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• Data Profiling without SSIS

  Strangely enough for a predominantly SSIS blog, this post is all about how to perform data profiling without using SSIS. Whilst the Data Profiling Task is a worthy addition, there are a couple of limitations I’ve encountered of late. The first is that it requires SQL Server 2008, and not everyone is there yet. The second is that it can only target SQL Server 2005 and above. What about older systems, which are the ones that we probably need to investigate the most, or other vendor databases such as Oracle? With these limitations in mind I did some searching to find a quick and easy alternative to help me perform some data profiling for a project I was working on recently. I only had SQL Server 2005 available, and anyway most of my target source systems were Oracle, and of course I had short timescales. I looked at several options. Some never got beyond the download stage, they failed to install or just did not run, and others provided less than I could have produced myself by spending 2 minutes writing some basic SQL queries. In the end I settled on an open source product called DataCleaner. To quote from their website: DataCleaner is an Open Source application for profiling, validating and comparing data. These activities help you administer and monitor your data quality in order to ensure that your data is useful and applicable to your business situation. DataCleaner is the free alternative to software for master data management (MDM) methodologies, data warehousing (DW) projects, statistical research, preparation for extract-transform-load (ETL) activities and more. DataCleaner is developed in Java and licensed under LGPL. As quoted above it claims to support profiling, validating and comparing data, but I didn’t really get past the profiling functions, so won’t comment on the other two. The profiling whilst not prefect certainly saved some time compared to the limited alternatives. The ability to profile heterogeneous data sources is a big advantage over the SSIS option, and I found it overall quite easy to use and performance was good. I could see it struggling at times, but actually for what it does I was impressed. It had some data type niggles with Oracle, and some metrics seem a little strange, although thankfully they were easy to augment with some SQL queries to ensure a consistent picture. The report export options didn’t do it for me, but copy and paste with a bit of Excel magic was sufficient. One initial point for me personally is that I have had limited exposure to things of the Java persuasion and whilst I normally get by fine, sometimes the simplest things can throw me. For example installing a JDBC driver, why do I have to copy files to make it all work, has nobody ever heard of an MSI? In case there are other people out there like me who have become totally indoctrinated with the Microsoft software paradigm, I’ve written a quick start guide that details every step required. Steps 1- 5 are the key ones, the rest is really an excuse for some screenshots to show you the tool. Quick Start Guide Step 1  - Download Data Cleaner. The Microsoft Windows zipped exe option, and I chose the latest stable build, currently DataCleaner 1.5.3 (final). Extract the files to a suitable location. Step 2 - Download Java. If you try and run datacleaner.exe without Java it will warn you, and then open your default browser and take you to the Java download site. Follow the installation instructions from there, normally just click Download Java a couple of times and you’re done. Step 3 - Download Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver. You may have SQL Server installed, but you won’t have a JDBC driver. Version 3.0 is the latest as of April 2010. There is no real installer, we are in the Java world here, but run the exe you downloaded to extract the files. The default Unzip to folder is not much help, so try a fully qualified path such as C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver 3.0\ to ensure you can find the files afterwards. Step 4 - If you wish to use Windows Authentication to connect to your SQL Server then first we need to copy a file so that Data Cleaner can find it. Browse to the JDBC extract location from Step 3 and drill down to the file sqljdbc_auth.dll. You will have to choose the correct directory for your processor architecture. e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver 3.0\sqljdbc_3.0\enu\auth\x86\sqljdbc_auth.dll. Now copy this file to the Data Cleaner extract folder you chose in Step 1. An alternative method is to edit datacleaner.cmd in the data cleaner extract folder as detailed in this data cleaner wiki topic, but I find copying the file simpler. Step 5 – Now lets run Data Cleaner, just run datacleaner.exe from the extract folder you chose in Step 1. Step 6 – Complete or skip the registration screen, and ignore the task window for now. In the main window click settings. Step 7 – In the Settings dialog, select the Database drivers tab, then click Register database driver and select the Local JAR file option. Step 8 – Browse to the JDBC driver extract location from Step 3 and drill down to select sqljdbc4.jar. e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver 3.0\sqljdbc_3.0\enu\sqljdbc4.jar Step 9 – Select the Database driver class as com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver, and then click the Test and Save database driver button. Step 10 - You should be back at the Settings dialog with a the list of drivers that includes SQL Server. Just click Save Settings to persist all your hard work. Step 11 – Now we can start to profile some data. In the main Data Cleaner window click New Task, and then Profile from the task window. Step 12 – In the Profile window click Open Database Step 13 – Now choose the SQL Server connection string option. Selecting a connection string gives us a template like jdbc:sqlserver://<hostname>:1433;databaseName=<database>, but obviously it requires some details to be entered for example  jdbc:sqlserver://localhost:1433;databaseName=SQLBits. This will connect to the database called SQLBits on my local machine. The port may also have to be changed if using such as when you have a multiple instances of SQL Server running. If using SQL Server Authentication enter a username and password as required and then click Connect to database. You can use Window Authentication, just add integratedSecurity=true to the end of your connection string. e.g jdbc:sqlserver://localhost:1433;databaseName=SQLBits;integratedSecurity=true.  If you didn’t complete Step 4 above you will need to do so now and restart Data Cleaner before it will work. Manually setting the connection string is fine, but creating a named connection makes more sense if you will be spending any length of time profiling a specific database. As highlighted in the left-hand screen-shot, at the bottom of the dialog it includes partial instructions on how to create named connections. In the folder shown C:\Users\<Username>\.datacleaner\1.5.3, open the datacleaner-config.xml file in your editor of choice add your own details. You’ll see a sample connection in the file already, just add yours following the same pattern. e.g. <!-- Darren's Named Connections --> <bean class="dk.eobjects.datacleaner.gui.model.NamedConnection"> <property name="name" value="SQLBits Local Connection" /> <property name="driverClass" value="com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver" /> <property name="connectionString" value="jdbc:sqlserver://localhost:1433;databaseName=SQLBits;integratedSecurity=true" /> <property name="tableTypes"> <list> <value>TABLE</value> <value>VIEW</value> </list> </property> </bean> Step 14 – Once back at the Profile window, you should now see your schemas, tables and/or views listed down the left hand side. Browse this tree and double-click a table to select it for profiling. You can then click Add profile, and choose some profiling options, before finally clicking Run profiling. You can see below a sample output for three of the most common profiles, click the image for full size.   I hope this has given you a taster for DataCleaner, and should help you get up and running pretty quickly.

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• Add Free Google Apps to Your Website or Blog

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to have an email address from your own domain, but prefer Gmail’s interface and integration with Google Docs?  Here’s how you can add the free Google Apps Standard to your site and get the best of both worlds. Note: To signup for Google Apps and get it setup on your domain, you will need to be able to add info to your WordPress blog or change Domain settings manually. Getting Started Head to the Google Apps signup page (link below), and click the Get Started button on the right.  Note that we are signing up for the free Google Apps which allows a max of 50 users; if you need more than 50 email addresses for your domain, you can choose Premiere Edition instead for $50/year. Select that you are the Administrator of the domain, and enter the domain or subdomain you want to use with Google Apps.  Here we’re adding Google Apps to the techinch.com site, but we could instead add Apps to mail.techinch.com if needed…click Get Started. Enter your name, phone number, an existing email address, and other Administrator information.  The Apps signup page also includes some survey questions about your organization, but you only have to fill in the required fields. On the next page, enter a username and password for the administrator account.  Note that the user name will also be the administrative email address as [email protected]. Now you’re ready to authenticate your Google Apps account with your domain.  The steps are slightly different depending on whether your site is on WordPress.com or on your own hosting service or server, so we’ll show how to do it both ways.   Authenticate and Integrate Google Apps with WordPress.com To add Google Apps to a domain you have linked to your WordPress.com blog, select Change yourdomain.com CNAME record and click Continue. Copy the code under #2, which should be something like googleabcdefg123456.  Do not click the button at the bottom; wait until we’ve completed the next step.   Now, in a separate browser window or tab, open your WordPress Dashboard.  Click the arrow beside Upgrades, and select Domains from the menu. Click the Edit DNS link beside the domain name you’re adding to Google Apps. Scroll down to the Google Apps section, and paste your code from Google Apps into the verification code field.  Click Generate DNS records when you’re done. This will add the needed DNS settings to your records in the box above the Google Apps section.  Click Save DNS records. Now, go back to the Google Apps signup page, and click I’ve completed the steps above. Authenticate Google Apps on Your Own Server If your website is hosted on your own server or hosting account, you’ll need to take a few more steps to add Google Apps to your domain.  You can add a CNAME record to your domain host using the same information that you would use with a WordPress account, or you can upload an HTML file to your site’s main directory.  In this test we’re going to upload an HTML file to our site for verification. Copy the code under #1, which should be something like googleabcdefg123456.  Do not click the button at the bottom; wait until we’ve completed the next step first. Create a new HTML file and paste the code in it.  You can do this easily in Notepad: create a new document, paste the code, and then save as googlehostedservice.html.  Make sure to select the type as All Files or otherwise the file will have a .txt extension. Upload this file to your web server via FTP or a web dashboard for your site.  Make sure it is in the top level of your site’s directory structure, and try visiting it at yoursite.com/googlehostedservice.html. Now, go back to the Google Apps signup page, and click I’ve completed the steps above. Setup Your Email on Google Apps When this is done, your Google Apps account should be activated and ready to finish setting up.  Google Apps will offer to launch a guide to step you through the rest of the process; you can click Launch guide if you want, or click Skip this guide to continue on your own and go directly to the Apps dashboard.   If you choose to open the guide, you’ll be able to easily learn the ropes of Google Apps administration.  Once you’ve completed the tutorial, you’ll be taken to the Google Apps dashboard. Most of the Google Apps will be available for immediate use, but Email may take a bit more setup.  Click Activate email to get your Gmail-powered email running on your domain.    Add Google MX Records to Your Server You will need to add Google MX records to your domain registrar in order to have your mail routed to Google.  If your domain is hosted on WordPress.com, you’ve already made these changes so simply click I have completed these steps.  Otherwise, you’ll need to manually add these records before clicking that button.   Adding MX Entries is fairly easy, but the steps may depend on your hosting company or registrar.  With some hosts, you may have to contact support to have them add the MX records for you.  Our site’s host uses the popular cPanel for website administration, so here’s how we added the MX Entries through cPanel. Add MX Entries through cPanel Login to your site’s cPanel, and click the MX Entry link under Mail. Delete any existing MX Records for your domain or subdomain first to avoid any complications or interactions with Google Apps.  If you think you may want to revert to your old email service in the future, save a copy of the records so you can switch back if you need. Now, enter the MX Records that Google listed.  Here’s our account after we added all of the entries to our account. Finally, return to your Google Apps Dashboard and click the I have completed these steps button at the bottom of the page. Activating Service You’re now officially finished activating and setting up your Google Apps account.  Google will first have to check the MX records for your domain; this only took around an hour in our test, but Google warns it can take up to 48 hours in some cases. You may then see that Google is updating its servers with your account information.  Once again, this took much less time than Google’s estimate. When everything’s finished, you can click the link to access the inbox of your new Administrator email account in Google Apps. Welcome to Gmail … at your own domain!  All of the Google Apps work just the same in this version as they do in the public @gmail.com version, so you should feel right at home. You can return to the Google Apps dashboard from the Administrative email account by clicking the Manage this domain at the top right. In the Dashboard, you can easily add new users and email accounts, as well as change settings in your Google Apps account and add your site’s branding to your Apps. Your Google Apps will work just like their standard @gmail.com counterparts.  Here’s an example of an inbox customized with the techinch logo and a Gmail theme. Links to Remember Here are the common links to your Google Apps online.  Substitute your domain or subdomain for yourdomain.com. Dashboard https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/yourdomain.com Email https://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com Calendar https://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/yourdomain.com Docs https://docs.google.com/a/yourdomain.com Sites https://sites.google.com/a/yourdomain.com Conclusion Google Apps offers you great webapps and webmail for your domain, and let’s you take advantage of Google’s services while still maintaining the professional look of your own domain.  Setting up your account can be slightly complicated, but once it’s finished, it will run seamlessly and you’ll never have to worry about email or collaboration with your team again. Signup for the free Google Apps Standard Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Mysticgeek Blog: Create Your Own Simple iGoogle GadgetAccess Your Favorite Google Services in Chrome the Easy WayRevo Uninstaller Pro [REVIEW]Mysticgeek Blog: A Look at Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 on Windows XPFind Similar Websites in Google Chrome TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Video preview of new Windows Live Essentials 21 Cursor Packs for XP, Vista & 7 Map the Stars with Stellarium Use ILovePDF To Split and Merge PDF Files TimeToMeet is a Simple Online Meeting Planning Tool Easily Create More Bookmark Toolbars in Firefox

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• Option Trading: Getting the most out of the event session options

  - by extended_events

  You can control different aspects of how an event session behaves by setting the event session options as part of the CREATE EVENT SESSION DDL. The default settings for the event session options are designed to handle most of the common event collection situations so I generally recommend that you just use the defaults. Like everything in the real world though, there are going to be a handful of “special cases” that require something different. This post focuses on identifying the special cases and the correct use of the options to accommodate those cases. There is a reason it’s called Default The default session options specify a total event buffer size of 4 MB with a 30 second latency. Translating this into human terms; this means that our default behavior is that the system will start processing events from the event buffer when we reach about 1.3 MB of events or after 30 seconds, which ever comes first. Aside: What’s up with the 1.3 MB, I thought you said the buffer was 4 MB?The Extended Events engine takes the total buffer size specified by MAX_MEMORY (4MB by default) and divides it into 3 equally sized buffers. This is done so that a session can be publishing events to one buffer while other buffers are being processed. There are always at least three buffers; how to get more than three is covered later. Using this configuration, the Extended Events engine can “keep up” with most event sessions on standard workloads. Why is this? The fact is that most events are small, really small; on the order of a couple hundred bytes. Even when you start considering events that carry dynamically sized data (eg. binary, text, etc.) or adding actions that collect additional data, the total size of the event is still likely to be pretty small. This means that each buffer can likely hold thousands of events before it has to be processed. When the event buffers are finally processed there is an economy of scale achieved since most targets support bulk processing of the events so they are processed at the buffer level rather than the individual event level. When all this is working together it’s more likely that a full buffer will be processed and put back into the ready queue before the remaining buffers (remember, there are at least three) are full. I know what you’re going to say: “My server is exceptional! My workload is so massive it defies categorization!” OK, maybe you weren’t going to say that exactly, but you were probably thinking it. The point is that there are situations that won’t be covered by the Default, but that’s a good place to start and this post assumes you’ve started there so that you have something to look at in order to determine if you do have a special case that needs different settings. So let’s get to the special cases… What event just fired?! How about now?! Now?! If you believe the commercial adage from Heinz Ketchup (Heinz Slow Good Ketchup ad on You Tube), some things are worth the wait. This is not a belief held by most DBAs, particularly DBAs who are looking for an answer to a troubleshooting question fast. If you’re one of these anxious DBAs, or maybe just a Program Manager doing a demo, then 30 seconds might be longer than you’re comfortable waiting. If you find yourself in this situation then consider changing the MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY option for your event session. This option will force the event buffers to be processed based on your time schedule. This option only makes sense for the asynchronous targets since those are the ones where we allow events to build up in the event buffer – if you’re using one of the synchronous targets this option isn’t relevant. Avoid forgotten events by increasing your memory Have you ever had one of those days where you keep forgetting things? That can happen in Extended Events too; we call it dropped events. In order to optimizes for server performance and help ensure that the Extended Events doesn’t block the server if to drop events that can’t be published to a buffer because the buffer is full. You can determine if events are being dropped from a session by querying the dm_xe_sessions DMV and looking at the dropped_event_count field. Aside: Should you care if you’re dropping events?Maybe not – think about why you’re collecting data in the first place and whether you’re really going to miss a few dropped events. For example, if you’re collecting query duration stats over thousands of executions of a query it won’t make a huge difference to miss a couple executions. Use your best judgment. If you find that your session is dropping events it means that the event buffer is not large enough to handle the volume of events that are being published. There are two ways to address this problem. First, you could collect fewer events – examine you session to see if you are over collecting. Do you need all the actions you’ve specified? Could you apply a predicate to be more specific about when you fire the event? Assuming the session is defined correctly, the next option is to change the MAX_MEMORY option to a larger number. Picking the right event buffer size might take some trial and error, but a good place to start is with the number of dropped events compared to the number you’ve collected. Aside: There are three different behaviors for dropping events that you specify using the EVENT_RETENTION_MODE option. The default is to allow single event loss and you should stick with this setting since it is the best choice for keeping the impact on server performance low.You’ll be tempted to use the setting to not lose any events (NO_EVENT_LOSS) – resist this urge since it can result in blocking on the server. If you’re worried that you’re losing events you should be increasing your event buffer memory as described in this section. Some events are too big to fail A less common reason for dropping an event is when an event is so large that it can’t fit into the event buffer. Even though most events are going to be small, you might find a condition that occasionally generates a very large event. You can determine if your session is dropping large events by looking at the dm_xe_sessions DMV once again, this time check the largest_event_dropped_size. If this value is larger than the size of your event buffer [remember, the size of your event buffer, by default, is max_memory / 3] then you need a large event buffer. To specify a large event buffer you set the MAX_EVENT_SIZE option to a value large enough to fit the largest event dropped based on data from the DMV. When you set this option the Extended Events engine will create two buffers of this size to accommodate these large events. As an added bonus (no extra charge) the large event buffer will also be used to store normal events in the cases where the normal event buffers are all full and waiting to be processed. (Note: This is just a side-effect, not the intended use. If you’re dropping many normal events then you should increase your normal event buffer size.) Partitioning: moving your events to a sub-division Earlier I alluded to the fact that you can configure your event session to use more than the standard three event buffers – this is called partitioning and is controlled by the MEMORY_PARTITION_MODE option. The result of setting this option is fairly easy to explain, but knowing when to use it is a bit more art than science. First the science… You can configure partitioning in three ways: None, Per NUMA Node & Per CPU. This specifies the location where sets of event buffers are created with fairly obvious implication. There are rules we follow for sub-dividing the total memory (specified by MAX_MEMORY) between all the event buffers that are specific to the mode used: None: 3 buffers (fixed)Node: 3 * number_of_nodesCPU: 2.5 * number_of_cpus Here are some examples of what this means for different Node/CPU counts: Configuration None Node CPU 2 CPUs, 1 Node 3 buffers 3 buffers 5 buffers 6 CPUs, 2 Node 3 buffers 6 buffers 15 buffers 40 CPUs, 5 Nodes 3 buffers 15 buffers 100 buffers   Aside: Buffer size on multi-processor computersAs the number of Nodes or CPUs increases, the size of the event buffer gets smaller because the total memory is sub-divided into more pieces. The defaults will hold up to this for a while since each buffer set is holding events only from the Node or CPU that it is associated with, but at some point the buffers will get too small and you’ll either see events being dropped or you’ll get an error when you create your session because you’re below the minimum buffer size. Increase the MAX_MEMORY setting to an appropriate number for the configuration. The most likely reason to start partitioning is going to be related to performance. If you notice that running an event session is impacting the performance of your server beyond a reasonably expected level [Yes, there is a reasonably expected level of work required to collect events.] then partitioning might be an answer. Before you partition you might want to check a few other things: Is your event retention set to NO_EVENT_LOSS and causing blocking? (I told you not to do this.) Consider changing your event loss mode or increasing memory. Are you over collecting and causing more work than necessary? Consider adding predicates to events or removing unnecessary events and actions from your session. Are you writing the file target to the same slow disk that you use for TempDB and your other high activity databases? <kidding> <not really> It’s always worth considering the end to end picture – if you’re writing events to a file you can be impacted by I/O, network; all the usual stuff. Assuming you’ve ruled out the obvious (and not so obvious) issues, there are performance conditions that will be addressed by partitioning. For example, it’s possible to have a successful event session (eg. no dropped events) but still see a performance impact because you have many CPUs all attempting to write to the same free buffer and having to wait in line to finish their work. This is a case where partitioning would relieve the contention between the different CPUs and likely reduce the performance impact cause by the event session. There is no DMV you can check to find these conditions – sorry – that’s where the art comes in. This is  largely a matter of experimentation. On the bright side you probably won’t need to to worry about this level of detail all that often. The performance impact of Extended Events is significantly lower than what you may be used to with SQL Trace. You will likely only care about the impact if you are trying to set up a long running event session that will be part of your everyday workload – sessions used for short term troubleshooting will likely fall into the “reasonably expected impact” category. Hey buddy – I think you forgot something OK, there are two options I didn’t cover: STARTUP_STATE & TRACK_CAUSALITY. If you want your event sessions to start automatically when the server starts, set the STARTUP_STATE option to ON. (Now there is only one option I didn’t cover.) I’m going to leave causality for another post since it’s not really related to session behavior, it’s more about event analysis. - Mike Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• GuestPost: Unit Testing Entity Framework (v1) Dependent Code using TypeMock Isolator

  - by Eric Nelson

  Time for another guest post (check out others in the series), this time bringing together the world of mocking with the world of Entity Framework. A big thanks to Moses for agreeing to do this. Unit Testing Entity Framework Dependent Code using TypeMock Isolator by Muhammad Mosa Introduction Unit testing data access code in my opinion is a challenging thing. Let us consider unit tests and integration tests. In integration tests you are allowed to have environmental dependencies such as a physical database connection to insert, update, delete or retrieve your data. However when performing unit tests it is often much more efficient and productive to remove environmental dependencies. Instead you will need to fake these dependencies. Faking a database (also known as mocking) can be relatively straight forward but the version of Entity Framework released with .Net 3.5 SP1 has a number of implementation specifics which actually makes faking the existence of a database quite difficult. Faking Entity Framework As mentioned earlier, to effectively unit test you will need to fake/simulate Entity Framework calls to the database. There are many free open source mocking frameworks that can help you achieve this but it will require additional effort to overcome & workaround a number of limitations in those frameworks. Examples of these limitations include: Not able to fake calls to non virtual methods Not able to fake sealed classes Not able to fake LINQ to Entities queries (replace database calls with in-memory collection calls) There is a mocking framework which is flexible enough to handle limitations such as those above. The commercially available TypeMock Isolator can do the job for you with less code and ultimately more readable unit tests. I’m going to demonstrate tackling one of those limitations using MoQ as my mocking framework. Then I will tackle the same issue using TypeMock Isolator. Mocking Entity Framework with MoQ One basic need when faking Entity Framework is to fake the ObjectContext. This cannot be done by passing any connection string. You have to pass a correct Entity Framework connection string that specifies CSDL, SSDL and MSL locations along with a provider connection string. Assuming we are going to do that, we’ll explore another limitation. The limitation we are going to face now is related to not being able to fake calls to non-virtual/overridable members with MoQ. I have the following repository method that adds an EntityObject (instance of a Blog entity) to Blogs entity set in an ObjectContext. public override void Add(Blog blog) { if(BlogContext.Blogs.Any(b=>b.Name == blog.Name)) { throw new InvalidOperationException("Blog with same name already exists!"); } BlogContext.AddToBlogs(blog); } The method does a very simple check that the name of the new Blog entity instance doesn’t exist. This is done through the simple LINQ query above. If the blog doesn’t already exist it simply adds it to the current context to be saved when SaveChanges of the ObjectContext instance (e.g. BlogContext) is called. However, if a blog with the same name exits, and exception (InvalideOperationException) will be thrown. Let us now create a unit test for the Add method using MoQ. [TestMethod] [ExpectedException(typeof(InvalidOperationException))] public void Add_Should_Throw_InvalidOperationException_When_Blog_With_Same_Name_Already_Exits() { //(1) We shouldn't depend on configuration when doing unit tests! But, //its a workaround to fake the ObjectContext string connectionString = ConfigurationManager .ConnectionStrings["MyBlogConnString"] .ConnectionString; //(2) Arrange: Fake ObjectContext var fakeContext = new Mock<MyBlogContext>(connectionString); //(3) Next Line will pass, as ObjectContext now can be faked with proper connection string var repo = new BlogRepository(fakeContext.Object); //(4) Create fake ObjectQuery<Blog>. Will be used to substitute MyBlogContext.Blogs property var fakeObjectQuery = new Mock<ObjectQuery<Blog>>("[Blogs]", fakeContext.Object); //(5) Arrange: Set Expectations //Next line will throw an exception by MoQ: //System.ArgumentException: Invalid setup on a non-overridable member fakeContext.SetupGet(c=>c.Blogs).Returns(fakeObjectQuery.Object); fakeObjectQuery.Setup(q => q.Any(b => b.Name == "NewBlog")).Returns(true); //Act repo.Add(new Blog { Name = "NewBlog" }); } This test method is checking to see if the correct exception ([ExpectedException(typeof(InvalidOperationException))]) is thrown when a developer attempts to Add a blog with a name that’s already exists. On (1) a connection string is initialized from configuration file. To retrieve the full connection string. On (2) a fake ObjectContext is being created. The ObjectContext here is MyBlogContext and its being created using this var fakeContext = new Mock<MyBlogContext>(connectionString); This way a fake context is being created using MoQ. On (3) a BlogRepository instance is created. BlogRepository has dependency on generate Entity Framework ObjectContext, MyObjectContext. And so the fake context is passed to the constructor. var repo = new BlogRepository(fakeContext.Object); On (4) a fake instance of ObjectQuery<Blog> is being created to use as a substitute to MyObjectContext.Blogs property as we will see in (5). On (5) setup an expectation for calling Blogs property of MyBlogContext and substitute the return result with the fake ObjectQuery<Blog> instance created on (4). When you run this test it will fail with MoQ throwing an exception because of this line: fakeContext.SetupGet(c=>c.Blogs).Returns(fakeObjectQuery.Object); This happens because the generate property MyBlogContext.Blogs is not virtual/overridable. And assuming it is virtual or you managed to make it virtual it will fail at the following line throwing the same exception: fakeObjectQuery.Setup(q => q.Any(b => b.Name == "NewBlog")).Returns(true); This time the test will fail because the Any extension method is not virtual/overridable. You won’t be able to replace ObjectQuery<Blog> with fake in memory collection to test your LINQ to Entities queries. Now lets see how replacing MoQ with TypeMock Isolator can help. Mocking Entity Framework with TypeMock Isolator The following is the same test method we had above for MoQ but this time implemented using TypeMock Isolator: [TestMethod] [ExpectedException(typeof(InvalidOperationException))] public void Add_New_Blog_That_Already_Exists_Should_Throw_InvalidOperationException() { //(1) Create fake in memory collection of blogs var fakeInMemoryBlogs = new List<Blog> {new Blog {Name = "FakeBlog"}}; //(2) create fake context var fakeContext = Isolate.Fake.Instance<MyBlogContext>(); //(3) Setup expected call to MyBlogContext.Blogs property through the fake context Isolate.WhenCalled(() => fakeContext.Blogs) .WillReturnCollectionValuesOf(fakeInMemoryBlogs.AsQueryable()); //(4) Create new blog with a name that already exits in the fake in memory collection in (1) var blog = new Blog {Name = "FakeBlog"}; //(5) Instantiate instance of BlogRepository (Class under test) var repo = new BlogRepository(fakeContext); //(6) Acting by adding the newly created blog () repo.Add(blog); } When running the above test method it will pass as the Add method of BlogRepository is going to throw an InvalidOperationException which is the expected behaviour. Nothing prevents us from faking out the database interaction! Even faking ObjectContext  at (2) didn’t require a connection string. On (3) Isolator sets up a faking result for MyBlogContext.Blogs when its being called through the fake instance fakeContext created on (2). The faking result is just an in-memory collection declared an initialized on (1). Finally at (6) action we call the Add method of BlogRepository passing a new Blog instance that has a name that’s already exists in the fake in-memory collection which we set up at (1). As expected the test will pass because it will throw the expected exception defined on top of the test method - InvalidOperationException. TypeMock Isolator succeeded in faking Entity Framework with ease. Conclusion We explored how to write a simple unit test using TypeMock Isolator for code which is using Entity Framework. We also explored a few of the limitations of other mocking frameworks which TypeMock is successfully able to handle. There are workarounds that you can use to overcome limitations when using MoQ or Rhino Mock, however the workarounds will require you to write more code and your tests will likely be more complex. For a comparison between different mocking frameworks take a look at this document produced by TypeMock. You might also want to check out this open source project to compare mocking frameworks. I hope you enjoyed this post Muhammad Mosa http://mosesofegypt.net/ http://twitter.com/mosessaur Screencast of unit testing Entity Framework Related Links GuestPost: Introduction to Mocking GuesPost: Typemock Isolator – Much more than an Isolation framework

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• Queued Loadtest to remove Concurrency issues using Shared Data Service in OpenScript

  - by stefan.thieme(at)oracle.com

  Queued Processing to remove Concurrency issues in Loadtest ScriptsSome scripts act on information returned by the server, e.g. act on first item in the returned list of pending tasks/actions. This may lead to concurrency issues if the virtual users simulated in a load test scenario are not synchronized in some way.As the load test cases should be carried out in a comparable and straight forward manner simply cancel a transaction in case a collision occurs is clearly not an option. In case you increase the number of virtual users this approach would lead to a high number of requests for the early steps in your transaction (e.g. login, retrieve list of action points, assign an action point to the virtual user) but later steps would be rarely visited successfully or at all, depending on the application logic.A way to tackle this problem is to enqueue the virtual users in a Shared Data Service queue. Only the first virtual user in this queue will be allowed to carry out the critical steps (retrieve list of action points, assign an action point to the virtual user) in your transaction at any one time.Once a virtual user has passed the critical path it will dequeue himself from the head of the queue and continue with his actions. This does theoretically allow virtual users to run in parallel all steps of the transaction which are not part of the critical path.In practice it has been seen this is rarely the case, though it does not allow adding more than N users to perform a transaction without causing delays due to virtual users waiting in the queue. N being the time of the total transaction divided by the sum of the time of all critical steps in this transaction.While this problem can be circumvented by allowing multiple queues to act on individual segments of the list of actions, e.g. per country filter, ends with 0..9 filter, etc.This would require additional handling of these additional queues of slots for the virtual users at the head of the queue in order to maintain the mutually exclusive access to the first element in the list returned by the server at any one time of the load test. Such an improved handling of multiple queues and/or multiple slots is above the subject of this paper.Shared Data Services Pre-RequisitesStart WebLogic Server to host Shared Data ServicesYou will have to make sure that your WebLogic server is installed and started. Shared Data Services may not work if you installed only the minimal installation package for OpenScript. If however you installed the default package including OLT and OTM, you may follow the instructions below to start and verify WebLogic installation.To start the WebLogic Server deployed underneath of Oracle Load Testing and/or Oracle Test Manager you can go to your Start menu, Oracle Application Testing Suite and select the Restart Oracle Application Testing Suite Application Service entry from the Tools submenu.To verify the service has been started you can run the Microsoft Management Console for Services by Selecting Run from the Start Menu and entering services.msc. Look for the entry that reads Oracle Application Testing Suite Application Service, once it has changed it status from Starting to Started you can proceed to verify the login. Please note that this may take several minutes, I would say up to 10 minutes depending on the strength of your CPU horse-power.Verify WebLogic Server user credentialsYou will have to make sure that your WebLogic Server is installed and started. Next open the Oracle WebLogic Server Adminstration Console on http://localhost:8088/console.It may take a while until the application is deployed and started. It may display the following until the Administration Console has been deployed on the fly.Afterwards you can login using the username oats and the password that you selected during install time for your Application Testing Suite administrative purposes.This will bring up the Home page of you WebLogic Server. You have actually verified that you are able to login with these credentials already. However if you want to check the details, navigate to Security Realms, myrealm, Users and Groups tab.Here you could add users to your WebLogic Server which could be used in the later steps. Details on the Groups required for such a custom user to work are exceeding this quick overview and have to be selected with the WebLogic Server Adminstration Guide in mind.Shared Data Services pre-requisites for Load testingOpenScript Preferences have to be set to enable Encryption and provide a default Shared Data Service Connection for Playback.These are pre-requisites you want to use for load testing with Shared Data Services.Please note that the usage of the Connection Parameters (individual directive in the script) for Shared Data Services did not playback reliably in the current version 9.20.0370 of Oracle Load Testing (OLT) and encryption of credentials still seemed to be mandatory as well.General Encryption settingsSelect OpenScript Preferences from the View menu and navigate to the General, Encryption entry in the tree on the left. Select the Encrypt script data option from the list and enter the same password that you used for securing your WebLogic Server Administration Console.Enable global shared data access credentialsSelect OpenScript Preferences from the View menu and navigate to the Playback, Shared Data entry in the tree on the left. Enable the global shared data access credentials and enter the Address, User name and Password determined for your WebLogic Server to host Shared Data Services.Please note, that you may want to replace the localhost in Address with the hosts realname in case you plan to run load tests with Loadtest Agents running on remote systems.Queued Processing of TransactionsEnable Shared Data Services Module in Script PropertiesThe Shared Data Services Module has to be enabled for each Script that wants to employ the Shared Data Service Queue functionality in OpenScript. It can be enabled under the Script menu selecting Script Properties. On the Script Properties Dialog select the Modules section and check Shared Data to enable Shared Data Service Module for your script. Checking the Shared Data Services option will effectively add a line to your script code that adds the sharedData ScriptService to your script class of IteratingVUserScript.@ScriptService oracle.oats.scripting.modules.sharedData.api.SharedDataService sharedData;Record your scriptRecord your script as usual and then add the following things for Queue handling in the Initialize code block, before the first step and after the last step of your critical path and in the Finalize code block.The java code to be added at individual locations is explained in the following sections in full detail.Create a Shared Data Queue in InitializeTo create a Shared Data Queue go to the Java view of your script and enter the following statements to the initialize() code block.info("Create queueA with life time of 120 minutes");sharedData.createQueue("queueA", 120);This will create an instantiation of the Shared Data Queue object named queueA which is maintained for upto 120 minutes.If you want to use the code for multiple scripts, make sure to use a different queue name for each one here and in the subsequent steps. You may even consider to use a dynamic queueName based on filters of your result list being concurrently accessed.Prepare a unique id for each IterationIn order to keep track of individual virtual users in our queue we need to create a unique identifier from the virtual user id and the used username right after retrieving the next record from our databank file.getDatabank("Usernames").getNextDatabankRecord();getVariables().set("usernameValue1","VU_{{@vuid}}_{{@iterationnum}}_{{db.Usernames.Username}}_{{@timestamp}}_{{@random(10000)}}");String usernameValue = getVariables().get("usernameValue1");info("Now running virtual user " + usernameValue);As you can see from the above code block, we have set the OpenScript variable usernameValue1 to VU_{{@vuid}}_{{@iterationnum}}_{{db.Usernames.Username}}_{{@timestamp}}_{{@random(10000)}} which is a concatenation of the virtual user id and the iterationnumber for general uniqueness; as well as the username from our databank, the timestamp and a random number for making it further unique and ease spotting of errors.Not all of these fields are actually required to make it really unique, but adding the queue name may also be considered to help troubleshoot multiple queues.The value is then retrieved with the getVariables.get() method call and assigned to the usernameValue String used throughout the script.Please note that moving the getDatabank("Usernames").getNextDatabankRecord(); call to the initialize block was later considered to remove concurrency of multiple virtual users running with the same userid and therefor accessing the same "My Inbox" in step 6. This will effectively give each virtual user a userid from the databank file. Make sure you have enough userids to remove this second hurdle.Enqueue and attend Queue before Critical PathTo maintain the right order of virtual users being allowed into the critical path of the transaction the following pseudo step has to be added in front of the first critical step. In the case of this example this is right in front of the step where we retrieve the list of actions from which we select the first to be assigned to us.beginStep("[0] Waiting in the Queue", 0);{info("Enqueued virtual user " + usernameValue + " at the end of queueA");sharedData.offerLast("queueA", usernameValue);info("Wait until the user is the first in queueA");String queueValue1 = null;do {// we wait for at least 0.7 seconds before we check the head of the// queue. This is the time it takes one user to move through the// critical path, i.e. pass steps [5] Enter country and [6] Assign// to meThread.sleep(700);queueValue1 = (String) sharedData.peekFirst("queueA");info("The first user in queueA is currently: '" + queueValue1 + "' " + queueValue1.getClass() + " length " + queueValue1.length() );info("The current user is '"+ usernameValue + "' " + usernameValue.getClass() + " length " + usernameValue.length() + ": indexOf " + usernameValue.indexOf(queueValue1) + " equals " + usernameValue.equals(queueValue1) );} while ( queueValue1.indexOf(usernameValue) < 0 );info("Now the user is the first in queueA");}endStep();This will enqueue the username to the tail of our Queue. It will will wait for at least 700 milliseconds, the time it takes for one user to exit the critical path and then compare the head of our queue with it's username. This last step will be repeated while the two are not equal (indexOf less than zero). If they are equal the indexOf will yield a value of zero or larger and we will perform the critical steps.Dequeue after Critical PathAfter the virtual user has left the critical path and complete its last step the following code block needs to dequeue the virtual user. In the case of our example this is right after the action has been actually assigned to the virtual user. This will allow the next virtual user to retrieve the list of actions still available and in turn let him make his selection/assignment.info("Get and remove the current user from the head of queueA");String pollValue1 = (String) sharedData.pollFirst("queueA");The current user is removed from the head of the queue. The next one will now be able to match his username against the head of the queue.Clear and Destroy Queue for FinishWhen the script has completed, it should clear and destroy the queue. This code block can be put in the finish block of your script and/or in a separate script in order to clear and remove the queue in case you have spotted an error or want to reset the queue for some reason.info("Clear queueA");sharedData.clearQueue("queueA");info("Destroy queueA");sharedData.destroyQueue("queueA");The users waiting in queueA are cleared and the queue is destroyed. If you have scripts still executing they will be caught in a loop.I found it better to maintain a separate Reset Queue script which contained only the following code in the initialize() block. I use to call this script to make sure the queue is cleared in between multiple Loadtest runs. This script could also even be added as the first in a larger scenario, which would execute it only once at very start of the Loadtest and make sure the queues do not contain any stale entries.info("Create queueA with life time of 120 minutes");sharedData.createQueue("queueA", 120);info("Clear queueA");sharedData.clearQueue("queueA");This will create a Shared Data Queue instance of queueA and clear all entries from this queue.Monitoring QueueWhile creating the scripts it was useful to monitor the contents, i.e. the current first user in the Queue. The following code block will make sure the Shared Data Queue is accessible in the initialize() block.info("Create queueA with life time of 120 minutes");sharedData.createQueue("queueA", 120);In the run() block the following code will continuously monitor the first element of the Queue and write an informational message with the current username Value to the Result window.info("Monitor the first users in queueA");String queueValue1 = null;do {queueValue1 = (String) sharedData.peekFirst("queueA");if (queueValue1 != null)info("The first user in queueA is currently: '" + queueValue1 + "' " + queueValue1.getClass() + " length " + queueValue1.length() );} while ( true );This script can be run from OpenScript parallel to a loadtest performed by the Oracle Load Test.However it is not recommend to run this in a production loadtest as the performance impact is unknown. Accessing the Queue's head with the peekFirst() method has been reported with about 2 seconds response time by both OpenScript and OTL. It is advised to log a Service Request to see if this could be lowered in future releases of Application Testing Suite, as the pollFirst() and even offerLast() writing to the tail of the Queue usually returned after an average 0.1 seconds.Debugging QueueWhile debugging the scripts the following was useful to remove single entries from its head, i.e. the current first user in the Queue. The following code block will make sure the Shared Data Queue is accessible in the initialize() block.info("Create queueA with life time of 120 minutes");sharedData.createQueue("queueA", 120);In the run() block the following code will remove the first element of the Queue and write an informational message with the current username Value to the Result window.info("Get and remove the current user from the head of queueA");String pollValue1 = (String) sharedData.pollFirst("queueA");info("The first user in queueA was currently: '" + pollValue1 + "' " + pollValue1.getClass() + " length " + pollValue1.length() );ReferencesOracle Functional Testing OpenScript User's Guide Version 9.20 [E15488-05]Chapter 17 Using the Shared Data Modulehttp://download.oracle.com/otn/nt/apptesting/oats-docs-9.21.0030.zipOracle Fusion Middleware Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console Online Help 11g Release 1 (10.3.4) [E13952-04]Administration Console Online Help - Manage users and groupshttp://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/apirefs.1111/e13952/taskhelp/security/ManageUsersAndGroups.htm

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, February 23, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, February 23, 2010New Projects.NET Beginners: This project is a summary of project for first time developer and .net beginners. the aim is to provide tools and libraries to get startet with dev...A simple ASP.NET Currency / Money TextBox User Control: A ASP.NET TextBox control used with AJAX maskeditextender makes it possible to enter numbers but it's not very intuitive to use. CurrencyTextBox co...Academiki: Academik The project aims to be a university social network with content sharing and intellectual property. Academik makes it easier for students t...Acessando Campos com XPath Expression: Esse é um exemplo de como usar Xpath Expression na orchestration do Biztalk 2006. O Artigo do exemplo esta em www.biztalkbrasil.blogspot.comAg.CommandManager: A command manager implementation for Silverlights. Supports commanding to more or less any event using the ICommand interfaceApunta Notas: Apunta notas is just a note taking program that I created to learn WPF. Now you can write everything you need to remember or tell somebody. Or you...AzureKit: AzureKit provides a more direct approach to Azure's Table Service, which takes more advantage of the NoSQL nature of the storage medium.CRM 4.0 Distribute Workflow Activity: This plugin allows to execute a workflow for each entity that has a 1:N or N:N relationship to a given entity. For example: execute a workflow for...Dbg Shell: Dbg Shell replaces WinDbg for debugging dumps. All standard Dbg commands are supported. You can also write scripts in .Net assemblies to automated ...Egg Timer: Egg Timer is a very simple Windows Form application for setting short time-frame alarms.Enterprise Library Extensions: Extensions for the Microsoft Enterprise Library applications blocks which makes programming applications even easier.Event Calendar 2.0 Data Extractor: Really simple app to recover event calendar 2.0 information from iGoogle settings files and turn them into CSV format info for importing to other c...iTwiit: Silverlight Twitter Clientlibtym: Have your complete movie collection at a glance to manage all your movie files very comfortably!Metabolite Enterprise Libraries for EPiServer CMS using Page Type Builder: The Metabolite Enterprise libraries are a set of C# Class Libraries developed for use with EPiServer 5 R2 SP2+ projects using PageTypeBuilder. They...Metro UX: Metro UXMTI: -Personal Expense Tracker: Personal Expense Tracker helps you track your expenses. I tried to find simple win forms expense tracker but found none interesting, so i made one...rarouš: repository for rarouš.weblog articlesSacDotNetUG: SacDotNetUG is an ASP.NET MVC 2 Web application intended for the Sacramento .NET user group. This project servers 2 main goals: to promote the adop...ShellLight: ShellLight is essentially a graphical shell for Silverlight applications that enables a quick auto-complete launcher for features in your solution.Sina Weibo(Microblog): sina weibo .NET libraries and applications.Terrain Independant Navigating Automaton v2.0: This is where members of the Robot Design Team from Stony Brook University come together and work on our unique TINA. This project is for a self-go...Url Rewrite.Net: Url Rewrite.Net is an open-source SEO project which contains Custom Http Module example and Custom Configrutaion Module.It is developed in C#.NET 2...WebPart and WebService Currency Converter: This is only a sample code how to get data from yahoo finance and how to implementing on Sharepoint WebPart or WebServices. This code it is freely...WPF AutoComplete TextBox Control: A AutoComplete TextBox Control written in WPF, Looks like the system built-in auto-completion(SHAutoComplete).ZWaveAPI: This project is aim to create an open class library on ZWave. It is based on article from digiWave.dk New Releases.NET Beginners: MathLab Visual Studio Project Template: First preview to a mathlab beginners library..NET Beginners: Turtle Visual Studio Project Template: The turtle engine is a very simlpe turtle which runs over a beach and leaves a track.A simple ASP.NET Currency / Money TextBox User Control: CurrencyTextBox Source v1.0: Source code with a test project.A simple ASP.NET Currency / Money TextBox User Control: CurrencyTextBox.dll: The User Control for use in projects.Acessando Campos com XPath Expression: Source Code SampleXPathExpression: O Source code contem o Projeto em Visual Studio 2005.Actipro WPF Controls Contrib: v2009.2 build 515: Minor tweaks and updated to target Actipro WPF Studio 2009.2 (build 515).Analysis Management System: 1.0.0.1 Update: Fix - Issue 4004 Nieuw - Beschikbare klanten kunnen nu bekeken worden via Extra/Aanvragers (Ctrl R)Apunta Notas: Apunta Notas 1.0 Release Candidate: There is the Release Candidate of Apunta Notas.ARSoft.Tools.Net - C# DNS and SPF Library: 1.2.0: Added asynchronous operations for DNS client.CRM 4.0 Distribute Workflow Activity: Beta: Initial release. Complete functionality, limited testing.Dbg Shell: First Public Release: First ReleaseDnDns and PocketDnDns - A .NET DNS Client Resolver Library: DnDns Library Release 2: A DNS protocol library written completely in managed code (C#). Supports common DNS records types like A, CNAME, MX, SRV, and more. Works on Window...Egg Timer: Egg Timer v1.0: Pretty simple application. Set the time directly or use the 5 minute and 1 hour increment/decrement buttons.EnhSim: EnhSim v1.9.7.2 BETA: 1.9.7.2 BETAImportant!: This beta version includes the changes to the Flame shock damage-over-time component which are currently on the PTR. Downlo...EnhSim: EnhSim v1.9.7.3 BETA: Important!: This beta version includes the changes to the Flame shock damage-over-time component which are currently on the PTR. Download 1.9.7.1 f...Esendex SMS SDK and Downloads for Microsoft.NET languages: Esendex .NET SDK v0.4.0: Features Messaging Service: Send a single SMS message and multiple SMS messages. Send a single Voice Message and multiple Voice Messages. Send...Event Calendar 2.0 Data Extractor: V1.0: First ever build of extractorExcelDna: ExcelDna Version 0.22: An important bugfix release that fixes a critical bug in the MultiThreaded marshaling support (under Excel 2007).InfoService: InfoService v1.5 Beta 8: InfoService Beta Release Please note this is a BETA. It should be stable, but i can't gurantee that! So use it on your own risk. Please read Plugi...Krypton Palette Selectors: Release 1.2: Adds the new KryptonPaletteContextMenu and refactors the KryptonPaletteDropButton to use it.kuuy static system: kss_v1.0beta: kuuy static sytem 1.0 beta editionlibtym: libtym: First public release version. Full functionality, tested. Please notify about bugs.mojoPortal: 2.3.3.9: see release notes on mojoPortal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2339-released.aspx This release makes it easy to use Artisteer html templa...Net Tool: v1.01: User interface has been changedOpen NFSe: Open NFSe 0.1 (Salvador): Open NFSe 0.1 (Salvador)Paint.NET PSD Plugin: 1.0.7: Further substantial improvements in speed of both loading and saving. In particular, loading is about 5x as fast as in version 1.0.6. Saving is ...Project Starlight: 2.0: Release 2.0 final Changes: -Numerous stability fixes -Firefox 3.5 support -Safari 64 bit support (Snow Leopard) Mac and Windows Binaries are avai...RoTwee: RoTwee 5.0.0.1: This version fix for 16620Secure Data: Secure Data 2010.02.22.01: This version has been rewritten and contains many enhancements and I encourage anyone interested to download the source code and work through the Q...TreeSizeNet: TreeSizeNet 0.10.1: - Complete Redesign - Improved Stability - Improved Performance - PieChart for directory contentUrl Rewrite.Net: Beta V0.1 Release: Includes : -Custom Http Module -Custom Configuration Section Module ( in web.config) -Rewriting ModuleVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30222.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWebPart and WebService Currency Converter: CurrencyConverter.zip: CurrencyConverter.zip Have 3 Project on this files: 1. Library Project 2. Load Library Project Using Web Services 3. Load Library Project Using We...WSUS Smart Approve: 1.0.0.2: Fix: 25903ZuneConsole: ZuneConsole: Console GUI for the Zune Customs library, which should make everything work. This is what you should download.ZuneConsole: ZuneConsole How-To Manual: A quick (only 9 pages lol) tutorial on how to add custom artist info to your Zune.Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETDotNetNuke® Community EditionImage Resizer Powertoy Clone for WindowsMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsDinnerNow.netRawrBlogEngine.NETNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleSharpyInfoServicejQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesPHPExcelpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibrarySharePoint Contrib

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, February 20, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, February 20, 2011Popular ReleasesView Layout Replicator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: View Layout Replicator (1.0.119.18): Initial releaseWindows Phone 7 Isolated Storage Explorer: WP7 Isolated Storage Explorer v1.0 Beta: Current release features:WPF desktop explorer client Visual Studio integrated tool window explorer client (Visual Studio 2010 Professional and above) Supported operations: Refresh (isolated storage information), Add Folder, Add Existing Item, Download File, Delete Folder, Delete File Explorer supports operations running on multiple remote applications at the same time Explorer detects application disconnect (1-2 second delay) Explorer confirms operation completed status Explorer d...Advanced Explorer for Wp7: Advanced Explorer for Wp7 Version 1.4 Test8: Added option to run under Lockscreen. Fixed a bug when you open a pdf/mobi file without starting adobe reader/amazon kindle first boost loading time for folders added \Windows directory (all devices) you can now interact with the filesystem while it is loading!Game Files Open - Map Editor: Game Files Open - Map Editor Beta 2 v1.0.0.0: The 2° beta release of the Map Editor, we have fixed a big bug of the files regen.Document.Editor: 2011.6: Whats new for Document.Editor 2011.6: New Left to Right and Left to Right support New Indent more/less support Improved Home tab Improved Tooltips/shortcut keys Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsCatel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.2: Catel history ============= (+) Added (*) Changed (-) Removed (x) Error / bug (fix) For more information about issues or new feature requests, please visit: http://catel.codeplex.com =========== Version 1.2 =========== Release date: ============= 2011/02/17 Added/fixed: ============ (+) DataObjectBase now supports Isolated Storage out of the box: Person.Save(myStream) stores a whole object graph in Silverlight (+) DataObjectBase can now be converted to Json via Person.ToJson(); (+)...??????????: All-In-One Code Framework ??? 2011-02-18: ?????All-In-One Code Framework?2011??????????！！http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=128165 ?????，?????AzureBingMaps??????，??Azure，WCF, Silverlight, Window Phone????????，????????????????????????。 ???： Windows Azure SQL Azure Windows Azure AppFabric Windows Live Messenger Connect Bing Maps ?????： ??????HTML??? ??Windows PC?Mac?Silverlight??? ??Windows Phone?Silverlight??? ?????：http://blog.csdn.net/sjb5201/archive/2011...Image.Viewer: 2011: First version of 2011Silverlight Toolkit: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit - Feb 2011: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit OverviewSilverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit offers developers additional controls for Windows Phone application development, designed to match the rich user experience of the Windows Phone 7. Suggestions? Features? Questions? Ask questions in the Create.msdn.com forum. Add bugs or feature requests to the Issue Tracker. Help us shape the Silverlight Toolkit with your feedback! Please clearly indicate that the work items and issues are for the phone t...VsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 29 Beta: Note: This release does not work with custom VsTortoise toolbars. These get removed every time when you shutdown Visual Studio. (#7940) Build 29 (beta)New: Added VsTortoise Solution Explorer integration for Web Project Folder, Web Folder and Web Item. Fix: TortoiseProc was called with invalid parameters, when using TSVN 1.4.x or older #7338 (thanks psifive) Fix: Add-in does not work, when "TortoiseSVN/bin" is not added to PATH environment variable #7357 Fix: Missing error message when ...Sense/Net CMS - Enterprise Content Management: SenseNet 6.0.3 Community Edition: Sense/Net 6.0.3 Community Edition We are happy to introduce you the latest version of Sense/Net with integrated ECM Workflow capabilities! In the past weeks we have been working hard to migrate the product to .Net 4 and include a workflow framework in Sense/Net built upon Windows Workflow Foundation 4. This brand new feature enables developers to define and develop workflows, and supports users when building and setting up complicated business processes involving content creation and response...thinktecture WSCF.blue: WSCF.blue V1 Update (1.0.11): Features Added a new option that allows properties on data contract types to be marked as virtual. Bug Fixes Fixed a bug caused by certain project properties not being available on Web Service Software Factory projects. Fixed a bug that could result in the WrapperName value of the MessageContractAttribute being incorrect when the Adjust Casing option is used. The menu item code now caters for CommandBar instances that are not available. For example the Web Item CommandBar does not exist ...Terminals: Version 2 - RC1: The "Clean Install" will overwrite your log4net configuration (if you have one). If you run in a Portable Environment, you can use the "Clean Install" and target your portable folder. Tested and it works fine. Changes for this release: Re-worked on the Toolstip settings are done, just to avoid the vs.net clash with auto-generating files for .settings files. renamed it to .settings.config Packged both log4net and ToolStripSettings files into the installer Upgraded the version inform...SQL Server Process Info Log: Release: releaseAllNewsManager.NET: AllNewsManager.NET 1.3: AllNewsManager.NET 1.3. This new version provide several new features, improvements and bug fixes. Some new features: Online Users. Avatars. Copy function (to create a new article from another one). SEO improvements (friendly urls). New admin buttons. And more...Facebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 0.8: Version 0.8 (15 Feb 2011)moved to Beta stage publish photo feature "email" field of User object added new Graph Api object: Group, Event new Graph Api connection: likes, groups, eventsDJME - The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC: DJME2 -The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC beta2: The source code and runtime library for DJME2. For more product info you can goto http://www.dotnetage.com/djme.html What is new ?The Grid extension added The ModelBinder added which helping you create Bindable data Action. The DnaFor() control factory added that enabled Model bindable extensions. Enhance the ListBox , ComboBox data binding.Jint - Javascript Interpreter for .NET: Jint - 0.9.0: New CLR interoperability features Many bugfixesBuild Version Increment Add-In Visual Studio: Build Version Increment v2.4.11046.2045: v2.4.11046.2045 Fixes and/or Improvements:Major: Added complete support for VC projects including .vcxproj & .vcproj. All padding issues fixed. A project's assembly versions are only changed if the project has been modified. Minor Order of versioning style values is now according to their respective positions in the attributes i.e. Major, Minor, Build, Revision. Fixed issue with global variable storage with some projects. Fixed issue where if a project item's file does not exist, a ...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.1: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.1 release. Bug fixes and minor feature requests addedNew Projects.NET Core Audio APIs: This project provides a lightweight set of .NET wrappers around each section of the Windows Core Audio APIs.Akwen: Akwen aspirantbigserve: made in load sof languages a serve ralternative to iis and apacheCathedral game framework: (Will eventually be) A framework for creating 2d region-based games in Silverlight.Gmail Like File Uploader In .NET: Many times I wounder, How does gmail uploads files and monitor the upload status. I suppose many of you also have gone through the same experience. Most of you knows that the Choose File button on the Gmail Page is actually a flash button but how about the progressbar? AJAX rightinicomInterface: ????ini???????COM??iOnlineExamCenter - Trung Tâm Thi Tr?c Tuy?n: Tìm hi?u các phuong pháp thi tr?c nghi?m . Áp d?ng xây d?ng trung tâm thi tr?c tuy?n. ?ng d?ng du?c xây d?ng d?a trên n?n t?ng - .NET Framework v4.0 - ASP.NET MVC v3 - Entity Framework v4 - Silverlight v4 - jQueryLee Utility Library: Lee Utility LibrarySocialCore: Social Core is a framework for developing Social applications using a distributed infrastructure. The focus of Social Core is on collaboration, security and transparency. Privacy is not dead, it just is not implemented correctly.TestAmazonCloud: tacTftp.Net: This projects implements the TFTP (Trivial File Transfer) protocol for .NET in an easy-to-use library. It allows you to integrate TFTP client and server functionality into your project. It is s table, unit-tested and comes with a sample TFTP client and server.Using the Repository Pattern and DI to switch between SQL and XML: This is an example application, showing how Dependency Injection and the Repository can be used to allow interchangeable persistence between XML and SQLWebForms Razor converter - WinForms: Telerik developed a command line "WebForms to Razor (CSHTML) conversion tool" and uploaded in git -https://github.com/telerik/razor-converter This project uses the same Telerik API, but the client is the GUI/WinForms and allow developer to convert multiple files in a one go.XNA and Dependency Injection: Test code sample for XNA and Dependency Injection.XNA and IoC Container: Test code sample for XNA and IoC Container.XNA and Unit Testing: Test code sample for XNA and Unit Testing.Xplore World: Xplore World es un navegador web avanzado disponible para Windows Xp/Vista/7 y actualmente solo está disponible en español. Con este navegador puedes hacer cosas maravillosas como ver imágenes de cualquier web a tu estilo, administrar los usuarios, modificar tus marcadores, etc.ZO (ZeroOne): ZeroOne is the editor for programmers who think in binary.

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• Creating a Dynamic DataRow for easier DataRow Syntax

  - by Rick Strahl

  I've been thrown back into an older project that uses DataSets and DataRows as their entity storage model. I have several applications internally that I still maintain that run just fine (and I sometimes wonder if this wasn't easier than all this ORM crap we deal with with 'newer' improved technology today - but I disgress) but use this older code. For the most part DataSets/DataTables/DataRows are abstracted away in a pseudo entity model, but in some situations like queries DataTables and DataRows are still surfaced to the business layer. Here's an example. Here's a business object method that runs dynamic query and the code ends up looping over the result set using the ugly DataRow Array syntax:public int UpdateAllSafeTitles() { int result = this.Execute("select pk, title, safetitle from " + Tablename + " where EntryType=1", "TPks"); if (result < 0) return result; result = 0; foreach (DataRow row in this.DataSet.Tables["TPks"].Rows) { string title = row["title"] as string; string safeTitle = row["safeTitle"] as string; int pk = (int)row["pk"]; string newSafeTitle = this.GetSafeTitle(title); if (newSafeTitle != safeTitle) { this.ExecuteNonQuery("update " + this.Tablename + " set safeTitle=@safeTitle where pk=@pk", this.CreateParameter("@safeTitle",newSafeTitle), this.CreateParameter("@pk",pk) ); result++; } } return result; } The problem with looping over DataRow objecs is two fold: The array syntax is tedious to type and not real clear to look at, and explicit casting is required in order to do anything useful with the values. I've highlighted the place where this matters. Using the DynamicDataRow class I'll show in a minute this code can be changed to look like this:public int UpdateAllSafeTitles() { int result = this.Execute("select pk, title, safetitle from " + Tablename + " where EntryType=1", "TPks"); if (result < 0) return result; result = 0; foreach (DataRow row in this.DataSet.Tables["TPks"].Rows) { dynamic entry = new DynamicDataRow(row); string newSafeTitle = this.GetSafeTitle(entry.title); if (newSafeTitle != entry.safeTitle) { this.ExecuteNonQuery("update " + this.Tablename + " set safeTitle=@safeTitle where pk=@pk", this.CreateParameter("@safeTitle",newSafeTitle), this.CreateParameter("@pk",entry.pk) ); result++; } } return result; } The code looks much a bit more natural and describes what's happening a little nicer as well. Well, using the new dynamic features in .NET it's actually quite easy to implement the DynamicDataRow class. Creating your own custom Dynamic Objects .NET 4.0 introduced the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) and opened up a whole bunch of new capabilities for .NET applications. The dynamic type is an easy way to avoid Reflection and directly access members of 'dynamic' or 'late bound' objects at runtime. There's a lot of very subtle but extremely useful stuff that dynamic does (especially for COM Interop scenearios) but in its simplest form it often allows you to do away with manual Reflection at runtime. In addition you can create DynamicObject implementations that can perform  custom interception of member accesses and so allow you to provide more natural access to more complex or awkward data structures like the DataRow that I use as an example here. Bascially you can subclass DynamicObject and then implement a few methods (TryGetMember, TrySetMember, TryInvokeMember) to provide the ability to return dynamic results from just about any data structure using simple property/method access. In the code above, I created a custom DynamicDataRow class which inherits from DynamicObject and implements only TryGetMember and TrySetMember. Here's what simple class looks like:/// <summary> /// This class provides an easy way to turn a DataRow /// into a Dynamic object that supports direct property /// access to the DataRow fields. /// /// The class also automatically fixes up DbNull values /// (null into .NET and DbNUll to DataRow) /// </summary> public class DynamicDataRow : DynamicObject { /// <summary> /// Instance of object passed in /// </summary> DataRow DataRow; /// <summary> /// Pass in a DataRow to work off /// </summary> /// <param name="instance"></param> public DynamicDataRow(DataRow dataRow) { DataRow = dataRow; } /// <summary> /// Returns a value from a DataRow items array. /// If the field doesn't exist null is returned. /// DbNull values are turned into .NET nulls. /// /// </summary> /// <param name="binder"></param> /// <param name="result"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool TryGetMember(GetMemberBinder binder, out object result) { result = null; try { result = DataRow[binder.Name]; if (result == DBNull.Value) result = null; return true; } catch { } result = null; return false; } /// <summary> /// Property setter implementation tries to retrieve value from instance /// first then into this object /// </summary> /// <param name="binder"></param> /// <param name="value"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool TrySetMember(SetMemberBinder binder, object value) { try { if (value == null) value = DBNull.Value; DataRow[binder.Name] = value; return true; } catch {} return false; } } To demonstrate the basic features here's a short test: [TestMethod] [ExpectedException(typeof(RuntimeBinderException))] public void BasicDataRowTests() { DataTable table = new DataTable("table"); table.Columns.Add( new DataColumn() { ColumnName = "Name", DataType=typeof(string) }); table.Columns.Add( new DataColumn() { ColumnName = "Entered", DataType=typeof(DateTime) }); table.Columns.Add(new DataColumn() { ColumnName = "NullValue", DataType = typeof(string) }); DataRow row = table.NewRow(); DateTime now = DateTime.Now; row["Name"] = "Rick"; row["Entered"] = now; row["NullValue"] = null; // converted in DbNull dynamic drow = new DynamicDataRow(row); string name = drow.Name; DateTime entered = drow.Entered; string nulled = drow.NullValue; Assert.AreEqual(name, "Rick"); Assert.AreEqual(entered,now); Assert.IsNull(nulled); // this should throw a RuntimeBinderException Assert.AreEqual(entered,drow.enteredd); } The DynamicDataRow requires a custom constructor that accepts a single parameter that sets the DataRow. Once that's done you can access property values that match the field names. Note that types are automatically converted - no type casting is needed in the code you write. The class also automatically converts DbNulls to regular nulls and vice versa which is something that makes it much easier to deal with data returned from a database. What's cool here isn't so much the functionality - even if I'd prefer to leave DataRow behind ASAP -  but the fact that we can create a dynamic type that uses a DataRow as it's 'DataSource' to serve member values. It's pretty useful feature if you think about it, especially given how little code it takes to implement. By implementing these two simple methods we get to provide two features I was complaining about at the beginning that are missing from the DataRow: Direct Property Syntax Automatic Type Casting so no explicit casts are required Caveats As cool and easy as this functionality is, it's important to understand that it doesn't come for free. The dynamic features in .NET are - well - dynamic. Which means they are essentially evaluated at runtime (late bound). Rather than static typing where everything is compiled and linked by the compiler/linker, member invokations are looked up at runtime and essentially call into your custom code. There's some overhead in this. Direct invocations - the original code I showed - is going to be faster than the equivalent dynamic code. However, in the above code the difference of running the dynamic code and the original data access code was very minor. The loop running over 1500 result records took on average 13ms with the original code and 14ms with the dynamic code. Not exactly a serious performance bottleneck. One thing to remember is that Microsoft optimized the DLR code significantly so that repeated calls to the same operations are routed very efficiently which actually makes for very fast evaluation. The bottom line for performance with dynamic code is: Make sure you test and profile your code if you think that there might be a performance issue. However, in my experience with dynamic types so far performance is pretty good for repeated operations (ie. in loops). While usually a little slower the perf hit is a lot less typically than equivalent Reflection work. Although the code in the second example looks like standard object syntax, dynamic is not static code. It's evaluated at runtime and so there's no type recognition until runtime. This means no Intellisense at development time, and any invalid references that call into 'properties' (ie. fields in the DataRow) that don't exist still cause runtime errors. So in the case of the data row you still get a runtime error if you mistype a column name:// this should throw a RuntimeBinderException Assert.AreEqual(entered,drow.enteredd); Dynamic - Lots of uses The arrival of Dynamic types in .NET has been met with mixed emotions. Die hard .NET developers decry dynamic types as an abomination to the language. After all what dynamic accomplishes goes against all that a static language is supposed to provide. On the other hand there are clearly scenarios when dynamic can make life much easier (COM Interop being one place). Think of the possibilities. What other data structures would you like to expose to a simple property interface rather than some sort of collection or dictionary? And beyond what I showed here you can also implement 'Method missing' behavior on objects with InvokeMember which essentially allows you to create dynamic methods. It's all very flexible and maybe just as important: It's easy to do. There's a lot of power hidden in this seemingly simple interface. Your move…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in CSharp  .NET   Tweet (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Point inside Oriented Bounding Box?

  - by Milo

  I have an OBB2D class based on SAT. This is my point in OBB method: public boolean pointInside(float x, float y) { float newy = (float) (Math.sin(angle) * (y - center.y) + Math.cos(angle) * (x - center.x)); float newx = (float) (Math.cos(angle) * (x - center.x) - Math.sin(angle) * (y - center.y)); return (newy > center.y - (getHeight() / 2)) && (newy < center.y + (getHeight() / 2)) && (newx > center.x - (getWidth() / 2)) && (newx < center.x + (getWidth() / 2)); } public boolean pointInside(Vector2D v) { return pointInside(v.x,v.y); } Here is the rest of the class; the parts that pertain: public class OBB2D { private Vector2D projVec = new Vector2D(); private static Vector2D projAVec = new Vector2D(); private static Vector2D projBVec = new Vector2D(); private static Vector2D tempNormal = new Vector2D(); private Vector2D deltaVec = new Vector2D(); private ArrayList<Vector2D> collisionPoints = new ArrayList<Vector2D>(); // Corners of the box, where 0 is the lower left. private Vector2D corner[] = new Vector2D[4]; private Vector2D center = new Vector2D(); private Vector2D extents = new Vector2D(); private RectF boundingRect = new RectF(); private float angle; //Two edges of the box extended away from corner[0]. private Vector2D axis[] = new Vector2D[2]; private double origin[] = new double[2]; public OBB2D(float centerx, float centery, float w, float h, float angle) { for(int i = 0; i < corner.length; ++i) { corner[i] = new Vector2D(); } for(int i = 0; i < axis.length; ++i) { axis[i] = new Vector2D(); } set(centerx,centery,w,h,angle); } public OBB2D(float left, float top, float width, float height) { for(int i = 0; i < corner.length; ++i) { corner[i] = new Vector2D(); } for(int i = 0; i < axis.length; ++i) { axis[i] = new Vector2D(); } set(left + (width / 2), top + (height / 2),width,height,0.0f); } public void set(float centerx,float centery,float w, float h,float angle) { float vxx = (float)Math.cos(angle); float vxy = (float)Math.sin(angle); float vyx = (float)-Math.sin(angle); float vyy = (float)Math.cos(angle); vxx *= w / 2; vxy *= (w / 2); vyx *= (h / 2); vyy *= (h / 2); corner[0].x = centerx - vxx - vyx; corner[0].y = centery - vxy - vyy; corner[1].x = centerx + vxx - vyx; corner[1].y = centery + vxy - vyy; corner[2].x = centerx + vxx + vyx; corner[2].y = centery + vxy + vyy; corner[3].x = centerx - vxx + vyx; corner[3].y = centery - vxy + vyy; this.center.x = centerx; this.center.y = centery; this.angle = angle; computeAxes(); extents.x = w / 2; extents.y = h / 2; computeBoundingRect(); } //Updates the axes after the corners move. Assumes the //corners actually form a rectangle. private void computeAxes() { axis[0].x = corner[1].x - corner[0].x; axis[0].y = corner[1].y - corner[0].y; axis[1].x = corner[3].x - corner[0].x; axis[1].y = corner[3].y - corner[0].y; // Make the length of each axis 1/edge length so we know any // dot product must be less than 1 to fall within the edge. for (int a = 0; a < axis.length; ++a) { float l = axis[a].length(); float ll = l * l; axis[a].x = axis[a].x / ll; axis[a].y = axis[a].y / ll; origin[a] = corner[0].dot(axis[a]); } } public void computeBoundingRect() { boundingRect.left = JMath.min(JMath.min(corner[0].x, corner[3].x), JMath.min(corner[1].x, corner[2].x)); boundingRect.top = JMath.min(JMath.min(corner[0].y, corner[1].y),JMath.min(corner[2].y, corner[3].y)); boundingRect.right = JMath.max(JMath.max(corner[1].x, corner[2].x), JMath.max(corner[0].x, corner[3].x)); boundingRect.bottom = JMath.max(JMath.max(corner[2].y, corner[3].y),JMath.max(corner[0].y, corner[1].y)); } public void set(RectF rect) { set(rect.centerX(),rect.centerY(),rect.width(),rect.height(),0.0f); } // Returns true if other overlaps one dimension of this. private boolean overlaps1Way(OBB2D other) { for (int a = 0; a < axis.length; ++a) { double t = other.corner[0].dot(axis[a]); // Find the extent of box 2 on axis a double tMin = t; double tMax = t; for (int c = 1; c < corner.length; ++c) { t = other.corner[c].dot(axis[a]); if (t < tMin) { tMin = t; } else if (t > tMax) { tMax = t; } } // We have to subtract off the origin // See if [tMin, tMax] intersects [0, 1] if ((tMin > 1 + origin[a]) || (tMax < origin[a])) { // There was no intersection along this dimension; // the boxes cannot possibly overlap. return false; } } // There was no dimension along which there is no intersection. // Therefore the boxes overlap. return true; } public void moveTo(float centerx, float centery) { float cx,cy; cx = center.x; cy = center.y; deltaVec.x = centerx - cx; deltaVec.y = centery - cy; for (int c = 0; c < 4; ++c) { corner[c].x += deltaVec.x; corner[c].y += deltaVec.y; } boundingRect.left += deltaVec.x; boundingRect.top += deltaVec.y; boundingRect.right += deltaVec.x; boundingRect.bottom += deltaVec.y; this.center.x = centerx; this.center.y = centery; computeAxes(); } // Returns true if the intersection of the boxes is non-empty. public boolean overlaps(OBB2D other) { if(right() < other.left()) { return false; } if(bottom() < other.top()) { return false; } if(left() > other.right()) { return false; } if(top() > other.bottom()) { return false; } if(other.getAngle() == 0.0f && getAngle() == 0.0f) { return true; } return overlaps1Way(other) && other.overlaps1Way(this); } public Vector2D getCenter() { return center; } public float getWidth() { return extents.x * 2; } public float getHeight() { return extents.y * 2; } public void setAngle(float angle) { set(center.x,center.y,getWidth(),getHeight(),angle); } public float getAngle() { return angle; } public void setSize(float w,float h) { set(center.x,center.y,w,h,angle); } public float left() { return boundingRect.left; } public float right() { return boundingRect.right; } public float bottom() { return boundingRect.bottom; } public float top() { return boundingRect.top; } public RectF getBoundingRect() { return boundingRect; } public boolean overlaps(float left, float top, float right, float bottom) { if(right() < left) { return false; } if(bottom() < top) { return false; } if(left() > right) { return false; } if(top() > bottom) { return false; } return true; } public static float distance(float ax, float ay,float bx, float by) { if (ax < bx) return bx - ay; else return ax - by; } public Vector2D project(float ax, float ay) { projVec.x = Float.MAX_VALUE; projVec.y = Float.MIN_VALUE; for (int i = 0; i < corner.length; ++i) { float dot = Vector2D.dot(corner[i].x,corner[i].y,ax,ay); projVec.x = JMath.min(dot, projVec.x); projVec.y = JMath.max(dot, projVec.y); } return projVec; } public Vector2D getCorner(int c) { return corner[c]; } public int getNumCorners() { return corner.length; } public boolean pointInside(float x, float y) { float newy = (float) (Math.sin(angle) * (y - center.y) + Math.cos(angle) * (x - center.x)); float newx = (float) (Math.cos(angle) * (x - center.x) - Math.sin(angle) * (y - center.y)); return (newy > center.y - (getHeight() / 2)) && (newy < center.y + (getHeight() / 2)) && (newx > center.x - (getWidth() / 2)) && (newx < center.x + (getWidth() / 2)); } public boolean pointInside(Vector2D v) { return pointInside(v.x,v.y); } public ArrayList<Vector2D> getCollsionPoints(OBB2D b) { collisionPoints.clear(); for(int i = 0; i < corner.length; ++i) { if(b.pointInside(corner[i])) { collisionPoints.add(corner[i]); } } for(int i = 0; i < b.corner.length; ++i) { if(pointInside(b.corner[i])) { collisionPoints.add(b.corner[i]); } } return collisionPoints; } }; What could be wrong? When I getCollisionPoints for 2 OBBs I know are penetrating, it returns no points. Thanks

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• Point of contact of 2 OBBs?

  - by Milo

  I'm working on the physics for my GTA2-like game so I can learn more about game physics. The collision detection and resolution are working great. I'm now just unsure how to compute the point of contact when I hit a wall. Here is my OBB class: public class OBB2D { private Vector2D projVec = new Vector2D(); private static Vector2D projAVec = new Vector2D(); private static Vector2D projBVec = new Vector2D(); private static Vector2D tempNormal = new Vector2D(); private Vector2D deltaVec = new Vector2D(); // Corners of the box, where 0 is the lower left. private Vector2D corner[] = new Vector2D[4]; private Vector2D center = new Vector2D(); private Vector2D extents = new Vector2D(); private RectF boundingRect = new RectF(); private float angle; //Two edges of the box extended away from corner[0]. private Vector2D axis[] = new Vector2D[2]; private double origin[] = new double[2]; public OBB2D(float centerx, float centery, float w, float h, float angle) { for(int i = 0; i < corner.length; ++i) { corner[i] = new Vector2D(); } for(int i = 0; i < axis.length; ++i) { axis[i] = new Vector2D(); } set(centerx,centery,w,h,angle); } public OBB2D(float left, float top, float width, float height) { for(int i = 0; i < corner.length; ++i) { corner[i] = new Vector2D(); } for(int i = 0; i < axis.length; ++i) { axis[i] = new Vector2D(); } set(left + (width / 2), top + (height / 2),width,height,0.0f); } public void set(float centerx,float centery,float w, float h,float angle) { float vxx = (float)Math.cos(angle); float vxy = (float)Math.sin(angle); float vyx = (float)-Math.sin(angle); float vyy = (float)Math.cos(angle); vxx *= w / 2; vxy *= (w / 2); vyx *= (h / 2); vyy *= (h / 2); corner[0].x = centerx - vxx - vyx; corner[0].y = centery - vxy - vyy; corner[1].x = centerx + vxx - vyx; corner[1].y = centery + vxy - vyy; corner[2].x = centerx + vxx + vyx; corner[2].y = centery + vxy + vyy; corner[3].x = centerx - vxx + vyx; corner[3].y = centery - vxy + vyy; this.center.x = centerx; this.center.y = centery; this.angle = angle; computeAxes(); extents.x = w / 2; extents.y = h / 2; computeBoundingRect(); } //Updates the axes after the corners move. Assumes the //corners actually form a rectangle. private void computeAxes() { axis[0].x = corner[1].x - corner[0].x; axis[0].y = corner[1].y - corner[0].y; axis[1].x = corner[3].x - corner[0].x; axis[1].y = corner[3].y - corner[0].y; // Make the length of each axis 1/edge length so we know any // dot product must be less than 1 to fall within the edge. for (int a = 0; a < axis.length; ++a) { float l = axis[a].length(); float ll = l * l; axis[a].x = axis[a].x / ll; axis[a].y = axis[a].y / ll; origin[a] = corner[0].dot(axis[a]); } } public void computeBoundingRect() { boundingRect.left = JMath.min(JMath.min(corner[0].x, corner[3].x), JMath.min(corner[1].x, corner[2].x)); boundingRect.top = JMath.min(JMath.min(corner[0].y, corner[1].y),JMath.min(corner[2].y, corner[3].y)); boundingRect.right = JMath.max(JMath.max(corner[1].x, corner[2].x), JMath.max(corner[0].x, corner[3].x)); boundingRect.bottom = JMath.max(JMath.max(corner[2].y, corner[3].y),JMath.max(corner[0].y, corner[1].y)); } public void set(RectF rect) { set(rect.centerX(),rect.centerY(),rect.width(),rect.height(),0.0f); } // Returns true if other overlaps one dimension of this. private boolean overlaps1Way(OBB2D other) { for (int a = 0; a < axis.length; ++a) { double t = other.corner[0].dot(axis[a]); // Find the extent of box 2 on axis a double tMin = t; double tMax = t; for (int c = 1; c < corner.length; ++c) { t = other.corner[c].dot(axis[a]); if (t < tMin) { tMin = t; } else if (t > tMax) { tMax = t; } } // We have to subtract off the origin // See if [tMin, tMax] intersects [0, 1] if ((tMin > 1 + origin[a]) || (tMax < origin[a])) { // There was no intersection along this dimension; // the boxes cannot possibly overlap. return false; } } // There was no dimension along which there is no intersection. // Therefore the boxes overlap. return true; } public void moveTo(float centerx, float centery) { float cx,cy; cx = center.x; cy = center.y; deltaVec.x = centerx - cx; deltaVec.y = centery - cy; for (int c = 0; c < 4; ++c) { corner[c].x += deltaVec.x; corner[c].y += deltaVec.y; } boundingRect.left += deltaVec.x; boundingRect.top += deltaVec.y; boundingRect.right += deltaVec.x; boundingRect.bottom += deltaVec.y; this.center.x = centerx; this.center.y = centery; computeAxes(); } // Returns true if the intersection of the boxes is non-empty. public boolean overlaps(OBB2D other) { if(right() < other.left()) { return false; } if(bottom() < other.top()) { return false; } if(left() > other.right()) { return false; } if(top() > other.bottom()) { return false; } if(other.getAngle() == 0.0f && getAngle() == 0.0f) { return true; } return overlaps1Way(other) && other.overlaps1Way(this); } public Vector2D getCenter() { return center; } public float getWidth() { return extents.x * 2; } public float getHeight() { return extents.y * 2; } public void setAngle(float angle) { set(center.x,center.y,getWidth(),getHeight(),angle); } public float getAngle() { return angle; } public void setSize(float w,float h) { set(center.x,center.y,w,h,angle); } public float left() { return boundingRect.left; } public float right() { return boundingRect.right; } public float bottom() { return boundingRect.bottom; } public float top() { return boundingRect.top; } public RectF getBoundingRect() { return boundingRect; } public boolean overlaps(float left, float top, float right, float bottom) { if(right() < left) { return false; } if(bottom() < top) { return false; } if(left() > right) { return false; } if(top() > bottom) { return false; } return true; } public static float distance(float ax, float ay,float bx, float by) { if (ax < bx) return bx - ay; else return ax - by; } public Vector2D project(float ax, float ay) { projVec.x = Float.MAX_VALUE; projVec.y = Float.MIN_VALUE; for (int i = 0; i < corner.length; ++i) { float dot = Vector2D.dot(corner[i].x,corner[i].y,ax,ay); projVec.x = JMath.min(dot, projVec.x); projVec.y = JMath.max(dot, projVec.y); } return projVec; } public Vector2D getCorner(int c) { return corner[c]; } public int getNumCorners() { return corner.length; } public static float collisionResponse(OBB2D a, OBB2D b, Vector2D outNormal) { float depth = Float.MAX_VALUE; for (int i = 0; i < a.getNumCorners() + b.getNumCorners(); ++i) { Vector2D edgeA; Vector2D edgeB; if(i >= a.getNumCorners()) { edgeA = b.getCorner((i + b.getNumCorners() - 1) % b.getNumCorners()); edgeB = b.getCorner(i % b.getNumCorners()); } else { edgeA = a.getCorner((i + a.getNumCorners() - 1) % a.getNumCorners()); edgeB = a.getCorner(i % a.getNumCorners()); } tempNormal.x = edgeB.x -edgeA.x; tempNormal.y = edgeB.y - edgeA.y; tempNormal.normalize(); projAVec.equals(a.project(tempNormal.x,tempNormal.y)); projBVec.equals(b.project(tempNormal.x,tempNormal.y)); float distance = OBB2D.distance(projAVec.x, projAVec.y,projBVec.x,projBVec.y); if (distance > 0.0f) { return 0.0f; } else { float d = Math.abs(distance); if (d < depth) { depth = d; outNormal.equals(tempNormal); } } } float dx,dy; dx = b.getCenter().x - a.getCenter().x; dy = b.getCenter().y - a.getCenter().y; float dot = Vector2D.dot(dx,dy,outNormal.x,outNormal.y); if(dot > 0) { outNormal.x = -outNormal.x; outNormal.y = -outNormal.y; } return depth; } public Vector2D getMoveDeltaVec() { return deltaVec; } }; Thanks!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, May 27, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, May 27, 2010New ProjectsBinding Navigator: Clone of WinForms BindingNavigator that is able to work with any type of DataSource. For full functionality it requires the DataSource to implement...DEWD: DEWD is an Umbraco 4.0 extension used to edit sequential data such as rows in a SQL server database table. It's meant to allow developers to quickl...Eletronic Invoice Extensions: A simple DLL to use against XSD and validate a XML.EssionCalendar: EssionCal EssionCalExpression Encoder Batch Processor: Importing your videotapes into Windows is easy with the built-in utilities, but if your importer does not encode to your desired format, you need t...Feedback Form: Feedback application makes it easier for attendees who attend an seminar/event and event organizers. Organizers of the event will no longer need to...Find in Start Menu: Find in Start MenuIE8 Web Slices Pack: IE8 Web Slices Pack is a package of 5 types of web slices ready to be customized via a mini-CMS for your web site or for your custom IE8 installer....KafTK: Iskakov AzamatMicrosoft Dynamics NAV text export splitter: Utility for splitting Microsoft Dynamics NAV object exports (in text format) into files that each contain a single object. MultiPoint Vote: Voting is more innovative and catchy through this MultiPoint application. Using MultiPoint SDK 1.5 and Visual C#, this prototype emphasizes the cap...NebDotNet: NebDotNetnsim: Some simulation issues.OpenLight Group Common Lib: This project is a set of classes commonly used across OpenLight Group projects.pstsdk.net: .NET port of PST File Format SDK: pstsdk.net makes it easier for .NET developers to access the PST file format. This is a direct C# port of the PST File Format SDK project which is ...RavenMVC: A NoSQL Demo App using RavenDB and ASP.NET MVC 2.Remics: Remics is a toolkit for reverse engineering tools. Open source (MIT license). The goal of Remics is enabling developers (or researchers) quickly...RIA Services to Legacy DAL Integration Library: RIA Services to Legacy DAL Integration LibrarySharePoint List Adapters for SSIS: SSIS source and destination components to access SharePoint lists using basic authenticationSql Query Modelling Language: This project library creates simple Sql queries.Thumb nail creator and image resizer: a user control to create thubnails and resize images for displayTK: study projectViperWorks Ignition: Ignition is application framework for WinForms and WPF business applications. Built in webservice generation, reporting and rapid application devel...XNA Image Reflector: XNA Image Reflector allows you to add Web 2.0-like reflections to images in a few clicksXNArkanoid: XNArkanoid is a Windows Phone 7 remake of the classic Taito´s Arkanoid. It´s developed in C#, using XNA Framework v4.0.New ReleasesAcies: Acies - Alpha Build 0.0.5: First alpha release. Requires Microsoft XNA Framework Redistributable 3.1 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=53867a2a-e249...Ajax Toolkit for ASP.NET MVC: Ajax Toolkit for ASP.NET MVC v20100527: change array datasource to json datasource allow lowercaseAttribute Builder: Attribute Builder 1.0: Attribute Builder 1.0Support for parameter-less constructors, constructors with parameters and object initialization with field and property assign...Binding Navigator: TTBindingNavigator preview: First binary release. Only control without samples.Bojinx: Bojinx Core V4.5.15: Bugs fixed: Clean up in the event handler Added more disposal features to better clean up contexts on unload. Optimized command processing fur...CBM-Command: Version 1.0 - 2010-05-26: Release Notes - 2010-05-26 - Version 1.0New Features None Changes Fixed bug where you could move to an unopened panel Fixed bug where you could ...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V03: This is the second release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open sourcen NNTP Bridge. ...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V04: This is the second release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open sourcen NNTP Bridge. ...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V05: This is the second release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open sourcen NNTP Bridge. ...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V06: This is the second release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open sourcen NNTP Bridge. ...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V07: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open sourcen NNTP Bridge. This release solves...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V08: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release solves ...Dot Game: Dot Game Network version: Now, you can play over network.EpsiRisk: EPSI RISK V1: First Stable Version of EpsiRISK ! Enjoy !Event Scavenger: Viewer 3.3.0: Added grouping functionality to Viewer. Group expanding/collapsing only supported under Windows Vista/7 and onwards. Viewer version set to 3.3.0.FAST for Sharepoint MOSS 2010 Query Tool: Version 1.0: Full Release Added sorting Added custom trim duplicates Added UI improvements Added ignore certificate errorsFoursquare for Windows Phone 7: Foursquare 2010.05.26.01: Foursquare 2010.05.26.01 Updates: Corrected issue with isPrivate, sendToTwitter, and sendToFacebookHobbyBrew Mobile: Beta 3: ATTENZIONE notifica nuove versioni via email disponibile (leggi in fondo)! Supporto alla rotazione dello schermo: Malti e Luppoli si affiancano or...IE8 Web Slices Pack: IE8 Web Slices Pack v2.0: This release of the Web Slices Pack supports 5 different Web Slices and a mini CMS to administer the info in the Web Slices.manx: manx data 1.0: Initial dump of data. This is a raw SQL dump script that deletes all existing data and inserts the initial dataset as received from Paul Williams....Microsoft Web Protection Library: WPL May CTP: This preview of the Web Protection Library includes AntiXSS - an updated Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library removes some bugs and is now usable in ...MultiPoint Vote: MultiPoint Vote v.1: MultiPoint Vote v1 Features This accepts user inputs: number of participants, poll/survey title and the list of options A text file containing th...NLog - Advanced .NET Logging: Nightly Build 2010.05.26.001: Changes since the last build:2010-05-25 19:21:49 Jarek Kowalski Reordered parameters of AsynchronousAction<T> 2010-05-25 19:16:02 Jarek Kowalski N...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Class Libraries, version 1.0.1.124: The NodeXL class libraries can be used to display network graphs in .NET applications. To include a NodeXL network graph in a WPF desktop or Windo...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel 2007 Template, version 1.0.1.124: The NodeXL Excel 2007 template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 workbook. What's NewThis is a minor re...OpenExpressApp let business people build application: OpenExpressApp for .Net4: 从.Net3.5 SP1 升级到.Net4 ,升级主要内容: 1. 解决了一些内存泄露问题 2. 修改了一些bug 3. 进行了部分代码重构 4. 使用MEF替代了PrismRavenMVC: RavenMVC 0.1: A NoSQL demo app in ASP.NET MVC using RavenDB.SharePoint List Adapters for SSIS: Initial Release: Contains the raw assemblies necessary to use the SharePoint list adapters with basic authentication. See the read me file for details on using in ...Sql Query Modelling Language: Sql Qml V1: This is first versionThumb nail creator and image resizer: ThumbnailCreator 1.0: This is the very first release I built it for my self so it a bit rough but i thought others might fint it usefulluptime.exe: uptime.exe v1.1: Changed the calculation of the uptime. It's now based on the LastbootUpTime value obtained from WMI.VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30526.0: Automatic drop of latest buildViperWorks Ignition: Test: TestXmlCodeEditor: Release 0.91 Alpha: Release 0.91 AlphaXNA Image Reflector: XNA Image Reflector v 1.1: This release has been compiled with XNA Game Studio 3.1, so you will need to download the XNA Runtime 3.1 in order to run it.Xna.Extend: Xna Extend (Ver 0.0.1 beta): This is the betas, betas, beta, test version (Version 0.0.1 beta). It includes only the input and audio components. If you experience any errors, o...XNArkanoid: XNArkanoid v 0.2b: XNArkanoid v 0.2. Initial beta releaseMost Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelASP.NETMost Active ProjectsAStar.netpatterns & practices – Enterprise Librarypatterns & practices: Windows Azure Security GuidanceSqlServerExtensionsMono.AddinsBlogEngine.NETCustomer Portal Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRMRawrCodeReviewGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & Presentation

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• Option Trading: Getting the most out of the event session options

  - by extended_events

  You can control different aspects of how an event session behaves by setting the event session options as part of the CREATE EVENT SESSION DDL. The default settings for the event session options are designed to handle most of the common event collection situations so I generally recommend that you just use the defaults. Like everything in the real world though, there are going to be a handful of “special cases” that require something different. This post focuses on identifying the special cases and the correct use of the options to accommodate those cases. There is a reason it’s called Default The default session options specify a total event buffer size of 4 MB with a 30 second latency. Translating this into human terms; this means that our default behavior is that the system will start processing events from the event buffer when we reach about 1.3 MB of events or after 30 seconds, which ever comes first. Aside: What’s up with the 1.3 MB, I thought you said the buffer was 4 MB?The Extended Events engine takes the total buffer size specified by MAX_MEMORY (4MB by default) and divides it into 3 equally sized buffers. This is done so that a session can be publishing events to one buffer while other buffers are being processed. There are always at least three buffers; how to get more than three is covered later. Using this configuration, the Extended Events engine can “keep up” with most event sessions on standard workloads. Why is this? The fact is that most events are small, really small; on the order of a couple hundred bytes. Even when you start considering events that carry dynamically sized data (eg. binary, text, etc.) or adding actions that collect additional data, the total size of the event is still likely to be pretty small. This means that each buffer can likely hold thousands of events before it has to be processed. When the event buffers are finally processed there is an economy of scale achieved since most targets support bulk processing of the events so they are processed at the buffer level rather than the individual event level. When all this is working together it’s more likely that a full buffer will be processed and put back into the ready queue before the remaining buffers (remember, there are at least three) are full. I know what you’re going to say: “My server is exceptional! My workload is so massive it defies categorization!” OK, maybe you weren’t going to say that exactly, but you were probably thinking it. The point is that there are situations that won’t be covered by the Default, but that’s a good place to start and this post assumes you’ve started there so that you have something to look at in order to determine if you do have a special case that needs different settings. So let’s get to the special cases… What event just fired?! How about now?! Now?! If you believe the commercial adage from Heinz Ketchup (Heinz Slow Good Ketchup ad on You Tube), some things are worth the wait. This is not a belief held by most DBAs, particularly DBAs who are looking for an answer to a troubleshooting question fast. If you’re one of these anxious DBAs, or maybe just a Program Manager doing a demo, then 30 seconds might be longer than you’re comfortable waiting. If you find yourself in this situation then consider changing the MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY option for your event session. This option will force the event buffers to be processed based on your time schedule. This option only makes sense for the asynchronous targets since those are the ones where we allow events to build up in the event buffer – if you’re using one of the synchronous targets this option isn’t relevant. Avoid forgotten events by increasing your memory Have you ever had one of those days where you keep forgetting things? That can happen in Extended Events too; we call it dropped events. In order to optimizes for server performance and help ensure that the Extended Events doesn’t block the server if to drop events that can’t be published to a buffer because the buffer is full. You can determine if events are being dropped from a session by querying the dm_xe_sessions DMV and looking at the dropped_event_count field. Aside: Should you care if you’re dropping events?Maybe not – think about why you’re collecting data in the first place and whether you’re really going to miss a few dropped events. For example, if you’re collecting query duration stats over thousands of executions of a query it won’t make a huge difference to miss a couple executions. Use your best judgment. If you find that your session is dropping events it means that the event buffer is not large enough to handle the volume of events that are being published. There are two ways to address this problem. First, you could collect fewer events – examine you session to see if you are over collecting. Do you need all the actions you’ve specified? Could you apply a predicate to be more specific about when you fire the event? Assuming the session is defined correctly, the next option is to change the MAX_MEMORY option to a larger number. Picking the right event buffer size might take some trial and error, but a good place to start is with the number of dropped events compared to the number you’ve collected. Aside: There are three different behaviors for dropping events that you specify using the EVENT_RETENTION_MODE option. The default is to allow single event loss and you should stick with this setting since it is the best choice for keeping the impact on server performance low.You’ll be tempted to use the setting to not lose any events (NO_EVENT_LOSS) – resist this urge since it can result in blocking on the server. If you’re worried that you’re losing events you should be increasing your event buffer memory as described in this section. Some events are too big to fail A less common reason for dropping an event is when an event is so large that it can’t fit into the event buffer. Even though most events are going to be small, you might find a condition that occasionally generates a very large event. You can determine if your session is dropping large events by looking at the dm_xe_sessions DMV once again, this time check the largest_event_dropped_size. If this value is larger than the size of your event buffer [remember, the size of your event buffer, by default, is max_memory / 3] then you need a large event buffer. To specify a large event buffer you set the MAX_EVENT_SIZE option to a value large enough to fit the largest event dropped based on data from the DMV. When you set this option the Extended Events engine will create two buffers of this size to accommodate these large events. As an added bonus (no extra charge) the large event buffer will also be used to store normal events in the cases where the normal event buffers are all full and waiting to be processed. (Note: This is just a side-effect, not the intended use. If you’re dropping many normal events then you should increase your normal event buffer size.) Partitioning: moving your events to a sub-division Earlier I alluded to the fact that you can configure your event session to use more than the standard three event buffers – this is called partitioning and is controlled by the MEMORY_PARTITION_MODE option. The result of setting this option is fairly easy to explain, but knowing when to use it is a bit more art than science. First the science… You can configure partitioning in three ways: None, Per NUMA Node & Per CPU. This specifies the location where sets of event buffers are created with fairly obvious implication. There are rules we follow for sub-dividing the total memory (specified by MAX_MEMORY) between all the event buffers that are specific to the mode used: None: 3 buffers (fixed)Node: 3 * number_of_nodesCPU: 2.5 * number_of_cpus Here are some examples of what this means for different Node/CPU counts: Configuration None Node CPU 2 CPUs, 1 Node 3 buffers 3 buffers 5 buffers 6 CPUs, 2 Node 3 buffers 6 buffers 15 buffers 40 CPUs, 5 Nodes 3 buffers 15 buffers 100 buffers   Aside: Buffer size on multi-processor computersAs the number of Nodes or CPUs increases, the size of the event buffer gets smaller because the total memory is sub-divided into more pieces. The defaults will hold up to this for a while since each buffer set is holding events only from the Node or CPU that it is associated with, but at some point the buffers will get too small and you’ll either see events being dropped or you’ll get an error when you create your session because you’re below the minimum buffer size. Increase the MAX_MEMORY setting to an appropriate number for the configuration. The most likely reason to start partitioning is going to be related to performance. If you notice that running an event session is impacting the performance of your server beyond a reasonably expected level [Yes, there is a reasonably expected level of work required to collect events.] then partitioning might be an answer. Before you partition you might want to check a few other things: Is your event retention set to NO_EVENT_LOSS and causing blocking? (I told you not to do this.) Consider changing your event loss mode or increasing memory. Are you over collecting and causing more work than necessary? Consider adding predicates to events or removing unnecessary events and actions from your session. Are you writing the file target to the same slow disk that you use for TempDB and your other high activity databases? <kidding> <not really> It’s always worth considering the end to end picture – if you’re writing events to a file you can be impacted by I/O, network; all the usual stuff. Assuming you’ve ruled out the obvious (and not so obvious) issues, there are performance conditions that will be addressed by partitioning. For example, it’s possible to have a successful event session (eg. no dropped events) but still see a performance impact because you have many CPUs all attempting to write to the same free buffer and having to wait in line to finish their work. This is a case where partitioning would relieve the contention between the different CPUs and likely reduce the performance impact cause by the event session. There is no DMV you can check to find these conditions – sorry – that’s where the art comes in. This is  largely a matter of experimentation. On the bright side you probably won’t need to to worry about this level of detail all that often. The performance impact of Extended Events is significantly lower than what you may be used to with SQL Trace. You will likely only care about the impact if you are trying to set up a long running event session that will be part of your everyday workload – sessions used for short term troubleshooting will likely fall into the “reasonably expected impact” category. Hey buddy – I think you forgot something OK, there are two options I didn’t cover: STARTUP_STATE & TRACK_CAUSALITY. If you want your event sessions to start automatically when the server starts, set the STARTUP_STATE option to ON. (Now there is only one option I didn’t cover.) I’m going to leave causality for another post since it’s not really related to session behavior, it’s more about event analysis. - Mike Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Announcing ASP.NET MVC 3 (Release Candidate 2)

  - by ScottGu

  Earlier today the ASP.NET team shipped the final release candidate (RC2) for ASP.NET MVC 3.  You can download and install it here. Almost there… Today’s RC2 release is the near-final release of ASP.NET MVC 3, and is a true “release candidate” in that we are hoping to not make any more code changes with it.  We are publishing it today so that people can do final testing with it, let us know if they find any last minute “showstoppers”, and start updating their apps to use it.  We will officially ship the final ASP.NET MVC 3 “RTM” build in January. Works with both VS 2010 and VS 2010 SP1 Beta Today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 release works with both the shipping version of Visual Studio 2010 / Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, as well as the newly released VS 2010 SP1 Beta.  This means that you do not need to install VS 2010 SP1 (or the SP1 beta) in order to use ASP.NET MVC 3.  It works just fine with the shipping Visual Studio 2010.  I’ll do a blog post next week, though, about some of the nice additional feature goodies that come with VS 2010 SP1 (including IIS Express and SQL CE support within VS) which make the dev experience for both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC even better. Bugs and Perf Fixes Today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 build contains many bug fixes and performance optimizations.  Our latest performance tests indicate that ASP.NET MVC 3 is now faster than ASP.NET MVC 2, and that existing ASP.NET MVC applications will experience a slight performance increase when updated to run using ASP.NET MVC 3. Final Tweaks and Fit-N-Finish In addition to bug fixes and performance optimizations, today’s RC2 build contains a number of last-minute feature tweaks and “fit-n-finish” changes for the new ASP.NET MVC 3 features.  The feedback and suggestions we’ve received during the public previews has been invaluable in guiding these final tweaks, and we really appreciate people’s support in sending this feedback our way.  Below is a short-list of some of the feature changes/tweaks made between last month’s ASP.NET MVC 3 RC release and today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 release: jQuery updates and addition of jQuery UI The default ASP.NET MVC 3 project templates have been updated to include jQuery 1.4.4 and jQuery Validation 1.7.  We are also excited to announce today that we are including jQuery UI within our default ASP.NET project templates going forward.  jQuery UI provides a powerful set of additional UI widgets and capabilities.  It will be added by default to your project’s \scripts folder when you create new ASP.NET MVC 3 projects. Improved View Scaffolding The T4 templates used for scaffolding views with the Add-View dialog now generates views that use Html.EditorFor instead of helpers such as Html.TextBoxFor. This change enables you to optionally annotate models with metadata (using data annotation attributes) to better customize the output of your UI at runtime. The Add View scaffolding also supports improved detection and usage of primary key information on models (including support for naming conventions like ID, ProductID, etc).  For example: the Add View dialog box uses this information to ensure that the primary key value is not scaffold as an editable form field, and that links between views are auto-generated correctly with primary key information. The default Edit and Create templates also now include references to the jQuery scripts needed for client validation.  Scaffold form views now support client-side validation by default (no extra steps required).  Client-side validation with ASP.NET MVC 3 is also done using an unobtrusive javascript approach – making pages fast and clean. [ControllerSessionState] –> [SessionState] ASP.NET MVC 3 adds support for session-less controllers.  With the initial RC you used a [ControllerSessionState] attribute to specify this.  We shortened this in RC2 to just be [SessionState]: Note that in addition to turning off session state, you can also set it to be read-only (which is useful for webfarm scenarios where you are reading but not updating session state on a particular request). [SkipRequestValidation] –> [AllowHtml] ASP.NET MVC includes built-in support to protect against HTML and Cross-Site Script Injection Attacks, and will throw an error by default if someone tries to post HTML content as input.  Developers need to explicitly indicate that this is allowed (and that they’ve hopefully built their app to securely support it) in order to enable it. With ASP.NET MVC 3, we are also now supporting a new attribute that you can apply to properties of models/viewmodels to indicate that HTML input is enabled, which enables much more granular protection in a DRY way.  In last month’s RC release this attribute was named [SkipRequestValidation].  With RC2 we renamed it to [AllowHtml] to make it more intuitive: Setting the above [AllowHtml] attribute on a model/viewmodel will cause ASP.NET MVC 3 to turn off HTML injection protection when model binding just that property. Html.Raw() helper method The new Razor view engine introduced with ASP.NET MVC 3 automatically HTML encodes output by default.  This helps provide an additional level of protection against HTML and Script injection attacks. With RC2 we are adding a Html.Raw() helper method that you can use to explicitly indicate that you do not want to HTML encode your output, and instead want to render the content “as-is”: ViewModel/View –> ViewBag ASP.NET MVC has (since V1) supported a ViewData[] dictionary within Controllers and Views that enables developers to pass information from a Controller to a View in a late-bound way.  This approach can be used instead of, or in combination with, a strongly-typed model class.  The below code demonstrates a common use case – where a strongly typed Product model is passed to the view in addition to two late-bound variables via the ViewData[] dictionary: With ASP.NET MVC 3 we are introducing a new API that takes advantage of the dynamic type support within .NET 4 to set/retrieve these values.  It allows you to use standard “dot” notation to specify any number of additional variables to be passed, and does not require that you create a strongly-typed class to do so.  With earlier previews of ASP.NET MVC 3 we exposed this API using a dynamic property called “ViewModel” on the Controller base class, and with a dynamic property called “View” within view templates.  A lot of people found the fact that there were two different names confusing, and several also said that using the name ViewModel was confusing in this context – since often you create strongly-typed ViewModel classes in ASP.NET MVC, and they do not use this API.  With RC2 we are exposing a dynamic property that has the same name – ViewBag – within both Controllers and Views.  It is a dynamic collection that allows you to pass additional bits of data from your controller to your view template to help generate a response.  Below is an example of how we could use it to pass a time-stamp message as well as a list of all categories to our view template: Below is an example of how our view template (which is strongly-typed to expect a Product class as its model) can use the two extra bits of information we passed in our ViewBag to generate the response.  In particular, notice how we are using the list of categories passed in the dynamic ViewBag collection to generate a dropdownlist of friendly category names to help set the CategoryID property of our Product object.  The above Controller/View combination will then generate an HTML response like below.    Output Caching Improvements ASP.NET MVC 3’s output caching system no longer requires you to specify a VaryByParam property when declaring an [OutputCache] attribute on a Controller action method.  MVC3 now automatically varies the output cached entries when you have explicit parameters on your action method – allowing you to cleanly enable output caching on actions using code like below: In addition to supporting full page output caching, ASP.NET MVC 3 also supports partial-page caching – which allows you to cache a region of output and re-use it across multiple requests or controllers.  The [OutputCache] behavior for partial-page caching was updated with RC2 so that sub-content cached entries are varied based on input parameters as opposed to the URL structure of the top-level request – which makes caching scenarios both easier and more powerful than the behavior in the previous RC. @model declaration does not add whitespace In earlier previews, the strongly-typed @model declaration at the top of a Razor view added a blank line to the rendered HTML output. This has been fixed so that the declaration does not introduce whitespace. Changed "Html.ValidationMessage" Method to Display the First Useful Error Message The behavior of the Html.ValidationMessage() helper was updated to show the first useful error message instead of simply displaying the first error. During model binding, the ModelState dictionary can be populated from multiple sources with error messages about the property, including from the model itself (if it implements IValidatableObject), from validation attributes applied to the property, and from exceptions thrown while the property is being accessed. When the Html.ValidationMessage() method displays a validation message, it now skips model-state entries that include an exception, because these are generally not intended for the end user. Instead, the method looks for the first validation message that is not associated with an exception and displays that message. If no such message is found, it defaults to a generic error message that is associated with the first exception. RemoteAttribute “Fields” -> “AdditionalFields” ASP.NET MVC 3 includes built-in remote validation support with its validation infrastructure.  This means that the client-side validation script library used by ASP.NET MVC 3 can automatically call back to controllers you expose on the server to determine whether an input element is indeed valid as the user is editing the form (allowing you to provide real-time validation updates). You can accomplish this by decorating a model/viewmodel property with a [Remote] attribute that specifies the controller/action that should be invoked to remotely validate it.  With the RC this attribute had a “Fields” property that could be used to specify additional input elements that should be sent from the client to the server to help with the validation logic.  To improve the clarity of what this property does we have renamed it to “AdditionalFields” with today’s RC2 release. ViewResult.Model and ViewResult.ViewBag Properties The ViewResult class now exposes both a “Model” and “ViewBag” property off of it.  This makes it easier to unit test Controllers that return views, and avoids you having to access the Model via the ViewResult.ViewData.Model property. Installation Notes You can download and install the ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 build here.  It can be installed on top of the previous ASP.NET MVC 3 RC release (it should just replace the bits as part of its setup). The one component that will not be updated by the above setup (if you already have it installed) is the NuGet Package Manager.  If you already have NuGet installed, please go to the Visual Studio Extensions Manager (via the Tools –> Extensions menu option) and click on the “Updates” tab.  You should see NuGet listed there – please click the “Update” button next to it to have VS update the extension to today’s release. If you do not have NuGet installed (and did not install the ASP.NET MVC RC build), then NuGet will be installed as part of your ASP.NET MVC 3 setup, and you do not need to take any additional steps to make it work. Summary We are really close to the final ASP.NET MVC 3 release, and will deliver the final “RTM” build of it next month.  It has been only a little over 7 months since ASP.NET MVC 2 shipped, and I’m pretty amazed by the huge number of new features, improvements, and refinements that the team has been able to add with this release (Razor, Unobtrusive JavaScript, NuGet, Dependency Injection, Output Caching, and a lot, lot more).  I’ll be doing a number of blog posts over the next few weeks talking about many of them in more depth. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Recover Data Like a Forensics Expert Using an Ubuntu Live CD

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  There are lots of utilities to recover deleted files, but what if you can’t boot up your computer, or the whole drive has been formatted? We’ll show you some tools that will dig deep and recover the most elusive deleted files, or even whole hard drive partitions. We’ve shown you simple ways to recover accidentally deleted files, even a simple method that can be done from an Ubuntu Live CD, but for hard disks that have been heavily corrupted, those methods aren’t going to cut it. In this article, we’ll examine four tools that can recover data from the most messed up hard drives, regardless of whether they were formatted for a Windows, Linux, or Mac computer, or even if the partition table is wiped out entirely. Note: These tools cannot recover data that has been overwritten on a hard disk. Whether a deleted file has been overwritten depends on many factors – the quicker you realize that you want to recover a file, the more likely you will be able to do so. Our setup To show these tools, we’ve set up a small 1 GB hard drive, with half of the space partitioned as ext2, a file system used in Linux, and half the space partitioned as FAT32, a file system used in older Windows systems. We stored ten random pictures on each hard drive. We then wiped the partition table from the hard drive by deleting the partitions in GParted. Is our data lost forever? Installing the tools All of the tools we’re going to use are in Ubuntu’s universe repository. To enable the repository, open Synaptic Package Manager by clicking on System in the top-left, then Administration > Synaptic Package Manager. Click on Settings > Repositories and add a check in the box labelled “Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)”. Click Close, and then in the main Synaptic Package Manager window, click the Reload button. Once the package list has reloaded, and the search index rebuilt, search for and mark for installation one or all of the following packages: testdisk, foremost, and scalpel. Testdisk includes TestDisk, which can recover lost partitions and repair boot sectors, and PhotoRec, which can recover many different types of files from tons of different file systems. Foremost, originally developed by the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations, recovers files based on their headers and other internal structures. Foremost operates on hard drives or drive image files generated by various tools. Finally, scalpel performs the same functions as foremost, but is focused on enhanced performance and lower memory usage. Scalpel may run better if you have an older machine with less RAM. Recover hard drive partitions If you can’t mount your hard drive, then its partition table might be corrupted. Before you start trying to recover your important files, it may be possible to recover one or more partitions on your drive, recovering all of your files with one step. Testdisk is the tool for the job. Start it by opening a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and typing in: sudo testdisk If you’d like, you can create a log file, though it won’t affect how much data you recover. Once you make your choice, you’re greeted with a list of the storage media on your machine. You should be able to identify the hard drive you want to recover partitions from by its size and label. TestDisk asks you select the type of partition table to search for. In most cases (ext2/3, NTFS, FAT32, etc.) you should select Intel and press Enter. Highlight Analyse and press enter. In our case, our small hard drive has previously been formatted as NTFS. Amazingly, TestDisk finds this partition, though it is unable to recover it. It also finds the two partitions we just deleted. We are able to change their attributes, or add more partitions, but we’ll just recover them by pressing Enter. If TestDisk hasn’t found all of your partitions, you can try doing a deeper search by selecting that option with the left and right arrow keys. We only had these two partitions, so we’ll recover them by selecting Write and pressing Enter. Testdisk informs us that we will have to reboot. Note: If your Ubuntu Live CD is not persistent, then when you reboot you will have to reinstall any tools that you installed earlier. After restarting, both of our partitions are back to their original states, pictures and all. Recover files of certain types For the following examples, we deleted the 10 pictures from both partitions and then reformatted them. PhotoRec Of the three tools we’ll show, PhotoRec is the most user-friendly, despite being a console-based utility. To start recovering files, open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type in: sudo photorec To begin, you are asked to select a storage device to search. You should be able to identify the right device by its size and label. Select the right device, and then hit Enter. PhotoRec asks you select the type of partition to search. In most cases (ext2/3, NTFS, FAT, etc.) you should select Intel and press Enter. You are given a list of the partitions on your selected hard drive. If you want to recover all of the files on a partition, then select Search and hit enter. However, this process can be very slow, and in our case we only want to search for pictures files, so instead we use the right arrow key to select File Opt and press Enter. PhotoRec can recover many different types of files, and deselecting each one would take a long time. Instead, we press “s” to clear all of the selections, and then find the appropriate file types – jpg, gif, and png – and select them by pressing the right arrow key. Once we’ve selected these three, we press “b” to save these selections. Press enter to return to the list of hard drive partitions. We want to search both of our partitions, so we highlight “No partition” and “Search” and then press Enter. PhotoRec prompts for a location to store the recovered files. If you have a different healthy hard drive, then we recommend storing the recovered files there. Since we’re not recovering very much, we’ll store it on the Ubuntu Live CD’s desktop. Note: Do not recover files to the hard drive you’re recovering from. PhotoRec is able to recover the 20 pictures from the partitions on our hard drive! A quick look in the recup_dir.1 directory that it creates confirms that PhotoRec has recovered all of our pictures, save for the file names. Foremost Foremost is a command-line program with no interactive interface like PhotoRec, but offers a number of command-line options to get as much data out of your had drive as possible. For a full list of options that can be tweaked via the command line, open up a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type in: foremost –h In our case, the command line options that we are going to use are: -t, a comma-separated list of types of files to search for. In our case, this is “jpeg,png,gif”. -v, enabling verbose-mode, giving us more information about what foremost is doing. -o, the output folder to store recovered files in. In our case, we created a directory called “foremost” on the desktop. -i, the input that will be searched for files. This can be a disk image in several different formats; however, we will use a hard disk, /dev/sda. Our foremost invocation is: sudo foremost –t jpeg,png,gif –o foremost –v –i /dev/sda Your invocation will differ depending on what you’re searching for and where you’re searching for it. Foremost is able to recover 17 of the 20 files stored on the hard drive. Looking at the files, we can confirm that these files were recovered relatively well, though we can see some errors in the thumbnail for 00622449.jpg. Part of this may be due to the ext2 filesystem. Foremost recommends using the –d command-line option for Linux file systems like ext2. We’ll run foremost again, adding the –d command-line option to our foremost invocation: sudo foremost –t jpeg,png,gif –d –o foremost –v –i /dev/sda This time, foremost is able to recover all 20 images! A final look at the pictures reveals that the pictures were recovered with no problems. Scalpel Scalpel is another powerful program that, like Foremost, is heavily configurable. Unlike Foremost, Scalpel requires you to edit a configuration file before attempting any data recovery. Any text editor will do, but we’ll use gedit to change the configuration file. In a terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal), type in: sudo gedit /etc/scalpel/scalpel.conf scalpel.conf contains information about a number of different file types. Scroll through this file and uncomment lines that start with a file type that you want to recover (i.e. remove the “#” character at the start of those lines). Save the file and close it. Return to the terminal window. Scalpel also has a ton of command-line options that can help you search quickly and effectively; however, we’ll just define the input device (/dev/sda) and the output folder (a folder called “scalpel” that we created on the desktop). Our invocation is: sudo scalpel /dev/sda –o scalpel Scalpel is able to recover 18 of our 20 files. A quick look at the files scalpel recovered reveals that most of our files were recovered successfully, though there were some problems (e.g. 00000012.jpg). Conclusion In our quick toy example, TestDisk was able to recover two deleted partitions, and PhotoRec and Foremost were able to recover all 20 deleted images. Scalpel recovered most of the files, but it’s very likely that playing with the command-line options for scalpel would have enabled us to recover all 20 images. These tools are lifesavers when something goes wrong with your hard drive. If your data is on the hard drive somewhere, then one of these tools will track it down! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Recover Deleted Files on an NTFS Hard Drive from a Ubuntu Live CDUse an Ubuntu Live CD to Securely Wipe Your PC’s Hard DriveReset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDBackup Your Windows Live Writer SettingsAdding extra Repositories on Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites Restore Hidden Updates in Windows 7 & Vista Iceland an Insurance Job? Find Downloads and Add-ins for Outlook Recycle !

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• NRF Online Merchandising Workshop: Where Online Retailers Are Focusing for Holiday and Beyond

  - by Rose Spicer-Oracle

  0 0 1 1204 6863 Oracle Corporation 57 16 8051 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Last month we attended the NRF Online Merchandising Workshop in LA, and it was a great opportunity to catch up with our customers, meet new retailers, and hear some great presentations from VF Corporation, Zazzle, Julep Beauty, Backcountry, eBags and more. The one-on-one conversations with Merchants and the keynote presentations carry the same themes across companies of all sizes and across verticals. With only 125 days left (and counting) until Black Friday, these conversations provided some great insight in to what’s top of mind for retailers during the most stressful time of their year, and a sneak peek in to what they will deliver this holiday season.  Some of the most popular topics were: When to start promoting for holiday: seems like a funny conversation to have in July, but a number of retailers said they already had their holiday shopping gift guides live on their site, and it was attracting a significant portion of their onsite traffic. When it comes to timing, most retailers were questioning when to begin their holiday promotions -- carefully balancing when to release pricing and specials, and knowing that customers are holding out for last-minute deals and price drops. Many retailers noted the frustrations around transparent pricing by Amazon and a few other mega-retailers last year, publishing their “lowest prices of the season” as early as October – ensuring shoppers that those prices were the best they could get all season long. Many retailers felt their hands were forced to drop prices. Others kept their set pricing with negative customer reaction, causing some to miss their holiday goals. The pressure is on, and most retailers identified November 1 as their target start date for the holiday promotions blitz. Some are even waiting for the big guys to release their “lowest prices of the season” guides and will then follow suit.      Attribution is tough – and a huge focus: understanding the path to conversion is a tough nut to crack, especially in the new omnichannel world where consumers use multiple touchpoints to make a single purchase, and internal management wants to know hard data. This has lead many retailers to invest in attribution; carefully tracking their online marketing efforts to determine what gets “credit” for the sale, instead of giving credit to the “last click.” Retailers noted that it is very difficult to determine the numbers when online and offline worlds collide – like when a shopper uses digital channels for research and then makes a purchase in a store. As one of the presenters from The North Face mentioned in her keynote, a key to enabling better customer service and satisfaction when it comes to converged online and offline sales is training the in-store staff, and creating a culture where it eventually “doesn’t matter what group gets the credit” if they all add to the sale. No doubt, the area of attribution will be a big area of retail investment in the coming years.      How to plan for the converged world: planning to ensure inventory gets where it needs to be was another concern. In conversations with retailers, we advised them to analyze customer patterns: where shoppers purchase items, where the items were sourced from and even where items are returned. This analysis is very valuable in determining inventory plans. From there, retailers can more accurately plan and allocate inventory to support both the online and offline customer behavior. As we head into the holiday season, the need for accurate enterprise-wide inventory visibility, and providing that information to associates, is even more critical to the brand-wide customer experience.       Improving the search / navigation / usability of the site(s): Aside from some of the big ideas and standard holiday pricing pressure, most conversations we had centered around continuing to improve the basics of the site. Reinvesting in search and navigation came up time and time again (FitForCommerce blogged about what a big topic it was at the event as well). Obviously getting shoppers on their path quickly and allowing them to find what they need fast is critical, but it was definitely interesting to hear just how much effort is still going in to honing the search and navigation experience. Adding new elements to search and navigation like typeahed, inventive navigation refinements, and new navigation categories like gift guides, specialized boutiques and flash sales were top of mind, in addition to searchandising and making search-driven product recommendations. (Oracle can help!)       Reducing cart abandonment: always a hot topic that is top of mind for every online retailer. Getting shoppers to the cart is often less then half the battle; getting them to click “buy” and complete the transaction is much more difficult. While retailers carefully study the checkout process and where shoppers tend to bounce, they know that how they design their checkout page is critical. We’re all online shoppers in our personal lives and we know how frustrating it can be when total prices are not transparent (i.e. shipping, processing, taxes is not included until the very last possible screen before clicking that buy button). Online retailers are struggling with where in the checkout process to surface the total price to be charged to reduce cart abandonment, while not showing the total figure too early in the process that it keeps shoppers from getting to checkout altogether. Recent research shows that providing total pricing prior to the checkout process dramatically reduces cart abandonment – as it serves as a filter to those shopping within a specific price band. Much of the cart abandonment discussion leads us to…       The free shipping / free returns question: it’s no secret that because of Amazon and programs like Prime, consumers expect free shipping, much to the chagrin of the smaller retailer. The reality is that if you’re not a mega-retailer, shipping is an expensive part of doing business that doesn’t allow most retailers to keep their prices low and offer free shipping. This has many retailers venturing out on the “free returns” path, especially in apparel. A number of retailers we spoke with are testing a flat rate shipping fee with free returns to see if they can crack the price threshold where shoppers are willing to pay for shipping with an added service. But, free shipping remains king.      Social ads and retargeting: they are working, but do they turn off consumers? That’s the big question. Every retailer we spoke with during a roundtable on the topic said that social ads and retargeting (where that pair of boots you’re been eyeing on a site magically follows you around the Internet) work and are meeting campaign goals. The larger question many retailers are asking is if this type of tactic is turning off a large number of shoppers, even if these campaigns are meeting their early goals. Retailers also mentioned that Facebook ads are working very well for them, especially when it comes to new customer acquisition, serving as a complimentary a channel to SEO when it comes to engaging new customers. While there are always new things to experiment with in retail, standard challenges are top of mind as retailers scramble to get ready for holiday. It will undoubtedly be another record-breaking online shopping season, but as retailers get more and more advanced with each Black Friday, expect some exciting things. This excitement needs to be backed by sound solutions and optimized operations. Then again, consumers are expecting more than ever, so I don’t doubt that retailers are already thinking about the possibilities of holiday 2015… and beyond. Customers who read this article, also found value in the following stories: Personalization for Retail: http://blogs.oracle.com/retail/entry/personalization_for_retailShop Direct User Experience Focus Drives Sales:https://blogs.oracle.com/retail/entry/shop_direct_user_experience_focusMaking Waves: Australian Online Retailer SurfStitch: https://blogs.oracle.com/oracleretail/entry/surf_stitchWhat’s new in Oracle Commerce v11.1 for RetailWhat the Content+Commerce Equation is Missing

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• Not All “Viruses” Are Viruses: 10 Malware Terms Explained

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Most people seem to call every type of malware a “virus”, but that isn’t technically accurate. You’ve probably heard of many more terms beyond virus: malware, worm, Trojan, rootkit, keylogger, spyware, and more. But what do all these terms mean? These terms aren’t just used by geeks. They make their way into even mainstream news stories about the latest web security problems and tech scares. Understanding them will help you understand the dangers your\ hear about. Malware The word “malware” is short for “malicious software.” Many people use the word “virus” to indicate any type of harmful software, but a virus is actually just a specific type of malware. The word “malware” encompasses all harmful software, including all the ones listed below. Virus Let’s start with viruses. A virus is a type of malware that copies itself by infecting other files,  just as viruses in the real world infect biological cells and use those biological cells to reproduce copies of themselves. A virus can do many different things — watch in the background and steal your passwords, display advertisements, or just crash your computer — but the key thing that makes it a virus is how it spreads. When you run a virus, it will infect programs on your computer. When you run the program on another computer, the virus will infect programs on that computer, and so on. For example, a virus might infect program files on a USB stick. When the programs on that USB stick are run on another computer, the virus runs on the other computer and infects more program files. The virus will continue to spread in this way. Worm A worm is similar to a virus, but it spreads a different way. Rather than infecting files and relying on human activity to move those files around and run them on different systems, a worm spreads over computer networks on its own accord. For example, the Blaster and Sasser worms spread very quickly in the days of Windows XP because Windows XP did not come properly secured and exposed system services to the Internet. The worm accessed these system services over the Internet, exploited a vulnerability, and infected the computer. The worm then used the new infected computer to continue replicating itself. Such worms are less common now that Windows is properly firewalled by default, but worms can also spread in other ways — for example, by mass-emailing themselves to every email address in an effected user’s address book. Like a virus, a worm can do any number of other harmful things once it infects a computer. The key thing that makes it a worm is simply how it spreads copies of itself. Trojan (or Trojan Horse) A Trojan horse, or Trojan, is a type of malware that disguises itself as a legitimate file. When you download and run the program, the Trojan horse will run in the background, allowing third-parties to access your computer. Trojans can do this for any number of reasons — to monitor activity on your computer, to join your computer to a botnet. Trojans may also be used to open the floodgates and download many other types of malware onto your computer. The key thing that makes this type of malware a Trojan is how it arrives. It pretends to be a useful program and, when run, it hides in the background and gives malicious people access to your computer. It isn’t obsessed with copying itself into other files or spreading over the network, as viruses and worms are. For example, a piece of pirated software on an unscrupulous website may actually contain a Trojan. Spyware Spyware is a type of malicious software that spies on you without your knowledge. It collects a variety of different types of data, depending on the piece of spyware. Different types of malware can function as spyware — there may be malicious spyware included in Trojans that spies on your keystrokes to steal financial data, for example. More “legitimate” spyware may be bundled along with free software and simply monitor your web browsing habits, uploading this data to advertising servers so the software’s creator can make money from selling their knowledge of your activities. Adware Adware often comes along with spyware. It’s any type of software that displays advertising on your computer. Programs that display advertisements inside the program itself aren’t generally classified as malware. The kind of “adware” that’s particularly malicious is the kind that abuses its access to your system to display ads when it shouldn’t. For example, a piece of harmful adware may cause pop-up advertisements to appear on your computer when you’re not doing anything else. Or, adware may inject additional advertising into other web pages as you browse the web. Adware is often combined with spyware — a piece of malware may monitor your browsing habits and use them to serve you more targeted ads. Adware is more “socially acceptable” than other types of malware on Windows and you may see adware bundled with legitimate programs. For example, some people consider the Ask Toolbar included with Oracle’s Java software adware. Keylogger A keylogger is a type of malware that runs in the background, recording every key stroke you make. These keystrokes can include usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, and other sensitive data. The keylogger then, most likely, uploads these keystrokes to a malicious server, where it can be analyzed and people can pick out the useful passwords and credit card numbers. Other types of malware can act as keyloggers. A virus, worm, or Trojan may function as a keylogger, for example. Keyloggers may also be installed for monitoring purposes by businesses or even jealous spouses. Botnet, Bot A botnet is a large network of computers that are under the botnet creator’s control. Each computer functions as a “bot” because it’s infected with a specific piece of malware. Once the bot software infects the computer, ir will connect to some sort of control server and wait for instructions from the botnet’s creator. For example, a botnet may be used to initiate a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack. Every computer in the botnet will be told to bombard a specific website or server with requests at once, and such millions or requests can cause a server to become unresponsive or crash. Botnet creators may sell access to their botnets, allowing other malicious individuals to use large botnets to do their dirty work. Rootkit A rootkit is a type of malware designed to burrow deep into your computer, avoiding detection by security programs and users. For example, a rootkit might load before most of Windows, burying itself deep into the system and modifying system functions so that security programs can’t detect it. A rootkit might hide itself completely, preventing itself from showing up in the Windows task manager. The key thing that makes a type of malware a rootkit is that it’s stealthy and focused on hiding itself once it arrives. Ransomware Ransomware is a fairly new type of malware. It holds your computer or files hostage and demands a ransom payment. Some ransomware may simply pop up a box asking for money before you can continue using your computer. Such prompts are easily defeated with antivirus software. More harmful malware like CryptoLocker literally encrypts your files and demands a payment before you can access them. Such types of malware are dangerous, especially if you don’t have backups. Most malware these days is produced for profit, and ransomware is a good example of that. Ransomware doesn’t want to crash your computer and delete your files just to cause you trouble. It wants to take something hostage and get a quick payment from you. So why is it called “antivirus software,” anyway? Well, most people continue to consider the word “virus” synonymous with malware as a whole. Antivirus software doesn’t just protect against viruses, but against all types of malware. It may be more accurately referred to as “antimalware” or “security” software. Image Credit: Marcelo Alves on Flickr, Tama Leaver on Flickr, Szilard Mihaly on Flickr     

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• Standards Corner: OAuth WG Client Registration Problem

  - by Tanu Sood

  Phil Hunt is an active member of multiple industry standards groups and committees (see brief bio at the end of the post) and has spearheaded discussions, creation and ratifications of  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} industry standards including the Kantara Identity Governance Framework, among others. Being an active voice in the industry standards development world, we have invited him to share his discussions, thoughts, news & updates, and discuss use cases, implementation success stories (and even failures) around industry standards on this monthly column. Author: Phil Hunt This afternoon, the OAuth Working Group will meet at IETF88 in Vancouver to discuss some important topics important to the maturation of OAuth. One of them is the OAuth client registration problem.OAuth (RFC6749) was initially developed with a simple deployment model where there is only monopoly or singleton cloud instance of a web API (e.g. there is one Facebook, one Google, on LinkedIn, and so on). When the API publisher and API deployer are the same monolithic entity, it easy for developers to contact the provider and register their app to obtain a client_id and credential.But what happens when the API is for an open source project where there may be 1000s of deployed copies of the API (e.g. such as wordpress). In these cases, the authors of the API are not the people running the API. In these scenarios, how does the developer obtain a client_id? An example of an "open deployed" API is OpenID Connect. Connect defines an OAuth protected resource API that can provide personal information about an authenticated user -- in effect creating a potentially common API for potential identity providers like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, or Oracle. In Oracle's case, Fusion applications will soon have RESTful APIs that are deployed in many different ways in many different environments. How will developers write apps that can work against an openly deployed API with whom the developer can have no prior relationship?At present, the OAuth Working Group has two proposals two consider: Dynamic RegistrationDynamic Registration was originally developed for OpenID Connect and UMA. It defines a RESTful API in which a prospective client application with no client_id creates a new client registration record with a service provider and is issued a client_id and credential along with a registration token that can be used to update registration over time.As proof of success, the OIDC community has done substantial implementation of this spec and feels committed to its use. Why not approve?Well, the answer is that some of us had some concerns, namely: Recognizing instances of software - dynamic registration treats all clients as unique. It has no defined way to recognize that multiple copies of the same client are being registered other then assuming if the registration parameters are similar it might be the same client. Versioning and Policy Approval of open APIs and clients - many service providers have to worry about change management. They expect to have approval cycles that approve versions of server and client software for use in their environment. In some cases approval might be wide open, but in many cases, approval might be down to the specific class of software and version. Registration updates - when does a client actually need to update its registration? Shouldn't it be never? Is there some characteristic of deployed code that would cause it to change? Options lead to complexity - because each client is treated as unique, it becomes unclear how the clients and servers will agree on what credentials forms are acceptable and what OAuth features are allowed and disallowed. Yet the reality is, developers will write their application to work in a limited number of ways. They can't implement all the permutations and combinations that potential service providers might choose. Stateful registration - if the primary motivation for registration is to obtain a client_id and credential, why can't this be done in a stateless fashion using assertions? Denial of service - With so much stateful registration and the need for multiple tokens to be issued, will this not lead to a denial of service attack / risk of resource depletion? At the very least, because of the information gathered, it would difficult for service providers to clean up "failed" registrations and determine active from inactive or false clients. There has yet to be much wide-scale "production" use of dynamic registration other than in small closed communities. Client Association A second proposal, Client Association, has been put forward by Tony Nadalin of Microsoft and myself. We took at look at existing use patterns to come up with a new proposal. At the Berlin meeting, we considered how WS-STS systems work. More recently, I took a review of how mobile messaging clients work. I looked at how Apple, Google, and Microsoft each handle registration with APNS, GCM, and WNS, and a similar pattern emerges. This pattern is to use an existing credential (mutual TLS auth), or client bearer assertion and swap for a device specific bearer assertion.In the client association proposal, the developer's registration with the API publisher is handled by having the developer register with an API publisher (as opposed to the party deploying the API) and obtaining a software "statement". Or, if there is no "publisher" that can sign a statement, the developer may include their own self-asserted software statement.A software statement is a special type of assertion that serves to lock application registration profile information in a signed assertion. The statement is included with the client application and can then be used by the client to swap for an instance specific client assertion as defined by section 4.2 of the OAuth Assertion draft and profiled in the Client Association draft. The software statement provides a way for service provider to recognize and configure policy to approve classes of software clients, and simplifies the actual registration to a simple assertion swap. Because the registration is an assertion swap, registration is no longer "stateful" - meaning the service provider does not need to store any information to support the client (unless it wants to). Has this been implemented yet? Not directly. We've only delivered draft 00 as an alternate way of solving the problem using well-known patterns whose security characteristics and scale characteristics are well understood. Dynamic Take II At roughly the same time that Client Association and Software Statement were published, the authors of Dynamic Registration published a "split" version of the Dynamic Registration (draft-richer-oauth-dyn-reg-core and draft-richer-oauth-dyn-reg-management). While some of the concerns above are addressed, some differences remain. Registration is now a simple POST request. However it defines a new method for issuing client tokens where as Client Association uses RFC6749's existing extension point. The concern here is whether future client access token formats would be addressed properly. Finally, Dyn-reg-core does not yet support software statements. Conclusion The WG has some interesting discussion to bring this back to a single set of specifications. Dynamic Registration has significant implementation, but Client Association could be a much improved way to simplify implementation of the overall OpenID Connect specification and improve adoption. In fairness, the existing editors have already come a long way. Yet there are those with significant investment in the current draft. There are many that have expressed they don't care. They just want a standard. There is lots of pressure on the working group to reach consensus quickly.And that folks is how the sausage is made.Note: John Bradley and Justin Richer recently published draft-bradley-stateless-oauth-client-00 which on first look are getting closer. Some of the details seem less well defined, but the same could be said of client-assoc and software-statement. I hope we can merge these specs this week. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} About the Writer: Phil Hunt joined Oracle as part of the November 2005 acquisition of OctetString Inc. where he headed software development for what is now Oracle Virtual Directory. Since joining Oracle, Phil works as CMTS in the Identity Standards group at Oracle where he developed the Kantara Identity Governance Framework and provided significant input to JSR 351. Phil participates in several standards development organizations such as IETF and OASIS working on federation, authorization (OAuth), and provisioning (SCIM) standards.  Phil blogs at www.independentid.com and a Twitter handle of @independentid.

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• Move Files from a Failing PC with an Ubuntu Live CD

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  You’ve loaded the Ubuntu Live CD to salvage files from a failing system, but where do you store the recovered files? We’ll show you how to store them on external drives, drives on the same PC, a Windows home network, and other locations. We’ve shown you how to recover data like a forensics expert, but you can’t store recovered files back on your failed hard drive! There are lots of ways to transfer the files you access from an Ubuntu Live CD to a place that a stable Windows machine can access them. We’ll go through several methods, starting each section from the Ubuntu desktop – if you don’t yet have an Ubuntu Live CD, follow our guide to creating a bootable USB flash drive, and then our instructions for booting into Ubuntu. If your BIOS doesn’t let you boot using a USB flash drive, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! Use a Healthy Hard Drive If your computer has more than one hard drive, or your hard drive is healthy and you’re in Ubuntu for non-recovery reasons, then accessing your hard drive is easy as pie, even if the hard drive is formatted for Windows. To access a hard drive, it must first be mounted. To mount a healthy hard drive, you just have to select it from the Places menu at the top-left of the screen. You will have to identify your hard drive by its size. Clicking on the appropriate hard drive mounts it, and opens it in a file browser. You can now move files to this hard drive by drag-and-drop or copy-and-paste, both of which are done the same way they’re done in Windows. Once a hard drive, or other external storage device, is mounted, it will show up in the /media directory. To see a list of currently mounted storage devices, navigate to /media by clicking on File System in a File Browser window, and then double-clicking on the media folder. Right now, our media folder contains links to the hard drive, which Ubuntu has assigned a terribly uninformative label, and the PLoP Boot Manager CD that is currently in the CD-ROM drive. Connect a USB Hard Drive or Flash Drive An external USB hard drive gives you the advantage of portability, and is still large enough to store an entire hard disk dump, if need be. Flash drives are also very quick and easy to connect, though they are limited in how much they can store. When you plug a USB hard drive or flash drive in, Ubuntu should automatically detect it and mount it. It may even open it in a File Browser automatically. Since it’s been mounted, you will also see it show up on the desktop, and in the /media folder. Once it’s been mounted, you can access it and store files on it like you would any other folder in Ubuntu. If, for whatever reason, it doesn’t mount automatically, click on Places in the top-left of your screen and select your USB device. If it does not show up in the Places list, then you may need to format your USB drive. To properly remove the USB drive when you’re done moving files, right click on the desktop icon or the folder in /media and select Safely Remove Drive. If you’re not given that option, then Eject or Unmount will effectively do the same thing. Connect to a Windows PC on your Local Network If you have another PC or a laptop connected through the same router (wired or wireless) then you can transfer files over the network relatively quickly. To do this, we will share one or more folders from the machine booted up with the Ubuntu Live CD over the network, letting our Windows PC grab the files contained in that folder. As an example, we’re going to share a folder on the desktop called ToShare. Right-click on the folder you want to share, and click Sharing Options. A Folder Sharing window will pop up. Check the box labeled Share this folder. A window will pop up about the sharing service. Click the Install service button. Some files will be downloaded, and then installed. When they’re done installing, you’ll be appropriately notified. You will be prompted to restart your session. Don’t worry, this won’t actually log you out, so go ahead and press the Restart session button. The Folder Sharing window returns, with Share this folder now checked. Edit the Share name if you’d like, and add checkmarks in the two checkboxes below the text fields. Click Create Share. Nautilus will ask your permission to add some permissions to the folder you want to share. Allow it to Add the permissions automatically. The folder is now shared, as evidenced by the new arrows above the folder’s icon. At this point, you are done with the Ubuntu machine. Head to your Windows PC, and open up Windows Explorer. Click on Network in the list on the left, and you should see a machine called UBUNTU in the right pane. Note: This example is shown in Windows 7; the same steps should work for Windows XP and Vista, but we have not tested them. Double-click on UBUNTU, and you will see the folder you shared earlier! As well as any other folders you’ve shared from Ubuntu. Double click on the folder you want to access, and from there, you can move the files from the machine booted with Ubuntu to your Windows PC. Upload to an Online Service There are many services online that will allow you to upload files, either temporarily or permanently. As long as you aren’t transferring an entire hard drive, these services should allow you to transfer your important files from the Ubuntu environment to any other machine with Internet access. We recommend compressing the files that you want to move, both to save a little bit of bandwidth, and to save time clicking on files, as uploading a single file will be much less work than a ton of little files. To compress one or more files or folders, select them, and then right-click on one of the members of the group. Click Compress…. Give the compressed file a suitable name, and then select a compression format. We’re using .zip because we can open it anywhere, and the compression rate is acceptable. Click Create and the compressed file will show up in the location selected in the Compress window. Dropbox If you have a Dropbox account, then you can easily upload files from the Ubuntu environment to Dropbox. There is no explicit limit on the size of file that can be uploaded to Dropbox, though a free account begins with a total limit of 2 GB of files in total. Access your account through Firefox, which can be opened by clicking on the Firefox logo to the right of the System menu at the top of the screen. Once into your account, press the Upload button on top of the main file list. Because Flash is not installed in the Live CD environment, you will have to switch to the basic uploader. Click Browse…find your compressed file, and then click Upload file. Depending on the size of the file, this could take some time. However, once the file has been uploaded, it should show up on any computer connected through Dropbox in a matter of minutes. Google Docs Google Docs allows the upload of any type of file – making it an ideal place to upload files that we want to access from another computer. While your total allocation of space varies (mine is around 7.5 GB), there is a per-file maximum of 1 GB. Log into Google Docs, and click on the Upload button at the top left of the page. Click Select files to upload and select your compressed file. For safety’s sake, uncheck the checkbox concerning converting files to Google Docs format, and then click Start upload. Go Online – Through FTP If you have access to an FTP server – perhaps through your web hosting company, or you’ve set up an FTP server on a different machine – you can easily access the FTP server in Ubuntu and transfer files. Just make sure you don’t go over your quota if you have one. You will need to know the address of the FTP server, as well as the login information. Click on Places > Connect to Server… Choose the FTP (with login) Service type, and fill in your information. Adding a bookmark is optional, but recommended. You will be asked for your password. You can choose to remember it until you logout, or indefinitely. You can now browse your FTP server just like any other folder. Drop files into the FTP server and you can retrieve them from any computer with an Internet connection and an FTP client. Conclusion While at first the Ubuntu Live CD environment may seem claustrophobic, it has a wealth of options for connecting to peripheral devices, local computers, and machines on the Internet – and this article has only scratched the surface. Whatever the storage medium, Ubuntu’s got an interface for it! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Backup Your Windows Live Writer SettingsMove a Window Without Clicking the Titlebar in UbuntuRecover Deleted Files on an NTFS Hard Drive from a Ubuntu Live CDCreate a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive the Easy WayReset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CD TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Tech Fanboys Field Guide Check these Awesome Chrome Add-ons iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools Track Daily Goals With 42Goals

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• Metro: Promises

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to describe the Promise class in the WinJS library. You can use promises whenever you need to perform an asynchronous operation such as retrieving data from a remote website or a file from the file system. Promises are used extensively in the WinJS library. Asynchronous Programming Some code executes immediately, some code requires time to complete or might never complete at all. For example, retrieving the value of a local variable is an immediate operation. Retrieving data from a remote website takes longer or might not complete at all. When an operation might take a long time to complete, you should write your code so that it executes asynchronously. Instead of waiting for an operation to complete, you should start the operation and then do something else until you receive a signal that the operation is complete. An analogy. Some telephone customer service lines require you to wait on hold – listening to really bad music – until a customer service representative is available. This is synchronous programming and very wasteful of your time. Some newer customer service lines enable you to enter your telephone number so the customer service representative can call you back when a customer representative becomes available. This approach is much less wasteful of your time because you can do useful things while waiting for the callback. There are several patterns that you can use to write code which executes asynchronously. The most popular pattern in JavaScript is the callback pattern. When you call a function which might take a long time to return a result, you pass a callback function to the function. For example, the following code (which uses jQuery) includes a function named getFlickrPhotos which returns photos from the Flickr website which match a set of tags (such as “dog” and “funny”): function getFlickrPhotos(tags, callback) { $.getJSON( "http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?jsoncallback=?", { tags: tags, tagmode: "all", format: "json" }, function (data) { if (callback) { callback(data.items); } } ); } getFlickrPhotos("funny, dogs", function(data) { $.each(data, function(index, item) { console.log(item); }); }); The getFlickr() function includes a callback parameter. When you call the getFlickr() function, you pass a function to the callback parameter which gets executed when the getFlicker() function finishes retrieving the list of photos from the Flickr web service. In the code above, the callback function simply iterates through the results and writes each result to the console. Using callbacks is a natural way to perform asynchronous programming with JavaScript. Instead of waiting for an operation to complete, sitting there and listening to really bad music, you can get a callback when the operation is complete. Using Promises The CommonJS website defines a promise like this (http://wiki.commonjs.org/wiki/Promises): “Promises provide a well-defined interface for interacting with an object that represents the result of an action that is performed asynchronously, and may or may not be finished at any given point in time. By utilizing a standard interface, different components can return promises for asynchronous actions and consumers can utilize the promises in a predictable manner.” A promise provides a standard pattern for specifying callbacks. In the WinJS library, when you create a promise, you can specify three callbacks: a complete callback, a failure callback, and a progress callback. Promises are used extensively in the WinJS library. The methods in the animation library, the control library, and the binding library all use promises. For example, the xhr() method included in the WinJS base library returns a promise. The xhr() method wraps calls to the standard XmlHttpRequest object in a promise. The following code illustrates how you can use the xhr() method to perform an Ajax request which retrieves a file named Photos.txt: var options = { url: "/data/photos.txt" }; WinJS.xhr(options).then( function (xmlHttpRequest) { console.log("success"); var data = JSON.parse(xmlHttpRequest.responseText); console.log(data); }, function(xmlHttpRequest) { console.log("fail"); }, function(xmlHttpRequest) { console.log("progress"); } ) The WinJS.xhr() method returns a promise. The Promise class includes a then() method which accepts three callback functions: a complete callback, an error callback, and a progress callback: Promise.then(completeCallback, errorCallback, progressCallback) In the code above, three anonymous functions are passed to the then() method. The three callbacks simply write a message to the JavaScript Console. The complete callback also dumps all of the data retrieved from the photos.txt file. Creating Promises You can create your own promises by creating a new instance of the Promise class. The constructor for the Promise class requires a function which accepts three parameters: a complete, error, and progress function parameter. For example, the code below illustrates how you can create a method named wait10Seconds() which returns a promise. The progress function is called every second and the complete function is not called until 10 seconds have passed: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; function wait10Seconds() { return new WinJS.Promise(function (complete, error, progress) { var seconds = 0; var intervalId = window.setInterval(function () { seconds++; progress(seconds); if (seconds > 9) { window.clearInterval(intervalId); complete(); } }, 1000); }); } app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { wait10Seconds().then( function () { console.log("complete") }, function () { console.log("error") }, function (seconds) { console.log("progress:" + seconds) } ); } } app.start(); })(); All of the work happens in the constructor function for the promise. The window.setInterval() method is used to execute code every second. Every second, the progress() callback method is called. If more than 10 seconds have passed then the complete() callback method is called and the clearInterval() method is called. When you execute the code above, you can see the output in the Visual Studio JavaScript Console. Creating a Timeout Promise In the previous section, we created a custom Promise which uses the window.setInterval() method to complete the promise after 10 seconds. We really did not need to create a custom promise because the Promise class already includes a static method for returning promises which complete after a certain interval. The code below illustrates how you can use the timeout() method. The timeout() method returns a promise which completes after a certain number of milliseconds. WinJS.Promise.timeout(3000).then( function(){console.log("complete")}, function(){console.log("error")}, function(){console.log("progress")} ); In the code above, the Promise completes after 3 seconds (3000 milliseconds). The Promise returned by the timeout() method does not support progress events. Therefore, the only message written to the console is the message “complete” after 10 seconds. Canceling Promises Some promises, but not all, support cancellation. When you cancel a promise, the promise’s error callback is executed. For example, the following code uses the WinJS.xhr() method to perform an Ajax request. However, immediately after the Ajax request is made, the request is cancelled. // Specify Ajax request options var options = { url: "/data/photos.txt" }; // Make the Ajax request var request = WinJS.xhr(options).then( function (xmlHttpRequest) { console.log("success"); }, function (xmlHttpRequest) { console.log("fail"); }, function (xmlHttpRequest) { console.log("progress"); } ); // Cancel the Ajax request request.cancel(); When you run the code above, the message “fail” is written to the Visual Studio JavaScript Console. Composing Promises You can build promises out of other promises. In other words, you can compose promises. There are two static methods of the Promise class which you can use to compose promises: the join() method and the any() method. When you join promises, a promise is complete when all of the joined promises are complete. When you use the any() method, a promise is complete when any of the promises complete. The following code illustrates how to use the join() method. A new promise is created out of two timeout promises. The new promise does not complete until both of the timeout promises complete: WinJS.Promise.join([WinJS.Promise.timeout(1000), WinJS.Promise.timeout(5000)]) .then(function () { console.log("complete"); }); The message “complete” will not be written to the JavaScript Console until both promises passed to the join() method completes. The message won’t be written for 5 seconds (5,000 milliseconds). The any() method completes when any promise passed to the any() method completes: WinJS.Promise.any([WinJS.Promise.timeout(1000), WinJS.Promise.timeout(5000)]) .then(function () { console.log("complete"); }); The code above writes the message “complete” to the JavaScript Console after 1 second (1,000 milliseconds). The message is written to the JavaScript console immediately after the first promise completes and before the second promise completes. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to describe WinJS promises. First, we discussed how promises enable you to easily write code which performs asynchronous actions. You learned how to use a promise when performing an Ajax request. Next, we discussed how you can create your own promises. You learned how to create a new promise by creating a constructor function with complete, error, and progress parameters. Finally, you learned about several advanced methods of promises. You learned how to use the timeout() method to create promises which complete after an interval of time. You also learned how to cancel promises and compose promises from other promises.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, March 26, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, March 26, 2010New Projects.NET settings class generator T4 templates: A couple of T4 templates to generate a Settings class for your .NET project. Allows you to define your application settings in an XML file and have...AlphaPagedList: AlphaPagedList makes it easier for .Net developers to write paging code. Based on PagedList it allows you to take any List<T> and split it based on...C# Projects: C# ProjectsChitme: Aenean feugiat pharetra enim rhoncus viverra. In at nunc nec sem varius bibendum. Aliquam erat volutpat. Nullam fringilla facilisis massa et eleife...CloudCache - Distributed Cache Tier with Azure: Cloudcache makes it easier for you to manage and deploy a distributed caching tier to Windows Azure. Included is a web-dashboard in MVC 2.0, Memcac...Composer: Composer is an extensible Compositional Architecture framework, providing a set of functionality such as Inversion of Control container (IoC), Depe...Data Connection Suite: Data Connection Suite is a set of easy to use data connection string builder dialogs & controls ready to be integrated in any .NET application.DatabaseHandler: Database HandlerEPiServer Blog Page Provider: A example page provider implementation for EPiServer that supports external blog sources for pages, Blogger and WordPress supported out of the box ...Extended MessageBox: ExtendedMessageBox makes it easier to display messages from your Windows applications. Based on the built-in .NET MessageBox class functionality, i...FluentPath: FluentPath implements a modern wrapper around System.IO, using modern patterns such as fluent APIs and Lambdas. By using FluentPath instead of Syst...Halcyone : Silverlight without pain: Halcyone is application framework for Silverlight that should make live of developers easier =)IlluminaRT: Real-time renderingme2: Mista Engine 2MessegeBox RightToLeft Lib: This is really simple lib project for use RTL in MessegeBox class. This just for short code and default option for RTL.MS Word Automation Service: A MS Word Automation service that comsumes a Word template and combines with XML to produce a word document. Currently in production. Must add some...SharePoint - Site Request InfoPath Form Template: This template allow portal user to enter initial information for requesting of creating a new SharePoint site. TextFlow - Text Editor: TextFlow is a fast and light text editor that simplifies day-to-day tasks. You can create letters and documents through TextFlow. It also includes ...TiledLib: A library for using Tiled (http://mapeditor.org) levels in XNA Game Studio projects. Includes a content pipeline extension and runtime library.wcf learning 2010: myWCFprojectsNew Releases.NET settings class generator T4 templates: Example 1: An example project containing the T4 templates and associated files. SingleSite - generate settings for a single site MultiSite - generate setting...AccessibilityChecker: Accessibility Checker V0.1: SharePoint Accessibility Checker V0.1AlphaPagedList: AlphaPagedList v0.9: Initial release of AlphaPagedListASP.Net RIA Controls: Version 1.1 Beta: New XHTML compliant version with alternative content support if no plugin installed.Business & System Analysis Templates and Best Practices: R 00: You may find out here the structured on my own materials from from Luxoft ReqLabs 2009 + short presentation about System Analysis and Modelling. Th...CloudCache - Distributed Cache Tier with Azure: v1.0.0.0: First release! More information at http://blog.shutupandcode.net/?p=935CycleMania Starter Kit EAP - ASP.NET 4 Problem - Design - Solution: Cyclemania 0.08.39: implemented client side functions on remainder of account pagesDevTreks -social budgeting that improves lives and livelihoods: Social Budgeting Web Software, DevTreks alpha 3d: Alpha 3d is a general bug fix -tweaking pagination, navigation, packaging, file system storage, page validation, security, locals, and linked views.Digital Media Processing Project 1: Image Processor: Image Processor 1.01: Supports opening files through Windows Explorer or by drag and drop.Extended MessageBox: ExtendedMessageBox Runtime Version 1.2: Initial releaseExtended MessageBox: SourceCode for Version 1.2: Initial SourceCodeFluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 1.0: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 1.0 Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml, debug and release version) Showcase Application Samples Foundation (T...FluentPath: FluentPath Beta: The Beta release of FluentPath.HaterAide ORM: HaterAide ORM 1.5: This version is a, more or less, rewrite of the code base. Also many new features have been added in this release: 1) Foreign keys are now added to...iTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.2.3735 Beta: V1.2 allows you to synchronize one or more iTunes playlists to a USB MP3 player. This continues the evolution yet maintains the minimalistic appro...LogWin-Logging Your Computer Activities: LogWin-Logging your computer activities: This program is logging your computer activities and display them as table and pie chart. It is made by native C , HTML Dialog and Google Chart API.MessegeBox RightToLeft Lib: MessegeBoxRTL-1.0.0.0_BIN: My First upload.. This is binary release only. Have fun.MessegeBox RightToLeft Lib: MessegeBoxRTL-1.0.0.0_SRC: My first upload.. This is source code with binary. Have fun.MS Word Automation Service: Alpha: In production already, but who cares. It works.MultiMenu ASP.NET Cascading Menu WebControl: MultiMenu 2.6 ASP.NET Menu: Fixed problems that prevented the menu from working with the XHTML DocTypes Added support for IE 7-8 Added XmlLoading and XmlLoaded events Ad...netgod: LanyoWebBrowser: Lanyo ERP ClientnopCommerce. Open Source online shop e-commerce solution.: nopCommerce 1.50: To see the full list of fixes and changes please visit the release notes page (http://www.nopCommerce.com/ReleaseNotes.aspx).Open NFe: Open NFe v1.9.7: Fontes do DANFe 1.9.7 Trim na conversão TXT para XMLpatterns & practices - Smart Client Guidance: Smart Client Software Factory 2010 Beta Source: The Smart Client Software Factory 2010 provides an integrated set of guidance that assists architects and developers in creating composite smart cl...Physics Helper for Silverlight, WPF, Blend, and Farseer: PhysicsHelper 3.0.0.5 Alpha: This release supports Windows Phone 7 Series Development, along with the Silverlight 3 and WPF support. 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Deleting anything will cause an automatic export prior to deletion, automatically backing up your log...Reusable Library: V1.0.5: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developer.Reusable Library Demo: Reusable Library Demo v1.0.3: A demonstration of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developerSharePoint - Site Request InfoPath Form Template: SharePoint - Site Request InfoPath Form Template: This template allow portal user to enter initial information for requesting of creating a new SharePoint site To install: 1. Run the SiteRequest.m...Silverlight Gantt Chart: Silverlight Gantt Chart 1.2: Updates include ability to add GanttNodeSections that allow for multiple GanttItems in a single row.Spiral Architecture Driven Development (SADD): SADD v.1.0: This is the First complete Release with the NEW materials now all in English ! The abstract from the main article named "SADD-MSAJ-The Spiral Arc...Spiral Architecture Driven Development (SADD) for Russian: SADD v.1.0: Это Первая Версия полного релиза SADD на русском языке. Отрывок из этой статьи опубликован в Microsoft Architecture Journal #23, вы можете найти в ...Sprite Sheet Packer: 2.3 Release: SpriteSheetPacker now supports saved user settings so the app will now remember your previous values for padding, image size, image options, whethe...Standalone XQuery Implementation in .NET: 1.4: This is version 1.4 of the QueryMachine.XQuery. It's includes bug fixes and performance optimization. Document load time is dramatically increased...TextFlow - Text Editor: Kernel: TextFlow core KernelTextFlow - Text Editor: TextFlow Beta 3 Technical Preview: This is a technical preview of TextFlow and is made to run for 40 days after which it will expire. Changes : 140 Bug fixes Supports Windows(R) 7...TiledLib: TiledLib 1.0: First release of TiledLib. 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IMPORTANT NOTE: You must close all applications before launching this build ...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30325.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWCF Metal: WCFMetal 0.3.0.0: WCFMetal 0.3.0.0Copyright © 2010 John Leitch Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License Summary By utilizing LINQ to SQL gene...Web Log Analyzer: Release Indihiang 1.0: For installation and how to use, please read Indihiang portal: http://wiki.indihiang.com What's New in Indihiang 1.0 ? check http://geeks.netindone...異世界の新着動画: Ver. 10-03-25: ニコ生仕様に対応Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerASP.NET Ajax LibrarySilverlight ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitLiveUpload to FacebookWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMost Active ProjectsRawrjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETFarseer Physics EngineFacebook Developer ToolkitLINQ to TwitterFluent Ribbon Control SuiteTable2ClassNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModulePHPExcel

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• Looking Back at MIX10

  - by WeigeltRo

  It’s the sad truth of my life that even though I’m fascinated by airplanes and flight in general since my childhood days, my body doesn’t like flying. Even the ridiculously short flights inside Germany are taking their toll on me each time. Now combine this with sitting in the cramped space of economy class for many hours on a transatlantic flight from Germany to Las Vegas and back, and factor in some heavy dose of jet lag (especially on my way eastwards), and you get an idea why after coming back home I had this question on my mind: Was it really worth it to attend MIX10? This of course is a question that will also be asked by my boss at Comma Soft (for other reasons, obviously), who decided to send me and my colleague Jens Schaller, to the MIX10 conference. (A note to my German readers: An dieser Stelle der Hinweis, dass Comma Soft noch Silverlight-Entwickler und/oder UI-Designer für den Standort Bonn sucht – aussagekräftige Bewerbungen bitte an [email protected]) Too keep things short: My answer is yes. Before I’ll go into detail, let me ask the heretical questions whether tech conferences in general still make sense. There was a time, where actually being at a tech conference gave you a head-start in regard to learning about new technologies. Nowadays this is no longer true, where every bit of information and every detail is immediately twittered, blogged and whatevered to death. In the case of MIX10 you even can download the video-taped sessions shortly after. So: Does visiting a conference still make sense? It depends on what you expect from a conference. It should be clear to everybody that you’ll neither get exclusive information, nor receive training in a small group. What a conference does offer that sitting in front of your computer does not can be summarized as follows: Focus Being away from work and home will help you to focus on the presented information. Of course there are always the poor guys who are haunted by their work (with mails and short text messages reporting the latest showstopper problem), but in general being out of your office makes a huge difference. Inspiration With the focus comes the emotional involvement. I find it much easier to absorb information if I feel that certain vibe when sitting in a session. This still means that I have put work into reviewing the information later, but it’s a better starting point. And all the impressions collected at a (good) conference combined lead to a higher motivation – be it by the buzz (“this is gonna be sooo cool!”) or by the fear to fall behind (“man, we’ll have work on this, or else…”). People At a conference it’s pretty easy to get into contact with other people during breakfast, lunch and other breaks. This is a good opportunity to get a feel for what other development teams are doing (on a very general level of course, nobody will tell you about their secret formula) and what they are thinking about specific technologies. So MIX10 did offer focus, inspiration and people, but that would have meant nothing without valuable content. When I (being a frontend developer with a strong interest in UI/UX) planned my visit to MIX10, I made the decision to focus on the "soft" topics of design, interaction and user experience. I figured that I would be bombarded with all the technical details about Silverlight 4 anyway in the weeks and months to come. Actually, I would have liked to catch a few technical sessions, but the agenda wasn’t exactly in favor of people interested in any kind of Silverlight and UI/UX/Design topics. That’s one of my few complaints about the conference – I would have liked one more day and/or more sessions per day. Overall, the quality of the workshops and sessions was pretty high. In fact, looking back at my collection of conferences I’ve visited in the past I’d say that MIX10 ranks somewhere near the top spot. Here’s an overview of the workshops/sessions I attended (I’ll leave out the keynotes): Day 0 (Workshops on Sunday) Design Fundamentals for Developers Robby Ingebretsen is the man! Great workshop in three parts with the perfect mix of examples, well-structured definition of terminology and the right dose of humor. Robby was part of the WPF team before founding his own company so he not only has a strong interest in design (and the skillz!) but also the technical background.   Design Tools and Techniques Originally announced to be held by Arturo Toledo, the Rosso brothers from ArcheType filled in for the first two parts, and Corrina Black had a pretty general part about the Windows Phone UI. The first two thirds were a mixed bag; the two guys definitely knew what they were talking about, and the demos were great, but the talk lacked the preparation and polish of a truly great presentation. Corrina was not allowed to go into too much detail before the keynote on Monday, but the session was still very interesting as it showed how much thought went into the Windows Phone UI (and there’s always a lot to learn when people talk about their thought process). Day 1 (Monday) Designing Rich Experiences for Data-Centric Applications I wonder whether there was ever a test-run for this session, but what Ken Azuma and Yoshihiro Saito delivered in the first 15 minutes of a 30-minutes-session made me walk out. A commercial for a product (just great: a video showing a SharePoint plug-in in an all-Japanese UI) combined with the most generic blah blah one could imagine. EPIC FAIL.   Great User Experiences: Seamlessly Blending Technology & Design I switched to this session from the one above but I guess I missed the interesting part – what I did catch was what looked like a “look at the cool stuff we did” without being helpful. Or maybe I was just in a bad mood after the other session.   The Art, Technology and Science of Reading This talk by Kevin Larson was very interesting, but was more a presentation of what Microsoft is doing in research (pretty impressive) and in the end lacked a bit the helpful advice one could have hoped for.   10 Ways to Attack a Design Problem and Come Out Winning Robby Ingebretsen again, and again a great mix of theory and practice. The clean and simple, yet effective, UI of the reader app resulted in a simultaneous “wow” of Jens and me. If you’d watch only one session video, this should be it. Microsoft has to bring Robby back next year! Day 2 (Tuesday) Touch in Public: Multi-touch Interaction Design for Kiosks & Architectural Experiences Very interesting session by Jason Brush, a great inspiration with many details to look out for in the examples. Exactly what I was hoping for – and then some!   Designing Bing: Heart and Science How hard can it be to design the UI for a search engine? An input field and a list of results, that should be it, right? Well, not so fast! The talk by Paul Ray showed the many iterations to finally get it right (up to the choice of a specific blue for the links). And yes, I want an eye-tracking device to play around with!   The Elephant in the Room When Nishant Kothary presented a long list of what his session was not about, I told to myself (not having the description text present) “Am I in the wrong talk? Should I leave?”. Boy, was I wrong. A great talk about human factors in the process of designing stuff.   An Hour with Bill Buxton Having seen Bill Buxton’s presentation in the keynote, I just had to see this man again – even though I didn’t know what to expect. Being more or less unplanned and intended to be more of a conversation, the session didn’t provide a wealth of immediately useful information. Nevertheless Bill Buxton was impressive with his huge knowledge of seemingly everything. But this could/should have been a session some when in the evening and not in parallel to at least two other interesting talks. Day 3 (Wednesday) Design the Ordinary, Like the Fixie This session by DL Byron and Kevin Tamura started really well and brought across the message to keep things simple. But towards the end the talk lost some of its steam. And, as a member of the audience pointed out, they kind of ignored their own advice when they used a fancy presentation software other then PowerPoint that sometimes got in the way of showing things.   Developing Natural User Interfaces Speaking of alternative presentation software, Joshua Blake definitely had the most remarkable alternative to PowerPoint, a self-written program called NaturalShow that was controlled using multi-touch on a touch screen. Not a PowerPoint-killer, but impressive nevertheless. The (excellent) talk itself was kind of eye-opening in regard to what “multi-touch support” on various platforms (WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone) actually means.   Treat your Content Right The talk by Tiffani Jones Brown wasn’t even on my planned schedule, but somehow I ended up in that session – and it was great. And even for people who don’t necessarily have to write content for websites, some points made by Tiffani are valid in many places, notably wherever you put texts with more than a single word into your UI. Creating Effective Info Viz in Microsoft Silverlight The last session of MIX10 I attended was kind of disappointing. At first things were very promising, with Matthias Shapiro giving a brief but well-structured introduction to info graphics and interactive visualizations. Then the live-coding began and while the result was interesting, too much time was spend on wrestling to get the code working. Ending earlier than planned, the talk was a bit light on actual content, but at least it included a nice list of resources. Conclusion It could be felt all across MIX10, UIs will take a huge leap forward; in fact, there are enough examples that have already. People who both have the technical know-how and at least a basic understanding of design (“literacy” as Bill Buxton called it) are in high demand. The concept of the MIX conference and initiatives like design.toolbox shows that Microsoft understands very well that frontend developers have to acquire new knowledge besides knowing how to hack code and putting buttons on a form. There are extremely exciting times before us, with lots of opportunity for those who are eager to develop their skills, that is for sure.

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• Social Business Forum Milano: Day 1

  - by me

  div.c50 {font-family: Helvetica;} div.c49 {position: relative; height: 0px; overflow: hidden;} span.c48 {color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;} div.c47 {background-color: #ffffff; border-left: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.098); border-right: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.098); background-clip: padding-box;} div.c46 {color: #666666; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal} span.c45 {line-height: 14px;} div.c44 {border-width: 0px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px; outline-width: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline} div.c43 {border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; outline-width: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;} p.c42 {color: #666666; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif} span.c41 {line-height: 14px; font-size: 11px;} h2.c40 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif} p.c39 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif} span.c38 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 80%; font-weight: bold} div.c37 {color: #999999; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 18px} div.c36 {background-clip: padding-box; background-color: #ffffff; border-bottom: 1px solid #e8e8e8; border-left: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.098); border-right: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.098); cursor: pointer; margin-left: 58px; min-height: 51px; padding: 9px 12px; position: relative; z-index: auto} div.c35 {background-clip: padding-box; background-color: #ffffff; border-bottom: 1px solid #e8e8e8; border-left: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.098); border-right: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.098); cursor: pointer; margin-left: 58px; min-height: 51px; padding: 9px 12px; position: relative} div.c34 {overflow: hidden; font-size: 12px; padding-top: 1px;} ul.c33 {padding: 0px; margin: 0px; list-style-type: none; opacity: 0;} li.c32 {display: inline;} a.c31 {color: #298500; text-decoration: none; outline-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin-left: 8px;} a.c30 {color: #999999; text-decoration: none; outline-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; float: left; margin-right: 2px;} strong.c29 {font-weight: normal; color: #298500;} span.c28 {color: #999999;} div.c27 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px; word-wrap: break-word} span.c26 {border-width: 0px; width: 48px; height: 48px; border-radius: 5px 5px 5px 5px; position: absolute; top: 12px; left: 12px;} small.c25 {font-size: 12px; color: #bbbbbb; position: absolute; top: 9px; right: 12px; float: right; margin-top: 1px;} a.c24 {color: #999999; text-decoration: none; outline-width: 0px; font-size: 12px;} h3.c23 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif} span.c22 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif} div.c21 {display: inline ! important; font-weight: normal} span.c20 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 80%} a.c19 {font-weight: normal;} span.c18 {font-weight: normal;} div.c17 {font-weight: normal;} div.c16 {margin: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;} a.c15 {color: #298500; text-decoration: none; outline-width: 0px;} strong.c14 {font-weight: normal; color: inherit;} span.c13 {color: #7eb566; text-decoration: none} span.c12 {color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px} a.c11 {color: #999999; text-decoration: none; outline-width: 0px;} span.c10 {font-size: 12px; color: #999999; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed;} strong.c9 {font-weight: normal;} span.c8 {color: #bbbbbb; text-decoration: none} strong.c7 {font-weight: bold; color: #333333;} div.c6 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal} div.c5 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 80%; font-weight: normal} p.c4 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 80%; font-weight: normal} h3.c3 {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold} span.c2 {font-size: 80%} span.c1 {font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;} Here are my impressions of the first day of the Social Business Forum in Milano A dialogue on Social Business Manifesto - Emanuele Scotti, Rosario Sica The presentation was focusing on Thesis and Anti-Thesis around Social Business My favorite one is: Peter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser social business manifesto theses #2: organizations are conversations - hello Oracle Social Network #sbf12 Here are the Thesis (auto-translated from italian to english) From Stress to Success - Pragmatic pathways for Social Business - John Hagel John Hagel talked about challenges of deploying new social technologies. Below are some key points participant tweeted during the session. 6hRhiannon Hughes ?@Rhi_Hughes Favourite quote this morning 'We need to strengthen the champions & neutralise the enemies' John Hagel. Not a hard task at all #sbf12 Expand Reply Retweet Favorite 8hElena Torresani ?@ElenaTorresani Minimize the power of the enemies of change. Maximize the power of the champions - John Hagel #sbf12 Expand Reply Retweet Favorite 8hGaetano Mazzanti ?@mgaewsj John Hagel change: minimize the power of the enemies #sbf12 Expand Reply Retweet Favorite 8hGaetano Mazzanti ?@mgaewsj John Hagel social software as band-aid for poor leadtime/waste management? mmm #sbf12 Expand Reply Retweet Favorite 8hElena Torresani ?@ElenaTorresani "information is power. We need access to information to get power"John Hagel, Deloitte &Touche #sbf12http://instagr.am/p/LcjgFqMXrf/ View photo Reply Retweet Favorite 8hItalo Marconi ?@italomarconi Information is power and Knowledge is subversive. John Hagel#sbf12 Expand Reply Retweet Favorite 8hdanielce ?@danielce #sbf12 john Hagel: innovation is not rational. from Milano, Milano Reply Retweet Favorite 8hGaetano Mazzanti ?@mgaewsj John Hagel: change is a political (not rational) process #sbf12 Expand Reply Retweet Favorite Enterprise gamification to drive engagement - Ray Wang Ray Wang did an excellent speech around engagement strategies and gamification More details can be found on the Harvard Business Review blog Panel Discussion: Does technology matter? Understanding how software enables or prevents participation Christian Finn, Ram Menon, Mike Gotta, moderated by Paolo Calderari Below are the highlights of the panel discussions as live tweets: 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @cfinn Q: social silos: mega trend social suites - do we create social silos + apps silos + org silos ... #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @cfinn A: Social will be less siloed - more integrated into application design. Analyatics is key to make intelligent decisions #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @MikeGotta - A: its more social be design then social by layer - Better work experience using social design. #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser Ram Menon: A: Social + Mobile + consumeration is coming together#sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser Q: What is the evolution for social business solution in the next 4-5 years? #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @cfinn Adoption: A: User experience is king - no training needed - We let you participate into a conversation via mobile and email#sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @MikeGotta A:Adoption - how can we measure quality? Literacy - Are people get confident to talk to a invisible audience ? #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser Ram Meno: A:Adoption - What should I measure ? Depend on business goal you want to active? #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser Q: How can technology facilitate adoption #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser #sbf12 @cfinn @mgotta Ram Menon at panel discussion about social technology @oraclewebcenter http://pic.twitter.com/Pquz73jO View photo Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser Ram Menon: 100% of data is in a system somewhere. 100% of collective intelligence is with people. Social System bridge both worlds Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser #sbf12 @MikeGotta Adoption is specific to the culture of the company Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @cfinn - drive adoption is important @MikeGotta - activity stream + watch list is most important feature in a social system #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @MikeGotta Why just adoption? email as 100% adoption? #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 2hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @MikeGotta Ram Menon respond: there is only 1 questions to ask: What is the adoption? #sbf12 @socialadoption you like this ? #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 3hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @MikeGotta - just replacing old technology (e.g. email) with new technology does not help. we need to change model/attitude #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 3hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser Ram Menon: CEO mandated to replace 6500 email aliases with Social Networking Software #sbf12 Expand Reply Delete Favorite 3hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @MikeGotta A: How to bring interface together #sbf12 . Going from point tools to platform, UI, Architecture + Eco-system is important Expand Reply Delete Favorite 3hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser Q: How is technology important in Social Business #sbf12 A:@cfinn - technology is enabler , user experience -easy of use is important Expand Reply Delete Favorite 3hPeter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser @cfinn particiapte in panel "Does technology matter? Understanding how software enables or prevents participation" #sbf #webcenter

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, April 13, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, April 13, 2010New ProjectsChat Neo: Video chatDev-wow HappyFuwa: Silverlight + Asp.net + Ajax 实现的以北京奥运为题材，福娃在线聊天互动系统 登录系统后，你可以和线上的朋友即时互动，走动 聊天 动作等都会呈现给其他的在线用户Dynamic Configuration Manager: Dynamic Configuration Manager GameHelper: the project of myselfGeotron: Geotron is a C# geolocation library to resolve postcodes and addresses to co-ordinates, to assist developers in creating location-aware applications. InfoPath Forms Services 2010 Web Testing Toolkit: This project has the tools and information needed to write Visual Studio web tests for InfoPath Forms Services 2010.IronBrainFuck, SimpleBrainFuck: IronBrainFuck and SimpleBrainFuck makes it easier for BrainFuck programmers to develop BrainFuck-compatible programs. It's developed in C#.Runtime Intelligence API: The Runtime Intelligence API library and samples provided by PreEmptive Solutions.SilverVNC 1.0: This project is a Silverlight VNC Viewer. It requires Silverlight 4.0 and works in Out of Browser with full-trust.Snippet Creator: Yet another Visual Studio plugin for creating code snippets.Software Codex: Software Codex is a collection of projects developed in .net to provide a set of libraries and functionalities for developers. It is divided into m...TestCrm: Let go!Make our CrmVidCoder: VidCoder is a DVD ripping and video transcoding application. It uses HandBrake for the encoding engine, but has a revamped and easy to use UI writt...WPF Data Virtualization: Component for displaying and interacting a large data set in WPF application.WPF Gantt chart: Gantt chart control for WPFNew ReleasesAJAX Control Toolkit: 40412: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - April 12th 2010 Release Version 40412April 12, 2010 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit...ASP.NET MVC | SCAFFOLD: ASP.NET MVC SCAFFOLD 1.0 PREVIEW: Primeiro release do ASP.NET MVC SCAFFOLD.Autenticar no OpenLDAP utilizando pGIna: LDAPAuth plugin: Release: DLL LDAPAuth Brief: pGina pluginBluetooth Radar: Version 1.8: Add position helper class to test whether a given point is on the interior of a circle. Random set of Devices on the radar + Zindex changes on Mous...Database Searcher: DB-Searcher Binaries v0.1: First beta version containing following features: Search exact database values via .NET DB-Provider Microsoft SQL MySQL .NET Connector (no .NET t...DBSourceTools: DBSourceTools_1.2.0.7: Release 1.2.0.7 Extended search engine from (pegas)'s patch. Fixed Script Data bug with reserved word (eripsni). Write Targets can now create targe...ESB Toolkit Extensions: Tellago SOA ESB Extenstions v0.4: Windows Installer file that installs Library on a BizTalk ESB 2.0 system. This Install automatically configures the esb.config to use the new compo...Fluent Assertions: Release 1.2: See this blog post for more details on this release: http://www.dennisdoomen.net/2010/04/fluent-assertions-12-has-been-released.htmlFNA Fractal Numerical Algorithm for a new encryption technology: FNA: This is a latest distribution ( 0.04 at the moment). Is a Perl package (.pm). More information on: http://search.cpan.org/~anak/Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts 3.0.6 Released!: Hi, Today we have released the final version of Visifire v3.0.6 which contains the following major features: * Zoom using interactive ZoomRec...HD-Trailers.NET Downloader: HD-Trailers.NET_Downloader_v.91_BETA: - added configuration option 'FeedAddress' to specify the URL of the RSS feed to consume - implemented fix for workitem4260: AddDate = false; will ...HobbyBrew Mobile: Beta 1: First public BetaHome Access Plus+: v3.2.6.1: v3.2.6.1 Fixed the wrong date in the iCal Generator Fixed the admin booking posting logging it as being booked by the admin Fixed the problem o...HTML Ruby: 6.21.1: Added back the space ruby text option More consistent ruby text positioning regardless to the page's stylesInfoPath Forms Services 2010 Web Testing Toolkit: IPFS 2010 Web Test Toolkit 20100412 for VS2008: The ExtractAndSubstituteDynamicInfoPathData web test plugin. To use it, simply add the plugin to your web test. It automatically recognizes the inf...IronPython: 2.6.1: Hello Python Community, We’re pleased to announce the final release of IronPython 2.6.1. This version of IronPython makes great strides in stabili...IronRuby: 1.0: IronRuby 1.0 is the first stable version of IronRuby, targeting Ruby 1.8.6 compatibility. For a high-level compatibility report solely based on Rub...METAR.NET Decoder: 0.3.x beta: First public release. Main of the application is working. Metar can be downloaded, decoded, updated and encoded back to metar string. Release incl...MiniTwitter: 1.11: MiniTwitter 1.11 更新内容 修正 設定ファイルを自動でバックアップして、破損したときは出来るだけ修正するように。 初回起動時にタイムラインを更新しようとすると落ちるバグを修正。MSBuild Mercurial Tasks: 1.0.1 Stable: Ready for Production release. 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• New Bundling and Minification Support (ASP.NET 4.5 Series)

  - by ScottGu

  This is the sixth in a series of blog posts I'm doing on ASP.NET 4.5. The next release of .NET and Visual Studio include a ton of great new features and capabilities.  With ASP.NET 4.5 you'll see a bunch of really nice improvements with both Web Forms and MVC - as well as in the core ASP.NET base foundation that both are built upon. Today’s post covers some of the work we are doing to add built-in support for bundling and minification into ASP.NET - which makes it easy to improve the performance of applications.  This feature can be used by all ASP.NET applications, including both ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Forms solutions. Basics of Bundling and Minification As more and more people use mobile devices to surf the web, it is becoming increasingly important that the websites and apps we build perform well with them. We’ve all tried loading sites on our smartphones – only to eventually give up in frustration as it loads slowly over a slow cellular network.  If your site/app loads slowly like that, you are likely losing potential customers because of bad performance.  Even with powerful desktop machines, the load time of your site and perceived performance can make an enormous customer perception. Most websites today are made up of multiple JavaScript and CSS files to separate the concerns and keep the code base tight. While this is a good practice from a coding point of view, it often has some unfortunate consequences for the overall performance of the website.  Multiple JavaScript and CSS files require multiple HTTP requests from a browser – which in turn can slow down the performance load time.  Simple Example Below I’ve opened a local website in IE9 and recorded the network traffic using IE’s built-in F12 developer tools. As shown below, the website consists of 5 CSS and 4 JavaScript files which the browser has to download. Each file is currently requested separately by the browser and returned by the server, and the process can take a significant amount of time proportional to the number of files in question. Bundling ASP.NET is adding a feature that makes it easy to “bundle” or “combine” multiple CSS and JavaScript files into fewer HTTP requests. This causes the browser to request a lot fewer files and in turn reduces the time it takes to fetch them.   Below is an updated version of the above sample that takes advantage of this new bundling functionality (making only one request for the JavaScript and one request for the CSS): The browser now has to send fewer requests to the server. The content of the individual files have been bundled/combined into the same response, but the content of the files remains the same - so the overall file size is exactly the same as before the bundling.   But notice how even on a local dev machine (where the network latency between the browser and server is minimal), the act of bundling the CSS and JavaScript files together still manages to reduce the overall page load time by almost 20%.  Over a slow network the performance improvement would be even better. Minification The next release of ASP.NET is also adding a new feature that makes it easy to reduce or “minify” the download size of the content as well.  This is a process that removes whitespace, comments and other unneeded characters from both CSS and JavaScript. The result is smaller files, which will download and load in a browser faster.  The graph below shows the performance gain we are seeing when both bundling and minification are used together: Even on my local dev box (where the network latency is minimal), we now have a 40% performance improvement from where we originally started.  On slow networks (and especially with international customers), the gains would be even more significant. Using Bundling and Minification inside ASP.NET The upcoming release of ASP.NET makes it really easy to take advantage of bundling and minification within projects and see performance gains like in the scenario above. The way it does this allows you to avoid having to run custom tools as part of your build process –  instead ASP.NET has added runtime support to perform the bundling/minification for you dynamically (caching the results to make sure perf is great).  This enables a really clean development experience and makes it super easy to start to take advantage of these new features. Let’s assume that we have a simple project that has 4 JavaScript files and 6 CSS files: Bundling and Minifying the .css files Let’s say you wanted to reference all of the stylesheets in the “Styles” folder above on a page.  Today you’d have to add multiple CSS references to get all of them – which would translate into 6 separate HTTP requests: The new bundling/minification feature now allows you to instead bundle and minify all of the .css files in the Styles folder – simply by sending a URL request to the folder (in this case “styles”) with an appended “/css” path after it.  For example:    This will cause ASP.NET to scan the directory, bundle and minify the .css files within it, and send back a single HTTP response with all of the CSS content to the browser.  You don’t need to run any tools or pre-processor to get this behavior.  This enables you to cleanly separate your CSS into separate logical .css files and maintain a very clean development experience – while not taking a performance hit at runtime for doing so.  The Visual Studio designer will also honor the new bundling/minification logic as well – so you’ll still get a WYSWIYG designer experience inside VS as well. Bundling and Minifying the JavaScript files Like the CSS approach above, if we wanted to bundle and minify all of our JavaScript into a single response we could send a URL request to the folder (in this case “scripts”) with an appended “/js” path after it:   This will cause ASP.NET to scan the directory, bundle and minify the .js files within it, and send back a single HTTP response with all of the JavaScript content to the browser.  Again – no custom tools or builds steps were required in order to get this behavior.  And it works with all browsers. Ordering of Files within a Bundle By default, when files are bundled by ASP.NET they are sorted alphabetically first, just like they are shown in Solution Explorer. Then they are automatically shifted around so that known libraries and their custom extensions such as jQuery, MooTools and Dojo are loaded before anything else. So the default order for the merged bundling of the Scripts folder as shown above will be: Jquery-1.6.2.js Jquery-ui.js Jquery.tools.js a.js By default, CSS files are also sorted alphabetically and then shifted around so that reset.css and normalize.css (if they are there) will go before any other file. So the default sorting of the bundling of the Styles folder as shown above will be: reset.css content.css forms.css globals.css menu.css styles.css The sorting is fully customizable, though, and can easily be changed to accommodate most use cases and any common naming pattern you prefer.  The goal with the out of the box experience, though, is to have smart defaults that you can just use and be successful with. Any number of directories/sub-directories supported In the example above we just had a single “Scripts” and “Styles” folder for our application.  This works for some application types (e.g. single page applications).  Often, though, you’ll want to have multiple CSS/JS bundles within your application – for example: a “common” bundle that has core JS and CSS files that all pages use, and then page specific or section specific files that are not used globally. You can use the bundling/minification support across any number of directories or sub-directories in your project – this makes it easy to structure your code so as to maximize the bunding/minification benefits.  Each directory by default can be accessed as a separate URL addressable bundle.  Bundling/Minification Extensibility ASP.NET’s bundling and minification support is built with extensibility in mind and every part of the process can be extended or replaced. Custom Rules In addition to enabling the out of the box - directory-based - bundling approach, ASP.NET also supports the ability to register custom bundles using a new programmatic API we are exposing.  The below code demonstrates how you can register a “customscript” bundle using code within an application’s Global.asax class.  The API allows you to add/remove/filter files that go into the bundle on a very granular level:     The above custom bundle can then be referenced anywhere within the application using the below <script> reference:     Custom Processing You can also override the default CSS and JavaScript bundles to support your own custom processing of the bundled files (for example: custom minification rules, support for Saas, LESS or Coffeescript syntax, etc). In the example below we are indicating that we want to replace the built-in minification transforms with a custom MyJsTransform and MyCssTransform class. They both subclass the CSS and JavaScript minifier respectively and can add extra functionality:     The end result of this extensibility is that you can plug-into the bundling/minification logic at a deep level and do some pretty cool things with it. 2 Minute Video of Bundling and Minification in Action Mads Kristensen has a great 90 second video that shows off using the new Bundling and Minification feature.  You can watch the 90 second video here. Summary The new bundling and minification support within the next release of ASP.NET will make it easier to build fast web applications.  It is really easy to use, and doesn’t require major changes to your existing dev workflow.  It is also supports a rich extensibility API that enables you to customize it however you want. You can easily take advantage of this new support within ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET Web Pages based applications. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I use Twitter to-do quick posts and share links. My Twitter handle is: @scottgu

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• The Internet of Things & Commerce: Part 2 -- Interview with Brian Celenza, Commerce Innovation Strategist

  - by Katrina Gosek, Director | Commerce Product Strategy-Oracle

  Internet of Things & Commerce Series: Part 2 (of 3) Welcome back to the second installation of my three part series on the Internet of Things & Commerce. A few weeks ago, I wrote “The Next 7,000 Days” about how we’ve become embedded in a digital architecture in the last 7,000 days since the birth of the internet – an architecture that everyday ties the massive expanse of the internet evermore closely with our physical lives. This blog series explores how this new blend of virtual and material will change how we shop and how businesses sell. Now enjoy reading my interview with Brian Celenza, one of the chief strategists in our Oracle Commerce innovation group. He comments on the past, present, and future of the how the growing Internet of Things relates and will relate to the buying and selling of goods on and offline. -------------------------------------------- QUESTION: You probably have one of the coolest jobs on our team, Brian – and frankly, one of the coolest jobs in our industry. As part of the innovation team for Oracle Commerce, you’re regularly working on bold features and groundbreaking commerce-focused experiences for our vision demos. As you look back over the past couple of years, what is the biggest trend (or trends) you’ve seen in digital commerce that started to bring us closer to this idea of what people are calling an “Internet of Things”? Brian: Well as you look back over the last couple of years, the speed at which change in our industry has moved looks like one of those blurred movement photos – you know the ones where the landscape blurs because the observer is moving so quickly your eye focus can’t keep up. But one thing that is absolutely clear is that the biggest catalyst for that speed of change – especially over the last three years – has been mobile. Mobile technology changed everything. Over the last three years the entire thought process of how to sell on (and offline) has shifted because of mobile technology advances. Particularly for eCommerce professionals who have started to move past the notion of “channels” for selling goods to this notion of “Mobile First”… then the Web site. Or more accurately, that everything – smartphones, web, store, tablet – is just one channel or has to act like one singular access point to the same product catalog, information and content. The most innovative eCommerce professionals realized some time ago that it’s not ideal to build an eCommerce Web site and then build everything on top of or off of it. Rather, they want to build an eCommerce API and then integrate it will all other systems. To accomplish this, they are leveraging all the latest mobile technologies or possibilities mobile technology has opened up: 4G and LTE, GPS, bluetooth, touch screens, apps, html5… How has this all started to come together for shopping experiences on and offline? Well to give you a personal example, I remember visiting an Apple store a few years ago and being amazed that I didn’t have to wait in line because a store associate knew everything about me from my ID – right there on the sales floor – and could check me out anywhere. Then just a few months later (when like any good addict) I went back to get the latest and greatest new gadget, I felt like I was stealing it because I could check myself out with my smartphone. I didn’t even need to see a sales associate OR go to a cash register. Amazing. And since then, all sort sorts of companies across all different types of industries – from food service to apparel –  are starting to see mobile payments in the billions of dollars now thanks not only to the convenience factor but to smart loyalty rewards programs as well. These are just some really simple current examples that come to mind. So many different things have happened in the last couple of years, it’s hard to really absorb all of the quickly – because as soon as you do, everything changes again! Just like that blurry speed photo image. For eCommerce, however, this type of new environment underscores the importance of building an eCommerce API – a platform that has services you can tap in to and build on as the landscape changes at a fever pitch. It’s a mobile first perspective. A web service perspective – particularly if you are thinking of how to engage customers across digital and physical spaces. —— QUESTION: Thanks for bringing us into the present – some really great examples you gave there to put things into perspective. So what do you see as the biggest trend right now around the “Internet of Things” – and what’s coming next few years? Brian: Honestly, even sitting where I am in the innovation group – it’s hard to look out even 12 months because, well, I don’t even think we’ve fully caught up with what is possible now. But I can definitely say that in the last 12 months and in the coming 12 months, in the technology and eCommerce world it’s all about iBeacons. iBeacons are awesome tools we have right now to tie together physical and digital shopping experiences. They know exactly where you are as a shopper and can communicate that to businesses. Currently there seem to be two camps of thought around iBeacons. First, many people are thinking of them like an “indoor GPS”, which to be fair they literally are. The use case this first camp envisions for iBeacons is primarily for advertising and marketing. So they use iBeacons to push location-based promotions to customers if they are close to a store or in a store. You may have seen these types of mobile promotions start to pop up occasionally on your smart phone as you pass by a store you’ve bought from in the past. That’s the work of iBeacons. But in my humble opinion, these promotions probably come too early in the customer journey and although they may be well timed and work to “convert” in some cases, I imagine in most they are just eroding customer trust because they are kind of a “one-size-fits-all” solution rather than one that is taking into account what exactly the customer might be looking for in that particular moment. Maybe they just want more information and a promotion is way too soon for that type of customer. The second camp is more in line with where my thinking falls. In this case, businesses take a more sensitive approach with iBeacons to customers’ needs. Instead of throwing out a “one-size-fits-all” to any passer by with iBeacons, the use case is more around looking at the physical proximity of a customer as an opportunity to provide a service: show expert reviews on a product they may be looking at in a particular aisle of a store, offer the opportunity to compare prices (and then offer a promotion), signal an in-store associate if a customer has been in the store for more than 10 minutes in one place. These are all less intrusive more value-driven uses of iBeacons. And they are more about building customer trust through service. To take this example a bit further into the future realm of “Big Data” and “Internet of Things” businesses could actually use the Oracle Commerce Platform and iBeacons to “silently” track customer movement w/in the store to provide higher quality service. And this doesn’t have to be creepy or intrusive. Simply if a customer has been in a particular department or aisle for more than a 5 or 10 minutes, an in-store associate could come over an offer some assistance already knowing customer preferences from their online profile and maybe even seeing the items in a shopping cart they started at home. None of this has to be revealed to the customer, but it certainly could boost the level of service an in-store sales associate could provide. Or, in another futuristic example, stores could use the digital footprint of the physical store transmitted by iBeacons to generate heat maps of the store that could be tracked over time. Imagine how much you could find out about which parts of the store are more busy during certain parts of the day or seasons. This could completely revolutionize how physical merchandising is deployed or where certain high value / new items are placed. And / or this use of iBeacons could also help businesses figure out if customers are getting held up in certain parts of the store during busy days like Black Friday. If long lines are causing customers to bounce from a physical store and leave those holiday gifts behind, maybe having employees with mobile check as an option could remove the cash register bottleneck. But going to back to my original statement, it’s all still very early in the story for iBeacons. The hardware manufacturers are still very new and there is still not one clear standard.  Honestly, it all goes back to building and maintaining an extensible and flexible platform for anywhere engagement. What you’re building today should allow you to rapidly take advantage of whatever unimaginable use cases wait around the corner. ------------------------------------------------------ I hope you enjoyed the brief interview with Brian. It’s really awesome to have such smart and innovation-minded individuals on our Oracle Commerce innovation team. Please join me again in a few weeks for Part 3 of this series where I interview one of the product managers on our team about how the blending of digital and in-store selling in influencing our product development and vision.

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