Search Results

Search found 7484 results on 300 pages for 'rendered attribute'.

Page 221/300 | < Previous Page | 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228  | Next Page >

• BIP 10.1.3.4.x June 2010 Update Available

  - by Tim Dexter

  A new patchset for 10.1.3.4.0 and 10.1.3.4.1 is available on Metalink. some notes: The patch number is 9791839. This patchset includes 28 new bug fixes since the last patchset release on March 31. This is a culmulative update that includes all the fixes and enhancements from previous updates. The patch will supercede the other two updates. Install instructions are in the readme inside the patch There is also a new BIP client patch available, 9821068. No new template building features to my knowledge but there is an update to the template viewer to allow you to test and debug you siny new Excel templates. Server 8529759XMLP_TEMPLATE_DESIGNER CANNOT SAVE / UPLOAD TEMPLATE 8566455 BI PUBLISHER SCHEDULER DOES NOT START WITH JNDI DATA SOURCE 9295667RESPONSE OF GETSCHEDULEDREPORTINFO RETURNS STATUS AS 'UNKNOWN' INSTEAD OF 'SCHED 9542413 UNABLE TO CREATE A NEW TEMPLATE FROM UI 9546137 EXCEL ANALYZER TEMPLATE FAILS FOR A STRUCTURED XML WHEN IT IS UPLOADED 9556338 SIEBEL - BIP PARAMETERS SORT ORDER 9560562 BI PUBLISHER CACHE DIRECTORY FILLING UP AND POINTING TO INVALID DIRECTORY 9646599 USER ROLE DEFINED AS PRIMARYGROUP IN ACTIVEDIRECTORY GROUP ARE NOT RECOGNIZED 9664768 ER: NEED TO BIND USER ATTRIBUTE VALUES DEFINED IN ACTIVEDIRECTORY IN DATA QUERY 9665075 BI PUBLISHER AFTER 9546699 NOTIFICATIONS FOR REPORTS FAIL 9669973 ER: NEED TO SUPPORT PRE-PROCESSING XML WITH XSL FOR EXCEL TEMPLATE 9704401 ER: NEED TO SUPPORT DEFAULT GROUP FOR ALL USERS IN LDAP/AD SECURITY 9711899 SEARCH PARAMETER IS NOT VISIBLE WHEN SCHEDULE A REPORT 9753736 SOME ROLES FROM ACTIVEDIRECTORY ARE NOT LISTED IN ADMIN ROLE-FOLDER MAPPING 9771354 MULTIPLE PARAMETERS IN 10.1.3.4.1 DATA TEMPLATE ACT ACT DIFFERENTLY FROM 10.1.3. 9772982 "REFRESH OTHER PARAMETERS ON CHANGE" DOESN'T WORK PROPERLY Core  8599646 ER:EXTRA SPACE ADDED BELOW IMAGE IN A TABLE CELL OF TEMPLATE IN FIREFOX 9377593 SOME ROWS HEIGHT IN HTML/EXCEL OUTPUT ARE TOO BIG IN BI PUBLISHER 9487030 NAVIGATION TREE REPEATING TWICE IN PDF DCCUMENT CREATED BY BI PUBLISHER 9509432 PERFORMANCE ISSUE WHEN USING PDF TEMPLATE 9534424 PS: DOCUMENT-REPEAT-FULLPATH-ELEMENTNAME SHOULDNT USE DOT "." AS PATH SEPARATOR 9553360 FORMPROCESSOR CANNOT PARSE SOME PDF TEMPLATES 9554959 TEXT IN AUTOSHAPE IS NOT PROPERLY CUT OFF FOR LINE WRAPPING 9569417 AFTER APPLYING PATCH 9509432 PDF TEMPLATES WITH DBDRV PRODUCE NO OUTPUT 9571670 ER: EXCEL TEMPLATE TO SUPPORT XSLT LOGIC AND XSL CUSTOM EXTENTIONS 9589809 XSL:CALL-TEMPLATE IS MISSING IN GENERATED XSL FILE 9605920 BOOKMARK TESTCASE FAILED DUE TO ER9283933 9689634 PRINT FLOW CHART USING ACROSS 3 DOWN 0 GIVES EXTRA BLANK PAGES You might have noticed some fixes and ehancements to the Excel templates so I can get back on those now. There is a part two to the Mapviewer BIP Mashup coming ... just need aanother 4 hours in the day to squeeze it in.

  Read the article

• Slick2D Rendering Lots of Polygons

  - by Hazzard

  I'm writing an little isometric game using Slick. The world terrain is made up of lots of quadrilaterals. In a small world that is 128 by 128 squares, over 16,000 quadrilaterals need to be rendered. This puts my pretty powerful computer down to 30 fps. I've though about caching "chunks" of the world so only single chunks would ever need updating at a time, but I don't know how to do this, and I am sure there are other ways to optimize it besides that. Maybe I'm doing the whole thing wrong, surely fancy 3D games that run fine on my machine are more intensive than this. My question is how can I improve the FPS and am I doing something wrong? Or does it actually take that much power to render those polygons? -- Here is the source code for the render method in my game state. It iterates through a 2d array or heights and draws polygons based on the height. public void render(GameContainer container, StateBasedGame game, Graphics gfx) throws SlickException { gfx.translate(offsetX * d + container.getWidth() / 2, offsetY * d + container.getHeight() / 2); gfx.scale(d, d); for (int y = 0; y < placeholder.length; y++) {// x & y are isometric // diag for (int x = 0; x < placeholder[0].length; x++) { Polygon poly; int hor = TestState.TILE_WIDTH * (x - y);// hor and ver are orthagonal int W = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y + 1][x];//points to go off of int S = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y + 1][x + 1]; int E = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y][x + 1]; int N = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y][x]; if (placeholder[y][x] == null) { poly = new Polygon();//Create actual surface polygon poly.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, W); poly.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); poly.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, E); poly.addPoint(hor, N - TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); float z = ((float) heights[y][x + 1] - heights[y + 1][x]) / 32 + 0.5f; placeholder[y][x] = new Tile(poly, new Color(z, z, z)); //ShapeRenderer.fill(placeholder[y][x]); } if (true) {//ONLY draw tile if it's on screen gfx.setColor(placeholder[y][x].getColor()); ShapeRenderer.fill(placeholder[y][x]); //gfx.fill(placeholder[y][x]); //placeholder[y][x]. //DRAW EDGES if (y + 1 == placeholder.length) {//draw South foundation edges gfx.setColor(Color.gray); Polygon found = new Polygon(); found.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, W); found.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); found.addPoint(hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y + 1)); found.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y)); gfx.fill(found); } if (x + 1 == placeholder[0].length) {//north gfx.setColor(Color.darkGray); Polygon found = new Polygon(); found.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, E); found.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); found.addPoint(hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y + 1)); found.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y)); gfx.fill(found); }//*/ } } } }

  Read the article

• Simplifying C++11 optimal parameter passing when a copy is needed

  - by Mr.C64

  It seems to me that in C++11 lots of attention was made to simplify returning values from functions and methods, i.e.: with move semantics it's possible to simply return heavy-to-copy but cheap-to-move values (while in C++98/03 the general guideline was to use output parameters via non-const references or pointers), e.g.: // C++11 style vector<string> MakeAVeryBigStringList(); // C++98/03 style void MakeAVeryBigStringList(vector<string>& result); On the other side, it seems to me that more work should be done on input parameter passing, in particular when a copy of an input parameter is needed, e.g. in constructors and setters. My understanding is that the best technique in this case is to use templates and std::forward<>, e.g. (following the pattern of this answer on C++11 optimal parameter passing): class Person { std::string m_name; public: template <class T, class = typename std::enable_if < std::is_constructible<std::string, T>::value >::type> explicit Person(T&& name) : m_name(std::forward<T>(name)) { } ... }; A similar code could be written for setters. Frankly, this code seems boilerplate and complex, and doesn't scale up well when there are more parameters (e.g. if a surname attribute is added to the above class). Would it be possible to add a new feature to C++11 to simplify code like this (just like lambdas simplify C++98/03 code with functors in several cases)? I was thinking of a syntax with some special character, like @ (since introducing a &&& in addition to && would be too much typing :) e.g.: class Person { std::string m_name; public: /* Simplified syntax to produce boilerplate code like this: template <class T, class = typename std::enable_if < std::is_constructible<std::string, T>::value >::type> */ explicit Person(std::string@ name) : m_name(name) // implicit std::forward as well { } ... }; This would be very convenient also for more complex cases involving more parameters, e.g. Person(std::string@ name, std::string@ surname) : m_name(name), m_surname(surname) { } Would it be possible to add a simplified convenient syntax like this in C++? What would be the downsides of such a syntax?

  Read the article

• Future Of F# At Jazoon 2011

  - by Alois Kraus

  I was at the Jazoon 2011 in Zurich (Switzerland). It was a really cool event and it had many top notch speaker not only from the Microsoft universe. One of the most interesting talks was from Don Syme with the title: F# Today/F# Tomorrow. He did show how to use F# scripting to browse through open databases/, OData Web Services, Sharepoint, …interactively. It looked really easy with the help of F# Type Providers which is the next big language feature in a future F# version. The object returned by a Type Provider is used to access the data like in usual strongly typed object model. No guessing how the property of an object is called. Intellisense will show it just as you expect. There exists a range of Type Providers for various data sources where the schema of the stored data can somehow be dynamically extracted. Lets use e.g. a free database it would be then let data = DbProvider(http://.....); data the object which contains all data from e.g. a chemical database. It has an elements collection which contains an element which has the properties: Name, AtomicMass, Picture, …. You can browse the object returned by the Type Provider with full Intellisense because the returned object is strongly typed which makes this happen. The same can be achieved of course with code generators that use an input the schema of the input data (OData Web Service, database, Sharepoint, JSON serialized data, …) and spit out the necessary strongly typed objects as an assembly. This does work but has the downside that if the schema of your data source is huge you will quickly run against a wall with traditional code generators since the generated “deserialization” assembly could easily become several hundred MB. *** The following part contains guessing how this exactly work by asking Don two questions **** Q: Can I use Type Providers within C#? D: No. Q: F# is after all a library. I can reference the F# assemblies and use the contained Type Providers? D: F# does annotate the generated types in a special way at runtime which is not a static type that C# could use. The F# type providers seem to use a hybrid approach. At compilation time the Type Provider is instantiated with the url of your input data. The obtained schema information is used by the compiler to generate static types as usual but only for a small subset (the top level classes up to certain nesting level would make sense to me). To make this work you need to access the actual data source at compile time which could be a problem if you want to keep the actual url in a config file. Ok so this explains why it does work at all. But in the demo we did see full intellisense support down to the deepest object level. It looks like if you navigate deeper into the object hierarchy the type provider is instantiated in the background and attach to a true static type the properties determined at run time while you were typing. So this type is not really static at all. It is static if you define as a static type that its properties shows up in intellisense. But since this type information is determined while you are typing and it is not used to generate a true static type and you cannot use these “intellistatic” types from C#. Nonetheless this is a very cool language feature. With the plotting libraries you can generate expressive charts from any datasource within seconds to get quickly an overview of any structured data storage. My favorite programming language C# will not get such features in the near future there is hope. If you restrict yourself to OData sources you can use LINQPad to query any OData enabled data source with LINQ with ease. There you can query Stackoverflow with The output is also nicely rendered which makes it a very good tool to explore OData sources today.

  Read the article

• Play or Lift: which one is more explicit?

  - by Andrea

  I am going to investigate web development with Scala, and the choice is between learning Lift or Play: probably I will not have enough time to try both, at least at first. Now, many comparisons between the two are available on the internet, but I would like to know how do they compare with respect to being explicit and involving less magic. Let me explain what I mean by example. I have used, to various degrees, CakePHP, symfony2, Django and Grails. I feel a very clear distinction between Django and symfony2, which are very explicit about what you are doing, and Grails and CakePHP, which try to do their best to guess what you are trying to achieve and often feel "magical". Let me give some examples comparing Django and Grails. In Django, views are functions that take a request as input and return a response. You can instantiate explicitly an instance of HttpResponse and populate its body with a string, or you can use shortcut functions to leverage the template system. In any case the return value from your view always has the same type. In contrast, the render method from Grails is highly polymorphic. You can throw a context at it and it will try to render a template which is found by convention using that context. Or you can pass it a pair of a template path and a context and that will work too. Or a string. Or XML. Grails tries hard to make sense of whatever you return from your controller. In the Django ORM, each model class has a static attribute representing the manager for that class. That manager exposes a fluent interface to build querysets. In Grails, you can have a similar functionality by composing detached criteria. Still, the most common way to query objects seems to be the use of runtime-generated methods like FindUserByEmailNotNull or FindPostByDateGreaterThan. I will not go further, but my point is that in Django-like frameworks you have control over the whole flow of the request/response process, while in Grails-like ones I feel I only have to feel the blanks and the framework will manage the rest of the flow for me. This is not to criticize Grails or CakePHP; which type you prefer is mainly a matter of preference. In fact, I happen to like some aspects of Grails, but I feel more comfortable with a framework which does less for me. Back to the point of the question: which one among Play and Lift is more explicit about what you do and which one tries to simplify more what you have to do with a layer of "magic"?

  Read the article

• Synchronizing ODSEE and OUD

  - by Etienne Remillon

  When it comes to synchronizing between ODSEE and OUD, what should be the best options ? Couple  options are available - Use one of OUD internal capability called Replication Gateway - Use our synchronization tool called Directory Integration Platform part of Oracle Directory Services Plus - Manuel export and import Let's check pro and cons on each method. Replication Gateway is the natural, out of the box solution to perform the task. We created this as a feature of OUD because it works at our replication protocol level. The gateway perform the required adaptation between the ODSEE's replication protocol and OUD's one. The benefits of doing this is that it provide strong consistency between the to type of directories. This fully leverage conflict management implemented in the replication protocols to ensure that changes are applied in a coherent and ordered manner. It does not require specific modification on existing ODSEE production instances such as turning on "retro changelog". Changes are propagated at near speed of replication in both directions. Replication Gateway can also synchronize information that are stored internally in the directory server such as "xxxxx" account locking managed at ODSEE server level and not via the nsyyyy attribute. OUD replication gateway does no require any specific tools or installation specific procedure. It is manged like other OUD component with monitoring and configuration via the standard console. OUD Replication Gateway does not perform adaptation between ODSEE and OUD. Using Directory Integration Protocol as external component to OUD, brings flexibility in remapping and transformations between ODSEE and OUD. There is a price to pay in using DIP to perform the synchronization task. You will have to turn on the retro change log to get access to changes on the ODSEE side (this will impact disk and CPU usage and performances which could be a serious challenge for your existing ODSEE environment (if you have not provisioned additional hardware and instances). You will not benefits of conflict resolution management and this might have to be addressed at application level, which is not always possible to implement. Using export and import seams very simple, but this methodology cannot ensure an highly available deployment with up to date entries on booth sides. This solution can be used if full HA with up-to-date data is not needed (during synchronization time). It often used  if data-cleaning need to take place to avoid polluting a new environment with old un-necessary data.

  Read the article

• SQLAuthority News – Live Virtual Classroom New Trend in Technology

  - by nupurdave

  This blog post is by Nupur Dave, who is housewife and works from home. Changing times and a super busy lifestyle have rendered most of us powerless when it comes to doing what we love to do. I feel that a man never ceases to learn and his sole aim is to seek knowledge, and keep growing. However, our tight schedules and packed calendars mean that we really have to struggle to take some time out and follow the path towards learning. Like all working professionals with a family to take care of, I hardly found time to pursue my interests. However, it was getting increasingly important for me to upgrade my skills, not only for my personal quest for knowledge but to also substantiate my professional standing. When I came to know about Koenig Live Virtual Classroom from friends, it piqued my interest. I felt like it was the answer to all my concerns. Without wasting a single minute, I contacted Koenig for a demo class. Here are some of the highlights of Koenig LVC which instantly struck a chord in me: Online Training – Koenig offers 1-on-1 Online Training with the instructor at the other end. Doesn’t matter where I am sitting, in my office or at home, I can connect to my trainer from anywhere. Flexible Timings – The most comfortable part is you get to choose the time that suits you best. Economical -  No need to travel a thousand miles, the experts are right here on your computer screen. So no extra cost of travel, lodging and meals. 24X7 Lab Access: This is again a great feature that proved to be very beneficial in gaining a practical understanding of the subject. Powered by a data center, this facility offers students much to look forward to. 300+ Full Time Certified Experts: Be assured that you are learning from the best people in the industry. Customized Courses: Course material and training delivery is completely customized to suit your specific requirements. Official Courseware: The instructor teaches from official courseware of the vendor, depending on which course you have applied for – be it Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle or any other certification. Take Exam from Anywhere: Post completion of your IT training, you can take your certification exam from anywhere. Again, no need to travel a thousand miles to earn certified status. No Pre-Recorded Sessions: For those who still need clarification, it will be a live online classroom with trainers instructing you in real time. So you won’t get any surprises of getting pre-recorded sessions in place of your live instructor. Koenig’s Live Virtual Classroom methodology greatly exceeded my expectations. The instructor was highly skilled and very professional. I had concerns about the quality of AV on the computer screen, and whether I’ll be able to understand each topic in detail. However, the quality of video and sound, and the learning methodology used was impeccable. If you’re also facing time crunch and other commitment issues which are getting in the way of your professional development, LVC is the best solution to learn and grow. To know more about Student Experiences and Feedback of Koenig LVC, you can view their Testimonials. Reference: Nupur Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: SQL Authority

  Read the article

• How do I cap rendering of tiles in a 2D game with SDL?

  - by farmdve

  I have some boilerplate code working, I basically have a tile based map composed of just 3 colors, and some walls and render with SDL. The tiles are in a bmp file, but each tile inside it corresponds to an internal number of the type of tile(color, or wall). I have pretty basic collision detection and it works, I can also detetc continuous presses, which allows me to move pretty much anywhere I want. I also have a moving camera, which follows the object. The problem is that, the tile based map is bigger than the resolution, thus not all of the map can be displayed on the screen, but it's still rendered. I would like to cap it, but since this is new to me, I pretty much have no idea. Although I cannot post all the code, as even though I am a newbie and the code pretty basic, it's already quite a few lines, I can post what I tried to do void set_camera() { //Center the camera over the dot camera.x = ( player.box.x + DOT_WIDTH / 2 ) - SCREEN_WIDTH / 2; camera.y = ( player.box.y + DOT_HEIGHT / 2 ) - SCREEN_HEIGHT / 2; //Keep the camera in bounds. if(camera.x < 0 ) { camera.x = 0; } if(camera.y < 0 ) { camera.y = 0; } if(camera.x > LEVEL_WIDTH - camera.w ) { camera.x = LEVEL_WIDTH - camera.w; } if(camera.y > LEVEL_HEIGHT - camera.h ) { camera.y = LEVEL_HEIGHT - camera.h; } } set_camera() is the function which calculates the camera position based on the player's positions. I won't pretend I know much about it. Rectangle box = {0,0,0,0}; for(int t = 0; t < TOTAL_TILES; t++) { if(box.x < (camera.x - TILE_WIDTH) || box.y > (camera.y - TILE_HEIGHT)) apply_surface(box.x - camera.x, box.y - camera.y, surface, screen, &clips[tiles[t]]); box.x += TILE_WIDTH; //If we've gone too far if(box.x >= LEVEL_WIDTH) { //Move back box.x = 0; //Move to the next row box.y += TILE_HEIGHT; } } This is basically my render code. The for loop loops over 192 tiles stored in an int array, each with their own unique value describing the tile type(wall or one of three possible colored tiles). box is an SDL_Rect containing the current position of the tile, which is calculated on render. TILE_HEIGHT and TILE_WIDTH are of value 80. So the cap is determined by if(box.x < (camera.x - TILE_WIDTH) || box.y > (camera.y - TILE_HEIGHT)) However, this is just me playing with the values and see what doesn't break it. I pretty much have no idea how to calculate it. My screen resolution is 1024/768, and the tile map is of size 1280/960.

  Read the article

• Representing complex object dependencies

  - by max

  I have several classes with a reasonably complex (but acyclic) dependency graph. All the dependencies are of the form: class X instance contains an attribute of class Y. All such attributes are set during initialization and never changed again. Each class' constructor has just a couple parameters, and each object knows the proper parameters to pass to the constructors of the objects it contains. class Outer is at the top of the dependency hierarchy, i.e., no class depends on it. Currently, the UI layer only creates an Outer instance; the parameters for Outer constructor are derived from the user input. Of course, Outer in the process of initialization, creates the objects it needs, which in turn create the objects they need, and so on. The new development is that the a user who knows the dependency graph may want to reach deep into it, and set the values of some of the arguments passed to constructors of the inner classes (essentially overriding the values used currently). How should I change the design to support this? I could keep the current approach where all the inner classes are created by the classes that need them. In this case, the information about "user overrides" would need to be passed to Outer class' constructor in some complex user_overrides structure. Perhaps user_overrides could be the full logical representation of the dependency graph, with the overrides attached to the appropriate edges. Outer class would pass user_overrides to every object it creates, and they would do the same. Each object, before initializing lower level objects, will find its location in that graph and check if the user requested an override to any of the constructor arguments. Alternatively, I could rewrite all the objects' constructors to take as parameters the full objects they require. Thus, the creation of all the inner objects would be moved outside the whole hierarchy, into a new controller layer that lies between Outer and UI layer. The controller layer would essentially traverse the dependency graph from the bottom, creating all the objects as it goes. The controller layer would have to ask the higher-level objects for parameter values for the lower-level objects whenever the relevant parameter isn't provided by the user. Neither approach looks terribly simple. Is there any other approach? Has this problem come up enough in the past to have a pattern that I can read about? I'm using Python, but I don't think it matters much at the design level.

  Read the article

• JS closures - Passing a function to a child, how should the shared object be accessed

  - by slicedtoad

  I have a design and am wondering what the appropriate way to access variables is. I'll demonstrate with this example since I can't seem to describe it better than the title. Term is an object representing a bunch of time data (a repeating duration of time defined by a bunch of attributes) Term has some print functionality but does not implement the print functions itself, rather they are passed in as anonymous functions by the parent. This would be similar to how shaders can be passed to a renderer rather than defined by the renderer. A container (let's call it Box) has a Schedule object that can understand and use Term objects. Box creates Term objects and passes them to Schedule as required. Box also defines the print functions stored in Term. A print function usually takes an argument and uses it to return a string based on that argument and Term's internal data. Sometime the print function could also use data stored in Schedule, though. I'm calling this data shared. So, the question is, what is the best way to access this shared data. I have a lot of options since JS has closures and I'm not familiar enough to know if I should be using them or avoiding them in this case. Options: Create a local "reference" (term used lightly) to the shared data (data is not a primitive) when defining the print function by accessing the shared data through Schedule from Box. Example: var schedule = function(){ var sched = Schedule(); var t1 = Term( function(x){ // Term.print() return (x + sched.data).format(); }); }; Bind it to Term explicitly. (Pass it in Term's constructor or something). Or bind it in Sched after Box passes it. And then access it as an attribute of Term. Pass it in at the same time x is passed to the print function, (from sched). This is the most familiar way for my but it doesn't feel right given JS's closure ability. Do something weird like bind some context and arguments to print. I'm hoping the correct answer isn't purely subjective. If it is, then I guess the answer is just "do whatever works". But I feel like there are some significant differences between the approaches that could have a large impact when stretched beyond my small example.

  Read the article

• Columnstore Case Study #1: MSIT SONAR Aggregations

  - by aspiringgeek

  Preamble This is the first in a series of posts documenting big wins encountered using columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 & 2014.  Many of these can be found in this deck along with details such as internals, best practices, caveats, etc.  The purpose of sharing the case studies in this context is to provide an easy-to-consume quick-reference alternative. Why Columnstore? If we’re looking for a subset of columns from one or a few rows, given the right indexes, SQL Server can do a superlative job of providing an answer. If we’re asking a question which by design needs to hit lots of rows—DW, reporting, aggregations, grouping, scans, etc., SQL Server has never had a good mechanism—until columnstore. Columnstore indexes were introduced in SQL Server 2012. However, they're still largely unknown. Some adoption blockers existed; yet columnstore was nonetheless a game changer for many apps.  In SQL Server 2014, potential blockers have been largely removed & they're going to profoundly change the way we interact with our data.  The purpose of this series is to share the performance benefits of columnstore & documenting columnstore is a compelling reason to upgrade to SQL Server 2014. App: MSIT SONAR Aggregations At MSIT, performance & configuration data is captured by SCOM. We archive much of the data in a partitioned data warehouse table in SQL Server 2012 for reporting via an application called SONAR.  By definition, this is a primary use case for columnstore—report queries requiring aggregation over large numbers of rows.  New data is refreshed each night by an automated table partitioning mechanism—a best practices scenario for columnstore. The Win Compared to performance using classic indexing which resulted in the expected query plan selection including partition elimination vs. SQL Server 2012 nonclustered columnstore, query performance increased significantly.  Logical reads were reduced by over a factor of 50; both CPU & duration improved by factors of 20 or more.  Other than creating the columnstore index, no special modifications or tweaks to the app or databases schema were necessary to achieve the performance improvements.  Existing nonclustered indexes were rendered superfluous & were deleted, thus mitigating maintenance challenges such as defragging as well as conserving disk capacity. Details The table provides the raw data & summarizes the performance deltas. Logical Reads (8K pages) CPU (ms) Durn (ms) Columnstore 160,323 20,360 9,786 Conventional Table & Indexes 9,053,423 549,608 193,903 ? x56 x27 x20 The charts provide additional perspective of this data.  "Conventional vs. Columnstore Metrics" document the raw data.  Note on this linear display the magnitude of the conventional index performance vs. columnstore.  The “Metrics (?)” chart expresses these values as a ratio. Summary For DW, reports, & other BI workloads, columnstore often provides significant performance enhancements relative to conventional indexing.  I have documented here, the first in a series of reports on columnstore implementations, results from an initial implementation at MSIT in which logical reads were reduced by over a factor of 50; both CPU & duration improved by factors of 20 or more.  Subsequent features in this series document performance enhancements that are even more significant. 

  Read the article

• Musings on the launch of SQL Monitor

  - by Phil Factor

  For several years, I was responsible for the smooth running of a large number of enterprise database servers. We ran a network monitoring tool that was primitive by today’s standards but which performed the useful function of polling every system, including all the Servers in my charge. It ran a configurable script for each service that you needed to monitor that was merely required to return one of a number of integer values. These integer values represented the pain level of the service, from 10 (“hurtin’ real bad”) to 1 (“Things is great”). Not only could you program the visual appearance of each server on the network diagram according to the value of the integer, but you could even opt to run a sound file. Very soon, we had a large TFT Screen, high on the wall of the server room, with every server represented by an icon, and a speaker next to it that would give out a series of grunts, groans, snores, shrieks and funeral marches, depending on the problem. One glance at the display, and you could dive in with iSQL/QA/SSMS and check what was going on with your favourite diagnostic tools. If you saw a server icon burst into flames on the screen or droop like a jelly, you dropped your mug of coffee to do it.  It was real fun, but I remember it more for the huge difference it made to have that real-time visibility into how your servers are performing. The management soon stopped making jokes about the real reason we wanted the TFT screen. (It rendered DVDs beautifully they said; particularly flesh-tints). If you are instantly alerted when things start to go wrong, then there was a good chance you could fix it before being alerted to the problem by the users of the system.  There is a world of difference between this sort of tool, one that gives whoever is ‘on watch’ in the server room the first warning of a potential problem on one of any number of servers, and the breed of tool that attempts to provide some sort of prosthetic DBA Brain. I like to get the early warning, to get the right information to help to diagnose a problem: No auto-fix, but just the information. I prefer to leave the task of ascertaining the exact cause of a problem to my own routines, custom code, intuition and forensic instincts. A simulated aircraft cockpit doesn’t do anything for me, especially before I know where I should be flying.  Time has moved on, and that TFT screen is now, with SQL Monitor, an iPad or any other mobile or static device that can support a browser. Rather than trying to reproduce the conceptual topology of the servers, it lists them in their groups so as to give a display that scales with the increasing number of databases you monitor.  It gives the history of the major events and trends for the servers. It gives the icons and colours that you can spot out of the corner of your eye, but goes on to give you just enough information in drill-down to give you a much clearer idea of where to look with your DBA tools and routines. It doesn't swamp you with information.  Whereas a few server and database-level problems are pretty easily fixed, others depend on judgement and experience to sort out.  Although the idea of an application that automates the bulk of a DBA’s skills is attractive to many, I can’t see it happening soon. SQL Server’s complexity increases faster than the panaceas can be created. In the meantime, I believe that the best way of helping  DBAs  is to make the monitoring process as simple and effective as possible,  and provide the right sort of detail and ‘evidence’ to allow them to decide on the fix. In the end, it is still down to the skill of the DBA.

  Read the article

• Make your TSQL easier to read during a presentation

  - by Jonathan Allen

  SQL Server Management Studio 2012 has some neat settings that you can use to help your presentations at a SQL event better for the attendees if you are willing to spend a few minutes making some settings changes. Historically, I have been reluctant to make changes to my SSMS settings as it is such a tedious process and it’s not 100% clear that what you think you are changing is actually what gets changed. With SSMS 2012 this has become a lot easier and a lot less risky. In any session that involves TSQL there is a trade off between the speaker having all the code on screen and the attendees being able to read any of what is on screen. You (the speaker) might be able to read this when you are working on the code but plenty of your audience wont be able to make head or tail of it. SSMS 2012 has a zoom facility that can help: but don’t go nuts … Having the font too big means you will be scrolling a lot and the code will again be rendered unreadable. There is more though but you need to take a deep breath and open the Tools menu and delve into the SSMS options. In previous versions of SSMS this is a deep, dark and scary place where changing values can be obscure and sometimes catastrophic to the UI when you get back to the code editor. First things first, we set out as a good DBA and save our current (and presumably acceptable) SSMS configuration. From the import and Export Settings you can set up a file to hold all of the settings that you currently have. The wizard will open and ask you to pick an option. This time around choose to export settings. hit next and next again and then name your settings profile in the final step of the wizard and then click Finish. Once this is done then you can change whatever you like and always get back to this configuration in a couple of clicks. So what can you change to make for a good experience? Well there are plenty of things that can be altered but don’t go too mad and change too many things without taking a look at the results for every item on the list above you can change font, size, weight, colour, background colour etc. etc. but consider what you are trying to achieve and take it slowly. I have seen presenters with their settings set to have a yellow highlight and black font rather than the default pale blue background and slightly darker font so to achieve that select Text Editor and then select “Selected Text” in the Display Items listbox. As you change things the Sample area give you an idea of what effect you are going to have. Black and yellow is the colour combination with the highest contrast – that’s why bees and wasps# are that colour. What next? how about increasing the default font for your demo scripts? This means that any script you open and any new ones that you start will take on this font. No more zooming (or forgetting to) in the middle of sessions. now don’t forget to save this profile – follow the same steps as above but give the profile a different name, something like PresentationBigFontHighContrast might be appropriate. Once you are done making changes, export the settings once more and then go into the Import Export wizard and import settings from the first profile you created. Everything will be back to normal. Now making changes to suit your environment can be done very easily and with confidence. * – and warning tape and safety signs and so forth – Health and Safety officers simply copy nature!

  Read the article

• Compiling for T4

  - by Darryl Gove

  I've recently had quite a few queries about compiling for T4 based systems. So it's probably a good time to review what I consider to be the best practices. Always use the latest compiler. Being in the compiler team, this is bound to be something I'd recommend But the serious points are that (a) Every release the tools get better and better, so you are going to be much more effective using the latest release (b) Every release we improve the generated code, so you will see things get better (c) Old releases cannot know about new hardware. Always use optimisation. You should use at least -O to get some amount of optimisation. -xO4 is typically even better as this will add within-file inlining. Always generate debug information, using -g. This allows the tools to attribute information to lines of source. This is particularly important when profiling an application. The default target of -xtarget=generic is often sufficient. This setting is designed to produce a binary that runs well across all supported platforms. If the binary is going to be deployed on only a subset of architectures, then it is possible to produce a binary that only uses the instructions supported on these architectures, which may lead to some performance gains. I've previously discussed which chips support which architectures, and I'd recommend that you take a look at the chart that goes with the discussion. Crossfile optimisation (-xipo) can be very useful - particularly when the hot source code is distributed across multiple source files. If you're allowed to have something as geeky as favourite compiler optimisations, then this is mine! Profile feedback (-xprofile=[collect: | use:]) will help the compiler make the best code layout decisions, and is particularly effective with crossfile optimisations. But what makes this optimisation really useful is that codes that are dominated by branch instructions don't typically improve much with "traditional" compiler optimisation, but often do respond well to being built with profile feedback. The macro flag -fast aims to provide a one-stop "give me a fast application" flag. This usually gives a best performing binary, but with a few caveats. It assumes the build platform is also the deployment platform, it enables floating point optimisations, and it makes some relatively weak assumptions about pointer aliasing. It's worth investigating. SPARC64 processor, T3, and T4 implement floating point multiply accumulate instructions. These can substantially improve floating point performance. To generate them the compiler needs the flag -fma=fused and also needs an architecture that supports the instruction (at least -xarch=sparcfmaf). The most critical advise is that anyone doing performance work should profile their application. I cannot overstate how important it is to look at where the time is going in order to determine what can be done to improve it. I also presented at Oracle OpenWorld on this topic, so it might be helpful to review those slides.

  Read the article

• BizTalk: Using context for routing

  - by Leonid Ganeline

  [See Sample: Context routing and throttling with orchestration] Imagine the project where most of the routing happens between orchestrations. I.e. routing is mostly between the MessageBox and orchestration with direct endpoints. Imagine also the most of the messages are with the same Message type. Usually in this case messages got the special node only for the routing. For example, the field can be the “Originator” or “Recipient” or “From” or “To”. What wrong is with this approach, it creates the dependency between the message and the message processing. Message “knows” something about Originator or Recipient. So what we can do with it? How can we “colorize” the same message to route it to the different places without changing the message itself? One of the decisions is to use the message context. BizTalk uses the promoted properties for routing.  There are two kinds of the properties: the content properties and the context properties. The content property extracts its value from inside the message, it is a value of the element or attribute. [See MSDN] The context property gets its value from the message environment. It can be the port name that receive this message, it can be the message Id, created by the BizTalk. Context properties look like the headers in the SOAP message. Actually they are not the headers but behave like headers. The context properties are the good match for our case. First, we don’t have to change the message itself to set or change the routing property. The context is stored outside the message body. Second, we don’t have to create the property schema to use the context properties. [See MSDN: How to create Property schema] BizTalk has the predefined schema set for the context properties. [See MSDN: Message Context Properties] Use one of them and that's it. The main purpose of the context properties is working on behalf of the BizTalk internals. But we can read, create and change them. Just do not interfere with BizTalk internals on this way.

  Read the article

• Styling Windows Phone Silverlight Applications

  - by Tim Murphy

  If you have not developed with styles in Silverlight/XAML then it can be challenging and resources can be sparse depending on how deep you get.  One thing that you need to understand is what level you can apply styles and how much they can cascade.  What I am finding is that this doesn’t go to the level that we are used to in HTML and CSS. While styles can be defined at a page level if you want to share styles throughout your application they should be defined in the App.xaml file.  This is of course analogous to placing a style in your HTML file versus an external CSS file.  This is the type of style I will concentrate on in this post. The first thing to look it how styles associate to elements.  TargetType defines the object type that your style will apply to.  In the example below the style is targeting the TextBlock object type. <Style x:Key="TextBlockSmallGray" TargetType="TextBlock"> Next we use a Setter which allows you to apply values for specific attributes of the target object type.  The setters can be a simple value or complex.  The first example here is simply applying a color to the background property of the target. <Setter Property="Background" Value="White"/> The second setter example here is for the same property, but we are applying a the definition of a LinearGradientBrush. <Setter Property="Background"> <Setter.Value> <LinearGradientBrush> <GradientStop Offset="0" Color="Black"/> <GradientStop Offset="1" Color="White"/> </LinearGradientBrush> </Setter.Value> </Setter> The last thing I want to cover here is that you can leverage the system styles and then override or extend them.  The BasedOn attribute of the Style tag allows this sort of inheritance.  In the example below I am going to start with the PhoneTextTitleStyle and then override properties as needed. <Style x:Key="TextBlockTitle" BasedOn="{StaticResource PhoneTextTitle1Style}" TargetType="TextBlock"> So now that we have our styles defined applying it is fairly straight forward.  Add the style name as a static resource to the style property of the element in your page and off you go. <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Style="{StaticResource PageGridStyle}"> So this is one step in creating consistency in your application’s look.  In future posts I will dig a little deeper. del.icio.us Tags: windows phone 7,mobile development,windows phone 7 development,.NET,software development,design,UX

  Read the article

• Projective texture and deferred lighting

  - by Vodácek

  In my previous question, I asked whether it is possible to do projective texturing with deferred lighting. Now (more than half a year later) I have a problem with my implementation of the same thing. I am trying to apply this technique in light pass. (my projector doesn't affect albedo). I have this projector View a Projection matrix: Matrix projection = Matrix.CreateOrthographicOffCenter(-halfWidth * Scale, halfWidth * Scale, -halfHeight * Scale, halfHeight * Scale, 1, 100000); Matrix view = Matrix.CreateLookAt(Position, Target, Vector3.Up); Where halfWidth and halfHeight is are half of the texture's width and height, Position is the Projector's position and target is the projector's target. This seems to be ok. I am drawing full screen quad with this shader: float4x4 InvViewProjection; texture2D DepthTexture; texture2D NormalTexture; texture2D ProjectorTexture; float4x4 ProjectorViewProjection; sampler2D depthSampler = sampler_state { texture = <DepthTexture>; minfilter = point; magfilter = point; mipfilter = point; }; sampler2D normalSampler = sampler_state { texture = <NormalTexture>; minfilter = point; magfilter = point; mipfilter = point; }; sampler2D projectorSampler = sampler_state { texture = <ProjectorTexture>; AddressU = Clamp; AddressV = Clamp; }; float viewportWidth; float viewportHeight; // Calculate the 2D screen position of a 3D position float2 postProjToScreen(float4 position) { float2 screenPos = position.xy / position.w; return 0.5f * (float2(screenPos.x, -screenPos.y) + 1); } // Calculate the size of one half of a pixel, to convert // between texels and pixels float2 halfPixel() { return 0.5f / float2(viewportWidth, viewportHeight); } struct VertexShaderInput { float4 Position : POSITION0; }; struct VertexShaderOutput { float4 Position :POSITION0; float4 PositionCopy : TEXCOORD1; }; VertexShaderOutput VertexShaderFunction(VertexShaderInput input) { VertexShaderOutput output; output.Position = input.Position; output.PositionCopy=output.Position; return output; } float4 PixelShaderFunction(VertexShaderOutput input) : COLOR0 { float2 texCoord =postProjToScreen(input.PositionCopy) + halfPixel(); // Extract the depth for this pixel from the depth map float4 depth = tex2D(depthSampler, texCoord); //return float4(depth.r,0,0,1); // Recreate the position with the UV coordinates and depth value float4 position; position.x = texCoord.x * 2 - 1; position.y = (1 - texCoord.y) * 2 - 1; position.z = depth.r; position.w = 1.0f; // Transform position from screen space to world space position = mul(position, InvViewProjection); position.xyz /= position.w; //compute projection float3 projection=tex2D(projectorSampler,postProjToScreen(mul(position,ProjectorViewProjection)) + halfPixel()); return float4(projection,1); } In first part of pixel shader is recovered position from G-buffer (this code I am using in other shaders without any problem) and then is tranformed to projector viewprojection space. Problem is that projection doesn't appear. Here is an image of my situation: The green lines are the rendered projector frustum. Where is my mistake hidden? I am using XNA 4. Thanks for advice and sorry for my English. EDIT: Shader above is working but projection was too small. When I changed the Scale property to a large value (e.g. 100), the projection appears. But when the camera moves toward the projection, the projection expands, as can bee seen on this YouTube video.

  Read the article

• Training v. Teaching

  - by Chris Gardner

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2014/05/28/training-v.-teaching.aspxAs some of you may know, I recently accepted a position to teach an undergraduate course at my alma mater. Yesterday, I had my first day in an academic classroom. I immediately noticed a difference with the interactions between the students. They don't act like students in a professional training or conference talk. I wanted to use this opportunity to enumerate some of those differences. The immediate thing I noticed was the lack of open environment. This is not to say the class was hostile towards me. I am used to entering the room, bantering with audience, loosening everyone a bit, and flowing into the discussion. A purely academic audience does not banter. At least, they do not banter on day one. I think I can attribute this to two factors. This first is a greater perception of authority. In a training or conference environment, I am an equal with the audience. This is true even if I am being a subject matter expert. We're all professionals. We're all there to learn from each other, share our stories, and enjoy the journey. In the academic classroom, there was a distinct class difference. I had forgotten about this distinction; I had the professional familiarity with the staff by the time I completed my masters. This leads to the other distinction. These was an expectation of performance. At conference and professional training, there is generally no (immediate) grading. This may be a preparation for a certification exam, but I'm not the one responsible for delivering the exam. This was not the case in the academic classroom. These students are battling for points, and I am the sole arbiter. These students are less likely to let the material wash over them, applying the material to their past experiences. They were down taking notes. I don't want to leave the impression that there was no interact in the classroom. I spent a good deal of time doing problems with the class on the whiteboard. I tried to get the class to help me work out the steps. This opened up a few of them. After every conference or training class, I always get a few people that will email me afterward to continue the conversation. I am very curious to see if anybody comes to my office hours tomorrow. However, that is a curiosity that will have to wait until tomorrow.

  Read the article

• Best approach to depth streaming via existing codec

  - by Kevin

  I'm working on a development system (and game) intended for games set mostly in static third-person views. We produce our scenery by CG and photographic techniques. Our background art is rendered off-line by a production-grade renderer. To allow the runtime imagery to properly interact with the background art, I wrote a program to convert from depth output by Mental Ray into a texture, and a pixel shader to draw a quad such that the Z data comes from the texture. This technique is working out very well, but now we've decided that some of the camera angle changes between scenes should be animated. The animation itself is straightforward to produce from our CG models. We intend to encode it to some HD video codec such as H.264. The problem is that in order to maintain our runtime imagery on the screen, the depth buffer will need to be loaded for each video frame. Due to the bandwidth, the video's depth data will need to be compressed efficiently. I've looked into methods for performing temporal compression of depth info and found an interesting research paper here: http://web4.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/j.kautz/publications/depth-streaming.pdf The method establishes a mapping between 16-bit depth values and YCbCr values. The mapping is tuned to the properties of existing video codecs in order to maximize precision of the decoded depths after the YCbCr has undergone video compression. It allows an existing, unmodified video codec to be used on the backend. I'm looking at how to pull this off with the least possible work. (This design change was unplanned.) Our game engine itself is native C++, presently for Win32 and DirectX, although we've worked hard to keep platform dependence segregated because we intend other ports. We don't have motion video facilities in the engine yet but will ultimately need that anyway for cinematics. I was planning on using some off-the-shelf motion video solution we can plug into our engine, and haven't chosen one yet. This new added requirement makes selecting one harder since, among other things, we'll now need to bypass colourspace conversion on one of the streams, and also will need to be playing two streams simultaneously in lockstep, on top of in some cases audio on one of them (for the cinematics). I'm also wondering if it's possible (or even useful) to do the conversion from YCbCr to depth in a pixel shader, or if it's better to just do it in CPU and separately load the resulting depth values into a locked tex. The conversion unfortunately does involve branching logic per-pixel. (There are more naive mappings that don't need branching, but they produce inferior results.) It could be reduced to a table lookup but the table would be 32MB. Programming is second-nature to me but I'm not that experienced with pix shaders and have zero knowledge of off-the-shelf video solutions. I'd therefore be interested in advice from others who may have dealt more with depth streaming, pixel shaders, and/or off-the-shelf codecs, regarding how feasible the proposed application is and what off-the-shelf video systems out there would best get along with this usage case.

  Read the article

• Omni-directional light shadow mapping with cubemaps in WebGL

  - by Winged

  First of all I must say, that I have read a lot of posts describing an usage of cubemaps, but I'm still confused about how to use them. My goal is to achieve a simple omni-directional (point) light type shading in my WebGL application. I know that there is a lot more techniques (like using Two-Hemispheres or Camera Space Shadow Mapping) which are way more efficient, but for an educational purpose cubemaps are my primary goal. Till now, I have adapted a simple shadow mapping which works with spotlights (with one exception: I don't know how to cut off the glitchy part beyond the reach of a single shadow map texture): glitchy shadow mapping<<< So for now, this is how I understand the usage of cubemaps in shadow mapping: Setup a framebuffer (in case of cubemaps - 6 framebuffers; 6 instead of 1 because every usage of framebufferTexture2D slows down an execution which is nicely described here <<<) and a texture cubemap. Also in WebGL depth components are not well supported, so I need to render it to RGBA first. this.texture = gl.createTexture(); gl.bindTexture(gl.TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP, this.texture); gl.texParameteri(gl.TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP, gl.TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, gl.LINEAR); gl.texParameteri(gl.TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP, gl.TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, gl.LINEAR); for (var face = 0; face < 6; face++) gl.texImage2D(gl.TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP_POSITIVE_X + face, 0, gl.RGBA, this.size, this.size, 0, gl.RGBA, gl.UNSIGNED_BYTE, null); gl.bindTexture(gl.TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP, null); this.framebuffer = []; for (face = 0; face < 6; face++) { this.framebuffer[face] = gl.createFramebuffer(); gl.bindFramebuffer(gl.FRAMEBUFFER, this.framebuffer[face]); gl.framebufferTexture2D(gl.FRAMEBUFFER, gl.COLOR_ATTACHMENT0, gl.TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP_POSITIVE_X + face, this.texture, 0); gl.framebufferRenderbuffer(gl.FRAMEBUFFER, gl.DEPTH_ATTACHMENT, gl.RENDERBUFFER, this.depthbuffer); var e = gl.checkFramebufferStatus(gl.FRAMEBUFFER); // Check for errors if (e !== gl.FRAMEBUFFER_COMPLETE) throw "Cubemap framebuffer object is incomplete: " + e.toString(); } Setup the light and the camera (I'm not sure if should I store all of 6 view matrices and send them to shaders later, or is there a way to do it with just one view matrix). Render the scene 6 times from the light's position, each time in another direction (X, -X, Y, -Y, Z, -Z) for (var face = 0; face < 6; face++) { gl.bindFramebuffer(gl.FRAMEBUFFER, shadow.buffer.framebuffer[face]); gl.viewport(0, 0, shadow.buffer.size, shadow.buffer.size); gl.clear(gl.COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | gl.DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); camera.lookAt( light.position.add( cubeMapDirections[face] ) ); scene.draw(shadow.program); } In a second pass, calculate the projection a a current vertex using light's projection and view matrix. Now I don't know If should I calculate 6 of them, because of 6 faces of a cubemap. ScaleMatrix pushes the projected vertex into the 0.0 - 1.0 region. vDepthPosition = ScaleMatrix * uPMatrixFromLight * uVMatrixFromLight * vWorldVertex; In a fragment shader calculate the distance between the current vertex and the light position and check if it's deeper then the depth information read from earlier rendered shadow map. I know how to do it with a 2D Texture, but I have no idea how should I use cubemap texture here. I have read that texture lookups into cubemaps are performed by a normal vector instead of a UV coordinate. What vector should I use? Just a normalized vector pointing to the current vertex? For now, my code for this part looks like this (not working yet): float shadow = 1.0; vec3 depth = vDepthPosition.xyz / vDepthPosition.w; depth.z = length(vWorldVertex.xyz - uLightPosition) * linearDepthConstant; float shadowDepth = unpack(textureCube(uDepthMapSampler, vWorldVertex.xyz)); if (depth.z > shadowDepth) shadow = 0.5; Could you give me some hints or examples (preferably in WebGL code) how I should build it?

  Read the article

• Improving the efficiency of frustum culling

  - by DeadMG

  I've got some code which performs frustum culling. However, this defines the "frustum" way too broadly- when I have ~10 objects on screen, the code returns 42 objects to be rendered. I've tried taking "slices" through the frustum to attempt to increase the accuracy of the technique, but it doesn't seem to have made much impact. I also significantly reduced the far plane, so that the objects are barely at the edge. Here's my code (where size is the size in screen space- the resolution of the client area of the window I'm rendering into). Any suggestions? auto&& size = GetDimensions(); D3DVIEWPORT9 vp = { 0, 0, size.x, size.y, 0, 1 }; D3DCALL(device->SetViewport(&vp)); static const int slices = 10; std::vector<Object*> result; for(int i = 0; i < slices; i++) { D3DXVECTOR3 WorldSpaceFrustrumPoints[8] = { D3DXVECTOR3(0, size.y, static_cast<float>(i) / slices), D3DXVECTOR3(size.x, 0, static_cast<float>(i) / slices), D3DXVECTOR3(size.x, size.y, static_cast<float>(i) / slices), D3DXVECTOR3(0, 0, static_cast<float>(i) / slices), D3DXVECTOR3(0, 0, static_cast<float>(i + 1) / slices), D3DXVECTOR3(size.x, 0, static_cast<float>(i + 1) / slices), D3DXVECTOR3(size.x, size.y, static_cast<float>(i + 1) / slices), D3DXVECTOR3(0, size.y, static_cast<float>(i + 1) / slices) }; D3DXMATRIXA16 Identity; D3DXMatrixIdentity(&Identity); D3DXVec3UnprojectArray( WorldSpaceFrustrumPoints, sizeof(D3DXVECTOR3), WorldSpaceFrustrumPoints, sizeof(D3DXVECTOR3), &vp, &Projection, &View, &Identity, 8 ); Math::AABB Frustrum; auto world_begin = std::begin(WorldSpaceFrustrumPoints); auto world_end = std::end(WorldSpaceFrustrumPoints); auto world_initial = WorldSpaceFrustrumPoints[0]; Frustrum.BottomLeftClosest.x = std::accumulate(world_begin, world_end, world_initial, [](D3DXVECTOR3 lhs, D3DXVECTOR3 rhs) { return lhs.x < rhs.x ? lhs : rhs; }).x; Frustrum.BottomLeftClosest.y = std::accumulate(world_begin, world_end, world_initial, [](D3DXVECTOR3 lhs, D3DXVECTOR3 rhs) { return lhs.y < rhs.y ? lhs : rhs; }).y; Frustrum.BottomLeftClosest.z = std::accumulate(world_begin, world_end, world_initial, [](D3DXVECTOR3 lhs, D3DXVECTOR3 rhs) { return lhs.z < rhs.z ? lhs : rhs; }).z; Frustrum.TopRightFurthest.x = std::accumulate(world_begin, world_end, world_initial, [](D3DXVECTOR3 lhs, D3DXVECTOR3 rhs) { return lhs.x > rhs.x ? lhs : rhs; }).x; Frustrum.TopRightFurthest.y = std::accumulate(world_begin, world_end, world_initial, [](D3DXVECTOR3 lhs, D3DXVECTOR3 rhs) { return lhs.y > rhs.y ? lhs : rhs; }).y; Frustrum.TopRightFurthest.z = std::accumulate(world_begin, world_end, world_initial, [](D3DXVECTOR3 lhs, D3DXVECTOR3 rhs) { return lhs.z > rhs.z ? lhs : rhs; }).z; auto slices_result = ObjectTree.collision(Frustrum); result.insert(result.end(), slices_result.begin(), slices_result.end()); } return result;

  Read the article

• Admin Panel like Custom Framework

  - by bhuvin

  I want to Create a Framework , like Admin panel , which can rule almost all the aspects of what is shown on the frontend. For an (most basic) example: If suppose the links which are to be shown in a navigation area is passed from the server, with the order and the url , etc. The whole aim is to save the time on the tedious tasks. You can just start creating menus and start assigning pages to it. Give a url, actual files which are to be rendered (in case of static files.), in case of dynamic files, giving the file accordingly. And all this is fully server side manageable using different portlets, sort of things. So basic Roadmap is having : Areas like: Header Area - Which can contain logos, links etc. Navigation Area - Which can contains links and submenus. Content Area - Now this is where the tricky part is that that it has zones like: left, center & right. It contains Order in which it has to be displayed. So, when someday we want to change the way the articles appear on the page, we can do so easily, without any deployments. Now these zones can have n number of internal elements, like the word cloud, or the advertisement area. Footer Area: Again similar as Header Area. Currently there is a preexisting custom framework, which uses XSLT files for pulling out data from the server side. And it has the above capabilities. For example: If there's a grid it will be having a <table> tag embedded in the XSLT file. Now whatever might be the source of the data, we serialize this as XML and give it to the XSLT file and the html is derived from this and is appended to the layer in a page. The problem with this approach is: The XSLT conversion is occurring on the server side, so the server is responsible for getting the data, running XSLT transform, and append the html generated to the layer div. So, according to me, firstly this isn't the server's concern to do so. Secondly for larger applications this might be slower. Debugging isn't possible for XSLT transformation. So, whenever we face problems with data its always a bit of a trial & error method. Maintaining it is a bit of an eerie job i.e. styling changes, and other stuff. Adding dynamic values. Like JavaScript can't actually be very easily used in this. Secondly, we can't use JQuery or any other libraries with this since this is all occurring on the server. For now what I have thought about is using Templating - Javascript - JSON combination in place of XSLT, this will be offloaded to the client and the rendering will take place accordingly. This could solve the above problems and also could add mobile support for the same. Only problem which I could think of is that: It is much work and adding new portlets on the go needs to be looked into. What could be the alternatives for this? What kind of problems are there with the JavaScript approach? What are the different ways to implement the same? Are there any existing frameworks for similar usage?

  Read the article

• TransportWithMessageCredential & Service Bus – Introduction

  - by Michael Stephenson

  Recently we have been working on a project using the Windows Azure Service Bus to expose line of business applications. One of the topics we discussed a lot was around the security aspects of the solution. Most of the samples you see for Windows Azure Service Bus often use the shared secret with the Access Control Service to protect the service bus endpoint but one of the problems we found was that with this scenario any claims resulting from credentials supplied by the client are not passed through to the service listening to the service bus endpoint. As an example of this we originally were hoping that we could give two different clients their own shared secret key and the issuer for each would indicate which client it was. If the claims had flown to the listening service then we could check that the message sent by client one was a type they are allowed to send. Unfortunately this claim isn't flown to the listening service so we were unable to implement this scenario. We had also seen samples that talk about changing the relayClientAuthenticationType attribute would allow you to authenticate the client within the service itself rather than with ACS. While this was interesting it wasn't exactly what we wanted. By removing the step where access to the Relay endpoint is protected by authentication against ACS it means that anyone could send messages via the service bus to the on-premise listening service which would then authenticate clients. In our scenario we certainly didn't want to allow clients to skip the ACS authentication step because this could open up two attack opportunities for an attacker. The first of these would allow an attacker to send messages through to our on-premise servers and potentially cause a denial of service situation. The second case would be with the same kind of attack by running lots of messages through service bus which were then rejected the attacker would be causing us to incur charges per message on our Windows Azure account. The correct way to implement our desired scenario is to combine one of the common options for authenticating against ACS so the service bus endpoint cannot be accessed by an unauthenticated caller with the normal WCF security features using the TransportWithMessageCredential security option. Looking around I could not find any guidance on how to implement this correctly so on the back of setting this up I decided to write a couple of articles to walk through a couple of the common scenarios you may be interested in. These are available on the following links: Walkthrough - Combining shared secret and username token Walkthrough – Combining shared secret and certificates

  Read the article

• Adding Facebook Open Graph Tags to an MVC Application

  - by amaniar

  If you have any kind of share functionality within your application it’s a good practice to add the basic Facebook open graph tags to the header of all pages. For an MVC application this can be as simple as adding these tags to the Head section of the Layouts file.<head> <title>@ViewBag.Title</title> <meta property="og:title" content="@ViewBag.FacebookTitle" /> <meta property="og:type" content="website"/> <meta property="og:url" content="@ViewBag.FacebookUrl"/> <meta property="og:image" content="@ViewBag.FacebookImage"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Site Name"/> <meta property="og:description" content="@ViewBag.FacebookDescription"/></head>  These ViewBag properties can then be populated from any action: private ActionResult MyAction() { ViewBag.FacebookDescription = "My Actions Description"; ViewBag.FacebookUrl = "My Full Url"; ViewBag.FacebookTitle = "My Actions Title"; ViewBag.FacebookImage = "My Actions Social Image"; .... } You might want to populate these ViewBag properties with default values when the actions don’t populate them. This can be done in 2 places. 1. In the Layout itself. (check the ViewBag properties and set them if they are empty) @{ ViewBag.FacebookTitle = ViewBag.FacebookTitle ?? "My Default Title"; ViewBag.FacebookUrl = ViewBag.FacebookUrl ?? HttpContext.Current.Request.RawUrl; ViewBag.FacebookImage = ViewBag.FacebookImage ?? "http://www.mysite.com/images/logo_main.png"; ViewBag.FacebookDescription = ViewBag.FacebookDescription ?? "My Default Description"; }  2. Create an action filter and add it to all Controllers or your base controller. public class FacebookActionFilterAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute { public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext) { var viewBag = filterContext.Controller.ViewBag; viewBag.FacebookDescription = "My Actions Description"; viewBag.FacebookUrl = "My Full Url"; viewBag.FacebookTitle = "My Actions Title"; viewBag.FacebookImage = "My Actions Social Image"; base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext); } } Add attribute to your BaseController. [FacebookActionFilter] public class HomeController : Controller { .... }

  Read the article

• The difference

  So with the CTP tools available, weve been building a few apps, just to get a feel for the tools and whats supported in the framework.  Whats been great is that everything is fairly familiar and consistent, largely to do with the .net framework and Microsofts focus on providing good tools.  Weve produced mobile applications, mostly in concept form, for Windows Phone Classic, iPhone and Android but never so quickly and not of such high quality and visual impression.  I attribute some of this obviously to our familiarity to the Microsoft platform and tools.  Though when you look at the designs our team has produced, it becomes clear that this is not just another mobile application container.                                                            The Metro design language implores content prominence with fluid motion and transitions, with a crisp font and easily organized features and services placement.  In addition to a purposeful right edge tease, where the intent is for users to discover new premium content and services.   The concept that enables this is called hubs, building application with hubs changes your thinking from a single mobile application task, to thinking creatively about a mobile experience. Its engaging to think of the other brands and industry verticals that will take advantage of this core feature.  Combine this with Windows Phone 7 live tiles, more on that later, and you have a recipe for a solid mobile services platform.                                                              This so much more fun and liberating than my icon on a gridDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228  | Next Page >