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  • Construction Paper, Legos, and Architectural Modeling

    I can remember as a kid playing with construction paper and Legos to explore my imagination. Through my exploration I was able to build airplanes, footballs, guns, and more, out of paper. Additionally I could create entire cities, robots, or anything else I could image out of Legos.  These toys, I now realize were in fact tools that gave me an opportunity to explore my ideas in the physical world through the use of modeling.  My imagination was allowed to run wild as I, unknowingly at the time, made design decisions that directly affected the models I was building from the raw materials.  To prove my point further, I can remember building a paper airplane that seemed to go nowhere when I tried to throw it. So I decided to attach a paper clip to the plane before I decided to throw it the next time to test my concept that by adding more weight to the plane that it would fly better and for longer distances. The paper airplane allowed me to model my design decision through the use of creating an artifact in that I created a paper airplane that was carrying extra weight through the incorporation of the paper clip in to the design. Also, I remember using Legos to build all sorts of creations, and these creations became artifacts of my imagination. As I further and further defined my Lego creations through the process of playing I was able to create elaborate artifacts of my imagination. These artifacts represented design decision I had made in the evolution of my creation through my child like design process. In some form or fashion the artifacts I created as a kid are very similar to the artifacts that I create when I model a software architectural concept or a software design in that the process of making decisions is directly translated in to a tangible model in the form of an architectural model. Architectural models have been defined as artifacts that depict design decisions of a system’s architecture.  The act of creating architectural models is the act of architectural modeling. Furthermore, architectural modeling is the process of creating a physical model based architectural concepts and documenting these design decisions. In the process of creating models, the standard notation used is Architectural modeling notation. This notation is the primary method of capturing the essence of design decisions regarding architecture.  Modeling notations can vary based on the need and intent of a project; typically they range from natural language to a diagram based notation. Currently, Unified Markup Language (UML) is the industry standard in terms of architectural modeling notation  because allows for architectures to be defined through a series of boxes, lines, arrows and other basic symbols that encapsulate design designs in to virtual components, connectors, configurations and interfaces.  Furthermore UML allows for additional break down of models through the use of natural language as to explain each section of the model in plain English. One of the major factors in architectural modeling is to define what is to be modeled. As a basic rule of thumb, I tend to model architecture based on the complexity of systems or sub sub-systems of architecture. Another key factor is the level of detail that is actually needed for a model. For example if I am modeling a system for a CEO to view then the low level details will be omitted. In comparison, if I was modeling a system for another engineer to actually implement I would include as much detailed information as I could to help the engineer implement my design.

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  • Java EE 7 Roadmap

    - by Linda DeMichiel
    The Java EE 6 Platform, released in December 2009, has seen great uptake from the community with its POJO-based programming model, lightweight Web Profile, and extension points. There are now 13 Java EE 6 compliant appserver implementations today! When we announced the Java EE 7 JSR back in early 2011, our plans were that we would release it by Q4 2012. This target date was slightly over three years after the release of Java EE 6, but at the same time it meant that we had less than two years to complete a fairly comprehensive agenda — to continue to invest in significant enhancements in simplification, usability, and functionality in updated versions of the JSRs that are currently part of the platform; to introduce new JSRs that reflect emerging needs in the community; and to add support for use in cloud environments. We have since announced a minor adjustment in our dates (to the spring of 2013) in order to accommodate the inclusion of JSRs of importance to the community, such as Web Sockets and JSON-P. At this point, however, we have to make a choice. Despite our best intentions, our progress has been slow on the cloud side of our agenda. Partially this has been due to a lack of maturity in the space for provisioning, multi-tenancy, elasticity, and the deployment of applications in the cloud. And partially it is due to our conservative approach in trying to get things "right" in view of limited industry experience in the cloud area when we started this work. Because of this, we believe that providing solid support for standardized PaaS-based programming and multi-tenancy would delay the release of Java EE 7 until the spring of 2014 — that is, two years from now and over a year behind schedule. In our opinion, that is way too long. We have therefore proposed to the Java EE 7 Expert Group that we adjust our course of action — namely, stick to our current target release dates, and defer the remaining aspects of our agenda for PaaS enablement and multi-tenancy support to Java EE 8. Of course, we continue to believe that Java EE is well-suited for use in the cloud, although such use might not be quite ready for full standardization. Even today, without Java EE 7, Java EE vendors such as Oracle, Red Hat, IBM, and CloudBees have begun to offer the ability to run Java EE applications in the cloud. Deferring the remaining cloud-oriented aspects of our agenda has several important advantages: It allows Java EE Platform vendors to gain more experience with their implementations in this area and thus helps us avoid risks entailed by trying to standardize prematurely in an emerging area. It means that the community won't need to wait longer for those features that are ready at the cost of those features that need more time. Because we have already laid some of the infrastructure for cloud support in Java EE 7, including resource definition metadata, improved security configuration, JPA schema generation, etc., it will allow us to expedite a Java EE 8 release. We therefore plan to target the Java EE 8 Platform release for the spring of 2015. This shift in the scope of Java EE 7 allows us to better retain our focus on enhancements in simplification and usability and to deliver on schedule those features that have been most requested by developers. These include the support for HTML 5 in the form of Web Sockets and JSON-P; the simplified JMS 2.0 APIs; improved Managed Bean alignment, including transactional interceptors; the JAX-RS 2.0 client API; support for method-level validation; a much more comprehensive expression language; and more. We feel strongly that this is the right thing to do, and we hope that you will support us in this proposed direction.

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  • Designing An ACL Based Permission System

    - by ryanzec
    I am trying to create a permissions system where everything is going to be stored in MySQL (or some database) and pulled using PHP for a project management system I am building.  I am right now trying to do it is an ACL kind of way.  There are a number key features I want to be able to support: 1.  Being able to assign permissions without being tied to a specific object. The reason for this is that I want to be able to selectively show/hide elements of the UI based on permissions at a point where I am not directly looking at a domain object instance.  For instance, a button to create a new project should only should only be shown to users that have the pm.project.create permission but obviously you can assign a create permission to an domain object instance (as it is already created). 2.  Not have to assign permissions for every single object. Obviously creating permissions entries for every single object (projects, tickets, comments, etc…) would become a nightmare to maintain so I want to have some level of permission inheritance. *3.  Be able to filter queries based on permissions. This would be a really nice to have but I am not sure if it is possible.  What I mean by this is say I have a page that list all projects.  I want the query that pulls all projects to incorporate the ACL so that it would not show projects that the current user does not have pm.project.read access to.  This would have to be incorporated into the main query as if it is a process that is done after that main query (which I know I could do) certain features like pagination become much more difficult. Right now this is my basic design for the tables: AclEntities id - the primary key key - the unique identifier for the domain object (usually the primary key of that object) parentId - the parent of the domain object (like the project object if this was a ticket object) aclDomainObjectId - metadata about the domain object AclDomainObjects id - primary key title - simple string to unique identify the domain object(ie. project, ticket, comment, etc…) fullyQualifiedClassName - the fully qualified class name for use in code (I am using namespaces) There would also be tables mapping AclEntities to Users and UserGroups. I also have this interface that all acl entity based object have to implement: IAclEntity getAclKey() - to the the unique key for this specific instance of the acl domain object (generally return the primary key or a concatenated string of a composite primary key) getAclTitle() - to get the unique title for the domain object (generally just returning a static string) getAclDisplayString() - get the string that represents this entity (generally one or more field on the object) getAclParentEntity() - get the parent acl entity object (or null if no parent) getAclEntity() - get the acl enitty object for this instance of the domain object (or null if one has not been created yet) hasPermission($permissionString, $user = null) - whether or not the user has the permission for this instance of the domain object static getFromAclEntityId($aclEntityId) - get a specific instance of the domain object from an acl entity id. Do any of these features I am looking for seems hard to support or are just way off base? Am I missing or not taking in account anything in my implementation? Is performance something I should keep in mind?

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  • Introducing the Oracle Linux Playground yum repo

    - by wcoekaer
    We just introduced a new yum repository/channel on http://public-yum.oracle.com called the playground channel. What we started doing is the following: When a new stable mainline kernel is released by Linus or GregKH, we internally build RPMs to test it and do some QA work around it to keep track of what's going on with the latest development kernels. It helps us understand how performance moves up or down and if there are issues, we try to help look into them and of course send that stuff back upstream. Many Linux users out there are interested in trying out the latest features but there are some potential barriers to do this. (1) in general, you are looking at an upstream development distribution, which means that everything changes both in userspace(random applications) and kernel. Projects like Fedora are very useful and someone that wants to just see how the entire distribution evolves with all the changes, this is a great way to be current. A drawback here, though, is that if you have applications that are not part of the distribution, there's a lot of manual work involved or they might just not work because the changes are too drastic. The introduction of systemd is a good example. (2) when you look at many of our customers, that are interested in our database products or applications, the starting point of having a supported/certified userspace/distribution, like Oracle Linux, is a much easier way to get your feet wet in seeing what new/future Linux kernel enhancements could do. This is where the playground channel comes into play. When you install Oracle Linux 6 (which anyone can download and use from http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux), grab the latest public yum repository file http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-ol6.repo, put it in /etc/yum.repos.d and enable the playground repo : [ol6_playground_latest] name=Latest mainline stable kernel for Oracle Linux 6 ($basearch) - Unsupported baseurl=http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/playground/latest/$basearch/ gpgkey=http://public-yum.oracle.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle-ol6 gpgcheck=1 enabled=1 Now, all you need to do : type yum update and you will be downloading the latest stable kernel which will install cleanly on Oracle Linux 6. Thus you end up with a stable Linux distribution where you can install all your software, and then download the latest stable kernel (at time of writing this is 3.6.7) without having to recompile a kernel, without having to jump through hoops. There is of course a big, very important disclaimer this is NOT for PRODUCTION use. We want to try and help make it easy for people that are interested, from a user perspective, where the Linux kernel is going and make it easy to install and use it and play around with new features. Without having to learn how to compile a kernel and without necessarily having to install a complete new distribution with all the changes top to bottom. So we don't or won't introduce any new userspace changes, this project really is around making it easy to try out the latest upstream Linux kernels in a very easy way on an environment that's stable and you can keep current, since all the latest errata for Oracle Linux 6 are published on the public yum repo as well. So one repository location for all your current changes and the upstream kernels. We hope that this will get more users to try out the latest kernel and report their findings. We are always interested in understanding stability and performance characteristics. As new features are going into the mainline kernel, that could potentially be interesting or useful for various products, we will try to point them out on our blogs and give an example on how something can be used so you can try it out for yourselves. Anyway, I hope people will find this useful and that it will help increase interested in upstream development beyond reading lkml by some of the more non-kernel-developer types.

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  • Planning development when academic research is involved

    - by Another Anonymous User
    Dear fellow programmers, how do you do "software planning" when academic research is involved? And, on a side note, how do you convince your boss that writing software is not like building a house and it's more like writing a novel? The gory details are below. I am in charge of a small dev team working in a research lab. We started developing a software with the purpose of going public one day (i.e. sell and make money off that). Such software depends on, amongst other things, at least two independent research lines: that is, there are at least two Ph.D. candidates that will, hopefully, one day come out with a working implementation of what we need. The main software depends also on other, more concrete resources that we as developers can take care of: graphics rendering, soft bodies deformation, etc. My boss asked me to write the specifications, requirements AND a bloody GANTT chart of the entire project. Faced with the fact that I don't have a clue about the research part, and that such research is fundamental for the software, he said "make assumptions." For the clarity of the argument, he is a professor whose Ph.D. students should come up with the research we need. And he comes from a strictly engineering background: plan everything first, write down specifications and only then write down code that "it's the last part". What I am doing now: I broke down the product in features; each 'feature' is, de facto, a separate product; Each feature is built on top of the previous one; Once a feature (A) has a working prototype the team can start working on the next feature (B), while QA for is being done for A (if money allows, more people can be brought in, etc.); Features that depend on research will come last: by then, hopefully, the research part will be completed (when is still a big question) ; Also, I set the team to use SCRUM for the development of 'version 1.0', due in a few months. This deadline could be set based on reasonable assumptions: we listed all required features, we counted our availability, and we gave a reasonable estimate. So my questions, again, are: How do I make my boss happy while at the same time get something out the door? How do I write specifications for something we -the developers- have no clue whether it's possible to do or not? (We still haven't decided which libraries to use for some tasks; we'll do so when we'll need to) How do I get the requirements for that, given that there are yet no clients nor investors, just lots of interests and promises? How do I get peace in the world? I am sure at least one of my questions will be answered :) ps: I am writing this anonymously since a potential investor might backfire if this is discovered. Hope you'll understand. However I must say I do not like this mentality of 'hiding the truth': this program will likely benefit many, and not being able to talk openly about this (with my name and my reputation attached) feels like censorship. But alas, I care more about your suggestions now.

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  • Extreme Makeover, Phone Edition: Comcasts xfinity

    Mobile Makeover For many companies the first foray into Windows Phone 7 (WP7) may be in porting their existing mobile apps. It is tempting to simply transfer existing functionality, avoiding the additional design costs. Readdressing business needs and taking advantage of the WP7 platform can reduce cost and is essential to a successful re-launch. To better understand the advantage of new development lets examine a conceptual upgrade of Comcasts existing mobile app. Before Comcast has a great mobile app that provides several key features. The ability to browse the lineup using a guide, a client for Comcast email accounts, On Demand gallery, and much more. We will leverage these and build on them using some of the incredible WP7 features.   After With the proliferation of DVRs (Digital Video Recorders) and a variety of media devices (TV, PC, Mobile) content providers are challenged to find creative ways to build their brands. Every client touch point must provide both value added services as well as opportunities for marketing and up-sale; WP7 makes it easy to focus on those opportunities. The new app is an excellent vehicle for presenting Comcasts newly rebranded TV, Voice, and Internet services. These services now fly under the banner of xfinity and have been expanded to provide the best experience for Comcast customers. The Windows Phone 7 app will increase the surface area of this service revolution.   The home menu is simplified and highlights Comcasts Triple Play: Voice, TV, and Internet. The inbox has been replaced with a messages view, and message management is handled by a WP7 hub. The hub presents emails, tweets, and IMs from Comcast and other viewers the user follows on Twitter.  The popular view orders shows based on the users viewing history and current cable package. The first show Glee is both popular and participating in a conceptual co-marketing effort, so it receives prime positioning. The second spot goes to a hit show on a premium channel, in this example HBOs The Pacific, encouraging viewers to upgrade for this premium content. The remaining spots are ordered based on viewing history and popularity. Tapping the play button moves the user to the theatre where they can watch previews or full episodes streaming from Fancast. Tapping an extra presents the user with show details as well as interactive content that may be included as part of co-marketing efforts. Co-Marketing with Dynamic Content The success of Comcasts services are tied to the success of the networks and shows it purveys, making co-marketing efforts essential. In this concept FOX is co-marketing its popular show Glee. A customized panorama is updated with the latest gleeks tweets, streaming HD episodes, and extras featuring photos and video of the cast. If WP7 apps can be dynamically extended with web hosted .xap files, including sandboxed partner experiences would enable interactive features such as the Gleek Peek, in which a viewer can select a character from a panorama to view the actors profile. This dynamic inline experience has a tailored appeal to aspiring creatives and is technically possible with Windows Phone 7.   Summary The conceptual Comcast mobile app for Windows Phone 7 highlights just a few of the incredible experiences and business opportunities that can be unlocked with this latest mobile solution. It is critical that organizations recognize and take full advantage of these new capabilities. Simply porting existing mobile applications does not leverage these powerful tools; re-examining existing applications and upgrading them to Windows Phone 7 will prove essential to the continued growth and success of your brand.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • JEP 124: Enhance the Certificate Revocation-Checking API

    - by smullan
    Revocation checking is the mechanism to determine the revocation status of a certificate. If it is revoked, it is considered invalid and should not be used. Currently as of JDK 7, the PKIX implementation of java.security.cert.CertPathValidator  includes a revocation checking implementation that supports both OCSP and CRLs, the two main methods of checking revocation. However, there are very few options that allow you to configure the behavior. You can always implement your own revocation checker, but that's a lot of work. JEP 124 (Enhance the Certificate Revocation-Checking API) is one of the 11 new security features in JDK 8. This feature enhances the java.security.cert API to support various revocation settings such as best-effort checking, end-entity certificate checking, and mechanism-specific options and parameters. Let's describe each of these in more detail and show some examples. The features are provided through a new class named PKIXRevocationChecker. A PKIXRevocationChecker instance is returned by a PKIX CertPathValidator as follows: CertPathValidator cpv = CertPathValidator.getInstance("PKIX"); PKIXRevocationChecker prc = (PKIXRevocationChecker)cpv.getRevocationChecker(); You can now set various revocation options by calling different methods of the returned PKIXRevocationChecker object. For example, the best-effort option (called soft-fail) allows the revocation check to succeed if the status cannot be obtained due to a network connection failure or an overloaded server. It is enabled as follows: prc.setOptions(Enum.setOf(Option.SOFT_FAIL)); When the SOFT_FAIL option is specified, you can still obtain any exceptions that may have been thrown due to network issues. This can be useful if you want to log this information or treat it as a warning. You can obtain these exceptions by calling the getSoftFailExceptions method: List<CertPathValidatorException> exceptions = prc.getSoftFailExceptions(); Another new option called ONLY_END_ENTITY allows you to only check the revocation status of the end-entity certificate. This can improve performance, but you should be careful using this option, as the revocation status of CA certificates will not be checked. To set more than one option, simply specify them together, for example: prc.setOptions(Enum.setOf(Option.SOFT_FAIL, Option.ONLY_END_ENTITY)); By default, PKIXRevocationChecker will try to check the revocation status of a certificate using OCSP first, and then CRLs as a fallback. However, you can switch the order using the PREFER_CRLS option, or disable the fallback altogether using the NO_FALLBACK option. For example, here is how you would only use CRLs to check the revocation status: prc.setOptions(Enum.setOf(Option.PREFER_CRLS, Option.NO_FALLBACK)); There are also a number of other useful methods which allow you to specify various options such as the OCSP responder URI, the trusted OCSP responder certificate, and OCSP request extensions. However, one of the most useful features is the ability to specify a cached OCSP response with the setOCSPResponse method. This can be quite useful if the OCSPResponse has already been obtained, for example in a protocol that uses OCSP stapling. After you have set all of your preferred options, you must add the PKIXRevocationChecker to your PKIXParameters object as one of your custom CertPathCheckers before you validate the certificate chain, as follows: PKIXParameters params = new PKIXParameters(keystore); params.addCertPathChecker(prc); CertPathValidatorResult result = cpv.validate(path, params); Early access binaries of JDK 8 can be downloaded from http://jdk8.java.net/download.html

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  • Rounded Corners and Shadows &ndash; Dialogs with CSS

    - by Rick Strahl
    Well, it looks like we’ve finally arrived at a place where at least all of the latest versions of main stream browsers support rounded corners and box shadows. The two CSS properties that make this possible are box-shadow and box-radius. Both of these CSS Properties now supported in all the major browsers as shown in this chart from QuirksMode: In it’s simplest form you can use box-shadow and border radius like this: .boxshadow { -moz-box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353; -webkit-box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353; box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353; } .roundbox { -moz-border-radius: 6px 6px 6px 6px; -webkit-border-radius: 6px; border-radius: 6px 6px 6px 6px; } box-shadow: horizontal-shadow-pixels vertical-shadow-pixels blur-distance shadow-color box-shadow attributes specify the the horizontal and vertical offset of the shadow, the blur distance (to give the shadow a smooth soft look) and a shadow color. The spec also supports multiple shadows separated by commas using the attributes above but we’re not using that functionality here. box-radius: top-left-radius top-right-radius bottom-right-radius bottom-left-radius border-radius takes a pixel size for the radius for each corner going clockwise. CSS 3 also specifies each of the individual corner elements such as border-top-left-radius, but support for these is much less prevalent so I would recommend not using them for now until support improves. Instead use the single box-radius to specify all corners. Browser specific Support in older Browsers Notice that there are two variations: The actual CSS 3 properties (box-shadow and box-radius) and the browser specific ones (-moz, –webkit prefixes for FireFox and Chrome/Safari respectively) which work in slightly older versions of modern browsers before official CSS 3 support was added. The goal is to spread support as widely as possible and the prefix versions extend the range slightly more to those browsers that provided early support for these features. Notice that box-shadow and border-radius are used after the browser specific versions to ensure that the latter versions get precedence if the browser supports both (last assignment wins). Use the .boxshadow and .roundbox Styles in HTML To use these two styles create a simple rounded box with a shadow you can use HTML like this: <!-- Simple Box with rounded corners and shadow --> <div class="roundbox boxshadow" style="width: 550px; border: solid 2px steelblue"> <div class="boxcontenttext"> Simple Rounded Corner Box. </div> </div> which looks like this in the browser: This works across browsers and it’s pretty sweet and simple. Watch out for nested Elements! There are a couple of things to be aware of however when using rounded corners. Specifically, you need to be careful when you nest other non-transparent content into the rounded box. For example check out what happens when I change the inside <div> to have a colored background: <!-- Simple Box with rounded corners and shadow --> <div class="roundbox boxshadow" style="width: 550px; border: solid 2px steelblue"> <div class="boxcontenttext" style="background: khaki;"> Simple Rounded Corner Box. </div> </div> which renders like this:   If you look closely you’ll find that the inside <div>’s corners are not rounded and so ‘poke out’ slightly over the rounded corners. It looks like the rounded corners are ‘broken’ up instead of a solid rounded line around the corner, which his pretty ugly. The bigger the radius the more drastic this effect becomes . To fix this issue the inner <div> also has have rounded corners at the same or slightly smaller radius than the outer <div>. The simple fix for this is to simply also apply the roundbox style to the inner <div> in addition to the boxcontenttext style already applied: <div class="boxcontenttext roundbox" style="background: khaki;"> The fixed display now looks proper: Separate Top and Bottom Elements This gets even a little more tricky if you have an element at the top or bottom only of the rounded box. What if you need to add something like a header or footer <div> that have non-transparent backgrounds which is a pretty common scenario? In those cases you want only the top or bottom corners rounded and not both. To make this work a couple of additional styles to round only the top and bottom corners can be created: .roundbox-top { -moz-border-radius: 4px 4px 0 0; -webkit-border-radius: 4px 4px 0 0; border-radius: 4px 4px 0 0; } .roundbox-bottom { -moz-border-radius: 0 0 4px 4px; -webkit-border-radius: 0 0 4px 4px; border-radius: 0 0 4px 4px; } Notice that radius used for the ‘inside’ rounding is smaller (4px) than the outside radius (6px). This is so the inner radius fills into the outer border – if you use the same size you may have some white space showing between inner and out rounded corners. Experiment with values to see what works – in my experimenting the behavior across browsers here is consistent (thankfully). These styles can be applied in addition to other styles to make only the top or bottom portions of an element rounded. For example imagine I have styles like this: .gridheader, .gridheaderbig, .gridheaderleft, .gridheaderright { padding: 4px 4px 4px 4px; background: #003399 url(images/vertgradient.png) repeat-x; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; color: khaki; } .gridheaderleft { text-align: left; } .gridheaderright { text-align: right; } .gridheaderbig { font-size: 135%; } If I just apply say gridheader by itself in HTML like this: <div class="roundbox boxshadow" style="width: 550px; border: solid 2px steelblue"> <div class="gridheaderleft">Box with a Header</div> <div class="boxcontenttext" style="background: khaki;"> Simple Rounded Corner Box. </div> </div> This results in a pretty funky display – again due to the fact that the inner elements render square rather than rounded corners: If you look close again you can see that both the header and the main content have square edges which jumps out at the eye. To fix this you can now apply the roundbox-top and roundbox-bottom to the header and content respectively: <div class="roundbox boxshadow" style="width: 550px; border: solid 2px steelblue"> <div class="gridheaderleft roundbox-top">Box with a Header</div> <div class="boxcontenttext roundbox-bottom" style="background: khaki;"> Simple Rounded Corner Box. </div> </div> Which now gives the proper display with rounded corners both on the top and bottom: All of this is sweet to be supported – at least by the newest browser – without having to resort to images and nasty JavaScripts solutions. While this is still not a mainstream feature yet for the majority of actually installed browsers, the majority of browser users are very likely to have this support as most browsers other than IE are actively pushing users to upgrade to newer versions. Since this is a ‘visual display only feature it degrades reasonably well in non-supporting browsers: You get an uninteresting square and non-shadowed browser box, but the display is still overall functional. The main sticking point – as always is Internet Explorer versions 8.0 and down as well as older versions of other browsers. With those browsers you get a functional view that is a little less interesting to look at obviously: but at least it’s still functional. Maybe that’s just one more incentive for people using older browsers to upgrade to a  more modern browser :-) Creating Dialog Related Styles In a lot of my AJAX based applications I use pop up windows which effectively work like dialogs. Using the simple CSS behaviors above, it’s really easy to create some fairly nice looking overlaid windows with nothing but CSS. Here’s what a typical ‘dialog’ I use looks like: The beauty of this is that it’s plain CSS – no plug-ins or images (other than the gradients which are optional) required. Add jQuery-ui draggable (or ww.jquery.js as shown below) and you have a nice simple inline implementation of a dialog represented by a simple <div> tag. Here’s the HTML for this dialog: <div id="divDialog" class="dialog boxshadow" style="width: 450px;"> <div class="dialog-header"> <div class="closebox"></div> User Sign-in </div> <div class="dialog-content"> <label>Username:</label> <input type="text" name="txtUsername" value=" " /> <label>Password</label> <input type="text" name="txtPassword" value=" " /> <hr /> <input type="button" id="btnLogin" value="Login" /> </div> <div class="dialog-statusbar">Ready</div> </div> Most of this behavior is driven by the ‘dialog’ styles which are fairly basic and easy to understand. They do use a few support images for the gradients which are provided in the sample I’ve provided. Here’s what the CSS looks like: .dialog { background: White; overflow: hidden; border: solid 1px steelblue; -moz-border-radius: 6px 6px 4px 4px; -webkit-border-radius: 6px 6px 4px 4px; border-radius: 6px 6px 3px 3px; } .dialog-header { background-image: url(images/dialogheader.png); background-repeat: repeat-x; text-align: left; color: cornsilk; padding: 5px; padding-left: 10px; font-size: 1.02em; font-weight: bold; position: relative; -moz-border-radius: 4px 4px 0px 0px; -webkit-border-radius: 4px 4px 0px 0px; border-radius: 4px 4px 0px 0px; } .dialog-top { -moz-border-radius: 4px 4px 0px 0px; -webkit-border-radius: 4px 4px 0px 0px; border-radius: 4px 4px 0px 0px; } .dialog-bottom { -moz-border-radius: 0 0 3px 3px; -webkit-border-radius: 0 0 3px 3px; border-radius: 0 0 3px 3px; } .dialog-content { padding: 15px; } .dialog-statusbar, .dialog-toolbar { background: #eeeeee; background-image: url(images/dialogstrip.png); background-repeat: repeat-x; padding: 5px; padding-left: 10px; border-top: solid 1px silver; border-bottom: solid 1px silver; font-size: 0.8em; } .dialog-statusbar { -moz-border-radius: 0 0 3px 3px; -webkit-border-radius: 0 0 3px 3px; border-radius: 0 0 3px 3px; padding-right: 10px; } .closebox { position: absolute; right: 2px; top: 2px; background-image: url(images/close.gif); background-repeat: no-repeat; width: 14px; height: 14px; cursor: pointer; opacity: 0.60; filter: alpha(opacity="80"); } .closebox:hover { opacity: 1; filter: alpha(opacity="100"); } The main style is the dialog class which is the outer box. It has the rounded border that serves as the outline. Note that I didn’t add the box-shadow to this style because in some situations I just want the rounded box in an inline display that doesn’t have a shadow so it’s still applied separately. dialog-header, then has the rounded top corners and displays a typical dialog heading format. dialog-bottom and dialog-top then provide the same functionality as roundbox-top and roundbox-bottom described earlier but are provided mainly in the stylesheet for consistency to match the dialog’s round edges and making it easier to  remember and find in Intellisense as it shows up in the same dialog- group. dialog-statusbar and dialog-toolbar are two elements I use a lot for floating windows – the toolbar serves for buttons and options and filters typically, while the status bar provides information specific to the floating window. Since the the status bar is always on the bottom of the dialog it automatically handles the rounding of the bottom corners. Finally there’s  closebox style which is to be applied to an empty <div> tag in the header typically. What this does is render a close image that is by default low-lighted with a low opacity value, and then highlights when hovered over. All you’d have to do handle the close operation is handle the onclick of the <div>. Note that the <div> right aligns so typically you should specify it before any other content in the header. Speaking of closable – some time ago I created a closable jQuery plug-in that basically automates this process and can be applied against ANY element in a page, automatically removing or closing the element with some simple script code. Using this you can leave out the <div> tag for closable and just do the following: To make the above dialog closable (and draggable) which makes it effectively and overlay window, you’d add jQuery.js and ww.jquery.js to the page: <script type="text/javascript" src="../../scripts/jquery.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../../scripts/ww.jquery.min.js"></script> and then simply call: <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function () { $("#divDialog") .draggable({ handle: ".dialog-header" }) .closable({ handle: ".dialog-header", closeHandler: function () { alert("Window about to be closed."); return true; // true closes - false leaves open } }); }); </script> * ww.jquery.js emulates base features in jQuery-ui’s draggable. If jQuery-ui is loaded its draggable version will be used instead and voila you have now have a draggable and closable window – here in mid-drag:   The dragging and closable behaviors are of course optional, but it’s the final touch that provides dialog like window behavior. Relief for older Internet Explorer Versions with CSS Pie If you want to get these features to work with older versions of Internet Explorer all the way back to version 6 you can check out CSS Pie. CSS Pie provides an Internet Explorer behavior file that attaches to specific CSS rules and simulates these behavior using script code in IE (mostly by implementing filters). You can simply add the behavior to each CSS style that uses box-shadow and border-radius like this: .boxshadow {     -moz-box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353;     -webkit-box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353;           box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353;     behavior: url(scripts/PIE.htc);           } .roundbox {      -moz-border-radius: 6px 6px 6px 6px;     -webkit-border-radius: 6px;      border-radius: 6px 6px 6px 6px;     behavior: url(scripts/PIE.htc); } CSS Pie requires the PIE.htc on your server and referenced from each CSS style that needs it. Note that the url() for IE behaviors is NOT CSS file relative as other CSS resources, but rather PAGE relative , so if you have more than one folder you probably need to reference the HTC file with a fixed path like this: behavior: url(/MyApp/scripts/PIE.htc); in the style. Small price to pay, but a royal pain if you have a common CSS file you use in many applications. Once the PIE.htc file has been copied and you have applied the behavior to each style that uses these new features Internet Explorer will render rounded corners and box shadows! Yay! Hurray for box-shadow and border-radius All of this functionality is very welcome natively in the browser. If you think this is all frivolous visual candy, you might be right :-), but if you take a look on the Web and search for rounded corner solutions that predate these CSS attributes you’ll find a boatload of stuff from image files, to custom drawn content to Javascript solutions that play tricks with a few images. It’s sooooo much easier to have this functionality built in and I for one am glad to see that’s it’s finally becoming standard in the box. Still remember that when you use these new CSS features, they are not universal, and are not going to be really soon. Legacy browsers, especially old versions of Internet Explorer that can’t be updated will continue to be around and won’t work with this shiny new stuff. I say screw ‘em: Let them get a decent recent browser or see a degraded and ugly UI. We have the luxury with this functionality in that it doesn’t typically affect usability – it just doesn’t look as nice. Resources Download the Sample The sample includes the styles and images and sample page as well as ww.jquery.js for the draggable/closable example. Online Sample Check out the sample described in this post online. Closable and Draggable Documentation Documentation for the closeable and draggable plug-ins in ww.jquery.js. You can also check out the full documentation for all the plug-ins contained in ww.jquery.js here. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in HTML  CSS  

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  • Basic Spatial Data with SQL Server and Entity Framework 5.0

    - by Rick Strahl
    In my most recent project we needed to do a bit of geo-spatial referencing. While spatial features have been in SQL Server for a while using those features inside of .NET applications hasn't been as straight forward as could be, because .NET natively doesn't support spatial types. There are workarounds for this with a few custom project like SharpMap or a hack using the Sql Server specific Geo types found in the Microsoft.SqlTypes assembly that ships with SQL server. While these approaches work for manipulating spatial data from .NET code, they didn't work with database access if you're using Entity Framework. Other ORM vendors have been rolling their own versions of spatial integration. In Entity Framework 5.0 running on .NET 4.5 the Microsoft ORM finally adds support for spatial types as well. In this post I'll describe basic geography features that deal with single location and distance calculations which is probably the most common usage scenario. SQL Server Transact-SQL Syntax for Spatial Data Before we look at how things work with Entity framework, lets take a look at how SQL Server allows you to use spatial data to get an understanding of the underlying semantics. The following SQL examples should work with SQL 2008 and forward. Let's start by creating a test table that includes a Geography field and also a pair of Long/Lat fields that demonstrate how you can work with the geography functions even if you don't have geography/geometry fields in the database. Here's the CREATE command:CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Geo]( [id] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, [Location] [geography] NULL, [Long] [float] NOT NULL, [Lat] [float] NOT NULL ) Now using plain SQL you can insert data into the table using geography::STGeoFromText SQL CLR function:insert into Geo( Location , long, lat ) values ( geography::STGeomFromText ('POINT(-121.527200 45.712113)', 4326), -121.527200, 45.712113 ) insert into Geo( Location , long, lat ) values ( geography::STGeomFromText ('POINT(-121.517265 45.714240)', 4326), -121.517265, 45.714240 ) insert into Geo( Location , long, lat ) values ( geography::STGeomFromText ('POINT(-121.511536 45.714825)', 4326), -121.511536, 45.714825) The STGeomFromText function accepts a string that points to a geometric item (a point here but can also be a line or path or polygon and many others). You also need to provide an SRID (Spatial Reference System Identifier) which is an integer value that determines the rules for how geography/geometry values are calculated and returned. For mapping/distance functionality you typically want to use 4326 as this is the format used by most mapping software and geo-location libraries like Google and Bing. The spatial data in the Location field is stored in binary format which looks something like this: Once the location data is in the database you can query the data and do simple distance computations very easily. For example to calculate the distance of each of the values in the database to another spatial point is very easy to calculate. Distance calculations compare two points in space using a direct line calculation. For our example I'll compare a new point to all the points in the database. Using the Location field the SQL looks like this:-- create a source point DECLARE @s geography SET @s = geography:: STGeomFromText('POINT(-121.527200 45.712113)' , 4326); --- return the ids select ID, Location as Geo , Location .ToString() as Point , @s.STDistance( Location) as distance from Geo order by distance The code defines a new point which is the base point to compare each of the values to. You can also compare values from the database directly, but typically you'll want to match a location to another location and determine the difference for which you can use the geography::STDistance function. This query produces the following output: The STDistance function returns the straight line distance between the passed in point and the point in the database field. The result for SRID 4326 is always in meters. Notice that the first value passed was the same point so the difference is 0. The other two points are two points here in town in Hood River a little ways away - 808 and 1256 meters respectively. Notice also that you can order the result by the resulting distance, which effectively gives you results that are ordered radially out from closer to further away. This is great for searches of points of interest near a central location (YOU typically!). These geolocation functions are also available to you if you don't use the Geography/Geometry types, but plain float values. It's a little more work, as each point has to be created in the query using the string syntax, but the following code doesn't use a geography field but produces the same result as the previous query.--- using float fields select ID, geography::STGeomFromText ('POINT(' + STR (long, 15,7 ) + ' ' + Str(lat ,15, 7) + ')' , 4326), geography::STGeomFromText ('POINT(' + STR (long, 15,7 ) + ' ' + Str(lat ,15, 7) + ')' , 4326). ToString(), @s.STDistance( geography::STGeomFromText ('POINT(' + STR(long ,15, 7) + ' ' + Str(lat ,15, 7) + ')' , 4326)) as distance from geo order by distance Spatial Data in the Entity Framework Prior to Entity Framework 5.0 on .NET 4.5 consuming of the data above required using stored procedures or raw SQL commands to access the spatial data. In Entity Framework 5 however, Microsoft introduced the new DbGeometry and DbGeography types. These immutable location types provide a bunch of functionality for manipulating spatial points using geometry functions which in turn can be used to do common spatial queries like I described in the SQL syntax above. The DbGeography/DbGeometry types are immutable, meaning that you can't write to them once they've been created. They are a bit odd in that you need to use factory methods in order to instantiate them - they have no constructor() and you can't assign to properties like Latitude and Longitude. Creating a Model with Spatial Data Let's start by creating a simple Entity Framework model that includes a Location property of type DbGeography: public class GeoLocationContext : DbContext { public DbSet<GeoLocation> Locations { get; set; } } public class GeoLocation { public int Id { get; set; } public DbGeography Location { get; set; } public string Address { get; set; } } That's all there's to it. When you run this now against SQL Server, you get a Geography field for the Location property, which looks the same as the Location field in the SQL examples earlier. Adding Spatial Data to the Database Next let's add some data to the table that includes some latitude and longitude data. An easy way to find lat/long locations is to use Google Maps to pinpoint your location, then right click and click on What's Here. Click on the green marker to get the GPS coordinates. To add the actual geolocation data create an instance of the GeoLocation type and use the DbGeography.PointFromText() factory method to create a new point to assign to the Location property:[TestMethod] public void AddLocationsToDataBase() { var context = new GeoLocationContext(); // remove all context.Locations.ToList().ForEach( loc => context.Locations.Remove(loc)); context.SaveChanges(); var location = new GeoLocation() { // Create a point using native DbGeography Factory method Location = DbGeography.PointFromText( string.Format("POINT({0} {1})", -121.527200,45.712113) ,4326), Address = "301 15th Street, Hood River" }; context.Locations.Add(location); location = new GeoLocation() { Location = CreatePoint(45.714240, -121.517265), Address = "The Hatchery, Bingen" }; context.Locations.Add(location); location = new GeoLocation() { // Create a point using a helper function (lat/long) Location = CreatePoint(45.708457, -121.514432), Address = "Kaze Sushi, Hood River" }; context.Locations.Add(location); location = new GeoLocation() { Location = CreatePoint(45.722780, -120.209227), Address = "Arlington, OR" }; context.Locations.Add(location); context.SaveChanges(); } As promised, a DbGeography object has to be created with one of the static factory methods provided on the type as the Location.Longitude and Location.Latitude properties are read only. Here I'm using PointFromText() which uses a "Well Known Text" format to specify spatial data. In the first example I'm specifying to create a Point from a longitude and latitude value, using an SRID of 4326 (just like earlier in the SQL examples). You'll probably want to create a helper method to make the creation of Points easier to avoid that string format and instead just pass in a couple of double values. Here's my helper called CreatePoint that's used for all but the first point creation in the sample above:public static DbGeography CreatePoint(double latitude, double longitude) { var text = string.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture.NumberFormat, "POINT({0} {1})", longitude, latitude); // 4326 is most common coordinate system used by GPS/Maps return DbGeography.PointFromText(text, 4326); } Using the helper the syntax becomes a bit cleaner, requiring only a latitude and longitude respectively. Note that my method intentionally swaps the parameters around because Latitude and Longitude is the common format I've seen with mapping libraries (especially Google Mapping/Geolocation APIs with their LatLng type). When the context is changed the data is written into the database using the SQL Geography type which looks the same as in the earlier SQL examples shown. Querying Once you have some location data in the database it's now super easy to query the data and find out the distance between locations. A common query is to ask for a number of locations that are near a fixed point - typically your current location and order it by distance. Using LINQ to Entities a query like this is easy to construct:[TestMethod] public void QueryLocationsTest() { var sourcePoint = CreatePoint(45.712113, -121.527200); var context = new GeoLocationContext(); // find any locations within 5 kilometers ordered by distance var matches = context.Locations .Where(loc => loc.Location.Distance(sourcePoint) < 5000) .OrderBy( loc=> loc.Location.Distance(sourcePoint) ) .Select( loc=> new { Address = loc.Address, Distance = loc.Location.Distance(sourcePoint) }); Assert.IsTrue(matches.Count() > 0); foreach (var location in matches) { Console.WriteLine("{0} ({1:n0} meters)", location.Address, location.Distance); } } This example produces: 301 15th Street, Hood River (0 meters)The Hatchery, Bingen (809 meters)Kaze Sushi, Hood River (1,074 meters)   The first point in the database is the same as my source point I'm comparing against so the distance is 0. The other two are within the 5 mile radius, while the Arlington location which is 65 miles or so out is not returned. The result is ordered by distance from closest to furthest away. In the code, I first create a source point that is the basis for comparison. The LINQ query then selects all locations that are within 5km of the source point using the Location.Distance() function, which takes a source point as a parameter. You can either use a pre-defined value as I'm doing here, or compare against another database DbGeography property (say when you have to points in the same database for things like routes). What's nice about this query syntax is that it's very clean and easy to read and understand. You can calculate the distance and also easily order by the distance to provide a result that shows locations from closest to furthest away which is a common scenario for any application that places a user in the context of several locations. It's now super easy to accomplish this. Meters vs. Miles As with the SQL Server functions, the Distance() method returns data in meters, so if you need to work with miles or feet you need to do some conversion. Here are a couple of helpers that might be useful (can be found in GeoUtils.cs of the sample project):/// <summary> /// Convert meters to miles /// </summary> /// <param name="meters"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static double MetersToMiles(double? meters) { if (meters == null) return 0F; return meters.Value * 0.000621371192; } /// <summary> /// Convert miles to meters /// </summary> /// <param name="miles"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static double MilesToMeters(double? miles) { if (miles == null) return 0; return miles.Value * 1609.344; } Using these two helpers you can query on miles like this:[TestMethod] public void QueryLocationsMilesTest() { var sourcePoint = CreatePoint(45.712113, -121.527200); var context = new GeoLocationContext(); // find any locations within 5 miles ordered by distance var fiveMiles = GeoUtils.MilesToMeters(5); var matches = context.Locations .Where(loc => loc.Location.Distance(sourcePoint) <= fiveMiles) .OrderBy(loc => loc.Location.Distance(sourcePoint)) .Select(loc => new { Address = loc.Address, Distance = loc.Location.Distance(sourcePoint) }); Assert.IsTrue(matches.Count() > 0); foreach (var location in matches) { Console.WriteLine("{0} ({1:n1} miles)", location.Address, GeoUtils.MetersToMiles(location.Distance)); } } which produces: 301 15th Street, Hood River (0.0 miles)The Hatchery, Bingen (0.5 miles)Kaze Sushi, Hood River (0.7 miles) Nice 'n simple. .NET 4.5 Only Note that DbGeography and DbGeometry are exclusive to Entity Framework 5.0 (not 4.4 which ships in the same NuGet package or installer) and requires .NET 4.5. That's because the new DbGeometry and DbGeography (and related) types are defined in the 4.5 version of System.Data.Entity which is a CLR assembly and is only updated by major versions of .NET. Why this decision was made to add these types to System.Data.Entity rather than to the frequently updated EntityFramework assembly that would have possibly made this work in .NET 4.0 is beyond me, especially given that there are no native .NET framework spatial types to begin with. I find it also odd that there is no native CLR spatial type. The DbGeography and DbGeometry types are specific to Entity Framework and live on those assemblies. They will also work for general purpose, non-database spatial data manipulation, but then you are forced into having a dependency on System.Data.Entity, which seems a bit silly. There's also a System.Spatial assembly that's apparently part of WCF Data Services which in turn don't work with Entity framework. Another example of multiple teams at Microsoft not communicating and implementing the same functionality (differently) in several different places. Perplexed as a I may be, for EF specific code the Entity framework specific types are easy to use and work well. Working with pre-.NET 4.5 Entity Framework and Spatial Data If you can't go to .NET 4.5 just yet you can also still use spatial features in Entity Framework, but it's a lot more work as you can't use the DbContext directly to manipulate the location data. You can still run raw SQL statements to write data into the database and retrieve results using the same TSQL syntax I showed earlier using Context.Database.ExecuteSqlCommand(). Here's code that you can use to add location data into the database:[TestMethod] public void RawSqlEfAddTest() { string sqlFormat = @"insert into GeoLocations( Location, Address) values ( geography::STGeomFromText('POINT({0} {1})', 4326),@p0 )"; var sql = string.Format(sqlFormat,-121.527200, 45.712113); Console.WriteLine(sql); var context = new GeoLocationContext(); Assert.IsTrue(context.Database.ExecuteSqlCommand(sql,"301 N. 15th Street") > 0); } Here I'm using the STGeomFromText() function to add the location data. Note that I'm using string.Format here, which usually would be a bad practice but is required here. I was unable to use ExecuteSqlCommand() and its named parameter syntax as the longitude and latitude parameters are embedded into a string. Rest assured it's required as the following does not work:string sqlFormat = @"insert into GeoLocations( Location, Address) values ( geography::STGeomFromText('POINT(@p0 @p1)', 4326),@p2 )";context.Database.ExecuteSqlCommand(sql, -121.527200, 45.712113, "301 N. 15th Street") Explicitly assigning the point value with string.format works however. There are a number of ways to query location data. You can't get the location data directly, but you can retrieve the point string (which can then be parsed to get Latitude and Longitude) and you can return calculated values like distance. Here's an example of how to retrieve some geo data into a resultset using EF's and SqlQuery method:[TestMethod] public void RawSqlEfQueryTest() { var sqlFormat = @" DECLARE @s geography SET @s = geography:: STGeomFromText('POINT({0} {1})' , 4326); SELECT Address, Location.ToString() as GeoString, @s.STDistance( Location) as Distance FROM GeoLocations ORDER BY Distance"; var sql = string.Format(sqlFormat, -121.527200, 45.712113); var context = new GeoLocationContext(); var locations = context.Database.SqlQuery<ResultData>(sql); Assert.IsTrue(locations.Count() > 0); foreach (var location in locations) { Console.WriteLine(location.Address + " " + location.GeoString + " " + location.Distance); } } public class ResultData { public string GeoString { get; set; } public double Distance { get; set; } public string Address { get; set; } } Hopefully you don't have to resort to this approach as it's fairly limited. Using the new DbGeography/DbGeometry types makes this sort of thing so much easier. When I had to use code like this before I typically ended up retrieving data pks only and then running another query with just the PKs to retrieve the actual underlying DbContext entities. This was very inefficient and tedious but it did work. Summary For the current project I'm working on we actually made the switch to .NET 4.5 purely for the spatial features in EF 5.0. This app heavily relies on spatial queries and it was worth taking a chance with pre-release code to get this ease of integration as opposed to manually falling back to stored procedures or raw SQL string queries to return spatial specific queries. Using native Entity Framework code makes life a lot easier than the alternatives. It might be a late addition to Entity Framework, but it sure makes location calculations and storage easy. Where do you want to go today? ;-) Resources Download Sample Project© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in ADO.NET  Sql Server  .NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • How to shoot yourself in the foot (DO NOT Read in the office)

    - by TATWORTH
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2013/06/21/how-to-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-do-not-read.aspxLet me make it absolutely clear - the following is:merely collated by your Geek from http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=3917012#xx3917012xxvery, very very funny so you read it in the presence of others at your own riskso here is the list - you have been warned!C You shoot yourself in the foot.   C++ You accidently create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying "That's me, over there."   FORTRAN You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you have no exception-handling facility.   Modula-2 After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.   COBOL USEing a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be retied.   Lisp You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds...   BASIC Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On big systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.   Forth Foot yourself in the shoot.   APL You shoot yourself in the foot; then spend all day figuring out how to do it in fewer characters.   Pascal The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.   Snobol If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot. If you fail, shoot yourself in the right foot.   HyperTalk Put the first bullet of the gun into foot left of leg of you. Answer the result.   Prolog You tell your program you want to be shot in the foot. The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn't allow it to explain.   370 JCL You send your foot down to MIS with a 4000-page document explaining how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried.   FORTRAN-77 You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you still can't do exception-processing.   Modula-2 (alternative) You perform a shooting on what might be currently a foot with what might be currently a bullet shot by what might currently be a gun.   BASIC (compiled) You shoot yourself in the foot with a BB using a SCUD missile launcher.   Visual Basic You'll really only appear to have shot yourself in the foot, but you'll have so much fun doing it that you won't care.   Forth (alternative) BULLET DUP3 * GUN LOAD FOOT AIM TRIGGER PULL BANG! EMIT DEAD IF DROP ROT THEN (This takes about five bytes of memory, executes in two to ten clock cycles on any processor and can be used to replace any existing function of the language as well as in any future words). (Welcome to bottom up programming - where you, too, can perform compiler pre-processing instead of writing code)   APL (alternative) You hear a gunshot and there's a hole in your foot, but you don't remember enough linear algebra to understand what happened. or @#&^$%&%^ foot   Pascal (alternative) Same as Modula-2 except that the bullet is not the right type for the gun and your hand is blown off.   Snobol (alternative) You grab your foot with your hand, then rewrite your hand to be a bullet. The act of shooting the original foot then changes your hand/bullet into yet another foot (a left foot).   Prolog (alternative) You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot, but the bullet, failing to find its mark, backtracks to the gun, which then explodes in your face.   COMAL You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol, but the bore is clogged, and the pressure build-up blows apart both the pistol and your hand. or draw_pistol aim_at_foot(left) pull_trigger hop(swearing)   Scheme As Lisp, but none of the other appendages are aware of this happening.   Algol You shoot yourself in the foot with a musket. The musket is aesthetically fascinating and the wound baffles the adolescent medic in the emergency room.   Ada If you are dumb enough to actually use this language, the United States Department of Defense will kidnap you, stand you up in front of a firing squad and tell the soldiers, "Shoot at the feet." or The Department of Defense shoots you in the foot after offering you a blindfold and a last cigarette. or After correctly packaging your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream and shoot yourself in the foot. When you try, however, you discover that your foot is of the wrong type. or After correctly packing your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream, and confidently aim at your foot knowing it is safe. However the cordite in the round does an Unchecked Conversion, fires and shoots you in the foot anyway.   Eiffel   You create a GUN object, two FOOT objects and a BULLET object. The GUN passes both the FOOT objects a reference to the BULLET. The FOOT objects increment their hole counts and forget about the BULLET. A little demon then drives a garbage truck over your feet and grabs the bullet (both of it) on the way. Smalltalk You spend so much time playing with the graphics and windowing system that your boss shoots you in the foot, takes away your workstation and makes you develop in COBOL on a character terminal. or You send the message shoot to gun, with selectors bullet and myFoot. A window pops up saying Gunpowder doesNotUnderstand: spark. After several fruitless hours spent browsing the methods for Trigger, FiringPin and IdealGas, you take the easy way out and create ShotFoot, a subclass of Foot with an additional instance variable bulletHole. Object Oriented Pascal You perform a shooting on what might currently be a foot with what might currently be a bullet fired from what might currently be a gun.   PL/I You consume all available system resources, including all the offline bullets. The Data Processing & Payroll Department doubles its size, triples its budget, acquires four new mainframes and drops the original one on your foot. Postscript foot bullets 6 locate loadgun aim gun shoot showpage or It takes the bullet ten minutes to travel from the gun to your foot, by which time you're long since gone out to lunch. The text comes out great, though.   PERL You stab yourself in the foot repeatedly with an incredibly large and very heavy Swiss Army knife. or You pick up the gun and begin to load it. The gun and your foot begin to grow to huge proportions and the world around you slows down, until the gun fires. It makes a tiny hole, which you don't feel. Assembly Language You crash the OS and overwrite the root disk. The system administrator arrives and shoots you in the foot. After a moment of contemplation, the administrator shoots himself in the foot and then hops around the room rabidly shooting at everyone in sight. or You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to discover you must first reinvent the gun, the bullet, and your foot.or The bullet travels to your foot instantly, but it took you three weeks to load the round and aim the gun.   BCPL You shoot yourself somewhere in the leg -- you can't get any finer resolution than that. Concurrent Euclid You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.   Motif You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the trajectory, the bullet and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.   Powerbuilder While attempting to load the gun you discover that the LoadGun system function is buggy; as a work around you tape the bullet to the outside of the gun and unsuccessfully attempt to fire it with a nail. In frustration you club your foot with the butt of the gun and explain to your client that this approximates the functionality of shooting yourself in the foot and that the next version of Powerbuilder will fix it.   Standard ML By the time you get your code to typecheck, you're using a shoot to foot yourself in the gun.   MUMPS You shoot 583149 AK-47 teflon-tipped, hollow-point, armour-piercing bullets into even-numbered toes on odd-numbered feet of everyone in the building -- with one line of code. Three weeks later you shoot yourself in the head rather than try to modify that line.   Java You locate the Gun class, but discover that the Bullet class is abstract, so you extend it and write the missing part of the implementation. Then you implement the ShootAble interface for your foot, and recompile the Foot class. The interface lets the bullet call the doDamage method on the Foot, so the Foot can damage itself in the most effective way. Now you run the program, and call the doShoot method on the instance of the Gun class. First the Gun creates an instance of Bullet, which calls the doFire method on the Gun. The Gun calls the hit(Bullet) method on the Foot, and the instance of Bullet is passed to the Foot. But this causes an IllegalHitByBullet exception to be thrown, and you die.   Unix You shoot yourself in the foot or % ls foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o % rm * .o rm: .o: No such file or directory % ls %   370 JCL (alternative) You shoot yourself in the head just thinking about it.   DOS JCL You first find the building you're in in the phone book, then find your office number in the corporate phone book. Then you have to write this down, then describe, in cubits, your exact location, in relation to the door (right hand side thereof). Then you need to write down the location of the gun (loading it is a proprietary utility), then you load it, and the COBOL program, and run them, and, with luck, it may be run tonight.   VMS   $ MOUNT/DENSITY=.45/LABEL=BULLET/MESSAGE="BYE" BULLET::BULLET$GUN SYS$BULLET $ SET GUN/LOAD/SAFETY=OFF/SIGHT=NONE/HAND=LEFT/CHAMBER=1/ACTION=AUTOMATIC/ LOG/ALL/FULL SYS$GUN_3$DUA3:[000000]GUN.GNU $ SHOOT/LOG/AUTO SYS$GUN SYS$SYSTEM:[FOOT]FOOT.FOOT   %DCL-W-ACTIMAGE, error activating image GUN -CLI-E-IMGNAME, image file $3$DUA240:[GUN]GUN.EXE;1 -IMGACT-F-NOTNATIVE, image is not an OpenVMS Alpha AXP image or %SYS-F-FTSHT, foot shot (fifty lines of traceback omitted) sh,csh, etc You can't remember the syntax for anything, so you spend five hours reading manual pages, then your foot falls asleep. You shoot the computer and switch to C.   Apple System 7 Double click the gun icon and a window giving a selection for guns, target areas, plus balloon help with medical remedies, and assorted sound effects. Click "shoot" button and a small bomb appears with note "Error of Type 1 has occurred."   Windows 3.1 Double click the gun icon and wait. Eventually a window opens giving a selection for guns, target areas, plus balloon help with medical remedies, and assorted sound effects. Click "shoot" button and a small box appears with note "Unable to open Shoot.dll, check that path is correct."   Windows 95 Your gun is not compatible with this OS and you must buy an upgrade and install it before you can continue. Then you will be informed that you don't have enough memory.   CP/M I remember when shooting yourself in the foot with a BB gun was a big deal.   DOS You finally found the gun, but can't locate the file with the foot for the life of you.   MSDOS You shoot yourself in the foot, but can unshoot yourself with add-on software.   Access You try to point the gun at your foot, but it shoots holes in all your Borland distribution diskettes instead.   Paradox Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can too.   dBase You squeeze the trigger, but the bullet moves so slowly that by the time your foot feels the pain, you've forgotten why you shot yourself anyway. or You buy a gun. Bullets are only available from another company and are promised to work so you buy them. Then you find out that the next version of the gun is the one scheduled to actually shoot bullets.   DBase IV, V1.0 You pull the trigger, but it turns out that the gun was a poorly designed hand grenade and the whole building blows up.   SQL You cut your foot off, send it out to a service bureau and when it returns, it has a hole in it but will no longer fit the attachment at the end of your leg. or Insert into Foot Select Bullet >From Gun.Hand Where Chamber = 'LOADED' And Trigger = 'PULLED'   Clipper You grab a bullet, get ready to insert it in the gun so that you can shoot yourself in the foot and discover that the gun that the bullets fits has not yet been built, but should be arriving in the mail _REAL_SOON_NOW_. Oracle The menus for coding foot_shooting have not been implemented yet and you can't do foot shooting in SQL.   English You put your foot in your mouth, then bite it off. (For those who don't know, English is a McDonnell Douglas/PICK query language which allegedly requires 110% of system resources to run happily.) Revelation [an implementation of the PICK Operating System] You'll be able to shoot yourself in the foot just as soon as you figure out what all these bullets are for.   FlagShip Starting at the top of your head, you aim the gun at yourself repeatedly until, half an hour later, the gun is finally pointing at your foot and you pull the trigger. A new foot with a hole in it appears but you can't work out how to get rid of the old one and your gun doesn't work anymore.   FidoNet You put your foot in your mouth, then echo it internationally.   PicoSpan [a UNIX-based computer conferencing system] You can't shoot yourself in the foot because you're not a host. or (host variation) Whenever you shoot yourself in the foot, someone opens a topic in policy about it.   Internet You put your foot in your mouth, shoot it, then spam the bullet so that everybody gets shot in the foot.   troff rmtroff -ms -Hdrwp | lpr -Pwp2 & .*place bullet in footer .B .NR FT +3i .in 4 .bu Shoot! .br .sp .in -4 .br .bp NR HD -2i .*   Genetic Algorithms You create 10,000 strings describing the best way to shoot yourself in the foot. By the time the program produces the optimal solution, humans have evolved wings and the problem is moot.   CSP (Communicating Sequential Processes) You only fail to shoot everything that isn't your foot.   MS-SQL Server MS-SQL Server’s gun comes pre-loaded with an unlimited supply of Teflon coated bullets, and it only has two discernible features: the muzzle and the trigger. If that wasn't enough, MS-SQL Server also puts the gun in your hand, applies local anesthetic to the skin of your forefinger and stitches it to the gun's trigger. Meanwhile, another process has set up a spinal block to numb your lower body. It will then proceeded to surgically remove your foot, cryogenically freeze it for preservation, and attach it to the muzzle of the gun so that no matter where you aim, you will shoot your foot. In order to avoid shooting yourself in the foot, you need to unstitch your trigger finger, remove your foot from the muzzle of the gun, and have it surgically reattached. Then you probably want to get some crutches and go out to buy a book on SQL Server Performance Tuning.   Sybase Sybase's gun requires assembly, and you need to go out and purchase your own clip and bullets to load the gun. Assembly is complicated by the fact that Sybase has hidden the gun behind a big stack of reference manuals, but it hasn't told you where that stack is. While you were off finding the gun, assembling it, buying bullets, etc., Sybase was also busy surgically removing your foot and cryogenically freezing it for preservation. Instead of attaching it to the muzzle of the gun, though, it packed your foot on dry ice and sent it UPS-Ground to an unnamed hookah bar somewhere in the middle east. In order to shoot your foot, you must modify your gun with a GPS system for targeting and hire some guy named "Indy" to find the hookah bar and wire the coordinates back to you. By this time, you've probably become so daunted at the tasks stand between you and shooting your foot that you hire a guy who's read all the books on Sybase to help you shoot your foot. If you're lucky, he'll be smart enough both to find your foot and to stop you from shooting it.   Magic software You spend 1 week looking up the correct syntax for GUN. When you find it, you realise that GUN will not let you shoot in your own foot. It will allow you to shoot almost anything but your foot. You then decide to build your own gun. You can't use the standard barrel since this will only allow for standard bullets, which will not fire if the barrel is pointed at your foot. After four weeks, you have created your own custom gun. It blows up in your hand without warning, because you failed to initialise the safety catch and it doesn't know whether the initial state is "0", 0, NULL, "ZERO", 0.0, 0,0, "0.0", or "0,00". You fix the problem with your remaining hand by nesting 12 safety catches, and then decide to build the gun without safety catch. You then shoot the management and retire to a happy life where you code in languages that will allow you to shoot your foot in under 10 days.FirefoxLets you shoot yourself in as many feet as you'd like, while using multiple great addons! IEA moving target in terms of standard ammunition size and doesn't always work properly with non-Microsoft ammunition, so sometimes you shoot something other than your foot. However, it's the corporate world's standard foot-shooting apparatus. Hackers seem to enjoy rigging websites up to trigger cascading foot-shooting failures. Windows 98 About the same as Windows 95 in terms of overall bullet capacity and triggering mechanisms. Includes updated DirectShot API. A new version was released later on to support USB guns, Windows 98 SE.WPF:You get your baseball glove and a ball and you head out to your backyard, where you throw balls to your pitchback. Then your unkempt-haired-cargo-shorts-and-sandals-with-white-socks-wearing neighbor uses XAML to sculpt your arm into a gun, the ball into a bullet and the pitchback into your foot. By now, however, only the neighbor can get it to work and he's only around from 6:30 PM - 3:30 AM. LOGO: You very carefully lay out the trajectory of the bullet. Then you start the gun, which fires very slowly. You walk precisely to the point where the bullet will travel and wait, but just before it gets to you, your class time is up and one of the other kids has already used the system to hack into Sony's PS3 network. Flash: Someone has designed a beautiful-looking gun that anyone can shoot their feet with for free. It weighs six hundred pounds. All kinds of people are shooting themselves in the feet, and sending the link to everyone else so that they can too. That is, except for the criminals, who are all stealing iOS devices that the gun won't work with.APL: Its (mostly) all greek to me. Lisp: Place ((gun in ((hand sight (foot then shoot))))) (Lots of Insipid Stupid Parentheses)Apple OS/X and iOS Once a year, Steve Jobs returns from sick leave to tell millions of unwavering fans how they will be able to shoot themselves in the foot differently this year. They retweet and blog about it ad nauseam, and wait in line to be the first to experience "shoot different".Windows ME Usually fails, even at shooting you in the foot. Yo dawg, I heard you like shooting yourself in the foot. So I put a gun in your gun, so you can shoot yourself in the foot while you shoot yourself in the foot. (Okay, I'm not especially proud of this joke.) Windows 2000 Now you really do have to log in, before you are allowed to shoot yourself in the foot.Windows XPYou thought you learned your lesson: Don't use Windows ME. Then, along came this new creature, built on top of Windows NT! So you spend the next couple days installing antivirus software, patches and service packs, just so you can get that driver to install, and then proceed to shoot yourself in the foot. Windows Vista Newer! Glossier! Shootier! Windows 7 The bullets come out a lot smoother. Active Directory Each bullet now has an attached Bullet Identifier, and can be uniquely identified. Policies can be applied to dictate fragmentation, and the gun will occasionally have a confusing delay after the trigger has been pulled. PythonYou try to use import foot; foot.shoot() only to realize that's only available in 3.0, to which you can't yet upgrade from 2.7 because of all those extension libs lacking support. Solaris Shoots best when used on SPARC hardware, but still runs the trigger GUI under Java. After weeks of learning the appropriate STOP command to prevent the trigger from automatically being pressed on boot, you think you've got it under control. Then the one time you ever use dtrace, it hits a bug that fires the gun. MySQL The feature that allows you to shoot yourself in the foot has been in development for about 6 years, and they are adding it into the next version, which is coming out REAL SOON NOW, promise! But you can always check it out of source control and try it yourself (just not in any environment where data integrity is important because it will probably explode.) PostgreSQLAllows you to have a smug look on your face while you shoot yourself in the foot, because those MySQL guys STILL don't have that feature. NoSQL Barrel? Who needs a barrel? Just put the bullet on your foot, and strike it with a hammer. See? It's so much simpler and more efficient that way. You can even strike multiple bullets in one swing if you swing with a good enough arc, because hammers are easy to use. Getting them to synchronize is a little difficult, though.Eclipse There are about a dozen different packages for shooting yourself in the foot, with weird interdependencies on outdated components. Once you finally navigate the morass and get one installed, you then have something to look at while you shoot yourself in the foot with that package: You can watch the screen redraw.Outlook Makes it really easy to let everyone know you shot yourself in the foot!Shooting yourself in the foot using delegates.You really need to shoot yourself in the foot but you hate firearms (you don't want any dependency on the specifics of shooting) so you delegate it to somebody else. You don't care how it is done as long is shooting your foot. You can do it asynchronously in case you know you may faint so you are called back/slapped in the face by your shooter/friend (or background worker) when everything is done.C#You prepare the gun and the bullet, carefully modeling all of the physics of a bullet traveling through a foot. Just before you're about to pull the trigger, you stumble on System.Windows.BodyParts.Foot.ShootAt(System.Windows.Firearms.IGun gun) in the extended framework, realize you just wasted the entire afternoon, and shoot yourself in the head.PHP<?phprequire("foot_safety_check.php");?><!DOCTYPE HTML><html><head> <!--Lower!--><title>Shooting me in the foot</title></head> <body> <!--LOWER!!!--><leg> <!--OK, I made this one up...--><footer><?php echo (dungSift($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], "ie"))?("Your foot is safe, but you might want to wear a hard hat!"):("<div class=\"shot\">BANG!</div>"); ?></footer></leg> </body> </html>

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  • Extending Programming Languages

    - by chpwn
    (Since I just posted this in another question, but my browser had to be annoying and submit it without content first, here it is again:) I'm a fan of clean code. I like my languages to be able to express what I'm trying to do, but I like the syntax to mirror that too. For example, I work on a lot of programs in Objective-C for jailbroken iPhones, which patch other code using the method_setImplementation() function of the runtime. Or, in pyobjc, I have to use the syntax UIView.initWithFrame_(), which is also pretty awful and unreadable with the way the method names are structured. In both cases, the language does not support this in syntax. I've found three basic ways that this is done: Insane macros. Take a look at this "CaptainHook", it does what I'm looking for in a usable way, but it isn't quite clean and is a major hack. There's also "Logos", which implements a very nice syntax, but is written in Perl parsing my code with a ton of regular expressions. This scares me. I like the idea of adding a %hook ClassName, but not by using regular expressions to parse C or Objective-C. Finally, there is Cycript. This is an extension to JavaScript which interfaces with the Objective-C runtime and allows you to use Objective-C style code in your JavaScript, and inject that into other processes. This is likely the cleanest as it actually uses a parser for the JavaScript, but I'm not a huge fan of that language in general. Basically, this is a two part question. Should, and how should, I create an extension to Python and Objective-C to allow me to do this? Is it worth writing a parser for my language to transform the syntax into something nicer, if it is only in a very specialized niche like this? Should I just live with the horrible syntax of the default Objective-C hooking or pyobjc?

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  • What are some good/reputable/widely-used libraries written in VB.NET?

    - by Dan Tao
    Generally speaking, when VB.NET and C# are compared, there is a lot of strong support for C#, accompanied by some bashing of VB.NET until a respected developer comes along and acts as The Voice Of Reason, pointing out that while VB prior to VB.NET had its fair share of issues, VB.NET is really a very strong, fully OOP language that is, feature-wise, right about on par with C# (with the exception of certain things like a full-bodied lamba syntax [pre-VB10] or the yield keyword, as many C# faithfuls are quick to point out). I myself, having written plenty of code in both VB.NET and C#, fall squarely in the "I prefer C#, but don't consider VB.NET any less of a language" camp. However, one thing I have noticed is that when it comes to respected and/or widely-used libraries for .NET, everyting is written in C#. Or at least that's been my impression. This strikes me as a little strange because, aside from the abovementioned sprinkling of nice features (in particular the yield keyword), I tend to view the VB.NET/C# divide as primarily a matter of personal taste. Obviously, plenty of developers prefer C#. But I personally know some developers (good ones) who prefer VB.NET, which would lead me to suspect that surely some libraries (good ones) would be written in VB.NET. They must be out there, and I just haven't found them. What are some good libraries that've been written in VB.NET? The best would be open source, as that would allow interested developers to take a look at some good VB.NET code and see how effective the language can be when used properly. But I'd be interested to know about any libraries at all, particularly reputable ones.

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  • C# - Fill a combo box with a DataTable

    - by MrG
    I'm used to work with Java where large amounts of examples are available. For various reasons I had to switch to C# and trying to do the following in SharpDevelop: // Form has a menu containing a combobox added via SharpDevelop's GUI // --- Variables languages = new string[2]; languages[0] = "English"; languages[1] = "German"; DataSet myDataSet = new DataSet(); // --- Preparation DataTable lTable = new DataTable("Lang"); DataColumn lName = new DataColumn("Language", typeof(string)); lTable.Columns.Add( lName ); for( int i=0; i<languages.Length; i++ ) { DataRow lLang = lTable.NewRow(); lLang["Language"] = languages[i]; lTable.Rows.Add(lLang); } myDataSet.Tables.Add(lTable); // --- Handling the combobox mnuActionLanguage.ComboBox.DataSource = myDataSet.Tables["Lang"].DefaultView; mnuActionLanguage.ComboBox.DisplayMember = "Language"; One would assume to see some values in the dropdown, but it's empty. Please tell me what I'm doing wrong ;( EDIT: mnuActionLanguage.ComboBox.DataBind() is what I also found on the net, but it doesn't work in my case. SOLUTION mnuActionLanguage.ComboBox.BindingContext = this.BindingContext; at the end solved the problem!

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  • Add comment programmatically in Drupal 7

    - by volocuga
    trying to create a comment in own module. $comment = new stdClass(); $comment->nid = 555; // Node Id the comment will attached to $comment->cid = 0; $comment->pid = 0; $comment->uid = 1; $comment->mail = '[email protected]'; $comment->name = 'admin'; $comment->is_anonymous = 0; $comment->homepage = ''; $comment->status = COMMENT_PUBLISHED; $comment->language = LANGUAGE_NONE; $comment->subject = 'Comment subject'; $comment->comment_body[$comment->language][0]['value'] = 'Comment body text'; $comment->comment_body[$comment->language][0]['format'] = 'filtered_html'; comment_submit($comment); comment_save($comment); The code causes the following error: Fatal error: Call to undefined function node_load() in BLA/BLA/comment.module on line 1455 node_load() function is in node module which, of course, enabled. How to fix it? Thanks!

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  • Delphi Prism and LINQ to SQL / Entity Framework

    - by Vegar
    I have found many posts and examples of using LINQ-syntax in Delphi Prism (Oxygene), but I have never found anything on LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework. Is it possible to use LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework together with Prism? Where can I found such an example? Update: Olaf is giving an answer through his blog The question is now if any visual tools and code generation is provided, or if everything must be done by hand... Second update: Olaf has answered the tool/code generation-question in a comment on his site: The class designer is there, but there is no Pascal code gen. According to marc hoffman that is currently not on their list. For now you have to live with manual mapping. I guess, if you had Visual Studio (not just the VS shell), that you could add a C# library project to your solution, reference that from your Prism project. Then create the Table-Class mapping in the C# project using the visual designer. Maybe somewhat ugly, but possibly the key to get the Designer + CodeGen integrated into Prism. Who cares what language is used for the mapping . I will say this is a 1 - 0 to c# vs prism. If I did not care which language is used for the mapping - why should I care about which language is used for the rest?

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  • What's a good way to teach my son to program Java

    - by Software Monkey
    OK, so I've read through various posts about teaching beginner's to program, and there were some helpful things I will look at more closely. But what I want to know is whether there are any effective tools out there to teach a kid Java specifically? I want to teach him Java specifically because (a) with my strong background in C I feel that's too complex, (b) Java is the other language I know extremely well and therefore I can assist meaningfully without needing to teach myself a new but (to me) useless language, and (c) I feel that managed languages are the future, and lastly (d) Java is one of the simplest of all the languages I know well (aside from basic). I learned in basic, and I am open to teaching that first, but I am unaware of a decent free basic shell for Windows (though I haven't really searched, yet since it's not my first choice), and would anyway want to progress quickly to Java. My son is 8, so that's a couple of years earlier than I started - but he has expressed an interest in learning to program (possibly because I work from home a lot and he sees me programming all the time). If no-one can suggest a tool designed for this purpose, I will probably start him off with text/console based apps to teach the basics, and then progress to GUI building. Oh, one last thing, I am not a fan of IDE's (old school text editor type), so I would not be put off at all by a system that has him typing real code, and would likely prefer that to a toy drag/drop system. EDIT: Just to clarify; I really am specifically after ways to teach him Java; there are already a good many posts with good answers for other language alternatives - but that's not what I am looking for here. EDIT: What about Java frameworks for 2D video games - can anyone recommend any of them from personal experience? I like the idea of him starting with the mechanics in place (main game loop, scoring, etc) and adding the specifics for a game of his own imagining - that's what I did, though for me it was basic on a Commodore VIC-20 and a Sinclair ZX-81.

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  • Python progression path - From apprentice to guru

    - by Morlock
    Hi all, I've been learning, working, and playing with Python for a year and a half now. As a biologist slowly making the turn to bio-informatics, this language has been a the very core of all the major contributions I have made in the lab. (bash and R scripts have helped some too. My C++ capabilities are very not functional yet). I more or less fell in love with the way Python permits me to express beautiful solutions and also with the semantics of the language that allows such a natural flow from thoughts to workable code. What I would like to know from you is your answer to a kind of question I have seldom seen in this or other forums. Let me sum up what I do NOT want to ask first ;) I don't want to know how to QUICKLY learn Python Nor do I want to find out the best way to get acquainted with the language Finally, I don't want to know a 'one trick that does it all' approach. What I do want to know your opinion about, is: What are the steps YOU would recommend to a Python journeyman, from apprenticeship to guru status (feel free to stop wherever your expertise dictates it), in order that one IMPROVES CONSTANTLY, becoming a better and better Python coder, one step at a time. The kind of answers I would enjoy (but feel free to surprise the readership :P ), is formatted more or less like this: Read this (eg: python tutorial), pay attention to that kind of details Code for so manytime/problems/lines of code Then, read this (eg: this or that book), but this time, pay attention to this Tackle a few real-life problems Then, proceed to reading Y. Be sure to grasp these concepts Code for X time Come back to such and such basics or move further to... (you get the point :) This process depicts an iterative Learn/Code cycle, and I really care about knowing your opinion on what exactly one should pay attention to, at various stages, in order to progress CONSTANTLY (with due efforts, of course). If you come from a specific field of expertise, discuss the path you see as appropriate in this field. Thanks a lot for sharing your opinions and good Python coding!

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  • Metaprogramming - self explanatory code - tutorials, articles, books

    - by elena
    Hello everybody, I am looking into improving my programming skils (actually I try to do my best to suck less each year, as our Jeff Atwood put it), so I was thinking into reading stuff about metaprogramming and self explanatory code. I am looking for something like an idiot's guide to this (free books for download, online resources). Also I want more than your average wiki page and also something language agnostic or preferably with Java examples. Do you know of such resources that will allow to efficiently put all of it into practice (I know experience has a lot to say in all of this but i kind of want to build experience avoiding the flow bad decisions - experience - good decisions)? EDIT: Something of the likes of this example from the Pragmatic Programmer: ...implement a mini-language to control a simple drawing package... The language consists of single-letter commands. Some commands are followed by a single number. For example, the following input would draw a rectangle: P 2 # select pen 2 D # pen down W 2 # draw west 2cm N 1 # then north 1 E 2 # then east 2 S 1 # then back south U # pen up Thank you!

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  • What components and IDE add-ins do you install with Delphi?

    - by Mick
    After a clean install of Delphi, what components and IDE add-ins do you make certain that you install? What's your Delphi "rig"? Here's what I install after a clean installation: Delphi 2007 JCL / JVCL - JEDI Code Library and JEDI Visual Code Library (600+ components) JWA / JWSCL - JEDI API Library & Security Code Library GExperts - GExperts is a free set of tools built to increase the productivity of Delphi and C++Builder programmers by adding several features to the IDE. TWM's experimental GExperts code formatter - adds code formatting capabilities to Delphi Virtual TreeView - Virtual Treeview is a treeview control built from ground up. More than 5 years of development made it one of the most flexible and advanced tree controls available today. MustangPeak Components (EasyList View, Virtual ShellTools, etc) - EasyListview is a control that has no dependance on the Microsoft Listview control but has all the features of the latest version from Microsoft. Also includes 'Explorer.exe' like shell components. Synapse lightweight networking components - contains simple low level non-visual objects for easy programming without problems. (no required multi-threaded synchronization, no need for windows message processing,…) Great for command line utilities, visual projects, NT services EurekaLog - EurekaLog is a complete bug resolution tool for Delphi and C++Builder developers that gives your application the power to catch every exception and memory leak, directly on the end user PC, generating a detailed log of the call stack (with file, class, method and line number), optionally sending you a copy of each log entry via email or to a web bug-tracker. DelphiSpeedUp - DelphiSpeedUp is an IDE plugin for Delphi and C++Builder. It improves the IDE’s startup speed and increases the general speed of the whole IDE. DDevExtensions - DDevExtensions extends the Delphi/C++Builder IDE by adding some new productivity features. IDE Fix Pack - The IDE Fix Pack installs is a DLL-Expert that fixes the following RAD Studio 2007 bugs at runtime. All changes are done in memory. No file on disk is modified. TPerlRegex - Regular Expression library for Delphi How about other Delphi developers?

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  • XMPP SASL authentication on Ejabberd with PHP

    - by bucabay
    I'm trying to authenticate with an XMPP server using SASL. /** * Send Authentication, SASL * @return Bool * @param $username String * @param $password String */ function authenticate($username, $password) { $this->username = $username; $this->password = $password; var_dump($username, $password, $this->domain); $auth = base64_encode($username.'@'.$this->domain."\u0000".$username."\u0000".$password); $xml = '<auth mechanism="PLAIN" xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl">'.$auth.'</auth>'; if ($this->write($xml)) { if ($xml = $this->listen(1, true)) { if (preg_match("/<success/i", $xml)) { $this->authenticated = $this->_sendStream(); } } } $this->events->trigger('authenticate', $this->authenticated); return $this->authenticated; } The XMPP server however responds with: <failure xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'><bad-protocol/></failure> This is against an Ejabberd server. When I open the XMPP stream, it advertises: <stream:features><starttls xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'/><mechanisms xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl'><mechanism>DIGEST-MD5</mechanism><mechanism>PLAIN</mechanism></mechanisms><register xmlns='http://jabber.org/features/iq-register'/></stream:features> So it seams to me that SASL - PLAIN should work. I have a JavaScript version, that works perfectly on OpenFire server. (I can't test it on Ejabberd at the moment) sendAuthentication: function() { clearTimeout(XMPP.sendAuthentication_timer); var auth = Base64.encode(XMPP.username+'@'+XMPP.domain+'\u0000'+XMPP.username+'\u0000'+XMPP.password); mySocket.events.receive.observe(XMPP.receivedAuthSuccess, function() { mySocket.send('<auth mechanism="PLAIN" xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl">' + auth + '</auth>'); }); } So I can't get why the PHP version is not working.

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  • Eclipse Plugin does not work in FlashBuilder/FlexBuilder Standalone

    - by Janosch
    Hi, created an Eclipse plugin that contributes to the UI by a new project wizard a new menu in the context menu of projects in the Package Explorer a new project nature + builder a new preference page for the plugin The plugin works fine when installed in a normal Eclipse instance with Flex/Flashbuilder as plugin. The problem now is, that the plugin never gets activated when i install it in a Flex/Flashbuilder Standalone instance. Neither of the features described above is available. I even have no idea how to debug this, error-log (workspace/.metadata/.log) the following message appears, (but i dont think it is related to the problem) !ENTRY org.eclipse.ui.workbench 2 0 2009-07-20 17:51:17.984 !MESSAGE A handler conflict occurred. This may disable some commands. !SUBENTRY 1 org.eclipse.ui.workbench 2 0 2009-07-20 17:51:17.984 !MESSAGE Conflict for 'org.eclipse.ui.navigate.openResource': HandlerActivation(commandId=org.eclipse.ui.navigate.openResource, handler=ActionDelegateHandlerProxy(null,org.eclipse.ui.internal.ide.handlers.OpenResourceHandler), expression=AndExpression(ActionSetExpression(org.eclipse.ui.NavigateActionSet,org.eclipse.ui.internal.WorkbenchWindow@1c45731),WorkbenchWindowExpression(org.eclipse.ui.internal.WorkbenchWindow@1c45731)),sourcePriority=16640) HandlerActivation(commandId=org.eclipse.ui.navigate.openResource, handler=ActionDelegateHandlerProxy(null,org.eclipse.ui.internal.ide.handlers.OpenResourceHandler), expression=AndExpression(ActionSetExpression(com.adobe.flexbuilder.standalone.navigate,org.eclipse.ui.internal.WorkbenchWindow@1c45731),WorkbenchWindowExpression(org.eclipse.ui.internal.WorkbenchWindow@1c45731)),sourcePriority=16640) In the "Configuration Details" my feature doesn't show up in the *** Features: section and my plugin doesn't show up in the *** Plugin-in Registry: section. But they appear under Configured features and Configured plug-ins. Starting FlashBuilder with -clean didn't solve the problem. (the start command is now "C:\Programme\Adobe\Flash Builder Beta\Gumbo.exe" -clean) My plugin depends on org.eclipse.ui, org.eclipse.core.runtime, org.eclipse.core.resources, com.adobe.flexbuilder.project com.adobe.flexbuilder.project.ui com.adobe.flexbuilder.ui All of these should be available, as i see it. (and an error should be generated if they were not, i hope)

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  • Excel export displaying '#####...'

    - by Cypher
    I'm trying to export an Excel database into .txt (Tab Delimited), but some of my cells are quite large. When I export into a txt some of the cells are exported as '#######....' which is surprisingly useless. Has this happened to anyone else? Do you know an easy fix? Data from one cell of my column: Accounting, African Studies, Agricultural/Bioresource Engineering, Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Science, Anatomy/Cell Biology, Animal Biology, Animal Science, Anthropology, Applied Zoology, Architecture, Art History, Atmospheric/Oceanic Science, Biochemistry, Biology, Botanical Sciences, Canadian Studies, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry/Bio-Organic/Environmental/Materials,ChurchMusicPerformance, Civil Engineering/Applied Mechanics, Classics, Composition, Computer Engineering,ComputerScience, ContemporaryGerman Studies, Dietetics, Early Music Performance, Earth/Planetary Sciences, East Asian Studies, Economics, Electrical Engineering, English Literature/ Drama/Theatre/Cultural Studies, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Environmental Biology, Finance, Food Science, Foundations of Computing, French Language/Linguistics/Literature/Translation, Geography, Geography/ Urban Systems, German, German Language/Literature/Culture, Hispanic Languages/Literature/Culture,History,Humanistic Studies, Industrial Relations, Information Systems, International Business, International Development Studies, Italian Studies/Medieval/Renaissance, Jazz Performance, Jewish Studies, Keyboard Studies, Kindergarten/Elementary Education, Kindergarten/Elementary Education/Jewish Studies,Kinesiology, Labor/Management Relations, Latin American/Caribbean Studies, Linguistics, Literature/Translation, Management Science, Marketing, Materials Engineering,Mathematics,Mathematics/Statistics,Mechanical Engineering, Microbiology, Microbiology/Immunology, Middle Eastern Studies, Mining Engineering, Music, Music Education, MusicHistory,Music Technology,Music Theory,North American Studies, Nutrition,OperationsManagement,OrganizationalBehavior/Human Resources Management, Performing Arts, Philosophy, Physical Education, Physics, Physiology, Plant Sciences, Political Science, Psychology, Quebec Studies, Religious Studies/Scriptures/Interpretations/World Religions,ResourceConservation,Russian, Science for Teachers,Secondary Education, Secondary Education/Music, Secondary Education/Science, SocialWork, Sociology, Software Engineering, Soil Science, Strategic Management, Teaching of French/English as a Second Language, Theology, Wildlife Biology, Wildlife Resources, Women’s Studies.

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  • Need Advice on building the database. all in one table or split?

    - by Ibrahim Azhar Armar
    hello, i am developing an application for a real-estate company. the problem i am facing is about implementing the database. however i am just confused on which way to adopt i would appreciate if you could help me out in reasoning the database implementation. here is my situation. a) i have to store the property details in the database. b) the properties have approximately 4-5 categories to which it will belong for ex : resedential, commnercial, industrial etc. c) now the categories have sub-categories. for example. a residential category will have sub category such as. Apartment / Independent House / Villa / Farm House/ Studio Apartment etc. and hence same way commercial and industrial or agricultural will too have sub-categories. d) each sub-categories will have to store the different values. like a resident will have features like Bedrooms/ kitchens / Hall / bathroom etc. the features depends on the sub categories. for an example on how i would want to implement my application you can have a look at this site. http://www.magicbricks.com/bricks/postProperty.html i could possibly think of the solution like this. a) create four to five tables depending upon the categories which will be existing(the problem is categories might increase in the future). b) create different tables for all the features, location, price, description and merge the common property table into one. for example all the property will have the common entity such as location, total area, etc. what would you advice for me given the current situation. thank you

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  • What was Tim Sweeney thinking? (How does this C++ parser work?)

    - by Frank Krueger
    Tim Sweeney of Epic MegaGames is the lead developer for Unreal and a programming language geek. Many years ago posted the following screen shot to VoodooExtreme: As a C++ programmer and Sweeney fan, I was captivated by this. It shows generic C++ code that implements some kind of scripting language where that language itself seems to be generic in the sense that it can define its own grammar. Mr. Sweeney never explained himself. :-) It's rare to see this level of template programming, but you do see it from time to time when people want to push the compiler to generate great code or because they want to create generic code (for example, Modern C++ Design). Tim seems to be using it to create a grammar in Parser.cpp - you can see what look like prioritized binary operators. If that is the case, then why does Test.ae look like it's also defining a grammar? Obviously this is a puzzle that needs to be solved. Victory goes to the answer with a working version of this code, or the most plausible explanation, or to Tim Sweeney himself if he posts an answer. :-)

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  • Extending Python and Objective-C

    - by chpwn
    I'm a fan of clean code. I like my languages to be able to express what I'm trying to do, but I like the syntax to mirror that too. For example, I work on a lot of programs in Objective-C for jailbroken iPhones, which patch other code using the method_setImplementation() function of the runtime. Or, in PyObjC, I have to use the syntax UIView.initWithFrame_(), which is also pretty awful and unreadable with the way the method names are structured. In both cases, the language does not support this in syntax. I've found three basic ways that this is done: Insane macros. Take a look at this "CaptainHook", it does what I'm looking for in a usable way, but it isn't quite clean and is a major hack. There's also "Logos", which implements a very nice syntax, but is written in Perl parsing my code with a ton of regular expressions. This scares me. I like the idea of adding a %hook ClassName, but not by using regular expressions to parse C or Objective-C. Finally, there is Cycript. This is an extension to JavaScript which interfaces with the Objective-C runtime and allows you to use Objective-C style code in your JavaScript, and inject that into other processes. This is likely the cleanest as it actually uses a parser for the JavaScript, but I'm not a huge fan of that language in general. Should, and how should, I create an extension to Python and Objective-C to allow me to do this? Is it worth writing a parser for my language to transform the syntax into something nicer, if it is only in a very specialized niche like this? Should I just live with the horrible syntax of the default Objective-C hooking or PyObjC?

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