Search Results

Search found 6196 results on 248 pages for 'minimum requirements'.

Page 228/248 | < Previous Page | 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235  | Next Page >

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 11, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 11, 2010New ProjectsArkzia: This Silverlight game.CodePlex Wiki Editor: CodePlex Wiki Editor makes it easier for CodePlex users to create their wiki documentations. This project offer a rich interface for the edition...Evaluate: Evaluate & Comet DWR like .NET library with powerfull Evaluate and Ajax Comet support. Also, you may use Evaluate library in your own .Net applicat...FamAccountor: 家庭记账薄Horadric: This is common tools freamwork!K8061.Managed: This is a solution to use the Velleman Extended K8061 USB Interface board with .net and to have a nice wrapper handling most of the overhead for us...Latent semantic analysis: all you need is to use!: Baggr is feed aggregator with web interface, user rating and LSA filter. Enjoy it!LIF7 ==> RISK : TOWER DEFENSE: Université Lyon 1, L2 MATH-INFO 2009-2010 Semestre de printemps Projet RISK : TOWER DEFENSE Membres : Jessica El Melhem, Vincent Sébille, et Jonat...Managed ESL Suite: Managed ESL Suite using C# for FreeSWITCH Omni-Tool - A program version concept of the tool used in Mass Effect.: A program version concept of the tool used in Mass Effect. It will support little apps (plugins) that run inside the UI. Its talor mainly at develo...PdxCodeCamp: Web application for Portland Code CampProjeto Vírus: Desenvolvimento do Jogo Virus em XNAsilverlight control - stars with rounded corners: Draw stars and cogs including rounded cornersSilverlight MathParser: Implementation of mathematical expressions parser to compute and functions.turing machine simulator: Project for JCE in course SW engeenering. Turing Machine simulator with GUI.WpD - Wallpapers Downloader: You can easy download wallpapers to your computer without any advertising or registration. On 5 minutes you can download so many wallpapers!New ReleasesAJAX Control Framework: v1.0.0.0: New AJAX project that helps you create AJAX enabled controls. Make use of control level AJAX methods, a Script Manager that works like you'd expect...AutoFixture: Version 1.1: This is version 1.1 of AutoFixture. This release contains no known bugs. Compared to Release Candidate 1 for version 1.1, there are no changes. Ho...AutoPoco: AutoPoco 0.3: Method Invocation in configuration Custom type providers during configuration Method invocation for generationBacicworx (Basic Services Framework): 3.0.10.410 (Beta): Major update, winnowing, and recode of the library. Removed redundant classses and methods which have similar functionality to those available in ...Bluetooth Radar: Version 1.5: Mostly UI and Animation Changes.BUtil: BUtil 4.9: 1. Icons of kneo are almost removed 2. Deployment was moved to codeplex.com 3. Adding of storages was unavailable when any of storages are used FIXEDcrudwork library: crudwork 2.2.0.3: few bug fixes new object viewer - allow the user to view and change an object through the property grid and/or the simple XML editor pivot table ...EnhSim: Release v1.9.8.5: Release v1.9.8.5Removed the debugging output from the Armor Penetration change.EnhSim: Release v1.9.8.6: Release v1.9.8.6Updated release to include the correct version of EnhSimGUIEvaluate: Evaluate Library: This file contains Evaluate library source code under Visual Studio project. Also, there is a sample project to see the use.ExcelDna: ExcelDna Version 0.25: This is an important bugfix release, with the following changes: Fix case where unpacked .config temp file might not be deleted. Fix compiler pro...FamAccountor: 家庭账薄 预览版v0.0.1: 家庭账薄 预览版v0.0.1 该版本提供基本功能，还有待扩展! Feature: 实现基本添加、编辑、删除功能。FamAccountor: 家庭账薄 预览版v0.0.2: 家庭账薄 预览版v0.0.2 该版本提供基本功能，还有待扩展! Feature: 添加账户管理功能。Folder Bookmarks: Folder Bookmarks 1.4.2: This is the latest version of Folder Bookmarks (1.4.2), with general improvements. It has an installer - it will create a directory 'CPascoe' in My...GKO Libraries: GKO Libraries 0.3 Beta: Added Silverlight support for Gko.Utils Added ExtensionsHash Calculator: HashCalculator 1.2: HashCalculator 1.2HD-Trailers.NET Downloader: Version: TrailersOnly if set to 'true' only titles with 'trailer' in the title will be download MinTrailerSize Added a minimum trailer size, this avoids t...Home Access Plus+: v3.2.6.0: v3.2.5.1 Release Change Log: Add lesson naming Fixed a bug in the help desk which was rendering the wrong URL for tickets Planning has started ...HTML Ruby: 6.20.0: All new concept, all new code. Because this release does not support complex ruby annotations, "Furigana Injector" is not supported by this release...HTML Ruby: 6.20.1: Fixed problem where ruby with closed tags but no rb tag will result in empty page Added support for complex ruby annotation (limited single ruby)...K8061.Managed: K8061.Managed: This is a pre-compilled K8061.Managed.DLL file release 1.0.Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 2.1.0.0: Users of Kooboo CMS 2.0, please use the "Check updates" feature under System to upgrade New featuresWebDav support You can now use tools like w...Kooboo forum: Kooboo Forum Module for 2.1.0.0: Compatible with Kooboo cms 2.1.0.0 Upgrade to MVC 2Kooboo GoogleAnalytics: Kooboo GoogleAnalytics Module for 2.1.0.0: Compatible with Kooboo cms 2.1.0.0 Upgrade to MVC 2Kooboo wiki: Kooboo CMS Wiki module for 2.1.0.0: Compatible with Kooboo cms 2.1.0.0 Upgrade to MVC 2Mavention: Mavention Simple SiteMapPath: Mavention Simple SiteMapPath is a custom control that renders breadcrumbs as an unordered list what makes it a perfect solution for breadcrumbs on ...MetaSharp: MetaSharp v0.3: MetaSharp v0.3 Roadmap: Oslo Independence Custom Grammar library Improved build environment dogfooding Project structure simplificationsRoTwee: RoTwee (10.0.0.7): New feature of this version is support for mouse wheel. You can rotate tweets rotating mouse wheel.silverlight control - stars with rounded corners: first step: These are the first examples.Silverlight MathParser: Silverlight MathParser 1.0: Implementation of mathematical expressions parser to compute and functions.SimpleGeo.NET: SimpleGeo.NET example website project: ConfigurationYou must change these three configuration values in AppSettings.config: Google Maps API key: for the maps on the test site. Get one he...StickyTweets: 0.6.0: Version 0.6.0 Code - PERFORMANCE Hook into Async WinInet to perform async requests without adding an additional thread Code - Verify that async r...System.Html: Version 1.3; fixed bugs and improved performance: This release incorporates bug fixes, a new normalize method proposed by RudolfHenning of Codeplex.VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30410.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVFPX: FoxTabs 0.9.2: The following issues were addressed: 26744 24954 24767Visual Studio DSite: Advanced Guessing Number Game (Visual C++ 2008): A guessing number game made in visual c 2008.WpD - Wallpapers Downloader: WpD v0.1: My first release, I hope you enjoyMost Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesFacebook Developer ToolkitMost Active ProjectsRawrnopCommerce. Open Source online shop e-commerce solution.AutoPocopatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryShweet: SharePoint 2010 Team Messaging built with PexFarseer Physics EngineNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterBlogEngine.NETBeanProxy

  Read the article

• C# Neural Networks with Encog

  - by JoshReuben

  Neural Networks ·       I recently read a book Introduction to Neural Networks for C# , by Jeff Heaton. http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Neural-Networks-C-2nd/dp/1604390093/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1296821004&sr=8-2-spell. Not the 1st ANN book I've perused, but a nice revision.   ·       Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are a mechanism of machine learning – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Machine_learning ·       Problems Not Suited to a Neural Network Solution- Programs that are easily written out as flowcharts consisting of well-defined steps, program logic that is unlikely to change, problems in which you must know exactly how the solution was derived. ·       Problems Suited to a Neural Network – pattern recognition, classification, series prediction, and data mining. Pattern recognition - network attempts to determine if the input data matches a pattern that it has been trained to recognize. Classification - take input samples and classify them into fuzzy groups. ·       As far as machine learning approaches go, I thing SVMs are superior (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Support_vector_machine ) - a neural network has certain disadvantages in comparison: an ANN can be overtrained, different training sets can produce non-deterministic weights and it is not possible to discern the underlying decision function of an ANN from its weight matrix – they are black box. ·       In this post, I'm not going to go into internals (believe me I know them). An autoassociative network (e.g. a Hopfield network) will echo back a pattern if it is recognized. ·       Under the hood, there is very little maths. In a nutshell - Some simple matrix operations occur during training: the input array is processed (normalized into bipolar values of 1, -1) - transposed from input column vector into a row vector, these are subject to matrix multiplication and then subtraction of the identity matrix to get a contribution matrix. The dot product is taken against the weight matrix to yield a boolean match result. For backpropogation training, a derivative function is required. In learning, hill climbing mechanisms such as Genetic Algorithms and Simulated Annealing are used to escape local minima. For unsupervised training, such as found in Self Organizing Maps used for OCR, Hebbs rule is applied. ·       The purpose of this post is not to mire you in technical and conceptual details, but to show you how to leverage neural networks via an abstraction API - Encog   Encog ·       Encog is a neural network API ·       Links to Encog: http://www.encog.org , http://www.heatonresearch.com/encog, http://www.heatonresearch.com/forum ·       Encog requires .Net 3.5 or higher – there is also a Silverlight version. Third-Party Libraries – log4net and nunit. ·       Encog supports feedforward, recurrent, self-organizing maps, radial basis function and Hopfield neural networks. ·       Encog neural networks, and related data, can be stored in .EG XML files. ·       Encog Workbench allows you to edit, train and visualize neural networks. The Encog Workbench can generate code. Synapses and layers ·       the primary building blocks - Almost every neural network will have, at a minimum, an input and output layer. In some cases, the same layer will function as both input and output layer. ·       To adapt a problem to a neural network, you must determine how to feed the problem into the input layer of a neural network, and receive the solution through the output layer of a neural network. ·       The Input Layer - For each input neuron, one double value is stored. An array is passed as input to a layer. Encog uses the interface INeuralData to hold these arrays. The class BasicNeuralData implements the INeuralData interface. Once the neural network processes the input, an INeuralData based class will be returned from the neural network's output layer. ·       convert a double array into an INeuralData object : INeuralData data = new BasicNeuralData(= new double[10]); ·       the Output Layer- The neural network outputs an array of doubles, wraped in a class based on the INeuralData interface. ·        The real power of a neural network comes from its pattern recognition capabilities. The neural network should be able to produce the desired output even if the input has been slightly distorted. ·       Hidden Layers– optional. between the input and output layers. very much a “black box”. If the structure of the hidden layer is too simple it may not learn the problem. If the structure is too complex, it will learn the problem but will be very slow to train and execute. Some neural networks have no hidden layers. The input layer may be directly connected to the output layer. Further, some neural networks have only a single layer. A single layer neural network has the single layer self-connected. ·       connections, called synapses, contain individual weight matrixes. These values are changed as the neural network learns. Constructing a Neural Network ·       the XOR operator is a frequent “first example” -the “Hello World” application for neural networks. ·       The XOR Operator- only returns true when both inputs differ. 0 XOR 0 = 0 1 XOR 0 = 1 0 XOR 1 = 1 1 XOR 1 = 0 ·       Structuring a Neural Network for XOR  - two inputs to the XOR operator and one output. ·       input: 0.0,0.0 1.0,0.0 0.0,1.0 1.0,1.0 ·       Expected output: 0.0 1.0 1.0 0.0 ·       A Perceptron - a simple feedforward neural network to learn the XOR operator. ·       Because the XOR operator has two inputs and one output, the neural network will follow suit. Additionally, the neural network will have a single hidden layer, with two neurons to help process the data. The choice for 2 neurons in the hidden layer is arbitrary, and often comes down to trial and error. ·       Neuron Diagram for the XOR Network ·       ·       The Encog workbench displays neural networks on a layer-by-layer basis. ·       Encog Layer Diagram for the XOR Network:   ·       Create a BasicNetwork - Three layers are added to this network. the FinalizeStructure method must be called to inform the network that no more layers are to be added. The call to Reset randomizes the weights in the connections between these layers. var network = new BasicNetwork(); network.AddLayer(new BasicLayer(2)); network.AddLayer(new BasicLayer(2)); network.AddLayer(new BasicLayer(1)); network.Structure.FinalizeStructure(); network.Reset(); ·       Neural networks frequently start with a random weight matrix. This provides a starting point for the training methods. These random values will be tested and refined into an acceptable solution. However, sometimes the initial random values are too far off. Sometimes it may be necessary to reset the weights again, if training is ineffective. These weights make up the long-term memory of the neural network. Additionally, some layers have threshold values that also contribute to the long-term memory of the neural network. Some neural networks also contain context layers, which give the neural network a short-term memory as well. The neural network learns by modifying these weight and threshold values. ·       Now that the neural network has been created, it must be trained. Training a Neural Network ·       construct a INeuralDataSet object - contains the input array and the expected output array (of corresponding range). Even though there is only one output value, we must still use a two-dimensional array to represent the output. public static double[][] XOR_INPUT ={ new double[2] { 0.0, 0.0 }, new double[2] { 1.0, 0.0 }, new double[2] { 0.0, 1.0 }, new double[2] { 1.0, 1.0 } };   public static double[][] XOR_IDEAL = { new double[1] { 0.0 }, new double[1] { 1.0 }, new double[1] { 1.0 }, new double[1] { 0.0 } };   INeuralDataSet trainingSet = new BasicNeuralDataSet(XOR_INPUT, XOR_IDEAL); ·       Training is the process where the neural network's weights are adjusted to better produce the expected output. Training will continue for many iterations, until the error rate of the network is below an acceptable level. Encog supports many different types of training. Resilient Propagation (RPROP) - general-purpose training algorithm. All training classes implement the ITrain interface. The RPROP algorithm is implemented by the ResilientPropagation class. Training the neural network involves calling the Iteration method on the ITrain class until the error is below a specific value. The code loops through as many iterations, or epochs, as it takes to get the error rate for the neural network to be below 1%. Once the neural network has been trained, it is ready for use. ITrain train = new ResilientPropagation(network, trainingSet);   for (int epoch=0; epoch < 10000; epoch++) { train.Iteration(); Debug.Print("Epoch #" + epoch + " Error:" + train.Error); if (train.Error > 0.01) break; } Executing a Neural Network ·       Call the Compute method on the BasicNetwork class. Console.WriteLine("Neural Network Results:"); foreach (INeuralDataPair pair in trainingSet) { INeuralData output = network.Compute(pair.Input); Console.WriteLine(pair.Input[0] + "," + pair.Input[1] + ", actual=" + output[0] + ",ideal=" + pair.Ideal[0]); } ·       The Compute method accepts an INeuralData class and also returns a INeuralData object. Neural Network Results: 0.0,0.0, actual=0.002782538818034049,ideal=0.0 1.0,0.0, actual=0.9903741937121177,ideal=1.0 0.0,1.0, actual=0.9836807956566187,ideal=1.0 1.0,1.0, actual=0.0011646072586172778,ideal=0.0 ·       the network has not been trained to give the exact results. This is normal. Because the network was trained to 1% error, each of the results will also be within generally 1% of the expected value.

  Read the article

• Option Trading: Getting the most out of the event session options

  - by extended_events

  You can control different aspects of how an event session behaves by setting the event session options as part of the CREATE EVENT SESSION DDL. The default settings for the event session options are designed to handle most of the common event collection situations so I generally recommend that you just use the defaults. Like everything in the real world though, there are going to be a handful of “special cases” that require something different. This post focuses on identifying the special cases and the correct use of the options to accommodate those cases. There is a reason it’s called Default The default session options specify a total event buffer size of 4 MB with a 30 second latency. Translating this into human terms; this means that our default behavior is that the system will start processing events from the event buffer when we reach about 1.3 MB of events or after 30 seconds, which ever comes first. Aside: What’s up with the 1.3 MB, I thought you said the buffer was 4 MB?The Extended Events engine takes the total buffer size specified by MAX_MEMORY (4MB by default) and divides it into 3 equally sized buffers. This is done so that a session can be publishing events to one buffer while other buffers are being processed. There are always at least three buffers; how to get more than three is covered later. Using this configuration, the Extended Events engine can “keep up” with most event sessions on standard workloads. Why is this? The fact is that most events are small, really small; on the order of a couple hundred bytes. Even when you start considering events that carry dynamically sized data (eg. binary, text, etc.) or adding actions that collect additional data, the total size of the event is still likely to be pretty small. This means that each buffer can likely hold thousands of events before it has to be processed. When the event buffers are finally processed there is an economy of scale achieved since most targets support bulk processing of the events so they are processed at the buffer level rather than the individual event level. When all this is working together it’s more likely that a full buffer will be processed and put back into the ready queue before the remaining buffers (remember, there are at least three) are full. I know what you’re going to say: “My server is exceptional! My workload is so massive it defies categorization!” OK, maybe you weren’t going to say that exactly, but you were probably thinking it. The point is that there are situations that won’t be covered by the Default, but that’s a good place to start and this post assumes you’ve started there so that you have something to look at in order to determine if you do have a special case that needs different settings. So let’s get to the special cases… What event just fired?! How about now?! Now?! If you believe the commercial adage from Heinz Ketchup (Heinz Slow Good Ketchup ad on You Tube), some things are worth the wait. This is not a belief held by most DBAs, particularly DBAs who are looking for an answer to a troubleshooting question fast. If you’re one of these anxious DBAs, or maybe just a Program Manager doing a demo, then 30 seconds might be longer than you’re comfortable waiting. If you find yourself in this situation then consider changing the MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY option for your event session. This option will force the event buffers to be processed based on your time schedule. This option only makes sense for the asynchronous targets since those are the ones where we allow events to build up in the event buffer – if you’re using one of the synchronous targets this option isn’t relevant. Avoid forgotten events by increasing your memory Have you ever had one of those days where you keep forgetting things? That can happen in Extended Events too; we call it dropped events. In order to optimizes for server performance and help ensure that the Extended Events doesn’t block the server if to drop events that can’t be published to a buffer because the buffer is full. You can determine if events are being dropped from a session by querying the dm_xe_sessions DMV and looking at the dropped_event_count field. Aside: Should you care if you’re dropping events?Maybe not – think about why you’re collecting data in the first place and whether you’re really going to miss a few dropped events. For example, if you’re collecting query duration stats over thousands of executions of a query it won’t make a huge difference to miss a couple executions. Use your best judgment. If you find that your session is dropping events it means that the event buffer is not large enough to handle the volume of events that are being published. There are two ways to address this problem. First, you could collect fewer events – examine you session to see if you are over collecting. Do you need all the actions you’ve specified? Could you apply a predicate to be more specific about when you fire the event? Assuming the session is defined correctly, the next option is to change the MAX_MEMORY option to a larger number. Picking the right event buffer size might take some trial and error, but a good place to start is with the number of dropped events compared to the number you’ve collected. Aside: There are three different behaviors for dropping events that you specify using the EVENT_RETENTION_MODE option. The default is to allow single event loss and you should stick with this setting since it is the best choice for keeping the impact on server performance low.You’ll be tempted to use the setting to not lose any events (NO_EVENT_LOSS) – resist this urge since it can result in blocking on the server. If you’re worried that you’re losing events you should be increasing your event buffer memory as described in this section. Some events are too big to fail A less common reason for dropping an event is when an event is so large that it can’t fit into the event buffer. Even though most events are going to be small, you might find a condition that occasionally generates a very large event. You can determine if your session is dropping large events by looking at the dm_xe_sessions DMV once again, this time check the largest_event_dropped_size. If this value is larger than the size of your event buffer [remember, the size of your event buffer, by default, is max_memory / 3] then you need a large event buffer. To specify a large event buffer you set the MAX_EVENT_SIZE option to a value large enough to fit the largest event dropped based on data from the DMV. When you set this option the Extended Events engine will create two buffers of this size to accommodate these large events. As an added bonus (no extra charge) the large event buffer will also be used to store normal events in the cases where the normal event buffers are all full and waiting to be processed. (Note: This is just a side-effect, not the intended use. If you’re dropping many normal events then you should increase your normal event buffer size.) Partitioning: moving your events to a sub-division Earlier I alluded to the fact that you can configure your event session to use more than the standard three event buffers – this is called partitioning and is controlled by the MEMORY_PARTITION_MODE option. The result of setting this option is fairly easy to explain, but knowing when to use it is a bit more art than science. First the science… You can configure partitioning in three ways: None, Per NUMA Node & Per CPU. This specifies the location where sets of event buffers are created with fairly obvious implication. There are rules we follow for sub-dividing the total memory (specified by MAX_MEMORY) between all the event buffers that are specific to the mode used: None: 3 buffers (fixed)Node: 3 * number_of_nodesCPU: 2.5 * number_of_cpus Here are some examples of what this means for different Node/CPU counts: Configuration None Node CPU 2 CPUs, 1 Node 3 buffers 3 buffers 5 buffers 6 CPUs, 2 Node 3 buffers 6 buffers 15 buffers 40 CPUs, 5 Nodes 3 buffers 15 buffers 100 buffers   Aside: Buffer size on multi-processor computersAs the number of Nodes or CPUs increases, the size of the event buffer gets smaller because the total memory is sub-divided into more pieces. The defaults will hold up to this for a while since each buffer set is holding events only from the Node or CPU that it is associated with, but at some point the buffers will get too small and you’ll either see events being dropped or you’ll get an error when you create your session because you’re below the minimum buffer size. Increase the MAX_MEMORY setting to an appropriate number for the configuration. The most likely reason to start partitioning is going to be related to performance. If you notice that running an event session is impacting the performance of your server beyond a reasonably expected level [Yes, there is a reasonably expected level of work required to collect events.] then partitioning might be an answer. Before you partition you might want to check a few other things: Is your event retention set to NO_EVENT_LOSS and causing blocking? (I told you not to do this.) Consider changing your event loss mode or increasing memory. Are you over collecting and causing more work than necessary? Consider adding predicates to events or removing unnecessary events and actions from your session. Are you writing the file target to the same slow disk that you use for TempDB and your other high activity databases? <kidding> <not really> It’s always worth considering the end to end picture – if you’re writing events to a file you can be impacted by I/O, network; all the usual stuff. Assuming you’ve ruled out the obvious (and not so obvious) issues, there are performance conditions that will be addressed by partitioning. For example, it’s possible to have a successful event session (eg. no dropped events) but still see a performance impact because you have many CPUs all attempting to write to the same free buffer and having to wait in line to finish their work. This is a case where partitioning would relieve the contention between the different CPUs and likely reduce the performance impact cause by the event session. There is no DMV you can check to find these conditions – sorry – that’s where the art comes in. This is  largely a matter of experimentation. On the bright side you probably won’t need to to worry about this level of detail all that often. The performance impact of Extended Events is significantly lower than what you may be used to with SQL Trace. You will likely only care about the impact if you are trying to set up a long running event session that will be part of your everyday workload – sessions used for short term troubleshooting will likely fall into the “reasonably expected impact” category. Hey buddy – I think you forgot something OK, there are two options I didn’t cover: STARTUP_STATE & TRACK_CAUSALITY. If you want your event sessions to start automatically when the server starts, set the STARTUP_STATE option to ON. (Now there is only one option I didn’t cover.) I’m going to leave causality for another post since it’s not really related to session behavior, it’s more about event analysis. - Mike Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

  Read the article

• ASP.NET Web Forms Extensibility: Providers

  - by Ricardo Peres

  Introduction This will be the first of a number of posts on ASP.NET extensibility. At this moment I don’t know exactly how many will be and I only know a couple of subjects that I want to talk about, so more will come in the next days. I have the sensation that the providers offered by ASP.NET are not widely know, although everyone uses, for example, sessions, they may not be aware of the extensibility points that Microsoft included. This post won’t go into details of how to configure and extend each of the providers, but will hopefully give some pointers on that direction. Canonical These are the most widely known and used providers, coming from ASP.NET 1, chances are, you have used them already. Good support for invoking client side, either from a .NET application or from JavaScript. Lots of server-side controls use them, such as the Login control for example. Membership The Membership provider is responsible for managing registered users, including creating new ones, authenticating them, changing passwords, etc. ASP.NET comes with two implementations, one that uses a SQL Server database and another that uses the Active Directory. The base class is Membership and new providers are registered on the membership section on the Web.config file, as well as parameters for specifying minimum password lengths, complexities, maximum age, etc. One reason for creating a custom provider would be, for example, storing membership information in a different database engine. 1: <membership defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 2: <providers> 3: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 4: </providers> 5: </membership> Role The Role provider assigns roles to authenticated users. The base class is Role and there are three out of the box implementations: XML-based, SQL Server and Windows-based. Also registered on Web.config through the roleManager section, where you can also say if your roles should be cached on a cookie. If you want your roles to come from a different place, implement a custom provider. 1: <roleManager defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 2: <providers> 3: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> 4: </providers> 5: </roleManager> Profile The Profile provider allows defining a set of properties that will be tied and made available to authenticated or even anonymous ones, which must be tracked by using anonymous authentication. The base class is Profile and the only included implementation stores these settings in a SQL Server database. Configured through profile section, where you also specify the properties to make available, a custom provider would allow storing these properties in different locations. 1: <profile defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 2: <providers> 3: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 4: </providers> 5: </profile> Basic OK, I didn’t know what to call these, so Basic is probably as good as a name as anything else. Not supported client-side (doesn’t even make sense). Session The Session provider allows storing data tied to the current “session”, which is normally created when a user first accesses the site, even when it is not yet authenticated, and remains all the way. The base class and only included implementation is SessionStateStoreProviderBase and it is capable of storing data in one of three locations: In the process memory (default, not suitable for web farms or increased reliability); A SQL Server database (best for reliability and clustering); The ASP.NET State Service, which is a Windows Service that is installed with the .NET Framework (ok for clustering). The configuration is made through the sessionState section. By adding a custom Session provider, you can store the data in different locations – think for example of a distributed cache. 1: <sessionState customProvider=”MyProvider”> 2: <providers> 3: <add name=”MyProvider” type=”MyClass, MyAssembly” /> 4: </providers> 5: </sessionState> Resource A not so known provider, allows you to change the origin of localized resource elements. By default, these come from RESX files and are used whenever you use the Resources expression builder or the GetGlobalResourceObject and GetLocalResourceObject methods, but if you implement a custom provider, you can have these elements come from some place else, such as a database. The base class is ResourceProviderFactory and there’s only one internal implementation which uses these RESX files. Configuration is through the globalization section. 1: <globalization resourceProviderFactoryType="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> Health Monitoring Health Monitoring is also probably not so well known, and actually not a good name for it. First, in order to understand what it does, you have to know that ASP.NET fires “events” at specific times and when specific things happen, such as when logging in, an exception is raised. These are not user interface events and you can create your own and fire them, nothing will happen, but the Health Monitoring provider will detect it. You can configure it to do things when certain conditions are met, such as a number of events being fired in a certain amount of time. You define these rules and route them to a specific provider, which must inherit from WebEventProvider. Out of the box implementations include sending mails, logging to a SQL Server database, writing to the Windows Event Log, Windows Management Instrumentation, the IIS 7 Trace infrastructure or the debugger Trace. Its configuration is achieved by the healthMonitoring section and a reason for implementing a custom provider would be, for example, locking down a web application in the event of a significant number of failed login attempts occurring in a small period of time. 1: <healthMonitoring> 2: <providers> 3: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 4: </providers> 5: </healthMonitoring> Sitemap The Sitemap provider allows defining the site’s navigation structure and associated required permissions for each node, in a tree-like fashion. Usually this is statically defined, and the included provider allows it, by supplying this structure in a Web.sitemap XML file. The base class is SiteMapProvider and you can extend it in order to supply you own source for the site’s structure, which may even be dynamic. Its configuration must be done through the siteMap section. 1: <siteMap defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 2: <providers><add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> 3: </providers> 4: </siteMap> Web Part Personalization Web Parts are better known by SharePoint users, but since ASP.NET 2.0 they are included in the core Framework. Web Parts are server-side controls that offer certain possibilities of configuration by clients visiting the page where they are located. The infrastructure handles this configuration per user or globally for all users and this provider is responsible for just that. The base class is PersonalizationProvider and the only included implementation stores settings on SQL Server. Add new providers through the personalization section. 1: <webParts> 2: <personalization defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 3: <providers> 4: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 5: </providers> 6: </personalization> 7: </webParts> Build The Build provider is responsible for compiling whatever files are present on your web folder. There’s a base class, BuildProvider, and, as can be expected, internal implementations for building pages (ASPX), master pages (Master), user web controls (ASCX), handlers (ASHX), themes (Skin), XML Schemas (XSD), web services (ASMX, SVC), resources (RESX), browser capabilities files (Browser) and so on. You would write a build provider if you wanted to generate code from any kind of non-code file so that you have strong typing at development time. Configuration goes on the buildProviders section and it is per extension. 1: <buildProviders> 2: <add extension=".ext" type="MyClass, MyAssembly” /> 3: </buildProviders> New in ASP.NET 4 Not exactly new since they exist since 2010, but in ASP.NET terms, still new. Output Cache The Output Cache for ASPX pages and ASCX user controls is now extensible, through the Output Cache provider, which means you can implement a custom mechanism for storing and retrieving cached data, for example, in a distributed fashion. The base class is OutputCacheProvider and the only implementation is private. Configuration goes on the outputCache section and on each page and web user control you can choose the provider you want to use. 1: <caching> 2: <outputCache defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 3: <providers> 4: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 5: </providers> 6: </outputCache> 7: </caching> Request Validation A big change introduced in ASP.NET 4 (and refined in 4.5, by the way) is the introduction of extensible request validation, by means of a Request Validation provider. This means we are not limited to either enabling or disabling event validation for all pages or for a specific page, but we now have fine control over each of the elements of the request, including cookies, headers, query string and form values. The base provider class is RequestValidator and the configuration goes on the httpRuntime section. 1: <httpRuntime requestValidationType="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> Browser Capabilities The Browser Capabilities provider is new in ASP.NET 4, although the concept exists from ASP.NET 2. The idea is to map a browser brand and version to its supported capabilities, such as JavaScript version, Flash support, ActiveX support, and so on. Previously, this was all hardcoded in .Browser files located in %WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework(64)\vXXXXX\Config\Browsers, but now you can have a class inherit from HttpCapabilitiesProvider and implement your own mechanism. Register in on the browserCaps section. 1: <browserCaps provider="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> Encoder The Encoder provider is responsible for encoding every string that is sent to the browser on a page or header. This includes for example converting special characters for their standard codes and is implemented by the base class HttpEncoder. Another implementation takes care of Anti Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. Build your own by inheriting from one of these classes if you want to add some additional processing to these strings. The configuration will go on the httpRuntime section. 1: <httpRuntime encoderType="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> Conclusion That’s about it for ASP.NET providers. It was by no means a thorough description, but I hope I managed to raise your interest on this subject. There are lots of pointers on the Internet, so I only included direct references to the Framework classes and configuration sections. Stay tuned for more extensibility!

  Read the article

• Multi-tenant ASP.NET MVC - Views

  - by zowens

  Part I – Introduction Part II – Foundation Part III – Controllers   So far we have covered the basic premise of tenants and how they will be delegated. Now comes a big issue with multi-tenancy, the views. In some applications, you will not have to override views for each tenant. However, one of my requirements is to add extra views (and controller actions) along with overriding views from the core structure. This presents a bit of a problem in locating views for each tenant request. I have chosen quite an opinionated approach at the present but will coming back to the “views” issue in a later post. What’s the deal? The path I’ve chosen is to use precompiled Spark views. I really love Spark View Engine and was planning on using it in my project anyways. However, I ran across a really neat aspect of the source when I was having a look under the hood. There’s an easy way to hook in embedded views from your project. There are solutions that provide this, but they implement a special Virtual Path Provider. While I think this is a great solution, I would rather just have Spark take care of the view resolution. The magic actually happens during the compilation of the views into a bin-deployable DLL. After the views are compiled, the are simply pulled out of the views DLL. Each tenant has its own views DLL that just has “.Views” appended after the assembly name as a convention. The list of reasons for this approach are quite long. The primary motivation is performance. I’ve had quite a few performance issues in the past and I would like to increase my application’s performance in any way that I can. My customized build of Spark removes insignificant whitespace from the HTML output so I can some some bandwidth and load time without having to deal with whitespace removal at runtime.   How to setup Tenants for the Host In the source, I’ve provided a single tenant as a sample (Sample1). This will serve as a template for subsequent tenants in your application. The first step is to add a “PostBuildStep” installer into the project. I’ve defined one in the source that will eventually change as we focus more on the construction of dependency containers. The next step is to tell the project to run the installer and copy the DLL output to a folder in the host that will pick up as a tenant. Here’s the code that will achieve it (this belongs in Post-build event command line field in the Build Events tab of settings) %systemroot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\installutil "$(TargetPath)" copy /Y "$(TargetDir)$(TargetName)*.dll" "$(SolutionDir)Web\Tenants\" copy /Y "$(TargetDir)$(TargetName)*.pdb" "$(SolutionDir)Web\Tenants\" The DLLs with a name starting with the target assembly name will be copied to the “Tenants” folder in the web project. This means something like MultiTenancy.Tenants.Sample1.dll and MultiTenancy.Tenants.Sample1.Views.dll will both be copied along with the debug symbols. This is probably the simplest way to go about this, but it is a tad inflexible. For example, what if you have dependencies? The preferred method would probably be to use IL Merge to merge your dependencies with your target DLL. This would have to be added in the build events. Another way to achieve that would be to simply bypass Visual Studio events and use MSBuild.   I also got a question about how I was setting up the controller factory. Here’s the basics on how I’m setting up tenants inside the host (Global.asax) protected void Application_Start() { RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); // create a container just to pull in tenants var topContainer = new Container(); topContainer.Configure(config => { config.Scan(scanner => { scanner.AssembliesFromPath(Path.Combine(Server.MapPath("~/"), "Tenants")); scanner.AddAllTypesOf<IApplicationTenant>(); }); }); // create selectors var tenantSelector = new DefaultTenantSelector(topContainer.GetAllInstances<IApplicationTenant>()); var containerSelector = new TenantContainerResolver(tenantSelector); // clear view engines, we don't want anything other than spark ViewEngines.Engines.Clear(); // set view engine ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new TenantViewEngine(tenantSelector)); // set controller factory ControllerBuilder.Current.SetControllerFactory(new ContainerControllerFactory(containerSelector)); } The code to setup the tenants isn’t actually that hard. I’m utilizing assembly scanners in StructureMap as a simple way to pull in DLLs that are not in the AppDomain. Remember that there is a dependency on the host in the tenants and a tenant cannot simply be referenced by a host because of circular dependencies.   Tenant View Engine TenantViewEngine is a simple delegator to the tenant’s specified view engine. You might have noticed that a tenant has to define a view engine. public interface IApplicationTenant { .... IViewEngine ViewEngine { get; } } The trick comes in specifying the view engine on the tenant side. Here’s some of the code that will pull views from the DLL. protected virtual IViewEngine DetermineViewEngine() { var factory = new SparkViewFactory(); var file = GetType().Assembly.CodeBase.Without("file:///").Replace(".dll", ".Views.dll").Replace('/', '\\'); var assembly = Assembly.LoadFile(file); factory.Engine.LoadBatchCompilation(assembly); return factory; } This code resides in an abstract Tenant where the fields are setup in the constructor. This method (inside the abstract class) will load the Views assembly and load the compilation into Spark’s “Descriptors” that will be used to determine views. There is some trickery on determining the file location… but it works just fine.   Up Next There’s just a few big things left such as StructureMap configuring controllers with a convention instead of specifying types directly with container construction and content resolution. I will also try to find a way to use the Web Forms View Engine in a multi-tenant way we achieved with the Spark View Engine without using a virtual path provider. I will probably not use the Web Forms View Engine personally, but I’m sure some people would prefer using WebForms because of the maturity of the engine. As always, I love to take questions by email or on twitter. Suggestions are always welcome as well! (Oh, and here’s another link to the source code).

  Read the article

• Advantages of SQL Backup Pro

  - by Grant Fritchey

  Getting backups of your databases in place is a fundamental issue for protection of the business. Yes, I said business, not data, not databases, but business. Because of a lack of good, tested, backups, companies have gone completely out of business or suffered traumatic financial loss. That’s just a simple fact (outlined with a few examples here). So you want to get backups right. That’s a big part of why we make Red Gate SQL Backup Pro work the way it does. Yes, you could just use native backups, but you’ll be missing a few advantages that we provide over and above what you get out of the box from Microsoft. Let’s talk about them. Guidance If you’re a hard-core DBA with 20+ years of experience on every version of SQL Server and several other data platforms besides, you may already know what you need in order to get a set of tested backups in place. But, if you’re not, maybe a little help would be a good thing. To set up backups for your servers, we supply a wizard that will step you through the entire process. It will also act to guide you down good paths. For example, if your databases are in Full Recovery, you should set up transaction log backups to run on a regular basis. When you choose a transaction log backup from the Backup Type you’ll see that only those databases that are in Full Recovery will be listed: This makes it very easy to be sure you have a log backup set up for all the databases you should and none of the databases where you won’t be able to. There are other examples of guidance throughout the product. If you have the responsibility of managing backups but very little knowledge or time, we can help you out. Throughout the software you’ll notice little green question marks. You can see two in the screen above and more in each of the screens in other topics below this one. Clicking on these will open a window with additional information about the topic in question which should help to guide you through some of the tougher decisions you may have to make while setting up your backup jobs. Here’s an example: Backup Copies As a part of the wizard you can choose to make a copy of your backup on your network. This process runs as part of the Red Gate SQL Backup engine. It will copy your backup, after completing the backup so it doesn’t cause any additional blocking or resource use within the backup process, to the network location you define. Creating a copy acts as a mechanism of protection for your backups. You can then backup that copy or do other things with it, all without affecting the original backup file. This requires either an additional backup or additional scripting to get it done within the native Microsoft backup engine. Offsite Storage Red Gate offers you the ability to immediately copy your backup to the cloud as a further, off-site, protection of your backups. It’s a service we provide and expose through the Backup wizard. Your backup will complete first, just like with the network backup copy, then an asynchronous process will copy that backup to cloud storage. Again, this is built right into the wizard or even the command line calls to SQL Backup, so it’s part a single process within your system. With native backup you would need to write additional scripts, possibly outside of T-SQL, to make this happen. Before you can use this with your backups you’ll need to do a little setup, but it’s built right into the product to get this done. You’ll be directed to the web site for our hosted storage where you can set up an account. Compression If you have SQL Server 2008 Enterprise, or you’re on SQL Server 2008R2 or greater and you have a Standard or Enterprise license, then you have backup compression. It’s built right in and works well. But, if you need even more compression then you might want to consider Red Gate SQL Backup Pro. We offer four levels of compression within the product. This means you can get a little compression faster, or you can just sacrifice some CPU time and get even more compression. You decide. For just a simple example I backed up AdventureWorks2012 using both methods of compression. The resulting file from native was 53mb. Our file was 33mb. That’s a file that is smaller by 38%, not a small number when we start talking gigabytes. We even provide guidance here to help you determine which level of compression would be right for you and your system: So for this test, if you wanted maximum compression with minimum CPU use you’d probably want to go with Level 2 which gets you almost as much compression as Level 3 but will use fewer resources. And that compression is still better than the native one by 10%. Restore Testing Backups are vital. But, a backup is just a file until you restore it. How do you know that you can restore that backup? Of course, you’ll use CHECKSUM to validate that what was read from disk during the backup process is what gets written to the backup file. You’ll also use VERIFYONLY to check that the backup header and the checksums on the backup file are valid. But, this doesn’t do a complete test of the backup. The only complete test is a restore. So, what you really need is a process that tests your backups. This is something you’ll have to schedule separately from your backups, but we provide a couple of mechanisms to help you out here. First, when you create a backup schedule, all done through our wizard which gives you as much guidance as you get when running backups, you get the option of creating a reminder to create a job to test your restores. You can enable this or disable it as you choose when creating your scheduled backups. Once you’re ready to schedule test restores for your databases, we have a wizard for this as well. After you choose the databases and restores you want to test, all configurable for automation, you get to decide if you’re going to restore to a specified copy or to the original database: If you’re doing your tests on a new server (probably the best choice) you can just overwrite the original database if it’s there. If not, you may want to create a new database each time you test your restores. Another part of validating your backups is ensuring that they can pass consistency checks. So we have DBCC built right into the process. You can even decide how you want DBCC run, which error messages to include, limit or add to the checks being run. With this you could offload some DBCC checks from your production system so that you only run the physical checks on your production box, but run the full check on this backup. That makes backup testing not just a general safety process, but a performance enhancer as well: Finally, assuming the tests pass, you can delete the database, leave it in place, or delete it regardless of the tests passing. All this is automated and scheduled through the SQL Agent job on your servers. Running your databases through this process will ensure that you don’t just have backups, but that you have tested backups. Single Point of Management If you have more than one server to maintain, getting backups setup could be a tedious process. But, with Red Gate SQL Backup Pro you can connect to multiple servers and then manage all your databases and all your servers backups from a single location. You’ll be able to see what is scheduled, what has run successfully and what has failed, all from a single interface without having to connect to different servers. Log Shipping Wizard If you want to set up log shipping as part of a disaster recovery process, it can frequently be a pain to get configured correctly. We supply a wizard that will walk you through every step of the process including setting up alerts so you’ll know should your log shipping fail. Summary You want to get your backups right. As outlined above, Red Gate SQL Backup Pro will absolutely help you there. We supply a number of processes and functionalities above and beyond what you get with SQL Server native. Plus, with our guidance, hints and reminders, you will get your backups set up in a way that protects your business.

  Read the article

• Windows Azure Evolution &ndash; Welcome to VS2012

  - by Shaun

  When the Microsoft released the first preview version of Windows 8 and Visual Studio, many people in the community were asking if the windows azure tool is available to it. The answer was “NO”. Microsoft promised that the windows azure tool will only support the Visual Studio 2010 but when the 2012 was final released, windows azure tool should be work. But now alone with the new windows azure platform was published we got the latest Windows Azure SDK 1.7, which is compatible to the Visual Studio 2012 RC.   You can retrieve the latest version of the Windows Azure SDK through Web Platform Installer, which I think it’s the easiest and simplest way to download and install, since besides the SDK itself it also needs some other components. To download the latest windows azure SDK from Web Platform Installer, just go to the windows azure website and clicked the Develop, .NET and click the blue “install” button. Then you need to select which version of Visual Studio you want to use, Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2012 RC. After selected the current version you will download an EXE file. This file will lead you to install the Web Platform Installer 4.0 (if you haven’t installed) and the latest windows azure SDK. You can see the version name is June 2012, 1.7. Finally the WebPI will detect the dependent components you need to download and begin to install. But if you want to challenge yourself you can download the components and install them manually. The standalone installations are listed in this page with the instruction on how to install them with necessary pre-requirements.   Once you finished the installation you can open the Visual Studio 2012 RC and as usual, it need to be run as administrator. If you clicked the New Project link from the start page, navigated to Cloud category you will find that there no project template available. Is there anything wrong? So, if you changed the target framework from the default .NET 4.5 to .NET 4 you will see the azure project template. This is because, currently the windows azure instance does not support .NET 4.5. After clicked OK you will see the role creation window, which is similar as what you have seen before. But there are some new role templates in this SDK. Firstly you will have ASP.NET MVC 4 web role available, which means you can create ASP.NET MVC 4 applications for internet, intranet, mobile and WebAPI on the cloud. Then there are two new worker role templates, “Cache Worker Role” and “Worker Role with Service Bus Queue”. “Worker Role with Service Bus Queue” is a worker role which had added necessary references to access the Windows Azure Service Bus Queue. It also have some basic sample code in the worker role class which could read messages from the queue when started. The “Cache Worker Role” is a worker role which has the in-memory distributed cache feature enabled by default. This feature is different than the Windows Azure Caching. It allows the role instance to use its memory as a in-memory distributed cache clusters. By using this feature you can have one or more worker roles as some dedicate cache clusters. Alternatively, you can make part of your web role and worker role’s memory as the cache clusters as well. Let’s just create an ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Role, and click F5 to run it under the local emulator. If you have been working with azure for a while you should know that I need to setup the local storage emulator before running locally if it’s a fresh azure SDK installation. But in this version when we started our azure project the Visual Studio will check if the storage emulator had been initialized. If not, it will run the initializer automatically. And as you can see, in this version the storage emulator relies on the SQL Server 2012 Local DB feature. It will create the emulator database and tables in the default local database. You can set the storage emulator to use a standard SQL Server default instance by using the command “dsinit /instance:.”. The “dsinit” tool now is located at %PROGRAM FILES%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Azure\Emulator\devstore After the Visual Studio complied and deployed the package our website should be shown in the browser. This is the MVC 4 Web Role home page on my Windows 8 machine in IE10. Another thing you might notice is that, in this version the compute emulator utilizes IIS Express to host the web roles instead of the full IIS. You can add breakpoint in the code and debug, and you can use the local storage emulator to test your code for accessing the storage service. All of them are same as what your are doing now on SDK 1.6. You can switch to use IIS to run your web role in local emulator. Just open the windows azure porject property windows, in the Web page select “Use IIS Web Server”. For more information about this please have a look on Nuno’s blog post. In the role property page in Visual Studio there’s no massive changes. You can configure your role settings such as the endpoints, certificates and local storage, etc.. One thing was added is the Caching tab. Here you can specify enable the caching feature or not, and how much memory you want to use as the cache cluster. I will introduce more details about it in the future posts. The publish and package feature are also no change. You can publish your project to azure directly through Visual Studio 2012, while you can create the package and upload manually. Below is the SDK version of my deployment which is 1.7.30602.1703 in the developer portal.   Summary In this post I introduced about the new Windows Azure SDK 1.7 especially on how it works on the latest Visual Studio 2012 RC. There’s no significant changes in the visual studio tool in this version but some small enhancement such as ASP.NET MVC 4, Cache Worker Role, using SQL 2012 Local DB and IIS Express, etc..   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

  Read the article

• Validating a linked item&rsquo;s data template in Sitecore

  - by Kyle Burns

  I’ve been doing quite a bit of work in Sitecore recently and last week I encountered a situation that it appears many others have hit.  I was working with a field that had been configured originally as a grouped droplink, but now needed to be updated to support additional levels of hierarchy in the folder structure.  If you’ve done any work in Sitecore that statement makes sense, but if not it may seem a bit cryptic.  Sitecore offers a number of different field types and a subset of these field types focus on providing links either to other items on the content tree or to content that is not stored in Sitecore.  In the case of the grouped droplink, the field is configured with a “root” folder and each direct descendant of this folder is considered to be a header for a grouping of other items and displayed in a dropdown.  A picture is worth a thousand words, so consider the following piece of a content tree: If I configure a grouped droplink field to use the “Current” folder as its datasource, the control that gets to my content author looks like this: This presents a nicely organized display and limits the user to selecting only the direct grandchildren of the folder root.  It also presents the limitation that struck as we were thinking through the content architecture and how it would hold up over time – the authors cannot further organize content under the root folder because of the structure required for the dropdown to work.  Over time, not allowing the hierarchy to go any deeper would prevent out authors from being able to organize their content in a way that it would be found when needed, so the grouped droplink data type was not going to fit the bill. I needed to look for an alternative data type that allowed for selection of a single item and limited my choices to descendants of a specific node on the content tree.  After looking at the options available for links in Sitecore and considering them against each other, one option stood out as nearly perfect – the droptree.  This field type stores its data identically to the droplink and allows for the selection of zero or one items under a specific node in the content tree.  By changing my data template to use droptree instead of grouped droplink, the author is now presented with the following when selecting a linked item: Sounds great, but a did say almost perfect – there’s still one flaw.  The code intended to display the linked item is expecting the selection to use a specific data template (or more precisely it makes certain assumptions about the fields that will be present), but the droptree does nothing to prevent the author from selecting a folder (since folders are items too) instead of one of the items contained within a folder.  I looked to see if anyone had already solved this problem.  I found many people discussing the problem, but the closest that I found to a solution was the statement “the best thing would probably be to create a custom validator” with no further discussion in regards to what this validator might look like.  I needed to create my own validator to ensure that the user had not selected a folder.  Since so many people had the same issue, I decided to make the validator as reusable as possible and share it here. The validator that I created inherits from StandardValidator.  In order to make the validator more intuitive to developers that are familiar with the TreeList controls in Sitecore, I chose to implement the following parameters: ExcludeTemplatesForSelection – serves as a “deny list”.  If the data template of the selected item is in this list it will not validate IncludeTemplatesForSelection – this can either be empty to indicate that any template not contained in the exclusion list is acceptable or it can contain the list of acceptable templates Now that I’ve explained the parameters and the purpose of the validator, I’ll let the code do the rest of the talking: 1: /// <summary> 2: /// Validates that a link field value meets template requirements 3: /// specified using the following parameters: 4: /// - ExcludeTemplatesForSelection: If present, the item being 5: /// based on an excluded template will cause validation to fail. 6: /// - IncludeTemplatesForSelection: If present, the item not being 7: /// based on an included template will cause validation to fail 8: /// 9: /// ExcludeTemplatesForSelection trumps IncludeTemplatesForSelection 10: /// if the same value appears in both lists. Lists are comma seperated 11: /// </summary> 12: [Serializable] 13: public class LinkItemTemplateValidator : StandardValidator 14: { 15: public LinkItemTemplateValidator() 16: { 17: } 18:   19: /// <summary> 20: /// Serialization constructor is required by the runtime 21: /// </summary> 22: /// <param name="info"></param> 23: /// <param name="context"></param> 24: public LinkItemTemplateValidator(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context) : base(info, context) { } 25:   26: /// <summary> 27: /// Returns whether the linked item meets the template 28: /// constraints specified in the parameters 29: /// </summary> 30: /// <returns> 31: /// The result of the evaluation. 32: /// </returns> 33: protected override ValidatorResult Evaluate() 34: { 35: if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(ControlValidationValue)) 36: { 37: return ValidatorResult.Valid; // let "required" validation handle 38: } 39:   40: var excludeString = Parameters["ExcludeTemplatesForSelection"]; 41: var includeString = Parameters["IncludeTemplatesForSelection"]; 42: if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(excludeString) && string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(includeString)) 43: { 44: return ValidatorResult.Valid; // "allow anything" if no params 45: } 46:   47: Guid linkedItemGuid; 48: if (!Guid.TryParse(ControlValidationValue, out linkedItemGuid)) 49: { 50: return ValidatorResult.Valid; // probably put validator on wrong field 51: } 52:   53: var item = GetItem(); 54: var linkedItem = item.Database.GetItem(new ID(linkedItemGuid)); 55:   56: if (linkedItem == null) 57: { 58: return ValidatorResult.Valid; // this validator isn't for broken links 59: } 60:   61: var exclusionList = (excludeString ?? string.Empty).Split(','); 62: var inclusionList = (includeString ?? string.Empty).Split(','); 63:   64: if ((inclusionList.Length == 0 || inclusionList.Contains(linkedItem.TemplateName)) 65: && !exclusionList.Contains(linkedItem.TemplateName)) 66: { 67: return ValidatorResult.Valid; 68: } 69:   70: Text = GetText("The field \"{0}\" specifies an item which is based on template \"{1}\". This template is not valid for selection", GetFieldDisplayName(), linkedItem.TemplateName); 71:   72: return GetFailedResult(ValidatorResult.FatalError); 73: } 74:   75: protected override ValidatorResult GetMaxValidatorResult() 76: { 77: return ValidatorResult.FatalError; 78: } 79:   80: public override string Name 81: { 82: get { return @"LinkItemTemplateValidator"; } 83: } 84: }   In this blog entry, I have shared some code that I found useful in solving a problem that seemed fairly common.  Hopefully the next person that is looking for this answer finds it useful as well.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 04, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 04, 2010New ProjectsAcervo 2 - Gerenciador de coleções: Acervo 2 is a web application developed in ASP.NET 3.5 with Entity Framework, Coolite UI web controls and MySQL database that helps to catalog and ...AssemblyInfo Editor: AssemblyInfo Editor is a small Visual Studio 2010 extension I developed for my personal use mainly for automatically incrementing AssemblyVersion a...CommLine: It's a Command Line Interpreter. At the moment, it's a beta version, so I wait for developers that wanna help meFlowgraph Viewer: The flowgraph viewer enables users to view, build and share flowgraphs for the Crysis-franchise. It's built on Silverlight4, using MEF and Mvvmlight.Hash Calculator: WPF Windows 7 program to compute SHA1 & MD5 hash functions.MediaRSS library for .NET: This is a small set of libraries that allow you to create, read, and write MediaRSS files. By leveraging the syndication model object in .NET this...MEF Visualizer Tool: Helps to see what is going on inside the CompositionContainerone framework for developing asp.net project more elegent、flexible、and testable: if you are familiar with jsf、cdi、scoped javabean and work under asp.net, you may want to support aop and max flexibility and testability , all of ...Picasa Manager: A Silverlight Out Of Browser Application that Helps you manage your PicasaWeb albums in the easyest way possible.SharePhone: Windows Phone 7 library for connecting to SharePoint 2007/2010. Lets you work with SPWeb, SPList, reading/writing strong typed list items, user ...Silverlight Resource Extension: Silverlight Resource Extension. Extension silverlight project for use ResX resources and localize satellite dll.Silverlight Streamgraph: Streamgraph component for SilverlightTFTP Server: Managed TFTP server implementation, written in C#. Supports: - IPv4 and IPv6 - correct retry behavior. - TFTP options: block size, transfer size, a...Virtual UserGroup Video Helpers: This is a project that holds all the tools used by the C4MVC Virtual Usergroup. Tools written in C# and Powershell to automate, Live Meeting, Expr...xBlog: xBlog is a project to build a simple and extensible Blog Engine based on xml and linqXmlCodeEditor: XmlCodeEditor is a Silverlight 4 control based on RichTextControl that creates coloring and intellisense similar to the one in Visual Studio for ed...Zinc Launcher: Zinc Launcher is a simple Windows Media Center plugin that launches Zinc and attempts to manage the windows as seamlessly as possible. In addition ...New ReleasesAcervo 2 - Gerenciador de coleções: Acervo 2 - v1.0: Arquivos para implantação do sistema Acervo2 Aplicação web Web service Smart ClientAssemblyInfo Editor: Beta 1: Initial release of Assembly Info Editor. At this point, it is feature-complete and is relatively stable. There are undoubtedly some bugs to work o...Box2D.XNA: Box2D.XNA r70 Source Code and Solution: This version is synced to changeset 44697. This represents our official port of the C Box2D up to r70 on the Google Code project. With this versi...Boxee Launcher: Boxee Launcher Release 1.0.1.2: Will now stop Media Center playback before launching BoxeeBoxee Launcher: Boxee Launcher Release 1.0.1.3: Added a background window that attempts to display over the desktop and taskbar, and below Boxee and Media Center so that the desktop and taskbar a...CommLine: Beta Version 0.1: First Beta Of the AppCommLine: Source v0.1 Beta: Source Code C of 0.1 beta versionEncrypted Notes: Encrypted Notes 1.6.2: This is the latest version of Encrypted Notes (1.6.2), with general changes and improved randomness for the key generator. It has an installer that...Hash Calculator: HashCalculator: HashCalculator 1.0Hash Calculator: HashCalculator Source code: HashCalculator 1.0Hulu Launcher: Hulu Launcher 1.0.1.3: Added a background window that attempts to display over the desktop and taskbar, and below Hulu and Media Center so that the desktop and taskbar ar...Hulu Launcher: Hulu Launcher Release 1.0.1.2: Hulu Launcher will now stop playback in Media Center before launching Hulu Desktop.Innovative Games: 4.3 - Sprite Effects: Source code download for chapter 4.3 - "Sprite Effects"MediaRSS library for .NET: 0.1: Alpha release. Majority of MediaRSS spec is supported. A small set of unit test / sample code are included. A lightly tested CustomFormatter object...MEF Visualizer Tool: MEF Visualizer Tool 0.1: Help to see what going on in side CompositionContainer Container = new CompositionContainer( new AggregateCatalog( ...Ncqrs Framework - A CQRS framework for .NET: Ncqrs with sample application: This is the first release of the Ncqrs Framework. It contains the Ncqrs source code and a runnable sample application. All the code in this release...Rubik Cube's 3D Silverlight 3.0 Animated Solution: Rubik Cube 3D with Animated Solution: This project is a realization of Silverlight 3.0 Rubik Cube 3D with Animated Solution. The Solution is available for 3x3x3 cube, other features are...Scrabler: scrabler release 0.6.2.5: fixed a bug that werent executed some scriptsSharePhone: SharePhone: Initial release with basic functionality: Open SharePoint webs and subwebs Retrieve lists on SPWeb objects Read metadata/properties on lists ...SharePhone: SharePhone v.1.0.1: Fixed a bug that prevented saving list items to SharePointSharePoint Labs: SPLab4001A-FRA-Level100: SPLab4001A-FRA-Level100 This SharePoint Lab will teach you the first best practice you should apply when writing code with the SharePoint API. Lab ...Silverlight Resource Extension: ResourceExtension (alpha): Alpha version is not stable. Only for review.Silverlight Streamgraph: Port from processing.org: A port from the processing.org streamgraph. Code-heavy with very little XAML involved at this point.Theocratic Ministry School System: TMSS - Ver 1.1.1: What’s New! Added Menu Options 2010 Schedule Access 2007 Runtime There are still many uncompleted items so this is still a conceptual release....Theocratic Ministry School System: TMSS - Ver 1.1.2: Fixed the Schedule Import. Need needs to be tested. Click import button and make sure you can get the 2010 Schedule from the internet.thinktecture Starter STS (Community Edition): StarterSTS v1.0 RTW: Version 1.0 RTWTribe.Cache: Tribe.Cache Alpha - 0.2.0.0: Tribe.Cache Alpha - 0.2.0.0 - Now has sliding and absolute expiration on cache entries. Functional Alpha Release - But do not use in productionTwitterVB - A .NET Twitter Library: TwitterVB-2.3.1: This is mostly a minor release that adds br.st URL shortening to the menu (API key from http://br.st required)Virtu: Virtu 0.8.1: Source Requirements.NET Framework 3.5 with Service Pack 1 Visual Studio 2008 with Service Pack 1, or Visual C# 2008 Express Edition with Service Pa...Visual Studio DSite: Advanced C++ Calculator: An advanced visual c 2008 calculator that can do all your basic operations, plus some advanced mathematical functions. Source Code Only.xnaWebcam: xnaWebcam 0.3: xnaWebcam 0.3 Version 0.3: -ResolutionSet: 400x300 (Default), 800x600, 1024x720 -Settings Window got Icon -Settings Window Changes -DevConsole.cs ...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseASP.NET Ajax LibrarySilverlight ToolkitAJAX Control ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesDotNetNuke® Community EditionMost Active ProjectsGraffiti CMSnopCommerce. Open Source online shop e-commerce solution.RawrFacebook Developer ToolkitjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesLINQ to TwitterBlogEngine.NETN2 CMSBase Class LibrariesFarseer Physics Engine

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 11, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 11, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET Wiki Control: This ASP.NET user control allows you to embed a very useful wiki directly into your already existing ASP.NET website taking advantage of the popula...BabyLog: Log baby daily activity.buddyHome: buddyHome is a project that can make your home smarter. as good as your buddy. Cloud Community: Cloud Community makes it easier for organizations to have a simple to use community platform. Our mission is to create an easy to use community pl...Community Connectors for Microsoft CRM 4.0: Community Connectors for Microsoft CRM 4.0 allows Microsoft CRM 4.0 customers and partners to monitor and analyze customers’ interaction from their...Console Highlighter: Hightlights Microsoft Windows Command prompt (cmd.exe) by outputting ANSI VT100 Control sequences to color the output. These sequences are not hand...Cornell Store: This is IN NO WAY officially affiliated or related to the Cornell University store. Instead, this is a project that I am doing for a class. Ther...DevUtilities: This project is for creating some utility tools, and they will be useful during the development.DotNetNuke® Skin Maple: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by DyNNamite.co.uk. The package includes 4 color variations and sev...HRNet: HRNetIIS Web Site Monitoring: A software for monitor a particular web site on IIS, even if its IP is sharing between different web site.Iowa Code Camp: The source code for the Iowa Code Camp website.Leonidas: Leonidas is a virtual tutorLunch 'n Learn: The Lunch 'n Learn web application is an open source ASP.NET MVC application that allows you to setup lunch 'n learn presentations for your team, c...MNT Cryptography: A very simple cryptography classMooiNooi MVC2LINQ2SQL Web Databinder: mvc2linq2sql is a databinder for ASP.NET MVC that make able developer to clean bind object from HTML FORMS to Linq entities. Even 1 to N relations ...MoqBot: MoqBot is an auto mocking library for Moq and Ninject.mtExperience1: hoiMvcPager: MvcPager is a free paging component for ASP.NET MVC web application, it exposes a series of extension methods for using in ASP.NET MVC applications...OCal: OCal is based on object calisthenics to identify code smellsPex Custom Arithmetic Solver: Pex Custom Arithmetic Solver contains a collection of meta-heuristic search algorithms. The goal is to improve Pex's code coverage for code involvi...SetControls: Расширеные контролы для ASP.NET приложений. Полная информация ближе к релизу...shadowrage1597: CTC 195 Game Design classSharePoint Team-Mailer: A SharePoint 2007 solution that defines a generic CustomList for sending e-mails to SharePoint Groups.Sql Share: SQL Share is a collaboration tool used within the science to allow database engineers to work tightly with domain scientists.TechCalendar: Tech Events Calendar ASP.NET project.ZLYScript: A very simple script language compiler.New ReleasesALGLIB: ALGLIB 2.4.0: New ALGLIB release contains: improved versions of several linear algebra algorithms: QR decomposition, matrix inversion, condition number estimatio...AmiBroker Plug-Ins with C#: AmiBroker Plug-Ins v0.0.2: Source codes and a binaryAppFabric Caching UI Admin Tool: AppFabric Caching Beta 2 UI Admin Tool: System Requirements:.NET 4.0 RC AppFabric Caching Beta2 Test On:Win 7 (64x)Autodocs - WCF REST Automatic API Documentation Generator: Autodocs.ServiceModel.Web: This archive contains the reference DLL, instructions and license.Compact Plugs & Compact Injection: Compact Injection and Compact Plugs 1.1 Beta: First release of Compact Plugs (CP). The solution includes a simple example project of CP, called "TestCompactPlugs1". Also some fixes where made ...Console Highlighter: Console Highlighter 0.9 (preview release): Preliminary release.Encrypted Notes: Encrypted Notes 1.3: This is the latest version of Encrypted Notes (1.3). It has an installer - it will create a directory 'CPascoe' in My Documents. The last one was ...Family Tree Analyzer: Version 1.0.2: Family Tree Analyzer Version 1.0.2 This early beta version implements loading a gedcom file and displaying some basic reports. These reports inclu...FRC1103 - FRC Dashboard viewer: 2010 Documentation v0.1: This is my current version of the control system documentation for 2010. It isn't complete, but it has the information required for a custom dashbo...jQuery.cssLess: jQuery.cssLess 0.5 (Even less release): NEW - support for nested special CSS classes (like :hover) MAIN RELEASE This release, code "Even less", is the one that will interpret cssLess wit...MooiNooi MVC2LINQ2SQL Web Databinder: MooiNooi MVC2LINQ2SQL DataBinder: I didn't try this... I just took it off from my project. Please, tell me any problem implementing in your own development and I'll be pleased to h...MvcPager: MvcPager 1.2 for ASP.NET MVC 1.0: MvcPager 1.2 for ASP.NET MVC 1.0Mytrip.Mvc: Mytrip 1.0 preview 1: Article Manager Blog Manager L2S Membership(.NET Framework 3.5) EF Membership(.NET Framework 4) User Manager File Manager Localization Captcha ...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel 2007 Template, version 1.0.1.117: The NodeXL Excel 2007 template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 workbook. What's NewThis version adds ...Pex Custom Arithmetic Solver: PexCustomArithmeticSolver: This is the alpha release containing the Alternating Variable Method and Evolution Strategies to try and solve constraints over floating point vari...Scrum Sprint Monitor: v1.0.0.44877: What is new in this release? Major performance increase in animations (up to 50 fps from 2 fps) by replacing DropShadow effect with png bitmaps; ...sELedit: sELedit v1.0b: + Added support for empty strings / wstrings + Fixed: critical bug in configuration files (list 53)sPWadmin: pwAdmin v0.9_nightly: + Fixed: XML editor can now open and save character templates + Added: PWI item name database + Added: Plugin SupportTechCalendar: Events Calendar v.1.0: Initial release.The Silverlight Hyper Video Player [http://slhvp.com]: Beta 2: Beta 2.0 Some fixes from Beta 1, and a couple small enhancements. Intensive testing continues, and I will continue to update the code at least ever...ThreadSafe.Caching: 2010.03.10.1: Updates to the scavanging behaviour since last release. Scavenging will now occur every 30 seconds by default and all objects in the cache will be ...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30310.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: Email Sender (C++): The same Email Sender program that I but made in visual c plus plus 2008 instead of visual basic 2008.Web Forms MVP: Web Forms MVP CTP7: The release can be considered stable, and is in use behind several high traffic, public websites. It has been marked as a CTP release as it is not ...White Tiger: 0.0.3.1: Now you can load or create files with whatever root element you want *check f or sets file permisionsMost Popular ProjectsMetaSharpWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NET Ajax LibraryMost Active ProjectsUmbraco CMSRawrSDS: Scientific DataSet library and toolsN2 CMSFasterflect - A Fast and Simple Reflection APIjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETFarseer Physics Enginepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and Silverlight

  Read the article

• NINE Questions with Michelle Juett

  - by NINEQuestions

  Michelle Juett is one of the more interesting people I know, even though we’ve never met face to face. She’s part artist, part techie and all cool. We “met” via my good buddy George Clingerman and have plotting to take over the world, errr… I mean “collaborating” ever since. If you happen to live in the Seattle area, you can catch her and her work at Sakura Con on April 2-4, 2010 and various other gamer and art cons throughout the year. You can also find her on Twitter as @Shelldragon. Now that you know a little bit, I’ll let her tell you the rest of the story in these NINE Questions: 1. Where are you from? I was born in Clearwater, Florida. I like to tell people I'm from the Bermuda Triangle, it just makes explaining myself so much easier. My family moved to Washington when I was 5 and I've been in the Pacific Northwest ever since. We like to QQ about the rain but we really love the green trees and clean water. 2. What do you do? I fight evil by moonlight and win love by daylight.. or something like that.  I’ve been in quality assurance for games during the day since January 2008 and an artist for life. I currently work in QA for a really awesome game company in Bellevue.  At home, I work on personal digital art, making game assets as well as other random freelance projects as they pop up. 3. How did you get to where you are now? I'm still not where I want to be but I'm getting closer. The biggest piece of advice I can give is to work hard and never settle for the minimum required. I tend to overwork myself but I've never regretted it. You can want something really bad but if you aren't willing to work for it, then you can't expect it to just happen. I've always drawn and had an unhealthy love for video games that I was told I’d grow out of.  I knew I would not ‘grow out’ of games and that real adults make them and I could too. After I graduated, in searching for jobs, I discovered game testing. I figured this would be a good way to get my foot in the door and start networking. I’ve worked with consoles, websites and now, PC games.  I stuck with my journey, although it has been a rocky one, daylighting as a tester and moonlighting as an artist. I'm still on that journey but I wouldn't have it any other way. Test has given me a perspective that is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain any other way. It gives an unconditional respect for other hard working testers and an insight into creative problem solving. 4. So video game testing probably sounds WAY cooler than the reality. What's it like? What's a given day for you? Game testers don't get a lot of respect because of their stigmas and the fact most people don't actually know what we do.  People hear about the opening and closing disc trays all day. Many places do treat their testers like numbers. It all depends on where you work and how awesome your company is. I've had to deal with a lot of bad work situations to get to a really good one. QA exists to ensure the game is as flawless and enjoyable as it can be by the time it has to leave the nest and go out into the world. This includes everything obvious: “can I beat the level and save the princess?” to the more obscure: ‘What happens when I lose internet connection while trying to save right before falling into a pit to my death while holding the jump key then my cat pulls out my memory card and hides it in her litter box?” On the dev side, for developers, testers can be very scary people. Especially when the test team is not in house and you can’t see each other’s faces.  I've seen both sides. We don't mean to hurt your feelings. We really DO love you and want your game to be the best it can be! It can be some serious tough love. 5. You are also an accomplished artist. Got any major projects right now you'd like to talk about? LOL, I don't know if I’d say I'm an accomplished artist just yet. I’m still a long way from where I want to be. I figure that’s what makes you grow though: the desire to never stop improving. I like QA but I want to be a full time artist. I was lucky enough to register for a table at Sakura Con in the 11 second window that the tables sold out. As such, I’ll be selling my wares in the Artist Alley April 2-4th. Part of preparing for this is actually making the art to be sold there. Anime is a fun pass time but I don’t draw a whole lot of it so I’m making up for lost time. As I seem to enjoy burying myself in work, I’m an art lead for a secret project that’s so secret I might be killed tonight for even mentioning it. I also take on various freelance projects and do what I can to help out indie games. I discovered the XNA community a year and a half ago and developed a love for Indies when I was writing a weekly newsletter on XBLA news. I’m a little late to the party but I find myself in a unique position where I am an artist and also have technical skills in games. While not programmer myself, I have a lot of game sense and experience. I hope to make some awesome happen. Lastly, I have an ongoing web comic Shell’s Angels) that tends to get neglected when I get busy. I still love drawing comics and keep a little book with me to sketch down ideas as they pop into my head. I may pick it back up again as a larger project sometime in the future. 6. Can you talk about any of the other freelance projects you're doing or are you sworn to secrecy on those too? We wouldn't want a team of game developer ninjas to take you out or anything. All my projects are currently 2d. I have personal projects such as the ongoing comic as well as a graphic novel I've been picking at here and there. My main focus until April is Sakura Con, Sakura Con, Sakura Con.  I see it as a great way to get exposure and convention experience. I found out I love conventions a couple years ago and I want to get more involved in them. 7. As an artist, what is your weapon of choice? What do you use to get most of your stuff done? I am a Photoshop Hero and I have the hoodie to prove it. (http://www.pennyarcademerch.com/pah090011.html) I've dabbled in other paint programs but I always gravitate back to Photoshop. She is my one true love. I'd like to learn programs like Flash or Anime Studio when I get a bit more time because of their animation abilities. I've worked on frame by frame animation forever but I would love to learn 2d rigging. Still, nothing can compare to a simple sketchpad and a pencil. I always have one on me in case I come across or think of something interesting and can't get to a computer. If the Courier ever comes to exist it will be an ideal weapon for me. 8. You did some videos too, depicting the art creation process. What was the motivation behind those? The creative process is just as important as the final product, if not more so.  I've always loved watching speed paint videos and wanted to try it out myself. Turns out it's a lot of work and time but it's definitely fun to go back and rewatch them. Art isn't always the end result and is more often the process itself. 9. Got any interesting tattoos? Designed any for yourself or other people? Not yet, but not for lack of desire. I've toiled over what and where for years. Last year, I finally decided the back of my shoulders would be the place. Like anything permanent, I want it to have meaning. I thought of somehow incorporating games but I couldn't find something I felt would stand the test of time even with all the classic sprite games. I'm very picky so we'll see if I can get something solid decided. Come see me at Sakura Con April 2 -4!!!

  Read the article

• Interview with Lenz Grimmer about MySQL Connect

  - by Keith Larson

  Keith Larson: Thank you for allowing me to do this interview with you.  I have been talking with a few different Oracle ACEs   about the MySQL Connect Conference. I figured the MySQL community might be missing you as well. You have been very busy with Oracle Linux but I know you still have an eye on the MySQL Community. How have things been?Lenz Grimmer: Thanks for including me in this series of interviews, I feel honored! I've read the other interviews, and really liked them. I still try to follow what's going on over in the MySQL community and it's good to see that many of the familiar faces are still around. Over the course of the 9 years that I was involved with MySQL, many colleagues and contacts turned into good friends and we still maintain close relationships.It's been almost 1.5 years ago that I moved into my new role here in the Linux team at Oracle, and I really enjoy working on a Linux distribution again (I worked for SUSE before I joined MySQL AB in 2002). I'm still learning a lot - Linux in the data center has greatly evolved in so many ways and there are a lot of new and exciting technologies to explore. Keith Larson: What were your thoughts when you heard that Oracle was going to deliver the MySQL Connect conference to the MySQL Community?Lenz Grimmer: I think it's testament to the fact that Oracle deeply cares about MySQL, despite what many skeptics may say. What started as "MySQL Sunday" two years ago has now evolved into a full-blown sub-conference, with 80 sessions at one of the largest corporate IT events in the world. I find this quite telling, not many products at Oracle enjoy this level of exposure! So it certainly makes me feel proud to see how far MySQL has come. Keith Larson: Have you had a chance to look over the sessions? What are your thoughts on them?Lenz Grimmer: I did indeed look at the final schedule.The content committee did a great job with selecting these sessions. I'm glad to see that the content selection was influenced by involving well-known and respected members of the MySQL community. The sessions cover a broad range of topics and technologies, both covering established topics as well as recent developments. Keith Larson: When you get a chance, what sessions do you plan on attending?Lenz Grimmer: I will actually be manning the Oracle booth in the exhibition area on one of these days, so I'm not sure if I'll have a lot of time attending sessions. But if I do, I'd love to see the keynotes and catch some of the sessions that talk about recent developments and new features in MySQL, High Availability and Clustering . Quite a lot has happened and it's hard to keep up with this constant flow of new MySQL releases.In particular, the following sessions caught my attention: MySQL Connect Keynote: The State of the Dolphin Evaluating MySQL High-Availability Alternatives CERN’s MySQL “as a Service” Deployment with Oracle VM: Empowering Users MySQL 5.6 Replication: Taking Scalability and High Availability to the Next Level What’s New in MySQL Server 5.6? MySQL Security: Past and Present MySQL at Twitter: Development and Deployment MySQL Community BOF MySQL Connect Keynote: MySQL Perspectives Keith Larson: So I will ask you just like I have asked the others I have interviewed, any tips that you would give to people for handling the long hours at conferences?Lenz Grimmer: Wear comfortable shoes and make sure to drink a lot! Also prepare a plan of the sessions you would like to attend beforehand and familiarize yourself with the venue, so you can get to the next talk in time without scrambling to find the location. The good thing about piggybacking on such a large conference like Oracle OpenWorld is that you benefit from the whole infrastructure. For example, there is a nice schedule builder that helps you to keep track of your sessions of interest. Other than that, bring enough business cards and talk to people, build up your network among your peers and other MySQL professionals! Keith Larson: What features of the MySQL 5.6 release do you look forward to the most ?Lenz Grimmer: There has been solid progress in so many areas like the InnoDB Storage Engine, the Optimizer, Replication or Performance Schema, it's hard for me to really highlight anything in particular. All in all, MySQL 5.6 sounds like a very promising release. I'm confident it will follow the tradition that Oracle already established with MySQL 5.5, which received a lot of praise even from very critical members of the MySQL community. If I had to name a single feature, I'm particularly and personally happy that the precise GIS functions have finally made it into a GA release - that was long overdue. Keith Larson:  In your opinion what is the best reason for someone to attend this event?Lenz Grimmer: This conference is an excellent opportunity to get in touch with the key people in the MySQL community and ecosystem and to get facts and information from the domain experts and developers that work on MySQL. The broad range of topics should attract people from a variety of roles and relations to MySQL, beginning with Developers and DBAs, to CIOs considering MySQL as a viable solution for their requirements. Keith Larson: You will be attending MySQL Connect and have some Oracle Linux Demos, do you see a growing demand for MySQL on Oracle Linux ?Lenz Grimmer: Yes! Oracle Linux is our recommended Linux distribution and we have a good relationship to the MySQL engineering group. They use Oracle Linux as a base Linux platform for development and QA, so we make sure that MySQL and Oracle Linux are well tested together. Setting up a MySQL server on Oracle Linux can be done very quickly, and many customers recognize the benefits of using them both in combination.Because Oracle Linux is available for free (including free bug fixes and errata), it's an ideal choice for running MySQL in your data center. You can run the same Linux distribution on both your development/staging systems as well as on the production machines, you decide which of these should be covered by a support subscription and at which level of support. This gives you flexibility and provides some really attractive cost-saving opportunities. Keith Larson: Since I am a Linux user and fan, what is on the horizon for  Oracle Linux?Lenz Grimmer: We're working hard on broadening the ecosystem around Oracle Linux, building up partnerships with ISVs and IHVs to certify Oracle Linux as a fully supported platform for their products. We also continue to collaborate closely with the Linux kernel community on various projects, to make sure that Linux scales and performs well on large systems and meets the demands of today's data centers. These improvements and enhancements will then rolled into the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, which is the key ingredient that sets Oracle Linux apart from other distributions. We also have a number of ongoing projects which are making good progress, and I'm sure you'll hear more about this at the upcoming OpenWorld conference :) Keith Larson: What is something that more people should be aware of when it comes to Oracle Linux and MySQL ?Lenz Grimmer: Many people assume that Oracle Linux is just tuned for Oracle products, such as the Oracle Database or our Engineered Systems. While it's of course true that we do a lot of testing and optimization for these workloads, Oracle Linux is and will remain a general-purpose Linux distribution that is a very good foundation for setting up a LAMP-Stack, for example. We also provide MySQL RPM packages for Oracle Linux, so you can easily stay up to date if you need something newer than what's included in the stock distribution.One more thing that is really unique to Oracle Linux is Ksplice, which allows you to apply security patches to the running Linux kernel, without having to reboot. This ensures that your MySQL database server keeps up and running and is not affected by any downtime. Keith Larson: What else would you like to add ?Lenz Grimmer: Thanks again for getting in touch with me, I appreciated the opportunity. I'm looking forward to MySQL Connect and Oracle OpenWorld and to meet you and many other people from the MySQL community that I haven't seen for quite some time! Keith Larson:  Thank you Lenz!

  Read the article

• LLBLGen Pro v3.1 released!

  - by FransBouma

  Yesterday we released LLBLGen Pro v3.1! Version 3.1 comes with new features and enhancements, which I'll describe briefly below. v3.1 is a free upgrade for v3.x licensees. What's new / changed? Designer Extensible Import system. An extensible import system has been added to the designer to import project data from external sources. Importers are plug-ins which import project meta-data (like entity definitions, mappings and relational model data) from an external source into the loaded project. In v3.1, an importer plug-in for importing project elements from existing LLBLGen Pro v3.x project files has been included. You can use this importer to create source projects from which you import parts of models to build your actual project with. Model-only relationships. In v3.1, relationships of the type 1:1, m:1 and 1:n can be marked as model-only. A model-only relationship isn't required to have a backing foreign key constraint in the relational model data. They're ideal for projects which have to work with relational databases where changes can't always be made or some relationships can't be added to (e.g. the ones which are important for the entity model, but are not allowed to be added to the relational model for some reason). Custom field ordering. Although fields in an entity definition don't really have an ordering, it can be important for some situations to have the entity fields in a given order, e.g. when you use compound primary keys. Field ordering can be defined using a pop-up dialog which can be opened through various ways, e.g. inside the project explorer, model view and entity editor. It can also be set automatically during refreshes based on new settings. Command line relational model data refresher tool, CliRefresher.exe. The command line refresh tool shipped with v2.6 is now available for v3.1 as well Navigation enhancements in various designer elements. It's now easier to find elements like entities, typed views etc. in the project explorer from editors, to navigate to related entities in the project explorer by right clicking a relationship, navigate to the super-type in the project explorer when right-clicking an entity and navigate to the sub-type in the project explorer when right-clicking a sub-type node in the project explorer. Minor visual enhancements / tweaks LLBLGen Pro Runtime Framework Entity creation is now up to 30% faster and takes 5% less memory. Creating an entity object has been optimized further by tweaks inside the framework to make instantiating an entity object up to 30% faster. It now also takes up to 5% less memory than in v3.0 Prefetch Path node merging is now up to 20-25% faster. Setting entity references required the creation of a new relationship object. As this relationship object is always used internally it could be cached (as it's used for syncing only). This increases performance by 20-25% in the merging functionality. Entity fetches are now up to 20% faster. A large number of tweaks have been applied to make entity fetches up to 20% faster than in v3.0. Full WCF RIA support. It's now possible to use your LLBLGen Pro runtime framework powered domain layer in a WCF RIA application using the VS.NET tools for WCF RIA services. WCF RIA services is a Microsoft technology for .NET 4 and typically used within silverlight applications. SQL Server DQE compatibility level is now per instance. (Usable in Adapter). It's now possible to set the compatibility level of the SQL Server Dynamic Query Engine (DQE) per instance of the DQE instead of the global setting it was before. The global setting is still available and is used as the default value for the compatibility level per-instance. You can use this to switch between CE Desktop and normal SQL Server compatibility per DataAccessAdapter instance. Support for COUNT_BIG aggregate function (SQL Server specific). The aggregate function COUNT_BIG has been added to the list of available aggregate functions to be used in the framework. Minor changes / tweaks I'm especially pleased with the import system, as that makes working with entity models a lot easier. The import system lets you import from another LLBLGen Pro v3 project any entity definition, mapping and / or meta-data like table definitions. This way you can build repository projects where you store model fragments, e.g. the building blocks for a customer-order system, a user credential model etc., any model you can think of. In most projects, you'll recognize that some parts of your new model look familiar. In these cases it would have been easier if you would have been able to import these parts from projects you had pre-created. With LLBLGen Pro v3.1 you can. For example, say you have an Oracle schema called CRM which contains the bread 'n' butter customer-order-product kind of model. You create an entity model from that schema and save it in a project file. Now you start working on another project for another customer and you have to use SQL Server. You also start using model-first development, so develop the entity model from scratch as there's no existing database. As this customer also requires some CRM like entity model, you import the entities from your saved Oracle project into this new SQL Server targeting project. Because you don't work with Oracle this time, you don't import the relational meta-data, just the entities, their relationships and possibly their inheritance hierarchies, if any. As they're now entities in your project you can change them a bit to match the new customer's requirements. This can save you a lot of time, because you can re-use pre-fab model fragments for new projects. In the example above there are no tables yet (as you work model first) so using the forward mapping capabilities of LLBLGen Pro v3 creates the tables, PK constraints, Unique Constraints and FK constraints for you. This way you can build a nice repository of model fragments which you can re-use in new projects.

  Read the article

• Introducción a ENUM (E.164 Number Mapping)

  - by raul.goycoolea

  E.164 Number Mapping (ENUM o Enum) se diseñó para resolver la cuestión de como se pueden encontrar servicios de internet mediante un número telefónico, es decir cómo se pueden usar los los teléfonos, que solamente tienen 12 teclas, para acceder a servicios de Internet. La parte más básica de ENUM es por tanto la convergencia de las redes del STDP y la IP; ENUM hace que pueda haber una correspondencia entre un número telefónico y un identificador de Internet. En síntesis, Enum es un conjunto de protocolos para convertir números E.164 en URIs, y viceversa, de modo que el sistema de numeración E.164 tenga una función de correspondencia con las direcciones URI en Internet. Esta función es necesaria porque un número telefónico no tiene sentido en el mundo IP, ni una dirección IP tiene sentido en las redes telefónicas. Así, mediante esta técnica, las comunicaciones cuyo destino se marque con un número E.164, puedan terminar en el identificador correcto (número E.164 si termina en el STDP, o URI si termina en redes IP). La solución técnica de mirar en una base de datos cual es el identificador de destino tiene consecuencias muy interesantes, como que la llamada se pueda terminar donde desee el abonado llamado. Esta es una de las características que ofrece ENUM : el destino concreto, el terminal o terminales de terminación, no lo decide quien inicia la llamada o envía el mensaje sino la persona que es llamada o recibe el mensaje, que ha escrito sus preferencias en una base de datos. En otras palabras, el destinatario de la llamada decide cómo quiere ser contactado, tanto si lo que se le comunica es un email, o un sms, o telefax, o una llamada de voz. Cuando alguien quiera llamarle a usted, lo que tiene que hacer el llamante es seleccionar su nombre (el del llamado) en la libreta de direcciones del terminal o marcar su número ENUM. Una aplicación informática obtendrá de una base de datos los datos de contacto y disponibilidad que usted decidió. Y el mensaje le será remitido tal como usted especificó en dicha base de datos. Esto es algo nuevo que permite que usted, como persona llamada, defina sus preferencias de terminación para cualquier tipo de contenido. Por ejemplo, usted puede querer que todos los emails le sean enviados como sms o que los mensajes de voz se le remitan como emails; las comunicaciones ya no dependen de donde esté usted o deque tipo de terminal utiliza (teléfono, pda, internet). Además, con ENUM usted puede gestionar la portabilidad de sus números fijos y móviles. ENUM emplea una técnica de búsqueda indirecta en una base de datos que tiene los registros NAPTR ("Naming Authority Pointer Resource Records" tal como lo define el RFC 2915), y que utiliza el número telefónico Enum como clave de búsqueda, para obtener qué URIs corresponden a cada número telefónico. La base de datos que almacena estos registros es del tipo DNS.Si bien en uno de sus diversos usos sirve para facilitar las llamadas de usuarios de VoIP entre redes tradicionales del STDP y redes IP, debe tenerse en cuenta que ENUM no es una función de VoIP sino que es un mecanismo de conversión entre números/identificadores. Por tanto no debe ser confundido con el uso normal de enrutar las llamadas de VoIP mediante los protocolos SIP y H.323. ENUM puede ser muy útil para aquellas organizaciones que quieran tener normalizada la manera en que las aplicaciones acceden a los datos de comunicación de cada usuario. FundamentosPara que la convergencia entre el Sistema Telefónico Disponible al Público (STDP) y la Telefonía por Internet o Voz sobre IP (VoIP) y que el desarrollo de nuevos servicios multimedia tengan menos obstáculos, es fundamental que los usuarios puedan realizar sus llamadas tal como están acostumbrados a hacerlo, marcando números. Para eso, es preciso que haya un sistema universal de correspondencia de número a direcciones IP (y viceversa) y que las diferentes redes se puedan interconectar. Hay varias fórmulas que permiten que un número telefónico sirva para establecer comunicación con múltiples servicios. Una de estas fórmulas es el Electronic Number Mapping System ENUM, normalizado por el grupo de tareas especiales de ingeniería en Internet (IETF, Internet engineering task force), del que trata este artículo, que emplea la numeración E.164, los protocolos y la infraestructura telefónica para acceder indirectamente a diferentes servicios. Por tanto, se accede a un servicio mediante un identificador numérico universal: un número telefónico tradicional. ENUM permite comunicar las direcciones del mundo IP con las del mundo telefónico, y viceversa, sin problemas. Antes de entrar en mayores profundidades, conviene dar una breve pincelada para aclarar cómo se organiza la correspondencia entre números o URI. Para ello imaginemos una llamada que se inicia desde el servicio telefónico tradicional con destino a un número Enum. En ENUM Público, el abonado o usuario Enum a quien va destinada lallamada, habrá decidido incluir en la base de datos Enum uno o varios URI o números E.164, que forman una lista con sus preferencias para terminar la llamada. Y el sistema como se explica más adelante, elegirá cual es el número o URI adecuado para dicha terminación. Por tanto como resultado de la consulta a la base dedatos Enum siempre se da una relación unívoca entre el número Enum marcado y el de terminación, conforme a los deseos de la persona llamada.Variedades de ENUMUna posible fuente de confusión cuando se trata sobre ENUM es la variedad de soluciones o sistemas que emplean este calificativo. Lo habitual es que cuando se haga una referencia a ENUM se trate de uno de los siguientes casos: ENUM Público: Es la visión original de ENUM, como base de datos pública, parecida a un directorio, donde el abonado "opta" a ser incluido en la base de datos, que está gestionada en el dominio e164.arpa, delegando a cada país la gestión de la base de datos y la numeración. También se conoce como ENUM de usuario. Carrier ENUM, o ENUM Infraestructura, o de Operador: Cuando grupos de operadores proveedores de servicios de comunicaciones electrónicas acuerdan compartir la información de los abonados por medio de ENUM mediante acuerdos privados. En este caso son los operadores quienes controlan la información del abonado en vez de hacerlo (optar) los propios abonados. Carrier ENUM o ENUM de Operador también se conoce como Infrastructure ENUM o ENUM Infraestructura, y está siendo normalizado por IETF para la interconexión de VoIP (mediante acuerdos de peering). Como se explicará en la correspondiente sección, también se puede utilizar para la portabilidad o conservación de número. ENUM Privado: Un operador de telefonía o de VoIP, o un ISP, o un gran usuario, puede utilizar las técnicas de ENUM en sus redes y en las de sus clientes sin emplear DNS públicos, con DNS privados o internos. Resulta fácil imaginar como puede utilizarse esta técnica para que compañías multinacionales, o bancos, o agencias de viajes, tengan planes de numeración muy coherentes y eficaces. Cómo funciona ENUMPara conocer cómo funciona Enum, le remitimos a la página correspondiente a ENUM Público, puesto que esa variedad de Enum es la típica, la que dió lugar a todos los procedimientos y normas de IETF .Más detalles sobre: @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } H4 { margin-bottom: 0.08in } H4.ctl { font-family: "Lohit Hindi" } A:link { so-language: zxx } -- ENUM Público. En esta página se explica con cierto detalle como funciona Enum Carrier ENUM o ENUM de Operador ENUM Privado Normas técnicas: RFC 2915: NAPTR RR. The Naming Authority Pointer (NAPTR) DNS Resource Record RFC 3761: ENUM Protocol. The E.164 to Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS) Application (ENUM). (obsoletes RFC 2916). RFC 3762: Usage of H323 addresses in ENUM Protocol RFC 3764: Usage of SIP addresses in ENUM Protocol RFC 3824: Using E.164 numbers with SIP RFC 4769: IANA Registration for an Enumservice Containing Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) Signaling Information RFC 3026: Berlin Liaison Statement RFC 3953: Telephone Number Mapping (ENUM) Service Registration for Presence Services RFC 2870: Root Name Server Operational Requirements RFC 3482: Number Portability in the Global Switched Telephone Network (GSTN): An Overview RFC 2168: Resolution of Uniform Resource Identifiers using the Domain Name System Organizaciones relacionadas con ENUM RIPE - Adimistrador del nivel 0 de ENUM e164.arpa. ITU-T TSB - Unión Internacional de Telecomunicaciones ETSI - European Telecommunications Standards Institute VisionNG - Administrador del rango ENUM 878-10 IETF ENUM Chapter

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 09, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 09, 2010New Projects.NET Transactional File Manager: Transactional File Manager is a .NET API that supports including file system operations such as file copy, move, delete in a transaction. It's an i...3D World Studio Content Pipeline for Windows Phone 7: This is a port of PhotonicGames' project: http://xna3dws.codeplex.com/releases/view/42994 for the Windows Phone 7 tools (XNA 4.0 CTP).Advanced Script Editor for 3D Rad: Advanced Script Editor makes it easier for 3D Rad coders to write scripts. Developed in C#, it features a functions list, a favourites list, object...Ajax ASP.Net Forum: A fast & lightweight open source free forum developed in ASP.Net 3.5, AJAX, CSS, SQL & Javascript Cache (filter-sort-move through table records at ...Axon: Axon is the home automation system that I will be running in my home. It will be a collection of different technologies and projects, often experim...BigBallz: Projeto de site de Bolões para campeonatos diversos. A princípio pensado para copa do mundo de futebol de 2010BigfootMVC: MVC Framework for DotNetNukeBigfootSQL: A StringBuilder for SQL. BigfootSQL was built with simplicity in mind. It assumes that you are comfortable writing SQL but dislike effort required ...Bxf (Basic XAML Framework): Basic Xaml Framework (Bxf) is a simple, streamlined set of UI components designed to demonstrate the minimum framework functionality required to ma...elZerf - elektronische Zeiterfassung: elektronisches Zeiterfassungsystem im Rahmen der Seminararbeit im Modul Web-Anwendungsprogrammierung.IntoFactories.Net - Samples: Project to host samples created by members of the IntoFactories.NET Team blog.Lanchonete: Sistema para controle de lanchonetes. Medieval Dynasties: Medieval Dynasties is a game written in C# 3.5 and XNA 3.1 at the moment. It is inspired by Crusader Kings, Total War and Civilization.PMMsg: A project to replace the standard messaging client on the Windows Mobile platform. Mainly geared towards Windows Mobile 6.5.3 VGA devices. Also an...PunkPong: PunkPong is an open source "Pong" alike game totally written in DHTML (JavaScript, CSS and HTML) that uses keyboard or mouse. This cross-platform a...Renegade Legion Fighter Calculator: In working on assigning fighters to squadrons, flights, and groups for a campaign, I was struck by the sheer amount of calculations I had to make. ...Sharpotify - Spotify .Net Library: Sharpotify is a Spotify library in C#. It is based in Jotify and SharPot projects. It is not a libspotify wrapper, It is a full .Net Spotify protoc...Silverlight load on demand with MEF: With MEF, a Silverlight control can be split in several packages(xap files). Each package can contain one or more pages and it will download on dem...SOLID by example: Source code examples to undestood solid design principles. Most of them were taken from http://www.lostechies.com/SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services RS.EXE Supporting Forms Authentication: A version of RS.EXE that you can use with Forms Authentication in Native Mode. Use the following arguments to specify credentials (just like Basic ...Stripper: Stripper Remove Diacritics and other unwanted caracter to fabric a more standardized file naming.study: studyUncoverPIC: UncoverPIC is a Silverlight Game strongly inspired to the famous Arcade Game "GalsPanic" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gals_Panic ). It was dev...Unity3D Untitled MMO: Unity3D Untitled MMO FrameworkUnnamedShop: UnnamedShopXBStudio.asp.net.automation: A Unit Testing Automation library for asp.netXBStudio.Web: XBStudio Web ApplicationNew Releases3D World Studio Content Pipeline for Windows Phone 7: Initial Release (0.1): This is the first release of the project, with plenty of hackery and kludges to go around, but it mostly works! Let me know if you hit any bugs.Acies: Acies - Alpha Build 0.0.10: Alpha release. Requires Microsoft XNA Framework Redistributable 3.1 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=53867a2a-e249-4560-...Advanced Script Editor for 3D Rad: Advanced Script Editor - Version 2.6: Despite various previous releases on the 3D Rad forum, this is the first release on CodePlex.Ajax ASP.Net Forum: First Release: First Release prior to CodePlex Publish (send to admins)So, it doesn't all finish VERSION: 0.1.2 FEATURES Main Home Where all the Forums (called ...Artist Follower for Microsoft Access: Artist Follower 0.5.1: Artists Follower changes: Just one form to manage artists and links!!!Artist Follower for Microsoft Access: Artists Follower 0.5.0: This is the first release of Artist Follower.ASP.NET MVC SiteMap provider - MvcSiteMapProvider: MvcSiteMapProvider 2.0.0 CTP1: This is a community technology preview of MvcSiteMapProvider version 2.0. It is not backwards compatible with older MvcSiteMapProvider versions. ...B&W Port Scanner: Black`n`White Port Scanner 4.0: Version 4 includes: - Improved vulnerability detection tools - Report Creation - Improved Stability - Much better port information database - Nume...BaseCalendar: BaseControls 1.1: BaseControls 1.1 contains the BaseCalendar ASP.NET control. Changes: Rendering TH by default inside THEAD. Added option (ShowMinNumWeeks) to r...BigfootSQL: BigfootSQL Source Code: BigfootSQL C# Version 01Commerce Server 2009 Orders using Pipelines in a Console Application: ConsoleApplication To PLace Orders: ConsoleApplication To PLace Orders with Commerce Server 2009 foundationCommunity Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V33: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V34: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...ContainerOne - C# application server: V0.1.2.0: New minor release containing: Integration test component for runtime testing Refactored and cleaned solution files First unit testsExtend SmallBasic: Teaching Extensions v.020: Moved Tortoise.approve to ProgramWindow.TakeScreenShot()fleet It: v0.06 Alpha: v0.06 Alpha - Features Caching implemented for fleets Various Bug fixes Implemented Settings. Resolved logical issue with Getting fleets U...Frotz.NET: Frotz.NET B2: In addition to B1 changes: - Added ZTools to enable debugging view of zcode files - Added rudimentary scroll back buffer. B1 Changes: - Got Adapt...FsObserver: FsObserver 2.0: This is basically the same as FsObserver 1.0 but the "-help" documentation has been cleaned up somewhat and the code has been refactored so that it...GPdotNET - Genetic Programming Tool: GPdotNETv1.0: GPdotNET v.1.0 - more details on http.bhrnjica.wordpress.com/gpdotnetHERB.IQ: Alpha 0.1 Source code release 8: Alpha 0.1 Source code release 8imdb movie downloader: myImdb 0.9.3: myImdb 0.9.3imdb movie downloader: myImdb 0.9.4: myImdb 0.9.4jccc .NET smart framework: jccc .NET smart framework version 1.2010.06.07: jccc .NET smart framework version 1.2010.06.07 added oracle databases supportLongBar: LongBar 2.1 Build 313: - Fixed library and updates to work with updated live services - Options: You can disable shadow nowMDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.17.59623: Fixed FileFactory provider. Improvied postpone policies. Added network request limiter.MediaCoder.NET: MediaCoder.NET v1.0 beta 1.1: Installer for MediaCoder.NET v1.0 beta1.1. It can now convert files with spaces in the path or filename. I have also created filter for the SaveFil...MediaCoder.NET: MediaCoder.NET v1.0 beta 1.1 Source Code: Source Code for MediaCoder.NET v1.0 beta 1.1.mesoBoard: mesoBoard - 0.9.1 beta: Fixed file download permissions Released under the New BSD License.MPCLI: Alpha Release (0.1.0.0): This release has core functionality and is considered a potential candidate for a feature complete release of this library. However, suggestions fo...N2 CMS: 2.0: N2 is a lightweight CMS framework for ASP.NET. It helps professional developers build great web sites that anyone can update. Major Changes (1.5 -...NHTrace: NHTrace-47571: NHTrace-47571NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Class Libraries, version 1.0.1.125: The NodeXL class libraries can be used to display network graphs in .NET applications. To include a NodeXL network graph in a WPF desktop or Windo...NSoup: NSoup 0.2: NSoup 0.2 corresponds to jsoup version 1.1.1. List of changes can be viewed here.Opalis Community Releases: Integration Pack for Data Manipulation: The Integration Pack for Data Manipulation enables you to perform a wider variety of data manipulation tasks as well as aggregate data into common ...Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL) Tool: PAL v2.0 Beta 1: Fixed Counter Sorting: Fixed a minor bug where duplicate counter expression paths were not being removed. Analysis Added: Added LogicalDisk Read/...RoTwee: RoTwee (12.0.0.0): Trial version. 17925 Make it possible to change window sizeSharpotify - Spotify .Net Library: Sharpotify.Library 1.0: Sharpotify Library: Stable release. You can connect with spotify, search, browse (tracks, albums, artists), get a music stream, create and edit you...Silverlight load on demand with MEF: mal.Web.Silverlight.MEF 1.0.0.0: mal.Web.Silverlight.MEF 1.0.0.0sMAPtool: sMAPtool v0.7e (without Maps): + Added: color value expansion bar for hmap (right click to select color scheme) + Added: more complex hmap editing, uses now 4 point bounding rect...SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services RS.EXE Supporting Forms Authentication: Initial release: Enjoy!Stripper: Stripper 0.1.1 (CLi): Stripper Remove Diacritics and other unwanted caracters to fabric a more standardized file naming. Especially French caracter and maybe other lang...Unity3D Untitled MMO: v1: versionUrzaGatherer: UrzaGatherer 2.01a: New version with some minors bugs corrected.VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30608.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30608.1: Automatic drop of latest buildWatermarker.NET: 0.1.3811: A newer version with some improvements. I release this as a .zip archive, because settings are added here, so there will be .exe and .config files.Yet Another GPS: Alfa Release: Alfa working releaseMost Popular ProjectsDozer Enterprise Library for .NETEmployee Management SystemWiiMote PhysicsVisualStudio 2010 JavaScript OutliningSpider CompilerConcurrent CacheOil Slick Live FeedsCSUFVGDC Summer JamWinGetSiteMap Utility for DNN Blog ModuleMost Active ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRhyduino - Arduino and Managed CodejQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesRawrNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleAndrew's XNA HelpersBlogEngine.NETStyleCopCustomer Portal Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

  Read the article

• Oracle Coherence & Oracle Service Bus: REST API Integration

  - by Nino Guarnacci

  This post aims to highlight one of the features found in Oracle Coherence which allows it to be easily added and integrated inside a wider variety of projects.  The features in question are the REST API exposed by the Coherence nodes, with which you can interact in the wider mode in memory data grid.Oracle Coherence and Oracle Service Bus are natively integrated through a feature found in the Oracle Service Bus, which allows you to use the coherence grid cache during the configuration phase of a business service. This feature allows you to use an intermediate layer of cache to retrieve the answers from previous invocations of the same service, without necessarily having to invoke the real business service again. Directly from the web console of Oracle Service Bus, you can decide the policies of eviction of the objects / answers and define the discriminating parameters that identify their uniqueness.The coherence REST APIs, however, allow you to integrate both products for other necessities enabling realization of new architectures design.  Consider coherence’s node as a simple service which interoperates through the stardard services and in particular REST (with JSON and XML). Thinking of coherence as a company’s shared service, able to have an implementation of a centralized “map and reduce” which you can access  by a huge variety of protocols (transport and envelopes).An amazing step forward for those who still imagine connectors and code. This type of integration does not require writing custom code or complex implementation to be self-supported. The added value is made unique by the incredible value of both products independently, and still more out of their simple and robust integration.As already mentioned this scenario discovers a hidden new door behind the columns of these two products. The door leads to new ideas and perspectives for enterprise architectures that increasingly wink to next-generation applications: simple and dynamic, perhaps towards the mobile and web 2.0.Below, a small and simple demo useful to demonstrate how easily is to integrate these two products using the Coherence REST API. This demo is also intended to imagine new enterprise architectures using this approach.The idea is to create a centralized system of alerting, fed easily from any company’s application, regardless of the technology with which they were built . Then use a representation standard protocol: RSS, using a service exposed by the service bus; So you can browse and search only the alerts that you are interested on, by category, author, title, date, etc etc.. The steps needed to implement this system are very simple and very few. Here they are listed below and described to be easily replicated within your environment. I would remind you that the demo is only meant to demonstrate how easily is to integrate Oracle Coherence and the Oracle Service Bus, and stimulate your imagination to new technological approaches.1) Install the two products: In this demo used (if necessary, consult the installation guides of 2 products)  - Oracle Service Bus ver. 11.1.1.5.0 http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/service-bus/downloads/index.html - Oracle Coherence ver. 3.7.1 http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/coherence/downloads/index.html 2) Because you choose to create a centralized alerting system, we need to define a structure type containing some alerting attributes useful to preserve and organize the information of the various alerts sent by the different applications. Here, then it was built a java class named Alert containing the canonical properties of an alarm information:- Title- Description- System- Time- Severity 3) Therefore, we need to create two configuration files for the coherence node, in order to save the Alert objects within the grid, through the rest/http protocol (more than the native API for Java, C + +, C,. Net). Here are the two minimal configuration files for Coherence:coherence-rest-config.xml resty-server-config.xml This minimum configuration allows me to use a distributed cache named "alerts" that can  also be accessed via http - rest on the host "localhost" over port "8080", objects are of type “oracle.cohsb.Alert”. 4) Below  a simple Java class that represents the type of alert messages: 5) At this point we just need to startup our coherence node, able to listen on http protocol to manage the “alerts” cache, which will receive incoming XML or JSON objects of type Alert. Remember to include in the classpath of the coherence node, the Alert java class and the following coherence libraries and configuration files:  At this point, just run the coherence class node “com.tangosol.net.DefaultCacheServer”advising you to set the following parameters:-Dtangosol.coherence.log.level=9 -Dtangosol.coherence.log=stdout -Dtangosol.coherence.cacheconfig=[PATH_TO_THE_FILE]\resty-server-config.xml 6) Let's create a procedure to test our configuration of Coherence and in order to insert some custom alerts in our cache. The technology with which you want to achieve this functionality is fully not considerable: Javascript, Python, Ruby, Scala, C + +, Java.... Because the protocol to communicate with Coherence is simply HTTP / JSON or XML. For this little demo i choose Java: A method to send/put the alert to the cache: A method to query and view the content of the cache: Finally the main method that execute our methods:  No special library added in the classpath for our class (json struct static defined), when it will be executed, it asks some information such as title, description,... in order to compose and send an alert to the cache and then it will perform an inquiry, to the same cache. At this point, a good exercise at this point, may be to create the same procedure using other technologies, such as a simple html page containing some JavaScript code, and then using Python, Ruby, and so on.7) Now we are ready to start configuring the Oracle Service Bus in order to integrate the two products. First integrate the internal alerting system of Oracle Service Bus with our centralized alerting system based on coherence node. This ensures that by monitoring, or directly from within our Proxy Message Flow, we can throw alerts and save them directly into the Coherence node. To do this I choose to use the jms technology, natively present inside the Oracle Weblogic / Service Bus. Access to the Oracle WebLogic Administration console and create and configure a new JMS connection factory and a new jms destination (queue). Now we should create a new resource of type “alert destination” within our Oracle Service Bus project. The new “alert destination” resource should be configured using the newly created connection factory jms and jms destination. Finally, in order to withdraw the message alert enqueued in our JMS destination and send it to our coherence node, we just need to create a new business service and proxy service within our Oracle Service Bus project.Our business service is responsible for sending a message to our REST service Coherence using as a method action: PUT Finally our proxy service have to collect all messages enqueued on the destination, execute an xquery transformation on those messages  in order to translate them into valid XML / alert objects useful to be sent to our coherence service, through the newly created business service. The message flow pipeline containing the xquery transformation: Incredibly,  we just did a basic first integration between the native alerting system of Oracle Service Bus and our centralized alerting system by simply configuring our coherence node without developing anything.It's time to test it out. To do this I create a proxy service able to generate an alert using our "alert destination", whenever the proxy is invoked. After some invocation to our proxy that generates fake alerts, we could open an Internet browser and type the URL  http://localhost: 8080/alerts/  so we could see what has been inserted within the coherence node. 8) We are ready for the final step.  We would create a new message flow, that can be used to search and display the results in standard mode. To do this I choosen the standard representation of RSS, to display a formatted result on a huge variety of devices such as readers for the iPhone and Android. The inquiry may be defined already at the time of the request able to return only feed / items related to our needs. To do this we need to create a new business service, a new proxy service, and finally a new XQuery Transformation to take care of translating the collection of alerts that will be return from our coherence node in a nicely formatted RSS standard document.So we start right from this resource (xquery), which has the task of transforming a collection of alerts / xml returned from the node coherence in a type well-formatted feed RSS 2.0 our new business service that will search the alerts on our coherence node using the Rest API. And finally, our last resource, the proxy service that will be exposed as an RSS / feeds to various mobile devices and traditional web readers, in which we will intercept any search query, and transform the result returned by the business service in an RSS feed 2.0. The message flow with the transformation phase (Alert TO Feed Items): Finally some little tricks to follow during the routing to the business service, - check for any queries present in the url to require a subset of alerts  - the http header "Accept" to help get an answer XML instead of JSON: In our little demo we also static added some coherence parameters to the request:sort=time:desc;start=0;count=100I would like to get from Coherence that the results will be sorted by date, and starting from 1 up to a maximum of 100.Done!!Just incredible, our centralized alerting system is ready. Inheriting all the qualities and capabilities of the two products involved Oracle Coherence & Oracle Service Bus: - RASP (Reliability, Availability, Scalability, Performance)Now try to use your mobile device, or a normal Internet browser by accessing the RSS just published: Some urls you may test: Search for the last 100 alerts : http://localhost:7001/alarmsSearch for alerts that do not have time set to null (time is not null):http://localhost:7001/alarms?q=time+is+not+nullSearch for alerts that the system property is “Web Browser” (system = ‘Web Browser’):http://localhost:7001/alarms?q=system+%3D+%27Web+Browser%27Search for alerts that the system property is “Web Browser” and the severity property is “Fatal” and the title property contain the word “Javascript”  (system = ‘Web Broser’ and severity = ‘Fatal’ and title like ‘%Javascript%’)http://localhost:8080/alerts?q=system+%3D+%27Web+Browser%27+AND+severity+%3D+%27Fatal%27+AND+title+LIKE+%27%25Javascript%25%27 To compose more complex queries about your need I would suggest you to read the chapter in the coherence documentation inherent the Cohl language (Coherence Query Language) http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E24290_01/coh.371/e22837/api_cq.htm . Some useful links: - Oracle Coherence REST API Documentation http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E24290_01/coh.371/e22839/rest_intro.htm - Oracle Service Bus Documentation http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E21764_01/soa.htm#osb - REST explanation from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer At this URL could be downloaded the whole materials of this demo http://blogs.oracle.com/slc/resource/cosb/coh-sb-demo.zip Author: Nino Guarnacci.

  Read the article

• Company Review: Google Products

  Google, Inc offers an array of products and services to all of its end-users. However their search capabilities are the foundation for Google’s current success and their primary business focus. Currently, Google offers over twenty different search applications that allow users to search the internet for books, maps, videos, images, products and much more. Their product decisions have allowed users demands to be met while focusing on the free based model. This allows users to access Google data free of charge and indirectly gives Google a strong competitive advantage of other competitors along with the accuracy of the search results. According to Google, Inc, they offer the following types of searching capabilities: Alerts Get email updates on the topics of your choice Blog Search Find blogs on your favorite topics  Books Search the full text of books  Custom Search Create a customized search experience for your community  Desktop Search and personalize your computer  Dictionary Search for definitions of words and phrases Directory Search the web, organized by topic or category Earth Explore the world from your computer Finance Business info, news and interactive charts GOOG-411 Find and connect for free with businesses from your phone  Images Search for images on the web Maps View maps and directions News Search thousands of news stories Patent Search Search the full text of US Patents Product Search Search for stuff to buy Scholar Search scholarly papers Toolbar Add a search box to your browser Trends Explore past and present search trends Videos Search for videos on the web Web Search Search billions of web pages Web Search Features Find movies, music, stocks, books and more mapping Google’s free based business model is only one way it differentiates itself from its competition. There is also a strong focus on the accuracy of search results and the speed in which they are returned to the end-user. Quality function deployment (QFD) is a structured method used to help connect user needs to the design features of a project proposed to address those needs. This method is particularly useful in accounting for needs that are not easily articulated or precisely defined according to the U. S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration. Due to the fact that QFD is so customer driven Google is always in a constant state of change in attempt to reengineer its search algorithms, and other dependant systems so that end-users requirements are constantly being met. Value engineering is a key example of this, Google is constantly trying to improve all aspects of its products, improve system maintainability, and system interoperability. Bridgefield Group defines value engineering as an organized methodology that identifies and selects the lowest lifecycle cost options in design, materials and processes that achieves the desired level of performance, reliability and customer satisfaction. In addition, it seeks to remove unnecessary costs in the above areas and is often a joint effort with cross-functional internal teams and relevant suppliers. Common issues that appear when developing large scale systems like Google’s search applications include modular design of a product and/or service and providing accurate value analysis. A design approach that adheres to four fundamental tenets of cohesiveness, encapsulation, self-containment, and high binding to design a system component as an independently operable unit subject to change is how the Open System Joint Task Force defines modular design. More specifically M. S. Schmaltz defines modular software design as having a large collection of statements strung together in one partition of in-line code; we segment or divide the statements into logical groups called modules. Each module performs one or two tasks, and then passes control to another module. By breaking up the code into "bite-sized chunks", so to speak, we are able to better control the flow of data and control. This is especially true in large software systems. Value analysis is a process to evaluate products and services based on effectiveness, safety, and cost. Value analysis involves assessing the quality as well as the cost of a product or service as defined by the Healthcare Financial Management Association.  “Operations Management deals with the design and management of products, processes, services and supply chains. It considers the acquisition, development, and utilization of resources that firms need to deliver the goods and services their clients want.” (MIT,2010) Google, Inc encourages an open environment between all employees, also known as Googlers. This is reinforced by a cross-section team or cross-functional teams comprised from multiple departments assigned to every project so that every department like marketing, finance, and quality assurance has input on every project. In addition, Google is known for their openness to new ideas regardless of the status or seniority of an employee. In fact, Google allows for 20% of an employee’s time can be devoted to developing new ideas and/or pet projects. HumTech.com defines a cross-functional team as a collection of people with varied levels of skills and experience brought together to accomplish a task. As the name implies, Cross-Functional Team members come from different organizational units. Cross-Functional Teams may be permanent or ad hoc. Google’s search application product strategy primarily focuses on mass customization. This is allows Google to create a base search application and allows results to be returned to the end-users quickly based on specific parameters and search settings. In addition, they also store the data that is returned in case other desire the same results based on other end-users supplying the same customized settings. This allows Google to appear to render search results in virtually real-time to the user while allowing for complete customization of the searching criteria. Greg Vogl, a professor at Uganda Martyrs University, defines mass customization as when a business gives its customers the opportunity to tailor its products or services to the customer's specifications. The IT staff at Google play a key role in ensuring that the search application’s product strategy is maintained simply because the IT staff designs, develops, and maintains all of their proprietary applications. In fact, they also maintain all network infrastructure to ensure that it is available to all end-users. References: http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/publications/ftat_user_guide/sec5.htm http://www.bridgefieldgroup.com/bridgefieldgroup/glos9.htm#V http://www.acq.osd.mil/osjtf/termsdef.html http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~mssz/Pascal-CGS2462/prog-dsn.html http://www.hfma.org/publications/business_caring_newsletter/exclusives/Supply+and+Inventory+Terms+Defined.htm http://mitsloan.mit.edu/omg/om-definition.php http://www.humtech.com/opm/grtl/ols/ols3.cfm http://www.gregvogl.net/courses/mis1/glossary.htm

  Read the article

• Option Trading: Getting the most out of the event session options

  - by extended_events

  You can control different aspects of how an event session behaves by setting the event session options as part of the CREATE EVENT SESSION DDL. The default settings for the event session options are designed to handle most of the common event collection situations so I generally recommend that you just use the defaults. Like everything in the real world though, there are going to be a handful of “special cases” that require something different. This post focuses on identifying the special cases and the correct use of the options to accommodate those cases. There is a reason it’s called Default The default session options specify a total event buffer size of 4 MB with a 30 second latency. Translating this into human terms; this means that our default behavior is that the system will start processing events from the event buffer when we reach about 1.3 MB of events or after 30 seconds, which ever comes first. Aside: What’s up with the 1.3 MB, I thought you said the buffer was 4 MB?The Extended Events engine takes the total buffer size specified by MAX_MEMORY (4MB by default) and divides it into 3 equally sized buffers. This is done so that a session can be publishing events to one buffer while other buffers are being processed. There are always at least three buffers; how to get more than three is covered later. Using this configuration, the Extended Events engine can “keep up” with most event sessions on standard workloads. Why is this? The fact is that most events are small, really small; on the order of a couple hundred bytes. Even when you start considering events that carry dynamically sized data (eg. binary, text, etc.) or adding actions that collect additional data, the total size of the event is still likely to be pretty small. This means that each buffer can likely hold thousands of events before it has to be processed. When the event buffers are finally processed there is an economy of scale achieved since most targets support bulk processing of the events so they are processed at the buffer level rather than the individual event level. When all this is working together it’s more likely that a full buffer will be processed and put back into the ready queue before the remaining buffers (remember, there are at least three) are full. I know what you’re going to say: “My server is exceptional! My workload is so massive it defies categorization!” OK, maybe you weren’t going to say that exactly, but you were probably thinking it. The point is that there are situations that won’t be covered by the Default, but that’s a good place to start and this post assumes you’ve started there so that you have something to look at in order to determine if you do have a special case that needs different settings. So let’s get to the special cases… What event just fired?! How about now?! Now?! If you believe the commercial adage from Heinz Ketchup (Heinz Slow Good Ketchup ad on You Tube), some things are worth the wait. This is not a belief held by most DBAs, particularly DBAs who are looking for an answer to a troubleshooting question fast. If you’re one of these anxious DBAs, or maybe just a Program Manager doing a demo, then 30 seconds might be longer than you’re comfortable waiting. If you find yourself in this situation then consider changing the MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY option for your event session. This option will force the event buffers to be processed based on your time schedule. This option only makes sense for the asynchronous targets since those are the ones where we allow events to build up in the event buffer – if you’re using one of the synchronous targets this option isn’t relevant. Avoid forgotten events by increasing your memory Have you ever had one of those days where you keep forgetting things? That can happen in Extended Events too; we call it dropped events. In order to optimizes for server performance and help ensure that the Extended Events doesn’t block the server if to drop events that can’t be published to a buffer because the buffer is full. You can determine if events are being dropped from a session by querying the dm_xe_sessions DMV and looking at the dropped_event_count field. Aside: Should you care if you’re dropping events?Maybe not – think about why you’re collecting data in the first place and whether you’re really going to miss a few dropped events. For example, if you’re collecting query duration stats over thousands of executions of a query it won’t make a huge difference to miss a couple executions. Use your best judgment. If you find that your session is dropping events it means that the event buffer is not large enough to handle the volume of events that are being published. There are two ways to address this problem. First, you could collect fewer events – examine you session to see if you are over collecting. Do you need all the actions you’ve specified? Could you apply a predicate to be more specific about when you fire the event? Assuming the session is defined correctly, the next option is to change the MAX_MEMORY option to a larger number. Picking the right event buffer size might take some trial and error, but a good place to start is with the number of dropped events compared to the number you’ve collected. Aside: There are three different behaviors for dropping events that you specify using the EVENT_RETENTION_MODE option. The default is to allow single event loss and you should stick with this setting since it is the best choice for keeping the impact on server performance low.You’ll be tempted to use the setting to not lose any events (NO_EVENT_LOSS) – resist this urge since it can result in blocking on the server. If you’re worried that you’re losing events you should be increasing your event buffer memory as described in this section. Some events are too big to fail A less common reason for dropping an event is when an event is so large that it can’t fit into the event buffer. Even though most events are going to be small, you might find a condition that occasionally generates a very large event. You can determine if your session is dropping large events by looking at the dm_xe_sessions DMV once again, this time check the largest_event_dropped_size. If this value is larger than the size of your event buffer [remember, the size of your event buffer, by default, is max_memory / 3] then you need a large event buffer. To specify a large event buffer you set the MAX_EVENT_SIZE option to a value large enough to fit the largest event dropped based on data from the DMV. When you set this option the Extended Events engine will create two buffers of this size to accommodate these large events. As an added bonus (no extra charge) the large event buffer will also be used to store normal events in the cases where the normal event buffers are all full and waiting to be processed. (Note: This is just a side-effect, not the intended use. If you’re dropping many normal events then you should increase your normal event buffer size.) Partitioning: moving your events to a sub-division Earlier I alluded to the fact that you can configure your event session to use more than the standard three event buffers – this is called partitioning and is controlled by the MEMORY_PARTITION_MODE option. The result of setting this option is fairly easy to explain, but knowing when to use it is a bit more art than science. First the science… You can configure partitioning in three ways: None, Per NUMA Node & Per CPU. This specifies the location where sets of event buffers are created with fairly obvious implication. There are rules we follow for sub-dividing the total memory (specified by MAX_MEMORY) between all the event buffers that are specific to the mode used: None: 3 buffers (fixed)Node: 3 * number_of_nodesCPU: 2.5 * number_of_cpus Here are some examples of what this means for different Node/CPU counts: Configuration None Node CPU 2 CPUs, 1 Node 3 buffers 3 buffers 5 buffers 6 CPUs, 2 Node 3 buffers 6 buffers 15 buffers 40 CPUs, 5 Nodes 3 buffers 15 buffers 100 buffers   Aside: Buffer size on multi-processor computersAs the number of Nodes or CPUs increases, the size of the event buffer gets smaller because the total memory is sub-divided into more pieces. The defaults will hold up to this for a while since each buffer set is holding events only from the Node or CPU that it is associated with, but at some point the buffers will get too small and you’ll either see events being dropped or you’ll get an error when you create your session because you’re below the minimum buffer size. Increase the MAX_MEMORY setting to an appropriate number for the configuration. The most likely reason to start partitioning is going to be related to performance. If you notice that running an event session is impacting the performance of your server beyond a reasonably expected level [Yes, there is a reasonably expected level of work required to collect events.] then partitioning might be an answer. Before you partition you might want to check a few other things: Is your event retention set to NO_EVENT_LOSS and causing blocking? (I told you not to do this.) Consider changing your event loss mode or increasing memory. Are you over collecting and causing more work than necessary? Consider adding predicates to events or removing unnecessary events and actions from your session. Are you writing the file target to the same slow disk that you use for TempDB and your other high activity databases? <kidding> <not really> It’s always worth considering the end to end picture – if you’re writing events to a file you can be impacted by I/O, network; all the usual stuff. Assuming you’ve ruled out the obvious (and not so obvious) issues, there are performance conditions that will be addressed by partitioning. For example, it’s possible to have a successful event session (eg. no dropped events) but still see a performance impact because you have many CPUs all attempting to write to the same free buffer and having to wait in line to finish their work. This is a case where partitioning would relieve the contention between the different CPUs and likely reduce the performance impact cause by the event session. There is no DMV you can check to find these conditions – sorry – that’s where the art comes in. This is  largely a matter of experimentation. On the bright side you probably won’t need to to worry about this level of detail all that often. The performance impact of Extended Events is significantly lower than what you may be used to with SQL Trace. You will likely only care about the impact if you are trying to set up a long running event session that will be part of your everyday workload – sessions used for short term troubleshooting will likely fall into the “reasonably expected impact” category. Hey buddy – I think you forgot something OK, there are two options I didn’t cover: STARTUP_STATE & TRACK_CAUSALITY. If you want your event sessions to start automatically when the server starts, set the STARTUP_STATE option to ON. (Now there is only one option I didn’t cover.) I’m going to leave causality for another post since it’s not really related to session behavior, it’s more about event analysis. - Mike Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, April 27, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, April 27, 2010New ProjectsActive Directory User Properties Change: A complete application in VS 2005 and VB.NET, for Request Request in User Details in Active Directory, with flow to HR and then to IT for approval ...AVR Terminal: A Windows application for connecting to an AVR via RS232 serial or USB-to-COM FTDI ports. Works on Arduino, Bare Bones Board, and any custom board...Battle Droids: AVR-based Network Combat!: A Battle Droid is an AVR® microcontroller running the BattleDroid firmware. This firmware turns your AVR into a lean, mean, fighting machine, and ...Camp Foundation: Camp Foundationchakma: chakma is a question - answer based web application to make people get questions from anybody around the world and being able to answer them. c...Document.Editor: Document.Editor is a multitab text editor for Windows. It includes plain and rich text format support, multi tab interface so you can edit multiple...Dot Net Marche Music Store Demo Application: This is a demo application that the DotNetMarche user gorup (www.dotnetmarche.org) use to make experiments and prepare demos for our workshopselivators: a monitor which enables the user to view the movement of the elivators in a buildingExtended SSIS Package Execute: The SSIS package execute task is flawed as it does not support passing variables. Here we have a custom task that will pass items in a dataflow as...File tools: File toolsFileExplorer.NET: FileExplorer.NET is a .net usercontrol which tries to mimic the Windows FileExplorer treeview.Kazuku: ASP.NET MVC 2 Content Management SystemKSharp Ajax Control Toolkit Library: Built ontop of the Microsoft ASP.NET Ajax Control Toolkit, this library offers enhanced versions of the controls found in the Ajax Control Toolkit....Nitrous - An Aspx ViewEngine for ASP.NET MVC: Near drop-in replacement ASP.NET ViewEngine for MVC.Open Data Protocol - Client Libraries: This is an Open Source release of the .NET and Silverlight Client Libraries for the Open Data Protocol (OData). For more information on odata, see ...ORAYLIS BI.SmartDiff: BI.SmartDiff is a helper to connect the functionality of BIDS Helper – SmartDiff to TortoiseSVN. BIDS Helper – SmartDiff helps you to get more read...RicciWebSiteSystem: soon websiteSynapse:Silverlight A Simple Silverlight Framework: Synapse:Silverlight is a simplified framework for Silverlight. It's purpose is to help developers and designers produce basic LOB solutions that do...TestProjectMB: Testing Team Foundation ServerThoughtWorks Cruise Notification Interceptor: Cruise notification interceptorThreadSafeControls: ThreadSafeControls is a C# project that greatly simplifies the process of transitioning Windows Forms applications to a multithreaded environment b...Unscrambler: Unscrambler is a multitouch WPF word game built with MVVM Light in order to show how to use the touch maniupation and inertia features included in ...Web Utilities: web utilitiesNew Releases7zbackup - PowerShell Script to Backup Files with 7zip: 7zBackup v. 1.7.1 Stable: Bug Solved : Presence of junction.exe is wrongly referred to 7z.exeAVR Terminal: AVR Terminal v0.2: Here is an Alpha-almost-BETA release of the AVR Terminal. That being said, I use it almost daily and it shouldn't break anything on your system, b...Bistro FSharp Extensions: 0.9.7.0: This is the VS 2010 release of BistroFS extensions. This release focused on usability, adding key functionality such as resource aliasing and secur...Bojinx: Bojinx Dialog Management V1.0: Stable release of the Bojinx Dialog Management library.BOWIE: BOWIE 2010: This new version works on Outlook 2007/2010 and TFS 2008/2010 RTM. Details about all features in this version on the Home Page : http://bowie.code...Catharsis: Catharsis 2.5 on catarsa.com: The Catharsis framework has finally its own portal http://catarsa.com Example - documented steps to create Web-Application http://catarsa.com/Arti...Colorful Expression: Expression Blend 3: Alpha Version, Read Issues and Installing! Colorful Expression is an add-in for Expression Blend and Expression Design that brings you the Adobe K...Colorful Expression: Expression Blend 4: Read Issues and Installing! Colorful Expression is an add-in for Expression Blend and Expression Design that brings you the Adobe Kuler and ColorLo...Courier: Version 1.0: This release includes integration with the Reactive Framework for more elegant message handling and allowing more succinct client code. Full suite...CRM 4.0 Contract Utilities: Release 1.0: Project Description List of Contract Utilities (i.e. custom workflow actions) 1. Change contract status from Active to Draft 2. Copy Contract (with...Document.Editor: 0.9.0: Whats New?: New icon set Bug fix'sDotNetNuke® Blog: 04.00.00: Minimum Required DNN Version: 4.06.02General Code organization * Converted project to .NET 3.5 * Converted solution to Visual Stud...EPiAbstractions: EPiAbstractions 1.2: Updated for EPiServer CMS 6. Only features abstractions for EPiServer CMS. For abstractions for EPiServer.Common and EPiServer.Community use versio...Fluent ViewModel Configuration for WPF (MVVM): FluentViewModel Alpha2: Added support for view model validation using FluentValidation (http://fluentvalidation.codeplex.com/) Fixed exception from Blend while in design...GArphics: Beta v0.9: Beta v0.9. Practically all of the planned features have been implemented and are available to the users. For the version 1.0 mainly just some minor...HTML Ruby: 6.22.2.1: Fixed a bug where HTML Ruby's options window will generate entries in the error log when applying option changes (regression from 6.21.8)HTML Ruby: 6.22.3: Add/remove stop spacing event listener as needed for possible fix to 4620iTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.2.3768 Beta 3b: Beta 3 requires iTunes 9.1.0.79 or later A Librarian status panel showing active and queued Librarian scanners. This will be hidden behind the "bi...LiveUpload to Facebook: LiveUpload to Facebook 3.2.3: Version 3.2.3Become a fan on Facebook! Features Quickly and easily upload your photos and videos to Facebook, including any people tags added in W...Maintainance Schedule: Maintenance Scheduler: The first Alpha release of the project.NetSockets: NetSockets (1.2): The NetSockets library (DLL)NSIS Autorun: NSIS Autorun 0.1.2: NSIS Autorun 0.1.1 This release includes source code, application binary, and example materials.OpenSceneGraph glsl samples: OsgGlslSamples Win32 binaries: Project binary release for Windows. The effects shown are: Ambient Occlusion, Depth of Field, DoF with alpha channel, Fire effects, HDR, Light Ma...ORAYLIS BI.SmartDiff: ORAYLIS BI.SmartDiff 0.6.1: First public versionpatterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: Code Drop 4 - Content Complete: This release includes documentation and all code samples intended for this first guide. As before, this code release builds on the previous one an...Pex Custom Arithmetic Solver: Custom Solver Package: This is the custom solvers packaged together. To use simply include the dll in your project and add [assembly: PexCustomArithmeticSolver] to your P...PokeIn Comet Ajax Library: PokeIn v08 x86: New FeatureFrom this version forward, PokeIn will define a way between the main page and client side automaticly based to security level. Add "pub...Proxi [Proxy Interface]: Proxi Release 1.0.0.426: Proxi Release 1.0.0.426QuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.3: This release includes recurring quests! Now you can set a quest to uncomplete itself every X minutes, hours, or days! And the quests still retain t...Rensea Image Viewer: RIV 0.4.5: RIV Fix Version. You would need .NET Framework 4.0 to make it run RIVU Improved Version. With separated RIV up-loader, to upload images to Renjian...SCC Switch Provider: Provides a GUI to Switch Source Code Control Provi: Transferred from GotDotNet Workplace. Initial public Release. Downloaded ~922 times from original post.sTASKedit: sTASKedit v0.7a (Alpha): + Fixed: XOR text encoding + Fixed: adding timed rewards missing values + Fixed: occupations in clone()Synapse:Silverlight A Simple Silverlight Framework: Synapse Silverlight Alpha Release: Initial Road-map is being defined.ThoughtWorks Cruise Notification Interceptor: 1.0.0: Initial release.UDC indexes parser: UDC indexex parser Beta 2: Добавлена возможность работать с распределением определителей как если бы генератор был бы LALR(2) То что осталось: Если текстовое дополнение начи...Unscrambler: Release 1.0: Here's the first release of Unscrambler.WinXound: WinXound 3.3.0 Beta 2 for Mac OsX: New: Code Repository (for UDO and personal code) New: Format Code - Added the ability to format only the selected text of the code New: Explore...WPF Inspirational Quote Management System: Release 1.2.2: - Fixed issue some users were having when the application is minimised.Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitSilverlight Toolkitpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationParticle Plot PivotBlogEngine.NETNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleFarseer Physics EngineIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterN2 CMSDotNetZip Library

  Read the article

• It's not just “Single Sign-on” by Steve Knott (aurionPro SENA)

  - by Greg Jensen

  It is true that Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-on (Oracle ESSO) started out as purely an application single sign-on tool but as we have seen in the previous articles in this series the product has matured into a suite of tools that can do more than just automated single sign-on and can also provide rapidly deployed, cost effective solution to many demanding password management problems. In the last article of this series I would like to discuss three cases where customers faced password scenarios that required more than just single sign-on and how some of the less well known tools in the Oracle ESSO suite “kitbag” helped solve these challenges. Case #1 One of the issues often faced by our customers is how to keep their applications compliant. I had a client who liked the idea of automated single sign-on for most of his applications but had a key requirement to actually increase the security for one specific SOX application. For the SOX application he wanted to secure access by using two-factor authentication with a smartcard. The problem was that the application did not support two-factor authentication. The solution was to use a feature from the Oracle ESSO suite called authentication manager. This feature enables you to have multiple authentication methods for the same user which in this case was a smartcard and the Windows password.  Within authentication manager each authenticator can be configured with a security grade so we gave the smartcard a high grade and the Windows password a normal grade. Security grading in Oracle ESSO can be configured on a per application basis so we set the SOX application to require the higher grade smartcard authenticator. The end result for the user was that they enjoyed automated single sign-on for most of the applications apart from the SOX application. When the SOX application was launched, the user was required by ESSO to present their smartcard before being given access to the application. Case #2 Another example solving compliance issues was in the case of a large energy company who had a number of core billing applications. New regulations required that users change their password regularly and use a complex password. The problem facing the customer was that the core billing applications did not have any native user password change functionality. The customer could not replace the core applications because of the cost and time required to re-develop them. With a reputation for innovation aurionPro SENA were approached to provide a solution to this problem using Oracle ESSO. Oracle ESSO has a password expiry feature that can be triggered periodically based on the timestamp of the users’ last password creation therefore our strategy here was to leverage this feature to provide the password change experience. The trigger can launch an application change password event however in this scenario there was no native change password feature that could be launched therefore a “dummy” change password screen was created that could imitate the missing change password function and connect to the application database on behalf of the user. Oracle ESSO was configured to trigger a change password event every 60 days. After this period if the user launched the application Oracle ESSO would detect the logon screen and invoke the password expiry feature. Oracle ESSO would trigger the “dummy screen,” detect it automatically as the application change password screen and insert a complex password on behalf of the user. After the password event had completed the user was logged on to the application with their new password. All this was provided at a fraction of the cost of re-developing the core applications. Case #3 Recent popular initiatives such as the BYOD and working from home schemes bring with them many challenges in administering “unmanaged machines” and sometimes “unmanageable users.” In a recent case, a client had a dispersed community of casual contractors who worked for the business using their own laptops to access applications. To improve security the around password management the security goal was to provision the passwords directly to these contractors. In a previous article we saw how Oracle ESSO has the capability to provision passwords through Provisioning Gateway but the challenge in this scenario was how to get the Oracle ESSO agent to the casual contractor on an unmanaged machine. The answer was to use another tool in the suite, Oracle ESSO Anywhere. This component can compile the normal Oracle ESSO functionality into a deployment package that can be made available from a website in a similar way to a streamed application. The ESSO Anywhere agent does not actually install into the registry or program files but runs in a folder within the user’s profile therefore no local administrator rights are required for installation. The ESSO Anywhere package can also be configured to stay persistent or disable itself at the end of the user’s session. In this case the user just needed to be told where the website package was located and download the package. Once the download was complete the agent started automatically and the user was provided with single sign-on to their applications without ever knowing the application passwords. Finally, as we have seen in these series Oracle ESSO not only has great utilities in its own tool box but also has direct integration with Oracle Privileged Account Manager, Oracle Identity Manager and Oracle Access Manager. Integrated together with these tools provides a complete and complementary platform to address even the most complex identity and access management requirements. So what next for Oracle ESSO? “Agentless ESSO available in the cloud” – but that will be a subject for a future Oracle ESSO series!                                                                                                                               

  Read the article

• User Experience Highlights in PeopleSoft and PeopleTools: Direct from Jeff Robbins

  - by mvaughan

  By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience  This is the fifth in a series of blog posts on the user experience (UX) highlights in various Oracle product families. The last posted interview was with Nadia Bendjedou, Senior Director, Product Strategy on upcoming Oracle E-Business Suite user experience highlights. You’ll see themes around productivity and efficiency, and get an early look at the latest mobile offerings coming through these product lines. Today’s post is on the user experience in PeopleSoft and PeopleTools. To learn more about what’s ahead, attend PeopleSoft or PeopleTools OpenWorld presentations.This interview is with Jeff Robbins, Senior Director, PeopleSoft Development. Jeff Robbins Q: How would you describe the vision you have for the user experience of PeopleSoft?A: Intuitive – Specifically, customers use PeopleSoft to help their employees do their day-to-day work, and the UI (user interface) has been helpful and assistive in that effort. If it’s not obvious what they need to do a task, then the UI isn’t working. So the application needs to make it simple for users to find information they need, complete a task, do all the things they are responsible for, and it really helps when the UI just makes sense. Productive – PeopleSoft is a tool used to support people to do their work, and a lot of users are measured by how much work they’re able to get done per hour, per day, etc. The UI needs to help them be as productive as possible, and can’t make them waste time or energy. The UI needs to reflect the type of work necessary for a task -- if it's data entry, the UI needs to assist the user to get information into the system. For analysts, the UI needs help users assess or analyze information in a particular way. Innovative – The concept of the UI being innovative is something we’ve been working on for years. It’s not just that we want to be seen as innovative, the fact is that companies are asking their employees to do more than they’ve ever asked before. More often companies want to roll out processes as employee or manager self-service, where an employee is responsible to review and maintain their own data. So we’ve had to reinvent, and ask,  “How can we modify the ways an employee interacts with our applications so that they can be more productive and efficient – even with tasks that are entirely unfamiliar?”  Our focus on innovation has forced us to design new ways for users to interact with the entire application.Q: How are the UX features you have delivered so far resonating with customers?  A: Resonating very well. We’re hearing tremendous responses from users, managers, decision-makers -- who are very happy with the improved user experience. Many of the individual features resonate well. Some have really hit home, others are better than they used to be but show us that there’s still room for improvement.A couple innovations really stand out; features that have a significant effect on how users interact with PeopleSoft.First, the deployment of PeopleSoft in a way that’s more like a consumer website with the PeopleSoft Home page and Dashboards.  This new approach is very web-centric, where users feel they’re coming to a website rather than logging into an enterprise application.  There’s lots of information from all around the organization collected in a way that feels very familiar to users. In order to do your job, you can come to this web site rather than having to learn how to log into an application and figure out a complicated menu. Companies can host these really rich web sites for employees that are home pages for accessing critical tasks and information. The UI elements of incorporating search into the whole navigation process is another hit. Rather than having to log in and choose a task from a menu, users come to the web site and begin a task by simply searching for data: themselves, another employee, a customer record, whatever.  The search results include the data along with a set of actions the user might take, completely eliminating the need to hunt through a complicated system menu. Search-centric navigation is really sitting well with customers who are trying to deploy an intuitive set of systems. Q: Are any UX highlights more popular than you expected them to be?  A: We introduced a feature called Pivot Grid in the last release, which is a combination of an interactive grid, like an Excel Pivot Table, along with a dynamic visual chart that automatically graphs the data. I wasn’t certain at first how extensively this would be used. It looked like an innovative tool, but it wasn’t clear how it would be incorporated in business process applications. The fact is that everyone who sees Pivot Grids is thrilled with that kind of interactivity.  It reflects the amount of analytical thinking customers are asking employees to do. Employees can’t just enter data any more. They must interact with it, analyze it, and make decisions. Pivot Grids fit into this way of working. Q: What can you tell us about PeopleSoft’s mobile offerings?A: A lot of customers are finding that mobile is the chief priority in their organization.  They tell us they want their employees to be able to access company information from their mobile devices.  Of course, not everyone has the same requirements, so we’re working to make sure we can help our customers accomplish what they’re trying to do.  We’ve already delivered a number of mobile features.  For instance, PeopleSoft home pages, dashboards and workcenters all work well on an iPad, straight out of the box.  We’ve delivered a number of key functions and tasks for mobile workers – those who are responsible for using a mobile device to manage inventory, for example.  Customers tell us they also need a holistic strategy, one that allows their employees to access nearly every task from a mobile device.  While we don’t expect users to do extensive data entry from their smartphone, it makes sense that they have access to company information and systems while away from their desk.  That’s where our strategy is going now.  We plan to unveil a number of new mobile offerings at OpenWorld.  Some will be available then, some shortly after. Q: What else are you working on now that you think is going to be exciting to customers at Oracle OpenWorld?A: Our next release -- the big thing is PeopleSoft 9.2, and we’ll be talking about the huge amount of work that’s gone into the next versions. A new toolset, 8.53, will be coming, and there’s a lot to talk about there, and the next generation of PeopleSoft 9.2.  We have a ton of new stuff coming.Q: What do you want PeopleSoft customers to know? A: We have been focusing on the user experience in PeopleSoft as a very high priority for the last 4 years, and it’s had interesting effects. One thing is that the application is better, more usable.  We’ve made visible improvements. Another aspect is that in customers’ minds, the PeopleSoft brand is being reinvigorated. Customers invested in PeopleSoft years ago, and then they weren’t sure where PeopleSoft was going.  This investment in the UI and overall user experience keeps PeopleSoft current, innovative and fresh.  Customers  are able to take advantage of a lot of new features, even on the older applications, simply by upgrading their PeopleTools. The interest in that ability has been tremendous. Knowing they have a lot of these features available -- right now, that’s pretty huge. There’s been a tremendous amount of positive response, just on the fact that we’re focusing on the user experience. Editor’s note: For more on PeopleSoft and PeopleTools user experience highlights, visit the Usable Apps web site.To find out more about these enhancements at Openworld, be sure to check out these sessions: GEN8928     General Session: PeopleSoft Update and Product RoadmapCON9183     PeopleSoft PeopleTools Technology Roadmap CON8932     New Functional PeopleSoft PeopleTools Capabilities for the Line-of-Business UserCON9196     PeopleSoft PeopleTools Roadmap: Mobile ApplicationsCON9186     Case Study: Delivering a Groundbreaking User Interface with PeopleSoft PeopleTools

  Read the article

• Career development as a Software Developer without becoming a manager.

  - by albertpascual

  I’m a developer, I like to write new exciting code everyday, my perfect day at work is a day that when I wake up, I know that I have to write some code that I haven’t done before or to use a new framework/language/platform that is unknown to me. The best days in the office is when a project is waiting for me to architect or write. In my 15 years in the development field, I had to in order to get a better salary to manage people, not just to lead developers, to actually manage people. Something that I found out when I get into a management position is that I’m not that good at managing people, and not afraid to say it. I do not enjoy that part of the job, the worse one, takes time away from what I really like. Leading developers and managing people are very different things. I do like teaching and leading developers in a project. Yet most people believe, and is true in most companies, the way to get a better salary is to be promoted to a manager position. In order to advance in your career you need to let go of the everyday writing code and become a supervisor or manager. This is the path for developers after they become senior developers. As you get older and your family grows, the only way to hit your salary requirements is to advance your career to become a manager and get that manager salary. That path is the common in most companies, the most intelligent companies out there, have learned that promoting good developers mean getting a crappy manager and losing a good resource. Now scratch everything I said, because as I previously stated, I don’t see myself going to the office everyday and just managing people until is time to go home. I like to spend hours working in some code to accomplish a task, learning new platforms and languages or patterns to existing languages. Being interrupted every 15 minutes by emails or people stopping by my office to resolve their problems, is not something I could enjoy. All the sudden riding my motorcycle to work one cold morning over the Redlands Canyon and listening to .NET Rocks podcast, Michael “Doc” Norton explaining how to take control of your development career without necessary going to the manager’s track. I know, I should not have headphones under my helmet when riding a motorcycle in California. His conversation with Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell was just confirming everything I have ever did with actually more details and assuring that there are other paths. His method was simple yet most of us, already do many of those steps, Mr. Michael “Doc” Norton believe that it pays off on the long run, that finally companies prefer to pay higher salaries to those developers, yet I would actually think that many companies do not see developers that way, this is not true for bigger companies. However I do believe the value of those developers increase and most of the time, changing companies could increase their salary instead of staying in the same one. In short without even trying to get into the shadow of Mr. Norton and without following the steps in the order; you should love to learn new technologies, and then teach them to other geeks. I personally have learn many technologies and I haven’t stop doing that, I am a professor at UCR where I teach ASP.NET and Silverlight. Mr Norton continues that after than, you want to be involve in the development community, user groups, online forums, open source projects. I personally talk to user groups, I’m very active in forums asking and answering questions as well as for those I got awarded the Microsoft MVP for ASP.NET. After you accomplish all those, you should also expose yourself for what you know and what you do not know, learning a new language will make you humble again as well as extremely happy. There is no better feeling that learning a new language or pattern in your daily job. If you love your job everyday and what you do, I really recommend you to follow Michael’s presentation that he kindly share it on the link below. His confirmation is a refreshing, knowing that my future is not behind a desk where the computer screen is on my right hand side instead of in front of me. Where I don’t have to spent the days filling up performance forms for people and the new platforms that I haven’t been using yet are just at my fingertips. Presentation here. http://www.slideshare.net/LeanDog/take-control-of-your-development-career-michael-doc-norton?from=share_email_logout3 Take Control of Your Development Career Welcome! Michael “Doc” Norton @DocOnDev http://docondev.blogspot.com/ [email protected] Recovering Post Technical I love to learn I love to teach I love to work in teams I love to write code I really love to write code What about YOU? Do you love your job? Do you love your Employer? Do you love your Boss? What do you love? What do you really love? Take Control Take Control • Get Noticed • Get Together • Get Your Mojo • Get Naked • Get Schooled Get Noticed Get Noticed Know Your Business Get Noticed Get Noticed Understand Management Get Noticed Get Noticed Do Your Existing Job Get Noticed Get Noticed Make Yourself Expendable Get Together Get Together Join a User Group Get Together Help Run a User Group Get Together Start a User Group Get Your Mojo Get Your Mojo Kata Get Your Mojo Koans Get Your Mojo Breakable Toys Get Your Mojo Open Source Get Naked Get Naked Run with Group A Get Naked Do Something Different Get Naked Own Your Mistakes Get Naked Admit You Don’t Know Get Schooled Get Schooled Choose a Mentor Get Schooled Attend Conferences Get Schooled Teach a New Subject Get Started Read These (Again) Take Control of Your Development Career Thank You! Michael “Doc” Norton @DocOnDev http://docondev.blogspot.com/ [email protected] In a short summary, I recommend any developer to check his blog and more important his presentation, I haven’t been lucky enough to watch him live, I’m looking forward the day I have the opportunity. He is giving us hope in the future of developers, when I see some of my geek friends moving to position that in short years they begin to regret, I get more unsure of my future doing what I love. I would say that now is looking at the spectrum of companies that understand and appreciate developers. There are a few there, hopefully with time code sweat shops will start disappearing and being a developer will feed a family of 4. Cheers Al tweetmeme_url = 'http://weblogs.asp.net/albertpascual/archive/2010/12/07/career-development-as-a-software-developer-without-becoming-a-manager.aspx'; tweetmeme_source = 'alpascual';

  Read the article

• Observations in Migrating from JavaFX Script to JavaFX 2.0

  - by user12608080

  Observations in Migrating from JavaFX Script to JavaFX 2.0 Introduction Having been available for a few years now, there is a decent body of work written for JavaFX using the JavaFX Script language. With the general availability announcement of JavaFX 2.0 Beta, the natural question arises about converting the legacy code over to the new JavaFX 2.0 platform. This article reflects on some of the observations encountered while porting source code over from JavaFX Script to the new JavaFX API paradigm. The Application The program chosen for migration is an implementation of the Sudoku game and serves as a reference application for the book JavaFX – Developing Rich Internet Applications. The design of the program can be divided into two major components: (1) A user interface (ideally suited for JavaFX design) and (2) the puzzle generator. For the context of this article, our primary interest lies in the user interface. The puzzle generator code was lifted from a sourceforge.net project and is written entirely in Java. Regardless which version of the UI we choose (JavaFX Script vs. JavaFX 2.0), no code changes were required for the puzzle generator code. The original user interface for the JavaFX Sudoku application was written exclusively in JavaFX Script, and as such is a suitable candidate to convert over to the new JavaFX 2.0 model. However, a few notable points are worth mentioning about this program. First off, it was written in the JavaFX 1.1 timeframe, where certain capabilities of the JavaFX framework were as of yet unavailable. Citing two examples, this program creates many of its own UI controls from scratch because the built-in controls were yet to be introduced. In addition, layout of graphical nodes is done in a very manual manner, again because much of the automatic layout capabilities were in flux at the time. It is worth considering that this program was written at a time when most of us were just coming up to speed on this technology. One would think that having the opportunity to recreate this application anew, it would look a lot different from the current version. Comparing the Size of the Source Code An attempt was made to convert each of the original UI JavaFX Script source files (suffixed with .fx) over to a Java counterpart. Due to language feature differences, there are a small number of source files which only exist in one version or the other. The table below summarizes the size of each of the source files. JavaFX Script source file Number of Lines Number of Character JavaFX 2.0 Java source file Number of Lines Number of Characters ArrowKey.java 6 72 Board.fx 221 6831 Board.java 205 6508 BoardNode.fx 446 16054 BoardNode.java 723 29356 ChooseNumberNode.fx 168 5267 ChooseNumberNode.java 302 10235 CloseButtonNode.fx 115 3408 CloseButton.java 99 2883 ParentWithKeyTraversal.java 111 3276 FunctionPtr.java 6 80 Globals.java 20 554 Grouping.fx 8 140 HowToPlayNode.fx 121 3632 HowToPlayNode.java 136 4849 IconButtonNode.fx 196 5748 IconButtonNode.java 183 5865 Main.fx 98 3466 Main.java 64 2118 SliderNode.fx 288 10349 SliderNode.java 350 13048 Space.fx 78 1696 Space.java 106 2095 SpaceNode.fx 227 6703 SpaceNode.java 220 6861 TraversalHelper.fx 111 3095 Total 2,077 79,127 2531 87,800 A few notes about this table are in order: The number of lines in each file was determined by running the Unix ‘wc –l’ command over each file. The number of characters in each file was determined by running the Unix ‘ls –l’ command over each file. The examination of the code could certainly be much more rigorous. No standard formatting was performed on these files.  All comments however were deleted. There was a certain expectation that the new Java version would require more lines of code than the original JavaFX script version. As evidenced by a count of the total number of lines, the Java version has about 22% more lines than its FX Script counterpart. Furthermore, there was an additional expectation that the Java version would be more verbose in terms of the total number of characters.  In fact the preceding data shows that on average the Java source files contain fewer characters per line than the FX files.  But that's not the whole story.  Upon further examination, the FX Script source files had a disproportionate number of blank characters.  Why?  Because of the nature of how one develops JavaFX Script code.  The object literal dominates FX Script code.  Its not uncommon to see object literals indented halfway across the page, consuming lots of meaningless space characters. RAM consumption Not the most scientific analysis, memory usage for the application was examined on a Windows Vista system by running the Windows Task Manager and viewing how much memory was being consumed by the Sudoku version in question. Roughly speaking, the FX script version, after startup, had a RAM footprint of about 90MB and remained pretty much the same size. The Java version started out at about 55MB and maintained that size throughout its execution. What About Binding? Arguably, the most striking observation about the conversion from JavaFX Script to JavaFX 2.0 concerned the need for data synchronization, or lack thereof. In JavaFX Script, the primary means to synchronize data is via the bind expression (using the “bind” keyword), and perhaps to a lesser extent it’s “on replace” cousin. The bind keyword does not exist in Java, so for JavaFX 2.0 a Data Binding API has been introduced as a replacement. To give a feel for the difference between the two versions of the Sudoku program, the table that follows indicates how many binds were required for each source file. For JavaFX Script files, this was ascertained by simply counting the number of occurrences of the bind keyword. As can be seen, binding had been used frequently in the JavaFX Script version (and does not take into consideration an additional half dozen or so “on replace” triggers). The JavaFX 2.0 program achieves the same functionality as the original JavaFX Script version, yet the equivalent of binding was only needed twice throughout the Java version of the source code. JavaFX Script source file Number of Binds JavaFX Next Java source file Number of “Binds” ArrowKey.java 0 Board.fx 1 Board.java 0 BoardNode.fx 7 BoardNode.java 0 ChooseNumberNode.fx 11 ChooseNumberNode.java 0 CloseButtonNode.fx 6 CloseButton.java 0 CustomNodeWithKeyTraversal.java 0 FunctionPtr.java 0 Globals.java 0 Grouping.fx 0 HowToPlayNode.fx 7 HowToPlayNode.java 0 IconButtonNode.fx 9 IconButtonNode.java 0 Main.fx 1 Main.java 0 Main_Mobile.fx 1 SliderNode.fx 6 SliderNode.java 1 Space.fx 0 Space.java 0 SpaceNode.fx 9 SpaceNode.java 1 TraversalHelper.fx 0 Total 58 2 Conclusions As the JavaFX 2.0 technology is so new, and experience with the platform is the same, it is possible and indeed probable that some of the observations noted in the preceding article may not apply across other attempts at migrating applications. That being said, this first experience indicates that the migrated Java code will likely be larger, though not extensively so, than the original Java FX Script source. Furthermore, although very important, it appears that the requirements for data synchronization via binding, may be significantly less with the new platform.

  Read the article

• Best of Breed vs. Suite – Oracle’s SaaS Delivers Both

  - by yaldahhakim

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt: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;} The debate of which is better: “best of breed” business applications vs. an integrated suite is certainly not a new conversation. This has been argued between IT vendors and CIOs for years. It’s also important to clarify that “best of breed” does not necessarily translate into being the richest functionality; rather it’s often about just having the best fit solution to solve a specific business problem or need. So what does cloud have to do with the niche vs. suite debate? Consuming business applications in a cloud or SaaS deployment model can change the best of breed vs. suite discussion - if the cloud is done right. It’s having your cake and eating it too only better: you don’t have to gather all the ingredients or wait to bake your cake, and you can adjust how big of slice you take. Before you eat, it’s worth pausing to recall much of what we learned about IT over the last decade. These basic IT principles still hold true even though the financial model has changed from buying to renting. In other words, what’s under the technology hood still matters. Architecture and development methodologies like building an application based on open standards so it works with other systems - is still important. Data and information silos, complex integrations, and proprietary technologies that lock you in, are still bad. While some may argue that IT no longer matters with cloud, the opposite is actually true. If anything cloud can help return IT back to its rightful place as key strategic asset vs. a liability on the balance sheet. The “I” in CIO was never meant to stand for “integration” yet it’s amazing how much time and money is poured into these types of initiatives for most organizations each year. Rather the “I” needs to stand for “innovation”. This is where Oracle SaaS can uniquely help. Oracle’s application strategy has not really changed over the years. It’s always been about bringing the best and richest functionality across the enterprise to our customers while leveraging a common, standards-based, and enterprise-grade platform. So not jut best fit, but the best capabilities based on the input of thousands of enterprise customers across the globe. Oracle invests billions in R&D every year to add new capabilities to the broadest cloud portfolio in the industry, spanning across functional pillars like CRM, HCM, ERP, etc. And where it makes sense, Oracle combines key strategic acquisitions to complement organic functionality. The result is best of breed delivered in a suite. Again this is not something new. The game changer now with cloud is that it impacts HOW Oracle customers adopt the richest, most modern applications across the business – and continue on getting it. Consuming oracle applications in the cloud means you can adopt new capabilities and updates very quickly and easily. There’s no hardware to buy or software to manage. Oracle does it for you. Low upfront costs and an OpEx financial model is the easy part. Oracle Cloud Applications take it a big step further. For organizations that demand having the latest and richest functionality and accelerating the time to value from their IT investment, Oracle Cloud is the right path. It’s about holistically changing the “hows” and the “whys” of the organization by leveraging transformational innovations like social, mobile, and big data in a consistent and more powerful way. Not just about sales force automation or talent management. These technologies should impact all parts of the company and Oracle Cloud is the enterprise-grade delivery vehicle. Oracle SaaS helps break down barriers of adoption and is eases the headache of upgrades, investing in new supporting hardware, or adding internal expertise to manage it all. With Oracle Cloud, customers can get best of breed capabilities in either a full suite model or a la carte. And because it’s entirely built on open standards, it’s built to co-exist with existing IT investments. Updates can be automatic or delayed based on a customer’s requirements. And it’s complete – a full suite of cross pillar functionality. Even better, if you don’t like it, need more or less, just turn the dial up or down. Just like your utility bill, you pay for what you use, and can consume more or less power whenever you need it. Lower cost, lower investment risk, without compromising on functionality, security, or performance. Technology still matters in the cloud. So our cloud customers also like that when they adopt our cloud applications, they also get the best underlying technology, from the middleware and database platform down to infrastructure and Oracle’s engineered systems. Therefore it’s not just the greatest and latest in application functionality, but everything underneath that makes it work is also the latest and greatest. The best of breed technology stack powering best of breed business applications, and all delivered in a subscription based model. The best of both worlds. Yep, that’s the idea.

  Read the article

• 24+ Coda Alternatives for Windows and Linux

  - by Matt

  Coda plays an important role in designing layout on Mac. There are numerous coda alternatives for windows and Linux too. It is not possible to describe each and everyone so some of the coda alternatives, which work on both windows and Linux platforms, are discussed below. EditPlus $35.00 Good thing about EditPlus is that it highlights URLs and email addresses, activating them when you ‘crtl + double-click’. It also has a built in browser for previewing HTML, and FTP and SFTP support. Also supports Macros and RegEx find and replace. UltraEdit $49.99 It is another good coda alternative for windows and Linux. It is the best suited editor for text, HTML and HEX. It also plays an advanced PHP, Perl, Java and JavaScript editor for programmers. It supports disk-based 64-bit or standard file handling on 32-bit Windows platforms or window 2000 and later versions. HippoEdit $39.95 HippoEDIT has the best autocomplete it gives pop a ‘tooltip’ above your cursor as you type, suggesting words you’ve already typed. It does syntax highlighting for over 2 dozen language. Sublime Text $59.00 Sublime Text awesome ‘zoomed out’ view of the file lets you focus on the area you want. It lets you open a local file when you right-click on its link, and there are a few automation features, so this would make a solid choice of a text editor. Textpad $24.70 TextPad is simple editor with nifty features such as column select, drag-and-drop text between files, and hyperlink support. It also supports large files. Aptana Free Aptana Studio is one of the best editors working on both windows and Linux. It is a complete web development setting that has a nice blend of powerful authoring tools with a collection of online hosting and collaboration services. It is quite helpful as it support for PHP, CSS, FTP, and more. SciTE Free It is a SCIntilla based Text Editor. It has gradually developed as a generally useful editor. It provides for building and running programs. It is best to be used for jobs with simple configurations. SciTE is currently available for Intel Win32 and Linux compatible operating systems with GTK+. It has been run on Windows XP and on Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 7.10 with GTK+ 2.12 E Text Editor $34.96 E Text Editor is a new text editor for Windows, which also works on Linux as well. It has powerful editing features and also some unique abilities. It makes text manipulation quite fast and easy, and makes user focus on his writing as it automatically does all the manual work. It can be extend it in any language. It supports Text Mate bundles, thus allows the user to tap into a huge and active community. Editra Free Editra is an upcoming editor, with some fantastic features such as user profiles, auto-completion, session saving, and syntax highlighing for 60+ languages. Plugins can extend the feature set, offering an integrated python console, FTP client, file browser, and calculator, among others. PSPad Free PSPad is a good Template for writing CSS, as it an internal web browser, and a macro recorder to the table. It also supports hex editing, and some degree of code compiling. JEdit Free It is a mature programmer’s text editor and has taken a good deal of time to be developed as it is today. It is better than many costlier development tools due to its features and simplicity of use. It has been released as free software with full source code, provided under the terms of the GPL 2.0. Which also adds to its attractiveness. NEdit Free It is a multi-purpose text editor for the X Window System, which also works on Linux. It combines a standard, easy to use, graphical user interface with the full functionality and stability required by users who edit text for long period a day. It also provides for thorough support for development in various languages. It also facilitates the use of text processors, and other tools at the same time. It can be used productively by anyone who needs to edit text. It is quite a user-friendly tool. Its salient features include syntax highlighting with built in pattern, auto indent, tab emulation, block indentation adjustment etc. As of version 5.1, NEdit may be freely distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. MadEdit Free Mad Edit is an Open-Source and Cross-Platform Text/Hex Editor. It is written in C++ and wxWidgets. MadEdit can edit files in Text/Column/Hex modes. It also supports many useful functions, such as Syntax Highlighting, Word Wrap, Encoding for UTF8/16/32,and others. It also supports word count, which makes it quite a useful text editor for both windows and Linux. It has been recently modified on 10/09/2010. KompoZer Free Kompozer is a complete web authoring system that has a combination of web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing. KompoZer has been designed to be completely and extensively easy to use. It is thus an ideal tool for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without knowing HTML or web coding. It is based on the NVU source code. Vim Free Vim or “Vi IMproved” is an advanced text editor. Its salient features are syntax highlighting, word completion and it also has a huge amount of contributed content. Vim has several “modes” on offer for editing, which adds to the efficiency in editing. Thus it becomes a non-user-friendly application but it is also strength for its users. The normal mode binds alphanumeric keys to task-oriented commands. The visual mode highlights text. More tools for search & replace, defining functions, etc. are offered through command line mode. Vim comes with complete help. NotePad ++ Free One of the the best free text editor for Windows out there; with support for simple things—like syntax highlighting and folding—all the way up to FTP, Notepad++ should tick most of the boxes Notepad2 Free Notepad2 is also based on the Scintilla editing engine, but it’s much simpler than Notepad++. It bills itself as being fast, light-weight, and Notepad-like. Crimson Editor Free Crimson Editor has the ability to edit remote files, using a built-in FTP client; there’s also a spell checker. TotalEdit Free TotalEdit allows file comparison, RegEx search and replace, and has multiple options for file backup / versioning. For cleanup, it offers (X)HTML and XML customizable formatting, and a spell checker. In-Type Free ConTEXT Free SourceEdit Free SourceEdit includes features such as clipboard history, syntax highlighting and autocompletion for a decent set of languages. A hex editor and FTP client. RJ TextED Free RJ TextED supports integration with TopStyle Lite. Provides HTML validation and formatting. It includes an FTP client, a file browser, and a code browser, as well as a character map and support for email. GEDIT Free It is one of the best coda alternatives for windows and Linux. It has syntax highlighting and is best suitable for programming. It has many attractive features such as full support for UTF-8, undo/redo, and clipboard support, search and replace, configurable syntax highlighting for various languages and many more supportive features. It is extensible with plug ins. Other important coda alternatives for windows and Linux are Redcar, Bluefish Editor, NVU, Ruby Mine, Slick Edit, Geany, Editra, txt2html and CSSED. There are many more. Its up to user to decide which one suits best to his requirements. Related posts:10 Useful Text Editor For Developer Applications to Install & Run Windows on Linux Open Source WYSIWYG Text Editors

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235  | Next Page >