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• How to learn programming language (syntax rules, etc.) and remember easily? [closed]

  - by user239522

  I'm new to programming, and I always have a so call difficulty, that is, I always tend to forget the thing (syntax, rules, name, definition or anyting) of a programming language I've learnt. And I personally do feel that the way I learn it is wrong. Here is my method. Everyday I will spend approximately 1 or 2 hours on a programming e-book. I just follow the syllabus and teaching inside the books, of course I have try to code myself, alter the code inside the book, and did the exercises available. But everytime right after I finish a chapter and advanced myself to third or fourth chapter, I will forgot something I learnt in the first chapter. Is it the method I use wrong? Does learning through reading and coding not enough? Do I need to everytime make a small note (mind map for example) of things I've learnt by hand writing? Or do I sometime need to try coding using a pencil and a book, but not a computer?

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• Using FiddlerCore to capture HTTP Requests with .NET

  - by Rick Strahl

  Over the last few weeks I’ve been working on my Web load testing utility West Wind WebSurge. One of the key components of a load testing tool is the ability to capture URLs effectively so that you can play them back later under load. One of the options in WebSurge for capturing URLs is to use its built-in capture tool which acts as an HTTP proxy to capture any HTTP and HTTPS traffic from most Windows HTTP clients, including Web Browsers as well as standalone Windows applications and services. To make this happen, I used Eric Lawrence’s awesome FiddlerCore library, which provides most of the functionality of his desktop Fiddler application, all rolled into an easy to use library that you can plug into your own applications. FiddlerCore makes it almost too easy to capture HTTP content! For WebSurge I needed to capture all HTTP traffic in order to capture the full HTTP request – URL, headers and any content posted by the client. The result of what I ended up creating is this semi-generic capture form: In this post I’m going to demonstrate how easy it is to use FiddlerCore to build this HTTP Capture Form.  If you want to jump right in here are the links to get Telerik’s Fiddler Core and the code for the demo provided here. FiddlerCore Download FiddlerCore on NuGet Show me the Code (WebSurge Integration code from GitHub) Download the WinForms Sample Form West Wind Web Surge (example implementation in live app) Note that FiddlerCore is bound by a license for commercial usage – see license.txt in the FiddlerCore distribution for details. Integrating FiddlerCore FiddlerCore is a library that simply plugs into your application. You can download it from the Telerik site and manually add the assemblies to your project, or you can simply install the NuGet package via:       PM> Install-Package FiddlerCore The library consists of the FiddlerCore.dll as well as a couple of support libraries (CertMaker.dll and BCMakeCert.dll) that are used for installing SSL certificates. I’ll have more on SSL captures and certificate installation later in this post. But first let’s see how easy it is to use FiddlerCore to capture HTTP content by looking at how to build the above capture form. Capturing HTTP Content Once the library is installed it’s super easy to hook up Fiddler functionality. Fiddler includes a number of static class methods on the FiddlerApplication object that can be called to hook up callback events as well as actual start monitoring HTTP URLs. In the following code directly lifted from WebSurge, I configure a few filter options on Form level object, from the user inputs shown on the form by assigning it to a capture options object. In the live application these settings are persisted configuration values, but in the demo they are one time values initialized and set on the form. Once these options are set, I hook up the AfterSessionComplete event to capture every URL that passes through the proxy after the request is completed and start up the Proxy service:void Start() { if (tbIgnoreResources.Checked) CaptureConfiguration.IgnoreResources = true; else CaptureConfiguration.IgnoreResources = false; string strProcId = txtProcessId.Text; if (strProcId.Contains('-')) strProcId = strProcId.Substring(strProcId.IndexOf('-') + 1).Trim(); strProcId = strProcId.Trim(); int procId = 0; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(strProcId)) { if (!int.TryParse(strProcId, out procId)) procId = 0; } CaptureConfiguration.ProcessId = procId; CaptureConfiguration.CaptureDomain = txtCaptureDomain.Text; FiddlerApplication.AfterSessionComplete += FiddlerApplication_AfterSessionComplete; FiddlerApplication.Startup(8888, true, true, true); } The key lines for FiddlerCore are just the last two lines of code that include the event hookup code as well as the Startup() method call. Here I only hook up to the AfterSessionComplete event but there are a number of other events that hook various stages of the HTTP request cycle you can also hook into. Other events include BeforeRequest, BeforeResponse, RequestHeadersAvailable, ResponseHeadersAvailable and so on. In my case I want to capture the request data and I actually have several options to capture this data. AfterSessionComplete is the last event that fires in the request sequence and it’s the most common choice to capture all request and response data. I could have used several other events, but AfterSessionComplete is one place where you can look both at the request and response data, so this will be the most common place to hook into if you’re capturing content. The implementation of AfterSessionComplete is responsible for capturing all HTTP request headers and it looks something like this:private void FiddlerApplication_AfterSessionComplete(Session sess) { // Ignore HTTPS connect requests if (sess.RequestMethod == "CONNECT") return; if (CaptureConfiguration.ProcessId > 0) { if (sess.LocalProcessID != 0 && sess.LocalProcessID != CaptureConfiguration.ProcessId) return; } if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(CaptureConfiguration.CaptureDomain)) { if (sess.hostname.ToLower() != CaptureConfiguration.CaptureDomain.Trim().ToLower()) return; } if (CaptureConfiguration.IgnoreResources) { string url = sess.fullUrl.ToLower(); var extensions = CaptureConfiguration.ExtensionFilterExclusions; foreach (var ext in extensions) { if (url.Contains(ext)) return; } var filters = CaptureConfiguration.UrlFilterExclusions; foreach (var urlFilter in filters) { if (url.Contains(urlFilter)) return; } } if (sess == null || sess.oRequest == null || sess.oRequest.headers == null) return; string headers = sess.oRequest.headers.ToString(); var reqBody = sess.GetRequestBodyAsString(); // if you wanted to capture the response //string respHeaders = session.oResponse.headers.ToString(); //var respBody = session.GetResponseBodyAsString(); // replace the HTTP line to inject full URL string firstLine = sess.RequestMethod + " " + sess.fullUrl + " " + sess.oRequest.headers.HTTPVersion; int at = headers.IndexOf("\r\n"); if (at < 0) return; headers = firstLine + "\r\n" + headers.Substring(at + 1); string output = headers + "\r\n" + (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(reqBody) ? reqBody + "\r\n" : string.Empty) + Separator + "\r\n\r\n"; BeginInvoke(new Action<string>((text) => { txtCapture.AppendText(text); UpdateButtonStatus(); }), output); } The code starts by filtering out some requests based on the CaptureOptions I set before the capture is started. These options/filters are applied when requests actually come in. This is very useful to help narrow down the requests that are captured for playback based on options the user picked. I find it useful to limit requests to a certain domain for captures, as well as filtering out some request types like static resources – images, css, scripts etc. This is of course optional, but I think it’s a common scenario and WebSurge makes good use of this feature. AfterSessionComplete like other FiddlerCore events, provides a Session object parameter which contains all the request and response details. There are oRequest and oResponse objects to hold their respective data. In my case I’m interested in the raw request headers and body only, as you can see in the commented code you can also retrieve the response headers and body. Here the code captures the request headers and body and simply appends the output to the textbox on the screen. Note that the Fiddler events are asynchronous, so in order to display the content in the UI they have to be marshaled back the UI thread with BeginInvoke, which here simply takes the generated headers and appends it to the existing textbox test on the form. As each request is processed, the headers are captured and appended to the bottom of the textbox resulting in a Session HTTP capture in the format that Web Surge internally supports, which is basically raw request headers with a customized 1st HTTP Header line that includes the full URL rather than a server relative URL. When the capture is done the user can either copy the raw HTTP session to the clipboard, or directly save it to file. This raw capture format is the same format WebSurge and also Fiddler use to import/export request data. While this code is application specific, it demonstrates the kind of logic that you can easily apply to the request capture process, which is one of the reasonsof why FiddlerCore is so powerful. You get to choose what content you want to look up as part of your own application logic and you can then decide how to capture or use that data as part of your application. The actual captured data in this case is only a string. The user can edit the data by hand or in the the case of WebSurge, save it to disk and automatically open the captured session as a new load test. Stopping the FiddlerCore Proxy Finally to stop capturing requests you simply disconnect the event handler and call the FiddlerApplication.ShutDown() method:void Stop() { FiddlerApplication.AfterSessionComplete -= FiddlerApplication_AfterSessionComplete; if (FiddlerApplication.IsStarted()) FiddlerApplication.Shutdown(); } As you can see, adding HTTP capture functionality to an application is very straight forward. FiddlerCore offers tons of features I’m not even touching on here – I suspect basic captures are the most common scenario, but a lot of different things can be done with FiddlerCore’s simple API interface. Sky’s the limit! The source code for this sample capture form (WinForms) is provided as part of this article. Adding Fiddler Certificates with FiddlerCore One of the sticking points in West Wind WebSurge has been that if you wanted to capture HTTPS/SSL traffic, you needed to have the full version of Fiddler and have HTTPS decryption enabled. Essentially you had to use Fiddler to configure HTTPS decryption and the associated installation of the Fiddler local client certificate that is used for local decryption of incoming SSL traffic. While this works just fine, requiring to have Fiddler installed and then using a separate application to configure the SSL functionality isn’t ideal. Fortunately FiddlerCore actually includes the tools to register the Fiddler Certificate directly using FiddlerCore. Why does Fiddler need a Certificate in the first Place? Fiddler and FiddlerCore are essentially HTTP proxies which means they inject themselves into the HTTP conversation by re-routing HTTP traffic to a special HTTP port (8888 by default for Fiddler) and then forward the HTTP data to the original client. Fiddler injects itself as the system proxy in using the WinInet Windows settings  which are the same settings that Internet Explorer uses and that are configured in the Windows and Internet Explorer Internet Settings dialog. Most HTTP clients running on Windows pick up and apply these system level Proxy settings before establishing new HTTP connections and that’s why most clients automatically work once Fiddler – or FiddlerCore/WebSurge are running. For plain HTTP requests this just works – Fiddler intercepts the HTTP requests on the proxy port and then forwards them to the original port (80 for HTTP and 443 for SSL typically but it could be any port). For SSL however, this is not quite as simple – Fiddler can easily act as an HTTPS/SSL client to capture inbound requests from the server, but when it forwards the request to the client it has to also act as an SSL server and provide a certificate that the client trusts. This won’t be the original certificate from the remote site, but rather a custom local certificate that effectively simulates an SSL connection between the proxy and the client. If there is no custom certificate configured for Fiddler the SSL request fails with a certificate validation error. The key for this to work is that a custom certificate has to be installed that the HTTPS client trusts on the local machine. For a much more detailed description of the process you can check out Eric Lawrence’s blog post on Certificates. If you’re using the desktop version of Fiddler you can install a local certificate into the Windows certificate store. Fiddler proper does this from the Options menu: This operation does several things: It installs the Fiddler Root Certificate It sets trust to this Root Certificate A new client certificate is generated for each HTTPS site monitored Certificate Installation with FiddlerCore You can also provide this same functionality using FiddlerCore which includes a CertMaker class. Using CertMaker is straight forward to use and it provides an easy way to create some simple helpers that can install and uninstall a Fiddler Root certificate:public static bool InstallCertificate() { if (!CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.createRootCert()) return false; if (!CertMaker.trustRootCert()) return false; } return true; } public static bool UninstallCertificate() { if (CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.removeFiddlerGeneratedCerts(true)) return false; } return true; } InstallCertificate() works by first checking whether the root certificate is already installed and if it isn’t goes ahead and creates a new one. The process of creating the certificate is a two step process – first the actual certificate is created and then it’s moved into the certificate store to become trusted. I’m not sure why you’d ever split these operations up since a cert created without trust isn’t going to be of much value, but there are two distinct steps. When you trigger the trustRootCert() method, a message box will pop up on the desktop that lets you know that you’re about to trust a local private certificate. This is a security feature to ensure that you really want to trust the Fiddler root since you are essentially installing a man in the middle certificate. It’s quite safe to use this generated root certificate, because it’s been specifically generated for your machine and thus is not usable from external sources, the only way to use this certificate in a trusted way is from the local machine. IOW, unless somebody has physical access to your machine, there’s no useful way to hijack this certificate and use it for nefarious purposes (see Eric’s post for more details). Once the Root certificate has been installed, FiddlerCore/Fiddler create new certificates for each site that is connected to with HTTPS. You can end up with quite a few temporary certificates in your certificate store. To uninstall you can either use Fiddler and simply uncheck the Decrypt HTTPS traffic option followed by the remove Fiddler certificates button, or you can use FiddlerCore’s CertMaker.removeFiddlerGeneratedCerts() which removes the root cert and any of the intermediary certificates Fiddler created. Keep in mind that when you uninstall you uninstall the certificate for both FiddlerCore and Fiddler, so use UninstallCertificate() with care and realize that you might affect the Fiddler application’s operation by doing so as well. When to check for an installed Certificate Note that the check to see if the root certificate exists is pretty fast, while the actual process of installing the certificate is a relatively slow operation that even on a fast machine takes a few seconds. Further the trust operation pops up a message box so you probably don’t want to install the certificate repeatedly. Since the check for the root certificate is fast, you can easily put a call to InstallCertificate() in any capture startup code – in which case the certificate installation only triggers when a certificate is in fact not installed. Personally I like to make certificate installation explicit – just like Fiddler does, so in WebSurge I use a small drop down option on the menu to install or uninstall the SSL certificate:   This code calls the InstallCertificate and UnInstallCertificate functions respectively – the experience with this is similar to what you get in Fiddler with the extra dialog box popping up to prompt confirmation for installation of the root certificate. Once the cert is installed you can then capture SSL requests. There’s a gotcha however… Gotcha: FiddlerCore Certificates don’t stick by Default When I originally tried to use the Fiddler certificate installation I ran into an odd problem. I was able to install the certificate and immediately after installation was able to capture HTTPS requests. Then I would exit the application and come back in and try the same HTTPS capture again and it would fail due to a missing certificate. CertMaker.rootCertExists() would return false after every restart and if re-installed the certificate a new certificate would get added to the certificate store resulting in a bunch of duplicated root certificates with different keys. What the heck? CertMaker and BcMakeCert create non-sticky CertificatesI turns out that FiddlerCore by default uses different components from what the full version of Fiddler uses. Fiddler uses a Windows utility called MakeCert.exe to create the Fiddler Root certificate. FiddlerCore however installs the CertMaker.dll and BCMakeCert.dll assemblies, which use a different crypto library (Bouncy Castle) for certificate creation than MakeCert.exe which uses the Windows Crypto API. The assemblies provide support for non-windows operation for Fiddler under Mono, as well as support for some non-Windows certificate platforms like iOS and Android for decryption. The bottom line is that the FiddlerCore provided bouncy castle assemblies are not sticky by default as the certificates created with them are not cached as they are in Fiddler proper. To get certificates to ‘stick’ you have to explicitly cache the certificates in Fiddler’s internal preferences. A cache aware version of InstallCertificate looks something like this:public static bool InstallCertificate() { if (!CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.createRootCert()) return false; if (!CertMaker.trustRootCert()) return false; App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert = FiddlerApplication.Prefs.GetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.cert", null); App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Key = FiddlerApplication.Prefs.GetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.key", null); } return true; } public static bool UninstallCertificate() { if (CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.removeFiddlerGeneratedCerts(true)) return false; } App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert = null; App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Key = null; return true; } In this code I store the Fiddler cert and private key in an application configuration settings that’s stored with the application settings (App.Configuration.UrlCapture object). These settings automatically persist when WebSurge is shut down. The values are read out of Fiddler’s internal preferences store which is set after a new certificate has been created. Likewise I clear out the configuration settings when the certificate is uninstalled. In order for these setting to be used you have to also load the configuration settings into the Fiddler preferences *before* a call to rootCertExists() is made. I do this in the capture form’s constructor:public FiddlerCapture(StressTestForm form) { InitializeComponent(); CaptureConfiguration = App.Configuration.UrlCapture; MainForm = form; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert)) { FiddlerApplication.Prefs.SetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.key", App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Key); FiddlerApplication.Prefs.SetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.cert", App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert); }} This is kind of a drag to do and not documented anywhere that I could find, so hopefully this will save you some grief if you want to work with the stock certificate logic that installs with FiddlerCore. MakeCert provides sticky Certificates and the same functionality as Fiddler But there’s actually an easier way. If you want to skip the above Fiddler preference configuration code in your application you can choose to distribute MakeCert.exe instead of certmaker.dll and bcmakecert.dll. When you use MakeCert.exe, the certificates settings are stored in Windows so they are available without any custom configuration inside of your application. It’s easier to integrate and as long as you run on Windows and you don’t need to support iOS or Android devices is simply easier to deal with. To integrate into your project, you can remove the reference to CertMaker.dll (and the BcMakeCert.dll assembly) from your project. Instead copy MakeCert.exe into your output folder. To make sure MakeCert.exe gets pushed out, include MakeCert.exe in your project and set the Build Action to None, and Copy to Output Directory to Copy if newer. Note that the CertMaker.dll reference in the project has been removed and on disk the files for Certmaker.dll, as well as the BCMakeCert.dll files on disk. Keep in mind that these DLLs are resources of the FiddlerCore NuGet package, so updating the package may end up pushing those files back into your project. Once MakeCert.exe is distributed FiddlerCore checks for it first before using the assemblies so as long as MakeCert.exe exists it’ll be used for certificate creation (at least on Windows). Summary FiddlerCore is a pretty sweet tool, and it’s absolutely awesome that we get to plug in most of the functionality of Fiddler right into our own applications. A few years back I tried to build this sort of functionality myself for an app and ended up giving up because it’s a big job to get HTTP right – especially if you need to support SSL. FiddlerCore now provides that functionality as a turnkey solution that can be plugged into your own apps easily. The only downside is FiddlerCore’s documentation for more advanced features like certificate installation which is pretty sketchy. While for the most part FiddlerCore’s feature set is easy to work with without any documentation, advanced features are often not intuitive to gleam by just using Intellisense or the FiddlerCore help file reference (which is not terribly useful). While Eric Lawrence is very responsive on his forum and on Twitter, there simply isn’t much useful documentation on Fiddler/FiddlerCore available online. If you run into trouble the forum is probably the first place to look and then ask a question if you can’t find the answer. The best documentation you can find is Eric’s Fiddler Book which covers a ton of functionality of Fiddler and FiddlerCore. The book is a great reference to Fiddler’s feature set as well as providing great insights into the HTTP protocol. The second half of the book that gets into the innards of HTTP is an excellent read for anybody who wants to know more about some of the more arcane aspects and special behaviors of HTTP – it’s well worth the read. While the book has tons of information in a very readable format, it’s unfortunately not a great reference as it’s hard to find things in the book and because it’s not available online you can’t electronically search for the great content in it. But it’s hard to complain about any of this given the obvious effort and love that’s gone into this awesome product for all of these years. A mighty big thanks to Eric Lawrence  for having created this useful tool that so many of us use all the time, and also to Telerik for picking up Fiddler/FiddlerCore and providing Eric the resources to support and improve this wonderful tool full time and keeping it free for all. Kudos! Resources FiddlerCore Download FiddlerCore NuGet Fiddler Capture Sample Form Fiddler Capture Form in West Wind WebSurge (GitHub) Eric Lawrence’s Fiddler Book© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in .NET  HTTP   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Creating a dynamic, extensible C# Expando Object

  - by Rick Strahl

  I love dynamic functionality in a strongly typed language because it offers us the best of both worlds. In C# (or any of the main .NET languages) we now have the dynamic type that provides a host of dynamic features for the static C# language. One place where I've found dynamic to be incredibly useful is in building extensible types or types that expose traditionally non-object data (like dictionaries) in easier to use and more readable syntax. I wrote about a couple of these for accessing old school ADO.NET DataRows and DataReaders more easily for example. These classes are dynamic wrappers that provide easier syntax and auto-type conversions which greatly simplifies code clutter and increases clarity in existing code. ExpandoObject in .NET 4.0 Another great use case for dynamic objects is the ability to create extensible objects - objects that start out with a set of static members and then can add additional properties and even methods dynamically. The .NET 4.0 framework actually includes an ExpandoObject class which provides a very dynamic object that allows you to add properties and methods on the fly and then access them again. For example with ExpandoObject you can do stuff like this:dynamic expand = new ExpandoObject(); expand.Name = "Rick"; expand.HelloWorld = (Func<string, string>) ((string name) => { return "Hello " + name; }); Console.WriteLine(expand.Name); Console.WriteLine(expand.HelloWorld("Dufus")); Internally ExpandoObject uses a Dictionary like structure and interface to store properties and methods and then allows you to add and access properties and methods easily. As cool as ExpandoObject is it has a few shortcomings too: It's a sealed type so you can't use it as a base class It only works off 'properties' in the internal Dictionary - you can't expose existing type data It doesn't serialize to XML or with DataContractSerializer/DataContractJsonSerializer Expando - A truly extensible Object ExpandoObject is nice if you just need a dynamic container for a dictionary like structure. However, if you want to build an extensible object that starts out with a set of strongly typed properties and then allows you to extend it, ExpandoObject does not work because it's a sealed class that can't be inherited. I started thinking about this very scenario for one of my applications I'm building for a customer. In this system we are connecting to various different user stores. Each user store has the same basic requirements for username, password, name etc. But then each store also has a number of extended properties that is available to each application. In the real world scenario the data is loaded from the database in a data reader and the known properties are assigned from the known fields in the database. All unknown fields are then 'added' to the expando object dynamically. In the past I've done this very thing with a separate property - Properties - just like I do for this class. But the property and dictionary syntax is not ideal and tedious to work with. I started thinking about how to represent these extra property structures. One way certainly would be to add a Dictionary, or an ExpandoObject to hold all those extra properties. But wouldn't it be nice if the application could actually extend an existing object that looks something like this as you can with the Expando object:public class User : Westwind.Utilities.Dynamic.Expando { public string Email { get; set; } public string Password { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public bool Active { get; set; } public DateTime? ExpiresOn { get; set; } } and then simply start extending the properties of this object dynamically? Using the Expando object I describe later you can now do the following:[TestMethod] public void UserExampleTest() { var user = new User(); // Set strongly typed properties user.Email = "[email protected]"; user.Password = "nonya123"; user.Name = "Rickochet"; user.Active = true; // Now add dynamic properties dynamic duser = user; duser.Entered = DateTime.Now; duser.Accesses = 1; // you can also add dynamic props via indexer user["NickName"] = "AntiSocialX"; duser["WebSite"] = "http://www.west-wind.com/weblog"; // Access strong type through dynamic ref Assert.AreEqual(user.Name,duser.Name); // Access strong type through indexer Assert.AreEqual(user.Password,user["Password"]); // access dyanmically added value through indexer Assert.AreEqual(duser.Entered,user["Entered"]); // access index added value through dynamic Assert.AreEqual(user["NickName"],duser.NickName); // loop through all properties dynamic AND strong type properties (true) foreach (var prop in user.GetProperties(true)) { object val = prop.Value; if (val == null) val = "null"; Console.WriteLine(prop.Key + ": " + val.ToString()); } } As you can see this code somewhat blurs the line between a static and dynamic type. You start with a strongly typed object that has a fixed set of properties. You can then cast the object to dynamic (as I discussed in my last post) and add additional properties to the object. You can also use an indexer to add dynamic properties to the object. To access the strongly typed properties you can use either the strongly typed instance, the indexer or the dynamic cast of the object. Personally I think it's kinda cool to have an easy way to access strongly typed properties by string which can make some data scenarios much easier. To access the 'dynamically added' properties you can use either the indexer on the strongly typed object, or property syntax on the dynamic cast. Using the dynamic type allows all three modes to work on both strongly typed and dynamic properties. Finally you can iterate over all properties, both dynamic and strongly typed if you chose. Lots of flexibility. Note also that by default the Expando object works against the (this) instance meaning it extends the current object. You can also pass in a separate instance to the constructor in which case that object will be used to iterate over to find properties rather than this. Using this approach provides some really interesting functionality when use the dynamic type. To use this we have to add an explicit constructor to the Expando subclass:public class User : Westwind.Utilities.Dynamic.Expando { public string Email { get; set; } public string Password { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public bool Active { get; set; } public DateTime? ExpiresOn { get; set; } public User() : base() { } // only required if you want to mix in seperate instance public User(object instance) : base(instance) { } } to allow the instance to be passed. When you do you can now do:[TestMethod] public void ExpandoMixinTest() { // have Expando work on Addresses var user = new User( new Address() ); // cast to dynamicAccessToPropertyTest dynamic duser = user; // Set strongly typed properties duser.Email = "[email protected]"; user.Password = "nonya123"; // Set properties on address object duser.Address = "32 Kaiea"; //duser.Phone = "808-123-2131"; // set dynamic properties duser.NonExistantProperty = "This works too"; // shows default value Address.Phone value Console.WriteLine(duser.Phone); } Using the dynamic cast in this case allows you to access *three* different 'objects': The strong type properties, the dynamically added properties in the dictionary and the properties of the instance passed in! Effectively this gives you a way to simulate multiple inheritance (which is scary - so be very careful with this, but you can do it). How Expando works Behind the scenes Expando is a DynamicObject subclass as I discussed in my last post. By implementing a few of DynamicObject's methods you can basically create a type that can trap 'property missing' and 'method missing' operations. When you access a non-existant property a known method is fired that our code can intercept and provide a value for. Internally Expando uses a custom dictionary implementation to hold the dynamic properties you might add to your expandable object. Let's look at code first. The code for the Expando type is straight forward and given what it provides relatively short. Here it is.using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Dynamic; using System.Reflection; namespace Westwind.Utilities.Dynamic { /// <summary> /// Class that provides extensible properties and methods. This /// dynamic object stores 'extra' properties in a dictionary or /// checks the actual properties of the instance. /// /// This means you can subclass this expando and retrieve either /// native properties or properties from values in the dictionary. /// /// This type allows you three ways to access its properties: /// /// Directly: any explicitly declared properties are accessible /// Dynamic: dynamic cast allows access to dictionary and native properties/methods /// Dictionary: Any of the extended properties are accessible via IDictionary interface /// </summary> [Serializable] public class Expando : DynamicObject, IDynamicMetaObjectProvider { /// <summary> /// Instance of object passed in /// </summary> object Instance; /// <summary> /// Cached type of the instance /// </summary> Type InstanceType; PropertyInfo[] InstancePropertyInfo { get { if (_InstancePropertyInfo == null && Instance != null) _InstancePropertyInfo = Instance.GetType().GetProperties(BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.DeclaredOnly); return _InstancePropertyInfo; } } PropertyInfo[] _InstancePropertyInfo; /// <summary> /// String Dictionary that contains the extra dynamic values /// stored on this object/instance /// </summary> /// <remarks>Using PropertyBag to support XML Serialization of the dictionary</remarks> public PropertyBag Properties = new PropertyBag(); //public Dictionary<string,object> Properties = new Dictionary<string, object>(); /// <summary> /// This constructor just works off the internal dictionary and any /// public properties of this object. /// /// Note you can subclass Expando. /// </summary> public Expando() { Initialize(this); } /// <summary> /// Allows passing in an existing instance variable to 'extend'. /// </summary> /// <remarks> /// You can pass in null here if you don't want to /// check native properties and only check the Dictionary! /// </remarks> /// <param name="instance"></param> public Expando(object instance) { Initialize(instance); } protected virtual void Initialize(object instance) { Instance = instance; if (instance != null) InstanceType = instance.GetType(); } /// <summary> /// Try to retrieve a member by name first from instance properties /// followed by the collection entries. /// </summary> /// <param name="binder"></param> /// <param name="result"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool TryGetMember(GetMemberBinder binder, out object result) { result = null; // first check the Properties collection for member if (Properties.Keys.Contains(binder.Name)) { result = Properties[binder.Name]; return true; } // Next check for Public properties via Reflection if (Instance != null) { try { return GetProperty(Instance, binder.Name, out result); } catch { } } // failed to retrieve a property result = null; return false; } /// <summary> /// Property setter implementation tries to retrieve value from instance /// first then into this object /// </summary> /// <param name="binder"></param> /// <param name="value"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool TrySetMember(SetMemberBinder binder, object value) { // first check to see if there's a native property to set if (Instance != null) { try { bool result = SetProperty(Instance, binder.Name, value); if (result) return true; } catch { } } // no match - set or add to dictionary Properties[binder.Name] = value; return true; } /// <summary> /// Dynamic invocation method. Currently allows only for Reflection based /// operation (no ability to add methods dynamically). /// </summary> /// <param name="binder"></param> /// <param name="args"></param> /// <param name="result"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool TryInvokeMember(InvokeMemberBinder binder, object[] args, out object result) { if (Instance != null) { try { // check instance passed in for methods to invoke if (InvokeMethod(Instance, binder.Name, args, out result)) return true; } catch { } } result = null; return false; } /// <summary> /// Reflection Helper method to retrieve a property /// </summary> /// <param name="instance"></param> /// <param name="name"></param> /// <param name="result"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected bool GetProperty(object instance, string name, out object result) { if (instance == null) instance = this; var miArray = InstanceType.GetMember(name, BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.GetProperty | BindingFlags.Instance); if (miArray != null && miArray.Length > 0) { var mi = miArray[0]; if (mi.MemberType == MemberTypes.Property) { result = ((PropertyInfo)mi).GetValue(instance,null); return true; } } result = null; return false; } /// <summary> /// Reflection helper method to set a property value /// </summary> /// <param name="instance"></param> /// <param name="name"></param> /// <param name="value"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected bool SetProperty(object instance, string name, object value) { if (instance == null) instance = this; var miArray = InstanceType.GetMember(name, BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.SetProperty | BindingFlags.Instance); if (miArray != null && miArray.Length > 0) { var mi = miArray[0]; if (mi.MemberType == MemberTypes.Property) { ((PropertyInfo)mi).SetValue(Instance, value, null); return true; } } return false; } /// <summary> /// Reflection helper method to invoke a method /// </summary> /// <param name="instance"></param> /// <param name="name"></param> /// <param name="args"></param> /// <param name="result"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected bool InvokeMethod(object instance, string name, object[] args, out object result) { if (instance == null) instance = this; // Look at the instanceType var miArray = InstanceType.GetMember(name, BindingFlags.InvokeMethod | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance); if (miArray != null && miArray.Length > 0) { var mi = miArray[0] as MethodInfo; result = mi.Invoke(Instance, args); return true; } result = null; return false; } /// <summary> /// Convenience method that provides a string Indexer /// to the Properties collection AND the strongly typed /// properties of the object by name. /// /// // dynamic /// exp["Address"] = "112 nowhere lane"; /// // strong /// var name = exp["StronglyTypedProperty"] as string; /// </summary> /// <remarks> /// The getter checks the Properties dictionary first /// then looks in PropertyInfo for properties. /// The setter checks the instance properties before /// checking the Properties dictionary. /// </remarks> /// <param name="key"></param> /// /// <returns></returns> public object this[string key] { get { try { // try to get from properties collection first return Properties[key]; } catch (KeyNotFoundException ex) { // try reflection on instanceType object result = null; if (GetProperty(Instance, key, out result)) return result; // nope doesn't exist throw; } } set { if (Properties.ContainsKey(key)) { Properties[key] = value; return; } // check instance for existance of type first var miArray = InstanceType.GetMember(key, BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.GetProperty); if (miArray != null && miArray.Length > 0) SetProperty(Instance, key, value); else Properties[key] = value; } } /// <summary> /// Returns and the properties of /// </summary> /// <param name="includeProperties"></param> /// <returns></returns> public IEnumerable<KeyValuePair<string,object>> GetProperties(bool includeInstanceProperties = false) { if (includeInstanceProperties && Instance != null) { foreach (var prop in this.InstancePropertyInfo) yield return new KeyValuePair<string, object>(prop.Name, prop.GetValue(Instance, null)); } foreach (var key in this.Properties.Keys) yield return new KeyValuePair<string, object>(key, this.Properties[key]); } /// <summary> /// Checks whether a property exists in the Property collection /// or as a property on the instance /// </summary> /// <param name="item"></param> /// <returns></returns> public bool Contains(KeyValuePair<string, object> item, bool includeInstanceProperties = false) { bool res = Properties.ContainsKey(item.Key); if (res) return true; if (includeInstanceProperties && Instance != null) { foreach (var prop in this.InstancePropertyInfo) { if (prop.Name == item.Key) return true; } } return false; } } } Although the Expando class supports an indexer, it doesn't actually implement IDictionary or even IEnumerable. It only provides the indexer and Contains() and GetProperties() methods, that work against the Properties dictionary AND the internal instance. The reason for not implementing IDictionary is that a) it doesn't add much value since you can access the Properties dictionary directly and that b) I wanted to keep the interface to class very lean so that it can serve as an entity type if desired. Implementing these IDictionary (or even IEnumerable) causes LINQ extension methods to pop up on the type which obscures the property interface and would only confuse the purpose of the type. IDictionary and IEnumerable are also problematic for XML and JSON Serialization - the XML Serializer doesn't serialize IDictionary<string,object>, nor does the DataContractSerializer. The JavaScriptSerializer does serialize, but it treats the entire object like a dictionary and doesn't serialize the strongly typed properties of the type, only the dictionary values which is also not desirable. Hence the decision to stick with only implementing the indexer to support the user["CustomProperty"] functionality and leaving iteration functions to the publicly exposed Properties dictionary. Note that the Dictionary used here is a custom PropertyBag class I created to allow for serialization to work. One important aspect for my apps is that whatever custom properties get added they have to be accessible to AJAX clients since the particular app I'm working on is a SIngle Page Web app where most of the Web access is through JSON AJAX calls. PropertyBag can serialize to XML and one way serialize to JSON using the JavaScript serializer (not the DCS serializers though). The key components that make Expando work in this code are the Properties Dictionary and the TryGetMember() and TrySetMember() methods. The Properties collection is public so if you choose you can explicitly access the collection to get better performance or to manipulate the members in internal code (like loading up dynamic values form a database). Notice that TryGetMember() and TrySetMember() both work against the dictionary AND the internal instance to retrieve and set properties. This means that user["Name"] works against native properties of the object as does user["Name"] = "RogaDugDog". What's your Use Case? This is still an early prototype but I've plugged it into one of my customer's applications and so far it's working very well. The key features for me were the ability to easily extend the type with values coming from a database and exposing those values in a nice and easy to use manner. I'm also finding that using this type of object for ViewModels works very well to add custom properties to view models. I suspect there will be lots of uses for this - I've been using the extra dictionary approach to extensibility for years - using a dynamic type to make the syntax cleaner is just a bonus here. What can you think of to use this for? Resources Source Code and Tests (GitHub) Also integrated in Westwind.Utilities of the West Wind Web Toolkit West Wind Utilities NuGet© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in CSharp  .NET  Dynamic Types   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• SQL SERVER – Summary of Month – Wait Type – Day 28 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  I am glad to announce that the month of Wait Types and Queues very successful. I am glad that it was very well received and there was great amount of participation from community. I am fortunate to have some of the excellent comments throughout the series. I want to dedicate this series to all the guest blogger – Jonathan, Jacob, Glenn, and Feodor for their kindness to take a participation in this series. Here is the complete list of the blog posts in this series. I enjoyed writing the series and I plan to continue writing similar series. Please offer your opinion. SQL SERVER – Introduction to Wait Stats and Wait Types – Wait Type – Day 1 of 28 SQL SERVER – Signal Wait Time Introduction with Simple Example – Wait Type – Day 2 of 28 SQL SERVER – DMV – sys.dm_os_wait_stats Explanation – Wait Type – Day 3 of 28 SQL SERVER – DMV – sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks and sys.dm_exec_requests – Wait Type – Day 4 of 28 SQL SERVER – Capturing Wait Types and Wait Stats Information at Interval – Wait Type – Day 5 of 28 SQL SERVER – CXPACKET – Parallelism – Usual Solution – Wait Type – Day 6 of 28 SQL SERVER – CXPACKET – Parallelism – Advanced Solution – Wait Type – Day 7 of 28 SQL SERVER – SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD – Wait Type – Day 8 of 28 SQL SERVER – PAGEIOLATCH_DT, PAGEIOLATCH_EX, PAGEIOLATCH_KP, PAGEIOLATCH_SH, PAGEIOLATCH_UP – Wait Type – Day 9 of 28 SQL SERVER – IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 10 of 28 SQL SERVER – ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 11 of 28 SQL SERVER – PAGELATCH_DT, PAGELATCH_EX, PAGELATCH_KP, PAGELATCH_SH, PAGELATCH_UP – Wait Type – Day 12 of 28 SQL SERVER – FT_IFTS_SCHEDULER_IDLE_WAIT – Full Text – Wait Type – Day 13 of 28 SQL SERVER – BACKUPIO, BACKUPBUFFER – Wait Type – Day 14 of 28 SQL SERVER – LCK_M_XXX – Wait Type – Day 15 of 28 SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Jonathan Kehayias – Wait Type – Day 16 of 28 SQL SERVER – WRITELOG – Wait Type – Day 17 of 28 SQL SERVER – LOGBUFFER – Wait Type – Day 18 of 28 SQL SERVER – PREEMPTIVE and Non-PREEMPTIVE – Wait Type – Day 19 of 28 SQL SERVER – MSQL_XP – Wait Type – Day 20 of 28 SQL SERVER – Guest Posts – Feodor Georgiev – The Context of Our Database Environment – Going Beyond the Internal SQL Server Waits – Wait Type – Day 21 of 28 SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Jacob Sebastian – Filestream – Wait Types – Wait Queues – Day 22 of 28 SQL SERVER – OLEDB – Link Server – Wait Type – Day 23 of 28 SQL SERVER – 2000 – DBCC SQLPERF(waitstats) – Wait Type – Day 24 of 28 SQL SERVER – 2011 – Wait Type – Day 25 of 28 SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Glenn Berry – Wait Type – Day 26 of 28 SQL SERVER – Best Reference – Wait Type – Day 27 of 28 SQL SERVER – Summary of Month – Wait Type – Day 28 of 28 Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Optimization, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• Sending mail with Gmail Account using System.Net.Mail in ASP.NET

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  Any web application is in complete without mail functionality you should have to write send mail functionality. Like if there is shopping cart application for example then when a order created on the shopping cart you need to send an email to administrator of website for Order notification and for customer you need to send an email of receipt of order. So any web application is not complete without sending email. This post is also all about sending email. In post I will explain that how we can send emails from our Gmail Account without purchasing any smtp server etc. There are some limitations for sending email from Gmail Account. Please note following things. Gmail will have fixed number of quota for sending emails per day. So you can not send more then that emails for the day. Your from email address always will be your account email address which you are using for sending email. You can not send an email to unlimited numbers of people. Gmail ant spamming policy will restrict this. Gmail provide both Popup and SMTP settings both should be active in your account where you testing. You can enable that via clicking on setting link in gmail account and go to Forwarding and POP/Imap. So if you are using mail functionality for limited emails then Gmail is Best option. But if you are sending thousand of email daily then it will not be Good Idea. Here is the code for sending mail from Gmail Account. using System.Net.Mail; namespace Experiement { public partial class WebForm1 : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void Page_Load(object sender,System.EventArgs e) { MailMessage mailMessage = new MailMessage(new MailAddress("[email protected]") ,new MailAddress("[email protected]")); mailMessage.Subject = "Sending mail through gmail account"; mailMessage.IsBodyHtml = true; mailMessage.Body = "<B>Sending mail thorugh gmail from asp.net</B>"; System.Net.NetworkCredential networkCredentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("[email protected]", "yourpassword"); SmtpClient smtpClient = new SmtpClient(); smtpClient.EnableSsl = true; smtpClient.UseDefaultCredentials = false; smtpClient.Credentials = networkCredentials; smtpClient.Host = "smtp.gmail.com"; smtpClient.Port = 587; smtpClient.Send(mailMessage); Response.Write("Mail Successfully sent"); } } } That’s run this application and you will get like below in your account. Technorati Tags: Gmail,System.NET.Mail,ASP.NET

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• Oracle Insurance Unveils Next Generation of Enterprise Document Automation: Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition

  - by helen.pitts(at)oracle.com

  Oracle today announced the introduction of Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition, the next generation of the company's market-leading Enterprise Document Automation (EDA) solution for dynamically creating, managing and delivering adaptive enterprise communications across multiple channels. "Insurers and other organizations need enterprise document automation that puts the power to manage the complete document lifecycle in the hands of the business user," said Srini Venkatasanthanam, vice president, Product Strategy, Oracle Insurancein the press release. "Built with features such as rules-based configurability and interactive processing, Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition makes possible an adaptive approach to enterprise document automation - documents when, where and in the form they're needed." Key enhancements in Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition include: Documaker Interactive, the newly renamed and redesigned Web-based iDocumaker module. Documaker Interactive enables users to quickly and interactively create and assemble compliant communications such as policy and claims correspondence directly from their desktops. Users benefits from built-in accelerators and rules-based configurability, pre-configured content as well as embedded workflow leveraging Oracle BPEL Process Manager. Documaker Documaker Factory, which helps enterprises reduce cost and improve operational efficiency through better management of their enterprise publishing operations. Dashboards, analytics, reporting and an administrative console provide insurers with greater insight and centralized control over document production allowing them to better adapt their resources based on business demands. Other enhancements include: enhanced business user empowerment; additional multi-language localization capabilities; and benefits from the use of powerful Oracle technologies such as the Oracle Application Development Framework for all interfaces and Oracle Universal Content Management (Oracle UCM) for enterprise content management. Drive Competitive Advantage and Growth: Deb Smallwood, founder of SMA Strategy Meets Action, a leading industry insurance analyst consulting firm and co-author of 3CM in Insurance: Customer Communications and Content Management published last month, noted in the press release that "maximum value can be gained from investments when Enterprise Document Automation (EDA) is viewed holistically and all forms of communication and all types of information are integrated across the entire enterprise. "Insurers that choose an approach that takes all communications, both structured and unstructured data, coming into the company from a wide range of channels, and then create seamless flows of information will have a real competitive advantage," Smallwood said. "This capability will soon become essential for selling, servicing, and ultimately driving growth through new business and retention." Learn More: Click here to watch a short flash demo that demonstrates the real business value offered by Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition. You can also see how an insurance company can use Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition to dynamically create, manage and publish adaptive enterprise content throughout the insurance business lifecycle for delivery across multiple channels by visiting Alamere Insurance, a fictional model insurance company created by Oracle to showcase how Oracle applications can be leveraged within the insurance enterprise. Meet Our Newest Oracle Insurance Blogger: I'm pleased to introduce our newest Oracle Insurance blogger, Susanne Hale. Susanne, who manages product marketing for Oracle Insurance EDA solutions, will be sharing insights about this topic along with examples of how our customers are transforming their enterprise communications using Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition in future Oracle Insurance blog entries. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance.

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• How to Add Proprietary Drivers to Ubuntu 10.04

  - by Matthew Guay

  Does the hardware on your Ubuntu system need proprietary drivers work at peak performance?  Today we take a look how easy version 10.04 makes it to install them. Ubuntu 10.04 finally automatically recognizes and installs drivers for most hardware today, it even recognized and configured Wi-Fi drivers correctly every time in our tests.  This is in contrast to the past, when it was often difficult to get hardware to work in Linux.  However, most video cards still need proprietary drivers from their manufacturer to get full hardware video acceleration. Even though Ubuntu doesn’t include any non-open source components, it still makes it easy to install proprietary drivers if you wish.  When you first install and boot into Ubuntu, you may see a popup informing you that “restricted” drivers are available. You may see a notification asking you if you’d like to install optional drivers from your graphics card manufacturer when you try to enable advanced desktop effects.  Click Enable to directly install the drivers right there. Or, you can select the tray icon from the first popup, and click Install drivers. Alternately, if the tray icon has disappeared, click System, then Administration, and select Hardware Drivers.   This will open a dialog showing all the proprietary drivers available for your system, which may include drivers for your video card and other hardware depending on your computer.  Select the driver you wish to install, and click Activate. Enter your password, and then Ubuntu will download and install the driver without any more input.  After installation you may be prompted to reboot your system. Now, you should be able to take full advantage of your hardware, including fancy desktop effects with hardware acceleration. If you ever wish to remove these drivers, simply re-open the drivers dialog as above, select the driver, and click Remove.  Once again, a reboot may be required to finish the process. Conclusion Ubuntu has definitely made it easier to use Linux on your desktop computer, no matter what hardware you have.  If your video card or other hardware require proprietary drivers, it makes them available and simple to install.  And, best of all, all of your drivers stay updated with your software updates, so you can be sure you’re always running the latest. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Adding extra Repositories on UbuntuBackup and Restore Hardware Drivers the Easy Way with Double DriverCopy Windows Drivers From One Machine to AnotherInstalling PHP4 and Apache on UbuntuInstalling PHP5 and Apache on Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox) FetchMp3 Can Download Videos & Convert Them to Mp3 Use Flixtime To Create Video Slideshows

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• Reverse-engineer SharePoint fields, content types and list instance—Part2

  - by ybbest

  Reverse-engineer SharePoint fields, content types and list instance—Part1 Reverse-engineer SharePoint fields, content types and list instance—Part2 In the part1 of this series, I demonstrated how to use VS2010 to Reverse-engineer SharePoint fields, content types and list instances. In the part 2 of this series, I will demonstrate how to do the same using CKS:Dev. CKS:Dev extends the Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint project system with advanced templates and tools. Using these extensions you will be able to find relevant information from your SharePoint environments without leaving Visual Studio. You will have greater productivity while developing SharePoint components and you will have greater deployment capabilities on your local SharePoint installation. You can download the complete solution here. 1. First, download and install appropriate CKS:Dev from CodePlex. If you are using SharePoint Foundation 2010 then download and install the SharePoint Foundation 2010 version If you are using SharePoint Server 2010 then download and install the SharePoint Server 2010 version 2. After installation, you need to restart your visual studio and create empty SharePoint. 3. Go to Viewà Server Explorer 4. Add SharePoint web application connection to the server explorer. 5. After add the connection, you can browse to see the contents for the Web Application. 6. Go to Site Columns à YBBEST (Custom Group of you own choice) and right-click the YBBEST Folder and Click Import Site Columns. 7. Go to ContentTypesà YBBEST (Custom Group of you own choice) and right-click the YBBEST Folder and Click Import Content Types. 8. After the import completes, you can find the fields and contentTypes in the SharePoint project below. Of course you need to do some modification to your current project to make it work. 9. Next, create list instances using list instance item template in Visual Studio 10. Finally, create lookup columns using the feature receivers and the final project will look like this. You can download the complete solution here.

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• Why does my laptop resume immediately after suspend?

  - by Igor Zinov'yev

  I seem to be having some problem with suspend mode. Every time I try to suspend my laptop, it just locks the screen. Or maybe it successfully suspends just to resume only an instant after. What could cause such a behaviour? I'm running 32-bit Ubuntu 12.04 with the 3.2.0-25 kernel on a HP dv5-1178er Pavilion laptop (Intel Core 2 Duo). Here are the relevant log sections: kern.log: Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.131171] PM: Syncing filesystems ... done. Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.141222] PM: Preparing system for mem sleep Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.141239] Freezing user space processes ... (elapsed 0.01 seconds) done. Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.156171] Freezing remaining freezable tasks ... (elapsed 0.01 seconds) done. Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.172139] PM: Entering mem sleep Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.172169] Suspending console(s) (use no_console_suspend to debug) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.172895] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Synchronizing SCSI cache Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.181767] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Stopping disk Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.251089] ene_ir 00:0a: wake-up capability enabled by ACPI Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.251115] i8042 aux 00:09: wake-up capability disabled by ACPI Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.251133] i8042 kbd 00:08: wake-up capability enabled by ACPI Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.251286] jmb38x_ms 0000:06:00.3: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.252491] sdhci-pci 0000:06:00.1: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.264130] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: PCI INT D disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.264142] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: PCI INT B disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.264325] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: PCI INT B disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.288059] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.288097] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: PCI INT C disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.288135] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.316051] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.316068] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: PCI INT D disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522872] PM: suspend of drv:sd dev:0:0:0:0 complete after 349.979 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522901] PM: suspend of drv:scsi dev:target0:0:0 complete after 349.955 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522927] PM: suspend of drv:scsi dev:host0 complete after 272.260 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522969] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: BIOS update required for suspend/resume Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522976] pci_legacy_suspend(): ahci_pci_device_suspend+0x0/0x80 returns -5 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522981] pm_op(): pci_pm_suspend+0x0/0x110 returns -5 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522984] PM: suspend of drv:ahci dev:0000:00:1f.2 complete after 258.932 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522987] PM: Device 0000:00:1f.2 failed to suspend async: error -5 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.576228] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.576270] ACPI handle has no context! Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592136] PM: suspend of drv:snd_hda_intel dev:0000:00:1b.0 complete after 327.889 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592206] PM: Some devices failed to suspend Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592291] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592298] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592325] usb usb3: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592339] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592345] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592371] usb usb4: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592387] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: PCI INT D -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592395] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592843] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 20 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592851] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592854] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592863] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592878] usb usb5: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592892] usb usb6: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592895] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: PCI INT D -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592903] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592906] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: PCI INT C -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592915] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592930] usb usb7: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592946] usb usb8: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592949] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: PCI INT A -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 20 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592957] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592963] pci 0000:00:1e.0: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.597106] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Starting disk Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608138] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: BAR 0: set to [mem 0xdf300000-0xdf303fff 64bit] (PCI address [0xdf300000-0xdf303fff]) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608180] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: restoring config space at offset 0xf (was 0x100, writing 0x10b) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608233] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: restoring config space at offset 0x3 (was 0x0, writing 0x10) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608248] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: restoring config space at offset 0x1 (was 0x100000, writing 0x100002) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608299] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 22 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608313] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608420] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: irq 50 for MSI/MSI-X Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612095] firewire_ohci 0000:06:00.0: restoring config space at offset 0x1 (was 0x100000, writing 0x100006) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612181] sdhci-pci 0000:06:00.1: restoring config space at offset 0x1 (was 0x100003, writing 0x100007) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612211] sdhci-pci 0000:06:00.1: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612225] sdhci-pci 0000:06:00.1: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612296] jmb38x_ms 0000:06:00.3: restoring config space at offset 0x1 (was 0x100003, writing 0x100007) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612326] jmb38x_ms 0000:06:00.3: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612332] jmb38x_ms 0000:06:00.3: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.699170] PM: resume of drv:uvcvideo dev:2-4:1.0 complete after 101.965 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.699179] PM: resume of drv:uvcvideo dev:2-4:1.1 complete after 101.932 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.699186] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 101.917 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.699197] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_83 complete after 101.972 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716148] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:3-0:1.0 complete after 119.543 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716155] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 119.544 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716161] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:5-0:1.0 complete after 119.420 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716168] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 119.381 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716174] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:8-0:1.0 complete after 119.141 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716181] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 119.104 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716186] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 119.579 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716191] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 119.427 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716197] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 119.143 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.747148] firewire_core: skipped bus generations, destroying all nodes Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.776093] PM: resume of drv:hp_accel dev:HPQ0004:00 complete after 167.225 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.777243] i8042 kbd 00:08: wake-up capability disabled by ACPI Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.777278] ene_ir 00:0a: wake-up capability disabled by ACPI Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820100] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:4-0:1.0 complete after 223.436 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820115] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 223.444 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820123] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 223.456 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820206] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:7-0:1.0 complete after 223.266 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820221] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 223.260 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820238] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 223.255 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820295] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:6-0:1.0 complete after 223.453 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820302] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 223.415 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820321] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 223.457 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.932108] usb 4-2: reset full-speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.086714] PM: resume of drv:usbhid dev:4-2:1.0 complete after 489.393 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.086728] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 489.384 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.086745] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 489.329 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.086753] PM: resume of drv:usbhid dev:4-2:1.1 complete after 489.384 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.086764] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_82 complete after 489.373 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.180555] usb 7-2: reset full-speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.244858] firewire_core: rediscovered device fw0 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.335066] btusb 7-2:1.0: no reset_resume for driver btusb? Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.335068] btusb 7-2:1.1: no reset_resume for driver btusb? Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.432082] usb 6-1: reset full-speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.578280] PM: resume of drv:nvidia dev:0000:01:00.0 complete after 985.301 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584296] PM: resume of drv:usb dev:7-2:1.0 complete after 986.693 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584308] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 986.452 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584311] PM: resume of drv:usb dev:7-2:1.1 complete after 986.616 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584315] PM: resume of drv:usb dev:7-2:1.3 complete after 986.483 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584320] PM: resume of drv:usb dev:7-2:1.2 complete after 986.556 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584328] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_03 complete after 986.588 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584331] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 986.704 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584334] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_83 complete after 986.617 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584337] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_82 complete after 986.688 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584340] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_02 complete after 986.667 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584344] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_84 complete after 986.558 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584352] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_04 complete after 986.542 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.590883] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 993.327 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.590887] PM: resume of drv:usb dev:6-1:1.0 complete after 993.424 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.590927] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_82 complete after 993.395 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.590934] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 993.426 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.590940] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_01 complete after 993.456 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.592450] PM: resume of drv:sd dev:0:0:0:0 complete after 995.343 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.592461] PM: resume of drv:scsi_disk dev:0:0:0:0 complete after 802.688 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.592472] PM: resume of drv:scsi_device dev:0:0:0:0 complete after 995.324 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.600339] PM: resume of devices complete after 1008.129 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.601293] PM: resume devices took 1.008 seconds Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.601330] PM: Finishing wakeup. Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.601332] Restarting tasks ... done. Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.625660] video LNXVIDEO:01: Restoring backlight state Jun 1 10:42:22 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2227.478921] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S Jun 1 10:42:22 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2227.481981] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: Radio type=0x1-0x2-0x0 Jun 1 10:42:22 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2227.527727] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready Jun 1 10:42:22 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2227.532468] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link down Jun 1 10:42:22 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2227.533967] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready pm_suspend.log: Fri Jun 1 10:42:14 MSK 2012: Running hooks for suspend. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/000kernel-change suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/000kernel-change suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00logging suspend suspend: Linux igor-laptop 3.2.0-25-generic #40-Ubuntu SMP Wed May 23 20:33:05 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux Module Size Used by pci_stub 12550 1 vboxpci 22882 0 vboxnetadp 13328 0 vboxnetflt 27211 0 vboxdrv 252189 3 vboxpci,vboxnetadp,vboxnetflt dm_crypt 22528 0 snd_hda_codec_hdmi 31775 1 snd_hda_codec_idt 60251 1 arc4 12473 2 hp_wmi 13652 0 sparse_keymap 13658 1 hp_wmi rfcomm 38139 12 snd_hda_intel 32765 5 snd_hda_codec 109562 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel snd_hwdep 13276 1 snd_hda_codec bnep 17830 2 btusb 17912 2 bluetooth 158438 23 rfcomm,bnep,btusb joydev 17393 0 parport_pc 32114 0 snd_pcm 80845 4 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec ppdev 12849 0 uvcvideo 67203 0 binfmt_misc 17292 1 videodev 86588 1 uvcvideo snd_seq_midi 13132 0 snd_rawmidi 25424 1 snd_seq_midi nvidia 10958194 43 snd_seq_midi_event 14475 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq 51567 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event ir_lirc_codec 12739 0 lirc_dev 18700 1 ir_lirc_codec snd_timer 28931 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq snd_seq_device 14172 3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq ir_mce_kbd_decoder 12681 0 ir_sony_decoder 12462 0 ir_jvc_decoder 12459 0 ir_rc6_decoder 12459 0 psmouse 87213 0 ir_rc5_decoder 12459 0 serio_raw 13027 0 iwlwifi 287934 0 rc_rc6_mce 12454 0 ir_nec_decoder 12459 0 ene_ir 18019 0 rc_core 21263 10 ir_lirc_codec,ir_mce_kbd_decoder,ir_sony_decoder,ir_jvc_decoder,ir_rc6_decoder,ir_rc5_decoder,rc_rc6_mce,ir_nec_decoder,ene_ir mac80211 436455 1 iwlwifi snd 62064 19 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device cfg80211 178679 2 iwlwifi,mac80211 hp_accel 25728 0 lis3lv02d 19268 1 hp_accel input_polldev 13648 1 lis3lv02d mac_hid 13077 0 wmi 18744 1 hp_wmi jmb38x_ms 17406 0 soundcore 14635 1 snd snd_page_alloc 14115 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm memstick 15857 1 jmb38x_ms firewire_sbp2 18346 0 lp 17455 0 parport 40930 3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp vesafb 13516 1 usbhid 41906 0 hid 77367 1 usbhid firewire_ohci 40180 0 firewire_core 56906 2 firewire_sbp2,firewire_ohci crc_itu_t 12627 1 firewire_core sdhci_pci 18324 0 sdhci 28241 1 sdhci_pci r8169 56321 0 video 19068 0 total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 3095544 2364260 731284 0 159020 1280240 -/+ buffers/cache: 925000 2170544 Swap: 1718916 0 1718916 /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00logging suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00powersave suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00powersave suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/01PulseAudio suspend suspend: Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/01PulseAudio suspend suspend: success. Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_grub-common suspend suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_grub-common suspend suspend: success. Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_unattended-upgrades-hibernate suspend suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_unattended-upgrades-hibernate suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/55NetworkManager suspend suspend: Having NetworkManager put all interaces to sleep...Failed. /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/55NetworkManager suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/60_wpa_supplicant suspend suspend: Failed to connect to wpa_supplicant - wpa_ctrl_open: No such file or directory /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/60_wpa_supplicant suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/75modules suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/75modules suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/90clock suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/90clock suspend suspend: not applicable. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/94cpufreq suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/94cpufreq suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95anacron suspend suspend: stop: Unknown instance: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95anacron suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95hdparm-apm suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95hdparm-apm suspend suspend: not applicable. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95led suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95led suspend suspend: not applicable. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/98video-quirk-db-handler suspend suspend: nVidia binary video drive detected, not using quirks. /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/98video-quirk-db-handler suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video suspend suspend: kernel.acpi_video_flags = 0 /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video suspend suspend: success. Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/novatel_3g_suspend suspend suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/novatel_3g_suspend suspend suspend: success. Fri Jun 1 10:42:19 MSK 2012: performing suspend Fri Jun 1 10:42:21 MSK 2012: Awake. Fri Jun 1 10:42:21 MSK 2012: Running hooks for resume Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/novatel_3g_suspend resume suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/novatel_3g_suspend resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/98video-quirk-db-handler resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/98video-quirk-db-handler resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95led resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95led resume suspend: not applicable. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95hdparm-apm resume suspend: /dev/sda: setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254) APM_level = 254 /dev/sda: setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254) APM_level = 254 /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95hdparm-apm resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95anacron resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95anacron resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/94cpufreq resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/94cpufreq resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/90clock resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/90clock resume suspend: not applicable. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/75modules resume suspend: Reloaded unloaded modules. /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/75modules resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/60_wpa_supplicant resume suspend: Failed to connect to wpa_supplicant - wpa_ctrl_open: No such file or directory /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/60_wpa_supplicant resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/55NetworkManager resume suspend: Having NetworkManager wake interfaces back up...Failed. /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/55NetworkManager resume suspend: success. Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_unattended-upgrades-hibernate resume suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_unattended-upgrades-hibernate resume suspend: success. Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_grub-common resume suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_grub-common resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/01PulseAudio resume suspend: Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/01PulseAudio resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00powersave resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00powersave resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00logging resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00logging resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/000kernel-change resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/000kernel-change resume suspend: success. Fri Jun 1 10:42:22 MSK 2012: Finished.

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• IIS 7&rsquo;s Sneaky Secret to Get COM-InterOp to Run

  - by David Hoerster

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/DavidHoerster/archive/2013/06/17/iis-7rsquos-sneaky-secret-to-get-com-interop-to-run.aspxIf you’re like me, you don’t really do a lot with COM components these days.  For me, I’ve been ‘lucky’ to stay in the managed world for the past 6 or 7 years. Until last week. I’m running a project to upgrade a web interface to an older COM-based application.  The old web interface is all classic ASP and lots of tables, in-line styles and a bunch of other late 90’s and early 2000’s goodies.  So in addition to updating the UI to be more modern looking and responsive, I decided to give the server side an update, too.  So I built some COM-InterOp DLL’s (easily through VS2012’s Add Reference feature…nothing new here) and built a test console line app to make sure the COM DLL’s were actually built according to the COM spec.  There’s a document management system that I’m thinking of whose COM DLLs were not proper COM DLLs and crashed and burned every time .NET tried to call them through a COM-InterOp layer. Anyway, my test app worked like a champ and I felt confident that I could build a nice façade around the COM DLL’s and wrap some functionality internally and only expose to my users/clients what they really needed. So I did this, built some tests and also built a test web app to make sure everything worked great.  It did.  It ran fine in IIS Express via Visual Studio 2012, and the timings were very close to the pure Classic ASP calls, so there wasn’t much overhead involved going through the COM-InterOp layer. You know where this is going, don’t you? So I deployed my test app to a DEV server running IIS 7.5.  When I went to my first test page that called the COM-InterOp layer, I got this pretty message: Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {81C08CAE-1453-11D4-BEBC-00500457076D} failed due to the following error: 80040154 Class not registered (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80040154 (REGDB_E_CLASSNOTREG)). It worked as a console app and while running under IIS Express, so it must be permissions, right?  I gave every account I could think of all sorts of COM+ rights and nothing, nada, zilch! Then I came across this question on Experts Exchange, and at the bottom of the page, someone mentioned that the app pool should be running to allow 32-bit apps to run.  Oh yeah, my machine is 64-bit; these COM DLL’s I’m using are old and are definitely 32-bit.  I didn’t check for that and didn’t even think about that.  But I went ahead and looked at the app pool that my web site was running under and what did I see?  Yep, select your app pool in IIS 7.x, click on Advanced Settings and check for “Enable 32-bit Applications”. I went ahead and set it to True and my test application suddenly worked. Hope this helps somebody out there from pulling out your hair.

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• C# Java Objective-C need expert advices

  - by Kevino

  Which platform as the edge today in 2012 with the rise of cloud computing, mobile development and the revolution of HTML5/Javascript between J2EE, .Net framework and IOS Objective-C ??? I want to start learning 1 language between Java, C# and Objective-C and get back into programming after 14 years and I don't know which to choose I need expert advices... I already know a little C++ and I remember my concepts in example pointers arithmetic, class etc so I tend to prefer learning C# and Objective-C but I've been told by some experienced programmers that Windows 8 could flop and .Net could be going away slowly since C++ and Html5/Javascript could be king in mobile is that true ? and that C# is more advanced compared to Java with Linq/Lambda... but not truly as portable if we consider android, etc but Java as a lot going for him too Scala, Clojure, Groovy, JRuby, JPython etc etc so I am lost Please help me, and don't close this right away I really need help and expert advices thanks you very much ANSWER : ElYusubov : thanks for everything please continue with the answers/explanations I just did some native C++ in dos mode in 1998 before Cli and .Net I don't know the STL,Templates, Win32 or COM but I remember a little the concept of memory management and oop etc I already played around a little with C# 1.0 in 2002 but things changed a lot with linq and lambda... I am here because I talked with some experienced programmers and authors of some the best selling programming books like apress wrox and deitel and they told me a few things are likely to happen like .Net could be on his way out because of Html5/Javascript combo could kill xaml and C++ native apps on mobile dev will outperform them by a lot... Secondly ios and android are getting so popular that mobile dev is the future so Objective-C is very hard to ignore so why get tied down in Windows long term (.Net) compared to Java (android)... but again android is very fragmented, they also said Windows 8 RT will give you access to only a small part of the .Net framework... so that's what they think so I don't know which direction to choose I wanted to learn C# & .Net but what if it die off or Windows 8 flop Windows Phone marketshare really can't compare to ios... so I'll be stuck that's why I worry is Java safer long term or more versatile if you want 'cause of the support for android ??

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• Disable Opera Thumbnail Previews on Windows 7 Taskbar

  - by Asian Angel

  If you are one of the people who does not care for the Taskbar Thumbnail Previews in Windows 7 then we have a quick and easy way for you to turn them off in Opera Browser. Before Here is our Opera Browser with four tabs full of HTG Network goodness… Hovering the mouse over the Taskbar Icon gives a nice preview of each tabs content. Looking closer you can see the fanned edge on the Taskbar Icon indicating that there are multiple tabs open. This is all good but what if you just want something simpler? Disabling the Previews If you want to disable the Taskbar Thumbnail Previews in Opera you will need to type opera:config in the Address Bar and press Enter. Once you have done that, you will see a condensed listing for all of Opera’s preferences. There is one Preference Category that we need to look for…User Prefs. Note: While a Quick Find Search could be conducted for the entry that needs to be modified, we have chosen to show the full method here. After scrolling down and finding the User Prefs category you will need to expand the section. Notice the size of the scrollbar in comparison with the screenshot above…there is quite a lot that you can look at and finesse in Opera if desired. Scroll down until you find the Use Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnails entry. Uncheck the box but do not close the opera:config Tab yet…or your changes will not take effect. Scroll down once more until you reach the end of the User Prefs category and click Save. With this particular modification you will need to restart Opera after clicking OK. After restarting Opera the Taskbar Icon and Taskbar Thumbnail Preview will revert to the minimal Windows 7 default as shown here. You can see Opera’s Tab Bar in the thumbnail and the Taskbar Icon no longer has a “fanned edge”. Conclusion If you want to disable Opera’s Taskbar Thumbnail Previews on your Windows 7 system, then this quick modification will help get it sorted out in just a few moments. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Disable IE 8 Thumbnail Previews on Windows 7 TaskbarIncrease the size of Taskbar Preview Thumbnails in Windows 7Vista Style Popup Previews for Firefox TabsEnable Thumbnail Previews for Firefox in Windows 7 TaskbarWorkaround for Vista Taskbar Thumbnail Previews Not Showing Correctly TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 10 Superb Firefox Wallpapers OpenDNS Guide Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides

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• Mark Messages As Read in the Outlook 2010 Reading Pane

  - by Matthew Guay

  Do you ever feel annoyed that Outlook 2010 doesn’t mark messages as Read as soon as you click and view them in the Reading Pane?  Here we show you how to make Outlook mark them as read as soon as they’re opened. Mark as Read By default, Outlook will not mark a message as read until you select another message.  This can be annoying, because if you read a message and immediately click Delete, it will show up as an unread message in our Deleted Items folder. Let’s change this to make Outlook mark messages as read as soon as we view them in the Reading Pane.  Open Outlook and click File to open Backstage View, and select Options. In Options select Mail on the left menu, and under Outlook panes click on the Reading Pane button. Check the box Mark items as read when viewed in the Reading Pane to make Outlook mark your messages as read when you view them in the Reading Pane.  By default, Outlook will only mark a message read after you’ve been reading it for 5 seconds, though you can change this.  We set it to 0 seconds so our messages would be marked as read as soon as we select them. Click OK in both dialogs, and now your messages will be marked as read as soon as you select them in the reading pane, or soon after, depending on your settings. Conclusion Outlook 2010 is a great email client, but like most programs it has its quirks.  This quick tip can help you get rid of one of Outlook’s annoying features, and make it work like you want it to. And, if you’re still using Outlook 2007, check out our article on how to Mark Messages as Read When Viewed in Outlook 2007. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make Outlook 2007 Mark Items as Read When Viewed in Reading PaneMake Mail.app’s Reading Pane More Like OutlookIntegrate Twitter With Microsoft OutlookSort Your Emails by Conversation in Outlook 2010Find Emails With Attachments with Outlook 2007’s Instant Search TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 OpenDNS Guide Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app

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• Scrum in 5 Minutes

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to explain the basic concepts of Scrum in less than five minutes. You learn how Scrum can help a team of developers to successfully complete a complex software project. Product Backlog and the Product Owner Imagine that you are part of a team which needs to create a new website – for example, an e-commerce website. You have an overwhelming amount of work to do. You need to build (or possibly buy) a shopping cart, install an SSL certificate, create a product catalog, create a Facebook page, and at least a hundred other things that you have not thought of yet. According to Scrum, the first thing you should do is create a list. Place the highest priority items at the top of the list and the lower priority items lower in the list. For example, creating the shopping cart and buying the domain name might be high priority items and creating a Facebook page might be a lower priority item. In Scrum, this list is called the Product Backlog. How do you prioritize the items in the Product Backlog? Different stakeholders in the project might have different priorities. Gary, your division VP, thinks that it is crucial that the e-commerce site has a mobile app. Sally, your direct manager, thinks taking advantage of new HTML5 features is much more important. Multiple people are pulling you in different directions. According to Scrum, it is important that you always designate one person, and only one person, as the Product Owner. The Product Owner is the person who decides what items should be added to the Product Backlog and the priority of the items in the Product Backlog. The Product Owner could be the customer who is paying the bills, the project manager who is responsible for delivering the project, or a customer representative. The critical point is that the Product Owner must always be a single person and that single person has absolute authority over the Product Backlog. Sprints and the Sprint Backlog So now the developer team has a prioritized list of items and they can start work. The team starts implementing the first item in the Backlog — the shopping cart — and the team is making good progress. Unfortunately, however, half-way through the work of implementing the shopping cart, the Product Owner changes his mind. The Product Owner decides that it is much more important to create the product catalog before the shopping cart. With some frustration, the team switches their developmental efforts to focus on implementing the product catalog. However, part way through completing this work, once again the Product Owner changes his mind about the highest priority item. Getting work done when priorities are constantly shifting is frustrating for the developer team and it results in lower productivity. At the same time, however, the Product Owner needs to have absolute authority over the priority of the items which need to get done. Scrum solves this conflict with the concept of Sprints. In Scrum, a developer team works in Sprints. At the beginning of a Sprint the developers and the Product Owner agree on the items from the backlog which they will complete during the Sprint. This subset of items from the Product Backlog becomes the Sprint Backlog. During the Sprint, the Product Owner is not allowed to change the items in the Sprint Backlog. In other words, the Product Owner cannot shift priorities on the developer team during the Sprint. Different teams use Sprints of different lengths such as one month Sprints, two-week Sprints, and one week Sprints. For high-stress, time critical projects, teams typically choose shorter sprints such as one week sprints. For more mature projects, longer one month sprints might be more appropriate. A team can pick whatever Sprint length makes sense for them just as long as the team is consistent. You should pick a Sprint length and stick with it. Daily Scrum During a Sprint, the developer team needs to have meetings to coordinate their work on completing the items in the Sprint Backlog. For example, the team needs to discuss who is working on what and whether any blocking issues have been discovered. Developers hate meetings (well, sane developers hate meetings). Meetings take developers away from their work of actually implementing stuff as opposed to talking about implementing stuff. However, a developer team which never has meetings and never coordinates their work also has problems. For example, Fred might get stuck on a programming problem for days and never reach out for help even though Tom (who sits in the cubicle next to him) has already solved the very same problem. Or, both Ted and Fred might have started working on the same item from the Sprint Backlog at the same time. In Scrum, these conflicting needs – limiting meetings but enabling team coordination – are resolved with the idea of the Daily Scrum. The Daily Scrum is a meeting for coordinating the work of the developer team which happens once a day. To keep the meeting short, each developer answers only the following three questions: 1. What have you done since yesterday? 2. What do you plan to do today? 3. Any impediments in your way? During the Daily Scrum, developers are not allowed to talk about issues with their cat, do demos of their latest work, or tell heroic stories of programming problems overcome. The meeting must be kept short — typically about 15 minutes. Issues which come up during the Daily Scrum should be discussed in separate meetings which do not involve the whole developer team. Stories and Tasks Items in the Product or Sprint Backlog – such as building a shopping cart or creating a Facebook page – are often referred to as User Stories or Stories. The Stories are created by the Product Owner and should represent some business need. Unlike the Product Owner, the developer team needs to think about how a Story should be implemented. At the beginning of a Sprint, the developer team takes the Stories from the Sprint Backlog and breaks the stories into tasks. For example, the developer team might take the Create a Shopping Cart story and break it into the following tasks: · Enable users to add and remote items from shopping cart · Persist the shopping cart to database between visits · Redirect user to checkout page when Checkout button is clicked During the Daily Scrum, members of the developer team volunteer to complete the tasks required to implement the next Story in the Sprint Backlog. When a developer talks about what he did yesterday or plans to do tomorrow then the developer should be referring to a task. Stories are owned by the Product Owner and a story is all about business value. In contrast, the tasks are owned by the developer team and a task is all about implementation details. A story might take several days or weeks to complete. A task is something which a developer can complete in less than a day. Some teams get lazy about breaking stories into tasks. Neglecting to break stories into tasks can lead to “Never Ending Stories” If you don’t break a story into tasks, then you can’t know how much of a story has actually been completed because you don’t have a clear idea about the implementation steps required to complete the story. Scrumboard During the Daily Scrum, the developer team uses a Scrumboard to coordinate their work. A Scrumboard contains a list of the stories for the current Sprint, the tasks associated with each Story, and the state of each task. The developer team uses the Scrumboard so everyone on the team can see, at a glance, what everyone is working on. As a developer works on a task, the task moves from state to state and the state of the task is updated on the Scrumboard. Common task states are ToDo, In Progress, and Done. Some teams include additional task states such as Needs Review or Needs Testing. Some teams use a physical Scrumboard. In that case, you use index cards to represent the stories and the tasks and you tack the index cards onto a physical board. Using a physical Scrumboard has several disadvantages. A physical Scrumboard does not work well with a distributed team – for example, it is hard to share the same physical Scrumboard between Boston and Seattle. Also, generating reports from a physical Scrumboard is more difficult than generating reports from an online Scrumboard. Estimating Stories and Tasks Stakeholders in a project, the people investing in a project, need to have an idea of how a project is progressing and when the project will be completed. For example, if you are investing in creating an e-commerce site, you need to know when the site can be launched. It is not enough to just say that “the project will be done when it is done” because the stakeholders almost certainly have a limited budget to devote to the project. The people investing in the project cannot determine the business value of the project unless they can have an estimate of how long it will take to complete the project. Developers hate to give estimates. The reason that developers hate to give estimates is that the estimates are almost always completely made up. For example, you really don’t know how long it takes to build a shopping cart until you finish building a shopping cart, and at that point, the estimate is no longer useful. The problem is that writing code is much more like Finding a Cure for Cancer than Building a Brick Wall. Building a brick wall is very straightforward. After you learn how to add one brick to a wall, you understand everything that is involved in adding a brick to a wall. There is no additional research required and no surprises. If, on the other hand, I assembled a team of scientists and asked them to find a cure for cancer, and estimate exactly how long it will take, they would have no idea. The problem is that there are too many unknowns. I don’t know how to cure cancer, I need to do a lot of research here, so I cannot even begin to estimate how long it will take. So developers hate to provide estimates, but the Product Owner and other product stakeholders, have a legitimate need for estimates. Scrum resolves this conflict by using the idea of Story Points. Different teams use different units to represent Story Points. For example, some teams use shirt sizes such as Small, Medium, Large, and X-Large. Some teams prefer to use Coffee Cup sizes such as Tall, Short, and Grande. Finally, some teams like to use numbers from the Fibonacci series. These alternative units are converted into a Story Point value. Regardless of the type of unit which you use to represent Story Points, the goal is the same. Instead of attempting to estimate a Story in hours (which is doomed to failure), you use a much less fine-grained measure of work. A developer team is much more likely to be able to estimate that a Story is Small or X-Large than the exact number of hours required to complete the story. So you can think of Story Points as a compromise between the needs of the Product Owner and the developer team. When a Sprint starts, the developer team devotes more time to thinking about the Stories in a Sprint and the developer team breaks the Stories into Tasks. In Scrum, you estimate the work required to complete a Story by using Story Points and you estimate the work required to complete a task by using hours. The difference between Stories and Tasks is that you don’t create a task until you are just about ready to start working on a task. A task is something that you should be able to create within a day, so you have a much better chance of providing an accurate estimate of the work required to complete a task than a story. Burndown Charts In Scrum, you use Burndown charts to represent the remaining work on a project. You use Release Burndown charts to represent the overall remaining work for a project and you use Sprint Burndown charts to represent the overall remaining work for a particular Sprint. You create a Release Burndown chart by calculating the remaining number of uncompleted Story Points for the entire Product Backlog every day. The vertical axis represents Story Points and the horizontal axis represents time. A Sprint Burndown chart is similar to a Release Burndown chart, but it focuses on the remaining work for a particular Sprint. There are two different types of Sprint Burndown charts. You can either represent the remaining work in a Sprint with Story Points or with task hours (the following image, taken from Wikipedia, uses hours). When each Product Backlog Story is completed, the Release Burndown chart slopes down. When each Story or task is completed, the Sprint Burndown chart slopes down. Burndown charts typically do not always slope down over time. As new work is added to the Product Backlog, the Release Burndown chart slopes up. If new tasks are discovered during a Sprint, the Sprint Burndown chart will also slope up. The purpose of a Burndown chart is to give you a way to track team progress over time. If, halfway through a Sprint, the Sprint Burndown chart is still climbing a hill then you know that you are in trouble. Team Velocity Stakeholders in a project always want more work done faster. For example, the Product Owner for the e-commerce site wants the website to launch before tomorrow. Developers tend to be overly optimistic. Rarely do developers acknowledge the physical limitations of reality. So Project stakeholders and the developer team often collude to delude themselves about how much work can be done and how quickly. Too many software projects begin in a state of optimism and end in frustration as deadlines zoom by. In Scrum, this problem is overcome by calculating a number called the Team Velocity. The Team Velocity is a measure of the average number of Story Points which a team has completed in previous Sprints. Knowing the Team Velocity is important during the Sprint Planning meeting when the Product Owner and the developer team work together to determine the number of stories which can be completed in the next Sprint. If you know the Team Velocity then you can avoid committing to do more work than the team has been able to accomplish in the past, and your team is much more likely to complete all of the work required for the next Sprint. Scrum Master There are three roles in Scrum: the Product Owner, the developer team, and the Scrum Master. I’v e already discussed the Product Owner. The Product Owner is the one and only person who maintains the Product Backlog and prioritizes the stories. I’ve also described the role of the developer team. The members of the developer team do the work of implementing the stories by breaking the stories into tasks. The final role, which I have not discussed, is the role of the Scrum Master. The Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring that the team is following the Scrum process. For example, the Scrum Master is responsible for making sure that there is a Daily Scrum meeting and that everyone answers the standard three questions. The Scrum Master is also responsible for removing (non-technical) impediments which the team might encounter. For example, if the team cannot start work until everyone installs the latest version of Microsoft Visual Studio then the Scrum Master has the responsibility of working with management to get the latest version of Visual Studio as quickly as possible. The Scrum Master can be a member of the developer team. Furthermore, different people can take on the role of the Scrum Master over time. The Scrum Master, however, cannot be the same person as the Product Owner. Using SonicAgile SonicAgile (SonicAgile.com) is an online tool which you can use to manage your projects using Scrum. You can use the SonicAgile Product Backlog to create a prioritized list of stories. You can estimate the size of the Stories using different Story Point units such as Shirt Sizes and Coffee Cup sizes. You can use SonicAgile during the Sprint Planning meeting to select the Stories that you want to complete during a particular Sprint. You can configure Sprints to be any length of time. SonicAgile calculates Team Velocity automatically and displays a warning when you add too many stories to a Sprint. In other words, it warns you when it thinks you are overcommitting in a Sprint. SonicAgile also includes a Scrumboard which displays the list of Stories selected for a Sprint and the tasks associated with each story. You can drag tasks from one task state to another. Finally, SonicAgile enables you to generate Release Burndown and Sprint Burndown charts. You can use these charts to view the progress of your team. To learn more about SonicAgile, visit SonicAgile.com. Summary In this post, I described many of the basic concepts of Scrum. You learned how a Product Owner uses a Product Backlog to create a prioritized list of tasks. I explained why work is completed in Sprints so the developer team can be more productive. I also explained how a developer team uses the daily scrum to coordinate their work. You learned how the developer team uses a Scrumboard to see, at a glance, who is working on what and the state of each task. I also discussed Burndown charts. You learned how you can use both Release and Sprint Burndown charts to track team progress in completing a project. Finally, I described the crucial role of the Scrum Master – the person who is responsible for ensuring that the rules of Scrum are being followed. My goal was not to describe all of the concepts of Scrum. This post was intended to be an introductory overview. For a comprehensive explanation of Scrum, I recommend reading Ken Schwaber’s book Agile Project Management with Scrum: http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Project-Management-Microsoft-Professional/dp/073561993X/ref=la_B001H6ODMC_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345224000&sr=1-1

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• Suggestions on switching from lamp based web design-development to game design-development

  - by Sandeepan Nath

  I have around 2.5 years of experience as a web developer cum designer working mainly on the LAMP platform. Now, I want to try out game development (of the likes of First Person Shooter games like Call of Duty (COD)). It is one of my dreams to some day succeed in making a profitable, popular, commercial game of this type. However, I have never done any kind of business nor even freelancing yet even in the web domain. Okay, first things first, I am just starting and I don't yet have any idea about the technologies, languages, engines (game engines) etc involved in that. I would like this question to be a complete guide for people with similar interests. Best resources for getting hold really fast What would be the best approach to get the basic hold of the domain really fast? Any resource(s) for programmers coming from other domains/experienced in other domains would be the ideal ones for me. E.g., if anybody would ask me some good resource for quickly learning PHP/Mysql, I would suggest books like "How to do everything with PHP & MySql" - because - it introduces all the basics of the domain (not the advanced things which can be later learnt by practice and also a lot by searching in stackoverflow questions) it contains some very nice working projects in the end, which help in applying the skills learnt in the chapters of the book. This is the best way for self learners, I feel. I would appreciate some similar resource which connects all concepts together to get the bigger picture. I have read about C, C++, C#, JAVA being used in game programming but not sure which language to go for (I have previously learnt a little of C and JAVA). I have also read about game engines but there would be various other concepts. Commonly accepted ways of learning Should 3D games like these be tried after 2D games? Are there some commonly accepted ways of learning such kind of games? Like in web development, we should go for frameworks after practising well with basic language, AJAX after getting properly done with simple page-reload processing etc. Apart from these, any useful tips (like language choices etc.) would be much appreciated. Like it is highly recommended to contribute to open source web projects for getting recognition, are there similar open source game projects? Thanks, Sandeepan

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• June Oracle Technology Network NEW Member Benefits - books books and more books!!!

  - by Cassandra Clark

  As we mentioned a few posts ago we are working to bring Oracle Technology Network members NEW benefits each month. Listed below are several discounts on technology books brought to you by Apress, Pearson, CRC Press and Packt Publishing. Happy reading!!! Apress Offers - Get 50% off the eBook below using promo code ORACLEJUNEJCCF. Pro ODP.NET for Oracle Database 11g By Edmund T. Zehoo This book is a comprehensive and easy-to-understand guide for using the Oracle Data Provider (ODP) version 11g on the .NET Framework. It also outlines the core GoF (Gang of Four) design patterns and coding techniques employed to build and deploy high-impact mission-critical applications using advanced Oracle database features through the ODP.NET provider. Pearson Offers - Get 35% off all titles listed below using code OTNMEMBER. SOA Design Patterns | Thomas Earl | ISBN: 0136135161 In cooperation with experts and practitioners throughout the SOA community, best-selling author Thomas Erl brings together the de facto catalog of design patterns for SOA and service-orientation. Oracle Performance Survival Guide | Guy Harrison | ISBN: 9780137011957 The fast, complete, start-to-finish guide to optimizing Oracle performance. Core JavaServer Faces, Third Edition | David Geary and Cay S. Horstmann | ISBN: 9780137012893 Provides everything you need to master the powerful and time-saving features of JSF 2.0? Solaris Security Essentials | ISBN: 9780137012336 A superb guide to deploying and managing secure computer environments.? Effective C#, Second Edition | Bill Wagner | ISBN: 9780321658708 Respected .NET expert Bill Wagner identifies fifty ways you can leverage the full power of the C# 4.0 language to express your designs concisely and clearly. CRC Press Offers - Use 813DA to get 20% off this the title below. Secure and Resilient Software Development This book illustrates all phases of the secure software development life cycle. It details quality software development strategies that stress resilience requirements with precise, actionable, and ground-level inputs. Packt Publishing Offers - Use the promo code "Java35June", to save 35% off of each eBook mentioned below. JSF 2.0 Cookbook By Anghel Leonard ISBN: 978-1-847199-52-2 Packed with fast, practical solutions and techniques for JavaServer Faces developers who want to push past the JSF basics. JavaFX 1.2 Application Development Cookbook By Vladimir Vivien ISBN: 978-1-847198-94-5 Fast, practical solutions and techniques for building powerful, responsive Rich Internet Applications in JavaFX.

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• How to Use and Manage Extensions to Safari 5

  - by Mysticgeek

  While there have been hacks to include extensions in Safari for some time now, Safari 5 now offers proper support for them. Today we take a look at managing extensions in the latest version of Safari. Installation and Setup Download and install Safari 5 (link below). Make sure to download the installer that doesn’t include QuickTime if you don’t want it. Also, uncheck getting Apple updates and news in your email. Then decide if you want to install Bonjour for Windows and have Safari automatically update or not. Once it’s installed, launch Safari and select Show Menu Bar from the the Settings Menu. Then go into Preferences \ Advanced and check the box Show Develop menu in the menu bar. Develop will now appear on the Menu Bar…click on it and select Enable Extensions. Using Extensions Now you can find and start using extensions (link below) that will work with Safari 5. In this example we’re installing PageSaver which takes an image of what is showing in your browser. Click on the link for the Extension you want to install…   Then you’ll get a confirmation asking if you want to open or save it. Opening it will install it right away. Click Install in the dialog that asks if you’re sure you want to. Here we see the Extension was successfully installed and you can see the camera icon on the Toolbar. When you’re on a portion of a webpage you want to take an image of, click on the camera icon and you’ll have the image saved in your Downloads folder. Then you can open it up in a browser or image editor. Go into Preferences \ Extensions and from here you can turn the extensions on or off, uninstall, or check for updates. If you’re a Safari user, or thinking about trying it, you’ll enjoy proper support for extensions in version 5. At the time of this writing we couldn’t find any extensions on the Apple site, but you might want to keep your eye on it to see if they do start listing them.  Download Safari 5 for Mac & PC Safari Extensions Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Manage Web Searches In SafariMake Safari Stop Crashing Every 20 Seconds on Windows VistaCustomize Safari for Windows ToolbarMake Your Safari Web Browsing PrivateSave Screen Space by Hiding the Bookmarks Toolbar in Safari for Windows TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Nice Websites To Watch TV Shows Online 24 Million Sites Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like) How to Forecast Weather, without Gadgets Outlook Tools, one stop tweaking for any Outlook version Zoofs, find the most popular tweeted YouTube videos

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• Oracle Unveils Oracle Social Relationship Management Suite at Oracle OpenWorld

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  New Service Enables Companies to Listen, Engage, Create, Market and Analyze Interactions across Multiple Social Platforms in Real-Time During his keynote presentation, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison announced the Oracle Social Relationship Management (SRM) Suite.   Oracle Social Relationship Management Suite is an integrated enterprise service that enables companies to listen, engage, create, market, and analyze interactions across multiple social platforms in real-time providing a holistic view of the consumer.   Oracle Social Relationship Management Suite is integrated with Oracle’s enterprise applications, including Oracle Fusion Marketing, Oracle Fusion Sales Catalog, Oracle ATG Web Commerce, and Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), allowing organizations to use social to transform their corporate business processes and systems.   Additionally, Oracle Social Relationship Management Suite is integrated with Oracle Platform Services, including Oracle Java Cloud Service and Oracle Database Cloud Service, enabling marketing teams to integrate social with their custom Web pages, landing pages and marketing tools. Unleashing the Power of Social • Providing a holistic view of consumer interactions, Oracle Social Relationship Management Suite includes: Oracle Social Network (OSN): Provides a secure collaboration platform that supports real-time collaboration and networking for users inside and outside the organization. Oracle Social Marketing: Enables marketers to centrally create, publish, moderate, manage, measure and report across multiple social campaigns and platforms. It also helps marketers publish social content, engage fans and customize their brand's look and feel. Oracle Social Engagement & Monitoring Cloud Service: Enables organizations to analyze social media interactions while also empowering customer service and sales teams to effectively engage with customers and prospects. It gives organizations the tools they need to understand customers and take the appropriate actions by monitoring, listening, learning, and responding to signals and trends across the social web. Oracle Social Sites: provides brands and agencies a powerful and rich editing experience that end users can leverage to dynamically develop and launch social sites. Oracle Data and Insights. A service that caters to a growing enterprise need for externally information by providing information, directory and insights about common business entities. Supporting Quote “By fundamentally changing the way organizations connect with their different stakeholders, social is changing the rules of business,” said Thomas Kurian, executive vice president, Oracle Product Development. “With the Oracle Social Relationship Management Suite we are empowering our customers to embrace this change by integrating the tools required to listen, engage, create, market and analyze social interactions into existing applications and services.”

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• Desigual Extiende Uso de Oracle ® ATG Web Commerce para potenciar su expansión internacional en línea

  - by Noelia Gomez

  Normal 0 21 false false false ES X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Desigual, la empresa de moda internacional, ha extendido el uso de Oracle® ATG Web Commerce para dar soporte a su expansión creciente de sus capacidades comerciales de manera internacional y para ayudar a ofrecer un servicio de compra más personalizado a más clientes de manera global. Desigual eligió primero Oracle ATG Web Commerce en 2006 para lanzar su plataforma B2B y automatizar sus ventas a su negocio completo de ventas, Entonces, en Octubre de 2010, Desigual lanzó su plataforma B2C usando Oracle ATG Web Commerce, y ahora ofrece operaciones online en nueve países y 11 lenguas diferentes. Para dar soporte a esta creciente expansión de sus operaciones comerciales y de merchandising en otras geografías, Desigual decidió completar su arquitectura existente con Oracle ATG Web Commerce Merchandising y Oracle ATG Web Commerce Service Center. Además, Desigual implementará Oracle Endeca Guided Search para permitir a los clientes adaptarse de manera más eficiente con su entorno comercial y encontrar rápidamente los productos más relevantes y deseados. Desigual usará las aplicaciones de Oracle para permitir a los usuarios del negocio ganar el control sobre cómo ofrece la compañía una experiencia al cliente más personalizada y conectada a través de los diferentes canales, promoviendo ofertas personalizadas a cada cliente, priorizando los resultados de búsqueda e integrando las operaciones de la web con el contact center sin problemas para aumentar la satisfacción y mejorar los resultados de las conversaciones. Desde que se lanzara en 2002, el minorista español ha crecido rápidamente y ahora ofrece su original moda en sus 200 tiendas propias , 7000 minoristas autorizados y 1700 tiendas de concesión en 55 países. Infórmese con mayor profundidad de nuestras soluciones Oracle Customer Experience aquí. /* 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• On SQL Developer and TNSNAMES.ORA

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Tnsnames.ora [DOCS] is a configuration file for SQL*Net that describes the network service names for the databases in your organization. Basically, it tells Oracle applications how to find your databases. This post is just a quick overview on how to get SQL Developer to ‘see’ this file and define a connection. There’s only a single prerequisite for having SQL Devleoper setup such that it can use TNSNAMES to connect: You have somewhere a tnsnames.ora file You don’t need a client, instant or otherwise, on your machine. You just need the file. Now, if you DO you have a client or HOME on your machine, SQL Developer will look for those and find the tnsnames file for you. IF we can’t find it at the usual places, you can simply tell us where it is via this preference: On the Database – Advanced page Once you’ve done this, assuming you have a file (or 10) in that directory, we’ll read it, parse it, and list the entries in the connection dialog. The File(s) That’s right, files. Just like SQL*Plus, we’ll read any file that starts with ‘tnsnames’ – that includes files you’ve renamed to .bak or .old. Kris talks about that more here. I have just the one, which is all I need anyway. There we go! Defining the Connection Just set the connection type to TNS. This is a lot easier to do than manually defining the connections – esp as they’re likely to frequently change in ‘the real world.’ No Client or Home Required That’s right. You don’t need an Oracle Client or $ORACLE_HOME to have SQL Developer see and read a TNS file. Just so you know I’m not cheating… SQL Dev doesn’t know which client to use and won’t use it even if it DID know… I’m able to define a new connection AND connect with these preferences ON|OFF.

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• How To: LIC of India Online Policy Payments And Status Enquiries

  - by Kavitha

  Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India is the largest state-owned insurance company in India and also the country’s largest investor. The premium  amount for the insurance policies purchased from LIC are paid by visiting the nearest LIC office or by taking help of LIC agents. It’s a time consuming process and most of us are fed up of standing in long queues at LIC offices for paying premium amount. LIC Online Services Website The worries are not any more, no need to stand in a long queue or approach an agent for paying your LIC policies. LIC of India has an online payment and also renewal facility : http://licindia.in. To pay the policies online we have to register with LIC and login to the site using the registered username and password. Once you login, you can enter your profile information and LIC policies that are purchased on your name(register the policies that are purchased  only on your name, otherwise you land in to troubles). Once registered, managing activities of like payments, loan eligibility checking, policy maturity, etc. are very easy. For online payment of policies you can find Pay Premium Online tab which when clicked takes you to a page that lists all the policies that are due. Payments can be made using credit/debit cards and online banking systems. Almost all the Indian banks are covered as part of the online payment system. Other services that are available through the online system of LIC are : View ULIP Policies,Premium Calendar, Calculate Loan Eligibility, Revival Quote, Policy Maturity, Address Change Requests, etc. LIC Policy Status Enquiry Through Phone LIC also has a helpline/customer care  number ‘1251‘. You can call 1251 to know about  your policy status, premium due date, Loan possibility and loan amount possible, time of maturity etc. This article titled,How To: LIC of India Online Policy Payments And Status Enquiries, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Virtual Box - How to open a .VDI Virtual Machine

  - by [email protected]

   How to open a .VDI Virtual MachineSometimes someone share with us one Virtual machine with extension .VDI, after that we can wonder how and what with?Well the answer is... It is a VirtualBox - Virtual Machine. If you have not downloaded it you can do this easily just follow this post.http://listeningoracle.blogspot.com/2010/04/que-es-virtualbox.htmlor http://oracleoforacle.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/ques-es-virtualbox/Ok, Now with VirtualBox Installed open it and proceed with the following:1. Open the Virtual File Manager. 2. Click on Actions ? Add and select the .VDI file Click "Ok"3. Now we can register the new Virtual Machine - Click New, and Click Next4. Write down a Name for the virtual Machine a proceed to select a Operating System and Version. (In this case it is a Linux (Oracle Enterprise Linux or RedHat)Click Next5. Select the memory amount base for the Virtual Machine (Minimal 1280 for our case) - Click Next6. Select the Disk 11GR2_OEL5_32GB.vdi it was added in the virtual media manager in the step 2. Dont forget let selected Boot hard Disk (Primary Master) . Given it is the only disk assigned to the virtual machine.Click Next7. Click Finish8. This step is important. Once you have click on the settings Button.9. On General option click the advanced settings. Here you must change the default directory to save your Snapshots; my recommendation set it to the same directory where the .Vdi file is. Otherwise you can have the same Virtual Machine and its snapshots in different paths.10. Now Click on System, and proceed to assign the correct memory (If you did not before) Note: Enable "Enable IO APIC" if you are planning to assign more than one CPU to the Virtual Machine.Define the processors for the Virtual machine. If you processor is dual core choose 211. Select the video memory amount you want to assign to the Virtual Machine 12. Associated more storage disk to the Virtual machine, if you have more VDI files. (Not our case)The disk must be selected as IDE Primary Master. 13. Well you can verify the other options, but with these changes you will be able to start the VM.Note: Sometime the VM owner may share some instructions, if so follow his instructions.14. Finally Start the Virtual Machine (Click > Start)

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• ASP.NET Web API - Screencast series Part 2: Getting Data

  - by Jon Galloway

  We're continuing a six part series on ASP.NET Web API that accompanies the getting started screencast series. This is an introductory screencast series that walks through from File / New Project to some more advanced scenarios like Custom Validation and Authorization. The screencast videos are all short (3-5 minutes) and the sample code for the series is both available for download and browsable online. I did the screencasts, but the samples were written by the ASP.NET Web API team. In Part 1 we looked at what ASP.NET Web API is, why you'd care, did the File / New Project thing, and did some basic HTTP testing using browser F12 developer tools. This second screencast starts to build out the Comments example - a JSON API that's accessed via jQuery. This sample uses a simple in-memory repository. At this early stage, the GET /api/values/ just returns an IEnumerable<Comment>. In part 4 we'll add on paging and filtering, and it gets more interesting.   The get by id (e.g. GET /api/values/5) case is a little more interesting. The method just returns a Comment if the Comment ID is valid, but if it's not found we throw an HttpResponseException with the correct HTTP status code (HTTP 404 Not Found). This is an important thing to get - HTTP defines common response status codes, so there's no need to implement any custom messaging here - we tell the requestor that the resource the requested wasn't there.  public Comment GetComment(int id) { Comment comment; if (!repository.TryGet(id, out comment)) throw new HttpResponseException(HttpStatusCode.NotFound); return comment; } This is great because it's standard, and any client should know how to handle it. There's no need to invent custom messaging here, and we can talk to any client that understands HTTP - not just jQuery, and not just browsers. But it's crazy easy to consume an HTTP API that returns JSON via jQuery. The example uses Knockout to bind the JSON values to HTML elements, but the thing to notice is that calling into this /api/coments is really simple, and the return from the $.get() method is just JSON data, which is really easy to work with in JavaScript (since JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation and is the native serialization format in Javascript). $(function() { $("#getComments").click(function () { // We're using a Knockout model. This clears out the existing comments. viewModel.comments([]); $.get('/api/comments', function (data) { // Update the Knockout model (and thus the UI) with the comments received back // from the Web API call. viewModel.comments(data); }); }); }); That's it! Easy, huh? In Part 3, we'll start modifying data on the server using POST and DELETE.

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• Selling Solutions, Not Products

  - by David Dorf

  When I think about next-generation retailers, the names that come to mind are Apple, Whole Foods, Lulu Lemon, and IKEA.  They may not be the biggest retailers, but they are certainly growing fast. Success is never defined by just one dimension, and these retailers execute well across many dimensions, but the one that stands out for me is customer experience.  These stores feel...approachable...part of the community...local.  Customers are not intimidated to ask questions, and staff seem to go out of their way to help. What's makes these retailers stand out in the industry?  These retailers aren't selling products -- they're selling solutions.  Think about that.  You think you're going to the Apple store to buy a phone, but you're actually buying a communications solution that handles much, much more.  If you carry an iPhone, your life has changed.  The way you do things is different.  The impacts go much beyond a simple phone. Solutions start with a problem, which is why these retailers greet customers with "what brought you in today," or "can I answer any questions for you?"  Good retailers establish a relationship, even if it lasts only a few minutes. You don't walk into Whole Foods looking for cans of soup.  You are looking for meals: healthy snacks, interesting lunches, exotic dinners.  Its a learning experience where you might discover solutions to problems you didn't know you had.  Mention what foods you like, and you'll get a list of similar items you had not considered.  I didn't know I needed a closet organizer until I visited an IKEA and learned about all the options.  They were able to customize the solution to meet my needs, and now I'm much more organized. One of the differences between selling products and selling solutions is training.  Visit any of these retailers' sites and you'll see a long list of in-store events for the benefit of customers.  You can buy exercise clothing from Lulu Lemon, and also learn new yoga techniques, meet like-minded people, and branch off to other fitness regimes via their ambassadors.  You can visit the Geek Bar at Apple, eat lunch at IKEA, and learn to cook at Whole Foods. These retailers are making an investment in a relationship with their customers.  They are showing loyalty to their customers before asking for it back.  In the long-run, this strategic approach will outlive any scan-and-bag mentality.

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• SQL SERVER – Weekend Project – Visiting Friend’s Company – Koenig Solutions

  - by pinaldave

  I have decided to do some interesting experiments every weekend and share it next week as a weekend project on the blog. Many times our business lives and personal lives are very separate, however this post will talk about one instance where my two lives connect. This weekend I visited my friend’s company. My friend owns Koenig, so of course I am very interested so see that they are doing well.  I have been very impressed this year, as they have expanded into multiple cities and are offering more and more classes about Business Intelligence, Project Management, networking, and much more. Koenig Solutions originally were a company that focused on training IT professionals – from topics like databases and even English language courses.  As the company grew more popular, Koenig began their blog to keep fans updated, and gradually have added more and more courses. I am very happy for my friend’s success, but as a technology enthusiast I am also pleased with Koenig Solutions’ success.  Whenever anyone in our field improves, the field as a whole does better.  Koenig offers high quality classes on a variety of topics at a variety of levels, so anyone can benefit from browsing this blog. I am a big fan of technology (obviously), and I feel blessed to have gotten in on the “ground floor,” even though there are some people out there who think technology has advanced as far as possible – I believe they will be proven wrong.  And that is why I think companies like Koenig Solutions are so important – they are providing training and support in a quickly growing field, and providing job skills in this tough economy. I believe this particular post really highlights how I, and Koenig, feel about the IT industry.  It is quickly expanding, and job opportunities are sure to abound – but how can the average person get started in this exciting field?  This post emphasizes that knowledge is power – know what interests you in the IT field, get an education, and continue your training even after you’ve gotten your foot in the door. Koenig Solutions provides what I feel is one of the most important services in the modern world – in person training.  They obviously offer many online courses, but you can also set up physical, face-to-face training through their website.  As I mentioned before, they offer a wide variety of classes that cater to nearly every IT skill you can think of.  If you have more specific needs, they also offer one of the best English language training courses.  English is turning into the language of technology, so these courses can ensure that you are keeping up the pace. Koenig Solutions and I agree about how important training can be, and even better – they provide some of the best training around.  We share ideals and I am very happy see the success of my friend. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, SQLAuthority Author Visit, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Developer Training

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