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• iTunes and Hulu Playback Choppy and Slow?

  - by Bart Silverstrim

  Specs: Windows XP, latest updates 1.7 ghz Pentium 4 1 gig ram DirectX 9.0c NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 with 256 meg RAM OpenGL 2.1 The story: Okay, I had an older system laying around that I figured I would try turning into a mini-media system to connect to our TV. I put together a lot of older parts, got it into working order, etc. and hooked it up and voila'...slower, but usable system that displayed to the TV. It could run some things decently. I put in iTunes, it played video okay. Not great, but okay. Played Hulu and since we have a 1Mb download rate, the minimum for their site, there were some choppy moments when watching their shows, but I found that (sadly) changing resolution to 800x600 seemed to help with the issue when running full screen. I downloaded the application called Boxee and installed it. It wouldn't run; apparently the video card in the system supported OpenGL 1.2, and needed at least 1.4. I bought a cheap card, the 5200, with four times the memory in it and support for OpenGL 2.1. Installed, everything seemed fine. iTunes seemed to run fine, the video driver (PNY video card) came with OpenGL 2.1, and Boxee finally ran. I then upgraded to the latest drivers for the video card and ran the DirectX updater from MS. After that, the OpenGL Extension Viewer wouldn't run. It just stayed as an icon in the task bar. Also, any and all videos in iTunes stuttered and went out of sync horribly. Unwatchable. I tried watching Hulu video in Boxee, and it displayed video like it was a series of stills in a very bad powerpoint. Playing straightforward audio-only came through fine, no stutters no hiccups. I tried system restore to roll back updates to pre-directX updates (I thought that seemed to be the time that triggered the weird behavior), no joy. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the video drivers. I installed updated audio drivers (ensoniq audiopci), nothing helped. I finally wiped the drive last night and tried reinstalling everything and restoring my iTunes content via an import from a backup. Fresh install, no updater on the video card or directx. the problem was still there although I haven't tested Hulu, the iTunes player is still stuttering like crazy if I play video, fine if I play audio. I know the processor isn't high in heft, but with one gig of RAM and the fact that it seemed to do okay before I thought that the problem must be software related. Has anyone else run into this sort of issue and have a solution other than "buy a new computer"? What specs seem to work with video at the low end for you? Right now the system is of little use other than keeping my music library and iTunes apps synced with my iPod.

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• Nginx https rewrite turns POST to GET

  - by x7311

  My proxy server runs on ip A and this is how people access my web service. The nginx configuration will redirect to a virtual machine on ip B. For the proxy server on IP A, I have this in my sites-available server { listen 443; ssl on; ssl_certificate nginx.pem; ssl_certificate_key nginx.key; client_max_body_size 200M; server_name localhost 127.0.0.1; server_name_in_redirect off; location / { proxy_pass http://10.10.0.59:80; proxy_redirect http://10.10.0.59:80/ /; proxy_set_header Host $http_host; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; } } server { listen 80; rewrite ^(.*) https://$http_host$1 permanent; server_name localhost 127.0.0.1; server_name_in_redirect off; location / { proxy_pass http://10.10.0.59:80; proxy_redirect http://10.10.0.59:80/ /; proxy_set_header Host $http_host; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; } } The proxy_redirect was taken from how do I get nginx to forward HTTP POST requests via rewrite? Everything that hits the public IP will hit 443 because of the rewrite. Internally, we are forwarding to 80 on the virtual machine. But when I run a python script such as the one below to test our configuration import requests data = {'username': '....', 'password': '.....'} url = 'http://IP_A/api/service/signup' res = requests.post(url, data=data, verify=False) print res print res.json print res.status_code print res.headers I am getting a 405 Method Not Allowed. In nginx we found that when it hit the internal server, the internal nginx was getting a GET request, even though in the original header we did a POST (this was shown in the Python script). So it seems like rewrite has problem. Any idea how to fix this? When I commented out the rewrite, it hits 80 for sure, and it went through. Since rewrite was able to talk to our internal server, so rewrite itself has no issue. It's just the rewrite dropped POST to GET. Thank you! (This will also be asked on Nginx forum because this is a critical blocker...)

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• How To Switch Back to Outlook 2007 After the 2010 Beta Ends

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you switching back to Outlook 2007 after trying out Office 2010 beta?  Here’s how you can restore your Outlook data and keep everything working fine after the switch. Whenever you install a newer version of Outlook, it will convert your profile and data files to the latest format.  This makes them work the best in the newer version of Outlook, but may cause problems if you decide to revert to an older version.  If you installed Outlook 2010 beta, it automatically imported and converted your profile from Outlook 2007.  When the beta expires, you will either have to reinstall Office 2007 or purchase a copy of Office 2010. If you choose to reinstall Office 2007, you may notice an error message each time you open Outlook. Outlook will still work fine and all of your data will be saved, but this error message can get annoying.  Here’s how you can create a new profile, import all of your old data, and get rid of this error message. Banish the Error Message with a New Profile To get rid of this error message, we need to create a new Outlook profile.  First, make sure your Outlook data files are backed up.  Your messages, contacts, calendar, and more are stored in a .pst file in your appdata folder.  Enter the following in the address bar of an Explorer window to open your Outlook data folder, and replace username with your user name: C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook Copy the Outlook Personal Folders (.pst) files that contain your data. Its name is usually your email address, though it may have a different name.  If in doubt, select all of the Outlook Personal Folders files, copy them, and save them in another safe place (such as your Documents folder). Now, let’s remove your old profile.  Open Control Panel, and select Mail.  In Windows Vista or 7, simply enter “Mail” in the search box and select the first entry. Click the “Show Profiles…” button. Now, select your Outlook profile, and click Remove.  This will not delete your data files, but will remove them from Outlook. Press Yes to confirm that you wish to remove this profile. Open Outlook, and you will be asked to create a new profile.  Enter a name for your new profile, and press Ok. Now enter your email account information to setup Outlook as normal. Outlook will attempt to automatically configure your account settings.  This usually works for accounts with popular email systems, but if it fails to find your information you can enter it manually.  Press finish when everything’s done. Outlook will now go ahead and download messages from your email account.  In our test, we used a Gmail account that still had all of our old messages online.  Those files are backed up in our old Outlook data files, so we can save time and not download them.  Click the Send/Receive button on the bottom of the window, and select “Cancel Send/Receive”. Restore Your Old Outlook Data Let’s add our old Outlook file back to Outlook 2007.  Exit Outlook, and then go back to Control Panel, and select Mail as above.  This time, click the Data Files button. Click the Add button on the top left. Select “Office Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst)”, and click Ok. Now, select your old Outlook data file.  It should be in the folder that opens by default; if not, browse to the backup copy we saved earlier, and select it. Press Ok at the next dialog to accept the default settings. Now, select the data file we just imported, and click “Set as Default”. Now, all of your old messages, appointments, contacts, and everything else will be right in Outlook ready for you.  Click Ok, and then open Outlook to see the change. All of the data that was in Outlook 2010 is now ready to use in Outlook 2007.  You won’t have to wait to re-download all of your emails from the server since everything’s still here ready to be used.  And when you open Outlook, you won’t see any error messages, either! Conclusion Migrating your Outlook profile back to Outlook 2007 is fairly easy, and with these steps, you can avoid seeing an error message every time you open Outlook.  With all your data in tact, you’re ready to get back to work instead of getting frustrated with Outlook.  Many of us use webmail and keep all of our messages in the cloud, but even on broadband connections it can take a long time to download several gigabytes of emails. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Opening Attachments in Outlook 2007 by KeyboardQuickly Create Appointments from Tasks with Outlook 2007’s To-Do BarFix For Outlook 2007 Constantly Asking for Password on VistaPin Microsoft Outlook to the Desktop BackgroundOur Look at the LinkedIn Social Connector for Outlook 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 Download Free MP3s from Amazon 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

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• MVC Portable Areas Enhancement &ndash; Embedded Resource Controller

  - by Steve Michelotti

  MvcContrib contains a feature called Portable Areas which I’ve recently blogged about. In short, portable areas provide a way to distribute MVC binary components as simple .NET assemblies where the aspx/ascx files are actually compiled into the assembly as embedded resources. This is an extremely cool feature but once you start building robust portable areas, you’ll also want to be able to access other external files like css and javascript.  After my recent post suggesting portable areas be expanded to include other embedded resources, Eric Hexter asked me if I’d like to contribute the code to MvcContrib (which of course I did!). Embedded resources are stored in a case-sensitive way in .NET assemblies and the existing embedded view engine inside MvcContrib already took this into account. Obviously, we’d want the same case sensitivity handling to be taken into account for any embedded resource so my job consisted of 1) adding the Embedded Resource Controller, and 2) a little refactor to extract the logic that deals with embedded resources so that the embedded view engine and the embedded resource controller could both leverage it and, therefore, keep the code DRY. The embedded resource controller targets these scenarios: External image files that are referenced in an <img> tag External files referenced like css or JavaScript files Image files referenced inside css files Embedded Resources Walkthrough This post will describe a walkthrough of using the embedded resource controller in your portable areas to include the scenarios outlined above. I will build a trivial “Quick Links” widget to illustrate the concepts. The portable area registration is the starting point for all portable areas. The MvcContrib.PortableAreas.EmbeddedResourceController is optional functionality – you must opt-in if you want to use it.  To do this, you simply “register” it by providing a route in your area registration that uses it like this: 1: context.MapRoute("ResourceRoute", "quicklinks/resource/{resourceName}", 2: new { controller = "EmbeddedResource", action = "Index" }, 3: new string[] { "MvcContrib.PortableAreas" }); First, notice that I can specify any route I want (e.g., “quicklinks/resources/…”).  Second, notice that I need to include the “MvcContrib.PortableAreas” namespace as the fourth parameter so that the framework is able to find the EmbeddedResourceController at runtime. The handling of embedded views and embedded resources have now been merged.  Therefore, the call to: 1: RegisterTheViewsInTheEmmeddedViewEngine(GetType()); has now been removed (breaking change).  It has been replaced with: 1: RegisterAreaEmbeddedResources(); Other than that, the portable area registration remains unchanged. The solution structure for the static files in my portable area looks like this: I’ve got a css file in a folder called “Content” as well as a couple of image files in a folder called “images”. To reference these in my aspx/ascx code, all of have to do is this: 1: <link href="<%= Url.Resource("Content.QuickLinks.css") %>" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> 2: <img src="<%= Url.Resource("images.globe.png") %>" /> This results in the following HTML mark up: 1: <link href="/quicklinks/resource/Content.QuickLinks.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> 2: <img src="/quicklinks/resource/images.globe.png" /> The Url.Resource() method is now included in MvcContrib as well. Make sure you import the “MvcContrib” namespace in your views. Next, I have to following html to render the quick links: 1: <ul class="links"> 2: <li><a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a></li> 3: <li><a href="http://www.bing.com">Bing</a></li> 4: <li><a href="http://www.yahoo.com">Yahoo</a></li> 5: </ul> Notice the <ul> tag has a class called “links”. This is defined inside my QuickLinks.css file and looks like this: 1: ul.links li 2: { 3: background: url(/quicklinks/resource/images.navigation.png) left 4px no-repeat; 4: padding-left: 20px; 5: margin-bottom: 4px; 6: } On line 3 we’re able to refer to the url for the background property. As a final note, although we already have complete control over the location of the embedded resources inside the assembly, what if we also want control over the physical URL routes as well. This point was raised by John Nelson in this post. This has been taken into account as well. For example, suppose you want your physical url to look like this: 1: <img src="/quicklinks/images/globe.png" /> instead of the same corresponding URL shown above (i.e., “/quicklinks/resources/images.globe.png”). You can do this easily by specifying another route for it which includes a “resourcePath” parameter that is pre-pended. Here is the complete code for the area registration with the custom route for the images shown on lines 9-11: 1: public class QuickLinksRegistration : PortableAreaRegistration 2: { 3: public override void RegisterArea(System.Web.Mvc.AreaRegistrationContext context, IApplicationBus bus) 4: { 5: context.MapRoute("ResourceRoute", "quicklinks/resource/{resourceName}", 6: new { controller = "EmbeddedResource", action = "Index" }, 7: new string[] { "MvcContrib.PortableAreas" }); 8:   9: context.MapRoute("ResourceImageRoute", "quicklinks/images/{resourceName}", 10: new { controller = "EmbeddedResource", action = "Index", resourcePath = "images" }, 11: new string[] { "MvcContrib.PortableAreas" }); 12:   13: context.MapRoute("quicklink", "quicklinks/{controller}/{action}", 14: new {controller = "links", action = "index"}); 15:   16: this.RegisterAreaEmbeddedResources(); 17: } 18:   19: public override string AreaName 20: { 21: get 22: { 23: return "QuickLinks"; 24: } 25: } 26: } The Quick Links portable area results in the following requests (including custom route formats): The complete code for this post is now included in the Portable Areas sample solution in the latest MvcContrib source code. You can get the latest code now.  Portable Areas open up exciting new possibilities for MVC development!

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• Map a Network Drive from XP to Windows 7

  - by Mysticgeek

  We’ve received a lot of questions about mapping a drive from XP to Windows 7 to access data easily. Today we look at how to map a drive in Windows 7, and how to map to an XP drive from Windows 7. With the new Homegroup feature in Windows 7, it makes sharing data between computers a lot easier. But you might need to map a network drive so you can go directly into a folder to access its contents. Mapping a network drive may sound like “IT talk”, but the process is fairly easy. Map Network Drive in Windows 7 Note: All of the computers used in this article are part of the same workgroup on a home network. In this first example we’re mapping to another Windows 7 drive on the network. Open Computer and from the toolbar click on Map Network Drive. Alternately in Computer you can hit “Alt+T” to pull up the toolbar and click on Tools \ Map Network Drive. Now give it an available drive letter, type in the path or browse to the folder you want to map to. Check the box next to Reconnect at logon if you want it available after a reboot, and click Finish. If both machines aren’t part of the same Homegroup, you may be prompted to enter in a username and password. Make sure and check the box next to Remember my credentials if you don’t want to log in every time to access it. The drive will map and the contents of the folder will open up. When you look in Computer, you’ll see the drive under network location. This process works if you want to connect to a server drive as well. In this example we map to a Home Server drive. Map an XP Drive to Windows 7 There might be times when you need to map a drive on an XP machine on your network. There are extra steps you’ll need to take to make it work however. Here we take a look at the problem you’ll encounter when trying to map to an XP machine if things aren’t set up correctly. If you try to browse to your XP machine you’ll see a message that you don’t have permission. Or if you try to enter in the path directly, you’ll be prompted for a username and password, and the annoyance is, no matter what credentials you put in, you can’t connect. To solve the problem we need to set up the Windows 7 machine as a user on the XP machine and make them part of the Administrators group. Right-click My Computer and select Manage. Under Computer Management expand Local Users and Groups and click on the Users folder. Right-click an empty area and click New User. Add in the user credentials, uncheck User must change password at next logon, then check Password never expires then click Create. Now you see the new user you created in the list. After the user is added you might want to reboot before proceeding to the next step.   Next we need to make the user part of the Administrators group. So go back into Computer Management \ Local Users and Groups \ Groups then double click on Administrators. Click the Add button in Administrators Properties window. Enter in the new user you created and click OK. An easy way to do this is to enter the name of the user you created then click Check Names and the path will be entered in for you. Now you see the user as a member of the Administrators group. Back on the Windows 7 machine we’ll start the process of mapping a drive. Here we’re browsing to the XP Media Center Edition machine. Now we can enter in the user name and password we just created. If you only want to access specific shared folders on the XP machine you can browse to them. Or if you want to map to the entire drive, enter in the drive path where in this example it’s “\\XPMCE\C$” –Don’t forget the “$” sign after the local drive letter. Then login… Again the contents of the drive will open up for you to access. Here you can see we have two drives mapped. One to another Windows 7 machine on the network, and the other one to the XP computer.   If you ever want to disconnect a drive, just right-click on it and then Disconnect. There are several scenarios where you might want to map a drive in Windows 7 to access specific data. It takes a little bit of work but you can map to an XP drive from Windows 7 as well. This comes in handy where you have a network with different versions of Windows running on it. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Find Your Missing USB Drive on Windows XPMake Vista Index Your Network ConnectionsEasily Backup & Import Your Wireless Network Settings in Windows 7Quickly Open Network Connections List in Windows 7 or VistaHow To Find Drives Easily with Desk Drive TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Kill Processes Quickly with Process Assassin Need to Come Up with a Good Name? Try Wordoid StockFox puts a Lightweight Stock Ticker in your Statusbar Explore Google Public Data Visually The Ultimate Excel Cheatsheet Convert the Quick Launch Bar into a Super Application Launcher

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• MySQL 5.5 - Lost connection to MySQL server during query

  - by bully

  I have an Ubuntu 12.04 LTS server running at a german hoster (virtualized system). # uname -a Linux ... 3.2.0-27-generic #43-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jul 6 14:25:57 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux I want to migrate a Web CMS system, called Contao. It's not my first migration, but my first migration having connection issues with mysql. Migration went successfully, I have the same Contao version running (it's more or less just copy / paste). For the database behind, I did: apt-get install mysql-server phpmyadmin I set a root password and added a user for the CMS which has enough rights on its own database (and only its database) for doing the stuff it has to do. Data import via phpmyadmin worked just fine. I can access the backend of the CMS (which needs to deal with the database already). If I try to access the frontend now, I get the following error: Fatal error: Uncaught exception Exception with message Query error: Lost connection to MySQL server during query (<query statement here, nothing special, just a select>) thrown in /var/www/system/libraries/Database.php on line 686 (Keep in mind: I can access mysql with phpmyadmin and through the backend, working like a charme, it's just the frontend call causing errors). If I spam F5 in my browser I can sometimes even kill the mysql deamon. If I run # mysqld --log-warnings=2 I get this: ... 120921 7:57:31 [Note] mysqld: ready for connections. Version: '5.5.24-0ubuntu0.12.04.1' socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' port: 3306 (Ubuntu) 05:57:37 UTC - mysqld got signal 4 ; This could be because you hit a bug. It is also possible that this binary or one of the libraries it was linked against is corrupt, improperly built, or misconfigured. This error can also be caused by malfunctioning hardware. We will try our best to scrape up some info that will hopefully help diagnose the problem, but since we have already crashed, something is definitely wrong and this may fail. key_buffer_size=16777216 read_buffer_size=131072 max_used_connections=1 max_threads=151 thread_count=1 connection_count=1 It is possible that mysqld could use up to key_buffer_size + (read_buffer_size + sort_buffer_size)*max_threads = 346679 K bytes of memory Hope that's ok; if not, decrease some variables in the equation. Thread pointer: 0x7f1485db3b20 Attempting backtrace. You can use the following information to find out where mysqld died. If you see no messages after this, something went terribly wrong... stack_bottom = 7f1480041e60 thread_stack 0x30000 mysqld(my_print_stacktrace+0x29)[0x7f1483b96459] mysqld(handle_fatal_signal+0x483)[0x7f1483a5c1d3] /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0(+0xfcb0)[0x7f1482797cb0] /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6(+0x42e11)[0x7f14821cae11] mysqld(_ZN10SQL_SELECT17test_quick_selectEP3THD6BitmapILj64EEyyb+0x1368)[0x7f1483b26cb8] mysqld(+0x33116a)[0x7f148397916a] mysqld(_ZN4JOIN8optimizeEv+0x558)[0x7f148397d3e8] mysqld(_Z12mysql_selectP3THDPPP4ItemP10TABLE_LISTjR4ListIS1_ES2_jP8st_orderSB_S2_SB_yP13select_resultP18st_select_lex_unitP13st_select_lex+0xdd)[0x7f148397fd7d] mysqld(_Z13handle_selectP3THDP3LEXP13select_resultm+0x17c)[0x7f1483985d2c] mysqld(+0x2f4524)[0x7f148393c524] mysqld(_Z21mysql_execute_commandP3THD+0x293e)[0x7f14839451de] mysqld(_Z11mysql_parseP3THDPcjP12Parser_state+0x10f)[0x7f1483948bef] mysqld(_Z16dispatch_command19enum_server_commandP3THDPcj+0x1365)[0x7f148394a025] mysqld(_Z24do_handle_one_connectionP3THD+0x1bd)[0x7f14839ec7cd] mysqld(handle_one_connection+0x50)[0x7f14839ec830] /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0(+0x7e9a)[0x7f148278fe9a] /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(clone+0x6d)[0x7f1481eba4bd] Trying to get some variables. Some pointers may be invalid and cause the dump to abort. Query (7f1464004b60): is an invalid pointer Connection ID (thread ID): 1 Status: NOT_KILLED From /var/log/syslog: Sep 21 07:17:01 s16477249 CRON[23855]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) Sep 21 07:18:51 s16477249 kernel: [231923.349159] type=1400 audit(1348204731.333:70): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/mysqld" pid=23946 comm="apparmor_parser" Sep 21 07:18:53 s16477249 /etc/mysql/debian-start[23990]: Upgrading MySQL tables if necessary. Sep 21 07:18:53 s16477249 /etc/mysql/debian-start[23993]: /usr/bin/mysql_upgrade: the '--basedir' option is always ignored Sep 21 07:18:53 s16477249 /etc/mysql/debian-start[23993]: Looking for 'mysql' as: /usr/bin/mysql Sep 21 07:18:53 s16477249 /etc/mysql/debian-start[23993]: Looking for 'mysqlcheck' as: /usr/bin/mysqlcheck Sep 21 07:18:53 s16477249 /etc/mysql/debian-start[23993]: This installation of MySQL is already upgraded to 5.5.24, use --force if you still need to run mysql_upgrade Sep 21 07:18:53 s16477249 /etc/mysql/debian-start[24004]: Checking for insecure root accounts. Sep 21 07:18:53 s16477249 /etc/mysql/debian-start[24009]: Triggering myisam-recover for all MyISAM tables I'm using MyISAM tables all over, nothing with InnoDB there. Starting / stopping mysql is done via sudo service mysql start sudo service mysql stop After using google a little bit, I experimented a little bit with timeouts, correct socket path in the /etc/mysql/my.cnf file, but nothing helped. There are some old (from 2008) Gentoo bugs, where re-compiling just solved the problem. I already re-installed mysql via: sudo apt-get remove mysql-server mysql-common sudo apt-get autoremove sudo apt-get install mysql-server without any results. This is the first time I'm running into this problem, and I'm not very experienced with this kind of mysql 'administration'. So mainly, I want to know if anyone of you could help me out please :) Is it a mysql bug? Is something broken in the Ubuntu repositories? Is this one of those misterious 'use-tcp-connection-instead-of-socket-stuff-because-there-are-problems-on-virtualized-machines-with-sockets'-problem? Or am I completly on the wrong way and I just miss-configured something? Remember, phpmyadmin and access to the backend (which uses the database, too) is just fine. Maybe something with Apache? What can I do? Any help is appreciated, so thanks in advance :)

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• Enable Automatic Code First Migrations On SQL Database in Azure Web Sites

  - by Steve Michelotti

  Now that Azure supports .NET Framework 4.5, you can use all the latest and greatest available features. A common scenario is to be able to use Entity Framework Code First Migrations with a SQL Database in Azure. Prior to Code First Migrations, Entity Framework provided database initializers. While convenient for demos and prototypes, database initializers weren’t useful for much beyond that because, if you delete and re-create your entire database when the schema changes, you lose all of your operational data. This is the void that Migrations are meant to fill. For example, if you add a column to your model, Migrations will alter the database to add the column rather than blowing away the entire database and re-creating it from scratch. Azure is becoming increasingly easier to use – especially with features like Azure Web Sites. Being able to use Entity Framework Migrations in Azure makes deployment easier than ever. In this blog post, I’ll walk through enabling Automatic Code First Migrations on Azure. I’ll use the Simple Membership provider for my example. First, we’ll create a new Azure Web site called “migrationstest” including creating a new SQL Database along with it:   Next we’ll go to the web site and download the publish profile:   In the meantime, we’ve created a new MVC 4 website in Visual Studio 2012 using the “Internet Application” template. This template is automatically configured to use the Simple Membership provider. We’ll do our initial Publish to Azure by right-clicking our project and selecting “Publish…”. From the “Publish Web” dialog, we’ll import the publish profile that we downloaded in the previous step:   Once the site is published, we’ll just click the “Register” link from the default site. Since the AccountController is decorated with the [InitializeSimpleMembership] attribute, the initializer will be called and the initial database is created.   We can verify this by connecting to our SQL Database on Azure with SQL Management Studio (after making sure that our local IP address is added to the list of Allowed IP Addresses in Azure): One interesting note is that these tables got created with the default Entity Framework initializer – which is to create the database if it doesn’t already exist. However, our database did already exist! This is because there is a new feature of Entity Framework 5 where Code First will add tables to an existing database as long as the target database doesn’t contain any of the tables from the model. At this point, it’s time to enable Migrations. We’ll open the Package Manger Console and execute the command: PM> Enable-Migrations -EnableAutomaticMigrations This will enable automatic migrations for our project. Because we used the "-EnableAutomaticMigrations” switch, it will create our Configuration class with a constructor that sets the AutomaticMigrationsEnabled property set to true: 1: public Configuration() 2: { 3: AutomaticMigrationsEnabled = true; 4: } We’ll now add our initial migration: PM> Add-Migration Initial This will create a migration class call “Initial” that contains the entire model. But we need to remove all of this code because our database already exists so we are just left with empty Up() and Down() methods. 1: public partial class Initial : DbMigration 2: { 3: public override void Up() 4: { 5: } 6: 7: public override void Down() 8: { 9: } 10: } If we don’t remove this code, we’ll get an exception the first time we attempt to run migrations that tells us: “There is already an object named 'UserProfile' in the database”. This blog post by Julie Lerman fully describes this scenario (i.e., enabling migrations on an existing database). Our next step is to add the Entity Framework initializer that will automatically use Migrations to update the database to the latest version. We will add these 2 lines of code to the Application_Start of the Global.asax: 1: Database.SetInitializer(new MigrateDatabaseToLatestVersion<UsersContext, Configuration>()); 2: new UsersContext().Database.Initialize(false); Note the Initialize() call will force the initializer to run if it has not been run before. At this point, we can publish again to make sure everything is still working as we are expecting. This time we’re going to specify in our publish profile that Code First Migrations should be executed:   Once we have re-published we can once again navigate to the Register page. At this point the database has not been changed but Migrations is now enabled on our SQL Database in Azure. We can now customize our model. Let’s add 2 new properties to the UserProfile class – Email and DateOfBirth: 1: [Table("UserProfile")] 2: public class UserProfile 3: { 4: [Key] 5: [DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)] 6: public int UserId { get; set; } 7: public string UserName { get; set; } 8: public string Email { get; set; } 9: public DateTime DateOfBirth { get; set; } 10: } At this point all we need to do is simply re-publish. We’ll once again navigate to the Registration page and, because we had Automatic Migrations enabled, the database has been altered (*not* recreated) to add our 2 new columns. We can verify this by once again looking at SQL Management Studio:   Automatic Migrations provide a quick and easy way to keep your database in sync with your model without the worry of having to re-create your entire database and lose data. With Azure Web Sites you can set up automatic deployment with Git or TFS and automate the entire process to make it dead simple.

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• Convert Excel File 'xls' to CSV, CAUTION: Bumps Ahead

  - by faizanahmad

  The task was to provide users with an interface where they can upload the 'csv' files, these files were to be processed and loaded to Database by a Console application. The code in Console application could not handle the 'xls' files so we thought, OK, lets convert 'xls' to 'csv' in the code, Seemed like fun. The idea was to convert it right after uploading within 'csv' file. As Microsoft does not recommend using the  Excel objects in ASP.NET, we decided to use the Jet engine to open xls. (Ace driver is used for xlsx) The code was pretty straight, can be found on following links: http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/uploadfile/yuanwang200409/102242008174401pm/1.aspx http://www.devasp.net/net/articles/display/141.html FIRST BUMP 'OleDbException (0x80004005): Unspecified error' ( Impersonation ): The ablove code ran fine in my test web site and test console application, but it gave an 'OleDbException (0x80004005): Unspecified error' in main web site, turns out imperonation was set to True and as soon as I changed it to False, it did work. on My XP box, web site was running under user                   'ASPNET'  with imperosnation set to FALSE                   'IUSR_*' i.e IIS guest user with impersonation set to TRUE The weired part was that both users had same rights on the folders I was saving files to and on Excel app in DCOM Config.  We decided to give it a try on Windows Server 2003 with web site set to windows authentication ( impersonation = true ) and yes it did work. SECOND BUMP 'External table not in correct format': I got this error with some files and it appeared that the file from client has some metadata issues  ( when I opened the file in Excel and try to save it ,excel  would give me this error saying File can not be saved in current format ) and the error was caused by that. Some people were able to reslove the error by using "Extended Properties=HTML Import;" in connection string. But it did not work for me. We decided to detour from here and use Excel object :( as we had no control on client setting the meta deta of Excel files. Before third bump there were a ouple of small thingies like 'Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {00024500-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} failed due to the following error: 80070005' Fix can be found at http://blog.crowe.co.nz/archive/2006/03/02/589.aspx THIRD BUMP ( Could not get rid of the EXCEL process  ):  I has all the code in place to 'Quiet' the excel, but, it just did not work. work around was done to Kill the process as we knew no other application on server was using EXCEL.  The normal steps to quite the excel application worked just fine in console application though.   FOURTH BUMP: Code worked with one file 1 on my machine and with the other file 2 code will break. and the same code will work perfectly fine with file 2 on some other machine . We moved it to QA  ( Windows Server 2003 )and worked with every file just perfect. But , then there was another problem: one user can upload it and second cant, permissions on folder and DCOM Conifg checked. Another Detour: Uplooad the xls as it is and convert in Console application.   Lesson Learnt:  If its 'xlsx' use 'ACE Driver' or read xml within excel as recommneded by MS. If xls and you know its always going to be properly formatted  'jet Engine'  Code: Imports Microsoft.Office.Interop Private Function ConvertFile(ByVal SourceFolder As String, ByVal FileName As String, ByVal FileExtension As String)As Boolean     Dim appExcel As New Excel.Application     Dim workBooks As Excel.Workbooks = appExcel.Workbooks     Dim objWorkbook As Excel.Workbook      Try                   objWorkbook = workBooks.Open(CompleteFilePath )                            objWorkbook.SaveAs(Filename:=CObj(SourceFolder & FileName & ".csv"), FileFormat:=Excel.XlFileFormat.xlCSV)       Catch ex As Exception         GenerateAlert(ex.Message().Replace("'", "") & " Error Converting File to CSV.")         LogError(ex )         Return False      Finally                      If Not(objWorkbook is Nothing) then               objWorkbook.Close(SaveChanges:=CObj(False))           End If           ReleaseObj(objWorkbook)                                      ReleaseObj(workBooks)           appExcel.Quit()           ReleaseObj(appExcel)                                 Dim proc As System.Diagnostics.Process           For Each proc In System.Diagnostics.Process.GetProcessesByName("EXCEL")               proc.Kill()           Next         DeleteSourceFile(SourceFolder & FileName & FileExtension)     End Try  Return True  End Function   Private Sub ReleaseObj(ByVal o As Object)     Try      System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ReleaseComObject(o)   Catch ex As Exception           LogError(ex )   Finally      o = Nothing    End Try End Sub     Protected Sub DeleteSourceFile(Byval CompleteFilePath As string)         Try             Dim MyFile As FileInfo = New FileInfo(CompleteFilePath)             If  MyFile.Exists Then                 File.Delete(CompleteFilePath)             Else              Throw New FileNotFoundException()             End If         Catch ex As Exception             GenerateAlert( " Source File could not be deleted.")              LogError(ex)         End Try     End Sub  The code to kill the process ( Avoid it if you can ): Dim proc As System.Diagnostics.Process For Each proc In System.Diagnostics.Process.GetProcessesByName("EXCEL")     proc.Kill() Next

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• Oracle Open World 2012: SQL Developer Recap

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Last week was the ‘big show’ in San Francisco. I was very happy to meet many of you in person. And many of you had questions – lots of questions! We had full or overflowing rooms for our sessions and hands-on-labs. The SQL Developer ‘booths’ were also slammed several times. So exciting to see so many of YOU excited about SQL Developer. It’s very cool to hear the stories of our tools saving you and your organizations so much time (and money!) Instead of doing a Day 0 – Day 9 recap, I thought I’d share with you the questions that I heard more than once. And just for giggles, I’ll throw in some answers as well So in no particular order… What’s the difference between Oracle SQL Developer & Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler? Mathematically speaking – two words. But as far as the actual modeling features go, there’s no difference between the two applications. The same ‘code’ or features as it pertains to data modeling and design are in both tools. However, in SQL Developer you have all of the OTHER features fighting for real estate in the UI. So I have a general rule of thumb – if you spend MOST of your time in the database, use SQL Developer. And if you spend most of your time in the data model, run the separate and dedicated program, Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. Here’s a couple of screenshots to drive home the UI point: Oracle SQL Developer Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler running INSIDE of SQL Developer. Notice how the Modeler menu items fold under the file menu? Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Easier to navigate and manipulate your models with the stand alone modeler. Just no worksheet to run your ad-hoc queries, etc. Don’t forget you can disable the Data Modeler inside of SQL Developer via the Extensions preference page. How can I model my table partitions? Partitioning is defined via the Physical model. So after you have finished your relational model, you need to generate a physical model. Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Physical Model and Partitioning Open the properties for your physical model table. Enable the ‘partitioned’ property. Once you do so, the ‘Partitioning’ page will activate. Lots and lots of partitioning support and options here But what about Interval Partitioning? An extension of range partitioning in 11gR2, we don’t currently support this partitioning scheme in SQL Developer. But we’re working on it! Can SQL Developer ignore column order when comparing models? Yes! After you start a model compare, one of your options is to disregard the order of an attribute or column definition. Tell SQL Developer you don’t care when your column shows up, just as long as it DOES show up. Wow, you got a lot of questions around modeling! Is that normal? Yes! While we appreciate that many folks inherit their applications and associated designs, new applications are being ‘born’ every day. Since both of our tools are free for anyone to design their new Oracle applications with, we attract a fair amount of attention I want to do a Hands On Lab. How do I get your software and instructional guides? Go here. Download VirtualBox. Then download the VB image. Import the appliance. Start it. Connect oracle/oracle on the OEL VM. Click on ‘Start Here’ in the desktop. Follow the instructions. If you need help, ask away! You went too fast in your Tips & Tricks session. Do you have cliff notes? Yes! And you’re SO close to finding them! Just go to my SQL Developer resources page. All of my tips are documented on this blog somewhere. I’ve indexed the most popular ones on the resource page. You can use the Search dialog on the right to find the rest. Or just send me a comment or question, and I’ll do my best to answer them as they come in.

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• No, iCloud Isn’t Backing Them All Up: How to Manage Photos on Your iPhone or iPad

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Are the photos you take with your iPhone or iPad backed up in case you lose your device? If you’re just relying on iCloud to manage your important memories, your photos may not be backed up at all. Apple’s iCloud has a photo-syncing feature in the form of “Photo Stream,” but Photo Stream doesn’t actually perform any long-term backups of your photos. iCloud’s Photo Backup Limitations Assuming you’ve set up iCloud on your iPhone or iPad, your device is using a feature called “Photo Stream” to automatically upload the photos you take to your iCloud storage and sync them across your devices. Unfortunately, there are some big limitations here. 1000 Photos: Photo Stream only backs up the latest 1000 photos. Do you have 1500 photos in your Camera Roll folder on your phone? If so, only the latest 1000 photos are stored in your iCloud account online. If you don’t have those photos backed up elsewhere, you’ll lose them when you lose your phone. If you have 1000 photos and take one more, the oldest photo will be removed from your iCloud Photo Stream. 30 Days: Apple also states that photos in your Photo Stream will be automatically deleted after 30 days “to give your devices plenty of time to connect and download them.” Some people report photos aren’t deleted after 30 days, but it’s clear you shouldn’t rely on iCloud for more than 30 days of storage. iCloud Storage Limits: Apple only gives you 5 GB of iCloud storage space for free, and this is shared between backups, documents, and all other iCloud data. This 5 GB can fill up pretty quickly. If your iCloud storage is full and you haven’t purchased any more storage more from Apple, your photos aren’t being backed up. Videos Aren’t Included: Photo Stream doesn’t include videos, so any videos you take aren’t automatically backed up. It’s clear that iCloud’s Photo Stream isn’t designed as a long-term way to store your photos, just a convenient way to access recent photos on all your devices before you back them up for real. iCloud’s Photo Stream is Designed for Desktop Backups If you have a Mac, you can launch iPhoto and enable the Automatic Import option under Photo Stream in its preferences pane. Assuming your Mac is on and connected to the Internet, iPhoto will automatically download photos from your photo stream and make local backups of them on your hard drive. You’ll then have to back up your photos manually so you don’t lose them if your Mac’s hard drive ever fails. If you have a Windows PC, you can install the iCloud Control Panel, which will create a Photo Stream folder on your PC. Your photos will be automatically downloaded to this folder and stored in it. You’ll want to back up your photos so you don’t lose them if your PC’s hard drive ever fails. Photo Stream is clearly designed to be used along with a desktop application. Photo Stream temporarily backs up your photos to iCloud so iPhoto or iCloud Control Panel can download them to your Mac or PC and make a local backup before they’re deleted. You could also use iTunes to sync your photos from your device to your PC or Mac, but we don’t really recommend it — you should never have to use iTunes. How to Actually Back Up All Your Photos Online So Photo Stream is actually pretty inconvenient — or, at least, it’s just a way to temporarily sync photos between your devices without storing them long-term. But what if you actually want to automatically back up your photos online without them being deleted automatically? The solution here is a third-party app that does this for you, offering the automatic photo uploads with long-term storage. There are several good services with apps in the App Store: Dropbox: Dropbox’s Camera Upload feature allows you to automatically upload the photos — and videos — you take to your Dropbox account. They’ll be easily accessible anywhere there’s a Dropbox app and you can get much more free Dropbox storage than you can iCloud storage. Dropbox will never automatically delete your old photos. Google+: Google+ offers photo and video backups with its Auto Upload feature, too. Photos will be stored in your Google+ Photos — formerly Picasa Web Albums — and will be marked as private by default so no one else can view them. Full-size photos will count against your free 15 GB of Google account storage space, but you can also choose to upload an unlimited amount of photos at a smaller resolution. Flickr: The Flickr app is no longer a mess. Flickr offers an Auto Upload feature for uploading full-size photos you take and free Flickr accounts offer a massive 1 TB of storage for you to store your photos. The massive amount of free storage alone makes Flickr worth a look. Use any of these services and you’ll get an online, automatic photo backup solution you can rely on. You’ll get a good chunk of free space, your photos will never be automatically deleted, and you can easily access them from any device. You won’t have to worry about storing local copies of your photos and backing them up manually. Apple should fix this mess and offer a better solution for long-term photo backup, especially considering the limitations aren’t immediately obvious to users. Until they do, third-party apps are ready to step in and take their place. You can also automatically back up your photos to the web on Android with Google+’s Auto Upload or Dropbox’s Camera Upload. Image Credit: Simon Yeo on Flickr     

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• Error : Member 'D-T-D' in the Period dimension has no value for the Period Type property

  - by RahulS

  Workaround for LCM EPMA deploy errors: Error : Member 'D-T-D' in the Period dimension has no value for the Period  Type property.  Error : Member name 'D-T-D' in the Period dimension is only valid when Period  Type is set to 'DTS Time Period'.  Error : Member 'W-T-D' in the Period dimension has no value for the Period  Type property.  Error : Member name 'W-T-D' in the Period dimension is only valid when Period  Type is set to 'DTS Time Period'.  Error : Member 'M-T-D' in the Period dimension has no value for the Period  Type property.  Error : Member name 'M-T-D' in the Period dimension is only valid when Period  Type is set to 'DTS Time Period'.  Error : Member 'Q-T-D' in the Period dimension has no value for the Period  Type property.  Error : Member name 'Q-T-D' in the Period dimension is only valid when Period  Type is set to 'DTS Time Period'.  Error : Member 'P-T-D' in the Period dimension has no value for the Period  Type property.  Error : Member name 'P-T-D' in the Period dimension is only valid when Period  Type is set to 'DTS Time Period'.  Error : Member 'S-T-D' in the Period dimension has no value for the Period  Type property.  Error : Member name 'S-T-D' in the Period dimension is only valid when Period  Type is set to 'DTS Time Period'.  Error : Member 'Y-T-D' in the Period dimension has no value for the Period  Type property.  Error : Member name 'Y-T-D' in the Period dimension is only valid when Period  Type is set to 'DTS Time Period'.  Error : Member 'H-T-D' in the Period dimension has no value for the Period  Type property.  Error : Member name 'H-T-D' in the Period dimension is only valid when Period  Type is set to 'DTS Time Period'. Fix 1. Edit the Period dimension LCM artifact (Keep the back up of the file before editing.)  2. Delete the DTS members (for example as mentioned below) in the Period dimension hierarchy section.   #root|D-T-D|True||||||||||||||||   #root|W-T-D|True||||||||||||||||   #root|M-T-D|True||||||||||||||||   #root|Q-T-D|True||||||||||||||||   #root|P-T-D|True||||||||||||||||   #root|S-T-D|True||||||||||||||||   #root|Y-T-D|True||||||||||||||||   #root|H-T-D|True||||||||||||||||   3. Delete the DTS members (for example as mentioned below) in the Period member hierarchy section,   D-T-D|True||||||||||||||||   W-T-D|True||||||||||||||||   M-T-D|True||||||||||||||||   Q-T-D|True||||||||||||||||   P-T-D|True||||||||||||||||   S-T-D|True||||||||||||||||   Y-T-D|True||||||||||||||||   H-T-D|True||||||||||||||||   4. Then save the edited Period dimension LCM artifact.   5. Then try to import the Period dimension using LCM.   6. Then Validate/Deploy the Planning application still the same issue. PS: This issue is fixed in 11.1.2.2.

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• Troubleshooting Application Timeouts in SQL Server

  - by Tara Kizer

  I recently received the following email from a blog reader: "We are having an OLTP database instance, using SQL Server 2005 with little to moderate traffic (10-20 requests/min). There are also bulk imports that occur at regular intervals in this DB and the import duration ranges between 10secs to 1 min, depending on the data size. Intermittently (2-3 times in a week), we face an issue, where queries get timed out (default of 30 secs set in application). On analyzing, we found two stored procedures, having queries with multiple table joins inside them of taking a long time (5-10 mins) in getting executed, when ideally the execution duration ranges between 5-10 secs. Execution plan of the same displayed Clustered Index Scan happening instead of Clustered Index Seek. All required Indexes are found to be present and Index fragmentation is also minimal as we Rebuild Indexes regularly alongwith Updating Statistics. With no other alternate options occuring to us, we restarted SQL server and thereafter the performance was back on track. But sometimes it was still giving timeout errors for some hits and so we also restarted IIS and that stopped the problem as of now." Rather than respond directly to the blog reader, I thought it would be more interesting to share my thoughts on this issue in a blog. There are a few things that I can think of that could cause abnormal timeouts: Blocking Bad plan in cache Outdated statistics Hardware bottleneck To determine if blocking is the issue, we can easily run sp_who/sp_who2 or a query directly on sysprocesses (select * from master..sysprocesses where blocking <> 0).  If blocking is present and consistent, then you'll need to determine whether or not to kill the parent blocking process.  Killing a process will cause the transaction to rollback, so you need to proceed with caution.  Killing the parent blocking process is only a temporary solution, so you'll need to do more thorough analysis to figure out why the blocking was present.  You should look into missing indexes and perhaps consider changing the database's isolation level to READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT. The blog reader mentions that the execution plan shows a clustered index scan when a clustered index seek is normal for the stored procedure.  A clustered index scan might have been chosen either because that is what is in cache already or because of out of date statistics.  The blog reader mentions that bulk imports occur at regular intervals, so outdated statistics is definitely something that could cause this issue.  The blog reader may need to update statistics after imports are done if the imports are changing a lot of data (greater than 10%).  If the statistics are good, then the query optimizer might have chosen to scan rather than seek in a previous execution because the scan was determined to be less costly due to the value of an input parameter.  If this parameter value is rare, then its execution plan in cache is what we call a bad plan.  You want the best plan in cache for the most frequent parameter values.  If a bad plan is a recurring problem on your system, then you should consider rewriting the stored procedure.  You might want to break up the code into multiple stored procedures so that each can have a different execution plan in cache. To remove a bad plan from cache, you can recompile the stored procedure.  An alternative method is to run DBCC FREEPROCACHE which drops the procedure cache.  It is better to recompile stored procedures rather than dropping the procedure cache as dropping the procedure cache affects all plans in cache rather than just the ones that were bad, so there will be a temporary performance penalty until the plans are loaded into cache again. To determine if there is a hardware bottleneck occurring such as slow I/O or high CPU utilization, you will need to run Performance Monitor on the database server.  Hopefully you already have a baseline of the server so you know what is normal and what is not.  Be on the lookout for I/O requests taking longer than 12 milliseconds and CPU utilization over 90%.  The servers that I support typically are under 30% CPU utilization, but your baseline could be higher and be within a normal range. If restarting the SQL Server service fixes the problem, then the problem was most likely due to blocking or a bad plan in the procedure cache.  Rather than restarting the SQL Server service, which causes downtime, the blog reader should instead analyze the above mentioned things.  Proceed with caution when restarting the SQL Server service as all transactions that have not completed will be rolled back at startup.  This crash recovery process could take longer than normal if there was a long-running transaction running when the service was stopped.  Until the crash recovery process is completed on the database, it is unavailable to your applications. If restarting IIS fixes the problem, then the problem might not have been inside SQL Server.  Prior to taking this step, you should do analysis of the above mentioned things. If you can think of other reasons why the blog reader is facing this issue a few times a week, I'd love to hear your thoughts via a blog comment.

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• How to deploy Document Set using CAML in SharePoint2010 solution package

  - by ybbest

  In my last post, I showed you how to use Document Set using SharePoint UI in the browser. In this post, I’d like to show you how to create the same Document Set using CAML and SharePoint solution package. You can download the complete solution here. 1. Create the Application Number site column using the SharePoint empty element item template in VS2010 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"> <Field Type="Text" DisplayName="ApplicationNumber" Required="FALSE" EnforceUniqueValues="FALSE" Indexed="FALSE" MaxLength="255" Group="YBBEST" ID="{916bf3af-5ec1-4441-acd8-88ff62ab1b7e}" Name="ApplicationNumber" ></Field> </Elements> 2. Create the Loan Application Form and Loan Contract Form content types. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"> <!-- Parent ContentType: Document (0x0101) --> <ContentType ID="0x0101005dfbf820ce3c49f69c73a00e0e0e53f6" Name="Loan Contract Form" Group="YBBEST" Description="Loan Contract Form" Inherits="TRUE" Version="0"> <FieldRefs> <FieldRef ID="916bf3af-5ec1-4441-acd8-88ff62ab1b7e" Name="ApplicationNumber" DisplayName="ApplicationNumber" /> </FieldRefs> </ContentType> <!-- Parent ContentType: Document (0x0101) --> <ContentType ID="0x010100f3016e3d03454b93bc4d6ab63941c0d2" Name="Loan Application Form" Group="YBBEST" Description="Loan Application Form" Inherits="TRUE" Version="0"> <FieldRefs> <FieldRef ID="916bf3af-5ec1-4441-acd8-88ff62ab1b7e" Name="ApplicationNumber" DisplayName="ApplicationNumber" /> </FieldRefs> </ContentType> </Elements> 3. Create the Loan Application Document Set. 4. Create the Document Set Welcome Page using the SharePoint Module item template. Notes: 1.When creating document set content type , you need to set the  Inherits=”FALSE”  or remove the  Inherits=”TRUE” from the content type definition (default is  Inherits=”FALSE”) . This is the Document Set limitation in the current version of SharePoint2010. Because of this , you also need to manually  attach the event receiver and  Document Set welcome page to your custom Document Set Content Type. 2. Shared Fields are push down only: 3. Not available in SharePoint foundation (only SharePoint Server 2010). 4. You can’t have folders within document sets (you can place document sets in folders though). For a complete limitation and considerations , you can see the references for details. References: Document Set Limitations and Considerations in SharePoint 2010 1 Document Set Limitations and Considerations in SharePoint 2010 2 Document Sets planning (SharePoint Server 2010) Import Document Sets Issue http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg581064.aspx http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2010/OSP305 DocumentSet Class

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• Handy ASP.NET MVC 2 Extension Methods &ndash; Where am I?

  - by Bobby Diaz

  Have you ever needed to detect what part of the application is currently being viewed?  This might be a bigger issue if you write a lot of shared/partial views or custom display or editor templates.  Another scenario, which is the one I encountered when I first started down this path, is when you have some type of menu and you’d like to be able to determine which item represents the current page so you can highlight it in some way.  A simple example is the menu that is created as part of the default ASP.NET MVC 2 Application template.   <div id="menucontainer">       <ul id="menu">         <li><%= Html.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home") %></li>         <li><%= Html.ActionLink("About", "About", "Home") %></li>     </ul>   </div>   The part that got me at first, however, was the following entry in the default style sheet (Site.css):   ul#menu li.selected a {     background-color: #fff;     color: #000; }   I assumed that the .selected class would automatically get applied to the active menu item.  After trying a few different things, including the MvcContrib MenuBuilder, I decided to write my own extension methods so I would have more control over the output.  First, I needed a way to determine what view the user has navigated to based on the requested URL and route configuration.  Now, I am sure there are many ways to do this, but this is what I came up with:   public static class RequestExtensions {     public static bool IsCurrentRoute(this RequestContext context, String areaName,         String controllerName, params String[] actionNames)     {         var routeData = context.RouteData;         var routeArea = routeData.DataTokens["area"] as String;         var current = false;           if ( ((String.IsNullOrEmpty(routeArea) && String.IsNullOrEmpty(areaName)) ||               (routeArea == areaName)) &&              ((String.IsNullOrEmpty(controllerName)) ||               (routeData.GetRequiredString("controller") == controllerName)) &&              ((actionNames == null) ||                actionNames.Contains(routeData.GetRequiredString("action"))) )         {             current = true;         }           return current;     }       // additional overloads omitted... }   With that in place, I was able to write several UrlHelper methods that check if the supplied values map to the current view.   public static class UrlExtensions {     public static bool IsCurrent(this UrlHelper urlHelper, String areaName,         String controllerName, params String[] actionNames)     {         return urlHelper.RequestContext.IsCurrentRoute(areaName, controllerName, actionNames);     }       public static string Selected(this UrlHelper urlHelper, String areaName,         String controllerName, params String[] actionNames)     {         return urlHelper.IsCurrent(areaName, controllerName, actionNames)             ? "selected" : String.Empty;     }       // additional overloads omitted... }   Now I can re-work the original menu to utilize these new methods.  Note: be sure to import the proper namespace so the extension methods become available inside your views!   <div id="menucontainer">       <ul id="menu">         <li class="<%= Url.Selected(null, "Home", "Index") %>">             <%= Html.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home")%></li>           <li class="<%= Url.Selected(null, "Home", "About") %>">             <%= Html.ActionLink("About", "About", "Home")%></li>     </ul>   </div>   If we take it one step further, we can clean up the markup even more.  Check out the Html.ActionMenuItem() extension method and the refined menu:   public static class HtmlExtensions {     public static MvcHtmlString ActionMenuItem(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, String linkText,         String actionName, String controllerName)     {         var html = new StringBuilder("<li");           if ( htmlHelper.ViewContext.RequestContext                 .IsCurrentRoute(null, controllerName, actionName) )         {             html.Append(" class=\"selected\"");         }           html.Append(">")             .Append(htmlHelper.ActionLink(linkText, actionName, controllerName))             .Append("</li>");           return MvcHtmlString.Create(html.ToString());     }       // additional overloads omitted... }   <div id="menucontainer">       <ul id="menu">         <%= Html.ActionMenuItem("Home", "Index", "Home") %>         <%= Html.ActionMenuItem("About", "About", "Home") %>     </ul>   </div>   Which generates the following HTML:   <div id="menucontainer">       <ul id="menu">         <li class="selected"><a href="/">Home</a></li>         <li><a href="/Home/About">About</a></li>     </ul>   </div>     I have created a codepaste of these extension methods if you are interested in using them in your own projects.  Enjoy!

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• LLBLGen Pro v3.5 has been released!

  - by FransBouma

  Last weekend we released LLBLGen Pro v3.5! Below the list of what's new in this release. Of course, not everything is on this list, like the large amount of work we put in refactoring the runtime framework. The refactoring was necessary because our framework has two paradigms which are added to the framework at a different time, and from a design perspective in the wrong order (the paradigm we added first, SelfServicing, should have been built on top of Adapter, the other paradigm, which was added more than a year after the first released version). The refactoring made sure the framework re-uses more code across the two paradigms (they already shared a lot of code) and is better prepared for the future. We're not done yet, but refactoring a massive framework like ours without breaking interfaces and existing applications is ... a bit of a challenge ;) To celebrate the release of v3.5, we give every customer a 30% discount! Use the coupon code NR1ORM with your order :) The full list of what's new: Designer Rule based .NET Attribute definitions. It's now possible to specify a rule using fine-grained expressions with an attribute definition to define which elements of a given type will receive the attribute definition. Rules can be assigned to attribute definitions on the project level, to make it even easier to define attribute definitions in bulk for many elements in the project. More information... Revamped Project Settings dialog. Multiple project related properties and settings dialogs have been merged into a single dialog called Project Settings, which makes it easier to configure the various settings related to project elements. It also makes it easier to find features previously not used  by many (e.g. type conversions) More information... Home tab with Quick Start Guides. To make new users feel right at home, we added a home tab with quick start guides which guide you through four main use cases of the designer. System Type Converters. Many common conversions have been implemented by default in system type converters so users don't have to develop their own type converters anymore for these type conversions. Bulk Element Setting Manipulator. To change setting values for multiple project elements, it was a little cumbersome to do that without a lot of clicking and opening various editors. This dialog makes changing settings for multiple elements very easy. EDMX Importer. It's now possible to import entity model data information from an existing Entity Framework EDMX file. Other changes and fixes See for the full list of changes and fixes the online documentation. LLBLGen Pro Runtime Framework WCF Data Services (OData) support has been added. It's now possible to use your LLBLGen Pro runtime framework powered domain layer in a WCF Data Services application using the VS.NET tools for WCF Data Services. WCF Data Services is a Microsoft technology for .NET 4 to expose your domain model using OData. More information... New query specification and execution API: QuerySpec. QuerySpec is our new query specification and execution API as an alternative to Linq and our more low-level API. It's build, like our Linq provider, on top of our lower-level API. More information... SQL Server 2012 support. The SQL Server DQE allows paging using the new SQL Server 2012 style. More information... System Type converters. For a common set of types the LLBLGen Pro runtime framework contains built-in type conversions so you don't need to write your own type converters anymore. Public/NonPublic property support. It's now possible to mark a field / navigator as non-public which is reflected in the runtime framework as an internal/friend property instead of a public property. This way you can hide properties from the public interface of a generated class and still access it through code added to the generated code base. FULL JOIN support. It's now possible to perform FULL JOIN joins using the native query api and QuerySpec. It's left to the developer to check whether the used target database supports FULL (OUTER) JOINs. Using a FULL JOIN with entity fetches is not recommended, and should only be used when both participants in the join aren't the target of the fetch. Dependency Injection Tracing. It's now possible to enable tracing on dependency injection. Enable tracing at level '4' on the traceswitch 'ORMGeneral'. This will emit trace information about which instance of which type got an instance of type T injected into property P. Entity Instances in projections in Linq. It's now possible to return an entity instance in a custom Linq projection. It's now also possible to pass this instance to a method inside the query projection. Inheritance fully supported in this construct. Entity Framework support The Entity Framework has been updated in the recent year with code-first support and a new simpler context api: DbContext (with DbSet). The amount of code to generate is smaller and the context simpler. LLBLGen Pro v3.5 comes with support for DbContext and DbSet and generates code which utilizes these new classes. NHibernate support NHibernate v3.2+ built-in proxy factory factory support. By default the built-in ProxyFactoryFactory is selected. FluentNHibernate Session Manager uses 1.2 syntax. Fluent NHibernate mappings generate a SessionManager which uses the v1.2 syntax for the ProxyFactoryFactory location Optionally emit schema / catalog name in mappings Two settings have been added which allow the user to control whether the catalog name and/or schema name as known in the project in the designer is emitted into the mappings.

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• How to deploy Document Set using CAML in SharePoint2010 solution package

  - by ybbest

  In my last post, I showed you how to use Document Set using SharePoint UI in the browser. In this post, I’d like to show you how to create the same Document Set using CAML and SharePoint solution package. You can download the complete solution here. 1. Create the Application Number site column using the SharePoint empty element item template in VS2010 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"> <Field Type="Text" DisplayName="ApplicationNumber" Required="FALSE" EnforceUniqueValues="FALSE" Indexed="FALSE" MaxLength="255" Group="YBBEST" ID="{916bf3af-5ec1-4441-acd8-88ff62ab1b7e}" Name="ApplicationNumber" ></Field> </Elements> 2. Create the Loan Application Form and Loan Contract Form content types. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"> <!-- Parent ContentType: Document (0x0101) --> <ContentType ID="0x0101005dfbf820ce3c49f69c73a00e0e0e53f6" Name="Loan Contract Form" Group="YBBEST" Description="Loan Contract Form" Inherits="TRUE" Version="0"> <FieldRefs> <FieldRef ID="916bf3af-5ec1-4441-acd8-88ff62ab1b7e" Name="ApplicationNumber" DisplayName="ApplicationNumber" /> </FieldRefs> </ContentType> <!-- Parent ContentType: Document (0x0101) --> <ContentType ID="0x010100f3016e3d03454b93bc4d6ab63941c0d2" Name="Loan Application Form" Group="YBBEST" Description="Loan Application Form" Inherits="TRUE" Version="0"> <FieldRefs> <FieldRef ID="916bf3af-5ec1-4441-acd8-88ff62ab1b7e" Name="ApplicationNumber" DisplayName="ApplicationNumber" /> </FieldRefs> </ContentType> </Elements> 3. Create the Loan Application Document Set. 4. Create the Document Set Welcome Page using the SharePoint Module item template. Notes: 1.When creating document set content type , you need to set the  Inherits=”FALSE”  or remove the  Inherits=”TRUE” from the content type definition (default is  Inherits=”FALSE”) . This is the Document Set limitation in the current version of SharePoint2010. Because of this , you also need to manually  attach the event receiver and  Document Set welcome page to your custom Document Set Content Type. 2. Shared Fields are push down only: 3. Not available in SharePoint foundation (only SharePoint Server 2010). 4. You can’t have folders within document sets (you can place document sets in folders though). For a complete limitation and considerations , you can see the references for details. References: Document Set Limitations and Considerations in SharePoint 2010 1 Document Set Limitations and Considerations in SharePoint 2010 2 Document Sets planning (SharePoint Server 2010) Import Document Sets Issue http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg581064.aspx http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2010/OSP305 DocumentSet Class

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• Oracle Database 12c: Oracle Multitenant Option

  - by hamsun

  1. Why ? 2. What is it ? 3. How ? 1. Why ? The main idea of the 'grid' is to share resources, to make better use of storage, CPU and memory. If a database administrator wishes to implement this idea, he or she must consolidate many databases to one database. One of the concerns of running many applications together in one database is: ‚what will happen, if one of the applications must be restored because of a human error?‘ Tablespace point in time recovery can be used for this purpose, but there are a few prerequisites. Most importantly the tablespaces are strictly separated for each application. Another reason for creating separated databases is security: each customer has his own database. Therefore, there is often a proliferation of smaller databases. Each of them must be maintained, upgraded, each allocates virtual memory and runs background processes thereby wasting resources. Oracle 12c offers another possibility for virtualization, providing isolation at the database level: the multitenant container database holding pluggable databases. 2. What ? Pluggable databases are logical units inside a multitenant container database, which consists of one multitenant container database and up to 252 pluggable databases. The SGA is shared as are the background processes. The multitenant container database holds metadata information common for pluggable databases inside the System and the Sysaux tablespace, and there is just one Undo tablespace. The pluggable databases have smaller System and Sysaux tablespaces, containing just their 'personal' metadata. New data dictionary views will make the information available either on pdb (dba_views) or container level (cdb_views). There are local users, which are known in specific pluggable databases and common users known in all containers. Pluggable databases can be easily plugged to another multitenant container database and converted from a non-CDB. They can undergo point in time recovery. 3. How ? Creating a multitenant container database can be done using the database configuration assistant: There you find the new option: Create as Container Database. If you prefer ‚hand made‘ databases you can execute the command from a instance in nomount state: CREATE DATABASE cdb1 ENABLE PLUGGABLE DATABASE …. And of course this can also be achieved through Enterprise Manager Cloud. A freshly created multitenant container database consists of two containers: the root container as the 'rack' and a seed container, a template for future pluggable databases. There are 4 ways to create other pluggable databases: 1. Create an empty pdb from seed 2. Plug in a non-CDB 3. Move a pdb from another pdb 4. Copy a pdb from another pdb We will discuss option2: how to plug in a non_CDB into a multitenant container database. Three different methods are available : 1. Create an empty pdb and use Datapump in traditional export/import mode or with Transportable Tablespace or Database mode. This method is suitable for pre 12c databases. 2. Create an empty pdb and use GoldenGate replication. When the pdb catches up with the non-CDB, you fail over to the pdb. 3. Databases of Version 12c or higher can be plugged in with the help of the new dbms_pdb Package. This is a demonstration for method 3: Step1: Connect to the non-CDB to be plugged in and create an xml File with description of the database. The xml file is written to $ORACLE_HOME/dbs per default and contains mainly information about the datafiles. Step 2: Check if the non-CDB is pluggable in the multitenant container database: Step 3: Create the pluggable database, connected to the Multitenant container database. With nocopy option the files will be reused, but the tempfile is created anew: A service is created and registered automatically with the listener: Step 4: Delete unnecessary metadata from PDB SYSTEM tablespace: To connect to newly created pdb, edit tnsnames.ora and add entry for new pdb. Connect to plugged-in non_CDB and clean up Data Dictionary to remove entries now maintained in multitenant container database. As all kept objects have to be recompiled it will take a few minutes. Step 5: The plugged-in database will be automatically synchronised by creating common users and roles when opened the first time in read write mode. Step 6: Verify tablespaces and users: There is only one local tablespace (users) and one local user (scott) in the plugged-in non_CDB pdb_orcl. This method of creating plugged_in non_CDB from is fast and easy for 12c databases. The method for deplugging a pluggable database from a CDB is to create a new non_CDB and use the the new full transportable feature of Datapump and drop the pluggable database. About the Author: Gerlinde has been working for Oracle University Germany as one of our Principal Instructors for over 14 years. She started with Oracle 7 and became an Oracle Certified Master for Oracle 10g and 11c. She is a specialist in Database Core Technologies, with profound knowledge in Backup & Recovery, Performance Tuning for DBAs and Application Developers, Datawarehouse Administration, Data Guard and Real Application Clusters.

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• Creating Visual Studio projects that only contain static files

  - by Eilon

  Have you ever wanted to create a Visual Studio project that only contained static files and didn’t contain any code? While working on ASP.NET MVC we had a need for exactly this type of project. Most of the projects in the ASP.NET MVC solution contain code, such as managed code (C#), unit test libraries (C#), and Script# code for generating our JavaScript code. However, one of the projects, MvcFuturesFiles, contains no code at all. It only contains static files that get copied to the build output folder: As you may well know, adding static files to an existing Visual Studio project is easy. Just add the file to the project and in the property grid set its Build Action to “Content” and the Copy to Output Directory to “Copy if newer.” This works great if you have just a few static files that go along with other code that gets compiled into an executable (EXE, DLL, etc.). But this solution does not work well if the projects only contains static files and has no compiled code. If you create a new project in Visual Studio and add static files to it you’ll still get an EXE or DLL copied to the output folder, despite not having any actual code. We wanted to avoid having a teeny little DLL generated in the output folder. In ASP.NET MVC 2 we came up with a simple solution to this problem. We started out with a regular C# Class Library project but then edited the project file to alter how it gets built. The critical part to get this to work is to define the MSBuild targets for Build, Clean, and Rebuild to perform custom tasks instead of running the compiler. The Build, Clean, and Rebuild targets are the three main targets that Visual Studio requires in every project so that the normal UI functions properly. If they are not defined then running certain commands in Visual Studio’s Build menu will cause errors. Once you create the class library projects there are a few easy steps to change it into a static file project: The first step in editing the csproj file is to remove the reference to the Microsoft.CSharp.targets file because the project doesn’t contain any C# code: <Import Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" /> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The second step is to define the new Build, Clean, and Rebuild targets to delete and then copy the content files: <Target Name="Build"> <Copy SourceFiles="@(Content)" DestinationFiles="@(Content->'$(OutputPath)%(RelativeDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)')" /> </Target> <Target Name="Clean"> <Exec Command="rd /s /q $(OutputPath)" Condition="Exists($(OutputPath))" /> </Target> <Target Name="Rebuild" DependsOnTargets="Clean;Build"> </Target> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The third and last step is to add all the files to the project as normal Content files (as you would do in any project type). To see how we did this in the ASP.NET MVC 2 project you can download the source code and inspect the MvcFutureFules.csproj project file. If you’re working on a project that contains many static files I hope this solution helps you out!

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• doubleTwist is an iTunes Alternative that Supports Several Devices

  - by Mysticgeek

  There are a lot of iTunes users out there, but unfortunately you can’t use it with all of your portable devices. Today we take a look at doubleTwist, which allows you to sync your media with a multitude of portable devices and easily share it as well. Note: You can run doubleTwist on Windows or Mac, and here we take a look at the Windows version. Install & Setup doubleTwist Download and install doubleTwist using the defaults in the wizard… Installation takes several moments and you’ll see the progress while it finishes up. After installation is complete, sign up for an account if you don’t already have one. If you do have an account you can login right away. Enter in your username, email address, and password then click Sign Up.   You’ll get an confirmation email and need to activate the account before you can sign in. Once you’re all signed up, launch doubleTwist and you’ll be ready to start using it. doubleTwist Music The default music store is Amazon MP3 store which might appeal to those of you who are tired of the iTunes music store. A lot of times the music is cheaper and available at higher bit rates. You can start searching for music in the Amazon Music Store and previewing songs. To purchase anything though you will need to sign into your Amazon account.   Under Playlists it allows you to import your playlists from iTunes and Windows Media Player, which is a handy feature if you don’t want to set them up again. Of course you can play your songs through the music player on your desktop. Devices One of the coolest things about doubleTwist is that it supports a lot of different portable media devices including iPod, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android, PSP, Smartphones, and much more. Unfortunately for Zune users…there isn’t any support for the Zune of Zune HD yet. Here we have a Creative Zen attached and can sync songs, pictures, and podcasts. An HTC-S620 Smartphone running Windows Mobile… Even a simple USB drive will be recognized and you can transfer your media to it as well.   Podcasts Finding your favorite audio and video podcasts is easy with the search feature. You can easily manage and subscribe to podcasts in the subscriptions section.   You can watch the video podcasts directly in doubleTwist. Sharing Media Also you can share digital media with your friends or add it to Flickr and YouTube. You can send any pictures, videos, or music in your library to other people by dragging it over. You can email users individually… Or access contacts from your Gmail and Yahoo accounts. There is a limit to how much you can send of video podcasts… only the first 10 minutes. The person you send it to will get a link in their email that points to your My Feed page on the doubleTwist site.   There they can access the media you sent…in this example it’s a video podcast but you can share any media. Other Features Under My Profile you can change your avatar and personal information.   In Preferences you can choose where media is stored, its startup actions, podcast subscriptions, and manage device syncing. Conclusion It’s still in beta stage so expect some bugs, but overall doubleTwist is a solid media player that is easy to use with a clean interface. It’s simple and doesn’t try to do too much so is fairly easy on system resources. The main annoyance is it tries to catalog all of your media out of the box. Which may be alright for some users with smaller media collections, but very irritating to advanced users with large collections. Also there is currently no support for the Zune, but according to their forums, it’s on the way. At the time of this writing it’s in public beta and can be downloaded for XP, Vista, Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit), and Mac OSX. If you’re looking for an iTunes alternative that works with several different portable devices, you might want to give DoubleTwist a try. Download DoubleTwist Public Beta See If Your Media Device is Supported by doubleTwist Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips MusicBee is a Fast and Powerful Music ManagerAvoid the Apple QuickTime Bloat with QT LiteBeginner Geek: Set Default Programs in Windows 7 and VistaBeginner Geeks: OpenOffice is a Free Cross Platform Alternative to MS OfficeManage Devices the Easy Way with Device Stage in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Play Music in Chrome by Simply Dragging a File 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox) OldTvShows.org – Find episodes of Hitchcock, Soaps, Game Shows and more

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• Convert a PDF eBook to ePub Format

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to read a PDF eBook on an eReader or mobile device, but aren’t happy with the performance? Here’s how you can convert your PDFs to the popular ePub format so you can easily read them on any device. PDFs are a popular format for eBooks since they render the same on any device and can preserve the exact layout of the print book.  However, this benefit is their major disadvantage on mobile devices, as you often have to zoom and pan back and forth to see everything on the page.  ePub files, on the other hand, are an increasingly popular option. They can reflow to fill your screen instead of sticking to a strict layout style.  With the free Calibre program, you can quickly convert your PDF eBooks to ePub format. Getting Started Download the Calibre installer (link below) for your operating system, and install as normal.  Calibre works on recent versions of Windows, OS X, and Linux.  The Calibre installer is very streamlined, so the install process was quite quick. Calibre is a great application for organizing your eBooks.  It can automatically sort your books by their metadata, and even display their covers in a Coverflow-style viewer. To add an eBook to your library, simply drag-and-drop the file into the Calibre window, or click Add books at the top.  Here you can choose to add all the books from a folder and more. Calibre will then add the book(s) to your library, import the associated metadata, and organize them in the catalog. Convert your Books Once you’ve imported your books into Calibre, it’s time to convert them to the format you want.  Select the book or books you want to convert, and click Convert E-books.  Select whether you want to convert them individually or bulk convert them. The convertor window has lots of options, so you can get your ePub book exactly like you want.  You can simply click Ok and go with the defaults, or you can tweak the settings. Do note that the conversion will only work successfully with PDFs that contain actual text.  Some PDFs are actually images scanned in from the original books; these will appear just like the PDF after the conversion, and won’t be any easier to read. On the first tab, you’ll notice that Calibri will repopulate most of the metadata fields with info from your PDF.  It will also use the first page of the PDF as the cover.  Edit any of the information that may be incorrect, and add any additional information you want associated with the book. If you want to convert your eBook to a different format other than ePub, Calibri’s got you covered, too.  On the top right, you can choose to output the converted eBook into a many different file formats, including the Kindle-friendly MOBI format. One other important settings page is the Structure Detection tab.  Here you can choose to have it remove headers and footers in the converted book, as well as automatically detect chapter breaks. Click Ok when you’ve finished choosing your settings and Calibre will convert the book.  This may take a few minutes, depending on the size of the PDF.  If the conversion seems to be taking too long, you can click Show job details for more information on the progress.   The conversion usually works good, but we did have one job freeze on us.  When we checked the job details, it indicated that the PDF was copy-protected.  Most PDF eBooks, however, worked fine. Now, back in the main Calibri window, select your book and save it to disk.  You can choose to save only the EPUB format, or you can select Save to disk to save all formats of the book to your computer. You can also view the ePub file directly in Calibri’s built-in eBook viewer.  This is the PDF book we converted, and it looks fairly good in the converted format.  It does have some odd line breaks and some misplaced numbers, but on the whole, the converted book is much easier to read, especially on small mobile devices.   Even images get included inline, so you shouldn’t be missing anything from the original eBook. Conclusion Calibri makes it simple to read your eBooks in any format you need. It is a project that is in constant development, and updates regularly adding better stability and features.  Whether you want to ready your PDF eBooks on a Sony Reader, Kindle, netbook or Smartphone, your books will now be more accessible than ever.  And with thousands of free PDF eBooks out there, you’ll be sure to always have something to read. If you’d like some Geeky PDF eBooks, Microsoft Press is offering a number of free PDF eBooks right now.  Check them out at this link (Account Required). Download the Calibre eBook program Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Format a String as Currency in C#Convert Older Excel Documents to Excel 2007 FormatShare OneNote 2010 Notebooks with OneNote 2007Install an RPM Package on Ubuntu LinuxConvert PDF Files to Word Documents and Other Formats 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 HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Nice Websites To Watch TV Shows Online 24 Million Sites Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like) How to Forecast Weather, without Gadgets Outlook Tools, one stop tweaking for any Outlook version Zoofs, find the most popular tweeted YouTube videos

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• Entity Framework Batch Update and Future Queries

  - by pwelter34

  Entity Framework Extended Library A library the extends the functionality of Entity Framework. Features Batch Update and Delete Future Queries Audit Log Project Package and Source NuGet Package PM> Install-Package EntityFramework.Extended NuGet: http://nuget.org/List/Packages/EntityFramework.Extended Source: http://github.com/loresoft/EntityFramework.Extended Batch Update and Delete A current limitations of the Entity Framework is that in order to update or delete an entity you have to first retrieve it into memory. Now in most scenarios this is just fine. There are however some senerios where performance would suffer. Also, for single deletes, the object must be retrieved before it can be deleted requiring two calls to the database. Batch update and delete eliminates the need to retrieve and load an entity before modifying it. Deleting //delete all users where FirstName matches context.Users.Delete(u => u.FirstName == "firstname"); Update //update all tasks with status of 1 to status of 2 context.Tasks.Update( t => t.StatusId == 1, t => new Task {StatusId = 2}); //example of using an IQueryable as the filter for the update var users = context.Users .Where(u => u.FirstName == "firstname"); context.Users.Update( users, u => new User {FirstName = "newfirstname"}); Future Queries Build up a list of queries for the data that you need and the first time any of the results are accessed, all the data will retrieved in one round trip to the database server. Reducing the number of trips to the database is a great. Using this feature is as simple as appending .Future() to the end of your queries. To use the Future Queries, make sure to import the EntityFramework.Extensions namespace. Future queries are created with the following extension methods... Future() FutureFirstOrDefault() FutureCount() Sample // build up queries var q1 = db.Users .Where(t => t.EmailAddress == "[email protected]") .Future(); var q2 = db.Tasks .Where(t => t.Summary == "Test") .Future(); // this triggers the loading of all the future queries var users = q1.ToList(); In the example above, there are 2 queries built up, as soon as one of the queries is enumerated, it triggers the batch load of both queries. // base query var q = db.Tasks.Where(t => t.Priority == 2); // get total count var q1 = q.FutureCount(); // get page var q2 = q.Skip(pageIndex).Take(pageSize).Future(); // triggers execute as a batch int total = q1.Value; var tasks = q2.ToList(); In this example, we have a common senerio where you want to page a list of tasks. In order for the GUI to setup the paging control, you need a total count. With Future, we can batch together the queries to get all the data in one database call. Future queries work by creating the appropriate IFutureQuery object that keeps the IQuerable. The IFutureQuery object is then stored in IFutureContext.FutureQueries list. Then, when one of the IFutureQuery objects is enumerated, it calls back to IFutureContext.ExecuteFutureQueries() via the LoadAction delegate. ExecuteFutureQueries builds a batch query from all the stored IFutureQuery objects. Finally, all the IFutureQuery objects are updated with the results from the query. Audit Log The Audit Log feature will capture the changes to entities anytime they are submitted to the database. The Audit Log captures only the entities that are changed and only the properties on those entities that were changed. The before and after values are recorded. AuditLogger.LastAudit is where this information is held and there is a ToXml() method that makes it easy to turn the AuditLog into xml for easy storage. The AuditLog can be customized via attributes on the entities or via a Fluent Configuration API. Fluent Configuration // config audit when your application is starting up... var auditConfiguration = AuditConfiguration.Default; auditConfiguration.IncludeRelationships = true; auditConfiguration.LoadRelationships = true; auditConfiguration.DefaultAuditable = true; // customize the audit for Task entity auditConfiguration.IsAuditable<Task>() .NotAudited(t => t.TaskExtended) .FormatWith(t => t.Status, v => FormatStatus(v)); // set the display member when status is a foreign key auditConfiguration.IsAuditable<Status>() .DisplayMember(t => t.Name); Create an Audit Log var db = new TrackerContext(); var audit = db.BeginAudit(); // make some updates ... db.SaveChanges(); var log = audit.LastLog;

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• Simple Preferred time control using silverlight 3.

  - by mohanbrij

  Here I am going to show you a simple preferred time control, where you can select the day of the week and the time of the day. This can be used in lots of place where you may need to display the users preferred times. Sample screenshot is attached below. This control is developed using Silverlight 3 and VS2008, I am also attaching the source code with this post. This is a very basic example. You can download and customize if further for your requirement if you want. I am trying to explain in few words how this control works and what are the different ways in which you can customize it further. File: PreferredTimeControl.xaml, in this file I have just hardcoded the controls and their positions which you can see in the screenshot above. In this example, to change the start day of the week and time, you will have to go and change the design in XAML file, its not controlled by your properties or implementation classes. You can also customize it to change the start day of the week, Language, Display format, styles, etc, etc. File: PreferredTimeControl.xaml.cs, In this control using the code below, first I am taking all the checkbox from my form and store it in the Global Variable, which I can use across my page. List<CheckBox> checkBoxList; #region Constructor public PreferredTimeControl() { InitializeComponent(); GetCheckboxes();//Keep all the checkbox in List in the Load itself } #endregion #region Helper Methods private List<CheckBox> GetCheckboxes() { //Get all the CheckBoxes in the Form checkBoxList = new List<CheckBox>(); foreach (UIElement element in LayoutRoot.Children) { if (element.GetType().ToString() == "System.Windows.Controls.CheckBox") { checkBoxList.Add(element as CheckBox); } } return checkBoxList; } Then I am exposing the two methods which you can use in the container form to get and set the values in this controls. /// <summary> /// Set the Availability on the Form, with the Provided Timings /// </summary> /// <param name="selectedTimings">Provided timings comes from the DB in the form 11,12,13....37 /// Where 11 refers to Monday Morning, 12 Tuesday Morning, etc /// Here 1, 2, 3 is for Morning, Afternoon and Evening respectively, and for weekdays /// 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 where 1 is for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thrusday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday respectively /// So if we want Monday Morning, we can can denote it as 11, similarly for Saturday Evening we can write 36, etc /// </param> public void SetAvailibility(string selectedTimings) { foreach (CheckBox chk in checkBoxList) { chk.IsChecked = false; } if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(selectedTimings)) { string[] selectedString = selectedTimings.Split(','); foreach (string selected in selectedString) { foreach (CheckBox chk in checkBoxList) { if (chk.Tag.ToString() == selected) { chk.IsChecked = true; } } } } } /// <summary> /// Gets the Availibility from the selected checkboxes /// </summary> /// <returns>String in the format of 11,12,13...41,42...31,32...37</returns> public string GetAvailibility() { string selectedText = string.Empty; foreach (CheckBox chk in GetCheckboxes()) { if (chk.IsChecked == true) { selectedText = chk.Tag.ToString() + "," + selectedText; } } return selectedText; }   In my example I am using the matrix format for Day and Time, for example Monday=1, Tuesday=2, Wednesday=3, Thursday = 4, Friday = 5, Saturday = 6, Sunday=7. And Morning = 1, Afternoon =2, Evening = 3. So if I want to represent Morning-Monday I will have to represent it as 11, Afternoon-Tuesday as 22, Morning-Wednesday as 13, etc. And in the other way to set the values in the control I am passing the values in the control in the same format as preferredTimeControl.SetAvailibility("11,12,13,16,23,22"); So this will set the checkbox value for Morning-Monday, Morning-Tuesday, Morning-Wednesday, Morning-Saturday, Afternoon of Tuesday and Afternoon of Wednesday. To implement this control, first I have to import this control in xmlns namespace as xmlns:controls="clr-namespace:PreferredTimeControlApp" and finally put in your page wherever you want, <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Style="{StaticResource LayoutRootGridStyle}"> <Border x:Name="ContentBorder" Style="{StaticResource ContentBorderStyle}"> <controls:PreferredTimeControl x:Name="preferredTimeControl"></controls:PreferredTimeControl> </Border> </Grid> And in the code behind you can just include this code: private void InitializeControl() { preferredTimeControl.SetAvailibility("11,12,13,16,23,22"); } And you are ready to go. For more details you can refer to my code attached. I know there can be even simpler and better way to do this. Let me know if any other ideas. Sorry, Guys Still I have used Silverlight 3 and VS2008, as from the system I am uploading this is still not upgraded, but still you can use the same code with Silverlight 4 and VS2010 without any changes. May be just it will ask you to upgrade your project which will take care of rest. Download Source Code.   Thanks ~Brij

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• Integration with Multiple Versions of BizTalk HL7 Accelerator Schemas

  - by Paul Petrov

  Microsoft BizTalk Accelerator for HL7 comes with multiple versions of the HL7 implementation. One of the typical integration tasks is to receive one format and transmit another. For example, system A works HL7 v2.4 messages, system B with v2.3, and system C with v2.2. The system A is exchanging messages with B and C. The logical solution is to create schemas in separate namespaces for each system and assign maps on send ports. Schematic diagram of the messaging solution is shown below:   Nothing is complex about that conceptually. On the implementation level things can get nasty though because of the elaborate nature of HL7 schemas and sheer amount of message types involved. If trying to implement maps directly in BizTalk Map Editor one would quickly get buried by thousands of links between subfields of HL7 segments. Since task is repetitive because HL7 segments are reused between message types it's natural to take advantage of such modular structure and reduce amount of work through reuse. Here's where it makes sense to switch from visual map editor to old plain XSLT. The implementation is done in three steps. First, create XSL templates to map from segments of one version to another. This can be done using BizTalk Map Editor subsequently copying and modifying generated XSL code to create one xsl:template per segment. Group all segments for format mapping in one XSL file (we call it SegmentTemplates.xsl). Here's how template for the PID segment (Patient Identification) would look like this: <xsl:template name="PID"> <PID_PatientIdentification> <xsl:if test="PID_PatientIdentification/PID_1_SetIdPatientId"> <PID_1_SetIdPid> <xsl:value-of select="PID_PatientIdentification/PID_1_SetIdPatientId/text()" /> </PID_1_SetIdPid> </xsl:if> <xsl:for-each select="PID_PatientIdentification/PID_2_PatientIdExternalId"> <PID_2_PatientId> <xsl:if test="CX_0_Id"> <CX_0_Id> <xsl:value-of select="CX_0_Id/text()" /> </CX_0_Id> </xsl:if> <xsl:if test="CX_1_CheckDigit"> <CX_1_CheckDigitSt> <xsl:value-of select="CX_1_CheckDigit/text()" /> </CX_1_CheckDigitSt> </xsl:if> <xsl:if test="CX_2_CodeIdentifyingTheCheckDigitSchemeEmployed"> <CX_2_CodeIdentifyingTheCheckDigitSchemeEmployed> <xsl:value-of select="CX_2_CodeIdentifyingTheCheckDigitSchemeEmployed/text()" /> </CX_2_CodeIdentifyingTheCheckDigitSchemeEmployed> . . . // skipped for brevity This is the most tedious and time consuming part. Templates can be created for only those segments that are used in message interchange. Once this is done the rest goes much easier. The next step is to create message type specific XSL that references (imports) segment templates XSL file. Inside this file simple call segment templates in appropriate places. For example, beginning of the mapping XSL for ADT_A01 message would look like this:   <xsl:import href="SegmentTemplates_23_to_24.xslt" />  <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" method="xml" version="1.0" />   <xsl:template match="/">    <xsl:apply-templates select="s0:ADT_A01_23_GLO_DEF" />  </xsl:template>   <xsl:template match="s0:ADT_A01_23_GLO_DEF">    <ns0:ADT_A01_24_GLO_DEF>      <xsl:call-template name="EVN" />      <xsl:call-template name="PID" />      <xsl:for-each select="PD1_PatientDemographic">        <xsl:call-template name="PD1" />      </xsl:for-each>      <xsl:call-template name="PV1" />      <xsl:for-each select="PV2_PatientVisitAdditionalInformation">        <xsl:call-template name="PV2" />      </xsl:for-each> This code simply calls segment template directly for required singular elements and in for-each loop for optional/repeating elements. And lastly, create BizTalk map (btm) that references message type specific XSL. It is essentially empty map with Custom XSL Path set to appropriate XSL: In the end, you will end up with one segment templates file that is referenced by many message type specific XSL files which in turn used by BizTalk maps. Once all segment maps are created they are widely reusable and all the rest work is very simple and clean.

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• Helping install mrcwa and solve problems with f2py in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

  - by user288160

  I am sorry if this is the wrong section but I am starting to get desperate, please someone help me... I need to install the program mrcwa-20080820 (sourceforge.net/projects/mrcwa/) because a summer project that I am involved. I need to use it together with anaconda (store.continuum.io/cshop/anaconda/), I already installed Anaconda and apparently it is working. When I type: conda --version I got the expected answer. conda 3.5.2 If I tried to import numpy or scipy with python or simple type f2py there are no errors. So far so good. But when I tried to install this program sudo python setup.py install I got these errors: running install running build sh: 1: f2py: not found cp: cannot stat ‘mrcwaf.so’: No such file or directory running build_py running install_lib running install_egg_info Removing /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/mrcwa-20080820.egg-info Writing /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/mrcwa-20080820.egg-info Obs: I am trying to use intel fortran 64-bits and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. So I was checking f2py and tried to execute the program hello world f2py -c -m hello hello.f from here: cens.ioc.ee/projects/f2py2e/index.html#usage and I had some problems too: running build running config_cc unifing config_cc, config, build_clib, build_ext, build commands --compiler options running config_fc unifing config_fc, config, build_clib, build_ext, build commands --fcompiler options running build_src build_src building extension "hello" sources f2py options: [] f2py:> /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/hellomodule.c creating /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 Reading fortran codes... Reading file 'hello.f' (format:fix,strict) Post-processing... Block: hello Block: foo Post-processing (stage 2)... Building modules... Building module "hello"... Constructing wrapper function "foo"... foo(a) Wrote C/API module "hello" to file "/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 /hellomodule.c" adding '/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.c' to sources. adding '/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7' to include_dirs. copying /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/f2py/src/fortranobject.c -> /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 copying /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/f2py/src/fortranobject.h -> /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 build_src: building npy-pkg config files running build_ext customize UnixCCompiler customize UnixCCompiler using build_ext customize Gnu95FCompiler Could not locate executable gfortran Could not locate executable f95 customize IntelFCompiler Found executable /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013_sp1.3.174/bin/intel64/ifort customize LaheyFCompiler Could not locate executable lf95 customize PGroupFCompiler Could not locate executable pgfortran customize AbsoftFCompiler Could not locate executable f90 Could not locate executable f77 customize NAGFCompiler customize VastFCompiler customize CompaqFCompiler Could not locate executable fort customize IntelItaniumFCompiler customize IntelEM64TFCompiler customize IntelEM64TFCompiler customize IntelEM64TFCompiler using build_ext building 'hello' extension compiling C sources C compiler: gcc -pthread -fno-strict-aliasing -g -O2 -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O3 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -fPIC creating /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/tmp creating /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3 creating /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 compile options: '-I/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 -I/home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include -I/home/felipe/anaconda/include/python2.7 -c' gcc: /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/hellomodule.c In file included from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/ndarraytypes.h:1761:0, from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/ndarrayobject.h:17, from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/arrayobject.h:4, from /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.h:13, from /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/hellomodule.c:17: /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/npy_1_7_deprecated_api.h:15:2: warning: #warning "Using deprecated NumPy API, disable it by " "#defining NPY_NO_DEPRECATED_API NPY_1_7_API_VERSION" [-Wcpp] #warning "Using deprecated NumPy API, disable it by " \ ^ gcc: /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.c In file included from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/ndarraytypes.h:1761:0, from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/ndarrayobject.h:17, from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/arrayobject.h:4, from /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.h:13, from /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.c:2: /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/npy_1_7_deprecated_api.h:15:2: warning: #warning "Using deprecated NumPy API, disable it by " "#defining NPY_NO_DEPRECATED_API NPY_1_7_API_VERSION" [-Wcpp] #warning "Using deprecated NumPy API, disable it by " \ ^ compiling Fortran sources Fortran f77 compiler: /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013_sp1.3.174/bin/intel64/ifort -FI -fPIC -xhost -openmp -fp-model strict Fortran f90 compiler: /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013_sp1.3.174/bin/intel64/ifort -FR -fPIC -xhost -openmp -fp-model strict Fortran fix compiler: /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013_sp1.3.174/bin/intel64/ifort -FI -fPIC -xhost -openmp -fp-model strict compile options: '-I/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 -I/home/felipe/.local /lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include -I/home/felipe/anaconda/include/python2.7 -c' ifort:f77: hello.f /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013_sp1.3.174/bin/intel64/ifort -shared -shared -nofor_main /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/hellomodule.o /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3 /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.o /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/hello.o -L/home/felipe /anaconda/lib -lpython2.7 -o ./hello.so Removing build directory /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3 Please help me I am new in ubuntu and python. I really need this program, my advisor is waiting an answer. Thank you very much, Felipe Oliveira.

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• T-SQL Tuesday #21 - Crap!

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  Adam Machanic's (blog | twitter) ever popular T-SQL Tuesday series is being held on Wednesday this time, and the topic is… SHIT CRAP. No, not fecal material.  But crap code.  Crap SQL.  Crap ideas that you thought were good at the time, or were forced to do due (doo-doo?) to lack of time. The challenge for me is to look back on my SQL Server career and find something that WASN'T crap.  Well, there's a lot that wasn't, but for some reason I don't remember those that well.  So the additional challenge is to pick one particular turd that I really wish I hadn't squeezed out.  Let's see if this outline fits the bill: An ETL process on text files; That had to interface between SQL Server and an AS/400 system; That didn't use SSIS (should have) or BizTalk (ummm, no) but command-line scripting, using Unix utilities(!) via: xp_cmdshell; That had to email reports and financial data, some of it sensitive Yep, the stench smell is coming back to me now, as if it was yesterday… As to why SSIS and BizTalk were not options, basically I didn't know either of them well enough to get the job done (and I still don't).  I also had a strict deadline of 3 days, in addition to all the other responsibilities I had, so no time to learn them.  And seeing how screwed up the rest of the process was: Payment files from multiple vendors in multiple formats; Sent via FTP, PGP encrypted email, or some other wizardry; Manually opened/downloaded and saved to a particular set of folders (couldn't change this); Once processed, had to be placed BACK in the same folders with the original archived; x2 divisions that had to run separately; Plus an additional vendor file in another format on a completely different schedule; So that they could be MANUALLY uploaded into the AS/400 system (couldn't change this either, even if it was technically possible) I didn't feel so bad about the solution I came up with, which was naturally: Copy the payment files to the local SQL Server drives, using xp_cmdshell Run batch files (via xp_cmdshell) to parse the different formats using sed, a Unix utility (this was before Powershell) Use other Unix utilities (join, split, grep, wc) to process parsed files and generate metadata (size, date, checksum, line count) Run sqlcmd to execute a stored procedure that passed the parsed file names so it would bulk load the data to do a comparison bcp the compared data out to ANOTHER text file so that I could grep that data out of the original file Run another stored procedure to import the matched data into SQL Server so it could process the payments, including file metadata Process payment batches and log which division and vendor they belong to Email the payment details to the finance group (since it was too hard for them to run a web report with the same data…which they ran anyway to compare the emailed file against…which always matched, surprisingly) Email another report showing unmatched payments so they could manually void them…about 3 months afterward All in "Excel" format, using xp_sendmail (SQL 2000 system) Copy the unmatched data back to the original folder locations, making sure to match the file format exactly (if you've ever worked with ACH files, you'll understand why this sucked) If you're one of the 10 people who have read my blog before, you know that I love the DOS "for" command.  Like passionately.  Like fairy-tale love.  So my batch files were riddled with for loops, nested within other for loops, that called other batch files containing for loops.  I think there was one section that had 4 or 5 nested for commands.  It was wrong, disturbed, and completely un-maintainable by anyone, even myself.  Months, even a year, after I left the company I got calls from someone who had to make a minor change to it, and they called me to talk them out of spraying the office with an AK-47 after looking at this code.  (for you Star Trek TOS fans) The funniest part of this, well, one of the funniest, is that I made the deadline…sort of, I was only a day late…and the DAMN THING WORKED practically unchanged for 3 years.  Most of the problems came from the manual parts of the overall process, like forgetting to decrypt the files, or missing/late files, or saved to the wrong folders.  I'm definitely not trying to toot my own horn here, because this was truly one of the dumbest, crappiest solutions I ever came up with.  Fortunately as far as I know it's no longer in use and someone has written a proper replacement.  Today I would knuckle down and do it in SSIS or Powershell, even if it took me weeks to get it right. The real lesson from this crap code is to make things MAINTAINABLE and UNDERSTANDABLE.  sed scripting regular expressions doesn't fit that criteria in any way.  If you ever find yourself under pressure to do something fast at all costs, DON'T DO IT.  Stop and consider long-term maintainability, not just for yourself but for others on your team.  If you can't explain the basic approach in under 5 minutes, it ultimately won't succeed.  And while you may love to leave all that crap behind, it may follow you anyway, and you'll step in it again.   P.S. - if you're wondering about all the manual stuff that couldn't be changed, it was because the entire process had gone through Six Sigma, and was deemed the best possible way.  Phew!  Talk about stink!

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