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• Silverlight Cream for April 29, 2010 -- #851

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Carlos Figueira(-2-), Subodh Pushpak, Gergely Orosz, John Papa, Mike Snow(-2-), Rishi, Tim Heuer, Stefan Olson, and David Anson. Shoutouts: Josh Holmes blogged about a cool app the City of Miami has up: Miami 311: Built on Windows Azure Gergely Orosz reports on the state of a bug he found pre SL4: Silverlight 4 still displays large elements incorrectly Laura Foy and Charlie Kindel discuss WP7 on Channel 9: Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Refresh Announced Charlie Kindel has an announcement, good instructions, and what's new notes on the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP Refresh! Tim Heuer mentioned the workaround for this in his post (below), but I thought you might like to read Brandon Watson's debrief of what it's all about: Signed Assemblies Bug in the Windows Phone Tools CTP Refresh Laurent Bugnion posted about interrelations between versions of Blend and WP7 code... read it closely: Be careful when installing the Blend Windows Phone 7 Add-In From SilverlightCream.com: Consuming REST/POX services in Silverlight 4 Carlos Figueira has a pair of posts up about consuming services in Silverlight 4. This first one is about consuming REST/POX services. He provides a Service Contract that can be used with either and the full project code is available as well. Consuming REST/JSON services in Silverlight 4 In the second post, Carlos Figueira provides the code to allow WCF and Silverlight 4 to consume strongly-typed REST/JSON... and again, all the code is available. Silverlight and WCF caching Subodh Pushpak has a post up discussing caching in WCF, and has code demonstrating turning caching on at run-time. Detecting Silverlight Version Installed Gergely Orosz said it right when he said "Detecting the Silverlight version installed on a client machine isn’t entirely straightforward." ... and after reading this post, if you take the link to his ScottLogic blog, you'll get a full break-out of how it's done. Silverlight TV 22: Tim Heuer on Extending the SMF It's Thursday, and that means Silverlight TV! ... this week, John Papa has on Tim Heuer who has always been out there pushing media... and he's talking about SMF or Silverlight Media Framework for the uninitiated, and also extending it. Silverlight Tip of the Day #7 – Localized Resources Mike Snow has Tip Number 7 up and it's about localization... good end-to-end discussion and demonstration. Just thought I should use that to prove to my daughter that the tatoo she had put on the back of her neck actually reads "Eat More Broccoli" :) Silverlight Tip of the Day #8 – Detecting Alt, Shift, Control, Window & Apple Keys Combinations I just realized Mike Snow's site logo reads "Silverlight Tips of the Day" (bolding mine) ... that answers why I'm seeing more than one -- sorry Mike, couldn't pass it up :) ... Mike's second tip today and number 8 in the series is on detecting all the mouse button and ctl/alt/shift combinations in Silverlight. nRoute: More Wholesomeness, with SL 4 and .NET 4.0 Rishi has a post up announcing a new nRoute release for Silverlight 4 and .NET 4.0 He's tweaked the code to take advantages of enhancements in the new platforms, so check it out. Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools April 2010 Refresh Booya... Tim Heuer announced the release of the next drop in the WP7 tools ... dang wish I was at home today :) ... be sure to read the post for info such as the notes about Authenticode Assemblies and the release notes. Updates to Silverlight Multi-binding support Stefan Olson points up a SL4 change to Multi-binding support that he had previously blogged about. He shows the previous non-working example, and what you have to do to make it work now. Using XAML to create a custom wallpaper image for your mobile device David Anson has a solution for those pesky lost devices, and let me go on the record right now saying if anyone finds a WP7 phone laying around, just call me, it's mine :) [think that'd work??] ... ok, David's solution is a WPF app "MobileDeviceHomeScreenMaker" that you get the info set and it produces a png you then put on your device. But seriously about that lost phone... Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Visual Studio &amp; TFS &ndash; List of addins, extensions, patches and hotfixes &ndash; Latest and Greatest

  - by terje

  This post is a list of the addins and extensions we (I ) recommend for use in Inmeta.  It’s coming up all the time – what to install, where are the download sites, etc etc, and thus I thought it better to post it here and keep it updated. The basics are Visual Studio 2010 connected to a Team Foundation Server 2010.  The edition of Visual Studio I use is the Ultimate Edition, but as many stay with the Premium Edition I’ve marked the extensions which only works with the Ultimate with a . I’ve also split the group into Recommended (which means Required) and Optional (which means Recommended) and Nice to Have (which means Optional) .   The focus is to get a setup which can be used for a complete coding experience for the whole ALM process.  The Code Gallery is found either through the Tools/Extension Manager menu in Visual Studio or through this link. The ones to really download is the Recommended category.  Then consider the Optional based on your needs.  The list of course reflects what I use for my work , so it is by no means complete, and for some of the tools there are equally useful alternatives.  The components directly associated with Visual Studio from Microsoft should be common, see the Microsoft column.     Product Available on Code Gallery Latest Version License Rec/Opt/N2H Applicable to Microsoft TFS Power Tools Sept 2010 Complete setup msi on link, split into parts on CG Sept 2010 Free Recommended TFS integration Yes Productivity Power Tools Yes 10.0.11019.3 Free Recommended Coding Yes Code Contracts No 1.4.30903 Free Recommended Coding & Quality Yes Code Contracts Editor Extensions Yes 1.4.30903 Free Recommended Coding & Quality Yes VSCommands Yes 3.6.4.1 Lite version Free (Good enough) Nice to have Coding No Power Commands Yes 1.0.2.3 Free Recommended Coding Yes FeaturePack 2   No.  MSDN Subscriber download under Visual Studio 2010 FP2 Part of MSDN Subscription Recommended Modeling & Testing Yes ReSharper No (Trial only) 5.1.1 Licensed Recommended Coding & Quality No dotTrace No 4.0.1 Licensed Optional Quality No NDepends No (Trial only) Licensed Optional Quality No tangible T4 editor Yes 1.950 Lite version Free (Good enough) Optional Coding (T4 templates) No Reflector No (Trial of Pro version only) 6.5 Lite version Free (Good enough) Recommended Coding/Investigation No LinqPad No 4.26.2 Licensed Nice to have Coding No Beyond Compare No 3.1.11 Licensed Recommended Coding/Investigation No Pex and Moles No (Moles available alone on CG) . Complete on MSDN Subscriber download under Visual Studio 2010 0.94.51023 Part of MSDN Subscription Optional Coding & Unit Testing Yes ApexSQL No Licensed Nice to have SQL No                 Some important Patches, upgrades and fixes Product Date Information Rec/Opt Applicable to Scrolling context menu KB2345133 and KB2413613 October 2010 Here Recommended Visual Studio MTM Patch October 2010 Here and here  KB2387011 Recommended (if you use MTM) MTM Data warehouse fix June 2010 Iteration dates fails with SQL 2008 R2.  KB2222312. Affects Burndown chart in Agile workbook Only for SQL 2008 R2 Server Upgrade 2008 to 2010 issue and hotfix August 2010 Fixes problems with labels and branches which are lost during upgrade. Apply before upgrade. Note: This has been fixed in the latest re-release of the TFS Server dated Aug 5th 2010. See here. Recommends downloading the latest bits. Only if upgrade from 2008 from earlier bits Server

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• Google Chrome OS

  - by Piet

  It’s about time someone took this initiative: Google Chrome OS I especially like the following: Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work. I recently had the ‘pleasure’ witnessing several 60+ yr old friends and family (all respect for everyone in their 2nd or 3rd youth) buying their first pc, taking their first steps using a pc and the net. Have you ever seen the gazillions of little ‘useful’ tools that are installed on a new standard Vista pc or laptop ? This is like learning to drive a new car and being placed in an airplane cockpit. And all the messages one gets about virus/security checks, fingerprint nog being enrolled, trial period expiring (because half those really useful tools come with a trial period), … If I was in their shoes, being confronted with this as a total newbie, I guess I’d just give up pretty soon. As a matter of fact, I actually gave up on Vista on my work-laptop, it was driving me crazy. Thank god I was allowed to install XP. I’m a Linux user at home, and Vista was such a frustrating experience that Windows XP actually felt like breath of fresh air. And what are those people using? Email, browsing…. and maybe writing a little letter now and then or storing their photo’s if they have a digital camera. Actually (side note), I get the impression that hearing about facebook is a major motivator for the digital newbies to finally take the plunge, buy a pc and get on-line. And OK, we’ve seen initiatives like this before, but Google is a brand everyone knows… unlike Ubuntu, Debain or Mandriva. Google = God. If I was Microsoft I’d be wetting my pants knowing Google was about to release their own OS, without a doubt fully optimized to use their own on-line office suit. On the other hand, the old adage ‘no one ever got fired for choosing Microsoft’ still holds a lot of truth. I hope I’ll be able to give it a big thumbs up if a would-be pc-user asks me what kind of pc/OS they should go for in the near future. On the other hand, if I’d do that, I’m pretty sure a couple of weeks later I’d get a call asking how to install this game or photo editing tool they got from one of their Windows using friends… or that nifty photo-printer they just bought. But then, I also get those questions now from newbie Windows users. It takes a couple of years before Newbie pc users understand that some things just don’t work and aren’t worth the time trying to fix them. I’d just wish they’d go back to the shop when something doesn’t work. You also don’t let you mechanic friend try to fix a problem with your brand new car. But that’s another story… Wait and see…

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• What I don&rsquo;t like about WIF&rsquo;s Claims-based Authorization

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  In my last post I wrote about what I like about WIF’s proposed approach to authorization – I also said that I definitely would build upon that infrastructure for my own systems. But implementing such a system is a little harder as it could be. Here’s why (and that’s purely my perspective): First of all WIF’s authorization comes in two “modes” Per-request authorization. When an ASP.NET/WCF request comes in, the registered authorization manager gets called. For SOAP the SOAP action gets passed in. For HTTP requests (ASP.NET, WCF REST) the URL and verb. Imperative authorization This happens when you explicitly call the claims authorization API from within your code. There you have full control over the values for action and resource. In ASP.NET per-request authorization is optional (depends on if you have added the ClaimsAuthorizationHttpModule). In WCF you always get the per-request checks as soon as you register the authorization manager in configuration. I personally prefer the imperative authorization because first of all I don’t believe in URL based authorization. Especially in the times of MVC and routing tables, URLs can be easily changed – but then you also have to adjust your authorization logic every time. Also – you typically need more knowledge than a simple “if user x is allowed to invoke operation x”. One problem I have is, both the per-request calls as well as the standard WIF imperative authorization APIs wrap actions and resources in the same claim type. This makes it hard to distinguish between the two authorization modes in your authorization manager. But you typically need that feature to structure your authorization policy evaluation in a clean way. The second problem (which is somehow related to the first one) is the standard API for interacting with the claims authorization manager. The API comes as an attribute (ClaimsPrincipalPermissionAttribute) as well as a class to use programmatically (ClaimsPrincipalPermission). Both only allow to pass in simple strings (which results in the wrapping with standard claim types mentioned earlier). Both throw a SecurityException when the check fails. The attribute is a code access permission attribute (like PrincipalPermission). That means it will always be invoked regardless how you call the code. This may be exactly what you want, or not. In a unit testing situation (like an MVC controller) you typically want to test the logic in the function – not the security check. The good news is, the WIF API is flexible enough that you can build your own infrastructure around their core. For my own projects I implemented the following extensions: A way to invoke the registered claims authorization manager with more overloads, e.g. with different claim types or a complete AuthorizationContext. A new CAS attribute (with the same calling semantics as the built-in one) with custom claim types. A MVC authorization attribute with custom claim types. A way to use branching – as opposed to catching a SecurityException. I will post the code for these various extensions here – so stay tuned.

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• If You Could Cut Your Meeting Times in ½ Would You?

  - by [email protected]

  By Brian Dayton on April 22, 2010 2:02 PM I know it sounds like a big promise. And what I'm thinking about may not cut a :60 minute meeting into :30 minutes, but it could make meetings and interactions up to 2X more productive. How? Social Media for the Enterprise, Not Social Media In the Enterprise Bear with me. I'm not talking about whether or not workers should or shouldn't have access to Facebook on corporate networks. That topic has been discussed @ length. I'm also not talking about the direct benefits of Social Networking tools like Presence (the ability to see someone online and ask a question in real-time), blogs, RSS feeds or external tools like Twitter. The Un-Measurable Benefits Would you do something that you believe will have a positive effect--but can't be measured? It's impossible to quantify the effectiveness of a meeting. However, what I am talking about would be more of a byproduct of all of the social networking tools above. Here's the hypothesis: As I've gotten more and more busy with work, family, travel and kids--and the same has happened to my friends and family--I'm less and less connected. But by introducing Facebook to my life I've not only made connections with longtime friends whom I haven't spoken to in years--but I've increased the pace and quality of interactions, on and offline, with close friends who I see and speak to every week. In some cases it even enhances the connections and interactions with those I see or speak to every day. The same holds true in an organization. Especially a larger one with highly matrixed organizational structures. You work with people on a project, new people come in with each different project and a disproportionate amount of time is spent getting oriented and staying current. Going back to the initial value proposition--making meetings shorter/more effective--a large amount of time is spent: - At Project Kick-off: Meeting and understanding team member's histories, goals & roles - Ongoing: Summarizing events since the last meeting or update email In my personal, Facebook life today I know that: - My best friend from college - has been stranded in India for 5 days because of the volcano in Iceland and is now only 250 miles from home - One of my co-workers started conference calls at 6:30 this morning - My wife wasn't terribly pleased with my painting skills in our new bathroom (disclosure: she told me this face to face too) Strengthening Weak Links A recent article in CIO Magazine, Three Dangerous Social Media Misconceptions (Kristen Burnham, March 12, 2010) calls out the #1 misconception as follows: 1. "Face-to-face relationships are far more valuable than virtual ones." While some level of physical interaction will always add value to relationships, Gartner says that come 2020, most relationships and teams will be based on "weak links"--that is, you may not have personally met a contact, but you'll know of or may have interacted with him via social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The sooner your enterprise adopts these tools, the sooner your employees will learn them, and the sooner you'll begin to cultivate these relationships-of-the-future. I personally believe that it's not an either/or choice between face-to-face and virtual interactions. In fact, I'll be as bold as saying it doesn't matter. I can point to two extremely valuable work relationships that I've had over the past 5 years: - I shared an office with one of them - I met the other person, face-to-face, only once Both relationships were very productive. The dynamics were similar. The communication tactics differed immensely. What does matter is the quality, frequency and relevance of interactions. Still sound like too much? An over-promise? Stay tuned for my next post The Gap Between Facebook and LinkedIn. I'll also connect some of the dots with where Oracle Applications and technologies are headed.

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• Silverlight Cream for March 26, 2010 -- #821

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Max Paulousky, Christian Schormann, John Papa, Phani Raj, David Anson(-2-, -3-), Brad Abrams(-2-), and Jeff Wilcox(-2-, -3-). Shoutouts: Jeff Wilcox posted his material from mix and some preview TestFramework bits: Unit Testing Silverlight & Windows Phone Applications – talk now online At MIX10, Jeff Wilcox demo'd an app called "Peppermint"... here's the bleeding edge demo: “Peppermint” MIX demo sources Erik Mork and Co. have put out their weekly This Week In Silverlight 3.25.2010 Brad Abrams has all his materials posted for his MIX10 session Mix2010: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Microsoft Silverlight... including play-by-play of the demo and all source. Do you use Rooler? Well you should! Watch a video Pete Brown did with Pete Blois on Expression Blend, Windows Phone, Rooler Interested in Silverlight and XNA for WP7? Me too! Michael Klucher has a post outlining the two: Silverlight and XNA Framework Game Development and Compatibility From SilverlightCream.com: Modularity in Silverlight Applications - An Issue With ModuleInitializeException Max Paulousky has a truly ugly error trace listed by way of not having a reference listed, and the obvious simple solution. Next time he'll talk about the difficult situations. Using SketchFlow to Prototype for Windows Phone Christian Schormann has a tutorial up on using Expression Blend to develop for WP7 ... who better than Christian for that task?? Silverlight TV 18: WCF RIA Services Validation John Papa held forth with Nikhil Kothari on WCF RIA Services and validation just prior to MIX10, and was posted yesterday. Building SL3 applications using OData client Library with Vs 2010 RC Phani Raj walks through building an OData consumer in SL3, the first problem you're going to hit, and the easy solution to it. Tip: When creating a DependencyProperty, follow the handy convention of "wrapper+register+static+virtual" David Anson has a couple more of his 'Tips' up... this first is about Dependency Properties again... having a good foundation for all your Dependency Properties is a great way to avoid problems. Tip: Do not assign DependencyProperty values in a constructor; it prevents users from overriding them In the next post, David Anson talks about not assigning Dependency Property values in a constructor and gives one of the two ways to get around doing so. Tip: Set DependencyProperty default values in a class's default style if it's more convenient In his latest post, David Anson gives the second way to avoid setting a Dependency Property value in the constructor. Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Brad Abrams Abrams adds SEO to the tutorial series he's doing. He begins with his PDC09 session material on the subject and then takes off on a great detailed tutorial all with source. Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Localizing Business Application Brad Abrams then discusses localization and Silverlight in another detailed tutorial with all code included. Silverlight Toolkit and the Windows Phone: WrapPanel, and a few others Jeff Wilcox has a few WP7 posts I'm going to push today. This first is from earlier this week and is about using the Toolkit in WP7 and better than that, he includes the bits you need if all you want is the WrapPanel Data binding user settings in Windows Phone applications In the next one from yesterday, Jeff Wilcox demonstrates saving some user info in Isolated Storage to improve the user experience, and shares all the necessary plumbing files, and other external links as well. Displaying 2D QR barcodes in Windows Phone applications In a post from today, Jeff Wilcox ported his Silverlight 2D QR Barcode app from last year into WP7 ... just very cool... get the source and display your Microsoft Tag. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone    MIX10

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• Windows Phone–A beautiful phone which I admire but I don’t recommend to friends and family

  - by Gopinath

  Microsoft’s Windows Phones are the most beautiful phones I’ve seen. Look at the photo which Microsoft shared on their Facebook page today. It’s gorgeous. Windows Phones come in vibrant colors and the user interface is very lively. When you keep an iPhone, Android Phone & a Windows Phone on a table, Windows Phone definitely stands out. Android and iOS interfaces are routine – a bunch of apps icons arranged in rows and multiple screens. Windows Phone is very different, the live tiles concept mesmerizes us. I love Windows Phone, but neither I buy one nor I recommend to family/friends! Why? Because it does not have all the Apps I need. Microsoft advertises that Windows Phone has 100K apps on its Windows Market Place. It’s true, there are 100K+ apps available for Windows Phone but not many of them are really useful and most of the popular Apps I use on Android are not available. When I say this to my friends at Microsoft, they don’t agree and one of them asked me list the apps that are not available. For him today I spent an hour quickly scanning through the apps installed on my Google Nexus and searched for same apps on Windows Market Place. As expected many of them are not available. Here is the list of my favorite Android apps that are not available for Windows Phone Mint – I use this app more than any of the Banking Apps I’ve installed on my mobile. It’s one app to keep a tab on all the expenses and income, the best money management and tracking app. Google Chrome – Web without Google Chrome is too boring, either on Desktop or on mobile. IE is too heavy and Firefox is loosing its grip. Chrome is the new darling of web. Pulse, Flipboard – Flipboard and Pulse are one of the best apps for reading news and following content of favorite blogs. Dropbox – Sync content across devices and provides access to your content on any device.It really does not matter what is your gadget – mobile, tablet or computer; Dropbox lets you access your content. GMail, Google Maps – Should I say how important are these two apps in our day to day life!! Vonage Extension – For around 30 bucks a month, Vonage provide landline service in USA + unlimited calls to India and many other countries + Vonage Extension App that lets Android/iOS mobile to make unlimited international calls for free. Without Vonage Extension app, I’m almost cutoff from my family and friends back home in India. Instagram – The most popular camera app used from a common man to celebrities. Raaga, Dhingana  – Music is part and parcel of life and these two apps are the most like popular apps to listen to Indian music. Quora – Quora is the place where most of the sensible discussions happen on web. Google Analytics, Google Adsense – I’m a blogger and these two apps mean a lot to me The list goes on and on! There are many useful apps that are not available on Windows Phone – TuneIn, MyTWC, Chrome To Phone, Google Voice, etc. Without all these apps, Windows Phone is just another old Nokia phone. Even though Windows Phone is the most beautiful phone, it needs Apps to attract customers. Without apps a smartphone is more or less a dumb feature phone which we loved to use before release of iPhone. Wish in an year or two the beautiful Windows Phone may have all the missing Apps. When it happens I’ll buy a phone for myself and recommend it to my family & friends. But till then I prefer to stay away.

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• PetaPoco with parameterised stored procedure and Asp.Net MVC

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  I have been playing with Micro ORMs as this is very interesting things that are happening in developer communities and I already liked the concept of it. It’s tiny easy to use and can do performance tweaks. PetaPoco is also one of them I have written few blog post about this. In this blog post I have explained How we can use the PetaPoco with stored procedure which are having parameters.  I am going to use same Customer table which I have used in my previous posts. For those who have not read my previous post following is the link for that. Get started with ASP.NET MVC and PetaPoco PetaPoco with stored procedures Now our customer table is ready. So let’s Create a simple process which will fetch a single customer via CustomerId. Following is a code for that. CREATE PROCEDURE mysp_GetCustomer @CustomerId as INT AS SELECT * FROM [dbo].Customer where CustomerId=@CustomerId Now  we are ready with our stored procedures. Now lets create code in CustomerDB class to retrieve single customer like following. using System.Collections.Generic; namespace CodeSimplified.Models { public class CustomerDB { public IEnumerable<Customer> GetCustomers() { var databaseContext = new PetaPoco.Database("MyConnectionString"); databaseContext.EnableAutoSelect = false; return databaseContext.Query<Customer>("exec mysp_GetCustomers"); } public Customer GetCustomer(int customerId) { var databaseContext = new PetaPoco.Database("MyConnectionString"); databaseContext.EnableAutoSelect = false; var customer= databaseContext.SingleOrDefault<Customer>("exec mysp_GetCustomer @customerId",new {customerId}); return customer; } } } Here in above code you can see that I have created a new method call GetCustomer which is having customerId as parameter and then I have written to code to use stored procedure which we have created to fetch customer Information. Here I have set EnableAutoSelect=false because I don’t want to create Select statement automatically I want to use my stored procedure for that. Now Our Customer DB class is ready and now lets create a ActionResult Detail in our controller like following using System.Web.Mvc; namespace CodeSimplified.Controllers { public class HomeController : Controller { public ActionResult Index() { ViewBag.Message = "Welcome to ASP.NET MVC!"; return View(); } public ActionResult About() { return View(); } public ActionResult Customer() { var customerDb = new Models.CustomerDB(); return View(customerDb.GetCustomers()); } public ActionResult Details(int id) { var customerDb = new Models.CustomerDB(); return View(customerDb.GetCustomer(id)); } } } Now Let’s create view based on that ActionResult Details method like following. Now everything is ready let’s test it in browser. So lets first goto customer list like following. Now I am clicking on details for first customer and Let’s see how we can use the stored procedure with parameter to fetch the customer details and below is the output. So that’s it. It’s very easy. Hope you liked it. Stay tuned for more..Happy Programming

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• EVENT RECAP: Oracle Day & Product Fair - Ft. Lauderdale

  - by cwarticki

  Are you attending any of the Oracle Days and other Events? They are fantastic!  Keep track of the Oracle Events by following @OracleEvents on Twitter.  Also, stay in the know by subscribing to one of the several Oracle Newsletters. Those will also keep you posted of upcoming in-person and webcast events. From the Oracle Events website, simply navigate to your geography and refine your options to locate what interests you. You can also perform keyword searches. Today, I had the opportunity to participate in the Oracle Day & Product Fair in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida  Thanks to those who stopped by to ask your support questions and watched me demo My Oracle Support features and best practices. (Bob Stanoch, Sales Consulting Manager giving the 2nd keynote address on Exadata below) 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; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} It was a pleasant surprise to run into my former Oracle colleague Josh Tieso.  Josh (pictured right) is Sr. Oracle DBA at United Healthcare. He used to work for Oracle Support years ago but for the last 6 years at UHC. Josh is a member of the ERP DBA team, working with Exalogic, Oracle ERP R12, & RAC. Along the exhibit/vendor row, I met with Marco Gangano, National Sales Manager at Mythics. It was great getting to meet Marco and I look forward to working with his company with regards to Support Best Practices. In addition, Lissette Paez (left) was representing TAM Training.  TAM Training is an Oracle University, award-winning training partner.  They cover training across the scope of Oracle products with 7 facilities in the U.S.  Lissette and I have done a couple of these Oracle Days before.  It's great to see familiar faces.  A little while ago, I was down in this area to work with Citrix with an onsite session on Support Best Practices.  Pablo Leon and Alberto Gonzalez (right)came to chat with me over at the Support booth.  They wanted to know when I was giving my session.  Unfortunately, not this time guys. I'm on booth duty only. Keep in touch. Many thanks to our sponsors: BIAS, Cloudera, Intel and TekStream Solutions.Come attend one of the many Oracle Days & other events planned for you. -Chris WartickiGlobal Customer Management

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• Keep a Window on top with a handy AutoHotkey script

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you tired of shuffling back and forth between windows to get your work done?  Here’s a handy tool that lets you keep any window always on top when you need it. There are many ways to use multiple windows efficiently, but sometimes it seems you need to keep a smaller one in front of a larger window and they never quite fit right.  Whether you’re trying to use Calculator and a web form at the same time, or see what music is playing while you’re catching up on your news, there’s many scenarios where it can be useful to keep one window always on top.  There are many utilities to do this, but they are often needlessly complicated and bloated.  Here we look at a better solution from Amit, our friend at Digital Inspiration. Always on Top Thanks to AutoHotkey, you can easily always keep any window on top of all the others on your screen.  You can download this as a small exe and run it directly, or can create it with a simple script in AutoHotkey.  For simplicity, we simply downloaded the application and ran it directly. To do this, download Always on Top (link below), and unzip the file. Once you’ve launched it, simply select the window you want to keep on top and press Ctrl+Space.  This program will now stay in front, even when it is not the active window.  Here’s a screenshot of a Hotmail signup dialog in Chrome with Notepad kept on top.  Notice Notepad isn’t the active application, but it is still on top. If you wish to un-pin the window from being on top, simply select the window and press Ctrl+space again.  You can keep multiple windows pinned at once, too, though you may clutter your desktop quickly! Always on Top will keep running in your system tray, and you can exit or suspend it by right-clicking on its tray icon and selecting exit or suspend, respectively. Create Your Own Always on Top Utility with AutoHotkey If you’re a fan of AutoHotkey, you can create your own AutoHotkey script to keep windows on top simply and easily with only one line of code: ^SPACE:: Winset, Alwaysontop, , A Simply create a new file, insert the code, and save it as plaintext with the .ahk file extension.  If you have AutoHotkey installed, simply double-click this file for the exact same functionality as the premade version. Conclusion This is a great way to keep a window handy, and it can be beneficial in many scenarios.  For instance you can use it to copy data from a PDF or image into a form or spreadsheet, and it saves a lot of clicks and time.  Links: Download Always on Top from Digital Inspiration Download AutoHotkey if you want to make it yourself Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Get the Linux Alt+Window Drag Functionality in WindowsGet Mac’s Hide Others (cmd+opt+H) Keyboard Shortcut for WindowsAdd "Run as Administrator" for AutoHotkey Scripts in Windows 7 or VistaKeyboard Ninja: Pop Up the Vista Calendar with a Single HotkeyKeyboard Ninja: Assign a Hotkey to any Window TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver Optimize your computer the Microsoft way Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data Geek Parents – Did you try Parental Controls in Windows 7?

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• 11 Types of Developers

  - by Lee Brandt

  Jack Dawson Jack Dawson is the homeless drifter in Titanic. At one point in the movie he says, “I figure life’s a gift, and I don’t intend on wasting it.” He is happy to wander wherever life takes him. He works himself from place to place, making just enough money to make it to his next adventure. The “Jack Dawson” developer clings on to any new technology as the ‘next big thing’, and will find ways to shoe-horn it in to places where it is not a fit. He is very appealing to the other developers because they want to try the newest techniques and tools too, He will only stay until the new technology either bores him or becomes problematic. Jack will also be hard to find once the technology has been implemented, because he will be on to the next shiny thing. However, having a Jack Dawson on your team can be beneficial. Jack can be a great ally when attempting to convince a stodgy, corporate entity to upgrade. Jack usually has an encyclopedic recall of all the new features of the technology upgrade and is more than happy to interject them in any conversation. Tom Smykowski Tom is the neurotic employee in Office Space, and is deathly afraid of being fired. He will do only what is necessary to keep the status quo. He believes as long as nothing changes, his job is safe. He will scoff at anything new and be the naysayer during any change initiative. Tom can be useful in off-setting Jack Dawson. Jack will constantly be pushing for change and Tom will constantly be fighting it. When you see that Jack is getting kind of bored with a new technology and Tom has finally stopped wetting himself at the mere mention of it, then it is probably the sweet spot of beginning to implement that new technology (providing it is the right tool for the job). Ray Consella Ray is the guy who built the Field of Dreams. He took a risk. Sometimes he screwed it up, but he knew he didn’t want to end up regretting not attempting it. He constantly doubted himself, but he knew he had to keep going. Granted, he was doing what the voices in his head were telling him to do, but my point is he was driven to do something that most people considered crazy. Even when his friends, his wife and even he told himself he was crazy, somewhere inside himself, he knew it was the right thing to do. These are the innovators. These are the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of the world. The take risks, they fail, they learn and the get better. Obviously, this kind of person thrives in start-ups and smaller companies, but that is due to their natural aversion to bureaucracy. They want to see their ideas put into motion quickly, and withdrawn quickly if it doesn’t work. Short feedback cycles are essential to Ray. He wants to know if his idea is working or not. He wants to modify or reverse his idea if it is not working or makes things worse. These are the agilistas. May I always be one.

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• Silverlight Cream for March 17, 2010 -- #814

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Tim Heuer(-2-), René Schulte(-2-), Bart Czernicki, Mark Monster, Pencho Popadiyn, Alex Golesh, Phil Middlemiss, and Yochay Kiriaty. Shoutouts: Check out the new themes, and Tim Heuer's poetry skills: SNEAK PEEK: New Silverlight application themes I learned to program Windows 3.1 from reading Charles Petzold's book, and here we are again: Free ebook: Programming Windows Phone 7 Series (DRAFT Preview) Here's a blog you're going to want to watch, and first up on the blog tonight is links to the complete set of MIX10 phone sessions: The Windows Phone Developer Blog First let me get a couple of things out of my system... "Holy Crap it's March 17th already" and "Holy Crap, we're all Windows Phone Developers!" I'm sure both of those were old news to anyone that's not been in a coma since Monday, but I've been a tad busy here at #MIX10. I'm not complainin' ... I'm just sayin' From SilverlightCream.com: Getting Started with Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Development With any new Silverlight technology we have to begin with Tim Heuer... and this is Tim's announcement of Silverlight on the Windows Phone 7 Series ('cmon, can I call it a "Silverlight Phone"? ... please?) ... hope I didn't type that out loud :) ... so... in case you fell asleep Sunday, and just woke up, Tim let the dogs out on this and we could all talk about it. In all seriousness, bookmark this page... lots of good links. A guide to what has changed in the Silverlight 4 RC Continuing the 'bookmark this page' thought... Tim Heuer also has one up on what the heck is all in the Silverlight 4 RC they released on Monday... check this out... really good stuff in there... and a great post detailing it all. The Silverlight 4 Release Candidate René Schulte has a good post up detailing the new stuff in Silverlight 4 RC, with special attention paid to the webcam/mic and AsyncCaptureImage Let it ring - WriteableBitmapEx for Windows Phone René Schulte has a Windows Phone post up as well, introducing the WriteableBitmapEx library for Windows Phone... how cool is that?? Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 is NOT the same full Silverlight 3 RTM Bart Czernicki dug into the docs to expose some of the differences between Silverlight for the Windows Phone and Silverlight 3. If you've been developing in SL3 and want to also do Phone, check out this post and his resource listings. Trying to sketch a Windows Phone 7 application Mark Monster tried to SketchFlow a Windows Phone app and hit some problems... if anyone has thoughts, contribute on his blog page. Using Reactive Extensions in Silverlight – part 2 – Web Services Pencho Popadiyn has part 2 of his tutorial on Rx, and this one is concentrating on asynchronous service calls. Silverlight 4 Quick Tip: Out-Of-Browser Improvements This post from Alex Golesh is a little weird since he was sitting next to me in a session at MIX10 when he submitted it :) ... good update on what's new in OOB in the RC Turning a round button into a rounded panel I like Phil Middlemiss' other title for this post: "A Scalable Orb Panel-Button-Thingy" ... this is a very cool resizing button that works amazingly similar to the resizable skinned dialogs I did in Win32!... very cool, Phil! Go Get It – The Windows Phone Developer Training Kit Did you know there was a Windows Phone Training Kit with Hands-on Labs? Yochay Kiriaty at the Windows Phone Developer Blog wrote about it... I pulled it down, and it looks really good! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• POP Forums v9 Beta 1 for ASP.NET MVC 3 posted to CodePlex!

  - by Jeff

  As promised, I posted a beta build of my forum app for ASP.NET MVC 3. Get the new goodies here: http://popforums.codeplex.com/releases/view/58228 This is the first beta for the ASP.NET MVC 3 version of POP Forums. It is nearly feature complete, and ready for testing and feedback. For previous release notes, look here, here and here.Check out the live preview: http://preview.popforums.com/ForumsSetup instructions are on the home page of this project. The new hotness in the beta, or what has been done since the last preview: All views converted to use Razor E-mail subscription/notification of new posts New post indicators/mark read buttons Permalinks to posts Jump to newest post (from new post indicators) Recent topics Favorite topics Moderator functions for topics (pin/close/delete, plus move and rename) Search, ported from v8. Not a ton of optimization here, or new unit testing, but the old version worked pretty well User posts (topics the user posted in) Forgot password Vanity items (signatures and avatars) Hide vanity items per user preference Some minor data caching where appropriate A little bit of UI refinement Lots-o-bug fixes Lots-o-unit tests What's next? The plan between now and the next beta is as follows: Continue working through features/tasks, and fix bugs as they're reported Integrate the forum into a real, production site Refine the UI Refactor as much as possible... the code organization is not entirely logical in some places After the second beta, a release candidate will follow, with a real "final" release after that. Subsequent releases should come relatively frequently and without a lot of risk. The trick in building this thing has been that it mostly tossed the previous WebForms version, which was all full of crusties. The time table for this is a little harder to pin down, as day jobs and families will have their effect. Other notes Refactoring will be a priority. As the features of MVC have evolved, so have my desires to use it in a fashion that makes things clear and easy to follow. I don't even know if anyone will ever start mucking around in the code, but on the off chance they do, I'd like what they find to not suck. Other nice-to-haves are builds to target Windows Azure and SQL CE. A nice setup UI would be super too. I think the ASP.NET MVC world has gone long enough without a decent forum.The biggest challenge that I've found is making the forum something that can be dropped in any app. While it does rope its views into an area, areas are mostly just routing details. I haven't thought of a clever way yet to limit dependency injection, for example, to just the forum bits. I mean, everyone should be using Ninject, but how realistic is that? ;)How much time and effort should you spend on POP Forums in its current state? Change is inevitable, but at this point I'm reasonably committed to not changing the database schema. I really think it will stay as-is. All bets are off for the various interfaces throughout the app, but the data should generally resist change. It's not even that different from v8, which was one of the original goals because I didn't want to rewrite SQL or introduce a new ORM or whatever. My point is that if you wanted to build a site around this today, even though it's not entirely functional, I think it's low risk in terms of data loss. I can't vouch for whether or not you know what you're doing.I've been having some chats with people lately about quoting posts, and honestly there has to be something better and straight forward. That continues to be a holy grail of mine, and some day, I hope to find it.Enjoy... it's starting to feel more real every day!

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• Silverlight Cream for March 25, 2010 -- #820

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: René Schulte, Jeremy Likness, Hassan, Victor Gaudioso, SilverLaw, Mike Taulty, Phani Raj, Tim Heuer, Christian Schormann, Brad Abrams, David Anson, Diptimaya Patra, and Daniel Vaughan. Shoutouts: Last week, Koen Zwikstra announced Silverlight Spy at MIX10 Anand Iyer announced this for students on the Windows Team Blog: Be a Windows Phone 7 “Rockstar” Justin Angel blogged that Silverlight Isn't Fully Cross-Platform ... let him know if you think it's a yawn or important. On behalf of SilverlightShow, Cigdem Patlak posted MIX10: Laurent Bugnion on Silverlight adoption, WP7 and the EcoContest From SilverlightCream.com: Coding4Fun - Silverlight Real Time Face Detection René Schulte has a Coding 4 Fun article posted on facial recognition. Who better to be manipulating graphics like this than René? Sequential Asynchronous Workflows Part 2: Simplified Jeremy Likness follows up his previous post with another one that is 'simplified'. Remember his previous post began with a post on the Silverlight.net forum and Rob Eisenburg's MVVM presentation from MIX10 Windows Phone 7 Video Tutorial Hassan has a new video up on his AfricanGeek site, and that's a continuation of his previous WP7 video tutorial, adding a listbox and databinding it to the selected index of another listbox. The Los Angeles Silverlight Usergorup will be Streaming its March Meeting LIVE in Silverlight – Tonight! Victor Gaudioso used his Live Streaming knowledge to stream his User Group meeting last night from LA where Michael Washington presented on MVVM followed by Victor himself. That was last night. Today he has a couple of the videos up to view. Shining 3D Font Design - Silverlight 3 SilverLaw has a "Shining 3D Font" tutorial up, and a video on it here: New Video: How to create a 3D effect on a Silverlight 3 Textblock ... this is also available in the Expression Gallery. Silverlight 4 RC – Signing trusted apps with home made certificates Mike Taulty has a post up about building a hand-rolled cert to test out the XAP signing features, and then gives a nod to John Papa with a link to the Silverlight White Paper I've posted about before, because this info is in there as well. Developing a Windows Phone 7 Application that consumes OData Phani Raj has a tutorial up on consuming the NetFlix OData catalog on the WP7 emulator ... now *that* is cool! Make your Silverlight applications Speak to you with Microsoft Translator Tim Heuer used Silverlight to demonstrate Microsoft Translator as a speech synthesis tool using the Speak API included ... pretty cool, Tim ... lots of external links and code. Blend 4: About Path Layout, Sidebar – More About ListBox Than You Ever Wanted To Know Christian Schormann has another outstanding tutorial up on the ListBox and PathLayout in Expression Blend ... just check out the screen shots and you'll wanna read it! Silverlight 4 + RIA Services: Ready for Business: Updating Data in the Client This is the continuation of Brad Abrams' series on WCF RIA Services and is a tutorial on setting up to deal with updating the data. Tip: The CLR wrapper for a DependencyProperty should do its job and nothing more David Anson is posting some "Development Tips", and this is the first ... discussing making sure your DependencyProperty CLR wrapper stays on point... Create and Apply Theme Silverlight Application Diptimaya Patra has a tutorial up on creating and using themes. He states that "Themes are nothing but some predefined styles" ... check it out and see if it's really that easy :) Building a Windows Phone 7 Puzzle Game Daniel Vaughan has a great post up starting with installing all the tools and ending with a maze game for WP7 using XNA for sound... this is the first I've seen that integrates XNA (I think). Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone    MIX10

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• Silverlight Cream for March 28, 2010 -- #823

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, Andy Beaulieu, Bill Reiss, jocelyn, Shawn Wildermuth, Cameron Albert, Shawn Oster, Alex Yakhnin, ondrejsv, Giorgetti Alessandro, Jeff Handley, SilverLaw, deepm, and Kyle McClellan. Shoutouts: If I've listed this before, it's worth another... Introduction to Prototyping with SketchFlow (twelve video series) and on the same page is Creating a Beehive Game with Behaviors in Blend 3 (ten video series) Shawn Oster announced his Slides + Code + Video from ‘An Introduction to Developing Applications for Microsoft Silverlight’ from MIX10 Tim Heuer announced earlier this week: Silverlight Client for Facebook updated for Silverlight 4 RC Nikhil Kothari announced the availability of his MIX10 Talk - Slides and Code András Velvárt backed up his great MIX09 effort with MIX10.Zoomery.com... everything in one DZ effort... thanks András! Andy Beaulieu posted his material for his Code Camp 13 in Waltham: Windows Phone: Silverlight for Casual Games From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight MVVM - The Revolution Has Begun Michael Washington did an awesome tutorial on MVVM and Silverlight creating a simple Silverlight File Manager. The post has a link to the tutorial at CodeProject... great tutorial. Windows Phone 7 + Silverlight Performance Andy Beaulieu has a post up we should all bookmark... getting a handle on the graphics performance of our app on WP7. Great examples, and external links. Space Rocks game step 6: Keyboard handling Bill Reiss has a post up about keyboard input for the WP7 game he's building ... this is Episode 6 ... you're working along with him, right? Panoramic Navigation on Windows Phone 7 with No Code! jocelyn at InnovativeSingapore (I found this by way of Shawn's post), has a Panoramic Navigation template out there for WP7 for all of us to grab... great post about it too. My First WP7 Application Shawn Wildermuth has been playing with WP7 development and has his XBOX Game library app up on the emulator... all with source of course Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Game Cameron Albert built a web-based game called 'Shape Attack' and also did it for WP7 to compare the performance... check it out for yourself, but hey, it's game source for the phone... cool :) Changing the Onscreen Keyboard layout in Silverlight for Windows Phone using InputScope Shawn Oster has a cool post on changing the keyboard on WP7 to go along with what you're expecting the user to type... how cool is that?? Deep Zoom on WP7 Check out the quick work Alex Yakhnin made of putting DeepZoom on WP7... all source included. How to: Create a sketchy Siverlight GroupBox in Blend/SketchFlow ondrejsv has the xaml up to take Tim Greenfield's GroupBox control and insert it into SketchFlow. Silverlight / Castle Windsor – implementing a simple logging framework Giorgetti Alessandro posted about CastleWindsor for Silverlight, and a logging system inherited from LevelFilteredLogger in the absence of Log4Net. DomainDataSource in a ViewModel Jeff Handley responds to a common forum post about using DomainDataSource in a ViewModel. Read his comments on AutoLoad and ElementName Bindins. Digital Jugendstil TextEffect (Art Nouveau) - Silverlight 3 SilverLaw has a cool TagCloud demo and a UserControl he calls Art Nouveau up at the Expression Gallery... not for a business app, I don't think :) Configuring your DomainService for a Windows Phone 7 application deepm discusses RIA Services for WP7 and how to enable a WP7 app to communicate with a DomainService. Writing a Custom Filter or Parameter for DomainDataSource Kyle McClellan by way of Jeff Handley's blog, is discussing how to leverage the custom parameter types you defined in the previous version of RIA Services. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• SQLAuthority News – The Best Quotes of “Who Wrote This?” Contest

  - by pinaldave

  I am a frequent reader of Brent Ozar PLF, it is one of my favorite blogs. A recent post announced a “Who Wrote This?” contest to see if readers could tell their three contributors apart based on some writing samples. Here are my favorite lines from the sample paragraphs, from each of the three “mystery authors.” Topic 1: Working with Bad Managers Mystery Author A – “Working with bad managers means working against my own happiness, and I’ve come to learn that there’s no changing bad managers.” I love this line because, as anyone who has had a bad manager knows, often a lot of self-doubt rises up. We all have to remember that sometimes the problem is out of our control. Mystery Author B – “Mentor your manager just like you would mentor a junior DBA.” Having a bad manager can be extremely depressing, and we often feel out of control. But we all need to remember that our work is a two-way street, and that sometimes we can subtly influence those above us. Mystery Author C – “The trick to working for all bad managers is to remember that they aren’t your parent. Take charge of your career.” We all also need to learn not to play the blame game. Would you rather stay in a place where you are unhappy, or would you rather take charge of your life? I hope most people would pick the latter. Topic 2: Working with Remote Teams Mystery Author A – “Like almost anything else the key is to make sure that everyone on the team has an understanding of how and when communication will occur.” Communication is so important. I cannot over emphasize how much. And this one line captures how I feel and even communicates the idea clearly! Mystery Author B – “The key to remote team success is verifiable trust: feeling confident that invisible team members are doing the right amount of the right thing at the right time.” I think this line not only captures the key aspects of remote work – verifiable work and trust – but there were so many lines that followed that I loved and could not fit here. The whole paragraph is a list for successful remote work. Everyone could benefit from reading it. Mystery Author C – “What seems clear, precise, and specific in one time zone comes across as vague, soupy, and just plain weird in another.” You know what? I just love this description. The author is right – sometimes vague e-mails really do seem soupy and weird! Topic 3: Working with Your Nemesis Mystery Author A – “Every job is temporary, but your reputation stays with you.” Everyone needs to remember this. The workplace is meant to be a professional arena, and many people have the opinion that work is temporary and disposable. No one wants to work with co-worker like that. Mystery Author B – “Unhealthy conflict is going to lead to leaving three week old tuna fish sandwiches in someone’s desk drawer.” Sometimes humor really is the best policy! Mystery Author C – “Oh no, it’s that guy.” This might seem like a weird phrase to choose as my favorite from an entire paragraph. But the whole piece was written in the form of a story of co-workers getting drunk and plotting against a nemesis. It was too funny to overlook, but too long to post here. A must read! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Silverlight Firestarter thoughts, and thanks to one and all!

  - by Dave Campbell

  A few metrics that of course got out of hand, but some may find interesting:   1/2 My share of the MVP of the Year award in February of 2009 with Laurent Bugnion 2 Number of degrees I hold: B.S., M.S. Electrical Engineering 3 Number of years in the U.S. Army 3.5 Number of years SilverlighCream has been posted 4 Number of times awarded MVP 6 Number of professional positions I've worked: Antenna Rigger, Boilermaker, Musician, Electronic Technician, Hardware Engineer, Software Engineer 16 Number of companies I've worked for during my career as an Engineer 19 Age at which I turned my first line of code 28 Age at which I hit the workforce as an Engineer 33 Number of years working as an Engineer 43 Number of years writing code 62 Number of years since instantiation 116 Number of tags to search SilverlightCream with 645 Number of blogs I view to find articles (at this moment) 664 Number of articles tagged wp7dev at SilverlightCream right now 700 Number of Twitter followers for WynApse 981 Number of individual bloggers in the SilverlightCream database 1002 Number of SilverlightCream blogposts 1100 Number of people live in Redmond for the Firestarter (I think) 1428 Number of total blogposts at GeeksWithBlogs (not counting this one) 4200 Number of Feedburner subscribers (approximately) 6500 Number of Twitter followers for SilverlightNews (approximately) 7087 Number of posts tagged and aggregated at SilverlightCream right now 13000 Number of people registered to watch the Firestarter online (I think) The overwhelming feeling I have returning from the Silverlight Firestarter: Priceless There is absolutely no way that I could personally thank everyone that over the last few years has held their hand out and offered me a step up to get to the point that Scott Guthrie called me out in his keynote. So I'm just going to hit the highlights here... Scott Guthrie Thanks for not only being the level you are at Microsoft, but for being so approachable, easy to talk to, willing to help everyone, and above all knowledgable. My first level manager at my last position asked if Visual Studio was a graphics program... and you step up to a laptop at a conference and type "File->New Program" ... 'nuff said... oh yeah, thanks for the shoutout! John Papa Thanks for being a good friend, ramroding the Firestarter, being a great guy to be around, and for the poster... holy crap is that cool. Tim Heuer Thanks for all you did as a great DE in Phoenix, and for helping out so many of us, of course being a great guy, and for the poster as well... I think you and John shared that task. In no order at all my buddy Michael Washington, Laurent Bugnion (the other half of the first Silverlight MVP of the Year) Tim Sneath, Mike Harsh, Chad Campbell and Bryant Likes (from back in the day), Adam Kinney, Jesse Liberty, Jeff Paries, Pete Brown, András Velvárt, David Kelly, Michael Palermo, Scott Cate, Erik Mork, and on and on... don't feel bad if your name didn't appear, I have simply too many supporters to name. Silverlight Firestarter Indeed All the people mentioned here, and all the MVPs knew Silverlight was NOT dead, but because of a very unfortunate circumstance, the popular media opinion became that. Consequently the Firestarter exploded from a laid-back event to a global conference. People worked their ass off getting bits ready and presentations using those bits. All to stem the flow of misinformation. All involved please accept my personal thanks for an absolutely awesome job. I had the priviledge of watching the 'prep' on Wednesday afternoon, and was blown away the first time I saw the 3D demo... and have been blown away every time I've seen it since. Not to mention all the other goodness in Silverlight 5. Yes I hit 1000 on my blog, but more importantly, all of you are blogging and using Silverlight, and Microsoft hit one completely out of the park... no... they knocked it out of the neighborhood with the Firestarter. It was amazing to be there for it, and it will be awesome to use the new bits as we get them. Keep reading, there's tons more to come with Silverlight and SilverlightCream following along behind. As usual, this old hacker is humbled to be allowed to play with all the cool kids... Thanks one and all for everything, and Stay in the 'Light

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• MongoDB usage best practices

  - by andresv

  The project I'm working on uses MongoDB for some stuff so I'm creating some documents to help developers speedup the learning curve and also avoid mistakes and help them write clean & reliable code. This is my first version of it, so I'm pretty sure I will be adding more stuff to it, so stay tuned! C# Official driver notes The 10gen official MongoDB driver should always be referenced in projects by using NUGET. Do not manually download and reference assemblies in any project. C# driver quickstart guide: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Driver+Quickstart Reference links C# Language Center: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Language+Center MongoDB Server Documentation: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Home MongoDB Server Downloads: http://www.mongodb.org/downloads MongoDB client drivers download: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Drivers MongoDB Community content: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Community+Projects Tutorials Tutorial MongoDB con ASP.NET MVC - Ejemplo Práctico (Spanish):http://geeks.ms/blogs/gperez/archive/2011/12/02/tutorial-mongodb-con-asp-net-mvc-ejemplo-pr-225-ctico.aspx MongoDB and C#:http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/87757/MongoDB-and-C C# driver LINQ tutorial:http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Driver+LINQ+Tutorial C# driver reference: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Driver+Tutorial Safe Mode Connection The C# driver supports two connection modes: safe and unsafe. Safe connection mode (only applies to methods that modify data in a database like Inserts, Deletes and Updates. While the current driver defaults to unsafe mode (safeMode == false) it's recommended to always enable safe mode, and force unsafe mode on specific things we know aren't critical. When safe mode is enabled, the driver internal code calls the MongoDB "getLastError" function to ensure the last operation is completed before returning control the the caller. For more information on using safe mode and their implicancies on performance and data reliability see: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/getLastError+Command If safe mode is not enabled, all data modification calls to the database are executed asynchronously (fire & forget) without waiting for the result of the operation. This mode could be useful for creating / updating non-critical data like performance counters, usage logging and so on. It's important to know that not using safe mode implies that data loss can occur without any notification to the caller. As with any wait operation, enabling safe mode also implies dealing with timeouts. For more information about C# driver safe mode configuration see: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+getLastError+and+SafeMode The safe mode configuration can be specified at different levels: Connection string: mongodb://hostname/?safe=true Database: when obtaining a database instance using the server.GetDatabase(name, safeMode) method Collection: when obtaining a collection instance using the database.GetCollection(name, safeMode) method Operation: for example, when executing the collection.Insert(document, safeMode) method Some useful SafeMode article: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4604868/mongodb-c-sharp-safemode-official-driver Exception Handling The driver ensures that an exception will be thrown in case of something going wrong, in case of using safe mode (as said above, when not using safe mode no exception will be thrown no matter what the outcome of the operation is). As explained here https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/mongodb-user/mS6jIq5FUiM there is no need to check for any returned value from a driver method inserting data. With updates the situation is similar to any other relational database: if an update command doesn't affect any records, the call will suceed anyway (no exception thrown) and you manually have to check for something like "records affected". For MongoDB, an Update operation will return an instance of the "SafeModeResult" class, and you can verify the "DocumentsAffected" property to ensure the intended document was indeed updated. Note: Please remember that an Update method might return a null instance instead of an "SafeModeResult" instance when safe mode is not enabled. Useful Community Articles Comments about how MongoDB works and how that might affect your application: http://ethangunderson.com/blog/two-reasons-to-not-use-mongodb/ FourSquare using MongoDB had serious scalability problems: http://mashable.com/2010/10/07/mongodb-foursquare/ Is MongoDB a replacement for Memcached? http://www.quora.com/Is-MongoDB-a-good-replacement-for-Memcached/answer/Rick-Branson MongoDB Introduction, shell, when not to use, maintenance, upgrade, backups, memory, sharding, etc: http://www.markus-gattol.name/ws/mongodb.html MongoDB Collection level locking support: https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-1240 MongoDB performance tips: http://www.quora.com/MongoDB/What-are-some-best-practices-for-optimal-performance-of-MongoDB-particularly-for-queries-that-involve-multiple-documents Lessons learned migrating from SQL Server to MongoDB: http://www.wireclub.com/development/TqnkQwQ8CxUYTVT90/read MongoDB replication performance: http://benshepheard.blogspot.com.ar/2011/01/mongodb-replication-performance.html

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• Ann Arbor Day of .NET 2010 Recap

  - by PSteele

  Had a great time at the Ann Arbor Day of .NET on Saturday.  Lots of great speakers and topics.  And chance to meet up with friends you usually only communicate with via email/twitter. My Presentation I presented "Getting up to speed with C# 3.5 — Just in time for 4.0!".  There's still a lot of devs that are either stuck in .NET 2.0 or just now moving to .NET 3.5.  This presentation gave highlights of a lot of the key features of 3.5.  I had great questions from the audience.  Afterwards, I talked with a few people who are just now getting in to 3.5 and they told me they had a lot of "A HA!" moments when something I said finally clicked and made sense from a code sample they had seen on the web.  Thanks to all who attended! A few people have asked me for the slides and demo.  The slides were nothing more than a table of contents.  90% of the presentation was spent inside Visual Studio demo'ing new techniques.  However, I have included it in the ZIP file with the sample solution.  You can download it here. Dennis Burton on MongoDB I caught Dennis Burton's presentation on MongoDB.  I was really interested in this one as I've missed the last few times Dennis had given it to local user groups.  It was very informative and I want to spend some time learning more about MongoDB.  I'm still an old-school relational guy, but I'm willing to investigate alternatives. Brian Genisio on Prism Since I'm not a Silverlight/WPF guy (yet), I wasn't sure this would interest me.  But I talked with Brian for a couple of minutes before the presentation and he convinced me to catch it.  And I'm glad he did.  Prism looks like a very nice framework for "composable UI's" in Silverlight and WPF.  I like the whole "dependency injection" feel to it.  Nice job Brian! GiveCamp Planning I spent some time Saturday working on things for the upcoming GiveCamp (which is why I only caught a few sessions).  Ann Arbor's Day of .NET and GiveCamp have both been held at Washtenaw Community College so I took some time (along with fellow GiveCamp planners Mike Eaton and John Hopkins) to check out the new location for Ann Arbor GiveCamp this year! In the past, WCC has let us use the Business Education (BE) building for our GiveCamp's.  But this year, they're moving us over to the Morris Lawrence (ML) building.  Let me tell you – this is a step UP!  In the BE building, we were spread across two floors and spread out into classrooms.  Plus, our opening and closing ceremonies were held in the Liberal Arts (LA) building – a bit of a walk from the BE building. In the ML building, we're together for the whole weekend.  We've got a large open area (which can be sectioned off if needed) for everyone to work in:   Right next to that, we have a large area where we can set up tables and eat.  And it helps that we have a wonderful view while eating (yes, that's a lake out there with a fountain): The ML building also has showers (which we'll have access to!) and it's own auditorium for our opening and closing ceremonies. All in all, this year's GiveCamp will be great! Stay tuned to the Ann Arbor GiveCamp website.  We'll be looking for volunteers (devs, designers, PM's, etc…) soon! Technorati Tags: .NET,Day of .NET,GiveCamp,MongoDB,Prism

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• ASP.NET Error Handling: Creating an extension method to send error email

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  Error handling in asp.net required to handle any kind of error occurred. We all are using that in one or another scenario. But some errors are there which will occur in some specific scenario in production environment in this case We can’t show our programming errors to the End user. So we are going to put a error page over there or whatever best suited as per our requirement. But as a programmer we should know that error so we can track the scenario and we can solve that error or can handle error. In this kind of situation an Error Email comes handy. Whenever any occurs in system it will going to send error in our email. Here I am going to write a extension method which will send errors in email. From asp.net 3.5 or higher version of .NET framework  its provides a unique way to extend your classes. Here you can fine more information about extension method. So lets create extension method via implementing a static class like following. I am going to use same code for sending email via my Gmail account from here. Following is code for that. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Net.Mail; namespace Experiement { public static class MyExtension { public static void SendErrorEmail(this Exception ex) { MailMessage mailMessage = new MailMessage(new MailAddress("[email protected]") , new MailAddress("[email protected]")); mailMessage.Subject = "Exception Occured in your site"; mailMessage.IsBodyHtml = true; System.Text.StringBuilder errorMessage = new System.Text.StringBuilder(); errorMessage.AppendLine(string.Format("<B>{0}</B>:{1}<BR/>","Exception",ex.Message)); errorMessage.AppendLine(string.Format("<B>{0}</B>:{1}<BR/>", "Stack Trace", ex.StackTrace)); if (ex.InnerException != null) { errorMessage.AppendLine(string.Format("<B>{0}</B>:{1}<BR/>", " Inner Exception", ex.InnerException.Message)); errorMessage.AppendLine(string.Format("<B>{0}</B>:{1}<BR/>", "Inner Stack Trace", ex.InnerException.StackTrace)); } mailMessage.Body = errorMessage.ToString(); System.Net.NetworkCredential networkCredentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("[email protected]", "password"); SmtpClient smtpClient = new SmtpClient(); smtpClient.EnableSsl = true; smtpClient.UseDefaultCredentials = false; smtpClient.Credentials = networkCredentials; smtpClient.Host = "smtp.gmail.com"; smtpClient.Port = 587; smtpClient.Send(mailMessage); } } } After creating an extension method let us that extension method to handle error like following in page load event of page. using System; namespace Experiement { public partial class WebForm1 : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void Page_Load(object sender,System.EventArgs e) { try { throw new Exception("My custom Exception"); } catch (Exception ex) { ex.SendErrorEmail(); Response.Write(ex.Message); } } } } Now in above code I have generated custom exception for example but in production It can be any Exception. And you can see I have use ex.SendErrorEmail() function in catch block to send email. That’s it.. Now it will throw exception and you will email in your email box like below.   That’s its. It’s so simple…Stay tuned for more.. Happy programming.. Technorati Tags: Exception,Extension Mehtod,Error Handling,ASP.NET

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• Silverlight Cream for March 06, 2011 -- #1054

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Back from the Summit Issue, I am overloaded with posts to choose from. Submittals go first, but I'll eventually catch up... hopefully by MIX :) : Ollie Riches(-2-), Colin Eberhardt, John Papa, Jeremy Likness, Martin Krüger, Joost van Schaik, Karl Shifflett, Michael Crump, Georgi Stoyanov, Yochay Kiriaty, Page Brooks, and Deborah Kurata. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "ClassifiedCabinet: A Quick Start" Georgi Stoyanov WP7: "Easy access to WMAppManifest.xml App properties like version and title" Joost van Schaik Multiple: "Flashcards.Show Version 2 for the Desktop, Browser, and Windows Phone" Yochay Kiriaty Shoutouts: Mohamed Mosallem delivered an online session at the Second Riyadh Online Community Summit: Silverlight 4.0 with SharePoint 2010 John-Daniel Trask posted about a release of a new set of tools released for WP7 development... there's a free trial, so definitely worth a look: Mindscape Phone Elements released! From SilverlightCream.com: WP7Contrib: Trickling data to a bound collection Ollie Riches submitted a couple links... first up is this on a way they found to decrease the load on a data template in WP7 to get under the 90 mb limit and then added their solution to the WP7Contrib lib. WP7Contrib: Why we use SilverlightSerializer instead of DataContractSerializer Ollie Riches' next submittal compares the performance of the SilverlightSerializer & DataContractSerializer on the WP7 platform. MVVM Charting – Binding Multiple Series to a Visiblox Chart Colin Eberhardt sent me this post where he describes binding multiple series to a chart with no code-behind... great long multi-phase tutorial all with source. Silverlight TV 64: Dive into 64bit Support, App Model and Security John Papa has Nick Kramer of the Silverlight team up for his latest Silverlight TV episode, discussing some cool new Silverlight stuff: 64-bit support, multiple windows, etc. Building a Windows Phone 7 Application with UltraLight.mvvm Jeremy Likness has a pre-summit tutorial up on his UltraLight.mvvm project, and how he would use it to build a WP7 app... great to meet you, Jeremy! How to: Storyboard only start with the conspicuousness of the application in the browser window Martin Krüger continues his Storyboard startup solutions with this one about what to do if the Silverlight app is small or simply an island on an html page. Easy access to WMAppManifest.xml App properties like version and title Joost van Schaik posted about the WP7 manifest file and how you can get access to that information at runtime... why you ask? How about version number or title? Be sure to read the helpful hints in the last paragraph too! Mole 2010 Released Karl Shifflett, Josh Smith, and others have released the latest version of Mole... well worth the money in my opinion, if only it worked for Silverlight! (not their fault) Changing the Default Windows Phone 7 Deployment Target In Visual Studio 2010 Michael Crump points out an annoyance with the 2011 WP7 tools update... VS2010 defaults to the device rather than the emulator... and he shows us how to get it pointed back to the emulator! ClassifiedCabinet: A Quick Start Georgi Stoyanov posted a QuickStart to a 'ClassifiedCabinet' control posted on CodePlex... check out the demo first, you'll want to read the article after that. He builds a simple project from scratch using the control. Flashcards.Show Version 2 for the Desktop, Browser, and Windows Phone Yochay Kiriaty has a post up about FlashCards.Show version 2 that he worked on with Arik Poznanski and has it now running on the desktop, browser, and WP7, plus you get the source... I've been wanting to write just such an app for WP7, so hey... this saves me some time! A Simple Focus Manager for Jounce Applications Page Brooks has a post up about Jeremy Likness' Jounce... how to set focus to a particular control when a view loads. Silverlight Charting: Formatting the Axis Deborah Kurata is continuing her charting series with this one on setting axis font color and putting the text at an angle... really dresses up the chart! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• ASP.NET Performance tip- Combine multiple script file into one request with script manager

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  We all need java script for our web application and we storing our JavaScript code in .js files. Now If we have more then .js file then our browser will create a new request for each .js file. Which is a little overhead in terms of performance. If you have very big enterprise application you will have so much over head for this. Asp.net Script Manager provides a feature to combine multiple JavaScript into one request but you must remember that this feature will be available only with .NET Framework 3.5 sp1 or higher versions.  Let’s take a simple example. I am having two javascript files Jscrip1.js and Jscript2.js both are having separate functions. //Jscript1.js function Task1() { alert('task1'); } Here is another one for another file. ////Jscript1.js function Task2() { alert('task2'); } Now I am adding script reference with script manager and using this function in my code like this. <form id="form1" runat="server"> <asp:ScriptManager ID="myScriptManager" runat="server" > <Scripts> <asp:ScriptReference Path="~/JScript1.js" /> <asp:ScriptReference Path="~/JScript2.js" /> </Scripts> </asp:ScriptManager> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> Task1(); Task2(); </script> </form> Now Let’s test in Firefox with Lori plug-in which will show you how many request are made for this. Here is output of that. You can see 5 Requests are there. Now let’s do same thing in with ASP.NET Script Manager combined script feature. Like following <form id="form1" runat="server"> <asp:ScriptManager ID="myScriptManager" runat="server" > <CompositeScript> <Scripts> <asp:ScriptReference Path="~/JScript1.js" /> <asp:ScriptReference Path="~/JScript2.js" /> </Scripts> </CompositeScript> </asp:ScriptManager> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> Task1(); Task2(); </script> </form> Now let’s run it and let’s see how many request are there like following. As you can see now we have only 4 request compare to 5 request earlier. So script manager combined multiple script into one request. So if you have lots of javascript files you can save your loading time with this with combining multiple script files into one request. Hope you liked it. Stay tuned for more!!!.. Happy programming.. Technorati Tags: ASP.NET,ScriptManager,Microsoft Ajax

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• Google TV Gets Bad Reception. Can Media Center Pull in the Signal?

  - by andrewbrust

  The news hit Monday morning that Google has decided to delay the release of its Google TV platform, and has asked its OEMs to delay any products that embed the software.  Coming just about two weeks prior to the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Google’s timing is about the worst imaginable.  CES is where the platform should have had its coming out party, especially given all the anticipation that has built up since its initial announcement came 7 months ago. At last year’s CES, it seemed every consumer electronics company had fashioned its own software stack for Internet-based video programming and applications/widgets on its TVs, optical disc players and set top boxes.  In one case, I even saw two platforms on a single TV set (one provided by Yahoo and the other one native to the TV set). The whole point of Google TV was to solve this problem and offer a standard, embeddable platform.  But that won’t be happening, at least not for a while.  Google seems unable to get it together, and more proprietary approaches, like Apple TV, don’t seem to be setting the world of TV-Internet convergence on fire, either. It seems to me, that when it comes to building a “TV operating system,” Windows Media Center is still the best of a bad bunch.  But it won’t stay so for much longer without some changes.  Will Redmond pick up the ball that Google has fumbled?  I’m skeptical, but hopeful.  Regardless, here are some steps that could help Microsoft make the most of Google’s faux pas: Introduce a new Media Center version that uses XBox 360, rather than Windows 7 (or 8), as the platform.  TV platforms should be appliance-like, not PC-like.  Combine that notion with the runaway sales numbers for Xbox 360 Kinect, and the mass appeal it has delivered for Xbox, and the switch form Windows makes even more sense. As I have pointed out before, Microsoft’s Xbox implementation of its Mediaroom platform (announced and demoed at last year’s CES) gets Redmond 80% of the way toward this goal.  Nothing stops Microsoft from going the other 20%, other than its own apathy, which I hope has dissipated. Reverse the decision to remove Drive Extender technology from Windows Home Server (WHS), and create deep integration between WHS and Media Center.  I have suggested this previously as well, but the recent announcement that Drive Extender would be dropped from WHS 2.0 creates the need for me to a) join the chorus of people urging Microsoft to reconsider and b) reiterate the importance of Media Center-WHS integration in the context of a Google compete scenario. Enable Windows Phone 7 (WP7) as a Media Center client.  This would tighten the integration loop already established between WP7, Xbox and Zune.  But it would also counter Echostar/DISH Network/Sling Media, strike a blow against Google/Android (and even Apple/iOS) and could be the final strike against TiVO. Bring the WP7 user interface to Media Center and Kinect-enable it.  This would further the integration discussed above and would be appropriate recognition of WP7’s Metro UI having been built on the heritage of the original Media Center itself.  And being able to run your DVR even if you can’t find the remote (or can’t see its buttons in the dark) could be a nifty gimmick. Microsoft can do this but its consumer-oriented organization, responsible for Xbox, Zune and WP7, has to take the reins here, or none of this will likely work.  There’s a significant chance that won’t happen, but I won’t let that stop me from hoping that it does and insisting that it must.  Honestly, this fight is Microsoft’s to lose.

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• Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g is Here!

  - by chung.wu

  We hope that you enjoyed the launch event. If you missed it, you may still watch it via our on demand webcast, which is being produced and will be posted very shortly. 11gR1 is a major release of Oracle Enterprise Manager, and as one would expect from a big release, there are many new capabilities that appeal to a broad set of audience. Before going into the laundry list of new features, let's talk about the key themes for this release to put things in perspective. First, this release is about Business Driven Application Management. The traditional paradigm of component centric systems management simply cannot satisfy the management needs of modern distributed applications, as they do not provide adequate visibility of whether these applications are truly meeting the service level expectations of the business users. Business Driven Application Management helps IT manage applications according to the needs of the business users so that valuable IT resources can be better focused to help deliver better business results. To support Business Driven Application Management, 11gR1 builds on the work that we started in 10g to provide better support for user experience management. This capability helps IT better understand how users use applications and the experience that the applications provide so that IT can take actions to help end users get their work done more effectively. In addition, this release also delivers improved business transaction management capabilities to make it faster and easier to understand and troubleshoot transaction problems that impact end user experience. Second, this release includes strengthened Integrated Application-to-Disk Management. Every component of an application environment, from the application logic to the application server, to database, host machines and storage devices, etc... can affect end user experience. After user experience improvement needs are identified, IT needs tools that can be used do deep dive diagnostics for each of the application environment component, analyze configurations and deploy changes. Enterprise Manager 11gR1 extends coverage of key application environment components to include full support for Oracle Database 11gR2, Exadata V2, and Fusion Middleware 11g. For composite and Java application management, two key pieces of technologies, JVM Diagnostic and Composite Application Monitoring and Modeler, are now fully integrated into Enterprise Manager so there is no need to install and maintain separate tools. In addition, we have delivered the first set of integration between Enterprise Manager Grid Control and Enterprise Manager Ops Center so that hardware level events can be centrally monitored via Grid Control. Finally, this release delivers Integrated Systems Management and Support for customers of Oracle technologies. Traditionally, systems management tools and tech support were separate silos. When problems occur, administrators used internally deployed tools to try to solve the problems themselves. If they couldn't fix the problems, then they would use some sort of support website to get help from the vendor's support staff. Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g integrates problem diagnostic and remediation workflow. Administrators can use Oracle Enterprise Manager's various diagnostic tools to begin the troubleshooting process. They can also use the integrated access to My Oracle Support to look up solutions and download software patches. If further help is needed, administrators can open service requests from right within Oracle Enterprise Manager and track status update. Oracle's support staff, using Enterprise Manager's configuration management capabilities, can collect important configuration information about customer environments in order to expedite problem resolution. This tight integration between Oracle Enterprise Manager and My Oracle Support helps Oracle customers achieve a Superior Ownership Experience for their Oracle products. So there you have it. This is a brief 50,000 feet overview of Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g. We know you are hungry for the details. We are going to write about it in the coming days and weeks. For those of you that absolutely can't wait to find out more, you may download our software to try it out today. In fact, for the first time ever, the initial release of Oracle Enterprise Manager is available for both 32 and 64 bit Linux. Additional O/S ports will arrive in the coming weeks. Please stay tuned on the Oracle Enterprise Manager blog for additional updates.

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• Understanding Collabnet&rsquo;s LDAP binding

  - by Robert May

  We want to use both subversion usernames and passwords as well as Active Directory for our authentication on our Collabnet subversion server. This has proven to be more of a challenge than we thought, mostly because Collabnet’s documentation is pretty poor. To supplement that documentation, I add my own. The first thing to understand is that the attribute that you specify in the LDAP Login Attribute ONLY applies to lookups done for the user.  It does NOT apply to the LDAP Bind DN field.  Second, know that the debug logs (error is the one you want) don’t give you debug information for the bind DN, just the login attempts.  Third, by default, Active Directory does not allow anonymous binds, so you MUST put in a user that has the authority to query the Active Directory ldap. Because of these items, the values to set in those fields can be somewhat confusing.  You’ll want to have ADSI Edit handy (I also used ldp, which is installed by default on server 2008), since ADSI Edit can help you find stuff in your active directory.  Be careful, you can also break stuff. Here’s what should go into those fields. LDAP Security Level:  Should be set to None LDAP Server Host:  Should be set to the full name of a domain controller in your domain.  For example, dc.mydomain.com LDAP Server Port:  Should be set to 3268.  The default port of 389 will only query that specific server, not the global catalog.  By setting it to 3268, the global catalog will be queried, which is probably what you want. LDAP Base DN:  Should be set to the location where you want the search for users to begin.  By default, the search scope is set to sub, so all child organizational units below this setting will be searched.  In my case, I had created an OU specifically for users for group policies.  My value ended up being:  OU=MyOu,DC=domain,DC=org.   However, if you’re pointing it to the default Users folder, you may end up with something like CN=Users,DC=domain,DC=org (or com or whatever).  Again, use ADSI edit and use the Distinguished Name that it shows. LDAP Bind DN:  This needs to be the Distinguished Name of the user that you’re going to use for binding (i.e. the user you’ll be impersonating) for doing queries.  In my case, it ended up being CN=svn svn,OU=MyOu,DC=domain,DC=org.  Why the double svn, you might ask?  That’s because the first and last name fields are set to svn and by default, the distinguished name is the first and last name fields!  That’s important.  Its NOT the username or account name!  Again, use ADSI edit, browse to the username you want to use, right click and select properties, and then search the attributes for the Distinguished Name.  Once you’ve found that, select it and click View and you can copy and paste that into this field. LDAP Bind Password:  This is the password for the account in the Bind DN LDAP login Attribute: sAMAccountName.  If you leave this blank, uid is used, which may not even be set.  This tells it to use the Account Name field that’s defined under the account tab for users in Active Directory Users and Computers.  Note that this attribute DOES NOT APPLY to the LDAP Bind DN.  You must use the full distinguished name of the bind DN.  This attribute allows users to type their username and password for authentication, rather than typing their distinguished name, which they probably don’t know. LDAP Search Scope:  Probably should stay at sub, but could be different depending on your situation. LDAP Filter:  I left mine blank, but you could provide one to limit what you want to see.  LDP would be helpful for determining what this is. LDAP Server Certificate Verification:  I left it checked, but didn’t try it without it being checked. Hopefully, this will save some others pain when trying to get Collabnet setup. Technorati Tags: Subversion,collabnet

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