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  • Please help with very simple android widget button click. Getting very frustrated. :(

    - by Little Wendy
    I have poured over every example that I can find and I have gone through the official documentation from google. All I am trying to do is create a toast notification from a button click on a widget. I can get the widget (and button) to appear but I can't get my intent to fire. I have seen several examples that show doing this different ways but I just can't get it to work. I haven't felt this helpless with coding in a long time and I'm starting to feel dumb. This is what I have so far: public class simpleclick extends AppWidgetProvider { /** Called when the activity is first created. */ @Override public void onUpdate(Context context, AppWidgetManager appWidgetManager, int[] appWidgetIds) { final int N = appWidgetIds.length; Toast.makeText(context, "doing on update", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); for (int i=0; i<N; i++) { int appWidgetId = appWidgetIds[i]; Intent intent = new Intent(context, simpleclick.class); intent.setAction("ham"); PendingIntent pendingIntent = PendingIntent.getActivity(context, 0, intent, 0); RemoteViews views = new RemoteViews(context.getPackageName(), R.layout.main); views.setOnClickPendingIntent(R.id.Timm, pendingIntent); appWidgetManager.updateAppWidget(appWidgetId, views); } } //@Override public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub Toast.makeText(context, "action is: " + intent.getAction(), Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); super.onReceive(context, intent); } } My manifest: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" package="com.tblabs.simpleclick" android:versionCode="1" android:versionName="1.0"> <application android:icon="@drawable/icon" android:label="@string/app_name"> <receiver android:name="simpleclick"> <intent-filter> <action android:name="android.appwidget.action.APPWIDGET_UPDATE" /> </intent-filter> <meta-data android:name="android.appwidget.provider" android:resource="@xml/simpleclick" /> </receiver> </application> <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="5" /> </manifest> I would appreciate some help! Thanks, Wendy

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  • How can i optimize this recursive method

    - by Tirdyr
    Hi there. I'm trying to make a word puzzle game, and for that i'm using a recursive method to find all possible words in the given letters. The letters is in a 4x4 board. Like this: ABCD EFGH HIJK LMNO The recursive method is called inside this loop: for (int y = 0; y < width; y++) { for (int x = 0; x < height; x++) { myScabble.Search(letters, y, x, width, height, "", covered, t); } } letters is a 2D array of chars. y & x is ints that shows where in the board width & height is also int, that tells the dimensions of the board "" is the string we are trying to make (the word) covered is an array of bools, to check if we allready used that square. t is a List (wich contains all the words to check against). The recursive method that need optimizing: public void Search(char[,] letters, int y, int x, int width, int height, string build, bool[,] covered, List<aWord> tt) { // Dont get outside the bounds if (y >= width || y < 0 || x >= height || x < 0) { return; } // Dont deal with allrady covered squares if (covered[x, y]) { return; } // Get Letter char letter = letters[x, y]; // Append string pass = build + letter; // check if its a possibel word //List<aWord> t = myWords.aWord.Where(w => w.word.StartsWith(pass)).ToList(); List<aWord> t = tt.Where(w => w.word.StartsWith(pass)).ToList(); // check if the list is emphty if (t.Count < 10 && t.Count != 0) { //stop point } if (t.Count == 0) { return; } // Check if its a complete word. if (t[0].word == pass) { //check if its allrdy present in the _found dictinary if (!_found.ContainsKey(pass)) { //if not add the word to the dictionary _found.Add(pass, true); } } // Check to see if there is more than 1 more that matches string pass // ie. are there more words to find. if (t.Count > 1) { // make a copy of the covered array bool[,] cov = new bool[height, width]; for (int i = 0; i < width; i++) { for (int a = 0; a < height; a++) { cov[a, i] = covered[a, i]; } } // Set the current square as covered. cov[x, y] = true; // Continue in all 8 directions. Search(letters, y + 1, x, width, height, pass, cov, t); Search(letters, y, x + 1, width, height, pass, cov, t); Search(letters, y + 1, x + 1, width, height, pass, cov, t); Search(letters, y - 1, x, width, height, pass, cov, t); Search(letters, y, x - 1, width, height, pass, cov, t); Search(letters, y - 1, x - 1, width, height, pass, cov, t); Search(letters, y - 1, x + 1, width, height, pass, cov, t); Search(letters, y + 1, x - 1, width, height, pass, cov, t); } } The code works as i expected it to do, however it is very slow.. it takes about 2 mins to find the words. EDIT: i clarified that the letters array is 2D

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  • Property trigger in XAML for IsMouseOver fails to set Border.Background

    - by Mal Ross
    I'm currently trying to create a ControlTemplate for the Button class in WPF, replacing the usual visual tree with something that makes the button look similar to the little (X) close icon on Google Chrome's tabs. I decided to use a Path object in XAML to achieve the effect. Using a property trigger, the control responds to a change in the IsMouseOver property by setting the icon's red background. Here's the XAML from a test app: <Window x:Class="Widgets.Window1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300"> <Window.Resources> <Style x:Key="borderStyle" TargetType="Border"> <Style.Triggers> <Trigger Property="IsMouseOver" Value="True"> <Setter Property="Background"> <Setter.Value> <SolidColorBrush Color="#CC0000"/> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Trigger> </Style.Triggers> </Style> <ControlTemplate x:Key="closeButtonTemplate" TargetType="Button"> <Border Width="12" Height="12" CornerRadius="6" BorderBrush="#AAAAAA" Background="Transparent" Style="{StaticResource borderStyle}" ToolTip="Close"> <Viewbox Margin="2.75"> <Path Data="M 0,0 L 10,10 M 0,10 L 10,0" Stroke="{Binding BorderBrush, RelativeSource={RelativeSource FindAncestor, AncestorType=Border, AncestorLevel=1}}" StrokeThickness="1.8"/> </Viewbox> </Border> </ControlTemplate> </Window.Resources> <Grid Background="White"> <Button Template="{StaticResource closeButtonTemplate}"/> </Grid> </Window> Note that the circular background is always there - it's just transparent when the mouse isn't over it. The problem with this is that the trigger just isn't working. Nothing changes in the button's appearance. However, if I remove the Background="Transparent" value from the Border object in the ControlTemplate, the trigger does work (albeit only when over the 'X'). I really can't explain this. Setters for any other properties placed in the borderStyle resource work fine, but the Background setter fails as soon as the default background is specified in the ControlTemplate. Any ideas why it's happening and how I can fix it? I know I could easily replace this code with, for example, a .PNG-based image, but I want to understand why the current implementation isn't working. Thanks! :)

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  • Inlining an array of non-default constructible objects in a C++ class

    - by porgarmingduod
    C++ doesn't allow a class containing an array of items that are not default constructible: class Gordian { public: int member; Gordian(int must_have_variable) : member(must_have_variable) {} }; class Knot { Gordian* pointer_array[8]; // Sure, this works. Gordian inlined_array[8]; // Won't compile. Can't be initialized. }; As even beginner C++ users know, the language guarantees that all members are initialized when constructing a class. And it doesn't trust the user to initialize everything in the constructor - one has to provide valid arguments to the constructors of all members before the body of the constructor even starts. Generally, that's a great idea as far as I'm concerned, but I've come across a situation where it would be a lot easier if I could actually have an array of non-default constructible objects. The obvious solution: Have an array of pointers to the objects. This is not optimal in my case, as I am using shared memory. It would force me to do extra allocation from an already contended resource (that is, the shared memory). The entire reason I want to have the array inlined in the object is to reduce the number of allocations. This is a situation where I would be willing to use a hack, even an ugly one, provided it works. One possible hack I am thinking about would be: class Knot { public: struct dummy { char padding[sizeof(Gordian)]; }; dummy inlined_array[8]; Gordian* get(int index) { return reinterpret_cast<Gordian*>(&inlined_array[index]); } Knot() { for (int x = 0; x != 8; x++) { new (get(x)) Gordian(x*x); } } }; Sure, it compiles, but I'm not exactly an experienced C++ programmer. That is, I couldn't possibly trust my hacks less. So, the questions: 1) Does the hack I came up with seem workable? What are the issues? (I'm mainly concerned with C++0x on newer versions of GCC). 2) Is there a better way to inline an array of non-default constructible objects in a class?

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  • Converting my lightweight MySQL DB wrapper into MySQLi. Pesky Problems

    - by Chaplin
    Here is the original code: http://pastebin.com/DNxtmApY. I'm not that interested in prepared statements at the moment, I just want this wrapper updating to MySQLi so once MySQL becomes depreciated I haven't got to update a billion websites. Here is my attempt at converting to MySQLi. <? $database_host = "127.0.0.1"; $database_user = "user"; $database_pass = "pass"; $database_name = "name"; $db = new database($database_host, $database_user, $database_pass, $database_name); class database { var $link, $result; function database($host, $user, $pass, $db) { $this->link = mysqli_connect($host, $user, $pass, $db) or $this->error(); mysqli_select_db($db, $this->link) or $this->error(); } function query($query) { $this->result = mysqli_query($query, $this->link) or $this->error(); $this->_query_count++; return $this->result; } function countRows($result = "") { if ( empty( $result ) ) $result = $this->result; return mysqli_num_rows($result); } function fetch($result = "") { if ( empty( $result ) ) $result = $this->result; return mysqli_fetch_array($result); } function fetch_num($result = "") { if ( empty( $result ) ) $result = $this->result; return mysqli_fetch_array($result, mysqli_NUM); } function fetch_assoc($result = "") { if ( empty( $result ) ) $result = $this->result; return mysqli_fetch_array($result, mysqli_ASSOC); } function escape($str) { return mysqli_real_escape_string($str); } function error() { if ( $_GET["debug"] == 1 ){ die(mysqi_error()); } else { echo "Error in db code"; } } } function sanitize($data) { //apply stripslashes if magic_quotes_gpc is enabled if(get_magic_quotes_gpc()) $data = stripslashes($data); // a mysqli connection is required before using this function $data = trim(mysqli_real_escape_string($data)); return $data; } However it chucks all sorts of errors: Warning: mysql_query(): Access denied for user 'www-data'@'localhost' (using password: NO) in /home/count/Workspace/lib/classes/user.php on line 7 Warning: mysql_query(): A link to the server could not be established in /home/count/Workspace/lib/classes/user.php on line 7 Warning: mysql_fetch_array() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/count/Workspace/lib/classes/user.php on line 8 Warning: mysqli_fetch_array() expects parameter 1 to be mysqli_result, object given in /home/count/Workspace/lib/classes/database.php on line 31

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  • What are the Rails best practices for javascript templates in restful/resourceful controllers?

    - by numbers1311407
    First, 2 common (basic) approaches: # returning from some FoosController method respond_to do |format| # 1. render the javascript directly format.js { render :json => @foo.to_json } # 2. render the default template, say update.js.erb format.js { render } end # in update.js.erb $('#foo').html("<%= escape_javascript(render(@foo)) %>") These are obviously simple cases but I wanted to illustrate what I'm talking about. I believe that these are also the cases expected by the default responder in rails 3 (either the action-named default template or calling to_#{format} on the resource.) The Issues With 1, you have total flexibility on the view side with no worries about the template, but you have to manipulate the DOM directly via javascript. You lose access to helpers, partials, etc. With 2, you have partials and helpers at your disposal, but you're tied to the one template (by default at least). All your views that make JS calls to FoosController use the same template, which isn't exactly flexible. Three Other Approaches (none really satisfactory) 1.) Escape partials/helpers I need into javascript beforehand, then inserting them into the page after, using string replacement to tailor them to the results returned (subbing in name, id, etc). 2.) Put view logic in the templates. For example, looking for a particular DOM element and doing one thing if it exists, another if it does not. 3.) Put logic in the controller to render different templates. For example, in a polymorphic belongs to where update might be called for either comments/foo or posts/foo, rendering commnts/foos/update.js.erb versus posts/foos/update.js.erb. I've used all of these (and probably others I'm not thinking of). Often in the same app, which leads to confusing code. Are there best practices for this sort of thing? It seems like a common enough use-case that you'd want to call controllers via Ajax actions from different views and expect different things to happen (without having to do tedious things like escaping and string-replacing partials and helpers client side). Any thoughts?

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  • Unable to use getInt() but able to use getString() for a sqlite database

    - by mwrazam
    I am using a cursor to access a sqlite database I have in my app. I am having trouble using the .getInt() on my database. My database is pre-created, and I have a few cursors that perform queries to interface with the information. Several of the columns in one of the tables are set as INTEGER type. I realize that sqlite has no built in check to make sure columns are indeed INT. However, when retrieving the data, I can use the .getString() function without any issues, but calling .getInt() causes the app to crash. Below is the relevant code. If I am missing anything, please let me know, and I'll add it in. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you very much. Cursor: public Cursor getSkitStats(int module, int skit) { Cursor mCursor = myDataBase.rawQuery("SELECT * FROM score WHERE mod="+module+" AND skit="+skit+"", null); if (mCursor != null) { mCursor.moveToFirst(); } return mCursor; } and I am using a simple Toast call to output the result of the query: Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), scoreContent.getInt(0), Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); The variable scoreContent is the cursor. And here is the crash output: 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1659) 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1675) 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): at android.app.ActivityThread.access$1500(ActivityThread.java:121) 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:943) 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:130) 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:3701) 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507) 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:866) 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:624) 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): Caused by: android.content.res.Resources$NotFoundException: String resource ID #0x2 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): at android.content.res.Resources.getText(Resources.java:205) 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): at android.widget.Toast.makeText(Toast.java:258) 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): at jp.atomicideas.ne.Summary.onCreate(Summary.java:90) 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1047) 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1623) 07-08 23:53:31.726: E/AndroidRuntime(15685): ... 11 more

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  • A Security (encryption) Dilemma

    - by TravisPUK
    I have an internal WPF client application that accesses a database. The application is a central resource for a Support team and as such includes Remote Access/Login information for clients. At the moment this database is not available via a web interface etc, but one day is likely to. The remote access information includes the username and passwords for the client's networks so that our client's software applications can be remotely supported by us. I need to store the usernames and passwords in the database and provide the support consultants access to them so that they can login to the client's system and then provide support. Hope this is making sense. So the dilemma is that I don't want to store the usernames and passwords in cleartext on the database to ensure that if the DB was ever compromised, I am not then providing access to our client's networks to whomever gets the database. I have looked at two-way encryption of the passwords, but as they say, two-way is not much different to cleartext as if you can decrypt it, so can an attacker... eventually. The problem here is that I have setup a method to use a salt and a passcode that are stored in the application, I have used a salt that is stored in the db, but all have their weaknesses, ie if the app was reflected it exposes the salts etc. How can I secure the usernames and passwords in my database, and yet still provide the ability for my support consultants to view the information in the application so they can use it to login? This is obviously different to storing user's passwords as these are one way because I don't need to know what they are. But I do need to know what the client's remote access passwords are as we need to enter them in at the time of remoting to them. Anybody have some theories on what would be the best approach here? update The function I am trying to build is for our CRM application that will store the remote access details for the client. The CRM system provides call/issue tracking functionality and during the course of investigating the issue, the support consultant will need to remote in. They will then view the client's remote access details and make the connection

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  • Mysql select most frequent and sort alphabetically

    - by user2605793
    I am trying to select the most common 100 names from a table then display the list showing the names and count. I want the user to be able to re-sort the list alphabetically rather than based on count. I thought the following code would do it. It works for the default sort by count but fails on the sort alphabetically. The line "$count = mysql_num_rows($table);" gives an error: mysql_num_rows() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given. Any help would be greatly appreciated. // Get most popular surnames echo '<h2>Most Common Surnames</h2>'; if ($sort == "") { // default sort by count echo '<a href="http://mysite/names.php?id='.$id.'&sort=name">Sort by name</a><br>'; $query = "SELECT family_name, COUNT(*) as count FROM namefile WHERE record_key = $id GROUP BY family_name ORDER BY count DESC LIMIT 100"; } else { // sort alphabetically echo '<a href="http://mysite/names.php?id='.$id.'">Sort by count</a><br>'; $query = "SELECT * FROM ( SELECT family_name, COUNT(*) as count FROM namefile WHERE record_key = $id GROUP BY family_name ORDER BY count DESC LIMIT 100) AS alpha ORDER BY family_name"; } $table = mysql_query($query); $count = mysql_num_rows($table); $tot = 0; $i = 0; echo '<table><tr>'; while ($tot < $count2) { $rec2 = mysql_fetch_array($table2); echo '<td>'.$rec2[0].'</td><td>'.$rec2[1].'</td><td width="40">&nbsp;</td><td>'; if ($i++ == 6) { echo '</tr><tr>'; $i = 0; } $tot++; } echo '</tr></table><br>'; UPDATE: I needed to add "AS alpha" to give the outer select a unique name. (alpha is just a random name I made up.) It now works perfectly. Code updated for the benefit of any others who need something similar.

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  • Where can I find "canonical" sample programs that give quick refreshers for any given language? [on hold]

    - by acheong87
    Note to those close-voting this question: I understand this isn't a conventional programming question and I can agree with the reasoning that it's in the subjective domain (like best-of lists). In other ways though I think it's appropriate because, though it's not a "a specific programming problem," nor concerning "a software algorithm", nor (strictly) concerning "software tools commonly used by programmers", I think it is a "practical, answerable [problem that is] unique to the programming profession," and I think it is "based on an actual [problem I] face." I've been wanting this for some time now, because both approaches of (a) Googling for samples as I write every other line of code and (b) just winging it and seeing what errors crop up, distract me from coding efficiently. This note will be removed if the question gains popularity; this question will be deleted otherwise. I spend most of my time developing in C++, PHP, or Javascript, and every once in a while I have to do something in, say, VBA. In those times, it'd be convenient if I could just put up some sample code on a second monitor, something in between a cheat sheet (often too compact; and doesn't resemble anything that could actually compile/run), and a language reference (often too verbose, or segmented; requires extra steps to search or click through an index), so I can just glance at it and recall things, like how to loop through non-empty cells in a column. I think there's a hidden benefit to seeing formed code, that triggers the right spots in our brains to get back into a language we only need to brush up on. Similar in spirit is how http://ideone.com lets you click "Template" in any given language so you can get started without even doing a search. That template alone tells a lot, sometimes! Case-sensitivity, whitespace conventions, identifier conventions, the spelling of certain types, etc. I couldn't find a resource that pulled together such samples, so if there indeed doesn't exist such a repository, I was hoping this question would inspire professionals and experts to contribute links to the most useful sample code they've used for just this purpose: a keep-on-the-side, form-as-well-as-content, compilable/executable, reminder of a language's basic and oft-used features. Personally I am interested in seeing "samplers" for: VBA, Perl, Python, Java, C# (though for some of these autocompleters in Eclipse, Visual Studio, etc. help enough), awk, and sed. I'm tagging c++, php, and javascript because these are languages for which I'd best be able to evaluate whether proffered sample code matches what I had in mind.

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  • NullPointerException while trying to bind at SimpleCursorAdapter

    - by hrskrs
    I have asked a question before where i found my mistake. However now i am facing with another problem. I have checked all the similar errors asked on StackOverflow but without success.Any help is appriciated. The idea here is that i am getting image names from DB so depending on those names images from Drawable folder will be shown in a listView together with a description but im getting an error of NullPointException at setViewValue. Here is the code snippet: private void populateListView() { ListView customListView = (ListView)findViewById(R.id.lvCustom); Cursor cursor = DBhelper.getAllimages(); startManagingCursor(cursor); String[] from = { DBhelper.COLUMN_PIC_URL, DBhelper.COLUMN_PIC_DESC}; int[] to = {R.id.ivImg, R.id.tvTitle}; SimpleCursorAdapter cursorAdapter = new SimpleCursorAdapter(this, R.layout.custom_listview_row, cursor, from, to, 0); cursorAdapter.setViewBinder(new ViewBinder() { @Override public boolean setViewValue(View view, Cursor cursor, int columnIndex) { ImageView imageImageView = (ImageView)findViewById(R.id.ivImg); String[] imgNames = new String[cursor.getCount()]; int[] imgResourceIds = new int[cursor.getCount()]; for(int i=0; i<cursor.getCount(); i++){ imgNames[i] = cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex(DBhelper.COLUMN_PIC_URL)); imgResourceIds[i] = getResources().getIdentifier(imgNames[i], "drawable", getPackageName()); imageImageView.setImageResource(imgResourceIds[i]); cursor.moveToNext(); } return true; } }); customListView.setAdapter(cursorAdapter); } Here is the Error from LogCat: I have tried to log the output of imgNames[i] where it returns the url pic from the DB correctly and imgResourceIds[i] where it return the image resource id correctly also(it does not return NULL but something like: 295731). But it stops at imageImageView.setImageResource(imgResourceIds[i]); To see from where that NullPointerException is coming, i commented out imageImageView.setImageResource(imgResourceIds[i]);. This time imageNames(those with a TAG) and imgResourceIds(those system printed out) came correctly but doubled, when i removed cursor.MoveToNext() last row were doubled. Here is the screen shot of that: I have tried all the suggestions on stack about gettin a NullException but without success. Any idea where i am doing mistake?

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  • WiX 3 Tutorial: Generating file/directory fragments with Heat.exe

    - by Mladen Prajdic
    In previous posts I’ve shown you our SuperForm test application solution structure and how the main wxs and wxi include file look like. In this post I’ll show you how to automate inclusion of files to install into your build process. For our SuperForm application we have a single exe to install. But in the real world we have 10s or 100s of different files from dll’s to resource files like pictures. It all depends on what kind of application you’re building. Writing a directory structure for so many files by hand is out of the question. What we need is an automated way to create this structure. Enter Heat.exe. Heat is a command line utility to harvest a file, directory, Visual Studio project, IIS website or performance counters. You might ask what harvesting means? Harvesting is converting a source (file, directory, …) into a component structure saved in a WiX fragment (a wxs) file. There are 2 options you can use: Create a static wxs fragment with Heat and include it in your project. The pro of this is that you can add or remove components by hand. The con is that you have to do the pro part by hand. Automation always beats manual labor. Run heat command line utility in a pre-build event of your WiX project. I prefer this way. By always recreating the whole fragment you don’t have to worry about missing any new files you add. The con of this is that you’ll include files that you otherwise might not want to. There is no perfect solution so pick one and deal with it. I prefer using the second way. A neat way of overcoming the con of the second option is to have a post-build event on your main application project (SuperForm.MainApp in our case) to copy the files needed to be installed in a special location and have the Heat.exe read them from there. I haven’t set this up for this tutorial and I’m simply including all files from the default SuperForm.MainApp \bin directory. Remember how we created a System Environment variable called SuperFormFilesDir? This is where we’ll use it for the first time. The command line text that you have to put into the pre-build event of your WiX project looks like this: "$(WIX)bin\heat.exe" dir "$(SuperFormFilesDir)" -cg SuperFormFiles -gg -scom -sreg -sfrag -srd -dr INSTALLLOCATION -var env.SuperFormFilesDir -out "$(ProjectDir)Fragments\FilesFragment.wxs" After you install WiX you’ll get the WIX environment variable. In the pre/post-build events environment variables are referenced like this: $(WIX). By using this you don’t have to think about the installation path of the WiX. Remember: for 32 bit applications Program files folder is named differently between 32 and 64 bit systems. $(ProjectDir) is obviously the path to your project and is a Visual Studio built in variable. You can view all Heat.exe options by running it without parameters but I’ll explain some that stick out the most. dir "$(SuperFormFilesDir)": tell Heat to harvest the whole directory at the set location. That is the location we’ve set in our System Environment variable. –cg SuperFormFiles: the name of the Component group that will be created. This name is included in out Feature tag as is seen in the previous post. -dr INSTALLLOCATION: the directory reference this fragment will fall under. You can see the top level directory structure in the previous post. -var env.SuperFormFilesDir: the name of the variable that will replace the SourceDir text that would otherwise appear in the fragment file. -out "$(ProjectDir)Fragments\FilesFragment.wxs": the full path and name under which the fragment file will be saved. If you have source control you have to include the FilesFragment.wxs into your project but remove its source control binding. The auto generated FilesFragment.wxs for our test app looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><Wix xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/wi"> <Fragment> <ComponentGroup Id="SuperFormFiles"> <ComponentRef Id="cmp5BB40DB822CAA7C5295227894A07502E" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmpCFD331F5E0E471FC42A1334A1098E144" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmp4614DD03D8974B7C1FC39E7B82F19574" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmpDF166522884E2454382277128BD866EC" /> </ComponentGroup> </Fragment> <Fragment> <DirectoryRef Id="INSTALLLOCATION"> <Component Id="cmp5BB40DB822CAA7C5295227894A07502E" Guid="{117E3352-2F0C-4E19-AD96-03D354751B8D}"> <File Id="filDCA561ABF8964292B6BC0D0726E8EFAD" KeyPath="yes" Source="$(env.SuperFormFilesDir)\SuperForm.MainApp.exe" /> </Component> <Component Id="cmpCFD331F5E0E471FC42A1334A1098E144" Guid="{369A2347-97DD-45CA-A4D1-62BB706EA329}"> <File Id="filA9BE65B2AB60F3CE41105364EDE33D27" KeyPath="yes" Source="$(env.SuperFormFilesDir)\SuperForm.MainApp.pdb" /> </Component> <Component Id="cmp4614DD03D8974B7C1FC39E7B82F19574" Guid="{3443EBE2-168F-4380-BC41-26D71A0DB1C7}"> <File Id="fil5102E75B91F3DAFA6F70DA57F4C126ED" KeyPath="yes" Source="$(env.SuperFormFilesDir)\SuperForm.MainApp.vshost.exe" /> </Component> <Component Id="cmpDF166522884E2454382277128BD866EC" Guid="{0C0F3D18-56EB-41FE-B0BD-FD2C131572DB}"> <File Id="filF7CA5083B4997E1DEC435554423E675C" KeyPath="yes" Source="$(env.SuperFormFilesDir)\SuperForm.MainApp.vshost.exe.manifest" /> </Component> </DirectoryRef> </Fragment></Wix> The $(env.SuperFormFilesDir) will be replaced at build time with the directory where the files to be installed are located. There is nothing too complicated about this. In the end it turns out that this sort of automation is great! There are a few other ways that Heat.exe can compose the wxs file but this is the one I prefer. It just seems the clearest. Play with its options to see what can it do. It’s one awesome little tool.   WiX 3 tutorial by Mladen Prajdic navigation WiX 3 Tutorial: Solution/Project structure and Dev resources WiX 3 Tutorial: Understanding main wxs and wxi file WiX 3 Tutorial: Generating file/directory fragments with Heat.exe

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  • Version Assemblies with TFS 2010 Continuous Integration

    - by Steve Michelotti
    When I first heard that TFS 2010 had moved to Workflow Foundation for Team Build, I was *extremely* skeptical. I’ve loved MSBuild and didn’t quite understand the reasons for this change. In fact, given that I’ve been exclusively using Cruise Control for Continuous Integration (CI) for the last 5+ years of my career, I was skeptical of TFS for CI in general. However, after going through the learning process for TFS 2010 recently, I’m starting to become a believer. I’m also starting to see some of the benefits with Workflow Foundation for the overall processing because it gives you constructs not available in MSBuild such as parallel tasks, better control flow constructs, and a slightly better customization story. The first customization I had to make to the build process was to version the assemblies of my solution. This is not new. In fact, I’d recommend reading Mike Fourie’s well known post on Versioning Code in TFS before you get started. This post describes several foundational aspects of versioning assemblies regardless of your version of TFS. The main points are: 1) don’t use source control operations for your version file, 2) use a schema like <Major>.<Minor>.<IncrementalNumber>.0, and 3) do not keep AssemblyVersion and AssemblyFileVersion in sync. To do this in TFS 2010, the best post I’ve found has been Jim Lamb’s post of building a custom TFS 2010 workflow activity. Overall, this post is excellent but the primary issue I have with it is that the assembly version numbers produced are based in a date and look like this: “2010.5.15.1”. This is definitely not what I want. I want to be able to communicate to the developers and stakeholders that we are producing the “1.1 release” or “1.2 release” – which would have an assembly version number of “1.1.317.0” for example. In this post, I’ll walk through the process of customizing the assembly version number based on this method – customizing the concepts in Lamb’s post to suit my needs. I’ll also be combining this with the concepts of Fourie’s post – particularly with regards to the standards around how to version the assemblies. The first thing I’ll do is add a file called SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs to the root of my solution that looks like this: 1: using System; 2: using System.Reflection; 3: [assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.1.0.0")] 4: [assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("1.1.0.0")] I’ll then add that file as a Visual Studio link file to each project in my solution by right-clicking the project, “Add – Existing Item…” then when I click the SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs file, making sure I “Add As Link”: Now the Solution Explorer will show our file. We can see that it’s a “link” file because of the black arrow in the icon within all our projects. Of course you’ll need to remove the AssemblyVersion and AssemblyFileVersion attributes from the AssemblyInfo.cs files to avoid the duplicate attributes since they now leave in the SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs file. This is an extremely common technique so that all the projects in our solution can be versioned as a unit. At this point, we’re ready to write our custom activity. The primary consideration is that I want the developer and/or tech lead to be able to easily be in control of the Major.Minor and then I want the CI process to add the third number with a unique incremental number. We’ll leave the fourth position always “0” for now – it’s held in reserve in case the day ever comes where we need to do an emergency patch to Production based on a branched version.   Writing the Custom Workflow Activity Similar to Lamb’s post, I’m going to write two custom workflow activities. The “outer” activity (a xaml activity) will be pretty straight forward. It will check if the solution version file exists in the solution root and, if so, delegate the replacement of version to the AssemblyVersionInfo activity which is a CodeActivity highlighted in red below:   Notice that the arguments of this activity are the “solutionVersionFile” and “tfsBuildNumber” which will be passed in. The tfsBuildNumber passed in will look something like this: “CI_MyApplication.4” and we’ll need to grab the “4” (i.e., the incremental revision number) and put that in the third position. Then we’ll need to honor whatever was specified for Major.Minor in the SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs file. For example, if the SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs file had “1.1.0.0” for the AssemblyVersion (as shown in the first code block near the beginning of this post), then we want to resulting file to have “1.1.4.0”. Before we do anything, let’s put together a unit test for all this so we can know if we get it right: 1: [TestMethod] 2: public void Assembly_version_should_be_parsed_correctly_from_build_name() 3: { 4: // arrange 5: const string versionFile = "SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs"; 6: WriteTestVersionFile(versionFile); 7: var activity = new VersionAssemblies(); 8: var arguments = new Dictionary<string, object> { 9: { "tfsBuildNumber", "CI_MyApplication.4"}, 10: { "solutionVersionFile", versionFile} 11: }; 12:   13: // act 14: var result = WorkflowInvoker.Invoke(activity, arguments); 15:   16: // assert 17: Assert.AreEqual("1.2.4.0", (string)result["newAssemblyFileVersion"]); 18: var lines = File.ReadAllLines(versionFile); 19: Assert.IsTrue(lines.Contains("[assembly: AssemblyVersion(\"1.2.0.0\")]")); 20: Assert.IsTrue(lines.Contains("[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion(\"1.2.4.0\")]")); 21: } 22: 23: private void WriteTestVersionFile(string versionFile) 24: { 25: var fileContents = "using System.Reflection;\n" + 26: "[assembly: AssemblyVersion(\"1.2.0.0\")]\n" + 27: "[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion(\"1.2.0.0\")]"; 28: File.WriteAllText(versionFile, fileContents); 29: }   At this point, the code for our AssemblyVersion activity is pretty straight forward: 1: [BuildActivity(HostEnvironmentOption.Agent)] 2: public class AssemblyVersionInfo : CodeActivity 3: { 4: [RequiredArgument] 5: public InArgument<string> FileName { get; set; } 6:   7: [RequiredArgument] 8: public InArgument<string> TfsBuildNumber { get; set; } 9:   10: public OutArgument<string> NewAssemblyFileVersion { get; set; } 11:   12: protected override void Execute(CodeActivityContext context) 13: { 14: var solutionVersionFile = this.FileName.Get(context); 15: 16: // Ensure that the file is writeable 17: var fileAttributes = File.GetAttributes(solutionVersionFile); 18: File.SetAttributes(solutionVersionFile, fileAttributes & ~FileAttributes.ReadOnly); 19:   20: // Prepare assembly versions 21: var majorMinor = GetAssemblyMajorMinorVersionBasedOnExisting(solutionVersionFile); 22: var newBuildNumber = GetNewBuildNumber(this.TfsBuildNumber.Get(context)); 23: var newAssemblyVersion = string.Format("{0}.{1}.0.0", majorMinor.Item1, majorMinor.Item2); 24: var newAssemblyFileVersion = string.Format("{0}.{1}.{2}.0", majorMinor.Item1, majorMinor.Item2, newBuildNumber); 25: this.NewAssemblyFileVersion.Set(context, newAssemblyFileVersion); 26:   27: // Perform the actual replacement 28: var contents = this.GetFileContents(newAssemblyVersion, newAssemblyFileVersion); 29: File.WriteAllText(solutionVersionFile, contents); 30:   31: // Restore the file's original attributes 32: File.SetAttributes(solutionVersionFile, fileAttributes); 33: } 34:   35: #region Private Methods 36:   37: private string GetFileContents(string newAssemblyVersion, string newAssemblyFileVersion) 38: { 39: var cs = new StringBuilder(); 40: cs.AppendLine("using System.Reflection;"); 41: cs.AppendFormat("[assembly: AssemblyVersion(\"{0}\")]", newAssemblyVersion); 42: cs.AppendLine(); 43: cs.AppendFormat("[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion(\"{0}\")]", newAssemblyFileVersion); 44: return cs.ToString(); 45: } 46:   47: private Tuple<string, string> GetAssemblyMajorMinorVersionBasedOnExisting(string filePath) 48: { 49: var lines = File.ReadAllLines(filePath); 50: var versionLine = lines.Where(x => x.Contains("AssemblyVersion")).FirstOrDefault(); 51:   52: if (versionLine == null) 53: { 54: throw new InvalidOperationException("File does not contain [assembly: AssemblyVersion] attribute"); 55: } 56:   57: return ExtractMajorMinor(versionLine); 58: } 59:   60: private static Tuple<string, string> ExtractMajorMinor(string versionLine) 61: { 62: var firstQuote = versionLine.IndexOf('"') + 1; 63: var secondQuote = versionLine.IndexOf('"', firstQuote); 64: var version = versionLine.Substring(firstQuote, secondQuote - firstQuote); 65: var versionParts = version.Split('.'); 66: return new Tuple<string, string>(versionParts[0], versionParts[1]); 67: } 68:   69: private string GetNewBuildNumber(string buildName) 70: { 71: return buildName.Substring(buildName.LastIndexOf(".") + 1); 72: } 73:   74: #endregion 75: }   At this point the final step is to incorporate this activity into the overall build template. Make a copy of the DefaultTempate.xaml – we’ll call it DefaultTemplateWithVersioning.xaml. Before the build and labeling happens, drag the VersionAssemblies activity in. Then set the LabelName variable to “BuildDetail.BuildDefinition.Name + "-" + newAssemblyFileVersion since the newAssemblyFileVersion was produced by our activity.   Configuring CI Once you add your solution to source control, you can configure CI with the build definition window as shown here. The main difference is that we’ll change the Process tab to reflect a different build number format and choose our custom build process file:   When the build completes, we’ll see the name of our project with the unique revision number:   If we look at the detailed build log for the latest build, we’ll see the label being created with our custom task:     We can now look at the history labels in TFS and see the project name with the labels (the Assignment activity I added to the workflow):   Finally, if we look at the physical assemblies that are produced, we can right-click on any assembly in Windows Explorer and see the assembly version in its properties:   Full Traceability We now have full traceability for our code. There will never be a question of what code was deployed to Production. You can always see the assembly version in the properties of the physical assembly. That can be traced back to a label in TFS where the unique revision number matches. The label in TFS gives you the complete snapshot of the code in your source control repository at the time the code was built. This type of process for full traceability has been used for many years for CI – in fact, I’ve done similar things with CCNet and SVN for quite some time. This is simply the TFS implementation of that pattern. The new features that TFS 2010 give you to make these types of customizations in your build process are quite easy once you get over the initial curve.

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  • Upgrading from TFS 2010 RC to TFS 2010 RTM done

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    Today is the big day, with the Launch of Visual Studio 2010 already done in Asia, and rolling around the world towards us, we are getting ready for the RTM (Released). We have had TFS 2010 in Production for nearly 6 months and have had only minimal problems. Update 12th April 2010  – Added Scott Hanselman’s tweet about the MSDN download release time. SSW was the first company in the world outside of Microsoft to deploy Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server to production, not once, but twice. I am hoping to make it 3 in a row, but with all the hype around the new version, and with it being a production release and not just a go-live, I think there will be a lot of competition. Developers: MSDN will be updated with #vs2010 downloads and details at 10am PST *today*! @shanselman - Scott Hanselman Same as before, we need to Uninstall 2010 RC and install 2010 RTM. The installer will take care of all the complexity of actually upgrading any schema changes. If you are upgrading from TFS 2008 to TFS2010 you can follow our Rules To Better TFS 2010 Migration and read my post on our successes.   We run TFS 2010 in a Hyper-V virtual environment, so we have the advantage of running a snapshot as well as taking a DB backup. Done - Snapshot the hyper-v server Microsoft does not support taking a snapshot of a running server, for very good reason, and Brian Harry wrote a post after my last upgrade with the reason why you should never snapshot a running server. Done - Uninstall Visual Studio Team Explorer 2010 RC You will need to uninstall all of the Visual Studio 2010 RC client bits that you have on the server. Done - Uninstall TFS 2010 RC Done - Install TFS 2010 RTM Done - Configure TFS 2010 RTM Pick the Upgrade option and point it at your existing “tfs_Configuration” database to load all of the existing settings Done - Upgrade the SharePoint Extensions Upgrade Build Servers (Pending) Test the server The back out plan, and you should always have one, is to restore the snapshot. Upgrading to Team Foundation Server 2010 – Done The first thing you need to do is off the TFS server and then log into the Hyper-v server and create a snapshot. Figure: Make sure you turn the server off and delete all old snapshots before you take a new one I noticed that the snapshot that was taken before the Beta 2 to RC upgrade was still there. You should really delete old snapshots before you create a new one, but in this case the SysAdmin (who is currently tucked up in bed) asked me not to. I guess he is worried about a developer messing up his server Turn your server on and wait for it to boot in anticipation of all the nice shiny RTM’ness that is coming next. The upgrade procedure for TFS2010 is to uninstal the old version and install the new one. Figure: Remove Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server RC from the system.   Figure: Most of the heavy lifting is done by the Uninstaller, but make sure you have removed any of the client bits first. Specifically Visual Studio 2010 or Team Explorer 2010.  Once the uninstall is complete, this took around 5 minutes for me, you can begin the install of the RTM. Running the 64 bit OS will allow the application to use more than 2GB RAM, which while not common may be of use in heavy load situations. Figure: It is always recommended to install the 64bit version of a server application where possible. I do not think it is likely, with SharePoint 2010 and Exchange 2010  and even Windows Server 2008 R2 being 64 bit only, I do not think there will be another release of a server app that is 32bit. You then need to choose what it is you want to install. This depends on how you are running TFS and on how many servers. In our case we run TFS and the Team Foundation Build Service (controller only) on out TFS server along with Analysis services and Reporting Services. But our SharePoint server lives elsewhere. Figure: This always confuses people, but in reality it makes sense. Don’t install what you do not need. Every extra you install has an impact of performance. If you are integrating with SharePoint you will need to run this install on every Front end server in your farm and don’t forget to upgrade your Build servers and proxy servers later. Figure: Selecting only Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Team Foundation Build Services (TFBS)   It is worth noting that if you have a lot of builds kicking off, and hence a lot of get operations against your TFS server, you can use a proxy server to cache the source control on another server in between your TFS server and your build servers. Figure: Installing Microsoft .NET Framework 4 takes the most time. Figure: Now run Windows Update, and SSW Diagnostic to make sure all your bits and bobs are up to date. Note: SSW Diagnostic will check your Power Tools, Add-on’s, Check in Policies and other bits as well. Configure Team Foundation Server 2010 – Done Now you can configure the server. If you have no key you will need to pick “Install a Trial Licence”, but it is only £500, or free with a MSDN subscription. Anyway, if you pick Trial you get 90 days to get your key. Figure: You can pick trial and add your key later using the TFS Server Admin. Here is where the real choices happen. We are doing an Upgrade from a previous version, so I will pick Upgrade the same as all you folks that are using the RC or TFS 2008. Figure: The upgrade wizard takes your existing 2010 or 2008 databases and upgraded them to the release.   Once you have entered your database server name you can click “List available databases” and it will show what it can upgrade. Figure: Select your database from the list and at this point, make sure you have a valid backup. At this point you have not made ANY changes to the databases. At this point the configuration wizard will load configuration from your existing database if you have one. If you are upgrading TFS 2008 refer to Rules To Better TFS 2010 Migration. Mostly during the wizard the default values will suffice, but depending on the configuration you want you can pick different options. Figure: Set the application tier account and Authentication method to use. We use NTLM to keep things simple as we host our TFS server externally for our remote developers.  Figure: Setting your TFS server URL’s to be the remote URL’s allows the reports to be accessed without using VPN. Very handy for those remote developers. Figure: Detected the existing Warehouse no problem. Figure: Again we love green ticks. It gives us a warm fuzzy feeling. Figure: The username for connecting to Reporting services should be a domain account (if you are on a domain that is). Figure: Setup the SharePoint integration to connect to your external SharePoint server. You can take the option to connect later.   You then need to run all of your readiness checks. These check can save your life! it will check all of the settings that you have entered as well as checking all the external services are configures and running properly. There are two reasons that TFS 2010 is so easy and painless to install where previous version were not. Microsoft changes the install to two steps, Install and configuration. The second reason is that they have pulled out all of the stops in making the install run all the checks necessary to make sure that once you start the install that it will complete. if you find any errors I recommend that you report them on http://connect.microsoft.com so everyone can benefit from your misery.   Figure: Now we have everything setup the configuration wizard can do its work.  Figure: Took a while on the “Web site” stage for some point, but zipped though after that.  Figure: last wee bit. TFS Needs to do a little tinkering with the data to complete the upgrade. Figure: All upgraded. I am not worried about the yellow triangle as SharePoint was being a little silly Exception Message: TF254021: The account name or password that you specified is not valid. (type TfsAdminException) Exception Stack Trace:    at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Management.Controls.WizardCommon.AccountSelectionControl.TestLogon(String connectionString)    at System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker.WorkerThreadStart(Object argument) [Info   @16:10:16.307] Benign exception caught as part of verify: Exception Message: TF255329: The following site could not be accessed: http://projects.ssw.com.au/. The server that you specified did not return the expected response. Either you have not installed the Team Foundation Server Extensions for SharePoint Products on this server, or a firewall is blocking access to the specified site or the SharePoint Central Administration site. For more information, see the Microsoft Web site (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=161206). (type TeamFoundationServerException) Exception Stack Trace:    at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.SharePoint.WssUtilities.VerifyTeamFoundationSharePointExtensions(ICredentials credentials, Uri url)    at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Admin.VerifySharePointSitesUrl.Verify() Inner Exception Details: Exception Message: TF249064: The following Web service returned an response that is not valid: http://projects.ssw.com.au/_vti_bin/TeamFoundationIntegrationService.asmx. This Web service is used for the Team Foundation Server Extensions for SharePoint Products. Either the extensions are not installed, the request resulted in HTML being returned, or there is a problem with the URL. Verify that the following URL points to a valid SharePoint Web application and that the application is available: http://projects.ssw.com.au. If the URL is correct and the Web application is operating normally, verify that a firewall is not blocking access to the Web application. (type TeamFoundationServerInvalidResponseException) Exception Data Dictionary: ResponseStatusCode = InternalServerError I’ll look at SharePoint after, probably the SharePoint box just needs a restart or a kick If there is a problem with SharePoint it will come out in testing, But I will definatly be passing this on to Microsoft.   Upgrading the SharePoint connector to TFS 2010 You will need to upgrade the Extensions for SharePoint Products and Technologies on all of your SharePoint farm front end servers. To do this uninstall  the TFS 2010 RC from it in the same way as the server, and then install just the RTM Extensions. Figure: Only install the SharePoint Extensions on your SharePoint front end servers. TFS 2010 supports both SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010.   Figure: When you configure SharePoint it uploads all of the solutions and templates. Figure: Everything is uploaded Successfully. Figure: TFS even remembered the settings from the previous installation, fantastic.   Upgrading the Team Foundation Build Servers to TFS 2010 Just like on the SharePoint servers you will need to upgrade the Build Server to the RTM. Just uninstall TFS 2010 RC and then install only the Team Foundation Build Services component. Unlike on the SharePoint server you will probably have some version of Visual Studio installed. You will need to remove this as well. (Coming Soon) Connecting Visual Studio 2010 / 2008 / 2005 and Eclipse to TFS2010 If you have developers still on Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 you will need do download the respective compatibility pack: Visual Studio Team System 2005 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010 Visual Studio Team System 2008 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010 If you are using Eclipse you can download the new Team Explorer Everywhere install for connecting to TFS. Get your developers to check that you have the latest version of your applications with SSW Diagnostic which will check for Service Packs and hot fixes to Visual Studio as well.   Technorati Tags: TFS,TFS2010,TFS 2010,Upgrade

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 06, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 06, 2010New ProjectsAgr.CQRS: Agr.CQRS is a C# framework for DDD applications that use the Command Query Responsibility Segregation pattern (CQRS) and Event Sourcing. BigDays 2010: Big>Days 2010BizTalk - Controlled Admin: Hi .NET folks, I am planning to start project on a Controlled BizTalk Admin tool. This tool will be useful for the organizations which have "Sh...Blacklist of Providers: Blacklist of Providers - the application for department of warehouse logistics (warehouse) at firms.Career Vector: A job board software.Chargify Demo: This is a sample website for ChargifyConceptual: Concept description and animationEric Hexter: My publicly available source code and examplesFluentNHibernate.Search: A Fluent NHibernate.Search mapping interface for NHibernate provider implementation of Lucene.NET.FreelancePlanner: FreelancePlanner is a project tracking tool for freelance translators.HTMLx - JavaScript on the Server for .NET: HTMLx is a set of libraries based on ASP.NET engine to provide JavaScript programmability on the server side. It allows Web developers to use JavaS...IronMSBuild: IronMSBuild is a custom MSBuild Task, which allows you to execute IronRuby scripts. // have to provide some examples LINQ To Blippr: LINQ to Blippr is an open source LINQ Provider for the micro-reviewing service Blippr. LINQ to Blippr makes it easier and more efficent for develo...Luk@sh's HTML Parser: library that simplifies parsing of the HTML documents, for .NETMeta Choons: Unsure as yet but will be a kind of discogs type site but different..NetWork2: NetWork2Regular Expression Chooser: Simple gui for choosing the regular expressions that have become more than simple.See.Sharper: Hopefully useful C# extensions.SharePoint 2010 Toggle User Interface: Toggle the SharePoint 2010 user interface between the new SharePoint 2010 user interface and SharePoint 2007 user interface.Silverlight DiscussionBoard for SharePoint: This is a sharepoint 3.0 webpart that uses a silverlight treeview to display metadata about sharepoint discussions anduses the html bridge to show...Simple Sales Tracking CRM API Wrapper: The Simple Sales Tracking API Wrapper, enables easy extention development and integration with the hosted service at http://www.simplesalestracking...Syntax4Word: A syntax addin for word 2007.TortoiseHg installer builder: TortoiseHg and Mercurial installer builder for Windowsunbinder: Model un binding for route value dictionariesWindows Workflow Foundation on Codeplex: This site has previews of Workflow features which are released out of band for the purposes of adoption and feedback.XNA RSM Render State Manager: Render state management idea for XNA games. Enables isolation between draw calls whilst reducing DX9 SetRenderState calls to the minimum.New ReleasesAgr.CQRS: Sourcecode package: Agr.CQRS is a C# framework for DDD applications that use the Command Query Responsibility Segregation pattern (CQRS) and Event Sourcing. This dow...Book Cataloger: Preview 0.1.6a: New Features: Export to Word 2007 Bibliography format Dictionary list editors for Binding, Condition Improvements: Stability improved Content ...Braintree Client Library: Braintree-1.1.2: Includes minor enhancements to CreditCard and ValidationErrors to support upcoming example application.CassiniDev - Cassini 3.5 Developers Edition: CassiniDev v3.5.0.5: For usage see Readme.htm in download. New in CassiniDev v3.5.0.5 Reintroduced the Lib project and signed all Implemented the CassiniSqlFixture -...Composure: Calcium-64420-VS2010rc1.NET4.SL3: This is a simple conversion of Calcium (rev 64420) built in VS2010 RC1 against .NET4 and Silverlight 3. No source files were changed and ALL test...Composure: MS AJAX Library (46266) for VS2010 RC1 .NET4: This is a quick port of Microsoft's AJAX Library (rev 46266) for Visual Studio 2010 RC1 built against .NET 4.0. Since this conversion was thrown t...Composure: MS Web Test Lightweight for VS2010 RC1 .NET4: A simple conversion of Microsoft's Web Test Lightweight for Visual Studio 2010 RC1 .NET 4.0. This is part of a larger "special request" conversion...CoNatural Components: CoNatural Components 1.5: Supporting new data types: Added support for binary data types -> binary, varbinary, etc maps to byte[] Now supporting SQL Server 2008 new types ...Extensia: Extensia 2010-03-05: Extensia is a very large list of extension methods and a few helper types. Some extension methods are not practical (e.g. slow) whilst others are....Fluent Assertions: Fluent Assertions release 1.1: In this release, we've worked hard to add some important missing features that we really needed, and also improve resiliance against illegal argume...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 1.0 RC: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 1.0 (Release Candidate)Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml, debug and release version) Showcase Application Sa...FluentNHibernate.Search: 0.1 Beta: First beta versionFolderSize: FolderSize.Win32.1.0.7.0: FolderSize.Win32.1.0.6.0 A simple utility intended to be used to scan harddrives for the folders that take most place and display this to the user...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Silverlight and WPF Step Line Chart: Hi, With this release Visifire introduces Step Line Chart. This release also contains fix for the following issues: * In WPF, if AnimatedUpd...Html to OpenXml: HtmlToOpenXml 1.0: The dll library to include in your project. The dll is signed for GAC support. Compiled with .Net 3.5, Dependencies on System.Drawing.dll and Docu...Line Counter: 1.5.1: The Line Counter is a tool to calculate lines of your code files. The tool was written in .NET 2.0. Line Counter 1.5.1 Added outline icons and lin...Lokad Cloud - .NET O/C mapper (object to cloud) for Windows Azure: Lokad.Cloud v1.0.662.1: You can get the most recent release directly from the build server at http://build.lokad.com/distrib/Lokad.Cloud/Lost in Translation: LostInTranslation v0.2: Alpha release: function complete but not UX complete.MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.7.56349: Supported large file resumption. Fixed minor bugs.Mini C# Lab: Mini CSharp Lab Ver 1.4: The primary new feature of Ver 1.4 is batch mode! Now you can run Mini C# Lab program as a scheduled task, no UI interactivity is needed. Here ar...Mobile Store: First drop: First droppatterns & practices SharePoint Guidance: SPG2010 Drop6: SharePoint Guidance Drop Notes Microsoft patterns and practices ****************************************** ***************************************...Picasa Downloader: PicasaDownloader (41446): Changelog: Replaced some exception messages by a Summary dialog shown after downloading if there have been problems. Corrected the Portable vers...Pod Thrower: Version 1: This is the first release, I'm sure there are bugs, the tool is fully functional and I'm using it currently.PowerShell Provider BizTalk: BizTalkFactory PowerShell Provider - 1.1-snapshot: This release constitutes the latest development snapshot for the Provider. Please, leave feedback and use the Issue Tracker to help improve this pr...Resharper Settings Manager: RSM 1.2.1: This is a bug fix release. Changes Fixed plug-in crash when shared settings file was modified externally.Reusable Library Demo: Reusable Library Demo v1.0.2: A demonstration of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developerSharePoint 2010 Toggle User Interface: SharePoint Toggle User Interface: Release 1.0.0.0Starter Kit Mytrip.Mvc.Entity: Mytrip.Mvc.Entity(net3.5 MySQL) 1.0 Beta: MySQL VS 2008 EF Membership UserManager FileManager Localization Captcha ClientValidation Theme CrossBrowserTortoiseHg: TortoiseHg 1.0: http://bitbucket.org/tortoisehg/stable/wiki/ReleaseNotes Please backup your user Mercurial.ini file and then uninstall any 0.9.X release before in...Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 VM Factory: Rangers Virtualization Guidance: Rangers Virtualization Guidance Focused guidance on creating a Rangers base image manually and introduction of PowerShell scripts to automate many ...Visual Studio DSite: Advanced Email Program (Visual Basic 2008): This email program can send email to any one using your email username and email credentials. The email program can also attatch attactments to you...WPF ShaderEffect Generator: WPF ShaderEffect Generator 1.6: Several improvements and bug fixes have gone into the comment parsing code for the registers. The plug-in should now correctly pay attention to th...WSDLGenerator: WSDLGenerator 0.0.0.3: - Fixed SharePoint generated *.wsdl.aspx file - Added commandline option -wsdl which does only generate the wsdl file.Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETLiveUpload to FacebookMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsUmbraco CMSRawrSDS: Scientific DataSet library and toolsBlogEngine.NETjQuery Library for SharePoint Web Servicespatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterFluent AssertionsComposureDiffPlex - a .NET Diff Generator

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  • Dependency Injection in ASP.NET MVC NerdDinner App using Ninject

    - by shiju
    In this post, I am applying Dependency Injection to the NerdDinner application using Ninject. The controllers of NerdDinner application have Dependency Injection enabled constructors. So we can apply Dependency Injection through constructor without change any existing code. A Dependency Injection framework injects the dependencies into a class when the dependencies are needed. Dependency Injection enables looser coupling between classes and their dependencies and provides better testability of an application and it removes the need for clients to know about their dependencies and how to create them. If you are not familiar with Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control (IoC), read Martin Fowler’s article Inversion of Control Containers and the Dependency Injection pattern. The Open Source Project NerDinner is a great resource for learning ASP.NET MVC.  A free eBook provides an end-to-end walkthrough of building NerdDinner.com application. The free eBook and the Open Source Nerddinner application are extremely useful if anyone is trying to lean ASP.NET MVC. The first release of  Nerddinner was as a sample for the first chapter of Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0. Currently the application is updating to ASP.NET MVC 2 and you can get the latest source from the source code tab of Nerddinner at http://nerddinner.codeplex.com/SourceControl/list/changesets. I have taken the latest ASP.NET MVC 2 source code of the application and applied  Dependency Injection using Ninject and Ninject extension Ninject.Web.Mvc.Ninject &  Ninject.Web.MvcNinject is available at http://github.com/enkari/ninject and Ninject.Web.Mvc is available at http://github.com/enkari/ninject.web.mvcNinject is a lightweight and a great dependency injection framework for .NET.  Ninject is a great choice of dependency injection framework when building ASP.NET MVC applications. Ninject.Web.Mvc is an extension for ninject which providing integration with ASP.NET MVC.Controller constructors and dependencies of NerdDinner application Listing 1 – Constructor of DinnersController  public DinnersController(IDinnerRepository repository) {     dinnerRepository = repository; }  Listing 2 – Constrcutor of AccountControllerpublic AccountController(IFormsAuthentication formsAuth, IMembershipService service) {     FormsAuth = formsAuth ?? new FormsAuthenticationService();     MembershipService = service ?? new AccountMembershipService(); }  Listing 3 – Constructor of AccountMembership – Concrete class of IMembershipService public AccountMembershipService(MembershipProvider provider) {     _provider = provider ?? Membership.Provider; }    Dependencies of NerdDinnerDinnersController, RSVPController SearchController and ServicesController have a dependency with IDinnerRepositiry. The concrete implementation of IDinnerRepositiry is DinnerRepositiry. AccountController has dependencies with IFormsAuthentication and IMembershipService. The concrete implementation of IFormsAuthentication is FormsAuthenticationService and the concrete implementation of IMembershipService is AccountMembershipService. The AccountMembershipService has a dependency with ASP.NET Membership Provider. Dependency Injection in NerdDinner using NinjectThe below steps will configure Ninject to apply controller injection in NerdDinner application.Step 1 – Add reference for NinjectOpen the  NerdDinner application and add  reference to Ninject.dll and Ninject.Web.Mvc.dll. Both are available from http://github.com/enkari/ninject and http://github.com/enkari/ninject.web.mvcStep 2 – Extend HttpApplication with NinjectHttpApplication Ninject.Web.Mvc extension allows integration between the Ninject and ASP.NET MVC. For this, you have to extend your HttpApplication with NinjectHttpApplication. Open the Global.asax.cs and inherit your MVC application from  NinjectHttpApplication instead of HttpApplication.   public class MvcApplication : NinjectHttpApplication Then the Application_Start method should be replace with OnApplicationStarted method. Inside the OnApplicationStarted method, call the RegisterAllControllersIn() method.   protected override void OnApplicationStarted() {     AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();     RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);     ViewEngines.Engines.Clear();     ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new MobileCapableWebFormViewEngine());     RegisterAllControllersIn(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly()); }  The RegisterAllControllersIn method will enables to activating all controllers through Ninject in the assembly you have supplied .We are passing the current assembly as parameter for RegisterAllControllersIn() method. Now we can expose dependencies of controller constructors and properties to request injectionsStep 3 – Create Ninject ModulesWe can configure your dependency injection mapping information using Ninject Modules.Modules just need to implement the INinjectModule interface, but most should extend the NinjectModule class for simplicity. internal class ServiceModule : NinjectModule {     public override void Load()     {                    Bind<IFormsAuthentication>().To<FormsAuthenticationService>();         Bind<IMembershipService>().To<AccountMembershipService>();                  Bind<MembershipProvider>().ToConstant(Membership.Provider);         Bind<IDinnerRepository>().To<DinnerRepository>();     } } The above Binding inforamtion specified in the Load method tells the Ninject container that, to inject instance of DinnerRepositiry when there is a request for IDinnerRepositiry and  inject instance of FormsAuthenticationService when there is a request for IFormsAuthentication and inject instance of AccountMembershipService when there is a request for IMembershipService. The AccountMembershipService class has a dependency with ASP.NET Membership provider. So we configure that inject the instance of Membership Provider. When configuring the binding information, you can specify the object scope in you application.There are four built-in scopes available in Ninject:Transient  -  A new instance of the type will be created each time one is requested. (This is the default scope). Binding method is .InTransientScope()   Singleton - Only a single instance of the type will be created, and the same instance will be returned for each subsequent request. Binding method is .InSingletonScope()Thread -  One instance of the type will be created per thread. Binding method is .InThreadScope() Request -  One instance of the type will be created per web request, and will be destroyed when the request ends. Binding method is .InRequestScope() Step 4 – Configure the Ninject KernelOnce you create NinjectModule, you load them into a container called the kernel. To request an instance of a type from Ninject, you call the Get() extension method. We can configure the kernel, through the CreateKernel method in the Global.asax.cs. protected override IKernel CreateKernel() {     var modules = new INinjectModule[]     {         new ServiceModule()     };       return new StandardKernel(modules); } Here we are loading the Ninject Module (ServiceModule class created in the step 3)  onto the container called the kernel for performing dependency injection.Source CodeYou can download the source code from http://nerddinneraddons.codeplex.com. I just put the modified source code onto CodePlex repository. The repository will update with more add-ons for the NerdDinner application.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, February 22, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, February 22, 2010New ProjectsAVDB: System to keep track of orders and the inventory of televisions, DVDs, VCRs etcBooky: Booky is an online Bookmark Management Tool. Gear Up for Lord of the Rings Online (lotro): Windows utility for checking what your LOTRO character currently has equipped and figuring out gear you should get to improve your stats.GotSharp Extensions: GotSharp Extensions is a set of helpful classes and extension methods that can make your coding experience easier and cleaner. Halfwit: A minimalist WPF Twitter client.HOA Starter Kit: A community subdivision website starter kit. First draft.Lua For Irony: Project to define the Lua language using the Irony (http://irony.codeplex.com/) development kit. This work is based heavily on the work done for V...MimeCloud: Scalable .NET Digital Asset & Media Management: MimeCloud is a scalable digital asset library & media management toolset. Founded by Alex Norcliffe and Peter Miller Written by people who have b...Parallel Mandelbrot Set solver: Solving the Mandelbrot set using the Parallel class in .NET 4.0. Showing the resulting image in a WPF application. The solution file requires VS 2010.Pomogad - Pomodoro Windows Gadget: Você usa Pomodoro Technique? Não sabe o que é? Veja aqui http://www.pomodorotechnique.com Agora que você já sabe, que tal usar essa técnica? E p...PostCrap - flyweight .NET AOP post compiler: PostCrap is a flyweight attribute based aspect injection .NET post compiler It is written in C# and uses Mono.Cecil to modify assemblies and injec...Software + Service Reference Demo Kit: MS China Developer and Platform Evangelism team created an End-2-End demo for Software + Service. Yet Another SharePoint Tool: YEAST provides you with a simple to integrate approach to generating SharePoint solution packages as part of a Visual Studio project. Zen Coding Visual Studio Plugin: Zen Coding for Visual Studio is plugin for HTML and CSS hi-speed codingNew Releases.Net MSBuild Google Closure Compiler Task: .Net MSBuild Google Closure Compiler Task 1.1: - Corrected issue with regular expression source file and renamingdotNails: dotNails_0.5.9: NOTE - the latest source code has been moved to google code to take advantage of Mercurial source control - http://code.google.com/p/dotnails/sourc...EasyWFUnit: EasyWFUnit-2.2: Release 2.2 of EasyWFUnit, an extension library to support unit testing of Windows Workflow, includes a revised WinForm GUI Test Builder that utili...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite BETA2 (for .NET 4.0RC): Includes Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) and test application compiled with .NET 4.0 RC.FolderSize: FolderSize.Win32.1.0.3.0: FolderSize.Win32.1.0.3.0 A simple utility intended to be used to scan harddrives for the folders that take most place and display this to the user...Fusion Charts Free for SharePoint: 1.3: Fix release for issue #11833 : Feature Must Be Activated on Root of Web Application.GotSharp Extensions: 1.0: First release, containing only a few extension methods for the System.String and System.IO.Stream classes, and a Range utility class.Jeremy's Experimental Repository: FluentValidation with IoC Sample: Sample code for the blog post Using FluentValidation with an IoC containerMiniTwitter: 1.08: MiniTwitter 1.08 更新内容 修正 自動更新が CodePlex の変更で動いていなかった問題を修正 自動更新に失敗すると落ちるバグを修正 通知領域アイコン右クリックで表示されるメニューが消えないバグを修正 変更 ハッシュタグの抽出条件を変更 API のエンドポイ...MSTS Editors & Tools: Simis Editor v0.3: Simis Editor v0.3 Enabled Edit > Undo and Edit > Redo. Undoing/redoing back to last saved state is identified as saved (no prompt on exit, etc.)....Parallel Mandelbrot Set solver: Alpha 1: First releaseParallelTasks: ParallelTasks 2.0 beta1: ParallelTasks 2.0 is a total re-write of the original version. Featuring improved performance and stability and a more consistent API.Personal Expense Tracker: Personal Expense Tracker v0.1 beta: This is the first beta release. Please provide me with your feedback.PostCrap - flyweight .NET AOP post compiler: PostCrap 1.0 AOP source and binaries: PostCrap 1.0 source and binaries (the unit test project contains sample interceptor attributes for exception handling & logging)Protoforma | Tactica Adversa: Skilful 0.1.3.276: AlphaRawr: Rawr 2.3.10: - More improvements to the default filters - Further improvement on avoiding useless gem swaps from the Optimizer. - Normal/Heroic ICC items shou...Reusable Library: v1.0.2: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developer.Sem.Sync: 2010-02-21 - Synchronization Manager - Beta: This release is not tested very well, so you should use this version only to evaluate new features. - Changed way of handling source-ids in order ...Survey - web survey & form engine: Survey 1.1.0: Release Survey v. 1.1.0.0 Major changes: - layout & graphics completely overhauled - several technical changes & repairs (e.g. matrix question iss...Yet Another SharePoint Tool: Version 1: Version 1Zeta Resource Editor: Release 2010-02-21: New source code release.Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)Image Resizer Powertoy Clone for WindowsASP.NETDotNetNuke® Community EditionMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsDinnerNow.netRawrBlogEngine.NETNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleSharpyjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesSharePoint ContribInfoServicepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcel

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  • Parallelism in .NET – Part 15, Making Tasks Run: The TaskScheduler

    - by Reed
    In my introduction to the Task class, I specifically made mention that the Task class does not directly provide it’s own execution.  In addition, I made a strong point that the Task class itself is not directly related to threads or multithreading.  Rather, the Task class is used to implement our decomposition of tasks.  Once we’ve implemented our tasks, we need to execute them.  In the Task Parallel Library, the execution of Tasks is handled via an instance of the TaskScheduler class. The TaskScheduler class is an abstract class which provides a single function: it schedules the tasks and executes them within an appropriate context.  This class is the class which actually runs individual Task instances.  The .NET Framework provides two (internal) implementations of the TaskScheduler class. Since a Task, based on our decomposition, should be a self-contained piece of code, parallel execution makes sense when executing tasks.  The default implementation of the TaskScheduler class, and the one most often used, is based on the ThreadPool.  This can be retrieved via the TaskScheduler.Default property, and is, by default, what is used when we just start a Task instance with Task.Start(). Normally, when a Task is started by the default TaskScheduler, the task will be treated as a single work item, and run on a ThreadPool thread.  This pools tasks, and provides Task instances all of the advantages of the ThreadPool, including thread pooling for reduced resource usage, and an upper cap on the number of work items.  In addition, .NET 4 brings us a much improved thread pool, providing work stealing and reduced locking within the thread pool queues.  By using the default TaskScheduler, our Tasks are run asynchronously on the ThreadPool. There is one notable exception to my above statements when using the default TaskScheduler.  If a Task is created with the TaskCreationOptions set to TaskCreationOptions.LongRunning, the default TaskScheduler will generate a new thread for that Task, at least in the current implementation.  This is useful for Tasks which will persist for most of the lifetime of your application, since it prevents your Task from starving the ThreadPool of one of it’s work threads. The Task Parallel Library provides one other implementation of the TaskScheduler class.  In addition to providing a way to schedule tasks on the ThreadPool, the framework allows you to create a TaskScheduler which works within a specified SynchronizationContext.  This scheduler can be retrieved within a thread that provides a valid SynchronizationContext by calling the TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext() method. This implementation of TaskScheduler is intended for use with user interface development.  Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation both require any access to user interface controls to occur on the same thread that created the control.  For example, if you want to set the text within a Windows Forms TextBox, and you’re working on a background thread, that UI call must be marshaled back onto the UI thread.  The most common way this is handled depends on the framework being used.  In Windows Forms, Control.Invoke or Control.BeginInvoke is most often used.  In WPF, the equivelent calls are Dispatcher.Invoke or Dispatcher.BeginInvoke. As an example, say we’re working on a background thread, and we want to update a TextBlock in our user interface with a status label.  The code would typically look something like: // Within background thread work... string status = GetUpdatedStatus(); Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(DispatcherPriority.Normal, new Action( () => { statusLabel.Text = status; })); // Continue on in background method .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This works fine, but forces your method to take a dependency on WPF or Windows Forms.  There is an alternative option, however.  Both Windows Forms and WPF, when initialized, setup a SynchronizationContext in their thread, which is available on the UI thread via the SynchronizationContext.Current property.  This context is used by classes such as BackgroundWorker to marshal calls back onto the UI thread in a framework-agnostic manner. The Task Parallel Library provides the same functionality via the TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext() method.  When setting up our Tasks, as long as we’re working on the UI thread, we can construct a TaskScheduler via: TaskScheduler uiScheduler = TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext(); We then can use this scheduler on any thread to marshal data back onto the UI thread.  For example, our code above can then be rewritten as: string status = GetUpdatedStatus(); (new Task(() => { statusLabel.Text = status; })) .Start(uiScheduler); // Continue on in background method This is nice since it allows us to write code that isn’t tied to Windows Forms or WPF, but is still fully functional with those technologies.  I’ll discuss even more uses for the SynchronizationContext based TaskScheduler when I demonstrate task continuations, but even without continuations, this is a very useful construct. In addition to the two implementations provided by the Task Parallel Library, it is possible to implement your own TaskScheduler.  The ParallelExtensionsExtras project within the Samples for Parallel Programming provides nine sample TaskScheduler implementations.  These include schedulers which restrict the maximum number of concurrent tasks, run tasks on a single threaded apartment thread, use a new thread per task, and more.

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  • Silverlight 4 Training Kit

    - by ScottGu
    We recently released a new free Silverlight 4 Training Kit that walks you through building business applications with Silverlight 4.  You can browse the training kit online or alternatively download an entire offline version of the training kit.  The training material is structured on teaching how to use the new Silverlight 4 features to build an end to end business application. The training kit includes 8 modules, 25 videos, and several hands on labs. Below is a breakdown and links to all of the content. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Module 1: Introduction Click here to watch this module. In this video John Papa and Ian Griffiths discuss the key areas that the Building Business Applications with Silverlight 4 course focuses on. This module is the overview of the course and covers many key scenarios that are faced when building business applications, and how Silverlight can help address them. Module 2: WCF RIA Services Click here to explore this module. In this lab, you will create a web site for managing conferences that will be the basis for the other labs in this course. Don’t worry if you don’t complete a particular lab in the series – all lab manual instructions are accompanied by completed solutions, so you can either build your own solution from start to finish, or dive straight in at any point using the solutions provided as a starting point. In this lab you will learn how to set up WCF RIA Services, create bindings to the domain context, filter using the domain data source, and create domain service queries. Online Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 2.1 - WCF RIA Services Ian Griffiths sets up the Entity Framework and WCF RIA Services for the sample Event Manager application for the course. He covers how to set up the services, how the Domain Services work and the role that the DomainContext plays in the sample application. He also reviews the metadata classes and integrating the navigation framework. Module 2.2 – Using WCF RIA Services to Edit Entities Ian Griffiths discusses how he adds the ability to edit and create individual entities with the features built into WCF RIA Services into the sample Event Manager application. He covers data binding fundamentals, IQueryable, LINQ, the DomainDataSource, navigation to a single entity using the navigation framework, and how to use the Visual Studio designer to do much of the work . Module 2.3 – Showing Master/Details Records Using WCF RIA Services Ian Griffiths reviews how to display master/detail records for the sample Event Manager application using WCF RIA Services. He covers how to use the Include attribute to indicate which elements to serialize back to the client. Ian also demonstrates how to use the Data Sources window in the designer to add and bind controls to specific data elements. He wraps up by showing how to create custom services to the Domain Services. Module 3 – Authentication, Validation, MVVM, Commands, Implicit Styles and RichTextBox Click here to visit this module. This lab demonstrates how to build a login screen, integrate ASP.NET authentication, and perform validation on data elements. Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) is introduced and used in this lab as a pattern to help separate the UI and business logic. You will also learn how to use implicit styling and the new RichTextBox control. Online Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 3.1 – Authentication Ian Griffiths covers how to integrate a login screen and authentication into the sample Event Manager application. Ian shows how to use the ASP.NET authentication and integrate it into WCF RIA Services and the Silverlight presentation layer. Module 3.2 – MVVM Ian Griffiths covers how to Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) patterns into the sample Event Manager application. He discusses why MVVM exists, what separated presentation means, and why it is important. He shows how to connect the View to the ViewModel, why data binding is important in this symbiosis, and how everything fits together in the overall application. Module 3.3 –Validation Ian Griffiths discusses how validation of user input can be integrated into the sample Event Manager application. He demonstrates how to use the DataAnnotations, the INotifyDataErrorInfo interface, binding markup extensions, and WCF RIA Services in concert to achieve great validation in the sample application. He discusses how this technique allows for property level validation, entity level validation, and asynchronous server side validation. Module 3.4 – Implicit Styles Ian Griffiths discusses how why implicit styles are important and how they can be integrated into the sample Event Manager application. He shows how implicit styles defined in a resource dictionary can be applied to all elements of a particular kind throughout the application. Module 3.5 – RichTextBox Ian Griffiths discusses how the new RichTextBox control and it can be integrated into the sample Event Manager application. He demonstrates how the RichTextBox can provide editing for the event information and how it can display the rich text for selection and copying. Module 4 – User Profiles, Drop Targets, Webcam and Clipboard Click here to visit this module. This lab builds new features into the sample application to take the user's photo. It teaches you how to use the webcam to capture an image, use Silverlight as a drop target, and take advantage of programmatic access to the clipboard. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 4.1 – Webcam Ian Griffiths demonstrates how the webcam adds value to the sample Event Manager application by capturing an image of the attendee. He discusses the VideoCaptureDevice, the CaptureDviceConfiguration, and the CaptureSource classes and how they allow audio and video to be captured so you can grab an image from the capture device and save it. Module 4.2 - Drag and Drop in Silverlight Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to capture and handle the Drop in the sample Event Manager application so the user can drag a photo from a file and drop it into the application. Ian reviews the AllowDrop property, the Drop event, how to access the file that can be dropped, and the other drag related events. He also reviews how to make this work across browsers and the challenges for this. Module 5 – Schedule Planner and Right Mouse Click Click here to visit this module. This lab builds on the application to allow grouping in the DataGrid and implement right mouse click features to add context menu support. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 5.1 – Grouping and Binding Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to use the grouping features for data binding in the DataGrid and how it applies to the sample Event Manager application. He reviews the role of the CollectionViewSource in grouping, customizing the templates for headers, and how to work with grouping with ItemsControls. Module 5.2 – Layout Visual States Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to use the Fluid UI animation support for visual states in the ListBox control DataGrid and how it applies to the sample Event Manager application. He reviews the 3 visual states of BeforeLoaded, AfterLoaded, and BeforeUnloaded. Module 5.3 – Right Mouse Click Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to add support for handling the right mouse button click event to display a context menu for the Event Manager application. He demonstrates how to handle the event, show a custom context menu control, and integrate it into the scheduling portion of the application. Module 6 – Printing the Schedule Click here to visit this module. This lab teaches how to use the new printing features in Silverlight 4. The lab walks through the PrintDocument class and the ViewBox control, while showing how to print multiple pages of content using them. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 6.1 – Printing and the Viewbox Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to add the ability to print the schedule to the sample Event Manager application. He walks through the importance of the PrintDocument class and its members. He also shows how to handle printing the visual tree and how the ViewBox control can help. Module 6.2 – Multi Page Printing Ian Griffiths expands on his printing discussion by showing how to handle printing multiple pages of content for the sample Event Manager application. He shows how to paginate the content and points out various tips to keep in mind when determining the printable area. Module 7 – Running the Event Dashboard Out of Browser Click here to visit this module. This lab builds a dashboard for the sample application while explaining the fundamentals of the out of browser features, how to handle authentication, displaying notifications (toasts), and how to use native integration to use COM Interop with Silverlight. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 7.1 – Out of Browser Ian Griffiths discusses the role of an Out of Browser application for administrators to manage the events and users in the sample Event Manager application. He discusses several reasons why out of browser applications may better suit your needs including custom chrome, toasts, window placement, cross domain access, and file access. He demonstrates the basic technique to take your application and make it work out of browser using the tools. Module 7.2 – NotificationWindow (Toasts) for Elevated Trust Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses the how toasts can be used in the sample Event Manager application to show information that may require the user's attention. Ian covers how to create a toast using the NotificationWindow, security implications, and how to make the toast appear as needed. Module 7.3 – Out of Browser Window Placement Ian Griffiths discusses the how to manage the window positioning when building an out of browser application, handling the windows state, and controlling and handling activation of the window. Module 7.4 – Out of Browser Elevated Trust Application Overview Ian Griffiths discusses the implications of creating trusted out of browser application for the Event Manager sample application. He reviews why you might want to use elevated trust, what features is opens to you, and how to take advantage of them. Topics Ian covers include the dynamic keyword in C# 4, the AutomationFactory class, the API to check if you are in a trusted application, and communicating with Excel. Module 8 – Advanced Out of Browser and MEF Click here to visit this module. This hands-on lab walks through the creation of a trusted out of browser application and the new functionality that comes with that. You will learn to use COM Automation, handle the window closing event, set custom window chrome, digitally sign your Silverlight out of browser trusted application, create a silent install option, and take advantage of MEF. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 8.1 – Custom Window Chrome for Elevated Trust Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses how to replace the standard operating system window chrome with customized chrome for an elevated trusted out of browser application. He covers how it is important to handle close, resize, minimize, and maximize events. Ian mentions that the tooling was not ready when he shot this video, but the good news is that the tooling now supports setting the custom chrome directly from the property page for the Silverlight application. Module 8.2 – Window Closing Event for Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses the WindowClosing event and how to handle and optionally cancel the event. Module 8.3 – Silent Install of Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses how to use the SLLauncher executable to install an out of browser application. He discusses the optional command line switches that can be set including how the emulate switch can help you emulate the install process. Ian also shows how to setup a shortcut for the application and tell the application where it should look for future updates online. Module 8.4 – Digitally Signing Out of Browser Application Ian Griffiths discusses how and why to digitally sign an out of browser application using the signtool program. He covers what trusted certificates are, the implications of signing (or not signing), and the effect on the user experience. Module 8.5 – The Value of MEF with Silverlight Ian Griffiths discusses what MEF is, how your application can benefit from it, and the fundamental features it puts at your disposal. He covers the 3 step import, export and compose process as well as how to dynamically import XAP files using MEF. Summary As you can probably tell from the long list above – this series contains a ton of great content, and hopefully provides a nice end-to-end walkthrough that helps explain how to take advantage of Silverlight 4 (and all its new features).  Hope this helps, Scott

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  • Database users in the Oracle Utilities Application Framework

    - by Anthony Shorten
    I mentioned the product database users fleetingly in the last blog post and they deserve a better mention. This applies to all versions of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. The Oracle Utilities Application Framework uses up to three users initially as part of the base operations of the product. The type of database supported (the framework supports Oracle, IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server) dictates the number of users used and their permissions. For publishing brevity I will outline what is available for the Oracle database and, in summary, mention where it differs for the other database supported. For Oracle database customers we ship three distinct database users: Administration User (SPLADM or CISADM by default) - This is the database user that actually owns the schema. This user is not used by the product to do any DML (Data Manipulation Language) SQL other than that is necessary for maintenance of the database. This database user performs all the DCL (Data Control Language) and DDL (Data Definition Language) against the database. It is typically reserved for Database Administration use only. Product Read Write User (SPLUSER or CISUSER by default) - This is the database user used by the product itself to execute DML (Data Manipulation Language) statements against the schema owned by the Administration user. This user has the appropriate read and write permission to objects within the schema owned by the Administration user. For databases such as DB2 and SQL Server we may not create this user but use other DCL (Data Control Language) statements and facilities to simulate this user. Product Read User (SPLREAD or CISREAD by default) - This is the database that has read only permission to the schema owned by the Administration user. It is used for reporting or any part of the product or interface that requires read permissions to the database (for example, products that have ConfigLab and Archiving use this user for remote access). For databases such as DB2 and SQL Server we may not create this user but use other DCL (Data Control Language) statements and facilities to simulate this user. You may notice the words by default in the list above. The values supplied with the installer are the default and can be changed to what the site standard or implementation wants to use (as long as they conform to the standards supported by the underlying database). You can even create multiples of each within the same database and pointing to same schema. To manage the permissions for the users, there is a utility provided with the installation (oragensec (Oracle), db2gensec (DB2) or msqlgensec (SQL Server)) that generates the security definitions for the above users. That can be executed a number of times for each schema to give users appropriate permissions. For example, it is possible to define more than one read/write User to access the database. This is a common technique used by implementations to have a different user per access mode (to separate online and batch). In fact you can also allocate additional security (such as resource profiles in Oracle) to limit the impact of specific users at the database. To facilitate users and permissions, in Oracle for example, we create a CISREAD role (read only role) and a CISUSER role (read write role) that can be allocated to the appropriate database user. When the security permissions utility, oragensec in this case, is executed it uses the role to determine the permissions. To give you a case study, my underpowered laptop has multiple installations on it of multiple products but I have one database. I create a different schema for each product and each version (with my own naming convention to help me manage the databases). I create individual users on each schema and run oragensec to maintain the permissions for each appropriately. It works fine as long I have setup the userids appropriately. This means: Creating the users with the appropriate roles. I use the common CISUSER and CISREAD role across versions and across Oracle Utilities Application Framework products. Just remember to associate the CISUSER role with the database user you want to use for read/write operations and the CISREAD role with the user you wish to use for the read only operations. The role is treated as a tag to indicate the oragensec utility which appropriate permissions to assign to the user. The utilities for the other database types essentially do the same, obviously using the technology available within those databases. Run oragensec against the read write user and read only user against the appropriate administration user (I will abbreviate the user to ADM user). This ensures the right permissions are allocated to the right users for the right products. To help me there, I use the same prefix on the user name for the same product. For example, my Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4 environment has the administration user set to FW4ADM and the associated FW4USER and FW4READ as the users for the product to use. For my MWM environment I used MWMADM for the administration user and MWMUSER and MWMREAD for my associated users. You get the picture. When I run oragensec (once for each ADM user), I know what other users to associate with it. Remember to rerun oragensec against the users if I run upgrades, service packs or database based single fixes. This assures that the users are in synchronization with the ADM user. As a side note, for those who do not understand the difference between DML, DCL and DDL: DDL (Data Definition Language) - These are SQL statements that define the database schema and the structures within. SQL Statements such as CREATE and DROP are examples of DDL SQL statements. DCL (Data Control Language) - These are the SQL statements that define the database level permissions to DDL maintained objects within the database. SQL Statements such as GRANT and REVOKE are examples of DCL SQL statements. DML (Database Manipulation Language) - These are SQL statements that alter the data within the tables. SQL Statements such as SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE are examples of DML SQL statements. Hope this has clarified the database user support. Remember in Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4 we enhanced this by also supporting CLIENT_IDENTIFIER to allow the database to still use the administration user for the main processing but make the database session more traceable.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, February 27, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, February 27, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET MVC ScriptBehind: Dynamic, developer & designer friendly script inclusion, compression and optimization for ASP.NET MVCCSLib.Net: CSLib.Net (Common Solutions Library) is yet another library with commonly used utilities, helpers, extensions and etc.DNN Module - Google Analytic Dashboard: Here is a Google Analytic Dashboard DNN Module which contain following sub modules. * Visitors Overview * World Map Overlay * Traf...dotUML: dotUML is a toolkit that enables developers to create and visualize UML diagrams like sequence, use case or component diagrams. EventRegistration: Event Registration ProgramGameStore League Manager: GameStore League Manager makes it easier for gaming store managers to run local leagues for card games, board games and any game where there is a h...GibberIM: GibberIM (Gibberish IM) is yet another Jabber instant messanger implementation.HTTP Compression Library for Heavy Load Web Server: Deflater is a HTTP Compression Library, supporting Deflate (RFC 1950, RFC 1951) and GZip (RFC 1952). It is designed to encode and compress HTML con...HydroLiDAR: This is a research project intended to explore algorithms and techniques for extracting Hydrographic features (rivers, watersheds, ponds, pits, etc...Lan Party Manager: Lan Party ManagerMAPS SQL Analysis Project: This solution demonstrates how to build a Business Intelligence solution on top of the MAPS databaseMMDB Parallax ALM: An open source Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) system, being built by Mike Mooney of MMDB Solutions, as a learning/teaching exercise. MyColorSprite: This Silverlight app is a color selection tool especially great for creating gredient color brushes for the xaml code. It allows a user create/pic...PDF Form Bubble Up: Bubble Up takes PDF Forms stored in SharePoint document libraries and "bubbles up" the data in the PDF Form to the library. This means the data tha...PostBack Blog Engine: A modified Oxite open-source blog engine on top of the DB4O object database engine.Project Otto: A Silverlight Isometric Rendering Engine and Demo GameQFrac: Fraktalų generatorius parašytas naudojant Qt karkasą.RapidIoC: RapidIoC provides lightning fast IoC capabilities including Dependency Injection & AOP. The modular framework will allow for constructor, property,...Shatranj: A WPF / Silverlight based frontend to Huo Chess. This project was conceived as a way to learn key WPF / Silverlight concepts. At the release, it...WHS SkyDrive Backup Add In: This project allows for Windows Home Server to backup selected folders to your free 25GB Live SkyDrive. Simply dump the Home Server Add In, into y...Workflow Type Browser for WF4: This Workflow Type Browser displays type information for all arguments and variables in a WF4 workflow. It is designed for use in a rehosted desig...ZoomBarPlus: Windows Mobile Service designed for the HTC Touch Pro 2. Adds additional functionality to the zoom bar at the bottom of the screen. You can map key...New ReleasesBCryptTool: BCryptTool v0.2: The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 (SP1) is needed to run this program.Braintree Client Library: Braintree-1.1.1: Braintree-1.1.1CC.Utilities: CC.Utilities 1.0.10.226: Minor bug fixes. A few new functions in the Interop namespace. DoubleBufferedGraphics now exposes the underlying memory Image through the Mem...CC.Votd: CC.Votd 1.0.10.227: This release includes several bug fixes and enchancements. The most notable enhancement is the RssItemCache which will allow the screensaver to f...DNN Module - Google Analytic Dashboard: DNN Module - Google Analytic Dashboard: Here is a Google Analytic Dashboard DNN Module which contain following sub modules. * Visitors Overview * World Map Overlay * Traffic ...Extend SmallBasic: Teaching Extensions v.008: Fixed Message Box to appear in front as expected. Added ColorWheel.getRandomColor() Including Recipes and Concept slides as part of releaseFolderSize: FolderSize.Win32.1.0.5.0: FolderSize.Win32.1.0.5.0 A simple utility intended to be used to scan harddrives for the folders that take most place and display this to the user...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts 3.0.4 beta Released: Hi, Today we are releasing the much awaited Zooming feature. In this version of Zooming you will be able to zoom/scale the PlotArea of the chart. ...GameStore League Manager: League Manager 1.0: Rough and ready first version. You will need to have SQL Server Express 2005 or 2008 installed on your machine to use this software. Unzip to a l...Google Maps API 3 Visual Studio Intellisense: google-maps-3-vs-1-0-vsdoc: google-maps-3-vs-1-0 provides Visual Studio intellisense in-line api documentation and code completion for Google Maps API V3. Updated 02/25/10 A...HaoRan_WebCam: HaoRan.WebCam.Web beta2: 在年前发布的那一版基于silverlight4(beta)版的摄像头应用之后。经过最近一段时间的完善。目前已推出了beta2版,在修改了原有程序bug的基础上,做了如下变化: 1.将图片载入修改成为按原图宽高比进行缩放,所以以前沿X,Y轴变化就变成了一个缩放条同比例变化了。 ...IQToolkit Contrib: IQToolkitContrib.zip (v1.0.17.1): Update to DataServiceClientRepository - added ExecuteNonEntity to deal with calling Wcf Data Service methods for Dto classes (opposed to Entity cla...kdar: KDAR 0.0.15: KDAR - Kernel Debugger Anti Rootkit - new module cheks added - bugs fixedLogJoint - Log Viewer: logjoint 1.5: - Added support for more formats - Timeline improvement - Unicode logs and encodings supportMyColorSprite: MyColorSprite: MyColorSprite This Silverlight app is a color selection tool especially great for creating gredient color brushes for the xaml code. It allows a ...OAuthLib: OAuthLib (1.6.0.1): Difference between 1.6.0.0 is just version number.Picasa Downloader: PicasaDownloader Setup (41085): Changelog: Fixed workitem 10296 (Saving at resolutions above 1600px), Added experimental support for a modifier of the image download url (inse...Prolog.NET: Prolog.NET 1.0 Beta 1.1: Installer includes: primary Prolog.NET assembly Prolog.NET Workbench PrologTest console application all required dependencies Beta 1.1 in...QFrac: QFrac 1.0: Pirmoji stabili QFrac versija.SharepointApplicationFramework: SAF QuickPoll: Release Notes: This web part is written in VS2010 beta2 and uses Microsoft Chart Controls. Packaged into a single WSP. This wsp creates a quick po...Star System Simulator: Star System Simulator 2.2: An minor update to Version 2.1. Changes in this release: User interface enhancements/fixes with toolbar and icons. Features in this release: Mod...ToDoListReminder: Version 1.0.1.0: Bugs fixed: 10316, 10317 Handler for "Window Closing" event was added Error handling for XML parsing was addedVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30226.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWindows Remote Assistance For Skype: Beta 1.0.1: Major changes: 1) Now using Skype4COM to interact with Skype 2) InvitationXML is compressed 3) Showing warning on first run to Allow Access to SkypeWorkflow Type Browser for WF4: Release 1.0: There has been much surprise and disappointment expressed by the WF4 developer community since Microsoft made it clear that Intellisense woould not...Most Popular ProjectsData Dictionary CreatorOutlook 2007 Messaging API (MAPI) Code SamplesCommon Data Parameters ModuleTeam System - Work Item Spell Checker (All Languages)Tyrannt Online (Client/Server RPG)Ray Tracer StarterMeeting DemoNick BerardiScreenslayerRawrMost Active ProjectsDinnerNow.netRawrBlogEngine.NETMapWindow GISSLARToolkit - Silverlight Augmented Reality ToolkitInfoServiceSharpMap - Geospatial Application Framework for the CLRCommon Context Adapterspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module

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  • Oracle Data Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study

    - by charlie.berger
    There is a complete and detailed Telco Churn case study "How to" Blog Series just posted by Ari Mozes, ODM Dev. Manager.  In it, Ari provides detailed guidance in how to leverage various strengths of Oracle Data Mining including the ability to: mine Star Schemas and join tables and views together to obtain a complete 360 degree view of a customer combine transactional data e.g. call record detail (CDR) data, etc. define complex data transformation, model build and model deploy analytical methodologies inside the Database  His blog is posted in a multi-part series.  Below are some opening excerpts for the first 3 blog entries.  This is an excellent resource for any novice to skilled data miner who wants to gain competitive advantage by mining their data inside the Oracle Database.  Many thanks Ari! Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study (1 of 3) One of the strengths of Oracle Data Mining is the ability to mine star schemas with minimal effort.  Star schemas are commonly used in relational databases, and they often contain rich data with interesting patterns.  While dimension tables may contain interesting demographics, fact tables will often contain user behavior, such as phone usage or purchase patterns.  Both of these aspects - demographics and usage patterns - can provide insight into behavior.Churn is a critical problem in the telecommunications industry, and companies go to great lengths to reduce the churn of their customer base.  One case study1 describes a telecommunications scenario involving understanding, and identification of, churn, where the underlying data is present in a star schema.  That case study is a good example for demonstrating just how natural it is for Oracle Data Mining to analyze a star schema, so it will be used as the basis for this series of posts...... Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study (2 of 3) This post will follow the transformation steps as described in the case study, but will use Oracle SQL as the means for preparing data.  Please see the previous post for background material, including links to the case study and to scripts that can be used to replicate the stages in these posts.1) Handling missing values for call data recordsThe CDR_T table records the number of phone minutes used by a customer per month and per call type (tariff).  For example, the table may contain one record corresponding to the number of peak (call type) minutes in January for a specific customer, and another record associated with international calls in March for the same customer.  This table is likely to be fairly dense (most type-month combinations for a given customer will be present) due to the coarse level of aggregation, but there may be some missing values.  Missing entries may occur for a number of reasons: the customer made no calls of a particular type in a particular month, the customer switched providers during the timeframe, or perhaps there is a data entry problem.  In the first situation, the correct interpretation of a missing entry would be to assume that the number of minutes for the type-month combination is zero.  In the other situations, it is not appropriate to assume zero, but rather derive some representative value to replace the missing entries.  The referenced case study takes the latter approach.  The data is segmented by customer and call type, and within a given customer-call type combination, an average number of minutes is computed and used as a replacement value.In SQL, we need to generate additional rows for the missing entries and populate those rows with appropriate values.  To generate the missing rows, Oracle's partition outer join feature is a perfect fit.  select cust_id, cdre.tariff, cdre.month, minsfrom cdr_t cdr partition by (cust_id) right outer join     (select distinct tariff, month from cdr_t) cdre     on (cdr.month = cdre.month and cdr.tariff = cdre.tariff);   ....... Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study (3 of 3) Now that the "difficult" work is complete - preparing the data - we can move to building a predictive model to help identify and understand churn.The case study suggests that separate models be built for different customer segments (high, medium, low, and very low value customer groups).  To reduce the data to a single segment, a filter can be applied: create or replace view churn_data_high asselect * from churn_prep where value_band = 'HIGH'; It is simple to take a quick look at the predictive aspects of the data on a univariate basis.  While this does not capture the more complex multi-variate effects as would occur with the full-blown data mining algorithms, it can give a quick feel as to the predictive aspects of the data as well as validate the data preparation steps.  Oracle Data Mining includes a predictive analytics package which enables quick analysis. begin  dbms_predictive_analytics.explain(   'churn_data_high','churn_m6','expl_churn_tab'); end; /select * from expl_churn_tab where rank <= 5 order by rank; ATTRIBUTE_NAME       ATTRIBUTE_SUBNAME EXPLANATORY_VALUE RANK-------------------- ----------------- ----------------- ----------LOS_BAND                                      .069167052          1MINS_PER_TARIFF_MON  PEAK-5                   .034881648          2REV_PER_MON          REV-5                    .034527798          3DROPPED_CALLS                                 .028110322          4MINS_PER_TARIFF_MON  PEAK-4                   .024698149          5From the above results, it is clear that some predictors do contain information to help identify churn (explanatory value > 0).  The strongest uni-variate predictor of churn appears to be the customer's (binned) length of service.  The second strongest churn indicator appears to be the number of peak minutes used in the most recent month.  The subname column contains the interior piece of the DM_NESTED_NUMERICALS column described in the previous post.  By using the object relational approach, many related predictors are included within a single top-level column. .....   NOTE:  These are just EXCERPTS.  Click here to start reading the Oracle Data Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study from the beginning.    

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  • SSIS Lookup component tuning tips

    - by jamiet
    Yesterday evening I attended a London meeting of the UK SQL Server User Group at Microsoft’s offices in London Victoria. As usual it was both a fun and informative evening and in particular there seemed to be a few questions arising about tuning the SSIS Lookup component; I rattled off some comments and figured it would be prudent to drop some of them into a dedicated blog post, hence the one you are reading right now. Scene setting A popular pattern in SSIS is to use a Lookup component to determine whether a record in the pipeline already exists in the intended destination table or not and I cover this pattern in my 2006 blog post Checking if a row exists and if it does, has it changed? (note to self: must rewrite that blog post for SSIS2008). Fundamentally the SSIS lookup component (when using FullCache option) sucks some data out of a database and holds it in memory so that it can be compared to data in the pipeline. One of the big benefits of using SSIS dataflows is that they process data one buffer at a time; that means that not all of the data from your source exists in the dataflow at the same time and is why a SSIS dataflow can process data volumes that far exceed the available memory. However, that only applies to data in the pipeline; for reasons that are hopefully obvious ALL of the data in the lookup set must exist in the memory cache for the duration of the dataflow’s execution which means that any memory used by the lookup cache will not be available to be used as a pipeline buffer. Moreover, there’s an obvious correlation between the amount of data in the lookup cache and the time it takes to charge that cache; the more data you have then the longer it will take to charge and the longer you have to wait until the dataflow actually starts to do anything. For these reasons your goal is simple: ensure that the lookup cache contains as little data as possible. General tips Here is a simple tick list you can follow in order to tune your lookups: Use a SQL statement to charge your cache, don’t just pick a table from the dropdown list made available to you. (Read why in SELECT *... or select from a dropdown in an OLE DB Source component?) Only pick the columns that you need, ignore everything else Make the database columns that your cache is populated from as narrow as possible. If a column is defined as VARCHAR(20) then SSIS will allocate 20 bytes for every value in that column – that is a big waste if the actual values are significantly less than 20 characters in length. Do you need DT_WSTR typed columns or will DT_STR suffice? DT_WSTR uses twice the amount of space to hold values that can be stored using a DT_STR so if you can use DT_STR, consider doing so. Same principle goes for the numerical datatypes DT_I2/DT_I4/DT_I8. Only populate the cache with data that you KNOW you will need. In other words, think about your WHERE clause! Thinking outside the box It is tempting to build a large monolithic dataflow that does many things, one of which is a Lookup. Often though you can make better use of your available resources by, well, mixing things up a little and here are a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing: There is no rule that says everything has to happen in a single dataflow. If you have some particularly resource intensive lookups then consider putting that lookup into a dataflow all of its own and using raw files to pass the pipeline data in and out of that dataflow. Know your data. If you think, for example, that the majority of your incoming rows will match with only a small subset of your lookup data then consider chaining multiple lookup components together; the first would use a FullCache containing that data subset and the remaining data that doesn’t find a match could be passed to a second lookup that perhaps uses a NoCache lookup thus negating the need to pull all of that least-used lookup data into memory. Do you need to process all of your incoming data all at once? If you can process different partitions of your data separately then you can partition your lookup cache as well. For example, if you are using a lookup to convert a location into a [LocationId] then why not process your data one region at a time? This will mean your lookup cache only has to contain data for the location that you are currently processing and with the ability of the Lookup in SSIS2008 and beyond to charge the cache using a dynamically built SQL statement you’ll be able to achieve it using the same dataflow and simply loop over it using a ForEach loop. Taking the previous data partitioning idea further … a dataflow can contain more than one data path so why not split your data using a conditional split component and, again, charge your lookup caches with only the data that they need for that partition. Lookups have two uses: to (1) find a matching row from the lookup set and (2) put attributes from that matching row into the pipeline. Ask yourself, do you need to do these two things at the same time? After all once you have the key column(s) from your lookup set then you can use that key to get the rest of attributes further downstream, perhaps even in another dataflow. Are you using the same lookup data set multiple times? If so, consider the file caching option in SSIS 2008 and beyond. Above all, experiment and be creative with different combinations. You may be surprised at what works. Final  thoughts If you want to know more about how the Lookup component differs in SSIS2008 from SSIS2005 then I have a dedicated blog post about that at Lookup component gets a makeover. I am on a mini-crusade at the moment to get a BULK MERGE feature into the database engine, the thinking being that if the database engine can quickly merge massive amounts of data in a similar manner to how it can insert massive amounts using BULK INSERT then that’s a lot of work that wouldn’t have to be done in the SSIS pipeline. If you think that is a good idea then go and vote for BULK MERGE on Connect. If you have any other tips to share then please stick them in the comments. Hope this helps! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Remote Desktop to Your Azure Virtual Machine

    - by Shaun
    The Windows Azure Team had just published their new development portal this week and the SDK 1.3. Within this new release there are a lot of cool feature available. The one I’m looking forward to is Remote Desktop Access to your running Windows Azure Virtual Machine.   Configuration Remote Desktop Access It would be very simple to make the azure service enable the remote desktop access. First of all let’s create a new windows azure project from the Visual Studio. In this example I just created a normal MVC 2 web role without any modifications. Then we right-click the azure project node in the solution explorer window and select “Publish”. Then let’s select the “Deploy your Windows Azure project to Windows Azure” on the top radio button. And then select the credential, deployment service/slot, storage and label as susal. You must have the Management API Certificates uploaded to your Windows Azure account, and install the certification on you machine before in order to use this one-click deployment feature. If you are familiar with this dialog you will notice that there’s a linkage named “Configure Remote Desktop connections”. Here is where you need to make this service enable the remote desktop feature. After clicked this link we will set the configuration of the remote desktop access authorization information. There are 4 steps we need to do to configure our access. Certificates: We need either create or select a certificate file in order to encypt the access cerdenticals. In this example I will use the certificate file for my Management API. Username: The remote desktop user name to access the virtual machine. Password: The password for the access. Expiration: The access cerdentals would be expired after 1 month by default but we can amend here. After that we clicked the OK button to back to the publish dialog.   The next step is to back to the new windows azure portal and navigate to the hosted services list. I created a new hosted service and upload the certificate file onto this service. The user name and password access to the azure machine must be encrypted from the local machine, and then send to the windows azure platform, then decrypted on the azure side by the same file. This is why we need to upload the certificate file onto azure. We navigated to the “Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN"” from the left panel and created a new hosted service named “SDK13” and selected the “Certificates” node. Then we clicked the “Add Certificates” button. Then we select the local certificate file and the password to install it into this azure service.   The final step would be back to our Visual Studio and in the pulish dialog just click the OK button. The Visual Studio will upload our package and the configuration into our service with the remote desktop settings.   Remote Desktop Access to Azure Virtual Machine All things had been done, let’s have a look back on the Windows Azure Development Portal. If I selected the web role that I had just published we can see on the toolbar there’s a section named “Remote Access”. In this section the Enable checkbox had been checked which means this role has the Remote Desktop Access feature enabled. If we want to modify the access cerdentals we can simply click the Configure button. Then we can update the user name, password, certificates and the expiration date.   Let’s select the instance node under the web role. In this case I just created one instance for demo. We can see that when we selected the instance node, the Connect button turned enabled. After clicked this button there will be a RDP file downloaded. This is a Remote Desctop configuration file that we can use to access to our azure virtual machine. Let’s download it to our local machine and execute. We input the user name and password we specified when we published our application to azure and then click OK. There might be some certificates warning dislog appeared. This is because the certificates we use to encryption is not signed by a trusted provider. Just select OK in these cases as we know the certificate is safty to us. Finally, the virtual machine of Windows Azure appeared.   A Quick Look into the Azure Virtual Machine Let’s just have a very quick look into our virtual machine. There are 3 disks available for us: C, D and E. Disk C: Store the local resource, diagnosis information, etc. Disk D: System disk which contains the OS, IIS, .NET Frameworks, etc. Disk E: Sotre our application code. The IIS which hosting our webiste on Azure. The IP configuration of the azure virtual machine.   Summary In this post I covered one of the new feature of the Azure SDK 1.3 – Remote Desktop Access. We can set the access per service and all of the instances of this service could be accessed through the remote desktop tool. With this feature we can deep into the virtual machines of our instances to see the inner information such as the system event, IIS log, system information, etc. But we should pay attention to modify the system settings. 2 reasons from what I know for now: 1. If we have more than one instances against our service we should ensure that all system settings we modifed are applied to all instances/virtual machines. Otherwise, as the machines are under the azure load balance proxy our application process may doesn’t work due to the defferent settings between the instances. 2. When the virtual machine encounted some problem and need to be translated to another physical machine all settings we made would be disappeared.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Part 3

    - by SQLOS Team
    In parts 1 and 2 of this series we looked at the basics of Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and SQL Server memory management. In this part Serdar looks at configuration guidelines for SQL Server memory management. Part 3: Configuration Guidelines for Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and SQL Server Now that we understand SQL Server Memory Management and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory basics, let’s take a look at general configuration guidelines in order to utilize benefits of Hyper-V Dynamic Memory in your SQL Server VMs. Requirements Host Operating System Requirements Hyper-V Dynamic Memory feature is introduced with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. Therefore in order to use Dynamic Memory for your virtual machines, you need to have Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1 in your Hyper-V host. Guest Operating System Requirements In addition to this Dynamic Memory is only supported in Standard, Web, Enterprise and Datacenter editions of windows running inside VMs. Make sure that your VM is running one of these editions. For additional requirements on each operating system see “Dynamic Memory Configuration Guidelines” here. SQL Server Requirements All versions of SQL Server support Hyper-V Dynamic Memory. However, only certain editions of SQL Server are aware of dynamically changing system memory. To have a truly dynamic environment for your SQL Server VMs make sure that you are running one of the SQL Server editions listed below: ·         SQL Server 2005 Enterprise ·         SQL Server 2008 Enterprise / Datacenter Editions ·         SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise / Datacenter Editions Configuration guidelines for other versions of SQL Server are covered below in the FAQ section. Guidelines for configuring Dynamic Memory Parameters Here is how to configure Dynamic Memory for your SQL VMs in a nutshell: Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Parameter Recommendation Startup RAM 1 GB + SQL Min Server Memory Maximum RAM > SQL Max Server Memory Memory Buffer % 5 Memory Weight Based on performance needs   Startup RAM In order to ensure that your SQL Server VMs can start correctly, ensure that Startup RAM is higher than configured SQL Min Server Memory for your VMs. Otherwise SQL Server service will need to do paging in order to start since it will not be able to see enough memory during startup. Also note that Startup Memory will always be reserved for your VMs. This will guarantee a certain level of performance for your SQL Servers, however setting this too high will limit the consolidation benefits you’ll get out of your virtualization environment. Maximum RAM This one is obvious. If you’ve configured SQL Max Server Memory for your SQL Server, make sure that Dynamic Memory Maximum RAM configuration is higher than this value. Otherwise your SQL Server will not grow to memory values higher than the value configured for Dynamic Memory. Memory Buffer % Memory buffer configuration is used to provision file cache to virtual machines in order to improve performance. Due to the fact that SQL Server is managing its own buffer pool, Memory Buffer setting should be configured to the lowest value possible, 5%. Configuring a higher memory buffer will prevent low resource notifications from Windows Memory Manager and it will prevent reclaiming memory from SQL Server VMs. Memory Weight Memory weight configuration defines the importance of memory to a VM. Configure higher values for the VMs that have higher performance requirements. VMs with higher memory weight will have more memory under high memory pressure conditions on your host. Questions and Answers Q1 – Which SQL Server memory model is best for Dynamic Memory? The best SQL Server model for Dynamic Memory is “Locked Page Memory Model”. This memory model ensures that SQL Server memory is never paged out and it’s also adaptive to dynamically changing memory in the system. This will be extremely useful when Dynamic Memory is attempting to remove memory from SQL Server VMs ensuring no SQL Server memory is paged out. You can find instructions on configuring “Locked Page Memory Model” for your SQL Servers here. Q2 – What about other SQL Server Editions, how should I configure Dynamic Memory for them? Other editions of SQL Server do not adapt to dynamically changing environments. They will determine how much memory they should allocate during startup and don’t change this value afterwards. Therefore make sure that you configure a higher startup memory for your VM because that will be all the memory that SQL Server utilize Tune Maximum Memory and Memory Buffer based on the other workloads running on the system. If there are no other workloads consider using Static Memory for these editions. Q3 – What if I have multiple SQL Server instances in a VM? Having multiple SQL Server instances in a VM is not a general recommendation for predictable performance, manageability and isolation. In order to achieve a predictable behavior make sure that you configure SQL Min Server Memory and SQL Max Server Memory for each instance in the VM. And make sure that: ·         Dynamic Memory Startup Memory is greater than the sum of SQL Min Server Memory values for the instances in the VM ·         Dynamic Memory Maximum Memory is greater than the sum of SQL Max Server Memory values for the instances in the VM Q4 – I’m using Large Page Memory Model for my SQL Server. Can I still use Dynamic Memory? The short answer is no. SQL Server does not dynamically change its memory size when configured with Large Page Memory Model. In virtualized environments Hyper-V provides large page support by default. Most of the time, Large Page Memory Model doesn’t bring any benefits to a SQL Server if it’s running in virtualized environments. Q5 – How do I monitor SQL performance when I’m trying Dynamic Memory on my VMs? Use the performance counters below to monitor memory performance for SQL Server: Process - Working Set: This counter is available in the VM via process performance counters. It represents the actual amount of physical memory being used by SQL Server process in the VM. SQL Server – Buffer Cache Hit Ratio: This counter is available in the VM via SQL Server counters. This represents the paging being done by SQL Server. A rate of 90% or higher is desirable. Conclusion These blog posts are a quick start to a story that will be developing more in the near future. We’re still continuing our testing and investigations to provide more detailed configuration guidelines with example performance numbers with a white paper in the upcoming months. Now it’s time to give SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory a try. Use this guidelines to kick-start your environment. See what you think about it and let us know of your experiences. - Serdar Sutay Originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlosteam/

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