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  • DisplayMemberPath is not working in WPF

    - by WpfBee
    I want to display CustomerList\CustomerName property items to the listBox using ItemsSource DisplayMemberPath property only. But it is not working. I do not want to use DataContext or any other binding in my problem. Please help. My code is given below: MainWindow.xaml.cs namespace BindingAnItemControlToAList { /// <summary> /// Interaction logic for MainWindow.xaml /// </summary> public partial class MainWindow : Window { public MainWindow() { InitializeComponent(); } } public class Customer { public string Name {get;set;} public string LastName { get; set; } } public class CustomerList { public List<Customer> Customers { get; set; } public List<string> CustomerName { get; set; } public List<string> CustomerLastName { get; set; } public CustomerList() { Customers = new List<Customer>(); CustomerName = new List<string>(); CustomerLastName = new List<string>(); CustomerName.Add("Name1"); CustomerLastName.Add("LastName1"); CustomerName.Add("Name2"); CustomerLastName.Add("LastName2"); Customers.Add(new Customer() { Name = CustomerName[0], LastName = CustomerLastName[0] }); Customers.Add(new Customer() { Name = CustomerName[1], LastName = CustomerLastName[1] }); } } } **MainWindow.Xaml** <Window x:Class="BindingAnItemControlToAList.MainWindow" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:local="clr-namespace:BindingAnItemControlToAList" Title="MainWindow" Height="350" Width="525" Loaded="Window_Loaded" > <Window.Resources> <local:CustomerList x:Key="Cust"/> </Window.Resources> <Grid Name="Grid1"> <ListBox ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource Cust}}" DisplayMemberPath="CustomerName" Height="172" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="27,23,0,0" Name="lstStates" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="245" /> </Grid> </Window>

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  • Android programming help

    - by Tuffy G
    I want to start making a program for a local charity on the Android platform. Where can go I for resources and tutorials to learn? I'm very new at this, so would like something simple that can be followed by someone with minimal technical knowledge.

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  • Dealing with HTTP w00tw00t attacks

    - by Saif Bechan
    I have a server with apache and I recently installed mod_security2 because I get attacked a lot by this: My apache version is apache v2.2.3 and I use mod_security2.c This were the entries from the error log: [Wed Mar 24 02:35:41 2010] [error] [client 88.191.109.38] client sent HTTP/1.1 request without hostname (see RFC2616 section 14.23): /w00tw00t.at.ISC.SANS.DFind:) [Wed Mar 24 02:47:31 2010] [error] [client 202.75.211.90] client sent HTTP/1.1 request without hostname (see RFC2616 section 14.23): /w00tw00t.at.ISC.SANS.DFind:) [Wed Mar 24 02:47:49 2010] [error] [client 95.228.153.177] client sent HTTP/1.1 request without hostname (see RFC2616 section 14.23): /w00tw00t.at.ISC.SANS.DFind:) [Wed Mar 24 02:48:03 2010] [error] [client 88.191.109.38] client sent HTTP/1.1 request without hostname (see RFC2616 section 14.23): /w00tw00t.at.ISC.SANS.DFind:) Here are the errors from the access_log: 202.75.211.90 - - [29/Mar/2010:10:43:15 +0200] "GET /w00tw00t.at.ISC.SANS.DFind:) HTTP/1.1" 400 392 "-" "-" 211.155.228.169 - - [29/Mar/2010:11:40:41 +0200] "GET /w00tw00t.at.ISC.SANS.DFind:) HTTP/1.1" 400 392 "-" "-" 211.155.228.169 - - [29/Mar/2010:12:37:19 +0200] "GET /w00tw00t.at.ISC.SANS.DFind:) HTTP/1.1" 400 392 "-" "-" I tried configuring mod_security2 like this: SecFilterSelective REQUEST_URI "w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS\.DFind" SecFilterSelective REQUEST_URI "\w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS" SecFilterSelective REQUEST_URI "w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS" SecFilterSelective REQUEST_URI "w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS\.DFind:" SecFilterSelective REQUEST_URI "w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS\.DFind:\)" The thing in mod_security2 is that SecFilterSelective can not be used, it gives me errors. Instead I use a rule like this: SecRule REQUEST_URI "w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS\.DFind" SecRule REQUEST_URI "\w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS" SecRule REQUEST_URI "w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS" SecRule REQUEST_URI "w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS\.DFind:" SecRule REQUEST_URI "w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS\.DFind:\)" Even this does not work. I don't know what to do anymore. Anyone have any advice? Update 1 I see that nobody can solve this problem using mod_security. So far using ip-tables seems like the best option to do this but I think the file will become extremely large because the ip changes serveral times a day. I came up with 2 other solutions, can someone comment on them on being good or not. The first solution that comes to my mind is excluding these attacks from my apache error logs. This will make is easier for me to spot other urgent errors as they occur and don't have to spit trough a long log. The second option is better i think, and that is blocking hosts that are not sent in the correct way. In this example the w00tw00t attack is send without hostname, so i think i can block the hosts that are not in the correct form. Update 2 After going trough the answers I came to the following conclusions. To have custom logging for apache will consume some unnecessary recourses, and if there really is a problem you probably will want to look at the full log without anything missing. It is better to just ignore the hits and concentrate on a better way of analyzing your error logs. Using filters for your logs a good approach for this. Final thoughts on the subject The attack mentioned above will not reach your machine if you at least have an up to date system so there are basically no worries. It can be hard to filter out all the bogus attacks from the real ones after a while, because both the error logs and access logs get extremely large. Preventing this from happening in any way will cost you resources and they it is a good practice not to waste your resources on unimportant stuff. The solution i use now is Linux logwatch. It sends me summaries of the logs and they are filtered and grouped. This way you can easily separate the important from the unimportant. Thank you all for the help, and I hope this post can be helpful to someone else too.

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  • broadcom 5722 NIC not installed on Ubuntu Server, although driver present

    - by Bastien
    Hello, I just installed Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS, running kernel 2.6.32-24-server, on a brand new Dell T110 server, supposedly fully compatible with Ubuntu Server. I have two NICs: one ONBOARD, the other additional on PCI. both of them are Broadcom netXtreme 5572. on the first boot of the system, I could see both cards as eth0 and eth1 (with ifconfig) I configured eth0 as static IP (as planned), and did not configure eth1. after rebooting, one of the two NICs "disappeared": it does not appear in ifconfig at all. the one that disappeared is the ONBOARD one. I investigated a bit and found the following things: the card is SEEN, but not "installed", it appears as "UNCLAIMED" in lshw: *-network UNCLAIMED description: Ethernet controller product: NetXtreme BCM5722 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0 version: 00 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm vpd msi pciexpress cap_list configuration: latency=0 resources: memory:df9f0000-df9fffff *-network description: Ethernet interface product: NetXtreme BCM5722 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:05:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 00 serial: 00:10:18:60:23:64 size: 100MB/s capacity: 1GB/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm vpd msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=tg3 driverversion=3.102 duplex=full firmware=5722-v3.09 ip=10.129.167.25 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100MB/s resources: irq:35 memory:dfaf0000-dfafffff so I checked my dmesg and found a few strange lines, showing, there actually is a problem bringing up this card: [ 3.737506] tg3: Could not obtain valid ethernet address, aborting. [ 3.737527] tg3 0000:04:00.0: PCI INT A disabled [ 3.737535] tg3: probe of 0000:04:00.0 failed with error -22 [ 3.737553] alloc irq_desc for 17 on node -1 [ 3.737555] alloc kstat_irqs on node -1 [ 3.737560] tg3 0000:05:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17 [ 3.737566] tg3 0000:05:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 3.793529] eth0: Tigon3 [partno(BCM95722A2202G) rev a200] (PCI Express) MAC address 00:10:18:60:23:64 [ 3.793532] eth0: attached PHY is 5722/5756 (10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet) (WireSpeed[1]) [ 3.793534] eth0: RXcsums[1] LinkChgREG[0] MIirq[0] ASF[0] TSOcap[1] [ 3.793536] eth0: dma_rwctrl[76180000] dma_mask[64-bit] that actually shows that one NIC is recognized, the other is not. I researched a bit more, with lspci -v: 04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5722 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5722 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 16 Memory at df9f0000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K] Capabilities: [48] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [50] Vital Product Data <?> Capabilities: [58] Vendor Specific Information <?> Capabilities: [e8] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit+ Queue=0/0 Enable- Capabilities: [d0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting <?> Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel <?> Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 00-00-00-fe-ff-00-00-00 Kernel modules: tg3 05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5722 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5722 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 35 Memory at dfaf0000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K] Expansion ROM at <ignored> [disabled] Capabilities: [48] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [50] Vital Product Data <?> Capabilities: [58] Vendor Specific Information <?> Capabilities: [e8] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit+ Queue=0/0 Enable+ Capabilities: [d0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting <?> Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel <?> Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 64-23-60-fe-ff-18-10-00 Capabilities: [16c] Power Budgeting <?> Kernel driver in use: tg3 Kernel modules: tg3 here I could see that the MAC address is 00-00-00-FE-FF-00-00-00, which, according to some forum posts on several websites, could be an issue. I've researched everything I could on the net, and found out several people having slightly comparable issues, but they usually involve different HW, and do not provide a proper explanation / solution... I would appreciate if anyone around here has some info to share ! thanks

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  • One email user keeps disconnecting from our exchange server

    - by Funky Si
    I have one user who keeps reporting that Outlook keeps disconnecting from our email server. All other users are fine. Our email server is running Exchange 2010 and the client is running Outlook 2003. The disconnection only lasts a moment. I have checked for logs on the client and Exchange server and can not see any reason for the disconnect, On the Client I get EventId 26 telling me Outlook has disconnected and reconnected but no reason why. Can anyone give me some suggestions of things to try and track down where the problem could be? --Update-- I have found the following log file C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Logging\RPC Client Access which suggests that it is a problem with RPC sessions. Excerpt is below 2013-01-31T15:21:24.015Z,6413,15,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,,0,00:00:00,"BS=Conn:24,HangingConn:0,AD:$null/$null/0%,CAS:$null/$null/2%,AB:$null/$null/0%,RPC:$null/$null/1%,FC:$null/0,Policy:ClientThrottlingPolicy2,Norm[Resources:(Mdb)Mailbox Database 0765959540(Health:-1%,HistLoad:0),(Mdb)Public Folder Database 1945427388(Health:-1%,HistLoad:0),];GC:6/1/0;", 2013-01-31T15:21:24.015Z,6413,16,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,PublicLogoff,0,00:00:00,LogonId: 1, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.015Z,6413,16,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,,,00:00:00,"BS=Conn:24,HangingConn:0,AD:$null/$null/0%,CAS:$null/$null/2%,AB:$null/$null/0%,RPC:$null/$null/1%,FC:$null/0,Policy:ClientThrottlingPolicy2,Norm[Resources:(Mdb)Mailbox Database 0765959540(Health:-1%,HistLoad:0),(Mdb)Public Folder Database 1945427388(Health:-1%,HistLoad:0),];GC:6/1/0;", 2013-01-31T15:21:24.015Z,6417,5,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,OwnerLogoff,0,00:00:00,LogonId: 0, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.015Z,6417,5,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,,0x6BA (rpc::Exception),00:02:54.7668000,Budget Highs [AD = 0][CAS = 3][RPC = 1] Session Throttled Count = 0; SessionDropped,"RpcEndPoint: [ServerUnavailableException] Connection must be re-established - [SessionDeadException] Connection doesn't have any open logons, but has client activity. This may be masking synchronization stalls. Dropping a connection." 2013-01-31T15:21:24.015Z,6420,7,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,DelegateLogoff,0,00:00:00,LogonId: 0, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.031Z,6420,7,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,,,00:00:00.0156000,Budget Highs [AD = 0][CAS = 3][RPC = 1] Session Throttled Count = 0, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.031Z,6420,7,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,Disconnect,0,00:02:54.2364000,, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.031Z,6419,5,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,OwnerLogoff,0,00:00:00,LogonId: 0, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.031Z,6419,5,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,,,00:00:00,Budget Highs [AD = 0][CAS = 3][RPC = 1] Session Throttled Count = 0, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.031Z,6419,5,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,Disconnect,0,00:02:54.4392000,, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.031Z,6416,7,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,DelegateLogoff,0,00:00:00,LogonId: 0, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.031Z,6416,7,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,,,00:00:00,Budget Highs [AD = 0][CAS = 3][RPC = 1] Session Throttled Count = 0, Can anyone help point me in the right direction for a solution?

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  • Active Directory Time Synchronisation - Time-Service Event ID 50

    - by George
    I have an Active Directory domain with two DCs. The first DC in the forest/domain is Server 2012, the second is 2008 R2. The first DC holds the PDC Emulator role. I sporadically receive a warning from the Time-Service source, event ID 50: The time service detected a time difference of greater than %1 milliseconds for %2 seconds. The time difference might be caused by synchronization with low-accuracy time sources or by suboptimal network conditions. The time service is no longer synchronized and cannot provide the time to other clients or update the system clock. When a valid time stamp is received from a time service provider, the time service will correct itself. Time sync in the domain is configured with the second DC to synchronise using the /syncfromflags:DOMHIER flag. The first DC is configured to sync time using a /syncfromflags:MANUAL /reliable:YES, from a peerlist consisting of a number of UK based stratum 2 servers, such as ntp2d.mcc.ac.uk. I'm confused why I receive this event warning. It implies that my PDC emulator cannot synchronise time with a supposedly reliable external time source, and it quotes a time difference of 5 seconds for 900 seconds. It's worth also mentioning that I used to use a UK pool from ntp.org but I would receive the warning much more often. Since updating to a number of UK based academic time servers, it seems to be more reliable. Can someone with more experience shed some light on this - perhaps it is purely transient? Should I disregard the warning? Is my configuration sound? EDIT: I should add that the DCs are virtual, and installed on two separate VMware ESXi/vSphere physical hosts. I can also confirm that as per MDMarra's comment and best practice, VMware timesync is disabled, since: c:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\VMwareToolboxCmd.exe timesync status returns Disabled. EDIT 2 Some strange new issue has cropped up. I've noticed a pattern. Originally, the event ID 50 warnings would occur at about 1230pm each day. This is interesting since our veeam backup happens at 12 midday. Since I made the changes discussed here, I now receive an event ID 51 instead of 50. The new warning says that: The time sample received from peer server.ac.uk differs from the local time by -40 seconds (Or approximately 40 seconds). This has happened two days in a row. Now I'm even more confused. Obviously the time never updates until I manually intervene. The issue seems to be related to virtualisation and veeam. Something may be occuring when veeam is backing up the PDCe. Any suggestions? UPDATE & SUMMARY msemack's excellent list of resources below (the accepted answer) provided enough information to correctly configure the time service in the domain. This should be the first port of call for any future people looking to verify their configuration. The final "40 second jump" issue I have resolved (there are no more warnings) through adjusting the VMware time sync settings as noted in the veeam knowledge base article here: http://www.veeam.com/kb1202 In any case, should any future reader use ESXi, veeam or not, the resources here are an excellent source of information on the time sync topic and msemack's answer is particularly invaluable.

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  • Crash in audio resampler with some audio rates - FFMPEG PHP ( Solved! )

    - by Olaf Erlandsen
    i have a problem with this command( FFMPEG PHP ): Command: ffmpeg -i 62f76f050494f0ed6a5997967c00c0c0.wmv -ss 0 -t 99 -y -ar 44100 -async 44100 -r 29.970 -ac 2 -qscale 5 -f flv 62f76f050494f0ed6a5997967c00c0c0.flv Output: FFmpeg version 0.6.5, Copyright (c) 2000-2010 the FFmpeg developers built on Jan 29 2012 17:52:15 with gcc 4.4.5 20110214 (Red Hat 4.4.5-6) configuration: --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib64 --shlibdir=/usr/lib64 --mandir=/usr/share/man --incdir=/usr/include --disable-avisynth --extra-cflags='-O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -m64 -mtune=generic -fPIC' --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libdirac --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad --enable-libfaadbin --enable-libgsm --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-librtmp --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libx264 --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-postproc --enable-pthreads --enable-shared --enable-swscale --enable-vdpau --enable-version3 --enable-x11grab libavutil 50.15. 1 / 50.15. 1 libavcodec 52.72. 2 / 52.72. 2 libavformat 52.64. 2 / 52.64. 2 libavdevice 52. 2. 0 / 52. 2. 0 libavfilter 1.19. 0 / 1.19. 0 libswscale 0.11. 0 / 0.11. 0 libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0 [asf @ 0xe81670]max_analyze_duration reached Input #0, asf, from '/var/www/resources/tmp/62f76f050494f0ed6a5997967c00c0c0.wmv': Metadata: WMFSDKVersion : 12.0.7601.17514 WMFSDKNeeded : 0.0.0.0000 IsVBR : 0 Duration: 00:00:50.87, bitrate: 2467 kb/s Stream #0.0: Audio: wmapro, 44100 Hz, stereo, flt, 256 kb/s Stream #0.1: Video: vc1, yuv420p, 950x460 [PAR 1:1 DAR 95:46], 25 fps, 25 tbr, 1k tbn, 25 tbc Output #0, flv, to '/var/www/resources/media/62f76f050494f0ed6a5997967c00c0c0.flv': Metadata: encoder : Lavf52.64.2 Stream #0.0: Video: flv, yuv420p, 950x460 [PAR 1:1 DAR 95:46], q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 1k tbn, 29.97 tbc Stream #0.1: Audio: libmp3lame, 11025 Hz, stereo, s16, 64 kb/s Stream mapping: Stream #0.1 -> #0.0 Stream #0.0 -> #0.1 Press [q] to stop encoding frame= 72 fps= 0 q=5.0 size= 0kB time=10.91 bitrate= 0.0kbits/s Multiple frames in a packet from stream 0 Warning, using s16 intermediate sample format for resampling frame= 141 fps=139 q=5.0 size= 103kB time=8.15 bitrate= 103.2kbits/s frame= 220 fps=144 q=5.0 size= 875kB time=10.92 bitrate= 656.6kbits/s frame= 290 fps=143 q=5.0 size= 1525kB time=13.74 bitrate= 909.1kbits/s frame= 356 fps=141 q=5.0 size= 2153kB time=15.99 bitrate=1103.1kbits/s frame= 427 fps=141 q=5.0 size= 2847kB time=18.70 bitrate=1247.0kbits/s frame= 497 fps=141 q=5.0 size= 3771kB time=21.16 bitrate=1460.0kbits/s frame= 575 fps=142 q=5.0 size= 4695kB time=24.61 bitrate=1563.0kbits/s frame= 639 fps=141 q=5.0 size= 5301kB time=26.80 bitrate=1620.2kbits/s frame= 703 fps=139 q=5.0 size= 5829kB time=29.36 bitrate=1626.2kbits/s frame= 774 fps=139 q=5.0 size= 6659kB time=32.39 bitrate=1684.0kbits/s frame= 842 fps=139 q=5.0 size= 7915kB time=35.27 bitrate=1838.6kbits/s frame= 911 fps=139 q=5.0 size= 9011kB time=37.98 bitrate=1943.4kbits/s frame= 975 fps=138 q=5.0 size= 9788kB time=40.59 bitrate=1975.3kbits/s frame= 1041 fps=138 q=5.0 size= 10904kB time=43.83 bitrate=2037.9kbits/s frame= 1115 fps=138 q=5.0 size= 11795kB time=46.24 bitrate=2089.8kbits/s frame= 1183 fps=138 q=5.0 size= 12678kB time=48.74 bitrate=2130.7kbits/s frame= 1247 fps=137 q=5.0 size= 13964kB time=51.36 bitrate=2227.5kbits/s frame= 1271 fps=136 q=5.0 Lsize= 15865kB time=58.86 bitrate=2208.1kbits/s video:15366kB audio:462kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.238956% Problem: Warning, using s16 intermediate sample format for resampling I've also tried changing the parameter From -ar 44100 to -ar 11025 Thanks! Solution: Read this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Bit_rate

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  • Rewriting Apache URLs to use only paths and set response headers

    - by jabley
    I have apache httpd in front of an application running in Tomcat. The application exposes URLs of the form: /path/to/images?id={an-image-id} The entities returned by such URLs are images (even though URIs are opaque, I find human-friendly ones are easier to work with!). The application does not set caching directives on the image response, so I've added that via Apache. # LocationMatch to set caching directives on image responses <LocationMatch "^/path/to/images$"> # Can't have Set-Cookie on response, otherwise the downstream caching proxy # won't cache! Header unset Set-Cookie # Mark the response as cacheable. Header append Cache-Control "max-age=8640000" </LocationMatch> Note that I can't use ExpiresByType since not all images served by the app have versioned URIs. I know that ones served by the /path/to/images resource handler are versioned URIs though, which don't perform any sort of content negotiation, and thus are ripe for Far Future Expires management. This is working well for us. Now a requirement has come up to put something else in front of the app (in this case, Amazon CloudFront) to further distribute and cache some of the content. Amazon CloudFront will not pass query string parameters through to my origin server. I thought I would be able to work around this, by changing my apache config appropriately: # Rewrite to map new Amazon CloudFront friendly URIs to the application resources RewriteRule ^/new/path/to/images/([0-9]+) /path/to/images?id=$1 [PT] # LocationMatch to set caching directives on image responses <LocationMatch "^/path/to/images$"> # Can't have Set-Cookie on response, otherwise the downstream caching proxy # won't cache! Header unset Set-Cookie # Mark the response as cacheable. Header append Cache-Control "max-age=8640000" </LocationMatch> This works fine in terms of serving the content, but there are no longer caching directives with the response. I've tried playing around with [PT], [P] for the RewriteRule, and adding a new LocationMatch directive: # Rewrite to map new Amazon CloudFront friendly URIs to the application resources # /new/path/to/images/12345 -> /path/to/images?id=12345 RewriteRule ^/new/path/to/images/([0-9]+) /path/to/images?id=$1 [PT] # LocationMatch to set caching directives on image responses <LocationMatch "^/path/to/images$"> # Can't have Set-Cookie on response, otherwise the downstream caching proxy # won't cache! Header unset Set-Cookie # Mark the response as cacheable. Header append Cache-Control "max-age=8640000" </LocationMatch> <LocationMatch "^/new/path/to/images/"> # Can't have Set-Cookie on response, otherwise the downstream caching proxy # won't cache! Header unset Set-Cookie # Mark the response as cacheable. Header append Cache-Control "max-age=8640000" </LocationMatch> Unfortunately, I'm still unable to get the Cache-Control header added to the response with the new URL format. Please point out what I'm missing to get /new/path/to/images/12345 returning a 200 response with a Cache-Control: max-age=8640000 header. Pointers as to how to debug apache like this would be appreciated as well!

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  • SQL SERVER – World Shapefile Download and Upload to Database – Spatial Database

    - by pinaldave
    During my recent, training I was asked by a student if I know a place where he can download spatial files for all the countries around the world, as well as if there is a way to upload shape files to a database. Here is a quick tutorial for it. VDS Technologies has all the spatial files for every location for free. You can download the spatial file from here. If you cannot find the spatial file you are looking for, please leave a comment here, and I will send you the necessary details. Unzip the file to a folder and it will have the following content. Then, download Shape2SQL tool from SharpGIS. This is one of the best tools available to convert shapefiles to SQL tables. Afterwards, run the .exe file. When the file is run for the first time, it will ask for the database properties. Provide your database details. Select the appropriate shape files and the tool will fill up the essential details automatically. If you do not want to create the index on the column, uncheck the box beside it. The screenshot below is simply explains the procedure. You also have to be careful regarding your data, whether that is GEOMETRY or GEOGRAPHY. In this example,  it is GEOMETRY data. Click “Upload to Database”. It will show you the uploading process. Once the shape file is uploaded, close the application and open SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). Run the following code in SSMS Query Editor. USE Spatial GO SELECT * FROM dbo.world GO This will show the complete map of world after you click on Spatial Results in Spatial Tab. In Spatial Results Set, the Zoom feature is available. From the Select label column, choose the country name in order to show the country name overlaying the country borders. Let me know if this tutorial is helpful enough. I am planning to write a few more posts about this later. Note: Please note that the images displayed here do not reflect the original political boundaries. These data are pretty old and can probably draw incorrect maps as well. I have personally spotted several parts of the map where some countries are located a little bit inaccurately. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Add-On, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Spatial, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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  • Android - creating a custom preferences activity screen

    - by Bill Osuch
    Android applications can maintain their own internal preferences (and allow them to be modified by users) with very little coding. In fact, you don't even need to write an code to explicitly save these preferences, it's all handled automatically! Create a new Android project, with an intial activity title Main. Create two more activities: ShowPrefs, which extends Activity Set Prefs, which extends PreferenceActivity Add these two to your AndroidManifest.xml file: <activity android:name=".SetPrefs"></activity> <activity android:name=".ShowPrefs"></activity> Now we'll work on fleshing out each activity. First, open up the main.xml layout file and add a couple of buttons to it: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"    android:orientation="vertical"    android:layout_width="fill_parent"    android:layout_height="fill_parent"> <Button android:text="Edit Preferences"    android:id="@+id/prefButton"    android:layout_width="wrap_content"    android:layout_height="wrap_content"    android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"/> <Button android:text="Show Preferences"    android:id="@+id/showButton"    android:layout_width="wrap_content"    android:layout_height="wrap_content"    android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"/> </LinearLayout> Next, create a couple button listeners in Main.java to handle the clicks and start the other activities: Button editPrefs = (Button) findViewById(R.id.prefButton);       editPrefs.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {              public void onClick(View view) {                  Intent myIntent = new Intent(view.getContext(), SetPrefs.class);                  startActivityForResult(myIntent, 0);              }      });           Button showPrefs = (Button) findViewById(R.id.showButton);      showPrefs.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {              public void onClick(View view) {                  Intent myIntent = new Intent(view.getContext(), ShowPrefs.class);                  startActivityForResult(myIntent, 0);              }      }); Now, we'll create the actual preferences layout. You'll need to create a file called preferences.xml inside res/xml, and you'll likely have to create the xml directory as well. Add the following xml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <PreferenceScreen xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"> </PreferenceScreen> First we'll add a category, which is just a way to group similar preferences... sort of a horizontal bar. Add this inside the PreferenceScreen tags: <PreferenceCategory android:title="First Category"> </PreferenceCategory> Now add a Checkbox and an Edittext box (inside the PreferenceCategory tags): <CheckBoxPreference    android:key="checkboxPref"    android:title="Checkbox Preference"    android:summary="This preference can be true or false"    android:defaultValue="false"/> <EditTextPreference    android:key="editTextPref"    android:title="EditText Preference"    android:summary="This allows you to enter a string"    android:defaultValue="Nothing"/> The key is how you will refer to the preference in code, the title is the large text that will be displayed, and the summary is the smaller text (this will make sense when you see it). Let's say we've got a second group of preferences that apply to a different part of the app. Add a new category just below the first one: <PreferenceCategory android:title="Second Category"> </PreferenceCategory> In there we'll a list with radio buttons, so add: <ListPreference    android:key="listPref"    android:title="List Preference"    android:summary="This preference lets you select an item in a array"    android:entries="@array/listArray"    android:entryValues="@array/listValues" /> When complete, your full xml file should look like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <PreferenceScreen xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">  <PreferenceCategory android:title="First Category"> <CheckBoxPreference    android:key="checkboxPref"    android:title="Checkbox Preference"    android:summary="This preference can be true or false"    android:defaultValue="false"/> <EditTextPreference    android:key="editTextPref"    android:title="EditText Preference"    android:summary="This allows you to enter a string"    android:defaultValue="Nothing"/>  </PreferenceCategory>  <PreferenceCategory android:title="Second Category">   <ListPreference    android:key="listPref"    android:title="List Preference"    android:summary="This preference lets you select an item in a array"    android:entries="@array/listArray"    android:entryValues="@array/listValues" />  </PreferenceCategory> </PreferenceScreen> However, when you try to save it, you'll get an error because you're missing your array definition. To fix this, add a file called arrays.xml in res/values, and paste in the following: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <resources>  <string-array name="listArray">      <item>Value 1</item>      <item>Value 2</item>      <item>Value 3</item>  </string-array>  <string-array name="listValues">      <item>1</item>      <item>2</item>      <item>3</item>  </string-array> </resources> Finally (for the preferences screen at least...) add the code that will display the preferences layout to the SetPrefs.java file:  @Override     public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {      super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);      addPreferencesFromResource(R.xml.preferences);      } OK, so now we've got an activity that will set preferences, and save them without the need to write custom save code. Let's throw together an activity to work with the saved preferences. Create a new layout called showpreferences.xml and give it three Textviews: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"     android:orientation="vertical"     android:layout_width="fill_parent"     android:layout_height="fill_parent"> <TextView   android:id="@+id/textview1"     android:layout_width="fill_parent"     android:layout_height="wrap_content"     android:text="textview1"/> <TextView   android:id="@+id/textview2"     android:layout_width="fill_parent"     android:layout_height="wrap_content"     android:text="textview2"/> <TextView   android:id="@+id/textview3"     android:layout_width="fill_parent"     android:layout_height="wrap_content"     android:text="textview3"/> </LinearLayout> Open up the ShowPrefs.java file and have it use that layout: setContentView(R.layout.showpreferences); Then add the following code to load the DefaultSharedPreferences and display them: SharedPreferences prefs = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this);    TextView text1 = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textview1); TextView text2 = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textview2); TextView text3 = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textview3);    text1.setText(new Boolean(prefs.getBoolean("checkboxPref", false)).toString()); text2.setText(prefs.getString("editTextPref", "<unset>"));; text3.setText(prefs.getString("listPref", "<unset>")); Fire up the application in the emulator and click the Edit Preferences button. Set various things, click the back button, then the Edit Preferences button again. Notice that your choices have been saved.   Now click the Show Preferences button, and you should see the results of what you set:   There are two more preference types that I did not include here: RingtonePreference - shows a radioGroup that lists your ringtones PreferenceScreen - allows you to embed a second preference screen inside the first - it opens up a new set of preferences when clicked

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  • SQL Server Editions and Integration Services

    The SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 product family has quite a few editions now, so what does this mean for SQL Server Integration Services? Starting from the bottom we have the free edition known as Express, and the entry level Workgroup edition, as well as the new Web edition. None of these three include the full SSIS product, but they do all include the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard, with access to basic data sources but nothing more, so for simple loading and extraction of data this should suffice. You will not be able to build packages though, this is just a one shot deal aimed at using the wizard on an ad-hoc basis. To get the full power of Integration Services you need to start with Standard edition. This includes the BI Development Studio, for building your own packages, and fully functional IDE integrated into Visual Studio. (You get the full VS 2005/2008 IDE with the product). All core functions will be available but with a restricted set of transformations and tasks. The SQL Server 2005 Features Comparison or Features Supported by the Editions of SQL Server 2008 describes standard edition as having basic transforms, compared to Enterprise which includes the advanced transforms. I think basic is a little harsh considering the power you get with Standard, but the advanced covers the truly ground-breaking capabilities of data mining, text mining and cleansing or fuzzy transforms. The power of performing these operations within your ETL pipeline should not be underestimated, but not all processes will require these capabilities, so it seems like a reasonable delineation. Thankfully there are no feature limitations or artificial governors within Standard compared to Enterprise. The same control flow and data flow engines underpin both editions, with the same configuration and deployment options allowing you to work seamlessly between environments and editions if using the common components. In fact there are no govenors at all in SSIS, so whilst the SQL Database engine is limited to 4 CPUs in Standard edition, SSIS is only limited by the base operating system. The advanced transforms only available with Enterprise edition: Data Mining Training Destination Data Mining Query Component Fuzzy Grouping Fuzzy Lookup Term Extraction Term Lookup Dimension Processing Destination Partition Processing Destination The advanced tasks only available with Enterprise edition: Data Mining Query Task So in summary, if you want SQL Server Integration Services, you need SQL Server Standard edition, and for the more advanced tasks and transforms you need SQL Server Enterprise edition. To recap, the answer to the often asked question is no, SQL Server Integration Services is not available in SQL Server Express or Workgroup editions.

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  • HttpContext.Items and Server.Transfer/Execute

    - by Rick Strahl
    A few days ago my buddy Ben Jones pointed out that he ran into a bug in the ScriptContainer control in the West Wind Web and Ajax Toolkit. The problem was basically that when a Server.Transfer call was applied the script container (and also various ClientScriptProxy script embedding routines) would potentially fail to load up the specified scripts. It turns out the problem is due to the fact that the various components in the toolkit use request specific singletons via a Current property. I use a static Current property tied to a Context.Items[] entry to handle this type of operation which looks something like this: /// <summary> /// Current instance of this class which should always be used to /// access this object. There are no public constructors to /// ensure the reference is used as a Singleton to further /// ensure that all scripts are written to the same clientscript /// manager. /// </summary> public static ClientScriptProxy Current { get { if (HttpContext.Current == null) return new ClientScriptProxy(); ClientScriptProxy proxy = null; if (HttpContext.Current.Items.Contains(STR_CONTEXTID)) proxy = HttpContext.Current.Items[STR_CONTEXTID] as ClientScriptProxy; else { proxy = new ClientScriptProxy(); HttpContext.Current.Items[STR_CONTEXTID] = proxy; } return proxy; } } The proxy is attached to a Context.Items[] item which makes the instance Request specific. This works perfectly fine in most situations EXCEPT when you’re dealing with Server.Transfer/Execute requests. Server.Transfer doesn’t cause Context.Items to be cleared so both the current transferred request and the original request’s Context.Items collection apply. For the ClientScriptProxy this causes a problem because script references are tracked on a per request basis in Context.Items to check for script duplication. Once a script is rendered an ID is written into the Context collection and so considered ‘rendered’: // No dupes - ref script include only once if (HttpContext.Current.Items.Contains( STR_SCRIPTITEM_IDENTITIFIER + fileId ) ) return; HttpContext.Current.Items.Add(STR_SCRIPTITEM_IDENTITIFIER + fileId, string.Empty); where the fileId is the script name or unique identifier. The problem is on the Transferred page the item will already exist in Context and so fail to render because it thinks the script has already rendered based on the Context item. Bummer. The workaround for this is simple once you know what’s going on, but in this case it was a bitch to track down because the context items are used in many places throughout this class. The trick is to determine when a request is transferred and then removing the specific keys. The first issue is to determine if a script is in a Trransfer or Execute call: if (HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler != HttpContext.Current.Handler) Context.Handler is the original handler and CurrentHandler is the actual currently executing handler that is running when a Transfer/Execute is active. You can also use Context.PreviousHandler to get the last handler and chain through the whole list of handlers applied if Transfer calls are nested (dog help us all for the person debugging that). For the ClientScriptProxy the full logic to check for a transfer and remove the code looks like this: /// <summary> /// Clears all the request specific context items which are script references /// and the script placement index. /// </summary> public void ClearContextItemsOnTransfer() { if (HttpContext.Current != null) { // Check for Server.Transfer/Execute calls - we need to clear out Context.Items if (HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler != HttpContext.Current.Handler) { List<string> Keys = HttpContext.Current.Items.Keys.Cast<string>().Where(s => s.StartsWith(STR_SCRIPTITEM_IDENTITIFIER) || s == STR_ScriptResourceIndex).ToList(); foreach (string key in Keys) { HttpContext.Current.Items.Remove(key); } } } } along with a small update to the Current property getter that sets a global flag to indicate whether the request was transferred: if (!proxy.IsTransferred && HttpContext.Current.Handler != HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler) { proxy.ClearContextItemsOnTransfer(); proxy.IsTransferred = true; } return proxy; I know this is pretty ugly, but it works and it’s actually minimal fuss without affecting the behavior of the rest of the class. Ben had a different solution that involved explicitly clearing out the Context items and replacing the collection with a manually maintained list of items which also works, but required changes through the code to make this work. In hindsight, it would have been better to use a single object that encapsulates all the ‘persisted’ values and store that object in Context instead of all these individual small morsels. Hindsight is always 20/20 though :-}. If possible use Page.Items ClientScriptProxy is a generic component that can be used from anywhere in ASP.NET, so there are various methods that are not Page specific on this component which is why I used Context.Items, rather than the Page.Items collection.Page.Items would be a better choice since it will sidestep the above Server.Transfer nightmares as the Page is reloaded completely and so any new Page gets a new Items collection. No fuss there. So for the ScriptContainer control, which has to live on the page the behavior is a little different. It is attached to Page.Items (since it’s a control): /// <summary> /// Returns a current instance of this control if an instance /// is already loaded on the page. Otherwise a new instance is /// created, added to the Form and returned. /// /// It's important this function is not called too early in the /// page cycle - it should not be called before Page.OnInit(). /// /// This property is the preferred way to get a reference to a /// ScriptContainer control that is either already on a page /// or needs to be created. Controls in particular should always /// use this property. /// </summary> public static ScriptContainer Current { get { // We need a context for this to work! if (HttpContext.Current == null) return null; Page page = HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler as Page; if (page == null) throw new InvalidOperationException(Resources.ERROR_ScriptContainer_OnlyWorks_With_PageBasedHandlers); ScriptContainer ctl = null; // Retrieve the current instance ctl = page.Items[STR_CONTEXTID] as ScriptContainer; if (ctl != null) return ctl; ctl = new ScriptContainer(); page.Form.Controls.Add(ctl); return ctl; } } The biggest issue with this approach is that you have to explicitly retrieve the page in the static Current property. Notice again the use of CurrentHandler (rather than Handler which was my original implementation) to ensure you get the latest page including the one that Server.Transfer fired. Server.Transfer and Server.Execute are Evil All that said – this fix is probably for the 2 people who are crazy enough to rely on Server.Transfer/Execute. :-} There are so many weird behavior problems with these commands that I avoid them at all costs. I don’t think I have a single application that uses either of these commands… Related Resources Full source of ClientScriptProxy.cs (repository) Part of the West Wind Web Toolkit Static Singletons for ASP.NET Controls Post © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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  • Running an intern program

    - by dotneteer
    This year I am running an unpaid internship program for high school students. I work for a small company. We have ideas for a few side projects but never have time to do them. So we experiment by making them intern projects. In return, we give these interns guidance to learn, personal attentions, and opportunities with real-world projects. A few years ago, I blogged about the idea of teaching kids to write application with no more than 6 hours of training. This time, I was able to reduce the instruction time to 4 hours and immediately put them into real work projects. When they encounter problems, I combine directions, pointer to various materials on w3school, Udacity, Codecademy and UTube, as well as encouraging them to  search for solutions with search engines. Now entering the third week, I am more than encouraged and feeling accomplished. Our the most senior intern, Christopher Chen, is a recent high school graduate and is heading to UC Berkeley to study computer science after the summer. He previously only had one year of Java experience through the AP computer science course but had no web development experience. Only 12 days into his internship, he has already gain advanced css skills with deeper understanding than more than half of the “senior” developers that I have ever worked with. I put him on a project to migrate an existing website to the Orchard content management system (CMS) with which I am new as well. We were able to teach each other and quickly gain advanced Orchard skills such as creating custom theme and modules. I felt very much a relationship similar to the those between professors and graduate students. On the other hand, I quite expect that I will lose him the next summer to companies like Google, Facebook or Microsoft. As a side note, Christopher and I will do a two part Orchard presentations together at the next SoCal code camp at UC San Diego July 27-28. The first part, “creating an Orchard website on Azure in 60 minutes”, is an introductory lecture and we will discuss how to create a website using Orchard without writing code. The 2nd part, “customizing Orchard websites without limit”, is an advanced lecture and we will discuss custom theme and module development with WebMatrix and Visual Studio.

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  • Grounded in Dublin

    - by Mike Dietrich
    Friday's hands-on workshop in the Oracle office in Dublin was quite good fun for everybody - except for Mick who has just recognized that his Ryanair flight back to Cork has been canceled (So I hope you've returned home well!) and me as my flights back to Munich via London City had been canceled as well. It's always good to have somebody in the workshop from Air Lingus so I've got hourly information what's going in in the Irish airspace (and now I know that the system dealing with such situations is an well prepared Oracle database which runs just like a switch watch - Thanks again for all your support!!! Was great to talk to you!!!). But to be honest, there are worse places to be grounded for a few days than Dublin. At least it gave me the chance to do something which I never had time enough before when visiting Oracle Ireland: a bit of sightseeing. When I've realized that nothing seems to move over the weekend I started organizing my travel back yesterday. It was no fun at all because there's no single system to book such a travel. Figuring out all possibilities and options going back to Munich was the first challange. Irish Ferries webpage was moaning with all the unexpected load (currently it's fully down). Hotel booking websites showed vacancies in Holyhead but didn't let me book. And calling them just reveiled that there are no rooms left. Haven't stayed overnight in a train station for quite a while ;-) The website of VirginTrains puzzled me with offering a seat at an enormous price for a train ride from Holyhead to London Euston (Thanks, Sir Richard Branson!) just to tell me after I booked a ticket that there are no seats left (but I traveled German railsways a few weeks ago from Düsseldorf to Frankfurt sitting on the floor as well). Eurostar's website let me choose tickets through the tunnel to tell me in the final step that the ticket cannot be confirmed as there are no seats left - but the next check again showed bookable seats - must be a database from some other vendor which has no proper row level locking ... hm ...?! Finally the TGV page for the speed train to Stuttgart and then the ICE to Munich was not allowing searches for quite a while - but ultimately ... after 4.5 hours of searching, waiting, sending credit card information again and again ... So if you have a few spare fingers please keep them crossed :-) And good luck to all my colleagues traveling back from the Exadata training in Berlin. As Mike Appleyard, my colleague from the UK presales team wrote: "Dublin and Berlin aren't too bad a place to get stuck... ;-)"

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  • The Windows Browser Ballot Screen Offers Web Browser Choice to European Users

    - by Matthew Guay
    Since March, our friends across the pond in Europe get to decide which browser they want to install with their Windows OS. Today we thought we would take a look at the ballot choices, some are well known, and others you may not have heard of. Windows users in European countries should start seeing the so called “Browser Ballot Screen” after installing the Windows Update KB976002 (link below). The browser ballot offers a dozen different browsers, including some you’ve likely never heard of.  They each have some unique features, and are all free, and here we take a quick look at each of them. Internet Explorer 8 Internet Explorer is the world’s most used web browser, as it’s bundled with Windows. It also includes several unique features, including Accelerators that make it easy to search or find a map of a location, and InPrivate filtering to directly control what sites can get personal information.  Additionally, it offers great integration with Windows Touch and the new taskbar in Windows 7. IE 8 runs on Windows XP and newer, and is bundled with Windows 7. Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Firefox is the most popular browser other than Internet Explorer.  It is the modern descendant of Netscape, and is loved by web developers for its adherence to web standards, openness, and expandability.  It offers thousands of Add-ons and themes to let you customize it to fit your preferences. The most recent version has added Personas, which are quick, lightweight themes to let you personalize the look your browser. It’s open source, and runs on all modern versions of Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Of course thanks to Asian Angel, our resident browser expert, you can check out several articles regarding this popular IE alternative. Google Chrome 4 Google Chrome has gained an impressive amount of market share during its short time in the market. It offers a minimalistic interface and fast speeds with intensive web applications. The address bar is also a search bar, so you can enter a search query or web address and quickly get the information you need. With version 4 you can add a growing number of extensions, personalize it with a variety of stylish themes, and automatically translate foreign websites into your own language. Opera 10.50 Although Opera has been around for over a decade, relatively few users have used it. With the new 10.50 release, Opera has many unique features packed in a sleek UI. It integrates great with Aero and the Windows 7 taskbar, and lets you preview the contents of your websites in the tab bar. It also includes Opera Unite, a small personal web server to make file sharing easy, Opera Turbo to speed up your internet when the connection is slow, and Opera Link to keep all your copies of Opera in sync. It’s a popular browser on many mobile devices, and version 10.50 has a lot of enhancements. Apple Safari 4 Safari is the default browser in Mac OS X, and starting with version 3 it has been available for Windows as well. It’s based on Webkit, the popular new rendering engine that provides great speed and standards compatibility.  Safari 4 lets you browse your browsing history in a unique Coverflow interface, and shows your Top Sites in a fancy, 3D interface.  It’s also great for viewing mobile websites for the iPhone and other mobile devices through Developer Tools. Flock 2.5 Based on the popular Firefox core, Flock brings a multitude of social features to your browsing experience. You can view the latest YouTube videos, Flickr pictures, update your favorite social network, and keep up with your webmail thanks to It’s integration with a wide variety of services. You can even post to your blog through the integrated blog editor. If your time online is mostly spent in social services, this may be a browser you want to check out. Maxthon 2.5 Maxthon is a unique browser that builds on Internet Explorer to bring more features with IE’s rendering. Formerly known as MyIE2, Maxthon was popular for bringing tabbed browsing with IE rendering during the days of IE 6.  Today Maxthon supports a wide range of plugins and skins, so you can customize it however you want. It includes mouse gestures, a web accelerator to speed up pokey internet connections, a content blocker to remove unwanted content from sites, an online account to backup your favorites, and a nice download manager. Avant Browser Another nice browser based on Internet Explorer, Avant brings a wide variety of features in a nice brushed-metal interface. It includes an integrated AutoFill for forms, mouse gestures, customizable skins, and privacy protection features. It also includes a Flash blocker that will only load flash in webpages when you select them. You can also integrate Avant with an online account to store your bookmarks, feeds, settings and passwords online. Sleipnir Sleipnir is a customizable browser meant for advance users that is quite popular in Japan. It’s built on the Trident engine and virtually every aspect of is customizable unlike Internet Explorer.   FlashPeak SlimBrowser SlimBrowser from FlashPeak incorporates a lot of features like Popup Killer, Auto Login, site filtering and more. It’s based on Internet Explorer but offers a lot more customizable options out of the box.   K-meleon This basic browser is light on system resources and based on the Gecko engine. It’s been in development for years on SourceForge, and if you like to tweak virtually any aspect of your browser, this might be a good choice for you.   GreenBrowser GreenBrowser is based on Internet Explorer and is available in several languages. It has a large amount of features out of the box and is light on system resources.   Conclusion The European Union asked for more choices in the web browser they could choose from when installing Windows, and with the Browser Ballot Screen, they certainly get a variety to choose from.  If you’ve tried out some of the lesser known browsers, or think some important ones have been left out, leave a comment and tell us about it. Learn More About the Browser Ballot Screen and Download Alternatives to IE Windows Update KB976002 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Set the Default Browser on Ubuntu From the Command LineQuick Tip: Empty Internet Explorer 7 Cache when Browser is ClosedView Hidden Files and Folders in Ubuntu File BrowserSet the Default Browser and Email Client in UbuntuAccess Multiple Browsers from Firefox with Browser View Plus TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Play Music in Chrome by Simply Dragging a File 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox) OldTvShows.org – Find episodes of Hitchcock, Soaps, Game Shows and more

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  • Michael Crump&rsquo;s notes for 70-563 PRO &ndash; Designing and Developing Windows Applications usi

    - by mbcrump
    TIME TO GO PRO! This is my notes for 70-563 PRO – Designing and Developing Windows Applications using .NET Framework 3.5 I created it using several resources (various certification web sites, msdn, official ms 70-548 book). The reason that I created this review is because a) I am taking the exam. b) MS did not create a book for this exam. Use the(MS 70-548)book. c) To make sure I am familiar with each before the exam. I hope that it provides a good start for your own notes. I hope that someone finds this useful. At least, it will give you a starting point of what to expect to know on the PRO exam. Also, for those wondering, the PRO exam does contains very little code. It is basically all theory. 1. Validation Controls – How to prevent users from entering invalid data on forms. (MaskedTextBox control and RegEx) 2. ServiceController – used to start and control the behavior of existing services. 3. User Feedback (know winforms Status Bar, Tool Tips, Color, Error Provider, Context-Sensitive and Accessibility) 4. Specific (derived) exceptions must be handled before general (base class) exceptions. By moving the exception handling for the base type Exception to after exception handling of ArgumentNullException, all ArgumentNullException thrown by the Helper method will be caught and logged correctly. 5. A heartbeat method is a method exposed by a Web service that allows external applications to check on the status of the service. 6. New users must master key tasks quickly. Giving these tasks context and appropriate detail will help. However, advanced users will demand quicker paths. Shortcuts, accelerators, or toolbar buttons will speed things along for the advanced user. 7. MSBuild uses project files to instruct the build engine what to build and how to build it. MSBuild project files are XML files that adhere to the MSBuild XML schema. The MSBuild project files contain complete file, build action, and dependency information for each individual projects. 8. Evaluating whether or not to fix a bug involves a triage process. You must identify the bug's impact, set the priority, categorize it, and assign a developer. Many times the person doing the triage work will assign the bug to a developer for further investigation. In fact, the workflow for the bug work item inside of Team System supports this step. Developers are often asked to assess the impact of a given bug. This assessment helps the person doing the triage make a decision on how to proceed. When assessing the impact of a bug, you should consider time and resources to fix it, bug risk, and impacts of the bug. 9. In large projects it is generally impossible and unfeasible to fix all bugs because of the impact on schedule and budget. 10. Code reviews should be conducted by a technical lead or a technical peer. 11. Testing Applications 12. WCF Services – application state 13. SQL Server 2005 / 2008 Express Edition – reliable storage of data / Microsoft SQL Server 3.5 Compact Database– used for client computers to retrieve and save data from a shared location. 14. SQL Server 2008 Compact Edition – used for minimum possible memory and can synchronize data with a corporate SQL Server 2008 Database. Supports offline user and minimum dependency on external components. 15. MDI and SDI Forms (specifically IsMDIContainer) 16. GUID – in the case of data warehousing, it is important to define unique keys. 17. Encrypting / Security Data 18. Understanding of Isolated Storage/Proper location to store items 19. LINQ to SQL 20. Multithreaded access 21. ADO.NET Entity Framework model 22. Marshal.ReleaseComObject 23. Common User Interface Layout (ComboBox, ListBox, Listview, MaskedTextBox, TextBox, RichTextBox, SplitContainer, TableLayoutPanel, TabControl) 24. DataSets Class - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.dataset%28VS.71%29.aspx 25. SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (SSRS) 26. SystemIcons.Shield (Vista UAC) 27. Leverging stored procedures to perform data manipulation for a database schema that can change. 28. DataContext 29. Microsoft Windows Installer Packages, ClickOnce(bootstrapping features), XCopy. 30. Client Application Services – will authenticate users by using the same data source as a ASP.NET web application. 31. SQL Server 2008 Caching 32. StringBuilder 33. Accessibility Guidelines for Windows Applications http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms228004.aspx 34. Logging erros 35. Testing performance related issues. 36. Role Based Security, GenericIdentity and GenericPrincipal 37. System.Net.CookieContainer will store session data for webapps (see isolated storage for winforms) 38. .NET CLR Profiler tool will identify objects that cause performance issues. 39. ADO.NET Synchronization (SyncGroup) 40. Globalization - CultureInfo 41. IDisposable Interface- reports on several questions relating to this. 42. Adding timestamps to determine whether data has changed or not. 43. Converting applications to .NET Framework 3.5 44. MicrosoftReportViewer 45. Composite Controls 46. Windows Vista KNOWN folders. 47. Microsoft Sync Framework 48. TypeConverter -Provides a unified way of converting types of values to other types, as well as for accessing standard values and sub properties. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.componentmodel.typeconverter.aspx 49. Concurrency control mechanisms The main categories of concurrency control mechanisms are: Optimistic - Delay the checking of whether a transaction meets the isolation rules (e.g., serializability and recoverability) until its end, without blocking any of its (read, write) operations, and then abort a transaction, if the desired rules are violated. Pessimistic - Block operations of a transaction, if they may cause violation of the rules. Semi-optimistic - Block operations in some situations, and do not block in other situations, while delaying rules checking to transaction's end, as done with optimistic. 50. AutoResetEvent 51. Microsoft Messaging Queue (MSMQ) 4.0 52. Bulk imports 53. KeyDown event of controls 54. WPF UI components 55. UI process layer 56. GAC (installing, removing and queuing) 57. Use a local database cache to reduce the network bandwidth used by applications. 58. Sound can easily be annoying and distracting to users, so use it judiciously. Always give users the option to turn sound off. Because a user might have sound off, never convey important information through sound alone.

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  • Q&amp;A: Can you develop for the Windows Azure Platform using Windows XP?

    - by Eric Nelson
    This question has come up several times recently as we take several hundred UK developers through 6 Weeks of Windows Azure training (sorry – we are full). Short answer: In the main, yes Longer answer: The question is sparked by the requirements as stated on the Windows Azure SDK download page. Namely: Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7; Windows Vista; Windows Vista 64-bit Editions Service Pack 1; Windows Vista Business; Windows Vista Business 64-bit edition; Windows Vista Enterprise; Windows Vista Enterprise 64-bit edition; Windows Vista Home Premium; Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit edition; Windows Vista Service Pack 1; Windows Vista Service Pack 2; Windows Vista Ultimate; Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition Notice there is no mention of Windows XP. However things are not quite that simple. The Windows Azure Platform consists of three released technologies Windows Azure SQL Azure Windows Azure platform AppFabric The Windows Azure SDK is only for one of the three technologies, Windows Azure. What about SQL Azure and AppFabric? Well it turns out that you can develop for both of these technologies just fine with Windows XP: SQL Azure development is really just SQL Server development with a few gotchas – and for local development you can simply use SQL Server 2008 R2 Express (other versions will also work). AppFabric also has no local simulation environment and the SDK will install fine on Windows XP (SDK download) Actually it is also possible to do Windows Azure development on Windows XP if you are willing to always work directly against the real Azure cloud running in Microsoft datacentres. However in practice this would be painful and time consuming, hence why the Windows Azure SDK installs a local simulation environment. Therefore if you want to develop for Windows Azure I would recommend you either upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 or… you use a virtual machine running Windows 7. If this is a temporary requirement, then you could consider building a virtual machine using the Windows 7 Enterprise 90 day eval. Or you could download a pre-configured VHD – but I can’t quite find the link for a Windows 7 VHD. Pointers welcomed. Thanks.

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  • Adding Volcanos and Options - Earthquake Locator, part 2

    - by Bobby Diaz
    Since volcanos are often associated with earthquakes, and vice versa, I decided to show recent volcanic activity on the Earthquake Locator map.  I am pulling the data from a website created for a joint project between the Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program and the US Geological Survey's Volcano Hazards Program, found here.  They provide a Weekly Volcanic Activity Report as an RSS feed.   I started implementing this new functionality by creating a new Volcano entity in the domain model and adding the following to the EarthquakeService class (I also factored out the common reading/parsing helper methods to a separate FeedReader class that can be used by multiple domain service classes):           private static readonly string VolcanoFeedUrl =             ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["VolcanoFeedUrl"];           /// <summary>         /// Gets the volcano data for the previous week.         /// </summary>         /// <returns>A queryable collection of <see cref="Volcano"/> objects.</returns>         public IQueryable<Volcano> GetVolcanos()         {             var feed = FeedReader.Load(VolcanoFeedUrl);             var list = new List<Volcano>();               if ( feed != null )             {                 foreach ( var item in feed.Items )                 {                     var quake = CreateVolcano(item);                     if ( quake != null )                     {                         list.Add(quake);                     }                 }             }               return list.AsQueryable();         }           /// <summary>         /// Creates a <see cref="Volcano"/> object for each item in the RSS feed.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="item">The RSS item.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         private Volcano CreateVolcano(SyndicationItem item)         {             Volcano volcano = null;             string title = item.Title.Text;             string desc = item.Summary.Text;             double? latitude = null;             double? longitude = null;               FeedReader.GetGeoRssPoint(item, out latitude, out longitude);               if ( !String.IsNullOrEmpty(title) )             {                 title = title.Substring(0, title.IndexOf('-'));             }             if ( !String.IsNullOrEmpty(desc) )             {                 desc = String.Join("\n\n", desc                         .Replace("<p>", "")                         .Split(                             new string[] { "</p>" },                             StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)                         .Select(s => s.Trim())                         .ToArray())                         .Trim();             }               if ( latitude != null && longitude != null )             {                 volcano = new Volcano()                 {                     Id = item.Id,                     Title = title,                     Description = desc,                     Url = item.Links.Select(l => l.Uri.OriginalString).FirstOrDefault(),                     Latitude = latitude.GetValueOrDefault(),                     Longitude = longitude.GetValueOrDefault()                 };             }               return volcano;         } I then added the corresponding LoadVolcanos() method and Volcanos collection to the EarthquakeViewModel class in much the same way I did with the Earthquakes in my previous article in this series. Now that I am starting to add more information to the map, I wanted to give the user some options as to what is displayed and allowing them to choose what gets turned off.  I have updated the MainPage.xaml to look like this:   <UserControl x:Class="EarthquakeLocator.MainPage"     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"     xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"     xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"     xmlns:basic="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls;assembly=System.Windows.Controls"     xmlns:bing="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Maps.MapControl;assembly=Microsoft.Maps.MapControl"     xmlns:vm="clr-namespace:EarthquakeLocator.ViewModel"     mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="640" d:DesignHeight="480" >     <UserControl.Resources>         <DataTemplate x:Key="EarthquakeTemplate">             <Ellipse Fill="Red" Stroke="Black" StrokeThickness="1"                      Width="{Binding Size}" Height="{Binding Size}"                      bing:MapLayer.Position="{Binding Location}"                      bing:MapLayer.PositionOrigin="Center">                 <ToolTipService.ToolTip>                     <StackPanel>                         <TextBlock Text="{Binding Title}" FontSize="14" FontWeight="Bold" />                         <TextBlock Text="{Binding UtcTime}" />                         <TextBlock Text="{Binding LocalTime}" />                         <TextBlock Text="{Binding DepthDesc}" />                     </StackPanel>                 </ToolTipService.ToolTip>             </Ellipse>         </DataTemplate>           <DataTemplate x:Key="VolcanoTemplate">             <Polygon Fill="Gold" Stroke="Black" StrokeThickness="1" Points="0,10 5,0 10,10"                      bing:MapLayer.Position="{Binding Location}"                      bing:MapLayer.PositionOrigin="Center"                      MouseLeftButtonUp="Volcano_MouseLeftButtonUp">                 <ToolTipService.ToolTip>                     <StackPanel>                         <TextBlock Text="{Binding Title}" FontSize="14" FontWeight="Bold" />                         <TextBlock Text="Click icon for more information..." />                     </StackPanel>                 </ToolTipService.ToolTip>             </Polygon>         </DataTemplate>     </UserControl.Resources>       <UserControl.DataContext>         <vm:EarthquakeViewModel AutoLoadData="True" />     </UserControl.DataContext>       <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">           <bing:Map x:Name="map" CredentialsProvider="--Your-Bing-Maps-Key--"                   Center="{Binding MapCenter, Mode=TwoWay}"                   ZoomLevel="{Binding ZoomLevel, Mode=TwoWay}">               <bing:MapItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Earthquakes}"                                   ItemTemplate="{StaticResource EarthquakeTemplate}" />               <bing:MapItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Volcanos}"                                   ItemTemplate="{StaticResource VolcanoTemplate}" />         </bing:Map>           <basic:TabControl x:Name="tabs" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" MaxHeight="25" Opacity="0.7">             <basic:TabItem Margin="90,0,-90,0" MouseLeftButtonUp="TabItem_MouseLeftButtonUp">                 <basic:TabItem.Header>                     <TextBlock x:Name="txtHeader" Text="Options"                                FontSize="13" FontWeight="Bold" />                 </basic:TabItem.Header>                   <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">                     <TextBlock Text="Earthquakes:" FontWeight="Bold" Margin="3" />                     <StackPanel Margin="3">                         <CheckBox Content=" &lt; 4.0"                                   IsChecked="{Binding ShowLt4, Mode=TwoWay}" />                         <CheckBox Content="4.0 - 4.9"                                   IsChecked="{Binding Show4s, Mode=TwoWay}" />                         <CheckBox Content="5.0 - 5.9"                                   IsChecked="{Binding Show5s, Mode=TwoWay}" />                     </StackPanel>                       <StackPanel Margin="10,3,3,3">                         <CheckBox Content="6.0 - 6.9"                                   IsChecked="{Binding Show6s, Mode=TwoWay}" />                         <CheckBox Content="7.0 - 7.9"                                   IsChecked="{Binding Show7s, Mode=TwoWay}" />                         <CheckBox Content="8.0 +"                                   IsChecked="{Binding ShowGe8, Mode=TwoWay}" />                     </StackPanel>                       <TextBlock Text="Other:" FontWeight="Bold" Margin="50,3,3,3" />                     <StackPanel Margin="3">                         <CheckBox Content="Volcanos"                                   IsChecked="{Binding ShowVolcanos, Mode=TwoWay}" />                     </StackPanel>                 </StackPanel>               </basic:TabItem>         </basic:TabControl>       </Grid> </UserControl> Notice that I added a VolcanoTemplate that uses a triangle-shaped Polygon to represent the Volcano locations, and I also added a second <bing:MapItemsControl /> tag to the map to bind to the Volcanos collection.  The TabControl found below the map houses the options panel that will present the user with several checkboxes so they can filter the different points based on type and other properties (i.e. Magnitude).  Initially, the TabItem is collapsed to reduce it's footprint, but the screen shot below shows the options panel expanded to reveal the available settings:     I have updated the Source Code and Live Demo to include these new features.   Happy Mapping!

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  • Renewed as MVP

    - by Sahil Malik
    Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). It is with great humbleness and honor that I accept Microsoft’s MVP award for 2010. This will be my .. I forget how many years, as an MVP. So suffice to say, I was a lot younger when I first got the MVP award, but also the excitement never dies. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still young, foolish and weird :). (and good looking, might I add) I’d like to share a few things with you on what I have learnt being a part of this very prestigious program that I am so unworthy of. Never aim to be an MVP. Let it be a consequence of what you already are. Always be down to earth, just because you’re an MVP doesn’t mean you’re better than anyone else. The biggest reward of the MVP program, yes much bigger than the free top notch MSDN subscription, is the amazing interaction you will have with other fellow MVPs, and incredibly smart people in the community in general. Get involved in the community, for your own sake! You will learn so much from your peers, it is a very very rewarding experience. Learn, Learn and Learn! Never under estimate the power of knowledge. Both technical and otherwise. I thank each one of you for all the attention you have given me over the past many years. And a very special thanks to my MVP lead, Melissa Travers, and my previous MVP lead Rafael Munoz (who isn’t with Microsoft anymore, but I am sure is kicking butt wherever he is). We are truly entering a very very exciting time in the technology space. Both Google and Apple are challenging Microsoft, forcing Microsoft to innovate at a pace like never before. Microsoft is coming out with an incredible amount of good, new and exciting stuff. Windows Mobile 7, Azure, .NET 4.0, Silverlight 4.0, IE9, and of course SharePoint 2010. The level of innovation in the tech industry is simply unprecedented. A truly exciting time for anyone who lives, breathes, sleeps and dreams of technology even when awake! (Like me!) As you know, I’ve been working on my SP2010 book lately. I’m happy to also inform that the book is DONE. WOOHOO!! :). So this means, I’ll have more time to blog, and cause more trouble in general. Once again! THANK YOU! Comment on the article ....

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  • Cloud Based Load Testing Using TF Service &amp; VS 2013

    - by Tarun Arora [Microsoft MVP]
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TarunArora/archive/2013/06/30/cloud-based-load-testing-using-tf-service-amp-vs-2013.aspx One of the new features announced as part of the Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate Preview is ‘Cloud Based Load Testing’. In this blog post I’ll walk you through, What is Cloud Based Load Testing? How have I been using this feature? – Success story! Where can you find more resources on this feature? What is Cloud Based Load Testing? It goes without saying that performance testing your application not only gives you the confidence that the application will work under heavy levels of stress but also gives you the ability to test how scalable the architecture of your application is. It is important to know how much is too much for your application! Working with various clients in the industry I have realized that the biggest barriers in Load Testing & Performance Testing adoption are, High infrastructure and administration cost that comes with this phase of testing Time taken to procure & set up the test infrastructure Finding use for this infrastructure investment after completion of testing Is cloud the answer? 100% Visual Studio Compatible Scalable and Realistic Start testing in < 2 minutes Intuitive Pay only for what you need Use existing on premise tests on cloud There are a lot of vendors out there offering Cloud Based Load Testing, to name a few, Load Storm Soasta Blaze Meter Blitz And others… The question you may want to ask is, why should you go with Microsoft’s Cloud based Load Test offering. If you are a Microsoft shop or already have investments in Microsoft technologies, you’ll see great benefit in the natural integration this offers with existing Microsoft products such as Visual Studio and Windows Azure. For example, your existing Web tests authored in Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2012 will run on the cloud without requiring any modifications what so ever. Microsoft’s cloud test rig also supports API based testing, for example, if you are building a WPF application which consumes WCF services, you can write unit tests to invoke the WCF service, these tests can be run on the cloud test rig and loaded with ‘N’ concurrent users for performance testing. If you have your assets already hosted in the Azure and possibly in the same data centre as the Cloud test rig, your Azure app will not incur a usage cost because of the generated traffic since the traffic is coming from the same data centre. The licensing or pricing information on Microsoft’s cloud based Load test service is yet to be announced, but I would expect this to be priced attractively to match the market competition.   The only additional configuration required for running load tests on Microsoft Cloud based Load Tests service is to select the Test run location as Run tests using Visual Studio Team Foundation Service, How have I been using Microsoft’s Cloud based Load Test Service? I have been part of the Microsoft Cloud Based Load Test Service advisory council for the last 7 months. This gave the opportunity to see the product shape up from concept to working solution. I was also the first person outside of Microsoft to try this offering out. This gave me the opportunity to test real world application at various clients using the Microsoft Load Test Service and provide real world feedback to the Microsoft product team. One of the most recent systems I tested using the Load Test Service has been an insurance quote generation engine. This insurance quote generation engine is,   hosted in Windows Azure expected to get quote requests from across the globe expected to handle 5 Million quote requests in a day (not clear how this load will be distributed across the day) There was no way, I could simulate such kind of load from on premise without standing up additional hardware. But Microsoft’s Cloud based Load Test service allowed me to test my key performance testing scenarios, i.e. Simulate expected Load, Endurance Testing, Threshold Testing and Testing for Latency. Simulating expected load: approach to devising a load pattern My approach to devising a load test pattern has been to run the test scenario with 1 user to figure out the response time. Then work out how many users are required to reach the target load. So, for example, to invoke 1 quote from the quote engine software takes 0.5 seconds. Now if you do the math,   1 quote request by 1 user = 0.5 seconds   quotes generated by 1 user in 24 hour = 1 * (((2 * 60) * 60) * 24) = 172,800   quotes generated by 30 users in 24 hours = 172,800 * 30 =  5,184,000 This was a very simple example, if your application requires more concurrent users to test scenario’s such as caching, etc then you can devise your own load pattern, some examples of load test patterns can be found here.  Endurance Testing To test for endurance, I loaded the quote generation engine with an expected fixed user load and ran the test for very long duration such as over 48 hours and observed the affect of the long running test on the Azure infrastructure. Currently Microsoft Load Test service does not support metrics from the machine under test. I used Azure diagnostics to begin with, but later started using Cerebrata Azure Diagnostics Manager to capture the metrics of the machine under test. Threshold Testing To figure out how much user load the application could cope with before falling on its belly, I opted to step load the quote generation engine by incrementing user load with different variations of incremental user load per minute till the application crashed out and forced an IIS reset. Testing for Latency Currently the Microsoft Load Test service does not support generating geographically distributed load, I however, deployed the insurance quote generation engine in different Azure data centres and ran the same set of performance tests to measure for latency. Because I could compare load test results from different runs by exporting the results to excel (this feature is provided out of the box right from Visual Studio 2010) I could see the different in response times. More resources on Microsoft Cloud based Load Test Service A few important links to get you started, Download Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 Preview Getting started guide for load testing using Team Foundation Service Troubleshooting guide for FAQs and known issues Team Foundation Service forum for questions and support Detailed demo and presentation (link to Tech-Ed session recording) Detailed demo and presentation (link to Build session recording) There a few limits on the usage of Microsoft Cloud based Load Test service that you can read about here. If you have any feedback on Microsoft Cloud based Load Test service, feel free to share it with the product team via the Visual Studio User Voice forum. I hope you found this useful. Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Stay tuned!

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  • Facebook Sponsored Results: Is It Getting Results?

    - by Mike Stiles
    Social marketers who like to focus on the paid aspect of the paid/earned hybrid Facebook represents may want to keep themselves aware of how the network’s new Sponsored Results ad product is performing. The ads, which appear when a user conducts a search from the Facebook search bar, have only been around a week or so. But the first statistics coming out of them are not bad. Marketer Nanigans says click-through rates on the Sponsored Results have been nearly 23 times better than regular Facebook ads. Some click-through rates have even gone over 3%. Just to give you some perspective, a TechCrunch article points out that’s the same kind of click-through rates that were being enjoyed during the go-go dot com boom of the 90’s. The average across the Internet in its entirety is now somewhere around .3% on a good day, so a 3% number should be enough to raise an eyebrow. Plus the cost-per-click price is turning up 78% lower than regular Facebook ads, so that should raise the other eyebrow. Marketers have gotten pretty used to being able to buy ads against certain keywords. Most any digital property worth its salt that sells ads offers this, and so does Facebook with its Sponsored Results product. But the unique prize Facebook brings to the table is the ability to also buy based on demographic and interest information gleaned from Facebook user profiles. With almost 950 million logging in, this is exactly the kind of leveraging of those users conventional wisdom says is necessary for Facebook to deliver on its amazing potential. So how does the Facebook user fit into this? Notorious for finding out exactly where sponsored marketing messages are appearing and training their eyeballs to avoid those areas, will the Facebook user reject these Sponsored Results? Well, Facebook may have found an area in addition to the News Feed where paid elements can’t be avoided and will be tolerated. If users want to read their News Feed, and they do, they’re going to see sponsored posts. Likewise, if they want to search for friends or Pages, and they do, they’re going to see Sponsored Results. The paid results are clearly marked as such. As long as their organic search results are not tainted or compromised, they will continue using search. But something more is going on. The early click-through rate numbers say not only do users not mind seeing these Sponsored Results, they’re finding them relevant enough to click on. And once they click, they seem to be liking what they find, with a reported 14% higher install rate than Marketplace Ads. It’s early, and obviously the jury is still out. But this is a new social paid marketing opportunity that’s well worth keeping an eye on, and that may wind up hitting the trifecta of being effective for the platform, the consumer, and the marketer.

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  • Creating a multi-column rollover image gallery with HTML 5

    - by nikolaosk
    I know it has been a while since I blogged about HTML 5. I have two posts in this blog about HTML 5. You can find them here and here.I am creating a small content website (only text,images and a contact form) for a friend of mine.He wanted to create a rollover gallery.The whole concept is that we have some small thumbnails on a page, the user hovers over them and they appear enlarged on a designated container/placeholder on a page. I am trying not to use Javascript scripts when I am using effects on a web page and this is what I will be doing in this post.  Well some people will say that HTML 5 is not supported in all browsers. That is true but most of the modern browsers support most of its recommendations. For people who still use IE6 some hacks must be devised.Well to be totally honest I cannot understand why anyone at this day and time is using IE 6.0.That really is beyond me.Well, the point of having a web browser is to be able to ENJOY the great experience that the WE? offers today.  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. 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.For the people who are not convinced yet that they should invest time and resources on becoming experts on HTML 5 I should point out that HTML 5 websites will be ranked higher than others. Search engines will be able to locate better the content of our site and its relevance/importance since it is using semantic tags. Let's move now to the actual hands-on example. In this case (since I am mad Liverpool supporter) I will create a rollover image gallery of Liverpool F.C legends. I create a folder in my desktop. I name it Liverpool Gallery.Then I create two subfolders in it, large-images (I place the large images in there) and thumbs (I place the small images in there).Then I create an empty .html file called LiverpoolLegends.html and an empty .css file called style.css.Please have a look at the HTML Markup that I typed in my fancy editor package below<!doctype html><html lang="en"><head><title>Liverpool Legends Gallery</title><meta charset="utf-8"><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css"></head><body><header><h1>A page dedicated to Liverpool Legends</h1><h2>Do hover over the images with the mouse to see the full picture</h2></header><ul id="column1"><li><a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx?SelectedNavItem=Posts§ionid=1153&postid=8927200#"><img src="thumbs/john-barnes.jpg" alt=""><img class="large" src="large-images/john-barnes-large.jpg" alt=""></a></li><li><a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx?SelectedNavItem=Posts§ionid=1153&postid=8927200#"><img src="thumbs/ian-rush.jpg" alt=""><img class="large" src="large-images/ian-rush-large.jpg" alt=""></a></li><li><a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx?SelectedNavItem=Posts§ionid=1153&postid=8927200#"><img src="thumbs/graeme-souness.jpg" alt=""><img class="large" src="large-images/graeme-souness-large.jpg" alt=""></a></li></ul><ul id="column2"><li><a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx?SelectedNavItem=Posts§ionid=1153&postid=8927200#"><img src="thumbs/steven-gerrard.jpg" alt=""><img class="large" src="large-images/steven-gerrard-large.jpg" alt=""></a></li><li><a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx?SelectedNavItem=Posts§ionid=1153&postid=8927200#"><img src="thumbs/kenny-dalglish.jpg" alt=""><img class="large" src="large-images/kenny-dalglish-large.jpg" alt=""></a></li><li><a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx?SelectedNavItem=Posts§ionid=1153&postid=8927200#"><img src="thumbs/robbie-fowler.jpg" alt=""><img class="large" src="large-images/robbie-fowler-large.jpg" alt=""></a></li></ul><ul id="column3"><li><a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx?SelectedNavItem=Posts§ionid=1153&postid=8927200#"><img src="thumbs/alan-hansen.jpg" alt=""><img class="large" src="large-images/alan-hansen-large.jpg" alt=""></a></li><li><a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx?SelectedNavItem=Posts§ionid=1153&postid=8927200#"><img src="thumbs/michael-owen.jpg" alt=""><img class="large" src="large-images/michael-owen-large.jpg" alt=""></a></li></ul></body></html> It is very easy to follow the markup. Please have a look at the new doctype and the new semantic tag <header>. I have 3 columns and I place my images in there.There is a class called "large".I will use this class in my CSS code to hide the large image when the mouse is not on (hover) an image Make sure you validate your HTML 5 page in the validator found hereHave a look at the CSS code below that makes it all happen.img { border:none;}#column1 { position: absolute; top: 30; left: 100; }li { margin: 15px; list-style-type:none;}#column1 a img.large {  position: absolute; top: 0; left:700px; visibility: hidden;}#column1 a:hover { background: white;}#column1 a:hover img.large { visibility:visible;}#column2 { position: absolute; top: 30; left: 195px; }li { margin: 5px; list-style-type:none;}#column2 a img.large { position: absolute; top: 0; left:510px; margin-left:0; visibility: hidden;}#column2 a:hover { background: white;}#column2 a:hover img.large { visibility:visible;}#column3 { position: absolute; top: 30; left: 400px; width:108px;}li { margin: 5px; list-style-type:none;}#column3 a img.large { width: 260px; height:260px; position: absolute; top: 0; left:315px; margin-left:0; visibility: hidden;}#column3 a:hover { background: white;}#column3 a:hover img.large { visibility:visible;}?n the first line of the CSS code I set the images to have no border.Then I place the first column in the page and then remove the bullets from the list elements.Then I use the large CSS class to create a position for the large image and hide it.Finally when the hover event takes place I make the image visible.I repeat the process for the next two columns. I have tested the page with IE 10 and the latest versions of Opera,Chrome and Firefox.Feel free to style your HTML 5 gallery any way you want through the magic of CSS.I did not bother adding background colors and borders because that was beyond the scope of this post. Hope it helps!!!!

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  • Cost justification for buying a 32GB superfast Alienware M18x with a price tag of around £5K ($10K)

    - by tonyrogerson
    When considering buying a laptop that’s going to cost me around £5,000 I really need to justify the purchase from a business perspective; my Lenovo W700 has served me very well for the last 2 years, it’s an extremely good machine and as solid as a rock (and as heavy), alas though it is limited to the 8GB. As SQL Server 2012 approaches and with my interest in working in the Business Intelligence space over the next year or two it is clear I need a powerful machine that I can run a full infrastructure though virtualised. My requirements For High Availability / Disaster Recovery research and demonstration Machine for a domain controller Four machines in a shared disk cluster (SQL Server Clustering active – active etc.) Five  machines in a file share cluster (SQL Server Availability Groups) For Business Intelligence research and demonstration Not entirely sure how many machine I want to run here, but it would be to cover the entire BI stack in an enterprise setting, sharepoint, sql server etc. For Big Data Research I have a fondness for the NoSQL approach to scalability and dealing with large volumes so I need a number of machines to research VoltDB, Hadoop etc. As you can see the requirements for a SQL Server consultant to service their clients well is considerable; will 8GB suffice, alas no, it will no longer do. I’m a very strong believer that in order to do your job well you must expense it, short cuts only cost you time, waiting 5 minutes instead of an hour for something to run not only saves me time but my clients time, I can do things quicker and more importantly I can demonstrate concepts. My W700 with the 8GB of RAM and SSD’s cost me around £3.5K two years ago, to be honest I’ve not got the full use I wanted out of it but the machine has had the power when I’ve needed it, it’s served me and my clients well. Alienware now do a model (the M18x) with 32GB of RAM; yes 32GB in a laptop! Dual drives so I can whack a couple of really good SSD’s in there, a quad core with hyper threading i7 and a decent speed. I can reduce the cost of the memory by getting it from Crucial, so instead of £1.5K for 32GB it will be around £900, I can also cost save on the SSD as well. The beauty about the M18x is that it is USB3.0, SATA 3 and also really importantly has eSATA, running VM’s will never be easier, I can have a removeable SSD with my VM’s on it and can plug it into my home machine or laptop – an ideal world! The initial outlay of £5K is peanuts compared to the benefits I’ll give my clients, I will be able to present real enterprise concepts, I’ll also be able to give training on those real enterprise concepts and with real, albeit virtualised machines.

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  • Selling Solutions, Not Products

    - by David Dorf
    When I think about next-generation retailers, the names that come to mind are Apple, Whole Foods, Lulu Lemon, and IKEA.  They may not be the biggest retailers, but they are certainly growing fast. Success is never defined by just one dimension, and these retailers execute well across many dimensions, but the one that stands out for me is customer experience.  These stores feel...approachable...part of the community...local.  Customers are not intimidated to ask questions, and staff seem to go out of their way to help. What's makes these retailers stand out in the industry?  These retailers aren't selling products -- they're selling solutions.  Think about that.  You think you're going to the Apple store to buy a phone, but you're actually buying a communications solution that handles much, much more.  If you carry an iPhone, your life has changed.  The way you do things is different.  The impacts go much beyond a simple phone. Solutions start with a problem, which is why these retailers greet customers with "what brought you in today," or "can I answer any questions for you?"  Good retailers establish a relationship, even if it lasts only a few minutes. You don't walk into Whole Foods looking for cans of soup.  You are looking for meals: healthy snacks, interesting lunches, exotic dinners.  Its a learning experience where you might discover solutions to problems you didn't know you had.  Mention what foods you like, and you'll get a list of similar items you had not considered.  I didn't know I needed a closet organizer until I visited an IKEA and learned about all the options.  They were able to customize the solution to meet my needs, and now I'm much more organized. One of the differences between selling products and selling solutions is training.  Visit any of these retailers' sites and you'll see a long list of in-store events for the benefit of customers.  You can buy exercise clothing from Lulu Lemon, and also learn new yoga techniques, meet like-minded people, and branch off to other fitness regimes via their ambassadors.  You can visit the Geek Bar at Apple, eat lunch at IKEA, and learn to cook at Whole Foods. These retailers are making an investment in a relationship with their customers.  They are showing loyalty to their customers before asking for it back.  In the long-run, this strategic approach will outlive any scan-and-bag mentality.

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