aaron levin - Page 23 - Developer IT

I spoke at SQL Saturday #77 and all I got was this really awesome speaker's shirt!

- by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

Yeah, it was 2 weeks ago, but I'm finally blogging about something! I presented Revenge: The SQL! at SQL Saturday #77 in Pensacola on June 4. The session abstract is here, and you can download the slides from that page too. You can see how I look in the speaker's shirt here. Overall it went pretty well. I discovered a new bit of evil just that morning and in a carefully considered, agonizing decision-making process that was full documented, tested, and approved…nah, I just went ahead and added it at the last minute. Which worked out even better than (not) planned, since it screwed me up a bit and made my point perfectly. I had a few fans in the audience, and one of them recorded it for blackmail material posterity. I'd like to thank Karla Landrum (blog | twitter) and all the volunteers for putting together such a great event, and for being kind enough to let me present. (Note to Karla: I'll get the next $100 to you as soon as I can. Might need a few extra days on the next $100.) Thanks to Audrey (blog | twitter), Peg, and Dorothy for attending and keeping the heckling down. Thanks also to Aaron (blog | twitter) for providing room and board and also not heckling. Thanks to Julie (blog | twitter) for coming up with the title for the presentation. (boo to Julie for getting sick and bailing out on us) And thanks to all of them for listening to a preview and offering their suggestions and advice! Cross your fingers that I get accepted at SQL Saturday 81 in Birmingham, SQL Saturday 85 in Orlando, or SQL Saturday 89 in Atlanta, or just attend them anyway!

Read the article

Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010 Done

- by Martin Hinshelwood

Since I have joined SSW as a Solution Architect its Chief Architect, Adam Cogan, has been mentoring me and pushing me to do better. One of the things that I have been wanting to do since the first DDD Scotland was to present a session. For DDD Scotland 2010 Adam suggested that I submit he double session on “Better project Management with Team Foundation Server 2010”. So, with some apprehension I submitted two session as Part A and Part B. Download DDD Scotland - Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010 How surprised was I that after the attendees had finished casting their votes that both sessions would be in the top 20 one in the top 5. I an effort to promote diversity in sessions the DDD committee try to make sure that each presenter only have one session. I would have to compress SSW’s presentation into 1 hour. Around this time SSW embarked on it continuing adventures with scrum an Microsoft started heavily investing in Scrum for its internal use. I decided to do a slightly different session, but one that would still meet the agenda and goal of the billed session to provide “Better project management with Team Foundation Server 2010”. And so Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010 was born. At this stage I really have to thank Aaron Bjork who provided me with many of the slides and animations as I really can’t work Power Point. On the 27th of April I presented the session for the Aberdeen Partner Group and then on 8th May I presented at DDD Scotland. Figure: Some of the presenters and organisers of DDD Scotland I mentioned quite a few of SSW’s Rules to better Scrum Using TFS and I have uploaded my presentation to Skydrive. Download DDD Scotland - Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010 Technorati Tags: DDD Scot,Scrum,TFS 2010,SSW

Read the article

PowerShell to fetch a SQL Execution Plan

- by Rob Farley

With PowerShell becoming the scripting language of choice for many people, I’ve occasionally wondered about using it to analyse execution plans. After all, an execution plan is just XML, and PowerShell is just one tool which will very easily handle xml. The thing is – there’s no Get-SqlPlan cmdlet available, which has frustrated me in the past. Today I figured I’d make one. I know that I can write T-SQL to get an execution plan using SET SHOWPLAN_XML ON, but the problem is that this must be the only statement in a batch. So I used go, and a couple of newlines, and whipped up the following one-liner: function Get-SqlPlan([string] $query, [string] $server, [string] $db) { return ([xml] (invoke-sqlcmd -Server $server -Database $db -Query "set showplan_xml on;`ngo`n$query").Item( 0)) } (but please bear in mind that I have the SQL Snapins installed, which provides invoke-sqlcmd) To use this, I just do something like: $plan = get-sqlplan "select name from Production.Product" "." "AdventureWorks" And then find myself with an easy way to navigate through an execution plan! At some point I should make the function more robust, but this should be a good starter for any SQL PowerShell enthusiasts (like Aaron Nelson) out there.

Read the article

SQLRally Nordic gets underway

- by Rob Farley

PASS is becoming more international, which is great. The SQL Community has always been international – it’s not as if data is only generated in North America. And while it’s easy for organisations to have a North American focus, PASS is taking steps to become international. Regular readers will be aware that I’m one of three advisors to the PASS Board of Directors, with a focus on developing PASS as a more global organisation. With this in mind, it’s great that today is Day 1 of SQLRally Nordic, being hosted in in Sweden – not only a non-American country, but one that doesn’t have English as its major language. The event has been hosted by the amazing Johan Åhlén and Raoul Illyés, two guys who I met earlier this year, but the thing that amazes me is the incredible support that this event has from the SQL Community. It’s been sold out for a long time, and when you see the list of speakers, it’s not surprising. Some of the industry’s biggest names from Microsoft have turned up, including Mark Souza (who is also a PASS Director), Thomas Kejser and Tobias Thernström. Business Intelligence experts such as Jen Stirrup, Chris Webb, Peter Myers, Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari are there, as are some of the most awarded SQL MVPs such as Itzik Ben-Gan, Aaron Bertrand and Kevin Kline. The sponsor list is also brilliant, with names such as HP, FusionIO, SQL Sentry, Quest and SolidQ complimented by Swedish companies like Cornerstone, Informator, B3IT and Addskills. As someone who is interested in PASS becoming global, I’m really excited to see this event happening, and I hope it’s a launch-pad into many other international events hosted by the SQL community. If you have the opportunity, thank Johan and Raoul for putting this event on, and the speakers and sponsors for helping support it. The noise from Twitter is that everything is going fantastically well, and everyone involved should be thoroughly congratulated! @rob_farley

Read the article

Profit at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

- by user462779

It's only a week away: Oracle OpenWorld descends on San Francisco from September 30 to October 4. It's always a frantic week for the Profit editorial staff, but here's a few thing we've got going in San Francisco that you'll want to watch out for: Profit on Oracle OpenWorld Live: The Oracle video team will be broadcasting live from the event all week. I have a few interesting on-air interviews booked, including a conversation with business/technology researcher Andrew Mcafee (Monday Oct 1 @ 11:45am), Acorn Paper CEO David Weissberg (Tuesday, Oct 2 @ 12:15pm) and Abhay Parasnis, Oracle Senior Vice President, Oracle Public Cloud (Wednesday, Oct 3, @ 10:45am). Profit in the Oracle Partner Network Lounge: This summer, I worked with the amazing Oracle Partner Network (OPN) team to create the Profit Oracle Specialized Partner Edition 2012. It's a great catalog of Oracle partner success stories and insight into the OPN strategy from its leadership. Look for the special issue of Profit in the Oracle PartnerNetwork Lounge: the place where partners can meet formally or informally with colleagues, customers, prospects, and other industry professionals. Moscone South, Exhibit Hall, Room 100 Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld: There's been a lot of discussion within my editorial team (and content published, as well)about Customer Experience. To keep pace with this evolving subject, I'll be attending this special embedded conference on Wednesday and Thursday (Oct. 3-4). Especially looking forward to Seth Godin's presentation: he was one of the first experts we interviewed forProfit Online five years ago. The Executive Edge @ OpenWorld: Of course, my Oracle OpenWorld is mostly filled with meetings/interviews with Oracle customers about completed Oracle projects and the strategic impact of enterprise IT on business. The ideal place for these conversations is The Executive Edge @ OpenWorld embedded conference. Samovar Tea Lounge at Moscone Center: I spend my down time on the roof of Moscone North, preparing for meetings or having impromptu conversations with attendees at this little oasis overlooking Yerba Buena Gardens. Fee free to drop my for a chat! See you in San Francisco! -Aaron Lazenby

Read the article

Positioning a sprite in XNA: Use ClientBounds or BackBuffer?

- by Martin Andersson

I'm reading a book called "Learning XNA 4.0" written by Aaron Reed. Throughout most of the chapters, whenever he calculates the position of a sprite to use in his call to SpriteBatch.Draw, he uses Window.ClientBounds.Width and Window.ClientBounds.Height. But then all of a sudden, on page 108, he uses PresentationParameters.BackBufferWidth and PresentationParameters.BackBufferHeight instead. I think I understand what the Back Buffer and the Client Bounds are and the difference between those two (or perhaps not?). But I'm mighty confused about when I should use one or the other when it comes to positioning sprites. The author uses for the most part Client Bounds both for checking whenever a moving sprite is of the screen and to find a spawn point for new sprites. However, he seems to make two exceptions from this pattern in his book. The first time is when he wants some animated sprites to "move in" and cross the screen from one side to another (page 108 as mentioned). The second and last time is when he positions a texture to work as a button in the lower right corner of a Windows Phone 7 screen (page 379). Anyone got an idea? I shall provide some context if it is of any help. Here's how he usually calls SpriteBatch.Draw (code example from where he positions a sprite in the middle of the screen [page 35]): spriteBatch.Draw(texture, new Vector2( (Window.ClientBounds.Width / 2) - (texture.Width / 2), (Window.ClientBounds.Height / 2) - (texture.Height / 2)), null, Color.White, 0, Vector2.Zero, 1, SpriteEffects.None, 0); And here is the first case of four possible in a switch statement that will set the position of soon to be spawned moving sprites, this position will later be used in the SpriteBatch.Draw call (page 108): // Randomly choose which side of the screen to place enemy, // then randomly create a position along that side of the screen // and randomly choose a speed for the enemy switch (((Game1)Game).rnd.Next(4)) { case 0: // LEFT to RIGHT position = new Vector2( -frameSize.X, ((Game1)Game).rnd.Next(0, Game.GraphicsDevice.PresentationParameters.BackBufferHeight - frameSize.Y)); speed = new Vector2(((Game1)Game).rnd.Next( enemyMinSpeed, enemyMaxSpeed), 0); break;

Read the article

LiveMeeting VC PowerShell PASS – Troubleshooting SQL Server with PowerShell

- by Laerte Junior

Guys, join me on Wednesday July 18th 12 noon EDT (GMT -4) for a presentation called Troubleshooting SQL Server With PowerShell. It will be in English, so please make allowances for this. I’m sure that you’re aware that my English is not perfect, but it is not so bad. I will do my best, you can be sure. The registration link will be available soon from PowerShell.sqlpass.org, so I hope to see you there. It will be a session without slides. Just code; pure PowerShell code. Trust me, We will see a lot of COOL stuff.Big thanks to Aaron Nelson (@sqlvariant) for the opportunity! Here are some more details about the presentation: “Troubleshooting SQL Server with PowerShell – The Next Level’ It is normal for us to have to face poorly performing queries or even complete failure in our SQL server environments. This can happen for a variety of reasons including poor Database Designs, hardware failure, improperly-configured systems and OS Updates applied without testing. As Database Administrators, we need to take precaution to minimize the impact of these problems when they occur, and so we need the tools and methodology required to identify and solve issues quickly. In this Session we will use PowerShell to explore some common troubleshooting techniques used in our day-to-day work as s DBA. This will include a variety of such activities including Gathering Performance Counters in several servers at the same time using background jobs, identifying Blocked Sessions and Reading & filtering the SQL Error Log even if the Instance is offline The approach will be using some advanced PowerShell techniques that allow us to scale the code for multiple servers and run the data collection in asynchronous mode.

Read the article

Aliasing a route causes rails to expect paths that don't exist

- by DJTripleThreat

ok here's some code: prompt>rails my_app prompt>cd my_app prompt>script/generate scaffold service_type title:string time_allotment:integer prompt>rake db:migrate then edit these files to look like this: #routes.rb: ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map| map.resources :services, :controller => :service_types map.connect ':controller/:action/:id' map.connect ':controller/:action/:id.:format' end which produces these routes: prompt>rake routes services GET /services(.:format) {:controller=>"service_types", :action=>"index"} POST /services(.:format) {:controller=>"service_types", :action=>"create"} new_service GET /services/new(.:format) {:controller=>"service_types", :action=>"new"} edit_service GET /services/:id/edit(.:format) {:controller=>"service_types", :action=>"edit"} service GET /services/:id(.:format) {:controller=>"service_types", :action=>"show"} PUT /services/:id(.:format) {:controller=>"service_types", :action=>"update"} DELETE /services/:id(.:format) {:controller=>"service_types", :action=>"destroy"} /:controller/:action/:id /:controller/:action/:id(.:format) _ #my_app/app/views/service_types/index.html.erb <h1>Listing service_types</h1> <table> <tr> <th>Title</th> <th>Time allotment</th> </tr> <% @service_types.each do |service_type| %> <tr> <td><%=h service_type.title %></td> <td><%=h service_type.time_allotment %></td> <td><%= link_to 'Show', service_type %></td> <td><%= link_to 'Edit', edit_service_path(service_type) %></td> <td><%= link_to 'Destroy', service_type, :confirm => 'Are you sure?', :method => :delete %></td> </tr> <% end %> </table> <br /> <%= link_to 'New service_type', new_service_path %> - #my_app/app/views/service_types/new.html.erb <h1>New service_type</h1> <% form_for(@service_type) do |f| %> <%= f.error_messages %> <p> <%= f.label :title %><br /> <%= f.text_field :title %> </p> <p> <%= f.label :time_allotment %><br /> <%= f.text_field :time_allotment %> </p> <p> <%= f.submit 'Create' %> </p> <% end %> <%= link_to 'Back', services_path %> when you try to access http://localhost:3000/services/new you get the following error: undefined method `service_types_path' for #<ActionView::Base:0xb7199a80> Extracted source (around line #3): 1: <h1>New service_type</h1> 2: 3: <% form_for(@service_type) do |f| %> 4: <%= f.error_messages %> 5: 6: <p> Application Trace: /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_controller/polymorphic_routes.rb:107:in `__send__' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_controller/polymorphic_routes.rb:107:in `polymorphic_url' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_controller/polymorphic_routes.rb:114:in `polymorphic_path' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_view/helpers/form_helper.rb:298:in `apply_form_for_options!' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_view/helpers/form_helper.rb:277:in `form_for' /home/aaron/NetBeansProjects/my_app/app/views/service_types/new.html.erb:3:in `_run_erb_app47views47service_types47new46html46erb' /home/aaron/NetBeansProjects/my_app/app/controllers/service_types_controller.rb:29:in `new' Anyone have any idea why it believes that service_types_path is in my code when it's not?

Read the article

Join and sum not compatible matrices through data.table

- by leodido

My goal is to "sum" two not compatible matrices (matrices with different dimensions) using (and preserving) row and column names. I've figured this approach: convert the matrices to data.table objects, join them and then sum columns vectors. An example: > M1 1 3 4 5 7 8 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 0 0 0 0 1 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 > M2 1 3 4 5 8 1 0 0 1 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 4 1 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 > M1 %ms% M2 1 3 4 5 7 8 1 0 0 2 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 2 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 0 0 0 0 1 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 This is my code: M1 <- matrix(c(0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0), byrow = TRUE, ncol = 6) colnames(M1) <- c(1,3,4,5,7,8) M2 <- matrix(c(0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0), byrow = TRUE, ncol = 5) colnames(M2) <- c(1,3,4,5,8) # to data.table objects DT1 <- data.table(M1, keep.rownames = TRUE, key = "rn") DT2 <- data.table(M2, keep.rownames = TRUE, key = "rn") # join and sum of common columns if (nrow(DT1) > nrow(DT2)) { A <- DT2[DT1, roll = TRUE] A[, list(X1 = X1 + X1.1, X3 = X3 + X3.1, X4 = X4 + X4.1, X5 = X5 + X5.1, X7, X8 = X8 + X8.1), by = rn] } That outputs: rn X1 X3 X4 X5 X7 X8 1: 1 0 0 2 0 0 0 2: 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 3: 4 2 0 0 0 0 0 4: 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 5: 7 0 0 0 0 1 0 6: 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 Then I can convert back this data.table to a matrix and fix row and column names. The questions are: how to generalize this procedure? I need a way to automatically create list(X1 = X1 + X1.1, X3 = X3 + X3.1, X4 = X4 + X4.1, X5 = X5 + X5.1, X7, X8 = X8 + X8.1) because i want to apply this function to matrices which dimensions (and row/columns names) are not known in advance. In summary I need a merge procedure that behaves as described. there are other strategies/implementations that achieve the same goal that are, at the same time, faster and generalized? (hoping that some data.table monster help me) to what kind of join (inner, outer, etc. etc.) is assimilable this procedure? Thanks in advance. p.s.: I'm using data.table version 1.8.2 EDIT - SOLUTIONS @Aaron solution. No external libraries, only base R. It works also on list of matrices. add_matrices_1 <- function(...) { a <- list(...) cols <- sort(unique(unlist(lapply(a, colnames)))) rows <- sort(unique(unlist(lapply(a, rownames)))) out <- array(0, dim = c(length(rows), length(cols)), dimnames = list(rows,cols)) for (m in a) out[rownames(m), colnames(m)] <- out[rownames(m), colnames(m)] + m out } @MadScone solution. Used reshape2 package. It works only on two matrices per call. add_matrices_2 <- function(m1, m2) { m <- acast(rbind(melt(M1), melt(M2)), Var1~Var2, fun.aggregate = sum) mn <- unique(colnames(m1), colnames(m2)) rownames(m) <- mn colnames(m) <- mn m } BENCHMARK (100 runs with microbenchmark package) Unit: microseconds expr min lq median uq max 1 add_matrices_1 196.009 257.5865 282.027 291.2735 549.397 2 add_matrices_2 13737.851 14697.9790 14864.778 16285.7650 25567.448 No need to comment the benchmark: @Aaron solution wins. I'll continue to investigate a similar solution for data.table objects. I'll add other solutions eventually reported or discovered.

Read the article

Visual Studio reference x64 GAC

- by icelava

How can one get Visual Studio 2005/2008 to reference assemblies in the 64-bit GAC instead of the 32-bit GAC? We are settin the target platfom to x64 and the compiler is throwing the error of Error 2 Warning as Error: Assembly generation -- Referenced assembly 'System.Data.dll' targets a different processor Common Error 3 Warning as Error: Assembly generation -- Referenced assembly 'mscorlib.dll' targets a different processor Common Error 4 Assembly signing failed; output may not be signed -- The system cannot find the file specified. Common Update 29 Dec 08 Been trying out Aaron Stebner's suggestions to place 64-bit assemblies onto an isolated location (e.g. C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\GAC_64) and creating additional entries in the registry like HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft.NETFramework\AssemblyFolders\GAC_64 or HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft.NETFramework\v2.0.50727\AssemblyFoldersEx\GAC_64 but Visual Studio 2005 is still not picking it up....

Read the article

Actionscrips/Flex4: Display cut-off datapoints differently in LineChart

- by Limited Atonement

Dear Sirs, The issue arises when the user selects a range on the linechart that cuts off datapoints. When this happens, I would like the chart to tell the user somehow that there are data points three, just outside the range, perhaps by drawing a straight line across the top or bottom of the graph. How can I get Flex to do this for met? Let me know if you understand the question, or if you need more information, and of course, let me know the answer! Thanks! Sincerely, Aaron

Read the article

Remove Registry Keys for Windows Phone 7 Emulator

- by Jake Pearson

I am trying to get the updated Windows Phone 7 tools installed, but can't get rid of the old ones. The uninstaller wouldn't run, so I had to try more extreme means. I got everything removed except for "Microsoft Windows Phone Emulator x64". Does anyone know what vm_web.exe (the tool installer) is checking for (registry, file, etc.) that prevents the installer from running. I tried Aaron Stebner's clean up tool, and it helped a lot, but couldn't get rid of the emulator.

Read the article

What ports does Advantage Database Server need?

- by asherber

I have an application which uses ADS and I am attempting to deploy it in a Windows network environment with a rather restrictive firewall. I am having a problem configuring firewall ports appropriately. ADS lives on \server, and it's listening on port 1234. When \client tries to connect to \server\tables, I get Error 6420 (Discovery process failed). When \client tries to connect to \server:1234\tables, I get error 6097, bad IP address specified in the connection path. \server is pingable from \client, and I can telnet to \server:1234. If I try to connect from a client machine inside the firewall, either connection path works fine. It seems there must be something else I need to open in the firewall. Any ideas? Thanks, Aaron.

Read the article

Difference between mutableArrayValueForKey and calling insertObject:inEmployeesAtIndex: directly

- by jasonbogd

I have a question regarding using KVO-compliant methods to insert/remove objects from an array. I'm working through Aaron Hillegass' Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X and I saw the following line of code (in the insertObject:inEmployeesAtIndex: method: [[undoManager prepareWithInvocationTarget:self] removeObjectFromEmployeesAtIndex:index]; Correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought it was better to call mutableArrayValueForKey: and then removeObjectAtIndex:...so I tried changing the above line to this: [[undoManager prepareWithInvocationTarget:[self mutableArrayValueForKey:@"employees"]] removeObjectAtIndex:index]; And it didn't work. Can someone explain the difference and why the first line works but the second line doesn't?

Read the article

How to use Code Igniter to show Dynamic images via javascript(jQuery).

- by aaroninfidel

You can use the URL helper in Code Igniter to load CSS and Javascript with the base_url() method, but what if you have images dynamically being placed into your HTML via javascript? for example in my javascript file I've got var arrowimages={down:['downarrowclass', 'images/down.png', 23], right:['rightarrowclass', 'images/right.png']} and those images will be placed into whatever menu item I've specified has a drop down menu. but that file is a .js file so obviously the server won't load php inside of it. so, how can I set the base url for the JS? Thanks! -Aaron

Read the article

Scrum for Team Foundation Server 2010

- by Martin Hinshelwood

I will be presenting a session on “Scrum for TFS2010” not once, but twice! If you are going to be at the Aberdeen Partner Group meeting on 27th April, or DDD Scotland on 8th May then you may be able to catch my session. Credit: I want to give special thanks to Aaron Bjork from Microsoft who provided me with most of my material He is a Scrum and Power Point genius. Scrum for Team Foundation Server 2010 Synopsis Visual Studio ALM (formerly Visual Studio Team System (VSTS)) and Team Foundation Server (TFS) are the cornerstones of development on the Microsoft .NET platform. These are the best tools for a team to have successful projects and for the developers to have a focused and smooth software development process. For TFS 2010 Microsoft is heavily investing in Scrum and has already started moving some teams across to using it. Martin will not be going in depth with Scrum but you can find out more about Scrum by reading the Scrum Guide and you can even asses your Scrum knowledge by having a go at the Scrum Open Assessment. Come and see Martin Hinshelwood, Visual Studio ALM MVP and Solution Architect from SSW show you: How to successfully gather requirements with User stories How to plan a project using TFS 2010 and Scrum How to work with a product backlog in TFS 2010 The right way to plan a sprint with TFS 2010 Tracking your progress The right way to use work items What you can use from the built in reporting as well as the Project portals available on from the SharePoint dashboard The important reports to give your Product Owner / Project Manager Walk away knowing how to see the project health and progress. Visual Studio ALM is designed to help address many of these traditional problems faced by teams. It does so by providing a set of integrated tools to help teams improve their software development activities and to help managers better support the software development processes. During this session we will cover the lifecycle of creating work items and how this fits into Scrum using Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server. If you want to know more about how to do Scrum with TFS then there is a new course that has been created in collaboration with Microsoft and Scrum.org that is going to be the official course for working with TFS 2010. SSW has Professional Scrum Developer Trainers who specialise in training your developers in implementing Scrum with Microsoft's Visual Studio ALM tools. Ken Schwaber and and Sam Guckenheimer: Professional Scrum Development Technorati Tags: Scrum,VS ALM,VS 2010,TFS 2010

Read the article

Scrum for Team Foundation Server 2010

- by Martin Hinshelwood

I will be presenting a session on “Scrum for TFS2010” not once, but twice! If you are going to be at the Aberdeen Partner Group meeting on 27th April, or DDD Scotland on 8th May then you may be able to catch my session. Credit: I want to give special thanks to Aaron Bjork from Microsoft who provided me with most of my material He is a Scrum and Power Point genius. Updated 9th May 2010 – I have now presented at both of these sessions and posted about it. Scrum for Team Foundation Server 2010 Synopsis Visual Studio ALM (formerly Visual Studio Team System (VSTS)) and Team Foundation Server (TFS) are the cornerstones of development on the Microsoft .NET platform. These are the best tools for a team to have successful projects and for the developers to have a focused and smooth software development process. For TFS 2010 Microsoft is heavily investing in Scrum and has already started moving some teams across to using it. Martin will not be going in depth with Scrum but you can find out more about Scrum by reading the Scrum Guide and you can even asses your Scrum knowledge by having a go at the Scrum Open Assessment. You can also read SSW’s Rules to Better Scrum using TFS which have been developed during our own Scrum implementations. Come and see Martin Hinshelwood, Visual Studio ALM MVP and Solution Architect from SSW show you: How to successfully gather requirements with User stories How to plan a project using TFS 2010 and Scrum How to work with a product backlog in TFS 2010 The right way to plan a sprint with TFS 2010 Tracking your progress The right way to use work items What you can use from the built in reporting as well as the Project portals available on from the SharePoint dashboard The important reports to give your Product Owner / Project Manager Walk away knowing how to see the project health and progress. Visual Studio ALM is designed to help address many of these traditional problems faced by teams. It does so by providing a set of integrated tools to help teams improve their software development activities and to help managers better support the software development processes. During this session we will cover the lifecycle of creating work items and how this fits into Scrum using Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server. If you want to know more about how to do Scrum with TFS then there is a new course that has been created in collaboration with Microsoft and Scrum.org that is going to be the official course for working with TFS 2010. SSW has Professional Scrum Developer Trainers who specialise in training your developers in implementing Scrum with Microsoft's Visual Studio ALM tools. Ken Schwaber and and Sam Guckenheimer: Professional Scrum Development Technorati Tags: Scrum,VS ALM,VS 2010,TFS 2010

Read the article

Exploding maps in Reporting Services 2008 R2

- by Rob Farley

Kaboom! Well, that was the imagery that secretly appeared in my mind when I saw “USA By State Exploded” in the list of installed maps in Report Builder 3.0 – part of the spatial offering of SQL Server Reporting Server 2008 R2. Alas, it just means that the borders are bigger. Clicking on it showed me. Unfortunately, I’m not interested in maps of the US. None of my clients are there (at least, not yet – feel free to get in touch if you want to change this ‘feature’ of my company). So instead, I’ve recently been getting hold of some data for Australian areas. I’ve just bought some PostCode shapes for South Australia, and will use this in demos for conferences and for showing clients how this kind of report can really impact their reporting. One of the companies I was talking about getting shape files sent me a sample. So I chose the “ESRI shapefile” option you see above, and browsed to my file. It appeared in the window like this: Australians will immediately recognise this as the area around Wollongong, just south of Sydney. Well, apart from me. I didn’t. I had to put a Bing Maps layer behind it to work that out, but that’s not for this post. The thing that I discovered was that if I selected the Exploded USA option (but without clicking Next), and then chose my shape file, then my area around Wollongong would be exploded too! Huh! I think this is actually a bug, but a potentially useful one! Some further investigation (involving creating two identical reports, one with this exploded view, one without), showed that the Exploded View is done by reducing the ScaleFactor property of the PolygonLayer in the map control. The Exploded version has it below 1. If you set to above one, your shapes overlap. I discovered this by accident… I guess I hadn’t looked through all the PolygonLayer options to work out what they all do. And because this post is about Reporting, it can qualify for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Aaron Nelson (@sqlvariant). Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

Read the article

SQLAuthority News – Featuring in Call Me Maybe The Developer Way – Pluralsight Video

- by pinaldave

Is SQL boring? Not at all. SQL is fun – one has to know how to maximize the fun while working with SQL Server. Earlier I was invited to participate in the video Pluralsight. I am sure all of you know that I have authored 3 SQL Server Learning courses with Pluralsight – 1) SQL Server Q and A 2) SQL Server Performance Tuning and 3) SQL Server Indexing. Before I say anything I suggest all of you watch the following video. Make sure that you pay special attention after 0 minute and 36 seconds. What I can say about this. I am just fortunate to be part of the history in the making. There are more than 53 super cool celebrities in this video. In this just over 3 minute video there are so many story lines. I must congratulate director Megan and creative assistant Mari for excellent work. There are so many fun moments in this small video. Let me list my top five moments. @John_Papa ‘s dance at second 14 @julielerman playing with cute doggy The RACE between @josepheames and @bruthafish – the end is hilarious The black belt moment by @boedie @stwool relaxing on something strange! Well, this is indeed a great short film. This video demonstrates how cool is the culture of Pluralsight and how fun loving they are. A good organization provides an environment to its employees and partners to have maximum fun while they all become part of the success story. Hats off to Aaron Skonnard for producing this fun loving video. Well, after listening to this song for multiple times, I decided to give a call to Pluralsight. If you want, you can call them at +1 (801) 784-9032 or send an email to james-cole at pluralsight.com . What are your top five favorite moments? List it in comments and you may win Pluralsight subscription. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: About Me, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

Read the article

Software to automate website screenshot capture

- by Leniel Macaferi

Do you know any software that can automate the process of getting screenshots of every page of a website? It would act like a spider/crawler/robot. You name it... For example: I developed a website and now I'd like to get a screenshot of every page of the site. I of course could do it manually (a lot of work). For each module of the site (Student, Payment, etc) I have different pages (Create, Edit, Details, Delete, etc) forms. The thing I'm looking for is a software that can visit every link of the site and then capture the screen - a software that can automate the whole process. It would also be good if the software allowed the user to pass a list of URLs to capture screenshots allowing even more fine grained configuration. EDIT: I tried Selenium mentioned by Aaron in his answer but I managed to find an app that does exactly what I needed. It's called Paparazzi!. I wrote a blog post to showcase my attempt at Selenium and the findings regarding Paparazzi!'s batch capture functionality: Software to automate website screenshot capture

Read the article

storing session data in mysql using php is not retrieving the data properly from the tables.

- by Ronedog

I have a problem retrieving some data from the $_SESSION using php and mysql. I've commented out the line in php.ini that tells the server to use the "file" to store the session info so my database will be used. I have a class that I use to write the information to the database and its working fine. When the user passes their credentials the class gets instantiated and the $_SESSION vars get set, then the user gets redirected to the index page. The index.php page includes the file where the db session class is, which when instantiated calles session_start() and the session variables should be in $_SESSION, but when I do var_dump($_SESSION) there is nothing in the array. However, when I look at the data in mysql, all the session information is in there. Its acting like session_start() has not been called, but by instantiating the class it is. Any idea what could be wrong? Here's the HTML: <?php include_once "classes/phpsessions_db/class.dbsession.php"; //used for sessions var_dump($_SESSION); ?> <html> . . . </html> Here's the dbsession class: <?php error_reporting(E_ALL); class dbSession { function dbSession($gc_maxlifetime = "", $gc_probability = "", $gc_divisor = "") { // if $gc_maxlifetime is specified and is an integer number if ($gc_maxlifetime != "" && is_integer($gc_maxlifetime)) { // set the new value @ini_set('session.gc_maxlifetime', $gc_maxlifetime); } // if $gc_probability is specified and is an integer number if ($gc_probability != "" && is_integer($gc_probability)) { // set the new value @ini_set('session.gc_probability', $gc_probability); } // if $gc_divisor is specified and is an integer number if ($gc_divisor != "" && is_integer($gc_divisor)) { // set the new value @ini_set('session.gc_divisor', $gc_divisor); } // get session lifetime $this->sessionLifetime = ini_get("session.gc_maxlifetime"); //Added by AARON. cancel the session's auto start,important, without this the session var's don't show up on next pg. session_write_close(); // register the new handler session_set_save_handler( array(&$this, 'open'), array(&$this, 'close'), array(&$this, 'read'), array(&$this, 'write'), array(&$this, 'destroy'), array(&$this, 'gc') ); register_shutdown_function('session_write_close'); // start the session @session_start(); } function stop() { $new_sess_id = $this->regenerate_id(true); session_unset(); session_destroy(); return $new_sess_id; } function regenerate_id($return_val=false) { // saves the old session's id $oldSessionID = session_id(); // regenerates the id // this function will create a new session, with a new id and containing the data from the old session // but will not delete the old session session_regenerate_id(); // because the session_regenerate_id() function does not delete the old session, // we have to delete it manually //$this->destroy($oldSessionID); //ADDED by aaron // returns the new session id if($return_val) { return session_id(); } } function open($save_path, $session_name) { // global $gf; // $gf->debug_this($gf, "GF: Opening Session"); // change the next values to match the setting of your mySQL database $mySQLHost = "localhost"; $mySQLUsername = "user"; $mySQLPassword = "pass"; $mySQLDatabase = "sessions"; $link = mysql_connect($mySQLHost, $mySQLUsername, $mySQLPassword); if (!$link) { die ("Could not connect to database!"); } $dbc = mysql_select_db($mySQLDatabase, $link); if (!$dbc) { die ("Could not select database!"); } return true; } function close() { mysql_close(); return true; } function read($session_id) { $result = @mysql_query(" SELECT session_data FROM session_data WHERE session_id = '".$session_id."' AND http_user_agent = '".$_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"]."' AND session_expire > '".time()."' "); // if anything was found if (is_resource($result) && @mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) { // return found data $fields = @mysql_fetch_assoc($result); // don't bother with the unserialization - PHP handles this automatically return unserialize($fields["session_data"]); } // if there was an error return an empty string - this HAS to be an empty string return ""; } function write($session_id, $session_data) { // global $gf; // first checks if there is a session with this id $result = @mysql_query(" SELECT * FROM session_data WHERE session_id = '".$session_id."' "); // if there is if (@mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) { // update the existing session's data // and set new expiry time $result = @mysql_query(" UPDATE session_data SET session_data = '".serialize($session_data)."', session_expire = '".(time() + $this->sessionLifetime)."' WHERE session_id = '".$session_id."' "); // if anything happened if (@mysql_affected_rows()) { // return true return true; } } else // if this session id is not in the database { // $gf->debug_this($gf, "inside dbSession, trying to write to db because session id was NOT in db"); $sql = " INSERT INTO session_data ( session_id, http_user_agent, session_data, session_expire ) VALUES ( '".serialize($session_id)."', '".$_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"]."', '".$session_data."', '".(time() + $this->sessionLifetime)."' ) "; // insert a new record $result = @mysql_query($sql); // if anything happened if (@mysql_affected_rows()) { // return an empty string return ""; } } // if something went wrong, return false return false; } function destroy($session_id) { // deletes the current session id from the database $result = @mysql_query(" DELETE FROM session_data WHERE session_id = '".$session_id."' "); // if anything happened if (@mysql_affected_rows()) { // return true return true; } // if something went wrong, return false return false; } function gc($maxlifetime) { // it deletes expired sessions from database $result = @mysql_query(" DELETE FROM session_data WHERE session_expire < '".(time() - $maxlifetime)."' "); } } //End of Class $session = new dbsession(); ?>

Read the article

Regular Expressions Cookbook Is in The Money—Win a Copy

- by Jan Goyvaerts

%COOKBOOKFRAME%You may have heard some people say that most book authors never get any royalties. That’s not true because most authors get an advance royalty that is paid before the book is published. That’s the author’s main incentive for writing the book, at least as far as money is concerned. (If money is your main concern, don’t write books.) What is true is that most authors never see any money beyond the advance royalty. Royalty rates are very low. A 10% royalty of the publisher’s price is considered normal. The publisher’s price is usually 45% of the retail price. So if you pay full price in a bookstore, the author gets 4.5% of your money. If there’s more than one author, they split the royalty. It doesn’t take a math degree to figure out that a book needs to sell quite a few copies for the royalty to add up to a meaningful amount of money. But Steven and I must have done something right. Regular Expressions Cookbook is in the money. My royalty statement for the 3rd quartier of 2009, which is the 2nd quarter that the book was on the market, came with a check. I actually received it last month but didn’t get around to blogging about. The amount of the check is insignificant. The point is that the balance is no longer negative. I’m taking this opportunity to pat myself and my co-author on the back. To celebrate the occassion O’Reilly has offered to sponsor a give-away of five (5) copies of Regular Expressions Cookbook. These are the rules of the game: You must post a comment to this blog article including your actual name and actual email address. Names are published, email addresses are not. Comments are moderated by myself (Jan Goyvaerts). If I consider a comment to be offensive or spam it will not be published and not be eligible for any prize. If you don’t know what to say in the comment, just wish me a happy 100000nd birthday, so I don’t have to feel so bad about entering the 6-bit era. Each person commenting has only one chance to win, regardless of the number of comments posted. O’Reilly will be provided with the names and email addresses of the winners (and those email addresses only) in order to arrange delivery. Each winner can choose to receive a printed copy or ebook (DRM-free PDF). If you choose the printed book, O’Reilly pays for shipping to anywhere in the world but not for any duties or taxes your country may impose on books imported from the USA. If you choose the ebook, you’ll need to create an O’Reilly account that is then granted access to the PDF download. You can make your choice after you’ve won, so it doesn’t influence your chance of winning. Contest ends 28 February 2010, GMT+7 (Thai time). Chosen by five calls to Random(78)+1 in Delphi 2010, the winners are: 48: Xiaozu 45: David Chisholm 19: Miquel Burns 33: Aaron Rice 17: David Laing Thanks to everybody who participated. The winners have been notified by email on how to collect their prize.

Read the article

Finding Leaders Breakfasts - Adelaide and Perth

- by rdatson-Oracle

HR Executives Breakfast Roundtables: Find the best leaders using science and social media! Perth, 22nd July & Adelaide, 24th July What is leadership in the 21st century? What does the latest research tell us about leadership? How do you recognise leadership qualities in individuals? How do you find individuals with these leadership qualities, hire and develop them? Join the Neuroleadership Institute, the Hay Group, and Oracle to hear: 1. the latest neuroscience research about human bias, and how it applies to finding and building better leaders; 2. the latest techniques to recognise leadership qualities in people; 3. and how you can harness your people and social media to find the best people for your company. Reflect on your hiring practices at this thought provoking breakfast, where you will be challenged to consider whether you are using best practices aimed at getting the right people into your company. Speakers Abigail Scott, Hay Group Abigail is a UK registered psychologist with 10 years international experience in the design and delivery of talent frameworks and assessments. She has delivered innovative assessment programmes across a range of organisations to identify and develop leaders. She is experienced in advising and supporting clients through new initiatives using evidence-based approach and has published a number of research papers on fairness and predictive validity in assessment. Karin Hawkins, NeuroLeadership Institute Karin is the Regional Director of NeuroLeadership Institute’s Asia-Pacific region. She brings over 20 years experience in the financial services sector delivering cultural and commercial results across a variety of organisations and functions. As a leadership risk specialist Karin understands the challenge of building deep bench strength in teams and she is able to bring evidence, insight, and experience to support executives in meeting today’s challenges. Robert Datson, Oracle Robert is a Human Capital Management specialist at Oracle, with several years as a practicing manager at IBM, learning and implementing latest management techniques for hiring, deploying and developing staff. At Oracle he works with clients to enable best practices for HR departments, and drawing the linkages between HR initiatives and bottom-line improvements. Agenda 07:30 a.m. Breakfast and Registrations 08:00 a.m. Welcome and Introductions 08:05 a.m. Breaking Bias in leadership decisions - Karin Hawkins 08:30 a.m. Identifying and developing leaders - Abigail Scott 08:55 a.m. Finding leaders, the social way - Robert Datson 09:20 a.m. Q&A and Closing Remarks 09:30 a.m. Event concludes If you are an employee or official of a government organisation, please click here for important ethics information regarding this event. To register for Perth, Tuesday 22nd July, please click HERE To register for Adelaide, Thursday 24th July, please click HERE 1024x768 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 -"/ /* 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; 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; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Contact: To register or have questions on the event? Contact Aaron Tait on +61 2 9491 1404

Read the article

Criminals and Other Illegal Characters

- by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

SQLTeam's favorite Slovenian blogger Mladen (b | t) had an interesting question on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MladenPrajdic/status/347057950470307841 I liked Kendal Van Dyke's (b | t) reply: http://twitter.com/SQLDBA/status/347058908801667072 And he was right! This is one of those pretty-useless-but-sounds-interesting propositions that I've based all my presentations on, and most of my blog posts. If you read all the replies you'll see a lot of good suggestions. I particularly like Aaron Bertrand's (b | t) idea of going into the Unicode character set, since there are over 65,000 characters available. But how to find an illegal character? Detective work? I'm working on the premise that if SQL Server will reject it as a name it would throw an error. So all we have to do is generate all Unicode characters, rename a database with that character, and catch any errors. It turns out that dynamic SQL can lend a hand here: IF DB_ID(N'a') IS NULL CREATE DATABASE [a]; DECLARE @c INT=1, @sql NVARCHAR(MAX)=N'', @err NVARCHAR(MAX)=N''; WHILE @c<65536 BEGIN BEGIN TRY SET @sql=N'alter database ' + QUOTENAME(CASE WHEN @c=1 THEN N'a' ELSE NCHAR(@c-1) END) + N' modify name=' + QUOTENAME(NCHAR(@c)); RAISERROR(N'*** Trying %d',10,1,@c) WITH NOWAIT; EXEC(@sql); SET @c+=1; END TRY BEGIN CATCH SET @err=ERROR_MESSAGE(); RAISERROR(N'Ooops - %d - %s',10,1,@c,@err) WITH NOWAIT; BREAK; END CATCH END SET @sql=N'alter database ' + QUOTENAME(NCHAR(@c-1)) + N' modify name=[a]'; EXEC(@sql); The script creates a dummy database "a" if it doesn't already exist, and only tests single characters as a database name. If you have databases with single character names then you shouldn't run this on that server. It takes a few minutes to run, but if you do you'll see that no errors are thrown for any of the characters. It seems that SQL Server will accept any character, no matter where they're from. (Well, there's one, but I won't tell you which. Actually there's 2, but one of them requires some deep existential thinking.) The output is also interesting, as quite a few codes do some weird things there. I'm pretty sure it's due to the font used in SSMS for the messages output window, not all characters are available. If you run it using the SQLCMD utility, and use the -o switch to output to a file, and -u for Unicode output, you can open the file in Notepad or another text editor and see the whole thing. I'm not sure what character I'd recommend to answer Mladen's question. I think the standard tab (ASCII 9) is fine. There's also several specific separator characters in the original ASCII character set (decimal 28-31). But of all the choices available in Unicode whitespace, I think my favorite would be the Mongolian Vowel Separator. Or maybe the zero-width space. (that'll be fun to print!) And since this is Mladen we're talking about, here's a good selection of "intriguing" characters he could use.

Search Results

Search found 600 results on 24 pages for 'aaron levin'.

Page 23/24 | < Previous Page | 19 20 21 22 23 24 | Next Page >

- by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

- by Martin Hinshelwood

- by Rob Farley

- by Rob Farley

- by user462779

- by Martin Andersson

- by Laerte Junior

- by DJTripleThreat

- by leodido

- by icelava

- by Limited Atonement

- by Jake Pearson

- by asherber

- by jasonbogd

- by aaroninfidel

- by Martin Hinshelwood

- by Martin Hinshelwood

- by Rob Farley

- by pinaldave

- by Leniel Macaferi

- by Ronedog

- by Jan Goyvaerts

- by Bill Graziano

- by rdatson-Oracle

- by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

< Previous Page | 19 20 21 22 23 24 | Next Page >