of texts, and get output to replace lines in the text. treadmill project: Treadmill ProjectTriathlon Checklist: Triathlon Checklist is a Windows Phone application for triathletes. Download it for free: http://bit.ly/TriathlonChecklistwarhamer40kListBuilder: projet personnel de geston de liste d'armée pour le jeux warhammer 40.000.Wonder: WonderWP7GBAEmulator: A C# GBA Emulator For Windows Phone 7WPF Message Box: WPF Message Box is a simple and free message box for WPF using MVVM pattern. Image, buttons, message, and caption can be set.????: ??????·???????????????

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Using CSS3 media queries in HTML 5 pages

- by nikolaosk

This is going to be the seventh post in a series of posts regarding HTML 5. You can find the other posts here , here , here, here , here and here. In this post I will provide a hands-on example on how to use CSS 3 Media Queries in HTML 5 pages. This is a very important feature since nowadays lots of users view websites through their mobile devices. Web designers were able to define media-specific style sheets for quite a while, but have been limited to the type of output. The output could only be Screen, Print .The way we used to do things before CSS 3 was to have separate CSS files and the browser decided which style sheet to use. Please have a look at the snippet below - HTML 4 media queries <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="styles.css"> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" href="print-styles.css"> ?he browser determines which style to use. With CSS 3 we can have all media queries in one stylesheet. Media queries can determine the resolution of the device, the orientation of the device, the width and height of the device and the width and height of the browser window.We can also include CSS 3 media queries in separate stylesheets. In order to be absolutely clear this is not (and could not be) a detailed tutorial on HTML 5. There are other great resources for that.Navigate to the excellent interactive tutorials of W3School. Another excellent resource is HTML 5 Doctor. Two very nice sites that show you what features and specifications are implemented by various browsers and their versions are http://caniuse.com/ and http://html5test.com/. At this times Chrome seems to support most of HTML 5 specifications.Another excellent way to find out if the browser supports HTML 5 and CSS 3 features is to use the Javascript lightweight library Modernizr. In this hands-on example I will be using Expression Web 4.0.This application is not a free application. You can use any HTML editor you like.You can use Visual Studio 2012 Express edition. You can download it here. Before I go on with the actual demo I will use the (http://www.caniuse.com) to see the support for CSS 3 Media Queries from the latest versions of modern browsers. Please have a look at the picture below. We see that all the latest versions of modern browsers support this feature. We can see that even IE 9 supports this feature. Let's move on with the actual demo. This is going to be a rather simple demo.I create a simple HTML 5 page. The markup follows and it is very easy to use and understand.This is a page with a 2 column layout. <!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"> <head> <title>HTML 5, CSS3 and JQuery</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" > <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css"> </head> <body> <div id="header"> <h1>Learn cutting edge technologies</h1> <p>HTML 5, JQuery, CSS3</p> </div> <div id="main"> <div id="mainnews"> <div> <h2>HTML 5</h2> </div> <div> <p> HTML5 is the latest version of HTML and XHTML. The HTML standard defines a single language that can be written in HTML and XML. It attempts to solve issues found in previous iterations of HTML and addresses the needs of Web Applications, an area previously not adequately covered by HTML. </p> <div class="quote"> <h4>Do More with Less</h4> <p> jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. </p> </div> <p> The HTML5 test(html5test.com) score is an indication of how well your browser supports the upcoming HTML5 standard and related specifications. Even though the specification isn't finalized yet, all major browser manufacturers are making sure their browser is ready for the future. Find out which parts of HTML5 are already supported by your browser today and compare the results with other browsers. The HTML5 test does not try to test all of the new features offered by HTML5, nor does it try to test the functionality of each feature it does detect. Despite these shortcomings we hope that by quantifying the level of support users and web developers will get an idea of how hard the browser manufacturers work on improving their browsers and the web as a development platform.</p> </div> </div> <div id="CSS"> <div> <h2>CSS 3 Intro</h2> </div> <div> <p> Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation semantics (the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can also be applied to any kind of XML document, including plain XML, SVG and XUL. </p> </div> </div> <div id="CSSmore"> <div> <h2>CSS 3 Purpose</h2> </div> <div> <p> CSS is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content (written in HTML or a similar markup language) from document presentation, including elements such as the layout, colors, and fonts.[1] This separation can improve content accessibility, provide more flexibility and control in the specification of presentation characteristics, enable multiple pages to share formatting, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content (such as by allowing for tableless web design). </p> </div> </div> </div> <div id="footer"> <p>Feel free to google more about the subject</p> </div> </body> </html> The CSS code (style.css) follows body{ line-height: 30px; width: 1024px; background-color:#eee; } p{ font-size:17px; font-family:"Comic Sans MS" } p,h2,h3,h4{ margin: 0 0 20px 0; } #main, #header, #footer{ width: 100%; margin: 0px auto; display:block; } #header{ text-align: center; border-bottom: 1px solid #000; margin-bottom: 30px; } #footer{ text-align: center; border-top: 1px solid #000; margin-bottom: 30px; } .quote{ width: 200px; margin-left: 10px; padding: 5px; float: right; border: 2px solid #000; background-color:#F9ACAE; } .quote :last-child{ margin-bottom: 0; } #main{ column-count:2; column-gap:20px; column-rule: 1px solid #000; -moz-column-count: 2; -webkit-column-count: 2; -moz-column-gap: 20px; -webkit-column-gap: 20px; -moz-column-rule: 1px solid #000; -webkit-column-rule: 1px solid #000; } Now I view the page in the browser.Now I am going to write a media query and add some more rules in the .css file in order to change the layout of the page when the page is viewed by mobile devices. @media only screen and (max-width: 480px) { body{ width: 480px; } #main{ -moz-column-count: 1; -webkit-column-count: 1; } } I am specifying that this media query applies only to screen and a max width of 480 px. If this condition is true, then I add new rules for the body element. I change the number of columns to one. This rule will not be applied unless the maximum width is 480px or less. As I decrease the size-width of the browser window I see no change in the column's layout. Have a look at the picture below. When I resize the window and the width of the browser so the width is less than 480px, the media query and its respective rules take effect.We can scroll vertically to view the content which is a more optimised viewing experience for mobile devices. Have a look at the picture below Hope it helps!!!!

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Autounattend.xml not being recognized in VirtualBox

- by beagle

I am working my way through the steps on this page to prepare an unattended installation of Windows 7 Enterprise x64 for purposes of a college assignment which simply requires the process to be carried out and documented. Both the "technician" and "reference" computers are virtual machines created in VirtualBox 4.3.12, as will be the destination computer. I seem to have successfully completed Step 1, building an Autounattend.xml answer file using Windows System Image Manager, in as far as the answer file validates successfully. The problem arises when I try to install Windows on the reference machine from the DVD image in conjunction with the Autounattend file on a USB drive. I have tried a couple of different USB devices, and the devices themselves seem to be recognized, but the answer file does not, as instead of taking the configuration settings from the file the user interface appears as in a manual installation. Has anyone come across this problem or a solution? The xml created by Windows SIM is below for reference in case the problem is with the file itself. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend"> <settings pass="oobeSystem"> <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Deployment" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <Reseal> <Mode>Audit</Mode> </Reseal> </component> <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <OOBE> <HideEULAPage>true</HideEULAPage> <ProtectYourPC>3</ProtectYourPC> </OOBE> </component> </settings> <settings pass="windowsPE"> <component name="Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <SetupUILanguage> <UILanguage>en-IE</UILanguage> </SetupUILanguage> <InputLocale>en-IE</InputLocale> <SystemLocale>en-IE</SystemLocale> <UILanguage>en-IE</UILanguage> <UserLocale>en-IE</UserLocale> </component> <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <DiskConfiguration> <Disk wcm:action="add"> <CreatePartitions> <CreatePartition wcm:action="add"> <Order>1</Order> <Size>300</Size> <Type>Primary</Type> </CreatePartition> <CreatePartition wcm:action="add"> <Order>2</Order> <Extend>true</Extend> <Type>Primary</Type> </CreatePartition> </CreatePartitions> <ModifyPartitions> <ModifyPartition wcm:action="add"> <Active>true</Active> <Format>NTFS</Format> <Label>System</Label> <Order>1</Order> <PartitionID>1</PartitionID> </ModifyPartition> <ModifyPartition wcm:action="add"> <Format>NTFS</Format> <Label>Windows</Label> <Order>2</Order> <PartitionID>2</PartitionID> </ModifyPartition> </ModifyPartitions> <DiskID>0</DiskID> <WillWipeDisk>true</WillWipeDisk> </Disk> <WillShowUI>OnError</WillShowUI> </DiskConfiguration> <ImageInstall> <OSImage> <InstallTo> <DiskID>0</DiskID> <PartitionID>2</PartitionID> </InstallTo> <InstallToAvailablePartition>false</InstallToAvailablePartition> <WillShowUI>OnError</WillShowUI> </OSImage> </ImageInstall> <UserData> <ProductKey> <WillShowUI>OnError</WillShowUI> </ProductKey> <AcceptEula>true</AcceptEula> </UserData> </component> </settings> <settings pass="specialize"> <component name="Microsoft-Windows-IE-InternetExplorer" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <Home_Page>http://www.example.com</Home_Page> </component> </settings> <cpi:offlineImage cpi:source="wim://technician/users/user/desktop/install.wim#Windows 7 ENTERPRISE" xmlns:cpi="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:cpi" />

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Parallelism in .NET – Part 15, Making Tasks Run: The TaskScheduler

- by Reed

In my introduction to the Task class, I specifically made mention that the Task class does not directly provide it’s own execution. In addition, I made a strong point that the Task class itself is not directly related to threads or multithreading. Rather, the Task class is used to implement our decomposition of tasks. Once we’ve implemented our tasks, we need to execute them. In the Task Parallel Library, the execution of Tasks is handled via an instance of the TaskScheduler class. The TaskScheduler class is an abstract class which provides a single function: it schedules the tasks and executes them within an appropriate context. This class is the class which actually runs individual Task instances. The .NET Framework provides two (internal) implementations of the TaskScheduler class. Since a Task, based on our decomposition, should be a self-contained piece of code, parallel execution makes sense when executing tasks. The default implementation of the TaskScheduler class, and the one most often used, is based on the ThreadPool. This can be retrieved via the TaskScheduler.Default property, and is, by default, what is used when we just start a Task instance with Task.Start(). Normally, when a Task is started by the default TaskScheduler, the task will be treated as a single work item, and run on a ThreadPool thread. This pools tasks, and provides Task instances all of the advantages of the ThreadPool, including thread pooling for reduced resource usage, and an upper cap on the number of work items. In addition, .NET 4 brings us a much improved thread pool, providing work stealing and reduced locking within the thread pool queues. By using the default TaskScheduler, our Tasks are run asynchronously on the ThreadPool. There is one notable exception to my above statements when using the default TaskScheduler. If a Task is created with the TaskCreationOptions set to TaskCreationOptions.LongRunning, the default TaskScheduler will generate a new thread for that Task, at least in the current implementation. This is useful for Tasks which will persist for most of the lifetime of your application, since it prevents your Task from starving the ThreadPool of one of it’s work threads. The Task Parallel Library provides one other implementation of the TaskScheduler class. In addition to providing a way to schedule tasks on the ThreadPool, the framework allows you to create a TaskScheduler which works within a specified SynchronizationContext. This scheduler can be retrieved within a thread that provides a valid SynchronizationContext by calling the TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext() method. This implementation of TaskScheduler is intended for use with user interface development. Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation both require any access to user interface controls to occur on the same thread that created the control. For example, if you want to set the text within a Windows Forms TextBox, and you’re working on a background thread, that UI call must be marshaled back onto the UI thread. The most common way this is handled depends on the framework being used. In Windows Forms, Control.Invoke or Control.BeginInvoke is most often used. In WPF, the equivelent calls are Dispatcher.Invoke or Dispatcher.BeginInvoke. As an example, say we’re working on a background thread, and we want to update a TextBlock in our user interface with a status label. The code would typically look something like: // Within background thread work... string status = GetUpdatedStatus(); Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(DispatcherPriority.Normal, new Action( () => { statusLabel.Text = status; })); // Continue on in background method .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; } This works fine, but forces your method to take a dependency on WPF or Windows Forms. There is an alternative option, however. Both Windows Forms and WPF, when initialized, setup a SynchronizationContext in their thread, which is available on the UI thread via the SynchronizationContext.Current property. This context is used by classes such as BackgroundWorker to marshal calls back onto the UI thread in a framework-agnostic manner. The Task Parallel Library provides the same functionality via the TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext() method. When setting up our Tasks, as long as we’re working on the UI thread, we can construct a TaskScheduler via: TaskScheduler uiScheduler = TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext(); We then can use this scheduler on any thread to marshal data back onto the UI thread. For example, our code above can then be rewritten as: string status = GetUpdatedStatus(); (new Task(() => { statusLabel.Text = status; })) .Start(uiScheduler); // Continue on in background method This is nice since it allows us to write code that isn’t tied to Windows Forms or WPF, but is still fully functional with those technologies. I’ll discuss even more uses for the SynchronizationContext based TaskScheduler when I demonstrate task continuations, but even without continuations, this is a very useful construct. In addition to the two implementations provided by the Task Parallel Library, it is possible to implement your own TaskScheduler. The ParallelExtensionsExtras project within the Samples for Parallel Programming provides nine sample TaskScheduler implementations. These include schedulers which restrict the maximum number of concurrent tasks, run tasks on a single threaded apartment thread, use a new thread per task, and more.

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AutoMapper MappingFunction from Source Type of NameValueCollection

- by REA_ANDREW

I have had a situation arise today where I need to construct a complex type from a source of a NameValueCollection. A little while back I submitted a patch for the Agatha Project to include REST (JSON and XML) support for the service contract. I realized today that as useful as it is, it did not actually support true REST conformance, as REST should support GET so that you can use JSONP from JavaScript directly meaning you can query cross domain services. My original implementation for POX and JSON used the POST method and this immediately rules out JSONP as from reading, JSONP only works with GET Requests. This then raised another issue. The current operation contract of Agatha and one of its main benefits is that you can supply an array of Request objects in a single request, limiting the about of server requests you need to make. Now, at the present time I am thinking that this will not be the case for the REST imlementation but will yield the benefits of the fact that : The same Request objects can be used for SOAP and RST (POX, JSON) The construct of the JavaScript functions will be simpler and more readable It will enable the use of JSONP for cross domain REST Services The current contract for the Agatha WcfRequestProcessor is at time of writing the following: [ServiceContract] public interface IWcfRequestProcessor { [OperationContract(Name = "ProcessRequests")] [ServiceKnownType("GetKnownTypes", typeof(KnownTypeProvider))] [TransactionFlow(TransactionFlowOption.Allowed)] Response[] Process(params Request[] requests); [OperationContract(Name = "ProcessOneWayRequests", IsOneWay = true)] [ServiceKnownType("GetKnownTypes", typeof(KnownTypeProvider))] void ProcessOneWayRequests(params OneWayRequest[] requests); } My current proposed solution, and at the very early stages of my concept is as follows: [ServiceContract] public interface IWcfRestJsonRequestProcessor { [OperationContract(Name="process")] [ServiceKnownType("GetKnownTypes", typeof(KnownTypeProvider))] [TransactionFlow(TransactionFlowOption.Allowed)] [WebGet(UriTemplate = "process/{name}/{*parameters}", BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.WrappedResponse, ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json)] Response[] Process(string name, NameValueCollection parameters); [OperationContract(Name="processoneway",IsOneWay = true)] [ServiceKnownType("GetKnownTypes", typeof(KnownTypeProvider))] [WebGet(UriTemplate = "process-one-way/{name}/{*parameters}", BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.WrappedResponse, ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json)] void ProcessOneWayRequests(string name, NameValueCollection parameters); } Now this part I have not yet implemented, it is the preliminart step which I have developed which will allow me to take the name of the Request Type and the NameValueCollection and construct the complex type which is that of the Request which I can then supply to a nested instance of the original IWcfRequestProcessor and work as it should normally. To give an example of some of the urls which you I envisage with this method are: http://www.url.com/service.svc/json/process/getweather/?location=london http://www.url.com/service.svc/json/process/getproductsbycategory/?categoryid=1 http://www.url.om/service.svc/json/process/sayhello/?name=andy Another reason why my direction has gone to a single request for the REST implementation is because of restrictions which are imposed by browsers on the length of the url. From what I have read this is on average 2000 characters. I think that this is a very acceptable usage limit in the context of using 1 request, but I do not think this is acceptable for accommodating multiple requests chained together. I would love to be corrected on that one, I really would but unfortunately from what I have read I have come to the conclusion that this is not the case. The mapping function So, as I say this is just the first pass I have made at this, and I am not overly happy with the try catch for detecting types without default constructors. I know there is a better way but for the minute, it escapes me. I would also like to know the correct way for adding mapping functions and not using the anonymous way that I have used. To achieve this I have used recursion which I am sure is what other mapping function use. As you do have to go as deep as the complex type is. public static object RecurseType(NameValueCollection collection, Type type, string prefix) { try { var returnObject = Activator.CreateInstance(type); foreach (var property in type.GetProperties()) { foreach (var key in collection.AllKeys) { if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(prefix) || key.Length > prefix.Length) { var propertyNameToMatch = String.IsNullOrEmpty(prefix) ? key : key.Substring(property.Name.IndexOf(prefix) + prefix.Length + 1); if (property.Name == propertyNameToMatch) { property.SetValue(returnObject, Convert.ChangeType(collection.Get(key), property.PropertyType), null); } else if(property.GetValue(returnObject,null) == null) { property.SetValue(returnObject, RecurseType(collection, property.PropertyType, String.Concat(prefix, property.PropertyType.Name)), null); } } } } return returnObject; } catch (MissingMethodException) { //Quite a blunt way of dealing with Types without default constructor return null; } } Another thing is performance, I have not measured this in anyway, it is as I say the first pass, so I hope this can be the start of a more perfected implementation. I tested this out with a complex type of three levels, there is no intended logical meaning to the properties, they are simply for the purposes of example. You could call this a spiking session, as from here on in, now I know what I am building I would take a more TDD approach. OK, purists, why did I not do this from the start, well I didn’t, this was a brain dump and now I know what I am building I can. The console test and how I used with AutoMapper is as follows: static void Main(string[] args) { var collection = new NameValueCollection(); collection.Add("Name", "Andrew Rea"); collection.Add("Number", "1"); collection.Add("AddressLine1", "123 Street"); collection.Add("AddressNumber", "2"); collection.Add("AddressPostCodeCountry", "United Kingdom"); collection.Add("AddressPostCodeNumber", "3"); AutoMapper.Mapper.CreateMap<NameValueCollection, Person>() .ConvertUsing(x => { return(Person) RecurseType(x, typeof(Person), null); }); var person = AutoMapper.Mapper.Map<NameValueCollection, Person>(collection); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); Console.WriteLine(person.Number); Console.WriteLine(person.Address.Line1); Console.WriteLine(person.Address.Number); Console.WriteLine(person.Address.PostCode.Country); Console.WriteLine(person.Address.PostCode.Number); Console.ReadLine(); } Notice the convention that I am using and that this method requires you do use. Each property is prefixed with the constructed name of its parents combined. This is the convention used by AutoMapper and it makes sense. I can also think of other uses for this including using with ASP.NET MVC ModelBinders for creating a complex type from the QueryString which is itself is a NameValueCollection. Hope this is of some help to people and I would welcome any code reviews you could give me. References: Agatha : http://code.google.com/p/agatha-rrsl/ AutoMapper : http://automapper.codeplex.com/ Cheers for now, Andrew P.S. I will have the proposed solution for a more complete REST implementation for AGATHA very soon.

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Dynamic Types and DynamicObject References in C#

- by Rick Strahl

I've been working a bit with C# custom dynamic types for several customers recently and I've seen some confusion in understanding how dynamic types are referenced. This discussion specifically centers around types that implement IDynamicMetaObjectProvider or subclass from DynamicObject as opposed to arbitrary type casts of standard .NET types. IDynamicMetaObjectProvider types are treated special when they are cast to the dynamic type. Assume for a second that I've created my own implementation of a custom dynamic type called DynamicFoo which is about as simple of a dynamic class that I can think of:public class DynamicFoo : DynamicObject { Dictionary<string, object> properties = new Dictionary<string, object>(); public string Bar { get; set; } public DateTime Entered { get; set; } public override bool TryGetMember(GetMemberBinder binder, out object result) { result = null; if (!properties.ContainsKey(binder.Name)) return false; result = properties[binder.Name]; return true; } public override bool TrySetMember(SetMemberBinder binder, object value) { properties[binder.Name] = value; return true; } } This class has an internal dictionary member and I'm exposing this dictionary member through a dynamic by implementing DynamicObject. This implementation exposes the properties dictionary so the dictionary keys can be referenced like properties (foo.NewProperty = "Cool!"). I override TryGetMember() and TrySetMember() which are fired at runtime every time you access a 'property' on a dynamic instance of this DynamicFoo type. Strong Typing and Dynamic Casting I now can instantiate and use DynamicFoo in a couple of different ways: Strong TypingDynamicFoo fooExplicit = new DynamicFoo(); var fooVar = new DynamicFoo(); These two commands are essentially identical and use strong typing. The compiler generates identical code for both of them. The var statement is merely a compiler directive to infer the type of fooVar at compile time and so the type of fooExplicit is DynamicFoo, just like fooExplicit. This is very static - nothing dynamic about it - and it completely ignores the IDynamicMetaObjectProvider implementation of my class above as it's never used. Using either of these I can access the native properties:DynamicFoo fooExplicit = new DynamicFoo();// static typing assignmentsfooVar.Bar = "Barred!"; fooExplicit.Entered = DateTime.Now; // echo back static values Console.WriteLine(fooVar.Bar); Console.WriteLine(fooExplicit.Entered); but I have no access whatsoever to the properties dictionary. Basically this creates a strongly typed instance of the type with access only to the strongly typed interface. You get no dynamic behavior at all. The IDynamicMetaObjectProvider features don't kick in until you cast the type to dynamic. If I try to access a non-existing property on fooExplicit I get a compilation error that tells me that the property doesn't exist. Again, it's clearly and utterly non-dynamic. Dynamicdynamic fooDynamic = new DynamicFoo(); fooDynamic on the other hand is created as a dynamic type and it's a completely different beast. I can also create a dynamic by simply casting any type to dynamic like this:DynamicFoo fooExplicit = new DynamicFoo(); dynamic fooDynamic = fooExplicit; Note that dynamic typically doesn't require an explicit cast as the compiler automatically performs the cast so there's no need to use as dynamic. Dynamic functionality works at runtime and allows for the dynamic wrapper to look up and call members dynamically. A dynamic type will look for members to access or call in two places: Using the strongly typed members of the object Using theIDynamicMetaObjectProvider Interface methods to access members So rather than statically linking and calling a method or retrieving a property, the dynamic type looks up - at runtime - where the value actually comes from. It's essentially late-binding which allows runtime determination what action to take when a member is accessed at runtime *if* the member you are accessing does not exist on the object. Class members are checked first before IDynamicMetaObjectProvider interface methods are kick in. All of the following works with the dynamic type:dynamic fooDynamic = new DynamicFoo(); // dynamic typing assignments fooDynamic.NewProperty = "Something new!"; fooDynamic.LastAccess = DateTime.Now; // dynamic assigning static properties fooDynamic.Bar = "dynamic barred"; fooDynamic.Entered = DateTime.Now; // echo back dynamic values Console.WriteLine(fooDynamic.NewProperty); Console.WriteLine(fooDynamic.LastAccess); Console.WriteLine(fooDynamic.Bar); Console.WriteLine(fooDynamic.Entered); The dynamic type can access the native class properties (Bar and Entered) and create and read new ones (NewProperty,LastAccess) all using a single type instance which is pretty cool. As you can see it's pretty easy to create an extensible type this way that can dynamically add members at runtime dynamically. The Alter Ego of IDynamicObject The key point here is that all three statements - explicit, var and dynamic - declare a new DynamicFoo(), but the dynamic declaration results in completely different behavior than the first two simply because the type has been cast to dynamic. Dynamic binding means that the type loses its typical strong typing, compile time features. You can see this easily in the Visual Studio code editor. As soon as you assign a value to a dynamic you lose Intellisense and you see which means there's no Intellisense and no compiler type checking on any members you apply to this instance. If you're new to the dynamic type it might seem really confusing that a single type can behave differently depending on how it is cast, but that's exactly what happens when you use a type that implements IDynamicMetaObjectProvider. Declare the type as its strong type name and you only get to access the native instance members of the type. Declare or cast it to dynamic and you get dynamic behavior which accesses native members plus it uses IDynamicMetaObjectProvider implementation to handle any missing member definitions by running custom code. You can easily cast objects back and forth between dynamic and the original type:dynamic fooDynamic = new DynamicFoo(); fooDynamic.NewProperty = "New Property Value"; DynamicFoo foo = fooDynamic; foo.Bar = "Barred"; Here the code starts out with a dynamic cast and a dynamic assignment. The code then casts back the value to the DynamicFoo. Notice that when casting from dynamic to DynamicFoo and back we typically do not have to specify the cast explicitly - the compiler can induce the type so I don't need to specify as dynamic or as DynamicFoo. Moral of the Story This easy interchange between dynamic and the underlying type is actually super useful, because it allows you to create extensible objects that can expose non-member data stores and expose them as an object interface. You can create an object that hosts a number of strongly typed properties and then cast the object to dynamic and add additional dynamic properties to the same type at runtime. You can easily switch back and forth between the strongly typed instance to access the well-known strongly typed properties and to dynamic for the dynamic properties added at runtime. Keep in mind that dynamic object access has quite a bit of overhead and is definitely slower than strongly typed binding, so if you're accessing the strongly typed parts of your objects you definitely want to use a strongly typed reference. Reserve dynamic for the dynamic members to optimize your code. The real beauty of dynamic is that with very little effort you can build expandable objects or objects that expose different data stores to an object interface. I'll have more on this in my next post when I create a customized and extensible Expando object based on DynamicObject.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in CSharp .NET Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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Overwriting TFS Web Services

- by javarg

In this blog I will share a technique I used to intercept TFS Web Services calls. This technique is a very invasive one and requires you to overwrite default TFS Web Services behavior. I only recommend taking such an approach when other means of TFS extensibility fail to provide the same functionality (this is not a supported TFS extensibility point). For instance, intercepting and aborting a Work Item change operation could be implemented using this approach (consider TFS Subscribers functionality before taking this approach, check Martin’s post about subscribers). So let’s get started. The technique consists in versioning TFS Web Services .asmx service classes. If you look into TFS’s ASMX services you will notice that versioning is supported by creating a class hierarchy between different product versions. For instance, let’s take the Work Item management service .asmx. Check the following .asmx file located at: %Program Files%\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\Web Services\_tfs_resources\WorkItemTracking\v3.0\ClientService.asmx The .asmx references the class Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Server.ClientService3: <%-- Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. --%> <%@ webservice language="C#" Class="Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Server.ClientService3" %> .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; } .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; } The inheritance hierarchy for this service class follows: Note the naming convention used for service versioning (ClientService3, ClientService2, ClientService). We will need to overwrite the latest service version provided by the product (in this case ClientService3 for TFS 2010). The following example intercepts and analyzes WorkItem fields. Suppose we need to validate state changes with more advanced logic other than the provided validations/constraints of the process template. Important: Backup the original .asmx file and create one of your own. Create a Visual Studio Web App Project and include a new ASMX Web Service in the project Add the following references to the project (check the folder %Program Files%\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\Web Services\bin\): Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Framework.Server.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Server.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Server.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client.QueryLanguage.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Server.DataAccessLayer.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Server.DataServices.dll Replace the default service implementation with the something similar to the following code: Code Snippet /// <summary> /// Inherit from ClientService3 to overwrite default Implementation /// </summary> [WebService(Namespace = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/TeamFoundation/2005/06/WorkItemTracking/ClientServices/03", Description = "Custom Team Foundation WorkItemTracking ClientService Web Service")] public class CustomTfsClientService : ClientService3 { [WebMethod, SoapHeader("requestHeader", Direction = SoapHeaderDirection.In)] public override bool BulkUpdate( XmlElement package, out XmlElement result, MetadataTableHaveEntry[] metadataHave, out string dbStamp, out Payload metadata) { var xe = XElement.Parse(package.OuterXml); // We only intercept WorkItems Updates (we can easily extend this sample to capture any operation). var wit = xe.Element("UpdateWorkItem"); if (wit != null) { if (wit.Attribute("WorkItemID") != null) { int witId = (int)wit.Attribute("WorkItemID"); // With this Id. I can query TFS for more detailed information, using TFS Client API (assuming the WIT already exists). var stateChanged = wit.Element("Columns").Elements("Column").FirstOrDefault(c => (string)c.Attribute("Column") == "System.State"); if (stateChanged != null) { var newStateName = stateChanged.Element("Value").Value; if (newStateName == "Resolved") { throw new Exception("Cannot change state to Resolved!"); } } } } // Finally, we call base method implementation return base.BulkUpdate(package, out result, metadataHave, out dbStamp, out metadata); } } .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; } 4. Build your solution and overwrite the original .asmx with the new implementation referencing our new service version (don’t forget to backup it up first). 5. Copy your project’s .dll into the following path: %Program Files%\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\Web Services\bin 6. Try saving a WorkItem into the Resolved state. Enjoy!

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Transparency and AlphaBlending

- by TechTwaddle

In this post we'll look at the AlphaBlend() api and how it can be used for semi-transparent blitting. AlphaBlend() takes a source device context and a destination device context (DC) and combines the bits in such a way that it gives a transparent effect. Follow the links for the msdn documentation. So lets take a image like, and AlphaBlend() it on our window. The code to do so is below, (under the WM_PAINT message of WndProc) HBITMAP hBitmap=NULL, hBitmapOld=NULL; HDC hMemDC=NULL; BLENDFUNCTION bf; hdc = BeginPaint(hWnd, &ps); hMemDC = CreateCompatibleDC(hdc); hBitmap = LoadBitmap(g_hInst, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDB_BITMAP1)); hBitmapOld = SelectObject(hMemDC, hBitmap); bf.BlendOp = AC_SRC_OVER; bf.BlendFlags = 0; bf.SourceConstantAlpha = 80; //transparency value between 0-255 bf.AlphaFormat = 0; AlphaBlend(hdc, 0, 25, 240, 100, hMemDC, 0, 0, 240, 100, bf); SelectObject(hMemDC, hBitmapOld); DeleteDC(hMemDC); DeleteObject(hBitmap); EndPaint(hWnd, &ps); The code above creates a memory DC (hMemDC) using CreateCompatibleDC(), loads a bitmap onto the memory DC and AlphaBlends it on the device DC (hdc), with a transparency value of 80. The result is: Pretty simple till now. Now lets try to do something a little more exciting. Lets get two images involved, each overlapping the other, giving a better demonstration of transparency. I am also going to add a few buttons so that the user can increase or decrease the transparency by clicking on the buttons. Since this is the first time I played around with GDI apis, I ran into something that everybody runs into sometime or the other, flickering. When clicking the buttons the images would flicker a lot, I figured out why and used something called double buffering to avoid flickering. We will look at both my first implementation and the second implementation just to give the concept a little more depth and perspective. A few pre-conditions before I dive into the code: - hBitmap and hBitmap2 are handles to the two images obtained using LoadBitmap(), these variables are global and are initialized under WM_CREATE - The two buttons in the application are labeled Opaque++ (make more opaque, less transparent) and Opaque-- (make less opaque, more transparent) - DrawPics(HWND hWnd, int step=0); is the function called to draw the images on the screen. This is called from under WM_PAINT and also when the buttons are clicked. When Opaque++ is clicked the 'step' value passed to DrawPics() is +20 and when Opaque-- is clicked the 'step' value is -20. The default value of 'step' is 0 Now lets take a look at my first implementation: //this funciton causes flicker, cos it draws directly to screen several times void DrawPics(HWND hWnd, int step) { HDC hdc=NULL, hMemDC=NULL; BLENDFUNCTION bf; static UINT32 transparency = 100; //no point in drawing when transparency is 0 and user clicks Opaque-- if (transparency == 0 && step < 0) return; //no point in drawing when transparency is 240 (opaque) and user clicks Opaque++ if (transparency == 240 && step > 0) return; hdc = GetDC(hWnd); if (!hdc) return; //create a memory DC hMemDC = CreateCompatibleDC(hdc); if (!hMemDC) { ReleaseDC(hWnd, hdc); return; } //while increasing transparency, clear the contents of screen if (step < 0) { RECT rect = {0, 0, 240, 200}; FillRect(hdc, &rect, (HBRUSH)GetStockObject(WHITE_BRUSH)); } SelectObject(hMemDC, hBitmap2); BitBlt(hdc, 0, 25, 240, 100, hMemDC, 0, 0, SRCCOPY); SelectObject(hMemDC, hBitmap); transparency += step; if (transparency >= 240) transparency = 240; if (transparency <= 0) transparency = 0; bf.BlendOp = AC_SRC_OVER; bf.BlendFlags = 0; bf.SourceConstantAlpha = transparency; bf.AlphaFormat = 0; AlphaBlend(hdc, 0, 75, 240, 100, hMemDC, 0, 0, 240, 100, bf); DeleteDC(hMemDC); ReleaseDC(hWnd, hdc); } In the code above, we first get the window DC using GetDC() and create a memory DC using CreateCompatibleDC(). Then we select hBitmap2 onto the memory DC and Blt it on the window DC (hdc). Next, we select the other image, hBitmap, onto memory DC and AlphaBlend() it over window DC. As I told you before, this implementation causes flickering because it draws directly on the screen (hdc) several times. The video below shows what happens when the buttons were clicked rapidly: Well, the video recording tool I use captures only 15 frames per second and so the flickering is not visible in the video. So you're gonna have to trust me on this, it flickers (; To solve this problem we make sure that the drawing to the screen happens only once and to do that we create an additional memory DC, hTempDC. We perform all our drawing on this memory DC and finally when it is ready we Blt hTempDC on hdc, and the images are displayed in one go. Here is the code for our new DrawPics() function: //no flicker void DrawPics(HWND hWnd, int step) { HDC hdc=NULL, hMemDC=NULL, hTempDC=NULL; BLENDFUNCTION bf; HBITMAP hBitmapTemp=NULL, hBitmapOld=NULL; static UINT32 transparency = 100; //no point in drawing when transparency is 0 and user clicks Opaque-- if (transparency == 0 && step < 0) return; //no point in drawing when transparency is 240 (opaque) and user clicks Opaque++ if (transparency == 240 && step > 0) return; hdc = GetDC(hWnd); if (!hdc) return; hMemDC = CreateCompatibleDC(hdc); hTempDC = CreateCompatibleDC(hdc); hBitmapTemp = CreateCompatibleBitmap(hdc, 240, 150); hBitmapOld = (HBITMAP)SelectObject(hTempDC, hBitmapTemp); if (!hMemDC) { ReleaseDC(hWnd, hdc); return; } //while increasing transparency, clear the contents if (step < 0) { RECT rect = {0, 0, 240, 150}; FillRect(hTempDC, &rect, (HBRUSH)GetStockObject(WHITE_BRUSH)); } SelectObject(hMemDC, hBitmap2); //Blt hBitmap2 directly to hTempDC BitBlt(hTempDC, 0, 0, 240, 100, hMemDC, 0, 0, SRCCOPY); SelectObject(hMemDC, hBitmap); transparency += step; if (transparency >= 240) transparency = 240; if (transparency <= 0) transparency = 0; bf.BlendOp = AC_SRC_OVER; bf.BlendFlags = 0; bf.SourceConstantAlpha = transparency; bf.AlphaFormat = 0; AlphaBlend(hTempDC, 0, 50, 240, 100, hMemDC, 0, 0, 240, 100, bf); //now hTempDC is ready, blt it directly on hdc BitBlt(hdc, 0, 25, 240, 150, hTempDC, 0, 0, SRCCOPY); SelectObject(hTempDC, hBitmapOld); DeleteObject(hBitmapTemp); DeleteDC(hMemDC); DeleteDC(hTempDC); ReleaseDC(hWnd, hdc); } This function is very similar to the first version, except for the use of hTempDC. Another point to note is the use of CreateCompatibleBitmap(). When a memory device context is created using CreateCompatibleDC(), the context is exactly one monochrome pixel high and one monochrome pixel wide. So in order for us to draw anything onto hTempDC, we first have to set a bitmap on it. We use CreateCompatibleBitmap() to create a bitmap of required dimension (240x150 above), and then select this bitmap onto hTempDC. Think of it as utilizing an extra canvas, drawing everything on the canvas and finally transferring the contents to the display in one scoop. And with this version the flickering is gone, video follows: If you want the entire solutions source code then leave a message, I will share the code over SkyDrive.

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RSS feeds in Orchard

- by Bertrand Le Roy

When we added RSS to Orchard, we wanted to make it easy for any module to expose any contents as a feed. We also wanted the rendering of the feed to be handled by Orchard in order to minimize the amount of work from the module developer. A typical example of such feed exposition is of course blog feeds. We have an IFeedManager interface for which you can get the built-in implementation through dependency injection. Look at the BlogController constructor for an example: public BlogController( IOrchardServices services, IBlogService blogService, IBlogSlugConstraint blogSlugConstraint, IFeedManager feedManager, RouteCollection routeCollection) { If you look a little further in that same controller, in the Item action, you’ll see a call to the Register method of the feed manager: _feedManager.Register(blog); This in reality is a call into an extension method that is specialized for blogs, but we could have made the two calls to the actual generic Register directly in the action instead, that is just an implementation detail: feedManager.Register(blog.Name, "rss", new RouteValueDictionary { { "containerid", blog.Id } }); feedManager.Register(blog.Name + " - Comments", "rss", new RouteValueDictionary { { "commentedoncontainer", blog.Id } }); What those two effective calls are doing is to register two feeds: one for the blog itself and one for the comments on the blog. For each call, the name of the feed is provided, then we have the type of feed (“rss”) and some values to be injected into the generic RSS route that will be used later to route the feed to the right providers. This is all you have to do to expose a new feed. If you’re only interested in exposing feeds, you can stop right there. If on the other hand you want to know what happens after that under the hood, carry on. What happens after that is that the feedmanager will take care of formatting the link tag for the feed (see FeedManager.GetRegisteredLinks). The GetRegisteredLinks method itself will be called from a specialized filter, FeedFilter. FeedFilter is an MVC filter and the event we’re interested in hooking into is OnResultExecuting, which happens after the controller action has returned an ActionResult and just before MVC executes that action result. In other words, our feed registration has already been called but the view is not yet rendered. Here’s the code for OnResultExecuting: model.Zones.AddAction("head:after", html => html.ViewContext.Writer.Write( _feedManager.GetRegisteredLinks(html))); This is another piece of code whose execution is differed. It is saying that whenever comes time to render the “head” zone, this code should be called right after. The code itself is rendering the link tags. As a result of all that, here’s what can be found in an Orchard blog’s head section: <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Tales from the Evil Empire" href="/rss?containerid=5" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Tales from the Evil Empire - Comments" href="/rss?commentedoncontainer=5" /> The generic action that these two feeds point to is Index on FeedController. That controller has three important dependencies: an IFeedBuilderProvider, an IFeedQueryProvider and an IFeedItemProvider. Different implementations of these interfaces can provide different formats of feeds, such as RSS and Atom. The Match method enables each of the competing providers to provide a priority for themselves based on arbitrary criteria that can be found on the FeedContext. This means that a provider can be selected based not only on the desired format, but also on the nature of the objects being exposed as a feed or on something even more arbitrary such as the destination device (you could imagine for example giving shorter text only excerpts of posts on mobile devices, and full HTML on desktop). The key here is extensibility and dynamic competition and collaboration from unknown and loosely coupled parts. You’ll find this pattern pretty much everywhere in the Orchard architecture. The RssFeedBuilder implementation of IFeedBuilderProvider is also a regular controller with a Process action that builds a RssResult, which is itself a thin ActionResult wrapper around an XDocument. Let’s get back to the FeedController’s Index action. After having called into each known feed builder to get its priority on the currently requested feed, it will select the one with the highest priority. The next thing it needs to do is to actually fetch the data for the feed. This again is a collaborative effort from a priori unknown providers, the implementations of IFeedQueryProvider. There are several implementations by default in Orchard, the choice of which is again done through a Match method. ContainerFeedQuery for example chimes in when a “containerid” parameter is found in the context (see URL in the link tag above): public FeedQueryMatch Match(FeedContext context) { var containerIdValue = context.ValueProvider.GetValue("containerid"); if (containerIdValue == null) return null; return new FeedQueryMatch { FeedQuery = this, Priority = -5 }; } The actual work is done in the Execute method, which finds the right container content item in the Orchard database and adds elements for each of them. In other words, the feed query provider knows how to retrieve the list of content items to add to the feed. The last step is to translate each of the content items into feed entries, which is done by implementations of IFeedItemBuilder. There is no Match method this time. Instead, all providers are called with the collection of items (or more accurately with the FeedContext, but this contains the list of items, which is what’s relevant in most cases). Each provider can then choose to pick those items that it knows how to treat and transform them into the format requested. This enables the construction of heterogeneous feeds that expose content items of various types into a single feed. That will be extremely important when you’ll want to expose a single feed for all your site. So here are feeds in Orchard in a nutshell. The main point here is that there is a fair number of components involved, with some complexity in implementation in order to allow for extreme flexibility, but the part that you use to expose a new feed is extremely simple and light: declare that you want your content exposed as a feed and you’re done. There are cases where you’ll have to dive in and provide new implementations for some or all of the interfaces involved, but that requirement will only arise as needed. For example, you might need to create a new feed item builder to include your custom content type but that effort will be extremely focused on the specialized task at hand. The rest of the system won’t need to change. So what do you think?

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MSCC: Scripting - Administrator's toolbox of magic...

Finally, we made it to have our April meetup - in May. The most obvious explanation is the increased amount of open source and IT activities that either the MSCC, the Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM), or the University of Mauritius Student's Computer Club is organising. It's absolutely incredible to see the recent hype of events here on the island. And I'm loving it! Unfortunately, we also had to deal with arranging for a location this time. It was kind of an odyssey as my requests (and phone calls) haven't been answered, even though I tried it several times - well, kind of disappointing and I have to look into that for future gatherings. In my opinion, it is essential that two parameters of a community meeting are fixed as early as possible: Location, and Date and time You can't just change one or both on the very last minute. Well, this time we had to do it due to unforeseen reasons, and I apologise to any MSCC member which couldn't make it to our April meetup. Okay, lesson learned but now back to the actual meetup report ... Shortly after the meeting I placed the following statement as my first impression: "Spontaneous and improvised :) No, seriously, Ish and Dan had well prepared presentations on shell scripting, mainly focused towards Bourne Again Shell (bash), and the pros and cons of scripting versus actually writing something in a decent programming language. I thought that I could cut myself out of the equation but the demand for information about PowerShell was higher than expected..." Well, it turned out that the interest in Windows PowerShell was high, as I even got a couple of questions on it via social media networks during the evening. I also like to mention that the number of attendees went back to what I would call a "standard" number of participation. This time there were 12 craftsmen, but again a good number of First Timers. Reactions of other attendees Here are some impressions and feedback from our participants: "Enjoyed the bash and powershell (linux / windows) presentations ..." -- Nadim on event comments "He [Daniel] also showed us some syntax loopholes in Bash that could leave someone with bad code." -- Ish on MSCC – Let's talk about Scripting Glad to see a couple of first time attendees, especially students from the university itself. Some details on the presentations MSCC: First time visit at the University of Mauritius - Phase II Engineering Tower, room 2.9 Gimme some love ... bash and other shells Ish gave a great introduction into shell scripting as he spoke about existing shell environments and a little bit about their history. Furthermore, he talked about various built-in commands, the use of coreutils, the ability to daisy-chain multiple commands using pipes, the importance of the standard I/O streams and their file descriptors in advanced scripting techniques. Combined with a couple of sample statements in the Linux terminal on Ubuntu 14.04 machine it was a solid presentation. Have a closer look at his slides - published on his blog on MSCC – Let's talk about Scripting. Oddities of scripting After the brief introduction into bash it was Daniel's turn to highlight a good number of oddities when working with shell scripts. First of all, it should be clear that scripting is not supposed for any kind of implementations in terms of software but simply to automate administrative procedures and to simplify routine jobs on a system. One of the cool oddities that he mentioned is that everything (!) in a shell is represented by strings; there are no other types like integer, float, date-time, etc. that you'd like to use in a full-fledged programming language. Let's have a look at his sample: more to come... What's the output? As a conclusion, Daniel suggests that shell scripting should be limited but not restricted to automatic repetitive command stacks and batch jobs, startup wrapper for applications in order to set up the execution environment, and other not too sophisticated jobs. But as soon as it might involve a little bit more logic or you might rely on performance it's better to write an application in Ruby, Python, or Perl (among others of course). This is also enables the possibility to test your code properly. MSCC: Ish talking about Bourne Again Shell (bash) and shell scripting to automate regular tasks MSCC: Daniel gives an overview about the pros and cons of shell scripting versus programming MSCC: PowerShell as your scripting solution on Windows operating systems The path of the Enlightened is long ... and tough. Honestly, even though PowerShell was mentioned without any further details on the meetup's agenda, I didn't expect that there would be demand to give a presentation on Microsoft PowerShell after all. I already took this topic out of the announcement but the audience wanted to have some information. Okay, then let's see what I could do - improvised style. While my machine booted and got hooked up to the projector, I started to talk about the beginnings of PowerShell from back in 2006, and its predecessors MS DOS and Command Prompt. A throwback in history... always good for young people. As usual, Microsoft didn't get it at that time. Instead of listening to their client's needs and demands they ignored the feasibility to administrate Windows server farms without any UI tools. PowerShell is actually a result of this, and seeing that shell scripting is a common, reliable and fast way in an administrator's toolbox for decades, Microsoft had to adapt from their Microsoft Management Console (MMC) to a broader approach. It's not like shell scripting was something new; it is in daily use by alternative operating systems like AIX, HP UX, Solaris, and last but not least Linux. Most interestingly, Microsoft is very good at renovating existing architectures, and over the years PowerShell not only replaced their own combination of Command Prompt and Scripting Hosts (VBScript and CScript) but really turned into a challenging competitor on the market. The shell is easy to extend with cmdlets, and open to other Microsoft products like SQL Server, SharePoint, as well as Third-party software applications. Similar to MMC PowerShell also offers the ability to administer other machine remotely - only without a graphical user interface and therefore it's easier to automate and schedule regular tasks. Following is a sample of a PowerShell script file (extension .ps1): $strComputer = "." $colItems = get-wmiobject -class Win32_BIOS -namespace root\CIMV2 -comp $strComputer foreach ($objItem in $colItems) {write-host "BIOS Characteristics: " $objItem.BiosCharacteristicswrite-host "BIOS Version: " $objItem.BIOSVersionwrite-host "Build Number: " $objItem.BuildNumberwrite-host "Caption: " $objItem.Captionwrite-host "Code Set: " $objItem.CodeSetwrite-host "Current Language: " $objItem.CurrentLanguagewrite-host "Description: " $objItem.Descriptionwrite-host "Identification Code: " $objItem.IdentificationCodewrite-host "Installable Languages: " $objItem.InstallableLanguageswrite-host "Installation Date: " $objItem.InstallDatewrite-host "Language Edition: " $objItem.LanguageEditionwrite-host "List Of Languages: " $objItem.ListOfLanguageswrite-host "Manufacturer: " $objItem.Manufacturerwrite-host "Name: " $objItem.Namewrite-host "Other Target Operating System: " $objItem.OtherTargetOSwrite-host "Primary BIOS: " $objItem.PrimaryBIOSwrite-host "Release Date: " $objItem.ReleaseDatewrite-host "Serial Number: " $objItem.SerialNumberwrite-host "SMBIOS BIOS Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSBIOSVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Major Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSMajorVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Minor Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSMinorVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Present: " $objItem.SMBIOSPresentwrite-host "Software Element ID: " $objItem.SoftwareElementIDwrite-host "Software Element State: " $objItem.SoftwareElementStatewrite-host "Status: " $objItem.Statuswrite-host "Target Operating System: " $objItem.TargetOperatingSystemwrite-host "Version: " $objItem.Versionwrite-host} Which gives you information about your BIOS and Windows OS. Then change the computer name to another one on your network (NetBIOS based) and run the script again. There lots of samples and tutorials at the Microsoft Script Center, and I would advise you to pay a visit over there if you are more interested in PowerShell. The Script Center provides the download links, too. Upcoming Events What are the upcoming events here in Mauritius? So far, we have the following ones (incomplete list as usual) in chronological order: Hacking Defence (14. May 2014) WebCup Maurice (7. & 8. June 2014) Developers Conference (TBA ~ July 2014) Linuxfest 2014 (TBA ~ November 2014) Hopefully, there will be more announcements during the next couple of weeks and months. If you know about any other event, like a bootcamp, a code challenge or hackathon here in Mauritius, please drop me a note in the comment section below this article. Thanks! My resume of the day Spontaneous and improvised :) The new location at the University of Mauritius turned out very well, there is plenty of space, and it could be a good choice for future meetings. Especially, having the ability to get more and more students into our IT community sounds like a great opportunity. Later during the day, I got some promising mails from Nadim regarding future sessions at the local branch of the Middlesex University. Well, we will see in the future... But for now this will be on hold until approximately October when students resume their regular studies. Anyway, it was a good experience at the university, and thanks again to the UoM Student's Computer Club that made the necessary arrangements for the MSCC!

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API Message Localization

- by Jesse Taber

In my post, “Keep Localizable Strings Close To Your Users” I talked about the internationalization and localization difficulties that can arise when you sprinkle static localizable strings throughout the different logical layers of an application. The main point of that post is that you should have your localizable strings reside as close to the user-facing modules of your application as possible. For example, if you’re developing an ASP .NET web forms application all of the localizable strings should be kept in .resx files that are associated with the .aspx views of the application. In this post I want to talk about how this same concept can be applied when designing and developing APIs. An API Facilitates Machine-to-Machine Interaction You can typically think about a web, desktop, or mobile application as a collection “views” or “screens” through which users interact with the underlying logic and data. The application can be designed based on the assumption that there will be a human being on the other end of the screen working the controls. You are designing a machine-to-person interaction and the application should be built in a way that facilitates the user’s clear understanding of what is going on. Dates should be be formatted in a way that the user will be familiar with, messages should be presented in the user’s preferred language, etc. When building an API, however, there are no screens and you can’t make assumptions about who or what is on the other end of each call. An API is, by definition, a machine-to-machine interaction. A machine-to-machine interaction should be built in a way that facilitates a clear and unambiguous understanding of what is going on. Dates and numbers should be formatted in predictable and standard ways (e.g. ISO 8601 dates) and messages should be presented in machine-parseable formats. For example, consider an API for a time tracking system that exposes a resource for creating a new time entry. The JSON for creating a new time entry for a user might look like: 1: { 2: "userId": 4532, 3: "startDateUtc": "2012-10-22T14:01:54.98432Z", 4: "endDateUtc": "2012-10-22T11:34:45.29321Z" 5: } Note how the parameters for start and end date are both expressed as ISO 8601 compliant dates in UTC. Using a date format like this in our API leaves little room for ambiguity. It’s also important to note that using ISO 8601 dates is a much, much saner thing than the \/Date(<milliseconds since epoch>)\/ nonsense that is sometimes used in JSON serialization. Probably the most important thing to note about the JSON snippet above is the fact that the end date comes before the start date! The API should recognize that and disallow the time entry from being created, returning an error to the caller. You might inclined to send a response that looks something like this: 1: { 2: "errors": [ {"message" : "The end date must come after the start date"}] 3: } While this may seem like an appropriate thing to do there are a few problems with this approach: What if there is a user somewhere on the other end of the API call that doesn’t speak English? What if the message provided here won’t fit properly within the UI of the application that made the API call? What if the verbiage of the message isn’t consistent with the rest of the application that made the API call? What if there is no user directly on the other end of the API call (e.g. this is a batch job uploading time entries once per night unattended)? The API knows nothing about the context from which the call was made. There are steps you could take to given the API some context (e.g.allow the caller to send along a language code indicating the language that the end user speaks), but that will only get you so far. As the designer of the API you could make some assumptions about how the API will be called, but if we start making assumptions we could very easily make the wrong assumptions. In this situation it’s best to make no assumptions and simply design the API in such a way that the caller has the responsibility to convey error messages in a manner that is appropriate for the context in which the error was raised. You would work around some of these problems by allowing callers to add metadata to each request describing the context from which the call is being made (e.g. accepting a ‘locale’ parameter denoting the desired language), but that will add needless clutter and complexity. It’s better to keep the API simple and push those context-specific concerns down to the caller whenever possible. For our very simple time entry example, this can be done by simply changing our error message response to look like this: 1: { 2: "errors": [ {"code": 100}] 3: } By changing our error error from exposing a string to a numeric code that is easily parseable by another application, we’ve placed all of the responsibility for conveying the actual meaning of the error message on the caller. It’s best to have the caller be responsible for conveying this meaning because the caller understands the context much better than the API does. Now the caller can see error code 100, know that it means that the end date submitted falls before the start date and take appropriate action. Now all of the problems listed out above are non-issues because the caller can simply translate the error code of ‘100’ into the proper action and message for the current context. The numeric code representation of the error is a much better way to facilitate the machine-to-machine interaction that the API is meant to facilitate. An API Does Have Human Users While APIs should be built for machine-to-machine interaction, people still need to wire these interactions together. As a programmer building a client application that will consume the time entry API I would find it frustrating to have to go dig through the API documentation every time I encounter a new error code (assuming the documentation exists and is accurate). The numeric error code approach hurts the discoverability of the API and makes it painful to integrate with. We can help ease this pain by merging our two approaches: 1: { 2: "errors": [ {"code": 100, "message" : "The end date must come after the start date"}] 3: } Now we have an easily parseable numeric error code for the machine-to-machine interaction that the API is meant to facilitate and a human-readable message for programmers working with the API. The human-readable message here is not intended to be viewed by end-users of the API and as such is not really a “localizable string” in my opinion. We could opt to expose a locale parameter for all API methods and store translations for all error messages, but that’s a lot of extra effort and overhead that doesn’t add a lot real value to the API. I might be a bit of an “ugly American”, but I think it’s probably fine to have the API return English messages when the target for those messages is a programmer. When resources are limited (which they always are), I’d argue that you’re better off hard-coding these messages in English and putting more effort into building more useful features, improving security, tweaking performance, etc.

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On StringComparison Values

- by Jesse

When you use the .NET Framework’s String.Equals and String.Compare methods do you use an overloStringComparison enumeration value? If not, you should be because the value provided for that StringComparison argument can have a big impact on the results of your string comparison. The StringComparison enumeration defines values that fall into three different major categories: Culture-sensitive comparison using a specific culture, defaulted to the Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture value (StringComparison.CurrentCulture and StringComparison.CurrentCutlureIgnoreCase) Invariant culture comparison (StringComparison.InvariantCulture and StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) Ordinal (byte-by-byte) comparison of (StringComparison.Ordinal and StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) There is a lot of great material available that detail the technical ins and outs of these different string comparison approaches. If you’re at all interested in the topic these two MSDN articles are worth a read: Best Practices For Using Strings in the .NET Framework: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd465121.aspx How To Compare Strings: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc165449.aspx Those articles cover the technical details of string comparison well enough that I’m not going to reiterate them here other than to say that the upshot is that you typically want to use the culture-sensitive comparison whenever you’re comparing strings that were entered by or will be displayed to users and the ordinal comparison in nearly all other cases. So where does that leave the invariant culture comparisons? The “Best Practices For Using Strings in the .NET Framework” article has the following to say: “On balance, the invariant culture has very few properties that make it useful for comparison. It does comparison in a linguistically relevant manner, which prevents it from guaranteeing full symbolic equivalence, but it is not the choice for display in any culture. One of the few reasons to use StringComparison.InvariantCulture for comparison is to persist ordered data for a cross-culturally identical display. For example, if a large data file that contains a list of sorted identifiers for display accompanies an application, adding to this list would require an insertion with invariant-style sorting.” I don’t know about you, but I feel like that paragraph is a bit lacking. Are there really any “real world” reasons to use the invariant culture comparison? I think the answer to this question is, “yes”, but in order to understand why we should first think about what the invariant culture comparison really does. The invariant culture comparison is really just a culture-sensitive comparison using a special invariant culture (Michael Kaplan has a great post on the history of the invariant culture on his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2004/12/29/344136.aspx). This means that the invariant culture comparison will apply the linguistic customs defined by the invariant culture which are guaranteed not to differ between different machines or execution contexts. This sort of consistently does prove useful if you needed to maintain a list of strings that are sorted in a meaningful and consistent way regardless of the user viewing them or the machine on which they are being viewed. Example: Prototype Names Let’s say that you work for a large multi-national toy company with branch offices in 10 different countries. Each year the company would work on 15-25 new toy prototypes each of which is assigned a “code name” while it is under development. Coming up with fun new code names is a big part of the company culture that everyone really enjoys, so to be fair the CEO of the company spent a lot of time coming up with a prototype naming scheme that would be fun for everyone to participate in, fair to all of the different branch locations, and accessible to all members of the organization regardless of the country they were from and the language that they spoke. Each new prototype will get a code name that begins with a letter following the previously created name using the alphabetical order of the Latin/Roman alphabet. Each new year prototype names would start back at “A”. The country that leads the prototype development effort gets to choose the name in their native language. (An appropriate Romanization system will be used for countries where the primary language is not written in the Latin/Roman alphabet. For example, the Pinyin system could be used for Chinese). To avoid repeating names, a list of all current and past prototype names will be maintained on each branch location’s company intranet site. Assuming that maintaining a single pre-sorted list is not feasible among all of the highly distributed intranet implementations, what string comparison method would you use to sort each year’s list of prototype names so that the list is both meaningful and consistent regardless of the country within which the list is being viewed? Sorting the list with a culture-sensitive comparison using the default configured culture on each country’s intranet server the list would probably work most of the time, but subtle differences between cultures could mean that two different people would see a list that was sorted slightly differently. The CEO wants the prototype names to be a unifying aspect of company culture and is adamant that everyone see the the same list sorted in the same order and there’s no way to guarantee a consistent sort across different cultures using the culture-sensitive string comparison rules. The culture-sensitive sort would produce a meaningful list for the specific user viewing it, but it wouldn’t always be consistent between different users. Sorting with the ordinal comparison would certainly be consistent regardless of the user viewing it, but would it be meaningful? Let’s say that the current year’s prototype name list looks like this: Antílope (Spanish) Babouin (French) Cahoun (Czech) Diamond (English) Flosse (German) If you were to sort this list using ordinal rules you’d end up with: Antílope Babouin Diamond Flosse Cahoun This sort is no good because the entry for “C” appears the bottom of the list after “F”. This is because the Czech entry for the letter “C” makes use of a diacritic (accent mark). The ordinal string comparison does a byte-by-byte comparison of the code points that make up each character in the string and the code point for the “C” with the diacritic mark is higher than any letter without a diacritic mark, which pushes that entry to the bottom of the sorted list. The CEO wants each country to be able to create prototype names in their native language, which means we need to allow for names that might begin with letters that have diacritics, so ordinal sorting kills the meaningfulness of the list. As it turns out, this situation is actually well-suited for the invariant culture comparison. The invariant culture accounts for linguistically relevant factors like the use of diacritics but will provide a consistent sort across all machines that perform the sort. Now that we’ve walked through this example, the following line from the “Best Practices For Using Strings in the .NET Framework” makes a lot more sense: One of the few reasons to use StringComparison.InvariantCulture for comparison is to persist ordered data for a cross-culturally identical display That line describes the prototype name example perfectly: we need a way to persist ordered data for a cross-culturally identical display. While this example is 100% made-up, I think it illustrates that there are indeed real-world situations where the invariant culture comparison is useful.

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European Interoperability Framework - a new beginning?

- by trond-arne.undheim

The most controversial document in the history of the European Commission's IT policy is out. EIF is here, wrapped in the Communication "Towards interoperability for European public services", and including the new feature European Interoperability Strategy (EIS), arguably a higher strategic take on the same topic. Leaving EIS aside for a moment, the EIF controversy has been around IPR, defining open standards and about the proper terminology around standardization deliverables. Today, as the document finally emerges, what is the verdict? First of all, to be fair to those among you who do not spend your lives in the intricate labyrinths of Commission IT policy documents on interoperability, let's define what we are talking about. According to the Communication: "An interoperability framework is an agreed approach to interoperability for organisations that want to collaborate to provide joint delivery of public services. Within its scope of applicability, it specifies common elements such as vocabulary, concepts, principles, policies, guidelines, recommendations, standards, specifications and practices." The Good - EIF reconfirms that "The Digital Agenda can only take off if interoperability based on standards and open platforms is ensured" and also confirms that "The positive effect of open specifications is also demonstrated by the Internet ecosystem." - EIF takes a productive and pragmatic stance on openness: "In the context of the EIF, openness is the willingness of persons, organisations or other members of a community of interest to share knowledge and stimulate debate within that community, the ultimate goal being to advance knowledge and the use of this knowledge to solve problems" (p.11). "If the openness principle is applied in full: - All stakeholders have the same possibility of contributing to the development of the specification and public review is part of the decision-making process; - The specification is available for everybody to study; - Intellectual property rights related to the specification are licensed on FRAND terms or on a royalty-free basis in a way that allows implementation in both proprietary and open source software" (p. 26). - EIF is a formal Commission document. The former EIF 1.0 was a semi-formal deliverable from the PEGSCO, a working group of Member State representatives. - EIF tackles interoperability head-on and takes a clear stance: "Recommendation 22. When establishing European public services, public administrations should prefer open specifications, taking due account of the coverage of functional needs, maturity and market support." - The Commission will continue to support the National Interoperability Framework Observatory (NIFO), reconfirming the importance of coordinating such approaches across borders. - The Commission will align its internal interoperability strategy with the EIS through the eCommission initiative. - One cannot stress the importance of using open standards enough, whether in the context of open source or non-open source software. The EIF seems to have picked up on this fact: What does the EIF says about the relation between open specifications and open source software? The EIF introduces, as one of the characteristics of an open specification, the requirement that IPRs related to the specification have to be licensed on FRAND terms or on a royalty-free basis in a way that allows implementation in both proprietary and open source software. In this way, companies working under various business models can compete on an equal footing when providing solutions to public administrations while administrations that implement the standard in their own software (software that they own) can share such software with others under an open source licence if they so decide. - EIF is now among the center pieces of the Digital Agenda (even though this demands extensive inter-agency coordination in the Commission): "The EIS and the EIF will be maintained under the ISA Programme and kept in line with the results of other relevant Digital Agenda actions on interoperability and standards such as the ones on the reform of rules on implementation of ICT standards in Europe to allow use of certain ICT fora and consortia standards, on issuing guidelines on essential intellectual property rights and licensing conditions in standard-setting, including for ex-ante disclosure, and on providing guidance on the link between ICT standardisation and public procurement to help public authorities to use standards to promote efficiency and reduce lock-in.(Communication, p.7)" All in all, quite a few good things have happened to the document in the two years it has been on the shelf or was being re-written, depending on your perspective, in any case, awaiting the storms to calm. The Bad - While a certain pragmatism is required, and governments cannot migrate to full openness overnight, EIF gives a bit too much room for governments not to apply the openness principle in full. Plenty of reasons are given, which should maybe have been put as challenges to be overcome: "However, public administrations may decide to use less open specifications, if open specifications do not exist or do not meet functional interoperability needs. In all cases, specifications should be mature and sufficiently supported by the market, except if used in the context of creating innovative solutions". - EIF does not use the internationally established terminology: open standards. Rather, the EIF introduces the notion of "formalised specification". How do "formalised specifications" relate to "standards"? According to the FAQ provided: The word "standard" has a specific meaning in Europe as defined by Directive 98/34/EC. Only technical specifications approved by a recognised standardisation body can be called a standard. Many ICT systems rely on the use of specifications developed by other organisations such as a forum or consortium. The EIF introduces the notion of "formalised specification", which is either a standard pursuant to Directive 98/34/EC or a specification established by ICT fora and consortia. The term "open specification" used in the EIF, on the one hand, avoids terminological confusion with the Directive and, on the other, states the main features that comply with the basic principle of openness laid down in the EIF for European Public Services. Well, this may be somewhat true, but in reality, Europe is 30 year behind in terminology. Unless the European Standardization Reform gets completed in the next few months, most Member States will likely conclude that they will go on referencing and using standards beyond those created by the three European endorsed monopolists of standardization, CEN, CENELEC and ETSI. Who can afford to begin following the strict Brussels rules for what they can call open standards when, in reality, standards stemming from global standardization organizations, so-called fora/consortia, dominate in the IT industry. What exactly is EIF saying? Does it encourage Member States to go on using non-ESO standards as long as they call it something else? I guess I am all for it, although it is a bit cumbersome, no? Why was there so much interest around the EIF? The FAQ attempts to explain: Some Member States have begun to adopt policies to achieve interoperability for their public services. These actions have had a significant impact on the ecosystem built around the provision of such services, e.g. providers of ICT goods and services, standardisation bodies, industry fora and consortia, etc... The Commission identified a clear need for action at European level to ensure that actions by individual Member States would not create new electronic barriers that would hinder the development of interoperable European public services. As a result, all stakeholders involved in the delivery of electronic public services in Europe have expressed their opinions on how to increase interoperability for public services provided by the different public administrations in Europe. Well, it does not take two years to read 50 consultation documents, and the EU Standardization Reform is not yet completed, so, more pragmatically, you finally had to release the document. Ok, let's leave some of that aside because the document is out and some people are happy (and others definitely not). The Verdict Considering the controversy, the delays, the lobbying, and the interests at stake both in the EU, in Member States and among vendors large and small, this document is pretty impressive. As with a good wine that has not yet come to full maturity, let's say that it seems to be coming in in the 85-88/100 range, but only a more fine-grained analysis, enjoyment in good company, and ultimately, implementation, will tell. The European Commission has today adopted a significant interoperability initiative to encourage public administrations across the EU to maximise the social and economic potential of information and communication technologies. Today, we should rally around this achievement. Tomorrow, let's sit down and figure out what it means for the future.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 23, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 23, 2010New Projects.NET StarCraft II Replay Parser: A .NET 3.5 Library used to parse StarCraft II replays. Developed in C# 3.5.BackToBasics "B2B" Chat: With technology and software getting more and more complicated, why not get back to basics with BackToBasicsChat. B2B allows you to chat over a ser...Dark Neuron Game Engine: Dark Neuron allows you to easily create fun and interesting games with no need of developing basic game components. This engine is developed for C#...DeepZoom Pivot Constructor: Library to make building DeepZoom images and Pivot displays simpler.ePaper reader: The project is aimed at creating a tool which helps in reading electronic editions of news papers(pdf/flash)FSharpPageProvider for EPiServer CMS 6: This project starts as the port of EPiServer XmlPageProvider to F# programming language. Hammock for REST: Hammock is a REST library for .NET that greatly simplifies consuming and wrapping RESTful services.Kirill Osenkov: Various small projects, tools, utilities and samples by Kirill OsenkovliveDB: liveDB - web client for sql serverLucilla Framework: lucilla frameworkMVC Foolproof Validation: MVC Foolproof Validation aims to extend the Data Annotation validation provided in ASP.NET MVC. Initial efforts are focused on adding contingent va...MVC2Forums: MVC2Forums is simply a forum system based upon MVC2.Mvvm Foundation Silverlight: Mvvm Foundation Silverlight is a library of classes that are helpful when building Silverlight applications based in the MVVM pattern. This librar...MyPersonalWebsite: This is my personal web site developed using ASP.NET MVC 2Planner: Planner makes it easier for all peoples to plan your tasks. It's developed in Delphi.Prose: Prose is an playground for an experimental JavaScript like language compiler. Eventually it will implement 0-CFA, CFA2, and a Tracing JITQuestTracker: QuestTracker is a todo list presented in the format of a quest tracking list such as the one in World of Warcraft.SevenZipLib: SevenZipLib is a C# interface to the 7-zip library.SimpleGeo .Net: .Net Client library for the SimpleGeo.com serviceNew ReleasesAutenticar no OpenLDAP utilizando pGIna: DLL LDAPAuth Plus: New Group: No LoginBMap.NET: BMap.NET 2: This is the 2nd version of BMap.NET. It has included these tags: Bing Maps, and "About BMap.NET".Cronos: Version 2.04: This is primarily a bug-fix release. Several numerical issues have been resolved, and a resource leak (of MS Windows graphics objects) has been fi...EV Dashboard: v1.0: This release includes support for an App.config file and Auto Connect, which will connect to the specified BMS at startup. Note: You still have to ...GKO Libraries: GKO Libraries 0.1 Beta: 0.1 Beta Added More utilities and functions RefactoringsGLB Virtual Player Builder: 0.4.2 Beta: Beta build that includes a new player creator.HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201003222215): New features: (None) Bug fix: Fixed bugs of unable to parse XML file stream returned from HKGolden API, as the encoding of XML file stream chang...jQuery Web Controls ASP.Net: jQueryWebControls 1.1.1.2: En esta versión se han corregido problemas existentes en la ejecución de los scripts de jquery cuando se utilizaban MasterPage y/o Ajax Control Too...LightKit: Version 0.2.2: Fixed: fixed bug when CollectionItemsEditor ditermines IsChanged property incorrectly fixed ObjectEditor`a thisstring propertyName method wrong l...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.8: New items added since v1.1 include: Support for OAuth (via DotNetOpenAuth), secure communication via https, VB language support, serialization of ...MapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 msi (March 22): This version fixes the icons for the desktop installer and changes the install directory to Program Files\MapWindow instead of Program Files\ISU.Math.NET Numerics: 2010.3.22.1334 Build: Latest alpha buildMiniCalendar Web Part: MiniCalendar Web Part 1.8: A small web part to display links to events stored in a list (or document library) in a mini calendar (in month view mode). It shows tooltips for t...OCInject: Release Two: This release brings some missing features such as Singleton support, Func<T> factories and child containers. It, also, has an updated constructor ...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.0 (March 2010): Installer of the latest binaries of Phalanger 2.0 (March 2010) and its integration into Visual Studio 2008. Easy installer with automatic IIS int...Planner: Planner: firstQuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1: This is the preliminary release of QuestTracker. There's not much documentation or many features yet, but it is functional. Any feedback would be a...QuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1.1: Bugfix for QuestTracker 0.1QuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1.2: Fixes an issue with saving the quest list.Rawr: Rawr 2.3.13: We're pleased to announce that, after long last, Rawr3 has entered public beta. You're still welcome to continue using Rawr2 (that's what you're re...Single Web Session: Alpha Model Plugin: !How to use Single Web Session add following line into your web config <httpModules> <add name="SingleSession" type="SingleWebSession.Model.W...SMIL - SharePoint Map Integration Layer: SMIL 1.0: Custom data field Extracts Lat/Lon from EXIF from images being uploaded. Map Web Part Filter with SharePoint views Filter by connecting to...sTASKedit: sTASKedit 42532 (Developer Alpha): This release is only to verify the currently decoded task structure... Supported files: tasks.data (v1.3.6 client)VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30322.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: Advanced Notepad (Visual C++ 2008): An notepad written in c that can save in a rich text file format.Wallpaper Rotator: Wallpaper Rotator 0.5: Wallpaper Rotator 0.5 This version includes the following improvements: Saving the choice of "Random Order (Shuffle Mode)" Updating the configu...Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitLiveUpload to FacebookWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMost Active ProjectsRawrjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETLINQ to TwitterPHPExcelFarseer Physics EngineFacebook Developer ToolkitNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Modulepatterns & practices: Composite WPF and SilverlightN2 CMS

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MySQL Cluster 7.3 Labs Release – Foreign Keys Are In!

- by Mat Keep

0 0 1 1097 6254 Homework 52 14 7337 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;} Summary (aka TL/DR): Support for Foreign Key constraints has been one of the most requested feature enhancements for MySQL Cluster. We are therefore extremely excited to announce that Foreign Keys are part of the first Labs Release of MySQL Cluster 7.3 – available for download, evaluation and feedback now! (Select the mysql-cluster-7.3-labs-June-2012 build) In this blog, I will attempt to discuss the design rationale, implementation, configuration and steps to get started in evaluating the first MySQL Cluster 7.3 Labs Release. Pace of Innovation It was only a couple of months ago that we announced the General Availability (GA) of MySQL Cluster 7.2, delivering 1 billion Queries per Minute, with 70x higher cross-shard JOIN performance, Memcached NoSQL key-value API and cross-data center replication. This release has been a huge hit, with downloads and deployments quickly reaching record levels. The announcement of the first MySQL Cluster 7.3 Early Access lab release at today's MySQL Innovation Day event demonstrates the continued pace in Cluster development, and provides an opportunity for the community to evaluate and feedback on new features they want to see. What’s the Plan for MySQL Cluster 7.3? Well, Foreign Keys, as you may have gathered by now (!), and this is the focus of this first Labs Release. As with MySQL Cluster 7.2, we plan to publish a series of preview releases for 7.3 that will incrementally add new candidate features for a final GA release (subject to usual safe harbor statement below*), including: - New NoSQL APIs; - Features to automate the configuration and provisioning of multi-node clusters, on premise or in the cloud; - Performance and scalability enhancements; - Taking advantage of features in the latest MySQL 5.x Server GA. Design Rationale MySQL Cluster is designed as a “Not-Only-SQL” database. It combines attributes that enable users to blend the best of both relational and NoSQL technologies into solutions that deliver web scalability with 99.999% availability and real-time performance, including: Concurrent NoSQL and SQL access to the database; Auto-sharding with simple scale-out across commodity hardware; Multi-master replication with failover and recovery both within and across data centers; Shared-nothing architecture with no single point of failure; Online scaling and schema changes; ACID compliance and support for complex queries, across shards. Native support for Foreign Key constraints enables users to extend the benefits of MySQL Cluster into a broader range of use-cases, including: - Packaged applications in areas such as eCommerce and Web Content Management that prescribe databases with Foreign Key support. - In-house developments benefiting from Foreign Key constraints to simplify data models and eliminate the additional application logic needed to maintain data consistency and integrity between tables. Implementation The Foreign Key functionality is implemented directly within MySQL Cluster’s data nodes, allowing any client API accessing the cluster to benefit from them – whether using SQL or one of the NoSQL interfaces (Memcached, C++, Java, JPA or HTTP/REST.) The core referential actions defined in the SQL:2003 standard are implemented: CASCADE RESTRICT NO ACTION SET NULL In addition, the MySQL Cluster implementation supports the online adding and dropping of Foreign Keys, ensuring the Cluster continues to serve both read and write requests during the operation. An important difference to note with the Foreign Key implementation in InnoDB is that MySQL Cluster does not support the updating of Primary Keys from within the Data Nodes themselves - instead the UPDATE is emulated with a DELETE followed by an INSERT operation. Therefore an UPDATE operation will return an error if the parent reference is using a Primary Key, unless using CASCADE action, in which case the delete operation will result in the corresponding rows in the child table being deleted. The Engineering team plans to change this behavior in a subsequent preview release. Also note that when using InnoDB "NO ACTION" is identical to "RESTRICT". In the case of MySQL Cluster “NO ACTION” means “deferred check”, i.e. the constraint is checked before commit, allowing user-defined triggers to automatically make changes in order to satisfy the Foreign Key constraints. Configuration There is nothing special you have to do here – Foreign Key constraint checking is enabled by default. If you intend to migrate existing tables from another database or storage engine, for example from InnoDB, there are a couple of best practices to observe: 1. Analyze the structure of the Foreign Key graph and run the ALTER TABLE ENGINE=NDB in the correct sequence to ensure constraints are enforced 2. Alternatively drop the Foreign Key constraints prior to the import process and then recreate when complete. Getting Started Read this blog for a demonstration of using Foreign Keys with MySQL Cluster. You can download MySQL Cluster 7.3 Labs Release with Foreign Keys today - (select the mysql-cluster-7.3-labs-June-2012 build) If you are new to MySQL Cluster, the Getting Started guide will walk you through installing an evaluation cluster on a singe host (these guides reflect MySQL Cluster 7.2, but apply equally well to 7.3) Post any questions to the MySQL Cluster forum where our Engineering team will attempt to assist you. Post any bugs you find to the MySQL bug tracking system (select MySQL Cluster from the Category drop-down menu) And if you have any feedback, please post them to the Comments section of this blog. Summary MySQL Cluster 7.2 is the GA, production-ready release of MySQL Cluster. This first Labs Release of MySQL Cluster 7.3 gives you the opportunity to preview and evaluate future developments in the MySQL Cluster database, and we are very excited to be able to share that with you. Let us know how you get along with MySQL Cluster 7.3, and other features that you want to see in future releases. * Safe Harbor Statement This information is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.

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Does Test Driven Development (TDD) improve Quality and Correctness? (Part 1)

- by David V. Corbin

Since the dawn of the computer age, various methodologies have been introduced to improve quality and reduce cost. In this posting, I will by sharing my experiences with Test Driven Development; both its benefits and limitations. To start this topic, we need to agree on what TDD is. The first is to define each of the three words as used in this context. Test - An item or action which measures something in some quantifiable form. Driven - The primary motivation or focus of a series of activities (process) Development - All phases of a software project/product from concept through delivery. The above are very simple definitions that result in the following: "TDD is a process where the primary focus is on measuring and quantifying all aspects of the creation of a (software) product." There are many places where TDD is used outside of software development, even though it is not known by this name. Consider the (conventional) education process that most of us grew up on. The focus was to get the best grades as measured by different tests. Many of these tests measured rote memorization and not understanding of the subject matter. The result of this that many people graduated with high scores but without "quality and correctness" in their ability to utilize the subject matter (of course, the flip side is true where certain people DID understand the material but were not very good at taking this type of test). Returning to software development, let us look at some common scenarios. While these items are generally applicable regardless of platform, language and tools; the remainder of this post will utilize Microsoft Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server (TFS) for examples. It should be realized that everyone does at least some aspect of TDD. At the most rudimentary level, getting a program to compile involves a "pass/fail" measurement (is the syntax valid) that drives their ability to proceed further (run the program). Other developers may create "Unit Tests" in the belief that having a test for every method/property of a class and good code coverage is the goal of TDD. These items may be helpful and even important, but really only address a small aspect of the overall effort. To see TDD in a bigger view, lets identify the various activities that are part of the Software Development LifeCycle. These are going to be presented in a Waterfall style for simplicity, but each item also occurs within Iterative methodologies such as Agile/Scrum. the key ones here are: Requirements Gathering Architecture Design Implementation Quality Assurance Can each of these items be subjected to a process which establishes metrics (quantified metrics) that reflect both the quality and correctness of each item? It should be clear that conventional Unit Tests do not apply to all of these items; at best they can verify that a local aspect (e.g. a Class/Method) of implementation matches the (test writers perspective of) the appropriate design document. So what can we do? For each of area, the goal is to create tests that are quantifiable and durable. The ability to quantify the measurements (beyond a simple pass/fail) is critical to tracking progress(eventually measuring the level of success that has been achieved) and for providing clear information on what items need to be addressed (along with the appropriate time to address them - in varying levels of detail) . Durability is important so that the test can be reapplied (ideally in an automated fashion) over the entire cycle. Returning for a moment back to our "education example", one must also be careful of how the tests are organized and how the measurements are taken. If a test is in a multiple choice format, there is a significant statistical probability that a correct answer might be the result of a random guess. Also, in many situations, having the student simply provide a final answer can obscure many important elements. For example, on a math test, having the student simply provide a numeric answer (rather than showing the methodology) may result in a complete mismatch between the process and the result. It is hard to determine which is worse: The student who makes a simple arithmetric error at one step of a long process (resulting in a wrong answer) or The student who (without providing the "workflow") uses a completely invalid approach, yet still comes up with the right number. The "Wrong Process"/"Right Answer" is probably the single biggest problem in software development. Even very simple items can suffer from this. As an example consider the following code for a "straight line" calculation....Is it correct? (for Integral Points) int Solve(int m, int b, int x) { return m * x + b; } Most people would respond "Yes". But let's take the question one step further... Is it correct for all possible values of m,b,x??? (no fair if you cheated by being focused on the bolded text!) Without additional information regarding constrains on "the possible values of m,b,x" the answer must be NO, there is the risk of overflow/wraparound that will produce an incorrect result! To properly answer this question (i.e. Test the Code), one MUST be able to backtrack from the implementation through the design, and architecture all the way back to the requirements. And the requirement itself must be tested against the stakeholder(s). It is only when the bounding conditions are defined that it is possible to determine if the code is "Correct" and has "Quality". Yet, how many of us (myself included) have written such code without even thinking about it. In many canses we (think we) "know" what the bounds are, and that the code will be correct. As we all know, requirements change, "code reuse" causes implementations to be applied to different scenarios, etc. This leads directly to the types of system failures that plague so many projects. This approach to TDD is much more holistic than ones which start by focusing on the details. The fundamental concepts still apply: Each item should be tested. The test should be defined/implemented before (or concurrent with) the definition/implementation of the actual item. We also add concepts that expand the scope and alter the style by recognizing: There are many things beside "lines of code" that benefit from testing (measuring/evaluating in a formal way) Correctness and Quality can not be solely measured by "correct results" In the future parts, we will examine in greater detail some of the techniques that can be applied to each of these areas....

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Is RTD Stateless or Stateful?

- by [email protected]

Yes. A stateless service is one where each request is an independent transaction that can be processed by any of the servers in a cluster. A stateful service is one where state is kept in a server's memory from transaction to transaction, thus necessitating the proper routing of requests to the right server. The main advantage of stateless systems is simplicity of design. The main advantage of stateful systems is performance. I'm often asked whether RTD is a stateless or stateful service, so I wanted to clarify this issue in depth so that RTD's architecture will be properly understood. The short answer is: "RTD can be configured as a stateless or stateful service." The performance difference between stateless and stateful systems can be very significant, and while in a call center implementation it may be reasonable to use a pure stateless configuration, a web implementation that produces thousands of requests per second is practically impossible with a stateless configuration. RTD's performance is orders of magnitude better than most competing systems. RTD was architected from the ground up to achieve this performance. Features like automatic and dynamic compression of prediction models, automatic translation of metadata to machine code, lack of interpreted languages, and separation of model building from decisioning contribute to achieving this performance level. Because of this focus on performance we decided to have RTD's default configuration work in a stateful manner. By being stateful RTD requests are typically handled in a few milliseconds when repeated requests come to the same session. Now, those readers that have participated in implementations of RTD know that RTD's architecture is also focused on reducing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) with features like automatic model building, automatic time windows, automatic maintenance of database tables, automatic evaluation of data mining models, automatic management of models partitioned by channel, geography, etcetera, and hot swapping of configurations. How do you reconcile the need for a low TCO and the need for performance? How do you get the performance of a stateful system with the simplicity of a stateless system? The answer is that you make the system behave like a stateless system to the exterior, but you let it automatically take advantage of situations where being stateful is better. For example, one of the advantages of stateless systems is that you can route a message to any server in a cluster, without worrying about sending it to the same server that was handling the session in previous messages. With an RTD stateful configuration you can still route the message to any server in the cluster, so from the point of view of the configuration of other systems, it is the same as a stateless service. The difference though comes in performance, because if the message arrives to the right server, RTD can serve it without any external access to the session's state, thus tremendously reducing processing time. In typical implementations it is not rare to have high percentages of messages routed directly to the right server, while those that are not, are easily handled by forwarding the messages to the right server. This architecture usually provides the best of both worlds with performance and simplicity of configuration. Configuring RTD as a pure stateless service A pure stateless configuration requires session data to be persisted at the end of handling each and every message and reloading that data at the beginning of handling any new message. This is of course, the root of the inefficiency of these configurations. This is also the reason why many "stateless" implementations actually do keep state to take advantage of a request coming back to the same server. Nevertheless, if the implementation requires a pure stateless decision service, this is easy to configure in RTD. The way to do it is: Mark every Integration Point to Close the session at the end of processing the message In the Session entity persist the session data on closing the session In the session entity check if a persisted version exists and load it An excellent solution for persisting the session data is Oracle Coherence, which provides a high performance, distributed cache that minimizes the performance impact of persisting and reloading the session. Alternatively, the session can be persisted to a local database. An interesting feature of the RTD stateless configuration is that it can cope with serializing concurrent requests for the same session. For example, if a web page produces two requests to the decision service, these requests could come concurrently to the decision services and be handled by different servers. Most stateless implementation would have the two requests step onto each other when saving the state, or fail one of the messages. When properly configured, RTD will make one message wait for the other before processing. A Word on Context Using the context of a customer interaction typically significantly increases lift. For example, offer success in a call center could double if the context of the call is taken into account. For this reason, it is important to utilize the contextual information in decision making. To make the contextual information available throughout a session it needs to be persisted. When there is a well defined owner for the information then there is no problem because in case of a session restart, the information can be easily retrieved. If there is no official owner of the information, then RTD can be configured to persist this information. Once again, RTD provides flexibility to ensure high performance when it is adequate to allow for some loss of state in the rare cases of server failure. For example, in a heavy use web site that serves 1000 pages per second the navigation history may be stored in the in memory session. In such sites it is typical that there is no OLTP that stores all the navigation events, therefore if an RTD server were to fail, it would be possible for the navigation to that point to be lost (note that a new session would be immediately established in one of the other servers). In most cases the loss of this navigation information would be acceptable as it would happen rarely. If it is desired to save this information, RTD would persist it every time the visitor navigates to a new page. Note that this practice is preferred whether RTD is configured in a stateless or stateful manner.

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Using Apache FOP from .NET level

- by Lukasz Kurylo

In one of my previous posts I was talking about FO.NET which I was using to generate a pdf documents from XSL-FO. FO.NET is one of the .NET ports of Apache FOP. Unfortunatelly it is no longer maintained. I known it when I decidec to use it, because there is a lack of available (free) choices for .NET to render a pdf form XSL-FO. I hoped in this implementation I will find all I need to create a pdf file with my really simple requirements. FO.NET is a port from some old version of Apache FOP and I found really quickly that there is a lack of some features that I needed, like dotted borders, double borders or support for margins. So I started to looking for some alternatives. I didn’t try the NFOP, another port of Apache FOP, because I found something I think much more better, the IKVM.NET project. IKVM.NET it is not a pdf renderer. So what it is? From the project site: IKVM.NET is an implementation of Java for Mono and the Microsoft .NET Framework. It includes the following components: a Java Virtual Machine implemented in .NET a .NET implementation of the Java class libraries tools that enable Java and .NET interoperability In the simplest form IKVM.NET allows to use a Java code library in the C# code and vice versa. I tried to use an Apache FOP, the best I think open source pdf –> XSL-FO renderer written in Java from my project written in C# using an IKVM.NET and it work like a charm. In the rest of the post I want to show, how to prepare a .NET *.dll class library from Apache FOP *.jar’s with IKVM.NET and generate a simple Hello world pdf document. To start playing with IKVM.NET and Apache FOP we need to download their packages: IKVM.NET Apache FOP and then unpack them. From the FOP directory copy all the *.jar’s files from lib and build catalogs to some location, e.g. d:\fop. Second step is to build the *.dll library from these files. On the console execute the following comand: ikvmc –target:library –out:d:\fop\fop.dll –recurse:d:\fop The ikvmc is located in the bin subdirectory where you unpacked the IKVM.NET. You must execute this command from this catalog, add this path to the global variable PATH or specify the full path to the bin subdirectory. In no error occurred during this process, the fop.dll library should be created. Right now we can create a simple project to test if we can create a pdf file. So let’s create a simple console project application and add reference to the fop.dll and the IKVM dll’s: IKVM.OpenJDK.Core and IKVM.OpenJDK.XML.API. Full code to generate a pdf file from XSL-FO template: static void Main(string[] args) { //initialize the Apache FOP FopFactory fopFactory = FopFactory.newInstance(); //in this stream we will get the generated pdf file OutputStream o = new DotNetOutputMemoryStream(); try { Fop fop = fopFactory.newFop("application/pdf", o); TransformerFactory factory = TransformerFactory.newInstance(); Transformer transformer = factory.newTransformer(); //read the template from disc Source src = new StreamSource(new File("HelloWorld.fo")); Result res = new SAXResult(fop.getDefaultHandler()); transformer.transform(src, res); } finally { o.close(); } using (System.IO.FileStream fs = System.IO.File.Create("HelloWorld.pdf")) { //write from the .NET MemoryStream stream to disc the generated pdf file var data = ((DotNetOutputMemoryStream)o).Stream.GetBuffer(); fs.Write(data, 0, data.Length); } Process.Start("HelloWorld.pdf"); System.Console.ReadLine(); } Apache FOP be default using a Java’s Xalan to work with XML files. I didn’t find a way to replace this piece of code with equivalent from .NET standard library. If any error or warning will occure during generating the pdf file, on the console will ge shown, that’s why I inserted the last line in the sample above. The DotNetOutputMemoryStream this is my wrapper for the Java OutputStream. I have created it to have the possibility to exchange data between the .NET <-> Java objects. It’s implementation: class DotNetOutputMemoryStream : OutputStream { private System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new System.IO.MemoryStream(); public System.IO.MemoryStream Stream { get { return ms; } } public override void write(int i) { ms.WriteByte((byte)i); } public override void write(byte[] b, int off, int len) { ms.Write(b, off, len); } public override void write(byte[] b) { ms.Write(b, 0, b.Length); } public override void close() { ms.Close(); } public override void flush() { ms.Flush(); } } The last thing we need, this is the HelloWorld.fo template. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <fo:layout-master-set> <fo:simple-page-master master-name="simple" page-height="29.7cm" page-width="21cm" margin-top="1.8cm" margin-bottom="0.8cm" margin-left="1.6cm" margin-right="1.2cm"> <fo:region-body margin-top="3cm"/> <fo:region-before extent="3cm"/> <fo:region-after extent="1.5cm"/> </fo:simple-page-master> </fo:layout-master-set> <fo:page-sequence master-reference="simple"> <fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body"> <fo:block font-size="18pt" color="black" text-align="center"> Hello, World! </fo:block> </fo:flow> </fo:page-sequence> </fo:root> I’m not going to explain how how this template is created, because this will be covered in the near future posts. Generated pdf file should look that:

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Waterfall Model (SDLC) vs. Prototyping Model

The characters in the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare can easily be used to demonstrate the similarities and differences between the Waterfall and Prototyping software development models. This children fable is about a race between a consistently slow moving but steadfast turtle and an extremely fast but unreliable rabbit. After closely comparing each character’s attributes in correlation with both software development models, a trend seems to appear in that the Waterfall closely resembles the Tortoise in that Waterfall Model is typically a slow moving process that is broken up in to multiple sequential steps that must be executed in a standard linear pattern. The Tortoise can be quoted several times in the story saying “Slow and steady wins the race.” This is the perfect mantra for the Waterfall Model in that this model is seen as a cumbersome and slow moving. Waterfall Model Phases Requirement Analysis & Definition This phase focuses on defining requirements for a project that is to be developed and determining if the project is even feasible. Requirements are collected by analyzing existing systems and functionality in correlation with the needs of the business and the desires of the end users. The desired output for this phase is a list of specific requirements from the business that are to be designed and implemented in the subsequent steps. In addition this phase is used to determine if any value will be gained by completing the project. System Design This phase focuses primarily on the actual architectural design of a system, and how it will interact within itself and with other existing applications. Projects at this level should be viewed at a high level so that actual implementation details are decided in the implementation phase. However major environmental decision like hardware and platform decision are typically decided in this phase. Furthermore the basic goal of this phase is to design an application at the system level in those classes, interfaces, and interactions are defined. Additionally decisions about scalability, distribution and reliability should also be considered for all decisions. The desired output for this phase is a functional design document that states all of the architectural decisions that have been made in regards to the project as well as a diagrams like a sequence and class diagrams. Software Design This phase focuses primarily on the refining of the decisions found in the functional design document. Classes and interfaces are further broken down in to logical modules based on the interfaces and interactions previously indicated. The output of this phase is a formal design document. Implementation / Coding This phase focuses primarily on implementing the previously defined modules in to units of code. These units are developed independently are intergraded as the system is put together as part of a whole system. Software Integration & Verification This phase primarily focuses on testing each of the units of code developed as well as testing the system as a whole. There are basic types of testing at this phase and they include: Unit Test and Integration Test. Unit Test are built to test the functionality of a code unit to ensure that it preforms its desired task. Integration testing test the system as a whole because it focuses on results of combining specific units of code and validating it against expected results. The output of this phase is a test plan that includes test with expected results and actual results. System Verification This phase primarily focuses on testing the system as a whole in regards to the list of project requirements and desired operating environment. Operation & Maintenance his phase primarily focuses on handing off the competed project over to the customer so that they can verify that all of their requirements have been met based on their original requirements. This phase will also validate the correctness of their requirements and if any changed need to be made. In addition, any problems not resolved in the previous phase will be handled in this section. The Waterfall Model’s linear and sequential methodology does offer a project certain advantages and disadvantages. Advantages of the Waterfall Model Simplistic to implement and execute for projects and/or company wide Limited demand on resources Large emphasis on documentation Disadvantages of the Waterfall Model Completed phases cannot be revisited regardless if issues arise within a project Accurate requirement are never gather prior to the completion of the requirement phase due to the lack of clarification in regards to client’s desires. Small changes or errors that arise in applications may cause additional problems The client cannot change any requirements once the requirements phase has been completed leaving them no options for changes as they see their requirements changes as the customers desires change. Excess documentation Phases are cumbersome and slow moving Learn more about the Major Process in the Sofware Development Life Cycle and Waterfall Model. Conversely, the Hare shares similar traits with the prototyping software development model in that ideas are rapidly converted to basic working examples and subsequent changes are made to quickly align the project with customers desires as they are formulated and as software strays from the customers vision. The basic concept of prototyping is to eliminate the use of well-defined project requirements. Projects are allowed to grow as the customer needs and request grow. Projects are initially designed according to basic requirements and are refined as requirement become more refined. This process allows customer to feel their way around the application to ensure that they are developing exactly what they want in the application This model also works well for determining the feasibility of certain approaches in regards to an application. Prototypes allow for quickly developing examples of implementing specific functionality based on certain techniques. Advantages of Prototyping Active participation from users and customers Allows customers to change their mind in specifying requirements Customers get a better understanding of the system as it is developed Earlier bug/error detection Promotes communication with customers Prototype could be used as final production Reduced time needed to develop applications compared to the Waterfall method Disadvantages of Prototyping Promotes constantly redefining project requirements that cause major system rewrites Potential for increased complexity of a system as scope of the system expands Customer could believe the prototype as the working version. Implementation compromises could increase the complexity when applying updates and or application fixes When companies trying to decide between the Waterfall model and Prototype model they need to evaluate the benefits and disadvantages for both models. Typically smaller companies or projects that have major time constraints typically head for more of a Prototype model approach because it can reduce the time needed to complete the project because there is more of a focus on building a project and less on defining requirements and scope prior to the start of a project. On the other hand, Companies with well-defined requirements and time allowed to generate proper documentation should steer towards more of a waterfall model because they are in a position to obtain clarified requirements and have to design and optimal solution prior to the start of coding on a project.

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Following my passion

- by Maria Sandu

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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} What makes you go the extra mile? What makes you move forward and be ambitious? My name is Alin Gheorghe and I am currently working as a Contracts Administrator in the Shared Service Centre in Bucharest, Romania. I have graduated from the Political Science Faculty of the National School of Political and Administrative Studies here in Bucharest and I am currently undergoing a Master Program on Security and Diplomacy at the same university. Although I have been working a full time job here at Oracle since January 2011 and also going to school after work, I am going to tell you how I spend my spare time and about my passion. I always thought that if one doesn’t have something that he would consider a passion it’s always just a matter of time until he would discover one. Looking back, I can tell you that I discovered mine when I was 14 years old and I remember watching a football game when suddenly I became fascinated by the “man in black” that all football players obeyed during the match. That year I attended and promoted a referee course within my local referee committee and about 6 months later I was delegated to my first official game at youth tournament. Almost 10 years have passed since then and I can tell you that I very much love and appreciate this activity that I have spent doing, each and every weekend, 9 months every year, acquiring more than 600 official games until now. And even if not having a real free weekend or holiday might be sound very consuming, I can say that having something I am passionate about helps me to keep myself balanced and happy while giving me an option to channel any stress or anxiety I may feel. I think it’s important to have something of your own besides work that you spend time and effort on. Whether it’s painting, writing or a sport, having a passion can only have a positive effect on your life. And as every extra thing, it’s not always easy to follow your passion, but is it worth it? Speaking from my own experience I am sure it is, and here are some tips and tricks I constantly use not to give up on my passion: 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} No matter how much time you spend at work and how much credit you get for that, it will always be the passion related achievements that will comfort you more and boost your self esteem and nothing compares to that feeling you get. I always try to keep this in mind so that each time I think about giving up I get even more ambitious to move forward. Everybody can just do what they are paid to do or what they are requested to do at work but not everybody can go that extra mile when it comes to following their passion and putting in extra work for that. By exercising this constantly you get used to also applying this attitude on the work related tasks. It takes accurate planning, anticipation and forecasting in order to combine your work with your passion. Therefore having a full schedule and keeping up with it will only help develop and exercise such skills and also will prove to you that you are up to such a challenge. I always keep in mind as a final goal that if you get very good at your passion you can actually start earning from it. And I think that is the ultimate level when you can say that you make a living by doing exactly what you are passionate about. In conclusion, by taking the easy way not only do you miss out on something nice, but life’s priceless rewards are usually given by those things that you actually believe in and know how to stand up for over time.

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Let your Signature Experience drive IT-decision making

- by Tania Le Voi

Today’s CIO job description: ‘’Align IT infrastructure and solutions with business goals and objectives ; AND while doing so reduce costs; BUT ALSO, be innovative, ensure the architectures are adaptable and agile as we need to act today on the changes that we may request tomorrow.” Sound like an unachievable request? The fact is, reality dictates that CIO’s are put under this type of pressure to deliver more with less. In a past career phase I spent a few years as an IT Relationship Manager for a large Insurance company. This is a role that we see all too infrequently in many of our customers, and it’s a shame. The purpose of this role was to build a bridge, a relationship between IT and the business. Key to achieving that goal was to ensure the same language was being spoken and more importantly that objectives were commonly understood - hence service and projects were delivered to time, to budget and actually solved the business problems. In reality IT and the business are already married, but the relationship is most often defined as ‘supplier’ of IT rather than a ‘trusted partner’. To deliver business value they need to understand how to work together effectively to attain this next level of partnership. The Business cannot compete if they do not get a new product to market ahead of the competition, or for example act in a timely manner to address a new industry problem such as a legislative change. An even better example is when the Application or Service fails and the Business takes a hit by bad publicity, being trending topics on social media and losing direct revenue from online channels. For this reason alone Business and IT need the alignment of their priorities and deliverables now more than ever! Take a look at Forrester’s recent study that found ‘many IT respondents considering themselves to be trusted partners of the business but their efforts are impaired by the inadequacy of tools and organizations’. IT Meet the Business; Business Meet IT So what is going on? We talk about aligning the business with IT but the reality is it’s difficult to do. Like any relationship each side has different goals and needs and language can be a barrier; business vs. technology jargon! What if we could translate the needs of both sides into actionable information, backed by data both sides understand, presented in a meaningful way? Well now we can with the Business-Driven Application Management capabilities in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12cR2! Enterprise Manager’s Business-Driven Application Management capabilities provide the information that IT needs to understand the impact of its decisions on business criteria. No longer does IT need to be focused solely on speeds and feeds, performance and throughput – now IT can understand IT’s impact on business KPIs like inventory turns, order-to-cash cycle, pipeline-to-forecast, and similar. Similarly, now the line of business can understand which IT services are most critical for the KPIs they care about. There are a good deal of resources on Oracle Technology Network that describe the functionality of these products, so I won’t’ rehash them here. What I want to talk about is what you do with these products. What’s next after we meet? Where do you start? Step 1: Identify the Signature Experience. This is THE business process (or set of processes) that is core to the business, the one that drives the economic engine, the process that a customer recognises the company brand for, reputation, the customer experience, the process that a CEO would state as his number one priority. The crème de la crème of your business! Once you have nailed this it gets easy as Enterprise Manager 12c makes it easy. Step 2: Map the Signature Experience to underlying IT. Taking the signature experience, map out the touch points of the components that play a part in ensuring this business transaction is successful end to end, think of it like mapping out a critical path; the applications, middleware, databases and hardware. Use the wealth of Enterprise Manager features such as Systems, Services, Business Application Targets and Business Transaction Management (BTM) to assist you. Adding Real User Experience Insight (RUEI) into the mix will make the end to end customer satisfaction story transparent. Work with the business and define meaningful key performance indicators (KPI’s) and thresholds to enable you to report and action upon. Step 3: Observe the data over time. You now have meaningful insight into every step enabling your signature experience and you understand the implication of that experience on your underlying IT. Watch if for a few months, see what happens and reconvene with your business stakeholders and set clear and measurable targets which can re-define service levels. Step 4: Change the information about which you and the business communicate. It’s amazing what happens when you and the business speak the same language. You’ll be able to make more informed business and IT decisions. From here IT can identify where/how budget is spent whether on the level of support, performance, capacity, HA, DR, certification etc. IT SLA’s no longer need be focused on metrics such as %availability but structured around business process requirements. The power of this way of thinking doesn’t end here. IT staff get to see and understand how their own role contributes to the business making them accountable for the business service. Take a step further and appraise your staff on the business competencies that are linked to the service availability. For the business, the language barrier is removed by producing targeted reports on the signature experience core to the business and therefore key to the CEO. Chargeback or show back becomes easier to justify as the ‘cost of day per outage’ can be more easily calculated; the business will be able to translate the cost to the business to the cost/value of the underlying IT that supports it. Used this way, Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c is a key enabler to a harmonious relationship between the end customer the business and IT to deliver ultimate service and satisfaction. Just engage with the business upfront, make the signature experience visible and let Enterprise Manager 12c do the rest. In the next blog entry we will cover some of the Enterprise Manager features mentioned to enable you to implement this new way of working.

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placing the matched 2 different child elements xml values in a single line from xslt2.0

- by Girikumar Mathivanan

I have the below input xml, <GSKProductHierarchy> <GlobalBusinessIdentifier>ZGB001</GlobalBusinessIdentifier> <Hierarchy> <Material>335165140779</Material> <Level1>02</Level1> <Level2>02AQ</Level2> <Level3>02AQ006</Level3> <Level4>02AQ006309</Level4> <Level5>02AQ006309</Level5> <Level6>02AQ006309</Level6> <Level7>02AQ006309</Level7> <Level8>02AQ006309</Level8> </Hierarchy> <Hierarchy> <Material>335165140780</Material> <Level1>02</Level1> <Level2>02AQ</Level2> <Level3>02AQ006</Level3> <Level4>02AQ006309</Level4> <Level5>02AQ006309</Level5> <Level6>02AQ006309</Level6> <Level7>02AQ006309</Level7> <Level8>02AQ006310</Level8> </Hierarchy> <Texts> <ProductHierarchy>02AQ006310</ProductHierarchy> <Language>A</Language> <Description>CREAM</Description> </Texts> <Texts> <ProductHierarchy>02AQ006309</ProductHierarchy> <Language>B</Language> <Description>CREAM</Description> </Texts> as per the requirement, xsl should check the matched value of GSKProductHierarchy/Hierarchy/Level8 in the GSKProductHierarchy/Texts/ProductHierarchy elements...and its should result as below flat file. 335165140779|02|02AQ|02AQ006|02AQ006309|02AQ006309|02AQ006309|02AQ006309|02AQ006309|02AQ006309|A|CREAM| 335165140780|02|02AQ|02AQ006|02AQ006309|02AQ006309|02AQ006309|02AQ006309|02AQ006310|02AQ006310|B|CREAM| Right now I have the below xslt, <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:exsl="http://exslt.org/common" xmlns:set="http://exslt.org/sets" xmlns:str="http://exslt.org/strings" xmlns:java="http://xml.apache.org/xslt/java" xmlns:saxon="http://saxon.sf.net/" exclude-result-prefixes="exsl set str java saxon"> <xsl:output method="text" indent="yes"/> <xsl:variable name="VarPipe" select="'|'"/> <xsl:variable name="VarBreak" select="'
'"/> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:for-each select="GSKProductHierarchy/Hierarchy"> <xsl:variable name="currentIndex" select="position()"/> <xsl:variable name="Level8" select="Level8"/> <xsl:variable name="ProductHierarchy" select="../Texts[$currentIndex]/ProductHierarchy"/> <xsl:if test="$Level8=$ProductHierarchy"> <xsl:value-of select="Material"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="Level1"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="Level2"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="Level3"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="Level4"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="Level5"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="Level6"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="Level7"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="Level8"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="../Texts[$currentIndex]/ProductHierarchy"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="../Texts[$currentIndex]/Language"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="../Texts[$currentIndex]/Description"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:if test="not(position() = last())"> <xsl:value-of select="$VarBreak"/> </xsl:if> </xsl:if> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:template> can anyone please suggest what function should i need to use to get the desired result. Regards, Giri

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Help with understanding why UAC dialog pops up on Win7 for our application

- by Tim

We have a C++ unmanaged application that appears to cause a UAC prompt. It seems to happen on Win7 and NOT on Vista Unfortunately the UAC dlg is system modal so I can't attach a debugger to check in the code where it is, and running under msdev (we're using 2008) runs in elevated mode. We put a message box at the start of our program/winmain but it doesn't even get that far, so apparently this is in the startup code. What can cause a UAC notification so early and what other things can I do to track down the cause? EDIT Apparently the manifest is an important issue here, but it seems not to be helping me - or perhaps I am not configuring the manifest file correctly. Can someone provide a sample manifest? Also, does the linker/UAC magic figure out that the program "might" write to the registry and set its UAC requirements based on that? There are code paths that might trigger UAC, but we are not even at that point when the UAC dlg comes up. An additional oddity is that this does not seem to happen on Vista with UAC turned on. Here is a manifest (that I think is/was generated automatically): <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' standalone='yes'?> <assembly xmlns='urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1' manifestVersion='1.0'> <trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3"> <security> <requestedPrivileges> <requestedExecutionLevel level='asInvoker' uiAccess='false' /> </requestedPrivileges> </security> </trustInfo> <dependency> <dependentAssembly> <assemblyIdentity type='win32' name='Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls' version='6.0.0.0' processorArchitecture='*' publicKeyToken='6595b64144ccf1df' language='*' /> </dependentAssembly> </dependency> <dependency> <dependentAssembly> <assemblyIdentity type='win32' name='Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls' version='6.0.0.0' processorArchitecture='x86' publicKeyToken='6595b64144ccf1df' language='*' /> </dependentAssembly> </dependency> </assembly> And then this one was added to the manifest list to see if it would help <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?> <assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0"> <assemblyIdentity version="1.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" name="[removed for anonymity]" type="win32" /> <description> [removed for anonymity] </description> <dependency> <dependentAssembly> <assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls" version="6.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df" language="*" /> </dependentAssembly> </dependency> <trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2"> <security> <requestedPrivileges> <requestedExecutionLevel level="asInvoker" uiAccess="false"/> </requestedPrivileges> </security> </trustInfo> </assembly> The following is from the actual EXE using the ManifestViewer tool - <assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0"> <assemblyIdentity version="1.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" name="[removed]" type="win32" /> <description>[removed]</description> - <dependency> - <dependentAssembly> <assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls" version="6.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df" language="*" /> </dependentAssembly> </dependency> - <dependency> - <dependentAssembly> <assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls" version="6.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="*" publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df" language="*" /> </dependentAssembly> </dependency> - <trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2"> - <security> - <requestedPrivileges> <requestedExecutionLevel level="asInvoker" uiAccess="false" /> </requestedPrivileges> </security> </trustInfo> </assembly> It appears that it might be due to the xp compatibility setting on our app. I'll have to test that. (we set that in the installer I found out because some sound drivers don't work correctly on win7)

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SQL SERVER – History of SQL Server Database Encryption

- by pinaldave

I recently met Michael Coles and Rodeney Landrum the author of one of the kind book Expert SQL Server 2008 Encryption at SQLPASS in Seattle. During the conversation we ended up how Microsoft is evolving encryption technology. The same discussion lead to talking about history of encryption tools in SQL Server. Michale pointed me to page 18 of his book of encryption. He explicitly give me permission to re-produce relevant part of history from his book. Encryption in SQL Server 2000 Built-in cryptographic encryption functionality was nonexistent in SQL Server 2000 and prior versions. In order to get server-side encryption in SQL Server you had to resort to purchasing or creating your own SQL Server XPs. Creating your own cryptographic XPs could be a daunting task owing to the fact that XPs had to be compiled as native DLLs (using a language like C or C++) and the XP application programming interface (API) was poorly documented. In addition there were always concerns around creating wellbehaved XPs that “played nicely” with the SQL Server process. Encryption in SQL Server 2005 Prior to the release of SQL Server 2005 there was a flurry of regulatory activity in response to accounting scandals and attacks on repositories of confidential consumer data. Much of this regulation centered onthe need for protecting and controlling access to sensitive financial and consumer information. With the release of SQL Server 2005 Microsoft responded to the increasing demand for built-in encryption byproviding the necessary tools to encrypt data at the column level. This functionality prominently featured the following: Support for column-level encryption of data using symmetric keys or passphrases. Built-in access to a variety of symmetric and asymmetric encryption algorithms, including AES, DES, Triple DES, RC2, RC4, and RSA. Capability to create and manage symmetric keys. Key creation and management. Ability to generate asymmetric keys and self-signed certificates, or to install external asymmetric keys and certificates. Implementation of hierarchical model for encryption key management, similar to the ANSI X9.17 standard model. SQL functions to generate one-way hash codes and digital signatures, including SHA-1 and MD5 hashes. Additional SQL functions to encrypt and decrypt data. Extensions to the SQL language to support creation, use, and administration of encryption keys and certificates. SQL CLR extensions that provide access to .NET-based encryption functionality. Encryption in SQL Server 2008 Encryption demands have increased over the past few years. For instance, there has been a demand for the ability to store encryption keys “off-the-box,” physically separate from the database and the data it contains. Also there is a recognized requirement for legacy databases and applications to take advantage of encryption without changing the existing code base. To address these needs SQL Server 2008 adds the following features to its encryption arsenal: Transparent Data Encryption (TDE): Allows you to encrypt an entire database, including log files and the tempdb database, in such a way that it is transparent to client applications. Extensible Key Management (EKM): Allows you to store and manage your encryption keys on an external device known as a hardware security module (HSM). Cryptographic random number generation functionality. Additional cryptography-related catalog views and dynamic management views. SQL language extensions to support the new encryption functionality. The encryption book covers all the tools in its various chapter in one simple story. If you are interested how encryption evolved and reached to the stage where it is today, this book is must for everyone. You can read my earlier review of the book over here. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Encryption, SQL Server Encryption, SQLPASS

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