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Using SQL Source Control with Fortress or Vault – Part 2

- by AjarnMark

In Part 1, I started talking about using Red-Gate’s newest version of SQL Source Control and how I really like it as a viable method to source control your database development. It looks like this is going to turn into a little series where I will explain how we have done things in the past, and how life is different with SQL Source Control. I will also explain some of my philosophy and methodology around deployment with these tools. But for now, let’s talk about some of the good and the bad of the tool itself. More Kudos and Features I mentioned previously how impressed I was with the responsiveness of Red-Gate’s team. I have been having an ongoing email conversation with Gyorgy Pocsi, and as I have run into problems or requested things behave a little differently, it has not been more than a day or two before a new Build is ready for me to download and test. Quite impressive! I’m sure much of the requests I put in were already in the plans, so I can’t really take credit for them, but throughout this conversation, Red-Gate has implemented several features that were not in the first Early Access version. Those include: Honoring the Fortress configuration option to require Work Item (Bug) IDs on check-ins. Adding the check-in comment text as a comment to the Work Item. Adding the list of checked-in files, along with the Fortress links for automatic History and DIFF view Updating the status of a Work Item on check-in (e.g. setting the item to Complete or, in our case “Dev-Complete”) Support for the Fortress 2.0 API, and not just the Vault Pro 5.1 API. (See later notes regarding support for Fortress 2.0). These were all features that I felt we really needed to have in-place before I could honestly consider converting my team to using SQL Source Control on a regular basis. Now that I have those, my only excuse is not wanting to switch boats on the team mid-stream. So when we wrap up our current release in a few weeks, we will make the jump. In the meantime, I will continue to bang on it to make sure it is stable. It passed one test for stability when I did a test load of one of our larger database schemas into Fortress with SQL Source Control. That database has about 150 tables, 200 User-Defined Functions and nearly 900 Stored Procedures. The initial load to source control went smoothly and took just a brief amount of time. Warnings Remember that this IS still in pre-release stage and while I have not had any problems after that first hiccup I wrote about last time, you still need to treat it with a healthy respect. As I understand it, the RTM is targeted for February. There are a couple more features that I hope make it into the final release version, but if not, they’ll probably be coming soon thereafter. Those are: A Browse feature to let me lookup the Work Item ID instead of having to remember it or look back in my Item details. This is just a matter of convenience. I normally have my Work Item list open anyway, so I can easily look it up, but hey, why not make it even easier. A multi-line comment area. The current space for writing check-in comments is a single-line text box. I would like to have a multi-line space as I sometimes write lengthy commentary. But I recognize that it is a struggle to get most developers to put in more than the word “fixed” as their comment, so this meets the need of the majority as-is, and it’s not a show-stopper for us. Merge. SQL Source Control currently does not have a Merge feature. If two or more people make changes to the same database object, you will get a warning of the conflict and have to choose which one wins (and then manually edit to include the others’ changes). I think it unlikely you will run into actual conflicts in Stored Procedures and Functions, but you might with Views or Tables. This will be nice to have, but I’m not losing any sleep over it. And I have multiple tools at my disposal to do merges manually, so really not a show-stopper for us. Automation has its limits. As cool as this automation is, it has its limits and there are some changes that you will be better off scripting yourself. For example, if you are refactoring table definitions, and want to change a column name, you can write that as a quick sp_rename command and preserve the data within that column. But because this tool is looking just at a before and after picture, it cannot tell that you just renamed a column. To the tool, it looks like you dropped one column and added another. This is not a knock against Red-Gate. All automated scripting tools have this issue, unless the are actively monitoring your every step to know exactly what you are doing. This means that when you go to Deploy your changes, SQL Compare will script the change as a column drop and add, or will attempt to rebuild the entire table. Unfortunately, neither of these approaches will preserve the existing data in that column the way an sp_rename will, and so you are better off scripting that change yourself. Thankfully, SQL Compare will produce warnings about the potential loss of data before it does the actual synchronization and give you a chance to intercept the script and do it yourself. Also, please note that the current official word is that SQL Source Control supports Vault Professional 5.1 and later. Vault Professional is the new name for what was previously known as Fortress. (You can read about the name change on SourceGear’s site.) The last version of Fortress was 2.x, and the API for Fortress 2.x is different from the API for Vault Pro. At my company, we are currently running Fortress 2.0, with plans to upgrade to Vault Pro early next year. Gyorgy was able to come up with a work-around for me to be able to use SQL Source Control with Fortress 2.0, even though it is not officially supported. If you are using Fortress 2.0 and want to use SQL Source Control, be aware that this is not officially supported, but it is working for us, and you can probably get the work-around instructions from Red-Gate if you’re really, really nice to them. Upcoming Topics Some of the other topics I will likely cover in this series over the next few weeks are: How we used to do source control back in the old days (a few weeks ago) before SQL Source Control was available to Vault users What happens when you restore a database that is linked to source control Handling multiple development branches of source code Concurrent Development practices and handling Conflicts Deployment Tips and Best Practices A recap after using the tool for a while

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24+ Coda Alternatives for Windows and Linux

- by Matt

Coda plays an important role in designing layout on Mac. There are numerous coda alternatives for windows and Linux too. It is not possible to describe each and everyone so some of the coda alternatives, which work on both windows and Linux platforms, are discussed below. EditPlus $35.00 Good thing about EditPlus is that it highlights URLs and email addresses, activating them when you ‘crtl + double-click’. It also has a built in browser for previewing HTML, and FTP and SFTP support. Also supports Macros and RegEx find and replace. UltraEdit $49.99 It is another good coda alternative for windows and Linux. It is the best suited editor for text, HTML and HEX. It also plays an advanced PHP, Perl, Java and JavaScript editor for programmers. It supports disk-based 64-bit or standard file handling on 32-bit Windows platforms or window 2000 and later versions. HippoEdit $39.95 HippoEDIT has the best autocomplete it gives pop a ‘tooltip’ above your cursor as you type, suggesting words you’ve already typed. It does syntax highlighting for over 2 dozen language. Sublime Text $59.00 Sublime Text awesome ‘zoomed out’ view of the file lets you focus on the area you want. It lets you open a local file when you right-click on its link, and there are a few automation features, so this would make a solid choice of a text editor. Textpad $24.70 TextPad is simple editor with nifty features such as column select, drag-and-drop text between files, and hyperlink support. It also supports large files. Aptana Free Aptana Studio is one of the best editors working on both windows and Linux. It is a complete web development setting that has a nice blend of powerful authoring tools with a collection of online hosting and collaboration services. It is quite helpful as it support for PHP, CSS, FTP, and more. SciTE Free It is a SCIntilla based Text Editor. It has gradually developed as a generally useful editor. It provides for building and running programs. It is best to be used for jobs with simple configurations. SciTE is currently available for Intel Win32 and Linux compatible operating systems with GTK+. It has been run on Windows XP and on Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 7.10 with GTK+ 2.12 E Text Editor $34.96 E Text Editor is a new text editor for Windows, which also works on Linux as well. It has powerful editing features and also some unique abilities. It makes text manipulation quite fast and easy, and makes user focus on his writing as it automatically does all the manual work. It can be extend it in any language. It supports Text Mate bundles, thus allows the user to tap into a huge and active community. Editra Free Editra is an upcoming editor, with some fantastic features such as user profiles, auto-completion, session saving, and syntax highlighing for 60+ languages. Plugins can extend the feature set, offering an integrated python console, FTP client, file browser, and calculator, among others. PSPad Free PSPad is a good Template for writing CSS, as it an internal web browser, and a macro recorder to the table. It also supports hex editing, and some degree of code compiling. JEdit Free It is a mature programmer’s text editor and has taken a good deal of time to be developed as it is today. It is better than many costlier development tools due to its features and simplicity of use. It has been released as free software with full source code, provided under the terms of the GPL 2.0. Which also adds to its attractiveness. NEdit Free It is a multi-purpose text editor for the X Window System, which also works on Linux. It combines a standard, easy to use, graphical user interface with the full functionality and stability required by users who edit text for long period a day. It also provides for thorough support for development in various languages. It also facilitates the use of text processors, and other tools at the same time. It can be used productively by anyone who needs to edit text. It is quite a user-friendly tool. Its salient features include syntax highlighting with built in pattern, auto indent, tab emulation, block indentation adjustment etc. As of version 5.1, NEdit may be freely distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. MadEdit Free Mad Edit is an Open-Source and Cross-Platform Text/Hex Editor. It is written in C++ and wxWidgets. MadEdit can edit files in Text/Column/Hex modes. It also supports many useful functions, such as Syntax Highlighting, Word Wrap, Encoding for UTF8/16/32,and others. It also supports word count, which makes it quite a useful text editor for both windows and Linux. It has been recently modified on 10/09/2010. KompoZer Free Kompozer is a complete web authoring system that has a combination of web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing. KompoZer has been designed to be completely and extensively easy to use. It is thus an ideal tool for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without knowing HTML or web coding. It is based on the NVU source code. Vim Free Vim or “Vi IMproved” is an advanced text editor. Its salient features are syntax highlighting, word completion and it also has a huge amount of contributed content. Vim has several “modes” on offer for editing, which adds to the efficiency in editing. Thus it becomes a non-user-friendly application but it is also strength for its users. The normal mode binds alphanumeric keys to task-oriented commands. The visual mode highlights text. More tools for search & replace, defining functions, etc. are offered through command line mode. Vim comes with complete help. NotePad ++ Free One of the the best free text editor for Windows out there; with support for simple things—like syntax highlighting and folding—all the way up to FTP, Notepad++ should tick most of the boxes Notepad2 Free Notepad2 is also based on the Scintilla editing engine, but it’s much simpler than Notepad++. It bills itself as being fast, light-weight, and Notepad-like. Crimson Editor Free Crimson Editor has the ability to edit remote files, using a built-in FTP client; there’s also a spell checker. TotalEdit Free TotalEdit allows file comparison, RegEx search and replace, and has multiple options for file backup / versioning. For cleanup, it offers (X)HTML and XML customizable formatting, and a spell checker. In-Type Free ConTEXT Free SourceEdit Free SourceEdit includes features such as clipboard history, syntax highlighting and autocompletion for a decent set of languages. A hex editor and FTP client. RJ TextED Free RJ TextED supports integration with TopStyle Lite. Provides HTML validation and formatting. It includes an FTP client, a file browser, and a code browser, as well as a character map and support for email. GEDIT Free It is one of the best coda alternatives for windows and Linux. It has syntax highlighting and is best suitable for programming. It has many attractive features such as full support for UTF-8, undo/redo, and clipboard support, search and replace, configurable syntax highlighting for various languages and many more supportive features. It is extensible with plug ins. Other important coda alternatives for windows and Linux are Redcar, Bluefish Editor, NVU, Ruby Mine, Slick Edit, Geany, Editra, txt2html and CSSED. There are many more. Its up to user to decide which one suits best to his requirements. Related posts:10 Useful Text Editor For Developer Applications to Install & Run Windows on Linux Open Source WYSIWYG Text Editors

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How To - Guide to Importing Data from a MySQL Database to Excel using MySQL for Excel

- by Javier Treviño

Fetching data from a database to then get it into an Excel spreadsheet to do analysis, reporting, transforming, sharing, etc. is a very common task among users. There are several ways to extract data from a MySQL database to then import it to Excel; for example you can use the MySQL Connector/ODBC to configure an ODBC connection to a MySQL database, then in Excel use the Data Connection Wizard to select the database and table from which you want to extract data from, then specify what worksheet you want to put the data into. Another way is to somehow dump a comma delimited text file with the data from a MySQL table (using the MySQL Command Line Client, MySQL Workbench, etc.) to then in Excel open the file using the Text Import Wizard to attempt to correctly split the data in columns. These methods are fine, but involve some degree of technical knowledge to make the magic happen and involve repeating several steps each time data needs to be imported from a MySQL table to an Excel spreadsheet. So, can this be done in an easier and faster way? With MySQL for Excel you can. MySQL for Excel features an Import MySQL Data action where you can import data from a MySQL Table, View or Stored Procedure literally with a few clicks within Excel. Following is a quick guide describing how to import data using MySQL for Excel. This guide assumes you already have a working MySQL Server instance, Microsoft Office Excel 2007 or 2010 and MySQL for Excel installed. 1. Opening MySQL for Excel Being an Excel Add-In, MySQL for Excel is opened from within Excel, so to use it open Excel, go to the Data tab located in the Ribbon and click MySQL for Excel at the far right of the Ribbon. 2. Creating a MySQL Connection (may be optional) If you have MySQL Workbench installed you will automatically see the same connections that you can see in MySQL Workbench, so you can use any of those and there may be no need to create a new connection. If you want to create a new connection (which normally you will do only once), in the Welcome Panel click New Connection, which opens the Setup New Connection dialog. Here you only need to give your new connection a distinctive Connection Name, specify the Hostname (or IP address) where the MySQL Server instance is running on (if different than localhost), the Port to connect to and the Username for the login. If you wish to test if your setup is good to go, click Test Connection and an information dialog will pop-up stating if the connection is successful or errors were found. 3.Opening a connection to a MySQL Server To open a pre-configured connection to a MySQL Server you just need to double-click it, so the Connection Password dialog is displayed where you enter the password for the login. 4. Selecting a MySQL Schema After opening a connection to a MySQL Server, the Schema Selection Panel is shown, where you can select the Schema that contains the Tables, Views and Stored Procedures you want to work with. To do so, you just need to either double-click the desired Schema or select it and click Next >. 5. Importing data… All previous steps were really the basic minimum needed to drill-down to the DB Object Selection Panel where you can see the Database Objects (grouped by type: Tables, Views and Procedures in that order) that you want to perform actions against; in the case of this guide, the action of importing data from them. a. From a MySQL Table To import from a Table you just need to select it from the list of Database Objects’ Tables group, after selecting it you will note actions below the list become available; then click Import MySQL Data. The Import Data dialog is displayed; you can see some basic information here like the name of the Excel worksheet the data will be imported to (in the window title), the Table Name, the total Row Count and a 10 row preview of the data meant for the user to see the columns that the table contains and to provide a way to select which columns to import. The Import Data dialog is designed with defaults in place so all data is imported (all rows and all columns) by just clicking Import; this is important to minimize the number of clicks needed to get the job done. After the import is performed you will have the data in the Excel worksheet formatted automatically. If you need to override the defaults in the Import Data dialog to change the columns selected for import or to change the number of imported rows you can easily do so before clicking Import. In the screenshot below the defaults are overridden to import only the first 3 columns and rows 10 – 60 (Limit to 50 Rows and Start with Row 10). If the number of rows to be imported exceeds the maximum number of rows Excel can hold in its worksheet, a warning will be displayed in the dialog, meaning the imported number of rows will be limited by that maximum number (65,535 rows if the worksheet is in Compatibility Mode). In the screenshot below you can see the Table contains 80,559 rows, but only 65,534 rows will be imported since the first row is used for the column names if the Include Column Names as Headers checkbox is checked. b. From a MySQL View Similar to the way of importing from a Table, to import from a View you just need to select it from the list of Database Objects’ Views group, then click Import MySQL Data. The Import Data dialog is displayed; identically to the way everything looks when importing from a table, the dialog displays the View Name, the total Row Count and the data preview grid. Since Views are really a filtered way to display data from Tables, it is actually as if we are extracting data from a Table; so the Import Data dialog is actually identical for those 2 Database Objects. After the import is performed, the data in the Excel spreadsheet looks like the following screenshot. Note that you can override the defaults in the Import Data dialog in the same way described above for importing data from Tables. Also the Compatibility Mode warning will be displayed if data exceeds the maximum number of rows explained before. c. From a MySQL Procedure Too import from a Procedure you just need to select it from the list of Database Objects’ Procedures group (note you can see Procedures here but not Functions since these return a single value, so by design they are filtered out). After the selection is made, click Import MySQL Data. The Import Data dialog is displayed, but this time you can see it looks different to the one used for Tables and Views. Given the nature of Store Procedures, they require first that values are supplied for its Parameters and also Procedures can return multiple Result Sets; so the Import Data dialog shows the Procedure Name and the Procedure Parameters in a grid where their values are input. After you supply the Parameter Values click Call. After calling the Procedure, the Result Sets returned by it are displayed at the bottom of the dialog; output parameters and the return value of the Procedure are appended as the last Result Set of the group. You can see each Result Set is displayed as a tab so you can see a preview of the returned data. You can specify if you want to import the Selected Result Set (default), All Result Sets – Arranged Horizontally or All Result Sets – Arranged Vertically using the Import drop-down list; then click Import. After the import is performed, the data in the Excel spreadsheet looks like the following screenshot. Note in this example all Result Sets were imported and arranged vertically. As you can see using MySQL for Excel importing data from a MySQL database becomes an easy task that requires very little technical knowledge, so it can be done by any type of user. Hope you enjoyed this guide! Remember that your feedback is very important for us, so drop us a message: MySQL on Windows (this) Blog - https://blogs.oracle.com/MySqlOnWindows/ Forum - http://forums.mysql.com/list.php?172 Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/mysql Cheers!

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Wrapping ASP.NET Client Callbacks

- by Ricardo Peres

Client Callbacks are probably the less known (and I dare say, less loved) of all the AJAX options in ASP.NET, which also include the UpdatePanel, Page Methods and Web Services. The reason for that, I believe, is it’s relative complexity: Get a reference to a JavaScript function; Dynamically register function that calls the above reference; Have a JavaScript handler call the registered function. However, it has some the nice advantage of being self-contained, that is, doesn’t need additional files, such as web services, JavaScript libraries, etc, or static methods declared on a page, or any kind of attributes. So, here’s what I want to do: Have a DOM element which exposes a method that is executed server side, passing it a string and returning a string; Have a server-side event that handles the client-side call; Have two client-side user-supplied callback functions for handling the success and error results. I’m going to develop a custom control without user interface that does the registration of the client JavaScript method as well as a server-side event that can be hooked by some handler on a page. My markup will look like this: 1: <script type="text/javascript"> 1: 2: 3: function onCallbackSuccess(result, context) 4: { 5: } 6: 7: function onCallbackError(error, context) 8: { 9: } 10: </script> 2: <my:CallbackControl runat="server" ID="callback" SendAllData="true" OnCallback="OnCallback"/> The control itself looks like this: 1: public class CallbackControl : Control, ICallbackEventHandler 2: { 3: #region Public constructor 4: public CallbackControl() 5: { 6: this.SendAllData = false; 7: this.Async = true; 8: } 9: #endregion 10: 11: #region Public properties and events 12: public event EventHandler<CallbackEventArgs> Callback; 13: 14: [DefaultValue(true)] 15: public Boolean Async 16: { 17: get; 18: set; 19: } 20: 21: [DefaultValue(false)] 22: public Boolean SendAllData 23: { 24: get; 25: set; 26: } 27: 28: #endregion 29: 30: #region Protected override methods 31: 32: protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer) 33: { 34: writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Id, this.ClientID); 35: writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Span); 36: 37: base.Render(writer); 38: 39: writer.RenderEndTag(); 40: } 41: 42: protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) 43: { 44: String reference = this.Page.ClientScript.GetCallbackEventReference(this, "arg", "onCallbackSuccess", "context", "onCallbackError", this.Async); 45: String script = String.Concat("\ndocument.getElementById('", this.ClientID, "').callback = function(arg, context, onCallbackSuccess, onCallbackError){", ((this.SendAllData == true) ? "__theFormPostCollection.length = 0; __theFormPostData = ''; WebForm_InitCallback(); " : String.Empty), reference, ";};\n"); 46: 47: this.Page.ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript(this.GetType(), String.Concat("callback", this.ClientID), script, true); 48: 49: base.OnInit(e); 50: } 51: 52: #endregion 53: 54: #region Protected virtual methods 55: protected virtual void OnCallback(CallbackEventArgs args) 56: { 57: EventHandler<CallbackEventArgs> handler = this.Callback; 58: 59: if (handler != null) 60: { 61: handler(this, args); 62: } 63: } 64: 65: #endregion 66: 67: #region ICallbackEventHandler Members 68: 69: String ICallbackEventHandler.GetCallbackResult() 70: { 71: CallbackEventArgs args = new CallbackEventArgs(this.Context.Items["Data"] as String); 72: 73: this.OnCallback(args); 74: 75: return (args.Result); 76: } 77: 78: void ICallbackEventHandler.RaiseCallbackEvent(String eventArgument) 79: { 80: this.Context.Items["Data"] = eventArgument; 81: } 82: 83: #endregion 84: } And the event argument class: 1: [Serializable] 2: public class CallbackEventArgs : EventArgs 3: { 4: public CallbackEventArgs(String argument) 5: { 6: this.Argument = argument; 7: this.Result = String.Empty; 8: } 9: 10: public String Argument 11: { 12: get; 13: private set; 14: } 15: 16: public String Result 17: { 18: get; 19: set; 20: } 21: } You will notice two properties on the CallbackControl: Async: indicates if the call should be made asynchronously or synchronously (the default); SendAllData: indicates if the callback call will include the view and control state of all of the controls on the page, so that, on the server side, they will have their properties set when the Callback event is fired. The CallbackEventArgs class exposes two properties: Argument: the read-only argument passed to the client-side function; Result: the result to return to the client-side callback function, set from the Callback event handler. An example of an handler for the Callback event would be: 1: protected void OnCallback(Object sender, CallbackEventArgs e) 2: { 3: e.Result = String.Join(String.Empty, e.Argument.Reverse()); 4: } Finally, in order to fire the Callback event from the client, you only need this: 1: <input type="text" id="input"/> 2: <input type="button" value="Get Result" onclick="document.getElementById('callback').callback(callback(document.getElementById('input').value, 'context', onCallbackSuccess, onCallbackError))"/> The syntax of the callback function is: arg: some string argument; context: some context that will be passed to the callback functions (success or failure); callbackSuccessFunction: some function that will be called when the callback succeeds; callbackFailureFunction: some function that will be called if the callback fails for some reason. Give it a try and see if it helps!

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ASP.NET MVC 3 Hosting :: Rolling with Razor in MVC v3 Preview

- by mbridge

Razor is an alternate view engine for asp.net MVC. It was introduced in the “WebMatrix” tool and has now been released as part of the asp.net MVC 3 preview 1. Basically, Razor allows us to replace the clunky <% %> syntax with a much cleaner coding model, which integrates very nicely with HTML. Additionally, it provides some really nice features for master page type scenarios and you don’t lose access to any of the features you are currently familiar with, such as HTML helper methods. First, download and install the ASP.NET MVC Preview 1. You can find this at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=cb42f741-8fb1-4f43-a5fa-812096f8d1e8&displaylang=en. Now, follow these steps to create your first asp.net mvc project using Razor: 1. Open Visual Studio 2010 2. Create a new project. Select File->New->Project (Shift Control N) 3. You will see the list of project types which should look similar to what’s shown: 4. Select “ASP.NET MVC 3 Web Application (Razor).” Set the application name to RazorTest and the path to c:projectsRazorTest for this tutorial. If you select accidently select ASPX, you will end up with the standard asp.net view engine and template, which isn’t what you want. 5. For this tutorial, and ONLY for this tutorial, select “No, do not create a unit test project.” In general, you should create and use a unit test project. Code without unit tests is kind of like diet ice cream. It just isn’t very good. Now, once we have this done, our brand new project will be created. In all likelihood, Visual Studio will leave you looking at the “HomeController.cs” class, as shown below: Immediately, you should notice one difference. The Index action used to look like: public ActionResult Index () { ViewData[“Message”] = “Welcome to ASP.Net MVC!”; Return View(); } While this will still compile and run just fine, ASP.Net MVC 3 has a much nicer way of doing this: public ActionResult Index() { ViewModel.Message = “Welcome to ASP.Net MVC!”; Return View(); } Instead of using ViewData we are using the new ViewModel object, which uses the new dynamic data typing of .Net 4.0 to allow us to express ourselves much more cleanly. This isn’t a tutorial on ALL of MVC 3, but the ViewModel concept is one we will need as we dig into Razor. What comes in the box? When we create a project using the ASP.Net MVC 3 Template with Razor, we get a standard project setup, just like we did in ASP.NET MVC 2.0 but with some differences. Instead of seeing “.aspx” view files and “.ascx” files, we see files with the “.cshtml” which is the default razor extension. Before we discuss the details of a razor file, one thing to keep in mind is that since this is an extremely early preview, intellisense is not currently enabled with the razor view engine. This is promised as an updated before the final release. Just like with the aspx view engine, the convention of the folder name for a set of views matching the controller name without the word “Controller” still stands. Similarly, each action in the controller will usually have a corresponding view file in the appropriate view directory. Remember, in asp.net MVC, convention over configuration is key to successful development! The initial template organizes views in the following folders, located in the project under Views: - Account – The default account management views used by the Account controller. Each file represents a distinct view. - Home – Views corresponding to the appropriate actions within the home controller. - Shared – This contains common view objects used by multiple views. Within here, master pages are stored, as well as partial page views (user controls). By convention, these partial views are named “_XXXPartial.cshtml” where XXX is the appropriate name, such as _LogonPartial.cshtml. Additionally, display templates are stored under here. With this in mind, let us take a look at the index.cshtml file under the home view directory. When you open up index.cshtml you should see 1: @inherits System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage 2: @{ 3: View.Title = "Home Page"; 4: LayoutPage = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml"; 5: } 6: <h2>@View.Message</h2> 7: <p> 8: To learn more about ASP.NET MVC visit <a href="http://asp.net/mvc" title="ASP.NET MVC 9: Website">http://asp.net/mvc</a>. 10: </p> So looking through this, we observe the following facts: Line 1 imports the base page that all views (using Razor) are based on, which is System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage. Note that this is different than System.Web.MVC.ViewPage which is used by asp.net MVC 2.0 Also note that instead of the <% %> syntax, we use the very simple ‘@’ sign. The View Engine contains enough context sensitive logic that it can even distinguish between @ in code and @ in an email. It’s a very clean markup. Line 2 introduces the idea of a code block in razor. A code block is a scoping mechanism just like it is in a normal C# class. It is designated by @{… } and any C# code can be placed in between. Note that this is all server side code just like it is when using the aspx engine and <% %>. Line 3 allows us to set the page title in the client page’s file. This is a new feature which I’ll talk more about when we get to master pages, but it is another of the nice things razor brings to asp.net mvc development. Line 4 is where we specify our “master” page, but as you can see, you can place it almost anywhere you want, because you tell it where it is located. A Layout Page is similar to a master page, but it gains a bit when it comes to flexibility. Again, we’ll come back to this in a later installment. Line 6 and beyond is where we display the contents of our view. No more using <%: %> intermixed with code. Instead, we get to use very clean syntax such as @View.Message. This is a lot easier to read than <%:@View.Message%> especially when intermixed with html. For example: <p> My name is @View.Name and I live at @View.Address </p> Compare this to the equivalent using the aspx view engine <p> My name is <%:View.Name %> and I live at <%: View.Address %> </p> While not an earth shaking simplification, it is easier on the eyes. As we explore other features, this clean markup will become more and more valuable.

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The DOS DEBUG Environment

- by MarkPearl

Today I thought I would go back in time and have a look at the DEBUG command that has been available since the beginning of dawn in DOS, MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. up to today I always knew it was there, but had no clue on how to use it so for those that are interested this might be a great geek party trick to pull out when you want the awe the younger generation and want to show them what “real” programming is about. But wait, you will have to do it relatively quickly as it seems like DEBUG was finally dumped from the Windows group in Windows 7. Not to worry, pull out that Windows XP box which will get you even more geek points and you can still poke DEBUG a bit. So, for those that are interested and want to find out a bit about the history of DEBUG read the wiki link here. That all put aside, lets get our hands dirty.. How to Start DEBUG in Windows Make sure your version of Windows supports DEBUG. Open up a console window Make a directory where you want to play with debug – in my instance I called it C221 Enter the directory and type Debug You will get a response with a – as illustrated in the image below… The commands available in DEBUG There are several commands available in DEBUG. The most common ones are A (Assemble) R (Register) T (Trace) G (Go) D (Dump or Display) U (Unassemble) E (Enter) P (Proceed) N (Name) L (Load) W (Write) H (Hexadecimal) I (Input) O (Output) Q (Quit) I am not going to cover all these commands, but what I will do is go through a few of them briefly. A is for Assemble Command (to write code) The A command translates assembly language statements into machine code. It is quite useful for writing small assembly programs. Below I have written a very basic assembly program. The code typed out is as follows mov ax,0015 mov cx,0023 sub cx,ax mov [120],al mov cl,[120]A nop R is for Register (to jump to a point in memory) The r command turns out to be one of the most frequent commands you will use in DEBUG. It allows you to view the contents of registers and to change their values. It can be used with the following combinations… R – Displays the contents of all the registers R f – Displays the flags register R register_name – Displays the contents of a specific register All three methods are illustrated in the image above T is for Trace (To execute a program step by step) The t command allows us to execute the program step by step. Before we can trace the program we need to point back to the beginning of the program. We do this by typing in r ip, which moves us back to memory point 100. We then type trace which executes the first line of code (line 100) (As shown in the image below starting from the red arrow). You can see from the above image that the register AX now contains 0015 as per our instruction mov ax,0015 You can also see that the IP points to line 0103 which has the MOV CX,0023 command If we type t again it will now execute the second line of the program which moves 23 in the cx register. Again, we can see that the line of code was executed and that the CX register now holds the value of 23. What I would like to highlight now is the section underlined in red. These are the status flags. The ones we are going to look at now are 1st (NV), 4th (PL), 5th (NZ) & 8th (NC) NV means no overflow, the alternate would be OV PL means that the sign of the previous arithmetic operation was Plus, the alternate would be NG (Negative) NZ means that the results of the previous arithmetic operation operation was Not Zero, the alternate would be ZR NC means that No final Carry resulted from the previous arithmetic operation. CY means that there was a final Carry. We could now follow this process of entering the t command until the entire program is executed line by line. G is for Go (To execute a program up to a certain line number) So we have looked at executing a program line by line, which is fine if your program is minuscule BUT totally unpractical if we have any decent sized program. A quicker way to run some lines of code is to use the G command. The ‘g’ command executes a program up to a certain specified point. It can be used in connection with the the reset IP command. You would set your initial point and then run the G command with the line you want to end on. P is for Proceed (Similar to trace but slightly more streamlined) Another command similar to trace is the proceed command. All that the p command does is if it is called and it encounters a CALL, INT or LOOP command it terminates the program execution. In the example below I modified our example program to include an int 20 at the end of it as illustrated in the image below… Then when executing the code when I encountered the int 20 command I typed the P command and the program terminated normally (illustrated below). D is for Dump (or for those more polite Display) So, we have all these assembly lines of code, but if you have ever opened up an exe or com file in a text/hex editor, it looks nothing like assembly code. The D command is a way that we can see what our code looks like in memory (or in a hex editor). If we examined the image above, we can see that Debug is storing our assembly code with each instruction following immediately after the previous one. For instance in memory address 110 we have int and 111 we have 20. If we examine the dump of memory we can see at memory point 110 CD is stored and at memory point 111 20 is stored. U is for Unassemble (or Convert Machine code to Assembly Code) So up to now we have gone through a bunch of commands, but probably one of the most useful is the U command. Let’s say we don’t understand machine code so well and so instead we want to see it in its equivalent assembly code. We can type the U command followed by the start memory point, followed by the end memory point and it will show us the assembly code equivalent of the machine code. E is for a bunch of things… The E command can be used for a bunch of things… One example is to enter data or machine code instructions directly into memory. It can also be used to display the contents of memory locations. I am not going to worry to much about it in this post. N / L / W is for Name, Load & Write So we have written out assembly code in debug, and now we want to save it to disk, or write it as a com file or load it. This is where the N, L & W command come in handy. The n command is used to give a name to the executable program file and is pretty simple to use. The w command is a bit trickier. It saves to disk all the memory between point bx and point cx so you need to specify the bx memory address and the cx memory address for it to write your code. Let’s look at an example illustrated below. You do this by calling the r command followed by the either bx or cx. We can then go to the directory where we were working and will see the new file with the name we specified. The L command is relatively simple. You would first specify the name of the file you would like to load using the N command, and then call the L command. Q is for Quit The last command that I am going to write about in this post is the Q command. Simply put, calling the Q command exits DEBUG. Commands we did not Cover Out of the standard DEBUG commands we covered A, T, G, D, U, E, P, R, N, L & W. The ones we did not cover were H, I & O – I might make mention of these in a later post, but for the basics they are not really needed. Some Useful Resources Please note this post is based on the COS2213 handouts for UNISA A Guide to DEBUG - http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/asm/debug/debug.htm#NT

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Silverlight for Everyone!!

- by subodhnpushpak

Someone asked me to compare Silverlight / HTML development. I realized that the question can be answered in many ways: Below is the high level comparison between a HTML /JavaScript client and Silverlight client and why silverlight was chosen over HTML / JavaScript client (based on type of users and major functionalities provided): 1. For end users Browser compatibility Silverlight is a plug-in and requires installation first. However, it does provides consistent look and feel across all browsers. For HTML / DHTML, there is a need to tweak JavaScript for each of the browser supported. In fact, tags like <span> and <div> works differently on different browser / version. So, HTML works on most of the systems but also requires lot of efforts coding-wise to adhere to all standards/ browsers / versions. Out of browser support No support in HTML. Third party tools like Google gears offers some functionalities but there are lots of issues around platform and accessibility. Out of box support for out-of-browser support. provides features like drag and drop onto application surface. Cut and copy paste in HTML HTML is displayed in browser; which, in turn provides facilities for cut copy and paste. Silverlight (specially 4) provides rich features for cut-copy-paste along with full control over what can be cut copy pasted by end users and .advanced features like visual tree printing. Rich user experience HTML can provide some rich experience by use of some JavaScript libraries like JQuery. However, extensive use of JavaScript combined with various versions of browsers and the supported JavaScript makes the solution cumbersome. Silverlight is meant for RIA experience. User data storage on client end In HTML only small amount of data can be stored that too in cookies. In Silverlight large data may be stored, that too in secure way. This increases the response time. Post back In HTML / JavaScript the post back can be stopped by use of AJAX. Extensive use of AJAX can be a bottleneck as browser stack is used for the calls. Both look and feel and data travel over network. In Silverlight everything run the client side. Calls are made to server ONLY for data; which also reduces network traffic in long run. 2. For Developers Coding effort HTML / JavaScript can take considerable amount to code if features (requirements) are rich. For AJAX like interfaces; knowledge of third party kits like DOJO / Yahoo UI / JQuery is required which has steep learning curve. ASP .Net coding world revolves mostly along <table> tags for alignments whereas most popular tools provide <div> tags; which requires lots of tweaking. AJAX calls can be a bottlenecks for performance, if the calls are many. In Silverlight; coding is in C#, which is managed code. XAML is also very intuitive and Blend can be used to provide look and feel. Event handling is much clean than in JavaScript. Provides for many clean patterns like MVVM and composable application. Each call to server is asynchronous in silverlight. AJAX is in built into silverlight. Threading can be done at the client side itself to provide for better responsiveness; etc. Debugging Debugging in HTML / JavaScript is difficult. As JavaScript is interpreted; there is NO compile time error handling. Debugging in Silverlight is very helpful. As it is compiled; it provides rich features for both compile time and run time error handling. Multi -targeting browsers HTML / JavaScript have different rendering behaviours in different browsers / and their versions. JavaScript have to be written to sublime the differences in browser behaviours. Silverlight works exactly the same in all browsers and works on almost all popular browser. Multi-targeting desktop No support in HTML / JavaScript Silverlight is very close to WPF. Bot the platform may be easily targeted while maintaining the same source code. Rich toolkit HTML /JavaScript have limited toolkit as controls Silverlight provides a rich set of controls including graphs, audio, video, layout, etc. 3. For Architects Design Patterns Silverlight provides for patterns like MVVM (MVC) and rich (fat) client architecture. This segregates the "separation of concern" very clearly. Client (silverlight) does what it is expected to do and server does what it is expected of. In HTML / JavaScript world most of the processing is done on the server side. Extensibility Silverlight provides great deal of extensibility as custom controls may be made. Extensibility is NOT restricted by browser but by the plug-in silverlight runs in. HTML / JavaScript works in a certain way and extensibility is generally done on the server side rather than client end. Client side is restricted by the limitations of the browser. Performance Silverlight provides localized storage which may be used for cached data storage. this reduces the response time. As processing can be done on client side itself; there is no need for server round trips. this decreases the round about time. Look and feel of the application is downloaded ONLY initially, afterwards ONLY data is fetched form the server. Security Silverlight is compiled code downloaded as .XAP; As compared to HTML / JavaScript, it provides more secure sandboxed approach. Cross - scripting is inherently prohibited in silverlight by default. If proper guidelines are followed silverlight provides much robust security mechanism as against HTML / JavaScript world. For example; knowing server Address in obfuscated JavaScript is easier than a compressed compiled obfuscated silverlight .XAP file. Some of these like (offline and Canvas support) will be available in HTML5. However, the timelines are not encouraging at all. According to Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML5 specification, the specification to reach the W3C Candidate Recommendation stage during 2012, and W3C Recommendation in the year 2022 or later. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5 for details. The above is MY opinion. I will love to hear yours; do let me know via comments. Technorati Tags: Silverlight

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The blocking nature of aggregates

- by Rob Farley

I wrote a post recently about how query tuning isn’t just about how quickly the query runs – that if you have something (such as SSIS) that is consuming your data (and probably introducing a bottleneck), then it might be more important to have a query which focuses on getting the first bit of data out. You can read that post here. In particular, we looked at two operators that could be used to ensure that a query returns only Distinct rows. and The Sort operator pulls in all the data, sorts it (discarding duplicates), and then pushes out the remaining rows. The Hash Match operator performs a Hashing function on each row as it comes in, and then looks to see if it’s created a Hash it’s seen before. If not, it pushes the row out. The Sort method is quicker, but has to wait until it’s gathered all the data before it can do the sort, and therefore blocks the data flow. But that was my last post. This one’s a bit different. This post is going to look at how Aggregate functions work, which ties nicely into this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. I’ve frequently explained about the fact that DISTINCT and GROUP BY are essentially the same function, although DISTINCT is the poorer cousin because you have less control over it, and you can’t apply aggregate functions. Just like the operators used for Distinct, there are different flavours of Aggregate operators – coming in blocking and non-blocking varieties. The example I like to use to explain this is a pile of playing cards. If I’m handed a pile of cards and asked to count how many cards there are in each suit, it’s going to help if the cards are already ordered. Suppose I’m playing a game of Bridge, I can easily glance at my hand and count how many there are in each suit, because I keep the pile of cards in order. Moving from left to right, I could tell you I have four Hearts in my hand, even before I’ve got to the end. By telling you that I have four Hearts as soon as I know, I demonstrate the principle of a non-blocking operation. This is known as a Stream Aggregate operation. It requires input which is sorted by whichever columns the grouping is on, and it will release a row as soon as the group changes – when I encounter a Spade, I know I don’t have any more Hearts in my hand. Alternatively, if the pile of cards are not sorted, I won’t know how many Hearts I have until I’ve looked through all the cards. In fact, to count them, I basically need to put them into little piles, and when I’ve finished making all those piles, I can count how many there are in each. Because I don’t know any of the final numbers until I’ve seen all the cards, this is blocking. This performs the aggregate function using a Hash Match. Observant readers will remember this from my Distinct example. You might remember that my earlier Hash Match operation – used for Distinct Flow – wasn’t blocking. But this one is. They’re essentially doing a similar operation, applying a Hash function to some data and seeing if the set of values have been seen before, but before, it needs more information than the mere existence of a new set of values, it needs to consider how many of them there are. A lot is dependent here on whether the data coming out of the source is sorted or not, and this is largely determined by the indexes that are being used. If you look in the Properties of an Index Scan, you’ll be able to see whether the order of the data is required by the plan. A property called Ordered will demonstrate this. In this particular example, the second plan is significantly faster, but is dependent on having ordered data. In fact, if I force a Stream Aggregate on unordered data (which I’m doing by telling it to use a different index), a Sort operation is needed, which makes my plan a lot slower. This is all very straight-forward stuff, and information that most people are fully aware of. I’m sure you’ve all read my good friend Paul White (@sql_kiwi)’s post on how the Query Optimizer chooses which type of aggregate function to apply. But let’s take a look at SQL Server Integration Services. SSIS gives us a Aggregate transformation for use in Data Flow Tasks, but it’s described as Blocking. The definitive article on Performance Tuning SSIS uses Sort and Aggregate as examples of Blocking Transformations. I’ve just shown you that Aggregate operations used by the Query Optimizer are not always blocking, but that the SSIS Aggregate component is an example of a blocking transformation. But is it always the case? After all, there are plenty of SSIS Performance Tuning talks out there that describe the value of sorted data in Data Flow Tasks, describing the IsSorted property that can be set through the Advanced Editor of your Source component. And so I set about testing the Aggregate transformation in SSIS, to prove for sure whether providing Sorted data would let the Aggregate transform behave like a Stream Aggregate. (Of course, I knew the answer already, but it helps to be able to demonstrate these things). A query that will produce a million rows in order was in order. Let me rephrase. I used a query which produced the numbers from 1 to 1000000, in a single field, ordered. The IsSorted flag was set on the source output, with the only column as SortKey 1. Performing an Aggregate function over this (counting the number of rows per distinct number) should produce an additional column with 1 in it. If this were being done in T-SQL, the ordered data would allow a Stream Aggregate to be used. In fact, if the Query Optimizer saw that the field had a Unique Index on it, it would be able to skip the Aggregate function completely, and just insert the value 1. This is a shortcut I wouldn’t be expecting from SSIS, but certainly the Stream behaviour would be nice. Unfortunately, it’s not the case. As you can see from the screenshots above, the data is pouring into the Aggregate function, and not being released until all million rows have been seen. It’s not doing a Stream Aggregate at all. This is expected behaviour. (I put that in bold, because I want you to realise this.) An SSIS transformation is a piece of code that runs. It’s a physical operation. When you write T-SQL and ask for an aggregation to be done, it’s a logical operation. The physical operation is either a Stream Aggregate or a Hash Match. In SSIS, you’re telling the system that you want a generic Aggregation, that will have to work with whatever data is passed in. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be possible to make a sometimes-blocking aggregation component in SSIS. A Custom Component could be created which could detect whether the SortKeys columns of the input matched the Grouping columns of the Aggregation, and either call the blocking code or the non-blocking code as appropriate. One day I’ll make one of those, and publish it on my blog. I’ve done it before with a Script Component, but as Script components are single-use, I was able to handle the data knowing everything about my data flow already. As per my previous post – there are a lot of aspects in which tuning SSIS and tuning execution plans use similar concepts. In both situations, it really helps to have a feel for what’s going on behind the scenes. Considering whether an operation is blocking or not is extremely relevant to performance, and that it’s not always obvious from the surface. In a future post, I’ll show the impact of blocking v non-blocking and synchronous v asynchronous components in SSIS, using some of LobsterPot’s Script Components and Custom Components as examples. When I get that sorted, I’ll make a Stream Aggregate component available for download.

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The blocking nature of aggregates

- by Rob Farley

I wrote a post recently about how query tuning isn’t just about how quickly the query runs – that if you have something (such as SSIS) that is consuming your data (and probably introducing a bottleneck), then it might be more important to have a query which focuses on getting the first bit of data out. You can read that post here. In particular, we looked at two operators that could be used to ensure that a query returns only Distinct rows. and The Sort operator pulls in all the data, sorts it (discarding duplicates), and then pushes out the remaining rows. The Hash Match operator performs a Hashing function on each row as it comes in, and then looks to see if it’s created a Hash it’s seen before. If not, it pushes the row out. The Sort method is quicker, but has to wait until it’s gathered all the data before it can do the sort, and therefore blocks the data flow. But that was my last post. This one’s a bit different. This post is going to look at how Aggregate functions work, which ties nicely into this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. I’ve frequently explained about the fact that DISTINCT and GROUP BY are essentially the same function, although DISTINCT is the poorer cousin because you have less control over it, and you can’t apply aggregate functions. Just like the operators used for Distinct, there are different flavours of Aggregate operators – coming in blocking and non-blocking varieties. The example I like to use to explain this is a pile of playing cards. If I’m handed a pile of cards and asked to count how many cards there are in each suit, it’s going to help if the cards are already ordered. Suppose I’m playing a game of Bridge, I can easily glance at my hand and count how many there are in each suit, because I keep the pile of cards in order. Moving from left to right, I could tell you I have four Hearts in my hand, even before I’ve got to the end. By telling you that I have four Hearts as soon as I know, I demonstrate the principle of a non-blocking operation. This is known as a Stream Aggregate operation. It requires input which is sorted by whichever columns the grouping is on, and it will release a row as soon as the group changes – when I encounter a Spade, I know I don’t have any more Hearts in my hand. Alternatively, if the pile of cards are not sorted, I won’t know how many Hearts I have until I’ve looked through all the cards. In fact, to count them, I basically need to put them into little piles, and when I’ve finished making all those piles, I can count how many there are in each. Because I don’t know any of the final numbers until I’ve seen all the cards, this is blocking. This performs the aggregate function using a Hash Match. Observant readers will remember this from my Distinct example. You might remember that my earlier Hash Match operation – used for Distinct Flow – wasn’t blocking. But this one is. They’re essentially doing a similar operation, applying a Hash function to some data and seeing if the set of values have been seen before, but before, it needs more information than the mere existence of a new set of values, it needs to consider how many of them there are. A lot is dependent here on whether the data coming out of the source is sorted or not, and this is largely determined by the indexes that are being used. If you look in the Properties of an Index Scan, you’ll be able to see whether the order of the data is required by the plan. A property called Ordered will demonstrate this. In this particular example, the second plan is significantly faster, but is dependent on having ordered data. In fact, if I force a Stream Aggregate on unordered data (which I’m doing by telling it to use a different index), a Sort operation is needed, which makes my plan a lot slower. This is all very straight-forward stuff, and information that most people are fully aware of. I’m sure you’ve all read my good friend Paul White (@sql_kiwi)’s post on how the Query Optimizer chooses which type of aggregate function to apply. But let’s take a look at SQL Server Integration Services. SSIS gives us a Aggregate transformation for use in Data Flow Tasks, but it’s described as Blocking. The definitive article on Performance Tuning SSIS uses Sort and Aggregate as examples of Blocking Transformations. I’ve just shown you that Aggregate operations used by the Query Optimizer are not always blocking, but that the SSIS Aggregate component is an example of a blocking transformation. But is it always the case? After all, there are plenty of SSIS Performance Tuning talks out there that describe the value of sorted data in Data Flow Tasks, describing the IsSorted property that can be set through the Advanced Editor of your Source component. And so I set about testing the Aggregate transformation in SSIS, to prove for sure whether providing Sorted data would let the Aggregate transform behave like a Stream Aggregate. (Of course, I knew the answer already, but it helps to be able to demonstrate these things). A query that will produce a million rows in order was in order. Let me rephrase. I used a query which produced the numbers from 1 to 1000000, in a single field, ordered. The IsSorted flag was set on the source output, with the only column as SortKey 1. Performing an Aggregate function over this (counting the number of rows per distinct number) should produce an additional column with 1 in it. If this were being done in T-SQL, the ordered data would allow a Stream Aggregate to be used. In fact, if the Query Optimizer saw that the field had a Unique Index on it, it would be able to skip the Aggregate function completely, and just insert the value 1. This is a shortcut I wouldn’t be expecting from SSIS, but certainly the Stream behaviour would be nice. Unfortunately, it’s not the case. As you can see from the screenshots above, the data is pouring into the Aggregate function, and not being released until all million rows have been seen. It’s not doing a Stream Aggregate at all. This is expected behaviour. (I put that in bold, because I want you to realise this.) An SSIS transformation is a piece of code that runs. It’s a physical operation. When you write T-SQL and ask for an aggregation to be done, it’s a logical operation. The physical operation is either a Stream Aggregate or a Hash Match. In SSIS, you’re telling the system that you want a generic Aggregation, that will have to work with whatever data is passed in. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be possible to make a sometimes-blocking aggregation component in SSIS. A Custom Component could be created which could detect whether the SortKeys columns of the input matched the Grouping columns of the Aggregation, and either call the blocking code or the non-blocking code as appropriate. One day I’ll make one of those, and publish it on my blog. I’ve done it before with a Script Component, but as Script components are single-use, I was able to handle the data knowing everything about my data flow already. As per my previous post – there are a lot of aspects in which tuning SSIS and tuning execution plans use similar concepts. In both situations, it really helps to have a feel for what’s going on behind the scenes. Considering whether an operation is blocking or not is extremely relevant to performance, and that it’s not always obvious from the surface. In a future post, I’ll show the impact of blocking v non-blocking and synchronous v asynchronous components in SSIS, using some of LobsterPot’s Script Components and Custom Components as examples. When I get that sorted, I’ll make a Stream Aggregate component available for download.

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SQL SERVER – Thinking about Deprecated, Discontinued Features and Breaking Changes while Upgrading to SQL Server 2012 – Guest Post by Nakul Vachhrajani

- by pinaldave

Nakul Vachhrajani is a Technical Specialist and systems development professional with iGATE having a total IT experience of more than 7 years. Nakul is an active blogger with BeyondRelational.com (150+ blogs), and can also be found on forums at SQLServerCentral and BeyondRelational.com. Nakul has also been a guest columnist for SQLAuthority.com and SQLServerCentral.com. Nakul presented a webcast on the “Underappreciated Features of Microsoft SQL Server” at the Microsoft Virtual Tech Days Exclusive Webcast series (May 02-06, 2011) on May 06, 2011. He is also the author of a research paper on Database upgrade methodologies, which was published in a CSI journal, published nationwide. In addition to his passion about SQL Server, Nakul also contributes to the academia out of personal interest. He visits various colleges and universities as an external faculty to judge project activities being carried out by the students. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are his own personal opinions and do not represent his employer’s view in anyway. Blog | LinkedIn | Twitter | Google+ Let us hear the thoughts of Nakul in first person - Those who have been following my blogs would be aware that I am recently running a series on the database engine features that have been deprecated in Microsoft SQL Server 2012. Based on the response that I have received, I was quite surprised to know that most of the audience found these to be breaking changes, when in fact, they were not! It was then that I decided to write a little piece on how to plan your database upgrade such that it works with the next version of Microsoft SQL Server. Please note that the recommendations made in this article are high-level markers and are intended to help you think over the specific steps that you would need to take to upgrade your database. Refer the documentation – Understand the terms Change is the only constant in this world. Therefore, whenever customer requirements, newer architectures and designs require software vendors to make a change to the keywords, functions, etc; they ensure that they provide their end users sufficient time to migrate over to the new standards before dropping off the old ones. Microsoft does that too with it’s Microsoft SQL Server product. Whenever a new SQL Server release is announced, it comes with a list of the following features: Breaking changes These are changes that would break your currently running applications, scripts or functionalities that are based on earlier version of Microsoft SQL Server These are mostly features whose behavior has been changed keeping in mind the newer architectures and designs Lesson: These are the changes that you need to be most worried about! Discontinued features These features are no longer available in the associated version of Microsoft SQL Server These features used to be “deprecated” in the prior release Lesson: Without these changes, your database would not be compliant/may not work with the version of Microsoft SQL Server under consideration Deprecated features These features are those that are still available in the current version of Microsoft SQL Server, but are scheduled for removal in a future version. These may be removed in either the next version or any other future version of Microsoft SQL Server The features listed for deprecation will compose the list of discontinued features in the next version of SQL Server Lesson: Plan to make necessary changes required to remove/replace usage of the deprecated features with the latest recommended replacements Once a feature appears on the list, it moves from bottom to the top, i.e. it is first marked as “Deprecated” and then “Discontinued”. We know of “Breaking change” comes later on in the product life cycle. What this means is that if you want to know what features would not work with SQL Server 2012 (and you are currently using SQL Server 2008 R2), you need to refer the list of breaking changes and discontinued features in SQL Server 2012. Use the tools! There are a lot of tools and technologies around us, but it is rarely that I find teams using these tools religiously and to the best of their potential. Below are the top two tools, from Microsoft, that I use every time I plan a database upgrade. The SQL Server Upgrade Advisor Ever since SQL Server 2005 was announced, Microsoft provides a small, very light-weight tool called the “SQL Server upgrade advisor”. The upgrade advisor analyzes installed components from earlier versions of SQL Server, and then generates a report that identifies issues to fix either before or after you upgrade. The analysis examines objects that can be accessed, such as scripts, stored procedures, triggers, and trace files. Upgrade Advisor cannot analyze desktop applications or encrypted stored procedures. Refer the links towards the end of the post to know how to get the Upgrade Advisor. The SQL Server Profiler Another great tool that you can use is the one most SQL Server developers & administrators use often – the SQL Server profiler. SQL Server Profiler provides functionality to monitor the “Deprecation” event, which contains: Deprecation announcement – equivalent to features to be deprecated in a future release of SQL Server Deprecation final support – equivalent to features to be deprecated in the next release of SQL Server You can learn more using the links towards the end of the post. A basic checklist There are a lot of finer points that need to be taken care of when upgrading your database. But, it would be worth-while to identify a few basic steps in order to make your database compliant with the next version of SQL Server: Monitor the current application workload (on a test bed) via the Profiler in order to identify usage of features marked as Deprecated If none appear, you are all set! (This almost never happens) Note down all the offending queries and feature usages Run analysis sessions using the SQL Server upgrade advisor on your database Based on the inputs from the analysis report and Profiler trace sessions, Incorporate solutions for the breaking changes first Next, incorporate solutions for the discontinued features Revisit and document the upgrade strategy for your deployment scenarios Revisit the fall-back, i.e. rollback strategies in case the upgrades fail Because some programming changes are dependent upon the SQL server version, this may need to be done in consultation with the development teams Before any other enhancements are incorporated by the development team, send out the database changes into QA QA strategy should involve a comparison between an environment running the old version of SQL Server against the new one Because minimal application changes have gone in (essential changes for SQL Server version compliance only), this would be possible As an ongoing activity, keep incorporating changes recommended as per the deprecated features list As a DBA, update your coding standards to ensure that the developers are using ANSI compliant code – this code will require a change only if the ANSI standard changes Remember this: Change management is a continuous process. Keep revisiting the product release notes and incorporate recommended changes to stay prepared for the next release of SQL Server. May the power of SQL Server be with you! Links Referenced in this post Breaking changes in SQL Server 2012: Link Discontinued features in SQL Server 2012: Link Get the upgrade advisor from the Microsoft Download Center at: Link Upgrade Advisor page on MSDN: Link Profiler: Review T-SQL code to identify objects no longer supported by Microsoft: Link Upgrading to SQL Server 2012 by Vinod Kumar: Link Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Upgrade

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The Shift: how Orchard painlessly shifted to document storage, and how it’ll affect you

- by Bertrand Le Roy

We’ve known it all along. The storage for Orchard content items would be much more efficient using a document database than a relational one. Orchard content items are composed of parts that serialize naturally into infoset kinds of documents. Storing them as relational data like we’ve done so far was unnatural and requires the data for a single item to span multiple tables, related through 1-1 relationships. This means lots of joins in queries, and a great potential for Select N+1 problems. Document databases, unfortunately, are still a tough sell in many places that prefer the more familiar relational model. Being able to x-copy Orchard to hosters has also been a basic constraint in the design of Orchard. Combine those with the necessity at the time to run in medium trust, and with license compatibility issues, and you’ll find yourself with very few reasonable choices. So we went, a little reluctantly, for relational SQL stores, with the dream of one day transitioning to document storage. We have played for a while with the idea of building our own document storage on top of SQL databases, and Sébastien implemented something more than decent along those lines, but we had a better way all along that we didn’t notice until recently… In Orchard, there are fields, which are named properties that you can add dynamically to a content part. Because they are so dynamic, we have been storing them as XML into a column on the main content item table. This infoset storage and its associated API are fairly generic, but were only used for fields. The breakthrough was when Sébastien realized how this existing storage could give us the advantages of document storage with minimal changes, while continuing to use relational databases as the substrate. public bool CommercialPrices { get { return this.Retrieve(p => p.CommercialPrices); } set { this.Store(p => p.CommercialPrices, value); } } This code is very compact and efficient because the API can infer from the expression what the type and name of the property are. It is then able to do the proper conversions for you. For this code to work in a content part, there is no need for a record at all. This is particularly nice for site settings: one query on one table and you get everything you need. This shows how the existing infoset solves the data storage problem, but you still need to query. Well, for those properties that need to be filtered and sorted on, you can still use the current record-based relational system. This of course continues to work. We do however provide APIs that make it trivial to store into both record properties and the infoset storage in one operation: public double Price { get { return Retrieve(r => r.Price); } set { Store(r => r.Price, value); } } This code looks strikingly similar to the non-record case above. The difference is that it will manage both the infoset and the record-based storages. The call to the Store method will send the data in both places, keeping them in sync. The call to the Retrieve method does something even cooler: if the property you’re looking for exists in the infoset, it will return it, but if it doesn’t, it will automatically look into the record for it. And if that wasn’t cool enough, it will take that value from the record and store it into the infoset for the next time it’s required. This means that your data will start automagically migrating to infoset storage just by virtue of using the code above instead of the usual: public double Price { get { return Record.Price; } set { Record.Price = value; } } As your users browse the site, it will get faster and faster as Select N+1 issues will optimize themselves away. If you preferred, you could still have explicit migration code, but it really shouldn’t be necessary most of the time. If you do already have code using QueryHints to mitigate Select N+1 issues, you might want to reconsider those, as with the new system, you’ll want to avoid joins that you don’t need for filtering or sorting, further optimizing your queries. There are some rare cases where the storage of the property must be handled differently. Check out this string[] property on SearchSettingsPart for example: public string[] SearchedFields { get { return (Retrieve<string>("SearchedFields") ?? "") .Split(new[] {',', ' '}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); } set { Store("SearchedFields", String.Join(", ", value)); } } The array of strings is transformed by the property accessors into and from a comma-separated list stored in a string. The Retrieve and Store overloads used in this case are lower-level versions that explicitly specify the type and name of the attribute to retrieve or store. You may be wondering what this means for code or operations that look directly at the database tables instead of going through the new infoset APIs. Even if there is a record, the infoset version of the property will win if it exists, so it is necessary to keep the infoset up-to-date. It’s not very complicated, but definitely something to keep in mind. Here is what a product record looks like in Nwazet.Commerce for example: And here is the same data in the infoset: The infoset is stored in Orchard_Framework_ContentItemRecord or Orchard_Framework_ContentItemVersionRecord, depending on whether the content type is versionable or not. A good way to find what you’re looking for is to inspect the record table first, as it’s usually easier to read, and then get the item record of the same id. Here is the detailed XML document for this product: <Data> <ProductPart Inventory="40" Price="18" Sku="pi-camera-box" OutOfStockMessage="" AllowBackOrder="false" Weight="0.2" Size="" ShippingCost="null" IsDigital="false" /> <ProductAttributesPart Attributes="" /> <AutoroutePart DisplayAlias="camera-box" /> <TitlePart Title="Nwazet Pi Camera Box" /> <BodyPart Text="[...]" /> <CommonPart CreatedUtc="2013-09-10T00:39:00Z" PublishedUtc="2013-09-14T01:07:47Z" /> </Data> The data is neatly organized under each part. It is easy to see how that document is all you need to know about that content item, all in one table. If you want to modify that data directly in the database, you should be careful to do it in both the record table and the infoset in the content item record. In this configuration, the record is now nothing more than an index, and will only be used for sorting and filtering. Of course, it’s perfectly fine to mix record-backed properties and record-less properties on the same part. It really depends what you think must be sorted and filtered on. In turn, this potentially simplifies migrations considerably. So here it is, the great shift of Orchard to document storage, something that Orchard has been designed for all along, and that we were able to implement with a satisfying and surprising economy of resources. Expect this code to make its way into the 1.8 version of Orchard when that’s available.

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Curing the Database-Application mismatch

- by Phil Factor

If an application requires access to a database, then you have to be able to deploy it so as to be version-compatible with the database, in phase. If you can deploy both together, then the application and database must normally be deployed at the same version in which they, together, passed integration and functional testing. When a single database supports more than one application, then the problem gets more interesting. I’ll need to be more precise here. It is actually the application-interface definition of the database that needs to be in a compatible ‘version’. Most databases that get into production have no separate application-interface; in other words they are ‘close-coupled’. For this vast majority, the whole database is the application-interface, and applications are free to wander through the bowels of the database scot-free. If you’ve spurned the perceived wisdom of application architects to have a defined application-interface within the database that is based on views and stored procedures, any version-mismatch will be as sensitive as a kitten. A team that creates an application that makes direct access to base tables in a database will have to put a lot of energy into keeping Database and Application in sync, to say nothing of having to tackle issues such as security and audit. It is not the obvious route to development nirvana. I’ve been in countless tense meetings with application developers who initially bridle instinctively at the apparent restrictions of being ‘banned’ from the base tables or routines of a database. There is no good technical reason for needing that sort of access that I’ve ever come across. Everything that the application wants can be delivered via a set of views and procedures, and with far less pain for all concerned: This is the application-interface. If more than zero developers are creating a database-driven application, then the project will benefit from the loose-coupling that an application interface brings. What is important here is that the database development role is separated from the application development role, even if it is the same developer performing both roles. The idea of an application-interface with a database is as old as I can remember. The big corporate or government databases generally supported several applications, and there was little option. When a new application wanted access to an existing corporate database, the developers, and myself as technical architect, would have to meet with hatchet-faced DBAs and production staff to work out an interface. Sure, they would talk up the effort involved for budgetary reasons, but it was routine work, because it decoupled the database from its supporting applications. We’d be given our own stored procedures. One of them, I still remember, had ninety-two parameters. All database access was encapsulated in one application-module. If you have a stable defined application-interface with the database (Yes, one for each application usually) you need to keep the external definitions of the components of this interface in version control, linked with the application source, and carefully track and negotiate any changes between database developers and application developers. Essentially, the application development team owns the interface definition, and the onus is on the Database developers to implement it and maintain it, in conformance. Internally, the database can then make all sorts of changes and refactoring, as long as source control is maintained. If the application interface passes all the comprehensive integration and functional tests for the particular version they were designed for, nothing is broken. Your performance-testing can ‘hang’ on the same interface, since databases are judged on the performance of the application, not an ‘internal’ database process. The database developers have responsibility for maintaining the application-interface, but not its definition, as they refactor the database. This is easily tested on a daily basis since the tests are normally automated. In this setting, the deployment can proceed if the more stable application-interface, rather than the continuously-changing database, passes all tests for the version of the application. Normally, if all goes well, a database with a well-designed application interface can evolve gracefully without changing the external appearance of the interface, and this is confirmed by integration tests that check the interface, and which hopefully don’t need to be altered at all often. If the application is rapidly changing its ‘domain model’ in the light of an increased understanding of the application domain, then it can change the interface definitions and the database developers need only implement the interface rather than refactor the underlying database. The test team will also have to redo the functional and integration tests which are, of course ‘written to’ the definition. The Database developers will find it easier if these tests are done before their re-wiring job to implement the new interface. If, at the other extreme, an application receives no further development work but survives unchanged, the database can continue to change and develop to keep pace with the requirements of the other applications it supports, and needs only to take care that the application interface is never broken. Testing is easy since your automated scripts to test the interface do not need to change. The database developers will, of course, maintain their own source control for the database, and will be likely to maintain versions for all major releases. However, this will not need to be shared with the applications that the database servers. On the other hand, the definition of the application interfaces should be within the application source. Changes in it have to be subject to change-control procedures, as they will require a chain of tests. Once you allow, instead of an application-interface, an intimate relationship between application and database, we are in the realms of impedance mismatch, over and above the obvious security problems. Part of this impedance problem is a difference in development practices. Whereas the application has to be regularly built and integrated, this isn’t necessarily the case with the database. An RDBMS is inherently multi-user and self-integrating. If the developers work together on the database, then a subsequent integration of the database on a staging server doesn’t often bring nasty surprises. A separate database-integration process is only needed if the database is deliberately built in a way that mimics the application development process, but which hampers the normal database-development techniques. This process is like demanding a official walking with a red flag in front of a motor car. In order to closely coordinate databases with applications, entire databases have to be ‘versioned’, so that an application version can be matched with a database version to produce a working build without errors. There is no natural process to ‘version’ databases. Each development project will have to define a system for maintaining the version level. A curious paradox occurs in development when there is no formal application-interface. When the strains and cracks happen, the extra meetings, bureaucracy, and activity required to maintain accurate deployments looks to IT management like work. They see activity, and it looks good. Work means progress. Management then smile on the design choices made. In IT, good design work doesn’t necessarily look good, and vice versa.

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Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives - "Is It Time for an Upgrade?"

- by Tanu Sood

Is your organization debating their next step with regard to Identity Management? While all the stakeholders are well aware that the one-size-fits-all doesn’t apply to identity management, just as true is the fact that no two identity management implementations are alike. Oracle’s recent release of Identity Governance Suite 11g Release 2 has innovative features such as a customizable user interface, shopping cart style request catalog and more. However, only a close look at the use cases can help you determine if and when an upgrade to the latest R2 release makes sense for your organization. This post will describe a few of the situations that PwC has helped our clients work through. “Should I be considering an upgrade?” If your organization has an existing identity management implementation, the questions below are a good start to assessing your current solution to see if you need to begin planning for an upgrade: Does the current solution scale and meet your projected identity management needs? Does the current solution have a customer-friendly user interface? Are you completely meeting your compliance objectives? Are you still using spreadsheets? Does the current solution have the features you need? Is your total cost of ownership in line with well-performing similar sized companies in your industry? Can your organization support your existing Identity solution? Is your current product based solution well positioned to support your organization's tactical and strategic direction? Existing Oracle IDM Customers: Several existing Oracle clients are looking to move to R2 in 2013. If your organization is on Sun Identity Manager (SIM) or Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) and if your current assessment suggests that you need to upgrade, you should strongly consider OIM 11gR2. Oracle provides upgrade paths to Oracle Identity Manager 11gR2 from SIM 7.x / 8.x as well as Oracle Identity Manager 10g / 11gR1. The following are some of the considerations for migration: Check the end of product support (for Sun or legacy OIM) schedule There are several new features available in R2 (including common Helpdesk scenarios, profiling of disconnected applications, increased scalability, custom connectors, browser-based UI configurations, portability of configurations during future upgrades, etc) Cost of ownership (for SIM customers)\ Customizations that need to be maintained during the upgrade Time/Cost to migrate now vs. waiting for next version If you are already on an older version of Oracle Identity Manager and actively maintaining your support contract with Oracle, you might be eligible for a free upgrade to OIM 11gR2. Check with your Oracle sales rep for more details. Existing IDM infrastructure in place: In the past year and half, we have seen a surge in IDM upgrades from non-Oracle infrastructure to Oracle. If your organization is looking to improve the end-user experience related to identity management functions, the shopping cart style access request model and browser based personalization features may come in handy. Additionally, organizations that have a large number of applications that include ecommerce, LDAP stores, databases, UNIX systems, mainframes as well as a high frequency of user identity changes and access requests will value the high scalability of the OIM reconciliation and provisioning engine. Furthermore, we have seen our clients like OIM's out of the box (OOB) support for multiple authoritative sources. For organizations looking to integrate applications that do not have an exposed API, the Generic Technology Connector framework supported by OIM will be helpful in quickly generating custom connector using OOB wizard. Similarly, organizations in need of not only flexible on-boarding of disconnected applications but also strict access management to these applications using approval flows will find the flexible disconnected application profiling feature an extremely useful tool that provides a high degree of time savings. Organizations looking to develop custom connectors for home grown or industry specific applications will likewise find that the Identity Connector Framework support in OIM allows them to build and test a custom connector independently before integrating it with OIM. Lastly, most of our clients considering an upgrade to OIM 11gR2 have also expressed interest in the browser based configuration feature that allows an administrator to quickly customize the user interface without adding any custom code. Better yet, code customizations, if any, made to the product are portable across the future upgrades which, is viewed as a big time and money saver by most of our clients. Below are some upgrade methodologies we adopt based on client priorities and the scale of implementation. For illustration purposes, we have assumed that the client is currently on Oracle Waveset (formerly Sun Identity Manager). Integrated Deployment: The integrated deployment is typically where a client wants to split the implementation to where their current IDM is continuing to handle the front end workflows and OIM takes over the back office operations incrementally. Once all the back office operations are moved completely to OIM, the front end workflows are migrated to OIM. Parallel Deployment: This deployment is typically done where there can be a distinct line drawn between which functionality the platforms are supporting. For example the current IDM implementation is handling the password reset functionality while OIM takes over the access provisioning and RBAC functions. Cutover Deployment: A cutover deployment is typically recommended where a client has smaller less complex implementations and it makes sense to leverage the migration tools to move them over immediately. What does this mean for YOU? There are many variables to consider when making upgrade decisions. For most customers, there is no ‘easy’ button. Organizations looking to upgrade or considering a new vendor should start by doing a mapping of their requirements with product features. The recommended approach is to take stock of both the short term and long term objectives, understand product features, future roadmap, maturity and level of commitment from the R&D and build the implementation plan accordingly. As we said, in the beginning, there is no one-size-fits-all with Identity Management. So, arm yourself with the knowledge, engage in industry discussions, bring in business stakeholders and start building your implementation roadmap. In the next post we will discuss the best practices on R2 implementations. We will be covering the Do's and Don't's and share our thoughts on making implementations successful. Meet the Writers: Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC. He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors. Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC. He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail. Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC. He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL). Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory Security practice within PwC. Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries. His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving. Jenny (Xiao) Zhang is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC. She has consulted across multiple industries including financial services, entertainment and retail. Jenny has three years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which she has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past one and a half years.

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Changing CSS with jQuery syntax in Silverlight using jLight

- by Timmy Kokke

Lately I’ve ran into situations where I had to change elements or had to request a value in the DOM from Silverlight. jLight, which was introduced in an earlier article, can help with that. jQuery offers great ways to change CSS during runtime. Silverlight can access the DOM, but it isn’t as easy as jQuery. All examples shown in this article can be looked at in this online demo. The code can be downloaded here. Part 1: The easy stuff Selecting and changing properties is pretty straight forward. Setting the text color in all <B> </B> elements can be done using the following code: jQuery.Select("b").Css("color", "red"); The Css() method is an extension method on jQueryObject which is return by the jQuery.Select() method. The Css() method takes to parameters. The first is the Css style property. All properties used in Css can be entered in this string. The second parameter is the value you want to give the property. In this case the property is “color” and it is changed to “red”. To specify which element you want to select you can add a :selector parameter to the Select() method as shown in the next example. jQuery.Select("b:first").Css("font-family", "sans-serif"); The “:first” pseudo-class selector selects only the first element. This example changes the “font-family” property of the first <B></B> element to “sans-serif”. To make use of intellisense in Visual Studio I’ve added a extension methods to help with the pseudo-classes. In the example below the “font-weight” of every “Even” <LI></LI> is set to “bold”. jQuery.Select("li".Even()).Css("font-weight", "bold"); Because the Css() extension method returns a jQueryObject it is possible to chain calls to Css(). The following example show setting the “color”, “background-color” and the “font-size” of all headers in one go. jQuery.Select(":header").Css("color", "#12FF70") .Css("background-color", "yellow") .Css("font-size", "25px"); Part 2: More complex stuff In only a few cases you need to change only one style property. More often you want to change an entire set op style properties all in one go. You could chain a lot of Css() methods together. A better way is to add a class to a stylesheet and define all properties in there. With the AddClass() method you can set a style class to a set of elements. This example shows how to add the “demostyle” class to all <B></B> in the document. jQuery.Select("b").AddClass("demostyle"); Removing the class works in the same way: jQuery.Select("b").RemoveClass("demostyle"); jLight is build for interacting with to the DOM from Silverlight using jQuery. A jQueryObjectCss object can be used to define different sets of style properties in Silverlight. The over 60 most common Css style properties are defined in the jQueryObjectCss class. A string indexer can be used to access all style properties ( CssObject1[“background-color”] equals CssObject1.BackgroundColor). In the code below, two jQueryObjectCss objects are defined and instantiated. private jQueryObjectCss CssObject1; private jQueryObjectCss CssObject2; public Demo2() { CssObject1 = new jQueryObjectCss { BackgroundColor = "Lime", Color="Black", FontSize = "12pt", FontFamily = "sans-serif", FontWeight = "bold", MarginLeft = 150, LineHeight = "28px", Border = "Solid 1px #880000" }; CssObject2 = new jQueryObjectCss { FontStyle = "Italic", FontSize = "48", Color = "#225522" }; InitializeComponent(); } Now instead of chaining to set all different properties you can just pass one of the jQueryObjectCss objects to the Css() method. In this case all <LI></LI> elements are set to match this object. jQuery.Select("li").Css(CssObject1); When using the jQueryObjectCss objects chaining is still possible. In the following example all headers are given a blue backgroundcolor and the last is set to match CssObject2. jQuery.Select(":header").Css(new jQueryObjectCss{BackgroundColor = "Blue"}) .Eq(-1).Css(CssObject2); Part 3: The fun stuff Having Silverlight call JavaScript and than having JavaScript to call Silverlight requires a lot of plumbing code. Everything has to be registered and strings are passed back and forth to execute the JavaScript. jLight makes this kind of stuff so easy, it becomes fun to use. In a lot of situations jQuery can call a function to decide what to do, setting a style class based on complex expressions for example. jLight can do the same, but the callback methods are defined in Silverlight. This example calls the function() method for each <LI></LI> element. The callback method has to take a jQueryObject, an integer and a string as parameters. In this case jLight differs a bit from the actual jQuery implementation. jQuery uses only the index and the className parameters. A jQueryObject is added to make it simpler to access the attributes and properties of the element. If the text of the listitem starts with a ‘D’ or an ‘M’ the class is set. Otherwise null is returned and nothing happens. private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { jQuery.Select("li").AddClass(function); } private string function(jQueryObject obj, int index, string className) { if (obj.Text[0] == 'D' || obj.Text[0] == 'M') return "demostyle"; return null; } The last thing I would like to demonstrate uses even more Silverlight and less jLight, but demonstrates the power of the combination. Animating a style property using a Storyboard with easing functions. First a dependency property is defined. In this case it is a double named Intensity. By handling the changed event the color is set using jQuery. public double Intensity { get { return (double)GetValue(IntensityProperty); } set { SetValue(IntensityProperty, value); } } public static readonly DependencyProperty IntensityProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("Intensity", typeof(double), typeof(Demo3), new PropertyMetadata(0.0, IntensityChanged)); private static void IntensityChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e) { var i = (byte)(double)e.NewValue; jQuery.Select("span").Css("color", string.Format("#{0:X2}{0:X2}{0:X2}", i)); } An animation has to be created. This code defines a Storyboard with one keyframe that uses a bounce ease as an easing function. The animation is set to target the Intensity dependency property defined earlier. private Storyboard CreateAnimation(double value) { Storyboard storyboard = new Storyboard(); var da = new DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames(); var d = new EasingDoubleKeyFrame { EasingFunction = new BounceEase(), KeyTime = KeyTime.FromTimeSpan(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1.0)), Value = value }; da.KeyFrames.Add(d); Storyboard.SetTarget(da, this); Storyboard.SetTargetProperty(da, new PropertyPath(Demo3.IntensityProperty)); storyboard.Children.Add(da); return storyboard; } Initially the Intensity is set to 128 which results in a gray color. When one of the buttons is pressed, a new animation is created an played. One to animate to black, and one to animate to white. public Demo3() { InitializeComponent(); Intensity = 128; } private void button2_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { CreateAnimation(255).Begin(); } private void button3_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { CreateAnimation(0).Begin(); } Conclusion As you can see jLight can make the life of a Silverlight developer a lot easier when accessing the DOM. Almost all jQuery functions that are defined in jLight use the same constructions as described above. I’ve tried to stay as close as possible to the real jQuery. Having JavaScript perform callbacks to Silverlight using jLight will be described in more detail in a future tutorial about AJAX or eventing.

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Integrating Oracle Hyperion Smart View Data Queries with MS Word and Power Point

- by Andreea Vaduva

Untitled Document table { border: thin solid; } Most Smart View users probably appreciate that they can use just one add-in to access data from the different sources they might work with, like Oracle Essbase, Oracle Hyperion Planning, Oracle Hyperion Financial Management and others. But not all of them are aware of the options to integrate data analyses not only in Excel, but also in MS Word or Power Point. While in the past, copying and pasting single numbers or tables from a recent analysis in Excel made the pasted content a static snapshot, copying so called Data Points now creates dynamic, updateable references to the data source. It also provides additional nice features, which can make life easier and less stressful for Smart View users. So, how does this option work: after building an ad-hoc analysis with Smart View as usual in an Excel worksheet, any area including data cells/numbers from the database can be highlighted in order to copy data points - even single data cells only. TIP It is not necessary to highlight and copy the row or column descriptions Next from the Smart View ribbon select Copy Data Point. Then transfer to the Word or Power Point document into which the selected content should be copied. Note that in these Office programs you will find a menu item Smart View;from it select the Paste Data Point icon. The copied details from the Excel report will be pasted, but showing #NEED_REFRESH in the data cells instead of the original numbers. =After clicking the Refresh icon on the Smart View menu the data will be retrieved and displayed. (Maybe at that moment a login window pops up and you need to provide your credentials.) It works in the same way if you just copy one single number without any row or column descriptions, for example in order to incorporate it into a continuous text: Before refresh: After refresh: From now on for any subsequent updates of the data shown in your documents you only need to refresh data by clicking the Refresh button on the Smart View menu, without copying and pasting the context or content again. As you might realize, trying out this feature on your own, there won’t be any Point of View shown in the Office document. Also you have seen in the example, where only a single data cell was copied, that there aren’t any member names or row/column descriptions copied, which are usually required in an ad-hoc report in order to exactly define where data comes from or how data is queried from the source. Well, these definitions are not visible, but they are transferred to the Word or Power Point document as well. They are stored in the background for each individual data cell copied and can be made visible by double-clicking the data cell as shown in the following screen shot (but which is taken from another context). So for each cell/number the complete connection information is stored along with the exact member/cell intersection from the database. And that’s not all: you have the chance now to exchange the members originally selected in the Point of View (POV) in the Excel report. Remember, at that time we had the following selection: By selecting the Manage POV option from the Smart View meny in Word or Power Point… … the following POV Manager – Queries window opens: You can now change your selection for each dimension from the original POV by either double-clicking the dimension member in the lower right box under POV: or by selecting the Member Selector icon on the top right hand side of the window. After confirming your changes you need to refresh your document again. Be aware, that this will update all (!) numbers taken from one and the same original Excel sheet, even if they appear in different locations in your Office document, reflecting your recent changes in the POV. TIP Build your original report already in a way that dimensions you might want to change from within Word or Power Point are placed in the POV. And there is another really nice feature I wouldn’t like to miss mentioning: Using Dynamic Data Points in the way described above, you will never miss or need to search again for your original Excel sheet from which values were taken and copied as data points into an Office document. Because from even only one single data cell Smart View is able to recreate the entire original report content with just a few clicks: Select one of the numbers from within your Word or Power Point document by double-clicking. Then select the Visualize in Excel option from the Smart View menu. Excel will open and Smart View will rebuild the entire original report, including POV settings, and retrieve all data from the most recent actual state of the database. (It might be necessary to provide your credentials before data is displayed.) However, in order to make this work, an active online connection to your databases on the server is necessary and at least read access to the retrieved data. But apart from this, your newly built Excel report is fully functional for ad-hoc analysis and can be used in the common way for drilling, pivoting and all the other known functions and features. So far about embedding Dynamic Data Points into Office documents and linking them back into Excel worksheets. You can apply this in the described way with ad-hoc analyses directly on Essbase databases or using Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Financial Management ad-hoc web forms. If you are also interested in other new features and smart enhancements in Essbase or Hyperion Planning stay tuned for coming articles or check our training courses and web presentations. You can find general information about offerings for the Essbase and Planning curriculum or other Oracle-Hyperion products here (please make sure to select your country/region at the top of this page) or in the OU Learning paths section , where Planning, Essbase and other Hyperion products can be found under the Fusion Middleware heading (again, please select the right country/region). Or drop me a note directly: [email protected] . About the Author: Bernhard Kinkel started working for Hyperion Solutions as a Presales Consultant and Consultant in 1998 and moved to Hyperion Education Services in 1999. He joined Oracle University in 2007 where he is a Principal Education Consultant. Based on these many years of working with Hyperion products he has detailed product knowledge across several versions. He delivers both classroom and live virtual courses. His areas of expertise are Oracle/Hyperion Essbase, Oracle Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Web Analysis.

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How to store generated eigen faces for future face recognition?

- by user3237134

My code works in the following manner: 1.First, it obtains several images from the training set 2.After loading these images, we find the normalized faces,mean face and perform several calculation. 3.Next, we ask for the name of an image we want to recognize 4.We then project the input image into the eigenspace, and based on the difference from the eigenfaces we make a decision. 5.Depending on eigen weight vector for each input image we make clusters using kmeans command. Source code i tried: clear all close all clc % number of images on your training set. M=1200; %Chosen std and mean. %It can be any number that it is close to the std and mean of most of the images. um=60; ustd=32; %read and show images(bmp); S=[]; %img matrix for i=1:M str=strcat(int2str(i),'.jpg'); %concatenates two strings that form the name of the image eval('img=imread(str);'); [irow icol d]=size(img); % get the number of rows (N1) and columns (N2) temp=reshape(permute(img,[2,1,3]),[irow*icol,d]); %creates a (N1*N2)x1 matrix S=[S temp]; %X is a N1*N2xM matrix after finishing the sequence %this is our S end %Here we change the mean and std of all images. We normalize all images. %This is done to reduce the error due to lighting conditions. for i=1:size(S,2) temp=double(S(:,i)); m=mean(temp); st=std(temp); S(:,i)=(temp-m)*ustd/st+um; end %show normalized images for i=1:M str=strcat(int2str(i),'.jpg'); img=reshape(S(:,i),icol,irow); img=img'; end %mean image; m=mean(S,2); %obtains the mean of each row instead of each column tmimg=uint8(m); %converts to unsigned 8-bit integer. Values range from 0 to 255 img=reshape(tmimg,icol,irow); %takes the N1*N2x1 vector and creates a N2xN1 matrix img=img'; %creates a N1xN2 matrix by transposing the image. % Change image for manipulation dbx=[]; % A matrix for i=1:M temp=double(S(:,i)); dbx=[dbx temp]; end %Covariance matrix C=A'A, L=AA' A=dbx'; L=A*A'; % vv are the eigenvector for L % dd are the eigenvalue for both L=dbx'*dbx and C=dbx*dbx'; [vv dd]=eig(L); % Sort and eliminate those whose eigenvalue is zero v=[]; d=[]; for i=1:size(vv,2) if(dd(i,i)>1e-4) v=[v vv(:,i)]; d=[d dd(i,i)]; end end %sort, will return an ascending sequence [B index]=sort(d); ind=zeros(size(index)); dtemp=zeros(size(index)); vtemp=zeros(size(v)); len=length(index); for i=1:len dtemp(i)=B(len+1-i); ind(i)=len+1-index(i); vtemp(:,ind(i))=v(:,i); end d=dtemp; v=vtemp; %Normalization of eigenvectors for i=1:size(v,2) %access each column kk=v(:,i); temp=sqrt(sum(kk.^2)); v(:,i)=v(:,i)./temp; end %Eigenvectors of C matrix u=[]; for i=1:size(v,2) temp=sqrt(d(i)); u=[u (dbx*v(:,i))./temp]; end %Normalization of eigenvectors for i=1:size(u,2) kk=u(:,i); temp=sqrt(sum(kk.^2)); u(:,i)=u(:,i)./temp; end % show eigenfaces; for i=1:size(u,2) img=reshape(u(:,i),icol,irow); img=img'; img=histeq(img,255); end % Find the weight of each face in the training set. omega = []; for h=1:size(dbx,2) WW=[]; for i=1:size(u,2) t = u(:,i)'; WeightOfImage = dot(t,dbx(:,h)'); WW = [WW; WeightOfImage]; end omega = [omega WW]; end % Acquire new image % Note: the input image must have a bmp or jpg extension. % It should have the same size as the ones in your training set. % It should be placed on your desktop ed_min=[]; srcFiles = dir('G:\newdatabase\*.jpg'); % the folder in which ur images exists for b = 1 : length(srcFiles) filename = strcat('G:\newdatabase\',srcFiles(b).name); Imgdata = imread(filename); InputImage=Imgdata; InImage=reshape(permute((double(InputImage)),[2,1,3]),[irow*icol,1]); temp=InImage; me=mean(temp); st=std(temp); temp=(temp-me)*ustd/st+um; NormImage = temp; Difference = temp-m; p = []; aa=size(u,2); for i = 1:aa pare = dot(NormImage,u(:,i)); p = [p; pare]; end InImWeight = []; for i=1:size(u,2) t = u(:,i)'; WeightOfInputImage = dot(t,Difference'); InImWeight = [InImWeight; WeightOfInputImage]; end noe=numel(InImWeight); % Find Euclidean distance e=[]; for i=1:size(omega,2) q = omega(:,i); DiffWeight = InImWeight-q; mag = norm(DiffWeight); e = [e mag]; end ed_min=[ed_min MinimumValue]; theta=6.0e+03; %disp(e) z(b,:)=InImWeight; end IDX = kmeans(z,5); clustercount=accumarray(IDX, ones(size(IDX))); disp(clustercount); QUESTIONS: 1.It is working fine for M=50(i.e Training set contains 50 images) but not for M=1200(i.e Training set contains 1200 images).It is not showing any error.There is no output.I waited for 10 min still there is no output. I think it is going infinite loop.What is the problem?Where i was wrong? 2.Instead of running the training set everytime how eigen faces generated are stored so that stored eigen faces are used for future face recoginition for a new input image.So it reduces wastage of time.

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SQL Server script commands to check if object exists and drop it

- by deadlydog

Over the past couple years I’ve been keeping track of common SQL Server script commands that I use so I don’t have to constantly Google them. Most of them are how to check if a SQL object exists before dropping it. I thought others might find these useful to have them all in one place, so here you go: 1: --=============================== 2: -- Create a new table and add keys and constraints 3: --=============================== 4: IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo') 5: BEGIN 6: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[TableName] 7: ( 8: [ColumnName1] INT NOT NULL, -- To have a field auto-increment add IDENTITY(1,1) 9: [ColumnName2] INT NULL, 10: [ColumnName3] VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL DEFAULT('') 11: ) 12: 13: -- Add the table's primary key 14: ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] ADD CONSTRAINT [PK_TableName] PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED 15: ( 16: [ColumnName1], 17: [ColumnName2] 18: ) 19: 20: -- Add a foreign key constraint 21: ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] WITH CHECK ADD CONSTRAINT [FK_Name] FOREIGN KEY 22: ( 23: [ColumnName1], 24: [ColumnName2] 25: ) 26: REFERENCES [dbo].[Table2Name] 27: ( 28: [OtherColumnName1], 29: [OtherColumnName2] 30: ) 31: 32: -- Add indexes on columns that are often used for retrieval 33: CREATE INDEX IN_ColumnNames ON [dbo].[TableName] 34: ( 35: [ColumnName2], 36: [ColumnName3] 37: ) 38: 39: -- Add a check constraint 40: ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] WITH CHECK ADD CONSTRAINT [CH_Name] CHECK (([ColumnName] >= 0.0000)) 41: END 42: 43: --=============================== 44: -- Add a new column to an existing table 45: --=============================== 46: IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS where TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo' 47: AND TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND COLUMN_NAME = 'ColumnName') 48: BEGIN 49: ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] ADD [ColumnName] INT NOT NULL DEFAULT(0) 50: 51: -- Add a description extended property to the column to specify what its purpose is. 52: EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name=N'MS_Description', 53: @value = N'Add column comments here, describing what this column is for.' , 54: @level0type=N'SCHEMA',@level0name=N'dbo', @level1type=N'TABLE', 55: @level1name = N'TableName', @level2type=N'COLUMN', 56: @level2name = N'ColumnName' 57: END 58: 59: --=============================== 60: -- Drop a table 61: --=============================== 62: IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo') 63: BEGIN 64: DROP TABLE [dbo].[TableName] 65: END 66: 67: --=============================== 68: -- Drop a view 69: --=============================== 70: IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'ViewName' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo') 71: BEGIN 72: DROP VIEW [dbo].[ViewName] 73: END 74: 75: --=============================== 76: -- Drop a column 77: --=============================== 78: IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS where TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo' 79: AND TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND COLUMN_NAME = 'ColumnName') 80: BEGIN 81: 82: -- If the column has an extended property, drop it first. 83: IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.fn_listExtendedProperty(N'MS_Description', N'SCHEMA', N'dbo', N'Table', 84: N'TableName', N'COLUMN', N'ColumnName') 85: BEGIN 86: EXEC sys.sp_dropextendedproperty @name=N'MS_Description', 87: @level0type=N'SCHEMA',@level0name=N'dbo', @level1type=N'TABLE', 88: @level1name = N'TableName', @level2type=N'COLUMN', 89: @level2name = N'ColumnName' 90: END 91: 92: ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] DROP COLUMN [ColumnName] 93: END 94: 95: --=============================== 96: -- Drop Primary key constraint 97: --=============================== 98: IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS WHERE CONSTRAINT_TYPE='PRIMARY KEY' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo' 99: AND TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND CONSTRAINT_NAME = 'PK_Name') 100: BEGIN 101: ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] DROP CONSTRAINT [PK_Name] 102: END 103: 104: --=============================== 105: -- Drop Foreign key constraint 106: --=============================== 107: IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS WHERE CONSTRAINT_TYPE='FOREIGN KEY' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo' 108: AND TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND CONSTRAINT_NAME = 'FK_Name') 109: BEGIN 110: ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] DROP CONSTRAINT [FK_Name] 111: END 112: 113: --=============================== 114: -- Drop Unique key constraint 115: --=============================== 116: IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS WHERE CONSTRAINT_TYPE='UNIQUE' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo' 117: AND TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND CONSTRAINT_NAME = 'UNI_Name') 118: BEGIN 119: ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableNames] DROP CONSTRAINT [UNI_Name] 120: END 121: 122: --=============================== 123: -- Drop Check constraint 124: --=============================== 125: IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS WHERE CONSTRAINT_TYPE='CHECK' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo' 126: AND TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND CONSTRAINT_NAME = 'CH_Name') 127: BEGIN 128: ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] DROP CONSTRAINT [CH_Name] 129: END 130: 131: --=============================== 132: -- Drop a column's Default value constraint 133: --=============================== 134: DECLARE @ConstraintName VARCHAR(100) 135: SET @ConstraintName = (SELECT TOP 1 s.name FROM sys.sysobjects s JOIN sys.syscolumns c ON s.parent_obj=c.id 136: WHERE s.xtype='d' AND c.cdefault=s.id 137: AND parent_obj = OBJECT_ID('TableName') AND c.name ='ColumnName') 138: 139: IF @ConstraintName IS NOT NULL 140: BEGIN 141: EXEC ('ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] DROP CONSTRAINT ' + @ConstraintName) 142: END 143: 144: --=============================== 145: -- Example of how to drop dynamically named Unique constraint 146: --=============================== 147: DECLARE @ConstraintName VARCHAR(100) 148: SET @ConstraintName = (SELECT TOP 1 CONSTRAINT_NAME FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS 149: WHERE CONSTRAINT_TYPE='UNIQUE' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo' 150: AND TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND CONSTRAINT_NAME LIKE 'FirstPartOfConstraintName%') 151: 152: IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS WHERE CONSTRAINT_TYPE='UNIQUE' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo' 153: AND TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND CONSTRAINT_NAME = @ConstraintName) 154: BEGIN 155: EXEC ('ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] DROP CONSTRAINT ' + @ConstraintName) 156: END 157: 158: --=============================== 159: -- Check for and drop a temp table 160: --=============================== 161: IF OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#TableName') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE #TableName 162: 163: --=============================== 164: -- Drop a stored procedure 165: --=============================== 166: IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES WHERE ROUTINE_TYPE='PROCEDURE' AND ROUTINE_SCHEMA='dbo' AND 167: ROUTINE_NAME = 'StoredProcedureName') 168: BEGIN 169: DROP PROCEDURE [dbo].[StoredProcedureName] 170: END 171: 172: --=============================== 173: -- Drop a UDF 174: --=============================== 175: IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES WHERE ROUTINE_TYPE='FUNCTION' AND ROUTINE_SCHEMA='dbo' AND 176: ROUTINE_NAME = 'UDFName') 177: BEGIN 178: DROP FUNCTION [dbo].[UDFName] 179: END 180: 181: --=============================== 182: -- Drop an Index 183: --=============================== 184: IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM SYS.INDEXES WHERE name = 'IndexName') 185: BEGIN 186: DROP INDEX TableName.IndexName 187: END 188: 189: --=============================== 190: -- Drop a Schema 191: --=============================== 192: IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SCHEMATA WHERE SCHEMA_NAME = 'SchemaName') 193: BEGIN 194: EXEC('DROP SCHEMA SchemaName') 195: END And here’s the same code, just not in the little code view window so that you don’t have to scroll it.--=============================== -- Create a new table and add keys and constraints --=============================== IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo') BEGIN CREATE TABLE [dbo].[TableName] ( [ColumnName1] INT NOT NULL, -- To have a field auto-increment add IDENTITY(1,1) [ColumnName2] INT NULL, [ColumnName3] VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL DEFAULT('') ) -- Add the table's primary key ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] ADD CONSTRAINT [PK_TableName] PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED ( [ColumnName1], [ColumnName2] ) -- Add a foreign key constraint ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] WITH CHECK ADD CONSTRAINT [FK_Name] FOREIGN KEY ( [ColumnName1], [ColumnName2] ) REFERENCES [dbo].[Table2Name] ( [OtherColumnName1], [OtherColumnName2] ) -- Add indexes on columns that are often used for retrieval CREATE INDEX IN_ColumnNames ON [dbo].[TableName] ( [ColumnName2], [ColumnName3] ) -- Add a check constraint ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] WITH CHECK ADD CONSTRAINT [CH_Name] CHECK (([ColumnName] >= 0.0000)) END --=============================== -- Add a new column to an existing table --=============================== IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS where TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo' AND TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND COLUMN_NAME = 'ColumnName') BEGIN ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] ADD [ColumnName] INT NOT NULL DEFAULT(0) -- Add a description extended property to the column to specify what its purpose is. EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name=N'MS_Description', @value = N'Add column comments here, describing what this column is for.' , @level0type=N'SCHEMA',@level0name=N'dbo', @level1type=N'TABLE', @level1name = N'TableName', @level2type=N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'ColumnName' END --=============================== -- Drop a table --=============================== IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo') BEGIN DROP TABLE [dbo].[TableName] END --=============================== -- Drop a view --=============================== IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'ViewName' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo') BEGIN DROP VIEW [dbo].[ViewName] END --=============================== -- Drop a column --=============================== IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS where TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo' AND TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND COLUMN_NAME = 'ColumnName') BEGIN -- If the column has an extended property, drop it first. IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.fn_listExtendedProperty(N'MS_Description', N'SCHEMA', N'dbo', N'Table', N'TableName', N'COLUMN', N'ColumnName') BEGIN EXEC sys.sp_dropextendedproperty @name=N'MS_Description', @level0type=N'SCHEMA',@level0name=N'dbo', @level1type=N'TABLE', @level1name = N'TableName', @level2type=N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'ColumnName' END ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] DROP COLUMN [ColumnName] END --=============================== -- Drop Primary key constraint --=============================== IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS WHERE CONSTRAINT_TYPE='PRIMARY KEY' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo' AND TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND CONSTRAINT_NAME = 'PK_Name') BEGIN ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] DROP CONSTRAINT [PK_Name] END --=============================== -- Drop Foreign key constraint --=============================== IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS WHERE CONSTRAINT_TYPE='FOREIGN KEY' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo' AND TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND CONSTRAINT_NAME = 'FK_Name') BEGIN ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] DROP CONSTRAINT [FK_Name] END --=============================== -- Drop Unique key constraint --=============================== IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS WHERE CONSTRAINT_TYPE='UNIQUE' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo' AND TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND CONSTRAINT_NAME = 'UNI_Name') BEGIN ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableNames] DROP CONSTRAINT [UNI_Name] END --=============================== -- Drop Check constraint --=============================== IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS WHERE CONSTRAINT_TYPE='CHECK' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo' AND TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND CONSTRAINT_NAME = 'CH_Name') BEGIN ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] DROP CONSTRAINT [CH_Name] END --=============================== -- Drop a column's Default value constraint --=============================== DECLARE @ConstraintName VARCHAR(100) SET @ConstraintName = (SELECT TOP 1 s.name FROM sys.sysobjects s JOIN sys.syscolumns c ON s.parent_obj=c.id WHERE s.xtype='d' AND c.cdefault=s.id AND parent_obj = OBJECT_ID('TableName') AND c.name ='ColumnName') IF @ConstraintName IS NOT NULL BEGIN EXEC ('ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] DROP CONSTRAINT ' + @ConstraintName) END --=============================== -- Example of how to drop dynamically named Unique constraint --=============================== DECLARE @ConstraintName VARCHAR(100) SET @ConstraintName = (SELECT TOP 1 CONSTRAINT_NAME FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS WHERE CONSTRAINT_TYPE='UNIQUE' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo' AND TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND CONSTRAINT_NAME LIKE 'FirstPartOfConstraintName%') IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS WHERE CONSTRAINT_TYPE='UNIQUE' AND TABLE_SCHEMA='dbo' AND TABLE_NAME = 'TableName' AND CONSTRAINT_NAME = @ConstraintName) BEGIN EXEC ('ALTER TABLE [dbo].[TableName] DROP CONSTRAINT ' + @ConstraintName) END --=============================== -- Check for and drop a temp table --=============================== IF OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#TableName') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE #TableName --=============================== -- Drop a stored procedure --=============================== IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES WHERE ROUTINE_TYPE='PROCEDURE' AND ROUTINE_SCHEMA='dbo' AND ROUTINE_NAME = 'StoredProcedureName') BEGIN DROP PROCEDURE [dbo].[StoredProcedureName] END --=============================== -- Drop a UDF --=============================== IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES WHERE ROUTINE_TYPE='FUNCTION' AND ROUTINE_SCHEMA='dbo' AND ROUTINE_NAME = 'UDFName') BEGIN DROP FUNCTION [dbo].[UDFName] END --=============================== -- Drop an Index --=============================== IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM SYS.INDEXES WHERE name = 'IndexName') BEGIN DROP INDEX TableName.IndexName END --=============================== -- Drop a Schema --=============================== IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SCHEMATA WHERE SCHEMA_NAME = 'SchemaName') BEGIN EXEC('DROP SCHEMA SchemaName') END

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Tracing Silex from PHP to the OS with DTrace

- by cj

In this blog post I show the full stack tracing of Brendan Gregg's php_syscolors.d script in the DTrace Toolkit. The Toolkit contains a dozen very useful PHP DTrace scripts and many more scripts for other languages and the OS. For this example, I'll trace the PHP micro framework Silex, which was the topic of the second of two talks by Dustin Whittle at a recent SF PHP Meetup. His slides are at Silex: From Micro to Full Stack. Installing DTrace and PHP The php_syscolors.d script uses some static PHP probes and some kernel probes. For Oracle Linux I discussed installing DTrace and PHP in DTrace PHP Using Oracle Linux 'playground' Pre-Built Packages. On other platforms with DTrace support, follow your standard procedures to enable DTrace and load the correct providers. The sdt and systrace providers are required in addition to fasttrap. On Oracle Linux, I loaded the DTrace modules like: # modprobe fasttrap # modprobe sdt # modprobe systrace # chmod 666 /dev/dtrace/helper Installing the DTrace Toolkit I download DTraceToolkit-0.99.tar.gz and extracted it: $ tar -zxf DTraceToolkit-0.99.tar.gz The PHP scripts are in the Php directory and examples in the Examples directory. Installing Silex I downloaded the "fat" Silex .tgz file from the download page and extracted it: $ tar -zxf silex_fat.tgz I changed the demonstration silex/web/index.php so I could use the PHP development web server: <?php // web/index.php $filename = __DIR__.preg_replace('#(\?.*)$#', '', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); if (php_sapi_name() === 'cli-server' && is_file($filename)) { return false; } require_once __DIR__.'/../vendor/autoload.php'; $app = new Silex\Application(); //$app['debug'] = true; $app->get('/hello', function() { return 'Hello!'; }); $app->run(); ?> Running DTrace The php_syscolors.d script uses the -Z option to dtrace, so it can be started before PHP, i.e. when there are zero of the requested probes available to be traced. I ran DTrace like: # cd DTraceToolkit-0.99/Php # ./php_syscolors.d Next, I started the PHP developer web server in a second terminal: $ cd silex $ php -S localhost:8080 -t web web/index.php At this point, the web server is idle, waiting for requests. DTrace is idle, waiting for the probes in php_syscolors.d to be fired, at which time the action associated with each probe will run. I then loaded the demonstration page in a browser: http://localhost:8080/hello When the request was fulfilled and the simple output of "Hello" was displayed, I ^C'd php and dtrace in their terminals to stop them. DTrace output over a thousand lines long had been generated. Here is one snippet from when run() was invoked: C PID/TID DELTA(us) FILE:LINE TYPE -- NAME ... 1 4765/4765 21 Application.php:487 func -> run 1 4765/4765 29 ClassLoader.php:182 func -> loadClass 1 4765/4765 17 ClassLoader.php:198 func -> findFile 1 4765/4765 31 ":- syscall -> access 1 4765/4765 26 ":- syscall <- access 1 4765/4765 16 ClassLoader.php:198 func <- findFile 1 4765/4765 25 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 15 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 22 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 14 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 15 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 60 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 20 ":- syscall -> open 1 4765/4765 16 ":- syscall <- open 1 4765/4765 26 ":- syscall -> newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall <- newfstat 1 4765/4765 17 ":- syscall -> newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall <- newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall -> newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall <- newfstat 1 4765/4765 20 ":- syscall -> mmap 1 4765/4765 14 ":- syscall <- mmap 1 4765/4765 3201 ":- syscall -> mmap 1 4765/4765 27 ":- syscall <- mmap 1 4765/4765 1233 ":- syscall -> munmap 1 4765/4765 53 ":- syscall <- munmap 1 4765/4765 15 ":- syscall -> close 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall <- close 1 4765/4765 34 Request.php:32 func -> main 1 4765/4765 22 Request.php:32 func <- main 1 4765/4765 31 ClassLoader.php:182 func <- loadClass 1 4765/4765 33 Request.php:249 func -> createFromGlobals 1 4765/4765 29 Request.php:198 func -> __construct 1 4765/4765 24 Request.php:218 func -> initialize 1 4765/4765 26 ClassLoader.php:182 func -> loadClass 1 4765/4765 89 ClassLoader.php:198 func -> findFile 1 4765/4765 43 ":- syscall -> access ... The output shows PHP functions being called and returning (and where they are located) and which system calls the PHP functions in turn invoked. The time each line took from the previous one is displayed in the third column. The first column is the CPU number. In this example, the process was always on CPU 1 so the output is naturally ordered without requiring post-processing, or the D script requiring to be modified to display a time stamp. On a terminal, the output of php_syscolors.d is color-coded according to whether each function is a PHP or system one, hence the file name. Summary With one tool, I was able to trace the interaction of a user application with the operating system. I was able to do this to an application running "live" in a web context. The DTrace Toolkit provides a very handy repository of DTrace information. Even though the PHP scripts were created in the time frame of the original PHP DTrace PECL extension, which only had PHP function entry and return probes, the scripts provide core examples for custom investigation and resolution scripts. You can easily adapt the ideas and and create scripts using the other PHP static probes, which are listed in the PHP Manual. Because DTrace is "always on", you can take advantage of it to resolve development questions or fix production situations.

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Deterministic/Consistent Unique Masking

- by Dinesh Rajasekharan-Oracle

One of the key requirements while masking data in large databases or multi database environment is to consistently mask some columns, i.e. for a given input the output should always be the same. At the same time the masked output should not be predictable. Deterministic masking also eliminates the need to spend enormous amount of time spent in identifying data relationships, i.e. parent and child relationships among columns defined in the application tables. In this blog post I will explain different ways of consistently masking the data across databases using Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting The readers of post should have minimal knowledge on Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, Application Data Modeling, Data Masking concepts. For more information on these concepts, please refer to Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting document Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting 12c provides four methods using which users can consistently yet irreversibly mask their inputs. 1. Substitute 2. SQL Expression 3. Encrypt 4. User Defined Function SUBSTITUTE The substitute masking format replaces the original value with a value from a pre-created database table. As the method uses a hash based algorithm in the back end the mappings are consistent. For example consider DEPARTMENT_ID in EMPLOYEES table is replaced with FAKE_DEPARTMENT_ID from FAKE_TABLE. The substitute masking transformation that all occurrences of DEPARTMENT_ID say ‘101’ will be replaced with ‘502’ provided same substitution table and column is used , i.e. FAKE_TABLE.FAKE_DEPARTMENT_ID. The following screen shot shows the usage of the Substitute masking format with in a masking definition: Note that the uniqueness of the masked value depends on the number of columns being used in the substitution table i.e. if the original table contains 50000 unique values, then for the masked output to be unique and deterministic the substitution column should also contain 50000 unique values without which only consistency is maintained but not uniqueness. SQL EXPRESSION SQL Expression replaces an existing value with the output of a specified SQL Expression. For example while masking an EMPLOYEES table the EMAIL_ID of an employee has to be in the format EMPLOYEE’s [email protected] while FIRST_NAME and LAST_NAME are the actual column names of the EMPLOYEES table then the corresponding SQL Expression will look like %FIRST_NAME%||’.’||%LAST_NAME%||’@COMPANY.COM’. The advantage of this technique is that if you are masking FIRST_NAME and LAST_NAME of the EMPLOYEES table than the corresponding EMAIL ID will be replaced accordingly by the masking scripts. One of the interesting aspect’s of a SQL Expressions is that you can use sub SQL expressions, which means that you can write a nested SQL and use it as SQL Expression to address a complex masking business use cases. SQL Expression can also be used to consistently replace value with hashed value using Oracle’s PL/SQL function ORA_HASH. The following SQL Expression will help in the previous example for replacing the DEPARTMENT_IDs with a hashed number ORA_HASH (%DEPARTMENT_ID%, 1000) The following screen shot shows the usage of encrypt masking format with in the masking definition: ORA_HASH takes three arguments: 1. Expression which can be of any data type except LONG, LOB, User Defined Type [nested table type is allowed]. In the above example I used the Original value as expression. 2. Number of hash buckets which can be number between 0 and 4294967295. The default value is 4294967295. You can also co-relate the number of hash buckets to a range of numbers. In the above example above the bucket value is specified as 1000, so the end result will be a hashed number in between 0 and 1000. 3. Seed, can be any number which decides the consistency, i.e. for a given seed value the output will always be same. The default seed is 0. In the above SQL Expression a seed in not specified, so it to 0. If you have to use a non default seed then the function will look like. ORA_HASH (%DEPARTMENT_ID%, 1000, 1234 The uniqueness depends on the input and the number of hash buckets used. However as ORA_HASH uses a 32 bit algorithm, considering birthday paradox or pigeonhole principle there is a 0.5 probability of collision after 232-1 unique values. ENCRYPT Encrypt masking format uses a blend of 3DES encryption algorithm, hashing, and regular expression to produce a deterministic and unique masked output. The format of the masked output corresponds to the specified regular expression. As this technique uses a key [string] to encrypt the data, the same string can be used to decrypt the data. The key also acts as seed to maintain consistent outputs for a given input. The following screen shot shows the usage of encrypt masking format with in the masking definition: Regular Expressions may look complex for the first time users but you will soon realize that it’s a simple language. There are many resources in internet, oracle documentation, oracle learning library, my oracle support on writing a Regular Expressions, out of all the following My Oracle Support document helped me to get started with Regular Expressions: Oracle SQL Support for Regular Expressions[Video](Doc ID 1369668.1) USER DEFINED FUNCTION [UDF] User Defined Function or UDF provides flexibility for the users to code their own masking logic in PL/SQL, which can be called from masking Defintion. The standard format of an UDF in Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting is: Function udf_func (rowid varchar2, column_name varchar2, original_value varchar2) returns varchar2; Where • rowid is the row identifier of the column that needs to be masked • column_name is the name of the column that needs to be masked • original_value is the column value that needs to be masked You can achieve deterministic masking by using Oracle’s built in hash functions like, ORA_HASH, DBMS_CRYPTO.MD4, DBMS_CRYPTO.MD5, DBMS_UTILITY. GET_HASH_VALUE.Please refers to the Oracle Database Documentation for more information on the Oracle Hash functions. For example the following masking UDF generate deterministic unique hexadecimal values for a given string input: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION RD_DUX (rid varchar2, column_name varchar2, orig_val VARCHAR2) RETURN VARCHAR2 DETERMINISTIC PARALLEL_ENABLE IS stext varchar2 (26); no_of_characters number(2); BEGIN no_of_characters:=6; stext:=substr(RAWTOHEX(DBMS_CRYPTO.HASH(UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_RAW(text),1)),0,no_of_characters); RETURN stext; END; The uniqueness depends on the input and length of the string and number of bits used by hash algorithm. In the above function MD4 hash is used [denoted by argument 1 in the DBMS_CRYPTO.HASH function which is a 128 bit algorithm which produces 2^128-1 unique hashed values , however this is limited by the length of the input string which is 6, so only 6^6 unique values will be generated. Also do not forget about the birthday paradox/pigeonhole principle mentioned earlier in this post. An another example is to consistently replace characters or numbers preserving the length and special characters as shown below: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION RD_DUS(rid varchar2,column_name varchar2,orig_val VARCHAR2) RETURN VARCHAR2 DETERMINISTIC PARALLEL_ENABLE IS stext varchar2(26); BEGIN DBMS_RANDOM.SEED(orig_val); stext:=TRANSLATE(orig_val,'ABCDEFGHILKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ',DBMS_RANDOM.STRING('U',26)); stext:=TRANSLATE(stext,'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',DBMS_RANDOM.STRING('L',26)); stext:=TRANSLATE(stext,'0123456789',to_char(DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE(1,9))); stext:=REPLACE(stext,'.','0'); RETURN stext; END; The following screen shot shows the usage of an UDF with in a masking definition: To summarize, Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting helps you to consistently mask data across databases using one or all of the methods described in this post. It saves the hassle of identifying the parent-child relationships defined in the application table. Happy Masking

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Quaternion Camera Orbiting around a Sphere

- by jessejuicer

Background: I'm trying to create a game where the camera is always rotating around a single sphere. I'm using the DirectX D3DX math functions in C++ on Windows. The Problem: I cannot get both the camera position and orientation both working properly at the same time. Either one works but not both together. Here's the code for my quaternion camera that revolves around a sphere, always looking at the centerpoint of the sphere, ... as far as I understand it (but which isn't working properly): (I'm only going to present rotation around the X axis here, to simplify this post) Whenever the UP key is pressed or held down, the camera should rotate around the X axis, while looking at the centerpoint of the sphere (which is at 0,0,0 in the world). So, I build a quaternion that represents a small angle of rotation around the x axis like this (where 'deltaAngle' is a small enough number for a slow rotation): D3DXVECTOR3 rotAxis; D3DXQUATERNION tempQuat; tempQuat.x = 0.0f; tempQuat.y = 0.0f; tempQuat.z = 0.0f; tempQuat.w = 1.0f; rotAxis.x = 1.0f; rotAxis.y = 0.0f; rotAxis.z = 0.0f; D3DXQuaternionRotationAxis(&tempQuat, &rotAxis, deltaAngle); ...and I accumulate the result into the camera's current orientation quat, like this: D3DXQuaternionMultiply(&cameraOrientationQuat, &cameraOrientationQuat, &tempQuat); ...which all works fine. Now I need to build a view matrix to pass to DirectX SetTransform function. So I build a rotation matrix from the camera orientation quat as follows: D3DXMATRIXA16 rotationMatrix; D3DXMatrixIdentity(&rotationMatrix); D3DXMatrixRotationQuaternion(&rotationMatrix, &cameraOrientationQuat); ...Now (as seen below) if I just transpose that rotationMatrix and plug it into the 3x3 section of the view matrix, then negate the camera's position and plug it into the translation section of the view matrix, the rotation magically works. Perfectly. (even when I add in rotations for all three axes). There's no gimbal lock, just a smooth rotation all around in any direction. BUT- this works even though I never change the camera's position. At all. Which sorta blows my mind. I even display the camera position and can watch it stay constant at it's starting point (0.0, 0.0, -4000.0). It never moves, but the rotation around the sphere is perfect. I don't understand that. For proper view rotation, the camera position should be revolving around the sphere. Here's the rest of building the view matrix (I'll talk about the commented code below). Note that the camera starts out at (0.0, 0.0, -4000.0) and m_camDistToTarget is 4000.0: /* D3DXVECTOR3 vec1; D3DXVECTOR4 vec2; vec1.x = 0.0f; vec1.y = 0.0f; vec1.z = -1.0f; D3DXVec3Transform(&vec2, &vec1, &rotationMatrix); g_cameraActor->pos.x = vec2.x * g_cameraActor->m_camDistToTarget; g_cameraActor->pos.y = vec2.y * g_cameraActor->m_camDistToTarget; g_cameraActor->pos.z = vec2.z * g_cameraActor->m_camDistToTarget; */ D3DXMatrixTranspose(&g_viewMatrix, &rotationMatrix); g_viewMatrix._41 = -g_cameraActor->pos.x; g_viewMatrix._42 = -g_cameraActor->pos.y; g_viewMatrix._43 = -g_cameraActor->pos.z; g_viewMatrix._44 = 1.0f; g_direct3DDevice9->SetTransform( D3DTS_VIEW, &g_viewMatrix ); ...(The world matrix is always an identity, and the perspective projection works fine). ...So, without the commented code being compiled, the rotation works fine. But to be proper, for obvious reasons, the camera position should be rotating around the sphere, which it currently is not. That's what the commented code is supposed to do. And when I add in that chunk of code to do that, and look at all the data as I hold the keys down (using UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT to rotate different directions) all the values look correct! The camera position is rotating around the sphere just fine, and I can watch that happen visually too. The problem is that the camera orientation does not lookat the center of the sphere. It always looks straight forward down the z axis (toward positive z) as it revolves around the sphere. Yet the values of both the rotation matrix and the view matrix seem to be behaving correctly. (The view matrix orientation is the same as the rotation matrix, just transposed). For instance if I just hold down the key to spin around the x axis, I can watch the values of the three axes represented in the view matrix (x, y, and z axes)... view x-axis stays at (1.0, 0.0, 0.0), and view y-axis and z-axis both spin around the x axis just fine. All the numbers are changing as they should be... well, almost. As far as I can tell, the position of the view matrix is spinning around the sphere one direction (like clockwise), and the orientation (the axes in the view matrix) are spinning the opposite direction (like counter-clockwise). Which I guess explains why the orientation appears to stay straight ahead. I know the position is correct. It revolves properly. It's the orientation that's wrong. Can anyone see what am I doing wrong? Am I using these functions incorrectly? Or is my algorithm flawed? As usual I've been combing my code for simple mistakes for many hours. I'm willing to post the actual code, and a video of the behavior, but that will take much more effort. Thought I'd ask this way first.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 02, 2014

CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 02, 2014Popular ReleasesPortable Class Library for SQLite: Portable Class Library for SQLite - 3.8.4.4: This pull request from mattleibow addresses an issue with custom function creation (define functions in C# code and invoke them from SQLite as id they where regular SQL functions). Impact: Xamarin iOSTweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Tweetinvi 0.9.3.x: Timelines- Added all the parameters available from the Timeline Endpoints in Tweetinvi. - This is available for HomeTimeline, UserTimeline, MentionsTimeline // Simple query var tweets = Timeline.GetHomeTimeline(); // Create a parameter for queries with specific parameters var timelineParameter = Timeline.GenerateHomeTimelineRequestParameter(); timelineParameter.ExcludeReplies = true; timelineParameter.TrimUser = true; var tweets = Timeline.GetHomeTimeline(timelineParameter); Tweets- Add mis...Sandcastle Help File Builder: Help File Builder and Tools v2014.5.31.0: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This release completes removal of the branding transformations and implements the new VS2013 presentation style that utilizes the new lightweight website format. Several breaking cha...Tooltip Web Preview: ToolTip Web Preview: Version 1.0Database Helper: Release 1.0.0.0: First Release of Database HelperCoMaSy: CoMaSy1.0.2: !Contact Management SystemImage View Slider: Image View Slider: This is a .NET component. We create this using VB.NET. Here you can use an Image Viewer with several properties to your application form. We wish somebody to improve freely. Try this out! Author : Steven Renaldo Antony Yustinus Arjuna Purnama Putra Andre Wijaya P Martin Lidau PBK GENAP 2014 - TI UKDWAspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI WP - v 1.1: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI WP SDK in Comparison with Aspose.Words for dealing with Microsoft Word. What's New ?Following Examples: Insert Picture in Word Document Insert Comments Set Page Borders Mail Merge from XML Data Source Moving the Cursor Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are yet to come here. Keep visiting us. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.SEToolbox: 01.032.014 Release 1: Added fix when loading game Textures for icons causing 'Unable to read beyond the end of the stream'. Added new Resource Report, that displays all in game resources in a concise report. Added in temp directory cleaner, to keep excess files from building up. Fixed use of colors on the windows, to work better with desktop schemes. Adding base support for multilingual resources. This will allow loading of the Space Engineers resources to show localized names, and display localized date a...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.71.2: More memory and performance improvements. Fixed an issue with pivot table field order.Vi-AIO SearchBar: Vi – AIO Search Bar: Version 1.0Top Verses ( Ayat Emas ): Binary Top Verses: This one is the bin folder of the component. the .dll component is inside.Traditional Calendar Component: Traditional Calender Converter: Duta Wacana Christian University This file containing Traditional Calendar Component and Demo Aplication that using Traditional Calendar Component. This component made with .NET Framework 4 and the programming language is C# .SQLSetupHelper: 1.0.0.0: First Stable Version of SQL SetupComposite Iconote: Composite Iconote: This is a composite has been made by Microsoft Visual Studio 2013. Requirement: To develop this composite or use this component in your application, your computer must have .NET framework 4.5 or newer.Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.9.101: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.9.1. Breaking changes: - Int/short Set methods of WritablePixelCollection are now unsigned. - The Q16 build no longer uses HDRI, switch to the new Q16-HDRI build if you need HDRI.fnr.exe - Find And Replace Tool: 1.7: Bug fixes Refactored logic for encoding text values to command line to handle common edge cases where find/replace operation works in GUI but not in command line Fix for bug where selection in Encoding drop down was different when generating command line in some cases. It was reported in: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/workitem/34 Fix for "Backslash inserted before dot in replacement text" reported here: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/discussions/541024 Fix for finding replacing...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.59: changes NEW: Added Support for 'GokoImage.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ViperII.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixxxView.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgRex.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixLiv.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'imgsee.me' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgS.it' linksToolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011/2013: XrmToolBox (v1.2014.5.28): XrmToolbox improvement XrmToolBox updates (v1.2014.5.28)Fix connecting to a connection with custom authentication without saved password Tools improvement New tool!Solution Components Mover (v1.2014.5.22) Transfer solution components from one solution to another one Import/Export NN relationships (v1.2014.3.7) Allows you to import and export many to many relationships Tools updatesAttribute Bulk Updater (v1.2014.5.28) Audit Center (v1.2014.5.28) View Layout Replicator (v1.2014.5.28) Scrip...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 5.10: Fix for Issue #20875 - echo switch doesn't work for CSS CSS should honor the SASS source-file comments JS should allow multi-line comment directivesNew Projects[ISEN] Rendu de projet Naughty3Dogs - Pong3D: Pong3D est un jeu qui reprend le principe classique du Pong en le portant dans un environnement 3D à l'aide du langage c# et du moteur Unity3DBootstrap for MVC: Bootstrap for MVC.F. A. Q. - Najczesciej zadawane pytania: FAQForuMvc: Technifutur short projecthomework456: no.iStoody: Studies organize solution, available through app for Windows and Windows Phone.liaoliao: ???????????Price Tracker: Allows a user to track prices based on parsed emailsRoslynEval: RoslynRx Hub: Rx Hub provides server side computation which initiate by subscriber requestSharepoint Online AppCache Reset: We are an IT resource company providing Virtual IT services and custom and opensource programs for everyday needs. UnitConversionLib : Smart Unit Conversion Library in C#: Conversion of units, arithmetic operation and parsing quantities with their units on run time. Smart unit converter and conversion lib for physical quantities,

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How To: Using spatial data with Entity Framework and Connector/Net

- by GABMARTINEZ

One of the new features introduced in Entity Framework 5.0 is the incorporation of some new types of data within an Entity Data Model: the spatial data types. These types allow us to perform operations on coordinates values in an easier way. There's no need to add stored routines or functions for every operation among these geometry types, now the user can have the alternative to put this logic on his application or keep it in the database. In the new 6.7.4 version there's also this new feature incorporated to Connector/Net library so our users can start exploring it and could provide us some feedback or comments about this new functionality. Through this tutorial on how to create a Code First Entity Model with a geometry column, we'll show an example on using Geometry types and some common operations when using geometry types inside an application. Requirements: - Connector/Net 6.7.4 - Entity Framework 5.0 version - .NET Framework 4.5 version - Basic understanding on Entity Framework and C# language. - An installed and running instance of MySQL Server 5.5.x or 5.6.10 version- Visual Studio 2012. Step One: Create a new Console Application Inside Visual Studio select File->New Project menu option and select the Console Application template. Also make sure the .Net 4.5 version is selected so the new features for EF 5.0 will work with the application. Step Two: Add the Entity Framework Package For adding the Entity Framework Package there is more than one option: the package manager console or the Manage Nuget Packages option dialog. If you want to open the Package Manager Console, go to the Tools Menu -> Library Package Manager -> Package Manager Console. On the Package Manager Console Type:Install-Package EntityFrameworkThis will add the reference to the project of the latest released No alpha version of Entity Framework. Step Three: Adding Entity class and DBContext We'll add a simple class that represents a table entity to save some places and its location using a DBGeometry column that will be mapped to a Geometry type in MySQL. After that some operations can be performed using this data. public class MyPlace { [Key] public int Id { get; set; } public string name { get; set; } public DbGeometry location { get; set; } } public class JourneyDb : DbContext { public DbSet<MyPlace> MyPlaces { get; set; } } Also make sure to add the connection string to the App.Config file as in the example: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <configuration> <configSections>  <section name="entityFramework" type="System.Data.Entity.Internal.ConfigFile.EntityFrameworkSection, EntityFramework, Version=5.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" requirePermission="false" /> </configSections> <startup> <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.5" /> </startup> <connectionStrings> <add name="JourneyDb" connectionString="server=localhost;userid=root;pwd=;database=journeydb" providerName="MySql.Data.MySqlClient"/> </connectionStrings> <entityFramework> </entityFramework> </configuration> Note also that the <entityFramework> section is empty.Step Four: Adding some new records.On the Program.cs file add the following code for the Main method so the Database gets created and also some new data can be added to the new table. This code adds some records containing some determinate locations. After being added a distance function will be used to know how much distance has each location in reference to the Queens Village Station in New York. static void Main(string[] args) { using (JourneyDb cxt = new JourneyDb()) { cxt.Database.Delete(); cxt.Database.Create(); cxt.MyPlaces.Add(new MyPlace() { name = "JFK INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT OF NEW YORK", location = DbGeometry.FromText("POINT(40.644047 -73.782291)"), }); cxt.MyPlaces.Add(new MyPlace() { name = "ALLEY POND PARK", location = DbGeometry.FromText("POINT(40.745696 -73.742638)"), }); cxt.MyPlaces.Add(new MyPlace() { name = "CUNNINGHAM PARK", location = DbGeometry.FromText("POINT(40.735031 -73.768387)"), }); cxt.MyPlaces.Add(new MyPlace() { name = "QUEENS VILLAGE STATION", location = DbGeometry.FromText("POINT(40.717957 -73.736501)"), }); cxt.SaveChanges(); var points = (from p in cxt.MyPlaces select new { p.name, p.location }); foreach (var item in points) { Console.WriteLine("Location " + item.name + " has a distance in Km from Queens Village Station " + DbGeometry.FromText("POINT(40.717957 -73.736501)").Distance(item.location) * 100); } Console.ReadKey(); } }}Output : Location JFK INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT OF NEW YORK has a distance from Queens Village Station 8.69448802402959 Km. Location ALLEY POND PARK has a distance from Queens Village Station 2.84097675104912 Km. Location CUNNINGHAM PARK has a distance from Queens Village Station 3.61695793727275 Km. Location QUEENS VILLAGE STATION has a distance from Queens Village Station 0 Km. Conclusion:Adding spatial data to a table is easier than before when having Entity Framework 5.0. This new Entity Framework feature that handles spatial data columns within the Data layer has a lot of integrated functions and methods toease this type of tasks.Notes:This version of Connector/Net is just released as GA so is preatty much stable to be used on a ProductionEnvironment. Please send us your comments or questions using this blog or at the Forums where we keep answering any questions you have about Connector/Net and MySQL Server.A copy of this sample project can be downloaded here. This application does not include any library so you will haveto add them before running it. Happly MySQL/.Net Coding.

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SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #031

- by Pinal Dave

Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Find Table without Clustered Index – Find Table with no Primary Key Clustered index is very important concept for any table. They impact the performance very heavily. Here is a quick script to find tables without a clustered index. Replace TEXT with VARCHAR(MAX) – Stop using TEXT, NTEXT, IMAGE Data Types Question: “Is VARCHAR (MAX) big enough to store the TEXT field?” Answer: “Yes, VARCHAR(MAX) is big enough to accommodate TEXT field. TEXT, NTEXT and IMAGE data types of SQL Server 2000 will be deprecated in a future version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2005 provides backward compatibility to data types but it is recommended to use new data types which are VARHCAR (MAX), NVARCHAR (MAX) and VARBINARY (MAX).” Limiting Result Sets by Using TABLESAMPLE – Examples Introduced in SQL Server 2005, TABLESAMPLE allows you to extract a sampling of rows from a table in the FROM clause. The rows retrieved are random and they are are not in any order. This sampling can be based on a percentage of number of rows. You can use TABLESAMPLE when only a sampling of rows is necessary for the application instead of a full result set. User Defined Functions (UDF) Limitations UDF have its own advantage and usage but in this article we will see the limitation of UDF. Things UDF can not do and why Stored Procedure are considered as more flexible then UDFs. Stored Procedure are more flexibility then User Defined Functions(UDF). However, this blog post is a good read to know what are the limitations of UDF. Change Database Compatible Level – Backward Compatibility For a long time SQL Server stayed on the compatibility level of 80 which is of SQL Server 2000. However, as soon as SQL Server 2005 introduced the issue of compatibility was quite a major issue. Since that time MS has been releasing the versions at every 2-3 years, changing compatibility is a ever popular topic. In this blog post, we learn how we can do the same using T-SQL. We can also do the same using SSMS and here is the blog post for the same: Change Database Compatible Level – Backward Compatibility – Part 2 – Management Studio. Constraint on VARCHAR(MAX) Field To Limit It Certain Length How can I limit the VARCHAR(MAX) field with maximum length of 12500 characters only. His Question was valid as our application was allowed 12500 characters. First of all – this requirement is bit strange but if someone wants to do the same, they can do it as described in this blog post. 2008 UNPIVOT Table Example Understanding UNPIVOT can be very complicated at times. In this blog post, I have attempted to explain the same concept in very simple words. Create Default Constraint Over Table Column A simple straight to script blog post – I still use this blog quite many times for my own reference. UDF – Get the Day of the Week Function It took me 4 iteration to find this very simple function which can immediately get the day of the week in a single line. 2009 Find Hostname and Current Logged In User Name There are two tricks listed in this blog post where users can find out the hostname and current logged user name immediately and very easily. Interesting Observation of Logon Trigger On All Servers When I was doing a project, I made an interesting observation of executing a logon trigger multiple times. It was absolutely unexpected for me! As I was logging only once, naturally, I was expecting the entry only once. However, it did it multiple times on different threads – indeed an eccentric phenomenon at first sight! Difference Between Candidate Keys and Primary Key One needs to be very careful in selecting the Primary Key as an incorrect selection can adversely impact the database architect and future normalization. For a Candidate Key to qualify as a Primary Key, it should be Non-NULL and unique in any domain. I have observed quite often that Primary Keys are seldom changed. I would like to have your feedback on not changing a Primary Key. Create Multiple Filegroup For Single Database Why should one create multiple file group for any database and what are the advantages of the same. In this blog post, I explain the same in detail. List All Objects Created on All Filegroups in Database In this blog post we discuss the essential question – “How can I find which object belongs to which filegroup. Is there any way to know this?” 2010 DATE and TIME in SQL Server 2008 When DATE is converted to DATETIME it adds the of midnight. When TIME is converted to DATETIME it adds the date of 1900 and it is something one wants to consider if you are going to run scripts from SQL Server 2008 to earlier version with CONVERT. Disabled Index and Update Statistics If you do not need a nonclustered index, I suggest you to drop it as keeping them disabled is an overhead on your system. This is because every time the statistics are updated for system all the statistics for disabled indexes are also updated. Precision of SMALLDATETIME – A 1 Minute Precision The precision of the datatype SMALLDATETIME is 1 minute. It discards the seconds by rounding up or rounding down any seconds greater than zero. 2011 Getting Columns Headers without Result Data – SET FMTONLY ON SET FMTONLY ON returns only metadata to the client. It can be used to test the format of the response without actually running the query. When this setting is ON the resultset only have headers of the results but no data. Copy Database from Instance to Another Instance – Copy Paste in SQL Server SQL Server has a feature which copy database from one database to another database and it can be automated as well using SSIS. Make sure you have SQL Server Agent Turned on as this feature will create a job. Puzzle – SELECT * vs SELECT COUNT(*) If you have ever wondered SELECT * gives error when executed alone but SELECT COUNT(*) does not. Why? in that case, you should read this blog post. Creating All New Database with Full Recovery Model This blog post is very based on very interesting story where the user wants to do something by default for every single new database created. Model database is a secret weapon which should be used very carefully and with proper evalution. If used carefully this can be a very much beneficiary when we need a newly created database behave in certain fashion. 2012 In year 2012 I had two interesting series ran on the blog. If there is no fun in learning, the learning becomes a burden. For the same reason, I had decided to build a three part quiz around SEQUENCE. The quiz was to identify the next value of the sequence. I encourage all of you to take part in this fun quiz. Guess the Next Value – Puzzle 1 Guess the Next Value – Puzzle 2 Guess the Next Value – Puzzle 3 Can anyone remember their final day of schooling? This is probably a silly question because – of course you can! Many people mark this as the most exciting, happiest day of their life. It marks the end of testing, the end of following rules set by teachers, and the beginning of finally being able to earn money and work in your chosen field. Read five part series on developer training subject Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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Orchestrating the Virtual Enterprise

- by John Murphy

During the American Industrial Revolution, the Ford Motor Company did it all. It turned raw materials into a showroom full of Model Ts. It owned a steel mill, a glass factory, and an automobile assembly line. The company was both self-sufficient and innovative and went on to become one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world. Nowadays, it's unusual for any business to follow this vertical integration model because its much harder to be best in class across such a wide a range of capabilities and services. Instead, businesses focus on their core competencies and outsource other business functions to specialized suppliers. They exchange vertical integration for collaboration. When done well, all parties benefit from this arrangement and the collaboration leads to the creation of an agile, lean and successful "virtual enterprise." Case in point: For Sun hardware, Oracle outsources most of its manufacturing and all of its logistics to third parties. These are vital activities, but ones where Oracle doesn't have a core competency, so we shift them to business partners who do. Within our enterprise, we always retain the core functions of product development, support, and most of the sales function, because that's what constitutes our core value to our customers. This is a perfect example of a virtual enterprise. What are the implications of this? It means that we must exchange direct internal control for indirect external collaboration. This fundamentally changes the relative importance of different business processes, the boundaries of security and information sharing, and the relationship of the supply chain systems to the ERP. The challenge is that the systems required to support this virtual paradigm are still mired in "island enterprise" thinking. But help is at hand. Developments such as the Web, social networks, collaboration, and rules-based orchestration offer great potential to fundamentally re-architect supply chain systems to better support the virtual enterprise. Supply Chain Management Systems in a Virtual Enterprise Historically enterprise software was constructed to automate the ERP - and then the supply chain systems extended the ERP. They were joined at the hip. In virtual enterprises, the supply chain system needs to be ERP agnostic, sitting above each of the ERPs that are distributed across the virtual enterprise - most of which are operating in other businesses. This is vital so that the supply chain system can manage the flow of material and the related information through the multiple enterprises. It has to have strong collaboration tools. It needs to be highly flexible. Users need to be able to see information that's coming from multiple sources and be able to react and respond to events across those sources. Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO) is a perfect example of a supply chain system designed to operate in this virtual way. DOO embraces the idea that a company's fulfillment challenge is a distributed, multi-enterprise problem. It enables users to manage the process and the trading partners in a uniform way and deliver a consistent user experience while operating over a heterogeneous, virtual enterprise. This is a fundamental shift at the core of managing supply chains. It forces virtual enterprises to think architecturally about how best to construct their supply chain systems. Case in point, almost everyone has ordered from Amazon.com at one time or another. Our orders are as likely to be fulfilled by third parties as they are by Amazon itself. To deliver the order promptly and efficiently, Amazon has to send it to the right fulfillment location and know the availability in that location. It needs to be able to track status of the fulfillment and deal with exceptions. As a virtual enterprise, Amazon's operations, using thousands of trading partners, requires a very different approach to fulfillment than the traditional 'take an order and ship it from your own warehouse' model. Amazon had no choice but to develop a complex, expensive and custom solution to tackle this problem as there used to be no product solution available. Now, other companies who want to follow similar models have a better off-the-shelf choice -- Oracle Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO). Consider how another of our customers is using our distributed orchestration solution. This major airplane manufacturer has a highly complex business and interacts regularly with the U.S. Government and major airlines. It sits in the middle of an intricate supply chain and needed to improve visibility across its many different entities. Oracle Fusion DOO gives the company an orchestration mechanism so it could improve quality, speed, flexibility, and consistency without requiring an organ transplant of these highly complex legacy systems. Many retailers face the challenge of dealing with brick and mortar, Web, and reseller channels. They all need to be knitted together into a virtual enterprise experience that is consistent for their customers. When a large U.K. grocer with a strong brick and mortar retail operation added an online business, they turned to Oracle Fusion DOO to bring these entities together. Disturbing the Peace with Acquisitions Quite often a company's ERP system is disrupted when it acquires a new company. An acquisition can inject a new set of processes and systems -- or even introduce an entirely new business like Sun's hardware did at Oracle. This challenge has been a driver for some of our DOO customers. A large power management company is using Oracle Fusion DOO to provide the flexibility to rapidly integrate additional products and services into its central fulfillment operation. The Flip Side of Fulfillment Meanwhile, we haven't ignored similar challenges on the supply side of the equation. Specifically, how to manage complex supply in a flexible way when there are multiple trading parties involved? How to manage the supply to suppliers? How to manage critical components that need to merge in a tier two or tier three supply chain? By investing in supply orchestration solutions for the virtual enterprise, we plan to give users better visibility into their network of suppliers to help them drive down costs. We also think this technology and full orchestration process can be applied to the financial side of organizations. An example is transactions that flow through complex internal structures to minimize tax exposure. We can help companies manage those transactions effectively by thinking about the internal organization as a virtual enterprise and bringing the same solution set to this internal challenge. The Clear Front Runner No other company is investing in solving the virtual enterprise supply chain issues like Oracle is. Oracle is in a unique position to become the gold standard in this market space. We have the infrastructure of Oracle technology. We already have an Oracle Fusion DOO application which embraces the best of what's required in this area. And we're absolutely committed to extending our Fusion solution to other use cases and delivering even more business value.

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Applications: The Mathematics of Movement, Part 2

- by TechTwaddle

In part 1 of this series we saw how we can make the marble move towards the click point, with a fixed speed. In this post we’ll see, first, how to get rid of Atan2(), sine() and cosine() in our calculations, and, second, reducing the speed of the marble as it approaches the destination, so it looks like the marble is easing into it’s final position. As I mentioned in one of the previous posts, this is achieved by making the speed of the marble a function of the distance between the marble and the destination point. Getting rid of Atan2(), sine() and cosine() Ok, to be fair we are not exactly getting rid of these trigonometric functions, rather, replacing one form with another. So instead of writing sin(?), we write y/length. You see the point. So instead of using the trig functions as below, double x = destX - marble1.x; double y = destY - marble1.y; //distance between destination and current position, before updating marble position distanceSqrd = x * x + y * y; double angle = Math.Atan2(y, x); //Cos and Sin give us the unit vector, 6 is the value we use to magnify the unit vector along the same direction incrX = speed * Math.Cos(angle); incrY = speed * Math.Sin(angle); marble1.x += incrX; marble1.y += incrY; we use the following, double x = destX - marble1.x; double y = destY - marble1.y; //distance between destination and marble (before updating marble position) lengthSqrd = x * x + y * y; length = Math.Sqrt(lengthSqrd); //unit vector along the same direction as vector(x, y) unitX = x / length; unitY = y / length; //update marble position incrX = speed * unitX; incrY = speed * unitY; marble1.x += incrX; marble1.y += incrY; so we replaced cos(?) with x/length and sin(?) with y/length. The result is the same. Adding oomph to the way it moves In the last post we had the speed of the marble fixed at 6, double speed = 6; to make the marble decelerate as it moves, we have to keep updating the speed of the marble in every frame such that the speed is calculated as a function of the length. So we may have, speed = length/12; ‘length’ keeps decreasing as the marble moves and so does speed. The Form1_MouseUp() function remains the same as before, here is the UpdatePosition() method, private void UpdatePosition() { double incrX = 0, incrY = 0; double lengthSqrd = 0, length = 0, lengthSqrdNew = 0; double unitX = 0, unitY = 0; double speed = 0; double x = destX - marble1.x; double y = destY - marble1.y; //distance between destination and marble (before updating marble position) lengthSqrd = x * x + y * y; length = Math.Sqrt(lengthSqrd); //unit vector along the same direction as vector(x, y) unitX = x / length; unitY = y / length; //speed as a function of length speed = length / 12; //update marble position incrX = speed * unitX; incrY = speed * unitY; marble1.x += incrX; marble1.y += incrY; //check for bounds if ((int)marble1.x < MinX + marbleWidth / 2) { marble1.x = MinX + marbleWidth / 2; } else if ((int)marble1.x > (MaxX - marbleWidth / 2)) { marble1.x = MaxX - marbleWidth / 2; } if ((int)marble1.y < MinY + marbleHeight / 2) { marble1.y = MinY + marbleHeight / 2; } else if ((int)marble1.y > (MaxY - marbleHeight / 2)) { marble1.y = MaxY - marbleHeight / 2; } //distance between destination and marble (after updating marble position) x = destX - (marble1.x); y = destY - (marble1.y); lengthSqrdNew = x * x + y * y; /* * End Condition: * 1. If there is not much difference between lengthSqrd and lengthSqrdNew * 2. If the marble has moved more than or equal to a distance of totLenToTravel (see Form1_MouseUp) */ x = startPosX - marble1.x; y = startPosY - marble1.y; double totLenTraveledSqrd = x * x + y * y; if ((int)totLenTraveledSqrd >= (int)totLenToTravelSqrd) { System.Console.WriteLine("Stopping because Total Len has been traveled"); timer1.Enabled = false; } else if (Math.Abs((int)lengthSqrd - (int)lengthSqrdNew) < 4) { System.Console.WriteLine("Stopping because no change in Old and New"); timer1.Enabled = false; } } A point to note here is that, in this implementation, the marble never stops because it travelled a distance of totLenToTravelSqrd (first if condition). This happens because speed is a function of the length. During the final few frames length becomes very small and so does speed; and so the amount by which the marble shifts is quite small, and the second if condition always hits true first. I’ll end this series with a third post. In part 3 we will cover two things, one, when the user clicks, the marble keeps moving in that direction, rebounding off the screen edges and keeps moving forever. Two, when the user clicks on the screen, the marble moves towards it, with it’s speed reducing by every frame. It doesn’t come to a halt when the destination point is reached, instead, it continues to move, rebounds off the screen edges and slowly comes to halt. The amount of time that the marble keeps moving depends on how far the user clicks from the marble. I had mentioned this second situation here. Finally, here’s a video of this program running,

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