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  • How to have other divs with a flash liquid layout that fits to the page?

    - by brybam
    Basically the majority of my content is flash based. I designed it using Flash Builder (Flex) and Its in a liquid layout, (everything is in percents) and if im JUST embedding the flash content it scales to the page fine, and i have the flash content set to have a padding of 50 px. I put a header div in fine with no problems, but I have 2 problems, the first being the footer div seems to cover up the buttom of the flash content in IE, but it looks just fine in chrome. How can I solve this? I'm using the stock embed code that Flex provides, I tried to edit the css style for the div which I think is #flashContent and give it a min width and min height but it didnt seem to work, actually anything I did to #flashContent didn't seem to do anything, maybe its not the div i need to be adding that attribute to... And my other problem is I dont even know where to start when it comes to placing a div thats 280width by 600height colum to the right side of the flash content. If i could specify a size for the flash content, and the float it left, and float the colum right, and clear it with the container div id be just fine....But remember the flash content is set to 100% Scale (well techically 100%x80% because it looked better that way). Does anyone know how I can start to deal with creating a more complex scaleable flash layouts that includes other divs? ALL WELL MAINTAINING IE SUPPORT? IE is ruining my life. Here's the code I'm using: (or if it will help you visualize what im trying to do here's the page where im working on setting this up http://apumpkinpatch.com/textmashnew/) <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en"> <head> <title>TextMixup</title> <meta name="google" value="notranslate"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <link href="css.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.2/jquery.min.js"></script> <script src="../appassets/scripts/jquery.titlealert.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-19768131-2']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); function tabNotification() { $.titleAlert('New Message!', {interval:200,requireBlur:true,stopOnFocus:true}); } function joinNotification() { $.titleAlert('Joined Chat!', {interval:200,requireBlur:true,stopOnFocus:true}); } </script> <!-- BEGIN Browser History required section --> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="history/history.css" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="history/history.js"></script> <!-- END Browser History required section --> <script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var swfVersionStr = "10.2.0"; var xiSwfUrlStr = "playerProductInstall.swf"; var flashvars = {}; var params = {}; params.quality = "high"; params.bgcolor = "#ffffff"; params.allowscriptaccess = "sameDomain"; params.allowfullscreen = "true"; var attributes = {}; attributes.id = "TextMixup"; attributes.name = "TextMixup"; attributes.align = "middle"; swfobject.embedSWF( "TextMixup.swf", "flashContent", "100%", "80%", swfVersionStr, xiSwfUrlStr, flashvars, params, attributes); swfobject.createCSS("#flashContent", "display:block;text-align:left;"); </script> </head> <body> <div id="homebar"><a href="http://apumpkinpatch.com"><img src="../appassets/images/logo/logoHor_130_30.png" alt="APumpkinPatch HOME" width="130" height="30" hspace="10" vspace="3" border="0"/></a> </div> <div id="topad"> <script type="text/javascript"><!-- google_ad_client = "pub-5824388356626461"; /* 728x90, textmash */ google_ad_slot = "1114351240"; google_ad_width = 728; google_ad_height = 90; //--> </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> </script> </div> <div id="mainContainer"> <div id="flashContent"> <p> To view this page ensure that Adobe Flash Player version 10.2.0 or greater is installed. </p> <script type="text/javascript"> var pageHost = ((document.location.protocol == "https:") ? "https://" : "http://"); document.write("<a href='http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer'><img src='" + pageHost + "www.adobe.com/images/shared/download_buttons/get_flash_player.gif' alt='Get Adobe Flash player' /></a>" ); </script> </div> <noscript> <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="100%" height="80%" id="TextMixup"> <param name="movie" value="TextMixup.swf" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <!--[if !IE]>--> <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="TextMixup.swf" width="100%" height="80%"> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <!--<![endif]--> <!--[if gte IE 6]>--> <p> Either scripts and active content are not permitted to run or Adobe Flash Player version 10.2.0 or greater is not installed. </p> <!--<![endif]--> <a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer"> <img src="http://www.adobe.com/images/shared/download_buttons/get_flash_player.gif" alt="Get Adobe Flash Player" /> </a> <!--[if !IE]>--> </object> <!--<![endif]--> </object> </noscript> <div id="convosPreview">This is a div I would want to appear as a colum to the right of the flash content that can scale</div> <!---End mainContainer --> </div> <div id="footer"> <a href="../apps.html"><img src="../appassets/images/apps.png" hspace="5" vspace="5" alt="random chat app apumpkinpatch" width="228" height="40" border="0" /></a><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hjmnobclpbhnjcpdnpdnkbgdkbfifbao?hl=en-US#"><img src="../appassets/images/chromeapp.png" alt="chrome app random video chat apumpkinpatch" width="115" height="40" vspace="5" border="0" /></a><br /><br /> <a href="http://spacebarup.com" target="_blank">©2011 Space Bar</a> | <a href="../tos.html">TOS & Privacy Policy</a> | <a href="../help.html">FAQ & Help</a> | <a href="../tips.html">Important online safety tips</a> | <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/APumpkinPatchcom/164279206963001?sk=app_2373072738" target="_blank">Discussion Boards</a><br /> <p>You must be at least 18 years of age to access this web site.<br />APumpkinPatch.com is not responsible for the actions of any visitors of this site.<br />APumpkinPatch.com does not endorse or claim ownership to any of the content that is broadcast through this site. </p><h2>A Pumpkin Patch is BRAND NEW and will be developed a lot over the next few months adding video chat games, chat rooms, and more! Check back often it's going to be a lot of fun!</h2> </div> </body> </html> myCSS: html, body { height:100%; } body { text-align:center; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin:0; padding:0; overflow:auto; text-align:center; background-color: #ffffff; } object:focus { outline:none; } #homebar { clear:both; text-align: left; width: 100%; height: 40px; background-color:#333333; color:#CCC; overflow:hidden; box-shadow: 0px 0px 14px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65); -moz-box-shadow: 0px 0px 14px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65); -webkit-box-shadow: 0px 0px 14px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65); margin-bottom: 10px; } #mainContainer { height:auto; width:auto; clear:both; } #flashContent { display:none; height:auto; float:left; min-height: 500px; min-width: 340px; } /**this is the div i want to appear as a column net to the scaleable flash content **/ #convosPreview { float:right; width:280px; height:600px; }

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  • Dynamic Forms: Pattern or AntiPattern?

    - by Segfault
    I'm sure you've seen it. The database has a bunch of tables called Forms, Controls,FormsControls, ControlSets, Actions and the program that queries these tables has a dynamically generated user interface. It will read all the forms, load a home page that has links to them all, or embed them in some tabbed or paged home page, and for each of those forms it will read the various text boxes, check boxes, radio buttons, submit buttons, combo boxes, labels and whatnot from the controls and form-to-control join tables, lay those elements out according to the database and link all the controls to logic according to other rules in the database. To me, this is an anti-pattern. It actually make the application more difficult to maintain because the design of it is now spread out into multiple different systems. Also, the database is not source controlled. Sure, it may make one or two changes go more quickly, after you've analyzed the program anyway to understand how to change the data and as long as you don't stray from the sort of changes that were anticipated and accounted for, but that's often just not sustainable. What say you?

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  • Formalizing a requirements spec written in narrative English

    - by ProfK
    I have a fairly technical functionality requirements spec, expressed in English prose, produced by my project manager. It is structured as a collection of UI tabs, where the requirements for each tab are expressed as a lit of UI fields and a list of business rules for the tab. Most business rules are for UI fields on a tab, e.g: a) Must be alphanumeric, max length 20. b) Must be a dropdown, with values from table x. c) Is mandatory. d) Is mandatory under certain conditions, e.g. another field is just populated, or has a specific value. Then other business rules get a little more complex. The spec is for a job application, so the central business object (table) is the Applicant, and we have several other tables with one-to-many relationships with applicant, such as Degree, HighSchool, PreviousEmployer, Diploma, etc. e) One such complex rule says a status field can only be assigned a certain value if a many-side record exists in at least one of the many-side tables. E.g. the Applicant has at least one HighSchool or at least one Diploma record. I am looking for advice on how to codify these requirements into a more structured specification defined in terms of tables, fields, and relationships, especially for the conditional rules for fields and for the presence of related records. Any suggestions and advice will be most welcome, but I would be overjoyed if i could find an already defined system or structure for expressing things like this.

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  • Notes for a NetBeans IDE 7.4 HTML5 Screencast

    - by Geertjan
    I'm making a screencast that intends to thoroughly introduce NetBeans IDE 7.4 as a tool for HTML, JavaScript, and CSS developers. Here's the current outline, additions and other suggestions are welcome. Getting Started Downloading NetBeans IDE for HTML5 and PHP Examining the NetBeans installation directory, especially netbeans.conf Examining the NetBeans user directory Command line options for starting NetBeans IDE Exploring NetBeans IDE Menus and toolbars Versioning tools Options Window Go through whole Options window Change look and feels Adding themes Syntax coloring Code templates Plugin Manager and Plugin Portal Dark Look and Feel Themes Toggle line wrap Emmet HTML Tidy NetBeans Cheat Sheets Creating HTML5 projects From scratch From online template, e.g., Twitter Bootstrap From ZIP file From folder on disk From sample Editing Useful shortcuts Alt-Enter: see the current hints Alt-Shift-DOT/COMMA: expand selection (CTRL instead of Alt on Mac) Ctrl-Shift-Up/Down: copy up/down Alt-Shift-Up/Down: move up/down Alt-Insert: generate code (Lorum Ipsum) View menu | Show Non-printable Characters Source menu Show keyboard shortcut card Useful hints Surround with Tag Remove Surrounding Tag Useful code completion Link tag for CSS, show completion Script tag for JavaScript, show completion Create code templates in Options window Useful HTML Palette items Unordered List Link Useful code navigation Navigator Navigate menu Useful project settings Project-level deployment settings CSS Preprocessors (SASS/LESS) Cordova support Useful window management Dragging, minimizing, undocking Ctrl-Shift-Enter: distraction-free mode Alt-Shift Enter: maximization Debugging JavaScript debugger Deploying Embedded browser Responsive design Inspect in NetBeans mode Chrome browser with NetBeans plugin Android and iOS browsers Cordova makes native packages On device debugging On device styling Documentation PHP and HTML5 Learning Trail: https://netbeans.org/kb/trails/php.html Contributing Social Media: Twitter, Facebook, blogs Plugin Portal Planning to complete the above screencast this week, will continue editing this page as more useful features arise in my mind or hopefully in the comments in this blog entry!

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  • How to filter a mysql database with user input on a website and then spit the filtered table back to the website? [migrated]

    - by Luke
    I've been researching this on google for literally 3 weeks, racking my brain and still not quite finding anything. I can't believe this is so elusive. (I'm a complete beginner so if my terminology sounds stupid then that's why.) I have a database in mysql/phpmyadmin on my web host. I'm trying to create a front end that will allow a user to specify criteria for querying the database in a way that they don't have to know sql, basically just combo boxes and checkboxes on a form. Then have this form 'submit' a query to the database, and show the filtered tables. This is how the SQL looks in Microsoft Access: PARAMETERS TEXTINPUT1 Text ( 255 ), NUMBERINPUT1 IEEEDouble; // pops up a list of parameters for the user to input SELECT DISTINCT Table1.Column1, Table1.Column2, Table1.Column3,* // selects only the unique rows in these three columns FROM Table1 // the table where this query is happening WHERE (((Table1.Column1) Like TEXTINPUT1] AND ((Table1.Column2)<=[NUMBERINPUT1] AND ((Table1.Column3)>=[NUMBERINPUT1])); // the criteria for the filter, it's comparing the user input parameters to the data in the rows and only selecting matches according to the equal sign, or greater than + equal sign, or less than + equal sign What I don't get: WHAT IN THE WORLD AM I SUPPOSED TO USE (that isn't totally hard)!? I've tried google fusion tables - doesn't filter right with numerical data or empty cells in rows, can't relate tables I've tried DataTables.net, can't filter right with numerical data and can't use SQL without a bunch of indepth knowledge, not even sure it can if you have that.. I've looked into using jQuery with google spreadsheets, doesn't work at all either I have no idea how I'm supposed to build a front end with my database. Every place that looks promising (like zohocreator) is asking for money, and is far too simplified to be able to do the LIKE criteria or SELECT DISTINCT stuff.

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  • Codifying a natural language requirements spec

    - by ProfK
    I have a fairly technical functionality requirements spec, expressed in English prose, produced by my project manager. It is structured as a collection of UI tabs, where the requirements for each tab are expressed as a lit of UI fields and a list of business rules for the tab. Most business rules are for UI fields on a tab, e.g: a) Must be alphanumeric, max length 20. b) Must be a dropdown, with values from table x. c) Is mandatory. d) Is mandatory under certain conditions, e.g. another field is just populated, or has a specific value. Then other business rules get a little more complex. The spec is for a job application, so the central business object (table) is the Applicant, and we have several other tables with one-to-many relationships with applicant, such as Degree, HighSchool, PreviousEmployer, Diploma, etc. e) One such complex rule says a status field can only be assigned a certain value if a many-side record exists in at least one of the many-side tables. E.g. the Applicant has at least one HighSchool or at least one Diploma record. I am looking for advice on how to codify these requirements into a more structured specification defined in terms of tables, fields, and relationships, especially for the conditional rules for fields and for the presence of related records. Any suggestions and advice will be most welcome, but I would be overjoyed if i could find an already defined system or structure for expressing things like this.

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  • Database Schema Usage

    - by CrazyHorse
    I have a question regarding the appropriate use of SQL Server database schemas and was hoping that some database gurus might be able to offer some guidance around best practice. Just to give a bit of background, my team has recently shrunk to 2 people and we have just been merged with another 6 person team. My team had set up a SQL Server environment running off a desktop backing up to another desktop (and nightly to the network), whilst the new team has a formal SQL Server environment, running on a dedicated server, with backups and maintenance all handled by a dedicated team. So far it's good news for my team. Now to the query. My team designed all our tables to belong to a 3-letter schema name (e.g. User = USR, General = GEN, Account = ACC) which broadly speaking relate to specific applications, although there is a lot of overlap. My new team has come from an Access background and have implemented their tables within dbo with a 3-letter perfix followed by "_tbl" so the examples above would be dbo.USR_tblTableName, dbo.GEN_tblTableName and dbo.ACC_tblTableName. Further to this, neither my old team nor my new team has gone live with their SQL Servers yet (we're both coincidentally migrating away from Access environments) and the new team have said they're willing to consider adopting our approach if we can explain how this would be beneficial. We are not anticipating handling table updates at schema level, as we will be using application-level logins. Also, with regards to the unwieldiness of the 7-character prefix, I'm not overly concerned myself as we're using LINQ almost exclusively so the tables can simply be renamed in the DMBL (although I know that presents some challenges when we update the DBML). So therefore, given that both teams need to be aligned with one another, can anyone offer any convincing arguments either way?

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  • Advice for programming a lobby for a network multiplayer game?

    - by Milo
    I'm working on learning network programming. I'm working on a simple card game. The basic idea is: Players enter the lobby Players see tables Players sit at an empty seat Once they sit, they do not need any information from the lobby, they see the card table and the data about the other players and so forth. I've programmed the server portion for the game itself. The clients connect to my server object and the server then receives and sends messages; quite simple. The tricky concepts for me are: What's a good way to run many tables at the same time? What's a good way to keep the lobby consistently updated for each person in the lobby (eg: MSG_TABLE_FILLED, 22) Ideally I'd like to have 1 server exe for all of this and to have to deal with multithreading as little as possible. I'm going to use the enet library. I was thinking that each time a game session starts, I push a new Game and I map the client IPs to that table, then I just route messages from those clients to that Game. Since enet supports channels I was thinking of using 2 channels per table, one for the game messages and one for in game chat. Would something like this work? Does anyone have any advice / design ideas for a game with a lobby and many tables? Is there a usual way this is done that I'm overlooking? Any conceptual ideas or even c/c++ code examples would be very helpful. Thanks

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  • wxCam can't open /dev/dsp

    - by SIJAR
    I try to run wxCam through PulseAudio using the following command: $ padsp -d wxcam Although wxCam started ok, wxCam is been set to use xdiv format to enable sound during recording, but while recording the I get the error: Cannot open /dev/dsp. Video file will be recorded without audio track Please help me in fixing this issue. Below is some debug information: $ padsp -d wxcam Determining video4linux API version... Using video4linux 2 API VIDIOC_ENUM_FRAMESIZES: Invalid argument V4L2_CID_GAMMA is not supported Determining pixel format... pixel format: YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV) Found V4L2_PIX_FMT_YUYV pixel format pixel format: MJPEG Found V4L2_PIX_FMT_MJPEG pixel format --DEBUG: [wxcam] Generating standard Huffman tables for this frame. Corrupt JPEG data: 2 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd2 ... repeats a couple of times ... open of failed: No such file or directory --DEBUG: [wxcam] Generating standard Huffman tables for this frame. Corrupt JPEG data: 2 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd4 ... repeats a couple of times .... /home/sij/Videos/Webcam/video.avi written: 640x480, 1334396 bytes --DEBUG: [wxcam] Generating standard Huffman tables for this frame. Corrupt JPEG data: 2 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd3 ... repeats a couple of times ...

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  • How to improve designer and developer work flow?

    - by mbdev
    I work in a small startup with two front end developers and one designer. Currently the process starts with the designer sending a png file with the whole page design and assets if needed. My task as front end developer is to convert it to a HTML/CSS page. My work flow currently looks like this: Lay out the distinct parts using html elements. Style each element very roughly (floats, minimal fonts and padding) so I can modify it using inspection. Using Chrome Developer Tools (inspect) add/change css attributes while updating the css file. Refresh the page after X amount of changes Use Pixel Perfect to refine the design more. Sit with the designer to make last adjustments. Inferring the paddings, margins, font sizes using trial and error takes a lot of time and I feel the process could become more efficient but not sure how to improve it. Using PSD files is not an option since buying Photoshop for each developer is currently not considered. Design guide is also not available since design is still evolving and new features are introduced. Ideas for improving the process above and sharing how the process looks like in your company will be great.

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  • sp_help

    - by David-Betteridge
    One of the nice things about SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is that you can highlight a table name in a script and press Alt + F1 to perform sp_help on it. Unfortunately I've never been able to use that feature as the majority of the tables in our product belong to a schema other than dbo.    On a long train journey back to York I wondered if I could solve this problem by writing my own replacement for sp_help (which I’ve called sp_help_table_schemas).  My version works by first checking the system tables to find out which schemas the table belongs to SELECT s.Name   --Find the schema FROM sys.schemas s  JOIN sys.tables t on t.schema_id = s.schema_id  WHERE t.name = 'Orders'It then dynamically calls the standard sp_help method but this time supplying the table owner as well.SET @cmd = 'EXEC sp_help ''' + QUOTENAME(@SchemaName) + '.' + QUOTENAME(@ObjectName) + ''' ;' ;           EXEC ( @cmd )Once I had proved the basics worked I wrapped it up into a stored procedure and deployed it to the master database on my laptop.  It was then just a question of going into Tools à Options within SSMS and defining the keyboard short cutA couple of notes You can’t amend the existing Alt+F1 entry to I went with Ctrl+F1.  You need to open new query window for the change to be picked upSo I can now highlight a table name and press Ctrl+F1 The completed script is attached.   Thanks go to Martin Bell who reviewed my stored procedure and give some valuable advice.

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  • SQL SERVER – Get Schema Name from Object ID using OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME

    - by pinaldave
    Sometime a simple solution have even simpler solutions but we often do not practice it as we do not see value in it or find it useful. Well, today’s blog post is also about something which I have seen not practiced much in codes. We are so much comfortable with alternative usage that we do not feel like switching how we query the data. I was going over forums and I noticed that at one place user has used following code to get Schema Name from ObjectID. USE AdventureWorks2012 GO SELECT s.name AS SchemaName, t.name AS TableName, s.schema_id, t.OBJECT_ID FROM sys.Tables t INNER JOIN sys.schemas s ON s.schema_id = t.schema_id WHERE t.name = OBJECT_NAME(46623209) GO Before I continue let me say I do not see anything wrong with this script. It is just fine and one of the way to get SchemaName from Object ID. However, I have been using function OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME to get the schema name. If I have to write the same code from the beginning I would have written the same code as following. SELECT OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(46623209) AS SchemaName, t.name AS TableName, t.schema_id, t.OBJECT_ID FROM sys.tables t WHERE t.name = OBJECT_NAME(46623209) GO Now, both of the above code give you exact same result. If you remove the WHERE condition it will give you information of all the tables of the database. Now the question is which one is better – honestly – it is not about one is better than other. Use the one which you prefer to use. I prefer to use second one as it requires less typing. Let me ask you the same question to you – which method to get schema name do yo use? and Why? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL System Table, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Can't get lines around table borders/cells [migrated]

    - by Ira Baxter
    I have several web pages containing tables, for which I'd like to have line-borders around the tables and the cells. In fact, some of these pages existed for several years already, and rendered acceptly in IE6, IE7. We switched about 6 months ago to a completely different set of style sheets to change our site look and feel. We also switched to "modern" browsers such as IE8 (and because I couldn't stop Vista) to IE9. Now the borders don't render at all. I spent a day fighting with this about a month ago, and failed to fix it. It seemed that I could reduce the page down to just the barest table and IE8 would still not render the border. I think I decided IE8 was just buggy, but I'm not an HTML expert so it is more likely that I'm buggy. (I'm just getting back to this; I'll go see if I can find that reduced page). Here is one such page: http://www.semdesigns.com/products/DMS/DMSComparison.html The tables should be obvious; you can tell them by their absence of lines :-{ The URI validates using the W3C service as HTML 4.01 Transitional. Any suggestions?

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  • Getting the relational table data into XML recursively

    - by Tom
    I have levels of tables (Level1, Level2, Level3, ...) For simplicity, we'll say I have 3 levels. The rows in the higher level tables are parents of lower level table rows. The relationship does not skip levels however. E.g. Row1Level1 is parent of Row3Level2, Row2Level2 is parent of Row4Level3. Level(n-1)'s parent is always be in Level(n). Given these tables with data, I need to come up with a recursive function that generates an XML file to represent the relationship and the data. E.g. <data> <level levelid = 1 rowid=1> <level levelid = 2 rowid=3 /> </level> <level levelid = 2 rowid=2> <level levelid = 3 rowid=4 /> </level> </data> I would like help with coming up with a pseudo-code for this setup. This is what I have so far: XElement GetXMLData(Table table, string identifier, XElement data) { XElement xmlData = data; if (table != null) { foreach (row in the table) { // Get subordinate table Table subordinateTable = GetSubordinateTable(table); // Get the XML Data for the children of current row xmlData += GetXMLData(subordinateTable, row.Identifier, xmlData); } } return xmlData; }

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  • Data that has been deleted in P6, how is it updated in Analytics

    - by Jeffrey McDaniel
    In P6 Reporting Database 2.0 the ETL process looked to the refrdel table in the P6 PMDB to determine which projects were deleted. The refrdel table could not be cleared out between ETL runs or those deletes would be lost. After the ETL process is run the refrdel can be cleared out. It is important to keep any purging of the refrdel in a consistent cycle so the ETL process can pick up these deletes and process them accordingly.  In P6 Reporting Database 2.2 and higher the Extended Schema is used as the data source. In the Extended Schema, deleted data is filtered out by the views. The Extended Schema services will handle any interaction with the refrdel table, this concern with timing refrdel cleanup and ETL runs is not applicable as of this release. In the Extended Schema tables (ex. TaskX) there can still be deleted data present. The Extended Schema views join on the primary PMDB tables (ex. Task) and filter out any deleted data.  Any data that was deleted that remains in the Extended Schema tables can be cleaned out at a designated time by running the clean up procedure as documented in the P6 Extended Schema white paper. This can be run occasionally but is not necessary to run often unless large amounts of data has been deleted.

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  • Determine All SQL Server Table Sizes

    Im doing some work to migrate and optimize a large-ish (40GB) SQL Server database at the moment.  Moving such a database between data centers over the Internet is not without its challenges.  In my case, virtually all of the size of the database is the result of one table, which has over 200M rows of data.  To determine the size of this table on disk, you can run the sp_TableSize stored procedure, like so: EXEC sp_spaceused lq_ActivityLog This results in the following: Of course this is only showing one table if you have a lot of tables and need to know which ones are taking up the most space, it would be nice if you could run a query to list all of the tables, perhaps ordered by the space theyre taking up.  Thanks to Mitchel Sellers (and Gregg Starks CURSOR template) and a tiny bit of my own edits, now you can!  Create the stored procedure below and call it to see a listing of all user tables in your database, ordered by their reserved space. -- Lists Space Used for all user tablesCREATE PROCEDURE GetAllTableSizesASDECLARE @TableName VARCHAR(100)DECLARE tableCursor CURSOR FORWARD_ONLYFOR select [name]from dbo.sysobjects where OBJECTPROPERTY(id, N'IsUserTable') = 1FOR READ ONLYCREATE TABLE #TempTable( tableName varchar(100), numberofRows varchar(100), reservedSize varchar(50), dataSize varchar(50), indexSize varchar(50), unusedSize varchar(50))OPEN tableCursorWHILE (1=1)BEGIN FETCH NEXT FROM tableCursor INTO @TableName IF(@@FETCH_STATUS<>0) BREAK; INSERT #TempTable EXEC sp_spaceused @TableNameENDCLOSE tableCursorDEALLOCATE tableCursorUPDATE #TempTableSET reservedSize = REPLACE(reservedSize, ' KB', '')SELECT tableName 'Table Name',numberofRows 'Total Rows',reservedSize 'Reserved KB',dataSize 'Data Size',indexSize 'Index Size',unusedSize 'Unused Size'FROM #TempTableORDER BY CONVERT(bigint,reservedSize) DESCDROP TABLE #TempTableGO Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Bundling in visual studio 2012 for web optimization

    - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama
    I have been writing a series of posts about Visual Studio 2012 features. This series describes what are the new features in the Visual Studio 2012. This post will also be part of Visual Studio 2012 feature series. As we know now days web applications or site are providing more and more features and due to that we have include lots of JavaScript and CSS files in our web application.So once we load site then we will have all the JavaScript  js files and CSS files loaded in the browsers and If you have lots of JavaScript files then its consumes lots of time when browser request them. Following images show the same situation over there.   Here you can see total 25 files loaded into the system and it's almost more than 1MB of total size. As we need to have our web application of site very responsive and need to have high performance application/site, this will be a performance bottleneck to our site. In situation like this, the bundling feature of Visual Studio 2012 and ASP.NET 4.5 comes very handy. With the help of this feature we do optimization there and we can increase performance of our application. To enable this feature in Visual Studio 2012 we just made debug=”false” in web.config of our application like following. Now once you enable this feature and run this application in the browser to see your traffic it will have less items like following. As you can see in the above image there are only 8 items. So after enabling bundling it will automatically convert all js and css files into the one request. Isn’t that cool feature? This feature will surely going to have great impact on performance. Hope you like it. Stay tuned for more.. Till then happy programming!!

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  • Database Migration Scripts: Getting from place A to place B

    - by Phil Factor
    We’ll be looking at a typical database ‘migration’ script which uses an unusual technique to migrate existing ‘de-normalised’ data into a more correct form. So, the book-distribution business that uses the PUBS database has gradually grown organically, and has slipped into ‘de-normalisation’ habits. What’s this? A new column with a list of tags or ‘types’ assigned to books. Because books aren’t really in just one category, someone has ‘cured’ the mismatch between the database and the business requirements. This is fine, but it is now proving difficult for their new website that allows searches by tags. Any request for history book really has to look in the entire list of associated tags rather than the ‘Type’ field that only keeps the primary tag. We have other problems. The TypleList column has duplicates in there which will be affecting the reporting, and there is the danger of mis-spellings getting there. The reporting system can’t be persuaded to do reports based on the tags and the Database developers are complaining about the unCoddly things going on in their database. In your version of PUBS, this extra column doesn’t exist, so we’ve added it and put in 10,000 titles using SQL Data Generator. /* So how do we refactor this database? firstly, we create a table of all the tags. */IF  OBJECT_ID('TagName') IS NULL OR OBJECT_ID('TagTitle') IS NULL  BEGIN  CREATE TABLE  TagName (TagName_ID INT IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY ,     Tag VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL UNIQUE)  /* ...and we insert into it all the tags from the list (remembering to take out any leading spaces */  INSERT INTO TagName (Tag)     SELECT DISTINCT LTRIM(x.y.value('.', 'Varchar(80)')) AS [Tag]     FROM     (SELECT  Title_ID,          CONVERT(XML, '<list><i>' + REPLACE(TypeList, ',', '</i><i>') + '</i></list>')          AS XMLkeywords          FROM   dbo.titles)g    CROSS APPLY XMLkeywords.nodes('/list/i/text()') AS x ( y )  /* we can then use this table to provide a table that relates tags to articles */  CREATE TABLE TagTitle   (TagTitle_ID INT IDENTITY(1, 1),   [title_id] [dbo].[tid] NOT NULL REFERENCES titles (Title_ID),   TagName_ID INT NOT NULL REFERENCES TagName (Tagname_ID)   CONSTRAINT [PK_TagTitle]       PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([title_id] ASC, TagName_ID)       ON [PRIMARY])        CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX idxTagName_ID  ON  TagTitle (TagName_ID)  INCLUDE (TagTitle_ID,title_id)        /* ...and it is easy to fill this with the tags for each title ... */        INSERT INTO TagTitle (Title_ID, TagName_ID)    SELECT DISTINCT Title_ID, TagName_ID      FROM        (SELECT  Title_ID,          CONVERT(XML, '<list><i>' + REPLACE(TypeList, ',', '</i><i>') + '</i></list>')          AS XMLkeywords          FROM   dbo.titles)g    CROSS APPLY XMLkeywords.nodes('/list/i/text()') AS x ( y )    INNER JOIN TagName ON TagName.Tag=LTRIM(x.y.value('.', 'Varchar(80)'))    END    /* That's all there was to it. Now we can select all titles that have the military tag, just to try things out */SELECT Title FROM titles  INNER JOIN TagTitle ON titles.title_ID=TagTitle.Title_ID  INNER JOIN Tagname ON Tagname.TagName_ID=TagTitle.TagName_ID  WHERE tagname.tag='Military'/* and see the top ten most popular tags for titles */SELECT Tag, COUNT(*) FROM titles  INNER JOIN TagTitle ON titles.title_ID=TagTitle.Title_ID  INNER JOIN Tagname ON Tagname.TagName_ID=TagTitle.TagName_ID  GROUP BY Tag ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC/* and if you still want your list of tags for each title, then here they are */SELECT title_ID, title, STUFF(  (SELECT ','+tagname.tag FROM titles thisTitle    INNER JOIN TagTitle ON titles.title_ID=TagTitle.Title_ID    INNER JOIN Tagname ON Tagname.TagName_ID=TagTitle.TagName_ID  WHERE ThisTitle.title_id=titles.title_ID  FOR XML PATH(''), TYPE).value('.', 'varchar(max)')  ,1,1,'')    FROM titles  ORDER BY title_ID So we’ve refactored our PUBS database without pain. We’ve even put in a check to prevent it being re-run once the new tables are created. Here is the diagram of the new tag relationship We’ve done both the DDL to create the tables and their associated components, and the DML to put the data in them. I could have also included the script to remove the de-normalised TypeList column, but I’d do a whole lot of tests first before doing that. Yes, I’ve left out the assertion tests too, which should check the edge cases and make sure the result is what you’d expect. One thing I can’t quite figure out is how to deal with an ordered list using this simple XML-based technique. We can ensure that, if we have to produce a list of tags, we can get the primary ‘type’ to be first in the list, but what if the entire order is significant? Thank goodness it isn’t in this case. If it were, we might have to revisit a string-splitter function that returns the ordinal position of each component in the sequence. You’ll see immediately that we can create a synchronisation script for deployment from a comparison tool such as SQL Compare, to change the schema (DDL). On the other hand, no tool could do the DML to stuff the data into the new table, since there is no way that any tool will be able to work out where the data should go. We used some pretty hairy code to deal with a slightly untypical problem. We would have to do this migration by hand, and it has to go into source control as a batch. If most of your database changes are to be deployed by an automated process, then there must be a way of over-riding this part of the data synchronisation process to do this part of the process taking the part of the script that fills the tables, Checking that the tables have not already been filled, and executing it as part of the transaction. Of course, you might prefer the approach I’ve taken with the script of creating the tables in the same batch as the data conversion process, and then using the presence of the tables to prevent the script from being re-run. The problem with scripting a refactoring change to a database is that it has to work both ways. If we install the new system and then have to rollback the changes, several books may have been added, or had their tags changed, in the meantime. Yes, you have to script any rollback! These have to be mercilessly tested, and put in source control just in case of the rollback of a deployment after it has been in place for any length of time. I’ve shown you how to do this with the part of the script .. /* and if you still want your list of tags for each title, then here they are */SELECT title_ID, title, STUFF(  (SELECT ','+tagname.tag FROM titles thisTitle    INNER JOIN TagTitle ON titles.title_ID=TagTitle.Title_ID    INNER JOIN Tagname ON Tagname.TagName_ID=TagTitle.TagName_ID  WHERE ThisTitle.title_id=titles.title_ID  FOR XML PATH(''), TYPE).value('.', 'varchar(max)')  ,1,1,'')    FROM titles  ORDER BY title_ID …which would be turned into an UPDATE … FROM script. UPDATE titles SET  typelist= ThisTaglistFROM     (SELECT title_ID, title, STUFF(    (SELECT ','+tagname.tag FROM titles thisTitle      INNER JOIN TagTitle ON titles.title_ID=TagTitle.Title_ID      INNER JOIN Tagname ON Tagname.TagName_ID=TagTitle.TagName_ID    WHERE ThisTitle.title_id=titles.title_ID    ORDER BY CASE WHEN tagname.tag=titles.[type] THEN 1 ELSE 0  END DESC    FOR XML PATH(''), TYPE).value('.', 'varchar(max)')    ,1,1,'')  AS ThisTagList  FROM titles)fINNER JOIN Titles ON f.title_ID=Titles.title_ID You’ll notice that it isn’t quite a round trip because the tags are in a different order, though we’ve managed to make sure that the primary tag is the first one as originally. So, we’ve improved the database for the poor book distributors using PUBS. It is not a major deal but you’ve got to be prepared to provide a migration script that will go both forwards and backwards. Ideally, database refactoring scripts should be able to go from any version to any other. Schema synchronization scripts can do this pretty easily, but no data synchronisation scripts can deal with serious refactoring jobs without the developers being able to specify how to deal with cases like this.

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  • Multiplayer online game engine/pipeline

    - by Slav
    I am implementing online multiplayer game where client must be written in AS3 (Flash) to embed game into browser and server in C++ (abstract part of which is already written and used with other games). Networking models may differ from each other, but currently I'm looking toward game's logic run on both client and server parts but they're written on different languages while it's not the main problem. My previous game (pretty big one - was implemented with efforts of ~5 programmers in 1.5 years) was mainly "written" within electronic tables as structured objects with implemented inheritance: was written standalone tool which generated AS3 and C++ (languages of platforms to which the game was published) using specified electronic tables file (.xls or .ods). That file contained ~50 tables with ~50 rows and ~50 columns each and was mainly written by game designers which do not know any programming languages. But that game was single-player. Having declared problem with my currently implementing MMO, I'm looking toward some vast pipeline, where will be resolved such problems like: game objects descriptions (which starships exist within game, how much HP they have, how fast move, what damage deal...) actions descriptions (what players or NPCs can do: attack each other, collect resources, build structures, move, teleport, cast spells) - actions are transmitted through server between clients influences (what happens when specified action applied on specified object, e.i "Ship A attacked Ship B: field "HP" of Ship B reduced by amount of field "damage" of Ship A" Influences can be much more difficult, yes, e.i. "damage is twice it's size when Ship has =5 allies around him in a 200 units range during night" and so on. If to be able to write such logic within some "design document" it will be easily possible to: let designers to do their job without programmer's intervention or any bug-prone programming validate described logic transfer (transform, convert) to any programming language where it will be executed Did somebody worked on something like that? Is there some tools/engines/pipelines which concernes with it? How to handle all of this problems simultaneously in a best way or do I properly imagine my tasks and problems to myself?

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  • Structure of a .NET Assembly

    - by Om Talsania
    Assembly is the smallest unit of deployment in .NET Framework.When you compile your C# code, it will get converted into a managed module. A managed module is a standard EXE or DLL. This managed module will have the IL (Microsoft Intermediate Language) code and the metadata. Apart from this it will also have header information.The following table describes parts of a managed module.PartDescriptionPE HeaderPE32 Header for 32-bit PE32+ Header for 64-bit This is a standard Windows PE header which indicates the type of the file, i.e. whether it is an EXE or a DLL. It also contains the timestamp of the file creation date and time. It also contains some other fields which might be needed for an unmanaged PE (Portable Executable), but not important for a managed one. For managed PE, the next header i.e. CLR header is more importantCLR HeaderContains the version of the CLR required, some flags, token of the entry point method (Main), size and location of the metadata, resources, strong name, etc.MetadataThere can be many metadata tables. They can be categorized into 2 major categories.1. Tables that describe the types and members defined in your code2. Tables that describe the types and members referenced by your codeIL CodeMSIL representation of the C# code. At runtime, the CLR converts it into native instructions

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  • URL is generating a /#!/splash-page

    - by user32642
    My site for some reason is generating a shebang - /#!/splash-page on the URL. For example when I type www.modernvintage1005.com, the browser returns www.modernvintage1005.com/#!/splash-page and every subsequent page is /#!/about, /#!/contact, and so forth. There's absolutely nothing on the Google about this. There is a lot of rewrite help to eliminate .index.php from the home page, but that's it. How do I rewrite it to just say domain.com and domain.com/about.html, etc.? Here is my .htaccess file if you need to see it. # Rewrite Rule <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L] </IfModule> # compress text, html, javascript, css, xml: <IfModule mod_deflate.c> AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript AddType x-font/otf .otf AddType x-font/ttf .ttf AddType x-font/eot .eot AddType x-font/woff .woff AddType image/x-icon .ico AddType image/png .png </IfModule> ## EXPIRES CACHING ## <IfModule mod_expires.c> ExpiresActive On ExpiresByType image/jpg "access 1 year" ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access 1 year" ExpiresByType image/gif "access 1 year" ExpiresByType image/png "access 1 year" ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 month" ExpiresByType application/pdf "access 1 month" ExpiresByType text/x-javascript "access 1 month" ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access 1 month" ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 1 year" ExpiresDefault "access 2 days" </IfModule> ## EXPIRES CACHING ##

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  • Problems with LibreOffice Impress?

    - by kkp
    I am a big fan of Ubuntu. I have recently switched from Latex to LibreOffice Impress for PPT because it seems that with Impress you can quickly create slides. I am using LibreOffice 3.4.4 OOO340m1 (Build:402) on Ubuntu 11.04. I am saving them as .ppt format. However, facing the following problems. It is really frustrating and forcing me to use Windows/MAC just for making slides. Font is changing from Arial to TimesNewRoman specifically for Tables when I reopen an Impress presentation. Tables are stretched if I reopen an Impress presentation. Impress is not allowing me to compress them (the stretched tables) and I have needed to make a fresh table. Several other modifications are reverting back when I reopen an Impress presentation. For example, the "transparency" change to the borders (e.g., for rectangular shape). Arbitrarily Impress is crashing. It would be great if someone help me to resolve these issues. Thanks.

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  • Google Chrome with strange behavior

    - by user72274
    I'm former Chromium-browser user, but after not upgrading the PPA for 2 months, I switched to Google Chrome browser yesterday. Everything is okay, except some strange behavior on some pages and crashing after loading "chrome://" configuration pages. The best known website with strange behavior is youtube, there is a picture what I see: When I open user menu in top right corner, it crashes that way and even after closing the menu, some parts of menu stay display. You may say it's Youtube problem, no, I have this problem at least on three other websites, here it is on Imgur: The problem isn't for the whole side, sometimes it happens from the middle of the screen. The interesting part is that it happens everytime in the same distance from the right border. When I check the DOM elements with the Developer tool, the overlay which shows element's position is rendered how it should be. What is more, if there is anchor after the crashed area, it works after clicking on it. Selecting text in crashed page is impossible. I hope there is enough information to give me an advice, thanks in advance. :) EDIT: Here is what the browser posted in "chrome://gpu-internals/": Graphics Feature Status Canvas: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable Compositing: Hardware accelerated 3D CSS: Hardware accelerated CSS Animation: Software animated. WebGL: Hardware accelerated WebGL multisampling: Hardware accelerated Problems Detected Accelerated CSS animation has been disabled at the command line. Accelerated 2d canvas is unstable in Linux at the moment. Ubuntu 12.04 | Gnome-shell 3.4.1 | ATI Radeon 4550 | Screen resolution 1024*768 | Chrome version 20.0.1132.57 (Official Build 145807)

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  • MVC 4 Authentication

    - by Aligned
    First: After searching for awhile to figure out what’s new/different with MVC 4 and forms authentication, this is the best article I've found on the subject: http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2012/08/29/simplemembership-membership-providers-universal-providers-and-the-new-asp-net-4-5-web-forms-and-asp-net-mvc-4-templates.aspx Some quotes from the article: “The ASP.NET Web Pages team designed SimpleMembership to (wait for it) simplify the task of dealing with membership” "WSAT is built to work with ASP.NET Membership, and is not compatible with Simple Membership. There are two main options there: Use the WebSecurity and OAuthWebSecurity API to manage the users and roles Create a web admin using the above APIs Since SimpleMembership runs on top of your database, you can update your users as you would any other data - via EF or even in direct database edits (in development, of course)" “If you want to use an existing ASP.NET Membership Provider in ASP.NET MVC 4, you can't use the new AccountController. You can do a few things:” “Universal Providers do not work with Simple Membership.” ~ this post (look for Bob.at.SBS’s answer) says Universal Providers is not needed for MVC 4 to work in Azure)   I've been trying to figure out the Forms Authentication in MVC4. It's different than the past approach (aspnet_regsql). If you do file new project -> MVC 4 -> internet application, you get a really nice template with the controller and model setup for you. However, the tables are different than using aspnet_regsql and the ASP.Net Configuration tool (WSAT) wasn’t connecting to the data I had (it was creating an App_Data/aspnet.mdf file, which I didn’t see right away). Points of Note The database tables are created in the SimpleMembershipInitializer class, when you first run your app using Entity Framework 5 migration functionality. The tables created are webpages_Membership, webpages_OAuthMembership, webpages_Roles, webpages_UsersInRoles, UserProfile. Web.config settings don’t seem to be needed.   Scott Hanselman on Universal Providers was also useful if not somewhat out dated. Universal Providers and SimpleMembership are not compatible. http://www.asp.net/web-pages/tutorials/security/16-adding-security-and-membership – walk-through

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  • What Every Developer Should Know About MSI Components

    - by Alois Kraus
    Hopefully nothing. But if you have to do more than simple XCopy deployment and you need to support updates, upgrades and perhaps side by side scenarios there is no way around MSI. You can create Msi files with a Visual Studio Setup project which is severely limited or you can use the Windows Installer Toolset. I cannot talk about WIX with my German colleagues because WIX has a very special meaning. It is funny to always use the long name when I talk about deployment possibilities. Alternatively you can buy commercial tools which help you to author Msi files but I am not sure how good they are. Given enough pain with existing solutions you can also learn the MSI Apis and create your own packaging solution. If I were you I would use either a commercial visual tool when you do easy deployments or use the free Windows Installer Toolset. Once you know the WIX schema you can create well formed wix xml files easily with any editor. Then you can “compile” from the wxs files your Msi package. Recently I had the “pleasure” to get my hands dirty with C++ (again) and the MSI technology. Installation is a complex topic but after several month of digging into arcane MSI issues I can safely say that there should exist an easier way to install and update files as today. I am not alone with this statement as John Robbins (creator of the cool tool Paraffin) states: “.. It's a brittle and scary API in Windows …”. To help other people struggling with installation issues I present you the advice I (and others) found useful and what will happen if you ignore this advice. What is a MSI file? A MSI file is basically a database with tables which reference each other to control how your un/installation should work. The basic idea is that you declare via these tables what you want to install and MSI controls the how to get your stuff onto or off your machine. Your “stuff” consists usually of files, registry keys, shortcuts and environment variables. Therefore the most important tables are File, Registry, Environment and Shortcut table which define what will be un/installed. The key to master MSI is that every resource (file, registry key ,…) is associated with a MSI component. The actual payload consists of compressed files in the CAB format which can either be embedded into the MSI file or reside beside the MSI file or in a subdirectory below it. To examine MSI files you need Orca a free MSI editor provided by MS. There is also another free editor called Super Orca which does support diffs between MSI and it does not lock the MSI files. But since Orca comes with a shell extension I tend to use only Orca because it is so easy to right click on a MSI file and open it with this tool. How Do I Install It? Double click it. This does work for fresh installations as well as major upgrades. Updates need to be installed via the command line via msiexec /i <msi> REINSTALL=ALL REINSTALLMODE=vomus   This tells the installer to reinstall all already installed features (new features will NOT be installed). The reinstallmode letters do force an overwrite of the old cached package in the %WINDIR%\Installer folder. All files, shortcuts and registry keys are redeployed if they are missing or need to be replaced with a newer version. When things did go really wrong and you want to overwrite everything unconditionally use REINSTALLMODE=vamus. How To Enable MSI Logs? You can download a MSI from Microsoft which installs some registry keys to enable full MSI logging. The log files can be found in your %TEMP% folder and are called MSIxxxx.log. Alternatively you can add to your msiexec command line the option msiexec …. /l*vx <LogFileName> Personally I find it rather strange that * does not mean full logging. To really get all logs I need to add v and x which is documented in the msiexec help but I still find this behavior unintuitive. What are MSI components? The whole MSI logic is bound to the concept of MSI components. Nearly every msi table has a Component column which binds an installable resource to a component. Below are the screenshots of the FeatureComponents and Component table of an example MSI. The Feature table defines basically the feature hierarchy.  To find out what belongs to a feature you need to look at the FeatureComponents table where for each feature the components are listed which will be installed when a feature is installed. The MSI components are defined in the  Component table. This table has as first column the component name and as second column the component id which is a GUID. All resources you want to install belong to a MSI component. Therefore nearly all MSI tables have a Component_ column which contains the component name. If you look e.g. a the File table you see that every file belongs to a component which is true for all other tables which install resources. The component table is the glue between all other tables which contain the resources you want to install. So far so easy. Why is MSI then so complex? Most MSI problems arise from the fact that you did violate a MSI component rule in one or the other way. When you install a feature the reference count for all components belonging to this feature will increase by one. If your component is installed by more than one feature it will get a higher refcount. When you uninstall a feature its refcount will drop by one. Interesting things happen if the component reference count reaches zero: Then all associated resources will be deleted. That looks like a reasonable thing and it is. What it makes complex are the strange component rules you have to follow. Below are some important component rules from the Tao of the Windows Installer … Rule 16: Follow Component Rules Components are a very important part of the Installer technology. They are the means whereby the Installer manages the resources that make up your application. The SDK provides the following guidelines for creating components in your package: Never create two components that install a resource under the same name and target location. If a resource must be duplicated in multiple components, change its name or target location in each component. This rule should be applied across applications, products, product versions, and companies. Two components must not have the same key path file. This is a consequence of the previous rule. The key path value points to a particular file or folder belonging to the component that the installer uses to detect the component. If two components had the same key path file, the installer would be unable to distinguish which component is installed. Two components however may share a key path folder. Do not create a version of a component that is incompatible with all previous versions of the component. This rule should be applied across applications, products, product versions, and companies. Do not create components containing resources that will need to be installed into more than one directory on the user’s system. The installer installs all of the resources in a component into the same directory. It is not possible to install some resources into subdirectories. Do not include more than one COM server per component. If a component contains a COM server, this must be the key path for the component. Do not specify more than one file per component as a target for the Start menu or a Desktop shortcut. … And these rules do not even talk about component ids, update packages and upgrades which you need to understand as well. Lets suppose you install two MSIs (MSI1 and MSI2) which have the same ComponentId but different component names. Both do install the same file. What will happen when you uninstall MSI2?   Hm the file should stay there. But the component names are different. Yes and yes. But MSI uses not use the component name as key for the refcount. Instead the ComponentId column of the Component table which contains a GUID is used as identifier under which the refcount is stored. The components Comp1 and Comp2 are identical from the MSI perspective. After the installation of both MSIs the Component with the Id {100000….} has a refcount of two. After uninstallation of one MSI there is still a refcount of one which drops to zero just as expected when we uninstall the last msi. Then the file which was the same for both MSIs is deleted. You should remember that MSI keeps a refcount across MSIs for components with the same component id. MSI does manage components not the resources you did install. The resources associated with a component are then and only then deleted when the refcount of the component reaches zero.   The dependencies between features, components and resources can be described as relations. m,k are numbers >= 1, n can be 0. Inside a MSI the following relations are valid Feature    1  –> n Components Component    1 –> m Features Component      1  –>  k Resources These relations express that one feature can install several components and features can share components between them. Every (meaningful) component will install at least one resource which means that its name (primary key to stay in database speak) does occur in some other table in the Component column as value which installs some resource. Lets make it clear with an example. We want to install with the feature MainFeature some files a registry key and a shortcut. We can then create components Comp1..3 which are referenced by the resources defined in the corresponding tables.   Feature Component Registry File Shortcuts MainFeature Comp1 RegistryKey1     MainFeature Comp2   File.txt   MainFeature Comp3   File2.txt Shortcut to File2.txt   It is illegal that the same resource is part of more than one component since this would break the refcount mechanism. Lets illustrate this:            Feature ComponentId Resource Reference Count Feature1 {1000-…} File1.txt 1 Feature2 {2000-….} File1.txt 1 The installation part works well but what happens when you uninstall Feature2? Component {20000…} gets a refcount of zero where MSI deletes all resources belonging to this component. In this case File1.txt will be deleted. But Feature1 still has another component {10000…} with a refcount of one which means that the file was deleted too early. You just have ruined your installation. To fix it you then need to click on the Repair button under Add/Remove Programs to let MSI reinstall any missing registry keys, files or shortcuts. The vigilant reader might has noticed that there is more in the Component table. Beside its name and GUID it has also an installation directory, attributes and a KeyPath. The KeyPath is a reference to a file or registry key which is used to detect if the component is already installed. This becomes important when you repair or uninstall a component. To find out if the component is already installed MSI checks if the registry key or file referenced by the KeyPath property does exist. When it does not exist it assumes that it was either already uninstalled (can lead to problems during uninstall) or that it is already installed and all is fine. Why is this detail so important? Lets put all files into one component. The KeyPath should be then one of the files of your component to check if it was installed or not. When your installation becomes corrupt because a file was deleted you cannot repair it with the Repair button under Add/Remove Programs because MSI checks the component integrity via the Resource referenced by its KeyPath. As long as you did not delete the KeyPath file MSI thinks all resources with your component are installed and never executes any repair action. You get even more trouble when you try to remove files during an upgrade (you cannot remove files during an update) from your super component which contains all files. The only way out and therefore best practice is to assign for every resource you want to install an extra component. This ensures painless updatability and repairs and you have much less effort to remove specific files during an upgrade. In effect you get this best practice relation Feature 1  –> n Components Component   1  –>  1 Resources MSI Component Rules Rule 1 – One component per resource Every resource you want to install (file, registry key, value, environment value, shortcut, directory, …) must get its own component which does never change between versions as long as the install location is the same. Penalty If you add more than one resources to a component you will break the repair capability of MSI because the KeyPath is used to check if the component needs repair. MSI ComponentId Files MSI 1.0 {1000} File1-5 MSI 2.0 {2000} File2-5 You want to remove File1 in version 2.0 of your MSI. Since you want to keep the other files you create a new component and add them there. MSI will delete all files if the component refcount of {1000} drops to zero. The files you want to keep are added to the new component {2000}. Ok that does work if your upgrade does uninstall the old MSI first. This will cause the refcount of all previously installed components to reach zero which means that all files present in version 1.0 are deleted. But there is a faster way to perform your upgrade by first installing your new MSI and then remove the old one.  If you choose this upgrade path then you will loose File1-5 after your upgrade and not only File1 as intended by your new component design.   Rule 2 – Only add, never remove resources from a component If you did follow rule 1 you will not need Rule 2. You can add in a patch more resources to one component. That is ok. But you can never remove anything from it. There are tricky ways around that but I do not want to encourage bad component design. Penalty Lets assume you have 2 MSI files which install under the same component one file   MSI1 MSI2 {1000} - ComponentId {1000} – ComponentId File1.txt File2.txt   When you install and uninstall both MSIs you will end up with an installation where either File1 or File2 will be left. Why? It seems that MSI does not store the resources associated with each component in its internal database. Instead Windows will simply query the MSI that is currently uninstalled for all resources belonging to this component. Since it will find only one file and not two it will only uninstall one file. That is the main reason why you never can remove resources from a component!   Rule 3 Never Remove A Component From an Update MSI. This is the same as if you change the GUID of a component by accident for your new update package. The resulting update package will not contain all components from the previously installed package. Penalty When you remove a component from a feature MSI will set the feature state during update to Advertised and log a warning message into its log file when you did enable MSI logging. SELMGR: ComponentId '{2DCEA1BA-3E27-E222-484C-D0D66AEA4F62}' is registered to feature 'xxxxxxx, but is not present in the Component table.  Removal of components from a feature is not supported! MSI (c) (24:44) [07:53:13:436]: SELMGR: Removal of a component from a feature is not supported Advertised means that MSI treats all components of this feature as not installed. As a consequence during uninstall nothing will be removed since it is not installed! This is not only bad because uninstall does no longer work but this feature will also not get the required patches. All other features which have followed component versioning rules for update packages will be updated but the one faulty feature will not. This results in very hard to find bugs why an update was only partially successful. Things got better with Windows Installer 4.5 but you cannot rely on that nobody will use an older installer. It is a good idea to add to your update msiexec call MSIENFORCEUPGRADECOMPONENTRULES=1 which will abort the installation if you did violate this rule.

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