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• Edit Text in a Webpage with Internet Explorer 8

  - by Matthew Guay

  Internet Explorer is often decried as the worst browser for web developers, but IE8 actually offers a very nice set of developer tools.  Here we’ll look at a unique way to use them to edit the text on any webpage. How to edit text in a webpage IE8’s developer tools make it easy to make changes to a webpage and view them directly.  Simply browse to the webpage of your choice, and press the F12 key on your keyboard.  Alternately, you can click the Tools button, and select Developer tools from the list. This opens the developer tools.  To do our editing, we want to select the mouse button on the toolbar “Select Element by Click” tool. Now, click on any spot of the webpage in IE8 that you want to edit.  Here, let’s edit the footer of Google.com.  Notice it places a blue box around any element you hover over to make it easy to choose exactly what you want to edit. In the developer tools window, the element you selected before is now highlighted.  Click the plus button beside that entry if the text you want to edit is not visible.   Now, click the text you wish to change, and enter what you wish in the box.  For fun, we changed the copyright to say “©2010 Microsoft”. Go back to IE to see the changes on the page! You can also change a link on a page this way: Or you can even change the text on a button: Here’s our edited Google.com: This may be fun for playing a trick on someone or simply for a funny screenshot, but it can be very useful, too.  You could test how changes in fontsize would change how a website looks, or see how a button would look with a different label.  It can also be useful when taking screenshots.  For instance, if I want to show a friend how to do something in Gmail but don’t want to reveal my email address, I could edit the text on the top right before I took the screenshot.  Here I changed my Gmail address to [email protected]. Please note that the changes will disappear when you reload the page.  You can save your changes from the developer tools window, though, and reopen the page from your computer if you wish. We have found this trick very helpful at times, and it can be very fun too!  Enjoy it, and let us know how you used it to help you! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Edit Webpage Text Areas in Your Favorite Text EditorRemove Webpage Formatting or View the HTML Code When Copying in FirefoxChange the Default Editor From Nano on Ubuntu LinuxShare Text & Images the Easy Way with JustPaste.itEditPad Lite – All Purpose Tabbed Text Editor TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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• Links to my “Best of 2010” Posts

  - by ScottGu

  I hope everyone is having a Happy New Years! 2010 has been a busy blogging year for me (this is the 100th blog post I’ve done in 2010).  Several people this week suggested I put together a summary post listing/organizing my favorite posts from the year.  Below is a quick listing of some of my favorite posts organized by topic area: VS 2010 and .NET 4 Below is a series of posts I wrote (some in late 2009) about the VS 2010 and .NET 4 (including ASP.NET 4 and WPF 4) release we shipped in April: Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 Released Clean Web.Config Files Starter Project Templates Multi-targeting Multiple Monitor Support New Code Focused Web Profile Option HTML / ASP.NET / JavaScript Code Snippets Auto-Start ASP.NET Applications URL Routing with ASP.NET 4 Web Forms Searching and Navigating Code in VS 2010 VS 2010 Code Intellisense Improvements WPF 4 Add Reference Dialog Improvements SEO Improvements with ASP.NET 4 Output Cache Extensibility with ASP.NET 4 Built-in Charting Controls for ASP.NET and Windows Forms Cleaner HTML Markup with ASP.NET 4 - Client IDs Optional Parameters and Named Arguments in C# 4 - and a cool scenarios with ASP.NET MVC 2 Automatic Properties, Collection Initializers and Implicit Line Continuation Support with VB 2010 New <%: %> Syntax for HTML Encoding Output using ASP.NET 4 JavaScript Intellisense Improvements with VS 2010 VS 2010 Debugger Improvements (DataTips, BreakPoints, Import/Export) Box Selection and Multi-line Editing Support with VS 2010 VS 2010 Extension Manager (and the cool new PowerCommands Extension) Pinning Projects and Solutions VS 2010 Web Deployment Debugging Tips/Tricks with Visual Studio Search and Navigation Tips/Tricks with Visual Studio Visual Studio Below are some additional Visual Studio posts I’ve done (not in the first series above) that I thought were nice: Download and Share Visual Studio Color Schemes Visual Studio 2010 Keyboard Shortcuts VS 2010 Productivity Power Tools Fun Visual Studio 2010 Wallpapers Silverlight We shipped Silverlight 4 in April, and announced Silverlight 5 the beginning of December: Silverlight 4 Released Silverlight 4 Tools for VS 2010 and WCF RIA Services Released Silverlight 4 Training Kit Silverlight PivotViewer Now Available Silverlight Questions Announcing Silverlight 5 Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 We shipped Windows Phone 7 this fall and shipped free Visual Studio development tools with great Silverlight and XNA support in September: Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Released Building a Windows Phone 7 Twitter Application using Silverlight ASP.NET MVC We shipped ASP.NET MVC 2 in March, and started previewing ASP.NET MVC 3 this summer.  ASP.NET MVC 3 will RTM in less than 2 weeks from today: ASP.NET MVC 2: Strongly Typed Html Helpers ASP.NET MVC 2: Model Validation Introducing ASP.NET MVC 3 (Preview 1) Announcing ASP.NET MVC 3 Beta and NuGet (nee NuPack) Announcing ASP.NET MVC 3 Release Candidate 1  Announcing ASP.NET MVC 3 Release Candidate 2 Introducing Razor – A New View Engine for ASP.NET ASP.NET MVC 3: Layouts with Razor ASP.NET MVC 3: New @model keyword in Razor ASP.NET MVC 3: Server-Side Comments with Razor ASP.NET MVC 3: Razor’s @: and <text> syntax ASP.NET MVC 3: Implicit and Explicit code nuggets with Razor ASP.NET MVC 3: Layouts and Sections with Razor IIS and Web Server Stack The IIS and Web Stack teams have made a bunch of great improvements to the core web server this year: Fix Common SEO Problems using the URL Rewrite Extension Introducing the Microsoft Web Farm Framework Automating Deployment with Microsoft Web Deploy Introducing IIS Express SQL CE 4 (New Embedded Database Support with ASP.NET) Introducing Web Matrix EF Code First EF Code First is a really nice new data option that enables a very clean code-oriented data workflow: Announcing Entity Framework Code-First CTP5 Release Class-Level Model Validation with EF Code First and ASP.NET MVC 3 Code-First Development with Entity Framework 4 EF 4 Code First: Custom Database Schema Mapping Using EF Code First with an Existing Database jQuery and AJAX Contributions My team began making some significant source code contributions to the jQuery project this year: jQuery Templates, Data Link and Globalization Accepted as Official jQuery Plugins jQuery Templates and Data Linking (and Microsoft contributing to jQuery) jQuery Globalization Plugin from Microsoft Patches and Hot Fixes Some useful fixes you can download prior to VS 2010 SP1: Patch for Cut/Copy “Insufficient Memory” issue with VS 2010 Patch for VS 2010 Find and Replace Dialog Growing Patch for VS 2010 Scrolling Context Menu Videos of My Talks Some recordings of technical talks I’ve done this year: ASP.NET 4, ASP.NET MVC, and Silverlight 4 Talks I did in Europe VS 2010 and ASP.NET 4 Web Forms Talk in Arizona Other About Technical Debates (and ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC debates in particular) ASP.NET Security Fix Now on Windows Update Upcoming Web Camps I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who follows my blog – I really appreciate you reading it (the comments you post help encourage me to write it).  See you in the New Year! Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Nepotism In The SQL Family

  - by Rob Farley

  There’s a bunch of sayings about nepotism. It’s unpopular, unless you’re the family member who is getting the opportunity. But of course, so much in life (and career) is about who you know. From the perspective of the person who doesn’t get promoted (when the family member is), nepotism is simply unfair; even more so when the promoted one seems less than qualified, or incompetent in some way. We definitely get a bit miffed about that. But let’s also look at it from the other side of the fence – the person who did the promoting. To them, their son/daughter/nephew/whoever is just another candidate, but one in whom they have more faith. They’ve spent longer getting to know that person. They know their weaknesses and their strengths, and have seen them in all kinds of situations. They expect them to stay around in the company longer. And yes, they may have plans for that person to inherit one day. Sure, they have a vested interest, because they’d like their family members to have strong careers, but it’s not just about that – it’s often best for the company as well. I’m not announcing that the next LobsterPot employee is one of my sons (although I wouldn’t be opposed to the idea of getting them involved), but actually, admitting that almost all the LobsterPot employees are SQLFamily members… …which makes this post good for T-SQL Tuesday, this month hosted by Jeffrey Verheul (@DevJef). You see, SQLFamily is the concept that the people in the SQL Server community are close. We have something in common that goes beyond ordinary friendship. We might only see each other a few times a year, at events like the PASS Summit and SQLSaturdays, but the bonds that are formed are strong, going far beyond typical professional relationships. And these are the people that I am prepared to hire. People that I have got to know. I get to know their skill level, how well they explain things, how confident people are in their expertise, and what their values are. Of course there people that I wouldn’t hire, but I’m a lot more comfortable hiring someone that I’ve already developed a feel for. I need to trust the LobsterPot brand to people, and that means they need to have a similar value system to me. They need to have a passion for helping people and doing what they can to make a difference. Above all, they need to have integrity. Therefore, I believe in nepotism. All the people I’ve hired so far are people from the SQL community. I don’t know whether I’ll always be able to hire that way, but I have no qualms admitting that the things I look for in an employee are things that I can recognise best in those that are referred to as SQLFamily. …like Ted Krueger (@onpnt), LobsterPot’s newest employee and the guy who is representing our brand in America. I’m completely proud of this guy. He’s everything I want in an employee. He’s an experienced consultant (even wrote a book on it!), loving husband and father, genuine expert, and incredibly respected by his peers. It’s not favouritism, it’s just choosing someone I’ve been interviewing for years. @rob_farley

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• Create a Customized Tab on the Office 2010 Ribbon

  - by Mysticgeek

  Some MS Office users were put off a bit by the Ribbon feature in 2007 for being cumbersome and confusing. Today we look at a cool new feature in Office 2010 that allows you to create your own custom tabs with specific commands for easier document creation. Create a Customized Tab In our example we’re using Word, but you can create a custom tab in the other Office apps as well. To do so, right-click on the Ribbon and select Customize the Ribbon. The Word Options screen opens up and from here you can manage a lot of customization options. We want to create a new customized tab, so click on the New Tab button.   Now give it a name… Now just drag the commands you want to add from the left column over to your new custom group. You have every command available to choose from. You can select specific groups or all commands from the dropdown menu on the left. That is all there is to it…now you have your own customized tab with the commands you use most often to help you work more efficiently. In this example We didn’t add a whole lot of commands, but you can customize it with as many as you need. You can also create other tabs with different sets of commands too. When you create a customized tab in one application, it’s only going to be in that app. For example if you create on in Word, it’s not going to show in Excel as commands differ between apps. If you want a custom tab in another Office app you’ll need to create one for it. Another very cool thing you can do is export the customizations to use on another machine or pass them to a coworker. To export the customizations, go to the Customize Ribbon section and at the bottom of the right field click Import/Export then Export all customizations. Then save the file to a location on your hard drive.   To import the settings to another machine, go into Ribbon Customizations and select Import customizations file… then browse the the file you exported. You’ll be prompted to confirm you want to import he customizations… After confirming the choice now you’ll see the customization show up on the other machine. This is very handy if you work on several machines throughout the day and want to easily bring your customized tabs with you. If you find yourself using a lot of specific commands throughout the day, creating your own customized tab will help access them more quickly. If you want to test out Office 2010 it’s currently in Public Beta and can be downloaded for free. Download Office 2010 Beta Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Maximize Space by "Auto-Hiding" the Ribbon in Office 2007Make Learning Office 2007 & 2010 Fun with Ribbon HeroAdd or Remove Apps from the Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 SuiteHow To Bring Back the Old Menus in Office 2007How To Take Screenshots with Word 2010 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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• Create a Customized Tab on the Office 2010 Ribbon

  - by Mysticgeek

  Some MS Office users were put off a bit by the Ribbon feature in 2007 for being cumbersome and confusing. Today we look at a cool new feature in Office 2010 that allows you to create your own custom tabs with specific commands for easier document creation. Create a Customized Tab In our example we’re using Word, but you can create a custom tab in the other Office apps as well. To do so, right-click on the Ribbon and select Customize the Ribbon. The Word Options screen opens up and from here you can manage a lot of customization options. We want to create a new customized tab, so click on the New Tab button.   Now give it a name… Now just drag the commands you want to add from the left column over to your new custom group. You have every command available to choose from. You can select specific groups or all commands from the dropdown menu on the left. That is all there is to it…now you have your own customized tab with the commands you use most often to help you work more efficiently. In this example We didn’t add a whole lot of commands, but you can customize it with as many as you need. You can also create other tabs with different sets of commands too. When you create a customized tab in one application, it’s only going to be in that app. For example if you create on in Word, it’s not going to show in Excel as commands differ between apps. If you want a custom tab in another Office app you’ll need to create one for it. Another very cool thing you can do is export the customizations to use on another machine or pass them to a coworker. To export the customizations, go to the Customize Ribbon section and at the bottom of the right field click Import/Export then Export all customizations. Then save the file to a location on your hard drive.   To import the settings to another machine, go into Ribbon Customizations and select Import customizations file… then browse the the file you exported. You’ll be prompted to confirm you want to import he customizations… After confirming the choice now you’ll see the customization show up on the other machine. This is very handy if you work on several machines throughout the day and want to easily bring your customized tabs with you. If you find yourself using a lot of specific commands throughout the day, creating your own customized tab will help access them more quickly. If you want to test out Office 2010 it’s currently in Public Beta and can be downloaded for free. Download Office 2010 Beta Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Maximize Space by "Auto-Hiding" the Ribbon in Office 2007Make Learning Office 2007 & 2010 Fun with Ribbon HeroAdd or Remove Apps from the Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 SuiteHow To Bring Back the Old Menus in Office 2007How To Take Screenshots with Word 2010 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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• Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Batman

  - by Pinal Dave

  Batman is one of the darkest superheroes in the fantasy canon.  He does not come to his powers through any sort of magical coincidence or radioactive insect, but through a lot of psychological scarring caused by witnessing the death of his parents.  Despite his dark back story, he possesses a lot of admirable abilities that I feel bear comparison to developers. Batman has the distinct advantage that his alter ego, Bruce Wayne is a millionaire (or billionaire in today’s reboots).  This means that he can spend his time working on his athletic abilities, building a secret lair, and investing his money in cool tools.  This might not be true for developers (well, most developers), but I still think there are many parallels. So how are developers like Batman? Well, read on my list of reasons. Develop Skills Batman works on his skills.  He didn’t get the strength to scale Gotham’s skyscrapers by inheriting his powers or suffering an industrial accident.  Developers also hone their skills daily.  They might not be doing pull-ups and scaling buldings, but I think their skills are just as impressive. Clear Goals Batman is driven to build a better Gotham.  He knows that the criminal who killed his parents was a small-time thief, not a super villain – so he has larger goals in mind than simply chasing one villain.  He wants his city as a whole to be better.  Developers are also driven to make things better.  It can be easy to get hung up on one problem, but in the end it is best to focus on the well-being of the system as a whole. Ultimate Teamplayers Batman is the hero Gotham needs – even when that means appearing to be the bad guys.  Developers probably know that feeling well.  Batman takes the fall for a crime he didn’t commit, and developers often have to deliver bad news about the limitations of their networks and servers.  It’s not always a job filled with glory and thanks, but someone has to do it. Always Ready Batman and the Boy Scouts have this in common – they are always prepared.  Let’s add developers to this list.  Batman has an amazing tool belt with gadgets and gizmos, and let’s not even get into all the functions of the Batmobile!  Developers’ skills might be the knowledge and skills they have developed, not tools they can carry in a utility belt, but that doesn’t make them any less impressive. 100% Dedication Bruce Wayne cultivates the personality of a playboy, never keeping the same girlfriend for long and spending his time partying.  Even though he hides it, his driving force is his deep concern and love for his friends and the city as a whole.  Developers also care a lot about their company and employees – even when it is driving them crazy.  You do your best work when you care about your job on a personal level. Quality Output Batman believes the city deserves to be saved.  The citizens might have a love-hate relationship with both Batman and Bruce Wayne, and employees might not always appreciate developers.  Batman and developers, though, keep working for the best of everyone. I hope you are all enjoying reading about developers-as-superheroes as much as I am enjoying writing about them.  Please tell me how else developers are like Superheroes in the comments – especially if you know any developers who are faster than a speeding bullet and can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Developer, Superhero

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• 5 reason why you should upgrade to new iPad (3rd generation)

  - by Gopinath

  Apple released the new iPad, 3rd generation, couple of days ago and they will be available in stores from March 16 onwards.  It’s the best tablet available in the market and for first time buyers it’s a no brainer to choose it. What about the iPad owners? Should they upgrade their iPad 2 to the new iPad? This is the question on the lips of most of the iPad owners. In this post we will provide you 5 reasons why you should upgrade your iPad, if more than two reasons are convincing then you should upgrade to the new iPad. Retina display – The best display ever made for mobile device, a game changer The new iPad comes with Retina display with screen resolution of 2048 x 1536, which is twice the resolution of iPad 2. Undoubtedly the iPad 3’s display is the best display ever made for a mobile device and it’s a game changer. With better resolution on iPad 3 eBook reading is going to be a pleasure with clear and crisp text Watching HD movies on iPad is going to be unbelievably good The new Games targeted for Retina display are going to be more realistic and needless to explain the pleasure of playing such games Graphic artists and photo editors get a professional on screen rendering support to create beautiful graphics 2x Faster & 2x Memory – Better Games and powerful Apps The new iPad is more powerful with 2x faster graphics and 2x more memory. Apple claims that the A5x processor of new iPad is 2x faster than iPad 2 and 4x faster than the best graphic chips available from other vendors. The RAM of  new iPad  is upgraded to 1 GB compared from 512 MB of iPad 2. With the fast processor and more memory, Apps and games are going to be blazing fast. 4G Internet – Browse the web at the speeds of 42 MB/sec Half of the iPad owners are frequent commuters who access internet over cellular networks, the new iPad’s 4G LTE is going to be a big boom for their  high data access needs. With the new iPad’s 4G LTE connectivity you can browse the web at 42 MB/sec and it mean you can watch a HD video without buffering issues. iPad 2 comes with 3G network support and it’s browsing speeds are way less than the new iPad. 5MP Camera – HD Movie Recording & gorgeous Photography iPad 2 has a 0.7 mega pixel camera and the new iPad comes with 5 megapixels camera. That is a huge boost for hobbyist  photographers and videographers. With the new iPad you can shoot gorgeous photos and 1080p HD video. The iSight camera of new iPad uses advanced optics with features like auto exposure, auto focus and face detection up to 10 faces. Amazon Pays up to $300 for old iPad 2 16 GB Wifi and more for other models Do you know that you can trade in your iPad 2 16 GB Wifi for upto $300? Amazon has an excellent trade in program for selling your used iPad 2s. Depending on the condition of the iPad 2  Amazon offers $234, $270, $300.00 for 16 GB Wifi versions that in Acceptable, Good and Like New conditions respectively.  The higher models of iPad 2s fetch you more money. With this great deal from Amazon the amount of extra money you need to spend for new iPad is almost half of their price. Visit Amazon Trade In’s website or read Amazon’s brilliant plan to pay you crazy money for your iPad 2 for more details. Related: New IPad Vs. IPad 2–Side By Side Comparison Of Hardware Specification [Infographic]

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• Looking into ASP.Net MVC 4.0 Mobile Development - part 1

  - by nikolaosk

  In this post I will be looking how ASP.Net MVC 4.0 helps us to create web solutions that target mobile devices.We all experience the magic that is the World Wide Web through mobile devices. Millions of people around the world, use tablets and smartphones to view the contents of websites,e-shops and portals.ASP.Net MVC 4.0 includes a new mobile project template and the ability to render a different set of views for different types of devices.There is a new feature that is called browser overriding which allows us to control exactly what a user is going to see from your web application regardless of what type of device he is using.In order to follow along this post you must have Visual Studio 2012 and .Net Framework 4.5 installed in your machine.Download and install VS 2012 using this link.My machine runs on Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 works just fine.It will work fine in Windows 7 as well so do not worry if you do not have the latest Microsoft operating system.1) Launch VS 2012 and create a new Web Forms application by going to File - >New Project - > ASP.Net MVC 4 Web Application and then click OKHave a look at the picture below  2) From the available templates select Mobile Application and then click OK.Have a look at the picture below 3) When I run the application I get the mobile view of the page. I would like to show you what a typical ASP.Net MVC 4.0 application looks like. So I will create a new simple ASP.Net MVC 4.0 Web Application. When I run the application I get the normal page view.Have a look at the picture below.On the left is the mobile view and on the right the normal view. As you can see we have more or less the same content in our mobile application (log in,register) compared with the normal ASP.Net MVC 4.0 application but it is optimised for mobile devices. 4) Let me explain how and when the mobile view is selected and finally rendered.There is a feature in MVC 4.0 that is called Display Modes and with this feature the runtime will select a view.If we have 2 views e.g contact.mobile.cshtml and contact.cshtml in our application the Controller at some point will instruct the runtime to select and render a view named contact.The runtime will look at the browser making the request and will determine if it is a mobile browser or a desktop browser. So if there is a request from my IPhone Safari browser for a particular site, if there is a mobile view the MVC 4.0 will select it and render it. If there is not a mobile view, the normal view will be rendered.5) In the  ASP.Net MVC 4.0 (Internet application) I created earlier (not the first project which was a mobile one) I can run it once more and see how it looks on the browser. If I want to view it with a mobile browser I must download one emulator like Opera Mobile.You can download Opera Mobile hereWhen I run the application I get the same view in both the desktop and the mobile browser. That was to be expected. Have a look at the picture below 6) Then I create another version of the _Layout.mobile.cshtml view in the Shared folder.I simply copy and paste the _Layout.cshtml  into the same folder and then rename it to _Layout.mobile.cshtml and then just alter the contents of the _Layout.mobile.cshtml.When I run again the application I get a different view on the desktop browser and a different one on the Opera mobile browser.Have a look at the picture below ?he Controller will instruct the ASP.Net runtime to select and render a view named _Layout.mobile.cshtml when the request will come from a mobile browser.?he runtime knows that a browser is a mobile one through the ASP.Net browser capability provider. Hope it helps!!!

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• SQLAuthority News – Professional Development and Community

  - by pinaldave

  I was recently invited by Hyderabad Techies to deliver a keynote for their 16-day online session called TECH THUNDERS. This event has been running from May 15 and will continue up to the end of the month May 30). There would be a total of 30 sessions. In every evening of those 16 day, there will be either one or two sessions from several noted industry experts. It is the same group which has received the Microsoft Community Impact Award as the Best User Group in India as for developers. I have never talked about Professional Development before. Even if this was my first time to do so, I still accepted the wonderful challenge for the sake of the thousands of audience who were expected to attend this online event. Time is of the essence; I had 15 minutes to deliver the keynote and open the event. The reason why I was nervous was because I had to cover precisely only 15 minutes- no more, no less. If I had an hour, I would have been very confident because I knew I could do a good job for sure. However, I still needed to open the event as great as it can be even if the time was short. I finally created a 6-slide small presentation. In reality, there were only two pages which had the main contents of my keynote, and the remaining slides were just wrappers and decors. You can download the complete slide deck from here. The image used in the slide deck is a curtsy of blog reader Roger Smith who sent it to me. The slide in which I spent a good amount of time is the slide which talks about Professional Development. The content of the slide is as follows: Today, Technology and You Keep your eyes, ears and senses open – Stay Active! You are not the first one who faced the problem – Search Online! Learn the web – Blogs, Forums and Friends! Trust the Technology, Not Print – Test Everything! Community and You! I had a very little time creating the slide deck as I was busy the whole day doing the Advanced SQL Server Training. I had put together these slides during the tea/coffee break of my session. Though it was just a six-bullet point, I had received quite a few emails right after keynote requesting me to talk more about this subject and share the details of my slide deck. I have talked with the event organizer and he will put the keynote online very soon. The subject of the talk is very simple; it revolves around the community. Time has changed, and Internet has come a long way from where it was many years ago. Now that we are all connected, help via the Internet and useful software is easily available around us. In fact, RSS, Newletters and few other technologies have progressed so much that the help through news is now being delivered to our door steps, instead of going out and seeking them. Sometimes, a simple search online solves a lot of problems of many developers. The community is now the first stop for any developer when he or she needs help or just wants to hang around and share some thoughts. I strongly suggest everybody to be a part of the Tech Community. Be it online, offline community or just a local user group, I strongly advise all of you to get involved. I am active in the Community, and I must say I recommend getting drawn into it. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: MVP, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL User Group, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Community

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• Oracle Announces Oracle Exadata X3 Database In-Memory Machine

  - by jgelhaus

  Fourth Generation Exadata X3 Systems are Ideal for High-End OLTP, Large Data Warehouses, and Database Clouds; Eighth-Rack Configuration Offers New Low-Cost Entry Point ORACLE OPENWORLD, SAN FRANCISCO – October 1, 2012 News Facts During his opening keynote address at Oracle OpenWorld, Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison announced the Oracle Exadata X3 Database In-Memory Machine - the latest generation of its Oracle Exadata Database Machines. The Oracle Exadata X3 Database In-Memory Machine is a key component of the Oracle Cloud. Oracle Exadata X3-2 Database In-Memory Machine and Oracle Exadata X3-8 Database In-Memory Machine can store up to hundreds of Terabytes of compressed user data in Flash and RAM memory, virtually eliminating the performance overhead of reads and writes to slow disk drives, making Exadata X3 systems the ideal database platforms for the varied and unpredictable workloads of cloud computing. In order to realize the highest performance at the lowest cost, the Oracle Exadata X3 Database In-Memory Machine implements a mass memory hierarchy that automatically moves all active data into Flash and RAM memory, while keeping less active data on low-cost disks. With a new Eighth-Rack configuration, the Oracle Exadata X3-2 Database In-Memory Machine delivers a cost-effective entry point for smaller workloads, testing, development and disaster recovery systems, and is a fully redundant system that can be used with mission critical applications. Next-Generation Technologies Deliver Dramatic Performance Improvements Oracle Exadata X3 Database In-Memory Machines use a combination of scale-out servers and storage, InfiniBand networking, smart storage, PCI Flash, smart memory caching, and Hybrid Columnar Compression to deliver extreme performance and availability for all Oracle Database Workloads. Oracle Exadata X3 Database In-Memory Machine systems leverage next-generation technologies to deliver significant performance enhancements, including: Four times the Flash memory capacity of the previous generation; with up to 40 percent faster response times and 100 GB/second data scan rates. Combined with Exadata’s unique Hybrid Columnar Compression capabilities, hundreds of Terabytes of user data can now be managed entirely within Flash; 20 times more capacity for database writes through updated Exadata Smart Flash Cache software. The new Exadata Smart Flash Cache software also runs on previous generation Exadata systems, increasing their capacity for writes tenfold; 33 percent more database CPU cores in the Oracle Exadata X3-2 Database In-Memory Machine, using the latest 8-core Intel® Xeon E5-2600 series of processors; Expanded 10Gb Ethernet connectivity to the data center in the Oracle Exadata X3-2 provides 40 10Gb network ports per rack for connecting users and moving data; Up to 30 percent reduction in power and cooling. Configured for Your Business, Available Today Oracle Exadata X3-2 Database In-Memory Machine systems are available in a Full-Rack, Half-Rack, Quarter-Rack, and the new low-cost Eighth-Rack configuration to satisfy the widest range of applications. Oracle Exadata X3-8 Database In-Memory Machine systems are available in a Full-Rack configuration, and both X3 systems enable multi-rack configurations for virtually unlimited scalability. Oracle Exadata X3-2 and X3-8 Database In-Memory Machines are fully compatible with prior Exadata generations and existing systems can also be upgraded with Oracle Exadata X3-2 servers. Oracle Exadata X3 Database In-Memory Machine systems can be used immediately with any application certified with Oracle Database 11g R2 and Oracle Real Application Clusters, including SAP, Oracle Fusion Applications, Oracle’s PeopleSoft, Oracle’s Siebel CRM, the Oracle E-Business Suite, and thousands of other applications. Supporting Quotes “Forward-looking enterprises are moving towards Cloud Computing architectures,” said Andrew Mendelsohn, senior vice president, Oracle Database Server Technologies. “Oracle Exadata’s unique ability to run any database application on a fully scale-out architecture using a combination of massive memory for extreme performance and low-cost disk for high capacity delivers the ideal solution for Cloud-based database deployments today.” Supporting Resources Oracle Press Release Oracle Exadata Database Machine Oracle Exadata X3-2 Database In-Memory Machine Oracle Exadata X3-8 Database In-Memory Machine Oracle Database 11g Follow Oracle Database via Blog, Facebook and Twitter Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Keynotes Like Oracle OpenWorld on Facebook Follow Oracle OpenWorld on Twitter Oracle OpenWorld Blog Oracle OpenWorld on LinkedIn Mark Hurd's keynote with Andy Mendelsohn and Juan Loaiza - - watch for the replay to be available soon at http://www.youtube.com/user/Oracle or http://www.oracle.com/openworld/live/on-demand/index.html

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• DESIGNING FOR WIN PHONE 7

  Designing applications for the Win Phone 7 is very similar to designing for print. In my opinion, it feels like a cross between a tri-fold brochure and a poster. I based my prototype designs on Microsofts Metro style guide, with typography as the main focus and stunning imagery for support. Its nice to have fixed factors regulating the design, making it a fun and fresh design experience. Microsoft provides a UI Design Guidelines document that outlines layout sizes, background image size, recommended typefaces and spacing. You know what you are designing for and you know how it will look and act on the win phone 7 platform. Although applications are not required to strictly adhere to the Metro style guide I feel it makes the best use of the panorama view  and navigation. With strong examples of this UI concept in place like their Zune-like music + videos hub, I found it fairly easy to put together a few quick app mockups (see below). In addition to design guidelines, using a ready built design templates, or a win phone 7 specific panorama control like the one by Clarity Consulting will make the process of bringing your designs to life much more efficient. Likes, Dislikes, and Challenges I think the idea of the hub is completely intuitive. This concept clearly breaks down info into more manageable pieces, and greatly helps with organization when designing for the phone. I like the chromeless appearance, allowing the core functionality of the application to take precedence over gradients, textures, bevels, drop shadows, and the complicated animations you see on the web. Although I understand the Win Phone 7 guidelines are a work in progress, I found a few contradictions. I also noticed that certain design specifications did not translate well to the phone emulator . If you use their guidelines as suggested best practices and not as fixed definitions you will have more success. Multi-directional vs Linear The main challenge I had was stepping away from familiar navigational examples seen in other mobile phones. I had to keep reminding myself that the content to the right and to the left of what I was working on didnt necessarily have to have a direct link to one another. I started thinking multi-directional as opposed to linear. Win phone 7 vs IPhone The Metro styling of the Win Phone 7 is similar to the Zune HD and the Windows Media Center UI and offers a different interface paradigm than the IPhone. When navigating an application it feels like you are panning a long seamless page of information in contrast to the multiple panels of an IPhone. I think there is less of an opportunity to overdesign your application, which happens often with IPhone applications. While both interfaces are simple and sleek, win phone 7 really gets down to the basics. IPhone sets a high standard for designing for touch, designing for win phone 7 could improve on that user experience with a consistent and strategic use of white space and staying away from a menu and icon heavy UI. Design Examples for Win Phone 7 Applications Here are some concepts for both generic and brand specific applications for Win Phone 7: View Full Album Resources to get you going with your own Win Phone 7 design: Helpful design templates for Win Phone 7  http://www.shazaml.com/archives/windows-phone-7-ui-templates Here is the interaction design guide for Win Phone 7 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 Windows has a project template for Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 RC1 http://developer.windowsphone.com/ Clarity Consulting developed a panorama control for Win Phone 7 http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/design/archive/2010/03/30/building-the-elusive-windows-phone-panorama-control.aspxDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• DESIGNING FOR WIN PHONE 7

  Designing applications for the Win Phone 7 is very similar to designing for print. In my opinion, it feels like a cross between a tri-fold brochure and a poster. I based my prototype designs on Microsofts Metro style guide, with typography as the main focus and stunning imagery for support. Its nice to have fixed factors regulating the design, making it a fun and fresh design experience. Microsoft provides a UI Design Guidelines document that outlines layout sizes, background image size, recommended typefaces and spacing. You know what you are designing for and you know how it will look and act on the win phone 7 platform. Although applications are not required to strictly adhere to the Metro style guide I feel it makes the best use of the panorama view  and navigation. With strong examples of this UI concept in place like their Zune-like music + videos hub, I found it fairly easy to put together a few quick app mockups (see below). In addition to design guidelines, using a ready built design templates, or a win phone 7 specific panorama control like the one by Clarity Consulting will make the process of bringing your designs to life much more efficient. Likes, Dislikes, and Challenges I think the idea of the hub is completely intuitive. This concept clearly breaks down info into more manageable pieces, and greatly helps with organization when designing for the phone. I like the chromeless appearance, allowing the core functionality of the application to take precedence over gradients, textures, bevels, drop shadows, and the complicated animations you see on the web. Although I understand the Win Phone 7 guidelines are a work in progress, I found a few contradictions. I also noticed that certain design specifications did not translate well to the phone emulator . If you use their guidelines as suggested best practices and not as fixed definitions you will have more success. Multi-directional vs Linear The main challenge I had was stepping away from familiar navigational examples seen in other mobile phones. I had to keep reminding myself that the content to the right and to the left of what I was working on didnt necessarily have to have a direct link to one another. I started thinking multi-directional as opposed to linear. Win phone 7 vs IPhone The Metro styling of the Win Phone 7 is similar to the Zune HD and the Windows Media Center UI and offers a different interface paradigm than the IPhone. When navigating an application it feels like you are panning a long seamless page of information in contrast to the multiple panels of an IPhone. I think there is less of an opportunity to overdesign your application, which happens often with IPhone applications. While both interfaces are simple and sleek, win phone 7 really gets down to the basics. IPhone sets a high standard for designing for touch, designing for win phone 7 could improve on that user experience with a consistent and strategic use of white space and staying away from a menu and icon heavy UI. Design Examples for Win Phone 7 Applications Here are some concepts for both generic and brand specific applications for Win Phone 7: View Full Album Resources to get you going with your own Win Phone 7 design: Helpful design templates for Win Phone 7  http://www.shazaml.com/archives/windows-phone-7-ui-templates Here is the interaction design guide for Win Phone 7 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 Windows has a project template for Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 RC1 http://developer.windowsphone.com/ Clarity Consulting developed a panorama control for Win Phone 7 http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/design/archive/2010/03/30/building-the-elusive-windows-phone-panorama-control.aspxDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Performance and Optimization Isn’t Evil

  - by Reed

  Donald Knuth is a fairly amazing guy.  I consider him one of the most influential contributors to computer science of all time.  Unfortunately, most of the time I hear his name, I cringe.  This is because it’s typically somebody quoting a small portion of one of his famous statements on optimization: “premature optimization is the root of all evil.” I mention that this is only a portion of the entire quote, and, as such, I feel that Knuth is being quoted out of context.  Optimization is important.  It is a critical part of every software development effort, and should never be ignored.  A developer who ignores optimization is not a professional.  Every developer should understand optimization – know what to optimize, when to optimize it, and how to think about code in a way that is intelligent and productive from day one. I want to start by discussing my own, personal motivation here.  I recently wrote about a performance issue I ran across, and was slammed by multiple comments and emails that effectively boiled down to: “You’re an idiot.  Premature optimization is the root of all evil.  This doesn’t matter.”  It didn’t matter that I discovered this while measuring in a profiler, and that it was a portion of my code base that can take “many hours to complete.”  Even so, multiple people instantly jump to “it’s premature – it doesn’t matter.” This is a common thread I see.  For example, StackOverflow has many pages of posts with answers that boil down to (mis)quoting Knuth.  In fact, just about any question relating to a performance related issue gets this quote thrown at it immediately – whether it deserves it or not.  That being said, I did receive some positive comments and emails as well.  Many people want to understand how to optimize their code, approaches to take, tools and techniques they can use, and any other advice they can discover. First, lets get back to Knuth – I mentioned before that Knuth is being quoted out of context.  Lets start by looking at the entire quote from his 1974 paper Structured Programming with go to Statements: “We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%. A good programmer will not be lulled into complacency by such reasoning, he will be wise to look carefully at the critical code; but only after that code has been identified.” Ironically, if you read Knuth’s original paper, this statement was made in the middle of a discussion of how Knuth himself had changed how he approaches optimization.  It was never a statement saying “don’t optimize”, but rather, “optimizing intelligently provides huge advantages.”  His approach had three benefits: “a) it doesn’t take long” … “b) the payoff is real”, c) you can “be less efficient in the other parts of my programs, which therefore are more readable and more easily written and debugged.” Looking at Knuth’s premise here, and reading that section of his paper, really leads to a few observations: Optimization is important  “he will be wise to look carefully at the critical code” Normally, 3% of your code – three lines out of every 100 you write, are “critical code” and will require some optimization: “we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%” Optimization, if done well, should not be time consuming: “it doesn’t take long” Optimization, if done correctly, provides real benefits: “the payoff is real” None of this is new information.  People who care about optimization have been discussing this for years – for example, Rico Mariani’s Designing For Performance (a fantastic article) discusses many of the same issues very intelligently. That being said, many developers seem unable or unwilling to consider optimization.  Many others don’t seem to know where to start.  As such, I’m going to spend some time writing about optimization – what is it, how should we think about it, and what can we do to improve our own code.

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• Developer Training – Importance and Significance – Part 1

  - by pinaldave

  Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 Can anyone remember their final day of schooling?  This is probably a silly question because – of course you can!  Many people mark this as the most exciting, happiest day of their life.  It marks the end of testing, the end of following rules set by teachers, and the beginning of finally being able to earn money and work in your chosen field. Beginning in Real World However, many former-students will be disappointed to find out that once they become employees, learning is not over.  Many companies are discovering the importance and benefits to training their employees.  You can breathe a sigh of relief, though, because much for this kind of training there are not usually tests! We often think that we go to school for our younger years so that we do all our learning all at once, and then for the rest of our lives we use that knowledge.  But in so many cases, but especially for developers, the opposite is true.  It takes many years of schools to learn the basics of a field, and then our careers are spent learning to become experts. For this, and so many other reasons, training is very important.  Example one: developer training leads to better employees.  A company is only as good as the people it employs, and one way to ensure that you have employed the right candidate is through training.  Training can take a regular “stone” and polish it into a “diamond.”  Employees who have been well-trained will be better at their jobs and produce a better product. Most Expensive Resource Did you know that one of the most expensive operating costs for any company is not buying goods, or advertising, but its employees – especially having to hire new employees.  Bringing in new people, getting them up to speed, and providing them with perks to attract them to a company is a huge cost for companies.  So employee retention – keep the employees you already have, and keeping them happy – is incredibly important from a business aspect.  And research shows that a well-trained employee is a happy employee.  They feel more confident in their job, happier with their position, and more cared-about – and therefore less likely to leave in search of a better job.  Employee training leads to better retention. Good Moral On the subject of keeping employees happy in order to keep them at a company, the complement to that research shows that happier employees are more efficient and overall better at their jobs.  You don’t have to be a scientist to figure out why this is true.  An employee who feel that his company cares about him and his educational future will work harder for the company.  He or she will put in that extra hour during the busy season that makes all the difference in the end.  Good morale is good for the company. If good morale is better for the company, you know that it goes hand-in-hand with something even better – better efficiency.  An employee who is well trained obviously knows more about their job and all the technical aspects.  That means when a problem crops up – and they inevitably do – this employee will be well-equipped to deal with that problem with fewer problems, and no need to go searching for help from higher up.  When employees are well trained, companies run more smoothly. A Better Product Of course, all of these “pros” for employee training are leading up to the one thing that companies truly care about – a better product.  We have shown that employees who have been trained to be competitive in the market are happier at the company, they are more efficient, and their morale is better.  The overall result is that the company’s product – whether it is a database, piece of equipment, or even a physical good – is better.  And a better product will always be more competitive on the market. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Developer Training, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Redaction in AutoVue

  - by [email protected]

  As the trend to digitize all paper assets continues, so does the push to digitize all the processes around these assets. One such process is redaction - removing sensitive or classified information from documents. While for some this may conjure up thoughts of old CIA documents filled with nothing but blacked out pages, there are actually many uses for redaction today beyond military and government. Many companies have a need to remove names, phone numbers, social security numbers, credit card numbers, etc. from documents that are being scanned in and/or released to the public or less privileged users - insurance companies, banks and legal firms are a few examples. The process of digital redaction actually isn't that far from the old paper method: Step 1. Find a folder with a big red stamp on it labeled "TOP SECRET" Step 2. Make a copy of that document, since some folks still need to access the original contents Step 3. Black out the text or pages you want to hide Step 4. Release or distribute this new 'redacted' copy So where does a solution like AutoVue come in? Well, we've really been doing all of these things for years! 1. With AutoVue's VueLink integration and iSDK, we can integrate to virtually any content management system and view documents of almost any format with a single click. Finding the document and opening it in AutoVue: CHECK! 2. With AutoVue's markup capabilities, adding filled boxes (or other shapes) around certain text is a no-brainer. You can even leverage AutoVue's powerful APIs to automate the addition of markups over certain text or pre-defined regions using our APIs. Black out the text you want to hide: CHECK! 3. With AutoVue's conversion capabilities, you can 'burn-in' the comments into a new file, either as a TIFF, JPEG or PDF document. Burning-in the redactions avoids slip-ups like the recent (well-publicized) TSA one. Through our tight integrations, the newly created copies can be directly checked into the content management system with no manual intervention. Make a copy of that document: CHECK! 4. Again, leveraging AutoVue's integrations, we can now define rules in the system based on a user's privileges. An 'authorized' user wishing to view the document from the repository will get exactly that - no redactions. An 'unauthorized' user, when requesting to view that same document, can get redirected to open the redacted copy of the same document. Release or distribute the new 'redacted' copy: CHECK! See this movie (WMV format, 2mins, 20secs, no audio) for a quick illustration of AutoVue's redaction capabilities. It shows how redactions can be added based on text searches, manual input or pre-defined templates/regions. Let us know what you think in the comments. And remember - this is all in our flagship AutoVue product - no additional software required!

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• SQL SERVER – Auto Complete and Format T-SQL Code – Devart SQL Complete

  - by pinaldave

  Some people call it laziness, some will call it efficiency, some think it is the right thing to do. At any rate, tools are meant to make a job easier, and I like to use various tools. If we consider the history of the world, if we all wanted to keep traditional practices, we would have never invented the wheel.  But as time progressed, people wanted convenience and efficiency, which then led to laziness. Wanting a more efficient way to do something is not inherently lazy.  That’s how I see any efficiency tools. A few days ago I found Devart SQL Complete.  It took less than a minute to install, and after installation it just worked without needing any tweaking.  Once I started using it I was impressed with how fast it formats SQL code – you can write down any terms or even copy and paste.  You can start typing right away, and it will complete keywords, object names, and fragmentations. It completes statement expressions.  How many times do we write insert, update, delete?  Take this example: to alter a stored procedure name, we don’t remember the code written in it, you have to write it over again, or go back to SQL Server Studio Manager to create and alter which is very difficult.  With SQL Complete , you can write “alter stored procedure,” and it will finish it for you, and you can modify as needed. I love to write code, and I love well-written code.  When I am working with clients, and I find people whose code have not been written properly, I feel a little uncomfortable.  It is difficult to deal with code that is in the wrong case, with no line breaks, no white spaces, improper indents, and no text wrapping.  The worst thing to encounter is code that goes all the way to the right side, and you have to scroll a million times because there are no breaks or indents.  SQL Complete will take care of this for you – if a developer is too lazy for proper formatting, then Devart’s SQL formatter tool will make them better, not lazier. SQL Management Studio gives information about your code when you hover your mouse over it, however SQL Complete goes further in it, going into the work table, and the current rate idea, too. It gives you more information about the parameters; and last but not least, it will just take you to the help file of code navigation.  It will open object explorer in a document viewer.  You can start going through the various properties of your code – a very important thing to do. Here are are interesting Intellisense examples: 1) We are often very lazy to expand *however, when we are using SQL Complete we can just mouse over the * and it will give us all the the column names and we can select the appropriate columns. 2) We can put the cursor after * and it will give us option to expand it to all the column names by pressing the Tab key. 3) Here is one more Intellisense feature I really liked it. I always alias my tables and I always select the alias with special logic. When I was using SQL Complete I selected just a tablename (without schema name) and…(just like below image) … and it autocompleted the schema and alias name (the way I needed it). I believe using SQL Complete we can work faster.  It supports all versions of SQL Server, and works SQL formatting.  Many businesses perform code review and have code standards, so why not use an efficiency tool on everyone’s computer and make sure the code is written correctly from the first time?  If you’re interested in this tool, there are free editions available.  If you like it, you can buy it.  I bought it because it works.  I love it, and I want to hear all your opinions on it, too. You can get the product for FREE.  Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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• MSMQ messages using HTTP just won't get delivered

  - by John Breakwell

  I'm starting off the blog with a discussion of an unusual problem that has hit a couple of my customers this month. It's not a problem you'd expect to bump into and the solution is potentially painful. Scenario You want to make use of the HTTP protocol to send MSMQ messages from one machine to another. You have installed HTTP support for MSMQ and have addressed your messages correctly but they will not leave the outgoing queue. There is no configuration for HTTP support - setup has already done all that for you (although you may want to check the most recent "Installation of the MSMQ HTTP Support Subcomponent" section of MSMQINST.LOG to see if anything DID go wrong) - so you can't tweak anything. Restarting services and servers makes no difference - the messages just will not get delivered. The problem is documented and resolved by Knowledgebase article 916699 "The message may not be delivered when you use the HTTP protocol to send a message to a server that is running Message Queuing 3.0". It is unlikely that you would be able to resolve the problem without the assistance of PSS because there are no messages that can be seen to assist you and only access to the source code exposes the root cause. As this communication is over HTTP, the IIS logs would be a good place to start. POST entries are logged which show that connectivity is working and message delivery is being attempted: #Software: Microsoft Internet Information Services 6.0 #Version: 1.0 #Date: 2006-09-12 12:11:29 #Fields: date time s-sitename s-ip cs-method cs-uri-stem cs-uri-query s-port cs-username c-ip cs(User-Agent) sc-status sc-substatus sc-win32-status 2006-09-12 12:12:12 W3SVC1 10.1.17.219 POST /msmq/private$/test - 80 - 10.2.200.3 - 200 0 0 If you capture the traffic with Network Monitor you can see the POST being sent to the server but you also see a response being returned to the client: HTTP: Response to Client; HTTP/1.1; Status Code = 500 - Internal Server Error "Internal Server Error" means we can probably stop looking at IIS and instead focus on the Message Queuing ISAPI extension (Mqise.dll). MSMQ 3.0 (Windows XP and Windows Server 2003) comes with error logging enabled by default but the log files are in binary format - MSMQ 2.0 generated logging in plain text. The symbolic information needed for formatting the files is not currently publicly available so log files have to be sent in to Microsoft PSS.  Although this does mean raising a support case, formatting the log files to text and returning them to the customer shouldn't take long. Obviously the engineer analyses them for you - I just want to point out that you can see the logging output in text format if you want it. The important entries in the log for this problem are: [7]b48.928 09/12/2006-13:20:44.552 [mqise GetNetBiosNameFromIPAddr] ERROR:Failed to get the NetBios name from the DNS name, error = 0xea [7]b48.928 09/12/2006-13:20:44.552 [mqise RPCToServer] ERROR:RPC call R_ProcessHTTPRequest failed, error code = 1702(RPC_S_INVALID_BINDING) which allow a Microsoft escalation engineer to check the MQISE source code to see what is going wrong. This problem according to the article occurs when the extension tries to bind to the local MSMQ service after the extension receives a POST request that contains an MSMQ message. MSMQ resolves the server name by using the DNS host name but the extension cannot bind to the service because the buffer that MSMQ uses to resolve the server name is too small - server names that are exactly 15 characters long will not fit. RPC exception 0x6a6 (RPC_S_INVALID_BINDING) occurs in the W3wp.exe process but the exception is handled and so you do not receive an error message. The workaround is to rename the MSMQ server to something less than 15 characters. If the problem has only just been noticed in a production environment - an application may have been modified to get through a newly-implemented firewall, for example - then renaming is going to be an issue. Other applications may need to be reinstalled or modified if server names are hard-coded or stored in the registry. The renaming may also break a company naming convention where the name is built up from something like location+department+number. If you want to learn more about MSMQ logging then check out Chapter 15 of the MSMQ FAQ. In fact, even if you DON'T want to learn anything about MSMQ logging you should read the FAQ anyway as there is a huge amount of useful information on known issues and the like.

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• Book Review: Middleware Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 10g R5

  - by olaf.heimburger

  When you are familar with the Oracle Database and Middleware stack, chances are that you came across the Enterprise Manager. It comes in many versions for the database or the middleware and differs in its features. If meet someone who talks about Enterprise Manager, it might be possible that this person is talking about something completely different - Enterprise Manager Grid Control. Enterprise Manager Grid Control is the Oracle product for the data center that monitors all databases - and middleware components as well as operating systems. Since the database part is taken for granted, is needs some additional steps to get into the world of centralized middleware management. That's what this book is for - bringing you in the world of middleware management. The Authors This book is written by Debu Panda, former Product Management Director of the Oracle Fusion Middleware Management development team, and Arvind Maheshwari, Senior Software Development Manager of the Oracle Enterprise Manager development team. The Book Oracle Enterprise Manager conceptionally works for many different management areas. As a user you often think of managing databases with it. This is a wide area and deserves another book. The least known area is the middleware management and that's what the booked aimes for. The first 3 chapters cover the key features of Enterprise Manager Grid Control, Installing Enterprise Manager Grid Control, and Enterprise Manager Key Concepts and Subsystems. The foundation you need to understand the whole software and the following chapters. Read them in order and you are well prepared for the next 10 chapters on managing the various bits and pieces in your data center. The list of bits and pieces is always a surprise, no matter how often you open the book. You can manage Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Application Server, Oracle Forms and Reports Services, SOA Suite 10g, Oracle Service Bus 10g, Oracle Internet Directory, Oracle Virtual Directory, Oracle Access Manager, Oracle Identity Manager, Oracle Identity Federation, Oracle Coherence Cluster, Non-Oracle Middleware like Apache, Tomcat, JBoss, OBM WebSphere and much much more. The chapters for these components can be read in any order you like, you only need the foundation chapters and continue with the parts in your data center. Once you are done with them, don't forget to read the last chapter, Best Practices for Managing Middleware Components using Enterprise Manager. Read it, understand it, and implement it in your organization. This will save you valueable time and budget. Recommendation This book is mainly written for the Enterprise Manager newbies and saves you a lot of time while going through the standard product documentation. All chapters are considerable short and tell exactly what need to know to get started with. Nothing more and nothing less. That's the beauty of it and why I love it. Due to its limitation it will cover everything you'd like to know, but it gets you started and interested for more insights. But that is the job of the product documentation. The Details Title Middleware Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 10g R5 Authors Debu Panda and Arvind Maheshwari Paperback 310 pages ISBN 13 978-1-847198-34-1

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• I’m a Phoenix… and I’m miffed

  - by Stan Spotts

  For personal reasons, almost 30 years ago I left school to enter the workforce. I decided late 2008 to go back to school and finish my degree. After the expected loss of credits for a transfer, from Temple University to University of Phoenix, I'm now about 75% done. The experience has been interesting. Classes are time compressed, only 5 weeks each. Because I have a family and a full time job, I'm taking one at a time. Even so, I've written more papers in these classes than I ever wrote at Temple. My own papers are one thing, but the team papers give me heartburn since I can't completely control what goes into them. Not a big deal except that they make up 30% of our grade. In any case, most of the class facilitators have been great. I had great ones for Accounting, Finance, and frankly most others. I've had a few (4, maybe) cases where I was less than 2 points from an A, and asked the facilitator if I could get any of my work reviewed to see if I could get those extra points. I figured it was worth a shot, and there were no extenuating circumstances to help make my case. I think that only one facilitator decided after a review of one paper that my interpretation was good, just not what he expected, and gave me another point, which gave me an A. So while none are pushovers, they've all been open to discussion, which is as much as I should expect. Overall, good experience. That is, until my last class. On the second week, the day I was due to hand in my personal assignment for the week, I was in an accident. An SUV creamed my little Ford Focus, and totaled it (estimated repair over $11K). I was pretty banged up, especially my left shoulder. I was scheduled for rotator cuff surgery for two weeks later, and getting hit against the door really made it worse. After dealing with the police, the EMT, the tow truck, and the Percocet and Flexeril for the pain, I crashed for the night and didn't get to upload my paper until the next day. The instructor took 30% off for it being late, even after I supplied photos of the car, my arm (huge bruises), and offered to supply the police report number. I figured I'd be okay since that's 2.7 points, and I could lose up to 5 before jeopardizing an A grade. Well, that wasn't the case as we lost more points than I expected on our team paper in Week 5. I ended up with a 94.3. Yes, 7/10 of a point from an A. Of course I asked the instructor to review the issue with the accident and give me just the 0.7 points I needed for the A. That got me a short response of "I have received your emails and review your work over the last five weeks. Your current grade will stand. If you would like to dispute your grade then please feel free to contact your academic advisor. I wish you much success in your professional and academic career." Brrrr….! So I asked my academic advisor to file a dispute. If it wasn't that a pretty bad car accident was the cause, I wouldn't have. Without the grade reduction, I would have had a 97 for the class, so I'll argue that I was performing at the A level throughout the class. Why her purported "review" of my work didn't then warrant such a minor adjustment, I don't know. An A- drops my GPA, and this ticked me off. Now I have to wait and see what the school says about the grade dispute.

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• Query Logging in Analysis Services

  - by MikeD

  On a project I work on, we capture the queries that get executed on our Analysis Services instance (SQL Server 2008 R2) and use the table for helping us to build aggregations and also we aggregate the query log daily into a data warehouse of operational data so we can track usage of our Analysis databases by users over time. We've learned a couple of helpful things about this logging that I'd like to share here.First off, the query log table automatically gets cleaned out by SSAS under a few conditions - schema changes to the analysis database and even regular data and aggregation processing can delete rows in the table. We like to keep these logs longer than that, so we have a trigger on the table that copies all rows into another table with the same structure:Here is our trigger code:CREATE TRIGGER [dbo].[SaveQueryLog] on [dbo].[OlapQueryLog] AFTER INSERT AS       INSERT INTO dbo.[OlapQueryLog_History] (MSOLAP_Database, MSOLAP_ObjectPath, MSOLAP_User, Dataset, StartTime, Duration)      SELECT MSOLAP_Database, MSOLAP_ObjectPath, MSOLAP_User, Dataset, StartTime, Duration FROM inserted Second, the query logging process is "best effort" - if SSAS cannot connect to the database listed in the QueryLogConnectionString in the Analysis Server properties, it just stops logging - it doesn't generate any errors to the client at all, which is a good thing. Once it stops logging, it doesn't retry later - an hour, a day, a week, or even a month later, so long as the service doesn't restart.That has burned us a couple of times, when we have made changes to the service account that is used for SSAS, and that account doesn't have access to the database we want to log to. The last time this happened, we noticed a while later that no logging was taking place, and I determined that the service account didn't have sufficient permissions, so I made the necessary changes to give that service account access to the logging database. I first tried just the db_datawriter role and that wasn't enough, so I granted the service account membership in the db_owner role. Yes, that's a much bigger set of permissions, but I didn't want to search out the specific permissions at the time. Once I determined that the service account had the appropriate permissions, I wanted to get query logging restarted from SSAS, and I wondered how to do that? Having just used a larger hammer than necessary with the db_owner role membership, I considered just restarting SSAS to get it logging again. However, this was a production server, and it was in the middle of business hours, and there were active users connecting to that SSAS instance, so I thought better of it.As I considered the options, I remembered that the first time I set up query logging, by putting in a valid connection string to the QueryLogConnectionString server property, logging started immediately after I saved the properties. I wondered if I could make some other change to the connection string so that the query logging would start again without restarting the service. I went into the connection string dialog, went to the All page, and looked at the properties I could change that wouldn't affect the actual connection. Aha! The Application Name property would do just nicely - I set it to "SSAS Query Logging" (it was previously blank) and saved the changes to the server properties. And the query logging started up right away. If I need to get this running again in the future, I could just make a small change in the Application Name property again, save it, and even change it back again if I wanted to.The other nice side effect of setting the Application Name property is that now I can see (and possibly filter for or filter out) the SQL activity in that database that is related to the query logging process in Profiler:  To sum up:The SSAS Query Logging process will automatically delete rows from the QueryLog table, so if you want to keep them longer, put a trigger on the table to copy the rows to another tableThe SSAS service account requires more than db_datawriter role membership (and probably less than db_owner) in the database specified in the QueryLogConnectionString server property to successfully insert log rows to the QueryLog  table.Query logging will stop quietly whenever it encounters an error. Make a change to the QueryLogConnectionString server property (such as the Application Name attribute) to get query logging to restart and you won't have to restart the service.

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• Make Your PC Look Like Windows Phone 7

  - by Matthew Guay

  Windows Phone 7 offers a unique and exciting UI that displays lots of information efficiently on the screen.  And with a simple Rainmeter theme, you can have the same UI and content directly on your Windows 7 desktop. Turn your Desktop into a Windows Phone 7 lookalike To give your Windows 7 desktop a Windows Phone 7 makeover, first you need to have the free Rainmeter application installed.  If you do not have it installed, download it from the link below and run the setup.  Accept the license agreement, and install it with the default settings. By default Rainmeter will automatically run when you start your computer.  If you do not want this, you can uncheck the box during the setup. Now, download the Omnimo UI theme for Rainmeter (link below).  You will need to unzip the folder first. This theme uses the Segoe UI and the Segoe UI Light font, so Windows Vista users need to install the segoeuil.ttf font first, and XP users need to install both the segoeui.ttf and the segoeuil.ttf font first.  Copy the appropriate fonts to C:\Windows\Fonts, or in Vista double-click on the font and select Install. Now, run the Rainmeter theme setup.  Double-click on the Rainstaller.exe in the Omnimo folder. Click Express install to add the theme and skin to Rainmeter. Click Finish, and by default Rainmeter will open with your new theme. When the new theme opens the first time, you will be asked to read the readme, or simply go to the gallery. When you open the gallery, you can choose from a wide variety of tiles and gadgets to place on your desktop.  You can also choose a different color scheme for your tiles. Once you’re done, click the X in the top right hand corner to close the Gallery.  Welcome to your Windows Phone 7 desktop!  Many of the gadgets are dynamic, and you can change the settings for most of them.  The only thing missing is the transition animations that Windows Phone 7 shows when you launch an application. To make it look even more like Windows Phone 7, you can change your background to black.  This makes the desktop theme really dramatic. And, if you want to add gadgets or change the color scheme, simply click on the + logo on the top. Windows Phone 7 Desktop Wallpapers If you’d prefer to simply change your background, My Microsoft Life has several very nice Windows Phone 7 wallpapers available for free.  Click the link below to download these and other Microsoft-centric wallpapers. If you can’t wait to get the new Windows phone 7, this is a great way to start experiencing the beauty of the phone UI on your desktop. Links Download Rainmeter Download the Omnimo UI Rainmeter theme Download Windows Phone 7 inspired wallpapers Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Try out Windows Phone 7 on your PC todayTest All Features of Windows Phone 7 On Your PCHow-To Geek on Lifehacker: How to Make Windows Vista Less AnnoyingCreate a Shortcut or Hotkey to Mute the System Volume in WindowsMake Ubuntu Automatically Save Changes to Your Session TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Norwegian Life If Web Browsers Were Modes of Transportation Google Translate (for animals) Roadkill’s Scan Port scans for open ports Out of 100 Tweeters Out of band Security Update for Internet Explorer

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• Text Expansion Awareness for UX Designers: Points to Consider

  - by ultan o'broin

  Awareness of translated text expansion dynamics is important for enterprise applications UX designers (I am assuming all source text for translation is in English, though apps development can takes place in other natural languages too). This consideration goes beyond the standard 'character multiplication' rule and must take into account the avoidance of other layout tricks that a designer might be tempted to try. Follow these guidelines. For general text expansion, remember the simple rule that the shorter the word is in the English, the longer it will need to be in English. See the examples provided by Richard Ishida of the W3C and you'll get the idea. So, forget the 30 percent or one inch minimum expansion rule of the old Forms days. Unfortunately remembering convoluted text expansion rules, based as a percentage of the US English character count can be tough going. Try these: Up to 10 characters: 100 to 200% 11 to 20 characters: 80 to 100% 21 to 30 characters: 60 to 80% 31 to 50 characters: 40 to 60% 51 to 70 characters: 31 to 40% Over 70 characters: 30% (Source: IBM) So it might be easier to remember a rule that if your English text is less than 20 characters then allow it to double in length (200 percent), and then after that assume an increase by half the length of the text (50%). (Bear in mind that ADF can apply truncation rules on some components in English too). (If your text is stored in a database, developers must make sure the table column widths can accommodate the expansion of your text when translated based on byte size for the translated character and not numbers of characters. Use Unicode. One character does not equal one byte in the multilingual enterprise apps world.) Rely on a graceful transformation of translated text. Let all pages to resize dynamically so the text wraps and flow naturally. ADF pages supports this already. Think websites. Don't hard-code alignments. Use Start and End properties on components and not Left or Right. Don't force alignments of components on the page by using texts of a certain length as spacers. Use proper label positioning and anchoring in ADF components or other technologies. Remember that an increase in text length means an increase in vertical space too when pages are resized. So don't hard-code vertical heights for any text areas. Don't be tempted to manually create text or printed reports this way either. They cannot be translated successfully, and are very difficult to maintain in English. Use XML, HTML, RTF and so on. Check out what Oracle BI Publisher offers. Don't force wrapping by using tricks such as /n or /t characters or HTML BR tags or forced page breaks. Once the text is translated the alignment will be destroyed. The position of the breaking character or tag would need to be moved anyway, or even removed. When creating tables, then use table components. Don't use manually created tables that reply on word length to maintain column and row alignment. For example, don't use codeblock elements in HTML; use the proper table elements instead. Once translated, the alignment of manually formatted tabular data is destroyed. Finally, if there is a space restriction, then don't use made-up acronyms, abbreviations or some form of daft text speak to save space. Besides being incomprehensible in English, they may need full translations of the shortened words, even if they can be figured out. Use approved or industry standard acronyms according to the UX style rules, not as a space-saving device. Restricted Real Estate on Mobile Devices On mobile devices real estate is limited. Using shortened text is fine once it is comprehensible. Users in the mobile space prefer brevity too, as they are on the go, performing three-minute tasks, with no time to read lengthy texts. Using fragments and lightning up on unnecessary articles and getting straight to the point with imperative forms of verbs makes sense both on real estate and user experience grounds.

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• OBIEE 11.1.1 - Introduction to OBIEE 11g Full Sample App

  - by user809526

  Isn't it nice to discover OBIEE 11g around a nice "How To" catalog of features? to observe OBI and Essbase relationships at work? to discover TimesTen? The OBIEE 11g Full Sample App (FSA) is a comprehensive collection of examples designed to demonstrate the latest Oracle BIEE 11g capabilities and design best practices: Enhanced visualizations as Geo-spacial maps and interactive dashboards, Action Framework,  BI Publisher, Scorecard and Strategy Management, Mobile style sheets, Semantic layer modeling, Multi-source federation, Integration with products such as Essbase, Oracle OLAP, ODM, TimesTen, ODI and more The FSA is intended to be comprehensive, it is big (see CAVEAT below). The FSA is not an Oracle product, it is a good will free deployment of OBIEE/Essbase designed to exemplify OBIEE features, infrastructure and security around the Fusion Middleware components. Its contents and code are distributed free for demonstrative purposes only. It is neither maintained nor supported by Oracle as a licensed product. The OBIEE Full Sample App is independent of the default Sample App that comes with the OBIEE product. BENEFITS The FSA helps as a demonstrator of OBIEE 11g best practices, a tutorial, an environment "Test & Scrap", a SR bench (regression, conflicts), a tuning bench, a quick ready made POC seed for projects, a security options environment, ... The FSA - Is organized around a catalog of functional features - Has been deployed over 1000 times, it should be stable RELEASE The Full Sample App (V107) is bound to OBIEE 11.1.1.5 and Essbase 11.1.2.1 (November 2011). The FSA release dates are independent of the Product GA date (OBIEE). In early December 2011, a new functional Patch (V110) is released. It is easily applied (in less than 15 mins) on top of OBIEE SampleApp 11.1.1.5 (V107). The patch (V110) includes additional functional examples:        1. Web Catalog Statistics Application: Provides detailed insight into your web catalog content, dormant catalog objects, webcat impact analysis for metadata changes and more        2. Data inflation Scripts: A set of simple SQL procedures to quickly inflate SampleApp Fact and Dimension data to millions of records in a few minutes        3. Public Content Extensions Framework: A patching framework for public examples and contributions leveraging SampleApp        4. Additional report examples (including bridge report, external chart integrations) and bug fixes DISTRIBUTION as VBox image (November 2011) The ready made VBox image is designed to run on Virtual Box. It can be converted to VMware (see another BLOG). 1/ http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/obiee-samples-167534.html VBox Image Deployment Guide Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf - VBox image key file The above http URL provides the user:password for the ftp URLs below. 2/ ftp://user:[email protected]/static/SampleAppV107/ 12 "7-zip" files Sampleapp_v107_GA_7_20.7z.001 -> .012 We recommend 7-zip file manager for unzipping (http://www.7-zip.org/). Select Unzip here option, it will create the contents under a directory named "SampleApp_10722". On Windows, it is important to download and save zip file under the root directory (e.g. C:\ or D:\) because of possible long pathnames. 3/ ftp://user:[email protected]/static/SampleAppV107/Unzipped_Version/ 4 files Sampleapp_v107_GA-disk[1234].vmdk Important note: Check the provided checksums (md5sum). Please do it! DISTRIBUTION as Installation files for existing OBI 11.1.1.5 (November 2011) http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/obiee-samples-167534.html Install files Deployment Guide SampleApp_10722_1.zip - 198 MB CAVEAT Many computers have RAM chips problems that keep often silent ... until you manipulate big files. It is strongly advised you run some memory check program eg MEMTEST in GRUB boot manager. Running md5sum repeatedly onto the very same big file must be consistent [same result], else a hardware memory problem is suspected. For Virtual Box, you should most likely enable VT-X (Vanderpool) hardware virtualization in BIOS. A free disk space of 80 GB is required to perform safely the VBox image installation. A Virtual Machine of minimum 6 to 7 GB memory fits the needs of combining OBIEE and Essbase execution.

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• View Weather Underground Forecasts in Google Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  If you like a simple straightforward interface for keeping up with weather forecasts then join us as we look at the Weather Underground extension for Google Chrome. Weather Underground in Action As soon as you click on the “Toolbar Icon” you will need to enter a location. Keep in mind that you will need to enter the “city and country” if using that option. Going with less information will yield an “error”. Note: The extension did not work for some Asian locations during our tests. In honor of the Olympics we chose Vancouver, Canada. You can hover over the “Toolbar Button” to see the current conditions or click to view the current day’s conditions, the current day’s forecast, and the forecast for the following three days. It is a simple straightforward interface. Note: There are no options to worry with. Clicking on the “Detailed Forecast Link” in the drop-down window will take you to the Weather Underground webpage for your location. Clicking on the “Weather Underground Link” in the drop-down window will take you to the Weather Underground U.S. Homepage. Additional Weather Underground Fun Since we were focusing on Weather Underground we have an extra bit of fun for you. If you love being able to view a “large scale” map of your location with current conditions and forecast combined then you might want to have a look at Weather Underground’s “wxmap webpage”. Using the link below you can access the basic starting page where you will be asked to enter your location. Once you have entered the information you will see the default “Terrain View” for your location and a “Current Conditions & Forecast Window” in the lower left corner. You can modify how your map looks by choosing from “Temperature, Precipitation, Clouds, Satellite, Hybrid, & Terrain” views. Going full screen in your browser with this gives your monitor a wonderful and unique look that will have your family & friends asking you how you did it. Note: Terrain View shown here. Clicking on the “Settings Link” in the upper left corner will let you tweak your map view very nicely. Conclusion If you love using Weather Underground for your weather forecasts then you can add a “double dose” of goodness to your browser. Links Download the Weather Underground extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Access the Full Screen Weather Underground Map & Forecast for your area Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Weather Forecasts to Google ChromeMonitor the Weather for Your Location in ChromeView the Time & Date in Chrome When Hiding Your TaskbarView Maps and Get Directions in Google ChromeGoogle Image Search Quick Fix TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver Optimize your computer the Microsoft way Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data Geek Parents – Did you try Parental Controls in Windows 7? Change DNS servers on the fly with DNS Jumper

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• Inequality joins, Asynchronous transformations and Lookups : SSIS

  - by jamiet

  It is pretty much accepted by SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) developers that synchronous transformations are generally quicker than asynchronous transformations (for a description of synchronous and asynchronous transformations go read Asynchronous and synchronous data flow components). Notice I said “generally” and not “always”; there are circumstances where using asynchronous transformations can be beneficial and in this blog post I’ll demonstrate such a scenario, one that is pretty common when building data warehouses. Imagine I have a [Customer] dimension table that manages information about all of my customers as a slowly-changing dimension. If that is a type 2 slowly changing dimension then you will likely have multiple rows per customer in that table. Furthermore you might also have datetime fields that indicate the effective time period of each member record. Here is such a table that contains data for four dimension members {Terry, Max, Henry, Horace}: Notice that we have multiple records per customer and that the [SCDStartDate] of a record is equivalent to the [SCDEndDate] of the record that preceded it (if there was one). (Note that I am on record as saying I am not a fan of this technique of storing an [SCDEndDate] but for the purposes of clarity I have included it here.) Anyway, the idea here is that we will have some incoming data containing [CustomerName] & [EffectiveDate] and we need to use those values to lookup [Customer].[CustomerId]. The logic will be: Lookup a [CustomerId] WHERE [CustomerName]=[CustomerName] AND [SCDStartDate] <= [EffectiveDate] AND [EffectiveDate] <= [SCDEndDate] The conventional approach to this would be to use a full cached lookup but that isn’t an option here because we are using inequality conditions. The obvious next step then is to use a non-cached lookup which enables us to change the SQL statement to use inequality operators: Let’s take a look at the dataflow: Notice these are all synchronous components. This approach works just fine however it does have the limitation that it has to issue a SQL statement against your lookup set for every row thus we can expect the execution time of our dataflow to increase linearly in line with the number of rows in our dataflow; that’s not good. OK, that’s the obvious method. Let’s now look at a different way of achieving this using an asynchronous Merge Join transform coupled with a Conditional Split. I’ve shown it post-execution so that I can include the row counts which help to illustrate what is going on here: Notice that there are more rows output from our Merge Join component than on the input. That is because we are joining on [CustomerName] and, as we know, we have multiple records per [CustomerName] in our lookup set. Notice also that there are two asynchronous components in here (the Sort and the Merge Join). I have embedded a video below that compares the execution times for each of these two methods. The video is just over 8minutes long. View on Vimeo  For those that can’t be bothered watching the video I’ll tell you the results here. The dataflow that used the Lookup transform took 36 seconds whereas the dataflow that used the Merge Join took less than two seconds. An illustration in case it is needed: Pretty conclusive proof that in some scenarios it may be quicker to use an asynchronous component than a synchronous one. Your mileage may of course vary. The scenario outlined here is analogous to performance tuning procedural SQL that uses cursors. It is common to eliminate cursors by converting them to set-based operations and that is effectively what we have done here. Our non-cached lookup is performing a discrete operation for every single row of data, exactly like a cursor does. By eliminating this cursor-in-disguise we have dramatically sped up our dataflow. I hope all of that proves useful. You can download the package that I demonstrated in the video from my SkyDrive at http://cid-550f681dad532637.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/BlogShare/20100514/20100514%20Lookups%20and%20Merge%20Joins.zip Comments are welcome as always. @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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