future proof - Page 238

CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 04, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 04, 2010New ProjectsAlbum photo de club - Club's Photos Album: Un album photos permettant d'afficher les photos et le détails des membres d'un club - Photo album allowing to view photos and details of the membersBlog.Net Blogging Components: Blog.Net server-side blogging components to add a blog to your current ASP.NET website.FilePirate - Really Advanced LAN File Sharing: Really Advanced, yet super easy, LAN Party File Sharing written using the .Net Framework and C#. Ditch DirectConnect or Windows File Sharing at y...Fisiogest: Programa de gestión de una clínica de fisioterapiaIdeaNMR: An online repository of NMR experiment automated setups with wiki type documentation library and client program providing automated experiment setu...Introducción a Unity: Código de ejemplo del uso de Unity en diferentes situaciones. - Registro de clases, instancias e interfaces. - Resolución de clases, instancias e...Iowa City .NET Developers: This is the project site for the Iowa City .NET Developers.isanywhere: A command line utility to see if one or more files (given a filemask) are to be found anywhere inside a specific directory, or elsewhere inside one...LczCode: lczLog4net udp logs viewer: UdpLogViewer is a .NET 4 WinForm application that receives udp messages from log4net and shows them in a grid. It is possible to filter them or sh...New Silverlight XPS Viewer (In Sl4): New Silverlight XPS viewer Novuz: Novuz is a usenet indexer and reporter. It's developed both in Visual Studio 2010 and MonoDevelop, one of the key features of Novuz is that it sho...PodSnatch: PodSnatch is a podcast client that makes it easy to download rss-enclosures. Multiple simultaneous downloads enabled by threading. GUI is built wi...Robot Shootans: A simple top down shooter game where the player has to kill robots running at them. Written in C++ using SDL with various extentionsSharePoint Rsync List: This program will syncronize files and directories from and unc/local/sharepoint to a SharePoint 2007 or 2010 server. Supports of to 2GB files and ...SignInAndStorageLib: SignInAndStorageLib makes properly handling both sign in and storage issues in Xbox 360 XBLIG XNA games simple. Written in C#, SignInAndStorageLib...SilverBBS: ANSI-style bbs experience delivered via Silverlight. Silverlight flip-down counter: A Silverlight widget that enables you to count down towards a preconfigured event on a configured date.SmartieFly: Smartie Fly is a quiz software program written in C# using Silverlight. It uses SQL Server as a backend database. VS2010 Framework Driven Testing: CodedUITests generate a lot of code, and they break on every change to the object under test. Goals: - write new tests manually, but with as litt...WMediaCatalog: Advanced multimedia cataloguer. Allows users to keep their musical collections well organized and provides flexible methods of filtering, serarching WPathFinder: A simple path management application for windows. Functionality includes: - Add/remove/change path entries easily. - Search for all instances of a...Yasminoku: Yasminoku is an open source "Sudoku" alike game totally written in DHTML (JavaScript, CSS and HTML) that uses mouse. Includes sudoku solver. This c...New ReleasesAlbum photo de club - Club's Photos Album: App - version 0.4: version 0.4 - Critère d'affichage des membres : nom, année, ville - Navigation entre les images d'un membres - Navigation entre les membres - Affi...Album photo de club - Club's Photos Album: Code - Version 0.4: Code source de la version 0.4BigDecimal: Concept Evaluation Release 2 (BigDecimals): This in the second updates release of BigDecimals. It has the four simple arithmetic rules Addition, Subtract, Multiple and Division.CBM-Command: 2010-05-03: New features in this build Keyboard Shortcuts Panel Swapping Panel Toggling On/Off Toggling 40/80 Columns Confirming Quit Confirming GO64...Directory Linker: Directory Linker 2: This release introduces Undo Support and Symbolic File Link support. More details can be found here http://www.humblecoder.co.uk/?p=141DotNetNuke Skins Pack: DotNetNuke 80 Skins Pack: This released is the first for DNN 4 & 5 with Skin Token Design (legacy skin support on DNN 4 & 5)DTLoggedExec: 1.0.0.0: -FIRST NON-BETA RELEASE! :) -Code cleaned up -Added SetPackageInfo method to ILogProvider interface to make easier future improvements -Deprecated...GenerateTypedBamApi: Version 2.1: Changes in this release: NEW: Support for Office Data Connectivity Components 2010 NEW: Include both x86 and x64 EXE's due to lack of support in ...HobbyBrew Mobile: Beta 1 Refresh: Risolto bug circa il salvataggio di ricette (veniva impostato scorrettamente che si trattava di Mash Design "infusione" se ri-aperte con hobbyBrew)...Home Access Plus+: v4.2: Version 4.2 Added Overrides into the Booking System Some slight CSS changes to the Help Desk Updated the config tool to work anywhere on the LA...Hubble.Net - Open source full-text search database: V0.8.3.0: V0.8.3.0 Show server version in about dialog. Fix a bug of deleting querycache files. V0.8.2.9 Change sql client to support userid and password Ch...IdeaNMR: IdeaNMR Client: This is a client program with an example package.kdar: KDAR 0.0.21: KDAR - Kernel Debugger Anti Rootkit - signature's bases updated - usability increased - NDIS6 MINIPORT_BLOCK checks addedLightWeight Application Server: 0.4.1: One step further to beta - yet another release for c# developers audience only. Changes: 1. API - added a LWAS.Infrastructure.Storage service to d...Log4net udp logs viewer: UdpLogViewer 1.0: First release of UdpLogViewer, version 1.0.MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.11.58370: Fixed minor bugs.Metabolite Enterprise Libraries for EPiServer CMS using Page Type Builder: Metabolite Enterprise Libraries 1.2 Beta 2: This is the beta release of the Metabolite Enterprise Libraries 1.2 Beta 2 for use with EPiServer 6 and Page Type Builder 1.2 Beta 2.Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework: Version 1.4.3 Installer: Pre-release Installer for Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 4 RCSupports both Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4 Release NotesFixed null referen...MultipointTUIO: Multipoint SDK v1.5 Release: Rebuilt against v1.5 of the Microsoft Multipoint SDK, this mean Windows 7 support (and 64bit I think!)My Notepad: My Notepad: This is the status of My Notepad until now. This is many built in features but has to undergo a lot of modifications. The release does not include ...New Silverlight XPS Viewer (In Sl4): Silverlight XPS Viewer: Background: During my development last week I was working on a Silverlight based XPS viewer. During this viewer we came to a situation in which the...NSIS Autorun: NSIS Autorun 0.1.6: This release includes source code, executable binary, files and example materials.Open Diagram: Open Diagram 5.0 Beta May 2010: This is the first beta release of Open Diagram 5.0. Select Crainiate.Diagramming.Examples.Forms as the startup project to view the current Class D...Pocket Wiki: PC Wiki (zip) 1.0.1: PC Version of Pocket Wiki. Unzip and run. Requires .NET Framework 2.0Pocket Wiki: Pocket Wiki 1.0.1 (cab): Pocket Wiki cab installation - requires DotNet 2.0 or greater. Default wiki language is "slash" - a syntax I created that is easy to type on keyboa...Pocket Wiki: Pocket Wiki.sbp: Pocket Wiki Source Code (version .72) - Basic4PPCPublish to Photo Frame: 1.0.2.0: This version adds: add borders to portrait images, for photo frames that crop them incorrectly.Reflection Studio: Reflection Studio 0.1: First download release, it contains a lot of things but allways in beta version. Hope you will like the preview.SharePoint 2010 PowerShell Scripts & Utilities: PSSP2010 Utils 0.1: This is the initial release with SPInstallUtils.psm1 module. This module includes Get-SPPrerequisites and New-SPInstallPackage cmdlets. Refer to th...Silverlight 4.0 Popup Menu: Context Menu for Silverlight 4.0 v1.1 Beta: Multilevel menus are now supported. Added design time support for the PopupMenuItem elements. The project is now under Subversion.Silverlight flip-down counter: FlipDownCounter v1.0: The final release of the Silverlight flip-down counter. Please refer to the included readme file for information on how to use the counter.Stratosphere: Stratosphere 1.0.0.1: Moved scalable block file system implementation to Stratosphere.FileSystemSystem.AddIn Pipeline Builder: Pipeline Builder 1.2: Lots of improvements from the CTP, version 1.0: - Added dialogue for possible overwrite if the file has changed: possibility of ignoring changes (p...ThoughtWorks Cruise Notification Interceptor: 1.0.1: Fixed an issue with the regex that parses the incoming notification. This issue would send failure messages when the build was "fixed".ThreadSafeControls: ThreadSafeControls v0.1: This is the first binary release of the ThreadSafeControls library. I'll call it a pre-alpha release.TracerX Logger/Viewer for .NET: 4.0: View this CodeProject article for documentation on how to use the latest version of the Logger. About the DownloadsVersion: 4.0.1005.1163 Changese...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30503.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: Lottery Game (Visual C++ 2008): An advanced lottery game made in visual c 2008.VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.1.3: Version 7.1.3 of VivoSocial has been released. If you experienced any issues with the previous version, please update your modules to the 7.1.3 rel...Xrns2XMod: Xrns2XMod 1.0: Features added Conversion of all possible convertible features between Renoise and MOD / XM. FlacBox lib updated (thanks to Yuri) NAudio lib in...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: Databasepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibrarySilverlight ToolkitiTuner - The iTunes CompanionWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETDotNetNuke® Community EditionMost Active ProjectsIonics Isapi Rewrite Filterpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrHydroServer - CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System ServerAJAX Control Frameworkpatterns & practices: Azure Security GuidanceNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleBlogEngine.NETTinyProjectDambach Linear Algebra Framework

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SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #033

- by Pinal Dave

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

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MVC Automatic Menu

- by Nuri Halperin

An ex-colleague of mine used to call his SQL script generator "Super-Scriptmatic 2000". It impressed our then boss little, but was fun to say and use. We called every batch job and script "something 2000" from that day on. I'm tempted to call this one Menu-Matic 2000, except it's waaaay past 2000. Oh well. The problem: I'm developing a bunch of stuff in MVC. There's no PM to generate mounds of requirements and there's no Ux Architect to create wireframe. During development, things change. Specifically, actions get renamed, moved from controller x to y etc. Well, as the site grows, it becomes a major pain to keep a static menu up to date, because the links change. The HtmlHelper doesn't live up to it's name and provides little help. How do I keep this growing list of pesky little forgotten actions reigned in? The general plan is: Decorate every action you want as a menu item with a custom attribute Reflect out all menu items into a structure at load time Render the menu using as CSS friendly <ul><li> HTML. The MvcMenuItemAttribute decorates an action, designating it to be included as a menu item: [AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Method, AllowMultiple = true)] public class MvcMenuItemAttribute : Attribute { public string MenuText { get; set; } public int Order { get; set; } public string ParentLink { get; set; } internal string Controller { get; set; } internal string Action { get; set; } #region ctor public MvcMenuItemAttribute(string menuText) : this(menuText, 0) { } public MvcMenuItemAttribute(string menuText, int order) { MenuText = menuText; Order = order; } internal string Link { get { return string.Format("/{0}/{1}", Controller, this.Action); } } internal MvcMenuItemAttribute ParentItem { get; set; } #endregion } The MenuText allows overriding the text displayed on the menu. The Order allows the items to be ordered. The ParentLink allows you to make this item a child of another menu item. An example action could then be decorated thusly: [MvcMenuItem("Tracks", Order = 20, ParentLink = "/Session/Index")] . All pretty straightforward methinks. The challenge with menu hierarchy becomes fairly apparent when you try to render a menu and highlight the "current" item or render a breadcrumb control. Both encounter an ambiguity if you allow a data source to have more than one menu item with the same URL link. The issue is that there is no great way to tell which link a person click. Using referring URL will fail if a user bookmarked the page. Using some extra query string to disambiguate duplicate URLs essentially changes the links, and also ads a chance of collision with other query parameters. Besides, that smells. The stock ASP.Net sitemap provider simply disallows duplicate URLS. I decided not to, and simply pick the first one encountered as the "current". Although it doesn't solve the issue completely – one might say they wanted the second of the 2 links to be "current"- it allows one to include a link twice (home->deals and products->deals etc), and the logic of deciding "current" is easy enough to explain to the customer. Now that we got that out of the way, let's build the menu data structure: public static List<MvcMenuItemAttribute> ListMenuItems(Assembly assembly) { var result = new List<MvcMenuItemAttribute>(); foreach (var type in assembly.GetTypes()) { if (!type.IsSubclassOf(typeof(Controller))) { continue; } foreach (var method in type.GetMethods()) { var items = method.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(MvcMenuItemAttribute), false) as MvcMenuItemAttribute[]; if (items == null) { continue; } foreach (var item in items) { if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(item.Controller)) { item.Controller = type.Name.Substring(0, type.Name.Length - "Controller".Length); } if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(item.Action)) { item.Action = method.Name; } result.Add(item); } } } return result.OrderBy(i => i.Order).ToList(); } Using reflection, the ListMenuItems method takes an assembly (you will hand it your MVC web assembly) and generates a list of menu items. It digs up all the types, and for each one that is an MVC Controller, digs up the methods. Methods decorated with the MvcMenuItemAttribute get plucked and added to the output list. Again, pretty simple. To make the structure hierarchical, a LINQ expression matches up all the items to their parent: public static void RegisterMenuItems(List<MvcMenuItemAttribute> items) { _MenuItems = items; _MenuItems.ForEach(i => i.ParentItem = items.FirstOrDefault(p => String.Equals(p.Link, i.ParentLink, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))); } The _MenuItems is simply an internal list to keep things around for later rendering. Finally, to package the menu building for easy consumption: public static void RegisterMenuItems(Type mvcApplicationType) { RegisterMenuItems(ListMenuItems(Assembly.GetAssembly(mvcApplicationType))); } To bring this puppy home, a call in Global.asax.cs Application_Start() registers the menu. Notice the ugliness of reflection is tucked away from the innocent developer. All they have to do is call the RegisterMenuItems() and pass in the type of the application. When you use the new project template, global.asax declares a class public class MvcApplication : HttpApplication and that is why the Register call passes in that type. protected void Application_Start() { AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas(); RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); MvcMenu.RegisterMenuItems(typeof(MvcApplication)); } What else is left to do? Oh, right, render! public static void ShowMenu(this TextWriter output) { var writer = new HtmlTextWriter(output); renderHierarchy(writer, _MenuItems, null); } public static void ShowBreadCrumb(this TextWriter output, Uri currentUri) { var writer = new HtmlTextWriter(output); string currentLink = "/" + currentUri.GetComponents(UriComponents.Path, UriFormat.Unescaped); var menuItem = _MenuItems.FirstOrDefault(m => m.Link.Equals(currentLink, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)); if (menuItem != null) { renderBreadCrumb(writer, _MenuItems, menuItem); } } private static void renderBreadCrumb(HtmlTextWriter writer, List<MvcMenuItemAttribute> menuItems, MvcMenuItemAttribute current) { if (current == null) { return; } var parent = current.ParentItem; renderBreadCrumb(writer, menuItems, parent); writer.Write(current.MenuText); writer.Write(" / "); } static void renderHierarchy(HtmlTextWriter writer, List<MvcMenuItemAttribute> hierarchy, MvcMenuItemAttribute root) { if (!hierarchy.Any(i => i.ParentItem == root)) return; writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Ul); foreach (var current in hierarchy.Where(element => element.ParentItem == root).OrderBy(i => i.Order)) { if (ItemFilter == null || ItemFilter(current)) { writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Li); writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Href, current.Link); writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Alt, current.MenuText); writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.A); writer.WriteEncodedText(current.MenuText); writer.RenderEndTag(); // link renderHierarchy(writer, hierarchy, current); writer.RenderEndTag(); // li } } writer.RenderEndTag(); // ul } The ShowMenu method renders the menu out to the provided TextWriter. In previous posts I've discussed my partiality to using well debugged, time test HtmlTextWriter to render HTML rather than writing out angled brackets by hand. In addition, writing out using the actual writer on the actual stream rather than generating string and byte intermediaries (yes, StringBuilder being no exception) disturbs me. To carry out the rendering of an hierarchical menu, the recursive renderHierarchy() is used. You may notice that an ItemFilter is called before rendering each item. I figured that at some point one might want to exclude certain items from the menu based on security role or context or something. That delegate is the hook for such future feature. To carry out rendering of a breadcrumb recursion is used again, this time simply to unwind the parent hierarchy from the leaf node, then rendering on the return from the recursion rather than as we go along deeper. I guess I was stuck in LISP that day.. recursion is fun though. Now all that is left is some usage! Open your Site.Master or wherever you'd like to place a menu or breadcrumb, and plant one of these calls: <% MvcMenu.ShowBreadCrumb(this.Writer, Request.Url); %> to show a breadcrumb trail (notice lack of "=" after <% and the semicolon). <% MvcMenu.ShowMenu(Writer); %> to show the menu. As mentioned before, the HTML output is nested <UL> <LI> tags, which should make it easy to style using abundant CSS to produce anything from static horizontal or vertical to dynamic drop-downs. This has been quite a fun little implementation and I was pleased that the code size remained low. The main crux was figuring out how to pass parent information from the attribute to the hierarchy builder because attributes have restricted parameter types. Once I settled on that implementation, the rest falls into place quite easily.

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Collaborate 2010 Recap: A lot of Excitement for Oracle Content Management 11g

- by [email protected]

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: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;} Collaborate brought me to Las Vegas last week and what a week it was. Each day was jam packed with Oracle Content Management sessions, and almost every session I attended was full. Across the 35+ sessions that were given by my Oracle peers, Oracle partners, and Oracle customers, the majority of the discussion and questions that were asked had to do with the release of Oracle Content Management 11g. Just to bring everyone up-to-speed, the first wave of Oracle Content Management 11g releases happened this past January as Oracle Imaging & Process Management and Oracle Information Rights Management went GA. The next wave, which should be released soon, includes Oracle Universal Content Management and Oracle Universal Records Management. 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: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;} Andy MacMillan and Roel Stalman kicked off these discussions last Monday, as they presented Oracle Content Management's product strategy and roadmap. It seemed that the attendees liked what they heard regarding the strategy and future direction, but the question that seems to always come up after roadmap presentations is "when will the product be released"? This is a question that none of us have the power to answer, but soon customers will be able to enjoy these new product capabilities: 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: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;} Unified content repository across ECMCentralized installation, access, administration & monitoringCertified application integrations with solution templatesOpen Web Content Management 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: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;} Stay tuned for more news about the release of Oracle Universal Content Management and Oracle Records Management. There are a lot of new assets currently being built that will help get everyone up-to-speed quickly. 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: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;} Outside of the sessions that were presented, there were a lot of other activities that took place at Collaborate. The Enterprise 2.0 solutions demo pod was busy, and attendees were anxious to see demonstrations of Oracle's end-to-end document imaging solution, WebCenter Spaces, and web site creation using Oracle Universal Content Management. I also want to thank our partners (Fishbowl Solutions, Redstone Content Solutions, Bezzotech, Team Informatics, and DTI) for their efforts in creating detailed, insightful presentations. Also, special thanks are in order to Thomas Feldmeier and Markus Neubauer of Silbury IT-Beratung GmbH for their participation. It seems that Thomas and Markus were doomed to be stranded in Frankfurt after the Icelandic ash storm. They couldn't get a flight out of their native Germany, and with fear that they would miss Collaborate, they rented a car and drove to Rome - some 800 miles (1,200 kilometers). Anyway, they made it safe and sound to Las Vegas, and although probably a bit tired, they gave 2 Oracle Content Management presentations. Talk about commitment. 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: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;} Finally, a very special thanks to Al Hoof and Dave Chaffee of the Oracle Content Management Special Interest Group (SIG). Al and Dave did most of the heavy lifting for Collaborate, including the coordination of all the sessions. The Independent Oracle Users Group presented Al with the Chris Wooldridge award, recognizing him as the volunteer of the year. Here is Al with his award: 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: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;} I hope to see you next year at Collaborate as the show returns to Orlando.

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When Your Boss Doesn't Want you to Succeed

- by Phil Factor

You're working hard to get an application finished. You are programming long into the evenings sometimes, and eating sandwiches at your desk instead of taking a lunch break. Then one day you glance up at the IT manager, serene in his mysterious round of meetings, and think 'Does he actually care whether this project succeeds or not?'. The question may seem absurd. Of course the project must succeed. The truth, as always, is often far more complex. Your manager may even be doing his best to make sure you don't succeed. Why? There have always been rich pickings for the unscrupulous in IT. In extreme cases, where administrators struggle with scarcely-comprehended technical issues, huge sums of money can be lost and gained without any perceptible results. In a very few cases can fraud be proven: most of the time, the intricacies of the 'game' are such that one can do little more than harbor suspicion. Where does over-enthusiastic salesmanship end and fraud begin? The Business of Information Technology provides rich opportunities for White-collar crime. The poor developer has his, or her, hands full with the task of wrestling with the sheer complexity of building an application. He, or she, has no time for following the complexities of the chicanery of the management that is directing affairs. Most likely, the developers wouldn't even suspect that their company management had ulterior motives. I'll illustrate what I mean with an entirely fictional, hypothetical, example. The Opportunist and the Aged Charities often do good, unexciting work that is funded by the income from a bequest that dates back maybe hundreds of years. In our example, it isn't exciting work, for it involves the welfare of elderly people who have fallen on hard times. Volunteers visit, giving a smile and a chat, and check that they are all right, but are able to spend a little money on their discretion to ameliorate any pressing needs for these old folk. The money is made to work very hard and the charity averts a great deal of suffering and eases the burden on the state. Daisy hears the garden gate creak as Mrs Rainer comes up the path. She looks forward to her twice-weekly visit from the nice lady from the trust. She always asked ‘is everything all right, Love’. Cheeky but nice. She likes her cheery manner. She seems interested in hearing her memories, and talking about her far-away family. She helps her with those chores in the house that she couldn’t manage and once even paid to fill the back-shed with coke, the other year. Nice, Mrs. Rainer is, she thought as she goes to open the door. The trustees are getting on in years themselves, and worry about the long-term future of the charity: is it relevant to modern society? Is it likely to attract a new generation of workers to take it on. They are instantly attracted by the arrival to the board of a smartly dressed University lecturer with the ear of the present Government. Alain 'Stalin' Jones is earnest, persuasive and energetic. The trustees welcome him to the board and quickly forgive his humorless political-correctness. He talks of 'diversity', 'relevance', 'social change', 'equality' and 'communities', but his eye is on that huge bequest. Alain first came to notice as a Trotskyite union official, who insinuated himself into one of the duller Trades Unions and turned it, through his passionate leadership, into a radical, headline-grabbing organization. Middle age, and the rise of European federal socialism, had brought him quiet prosperity and charcoal suits, an ear in the current government, and a wide influence as a member of various Quangos (government bodies staffed by well-paid unelected courtiers). He was employed as a 'consultant' by several organizations that relied on government contracts. After gaining the confidence of the trustees, and showing a surprising knowledge of mundane processes and the regulatory framework of charities, Alain launches his plan. The trust will expand their work by means of a bold IT initiative that will coordinate the interventions of several 'caring agencies', and provide emergency cover, a special Website so anxious relatives can see how their elderly charges are doing, and a vastly more efficient way of coordinating the work of the volunteer carers. It will also provide a special-purpose site that gives 'social networking' facilities, rather like Facebook, to the few elderly folk on the lists with access to the internet. The trustees perk up. Their own experience of the internet is restricted to the occasional scanning of railway timetables, but they can see that it is 'relevant'. In his next report to the other trustees, Alain proudly announces that all this glamorous and exciting technology can be paid for by a grant from the government. He admits darkly that he has influence. True to his word, the government promises a grant of a size that is an order of magnitude greater than any budget that the trustees had ever handled. There was the understandable proviso that the company that would actually do the IT work would have to be one of the government's preferred suppliers and the work would need to be tendered under EU competition rules. The only company that tenders, a multinational IT company with a long track record of government work, quotes ten million pounds for the work. A trustee questions the figure as it seems enormous for the reasonably trivial internet facilities being built, but the IT Salesmen dazzle them with presentations and three-letter acronyms until they subside into quiescent acceptance. After all, they can’t stay locked in the Twentieth century practices can they? The work is put in hand with a large project team, in a splendid glass building near west London. The trustees see rooms of programmers working diligently at screens, and who talk with enthusiasm of the project. Paul, the project manager, looked through his resource schedule with growing unease. His initial excitement at being given his first major project hadn’t lasted. He’d been allocated a lackluster team of developers whose skills didn’t seem right, and he was allowed only a couple of contractors to make good the deficit. Strangely, the presentation he’d given to his management, where he’d saved time and resources with a OTS solution to a great deal of the development work, and a sound conservative architecture, hadn’t gone down nearly as big as he’d hoped. He almost got the feeling they wanted a more radical and ambitious solution. The project starts slipping its dates. The costs build rapidly. There are certain uncomfortable extra charges that appear, such as the £600-a-day charge by the 'Business Manager' appointed to act as a point of liaison between the charity and the IT Company. When he appeared, his face permanently split by a 'Mr Sincerity' smile, they'd thought he was provided at the cost of the IT Company. Derek, the DBA, didn’t have to go to the server room quite some much as he did: but It got him away from the poisonous despair of the development group. Wave after wave of events had conspired to delay the project. Why the management had imposed hideous extra bureaucracy to cover ISO 9000 and 9001:2008 accreditation just as the project was struggling to get back on-schedule was beyond belief. Then the Business manager was coming back with endless changes in scope, sorrowing saying that the Trustees were very insistent, though hopelessly out in touch with the reality of technical challenges. Suddenly, the costs mount to the point of consuming the government grant in its entirety. The project remains tantalizingly just out of reach. Alain Jones gives an emotional rallying speech at the trustees review meeting, urging them not to lose their nerve. Sadly, the trustees dip into the accumulated capital of the trust, the seed-corn of all their revenues, in order to save the IT project. A few months later it is all over. The IT project is never delivered, even though it had seemed so incredibly close. With the trust's capital all gone, the activities it funded have to be terminated and the trust becomes just a shell. There aren't even the funds to mount a legal challenge against the IT company, even had the trust's solicitor advised such a foolish thing. Alain leaves as suddenly as he had arrived, only to pop up a few months later, bronzed and rested, at another charity. The IT workers who were permanent employees are dispersed to other projects, and the contractors leave to other contracts. Within months the entire project is but a vague memory. One or two developers remain puzzled that their managers had been so obstructive when they should have welcomed progress toward completion of the project, but they put it down to incompetence and testosterone. Few suspected that they were actively preventing the project from getting finished. The relationships between the IT consultancy, and the government of the day are intricate, and made more complex by the Private Finance initiatives and political patronage. The losers in this case were the taxpayers, and the beneficiaries of the trust, and, perhaps the soul of the original benefactor of the trust, whose bid to give his name some immortality had been scuppered by smooth-talking white-collar political apparatniks. Even now, nobody is certain whether a crime was ever committed. The perfect heist, I guess. Where’s the victim? "I hear that Daisy’s cottage is up for sale. She’s had to go into a care home. She didn’t want to at all, but then there is nobody to keep an eye on her since she had that minor stroke a while back. A charity used to help out. The ‘social’ don’t have the funding, evidently for community care. Yes, her old cat was put down. There was a good clearout, and now the house is all scrubbed and cleared ready for sale. The skip was full of old photos and letters, memories. No room in her new ‘home’."

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Metro: Namespaces and Modules

- by Stephen.Walther

The goal of this blog entry is to describe how you can use the Windows JavaScript (WinJS) library to create namespaces. In particular, you learn how to use the WinJS.Namespace.define() and WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent() methods. You also learn how to hide private methods by using the module pattern. Why Do We Need Namespaces? Before we do anything else, we should start by answering the question: Why do we need namespaces? What function do they serve? Do they just add needless complexity to our Metro applications? After all, plenty of JavaScript libraries do just fine without introducing support for namespaces. For example, jQuery has no support for namespaces and jQuery is the most popular JavaScript library in the universe. If jQuery can do without namespaces, why do we need to worry about namespaces at all? Namespaces perform two functions in a programming language. First, namespaces prevent naming collisions. In other words, namespaces enable you to create more than one object with the same name without conflict. For example, imagine that two companies – company A and company B – both want to make a JavaScript shopping cart control and both companies want to name the control ShoppingCart. By creating a CompanyA namespace and CompanyB namespace, both companies can create a ShoppingCart control: a CompanyA.ShoppingCart and a CompanyB.ShoppingCart control. The second function of a namespace is organization. Namespaces are used to group related functionality even when the functionality is defined in different physical files. For example, I know that all of the methods in the WinJS library related to working with classes can be found in the WinJS.Class namespace. Namespaces make it easier to understand the functionality available in a library. If you are building a simple JavaScript application then you won’t have much reason to care about namespaces. If you need to use multiple libraries written by different people then namespaces become very important. Using WinJS.Namespace.define() In the WinJS library, the most basic method of creating a namespace is to use the WinJS.Namespace.define() method. This method enables you to declare a namespace (of arbitrary depth). The WinJS.Namespace.define() method has the following parameters: · name – A string representing the name of the new namespace. You can add nested namespace by using dot notation · members – An optional collection of objects to add to the new namespace For example, the following code sample declares two new namespaces named CompanyA and CompanyB.Controls. Both namespaces contain a ShoppingCart object which has a checkout() method: // Create CompanyA namespace with ShoppingCart WinJS.Namespace.define("CompanyA"); CompanyA.ShoppingCart = { checkout: function (){ return "Checking out from A"; } }; // Create CompanyB.Controls namespace with ShoppingCart WinJS.Namespace.define( "CompanyB.Controls", { ShoppingCart: { checkout: function(){ return "Checking out from B"; } } } ); // Call CompanyA ShoppingCart checkout method console.log(CompanyA.ShoppingCart.checkout()); // Writes "Checking out from A" // Call CompanyB.Controls checkout method console.log(CompanyB.Controls.ShoppingCart.checkout()); // Writes "Checking out from B" In the code above, the CompanyA namespace is created by calling WinJS.Namespace.define(“CompanyA”). Next, the ShoppingCart is added to this namespace. The namespace is defined and an object is added to the namespace in separate lines of code. A different approach is taken in the case of the CompanyB.Controls namespace. The namespace is created and the ShoppingCart object is added to the namespace with the following single line of code: WinJS.Namespace.define( "CompanyB.Controls", { ShoppingCart: { checkout: function(){ return "Checking out from B"; } } } ); Notice that CompanyB.Controls is a nested namespace. The top level namespace CompanyB contains the namespace Controls. You can declare a nested namespace using dot notation and the WinJS library handles the details of creating one namespace within the other. After the namespaces have been defined, you can use either of the two shopping cart controls. You call CompanyA.ShoppingCart.checkout() or you can call CompanyB.Controls.ShoppingCart.checkout(). Using WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent() The WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent() method is similar to the WinJS.Namespace.define() method. Both methods enable you to define a new namespace. The difference is that the defineWithParent() method enables you to add a new namespace to an existing namespace. The WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent() method has the following parameters: · parentNamespace – An object which represents a parent namespace · name – A string representing the new namespace to add to the parent namespace · members – An optional collection of objects to add to the new namespace The following code sample demonstrates how you can create a root namespace named CompanyA and add a Controls child namespace to the CompanyA parent namespace: WinJS.Namespace.define("CompanyA"); WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent(CompanyA, "Controls", { ShoppingCart: { checkout: function () { return "Checking out"; } } } ); console.log(CompanyA.Controls.ShoppingCart.checkout()); // Writes "Checking out" One significant advantage of using the defineWithParent() method over the define() method is the defineWithParent() method is strongly-typed. In other words, you use an object to represent the base namespace instead of a string. If you misspell the name of the object (CompnyA) then you get a runtime error. Using the Module Pattern When you are building a JavaScript library, you want to be able to create both public and private methods. Some methods, the public methods, are intended to be used by consumers of your JavaScript library. The public methods act as your library’s public API. Other methods, the private methods, are not intended for public consumption. Instead, these methods are internal methods required to get the library to function. You don’t want people calling these internal methods because you might need to change them in the future. JavaScript does not support access modifiers. You can’t mark an object or method as public or private. Anyone gets to call any method and anyone gets to interact with any object. The only mechanism for encapsulating (hiding) methods and objects in JavaScript is to take advantage of functions. In JavaScript, a function determines variable scope. A JavaScript variable either has global scope – it is available everywhere – or it has function scope – it is available only within a function. If you want to hide an object or method then you need to place it within a function. For example, the following code contains a function named doSomething() which contains a nested function named doSomethingElse(): function doSomething() { console.log("doSomething"); function doSomethingElse() { console.log("doSomethingElse"); } } doSomething(); // Writes "doSomething" doSomethingElse(); // Throws ReferenceError You can call doSomethingElse() only within the doSomething() function. The doSomethingElse() function is encapsulated in the doSomething() function. The WinJS library takes advantage of function encapsulation to hide all of its internal methods. All of the WinJS methods are defined within self-executing anonymous functions. Everything is hidden by default. Public methods are exposed by explicitly adding the public methods to namespaces defined in the global scope. Imagine, for example, that I want a small library of utility methods. I want to create a method for calculating sales tax and a method for calculating the expected ship date of a product. The following library encapsulates the implementation of my library in a self-executing anonymous function: (function (global) { // Public method which calculates tax function calculateTax(price) { return calculateFederalTax(price) + calculateStateTax(price); } // Private method for calculating state tax function calculateStateTax(price) { return price * 0.08; } // Private method for calculating federal tax function calculateFederalTax(price) { return price * 0.02; } // Public method which returns the expected ship date function calculateShipDate(currentDate) { currentDate.setDate(currentDate.getDate() + 4); return currentDate; } // Export public methods WinJS.Namespace.define("CompanyA.Utilities", { calculateTax: calculateTax, calculateShipDate: calculateShipDate } ); })(this); // Show expected ship date var shipDate = CompanyA.Utilities.calculateShipDate(new Date()); console.log(shipDate); // Show price + tax var price = 12.33; var tax = CompanyA.Utilities.calculateTax(price); console.log(price + tax); In the code above, the self-executing anonymous function contains four functions: calculateTax(), calculateStateTax(), calculateFederalTax(), and calculateShipDate(). The following statement is used to expose only the calcuateTax() and the calculateShipDate() functions: // Export public methods WinJS.Namespace.define("CompanyA.Utilities", { calculateTax: calculateTax, calculateShipDate: calculateShipDate } ); Because the calculateTax() and calcuateShipDate() functions are added to the CompanyA.Utilities namespace, you can call these two methods outside of the self-executing function. These are the public methods of your library which form the public API. The calculateStateTax() and calculateFederalTax() methods, on the other hand, are forever hidden within the black hole of the self-executing function. These methods are encapsulated and can never be called outside of scope of the self-executing function. These are the internal methods of your library. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to describe why and how you use namespaces with the WinJS library. You learned how to define namespaces using both the WinJS.Namespace.define() and WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent() methods. We also discussed how to hide private members and expose public members using the module pattern.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 29, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 29, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET MVC Time Planner: ASP.NET MVC based time planner is example solution that introduces ASP.NET MVC, MSSQL AJAX and jQuery development.Blit Scripting Engine: Blit Scripting Engine provides developers using Microsofts XNA Framework the ability to implement a scripting solution to their games and other pro...Expression Evaluator: This is an article on how to build a basic expression evaluator. It can evaluate any numerical expression combined with trigonometric functions for...Log Analyzer: This project has the aim to help developers to see live log/trace from their application applying visual styles to the grabbed text.LParse: LParse is a monadic parser combinator library, similar to Haskell’s Parsec. It allows you create parsers on C# language. All parsers are first-clas...NeatHtml: NeatHtml™ is a highly-portable open source website component that displays untrusted content securely, efficiently, and accessibly. Untrusted conte...NeatUpload: The NeatUpload ™ ASP.NET component allows developers to stream uploaded files to storage (filesystem or database) and allows users to monitor uplo...NSoup: NSoup is a .NET port of the jsoup (http://jsoup.org) HTML parser and sanitizer originally written in Java. jsoup originally written by Jonathan He...Ordering: c# farm softwarephone7: Project for Windows Phone 7RestCall: A very simple library to make a simple REST call and deserialize to an object. It uses WCF REST Starter Kit and the .net serializer in: System.Runt...SCSM CSV Connector: CSV Connector allows you to specify a data file and mapping location and a scheuled interval in minutes. At each scheduled interval Service Manage...Silverlight Adorner Control: An Adorner is a custom FrameworkElement that is bound to a FrameworkElement and displays information about that element 'above' the element without...Simple Stupid Tools: Simple Stupid ToolsSQScriptRunner: Simple Quick Script Runner allows an administrator to run T-SQL Scripts against one or more servers with common characteristics. For example, an m...ssisassembly: ssisassemblySSRS Report RoboCopy: a tools used to pass a report from a server to anotherTeam Foundation Server Explorer: A standalone Team Foundation Server explorer that can be used to view and manage source files.New Releases(SocketCoder) Full Silverlight Web Video/Voice Conferencing: SocketCoderWebConferencingSystem_Compiled: Installing The Server: 1- before you start you should allow the SocketCoderWCService.MainService.exe service to use the TCP ports from 4528 to 4532...ASP.NET MVC Time Planner: MVC Time Planner - v0.0.1.0: First public alpha of MVC Time Planner is now available. I got a lot of letters from my ASP.NET blog readers who are interested in this example sol...AvalonDock: AvalonDock 1.3.3384: Welcome to AvalonDock 1.3 This is the new version of AvalonDock targetting .NET 4 These are the main features that are included: - Target Microso...Blit Scripting Engine: Blit Scripting Engine 1.0: This marks the initial release of the Blit Scripting Engine. It provides the ability to compile scripts to an assembly, load pre-compiled assemblie...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V12: 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 add...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V13: 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 add...CSharp Intellisense: V2.4: bug fix: Pascal Casing, Single Selection and other selection errorsExpression Evaluator: Expression Evaluator - Visual Studio 2010: Visual Studio 2010 VersionFacebook Graph Toolkit: Preview 2: Preview 2 updates the source to be much more like the Facebook PHP-SDK. Additionally, the code has been updated to follow StyleCop framework rules....Facebook Graph Toolkit: Preview 3: Rest API now working although not fully tested. Removed JsonObject and JsonArray custom dynamic objects in favor of standard ExpandoObject and List...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.1.1 beta Released: Hi, Today we are releasing the two most awaited features i.e, Logarithmic axis and auto update of y-axis while Scrolling and Zooming. * Logar...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.5.4 beta Released: Hi, Today we are releasing the two most awaited features i.e, Logarithmic axis and auto update of y-axis while Scrolling and Zooming. Logarithmic...Fulcrum: Fulcrum 1.0: Initial release.Git Source Control Provider: V 0.3: V 0.3 Add automatic status refresh when files in solution folder changedIBCSharp: IBCSharp 1.04: What IBCSharp 1.04.zip unzips to: http://i50.tinypic.com/205qofl.png IBCSharp Change Log 1.04 - 5/28/2010 Updated IBClient.dll to IB API version...MapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 May 28 2010: This shifts the projection library to System.Spatial.Projections instead of MWProj4. This also fixes a meter/feet conversion error.Microsoft Health Common User Interface: Release 8.2.51.000: This is version 8.2 of the Microsoft® Health Common User Interface Control Toolkit. This release includes code updates to controls as listed below....NeatHtml: NeatHtml-trunk.221: Adds support for Internet Explorer Mobile 6.NeatUpload: NeatUpload-1.3.25: Fixes the following bugs: SWFUpload.swf could not be served by a CDN because it was embedded without setting allowScriptAccess="always". 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Native packaging for JavaFX

- by igor

JavaFX 2.2 adds new packaging option for JavaFX applications, allowing you to package your application as a "native bundle". This gives your users a way to install and run your application without any external dependencies on a system JRE or FX SDK. I'd like to give you an overview of what is it, motivation behind it, and finally explain how to get started with it. Screenshots may give you some idea of user experience but first hand experience is always the best. Before we go into all of the boring details, here are few different flavors of Ensemble for you to try: exe, msi, dmg, rpm installers and zip of linux bundle for non-rpm aware systems. Alternatively, check out native packages for JFXtras 2. Whats wrong with existing deployment options? JavaFX 2 applications are easy to distribute as a standalone application or as an application deployed on the web (embedded in the web page or as link to launch application from the webpage). JavaFX packaging tools, such as ant tasks and javafxpackager utility, simplify the creation of deployment packages even further. Why add new deployment options? JavaFX applications have implicit dependency on the availability of Java and JavaFX runtimes, and while existing deployment methods provide a means to validate the system requirements are met -- and even guide user to perform required installation/upgrades -- they do not fully address all of the important scenarios. In particular, here are few examples: the user may not have admin permissions to install new system software if the application was certified to run in the specific environment (fixed version of Java and JavaFX) then it may be hard to ensure user has this environment due to an autoupdate of the system version of Java/JavaFX (to ensure they are secure). Potentially, other apps may have a requirement for a different JRE or FX version that your app is incompatible with. your distribution channel may disallow dependencies on external frameworks (e.g. Mac AppStore) What is a "native package" for JavaFX application? In short it is A Wrapper for your JavaFX application that makes is into a platform-specific application bundle Each Bundle is self-contained and includes your application code and resources (same set as need to launch standalone application from jar) Java and JavaFX runtimes (private copies to be used by this application only) native application launcher metadata (icons, etc.) No separate installation is needed for Java and JavaFX runtimes Can be distributed as .zip or packaged as platform-specific installer No application changes, the same jar app binaries can be deployed as a native bundle, double-clickable jar, applet, or web start app What is good about it: Easy deployment of your application on fresh systems, without admin permissions when using .zip or a user-level installer No-hassle compatibility. Your application is using a private copy of Java and JavaFX. The developer (you!) controls when these are updated. Easily package your application for Mac AppStore (or Windows, or...) Process name of running application is named after your application (and not just java.exe) Easily deploy your application using enterprise deployment tools (e.g. deploy as MSI) Support is built in into JDK 7u6 (that includes JavaFX 2.2) Is it a silver bullet for the deployment that other deployment options will be deprecated? No. There are no plans to deprecate other deployment options supported by JavaFX, each approach addresses different needs. Deciding whether native packaging is a best way to deploy your application depends on your requirements. A few caveats to consider: "Download and run" user experienceUnlike web deployment, the user experience is not about "launch app from web". It is more of "download, install and run" process, and the user may need to go through additional steps to get application launched - e.g. accepting a browser security dialog or finding and launching the application installer from "downloads" folder. Larger download sizeIn general size of bundled application will be noticeably higher than size of unbundled app as a private copy of the JRE and JavaFX are included. We're working to reduce the size through compression and customizable "trimming", but it will always be substantially larger than than an app that depends on a "system JRE". Bundle per target platformBundle formats are platform specific. Currently a native bundle can only be produced for the same system you are building on. That is, if you want to deliver native app bundles on Windows, Linux and Mac you will have to build your project on all three platforms. Application updates are the responsibility of developerWeb deployed Java applications automatically download application updates from the web as soon as they are available. The Java Autoupdate mechanism takes care of updating the Java and JavaFX runtimes to latest secure version several times every year. There is no built in support for this in for bundled applications. It is possible to use 3rd party libraries (like Sparkle on Mac) to add autoupdate support at application level. In a future version of JavaFX we may include built-in support for autoupdate (add yourself as watcher for RT-22211 if you are interested in this) Getting started with native bundles First, you need to get the latest JDK 7u6 beta build (build 14 or later is recommended). On Windows/Mac/Linux it comes with JavaFX 2.2 SDK as part of JDK installation and contains JavaFX packaging tools, including: bin/javafxpackagerCommand line utility to produce JavaFX packages. lib/ant-javafx.jar Set of ant tasks to produce JavaFX packages (most recommended way to deploy apps) For general information on how to use them refer to the Deploying JavaFX Application guide. Once you know how use these tools to package your JavaFX application for other deployment methods there are only a few minor tweaks necessary to produce native bundles: make sure java is used from JDK7u6 bundle you have installed adjust your PATH settings if needed if you are using ant tasks add "nativeBundles=all" attribute to fx:deploy task if you are using javafxpackager pass "-native" option to deploy command or if you are using makeall command then it will try build native packages by default result bundles will be in the "bundles" folder next to other deployment artifacts Note that building some types of native packages (e.g. .exe or .msi) may require additional free 3rd party software to be installed and available on PATH. As of JDK 7u6 build 14 you could build following types of packages: Windows bundle image EXE Inno Setup 5 or later is required Result exe will perform user level installation (no admin permissions are required) At least one shortcut will be created (menu or desktop) Application will be launched at the end of install MSI WiX 3.0 or later is required Result MSI will perform user level installation (no admin permissions are required) At least one shortcut will be created (menu or desktop) MacOS bundle image dmg (drag and drop) installer Linux bundle image rpm rpmbuild is required shortcut will be added to the programs menu If you are using Netbeans for producing the deployment packages then you will need to add custom build step to the build.xml to execute the fx:deploy task with native bundles enabled. Here is what we do for BrickBreaker sample: <target name="-post-jfx-deploy"> <fx:deploy width="${javafx.run.width}" height="${javafx.run.height}" nativeBundles="all" outdir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" outfile="${application.title}"> <fx:application name="${application.title}" mainClass="${javafx.main.class}"> <fx:resources> <fx:fileset dir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" includes="BrickBreaker.jar"/> </fx:resources> <info title="${application.title}" vendor="${application.vendor}"/> </fx:application> </fx:deploy> </target> This is pretty much regular use of fx:deploy task, the only special thing here is nativeBundles="all". Perhaps the easiest way to try building native bundles is to download the latest JavaFX samples bundle and build Ensemble, BrickBreaker or SwingInterop. Please give it a try and share your experience. We need your feedback! BTW, do not hesitate to file bugs and feature requests to JavaFX bug database! Wait! How can i ... This entry is not a comprehensive guide into native bundles, and we plan to post on this topic more. However, I am sure that once you play with native bundles you will have a lot of questions. We may not have all the answers, but please do not hesitate to ask! Knowing all of the questions is the first step to finding all of the answers.

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What's up with LDoms: Part 1 - Introduction & Basic Concepts

- by Stefan Hinker

LDoms - the correct name is Oracle VM Server for SPARC - have been around for quite a while now. But to my surprise, I get more and more requests to explain how they work or to give advise on how to make good use of them. This made me think that writing up a few articles discussing the different features would be a good idea. Now - I don't intend to rewrite the LDoms Admin Guide or to copy and reformat the (hopefully) well known "Beginners Guide to LDoms" by Tony Shoumack from 2007. Those documents are very recommendable - especially the Beginners Guide, although based on LDoms 1.0, is still a good place to begin with. However, LDoms have come a long way since then, and I hope to contribute to their adoption by discussing how they work and what features there are today. In this and the following posts, I will use the term "LDoms" as a common abbreviation for Oracle VM Server for SPARC, just because it's a lot shorter and easier to type (and presumably, read). So, just to get everyone on the same baseline, lets briefly discuss the basic concepts of virtualization with LDoms. LDoms make use of a hypervisor as a layer of abstraction between real, physical hardware and virtual hardware. This virtual hardware is then used to create a number of guest systems which each behave very similar to a system running on bare metal: Each has its own OBP, each will install its own copy of the Solaris OS and each will see a certain amount of CPU, memory, disk and network resources available to it. Unlike some other type 1 hypervisors running on x86 hardware, the SPARC hypervisor is embedded in the system firmware and makes use both of supporting functions in the sun4v SPARC instruction set as well as the overall CPU architecture to fulfill its function. The CMT architecture of the supporting CPUs (T1 through T4) provide a large number of cores and threads to the OS. For example, the current T4 CPU has eight cores, each running 8 threads, for a total of 64 threads per socket. To the OS, this looks like 64 CPUs. The SPARC hypervisor, when creating guest systems, simply assigns a certain number of these threads exclusively to one guest, thus avoiding the overhead of having to schedule OS threads to CPUs, as do typical x86 hypervisors. The hypervisor only assigns CPUs and then steps aside. It is not involved in the actual work being dispatched from the OS to the CPU, all it does is maintain isolation between different guests. Likewise, memory is assigned exclusively to individual guests. Here, the hypervisor provides generic mappings between the physical hardware addresses and the guest's views on memory. Again, the hypervisor is not involved in the actual memory access, it only maintains isolation between guests. During the inital setup of a system with LDoms, you start with one special domain, called the Control Domain. Initially, this domain owns all the hardware available in the system, including all CPUs, all RAM and all IO resources. If you'd be running the system un-virtualized, this would be what you'd be working with. To allow for guests, you first resize this initial domain (also called a primary domain in LDoms speak), assigning it a small amount of CPU and memory. This frees up most of the available CPU and memory resources for guest domains. IO is a little more complex, but very straightforward. When LDoms 1.0 first came out, the only way to provide IO to guest systems was to create virtual disk and network services and attach guests to these services. In the meantime, several different ways to connect guest domains to IO have been developed, the most recent one being SR-IOV support for network devices released in version 2.2 of Oracle VM Server for SPARC. I will cover these more advanced features in detail later. For now, lets have a short look at the initial way IO was virtualized in LDoms: For virtualized IO, you create two services, one "Virtual Disk Service" or vds, and one "Virtual Switch" or vswitch. You can, of course, also create more of these, but that's more advanced than I want to cover in this introduction. These IO services now connect real, physical IO resources like a disk LUN or a networt port to the virtual devices that are assigned to guest domains. For disk IO, the normal case would be to connect a physical LUN (or some other storage option that I'll discuss later) to one specific guest. That guest would be assigned a virtual disk, which would appear to be just like a real LUN to the guest, while the IO is actually routed through the virtual disk service down to the physical device. For network, the vswitch acts very much like a real, physical ethernet switch - you connect one physical port to it for outside connectivity and define one or more connections per guest, just like you would plug cables between a real switch and a real system. For completeness, there is another service that provides console access to guest domains which mimics the behavior of serial terminal servers. The connections between the virtual devices on the guest's side and the virtual IO services in the primary domain are created by the hypervisor. It uses so called "Logical Domain Channels" or LDCs to create point-to-point connections between all of these devices and services. These LDCs work very similar to high speed serial connections and are configured automatically whenever the Control Domain adds or removes virtual IO. To see all this in action, now lets look at a first example. I will start with a newly installed machine and configure the control domain so that it's ready to create guest systems. In a first step, after we've installed the software, let's start the virtual console service and downsize the primary domain. root@sun # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-c-- UART 512 261632M 0.3% 2d 13h 58m root@sun # ldm add-vconscon port-range=5000-5100 \ primary-console primary root@sun # svcadm enable vntsd root@sun # svcs vntsd STATE STIME FMRI online 9:53:21 svc:/ldoms/vntsd:default root@sun # ldm set-vcpu 16 primary root@sun # ldm set-mau 1 primary root@sun # ldm start-reconf primary root@sun # ldm set-memory 7680m primary root@sun # ldm add-config initial root@sun # shutdown -y -g0 -i6 So what have I done: I've defined a range of ports (5000-5100) for the virtual network terminal service and then started that service. The vnts will later provide console connections to guest systems, very much like serial NTS's do in the physical world. Next, I assigned 16 vCPUs (on this platform, a T3-4, that's two cores) to the primary domain, freeing the rest up for future guest systems. I also assigned one MAU to this domain. A MAU is a crypto unit in the T3 CPU. These need to be explicitly assigned to domains, just like CPU or memory. (This is no longer the case with T4 systems, where crypto is always available everywhere.) Before I reassigned the memory, I started what's called a "delayed reconfiguration" session. That avoids actually doing the change right away, which would take a considerable amount of time in this case. Instead, I'll need to reboot once I'm all done. I've assigned 7680MB of RAM to the primary. That's 8GB less the 512MB which the hypervisor uses for it's own private purposes. You can, depending on your needs, work with less. I'll spend a dedicated article on sizing, discussing the pros and cons in detail. Finally, just before the reboot, I saved my work on the ILOM, to make this configuration available after a powercycle of the box. (It'll always be available after a simple reboot, but the ILOM needs to know the configuration of the hypervisor after a power-cycle, before the primary domain is booted.) Now, lets create a first disk service and a first virtual switch which is connected to the physical network device igb2. We will later use these to connect virtual disks and virtual network ports of our guest systems to real world storage and network. root@sun # ldm add-vds primary-vds root@sun # ldm add-vswitch net-dev=igb2 switch-primary primary You are free to choose whatever names you like for the virtual disk service and the virtual switch. I strongly recommend that you choose names that make sense to you and describe the function of each service in the context of your implementation. For the vswitch, for example, you could choose names like "admin-vswitch" or "production-network" etc. This already concludes the configuration of the control domain. We've freed up considerable amounts of CPU and RAM for guest systems and created the necessary infrastructure - console, vts and vswitch - so that guests systems can actually interact with the outside world. The system is now ready to create guests, which I'll describe in the next section. For further reading, here are some recommendable links: The LDoms 2.2 Admin Guide The "Beginners Guide to LDoms" The LDoms Information Center on MOS LDoms on OTN

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Windows Azure Evolution – Preview Developer Portal

- by Shaun

With the MEET Windows Azure event on 7th June, there are many new features and updates in windows azure platform. In the coming several posts I will try to cover some of them. And in the first post here I would like to just have a quick walkthrough of the new preview developer portal. History of the Developer Portal If you have been working with windows azure since 2009 or 2010, you should remember the first version of the developer portal. It was built in HTML with very limited features. I have the impression when I was using is old one. The layout is not that attractive and you have very limited features. On November, 2010 alone with the SDK 1.3 release, the developer portal was getting a big jump. In order to give more usability and features this it turned to be built on Silverlight. Hence it runs like a desktop application with many windows, lists, commands and context menus. From 2010 till now many features were involved into this portal, such as the remote desktop, co-admin, virtual connect, VM role, etc.. And the portal itself became more and more complicated. But it brought some problems by using the Silverlight. The first one is the browser capability. As you know in most mobile and tablet device the browser doesn’t allow the rich content plugin, such as Flash and Silverlight. This means people cannot open and configure their azure services from their iPad, iPhone and Windows Phone, etc., even though what they need may just be restart a hosted service, or view the status of their databases. Another problem is the performance. Silverlight provides rich experience to the users, but also needs more bandwidth. So in this upgrade the preview developer portal will be back to use HTML, with JavaScript, as a mobile friendly, cross browser, interactively web site. Preview Portal vs. Silverlight Portal Before I started to talk about the new preview portal I’d better highlight that, this preview portal is a PREVIEW version, which means even though you can do almost all features that already in the old one, as long as some cool new features I will mention in the coming several posts, there are something still under developed and migrated. So sometimes you need to switch back to the old one. For example, in preview portal there is no co-admin manage function, no remote desktop function and the SQL database manage function will take you back to the old SQL Azure Manage Portal. But as Microsoft said these missing features will be moved in the preview portal in the couple of next few months. Since the public URL of the developer portal, https://windows.azure.com/, had been changed to point to this preview one, you need to click to preview button on top of the page and click the “Take me to the previous portal” link. Overview There are four parts in the preview portal. On the top is the header which shows the account you are currently logging in. If you click on the header it will show the top menu of windows azure, where you can navigate to the windows azure home page, the price information page, community and account, etc.. The navigation bar is on the left hand side, with the categories listed below. ALL ITEMS All items in your windows azure account, includes the web sites, services, databases, etc.. WEB SITES The web sites in your windows azure account. It will only show the web sites you have. The linked resources will be shown if you drill down into a web site. VIRTUAL MACHINES The virtual machines that you had been deployed to azure. CLOUD SERVICES All windows azure hosted services in your account. SQL DATABASES All SQL databases (SQL Azure) in your account. STORAGE All windows azure storage services in your account. NETWORKS The virtual network (Windows Azure Connect) you had been created. The available items will be listed in the main part of the page based on which category your currently selected. If there’s no item it will show the link to you to quick create. At the bottom of the page there will be the command and information bar. Based on what is selected and what is performed by the user, it will show the related information and commands. For example, in the image below when I was creating a new web site, the information bar told me that my web site is being provisioned; and there are two commands in the command bar. And once it ready the command bar will show some commands that I can do to my new web site. The “Web Sites” is a new feature introduced alone with this upgrade. It gives us an easier and quicker way to establish a website from the scratch or from some existing library. I will introduce it more details in the coming next post. Also in the command bar you can create a service by clicking the NEW button. It will slide the creation panel up to you. Where’s My Hosted Services The Windows Azure Hosted Services had been renamed to the Cloud Services. Create a new service would be very easy. Just click the NEW button at the bottom of the page, and select the CLOUD SERVICE and QIUICK CREATE. This will create a blank hosted service without deployment and certificate. It just needs you to specify the service URL and the affinity/region. Then the service will be shown in the list. If you clicked the item all information will be shown in the main part. Since there’s no package deployed to this service so currently we cannot see any information about it. But we can upload the package by using the command at the bottom. And as you can see, we could manage the configuration, instances, certificates and we can scale up and down (change the VM size), in and out (increase and decrease the instance count) to our service. Assuming I had created an ASP.NET MVC 3 web role project in Visual Studio and completed the package. Then I can click the UPLOAD button in this page to deploy my package. In the popping up window I just specify my deployment name, package file and configure file. Also I can check the box below so that it will NOT warn me if only one instance of this deployment. Once we clicked the OK button our package will be uploaded and provisioned by the platform. After a while we can see the service was ready from the information bar. We can have the basic information about this service and deployment if we to the dashboard page. For example the usage overview diagram, status, URL, public IP address, etc.. In the configure page we can view and change the CSCFG content such as the monitor setting, connection strings, OS family. In scale page we can increase and decrease the count of the instances. And in the instances page we can view all instances status. And, if your services is using some SQL databases and storages they will be shown as the linked resources under the linked resources page. And you can manage the certificates of this service as well under the certificates page. How About My Storage Services The storage service can be managed by clicking into the STORAGES link in the navigation bar. And we can create a new storage service from the NEW button. After specify the storage name and region it will be previsioned by the platform. If you want to copy or manage the storage key you can just click the Manage Keys button at the bottom, which is very easy. What I want to highlight here is that, you can monitor your storage service by enabling the monitor configuration. Click the storage item in the list and navigate to the configure page. As you can see in the page you can enable the monitoring for blob, table and queue. And you can also enable the logging when any requests come to the storage. But as the tooltip shown in the page, enabling the monitoring and logging will increase the usage of the storage, which means increase the bill of them. So make sure you enable them properly. And My SQL Databases (SQL Azure) The last thing I want to quick introduce is the SQL databases, which was formally named SQL Azure. You can create a new SQL Database Server and a new database by clicking the ADD button under the SQL Database navigation item. In the popping up windows just specify the database name, the edition, size, collation and the server. You can select an existing SQL Database Server if you have, or cerate a new one. If you selected to create a new server, there will be another step you need to do, which is specify the server login, password and the region. Once it ready you can mange your databases as well as the servers in the portal. In a particular server you can update the firewall settings in its Configure page. So, What Else There are some other area on the preview portal I didn’t cover, such as the virtual machines, virtual network and web sites. Regarding the virtual machines and web sites I will talk about them in the future separated post. Regarding the virtual network, it the Windows Azure Connect we are familiar with. But as I mention in the beginning of this post, the preview portal is still under developed. Some features are not available here. For example, you cannot manage the co-admin of your subscriptions, you cannot open the remote desktop on your hosted services, and you cannot navigate to the Windows Azure Service Bus, Access Control and Caching, which formally named Windows Azure AppFabric directly. In these cases you need to navigate back to the old portal. So in the coming several months we might need to use both these two sites. Summary In this post I quick introduced the new windows azure developer portal. Since it had been rearranged and renamed I demonstrated some features that existing in the old portal, such as how to create and deploy a hosted service, how to provision a storage service and SQL database. All features in the old portal had been, is being and will be migrated into this new portal, but some of them were in a different category and page we need to figure out. 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.

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The fastest way to resize images from ASP.NET. And it’s (more) supported-ish.

- by Bertrand Le Roy

I’ve shown before how to resize images using GDI, which is fairly common but is explicitly unsupported because we know of very real problems that this can cause. Still, many sites still use that method because those problems are fairly rare, and because most people assume it’s the only way to get the job done. Plus, it works in medium trust. More recently, I’ve shown how you can use WPF APIs to do the same thing and get JPEG thumbnails, only 2.5 times faster than GDI (even now that GDI really ultimately uses WIC to read and write images). The boost in performance is great, but it comes at a cost, that you may or may not care about: it won’t work in medium trust. It’s also just as unsupported as the GDI option. What I want to show today is how to use the Windows Imaging Components from ASP.NET APIs directly, without going through WPF. The approach has the great advantage that it’s been tested and proven to scale very well. The WIC team tells me you should be able to call support and get answers if you hit problems. Caveats exist though. First, this is using interop, so until a signed wrapper sits in the GAC, it will require full trust. Second, the APIs have a very strong smell of native code and are definitely not .NET-friendly. And finally, the most serious problem is that older versions of Windows don’t offer MTA support for image decoding. MTA support is only available on Windows 7, Vista and Windows Server 2008. But on 2003 and XP, you’ll only get STA support. that means that the thread safety that we so badly need for server applications is not guaranteed on those operating systems. To make it work, you’d have to spin specialized threads yourself and manage the lifetime of your objects, which is outside the scope of this article. We’ll assume that we’re fine with al this and that we’re running on 7 or 2008 under full trust. Be warned that the code that follows is not simple or very readable. This is definitely not the easiest way to resize an image in .NET. Wrapping native APIs such as WIC in a managed wrapper is never easy, but fortunately we won’t have to: the WIC team already did it for us and released the results under MS-PL. The InteropServices folder, which contains the wrappers we need, is in the WicCop project but I’ve also included it in the sample that you can download from the link at the end of the article. In order to produce a thumbnail, we first have to obtain a decoding frame object that WIC can use. Like with WPF, that object will contain the command to decode a frame from the source image but won’t do the actual decoding until necessary. Getting the frame is done by reading the image bytes through a special WIC stream that you can obtain from a factory object that we’re going to reuse for lots of other tasks: var photo = File.ReadAllBytes(photoPath); var factory = (IWICComponentFactory)new WICImagingFactory(); var inputStream = factory.CreateStream(); inputStream.InitializeFromMemory(photo, (uint)photo.Length); var decoder = factory.CreateDecoderFromStream( inputStream, null, WICDecodeOptions.WICDecodeMetadataCacheOnLoad); var frame = decoder.GetFrame(0); We can read the dimensions of the frame using the following (somewhat ugly) code: uint width, height; frame.GetSize(out width, out height); This enables us to compute the dimensions of the thumbnail, as I’ve shown in previous articles. We now need to prepare the output stream for the thumbnail. WIC requires a special kind of stream, IStream (not implemented by System.IO.Stream) and doesn’t directlyunderstand .NET streams. It does provide a number of implementations but not exactly what we need here. We need to output to memory because we’ll want to persist the same bytes to the response stream and to a local file for caching. The memory-bound version of IStream requires a fixed-length buffer but we won’t know the length of the buffer before we resize. To solve that problem, I’ve built a derived class from MemoryStream that also implements IStream. The implementation is not very complicated, it just delegates the IStream methods to the base class, but it involves some native pointer manipulation. Once we have a stream, we need to build the encoder for the output format, which could be anything that WIC supports. For web thumbnails, our only reasonable options are PNG and JPEG. I explored PNG because it’s a lossless format, and because WIC does support PNG compression. That compression is not very efficient though and JPEG offers good quality with much smaller file sizes. On the web, it matters. I found the best PNG compression option (adaptive) to give files that are about twice as big as 100%-quality JPEG (an absurd setting), 4.5 times bigger than 95%-quality JPEG and 7 times larger than 85%-quality JPEG, which is more than acceptable quality. As a consequence, we’ll use JPEG. The JPEG encoder can be prepared as follows: var encoder = factory.CreateEncoder( Consts.GUID_ContainerFormatJpeg, null); encoder.Initialize(outputStream, WICBitmapEncoderCacheOption.WICBitmapEncoderNoCache); The next operation is to create the output frame: IWICBitmapFrameEncode outputFrame; var arg = new IPropertyBag2[1]; encoder.CreateNewFrame(out outputFrame, arg); Notice that we are passing in a property bag. This is where we’re going to specify our only parameter for encoding, the JPEG quality setting: var propBag = arg[0]; var propertyBagOption = new PROPBAG2[1]; propertyBagOption[0].pstrName = "ImageQuality"; propBag.Write(1, propertyBagOption, new object[] { 0.85F }); outputFrame.Initialize(propBag); We can then set the resolution for the thumbnail to be 96, something we weren’t able to do with WPF and had to hack around: outputFrame.SetResolution(96, 96); Next, we set the size of the output frame and create a scaler from the input frame and the computed dimensions of the target thumbnail: outputFrame.SetSize(thumbWidth, thumbHeight); var scaler = factory.CreateBitmapScaler(); scaler.Initialize(frame, thumbWidth, thumbHeight, WICBitmapInterpolationMode.WICBitmapInterpolationModeFant); The scaler is using the Fant method, which I think is the best looking one even if it seems a little softer than cubic (zoomed here to better show the defects): Cubic Fant Linear Nearest neighbor We can write the source image to the output frame through the scaler: outputFrame.WriteSource(scaler, new WICRect { X = 0, Y = 0, Width = (int)thumbWidth, Height = (int)thumbHeight }); And finally we commit the pipeline that we built and get the byte array for the thumbnail out of our memory stream: outputFrame.Commit(); encoder.Commit(); var outputArray = outputStream.ToArray(); outputStream.Close(); That byte array can then be sent to the output stream and to the cache file. Once we’ve gone through this exercise, it’s only natural to wonder whether it was worth the trouble. I ran this method, as well as GDI and WPF resizing over thirty twelve megapixel images for JPEG qualities between 70% and 100% and measured the file size and time to resize. Here are the results: Size of resized images Time to resize thirty 12 megapixel images Not much to see on the size graph: sizes from WPF and WIC are equivalent, which is hardly surprising as WPF calls into WIC. There is just an anomaly for 75% for WPF that I noted in my previous article and that disappears when using WIC directly. But overall, using WPF or WIC over GDI represents a slight win in file size. The time to resize is more interesting. WPF and WIC get similar times although WIC seems to always be a little faster. Not surprising considering WPF is using WIC. The margin of error on this results is probably fairly close to the time difference. As we already knew, the time to resize does not depend on the quality level, only the size does. This means that the only decision you have to make here is size versus visual quality. This third approach to server-side image resizing on ASP.NET seems to converge on the fastest possible one. We have marginally better performance than WPF, but with some additional peace of mind that this approach is sanctioned for server-side usage by the Windows Imaging team. It still doesn’t work in medium trust. That is a problem and shows the way for future server-friendly managed wrappers around WIC. The sample code for this article can be downloaded from: http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bleroy/Samples/WicResize.zip The benchmark code can be found here (you’ll need to add your own images to the Images directory and then add those to the project, with content and copy if newer in the properties of the files in the solution explorer): http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bleroy/Samples/WicWpfGdiImageResizeBenchmark.zip WIC tools can be downloaded from: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wictools To conclude, here are some of the resized thumbnails at 85% fant:

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Experience your music in a whole new way with Zune for PC

- by Matthew Guay

Tired of the standard Media Player look and feel, and want something new and innovative? Zune offers a fresh, new way to enjoy your music, videos, pictures, and podcasts, whether or not you own a Zune device. Microsoft started out on a new multimedia experience for PCs and mobile devices with the launch of the Zune several years ago. The Zune devices have been well received and noted for their innovative UI, and the Zune HD’s fluid interface is the foundation for the widely anticipated Windows Phone 7. But regardless of whether or not you have a Zune Device, you can still use the exciting new UI and services directly from your PC. Zune for Windows is a very nice media player that offers a music and video store and wide support for multimedia formats including those used in Apple products. And if you enjoy listening to a wide variety of music, it also offers the Zune Pass which lets you stream an unlimited number of songs to your computer and download 10 songs for keeps per month for $14.99/month. Or you can do a pre-paid music card as well. It does all this using the new Metro UI which beautifully shows information using text in a whole new way. Here’s a quick look at setting up and using Zune on your PC. Getting Started Download the installer (link below), and run it to begin setup. Please note that Zune offers a separate version for computers running the 64 bit version of Windows Vista or 7, so choose it if your computer is running these. Once your download is finished, run the installer to setup Zune on your computer. Accept the EULA when prompted. If there are any updates available, they will automatically download and install during the setup. So, if you’re installing Zune from a disk (for example, one packaged with a Zune device), you don’t have to worry if you have the latest version. Zune will proceed to install on your computer. It may prompt you to restart your computer after installation; click Restart Now so you can proceed with your Zune setup. The reboot appears to be for Zune device support, and the program ran fine otherwise without rebooting, so you could possibly skip this step if you’re not using a Zune device. However, to be on the safe side, go ahead and reboot. After rebooting, launch Zune. It will play a cute introduction video on first launch; press skip if you don’t want to watch it. Zune will now ask you if you want to keep the default settings or change them. Choose Start to keep the defaults, or Settings to customize to your wishes. Do note that the default settings will set Zune as your default media player, so click Settings if you wish to change this. If you choose to change the default settings, you can change how Zune finds and stores media on your computer. In Windows 7, Zune will by default use your Windows 7 Libraries to manage your media, and will in fact add a new Podcasts library to Windows 7. If your media is stored on another location, such as on a server, then you can add this to the Library. Please note that this adds the location to your system-wide library, not just the Zune player. There’s one last step. Enter three of your favorite artists, and Zune will add Smart DJ mixes to your Quickplay list based on these. Some less famous or popular artists may not be recognized, so you may have to try another if your choice isn’t available. Or, you can click Skip if you don’t want to do this right now. Welcome to Zune! This is the default first page, QuickPlay, where you can easily access your pinned and new items. If you have a Zune account, or would like to create a new one, click Sign In on the top. Creating a new account is quick and simple, and if you’re new to Zune, you can try out a 14 day trial of Zune Pass for free if you want. Zune allows you to share your listening habits and favorites with friends or the world, but you can turn this off or change it if you like. Using Zune for Windows To access your media, click the Collection link on the top left. Zune will show all the media you already have stored on your computer, organized by artist and album. Right-click on any album, and you choose to have Zune find album art or do a variety of other tasks with the media. When playing media, you can view it in several unique ways. First, the default Mix view will show related tracks to the music you’re playing from Smart DJ. You can either play these fully if you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, or otherwise you can play 30 second previews. Then, for many popular artists, Zune will change the player background to show pictures and information in a unique way while the music is playing. The information may range from history about the artist to the popularity of the song being played. Zune also works as a nice viewer for the pictures on your computer. Start a slideshow, and Zune will play your pictures with nice transition effects and music from your library. Zune Store The Zune Store offers a wide variety of music, TV shows, and videos for purchase. If you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, you can listen to or download any song without purchasing it; otherwise, you can preview a 30 second clip first. Zune also offers a wide selection of Podcasts you can subscribe to for free. Using Zune for PC with a Zune Device If you have a Zune device attached to your computer, you can easily add media files to it by simply dragging them to the Zune device icon in the left corner. In the future, this will also work with Windows Phone 7 devices. If you have a Zune HD, you can also download and add apps to your device. Here’s the detailed information window for the weather app. Click Download to add it to your device. Mini Mode The Zune player generally takes up a large portion of your screen, and is actually most impressive when run maximized. However, if you’re simply wanting to enjoy your tunes while you’re using your computer, you can use the Mini mode to still view music info and control Zune in a smaller mode. Click the Mini Player button near the window control buttons in the top right to activate it. Now Zune will take up much less of your desktop. This window will stay on top of other windows so you can still easily view and control it. Zune will display an image of the artist if one is available, and this shows up in Mini mode more often than it does in the full mode. And, in Windows 7, you could simply minimize Zune as you can control it directly from the taskbar thumbnail preview. Even more controls are available from Zune’s jumplist in Windows 7. You can directly access your Quickplay links or choose to shuffle all music without leaving the taskbar. Settings Although Zune is designed to be used without confusing menus and settings, you can tweak the program to your liking from the settings panel. Click Settings near the top left of the window. Here you can change file storage, types, burn, metadata, and many more settings. You can also setup Zune to stream media to your XBOX 360 if you have one. You can also customize Zune’s look with a variety of modern backgrounds and gradients. Conclusion If you’re ready for a fresh way to enjoy your media, Zune is designed for you. It’s innovative UI definitely sets it apart from standard media players, and is very pleasing to use. Zune is especially nice if your computer is using XP, Vista Home Basic, or 7 Starter as these versions of Windows don’t include Media Center. Additionally, the mini player mode is a nice touch that brings a feature of Windows 7’s Media Player to XP and Vista. Zune is definitely one of our favorite music apps. Try it out, and get a fresh view of your music today! 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Routing to a Controller with no View in Angular

- by Rick Strahl

I've finally had some time to put Angular to use this week in a small project I'm working on for fun. Angular's routing is great and makes it real easy to map URL routes to controllers and model data into views. But what if you don't actually need a view, if you effectively need a headless controller that just runs code, but doesn't render a view?Preserve the ViewWhen Angular navigates a route and and presents a new view, it loads the controller and then renders the view from scratch. Views are not cached or stored, but displayed and then removed. So if you have routes configured like this:'use strict'; // Declare app level module which depends on filters, and services window.myApp = angular.module('myApp', ['myApp.filters', 'myApp.services', 'myApp.directives', 'myApp.controllers']). config(['$routeProvider', function($routeProvider) { $routeProvider.when('/map', { template: "partials/map.html ", controller: 'mapController', reloadOnSearch: false, animation: 'slide' }); … $routeProvider.otherwise({redirectTo: '/map'}); }]); Angular routes to the mapController and then re-renders the map.html template with the new data from the $scope filled in.But, but… I don't want a new View!Now in most cases this works just fine. If I'm rendering plain DOM content, or textboxes in a form interface that is all fine and dandy - it's perfectly fine to completely re-render the UI.But in some cases, the UI that's being managed has state and shouldn't be redrawn. In this case the main page in question has a Google Map on it. The map is going to be manipulated throughout the lifetime of the application and the rest of the pages. In my application I have a toolbar on the bottom and the rest of the content is replaced/switched out by the Angular Views:The problem is that the map shouldn't be redrawn each time the Location view is activated. It should maintain its state, such as the current position selected (which can move), and shouldn't redraw due to the overhead of re-rendering the initial map.Originally I set up the map, exactly like all my other views - as a partial, that is rendered with a separate file, but that didn't work.The Workaround - Controller Only RoutesThe workaround for this goes decidedly against Angular's way of doing things:Setting up a Template-less RouteIn-lining the map view directly into the main pageHiding and showing the map view manuallyLet's see how this works.Controller Only RouteThe template-less route is basically a route that doesn't have any template to render. This is not directly supported by Angular, but thankfully easy to fake. The end goal here is that I want to simply have the Controller fire and then have the controller manage the display of the already active view by hiding and showing the map and any other view content, in effect bypassing Angular's view display management.In short - I want a controller action, but no view rendering.The controller-only or template-less route looks like this: $routeProvider.when('/map', { template: " ", // just fire controller controller: 'mapController', animation: 'slide' });Notice I'm using the template property rather than templateUrl (used in the first example above), which allows specifying a string template, and leaving it blank. The template property basically allows you to provide a templated string using Angular's HandleBar like binding syntax which can be useful at times. You can use plain strings or strings with template code in the template, or as I'm doing here a blank string to essentially fake 'just clear the view'. In-lined ViewSo if there's no view where does the HTML go? Because I don't want Angular to manage the view the map markup is in-lined directly into the page. So instead of rendering the map into the Angular view container, the content is simply set up as inline HTML to display as a sibling to the view container.<div id="MapContent" data-icon="LocationIcon" ng-controller="mapController" style="display:none"> <div class="headerbar"> <div class="right-header" style="float:right"> <a id="btnShowSaveLocationDialog" class="iconbutton btn btn-sm" href="#/saveLocation" style="margin-right: 2px;"> <i class="icon-ok icon-2x" style="color: lightgreen; "></i> Save Location </a> </div> <div class="left-header">GeoCrumbs</div> </div> <div class="clearfix"></div> <div id="Message"> <i id="MessageIcon"></i> <span id="MessageText"></span> </div> <div id="Map" class="content-area"> </div> </div> <div id="ViewPlaceholder" ng-view></div>Note that there's the #MapContent element and the #ViewPlaceHolder. The #MapContent is my static map view that is always 'live' and is initially hidden. It is initially hidden and doesn't get made visible until the MapController controller activates it which does the initial rendering of the map. After that the element is persisted with the map data already loaded and any future access only updates the map with new locations/pins etc.Note that default route is assigned to the mapController, which means that the mapController is fired right as the page loads, which is actually a good thing in this case, as the map is the cornerstone of this app that is manipulated by some of the other controllers/views.The Controller handles some UISince there's effectively no view activation with the template-less route, the controller unfortunately has to take over some UI interaction directly. Specifically it has to swap the hidden state between the map and any of the other views.Here's what the controller looks like:myApp.controller('mapController', ["$scope", "$routeParams", "locationData", function($scope, $routeParams, locationData) { $scope.locationData = locationData.location; $scope.locationHistory = locationData.locationHistory; if ($routeParams.mode == "currentLocation") { bc.getCurrentLocation(false); } bc.showMap(false,"#LocationIcon"); }]);bc.showMap is responsible for a couple of display tasks that hide/show the views/map and for activating/deactivating icons. The code looks like this:this.showMap = function (hide,selActiveIcon) { if (!hide) $("#MapContent").show(); else { $("#MapContent").hide(); } self.fitContent(); if (selActiveIcon) { $(".iconbutton").removeClass("active"); $(selActiveIcon).addClass("active"); } };Each of the other controllers in the app also call this function when they are activated to basically hide the map and make the View Content area visible. The map controller makes the map.This is UI code and calling this sort of thing from controllers is generally not recommended, but I couldn't figure out a way using directives to make this work any more easily than this. It'd be easy to hide and show the map and view container using a flag an ng-show, but it gets tricky because of scoping of the $scope. I would have to resort to storing this setting on the $rootscope which I try to avoid. The same issues exists with the icons.It sure would be nice if Angular had a way to explicitly specify that a View shouldn't be destroyed when another view is activated, so currently this workaround is required. Searching around, I saw a number of whacky hacks to get around this, but this solution I'm using here seems much easier than any of that I could dig up even if it doesn't quite fit the 'Angular way'.Angular nice, until it's notOverall I really like Angular and the way it works although it took me a bit of time to get my head around how all the pieces fit together. Once I got the idea how the app/routes, the controllers and views snap together, putting together Angular pages becomes fairly straightforward. You can get quite a bit done never going beyond those basics. For most common things Angular's default routing and view presentation works very well.But, when you do something a bit more complex, where there are multiple dependencies or as in this case where Angular doesn't appear to support a feature that's absolutely necessary, you're on your own. Finding information on more advanced topics is not trivial especially since versions are changing so rapidly and the low level behaviors are changing frequently so finding something that works is often an exercise in trial and error. Not that this is surprising. Angular is a complex piece of kit as are all the frameworks that try to hack JavaScript into submission to do something that it was really never designed to. After all everything about a framework like Angular is an elaborate hack. A lot of shit has to happen to make this all work together and at that Angular (and Ember, Durandel etc.) are pretty amazing pieces of JavaScript code. So no harm, no foul, but I just can't help feeling like working in toy sandbox at times :-)© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in Angular JavaScript Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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That Escalated Quickly

- by Jesse Taber

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2014/05/17/that-escalated-quickly.aspxI have been working remotely out of my home for over 4 years now. All of my coworkers during that time have also worked remotely. Lots of folks have written about the challenges inherent in facilitating communication on remote teams and strategies for overcoming them. A popular theme around this topic is the notion of “escalating communication”. In this context “escalating” means taking a conversation from one mode of communication to a different, higher fidelity mode of communication. Here are the five modes of communication I use at work in order of increasing fidelity: Email – This is the “lowest fidelity” mode of communication that I use. I usually only check it a few times a day (and I’m trying to check it even less frequently than that) and I only keep items in my inbox if they represent an item I need to take action on that I haven’t tracked anywhere else. Forums / Message boards – Being a developer, I’ve gotten into the habit of having other people look over my code before it becomes part of the product I’m working on. These code reviews often happen in “real time” via screen sharing, but I also always have someone else give all of the changes another look using pull requests. A pull request takes my code and lets someone else see the changes I’ve made side-by-side with the existing code so they can see if I did anything dumb. Pull requests can facilitate a conversation about the code changes in an online-forum like style. Some teams I’ve worked on also liked using tools like Trello or Google Groups to have on-going conversations about a topic or task that was being worked on. Chat & Instant Messaging - Chat and instant messaging are the real workhorses for communication on the remote teams I’ve been a part of. I know some teams that are co-located that also use it pretty extensively for quick messages that don’t warrant walking across the office to talk with someone but reqire more immediacy than an e-mail. For the purposes of this post I think it’s important to note that the terms “chat” and “instant messaging” might insinuate that the conversation is happening in real time, but that’s not always true. Modern chat and IM applications maintain a searchable history so people can easily see what might have been discussed while they were away from their computers. Voice, Video and Screen sharing – Everyone’s got a camera and microphone on their computers now, and there are an abundance of services that will let you use them to talk to other people who have cameras and microphones on their computers. I’m including screen sharing here as well because, in my experience, these discussions typically involve one or more people showing the other participants something that’s happening on their screen. Obviously, this mode of communication is much higher-fidelity than any of the ones listed above. Scheduled meetings are typically conducted using this mode of communication. In Person – No matter how great communication tools become, there’s no substitute for meeting with someone face-to-face. However, opportunities for this kind of communcation are few and far between when you work on a remote team. When a conversation gets escalated that usually means it moves up one or more positions on this list. A lot of people advocate jumping to #4 sooner than later. Like them, I used to believe that, if it was possible, organizing a call with voice and video was automatically better than any kind of text-based communication could be. Lately, however, I’m becoming less convinced that escalating is always the right move. Working Asynchronously Last year I attended a talk at our local code camp given by Drew Miller. Drew works at GitHub and was talking about how they use GitHub internally. Many of the folks at GitHub work remotely, so communication was one of the main themes in Drew’s talk. During the talk Drew used the phrase, “asynchronous communication” to describe their use of chat and pull request comments. That phrase stuck in my head because I hadn’t heard it before but I think it perfectly describes the way in which remote teams often need to communicate. You don’t always know when your co-workers are at their computers or what hours (if any) they are working that day. In order to work this way you need to assume that the person you’re talking to might not respond right away. You can’t always afford to wait until everyone required is online and available to join a voice call, so you need to use text-based, persistent forms of communication so that people can receive and respond to messages when they are available. Going back to my list from the beginning of this post for a second, I characterize items #1-3 as being “asynchronous” modes of communication while we could call items #4 and #5 “synchronous”. When communication gets escalated it’s almost always moving from an asynchronous mode of communication to a synchronous one. Now, to the point of this post: I’ve become increasingly reluctant to escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication for two primary reasons: 1 – You can often find a higher fidelity way to convey your message without holding a synchronous conversation 2 - Asynchronous modes of communication are (usually) persistent and searchable. You Don’t Have to Broadcast Live Let’s start with the first reason I’ve listed. A lot of times you feel like you need to escalate to synchronous communication because you’re having difficulty describing something that you’re seeing in words. You want to provide the people you’re conversing with some audio-visual aids to help them understand the point that you’re trying to make and you think that getting on Skype and sharing your screen with them is the best way to do that. Firing up a screen sharing session does work well, but you can usually accomplish the same thing in an asynchronous manner. For example, you could take a screenshot and annotate it with some text and drawings to illustrate what it is you’re seeing. If a screenshot won’t work, taking a short screen recording while your narrate over it and posting the video to your forum or chat system along with a text-based description of what’s in the recording that can be searched for later can be a great way to effectively communicate with your team asynchronously. I Said What?!? Now for the second reason I listed: most asynchronous modes of communication provide a transcript of what was said and what decisions might have been made during the conversation. There have been many occasions where I’ve used the search feature of my team’s chat application to find a conversation that happened several weeks or months ago to remember what was decided. Unfortunately, I think the benefits associated with the persistence of communicating asynchronously often get overlooked when people decide to escalate to a in-person meeting or voice/video call. I’m becoming much more reluctant to suggest a voice or video call if I suspect that it might lead to codifying some kind of design decision because everyone involved is going to hang up the call and immediately forget what was decided. I recognize that you can record and archive these types of interactions, but without being able to search them the recordings aren’t terribly useful. When and How To Escalate I don’t mean to imply that communicating via voice/video or in person is never a good idea. I probably jump on a Skype call with a co-worker at least once a day to quickly hash something out or show them a bit of code that I’m working on. Also, meeting in person periodically is really important for remote teams. There’s no way around the fact that sometimes it’s easier to jump on a call and show someone my screen so they can see what I’m seeing. So when is it right to escalate? I think the simplest way to answer that is when the communication starts to feel painful. Everyone’s tolerance for that pain is different, but I think you need to let it hurt a little bit before jumping to synchronous communication. When you do escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication, there are a couple of things you can do to maximize the effectiveness of the communication: Takes notes – This is huge and yet I’ve found that a lot of teams don’t do this. If you’re holding a meeting with > 2 people you should have someone taking notes. Taking notes while participating in a meeting can be difficult but there are a few strategies to deal with this challenge that probably deserve a short post of their own. After the meeting, make sure the notes are posted to a place where all concerned parties (including those that might not have attended the meeting) can review and search them. Persist decisions made ASAP – If any decisions were made during the meeting, persist those decisions to a searchable medium as soon as possible following the conversation. All the teams I’ve worked on used a web-based system for tracking the on-going work and a backlog of work to be done in the future. I always try to make sure that all of the cards/stories/tasks/whatever in these systems always reflect the latest decisions that were made as the work was being planned and executed. If held a quick call with your team lead and decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to build real-time validation into that new UI you were working on, go and codify that decision in the story associated with that work immediately after you hang up. Even better, write it up in the story while you are both still on the phone. That way when the folks from your QA team pick up the story to test a few days later they’ll know why the real-time validation isn’t there without having to invoke yet another conversation about the work. Communicating Well is Hard At this point you might be thinking that communicating asynchronously is more difficult than having a live conversation. You’re right: it is more difficult. In order to communicate effectively this way you need to very carefully think about the message that you’re trying to convey and craft it in a way that’s easy for your audience to understand. This is almost always harder than just talking through a problem in real time with someone; this is why escalating communication is such a popular idea. Why wouldn’t we want to do the thing that’s easier? Easier isn’t always better. If you and your team can get in the habit of communicating effectively in an asynchronous manner you’ll find that, over time, all of your communications get less painful because you don’t need to re-iterate previously made points over and over again. If you communicate right the first time, you often don’t need to rehash old conversations because you can go back and find the decisions that were made laid out in plain language. You’ll also find that you get better at doing things like writing useful comments in your code, creating written documentation about how the feature that you just built works, or persuading your team to do things in a certain way.

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WPF Login Verification Using Active Directory

- by psheriff

Back in October of 2009 I created a WPF login screen (Figure 1) that just showed how to create the layout for a login screen. That one sample is probably the most downloaded sample we have. So in this blog post, I thought I would update that screen and also hook it up to show how to authenticate your user against Active Directory. Figure 1: Original WPF Login Screen I have updated not only the code behind for this login screen, but also the look and feel as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2: An Updated WPF Login Screen The UI To create the UI for this login screen you can refer to my October of 2009 blog post to see how to create the borderless window. You can then look at the sample code to see how I created the linear gradient brush for the background. There are just a few differences in this screen compared to the old version. First, I changed the key image and instead of using words for the Cancel and Login buttons, I used some icons. Secondly I added a text box to hold the Domain name that you wish to authenticate against. This text box is automatically filled in if you are connected to a network. In the Window_Loaded event procedure of the winLogin window you can retrieve the user’s domain name from the Environment.UserDomainName property. For example: txtDomain.Text = Environment.UserDomainName The ADHelper Class Instead of coding the call to authenticate the user directly in the login screen I created an ADHelper class. This will make it easier if you want to add additional AD calls in the future. The ADHelper class contains just one method at this time called AuthenticateUser. This method authenticates a user name and password against the specified domain. The login screen will gather the credentials from the user such as their user name and password, and also the domain name to authenticate against. To use this ADHelper class you will need to add a reference to the System.DirectoryServices.dll in .NET. The AuthenticateUser Method In order to authenticate a user against your Active Directory you will need to supply a valid LDAP path string to the constructor of the DirectoryEntry class. The LDAP path string will be in the format LDAP://DomainName. You will also pass in the user name and password to the constructor of the DirectoryEntry class as well. With a DirectoryEntry object populated with this LDAP path string, the user name and password you will now pass this object to the constructor of a DirectorySearcher object. You then perform the FindOne method on the DirectorySearcher object. If the DirectorySearcher object returns a SearchResult then the credentials supplied are valid. If the credentials are not valid on the Active Directory then an exception is thrown. C#public bool AuthenticateUser(string domainName, string userName, string password){ bool ret = false; try { DirectoryEntry de = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://" + domainName, userName, password); DirectorySearcher dsearch = new DirectorySearcher(de); SearchResult results = null; results = dsearch.FindOne(); ret = true; } catch { ret = false; } return ret;} Visual Basic Public Function AuthenticateUser(ByVal domainName As String, _ ByVal userName As String, ByVal password As String) As Boolean Dim ret As Boolean = False Try Dim de As New DirectoryEntry("LDAP://" & domainName, _ userName, password) Dim dsearch As New DirectorySearcher(de) Dim results As SearchResult = Nothing results = dsearch.FindOne() ret = True Catch ret = False End Try Return retEnd Function In the Click event procedure under the Login button you will find the following code that will validate the credentials that the user types into the login window. C#private void btnLogin_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e){ ADHelper ad = new ADHelper(); if(ad.AuthenticateUser(txtDomain.Text, txtUserName.Text, txtPassword.Password)) DialogResult = true; else MessageBox.Show("Unable to Authenticate Using the Supplied Credentials");} Visual BasicPrivate Sub btnLogin_Click(ByVal sender As Object, _ ByVal e As RoutedEventArgs) Dim ad As New ADHelper() If ad.AuthenticateUser(txtDomain.Text, txtUserName.Text, _ txtPassword.Password) Then DialogResult = True Else MessageBox.Show("Unable to Authenticate Using the Supplied Credentials") End IfEnd Sub Displaying the Login Screen At some point when your application launches, you will need to display your login screen modally. Below is the code that you would call to display the login form (named winLogin in my sample application). This code is called from the main application form, and thus the owner of the login screen is set to “this”. You then call the ShowDialog method on the login screen to have this form displayed modally. After the user clicks on one of the two buttons you need to check to see what the DialogResult property was set to. The DialogResult property is a nullable type and thus you first need to check to see if the value has been set. C# private void DisplayLoginScreen(){ winLogin win = new winLogin(); win.Owner = this; win.ShowDialog(); if (win.DialogResult.HasValue && win.DialogResult.Value) MessageBox.Show("User Logged In"); else this.Close();} Visual Basic Private Sub DisplayLoginScreen() Dim win As New winLogin() win.Owner = Me win.ShowDialog() If win.DialogResult.HasValue And win.DialogResult.Value Then MessageBox.Show("User Logged In") Else Me.Close() End IfEnd Sub Summary Creating a nice looking login screen is fairly simple to do in WPF. Using the Active Directory services from a WPF application should make your desktop programming task easier as you do not need to create your own user authentication system. I hope this article gave you some ideas on how to create a login screen in WPF. NOTE: You can download the complete sample code for this blog entry at my website: http://www.pdsa.com/downloads. Click on Tips & Tricks, then select 'WPF Login Verification Using Active Directory' from the drop down list. Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **We frequently offer a FREE gift for readers of my blog. Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for your FREE gift!

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Windows Azure Evolution – TFS Integration (WAWS Part 2)

- by Shaun

So this is the fourth blog post about the new features of Windows Azure and the second part of Windows Azure Web Sites. But this is not just focus on the WAWS since the function I’m going to introduce is available in both Windows Azure Web Sites and Windows Azure Cloud Service (a.k.a. hosted service). In the previous post I talked about the Windows Azure Web Sites and how to use its gallery to build a WordPress personal blog without coding. Besides the gallery we can create an empty web site and upload our website from vary approaches. And one of the highlighted feature here is that, we can make our web site integrated with a source control service, such as TFS and Git, so that it will be deployed automatically once a new commit or build available. Create New Empty Web Site In the developer portal when creating a new web site, we can select QUICK CREATE item. This will create an empty web site with only one shared instance without any database associated. Let’s specify the URL, region and subscription and click OK. After a few seconds our website will be ready. And now we can click the BROWSE button to open this empty website. As you can see there is a welcome page available in my website even thought I didn’t upload or deploy anything. This means even though the website will be charged even before anything was deployed, similar as the cloud service (hosted service). It is because once we created a website, Windows Azure platform had arranged a hosting process (w3wp.exe) in the group of virtual machines. Create Project in TFS Preview Service and Setup Link Currently the Windows Azure Web Sites can integrate with TFS and Git as its deployment source, and it only support the Microsoft TFS Preview Service for now. I will not deep into how to use the TFS preview service in this post but once we click into the website we had just created and then clicked the “Set up TFS publishing”, there will be a dialog helping us to connect to this service. If you don’t have an account you can click the link shown below to request one. Assuming we have already had an account of TFS service then we need to create a new project firstly. Go to your TFS service website and create a new project, giving the project name, description and the process template. Then, back to the developer portal and clicked the “Set up TFS publishing” link. In the popping up window I will provide my TFS service URL and click the “Authorize now” link. Click “Accept” button to allow my windows azure to connect to my TFS service. Then it will be back to the developer portal and list all projects in my account. Just select the one I had just created and click OK. Then our website is linking to the TFS project I specified and finally it will show similar like this below. This means the web site had been linked to the TFS successfully. Work with TFS Preview Service in VS2010 In the figure above there are some links to guide us how to connect to the TFS server through Visual Studio 2010 and 2012 RC. If you are using Visual Studio 2012 RC, you don’t need any extension. But if you are using Visual Studio 2010 you must have SP1 and KB2581206 installed. To connect to my TFS service just open the Visual Studio and in the Team Explorer, we can add a new TFS server and paste the URL of my TFS service from the developer portal. And select the project I had just created, then it will be listed in my Team Explorer. Now let’s start to build our website. Since the website we are going to build will be deployed to WAWS, it’s NOT a cloud service, NOT a web role. So in this case we need to create a normal ASP.NET web application. For example, an ASP.NET MVC 3 web application. Next, right click on the solution and select “Add Solution to Source Control”, select the project I had just created. Then check my code in. Once the check-in finished we can see that there is a build running in the TFS server. And if we back to the developer portal, we will see in our web site deployment page there’s a deployment running. In fact, once we linked our web site to our TFS then it will create a new build definition in our TFS project. It will be triggered by each check-in and deploy to the web site we linked automatically. So that when our code had been compiled it will be published to our web site from our TFS server. Once the build and deployment finished we can see it’s now active on our developer portal. Now we can see the web site that created from my Visual Studio and deployed by my TFS. Continue Deployment through VS and TFS A big benefit when using TFS publishing is the continue deployment. Now if I changed some code in my Visual Studio, for example update some text on the home page and check in my changes, then it will trigger an new build and deploy to my WAWS automatically. And even more, if we wanted to rollback to a previous version we can just select an existing deployment listed in the portal and click REDEPLOY at the bottom. Q&A: Can Web Site use Storage work with a Worker Role? Stacy asked a question in my previous post, which was “can a web site use Windows Azure Storage and furthermore working with a worker role”. Since the web site is deployed on the windows azure virtual machines in data center, it must be able to use all windows azure features such as the storage, SQL databases, CDN, etc.. But since when using web site we normally have a standard ASP.NET web application, PHP website or NodeJS, the windows azure SDK was not referenced by default. But we can add them by ourselves. In our sample project let’s right click on my MVC project and clicked the “Manage NuGet packages”. And in the dialog I will search windows azure packages and select the “Windows Azure Storage” to install. Then we will have the assemblies to access windows azure storage such as tables, queues and blobs. Since I have a storage account already, let’s have a quick demo, just to list all blobs in a container. The code would be like this. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Web; 5: using System.Web.Mvc; 6: using Microsoft.WindowsAzure; 7: using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient; 8: 9: namespace WAASTFSDemo.Controllers 10: { 11: public class HomeController : Controller 12: { 13: public ActionResult Index() 14: { 15: ViewBag.Message = "Welcome to Windows Azure!"; 16: 17: var credentials = new StorageCredentialsAccountAndKey("[STORAGE_ACCOUNT]", "[STORAGE_KEY]"); 18: var account = new CloudStorageAccount(credentials, false); 19: var client = account.CreateCloudBlobClient(); 20: var container = client.GetContainerReference("shared"); 21: ViewBag.Blobs = container.ListBlobs().Select(b => b.Uri.AbsoluteUri); 22: 23: return View(); 24: } 25: 26: public ActionResult About() 27: { 28: return View(); 29: } 30: } 31: } 1: @{ 2: ViewBag.Title = "Home Page"; 3: } 4: 5: <h2>@ViewBag.Message</h2> 6: <p> 7: To learn more about ASP.NET MVC visit <a href="http://asp.net/mvc" title="ASP.NET MVC Website">http://asp.net/mvc</a>. 8: </p> 9: <div> 10: <ul> 11: @foreach (var blob in ViewBag.Blobs) 12: { 13: <li>@blob</li> 14: } 15: </ul> 16: </div> And then just check in the code, it will be deployed to my web site. Finally we can see the blobs in my storage. This is just an example but it proves that web sites can connect to storage, table, blob and queue as well. So the answer to Stacy should be “yes”. The web site can use queue storage to work with worker role. Summary In this post I demonstrated how to integrate with TFS from Windows Azure Web Sites. You can see our website can be built, uploaded and deployed automatically by TFS service. All we need to do is to provide the TFS name and select the project. Not only the Windows Azure Web Site, in this upgrade the Windows Azure Cloud Services (hosted service) can be published through TFS as well. Very similar as what we have shown below. But currently, only Microsoft TFS Service Preview can be integrated with Windows Azure. But I think in the future we can link the TFS in our enterprise and some 3rd party TFS such as CodePlex to Windows Azure. 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.

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Refactor This (Ugly Code)!

- by Alois Kraus

Ayende has put on his blog some ugly code to refactor. First and foremost it is nearly impossible to reason about other peoples code without knowing the driving forces behind the current code. It is certainly possible to make it much cleaner when potential sources of errors cannot happen in the first place due to good design. I can see what the intention of the code is but I do not know about every brittle detail if I am allowed to reorder things here and there to simplify things. So I decided to make it much simpler by identifying the different responsibilities of the methods and encapsulate it in different classes. The code we need to refactor seems to deal with a handler after a message has been sent to a message queue. The handler does complete the current transaction if there is any and does handle any errors happening there. If during the the completion of the transaction errors occur the transaction is at least disposed. We can enter the handler already in a faulty state where we try to deliver the complete event in any case and signal a failure event and try to resend the message again to the queue if it was not inside a transaction. All is decorated with many try/catch blocks, duplicated code and some state variables to route the program flow. It is hard to understand and difficult to reason about. In other words: This code is a mess and could be written by me if I was under pressure. Here comes to code we want to refactor: private void HandleMessageCompletion( Message message, TransactionScope tx, OpenedQueue messageQueue, Exception exception, Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageCompleted, Action<CurrentMessageInformation> beforeTransactionCommit) { var txDisposed = false; if (exception == null) { try { if (tx != null) { if (beforeTransactionCommit != null) beforeTransactionCommit(currentMessageInformation); tx.Complete(); tx.Dispose(); txDisposed = true; } try { if (messageCompleted != null) messageCompleted(currentMessageInformation, exception); } catch (Exception e) { Trace.TraceError("An error occured when raising the MessageCompleted event, the error will NOT affect the message processing"+ e); } return; } catch (Exception e) { Trace.TraceWarning("Failed to complete transaction, moving to error mode"+ e); exception = e; } } try { if (txDisposed == false && tx != null) { Trace.TraceWarning("Disposing transaction in error mode"); tx.Dispose(); } } catch (Exception e) { Trace.TraceWarning("Failed to dispose of transaction in error mode."+ e); } if (message == null) return; try { if (messageCompleted != null) messageCompleted(currentMessageInformation, exception); } catch (Exception e) { Trace.TraceError("An error occured when raising the MessageCompleted event, the error will NOT affect the message processing"+ e); } try { var copy = MessageProcessingFailure; if (copy != null) copy(currentMessageInformation, exception); } catch (Exception moduleException) { Trace.TraceError("Module failed to process message failure: " + exception.Message+ moduleException); } if (messageQueue.IsTransactional == false)// put the item back in the queue { messageQueue.Send(message); } } You can see quite some processing and handling going on there. Yes this looks like real world code one did put together to make things work and he does not trust his callbacks. I guess these are event handlers which are optional and the delegates were extracted from an event to call them back later when necessary. Lets see what the author of this code did intend: private void HandleMessageCompletion( TransactionHandler transactionHandler, MessageCompletionHandler handler, CurrentMessageInformation messageInfo, ErrorCollector errors ) { // commit current pending transaction transactionHandler.CallHandlerAndCommit(messageInfo, errors); // We have an error for a null message do not send completion event if (messageInfo.CurrentMessage == null) return; // Send completion event in any case regardless of errors handler.OnMessageCompleted(messageInfo, errors); // put message back if queue is not transactional transactionHandler.ResendMessageOnError(messageInfo.CurrentMessage, errors); } I did not bother to write the intention here again since the code should be pretty self explaining by now. I have used comments to explain the still nontrivial procedure step by step revealing the real intention about all this complex program flow. The original complexity of the problem domain does not go away but by applying the techniques of SRP (Single Responsibility Principle) and some functional style but we can abstract the necessary complexity away in useful abstractions which make it much easier to reason about it. Since most of the method seems to deal with errors I thought it was a good idea to encapsulate the error state of our current message in an ErrorCollector object which stores all exceptions in a list along with a description what the error all was about in the exception itself. We can log it later or not depending on the log level or whatever. It is really just a simple list that encapsulates the current error state. class ErrorCollector { List<Exception> _Errors = new List<Exception>(); public void Add(Exception ex, string description) { ex.Data["Description"] = description; _Errors.Add(ex); } public Exception Last { get { return _Errors.LastOrDefault(); } } public bool HasError { get { return _Errors.Count > 0; } } } Since the error state is global we have two choices to store a reference in the other helper objects (TransactionHandler and MessageCompletionHandler)or pass it to the method calls when necessary. I did chose the latter one because a second argument does not hurt and makes it easier to reason about the overall state while the helper objects remain stateless and immutable which makes the helper objects much easier to understand and as a bonus thread safe as well. This does not mean that the stored member variables are stateless or thread safe as well but at least our helper classes are it. Most of the complexity is located the transaction handling I consider as a separate responsibility that I delegate to the TransactionHandler which does nothing if there is no transaction or Call the Before Commit Handler Commit Transaction Dispose Transaction if commit did throw In fact it has a second responsibility to resend the message if the transaction did fail. I did see a good fit there since it deals with transaction failures. class TransactionHandler { TransactionScope _Tx; Action<CurrentMessageInformation> _BeforeCommit; OpenedQueue _MessageQueue; public TransactionHandler(TransactionScope tx, Action<CurrentMessageInformation> beforeCommit, OpenedQueue messageQueue) { _Tx = tx; _BeforeCommit = beforeCommit; _MessageQueue = messageQueue; } public void CallHandlerAndCommit(CurrentMessageInformation currentMessageInfo, ErrorCollector errors) { if (_Tx != null && !errors.HasError) { try { if (_BeforeCommit != null) { _BeforeCommit(currentMessageInfo); } _Tx.Complete(); _Tx.Dispose(); } catch (Exception ex) { errors.Add(ex, "Failed to complete transaction, moving to error mode"); Trace.TraceWarning("Disposing transaction in error mode"); try { _Tx.Dispose(); } catch (Exception ex2) { errors.Add(ex2, "Failed to dispose of transaction in error mode."); } } } } public void ResendMessageOnError(Message message, ErrorCollector errors) { if (errors.HasError && !_MessageQueue.IsTransactional) { _MessageQueue.Send(message); } } } If we need to change the handling in the future we have a much easier time to reason about our application flow than before. After we did complete our transaction and called our callback we can call the completion handler which is the main purpose of the HandleMessageCompletion method after all. The responsiblity o the MessageCompletionHandler is to call the completion callback and the failure callback when some error has occurred. class MessageCompletionHandler { Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> _MessageCompletedHandler; Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> _MessageProcessingFailure; public MessageCompletionHandler(Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageCompletedHandler, Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageProcessingFailure) { _MessageCompletedHandler = messageCompletedHandler; _MessageProcessingFailure = messageProcessingFailure; } public void OnMessageCompleted(CurrentMessageInformation currentMessageInfo, ErrorCollector errors) { try { if (_MessageCompletedHandler != null) { _MessageCompletedHandler(currentMessageInfo, errors.Last); } } catch (Exception ex) { errors.Add(ex, "An error occured when raising the MessageCompleted event, the error will NOT affect the message processing"); } if (errors.HasError) { SignalFailedMessage(currentMessageInfo, errors); } } void SignalFailedMessage(CurrentMessageInformation currentMessageInfo, ErrorCollector errors) { try { if (_MessageProcessingFailure != null) _MessageProcessingFailure(currentMessageInfo, errors.Last); } catch (Exception moduleException) { errors.Add(moduleException, "Module failed to process message failure"); } } } If for some reason I did screw up the logic and we need to call the completion handler from our Transaction handler we can simple add to the CallHandlerAndCommit method a third argument to the MessageCompletionHandler and we are fine again. If the logic becomes even more complex and we need to ensure that the completed event is triggered only once we have now one place the completion handler to capture the state. During this refactoring I simple put things together that belong together and came up with useful abstractions. If you look at the original argument list of the HandleMessageCompletion method I have put many things together: Original Arguments New Arguments Encapsulate Message message CurrentMessageInformation messageInfo Message message TransactionScope tx Action<CurrentMessageInformation> beforeTransactionCommit OpenedQueue messageQueue TransactionHandler transactionHandler TransactionScope tx OpenedQueue messageQueue Action<CurrentMessageInformation> beforeTransactionCommit Exception exception, ErrorCollector errors Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageCompleted MessageCompletionHandler handler Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageCompleted Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageProcessingFailure The reason is simple: Put the things that have relationships together and you will find nearly automatically useful abstractions. I hope this makes sense to you. If you see a way to make it even more simple you can show Ayende your improved version as well.

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Click Once Deployment Process and Issue Resolution

- by Geordie

Introduction We are adopting Click Once as a deployment standard for Thick .Net application clients. The latest version of this tool has matured it to a point where it can be used in an enterprise environment. This guide will identify how to use Click Once deployment and promote code trough the dev, test and production environments. Why Use Click Once over SCCM If we already use SCCM why add Click Once to the deployment options. The advantages of Click Once are their ability to update the code in a single location and have the update flow automatically down to the user community. There have been challenges in the past with getting configuration updates to download but these can now be achieved. With SCCM you can do the same thing but it then needs to be packages and pushed out to users. Each time a new user is added to an application, time needs to be spent by an administrator, to push out any required application packages. With Click Once the user would go to a web link and the application and pre requisites will automatically get installed. New Deployment Steps Overview The deployment in an enterprise environment includes several steps as the solution moves through the development life cycle before being released into production. To make mitigate risk during the release phase, it is important to ensure the solution is not deployed directly into production from the development tools. Although this is the easiest path, it can introduce untested code into production and result in unexpected results. 1. Deploy the client application to a development web server using Visual Studio 2008 Click Once deployment tools. Once potential production versions of the solution are being generated, ensure the production install URL is specified when deploying code from Visual Studio. (For details see ‘Deploying Click Once Code from Visual Studio’) 2. xCopy the code to the test server. Run the MageUI tool to update the URLs, signing and version numbers to match the test server. (For details see ‘Moving Click Once Code to a new Server without using Visual Studio’) 3. xCopy the code to the production server. Run the MageUI tool to update the URLs, signing and version numbers to match the production server. The certificate used to sign the code should be provided by a certificate authority that will be trusted by the client machines. Finally make sure the setup.exe contains the production install URL. If not redeploy the solution from Visual Studio to the dev environment specifying the production install URL. Then xcopy the install.exe file from dev to production. (For details see ‘Moving Click Once Code to a new Server without using Visual Studio’) Detailed Deployment Steps Deploying Click Once Code From Visual Studio Open Visual Studio and create a new WinForms or WPF project. In the solution explorer right click on the project and select ‘Publish’ in the context menu. The ‘Publish Wizard’ will start. Enter the development deployment path. This could be a local directory or web site. When first publishing the solution set this to a development web site and Visual basic will create a site with an install.htm page. Click Next. Select weather the application will be available both online and offline. Then click Finish. Once the initial deployment is completed, republish the solution this time mapping to the directory that holds the code that was just published. This time the Publish Wizard contains and additional option. The setup.exe file that is created has the install URL hardcoded in it. It is this screen that allows you to specify the URL to use. At some point a setup.exe file must be generated for production. Enter the production URL and deploy the solution to the dev folder. This file can then be saved for latter use in deployment to production. During development this URL should be pointing to development site to avoid accidently installing the production application. Visual studio will publish the application to the desired location in the process it will create an anonymous ‘pfx’ certificate to sign the deployment configuration files. A production certificate should be acquired in preparation for deployment to production. Directory structure created by Visual Studio Application files created by Visual Studio Development web site (install.htm) created by Visual Studio Migrating Click Once Code to a new Server without using Visual Studio To migrate the Click Once application code to a new server, a tool called MageUI is needed to modify the .application and .manifest files. The MageUI tool is usually located – ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bin’ folder or can be downloaded from the web. When deploying to a new environment copy all files in the project folder to the new server. In this case the ‘ClickOnceSample’ folder and contents. The old application versions can be deleted, in this case ‘ClickOnceSample_1_0_0_0’ and ‘ClickOnceSample_1_0_0_1’. Open IIS Manager and create a virtual directory that points to the project folder. Also make the publish.htm the default web page. Run the ManeUI tool and then open the .application file in the root project folder (in this case in the ‘ClickOnceSample’ folder). Click on the Deployment Options in the left hand list and update the URL to the new server URL and save the changes. When MageUI tries to save the file it will prompt for the file to be signed. This step cannot be bypassed if you want the Click Once deployment to work from a web site. The easiest solution to this for test is to use the auto generated certificate that Visual Studio created for the project. This certificate can be found with the project source code. To save time go to File>Preferences and configure the ‘Use default signing certificate’ fields. Future deployments will only require application files to be transferred to the new server. The only difference is then updating the .application file the ‘Version’ must be updated to match the new version and the ‘Application Reference’ has to be update to point to the new .manifest file. Updating the Configuration File of a Click Once Deployment Package without using Visual Studio When an update to the configuration file is required, modifying the ClickOnceSample.exe.config.deploy file will not result in current users getting the new configurations. We do not want to go back to Visual Studio and generate a new version as this might introduce unexpected code changes. A new version of the application can be created by copying the folder (in this case ClickOnceSample_1_0_0_2) and pasting it into the application Files directory. Rename the directory ‘ClickOnceSample_1_0_0_3’. In the new folder open the configuration file in notepad and make the configuration changes. Run MageUI and open the manifest file in the newly copied directory (ClickOnceSample_1_0_0_3). Edit the manifest version to reflect the newly copied files (in this case 1.0.0.3). Then save the file. Open the .application file in the root folder. Again update the version to 1.0.0.3. Since the file has not changed the Deployment Options/Start Location URL should still be correct. The application Reference needs to be updated to point to the new versions .manifest file. Save the file. Next time a user runs the application the new version of the configuration file will be down loaded. It is worth noting that there are 2 different types of configuration parameter; application and user. With Click Once deployment the difference is significant. When an application is downloaded the configuration file is also brought down to the client machine. The developer may have written code to update the user parameters in the application. As a result each time a new version of the application is down loaded the user parameters are at risk of being overwritten. With Click Once deployment the system knows if the user parameters are still the default values. If they are they will be overwritten with the new default values in the configuration file. If they have been updated by the user, they will not be overwritten. Settings configuration view in Visual Studio Production Deployment When deploying the code to production it is prudent to disable the development and test deployment sites. This will allow errors such as incorrect URL to be quickly identified in the initial testing after deployment. If the sites are active there is no way to know if the application was downloaded from the production deployment and not redirected to test or dev. Troubleshooting Clicking the install button on the install.htm page fails. Error: URLDownloadToCacheFile failed with HRESULT '-2146697210' Error: An error occurred trying to download <file> This is due to the setup.exe file pointing to the wrong location. ‘The setup.exe file that is created has the install URL hardcoded in it. It is this screen that allows you to specify the URL to use. At some point a setup.exe file must be generated for production. Enter the production URL and deploy the solution to the dev folder. This file can then be saved for latter use in deployment to production. During development this URL should be pointing to development site to avoid accidently installing the production application.’

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DocumentDB - Another Azure NoSQL Storage Service

- by Shaun

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2014/08/25/documentdb---another-azure-nosql-storage-service.aspxMicrosoft just released a bunch of new features for Azure on 22nd and one of them I was interested in most is DocumentDB, a document NoSQL database service on the cloud. Quick Look at DocumentDB We can try DocumentDB from the new azure preview portal. Just click the NEW button and select the item named DocumentDB to create a new account. Specify the name of the DocumentDB, which will be the endpoint we are going to use to connect later. Select the capacity unit, resource group and subscription. In resource group section we can select which region our DocumentDB will be located. Same as other azure services select the same location with your consumers of the DocumentDB, for example the website, web services, etc.. After several minutes the DocumentDB will be ready. Click the KEYS button we can find the URI and primary key, which will be used when connecting. Now let's open Visual Studio and try to use the DocumentDB we had just created. Create a new console application and install the DocumentDB .NET client library from NuGet with the keyword "DocumentDB". You need to select "Include Prerelase" in NuGet Package Manager window since this library was not yet released. Next we will create a new database and document collection under our DocumentDB account. The code below created an instance of DocumentClient with the URI and primary key we just copied from azure portal, and create a database and collection. And it also prints the document and collection link string which will be used later to insert and query documents. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: var endpoint = new Uri("https://shx.documents.azure.com:443/"); 4: var key = "LU2NoyS2fH0131TGxtBE4DW/CjHQBzAaUx/mbuJ1X77C4FWUG129wWk2oyS2odgkFO2Xdif9/ZddintQicF+lA=="; 5: 6: var client = new DocumentClient(endpoint, key); 7: Run(client).Wait(); 8: 9: Console.WriteLine("done"); 10: Console.ReadKey(); 11: } 12: 13: static async Task Run(DocumentClient client) 14: { 15: 16: var database = new Database() { Id = "testdb" }; 17: database = await client.CreateDatabaseAsync(database); 18: Console.WriteLine("database link = {0}", database.SelfLink); 19: 20: var collection = new DocumentCollection() { Id = "testcol" }; 21: collection = await client.CreateDocumentCollectionAsync(database.SelfLink, collection); 22: Console.WriteLine("collection link = {0}", collection.SelfLink); 23: } Below is the result from the console window. We need to copy the collection link string for future usage. Now if we back to the portal we will find a database was listed with the name we specified in the code. Next we will insert a document into the database and collection we had just created. In the code below we pasted the collection link which copied in previous step, create a dynamic object with several properties defined. As you can see we can add some normal properties contains string, integer, we can also add complex property for example an array, a dictionary and an object reference, unless they can be serialized to JSON. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: var endpoint = new Uri("https://shx.documents.azure.com:443/"); 4: var key = "LU2NoyS2fH0131TGxtBE4DW/CjHQBzAaUx/mbuJ1X77C4FWUG129wWk2oyS2odgkFO2Xdif9/ZddintQicF+lA=="; 5: 6: var client = new DocumentClient(endpoint, key); 7: 8: // collection link pasted from the result in previous demo 9: var collectionLink = "dbs/AAk3AA==/colls/AAk3AP6oFgA=/"; 10: 11: // document we are going to insert to database 12: dynamic doc = new ExpandoObject(); 13: doc.firstName = "Shaun"; 14: doc.lastName = "Xu"; 15: doc.roles = new string[] { "developer", "trainer", "presenter", "father" }; 16: 17: // insert the docuemnt 18: InsertADoc(client, collectionLink, doc).Wait(); 19: 20: Console.WriteLine("done"); 21: Console.ReadKey(); 22: } the insert code will be very simple as below, just provide the collection link and the object we are going to insert. 1: static async Task InsertADoc(DocumentClient client, string collectionLink, dynamic doc) 2: { 3: var document = await client.CreateDocumentAsync(collectionLink, doc); 4: Console.WriteLine(await JsonConvert.SerializeObjectAsync(document, Formatting.Indented)); 5: } Below is the result after the object had been inserted. Finally we will query the document from the database and collection. Similar to the insert code, we just need to specify the collection link so that the .NET SDK will help us to retrieve all documents in it. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: var endpoint = new Uri("https://shx.documents.azure.com:443/"); 4: var key = "LU2NoyS2fH0131TGxtBE4DW/CjHQBzAaUx/mbuJ1X77C4FWUG129wWk2oyS2odgkFO2Xdif9/ZddintQicF+lA=="; 5: 6: var client = new DocumentClient(endpoint, key); 7: 8: var collectionLink = "dbs/AAk3AA==/colls/AAk3AP6oFgA=/"; 9: 10: SelectDocs(client, collectionLink); 11: 12: Console.WriteLine("done"); 13: Console.ReadKey(); 14: } 15: 16: static void SelectDocs(DocumentClient client, string collectionLink) 17: { 18: var docs = client.CreateDocumentQuery(collectionLink + "docs/").ToList(); 19: foreach(var doc in docs) 20: { 21: Console.WriteLine(doc); 22: } 23: } Since there's only one document in my collection below is the result when I executed the code. As you can see all properties, includes the array was retrieve at the same time. DocumentDB also attached some properties we didn't specified such as "_rid", "_ts", "_self" etc., which is controlled by the service. DocumentDB Benefit DocumentDB is a document NoSQL database service. Different from the traditional database, document database is truly schema-free. In a short nut, you can save anything in the same database and collection if it could be serialized to JSON. We you query the document database, all sub documents will be retrieved at the same time. This means you don't need to join other tables when using a traditional database. Document database is very useful when we build some high performance system with hierarchical data structure. For example, assuming we need to build a blog system, there will be many blog posts and each of them contains the content and comments. The comment can be commented as well. If we were using traditional database, let's say SQL Server, the database schema might be defined as below. When we need to display a post we need to load the post content from the Posts table, as well as the comments from the Comments table. We also need to build the comment tree based on the CommentID field. But if were using DocumentDB, what we need to do is to save the post as a document with a list contains all comments. Under a comment all sub comments will be a list in it. When we display this post we just need to to query the post document, the content and all comments will be loaded in proper structure. 1: { 2: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 3: "title": "xxxxx", 4: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 5: "postedOn": "08/25/2014 13:55", 6: "comments": 7: [ 8: { 9: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 10: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 11: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 14:00", 12: "commentedBy": "xxx" 13: }, 14: { 15: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 16: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 17: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 14:10", 18: "commentedBy": "xxx", 19: "comments": 20: [ 21: { 22: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 23: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 24: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 14:18", 25: "commentedBy": "xxx", 26: "comments": 27: [ 28: { 29: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 30: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 31: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 18:22", 32: "commentedBy": "xxx", 33: } 34: ] 35: }, 36: { 37: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 38: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 39: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 15:02", 40: "commentedBy": "xxx", 41: } 42: ] 43: }, 44: { 45: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 46: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 47: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 14:30", 48: "commentedBy": "xxx" 49: } 50: ] 51: } DocumentDB vs. Table Storage DocumentDB and Table Storage are all NoSQL service in Microsoft Azure. One common question is "when we should use DocumentDB rather than Table Storage". Here are some ideas from me and some MVPs. First of all, they are different kind of NoSQL database. DocumentDB is a document database while table storage is a key-value database. Second, table storage is cheaper. DocumentDB supports scale out from one capacity unit to 5 in preview period and each capacity unit provides 10GB local SSD storage. The price is $0.73/day includes 50% discount. For storage service the highest price is $0.061/GB, which is almost 10% of DocumentDB. Third, table storage provides local-replication, geo-replication, read access geo-replication while DocumentDB doesn't support. Fourth, there is local emulator for table storage but none for DocumentDB. We have to connect to the DocumentDB on cloud when developing locally. But, DocumentDB supports some cool features that table storage doesn't have. It supports store procedure, trigger and user-defined-function. It supports rich indexing while table storage only supports indexing against partition key and row key. It supports transaction, table storage supports as well but restricted with Entity Group Transaction scope. And the last, table storage is GA but DocumentDB is still in preview. Summary In this post I have a quick demonstration and introduction about the new DocumentDB service in Azure. It's very easy to interact through .NET and it also support REST API, Node.js SDK and Python SDK. Then I explained the concept and benefit of using document database, then compared with table storage. 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.

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SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #003

- by pinaldave

Here is the list of curetted articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2006 This was the first year of my blogging and lots of new things I was learning as I go. I was indeed an infant in blogging a few years ago. However, as time passed by I have learned a lot. This year was year of experiments and new learning. 2007 Working as a full time DBA I often encoutered various errors and I started to learn how to avoid those error and document the same. ERROR Msg 5174 Each file size must be greater than or equal to 512 KB Whenever I see this error I wonder why someone is trying to attempt a database which is extremely small. Anyway, it does not matter what I think I keep on seeing this error often in industries. Anyway the solution of the error is equally interesting – just created larger database. Dilbert Humor This was very first encounter with database humor and I started to love it. It does not matter how many time we read this cartoon it does not get old. Generate Script with Data from Database – Database Publishing Wizard Generating schema script with data is one of the most frequently performed tasks among SQL Server Data Professionals. There are many ways to do the same. In the above article I demonstrated that how we can use the Database Publishing Wizard to accomplish the same. It was new to me at that time but I have not seen much of the adoption of the same still in the industry. Here is one of my videos where I demonstrate how we can generate data with schema. 2008 Delete Backup History – Cleanup Backup History Deleting backup history is important too but should be done carefully. If this is not carried out at regular interval there is good chance that MSDB will be filled up with all the old history. Every organization is different. Some would like to keep the history for 30 days and some for a year but there should be some limit. One should regularly archive the database backup history. South Asia MVP Open Days 2008 This was my very first year Microsoft MVP. I had Indeed big blast at the event and the fun was incredible. After this event I have attended many different MVP events but the fun and learning this particular event presented was amazing and just like me many others are not able to forget the same. Here are other links related to the event: South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 1 South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 2 South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 3 2009 Enable or Disable Constraint This is very simple script but I personally keep on forgetting it so I had blogged it. Till today, I keep on referencing this again and again as sometime a very little thing is hard to remember. Policy Based Management – Create, Evaluate and Fix Policies This article will cover the most spectacular feature of SQL 2008 – Policy-based management and how the configuration of SQL Server with policy-based management architecture can make a powerful difference. Policy based management is loaded with several advantages. It can help you implement various policies for reliable configuration of the system. It also provides additional administrative assistance to DBAs and helps them effortlessly manage various tasks of SQL Server across the enterprise. SQLPASS 2009 – My Very First SQPASS Experience Just Brilliant! I never had an experience such a thing in my life. SQL SQL and SQL – all around SQL! I am listing my own reasons here in order of importance to me. Networking with SQL fellows and experts Putting face to the name or avatar Learning and improving my SQL skills Understanding the structure of the largest SQL Server Professional Association Attending my favorite training sessions Since last time I have never missed a single time this event. This event is my favorite event and something keeps me going. Here are additional post related SQLPASS 2009. SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 1 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 2 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 3 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 4 2010 Get All the Information of Database using sys.databases Even though we believe that we know everything about our database, we do not know a lot of things about our database. This little script enables us to know so many details about databases which we may not be familiar with. Run this on your server today and see how much you know your database. Reducing CXPACKET Wait Stats for High Transactional Database While engaging in a performance tuning consultation for a client, a situation occurred where they were facing a lot of CXPACKET Waits Stats. The client asked me if I could help them reduce this huge number of wait stats. I usually receive this kind of request from other client as well, but the important thing to understand is whether this question has any merits or benefits, or not. I discusses the same in this article – a bit long but insightful for sure. Error related to Database in Use There are so many database management operations in SQL Server which requires exclusive access to the database and it is not always possible to get it. When any database is online in SQL Server it either applications or system thread often accesses them. This means database can’t have exclusive access and the operations which required this access throws an error. There is very easy method to overcome this minor issue – a single line script can give you exclusive access to the database. Difference between DATETIME and DATETIME2 Developers have found the root reason of the problem when dealing with Date Functions – when data time values are converted (implicit or explicit) between different data types, which would lose some precision, so the result cannot match each other as expected. In this blog post I go over very interesting details and difference between DATETIME and DATETIME2 History of SQL Server Database Encryption I recently met Michael Coles and Rodeney Landrum the author of one of the kind book Expert SQL Server 2008 Encryption at SQLPASS in Seattle. During the conversation we ended up how Microsoft is evolving encryption technology. The same discussion lead to talking about history of encryption tools in SQL Server. Michale pointed me to page 18 of his book of encryption. He explicitly gave me permission to re-produce relevant part of history from his book. 2011 Functions FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE with OVER clause and ORDER BY Some time an interesting feature and smart audience make a total difference in places. From last two days, I have been writing on SQL Server 2012 feature FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE. I created a puzzle which was very interesting and got many people attempt to resolve it. It was based on following two articles: Introduction to FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE Introduction to FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE with OVER clause I even provided the hint about how one can solve this problem. The best part was many people solved the problem without using hints! Try your luck! A Real Story of Book Getting ‘Out of Stock’ to A 25% Discount Story Available This is a great problem and everybody would love to have it. We had it and we loved it. Our book got out of stock in 48 hours of releasing and stocks were empty. We faced many issues and learned many valuable lessons. Some we were able to avoid in the future and some we are still facing it as those problems have no solutions. However, since that day – our books never gone out of stock. This inspiring learning story for us and I am confident that you will love to read it as well. Introduction to LEAD and LAG – Analytic Functions Introduced in SQL Server 2012 SQL Server 2012 introduces new analytical function LEAD() and LAG(). This function accesses data from a subsequent row (for lead) and previous row (for lag) in the same result set without the use of a self-join . It will be very difficult to explain this in words so I will attempt small example to explain you this function. I had a fantastic time writing this blog post and I am very confident when you read it, you will like the same. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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This is the End of Business as Usual...

- by Michael Snow

This week, we'll be hosting our last Social Business Thought Leader Series Webcast for 2012. Our featured guest this week will be Brian Solis of Altimeter Group. As we've been going through the preparations for Brian's webcast, it became very clear that an hour's time is barely scraping the surface of the depth of Brian's insights and analysis. Accordingly, in the spirit of sharing Brian's perspective for all of our readers, we'll be featuring guest posts all this week pulled from Brian's larger collection of blog postings on his own website. If you like what you've read here this week, we highly recommend digging deeper into his tome of wisdom. Guest Post by Brian Solis, Analyst, Altimeter Group as originally featured on his site with the minor change of the video addition at the beginning of the post. This is the End of Business as Usual and the Beginning of a New Era of Relevance - Brian Solis, Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group The Times They Are A-Changin’ Come gather ’round people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have grown And accept it that soon You’ll be drenched to the bone If your time to you Is worth savin’ Then you better start swimmin’ Or you’ll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin’. - Bob Dylan I’m sure you are wondering why I chose lyrics to open this article. If you skimmed through them, stop here for a moment. Go back through the Dylan’s words and take your time. Carefully read, and feel, what it is he’s saying and savor the moment to connect the meaning of his words to the challenges you face today. His message is as important and true today as it was when they were first written in 1964. The tide is indeed once again turning. And even though the 60s now live in the history books, right here, right now, Dylan is telling us once again that this is our time to not only sink or swim, but to do something amazing. This is your time. This is our time. But, these times are different and what comes next is difficult to grasp. How people communicate. How people learn and share. How people make decisions. Everything is different now. Think about this…you’re reading this article because it was sent to you via email. Yet more people spend their online time in social networks than they do in email. Duh. According to Nielsen, of the total time spent online 22.5% are connecting and communicating in social networks. To put that in perspective, the time spent in the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube is greater than online gaming at 9.8%, email at 7.6% and search at 4%. Imagine for a moment if you and I were connected to one another in Facebook, which just so happens to be the largest social network in the world. How big? Well, Facebook is the size today of the entire Internet in 2004. There are over 1 billion people friending, Liking, commenting, sharing, and engaging in Facebook…that’s roughly 12% of the world’s population. Twitter has over 200 million users. Ever hear of tumblr? More time is spent on this popular microblogging community than Twitter. The point is that the landscape for communication and all that’s affected by human interaction is profoundly different than how you and I learned, shared or talked to one another yesterday. This transformation is only becoming more pervasive and, it’s not going back. Survival of the Fitting But social media is just one of the channels we can use to reach people. I must be honest. I’m as much a part of tomorrow as I am of yesteryear. It’s why I spend all of my time researching the evolution of media and its impact on business and culture. Because of you, I share everything I learn in newsletters, emails, blogs, Youtube videos, and also traditional books. I’m dedicated to helping everyone not only understand, but grasp the change that’s before you. Technologies such as social, mobile, virtual, augmented, et al compel us adapt our story and value proposition and extend our reach to be part of communities we don’t realize exist. The people who will keep you in business or running tomorrow are the very people you’re not reaching today. Before you continue to read on, allow me to clarify my point of view. My inspiration for writing this is to help you augment, not necessarily replace, the programs you’re running today. We must still reach those whom matter to us in the ways they prefer to be engaged. To reach what I call the connected consumer of Geneeration-C we must too reach them in the ways they wish to be engaged. And in all of my work, how they connect, talk to one another, influence others, and make decisions are not at all like the traditional consumers of the past. Nor are they merely the kids…the Millennial. Connected consumers are representative across every age group and demographic. As you can see, use of social networks, media sharing sites, microblogs, blogs, etc. equally span across Gen Y, Gen X, and Baby Boomers. The DNA of connected customers is indiscriminant of age or any other demographic for that matter. This is more about psychographics, the linkage of people through common interests (than it is their age, gender, education, nationality or level of income. Once someone is introduced to the marvels of connectedness, the sensation becomes a contagion. It touches and affects everyone. And, that’s why this isn’t going anywhere but normalcy. Social networking isn’t just about telling people what you’re doing. Nor is it just about generic, meaningless conversation. Today’s connected consumer is incredibly influential. They’re connected to hundreds and even thousands of other like-minded people. What they experiences, what they support, it’s shared throughout these networks and as information travels, it shapes and steers impressions, decisions, and experiences of others. For example, if we revisit the Nielsen research, we get an idea of just how big this is becoming. 75% spend heavily on music. How does that translate to the arts? I’d imagine the number is equally impressive. If 53% follow their favorite brand or organization, imagine what’s possible. Just like this email list that connects us, connections in social networks are powerful. The difference is however, that people spend more time in social networks than they do in email. Everything begins with an understanding of the “5 W’s and H.E.” – Who, What, When, Where, How, and to What Extent? The data that comes back tells you which networks are important to the people you’re trying to reach, how they connect, what they share, what they value, and how to connect with them. From there, your next steps are to create a community strategy that extends your mission, vision, and value and it align it with the interests, behavior, and values of those you wish to reach and galvanize. To help, I’ve prepared an action list for you, otherwise known as the 10 Steps Toward New Relevance: 1. Answer why you should engage in social networks and why anyone would want to engage with you 2. Observe what brings them together and define how you can add value to the conversation 3. Identify the influential voices that matter to your world, recognize what’s important to them, and find a way to start a dialogue that can foster a meaningful and mutually beneficial relationship 4. Study the best practices of not just organizations like yours, but also those who are successfully reaching the type of people you’re trying to reach – it’s benching marking against competitors and benchmarking against undefined opportunities 5. Translate all you’ve learned into a convincing presentation written to demonstrate tangible opportunity to your executive board, make the case through numbers, trends, data, insights – understanding they have no idea what’s going on out there and you are both the scout and the navigator (start with a recommended pilot so everyone can learn together) 6. Listen to what they’re saying and develop a process to learn from activity and adapt to interests and steer engagement based on insights 7. Recognize how they use social media and innovate based on what you observe to captivate their attention 8. Align your objectives with their objectives. If you’re unsure of what they’re looking for…ask 9. Invest in the development of content, engagement 10. Build a community, invest in values, spark meaningful dialogue, and offer tangible value…the kind of value they can’t get anywhere else. Take advantage of the medium and the opportunity! The reality is that we live and compete in a perpetual era of Digital Darwinism, the evolution of consumer behavior when society and technology evolve faster than our ability to adapt. This is why it’s our time to alter our course. We must connect with those who are defining the future of engagement, commerce, business, and how the arts are appreciated and supported. Even though it is the end of business as usual, it is the beginning of a new age of opportunity. The consumer revolution is already underway, and the question is: How do you better understand the role you play in this production as a connected or social consumer as well as business professional? Again, this is your time to define a new era of engagement and relevance. Originally written for The National Arts Marketing Project Connect with Brian via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+ --- Note from Michael: If you really like this post above - check out Brian's TEDTalk and his thought process for preparing it in this post: 12.00 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:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} http://www.briansolis.com/2012/10/tedtalk-reinventing-consumer-capitalism-screw-business-as-usual/

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HTML5 Form Validation

- by Stephen.Walther

The latest versions of Google Chrome (16+), Mozilla Firefox (8+), and Internet Explorer (10+) all support HTML5 client-side validation. It is time to take HTML5 validation seriously. The purpose of the blog post is to describe how you can take advantage of HTML5 client-side validation regardless of the type of application that you are building. You learn how to use the HTML5 validation attributes, how to perform custom validation using the JavaScript validation constraint API, and how to simulate HTML5 validation on older browsers by taking advantage of a jQuery plugin. Finally, we discuss the security issues related to using client-side validation. Using Client-Side Validation Attributes The HTML5 specification discusses several attributes which you can use with INPUT elements to perform client-side validation including the required, pattern, min, max, step, and maxlength attributes. For example, you use the required attribute to require a user to enter a value for an INPUT element. The following form demonstrates how you can make the firstName and lastName form fields required: <!DOCTYPE html> <html > <head> <title>Required Demo</title> </head> <body> <form> <label> First Name: <input required title="First Name is Required!" /> </label> <label> Last Name: <input required title="Last Name is Required!" /> </label> <button>Register</button> </form> </body> </html> If you attempt to submit this form without entering a value for firstName or lastName then you get the validation error message: Notice that the value of the title attribute is used to display the validation error message “First Name is Required!”. The title attribute does not work this way with the current version of Firefox. If you want to display a custom validation error message with Firefox then you need to include an x-moz-errormessage attribute like this: <input required title="First Name is Required!" x-moz-errormessage="First Name is Required!" /> The pattern attribute enables you to validate the value of an INPUT element against a regular expression. For example, the following form includes a social security number field which includes a pattern attribute: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Pattern</title> </head> <body> <form> <label> Social Security Number: <input required pattern="^\d{3}-\d{2}-\d{4}$" title="###-##-####" /> </label> <button>Register</button> </form> </body> </html> The regular expression in the form above requires the social security number to match the pattern ###-##-####: Notice that the input field includes both a pattern and a required validation attribute. If you don’t enter a value then the regular expression is never triggered. You need to include the required attribute to force a user to enter a value and cause the value to be validated against the regular expression. Custom Validation You can take advantage of the HTML5 constraint validation API to perform custom validation. You can perform any custom validation that you need. The only requirement is that you write a JavaScript function. For example, when booking a hotel room, you might want to validate that the Arrival Date is in the future instead of the past: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Constraint Validation API</title> </head> <body> <form> <label> Arrival Date: <input id="arrivalDate" type="date" required /> </label> <button>Submit Reservation</button> </form> <script type="text/javascript"> var arrivalDate = document.getElementById("arrivalDate"); arrivalDate.addEventListener("input", function() { var value = new Date(arrivalDate.value); if (value < new Date()) { arrivalDate.setCustomValidity("Arrival date must be after now!"); } else { arrivalDate.setCustomValidity(""); } }); </script> </body> </html> The form above contains an input field named arrivalDate. Entering a value into the arrivalDate field triggers the input event. The JavaScript code adds an event listener for the input event and checks whether the date entered is greater than the current date. If validation fails then the validation error message “Arrival date must be after now!” is assigned to the arrivalDate input field by calling the setCustomValidity() method of the validation constraint API. Otherwise, the validation error message is cleared by calling setCustomValidity() with an empty string. HTML5 Validation and Older Browsers But what about older browsers? For example, what about Apple Safari and versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer older than Internet Explorer 10? What the world really needs is a jQuery plugin which provides backwards compatibility for the HTML5 validation attributes. If a browser supports the HTML5 validation attributes then the plugin would do nothing. Otherwise, the plugin would add support for the attributes. Unfortunately, as far as I know, this plugin does not exist. I have not been able to find any plugin which supports both the required and pattern attributes for older browsers, but does not get in the way of these attributes in the case of newer browsers. There are several jQuery plugins which provide partial support for the HTML5 validation attributes including: · jQuery Validation — http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins/Validation · html5Form — http://www.matiasmancini.com.ar/jquery-plugin-ajax-form-validation-html5.html · h5Validate — http://ericleads.com/h5validate/ The jQuery Validation plugin – the most popular JavaScript validation library – supports the HTML5 required attribute, but it does not support the HTML5 pattern attribute. Likewise, the html5Form plugin does not support the pattern attribute. The h5Validate plugin provides the best support for the HTML5 validation attributes. The following page illustrates how this plugin supports both the required and pattern attributes: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>h5Validate</title> <style type="text/css"> .validationError { border: solid 2px red; } .validationValid { border: solid 2px green; } </style> </head> <body> <form id="customerForm"> <label> First Name: <input id="firstName" required /> </label> <label> Social Security Number: <input id="ssn" required pattern="^\d{3}-\d{2}-\d{4}$" title="Expected pattern is ###-##-####" /> </label> <input type="submit" /> </form> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.4.4.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery.h5validate.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> // Enable h5Validate plugin $("#customerForm").h5Validate({ errorClass: "validationError", validClass: "validationValid" }); // Prevent form submission when errors $("#customerForm").submit(function (evt) { if ($("#customerForm").h5Validate("allValid") === false) { evt.preventDefault(); } }); </script> </body> </html> When an input field fails validation, the validationError CSS class is applied to the field and the field appears with a red border. When an input field passes validation, the validationValid CSS class is applied to the field and the field appears with a green border. From the perspective of HTML5 validation, the h5Validate plugin is the best of the plugins. It adds support for the required and pattern attributes to browsers which do not natively support these attributes such as IE9. However, this plugin does not include everything in my wish list for a perfect HTML5 validation plugin. Here’s my wish list for the perfect back compat HTML5 validation plugin: 1. The plugin would disable itself when used with a browser which natively supports HTML5 validation attributes. The plugin should not be too greedy – it should not handle validation when a browser could do the work itself. 2. The plugin should simulate the same user interface for displaying validation error messages as the user interface displayed by browsers which natively support HTML5 validation. Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer all display validation errors in a popup. The perfect plugin would also display a popup. 3. Finally, the plugin would add support for the setCustomValidity() method and the other methods of the HTML5 validation constraint API. That way, you could implement custom validation in a standards compatible way and you would know that it worked across all browsers both old and new. Security It would be irresponsible of me to end this blog post without mentioning the issue of security. It is important to remember that any client-side validation — including HTML5 validation — can be bypassed. You should use client-side validation with the intention to create a better user experience. Client validation is great for providing a user with immediate feedback when the user is in the process of completing a form. However, client-side validation cannot prevent an evil hacker from submitting unexpected form data to your web server. You should always enforce your validation rules on the server. The only way to ensure that a required field has a value is to verify that the required field has a value on the server. The HTML5 required attribute does not guarantee anything. Summary The goal of this blog post was to describe the support for validation contained in the HTML5 standard. You learned how to use both the required and the pattern attributes in an HTML5 form. We also discussed how you can implement custom validation by taking advantage of the setCustomValidity() method. Finally, I discussed the available jQuery plugins for adding support for the HTM5 validation attributes to older browsers. Unfortunately, I am unaware of any jQuery plugin which provides a perfect solution to the problem of backwards compatibility.

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C#: My World Clock

- by Bruce Eitman

[Placeholder: I will post the entire project soon] I have been working on cleaning my office of 8 years of stuff from several engineers working on many projects. It turns out that we have a few extra single board computers with displays, so at the end of the day last Friday I though why not create a little application to display the time, you know, a clock. How difficult could that be? It turns out that it is quite simple – until I decided to gold plate the project by adding time displays for our offices around the world. I decided to use C#, which actually made creating the main clock quite easy. The application was simply a text box and a timer. I set the timer to fire a couple of times a second, and when it does use a DateTime object to get the current time and retrieve a string to display. And I could have been done, but of course that gold plating came up. Seems simple enough, simply offset the time from the local time to the location that I want the time for and display it. Sure enough, I had the time displayed for UK, Italy, Kansas City, Japan and China in no time at all. But it is October, and for those of us still stuck with Daylight Savings Time, we know that the clocks are about to change. My first attempt was to simply check to see if the local time was DST or Standard time, then change the offset for China. China doesn’t have Daylight Savings Time. If you know anything about the time changes around the world, you already know that my plan is flawed – in a big way. It turns out that the transitions in and out of DST take place at different times around the world. If you didn’t know that, do a quick search for “Daylight Savings” and you will find many WEB sites dedicated to tracking the time changes dates, and times. Now the real challenge of this application; how do I programmatically find out when the time changes occur and handle them correctly? After a considerable amount of research it turns out that the solution is to read the data from the registry and parse it to figure out when the time changes occur. Reading Time Change Information from the Registry Reading the data from the registry is simple, using the data is a little more complicated. First, reading from the registry can be done like: byte[] binarydata = (byte[])Registry.GetValue("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Time Zones\\Eastern Standard Time", "TZI", null); Where I have hardcoded the registry key for example purposes, but in the end I will use some variables. We now have a binary blob with the data, but it needs to be converted to use the real data. To start we will need a couple of structs to hold the data and make it usable. We will need a SYSTEMTIME and REG_TZI_FORMAT. You may have expected that we would need a TIME_ZONE_INFORMATION struct, but we don’t. The data is stored in the registry as a REG_TZI_FORMAT, which excludes some of the values found in TIME_ZONE_INFORMATION. struct SYSTEMTIME { internal short wYear; internal short wMonth; internal short wDayOfWeek; internal short wDay; internal short wHour; internal short wMinute; internal short wSecond; internal short wMilliseconds; } struct REG_TZI_FORMAT { internal long Bias; internal long StdBias; internal long DSTBias; internal SYSTEMTIME StandardStart; internal SYSTEMTIME DSTStart; } Now we need to convert the binary blob to a REG_TZI_FORMAT. To do that I created the following helper functions: private void BinaryToSystemTime(ref SYSTEMTIME ST, byte[] binary, int offset) { ST.wYear = (short)(binary[offset + 0] + (binary[offset + 1] << 8)); ST.wMonth = (short)(binary[offset + 2] + (binary[offset + 3] << 8)); ST.wDayOfWeek = (short)(binary[offset + 4] + (binary[offset + 5] << 8)); ST.wDay = (short)(binary[offset + 6] + (binary[offset + 7] << 8)); ST.wHour = (short)(binary[offset + 8] + (binary[offset + 9] << 8)); ST.wMinute = (short)(binary[offset + 10] + (binary[offset + 11] << 8)); ST.wSecond = (short)(binary[offset + 12] + (binary[offset + 13] << 8)); ST.wMilliseconds = (short)(binary[offset + 14] + (binary[offset + 15] << 8)); } private REG_TZI_FORMAT ConvertFromBinary(byte[] binarydata) { REG_TZI_FORMAT RTZ = new REG_TZI_FORMAT(); RTZ.Bias = binarydata[0] + (binarydata[1] << 8) + (binarydata[2] << 16) + (binarydata[3] << 24); RTZ.StdBias = binarydata[4] + (binarydata[5] << 8) + (binarydata[6] << 16) + (binarydata[7] << 24); RTZ.DSTBias = binarydata[8] + (binarydata[9] << 8) + (binarydata[10] << 16) + (binarydata[11] << 24); BinaryToSystemTime(ref RTZ.StandardStart, binarydata, 4 + 4 + 4); BinaryToSystemTime(ref RTZ.DSTStart, binarydata, 4 + 16 + 4 + 4); return RTZ; } I am the first to admit that there may be a better way to get the settings from the registry and into the REG_TXI_FORMAT, but I am not a great C# programmer which I have said before on this blog. So sometimes I chose brute force over elegant. Now that we have the Bias information and the start date information, we can start to make sense of it. The bias is an offset, in minutes, from local time (if already in local time for the time zone in question) to get to UTC – or as Microsoft defines it: UTC = local time + bias. Standard bias is an offset to adjust for standard time, which I think is usually zero. And DST bias is and offset to adjust for daylight savings time. Since we don’t have the local time for a time zone other than the one that the computer is set to, what we first need to do is convert local time to UTC, which is simple enough using: DateTime.Now.ToUniversalTime(); Then, since we have UTC we need to do a little math to alter the formula to: local time = UTC – bias. In other words, we need to subtract the bias minutes. I am ahead of myself though, the standard and DST start dates really aren’t dates. Instead they indicate the month, day of week and week number of the time change. The dDay member of SYSTEM time will be set to the week number of the date change indicating that the change happens on the first, second… day of week of the month. So we need to convert them to dates so that we can determine which bias to use, and when to change to a different bias. To do that, I wrote the following function: private DateTime SystemTimeToDateTimeStart(SYSTEMTIME Time, int Year) { DayOfWeek[] Days = { DayOfWeek.Sunday, DayOfWeek.Monday, DayOfWeek.Tuesday, DayOfWeek.Wednesday, DayOfWeek.Thursday, DayOfWeek.Friday, DayOfWeek.Saturday }; DateTime InfoTime = new DateTime(Year, Time.wMonth, Time.wDay == 1 ? 1 : ((Time.wDay - 1) * 7) + 1, Time.wHour, Time.wMinute, Time.wSecond, DateTimeKind.Utc); DateTime BestGuess = InfoTime; while (BestGuess.DayOfWeek != Days[Time.wDayOfWeek]) { BestGuess = BestGuess.AddDays(1); } return BestGuess; } SystemTimeToDateTimeStart gets two parameters; a SYSTEMTIME and a year. The reason is that we will try this year and next year because we are interested in start dates that are in the future, not the past. The function starts by getting a new Datetime with the first possible date and then looking for the correct date. Using the start dates, we can then determine the correct bias to use, and the next date that time will change: NextTimeChange = StandardChange; CurrentBias = TimezoneSettings.Bias + TimezoneSettings.DSTBias; if (DSTChange.Year != 1 && StandardChange.Year != 1) { if (DSTChange.CompareTo(StandardChange) < 0) { NextTimeChange = DSTChange; CurrentBias = TimezoneSettings.StdBias + TimezoneSettings.Bias; } } else { // I don't like this, but it turns out that China Standard Time // has a DSTBias of -60 on every Windows system that I tested. // So, if no DST transitions, then just use the Bias without // any offset CurrentBias = TimezoneSettings.Bias; } Note that some time zones do not change time, in which case the years will remain set to 1. Further, I found that the registry settings are actually wrong in that the DST Bias is set to -60 for China even though there is not DST in China, so I ignore the standard and DST bias for those time zones. There is one thing that I have not solved, and don’t plan to solve. If the time zone for this computer changes, this application will not update the clock using the new time zone. I tell you this because you may need to deal with it – I do not because I won’t let the user get to the control panel applet to change the timezone. Copyright © 2012 – Bruce Eitman All Rights Reserved

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A Simple Approach For Presenting With Code Samples

- by Jesse Taber

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2013/07/31/a-simple-approach-for-presenting-with-code-samples.aspxI’ve been getting ready for a presentation and have been struggling a bit with the best way to show and execute code samples. I don’t present often (hardly ever), but when I do I like the presentation to have a lot of succinct and executable code snippets to help illustrate the points that I’m making. Depending on what the presentation is about, I might just want to build an entire sample application that I would run during the presentation. In other cases, however, building a full-blown application might not really be the best way to present the code. The presentation I’m working on now is for an open source utility library for dealing with dates and times. I could have probably cooked up a sample app for accepting date and time input and then contrived ways in which it could put the library through its paces, but I had trouble coming up with one app that would illustrate all of the various features of the library that I wanted to highlight. I finally decided that what I really needed was an approach that met the following criteria: Simple: I didn’t want the user interface or overall architecture of a sample application to serve as a distraction from the demonstration of the syntax of the library that the presentation is about. I want to be able to present small bits of code that are focused on accomplishing a single task. Several of these examples will look similar, and that’s OK. I want each sample to “stand on its own” and not rely much on external classes or methods (other than the library that is being presented, of course). “Debuggable” (not really a word, I know): I want to be able to easily run the sample with the debugger attached in Visual Studio should I want to step through any bits of code and show what certain values might be at run time. As far as I know this rules out something like LinqPad, though using LinqPad to present code samples like this is actually a very interesting idea that I might explore another time. Flexible and Selectable: I’m going to have lots of code samples to show, and I want to be able to just package them all up into a single project or module and have an easy way to just run the sample that I want on-demand. Since I’m presenting on a .NET framework library, one of the simplest ways in which I could execute some code samples would be to just create a Console application and use Console.WriteLine to output the pertinent info at run time. This gives me a “no frills” harness from which to run my code samples, and I just hit ‘F5’ to run it with the debugger. This satisfies numbers 1 and 2 from my list of criteria above, but item 3 is a little harder. By default, just running a console application is going to execute the ‘main’ method, and then terminate the program after all code is executed. If I want to have several different code samples and run them one at a time, it would be cumbersome to keep swapping the code I want in and out of the ‘main’ method of the console application. What I really want is an easy way to keep the console app running throughout the whole presentation and just have it run the samples I want when I want. I could setup a simple Windows Forms or WPF desktop application with buttons for the different samples, but then I’m getting away from my first criteria of keeping things as simple as possible. Infinite Loops To The Rescue I found a way to have a simple console application satisfy all three of my requirements above, and it involves using an infinite loop and some Console.ReadLine calls that will give the user an opportunity to break out and exit the program. (All programs that need to run until they are closed explicitly (or crash!) likely use similar constructs behind the scenes. Create a new Windows Forms project, look in the ‘Program.cs’ that gets generated, and then check out the docs for the Application.Run method that it calls.). Here’s how the main method might look: 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: do 4: { 5: Console.Write("Enter command or 'exit' to quit: > "); 6: var command = Console.ReadLine(); 7: if ((command ?? string.Empty).Equals("exit", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) 8: { 9: Console.WriteLine("Quitting."); 10: break; 11: } 12: 13: } while (true); 14: } The idea here is the app prompts me for the command I want to run, or I can type in ‘exit’ to break out of the loop and let the application close. The only trick now is to create a set of commands that map to each of the code samples that I’m going to want to run. Each sample is already encapsulated in a single public method in a separate class, so I could just write a big switch statement or create a hashtable/dictionary that maps command text to an Action that will invoke the proper method, but why re-invent the wheel? CLAP For Your Own Presentation I’ve blogged about the CLAP library before, and it turns out that it’s a great fit for satisfying criteria #3 from my list above. CLAP lets you decorate methods in a class with an attribute and then easily invoke those methods from within a console application. CLAP was designed to take the arguments passed into the console app from the command line and parse them to determine which method to run and what arguments to pass to that method, but there’s no reason you can’t re-purpose it to accept command input from within the infinite loop defined above and invoke the corresponding method. Here’s how you might define a couple of different methods to contain two different code samples that you want to run during your presentation: 1: public static class CodeSamples 2: { 3: [Verb(Aliases="one")] 4: public static void SampleOne() 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("This is sample 1"); 7: } 8: 9: [Verb(Aliases="two")] 10: public static void SampleTwo() 11: { 12: Console.WriteLine("This is sample 2"); 13: } 14: } A couple of things to note about the sample above: I’m using static methods. You don’t actually need to use static methods with CLAP, but the syntax ends up being a bit simpler and static methods happen to lend themselves well to the “one self-contained method per code sample” approach that I want to use. The methods are decorated with a ‘Verb’ attribute. This tells CLAP that they are eligible targets for commands. The “Aliases” argument lets me give them short and easy-to-remember aliases that can be used to invoke them. By default, CLAP just uses the full method name as the command name, but with aliases you can simply the usage a bit. I’m not using any parameters. CLAP’s main feature is its ability to parse out arguments from a command line invocation of a console application and automatically pass them in as parameters to the target methods. My code samples don’t need parameters ,and honestly having them would complicate giving the presentation, so this is a good thing. You could use this same approach to invoke methods with parameters, but you’d have a couple of things to figure out. When you invoke a .NET application from the command line, Windows will parse the arguments and pass them in as a string array (called ‘args’ in the boilerplate console project Program.cs). The parsing that gets done here is smart enough to deal with things like treating strings in double quotes as one argument, and you’d have to re-create that within your infinite loop if you wanted to use parameters. I plan on either submitting a pull request to CLAP to add this capability or maybe just making a small utility class/extension method to do it and posting that here in the future. So I now have a simple class with static methods to contain my code samples, and an infinite loop in my ‘main’ method that can accept text commands. Wiring this all up together is pretty easy: 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: do 4: { 5: try 6: { 7: Console.Write("Enter command or 'exit' to quit: > "); 8: var command = Console.ReadLine(); 9: if ((command ?? string.Empty).Equals("exit", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("Quitting."); 12: break; 13: } 14: 15: Parser.Run<CodeSamples>(new[] { command }); 16: Console.WriteLine("---------------------------------------------------------"); 17: } 18: catch (Exception ex) 19: { 20: Console.Error.WriteLine("Error: " + ex.Message); 21: } 22: 23: } while (true); 24: } Note that I’m now passing the ‘CodeSamples’ class into the CLAP ‘Parser.Run’ as a type argument. This tells CLAP to inspect that class for methods that might be able to handle the commands passed in. I’m also throwing in a little “----“ style line separator and some basic error handling (because I happen to know that some of the samples are going to throw exceptions for demonstration purposes) and I’m good to go. Now during my presentation I can just have the console application running the whole time with the debugger attached and just type in the alias of the code sample method that I want to run when I want to run it.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, December 12, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, December 12, 2010Popular ReleasesWii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 0.9 Beta: - Aqua or brushed metal style for Mac OS X - Shows selection count beside ID - Game list selection mode via settings - Compare Files <-> WBFS game lists - Verify game images/DVD/WBFS - WIT command line for log (via settings) - Cancel possibility for loading games process - Progress infos while loading games - Localization for dates - UTF-8 support - Shortcuts added - View game infos in browser - Transfer infos for log - All transfer routines rewritten - Extract image from image/WBFS - Support....NETTER Code Starter Pack: v1.0.beta: '.NETTER Code Starter Pack ' contains a gallery of Visual Studio 2010 solutions leveraging latest and new technologies and frameworks based on Microsoft .NET Framework. 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This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Updated th...NuGet (formerly NuPack): NuGet 1.0 Release Candidate: NuGet is a free, open source developer focused package management system for the .NET platform intent on simplifying the process of incorporating third party libraries into a .NET application during development. This release is a Visual Studio 2010 extension and contains the the Package Manager Console and the Add Package Dialog. This new build targets the newer feed (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=206669) and package format. See http://nupack.codeplex.com/documentation?title=Nuspe...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire Silverlight, WPF Charts v3.6.5 Released: Hi, Today we are releasing final version of Visifire, v3.6.5 with the following new feature: * New property AutoFitToPlotArea has been introduced in DataSeries. 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Want to contribute?Please refer the Contribute page.DNN Simple Article: DNNSimpleArticle Module V00.00.03: The initial release of the DNNSimpleArticle module (labelled V00.00.03) There are C# and VB versions of this module for this initial release. No promises that going forward there will be packages for both languages provided for future releases. This module provides the following functionality Create and display articles Display a paged list of articles Articles get created as DNN ContentItems Categorization provided through DNN Taxonomy SEO functionality for article display providi...UOB & ME: UOB_ME 2.5: latest versionAutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.4.3: AutoLoL now supports importing the build pages from Mobafire.com as well! Just insert the url to the build and voila. (For example: http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/unforgivens-guide-how-to-build-a-successful-mordekaiser-24061) Stable release of AutoChat (It is still recommended to use with caution and to read the documentation) It is now possible to associate *.lolm files with AutoLoL to quickly open them The selected spells are now displayed in the masteries tab for qu...SubtitleTools: SubtitleTools 1.2: - Added auto insertion of RLE (RIGHT-TO-LEFT EMBEDDING) Unicode character for the RTL languages. - Fixed delete rows issue.PHP Manager for IIS: PHP Manager 1.1 for IIS 7: This is a final stable release of PHP Manager 1.1 for IIS 7. This is a minor incremental release that contains all the functionality available in 53121 plus additional features listed below: Improved detection logic for existing PHP installations. Now PHP Manager detects the location to php.ini file in accordance to the PHP specifications Configuring date.timezone. 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Well suited for real-time data intensive applications (e.g.: packet streaming, embedded devices...).GIFT: gift appHeroBeastCodeProject: create a HeroBeastCodeProjects project,opensource my codeiFinance: The wpf/sl solution for personal finance manager.MailOnSocketChange: Send an alert via email, if a certain socket/TCP-connection-changes state on the PC running the MailOnSocketChange applicationMath Teacher for kids: This application will help your kids learn and practice Math. midnc: Proyecto en silverlight para el control interno de registro de actividades y eventosMusicWho: MusicWho compose music. It use biological neuron firing signals to generate music. so, what will the brain sound like? we'll see.Nabaztag Enterprise Services: The goal of the Nabaztag Enterprise Services is to come up with a free .NET implementation of the Nabaztag server. Additionally we think of building a whole platform around the core services using the newsest an coolest .NET technologies.pkEditor: pkEditor is a Poketscript or Pokescript script generator and editor.Second Block: Second Block is an block-based 3D multiplayer game.Share my speed: Coding4Fun Window Phone 7 "Share my speed" applicationSharePoint Image Resizer: Image Resizer allows to create custom policies to control image size of pictures in WSS 3.0/SharePoint 2007.ShoutStreamSource: ShoutStreamSource provides you an implementation of the MediaStreamSource of the ShoutCast protocol for the Windows Phone 7. It makes it possible to play a ShoutCast stream using a MediaElement on the phone.SSIS Reporting Pack: A suite of SQL Server Reporting Services reports that operate over the SSIS catalog in SQL Server code-named DenaliSunshine2011: testTrabalhando com Functoid Table Looping: Usado em conjunto com o Functoid “Table Extractor”, serve para criar estruturas de any registros podendo conter valores de campos, valores constantes, e valores que resultam de outros functoids. VKontakte API SDK: SDK for work with most popular russian social site VKontakte.ruwho's who: iYasmin: Yasmin - A WPF based Anime Database.YiDeSOFT: YiDe is EzDesk~!?????????? ?????: ?????????? ????? ?????????? ? ?????????????? ????????? ??????? ?????????????????? ? ????????? ???????

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