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• Office 2010: It&rsquo;s not just DOC(X) and XLS(X)

  - by andrewbrust

  Office 2010 has released to manufacturing.  The bits have left the (product team’s) building.  Will you upgrade? This version of Office is officially numbered 14, a designation that correlates with the various releases, through the years, of Microsoft Word.  There were six major versions of Word for DOS, during whose release cycles came three 16-bit Windows versions.  Then, starting with Word 95 and counting through Word 2007, there have been six more versions – all for the 32-bit Windows platform.  Skip version 13 to ward off folksy bad luck (and, perhaps, the bugs that could come with it) and that brings us to version 14, which includes implementations for both 32- and 64-bit Windows platforms.  We’ve come a long way baby.  Or have we? As it does every three years or so, debate will now start to rage on over whether we need a “14th” version the PC platform’s standard word processor, or a “13th” version of the spreadsheet.  If you accept the premise of that question, then you may be on a slippery slope toward answering it in the negative.  Thing is, that premise is valid for certain customers and not others. The Microsoft Office product has morphed from one that offered core word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and email functionality to a suite of applications that provides unique, new value-added features, and even whole applications, in the context of those core services.  The core apps thus grow in mission: Excel is a BI tool.  Word is a collaborative editorial system for the production of publications.  PowerPoint is a media production platform for for live presentations and, increasingly, for delivering more effective presentations online.  Outlook is a time and task management system.  Access is a rich client front-end for data-driven self-service SharePoint applications.  OneNote helps you capture ideas, corral random thoughts in a semi-structured way, and then tie them back to other, more rigidly structured, Office documents. Google Docs and other cloud productivity platforms like Zoho don’t really do these things.  And there is a growing chorus of voices who say that they shouldn’t, because those ancillary capabilities are over-engineered, over-produced and “under-necessary.”  They might say Microsoft is layering on superfluous capabilities to avoid admitting that Office’s core capabilities, the ones people really need, have become commoditized. It’s hard to take sides in that argument, because different people, and the different companies that employ them, have different needs.  For my own needs, it all comes down to three basic questions: will the new version of Office save me time, will it make the mundane parts of my job easier, and will it augment my services to customers?  I need my time back.  I need to spend more of it with my family, and more of it focusing on my own core capabilities rather than the administrative tasks around them.  And I also need my customers to be able to get more value out of the services I provide. Help me triage my inbox, help me get proposals done more quickly and make them easier to read.  Let me get my presentations done faster, make them more effective and make it easier for me to reuse materials from other presentations.  And, since I’m in the BI and data business, help me and my customers manage data and analytics more easily, both on the desktop and online. Those are my criteria.  And, with those in mind, Office 2010 is looking like a worthwhile upgrade.  Perhaps it’s not earth-shattering, but it offers a combination of incremental improvements and a few new major capabilities that I think are quite compelling.  I provide a brief roundup of them here.  It’s admittedly arbitrary and not comprehensive, but I think it tells the Office 2010 story effectively. Across the Suite More than any other, this release of Office aims to give collaboration a real workout.  In certain apps, for the first time, documents can be opened simultaneously by multiple users, with colleagues’ changes appearing in near real-time.  Web-browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will be available to extend collaboration to contributors who are off the corporate network. The ribbon user interface is now more pervasive (for example, it appears in OneNote and in Outlook’s main window).  It’s also customizable, allowing users to add, easily, buttons and options of their choosing, into new tabs, or into new groups within existing tabs. Microsoft has also taken the File menu (which was the “Office Button” menu in the 2007 release) and made it into a full-screen “Backstage” view where document-wide operations, like saving, printing and online publishing are performed. And because, more and more, heavily formatted content is cut and pasted between documents and applications, Office 2010 makes it easier to manage the retention or jettisoning of that formatting right as the paste operation is performed.  That’s much nicer than stripping it off, or adding it back, afterwards. And, speaking of pasting, a number of Office apps now make it especially easy to insert screenshots within their documents.  I know that’s useful to me, because I often document or critique applications and need to show them in action.  For the vast majority of users, I expect that this feature will be more useful for capturing snapshots of Web pages, but we’ll have to see whether this feature becomes popular.   Excel At first glance, Excel 2010 looks and acts nearly identically to the 2007 version.  But additional glances are necessary.  It’s important to understand that lots of people in the working world use Excel as more of a database, analytics and mathematical modeling tool than merely as a spreadsheet.  And it’s also important to understand that Excel wasn’t designed to handle such workloads past a certain scale.  That all changes with this release. The first reason things change is that Excel has been tuned for performance.  It’s been optimized for multi-threaded operation; previously lengthy processes have been shortened, especially for large data sets; more rows and columns are allowed and, for the first time, Excel (and the rest of Office) is available in a 64-bit version.  For Excel, this means users can take advantage of more than the 2GB of memory that the 32-bit version is limited to. On the analysis side, Excel 2010 adds Sparklines (tiny charts that fit into a single cell and can therefore be presented down an entire column or across a row) and Slicers (a more user-friendly filter mechanism for PivotTables and charts, which visually indicates what the filtered state of a given data member is).  But most important, Excel 2010 supports the new PowerPIvot add-in which brings true self-service BI to Office.  PowerPivot allows users to import data from almost anywhere, model it, and then analyze it.  Rather than forcing users to build “spreadmarts” or use corporate-built data warehouses, PowerPivot models function as true columnar, in-memory OLAP cubes that can accommodate millions of rows of data and deliver fast drill-down performance. And speaking of OLAP, Excel 2010 now supports an important Analysis Services OLAP feature called write-back.  Write-back is especially useful in financial forecasting scenarios for which Excel is the natural home.  Support for write-back is long overdue, but I’m still glad it’s there, because I had almost given up on it.   PowerPoint This version of PowerPoint marks its progression from a presentation tool to a video and photo editing and production tool.  Whether or not it’s successful in this pursuit, and if offering this is even a sensible goal, is another question. Regardless, the new capabilities are kind of interesting.  A greatly enhanced set of slide transitions with 3D effects; in-product photo and video editing; accommodation of embedded videos from services such as YouTube; and the ability to save a presentation as a video each lay testimony to PowerPoint’s transformation into a media tool and away from a pure presentation tool. These capabilities also recognize the importance of the Web as both a source for materials and a channel for disseminating PowerPoint output. Congruent with that is PowerPoint’s new ability to broadcast a slide presentation, using a quickly-generated public URL, without involving the hassle or expense of a Web meeting service like GoToMeeting or Microsoft’s own LiveMeeting.  Slides presented through this broadcast feature retain full color fidelity and transitions and animations are preserved as well.   Outlook Microsoft’s ubiquitous email/calendar/contact/task management tool gains long overdue speed improvements, especially against POP3 email accounts.  Outlook 2010 also supports multiple Exchange accounts, rather than just one; tighter integration with OneNote; and a new Social Connector providing integration with, and presence information from, online social network services like LinkedIn and Facebook (not to mention Windows Live).  A revamped conversation view now includes messages that are part of a given thread regardless of which folder they may be stored in. I don’t know yet how well the Social Connector will work or whether it will keep Outlook relevant to those who live on Facebook and LinkedIn.  But among the other features, there’s very little not to like.   OneNote To me, OneNote is the part of Office that just keeps getting better.  There is one major caveat to this, which I’ll cover in a moment, but let’s first catalog what new stuff OneNote 2010 brings.  The best part of OneNote, is the way each of its versions have managed hierarchy: Notebooks have sections, sections have pages, pages have sub pages, multiple notes can be contained in either, and each note supports infinite levels of indentation.  None of that is new to 2010, but the new version does make creation of pages and subpages easier and also makes simple work out of promoting and demoting pages from sub page to full page status.  And relationships between pages are quite easy to create now: much like a Wiki, simply typing a page’s name in double-square-brackets (“[[…]]”) creates a link to it. OneNote is also great at integrating content outside of its notebooks.  With a new Dock to Desktop feature, OneNote becomes aware of what window is displayed in the rest of the screen and, if it’s an Office document or a Web page, links the notes you’re typing, at the time, to it.  A single click from your notes later on will bring that same document or Web page back on-screen.  Embedding content from Web pages and elsewhere is also easier.  Using OneNote’s Windows Key+S combination to grab part of the screen now allows you to specify the destination of that bitmap instead of automatically creating a new note in the Unfiled Notes area.  Using the Send to OneNote buttons in Internet Explorer and Outlook result in the same choice. Collaboration gets better too.  Real-time multi-author editing is better accommodated and determining author lineage of particular changes is easily carried out. My one pet peeve with OneNote is the difficulty using it when I’m not one a Windows PC.  OneNote’s main competitor, Evernote, while I believe inferior in terms of features, has client versions for PC, Mac, Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone, iPad and Web browsers.  Since I have an Android phone and an iPad, I am practically forced to use it.  However, the OneNote Web app should help here, as should a forthcoming version of OneNote for Windows Phone 7.  In the mean time, it turns out that using OneNote’s Email Page ribbon button lets you move a OneNote page easily into EverNote (since every EverNote account gets a unique email address for adding notes) and that Evernote’s Email function combined with Outlook’s Send to OneNote button (in the Move group of the ribbon’s Home tab) can achieve the reverse.   Access To me, the big change in Access 2007 was its tight integration with SharePoint lists.  Access 2010 and SharePoint 2010 continue this integration with the introduction of SharePoint’s Access Services.  Much as Excel Services provides a SharePoint-hosted experience for viewing (and now editing) Excel spreadsheet, PivotTable and chart content, Access Services allows for SharePoint browser-hosted editing of Access data within the forms that are built in the Access client itself. To me this makes all kinds of sense.  Although it does beg the question of where to draw the line between Access, InfoPath, SharePoint list maintenance and SharePoint 2010’s new Business Connectivity Services.  Each of these tools provide overlapping data entry and data maintenance functionality. But if you do prefer Access, then you’ll like  things like templates and application parts that make it easier to get off the blank page.  These features help you quickly get tables, forms and reports built out.  To make things look nice, Access even gets its own version of Excel’s Conditional Formatting feature, letting you add data bars and data-driven text formatting.   Word As I said at the beginning of this post, upgrades to Office are about much more than enhancing the suite’s flagship word processing application. So are there any enhancements in Word worth mentioning?  I think so.  The most important one has to be the collaboration features.  Essentially, when a user opens a Word document that is in a SharePoint document library (or Windows Live SkyDrive folder), rather than the whole document being locked, Word has the ability to observe more granular locks on the individual paragraphs being edited.  Word also shows you who’s editing what and its Save function morphs into a sync feature that both saves your changes and loads those made by anyone editing the document concurrently. There’s also a new navigation pane that lets you manage sections in your document in much the same way as you manage slides in a PowerPoint deck.  Using the navigation pane, you can reorder sections, insert new ones, or promote and demote sections in the outline hierarchy.  Not earth shattering, but nice.   Other Apps and Summarized Findings What about InfoPath, Publisher, Visio and Project?  I haven’t looked at them yet.  And for this post, I think that’s fine.  While those apps (and, arguably, Access) cater to specific tasks, I think the apps we’ve looked at in this post service the general purpose needs of most users.  And the theme in those 2010 apps is clear: collaboration is key, the Web and productivity are indivisible, and making data and analytics into a self-service amenity is the way to go.  But perhaps most of all, features are still important, as long as they get you through your day faster, rather than adding complexity for its own sake.  I would argue that this is true for just about every product Microsoft makes: users want utility, not complexity.

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• Stumbling Through: Visual Studio 2010 (Part I)

  Ive spent the better part of the last two years doing nothing but K2 workflow development, which until very recently could only be done in Visual Studio 2005 so I am a bit behind the times. I seem to have skipped over using Visual Studio 2008 entirely, and I am now ready to stumble through all that Ive missed. Not that I will abandon my K2 ramblings, but I need to get back to some of the other technologies I am passionate about but havent had the option of working with them on a day-to-day basis as I have with K2 blackpearl. Specifically, I am going to be focusing my efforts on what is new in the Entity Framework and WPF in Visual Studio 2010, though you have to keep in mind that since I have skipped VS 2008, I may be giving VS 2010 credit for things that really have been around for a while (hey, if I havent seen it, it is new to me!). I have the following simple goals in mind for this exercise: Entity Framework Model an inherited class Entity Framework Model a lookup entity WPF Bind a list of entities WPF - on selection of an entity in the bound list, display values of the selected entity WPF For the lookup field, provide a dropdown of potential values to lookup All of these goals must be accomplished using as little code as possible, relying on the features we get out of the box in Visual Studio 2010. This isnt going to be rocket science here, Im not even looking to get or save this data from/to a data source, but I gotta start somewhere and hopefully it will grow into something more interesting. For this exercise, I am going to try to model some fictional data about football players and personnel (maybe turning this into some sort of NFL simulation game if I lose my job and can play with this all day), so Ill start with a Person class that has a name property, and extend that with a Player class to include a Position lookup property. The idea is that a Person can be a Player, Coach or whatever other personnel type may be associated with a football team but well only flesh out the Player aspect of a person for this. So to get started, I fired up Visual Studio 2010 and created a new WPF Application: To this project, I added a new ADO.NET Entity Data Model named PlayerModel (for now, not sure what will be an appropriate name so this may be revisited): I chose for it to be an empty model, as I dont have a database designed for this yet: Using the toolbox, I dragged out an entity for each of the items we identified earlier: Person, Player and Position, and gave them some simple properties (note that I kept the default Id property for each of them): Now to figure out how to link these things together the way I want to first, lets try to tell it that Player extends Person. I see that Inheritance is one of the items in the toolbox, but I cant seem to drag it out anywhere onto the canvas. However, when I right-click an element, I get the option to Add Inheritance to it, which gives us exactly what we want: Ok, now that we have that, how do we tell it that each player has a position? Well, despite association being in the toolbox, I have learned that you cant just drag and drop those elements so I right click Player and select Add -> Association to get the following dialog: I see the option here to Add foreign key properties to my entities Ive read somewhere this this is a new and highly-sought after feature so Ill see what it does. Selecting it includes a PositionId on the Player element for me, which seems pretty database-centric and I would like to see if I can live without it for now given that we also got the Position property out of this association. Ill bring it back into the fold if it ends up being useful later. Here is what we end up with now: Trying to compile this resulted in an error stating that the Player entity cannot have an Id, because the Person element it extends already has a property named Id. Makes sense, so I remove it and compile again. Success, but with a warning but success is a good thing so Ill pretend I didnt see that warning for now. It probably has to do with the fact that my Player entity is now pretty useless as it doesnt have any non-navigation properties. So things seem to match what we are going for, great now what the heck do we do with this? Lets switch gears and see what we get for free dealing with this model from the UI. Lets open up the MainWindow.xaml and see if we can connect to our entities as a data source. Hey, whats this? Have you read my mind, Visual Studio? Our entities are already listed in the Data Sources panel: I do notice, however, that our Player entity is missing. Is this due to that compilation warning? Ill add a bogus property to our player entity just to see if that is the case no, still no love. The warning reads: Error 2062: No mapping specified for instances of the EntitySet and AssociationSet in the EntityContainer PlayerModelContainer. Well if everything worked without any issues, then I wouldnt be stumbling through at all, so lets get to the bottom of this. My good friend google indicates that the warning is due to the model not being tied up to a database. Hmmm, so why dont Players show up in my data sources? A little bit of drill-down shows that they are, in fact, exposed under Positions: Well now that isnt quite what I want. While you could get to players through a position, it shouldnt be that way exclusively. Oh well, I can ignore that for now lets drag Players out onto the canvas after selecting List from the dropdown: Hey, what the heck? I wanted a list not a listview. Get rid of that list view that was just dropped, drop in a listbox and then drop the Players entity into it. That will bind it for us. Of course, there isnt any data to show, which brings us to the really hacky part of all this and that is to stuff some test data into our view source without actually getting it from any data source. To do this through code, we need to grab a reference to the positionsPlayersViewSource resource that was created for us when we dragged out our Players entity. We then set the source of that reference equal to a populated list of Players.  Well add a couple of players that way as well as a few positions via the positionsViewSource resource, and Ill ensure that each player has a position specified.  Ultimately, the code looks like this: System.Windows.Data.CollectionViewSource positionViewSource = ((System.Windows.Data.CollectionViewSource)(this.FindResource("positionsViewSource")));             List<Position> positions = new List<Position>();             Position newPosition = new Position();             newPosition.Id = 0;             newPosition.Name = "WR";             positions.Add(newPosition);             newPosition = new Position();             newPosition.Id = 1;             newPosition.Name = "RB";             positions.Add(newPosition);             newPosition = new Position();             newPosition.Id = 2;             newPosition.Name = "QB";             positions.Add(newPosition);             positionViewSource.Source = positions;             System.Windows.Data.CollectionViewSource playerViewSource = ((System.Windows.Data.CollectionViewSource)(this.FindResource("positionsPlayersViewSource")));             List<Player> players = new List<Player>();             Player newPlayer = new Player();             newPlayer.Id = 0;             newPlayer.Name = "Test Dude";             newPlayer.Position = positions[0];             players.Add(newPlayer);             newPlayer = new Player();             newPlayer.Id = 1;             newPlayer.Name = "Test Dude II";             newPlayer.Position = positions[1];             players.Add(newPlayer);             newPlayer = new Player();             newPlayer.Id = 2;             newPlayer.Name = "Test Dude III";             newPlayer.Position = positions[2];             players.Add(newPlayer);             playerViewSource.Source = players; Now that our views are being loaded with data, we can go about tying things together visually. Drop a text box (to show the selected players name) and a combo box (to show the selected players position). Drag the Positions entity from the data sources panel to the combo box to wire it up to the positions view source. Click the text box that was dragged, and find its Text property in the properties pane. There is a little glyph next to it that displays Advanced Properties when hovered over click this and then select Apply Data Binding. In the dialog that appears, we can select the current players name as the value to bind to: Similarly, we can wire up the combo boxs SelectedItem value to the current players position: When the application is executed and we navigate through the various players, we automatically get their name and position bound to the appropriate fields: All of this was accomplished with no code save for loading the test data, and I might add, it was pretty intuitive to do so via the drag and drop of entities straight from the data sources panel. So maybe all of this was old hat to you, but I was very impressed with this experience and I look forward to stumbling through the caveats of doing more complex data modeling and binding in this fashion. Next up, I suppose, will be figuring out how to get the entities to get real data from a data source instead of stuffing it with test data as well as trying to figure out why Players ended up being under Positions in the data sources panel.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Tips for XNA WP7 Developers

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  There are several things any XNA developer should know/consider when coming to the Windows Phone 7 platform. This post assumes you are familiar with the XNA Framework and with the changes between XNA 3.1 and XNA 4.0. It’s not exhaustive; it’s simply a list of things I’ve gathered over time. I may come back and add to it over time, and I’m happy to add anything anyone else has experienced or learned as well. Display · The screen is either 800x480 or 480x800. · But you aren’t required to use only those resolutions. · The hardware scaler on the phone will scale up from 240x240. · One dimension will be capped at 800 and the other at 480; which depends on your code, but you cannot have, e.g., an 800x600 back buffer – that will be created as 800x480. · The hardware scaler will not normally change aspect ratio, though, so no unintended stretching. · Any dimension (width, height, or both) below 240 will be adjusted to 240 (without any aspect ratio adjustment such that, e.g. 200x240 will be treated as 240x240). · Dimensions below 240 will be honored in terms of calculating whether to use portrait or landscape. · If dimensions are exactly equal or if height is greater than width then game will be in portrait. · If width is greater than height, the game will be in landscape. · Landscape games will automatically flip if the user turns the phone 180°; no code required. · Default landscape is top = left. In other words a user holding a phone who starts a landscape game will see the first image presented so that the “top” of the screen is along the right edge of his/her phone, such that the natural behavior would be to turn the phone 90° so that the top of the phone will be held in the user’s left hand and the bottom would be held in the user’s right hand. · The status bar (where the clock, battery power, etc., are found) is hidden when the Game-derived class sets GraphicsDeviceManager.IsFullScreen = true. It is shown when IsFullScreen = false. The default value is false (i.e. the status bar is shown). · You should have a good reason for hiding the status bar. Users find it helpful to know what time it is, how much charge their battery has left, and whether or not their phone is in service range. This is especially true for casual games that you expect someone to play for a few minutes at a time, e.g. while waiting for some event to start, for a phone call to come in, or for a train, bus, or subway to arrive. · In portrait mode, the status bar occupies 32 pixels of space. This means that a game with a back buffer of 480x800 will be scaled down to occupy approximately 461x768 screen pixels. Setting the back buffer to 480x768 (or some resolution with the same 0.625 aspect ratio) will avoid this scaling. · In landscape mode, the status bar occupies 72 pixels of space. This means that a game with a back buffer of 800x480 will be scaled down to occupy approximately 728x437 screen pixels. Setting the back buffer to 728x480 (or some resolution with the same 1.51666667 aspect ratio) will avoid this scaling. Input · Touch input is scaled with screen size. · So if your back buffer is 600x360, a tap in the bottom right corner will come in as (599,359). You don’t need to do anything special to get this automatic scaling of touch behavior. · If you do not use full area of the screen, any touch input outside the area you use will still register as a touch input. For example, if you set a portrait resolution of 240x240, it would be scaled up to occupy a 480x480 area, centered in the screen. If you touch anywhere above this area, you will get a touch input of (X,0) where X is a number from 0 to 239 (in accordance with your 240 pixel wide back buffer). Any touch below this area will give a touch input of (X,239). · If you keep the status bar visible, touches within its area will not be passed to your game. · In general, a screen measurement is the diagonal. So a 3.5” screen is 3.5” long from the bottom right corner to the top left corner. With an aspect ratio of 0.6 (480/800 = 0.6), this means that a phone with a 3.5” screen is only approximately 1.8” wide by 3” tall. So there are approximately 267 pixels in an inch on a 3.5” screen. · Again, this time in metric! 3.5 inches is approximately 8.89 cm. So an 8.89 cm screen is 8.89 cm long from the bottom right corner to the top left corner. With an aspect ratio of 0.6, this means that a phone with an 8.89 cm screen is only approximately 4.57 cm wide by 7.62 cm tall. So there are approximately 105 pixels in a centimeter on an 8.89 cm screen. · Think about the size of your finger tip. If you do not have large hands, think about the size of the fingertip of someone with large hands. Consider that when you are sizing your touch input. Especially consider that when you are spacing two touch targets near one another. You need to judge it for yourself, but items that are next to each other and are each 100x100 should be fine when it comes to selecting items individually. Smaller targets than that are ok provided that you leave space between them. · You want your users to have a pleasant experience. Making touch controls too small or too close to one another will make them nervous about whether they will touch the right target. Take this into account when you plan out your game initially. If possible, do some quick size mockups on an actual phone using colored rectangles that you position and size where you plan to have your game controls. Adjust as necessary. · People do not have transparent hands! Nor are their hands the size of a mouse pointer icon. Consider leaving a dedicated space for input rather than forcing the user to cover up to one-third of the screen with a finger just to play the game. · Another benefit of designing your controls to use a dedicated area is that you’re less likely to have players moving their finger(s) so frantically that they accidentally hit the back button, start button, or search button (many phones have one or more of these on the screen itself – it’s easy to hit one by accident and really annoying if you hit, e.g., the search button and then quickly tap back only to find out that the game didn’t save your progress such that you just wasted all the time you spent playing). · People do not like doing somersaults in order to move something forward with accelerometer-based controls. Test your accelerometer-based controls extensively and get a lot of feedback. Very well-known games from noted publishers have created really bad accelerometer controls and been virtually unplayable as a result. Also be wary of exceptions and other possible failures that the documentation warns about. · When done properly, the accelerometer can add a nice touch to your game (see, e.g. ilomilo where the accelerometer was used to move the background; it added a nice touch without frustrating the user; I also think CarniVale does direct accelerometer controls very well). However, if done poorly, it will make your game an abomination unto the Marketplace. Days, weeks, perhaps even months of development time that you will never get back. I won’t name names; you can search the marketplace for games with terrible reviews and you’ll find them. Graphics · The maximum frame rate is 30 frames per second. This was set as a compromise between battery life and quality. · At least one model of phone is known to have a screen refresh rate that is between 59 and 60 hertz. Because of this, using a fixed time step with a target frame rate of 30 will cause a slight internal delay to build up as the framework is forced to wait slightly for the next refresh. Eventually the delay will get to the point where a draw is skipped in order to recover from the delay. (See Nick's comment below for clarification.) · To deal with that delay, you can either stay with a fixed time step and set the frame rate slightly lower or else you can go to a variable time step and make sure to adjust all of your update data (e.g. player movement distance) to take into account the elapsed time from the last update. A variable time step makes your update logic slightly more complicated but will avoid frame skips entirely. · Currently there are no custom shaders. This might change in the future (there is no hardware limitation preventing it; it simply wasn’t a feature that could be implemented in the time available before launch). · There are five built-in shaders. You can create a lot of nice effects with the built-in shaders. · There is more power on the CPU than there is on the GPU so things you might typically off-load to the GPU will instead make sense to do on the CPU side. · This is a phone. It is not a PC. It is not an Xbox 360. The emulator runs on a PC and uses the full power of your PC. It is very good for testing your code for bugs and doing early prototyping and layout. You should not use it to measure performance. Use actual phone hardware instead. · There are many phone models, each of which has slightly different performance levels for I/O, screen blitting, CPU performance, etc. Do not take your game right to the performance limit on your phone since for some other phones you might be crossing their limits and leaving players with a bad experience. Leave a cushion to account for hardware differences. · Smaller screened phones will have slightly more dots per inch (dpi). Larger screened phones will have slightly less. Either way, the dpi will be much higher than the typical 96 found on most computer screens. Make sure that whoever is doing art for your game takes this into account. · Screens are only required to have 16 bit color (65,536 colors). This is common among smart phones. Using gradients on a 16 bit display can produce an ugly artifact known as banding. Banding is when, rather than a smooth transition from one color to another, you instead see distinct lines. Be careful to avoid this when possible. Banding can be avoided through careful art creation. Its effects can be minimized and even unnoticeable when the texture in question is always moving. You should be careful not to rely on “looks good on my phone” since some phones do have 32-bit displays and thus you’ll find yourself wondering why you’re getting bad reviews that complain about the graphics. Avoid gradients; if you can’t, make sure they are 16-bit safe. Audio · Never rely on sounds as your sole signal to the player that something is happening in the game. They might have the sound off. They might be playing somewhere loud. Etc. · You have to provide controls to disable sound & music. These should be separate. · On at least one model of phone, the volume control API currently has no effect. Players can adjust sound with their hardware volume buttons, but in game selectors simply won’t work. As such, it may not be worth the effort of providing anything beyond on/off switches for sound and music. · MediaPlayer.GameHasControl will return true when a game is hooked up to a PC running Zune. When Zune is running, any attempts to do anything (beyond check GameHasControl) with MediaPlayer will cause an exception to be thrown. If this exception is thrown, catch it and disable music. Exceptions take time to propagate; you don’t want one popping up in every single run of your game’s Update method. · Remember that players can already be listening to music or using the FM radio. In this case GameHasControl will be false and you should handle this appropriately. You can, alternately, ask the player for permission to stop their current music and play your music instead, but the (current) requirement that you restore their music when done is very hard (if not impossible) to deal with. · You can still play sound effects even when the game doesn’t have control of the music, but don’t think this is a backdoor to playing music. Your game will fail certification if your “sound effect” seems to be more like music in scope and length.

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• Selling Federal Enterprise Architecture (EA)

  - by TedMcLaughlan

  Selling Federal Enterprise Architecture A taxonomy of subject areas, from which to develop a prioritized marketing and communications plan to evangelize EA activities within and among US Federal Government organizations and constituents. Any and all feedback is appreciated, particularly in developing and extending this discussion as a tool for use – more information and details are also available. "Selling" the discipline of Enterprise Architecture (EA) in the Federal Government (particularly in non-DoD agencies) is difficult, notwithstanding the general availability and use of the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF) for some time now, and the relatively mature use of the reference models in the OMB Capital Planning and Investment (CPIC) cycles. EA in the Federal Government also tends to be a very esoteric and hard to decipher conversation – early apologies to those who agree to continue reading this somewhat lengthy article. Alignment to the FEAF and OMB compliance mandates is long underway across the Federal Departments and Agencies (and visible via tools like PortfolioStat and ITDashboard.gov – but there is still a gap between the top-down compliance directives and enablement programs, and the bottom-up awareness and effective use of EA for either IT investment management or actual mission effectiveness. "EA isn't getting deep enough penetration into programs, components, sub-agencies, etc.", verified a panelist at the most recent EA Government Conference in DC. Newer guidance from OMB may be especially difficult to handle, where bottom-up input can't be accurately aligned, analyzed and reported via standardized EA discipline at the Agency level – for example in addressing the new (for FY13) Exhibit 53D "Agency IT Reductions and Reinvestments" and the information required for "Cloud Computing Alternatives Evaluation" (supporting the new Exhibit 53C, "Agency Cloud Computing Portfolio"). Therefore, EA must be "sold" directly to the communities that matter, from a coordinated, proactive messaging perspective that takes BOTH the Program-level value drivers AND the broader Agency mission and IT maturity context into consideration. Selling EA means persuading others to take additional time and possibly assign additional resources, for a mix of direct and indirect benefits – many of which aren't likely to be realized in the short-term. This means there's probably little current, allocated budget to work with; ergo the challenge of trying to sell an "unfunded mandate". Also, the concept of "Enterprise" in large Departments like Homeland Security tends to cross all kinds of organizational boundaries – as Richard Spires recently indicated by commenting that "...organizational boundaries still trump functional similarities. Most people understand what we're trying to do internally, and at a high level they get it. The problem, of course, is when you get down to them and their system and the fact that you're going to be touching them...there's always that fear factor," Spires said. It is quite clear to the Federal IT Investment community that for EA to meet its objective, understandable, relevant value must be measured and reported using a repeatable method – as described by GAO's recent report "Enterprise Architecture Value Needs To Be Measured and Reported". What's not clear is the method or guidance to sell this value. In fact, the current GAO "Framework for Assessing and Improving Enterprise Architecture Management (Version 2.0)", a.k.a. the "EAMMF", does not include words like "sell", "persuade", "market", etc., except in reference ("within Core Element 19: Organization business owner and CXO representatives are actively engaged in architecture development") to a brief section in the CIO Council's 2001 "Practical Guide to Federal Enterprise Architecture", entitled "3.3.1. Develop an EA Marketing Strategy and Communications Plan." Furthermore, Core Element 19 of the EAMMF is advised to be applied in "Stage 3: Developing Initial EA Versions". This kind of EA sales campaign truly should start much earlier in the maturity progress, i.e. in Stages 0 or 1. So, what are the understandable, relevant benefits (or value) to sell, that can find an agreeable, participatory audience, and can pave the way towards success of a longer-term, funded set of EA mechanisms that can be methodically measured and reported? Pragmatic benefits from a useful EA that can help overcome the fear of change? And how should they be sold? Following is a brief taxonomy (it's a taxonomy, to help organize SME support) of benefit-related subjects that might make the most sense, in creating the messages and organizing an initial "engagement plan" for evangelizing EA "from within". An EA "Sales Taxonomy" of sorts. We're not boiling the ocean here; the subjects that are included are ones that currently appear to be urgently relevant to the current Federal IT Investment landscape. Note that successful dialogue in these topics is directly usable as input or guidance for actually developing early-stage, "Fit-for-Purpose" (a DoDAF term) Enterprise Architecture artifacts, as prescribed by common methods found in most EA methodologies, including FEAF, TOGAF, DoDAF and our own Oracle Enterprise Architecture Framework (OEAF). The taxonomy below is organized by (1) Target Community, (2) Benefit or Value, and (3) EA Program Facet - as in: "Let's talk to (1: Community Member) about how and why (3: EA Facet) the EA program can help with (2: Benefit/Value)". Once the initial discussion targets and subjects are approved (that can be measured and reported), a "marketing and communications plan" can be created. A working example follows the Taxonomy. Enterprise Architecture Sales Taxonomy Draft, Summary Version 1. Community 1.1. Budgeted Programs or Portfolios Communities of Purpose (CoPR) 1.1.1. Program/System Owners (Senior Execs) Creating or Executing Acquisition Plans 1.1.2. Program/System Owners Facing Strategic Change 1.1.2.1. Mandated 1.1.2.2. Expected/Anticipated 1.1.3. Program Managers - Creating Employee Performance Plans 1.1.4. CO/COTRs – Creating Contractor Performance Plans, or evaluating Value Engineering Change Proposals (VECP) 1.2. Governance & Communications Communities of Practice (CoP) 1.2.1. Policy Owners 1.2.1.1. OCFO 1.2.1.1.1. Budget/Procurement Office 1.2.1.1.2. Strategic Planning 1.2.1.2. OCIO 1.2.1.2.1. IT Management 1.2.1.2.2. IT Operations 1.2.1.2.3. Information Assurance (Cyber Security) 1.2.1.2.4. IT Innovation 1.2.1.3. Information-Sharing/ Process Collaboration (i.e. policies and procedures regarding Partners, Agreements) 1.2.2. Governing IT Council/SME Peers (i.e. an "Architects Council") 1.2.2.1. Enterprise Architects (assumes others exist; also assumes EA participants aren't buried solely within the CIO shop) 1.2.2.2. Domain, Enclave, Segment Architects – i.e. the right affinity group for a "shared services" EA structure (per the EAMMF), which may be classified as Federated, Segmented, Service-Oriented, or Extended 1.2.2.3. External Oversight/Constraints 1.2.2.3.1. GAO/OIG & Legal 1.2.2.3.2. Industry Standards 1.2.2.3.3. Official public notification, response 1.2.3. Mission Constituents Participant & Analyst Community of Interest (CoI) 1.2.3.1. Mission Operators/Users 1.2.3.2. Public Constituents 1.2.3.3. Industry Advisory Groups, Stakeholders 1.2.3.4. Media 2. Benefit/Value (Note the actual benefits may not be discretely attributable to EA alone; EA is a very collaborative, cross-cutting discipline.) 2.1. Program Costs – EA enables sound decisions regarding... 2.1.1. Cost Avoidance – a TCO theme 2.1.2. Sequencing – alignment of capability delivery 2.1.3. Budget Instability – a Federal reality 2.2. Investment Capital – EA illuminates new investment resources via... 2.2.1. Value Engineering – contractor-driven cost savings on existing budgets, direct or collateral 2.2.2. Reuse – reuse of investments between programs can result in savings, chargeback models; avoiding duplication 2.2.3. License Refactoring – IT license & support models may not reflect actual or intended usage 2.3. Contextual Knowledge – EA enables informed decisions by revealing... 2.3.1. Common Operating Picture (COP) – i.e. cross-program impacts and synergy, relative to context 2.3.2. Expertise & Skill – who truly should be involved in architectural decisions, both business and IT 2.3.3. Influence – the impact of politics and relationships can be examined 2.3.4. Disruptive Technologies – new technologies may reduce costs or mitigate risk in unanticipated ways 2.3.5. What-If Scenarios – can become much more refined, current, verifiable; basis for Target Architectures 2.4. Mission Performance – EA enables beneficial decision results regarding... 2.4.1. IT Performance and Optimization – towards 100% effective, available resource utilization 2.4.2. IT Stability – towards 100%, real-time uptime 2.4.3. Agility – responding to rapid changes in mission 2.4.4. Outcomes –measures of mission success, KPIs – vs. only "Outputs" 2.4.5. Constraints – appropriate response to constraints 2.4.6. Personnel Performance – better line-of-sight through performance plans to mission outcome 2.5. Mission Risk Mitigation – EA mitigates decision risks in terms of... 2.5.1. Compliance – all the right boxes are checked 2.5.2. Dependencies –cross-agency, segment, government 2.5.3. Transparency – risks, impact and resource utilization are illuminated quickly, comprehensively 2.5.4. Threats and Vulnerabilities – current, realistic awareness and profiles 2.5.5. Consequences – realization of risk can be mapped as a series of consequences, from earlier decisions or new decisions required for current issues 2.5.5.1. Unanticipated – illuminating signals of future or non-symmetric risk; helping to "future-proof" 2.5.5.2. Anticipated – discovering the level of impact that matters 3. EA Program Facet (What parts of the EA can and should be communicated, using business or mission terms?) 3.1. Architecture Models – the visual tools to be created and used 3.1.1. Operating Architecture – the Business Operating Model/Architecture elements of the EA truly drive all other elements, plus expose communication channels 3.1.2. Use Of – how can the EA models be used, and how are they populated, from a reasonable, pragmatic yet compliant perspective? What are the core/minimal models required? What's the relationship of these models, with existing system models? 3.1.3. Scope – what level of granularity within the models, and what level of abstraction across the models, is likely to be most effective and useful? 3.2. Traceability – the maturity, status, completeness of the tools 3.2.1. Status – what in fact is the degree of maturity across the integrated EA model and other relevant governance models, and who may already be benefiting from it? 3.2.2. Visibility – how does the EA visibly and effectively prove IT investment performance goals are being reached, with positive mission outcome? 3.3. Governance – what's the interaction, participation method; how are the tools used? 3.3.1. Contributions – how is the EA program informed, accept submissions, collect data? Who are the experts? 3.3.2. Review – how is the EA validated, against what criteria?  Taxonomy Usage Example:   1. To speak with: a. ...a particular set of System Owners Facing Strategic Change, via mandate (like the "Cloud First" mandate); about... b. ...how the EA program's visible and easily accessible Infrastructure Reference Model (i.e. "IRM" or "TRM"), if updated more completely with current system data, can... c. ...help shed light on ways to mitigate risks and avoid future costs associated with NOT leveraging potentially-available shared services across the enterprise... 2. ....the following Marketing & Communications (Sales) Plan can be constructed: a. Create an easy-to-read "Consequence Model" that illustrates how adoption of a cloud capability (like elastic operational storage) can enable rapid and durable compliance with the mandate – using EA traceability. Traceability might be from the IRM to the ARM (that identifies reusable services invoking the elastic storage), and then to the PRM with performance measures (such as % utilization of purchased storage allocation) included in the OMB Exhibits; and b. Schedule a meeting with the Program Owners, timed during their Acquisition Strategy meetings in response to the mandate, to use the "Consequence Model" for advising them to organize a rapid and relevant RFI solicitation for this cloud capability (regarding alternatives for sourcing elastic operational storage); and c. Schedule a series of short "Discovery" meetings with the system architecture leads (as agreed by the Program Owners), to further populate/validate the "As-Is" models and frame the "To Be" models (via scenarios), to better inform the RFI, obtain the best feedback from the vendor community, and provide potential value for and avoid impact to all other programs and systems. --end example -- Note that communications with the intended audience should take a page out of the standard "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO) playbook, using keywords and phrases relating to "value" and "outcome" vs. "compliance" and "output". Searches in email boxes, internal and external search engines for phrases like "cost avoidance strategies", "mission performance metrics" and "innovation funding" should yield messages and content from the EA team. This targeted, informed, practical sales approach should result in additional buy-in and participation, additional EA information contribution and model validation, development of more SMEs and quick "proof points" (with real-life testing) to bolster the case for EA. The proof point here is a successful, timely procurement that satisfies not only the external mandate and external oversight review, but also meets internal EA compliance/conformance goals and therefore is more transparently useful across the community. In short, if sold effectively, the EA will perform and be recognized. EA won’t therefore be used only for compliance, but also (according to a validated, stated purpose) to directly influence decisions and outcomes. The opinions, views and analysis expressed in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.

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• How to Load Oracle Tables From Hadoop Tutorial (Part 5 - Leveraging Parallelism in OSCH)

  - by Bob Hanckel

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Using OSCH: Beyond Hello World In the previous post we discussed a “Hello World” example for OSCH focusing on the mechanics of getting a toy end-to-end example working. In this post we are going to talk about how to make it work for big data loads. We will explain how to optimize an OSCH external table for load, paying particular attention to Oracle’s DOP (degree of parallelism), the number of external table location files we use, and the number of HDFS files that make up the payload. We will provide some rules that serve as best practices when using OSCH. The assumption is that you have read the previous post and have some end to end OSCH external tables working and now you want to ramp up the size of the loads. Using OSCH External Tables for Access and Loading OSCH external tables are no different from any other Oracle external tables.  They can be used to access HDFS content using Oracle SQL: SELECT * FROM my_hdfs_external_table; or use the same SQL access to load a table in Oracle. INSERT INTO my_oracle_table SELECT * FROM my_hdfs_external_table; To speed up the load time, you will want to control the degree of parallelism (i.e. DOP) and add two SQL hints. ALTER SESSION FORCE PARALLEL DML PARALLEL  8; ALTER SESSION FORCE PARALLEL QUERY PARALLEL 8; INSERT /*+ append pq_distribute(my_oracle_table, none) */ INTO my_oracle_table SELECT * FROM my_hdfs_external_table; There are various ways of either hinting at what level of DOP you want to use.  The ALTER SESSION statements above force the issue assuming you (the user of the session) are allowed to assert the DOP (more on that in the next section).  Alternatively you could embed additional parallel hints directly into the INSERT and SELECT clause respectively. /*+ parallel(my_oracle_table,8) *//*+ parallel(my_hdfs_external_table,8) */ Note that the "append" hint lets you load a target table by reserving space above a given "high watermark" in storage and uses Direct Path load.  In other doesn't try to fill blocks that are already allocated and partially filled. It uses unallocated blocks.  It is an optimized way of loading a table without incurring the typical resource overhead associated with run-of-the-mill inserts.  The "pq_distribute" hint in this context unifies the INSERT and SELECT operators to make data flow during a load more efficient. Finally your target Oracle table should be defined with "NOLOGGING" and "PARALLEL" attributes.   The combination of the "NOLOGGING" and use of the "append" hint disables REDO logging, and its overhead.  The "PARALLEL" clause tells Oracle to try to use parallel execution when operating on the target table. Determine Your DOP It might feel natural to build your datasets in Hadoop, then afterwards figure out how to tune the OSCH external table definition, but you should start backwards. You should focus on Oracle database, specifically the DOP you want to use when loading (or accessing) HDFS content using external tables. The DOP in Oracle controls how many PQ slaves are launched in parallel when executing an external table. Typically the DOP is something you want to Oracle to control transparently, but for loading content from Hadoop with OSCH, it's something that you will want to control. Oracle computes the maximum DOP that can be used by an Oracle user. The maximum value that can be assigned is an integer value typically equal to the number of CPUs on your Oracle instances, times the number of cores per CPU, times the number of Oracle instances. For example, suppose you have a RAC environment with 2 Oracle instances. And suppose that each system has 2 CPUs with 32 cores. The maximum DOP would be 128 (i.e. 2*2*32). In point of fact if you are running on a production system, the maximum DOP you are allowed to use will be restricted by the Oracle DBA. This is because using a system maximum DOP can subsume all system resources on Oracle and starve anything else that is executing. Obviously on a production system where resources need to be shared 24x7, this can’t be allowed to happen. The use cases for being able to run OSCH with a maximum DOP are when you have exclusive access to all the resources on an Oracle system. This can be in situations when your are first seeding tables in a new Oracle database, or there is a time where normal activity in the production database can be safely taken off-line for a few hours to free up resources for a big incremental load. Using OSCH on high end machines (specifically Oracle Exadata and Oracle BDA cabled with Infiniband), this mode of operation can load up to 15TB per hour. The bottom line is that you should first figure out what DOP you will be allowed to run with by talking to the DBAs who manage the production system. You then use that number to derive the number of location files, and (optionally) the number of HDFS data files that you want to generate, assuming that is flexible. Rule 1: Find out the maximum DOP you will be allowed to use with OSCH on the target Oracle system Determining the Number of Location Files Let’s assume that the DBA told you that your maximum DOP was 8. You want the number of location files in your external table to be big enough to utilize all 8 PQ slaves, and you want them to represent equally balanced workloads. Remember location files in OSCH are metadata lists of HDFS files and are created using OSCH’s External Table tool. They also represent the workload size given to an individual Oracle PQ slave (i.e. a PQ slave is given one location file to process at a time, and only it will process the contents of the location file.) Rule 2: The size of the workload of a single location file (and the PQ slave that processes it) is the sum of the content size of the HDFS files it lists For example, if a location file lists 5 HDFS files which are each 100GB in size, the workload size for that location file is 500GB. The number of location files that you generate is something you control by providing a number as input to OSCH’s External Table tool. Rule 3: The number of location files chosen should be a small multiple of the DOP Each location file represents one workload for one PQ slave. So the goal is to keep all slaves busy and try to give them equivalent workloads. Obviously if you run with a DOP of 8 but have 5 location files, only five PQ slaves will have something to do and the other three will have nothing to do and will quietly exit. If you run with 9 location files, then the PQ slaves will pick up the first 8 location files, and assuming they have equal work loads, will finish up about the same time. But the first PQ slave to finish its job will then be rescheduled to process the ninth location file, potentially doubling the end to end processing time. So for this DOP using 8, 16, or 32 location files would be a good idea. Determining the Number of HDFS Files Let’s start with the next rule and then explain it: Rule 4: The number of HDFS files should try to be a multiple of the number of location files and try to be relatively the same size In our running example, the DOP is 8. This means that the number of location files should be a small multiple of 8. Remember that each location file represents a list of unique HDFS files to load, and that the sum of the files listed in each location file is a workload for one Oracle PQ slave. The OSCH External Table tool will look in an HDFS directory for a set of HDFS files to load.  It will generate N number of location files (where N is the value you gave to the tool). It will then try to divvy up the HDFS files and do its best to make sure the workload across location files is as balanced as possible. (The tool uses a greedy algorithm that grabs the biggest HDFS file and delegates it to a particular location file. It then looks for the next biggest file and puts in some other location file, and so on). The tools ability to balance is reduced if HDFS file sizes are grossly out of balance or are too few. For example suppose my DOP is 8 and the number of location files is 8. Suppose I have only 8 HDFS files, where one file is 900GB and the others are 100GB. When the tool tries to balance the load it will be forced to put the singleton 900GB into one location file, and put each of the 100GB files in the 7 remaining location files. The load balance skew is 9 to 1. One PQ slave will be working overtime, while the slacker PQ slaves are off enjoying happy hour. If however the total payload (1600 GB) were broken up into smaller HDFS files, the OSCH External Table tool would have an easier time generating a list where each workload for each location file is relatively the same.  Applying Rule 4 above to our DOP of 8, we could divide the workload into160 files that were approximately 10 GB in size.  For this scenario the OSCH External Table tool would populate each location file with 20 HDFS file references, and all location files would have similar workloads (approximately 200GB per location file.) As a rule, when the OSCH External Table tool has to deal with more and smaller files it will be able to create more balanced loads. How small should HDFS files get? Not so small that the HDFS open and close file overhead starts having a substantial impact. For our performance test system (Exadata/BDA with Infiniband), I compared three OSCH loads of 1 TiB. One load had 128 HDFS files living in 64 location files where each HDFS file was about 8GB. I then did the same load with 12800 files where each HDFS file was about 80MB size. The end to end load time was virtually the same. However when I got ridiculously small (i.e. 128000 files at about 8MB per file), it started to make an impact and slow down the load time. What happens if you break rules 3 or 4 above? Nothing draconian, everything will still function. You just won’t be taking full advantage of the generous DOP that was allocated to you by your friendly DBA. The key point of the rules articulated above is this: if you know that HDFS content is ultimately going to be loaded into Oracle using OSCH, it makes sense to chop them up into the right number of files roughly the same size, derived from the DOP that you expect to use for loading. Next Steps So far we have talked about OLH and OSCH as alternative models for loading. That’s not quite the whole story. They can be used together in a way that provides for more efficient OSCH loads and allows one to be more flexible about scheduling on a Hadoop cluster and an Oracle Database to perform load operations. The next lesson will talk about Oracle Data Pump files generated by OLH, and loaded using OSCH. It will also outline the pros and cons of using various load methods.  This will be followed up with a final tutorial lesson focusing on how to optimize OLH and OSCH for use on Oracle's engineered systems: specifically Exadata and the BDA. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

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• Parsing Concerns

  - by Jesse

  If you’ve ever written an application that accepts date and/or time inputs from an external source (a person, an uploaded file, posted XML, etc.) then you’ve no doubt had to deal with parsing some text representing a date into a data structure that a computer can understand. Similarly, you’ve probably also had to take values from those same data structure and turn them back into their original formats. Most (all?) suitably modern development platforms expose some kind of parsing and formatting functionality for turning text into dates and vice versa. In .NET, the DateTime data structure exposes ‘Parse’ and ‘ToString’ methods for this purpose. This post will focus mostly on parsing, though most of the examples and suggestions below can also be applied to the ToString method. The DateTime.Parse method is pretty permissive in the values that it will accept (though apparently not as permissive as some other languages) which makes it pretty easy to take some text provided by a user and turn it into a proper DateTime instance. Here are some examples (note that the resulting DateTime values are shown using the RFC1123 format): DateTime.Parse("3/12/2010"); //Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT DateTime.Parse("2:00 AM"); //Sat, 01 Jan 2011 02:00:00 GMT (took today's date as date portion) DateTime.Parse("5-15/2010"); //Sat, 15 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT DateTime.Parse("7/8"); //Fri, 08 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT DateTime.Parse("Thursday, July 1, 2010"); //Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT Dealing With Inaccuracy While the DateTime struct has the ability to store a date and time value accurate down to the millisecond, most date strings provided by a user are not going to specify values with that much precision. In each of the above examples, the Parse method was provided a partial value from which to construct a proper DateTime. This means it had to go ahead and assume what you meant and fill in the missing parts of the date and time for you. This is a good thing, especially when we’re talking about taking input from a user. We can’t expect that every person using our software to provide a year, day, month, hour, minute, second, and millisecond every time they need to express a date. That said, it’s important for developers to understand what assumptions the software might be making and plan accordingly. I think the assumptions that were made in each of the above examples were pretty reasonable, though if we dig into this method a little bit deeper we’ll find that there are a lot more assumptions being made under the covers than you might have previously known. One of the biggest assumptions that the DateTime.Parse method has to make relates to the format of the date represented by the provided string. Let’s consider this example input string: ‘10-02-15’. To some people. that might look like ‘15-Feb-2010’. To others, it might be ‘02-Oct-2015’. Like many things, it depends on where you’re from. This Is America! Most cultures around the world have adopted a “little-endian” or “big-endian” formats. (Source: Date And Time Notation By Country) In this context,  a “little-endian” date format would list the date parts with the least significant first while the “big-endian” date format would list them with the most significant first. For example, a “little-endian” date would be “day-month-year” and “big-endian” would be “year-month-day”. It’s worth nothing here that ISO 8601 defines a “big-endian” format as the international standard. While I personally prefer “big-endian” style date formats, I think both styles make sense in that they follow some logical standard with respect to ordering the date parts by their significance. Here in the United States, however, we buck that trend by using what is, in comparison, a completely nonsensical format of “month/day/year”. Almost no other country in the world uses this format. I’ve been fortunate in my life to have done some international travel, so I’ve been aware of this difference for many years, but never really thought much about it. Until recently, I had been developing software for exclusively US-based audiences and remained blissfully ignorant of the different date formats employed by other countries around the world. The web application I work on is being rolled out to users in different countries, so I was recently tasked with updating it to support different date formats. As it turns out, .NET has a great mechanism for dealing with different date formats right out of the box. Supporting date formats for different cultures is actually pretty easy once you understand this mechanism. Pulling the Curtain Back On the Parse Method Have you ever taken a look at the different flavors (read: overloads) that the DateTime.Parse method comes in? In it’s simplest form, it takes a single string parameter and returns the corresponding DateTime value (if it can divine what the date value should be). You can optionally provide two additional parameters to this method: an ‘System.IFormatProvider’ and a ‘System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles’. Both of these optional parameters have some bearing on the assumptions that get made while parsing a date, but for the purposes of this article I’m going to focus on the ‘System.IFormatProvider’ parameter. The IFormatProvider exposes a single method called ‘GetFormat’ that returns an object to be used for determining the proper format for displaying and parsing things like numbers and dates. This interface plays a big role in the globalization capabilities that are built into the .NET Framework. The cornerstone of these globalization capabilities can be found in the ‘System.Globalization.CultureInfo’ class. To put it simply, the CultureInfo class is used to encapsulate information related to things like language, writing system, and date formats for a certain culture. Support for many cultures are “baked in” to the .NET Framework and there is capacity for defining custom cultures if needed (thought I’ve never delved into that). While the details of the CultureInfo class are beyond the scope of this post, so for now let me just point out that the CultureInfo class implements the IFormatInfo interface. This means that a CultureInfo instance created for a given culture can be provided to the DateTime.Parse method in order to tell it what date formats it should expect. So what happens when you don’t provide this value? Let’s crack this method open in Reflector: When no IFormatInfo parameter is provided (i.e. we use the simple DateTime.Parse(string) overload), the ‘DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo’ is used instead. Drilling down a bit further we can see the implementation of the DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo property: From this property we can determine that, in the absence of an IFormatProvider being specified, the DateTime.Parse method will assume that the provided date should be treated as if it were in the format defined by the CultureInfo object that is attached to the current thread. The culture specified by the CultureInfo instance on the current thread can vary depending on several factors, but if you’re writing an application where a single instance might be used by people from different cultures (i.e. a web application with an international user base), it’s important to know what this value is. Having a solid strategy for setting the current thread’s culture for each incoming request in an internationally used ASP .NET application is obviously important, and might make a good topic for a future post. For now, let’s think about what the implications of not having the correct culture set on the current thread. Let’s say you’re running an ASP .NET application on a server in the United States. The server was setup by English speakers in the United States, so it’s configured for US English. It exposes a web page where users can enter order data, one piece of which is an anticipated order delivery date. Most users are in the US, and therefore enter dates in a ‘month/day/year’ format. The application is using the DateTime.Parse(string) method to turn the values provided by the user into actual DateTime instances that can be stored in the database. This all works fine, because your users and your server both think of dates in the same way. Now you need to support some users in South America, where a ‘day/month/year’ format is used. The best case scenario at this point is a user will enter March 13, 2011 as ‘25/03/2011’. This would cause the call to DateTime.Parse to blow up since that value doesn’t look like a valid date in the US English culture (Note: In all likelihood you might be using the DateTime.TryParse(string) method here instead, but that method behaves the same way with regard to date formats). “But wait a minute”, you might be saying to yourself, “I thought you said that this was the best case scenario?” This scenario would prevent users from entering orders in the system, which is bad, but it could be worse! What if the order needs to be delivered a day earlier than that, on March 12, 2011? Now the user enters ‘12/03/2011’. Now the call to DateTime.Parse sees what it thinks is a valid date, but there’s just one problem: it’s not the right date. Now this order won’t get delivered until December 3, 2011. In my opinion, that kind of data corruption is a much bigger problem than having the Parse call fail. What To Do? My order entry example is a bit contrived, but I think it serves to illustrate the potential issues with accepting date input from users. There are some approaches you can take to make this easier on you and your users: Eliminate ambiguity by using a graphical date input control. I’m personally a fan of a jQuery UI Datepicker widget. It’s pretty easy to setup, can be themed to match the look and feel of your site, and has support for multiple languages and cultures. Be sure you have a way to track the culture preference of each user in your system. For a web application this could be done using something like a cookie or session state variable. Ensure that the current user’s culture is being applied correctly to DateTime formatting and parsing code. This can be accomplished by ensuring that each request has the handling thread’s CultureInfo set properly, or by using the Format and Parse method overloads that accept an IFormatProvider instance where the provided value is a CultureInfo object constructed using the current user’s culture preference. When in doubt, favor formats that are internationally recognizable. Using the string ‘2010-03-05’ is likely to be recognized as March, 5 2011 by users from most (if not all) cultures. Favor standard date format strings over custom ones. So far we’ve only talked about turning a string into a DateTime, but most of the same “gotchas” apply when doing the opposite. Consider this code: someDateValue.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy"); This will output the same string regardless of what the current thread’s culture is set to (with the exception of some cultures that don’t use the Gregorian calendar system, but that’s another issue all together). For displaying dates to users, it would be better to do this: someDateValue.ToString("d"); This standard format string of “d” will use the “short date format” as defined by the culture attached to the current thread (or provided in the IFormatProvider instance in the proper method overload). This means that it will honor the proper month/day/year, year/month/day, or day/month/year format for the culture. Knowing Your Audience The examples and suggestions shown above can go a long way toward getting an application in shape for dealing with date inputs from users in multiple cultures. There are some instances, however, where taking approaches like these would not be appropriate. In some cases, the provider or consumer of date values that pass through your application are not people, but other applications (or other portions of your own application). For example, if your site has a page that accepts a date as a query string parameter, you’ll probably want to format that date using invariant date format. Otherwise, the same URL could end up evaluating to a different page depending on the user that is viewing it. In addition, if your application exports data for consumption by other systems, it’s best to have an agreed upon format that all systems can use and that will not vary depending upon whether or not the users of the systems on either side prefer a month/day/year or day/month/year format. I’ll look more at some approaches for dealing with these situations in a future post. If you take away one thing from this post, make it an understanding of the importance of knowing where the dates that pass through your system come from and are going to. You will likely want to vary your parsing and formatting approach depending on your audience.

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• Too nervous to install

  - by The Prop

  Yesterday I (a professional rugby prop of somewhat limited intellect) landed in http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/ and found myself stranded in a town with no signposts. The locals don't need signposts - they know their way around - so who gives a hoot about visitors? Well I'm a visitor and I'm lost. Here's my plea to the good burgesses of Codeplex-sans-signs: HELP!! Let me back-track and explain what landed me at the bottom of this tangled ruck. There's a "Download" button positioned near the top-right of the Codeplex web page, right? Like the Sword of Damocles, a down-arrow to the left of the button indicates, presumably, what a download would include: CURRENT 1.4.0 Stable DATE Fri May 7 2010 at 7:00 AM STATUS Stable With a simple-minded confidence that has since deserted me (the confidence - not the simple-mindedness), I clicked "Download". This introduced 3 new files to my computer: HtmlAgilityPack.dll, HtmlAgilityPack.pdb, and HtmlAgilityPack.XML This is when the first stab of doubt penetrated that globe between my cauliflower ears that I call a head. Where's the dot cs? Somewhere in Codeplex, I'd read advice to another lost soul to "download and build the HTMLAgilityPack solution". As I've done so many times as an All Black prop, I glared at the opposition front row - ah, I mean the 3 new files. Shouldn't one of them have a ".cs" on the back of his jersey - er, on the end of its name? Or is this just how they play the game in Codeplex-sans-signs? Undaunted (props have more courage than sense) I packed into my first C# scrum. The half-back feeds the ball in, and the front rows collapse - er, the debugging stops at this line of my code: "HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument();" Then the Referee blows his whistle and announces one of those verdicts that's utterly indecipherable to your average loose-head prop: Locating source for 'C:\Source\htmlagilitypack\Trunk\HtmlAgilityPack\HtmlDocument.cs'. Checksum: MD5 {62 bc f3 7e 9a 92 a6 32 7 d6 5b f8 76 59 7b 5b} The file 'C:\Source\htmlagilitypack\Trunk\HtmlAgilityPack\HtmlDocument.cs' does not exist. Looking in script documents for 'C:\Source\htmlagilitypack\Trunk\HtmlAgilityPack\HtmlDocument.cs'... Looking in the projects for 'C:\Source\htmlagilitypack\Trunk\HtmlAgilityPack\HtmlDocument.cs'. The file was not found in a project. Looking in directory 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\vc7\atlmfc'... Looking in directory 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\vc7\crt'... The debugger will ask the user to find the file: C:\Source\htmlagilitypack\Trunk\HtmlAgilityPack\HtmlDocument.cs. The user pressed Cancel [a brain-stemmer from the prop] in the Find Source dialog. The debug source files settings for the active solution have been modified so that the debugger will not ask the user to find the file: C:\Source\htmlagilitypack\Trunk\HtmlAgilityPack\HtmlDocument.cs. The debugger could not locate the source file 'C:\Source\htmlagilitypack\Trunk\HtmlAgilityPack\HtmlDocument.cs'. Even if it had been the first 50 stanzas of "Eskimo Nell", I couldn't have been more shocked. I'm so shocked, my jaws clamp shut around the opposition hooker's ear. He thumbs me in the iris. With a cornea-torn eye I peer at the Codeplex site. My brain stem sparks and I punch the "View all downloads" link. It sparks four more times on each download link, and.. lo! FOUR files this time: HAPExplorer.zip, HtmlAgilityPack.1.4.0.Source.zip, HtmlAgilityPack.1.4.0.zip, HtmlAgilityPack.Documentation.chm But... is this not the same place arrived at recently by my flat-mate Chaz, journalist extraordinaire? (Chaz, if you're reading this, I'm not plugging for nothing - just write kindly about me in your next report, okay?) Didn't these same four files flummox Chaz The Great? He told me about it. Chaz left a message with Codeplex and then solved the problem by just walking away. Typical journalist, huh. But I'm not like that. I don't walk away. I'm made of the sort of stubborn stuff that becomes an All Black prop. Hence this impassioned plea: GOOD TOWNSFOLK OF CODEPLEX-SANS-SIGNS, WHAT SHOULD I DO NEXT? Can somebody point me to Main Street? How does a simpleton install 'C:\Source\htmlagilitypack\Trunk\HtmlAgilityPack\HtmlDocument.cs'? I'm willing to prostrate myself and grovel to the first kind face that passes in front of my rapidly clouding sight. So help me, I'd even tug my forelock if I had one! Should I hold forth my rod over the wilderness, and create a folder called 'C:\Source\htmlagilitypack\Trunk\HtmlAgilityPack\' or some such? If so, what files should I move into it? ANYTHING else a dum-ass should know about? - and I mean ANYTHING - you just don't know how witless a punch-drunk prop can be.. %( Whenever I've installed other programs they've given me an ".exe" or ".msi" that I can click on and it's all done for me like magic. HEY... there's nothing of that nature here, is there? Am I missing something? Something for dummies to click? (From the waiting rooms of Dr I. Sight Phixes) (signed) The Prop

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• LINQ 4 XML - What is the proper way to query deep in the tree structure?

  - by Keith Barrows

  I have an XML structure that is 4 deep: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <EmailRuleList xmlns:xsd="EmailRules.xsd"> <TargetPST name="Tech Communities"> <Parse emailAsList="true" useJustDomain="false" fromAddress="false" toAddress="true"> <EmailRule address="@aspadvice.com" folder="Lists, ASP" saveAttachments="false" /> <EmailRule address="@sqladvice.com" folder="Lists, SQL" saveAttachments="false" /> <EmailRule address="@xmladvice.com" folder="Lists, XML" saveAttachments="false" /> </Parse> <Parse emailAsList="false" useJustDomain="false" fromAddress="false" toAddress="true"> <EmailRule address="[email protected]" folder="Special Interest Groups|Northern Colorado Architects Group" saveAttachments="false" /> <EmailRule address="[email protected]" folder="Support|SpamBayes" saveAttachments="false" /> </Parse> <Parse emailAsList="false" useJustDomain="false" fromAddress="true" toAddress="false"> <EmailRule address="[email protected]" folder="Support|GoDaddy" saveAttachments="false" /> <EmailRule address="[email protected]" folder="Support|No-IP.com" saveAttachments="false" /> <EmailRule address="[email protected]" folder="Discussions|Orchard Project" saveAttachments="false" /> </Parse> <Parse emailAsList="false" useJustDomain="true" fromAddress="true" toAddress="false"> <EmailRule address="@agilejournal.com" folder="Newsletters|Agile Journal" saveAttachments="false"/> <EmailRule address="@axosoft.ccsend.com" folder="Newsletters|Axosoft Newsletter" saveAttachments="false"/> <EmailRule address="@axosoft.com" folder="Newsletters|Axosoft Newsletter" saveAttachments="false"/> <EmailRule address="@cmcrossroads.com" folder="Newsletters|CM Crossroads" saveAttachments="false" /> <EmailRule address="@urbancode.com" folder="Newsletters|Urbancode" saveAttachments="false" /> <EmailRule address="@urbancode.ccsend.com" folder="Newsletters|Urbancode" saveAttachments="false" /> <EmailRule address="@Infragistics.com" folder="Newsletters|Infragistics" saveAttachments="false" /> <EmailRule address="@zdnet.online.com" folder="Newsletters|ZDNet Tech Update Today" saveAttachments="false" /> <EmailRule address="@sqlservercentral.com" folder="Newsletters|SQLServerCentral.com" saveAttachments="false" /> <EmailRule address="@simple-talk.com" folder="Newsletters|Simple-Talk Newsletter" saveAttachments="false" /> </Parse> </TargetPST> <TargetPST name="[Sharpen the Saw]"> <Parse emailAsList="false" useJustDomain="false" fromAddress="false" toAddress="true"> <EmailRule address="[email protected]" folder="Head Geek|Job Alerts" saveAttachments="false" /> <EmailRule address="[email protected]" folder="Social|LinkedIn USMC" saveAttachments="false"/> </Parse> <Parse emailAsList="false" useJustDomain="false" fromAddress="true" toAddress="false"> <EmailRule address="[email protected]" folder="Head Geek|Job Alerts" saveAttachments="false" /> <EmailRule address="[email protected]" folder="Head Geek|Job Alerts" saveAttachments="false" /> <EmailRule address="[email protected]" folder="Social|Cruise Critic" saveAttachments="false"/> </Parse> <Parse emailAsList="false" useJustDomain="true" fromAddress="true" toAddress="false"> <EmailRule address="@moody.edu" folder="Social|5 Love Languages" saveAttachments="false" /> <EmailRule address="@postmaster.twitter.com" folder="Social|Twitter" saveAttachments="false"/> <EmailRule address="@diabetes.org" folder="Physical|American Diabetes Association" saveAttachments="false"/> <EmailRule address="@membership.webshots.com" folder="Social|Webshots" saveAttachments="false"/> </Parse> </TargetPST> </EmailRuleList> Now, I have both an FromAddress and a ToAddress that is parsed from an incoming email. I would like to do a LINQ query against a class set that was deserialized from this XML. For instance: ToAddress = [email protected] FromAddress = [email protected] Query: Get EmailRule.Include(Parse).Include(TargetPST) where address == ToAddress AND Parse.ToAddress==true AND Parse.useJustDomain==false Get EmailRule.Include(Parse).Include(TargetPST) where address == [ToAddress Domain Only] AND Parse.ToAddress==true AND Parse.useJustDomain==true Get EmailRule.Include(Parse).Include(TargetPST) where address == FromAddress AND Parse.FromAddress==true AND Parse.useJustDomain==false Get EmailRule.Include(Parse).Include(TargetPST) where address == [FromAddress Domain Only] AND Parse.FromAddress==true AND Parse.useJustDomain==true I am having a hard time figuring this LINQ query out. I can, of course, loop on all the bits in the XML like so (includes deserialization into objects): XmlSerializer s = new XmlSerializer(typeof(EmailRuleList)); TextReader r = new StreamReader(path); _emailRuleList = (EmailRuleList)s.Deserialize(r); TargetPST[] PSTList = _emailRuleList.Items; foreach (TargetPST targetPST in PSTList) { olRoot = GetRootFolder(targetPST.name); if (olRoot != null) { Parse[] ParseList = targetPST.Items; foreach (Parse parseRules in ParseList) { EmailRule[] EmailRuleList = parseRules.Items; foreach (EmailRule targetFolders in EmailRuleList) { } } } } However, this means going through all these loops for each and every address. It makes more sense to me to query against the Objects. Any tips appreciated!

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• "Randomly" occurring errors...

  - by ClarkeyBoy

  Hi, My website has a setup whereby when the application starts a module called SiteContent is "created". This runs a clearup function which basically deletes any irrelevant data from the database, in case any has been left in there from previously run functions. The module has instances of Manager classes - namely RangeManager, CollectionManager, DesignManager. There are others but I will just use these as an example. Each Manager class contains an array of items - items may be of type Range, Collection or Design, whichever one is relevant. Data for each range is then read into an instance of Range, Collection or Design. I know this is basically duplicating data - not very efficient but its my final year project at the moment so I can always change it to use Linq or something similar later, when I am not pressured by the one month deadline. I have a form which, on clicking the Save button, saves data by calling SiteContent.RangeManager.Create(vars) or SiteContent.RangeManager.Update(Range As Range, vars) (or the equivalent for other manager classes, whichever one happens to be relevant). These functions call a stored procedure to insert or update in the relevant table. Classes Range, Collection and Design all have attributes such as Name, Description, Display and several others. When the Create or Update function is called, the Manager loops through all the other items to check if an item with the same name already exists. The Update function ensures that it does not compare the item being updated to itself. A custom exception (ItemAlreadyExistsException) is thrown if another item with the same name is found. For some weird reason, if I go into a Range, Collection or Design in edit mode, change something and try to update it, it occasionally doesnt update the item. When I say occasionally I mean every 3 - 4 page loads, sometimes more. I see absolutely no pattern in when or why it occurs. I have a try-catch statement which catches ItemAlreadyExistsException, and outputs "An item with this name already exists" when caught. Occasionally it will output this; other times it will not. Does anyone have any idea why this could happen? Maybe a mistake which someone has made and solved before? I used to have regular expressions in place that the names were compared to - I believe it was [a-zA-Z]{1, 100} (between 1 and 100 lower- or upper-case characters). For some reason the customer who I am developing the site for used to get errors saying its not in the correct format. Yet he could try the same text 5 minutes later and it would work fine. I am thinking this could well be the same problem, since both problems occur at random. Many thanks in advance. Regards, Richard Clarke Edit: After much time spent narrowing down the code, I have decided to wait till my brother, who has been a programmer for at least 8 years more than I have, to come down over Easter and get him to have a look at it. If he cant solve it then I will zip the files up and put them somewhere for people to access and have a go at. I narrowed it down literally to the minimum number of files possible, and it still occurs. It seems to be about every 10th time. Having said that, I force the manager classes to refresh every 10 page loads or 5 minutes (whichever one is sooner). I may look into this - this could be causing a problem. Basically each Manager contains an array of an object. This array is populated using data from the database. The Update function takes an instance of the item and the new values to be set for the object. If it happens to be a page load where the array is reset (ie the data is loaded freshly from the database) then the object instance with the same ID wont be the same instance as the one being passed in. This explains the fact that it throws an ItemAlreadyExistsException now and then. It all makes sense now the more I think about it. If I were to pass in the ID of the object to be altered, rather than the object itself, then it should work perfectly. I will answer the question if I solve it..

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• Prime Numbers Code Help

  - by andrew

  Hello Everybody, I am suppose to "write a Java program that reads a positive integer n from standard input, then prints out the first n prime number." It's divided into 3 parts. 1st: This function will return true or false according to whether m is prime or composite. The array argument P will contain a sufficient number of primes to do the testing. Specifically, at the time isPrime() is called, array P must contain (at least) all primes p in the range 2 p m . For instance, to test m = 53 for primality, one must do successive trial divisions by 2, 3, 5, and 7. We go no further since 11 53 . Thus a precondition for the function call isPrime(53, P) is that P[0] = 2 , P[1] = 3 , P[2] = 5, and P[3] = 7 . The return value in this case would be true since all these divisions fail. Similarly to test m =143 , one must do trial divisions by 2, 3, 5, 7, and 11 (since 13 143 ). The precondition for the function call isPrime(143, P) is therefore P[0] = 2 , P[1] = 3 , P[2] = 5, P[3] = 7 , and P[4] =11. The return value in this case would be false since 11 divides 143. Function isPrime() should contain a loop that steps through array P, doing trial divisions. This loop should terminate when 2 either a trial division succeeds, in which case false is returned, or until the next prime in P is greater than m , in which case true is returned. Then there is the "main function" • Check that the user supplied exactly one command line argument which can be interpreted as a positive integer n. If the command line argument is not a single positive integer, your program will print a usage message as specified in the examples below, then exit. • Allocate array Primes[] of length n and initialize Primes[0] = 2 . • Enter a loop which will discover subsequent primes and store them as Primes[1] , Primes[2], Primes[3] , ……, Primes[n -1] . This loop should contain an inner loop which walks through successive integers and tests them for primality by calling function isPrime() with appropriate arguments. • Print the contents of array Primes[] to stdout, 10 to a line separated by single spaces. In other words Primes[0] through Primes[9] will go on line 1, Primes[10] though Primes[19] will go on line 2, and so on. Note that if n is not a multiple of 10, then the last line of output will contain fewer than 10 primes. The last function is called "usage" which I am not sure how to execute this! Your program will include a function called Usage() having signature static void Usage() that prints this message to stderr, then exits. Thus your program will contain three functions in all: main(), isPrime(), and Usage(). Each should be preceded by a comment block giving it’s name, a short description of it’s operation, and any necessary preconditions (such as those for isPrime().) And hear is my code, but I am having a bit of a problem and could you guys help me fix it? If I enter the number "5" it gives me the prime numbers which are "6,7,8,9" which doesn't make much sense. import java.util.; import java.io.; import java.lang.*; public class PrimeNumber { static boolean isPrime(int m, int[] P){ int squarert = Math.round( (float)Math.sqrt(m) ); int i = 2; boolean ans=false; while ((i<=squarert) & (ans==false)) { int c= P[i]; if (m%c==0) ans= true; else ans= false; i++; } /* if(ans ==true) ans=false; else ans=true; return ans; } ///****main public static void main(String[] args ) { Scanner in= new Scanner(System.in); int input= in.nextInt(); int i, j; int squarert; boolean ans = false; int userNum; int remander = 0; System.out.println("input: " + input); int[] prime = new int[input]; prime[0]= 2; for(i=1; i ans = isPrime(j,prime); j++;} prime[i] = j; } //prnt prime System.out.println("The first " + input + " prime number(s) are: "); for(int r=0; r }//end of main } Thanks for the help

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• How to read verbose VC++ linker output

  - by Assaf Lavie

  Trying to debug some linker errors, I turned on /VERBOSE and I'm trying to make sense of the output. It occurs to me that I really don't know how to read it. For example: 1>Compiling version info 1>Linking... 1>Starting pass 1 1>Processed /DEFAULTLIB:mfc80.lib 1>Processed /DEFAULTLIB:mfcs80.lib 1>Processed /DEFAULTLIB:msvcrt.lib 1>Processed /DEFAULTLIB:kernel32.lib 1>Processed /DEFAULTLIB:user32.lib .... 1>Processed /DEFAULTLIB:libgslcblasMD.lib 1>Searching libraries 1> Searching V:\Src\Solutions\\..\..\\Common\Win32\Lib\PlxApi.lib: 1> Searching ..\..\..\..\out\win32\release\lib\camerageometry.lib: 1> Searching ..\..\..\..\out\win32\release\lib\geometry.lib: 1> Found "public: __thiscall VisionMap::Geometry::Box2d::operator class VisionMap::Geometry::Box2DInt(void)const " (??BBox2d@Geometry@VisionMap@@QBE?AVBox2DInt@12@XZ) 1> Referenced in FocusDlg.obj 1> Loaded geometry.lib(Box2d.obj) 1>Processed /DEFAULTLIB:CGAL-vc80-mt.lib 1>Processed /DEFAULTLIB:boost_thread-vc80-mt-1_33_1.lib What's going on here? I think I understand this bit: 1>Processed /DEFAULTLIB:libgslcblasMD.lib 1>Searching libraries 1> Searching V:\Src\Solutions\\..\..\\Common\Win32\Lib\PlxApi.lib: 1> Searching ..\..\..\..\out\win32\release\lib\camerageometry.lib: 1> Searching ..\..\..\..\out\win32\release\lib\geometry.lib: 1> Found "public: __thiscall VisionMap::Geometry::Box2d::operator class VisionMap::Geometry::Box2DInt(void)const " (??BBox2d@Geometry@VisionMap@@QBE?AVBox2DInt@12@XZ) 1> Referenced in FocusDlg.obj 1> Loaded geometry.lib(Box2d.obj) It's trying to find the implementation of the above operator, which is used somewhere in FocusDlg.cpp, and it finds it in geometry.lib. But what does 1>Processed /DEFAULTLIB:libgslcblasMD.lib mean? What determines the order of symbol resolution? Why is it loading this particular symbol while processing libgslcblasMD.lib which is a 3rd party library? Or am I reading it wrong? It seems that the linker is going through the symbols referenced in the project's various object files, but I have no idea in what order. It then searches the static libraries the project uses - by project reference, explicit import and automatic default library imports; but it does so in an order that, again, seems arbitrary to me. When it finds a symbol, for example in geometry.lib, it then continues to find a bunch of other symbols from the same lib: 1> Searching V:\Src\Solutions\\..\..\\Common\Win32\Lib\PlxApi.lib: 1> Searching ..\..\..\..\out\win32\release\lib\camerageometry.lib: 1> Searching ..\..\..\..\out\win32\release\lib\geometry.lib: 1> Found "public: __thiscall VisionMap::Geometry::Box2d::operator class VisionMap::Geometry::Box2DInt(void)const " (??BBox2d@Geometry@VisionMap@@QBE?AVBox2DInt@12@XZ) 1> Referenced in FocusDlg.obj 1> Loaded geometry.lib(Box2d.obj) 1>Processed /DEFAULTLIB:CGAL-vc80-mt.lib 1>Processed /DEFAULTLIB:boost_thread-vc80-mt-1_33_1.lib 1> Found "public: __thiscall VisionMap::Geometry::Box2DInt::Box2DInt(int,int,int,int)" (??0Box2DInt@Geometry@VisionMap@@QAE@HHHH@Z) 1> Referenced in FocusDlg.obj 1> Referenced in ImageView.obj 1> Referenced in geometry.lib(Box2d.obj) 1> Loaded geometry.lib(Box2DInt.obj) 1> Found "public: virtual __thiscall VisionMap::Geometry::Point3d::~Point3d(void)" (??1Point3d@Geometry@VisionMap@@UAE@XZ) 1> Referenced in GPSFrm.obj 1> Referenced in MainFrm.obj 1> Loaded geometry.lib(Point3d.obj) 1> Found "void __cdecl VisionMap::Geometry::serialize<class boost::archive::binary_oarchive>(class boost::archive::binary_oarchive &,class VisionMap::Geometry::Point3d &,unsigned int)" (??$serialize@Vbinary_oarchive@archive@boost@@@Geometry@VisionMap@@YAXAAVbinary_oarchive@archive@boost@@AAVPoint3d@01@I@Z) 1> Referenced in GPSFrm.obj 1> Referenced in MainFrm.obj 1> Loaded geometry.lib(GeometrySerializationImpl.obj) But then, for some reason, it goes on to find symbols that are defined in other libs, and returns to geometry later on (a bunch of times). So clearly it's not doing "look in geometry and load every symbol that's references in the project, and then continue to other libraries". But it's not clear to me what is the order of symbol lookup. And what's the deal with all those libraries being processed at the beginning of the linker's work, but not finding any symbols to load from them? Does this project really not use anything from msvcrt.lib, kernel32.lib? Seems unlikely. So basically I'm looking to decipher the underlying order in the linker's operation.

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• Big smart ViewModels, dumb Views, and any model, the best MVVM approach?

  - by Edward Tanguay

  The following code is a refactoring of my previous MVVM approach (Fat Models, skinny ViewModels and dumb Views, the best MVVM approach?) in which I moved the logic and INotifyPropertyChanged implementation from the model back up into the ViewModel. This makes more sense, since as was pointed out, you often you have to use models that you either can't change or don't want to change and so your MVVM approach should be able to work with any model class as it happens to exist. This example still allows you to view the live data from your model in design mode in Visual Studio and Expression Blend which I think is significant since you could have a mock data store that the designer connects to which has e.g. the smallest and largest strings that the UI can possibly encounter so that he can adjust the design based on those extremes. Questions: I'm a bit surprised that I even have to "put a timer" in my ViewModel since it seems like that is a function of INotifyPropertyChanged, it seems redundant, but it was the only way I could get the XAML UI to constantly (once per second) reflect the state of my model. So it would be interesting to hear anyone who may have taken this approach if you encountered any disadvantages down the road, e.g. with threading or performance. The following code will work if you just copy the XAML and code behind into a new WPF project. XAML: <Window x:Class="TestMvvm73892.Window1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:local="clr-namespace:TestMvvm73892" Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300"> <Window.Resources> <ObjectDataProvider x:Key="DataSourceCustomer" ObjectType="{x:Type local:CustomerViewModel}" MethodName="GetCustomerViewModel"/> </Window.Resources> <DockPanel DataContext="{StaticResource DataSourceCustomer}"> <StackPanel DockPanel.Dock="Top" Orientation="Horizontal"> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=FirstName}"/> <TextBlock Text=" "/> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=LastName}"/> </StackPanel> <StackPanel DockPanel.Dock="Top" Orientation="Horizontal"> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=TimeOfMostRecentActivity}"/> </StackPanel> </DockPanel> </Window> Code Behind: using System; using System.Windows; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Threading; namespace TestMvvm73892 { public partial class Window1 : Window { public Window1() { InitializeComponent(); } } //view model public class CustomerViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged { private string _firstName; private string _lastName; private DateTime _timeOfMostRecentActivity; private Timer _timer; public string FirstName { get { return _firstName; } set { _firstName = value; this.RaisePropertyChanged("FirstName"); } } public string LastName { get { return _lastName; } set { _lastName = value; this.RaisePropertyChanged("LastName"); } } public DateTime TimeOfMostRecentActivity { get { return _timeOfMostRecentActivity; } set { _timeOfMostRecentActivity = value; this.RaisePropertyChanged("TimeOfMostRecentActivity"); } } public CustomerViewModel() { _timer = new Timer(CheckForChangesInModel, null, 0, 1000); } private void CheckForChangesInModel(object state) { Customer currentCustomer = CustomerViewModel.GetCurrentCustomer(); MapFieldsFromModeltoViewModel(currentCustomer, this); } public static CustomerViewModel GetCustomerViewModel() { CustomerViewModel customerViewModel = new CustomerViewModel(); Customer currentCustomer = CustomerViewModel.GetCurrentCustomer(); MapFieldsFromModeltoViewModel(currentCustomer, customerViewModel); return customerViewModel; } public static void MapFieldsFromModeltoViewModel(Customer model, CustomerViewModel viewModel) { viewModel.FirstName = model.FirstName; viewModel.LastName = model.LastName; viewModel.TimeOfMostRecentActivity = model.TimeOfMostRecentActivity; } public static Customer GetCurrentCustomer() { return Customer.GetCurrentCustomer(); } //INotifyPropertyChanged implementation public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; private void RaisePropertyChanged(string property) { if (PropertyChanged != null) { PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(property)); } } } //model public class Customer { public string FirstName { get; set; } public string LastName { get; set; } public DateTime TimeOfMostRecentActivity { get; set; } public static Customer GetCurrentCustomer() { return new Customer { FirstName = "Jim", LastName = "Smith", TimeOfMostRecentActivity = DateTime.Now }; } } }

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• What strategy do you use for package naming in Java projects and why?

  - by Tim Visher

  I thought about this awhile ago and it recently resurfaced as my shop is doing its first real Java web app. As an intro, I see two main package naming strategies. (To be clear, I'm not referring to the whole 'domain.company.project' part of this, I'm talking about the package convention beneath that.) Anyway, the package naming conventions that I see are as follows: Functional: Naming your packages according to their function architecturally rather than their identity according to the business domain. Another term for this might be naming according to 'layer'. So, you'd have a *.ui package and a *.domain package and a *.orm package. Your packages are horizontal slices rather than vertical. This is much more common than logical naming. In fact, I don't believe I've ever seen or heard of a project that does this. This of course makes me leery (sort of like thinking that you've come up with a solution to an NP problem) as I'm not terribly smart and I assume everyone must have great reasons for doing it the way they do. On the other hand, I'm not opposed to people just missing the elephant in the room and I've never heard a an actual argument for doing package naming this way. It just seems to be the de facto standard. Logical: Naming your packages according to their business domain identity and putting every class that has to do with that vertical slice of functionality into that package. I have never seen or heard of this, as I mentioned before, but it makes a ton of sense to me. I tend to approach systems vertically rather than horizontally. I want to go in and develop the Order Processing system, not the data access layer. Obviously, there's a good chance that I'll touch the data access layer in the development of that system, but the point is that I don't think of it that way. What this means, of course, is that when I receive a change order or want to implement some new feature, it'd be nice to not have to go fishing around in a bunch of packages in order to find all the related classes. Instead, I just look in the X package because what I'm doing has to do with X. From a development standpoint, I see it as a major win to have your packages document your business domain rather than your architecture. I feel like the domain is almost always the part of the system that's harder to grok where as the system's architecture, especially at this point, is almost becoming mundane in its implementation. The fact that I can come to a system with this type of naming convention and instantly from the naming of the packages know that it deals with orders, customers, enterprises, products, etc. seems pretty darn handy. It seems like this would allow you to take much better advantage of Java's access modifiers. This allows you to much more cleanly define interfaces into subsystems rather than into layers of the system. So if you have an orders subsystem that you want to be transparently persistent, you could in theory just never let anything else know that it's persistent by not having to create public interfaces to its persistence classes in the dao layer and instead packaging the dao class in with only the classes it deals with. Obviously, if you wanted to expose this functionality, you could provide an interface for it or make it public. It just seems like you lose a lot of this by having a vertical slice of your system's features split across multiple packages. I suppose one disadvantage that I can see is that it does make ripping out layers a little bit more difficult. Instead of just deleting or renaming a package and then dropping a new one in place with an alternate technology, you have to go in and change all of the classes in all of the packages. However, I don't see this is a big deal. It may be from a lack of experience, but I have to imagine that the amount of times you swap out technologies pales in comparison to the amount of times you go in and edit vertical feature slices within your system. So I guess the question then would go out to you, how do you name your packages and why? Please understand that I don't necessarily think that I've stumbled onto the golden goose or something here. I'm pretty new to all this with mostly academic experience. However, I can't spot the holes in my reasoning so I'm hoping you all can so that I can move on. Thanks in advance!

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• HttpModule Init method is called several times - why?

  - by MartinF

  I was creating a http module and while debugging I noticed something which at first (at least) seemed like weird behaviour. When i set a breakpoint in the init method of the httpmodule i can see that the http module init method is being called several times even though i have only started up the website for debugging and made one single request (sometimes it is hit only 1 time, other times as many as 10 times). I know that I should expect several instances of the HttpApplication to be running and for each the http modules will be created, but when i request a single page it should be handled by a single http application object and therefore only fire the events associated once, but still it fires the events several times for each request which makes no sense - other than it must have been added several times within that httpApplication - which means it is the same httpmodule init method which is being called every time and not a new http application being created each time it hits my break point (see my code example at the bottom etc.). What could be going wrong here ? is it because i am debugging and set a breakpoint in the http module? It have noticed that it seems that if i startup the website for debugging and quickly step over the breakpoint in the httpmodule it will only hit the init method once and the same goes for the eventhandler. If I instead let it hang at the breakpoint for a few seconds the init method is being called several times (seems like it depends on how long time i wait before stepping over the breakpoint). Maybe this could be some build in feature to make sure that the httpmodule is initialised and the http application can serve requests , but it also seems like something that could have catastrophic consequences. This could seem logical, as it might be trying to finish the request and since i have set the break point it thinks something have gone wrong and try to call the init method again ? soo it can handle the request ? But is this what is happening and is everything fine (i am just guessing), or is it a real problem ? What i am specially concerned about is that if something makes it hang on the "production/live" server for a few seconds a lot of event handlers are added through the init and therefore each request to the page suddenly fires the eventhandler several times. This behaviour could quickly bring any site down. I have looked at the "original" .net code used for the httpmodules for formsauthentication and the rolemanagermodule etc but my code isnt any different that those modules uses. My code looks like this. public void Init(HttpApplication app) { if (CommunityAuthenticationIntegration.IsEnabled) { FormsAuthenticationModule formsAuthModule = (FormsAuthenticationModule) app.Modules["FormsAuthentication"]; formsAuthModule.Authenticate += new FormsAuthenticationEventHandler(this.OnAuthenticate); } } here is an example how it is done in the RoleManagerModule from the .NET framework public void Init(HttpApplication app) { if (Roles.Enabled) { app.PostAuthenticateRequest += new EventHandler(this.OnEnter); app.EndRequest += new EventHandler(this.OnLeave); } } Do anyone know what is going on? (i just hope someone out there can tell me why this is happening and assure me that everything is perfectly fine) :) UPDATE: I have tried to narrow down the problem and so far i have found that the Init method being called is always on a new object of my http module (contary to what i thought before). I seems that for the first request (when starting up the site) all of the HttpApplication objects being created and its modules are all trying to serve the first request and therefore all hit the eventhandler that is being added. I cant really figure out why this is happening. If i request another page all the HttpApplication's created (and their moduless) will again try to serve the request causing it to hit the eventhandler multiple times. But it also seems that if i then jump back to the first page (or another one) only one HttpApplication will start to take care of the request and everything is as expected - as long as i dont let it hang at a break point. If i let it hang at a breakpoint it begins to create new HttpApplication's objects and starts adding HttpApplications (more than 1) to serve/handle the request (which is already in process of being served by the HttpApplication which is currently stopped at the breakpoint). I guess or hope that it might be some intelligent "behind the scenes" way of helping to distribute and handle load and / or errors. But I have no clue. I hope some out there can assure me that it is perfectly fine and how it is supposed to be?

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• Scala n00b: Critique my code

  - by Peter

  G'day everyone, I'm a Scala n00b (but am experienced with other languages) and am learning the language as I find time - very much enjoying it so far! Usually when learning a new language the first thing I do is implement Conway's Game of Life, since it's just complex enough to give a good sense of the language, but small enough in scope to be able to whip up in a couple of hours (most of which is spent wrestling with syntax). Anyhoo, having gone through this exercise with Scala I was hoping the Scala gurus out there might take a look at the code I've ended up with and provide feedback on it. I'm after anything - algorithmic improvements (particularly concurrent solutions!), stylistic improvements, alternative APIs or language constructs, disgust at the length of my function names - whatever feedback you've got, I'm keen to hear it! You should be able to run the following script via "scala GameOfLife.scala" - by default it will run a 20x20 board with a single glider on it - please feel free to experiment. // CONWAY'S GAME OF LIFE (SCALA) abstract class GameOfLifeBoard(val aliveCells : Set[Tuple2[Int, Int]]) { // Executes a "time tick" - returns a new board containing the next generation def tick : GameOfLifeBoard // Is the board empty? def empty : Boolean = aliveCells.size == 0 // Is the given cell alive? protected def alive(cell : Tuple2[Int, Int]) : Boolean = aliveCells contains cell // Is the given cell dead? protected def dead(cell : Tuple2[Int, Int]) : Boolean = !alive(cell) } class InfiniteGameOfLifeBoard(aliveCells : Set[Tuple2[Int, Int]]) extends GameOfLifeBoard(aliveCells) { // Executes a "time tick" - returns a new board containing the next generation override def tick : GameOfLifeBoard = new InfiniteGameOfLifeBoard(nextGeneration) // The next generation of this board protected def nextGeneration : Set[Tuple2[Int, Int]] = aliveCells flatMap neighbours filter shouldCellLiveInNextGeneration // Should the given cell should live in the next generation? protected def shouldCellLiveInNextGeneration(cell : Tuple2[Int, Int]) : Boolean = (alive(cell) && (numberOfAliveNeighbours(cell) == 2 || numberOfAliveNeighbours(cell) == 3)) || (dead(cell) && numberOfAliveNeighbours(cell) == 3) // The number of alive neighbours for the given cell protected def numberOfAliveNeighbours(cell : Tuple2[Int, Int]) : Int = aliveNeighbours(cell) size // Returns the alive neighbours for the given cell protected def aliveNeighbours(cell : Tuple2[Int, Int]) : Set[Tuple2[Int, Int]] = aliveCells intersect neighbours(cell) // Returns all neighbours (whether dead or alive) for the given cell protected def neighbours(cell : Tuple2[Int, Int]) : Set[Tuple2[Int, Int]] = Set((cell._1-1, cell._2-1), (cell._1, cell._2-1), (cell._1+1, cell._2-1), (cell._1-1, cell._2), (cell._1+1, cell._2), (cell._1-1, cell._2+1), (cell._1, cell._2+1), (cell._1+1, cell._2+1)) // Information on where the currently live cells are protected def xVals = aliveCells map { cell => cell._1 } protected def xMin = (xVals reduceLeft (_ min _)) - 1 protected def xMax = (xVals reduceLeft (_ max _)) + 1 protected def xRange = xMin until xMax + 1 protected def yVals = aliveCells map { cell => cell._2 } protected def yMin = (yVals reduceLeft (_ min _)) - 1 protected def yMax = (yVals reduceLeft (_ max _)) + 1 protected def yRange = yMin until yMax + 1 // Returns a simple graphical representation of this board override def toString : String = { var result = "" for (y <- yRange) { for (x <- xRange) { if (alive (x,y)) result += "# " else result += ". " } result += "\n" } result } // Equality stuff override def equals(other : Any) : Boolean = { other match { case that : InfiniteGameOfLifeBoard => (that canEqual this) && that.aliveCells == this.aliveCells case _ => false } } def canEqual(other : Any) : Boolean = other.isInstanceOf[InfiniteGameOfLifeBoard] override def hashCode = aliveCells.hashCode } class FiniteGameOfLifeBoard(val boardWidth : Int, val boardHeight : Int, aliveCells : Set[Tuple2[Int, Int]]) extends InfiniteGameOfLifeBoard(aliveCells) { override def tick : GameOfLifeBoard = new FiniteGameOfLifeBoard(boardWidth, boardHeight, nextGeneration) // Determines the coordinates of all of the neighbours of the given cell override protected def neighbours(cell : Tuple2[Int, Int]) : Set[Tuple2[Int, Int]] = super.neighbours(cell) filter { cell => cell._1 >= 0 && cell._1 < boardWidth && cell._2 >= 0 && cell._2 < boardHeight } // Information on where the currently live cells are override protected def xRange = 0 until boardWidth override protected def yRange = 0 until boardHeight // Equality stuff override def equals(other : Any) : Boolean = { other match { case that : FiniteGameOfLifeBoard => (that canEqual this) && that.boardWidth == this.boardWidth && that.boardHeight == this.boardHeight && that.aliveCells == this.aliveCells case _ => false } } override def canEqual(other : Any) : Boolean = other.isInstanceOf[FiniteGameOfLifeBoard] override def hashCode : Int = { 41 * ( 41 * ( 41 + super.hashCode ) + boardHeight.hashCode ) + boardWidth.hashCode } } class GameOfLife(initialBoard: GameOfLifeBoard) { // Run the game of life until the board is empty or the exact same board is seen twice // Important note: this method does NOT necessarily terminate!! def go : Unit = { var currentBoard = initialBoard var previousBoards = List[GameOfLifeBoard]() while (!currentBoard.empty && !(previousBoards contains currentBoard)) { print(27.toChar + "[2J") // ANSI: clear screen print(27.toChar + "[;H") // ANSI: move cursor to top left corner of screen println(currentBoard.toString) Thread.sleep(75) // Warning: unbounded list concatenation can result in OutOfMemoryExceptions ####TODO: replace with LRU bounded list previousBoards = List(currentBoard) ::: previousBoards currentBoard = currentBoard tick } // Print the final board print(27.toChar + "[2J") // ANSI: clear screen print(27.toChar + "[;H") // ANSI: move cursor to top left corner of screen println(currentBoard.toString) } } // Script starts here val simple = Set((1,1)) val square = Set((4,4), (4,5), (5,4), (5,5)) val glider = Set((2,1), (3,2), (1,3), (2,3), (3,3)) val initialBoard = glider (new GameOfLife(new FiniteGameOfLifeBoard(20, 20, initialBoard))).go //(new GameOfLife(new InfiniteGameOfLifeBoard(initialBoard))).go // COPYRIGHT PETER MONKS 2010 Thanks! Peter

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• How to find vector for the quaternion from X Y Z rotations

  - by can poyrazoglu

  I am creating a very simple project on OpenGL and I'm stuck with rotations. I am trying to rotate an object indepentdently in all 3 axes: X, Y, and Z. I've had sleepless nights due to the "gimbal lock" problem after rotating about one axis. I've then learned that quaternions would solve my problem. I've researched about quaternions and implementd it, but I havent't been able to convert my rotations to quaternions. For example, if I want to rotate around Z axis 90 degrees, I just create the {0,0,1} vector for my quaternion and rotate it around that axis 90 degrees using the code here: http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2009/06/opengl-es-from-ground-up-part-7_04.html (the most complicated matrix towards the bottom) That's ok for one vector, but, say, I first want to rotate 90 degrees around Z, then 90 degrees around X (just as an example). What vector do I need to pass in? How do I calculate that vector. I am not good with matrices and trigonometry (I know the basics and the general rules, but I'm just not a whiz) but I need to get this done. There are LOTS of tutorials about quaternions, but I seem to understand none (or they don't answer my question). I just need to learn to construct the vector for rotations around more than one axis combined. UPDATE: I've found this nice page about quaternions and decided to implement them this way: http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/3d/quaternions.html Here is my code for quaternion multiplication: void cube::quatmul(float* q1, float* q2, float* resultRef){ float w = q1[0]*q2[0] - q1[1]*q2[1] - q1[2]*q2[2] - q1[3]*q2[3]; float x = q1[0]*q2[1] + q1[1]*q2[0] + q1[2]*q2[3] - q1[3]*q2[2]; float y = q1[0]*q2[2] - q1[1]*q2[3] + q1[2]*q2[0] + q1[3]*q2[1]; float z = q1[0]*q2[3] + q1[1]*q2[2] - q1[2]*q2[1] + q1[3]*q2[0]; resultRef[0] = w; resultRef[1] = x; resultRef[2] = y; resultRef[3] = z; } Here is my code for applying a quaternion to my modelview matrix (I have a tmodelview variable that is my target modelview matrix): void cube::applyquat(){ float& x = quaternion[1]; float& y = quaternion[2]; float& z = quaternion[3]; float& w = quaternion[0]; float magnitude = sqrtf(w * w + x * x + y * y + z * z); if(magnitude == 0){ x = 1; w = y = z = 0; }else if(magnitude != 1){ x /= magnitude; y /= magnitude; z /= magnitude; w /= magnitude; } tmodelview[0] = 1 - (2 * y * y) - (2 * z * z); tmodelview[1] = 2 * x * y + 2 * w * z; tmodelview[2] = 2 * x * z - 2 * w * y; tmodelview[3] = 0; tmodelview[4] = 2 * x * y - 2 * w * z; tmodelview[5] = 1 - (2 * x * x) - (2 * z * z); tmodelview[6] = 2 * y * z - 2 * w * x; tmodelview[7] = 0; tmodelview[8] = 2 * x * z + 2 * w * y; tmodelview[9] = 2 * y * z + 2 * w * x; tmodelview[10] = 1 - (2 * x * x) - (2 * y * y); tmodelview[11] = 0; glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW); glPushMatrix(); glLoadMatrixf(tmodelview); glMultMatrixf(modelview); glGetFloatv(GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX, tmodelview); glPopMatrix(); } And my code for rotation (that I call externally), where quaternion is a class variable of the cube: void cube::rotatex(int angle){ float quat[4]; float ang = angle * PI / 180.0; quat[0] = cosf(ang / 2); quat[1] = sinf(ang/2); quat[2] = 0; quat[3] = 0; quatmul(quat, quaternion, quaternion); applyquat(); } void cube::rotatey(int angle){ float quat[4]; float ang = angle * PI / 180.0; quat[0] = cosf(ang / 2); quat[1] = 0; quat[2] = sinf(ang/2); quat[3] = 0; quatmul(quat, quaternion, quaternion); applyquat(); } void cube::rotatez(int angle){ float quat[4]; float ang = angle * PI / 180.0; quat[0] = cosf(ang / 2); quat[1] = 0; quat[2] = 0; quat[3] = sinf(ang/2); quatmul(quat, quaternion, quaternion); applyquat(); } I call, say rotatex, for 10-11 times for rotating only 1 degree, but my cube gets rotated almost 90 degrees after 10-11 times of 1 degree, which doesn't make sense. Also, after calling rotation functions in different axes, My cube gets skewed, gets 2 dimensional, and disappears (a column in modelview matrix becomes all zeros) irreversibly, which obviously shouldn't be happening with a correct implementation of the quaternions.

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• [wordpress] Loop through a specific category on single.php

  - by petrescu

  I've created a custom page and it is set as my homepage, within this custom page I am pulling out the latest post from a specific category, I've also created a form of pagination which when clicked upon will take the user to single.php. My intention for the single.php is to have two custom loops. Custom loop one I want single.php to distinguish that it has came from the homepage and loop through all of the posts tagged with the same category as the one on the homepage. Some of these posts will have to be tagged with more than one category, so the loop will have to know to ignore the other categories and just pay attention to the category in question. Does that make sense? Custom loop two If the user hasn't arrived from the homepage, single.php will just act as it normally does i.e, if the user comes from index.php (the blog) they will be taken to this second loop (blog post) However I don't seem to be able to make the distinction between the two loops, I might be over complicating matters, as I've got a loop which wraps everything together and then I have a loop for my custom pagination. Here is the code below to show you what I'm talking about custompage.php (set to home) - This works just fine but I'll post it just incase anyone is able to tidy it up <?php query_posts('cat=1'); ?> <?php $myPosts = new WP_Query(); $myPosts->query('showposts=1'); if (have_posts()) : while ($myPosts->have_posts()) : $myPosts->the_post(); ?> <script type="text/javascript">$.backstretch("<?php $key="image"; echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true);?>");</script> <div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" class="info"> <h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2> <ul class="nav"> <?php query_posts('posts_per_page=1&offset=1'); the_post(); ?> <li class="prev"><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>">Previous</a></li> <?php wp_reset_query(); ?> <li class="next"></li> </ul> </div> <!-- end .info --> <?php endwhile; endif; ?> <?php wp_reset_query(); ?> single.php - Currently broken <?php if( in_category('1') ) { ?> <!-- start --> <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> <div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" class="info"> <script type="text/javascript">$.backstretch("<?php $key="image"; echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true);?>");</script> <h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2> <ul class="nav"> <li class="prev"><?php previous_post_link('%link', '&nbsp;', 'true', '1') ?></li> <li class="next"><?php next_post_link('%link', '&nbsp;', 'true', '1'); ?></li> <!--li class="prev"><?php //previous_post_link('%link', '%title;', 'true', '1') ?></li> <li class="next"><?php //next_post_link('%link', '%title;', 'true', '1'); ?></li--> </ul> </div> <!-- end .info --> <?php endwhile; else: ?> <?php endif; ?> <!-- end --> <?php }else{ ?> <div id="content" class="widecolumn" role="main"> <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> <div <?php post_class() ?> id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>"> <h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2> <div class="entry"> <?php the_content('<p class="serif">Read the rest of this entry &raquo;</p>'); ?> </div> </div> <?php comments_template(); ?> <?php endwhile; else: ?> <p>Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.</p> <?php endif; ?> </div> <?php } ?> The problem I seem to be running into is when a post has been tagged with two categories, wordpress doesn't seem to be able to make the distinction between the two categories and instead of carrying on to the next category it breaks and defaults to the second loop.

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• PHP Email Form Sending Random Text

  - by Doug

  Hi, I did a webpage for a client that involved a series of text boxes asking for specific information such as a person's name, e-mail address, company, etc. Along with a button that would e-mail the information to my client. Whenever I tested the button it seemed to work perfectly, I uploaded the page and thought I was done. But, the other day my client got this email from the site: Name: rfhopzdgmx rfhopzdgmx Email: [email protected] Company: zUDXatAfoDvQrdH Mailing Address: AaSsXklqpHIsoCNcei gXsimMPRBYZqq vGLvZraZNdpOAV, ChsmuibE PoKzaSCubXPRI Home Phone: CIJbIfjMfjIaTqAlD Work Phone: JFLZBOvru Cell Phone: XlFJTTFGiTTiiFQfy Fax: UEJMOVZodWPkKxew Comments: sPvSCE hgetwoguderu,* [url=http://atyktjlxcznl.com/]atyktjlxcznl[/url], [link=http://nudvfcehwpyg.com/]nudvfcehwpyg[/link], http://lvvwkbzbhnzp.com/ Note: The * line contained HTML link code, I just don't know how to get this site to show it. Here is the PHP code in the site for the e-mail button. <?php //This Sends A Formatted Text Email Using The Text Boxes if ($_POST['submit']){ //This Gets The Form Data $fname = $_POST['fName']; $lname = $_POST['lName']; $email = $_POST['email']; $company = $_POST['co']; $address1 = $_POST['address1']; $address2 = $_POST['address2']; $city = $_POST['city']; $state = $_POST['state']; $zip = $_POST['zip']; $homep = $_POST['homeP']; $workp = $_POST['workP']; $cellp = $_POST['cellP']; $fax = $_POST['fax']; $comments = $_POST['txaOutputField']; //echo "<script language = 'javascript'>alert('YAY');</script>"; if ($fname && $lname && $email && $comments){ //Check If Required Fields Are Filled //This Sets The SMTP Configuration In php.ini ini_set("SMTP", "smtp.2ndsourcewire.com"); //This Replaces Any Blank Fields With 'None's if ($company == ""){ $company = "None"; } if ($address1 == ""){ $address1 = "None"; } if ($city == ""){ $city = "None"; } if ($state == ""){ $state = "None"; } if ($zip == ""){ $zip = "None"; } if ($homep == ""){ $homep = "None"; } if ($workp == ""){ $workp = "None"; } if ($cellp == ""){ $cellp = "None"; } if ($fax == ""){ $fax = "None"; } //This Creates The Variables Necessary For The Email $to = "CLIENT EMAIL WHICH I'M CENSORING"; $subject = "Email from 2ndSourceWire.com"; $from = "From: [email protected]"; $secondEmail = "MY EMAIL WHICH I'M ALSO CENSORING"; if ($address2 == ""){ $body = "Name: $fname $lname\n". "Email: $email\n". "Company: $company\n\n". "Mailing Address:\n". "$address1\n". "$city, $state $zip\n\n". "Home Phone: $homep\n". "Work Phone: $workp\n". "Cell Phone: $cellp\n". "Fax: $fax\n\n". "Comments:\n". "$comments"; } else { $body = "Name: $fname $lname\n". "Email: $email\n". "Company: $company\n\n". "Mailing Address:\n". "$address1\n". "$address2\n". "$city, $state $zip\n\n". "Home Phone: $homep\n". "Work Phone: $workp\n". "Cell Phone: $cellp\n". "Fax: $fax\n\n". "Comments:\n". "$comments"; } //This Sends The Email mail($to, $subject, $body, $from); mail($secondEmail, $subject, $body, $from); echo "<script language = 'javascript'>alert('The email was sent successfully.');</script>"; } else { //The Required Fields Are Not Filled echo "<script language = 'javascript'>alert('Please fill your first name, last name, email address, and your comment or question.');</script>"; } } ? I'm a little dumbfounded on how this happened, the client mentioned a couple e-mails of this, so I don't think it is a random glitch. Also, the e-mail address was formatted like an e-mail address, so someone or some program was interpreting the labels next to each text box. I also noticed that the first and last names entered are the same word, even though they were in different text boxes, I'm thinking its some spam program, but wouldn't they try to advertise something and make money, rather than just spouting out random text? Also, the comments section makes no sense to me at all, the links goto nowhere and they're all perfectly formatted, a random person just screwing around wouldn't know those tags, and a programmer doing it wouldn't bother with it, but also neither would a program. I have no idea what caused this or how to fix it, I'm drawing a blank here. Anyone have any ideas?

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• NServiceBus pipeline with Distributors

  - by David

  I'm building a processing pipeline with NServiceBus but I'm having trouble with the configuration of the distributors in order to make each step in the process scalable. Here's some info: The pipeline will have a master process that says "OK, time to start" for a WorkItem, which will then start a process like a flowchart. Each step in the flowchart may be computationally expensive, so I want the ability to scale out each step. This tells me that each step needs a Distributor. I want to be able to hook additional activities onto events later. This tells me I need to Publish() messages when it is done, not Send() them. A process may need to branch based on a condition. This tells me that a process must be able to publish more than one type of message. A process may need to join forks. I imagine I should use Sagas for this. Hopefully these assumptions are good otherwise I'm in more trouble than I thought. For the sake of simplicity, let's forget about forking or joining and consider a simple pipeline, with Step A followed by Step B, and ending with Step C. Each step gets its own distributor and can have many nodes processing messages. NodeA workers contain a IHandleMessages processor, and publish EventA NodeB workers contain a IHandleMessages processor, and publish Event B NodeC workers contain a IHandleMessages processor, and then the pipeline is complete. Here are the relevant parts of the config files, where # denotes the number of the worker, (i.e. there are input queues NodeA.1 and NodeA.2): NodeA: <MsmqTransportConfig InputQueue="NodeA.#" ErrorQueue="error" NumberOfWorkerThreads="1" MaxRetries="5" /> <UnicastBusConfig DistributorControlAddress="NodeA.Distrib.Control" DistributorDataAddress="NodeA.Distrib.Data" > <MessageEndpointMappings> </MessageEndpointMappings> </UnicastBusConfig> NodeB: <MsmqTransportConfig InputQueue="NodeB.#" ErrorQueue="error" NumberOfWorkerThreads="1" MaxRetries="5" /> <UnicastBusConfig DistributorControlAddress="NodeB.Distrib.Control" DistributorDataAddress="NodeB.Distrib.Data" > <MessageEndpointMappings> <add Messages="Messages.EventA, Messages" Endpoint="NodeA.Distrib.Data" /> </MessageEndpointMappings> </UnicastBusConfig> NodeC: <MsmqTransportConfig InputQueue="NodeC.#" ErrorQueue="error" NumberOfWorkerThreads="1" MaxRetries="5" /> <UnicastBusConfig DistributorControlAddress="NodeC.Distrib.Control" DistributorDataAddress="NodeC.Distrib.Data" > <MessageEndpointMappings> <add Messages="Messages.EventB, Messages" Endpoint="NodeB.Distrib.Data" /> </MessageEndpointMappings> </UnicastBusConfig> And here are the relevant parts of the distributor configs: Distributor A: <add key="DataInputQueue" value="NodeA.Distrib.Data"/> <add key="ControlInputQueue" value="NodeA.Distrib.Control"/> <add key="StorageQueue" value="NodeA.Distrib.Storage"/> Distributor B: <add key="DataInputQueue" value="NodeB.Distrib.Data"/> <add key="ControlInputQueue" value="NodeB.Distrib.Control"/> <add key="StorageQueue" value="NodeB.Distrib.Storage"/> Distributor C: <add key="DataInputQueue" value="NodeC.Distrib.Data"/> <add key="ControlInputQueue" value="NodeC.Distrib.Control"/> <add key="StorageQueue" value="NodeC.Distrib.Storage"/> I'm testing using 2 instances of each node, and the problem seems to come up in the middle at Node B. There are basically 2 things that might happen: Both instances of Node B report that it is subscribing to EventA, and also that NodeC.Distrib.Data@MYCOMPUTER is subscribing to the EventB that Node B publishes. In this case, everything works great. Both instances of Node B report that it is subscribing to EventA, however, one worker says NodeC.Distrib.Data@MYCOMPUTER is subscribing TWICE, while the other worker does not mention it. In the second case, which seem to be controlled only by the way the distributor routes the subscription messages, if the "overachiever" node processes an EventA, all is well. If the "underachiever" processes EventA, then the publish of EventB has no subscribers and the workflow dies. So, my questions: Is this kind of setup possible? Is the configuration correct? It's hard to find any examples of configuration with distributors beyond a simple one-level publisher/2-worker setup. Would it make more sense to have one central broker process that does all the non-computationally-intensive traffic cop operations, and only sends messages to processes behind distributors when the task is long-running and must be load balanced? Then the load-balanced nodes could simply reply back to the central broker, which seems easier. On the other hand, that seems at odds with the decentralization that is NServiceBus's strength. And if this is the answer, and the long running process's done event is a reply, how do you keep the Publish that enables later extensibility on published events?

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• What add-in/workbench framework is the best .NET alternative to Eclipse RCP?

  - by Winston Fassett

  I'm looking for a plugin-based application framework that is comparable to the Eclipse Plugin Framework, which to my simple mind consists of: a core plugin management framework (Equinox / OSGI), which provides the ability to declare extension endpoints and then discover and load plugins that service those endpoints. (this is different than Dependency Injection, but admittedly the difference is subtle - configuration is highly de-centralized, there are versioning concerns, it might involve an online plugin repository, and most importantly to me, it should be easy for the user to add plugins without needing to know anything about the underlying architecture / config files) many layers of plugins that provide a basic workbench shell with concurrency support, commands, preference sheets, menus, toolbars, key bindings, etc. That is just scratching the surface of the RCP, which itself is meant to serve as the foundation of your application, which you build by writing / assembling even more plugins. Here's what I've gleaned from the internet in the past couple of days... As far as I can tell, there is nothing in the .NET world that remotely approaches the robustness and maturity of the Eclipse RCP for Java but there are several contenders that do either #1 or #2 pretty well. (I should also mention that I have not made a final decision on WinForms vs WPF, so I'm also trying to understand the level of UI coupling in any candidate framework. I'm also wondering about platform coupling and source code licensing) I must say that the open-source stuff is generally less-documented but easier to understand, while the MS stuff typically has more documentation but is less accessible, so that with many of the MS technologies, I'm left wondering what they actually do, in a practical sense. These are the libraries I have found: SharpDevelop The first thing I looked at was SharpDevelop, which does both #1 and also #2 in a basic way (no insult to SharpDevelop, which is admirable - I just mean more basic than Eclipse RCP). However, SharpDevelop is an application more than a framework, and there are basic assumptions and limitations there (i.e. being somewhat coupled to WinForms). Still, there are some articles on CodeProject explaining how to use it as the foundation for an application. System.Addins It appears that System.Addins is meant to provide a robust add-in loading framework, with some sophisticated options for loading assemblies with varying levels of trusts and even running the out of process. It appears to be primarily code-based, and pretty code-heavy, with lots of assemblies that serve to insulate against versioning issues., using Guidance Automation to generate a good deal of code. So far I haven't found many System.AddIns articles that illustrate how it could be used to build something like an Eclipse RCP, and many people seem to be wringing their hands about its complexity. Mono.Addins It appears that Mono.Addins was influenced by System.Addins, SharpDevelop, and MonoDevelop. It seems to provide the basics from System.Addins, with less sophisticated options for plugin loading, but more simplicity, with attribute-based registration, XML manifests, and the infrastructure for online plugin repositories. It has a pretty good FAQ and documentation, as well as a fairly robust set of examples that really help paint a picture of how to develop an architecture like that of SharpDevelop or Eclipse. The examples use GTK for UI, but the framework itself is not coupled to GTK. So it appears to do #1 (add-in loading) pretty well and points the way to #2 (workbench framework). It appears that Mono.Addins was derived from MonoDevelop, but I haven't actually looked at whether MonoDevelop provides a good core workbench framework. Managed Extensibility Framework This is what everyone's talking about at the moment, and it's slowly getting clearer what it does, but I'm still pretty fuzzy, even after reading several posts on SO. The official word is that it "can live side-by-side" with System.Addins. However, it doesn't reference it and it appears to reproduce some of its functionality. It seems to me, then, that it is a simpler, more accessible alternative to System.Addins. It appears to be more like Mono.Addins in that it provides attribute-based wiring. It provides "catalogs" that can be attribute-based or directory-based. It does not seem to provide any XML or manifest-based wiring. So far I haven't found much documentation and the examples seem to be kind of "magical" and more reminiscent of attribute-based DI, despite the clarifications that MEF is not a DI container. Its license just got opened up, but it does reference WindowsBase -- not sure if that means it's coupled to Windows. Acropolis I'm not sure what this is. Is it MEF, or something that is still coming? Composite Application Blocks There are WPF and Winforms Composite Application blocks that seem to provide much more of a workbench framework. I have very little experience with these but they appear to rely on Guidance Automation quite a bit are obviously coupled with the UI layers. There are a few examples of combining MEF with these application blocks. I've done the best I could to answer my own question here, but I'm really only scratching the surface, and I don't have experience with any of these frameworks. Hopefully some of you can add more detail about the frameworks you have experience with. It would be great if we could end up with some sort of comparison matrix.

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• Why does this XML validation via XSD fail in libxml2 (but succeed in xmllint) and how do I fix it?

  - by mtree

  If I run this XML validation via xmllint: xmllint --noout --schema schema.xsd test.xml I get this success message: .../test.xml validates However if I run the same validation via libxml2's C API: int result = xmlSchemaValidateDoc(...) I get a return value of 1845 and this failure message: Element '{http://example.com/XMLSchema/1.0}foo': No matching global declaration available for the validation root. Which I can make absolutely no sense of. :( schema.xsd: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <!DOCTYPE xs:schema PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XMLSCHEMA 200102//EN" "XMLSchema.dtd" > <xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://example.com/XMLSchema/1.0" targetNamespace="http://example.com/XMLSchema/1.0" elementFormDefault="qualified" attributeFormDefault="unqualified"> <xs:element name="foo"> </xs:element> </xs:schema> test.xml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <foo xmlns="http://example.com/XMLSchema/1.0"> </foo> main.c: #include <stdio.h> #include <sys/stat.h> #include <sys/types.h> #include <string.h> #include <libxml/parser.h> #include <libxml/valid.h> #include <libxml/xmlschemas.h> u_int32_t get_file_size(const char *file_name) { struct stat buf; if ( stat(file_name, &buf) != 0 ) return(0); return (unsigned int)buf.st_size; } void handleValidationError(void *ctx, const char *format, ...) { char *errMsg; va_list args; va_start(args, format); vasprintf(&errMsg, format, args); va_end(args); fprintf(stderr, "Validation Error: %s", errMsg); free(errMsg); } int main (int argc, const char * argv[]) { const char *xsdPath = argv[1]; const char *xmlPath = argv[2]; printf("\n"); printf("XSD File: %s\n", xsdPath); printf("XML File: %s\n", xmlPath); int xmlLength = get_file_size(xmlPath); char *xmlSource = (char *)malloc(sizeof(char) * xmlLength); FILE *p = fopen(xmlPath, "r"); char c; unsigned int i = 0; while ((c = fgetc(p)) != EOF) { xmlSource[i++] = c; } printf("\n"); printf("XML Source:\n\n%s\n", xmlSource); fclose(p); printf("\n"); int result = 42; xmlSchemaParserCtxtPtr parserCtxt = NULL; xmlSchemaPtr schema = NULL; xmlSchemaValidCtxtPtr validCtxt = NULL; xmlDocPtr xmlDocumentPointer = xmlParseMemory(xmlSource, xmlLength); parserCtxt = xmlSchemaNewParserCtxt(xsdPath); if (parserCtxt == NULL) { fprintf(stderr, "Could not create XSD schema parsing context.\n"); goto leave; } schema = xmlSchemaParse(parserCtxt); if (schema == NULL) { fprintf(stderr, "Could not parse XSD schema.\n"); goto leave; } validCtxt = xmlSchemaNewValidCtxt(schema); if (!validCtxt) { fprintf(stderr, "Could not create XSD schema validation context.\n"); goto leave; } xmlSetStructuredErrorFunc(NULL, NULL); xmlSetGenericErrorFunc(NULL, handleValidationError); xmlThrDefSetStructuredErrorFunc(NULL, NULL); xmlThrDefSetGenericErrorFunc(NULL, handleValidationError); result = xmlSchemaValidateDoc(validCtxt, xmlDocumentPointer); leave: if (parserCtxt) { xmlSchemaFreeParserCtxt(parserCtxt); } if (schema) { xmlSchemaFree(schema); } if (validCtxt) { xmlSchemaFreeValidCtxt(validCtxt); } printf("\n"); printf("Validation successful: %s (result: %d)\n", (result == 0) ? "YES" : "NO", result); return 0; } console output: XSD File: /Users/dephiniteloop/Desktop/xml_validate/schema.xsd XML File: /Users/dephiniteloop/Desktop/xml_validate/test.gkml XML Source: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <foo xmlns="http://example.com/XMLSchema/1.0"> </foo> Validation Error: Element '{http://example.com/XMLSchema/1.0}foo': No matching global declaration available for the validation root. Validation successful: NO (result: 1845) In case it matters: I'm on OSX 10.6.7 with its default libxml2.dylib (/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.6.sdk/usr/lib/libxml2.2.7.3.dylib)

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• Representing robot's elbow angle in 3-D

  - by Onkar Deshpande

  I am given coordinates of two points in 3-D viz. shoulder point and object point(to which I am supposed to reach). I am also given the length from my shoulder-to-elbow arm and the length of my forearm. I am trying to solve for the unknown position(the position of the joint elbow). I am using cosine rule to find out the elbow angle. Here is my code - #include <stdio.h> #include <math.h> #include <stdlib.h> struct point { double x, y, z; }; struct angles { double clock_wise; double counter_clock_wise; }; double max(double a, double b) { return (a > b) ? a : b; } /* * Check if the combination can make a triangle by considering the fact that sum * of any two sides of a triangle is greater than the remaining side. The * overlapping condition of links is handled separately in main(). */ int valid_triangle(struct point p0, double l0, struct point p1, double l1) { double dist = sqrt(pow((fabs(p1.z - p0.z)), 2) + pow((fabs(p1.y - p0.y)), 2) + pow((fabs(p1.x - p0.x)), 2)); if((max(dist, l0) == dist) && max(dist, l1) == dist) { return (dist < (l0 + l1)); } else if((max(dist, l0) == l0) && (max(l0, l1) == l0)) { return (l0 < (dist + l1)); } else { return (l1 < (dist + l0)); } } /* * Cosine rule is used to find the elbow angle. Positive value indicates a * counter clockwise angle while negative value indicates a clockwise angle. * Since this problem has at max 2 solutions for any given position of P0 and * P1, I am returning a structure of angles which can be used to consider angles * from both direction viz. clockwise-negative and counter-clockwise-positive */ void return_config(struct point p0, double l0, struct point p1, double l1, struct angles *a) { double dist = sqrt(pow((fabs(p1.z - p0.z)), 2) + pow((fabs(p1.y - p0.y)), 2) + pow((fabs(p1.x - p0.x)), 2)); double degrees = (double) acos((l0 * l0 + l1 * l1 - dist * dist) / (2 * l0 * l1)) * (180.0f / 3.1415f); a->clock_wise = -degrees; a->counter_clock_wise = degrees; } int main() { struct point p0, p1; struct angles a; p0.x = 15, p0.y = 4, p0.z = 0; p1.x = 20, p1.y = 4, p1.z = 0; double l0 = 5, l1 = 8; if(valid_triangle(p0, l0, p1, l1)) { printf("Three lengths can make a valid configuration \n"); return_config(p0, l0, p1, l1, &a); printf("Angle of the elbow point (clockwise) = %lf, (counter clockwise) = %lf \n", a.clock_wise, a.counter_clock_wise); } else { double dist = sqrt(pow((fabs(p1.z - p0.z)), 2) + pow((fabs(p1.y - p0.y)), 2) + pow((fabs(p1.x - p0.x)), 2)); if((dist <= (l0 + l1)) && (dist > l0)) { a.clock_wise = -180.0f; a.counter_clock_wise = 180.0f; printf("Angle of the elbow point (clockwise) = %lf, (counter clockwise) = %lf \n", a.clock_wise, a.counter_clock_wise); } else if((dist <= fabs(l0 - l1)) && (dist < l0)){ a.clock_wise = -0.0f; a.counter_clock_wise = 0.0f; printf("Angle of the elbow point (clockwise) = %lf, (counter clockwise) = %lf \n", a.clock_wise, a.counter_clock_wise); } else printf("Given combination cannot make a valid configuration\n"); } return 0; } However, this solution makes sense only in 2-D. Because clockwise and counter-clockwise are meaningless without an axis and direction of rotation. Returning only an angle is technically correct but it leaves a lot of work for the client of this function to use the result in meaningful way. How can I make the changes to get the axis and direction of rotation ? Also, I want to know how many possible solution could be there for this problem. Please let me know your thoughts ! Any help is highly appreciated ...

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• Is there an equivalent to Java's ClassFileTransformer in .NET? (a way to replace a class)

  - by Alix

  I've been searching for this for quite a while with no luck so far. Is there an equivalent to Java's ClassFileTransformer in .NET? Basically, I want to create a class CustomClassFileTransformer (which in Java would implement the interface ClassFileTransformer) that gets called whenever a class is loaded, and is allowed to tweak it and replace it with the tweaked version. I know there are frameworks that do similar things, but I was looking for something more straightforward, like implementing my own ClassFileTransformer. Is it possible? EDIT #1. More details about why I need this: Basically, I have a C# application and I need to monitor the instructions it wants to run in order to detect read or write operations to fields (operations Ldfld and Stfld) and insert some instructions before the read/write takes place. I know how to do this (except for the part where I need to be invoked to replace the class): for every method whose code I want to monitor, I must: Get the method's MethodBody using MethodBase.GetMethodBody() Transform it to byte array with MethodBody.GetILAsByteArray(). The byte[] it returns contains the bytecode. Analyse the bytecode as explained here, possibly inserting new instructions or deleting/modifying existing ones by changing the contents of the array. Create a new method and use the new bytecode to create its body, with MethodBuilder.CreateMethodBody(byte[] il, int count), where il is the array with the bytecode. I put all these tweaked methods in a new class and use the new class to replace the one that was originally going to be loaded. An alternative to replacing classes would be somehow getting notified whenever a method is invoked. Then I'd replace the call to that method with a call to my own tweaked method, which I would tweak only the first time is invoked and then I'd put it in a dictionary for future uses, to reduce overhead (for future calls I'll just look up the method and invoke it; I won't need to analyse the bytecode again). I'm currently investigating ways to do this and LinFu looks pretty interesting, but if there was something like a ClassFileTransformer it would be much simpler: I just rewrite the class, replace it, and let the code run without monitoring anything. An additional note: the classes may be sealed. I want to be able to replace any kind of class, I cannot impose restrictions on their attributes. EDIT #2. Why I need to do this at runtime. I need to monitor everything that is going on so that I can detect every access to data. This applies to the code of library classes as well. However, I cannot know in advance which classes are going to be used, and even if I knew every possible class that may get loaded it would be a huge performance hit to tweak all of them instead of waiting to see whether they actually get invoked or not. POSSIBLE (BUT PRETTY HARDCORE) SOLUTION. In case anyone is interested (and I see the question has been faved, so I guess someone is), this is what I'm looking at right now. Basically I'd have to implement the profiling API and I'll register for the events that I'm interested in, in my case whenever a JIT compilation starts. An extract of the blogpost: In your ICorProfilerCallback2::ModuleLoadFinished callback, you call ICorProfilerInfo2::GetModuleMetadata to get a pointer to a metadata interface on that module. QI for the metadata interface you want. Search MSDN for "IMetaDataImport", and grope through the table of contents to find topics on the metadata interfaces. Once you're in metadata-land, you have access to all the types in the module, including their fields and function prototypes. You may need to parse metadata signatures and this signature parser may be of use to you. In your ICorProfilerCallback2::JITCompilationStarted callback, you may use ICorProfilerInfo2::GetILFunctionBody to inspect the original IL, and ICorProfilerInfo2::GetILFunctionBodyAllocator and then ICorProfilerInfo2::SetILFunctionBody to replace that IL with your own. The great news: I get notified when a JIT compilation starts and I can replace the bytecode right there, without having to worry about replacing the class, etc. The not-so-great news: you cannot invoke managed code from the API's callback methods, which makes sense but means I'm on my own parsing the IL code, etc, as opposed to be able to use Cecil, which would've been a breeze. I don't think there's a simpler way to do this without using AOP frameworks (such as PostSharp). If anyone has any other idea please let me know. I'm not marking the question as answered yet.

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• ListView adapter data change without ListView being notified

  - by brockoli

  I've written a ListActivity that has a custom list adapter. The list is being updated from a ContentProvider when onCreate is run. I also have a service that gets started when I run the app and it first updates the ContentProvider, then sends a Broadcast that the content has been updated. My ListActivity recieves the broadcast and tries to update my ListView. My problem is, I'm getting intermittent errors about the ListView adapter data changing without the ListView being notified. I call the notifyDataSetChanged() method on my list adapter right after I update it. What it seems like is happening is the list is still in the process of being updated after first call in onCreate when it recieves the broadcast from the service to update, so it tries to update my ListView before it's finished updating from it's first run. Does this make sense? Here is some of my code. NOTE: The service is working properly, it gets new data and updates my ContentProvider, and I do get the broadcast in my activity when it is updated. @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); ctx = this; getPrefs(); setContentView(R.layout.main); // Setup preference listener preferences = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this); preferences.registerOnSharedPreferenceChangeListener(listener); // Setup report list adapter ListView nzbLv = (ListView) findViewById(R.id.report_list); nzbla = new NZBReportListAdaptor(ctx); getReports(); nzbla.setListItems(report_list); nzbLv.setAdapter(nzbla); // Broadcast receiver to get notification from NZBService to update ReportList registerReceiver(receiver, new IntentFilter(NZBService.BROADCAST_ACTION)); startService(new Intent(ctx, NZBService.class)); } @Override public void onResume() { super.onResume(); timerHandler.resume(); new updateSabQueue().execute(); //updateList(); } @Override public void onPause() { super.onPause(); timerHandler.pause(); unregisterReceiver(receiver); } private BroadcastReceiver receiver = new BroadcastReceiver() { public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) { Toast.makeText(ctx, "NZBService broadcast recieved", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); updateReportList(); } }; private void updateReportList() { new updateReportList().execute(); } private class updateReportList extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, Boolean> { /* (non-Javadoc) * @see android.os.AsyncTask#onPreExecute() * Show progress dialog */ protected void onPreExecute() { } /* (non-Javadoc) * @see android.os.AsyncTask#doInBackground(Params[]) * Get new articles from the internet */ protected Boolean doInBackground(Void...unused) { getReports(); return true; } /** * On post execute. * Close the progress dialog */ @Override protected void onPostExecute(Boolean updated) { if (updated) { Log.d(TAG, "NZB report list adapter updated"); synchronized(this) { nzbla.setListItems(report_list); } Log.d(TAG, "NZB report list notified of change"); nzbla.notifyDataSetChanged(); } } } Now that this question is answered, I will post my updated code in an effort to help others who might come across it. @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); ctx = this; getPrefs(); setContentView(R.layout.main); // Setup preference listener preferences = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this); preferences.registerOnSharedPreferenceChangeListener(listener); // Setup report list adapter ListView nzbLv = (ListView) findViewById(R.id.report_list); nzbla = new NZBReportListAdaptor(ctx); report_list.addAll(getReports()); nzbla.setListItems(report_list); nzbLv.setAdapter(nzbla); // Broadcast receiver to get notification from NZBService to update ReportList registerReceiver(receiver, new IntentFilter(NZBService.BROADCAST_ACTION)); startService(new Intent(ctx, NZBService.class)); } private class updateReportList extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, ArrayList<Report>> { /* (non-Javadoc) * @see android.os.AsyncTask#onPreExecute() * Show progress dialog */ protected void onPreExecute() { } /* (non-Javadoc) * @see android.os.AsyncTask#doInBackground(Params[]) * Get new articles from the internet */ protected ArrayList<Report> doInBackground(Void...unused) { return getReports(); } /** * On post execute. * Close the progress dialog */ @Override protected void onPostExecute(ArrayList<Report> updated) { nzbla.setListItems(updated); nzbla.notifyDataSetChanged(); } } private ArrayList<Report> getReports() { ArrayList<Report> reports = new ArrayList<Report>(); ContentResolver r = getContentResolver(); Cursor c = r.query(NZBReportProvider.CONTENT_URI, null, null, null, NZBReportProvider.ARTICLE_KEY_ROWID + " DESC"); startManagingCursor(c); Log.d(TAG, "NZBReport cursor.getCount=" + c.getCount()); int title = c.getColumnIndex(NZBReportProvider.ARTICLE_KEY_TITLE); int desc = c.getColumnIndex(NZBReportProvider.ARTICLE_KEY_DESCRIPTION); int cat = c.getColumnIndex(NZBReportProvider.ARTICLE_KEY_CAT); int size = c.getColumnIndex(NZBReportProvider.ARTICLE_KEY_SIZE); int link = c.getColumnIndex(NZBReportProvider.ARTICLE_KEY_LINK); int catid = c.getColumnIndex(NZBReportProvider.ARTICLE_KEY_CATID); int date = c.getColumnIndex(NZBReportProvider.ARTICLE_KEY_DATE_ADDED); int group = c.getColumnIndex(NZBReportProvider.ARTICLE_KEY_GROUP); if (c.getCount() > 0) { c.moveToFirst(); do { URL url = null; try { url = new URL(c.getString(link)); } catch (MalformedURLException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } reports.add(new Report(c.getString(title), url, c.getString(desc), c.getString(cat), c.getString(date), c.getString(size), c.getInt(catid), c.getString(group))); } while (c.moveToNext()); } return reports; }

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• Making hovor state of hidden list visible when page is active

  - by Joel

  Hi guys, One day I hope to not be such a newbie on this stuff, but some of this feels so insurmountable sometimes! OK. I have a nav bar with hidden li items that are visible when hovered over. Here's the live site: http://www.rattletree.com Here's the code for the nav: <ul id="navbar"> <li id="iex"><a href="index.php">About Rattletree</a></li> <li id="upcomgshows"><a href="upcomingshows.php">Calendar</a></li> <li id="sods"><a href="#">Sights &amp; Sounds</a> <ul class="innerlist"> <li class="innerlist"><img class="arrowAdjust" src="images/curved_arrow.png" alt="" /></li> <li class="innerlist"><a href="/playlist.m3u" target="_blank" onclick="javascript:BatmoAudioPop('Rattletree Marimba',this.href,'1'); return false">Listen</a></li> <li class="innerlist"><a href="/new_pictures.php">Photos</a></li> <li class="innerlist"><a href="/video.php">Video</a></li> <li class="innerlist"><a href="/press.php">Press</a></li> </ul> </li> <li id="bookin"><a href="#">Contact</a> <ul class="innerlist"> <li class="innerlist"><img class="arrowAdjust" src="images/curved_arrow.png" alt="" /></li> <li class="innerlist"><a href="/booking.php">Booking Info</a></li> <li class="innerlist"><a href="/media.php">Media Inquiries</a></li> </ul> </li> <li id="ste"> <a href="/sounds.php">Store</a></li> <li id="instrumes"><a href="/instruments.php">The Instruments</a></li> <li id="classe"><a href="classes.php">Workshops</a></li> </ul> css: div#navbar2 { background-color:#546F8B; border-bottom:1px solid #546F8B; border-top:1px solid #000000; display:inline-block; position:relative; width:100%; } div#navbar2 ul#navbar { color:#FFFFFF; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:16px; letter-spacing:1px; margin:10px 0; padding:0; white-space:nowrap; } div#navbar2 ul#navbar li ul.innerlist { color:#000000; display:none; position:relative; z-index:20; } div#navbar2 ul#navbar li { display:inline; list-style-type:none; margin:0; padding:0; position:relative; } Now it's a bit tricky what I want to do: If a user navigates to one of the innerlist pages, I'd like that innerlist ul to remain visible (with the specific li displaying the hovered state). Now I think I could figure that out on my own, but you can see on the live page that if the user is on a page from the innerlist and that list was visible, then if they hovered over the other nav tab, then those innerlists would overlap. This is a problem. Hopefully that last sentence makes sense! In short: I need to keep the inner list of the active page displaying, BUT if the user hovers over another nav button WITH it's own inner list, then the live innerlist needs to disappear. Clear as mud?

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