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• Add Free Windows Live Apps to Your Website or Blog

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to use Hotmail, Office Web Apps, Messenger, and more on your website domain?  Here’s how you can add Windows Live to your website for free. Microsoft offers a popular suite of online communications products including Hotmail and Messenger.  Although Hotmail hasn’t been as popular in recent years as Gmail, it is getting a refresh this summer that might make it an even better email solution.  Additionally, the new Office Web Apps offer great compatibility with Office documents. While Skydrive offers 25Gb of free online file storage for all users, so Windows Live can make a great communications solution for your domain. Note: To signup for Windows Live for your domain, you will need to be able to add info to your WordPress.com blog or change Domain settings manually. Getting Started Open the Windows Live Custom Domains page (Link below) to get started adding Windows Live to your domain.  Your free Windows Live account will let you create up to 500 accounts, so it’s great for teams and groups that want to have customized email addresses in addition to those who just want an email account for their website. Enter your domain or subdomain you want to add to Windows Live in the box, and then select whether you want to setup Hotmail with this or now.  We want to add email to our domain, so select Set up Windows Live Hotmail for my domain and click Continue. You’ll need to sign in with a Windows Live ID to create the account, or choose to create a new Windows Live account associated with your domain.   Sign in with your Windows Live ID…this can be a Hotmail, Live Messenger, XBOX Live, Zune ID, or Microsoft.com account. Or, enter your information to create a new Windows Live ID if you selected the second option. Now, review your settings and make sure everything looks correct.  Click the I Accept button to setup your account.   Your account is now fully setup, but you’ll need to add or edit DNS information on your site.  The steps are slightly different depending if your site is hosted on WordPress.com, on your own server, or hosting service. We’ll show you how to do it on either one. First, though, note the information below this box.  You’ll see settings for your Mail setup…   Security settings…   And Messenger integration.  Make note of the settings, especially the circled ones, as we’ll need them in the next step. Integrate Windows Live with Your WordPress Blog If the domain you added to Windows Live is for your WordPress blog, login to your WordPress dashboard in a separate browser window or tab.  Click the arrow beside Upgrades, and select Domains from the menu. Click the Edit DNS link beside the domain name you’re adding to Windows Live. In the text box on this page, enter the following, replacing Your_info with your code from the Mail Setup box in your Windows Live Dashboard.  Note that this is the blurred section in our screenshots.  It should be a numerical code like 1234567890.pamx1.hotmail.com. MX 10 Your_info.pamx1.hotmail.com. TXT v=spf1 include:hotmail.com ~all CNAME Your_info domains.live.com. Click Save DNS records, and your settings are saved to WordPress.  Note that this will only integrate email with your WordPress account; you cannot integrate Messenger with a domain hosted on WordPress.com. Finally, return to your Windows Live Settings page and click Refresh.  If your settings are correct, you’ll now be ready to use Windows Live on your WordPress.com domain. Integrate Windows Live with Your Own Server If your website is hosted on your own server or hosting account, you’ll need to take a few more steps to add Windows Live to your domain.  This is fairly easy, but the steps may be different depending on your hosting company or registrar.  With some hosts, you may have to contact support to have them add the MX records for you.  Our site’s host uses the popular cPanel for website administration, so here’s how we added the MX Entries through cPanel. Login to your website’s cPanel, and select MX Entry under the Mail section. In the text box on this page, enter the following, replacing Your_info with your code from the Mail Setup box in your Windows Live Dashboard.  Note that this is the blurred section in our screenshots.  It should be a numerical code like 1234567890.pamx1.hotmail.com. MX 10 Your_info.pamx1.hotmail.com. Now, go back to your cPanel home, and select Advanced DNS Zone Editor under Domains. Here, add a TXT record with the following info: Name: yoursite.com. TTL: 3600 TXT Data: v=spf1 include:hotmail.com ~all Click Add Record and your Mail integration data is all configured. To integrate Messenger with your own domain, you’ll have to add an SRV entry to your DNS settings.  cPanel doesn’t have an option for this, so we had to contact our site’s hosting company and they added the entry for us.  Copy all of the information in the Messenger box and send it to your domain support, and they should be able to add this for you.  Alternately, if you don’t want or need Messenger, then you can simply skip this step. Once all of your settings are in place, return to your Windows Live Settings page and click Refresh.  If your settings are correct, you’ll now be ready to use Windows Live on your WordPress.com domain. Create a New Email Account On Your Domain Welcome to your new Windows Live admin page!  Now you can add email accounts so you and anyone else you want can access Hotmail and the other Windows Live apps with your domain.  Click Add to add an account. Enter an account name, which will be the email address of the account, e.g. [email protected].  Then enter the user’s name and a password for the account.  By default this will be a temporary password, and the user will have to change it on first log-in, but if you’re setting up this account for yourself, you can uncheck the box and keep this as your standard password. Now, go to www.mail.live.com, and sign in with your new email address and password.  Remember, your email address is your username previously entered followed by @yourdomain.com. To finish setting up the email account, enter your password, secret question and answer, alternate email, and location information.  Click I accept to finish setting up your new email account. Enter the characters in the Captcha to confirm you’re a human, and click Continue. Your new Hotmail inbox will now load, and you’ll have a welcome email in your inbox.  This works the same as normal Hotmail, except this time, your email address is with your own domain. You can now access any of the Windows Live services from the top-level menu. Here’s an Excel Spreadsheet open in the new Office Web Apps via SkyDrive on our new Windows Live account. If you setup Messenger access previously, you can now sign in to Windows Live Messenger using your new @yourdomain.com account as well. Important Links Accessing your Windows Live accounts is easy.  Simply go to any Windows Live site, such as www.hotmail.com or www.skydrive.com, and sign in with your new Windows Live ID from your domain as normal.  You don’t need a special address to access your account; it works just like the standard public Hotmail accounts. To administer your Windows Live for your domain, go to https://domains.live.com/ and sign in with the Windows Live ID you used to create the account.  Here you can add more users, change settings, and view usage details for the Windows Live accounts on your domain. Conclusion Windows Live is easy to add to your domain, and lets you create up to 500 email address for it.  With the upcoming updates to Hotmail and Office Web Apps coming this summer, this can be a nice way to make your domain even more useful.  And with 500 email accounts, you can easily let your team take advantage of your unique address as well. If you’d rather use Google’s online applications with your domain, check out our article on how to add free Google apps to your website or blog. Link Signup for Windows Live for Your Domain Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Tools to Help Post Content On Your WordPress BlogBackup Your Windows Live Writer SettingsInstall Windows Live Essentials In Windows 7Add Your Gmail To Windows Live MailMysticgeek Blog: A Look at Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 on Windows XP 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 HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Backup Drivers With Driver Magician TubeSort: YouTube Playlist Organizer XPS file format & XPS Viewer Explained Microsoft Office Web Apps Guide Know if Someone Accessed Your Facebook Account Shop for Music with Windows Media Player 12

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• Heaps of Trouble?

  - by Paul White NZ

  If you’re not already a regular reader of Brad Schulz’s blog, you’re missing out on some great material.  In his latest entry, he is tasked with optimizing a query run against tables that have no indexes at all.  The problem is, predictably, that performance is not very good.  The catch is that we are not allowed to create any indexes (or even new statistics) as part of our optimization efforts. In this post, I’m going to look at the problem from a slightly different angle, and present an alternative solution to the one Brad found.  Inevitably, there’s going to be some overlap between our entries, and while you don’t necessarily need to read Brad’s post before this one, I do strongly recommend that you read it at some stage; he covers some important points that I won’t cover again here. The Example We’ll use data from the AdventureWorks database, copied to temporary unindexed tables.  A script to create these structures is shown below: CREATE TABLE #Custs ( CustomerID INTEGER NOT NULL, TerritoryID INTEGER NULL, CustomerType NCHAR(1) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NOT NULL, ); GO CREATE TABLE #Prods ( ProductMainID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, Name NVARCHAR(50) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NOT NULL, ); GO CREATE TABLE #OrdHeader ( SalesOrderID INTEGER NOT NULL, OrderDate DATETIME NOT NULL, SalesOrderNumber NVARCHAR(25) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NOT NULL, CustomerID INTEGER NOT NULL, ); GO CREATE TABLE #OrdDetail ( SalesOrderID INTEGER NOT NULL, OrderQty SMALLINT NOT NULL, LineTotal NUMERIC(38,6) NOT NULL, ProductMainID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, ); GO INSERT #Custs ( CustomerID, TerritoryID, CustomerType ) SELECT C.CustomerID, C.TerritoryID, C.CustomerType FROM AdventureWorks.Sales.Customer C WITH (TABLOCK); GO INSERT #Prods ( ProductMainID, ProductSubID, ProductSubSubID, Name ) SELECT P.ProductID, P.ProductID, P.ProductID, P.Name FROM AdventureWorks.Production.Product P WITH (TABLOCK); GO INSERT #OrdHeader ( SalesOrderID, OrderDate, SalesOrderNumber, CustomerID ) SELECT H.SalesOrderID, H.OrderDate, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.CustomerID FROM AdventureWorks.Sales.SalesOrderHeader H WITH (TABLOCK); GO INSERT #OrdDetail ( SalesOrderID, OrderQty, LineTotal, ProductMainID, ProductSubID, ProductSubSubID ) SELECT D.SalesOrderID, D.OrderQty, D.LineTotal, D.ProductID, D.ProductID, D.ProductID FROM AdventureWorks.Sales.SalesOrderDetail D WITH (TABLOCK); The query itself is a simple join of the four tables: SELECT P.ProductMainID AS PID, P.Name, D.OrderQty, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.OrderDate, C.TerritoryID FROM #Prods P JOIN #OrdDetail D ON P.ProductMainID = D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductSubID = D.ProductSubID AND P.ProductSubSubID = D.ProductSubSubID JOIN #OrdHeader H ON D.SalesOrderID = H.SalesOrderID JOIN #Custs C ON H.CustomerID = C.CustomerID ORDER BY P.ProductMainID ASC OPTION (RECOMPILE, MAXDOP 1); Remember that these tables have no indexes at all, and only the single-column sampled statistics SQL Server automatically creates (assuming default settings).  The estimated query plan produced for the test query looks like this (click to enlarge): The Problem The problem here is one of cardinality estimation – the number of rows SQL Server expects to find at each step of the plan.  The lack of indexes and useful statistical information means that SQL Server does not have the information it needs to make a good estimate.  Every join in the plan shown above estimates that it will produce just a single row as output.  Brad covers the factors that lead to the low estimates in his post. In reality, the join between the #Prods and #OrdDetail tables will produce 121,317 rows.  It should not surprise you that this has rather dire consequences for the remainder of the query plan.  In particular, it makes a nonsense of the optimizer’s decision to use Nested Loops to join to the two remaining tables.  Instead of scanning the #OrdHeader and #Custs tables once (as it expected), it has to perform 121,317 full scans of each.  The query takes somewhere in the region of twenty minutes to run to completion on my development machine. A Solution At this point, you may be thinking the same thing I was: if we really are stuck with no indexes, the best we can do is to use hash joins everywhere. We can force the exclusive use of hash joins in several ways, the two most common being join and query hints.  A join hint means writing the query using the INNER HASH JOIN syntax; using a query hint involves adding OPTION (HASH JOIN) at the bottom of the query.  The difference is that using join hints also forces the order of the join, whereas the query hint gives the optimizer freedom to reorder the joins at its discretion. Adding the OPTION (HASH JOIN) hint results in this estimated plan: That produces the correct output in around seven seconds, which is quite an improvement!  As a purely practical matter, and given the rigid rules of the environment we find ourselves in, we might leave things there.  (We can improve the hashing solution a bit – I’ll come back to that later on). Faster Nested Loops It might surprise you to hear that we can beat the performance of the hash join solution shown above using nested loops joins exclusively, and without breaking the rules we have been set. The key to this part is to realize that a condition like (A = B) can be expressed as (A <= B) AND (A >= B).  Armed with this tremendous new insight, we can rewrite the join predicates like so: SELECT P.ProductMainID AS PID, P.Name, D.OrderQty, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.OrderDate, C.TerritoryID FROM #OrdDetail D JOIN #OrdHeader H ON D.SalesOrderID >= H.SalesOrderID AND D.SalesOrderID <= H.SalesOrderID JOIN #Custs C ON H.CustomerID >= C.CustomerID AND H.CustomerID <= C.CustomerID JOIN #Prods P ON P.ProductMainID >= D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductMainID <= D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductSubID = D.ProductSubID AND P.ProductSubSubID = D.ProductSubSubID ORDER BY D.ProductMainID OPTION (RECOMPILE, LOOP JOIN, MAXDOP 1, FORCE ORDER); I’ve also added LOOP JOIN and FORCE ORDER query hints to ensure that only nested loops joins are used, and that the tables are joined in the order they appear.  The new estimated execution plan is: This new query runs in under 2 seconds. Why Is It Faster? The main reason for the improvement is the appearance of the eager Index Spools, which are also known as index-on-the-fly spools.  If you read my Inside The Optimiser series you might be interested to know that the rule responsible is called JoinToIndexOnTheFly. An eager index spool consumes all rows from the table it sits above, and builds a index suitable for the join to seek on.  Taking the index spool above the #Custs table as an example, it reads all the CustomerID and TerritoryID values with a single scan of the table, and builds an index keyed on CustomerID.  The term ‘eager’ means that the spool consumes all of its input rows when it starts up.  The index is built in a work table in tempdb, has no associated statistics, and only exists until the query finishes executing. The result is that each unindexed table is only scanned once, and just for the columns necessary to build the temporary index.  From that point on, every execution of the inner side of the join is answered by a seek on the temporary index – not the base table. A second optimization is that the sort on ProductMainID (required by the ORDER BY clause) is performed early, on just the rows coming from the #OrdDetail table.  The optimizer has a good estimate for the number of rows it needs to sort at that stage – it is just the cardinality of the table itself.  The accuracy of the estimate there is important because it helps determine the memory grant given to the sort operation.  Nested loops join preserves the order of rows on its outer input, so sorting early is safe.  (Hash joins do not preserve order in this way, of course). The extra lazy spool on the #Prods branch is a further optimization that avoids executing the seek on the temporary index if the value being joined (the ‘outer reference’) hasn’t changed from the last row received on the outer input.  It takes advantage of the fact that rows are still sorted on ProductMainID, so if duplicates exist, they will arrive at the join operator one after the other. The optimizer is quite conservative about introducing index spools into a plan, because creating and dropping a temporary index is a relatively expensive operation.  It’s presence in a plan is often an indication that a useful index is missing. I want to stress that I rewrote the query in this way primarily as an educational exercise – I can’t imagine having to do something so horrible to a production system. Improving the Hash Join I promised I would return to the solution that uses hash joins.  You might be puzzled that SQL Server can create three new indexes (and perform all those nested loops iterations) faster than it can perform three hash joins.  The answer, again, is down to the poor information available to the optimizer.  Let’s look at the hash join plan again: Two of the hash joins have single-row estimates on their build inputs.  SQL Server fixes the amount of memory available for the hash table based on this cardinality estimate, so at run time the hash join very quickly runs out of memory. This results in the join spilling hash buckets to disk, and any rows from the probe input that hash to the spilled buckets also get written to disk.  The join process then continues, and may again run out of memory.  This is a recursive process, which may eventually result in SQL Server resorting to a bailout join algorithm, which is guaranteed to complete eventually, but may be very slow.  The data sizes in the example tables are not large enough to force a hash bailout, but it does result in multiple levels of hash recursion.  You can see this for yourself by tracing the Hash Warning event using the Profiler tool. The final sort in the plan also suffers from a similar problem: it receives very little memory and has to perform multiple sort passes, saving intermediate runs to disk (the Sort Warnings Profiler event can be used to confirm this).  Notice also that because hash joins don’t preserve sort order, the sort cannot be pushed down the plan toward the #OrdDetail table, as in the nested loops plan. Ok, so now we understand the problems, what can we do to fix it?  We can address the hash spilling by forcing a different order for the joins: SELECT P.ProductMainID AS PID, P.Name, D.OrderQty, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.OrderDate, C.TerritoryID FROM #Prods P JOIN #Custs C JOIN #OrdHeader H ON H.CustomerID = C.CustomerID JOIN #OrdDetail D ON D.SalesOrderID = H.SalesOrderID ON P.ProductMainID = D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductSubID = D.ProductSubID AND P.ProductSubSubID = D.ProductSubSubID ORDER BY D.ProductMainID OPTION (MAXDOP 1, HASH JOIN, FORCE ORDER); With this plan, each of the inputs to the hash joins has a good estimate, and no hash recursion occurs.  The final sort still suffers from the one-row estimate problem, and we get a single-pass sort warning as it writes rows to disk.  Even so, the query runs to completion in three or four seconds.  That’s around half the time of the previous hashing solution, but still not as fast as the nested loops trickery. Final Thoughts SQL Server’s optimizer makes cost-based decisions, so it is vital to provide it with accurate information.  We can’t really blame the performance problems highlighted here on anything other than the decision to use completely unindexed tables, and not to allow the creation of additional statistics. I should probably stress that the nested loops solution shown above is not one I would normally contemplate in the real world.  It’s there primarily for its educational and entertainment value.  I might perhaps use it to demonstrate to the sceptical that SQL Server itself is crying out for an index. Be sure to read Brad’s original post for more details.  My grateful thanks to him for granting permission to reuse some of his material. Paul White Email: [email protected] Twitter: @PaulWhiteNZ

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• Add Free Google Apps to Your Website or Blog

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to have an email address from your own domain, but prefer Gmail’s interface and integration with Google Docs?  Here’s how you can add the free Google Apps Standard to your site and get the best of both worlds. Note: To signup for Google Apps and get it setup on your domain, you will need to be able to add info to your WordPress blog or change Domain settings manually. Getting Started Head to the Google Apps signup page (link below), and click the Get Started button on the right.  Note that we are signing up for the free Google Apps which allows a max of 50 users; if you need more than 50 email addresses for your domain, you can choose Premiere Edition instead for $50/year. Select that you are the Administrator of the domain, and enter the domain or subdomain you want to use with Google Apps.  Here we’re adding Google Apps to the techinch.com site, but we could instead add Apps to mail.techinch.com if needed…click Get Started. Enter your name, phone number, an existing email address, and other Administrator information.  The Apps signup page also includes some survey questions about your organization, but you only have to fill in the required fields. On the next page, enter a username and password for the administrator account.  Note that the user name will also be the administrative email address as [email protected]. Now you’re ready to authenticate your Google Apps account with your domain.  The steps are slightly different depending on whether your site is on WordPress.com or on your own hosting service or server, so we’ll show how to do it both ways.   Authenticate and Integrate Google Apps with WordPress.com To add Google Apps to a domain you have linked to your WordPress.com blog, select Change yourdomain.com CNAME record and click Continue. Copy the code under #2, which should be something like googleabcdefg123456.  Do not click the button at the bottom; wait until we’ve completed the next step.   Now, in a separate browser window or tab, open your WordPress Dashboard.  Click the arrow beside Upgrades, and select Domains from the menu. Click the Edit DNS link beside the domain name you’re adding to Google Apps. Scroll down to the Google Apps section, and paste your code from Google Apps into the verification code field.  Click Generate DNS records when you’re done. This will add the needed DNS settings to your records in the box above the Google Apps section.  Click Save DNS records. Now, go back to the Google Apps signup page, and click I’ve completed the steps above. Authenticate Google Apps on Your Own Server If your website is hosted on your own server or hosting account, you’ll need to take a few more steps to add Google Apps to your domain.  You can add a CNAME record to your domain host using the same information that you would use with a WordPress account, or you can upload an HTML file to your site’s main directory.  In this test we’re going to upload an HTML file to our site for verification. Copy the code under #1, which should be something like googleabcdefg123456.  Do not click the button at the bottom; wait until we’ve completed the next step first. Create a new HTML file and paste the code in it.  You can do this easily in Notepad: create a new document, paste the code, and then save as googlehostedservice.html.  Make sure to select the type as All Files or otherwise the file will have a .txt extension. Upload this file to your web server via FTP or a web dashboard for your site.  Make sure it is in the top level of your site’s directory structure, and try visiting it at yoursite.com/googlehostedservice.html. Now, go back to the Google Apps signup page, and click I’ve completed the steps above. Setup Your Email on Google Apps When this is done, your Google Apps account should be activated and ready to finish setting up.  Google Apps will offer to launch a guide to step you through the rest of the process; you can click Launch guide if you want, or click Skip this guide to continue on your own and go directly to the Apps dashboard.   If you choose to open the guide, you’ll be able to easily learn the ropes of Google Apps administration.  Once you’ve completed the tutorial, you’ll be taken to the Google Apps dashboard. Most of the Google Apps will be available for immediate use, but Email may take a bit more setup.  Click Activate email to get your Gmail-powered email running on your domain.    Add Google MX Records to Your Server You will need to add Google MX records to your domain registrar in order to have your mail routed to Google.  If your domain is hosted on WordPress.com, you’ve already made these changes so simply click I have completed these steps.  Otherwise, you’ll need to manually add these records before clicking that button.   Adding MX Entries is fairly easy, but the steps may depend on your hosting company or registrar.  With some hosts, you may have to contact support to have them add the MX records for you.  Our site’s host uses the popular cPanel for website administration, so here’s how we added the MX Entries through cPanel. Add MX Entries through cPanel Login to your site’s cPanel, and click the MX Entry link under Mail. Delete any existing MX Records for your domain or subdomain first to avoid any complications or interactions with Google Apps.  If you think you may want to revert to your old email service in the future, save a copy of the records so you can switch back if you need. Now, enter the MX Records that Google listed.  Here’s our account after we added all of the entries to our account. Finally, return to your Google Apps Dashboard and click the I have completed these steps button at the bottom of the page. Activating Service You’re now officially finished activating and setting up your Google Apps account.  Google will first have to check the MX records for your domain; this only took around an hour in our test, but Google warns it can take up to 48 hours in some cases. You may then see that Google is updating its servers with your account information.  Once again, this took much less time than Google’s estimate. When everything’s finished, you can click the link to access the inbox of your new Administrator email account in Google Apps. Welcome to Gmail … at your own domain!  All of the Google Apps work just the same in this version as they do in the public @gmail.com version, so you should feel right at home. You can return to the Google Apps dashboard from the Administrative email account by clicking the Manage this domain at the top right. In the Dashboard, you can easily add new users and email accounts, as well as change settings in your Google Apps account and add your site’s branding to your Apps. Your Google Apps will work just like their standard @gmail.com counterparts.  Here’s an example of an inbox customized with the techinch logo and a Gmail theme. Links to Remember Here are the common links to your Google Apps online.  Substitute your domain or subdomain for yourdomain.com. Dashboard https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/yourdomain.com Email https://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com Calendar https://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/yourdomain.com Docs https://docs.google.com/a/yourdomain.com Sites https://sites.google.com/a/yourdomain.com Conclusion Google Apps offers you great webapps and webmail for your domain, and let’s you take advantage of Google’s services while still maintaining the professional look of your own domain.  Setting up your account can be slightly complicated, but once it’s finished, it will run seamlessly and you’ll never have to worry about email or collaboration with your team again. Signup for the free Google Apps Standard Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Mysticgeek Blog: Create Your Own Simple iGoogle GadgetAccess Your Favorite Google Services in Chrome the Easy WayRevo Uninstaller Pro [REVIEW]Mysticgeek Blog: A Look at Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 on Windows XPFind Similar Websites in Google Chrome 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 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Video preview of new Windows Live Essentials 21 Cursor Packs for XP, Vista & 7 Map the Stars with Stellarium Use ILovePDF To Split and Merge PDF Files TimeToMeet is a Simple Online Meeting Planning Tool Easily Create More Bookmark Toolbars in Firefox

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• Back to Basics: When does a .NET Assembly Dependency get loaded

  - by Rick Strahl

  When we work on typical day to day applications, it's easy to forget some of the core features of the .NET framework. For me personally it's been a long time since I've learned about some of the underlying CLR system level services even though I rely on them on a daily basis. I often think only about high level application constructs and/or high level framework functionality, but the low level stuff is often just taken for granted. Over the last week at DevConnections I had all sorts of low level discussions with other developers about the inner workings of this or that technology (especially in light of my Low Level ASP.NET Architecture talk and the Razor Hosting talk). One topic that came up a couple of times and ended up a point of confusion even amongst some seasoned developers (including some folks from Microsoft <snicker>) is when assemblies actually load into a .NET process. There are a number of different ways that assemblies are loaded in .NET. When you create a typical project assemblies usually come from: The Assembly reference list of the top level 'executable' project The Assembly references of referenced projects Dynamically loaded at runtime via AppDomain/Reflection loading In addition .NET automatically loads mscorlib (most of the System namespace) the boot process that hosts the .NET runtime in EXE apps, or some other kind of runtime hosting environment (runtime hosting in servers like IIS, SQL Server or COM Interop). In hosting environments the runtime host may also pre-load a bunch of assemblies on its own (for example the ASP.NET host requires all sorts of assemblies just to run itself, before ever routing into your user specific code). Assembly Loading The most obvious source of loaded assemblies is the top level application's assembly reference list. You can add assembly references to a top level application and those assembly references are then available to the application. In a nutshell, referenced assemblies are not immediately loaded - they are loaded on the fly as needed. So regardless of whether you have an assembly reference in a top level project, or a dependent assembly assemblies typically load on an as needed basis, unless explicitly loaded by user code. The same is true of dependent assemblies. To check this out I ran a simple test: I have a utility assembly Westwind.Utilities which is a general purpose library that can work in any type of project. Due to a couple of small requirements for encoding and a logging piece that allows logging Web content (dependency on HttpContext.Current) this utility library has a dependency on System.Web. Now System.Web is a pretty large assembly and generally you'd want to avoid adding it to a non-Web project if it can be helped. So I created a Console Application that loads my utility library: You can see that the top level Console app a reference to Westwind.Utilities and System.Data (beyond the core .NET libs). The Westwind.Utilities project on the other hand has quite a few dependencies including System.Web. I then add a main program that accesses only a simple utillity method in the Westwind.Utilities library that doesn't require any of the classes that access System.Web: static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(StringUtils.NewStringId()); Console.ReadLine(); } StringUtils.NewStringId() calls into Westwind.Utilities, but it doesn't rely on System.Web. Any guesses what the assembly list looks like when I stop the code on the ReadLine() command? I'll wait here while you think about it… … … So, when I stop on ReadLine() and then fire up Process Explorer and check the assembly list I get: We can see here that .NET has not actually loaded any of the dependencies of the Westwind.Utilities assembly. Also not loaded is the top level System.Data reference even though it's in the dependent assembly list of the top level project. Since this particular function I called only uses core System functionality (contained in mscorlib) there's in fact nothing else loaded beyond the main application and my Westwind.Utilities assembly that contains the method accessed. None of the dependencies of Westwind.Utilities loaded. If you were to open the assembly in a disassembler like Reflector or ILSpy, you would however see all the compiled in dependencies. The referenced assemblies are in the dependency list and they are loadable, but they are not immediately loaded by the application. In other words the C# compiler and .NET linker are smart enough to figure out the dependencies based on the code that actually is referenced from your application and any dependencies cascading down into the dependencies from your top level application into the referenced assemblies. In the example above the usage requirement is pretty obvious since I'm only calling a single static method and then exiting the app, but in more complex applications these dependency relationships become very complicated - however it's all taken care of by the compiler and linker figuring out what types and members are actually referenced and including only those assemblies that are in fact referenced in your code or required by any of your dependencies. The good news here is: That if you are referencing an assembly that has a dependency on something like System.Web in a few places that are not actually accessed by any of your code or any dependent assembly code that you are calling, that assembly is never loaded into memory! Some Hosting Environments pre-load Assemblies The load behavior can vary however. In Console and desktop applications we have full control over assembly loading so we see the core CLR behavior. However other environments like ASP.NET for example will preload referenced assemblies explicitly as part of the startup process - primarily to minimize load conflicts. Specifically ASP.NET pre-loads all assemblies referenced in the assembly list and the /bin folder. So in Web applications it definitely pays to minimize your top level assemblies if they are not used. Understanding when Assemblies Load To clarify and see it actually happen what I described in the first example , let's look at a couple of other scenarios. To see assemblies loading at runtime in real time lets create a utility function to print out loaded assemblies to the console: public static void PrintAssemblies() { var assemblies = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies(); foreach (var assembly in assemblies) { Console.WriteLine(assembly.GetName()); } } Now let's look at the first scenario where I have class method that references internally uses System.Web. In the first scenario lets add a method to my main program like this: static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(StringUtils.NewStringId()); Console.ReadLine(); PrintAssemblies(); } public static void WebLogEntry() { var entry = new WebLogEntry(); entry.UpdateFromRequest(); Console.WriteLine(entry.QueryString); } UpdateFromWebRequest() internally accesses HttpContext.Current to read some information of the ASP.NET Request object so it clearly needs a reference System.Web to work. In this first example, the method that holds the calling code is never called, but exists as a static method that can potentially be called externally at some point. What do you think will happen here with the assembly loading? Will System.Web load in this example? No - it doesn't. Because the WebLogEntry() method is never called by the mainline application (or anywhere else) System.Web is not loaded. .NET dynamically loads assemblies as code that needs it is called. No code references the WebLogEntry() method and so System.Web is never loaded. Next, let's add the call to this method, which should trigger System.Web to be loaded because a dependency exists. Let's change the code to: static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(StringUtils.NewStringId()); Console.WriteLine("--- Before:"); PrintAssemblies(); WebLogEntry(); Console.WriteLine("--- After:"); PrintAssemblies(); Console.ReadLine(); } public static void WebLogEntry() { var entry = new WebLogEntry(); entry.UpdateFromRequest(); Console.WriteLine(entry.QueryString); } Looking at the code now, when do you think System.Web will be loaded? Will the before list include it? Yup System.Web gets loaded, but only after it's actually referenced. In fact, just until before the call to UpdateFromRequest() System.Web is not loaded - it only loads when the method is actually called and requires the reference in the executing code. Moral of the Story So what have we learned - or maybe remembered again? Dependent Assembly References are not pre-loaded when an application starts (by default) Dependent Assemblies that are not referenced by executing code are never loaded Dependent Assemblies are just in time loaded when first referenced in code All of this is nothing new - .NET has always worked like this. But it's good to have a refresher now and then and go through the exercise of seeing it work in action. It's not one of those things we think about everyday, and as I found out last week, I couldn't remember exactly how it worked since it's been so long since I've learned about this. And apparently I'm not the only one as several other people I had discussions with in relation to loaded assemblies also didn't recall exactly what should happen or assumed incorrectly that just having a reference automatically loads the assembly. The moral of the story for me is: Trying at all costs to eliminate an assembly reference from a component is not quite as important as it's often made out to be. For example, the Westwind.Utilities module described above has a logging component, including a Web specific logging entry that supports pulling information from the active HTTP Context. Adding that feature requires a reference to System.Web. Should I worry about this in the scope of this library? Probably not, because if I don't use that one class of nearly a hundred, System.Web never gets pulled into the parent process. IOW, System.Web only loads when I use that specific feature and if I am, well I clearly have to be running in a Web environment anyway to use it realistically. The alternative would be considerably uglier: Pulling out the WebLogEntry class and sticking it into another assembly and breaking up the logging code. In this case - definitely not worth it. So, .NET definitely goes through some pretty nifty optimizations to ensure that it loads only what it needs and in most cases you can just rely on .NET to do the right thing. Sometimes though assembly loading can go wrong (especially when signed and versioned local assemblies are involved), but that's subject for a whole other post…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET  CSharp   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Customize the Windows Media Center Start Menu with Media Center Studio

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Do you ever wish you could change the WMC start menu? Maybe move some of the tiles and strips around to different locations, add new ones, or eliminate some altogether? Today we look at how to do it using Media Center Studio. Download and install Media Center Studio. (Download link below) You’ll also want to make sure you have Windows Media Center closed before running Media Center Studio. Many of the actions cannot be performed with Media Center open. Once installed, you can open Media Center Studio from the Windows Start Menu. When you first open Media Center Studio you’ll be on the Themes tab. Click on the Start Menu tab. It should be noted that Media Center Studio is a Beta application, and it did crash on us a few times, so it’s a good idea to save your work frequently. You can save your changes by selecting Save on the Home tab, or by clicking the small disk icon at the top left. We also found that that trying to launch Media Center from the Start Media Center button on the application ribbon typically didn’t work. Opening Windows Media Center from the Windows Start Menu is preferred.   When you’re on the Start Menu tab you will see the Windows Media Center menu strips and tiles. Click the arrows located at the right, left, top, and bottom of the screen to scroll through the various menu strips.   Hiding and Removing Tiles and Menu Strips. If there is an entire menu strip that you never use and would like to remove from Media Center, simply uncheck the box to the left of the the title above that menu strip. If you’d like to hide individual tiles, uncheck the box next to the name of the individual tile. Renaming Tiles and Strips To rename a tile or menu strip, click on the small notepad icon next to the title. Note: If you do not see a small notepad icon next to the title, then the title is not editable. This applies to many of the “Promo” tiles. The title will turn into a text input box so that you can edit the name. Click away from the text box when finished. Here we will change the title of the default Movie strip to “Flicks.” Change the Default Tile and Menu Strip The Default menu strip is the strip that is highlighted, or on focus, when you open Media Center.   To change the default strip, simply click once on another strip to highlight it, and then save your work. In our example, I’m going to make our newly renamed “Flicks” strip the default.   Each menu strip has a default tile. This is the tile that is active, or on focus, when you select the menu strip. To change the default tile on a strip, click once on the tile. You will see it outlined in light blue. Now just simply save your changes. In our example below, we’ve changed the default tile on the TV strip to “guide.”   Moving Tiles and Menu Strips You can move an entire Menu Strip up or down on the screen. When you hover your mouse over the a menu strip, you will see up and down arrows appear to the right and left of the title. Click on the arrows to move the strip up or down.   You will see the menu strip appear in it’s new position.   To move a tile to a new menu strip, click and drag the tile you’d like to move. When you begin to drag the tile, green plus (+) signs will appear in between the tiles. Drag and drop the tile onto to any of these green plus signs to move it to that location. When you’ve dragged the tile over an acceptable position, you’ll see the  red “Move” label next to your cursor turn to a blue “Move to” label. Now you can drop the tile into position. You’ll see the tile located in it’s new position.   Adding a New Custom Menu Strip Click on the Start Menu tab and then select the Menu Strip button.   You will see a new Custom Menu strip appear on your Start Menu with the default name of Custom menu. You can change the name by clicking on the notepad icon just as we did earlier. For our example, we’ll change the name of the new strip to Add-ins. To add a new tile, click on Entry Points at the lower left of the application window. This will reveal all of your available Entry Points that can be added to the Media Center Menu. You should see the built-in Media Center Games and any Media Center Plug-ins you have added to your system. You can then drag and drop any of the Entry Points onto any of the Menu Strips. Below we’ve added Media Browser to our custom Add-ins menu strip. You can also add additional applications to launch directly from Media Center. Click on the Application button on the Start Menu tab. Note: Many applications may not work with your remote, but with keyboard and mouse only.    Type in a title which will appear under the tile in Media Center, and then type the path to the application. In our example, we will add Internet Explorer 8. Note: Be sure to add the actual path to the application and not just a link on the desktop. Click any of the check boxes to select any options under Required Capabilities. You can also browse to choose an image if you don’t care for the image that appears automatically.   Next, you can select keyboard strokes to press to exit the application and return to Media Center. Click the green plus (+) button. When prompted, press a key you’ll use to close the program. Repeat the process if you’d also like to select a keystroke to kill the program.   You’ll see your button programs listed below. When you’re finished, save your work and close out of Media Center Studio.   Now your new program entry point will appear in the Entry Points section. Drag the icon to the desired position on the Start Menu and save again before exiting Media Center Studio. When you open Media Center you will see your new application on the start menu. Click the tile to open the application just as you would any other tile. The application will open and minimize Media Center. When you press the key you choose to close the program, Windows Media Center will automatically be restored. Note: You can also exit the application through normal methods by clicking the red “X” or File > Exit. Conclusion Media Center Studio is a Beta application which the developer freely admits still has some bugs. Despite it’s flaws Media Center Studio is a powerful tool, and when it comes to customizing your Media Center start menu, it’s pretty much the only game in town. It works with both Vista and Windows 7, and according to the developer, has not been officially tested with extenders. Media Center Studio can also be used to add custom themes to Windows 7 Media Center and we’ll be covering that in a future article. Looking for more ways to customize your Media Center experience? Be sure to check out our earlier posts on Media Browser, as well as how to add Hulu, Boxee, and weather conditions your Windows 7 Media Center. Download Media Center Studio Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)How To Rip a Music CD in Windows 7 Media CenterSchedule Updates for Windows Media CenterStartup Customizations for Media Center in Windows 7Automatically Start Windows 7 Media Center in Live TV Mode 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 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Video Toolbox is a Superb Online Video Editor Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall

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• Stream Media and Live TV Across the Internet with Orb

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Looking for a way to stream your media collection across the Internet? Or perhaps watch and record TV remotely? Today we are going to look at how to do all that and more with Orb. Requirements Windows XP / Vista / 7 or Intel based Mac w/ OS X 10.5 or later. 1 GB RAM or more Pentium 4 2.4 GHz or higher / AMD Athlon 3200+ Broadband connections TV Tuner for streaming and recording live TV (optional) Note: Slower internet connections may result in stuttering during playback. Installation and Setup Download and install Orb on your home computer. (Download link below) You’ll want to take the defaults for the initial portion of the install. When we get to the Orb Account setup portion of the install is when we will have to enter information and make some decisions. Choose your language and click Next. We’ll need to create and user account and password. A valid email address is required as we’ll need to confirm the account later. Click Next.   Now you’ll want to choose your media sources. Orb will automatically look for folders that may contain media files. You can add or remove folders click on the (+) or (-) buttons. To remove a folder, click on it once to select it from the list and then click the minus (-) button. To add a folder, click the plus (+) button and browse for the folder. You can add local folders as well as shared folders from networked computers and USB attached storage. Note: Both the host computer running Orb and the networked computer will need to be running to access shared network folders remotely. When you’ve selected all your media files, click Next. Orb will proceed to index your media files… When the indexing is complete, click Next. Orb TV Setup Note: Streaming Live TV to Macs is not currently supported. If you have a TV tuner card connected to your PC, you can opt to configure Orb to stream live or recorded TV. Click Next  to configure TV. Or, choose Skip if you don’t wish to configure Orb for TV.   If you have a Digital tuner card, type in your Zip Code and click Get List to pull your channel listings. Select a TV provider from the list and click Next. If not, click Skip.   You can select or deselect any channels by checking or un-checking the box to each channel. Select Auto Scan to let Orb find more channels or disable the ones with no reception. Click Next when finished.   Next choose an analog provider, if necessary, and click Next.   Select “Yes” or “No” for a set top box and click Next. Just as we did with the Digital tuner, select or deselect any channels by checking or un-checking the box to each channel. Select Auto Scan to let Orb find more channels or disable the ones with no reception. Click Next when finished.   Now we’re finished with the setup. Click Close. Accessing your Media Remotely Media files are accessed through a web-based interface. Before we go any further, however, we’ll need to confirm our username and password. Check your inbox for an email from Orb Networks. Click the enclosed confirmation link. You’ll be prompted to enter the username and password you selected in your browser then click Next.   Your account will be confirmed. Now, we’re ready to enjoy our media remotely. To get started, point your browser to the MyCast website from your remote computer. (See link below) Enter your credentials and click Log In. Once logged in, you’ll be presented with the MyCast Home screen. By default you’ll see a handful of “channels” such as a TV program guide, random audio and photos, video favorites, and weather. You can add, remove, or customize channels. To add additional channels, click on Add Channels at the top right…   …and select from the dropdown list. To access your full media libraries, click Open Application at the top left and select from one of the options. Live and Recorded TV If you have a TV tuner card you configured for Orb, you’ll see your program guide on the TV / Webcams screen. To watch or record a show, click on the program listing to bring up a detail box. Then click the red button to record, or the green button to play. When recording a show, you’ll see a pulsating red icon at the top right of the listing in the program guide. If you want to watch Live TV, you may be prompted to choose your media player, depending on your browser and settings. Playback should begin shortly.   Note for Windows Media Center Users If you try to stream live TV in Orb while Windows Media Center is running on your PC, you’ll get an error message. Click the Stop MediaCenter button and then try again.   Audio On the Audio screen, you’ll find your music files indexed by genre, artist, and album. You can play a selection by clicking once and then clicking the green play button, or by simply double-clicking.   Playback will begin in the default media player for the streaming format.   Video Video works essentially the same as audio. Click on a selection and press the green play button, or double-click on the video title. Video playback will begin in the default media player for the streaming format.   Streaming Formats You can change the default streaming format in the control panel settings. To access the Control Panel, click on Open Applications  and select Control Panel. You can also click Settings at the top right.   Select General from the drop down list and then click on the Streaming Formats tab. You are provided four options. Flash, Windows Media, .SDP, and .PLS.   Creating Playlists To create playlists, drag and drop your media title to the playlist work area on the right, or click Add to playlist on the top menu. Click Save when finished.    Sharing your Media Orb allows you to share media playlists across the Internet with friends and family. There are a few ways to accomplish this. We’ll start by click the Share button at the bottom of the playlist work area after you’ve compiled your playlist. You’ll be prompted to choose a method by which to share your playlist. You’ll have the option to share your playlist publicly or privately. You can share publically through links, blogs, or on your Orb public profile.  By choosing the Public Profile option, Orb will automatically create a profile page for you with a URL like http://public.orb.com/username that anyone can easily access on the Internet. The private sharing option allows you to invite friends by email and requires recipients to register with Orb. You can also give your playlist a custom name, or accept the auto-generated title. Click OK when finished. Users who visit your public profile will be able to view and stream any of your shared playlists to their computer or supported device.   Portable Media Devices and Smartphones Orb can stream media to many portable devices and 3G phones. Streaming audio is supported on the iPhone and iPod Touch through the Safari browser. However, video and live TV streaming requires the Orb Live iPhone App.  Orb Live is available in the App store for $9.99. To stream media to your portable device, go to the MyCast website in your mobile browser and login. Browse for your media or playlist. Make a selection and play the media. Playback will begin. We found streaming music to both the Droid and the iPhone to work quite nicely. Video playback on the Droid, however, left a bit to be desired. The video looked good, but the audio tended to be out of sync. System Tray Control Panel By default Orb runs in the system tray on start up. To access the System Tray Control Panel, right-click on the Orb icon in the system tray and select Control Panel. Login with your Orb username and  password and click OK.   From here you can add or remove media sources, add manage accounts, change your password, and more. If you’d rather not run Orb on Startup, click the General icon.   Unselect the checkbox next to Start Orb when the system starts. Conclusion It may seem like a lot of steps, but getting Orb up and running isn’t terribly difficult. Orb is available for both Windows and Intel based Macs. It also supports streaming to many Game Consoles such as the Wii, PS3, and XBox 360. If you are running Windows 7 on multiple computers, you may want to check out our write-up on how to stream music and video over the Internet with Windows Media Player 12. Downloads Download Orb Logon to MyCast Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Stream Music and Video Over the Internet with Windows Media Player 12Enable Media Streaming in Windows Home Server to Windows Media PlayerStream Media from Windows 7 to XP with VLC Media PlayerShare Digital Media With Other Computers on a Home Network with Windows 7Automatically Start Windows 7 Media Center in Live TV Mode 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Looking for Good Windows Media Player 12 Plug-ins? Find Out the Celebrity You Resemble With FaceDouble Whoa ! Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems Icelandic Volcano Webcams Open Multiple Links At One Go

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• CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server

  - by The Geek

  Overview CloudBerry Online Backup version 1.5 is a front end application for Amazon S3 storage for backing up your Windows Home Server data. It makes backing up your essential data to Amazon S3 an easy process in the event the disaster strikes. Installation You install the Cloudberry Addin as you do for any addins for Windows Home Server. On a PC on your network, browse to the shared folders on your server and open the Add-Ins folder and copy over WHS_CloudBerryOnlineBackupSetup_v1.5.0.81S3o.msi (link below), then close out of the folder. Next launch the Windows Home Server Console, click Settings, then Add-Ins. Click on the Available tab and click the Install button. It installs very quickly, and when you get the Installation Succeeded dialog click OK. You will lose connection through the Console, just click OK, then reconnect. After reconnecting, you’ll see CloudBerry Backup has been installed, and you can begin using it. You can setup a backup plan right away or find out what’s new with version 1.5. Amazon S3 Account If you don’t already have an Amazon S3 account, you’ll be prompted to create a new one. Click on the Create an account hyperlink, which takes you to the Amazon S3 page where you can sign up. After reviewing the functionality of Amazon S3, click on the Sign Up for Amazon S3 button. Enter in your contact information and accept the Amazon Web Services Customer Agreement. You’re then shown their pricing for storage plans. The amount of storage space you use will depend on your needs. It’s relatively cheap for smaller amounts of data. Just keep in mind the more data you store and download, the more S3 is going to cost. Note: Amazon S3 is introducing Reduced Redundancy Storage which will lower the cost of the data stored on S3. CloudBerry 1.5 will support this new feature. You can find out more about this new pricing structure. Note: Keep in mind that after you first sign up for an Amazon S3 account, it can take up to 24 hours to be authorized. In fact, you may want to sign up for the S3 account before installing the Add-In. After you sign up for your S3 Account, you’ll be given access credentials which you can enter in and create a Storage Bucket name. Features & Use CloudBerry is wizard driven, straight-forward and easy to use. Here we take a look at creating a backup plan. To begin, click on the Setup Backup Plan button to kick off the wizard. Select your backup mode based on the amount of features you want. In our example we’re going to select Advanced Mode as it offers more features than Simple Mode. Select your backup storage account or create a new one. You can select a default account by checking Use currently selected account as default. Now you can go through and select the files and folders you want to backup from your home server. Check the box Show physical drives to get more of a selection of files and folders. This also allows you to backup files from your data drive as well. It has full support for drive extenders so you can backup your shares as well. The cool thing about Cloudberry is it allows you to drill down specific files and folders unlike other WHS backup utilities. Next you can use advanced filters to specify files and/or folders to skip if you want. There are compression and encryption options as well. This will save storage space, bandwidth, and keep your data secure. Purge Options allow you to customize options for getting rid of older files. You can also select the option to delete files from the S3 service that have been deleted locally. Be careful with this option however, as you won’t be able to restore files if you delete them locally. You have some nice scheduling options from running backups manually, specific date and time, or recurring daily, weekly or monthly. Receive email notifications in all cases or when a backup fails. This is a good option so you know if things were successful or something failed, and you need to back it up manually. Email notifications… Give your plan a name… Then if the summary page looks good you can continue, or still go back at this point if something doesn’t look correct and needs adjusting. That’s it! You’re ready to go, and you have an option to start your first backup right away. After you’ve created a backup plan, you can go in and edit, delete, view history, or restore files. Restoring Files using CloudBerry To restore data from your backups kick off the Restore Wizard and select the backup to restore from. You can select the last backup, a specific point in time, or manually browse through the files. Browse through the directory and select the files you need to restore. Choose the destination to restore the files to. You can select from the original location, a specific location, to overwrite existing files, or set the location as the default for future restores. If the files are encrypted, enter in the correct passwords. If the summary looks good, click on Next to start the restore process. You’ll be shown a progress bar at the bottom of the screen while the files are restored. After the process has completed, close out of the Restore Wizard. In this example we restored a couple of music files to the desktop of Windows Home Server… But as shown above you can save them to the original location, other network locations, or WHS shared folders. This can make it a lot easier to keep track of files you’ve restored. You can also access different options for CloudBerry by clicking Settings in WHS Console then CloudBerry Backup. Here you can set up a new storage account, check for updates, app options, Diagnostics, and send feedback. Under Options there are several settings you can tweak to get the best experience for your WHS backups. CloudBerry Web Interface Another nice feature is the CloudBerry Web Interface so you can access your data from anywhere you have an Internet connection. To check it out in WHS Console, click on the Backup Web Interface link…you’ll probably want to bookmark the link in your favorite browser. Note: This feature is still in beta and at the time of this review, the Web Interface wasn’t up and running so we weren’t able to test it out. Performance The Cloudberry app works very well through the Windows Home Server Console. The amount of time it takes to backup or restore your data will depend on the speed of your Internet connection and size of the files. In our tests, backing up 1GB of data to the Amazon S3 account took around an hour, but we were running it on a DSL with limited upload speeds so your mileage will vary. Product Support In our experience, the team at CloudBerry offered great support in a timely manner when contacting them. You can fill out a help request through a form on their website and they also have a community forum. Conclusion We were very pleased with CloudBerry Online Backup for WHS. It’s wizard driven interface makes it extremely easy to use, and offers comprehensive backup choices for your Amazon S3 account. CloudBerry will only backup files that have been modified, so if files haven’t been changed, they won’t be backed up again.They offer a free 15 day trial and is $29.99 after that for a full license. Once you buy the app you own it, and charges to your S3 account will vary depending on the amount of data you upload. If you’re looking for an effective and easy to use front end application to backup your Windows Home Server data to your Amazon S3 account, CloudBerry is a recommended affordable choice. Download CloudBerry for Windows Home Server Sign Up For Amazon S3 Account Rating Installation: 9 Ease of Use: 8 Features: 8 Performance: 8 Product Support: 8 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home ServerGMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerBackup Windows Home Server Folders to an External Hard DriveBackup Your Windows Home Server Off-Site with Asus WebstorageRemove a Network Computer from Windows Home Server 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 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox)

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• Using Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center to Update Solaris via Live Upgrade

  - by LeonShaner

  Introduction: This Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center blog entry provides tips for using Ops Center to update Solaris using Live Upgrade on Solaris 10 and Boot Environments on Solaris 11. Why use Live Upgrade? Live Upgrade (LU) can significantly reduce downtime associated with patching Live Upgrade avoids dropping to single-user mode for long periods of time during patching Live Upgrade relies on an Alternate Boot Environment (ABE)/(BE), which is patched while in multi-user mode; thereby allowing normal system operations to continue with the active BE, while the alternate BE is being patched Activating an newly patched (A)BE is essentially a reboot; therefore the downtime is ~= reboot Admins can easily revert to the prior Boot Environment (BE) as a safeguard / fallback. Why use Ops Center to patch via Live Upgrade, Alternate Boot Environments, and Solaris 11 equivalents? All the benefits of Ops Center's extensive patch and package knowledge base can be leveraged on top of Live Upgrade Ops Center can orchestrate patching based on Live Upgrade and Solaris 11 features, which all works together to minimize downtime Ops Centers advanced inventory and reporting features assurance that each OS is updated to a verifiable, consistent standard, rather than relying on ad-hoc (error prone) procedures and scripts Ops Center gives admins control over the boot environment specifications or they can let Ops Center decide when a BE is necessary, thereby reducing complexity and lowering the opportunity for user error Preparing to use Live Upgrade-like features in Solaris 11 Requirements and information you should know: Global Zone Root file-systems must be separate from Solaris Container / Zone filesystems Solaris 11 has features which are similar in concept to Live Upgrade on Solaris 10, but differ greatly in implementationImportant distinctions: Solaris 11 assumes ZFS root Solaris 11 adds Boot Environments (BE's) as an integrated feature (see beadm) Solaris 11 BE's avoid single-user patching (vs. Solaris 10 w/ ZFS snapshot=ABE). Solaris 11 Image Packaging System (IPS) has hooks for BE creation, as needed Solaris 11 allows pkgs to be installed + upgraded in alternate BE (e.g. instead of the live system) but it is controlled on a per-pkg basis Boot Environments are activated across a reboot; instead of spending long periods installing + upgrading packages in single user mode. Fallback to a prior BE is a function of the BE infrastructure (a la beadm). (Generally) Reboot + BE activation can be much much faster on Solaris 11 Preparing to use Live Upgrade on Solaris 10 Requirements and information you should know: Global Zone Root file-systems must be separate from Solaris Container / Zone filesystems Live Upgrade Pre-requisite patches must be applied before the first Live Upgrade Alternate Boot Environments are created (see "Pre-requisite Patches" section, below...) Solaris 10 Update 6 or newer on ZFS root is the practical starting point for Live Upgrade Live Upgrade with ZFS root is far more straight-forward than any scheme based on Alternative Boot Environments in slices or temporarily breaking mirrors Use Solaris best practices to upgrade the OS to at least Solaris 10 Update 4 (outside of Ops Center) UFS root can (technically) be used, but it is significantly more involved (e.g. discouraged) -- there are many reasons to move to ZFS while going through the process to update to Solaris 10 Update 6 or newer (out side of Ops Center) Recommendation: Start with Solaris 10 Update 6 or newer on ZFS root Recommendation: Start with Ops Center 12c or newer Ops Center 12c can automatically create your ABE's for you, without the need for custom scripts Ops Center 12c Update 2 avoids kernel panic on unpatched Solaris 10 update 9 (and older) -- unrelated to Live Upgrade, but more on the issue, below. NOTE: There is no magic!  If you have systems running Solaris 10 Update 5 or older on UFS root, and you don't know how to get them updated to Solaris 10 on ZFS root, then there are services available from Oracle Advanced Customer Support (ACS), which specialize in this area. Live Upgrade Pre-requisite Patches (Solaris 10) Certain Live Upgrade related patches must be present before the first Live Upgrade ABE's are created on Solaris 10.Use the following MOS Search String to find the “living document” that outlines the required patch minimums, which are necessary before using any Live Upgrade features: Solaris Live Upgrade Software Patch Requirements(Click above – the link is valid as of this writing, but search in MOS for the same "Solaris Live Upgrade Software Patch Requirements" string if necessary) It is a very good idea to check the document periodically and adapt to its contents, accordingly.IMPORTANT:  In case it wasn't clear in the above document, some direct patching of the active OS, including a reboot, may be required before Live Upgrade can be successfully used the first time.HINT: You can use Ops Center to determine what to expect for a given system, and to schedule the “pre-patching” during a maintenance window if necessary. Preparing to use Ops Center Discover + Manage (Install + Configure the Ops Center agent in) each Global Zone Recommendation:  Begin by using OCDoctor --agent-prereq to determine whether OS meets OC prerequisites (resolve any issues) See prior requirements and recommendations w.r.t. starting with Solaris 10 Update 6 or newer on ZFS (or at least Solaris 10 Update 4 on UFS, with caveats) WARNING: Systems running unpatched Solaris 10 update 9 (or older) should run the Ops Center 12c Update 2 agent to avoid a potential kernel panic The 12c Update 2 agent will check patch minimums and disable certain process accounting features if the kernel is not sufficiently patched to avoid the panic SPARC: 142900-05 Obsoleted by: 142900-06 SunOS 5.10: kernel patch 10 Oracle Solaris on SPARC (32-bit) X64: 142901-05 Obsoleted by: 142901-06 SunOS 5.10_x86: kernel patch 10 Oracle Solaris on x86 (32-bit) OR SPARC: 142909-17 SunOS 5.10: kernel patch 10 Oracle Solaris on SPARC (32-bit) X64: 142910-17 SunOS 5.10_x86: kernel patch 10 Oracle Solaris on x86 (32-bit) Ops Center 12c (initial release) and 12c Update 1 agent can also be safely used with a workaround (to be performed BEFORE installing the agent): # mkdir -p /etc/opt/sun/oc # echo "zstat_exacct_allowed=false" > /etc/opt/sun/oc/zstat.conf # chmod 755 /etc/opt/sun /etc/opt/sun/oc # chmod 644 /etc/opt/sun/oc/zstat.conf # chown -Rh root:sys /etc/opt/sun/oc NOTE: Remove the above after patching the OS sufficiently, or after upgrading to the 12c Update 2 agent Using Ops Center to apply Live Upgrade-related Pre-Patches (Solaris 10)Overview: Create an OS Update Profile containing the minimum LU-related pre-patches, based on the Solaris Live Upgrade Software Patch Requirements, previously mentioned. SIMULATE the deployment of the LU-related pre-patches Observe whether any of the LU-related pre-patches will require a reboot The job details for each Global Zone will advise whether a reboot step will be required ACTUALLY deploy the LU-related pre-patches, according to your change control process (e.g. if no reboot, maybe okay to do now; vs. must do later because of the reboot). You can schedule the job to occur later, during a maintenance window Check the job status for each node, resolving any issues found Once the LU-related pre-patches are applied, you can Ops Center to patch using Live Upgrade on Solaris 10 Using Ops Center to patch Solaris 10 with LU/ABE's -- the GOODS!(this is the heart of the tip): Create an OS Update Profile containing the patches that make up your standard build Use Solaris Baselines when possible Add other individual patches as needed ACTUALLY deploy the OS Update Profile Specify the appropriate Live Upgrade options, e.g. Synchronize the active BE to the alternate BE before patching Do not activate the BE after patching Check the job status for each node, resolving any issues found Activate the newly patched BE according to your change control process Activate = Reboot to the ABE, making the ABE the new active BE Ops Center does not separate LU activate from reboot, so expect a reboot! Check the job status for each node, resolving any issues found Examples (w/Screenshots) Solaris 10 and Live Upgrade: Auto-Create the Alternate Boot Environment (ZFS root only) ABE to be created on ZFS with name S10_12_07REC (Example) Uses built in feature to call “lucreate -n S10_12_07REC” behind scenes if not already present NOTE: Leave “lucreate” params blank (if you do specify options, the will be appended after -n $ABEName) Solaris 10 and Live Upgrade: Alternate Boot Environment Creation via Operational Profile (script) The Alternate Boot Environment is to be created via custom, user-supplied script, which does whatever is needed for the system where Live Upgrade will be used. Operational Profile, which provides the script to create an ABE: Very similar to the automatic case, but with a Script (Operational Profile), which is used to create the ABE Relies on user-supplied script in the form of an Operational Profile Could be used to prepare an ABE based on a UFS root in a slice, or on a separate device (e.g. by breaking a mirror first) – it is up to the script author to do the right thing! EXAMPLE: Same result as the ZFS case, but illustrating the Operational Profile (e.g. script) approach to call: # lucreate -n S10_1207REC NOTE: OC special variable is $ABEName Boot Environment Profile, which references the Operational Profile Script = Operational Profile on this screen Refers to Operational Profile shown in the previous section The user-supplied S10_Create_BE Operational Profile will be run The Operational Profile must send a non-zero exit code if there is a problem (so that the OS Update job will not proceed) Solaris 10 OS Update Profile (to provide the actual patch specifications) Solaris 10 Baseline “Recommended” chosen for “Install” Solaris 10 OS Update Plan (two-steps in this case) “Create a Boot Environment” + “Update OS” are chosen. Using Ops Center to patch Solaris 11 with Boot Environments (as needed) Create a Solaris 11 OS Update Profile containing the packages that make up your standard build ACTUALLY deploy the Solaris 11 OS Update Profile BE will be created if needed (or you can stipulate no BE) BE name will be auto-generated (if needed), or you may specify a BE name Check the job status for each node, resolving any issues found Check if a BE was created; if so, activate the new BE Activate = Reboot to the BE, making the new BE the active BE Ops Center does not separate BE activate from reboot NOTE: Not every Solaris 11 OS Update will require a new BE, so a reboot may not be necessary. Solaris 11: Auto BE Create (as Needed -- let Ops Center decide) BE to be created as needed BE to be named automatically Reboot (if necessary) deferred to separate step Solaris 11: OS Profile Solaris 11 “entire” chosen for a particular SRU Solaris 11: OS Update Plan (w/BE)  “Create a Boot Environment” + “Update OS” are chosen. Summary: Solaris 10 Live Upgrade, Alternate Boot Environments, and their equivalents on Solaris 11 can be very powerful tools to help minimize the downtime associated with updating your servers.  For very old Solaris, there are some important prerequisites to adhere to, but once the initial preparation is complete, Live Upgrade can be used going forward.  For Solaris 11, the built-in Boot Environment handling is leveraged directly by the Image Packaging System, and the result is a much more straight forward way to patch, and far fewer prerequisites to satisfy in getting there.  Ops Center simplifies using either approach, and helps you improve consistency from system to system, which ultimately helps you improve the overall up-time across all the Solaris systems in your environment. Please let us know what you think?  Until next time...\Leon-- Leon Shaner | Senior IT/Product ArchitectSystems Management | Ops Center Engineering @ Oracle The views expressed on this [blog; Web site] are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle. For more information, please go to Oracle Enterprise Manager  web page or  follow us at :  Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Linkedin | Newsletter

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• Run WordPress & Other Web Apps with Windows Web Platform

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to run WordPress or other web apps on your PC so you can easily test and design websites?  Here we’ll look at how you can get the latest web apps on your computer in only a few quick steps. Many web apps today, such as WordPress, MediaWiki, and more, are open source and can be run for free from any computer with even a simple local web server.  They are often very difficult to install on your computer, since they require a number of dependencies such as PHP and MySQL.  Microsoft has worked to make this easier, releasing the Windows Web Platform Installer.  This lets you install many popular web apps and free tools in Windows with only a few clicks. Here we’re going to look at how to install WordPress and the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express to edit web code with the Web Platform Installer.  But, if you’d rather install a different web app or tool, feel free to choose those as the installations are generally similar. Getting Started Head over to Microsoft’s Web development site and download the Web Platform Installer (link below).  This will download very quick, as it is just a small loader.  When you run this loader, it will download the Web Platform Installer files.  The Web Platform Installer works on XP, Vista, and Windows 7, as well as the related versions of Windows Server. After a couple moments, the Web Platform Installer will open and load information about the latest web offerings.    Now you can choose what you want to install.  You can quickly select the recommended products for several categories such as Web Server, Database, and more. Alternately, click Customize under the category and select exactly what you want to install.  Note that items already installed on your computer will be grayed out. We wanted to install Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, so select Customize under Tools, and select Visual Web Developer 2010 Express. Or, for more preset choices, select Options on the bottom of the window. You can choose to add Multimedia, Developer, and Enterprise tools to the lists, or add a new preset list from a feed. Choose Specific Web apps to Install We wanted to install WordPress, so instead of choosing a preset, select the Web Applications tab on the left.  Now you can choose from a variety of apps based on category, or you can view them all together in an A to Z, Most Popular, or Highest Rating list. Click the checkbox beside the app you want to install to select it, or click the “i” for more information. Here’s the More Information pane for WordPress.  If you’re ready to install it, click the checkbox. Now you can go back and add more web apps or tools to the install list if you like.  The Web Platform Installer will automatically find and select prerequisite apps such as MySQL, so you won’t need to worry about finding them. Once you’ve selected everything you want to install, click the Install button on the bottom of the window. The Web Platform Installer will now show you everything that’s selected, including components that it automatically selected.  Notice we only chose to install WordPress and Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, but it also has selected MySQL and PHP automatically.  Click I Accept to proceed. Enter an administrator password for MySQL before the setup begins. Now the Web Platform Installer will take over, automatically downloading, installing, and configuring all of your web apps.  It will also activate optional Windows components that may be needed on your computer.  This may take several minutes, depending on the components you selected and your internet speed.   Setting up Your Test Site Once the installation is finished, you’ll be asked to enter some information about your site.  You can simply accept the defaults or enter your own choices, and then click Continue. Now you’ll need to enter some information for your web apps.  When installing WordPress, you’ll need to choose a database and enter administrative usernames and passwords.  You may also be asked to enter extra information for additional security, but for a local-only test site this isn’t necessary.  Click Continue when you’re finished. You’ll need to wait a few more moments as it complete the setup of your web apps.  The good thing is, once it’s finished, they’ll be ready to go with only minimal configuration. And you’re finished!  The installer will let you know everything it installed, and if there were any problems.  In our test, Visual Web Developer 2010 Express failed to install successfully.  Often the problems may be with the download, so click Finish and then reselect the apps that didn’t install and run the installer again. Now you’re ready to run WordPress from your PC.  Click the Launch WordPress link or enter http://localhost:80/wordpress in your browser to get started. You’ll only have a little more setup to do on WordPress to get it running.  Once you’ve opened your WordPress page in your browser, enter a name for your blog and your email address, and click Install WordPress.   After a few seconds, you should see a Success! page with your username and a temporary password.  Copy the password, and then click Log In. Enter admin as the Username and paste the random generated password, and click Log In. WordPress will remind you to change the default password.  Click the Yes, Take me to my profile page link to do this. Enter something easier for you to remember, and click Update Profile. Now you’re ready to enjoy your new WordPress install on Windows.  You can add plugins and themes, and everything else you’d do with a normal WordPress site.  Here’s the dashboard running from localhost. And here’s the default blog running. Setting up Visual Web Developer 2010 Express As mentioned before, Visual Web Developer 2010 Express didn’t install correctly on our first try, but the second time it installed seamlessly.  Once it’s installed, launch it from your start menu as normal.  It may take a few minutes to load on the first run as it is finishing up setup. You may notice that the splash screen displayed while the program is loading says For Evaluation Purposes Only.  This is because you still need to register the program. You have 30 days to register the program, but let’s go ahead and do it to get this step out of the way.  Click Help in the menu bar, and select Register Product. Click Obtain a registration key online in the popup window. You’ll need to sign in with your Windows Live ID, and then fill out a quick form. When you’re done, copy the registration key displayed and paste it into the registration dialog in Visual Web Developer.   Now you’ve got a registered, free web development program with full standards compliance and IntelliSense to help you work smarter and faster.  And it works great with your local web apps, so you can create, tweak, and then deploy, all from your desktop with this simple installer! Install More Apps You can always run the Web Platform Installer again in the future and add more apps if you’d like.  The install adds a link to the Installer in the Start menu; just run it and repeat the steps above with your new selections. Also, from the installer, you can cleanup the setup files downloaded during the installation if you want.  Click the Options link in the bottom of the window, and then scroll down and select Delete installer cache folder. Uninstalling the apps is not as easy, unfortunately.  If you wish to uninstall the Web Platform Installer and everything you installed with it, you’ll need to uninstall each item individually.  One easy way to see what was all installed together is to sort the entries in Uninstall Programs by date.  In our case, we also installed some other applications on the same day, but it’s easier to see what was installed together. Or if you are not a fan of using Programs and Features to uninstall them, try out a program like Revo Uninstaller Pro. Conclusion Whether you’re a full-time web developer or just enjoy testing out the latest web apps, the Web Platform Installer makes it quick and easy to get your computer loaded up with the latest bits.  In fact, it’s easier to install these tools with all their dependencies than it is to install many standard boxed programs. If you’d like to take your web server anywhere you go and not have it confined to your desktop, then check out our article on how to Turn Your Flashdrive into a Portable Webserver. Link Download the Microsoft Web Platform Installer Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Linux QuickTip: Downloading and Un-tarring in One StepQuick Tip: Set a Future Date for a Post in WordPressHow-To Geek SoftwareAdd Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogHow-To Geek Software: WordPress Comment Moderation Notifier 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 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like) How to Forecast Weather, without Gadgets Outlook Tools, one stop tweaking for any Outlook version Zoofs, find the most popular tweeted YouTube videos Video preview of new Windows Live Essentials 21 Cursor Packs for XP, Vista & 7

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• [GEEK SCHOOL] Network Security 1: Securing User Accounts and Passwords in Windows

  - by Matt Klein

  This How-To Geek School class is intended for people who want to learn more about security when using Windows operating systems. You will learn many principles that will help you have a more secure computing experience and will get the chance to use all the important security tools and features that are bundled with Windows. Obviously, we will share everything you need to know about using them effectively. In this first lesson, we will talk about password security; the different ways of logging into Windows and how secure they are. In the proceeding lesson, we will explain where Windows stores all the user names and passwords you enter while working in this operating systems, how safe they are, and how to manage this data. Moving on in the series, we will talk about User Account Control, its role in improving the security of your system, and how to use Windows Defender in order to protect your system from malware. Then, we will talk about the Windows Firewall, how to use it in order to manage the apps that get access to the network and the Internet, and how to create your own filtering rules. After that, we will discuss the SmartScreen Filter – a security feature that gets more and more attention from Microsoft and is now widely used in its Windows 8.x operating systems. Moving on, we will discuss ways to keep your software and apps up-to-date, why this is important and which tools you can use to automate this process as much as possible. Last but not least, we will discuss the Action Center and its role in keeping you informed about what’s going on with your system and share several tips and tricks about how to stay safe when using your computer and the Internet. Let’s get started by discussing everyone’s favorite subject: passwords. The Types of Passwords Found in Windows In Windows 7, you have only local user accounts, which may or may not have a password. For example, you can easily set a blank password for any user account, even if that one is an administrator. The only exception to this rule are business networks where domain policies force all user accounts to use a non-blank password. In Windows 8.x, you have both local accounts and Microsoft accounts. If you would like to learn more about them, don’t hesitate to read the lesson on User Accounts, Groups, Permissions & Their Role in Sharing, in our Windows Networking series. Microsoft accounts are obliged to use a non-blank password due to the fact that a Microsoft account gives you access to Microsoft services. Using a blank password would mean exposing yourself to lots of problems. Local accounts in Windows 8.1 however, can use a blank password. On top of traditional passwords, any user account can create and use a 4-digit PIN or a picture password. These concepts were introduced by Microsoft to speed up the sign in process for the Windows 8.x operating system. However, they do not replace the use of a traditional password and can be used only in conjunction with a traditional user account password. Another type of password that you encounter in Windows operating systems is the Homegroup password. In a typical home network, users can use the Homegroup to easily share resources. A Homegroup can be joined by a Windows device only by using the Homegroup password. If you would like to learn more about the Homegroup and how to use it for network sharing, don’t hesitate to read our Windows Networking series. What to Keep in Mind When Creating Passwords, PINs and Picture Passwords When creating passwords, a PIN, or a picture password for your user account, we would like you keep in mind the following recommendations: Do not use blank passwords, even on the desktop computers in your home. You never know who may gain unwanted access to them. Also, malware can run more easily as administrator because you do not have a password. Trading your security for convenience when logging in is never a good idea. When creating a password, make it at least eight characters long. Make sure that it includes a random mix of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Ideally, it should not be related in any way to your name, username, or company name. Make sure that your passwords do not include complete words from any dictionary. Dictionaries are the first thing crackers use to hack passwords. Do not use the same password for more than one account. All of your passwords should be unique and you should use a system like LastPass, KeePass, Roboform or something similar to keep track of them. When creating a PIN use four different digits to make things slightly harder to crack. When creating a picture password, pick a photo that has at least 10 “points of interests”. Points of interests are areas that serve as a landmark for your gestures. Use a random mixture of gesture types and sequence and make sure that you do not repeat the same gesture twice. Be aware that smudges on the screen could potentially reveal your gestures to others. The Security of Your Password vs. the PIN and the Picture Password Any kind of password can be cracked with enough effort and the appropriate tools. There is no such thing as a completely secure password. However, passwords created using only a few security principles are much harder to crack than others. If you respect the recommendations shared in the previous section of this lesson, you will end up having reasonably secure passwords. Out of all the log in methods in Windows 8.x, the PIN is the easiest to brute force because PINs are restricted to four digits and there are only 10,000 possible unique combinations available. The picture password is more secure than the PIN because it provides many more opportunities for creating unique combinations of gestures. Microsoft have compared the two login options from a security perspective in this post: Signing in with a picture password. In order to discourage brute force attacks against picture passwords and PINs, Windows defaults to your traditional text password after five failed attempts. The PIN and the picture password function only as alternative login methods to Windows 8.x. Therefore, if someone cracks them, he or she doesn’t have access to your user account password. However, that person can use all the apps installed on your Windows 8.x device, access your files, data, and so on. How to Create a PIN in Windows 8.x If you log in to a Windows 8.x device with a user account that has a non-blank password, then you can create a 4-digit PIN for it, to use it as a complementary login method. In order to create one, you need to go to “PC Settings”. If you don’t know how, then press Windows + C on your keyboard or flick from the right edge of the screen, on a touch-enabled device, then press “Settings”. The Settings charm is now open. Click or tap the link that says “Change PC settings”, on the bottom of the charm. In PC settings, go to Accounts and then to “Sign-in options”. Here you will find all the necessary options for changing your existing password, creating a PIN, or a picture password. To create a PIN, press the “Add” button in the PIN section. The “Create a PIN” wizard is started and you are asked to enter the password of your user account. Type it and press “OK”. Now you are asked to enter a 4-digit pin in the “Enter PIN” and “Confirm PIN” fields. The PIN has been created and you can now use it to log in to Windows. How to Create a Picture Password in Windows 8.x If you log in to a Windows 8.x device with a user account that has a non-blank password, then you can also create a picture password and use it as a complementary login method. In order to create one, you need to go to “PC settings”. In PC Settings, go to Accounts and then to “Sign-in options”. Here you will find all the necessary options for changing your existing password, creating a PIN, or a picture password. To create a picture password, press the “Add” button in the “Picture password” section. The “Create a picture password” wizard is started and you are asked to enter the password of your user account. You are shown a guide on how the picture password works. Take a few seconds to watch it and learn the gestures that can be used for your picture password. You will learn that you can create a combination of circles, straight lines, and taps. When ready, press “Choose picture”. Browse your Windows 8.x device and select the picture you want to use for your password and press “Open”. Now you can drag the picture to position it the way you want. When you like how the picture is positioned, press “Use this picture” on the left. If you are not happy with the picture, press “Choose new picture” and select a new one, as shown during the previous step. After you have confirmed that you want to use this picture, you are asked to set up your gestures for the picture password. Draw three gestures on the picture, any combination you wish. Please remember that you can use only three gestures: circles, straight lines, and taps. Once you have drawn those three gestures, you are asked to confirm. Draw the same gestures one more time. If everything goes well, you are informed that you have created your picture password and that you can use it the next time you sign in to Windows. If you don’t confirm the gestures correctly, you will be asked to try again, until you draw the same gestures twice. To close the picture password wizard, press “Finish”. Where Does Windows Store Your Passwords? Are They Safe? All the passwords that you enter in Windows and save for future use are stored in the Credential Manager. This tool is a vault with the usernames and passwords that you use to log on to your computer, to other computers on the network, to apps from the Windows Store, or to websites using Internet Explorer. By storing these credentials, Windows can automatically log you the next time you access the same app, network share, or website. Everything that is stored in the Credential Manager is encrypted for your protection.

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• SQL – NuoDB and Third Party Explorer – SQuirreL SQL Client, SQL Workbench/J and DbVisualizer

  - by Pinal Dave

  I recently wrote a four-part series on how I started to learn about and begin my journey with NuoDB. Big Data is indeed a big world and the learning of the Big Data is like spaghetti – no one knows in reality where to start, so I decided to learn it with the help of NuoDB. You can download NuoDB and continue your journey with me as well. Part 1 – Install NuoDB in 90 Seconds Part 2 – Manage NuoDB Installation Part 3 – Explore NuoDB Database Part 4 – Migrate from SQL Server to NuoDB …and in this blog post we will try to answer the most asked question about NuoDB. “I like the NuoDB Explorer but can I connect to NuoDB from my preferred Graphical User Interface?” Honestly, I did not expect this question to be asked of me so many times but from the question it is clear that we developers absolutely want to learn new things and along with that we do want to continue to use our most efficient developer tools. Now here is the answer to the question: “Absolutely, you can continue to use any of the following most popular SQL clients.” NuoDB supports the three most popular 3rd-party SQL clients. In all the leading development environments there are always more than one database installed and managing each of them with a different tool is often a very difficult task. Developers like to use one tool, which can control most of the databases. Once developers are familiar with one database tool it is very difficult for them to switch to another tool. This is particularly difficult when we developers find that tool to be the key reason for our efficiency. Let us see how to install each of the NuoDB supported 3rd party tools along with a quick tutorial on how to go about using them. SQuirreL SQL Client First download SQuirreL Universal SQL client. On the Windows platform you can double-click on the file and it will install the SQuirrel client. Once it is installed, open the application and it will bring up the following screen. Now go to the Drivers tab on the left side and scroll it down. You will find NuoDB mentioned there. Now right click over it and click on Modify Driver. Now here is where you need to make sure that you make proper entries or your client will not work with the database. Enter following values: Name: NuoDB Example URL: jdbc:com:nuodb://localhost:48004/test Website URL: http://www.nuodb.com Now click on the Extra Class Path tab and Add the location of the nuodbjdbc.jar file. If you are following my blog posts and have installed NuoDB in the default location, you will find the default path as C:\Program Files\NuoDB\jar\nuodbjdbc.jar. The class name of the driver is automatically populated. Once you click OK you will see that there is a small icon displayed to the left of NuoDB, which shows that you have successfully configured and installed the NuoDB driver. Now click on the tab of Alias tab and you can notice that it is empty. Now click on the big Plus icon and it will open screen of adding an alias. “Alias” means nothing more than adding a database to your system. The database name of the original installation can be anything and, if you wish, you can register the database with any other alternative name. Here are the details you should fill into the Alias screen below. Name: Test (or your preferred alias) Driver: NuoDB URL: jdbc:com:nuodb://localhost:48004/test (This is for test database) User Name: dba (This is the username which I entered for test Database) Password: goalie (This is the password which I entered for test Database) Check Auto Logon and Connect at Startup and click on OK. That’s it! You are done. On the right side you will see a table name and on the left side you will see various tabs with all the relevant details from respective table. You can see various metadata, schemas, data types and other information in the table. In addition, you can also generate script and do various important tasks related to database. You can see how easy it is to configure NuoDB with the SQuirreL Client and get going with it immediately. SQL Workbench/J This is another wonderful client tool, which works very well with NuoDB. The best part is that in the Driver dropdown you will see NuoDB being mentioned there. Click here to download  SQL Workbench/J Universal SQL client. The download process is straight forward and the installation is a very easy process for SQL Workbench/J. As soon as you open the client, you will notice on following screen the NuoDB driver when selecting a New Connection Profile. Select NuoDB from the drop down and click on OK. In the driver information, enter following details: Driver: NuoDB (com.nuodb.jdbc.Driver) URL: jdbc:com.nuodb://localhost/test Username: dba Password: goalie While clicking on OK, it will bring up the following pop-up. Click Yes to edit the driver information. Click on OK and it will bring you to following screen. This is the screen where you can perform various tasks. You can write any SQL query you want and it will instantly show you the results. Now click on the database icon, which you see right on the left side of the word User=dba.  Once you click on Database Explorer, you can perform various database related tasks. As a developer, one of my favorite tasks is to look at the source of the table as it gives me a proper view of the structure of the database. I find SQL Workbench/J very efficient in doing the same. DbVisualizer DBVisualizer is another great tool, which helps you to connect to NuoDB and retrieve database information in your desired format. A developer who is familiar with DBVisualizer will find this client to be very easy to work with. The installation of the DBVisualizer is very pretty straight forward. When we open the client, it will bring us to the following screen. As a first step we need to set up the driver. Go to Tools >> Driver Manager. It will bring up following screen where we set up the diver. Click on Create Driver and it will open up the driver settings on the right side. On the right side of the area where it displays Driver Settings please enter the following values- Name: NuoDB URL Format: jdbc:com.nuodb://localhost:48004/test Now under the driver path, click on the folder icon and it will ask for the location of the jar file. Provide the path as a C:\Program Files\NuoDB\jar\nuodbjdbc.jar and click OK. You will notice there is a green button displayed at the bottom right corner. This means the driver is configured properly. Once driver is configured properly, we can go to Create Database Connection and create a database. If the pop up show up for the Wizard. Click on No Wizard and continue to enter the settings manually. Here is the Database Connection screen. This screen can be bit tricky. Here are the settings you need to remember to enter. Name: NuoDB Database Type: Generic Driver: NuoDB Database URL: jdbc:com.nuodb://localhost:48004/test Database Userid: dba Database Password: goalie Once you enter the values, click on Connect. Once Connect is pressed, it will change the button value to Reconnect if the connection is successfully established and it will show the connection details on lthe eft side. When we further explore the NuoDB, we can see various tables created in our test application. We can further click on the right side screen and see various details on the table. If you click on the Data Tab, it will display the entire data of the table. The Tools menu also has some very interesting and cool features like Driver Manager, Data Monitor and SQL History. Summary Well, this was a relatively long post but I find it is extremely essential to cover all the three important clients, which we developers use in our daily database development. Here is my question to you? Which one of the following is your favorite NuoDB 3rd-Party Database Client? (Pick One) SQuirreL SQL Client SQL Workbench/J DbVisualizer I will be very much eager to read your experience about NuoDB. You can download NuoDB from here. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: NuoDB

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• Recover Data Like a Forensics Expert Using an Ubuntu Live CD

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  There are lots of utilities to recover deleted files, but what if you can’t boot up your computer, or the whole drive has been formatted? We’ll show you some tools that will dig deep and recover the most elusive deleted files, or even whole hard drive partitions. We’ve shown you simple ways to recover accidentally deleted files, even a simple method that can be done from an Ubuntu Live CD, but for hard disks that have been heavily corrupted, those methods aren’t going to cut it. In this article, we’ll examine four tools that can recover data from the most messed up hard drives, regardless of whether they were formatted for a Windows, Linux, or Mac computer, or even if the partition table is wiped out entirely. Note: These tools cannot recover data that has been overwritten on a hard disk. Whether a deleted file has been overwritten depends on many factors – the quicker you realize that you want to recover a file, the more likely you will be able to do so. Our setup To show these tools, we’ve set up a small 1 GB hard drive, with half of the space partitioned as ext2, a file system used in Linux, and half the space partitioned as FAT32, a file system used in older Windows systems. We stored ten random pictures on each hard drive. We then wiped the partition table from the hard drive by deleting the partitions in GParted. Is our data lost forever? Installing the tools All of the tools we’re going to use are in Ubuntu’s universe repository. To enable the repository, open Synaptic Package Manager by clicking on System in the top-left, then Administration > Synaptic Package Manager. Click on Settings > Repositories and add a check in the box labelled “Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)”. Click Close, and then in the main Synaptic Package Manager window, click the Reload button. Once the package list has reloaded, and the search index rebuilt, search for and mark for installation one or all of the following packages: testdisk, foremost, and scalpel. Testdisk includes TestDisk, which can recover lost partitions and repair boot sectors, and PhotoRec, which can recover many different types of files from tons of different file systems. Foremost, originally developed by the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations, recovers files based on their headers and other internal structures. Foremost operates on hard drives or drive image files generated by various tools. Finally, scalpel performs the same functions as foremost, but is focused on enhanced performance and lower memory usage. Scalpel may run better if you have an older machine with less RAM. Recover hard drive partitions If you can’t mount your hard drive, then its partition table might be corrupted. Before you start trying to recover your important files, it may be possible to recover one or more partitions on your drive, recovering all of your files with one step. Testdisk is the tool for the job. Start it by opening a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and typing in: sudo testdisk If you’d like, you can create a log file, though it won’t affect how much data you recover. Once you make your choice, you’re greeted with a list of the storage media on your machine. You should be able to identify the hard drive you want to recover partitions from by its size and label. TestDisk asks you select the type of partition table to search for. In most cases (ext2/3, NTFS, FAT32, etc.) you should select Intel and press Enter. Highlight Analyse and press enter. In our case, our small hard drive has previously been formatted as NTFS. Amazingly, TestDisk finds this partition, though it is unable to recover it. It also finds the two partitions we just deleted. We are able to change their attributes, or add more partitions, but we’ll just recover them by pressing Enter. If TestDisk hasn’t found all of your partitions, you can try doing a deeper search by selecting that option with the left and right arrow keys. We only had these two partitions, so we’ll recover them by selecting Write and pressing Enter. Testdisk informs us that we will have to reboot. Note: If your Ubuntu Live CD is not persistent, then when you reboot you will have to reinstall any tools that you installed earlier. After restarting, both of our partitions are back to their original states, pictures and all. Recover files of certain types For the following examples, we deleted the 10 pictures from both partitions and then reformatted them. PhotoRec Of the three tools we’ll show, PhotoRec is the most user-friendly, despite being a console-based utility. To start recovering files, open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type in: sudo photorec To begin, you are asked to select a storage device to search. You should be able to identify the right device by its size and label. Select the right device, and then hit Enter. PhotoRec asks you select the type of partition to search. In most cases (ext2/3, NTFS, FAT, etc.) you should select Intel and press Enter. You are given a list of the partitions on your selected hard drive. If you want to recover all of the files on a partition, then select Search and hit enter. However, this process can be very slow, and in our case we only want to search for pictures files, so instead we use the right arrow key to select File Opt and press Enter. PhotoRec can recover many different types of files, and deselecting each one would take a long time. Instead, we press “s” to clear all of the selections, and then find the appropriate file types – jpg, gif, and png – and select them by pressing the right arrow key. Once we’ve selected these three, we press “b” to save these selections. Press enter to return to the list of hard drive partitions. We want to search both of our partitions, so we highlight “No partition” and “Search” and then press Enter. PhotoRec prompts for a location to store the recovered files. If you have a different healthy hard drive, then we recommend storing the recovered files there. Since we’re not recovering very much, we’ll store it on the Ubuntu Live CD’s desktop. Note: Do not recover files to the hard drive you’re recovering from. PhotoRec is able to recover the 20 pictures from the partitions on our hard drive! A quick look in the recup_dir.1 directory that it creates confirms that PhotoRec has recovered all of our pictures, save for the file names. Foremost Foremost is a command-line program with no interactive interface like PhotoRec, but offers a number of command-line options to get as much data out of your had drive as possible. For a full list of options that can be tweaked via the command line, open up a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type in: foremost –h In our case, the command line options that we are going to use are: -t, a comma-separated list of types of files to search for. In our case, this is “jpeg,png,gif”. -v, enabling verbose-mode, giving us more information about what foremost is doing. -o, the output folder to store recovered files in. In our case, we created a directory called “foremost” on the desktop. -i, the input that will be searched for files. This can be a disk image in several different formats; however, we will use a hard disk, /dev/sda. Our foremost invocation is: sudo foremost –t jpeg,png,gif –o foremost –v –i /dev/sda Your invocation will differ depending on what you’re searching for and where you’re searching for it. Foremost is able to recover 17 of the 20 files stored on the hard drive. Looking at the files, we can confirm that these files were recovered relatively well, though we can see some errors in the thumbnail for 00622449.jpg. Part of this may be due to the ext2 filesystem. Foremost recommends using the –d command-line option for Linux file systems like ext2. We’ll run foremost again, adding the –d command-line option to our foremost invocation: sudo foremost –t jpeg,png,gif –d –o foremost –v –i /dev/sda This time, foremost is able to recover all 20 images! A final look at the pictures reveals that the pictures were recovered with no problems. Scalpel Scalpel is another powerful program that, like Foremost, is heavily configurable. Unlike Foremost, Scalpel requires you to edit a configuration file before attempting any data recovery. Any text editor will do, but we’ll use gedit to change the configuration file. In a terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal), type in: sudo gedit /etc/scalpel/scalpel.conf scalpel.conf contains information about a number of different file types. Scroll through this file and uncomment lines that start with a file type that you want to recover (i.e. remove the “#” character at the start of those lines). Save the file and close it. Return to the terminal window. Scalpel also has a ton of command-line options that can help you search quickly and effectively; however, we’ll just define the input device (/dev/sda) and the output folder (a folder called “scalpel” that we created on the desktop). Our invocation is: sudo scalpel /dev/sda –o scalpel Scalpel is able to recover 18 of our 20 files. A quick look at the files scalpel recovered reveals that most of our files were recovered successfully, though there were some problems (e.g. 00000012.jpg). Conclusion In our quick toy example, TestDisk was able to recover two deleted partitions, and PhotoRec and Foremost were able to recover all 20 deleted images. Scalpel recovered most of the files, but it’s very likely that playing with the command-line options for scalpel would have enabled us to recover all 20 images. These tools are lifesavers when something goes wrong with your hard drive. If your data is on the hard drive somewhere, then one of these tools will track it down! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Recover Deleted Files on an NTFS Hard Drive from a Ubuntu Live CDUse an Ubuntu Live CD to Securely Wipe Your PC’s Hard DriveReset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDBackup Your Windows Live Writer SettingsAdding extra Repositories on Ubuntu 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites Restore Hidden Updates in Windows 7 & Vista Iceland an Insurance Job? Find Downloads and Add-ins for Outlook Recycle !

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• Move Files from a Failing PC with an Ubuntu Live CD

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  You’ve loaded the Ubuntu Live CD to salvage files from a failing system, but where do you store the recovered files? We’ll show you how to store them on external drives, drives on the same PC, a Windows home network, and other locations. We’ve shown you how to recover data like a forensics expert, but you can’t store recovered files back on your failed hard drive! There are lots of ways to transfer the files you access from an Ubuntu Live CD to a place that a stable Windows machine can access them. We’ll go through several methods, starting each section from the Ubuntu desktop – if you don’t yet have an Ubuntu Live CD, follow our guide to creating a bootable USB flash drive, and then our instructions for booting into Ubuntu. If your BIOS doesn’t let you boot using a USB flash drive, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! Use a Healthy Hard Drive If your computer has more than one hard drive, or your hard drive is healthy and you’re in Ubuntu for non-recovery reasons, then accessing your hard drive is easy as pie, even if the hard drive is formatted for Windows. To access a hard drive, it must first be mounted. To mount a healthy hard drive, you just have to select it from the Places menu at the top-left of the screen. You will have to identify your hard drive by its size. Clicking on the appropriate hard drive mounts it, and opens it in a file browser. You can now move files to this hard drive by drag-and-drop or copy-and-paste, both of which are done the same way they’re done in Windows. Once a hard drive, or other external storage device, is mounted, it will show up in the /media directory. To see a list of currently mounted storage devices, navigate to /media by clicking on File System in a File Browser window, and then double-clicking on the media folder. Right now, our media folder contains links to the hard drive, which Ubuntu has assigned a terribly uninformative label, and the PLoP Boot Manager CD that is currently in the CD-ROM drive. Connect a USB Hard Drive or Flash Drive An external USB hard drive gives you the advantage of portability, and is still large enough to store an entire hard disk dump, if need be. Flash drives are also very quick and easy to connect, though they are limited in how much they can store. When you plug a USB hard drive or flash drive in, Ubuntu should automatically detect it and mount it. It may even open it in a File Browser automatically. Since it’s been mounted, you will also see it show up on the desktop, and in the /media folder. Once it’s been mounted, you can access it and store files on it like you would any other folder in Ubuntu. If, for whatever reason, it doesn’t mount automatically, click on Places in the top-left of your screen and select your USB device. If it does not show up in the Places list, then you may need to format your USB drive. To properly remove the USB drive when you’re done moving files, right click on the desktop icon or the folder in /media and select Safely Remove Drive. If you’re not given that option, then Eject or Unmount will effectively do the same thing. Connect to a Windows PC on your Local Network If you have another PC or a laptop connected through the same router (wired or wireless) then you can transfer files over the network relatively quickly. To do this, we will share one or more folders from the machine booted up with the Ubuntu Live CD over the network, letting our Windows PC grab the files contained in that folder. As an example, we’re going to share a folder on the desktop called ToShare. Right-click on the folder you want to share, and click Sharing Options. A Folder Sharing window will pop up. Check the box labeled Share this folder. A window will pop up about the sharing service. Click the Install service button. Some files will be downloaded, and then installed. When they’re done installing, you’ll be appropriately notified. You will be prompted to restart your session. Don’t worry, this won’t actually log you out, so go ahead and press the Restart session button. The Folder Sharing window returns, with Share this folder now checked. Edit the Share name if you’d like, and add checkmarks in the two checkboxes below the text fields. Click Create Share. Nautilus will ask your permission to add some permissions to the folder you want to share. Allow it to Add the permissions automatically. The folder is now shared, as evidenced by the new arrows above the folder’s icon. At this point, you are done with the Ubuntu machine. Head to your Windows PC, and open up Windows Explorer. Click on Network in the list on the left, and you should see a machine called UBUNTU in the right pane. Note: This example is shown in Windows 7; the same steps should work for Windows XP and Vista, but we have not tested them. Double-click on UBUNTU, and you will see the folder you shared earlier! As well as any other folders you’ve shared from Ubuntu. Double click on the folder you want to access, and from there, you can move the files from the machine booted with Ubuntu to your Windows PC. Upload to an Online Service There are many services online that will allow you to upload files, either temporarily or permanently. As long as you aren’t transferring an entire hard drive, these services should allow you to transfer your important files from the Ubuntu environment to any other machine with Internet access. We recommend compressing the files that you want to move, both to save a little bit of bandwidth, and to save time clicking on files, as uploading a single file will be much less work than a ton of little files. To compress one or more files or folders, select them, and then right-click on one of the members of the group. Click Compress…. Give the compressed file a suitable name, and then select a compression format. We’re using .zip because we can open it anywhere, and the compression rate is acceptable. Click Create and the compressed file will show up in the location selected in the Compress window. Dropbox If you have a Dropbox account, then you can easily upload files from the Ubuntu environment to Dropbox. There is no explicit limit on the size of file that can be uploaded to Dropbox, though a free account begins with a total limit of 2 GB of files in total. Access your account through Firefox, which can be opened by clicking on the Firefox logo to the right of the System menu at the top of the screen. Once into your account, press the Upload button on top of the main file list. Because Flash is not installed in the Live CD environment, you will have to switch to the basic uploader. Click Browse…find your compressed file, and then click Upload file. Depending on the size of the file, this could take some time. However, once the file has been uploaded, it should show up on any computer connected through Dropbox in a matter of minutes. Google Docs Google Docs allows the upload of any type of file – making it an ideal place to upload files that we want to access from another computer. While your total allocation of space varies (mine is around 7.5 GB), there is a per-file maximum of 1 GB. Log into Google Docs, and click on the Upload button at the top left of the page. Click Select files to upload and select your compressed file. For safety’s sake, uncheck the checkbox concerning converting files to Google Docs format, and then click Start upload. Go Online – Through FTP If you have access to an FTP server – perhaps through your web hosting company, or you’ve set up an FTP server on a different machine – you can easily access the FTP server in Ubuntu and transfer files. Just make sure you don’t go over your quota if you have one. You will need to know the address of the FTP server, as well as the login information. Click on Places > Connect to Server… Choose the FTP (with login) Service type, and fill in your information. Adding a bookmark is optional, but recommended. You will be asked for your password. You can choose to remember it until you logout, or indefinitely. You can now browse your FTP server just like any other folder. Drop files into the FTP server and you can retrieve them from any computer with an Internet connection and an FTP client. Conclusion While at first the Ubuntu Live CD environment may seem claustrophobic, it has a wealth of options for connecting to peripheral devices, local computers, and machines on the Internet – and this article has only scratched the surface. Whatever the storage medium, Ubuntu’s got an interface for it! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Backup Your Windows Live Writer SettingsMove a Window Without Clicking the Titlebar in UbuntuRecover Deleted Files on an NTFS Hard Drive from a Ubuntu Live CDCreate a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive the Easy WayReset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CD 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 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Tech Fanboys Field Guide Check these Awesome Chrome Add-ons iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools Track Daily Goals With 42Goals

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #033

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Spatial Database Definition and Research Documents Here is the definition from Wikipedia about spatial database : A spatial database is a database that is optimized to store and query data related to objects in space, including points, lines and polygons. While typical databases can understand various numeric and character types of data, additional functionality needs to be added for databases to process spatial data types. Select Only Date Part From DateTime – Best Practice A very common question which I receive is how to only get Date or Time part from datetime value. In this blog post I explain the same in very simple words. T-SQL Paging Query Technique Comparison (OVER and ROW_NUMBER()) – CTE vs. Derived Table I have received few emails and comments about my post SQL SERVER – T-SQL Paging Query Technique Comparison – SQL 2000 vs SQL 2005. The main question was is this can be done using CTE? Absolutely! What about Performance? It is identical! Please refer above mentioned article for the history of paging. SQL SERVER – Cannot resolve collation conflict for equal to operation One of the very first error I ever encountered in my career was to resolve this conflict. I have blogged about it and I have realized that many others like me who are facing this error. LEN and DATALENGTH of NULL Simple Example Here is the question for you what is the LEN of NULL value? Well it is very easy – just read the blog. Recovery Models and Selection Very simple and easy explanation of the Database Backup Recovery Model and how to select the best option for you. Explanation SQL SERVER Hash Join Hash join gives best performance when two more join tables are joined and at-least one of them have no index or is not sorted. It is also expected that smaller of the either of table can be read in memory completely (though not necessary). Easy Sequence of SELECT FROM JOIN WHERE GROUP BY HAVING ORDER BY SELECT yourcolumns FROM tablenames JOIN tablenames WHERE condition GROUP BY yourcolumns HAVING aggregatecolumn condition ORDER BY yourcolumns NorthWind Database or AdventureWorks Database – Samples Databases In this blog post we learn how to install Northwind database. I also shared the source where one can download this database as that is used in many examples on MSDN help files. sp_HelpText for sp_HelpText – Puzzle A simple quick puzzle – do you know the answer of it? If not, go ahead and read the blog. 2008 SQL SERVER – 2008 – Step By Step Installation Guide With Images When SQL Server 2008 was newly introduced lots of people had no clue how to install SQL Server 2008 and the amount of the question which I used to receive were so much. I wrote this blog post with the spirit that this will help all the newbies to install SQL Server 2008 with the help of images. Still today this blog post has been bible for all of the people who are confused with SQL Server installation. Inline Variable Assignment I loved this feature. I have always wanted this feature to be present in SQL Server. The last time when I met developers from Microsoft SQL Server, I had talked about this feature. I think this feature saves some time but make the code more readable. Introduction to Policy Management – Enforcing Rules on SQL Server If our company policy is to create all the Stored Procedure with prefix ‘usp’ that developers should be just prevented to create Stored Procedure with any other prefix. Let us see a small tutorial how to create conditions and policy which will prevent any future SP to be created with any other prefix. 2009 Performance Counters from System Views – By Kevin Mckenna Many of you are not aware of this fact that access to performance information is readily available in SQL Server and that too without querying performance counters using a custom application or via perfmon. Till now, this fact has remained undisclosed but through this post I would like to explain you can easily access SQL Server performance counter information. Without putting much effort you will come across the system viewsys.dm_os_performance_counters. As the name suggests, this provides you easy access to the SQL Server performance counter information that is passed on to perfmon, but you can get at it via tsql. Customize Toolbar – Remove Debug Button from Toolbar I was fond of SQL Server Debugger feature in SQL Server 2000. To my utter disappointment, this feature was withdrawn from SQL Server 2005. The button of the debugger is similar to a play button and is used to run debugging commands of Visual Studio. Because of this reason, it gets very much infuriating for developers when they are developing on both – Visual Studio and SSMS. Let us now see how we can remove debugging button from SQL Server Management Studio. Effect of Normalization on Index and Performance A very interesting conversation which started from twitter. If you want to read one link this is the link I encourage you to read it. SSMS Feature – Multi-server Queries Using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) DBAs can now query multiple servers from one window. It is quite common for DBAs with large amount of servers to maintain and gather information from multiple SQL Servers and create report. This feature is a blessing for the DBAs, as they can now assemble all the information instantaneously without going anywhere. Query Optimizer Hint ROBUST PLAN – Question to You “ROBUST PLAN” is a kind of query hint which works quite differently than other hints. It does not improve join or force any indexes to use; it just makes sure that a query does not crash due to over the limit size of row. Let me elaborate upon it in the blog post. 2010 Do you really know the difference between various date functions available in SQL Server 2012? Here is a three part story where we explored the same with examples: Fastest Way to Restore the Database Difference Between DATETIME and DATETIME2 Difference Between DATETIME and DATETIME2 – WITH GETDATE Shrinking NDF and MDF Files – Readers’ Opinion Shrinking Database always creates performance degradation and increases fragmentation in the database. I suggest that you keep that in mind before you start reading the following comment. If you are going to say Shrinking Database is bad and evil, here I am saying it first and loud. Now, the comment of Imran is written while keeping in mind only the process showing how the Shrinking Database Operation works. Imran has already explained his understanding and requests further explanation. I have removed the Best Practices section from Imran’s comments, as there are a few corrections. 2011 Solution – Puzzle – SELECT * vs SELECT COUNT(*) This is very interesting question and I am very confident that not every one knows the answer to this question. Let me ask you again – Which will be faster SELECT* or SELECT COUNT (*) or do you think this is apples and oranges comparison. 2012 Service Broker and CAP_CPU_PERCENT – Limiting SQL Server Instances to CPU Usage In SQL Server 2012 there are a few enhancements with regards to SQL Server Resource Governor. One of the enhancement is how the resources are allocated. Let me explain you with examples. Let us understand the entire discussion with the help of three different examples. Finding Size of a Columnstore Index Using DMVs One of the very common question I often see is need of the list of columnstore index along with their size and corresponding table name. I quickly re-wrote a script using DMVs sys.indexes and sys.dm_db_partition_stats. This script gives the size of the columnstore index on disk only. I am sure there will be advanced script to retrieve details related to components associated with the columnstore index. However, I believe following script is sufficient to start getting an idea of columnstore index size. Developer Training Resources and Summary Roundup Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 In this part we discussed the importance of training in the real world. The most important and valuable resource any company is its employee. Employees who have been well-trained will be better at their jobs and produce a better product.  An employee who is well trained obviously knows more about their job and all the technical aspects. I have a very high opinion about training employees and it is the most important task. Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 In this part we discussed the most crucial components of training. Often employees are expecting the company to pay for their training and the company expresses no interest in training the employee. Quite often training expenses are the real issue for both the employee and employer. Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 This part was the most difficult to write as I tried to address a few difficult questions and answers. Training is such a sensitive issue that many developers when not receiving chance for training think about leaving the organization. Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 In this part I tried to explore a few methods and options for training. The generic feedback I received on this blog post was short and I should have explored each of the subject of the training in details. I believe there are two big buckets of training 1) Instructor Lead Training and 2) Self Lead Training. Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 There is no better motivation than a personal desire to learn new technology. Honestly there is nothing more personal learning. That “change is the only constant” and “adapt & overcome” are the essential lessons of life. One cannot stop the learning and resist the change. In the IT industry “ego of knowing all” and the “resistance to change” are the most challenging issues. A Quick Look at Logging and Ideas around Logging Question: What is the first thing comes to your mind when you hear the word “Logging”? Strange enough I got a different answer every single time. Let me just list what answer I got from my friends. Let us go over them one by one. Beginning Performance Tuning with SQL Server Execution Plan Solution of Puzzle – Swap Value of Column Without Case Statement Earlier this week I asked a question where I asked how to Swap Values of the column without using CASE Statement. Read here: SQL SERVER – A Puzzle – Swap Value of Column Without Case Statement. I have proposed 3 different solutions in the blog posts itself. I had requested the help of the community to come up with alternate solutions and honestly I am stunned and amazed by the qualified entries. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 10, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 10, 2013Popular ReleasesNexusCamera: NexusCamera: Nexus Camera is a control for Windows Phone 7 & 8, which can be used as a menu on the Camera. The idea in making this control when we use a camera nexus. Thanks for Nexus. Need Windows Phone Toolkit https://phone.codeplex.com/ View Sample Camera http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/nexus4-camera.jpgVR Player: VR Player 0.3 ALPHA: New plugin system with individual folders TrackIR support Maya and 3ds max formats support Dual screen support Mono layouts (left and right) Cylinder height parameter Barel effect factor parameter Razer hydra filter parameter VRPN bug fixes UI improvements Performances improvements Stabilization and logging with Log4Net New default values base on users feedback CTRL key to open menuZXMAK2: Version 2.7.5.4: - add hayes modem device (thanks to Eltaron) - add host joystick selection - fix joystick bits (swapped in previous version)SimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8 New features: Import BMP color palettes for vehicles Import RASTER file (uncompressed 8.8.8.8 DDS files) View different channels of RASTER files or preview of all layers combined Find text in javascripts TGA viewer Ground textures added to lot editor Many additional identified instances and propertiesWsus Package Publisher: Release v1.2.1306.09: Add more verifications on certificate validation. WPP will not let user to try publishing an update until the certificate is valid. Add certificate expiration date on the 'About' form. Filter Approbation to avoid a user to try to approve an update for uninstallation when the update do not support uninstallation. Add the server and console version on the 'About' form. WPP will not let user to publish an update until the server and console are not at the same level. WPP do not let user ...AJAX Control Toolkit: June 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - June 2013 Release Version 7.0607June 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - Instructions for using the AJAX Control Toolkit with ASP.NET 4.5 can be found at...Rawr: Rawr 5.2.1: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.13: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageJumbo.com" links FIXED: Ripping of Threads with multiple pagesXomega Framework: Xomega.Framework 1.4: Adding support for Visual Studio 2012 and .Net framework 4.5. Minor bug fixes and enhancements.sb0t v.5: sb0t 5.14: Stability fix in script engine. Avatar.exists property fixed in scripting. cb0t custom font protocol re-added and updated to support new Ares.ASP.NET MVC Forum: MVCForum v1.3.5: This is a bug release version, with a couple of small usability features and UI changes. All the small amount of bugs reported in v1.3 have been fixed, no upgrade needed just overwrite the files and everything should just work.Json.NET: Json.NET 5.0 Release 6: New feature - Added serialized/deserialized JSON to verbose tracing New feature - Added support for using type name handling with ISerializable content Fix - Fixed not using default serializer settings with primitive values and JToken.ToObject Fix - Fixed error writing BigIntegers with JsonWriter.WriteToken Fix - Fixed serializing and deserializing flag enums with EnumMember attribute Fix - Fixed error deserializing interfaces with a valid type converter Fix - Fixed error deser...Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke 7 Project Templates V2.3 for VS2012: V2.3 - Release Date 6/5/2013 Items addressed in this 2.3 release Fixed bad namespace for BusinessController in one of the C# templates. Updated documentation in all templates. Setting up your DotNetNuke Module Development Environment Installing Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Templates Customizing the latest DotNetNuke Module Development Project TemplatesPulse: Pulse 0.6.7.0: A number of small bug fixes to stabilize the previous Beta. Sorry about the never ending "New Version" bug!QlikView Extension - Animated Scatter Chart: Animated Scatter Chart - v1.0: Version 1.0 including Source Code qar File Example QlikView application Tested With: Browser Firefox 20 (x64) Google Chrome 27 (x64) Internet Explorer 9 QlikView QlikView Desktop 11 - SR2 (x64) QlikView Desktop 11.2 - SR1 (x64) QlikView Ajax Client 11.2 - SR2 (based on x64)BarbaTunnel: BarbaTunnel 7.2: Warning: HTTP Tunnel is not compatible with version 6.x and prior, HTTP packet format has been changed. Check Version History for more information about this release.SuperWebSocket, a .NET WebSocket Server: SuperWebSocket 0.8: This release includes these changes below: Upgrade SuperSocket to 1.5.3 which is much more stable Added handshake request validating api (WebSocketServer.ValidateHandshake(TWebSocketSession session, string origin)) Fixed a bug that the m_Filters in the SubCommandBase can be null if the command's method LoadSubCommandFilters(IEnumerable<SubCommandFilterAttribute> globalFilters) is not invoked Fixed the compatibility issue on Origin getting in the different version protocols Marked ISub...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.0: 2013.06.04 Ver5.9.0 (1) ?????????????????????????????????($Remote.ini Tmp.ini) (2) ThreadBaseTest?? (3) ????POP3??????SMTP???????????????? (4) Web???????、?????????URL??????????????? (5) Ftp???????、LIST?????????????? (6) ?????????????????????Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.569b: New* Movies - Autoscrape/Batch Rescrape extra fanart and or extra thumbs. * Movies - Alternative editor can add manually actors. * TV - Batch Rescraper, AutoScrape extrafanart, if option enabled. Fixed* Movies - Slow performance switching to movie tab by adding option 'Disable "Not Matching Rename Pattern"' to Movie Preferences - General. * Movies - Fixed only actors with images were scraped and added to nfo * Movies - Fixed filter reset if selected tab was above Home Movies. * Updated Medi...Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v9.0: Version 9.0 of Nearforums with great new features for users and developers: SQL Azure support Admin UI for Forum Categories Avoid html validation for certain roles Improve profile picture moderation and support Warn, suspend, and ban users Web administration of site settings Extensions support Visit the Roadmap for more details. Webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 9.0.0.0: e687ee0438cd2b1df1d3e95ecb9d66e7c538293b New ProjectsASP.NET MVC 4 and RequireJS: ASP.NET MVC 4 application with Areas and RequireJSBaseX - Base converter and calculator: Dealing with numbers of any base in .NET.C# Exercises: C# ExercisesClassfinder: ClassfinderCreative OS ALPHA: This is a OS!!!!CSS Exercises: CSS ExercisesCustom Workflow Action: Project showing how to create and use Custom Workflow Action for SharePoint Designer 2013.Devshed Tools: Provides easy to use and compile-time-support solution for various type of projects on the .NET framework. Currently Devshed.Web is in development.Envar Editor: Edit environment variables easily on windowsExcel To Sql: A simplified tool for importing Excel data into SQL.HTML Exercises: HTML ExercisesKnockout.js with ASP.NET MVC: This project implements a system which maps .NET ViewModels to javascript ViewModels for use with knockout.js, using Razor markup syntax.LogoBids: LOGO??????,ORM??OpenAccess ORMManagistics: Management Logistics Application (including: Warehouse, Sale, Purchase, ...)Matrix Switch Preset Utility: A small utility for managing the inputs and outputs from a matrix switch via RS-232. Developed in WPF (VB9) and running on the .Net3.5SP1 framework.MvcSystemsCommander: An ASP.NET C# MVC4 webapp to help systems administrators consolidate common systems administration tasksNewspaperAgent: My small projectOutlook Recovery Software - Efficiently Repair Damaged PST File: This project tells you the easiest way to recover PST file of Outlook. Complete information has been given here to help users.Pattern: Testprocedure: a new procedural programming framework based on .net, by using lambda expression, it can handle async io friendly and provide a full lock-free solutionSharePoint 2013 custom field samples: SharePoint 2013 custom field samples is a research project aims to provide samples for developing custom fields in SharePoint 2013.SharePoint 2013 List Forms: This small framework allows you to manage custom list forms using rendering templates and controls stored in a SharePoint library.The Coconut Cranium Decision Engine: The Coconut Cranium Decision Engine is a boolean decision engine using the most mind-bendingly worse way of working.TxtToSeq: Command line utility to convert Commodore SEQ files to TXT files and vice-versa.ultgw: ult gw

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, December 19, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, December 19, 2010Popular ReleasesTeam Foundation Server Administration Tool: 2.1: TFS Administration Tool 2.1, is the first version of the TFS Administration Tool which is built on top of the Team Foundation Server 2010 object model. TFS Administration Tool 2.1 can be installed on machines that are running either Team Explorer 2010, or Team Foundation Server 2010.SQL Monitor: SQL Monitor 3.0 alpha 5: 1. fix a problem with not expanding nodes in object explorer, sorryHacker Passwords: HackerPasswords.zip: Source code, executable and documentationWatchersNET.SiteMap: WatchersNET.SiteMap 01.03.03: Whats NewSkin Object: You can now filter by Terms for Example use: <object id="dnnSITEMAPSL" codetype="dotnetnuke/server" codebase="SITEMAPSL"> <param name="TaxMode" value="terms" /> <param name="TaxTerms" value="TermName1,TermName2" /> </object> changes Tax Term Filter should work correct nowSubtitleTools: SubtitleTools 1.3: - Added .srt FileAssociation & Win7 ShowRecentCategory feature. - Applied UnifiedYeKe to fix Persian search problems. - Reduced file size of Persian subtitles for uploading @OSDB.EnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.3 ALPHA: 2.2.3 ALPHAThis release adds in the changes for 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in th...Facebook C# SDK: 4.1.0: - Lots of bug fixes - Removed Dynamic Runtime Language dependencies from non-dynamic platforms. - Samples included in release for ASP.NET, MVC, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, WPF, WinForms, and one Visual Basic Sample - Changed internal serialization to use Json.net - BREAKING CHANGE: Canvas Session is no longer support. Use Signed Request instead. Canvas Session has been deprecated by Facebook. - BREAKING CHANGE: Some renames and changes with Authorizer, CanvasAuthorizer, and Authorization ac...NuGet (formerly NuPack): NuGet 1.0 build 11217.102: Note: this release is slightly newer than RC1, and fixes a couple issues relating to updating packages to newer versions. NuGet is a free, open source developer focused package management system for the .NET platform intent on simplifying the process of incorporating third party libraries into a .NET application during development. This release is a Visual Studio 2010 extension and contains the the Package Manager Console and the Add Package Dialog. This new build targets the newer feed (h...WCF Community Site: WCF Web APIs 10.12.17: Welcome to the second release of WCF Web APIs on codeplex Here is what is new in this release. WCF Support for jQuery - create WCF web services that are easy to consume from JavaScript clients, in particular jQuery. Better support for using JsonValue as dynamic Support for JsonValue change notification events for databinding and other purposes Support for going between JsonValue and CLR types WCF HTTP - create HTTP / REST based web services. This is a minor release which contains fixe...Orchard Project: Orchard 0.9: Orchard Release Notes Build: 0.9.253 Published: 12/16/2010 How to Install OrchardTo install the Orchard tech preview using Web PI, follow these instructions: http://www.orchardproject.net/docs/Installing-Orchard-Using-Web-PI.ashx Web PI will detect your hardware environment and install the application. --OR-- Alternatively, to install the release manually, download the Orchard.Web.0.9.253.zip file. The zip contents are pre-built and ready-to-run. Simply extract the contents of the Orch...Pyxis 2: Beta 2.2: An issue stopping the Checkbox from working properly has been resolved (gradient background has also been added) A TabDialog control has been added NumericUpDown control added A driver for the VS1053 has been added (not yet in use) PyxisAPI.OpenFile now works with all its features PyxisAPI.SaveFile now works with all features Settings window is now available from the Pyxis menu You can now connect using Static IP or DHCP You can now set your system time from the Settings windo...sgMotion Animation Library: sgMotion v1.3 for SunBurn 2.0.9 [Includes Sample]: sgMotion 1.3 release for use with SunBurn 2.0.9 (all editions). Includes example project with assets, and full Windows and Xbox support. (tested on all platforms)DotSpatial: DotSpatial 12-15-2010: This release contains a few minor bug fixes and hopefully the GDAL libraries for the 3.5 x86 build actually built to the correct directory this time.DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.01 Beta: This is the initial Beta of DotNetNuke 5.6.1. See the DotNetNuke Roadmap a full list of changes in this release.MSBuild Extension Pack: December 2010: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack December 2010 release provides a collection of over 380 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GU...TweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 5: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 5 ChangesMaintenance release with user reported fixes Preview 4 ChangesReintroduced fluent interface support via satellite assembly Added entities support, entity segmentation, and ITweetable/ITweeter interfaces for client development Numerous fixes reported by preview users Preview 3 ChangesNumerous ...Silverlight Contrib: Silverlight Contrib 2010.1.0: 2010.1.0 New FeaturesCompatibility Release for Silverlight 4 and Visual Studio 2010FlickrNet API Library: 3.1.4000: Newest release. Now contains dedicated Windows Phone 7 DLL as well as all previous DLLs. Also contains Windows Help file documentation now as standard.mojoPortal: 2.3.5.8: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2358-released.aspx Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code. To download the source code see the Source Code Tab I recommend getting the latest source code using TortoiseHG, you can get the source code corresponding to this release here.Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2010 Code Samples 2010-12-13: Code samples for Visual Studio 2010New ProjectsANLP - Another .NET Lexer Parser: This project aims to have a lexer/parser working in Silverlight and help people to write their own grammar and make the lexer/parser available in Silverlight.Better App Tab Shortcuts Firefox Extension: An extension for Firefox 4.0 which improves the shortcuts for selecting tabs.BizTalk Map Converter: Converts BizTalk Maps into ExcelCampo Minado: Campo minado em SilverlightCSharpHASH: Hash project is an college project conserning business software development. Written in C#.DS_HW1: hw1DynamicViewModel: MVVM using POCOs with .NET 4.0: This project aims to provide a way to implement the Model View ViewModel (MVVM) architectural pattern using Plain Old CLR Objects (POCOs) while taking full advantage of .NET 4.0 DynamicObject Class.Evolution Game: Evolution game that uses genetic algorithms to visualize life of different species.Fluent Parser: Fluent Parser is a library allowing to build a syntaxic analyser in C#. The grammar is built using only .NET objects into the form of a Parsing Expression Grammar (PEG).GoogleMusic Player: Choose and play music from newly launched google Music http://www.google.co.in/music create and save playlists Using C#Gracefully update SharePoint 2010 document metadata: Users want to update the metadata for a document in a document library, for which they don’t have access or if they wanted to update some read-only fields. Hacker Passwords: Hacker Passwords generator - free open sourceHTML5 Canvas FlowView: FlowView is a simple to use API for creating/implementing a flowview style element in HTML5/Canvas. The FlowView looks much like something from Apple's cover view.L#: A F# program to provide similar functionalities offered by Prolog for F# oriented applications.MapInfo Tools: Utilities for working with MapInfo files.Notepad X: Notepad X is an alternative open source text editor for Microsoft Windows, with a lot of customization options created to help users managing text documents, featuring tab navigation.OpenFlyClient: An educational open source of a client written in C# for FlyFF. This is for educational and evaluation purposes only. Using this for private servers is not allowed.Orkut API Library: Orkut API Library (more of a wrapper) for .NET makes it easier for .NET developers creating web and/or desktop applications to leverage Orkut OpenSocial API from within the familiar Visual Studio environment. PasteHtml.NET: PasteHtml.NET is a .NET API for using the PasteHtml.com service.Photon: Silverlight MVVM Framework RSATasync: Running analyses in RiskSpectrum PSA Professional software is a time-consuming task. RSATasync is a middleware, which uses .NET4 Parallel Extensions to parallelize analyses sent by the editor to the analyzer in the RiskSpectrum software.The Killie01 Project: all killie01 projects (opensource)United Nations News for Windows Phone 7: Open source project for United Nations News for Windows Phone 7. WCF SIP Stack: WCF SIPWordpress .NET: WPDotnet is a library to ease the Wordpress integration with ASP.NET. Some Server controls are implemented. If you don't want to use them, you can just use the classes.

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• Best Practices - updated: which domain types should be used to run applications

  - by jsavit

  This post is one of a series of "best practices" notes for Oracle VM Server for SPARC (formerly named Logical Domains). This is an updated and enlarged version of the post on this topic originally posted October 2012. One frequent question "what type of domain should I use to run applications?" There used to be a simple answer: "run applications in guest domains in almost all cases", but now there are more things to consider. Enhancements to Oracle VM Server for SPARC and introduction of systems like the current SPARC servers including the T4 and T5 systems, the Oracle SuperCluster T5-8 and Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 provide scale and performance much higher than the original servers that ran domains. Single-CPU performance, I/O capacity, memory sizes, are much larger now, and far more demanding applications are now being hosted in logical domains. The general advice continues to be "use guest domains in almost all cases", meaning, "use virtual I/O rather than physical I/O", unless there is a specific reason to use the other domain types. The sections below will discuss the criteria for choosing between domain types. Review: division of labor and types of domain Oracle VM Server for SPARC offloads management and I/O functionality from the hypervisor to domains (also called virtual machines), providing a modern alternative to older VM architectures that use a "thick", monolithic hypervisor. This permits a simpler hypervisor design, which enhances reliability, and security. It also reduces single points of failure by assigning responsibilities to multiple system components, further improving reliability and security. Oracle VM Server for SPARC defines the following types of domain, each with their own roles: Control domain - management control point for the server, runs the logical domain daemon and constraints engine, and is used to configure domains and manage resources. The control domain is the first domain to boot on a power-up, is always an I/O domain, and is usually a service domain as well. It doesn't have to be, but there's no reason to not leverage it for virtual I/O services. There is one control domain per T-series system, and one per Physical Domain (PDom) on an M5-32 or M6-32 system. M5 and M6 systems can be physically domained, with logical domains within the physical ones. I/O domain - a domain that has been assigned physical I/O devices. The devices may be one more more PCIe root complexes (in which case the domain is also called a root complex domain). The domain has native access to all the devices on the assigned PCIe buses. The devices can be any device type supported by Solaris on the hardware platform. a SR-IOV (Single-Root I/O Virtualization) function. SR-IOV lets a physical device (also called a physical function) or PF) be subdivided into multiple virtual functions (VFs) which can be individually assigned directly to domains. SR-IOV devices currently can be Ethernet or InfiniBand devices. direct I/O ownership of one or more PCI devices residing in a PCIe bus slot. The domain has direct access to the individual devices An I/O domain has native performance and functionality for the devices it owns, unmediated by any virtualization layer. It may also have virtual devices. Service domain - a domain that provides virtual network and disk devices to guest domains. The services are defined by commands that are run in the control domain. It usually is an I/O domain as well, in order for it to have devices to virtualize and serve out. Guest domain - a domain whose devices are all virtual rather than physical: virtual network and disk devices provided by one or more service domains. In common practice, this is where applications are run. Device considerations Consider the following when choosing between virtual devices and physical devices: Virtual devices provide the best flexibility - they can be dynamically added to and removed from a running domain, and you can have a large number of them up to a per-domain device limit. Virtual devices are compatible with live migration - domains that exclusively have virtual devices can be live migrated between servers supporting domains. On the other hand: Physical devices provide the best performance - in fact, native "bare metal" performance. Virtual devices approach physical device throughput and latency, especially with virtual network devices that can now saturate 10GbE links, but physical devices are still faster. Physical I/O devices do not add load to service domains - all the I/O goes directly from the I/O domain to the device, while virtual I/O goes through service domains, which must be provided sufficient CPU and memory capacity. Physical I/O devices can be other than network and disk - we virtualize network, disk, and serial console, but physical devices can be the wide range of attachable certified devices, including things like tape and CDROM/DVD devices. In some cases the lines are now blurred: virtual devices have better performance than previously: starting with Oracle VM Server for SPARC 3.1 there is near-native virtual network performance. There is more flexibility with physical devices than before: SR-IOV devices can now be dynamically reconfigured on domains. Tradeoffs one used to have to make are now relaxed: you can often have the flexibility of virtual I/O with performance that previously required physical I/O. You can have the performance and isolation of SR-IOV with the ability to dynamically reconfigure it, just like with virtual devices. Typical deployment A service domain is generally also an I/O domain: otherwise it wouldn't have access to physical device "backends" to offer to its clients. Similarly, an I/O domain is also typically a service domain in order to leverage the available PCI buses. Control domains must be I/O domains, because they boot up first on the server and require physical I/O. It's typical for the control domain to also be a service domain too so it doesn't "waste" the I/O resources it uses. A simple configuration consists of a control domain that is also the one I/O and service domain, and some number of guest domains using virtual I/O. In production, customers typically use multiple domains with I/O and service roles to eliminate single points of failure, as described in Availability Best Practices - Avoiding Single Points of Failure . Guest domains have virtual disk and virtual devices provisioned from more than one service domain, so failure of a service domain or I/O path or device does not result in an application outage. This also permits "rolling upgrades" in which service domains are upgraded one at a time while their guests continue to operate without disruption. (It should be noted that resiliency to I/O device failures can also be provided by the single control domain, using multi-path I/O) In this type of deployment, control, I/O, and service domains are used for virtualization infrastructure, while applications run in guest domains. Changing application deployment patterns The above model has been widely and successfully used, but more configuration options are available now. Servers got bigger than the original T2000 class machines with 2 I/O buses, so there is more I/O capacity that can be used for applications. Increased server capacity made it attractive to run more vertically-scaled applications, such as databases, with higher resource requirements than the "light" applications originally seen. This made it attractive to run applications in I/O domains so they could get bare-metal native I/O performance. This is leveraged by the Oracle SuperCluster engineered systems mentioned previously. In those engineered systems, I/O domains are used for high performance applications with native I/O performance for disk and network and optimized access to the Infiniband fabric. Another technical enhancement is Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), which make it possible to give domains direct connections and native I/O performance for selected I/O devices. Not all I/O domains own PCI complexes, and there are increasingly more I/O domains that are not service domains. They use their I/O connectivity for performance for their own applications. However, there are some limitations and considerations: at this time, a domain using physical I/O cannot be live-migrated to another server. There is also a need to plan for security and introducing unneeded dependencies: if an I/O domain is also a service domain providing virtual I/O to guests, it has the ability to affect the correct operation of its client guest domains. This is even more relevant for the control domain. where the ldm command must be protected from unauthorized (or even mistaken) use that would affect other domains. As a general rule, running applications in the service domain or the control domain should be avoided. For reference, an excellent guide to secure deployment of domains by Stefan Hinker is at Secure Deployment of Oracle VM Server for SPARC. To recap: Guest domains with virtual I/O still provide the greatest operational flexibility, including features like live migration. They should be considered the default domain type to use unless there is a specific requirement that mandates an I/O domain. I/O domains can be used for applications with the highest performance requirements. Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) makes this more attractive by giving direct I/O access to more domains, and by permitting dynamic reconfiguration of SR-IOV devices. Today's larger systems provide multiple PCIe buses - for example, 16 buses on the T5-8 - making it possible to configure multiple I/O domains each owning their own bus. Service domains should in general not be used for applications, because compromised security in the domain, or an outage, can affect domains that depend on it. This concern can be mitigated by providing guests' their virtual I/O from more than one service domain, so interruption of service in one service domain does not cause an application outage. The control domain should in general not be used to run applications, for the same reason. Oracle SuperCluster uses the control domain for applications, but it is an exception. It's not a general purpose environment; it's an engineered system with specifically configured applications and optimization for optimal performance. These are recommended "best practices" based on conversations with a number of Oracle architects. Keep in mind that "one size does not fit all", so you should evaluate these practices in the context of your own requirements. Summary Higher capacity servers that run Oracle VM Server for SPARC are attractive for applications with the most demanding resource requirements. New deployment models permit native I/O performance for demanding applications by running them in I/O domains with direct access to their devices. This is leveraged in SPARC SuperCluster, and can be leveraged in T-series servers to provision high-performance applications running in domains. Carefully planned, this can be used to provide peak performance for critical applications. That said, the improved virtual device performance in Oracle VM Server means that the default choice should still be guest domains with virtual I/O.

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• Performance Optimization &ndash; It Is Faster When You Can Measure It

  - by Alois Kraus

  Performance optimization in bigger systems is hard because the measured numbers can vary greatly depending on the measurement method of your choice. To measure execution timing of specific methods in your application you usually use Time Measurement Method Potential Pitfalls Stopwatch Most accurate method on recent processors. Internally it uses the RDTSC instruction. Since the counter is processor specific you can get greatly different values when your thread is scheduled to another core or the core goes into a power saving mode. But things do change luckily: Intel's Designer's vol3b, section 16.11.1 "16.11.1 Invariant TSC The time stamp counter in newer processors may support an enhancement, referred to as invariant TSC. Processor's support for invariant TSC is indicated by CPUID.80000007H:EDX[8]. The invariant TSC will run at a constant rate in all ACPI P-, C-. and T-states. This is the architectural behavior moving forward. On processors with invariant TSC support, the OS may use the TSC for wall clock timer services (instead of ACPI or HPET timers). TSC reads are much more efficient and do not incur the overhead associated with a ring transition or access to a platform resource." DateTime.Now Good but it has only a resolution of 16ms which can be not enough if you want more accuracy.   Reporting Method Potential Pitfalls Console.WriteLine Ok if not called too often. Debug.Print Are you really measuring performance with Debug Builds? Shame on you. Trace.WriteLine Better but you need to plug in some good output listener like a trace file. But be aware that the first time you call this method it will read your app.config and deserialize your system.diagnostics section which does also take time.   In general it is a good idea to use some tracing library which does measure the timing for you and you only need to decorate some methods with tracing so you can later verify if something has changed for the better or worse. In my previous article I did compare measuring performance with quantum mechanics. This analogy does work surprising well. When you measure a quantum system there is a lower limit how accurately you can measure something. The Heisenberg uncertainty relation does tell us that you cannot measure of a quantum system the impulse and location of a particle at the same time with infinite accuracy. For programmers the two variables are execution time and memory allocations. If you try to measure the timings of all methods in your application you will need to store them somewhere. The fastest storage space besides the CPU cache is the memory. But if your timing values do consume all available memory there is no memory left for the actual application to run. On the other hand if you try to record all memory allocations of your application you will also need to store the data somewhere. This will cost you memory and execution time. These constraints are always there and regardless how good the marketing of tool vendors for performance and memory profilers are: Any measurement will disturb the system in a non predictable way. Commercial tool vendors will tell you they do calculate this overhead and subtract it from the measured values to give you the most accurate values but in reality it is not entirely true. After falling into the trap to trust the profiler timings several times I have got into the habit to Measure with a profiler to get an idea where potential bottlenecks are. Measure again with tracing only the specific methods to check if this method is really worth optimizing. Optimize it Measure again. Be surprised that your optimization has made things worse. Think harder Implement something that really works. Measure again Finished! - Or look for the next bottleneck. Recently I have looked into issues with serialization performance. For serialization DataContractSerializer was used and I was not sure if XML is really the most optimal wire format. After looking around I have found protobuf-net which uses Googles Protocol Buffer format which is a compact binary serialization format. What is good for Google should be good for us. A small sample app to check out performance was a matter of minutes: using ProtoBuf; using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.IO; using System.Reflection; using System.Runtime.Serialization; [DataContract, Serializable] class Data { [DataMember(Order=1)] public int IntValue { get; set; } [DataMember(Order = 2)] public string StringValue { get; set; } [DataMember(Order = 3)] public bool IsActivated { get; set; } [DataMember(Order = 4)] public BindingFlags Flags { get; set; } } class Program { static MemoryStream _Stream = new MemoryStream(); static MemoryStream Stream { get { _Stream.Position = 0; _Stream.SetLength(0); return _Stream; } } static void Main(string[] args) { DataContractSerializer ser = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(Data)); Data data = new Data { IntValue = 100, IsActivated = true, StringValue = "Hi this is a small string value to check if serialization does work as expected" }; var sw = Stopwatch.StartNew(); int Runs = 1000 * 1000; for (int i = 0; i < Runs; i++) { //ser.WriteObject(Stream, data); Serializer.Serialize<Data>(Stream, data); } sw.Stop(); Console.WriteLine("Did take {0:N0}ms for {1:N0} objects", sw.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds, Runs); Console.ReadLine(); } } The results are indeed promising: Serializer Time in ms N objects protobuf-net   807 1000000 DataContract 4402 1000000 Nearly a factor 5 faster and a much more compact wire format. Lets use it! After switching over to protbuf-net the transfered wire data has dropped by a factor two (good) and the performance has worsened by nearly a factor two. How is that possible? We have measured it? Protobuf-net is much faster! As it turns out protobuf-net is faster but it has a cost: For the first time a type is de/serialized it does use some very smart code-gen which does not come for free. Lets try to measure this one by setting of our performance test app the Runs value not to one million but to 1. Serializer Time in ms N objects protobuf-net 85 1 DataContract 24 1 The code-gen overhead is significant and can take up to 200ms for more complex types. The break even point where the code-gen cost is amortized by its faster serialization performance is (assuming small objects) somewhere between 20.000-40.000 serialized objects. As it turned out my specific scenario involved about 100 types and 1000 serializations in total. That explains why the good old DataContractSerializer is not so easy to take out of business. The final approach I ended up was to reduce the number of types and to serialize primitive types via BinaryWriter directly which turned out to be a pretty good alternative. It sounded good until I measured again and found that my optimizations so far do not help much. After looking more deeper at the profiling data I did found that one of the 1000 calls did take 50% of the time. So how do I find out which call it was? Normal profilers do fail short at this discipline. A (totally undeserved) relatively unknown profiler is SpeedTrace which does unlike normal profilers create traces of your applications by instrumenting your IL code at runtime. This way you can look at the full call stack of the one slow serializer call to find out if this stack was something special. Unfortunately the call stack showed nothing special. But luckily I have my own tracing as well and I could see that the slow serializer call did happen during the serialization of a bool value. When you encounter after much analysis something unreasonable you cannot explain it then the chances are good that your thread was suspended by the garbage collector. If there is a problem with excessive GCs remains to be investigated but so far the serialization performance seems to be mostly ok.  When you do profile a complex system with many interconnected processes you can never be sure that the timings you just did measure are accurate at all. Some process might be hitting the disc slowing things down for all other processes for some seconds as well. There is a big difference between warm and cold startup. If you restart all processes you can basically forget the first run because of the OS disc cache, JIT and GCs make the measured timings very flexible. When you are in need of a random number generator you should measure cold startup times of a sufficiently complex system. After the first run you can try again getting different and much lower numbers. Now try again at least two times to get some feeling how stable the numbers are. Oh and try to do the same thing the next day. It might be that the bottleneck you found yesterday is gone today. Thanks to GC and other random stuff it can become pretty hard to find stuff worth optimizing if no big bottlenecks except bloatloads of code are left anymore. When I have found a spot worth optimizing I do make the code changes and do measure again to check if something has changed. If it has got slower and I am certain that my change should have made it faster I can blame the GC again. The thing is that if you optimize stuff and you allocate less objects the GC times will shift to some other location. If you are unlucky it will make your faster working code slower because you see now GCs at times where none were before. This is where the stuff does get really tricky. A safe escape hatch is to create a repro of the slow code in an isolated application so you can change things fast in a reliable manner. Then the normal profilers do also start working again. As Vance Morrison does point out it is much more complex to profile a system against the wall clock compared to optimize for CPU time. The reason is that for wall clock time analysis you need to understand how your system does work and which threads (if you have not one but perhaps 20) are causing a visible delay to the end user and which threads can wait a long time without affecting the user experience at all. Next time: Commercial profiler shootout.

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• VLOOKUP in Excel, part 2: Using VLOOKUP without a database

  - by Mark Virtue

  In a recent article, we introduced the Excel function called VLOOKUP and explained how it could be used to retrieve information from a database into a cell in a local worksheet.  In that article we mentioned that there were two uses for VLOOKUP, and only one of them dealt with querying databases.  In this article, the second and final in the VLOOKUP series, we examine this other, lesser known use for the VLOOKUP function. If you haven’t already done so, please read the first VLOOKUP article – this article will assume that many of the concepts explained in that article are already known to the reader. When working with databases, VLOOKUP is passed a “unique identifier” that serves to identify which data record we wish to find in the database (e.g. a product code or customer ID).  This unique identifier must exist in the database, otherwise VLOOKUP returns us an error.  In this article, we will examine a way of using VLOOKUP where the identifier doesn’t need to exist in the database at all.  It’s almost as if VLOOKUP can adopt a “near enough is good enough” approach to returning the data we’re looking for.  In certain circumstances, this is exactly what we need. We will illustrate this article with a real-world example – that of calculating the commissions that are generated on a set of sales figures.  We will start with a very simple scenario, and then progressively make it more complex, until the only rational solution to the problem is to use VLOOKUP.  The initial scenario in our fictitious company works like this:  If a salesperson creates more than $30,000 worth of sales in a given year, the commission they earn on those sales is 30%.  Otherwise their commission is only 20%.  So far this is a pretty simple worksheet: To use this worksheet, the salesperson enters their sales figures in cell B1, and the formula in cell B2 calculates the correct commission rate they are entitled to receive, which is used in cell B3 to calculate the total commission that the salesperson is owed (which is a simple multiplication of B1 and B2). The cell B2 contains the only interesting part of this worksheet – the formula for deciding which commission rate to use: the one below the threshold of $30,000, or the one above the threshold.  This formula makes use of the Excel function called IF.  For those readers that are not familiar with IF, it works like this: IF(condition,value if true,value if false) Where the condition is an expression that evaluates to either true or false.  In the example above, the condition is the expression B1<B5, which can be read as “Is B1 less than B5?”, or, put another way, “Are the total sales less than the threshold”.  If the answer to this question is “yes” (true), then we use the value if true parameter of the function, namely B6 in this case – the commission rate if the sales total was below the threshold.  If the answer to the question is “no” (false), then we use the value if false parameter of the function, namely B7 in this case – the commission rate if the sales total was above the threshold. As you can see, using a sales total of $20,000 gives us a commission rate of 20% in cell B2.  If we enter a value of $40,000, we get a different commission rate: So our spreadsheet is working. Let’s make it more complex.  Let’s introduce a second threshold:  If the salesperson earns more than $40,000, then their commission rate increases to 40%: Easy enough to understand in the real world, but in cell B2 our formula is getting more complex.  If you look closely at the formula, you’ll see that the third parameter of the original IF function (the value if false) is now an entire IF function in its own right.  This is called a nested function (a function within a function).  It’s perfectly valid in Excel (it even works!), but it’s harder to read and understand. We’re not going to go into the nuts and bolts of how and why this works, nor will we examine the nuances of nested functions.  This is a tutorial on VLOOKUP, not on Excel in general. Anyway, it gets worse!  What about when we decide that if they earn more than $50,000 then they’re entitled to 50% commission, and if they earn more than $60,000 then they’re entitled to 60% commission? Now the formula in cell B2, while correct, has become virtually unreadable.  No-one should have to write formulae where the functions are nested four levels deep!  Surely there must be a simpler way? There certainly is.  VLOOKUP to the rescue! Let’s redesign the worksheet a bit.  We’ll keep all the same figures, but organize it in a new way, a more tabular way: Take a moment and verify for yourself that the new Rate Table works exactly the same as the series of thresholds above. Conceptually, what we’re about to do is use VLOOKUP to look up the salesperson’s sales total (from B1) in the rate table and return to us the corresponding commission rate.  Note that the salesperson may have indeed created sales that are not one of the five values in the rate table ($0, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 or $60,000).  They may have created sales of $34,988.  It’s important to note that $34,988 does not appear in the rate table.  Let’s see if VLOOKUP can solve our problem anyway… We select cell B2 (the location we want to put our formula), and then insert the VLOOKUP function from the Formulas tab: The Function Arguments box for VLOOKUP appears.  We fill in the arguments (parameters) one by one, starting with the Lookup_value, which is, in this case, the sales total from cell B1.  We place the cursor in the Lookup_value field and then click once on cell B1: Next we need to specify to VLOOKUP what table to lookup this data in.  In this example, it’s the rate table, of course.  We place the cursor in the Table_array field, and then highlight the entire rate table – excluding the headings: Next we must specify which column in the table contains the information we want our formula to return to us.  In this case we want the commission rate, which is found in the second column in the table, so we therefore enter a 2 into the Col_index_num field: Finally we enter a value in the Range_lookup field. Important:  It is the use of this field that differentiates the two ways of using VLOOKUP.  To use VLOOKUP with a database, this final parameter, Range_lookup, must always be set to FALSE, but with this other use of VLOOKUP, we must either leave it blank or enter a value of TRUE.  When using VLOOKUP, it is vital that you make the correct choice for this final parameter. To be explicit, we will enter a value of true in the Range_lookup field.  It would also be fine to leave it blank, as this is the default value: We have completed all the parameters.  We now click the OK button, and Excel builds our VLOOKUP formula for us: If we experiment with a few different sales total amounts, we can satisfy ourselves that the formula is working. Conclusion In the “database” version of VLOOKUP, where the Range_lookup parameter is FALSE, the value passed in the first parameter (Lookup_value) must be present in the database.  In other words, we’re looking for an exact match. But in this other use of VLOOKUP, we are not necessarily looking for an exact match.  In this case, “near enough is good enough”.  But what do we mean by “near enough”?  Let’s use an example:  When searching for a commission rate on a sales total of $34,988, our VLOOKUP formula will return us a value of 30%, which is the correct answer.  Why did it choose the row in the table containing 30% ?  What, in fact, does “near enough” mean in this case?  Let’s be precise: When Range_lookup is set to TRUE (or omitted), VLOOKUP will look in column 1 and match the highest value that is not greater than the Lookup_value parameter. It’s also important to note that for this system to work, the table must be sorted in ascending order on column 1! If you would like to practice with VLOOKUP, the sample file illustrated in this article can be downloaded from here. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using VLOOKUP in ExcelImport Microsoft Access Data Into ExcelImport an Access Database into ExcelCopy a Group of Cells in Excel 2007 to the Clipboard as an ImageShare Access Data with Excel in Office 2010 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Quickly Schedule Meetings With NeedtoMeet Share Flickr Photos On Facebook Automatically Are You Blocked On Gtalk? Find out Discover Latest Android Apps On AppBrain The Ultimate Guide For YouTube Lovers Will it Blend? iPad Edition

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• Craftsmanship is ALL that Matters

  - by Wayne Molina

  Today, I'm going to talk about a touchy subject: the notion of working in a company that doesn't use the prescribed "best practices" in its software development endeavours.  Over the years I have, using a variety of pseudonyms, asked this question on popular programming forums.  Although I always add in some minor variation of the story to avoid suspicion that it's the same person posting, the crux of the tale remains the same: A Programmer’s Tale A junior software developer has just started a new job at an average company, creating average line-of-business applications for internal use (the most typical scenario programmers find themselves in).  This hypothetical newbie has spent a lot of time reading up on the "theory" of software development, devouring books, blogs and screencasts from well-known and respected software developers in the community in order to broaden his knowledge and "do what the pros do".  He begins his new job, eager to apply what he's learned on a real-world project only to discover that his new teammates doesn't use any of those concepts and techniques.  They hack their way through development, or in a best-case scenario use some homebrew, thrown-together semblance of a framework for their applications that follows not one of the best practices suggested by the “elite” in the software community - things like TDD (TDD as a "best practice" is the only subjective part of this post, but it's included here due to a very large following of respected developers who consider it one), the SOLID principles, well-known and venerable tools, even version control in a worst case and truly nightmarish scenario.  Our protagonist is frustrated that he isn't doing things the "proper" way - a way he's spent personal time digesting and learning about and, more importantly, a way that some of the top developers in the industry advocate - and turns to a forum to ask the advice of his peers. Invariably the answer I, in the guise of the concerned newbie, will receive is that A) I don't know anything and should just shut my mouth and sling code the bad way like everybody else on the team, and B) These "best practices" are fade or a joke, and the only thing that matters is shipping software to your customers. I am here today to say that anyone who says this, or anything like it, is not only full of crap but indicative of exactly the type of “developer” that has helped to give our industry a bad name.  Here is why: One Who Knows Nothing, Understands Nothing On one hand, you have the cognoscenti of the .NET development world.  Guys like James Avery, Jeremy Miller, Ayende Rahien and Rob Conery; all well-respected and noted programmers that are pretty much our version of celebrities.  These guys write blogs, books, and post videos outlining the "correct" way of writing software to make sure it not only works but is maintainable and extensible and a joy to work with.  They tout the virtues of the SOLID principles, or of using TDD/BDD, or using a mature ORM like NHibernate, Subsonic or even Entity Framework. On the other hand, you have Joe Everyman, Lead Software Developer at Initrode Corporation - in our hypothetical story Joe is the junior developer's new boss.  Joe's been with Initrode for 10 years, starting as the company’s very first programmer and over the years building up a little fiefdom of his own until at the present he’s in charge of all Initrode’s software development.  Joe writes code the same way he always has, without bothering to learn much, if anything.  He looked at NHibernate once and found it was "too hard", so he uses a primitive implementation of the TableDataGateway pattern as a wrapper around SqlClient.SqlConnection and SqlClient.SqlCommand instead of an actual ORM (or, in a better case scenario, has created his own ORM); the thought of using LINQ or Entity Framework or really anything other than his own hastily homebrew solution has never occurred to him.  He doesn't understand TDD and considers “testing” to be using the .NET debugger to step through code, or simply loading up an app and entering some values to see if it works.  He doesn't really understand SOLID, and he doesn't care to.  He's worked as a programmer for years, and that's all that counts.  Right?  WRONG. Who would you rather trust?  Someone with years of experience and who writes books, creates well-known software and is akin to a celebrity, or someone with no credibility outside their own minute environment who throws around their clout and company seniority as the "proof" of their ability?  Joe Everyman may have years of experience at Initrode as a programmer, and says to do things "his way" but someone like Jeremy Miller or Ayende Rahien have years of experience at companies just like Initrode, THEY know ten times more than Joe Everyman knows or could ever hope to know, and THEY say to do things "this way". Here's another way of thinking about it: If you wanted to get into politics and needed advice on the best way to do it, would you rather listen to the mayor of Hicktown, USA or Barack Obama?  One is a small-time nobody while the other is very well-known and, as such, would probably have much more accurate and beneficial advice. NOTE: The selection of Barack Obama as an example in no way, shape, or form suggests a political affiliation or political bent to this post or blog, and no political innuendo should be mistakenly read from it; the intent was merely to compare a small-time persona with a well-known persona in a non-software field.  Feel free to replace the name "Barack Obama" with any well-known Congressman, Senator or US President of your choice. DIY Considered Harmful I will say right now that the homebrew development environment is the WORST one for an aspiring programmer, because it relies on nothing outside it's own little box - no useful skill outside of the small pond.  If you are forced to use some half-baked, homebrew ORM created by your Director of Software, you are not learning anything valuable you can take with you in the future; now, if you plan to stay at Initrode for 10 years like Joe Everyman, this is fine and dandy.  However if, like most of us, you want to advance your career outside a very narrow space you will do more harm than good by sticking it out in an environment where you, to be frank, know better than everybody else because you are aware of alternative and, in almost most cases, better tools for the job.  A junior developer who understands why the SOLID principles are good to follow, or why TDD is beneficial, or who knows that it's better to use NHibernate/Subsonic/EF/LINQ/well-known ORM versus some in-house one knows better than a senior developer with 20 years experience who doesn't understand any of that, plain and simple.  Anyone who disagrees is either a liar, or someone who, just like Joe Everyman, Lead Developer, relies on seniority and tenure rather than adapting their knowledge as things evolve. In many cases, the Joe Everymans of the world act this way out of fear - they cannot possibly fathom that a “junior” could know more than them; after all, they’ve spent 10 or more years in the same company, doing the same job, cranking out the same shoddy software.  And here comes a newbie who hasn’t spent 10+ years doing the same things, with a fresh and often radical take on the craft, and Joe Everyman is afraid he might have to put some real effort into his career again instead of just pointing to his 10 years of service at Initrode as “proof” that he’s good, or that he might have to learn something new to improve; in most cases the problem is Joe Everyman, and by extension Initrode itself, has a mentality of just being “good enough”, and mediocrity is the rule of the day. A Thorn Bush is No Place for a Phoenix My advice is that if you work on a team where they don't use the best practices that some of the most famous developers in our field say is the "right" way to do things (and have legions of people who agree), and YOU are aware of these practices and can see why they work, then LEAVE the company.  Find a company where they DO care about quality, and craftsmanship, otherwise you will never be happy.  There is no point in "dumbing" yourself down to the level of your co-workers and slinging code without care to craftsmanship.  In 95% of these situations there will be no point in bringing it to the attention of Joe Everyman because he won't listen; he might even get upset that someone is trying to "upstage" him and fire the newbie, and replace someone with loads of untapped potential with a drone that will just nod affirmatively and grind out the tasks assigned without question. Find a company that has people smart enough to listen to the "best and brightest", and be happy.  Do not, I repeat, DO NOT waste away in a job working for ignorant people.  At the end of the day software development IS a craft, and a level of craftsmanship is REQUIRED for any serious professional.  When you have knowledgeable people with the credibility to back it up saying one thing, and small-time people who are, to put it bluntly, nobodies in the field saying and doing something totally different because they can't comprehend it, leave the nobodies to their own devices to fade into obscurity.  Work for a company that uses REAL software engineering techniques and really cares about craftsmanship.  The biggest issue affecting our career, and the reason software development has never been the respected, white-collar career it was meant to be, is because hacks and charlatans can pass themselves off as professional programmers without following a lick of good advice from programmers much better at the craft than they are.  These modern day snake-oil salesmen entrench themselves in companies by hoodwinking non-technical businesspeople and customers with their shoddy wares, end up in senior/lead/executive positions, and push their lack of knowledge on everybody unfortunate enough to work with/for/under them, crushing any dissent or voices of reason and change under their tyrannical heel and leaving behind a trail of dismayed and, often, unemployed junior developers who were made examples of to keep up the facade and avoid the shadow of doubt being cast upon them. To sum this up another way: If you surround yourself with learned people, you will learn.  Surround yourself with ignorant people who can't, as the saying goes, see the forest through the trees, and you'll learn nothing of any real value.  There is more to software development than just writing code, and the end goal should not be just "shipping software", it should be shipping software that is extensible, maintainable, and above all else software whose creation has broadened your knowledge in some capacity, even if a minor one.  An eager newbie who knows theory and thirsts for knowledge can easily be moulded and taught the advanced topics, but the same can't be said of someone who only cares about the finish line.  This industry needs more people espousing the benefits of software craftsmanship and proper software engineering techniques, and less Joe Everymans who are unwilling to adapt or foster new ways of thinking. Conclusion - I Cast “Protection from Fire” I am fairly certain this post will spark some controversy and might even invite the flames.  Please keep in mind these are opinions and nothing more.  A little healthy rant and subsequent flamewar can be good for the soul once in a while.  To paraphrase The Godfather: It helps to get rid of the bad blood.

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Predicate, Comparison, and Converter Generic Delegates

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. In the last three weeks, we examined the Action family of delegates (and delegates in general), the Func family of delegates, and the EventHandler family of delegates and how they can be used to support generic, reusable algorithms and classes. This week I will be completing my series on the generic delegates in the .NET Framework with a discussion of three more, somewhat less used, generic delegates: Predicate<T>, Comparison<T>, and Converter<TInput, TOutput>. These are older generic delegates that were introduced in .NET 2.0, mostly for use in the Array and List<T> classes.  Though older, it’s good to have an understanding of them and their intended purpose.  In addition, you can feel free to use them yourself, though obviously you can also use the equivalents from the Func family of delegates instead. Predicate<T> – delegate for determining matches The Predicate<T> delegate was a very early delegate developed in the .NET 2.0 Framework to determine if an item was a match for some condition in a List<T> or T[].  The methods that tend to use the Predicate<T> include: Find(), FindAll(), FindLast() Uses the Predicate<T> delegate to finds items, in a list/array of type T, that matches the given predicate. FindIndex(), FindLastIndex() Uses the Predicate<T> delegate to find the index of an item, of in a list/array of type T, that matches the given predicate. The signature of the Predicate<T> delegate (ignoring variance for the moment) is: 1: public delegate bool Predicate<T>(T obj); So, this is a delegate type that supports any method taking an item of type T and returning bool.  In addition, there is a semantic understanding that this predicate is supposed to be examining the item supplied to see if it matches a given criteria. 1: // finds first even number (2) 2: var firstEven = Array.Find(numbers, n => (n % 2) == 0); 3:  4: // finds all odd numbers (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) 5: var allEvens = Array.FindAll(numbers, n => (n % 2) == 1); 6:  7: // find index of first multiple of 5 (4) 8: var firstFiveMultiplePos = Array.FindIndex(numbers, n => (n % 5) == 0); This delegate has typically been succeeded in LINQ by the more general Func family, so that Predicate<T> and Func<T, bool> are logically identical.  Strictly speaking, though, they are different types, so a delegate reference of type Predicate<T> cannot be directly assigned to a delegate reference of type Func<T, bool>, though the same method can be assigned to both. 1: // SUCCESS: the same lambda can be assigned to either 2: Predicate<DateTime> isSameDayPred = dt => dt.Date == DateTime.Today; 3: Func<DateTime, bool> isSameDayFunc = dt => dt.Date == DateTime.Today; 4:  5: // ERROR: once they are assigned to a delegate type, they are strongly 6: // typed and cannot be directly assigned to other delegate types. 7: isSameDayPred = isSameDayFunc; When you assign a method to a delegate, all that is required is that the signature matches.  This is why the same method can be assigned to either delegate type since their signatures are the same.  However, once the method has been assigned to a delegate type, it is now a strongly-typed reference to that delegate type, and it cannot be assigned to a different delegate type (beyond the bounds of variance depending on Framework version, of course). Comparison<T> – delegate for determining order Just as the Predicate<T> generic delegate was birthed to give Array and List<T> the ability to perform type-safe matching, the Comparison<T> was birthed to give them the ability to perform type-safe ordering. The Comparison<T> is used in Array and List<T> for: Sort() A form of the Sort() method that takes a comparison delegate; this is an alternate way to custom sort a list/array from having to define custom IComparer<T> classes. The signature for the Comparison<T> delegate looks like (without variance): 1: public delegate int Comparison<T>(T lhs, T rhs); The goal of this delegate is to compare the left-hand-side to the right-hand-side and return a negative number if the lhs < rhs, zero if they are equal, and a positive number if the lhs > rhs.  Generally speaking, null is considered to be the smallest value of any reference type, so null should always be less than non-null, and two null values should be considered equal. In most sort/ordering methods, you must specify an IComparer<T> if you want to do custom sorting/ordering.  The Array and List<T> types, however, also allow for an alternative Comparison<T> delegate to be used instead, essentially, this lets you perform the custom sort without having to have the custom IComparer<T> class defined. It should be noted, however, that the LINQ OrderBy(), and ThenBy() family of methods do not support the Comparison<T> delegate (though one could easily add their own extension methods to create one, or create an IComparer() factory class that generates one from a Comparison<T>). So, given this delegate, we could use it to perform easy sorts on an Array or List<T> based on custom fields.  Say for example we have a data class called Employee with some basic employee information: 1: public sealed class Employee 2: { 3: public string Name { get; set; } 4: public int Id { get; set; } 5: public double Salary { get; set; } 6: } And say we had a List<Employee> that contained data, such as: 1: var employees = new List<Employee> 2: { 3: new Employee { Name = "John Smith", Id = 2, Salary = 37000.0 }, 4: new Employee { Name = "Jane Doe", Id = 1, Salary = 57000.0 }, 5: new Employee { Name = "John Doe", Id = 5, Salary = 60000.0 }, 6: new Employee { Name = "Jane Smith", Id = 3, Salary = 59000.0 } 7: }; Now, using the Comparison<T> delegate form of Sort() on the List<Employee>, we can sort our list many ways: 1: // sort based on employee ID 2: employees.Sort((lhs, rhs) => Comparer<int>.Default.Compare(lhs.Id, rhs.Id)); 3:  4: // sort based on employee name 5: employees.Sort((lhs, rhs) => string.Compare(lhs.Name, rhs.Name)); 6:  7: // sort based on salary, descending (note switched lhs/rhs order for descending) 8: employees.Sort((lhs, rhs) => Comparer<double>.Default.Compare(rhs.Salary, lhs.Salary)); So again, you could use this older delegate, which has a lot of logical meaning to it’s name, or use a generic delegate such as Func<T, T, int> to implement the same sort of behavior.  All this said, one of the reasons, in my opinion, that Comparison<T> isn’t used too often is that it tends to need complex lambdas, and the LINQ ability to order based on projections is much easier to use, though the Array and List<T> sorts tend to be more efficient if you want to perform in-place ordering. Converter<TInput, TOutput> – delegate to convert elements The Converter<TInput, TOutput> delegate is used by the Array and List<T> delegate to specify how to convert elements from an array/list of one type (TInput) to another type (TOutput).  It is used in an array/list for: ConvertAll() Converts all elements from a List<TInput> / TInput[] to a new List<TOutput> / TOutput[]. The delegate signature for Converter<TInput, TOutput> is very straightforward (ignoring variance): 1: public delegate TOutput Converter<TInput, TOutput>(TInput input); So, this delegate’s job is to taken an input item (of type TInput) and convert it to a return result (of type TOutput).  Again, this is logically equivalent to a newer Func delegate with a signature of Func<TInput, TOutput>.  In fact, the latter is how the LINQ conversion methods are defined. So, we could use the ConvertAll() syntax to convert a List<T> or T[] to different types, such as: 1: // get a list of just employee IDs 2: var empIds = employees.ConvertAll(emp => emp.Id); 3:  4: // get a list of all emp salaries, as int instead of double: 5: var empSalaries = employees.ConvertAll(emp => (int)emp.Salary); Note that the expressions above are logically equivalent to using LINQ’s Select() method, which gives you a lot more power: 1: // get a list of just employee IDs 2: var empIds = employees.Select(emp => emp.Id).ToList(); 3:  4: // get a list of all emp salaries, as int instead of double: 5: var empSalaries = employees.Select(emp => (int)emp.Salary).ToList(); The only difference with using LINQ is that many of the methods (including Select()) are deferred execution, which means that often times they will not perform the conversion for an item until it is requested.  This has both pros and cons in that you gain the benefit of not performing work until it is actually needed, but on the flip side if you want the results now, there is overhead in the behind-the-scenes work that support deferred execution (it’s supported by the yield return / yield break keywords in C# which define iterators that maintain current state information). In general, the new LINQ syntax is preferred, but the older Array and List<T> ConvertAll() methods are still around, as is the Converter<TInput, TOutput> delegate. Sidebar: Variance support update in .NET 4.0 Just like our descriptions of Func and Action, these three early generic delegates also support more variance in assignment as of .NET 4.0.  Their new signatures are: 1: // comparison is contravariant on type being compared 2: public delegate int Comparison<in T>(T lhs, T rhs); 3:  4: // converter is contravariant on input and covariant on output 5: public delegate TOutput Contravariant<in TInput, out TOutput>(TInput input); 6:  7: // predicate is contravariant on input 8: public delegate bool Predicate<in T>(T obj); Thus these delegates can now be assigned to delegates allowing for contravariance (going to a more derived type) or covariance (going to a less derived type) based on whether the parameters are input or output, respectively. Summary Today, we wrapped up our generic delegates discussion by looking at three lesser-used delegates: Predicate<T>, Comparison<T>, and Converter<TInput, TOutput>.  All three of these tend to be replaced by their more generic Func equivalents in LINQ, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t understand what they do or can’t use them for your own code, as they do contain semantic meanings in their names that sometimes get lost in the more generic Func name.   Tweet Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,delegates,generics,Predicate,Converter,Comparison

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• C#/.NET &ndash; Finding an Item&rsquo;s Index in IEnumerable&lt;T&gt;

  - by James Michael Hare

  Sorry for the long blogging hiatus.  First it was, of course, the holidays hustle and bustle, then my brother and his wife gave birth to their son, so I’ve been away from my blogging for two weeks. Background: Finding an item’s index in List<T> is easy… Many times in our day to day programming activities, we want to find the index of an item in a collection.  Now, if we have a List<T> and we’re looking for the item itself this is trivial: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // can find the exact item using IndexOf() 5: var pos = list.IndexOf(64); This will return the position of the item if it’s found, or –1 if not.  It’s easy to see how this works for primitive types where equality is well defined.  For complex types, however, it will attempt to compare them using EqualityComparer<T>.Default which, in a nutshell, relies on the object’s Equals() method. So what if we want to search for a condition instead of equality?  That’s also easy in a List<T> with the FindIndex() method: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // finds index of first even number or -1 if not found. 5: var pos = list.FindIndex(i => i % 2 == 0);   Problem: Finding an item’s index in IEnumerable<T> is not so easy... This is all well and good for lists, but what if we want to do the same thing for IEnumerable<T>?  A collection of IEnumerable<T> has no indexing, so there’s no direct method to find an item’s index.  LINQ, as powerful as it is, gives us many tools to get us this information, but not in one step.  As with almost any problem involving collections, there are several ways to accomplish the same goal.  And once again as with almost any problem involving collections, the choice of the solution somewhat depends on the situation. So let’s look at a few possible alternatives.  I’m going to express each of these as extension methods for simplicity and consistency. Solution: The TakeWhile() and Count() combo One of the things you can do is to perform a TakeWhile() on the list as long as your find condition is not true, and then do a Count() of the items it took.  The only downside to this method is that if the item is not in the list, the index will be the full Count() of items, and not –1.  So if you don’t know the size of the list beforehand, this can be confusing. 1: // a collection of extra extension methods off IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // Finds an item in the collection, similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: // note if item not found, result is length and not -1! 8: return list.TakeWhile(i => !finder(i)).Count(); 9: } 10: } Personally, I don’t like switching the paradigm of not found away from –1, so this is one of my least favorites.  Solution: Select with index Many people don’t realize that there is an alternative form of the LINQ Select() method that will provide you an index of the item being selected: 1: list.Select( (item,index) => do something here with the item and/or index... ) This can come in handy, but must be treated with care.  This is because the index provided is only as pertains to the result of previous operations (if any).  For example: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // you'd hope this would give you the indexes of the even numbers 5: // which would be 2, 3, 8, but in reality it gives you 0, 1, 2 6: list.Where(item => item % 2 == 0).Select((item,index) => index); The reason the example gives you the collection { 0, 1, 2 } is because the where clause passes over any items that are odd, and therefore only the even items are given to the select and only they are given indexes. Conversely, we can’t select the index and then test the item in a Where() clause, because then the Where() clause would be operating on the index and not the item! So, what we have to do is to select the item and index and put them together in an anonymous type.  It looks ugly, but it works: 1: // extensions defined on IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // finds an item in a collection, similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: // if you don't name the anonymous properties they are the variable names 8: return list.Select((item, index) => new { item, index }) 9: .Where(p => finder(p.item)) 10: .Select(p => p.index + 1) 11: .FirstOrDefault() - 1; 12: } 13: }     So let’s look at this, because i know it’s convoluted: First Select() joins the items and their indexes into an anonymous type. Where() filters that list to only the ones matching the predicate. Second Select() picks the index of the matches and adds 1 – this is to distinguish between not found and first item. FirstOrDefault() returns the first item found from the previous clauses or default (zero) if not found. Subtract one so that not found (zero) will be –1, and first item (one) will be zero. The bad thing is, this is ugly as hell and creates anonymous objects for each item tested until it finds the match.  This concerns me a bit but we’ll defer judgment until compare the relative performances below. Solution: Convert ToList() and use FindIndex() This solution is easy enough.  We know any IEnumerable<T> can be converted to List<T> using the LINQ extension method ToList(), so we can easily convert the collection to a list and then just use the FindIndex() method baked into List<T>. 1: // a collection of extension methods for IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // find the index of an item in the collection similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: return list.ToList().FindIndex(finder); 8: } 9: } This solution is simplicity itself!  It is very concise and elegant and you need not worry about anyone misinterpreting what it’s trying to do (as opposed to the more convoluted LINQ methods above). But the main thing I’m concerned about here is the performance hit to allocate the List<T> in the ToList() call, but once again we’ll explore that in a second. Solution: Roll your own FindIndex() for IEnumerable<T> Of course, you can always roll your own FindIndex() method for IEnumerable<T>.  It would be a very simple for loop which scans for the item and counts as it goes.  There’s many ways to do this, but one such way might look like: 1: // extension methods for IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // Finds an item matching a predicate in the enumeration, much like List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: int index = 0; 8: foreach (var item in list) 9: { 10: if (finder(item)) 11: { 12: return index; 13: } 14:  15: index++; 16: } 17:  18: return -1; 19: } 20: } Well, it’s not quite simplicity, and those less familiar with LINQ may prefer it since it doesn’t include all of the lambdas and behind the scenes iterators that come with deferred execution.  But does having this long, blown out method really gain us much in performance? Comparison of Proposed Solutions So we’ve now seen four solutions, let’s analyze their collective performance.  I took each of the four methods described above and run them over 100,000 iterations of lists of size 10, 100, 1000, and 10000 and here’s the performance results.  Then I looked for targets at the begining of the list (best case), middle of the list (the average case) and not in the list (worst case as must scan all of the list). Each of the times below is the average time in milliseconds for one execution as computer over the 100,000 iterations: Searches Matching First Item (Best Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0003 0.0003 0.0003 0.0003 Select 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 ToList 0.0002 0.0003 0.0013 0.0121 Manual 0.0001 0.0001 0.0001 0.0001   Searches Matching Middle Item (Average Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0004 0.0020 0.0191 0.1889 Select 0.0008 0.0042 0.0387 0.3802 ToList 0.0002 0.0007 0.0057 0.0562 Manual 0.0002 0.0013 0.0129 0.1255   Searches Where Not Found (Worst Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0006 0.0039 0.0381 0.3770 Select 0.0012 0.0081 0.0758 0.7583 ToList 0.0002 0.0012 0.0100 0.0996 Manual 0.0003 0.0026 0.0253 0.2514   Notice something interesting here, you’d think the “roll your own” loop would be the most efficient, but it only wins when the item is first (or very close to it) regardless of list size.  In almost all other cases though and in particular the average case and worst case, the ToList()/FindIndex() combo wins for performance, even though it is creating some temporary memory to hold the List<T>.  If you examine the algorithm, the reason why is most likely because once it’s in a ToList() form, internally FindIndex() scans the internal array which is much more efficient to iterate over.  Thus, it takes a one time performance hit (not including any GC impact) to create the List<T> but after that the performance is much better. Summary If you’re concerned about too many throw-away objects, you can always roll your own FindIndex() method, but for sheer simplicity and overall performance, using the ToList()/FindIndex() combo performs best on nearly all list sizes in the average and worst cases.    Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Litte Wonders,BlackRabbitCoder,Software,LINQ,List

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• Customize Your WordPress Blog & Build an Audience

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to quickly give your blog a fresh coat of paint and make it stand out from the pack?  Here’s how you can customize your WordPress blog and make it uniquely yours. WordPress offers many features that help you make your blog the best it can be.  Although it doesn’t offer as many customization features as full WordPress running on your own server, it still makes it easy to make your free blog as professional or cute as you like.  Here we’ll look at how you can customize features in your blog and build an audience. Personalize Your Blog WordPress make it easy to personalize your blog.  Most of the personalization options are available under the Appearance menu on the left.  Here we’ll look at how you can use most of these. Add New Theme WordPress is popular for the wide range of themes available for it.  While you cannot upload your own theme to your blog, you can choose from over 90 free themes currently available with more added all the time.  To change your theme, select the Themes page under Appearance. The Themes page will show random themes, but you can choose to view them in alphabetical order, by popularity, or how recently they were added.  Or, you can search for a theme by name or features. One neat way to find a theme that suites your needs is the Feature Filter.  Click the link on the right of the search button, and then select the options you want to make sure your theme has.  Click Apply Filters and WordPress will streamline your choices to themes that contain these features. Once you find a theme you like, click Preview under its name to see how your blog will look. This will open a popup that shows your blog with the new theme.  Click the Activate link in the top right corner of the popup if you want to keep this theme; otherwise, click the x in the top left corner to close the preview and continue your search for one you want.   Edit Current Theme Many of the themes on WordPress have customization options so you can make your blog stand out from others using the same theme.  The default theme Twenty Ten lets you customize both the header and background image, and many themes have similar options. To choose a new header image, select the Header page under Appearance.  Select one of the pre-installed images and click Save Changes, or upload your own image. If you upload an image larger than the size for the header, WordPress will let you crop it directly in the web interface.  Click Crop Header when you’ve selected the portion you want for the header of your blog. You can also customize your blog’s background from the Background page under Appearance.  You can upload an image for the background, or can enter a hex value of a color for a solid background.  If you’d rather visually choose a color, click Select a Color to open a color wheel that makes it easy to choose a nice color.  Click Save Changes when you’re done. Note: that all themes may not contain these customization options, but many are flexible.  You cannot edit the actual CSS of your theme on free WordPress blogs, but you you can purchase the Custom CSS Upgrade for $14.97/year to add this ability. Add Widgets With Extra Content Widgets are small addons for your blog, similar to Desktop Gadgets in Windows 7 or Dashboard widgets in Mac OS X.  You can add widgets to your blog to show recent Tweets, favorite Flickr pictures, popular articles, and more.  To add widgets to your blog, open the Widgets page under Appearance. You’ll see a variety of widgets available in the main white box.  Select one you want to add, and drag it to the widget area of your choice.  Different themes may offer different areas to place Widgets, such as the sidebar or footer. Most of the widgets offer configuration options.  Click the down arrow beside its name to edit it.  Set them up as you wish, and click Save on the bottom of the widget. Now we’ve got some nice dynamic content on our blog that’s automatically updated from the net. Choose Blog Extras By default, WordPress shows previews of websites when visitors hover over links on your blog, uses a special mobile theme when people visit from a mobile device, and shows related links to other blogs on the WordPress network at the end of your posts.  If you don’t like these features, you can disable them on the Extras page under Appearance. Build Your Audience Now that your blog is looking nice, we can make sure others will discover it.  WordPress makes it easy for you to make your site discoverable on search engines or social network, and even gives you the option to keep your site private if you’d prefer.  Open the Privacy page under Tools to change your site’s visibility.  By default, it will be indexed by search engines and be viewable to everyone.  You can also choose to leave your blog public but block search engines, or you can make it fully private. If you choose to make your blog private, you can enter up to 35 usernames of people you want to be able to see it.  Each private visitor must have a WordPress.com account so they can login.  If you need more than 35 private members, you can upgrade to allow unlimited private members for $29.97/year. Then, if you do want your site visible from search engines, one of the best ways to make sure your content is discovered by search engines is to register with their webmaster tools.  Once registered, you need to add your key to your site so the search engine will find and index it.  On the bottom of the Tools page, WordPress lets you enter your key from Google, Bing, and Yahoo! to make sure your site is discovered.  If you haven’t signed up with these tools yet, you can signup via the links on this page as well. Post Blog Updates to Social Networks Many people discover the sites they visit from friends and others via social networks.  WordPress makes it easy to automatically share links to your content on popular social networks.  To activate this feature, open the My Blogs page under Dashboard. Now, select the services you want to activate under the Publicize section.  This will automatically update Yahoo!, Twitter, and/or Facebook every time you publish a new post. You’ll have to authorize your connection with the social network.  With Twitter and Yahoo!, you can authorize them with only two clicks, but integrating with Facebook will take several steps.   If you’d rather share links yourself on social networks, you can get shortened URLs to your posts.  When you write a new post or edit an existing one, click the Get Shortlink button located underneath the post’s title. This will give you a small URL, usually 20 characters or less, that you can use to post on social networks such as Twitter.   This should help build your traffic, and if you want to see how many people are checking out your site, check out the stats on your Dashboard.  This shows a graph of how many people are visiting, and popular posts.  Click View All if you’d like more detailed stats including search engine terms that lead people to your blog. Conclusion Whether you’re looking to make a private blog for your group or publish a blog that’s read by millions around the world, WordPress is a great way to do it for free.  And with all of the personalization options, you can make your it memorable and exciting for your visitors. If you don’t have a blog, you can always signup for a free one from WordPress.com.  Also make sure to check out our article on how to Start Your Own Blog with WordPress. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Manage Your WordPress Blog Comments from Your Windows DesktopAdd Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogHow-To Geek SoftwareMake a Backup Copy of your Production Wordpress Blog on UbuntuOops! Sorry About the Feed Errors 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 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010

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• Installing SharePoint 2010 and PowerPivot for SharePoint on Windows 7

  - by smisner

  Many people like me want (or need) to do their business intelligence development work on a laptop. As someone who frequently speaks at various events or teaches classes on all subjects related to the Microsoft business intelligence stack, I need a way to run multiple server products on my laptop with reasonable performance. Once upon a time, that requirement meant only that I had to load the current version of SQL Server and the client tools of choice. In today's post, I'll review my latest experience with trying to make the newly released Microsoft BI products work with a Windows 7 operating system. The entrance of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 into the BI stack complicated matters and I started using Virtual Server to establish a "suitable" environment. As part of the team that delivered a lot of education as part of the Yukon pre-launch activities (that would be SQL Server 2005 for the uninitiated), I was working with four - yes, four - virtual servers. That was a pretty brutal workload for a 2GB laptop, which worked if I was very, very careful. It could also be a finicky and unreliable configuration as I learned to my dismay at one TechEd session several years ago when I had to reboot a very carefully cached set of servers just minutes before my session started. Although it worked, it came back to life very, very slowly much to the displeasure of the audience. They couldn't possibly have been less pleased than me. At that moment, I resolved to get the beefiest environment I could afford and consolidate to a single virtual server. Enter the 4GB 64-bit laptop to preserve my sanity and my livelihood. Likewise, for SQL Server 2008, I managed to keep everything within a single virtual server and I could function reasonably well with this approach. Now we have SQL Server 2008 R2 plus Office SharePoint Server 2010. That means a 64-bit operating system. Period. That means no more Virtual Server. That means I must use Hyper-V or another alternative. I've heard alternatives exist, but my few dabbles in this area did not yield positive results. It might have been just me having issues rather than any failure of those technologies to adequately support the requirements. My first run at working with the new BI stack configuration was to set up a 64-bit 4GB laptop with a dual-boot to run Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V. However, I was generally not happy with running Windows Server 2008 R2 on my laptop. For one, I couldn't put it into sleep mode, which is helpful if I want to prepare for a presentation beforehand and then walk to the podium without the need to hold my laptop in its open state along the way (my strategy at the TechEd session long, long ago). Secondly, it was finicky with projectors. I had issues from time to time and while I always eventually got it to work, I didn't appreciate those nerve-wracking moments wondering whether this would be the time that it wouldn't work. Somewhere along the way, I learned that it was possible to load SharePoint 2010 in a Windows 7 which piqued my interest. I had just acquired a new laptop running Windows 7 64-bit, and thought surely running the BI stack natively on my laptop must be better than running Hyper-V. (I have not tried booting to Hyper-V VHD yet, but that's on my list of things to try so the jury of one is still out on this approach.) Recently, I had to build up a server with the RTM versions of SQL Server 2008 R2 and Sharepoint Server 2010 and decided to follow suit on my Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit laptop. The process is slightly different, but I'm happy to report that it IS possible, although I had some fits and starts along the way. DISCLAIMER: These products are NOT intended to be run in production mode on the Windows 7 operating system. The configuration described in this post is strictly for development or learning purposes and not supported by Microsoft. If you have trouble, you will NOT get help from them. I might be able to help, but I provide no guarantees of my ability or availablity to help. I won't provide the step-by-step instructions in this post as there are other resources that provide these details, but I will provide an overview of my approach, point you to the relevant resources, describe some of the problems I encountered, and explain how I addressed those problems to achieve my desired goal. Because my goal was not simply to set up SharePoint Server 2010 on my laptop, but specifically PowerPivot for SharePoint, I started out by referring to the installation instructions at the PowerPiovt-Info site, but mainly to confirm that I was performing steps in the proper sequence. I didn't perform the steps in Part 1 because those steps are applicable only to a server operating system which I am not running on my laptop. Then, the instructions in Part 2, won't work exactly as written for the same reason. Instead, I followed the instructions on MSDN, Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint 2010 on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008. In general, I found the following differences in installation steps from the steps at PowerPivot-Info: You must copy the SharePoint installation media to the local drive so that you can edit the config.xml to allow installation on a Windows client. You also have to manually install the prerequisites. The instructions provides links to each item that you must manually install and provides a command-line instruction to execute which enables required Windows features. I will digress for a moment to save you some grief in the sequence of steps to perform. I discovered later that a missing step in the MSDN instructions is to install the November CTP Reporting Services add-in for SharePoint. When I went to test my SharePoint site (I believe I tested after I had a successful PowerPivot installation), I ran into the following error: Could not load file or assembly 'RSSharePointSoapProxy, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. I was rather surprised that Reporting Services was required. Then I found an article by Alan le Marquand, Working Together: SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services Integration in SharePoint 2010,that instructed readers to install the November add-in. My first reaction was, "Really?!?" But I confirmed it in another TechNet article on hardware and software requirements for SharePoint Server 2010. It doesn't refer explicitly to the November CTP but following the link took me there. (Interestingly, I retested today and there's no longer any reference to the November CTP. Here's the link to download the latest and greatest Reporting Services Add-in for SharePoint Technologies 2010.) You don't need to download the add-in anymore if you're doing a regular server-based installation of SharePoint because it installs as part of the prerequisites automatically. When it was time to start the installation of SharePoint, I deviated from the MSDN instructions and from the PowerPivot-Info instructions: On the Choose the installation you want page of the installation wizard, I chose Server Farm. On the Server Type page, I chose Complete. At the end of the installation, I did not run the configuration wizard. Returning to the PowerPivot-Info instructions, I tried to follow the instructions in Part 3 which describe installing SQL Server 2008 R2 with the PowerPivot option. These instructions tell you to choose the New Server option on the Setup Role page where you add PowerPivot for SharePoint. However, I ran into problems with this approach and got installation errors at the end. It wasn't until much later as I was investigating an error that I encountered Dave Wickert's post that installing PowerPivot for SharePoint on Windows 7 is unsupported. Uh oh. But he did want to hear about it if anyone succeeded, so I decided to take the plunge. Perseverance paid off, and I can happily inform Dave that it does work so far. I haven't tested absolutely everything with PowerPivot for SharePoint but have successfully deployed a workbook and viewed the PowerPivot Management Dashboard. I have not yet tested the data refresh feature, but I have installed. Continue reading to see how I accomplished my objective. I unintalled SQL Server 2008 R2 and started again. I had different problems which I don't recollect now. However, I uninstalled again and approached installation from a different angle and my next attempt succeeded. The downside of this approach is that you must do all of the things yourself that are done automatically when you install PowerPivot as a new server. Here are the steps that I followed: Install SQL Server 2008 R2 to get a database engine instance installed. Run the SharePoint configuration wizard to set up the SharePoint databases. In Central Administration, create a Web application using classic mode authentication as per a TechNet article on PowerPivot Authentication and Authorization. Then I followed the steps I found at How to: Install PowerPivot for SharePoint on an Existing SharePoint Server. Especially important to note - you must launch setup by using Run as administrator. I did not have to manually deploy the PowerPivot solution as the instructions specify, but it's good to know about this step because it tells you where to look in Central Administration to confirm a successful deployment. I did spot some incorrect steps in the instructions (at the time of this writing) in How To: Configure Stored Credentials for PowerPivot Data Refresh. Specifically, in the section entitled Step 1: Create a target application and set the credentials, both steps 10 and 12 are incorrect. They tell you to provide an actual Windows user name and password on the page where you are simply defining the prompts for your application in the Secure Store Service. To add the Windows user name and password that you want to associate with the application - after you have successfully created the target application - you select the target application and then click Set credentials in the ribbon. Lastly, I followed the instructions at How to: Install Office Data Connectivity Components on a PowerPivot server. However, I have yet to test this in my current environment. I did have several stops and starts throughout this process and edited those out to spare you from reading non-essential information. I believe the explanation I have provided here accurately reflect the steps I followed to produce a working configuration. If you follow these steps and get a different result, please let me know so that together we can work through the issue and correct these instructions. I'm sure there are many other folks in the Microsoft BI community that will appreciate the ability to set up the BI stack in a Windows 7 environment for development or learning purposes. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, August 13, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, August 13, 2012Popular ReleasesDeForm: DeForm v1.0: Initial Version Support for: GaussianBlur effect ConvolveMatrix effect ColorMatrix effect Morphology effectLiteBlog (MVC): LiteBlog 1.31: Features of this release Windows8 styled UI Namespace and code refactoring Resolved the deployment issues in the previous release Added documentation Help file Help file is HTML based built using SandCastle Help file works in all browsers except IE10Self-Tracking Entity Generator for WPF and Silverlight: Self-Tracking Entity Generator v 2.0.0 for VS11: Self-Tracking Entity Generator for WPF and Silverlight v 2.0.0 for Entity Framework 5.0 and Visual Studio 2012Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.6.0: New Stuff ImageTile Control - think People Tile MicrophoneRecorder - Coding4Fun.Phone.Audio GzipWebClient - Coding4Fun.Phone.Net Serialize - Coding4Fun.Phone.Storage this is code I've written countless times. JSON.net is another alternative ChatBubbleTextBox - Added in Hint TimeSpan languages added: Pl Bug Fixes RoundToggleButton - Enable Visual State not being respected OpacityToggleButton - Enable Visual State not being respected Prompts VS Crash fix for IsPrompt=true More...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.2 Unnamed: Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we try to pack it. Try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your own for Linux (source included) Added 3rd person Added mario jumps Fixed nextprimary code exploit ...NPOI: NPOI 2.0: New features a. Implement OpenXml4Net (same as System.Packaging from Microsoft). It supports both .NET 2.0 and .NET 4.0 b. Excel 2007 read/write library (NPOI.XSSF) c. Word 2007 read/write library(NPOI.XWPF) d. NPOI.SS namespace becomes the interface shared between XSSF and HSSF e. Load xlsx template and save as new xlsx file (partially supported) f. Diagonal line in cell both in xls and xlsx g. Support isRightToLeft and setRightToLeft on the common spreadsheet Sheet interface, as per existin...BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 1.1: This release includes bug fixes from the 1.0 release for email notifications, RSS feeds, and several other issues. Please see the change log for a full list of changes. http://support.bugnetproject.com/Projects/ReleaseNotes.aspx?pid=1&m=76 Upgrade Notes The following changes to the web.config in the profile section have occurred: Removed <add name="NotificationTypes" type="String" defaultValue="Email" customProviderData="NotificationTypes;nvarchar;255" />Added <add name="ReceiveEmailNotifi...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.67.0: Conditional formats now accept formulas. Major performance improvement when opening files with merged ranges. Misc fixes.Virtual Keyboard: Virtual Keyboard v2.0 Source Code: This release has a few added keys that were missing in the earlier versions.Visual Rx: V 2.0.20622.9: help will be available at my blog http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/bnaya/archive/2012/08/12/visual-rx-toc.aspx the SDK is also available though NuGet (search for VisualRx) http://nuget.org/packages/VisualRx if you want to make sure that the Visual Rx Viewer can monitor on your machine, you can install the Visual Rx Tester and run it while the Viewer is running.????: ????2.0.5: 1、?????????????。RiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.01: changes NEW: Added Support for Clipboard Function in Mono Version NEW: Added Support for "ImgBox.com" links FIXED: "PixHub.eu" links FIXED: "ImgChili.com" links FIXED: Kitty-Kats Forum loginPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 5): Support for Smooth Streaming SDK beta 2 Support for live playback New bitrate meter and SD/HD indicators Auto smooth streaming track restriction for snapped mode to conserve bandwidth New "Go Live" button and SeekToLive API Support for offset start times Support for Live position unique from end time Support for multiple audio streams (smooth and progressive content) Improved intellisense in JS version Support for Windows 8 RTM ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmooth Streaming Client SD...Media Companion: Media Companion 3.506b: This release includes an update to the XBMC scrapers, for those who prefer to use this method. There were a number of behind-the-scene tweaks to make Media Companion compatible with the new TMDb-V3 API, so it was considered important to get it out to the users to try it out. Please report back any important issues you might find. For this reason, unless you use the XBMC scrapers, there probably isn't any real necessity to download this one! The only other minor change was one to allow the mc...NVorbis: NVorbis v0.3: Fix Ogg page reader to correctly handle "split" packets Fix "zero-energy" packet handling Fix packet reader to always merge packets when needed Add statistics properties to VorbisReader.Stats Add multi-stream API (for Ogg files containing multiple Vorbis streams)System.Net.FtpClient: System.Net.FtpClient 2012.08.08: 2012.08.08 Release. Several changes, see commit notes in source code section. CHM help as well as source for this release are included in the download. Remember that Windows 7 by default (and possibly older versions) will block you from opening the CHM by default due to trust settings. To get around the problem, right click on the CHM, choose properties and click the Un-block button. Please note that this will be the last release tested to compile with the .net 2.0 framework. I will be remov...Isis2 Cloud Computing Library: Isis2 Alpha V1.1.967: This is an alpha pre-release of the August 2012 version of the system. I've been testing and fixing many problems and have also added a new group "lock" API (g.Lock("lock name")/g.Unlock/g.Holder/g.SetLockPolicy); with this, Isis2 can mimic Chubby, Google's locking service. I wouldn't say that the system is entirely stable yet, and I haven't rechecked every single problem I had seen in May/June, but I think it might be good to get some additional use of this release. By now it does seem to...JSON C# Class Generator: JSON CSharp Class Generator 1.3: Support for native JSON.net serializer/deserializer (POCO) New classes layout option: nested classes Better handling of secondary classesAxiom 3D Rendering Engine: v0.8.3376.12322: Changes Since v0.8.3102.12095 ===================================================================== Updated ndoc3 binaries to fix bug Added uninstall.ps1 to nuspec packages fixed revision component in version numbering Fixed sln referencing VS 11 Updated OpenTK Assemblies Added CultureInvarient to numeric parsing Added First Visual Studio 2010 Project Template (DirectX9) Updated SharpInputSystem Assemblies Backported fix for OpenGL Auto-created window not responding to input Fixed freeInterna...DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.3: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Tutorials are available. Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components ...New Projects.NET Weather Component: NET Weather is a component that will allow you to query various weather services for forcasts, current observations, etc..AxisProvider: Axis is a .NET reactive extensions based subscription and publication framework.Blawkay Hockey: Some xna testing i'm doing.Bolt Browser: Browse the web with ease. You'll never meet a browser more simple, friendly and easy to use. Blaze through the web the way it should be. Fast and beautiful.dotHTML: dotHTML provides a .NET-based DOM for HTML and CSS, facilitating code-driven creation of Web data.Fake DbConnection for Unit Testing EF Code: Unit test Entity Framework 4.3+ and confirm you have valid LINQ-to-Entities code without any need for a database connection.FNHMVC: FNHMVC is an architectural foundation for building maintainable web applications with ASP.NET, MVC, NHibernate & Autofac.FreeAgentMobile: FreeAgentMobile is a Windows Phone project intended to provide access to the FreeAgent Accounting application.Lexer: Generate a lexical analyzer (lexer) for a custom grammar by editing a T4 template.LibXmlSocket: XmlSocket LibraryMaxAlarm: This progect i create for my friend Igor.Minecraft Text Splitter: This tool was made to assist you in writing Minecraft books by splitting text into 255-byte pages and auto-copying it for later pasting into Minecraft.MxPlugin: MxPlugin is a project which demonstrates the calling of functions contained in DLLs both statically and dynamically. Parser: Generate a parser for a custom grammar by editing a T4 template.Sliding Boxes Windows Phone Game source code: .SmartSpider: ??????Http???????????，????????、??、???????。techsolittestpro: This project is testting project of codeplexThe Tiff Library - Fast & Simple .Net Tiff Library: The Tiff Library - Fast & Simple .Net Tiff LibraryVirtualizingWrapPanel: testVisual Rx: Visual Rx is a bundle of API and a Viewer which can monitor and visualize Rx datum stream (at run-time).we7T: testWebForms Transverse Library: This projet is aimed to compile best practices in ASP .NET WebForms development as generic tools working with UI components from various origins.

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