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• Which topics do I need to research to enable me to complete my self-assigned "Learning Project"?

  - by Anonymous -

  I want to continue learning C#. I've read parts of a few books recommended on here and the language is feeling more familiar by the day. I'd like to tackle a mid-sized personal project to take my expertise to the next level. What I'd like to do, is create an application that 'manages expenses', that runs on multiple machines on a LAN. So for example, say we have person1 and person2 on seperate machines running the application, when person1 enters an expense, it will appear on person2's (pretty UI) view of the expenses database and vice versa. What topics do I need to research to make this possible for me? I plan on learning WPF for the UI (though the steep learning curve (or so I'm told) has me a little anxious about that at this stage. With regards to the database, which database would you recommend I use? I don't want a 'server' for the database to run on, so do I need to use an embedded database that each client machine runs a copy of that updates to each other (upon startup/entering of expense on any machine etc)? What topics under networking should I be looking at? I haven't studied networking before in any language, so do I need to learn about sockets or?

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• Placeholders in strings

  - by dotancohen

  I find that I sometimes use placeholders in strings, like this: $ cat example-apache <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName ##DOMAIN_NAME## ServerAlias www.##DOMAIN_NAME## DocumentRoot /var/www/##DOMAIN_NAME##/public_html </VirtualHost> Now I am sure that it is a minor issue if the placeholder is ##DOMAIN_NAME##, !!DOMAIN_NAME!!, {{DOMAIN_NAME}}, or some other variant. However, I now need to standardize with other developers on a project, and we all have a vested interest in having our own placeholder format made standard in the organization. Are there any good reasons for choosing any of these, or others? I am trying to quantify these considerations: Aesthetics and usability. For example, __dict__ may be hard to read as we don't know how many underscores are in there. Compatibility. Will some language try to do something funny with {} syntax in a string (such as PHP does with "Welcome to {$siteName} today!")? Actually, I know that PHP and Python won't, but others? Will a C++ preprocessor choke on ## format? If I need to store the value in some SQL engine, will it not consider something a comment? Any other pitfalls to be wary of? Maintainability. Will the new guy mistake ##SOME_PLACEHOLDER## as a language construct? The unknown. Surely the wise folk here will think of other aspects of this decision that I have not thought of. I might be bikeshedding this, but if there are real issues that might be lurking then I would certainly like to know about them before mandating that our developers adhere to a potentially-problematic convention.

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• Good quality Secure Software Development Training [closed]

  - by Patrick

  Just had my annual appraisal and found out my company is willing to pay for training and exams etc! Woohoo (they kept that one quiet). I'm interested in doing a course on secure development techniques. Has anyone got any suggestions for good quality distance learning courses in secure development (I could probably get a couple of days off to attend a conference/ course if required)? We're mostly an MS .Net house but I have no particular allegiance to MS or any other programming language (though, obviously, C++ is the best language in the world). I have 12 years development experience working in (what are now) PCI:DSS environments, including designing and developing a key management system and I have some knowledge of basic attacks (XSS, injection etc). I would prefer a hard course I struggle with to a basic course I learn 3 things from (but hopefully get something right at my level). A quick google found these two course which look good: http://www.sans.org/course/secure-coding-net-developing-defensible-applications https://www.isc2.org/csslpedu/default.aspx I don't really know how to choose between them, and finding other courses isn't going to make that job any easier, so I thought I'd ask those who know. EDIT : Hmm, care to share the reason for your down vote, will help me learn how to use the site better...

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• Selectively Including files in C#.net web application [migrated]

  - by segnosaur

  I am attempting to modify an application with the following characteristics: Written in C#.net Using Visual Studio 2010 The application uses a Master sheet to maintain commonality The Master sheet has the following: <%@ Master Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="mysheet.master.cs" Inherits="master_mysheet" %> Now, currently, the master sheet has an include file that brings in a common footer: #include file="inc/my-footer.inc" Here's what I want to do: I would like to modify the master sheet to be able to read in a footer based on the value contained in a session variable... i.e. (not real code, but just something to give an idea of what I want) if session("x") = "a" then #include file="inc/my-footer1.inc" else #include file="inc/my-footer2.inc" My first instinct was to go with some vbscript: <script type="text/vbscript" language="vbscript"> document.write("vbscript example.") </script> However, it doesn't run the vbscript code automatically on page load. Does anyone know: - The syntax I need to actually get this to work? i.e. to get the vbscript to run automatically on page load, AND to do the page include? - Or, is there a better way to go about this? (perhaps by doing some coding in C#) Note: I am experienced in C#; however, I haven't done any vbscript since the days of ASP classic, so my knowledge there is out of date.

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• I am having a hard time learning Python, is it just me? [closed]

  - by Carpet

  For the past two weeks I am trying to learn Python and a framework for web development, while doing so I learned a lot but not what I was looking for. I did manage to get everything set up and running, followed tutorials, but I still have not managed to create a navigation bar and a simple template website. My goal is to create web applications (like a blog) and perhaps platforms similar to stackoverflow. In which language was stackoverflow created in? I believe that Python Django or Python Tornado (which I tried) is more for people who have learned desktop application development. It is hard for me to make sense out of the complex and fragmented system. I'm able to develop with PHP and have already created blogs and similar applications. If Python and a framework is not for me, what type of language would be for me, which languages are used for these type of platforms, I would like to develop myself? I only omitted PHP because I found it later on a bit too inheriting, and the code is hardly readable and becomes quickly cluttered, I love how readable Python code is.

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• Web Host which provides Latex and embedded programming [duplicate]

  - by Polymer

  This question already has an answer here: How to find web hosting that meets my requirements? 5 answers Hopefully this is a reasonable place to ask this question. I'll confess I'm a little green when it comes to web programming and websites in general (though not programming). I'm a Math and Physics person. I want to make a personal webpage containing a Math and Physics blog. Ideally the blog should support latex, and embedded programs. This would allow me to write, say, an equation for an orbit and then show what the orbit would look like (perhaps letting the reader configure parameters). The programming language can be javascript (though it isn't my favorite language). My budget is around 5 dollars a month. Does anybody have suggestions for a good Shared host with these kind of requirements? And a small aside, It would be useful if I can move the website content, since I might live at a university in the nearish future. They would have servers which could support such a webpage.

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• Have suggestions for these assembly mnemonics?

  - by Noctis Skytower

  Greetings! Last semester in college, my teacher in the Computer Languages class taught us the esoteric language named Whitespace. In the interest of learning the language better with a very busy schedule (midterms), I wrote an interpreter and assembler in Python. An assembly language was designed to facilitate writing programs easily, and a sample program was written with the given assembly mnemonics. Now that it is summer, a new project has begun with the objective being to rewrite the interpreter and assembler for Whitespace 0.3, with further developments coming afterwards. Since there is so much extra time than before to work on its design, you are presented here with an outline that provides a revised set of mnemonics for the assembly language. This post is marked as a wiki for their discussion. Have you ever had any experience with assembly languages in the past? Were there some instructions that you thought should have been renamed to something different? Did you find yourself thinking outside the box and with a different paradigm than in which the mnemonics were named? If you can answer yes to any of those questions, you are most welcome here. Subjective answers are appreciated! Stack Manipulation (IMP: [Space]) Stack manipulation is one of the more common operations, hence the shortness of the IMP [Space]. There are four stack instructions. hold N Push the number onto the stack copy Duplicate the top item on the stack copy N Copy the nth item on the stack (given by the argument) onto the top of the stack swap Swap the top two items on the stack drop Discard the top item on the stack drop N Slide n items off the stack, keeping the top item Arithmetic (IMP: [Tab][Space]) Arithmetic commands operate on the top two items on the stack, and replace them with the result of the operation. The first item pushed is considered to be left of the operator. add Addition sub Subtraction mul Multiplication div Integer Division mod Modulo Heap Access (IMP: [Tab][Tab]) Heap access commands look at the stack to find the address of items to be stored or retrieved. To store an item, push the address then the value and run the store command. To retrieve an item, push the address and run the retrieve command, which will place the value stored in the location at the top of the stack. save Store load Retrieve Flow Control (IMP: [LF]) Flow control operations are also common. Subroutines are marked by labels, as well as the targets of conditional and unconditional jumps, by which loops can be implemented. Programs must be ended by means of [LF][LF][LF] so that the interpreter can exit cleanly. L: Mark a location in the program call L Call a subroutine goto L Jump unconditionally to a label if=0 L Jump to a label if the top of the stack is zero if<0 L Jump to a label if the top of the stack is negative return End a subroutine and transfer control back to the caller halt End the program I/O (IMP: [Tab][LF]) Finally, we need to be able to interact with the user. There are IO instructions for reading and writing numbers and individual characters. With these, string manipulation routines can be written. The read instructions take the heap address in which to store the result from the top of the stack. print chr Output the character at the top of the stack print int Output the number at the top of the stack input chr Read a character and place it in the location given by the top of the stack input int Read a number and place it in the location given by the top of the stack Question: How would you redesign, rewrite, or rename the previous mnemonics and for what reasons?

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• Making a non-trivial Image and Video Gallery with a really nice interface

  - by Cawas

  Short part: I'm starting to build an Image and Video Gallery for our intranet. It's pretty much like an image gallery with video thumbnails that play on click. It's just good to keep that in mind because caching and streaming happen in very different ways there. It will serve to browse our reference database, which will also contain searching, tagging and voting. There are 3 features that I need to begin with: Quick preview of thumbnails from each Gallery Fast zoom in / out Animated scrolling Now to the long part, since I can't seem to reduce this: I hope this question belongs here. Maybe people can read this through and identify with it, specially since I expect answers to be pretty specific. The first plan was getting Apple's mobile me gallery as base, because it just so happens to have all those 3 features. If you've never seem it, you should check it out. Move the mouse over each collection and you'll get a nice preview "per pixel". Carousel got a really good scrolling, not just because of the pretty effect. I like it much more than cooliris, but it would be nice to have it in several rows, maybe without the magnifying effect... Then it could be all in the same place with the zoom. The more the features blend-in together, the better. Zooming out with the mouse, scrolling by dragging, once the zoom is really out it becomes a browsing through galleries, with the quick-show preview of each, all properly cached and fast. That'd be perfect. A very compelling interface will be important in this project. Well, my point here is just describing what I need and hope to hear from people with more experience in all that stuff of what's already done and what I'd have to do myself. And how (i.e. which framework to use) to do it. To begin with, I've found a gallery demo and its source code (I think it was from here, but the link seems broken now). I guess it was made in SproutCore, which is what mobileme was based upon. Definitely with JQuery (which already seems a little slow). But I'm still missing two features there: the carousel and the fast zoom (it's just not as slow as the zoom in this demo with cappuccino). Then I've found a supposedly better one with a pretty good and similar zoom, that I'm not sure if it's using any framework and is already in php. Right now it'd be better having just the HTML, no server-side, since I'm building interface first. So, can anyone point directions? There are way too many options! Should I look for another solution closer to what I need, or try and tweak this one? I'm not familiar with any framework at all. Sorry for bringing this question that I will have to answer myself anyway sooner or later and sorry that I couldn't make this smaller. Thanks.

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• Are there any suggestions for these new assembly mnemonics?

  - by Noctis Skytower

  Greetings! Last semester in college, my teacher in the Computer Languages class taught us the esoteric language named Whitespace. In the interest of learning the language better with a very busy schedule (midterms), I wrote an interpreter and assembler in Python. An assembly language was designed to facilitate writing programs easily, and a sample program was written with the given assembly mnemonics. Now that it is summer, a new project has begun with the objective being to rewrite the interpreter and assembler for Whitespace 0.3, with further developments coming afterwards. Since there is so much extra time than before to work on its design, you are presented here with an outline that provides a revised set of mnemonics for the assembly language. This post is marked as a wiki for their discussion. Have you ever had any experience with assembly languages in the past? Were there some instructions that you thought should have been renamed to something different? Did you find yourself thinking outside the box and with a different paradigm than in which the mnemonics were named? If you can answer yes to any of those questions, you are most welcome here. Subjective answers are appreciated! Stack Manipulation (IMP: [Space]) Stack manipulation is one of the more common operations, hence the shortness of the IMP [Space]. There are four stack instructions. hold N Push the number onto the stack copy Duplicate the top item on the stack copy N Copy the nth item on the stack (given by the argument) onto the top of the stack swap Swap the top two items on the stack drop Discard the top item on the stack drop N Slide n items off the stack, keeping the top item Arithmetic (IMP: [Tab][Space]) Arithmetic commands operate on the top two items on the stack, and replace them with the result of the operation. The first item pushed is considered to be left of the operator. add Addition sub Subtraction mul Multiplication div Integer Division mod Modulo Heap Access (IMP: [Tab][Tab]) Heap access commands look at the stack to find the address of items to be stored or retrieved. To store an item, push the address then the value and run the store command. To retrieve an item, push the address and run the retrieve command, which will place the value stored in the location at the top of the stack. save Store load Retrieve Flow Control (IMP: [LF]) Flow control operations are also common. Subroutines are marked by labels, as well as the targets of conditional and unconditional jumps, by which loops can be implemented. Programs must be ended by means of [LF][LF][LF] so that the interpreter can exit cleanly. L: Mark a location in the program call L Call a subroutine goto L Jump unconditionally to a label if=0 L Jump to a label if the top of the stack is zero if<0 L Jump to a label if the top of the stack is negative return End a subroutine and transfer control back to the caller halt End the program I/O (IMP: [Tab][LF]) Finally, we need to be able to interact with the user. There are IO instructions for reading and writing numbers and individual characters. With these, string manipulation routines can be written. The read instructions take the heap address in which to store the result from the top of the stack. print chr Output the character at the top of the stack print int Output the number at the top of the stack input chr Read a character and place it in the location given by the top of the stack input int Read a number and place it in the location given by the top of the stack Question: How would you redesign, rewrite, or rename the previous mnemonics and for what reasons?

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• PHP: Writing non-english characters to XML - encoding problem

  - by Dean

  Hello, I wrote a small PHP script to edit the site news XML file. I used DOM to manipulate the XML (Loading, writing, editing). It works fine when writing English characters, but when non-English characters are written, PHP throws an error when trying to load the file. If I manually type non-English characters into the file - it's loaded perfectly fine, but if PHP writes the non-English characters the encoding goes wrong, although I specified the utf-8 encoding. Any help is appreciated. Errors: Warning: DOMDocument::load() [domdocument.load]: Entity 'times' not defined in filepath Warning: DOMDocument::load() [domdocument.load]: Input is not proper UTF-8, indicate encoding ! Bytes: 0x91 0x26 0x74 0x69 in filepath Here are the functions responsible for loading and saving the file (self-explanatory): function get_tags_from_xml(){ // Load news entries from XML file for display $errors = Array(); if(!$xml_file = load_news_file()){ // Load file // String indicates error presence $errors = "file not found"; return $errors; } $taglist = $xml_file->getElementsByTagName("text"); return $taglist; } function set_news_lang(){ // Sets the news language global $news_lang; if($_POST["news-lang"]){ $news_lang = htmlentities($_POST["news-lang"]); } elseif($_GET["news-lang"]){ $news_lang = htmlentities($_GET["news-lang"]); } else{ $news_lang = "he"; } } function load_news_file(){ // Load XML news file for proccessing, depending on language global $news_lang; $doc = new DOMDocument('1.0','utf-8'); // Create new XML document $doc->load("news_{$news_lang}.xml"); // Load news file by language $doc->formatOutput = true; // Nicely format the file return $doc; } function save_news_file($doc){ // Save XML news file, depending on language global $news_lang; $doc->saveXML($doc->documentElement); $doc->save("news_{$news_lang}.xml"); } Here is the code for writing to XML (add news): <?php ob_start()?> <?php include("include/xml_functions.php")?> <?php include("../include/functions.php")?> <?php get_lang();?> <?php //TODO: ADD USER AUTHENTICATION! if(isset($_POST["news"]) && isset($_POST["news-lang"])){ set_news_lang(); $news = htmlentities($_POST["news"]); $xml_doc = load_news_file(); $news_list = $xml_doc->getElementsByTagName("text"); // Get all existing news from file $doc_root_element = $xml_doc->getElementsByTagName("news")->item(0); // Get the root element of the new XML document $new_news_entry = $xml_doc->createElement("text",$news); // Create the submited news entry $doc_root_element->appendChild($new_news_entry); // Append submited news entry $xml_doc->appendChild($doc_root_element); save_news_file($xml_doc); header("Location: /cpanel/index.php?lang={$lang}&news-lang={$news_lang}"); } else{ header("Location: /cpanel/index.php?lang={$lang}&news-lang={$news_lang}"); } ?> <?php ob_end_flush()?>

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• What does the `forall` keyword in Haskell/GHC do?

  - by JUST MY correct OPINION

  I've been banging my head on this one for (quite literally) years now. I'm beginning to kinda/sorta understand how the foreach keyword is used in so-called "existential types" like this: data ShowBox = forall s. Show s => SB s (This despite the confusingly-worded explanations of it in the fragments found all around the web.) This is only a subset, however, of how foreach is used and I simply cannot wrap my mind around its use in things like this: runST :: forall a. (forall s. ST s a) -> a Or explaining why these are different: foo :: (forall a. a -> a) -> (Char,Bool) bar :: forall a. ((a -> a) -> (Char, Bool)) Or the whole RankNTypes stuff that breaks my brain when "explained" in a way that makes me want to do that Samuel L. Jackson thing from Pulp Fiction. (Don't follow that link if you're easily offended by strong language.) The problem, really, is that I'm a dullard. I can't fathom the chicken scratchings (some call them "formulae") of the elite mathematicians that created this language seeing as my university years are over two decades behind me and I never actually had to put what I learnt into use in practice. I also tend to prefer clear, jargon-free English rather than the kinds of language which are normal in academic environments. Most of the explanations I attempt to read on this (the ones I can find through search engines) have these problems: They're incomplete. They explain one part of the use of this keyword (like "existential types") which makes me feel happy until I read code that uses it in a completely different way (like runST, foo and bar above). They're densely packed with assumptions that I've read the latest in whatever branch of discrete math, category theory or abstract algebra is popular this week. (If I never read the words "consult the paper whatever for details of implementation" again, it will be too soon.) They're written in ways that frequently turn even simple concepts into tortuously twisted and fractured grammar and semantics. (I suspect that the last two items are the biggest problem. I wouldn't know, though, since I'm too much a dullard to comprehend them.) It's been asked why Haskell never really caught on in industry. I suspect, in my own humble, unintelligent way, that my experience in figuring out one stupid little keyword -- a keyword that is increasingly ubiquitous in the libraries being written these days -- are also part of the answer to that question. It's hard for a language to catch on when even its individual keywords cause years-long quests to comprehend. Years-long quests which end in failure. So... On to the actual question. Can anybody completely explain the foreach keyword in clear, plain English (or, if it exists somewhere, point to such a clear explanation which I've missed) that doesn't assume I'm a mathematician steeped in the jargon?

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• How to write a bison grammer for WDI?

  - by Rizo

  I need some help in bison grammar construction. From my another question: I'm trying to make a meta-language for writing markup code (such as xml and html) wich can be directly embedded into C/C++ code. Here is a simple sample written in this language, I call it WDI (Web Development Interface): /* * Simple wdi/html sample source code */ #include <mySite> string name = "myName"; string toCapital(string str); html { head { title { mySiteTitle; } link(rel="stylesheet", href="style.css"); } body(id="default") { // Page content wrapper div(id="wrapper", class="some_class") { h1 { "Hello, " + toCapital(name) + "!"; } // Lists post ul(id="post_list") { for(post in posts) { li { a(href=post.getID()) { post.tilte; } } } } } } } Basically it is a C source with a user-friendly interface for html. As you can see the traditional tag-based style is substituted by C-like, with blocks delimited by curly braces. I need to build an interpreter to translate this code to html and posteriorly insert it into C, so that it can be compiled. The C part stays intact. Inside the wdi source it is not necessary to use prints, every return statement will be used for output (in printf function). The program's output will be clean html code. So, for example a heading 1 tag would be transformed like this: h1 { "Hello, " + toCapital(name) + "!"; } // would become: printf("<h1>Hello, %s!</h1>", toCapital(name)); My main goal is to create an interpreter to translate wdi source to html like this: tag(attributes) {content} = <tag attributes>content</tag> Secondly, html code returned by the interpreter has to be inserted into C code with printfs. Variables and functions that occur inside wdi should also be sorted in order to use them as printf parameters (the case of toCapital(name) in sample source). Here are my flex/bison files: id [a-zA-Z_]([a-zA-Z0-9_])* number [0-9]+ string \".*\" %% {id} { yylval.string = strdup(yytext); return(ID); } {number} { yylval.number = atoi(yytext); return(NUMBER); } {string} { yylval.string = strdup(yytext); return(STRING); } "(" { return(LPAREN); } ")" { return(RPAREN); } "{" { return(LBRACE); } "}" { return(RBRACE); } "=" { return(ASSIGN); } "," { return(COMMA); } ";" { return(SEMICOLON); } \n|\r|\f { /* ignore EOL */ } [ \t]+ { /* ignore whitespace */ } . { /* return(CCODE); Find C source */ } %% %start wdi %token LPAREN RPAREN LBRACE RBRACE ASSIGN COMMA SEMICOLON CCODE QUOTE %union { int number; char *string; } %token <string> ID STRING %token <number> NUMBER %% wdi : /* empty */ | blocks ; blocks : block | blocks block ; block : head SEMICOLON | head body ; head : ID | ID attributes ; attributes : LPAREN RPAREN | LPAREN attribute_list RPAREN ; attribute_list : attribute | attribute COMMA attribute_list ; attribute : key ASSIGN value ; key : ID {$$=$1} ; value : STRING {$$=$1} /*| NUMBER*/ /*| CCODE*/ ; body : LBRACE content RBRACE ; content : /* */ | blocks | STRING SEMICOLON | NUMBER SEMICOLON | CCODE ; %% I am having difficulties on defining a proper grammar for the language, specially in splitting WDI and C code . I just started learning language processing techniques so I need some orientation. Could someone correct my code or give some examples of what is the right way to solve this problem?

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• Do you have suggestions for these assembly mnemonics?

  - by Noctis Skytower

  Greetings! Last semester in college, my teacher in the Computer Languages class taught us the esoteric language named Whitespace. In the interest of learning the language better with a very busy schedule (midterms), I wrote an interpreter and assembler in Python. An assembly language was designed to facilitate writing programs easily, and a sample program was written with the given assembly mnemonics. Now that it is summer, a new project has begun with the objective being to rewrite the interpreter and assembler for Whitespace 0.3, with further developments coming afterwards. Since there is so much extra time than before to work on its design, you are presented here with an outline that provides a revised set of mnemonics for the assembly language. This post is marked as a wiki for their discussion. Have you ever had any experience with assembly languages in the past? Were there some instructions that you thought should have been renamed to something different? Did you find yourself thinking outside the box and with a different paradigm than in which the mnemonics were named? If you can answer yes to any of those questions, you are most welcome here. Subjective answers are appreciated! Stack Manipulation (IMP: [Space]) Stack manipulation is one of the more common operations, hence the shortness of the IMP [Space]. There are four stack instructions. hold N Push the number onto the stack copy Duplicate the top item on the stack copy N Copy the nth item on the stack (given by the argument) onto the top of the stack swap Swap the top two items on the stack drop Discard the top item on the stack drop N Slide n items off the stack, keeping the top item Arithmetic (IMP: [Tab][Space]) Arithmetic commands operate on the top two items on the stack, and replace them with the result of the operation. The first item pushed is considered to be left of the operator. add Addition sub Subtraction mul Multiplication div Integer Division mod Modulo Heap Access (IMP: [Tab][Tab]) Heap access commands look at the stack to find the address of items to be stored or retrieved. To store an item, push the address then the value and run the store command. To retrieve an item, push the address and run the retrieve command, which will place the value stored in the location at the top of the stack. save Store load Retrieve Flow Control (IMP: [LF]) Flow control operations are also common. Subroutines are marked by labels, as well as the targets of conditional and unconditional jumps, by which loops can be implemented. Programs must be ended by means of [LF][LF][LF] so that the interpreter can exit cleanly. L: Mark a location in the program call L Call a subroutine goto L Jump unconditionally to a label if=0 L Jump to a label if the top of the stack is zero if<0 L Jump to a label if the top of the stack is negative return End a subroutine and transfer control back to the caller halt End the program I/O (IMP: [Tab][LF]) Finally, we need to be able to interact with the user. There are IO instructions for reading and writing numbers and individual characters. With these, string manipulation routines can be written. The read instructions take the heap address in which to store the result from the top of the stack. print chr Output the character at the top of the stack print int Output the number at the top of the stack input chr Read a character and place it in the location given by the top of the stack input int Read a number and place it in the location given by the top of the stack Question: How would you redesign, rewrite, or rename the previous mnemonics and for what reasons?

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• nil object in view when building objects on two different associations

  - by Shako

  Hello all. I'm relatively new to Ruby on Rails so please don't mind my newbie level! I have following models: class Paintingdescription < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :paintings belongs_to :languages end class Paintingtitle < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :paintings belongs_to :languages end class Painting < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :paintingtitles, :dependent => :destroy has_many :paintingdescriptions, :dependent => :destroy has_many :languages, :through => :paintingdescriptions has_many :languages, :through => :paintingtitles end class Language < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :paintingtitles, :dependent => :nullify has_many :paintingdescriptions, :dependent => :nullify has_many :paintings, :through => :paintingtitles has_many :paintings, :through => :paintingdescriptions end In my painting new/edit view, I would like to show the painting details, together with its title and description in each of the languages, so I can store the translation of those field. In order to build the languagetitle and languagedescription records for my painting and each of the languages, I wrote following code in the new method of my Paintings_controller.rb: @temp_languages = @languages @languages.size.times{@painting.paintingtitles.build} @painting.paintingtitles.each do |paintingtitle| paintingtitle.language_id = @temp_languages[0].id @temp_languages.slice!(0) end @temp_languages = @languages @languages.size.times{@painting.paintingdescriptions.build} @painting.paintingdescriptions.each do |paintingdescription| paintingdescription.language_id = @temp_languages[0].id @temp_languages.slice!(0) end In form partial which I call in the new/edit view, I have <% form_for @painting, :html => { :multipart => true} do |f| %> ... <% languages.each do |language| %> <p> <%= label language, language.name %> <% paintingtitle = @painting.paintingtitles[counter] %> <% new_or_existing = paintingtitle.new_record? ? 'new' : 'new' %> <% prefix = "painting[#{new_or_existing}_title_attributes][]" %> <% fields_for prefix, paintingtitle do |paintingtitle_form| %> <%= paintingtitle_form.hidden_field :language_id%> <%= f.label :title %><br /> <%= paintingtitle_form.text_field :title%> <% end %> <% paintingdescription = @painting.paintingdescriptions[counter] %> <% new_or_existing = paintingdescription.new_record? ? 'new' : 'new' %> <% prefix = "painting[#{new_or_existing}_title_attributes][]" %> <% fields_for prefix, paintingdescription do |paintingdescription_form| %> <%= paintingdescription_form.hidden_field :language_id%> <%= f.label :description %><br /> <%= paintingdescription_form.text_field :description %> <% end %> </p> <% counter += 1 %> <% end %> ... <% end %> But, when running the code, ruby encounters a nil object when evaluating paintingdescription.new_record?: You have a nil object when you didn't expect it! You might have expected an instance of ActiveRecord::Base. The error occurred while evaluating nil.new_record? However, if I change the order in which I a) build the paintingtitles and painting descriptions in the paintings_controller new method and b) show the paintingtitles and painting descriptions in the form partial then I get the nil on the paintingtitles.new_record? call. I always get the nil for the objects I build in second place. The ones I build first aren't nil in my view. Is it possible that I cannot build objects for 2 different associations at the same time? Or am I missing something else? Thanks in advance!

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• How to find an entry-level job after you already have a graduate degree?

  - by Uri

  Note: I asked this question in early 2009. A couple of months later, I found a great job. I've previously updated this question with some tips for whoever ends up in a similar situation, and now cleaned it up a little for the benefit of the fresh batch of graduates. Original post: In my early 20s I abandoned a great C++ development career path in a major company to go to graduate school and get a research masters (3 years). I did another year in industrial research, and then moved to the US to attend graduate school again, getting another masters and a Ph.D in software engineering from a top school (another 6 years down the drain). I was coding the whole way throughout my degrees (core Java and Eclipse plug-ins) and working on research related to software engineering (usability of APIs). I ended up graduating the year of the recession, with a son on the way and the prospects of no healthcare. Academic jobs and industrial research jobs are quite scarce. Initially, I was naive, thinking that with my background, I could easily find a coding job. Big mistake. It turns out that I'm in a complicated position. Entry level positions are usually offered to college undergraduates. I attended my school's career fairs, but you could immediately see signs of Ph.D. aversion and overqualification issues. Some of the recruiters I spoke with explicitly told me that they wanted 20 year olds with clean slates, and some were looking for interns since they are in various forms of hiring freezes. I managed to get a couple of interviews from these career fairs and through recruiters. However, since I've been out of school for a long time and programming primarily in Java, I am also no longer proficient in C/C++ and the usual range of college-level interview questions that everyone uses. I had no problems with this when I was 19 and interviewing for my first job since a lot of what you do in C is manipulate pointers and I was coding C++ for fun and for school. Later I was routinely doing pointer manipulation on the job, and during my first masters taught college courses with data structures and C++. But even though I remember many properties of C++ well, it's been close to ten years since I regularly used C++ and pointers. As a Java developer I rarely had to work at this level, but experience in OOD and in writing good maintainable code is meaningless for C++ interviews. Reading books as a refresh and looking at sample code did not do the trick. I also looked at mid-to-senior level Java positions, but most of them focused on J2EE APIs rather than on core Java and required a certain number of years in industrial positions. Coding research tools and prior C++ experience doesn't count. So that sends me back to entry-level jobs that are posted through job-boards, and these are not common (mostly they are Monster junk), and small companies are even less likely to answer a Ph.D. compared to the giants who participate in top-10 career fairs. Even worse, in many companies initial screening is done by HR folks who really don't want to deal with anything anomalous like a Ph.D. Any tips on how I should approach this intractable position? For example, what should I write in cover letters? Note that while immigration is not an issue for me, I cannot go freelance as I need the benefits (and in particular group health insurance). During my studies I had no time to contribute to open-source projects or maintain a popular blog, so even if I invested in that now there would be no immediate benefit. Updates: In the two months after posting this I received several offers to work as a core Java developer in the financial industry and accepted one from a firm where I am working to this day. For those who find themselves in similar situations, here are my tips: Give up on trying to find an entry level positions. You can't undo time. Accept the fact that there is Ph.D. discrimination in the job market (some might say rightfully so). It is legal to discriminate based on education. No point fighting it. The most important tip is to focus on the language you are comfortable with. The sad truth about programming in a particular language is that it is not like riding a bike. If you haven't used a language in the last few years, and can't actually apply it routinely (not just as a refresher) before you start your search, it is going to be very difficult to do well in an interview. Now that I'm interviewing others, I routinely see it in folks with a mixed C++/Java background. We maintain "a shadow" of the old language but end up with a weird mix that makes it hard to interview on either. Entry-level folks are at an advantage here since they usually have one language. Memory can help you do great in a screening interview, but without recent day-to-day experience, code tests will be difficult. Despite the supposed relation, core Java programming and J2EE programming are two different things with different skillsets. If you come from academia, you likely have very little J2EE experience and may find it hard to get accepted for a J2EE job. J2EE jobs seem to have a larger list of acronyms in their requirements. In addition, from interviewing J2EE developers it seems that for many there is a focus on mastering specific APIs and architectures, whereas core Java development tends to be secondary. In the same way that I can no longer manipulate pointers well, a J2EE developer may have difficulties doing low level Java manipulation. This puts you at a relative advantage in competing for core Java jobs! If you are able to work for startups (in terms of family life and stability) or migrate to startup-rich areas such as the west coast, you can find many exciting opportunities where advanced degrees are a benefit. I've since been approached by several startups, although I had to decline. Work through a recruiter if possible. They have direct contacts with the hiring parties, allowing you to "stand out". It is better to get a clear yes/no confirmation from a recruiter on whether a company might be interested in interviewing you, than it is to send your resume and hope that someone will ever see it. Recruiters are also a great way of bypassing HR. However, also beware of recruiters. They have a vested interest and will go to various shady practices and pressure tactics. To find a good recruiter, talk to a friend who declined a job offer he got through a recruiter. A good recruiter, to me, is measured in how they handle that. Interview for the jobs that require your core strength. If you're rusty or entirely unfamiliar with a technology around which the job revolves, you're probably not a good match. Yes, you probably have the talent to master them, but most companies would want "instant gratification". I got my offers from companies that wanted core Java developer. I didn't do well on places that wanted advance C++ because I am too rusty and not up to date on recent libraries. I also didn't hear from companies that wanted lots of J2EE experience, and that's ok. Finding companies that want core Java without web is harder, but exists in specific industries (e.g., finance, defense). This requires a lot more legwork in terms of search, but these jobs do exist. There are different interview styles. Some companies focus on puzzles, some companies focus on algorithms, and some companies focus on design and coding skills. I had the most success in places where the questions were the most related to the function I would have been performing. Pick companies accordingly as well.

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• May 20th Links: ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET, .NET 4, VS 2010, Silverlight

  - by ScottGu

  Here is the latest in my link-listing series.  Also check out my VS 2010 and .NET 4 series and ASP.NET MVC 2 series for other on-going blog series I’m working on. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] ASP.NET MVC How to Localize an ASP.NET MVC Application: Michael Ceranski has a good blog post that describes how to localize ASP.NET MVC 2 applications. ASP.NET MVC with jTemplates Part 1 and Part 2: Steve Gentile has a nice two-part set of blog posts that demonstrate how to use the jTemplate and DataTable jQuery libraries to implement client-side data binding with ASP.NET MVC. CascadingDropDown jQuery Plugin for ASP.NET MVC: Raj Kaimal has a nice blog post that demonstrates how to implement a dynamically constructed cascading dropdownlist on the client using jQuery and ASP.NET MVC. How to Configure VS 2010 Code Coverage for ASP.NET MVC Unit Tests: Visual Studio enables you to calculate the “code coverage” of your unit tests.  This measures the percentage of code within your application that is exercised by your tests – and can give you a sense of how much test coverage you have.  Gunnar Peipman demonstrates how to configure this for ASP.NET MVC projects. Shrinkr URL Shortening Service Sample: A nice open source application and code sample built by Kazi Manzur that demonstrates how to implement a URL Shortening Services (like bit.ly) using ASP.NET MVC 2 and EF4.  More details here. Creating RSS Feeds in ASP.NET MVC: Damien Guard has a nice post that describes a cool new “FeedResult” class he created that makes it easy to publish and expose RSS feeds from within ASP.NET MVC sites. NoSQL with MongoDB, NoRM and ASP.NET MVC Part 1 and Part 2: Nice two-part blog series by Shiju Varghese on how to use MongoDB (a document database) with ASP.NET MVC.  If you are interested in document databases also make sure to check out the Raven DB project from Ayende. Using the FCKEditor with ASP.NET MVC: Quick blog post that describes how to use FCKEditor – an open source HTML Text Editor – with ASP.NET MVC. ASP.NET Replace Html.Encode Calls with the New HTML Encoding Syntax: Phil Haack has a good blog post that describes a useful way to quickly update your ASP.NET pages and ASP.NET MVC views to use the new <%: %> encoding syntax in ASP.NET 4.  I blogged about the new <%: %> syntax – it provides an easy and concise way to HTML encode content. Integrating Twitter into an ASP.NET Website using OAuth: Scott Mitchell has a nice article that describes how to take advantage of Twiter within an ASP.NET Website using the OAuth protocol – which is a simple, secure protocol for granting API access. Creating an ASP.NET report using VS 2010 Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3: Raj Kaimal has a nice three part set of blog posts that detail how to use SQL Server Reporting Services, ASP.NET 4 and VS 2010 to create a dynamic reporting solution. Three Hidden Extensibility Gems in ASP.NET 4: Phil Haack blogs about three obscure but useful extensibility points enabled with ASP.NET 4. .NET 4 Entity Framework 4 Video Series: Julie Lerman has a nice, free, 7-part video series on MSDN that walks through how to use the new EF4 capabilities with VS 2010 and .NET 4.  I’ll be covering EF4 in a blog series that I’m going to start shortly as well. Getting Lazy with System.Lazy: System.Lazy and System.Lazy<T> are new features in .NET 4 that provide a way to create objects that may need to perform time consuming operations and defer the execution of the operation until it is needed.  Derik Whittaker has a nice write-up that describes how to use it. LINQ to Twitter: Nifty open source library on Codeplex that enables you to use LINQ syntax to query Twitter. Visual Studio 2010 Using Intellitrace in VS 2010: Chris Koenig has a nice 10 minute video that demonstrates how to use the new Intellitrace features of VS 2010 to enable DVR playback of your debug sessions. Make the VS 2010 IDE Colors look like VS 2008: Scott Hanselman has a nice blog post that covers the Visual Studio Color Theme Editor extension – which allows you to customize the VS 2010 IDE however you want. How to understand your code using Dependency Graphs, Sequence Diagrams, and the Architecture Explorer: Jennifer Marsman has a nice blog post describes how to take advantage of some of the new architecture features within VS 2010 to quickly analyze applications and legacy code-bases. How to maintain control of your code using Layer Diagrams: Another great blog post by Jennifer Marsman that demonstrates how to setup a “layer diagram” within VS 2010 to enforce clean layering within your applications.  This enables you to enforce a compiler error if someone inadvertently violates a layer design rule. Collapse Selection in Solution Explorer Extension: Useful VS 2010 extension that enables you to quickly collapse “child nodes” within the Visual Studio Solution Explorer.  If you have deeply nested project structures this extension is useful. Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Building a Simple Windows Phone 7 Application: A nice tutorial blog post that demonstrates how to take advantage of Expression Blend to create an animated Windows Phone 7 application. If you haven’t checked out my Windows Phone 7 Twitter Tutorial I also recommend reading that. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. If you haven’t already, check out this month’s "Find a Hoster” page on the www.asp.net website to learn about great (and very inexpensive) ASP.NET hosting offers.

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• Top 20 Daily Deal Sites In India

  - by Damodhar

  If you have never heard of Groupon recently, you probably are not working in the tech industry because it is all over the blogosphere. After all, growing from zero to US$1.35 billion valuation in 18 months is pretty AMAZING. Inspired by this, the following bunch of Groupon clone’s are already rising in India. Definitely this business model is emerging and changes the way online shopping happens in India. SnapDeal SnapDeal features a Best deals Coupons at an unbeatable price on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in our city. It provides vouchers and discounts in all the major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore. KhojGuru Exclusive Discount coupons from hundreds of brands and retailers. These discounts can be easily downloaded as an SMS on to the mobile phone or their print out can be taken. MyDala A platform which gets us great deals in our city.Leveraging the “power of group buying”. Group buying happens when like minded people come together to get deals that we can never get on our own as individuals. SoSasta Great place which would not only tell us about the hidden treasures of our city — but also made them affordable to us at the end of the month. DealsAndYou Deals and You is a group buying portal that features a daily deal on the best stuff in some of India’s leading cities. AajKaCatch Its concept is to provide you the most unique, useful and qualitative product at a very low price. So you can now shop without the hassles of clustered products. BindassBargain Bindaas Bargain offers a new deal every day! Great stuff ranging from cool gadgets, home theatres, luxury watches, smash games. MasthiDeals It get you a great deal on a great stuff to do, eat, buy or see in your city. They have a team of about 25 wonderful people working in Chennai office working side by side with folks in MasthiDeal’s other cities. Koovs Founded by a team of IIT alumni who have brought in their expertise from the internet industry. Koovs is a Bangalore based start up and one point solution for all your desires. Taggle It brings you a variety of offers from some of the most respected brands in the country.This website uses collective buying to create a win-win for local businesses and their customers. BuzzInTown Buzzintown.com is a portal owned by Wortal Inc. There are a US headquartered company, with a presence pan-India through their India subsidiary, managed by a vastly experienced set of global leaders from the media, entertainment and technology industries. BuyThePrice It lines up the best win – win deals for both consumers and vendors and also ensures that each of the orders are dispatched in the shortest time possible. 24HoursLoot 24hoursLoot is an online store for selling a new t-shirt (sometime other products) everyday at deep discounted price in limited quantity/stock. DealMagic Customers get exposure to the best their city has to offer, at unbeatable prices (50-90% off).  We never feature more than one business on our website on any given day, so we have to be very very selective on who gets featured. Dealivore ICUMI Technologies Pvt Ltd is the company operating the Dealivore service. Founded in December 2009, ICUMI is privately owned and funded. LootMore An online store that exclusively focuses on selling cool quality stuff at cheap prices. Here you’ll always find the latest and greatest brands at prices you can afford. Foodome The deals features the best coupons at an unbeatable price on restaurants, fine dining on where to spend your birthday party.They provide coupon only in Chennai as of now. Top Online Shopping Sites- Nation Wide ebay.in eBay is The World’s Online Marketplace, enabling trade on a local, national and international basis. With a diverse and passionate community of individuals and small businesses, eBay offers an online platform where millions of items are traded each day. FutureBazzar Future Group, led by its founder and Group CEO, Mr. Kishore Biyani, is one of India’s leading business houses with multiple businesses spanning across the consumption space. TradeUs Launched in July 2009 and in a short span of time it has turned into one of India’s foremost shopping portals setting the Indian e-commerce abode aflame. BigShoeBazzar (BSB) is the largest online authorized shoe store in South Asia. Croma Promoted by Infiniti Retail Ltd, a 100% subsidiary of Tata Sons.One of the world’s leading retailers, ensuring that you buy nothing but the best. This article titled,Top 20 Daily Deal Sites In India, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Blending the Sketchflow Action

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

  Started a new Sketchflow Prototype in Expression Blend recently and documented each of the steps.  This blog entry covers some of those steps, which are the basic elements of any prototype.  I will have more information regarding design, prototype creation, and the process of the initial phases for development in the future.  For now, I hope you enjoy this short walk through.  Also, be sure to check out my last quick entry on Sketchflow. I started off with a Sketchflow Project, just like I did in my previous entry (more specifics in that entry about how to manipulate and build out the Sketchflow Map). Once I created the project I setup the following Sketchflow Map. The CoreNavigation is a ComponentScreen setup solely for the page navigation at the top of the screen.  The XAML markup in case you want to create a Component Screen with the same design is included below. <UserControl xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d" xmlns:i="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Interactivity;assembly=System.Windows.Interactivity" xmlns:pb="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Expression.Prototyping.Behavior;assembly=Microsoft.Expression.Prototyping.Interactivity" x:Class="RapidPrototypeSketchScreens.CoreNavigation" d:DesignWidth="624" d:DesignHeight="49" Height="49" Width="624">   <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Margin="307,3,0,0" Style="{StaticResource TitleCenter-Sketch}" Text="Aütøchart Scorecards" TextWrapping="Wrap"> <i:Interaction.Triggers> <i:EventTrigger EventName="MouseLeftButtonDown"> <pb:NavigateToScreenAction TargetScreen="RapidPrototypeSketchScreens.Screen_1"/> </i:EventTrigger> </i:Interaction.Triggers> </TextBlock> <Button HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="164,8,0,11" Style="{StaticResource Button-Sketch}" Width="144" Content="Scorecard"> <i:Interaction.Triggers> <i:EventTrigger EventName="Click"> <pb:NavigateToScreenAction TargetScreen="RapidPrototypeSketchScreens.Screen_1_2"/> </i:EventTrigger> </i:Interaction.Triggers> </Button> <Button HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="8,8,0,11" Style="{StaticResource Button-Sketch}" Width="152" Content="Standard Reports"> <i:Interaction.Triggers> <i:EventTrigger EventName="Click"> <pb:NavigateToScreenAction TargetScreen="RapidPrototypeSketchScreens.Screen_1_1"/> </i:EventTrigger> </i:Interaction.Triggers> </Button> </Grid> </UserControl> Now that the CoreNavigation Component Screen is done I built out each of the others.  In each of those screens I included the CoreNavigation Screen (all those little green lines in the image) as the top navigation.  In order to do that, as I created each of the pages I would hover over the CoreNavigation Object in the Sketchflow Map.  When the utilities drawer (the small menu that pops down under a node when you hover over it) shows click on the third little icon and drag it onto the page node you want a navigation screen on. Once I created all the screens I setup the navigation by opening up each screen and right clicking on the objects that needed to point to somewhere else in the prototype. Once I was done with the main page, my Home Navigation Page, it looked something like this in the Expression Blend Designer. I fleshed out each of the additional screens.  Once I was done I wanted to try out the deployment package.  The way to deploy a Sketchflow Prototype is to merely click on File –> Package SketchFlow Project and a prompt will appear.  In the prompt enter what you want the package to be called. I like to see the files generated afterwards too, so I checked the box to see that.  When Expression Blend is done generating everything you’ll have a directory like the one shown below, with all the needed files for deployment. Now these files can be copied or moved to any location for viewing.  One can even copy them (such as via FTP) to a server location to share with others.  Once they are deployed and you run the "TestPage.html" the other features of the Sketchflow Package are available. In the image below I have tagged a few sections to show the Sketchflow Player Features.  To the top left is the navigation, which provides a clearly defined area of movement in a list.  To the center right is the actual prototype application.  I have placed lists of things and made edits.  On the left hand side is the highlight feature, which is available in the Feedback section of the lower left.  On the right hand list I underlined the Autochart with an orange marker, and marked out two list items with a red marker. In the lower left hand side in the Feedback section is also an area to type in your feedback.  This can be useful for time based feedback, when you post this somewhere and want people to provide subsequent follow up feedback. Overall lots of great features, that enable some fairly rapid prototyping with customers.  Once one is familiar with the steps and parts of this Sketchflow Prototype Capabilities it is easy to step through an application without even stopping.  It really is that easy.  So get hold of Expression Blend 3 and get ramped up on Sketchflow, it will pay off in the design phases to do so! Original Entry

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• Ask How-To Geek: Learning the Office Ribbon, Booting to USB with an Old BIOS, and Snapping Windows

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  You’ve got questions and we’ve got answers. Today we highlight how to master the new Office interface, USB boot a computer with outdated BIOS, and snap windows to preset locations. Learning the New Office Ribbon Dear How-To Geek, I feel silly asking this (in light of how long the new Office interface has been out) but my company finally got around to upgrading from Windows XP and Office 2000 so the new interface it totally new to me. Can you recommend any resources for quickly learning the Office ribbon and the new changes? I feel completely lost after two decades of the old Office interface. Help! Sincerely, Where the Hell is Everything? Dear Where the Hell, We think most people were with you at some point in the last few years. “Where the hell is…” could possibly be the slogan for the new ribbon interface. You could browse through some of the dry tutorials online or even get a weighty book on the topic but the best way to learn something new is to get hands on. Ribbon Hero turns learning the new Office features and ribbon layout into a game. It’s no vigorous round of Team Fortress mind you, but it’s significantly more fun than reading a training document. Check out how to install and configure Ribbon Hero here. You’ll be teaching your coworkers new tricks in no time. Boot via USB with an Old BIOS Dear How-To Geek, I’m trying to repurpose some old computers by updating them with lightweight Linux distros but the BIOS on most of the machines is ancient and creaky. How ancient? It doesn’t even support booting from a USB device! I have a large flash drive that I’ve turned into a master installation tool for jobs like this but I can’t use it. The computers in question have USB ports; they just aren’t recognized during the boot process. What can I do? USB Bootin’ in Boise Dear USB Bootin’, It’s great you’re working to breathe life into old hardware! You’ve run into one of the limitations of older BIOSes, USB was around but nobody was thinking about booting off of it. Fortunately if you have a computer old enough to have that kind of BIOS it’s likely to also has a floppy drive or a CDROM drive. While you could make a bootable CDROM for your application we understand that you want to keep using the master USB installer you’ve made. In light of that we recommend PLoP Boot Manager. Think of it like a boot manager for your boot manager. Using it you can create a bootable floppy or CDROM that will enable USB booting of your master USB drive. Make a CD and a floppy version and you’ll have everything in your toolkit you need for future computer refurbishing projects. Read up on creating bootable media with PLoP Boot Manager here. Snapping Windows to Preset Coordinates Dear How-To Geek, Once upon a time I had a company laptop that came with a little utility that snapped windows to preset areas of the screen. This was long before the snap-to-side features in Windows 7. You could essentially configure your screen into a grid pattern of your choosing and then windows would neatly snap into those grids. I have no idea what it was called or if was anymore than a gimmick from the computer manufacturer, but I’d really like to have it on my new computer! Bend and Snap in San Francisco, Dear Bend and Snap, If we had to guess, we’d guess your company must have had a set of laptops from Acer as the program you’re describing sounds exactly like Acer GridVista. Fortunately for you the application was extremely popular and Acer released it independently of their hardware. If, by chance, you’ve since upgraded to a multiple monitor setup the app even supports multiple monitors—many of the configurations are handy for arranging IM windows and other auxiliary communication tools. Check out our guide to installing and configuring Acer GridVista here for more information. Have a question you want to put before the How-To Geek staff? Shoot us an email at [email protected] and then keep an eye out for a solution in the Ask How-To Geek column. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Upgrade Windows 7 Easily (And Understand Whether You Should) The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: Basic Noise Removal Install a Wii Game Loader for Easy Backups and Fast Load Times The Best of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy Download the New Year in Japan Windows 7 Theme from Microsoft Once More Unto the Breach – Facebook Apps Can Now Access Your Address and Phone Number Dial Zero Speeds You Through Annoying Customer Service Menus Complete Dropquest 2011 and Receive Free Dropbox Storage Desktop Computer versus Laptop Wallpaper The Kids Have No Idea What Old Tech Is [Video]

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• C# 5 Async, Part 1: Simplifying Asynchrony – That for which we await

  - by Reed

  Today’s announcement at PDC of the future directions C# is taking excite me greatly.  The new Visual Studio Async CTP is amazing.  Asynchronous code – code which frustrates and demoralizes even the most advanced of developers, is taking a huge leap forward in terms of usability.  This is handled by building on the Task functionality in .NET 4, as well as the addition of two new keywords being added to the C# language: async and await. This core of the new asynchronous functionality is built upon three key features.  First is the Task functionality in .NET 4, and based on Task and Task<TResult>.  While Task was intended to be the primary means of asynchronous programming with .NET 4, the .NET Framework was still based mainly on the Asynchronous Pattern and the Event-based Asynchronous Pattern. The .NET Framework added functionality and guidance for wrapping existing APIs into a Task based API, but the framework itself didn’t really adopt Task or Task<TResult> in any meaningful way.  The CTP shows that, going forward, this is changing. One of the three key new features coming in C# is actually a .NET Framework feature.  Nearly every asynchronous API in the .NET Framework has been wrapped into a new, Task-based method calls.  In the CTP, this is done via as external assembly (AsyncCtpLibrary.dll) which uses Extension Methods to wrap the existing APIs.  However, going forward, this will be handled directly within the Framework.  This will have a unifying effect throughout the .NET Framework.  This is the first building block of the new features for asynchronous programming: Going forward, all asynchronous operations will work via a method that returns Task or Task<TResult> The second key feature is the new async contextual keyword being added to the language.  The async keyword is used to declare an asynchronous function, which is a method that either returns void, a Task, or a Task<T>. Inside the asynchronous function, there must be at least one await expression.  This is a new C# keyword (await) that is used to automatically take a series of statements and break it up to potentially use discontinuous evaluation.  This is done by using await on any expression that evaluates to a Task or Task<T>. For example, suppose we want to download a webpage as a string.  There is a new method added to WebClient: Task<string> WebClient.DownloadStringTaskAsync(Uri).  Since this returns a Task<string> we can use it within an asynchronous function.  Suppose, for example, that we wanted to do something similar to my asynchronous Task example – download a web page asynchronously and check to see if it supports XHTML 1.0, then report this into a TextBox.  This could be done like so: private async void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { string url = "http://reedcopsey.com"; string content = await new WebClient().DownloadStringTaskAsync(url); this.textBox1.Text = string.Format("Page {0} supports XHTML 1.0: {1}", url, content.Contains("XHTML 1.0")); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Let’s walk through what’s happening here, step by step.  By adding the async contextual keyword to the method definition, we are able to use the await keyword on our WebClient.DownloadStringTaskAsync method call. When the user clicks this button, the new method (Task<string> WebClient.DownloadStringTaskAsync(string)) is called, which returns a Task<string>.  By adding the await keyword, the runtime will call this method that returns Task<string>, and execution will return to the caller at this point.  This means that our UI is not blocked while the webpage is downloaded.  Instead, the UI thread will “await” at this point, and let the WebClient do it’s thing asynchronously. When the WebClient finishes downloading the string, the user interface’s synchronization context will automatically be used to “pick up” where it left off, and the Task<string> returned from DownloadStringTaskAsync is automatically unwrapped and set into the content variable.  At this point, we can use that and set our text box content. There are a couple of key points here: Asynchronous functions are declared with the async keyword, and contain one or more await expressions In addition to the obvious benefits of shorter, simpler code – there are some subtle but tremendous benefits in this approach.  When the execution of this asynchronous function continues after the first await statement, the initial synchronization context is used to continue the execution of this function.  That means that we don’t have to explicitly marshal the call that sets textbox1.Text back to the UI thread – it’s handled automatically by the language and framework!  Exception handling around asynchronous method calls also just works. I’d recommend every C# developer take a look at the documentation on the new Asynchronous Programming for C# and Visual Basic page, download the Visual Studio Async CTP, and try it out.

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• Creating packages in code – Execute SQL Task

  The Execute SQL Task is for obvious reasons very well used, so I thought if you are building packages in code the chances are you will be using it. Using the task basic features of the task are quite straightforward, add the task and set some properties, just like any other. When you start interacting with variables though it can be a little harder to grasp so these samples should see you through. Some of these more advanced features are explained in much more detail in our ever popular post The Execute SQL Task, here I’ll just be showing you how to implement them in code. The abbreviated code blocks below demonstrate the different features of the task. The complete code has been encapsulated into a sample class which you can download (ExecSqlPackage.cs). Each feature described has its own method in the sample class which is mentioned after the code block. This first sample just shows adding the task, setting the basic properties for a connection and of course an SQL statement. Package package = new Package(); // Add the SQL OLE-DB connection ConnectionManager sqlConnection = AddSqlConnection(package, "localhost", "master"); // Add the SQL Task package.Executables.Add("STOCK:SQLTask"); // Get the task host wrapper TaskHost taskHost = package.Executables[0] as TaskHost; // Set required properties taskHost.Properties["Connection"].SetValue(taskHost, sqlConnection.ID); taskHost.Properties["SqlStatementSource"].SetValue(taskHost, "SELECT * FROM sysobjects"); For the full version of this code, see the CreatePackage method in the sample class. The AddSqlConnection method is a helper method that adds an OLE-DB connection to the package, it is of course in the sample class file too. Returning a single value with a Result Set The following sample takes a different approach, getting a reference to the ExecuteSQLTask object task itself, rather than just using the non-specific TaskHost as above. Whilst it means we need to add an extra reference to our project (Microsoft.SqlServer.SQLTask) it makes coding much easier as we have compile time validation of any property and types we use. For the more complex properties that is very valuable and saves a lot of time during development. The query has also been changed to return a single value, one row and one column. The sample shows how we can return that value into a variable, which we also add to our package in the code. To do this manually you would set the Result Set property on the General page to Single Row and map the variable on the Result Set page in the editor. Package package = new Package(); // Add the SQL OLE-DB connection ConnectionManager sqlConnection = AddSqlConnection(package, "localhost", "master"); // Add the SQL Task package.Executables.Add("STOCK:SQLTask"); // Get the task host wrapper TaskHost taskHost = package.Executables[0] as TaskHost; // Add variable to hold result value package.Variables.Add("Variable", false, "User", 0); // Get the task object ExecuteSQLTask task = taskHost.InnerObject as ExecuteSQLTask; // Set core properties task.Connection = sqlConnection.Name; task.SqlStatementSource = "SELECT id FROM sysobjects WHERE name = 'sysrowsets'"; // Set single row result set task.ResultSetType = ResultSetType.ResultSetType_SingleRow; // Add result set binding, map the id column to variable task.ResultSetBindings.Add(); IDTSResultBinding resultBinding = task.ResultSetBindings.GetBinding(0); resultBinding.ResultName = "id"; resultBinding.DtsVariableName = "User::Variable"; For the full version of this code, see the CreatePackageResultVariable method in the sample class. The other types of Result Set behaviour are just a variation on this theme, set the property and map the result binding as required. Parameter Mapping for SQL Statements This final example uses a parameterised SQL statement, with the coming from a variable. The syntax varies slightly between connection types, as explained in the Working with Parameters and Return Codes in the Execute SQL Taskhelp topic, but OLE-DB is the most commonly used, for which a question mark is the parameter value placeholder. Package package = new Package(); // Add the SQL OLE-DB connection ConnectionManager sqlConnection = AddSqlConnection(package, ".", "master"); // Add the SQL Task package.Executables.Add("STOCK:SQLTask"); // Get the task host wrapper TaskHost taskHost = package.Executables[0] as TaskHost; // Get the task object ExecuteSQLTask task = taskHost.InnerObject as ExecuteSQLTask; // Set core properties task.Connection = sqlConnection.Name; task.SqlStatementSource = "SELECT id FROM sysobjects WHERE name = ?"; // Add variable to hold parameter value package.Variables.Add("Variable", false, "User", "sysrowsets"); // Add input parameter binding task.ParameterBindings.Add(); IDTSParameterBinding parameterBinding = task.ParameterBindings.GetBinding(0); parameterBinding.DtsVariableName = "User::Variable"; parameterBinding.ParameterDirection = ParameterDirections.Input; parameterBinding.DataType = (int)OleDBDataTypes.VARCHAR; parameterBinding.ParameterName = "0"; parameterBinding.ParameterSize = 255; For the full version of this code, see the CreatePackageParameterVariable method in the sample class. You’ll notice the data type has to be specified for the parameter IDTSParameterBinding .DataType Property, and these type codes are connection specific too. My enumeration I wrote several years ago is shown below was probably done by reverse engineering a package and also the API header file, but I recently found a very handy post that covers more connections as well for exactly this, Setting the DataType of IDTSParameterBinding objects (Execute SQL Task). /// <summary> /// Enumeration of OLE-DB types, used when mapping OLE-DB parameters. /// </summary> private enum OleDBDataTypes { BYTE = 0x11, CURRENCY = 6, DATE = 7, DB_VARNUMERIC = 0x8b, DBDATE = 0x85, DBTIME = 0x86, DBTIMESTAMP = 0x87, DECIMAL = 14, DOUBLE = 5, FILETIME = 0x40, FLOAT = 4, GUID = 0x48, LARGE_INTEGER = 20, LONG = 3, NULL = 1, NUMERIC = 0x83, NVARCHAR = 130, SHORT = 2, SIGNEDCHAR = 0x10, ULARGE_INTEGER = 0x15, ULONG = 0x13, USHORT = 0x12, VARCHAR = 0x81, VARIANT_BOOL = 11 } Download Sample code ExecSqlPackage.cs (10KB)

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• New MySQL Cluster 7.3 Previews: Foreign Keys, NoSQL Node.js API and Auto-Tuned Clusters

  - by Mat Keep

  At this weeks MySQL Connect conference, Oracle previewed an exciting new wave of developments for MySQL Cluster, further extending its simplicity and flexibility by expanding the range of use-cases, adding new NoSQL options, and automating configuration. What’s new: Development Release 1: MySQL Cluster 7.3 with Foreign Keys Early Access “Labs” Preview: MySQL Cluster NoSQL API for Node.js Early Access “Labs” Preview: MySQL Cluster GUI-Based Auto-Installer In this blog, I'll introduce you to the features being previewed. Review the blogs listed below for more detail on each of the specific features discussed. Save the date!: A live webinar is scheduled for Thursday 25th October at 0900 Pacific Time / 1600UTC where we will discuss each of these enhancements in more detail. Registration will be open soon and published to the MySQL webinars page MySQL Cluster 7.3: Development Release 1 The first MySQL Cluster 7.3 Development Milestone Release (DMR) previews Foreign Keys, bringing powerful new functionality to MySQL Cluster while eliminating development complexity. Foreign Key support has been one of the most requested enhancements to MySQL Cluster – enabling users to simplify their data models and application logic – while extending the range of use-cases for both custom projects requiring referential integrity and packaged applications, such as eCommerce, CRM, CMS, etc. Implementation The Foreign Key functionality is implemented directly within the MySQL Cluster data nodes, allowing any client API accessing the cluster to benefit from them – whether they are SQL or one of the NoSQL interfaces (Memcached, C++, Java, JPA, HTTP/REST or the new Node.js API - discussed later.) The core referential actions defined in the SQL:2003 standard are implemented: CASCADE RESTRICT NO ACTION SET NULL In addition, the MySQL Cluster implementation supports the online adding and dropping of Foreign Keys, ensuring the Cluster continues to serve both read and write requests during the operation.  This represents a further enhancement to MySQL Cluster's support for on0line schema changes, ie adding and dropping indexes, adding columns, etc.  Read this blog for a demonstration of using Foreign Keys with MySQL Cluster.  Getting Started with MySQL Cluster 7.3 DMR1: Users can download either the source or binary and evaluate the MySQL Cluster 7.3 DMR with Foreign Keys now! (Select the Development Release tab). MySQL Cluster NoSQL API for Node.js Node.js is hot! In a little over 3 years, it has become one of the most popular environments for developing next generation web, cloud, mobile and social applications. Bringing JavaScript from the browser to the server, the design goal of Node.js is to build new real-time applications supporting millions of client connections, serviced by a single CPU core. Making it simple to further extend the flexibility and power of Node.js to the database layer, we are previewing the Node.js Javascript API for MySQL Cluster as an Early Access release, available for download now from http://labs.mysql.com/. Select the following build: MySQL-Cluster-NoSQL-Connector-for-Node-js Alternatively, you can clone the project at the MySQL GitHub page.  Implemented as a module for the V8 engine, the new API provides Node.js with a native, asynchronous JavaScript interface that can be used to both query and receive results sets directly from MySQL Cluster, without transformations to SQL. Figure 1: MySQL Cluster NoSQL API for Node.js enables end-to-end JavaScript development Rather than just presenting a simple interface to the database, the Node.js module integrates the MySQL Cluster native API library directly within the web application itself, enabling developers to seamlessly couple their high performance, distributed applications with a high performance, distributed, persistence layer delivering 99.999% availability. The new Node.js API joins a rich array of NoSQL interfaces available for MySQL Cluster. Whichever API is chosen for an application, SQL and NoSQL can be used concurrently across the same data set, providing the ultimate in developer flexibility.  Get started with MySQL Cluster NoSQL API for Node.js tutorial MySQL Cluster GUI-Based Auto-Installer Compatible with both MySQL Cluster 7.2 and 7.3, the Auto-Installer makes it simple for DevOps teams to quickly configure and provision highly optimized MySQL Cluster deployments – whether on-premise or in the cloud. Implemented with a standard HTML GUI and Python-based web server back-end, the Auto-Installer intelligently configures MySQL Cluster based on application requirements and auto-discovered hardware resources Figure 2: Automated Tuning and Configuration of MySQL Cluster Developed by the same engineering team responsible for the MySQL Cluster database, the installer provides standardized configurations that make it simple, quick and easy to build stable and high performance clustered environments. The auto-installer is previewed as an Early Access release, available for download now from http://labs.mysql.com/, by selecting the MySQL-Cluster-Auto-Installer build. You can read more about getting started with the MySQL Cluster auto-installer here. Watch the YouTube video for a demonstration of using the MySQL Cluster auto-installer Getting Started with MySQL Cluster If you are new to MySQL Cluster, the Getting Started guide will walk you through installing an evaluation cluster on a singe host (these guides reflect MySQL Cluster 7.2, but apply equally well to 7.3 and the Early Access previews). Or use the new MySQL Cluster Auto-Installer! Download the Guide to Scaling Web Databases with MySQL Cluster (to learn more about its architecture, design and ideal use-cases). Post any questions to the MySQL Cluster forum where our Engineering team and the MySQL Cluster community will attempt to assist you. Post any bugs you find to the MySQL bug tracking system (select MySQL Cluster from the Category drop-down menu) And if you have any feedback, please post them to the Comments section here or in the blogs referenced in this article. Summary MySQL Cluster 7.2 is the GA, production-ready release of MySQL Cluster. The first Development Release of MySQL Cluster 7.3 and the Early Access previews give you the opportunity to preview and evaluate future developments in the MySQL Cluster database, and we are very excited to be able to share that with you. Let us know how you get along with MySQL Cluster 7.3, and other features that you want to see in future releases, by using the comments of this blog.

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• New Product: Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 – Small, Smart, Connected

  - by terrencebarr

  The Internet of Things (IoT) is coming. And, with todays launch of the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 product, Java is going to play an even greater role in it. Java in the Internet of Things By all accounts, intelligent embedded devices are penetrating the world around us – driving industrial processes, monitoring environmental conditions, providing better health care, analyzing and processing data, and much more. And these devices are becoming increasingly connected, adding another dimension of utility. Welcome to the Internet of Things. As I blogged yesterday, this is a huge opportunity for the Java technology and ecosystem. To enable and utilize these billions of devices effectively you need a programming model, tools, and protocols which provide a feature-rich, consistent, scalable, manageable, and interoperable platform.  Java technology is ideally suited to address these technical and business problems, enabling you eliminate many of the typical challenges in designing embedded solutions. By using Java you can focus on building smarter, more valuable embedded solutions faster. To wit, Java technology is already powering around 10 billion devices worldwide. Delivering on this vision and accelerating the growth of embedded Java solutions, Oracle is today announcing a brand-new product: Oracle Java Micro Edition (ME) Embedded 3.2, accompanied by an update release of the Java ME Software Development Kit (SDK) to version 3.2. What is Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2? Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 is a complete Java runtime client, optimized for ARM architecture connected microcontrollers and other resource-constrained systems. The product provides dedicated embedded functionality and is targeted for low-power, limited memory devices requiring support for a range of network services and I/O interfaces.  What features and APIs are provided by Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2? Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 is a Java ME runtime based on CLDC 1.1 (JSR-139) and IMP-NG (JSR-228). The runtime and virtual machine (VM) are highly optimized for embedded use. Also included in the product are the following optional JSRs and Oracle APIs: File I/O API’s (JSR-75)  Wireless Messaging API’s (JSR-120) Web Services (JSR-172) Security and Trust Services subset (JSR-177) Location API’s (JSR-179) XML API’s (JSR-280)  Device Access API Application Management System (AMS) API AccessPoint API Logging API Additional embedded features are: Remote application management system Support for continuous 24×7 operation Application monitoring, auto-start, and system recovery Application access to peripheral interfaces such as GPIO, I2C, SPIO, memory mapped I/O Application level logging framework, including option for remote logging Headless on-device debugging – source level Java application debugging over IP Connection Remote configuration of the Java VM What type of platforms are targeted by Oracle Java ME 3.2 Embedded? The product is designed for embedded, always-on, resource-constrained, headless (no graphics/no UI), connected (wired or wireless) devices with a variety of peripheral I/O.  The high-level system requirements are as follows: System based on ARM architecture SOCs Memory footprint (approximate) from 130 KB RAM/350KB ROM (for a minimal, customized configuration) to 700 KB RAM/1500 KB ROM (for the full, standard configuration)  Very simple embedded kernel, or a more capable embedded OS/RTOS At least one type of network connection (wired or wireless) The initial release of the product is delivered as a device emulation environment for x86/Windows desktop computers, integrated with the Java ME SDK 3.2. A standard binary of Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 for ARM KEIL development boards based on ARM Cortex M-3/4 (KEIL MCBSTM32F200 using ST Micro SOC STM32F207IG) will soon be available for download from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN).  What types of applications can I develop with Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2? The Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 product is a full-featured embedded Java runtime supporting applications based on the IMP-NG application model, which is derived from the well-known MIDP 2 application model. The runtime supports execution of multiple concurrent applications, remote application management, versatile connectivity, and a rich set of APIs and features relevant for embedded use cases, including the ability to interact with peripheral I/O directly from Java applications. This rich feature set, coupled with familiar and best-in class software development tools, allows developers to quickly build and deploy sophisticated embedded solutions for a wide range of use cases. Target markets well supported by Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 include wireless modules for M2M, industrial and building control, smart grid infrastructure, home automation, and environmental sensors and tracking. What tools are available for embedded application development for Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2? Along with the release of Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2, Oracle is also making available an updated version of the Java ME Software Development Kit (SDK), together with plug-ins for the NetBeans and Eclipse IDEs, to deliver a complete development environment for embedded application development.  OK – sounds great! Where can I find out more? And how do I get started? There is a complete set of information, data sheet, API documentation, “Getting Started Guide”, FAQ, and download links available: For an overview of Oracle Embeddable Java, see here. For the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 press release, see here. For the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 data sheet, see here. For the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 landing page, see here. For the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 documentation page, including a “Getting Started Guide” and FAQ, see here. For the Oracle Java ME SDK 3.2 landing and download page, see here. Finally, to ask more questions, please see the OTN “Java ME Embedded” forum To get started, grab the “Getting Started Guide” and download the Java ME SDK 3.2, which includes the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 device emulation.  Can I learn more about Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 at JavaOne and/or Java Embedded @ JavaOne? Glad you asked Both conferences, JavaOne and Java Embedded @ JavaOne, will feature a host of content and information around the new Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 product, from technical and business sessions, to hands-on tutorials, and demos. Stay tuned, I will post details shortly. Cheers, – Terrence Filed under: Mobile & Embedded Tagged: "Oracle Java ME Embedded", Connected, embedded, Embedded Java, Java Embedded @ JavaOne, JavaOne, Smart

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• SQL SERVER – Database Dynamic Caching by Automatic SQL Server Performance Acceleration

  - by pinaldave

  My second look at SafePeak’s new version (2.1) revealed to me few additional interesting features. For those of you who hadn’t read my previous reviews SafePeak and not familiar with it, here is a quick brief: SafePeak is in business of accelerating performance of SQL Server applications, as well as their scalability, without making code changes to the applications or to the databases. SafePeak performs database dynamic caching, by caching in memory result sets of queries and stored procedures while keeping all those cache correct and up to date. Cached queries are retrieved from the SafePeak RAM in microsecond speed and not send to the SQL Server. The application gets much faster results (100-500 micro seconds), the load on the SQL Server is reduced (less CPU and IO) and the application or the infrastructure gets better scalability. SafePeak solution is hosted either within your cloud servers, hosted servers or your enterprise servers, as part of the application architecture. Connection of the application is done via change of connection strings or adding reroute line in the c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file on all application servers. For those who would like to learn more on SafePeak architecture and how it works, I suggest to read this vendor’s webpage: SafePeak Architecture. More interesting new features in SafePeak 2.1 In my previous review of SafePeak new I covered the first 4 things I noticed in the new SafePeak (check out my article “SQLAuthority News – SafePeak Releases a Major Update: SafePeak version 2.1 for SQL Server Performance Acceleration”): Cache setup and fine-tuning – a critical part for getting good caching results Database templates Choosing which database to cache Monitoring and analysis options by SafePeak Since then I had a chance to play with SafePeak some more and here is what I found. 5. Analysis of SQL Performance (present and history): In SafePeak v.2.1 the tools for understanding of performance became more comprehensive. Every 15 minutes SafePeak creates and updates various performance statistics. Each query (or a procedure execute) that arrives to SafePeak gets a SQL pattern, and after it is used again there are statistics for such pattern. An important part of this product is that it understands the dependencies of every pattern (list of tables, views, user defined functions and procs). From this understanding SafePeak creates important analysis information on performance of every object: response time from the database, response time from SafePeak cache, average response time, percent of traffic and break down of behavior. One of the interesting things this behavior column shows is how often the object is actually pdated. The break down analysis allows knowing the above information for: queries and procedures, tables, views, databases and even instances level. The data is show now on all arriving queries, both read queries (that can be cached), but also any types of updates like DMLs, DDLs, DCLs, and even session settings queries. The stats are being updated every 15 minutes and SafePeak dashboard allows going back in time and investigating what happened within any time frame. 6. Logon trigger, for making sure nothing corrupts SafePeak cache data If you have an application with many parts, many servers many possible locations that can actually update the database, or the SQL Server is accessible to many DBAs or software engineers, each can access some database directly and do some changes without going thru SafePeak – this can create a potential corruption of the data stored in SafePeak cache. To make sure SafePeak cache is correct it needs to get all updates to arrive to SafePeak, and if a DBA will access the database directly and do some changes, for example, then SafePeak will simply not know about it and will not clean SafePeak cache. In the new version, SafePeak brought a new feature called “Logon Trigger” to solve the above challenge. By special click of a button SafePeak can deploy a special server logon trigger (with a CLR object) on your SQL Server that actually monitors all connections and informs SafePeak on any connection that is coming not from SafePeak. In SafePeak dashboard there is an interface that allows to control which logins can be ignored based on login names and IPs, while the rest will invoke cache cleanup of SafePeak and actually locks SafePeak cache until this connection will not be closed. Important to note, that this does not interrupt any logins, only informs SafePeak on such connection. On the Dashboard screen in SafePeak you will be able to see those connections and then decide what to do with them. Configuration of this feature in SafePeak dashboard can be done here: Settings -> SQL instances management -> click on instance -> Logon Trigger tab. Other features: 7. User management ability to grant permissions to someone without changing its configuration and only use SafePeak as performance analysis tool. 8. Better reports for analysis of performance using 15 minute resolution charts. 9. Caching of client cursors 10. Support for IPv6 Summary SafePeak is a great SQL Server performance acceleration solution for users who want immediate results for sites with performance, scalability and peak spikes challenges. Especially if your apps are packaged or 3rd party, since no code changes are done. SafePeak can significantly increase response times, by reducing network roundtrip to the database, decreasing CPU resource usage, eliminating I/O and storage access. SafePeak team provides a free fully functional trial www.safepeak.com/download and actually provides a one-on-one assistance during such trial. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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• Setup Remote Access in Windows Home Server

  - by Mysticgeek

  One of the many awesome features of Windows Home Server, is the ability to access your server and other computers on your network remotely. Today we show you the steps to enable Remote Access to your home server from anywhere you have an Internet connection. Remote Access in Windows Home Server has a lot of great features like uploading and downloading files from shared folders, accessing files from machines on your network, and controling machines remotely (on supported OS versions). Here we take a look at the basics of setting it up, choosing a domain name, and verifying you can connect remotely. Setup Remote Access in Windows Home Server Open the Windows Home Server Console and click on Settings. Next select Remote Access, it is off by default, just click the button to turn it on. Wait while your router is configured for remote access, when it’s complete click Next. Notice that it will enable UPnP, if you don’t wish to have that enabled, you can manually forward the correct ports. If you have any problems with the router being automatically configured, we’ll be taking a look at a more detailed troubleshooting guide in the future. The router is successfully configured, and we can continue to the next process of configuring our domain name. The Domain Name Setup Wizard will start. Notice you will need a Windows Live ID to set it up –which is typically your hotmail address. If you don’t already have one, you can get one here. Type in your Live ID email address and password and click Next… Agree to the Home Server Privacy Statement and the Live Custom Domains Addendum. If you’re concerned about privacy and want to learn more about the domain addendum, make sure to read about it before agreeing. There is nothing abnormal to point out about either statement, but if this is your first time setting it up, it’s good to review the information.   Now choose a name for the domain. You should select something that is easy to remember and identifies your home server. The name can contain up to 63 characters, numbers, letters, and hyphens…and must begin and end with a letter or number. When you have the name figured out click the Confirm button. Note: You can only register one domain name per Live ID. If the name isn’t already taken, you’ll get a confirmation message indicating it’s god to go. The wizard is complete and you can now access the home server from the URL provided. A few other things to point out after you’ve set it up…under Domain Name click on the Details button… Which pulls up the domain detail information and you can refresh the data to verify everything is working correctly. Or you can click the Configure button and then change or release your current domain name. Under Web site settings, you can change you site page headline to whatever you want it to be. Accessing Home Server Remotely After you’ve gotten everything setup for your home server domain, you can begin to access it when you’re away from home. Simply type in the domain address you created in the previous steps. The start page is rather boring…and to start accessing your data, click the Log On button in the upper right hand corner. Then enter in your home server credentials to gain access to your files, folders, and network computers. You won’t be able to log in with your administrator user account however, to protect security of your network. Once you’re logged in, you’ll be able to access different parts of your home server shares and network computers. Conclusion Now that you have Remote Access setup, you should be able to access and manage your files easily. Being able to access data from your home server remotely is great when you need to get certain files while on the road. The web UI is pretty self explanatory, works best in IE as ActiveX is required, and is smooth and easy to work with. In future articles we’ll be covering a lot more regarding remote access, including more of the available features, troubleshooting connection issues, and enabling access for other users. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips GMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerHow to Remote Desktop to the Actual Server Console on Windows 2003Use Windows Vista Aero through Remote Desktop ConnectionAccess Your MySQL Server Remotely Over SSHShare Ubuntu Home Directories using Samba 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Penolo Lets You Share Sketches On Twitter Visit Woolyss.com for Old School Games, Music and Videos Add a Custom Title in IE using Spybot or Spyware Blaster When You Need to Hail a Taxi in NYC Live Map of Marine Traffic NoSquint Remembers Site Specific Zoom Levels (Firefox)

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