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• Book &ldquo;Team Foundation Server 2012 Starter&rdquo; published!

  - by Jakob Ehn

  During the summer and fall this year, me and my colleague Terje Sandstrøm has worked together on a book project that has now finally hit the stores! The title of the book is Team Foundation Server 2012 Starter and is published by Packt Publishing. You can find it at http://www.packtpub.com/team-foundation-server-2012-starter/book or from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/1849688389                          The book is part of a concept that Packt have with starter-books, intended for people new to Team Foundation Server 2012 and who want a quick guideline to get it up and working. It covers the fundamentals, from installing and configuring it, and how to use it with source control, work items and builds. It is done as a step-by-step guide, but also includes best practices advice in the different areas. It covers the use of both the on-premises and the TFS Services version. It also has a list of links and references in the end to the most relevant Visual Studio 2012 ALM sites. Our good friend and fellow ALM MVP Mathias Olausson have done the review of the book, thanks again Mathias! We hope the book fills the gap between the different online guide sites and the more advanced books that are out. Check it out and please let us know what you think of the book! Book Description Your quick start guide to TFS 2012, top features, and best practices with hands on examples Overview Install TFS 2012 from scratch Get up and running with your first project Streamline release cycles for maximum productivity In Detail Team Foundation Server 2012 is Microsoft's leading ALM tool, integrating source control, work item and process handling, build automation, and testing. This practical "Team Foundation Server 2012 Starter Guide" will provide you with clear step-by-step exercises covering all major aspects of the product. This is essential reading for anyone wishing to set up, organize, and use TFS server. This hands-on guide looks at the top features in Team Foundation Server 2012, starting with a quick installation guide and then moving into using it for your software development projects. Manage your team projects with Team Explorer, one of the many new features for 2012. Covering all the main features in source control to help you work more efficiently, including tools for branching and merging, we will delve into the Agile Planning Tools for planning your product and sprint backlogs. Learn to set up build automation, allowing your team to become faster, more streamlined, and ultimately more productive with this "Team Foundation Server 2012 Starter Guide". What you will learn from this book Install TFS 2012 on premise Access TFS Services in the cloud Quickly get started with a new project with product backlogs, source control, and build automation Work efficiently with source control using the top features Understand how the tools for branching and merging in TFS 2012 help you isolate work and teams Learn about the existing process templates, such as Visual Studio Scrum 2.0 Manage your product and sprint backlogs using the Agile planning tools Approach This Starter guide is a short, sharp introduction to Team Foundation Server 2012, covering everything you need to get up and running. Who this book is written for If you are a developer, project lead, tester, or IT administrator working with Team Foundation Server 2012 this guide will get you up to speed quickly and with minimal effort.

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• Read Mobi eBooks on Kindle for PC

  - by Matthew Guay

  Do you use your PC as a eBook reader?  Kindle for PC makes it easy to read thousands of books from the Kindle Store on your computer. What you may not know is that is also works with .mobi format too, so you can increase the amount of books you can read. Amazon has jumpstarted the eBook market with their popular Kindle device.  Last fall Amazon unveiled Kindle for PC, and we reviewed how you can Read Kindle Books On Your Computer with Kindle for PC.  Whether or not you own a Kindle or other eBook reader, this is a great way to take advantage of the thousands of eBooks available from the Kindle Store today. It supports azw, prc, and tpz format, which are sold from the Kindle store, but it also supports Mobipocket (.mobi) eBooks that are not DRM protected.  Here’s how you can add them to Kindle for PC so you can easily read them on your PC Getting Started: First, make sure you have Kindle for PC (link below) installed on your computer. Sign in with your Amazon account when you first run it. Kindle for PC lets you easily read eBooks downloaded from the Kindle Store, but it doesn’t have any way to add other eBooks directly from the program. To add eBooks, you can sometimes download and double-click on the books, and they will open in Kindle for PC and be automatically added to the library.  However, this does not always seem to work. So instead, browse to your Documents folder (simply click on the Documents link on your Start menu), and double-click on the My Kindle Content folder. This folder contains all the Kindle books you have downloaded.  If you have other eBooks you would like to add to Kindle for PC, simply drag-and-drop or copy and paste them into this folder.  Here we have a .mobi formatted book downloaded from the Gutenberg Project that we’re dragging into the folder. Now, close and reopen Kindle for PC.  It should now show your new eBook right beside the eBooks you have downloaded from the Kindle Store. These eBooks work just the same as the ones downloaded from the Kindle store, and you can change font size and add bookmarks just as with other eBooks. The eBooks downloaded this way may show up with either a Amazon logo or a mobile device icon.  You should only see the mobile device icon on .mobi files formatted for mobile devices; other ones should show up with the Amazon logo.  In this screen, Pilgrim’s Progress is a standard .mobi book, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a mobipocket book, and the others are downloaded from the Kindle Store. Conclusion This is a great way to read eBooks from across the internet on Kindle for PC.  Wikipedia’s Kindle page has a list of websites that offer eBooks formatted for the Kindle, so be sure to check it out for more books. Links Download Kindle for PC List of websites that offer eBooks that will work on Kindle – via Wikipedia Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Read Kindle Books On Your Computer with Kindle for PCInstall Adobe PDF Reader on Ubuntu EdgyHow to Access your Box.Net Account from Ubuntu the Easy Way 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 New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users Get News Quick and Precise With Newser Scan for Viruses in Ubuntu using ClamAV Replace Your Windows Task Manager With System Explorer Create Talking Photos using Fotobabble

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #005

  - by pinaldave

  Here is the list of curetted articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2006 SQL SERVER – Cursor to Kill All Process in Database I indeed wrote this cursor and when I often look back, I wonder how naive I was to write this. The reason for writing this cursor was to free up my database from any existing connection so I can do database operation. This worked fine but there can be a potentially big issue if there was any important transaction was killed by this process. There is another way to to achieve the same thing where we can use ALTER syntax to take database in single user mode. Read more about that over here and here. 2007 Rules of Third Normal Form and Normalization Advantage – 3NF The rules of 3NF are mentioned here Make a separate table for each set of related attributes, and give each table a primary key. If an attribute depends on only part of a multi-valued key, remove it to a separate table If attributes do not contribute to a description of the key, remove them to a separate table. Correct Syntax for Stored Procedure SP Sometime a simple question is the most important question. I often see in industry incorrectly written Stored Procedure. Few writes code after the most outer BEGIN…END and few writes code after the GO Statement. In this brief blog post, I have attempted to explain the same. 2008 Switch Between Result Pan and Query Pan – SQL Shortcut Many times when I am writing query I have to scroll the result displayed in the result set. Most of the developer uses the mouse to switch between and Query Pane and Result Pane. There are few developers who are crazy about Keyboard shortcuts. F6 is the keyword which can be used to switch between query pane and tabs of the result pane. Interesting Observation – Use of Index and Execution Plan Query Optimization is a complex game and it has its own rules. From the example in the article we have discovered that Query Optimizer does not use clustered index to retrieve data, sometime non clustered index provides optimal performance for retrieving Primary Key. When all the rows and columns are selected Primary Key should be used to select data as it provides optimal performance. 2009 Interesting Observation – TOP 100 PERCENT and ORDER BY If you pull up any application or system where there are more than 100 SQL Server Views are created – I am very confident that at one or two places you will notice the scenario wherein View the ORDER BY clause is used with TOP 100 PERCENT. SQL Server 2008 VIEW with ORDER BY clause does not throw an error; moreover, it does not acknowledge the presence of it as well. In this article we have taken three perfect examples and demonstrated which clause we should use when. Comma Separated Values (CSV) from Table Column A Very common question – How to create comma separated values from a table in the database? The answer is also very common if we use XML. Check out this article for quick learning on the same subject. Azure Start Guide – Step by Step Installation Guide Though Azure portal has changed a quite bit since I wrote this article, the concept used in this article are not old. They are still valid and many of the functions are still working as mentioned in the article. I believe this one article will put you on the track to use Azure! Size of Index Table for Each Index – Solution Earlier I have posted a small question on this blog and requested help from readers to participate here and provide a solution. The puzzle was to write a query that will return the size for each index that is on any particular table. We need a query that will return an additional column in the above listed query and it should contain the size of the index. This article presents two of the best solutions from the puzzle. 2010 Well, this week in 2010 was the week of puzzles as I posted three interesting puzzles. Till today I am noticing pretty good interesting in the puzzles. They are tricky but for sure brings a great value if you are a database developer for a long time. I suggest you go over this puzzles and their answers. Did you really know all of the answers? I am confident that reading following three blog post will for sure help you enhance the experience with T-SQL. SQL SERVER – Challenge – Puzzle – Usage of FAST Hint SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Challenge – Error While Converting Money to Decimal SQL SERVER – Challenge – Puzzle – Why does RIGHT JOIN Exists 2011 DVM sys.dm_os_sys_info Column Name Changed in SQL Server 2012 Have you ever faced a situation where something does not work? When you try to fix it - you enjoy fixing it and started to appreciate the breaking changes. Well, this was exactly I felt yesterday. Before I begin my story, I want to candidly state that I do not encourage anybody to use * in the SELECT statement. Now the disclaimer is over – I suggest you read the original story – you will love it! Get Directory Structure using Extended Stored Procedure xp_dirtree Here is the question to you – why would you do something in SQL Server where you can do the same task in command prompt much easily. Well, the answer is sometime there are real use cases when we have to do such thing. This is a similar example where I have demonstrated how in SQL Server 2012 we can use extended stored procedure to retrieve directory structure. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• View Mobile Websites in Windows with Safari 4 Developer Tools

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to try out mobile websites designed for the iPhone and other mobile devices on your PC?  Safari 4 for Windows lets you do this easily with their developer tools. By default, Safari will show standard desktop websites.  But by making a simple change, you can switch it to work like Safari Mobile on the iPhone or iPod Touch. Getting Started First make sure you have Safari 4 for Windows installed.  You can download Safari directly (link below) and install it as usual.   Or if you already have another Apple program installed, such as QuickTime or iTunes, then you can install it from Apple Software update.  Simply enter apple software update in the Start menu search box. And then select Safari 4 from the list of new software available.  Click Install to automatically download and install Safari. Accept the license Agreement, and then Safari will automatically install. Once this is finished, Safari will be ready to use. View Mobile Sites in Safari First, we need to enable the developer tools.  Click the gear icon on the toolbar, and select Preferences. Click the Advanced tab, and then check the box that says “Show Develop menu in menu bar”. Once you’ve closed your settings box, click the page icon, select Develop, then User Agent, and then choose one of the Mobile Safari settings.  In our test we chose Mobile Safari 3.1.2 – iPhone. To make your browser emulate a mobile device better, you can hide the bookmarks and tab bar to have a more streamlined interface. Click the Gear icon, and select “Hide Bookmarks Bar”, and then repeat and click “Hide Tab Bar”. You can also shrink your window to be closer to the size of a mobile device screen.  Once you’ve done these things, Safari should look similar to this screenshot.  Here we have loaded Google.com, and you can see it in its iPhone-style interface. Simply enter any website into the address bar, and it will load in its mobile interface if it has one.  Here is Google’s other mobile offerings, right inside Windows. Gmail loads messages with the default iPhone interface. One especially interesting mobile site is Apple’s online iPhone User Guide.  When loaded in Safari with the iPhone setting, it loads with a very nice mobile UI that works just like an iPhone app.  In fact, you can even click and drag to scroll, just like you would with your finger on an iPhone. Conclusion Even if you do not have a Smartphone, you can still preview what websites will look like on them with this trick. Not all sites will work of course, but it’s fun to play around with different sites that have mobile versions. Links: Safari 4 Download Apple iPhone online user guide Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make Safari Stop Crashing Every 20 Seconds on Windows VistaCustomize Safari for Windows ToolbarSave Screen Space by Hiding the Bookmarks Toolbar in Safari for WindowsEdit Text in a Webpage with Internet Explorer 8Keep Websites From Using Tiny Fonts in Safari 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 Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet

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• Boost Netbook Speed with an SD Card & ReadyBoost

  - by Matthew Guay

  Looking for a way to increase the performance of your netbook?  Here’s how you can use a standard SD memory card or a USB flash drive to boost performance with ReadyBoost. Most netbooks ship with 1Gb of Ram, and many older netbooks shipped with even less.  Even if you want to add more ram, often they can only be upgraded to a max of 2GB.  With ReadyBoost in Windows 7, it’s easy to boost your system’s performance with flash memory.  If your netbook has an SD card slot, you can insert a memory card into it and just leave it there to always boost your netbook’s memory; otherwise, you can use a standard USB flash drive the same way. Also, you can use ReadyBoost on any desktop or laptop; ones with limited memory will see the most performance increase from using it. Please Note:  ReadyBoost requires at least 256Mb of free space on your flash drive, and also requires minimum read/write speeds.  Most modern memory cards or flash drives meet these requirements, but be aware that an old card may not work with it. Using ReadyBoost Insert an SD card into your card reader, or connect a USB flash drive to a USB port on your computer.  Windows will automatically see if your flash memory is ReadyBoost capable, and if so, you can directly choose to speed up your computer with ReadyBoost. The ReadyBoost settings dialog will open when you select this.  Choose “Use this device” and choose how much space you want ReadyBoost to use. Click Ok, and Windows will setup ReadyBoost and start using it to speed up your computer.  It will automatically use ReadyBoost whenever the card is connected to the computer. When you view your SD card or flash drive in Explorer, you will notice a ReadyBoost file the size you chose before.  This will be deleted when you eject your card or flash drive. If you need to remove your drive to use elsewhere, simply eject as normal. Windows will inform you that the drive is currently being used.  Make sure you have closed any programs or files you had open from the drive, and then press Continue to stop ReadyBoost and eject your drive. If you remove the drive without ejecting it, the ReadyBoost file may still remain on the drive.  You can delete this to save space on the drive, and the cache will be recreated when you use ReadyBoost next time. Conclusion Although ReadyBoost may not make your netbook feel like a Core i7 laptop with 6GB of RAM, it will still help performance and make multitasking even easier.  Also, if you have, say, a memory stick and a flash drive, you can use both of them with ReadyBoost for the maximum benefit.  We have even noticed better battery life when multitasking with ReadyBoost, as it lets you use your hard drive less.  SD cards and thumb drives are relatively cheap today, and many of us have several already, so this is a great way to improve netbook performance cheaply. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Speed up Your Windows Vista Computer with ReadyBoostSet the Speed Dial as the Opera Startup PageAsk the Readers: What are Your Computer’s Hardware Specs?Understanding Windows Vista Aero Glass RequirementsReplace Google Chrome’s New Tab Page with Speed Dial 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 Recycle ! Find That Elusive Icon with FindIcons Looking for Good Windows Media Player 12 Plug-ins? Find Out the Celebrity You Resemble With FaceDouble Whoa ! Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems

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• Beginner Geek: How to Burn an ISO Image to a Disc

  - by Mysticgeek

  There may be a time when you have an ISO image that you need to burn to a CD or DVD for use in a computer or other device. Today we show you how to do it using ImgBurn, ISO Recorder, and Windows Disc Image Burner in Windows 7. You might need to burn an ISO of an operating system, software app, CD, DVD…etc. It doesn’t matter what the ISO image is, burning an image is a fairly straight-forward process and here we’ll take a look at three free options to accomplish it. Using ImgBurn ImgBurn is an awesome free utility that will create ISO images, allow out burn almost anything, and a lot more. Although there are a lot advanced features available, burning an ISO to disc is easy. Download and install ImgBurn (link below) taking the defaults in the install wizard. The main thing to watch for and uncheck during installation is when it offers the worthless Ask Toolbar. The easiest way to use ImgBurn is to burn an image to disc is pop in a blank disc to the CD/DVD drive, right-click on the ISO file, and select Burn using ImgBurn. ImgBurn opens up with the source and destination fields already filled in. You can leave the default settings, then click the Write button. You’ll notice that the ImgBurn Log screen opens, this is by default and is meant to show error messages you may receive during the writing process.   A successful burn! That is all there is to it…click Ok and close out of ImgBurn. Use ISO Recorder ISO Recorder (link below) is another great utility for burning ISO images to disc. They have a version for XP, Vista, and Windows 7 (32 & 64-bit Versions). Pop your blank disc into your CD/DVD drive and right-click on the ISO image file and select Copy image to CD from the Context Menu. In the next screen the image file path is in the Source Image file field. Under Recorder select the drive with your blank disc, select a recording speed and click Next. You’ll see a progress screen while the data is written to the disc and finalizing… That’s it! Your disc will pop out and you can click Finish to close out of ISO Recorder. Use Windows 7 If You’re using Windows 7, use the built in Windows Disc Image Burner feature to burn ISO images to disc. The process is very straight-forward, and for a full walkthrough on this, check out our article on how to burn an ISO image in Windows 7. Conclusion You don’t need an expensive commercial application to burn an ISO image to disc. Using any one of these free utilities will get the job done quite nicely. Download ImgBurn Download ISO Recorder Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Make a Windows Vista Repair Disk If You Don’t Have OneHow to Create a Windows ISO from a Disc Using ImgBurnEasily Burn Discs With BurnAware Free EditionCreate A Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore DiscWhy is Amarok’s "Burn This Album" Disabled in Ubuntu? TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Google Translate (for animals) Out of 100 Tweeters Roadkill’s Scan Port scans for open ports Out of band Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 Cool Looking Screensavers for Windows If it were only this easy

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• Opening the Internet Settings Dialog and using Windows Default Network Settings via Code

  - by Rick Strahl

  Ran into a question from a client the other day that asked how to deal with Internet Connection settings for running  HTTP requests. In this case this is an old FoxPro app and it's using WinInet to handle the actual HTTP connection. Another client asked a similar question about using the IE Web Browser control and configuring connection properties. Regardless of platform or tools used to do HTTP connections, you can probably configure custom connection and proxy settings in your application to configure http connection settings manually. However, this is a repetitive process for each application requires you to track system information in your application which is undesirable. Often it's much easier to rely on the system wide proxy settings that Windows provides via the Internet Settings dialog. The dialog is a Control Panel applet (inetcpl.cpl) and is the same dialog that you see when you pop up Internet Explorer's Options dialog: This dialog controls the Windows connection properties that determine how the Windows HTTP stack connects to the Internet and how Proxy's are used if configured. Depending on how the HTTP client is configured - it can typically inherit and use these global settings. Loading the Settings Dialog Programmatically The settings dialog is a Control Panel applet with the name of: inetcpl.cpl and you can use any Shell execution mechanism (Run dialog, ShellExecute API, Process.Start() in .NET etc.) to invoke the dialog. Changes made there are immediately reflected in any applications that use the default connection settings. In .NET you can simply do this to bring up the Internet Settings dialog with the Connection tab enabled: Process.Start("inetcpl.cpl",",4"); In FoxPro you can simply use the RUN command to execute inetcpl.cpl: lcCmd = "inetcpl.cpl ,4" RUN &lcCmd Using the Default Connection/Proxy Settings When using WinInet you specify the Http connect type in the call to InternetOpen() like this (FoxPro code here): hInetConnection=; InternetOpen(THIS.cUserAgent,0,; THIS.chttpproxyname,THIS.chttpproxybypass,0) The second parameter of 0 specifies that the default system proxy settings should be used and it uses the settings from the Internet Settings Connections tab. Other connection options for HTTP connections include 1 - direct (no proxies and ignore system settings), 3 - explicit Proxy specification. In most situations a connection mode setting of 0 should work. In .NET HTTP connections by default are direct connections and so you need to explicitly specify a default proxy or proxy configuration to use. The easiest way to do this is on the application level in the config file: <configuration> <system.net> <defaultProxy> <proxy bypassonlocal="False" autoDetect="True" usesystemdefault="True" /> </defaultProxy> </system.net> </configuration> You can do the same sort of thing in code specifying the proxy explicitly and using System.Net.WebProxy.GetDefaultProxy(). So when making HTTP calls to Web Services or using the HttpWebRequest class you can set the proxy with: StoreService.Proxy = WebProxy.GetDefaultProxy(); All of this is pretty easy to deal with and in my opinion is a way better choice to managing connection settings than having to track this stuff in your own application. Plus if you use default settings, most of the time it's highly likely that the connection settings are already properly configured making further configuration rare.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in Windows  HTTP  .NET  FoxPro   Tweet (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• F# WPF Form &ndash; the basics

  - by MarkPearl

  I was listening to Dot Net Rocks show #560 about F# and during the podcast Richard Campbell brought up a good point with regards to F# and a GUI. In essence what I understood his point to be was that until one could write an end to end application in F#, it would be a hard sell to developers to take it on. In part I agree with him, while I am beginning to really enjoy learning F#, I can’t but help feel that I would be a lot further into the language if I could do my Windows Forms like I do in C# or VB.NET for the simple reason that in “playing” applications I spend the majority of the time in the UI layer… So I have been keeping my eye out for some examples of creating a WPF form in a F# project and came across Tim’s F# Twitter Stream Sample, which had exactly this…. of course he actually had a bit more than a basic form… but it was enough for me to scrap the insides and glean what I needed. So today I am going to make just the very basic WPF form with all the goodness of a XAML window. Getting Started First thing we need to do is create a new solution with a blank F# application project – I have made mine called FSharpWPF. Once you have the project created you will need to change the project type from a Console Application to a Windows Application. You do this by right clicking on the project file and going to its properties… Once that is done you will need to add the appropriate references. You do this by right clicking on the References in the Solution Explorer and clicking “Add Reference'”. You should add the appropriate .Net references below for WPF & XAMl to work. Once these references are added you then need to add your XAML file to the project. You can do this by adding a new item to the project of type xml and simply changing the file extension from xml to xaml. Once the xaml file has been added to the project you will need to add valid window XAML. Example of a very basic xaml file is shown below… <Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="F# WPF WPF Form" Height="350" Width="525"> <Grid> </Grid> </Window> Once your xaml file is done… you need to set the build action of the xaml file from “None” to “Resource” as depicted in the picture below. If you do not set this you will get an IOException error when running the completed project with a message along the lines of “Cannot locate resource ‘window.xaml’ You then need to tie everything up by putting the correct F# code in the Program.fs to load the xaml window. In the Program.fs put the following code… module Program open System open System.Collections.ObjectModel open System.IO open System.Windows open System.Windows.Controls open System.Windows.Markup [<STAThread>] [<EntryPoint>] let main(_) = let w = Application.LoadComponent(new System.Uri("/FSharpWPF;component/Window.xaml", System.UriKind.Relative)) :?> Window (new Application()).Run(w) Once all this is done you should be able to build and run your project. What you have done is created a WPF based window inside a FSharp project. It should look something like below…   Nothing to exciting, but sufficient to illustrate the very basic WPF form in F#. Hopefully in future posts I will build on this to expose button events etc.

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• SQLAuthority News – Ahmedabad Tech Ed On Road June 11, 2011 – An Event to Remember – A Grand Success of Community Tech Days

  - by pinaldave

  I am very excited to announce the huge success of the Microsoft Community TechDays at Ahmedabad, on 11 June 2011.  The turn-out for this seminar was huge, and there was a great response from the audience.  In fact, the AMA where the conference was held can seat 275 people – but there were over 50 people standing, the event coordinators had to find 150 more chairs, and we even had to turn away 30 people at the door because there was just no more room.  This means that there were over 500 attendees! The event started right on time, at 10 am, with my introduction and welcome to the audience.  My presentation on my favorite subject of “SQL Server Performance Troubleshooting Using Waits and Queues.”  Because of the number of speakers, I had to cut my presentation short by 10 minutes, so I only had 50 minutes to explain how to use swaits and queues to fine tune performance.  There was a good response to my talk from audience. I feel the best presentation, though, was “HTML5 – Future of the Web” by Harish Vaidyanathan.  He explained how HTML5 is going to change the internet, and taught everyone a lot about how to best use Internet Explorer 9, and discussed CSS3, SVG and DOM specifications.  Many people in the audience came specifically for this session – many had to take a half day leave off work just to travel there. At this point we all took a break for lunch, but there was no one taking a nap with a full stomach because we had a presentation of the new Windows Mango phone from Dhananjay Kumar.  New technology like this always wakes everyone up! After this came “TSQL Worst Practices” by Jacob Sebastian.  He too had to cut his talk short by 10 minutes in order to accommodate everyone, but his discussion of what SQL queries to avoid was still excellent. He is magnificent presenter and Ahmedabad loves him. The final presentation was “ASP.NET Tips and Tricks” by Tejas Shah.  This was a good overview of asp.net fundamentals, and how to use them to improve application performance.  However, the day was not over here!  We kept the audience entertained with prizes and give-aways.  Names were drawn for prizes and there was a quiz session with great gifts for the winners. Overall, the day was a huge success.  There was a good mix of SQL and non-SQL subjects, and many audiences members commented on how much they learned.  We had a much bigger turn-out than expected – all the chairs were filled 45 minutes before we even started!  For our next conference we need to find a space that will hold everyone, especially since we are hoping to have 600-800 people attending.  We definitely feel we can reach this goal.  We are already looking forward to the next Ahmedabad Microsoft Community TechDays. Download presentations: HTML5 Beauty of Web -By Harish Vaidyanathan TSQL Worst Practices- By Jacob Sebastian SQL SERVER Performance troubleshooting using Waits and Queues -By Pinal Dave ASP.NET Tips and Tracks -By Tejas Shah Other reports: Tech-Ed on Road 2011- Ahmedabad–A great event- By Jalpesh Tech-Ed 2011 on the Road in Ahmedabad – by Ritesh Shah Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – An Efficiency Tool to Compare and Synchronize SQL Server Databases

  - by Pinal Dave

  There is no need to reinvent the wheel if it is already invented and if the wheel is already available at ease, there is no need to wait to grab it. Here is the similar situation. I came across a very interesting situation and I had to look for an efficient tool which can make my life easier and solve my business problem. Here is the scenario. One of the developers had deleted few rows from the very important mapping table of our development server (thankfully, it was not the production server). Though it was a development server, the entire development team had to stop working as the application started to crash on every page. Think about the lost of manpower and efficiency which we started to loose.  Pretty much every department had to stop working as our internal development application stopped working. Thankfully, we even take a backup of our development server and we had access to full backup of the entire database at 6 AM morning. We do not take as a frequent backup of development server as production server (naturally!). Even though we had a full backup, the solution was not to restore the database. Think about it, there were plenty of the other operations since the last good full backup and if we restore a full backup, we will pretty much overwrite on the top of the work done by developers since morning. Now, as restoring the full backup was not an option we decided to restore the same database on another server. Once we had restored our database to another server, the challenge was to compare the table from where the database was deleted. The mapping table from where the data were deleted contained over 5000 rows and it was humanly impossible to compare both the tables manually. Finally we decided to use efficiency tool dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server from DevArt. dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server is a powerful, fast and easy to use SQL compare tool, capable of using native SQL Server backups as metadata source. (FYI we Downloaded dbForge Data Compare) Once we discovered the product, we immediately downloaded the product and installed on our development server. After we installed the product, we were greeted with the following screen. We clicked on the New Data Comparision to start our new comparison project. It brought up following screen. Here is the best part of the product, we just had to enter our database connection username and password along with source and destination details and we are done. The entire process is very simple and self intuiting. The best part was that for the source, we can either select database or even backup. This was indeed fantastic feature. Think about this, if you have a very big database, it will take long time to restore on the server. Once it is restored, you will be able to work with it. However, when you are working with dbForge Data Compare it will accept database backup as your source or destination. Once I click on the execute it brought up following screen where it displayed an excellent summary of the data compare. It has dedicated tabs for the what is changing in what table as well had details of the changed data. The best part is that, once we had reviewed the change. We click on the Synchronize button in the menu bar and it brought up following screen. You can see that the screen has very simple straight forward but very powerful features. You can generate a script to synchronize from target to source or even from source to target. Additionally, the database is a very complicated world and there are extensive options to configure various database options on the next screen. We also have the option to either generate script or directly execute the script to target server. I like to play on the safe side and I generated the script for my synchronization and later on after review I deployed the scripts on the server. Well, my team and we were able to get going from our disaster in less than 10 minutes. There were few people in our team were indeed disappointed as they were thinking of going home early that day but in less than 10 minutes they had to get back to work. There are so many other features in  dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server, I am already planning to make this product company wide recommended product for Data Compare tool. Hats off to the team who have build this product. Here are few of the features salient features of the dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server Perform SQL Server database comparison to detect changes Compare SQL Server backups with live databases Analyze data differences between two databases Synchronize two databases that went out of sync Restore data of a particular table from the backup Generate data comparison reports in Excel and HTML formats Copy look-up data from development database to production Automate routine data synchronization tasks with command-line interface Go Ahead and Download the dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server right away. It is always a good idea to get familiar with the important tools before hand instead of learning it under pressure of disaster. 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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• New January 2013 Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit

  - by Stephen.Walther

  I am super excited to announce the January 2013 release of the Ajax Control Toolkit! I have one word to describe this release and that word is “Charts” – we’ve added lots of great new chart controls to the Ajax Control Toolkit. You can download the new release directly from http://AjaxControlToolkit.CodePlex.com – or, just fire the following command from the Visual Studio Library Package Manager Console Window (NuGet): Install-Package AjaxControlToolkit You also can view the new chart controls by visiting the “live” Ajax Control Toolkit Sample Site. 5 New Ajax Control Toolkit Chart Controls The Ajax Control Toolkit contains five new chart controls: the AreaChart, BarChart, BubbleChart, LineChart, and PieChart controls. Here is a sample of each of the controls: AreaChart: BarChart: BubbleChart: LineChart: PieChart: We realize that people love to customize the appearance of their charts so all of the chart controls include properties such as color properties. The chart controls render the chart on the browser using SVG. The chart controls are compatible with any browser which supports SVG including Internet Explorer 9 and new and recent versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari. (If you attempt to display a chart on a browser which does not support SVG then you won’t get an error – you just won’t get anything). Updates to the HTML Sanitizer If you are using the HtmlEditorExtender on a public-facing website then it is really important that you enable the HTML Sanitizer to prevent Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. The HtmlEditorExtender uses the HTML Sanitizer by default. The HTML Sanitizer strips out any suspicious content (like JavaScript code and CSS expressions) from the HTML submitted with the HtmlEditorExtender. We followed the recommendations of OWASP and ha.ckers.org to identify suspicious content. We updated the HTML Sanitizer with this release to protect against new types of XSS attacks. The HTML Sanitizer now has over 220 unit tests. The Ajax Control Toolkit team would like to thank Gil Cohen who helped us identify and block additional XSS attacks. Change in Ajax Control Toolkit Version Format We ran out of numbers. The Ajax Control Toolkit was first released way back in 2006. In previous releases, the version of the Ajax Control Toolkit followed the format: Release Year + Date. So, the previous release was 60919 where 6 represented the 6th release year and 0919 represent September 19. Unfortunately, the AssembyVersion attribute uses a UInt16 data type which has a maximum size of 65,534. The number 70123 is bigger than 65,534 so we had to change our version format with this release. Fortunately, the AssemblyVersion attribute actually accepts four UInt16 numbers so we used another one. This release of the Ajax Control Toolkit is officially version 7.0123. This new version format should work for another 65,000 years. And yes, I realize that 7.0123 is less than 60,919, but we ran out of numbers. Summary I hope that you find the chart controls included with this latest release of the Ajax Control Toolkit useful. Let me know if you use them in applications that you build. And, let me know if you run into any issues using the new chart controls. Next month, back to improving the File Upload control – more exciting stuff.

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• Login failed for user 'sa' because the account is currently locked out. The system administrator can

  - by cabhilash

  Login failed for user 'sa' because the account is currently locked out. The system administrator can unlock it. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 18486) SQL server has local password policies. If policy is enabled which locks down the account after X number of failed attempts then the account is automatically locked down.This error with 'sa' account is very common. sa is default administartor login available with SQL server. So there are chances that an ousider has tried to bruteforce your system. (This can cause even if a legitimate tries to access the account with wrong password.Sometimes a user would have changed the password without informing others. So the other users would try to lo) You can unlock the account with the following options (use another admin account or connect via windows authentication) Alter account & unlock ALTER LOGIN sa WITH PASSWORD='password' UNLOCK Use another account Almost everyone is aware of the sa account. This can be the potential security risk. Even if you provide strong password hackers can lock the account by providing the wrong password. ( You can provide extra security by installing firewall or changing the default port but these measures are not always practical). As a best practice you can disable the sa account and use another account with same privileges.ALTER LOGIN sa DISABLE You can edit the lock-ot options using gpedit.msc( in command prompt type gpedit.msc and press enter). Navigate to Account Lokout policy as shown in the figure The Following options are available Account lockout threshold This security setting determines the number of failed logon attempts that causes a user account to be locked out. A locked-out account cannot be used until it is reset by an administrator or until the lockout duration for the account has expired. You can set a value between 0 and 999 failed logon attempts. If you set the value to 0, the account will never be locked out. Failed password attempts against workstations or member servers that have been locked using either CTRL+ALT+DELETE or password-protected screen savers count as failed logon attempts. Account lockout duration This security setting determines the number of minutes a locked-out account remains locked out before automatically becoming unlocked. The available range is from 0 minutes through 99,999 minutes. If you set the account lockout duration to 0, the account will be locked out until an administrator explicitly unlocks it. If an account lockout threshold is defined, the account lockout duration must be greater than or equal to the reset time. Default: None, because this policy setting only has meaning when an Account lockout threshold is specified. Reset account lockout counter after This security setting determines the number of minutes that must elapse after a failed logon attempt before the failed logon attempt counter is reset to 0 bad logon attempts. The available range is 1 minute to 99,999 minutes. If an account lockout threshold is defined, this reset time must be less than or equal to the Account lockout duration. Default: None, because this policy setting only has meaning when an Account lockout threshold is specified.When creating SQL user you can set CHECK_POLICY=on which will enforce the windows password policy on the account. The following policies will be applied Define the Enforce password history policy setting so that several previous passwords are remembered. With this policy setting, users cannot use the same password when their password expires.  Define the Maximum password age policy setting so that passwords expire as often as necessary for your environment, typically, every 30 to 90 days. With this policy setting, if an attacker cracks a password, the attacker only has access to the network until the password expires.  Define the Minimum password age policy setting so that passwords cannot be changed until they are more than a certain number of days old. This policy setting works in combination with the Enforce password historypolicy setting. If a minimum password age is defined, users cannot repeatedly change their passwords to get around the Enforce password history policy setting and then use their original password. Users must wait the specified number of days to change their passwords.  Define a Minimum password length policy setting so that passwords must consist of at least a specified number of characters. Long passwords--seven or more characters--are usually stronger than short ones. With this policy setting, users cannot use blank passwords, and they have to create passwords that are a certain number of characters long.  Enable the Password must meet complexity requirements policy setting. This policy setting checks all new passwords to ensure that they meet basic strong password requirements.  Password must meet the following complexity requirement, when they are changed or created: Not contain the user's entire Account Name or entire Full Name. The Account Name and Full Name are parsed for delimiters: commas, periods, dashes or hyphens, underscores, spaces, pound signs, and tabs. If any of these delimiters are found, the Account Name or Full Name are split and all sections are verified not to be included in the password. There is no check for any character or any three characters in succession. Contain characters from three of the following five categories:  English uppercase characters (A through Z) English lowercase characters (a through z) Base 10 digits (0 through 9) Non-alphabetic characters (for example, !, $, #, %) A catch-all category of any Unicode character that does not fall under the previous four categories. This fifth category can be regionally specific.

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• SQL Server source control from Visual Studio

  - by David Atkinson

  Developers have long since had to context switch between two IDEs, Visual Studio for application code development and SQL Server Management Studio for database development. While this is accepted, especially given the richness of the database development feature set in SSMS, loading a separate tool can seem a little overkill. This is where SQL Connect comes in. This is an add-in to Visual Studio that provides a connected development experience for the SQL Server developer. Connected database development involves modifying a development sandbox database, as opposed to offline development, where SQL text files are modified independently of the database. One of the main complaints of Data Dude (VS DBPro) is that it enforces the offline approach. This gripe is what SQL Connect addresses. If you don't already use SQL Source Control, you can get up and running with SQL Connect by adding a new project to your Visual Studio solution as follows: Then choose your existing development database and you're ready to go. If you already use SQL Source Control, you will need to link SQL Connect to your existing database scripts folder repository, so SQL Connect and SQL Source Control can be used collaboratively (note that SQL Source Control v.3.0.9.18 or later is required). Locate the repository (this can be found in the Setup tab in SQL Source Control). .and create a working folder for it (here I'm using TortoiseSVN). Back in Visual Studio, locate the SQL Connect panel (in the View menu if it hasn't auto loaded) and select Import SQL Source Control project Locate your working folder and click Import. This creates a Red Gate database project under your solution: From here you can modify your development database, and manage your changes in source control. To associate your development database with the project, right click on the project node, select Properties, set the database and Save. Now you're ready to make some changes. Locate the object you'd like to modify in the Solution Explorer, and double click it to invoke a query window or table designer. You also have the option to edit the creation SQL directly using Edit SQL File in Project. Keeping the development database and Visual Studio project in sync is as easy as clicking on a button. One you've made your change, you can use whichever mechanism you choose to commit to source control. Here I'm using the free open-source AnkhSVN to integrate Subversion with Visual Studio. Maintaining your database in a Visual Studio solution means that you can commit database changes and application code changes in the same changeset. This is desirable if you have continuous integration set up as you want to ensure that all files related to a change are committed atomically, so you avoid an interim "broken build". More discussion on SQL Connect and its benefits can be found in the following article on Simple Talk: No More Disconnected SQL Development in Visual Studio The SQL Connect project team is currently assessing the backlog for the next development effort, and they'd appreciate your feature suggestions, as well as your votes on their suggestions site: http://redgate.uservoice.com/forums/140800-sql-connect-for-visual-studio- A 28-day free trial of SQL Connect is available from the Red Gate website. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

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• SQL SERVER – Identity Fields – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 2 of 5

  - by pinaldave

  August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Which of the following statement is incorrect? a) Identity value can be negative. b) Identity value can have negative interval. c) Identity value can be of datatype VARCHAR d) Identity value can have increment interval larger than 1 Query Hints: BIG HINT POST A simple way to determine if a table contains an identity field is to use the SSMS Object Explorer Design Interface. Navigate to the table, then right-click it and choose Design from the pop-up window. When your design tab opens, select the first field in the table to view its list of properties in the lower pane of the tab (In this case the field is ProductID). Look to see if the Identity Specification property in the lower pane is set to either yes or no. SQL Server will allow you to utilize IDENTITY_INSERT with just one table at a time. After you’ve completed the needed work, it’s very important to reset the IDENTITY_INSERT back to OFF. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 2. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Output Clause in Simple Examples SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Ranking Functions – Advanced NTILE in Detail SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Ranking Functions – RANK( ), DENSE_RANK( ), and ROW_NUMBER( ) SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Advanced Aggregates with the Over Clause SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Aggregates with the Over Clause SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Overriding Identity Fields – Tricks and Tips of Identity Fields SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Many to Many Relationships Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Implementing Database Settings Using Policy Based Management

  - by Ashish Kumar Mehta

  Introduction Database Administrators have always had a tough time to ensuring that all the SQL Servers administered by them are configured according to the policies and standards of organization. Using SQL Server’s  Policy Based Management feature DBAs can now manage one or more instances of SQL Server 2008 and check for policy compliance issues. In this article we will utilize Policy Based Management (aka Declarative Management Framework or DMF) feature of SQL Server to implement and verify database settings on all production databases. It is best practice to enforce the below settings on each Production database. However, it can be tedious to go through each database and then check whether the below database settings are implemented across databases. In this article I will explain it to you how to utilize the Policy Based Management Feature of SQL Server 2008 to create a policy to verify these settings on all databases and in cases of non-complaince how to bring them back into complaince. Database setting to enforce on each user database : Auto Close and Auto Shrink Properties of database set to False Auto Create Statistics and Auto Update Statistics set to True Compatibility Level of all the user database set as 100 Page Verify set as CHECKSUM Recovery Model of all user database set to Full Restrict Access set as MULTI_USER Configure a Policy to Verify Database Settings 1. Connect to SQL Server 2008 Instance using SQL Server Management Studio 2. In the Object Explorer, Click on Management > Policy Management and you will be able to see Policies, Conditions & Facets as child nodes 3. Right click Policies and then select New Policy…. from the drop down list as shown in the snippet below to open the  Create New Policy Popup window. 4. In the Create New Policy popup window you need to provide the name of the policy as “Implementing and Verify Database Settings for Production Databases” and then click the drop down list under Check Condition. As highlighted in the snippet below click on the New Condition… option to open up the Create New Condition window. 5. In the Create New Condition popup window you need to provide the name of the condition as “Verify and Change Database Settings”. In the Facet drop down list you need to choose the Facet as Database Options as shown in the snippet below. Under Expression you need to select Field value as @AutoClose and then choose Operator value as ‘ = ‘ and finally choose Value as False. Now that you have successfully added the first field you can now go ahead and add rest of the fields as shown in the snippet below. Once you have successfully added all the above shown fields of Database Options Facet, click OK to save the changes and to return to the parent Create New Policy – Implementing and Verify Database Settings for Production Database windows where you will see that the newly created condition “Verify and Change Database Settings” is selected by default. Continues…

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• [GEEK SCHOOL] Network Security 3: Windows Defender and a Malware-Free System

  - by Ciprian Rusen

  In this second lesson we are going to talk about one of the most confusing security products that are bundled with Windows: Windows Defender. In the past, this product has had a bad reputation and for good reason – it was very limited in its capacity to protect your computer from real-world malware. However, the latest version included in Windows 8.x operating systems is much different than in the past and it provides real protection to its users. The nice thing about Windows Defender in its current incarnation, is that it protects your system from the start, so there are never gaps in coverage. We will start this lesson by explaining what Windows Defender is in Windows 7 and Vista versus what it is in Windows 8, and what product to use if you are using an earlier version. We next will explore how to use Windows Defender, how to improve its default settings, and how to deal with the alerts that it displays. As you will see, Windows Defender will have you using its list of quarantined items a lot more often than other security products. This is why we will explain in detail how to work with it and remove malware for good or restore those items that are only false alarms. Lastly, you will learn how to turn off Windows Defender if you no longer want to use it and you prefer a third-party security product in its place and then how to enable it back, if you have changed your mind about using it. Upon completion, you should have a thorough understanding of your system’s default anti-malware options, or how to protect your system expeditiously. What is Windows Defender? Unfortunately there is no one clear answer to this question because of the confusing way Microsoft has chosen to name its security products. Windows Defender is a different product, depending on the Windows operating system you are using. If you use Windows Vista or Windows 7, then Windows Defender is a security tool that protects your computer from spyware. This but one form of malware made out of tools and applications that monitor your movements on the Internet or the activities you make on your computer. Spyware tends to send the information that is collected to a remote server and it is later used in all kinds of malicious purposes, from displaying advertising you don’t want, to using your personal data, etc. However, there are many other types of malware on the Internet and this version of Windows Defender is not able to protect users from any of them. That’s why, if you are using Windows 7 or earlier, we strongly recommend that you disable Windows Defender and install a more complete security product like Microsoft Security Essentials, or third-party security products from specialized security vendors. If you use Windows 8.x operating systems, then Windows Defender is the same thing as Microsoft Security Essentials: a decent security product that protects your computer in-real time from viruses and spyware. The fact that this product protects your computer also from viruses, not just from spyware, makes a huge difference. If you don’t want to pay for security products, Windows Defender in Windows 8.x and Microsoft Security Essentials (in Windows 7 or earlier) are good alternatives. Windows Defender in Windows 8.x and Microsoft Security Essentials are the same product, only their name is different. In this lesson, we will use the Windows Defender version from Windows 8.x but our instructions apply also to Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) in Windows 7 and Windows Vista. If you want to download Microsoft Security Essentials and try it out, we recommend you to use this page: Download Microsoft Security Essentials. There you will find both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of this product as well versions in multiple languages. How to Use and Configure Windows Defender Using Windows Defender (MSE) is very easy to use. To start, search for “defender” on the Windows 8.x Start screen and click or tap the “Windows Defender” search result. In Windows 7, search for “security” in the Start Menu search box and click “Microsoft Security Essentials”. Windows Defender has four tabs which give you access to the following tools and options: Home – here you can view the security status of your system. If everything is alright, then it will be colored in green. If there are some warnings to consider, then it will be colored in yellow, and if there are threats that must be dealt with, everything will be colored in red. On the right side of the “Home” tab you will find options for scanning your computer for viruses and spyware. On the bottom of the tab you will find information about when the last scan was performed and what type of scan it was. Update – here you will find information on whether this product is up-to-date. You will learn when it was last updated and the versions of the definitions it is using. You can also trigger a manual update. History – here you can access quarantined items, see which items you’ve allowed to run on your PC even if they were identified as malware by Windows Defender, and view a complete list with all the malicious items Windows Defender has detected on your PC. In order to access all these lists and work with them, you need to be signed in as an administrator. Settings – this is the tab where you can turn on the real-time protection service, exclude files, file types, processes, and locations from its scans as well as access a couple of more advanced settings. The only difference between Windows Defender in Windows 8.x and Microsoft Security Essentials (in Windows 7 or earlier) is that, in the “Settings” tab, Microsoft Security Essentials allows you to set when to run scheduled scans while Windows Defender lacks this option.

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• Check Your Spelling, Grammar, and Style in Firefox and Chrome

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you tired of making simple writing mistakes that get past your browser’s spell-check?  Here’s how you can get advanced grammar check and more in Firefox and Chrome with After the Deadline. Microsoft Word has spoiled us with grammar, syntax, and spell checking, but the default spell check in Firefox and Chrome still only does basic checks.  Even webapps like Google Docs don’t check more than basic spelling errors.  However, WordPress.com is an exception; it offers advanced spelling, grammar, and syntax checking with its After the Deadline proofing system.  This helps you keep from making embarrassing mistakes on your blog posts, and now, thanks to a couple free browser plugins, it can help you keep from making these mistakes in any website or webapp. After the Deadline in Google Chrome Add the After the Deadline extension (link below) to Chrome as usual. As soon as it’s installed, you’re ready to start improving your online writing.  To check spelling, grammar, and more, click the ABC button that you’ll now see at the bottom of most text boxes online. After a quick scan, grammar mistakes are highlighted in green, complex expressions and other syntax problems are highlighted in blue, and spelling mistakes are highlighted in red as would be expected.  Click on an underlined word to choose one of its recommended changes or ignore the suggestion. Or, if you want more explanation about what was wrong with that word or phrase, click Explain for more info. And, if you forget to run an After the Deadline scan before submitting a text entry, it will automatically check to make sure you still want to submit it.  Click Cancel to go back and check your writing first.   To change the After the Deadline settings, click its icon in the toolbar and select View Options.  Additionally, if you want to disable it on the site you’re on, you can click Disable on this site directly from the popup. From the settings page, you can choose extra things to check for such as double negatives and redundant phrases, as well as add sites and words to ignore. After the Deadline in Firefox Add the After the Deadline add-on to Firefox (link below) as normal. After the Deadline basically the same in Firefox as it does in Chrome.  Select the ABC icon in the lower right corner of textboxes to check them for problems, and After the Deadline will underline the problems as it did in Chrome.  To view a suggested change in Firefox, right-click on the underlined word and select the recommended change or ignore the suggestion. And, if you forget to check, you’ll see a friendly reminder asking if you’re sure you want to submit your text like it is. You can access the After the Deadline settings in Firefox from the menu bar.  Click Tools, then select AtD Preferences.  In Firefox, the settings are in a options dialog with three tabs, but it includes the same options as the Chrome settings page.  Here you can make After the Deadline as correction-happy as you like.   Conclusion The web has increasingly become an interactive place, and seldom does a day go by that we aren’t entering text in forms and comments that may stay online forever.  Even our insignificant tweets are being archived in the Library of Congress.  After the Deadline can help you make sure that your permanent internet record is as grammatically correct as possible.  Even though it doesn’t catch every problem, and even misses some spelling mistakes, it’s still a great help. Links Download the After the Deadline extension for Google Chrome Download the After the Deadline add-on for Firefox Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Quick Tip: Disable Favicons in FirefoxStupid Geek Tricks: Duplicate a Tab with a Shortcut Key in Chrome or FirefoxHow to Disable the New Geolocation Feature in Google ChromeStupid Geek Tricks: Compare Your Browser’s Memory Usage with Google ChromeStop YouTube Videos from Automatically Playing in Chrome 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 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Easily Search Food Recipes With Recipe Chimp Tech Fanboys Field Guide Check these Awesome Chrome Add-ons iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools

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• Knowledge Pathways Designer - Recommended Settings

  - by ted.henson

  The General page of the Options dialog box contains the application preferences for Knowledge Pathways Designer. It is recommended that you leave certain settings as they are, unless you have a specific reason for changing them. The following are a few of the settings on the General page with an explanation of the recommended setting. They are in the order they appear on the page: Allow version 2.0 style links: This option should remain disabled unless you were using content that was created using version 2.0 of Knowledge Pathways and you want the same linking functionality that existed in that version 2.0. This feature enables you to reuse parts of titles that contain no AUs. However, keep in mind that this type of link is not a true link, but a cross between a copy and a link. To create a 2.0 style link, you drag and drop sections between titles. You can only create 2.0 style links to sections that belong to the Title AU. When creating a version 2.0 style link, your mouse pointer will change to indicate a 2.0 link is being created. Confirm deletion of outline items and Confirm deletion of titles: It is recommended that these options remain enabled to avoid deleting something by accident. Display tracking data loss warning when opening a published title: It recommended that this option be enabled so you will receive the warning message when you open the development copy of a title, reminding you of the implications of your changes. ulCopy files when converting a Section to an Assignable Unit: This option should remain enabled unless you have a specific reason for not copying the files. If this is disabled, you will (in effect) lose your content files upon converting because they will not be copied to the new AU directory on the content root. In this case, you would need to use Windows Explorer to copy your files manually. Working with Spelling Options All of the spelling options are enabled by default. Your design team can review these options to determine if you want to make changes, depending upon your specific needs. Understanding Dictionary Options You should leave the dictionary options as they are, unless you have a specific reason for changing them. While you can delete the user (customizable) dictionary, doing so is not recommended. Setting Check In/Check Out Options The ability to check in and check out titles and AUs will impact the efficiency of your design team. Decide what your check in and check out processes are before you start developing titles. The Check In/Check Out page of the Options dialog box contains two options that affect what happens when you open a title using the Open Title dialog box. Both of these options are enabled by default and are described below: Check Out for editing enabled: This option ensures that the Check Out for editing option will be selected when you open the development copy of a title from the Open Title dialog box. If this option is disabled, you must select the Check Out for editing option every time you want to check out a title for editing. Attempt to Check Out for entire branch: When this option is enabled, Designer checks out the selected title and all AUs and sections that are part of that title, provided they are available for check out. If this option is disabled, you will only check out the Title AU and anything that belongs to that Title AU (e.g., sections, questions, etc.), but not other AUs. The Check In/Check Out page of the Options dialog box also contains options that control what happens when you close a title. You can choose one option in the Check In when Closing a Title area. The option selected is a matter of preference and you should determine which option is most appropriate for your design team.

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• Getting input from keyboard

  - by SAMIR BHOGAYTA

  When you type on the keyboard the keystrokes go to a particular application, the active application. The active application receives the input from the keyboard. This means the application has input focus. There are two events for a key on a keyboard, when the key is pressed and when it is released. No it's not a single event as you might expect if you have no prior programming experience, in shooter games for example when you keep the forward key pressed (KeyDown) the player goes forward, and when it isn't pressed (KeyUp) the player stays put. The event that occurs when the key is pressed is called KeyPress. It occurs between KeyDown and KeyUp, and therefore acts similar to KeyDown. Similar to the way we handle OnPaint and other events we also handle the OnKeyDown event (because we want the event to occur when the key is pressed and not when it is released) by overriding it. Try the code below and test it. You will understand the role of each property. protected override void OnKeyDown(KeyEventArgs keyEvent) { // Gets the key code lblKeyCode.Text = "KeyCode: " + keyEvent.KeyCode.ToString(); // Gets the key data; recognizes combination of keys lblKeyData.Text = "KeyData: " + keyEvent.KeyData.ToString(); // Integer representation of KeyData lblKeyValue.Text = "KeyValue: " + keyEvent.KeyValue.ToString(); // Returns true if Alt is pressed lblAlt.Text = "Alt: " + keyEvent.Alt.ToString(); // Returns true if Ctrl is pressed lblCtrl.Text = "Ctrl: " + keyEvent.Control.ToString(); // Returns true if Shift is pressed lblShift.Text = "Shift: " + keyEvent.Shift.ToString(); } How do I find out when the user presses a specific key? As you probably imagine, this will be easily accomplished using 'if'. if (keyEvent.KeyCode == Keys.A) { MessageBox.Show("'A' was pressed."); } Probably most beginners would be tempted to do this: if (keyEvent.KeyCode == "A") .... which is definitely incorrect because we can't compare System.Windows.Forms.Keys to a string. Also note that in the example we are using 'keyEvent.KeyCode', that means that even if we have other shift keys pressed (Alt, Ctrl, Shift, Windows...) simultaneous with A, the if condition returns true because it doesn't recognize key combinations. If we want to ignore key combinations (Alt+A, Ctrl+Shift+A), etc. we need to use 'keyEvent.KeyData' of course: if (keyEvent.KeyData == Keys.A) { MessageBox.Show("'A', and only A, was pressed."); } When you right click on a file in Windows Explorer and you have the Shift key pressed you get the additional 'Open with...' item in the menu. This and many others are cases when you need to use the mouse button together with the keyboard. The following code will change the background color of the form only if the form is clicked while the Ctrl key on the keyboard is pressed. If the Ctrl key is unpressed and the form is clicked nothing happens. private void Form1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { Keys modKey = Control.ModifierKeys; if(modKey == Keys.Control) { this.BackColor = Color.Yellow; } } If you have further questions feel free to ask them and also check the following pages at MSDN: KeyUp Event KeyPress Event KeyDown Event

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• ORACLE RIGHTNOW DYNAMIC AGENT DESKTOP CLOUD SERVICE - Putting the Dynamite into Dynamic Agent Desktop

  - by Andreea Vaduva

  Untitled Document There’s a mountain of evidence to prove that a great contact centre experience results in happy, profitable and loyal customers. The very best Contact Centres are those with high first contact resolution, customer satisfaction and agent productivity. But how many companies really believe they are the best? And how many believe that they can be? We know that with the right tools, companies can aspire to greatness – and achieve it. Core to this is ensuring their agents have the best tools that give them the right information at the right time, so they can focus on the customer and provide a personalised, professional and efficient service. Today there are multiple channels through which customers can communicate with you; phone, web, chat, social to name a few but regardless of how they communicate, customers expect a seamless, quality experience. Most contact centre agents need to switch between lots of different systems to locate the right information. This hampers their productivity, frustrates both the agent and the customer and increases call handling times. With this in mind, Oracle RightNow has designed and refined a suite of add-ins to optimize the Agent Desktop. Each is designed to simplify and adapt the agent experience for any given situation and unify the customer experience across your media channels. Let’s take a brief look at some of the most useful tools available and see how they make a difference. Contextual Workspaces: The screen where agents do their job. Agents don’t want to be slowed down by busy screens, scrolling through endless tabs or links to find what they’re looking for. They want quick, accurate and easy. Contextual Workspaces are fully configurable and through workspace rules apply if, then, else logic to display only the information the agent needs for the issue at hand . Assigned at the Profile level, different levels of agent, from a novice to the most experienced, get a screen that is relevant to their role and responsibilities and ensures their job is done quickly and efficiently the first time round. Agent Scripting: Sometimes, agents need to deliver difficult or sensitive messages while maximising the opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell. After all, contact centres are now increasingly viewed as revenue generators. Containing sophisticated branching logic, scripting helps agents to capture the right level of information and guides the agent step by step, ensuring no mistakes, inconsistencies or missed opportunities. Guided Assistance: This is typically used to solve common troubleshooting issues, displaying a series of question and answer sets in a decision-tree structure. This means agents avoid having to bookmark favourites or rely on written notes. Agents find particular value in these guides - to quickly craft chat and email responses. What’s more, by publishing guides in answers on support pages customers, can resolve issues themselves, without needing to contact your agents. And b ecause it can also accelerate agent ramp-up time, it ensures that even novice agents can solve customer problems like an expert. Desktop Workflow: Take a step back and look at the full customer interaction of your agents. It probably spans multiple systems and multiple tasks. With Desktop Workflows you control the design workflows that span the full customer interaction from start to finish. As sequences of decisions and actions, workflows are unique in that they can create or modify different records and provide automation behind the scenes. This means your agents can save time and provide better quality of service by having the tools they need and the relevant information as required. And doing this boosts satisfaction among your customers, your agents and you – so win, win, win! I have highlighted above some of the tools which can be used to optimise the desktop; however, this is by no means an exhaustive list. In approaching your design, it’s important to understand why and how your customers contact you in the first place. Once you have this list of “whys” and “hows”, you can design effective policies and procedures to handle each category of problem, and then implement the right agent desktop user interface to support them. This will avoid duplication and wasted effort. Five Top Tips to take away: Start by working out “why” and “how” customers are contacting you. Implement a clean and relevant agent desktop to support your agents. If your workspaces are getting complicated consider using Desktop Workflow to streamline the interaction. Enhance your Knowledgebase with Guides. Agents can access them proactively and can be published on your web pages for customers to help themselves. Script any complex, critical or sensitive interactions to ensure consistency and accuracy. Desktop optimization is an ongoing process so continue to monitor and incorporate feedback from your agents and your customers to keep your Contact Centre successful.   Want to learn more? Having attending the 3-day Oracle RightNow Customer Service Administration class your next step is to attend the Oracle RightNow Customer Portal Design and 2-day Dynamic Agent Desktop Administration class. Here you’ll learn not only how to leverage the Agent Desktop tools but also how to optimise your self-service pages to enhance your customers’ web experience.   Useful resources: Review the Best Practice Guide Review the tune-up guide   About the Author: Angela Chandler joined Oracle University as a Senior Instructor through the RightNow Customer Experience Acquisition. Her other areas of expertise include Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management.  She currently delivers the following Oracle RightNow courses in the classroom and as a Live Virtual Class: RightNow Customer Service Administration (3 days) RightNow Customer Portal Design and Dynamic Agent Desktop Administration (2 days) RightNow Analytics (2 days) Rightnow Chat Cloud Service Administration (2 days)

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• Man pages not finding entry

  - by Mike

  So, I'm not sure what is going on with my system (ubuntu 12.04), but my man pages do not seem to be working. I try man gcc and get the following response No manual entry for gcc See 'man 7 undocumented' for help when manual pages are not available. However I see the man entry in /usr/share/man/man1/gcc.1.gz Here is what my /etc/manpath.config file looks like # manpath.config # # This file is used by the man-db package to configure the man and cat paths. # It is also used to provide a manpath for those without one by examining # their PATH environment variable. For details see the manpath(5) man page. # # Lines beginning with `#' are comments and are ignored. Any combination of # tabs or spaces may be used as `whitespace' separators. # # There are three mappings allowed in this file: # -------------------------------------------------------- # MANDATORY_MANPATH manpath_element # MANPATH_MAP path_element manpath_element # MANDB_MAP global_manpath [relative_catpath] #--------------------------------------------------------- # every automatically generated MANPATH includes these fields # #MANDATORY_MANPATH /usr/src/pvm3/man # MANDATORY_MANPATH /usr/man MANDATORY_MANPATH /usr/share/man MANDATORY_MANPATH /usr/local/share/man #--------------------------------------------------------- # set up PATH to MANPATH mapping # ie. what man tree holds man pages for what binary directory. # # *PATH* -> *MANPATH* # MANPATH_MAP /bin /usr/share/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/bin /usr/share/man MANPATH_MAP /sbin /usr/share/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/sbin /usr/share/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/local/bin /usr/local/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/local/bin /usr/local/share/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/local/sbin /usr/local/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/local/sbin /usr/local/share/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/X11R6/bin /usr/X11R6/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/bin/X11 /usr/X11R6/man MANPATH_MAP /usr/games /usr/share/man MANPATH_MAP /opt/bin /opt/man MANPATH_MAP /opt/sbin /opt/man #--------------------------------------------------------- # For a manpath element to be treated as a system manpath (as most of those # above should normally be), it must be mentioned below. Each line may have # an optional extra string indicating the catpath associated with the # manpath. If no catpath string is used, the catpath will default to the # given manpath. # # You *must* provide all system manpaths, including manpaths for alternate # operating systems, locale specific manpaths, and combinations of both, if # they exist, otherwise the permissions of the user running man/mandb will # be used to manipulate the manual pages. Also, mandb will not initialise # the database cache for any manpaths not mentioned below unless explicitly # requested to do so. # # In a per-user configuration file, this directive only controls the # location of catpaths and the creation of database caches; it has no effect # on privileges. # # Any manpaths that are subdirectories of other manpaths must be mentioned # *before* the containing manpath. E.g. /usr/man/preformat must be listed # before /usr/man. # # *MANPATH* -> *CATPATH* # MANDB_MAP /usr/man /var/cache/man/fsstnd MANDB_MAP /usr/share/man /var/cache/man MANDB_MAP /usr/local/man /var/cache/man/oldlocal MANDB_MAP /usr/local/share/man /var/cache/man/local MANDB_MAP /usr/X11R6/man /var/cache/man/X11R6 MANDB_MAP /opt/man /var/cache/man/opt # #--------------------------------------------------------- # Program definitions. These are commented out by default as the value # of the definition is already the default. To change: uncomment a # definition and modify it. # #DEFINE pager pager -s #DEFINE cat cat #DEFINE tr tr '\255\267\264\327' '\055\157\047\170' #DEFINE grep grep #DEFINE troff groff -mandoc #DEFINE nroff nroff -mandoc #DEFINE eqn eqn #DEFINE neqn neqn #DEFINE tbl tbl #DEFINE col col #DEFINE vgrind vgrind #DEFINE refer refer #DEFINE grap grap #DEFINE pic pic -S # #DEFINE compressor gzip -c7 #--------------------------------------------------------- # Misc definitions: same as program definitions above. # #DEFINE whatis_grep_flags -i #DEFINE apropos_grep_flags -iEw #DEFINE apropos_regex_grep_flags -iE #--------------------------------------------------------- # Section names. Manual sections will be searched in the order listed here; # the default is 1, n, l, 8, 3, 0, 2, 5, 4, 9, 6, 7. Multiple SECTION # directives may be given for clarity, and will be concatenated together in # the expected way. # If a particular extension is not in this list (say, 1mh), it will be # displayed with the rest of the section it belongs to. The effect of this # is that you only need to explicitly list extensions if you want to force a # particular order. Sections with extensions should usually be adjacent to # their main section (e.g. "1 1mh 8 ..."). # SECTION 1 n l 8 3 2 3posix 3pm 3perl 5 4 9 6 7 # #--------------------------------------------------------- # Range of terminal widths permitted when displaying cat pages. If the # terminal falls outside this range, cat pages will not be created (if # missing) or displayed. # #MINCATWIDTH 80 #MAXCATWIDTH 80 # # If CATWIDTH is set to a non-zero number, cat pages will always be # formatted for a terminal of the given width, regardless of the width of # the terminal actually being used. This should generally be within the # range set by MINCATWIDTH and MAXCATWIDTH. # #CATWIDTH 0 # #--------------------------------------------------------- # Flags. # NOCACHE keeps man from creating cat pages. #NOCACHE Thanks for any help (p.s. even 'man man' fails) Edit: When I run ls -l /usr/share/man/man1/gcc* I get the following output lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 May 27 15:41 /usr/share/man/man1/gcc.1.gz -> gcc-4.6.1.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 217776 Apr 15 17:34 /usr/share/man/man1/gcc-4.6.1.gz

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• 24 Hours of PASS: Whine, Whine, Whine

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  24 Hours of Pass (or 24HOP) is a great program offered by PASS to provide free, online training for anyone who wants to learn more about SQL Server.  They routinely have the best SQL Server presenters available for these sessions, and attract hundreds, perhaps even a thousand attendees from around the world.  This is definitely one of the best things they've started doing in the past few years, and every session I've attended has been excellent. So why am I so grumpy about it? I'm not really, pretty much everything here is a minor annoyance that I can deal with.  However since they're so minor they seem to be things that can be easily corrected and would make the process much better. First off, this is my biggest gripe, the registration page: https://www323.livemeeting.com/lrs/8000181573/Registration.aspx?pageName=lj6378f4fhf5hpdm What grinds my gears about this?  I have to scroll alllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the way to bottom to actually register for the sessions.  This wouldn't be so bad except all the details of the session, including the presenter, is in a separate list at the top.  Both lists contain info the other does not, and scrolling between them to determine "Should I make time to listen to this?  Who is speaking at this time anyway?" is really unnecessary. My preference would be to keep the top list and add the checkboxes and schedule info in separate columns.  This is a full-width design, so there's plenty of space for this data, which is pretty small anyway.  The other huge benefit is halving the size of the page, which improves performance and lowers bandwidth usage considerably.  And if you know HTML/ASP.Net, and you view the page source, you can find PLENTY of other things that can be reduced even further.  (not just viewstate) One nice thing that PASS does is send iCal reminders to your email address so you can accept them to your calendar.  Again, they leave off the presenter in the appointment details, while still duplicating the meeting title in the body.  Sometimes I make decisions based on speaker rather than content (Natalie Portman is reading the Yellow Pages??? I'M THERE!) and having the speaker in the iCal is helpful. Next minor annoyances are the necessity for providing a company name, and the survey questions.  I know PASS needs to market themselves effectively, and they need information to do that, and since this is a free event it's really not worth complaining about, but why ask the survey question twice? (once at registration, once again when joining the LiveMeeting)  Same thing for the company name.  All of this should be tied to email address, so that's all I should need to enter when joining the LiveMeeting. The last one is also minor, but it irks me in this day and age of multiple browsers and the decline of Internet Explorer as a dominant platform.  The registration page was originally created in Visual Studio 2003, and has a lot of IE-specific crud representative of the browser situation of 2003. (IE5 references? really? and is the aforementioned viewstate big enough?)  This causes some grief with other browsers like Firefox, Chrome, and sometimes IE8 or 9.  And don't get me started on using the page on a Mac or in Safari. My main point is that PASS is an international organization, welcoming everyone from all levels of SQL Server proficiency, and in that spirit I think it would help to accommodate a wider range of browser software, especially since the registration page is extremely simple.  I recognize that this page is not hosted on the PASS website and may be maintained by some division of Microsoft, but to me that's even worse if MS can't update their own pages.  They've deprecated IE6, so they don't need to maintain support on their own websites anymore. OK, I'll shut up now. #sqlpass #24HOP

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• Uninstall, Disable, or Remove Windows 7 Media Center

  - by Mysticgeek

  Although Windows 7 Media Center has improved a lot over previous versions of Windows, but you might want to disable it for different reasons. Here we take a look at a couple of methods to get rid of it. There are a variety of reasons you might want to disable Windows 7 Media Center. Maybe you own a business and don’t want it to run on the machines. Or perhaps you don’t use it at all and just don’t want it around. Turn Off WMC Using Programs and Features Probably the easiest way to get rid of it on all versions of Windows 7 is to open Control Panel and select Programs and Features. This method is similar to disabling Internet Explorer 8 in Windows 7. On the left hand panel click on Turn Windows Features on or off. Scroll down to Media Features and expand the folder. Then Uncheck Windows Media Center… You’ll get a verification message making sure you want to disable it, click Yes. Then the box next to Windows Media Center will be empty…click OK. Wait while WMC is disabled… To complete the process a reboot is required. After getting back from the restart, the WMC icon will be gone and there won’t be any way to launch it. Re-enable WMC If you want to re-enable it, just go back in and recheck it. Again you’ll need to wait while it’s configured, but when it’s done, a restart is not required.   Disable Media Center Using Group Policy Note: This process uses Group Policy Editor which is not available in Home versions of Windows 7. Click on the Start menu and type gpedit.msc into the Search box and hit Enter. Now navigate to User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Windows Components \ Windows Media Center. Double-click on Do not allow Windows Media Center to run. Then select the radio button next to Enabled, click OK and close out of Group Policy Editor. Now if a user tries to launch WMC they will get the following message. Conclusion If you’re not a fan of Windows Media Center or want to disable it for whatever reason, the process is simple and there are a couple of ways you can do it. WMC is not included in Starter or Home Basic versions of Windows 7. If you’re new to Windows 7 Media Center, you might want to check out our guide on getting started and setting up live TV. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Disable Windows Mobility Center in Windows 7 or VistaMake Outlook Faster by Disabling Unnecessary Add-InsSchedule Updates for Windows Media CenterRemove "Map Network Drive" Menu Item from Windows Vista or XP 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 Find Downloads and Add-ins for Outlook Recycle ! Find That Elusive Icon with FindIcons Looking for Good Windows Media Player 12 Plug-ins? Find Out the Celebrity You Resemble With FaceDouble Whoa !

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• Trigger Happy

  - by Tim Dexter

  Its been a while, I know, we’ll say no more OK? I’ll just write …In the latest BIP 11.1.1.6 release and if I’m really honest; the release before this (we'll call it dot 5 for brevity.) The boys and gals in the engine room have been real busy enhancing BIP with some new functionality. Those of you that use the scheduling engine in OBIEE may already know and use the ‘conditional scheduling’ feature. This allows you to be more intelligent about what reports get run and sent to folks on a scheduled basis. You create a ‘trigger’ analysis (answer) that is executed at schedule time prior to the main report. When the schedule rolls around, the trigger is run, if it returns rows, then the main report is run and delivered. If there are no rows returned, then the main report is not run. Useful right? Your users are not bombarded with 20 reports in their inbox every week that they need to wade throu. They get a handful that they know they need to look at. If you ensure you use conditional formatting in the report then they can find the anomalous data in the reports very quickly and move on to the rest of their day more quickly. You could even think of OBIEE as a virtual team member, scouring the data on your behalf 24/7 and letting you know when its found an issue.BI Publisher, wanting the team t-shirt and the khaki pants, has followed suit. You can now set up ‘triggers’ for it to execute before it runs the main report. Just like its big brother, if the scheduled report trigger returns rows of data; it then executes the main report. Otherwise, the report is skipped until the next schedule time rolls around. Sound familiar?BIP differs a little, in that you only need to construct a query to act as the trigger rather than a complete report. Let assume we have a monthly wage by department report on a schedule. We only want to send the report to managers if their departmental wages reach and/or exceed a certain amount. The toughest part about this is coming up with the SQL to test the business rule you want to implement. For my example, its not that tough: select d.department_name, sum(e.salary) as wage_total from employees e, departments d where d.department_id = e.department_id group by d.department_name having sum(e.salary) > 230000 We're looking for departments where the wage cost is greater than 230,000 Dexter Dollars! With a bit of messing I found out you can parametrize the query. Users can then set a value at schedule time if they need to. To create the trigger is straightforward enough. You can create multiple triggers for users to select at schedule time. Notice I also used a parameter in the query, :wamount. Note the matching parameter in the tree on the left. You also dont need to return multiple columns, one is fine, the key is if there are rows returned. You can build the rest of your report as usual. At scheduling time the Schedule tab has a bit more on it. If your users want to set the trigger, they check the Use Trigger box. The page will then pop fields to pick the appropriate trigger they want to use, even a trigger on another data model if needed. Note it will also ask for the parameter value associated with the trigger. At this point you should note that the data model does not make a distinction between trigger and data model (extract) parameters. So users will see the parameters on the General and Schedule tabs. If per chance you do need to just have a trigger parameters. You can just hide them from the report using the Parameters popup in the report designer, just un-check the 'Show' box I have tested the opposite case where you do not want main report parameters seen in the trigger section. BIP handles that for you! Once the report hits its allotted schedule time, the trigger is executed. Based on the results the report will either run or be 'skipped.' Now, you have a smarter scheduler that will only deliver reports when folks need to see them and take action on the contents. More official info here for developers and here for users.

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• Welcome 2011

  - by PSteele

  About this time last year, I wrote a blog post about how January of 2010 was almost over and I hadn’t done a single blog post.  Ugh…  History repeats itself. 2010 in Review If I look back at 2010, it was a great year in terms of technology and development: Visited Redmond to attend the MVP Summit in February.  Had a great time with the MS product teams and got to connect with some really smart people. Continued my work on Visual Studio Magazine’s “C# Corner” column.  About mid-year, the column changed from an every-other-month print column to an every-other-month print column along with bi-monthly web-only articles.  Needless to say, this kept me even busier and away from my blog. Participated in another GiveCamp!  Thanks to the wonderful leadership of Michael Eaton and all of his minions, GiveCamp 2010 was another great success.  Planning for GiveCamp 2011 will be starting soon… I switched to DVCS full time.  After years of being a loyal SVN user, I got bit by the DVCS bug.  I played around with both Mercurial and Git and finally settled on Mercurial.  It’s seamless integration with Windows Explorer along with it’s wealth of plugins made me fall in love.  I can’t imagine going back and using a centralized version control system. Continued to work with the awesome group of talent at SRT Solutions.  Very proud that SRT won it’s third consecutive FastTrack award! Jumped off the BlackBerry train and enjoying the smooth ride of Android.  It was time to replace the old BlackBerry Storm so I did some research and settled on the Motorola DroidX.  I couldn’t be happier.  Android is a slick OS and the DroidX is a sweet piece of hardware.  Been dabbling in some Android development with both Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA (I like IntelliJ IDEA a lot better!).   2011 Plans On January 1st I was pleasantly surprised to get an email from the Microsoft MVP program letting me know that I had received the MVP award again for my community work in 2010.  I’m honored and humbled to be recognized by Microsoft as well as my peers! I’ll continue to do some Android development.  I’m currently working on a simple app to get me feet wet.  It may even makes it’s way into the Android Market. I’ve got a project that could really benefit from WPF so I’ll be diving into WPF this year.  I’ve played around with WPF a bit in the past – simple demos and learning exercises – but this will give me a chance to build an entire application in WPF.  I’m looking forward to the increased freedom that a WPF UI should give me. I plan on blogging a lot more in 2011! Technorati Tags: Android,MVP,Mercurial,WPF,SRT,GiveCamp

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