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  • NSInvalidArgumentException: Illegal attempt to establish a relationship between objects in different

    - by iPhoneDollaraire
    I have an app based on the CoreDataBooks example that uses an addingManagedObjectContext to add an Ingredient to a Cocktail in order to undo the entire add. The CocktailsDetailViewController in turn calls a BrandPickerViewController to (optionally) set a brand name for a given ingredient. Cocktail, Ingredient and Brand are all NSManagedObjects. Cocktail requires at least one Ingredient (baseLiquor) to be set, so I create it when the Cocktail is created. If I add the Cocktail in CocktailsAddViewController : CocktailsDetailViewController (merging into the Cocktail managed object context on save) without setting baseLiquor.brand, then it works to set the Brand from a picker (also stored in the Cocktails managed context) later from the CocktailsDetailViewController. However, if I try to set baseLiquor.brand in CocktailsAddViewController, I get: Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: 'Illegal attempt to establish a relationship 'brand' between objects in different contexts' From this question I understand that the issue is that Brand is stored in the app's managedObjectContext and the newly added Ingredient and Cocktail are stored in addingManagedObjectContext, and that passing the ObjectID instead would avoid the crash. What I don't get is how to implement the picker generically so that all of the Ingredients (baseLiquor, mixer, garnish, etc.) can be set during the add, as well as one-by-one from the CocktailsDetailViewController after the Cocktail has been created. In other words, following the CoreDataBooks example, where and when would the ObjectID be turned into the NSManagedObject from the parent MOC in both add and edit cases? -IPD UPDATE - Here's the code: - (IBAction)addCocktail:(id)sender { CocktailsAddViewController *addViewController = [[CocktailsAddViewController alloc] init]; addViewController.title = @"Add Cocktail"; addViewController.delegate = self; // Create a new managed object context for the new book -- set its persistent store coordinator to the same as that from the fetched results controller's context. NSManagedObjectContext *addingContext = [[NSManagedObjectContext alloc] init]; self.addingManagedObjectContext = addingContext; [addingContext release]; [addingManagedObjectContext setPersistentStoreCoordinator:[[fetchedResultsController managedObjectContext] persistentStoreCoordinator]]; Cocktail *newCocktail = (Cocktail *)[NSEntityDescription insertNewObjectForEntityForName:@"Cocktail" inManagedObjectContext:self.addingManagedObjectContext]; newCocktail.baseLiquor = (Ingredient *)[NSEntityDescription insertNewObjectForEntityForName:@"Ingredient" inManagedObjectContext:self.addingManagedObjectContext]; newCocktail.mixer = (Ingredient *)[NSEntityDescription insertNewObjectForEntityForName:@"Ingredient" inManagedObjectContext:self.addingManagedObjectContext]; newCocktail.volume = [NSNumber numberWithInt:0]; addViewController.cocktail = newCocktail; UINavigationController *navController = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:addViewController]; [self.navigationController presentModalViewController:navController animated:YES]; [addViewController release]; [navController release]; }

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  • Populate Multiple PDFs

    - by gmcalab
    I am using itextsharp to populate my PDFs. I have no issues with this. Basically what I am doing is getting the PDF and populating the fields in memory then passing back the MemoryStream to be displayed on a webpage. All this is working with a single document PDF. What I am trying to figure out now, is merging multiple PDFs into one MemoryStream. The part I cant figure out is, the documents I am populating are identical. So for example, I have a List<Person> that contains 5 persons. I want to fill out a PDF for each person and merge them all into one, in memory. Bare in mind I am going to fill out the same type of document for each person. The problem I am getting is that when I try to add a second copy of the same PDF to be filled out for the second iteration, it just overwrites the first populated PDF, since it's the same document, therefore not adding a second copy for the second Person at all. So basically if I had the 5 people, I would end up with a single page with the data of the 5th person, instead of a PDF with 5 like pages that contain the data of each person respectively. Here's some code... MemoryStream ms = ms = new MemoryStream(); PdfReader docReader = null; PdfStamper Stamper = null; List<Person> persons = new List<Person>() { new Person("Larry", "David"), new Person("Dustin", "Byfuglien"), new Person("Patrick", "Kane"), new Person("Johnathan", "Toews"), new Person("Marian", "Hossa") }; try { // Iterate thru all persons and populate a PDF for each foreach(var person in persons){ PdfCopyFields Copier = new PdfCopyFields(ms); Copier.AddDocument(GetReader("Person.pdf")); Copier.Close(); docReader = new PdfReader(ms.ToArray()); Stamper = new PdfStamper(docReader, ms); AcroFields Fields = Stamper.AcroFields; Fields.SetField("FirstName", person.FirstName); } }catch(Exception e){ // handle error }finally{ if (Stamper != null) { Stamper.Close(); } if (docReader != null) { docReader.Close(); } }

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  • How to eager load sibling data using LINQ to SQL?

    - by Scott
    The goal is to issue the fewest queries to SQL Server using LINQ to SQL without using anonymous types. The return type for the method will need to be IList<Child1>. The relationships are as follows: Parent Child1 Child2 Grandchild1 Parent Child1 is a one-to-many relationship Child1 Grandchild1 is a one-to-n relationship (where n is zero to infinity) Parent Child2 is a one-to-n relationship (where n is zero to infinity) I am able to eager load the Parent, Child1 and Grandchild1 data resulting in one query to SQL Server. This query with load options eager loads all of the data, except the sibling data (Child2): DataLoadOptions loadOptions = new DataLoadOptions(); loadOptions.LoadWith<Child1>(o => o.GrandChild1List); loadOptions.LoadWith<Child1>(o => o.Parent); dataContext.LoadOptions = loadOptions; IQueryable<Child1> children = from child in dataContext.Child1 select child; I need to load the sibling data as well. One approach I have tried is splitting the query into two LINQ to SQL queries and merging the result sets together (not pretty), however upon accessing the sibling data it is lazy loaded anyway. Adding the sibling load option will issue a query to SQL Server for each Grandchild1 and Child2 record (which is exactly what I am trying to avoid): DataLoadOptions loadOptions = new DataLoadOptions(); loadOptions.LoadWith<Child1>(o => o.GrandChild1List); loadOptions.LoadWith<Child1>(o => o.Parent); loadOptions.LoadWith<Parent>(o => o.Child2List); dataContext.LoadOptions = loadOptions; IQueryable<Child1> children = from child in dataContext.Child1 select child; exec sp_executesql N'SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Child2] AS [t0] WHERE [t0].[ForeignKeyToParent] = @p0',N'@p0 int',@p0=1 exec sp_executesql N'SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Child2] AS [t0] WHERE [t0].[ForeignKeyToParent] = @p0',N'@p0 int',@p0=2 exec sp_executesql N'SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Child2] AS [t0] WHERE [t0].[ForeignKeyToParent] = @p0',N'@p0 int',@p0=3 exec sp_executesql N'SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Child2] AS [t0] WHERE [t0].[ForeignKeyToParent] = @p0',N'@p0 int',@p0=4 I've also written LINQ to SQL queries to join in all of the data in hopes that it would eager load the data, however when the LINQ to SQL EntitySet of Child2 or Grandchild1 are accessed it lazy loads the data. The reason for returning the IList<Child1> is to hydrate business objects. My thoughts are I am either: Approaching this problem the wrong way. Have the option of calling a stored procedure? My organization should not be using LINQ to SQL as an ORM? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you, -Scott

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  • How to merge a "branch" that isn't really a branch (wasn't created by an svn copy)

    - by MatrixFrog
    I'm working on a team with lots of people who are pretty unfamiliar with the concepts of version control systems, and are just kind of doing whatever seems to work, by trial and error. Someone created a "branch" from the trunk that is not ancestrally related to the trunk. My guess is it went something like this: They created a folder in branches. They checked out all the code from the trunk to somewhere on their desktop. They added all that code to the newly created folder as though it was a bunch of brand new files. So the repository isn't aware that all that code is actually just a copy of the trunk. When I look at the history of that branch in TortoiseSVN, and uncheck the "Stop on copy/rename" box, there is no revision that has the trunk (or any other path) under the "Copy from path" column. Then they made lots of changes on their "branch". Meanwhile, others were making lots of changes on the trunk. We tried to do a merge and of course it doesn't work. Because, the trunk and the fake branch are not ancestrally related. I can see only two ways to resolve this: Go through the logs on the "branch", look at every change that was made, and manually apply each change to the trunk. Go through the logs on the trunk, look at every change that was made between revision 540 (when the "branch" was created) and HEAD, and manually apply each change to the "branch". This involves 7 revisions one way or 11 revisions the other way, so neither one is really that terrible. But is there any way to cause the repository to "realize" that the branch really IS ancestrally related even though it was created incorrectly, so that we can take advantage of the built-in merging functionality in Eclipse/TortoiseSVN? (You may be wondering: Why did your company hire these people and allow them to access the SVN repository without making sure they knew how to use it properly first?! We didn't -- this is a school assignment, which is a collaboration between two different classes -- the ones in the lower class were given a very quick hand-wavey "overview" of SVN which didn't really teach them anything. I've asked everyone in the group to please PLEASE read the svn book, and I'll make sure we (the slightly more experienced half of the team) keep a close eye on the repository to ensure this doesn't happen again.)

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  • Revision control for writing programming lessons

    - by Dietrich Epp
    I'd like to write a series programming lessons that guide programmers to build a certain kind of program. After each lesson, I'd like to provide sample code that implements what that lesson covered, and the next lesson would use that code as a starting point. Right now I'm using Git to keep track of the code from lesson to lesson. Each lesson has its own branch. lesson1: A--B--C \ lesson2: D--E--F \ lesson3: G--H--I However, suppose that now I want to make it easier on the Windows programmers using my lessons, so I add a Visual Studio project to lesson 1 and then merge it into lessons 2 and 3. lesson1: A--B--C--------------J \ \ lesson2: D--E--F--------K \ \ lesson3: G--H--I--L And then someone points out a bug in lesson 2 that causes crashes on certain systems. (This diagram is where I am right now, and I'm having doubts about continuing along this path.) lesson1: A--B--C--------------J \ \ lesson2: D--E--F--------K--M \ \ \ lesson3: G--H--I--L--N Here are the problems I imagine having: If I had many lessons, and I fix something in lesson 1, am I going to have to spend fifteen minutes or more just merging that one simple change? I know I'll probably have to test all of those lessons again, but I can put that off. When I make a bunch of changes to various lessons on one computer, how do I pull all of the branches at the same time? If I decide to publish these lessons, I'd like a way to tag all of the branches to correspond with what I publish. I figure I'll just need to tag each branch separately, but it would be nice if there were a better way. When I look at the history, I imagine becoming terribly confused about what I've done. Compare the above diagram to a hypothetical diagram below, where I use rebase instead of merge (and rebase has its own problems): lesson1: A--B--C--J \ lesson2: D2--E2--F2--M \ lesson3: G2--H2--I2 Do any of you have experience working with a project like this? Should I consider using a different VCS, such as Darcs? (Note: it would be a real pain to use centralized VCS, so don't suggest one of those unless the benefits are clear.) Should I consider writing plugins or extra tools for a VCS (such as a "meta tag" which tags several branches)?

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  • Mercurial for Beginners: The Definitive Practical Guide

    - by Laz
    Inspired by Git for beginners: The definitive practical guide. This is a compilation of information on using Mercurial for beginners for practical use. Beginner - a programmer who has touched source control without understanding it very well. Practical - covering situations that the majority of users often encounter - creating a repository, branching, merging, pulling/pushing from/to a remote repository, etc. Notes: Explain how to get something done rather than how something is implemented. Deal with one question per answer. Answer clearly and as concisely as possible. Edit/extend an existing answer rather than create a new answer on the same topic. Please provide a link to the the Mercurial wiki or the HG Book for people who want to learn more. Questions: Installation/Setup How to install Mercurial? How to set up Mercurial? How do you create a new project/repository? How do you configure it to ignore files? Working with the code How do you get the latest code? How do you check out code? How do you commit changes? How do you see what's uncommitted, or the status of your current codebase? How do you destroy unwanted commits? How do you compare two revisions of a file, or your current file and a previous revision? How do you see the history of revisions to a file? How do you handle binary files (visio docs, for instance, or compiler environments)? How do you merge files changed at the "same time"? Tagging, branching, releases, baselines How do you 'mark' 'tag' or 'release' a particular set of revisions for a particular set of files so you can always pull that one later? How do you pull a particular 'release'? How do you branch? How do you merge branches? How do you merge parts of one branch into another branch? Other Good GUI/IDE plugin for Mercurial? Advantages/disadvantages? Any other common tasks a beginner should know? How do I interface with Subversion? Other Mercurial references Mercurial: The Definitive Guide Mercurial Wiki Meet Mercurial | Peepcode Screencast

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  • How to merge an improperly created "branch" that isn't really a branch (wasn't created by an svn cop

    - by MatrixFrog
    I'm working on a team with lots of people who are pretty unfamiliar with the concepts of version control systems, and are just kind of doing whatever seems to work, by trial and error. Someone created a "branch" from the trunk that is not ancestrally related to the trunk. My guess is it went something like this: They created a folder in branches. They checked out all the code from the trunk to somewhere on their desktop. They added all that code to the newly created folder as though it was a bunch of brand new files. So the repository isn't aware that all that code is actually just a copy of the trunk. When I look at the history of that branch in TortoiseSVN, and uncheck the "Stop on copy/rename" box, there is no revision that has the trunk (or any other path) under the "Copy from path" column. Then they made lots of changes on their "branch". Meanwhile, others were making lots of changes on the trunk. We tried to do a merge and of course it doesn't work. Because, the trunk and the fake branch are not ancestrally related. I can see only two ways to resolve this: Go through the logs on the "branch", look at every change that was made, and manually apply each change to the trunk. Go through the logs on the trunk, look at every change that was made between revision 540 (when the "branch" was created) and HEAD, and manually apply each change to the "branch". This involves 7 revisions one way or 11 revisions the other way, so neither one is really that terrible. But is there any way to cause the repository to "realize" that the branch really IS ancestrally related even though it was created incorrectly, so that we can take advantage of the built-in merging functionality in Eclipse/TortoiseSVN? (You may be wondering: Why did your company hire these people and allow them to access the SVN repository without making sure they knew how to use it properly first?! We didn't -- this is a school assignment, which is a collaboration between two different classes -- the ones in the lower class were given a very quick hand-wavey "overview" of SVN which didn't really teach them anything. I've asked everyone in the group to please PLEASE read the svn book, and I'll make sure we (the slightly more experienced half of the team) keep a close eye on the repository to ensure this doesn't happen again.)

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  • msysgit git-am can't apply it's own git format-patch sequence

    - by Andrian Nord
    I'm using msysgit git on windows to operate on central svn repository. I'm using git as I want to have it's awesome little local branches for everything and rebasing on each other. I also need to update from central repo often, so using separate svn/git is not an option. Problem is - git svn --help (man page) says that it is not a good idea to use git merge into master branch (which is set to track from svn's trunk) from local branches, as this will ruin the party and git svn dcommit would not work anymore. I know that it's not exactly true and you may use git merge if you are merging from branch which was properly rebased on master prior merge, but I'm trying to make it safer and actually use git format-patch and git am. We are using code review, so I'm making patches anyway. I also knew about git cherry-pick, but I want to just git am /reviewed/patches/dir/* without actually recalling what commits was corresponding to this patches (without reading patches, that is). So, what's wrong with git svn and git am? It's simple - git am for a few very hard points is doing CRLF into LF conversion for patches supplied (git-mailsplit is doing this, to be precise), if not rebasing. git format-patch is also producing proper (LF-ended) patches. As my repo is mostly CRLF (and it should remain so), patches are, obviously, failing due to wrong EOL. Converting diffs to CRLF and somehow hacking git am to prevent it from conversion is not working, too. It will fail if any file was removed or deleted - git apply will complain about expected /dev/null (but he got /dev/null^M). And if I'm applying it with git am --ignore-space-change --ignore-whitespace that it will commit LF endings straight to the index, which is also weird. I don't know if it will preserve over commiting into svn (via git svn dcommit) and checking it out and I don't want to try out. Of course, it's still possible to try hacking around patches to convert only actual diffs, but this is too much hacks for simple task. So, I wonder, is there really no established way to produce patches and apply them to the same repo on the same system? It just feels weird that msysgit can't apply it's own patches.

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  • Dynamic data-entry value store

    - by simendsjo
    I'm creating a data-entry application where users are allowed to create the entry schema. My first version of this just created a single table per entry schema with each entry spanning a single or multiple columns (for complex types) with the appropriate data type. This allowed for "fast" querying (on small datasets as I didn't index all columns) and simple synchronization where the data-entry was distributed on several databases. I'm not quite happy with this solution though; the only positive thing is the simplicity... I can only store a fixed number of columns. I need to create indexes on all columns. I need to recreate the table on schema changes. Some of my key design criterias are: Very fast querying (Using a simple domain specific query language) Writes doesn't have to be fast Many concurrent users Schemas will change often Schemas might contain many thousand columns The data-entries might be distributed and needs syncronization. Preferable MySQL and SQLite - Databases like DB2 and Oracle is out of the question. Using .Net/Mono I've been thinking of a couple of possible designs, but none of them seems like a good choice. Solution 1: Union like table containing a Type column and one nullable column per type. This avoids joins, but will definitly use a lot of space. Solution 2: Key/value store. All values are stored as string and converted when needed. Also use a lot of space, and of course, I hate having to convert everything to string. Solution 3: Use an xml database or store values as xml. Without any experience I would think this is quite slow (at least for the relational model unless there is some very good xpath support). I also would like to avoid an xml database as other parts of the application fits better as a relational model, and being able to join the data is helpful. I cannot help to think that someone has solved (some of) this already, but I'm unable to find anything. Not quite sure what to search for either... I know market research is doing something like this for their questionnaires, but there are few open source implementations, and the ones I've found doesn't quite fit the bill. PSPP has much of the logic I'm thinking of; primitive column types, many columns, many rows, fast querying and merging. Too bad it doesn't work against a database.. And of course... I don't need 99% of the provided functionality, but a lot of stuff not included. I'm not sure this is the right place to ask such a design related question, but I hope someone here has some tips, know of any existing work, or can point me to a better place to ask such a question. Thanks in advance!

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  • Parsing language for both binary and character files

    - by Thorsten S.
    The problem: You have some data and your program needs specified input. For example strings which are numbers. You are searching for a way to transform the original data in a format you need. And the problem is: The source can be anything. It can be XML, property lists, binary which contains the needed data deeply embedded in binary junk. And your output format may vary also: It can be number strings, float, doubles.... You don't want to program. You want routines which gives you commands capable to transform the data in a form you wish. Surely it contains regular expressions, but it is very good designed and it offers capabilities which are sometimes much more easier and more powerful. Something like a super-grep which you can access (!) as program routines, not only as tool. It allows: joining/grouping/merging of results inserting/deleting/finding/replacing write macros which allows to execute a command chain repeatedly meta-grouping (lists-tables-hypertables) Example (No, I am not looking for a solution to this, it is just an example): You want to read xml strings embedded in a binary file with variable length records. Your tool reads the record length and deletes the junk surrounding your text. Now it splits open the xml and extracts the strings. Being Indian number glyphs and containing decimal commas instead of decimal points, your tool transforms it into ASCII and replaces commas with points. Now the results must be stored into matrices of variable length....etc. etc. I am searching for a good language / language-design and if possible, an implementation. Which design do you like or even, if it does not fulfill the conditions, wouldn't you want to miss ? EDIT: The question is if a solution for the problem exists and if yes, which implementations are available. You DO NOT implement your own sorting algorithm if Quicksort, Mergesort and Heapsort is available. You DO NOT invent your own text parsing method if you have regular expressions. You DO NOT invent your own 3D language for graphics if OpenGL/Direct3D is available. There are existing solutions or at least papers describing the problem and giving suggestions. And there are people who may have worked and experienced such problems and who can give ideas and suggestions. The idea that this problem is totally new and I should work out and implement it myself without background knowledge seems for me, I must admit, totally off the mark.

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  • Simplifying a four-dimensional rule table in Matlab: addressing rows and columns of each dimension

    - by Cate
    Hi all. I'm currently trying to automatically generate a set of fuzzy rules for a set of observations which contain four values for each observation, where each observation will correspond to a state (a good example is with Fisher's Iris Data). In Matlab I am creating a four dimensional rule table where a single cell (a,b,c,d) will contain the corresponding state. To reduce the table I am following the Hong and Lee method of row and column similarity checking but I am having difficulty understanding how to address the third and fourth dimensions' rows and columns. From the method it is my understanding that each dimension is addressed individually and if the rule is true, the table is simplified. The rules for merging are as follows: If all cells in adjacent columns or rows are the same. If two cells are the same or if either of them is empty in adjacent columns or rows and at least one cell in both is not empty. If all cells in a column or row are empty and if cells in its two adjacent columns or rows are the same, merge the three. If all cells in a column or row are empty and if cells in its two adjacent columns or rows are the same or either of them is empty, merge the three. If all cells in a column or row are empty and if all the non-empty cells in the column or row to its left have the same region, and all the non-empty cells in the column or row to its right have the same region, but one different from the previously mentioned region, merge these three columns into two parts. Now for the confusing bit. Simply checking if the entire row/column is the same as the adjacent (rule 1) seems simple enough: if (a,:,:,:) == (a+1,:,:,:) (:,b,:,:) == (:,b+1,:,:) (:,:,c,:) == (:,:,c+1,:) (:,:,:,d) == (:,:,:,d+1) is this correct? but to check if the elements in the row/column match, or either is zero (rules 2 and 4), I am a bit lost. Would it be something along these lines: for a = 1:20 for i = 1:length(b) if (a+1,i,:,:) == (a,i,:,:) ... else if (a+1,i,:,:) == 0 ... else if (a,i,:,:) == 0 etc. and for the third and fourth dimensions: for c = 1:20 for i = 1:length(a) if (i,:,c,:) == (i,:,c+1,:) ... else if (i,:,c+1,:) == 0 ... else if (i,:,c,:) == 0 etc. for d = 1:20 for i = 1:length(a) if (i,:,:,d) == (i,:,:,d+1) ... else if (i,:,:,d+1) == 0 ... else if (i,:,:,d) == 0 etc. even any help with four dimensional arrays would be useful as I'm so confused by the thought of more than three! I would advise you look at the paper to understand my meaning - they themselves have used the Iris data but only given an example with a 2D table. Thanks in advance, hopefully!

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  • Combined sign in and registration page?

    - by Ryan
    This is somewhat against rails convention but I am trying to have one controller that manages both user session authentication and user registration. I am having troubles figuring out how to go about this. So far I am merging the User Controller and the Sessions Controller and having the 'new' method deliver both a new usersession and a new user instance. With the new routes in rails 3 though, I am having trouble figuring out how to generate forms for these items. Below is the code: user_controller.rb class UserController < ApplicationController def new @user_session = UserSession.new @user = User.new end def create_user @user = User.new(params[:user]) if @user.save flash[:notice] = "Account Successfully Registered" redirect_back_or_default signup_path else render :action => new end end def create_session @user_session = UserSession.new(params[:user_session]) if @user_session.save flash[:notice] = "Login successful!" redirect_back_or_default login_path else render :action => new end end end views/user/new.html.erb <div id="login_section"> <% form_for @user_session do |f| -%> <%= f.label :email_address, "Email Address" %> <%= f.text_field :email %> <%= f.label :password, "Password" %> <%= f.text_field :password %> <%= f.submit "Login", :disable_with => 'Logining...' %> <% end -%> </div> <div id="registration_section"> <% form_for @user do |f| -%> <%= f.label :email_address, "Email Address" %> <%= f.text_field :email %> <%= f.label :password, "Password" %> <%= f.text_field :password %> <%= f.label :password_confirmation, "Password Confirmation" %> <%= f.text_field :password_confirmation %> <%= f.submit "Register", :disable_with => 'Logining...' %> <% end -%> </div> I imagine I will need to use :url = something for those forms, but I am unsure how to specify. Within routes.rb I have yet to specify either Usersor UserSessions as resources (not convinced that this is the best way to do it... but I could be). I would like, however, the registration and login on the same page and have implemented this by doing the following: routes.rb match 'signup' => 'user#new' match 'login' => 'user#new' What's the best way to go about solving this?

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  • Creating multiple heads in remote repository

    - by Jab
    We are looking to move our team (~10 developers) from SVN to mercurial. We are trying to figure out how to manage our workflow. In particular, we are trying to see if creating remote heads is the right solution. We currently have a very large repository with multiple, related projects. They share a lot of code, but pieces of the project are deployed by different teams (3 teams) independent of other portions of the code-base. So each team is working on concurrent large features. The way we currently handles this in SVN are branches. Team1 has a branch for Feature1, same deal for the other teams. When Team1 finishes their change, it gets merged into the trunk and deployed out. The other teams follow suite when their project is complete, merging of course. So my initial thought are using Named Branches for these situations. Team1 makes a Feature1 branch off of the default branch in Hg. Now, here is the question. Should the team PUSH that branch, in it's current/half-state to the repository. This will create a second head in the core repo. My initial reaction was "NO!" as it seems like a bad idea. Handling multiple heads on our repository just sounds awful, but there are some advantages... First, the teams want to setup Continuous Integration to build this branch during their development cycle(months long). This will only work if the CI can pull this branch from the repo. This is something we do now with SVN, copy a CI build and change the branch. Easy. Second, it makes it easier for any team member to jump onto the branch and start working. Without pushing to the core repo, they would have to receive a push from a developer on that team with the changeset information. It is also possible to lose local commits to hardware failure. The chances increase a lot if it's a branch by a single developer who has followed the "don't push until finished" approach. And lastly is just for ease of use. The developers can easily just commit and push on their branch at any time without consequence(as they do today, in their SVN branches). Is there a better way to handle this scenario that I may be missing? I just want a veteran's opinion before moving forward with the strategy. For bug fixes we like the general workflow of mecurial, anonymous branches that only consist of 1-2 commits. The simplicity is great for those cases. By the way, I've read this , great article which seems to favor Named branches.

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  • How do we simplify this kind of code in Java? Something like macros in C?

    - by Terry Li
    public static boolean diagonals(char[][] b, int row, int col, int l) { int counter = 1; // because we start from the current position char charAtPosition = b[row][col]; int numRows = b.length; int numCols = b[0].length; int topleft = 0; int topright = 0; int bottomleft = 0; int bottomright = 0; for (int i=row-1,j=col-1;i>=0 && j>=0;i--,j--) { if (b[i][j]==charAtPosition) { topleft++; } else { break; } } for (int i=row-1,j=col+1;i>=0 && j<=numCols;i--,j++) { if (b[i][j]==charAtPosition) { topright++; } else { break; } } for (int i=row+1,j=col-1;i<=numRows && j>=0;i++,j--) { if (b[i][j]==charAtPosition) { bottomleft++; } else { break; } } for (int i=row+1,j=col+1;i<=numRows && j<=numCols;i++,j++) { if (b[i][j]==charAtPosition) { bottomright++; } else { break; } } return topleft + bottomright + 1 >= l || topright + bottomleft + 1 >= l; //in this case l is 5 } After I was done posting the code above here, I couldn't help but wanted to simplify the code by merging the four pretty much the same loops into one method. Here's the kind of method I want to have: public int countSteps(char horizontal, char vertical) { } Two parameters horizontal and vertical can be either + or - to indicate the four directions to walk in. What I want to see if possible at all is i++; is generalized to i horizontal horizontal; when horizontal taking the value of +. What I don't want to see is if or switch statements, for example: public int countSteps(char horizontal, char vertical) { if (horizontal == '+' && vertical == '-') { for (int i=row-1,j=col+1;i>=0 && j<=numCols;i--,j++) { if (b[i][j]==charAtPosition) { topright++; } else { break; } } } else if (horizontal == '+' && vertical == '+') { for (int i=row+1,j=col+1;i>=0 && j<=numCols;i++,j++) { if (b[i][j]==charAtPosition) { topright++; } else { break; } } } else if () { } else { } } Since it is as tedious as the original one. Note also that the comparing signs for the loop condition i>=0 && j<=numCols; for example, >= && <= have correspondence with the value combination of horizontal and vertical. Sorry for my bad wording, please let me know if anything is not clear.

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  • Loading datasets from datastore and merge into single dictionary. Resource problem.

    - by fredrik
    Hi, I have a productdatabase that contains products, parts and labels for each part based on langcodes. The problem I'm having and haven't got around is a huge amount of resource used to get the different datasets and merging them into a dict to suit my needs. The products in the database are based on a number of parts that is of a certain type (ie. color, size). And each part has a label for each language. I created 4 different models for this. Products, ProductParts, ProductPartTypes and ProductPartLabels. I've narrowed it down to about 10 lines of code that seams to generate the problem. As of currently I have 3 Products, 3 Types, 3 parts for each type, and 2 languages. And the request takes a wooping 5500ms to generate. for product in productData: productDict = {} typeDict = {} productDict['productName'] = product.name cache_key = 'productparts_%s' % (slugify(product.key())) partData = memcache.get(cache_key) if not partData: for type in typeData: typeDict[type.typeId] = { 'default' : '', 'optional' : [] } ## Start of problem lines ## for defaultPart in product.defaultPartsData: for label in labelsForLangCode: if label.key() in defaultPart.partLabelList: typeDict[defaultPart.type.typeId]['default'] = label.partLangLabel for optionalPart in product.optionalPartsData: for label in labelsForLangCode: if label.key() in optionalPart.partLabelList: typeDict[optionalPart.type.typeId]['optional'].append(label.partLangLabel) ## end problem lines ## memcache.add(cache_key, typeDict, 500) partData = memcache.get(cache_key) productDict['parts'] = partData productList.append(productDict) I guess the problem lies in the number of for loops is too many and have to iterate over the same data over and over again. labelForLangCode get all labels from ProductPartLabels that match the current langCode. All parts for a product is stored in a db.ListProperty(db.key). The same goes for all labels for a part. The reason I need the some what complex dict is that I want to display all data for a product with it's default parts and show a selector for the optional one. The defaultPartsData and optionaPartsData are properties in the Product Model that looks like this: @property def defaultPartsData(self): return ProductParts.gql('WHERE __key__ IN :key', key = self.defaultParts) @property def optionalPartsData(self): return ProductParts.gql('WHERE __key__ IN :key', key = self.optionalParts) When the completed dict is in the memcache it works smoothly, but isn't the memcache reset if the application goes in to hibernation? Also I would like to show the page for first time user(memcache empty) with out the enormous delay. Also as I said above, this is only a small amount of parts/product. What will the result be when it's 30 products with 100 parts. Is one solution to create a scheduled task to cache it in the memcache every hour? It this efficient? I know this is alot to take in, but I'm stuck. I've been at this for about 12 hours straight. And can't figure out a solution. ..fredrik

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  • Spanning columns in HTML table.

    - by Tony
    I'm trying do to a very simple operation of merging two columns in a table. This seems easy with the colspan, but if I merge different columns without leaving at least one row without any merged columns, the sizing gets completely messed up. Please see the following example at http://www.allthingsdope.com/table.html or take a look at and try the following code: Good: <table width="700px"> <tr> <th width="100px">1: 100px</th> <td width="300px">2: 300px</td> <td width="200px">3: 200px</td> <td width="100px">4: 100px</td> </tr> <tr> <th width="100px">1: 100px</th> <td colspan=2 width="500px" >2 & 3: 500px</td> <td width="100px">4: 100px</td> </tr> <tr> <th width="100px">1: 100px</th> <td width="300px">2: 300px</td> <td colspan=2 width="300px">3 & 4: 300px</td> </tr> </table> Bad: <table width="700px"> <tr> <th width="100px">1: 100px</th> <td colspan=2 width="500px" >2 & 3: 500px</td> <td width="100px">4: 100px</td> </tr> <tr> <th width="100px">1: 100px</th> <td width="300px">2: 300px</td> <td colspan=2 width="300px">3 & 4: 300px</td> </tr> </table> This seems so simple but I can not figure it out!

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  • Basics of Join Predicate Pushdown in Oracle

    - by Maria Colgan
    Happy New Year to all of our readers! We hope you all had a great holiday season. We start the new year by continuing our series on Optimizer transformations. This time it is the turn of Predicate Pushdown. I would like to thank Rafi Ahmed for the content of this blog.Normally, a view cannot be joined with an index-based nested loop (i.e., index access) join, since a view, in contrast with a base table, does not have an index defined on it. A view can only be joined with other tables using three methods: hash, nested loop, and sort-merge joins. Introduction The join predicate pushdown (JPPD) transformation allows a view to be joined with index-based nested-loop join method, which may provide a more optimal alternative. In the join predicate pushdown transformation, the view remains a separate query block, but it contains the join predicate, which is pushed down from its containing query block into the view. The view thus becomes correlated and must be evaluated for each row of the outer query block. These pushed-down join predicates, once inside the view, open up new index access paths on the base tables inside the view; this allows the view to be joined with index-based nested-loop join method, thereby enabling the optimizer to select an efficient execution plan. The join predicate pushdown transformation is not always optimal. The join predicate pushed-down view becomes correlated and it must be evaluated for each outer row; if there is a large number of outer rows, the cost of evaluating the view multiple times may make the nested-loop join suboptimal, and therefore joining the view with hash or sort-merge join method may be more efficient. The decision whether to push down join predicates into a view is determined by evaluating the costs of the outer query with and without the join predicate pushdown transformation under Oracle's cost-based query transformation framework. The join predicate pushdown transformation applies to both non-mergeable views and mergeable views and to pre-defined and inline views as well as to views generated internally by the optimizer during various transformations. The following shows the types of views on which join predicate pushdown is currently supported. UNION ALL/UNION view Outer-joined view Anti-joined view Semi-joined view DISTINCT view GROUP-BY view Examples Consider query A, which has an outer-joined view V. The view cannot be merged, as it contains two tables, and the join between these two tables must be performed before the join between the view and the outer table T4. A: SELECT T4.unique1, V.unique3 FROM T_4K T4,            (SELECT T10.unique3, T10.hundred, T10.ten             FROM T_5K T5, T_10K T10             WHERE T5.unique3 = T10.unique3) VWHERE T4.unique3 = V.hundred(+) AND       T4.ten = V.ten(+) AND       T4.thousand = 5; The following shows the non-default plan for query A generated by disabling join predicate pushdown. When query A undergoes join predicate pushdown, it yields query B. Note that query B is expressed in a non-standard SQL and shows an internal representation of the query. B: SELECT T4.unique1, V.unique3 FROM T_4K T4,           (SELECT T10.unique3, T10.hundred, T10.ten             FROM T_5K T5, T_10K T10             WHERE T5.unique3 = T10.unique3             AND T4.unique3 = V.hundred(+)             AND T4.ten = V.ten(+)) V WHERE T4.thousand = 5; The execution plan for query B is shown below. In the execution plan BX, note the keyword 'VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE' indicates that the view has undergone the join predicate pushdown transformation. The join predicates (shown here in red) have been moved into the view V; these join predicates open up index access paths thereby enabling index-based nested-loop join of the view. With join predicate pushdown, the cost of query A has come down from 62 to 32.  As mentioned earlier, the join predicate pushdown transformation is cost-based, and a join predicate pushed-down plan is selected only when it reduces the overall cost. Consider another example of a query C, which contains a view with the UNION ALL set operator.C: SELECT R.unique1, V.unique3 FROM T_5K R,            (SELECT T1.unique3, T2.unique1+T1.unique1             FROM T_5K T1, T_10K T2             WHERE T1.unique1 = T2.unique1             UNION ALL             SELECT T1.unique3, T2.unique2             FROM G_4K T1, T_10K T2             WHERE T1.unique1 = T2.unique1) V WHERE R.unique3 = V.unique3 and R.thousand < 1; The execution plan of query C is shown below. In the above, 'VIEW UNION ALL PUSHED PREDICATE' indicates that the UNION ALL view has undergone the join predicate pushdown transformation. As can be seen, here the join predicate has been replicated and pushed inside every branch of the UNION ALL view. The join predicates (shown here in red) open up index access paths thereby enabling index-based nested loop join of the view. Consider query D as an example of join predicate pushdown into a distinct view. We have the following cardinalities of the tables involved in query D: Sales (1,016,271), Customers (50,000), and Costs (787,766).  D: SELECT C.cust_last_name, C.cust_city FROM customers C,            (SELECT DISTINCT S.cust_id             FROM sales S, costs CT             WHERE S.prod_id = CT.prod_id and CT.unit_price > 70) V WHERE C.cust_state_province = 'CA' and C.cust_id = V.cust_id; The execution plan of query D is shown below. As shown in XD, when query D undergoes join predicate pushdown transformation, the expensive DISTINCT operator is removed and the join is converted into a semi-join; this is possible, since all the SELECT list items of the view participate in an equi-join with the outer tables. Under similar conditions, when a group-by view undergoes join predicate pushdown transformation, the expensive group-by operator can also be removed. With the join predicate pushdown transformation, the elapsed time of query D came down from 63 seconds to 5 seconds. Since distinct and group-by views are mergeable views, the cost-based transformation framework also compares the cost of merging the view with that of join predicate pushdown in selecting the most optimal execution plan. Summary We have tried to illustrate the basic ideas behind join predicate pushdown on different types of views by showing example queries that are quite simple. Oracle can handle far more complex queries and other types of views not shown here in the examples. Again many thanks to Rafi Ahmed for the content of this blog post.

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  • The hidden cost of interrupting knowledge workers

    - by Piet
    The November issue of pragpub has an interesting article on interruptions. The article is written by Brian Tarbox, who also mentions the article on his blog. I like the subtitle: ‘Simple Strategies for Avoiding Dumping Your Mental Stack’. Brian talks about the effective cost of interrupting a ‘knowledge worker’, often with trivial questions or distractions. In the eyes of the interruptor, the interruption only costs the time the interrupted had to listen to the question and give an answer. However, depending on what the interrupted was doing at the time, getting fully immersed in their task again might take up to 15-20 minutes. Enough interruptions might even cause a knowledge worker to mentally call it a day. According to this article interruptions can consume about 28% of a knowledge worker’s time, translating in a $588 billion loss for US companies each year. Looking for a new developer to join your team? Ever thought about optimizing your team’s environment and the way they work instead? Making non knowledge workers aware You can’t. Well, I haven’t succeeded yet. And believe me: I’ve tried. When you’ve got a simple way to really increase your productivity (’give me 2 hours of uninterrupted time a day’) it wouldn’t be right not to tell your boss or team-leader about it. The problem is: only productive knowledge workers seem to understand this. People who don’t fall into this category just seem to think you’re joking, being arrogant or anti-social when you tell them the interruptions can really have an impact on your productivity. Also, knowledge workers often work in a very concentrated mental state which is described here as: It is the same mindfulness as ecstatic lovemaking, the merging of two into a fluidly harmonious one. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task. Yes, coding can be addictive and if you’re interrupting a programmer at the wrong moment, you’re effectively bringing down a junkie from his high in just a few seconds. This can result in seemingly arrogant, almost aggressive reactions. How to make people aware of the production-cost they’re inflicting: I’ve been often pondering that question myself. The article suggests that solutions based on that question never seem to work. To be honest: I’ve never even been able to find a half decent solution for this question. People who are not in this situations just don’t understand the issue, no matter how you try to explain it. Fun (?) thing I’ve noticed: Programmers or IT people in general who don’t get this are often the kind of people who just don’t get anything done. Interrupt handling (interruption management?) IRL Have non-urgent questions handled in a non-interruptive way It helps a bit to educate people into using non-interruptive ways to ask questions: “duh, I have no idea, but I’m a bit busy here now could you put it in an email so I don’t forget?”. Eventually, a considerable amount of people will skip interrupting you and just send an email right away. Some stubborn-headed people however will continue to just interrupt you, saying “you’re 10 meters from my desk, why can’t we just talk?”. Just remember to disable your email notifications, it can be hard to resist opening your email client when you know a new email just arrived. Use Do Not Disturb signals When working in a group of programmers, often the unofficial sign you can only be interrupted for something important is to put on headphones. And when the environment is quiet enough, often people aren’t even listening to music. Otherwise music can help to block the indirect distractions (someone else talking on the phone or tapping their feet). You might get a “they’re all just surfing and listening to music”-reaction from outsiders though. Peopleware talks about a team where the no-interruption sign was placing a shawl on the desk. If I remember correctly, I am unable to locate my copy of this really excellent must-read book. If you have all standardized on the same IM tool, maybe that tool has a ‘do not disturb’ setting. Also some phone-systems have a ‘DND’ (do not disturb) setting. Hide Brian offers a number of good suggestions, some obvious like: hide away somewhere they can’t find you. Not sure how long it’ll be till someone thinks you’re just taking a nap somewhere though. Also, this often isn’t possible or your boss might not understand this. And if you really get caught taking a nap, make sure to explain that your were powernapping. Counter-act interruptions Another suggestion he offers is when you’re being interrupted to just hold up your hand, blocking the interruption, and at least giving you time to finish your sentence or your block/line of code. The last suggestion works more as a way to make it obvious to the interruptor that they really are interrupting your work and to offload some of the cost on the interruptor. In practice, this can also helps you cool down a bit so you don’t start saying nasty things to the interruptor. Unfortunately I’ve sometimes been confronted with people who just ignore this signal and keep talking, as if they’re sure that whatever they’ve got to say is really worth listening to and without a doubt more important than anything you might be doing. This behaviour usually leaves me speechless (not good when someone just asked a question). I’ve noticed that these people are usually also the first to complain when being interrupted themselves. They’re generally not very liked as colleagues, so try not to imitate their behaviour. TDD as a way to minimize recovery time I don’t like Test Driven Development. Mainly for only one reason: It interrupts flow. At least, that’s what it does for me, but maybe I’m just not grown used to TDD yet. BUT a positive effect TDD has on me when I have to work in an interruptive environment and can’t really get into the ‘flow’ (also supposedly called ‘the zone’ by software developers, although I’ve never heard it 1st hand), TDD helps me to concentrate on the tasks at hand and helps me to get back at work after an interruption. I feel when using TDD, I can get by without the need for being totally ‘in’ the project and I can be reasonably productive without obtaining ‘flow’. Do you have a suggestion on how to make people aware of the concept of ‘flow’ and the cost of interruptions? (without looking like an arrogant ass or a weirdo)

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  • How can a code editor effectively hint at code nesting level - without using indentation?

    - by pgfearo
    I've written an XML text editor that provides 2 view options for the same XML text, one indented (virtually), the other left-justified. The motivation for the left-justified view is to help users 'see' the whitespace characters they're using for indentation of plain-text or XPath code without interference from indentation that is an automated side-effect of the XML context. I want to provide visual clues (in the non-editable part of the editor) for the left-justified mode that will help the user, but without getting too elaborate. I tried just using connecting lines, but that seemed too busy. The best I've come up with so far is shown in a mocked up screenshot of the editor below, but I'm seeking better/simpler alternatives (that don't require too much code). [Edit] Taking the heatmap idea (from: @jimp) I get this and 3 alternatives - labelled a, b and c: The following section describes the accepted answer as a proposal, bringing together ideas from a number of other answers and comments. As this question is now community wiki, please feel free to update this. NestView The name for this idea which provides a visual method to improve the readability of nested code without using indentation. Contour Lines The name for the differently shaded lines within the NestView The image above shows the NestView used to help visualise an XML snippet. Though XML is used for this illustration, any other code syntax that uses nesting could have been used for this illustration. An Overview: The contour lines are shaded (as in a heatmap) to convey nesting level The contour lines are angled to show when a nesting level is being either opened or closed. A contour line links the start of a nesting level to the corresponding end. The combined width of contour lines give a visual impression of nesting level, in addition to the heatmap. The width of the NestView may be manually resizable, but should not change as the code changes. Contour lines can either be compressed or truncated to keep acheive this. Blank lines are sometimes used code to break up text into more digestable chunks. Such lines could trigger special behaviour in the NestView. For example the heatmap could be reset or a background color contour line used, or both. One or more contour lines associated with the currently selected code can be highlighted. The contour line associated with the selected code level would be emphasized the most, but other contour lines could also 'light up' in addition to help highlight the containing nested group Different behaviors (such as code folding or code selection) can be associated with clicking/double-clicking on a Contour Line. Different parts of a contour line (leading, middle or trailing edge) may have different dynamic behaviors associated. Tooltips can be shown on a mouse hover event over a contour line The NestView is updated continously as the code is edited. Where nesting is not well-balanced assumptions can be made where the nesting level should end, but the associated temporary contour lines must be highlighted in some way as a warning. Drag and drop behaviors of Contour Lines can be supported. Behaviour may vary according to the part of the contour line being dragged. Features commonly found in the left margin such as line numbering and colour highlighting for errors and change state could overlay the NestView. Additional Functionality The proposal addresses a range of additional issues - many are outside the scope of the original question, but a useful side-effect. Visually linking the start and end of a nested region The contour lines connect the start and end of each nested level Highlighting the context of the currently selected line As code is selected, the associated nest-level in the NestView can be highlighted Differentiating between code regions at the same nesting level In the case of XML different hues could be used for different namespaces. Programming languages (such as c#) support named regions that could be used in a similar way. Dividing areas within a nesting area into different visual blocks Extra lines are often inserted into code to aid readability. Such empty lines could be used to reset the saturation level of the NestView's contour lines. Multi-Column Code View Code without indentation makes the use of a multi-column view more effective because word-wrap or horizontal scrolling is less likely to be required. In this view, once code has reach the bottom of one column, it flows into the next one: Usage beyond merely providing a visual aid As proposed in the overview, the NestView could provide a range of editing and selection features which would be broadly in line with what is expected from a TreeView control. The key difference is that a typical TreeView node has 2 parts: an expander and the node icon. A NestView contour line can have as many as 3 parts: an opener (sloping), a connector (vertical) and a close (sloping). On Indentation The NestView presented alongside non-indented code complements, but is unlikely to replace, the conventional indented code view. It's likely that any solutions adopting a NestView, will provide a method to switch seamlessly between indented and non-indented code views without affecting any of the code text itself - including whitespace characters. One technique for the indented view would be 'Virtual Formatting' - where a dynamic left-margin is used in lieu of tab or space characters. The same nesting-level data used to dynamically render the NestView could also used for the more conventional-looking indented view. Printing Indentation will be important for the readability of printed code. Here, the absence of tab/space characters and a dynamic left-margin means that the text can wrap at the right-margin and still maintain the integrity of the indented view. Line numbers can be used as visual markers that indicate where code is word-wrapped and also the exact position of indentation: Screen Real-Estate: Flat Vs Indented Addressing the question of whether the NestView uses up valuable screen real-estate: Contour lines work well with a width the same as the code editor's character width. A NestView width of 12 character widths can therefore accommodate 12 levels of nesting before contour lines are truncated/compressed. If an indented view uses 3 character-widths for each nesting level then space is saved until nesting reaches 4 levels of nesting, after this nesting level the flat view has a space-saving advantage that increases with each nesting level. Note: A minimum indentation of 4 character widths is often recommended for code, however XML often manages with less. Also, Virtual Formatting permits less indentation to be used because there's no risk of alignment issues A comparison of the 2 views is shown below: Based on the above, its probably fair to conclude that view style choice will be based on factors other than screen real-estate. The one exception is where screen space is at a premium, for example on a Netbook/Tablet or when multiple code windows are open. In these cases, the resizable NestView would seem to be a clear winner. Use Cases Examples of real-world examples where NestView may be a useful option: Where screen real-estate is at a premium a. On devices such as tablets, notepads and smartphones b. When showing code on websites c. When multiple code windows need to be visible on the desktop simultaneously Where consistent whitespace indentation of text within code is a priority For reviewing deeply nested code. For example where sub-languages (e.g. Linq in C# or XPath in XSLT) might cause high levels of nesting. Accessibility Resizing and color options must be provided to aid those with visual impairments, and also to suit environmental conditions and personal preferences: Compatability of edited code with other systems A solution incorporating a NestView option should ideally be capable of stripping leading tab and space characters (identified as only having a formatting role) from imported code. Then, once stripped, the code could be rendered neatly in both the left-justified and indented views without change. For many users relying on systems such as merging and diff tools that are not whitespace-aware this will be a major concern (if not a complete show-stopper). Other Works: Visualisation of Overlapping Markup Published research by Wendell Piez, dated from 2004, addresses the issue of the visualisation of overlapping markup, specifically LMNL. This includes SVG graphics with significant similarities to the NestView proposal, as such, they are acknowledged here. The visual differences are clear in the images (below), the key functional distinction is that NestView is intended only for well-nested XML or code, whereas Wendell Piez's graphics are designed to represent overlapped nesting. The graphics above were reproduced - with kind permission - from http://www.piez.org Sources: Towards Hermenutic Markup Half-steps toward LMNL

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  • API Message Localization

    - by Jesse Taber
    In my post, “Keep Localizable Strings Close To Your Users” I talked about the internationalization and localization difficulties that can arise when you sprinkle static localizable strings throughout the different logical layers of an application. The main point of that post is that you should have your localizable strings reside as close to the user-facing modules of your application as possible. For example, if you’re developing an ASP .NET web forms application all of the localizable strings should be kept in .resx files that are associated with the .aspx views of the application. In this post I want to talk about how this same concept can be applied when designing and developing APIs. An API Facilitates Machine-to-Machine Interaction You can typically think about a web, desktop, or mobile application as a collection “views” or “screens” through which users interact with the underlying logic and data. The application can be designed based on the assumption that there will be a human being on the other end of the screen working the controls. You are designing a machine-to-person interaction and the application should be built in a way that facilitates the user’s clear understanding of what is going on. Dates should be be formatted in a way that the user will be familiar with, messages should be presented in the user’s preferred language, etc. When building an API, however, there are no screens and you can’t make assumptions about who or what is on the other end of each call. An API is, by definition, a machine-to-machine interaction. A machine-to-machine interaction should be built in a way that facilitates a clear and unambiguous understanding of what is going on. Dates and numbers should be formatted in predictable and standard ways (e.g. ISO 8601 dates) and messages should be presented in machine-parseable formats. For example, consider an API for a time tracking system that exposes a resource for creating a new time entry. The JSON for creating a new time entry for a user might look like: 1: { 2: "userId": 4532, 3: "startDateUtc": "2012-10-22T14:01:54.98432Z", 4: "endDateUtc": "2012-10-22T11:34:45.29321Z" 5: }   Note how the parameters for start and end date are both expressed as ISO 8601 compliant dates in UTC. Using a date format like this in our API leaves little room for ambiguity. It’s also important to note that using ISO 8601 dates is a much, much saner thing than the \/Date(<milliseconds since epoch>)\/ nonsense that is sometimes used in JSON serialization. Probably the most important thing to note about the JSON snippet above is the fact that the end date comes before the start date! The API should recognize that and disallow the time entry from being created, returning an error to the caller. You might inclined to send a response that looks something like this: 1: { 2: "errors": [ {"message" : "The end date must come after the start date"}] 3: }   While this may seem like an appropriate thing to do there are a few problems with this approach: What if there is a user somewhere on the other end of the API call that doesn’t speak English?  What if the message provided here won’t fit properly within the UI of the application that made the API call? What if the verbiage of the message isn’t consistent with the rest of the application that made the API call? What if there is no user directly on the other end of the API call (e.g. this is a batch job uploading time entries once per night unattended)? The API knows nothing about the context from which the call was made. There are steps you could take to given the API some context (e.g.allow the caller to send along a language code indicating the language that the end user speaks), but that will only get you so far. As the designer of the API you could make some assumptions about how the API will be called, but if we start making assumptions we could very easily make the wrong assumptions. In this situation it’s best to make no assumptions and simply design the API in such a way that the caller has the responsibility to convey error messages in a manner that is appropriate for the context in which the error was raised. You would work around some of these problems by allowing callers to add metadata to each request describing the context from which the call is being made (e.g. accepting a ‘locale’ parameter denoting the desired language), but that will add needless clutter and complexity. It’s better to keep the API simple and push those context-specific concerns down to the caller whenever possible. For our very simple time entry example, this can be done by simply changing our error message response to look like this: 1: { 2: "errors": [ {"code": 100}] 3: }   By changing our error error from exposing a string to a numeric code that is easily parseable by another application, we’ve placed all of the responsibility for conveying the actual meaning of the error message on the caller. It’s best to have the caller be responsible for conveying this meaning because the caller understands the context much better than the API does. Now the caller can see error code 100, know that it means that the end date submitted falls before the start date and take appropriate action. Now all of the problems listed out above are non-issues because the caller can simply translate the error code of ‘100’ into the proper action and message for the current context. The numeric code representation of the error is a much better way to facilitate the machine-to-machine interaction that the API is meant to facilitate. An API Does Have Human Users While APIs should be built for machine-to-machine interaction, people still need to wire these interactions together. As a programmer building a client application that will consume the time entry API I would find it frustrating to have to go dig through the API documentation every time I encounter a new error code (assuming the documentation exists and is accurate). The numeric error code approach hurts the discoverability of the API and makes it painful to integrate with. We can help ease this pain by merging our two approaches: 1: { 2: "errors": [ {"code": 100, "message" : "The end date must come after the start date"}] 3: }   Now we have an easily parseable numeric error code for the machine-to-machine interaction that the API is meant to facilitate and a human-readable message for programmers working with the API. The human-readable message here is not intended to be viewed by end-users of the API and as such is not really a “localizable string” in my opinion. We could opt to expose a locale parameter for all API methods and store translations for all error messages, but that’s a lot of extra effort and overhead that doesn’t add a lot real value to the API. I might be a bit of an “ugly American”, but I think it’s probably fine to have the API return English messages when the target for those messages is a programmer. When resources are limited (which they always are), I’d argue that you’re better off hard-coding these messages in English and putting more effort into building more useful features, improving security, tweaking performance, etc.

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  • Taking the training wheels off: Accelerating the Business with Oracle IAM by Brian Mozinski (Accenture)

    - by Greg Jensen
    Today, technical requirements for IAM are evolving rapidly, and the bar is continuously raised for high performance IAM solutions as organizations look to roll out high volume use cases on the back of legacy systems.  Existing solutions were often designed and architected to support offline transactions and manual processes, and the business owners today demand globally scalable infrastructure to support the growth their business cases are expected to deliver. To help IAM practitioners address these challenges and make their organizations and themselves more successful, this series we will outline the: • Taking the training wheels off: Accelerating the Business with Oracle IAM The explosive growth in expectations for IAM infrastructure, and the business cases they support to gain investment in new security programs. • "Necessity is the mother of invention": Technical solutions developed in the field Well proven tricks of the trade, used by IAM guru’s to maximize your solution while addressing the requirements of global organizations. • The Art & Science of Performance Tuning of Oracle IAM 11gR2 Real world examples of performance tuning with Oracle IAM • No Where to go but up: Extending the benefits of accelerated IAM Anything is possible, compelling new solutions organizations are unlocking with accelerated Oracle IAM Let’s get started … by talking about the changing dynamics driving these discussions. Big Companies are getting bigger everyday, and increasingly organizations operate across state lines, multiple times zones, and in many countries or continents at the same time.  No longer is midnight to 6am a safe time to take down the system for upgrades, to run recon’s and import or update user accounts and attributes.  Further IT organizations are operating as shared services with SLA’s similar to telephone carrier levels expected by their “clients”.  Workers are moved in and out of roles on a weekly, daily, or even hourly rate and IAM is expected to support those rapid changes.  End users registering for services during business hours in Singapore are expected their access to be green-lighted in custom apps hosted in Portugal within the hour.  Many of the expectations of asynchronous systems and batched updates are not adequate and the number and types of users is growing. When organizations acted more like independent teams at functional or geographic levels it was manageable to have processes that relied on a handful of people who knew how to make things work …. Knew how to get you access to the key systems to get your job done.  Today everyone is expected to do more with less, the finance administrator previously supporting their local Atlanta sales office might now be asked to help close the books for the Johannesburg team, and access certification process once completed monthly by Joan on the 3rd floor is now done by a shared pool of resources in Sao Paulo.   Fragmented processes that rely on institutional knowledge to get access to systems and get work done quickly break down in these scenarios.  Highly robust processes that have automated workflows for connected or disconnected systems give organizations the dynamic flexibility to share work across these lines and cut costs or increase productivity. As the IT industry computing paradigms continue to change with the passing of time, and as mature or proven approaches become clear, it is normal for organizations to adjust accordingly. Businesses must manage identity in an increasingly hybrid world in which legacy on-premises IAM infrastructures are extended or replaced to support more and more interconnected and interdependent services to a wider range of users. The old legacy IAM implementation models we had relied on to manage identities no longer apply. End users expect to self-request access to services from their tablet, get supervisor approval over mobile devices and email, and launch the application even if is hosted on the cloud, or run by a partner, vendor, or service provider. While user expectations are higher, they are also simpler … logging into custom desktop apps to request approvals, or going through email or paper based processes for certification is unacceptable.  Users expect security to operate within the paradigm of the application … i.e. feel like the application they are using. Citizen and customer facing applications have evolved from every where, with custom applications, 3rd party tools, and merging in from acquired entities or 3rd party OEM’s resold to expand your portfolio of services.  These all have their own user stores, authentication models, user lifecycles, session management, etc.  Often the designers/developers are no longer accessible and the documentation is limited.  Bringing together underlying directories to scale for growth, and improve user experience is critical for revenue … but also for operations. Job functions are more dynamic.... take the Olympics for example.  Endless organizations from corporations broadcasting, endorsing, or marketing through the event … to non-profit athletic foundations and public/government entities for athletes and public safety, all operate simultaneously on the world stage.  Each organization needs to spin up short-term teams, often dealing with proprietary information from hot ads to racing strategies or security plans.  IAM is expected to enable team’s to spin up, enable new applications, protect privacy, and secure critical infrastructure.  Then it needs to be disabled just as quickly as users go back to their previous responsibilities. On a more technical level … Optimized system directory; tuning guidelines and parameters are needed by businesses today. Business’s need to be making the right choices (virtual directories) and considerations via choosing the correct architectural patterns (virtual, direct, replicated, and tuning), challenge is that business need to assess and chose the correct architectural patters (centralized, virtualized, and distributed) Today's Business organizations have very complex heterogeneous enterprises that contain diverse and multifaceted information. With today's ever changing global landscape, the strategic end goal in challenging times for business is business agility. The business of identity management requires enterprise's to be more agile and more responsive than ever before. The continued proliferation of networking devices (PC, tablet, PDA's, notebooks, etc.) has caused the number of devices and users to be granted access to these devices to grow exponentially. Business needs to deploy an IAM system that can account for the demands for authentication and authorizations to these devices. Increased innovation is forcing business and organizations to centralize their identity management services. Access management needs to handle traditional web based access as well as handle new innovations around mobile, as well as address insufficient governance processes which can lead to rouge identity accounts, which can then become a source of vulnerabilities within a business’s identity platform. Risk based decisions are providing challenges to business, for an adaptive risk model to make proper access decisions via standard Web single sign on for internal and external customers,. Organizations have to move beyond simple login and passwords to address trusted relationship questions such as: Is this a trusted customer, client, or citizen? Is this a trusted employee, vendor, or partner? Is this a trusted device? Without a solid technological foundation, organizational performance, collaboration, constituent services, or any other organizational processes will languish. A Single server location presents not only network concerns for distributed user base, but identity challenges. The network risks are centered on latency of the long trip that the traffic has to take. Other risks are a performance around availability and if the single identity server is lost, all access is lost. As you can see, there are many reasons why performance tuning IAM will have a substantial impact on the success of your organization.  In our next installment in the series we roll up our sleeves and get into detailed tuning techniques used everyday by thought leaders in the field implementing Oracle Identity & Access Management Solutions.

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  • Tailoring the Oracle Fusion Applications User Interface with Oracle Composer

    - by mvaughan
    By Killian Evers, Oracle Applications User Experience Changing the user interface (UI) is one of the most common modifications customers perform to Oracle Fusion Applications. Typically, customers add or remove a field based on their needs. Oracle makes the process of tailoring easier for customers, and reduces the burden for their IT staff, which you can read about on the Usable Apps website or in an earlier VoX post.This is the first in a series of posts that will talk about the tools that Oracle has provided for tailoring with its family of composers. These tools are designed for business systems analysts, and they allow employees other than IT staff to make changes in an upgrade-safe and patch-friendly manner. Let’s take a deep dive into one of these composers, the Oracle Composer. Oracle Composer allows business users to modify existing UIs after they have been deployed and are in use. It is an integral component of our SaaS offering. Using Oracle Composer, users can control:     •    Who sees the changes     •    When the changes are made     •    What changes are made Change for me, change for you, change for all of youOne of the most powerful aspects of Oracle Composer is its flexibility. Oracle uses Oracle Composer to make changes for a user or group of users – those who see the changes. A user of Oracle Fusion Applications can make changes to the user interface at runtime via Oracle Composer, and these changes will remain every time they log into the system. For example, they can rearrange certain objects on a page, add and remove designated content, and save queries.Business systems analysts can make changes to Oracle Fusion Application UIs for groups of users or all users. Oracle’s Fusion Middleware Metadata Services (MDS) stores these changes and retrieves them at runtime, merging customizations with the base metadata and revealing the final experience to the end user. A tailored application can have multiple customization layers, and some layers can be specific to certain Fusion Applications. Some examples of customization layers are: site, organization, country, or role. Customization layers are applied in a specific order of precedence on top of the base application metadata. This image illustrates how customization layers are applied.What time is it?Users make changes to UIs at design time, runtime, and design time at runtime. Design time changes are typically made by application developers using an integrated development environment, or IDE, such as Oracle JDeveloper. Once made, these changes are then deployed to managed servers by application administrators. Oracle Composer covers the other two areas: Runtime changes and design time at runtime changes. When we say users are making changes at runtime, we mean that the changes are made within the running application and take effect immediately in the running application. A prime example of this ability is users who make changes to their running application that only affect the UIs they see. What is new with Oracle Composer is the last area: Design time at runtime.  A business systems analyst can make changes to the UIs at runtime but does not have to make those changes immediately to the application. These changes are stored as metadata, separate from the base application definitions. Customizations made at runtime can be saved in a sandbox so that the changes can be isolated and validated before being published into an environment, without the need to redeploy the application. What can I do?Oracle Composer can be run in one of two modes. Depending on which mode is chosen, you may have different capabilities available for changing the UIs. The first mode is view mode, the most common default mode for most pages. This is the mode that is used for personalizations or user customizations. Users can access this mode via the Personalization link (see below) in the global region on Oracle Fusion Applications pages. In this mode, you can rearrange components on a page with drag-and-drop, collapse or expand components, add approved external content, and change the overall layout of a page. However, all of the changes made this way are exclusive to that particular user.The second mode, edit mode, is typically made available to select users with access privileges to edit page content. We call these folks business systems analysts. This mode is used to make UI changes for groups of users. Users with appropriate privileges can access the edit mode of Oracle Composer via the Administration menu (see below) in the global region on Oracle Fusion Applications pages. In edit mode, users can also add components, delete components, and edit component properties. While in edit mode in Oracle Composer, there are two views that assist the business systems analyst with making UI changes: Design View and Source View (see below). Design View, the default view, is a WYSIWYG rendering of the page and its content. The business systems analyst can perform these actions: Add content – including custom content like a portlet displaying news or stock quotes, or predefined content delivered from Oracle Fusion Applications (including ADF components and task flows) Rearrange content – performed via drag-and-drop on the page or by using the actions menu of a component or portlet to move content around Edit component properties and parameters – for specific components, control the visual properties such as text or display labels, or parameters such as RSS feeds Hide or show components – hidden components can be re-shown Delete components Change page layout – users can select from eight pre-defined layouts Edit page properties – create or edit a page’s parameters and display properties Reset page customizations – remove edits made to the page in the current layer and/or reset the page to a previous state. Detailed information on each of these capabilities and the additional actions not covered in the list above can be found in the Oracle® Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle WebCenter.This image shows what the screen looks like in Design View.Source View, the second option in the edit mode of Oracle Composer, provides a WYSIWYG and a hierarchical rendering of page components in a component navigator. In Source View, users can access and modify properties of components that are not otherwise selectable in Design View. For example, many ADF Faces components can be edited only in Source View. Users can also edit components within a task flow. This image shows what the screen looks like in Source View.Detailed information on Source View can be found in the Oracle® Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle WebCenter.Oracle Composer enables any application or portal to be customized or personalized after it has been deployed and is in use. It is designed to be extremely easy to use so that both business systems analysts and users can edit Oracle Fusion Applications pages with a few clicks of the mouse. Oracle Composer runs in all modern browsers and provides a rich, dynamic way to edit JSF application and portal pages.From the editor: The next post in this series about composers will be on Data Composer. You can also catch Killian speaking about extensibility at OpenWorld 2012 and in her Faces of Fusion video.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 16, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 16, 2012Popular ReleasesCosmos (C# Open Source Managed Operating System): Release 92560: Prerequisites Visual Studio 2010 - Any version including Express. Express users must also install Visual Studio 2010 Integrated Shell runtime VMWare - Cosmos can run on real hardware as well as other virtualization environments but our default debug setup is configured for VMWare. VMWare Player (Free). or Workstation VMWare VIX API 1.11AutoUpdaterdotNET : Autoupdate for VB.NET and C# Developer: AutoUpdater.NET 1.1: Release Notes *New feature added that allows user to select remind later interval.Sumzlib: API document: API documentMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks 2008 OLTP Script: Install AdventureWorks2008 OLTP database from script The AdventureWorks database can be created by running the instawdb.sql DDL script contained in the AdventureWorks 2008 OLTP Script.zip file. The instawdb.sql script depends on two path environment variables: SqlSamplesDatabasePath and SqlSamplesSourceDataPath. The SqlSamplesDatabasePath environment variable is set to the default Microsoft ® SQL Server 2008 path. You will need to change the SqlSamplesSourceDataPath environment variable to th...HigLabo: HigLabo_20120613: Bug fix HigLabo.Mail Decode header encoded by CP1252Jasc (just another script compressor): 1.3.1: Updated Ajax Minifier to 4.55.WipeTouch, a jQuery touch plugin: 1.2.0: Changes since 1.1.0: New: wipeMove event, triggered while moving the mouse/finger. New: added "source" to the result object. Bug fix: sometimes vertical wipe events would not trigger correctly. Bug fix: improved tapToClick handler. General code refactoring. Windows Phone 7 is not supported, yet! Its behaviour is completely broken and would require some special tricks to make it work. Maybe in the future...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0.0.3026 (June 2012): Fixes: round( 0.0 ) local TimeZone name TimeZone search compiling multi-script-assemblies PhpString serialization DocDocument::loadHTMLFile() token_get_all() parse_url()BlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.4: 2012.06.13 Ver5.6.4  (1) Web???????、???POST??????????????????Yahoo! UI Library: YUI Compressor for .Net: Version 2.0.0.0 - Ferret: - Merging both 3.5 and 2.0 codebases to a single .NET 2.0 assembly. - MSBuild Task. - NAnt Task.Bumblebee: Version 0.3.1: Changed default config values to decent ones. Restricted visibility of Hive.fs to internal. Added some XML documentation. Added Array.shuffle utility. The dll is also available on NuGet My apologies, the initial source code referenced was missing one file which prevented it from building The source code contains two examples, one in C#, one in F#, illustrating the usage of the framework on the Travelling Salesman Problem: Source CodeSharePoint XSL Templates: SPXSLT 0.0.9: Added new template FixAmpersands. Fixed the contents of the MultiSelectValueCheck.xsl file, which was missing the stylesheet wrapper.ExcelFileEditor: .CS File: nothingBizTalk Scheduled Task Adapter: Release 4.0: Works with BizTalk Server 2010. Compiled in .NET Framework 4.0. In this new version are available small improvements compared to the current version (3.0). We can highlight the following improvements or changes: 24 hours support in “start time” property. Previous versions had an issue with setting the start time, as it shown 12 hours watch but no AM/PM. Daily scheduler review. Solved a small bug on Daily Properties: unable to switch between “Every day” and “on these days” Installation e...Weapsy - ASP.NET MVC CMS: 1.0.0 RC: - Upgrade to Entity Framework 4.3.1 - Added AutoMapper custom version (by nopCommerce Team) - Added missed model properties and localization resources of Plugin Definitions - Minor changes - Fixed some bugsXenta Framework - extensible enterprise n-tier application framework: Xenta Framework 1.8.0 Beta: Catalog and Publication reviews and ratings Store language packs in data base Improve reporting system Improve Import/Export system A lot of WebAdmin app UI improvements Initial implementation of the WebForum app DB indexes Improve and simplify architecture Less abstractions Modernize architecture Improve, simplify and unify API Simplify and improve testing A lot of new unit tests Codebase refactoring and ReSharpering Utilize Castle Windsor Utilize NHibernate ORM ...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.55: Properly handle IE extension to CSS3 grammar that allows for multiple parameters to functional pseudo-class selectors. add new switch -braces:(new|same) that affects where opening braces are placed in multi-line output. The default, "new" puts them on their own new line; "same" outputs them at the end of the previous line. add new optional values to the -inline switch: -inline:(force|noforce), which can be combined with the existing boolean value via comma-separators; value "force" (which...Microsoft Media Platform: Player Framework: MMP Player Framework 2.7 (Silverlight and WP7): Additional DownloadsSMFv2.7 Full Installer (MSI) - This will install everything you need in order to develop your own SMF player application, including the IIS Smooth Streaming Client. It only includes the assemblies. If you want the source code please follow the link above. Smooth Streaming Sample Player - This is a pre-built player that includes support for IIS Smooth Streaming. You can configure the player to playback your content by simplying editing a configuration file - no need to co...Liberty: v3.2.1.0 Release 10th June 2012: Change Log -Added -Liberty is now digitally signed! If the certificate on Liberty.exe is missing, invalid, or does not state that it was developed by "Xbox Chaos, Open Source Developer," your copy of Liberty may have been altered in some (possibly malicious) way. -Reach Mass biped max health and shield changer -Fixed -H3/ODST Fixed all of the glitches that users kept reporting (also reverted the changes made in 3.2.0.2) -Reach Made some tag names clearer and more consistent between m...Media Companion: Media Companion 3.503b: It has been a while, so it's about time we release another build! Major effort has been for fixing trailer downloads, plus a little bit of work for episode guide tag in TV show NFOs.New Projects.NinJa (dotNinja): An extensive JavaScript Framework revolving around principles found in .NET and aiming to integrate full Intellisense support. bab-rizg: solve unemployment problemBizTalk Multi-part Message Attachments Zipper Pipeline Component: This pipeline component replaces all attachments of a multi-part message, in a send pipeline, for its zipped equivalent.Boggle.Net: A basic implementation of Boggle for WPF.CFScript: CFScript is an ANT-like scripting system for Compact Framework. Tasks like copying files, setting registry values o install CAB files can be done with CFScript.Diablo3: Diablo3Dygraphs.NET: Dygraphs.NETDynamics CRM plugin for nopCommerce: This plugins is a bridge between nopCommerce and Dynamics CRM. nms.gaming: Place holderProject Bright Star: Project Bright Star. Deal with it.RDFSharp: RDFSharp is a library designed to ease the development of .NET applications based on the RDF and Semantic Web data model.SlamCMS: An application framework that allows you to build content managed sites leveraging SharePoint 2010 for publishing with tools to query and manifest your data.test02: no

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  • Upgrading Team Foundation Server 2008 to 2010

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    I am sure you will have seen my posts on upgrading our internal Team Foundation Server from TFS2008 to TFS2010 Beta 2, RC and RTM, but what about a fresh upgrade of TFS2008 to TFS2010 using the RTM version of TFS. One of our clients is taking the plunge with TFS2010, so I have the job of doing the upgrade. It is sometimes very useful to have a team member that starts work when most of the Sydney workers are heading home as I can do the upgrade without impacting them. The down side is that if you have any blockers then you can be pretty sure that everyone that can deal with your problem is asleep I am starting with an existing blank installation of TFS 2010, but Adam Cogan let slip that he was the one that did the install so I thought it prudent to make sure that it was OK. Verifying Team Foundation Server 2010 We need to check that TFS 2010 has been installed correctly. First, check the Admin console and have a root about for any errors. Figure: Even the SQL Setup looks good. I don’t know how Adam did it! Backing up the Team Foundation Server 2008 Databases As we are moving from one server to another (recommended method) we will be taking a backup of our TFS2008 databases and resorting them to the SQL Server for the new TFS2010 Server. Do not just detach and reattach. This will cause problems with the version of the database. If you are running a test migration you just need to create a backup of the TFS 2008 databases, but if you are doing the live migration then you should stop IIS on the TFS 2008 server before you backup the databases. This will stop any inadvertent check-ins or changes to TFS 2008. Figure: Stop IIS before you take a backup to prevent any TFS 2008 changes being written to the database. It is good to leave a little time between taking the TFS 2008 server offline and commencing the upgrade as there is always one developer who has not finished and starts screaming. This time it was John Liu that needed 10 more minutes to make his changes and check-in, so I always give it 30 minutes and see if anyone screams. John Liu [SSW] said:   are you doing something to TFS :-O MrHinsh [SSW UK][VS ALM MVP] said:   I have stopped TFS 2008 as per my emails John Liu [SSW] said:   haven't finish check in @_@   can we have it for 10mins? :) MrHinsh [SSW UK][VS ALM MVP] said:   TFS 2008 has been started John Liu [SSW] said:   I love you! -IM conversation at TFS Upgrade +25 minutes After John confirmed that he had everything done I turned IIS off again and made a cup of tea. There were no more screams so the upgrade can continue. Figure: Backup all of the databases for TFS and include the Reporting Services, just in case.   Figure: Check that all the backups have been taken Once you have your backups, you need to copy them to your new TFS2010 server and restore them. This is a good way to proceed as if we have any problems, or just plain run out of time, then you just turn the TFS 2008 server back on and all you have lost is one upgrade day, and not 10 developer days. As per the rules, you should record the number of files and the total number of areas and iterations before the upgrade so you have something to compare to: TFS2008 File count: Type Count 1 1845 2 15770 Areas & Iterations: 139 You can use this to verify that the upgrade was successful. it should however be noted that the numbers in TFS 2010 will be bigger. This is due to some of the sorting out that TFS does during the upgrade process. Restore Team Foundation Server 2008 Databases Restoring the databases is much more time consuming than just attaching them as you need to do them one at a time. But you may be taking a backup of an operational database and need to restore all your databases to a particular point in time instead of to the latest. I am doing latest unless I encounter any problems. Figure: Restore each of the databases to either a latest or specific point in time.     Figure: Restore all of the required databases Now that all of your databases are restored you now need to upgrade them to Team Foundation Server 2010. Upgrade Team Foundation Server 2008 Databases This is probably the easiest part of the process. You need to call a fire and forget command that will go off to the database specified, find the TFS 2008 databases and upgrade them to 2010. During this process all of the 6 main TFS 2008 databases are merged into the TfsVersionControl database, upgraded and then the database is renamed to TFS_[CollectionName]. The rename is only the database and not the physical files, so it is worth going back and renaming the physical file as well. This keeps everything neat and tidy. If you plan to keep the old TFS 2008 server around, for example if you are doing a test migration first, then you will need to change the TFS GUID. This GUID is unique to each TFS instance and is preserved when you upgrade. This GUID is used by the clients and they can get a little confused if there are two servers with the same one. To kick of the upgrade you need to open a command prompt and change the path to “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Tools” and run the “import” command in  “tfsconfig”. TfsConfig import /sqlinstance:<Previous TFS Data Tier>                  /collectionName:<Collection Name>                  /confirmed Imports a TFS 2005 or 2008 data tier as a new project collection. Important: This command should only be executed after adequate backups have been performed. After you import, you will need to configure portal and reporting settings via the administration console. EXAMPLES -------- TfsConfig import /sqlinstance:tfs2008sql /collectionName:imported /confirmed TfsConfig import /sqlinstance:tfs2008sql\Instance /collectionName:imported /confirmed OPTIONS: -------- sqlinstance         The sql instance of the TFS 2005 or 2008 data tier. The TFS databases at that location will be modified directly and will no longer be usable as previous version databases.  Ensure you have back-ups. collectionName      The name of the new Team Project Collection. confirmed           Confirm that you have backed-up databases before importing. This command will automatically look for the TfsIntegration database and verify that all the other required databases exist. In this case it took around 5 minutes to complete the upgrade as the total database size was under 700MB. This was unlike the upgrade of SSW’s production database with over 17GB of data which took a few hours. At the end of the process you should get no errors and no warnings. The Upgrade operation on the ApplicationTier feature has completed. There were 0 errors and 0 warnings. As this is a new server and not a pure upgrade there should not be a problem with the GUID. If you think at any point you will be doing this more than once, for example doing a test migration, or merging many TFS 2008 instances into a single one, then you should go back and rename the physical TfsVersionControl.mdf file to the same as the new collection. This will avoid confusion later down the line. To do this, detach the new collection from the server and rename the physical files. Then reattach and change the physical file locations to match the new name. You can follow http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=1122 for a more detailed explanation of how to do this. Figure: Stop the collection so TFS does not take a wobbly when we detach the database. When you try to start the new collection again you will get a conflict with project names and will require to remove the Test Upgrade collection. This is fine and it just needs detached. Figure: Detaching the test upgrade from the new Team Foundation Server 2010 so we can start the new Collection again. You will now be able to start the new upgraded collection and you are ready for testing. Do you remember the stats we took off the TFS 2008 server? TFS2008 File count: Type Count 1 1845 2 15770 Areas & Iterations: 139 Well, now we need to compare them to the TFS 2010 stats, remembering that there will probably be more files under source control. TFS2010 File count: Type Count 1 19288 Areas & Iterations: 139 Lovely, the number of iterations are the same, and the number of files is bigger. Just what we were looking for. Testing the upgraded Team Foundation Server 2010 Project Collection Can we connect to the new collection and project? Figure: We can connect to the new collection and project.   Figure: make sure you can connect to The upgraded projects and that you can see all of the files. Figure: Team Web Access is there and working. Note that for Team Web Access you now use the same port and URL as for TFS 2010. So in this case as I am running on the local box you need to use http://localhost:8080/tfs which will redirect you to http://localhost:8080/tfs/web for the web access. If you need to connect with a Visual Studio 2008 client you will need to use the full path of the new collection, http://[servername]/tfs/[collectionname] and this will work with all of your collections. With Visual Studio 2005 you will only be able to connect to the Default collection and in both VS2008 and VS2005 you will need to install the forward compatibility updates. Visual Studio Team System 2005 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010 Visual Studio Team System 2008 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010 To make sure that you have everything up to date, make sure that you run SSW Diagnostics and get all green ticks. Upgrade Done! At this point you can send out a notice to everyone that the upgrade is complete and and give them the connection details. You need to remember that at this stage we have 2008 project upgraded to run under TFS 2010 but it is still running under that same process template that it was running before. You can only “enable” 2010 features in a process template you can’t upgrade. So what to do? Well, you need to create a new project and migrate things you want to keep across. Souse code is easy, you can move or Branch, but Work Items are more difficult as you can’t move them between projects. This instance is complicated more as the old project uses the Conchango/EMC Scrum for Team System template and I will need to write a script/application to get the work items across with their attachments in tact. That is my next task! Technorati Tags: TFS 2010,TFS 2008,VS ALM

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  • Parallelism in .NET – Part 9, Configuration in PLINQ and TPL

    - by Reed
    Parallel LINQ and the Task Parallel Library contain many options for configuration.  Although the default configuration options are often ideal, there are times when customizing the behavior is desirable.  Both frameworks provide full configuration support. When working with Data Parallelism, there is one primary configuration option we often need to control – the number of threads we want the system to use when parallelizing our routine.  By default, PLINQ and the TPL both use the ThreadPool to schedule tasks.  Given the major improvements in the ThreadPool in CLR 4, this default behavior is often ideal.  However, there are times that the default behavior is not appropriate.  For example, if you are working on multiple threads simultaneously, and want to schedule parallel operations from within both threads, you might want to consider restricting each parallel operation to using a subset of the processing cores of the system.  Not doing this might over-parallelize your routine, which leads to inefficiencies from having too many context switches. In the Task Parallel Library, configuration is handled via the ParallelOptions class.  All of the methods of the Parallel class have an overload which accepts a ParallelOptions argument. We configure the Parallel class by setting the ParallelOptions.MaxDegreeOfParallelism property.  For example, let’s revisit one of the simple data parallel examples from Part 2: Parallel.For(0, pixelData.GetUpperBound(0), row => { for (int col=0; col < pixelData.GetUpperBound(1); ++col) { pixelData[row, col] = AdjustContrast(pixelData[row, col], minPixel, maxPixel); } }); .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; } Here, we’re looping through an image, and calling a method on each pixel in the image.  If this was being done on a separate thread, and we knew another thread within our system was going to be doing a similar operation, we likely would want to restrict this to using half of the cores on the system.  This could be accomplished easily by doing: var options = new ParallelOptions(); options.MaxDegreeOfParallelism = Math.Max(Environment.ProcessorCount / 2, 1); Parallel.For(0, pixelData.GetUpperBound(0), options, row => { for (int col=0; col < pixelData.GetUpperBound(1); ++col) { pixelData[row, col] = AdjustContrast(pixelData[row, col], minPixel, maxPixel); } }); Now, we’re restricting this routine to using no more than half the cores in our system.  Note that I included a check to prevent a single core system from supplying zero; without this check, we’d potentially cause an exception.  I also did not hard code a specific value for the MaxDegreeOfParallelism property.  One of our goals when parallelizing a routine is allowing it to scale on better hardware.  Specifying a hard-coded value would contradict that goal. Parallel LINQ also supports configuration, and in fact, has quite a few more options for configuring the system.  The main configuration option we most often need is the same as our TPL option: we need to supply the maximum number of processing threads.  In PLINQ, this is done via a new extension method on ParallelQuery<T>: ParallelEnumerable.WithDegreeOfParallelism. Let’s revisit our declarative data parallelism sample from Part 6: double min = collection.AsParallel().Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); Here, we’re performing a computation on each element in the collection, and saving the minimum value of this operation.  If we wanted to restrict this to a limited number of threads, we would add our new extension method: int maxThreads = Math.Max(Environment.ProcessorCount / 2, 1); double min = collection .AsParallel() .WithDegreeOfParallelism(maxThreads) .Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); This automatically restricts the PLINQ query to half of the threads on the system. PLINQ provides some additional configuration options.  By default, PLINQ will occasionally revert to processing a query in parallel.  This occurs because many queries, if parallelized, typically actually cause an overall slowdown compared to a serial processing equivalent.  By analyzing the “shape” of the query, PLINQ often decides to run a query serially instead of in parallel.  This can occur for (taken from MSDN): Queries that contain a Select, indexed Where, indexed SelectMany, or ElementAt clause after an ordering or filtering operator that has removed or rearranged original indices. Queries that contain a Take, TakeWhile, Skip, SkipWhile operator and where indices in the source sequence are not in the original order. Queries that contain Zip or SequenceEquals, unless one of the data sources has an originally ordered index and the other data source is indexable (i.e. an array or IList(T)). Queries that contain Concat, unless it is applied to indexable data sources. Queries that contain Reverse, unless applied to an indexable data source. If the specific query follows these rules, PLINQ will run the query on a single thread.  However, none of these rules look at the specific work being done in the delegates, only at the “shape” of the query.  There are cases where running in parallel may still be beneficial, even if the shape is one where it typically parallelizes poorly.  In these cases, you can override the default behavior by using the WithExecutionMode extension method.  This would be done like so: var reversed = collection .AsParallel() .WithExecutionMode(ParallelExecutionMode.ForceParallelism) .Select(i => i.PerformComputation()) .Reverse(); Here, the default behavior would be to not parallelize the query unless collection implemented IList<T>.  We can force this to run in parallel by adding the WithExecutionMode extension method in the method chain. Finally, PLINQ has the ability to configure how results are returned.  When a query is filtering or selecting an input collection, the results will need to be streamed back into a single IEnumerable<T> result.  For example, the method above returns a new, reversed collection.  In this case, the processing of the collection will be done in parallel, but the results need to be streamed back to the caller serially, so they can be enumerated on a single thread. This streaming introduces overhead.  IEnumerable<T> isn’t designed with thread safety in mind, so the system needs to handle merging the parallel processes back into a single stream, which introduces synchronization issues.  There are two extremes of how this could be accomplished, but both extremes have disadvantages. The system could watch each thread, and whenever a thread produces a result, take that result and send it back to the caller.  This would mean that the calling thread would have access to the data as soon as data is available, which is the benefit of this approach.  However, it also means that every item is introducing synchronization overhead, since each item needs to be merged individually. On the other extreme, the system could wait until all of the results from all of the threads were ready, then push all of the results back to the calling thread in one shot.  The advantage here is that the least amount of synchronization is added to the system, which means the query will, on a whole, run the fastest.  However, the calling thread will have to wait for all elements to be processed, so this could introduce a long delay between when a parallel query begins and when results are returned. The default behavior in PLINQ is actually between these two extremes.  By default, PLINQ maintains an internal buffer, and chooses an optimal buffer size to maintain.  Query results are accumulated into the buffer, then returned in the IEnumerable<T> result in chunks.  This provides reasonably fast access to the results, as well as good overall throughput, in most scenarios. However, if we know the nature of our algorithm, we may decide we would prefer one of the other extremes.  This can be done by using the WithMergeOptions extension method.  For example, if we know that our PerformComputation() routine is very slow, but also variable in runtime, we may want to retrieve results as they are available, with no bufferring.  This can be done by changing our above routine to: var reversed = collection .AsParallel() .WithExecutionMode(ParallelExecutionMode.ForceParallelism) .WithMergeOptions(ParallelMergeOptions.NotBuffered) .Select(i => i.PerformComputation()) .Reverse(); On the other hand, if are already on a background thread, and we want to allow the system to maximize its speed, we might want to allow the system to fully buffer the results: var reversed = collection .AsParallel() .WithExecutionMode(ParallelExecutionMode.ForceParallelism) .WithMergeOptions(ParallelMergeOptions.FullyBuffered) .Select(i => i.PerformComputation()) .Reverse(); Notice, also, that you can specify multiple configuration options in a parallel query.  By chaining these extension methods together, we generate a query that will always run in parallel, and will always complete before making the results available in our IEnumerable<T>.

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