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• Clustering Basics and Challenges

  - by Karoly Vegh

  For upcoming posts it seemed to be a good idea to dedicate some time for cluster basic concepts and theory. This post misses a lot of details that would explode the articlesize, should you have questions, do not hesitate to ask them in the comments.  The goal here is to get some concepts straight. I can't promise to give you an overall complete definitions of cluster, cluster agent, quorum, voting, fencing, split brain condition, so the following is more of an explanation. Here we go. -------- Cluster, HA, failover, switchover, scalability -------- An attempted definition of a Cluster: A cluster is a set (2+) server nodes dedicated to keep application services alive, communicating through the cluster software/framework with eachother, test and probe health status of servernodes/services and with quorum based decisions and with switchover/failover techniques keep the application services running on them available. That is, should a node that runs a service unexpectedly lose functionality/connection, the other ones would take over the and run the services, so that availability is guaranteed. To provide availability while strictly sticking to a consistent clusterconfiguration is the main goal of a cluster.  At this point we have to add that this defines a HA-cluster, a High-Availability cluster, where the clusternodes are planned to run the services in an active-standby, or failover fashion. An example could be a single instance database. Some applications can be run in a distributed or scalable fashion. In the latter case instances of the application run actively on separate clusternodes serving servicerequests simultaneously. An example for this version could be a webserver that forwards connection requests to many backend servers in a round-robin way. Or a database running in active-active RAC setup.  -------- Cluster arhitecture, interconnect, topologies -------- Now, what is a cluster made of? Servers, right. These servers (the clusternodes) need to communicate. This of course happens over the network, usually over dedicated network interfaces interconnecting all the clusternodes. These connection are called interconnects.How many clusternodes are in a cluster? There are different cluster topologies. The most simple one is a clustered pair topology, involving only two clusternodes:  There are several more topologies, clicking the image above will take you to the relevant documentation. Also, to answer the question Solaris Cluster allows you to run up to 16 servers in a cluster. Where shall these clusternodes be placed? A very important question. The right answer is: It depends on what you plan to achieve with the cluster. Do you plan to avoid only a server outage? Then you can place them right next to eachother in the datacenter. Do you need to avoid DataCenter outage? In that case of course you should place them at least in different fire zones. Or in two geographically distant DataCenters to avoid disasters like floods, large-scale fires or power outages. We call this a stretched- or campus cluster, the clusternodes being several kilometers away from eachother. To cover really large distances, you probably need to move to a GeoCluster, which is a different kind of animal.  What is a geocluster? A Geographic Cluster in Solaris Cluster terms is actually a metacluster between two, separate (locally-HA) clusters.  -------- Cluster resource types, agents, resources, resource groups -------- So how does the cluster manage my applications? The cluster needs to start, stop and probe your applications. If you application runs, the cluster needs to check regularly if the application state is healthy, does it respond over the network, does it have all the processes running, etc. This is called probing. If the cluster deems the application is in a faulty state, then it can try to restart it locally or decide to switch (stop on node A, start on node B) the service. Starting, stopping and probing are the three actions that a cluster agent does. There are many different kinds of agents included in Solaris Cluster, but you can build your own too. Examples are an agent that manages (mounts, moves) ZFS filesystems, or the Oracle DB HA agent that cares about the database, or an agent that moves a floating IP address between nodes. There are lots of other agents included for Apache, Tomcat, MySQL, Oracle DB, Oracle Weblogic, Zones, LDoms, NFS, DNS, etc.We also need to clarify the difference between a cluster resource and the cluster resource group.A cluster resource is something that is managed by a cluster agent. Cluster resource types are included in Solaris cluster (see above, e.g. HAStoragePlus, HA-Oracle, LogicalHost). You can group cluster resources into cluster resourcegroups, and switch these groups together from one node to another. To stick to the example above, to move an Oracle DB service from one node to another, you have to switch the group between nodes, and the agents of the cluster resources in the group will do the following:  On node A Shut down the DB Unconfigure the LogicalHost IP the DB Listener listens on unmount the filesystem   Then, on node B: mount the FS configure the IP  startup the DB -------- Voting, Quorum, Split Brain Condition, Fencing, Amnesia -------- How do the clusternodes agree upon their action? How do they decide which node runs what services? Another important question. Running a cluster is a strictly democratic thing.Every node has votes, and you need the majority of votes to have the deciding power. Now, this is usually no problem, clusternodes think very much all alike. Still, every action needs to be governed upon in a productive system, and has to be agreed upon. Agreeing is easy as long as the clusternodes all behave and talk to eachother over the interconnect. But if the interconnect is gone/down, this all gets tricky and confusing. Clusternodes think like this: "My job is to run these services. The other node does not answer my interconnect communication, it must be down. I'd better take control and run the services!". The problem is, as I have already mentioned, clusternodes very much think alike. If the interconnect is gone, they all assume the other node is down, and they all want to mount the data backend, enable the IP and run the database. Double IPs, double mounts, double DB instances - now that is trouble. Also, in a 2-node cluster they both have only 50% of the votes, that is, they themselves alone are not allowed to run a cluster.  This is where you need a quorum device. According to Wikipedia, the "requirement for a quorum is protection against totally unrepresentative action in the name of the body by an unduly small number of persons.". They need additional votes to run the cluster. For this requirement a 2-node cluster needs a quorum device or a quorum server. If the interconnect is gone, (this is what we call a split brain condition) both nodes start to race and try to reserve the quorum device to themselves. They do this, because the quorum device bears an additional vote, that could ensure majority (50% +1). The one that manages to lock the quorum device (e.g. if it's an FC LUN, it SCSI reserves it) wins the right to build/run a cluster, the other one - realizing he was late - panics/reboots to ensure the cluster config stays consistent.  Losing the interconnect isn't only endangering the availability of services, but it also endangers the cluster configuration consistence. Just imagine node A being down and during that the cluster configuration changes. Now node B goes down, and node A comes up. It isn't uptodate about the cluster configuration's changes so it will refuse to start a cluster, since that would lead to cluster amnesia, that is the cluster had some changes, but now runs with an older cluster configuration repository state, that is it's like it forgot about the changes.  Also, to ensure application data consistence, the clusternode that wins the race makes sure that a server that isn't part of or can't currently join the cluster can access the devices. This procedure is called fencing. This usually happens to storage LUNs via SCSI reservation.  Now, another important question: Where do I place the quorum disk?  Imagine having two sites, two separate datacenters, one in the north of the city and the other one in the south part of it. You run a stretched cluster in the clustered pair topology. Where do you place the quorum disk/server? If you put it into the north DC, and that gets hit by a meteor, you lose one clusternode, which isn't a problem, but you also lose your quorum, and the south clusternode can't keep the cluster running lacking the votes. This problem can't be solved with two sites and a campus cluster. You will need a third site to either place the quorum server to, or a third clusternode. Otherwise, lacking majority, if you lose the site that had your quorum, you lose the cluster. Okay, we covered the very basics. We haven't talked about virtualization support, CCR, ClusterFilesystems, DID devices, affinities, storage-replication, management tools, upgrade procedures - should those be interesting for you, let me know in the comments, along with any other questions. Given enough demand I'd be glad to write a followup post too. Now I really want to move on to the second part in the series: ClusterInstallation.  Oh, as for additional source of information, I recommend the documentation: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23623_01/index.html, and the OTN Oracle Solaris Cluster site: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris-cluster/index.html

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• The Internet of Things & Commerce: Part 2 -- Interview with Brian Celenza, Commerce Innovation Strategist

  - by Katrina Gosek, Director | Commerce Product Strategy-Oracle

  Internet of Things & Commerce Series: Part 2 (of 3) Welcome back to the second installation of my three part series on the Internet of Things & Commerce. A few weeks ago, I wrote “The Next 7,000 Days” about how we’ve become embedded in a digital architecture in the last 7,000 days since the birth of the internet – an architecture that everyday ties the massive expanse of the internet evermore closely with our physical lives. This blog series explores how this new blend of virtual and material will change how we shop and how businesses sell. Now enjoy reading my interview with Brian Celenza, one of the chief strategists in our Oracle Commerce innovation group. He comments on the past, present, and future of the how the growing Internet of Things relates and will relate to the buying and selling of goods on and offline. -------------------------------------------- QUESTION: You probably have one of the coolest jobs on our team, Brian – and frankly, one of the coolest jobs in our industry. As part of the innovation team for Oracle Commerce, you’re regularly working on bold features and groundbreaking commerce-focused experiences for our vision demos. As you look back over the past couple of years, what is the biggest trend (or trends) you’ve seen in digital commerce that started to bring us closer to this idea of what people are calling an “Internet of Things”? Brian: Well as you look back over the last couple of years, the speed at which change in our industry has moved looks like one of those blurred movement photos – you know the ones where the landscape blurs because the observer is moving so quickly your eye focus can’t keep up. But one thing that is absolutely clear is that the biggest catalyst for that speed of change – especially over the last three years – has been mobile. Mobile technology changed everything. Over the last three years the entire thought process of how to sell on (and offline) has shifted because of mobile technology advances. Particularly for eCommerce professionals who have started to move past the notion of “channels” for selling goods to this notion of “Mobile First”… then the Web site. Or more accurately, that everything – smartphones, web, store, tablet – is just one channel or has to act like one singular access point to the same product catalog, information and content. The most innovative eCommerce professionals realized some time ago that it’s not ideal to build an eCommerce Web site and then build everything on top of or off of it. Rather, they want to build an eCommerce API and then integrate it will all other systems. To accomplish this, they are leveraging all the latest mobile technologies or possibilities mobile technology has opened up: 4G and LTE, GPS, bluetooth, touch screens, apps, html5… How has this all started to come together for shopping experiences on and offline? Well to give you a personal example, I remember visiting an Apple store a few years ago and being amazed that I didn’t have to wait in line because a store associate knew everything about me from my ID – right there on the sales floor – and could check me out anywhere. Then just a few months later (when like any good addict) I went back to get the latest and greatest new gadget, I felt like I was stealing it because I could check myself out with my smartphone. I didn’t even need to see a sales associate OR go to a cash register. Amazing. And since then, all sort sorts of companies across all different types of industries – from food service to apparel –  are starting to see mobile payments in the billions of dollars now thanks not only to the convenience factor but to smart loyalty rewards programs as well. These are just some really simple current examples that come to mind. So many different things have happened in the last couple of years, it’s hard to really absorb all of the quickly – because as soon as you do, everything changes again! Just like that blurry speed photo image. For eCommerce, however, this type of new environment underscores the importance of building an eCommerce API – a platform that has services you can tap in to and build on as the landscape changes at a fever pitch. It’s a mobile first perspective. A web service perspective – particularly if you are thinking of how to engage customers across digital and physical spaces. —— QUESTION: Thanks for bringing us into the present – some really great examples you gave there to put things into perspective. So what do you see as the biggest trend right now around the “Internet of Things” – and what’s coming next few years? Brian: Honestly, even sitting where I am in the innovation group – it’s hard to look out even 12 months because, well, I don’t even think we’ve fully caught up with what is possible now. But I can definitely say that in the last 12 months and in the coming 12 months, in the technology and eCommerce world it’s all about iBeacons. iBeacons are awesome tools we have right now to tie together physical and digital shopping experiences. They know exactly where you are as a shopper and can communicate that to businesses. Currently there seem to be two camps of thought around iBeacons. First, many people are thinking of them like an “indoor GPS”, which to be fair they literally are. The use case this first camp envisions for iBeacons is primarily for advertising and marketing. So they use iBeacons to push location-based promotions to customers if they are close to a store or in a store. You may have seen these types of mobile promotions start to pop up occasionally on your smart phone as you pass by a store you’ve bought from in the past. That’s the work of iBeacons. But in my humble opinion, these promotions probably come too early in the customer journey and although they may be well timed and work to “convert” in some cases, I imagine in most they are just eroding customer trust because they are kind of a “one-size-fits-all” solution rather than one that is taking into account what exactly the customer might be looking for in that particular moment. Maybe they just want more information and a promotion is way too soon for that type of customer. The second camp is more in line with where my thinking falls. In this case, businesses take a more sensitive approach with iBeacons to customers’ needs. Instead of throwing out a “one-size-fits-all” to any passer by with iBeacons, the use case is more around looking at the physical proximity of a customer as an opportunity to provide a service: show expert reviews on a product they may be looking at in a particular aisle of a store, offer the opportunity to compare prices (and then offer a promotion), signal an in-store associate if a customer has been in the store for more than 10 minutes in one place. These are all less intrusive more value-driven uses of iBeacons. And they are more about building customer trust through service. To take this example a bit further into the future realm of “Big Data” and “Internet of Things” businesses could actually use the Oracle Commerce Platform and iBeacons to “silently” track customer movement w/in the store to provide higher quality service. And this doesn’t have to be creepy or intrusive. Simply if a customer has been in a particular department or aisle for more than a 5 or 10 minutes, an in-store associate could come over an offer some assistance already knowing customer preferences from their online profile and maybe even seeing the items in a shopping cart they started at home. None of this has to be revealed to the customer, but it certainly could boost the level of service an in-store sales associate could provide. Or, in another futuristic example, stores could use the digital footprint of the physical store transmitted by iBeacons to generate heat maps of the store that could be tracked over time. Imagine how much you could find out about which parts of the store are more busy during certain parts of the day or seasons. This could completely revolutionize how physical merchandising is deployed or where certain high value / new items are placed. And / or this use of iBeacons could also help businesses figure out if customers are getting held up in certain parts of the store during busy days like Black Friday. If long lines are causing customers to bounce from a physical store and leave those holiday gifts behind, maybe having employees with mobile check as an option could remove the cash register bottleneck. But going to back to my original statement, it’s all still very early in the story for iBeacons. The hardware manufacturers are still very new and there is still not one clear standard.  Honestly, it all goes back to building and maintaining an extensible and flexible platform for anywhere engagement. What you’re building today should allow you to rapidly take advantage of whatever unimaginable use cases wait around the corner. ------------------------------------------------------ I hope you enjoyed the brief interview with Brian. It’s really awesome to have such smart and innovation-minded individuals on our Oracle Commerce innovation team. Please join me again in a few weeks for Part 3 of this series where I interview one of the product managers on our team about how the blending of digital and in-store selling in influencing our product development and vision.

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• Using Table-Valued Parameters With SQL Server Reporting Services

  - by Jesse

  In my last post I talked about using table-valued parameters to pass a list of integer values to a stored procedure without resorting to using comma-delimited strings and parsing out each value into a TABLE variable. In this post I’ll extend the “Customer Transaction Summary” report example to see how we might leverage this same stored procedure from within an SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) report. I’ve worked with SSRS off and on for the past several years and have generally found it to be a very useful tool for building nice-looking reports for end users quickly and easily. That said, I’ve been frustrated by SSRS from time to time when seemingly simple things are difficult to accomplish or simply not supported at all. I thought that using table-valued parameters from within a SSRS report would be simple, but unfortunately I was wrong. Customer Transaction Summary Example Let’s take the “Customer Transaction Summary” report example from the last post and try to plug that same stored procedure into an SSRS report. Our report will have three parameters: Start Date – beginning of the date range for which the report will summarize customer transactions End Date – end of the date range for which the report will summarize customer transactions Customer Ids – One or more customer Ids representing the customers that will be included in the report The simplest way to get started with this report will be to create a new dataset and point it at our Customer Transaction Summary report stored procedure (note that I’m using SSRS 2012 in the screenshots below, but there should be little to no difference with SSRS 2008): When you initially create this dataset the SSRS designer will try to invoke the stored procedure to determine what the parameters and output fields are for you automatically. As part of this process the following dialog pops-up: Obviously I can’t use this dialog to specify a value for the ‘@customerIds’ parameter since it is of the IntegerListTableType user-defined type that we created in the last post. Unfortunately this really throws the SSRS designer for a loop, and regardless of what combination of Data Type, Pass Null Value, or Parameter Value I used here, I kept getting this error dialog with the message, "Operand type clash: nvarchar is incompatible with IntegerListTableType". This error message makes some sense considering that the nvarchar type is indeed incompatible with the IntegerListTableType, but there’s little clue given as to how to remedy the situation. I don’t know for sure, but I think that behind-the-scenes the SSRS designer is trying to give the @customerIds parameter an nvarchar-typed SqlParameter which is causing the issue. When I first saw this error I figured that this might just be a limitation of the dataset designer and that I’d be able to work around the issue by manually defining the parameters. I know that there are some special steps that need to be taken when invoking a stored procedure with a table-valued parameter from ADO .NET, so I figured that I might be able to use some custom code embedded in the report  to create a SqlParameter instance with the needed properties and value to make this work, but the “Operand type clash" error message persisted. The Text Query Approach Just because we’re using a stored procedure to create the dataset for this report doesn’t mean that we can’t use the ‘Text’ Query Type option and construct an EXEC statement that will invoke the stored procedure. In order for this to work properly the EXEC statement will also need to declare and populate an IntegerListTableType variable to pass into the stored procedure. Before I go any further I want to make one point clear: this is a really ugly hack and it makes me cringe to do it. Simply put, I strongly feel that it should not be this difficult to use a table-valued parameter with SSRS. With that said, let’s take a look at what we’ll have to do to make this work. Manually Define Parameters First, we’ll need to manually define the parameters for report by right-clicking on the ‘Parameters’ folder in the ‘Report Data’ window. We’ll need to define the ‘@startDate’ and ‘@endDate’ as simple date parameters. We’ll also create a parameter called ‘@customerIds’ that will be a mutli-valued Integer parameter: In the ‘Available Values’ tab we’ll point this parameter at a simple dataset that just returns the CustomerId and CustomerName of each row in the Customers table of the database or manually define a handful of Customer Id values to make available when the report runs. Once we have these parameters properly defined we can take another crack at creating the dataset that will invoke the ‘rpt_CustomerTransactionSummary’ stored procedure. This time we’ll choose the ‘Text’ query type option and put the following into the ‘Query’ text area: 1: exec('declare @customerIdList IntegerListTableType ' + @customerIdInserts + 2: ' EXEC rpt_CustomerTransactionSummary 3: @startDate=''' + @startDate + ''', 4: @endDate='''+ @endDate + ''', 5: @customerIds=@customerIdList')   By using the ‘Text’ query type we can enter any arbitrary SQL that we we want to and then use parameters and string concatenation to inject pieces of that query at run time. It can be a bit tricky to parse this out at first glance, but from the SSRS designer’s point of view this query defines three parameters: @customerIdInserts – This will be a Text parameter that we use to define INSERT statements that will populate the @customerIdList variable that is being declared in the SQL. This parameter won’t actually ever get passed into the stored procedure. I’ll go into how this will work in a bit. @startDate – This is a simple date parameter that will get passed through directly into the @startDate parameter of the stored procedure on line 3. @endDate – This is another simple data parameter that will get passed through into the @endDate parameter of the stored procedure on line 4. At this point the dataset designer will be able to correctly parse the query and should even be able to detect the fields that the stored procedure will return without needing to specify any values for query when prompted to. Once the dataset has been correctly defined we’ll have a @customerIdInserts parameter listed in the ‘Parameters’ tab of the dataset designer. We need to define an expression for this parameter that will take the values selected by the user for the ‘@customerIds’ parameter that we defined earlier and convert them into INSERT statements that will populate the @customerIdList variable that we defined in our Text query. In order to do this we’ll need to add some custom code to our report using the ‘Report Properties’ dialog: Any custom code defined in the Report Properties dialog gets embedded into the .rdl of the report itself and (unfortunately) must be written in VB .NET. Note that you can also add references to custom .NET assemblies (which could be written in any language), but that’s outside the scope of this post so we’ll stick with the “quick and dirty” VB .NET approach for now. Here’s the VB .NET code (note that any embedded code that you add here must be defined in a static/shared function, though you can define as many functions as you want): 1: Public Shared Function BuildIntegerListInserts(ByVal variableName As String, ByVal paramValues As Object()) As String 2: Dim insertStatements As New System.Text.StringBuilder() 3: For Each paramValue As Object In paramValues 4: insertStatements.AppendLine(String.Format("INSERT {0} VALUES ({1})", variableName, paramValue)) 5: Next 6: Return insertStatements.ToString() 7: End Function   This method takes a variable name and an array of objects. We use an array of objects here because that is how SSRS will pass us the values that were selected by the user at run-time. The method uses a StringBuilder to construct INSERT statements that will insert each value from the object array into the provided variable name. Once this method has been defined in the custom code for the report we can go back into the dataset designer’s Parameters tab and update the expression for the ‘@customerIdInserts’ parameter by clicking on the button with the “function” symbol that appears to the right of the parameter value. We’ll set the expression to: 1: =Code.BuildIntegerListInserts("@customerIdList ", Parameters!customerIds.Value)   In order to invoke our custom code method we simply need to invoke “Code.<method name>” and pass in any needed parameters. The first parameter needs to match the name of the IntegerListTableType variable that we used in the EXEC statement of our query. The second parameter will come from the Value property of the ‘@customerIds’ parameter (this evaluates to an object array at run time). Finally, we’ll need to edit the properties of the ‘@customerIdInserts’ parameter on the report to mark it as a nullable internal parameter so that users aren’t prompted to provide a value for it when running the report. Limitations And Final Thoughts When I first started looking into the text query approach described above I wondered if there might be an upper limit to the size of the string that can be used to run a report. Obviously, the size of the actual query could increase pretty dramatically if you have a parameter that has a lot of potential values or you need to support several different table-valued parameters in the same query. I tested the example Customer Transaction Summary report with 1000 selected customers without any issue, but your mileage may vary depending on how much data you might need to pass into your query. If you think that the text query hack is a lot of work just to use a table-valued parameter, I agree! I think that it should be a lot easier than this to use a table-valued parameter from within SSRS, but so far I haven’t found a better way. It might be possible to create some custom .NET code that could build the EXEC statement for a given set of parameters automatically, but exploring that will have to wait for another post. For now, unless there’s a really compelling reason or requirement to use table-valued parameters from SSRS reports I would probably stick with the tried and true “join-multi-valued-parameter-to-CSV-and-split-in-the-query” approach for using mutli-valued parameters in a stored procedure.

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• That Escalated Quickly

  - by Jesse Taber

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

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• DocumentDB - Another Azure NoSQL Storage Service

  - by Shaun

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

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 25, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 25, 2011Popular ReleasesMosaic Project: Mosaic Alpha build 252: First public release There are 8 widgets: - Desktop - Gmail - Weather - Control panel - Me - Video - Clock - PicturesUsage Agent: Usage Agent 9.0.8: Latest release. Changes include: - Fixes for Optus - Usage Delta statistic for BigPond - Eliminated the need for UAC prompt at every startupjQuery List DragSort: jQuery List DragSort 0.4.3: Fix item not dropping correctly on Chrome and jQuery 1.6KinectNUI: Jun 25 Alpha Release: Initial public version. No installer needed, just run the EXE.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v3.3 [v1.0.5 Compatible]: I have added support for all the new items in Terraria v1.0.5. I have also added the ability to put your character in hardcore mode or take them out via a simple checkbox on the stats tab. If you come across any bugs, please let me know immediately.Terraria World Viewer: Version 1.5: Update June 24th Made compatible with the new tiles found in Terraria 1.0.5Kinect Earth Move: KinectEarthMove sample code: Sample code releasedThis is a sample code for Kinect for Windows SDK beta, which was demonstrated on Channel 9 Kinect for Windows SKD beta launch event on June 17 2011. Using color image and skeleton data from Kinect and user in front of Kinect can manipulate the earth between his/her hands.NetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.9b: Changes: - fix critical issue 262334 (AccessViolationException while using events in a COMAddin) - remove x64 Assemblies (not necessary) Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:..............................................................COM Proxy Management, Events, etc. - Examples in C# and VB.Net:............................................................Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access - COMAddi...MiniTwitter: 1.70: MiniTwitter 1.70 ???? ?? ????? xAuth ?? OAuth ??????? 1.70 ??????????????????????????。 ???????????????? Twitter ? Web ??????????、PIN ????????????????????。??????????????????、???????????????????????????。Total Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin (.wfx): Total Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin 0.8.7b: Total Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin version 0.8.7b. Bug fixes: - BROKEN PLUGIN by upgrading SkyDriveServiceClient version 2.0.1b. Please do not forget to express your opinion of the plugin by rating it! Donate (EUR)SkyDrive .Net API Client: SkyDrive .Net API Client 2.0.1b (RELOADED): SkyDrive .Net API Client assembly has been RELOADED in version 2.0.1b as a REAL API. It supports the followings: - Creating root and sub folders - Uploading and downloading files - Renaming and deleting folders and files Bug fixes: - BROKEN API (issue 6834) Please do not forget to express your opinion of the assembly by rating it! Donate (EUR)Mini SQL Query: Mini SQL Query v1.0.0.59794: This release includes the following enhancements: Added a Most Recently Used file list Added Row counts to the query (per tab) and table view windows Added the Command Timeout option, only valid for MSSQL for now - see options If you have no idea what this thing is make sure you check out http://pksoftware.net/MiniSqlQuery/Help/MiniSqlQueryQuickStart.docx for an introduction. PK :-]HydroDesktop - CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System Desktop Application: 1.2.591 Beta Release: 1.2.591 Beta Releasepatterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 12 - June 22, 2011: Changes from previous drop: Minor code changes. New "Introduction" chapter. New "Modularity" chapter. Updated "Architecture" chapter. Updated "Server-Side Implementation" chapter. Updated "Client Data Management and Caching" chapter. Guidance Chapters Ready for Review The Word documents for the chapters are included with the source code in addition to the CHM to help you provide feedback. The PDF is provided as a separate download for your convenience. Installation Overview To ins...SQL Server HowTo: Version 1.0: Initial ReleaseDropBox Linker: DropBox Linker 1.3: Added "Get links..." dialog, that provides selective public files links copying Get links link added to tray menu as the default option Fixed URL encoding .NET Framework 4.0 Client Profile requiredDotNetNuke® Community Edition: 06.00.00 Beta: Beta 1 (Build 2300) includes many important enhancements to the user experience. The control panel has been updated for easier access to the most important features and additional forms have been adapted to the new pattern. This release also includes many bug fixes that make it more stable than previous CTP releases. Beta ForumsBlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.5 RC: BlogEngine.NET Hosting - Click Here! 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! This is a Release Candidate version for BlogEngine.NET 2.5. The most current, stable version of BlogEngine.NET is version 2.0. Find out more about the BlogEngine.NET 2.5 RC here. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. To get started, be sure to check out our installation documentation. If you are upgrading from a previous version, please take a look at ...Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - a centralized code sample library: All-In-One Code Framework 2011-06-19: Alternatively, you can install Sample Browser or Sample Browser VS extension, and download the code samples from Sample Browser. Improved and Newly Added Examples:For an up-to-date code sample index, please refer to All-In-One Code Framework Sample Catalog. NEW Samples for Windows Azure Sample Description Owner CSAzureStartupTask The sample demonstrates using the startup tasks to install the prerequisites or to modify configuration settings for your environment in Windows Azure Rafe Wu ...IronPython: 2.7.1 Beta 1: This is the first beta release of IronPython 2.7. Like IronPython 54498, this release requires .NET 4 or Silverlight 4. This release will replace any existing IronPython installation. The highlights of this release are: Updated the standard library to match CPython 2.7.2. Add the ast, csv, and unicodedata modules. Fixed several bugs. IronPython Tools for Visual Studio are disabled by default. See http://pytools.codeplex.com for the next generation of Python Visual Studio support. See...New Projects.Net Image Processor: An image processing wrapper around GDI+, allowing you to apply one or more filters against an image source. Out-of-the-box support: * Conversion from one image type to another * Image resizing and various strategies for resolving aspect ratio * Edge detection * GIF support * Chaining filters together to perform complex operations on a single image Filters can be stacked and queued so that they run one after the other in a process queue. The processor can accept filenames, streams o...AsyncGetListSample: Reactive Extensions?????、Twitter??????????????????????????????。Awful for Windows Phone 7: Awful for Windows Phone 7 is a work-in-progress forum reader software for the Something Awful Forums.binzlog2.com: BlogEngine sourceCaffeine Model: A view model framework that specifically targets problems such as change recognition, validation and graph traversal. Provides robust support in these areas and base classes from which to build off of.CxBuild: cxbuildDotNetNuke Scheduler DashboardControl: The DNNSchedulerDashboard control adds a new control to the DotNetNuke Dashboard module that monitors the execution of the tasks in the DNN Scheduler. This control will keep host administrators informed on the tasks that are not executing on time.fkanban: A free Agile tool insist of Product backlog,sprint,Kanban etcKillstone Spycam: A "WebCam Timershot" style application that can take photos from a DirectShow device at a specified interval and save to disk and/or upload via FTP.Live Services for Moodle 1.9: This is a modification to the original Microsoft Live Services for Moodle allowing users to chat through Live Messenger using the web client.MoreEPG: Import of Extern EPG in Windows Media Center (Windows 7)NAntExt: The NAntExt is an extensions library for NAnt. This library includes Tasks and Functions which are much needed in using NAnt, but are not included in NAnt or NAntContrib. The ideal would be to eventually cycle them back into one of these projects. NetSquare - FourSquare C#.NET Open Source Class Library: NetSquare makes it easy to access Foursquare via the new v2 OAuth interface. This will be published as a VS 2010 C# project with associated examples.Power Presenter 2011: Do you want to make a great photo slideshow? Then get Power Presenter the best for showing phothos. Music with a click from the menu of the window. Better for you!!! If you want to join us it is a single rule NO-SEELING & NO-MONEY. It is developed in VB.NET. PowerPackPS: PowerPackPS is a DSV for creating PowerGUI PowerPacks using Powershell instead of the GUI or XML.Resuming Action Results for ASP.NET MVC: Resuming Action Results for MVC provides a similar implementation as the standard FileResult ActionResult objects but with the intelligence to detect range requests and respond appropriately with no need to write a single extra line of code.SoundSwitch: SoundSwitch makes it easier to switch playback devices (sound cards). Normally, to switch a Playback device you need to right click the sound icon in the bottom right corner of your screen (system tray), choose "Playback devices" and then change the default playback device. Every time you want to switch. With SoundSwitch you just configure once between which Playback devices you want to toggle and then you can press Ctrl+Alt+F11 to toggle automatically!StopWatch Plus: This is a simple stopwatch with which you can set a countdown, save and control the various steps imposed by the pause button. The projects will is still under development and not yet possess all the qualities mentioned above, currently is a simple countdown. _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Questo è un semplice cronometro col quale si potrà impostare un conto alla rovescia, salvare e tenere sotto controllo i vari step ...TFS Reports: The TFS Reports project is about sharing knowledge around the reporting capabilities in TFS and contains both guidance as well as ready to use reports. TRK ATR: Website for TV/Radio channel UpdateTool: A tool used to update client This project is for personal use. Please do not download in now.Windows Service Helper: Helps by creating a Play/Stop/Pause UI when running with a debugger attached, but also allows the windows service to be installed and run by the Windows Services environment as well. All this with one line of code!XNB filetype plugin for Paint.NET: This plugin allows viewing and editing of XNA compiled textures from inside Paint.NET.

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #003

  - by pinaldave

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

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• Error in code of basic game using multiple sprites and surfaceView [on hold]

  - by Khagendra Nath Mahato

  I am a beginner to android and i was trying to make a basic game with the help of an online video tutorial. I am having problem with the multi-sprites and how to use with surfaceview.The application fails launching. Here is the code of the game.please help me. package com.example.killthemall; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.List; import java.util.Random; import android.app.Activity; import android.content.Context; import android.graphics.Bitmap; import android.graphics.BitmapFactory; import android.graphics.Canvas; import android.graphics.Rect; import android.os.Bundle; import android.view.SurfaceHolder; import android.view.SurfaceView; import android.widget.Toast; public class Game extends Activity { KhogenView View1; @Override protected void onPause() { // TODO Auto-generated method stub super.onPause(); while(true){ try { OurThread.join(); } catch (InterruptedException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); }} } Thread OurThread; int herorows = 4; int herocolumns = 3; int xpos, ypos; int xspeed; int yspeed; int herowidth; int widthnumber = 0; int heroheight; Rect src; Rect dst; int round; Bitmap bmp1; // private Bitmap bmp1;//change name public List<Sprite> sprites = new ArrayList<Sprite>() { }; @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); View1 = new KhogenView(this); setContentView(View1); sprites.add(createSprite(R.drawable.image)); sprites.add(createSprite(R.drawable.bad1)); sprites.add(createSprite(R.drawable.bad2)); sprites.add(createSprite(R.drawable.bad3)); sprites.add(createSprite(R.drawable.bad4)); sprites.add(createSprite(R.drawable.bad5)); sprites.add(createSprite(R.drawable.bad6)); sprites.add(createSprite(R.drawable.good1)); sprites.add(createSprite(R.drawable.good2)); sprites.add(createSprite(R.drawable.good3)); sprites.add(createSprite(R.drawable.good4)); sprites.add(createSprite(R.drawable.good5)); sprites.add(createSprite(R.drawable.good6)); } private Sprite createSprite(int image) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub bmp1 = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), image); return new Sprite(this, bmp1); } public class KhogenView extends SurfaceView implements Runnable { SurfaceHolder OurHolder; Canvas canvas = null; Random rnd = new Random(); { xpos = rnd.nextInt(canvas.getWidth() - herowidth)+herowidth; ypos = rnd.nextInt(canvas.getHeight() - heroheight)+heroheight; xspeed = rnd.nextInt(10 - 5) + 5; yspeed = rnd.nextInt(10 - 5) + 5; } public KhogenView(Context context) { super(context); // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub OurHolder = getHolder(); OurThread = new Thread(this); OurThread.start(); } @Override public void run() { // TODO Auto-generated method stub herowidth = bmp1.getWidth() / 3; heroheight = bmp1.getHeight() / 4; boolean isRunning = true; while (isRunning) { if (!OurHolder.getSurface().isValid()) continue; canvas = OurHolder.lockCanvas(); canvas.drawRGB(02, 02, 50); for (Sprite sprite : sprites) { if (widthnumber == 3) widthnumber = 0; update(); getdirection(); src = new Rect(widthnumber * herowidth, round * heroheight, (widthnumber + 1) * herowidth, (round + 1)* heroheight); dst = new Rect(xpos, ypos, xpos + herowidth, ypos+ heroheight); canvas.drawBitmap(bmp1, src, dst, null); } widthnumber++; OurHolder.unlockCanvasAndPost(canvas); } } public void update() { try { Thread.sleep(1000); } catch (InterruptedException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } if (xpos + xspeed <= 0) xspeed = 40; if (xpos >= canvas.getWidth() - herowidth) xspeed = -50; if (ypos + yspeed <= 0) yspeed = 45; if (ypos >= canvas.getHeight() - heroheight) yspeed = -55; xpos = xpos + xspeed; ypos = ypos + yspeed; } public void getdirection() { double angleinteger = (Math.atan2(yspeed, xspeed)) / (Math.PI / 2); round = (int) (Math.round(angleinteger) + 2) % herorows; // Toast.makeText(this, String.valueOf(round), // Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); } } public class Sprite { Game game; private Bitmap bmp; public Sprite(Game game, Bitmap bmp) { // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub this.game = game; this.bmp = bmp; } } } Here is the LogCat if it helps.... 08-22 23:18:06.980: D/AndroidRuntime(28151): Shutting down VM 08-22 23:18:06.980: W/dalvikvm(28151): threadid=1: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0xb3f6f4f0) 08-22 23:18:06.980: D/AndroidRuntime(28151): procName from cmdline: com.example.killthemall 08-22 23:18:06.980: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): in writeCrashedAppName, pkgName :com.example.killthemall 08-22 23:18:06.980: D/AndroidRuntime(28151): file written successfully with content: com.example.killthemall StringBuffer : ;com.example.killthemall 08-22 23:18:06.990: I/Process(28151): Sending signal. PID: 28151 SIG: 9 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{com.example.killthemall/com.example.killthemall.Game}: java.lang.NullPointerException 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1647) 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1663) 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): at android.app.ActivityThread.access$1500(ActivityThread.java:117) 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:931) 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:130) 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:3683) 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507) 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:880) 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:638) 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): at com.example.killthemall.Game$KhogenView.<init>(Game.java:96) 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): at com.example.killthemall.Game.onCreate(Game.java:58) 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1049) 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1611) 08-22 23:18:06.990: E/AndroidRuntime(28151): ... 11 more 08-22 23:18:18.050: D/AndroidRuntime(28191): Shutting down VM 08-22 23:18:18.050: W/dalvikvm(28191): threadid=1: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0xb3f6f4f0) 08-22 23:18:18.050: I/Process(28191): Sending signal. PID: 28191 SIG: 9 08-22 23:18:18.050: D/AndroidRuntime(28191): procName from cmdline: com.example.killthemall 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): in writeCrashedAppName, pkgName :com.example.killthemall 08-22 23:18:18.050: D/AndroidRuntime(28191): file written successfully with content: com.example.killthemall StringBuffer : ;com.example.killthemall 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{com.example.killthemall/com.example.killthemall.Game}: java.lang.NullPointerException 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1647) 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1663) 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): at android.app.ActivityThread.access$1500(ActivityThread.java:117) 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:931) 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:130) 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:3683) 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507) 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:880) 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:638) 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): at com.example.killthemall.Game$KhogenView.<init>(Game.java:96) 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): at com.example.killthemall.Game.onCreate(Game.java:58) 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1049) 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1611) 08-22 23:18:18.050: E/AndroidRuntime(28191): ... 11 more

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #038

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 CASE Statement in ORDER BY Clause – ORDER BY using Variable This article is as per request from the Application Development Team Leader of my company. His team encountered code where the application was preparing string for ORDER BY clause of the SELECT statement. Application was passing this string as variable to Stored Procedure (SP) and SP was using EXEC to execute the SQL string. This is not good for performance as Stored Procedure has to recompile every time due to EXEC. sp_executesql can do the same task but still not the best performance. SSMS – View/Send Query Results to Text/Grid/Files Results to Text – CTRL + T Results to Grid – CTRL + D Results to File – CTRL + SHIFT + F 2008 Introduction to SPARSE Columns Part 2 I wrote about Introduction to SPARSE Columns Part 1. Let us understand the concept of the SPARSE column in more detail. I suggest you read the first part before continuing reading this article. All SPARSE columns are stored as one XML column in the database. Let us see some of the advantage and disadvantage of SPARSE column. Deferred Name Resolution How come when table name is incorrect SP can be created successfully but when an incorrect column is used SP cannot be created? 2009 Backup Timeline and Understanding of Database Restore Process in Full Recovery Model In general, databases backup in full recovery mode is taken in three different kinds of database files. Full Database Backup Differential Database Backup Log Backup Restore Sequence and Understanding NORECOVERY and RECOVERY While doing RESTORE Operation if you restoring database files, always use NORECOVER option as that will keep the database in a state where more backup file are restored. This will also keep database offline also to prevent any changes, which can create itegrity issues. Once all backup file is restored run RESTORE command with a RECOVERY option to get database online and operational. Four Different Ways to Find Recovery Model for Database Perhaps, the best thing about technical domain is that most of the things can be executed in more than one ways. It is always useful to know about the various methods of performing a single task. Two Methods to Retrieve List of Primary Keys and Foreign Keys of Database When Information Schema is used, we will not be able to discern between primary key and foreign key; we will have both the keys together. In the case of sys schema, we can query the data in our preferred way and can join this table to another table, which can retrieve additional data from the same. Get Last Running Query Based on SPID PID is returns sessions ID of the current user process. The acronym SPID comes from the name of its earlier version, Server Process ID. 2010 SELECT * FROM dual – Dual Equivalent Dual is a table that is created by Oracle together with data dictionary. It consists of exactly one column named “dummy”, and one record. The value of that record is X. You can check the content of the DUAL table using the following syntax. SELECT * FROM dual Identifying Statistics Used by Query Someone asked this question in my training class of query optimization and performance tuning.  “Can I know which statistics were used by my query?” 2011 SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 14 of 31 What are the basic functions for master, msdb, model, tempdb and resource databases? What is the Maximum Number of Index per Table? Explain Few of the New Features of SQL Server 2008 Management Studio Explain IntelliSense for Query Editing Explain MultiServer Query Explain Query Editor Regions Explain Object Explorer Enhancements Explain Activity Monitors SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 15 of 31 What is Service Broker? Where are SQL server Usernames and Passwords Stored in the SQL server? What is Policy Management? What is Database Mirroring? What are Sparse Columns? What does TOP Operator Do? What is CTE? What is MERGE Statement? What is Filtered Index? Which are the New Data Types Introduced in SQL SERVER 2008? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 16 of 31 What are the Advantages of Using CTE? How can we Rewrite Sub-Queries into Simple Select Statements or with Joins? What is CLR? What are Synonyms? What is LINQ? What are Isolation Levels? What is Use of EXCEPT Clause? What is XPath? What is NOLOCK? What is the Difference between Update Lock and Exclusive Lock? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 17 of 31 How will you Handle Error in SQL SERVER 2008? What is RAISEERROR? What is RAISEERROR? How to Rebuild the Master Database? What is the XML Datatype? What is Data Compression? What is Use of DBCC Commands? How to Copy the Tables, Schema and Views from one SQL Server to Another? How to Find Tables without Indexes? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 18 of 31 How to Copy Data from One Table to Another Table? What is Catalog Views? What is PIVOT and UNPIVOT? What is a Filestream? What is SQLCMD? What do you mean by TABLESAMPLE? What is ROW_NUMBER()? What are Ranking Functions? What is Change Data Capture (CDC) in SQL Server 2008? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 19 of 31 How can I Track the Changes or Identify the Latest Insert-Update-Delete from a Table? What is the CPU Pressure? How can I Get Data from a Database on Another Server? What is the Bookmark Lookup and RID Lookup? What is Difference between ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE and WITH NO_WAIT during ALTER DATABASE? What is Difference between GETDATE and SYSDATETIME in SQL Server 2008? How can I Check that whether Automatic Statistic Update is Enabled or not? How to Find Index Size for Each Index on Table? What is the Difference between Seek Predicate and Predicate? What are Basics of Policy Management? What are the Advantages of Policy Management? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 20 of 31 What are Policy Management Terms? What is the ‘FILLFACTOR’? Where in MS SQL Server is ’100’ equal to ‘0’? What are Points to Remember while Using the FILLFACTOR Argument? What is a ROLLUP Clause? What are Various Limitations of the Views? What is a Covered index? When I Delete any Data from a Table, does the SQL Server reduce the size of that table? What are Wait Types? How to Stop Log File Growing too Big? If any Stored Procedure is Encrypted, then can we see its definition in Activity Monitor? 2012 Example of Width Sensitive and Width Insensitive Collation Width Sensitive Collation: A single-byte character (half-width) represented as single-byte and the same character represented as a double-byte character (full-width) are when compared are not equal the collation is width sensitive. In this example we have one table with two columns. One column has a collation of width sensitive and the second column has a collation of width insensitive. Find Column Used in Stored Procedure – Search Stored Procedure for Column Name Very interesting conversation about how to find column used in a stored procedure. There are two different characters in the story and both are having a conversation about how to find column in the stored procedure. Here are two part story Part 1 | Part 2 SQL SERVER – 2012 Functions – FORMAT() and CONCAT() – An Interesting Usage Generate Script for Schema and Data – SQL in Sixty Seconds #021 – Video In simple words, in many cases the database move from one place to another place. It is not always possible to back up and restore databases. There are possibilities when only part of the database (with schema and data) has to be moved. In this video we learn that we can easily generate script for schema for data and move from one server to another one. INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS and Value Character Maximum Length -1 I often see the value -1 in the CHARACTER_MAXIMUM_LENGTH column of INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS table. I understand that the length of any column can be between 0 to large number but I do not get it when I see value in negative (i.e. -1). Any insight on this subject? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 01, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 01, 2013Popular ReleasesDotNetNuke® Form and List: 06.00.06: DotNetNuke Form and List 06.00.06 Changes to 6.0.6•Add in Sql to remove 'text on row' setting for UserDefinedTable to make SQL Azure compatible. •Add new azureCompatible element to manifest. •Added a fix for importing templates. Changes to 6.0.2•Fix: MakeThumbnail was broken if the application pool was configured to .Net 4 •Change: Data is now stored in nvarchar(max) instead of ntext Changes to 6.0.1•Scripts now compatible with SQL Azure. Changes to 6.0.0•Icons are shown in module action b...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.6: 2013.09.30 Ver5.9.6 (1)SMTP???????、???????????????? (2)WinAPI??????? (3)Web???????CGI???????????????????????Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 5.2: Mostly internal code tweaks. added -nosize switch to turn off the size- and gzip-calculations done after minification. removed the comments in the build targets script for the old AjaxMin build task (discussion #458831). Fixed an issue with extended Unicode characters encoded inside a string literal with adjacent \uHHHH\uHHHH sequences. Fixed an IndexOutOfRange exception when encountering a CSS identifier that's a single underscore character (_). In previous builds, the net35 and net20...AJAX Control Toolkit: September 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - September 2013 Release Version 7.0930September 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - Instructions for using the AJAX Control Toolkit with ASP.NET 4.5 can b...WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha is for testers to figure out if we got the NEW api plugged in ok. thanksVisual Log Parser: VisualLogParser: Portable Visual Log Parser for Dotnet 4.0Random searcher i pochodne: Generatorek playlisty: Generuje playlisty w formacie .m3u. Na razie beta z bety - ale juz dziala i mozna uzywac.sb0t v.5: sb0t 5.15: Fixed bug in join filter. Fixed bug in pm blocking. Added new Crypto and Entities static classes to scripting. Updated the default node list.Trace Reader for Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Trace Reader (1.2013.9.29): Initial releaseAudioWordsDownloader: AudioWordsDownloader 1.1 build 88: New features list of words (mp3 files) is available upon typing when a download path is defined list of download paths is added paths history settings added Bug fixed case mismatch in word search field fixed path not exist bug fixed when history has been used path, when filled from dialog, not stored refresh autocomplete list after path change word sought is deleted when path is changed at the end sought word list is deleted word list not refreshed download ends. word lis...HD-Trailers.NET Downloader: HD-Trailer.Net Downloader v 2.1.5: This started out as an effort to improve the search for the corr3ct IMDB page for the movie. I think I have done that here. I have run about 200 movies and the correct movie was identified in all cases including some entries that were problematic in the past. I also swatted several bugs that popped up under special circumstances and resulted in exceptions. This version should be quite a bit better than previous versions. Let me know if there are any issues.Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1309.28: Fix a bug, where WPP crash when running on a computer where Windows was installed in another language than Fr, En or De, and launching the Update Creation Wizard. Fix a bug, where WPP crash if some Multi-Thread job are launch with more than 64 items. Add a button to abort "Install This Update" wizard. Allow WPP to remember which columns are shown last time. Make URL clickable on the Update Information Tab. Add a new feature, when Double-Clicking on an update, the default action exec...Tweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Alpha 0.8.3.0: Version 0.8.3.0 emphasis on the FIlteredStream and ease how to manage Exceptions that can occur due to the network or any other issue you might encounter. Will be available through nuget the 29/09/2013. FilteredStream Features provided by the Twitter Stream API - Ability to track specific keywords - Ability to track specific users - Ability to track specific locations Additional features - Detect the reasons the tweet has been retrieved from the Filtered API. You have access to both the ma...AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.5: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.5 ???? AcPlay????????v3.5 ????????，???????????30% ?? ???????GoodManga.net???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??Acfun?????????? ??Bilibili??????????? ?????????flvcd???????? ??SfAcg????????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ????32...C# Intellisense for Notepad++: Release v1.0.6.0: Added support for classless scripts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.SimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.02: SourceCode and SampleMagick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.7.001: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.7.0. Breaking changes: - ToBitmap method of MagickImage returns a png instead of a bmp. - Changed the value for full transparency from 255(Q8)/65535(Q16) to 0. - MagickColor now uses floats instead of Byte/UInt16.Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.578b: With the feedback received over the renaming of Movie Folders, and files, there has been some refinement done. As well as I would like to introduce Blu-Ray movie folder support, for Pre-Frodo and Frodo onwards versions of XBMC. To start with, Context menu option for renaming movies, now has three sub options: Movie & Folder, Movie only & Folder only. The option Manual Movie Rename needs to be selected from Movie Preferences, but the autoscrape boxes do not need to be selected. Blu Ray Fo...FFXIV Crafting Simulator: Crafting Simulator 2.3: - Major refactoring of the code behind. - Added a current durability and a current CP textbox.DNN CMS Platform: 07.01.02: Major HighlightsAdded the ability to manage the Vanity URL prefix Added the ability to filter members in the member directory by role Fixed issue where the user could inadvertently click the login button multiple times Fixed issues where core classes could not be used in out of process cache provider Fixed issue where profile visibility submenu was not displayed correctly Fixed issue where the member directory was broken when Convert URL to lowercase setting was enabled Fixed issu...New Projects.netProject: .Net Project 3TINafs-m: Secure file storageASP.NET dhtmlxChart Class: Create different types of charts and render them to webforms.ASP.NET dhtmxGantt Class: Add tasks Add dependencies Use lighboxBestCodeTrainer: Project BestCode is for Training. Black Dragon Online Shop: An online shop with basic functionalities implemented with ASP.NET MVC as a team project in Telerik Academy 2012/2013.Central fovea -X: ????: 1.???????????Cell,??RGB,HSL,X,Y 2.???????? 3.???????????? 4.????????，???????? 5.????????CorvusSKK: SKK-like Japanese Input Method for Windowsdaneshjoo: ?? ??? ???????DBA Toolbox: A tool for the production DBA. A place to store all those scripts, tools, references and queries that make your job as a DBA easier.Devpad IDE: Basic integrated development environment.DXUT for Direct3D 11: Latest version of the Microsoft DXUT framework for Direct3D 11 Win32 desktop applications formerly in the now legacy DirectX SDK.Dynamics CRM Messaging Integration: This project shows how to implement a simple custom messaging solution using Microsoft Dynamics CRM and based on its standard development components.Kockafölde: Kliens program.Medusa's Ebay: Teamwork assignment @ TelerikAcademy 2012/2013. Project is for creating simple (or more complicated) interneTeamwork assignment @ TelerikAcademy 2012/2013.Nauplius.PAS: Nauplius.PAS allows end users to leverage the PowerPoint Conversion Services within SharePoint 2013 to convert PowerPoint documents from one format to another.PayBox payment gateway provider for NB_Store: PayBox payment provider for NB_StorePet passport: This is a teamwork projectProject Euler solutions: Solutions to the ProjectEuler problemsRoboSubSync: Fixes an unsynchronized subtitle in any language according to an already synced subtitle in english, with the help of some advanced algorithm magic... ShopBook: Shopbooksliders: jQuery slidersSQLite to JSON: A simple program to convert SQLite data to JSON.Super64: This is a Commodore 64 emulator that is determined to have extremely unnecessary accuracy.TeamProject1: This is just Demo ProjectXnaHelper: A collection of tools for making 2D XNA Games

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, January 10, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, January 10, 2011Popular ReleasesSense/Net Enterprise Portal & ECMS: SenseNet 6.0.1 Community Edition for .NET 4: SenseNet 6.0.1 Community Edition for .NET 4 with SQL CE 4.0 This half year we have been working quite fiercely to bring you the long-awaited release of Sense/Net 6.0. Download this Community Edition for .NET 4 Platform to see what we have been up to. These months we have worked on getting the WebCMS capabilities of Sense/Net 6.0 up to par. New features include: New, powerful page and portlet editing experience. HTML and CSS cleanup, new, powerful site skinning system. Upgraded, light...Agile Personal Body Of Knowledge: ????－????，???? v0.2.pdf: ????【????－????，????.pdf】???，?????????????????????????????，???????????，???????。 ??????????，??????????，????????，?????????！ ????sina??：http://q.t.sina.com.cn/135484VSSpeedster - Parallel Builds for VS: VSSpeedster 1.1: - Parallel Builds with MSBuild integrated in Visual StudioBernie's Trackviewer: Bernie's Trackviewer Version 1.2: Redesigned user interface of main form Also displays waypoints which are not part of a track Can convert a route int a track Maximum age of cached maps can be setPeople's Note: People's Note 0.21: Replaced note viewer buttons with a menu bar to improve scrolling performance. Fixed database relocation on low-resolution devices; thanks to compaNet for reporting. Improved signin error messages. To install: copy the appropriate CAB file onto your WM device and run it.mytrip.mvc (CMS & e-Commerce): mytrip.mvc 1.0.51.0 beta2: WEB.mytrip.mvc 1.0.51.0 Web for install hosting System Requirements: NET 4.0, MSSQL 2008 or MySql (auto creation table to database) if .\SQLEXPRESS auto creation database (App_Data folder) SRC.mytrip.mvc 1.0.51.0 System Requirements: Visual Studio 2010 or Web Deweloper 2010 MSSQL 2008 or MySql (auto creation table to database) if .\SQLEXPRESS auto creation database (App_Data folder) Connector/Net 6.3.5, MVC3 RC WARNING For run and debug SRC.mytrip.mvc 1.0.51.0 download and install MVC3 RC...EnhSim: EnhSim 2.3.0: 2.3.0This release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Changed how flame shoc...AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.3: A message will be displayed when there's an update available Shows a list of recent mastery files in the Editor Tab (requested by quite a few people) Updater: Update information is now scrollable Added a buton to launch AutoLoL after updating is finished Updated the UI to match that of AutoLoL Fix: Detects and resolves 'Read Only' state on Version.xmlHawkeye - The .Net Runtime Object Editor: Hawkeye 1.2.4: [EDIT: 2010/01/10] In the case you are running an x86 Windows; please wait until Release 1.2.5 is made available: Hawkeye is broken on these OS. This is a maintenance release providing bug fixes. It comes in two flavors: Hawkeye.124.N2 is the standard .NET 2 build, was compiled with Visual Studio 2005 and can only inspect .NET 2 applications. Hawkeye.124.N4 is a .NET4 2 build, was compiled with Visual Studio 2010 and can only inspect .NET 4 applications. Please be patient until Release 1.3...Extended WPF Toolkit: Extended WPF Toolkit - 1.3.0: What's in the 1.3.0 Release?BusyIndicator ButtonSpinner ChildWindow ColorPicker - Updated (Breaking Changes) DateTimeUpDown - New Control Magnifier - New Control MaskedTextBox - New Control MessageBox NumericUpDown RichTextBox RichTextBoxFormatBar - Updated .NET 3.5 binaries and SourcePlease note: The Extended WPF Toolkit 3.5 is dependent on .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit. You must install .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit in order to use any features in the To...sNPCedit: sNPCedit v0.9d: added elementclient coordinate catcher to catch coordinates select a target (ingame) i.e. your char, npc or monster than click the button and coordinates+direction will be transfered to the selected row in the table corrected labels from Rot to Direction (because it is a vector)Ionics Isapi Rewrite Filter: 2.1 latest stable: V2.1 is stable, and is in maintenance mode. This is v2.1.1.25. It is a bug-fix release. There are no new features. 28629 29172 28722 27626 28074 29164 27659 27900 many documentation updates and fixes proper x64 build environment. This release includes x64 binaries in zip form, but no x64 MSI file. You'll have to manually install x64 servers, following the instructions in the documentation.StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.14980.000: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes: - StyleCop's new ObjectBasedEnvironment object does not resolve the StyleCop installation path, thus it does not return the correct path ...VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.1: New release with bug fixes and updates for performance..NET Extensions - Extension Methods Library for C# and VB.NET: Release 2011.03: Added lot's of new extensions and new projects for MVC and Entity Framework. object.FindTypeByRecursion Int32.InRange String.RemoveAllSpecialCharacters String.IsEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.IsNotEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.IfEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.ToUpperFirstLetter String.GetBytes String.ToTitleCase String.ToPlural DateTime.GetDaysInYear DateTime.GetPeriodOfDay IEnumberable.RemoveAll IEnumberable.Distinct ICollection.RemoveAll IList.Join IList.Match IList.Cast Array.IsNullOrEmpty Array.W...EFMVC - ASP.NET MVC 3 and EF Code First: EFMVC 0.5- ASP.NET MVC 3 and EF Code First: Demo web app ASP.NET MVC 3, Razor and EF Code FirstVidCoder: 0.8.0: Added x64 version. Made the audio output preview more detailed and accurate. If the chosen encoder or mixdown is incompatible with the source, the fallback that will be used is displayed. Added "Auto" to the audio mixdown choices. Reworked non-anamorphic size calculation to work better with non-standard pixel aspect ratios and cropping. Reworked Custom anamorphic to be more intuitive and allow display width to be set automatically (Thanks, Statick). Allowing higher bitrates for 6-ch....NET Voice Recorder: Auto-Tune Release: This is the source code and binaries to accompany the article on the Coding 4 Fun website. It is the Auto Tuner release of the .NET Voice Recorder application.BloodSim: BloodSim - 1.3.2.0: - Simulation Log is now automatically disabled and hidden when running 10 or more iterations - Hit and Expertise are now entered by Rating, and include option for a Racial Expertise bonus - Added option for boss to use a periodic magic ability (Dragon Breath) - Added option for boss to periodically Enrage, gaining a Damage/Attack Speed buffJson.NET: Json.NET 4.0 Release 1: New feature - Added Windows Phone 7 project New feature - Added dynamic support to LINQ to JSON New feature - Added dynamic support to serializer New feature - Added INotifyCollectionChanged to JContainer in .NET 4 build New feature - Added ReadAsDateTimeOffset to JsonReader New feature - Added ReadAsDecimal to JsonReader New feature - Added covariance to IJEnumerable type parameter New feature - Added XmlSerializer style Specified property support New feature - Added ...New ProjectsAssimpXna: AssimpXna is a custom model importer for Xna 4.0 using the Open Asset Import Library (Assimp).ATCSim: This is an atc sim for a school projectAzure Role-Based Deployment: Azure Role-Based Deployment demonstrates how to use the CreateDeployment Windows Azure Service Management API to deploy an app from within a web role. This code can easily be ported to a worker role and thus included in the managment pack for a hosted service.CodeKata AltNet Hispano: Ejemplos de Code Kata usados por la comunidad AltNet Hispano.DataStoreCleaner: DataStoreCleaner clears "DataStore" folder which manages Windows Update History. It is useful for fixing WU error, or tune up Windows start-up. It's developed in C#.DS_HW2: dshw2EFT Calculator: EFT Calculator is an application that performs common cryptographic operations used in electronic funds transfer applications.Entity Visualizers: This project has debugger visualizers for several objects in the Entity Framework: EntityObject, EntityCollection, ObjectQuery and ObjectContext. Some of the source code is based on code from Julie Lerman's book "Programming Entity Framework".EzyCMS - Easy and Simple CMS made by ASP.Net MVC: EzyCMS makes both of end user and developer enjoy CMS benefit and extendability to perform requirements. The design principles: EASY TO USE, EASY TO EXTEND, FLEXIBLE AND PWOERFUL TECHNOLOGY: ASP.Net MVC2, NHibernate, StructureMap, JQueryFlatStore: Simple library to simplify storage of application data when a bulky dedicated database is cumbersome and unnecessaryGigantornis: Gigantornis is a tool for benchmarking your Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) server. It is designed to give you an impression of how your current server installation performs. This especially shows you how many requests per second your server installation is capable of serving.Gonte.Dal: Data access layer for NETLezatrus: Lezatrus is the open source project to help people find places to eat in Jakarta. It's developed in ASP.NET MVC using Razor and C#. It's the sample app for Pro ASP.NET MVC Coding Ninja facebook group.Moo: Moo is an object-to-object multi-mapper. It is able to use multiple different strategies (in a mix of convention, configuration, attributes and fluent calls) when mapping from one object to another.MvcXaml: A custom View Engine for ASP.NET MVC that allows Controller Action Methods to return dynamically generated images based on XAML markup.Perfect World Bot Development FrameWork: <empty yet>Silverlight motion detection: Motion detection using Silverlight 4 camera support and a simple motion detection algorithm.Small IT Business Manager: Small IT Business Manager is a tool being created keeping small-midsize IT companies in mind to allow them manage their day to day chores. Management Features planned: * Workers * Timesheets * Financial * HR * Basic Project Management * Invoicingsomething for testing: mot do an mau de test cac van de lien quan toi codeStructure Copier: This small program is supposed to copy tree structure of directory.TogNet: A small utility program to toggle between windows network adapters. Needed a program like this to switch between an external Wireless network and the corporate Lan network adapter.

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• Critique of SEO of this HTML

  - by Tom Gullen

  I'm designing a new site which I want to be as SEO friendly as possible, fast and responsive, semantic and very accessible. A lot of these things, embarrassingly are quite new to me. Have I miss applied anything? I want the template to be perfect. Live demo: http://69.24.73.172/demos/newDemo/ HTML: <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="UTF-8" /> <title>Welcome to Scirra.com</title> <meta name="description" content="Construct 2, the HTML5 games creator." /> <meta name="keywords" content="game maker, game builder, html5, create games, games creator" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/default.css" type="text/css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="plugins/coin-slider/coin-slider-styles.css" type="text/css" /> </head> <body> <div class="topBar"></div> <div class="mainBox"> <header> <div class="headWrapper"> <div class="s searchWrap"> <input type="text" name="SearchBox" id="SearchBox" tabindex="1" /> <div class="s searchIco"></div> </div> <!-- Logo placeholder --> </div> <div class="menuWrapper"><nav> <ul class="mainMenu"> <li><a href="#">Home</a></li> <li><a href="#">Forum</a></li> <li><a href="#" class="mainSelected">Construct</a></li> <li><a href="#">Arcade</a></li> <li><a href="#">Manual</a></li> </ul> <ul class="underMenu"> <li><a href="#">Homepage</a></li> <li><a href="#" class="underSelected">Construct</a></li> <li><a href="#">Products</a></li> <li><a href="#">Community Forum</a></li> <li><a href="#">Contact Us</a></li> </ul> </nav></div> </header> <div class="contentWrapper"> <div class="wideCol"> <div id="coin-slider" class="slideShowWrapper"> <a href="#" target="_blank"> <img src="images/screenshot1.jpg" alt="Screenshot" /> <span> Scirra software allows you to bring your imagination to life </span> </a> <a href="#"> <img src="images/screenshot2.jpg" alt="Screenshot" /> <span> Export your creations to HTML5 pages </span> </a> <a href="#"> <img src="images/screenshot3.jpg" alt="Screenshot" /> <span> Another description of some image </span> </a> <a href="#"> <img src="images/screenshot4.jpg" alt="Screenshot" /> <span> Something motivational to tell people </span> </a> </div> <div class="newsWrapper"> <h2>Latest from Twitter</h2> <div id="twitterFeed"> <p>The news on the block is this. Something has happened some news or something. <span class="smallDate">About 6 hours ago</span></p> <p>Another thing has happened lets tell the world some news or something. Lots to think about. Lots to do.<span class="smallDate">About 6 hours ago</span></p> <p>Shocker! Santa Claus is not real. This is breaking news, we must spread it. <span class="smallDate">About 6 hours ago</span></p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="thinCol"> <h1>Main Heading</h1> <p>Some paragraph goes here. It tells you about the picture. Cool! Have you thought about downloading Construct 2? Well you can download it with the link below. This column will expand vertically.</p> <h3>Help Me!</h3> <p>This column will keep expanging and expanging. It pads stuff out to make other things look good imo.</p> <h3>Why Download?</h3> <p>As well as other features, we also have some other features. Check out our <a href="#">other features</a>. Each of our other features is really cool and there to help everyone suceed.</p> <a href="#" class="s downloadBox" title="Download Construct 2 Now"> <div class="downloadHead">Download</div> <div class="downloadSize">24.5 MB</div> </a> </div> <div class="clear"></div> <h2>This Weeks Spotlight</h2> <div class="halfColWrapper"> <img src="images/spotlight1.png" class="spotLightImg" alt="Spotlight User" /> <p>Our spotlight member this week is Pooh-Bah. He writes good stuff. Read it. <a class="moreInfoLink" href="#">Learn More</a></p> </div> <div class="halfColWrapper r"> <img src="images/spotlight2.png" class="spotLightImg" alt="Spotlight Game" /> <p>Killer Bears is a scary ass game from JimmyJones. How many bears can you escape from? <a class="moreInfoLink" href="#">Learn More</a></p> </div> <div class="clear"></div> </div> </div><div class="mainEnder"></div> <footer> <div class="footerWrapper"> <div class="footerBox"> <div class="footerItem"> <h4>Community</h4> <ul> <li><a href="#">The Blog</a></li> <li><a href="#">Community Forum</a></li> <li><a href="#">RSS Feed</a></li> <li> <a class="s footIco facebook" href="http://www.facebook.com/ScirraOfficial" target="_blank" title="Visit Scirra on Facebook"></a> <a class="s footIco twitter" href="http://twitter.com/Scirra" target="_blank" title="Follow Scirra on Twitter"></a> <a class="s footIco youtube" href="http://www.youtube.com/user/ScirraVideos" target="_blank" title="Visit Scirra on Youtube"></a> </li> </ul> </div> <div class="footerItem"> <h4>About Us</h4> <ul> <li><a href="#">Contact Information</a></li> <li><a href="#">Advertising</a></li> <li><a href="#">History</a></li> <li><a href="#">Privacy Policy</a></li> <li><a href="#">Terms and Conditions</a></li> </ul> </div> <div class="footerItem"> <h4>Want to Help?</h4> <p>You can contribute to the community <a href="#">in lots of ways</a>. We have a large active friendly community, and there are lots of ways to join in!</p> <a href="#" class="ralign"><strong>Learn More</strong></a> </div> <div class="clear"></div> </div> </div> <div class="copyright"> Copyright &copy; 2011 Scirra.com. All rights reserved. </div> </footer> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.4/jquery.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/common.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="plugins/coin-slider/coin-slider.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/homepage.js"></script> </body> </html>

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• Do you play Sudoku ?

  - by Gilles Haro

  Did you know that 11gR2 database could solve a Sudoku puzzle with a single query and, most of the time, and this in less than a second ? The following query shows you how ! Simply pass a flattened Sudoku grid to it a get the result instantaneously ! col "Solution" format a9 col "Problem" format a9 with Iteration( initialSudoku, Step, EmptyPosition ) as ( select initialSudoku, InitialSudoku, instr( InitialSudoku, '-' )        from ( select '--64----2--7-35--1--58-----27---3--4---------4--2---96-----27--7--58-6--3----18--' InitialSudoku from dual )    union all    select initialSudoku        , substr( Step, 1, EmptyPosition - 1 ) || OneDigit || substr( Step, EmptyPosition + 1 )         , instr( Step, '-', EmptyPosition + 1 )      from Iteration         , ( select to_char( rownum ) OneDigit from dual connect by rownum <= 9 ) OneDigit     where EmptyPosition > 0       and not exists          ( select null              from ( select rownum IsPossible from dual connect by rownum <= 9 )             where OneDigit = substr( Step, trunc( ( EmptyPosition - 1 ) / 9 ) * 9 + IsPossible, 1 )   -- One line must contain the 1-9 digits                or OneDigit = substr( Step, mod( EmptyPosition - 1, 9 ) - 8 + IsPossible * 9, 1 )      -- One row must contain the 1-9 digits                or OneDigit = substr( Step, mod( trunc( ( EmptyPosition - 1 ) / 3 ), 3 ) * 3           -- One square must contain the 1-9 digits                            + trunc( ( EmptyPosition - 1 ) / 27 ) * 27 + IsPossible                            + trunc( ( IsPossible - 1 ) / 3 ) * 6 , 1 )          ) ) select initialSudoku "Problem", Step "Solution"    from Iteration  where EmptyPosition = 0 ;   The Magic thing behind this is called Recursive Subquery Factoring. The Oracle documentation gives the following definition: If a subquery_factoring_clause refers to its own query_name in the subquery that defines it, then the subquery_factoring_clause is said to be recursive. A recursive subquery_factoring_clause must contain two query blocks: the first is the anchor member and the second is the recursive member. The anchor member must appear before the recursive member, and it cannot reference query_name. The anchor member can be composed of one or more query blocks combined by the set operators: UNION ALL, UNION, INTERSECT or MINUS. The recursive member must follow the anchor member and must reference query_name exactly once. You must combine the recursive member with the anchor member using the UNION ALL set operator. This new feature is a replacement of this old Hierarchical Query feature that exists in Oracle since the days of Aladdin (well, at least, release 2 of the database in 1977). Everyone remembers the old syntax : select empno, ename, job, mgr, level      from   emp      start with mgr is null      connect by prior empno = mgr; that could/should be rewritten (but not as often as it should) as withT_Emp (empno, name, level) as        ( select empno, ename, job, mgr, level             from   emp             start with mgr is null             connect by prior empno = mgr        ) select * from   T_Emp; which uses the "with" syntax, whose main advantage is to clarify the readability of the query. Although very efficient, this syntax had the disadvantage of being a Non-Ansi Sql Syntax. Ansi-Sql version of Hierarchical Query is called Recursive Subquery Factoring. As of 11gR2, Oracle got compliant with Ansi Sql and introduced Recursive Subquery Factoring. It is basically an extension of the "With" clause that enables recursion. Now, the new syntax for the query would be with T_Emp (empno, name, job, mgr, hierlevel) as       ( select E.empno, E.ename, E.job, E.mgr, 1 from emp E where E.mgr is null         union all         select E.empno, E.ename, E.job, E.mgr, T.hierlevel + 1from emp E                                                                                                            join T_Emp T on ( E.mgr = T.empno ) ) select * from   T_Emp; The anchor member is a replacement for the "start with" The recursive member is processed through iterations. It joins the Source table (EMP) with the result from the Recursive Query itself (T_Emp) Each iteration works with the results of all its preceding iterations.     Iteration 1 works on the results of the first query     Iteration 2 works on the results of Iteration 1 and first query     Iteration 3 works on the results of Iteration 1, Iteration 2 and first query. So, knowing that, the Sudoku query it self-explaining; The anchor member contains the "Problem" : The Initial Sudoku and the Position of the first "hole" in the grid. The recursive member tries to replace the considered hole with any of the 9 digit that would satisfy the 3 rules of sudoku Recursion progress through the grid until it is complete.   Another example :  Fibonaccy Numbers :  un = (un-1) + (un-2) with Fib (u1, u2, depth) as   (select 1, 1, 1 from dual    union all    select u1+u2, u1, depth+1 from Fib where depth<10) select u1 from Fib; Conclusion Oracle brings here a new feature (which, to be honest, already existed on other concurrent systems) and extends the power of the database to new boundaries. It’s now up to developers to try and test it and find more useful application than solving puzzles… But still, solving a Sudoku in less time it takes to say it remains impressive… Interesting links: You might be interested by the following links which cover different aspects of this feature Oracle Documentation Lucas Jellema 's Blog Fibonaci Numbers

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• Making a Statement: How to retrieve the T-SQL statement that caused an event

  - by extended_events

  If you’ve done any troubleshooting of T-SQL, you know that sooner or later, probably sooner, you’re going to want to take a look at the actual statements you’re dealing with. In extended events we offer an action (See the BOL topic that covers Extended Events Objects for a description of actions) named sql_text that seems like it is just the ticket. Well…not always – sounds like a good reason for a blog post. When is a statement not THE statement? The sql_text action returns the same information that is returned from DBCC INPUTBUFFER, which may or may not be what you want. For example, if you execute a stored procedure, the sql_text action will return something along the lines of “EXEC sp_notwhatiwanted” assuming that is the statement you sent from the client. Often times folks would like something more specific, like the actual statements that are being run from within the stored procedure or batch. Enter the stack Extended events offers another action, this one with the descriptive name of tsql_stack, that includes the sql_handle and offset information about the statements being run when an event occurs. With the sql_handle and offset values you can retrieve the specific statement you seek using the DMV dm_exec_sql_statement. The BOL topic for dm_exec_sql_statement provides an example for how to extract this information, so I’ll cover the gymnastics required to get the sql_handle and offset values out of the tsql_stack data collected by the action. I’m the first to admit that this isn’t pretty, but this is what we have in SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2. We will be making it easier to get statement level information in the next major release of SQL Server. The sample code For this example I have a stored procedure that includes multiple statements and I have a need to differentiate between those two statements in my tracing. I’m going to track two events: module_end tracks the completion of the stored procedure execution and sp_statement_completed tracks the execution of each statement within a stored procedure. I’m adding the tsql_stack events (since that’s the topic of this post) and the sql_text action for comparison sake. (If you have questions about creating event sessions, check out Pedro’s post Introduction to Extended Events.) USE AdventureWorks2008GO -- Test SPCREATE PROCEDURE sp_multiple_statementsASSELECT 'This is the first statement'SELECT 'this is the second statement'GO -- Create a session to look at the spCREATE EVENT SESSION track_sprocs ON SERVERADD EVENT sqlserver.module_end (ACTION (sqlserver.tsql_stack, sqlserver.sql_text)),ADD EVENT sqlserver.sp_statement_completed (ACTION (sqlserver.tsql_stack, sqlserver.sql_text))ADD TARGET package0.ring_bufferWITH (MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY = 1 SECONDS)GO -- Start the sessionALTER EVENT SESSION track_sprocs ON SERVERSTATE = STARTGO -- Run the test procedureEXEC sp_multiple_statementsGO -- Stop collection of events but maintain ring bufferALTER EVENT SESSION track_sprocs ON SERVERDROP EVENT sqlserver.module_end,DROP EVENT sqlserver.sp_statement_completedGO Aside: Altering the session to drop the events is a neat little trick that allows me to stop collection of events while keeping in-memory targets such as the ring buffer available for use. If you stop the session the in-memory target data is lost. Now that we’ve collected some events related to running the stored procedure, we need to do some processing of the data. I’m going to do this in multiple steps using temporary tables so you can see what’s going on; kind of like having to “show your work” on a math test. The first step is to just cast the target data into XML so I can work with it. After that you can pull out the interesting columns, for our purposes I’m going to limit the output to just the event name, object name, stack and sql text. You can see that I’ve don a second CAST, this time of the tsql_stack column, so that I can further process this data. -- Store the XML data to a temp tableSELECT CAST( t.target_data AS XML) xml_dataINTO #xml_event_dataFROM sys.dm_xe_sessions s INNER JOIN sys.dm_xe_session_targets t    ON s.address = t.event_session_addressWHERE s.name = 'track_sprocs' SELECT * FROM #xml_event_data -- Parse the column data out of the XML blockSELECT    event_xml.value('(./@name)', 'varchar(100)') as [event_name],    event_xml.value('(./data[@name="object_name"]/value)[1]', 'varchar(255)') as [object_name],    CAST(event_xml.value('(./action[@name="tsql_stack"]/value)[1]','varchar(MAX)') as XML) as [stack_xml],    event_xml.value('(./action[@name="sql_text"]/value)[1]', 'varchar(max)') as [sql_text]INTO #event_dataFROM #xml_event_data    CROSS APPLY xml_data.nodes('//event') n (event_xml) SELECT * FROM #event_data event_name object_name stack_xml sql_text sp_statement_completed NULL <frame level="1" handle="0x03000500D0057C1403B79600669D00000100000000000000" line="4" offsetStart="94" offsetEnd="172" /><frame level="2" handle="0x01000500CF3F0331B05EC084000000000000000000000000" line="1" offsetStart="0" offsetEnd="-1" /> EXEC sp_multiple_statements sp_statement_completed NULL <frame level="1" handle="0x03000500D0057C1403B79600669D00000100000000000000" line="6" offsetStart="174" offsetEnd="-1" /><frame level="2" handle="0x01000500CF3F0331B05EC084000000000000000000000000" line="1" offsetStart="0" offsetEnd="-1" /> EXEC sp_multiple_statements module_end sp_multiple_statements <frame level="1" handle="0x03000500D0057C1403B79600669D00000100000000000000" line="0" offsetStart="0" offsetEnd="0" /><frame level="2" handle="0x01000500CF3F0331B05EC084000000000000000000000000" line="1" offsetStart="0" offsetEnd="-1" /> EXEC sp_multiple_statements After parsing the columns it’s easier to see what is recorded. You can see that I got back two sp_statement_completed events, which makes sense given the test procedure I’m running, and I got back a single module_end for the entire statement. As described, the sql_text isn’t telling me what I really want to know for the first two events so a little extra effort is required. -- Parse the tsql stack information into columnsSELECT    event_name,    object_name,    frame_xml.value('(./@level)', 'int') as [frame_level],    frame_xml.value('(./@handle)', 'varchar(MAX)') as [sql_handle],    frame_xml.value('(./@offsetStart)', 'int') as [offset_start],    frame_xml.value('(./@offsetEnd)', 'int') as [offset_end]INTO #stack_data    FROM #event_data        CROSS APPLY    stack_xml.nodes('//frame') n (frame_xml)    SELECT * from #stack_data event_name object_name frame_level sql_handle offset_start offset_end sp_statement_completed NULL 1 0x03000500D0057C1403B79600669D00000100000000000000 94 172 sp_statement_completed NULL 2 0x01000500CF3F0331B05EC084000000000000000000000000 0 -1 sp_statement_completed NULL 1 0x03000500D0057C1403B79600669D00000100000000000000 174 -1 sp_statement_completed NULL 2 0x01000500CF3F0331B05EC084000000000000000000000000 0 -1 module_end sp_multiple_statements 1 0x03000500D0057C1403B79600669D00000100000000000000 0 0 module_end sp_multiple_statements 2 0x01000500CF3F0331B05EC084000000000000000000000000 0 -1 Parsing out the stack information doubles the fun and I get two rows for each event. If you examine the stack from the previous table, you can see that each stack has two frames and my query is parsing each event into frames, so this is expected. There is nothing magic about the two frames, that’s just how many I get for this example, it could be fewer or more depending on your statements. The key point here is that I now have a sql_handle and the offset values for those handles, so I can use dm_exec_sql_statement to get the actual statement. Just a reminder, this DMV can only return what is in the cache – if you have old data it’s possible your statements have been ejected from the cache. “Old” is a relative term when talking about caches and can be impacted by server load and how often your statement is actually used. As with most things in life, your mileage may vary. SELECT    qs.*,     SUBSTRING(st.text, (qs.offset_start/2)+1,         ((CASE qs.offset_end          WHEN -1 THEN DATALENGTH(st.text)         ELSE qs.offset_end         END - qs.offset_start)/2) + 1) AS statement_textFROM #stack_data AS qsCROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(CONVERT(varbinary(max),sql_handle,1)) AS st event_name object_name frame_level sql_handle offset_start offset_end statement_text sp_statement_completed NULL 1 0x03000500D0057C1403B79600669D00000100000000000000 94 172 SELECT 'This is the first statement' sp_statement_completed NULL 1 0x03000500D0057C1403B79600669D00000100000000000000 174 -1 SELECT 'this is the second statement' module_end sp_multiple_statements 1 0x03000500D0057C1403B79600669D00000100000000000000 0 0 C Now that looks more like what we were after, the statement_text field is showing the actual statement being run when the sp_statement_completed event occurs. You’ll notice that it’s back down to one row per event, what happened to frame 2? The short answer is, “I don’t know.” In SQL Server 2008 nothing is returned from dm_exec_sql_statement for the second frame and I believe this to be a bug; this behavior has changed in the next major release and I see the actual statement run from the client in frame 2. (In other words I see the same statement that is returned by the sql_text action  or DBCC INPUTBUFFER) There is also something odd going on with frame 1 returned from the module_end event; you can see that the offset values are both 0 and only the first letter of the statement is returned. It seems like the offset_end should actually be –1 in this case and I’m not sure why it’s not returning this correctly. This behavior is being investigated and will hopefully be corrected in the next major version. You can workaround this final oddity by ignoring the offsets and just returning the entire cached statement. SELECT    event_name,    sql_handle,    ts.textFROM #stack_data    CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(CONVERT(varbinary(max),sql_handle,1)) as ts event_name sql_handle text sp_statement_completed 0x0300070025999F11776BAF006F9D00000100000000000000 CREATE PROCEDURE sp_multiple_statements AS SELECT 'This is the first statement' SELECT 'this is the second statement' sp_statement_completed 0x0300070025999F11776BAF006F9D00000100000000000000 CREATE PROCEDURE sp_multiple_statements AS SELECT 'This is the first statement' SELECT 'this is the second statement' module_end 0x0300070025999F11776BAF006F9D00000100000000000000 CREATE PROCEDURE sp_multiple_statements AS SELECT 'This is the first statement' SELECT 'this is the second statement' Obviously this gives more than you want for the sp_statement_completed events, but it’s the right information for module_end. I leave it to you to determine when this information is needed and use the workaround when appropriate. Aside: You might think it’s odd that I’m showing apparent bugs with my samples, but you’re going to see this behavior if you use this method, so you need to know about it.I’m all about transparency. Happy Eventing- Mike Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Top 5 Developer Enabling Nuggets in MySQL 5.6

  - by Rob Young

  MySQL 5.6 is truly a better MySQL and reflects Oracle's commitment to the evolution of the most popular and widelyused open source database on the planet.  The feature-complete 5.6 release candidate was announced at MySQL Connect in late September and the production-ready, generally available ("GA") product should be available in early 2013.  While the message around 5.6 has been focused mainly on mass appeal, advanced topics like performance/scale, high availability, and self-healing replication clusters, MySQL 5.6 also provides many developer-friendly nuggets that are designed to enable those who are building the next generation of web-based and embedded applications and services. Boiling down the 5.6 feature set into a smaller set, of simple, easy to use goodies designed with developer agility in mind, these things deserve a quick look:Subquery Optimizations Using semi-JOINs and late materialization, the MySQL 5.6 Optimizer delivers greatly improved subquery performance. Specifically, the optimizer is now more efficient in handling subqueries in the FROM clause; materialization of subqueries in the FROM clause is now postponed until their contents are needed during execution. Additionally, the optimizer may add an index to derived tables during execution to speed up row retrieval. Internal tests run using the DBT-3 benchmark Query #13, shown below, demonstrate an order of magnitude improvement in execution times (from days to seconds) over previous versions. select c_name, c_custkey, o_orderkey, o_orderdate, o_totalprice, sum(l_quantity)from customer, orders, lineitemwhere o_orderkey in (                select l_orderkey                from lineitem                group by l_orderkey                having sum(l_quantity) > 313  )  and c_custkey = o_custkey  and o_orderkey = l_orderkeygroup by c_name, c_custkey, o_orderkey, o_orderdate, o_totalpriceorder by o_totalprice desc, o_orderdateLIMIT 100;What does this mean for developers?  For starters, simplified subqueries can now be coded instead of complex joins for cross table lookups: SELECT title FROM film WHERE film_id IN (SELECT film_id FROM film_actor GROUP BY film_id HAVING count(*) > 12); And even more importantly subqueries embedded in packaged applications no longer need to be re-written into joins.  This is good news for both ISVs and their customers who have access to the underlying queries and who have spent development cycles writing, testing and maintaining their own versions of re-written queries across updated versions of a packaged app.The details are in the MySQL 5.6 docs. Online DDL OperationsToday's web-based applications are designed to rapidly evolve and adapt to meet business and revenue-generationrequirements. As a result, development SLAs are now most often measured in minutes vs days or weeks. For example, when an application must quickly support new product lines or new products within existing product lines, the backend database schema must adapt in kind, and most commonly while the application remains available for normal business operations.  MySQL 5.6 supports this level of online schema flexibility and agility by providing the following new ALTER TABLE online DDL syntax additions:  CREATE INDEX DROP INDEX Change AUTO_INCREMENT value for a column ADD/DROP FOREIGN KEY Rename COLUMN Change ROW FORMAT, KEY_BLOCK_SIZE for a table Change COLUMN NULL, NOT_NULL Add, drop, reorder COLUMN Again, the details are in the MySQL 5.6 docs. Key-value access to InnoDB via Memcached APIMany of the next generation of web, cloud, social and mobile applications require fast operations against simple Key/Value pairs. At the same time, they must retain the ability to run complex queries against the same data, as well as ensure the data is protected with ACID guarantees. With the new NoSQL API for InnoDB, developers have allthe benefits of a transactional RDBMS, coupled with the performance capabilities of Key/Value store.MySQL 5.6 provides simple, key-value interaction with InnoDB data via the familiar Memcached API.  Implemented via a new Memcached daemon plug-in to mysqld, the new Memcached protocol is mapped directly to the native InnoDB API and enables developers to use existing Memcached clients to bypass the expense of query parsing and go directly to InnoDB data for lookups and transactional compliant updates.  The API makes it possible to re-use standard Memcached libraries and clients, while extending Memcached functionality by integrating a persistent, crash-safe, transactional database back-end.  The implementation is shown here:So does this option provide a performance benefit over SQL?  Internal performance benchmarks using a customized Java application and test harness show some very promising results with a 9X improvement in overall throughput for SET/INSERT operations:You can follow the InnoDB team blog for the methodology, implementation and internal test cases that generated these results here. How to get started with Memcached API to InnoDB is here. New Instrumentation in Performance SchemaThe MySQL Performance Schema was introduced in MySQL 5.5 and is designed to provide point in time metrics for key performance indicators.  MySQL 5.6 improves the Performance Schema in answer to the most common DBA and Developer problems.  New instrumentations include: Statements/Stages What are my most resource intensive queries? Where do they spend time? Table/Index I/O, Table Locks Which application tables/indexes cause the most load or contention? Users/Hosts/Accounts Which application users, hosts, accounts are consuming the most resources? Network I/O What is the network load like? How long do sessions idle? Summaries Aggregated statistics grouped by statement, thread, user, host, account or object. The MySQL 5.6 Performance Schema is now enabled by default in the my.cnf file with optimized and auto-tune settings that minimize overhead (< 5%, but mileage will vary), so using the Performance Schema ona production server to monitor the most common application use cases is less of an issue.  In addition, new atomic levels of instrumentation enable the capture of granular levels of resource consumption by users, hosts, accounts, applications, etc. for billing and chargeback purposes in cloud computing environments.The MySQL docs are an excellent resource for all that is available and that can be done with the 5.6 Performance Schema. Better Condition Handling - GET DIAGNOSTICSMySQL 5.6 enables developers to easily check for error conditions and code for exceptions by introducing the new MySQL Diagnostics Area and corresponding GET DIAGNOSTICS interface command. The Diagnostic Area can be populated via multiple options and provides 2 kinds of information:Statement - which provides affected row count and number of conditions that occurredCondition - which provides error codes and messages for all conditions that were returned by a previous operation The addressable items for each are: The new GET DIAGNOSTICS command provides a standard interface into the Diagnostics Area and can be used via the CLI or from within application code to easily retrieve and handle the results of the most recent statement execution.  An example of how it is used might be:mysql> DROP TABLE test.no_such_table; ERROR 1051 (42S02): Unknown table 'test.no_such_table' mysql> GET DIAGNOSTICS CONDITION 1 -> @p1 = RETURNED_SQLSTATE, @p2 = MESSAGE_TEXT; mysql> SELECT @p1, @p2; +-------+------------------------------------+| @p1   | @p2                                | +-------+------------------------------------+| 42S02 | Unknown table 'test.no_such_table' | +-------+------------------------------------+ Options for leveraging the MySQL Diagnotics Area and GET DIAGNOSTICS are detailed in the MySQL Docs.While the above is a summary of some of the key developer enabling 5.6 features, it is by no means exhaustive. You can dig deeper into what MySQL 5.6 has to offer by reading this developer zone article or checking out "What's New in MySQL 5.6" in the MySQL docs.BONUS ALERT!  If you are developing on Windows or are considering MySQL as an alternative to SQL Server for your next project, application or shipping product, you should check out the MySQL Installer for Windows.  The installer includes the MySQL 5.6 RC database, all drivers, Visual Studio and Excel plugins, tray monitor and development tools all a single download and GUI installer.   So what are your next steps? Register for Dec. 13 "MySQL 5.6: Building the Next Generation of Web-Based Applications and Services" live web event.  Hurry!  Seats are limited. Download the MySQL 5.6 Release Candidate (look under the Development Releases tab) Provide Feedback <link to http://bugs.mysql.com/> Join the Developer discussion on the MySQL Forums Explore all MySQL Products and Developer Tools As always, thanks for your continued support of MySQL!

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• Clean Code Developer & Certification in IT - MSCC 21.09.2013

  It was a very busy weekend this time, and quite some hectic to organise the second meetup on a Saturday for the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC) but it was absolutely fun. Following, I'm writing a brief summary about the topics we spoke about and the new impulses I got. "What a meetup... I was positively impressed. At the beginning I thought that noone would actually show up but then by the time the room got filled. Lots of conversation, great dialogues and fantastic networking between fresh students, experienced students, experienced employees, and self-employed attendees. That's what community is all about!" Above quote was my first reaction shortly after the gathering. And despite being busy during the weekend and yesterday, I took my time to reflect a little bit on things happened and statements made before writing it here on my blog. Additionally, I was also very curious about possible reactions and blogs from other attendees. Reactions from other craftsmen Let me quickly give you some links and quotes from others first... "Like Jochen posted on facebook, that was indeed a 5+ hours marathon (maybe 4 hours for me but still) … Wohoo! We’re indeed a bunch of crazy geeks who did not realise how time flew as we dived into the myriad discussions that sprouted. Yet in the end everyone was happy (:" -- Ish on MSCC meetup - The marathon (: "And the 4hours spent @ Talking drums bore its fruit..I was doing something I never did before....reading the borrowed book while walking....and though I was not that familiar with things mentionned in the book...I was skimming,scanning & flipping...reading titles...short paragraphs...and I skipped pages till I reached home." -- Yannick on Mauritius Software Craftsmanship 1st Meet-up "Hi Developers, Just wanted to share with you the meetups i attended last Saturday - [...] - The second meetup is the one hosted by Jochen Kirstätter, the MSCC, where the attendees were Craftsman, no woman, this time - all sharing the same passion of being a developer - even though it is on different platforms(Windows - Windows Phone - Linux - Adobe(yes a designer) - .Net) - but we manage to sit at the same table - sharing developer views and experience in the corporate world - also talking about good practice when coding( where Jochen initiated a discussion on Clean Coding ) i could not stay till the end - but from what i have heard - the longer you stay the more fun you have till 1600. Developers in the Facebook grouping i invite you to stay tuned about the various developer communities popping up - where you can come to share and learn good practices, develop the entrepreneurial spirit, and learn and share your passion about technologies" -- Arnaud on Facebook More feedback has been posted on the event directly. So, should I really write more? Wouldn't that spoil the impressions? Starting the day with a surprise Indeed, I was very pleased to stumble over the existence of Mobile Monday Mauritius on LinkedIn, an association about any kind of mobile app development, mobile gadgets and latest smartphones on the market. Despite the Monday in their name they had scheduled their recent meeting on Saturday between 10:00 and 12:00hrs. Wow, what a coincidence! Let's grap the bull by its horns and pay them an introductory visit. As they chose the Ebene Accelerator at the Orange Tower in Ebene it was a no-brainer to leave home a bit earlier and stop by. It was quite an experience and fun to talk to the geeks over there. Really looking forward to organise something together.... Arriving at the venue As the children got a bit uneasy at the MoMo gathering and I didn't want to disturb them too much, we arrived early at Bagatelle. Well, no problems as we went for a decent breakfast at Food Lover's Market. Shortly afterwards we went to our venue location, Talking Drums, and prepared the room for the meeting. We only had to take off a repro-painting of the wall in order to have a decent area for the projector. All went very smooth and my two little ones were of great help. Just in time, our first craftsman Avinash arrived on the spot. And then the waiting started... Luckily, not too long. Bit by bit more and more IT people came to join our meeting. Meanwhile, I used the time to give a brief introduction about the MSCC in general, what we are (hm, maybe I am) trying to achieve and that the recent phase is completely focused on creating more awareness that a community like the MSCC is active here in Mauritius. As soon as we reached some 'critical mass' of about ten people I asked everyone for a short introduction and bio, just in case... Conversation between participants started to kick in and we were actually more networking than having a focus on our topics of the day. Quick updates on latest news and development around the MSCC Finally, Clean Code Developer No matter how the position is actually called, whether it is Software Engineer, Software Developer, Programmer, Architect, or Craftsman, anyone working in IT is facing almost the same obstacles. As for the process of writing software applications there are re-occurring patterns and principles combined with some common exercise and best practices on how to resolve them. Initiated by the must-read book 'Clean Code' by Robert C. Martin (aka Uncle Bob) the concept of the Clean Code Developer (CCD) was born already some years ago. CCD is much likely to traditional martial arts where you create awareness of certain principles and learn how to apply practices to improve your style. The CCD initiative recommends to indicate your level of knowledge and experience with coloured wrist bands - equivalent to the belt colours - for various reasons. Frankly speaking, I think that the biggest advantage here is provided by the obvious recognition of conceptual understanding. For example, take the situation of a team meeting... A member with a higher grade in CCD, say Green grade, sees that there are mainly Red grades to talk to, and adjusts her way of communication to their level of understanding. The choice of words might change as certain elements of CCD are not yet familiar to all team members. So instead of talking in an abstract way which only Green grades could follow the whole scenario comes down to Red grade level. Different story, better results... Similar to learning martial arts, we only covered two grades during this occasion - black and red. Most interestingly, there was quite some positive feedback and lots of questions about the principles and practices of the red grade. And we gathered real-world examples from various craftsman and discussed them. Following the Clean Code Developer Red Grade and some annotations from our meetup: CCD Red Grade - Principles Don't Repeat Yourself - DRY Keep It Simple, Stupid (and Short) - KISS Beware of Optimisations! Favour Composition over Inheritance - FCoI Interestingly most of the attendees already heard about those key words but couldn't really classify or categorize them. It's very similar to a situation in which you do not the particular for a thing and have to describe it to others... until someone tells you the actual name and suddenly all is very simple. CCD Red Grade - Practices Follow the Boy Scouts Rule Root Cause Analysis - RCA Use a Version Control System Apply Simple Refactoring Pattern Reflect Daily Introduction to the principles and practices of Clean Code Developer - here: Red Grade As for the various ToDo's we commonly agreed that the Boy Scout Rule clearly is not limited to software development or IT administration but applies to daily life in general. Same for the root cause analysis, btw. We really had good stories with surprisingly endings and conclusions. A quick check about who is using a version control system brought more drive into the conversation. Not only that we had people that aren't using any VCS at all, we also had the 'classic' approach of backup folders and naming conventions as well as the VCS 'junkie' that has to use multiple systems at a time. Just for the records: Git and GitHub seem to be in favour of some of the attendees. Regarding the daily reflection at the end of the day we came up with an easy solution: Wrap it up as a blog entry! Certifications in IT This is kind of a controversy in IT in general. Is it interesting to go for certifications or are they completely obsolete? What are the possibilities to get certified? What are the options we have in Mauritius? How would certificates stand compared to other educational tracks like Computer Science or Web Design. The ratio between craftsmen with certifications like MCP, MSTS, CCNA or LPI versus the ones without wasn't in favour for the first group but there was a high interest in the topic itself and some were really surprised to hear that exam preparations are completely free available online including temporarily voucher codes for either discounts or completely free exams. Furthermore, we discussed possible options on forming so-called study groups on a specific certificates and organising more frequent meetups in order to learn together. Taking into consideration that we have sponsored access to the video course material of Pluralsight (and now PeepCode as well as TrainSignal), we might give it a try by the end of the year. Current favourites are LPIC Level 1 and one of the Microsoft exams 40-78x. Feedback and ideas for the MSCC The closing conversations and discussions about how the MSCC is recently doing, what are the possibilities and what's (hopefully) going to happen in the future were really fertile and I made a couple of mental bullet points which I'm looking forward to tackle down together with orher craftsmen. Eventually, it might be a good option to elaborate on some issues during our weekly Code & Coffee sessions one Wednesday morning. Active discussion on various IT topics like certifications (LPI, MCP, CCNA, etc) and sharing experience Finally, we made it till the end of the planned time. Well, actually the talk was still on and we continued even after 16:00hrs. Unfortunately, we (the children and I) had to leave for evening activities. My resume of the day... It was great to have 15 craftsmen in one room. There are hundreds of IT geeks out there in Mauritius, and as Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community we still have a lot of work to do to pass on the message to some more key players and companies. Currently, it seems that we are able to attract a good number of students in Computer Science... but we have a lot more to offer, even or especially for IT people on the job. I'm already looking forward to our next Saturday meetup in the near future. PS: Meetup pictures are courtesy of Nirvan Pagooah. Thanks for sharing...

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• Data Integration 12c Raising the Big Data Roof at Oracle OpenWorld

  - by Tanu Sood

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";} Author: Dain Hansen, Director, Oracle It was an exciting OpenWorld 2013 for us in the Data Integration track. Our theme this year was all about ‘being future ready’ - previewing one of our biggest releases this year: Oracle Data Integration 12c. Just this week we followed up with this preview by announcing the general availability of 12c release for Oracle’s key data integration products: Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c. The new release delivers extreme performance, increase IT productivity, and simplify deployment, while helping IT organizations to keep pace with new data-oriented technology trends including cloud computing, big data analytics, real-time business intelligence. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";} Mark Hurd's keynote on day one set the tone for the Data Integration sessions. Mark focused on big data analytics and the changing consumer expectations. Especially real-time insight is a key theme for Oracle overall and data integration products. In Mark Hurd's keynote we heard from key customers, such as Airbus and Thomson Reuters, how real-time analysis of operational data including machine data creates value, in some cases even saves lives. Thomas Kurian gave a deeper look into Oracle's big data and fast data solutions. In the initial lead Data Integration track session - Brad Adelberg, VP of Development, presented Oracle’s Data Integration 12c product strategy based on key trends from the initial OpenWorld keynotes. Brad talked about how Oracle's data integration products address the new data integration requirements that evolved with cloud computing, big data, and changing consumer expectations and how they set the key themes in our products’ road map. Brad explained why and how fast-time to value, high-performance and future-ready solutions is the top focus areas for product development. If you were not able to attend OpenWorld or this session I recommend reading the white paper: Five New Data Integration Requirements and How to Meet them with Oracle Data Integration, which provides an in-depth look into how Oracle addresses the new trends in the DI market. Following Brad’s session, Nick Wagner provided in depth review of Oracle GoldenGate’s latest features and roadmap. Nick discussed how Oracle GoldenGate’s tight integration with Oracle Database sets the product apart from the competition. We also heard that heterogeneity of the product is still a major focus for GoldenGate’s development and there will be more news on that front when there is a major release. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";} After GoldenGate’s product strategy session, Denis Gray from the PM team presented Oracle Data Integrator’s product strategy session, talking about the latest and greatest on ODI. Another good session was delivered by long-time GoldenGate users, Comcast.  Jason Hurd and Amit Patel of Comcast talked about the various use cases they deploy Oracle GoldenGate throughout their enterprise, from database upgrades, feeding reporting systems, to active-active database synchronization.  The Comcast team shared many good tips on how to use GoldenGate for both zero downtime upgrades and active-active replication with conflict management requirement. One of our other important goals we had this year for the Data Integration track at OpenWorld was hearing from our customers. We ended day 1 on just that, with a wonderful award ceremony for Oracle Excellence Awards for Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation. The ceremony was held in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Congratulations to Royal Bank of Scotland and Yalumba Wine Company, the winners in the Data Integration category. You can find more information on the award and the winners in our previous blog post: 2013 Oracle Excellence Awards for Fusion Middleware Innovation… Selected for their innovation use of Oracle’s Data Integration products; the winners for the Data Integration Category are Royal Bank of Scotland and The Yalumba Wine Company. Congratulations!!! Royal Bank of Scotland’s Market and International Banking division provides clients across the globe with seamless trading and competitive pricing, underpinned by a deep knowledge of risk management across the full spectrum of financial products. They handle millions of transactions daily to keep the lifeblood of their clients’ businesses flowing – whether through payment management solutions or through bespoke trade finance solutions. Royal Bank of Scotland is leveraging Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Data Integrator along with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and the Oracle Database for a variety of solutions. Mainly, Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Data Integrator are used to feed their data warehouse – providing a real-time data integration solution that feeds transactional data to their analytics system in minutes to enable improved decision making with timely, accurate data for their business users. Oracle Data Integrator’s in-database transformation capabilities and its ability to integrate with Oracle GoldenGate for real-time data capture is the foundation of this implementation. This solution makes it such that changes happening in the analytics systems are available the same day they are deployed on the operational system with 100% data quality guaranteed. Additionally, the solution has helped to reduce their operational database size from 150GB to 10GB. Impressive! Now what if I told you this solution was built in 3 months and had a less than 6 month return on investment? That’s outstanding! The Yalumba Wine Company is situated in the Barossa Valley of Australia. It is the oldest family owned winery in Australia with a unique way of aging their wines in specially crafted 100 liter barrels. Did you know that “Yalumba” is Aboriginal for “all the land around”? The Yalumba Wine Company is growing rapidly, and was in need of introducing a more modern standard to the existing manufacturing processes to meet globalization demands, overall time-to-market, and better operational efficiency objectives of product development. The Yalumba Wine Company worked with a partner, Bristlecone to develop a unique solution whereby Oracle Data Integrator is leveraged to pull data from Salesforce.com and JD Edwards, in addition to their other pre-existing source systems, for consumption into their data warehouse. They have emphasized the overall ease of developing integration workflows with Oracle Data Integrator. The solution has brought better visibility for the business users, shorter data loading and transformation performance to their data warehouse with rapid incorporation of new data sources, and a solid future-proof foundation for their organization. Moving forward, they plan on leveraging more from Oracle’s Data Integration portfolio. Terrific! In addition to these two customers on Tuesday we featured many other important Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate customers. On Tuesday the GoldenGate panel included: Land O’Lakes, Smuckers, and Veolia Water. Besides giving us yummy nutrition and healthy water, these companies have another aspect in common. They all use GoldenGate to boost their ERP application. Please read the recap by Irem Radzik. On Wednesday, the ODI Panel included: Barry Ralston and Ryan Weber of Infinity Insurance, Paul Stracke of Paychex Inc., and Ian Wall of Vertex Pharmaceuticals for a session filled with interesting projects, use cases and approaches to leveraging Oracle Data Integrator. Please read the recap by Sandrine Riley for more. Thanks to everyone who joined with us and we hope to stay connected! To hear more about our Data Integration12c products join us in an upcoming webcast to learn more. Follow us www.twitter.com/ORCLGoldenGate or goto our website at www.oracle.com/goto/dataintegration

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• quick look at: dm_db_index_physical_stats

  - by fatherjack

  A quick look at the key data from this dmv that can help a DBA keep databases performing well and systems online as the users need them. When the dynamic management views relating to index statistics became available in SQL Server 2005 there was much hype about how they can help a DBA keep their servers running in better health than ever before. This particular view gives an insight into the physical health of the indexes present in a database. Whether they are use or unused, complete or missing some columns is irrelevant, this is simply the physical stats of all indexes; disabled indexes are ignored however. In it’s simplest form this dmv can be executed as:   The results from executing this contain a record for every index in every database but some of the columns will be NULL. The first parameter is there so that you can specify which database you want to gather index details on, rather than scan every database. Simply specifying DB_ID() in place of the first NULL achieves this. In order to avoid the NULLS, or more accurately, in order to choose when to have the NULLS you need to specify a value for the last parameter. It takes one of 4 values – DEFAULT, ‘SAMPLED’, ‘LIMITED’ or ‘DETAILED’. If you execute the dmv with each of these values you can see some interesting details in the times taken to complete each step. DECLARE @Start DATETIME DECLARE @First DATETIME DECLARE @Second DATETIME DECLARE @Third DATETIME DECLARE @Finish DATETIME SET @Start = GETDATE() SELECT * FROM [sys].[dm_db_index_physical_stats](DB_ID(), NULL, NULL, NULL, DEFAULT) AS ddips SET @First = GETDATE() SELECT * FROM [sys].[dm_db_index_physical_stats](DB_ID(), NULL, NULL, NULL, 'SAMPLED') AS ddips SET @Second = GETDATE() SELECT * FROM [sys].[dm_db_index_physical_stats](DB_ID(), NULL, NULL, NULL, 'LIMITED') AS ddips SET @Third = GETDATE() SELECT * FROM [sys].[dm_db_index_physical_stats](DB_ID(), NULL, NULL, NULL, 'DETAILED') AS ddips SET @Finish = GETDATE() SELECT DATEDIFF(ms, @Start, @First) AS [DEFAULT] , DATEDIFF(ms, @First, @Second) AS [SAMPLED] , DATEDIFF(ms, @Second, @Third) AS [LIMITED] , DATEDIFF(ms, @Third, @Finish) AS [DETAILED] Running this code will give you 4 result sets; DEFAULT will have 12 columns full of data and then NULLS in the remainder. SAMPLED will have 21 columns full of data. LIMITED will have 12 columns of data and the NULLS in the remainder. DETAILED will have 21 columns full of data. So, from this we can deduce that the DEFAULT value (the same one that is also applied when you query the view using a NULL parameter) is the same as using LIMITED. Viewing the final result set has some details that are worth noting: Running queries against this view takes significantly longer when using the SAMPLED and DETAILED values in the last parameter. The duration of the query is directly related to the size of the database you are working in so be careful running this on big databases unless you have tried it on a test server first. Let’s look at the data we get back with the DEFAULT value first of all and then progress to the extra information later. We know that the first parameter that we supply has to be a database id and for the purposes of this blog we will be providing that value with the DB_ID function. We could just as easily put a fixed value in there or a function such as DB_ID (‘AnyDatabaseName’). The first columns we get back are database_id and object_id. These are pretty explanatory and we can wrap those in some code to make things a little easier to read: SELECT DB_NAME([ddips].[database_id]) AS [DatabaseName] , OBJECT_NAME([ddips].[object_id]) AS [TableName] … FROM [sys].[dm_db_index_physical_stats](DB_ID(), NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL) AS ddips  gives us   SELECT DB_NAME([ddips].[database_id]) AS [DatabaseName] , OBJECT_NAME([ddips].[object_id]) AS [TableName], [i].[name] AS [IndexName] , ….. FROM [sys].[dm_db_index_physical_stats](DB_ID(), NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL) AS ddips INNER JOIN [sys].[indexes] AS i ON [ddips].[index_id] = [i].[index_id] AND [ddips].[object_id] = [i].[object_id]     These handily tie in with the next parameters in the query on the dmv. If you specify an object_id and an index_id in these then you get results limited to either the table or the specific index. Once again we can place a  function in here to make it easier to work with a specific table. eg. SELECT * FROM [sys].[dm_db_index_physical_stats] (DB_ID(), OBJECT_ID(‘AdventureWorks2008.Person.Address’) , 1, NULL, NULL) AS ddips   Note: Despite me showing that functions can be placed directly in the parameters for this dmv, best practice recommends that functions are not used directly in the function as it is possible that they will fail to return a valid object ID. To be certain of not passing invalid values to this function, and therefore setting an automated process off on the wrong path, declare variables for the OBJECT_IDs and once they have been validated, use them in the function: DECLARE @db_id SMALLINT; DECLARE @object_id INT; SET @db_id = DB_ID(N’AdventureWorks_2008′); SET @object_id = OBJECT_ID(N’AdventureWorks_2008.Person.Address’); IF @db_id IS NULL BEGINPRINT N’Invalid database’; ENDELSE IF @object_id IS NULL BEGINPRINT N’Invalid object’; ENDELSE BEGINSELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats (@db_id, @object_id, NULL, NULL , ‘LIMITED’); END; GO In cases where the results of querying this dmv don’t have any effect on other processes (i.e. simply viewing the results in the SSMS results area)  then it will be noticed when the results are not consistent with the expected results and in the case of this blog this is the method I have used. So, now we can relate the values in these columns to something that we recognise in the database lets see what those other values in the dmv are all about. The next columns are: We’ll skip partition_number, index_type_desc, alloc_unit_type_desc, index_depth and index_level  as this is a quick look at the dmv and they are pretty self explanatory. The final columns revealed by querying this view in the DEFAULT mode are avg_fragmentation_in_percent. This is the amount that the index is logically fragmented. It will show NULL when the dmv is queried in SAMPLED mode. fragment_count. The number of pieces that the index is broken into. It will show NULL when the dmv is queried in SAMPLED mode. avg_fragment_size_in_pages. The average size, in pages, of a single fragment in the leaf level of the IN_ROW_DATA allocation unit. It will show NULL when the dmv is queried in SAMPLED mode. page_count. Total number of index or data pages in use. OK, so what does this give us? Well, there is an obvious correlation between fragment_count, page_count and avg_fragment_size-in_pages. We see that an index that takes up 27 pages and is in 3 fragments has an average fragment size of 9 pages (27/3=9). This means that for this index there are 3 separate places on the hard disk that SQL Server needs to locate and access to gather the data when it is requested by a DML query. If this index was bigger than 72KB then having it’s data in 3 pieces might not be too big an issue as each piece would have a significant piece of data to read and the speed of access would not be too poor. If the number of fragments increases then obviously the amount of data in each piece decreases and that means the amount of work for the disks to do in order to retrieve the data to satisfy the query increases and this would start to decrease performance. This information can be useful to keep in mind when considering the value in the avg_fragmentation_in_percent column. This is arrived at by an internal algorithm that gives a value to the logical fragmentation of the index taking into account the multiple files, type of allocation unit and the previously mentioned characteristics if index size (page_count) and fragment_count. Seeing an index with a high avg_fragmentation_in_percent value will be a call to action for a DBA that is investigating performance issues. It is possible that tables will have indexes that suffer from rapid increases in fragmentation as part of normal daily business and that regular defragmentation work will be needed to keep it in good order. In other cases indexes will rarely become fragmented and therefore not need rebuilding from one end of the year to another. Keeping this in mind DBAs need to use an ‘intelligent’ process that assesses key characteristics of an index and decides on the best, if any, defragmentation method to apply should be used. There is a simple example of this in the sample code found in the Books OnLine content for this dmv, in example D. There are also a couple of very popular solutions created by SQL Server MVPs Michelle Ufford and Ola Hallengren which I would wholly recommend that you review for much further detail on how to care for your SQL Server indexes. Right, let’s get back on track then. Querying the dmv with the fifth parameter value as ‘DETAILED’ takes longer because it goes through the index and refreshes all data from every level of the index. As this blog is only a quick look a we are going to skate right past ghost_record_count and version_ghost_record_count and discuss avg_page_space_used_in_percent, record_count, min_record_size_in_bytes, max_record_size_in_bytes and avg_record_size_in_bytes. We can see from the details below that there is a correlation between the columns marked. Column 1 (Page_Count) is the number of 8KB pages used by the index, column 2 is how full each page is (how much of the 8KB has actual data written on it), column 3 is how many records are recorded in the index and column 4 is the average size of each record. This approximates to: ((Col1*8) * 1024*(Col2/100))/Col3 = Col4*. avg_page_space_used_in_percent is an important column to review as this indicates how much of the disk that has been given over to the storage of the index actually has data on it. This value is affected by the value given for the FILL_FACTOR parameter when creating an index. avg_record_size_in_bytes is important as you can use it to get an idea of how many records are in each page and therefore in each fragment, thus reinforcing how important it is to keep fragmentation under control. min_record_size_in_bytes and max_record_size_in_bytes are exactly as their names set them out to be. A detail of the smallest and largest records in the index. Purely offered as a guide to the DBA to better understand the storage practices taking place. So, keeping an eye on avg_fragmentation_in_percent will ensure that your indexes are helping data access processes take place as efficiently as possible. Where fragmentation recurs frequently then potentially the DBA should consider; the fill_factor of the index in order to leave space at the leaf level so that new records can be inserted without causing fragmentation so rapidly. the columns used in the index should be analysed to avoid new records needing to be inserted in the middle of the index but rather always be added to the end. * – it’s approximate as there are many factors associated with things like the type of data and other database settings that affect this slightly.  Another great resource for working with SQL Server DMVs is Performance Tuning with SQL Server Dynamic Management Views by Louis Davidson and Tim Ford – a free ebook or paperback from Simple Talk. Disclaimer – Jonathan is a Friend of Red Gate and as such, whenever they are discussed, will have a generally positive disposition towards Red Gate tools. Other tools are often available and you should always try others before you come back and buy the Red Gate ones. All code in this blog is provided “as is” and no guarantee, warranty or accuracy is applicable or inferred, run the code on a test server and be sure to understand it before you run it on a server that means a lot to you or your manager.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, January 08, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, January 08, 2011Popular ReleasesExtended WPF Toolkit: Extended WPF Toolkit - 1.3.0: What's in the 1.3.0 Release?BusyIndicator ButtonSpinner ChildWindow ColorPicker - Updated (Breaking Changes) DateTimeUpDown - New Control Magnifier - New Control MaskedTextBox - New Control MessageBox NumericUpDown RichTextBox RichTextBoxFormatBar - Updated .NET 3.5 binaries and SourcePlease note: The Extended WPF Toolkit 3.5 is dependent on .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit. You must install .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit in order to use any features in the To...sNPCedit: sNPCedit v0.9d: added elementclient coordinate catcher to catch coordinates select a target (ingame) i.e. your char, npc or monster than click the button and coordinates+direction will be transfered to the selected row in the table corrected labels from Rot to Direction (because it is a vector)AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.2: Implemented the Auto Updater Fix: Your settings will no longer be cleared with new releases of AutoLoL The mastery Editor and Browser now have their own tabs instead of nested tabs The Browser tab will only show the masteries matching ALL filters instead of just one Added a 'Browse' button in the Mastery Editor tab to open the Masteries Directory The Browser tab now shows a message when there are no mastery files in the Masteries Directory Fix: Fixed the Save As dialog again, for ...Ionics Isapi Rewrite Filter: 2.1 latest stable: V2.1 is stable, and is in maintenance mode. This is v2.1.1.25. It is a bug-fix release. There are no new features. 28629 29172 28722 27626 28074 29164 27659 27900 many documentation updates and fixes proper x64 build environment. This release includes x64 binaries in zip form, but no x64 MSI file. You'll have to manually install x64 servers, following the instructions in the documentation.StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.14980.000: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes: - StyleCop's new ObjectBasedEnvironment object does not resolve the StyleCop installation path, thus it does not return the correct path ...VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.1: New release with bug fixes and updates for performance.SSH.NET Library: 2011.1.6: Fixes CommandTimeout default value is fixed to infinite. Port Forwarding feature improvements Memory leaks fixes New Features Add ErrorOccurred event to handle errors that occurred on different thread New and improve SFTP features SftpFile now has more attributes and some operations Most standard operations now available Allow specify encoding for command execution KeyboardInteractiveConnectionInfo class added for "keyboard-interactive" authentication. Add ability to specify bo....NET Extensions - Extension Methods Library for C# and VB.NET: Release 2011.03: Added lot's of new extensions and new projects for MVC and Entity Framework. object.FindTypeByRecursion Int32.InRange String.RemoveAllSpecialCharacters String.IsEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.IsNotEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.IfEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.ToUpperFirstLetter String.GetBytes String.ToTitleCase String.ToPlural DateTime.GetDaysInYear DateTime.GetPeriodOfDay IEnumberable.RemoveAll IEnumberable.Distinct ICollection.RemoveAll IList.Join IList.Match IList.Cast Array.IsNullOrEmpty Array.W...VidCoder: 0.8.0: Added x64 version. Made the audio output preview more detailed and accurate. If the chosen encoder or mixdown is incompatible with the source, the fallback that will be used is displayed. Added "Auto" to the audio mixdown choices. Reworked non-anamorphic size calculation to work better with non-standard pixel aspect ratios and cropping. Reworked Custom anamorphic to be more intuitive and allow display width to be set automatically (Thanks, Statick). Allowing higher bitrates for 6-ch....NET Voice Recorder: Auto-Tune Release: This is the source code and binaries to accompany the article on the Coding 4 Fun website. It is the Auto Tuner release of the .NET Voice Recorder application.BloodSim: BloodSim - 1.3.2.0: - Simulation Log is now automatically disabled and hidden when running 10 or more iterations - Hit and Expertise are now entered by Rating, and include option for a Racial Expertise bonus - Added option for boss to use a periodic magic ability (Dragon Breath) - Added option for boss to periodically Enrage, gaining a Damage/Attack Speed buffEnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.9 BETA: 2.2.9 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in the Gobl...xUnit.net - Unit Testing for .NET: xUnit.net 1.7 Beta: xUnit.net release 1.7 betaBuild #1533 Important notes for Resharper users: Resharper support has been moved to the xUnit.net Contrib project. Important note for TestDriven.net users: If you are having issues running xUnit.net tests in TestDriven.net, especially on 64-bit Windows, we strongly recommend you upgrade to TD.NET version 3.0 or later. This release adds the following new features: Added support for ASP.NET MVC 3 Added Assert.Equal(double expected, double actual, int precision)...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.0 Release 1: New feature - Added Windows Phone 7 project New feature - Added dynamic support to LINQ to JSON New feature - Added dynamic support to serializer New feature - Added INotifyCollectionChanged to JContainer in .NET 4 build New feature - Added ReadAsDateTimeOffset to JsonReader New feature - Added ReadAsDecimal to JsonReader New feature - Added covariance to IJEnumerable type parameter New feature - Added XmlSerializer style Specified property support New feature - Added ...DbDocument: DbDoc Initial Version: DbDoc Initial versionASP .NET MVC CMS (Content Management System): Atomic CMS 2.1.2: Atomic CMS 2.1.2 release notes Atomic CMS installation guide N2 CMS: 2.1: N2 is a lightweight CMS framework for ASP.NET. It helps you build great web sites that anyone can update. Major Changes Support for auto-implemented properties ({get;set;}, based on contribution by And Poulsen) All-round improvements and bugfixes File manager improvements (multiple file upload, resize images to fit) New image gallery Infinite scroll paging on news Content templates First time with N2? Try the demo site Download one of the template packs (above) and open the proj...Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 0.1.11.10: IMPORTANT CHANGESThis release changes the way some WURFL capabilities and attributes are exposed to .NET developers. If you cast MobileCapabilities to return some values then please read the Release Note before implementing this release. The following code snippet can be used to access any WURFL capability. For instance, if the device is a tablet: string capability = Request.Browser["is_tablet"]; SummaryNew attributes have been added to the redirect section: originalUrlAsQueryString If se...Wii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 1.0: - Norwegian translation - French translation - German translation - WBFS dump for analysis - Scalable full HQ cover - Support for log file - Load game images improved - Support for image splitting - Diff for images after transfer - Support for scrubbing modes - Search functionality for log - Recurse depth for Files/Load - Show progress while downloading game cover - Supports more databases for cover download - Game cover loading routines improvedBlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.0: Get DotNetBlogEngine for 3 Months Free! Click Here for More Info 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.0 instructions. To get started, be sure to check out our installatio...New Projects2011 Scripting Games: Track Changes for the 2011 Scripting Games to be hosted on PoshCode by the Microsoft Scripting Guys and the PowerShell community. ADO.NET Unit Testable Repository Generator: Generates a strongly-typed Object Context and POCO Entities from your EDMX file. Additionally a Repository and an abstract Unit Test for the Repository is created (with a mock for the ObjectContext and mock for the ObjectSets). Bases on the "ADO.NET C# POCO Entity Generator".AshpazKhone: ???AVAilable Rooms: AVAilable Rooms Can be used to show and book rooms on an exchange serverContentManager: Content Manger for SAP Kpro exports the data pool of a content-server by PHIOS-Lists (txt-files) into local binary files. Afterwards this files can be imported in a SAP content-repository . The whole List of the PHIOS Keys can also be downloaded an splitted in practical units.CSLauncher: CSLauncher is a small application providing a launching interface similar to Counter Strike's weapons selection menu. You can organize your favorite applications in CSLauncher in the order you wish, then launch them by remembering their numbers.DbMetadata: A simple lightweight library used to retrieve database metadata.DotNetSiemensPLCToolBoxLibrary: DotNetSiemensPLCToolBoxLibrary A Library for working with Siemens Step5 and Step7 Projects, connecting to S5 or S7 PLC's.EmptyX: EmptyX is a game developped with c# and xna for the XNA CHALLENGE in AlgeriaERASMUS: Erasmus šitFaceDeBouc: Simplebook, le nouveau Facebook CPE! Technlogies .NET Serveur: - BDD SQLServer - Logique métier - Web services Clients: - client lourd WPF - client léger ASP.NETFunction resolver: Application using .NET Expression trees to resolve a function for a set of numbersMLRobotic: Programme de gestion MLRobotic 2011 Sissa ProjectMS CRM Multiple Attachment Download Application: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 currently does not have a built in way for CRM Administrators to Export multiple attachments from the database and store it on a local directory on the Server or the local PC. This application allows you to do so.Open Data Publisher: Open Data Publisher is a C# MVC application that allows you to quickly and easily publish data from SQL Server tables and views using the OData protocol, and present data from OData and static sources to the public for download and exploration.OttawaZagreb1: Test projectPrague: ????? ?? ???? ??????PSSplunk: PSSplunk is a set of Powershell cmdlets that use the RESTFUL API provided by www.splunk.com The goal is provide access to all of Splunks configuration and search features from the CLI without having to have Splunk installed locally.Reactive C#: Reactive language extensions for C#SemanaWebcasts: Projeto para semana de webcasts.Steward: Personal StewardSVNUG.Tracker: SVNUG.Tracker is an example task tracking application used as a presentation project for the Sangamon Valley .NET User Group (svnug.com). The purpose of SVNUG.Tracker is to be a common problem domain for exercising new .NET technology. SVNUG.Tracker is written in C# 4.The Silverlight Cookbook - A Reference Application for Silverlight 4 LOB Apps: The Silverlight Cookbook is a .NET example application that demonstrates how to build a full-blown line-of-business app using the reference architecture explained at: http://www.dennisdoomen.net/search/label/Silverlight Vkontakte Wpf Client: This is a simple client for social network Vkontakte. It can send message to your friends, download audio files or play it,list user video. Also you can view user status and change yours.Windows Phone Multilingual Keyboard: Multilingual keyboard for Windows Phone 7WPF Controls & MVVM Practices: WPF Controls contains various controls that can be used in applications. Currently Featured * FilteredListBox (filter and selected items notification) * IsDirty functionality for a ViewModel model

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• Day 6 - Game Menuing Woes and Future Screen Sneak Peeks

  - by dapostolov

  So, after my last post on Day 5 I dabbled with my game class design. I took the approach where each game objects is tightly coupled with a graphic. The good news is I got the menu working but not without some hard knocks and game growing pains. I'll explain later, but for now...here is a class diagram of my first stab at my class structure and some code...   Ok, there are few mistakes, however, I'm going to leave it as is for now... As you can see I created an inital abstract base class called GameSprite. This class when inherited will provide a simple virtual default draw method:        public virtual void DrawSprite(SpriteBatch spriteBatch)         {             spriteBatch.Draw(Sprite, Position, Color.White);         } The benefits of coding it this way allows me to inherit the class and utilise the method in the screen draw method...So regardless of what the graphic object type is it will now have the ability to render a static image on the screen. Example: public class MyStaticTreasureChest : GameSprite {} If you remember the window draw method from Day 3's post, we could use the above code as follows...         protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime)         {             GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue);             spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend);             foreach(var gameSprite in ListOfGameObjects)            {                 gameSprite.DrawSprite(spriteBatch);            }             spriteBatch.End();             base.Draw(gameTime);         } I have to admit the GameSprite object is pretty plain as with its DrawSprite method... But ... we now have the ability to render 3 static menu items on the screen ... BORING! I want those menu items to do something exciting, which of course involves animation... So, let's have a peek at AnimatedGameSprite in the above game diagram. The idea with the AnimatedGameSprite is that it has an image to animate...such as ... characters, fireballs, and... menus! So after inheriting from GameSprite class, I added a few more options such as UpdateSprite...         public virtual void UpdateSprite(float elapsed)         {             _totalElapsed += elapsed;             if (_totalElapsed > _timePerFrame)             {                 _frame++;                 _frame = _frame % _framecount;                 _totalElapsed -= _timePerFrame;             }         }  And an overidden DrawSprite...         public override void DrawSprite(SpriteBatch spriteBatch)         {             int FrameWidth = Sprite.Width / _framecount;             Rectangle sourcerect = new Rectangle(FrameWidth * _frame, 0, FrameWidth, Sprite.Height);             spriteBatch.Draw(Sprite, Position, sourcerect, Color.White, _rotation, _origin, _scale, SpriteEffects.None, _depth);         } With these two methods...I can animate and image, all I had to do was add a few more lines to the screens Update Method (From Day 3), like such:             float elapsed = (float) gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds;             foreach (var item in ListOfAnimatedGameObjects)             {                 item.UpdateSprite(elapsed);             } And voila! My images begin to animate in one spot, on the screen... Hmm, but how do I interact with the menu items using a mouse...well the mouse cursor was easy enough... this.IsMouseVisible = true; But, to have it "interact" with an image was a bit more tricky...I had to perform collision detection!             mouseStateCurrent = Mouse.GetState();             var uiEnabledSprites = (from s in menuItems                                    where s.IsEnabled                                    select s).ToList();             foreach (var item in uiEnabledSprites)             {                 var r = new Rectangle((int)item.Position.X, (int)item.Position.Y, item.Sprite.Width, item.Sprite.Height);                 item.MenuState = MenuState.Normal;                 if (r.Intersects(new Rectangle(mouseStateCurrent.X, mouseStateCurrent.Y, 0, 0)))                 {                     item.MenuState = MenuState.Hover;                     if (mouseStatePrevious.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed                         && mouseStateCurrent.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released)                     {                         item.MenuState = MenuState.Pressed;                     }                 }             }             mouseStatePrevious = mouseStateCurrent; So, basically, what it is doing above is iterating through all my interactive objects and detecting a rectangle collision and the object , plays the state animation (or static image).  Lessons Learned, Time Burned... So, I think I did well to start, but after I hammered out my prototype...well...things got sloppy and I began to realise some design flaws... At the time: I couldn't seem to figure out how to open another window, such as the character creation screen Input was not event based and it was bugging me My menu design relied heavily on mouse input and I couldn't use keyboard. Mouse input, is tightly bound with graphic rendering / positioning, so its logic will have to be in each scene. Menu animations would stop mid frame, then continue when the action occured again. This is bad, because...what if I had a sword sliding onthe screen? Then it would slide a quarter of the way, then stop due to another action, then render again mid-slide... it just looked sloppy. Menu, Solved!? To solve the above problems I did a little research and I found some great code in the XNA forums. The one worth mentioning was the GameStateManagementSample. With this sample, you can create a basic "text based" menu system which allows you to swap screens, popup screens, play the game, and quit....basic game state management... In my next post I'm going to dwelve a bit more into this code and adapt it with my code from this prototype. Text based menus just won't cut it for me, for now...however, I'm still going to stick with my animated menu item idea. A sneak peek using the Game State Management Sample...with no changes made... Cool Things to Mention: At work ... I tend to break out in random conversations every-so-often and I get talking about some of my challenges with this game (or some stupid observation about something... stupid) During one conversation I was discussing how I should animate my images; I explained that I knew I had to use the Update method provided, but I didn't know how (at the time) to render an image at an appropriate "pace" and how many frames to use, etc.. I also got thinking that if a machine rendered my images faster / slower, that was surely going to f-up my animations. To which a friend, Sheldon,  answered, surely the Draw method is like a camera taking a snapshot of a scene in time. Then it clicked...I understood the big picture of the game engine... After some research I discovered that the Draw method attempts to keep a framerate of 60 fps. From what I understand, the game engine will even leave out a few calls to the draw method if it begins to slow down. This is why we want to put our sprite updates in the update method. Then using a game timer (provided by the engine), we want to render the scene based on real time passed, not framerate. So even the engine renders at 20 fps, the animations will still animate at the same real time speed! Which brings up another point. Why 60 fps? I'm speculating that Microsoft capped it because LCD's dont' refresh faster than 60 fps? On another note, If the game engine knows its falling behind in rendering...then surely we can harness this to speed up our games. Maybe I can find some flag which tell me if the game is lagging, and what the current framerate is, etc...(instead of coding it like I did last time) Sheldon, suggested maybe I can render like WoW does, in prioritised layers...I think he's onto something, however I don't think I'll have that many graphics to worry about such a problem of graphic latency. We'll see. People to Mention: Well,as you are aware I hadn't posted in a couple days and I was surprised to see a few emails and messenger queries about my game progress (and some concern as to why I stopped). I want to thank everyone for their kind words of support and put everyone at ease by stating that I do intend on completing this project. Granted I only have a few hours each night, but, I'll do it. Thank you to Garth for mailing in my next screen! That was a nice surprise! The Sneek Peek you've been waiting for... Garth has also volunteered to render me some wizard images. He was a bit shocked when I asked for them in 2D animated strips. He said I was going backward (and that I have really bad Game Development Lingo). But, I advised Garth that I will use 3D images later...for now...2D images. Garth also had some great game design ideas to add on. I advised him that I will save his ideas and include them in the future design document (for the 3d version?). Lastly, my best friend Alek, is going to join me in developing this game. This was a project we started eons ago but never completed because of our careers. Now, priorities change and we have some spare time on our hands. Let's see what trouble Alek and I can get into! Tonight I'll be uploading my prototypes and base game to a source control for both of us to work off of. D.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, July 23, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, July 23, 2013Popular ReleasesHome Access Plus+: v9.3: UPDATED RELEASE Fixed: Issue with enabling LDAP encryption Added: Encrypted/Signed LDAP Queries Fixed: Wrong Modernizr reference on the setup page Changed: Code on the AD Tree Picker Upgraded: Dynatree Fixed: Removed Dynatree Debug Data Added: Time bar for the current day Added: Code to block booking/removing of bookings after the lesson time has past Fixed: New sidebar position issue Added: Decode for the NotesMagelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 2.4: Magelia WebStore version 2.4 introduces new and improved features: Basket and order calculation have been redesigned with a more modular approach geographic zone algorithms for tax and shipping calculations have been re-developed. The Store service has been split in three services (store, basket, order). Product start and end dates have been added. For variant products a unique code has been introduced for the top (variable) product, product attributes can now be defined at the top ...GoAgent GUI: GoAgent GUI 1.3.0 Beta: ??????????： Windows XP SP3 Windows Vista SP1 Windows 7 Windows 8 Windows 8.1 ??Windows 8.1???????????? ????： .Net Framework 4.0 http://59.111.20.19/download/17718/33240761/4/exe/69/54/17718_1/dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package http://59.111.20.23/download/4894298/8555584/1/exe/28/176/1348305610524_944/vcredist_x86.exe ???????????????。 ?????????????，??????????，??????????????（????） ?????Windows XP?Windows 7????，???????????，?issue??????。uygw@outlook.comLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.08: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.AndroidCopyAndPaste: Capood: Erstes Release für Evaluation --> Changeset 26675fastJSON: v2.0.17: 2.0.17 - added serialization of static fields and properties - added dynamic object support and testKartris E-commerce: Kartris v2.5002: This is the release version of Kartris with the responsive interface based on Zurb's Foundation framework. It will work on any screen size, down to and including mobile devices such as the iphone. We've also fixed issues with Apple iOS products being treated by ASP.NET as 'downscale' devices, which broke some functionality in Kartris. This release also includes native Bitcoin support (no third party services required - it communicates directly with the standard Bitcoin client via a JSON API)...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.15: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImgChili.net" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgBabes.com" linksAcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.4.3: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.4.3 ?? ??Bilibili????????????? ???????????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2.10?...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.6.601: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.6.6. These zip files are also available as a NuGet package: https://nuget.org/profiles/dlemstra/C# Intellisense for Notepad++: Initial release: Members auto-complete Integration with native Notepad++ Auto-Completion Auto "open bracket" for methods Right-arrow to accept suggestions51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.19.4: One Click Install from NuGet This release introduces the 51Degrees.mobi IIS Vary Header Fix. When Compression and Caching is used in IIS, the Vary header is overwritten, making intelligent caching with dynamic content impossible. Find out more about installing the Vary Header fix. Changes to Version 2.1.19.4Handlers now have a ‘Count’ property. This is an integer value that shows how many devices in the dataset that use that handler. Provider.cs -> GetDeviceInfoByID to address a problem w...Centrify DirectControl PowerShell Module: 1.5.709: -fix- Computer password is correctly set when preparing Computer account for Self-Service join and hostname is longer than 14 charsDLog: DLog v1.0: Log v1.0SalarDbCodeGenerator: SalarDbCodeGenerator v2.1.2013.0719: Version 2.1.2013.0719 2013/7/19 Pattern Changes: * DapperContext pattern is added. * All patterns are updated to work with one-to-one relations. Changes: * One-to-one relation is supported. * Minor bug fixes.Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows and WP (v1.3 beta 2): Includes all changes in v1.3 beta 1 Additional support for Windows 8.1 Preview New API (JS): addTextTrack New API (JS): msKeys New API (JS): msPlayToPreferredSourceUri New API (JS): msSetMediaKeys New API (JS): onmsneedkey New API (Xaml): SetMediaStreamSource method New API (Xaml): Stretch property New API (Xaml): StretchChanged event New API (Xaml): AreTransportControlsEnabled property New API (Xaml): IsFullWindow property New API (Xaml): PlayToPreferredSourceUri proper...Outlook 2013 Add-In: Multiple Calendars: As per popular request, this new version includes: - Support for multiple calendars. This can be enabled in the configuration by choosing which ones to show/hide appointments from. In some cases (public folders) it may time out and crash, and so far it only supports "My Calendars", so not shared ones yet. Also they're currently shown in the same font/color so there are no confusions with color categories, but please drop me a line on any suggestions you'd like to see implemented. - Added fri...Circuit Diagram: Circuit Diagram 2.0 Beta 2: New in this release: Show grid in editor Cut/copy/paste support Bug fixesOrchard Project: Orchard 1.7 RC: Planning releasedTerminals: Version 3.1 - Release: Changes since version 3.0:15992 Unified usage of icons in user interface Added context menu in Organize favorites grid Fixed:34219 34210 34223 33981 34209 Install notes:No changes in database (use database from release 3.0) No upgrade of configuration, passwords, credentials or favorites See also upgrade notes for release 3.0New ProjectsAerCloud.net FaceTools Client - Python, Linux & Windows: This project source code provides a step by step guide for using AerCloud.net Framework as a Service API. For more information please visit http://www.aercloudCode Snippet Manager: It is a simple Code Snippet Manager.. that I use when presenting tutorials. Features: - Insert a code snippet from the clipboard into program - Delete code sniDeutschWortSammler: A tiny English-German dictionary.DNN Testimonials: Virtual Essentials is a custom software development company. We strive to put joy back into the lives of people by removing the pain points through technologyDXWTEC: legsGoldenDream TeamWork: CourseWork for DB Course in Telerik Academy. Kpaint: Our work with Kpaint has proven to have provide highly accurate results mostly with the exception of occasion jittery of the paint brush. The voice recognition LAura: LAura checks the presence status of the currently signed in User and colorizes the Windows Window Color.MAPIFolders: MAPIFolders is intended as a successor to PFDAVAdmin and ExFolders.Microsoft Lab of Things Analytics: This is a project by students at University College London. We are creating analytics that will add value to home automation leveraging Microsoft Lab of Things.MySitelongdream: My siteMyTestSolution: this is a solution used just for laboratory purposeOrchestrator EventLog Integration Pack: Orchestrator Integration Pack to write spezific events in any Event Log.Planter's Supermarket: sdfResize images before upload: It will resize all images in folder recursively and store them in a store accountsampletranscodeffmpeg: a project for transcode for joyseeSCSM Perf Test Harness: Source Code for Travis Wright's LoadGen Tool for Service Manager. Simple Compression: Simple Compression is a .Net library that provides compression methods for use in an application.The Memory Game: This was my first WPF application.What day of the week is your birthday?: A program that can find the day of the week you were born!!!!!Windows Recovery Software: Recover Data Software for windows helps you to recover all type of data which has been lost due to several reasons.Xjs: Javascript framework to allow faster web development on the browser side

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 04, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 04, 2014Popular ReleasesSEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.032.018 Release 1: Added ability to merge/join two ships, regardless of origin. Added Language selection menu to set display text language (for SE resources only), and fixed inherent issues. Added full support for Dedicated Servers, allowing use on PC without Steam present, and only the Dedicated Install. Added Browse button for used specified save game selection in Load dialog. Installation of this version will replace older version.DNN Blog: 06.00.07: Highlights: Enhancement: Option to show management panel on child modules Fix: Changed SPROC and code to ensure the right people are notified of pending comments. (CP-24018) Fix: Fix to have notification actions authentication assume the right module id so these will work from the messaging center (CP-24019) Fix: Fix to issue in categories in a post that will not save when no categories and no tags selectedcsv2xlsx: Source code: Source code of applicationHigLabo: HigLabo_20140603: Bug fix of MimeParser for nested MimeContent parsing.Family Tree Analyzer: Version 4.0.0.0-beta2: This major release introduces a significant new feature the ability to search the UK Ordnance Survey 50k Gazetteer for small placenames that often don't appear on a modern Google Map. This means significant numbers of locations that were previously not found by Google Geocoding will now be found by using OS Geocoding. In addition I've added support for loading the Scottish 1930 Parish boundary maps, whilst slightly different from the parish boundaries in use in the 1800s that are familiar to...TEncoder: 4.0.0: --4.0.0 -Added: Video downloader -Added: Total progress will be updated more smoothly -Added: MP4Box progress will be shown -Added: A tool to create gif image from video -Added: An option to disable trimming -Added: Audio track option won't be used for mpeg sources as default -Fixed: Subtitle position wasn't used -Fixed: Duration info in the file list wasn't updated after trimming -Updated: FFMpegSSIS Multiple Hash: Multiple Hash 1.6.2.3: Release Notes This release is an SQL 2014 fix release. It addresses the following: The 1.6.1.2 release's SQL 2014 installer didn't work for SQL 2014 RTM. The x64 installer also showed x86 for both x64 and x86 in SQL 2014. Please download the x64 of x32 file based on the bitness of your SQL Server installation. BIDS or SSDT/BI ONLY INSTALLS ARE NOT DETECTED. You MUST use the Custom install, to install when the popup is shown, and select which versions of SQL Server are available. A war...QuickMon: Version 3.14 (Pie release): This is unofficially the 'Pie' release. There are two big changes.1. 'Presets' - basically templates. Future releases might build on this to allow users to add more presets. 2. MSI Installer now allows you to choose components (in case you don't want all collectors etc.). This means you don't have to download separate components anymore (AllAgents.zip still included in case you want to use them separately) Some other changes:1. Add/changed default file extension for monitor packs to *.qmp (...VeraCrypt: VeraCrypt version 1.0d: Changes between 1.0c and 1.0d (03 June 2014) : Correct issue while creating hidden operating system. Minor fixes (look at git history for more details).Keepass2Android: 0.9.4-pre1: added plug-in support: See settings for how to get plug-ins! published QR plug-in (scan passwords, display passwords as QR code, transfer entries to other KP2A devices) published InputStick plugin (transfer credentials to your PC via bluetooth - requires InputStick USB stick) Third party apps can now simply implement querying KP2A for credentials. Are you a developer? Please add this to your app if suitable! added TOTP support (compatible with KeeOTP and TrayTotp) app should no l...The IRIS Toolbox Project: IRIS Reference Manual Release 20140602: Reference Manual for Release 20140602.Microsoft Web Protection Library: AntiXss Library 4.3.0: Download from nuget or the Microsoft Download Center This issue finally addresses the over zealous behaviour of the HTML Sanitizer which should now function as expected once again. HTML encoding has been changed to safelist a few more characters for webforms compatibility. This will be the last version of AntiXSS that contains a sanitizer. Any new releases will be encoding libraries only. We recommend you explore other sanitizer options, for example AntiSamy https://www.owasp.org/index....Z SqlBulkCopy Extensions: SqlBulkCopy Extensions 1.0.0: SqlBulkCopy Extensions provide MUST-HAVE methods with outstanding performance missing from the SqlBulkCopy class like Delete, Update, Merge, Upsert. Compatible with .NET 2.0, SQL Server 2000, SQL Azure and more! Bulk MethodsBulkDelete BulkInsert BulkMerge BulkUpdate BulkUpsert Utility MethodsGetSqlConnection GetSqlTransaction You like this library? Find out how and why you should support Z Project Become a Memberhttp://zzzproject.com/resources/images/all/become-a-member.png|ht...Tweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Tweetinvi 0.9.3.x: Timelines- Added all the parameters available from the Timeline Endpoints in Tweetinvi. - This is available for HomeTimeline, UserTimeline, MentionsTimeline // Simple query var tweets = Timeline.GetHomeTimeline(); // Create a parameter for queries with specific parameters var timelineParameter = Timeline.CreateHomeTimelineRequestParameter(); timelineParameter.ExcludeReplies = true; timelineParameter.TrimUser = true; var tweets = Timeline.GetHomeTimeline(timelineParameter); Tweetinvi 0.9.3.1...Sandcastle Help File Builder: Help File Builder and Tools v2014.5.31.0: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This release completes removal of the branding transformations and implements the new VS2013 presentation style that utilizes the new lightweight website format. Several breaking cha...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.71.2: More memory and performance improvements. Fixed an issue with pivot table field order.Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.9.101: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.9.1. Breaking changes: - Int/short Set methods of WritablePixelCollection are now unsigned. - The Q16 build no longer uses HDRI, switch to the new Q16-HDRI build if you need HDRI.fnr.exe - Find And Replace Tool: 1.7: Bug fixes Refactored logic for encoding text values to command line to handle common edge cases where find/replace operation works in GUI but not in command line Fix for bug where selection in Encoding drop down was different when generating command line in some cases. It was reported in: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/workitem/34 Fix for "Backslash inserted before dot in replacement text" reported here: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/discussions/541024 Fix for finding replacing...SoundCloud Downloader: SC Downloader V1.0: Newest release Requirements .NET Framework 4.0/4.5 Changes since releasing the source Replaced ProgressBar and Buttons with the ones i created from scratch, you may use the .dll files on your own risk. Changed the authentication mode to Windows NOTE! When extracted, execute setup.exe to launch the installer! NOTE! ENJOY!VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.59: changes NEW: Added Support for 'GokoImage.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ViperII.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixxxView.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgRex.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixLiv.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'imgsee.me' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgS.it' linksNew Projects2112110148: 2112110148 Kieu Thi Phuong AnhAutoHelp: Inspired by Docy, AutoHelp exposes XML documentation embedded in sources code. a MVC 5 / typescripted connected on Webapi, AutoHelp is a modern HTML 5 appFeedbackata: An exercise in interactive development.Ideaa: A place to get inspired and find ideas about a topic you are interested inImpression Studio - Free presentation Maker Tool: Impression Studio is a free presentation maker tool based on impress.js library. It aims to be free alternative to prezi. This tool is under heavy development.LavaMite: LavaMite is a program that aims to capture the random wax formations that arise in a lava lamp before it is bubbling freely.Load Runner - HTTP Pressure Test Tool: A Lightweight HTTP pressure test tool supports multi methods / content type / requests, written in C# 4.0.Microsoft Research Software Radio SDK: Microsoft Research Software Radio SDKMsp: MspPower Torrent: Windows PowerShell module enabling BitTorrent (R) functionalities.

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• Want to be part of the most meaningful Customer Experience conversation today?

  - by Tony Berk

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-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;} Today's entry is written by Chris Warner, Director, Product Strategy at Oracle. By now you’ve undoubtedly seen the blogs and announcements about Oracle OpenWorld. And perhaps you’ve also seen the news about OpenWorld’s newest sister event: Oracle Customer Experience (CX) Summit @ OpenWorld. Oracle CX Summit was created to be the most meaningful CX event, to be truly unique, to serve as the place to discover what it takes and what it really means to put the customer at the center of your business success. One long-time Oracle customer, when told about the Oracle CX Summit, put it this way: ‘This makes me rethink how I think about Oracle and Customer Experience’. Listen to what she heard and you be the judge. We believe Customer Experience (‘CX’) is a movement, not just the latest ‘IT’ tech trend. CX isn’t something you can simply ‘install’. CX is one of the most strategic initiatives an organization can undertake. Customer Experience is about connecting with an organization’s most important asset, the customer, and the critical role that connection has to an organization’s success. And there’s never been a bigger gathering of the smartest CX minds, most successful CX companies, and innovative CX examples than Oracle CX Summit. Take Subaru, for example. The company fully embraced the CX opportunity and their CX leadership will be on stage at the Oracle CX Summit to share their CX journey. They radically changed the way they interact with their customers, empower their employees, and differentiate their brand. And this is a story with a phenomenal happy ending: in a stagnant market and shrinking economy, they GREW their business and outpaced their competition. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-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;} At Oracle CX Summit, you will be surrounded by dozens of CX leaders, visionaries and innovators like Subaru. This three-day event brings together the largest collection of thought leaders and practitioners in Customer Experience ever. Notable presenters include: v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Seth Godin - World-renowned blogger and one ‘the World’s Top 21 Speakers’, author of 14 best-selling books like “Permission Marketing”, and founder of dozens of startups such as Squidoo.com (ranked one of the top 125 sites in the US). Kerry Bodine - VP Principal Analyst at Forrester for Customer Experience, author of the just-published book “Outside In - The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business”, and renowned author of “The Customer Experience Ecosystem”. Bruce Temkin - Co-founder and Chair of the Customer Experience Professionals Association, revered blogger of “Customer Experience Matters”, former VP Principal Analyst at Forrester for Customer Experience, Founder and Managing Partner of The Temkin Group, a leading Customer Experience research and consulting firm. George Kembel - Executive Director and Co-founder of the Stanford Design School, an established, recognized thought leader in design thinking and innovation, and a Silicon Valley based-CEO, venture capitalist and educator. Gene Alvarez - VP Research Analyst at Gartner and a recognized authority in the Retail and Consumer Goods industry. Gene has been published, featured and referenced in a variety of trade publications for Customer Experience insights. Senior Executives from innovative Customer Experience brands and agencies like AT&T, Intuit, Southwest Airlines, Marriott, Quiksilver, and Sapient. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} But the CX Summit includes much, much more. There are over 30+ role-driven sessions and rountables as well as one-of-a-kind events including: v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} The Customer Experience Innovation Tent featuring hands-on demonstrations of bleeding-edge customer experiences like the Share Happy Ice Cream Machine A hands-on Customer Journey Mapping Workshop that lets you learn design thinking techniques for innovating differentiated experiences that drive cross-functional alignment Access to the Oracle OpenWorld Exhibition Halls and DEMOgrounds as well as a week-long Live Music Festival and the Oracle Appreciation Event featuring Pearl Jam and Kings of Leon Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} At Oracle, we are quite proud of our award-winning suite of CX products, a suite of solutions that can help an organization greatly accelerate their CX journey. But Oracle CX Summit isn’t about products. It’s about how an organization can succeed in its CX initiative. There’s never been a bigger gathering of the smartest CX minds, most successful CX companies, and innovative CX examples than Oracle CX Summit. Come join the Customer Experience Revolution. Register for Oracle CX Summit @ OpenWorld here. v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} --

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• Developing a SQL Server Function in a Test-Harness.

  - by Phil Factor

  /* Many times, it is a lot quicker to take some pain up-front and make a proper development/test harness for a routine (function or procedure) rather than think ‘I’m feeling lucky today!’. Then, you keep code and harness together from then on. Every time you run the build script, it runs the test harness too.  The advantage is that, if the test harness persists, then it is much less likely that someone, probably ‘you-in-the-future’  unintentionally breaks the code. If you store the actual code for the procedure as well as the test harness, then it is likely that any bugs in functionality will break the build rather than to introduce subtle bugs later on that could even slip through testing and get into production.   This is just an example of what I mean.   Imagine we had a database that was storing addresses with embedded UK postcodes. We really wouldn’t want that. Instead, we might want the postcode in one column and the address in another. In effect, we’d want to extract the entire postcode string and place it in another column. This might be part of a table refactoring or int could easily be part of a process of importing addresses from another system. We could easily decide to do this with a function that takes in a table as its parameter, and produces a table as its output. This is all very well, but we’d need to work on it, and test it when you make an alteration. By its very nature, a routine like this either works very well or horribly, but there is every chance that you might introduce subtle errors by fidding with it, and if young Thomas, the rather cocky developer who has just joined touches it, it is bound to break.     right, we drop the function we’re developing and re-create it. This is so we avoid the problem of having to change CREATE to ALTER when working on it. */ IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE name LIKE ‘ExtractPostcode’                                      and schema_name(schema_ID)=‘Dbo’)     DROP FUNCTION dbo.ExtractPostcode GO   /* we drop the user-defined table type and recreate it */ IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM sys.types WHERE name LIKE ‘AddressesWithPostCodes’                                    and schema_name(schema_ID)=‘Dbo’)   DROP TYPE dbo.AddressesWithPostCodes GO /* we drop the user defined table type and recreate it */ IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM sys.types WHERE name LIKE ‘OutputFormat’                                    and schema_name(schema_ID)=‘Dbo’)   DROP TYPE dbo.OutputFormat GO   /* and now create the table type that we can use to pass the addresses to the function */ CREATE TYPE AddressesWithPostCodes AS TABLE ( AddressWithPostcode_ID INT IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY, –because they work better that way! Address_ID INT NOT NULL, –the address we are fixing TheAddress VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL –The actual address ) GO CREATE TYPE OutputFormat AS TABLE (   Address_ID INT PRIMARY KEY, –the address we are fixing   TheAddress VARCHAR(1000) NULL, –The actual address   ThePostCode VARCHAR(105) NOT NULL – The Postcode )   GO CREATE FUNCTION ExtractPostcode(@AddressesWithPostCodes AddressesWithPostCodes READONLY)  /** summary:   > This Table-valued function takes a table type as a parameter, containing a table of addresses along with their integer IDs. Each address has an embedded postcode somewhere in it but not consistently in a particular place. The routine takes out the postcode and puts it in its own column, passing back a table where theinteger key is accompanied by the address without the (first) postcode and the postcode. If no postcode, then the address is returned unchanged and the postcode will be a blank string Author: Phil Factor Revision: 1.3 date: 20 May 2014 example:      – code: returns:   > Table of  Address_ID, TheAddress and ThePostCode. **/     RETURNS @FixedAddresses TABLE   (   Address_ID INT, –the address we are fixing   TheAddress VARCHAR(1000) NULL, –The actual address   ThePostCode VARCHAR(105) NOT NULL – The Postcode   ) AS – body of the function BEGIN DECLARE @BlankRange VARCHAR(10) SELECT  @BlankRange = CHAR(0)+‘- ‘+CHAR(160) INSERT INTO @FixedAddresses(Address_ID, TheAddress, ThePostCode) SELECT Address_ID,          CASE WHEN start>0 THEN REPLACE(STUFF([Theaddress],start,matchlength,”),‘  ‘,‘ ‘)             ELSE TheAddress END            AS TheAddress,        CASE WHEN Start>0 THEN SUBSTRING([Theaddress],start,matchlength-1) ELSE ” END AS ThePostCode FROM (–we have a derived table with the results we need for the chopping SELECT MAX(PATINDEX([matched],‘ ‘+[Theaddress] collate SQL_Latin1_General_CP850_Bin)) AS start,         MAX( CASE WHEN PATINDEX([matched],‘ ‘+[Theaddress] collate SQL_Latin1_General_CP850_Bin)>0 THEN TheLength ELSE 0 END) AS matchlength,        MAX(TheAddress) AS TheAddress,        Address_ID FROM (SELECT –first the match, then the length. There are three possible valid matches         ‘%['+@BlankRange+'][A-Z][0-9] [0-9][A-Z][A-Z]%’, 7 –seven character postcode       UNION ALL SELECT ‘%['+@BlankRange+'][A-Z][A-Z0-9][A-Z0-9] [0-9][A-Z][A-Z]%’, 8       UNION ALL SELECT ‘%['+@BlankRange+'][A-Z][A-Z][A-Z0-9][A-Z0-9] [0-9][A-Z][A-Z]%’, 9)      AS f(Matched,TheLength) CROSS JOIN  @AddressesWithPostCodes GROUP BY [address_ID] ) WORK; RETURN END GO ——————————-end of the function————————   IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE name LIKE ‘ExtractPostcode’)   BEGIN   RAISERROR (‘There was an error creating the function.’,16,1)   RETURN   END   /* now the job is only half done because we need to make sure that it works. So we now load our sample data, making sure that for each Sample, we have what we actually think the output should be. */ DECLARE @InputTable AddressesWithPostCodes INSERT INTO  @InputTable(Address_ID,TheAddress) VALUES(1,’14 Mason mews, Awkward Hill, Bibury, Cirencester, GL7 5NH’), (2,’5 Binney St      Abbey Ward    Buckinghamshire      HP11 2AX UK’), (3,‘BH6 3BE 8 Moor street, East Southbourne and Tuckton W     Bournemouth UK’), (4,’505 Exeter Rd,   DN36 5RP Hawerby cum BeesbyLincolnshire UK’), (5,”), (6,’9472 Lind St,    Desborough    Northamptonshire NN14 2GH  NN14 3GH UK’), (7,’7457 Cowl St, #70      Bargate Ward  Southampton   SO14 3TY UK’), (8,”’The Pippins”, 20 Gloucester Pl, Chirton Ward,   Tyne & Wear   NE29 7AD UK’), (9,’929 Augustine lane,    Staple Hill Ward     South Gloucestershire      BS16 4LL UK’), (10,’45 Bradfield road, Parwich   Derbyshire    DE6 1QN UK’), (11,’63A Northampton St,   Wilmington    Kent   DA2 7PP UK’), (12,’5 Hygeia avenue,      Loundsley Green WardDerbyshire    S40 4LY UK’), (13,’2150 Morley St,Dee Ward      Dumfries and Galloway      DG8 7DE UK’), (14,’24 Bolton St,   Broxburn, Uphall and Winchburg    West Lothian  EH52 5TL UK’), (15,’4 Forrest St,   Weston-Super-Mare    North Somerset       BS23 3HG UK’), (16,’89 Noon St,     Carbrooke     Norfolk       IP25 6JQ UK’), (17,’99 Guthrie St,  New Milton    Hampshire     BH25 5DF UK’), (18,’7 Richmond St,  Parkham       Devon  EX39 5DJ UK’), (19,’9165 laburnum St,     Darnall Ward  Yorkshire, South     S4 7WN UK’)   Declare @OutputTable  OutputFormat  –the table of what we think the correct results should be Declare @IncorrectRows OutputFormat –done for error reporting   –here is the table of what we think the output should be, along with a few edge cases. INSERT INTO  @OutputTable(Address_ID,TheAddress, ThePostcode)     VALUES         (1, ’14 Mason mews, Awkward Hill, Bibury, Cirencester, ‘,‘GL7 5NH’),         (2, ’5 Binney St   Abbey Ward    Buckinghamshire      UK’,‘HP11 2AX’),         (3, ’8 Moor street, East Southbourne and Tuckton W    Bournemouth UK’,‘BH6 3BE’),         (4, ’505 Exeter Rd,Hawerby cum Beesby   Lincolnshire UK’,‘DN36 5RP’),         (5, ”,”),         (6, ’9472 Lind St,Desborough    Northamptonshire NN14 3GH UK’,‘NN14 2GH’),         (7, ’7457 Cowl St, #70    Bargate Ward  Southampton   UK’,‘SO14 3TY’),         (8, ”’The Pippins”, 20 Gloucester Pl, Chirton Ward,Tyne & Wear   UK’,‘NE29 7AD’),         (9, ’929 Augustine lane,  Staple Hill Ward     South Gloucestershire      UK’,‘BS16 4LL’),         (10, ’45 Bradfield road, ParwichDerbyshire    UK’,‘DE6 1QN’),         (11, ’63A Northampton St,Wilmington    Kent   UK’,‘DA2 7PP’),         (12, ’5 Hygeia avenue,    Loundsley Green WardDerbyshire    UK’,‘S40 4LY’),         (13, ’2150 Morley St,     Dee Ward      Dumfries and Galloway      UK’,‘DG8 7DE’),         (14, ’24 Bolton St,Broxburn, Uphall and Winchburg    West Lothian  UK’,‘EH52 5TL’),         (15, ’4 Forrest St,Weston-Super-Mare    North Somerset       UK’,‘BS23 3HG’),         (16, ’89 Noon St,  Carbrooke     Norfolk       UK’,‘IP25 6JQ’),         (17, ’99 Guthrie St,      New Milton    Hampshire     UK’,‘BH25 5DF’),         (18, ’7 Richmond St,      Parkham       Devon  UK’,‘EX39 5DJ’),         (19, ’9165 laburnum St,   Darnall Ward  Yorkshire, South     UK’,‘S4 7WN’)       insert into @IncorrectRows(Address_ID,TheAddress, ThePostcode)        SELECT Address_ID,TheAddress,ThePostCode FROM dbo.ExtractPostcode(@InputTable)       EXCEPT     SELECT Address_ID,TheAddress,ThePostCode FROM @outputTable; If @@RowCount>0        Begin        PRINT ‘The following rows gave ‘;     SELECT Address_ID,TheAddress,ThePostCode FROM @IncorrectRows        RAISERROR (‘These rows gave unexpected results.’,16,1);     end   /* For tear-down, we drop the user defined table type */ IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM sys.types WHERE name LIKE ‘OutputFormat’                                    and schema_name(schema_ID)=‘Dbo’)   DROP TYPE dbo.OutputFormat GO /* once this is working, the development work turns from a chore into a delight and one ends up hitting execute so much more often to catch mistakes as soon as possible. It also prevents a wildly-broken routine getting into a build! */

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #007

  - by pinaldave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2006 Find Stored Procedure Related to Table in Database – Search in All Stored Procedure In 2006 I wrote a small script which will help user  find all the Stored Procedures (SP) which are related to one or more specific tables. This was quite a popular script however, in SQL Server 2012 the same can be achieved using new DMV sys.sql-expression_dependencies. I recently blogged about it over Find Referenced or Referencing Object in SQL Server using sys.sql_expression_dependencies. 2007 SQL SERVER – Versions, CodeNames, Year of Release 1993 – SQL Server 4.21 for Windows NT 1995 – SQL Server 6.0, codenamed SQL95 1996 – SQL Server 6.5, codenamed Hydra 1999 – SQL Server 7.0, codenamed Sphinx 1999 – SQL Server 7.0 OLAP, codenamed Plato 2000 – SQL Server 2000 32-bit, codenamed Shiloh (version 8.0) 2003 – SQL Server 2000 64-bit, codenamed Liberty 2005 – SQL Server 2005, codenamed Yukon (version 9.0) 2008 – SQL Server 2008, codenamed Katmai (version 10.0) 2011 – SQL Server 2008, codenamed Denali (version 11.0) Search String in Stored Procedure Searching sting in the stored procedure is one of the most frequent task developer do. They might be searching for a table, view or any other details. I have written a script to do the same in SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005. This is worth bookmarking blog post. There is an alternative way to do the same as well here is the example. 2008 SQL SERVER – Refresh Database Using T-SQL NO! Some of the questions have a single answer NO! You may want to read the question in the original blog post. I had a great time saying No! SQL SERVER – Delete Backup History – Cleanup Backup History SQL Server stores history of all the taken backup forever. History of all the backup is stored in the msdb database. Many times older history is no more required. Following Stored Procedure can be executed with a parameter which takes days of history to keep. In the following example 30 is passed to keep a history of month. 2009 Stored Procedure are Compiled on First Run – SP taking Longer to Run First Time Is stored procedure pre-compiled? Why the Stored Procedure takes a long time to run for the first time?  This is a very common questions often discussed by developers and DBAs. There is an absolutely definite answer but the question has been discussed forever. There is a misconception that stored procedures are pre-compiled. They are not pre-compiled, but compiled only during the first run. For every subsequent runs, it is for sure pre-compiled. Read the entire article for example and demonstration. Removing Key Lookup – Seek Predicate – Predicate – An Interesting Observation Related to Datatypes This is one of the most important performance tuning lesson on my blog. I suggest this weekend you spend time reading them and let me know what you think about the concepts which I have demonstrated in the four part series. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 Seek Predicate is the operation that describes the b-tree portion of the Seek. Predicate is the operation that describes the additional filter using non-key columns. Based on the description, it is very clear that Seek Predicate is better than Predicate as it searches indexes whereas in Predicate, the search is on non-key columns – which implies that the search is on the data in page files itself. Policy Based Management – Create, Evaluate and Fix Policies This article will cover the most spectacular feature of SQL Server – Policy-based management and how the configuration of SQL Server with policy-based management architecture can make a powerful difference. Policy based management is loaded with several advantages. It can help you implement various policies for reliable configuration of the system. It also provides additional administration assistance to DBAs and helps them effortlessly manage various tasks of SQL Server across the enterprise. 2010 Recycle Error Log – Create New Log file without Server Restart Once I observed a DBA to restaring the SQL Server when he needed new error log file. This was funny and sad both at the same time. There is no need to restart the server to create a new log file or recycle the log file. You can run sp_cycle_errorlog and achieve the same result. Get Database Backup History for a Single Database Simple but effective script! Reducing CXPACKET Wait Stats for High Transactional Database The subject is very complex and I have done my best to simplify the concept. In simpler words, when a parallel operation is created for SQL Query, there are multiple threads for a single query. Each query deals with a different set of the data (or rows). Due to some reasons, one or more of the threads lag behind, creating the CXPACKET Wait Stat. Threads which came first have to wait for the slower thread to finish. The Wait by a specific completed thread is called CXPACKET Wait Stat. Information Related to DATETIME and DATETIME2 There are quite a lot of confusion with DATETIME and DATETIME2. DATETIME2 is also one of the underutilized datatype of SQL Server.  In this blog post I have written a follow up of the my earlier datetime series where I clarify a few of the concepts related to datetime. Difference Between GETDATE and SYSDATETIME Difference Between DATETIME and DATETIME2 – WITH GETDATE Difference Between DATETIME and DATETIME2 2011 Introduction to CUME_DIST – Analytic Functions Introduced in SQL Server 2012 SQL Server 2012 introduces new analytical function CUME_DIST(). This function provides cumulative distribution value. It will be very difficult to explain this in words so I will attempt small example to explain you this function. Instead of creating new table, I will be using AdventureWorks sample database as most of the developer uses that for experiment. Introduction to FIRST _VALUE and LAST_VALUE – Analytic Functions Introduced in SQL Server 2012 SQL Server 2012 introduces new analytical functions FIRST_VALUE() and LAST_VALUE(). This function returns first and last value from the list. It will be very difficult to explain this in words so I’d like to attempt to explain its function through a brief example. Instead of creating a new table, I will be using the AdventureWorks sample database as most developers use that for experiment purposes. OVER clause with FIRST _VALUE and LAST_VALUE – Analytic Functions Introduced in SQL Server 2012 – ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING “Don’t you think there is bug in your first example where FIRST_VALUE is remain same but the LAST_VALUE is changing every line. I think the LAST_VALUE should be the highest value in the windows or set of result.” Puzzle – Functions FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE with OVER clause and ORDER BY You can see that row number 2, 3, 4, and 5 has same SalesOrderID = 43667. The FIRST_VALUE is 78 and LAST_VALUE is 77. Now if these function was working on maximum and minimum value they should have given answer as 77 and 80 respectively instead of 78 and 77. Also the value of FIRST_VALUE is greater than LAST_VALUE 77. Why? Explain in detail. Introduction to LEAD and LAG – Analytic Functions Introduced in SQL Server 2012 SQL Server 2012 introduces new analytical function LEAD() and LAG(). This functions accesses data from a subsequent row (for lead) and previous row (for lag) in the same result set without the use of a self-join . It will be very difficult to explain this in words so I will attempt small example to explain you this function. Instead of creating new table, I will be using AdventureWorks sample database as most of the developer uses that for experiment. A Real Story of Book Getting ‘Out of Stock’ to A 25% Discount Story Available Our book was out of stock in 48 hours of it was arrived in stock! We got call from the online store with a request for more copies within 12 hours. But we had printed only as many as we had sent them. There were no extra copies. We finally talked to the printer to get more copies. However, due to festivals and holidays the copies could not be shipped to the online retailer for two days. We knew for sure that they were going to be out of the book for 48 hours. This is the story of how we overcame that situation! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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