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• How to Inspect Javascript Object

  - by Madhan ayyasamy

  You can inspect any JavaScript objects and list them as indented, ordered by levels.It shows you type and property name. If an object property can't be accessed, an error message will be shown.Here the snippets for inspect javascript object.function inspect(obj, maxLevels, level){  var str = '', type, msg;    // Start Input Validations    // Don't touch, we start iterating at level zero    if(level == null)  level = 0;    // At least you want to show the first level    if(maxLevels == null) maxLevels = 1;    if(maxLevels < 1)             return '<font color="red">Error: Levels number must be > 0</font>';    // We start with a non null object    if(obj == null)    return '<font color="red">Error: Object <b>NULL</b></font>';    // End Input Validations    // Each Iteration must be indented    str += '<ul>';    // Start iterations for all objects in obj    for(property in obj)    {      try      {          // Show "property" and "type property"          type =  typeof(obj[property]);          str += '<li>(' + type + ') ' + property +                  ( (obj[property]==null)?(': <b>null</b>'):('')) + '</li>';          // We keep iterating if this property is an Object, non null          // and we are inside the required number of levels          if((type == 'object') && (obj[property] != null) && (level+1 < maxLevels))          str += inspect(obj[property], maxLevels, level+1);      }      catch(err)      {        // Is there some properties in obj we can't access? Print it red.        if(typeof(err) == 'string') msg = err;        else if(err.message)        msg = err.message;        else if(err.description)    msg = err.description;        else                        msg = 'Unknown';        str += '<li><font color="red">(Error) ' + property + ': ' + msg +'</font></li>';      }    }      // Close indent      str += '</ul>';    return str;}Method Call:function inspect(obj [, maxLevels [, level]]) Input Vars * obj: Object to inspect * maxLevels: Optional. Number of levels you will inspect inside the object. Default MaxLevels=1 * level: RESERVED for internal use of the functionReturn ValueHTML formatted string containing all values of inspected object obj.

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• Breaking 1NF to model subset constraints. Does this sound sane?

  - by Chris Travers

  My first question here. Appologize if it is in the wrong forum but this seems pretty conceptual. I am looking at doing something that goes against conventional wisdom and want to get some feedback as to whether this is totally insane or will result in problems, so critique away! I am on PostgreSQL 9.1 but may be moving to 9.2 for this part of this project. To re-iterate: Does it seem sane to break 1NF in this way? I am not looking for debugging code so much as where people see problems that this might lead. The Problem In double entry accounting, financial transactions are journal entries with an arbitrary number of lines. Each line has either a left value (debit) or a right value (credit) which can be modelled as a single value with negatives as debits and positives as credits or vice versa. The sum of all debits and credits must equal zero (so if we go with a single amount field, sum(amount) must equal zero for each financial journal entry). SQL-based databases, pretty much required for this sort of work, have no way to express this sort of constraint natively and so any approach to enforcing it in the database seems rather complex. The Write Model The journal entries are append only. There is a possibility we will add a delete model but it will be subject to a different set of restrictions and so is not applicable here. If and when we allow deletes, we will probably do them using a simple ON DELETE CASCADE designation on the foreign key, and require that deletes go through a dedicated stored procedure which can enforce the other constraints. So inserts and selects have to be accommodated but updates and deletes do not for this task. My Proposed Solution My proposed solution is to break first normal form and model constraints on arrays of tuples, with a trigger that breaks the rows out into another table. CREATE TABLE journal_line ( entry_id bigserial primary key, account_id int not null references account(id), journal_entry_id bigint not null, -- adding references later amount numeric not null ); I would then add "table methods" to extract debits and credits for reporting purposes: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION debits(journal_line) RETURNS numeric LANGUAGE sql IMMUTABLE AS $$ SELECT CASE WHEN $1.amount < 0 THEN $1.amount * -1 ELSE NULL END; $$; CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION credits(journal_line) RETURNS numeric LANGUAGE sql IMMUTABLE AS $$ SELECT CASE WHEN $1.amount > 0 THEN $1.amount ELSE NULL END; $$; Then the journal entry table (simplified for this example): CREATE TABLE journal_entry ( entry_id bigserial primary key, -- no natural keys :-( journal_id int not null references journal(id), date_posted date not null, reference text not null, description text not null, journal_lines journal_line[] not null ); Then a table method and and check constraints: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION running_total(journal_entry) returns numeric language sql immutable as $$ SELECT sum(amount) FROM unnest($1.journal_lines); $$; ALTER TABLE journal_entry ADD CONSTRAINT CHECK (((journal_entry.running_total) = 0)); ALTER TABLE journal_line ADD FOREIGN KEY journal_entry_id REFERENCES journal_entry(entry_id); And finally we'd have a breakout trigger: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION je_breakout() RETURNS TRIGGER LANGUAGE PLPGSQL AS $$ BEGIN IF TG_OP = 'INSERT' THEN INSERT INTO journal_line (journal_entry_id, account_id, amount) SELECT NEW.id, account_id, amount FROM unnest(NEW.journal_lines); RETURN NEW; ELSE RAISE EXCEPTION 'Operation Not Allowed'; END IF; END; $$; And finally CREATE TRIGGER AFTER INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE ON journal_entry FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE_PROCEDURE je_breaout(); Of course the example above is simplified. There will be a status table that will track approval status allowing for separation of duties, etc. However the goal here is to prevent unbalanced transactions. Any feedback? Does this sound entirely insane? Standard Solutions? In getting to this point I have to say I have looked at four different current ERP solutions to this problems: Represent every line item as a debit and a credit against different accounts. Use of foreign keys against the line item table to enforce an eventual running total of 0 Use of constraint triggers in PostgreSQL Forcing all validation here solely through the app logic. My concerns are that #1 is pretty limiting and very hard to audit internally. It's not programmer transparent and so it strikes me as being difficult to work with in the future. The second strikes me as being very complex and required a series of contraints and foreign keys against self to make work, and therefore it strikes me as complex, hard to sort out at least in my mind, and thus hard to work with. The fourth could be done as we force all access through stored procedures anyway and this is the most common solution (have the app total things up and throw an error otherwise). However, I think proof that a constraint is followed is superior to test cases, and so the question becomes whether this in fact generates insert anomilies rather than solving them. If this is a solved problem it isn't the case that everyone agrees on the solution....

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• Finding it Hard to Deliver Right Customer Experience: Think BPM!

  - by Ajay Khanna

  Our relationship with our customers is not a just a single interaction and we should not treat it like one. A customer’s relationship with a vendor is like a journey which starts way before customer makes a purchase and lasts long after that. The journey may start with customer researching a product that may lead to the eventual purchase and may continue with support or service needs for the product. A typical customer journey can be represented as shown below: As you may notice, customers tend to use multiple channels to interact with a company throughout their journey.  They also expect that they should get consistent experience, no matter what interaction channel they may choose. Customers do not like to repeat the information they have already provided and expect companies to remember their preferences, and offer them relevant products and services. If the company fails to meet this expectation, customers not only will abandon the purchase and go to the competitor but may also influence others’ purchase decision. Gone are the days when word of mouth was the only medium, and the customer could influence “Six” others. This is the age of social media and customer’s good or bad experience, especially bad get highly amplified and may influence hundreds of others. Challenges that face B2C companies today include: Delivering consistent experience: The reason that delivering consistent experience is challenging is due to fragmented data, disjointed systems and siloed multichannel interactions. Customers tend to get different service quality if they use web vs. phone vs. store. They get different responses from different service agents or get inconsistent answers if they call sales vs. service group in the company. Such inconsistent experiences result in lower customer satisfaction or NPS (net promoter score) numbers. Increasing Revenue: To stay competitive companies frequently introduce new products and services. Delay in launching such offerings has a significant impact on revenue realization. In addition to new product revenue, there are multiple opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell that impact bottom line. If companies are not able to identify such opportunities, bring a product to market quickly, or not offer the right product to the right customer at the right time, significant loss of revenue may occur. Ensuring Compliance: Companies must be compliant to ever changing regulations, these could be about Know Your Customer (KYC), Export/Import regulations, or taxation policies. In addition to government agencies, companies also need to comply with the SLA that they have committed to their customers. Lapse in meeting any of these requirements may lead to serious fines, penalties and loss in business. Companies have to make sure that they are in compliance will all such regulations and SLA commitments, at any given time. With the advent of social networks and mobile technology, companies not only need to focus on process efficiency but also on customer engagement. Improving engagement means delivering the customer experience as the customer is expecting and interacting with the customer at right time using right channel. Customers expect to be able to contact you via any channel of their choice (web, email, chat, mobile, social media), purchase via any viable channel (web, phone, store, mobile). Customers expect companies to understand their particular needs and remember their preferences on repeated visits. To deliver such an integrated, consistent, and contextual experience, power of BPM in must. Your company may be organized in departments like Marketing, Sales, Service. You may hold prospect data in SFA, order information in ERP, customer issues in CRM. However, the experience delivered to the customer must not be constrained by your system legacy. BPM helps in designing the right experience for the right customer and integrates all the underlining channels, systems, applications to make sure right information will be delivered to the right knowledge worker or to the customer every single time.     Orchestrating information across all systems (MDM, CRM, ERP), departments (commerce, merchandising, marketing service) and channels (Email, phone, web, social)  is the key, and that’s what BPM delivers. In addition to orchestrating systems and channels for consistency, BPM also provides an ability for analysis and decision management. By using data from historical transactions, social media and from other systems, users can determine the customer preferences, customer value, and churn propensity. This information, in the context, is then used while making a decision at a process step. Working with real-time decision management system can also suggest right up-sell or cross-sell offers, discounts or next-best-action steps for a particular customer. Timely action on customer issues or request is also a key tenet of a good customer experience. BPM’s complex event processing capabilities help companies to take proactive actions before issues get escalated. BPM system can be designed to listen to a certain event patters then deduce from those customer situations (credit card stolen, baggage lost, change of address) and do a triage before situation goes out of control. If such a situation arises you can send alerts to right people or immediately invoke corrective actions. Last but not least one of BPM’s key values is to drive continuous improvement. Learning about customers past experiences, interactions and social conversations, provide valuable insight. Such insight can be used to improve products, customer facing processes, and customer experience. You may take these insights as an input to design better more efficient and customer friendly sales, contact center or self-service processes. If customer experience is important for your business, make sure you have incorporated BPM as a part of your strategy to design, orchestrate and improve your customer facing processes.

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• jQuery Templates, Data Link

  - by Renso

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Query Templates, Data Link, and Globalization I am sure you must have read Scott Guthrie’s blog post about jQuery support and officially supporting jQuery's templating, data linking and globalization, if not here it is: jQuery Templating Since we are an open source shop and use jQuery and jQuery plugins extensively to say the least, decided to look into the templating a bit and see what data linking is all about. For those not familiar with those terms here is the summary, plenty of material out there on what it is, but here is what in my experience it means: jQuery Templating: A templating engine that allows you to specify a client-side template where you indicate which properties/tags you want dynamically updated. You in a sense specify which parts of the html is dynamic and since it is pluggable you are able to use tools data jQuery data linking and others to let it sync up your template with data. What makes it more powerful is that you can easily work with rows of data, adding and removing rows. Once the template has been generated, which you do dynamically on a client-side event, you then append/inject the resulting template somewhere in your DOM, like for example you would get a JSON object from the database, map it to your template, it populates the template with your data in the indicated places, and then let’s say for example append it to a row in a table. I have not found it that useful for lets say a single record of data since you could easily just get a partial view from the server via an html type ajax call. It really shines when you dynamically add/remove rows from a list in the DOM. I have not found an alternative that meets the functionality of the jQuery template and helps of course that Microsoft officially supports it. In future versions of the jQuery plug-in it may even ship as part of the standard jQuery library and with future versions of Visual Studio. jQuery Data Linking: In short I was fascinated by it initially by how with one line of code I can sync up my JSON object with my form elements. That's where my enthusiasm stopped. It was one-line to let is deal with syncing up your form with your JSON object, but it is not bidirectional as they state and I tried all the work arounds they suggested and none of them work. The problem is that when you update your JSON object it DOES NOT sync it up with your form. In an example, accounts are being edited client side by selecting the account from a list by clicking on the row, it then fetches the entire account JSON object via ajax json-type call and then refreshes the form with the account’s details from the new JSON object. What is the use of syncing up my JSON with the form if I still have to programmatically sync up my new JSON object with each DOM property?! So you may ask: “what is the alternative”? Good question and the same one I was pondering, maybe I can just use it for keeping my from n sync with my JSON object so I can post that JSON object back to the server and update my database. That’s when I discovered Knockout: Knockout It addresses the issues mentioned above and also supports event handling through the observer pattern. Not wanting to go into detail here, Steve Sanderson, the creator of Knockout, has already done a terrific job of that, thanks Steve for a great plug-in! Best of all it integrates perfectly with the jQuery Templating engine as well. I have not found an alternative to this plugin that supports the depth and width of functionality and would recommend it to anyone. The only drawback is the embedded html attributes (data-bind=””) tags that you have to add to the HTML, in my opinion tying your behavior to your HTML, where I like to separate behavior from HTML as well as CSS, so the HTML is purely to define content, not styling or behavior. But there are plusses to this as well and also a nifty work around to this that I will just shortly mention here with an example. Instead of data binding an html tag with knockout event handling like so:  <%=Html.TextBox("PrepayDiscount", String.Empty, new { @class = "number" })%>   Do: <%=Html.DataBoundTextBox("PrepayDiscount", String.Empty, new { @class = "number" })%>   The html extension above then takes care of the internals and you could then swap Knockout for something else if you want to inside the extension and keep the HTML plugin agnostic. Here is what the extension looks like, you can easily build a whole library to support all kinds of data binding options from this:      public static class HtmlExtensions       {         public static MvcHtmlString DataBoundTextBox(this HtmlHelper helper, string name, object value, object htmlAttributes)         {             var dic = new RouteValueDictionary(htmlAttributes);             dic.Add("data-bind", String.Format("value: {0}", name));             return helper.TextBox(name, value, dic);         }       }   Hope this helps in making a decision when and where to consider jQuery templating, data linking and Knockout.

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• What Counts For a DBA: Fitness

  - by Louis Davidson

  If you know me, you can probably guess that physical exercise is not really my thing. There was a time in my past when it a larger part of my life, but even then never in the same sort of passionate way as a number of our SQL friends.  For me, I find that mental exercise satisfies what I believe to be the same inner need that drives people to run farther than I like to drive on most Saturday mornings, and it is certainly just as addictive. Mental fitness shares many common traits with physical fitness, especially the need to attain it through repetitive training. I only wish that mental training burned off a bacon cheeseburger in the same manner as does jogging around a dewy park on Saturday morning. In physical training, there are at least two goals, the first of which is to be physically able to do a task. The second is to train the brain to perform the task without thinking too hard about it. No matter how long it has been since you last rode a bike, you will be almost certainly be able to hop on and start riding without thinking about the process of pedaling or balancing. If you’ve never ridden a bike, you could be a physics professor /Olympic athlete and still crash the first few times you try, even though you are as strong as an ox and your knowledge of the physics of bicycle riding makes the concept child’s play. For programming tasks, the process is very similar. As a DBA, you will come to know intuitively how to backup, optimize, and secure database systems. As a data programmer, you will work to instinctively use the clauses of Transact-SQL DML so that, when you need to group data three ways (and not four), you will know to use the GROUP BY clause with GROUPING SETS without resorting to a search engine.  You have the skill. Making it naturally then requires repetition and experience is the primary requirement, not just simply learning about a topic. The hardest part of being really good at something is this difference between knowledge and skill. I have recently taken several informative training classes with Kimball University on data warehousing and ETL. Now I have a lot more knowledge about designing data warehouses than before. I have also done a good bit of data warehouse designing of late and have started to improve to some level of proficiency with the theory. Yet, for all of this head knowledge, it is still a struggle to take what I have learned and apply it to the designs I am working on.  Data warehousing is still a task that is not yet deeply ingrained in my brain muscle memory. On the other hand, relational database design is something that no matter how much or how little I may get to do it, I am comfortable doing it. I have done it as a profession now for well over a decade, I teach classes on it, and I also have done (and continue to do) a lot of mental training beyond the work day. Sometimes the training is just basic education, some reading blogs and attending sessions at PASS events.  My best training comes from spending time working on other people’s design issues in forums (though not nearly as much as I would like to lately). Working through other people’s problems is a great way to exercise your brain on problems with which you’re not immediately familiar. The final bit of exercise I find useful for cultivating mental fitness for a data professional is also probably the nerdiest thing that I will ever suggest you do.  Akin to running in place, the idea is to work through designs in your head. I have designed more than one database system that would revolutionize grocery store operations, sales at my local Target store, the ordering process at Amazon, and ways to improve Disney World operations to get me through a line faster (some of which they are starting to implement without any of my help.) Never are the designs truly fleshed out, but enough to work through structures and processes.  On “paper”, I have designed database systems to catalog things as trivial as my Lego creations, rental car companies and my audio and video collections. Once I get the database designed mentally, sometimes I will create the database, add some data (often using Red-Gate’s Data Generator), and write a few queries to see if a concept was realistic, but I will rarely fully flesh out the database since I have no desire to do any user interface programming anymore.  The mental training allows me to keep in practice for when the time comes to do the work I love the most for real…even if I have been spending most of my work time lately building data warehouses.  If you are really strong of mind and body, perhaps you can mix a mental run with a physical run; though don’t run off of a cliff while contemplating how you might design a database to catalog the trees on a mountain…that would be contradictory to the purpose of both types of exercise.

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• Where would a spam bot be located?

  - by Tim

  I have a hosted website using a free hosting service, I received an email this afternoon saying that I have been suspended because my account has been compromised. Basically, someone is using my email account to mass send spam. I've changed all the passwords and everything but when my Gmail pulls the emails from the host it's still downloading loads of spam messages that show like this: This message was created automatically by mail delivery software. A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed: [email protected] SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data: host 198.91.80.251 [198.91.80.251]: 554 5.6.0 id=23634-03 - Rejected by MTA on relaying, from MTA([127.0.0.1]:10030): 554 Error: This email address has lost rights to send email from the system ------ This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ------ Return-path: <[email protected]> Received: from keenesystems.com ([66.135.33.211]:2370 helo=server211) by absolut.x10hosting.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1:RC4-MD5:128) (Exim 4.77) (envelope-from <[email protected]>) id 1TGwSW-002hHe-Lc for [email protected]; Wed, 26 Sep 2012 13:35:44 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2012 13:35:43 -0500 X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 3.9.9 (8.5.3-6) Subject: New staff members wanted at Auction It Online From: [email protected] Reply-To: [email protected] To: "Nadia Monti" <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-ID: <OUTLOOK-IDM-9aed7054-6a3e-e1a4-1d5c-3e73377652a6@server211> Date : 26 September 2012=0ATime : 13:35=0ASender : Dennise Halcomb Head = Office Manager of RJ Auction Drop-Off Int.=0A=0ANice to meet you Nadia M= onti=0A=0ARJ ADO Ltd., a USA based company, offers a significant amount = of goods worldwide for our customers on eBay and other auction venues. = Our company's main target is to provide a suitable and cost-effective se= rvice for any person, company or fundraising company. The main purpose o= f the administrative assistant / sales support representative is to cont= ribute to the sales force and add convenience to our cost-effective serv= ice dedicated to individuals, businesses, and organizations worldwide. O= ur HR department obtained your resume from one of the various job-orient= ed websites just to offer you this post.=0A=0AWorking Schedule: This is = a part time and home-based offer. You won't need to spend more than 3 ho= urs each day. Your =0Aschedule will be flexible.=0A=0ASalary: At the end= of the trial period (it lasts for 1 month) you will be paid 1,800 EUR. = With the average volume of clients your overall income will raise up to = 3,000 EUR per month. After the trial period is over your base salary wil= l grow up to 2,500 EUR per month, so you will earn 5% commission from th= e transactions completed.=0A=0AWhere?: Italy Wide. As it is a stay at ho= me position all the communication will be carried out via email and via = phone.=0A=0ARequirements: Access to the internet during the workday and = basic microsoft office skills are needed. Basic knowledge of English is = required (most of the contacts will be in English).=0A=0ACosts and Fees:= There are NO costs at any time for our employees. All fees related to t= his position are covered by the RJ ADO Co. Ltd..=0A=0AFurther Hiring Pro= cess: If you are interested in position we offer, please reply to this e= mail and send us the copy of your resume for verification.=0A=0AAfter re= viewing all of the received applications we will reply to successful app= licants only. Then we'll offer to these successful applicants a position= within our firm on a trial period basis for one month beginning from th= e date you sign a trial agreement. During this trial period you will rec= eive full guidance and support. Employees on a one monthly trial period = are evaluated at least one week prior to the end of their trial. During = the trial, your supervisor can recommend termination. At the end of the = trial period, the supervisor can offer continued employment, extension o= f trial period, or termination. After the trial period you may ask for m= ore hours or continue full-time.=0A=0AIf you are interested in this posi= tion, just reply to this email and send any questions you have and the c= opy of your resume for verification.=0A=0AThank You,=0AHR-Manager of RJ = ADO Co. Ltd.=0A=0APermission Settings=0AYou have been referred to RJ Auc= tion Drop-Off If you feel you received this email in error or do not wis= h to receive future messages, please reply to this message with "remove"= in the subject field. We will immediately update our database according= ly. =0AWe apologize for any inconvenience caused.=0A=0ARJ Auction Drop-O= ff Co. Ltd. I'm not aware of how this has happened. I'm not sure how anyone could have got hold of my password. It's a simple wordpress install, at some point recently my host went down and there was a fresh install of wordpress with default admin accounts, I have a feeling it could be something to do with this. My question is, even though I've changed all my passwords it's all still happening, is there annywhere in paticular this script would be stored on my host. I really can't deal with having my hosting account suspended and my email account sending all this spam.

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• Rebuilding CoasterBuzz, Part II: Hot data objects

  - by Jeff

  This is the second post, originally from my personal blog, in a series about rebuilding one of my Web sites, which has been around for 12 years. More: Part I: Evolution, and death to WCF After the rush to get moving on stuff, I temporarily lost interest. I went almost two weeks without touching the project, in part because the next thing on my backlog was doing up a bunch of administrative pages. So boring. Unfortunately, because most of the site's content is user-generated, you need some facilities for editing data. CoasterBuzz has a database full of amusement parks and roller coasters. The entities enjoy the relationships that you would expect, though they're further defined by "instances" of a coaster, to define one that has moved between parks as one, with different names and operational dates. And of course, there are pictures and news items, too. It's not horribly complex, except when you have to account for a name change and display just the newest name. In all previous versions, data access was straight SQL. As so much of the old code was rooted in 2003, with some changes in 2008, there wasn't much in the way of ORM frameworks going on then. Let me rephrase that, I mostly wasn't interested in ORM's. Since that time, I used a little LINQ to SQL in some projects, and a whole bunch of nHibernate while at Microsoft. Through all of that experience, I have to admit that these frameworks are often a bigger pain in the ass than not. They're great for basic crud operations, but when you start having all kinds of exotic relationships, they get difficult, and generate all kinds of weird SQL under the covers. The black box can quickly turn into a black hole. Sometimes you end up having to build all kinds of new expertise to do things "right" with a framework. Still, despite my reservations, I used the newer version of Entity Framework, with the "code first" modeling, in a science project and I really liked it. Since it's just a right-click away with NuGet, I figured I'd give it a shot here. My initial effort was spent defining the context class, which requires a bit of work because I deviate quite a bit from the conventions that EF uses, starting with table names. Then throw some partial querying of certain tables (where you'll find image data), and you're splitting tables across several objects (navigation properties). I won't go into the details, because these are all things that are well documented around the Internet, but there was a minor learning curve there. The basics of reading data using EF are fantastic. For example, a roller coaster object has a park associated with it, as well as a number of instances (if it was ever relocated), and there also might be a big banner image for it. This is stupid easy to use because it takes one line of code in your repository class, and by the time you pass it to the view, you have a rich object graph that has everything you need to display stuff. Likewise, editing simple data is also, well, simple. For this goodness, thank the ASP.NET MVC framework. The UpdateModel() method on the controllers is very elegant. Remember the old days of assigning all kinds of properties to objects in your Webforms code-behind? What a time consuming mess that used to be. Even if you're not using an ORM tool, having hydrated objects come off the wire is such a time saver. Not everything is easy, though. When you have to persist a complex graph of objects, particularly if they were composed in the user interface with all kinds of AJAX elements and list boxes, it's not just a simple matter of submitting the form. There were a few instances where I ended up going back to "old-fashioned" SQL just in the interest of time. It's not that I couldn't do what I needed with EF, it's just that the efficiency, both my own and that of the generated SQL, wasn't good. Since EF context objects expose a database connection object, you can use that to do the old school ADO.NET stuff you've done for a decade. Using various extension methods from POP Forums' data project, it was a breeze. You just have to stick to your decision, in this case. When you start messing with SQL directly, you can't go back in the same code to messing with entities because EF doesn't know what you're changing. Not really a big deal. There are a number of take-aways from using EF. The first is that you write a lot less code, which has always been a desired outcome of ORM's. The other lesson, and I particularly learned this the hard way working on the MSDN forums back in the day, is that trying to retrofit an ORM framework into an existing schema isn't fun at all. The CoasterBuzz database isn't bad, but there are design decisions I'd make differently if I were starting from scratch. Now that I have some of this stuff done, I feel like I can start to move on to the more interesting things on the backlog. There's a lot to do, but at least it's fun stuff, and not more forms that will be used infrequently.

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• Null Values And The T-SQL IN Operator

  - by Jesse

  I came across some unexpected behavior while troubleshooting a failing test the other day that took me long enough to figure out that I thought it was worth sharing here. I finally traced the failing test back to a SELECT statement in a stored procedure that was using the IN t-sql operator to exclude a certain set of values. Here’s a very simple example table to illustrate the issue: Customers CustomerId INT, NOT NULL, Primary Key CustomerName nvarchar(100) NOT NULL SalesRegionId INT NULL   The ‘SalesRegionId’ column contains a number representing the sales region that the customer belongs to. This column is nullable because new customers get created all the time but assigning them to sales regions is a process that is handled by a regional manager on a periodic basis. For the purposes of this example, the Customers table currently has the following rows: CustomerId CustomerName SalesRegionId 1 Customer A 1 2 Customer B NULL 3 Customer C 4 4 Customer D 2 5 Customer E 3   How could we write a query against this table for all customers that are NOT in sales regions 2 or 4? You might try something like this: 1: SELECT 2: CustomerId, 3: CustomerName, 4: SalesRegionId 5: FROM Customers 6: WHERE SalesRegionId NOT IN (2,4)   Will this work? In short, no; at least not in the way that you might expect. Here’s what this query will return given the example data we’re working with: CustomerId CustomerName SalesRegionId 1 Customer A 1 5 Customer E 5   I was expecting that this query would also return ‘Customer B’, since that customer has a NULL SalesRegionId. In my mind, having a customer with no sales region should be included in a set of customers that are not in sales regions 2 or 4.When I first started troubleshooting my issue I made note of the fact that this query should probably be re-written without the NOT IN clause, but I didn’t suspect that the NOT IN clause was actually the source of the issue. This particular query was only one minor piece in a much larger process that was being exercised via an automated integration test and I simply made a poor assumption that the NOT IN would work the way that I thought it should. So why doesn’t this work the way that I thought it should? From the MSDN documentation on the t-sql IN operator: If the value of test_expression is equal to any value returned by subquery or is equal to any expression from the comma-separated list, the result value is TRUE; otherwise, the result value is FALSE. Using NOT IN negates the subquery value or expression. The key phrase out of that quote is, “… is equal to any expression from the comma-separated list…”. The NULL SalesRegionId isn’t included in the NOT IN because of how NULL values are handled in equality comparisons. From the MSDN documentation on ANSI_NULLS: The SQL-92 standard requires that an equals (=) or not equal to (<>) comparison against a null value evaluates to FALSE. When SET ANSI_NULLS is ON, a SELECT statement using WHERE column_name = NULL returns zero rows even if there are null values in column_name. A SELECT statement using WHERE column_name <> NULL returns zero rows even if there are nonnull values in column_name. In fact, the MSDN documentation on the IN operator includes the following blurb about using NULL values in IN sub-queries or expressions that are used with the IN operator: Any null values returned by subquery or expression that are compared to test_expression using IN or NOT IN return UNKNOWN. Using null values in together with IN or NOT IN can produce unexpected results. If I were to include a ‘SET ANSI_NULLS OFF’ command right above my SELECT statement I would get ‘Customer B’ returned in the results, but that’s definitely not the right way to deal with this. We could re-write the query to explicitly include the NULL value in the WHERE clause: 1: SELECT 2: CustomerId, 3: CustomerName, 4: SalesRegionId 5: FROM Customers 6: WHERE (SalesRegionId NOT IN (2,4) OR SalesRegionId IS NULL)   This query works and properly includes ‘Customer B’ in the results, but I ultimately opted to re-write the query using a LEFT OUTER JOIN against a table variable containing all of the values that I wanted to exclude because, in my case, there could potentially be several hundred values to be excluded. If we were to apply the same refactoring to our simple sales region example we’d end up with: 1: DECLARE @regionsToIgnore TABLE (IgnoredRegionId INT) 2: INSERT @regionsToIgnore values (2),(4) 3:  4: SELECT 5: c.CustomerId, 6: c.CustomerName, 7: c.SalesRegionId 8: FROM Customers c 9: LEFT OUTER JOIN @regionsToIgnore r ON r.IgnoredRegionId = c.SalesRegionId 10: WHERE r.IgnoredRegionId IS NULL By performing a LEFT OUTER JOIN from Customers to the @regionsToIgnore table variable we can simply exclude any rows where the IgnoredRegionId is null, as those represent customers that DO NOT appear in the ignored regions list. This approach will likely perform better if the number of sales regions to ignore gets very large and it also will correctly include any customers that do not yet have a sales region.

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• To refund or not to refund this client?

  - by Mahalia Samuels

  I'd really appreciate your advice on an ongoing project. I presented my client with a proposal and design samples which he approved, and he paid in full instead of the 50% upfront deposit as I'd given him a generous discount. He was then slow in furnishing me with some of the content, but once we did, he expected the website to be finished immediately which was not possible. Because he needed it done urgently, we agreed to try to get it done about 10 working days after the content was provided, but the developer who was helping me let me down. The next week, I completed the website myself and uploaded it to the server on a Friday afternoon. He then calls and texts me on following Sunday while I'm at church to say it's not online (there was probably a problem with his browser). The next morning, I received an email from him demanding a full refund within two days because he couldn't see the website (even though it was live, and I tested it on multiple browsers, a different computer and my phone), and he called me shouting at me because he couldn't access it. Finally when he was able to access it, he was unhappy with a certain detail regarding the slideshow which I began fixing and which was done the next day. He then referred me to another website and said he wanted it to look similar but not identical to it in terms of the layout. He also now wanted to add more features which were not in the original design. I got a designer to work on a new design which I sent to him for review, which if approved would be completed by 15 October, and he approved it last Thursday. He then called me yesterday to say that he wanted to change the design - he only approved it out of impatience. He now wants the website to be more similar to the other website he referred me to and he wants it done before the 15th! Then, he says to me that other people have done websites for him in three days - website's he's complained to me about for lacking dimension because they were just premium themes, whereas we'd designed and coded from scratch. I'm thinking of finishing the website but refunding him in full (or at least the refundable 50%) less domain registration and other non-refundable amounts, just to avoid further escalation of this matter and having him call me next week and say he wants to change it again. These are the applicable terms and conditions as laid out in the agreement: Total amount due for this project is Amount A. Client shall pay Consultant a deposit of Amount B (50% of total amount due for project) in advance before any work commences on the Project. The balance is due within 7 working days of completion of project. Deposit is non-refundable. Should client opt to host elsewhere, applicable transferral fee of Amount C will apply. Estimated project completion time frame is 14 to 30 days from the date Client furnishes Consultant with Brief and all other required media and data, provided that Client has made payment to secure the project. Consultant will make every effort to meet agreed upon due dates. The Client should be aware that failure to submit required information or materials, or last minute changes and excessive changes may cause subsequent delays. Client delays could result in significant delays in delivery of finished work. Major changes in client input or direction or brief will be charged at normal rates. Any work the Client wishes Consultant to create, which is not specified in the attached Proposal will be considered an additional service. Client agrees to pay Consultant for any additional expenses or additional services not included in the attached quotation and proposal if requested by the Client. Web design credit in the name of the Consultant, and link to Consultant’s website shall be placed on the footer of the final Website. Either party may terminate this Agreement by giving 7 days written notice to the other of such termination. In the event that Work is postponed or terminated at the request of the Client, Consultant shall have the right to bill pro rata at full rates for work completed through the date of that request, while reserving all rights under this Agreement. If additional payment is due, this shall be payable within seven days of the Client's written notification to stop work. In the event of termination, the Client shall also pay any expenses incurred by Consultant and the Consultant shall own all rights to the Work. Advice please?

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• A Knights Tale

  - by Phil Factor

  There are so many lessons to be learned from the story of Knight Capital losing nearly half a billion dollars as a result of a deployment gone wrong. The Knight Capital Group (KCG N) was an American global financial services firm engaging in market making, electronic execution, and institutional sales and trading. According to the recent order (File No.3.15570) against Knight Capital by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission?, Knight had, for many years used some software which broke up incoming “parent” orders into smaller “child” orders that were then transmitted to various exchanges or trading venues for execution. A tracking ‘cumulative quantity’ function counted the number of ‘child’ orders and stopped the process once the total of child orders matched the ‘parent’ and so the parent order had been completed. Back in the mists of time, some code had been added to it  which was excuted if a particular flag was set. It was called ‘power peg’ and seems to have had a similar design and purpose, but, one guesses, would have shared the same tracking function. This code had been abandoned in 2003, but never deleted. In 2005, The tracking function was moved to an earlier point in the main process. It would seem from the account that, from that point, had that flag ever been set, the old ‘Power Peg’ would have been executed like Godzilla bursting from the ice, making child orders without limit without any tracking function. It wasn’t, presumably because the software that set the flag was removed. In 2012, nearly a decade after ‘Power Peg’ was abandoned, Knight prepared a new module to their software to cope with the imminent Retail Liquidity Program (RLP) for the New York Stock Exchange. By this time, the flag had remained unused and someone made the fateful decision to reuse it, and replace the old ‘power peg’ code with this new RLP code. Had the two actions been done together in a single automated deployment, and the new deployment tested, all would have been well. It wasn’t. To quote… “Beginning on July 27, 2012, Knight deployed the new RLP code in SMARS in stages by placing it on a limited number of servers in SMARS on successive days. During the deployment of the new code, however, one of Knight’s technicians did not copy the new code to one of the eight SMARS computer servers. Knight did not have a second technician review this deployment and no one at Knight realized that the Power Peg code had not been removed from the eighth server, nor the new RLP code added. Knight had no written procedures that required such a review.” (para 15) “On August 1, Knight received orders from broker-dealers whose customers were eligible to participate in the RLP. The seven servers that received the new code processed these orders correctly. However, orders sent with the repurposed flag to the eighth server triggered the defective Power Peg code still present on that server. As a result, this server began sending child orders to certain trading centers for execution. Because the cumulative quantity function had been moved, this server continuously sent child orders, in rapid sequence, for each incoming parent order without regard to the number of share executions Knight had already received from trading centers. Although one part of Knight’s order handling system recognized that the parent orders had been filled, this information was not communicated to SMARS.” (para 16) SMARS routed millions of orders into the market over a 45-minute period, and obtained over 4 million executions in 154 stocks for more than 397 million shares. By the time that Knight stopped sending the orders, Knight had assumed a net long position in 80 stocks of approximately $3.5 billion and a net short position in 74 stocks of approximately $3.15 billion. Knight’s shares dropped more than 20% after traders saw extreme volume spikes in a number of stocks, including preferred shares of Wells Fargo (JWF) and semiconductor company Spansion (CODE). Both stocks, which see roughly 100,000 trade per day, had changed hands more than 4 million times by late morning. Ultimately, Knight lost over $460 million from this wild 45 minutes of trading. Obviously, I’m interested in all this because, at one time, I used to write trading systems for the City of London. Obviously, the US SEC is in a far better position than any of us to work out the failings of Knight’s IT department, and the report makes for painful reading. I can’t help observing, though, that even with the breathtaking mistakes all along the way, that a robust automated deployment process that was ‘all-or-nothing’, and tested from soup to nuts would have prevented the disaster. The report reads like a Greek Tragedy. All the way along one wants to shout ‘No! not that way!’ and ‘Aargh! Don’t do it!’. As the tragedy unfolds, the audience weeps for the players, trapped by a cruel fate. All application development and deployment requires defense in depth. All IT goes wrong occasionally, but if there is a culture of defensive programming throughout, the consequences are usually containable. For financial systems, these defenses are required by statute, and ignored only by the foolish. Knight’s mistakes weren’t made by just one hapless sysadmin, but were progressive errors by an  IT culture spanning at least ten years.  One can spell these out, but I think they’re obvious. One can only hope that the industry studies what happened in detail, learns from the mistakes, and draws the right conclusions.

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• Speakers, Please Check Your Time

  - by AjarnMark

  Woodrow Wilson was once asked how long it would take him to prepare for a 10 minute speech. He replied "Two weeks". He was then asked how long it would take for a 1 hour speech. "One week", he replied. 2 hour speech? "I'm ready right now," he replied.  Whether that is a true story or an urban legend, I don’t really know, but either way, it is a poignant reminder for all speakers, and particularly apropos this week leading up to the PASS Community Summit. (Cross-posted to the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter blog #PASSProfDev.) What’s the point of that story?  Simply this…if you have plenty of time to do your presentation, you don’t need to prepare much because it is easy to throw in more and more material to stretch out to your allotted time.  But if you are on a tight time constraint, then it will take significant preparation to distill your talk down to only the essential points. I have attended seven of the last eight North American Summit events, and every one of them has been fantastic.  The speakers are great, the material is timely and relevant, and the networking opportunities are awesome.  And every year, there is one little thing that just bugs me…speakers going over their allotted time.  Why does it bother me so?  Well, if you look at a typical schedule for a Summit, you’ll see that there are six or more sessions going on at the same time, and only 15 minutes to move from one to another.  If you’re trying to maximize your training dollar by attending something during every session time slot, and you don’t want to be the last guy trying to squeeze into the middle of the row, then those 15 minutes can be critical.  All the more so if you need to stop and use the bathroom or if you have to hike to the opposite end of the convention center.  It is really a bad position to find yourself having to choose between learning the last key points of Speaker A who is going over time, and getting over to Speaker B on time so you don’t miss her key opening remarks. And frankly, I think it is just rude.  Yes, the speakers are the function, after all they are bringing the content that the rest of us are paying to learn.  But it is also an honor to be given the opportunity to speak at a conference like this, and no one speaker is so important that the conference would be a disaster without him.  Speakers know when they submit their abstract, long before the conference, how much time they will have.  It has been the same pattern at the Summit for at least the last eight years.  Program Sessions are 75 minutes long.  Some speakers who have a good track record, and meet other qualifying criteria, are extended an invitation to present a Spotlight Session which is 90 minutes (a 20% increase).  So there really is no excuse.  It’s not like you were promised a 2-hour segment and then discovered when you got here that it was only 75 minutes.  In fact, it’s not like PASS advertised 90-minute sessions for everyone and then a select few were cut back to only 75.  As a speaker, you know well before you get here which type of session you are doing and how long it is, so as a professional, you should plan accordingly. Now you might think that this only happens to rookies, but I’ll tell you that some of the worst offenders are big-name veterans who draw huge attendance numbers for their sessions.  Some attendees blow this off as, “Hey, it’s so-and-so, and I’d stay here for hours and listen to him/her talk.”  To which I would reply, “Then they should have submitted for a pre- or post-conference day-long seminar instead, but don’t try to squeeze your day-long talk into a 90-minute session.”  Now I don’t really believe that these speakers are being malicious or just selfishly trying to extend their time in the spotlight.  I think that most of them are merely being undisciplined and did not trim their presentation sufficiently, or allowed themselves to get off-track (often in a generous attempt to help someone in the audience with a question or problem that really should have been noted for further discussion after the session). So here is my recommendation…my plea, even.  TRIM THE FAT!  Now.  Before it’s too late.  Before you even get on the airplane, take a long, hard look at your presentation and eliminate some of the points that you originally thought you had to make, but in reality are not truly crucial to your main topic.  Delete a few slides.  Test your demos and have them already scripted rather than typing them during your talk.  It is better to cut out too much and end up with plenty of time at the end for Questions & Answers.  And you can always keep some notes on the stuff that you cut out so that you could fill it back in at the end as bonus material if you really do end up with a whole bunch of time on your hands.  But I don’t think you will.  And if you do, that will look even better to the audience as it will look like you’re giving them something extra that not every audience gets.  And they will thank you for that.

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• OBIA on Teradata - Part 1 Loader and Monitoring

  - by Mohan Ramanuja

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The out-of-the-box (OOB) OBIA Informatica mappings come with TPump loader.   TPUMP  FASTLOAD TPump does not lock the table. FastLoad applies exclusive lock on the table. The table that TPump is loading can have data. The table that FastLoad is loading needs to be empty. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} TPump is not efficient with lookups. FastLoad is more efficient in the absence of lookups. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The out-of the box Informatica mappings come with TPump loader. There is chance for bottleneck in writer thread The out-of the box tables in Teradata supplied with OBAW features all Dimension and Fact tables using ROW_WID as the key for primary index. Also, all staging tables use integration_id as the key for primary index. This reduces skewing of data across Teradata AMPs.You can use an SQL statement similar to the following to determine if data for a given table is distributed evenly across all AMP vprocs. The SQL statement displays the AMP with the most used through the AMP with the least-used space, investigating data distribution in the Message table in database RST.SELECT vproc,CurrentPermFROM DBC.TableSizeWHERE Databasename = ‘PRJ_CRM_STGC’AND Tablename = ‘w_party_per_d’ORDER BY 2 descIf you suspect distribution problems (skewing) among AMPS, the following is a sample of what you might enter for a three-column PI:SELECT HASHAMP (HASHBUCKET (HASHROW (col_x, col_y, col_z))), count (*)FROM hash15GROUP BY 1ORDER BY 2 desc; ETL Error Monitoring Error Table – These are tables that start with ET. Location and name can be specified in Informatica session as well as the loader connection.Loader Log – Loader log is available in the Informatica server under the session log folder. These give feedback on the loader parameters such as Packing Factor to use. These however need to be monitored in the production environment. The recommendations made in one environment may not be used in another environment.Log Table – These are tables that start with TL. These are sparse on information.Bad File – This is the Informatica file generated in case there is data quality issues

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• Why bother writing an Windows 8 app?

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  So you want to know more about development for Window 8. Great! There are lots of reasons you should be excited about this. Since I don’t know why YOU are interested in this, I’ll make a list of reasons people can choose from. (as a side note: whenever I talk about Win8 development I am referring to the Metro Style / WinRt side of things. Apps for the ‘classic’ desktop side of Win8 on Intel are business as usual…) So… Why would you care about making an app for Windows 8? 1. It’s cool. Let’s not beat around the bush: if you like development for a hobby then you’ll love to work on this new platform. You can create apps in a relative short time (short time as in compared to writing a new CRM system) and that makes it great for a hobby product. 2. You’ll stand out. Hey, we all need an ego boost every now and then. We all need to feel special. So if you can manage to be one of the first to have you app in the Store then you’ll likely to be noticed. Just close your eyes for a moment and image you standing in a bar. It’s crowded, and then you casually say “Oh yeah, I just had my app certified and it’s in the Win8 store now”. People will stop talking, will offer you drinks and beautiful women / gorgeous man / furry creatures from Alpha Centauri (whatever your preferences are) will propose. Or maybe not. Anyway…. 3. Make some cash! IDC predicts there will be about 350,000,000 Windows 8 licenses sold in the next year. Think about that number. 350,000,000. And they all have access to the Store. Where you’re app will be. With one little click they can select it, download and somehow magically $1.00 or $2.00 from their bank account is transferred to yours. Now, I am not saying that all of those people will download and buy your app but what if only 1% of them did? Remember: there aren’t that many apps available yet….. 4. Learn. Creating new small apps is a great way to learn new stuff. Yes, you could read about it (on this blog for instance) but the only way to learn something is to do it. So be prepared for the future and learn something new by doing it.Write an app! Now! 5. The biggie (for me at least): it’s fun. Even if you remove the points above it’s still fun to write for these devices and this platform. Now some of you will say : “But why not write a great app for IOS or Android?” I think this is a valid question. Of course the novelty of the platform wears out and points 2 and 3 from above list will not be as relevant as it is today. But still 1 4 and 5 remain. And don’t forget: if you already work on the Microsoft platform it’s not that hard to learn this new Win8 stuff. If you have done some XAML development (be it WPF or Silverlight) you are almost there in becoming a good Win8 developer. So you’ll be more productive much sooner than when you have to learn Objective C or Java. Even if you’re a HTML / Javascript developer (I say developer here, not designer) you’ll be up to speed on Win8 development pretty soon. Yes, you, that funky Web Developer who lives and breathes HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript / Node.Js / JQuery: you too can be a Win8 developer. A first class Win8 developer! So.. Download the stuff you need from http://dev.windows.com install Windows 8 and Visual Studio 12 and by the time you’re ready I’ll be working on the next article: how to do all this? Happy coding!

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• Clone a VirtualBox Machine

  I just installed VirtualBox, which I want to try out based on recommendations from peers for running a server from within my Windows 7 x64 OS.  Ive never used VirtualBox, so Im certainly no expert at it, but I did want to share my experience with it thus far.  Specifically, my intention is to create a couple of virtual machines.  One I intend to use as a build server, for which a virtual machine makes sense because I can easily move it around as needed if there are hardware issues (its worth noting my need for setting up a build server at the moment is a result of a disk failure on the old build server).  The other VM I want to set up will act as a proxy server for the issue tracking system were using at Code Project, Axosoft OnTime.  They have a Remote Server application for this purpose, and since the OnTime install is 300 miles away from my location, the Remote Server should speed up my use of the OnTime client by limiting the chattiness with the database (at least, thats the hope). So, I need two VMs, and Im lazy.  I dont want to have to install the OS and such twice.  No problem, it should be simple to clone a virtualbox machine, or clone a virtualbox hard drive, right?  Well unfortunately, if you look at the UI for VirtualBox, theres no such command.  Youre left wondering How do I clone a VirtualBox machine? or the slightly related How do I clone a VirtualBox hard drive? If youve used VirtualPC, then you know that its actually pretty easy to copy and move around those VMs.  Not quite so easy with VirtualBox.  Finding the files is easy, theyre located in your user folder within the .VirtualBox folder (possibly within a HardDisks folder).  The disks have a .vdi extension and will be pretty large if youve installed anything.  The one shown here has just Windows Server 2008 R2 installed on it nothing else. If you copy the .vdi file and rename it, you can use the Virtual Media Manager to view it and you can create a new machine and choose the new drive to attach to.  Unfortunately, if you simply make a copy of the drive, this wont work and youll get an error that says something to the effect of: Cannot register the hard disk PATH with UUID {id goes here} because a hard disk PATH2 with UUID {same id goes here} already exists in the media registry (PATH to XML file). There are command line tools you can use to do this in a way that avoids this error.  Specifically, the c:\Program File\Sun\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe program is used for all command line access to VirtualBox, and to copy a virtual disk (.vdi file) you would call something like this: VBoxManage clonehd Disk1.vdi Disk1_Copy.vdi However, in my case this didnt work.  I got basically the same error I showed above, along with some debug information for line 628 of VBoxManageDisk.cpp.  As my main task was not to debug the C++ code used to write VirtualBox, I continued looking for a simple way to clone a virtual drive.  I found it in this blog post. The Secret setvdiuuid Command VBoxManage has a whole bunch of commands you can use with it just pass it /? to see the list.  However, it also has a special command called internalcommands that opens up access to even more commands.  The one thats interesting for us here is the setvdiuuid command.  By calling this command and passing in the file path to your vdi file, it will reset the UUID to a new (random, apparently) UUID.  This then allows the virtual media manager to cope with the file, and lets you set up new machines that reference the newly UUIDd virtual drive.  The full command line would be: VBoxManage internalcommands setvdiuuid MyCopy.vdi The following screenshot shows the error when trying clonehd as well as the successful use of setvdiuuid. Summary Now that I can clone machines easily, its a simple matter to set up base builds of any OS I might need, and then fork from there as needed.  Hopefully the GUI for VirtualBox will be improved to include better support for copying machines/disks, as this is Im sure a very common scenario. 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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• CS, SE, HCI, Information Science, Please recommendation for further education of the former performing art manager seeking career in IT industries? [on hold]

  - by Baek Seungjoo

  IT specialists there J Thank you very much for your collective efforts here, and I got huge help reading your professional comments and advices on each questions I have searched so far! This time, I would like to ask for your practical advices or recommendation on what I am struggling on at this moment. I am currently seeking higher education for my career transition from performing art manager and director to “IT software and/or service development and management specialist”. However, as this field is quite new to me, and there are lots of different work positions, I have no idea which grad major I better pursue in order to get qualification. Of course I know this question could sounds wired as it is kind of personal choice. But my lack of understanding on how IT software companies work in general, your practical and experience-based advice will be great help to me, who spent more than two months of self-research on net. OK. Before my question, here is my plan and history, which are quite different from those currently in IT industry I think… 1) Target Firstly, get career transition into IT service or products companies and get experiences. Eventually, pursue IT entrepreneurship in combination with my arts and cultural production and business expertise. 2) Background Career: performing arts director and manager in theatre-based scale opera and musical Art education in youth BA in literature and Chinese studies (Art & Humanities) MA in Cultural & Creative Industries (Art & Humanities) – dissertation with focus on digital prosumption and the lived experience of the prosumer. (a qualitative research on the agents in the digital world) 2) Personally Huge interest in IT hardware and software, and their trend. Skills to build up, repair, tune PCs -of course this is no more than personal hobby, but shows my interests in this field. 4) Problem Encounter a question “So, what do you think you can contribute practically in this position”. This question turn me down everytime I go through job interviews, and I decided more education in the relevant area. Here are my questions. 1) In terms of work positions in IT software companies, I wonder if I can put the comparison of what “Artists” is to “Arts Manager or Director” is what “Developer” is to “Product Manager”. (Of course, this stereotypical division of Artist-Art Manager is out of sense because the domain overlaps to some extent, and is blurring at least in my field, and they are in different contexts, but just speaking easily.) Normally, artist comes with special arts educations, and they live in their own world of artistic inspiration and creation, and they feel alive in practice and on stages. Meanwhile, from the point of staging and managing productions, the role of art manager is critical as well. Our role cares how the production appeals to the audience in effective way, how to make profit and future sustainable management through that, how to set up future strategy in consideration of the external conditions such as political and social circumstances, audience trend and level, other production trends from on-going and historical perspectives, how and what the production make voice to the society from political, economic, humanitarian stances. So, we need keen eyes on economic, political, and societal environment, have to understand human-being and their desires, must know how to make presentation and attract investors, must have sense in managing and fighting over the limited financial resource, how to extend networking and so on. It is common that the two agents create productions in collaboration (normally not in that ideal way but in conflict and fight though J ). So, we need to know each other’s expertise to some extent, for better production. What are the work positions in IT software industries equivalent to the role of “art manager” in performing arts? From my view, considering developers come with special education in the world of computer science, software engineering, or others (self-education sometimes), and they express themselves with the arts of coding, computer languages on the black screen, and make sort of their artistic production online to the audience, I guess there might be someone who collaborate with developers in creating, managing, and launching IT services or products. 2) Which education among CS, SE, HCI, Information Science, is needed for those seeking such work position? Especially for person like me. (At this moment, Information Science has the highest possibility to get in, since I lack Calculus and Math in undergrad educaiton. But please let me know irrespective of this concern, I think there are ways to back it up if CS or SE education needed in my case) 3) Which field between Information Science and HCI can be more practical background regarding job hungting? And which of them have more demands in job market? AS I checked, HCI is more close to CS than IS in its focus of study area. Thank you very much for your patience reading such a long inquiry, and I appreciate to your efforts in advance. Have a nice day in this beautiful summer.

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• Synergy - easy share of keyboard and mouse between multiple computers

  Did you ever have the urge to share one set of keyboard and mouse between multiple machines? If so, please read on... Using multiple machines Honestly, as a software craftsman it is my daily business to run multiple machines - either physical or virtual - to be able to solve my customers' requirements. Recent hardware equipment allows this very easily. For laptops it's a no-brainer to attach a second or even a third screen in order to extend your native display. This works quite handy and in my case I used to attached two additional screens - one via HD15 connector, the other via HDMI. But... as it's a laptop and therefore a mobile unit there are slight restrictions. Detaching and re-attaching all cables when changing locations is one of them but hardware limitations, too. After all, it's a laptop and not a workstation. I guess, that anyone working in IT (or ICT) has more than one machine at their workplace or their home office and at least I find it quite annoying to have multiple sets of keyboard and mouse conquering my remaining space on my desk. Despite the ugly looks of all those cables and whatsoever 'chaos of distraction' I prefer a more clean solution and working environment. This allows me to actually focus on my work and tasks to do rather than to worry about choosing the right combination of keyboard/mouse. My current workplace is a patch work of various pieces of hardware (approx. 2-3 years): DIY desktop on Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit, Core2 Duo (E7400, 2.8GHz), 4GB RAM, 2x 250GB HDD, nVidia GPU 512MB Dell Inspiron 1525 on Windows 8 64-bit, 4GB RAM, 200GB HDD HP Compaq 6720s on Windows Vista 32-bit, Core2 Duo (T5670, 1.8GHz), 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD Mac mini on Mac OS X 10.7, Core i5 (2.3 GHz), 2GB RAM, 500GB HDD I know... Not the latest and greatest but a decent combination to work with. New system(s) is/are already on the shopping list but I live in the 'wrong' country to buy computer hardware. So, the next trip abroad will provide me with some new stuff. Using multiple operating systems The list of hardware above already names different operating systems, and actually I have only one preference: Linux. But still my job as a software craftsman for Visual FoxPro and .NET development requires other OSes, too. Not a big deal, it's just like this. Additionally to those physical machines, there are a bunch of virtual machines around. Most of them running either Windows XP or Windows 7. Since years I have the practice that each development for one customer is isolated into its own virtual machine and environment. This keeps it clean and version-safe. But as you can easily imagine with that setup there are a couple of constraints referring to keyboard and mouse. Usually, those systems require their own pieces of hardware attached. As stated, I don't like clutter on my desk's surface, so a cross-platform solution has to come in here. In the past, I tried it with various applications, hardware or network protocols like X11, RDP, NX, TeamViewer, RAdmin, KVM switch, etc. but the problem in this case is that they either allow you to remotely connect to the other system or exclusively 'bind' your peripherals to the active system. Not optimal after all. Synergy to the rescue Quote from their website: "Synergy lets you easily share your mouse and keyboard between multiple computers on your desk, and it's Free and Open Source. Just move your mouse off the edge of one computer's screen on to another. You can even share all of your clipboards. All you need is a network connection. Synergy is cross-platform (works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux)." Yep, that's it! All I need for my setup here... Actually, I couldn't believe it myself that I didn't stumble over synergy earlier but 'Get over it' and there we go. And despite the fact that it is Open Source, no, it's also for free. Donations for the developers are very welcome and recently they introduced Synergy Premium. A possibility to buy so-called premium votes that can be used to put more weight / importance on specific issues or bugs that you would like the developers to look into. Installation and configuration Simply download the installation packages for your systems of choice, run the installer and enter some minor information about your network setup. I chose my desktop machine for the role of the Synergy server and configured my screen setup as follows: The screen setup allows you currently to build or connect up to 15 machines. The number of screens can be higher as those machine might have multiple screens physically attached. Synergy takes this into the overall calculations and simply works as expected. I tried it for fun with a second monitor each connected to both laptops to have a total number of 6 active screens. No flaws after all - stunning! All the other machines are configured as clients like so: Side note: The screenshot was taken on Windows 8 and pasted via clipboard into Gimp running on Ubuntu. Resume Synergy is now definitely in my box of tools for my daily work, and amongst the first pieces of software I install after the operating system. It just simplifies my life and cleans my desk. Never again without Synergy!Now, only waiting for an Android version to integrate my Galaxy Tab 10.1, too. ;-) Please, check out that superb product and enjoy sharing one keyboard, one mouse and one clipboard between your various machines and operating systems.

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• XNA - Use Mouse To Rotate & Arrow Keys To Scroll A Linearly Wrapped Texture:

  - by The Thing

  Using XNA I'm working on my first, relatively simple, videogame for the PC. At the moment my game window is 1024 X 768 and I have a 'Starfield' linearly wrapped background texture 1280 X 1280 in size whose origin has been set to its center point (width / 2, height / 2). This texture is drawn onscreen using (graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth / 2, graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight / 2) to place the origin in the center of the window. I want to be able to use the horizontal movement of the mouse to rotate my texture left or right and use the arrow keys to scroll the texture in four directions. From my own related coding experiments I have found that once I rotate the texture it no longer scrolls in the direction I want, it's as if somehow the XNA framework's 'sense of direction' has been 'rotated' along with the texture. As an example of what I've described above lets say I rotate the texture 45 degrees to the right, then pressing the up arrow key results in the texture scrolling diagonally from top-right to bottom-left. This is not what I want, regardless of the degree or direction of rotation I want my texture to scroll straight up, straight down, or to the left or right depending on which arrow key was pressed. How do I go about accomplishing this? Any help or guidance is appreciated. To finish up there are two points I'd like to clarify: [1] The reason I'm using linear wrapping on my starfield texture is that it gives a nice impression of an endless starfield. [2] Using a texture at least 1280 X 1280 in conjunction with a game window of 1024 X 768 means that at no point in it's rotation will the edges of the texture become visible. Thanks for reading..... Update # 1 - as requested by RCIX: The code below is what I was referring to earlier when I mentioned 'related coding experiments'. As you can see I am scrolling a linearly wrapped texture in the direction I've moved the mouse relative to the center of the screen. This works perfectly if I don't rotate the texture, but once I do rotate it the direction of the scrolling gets messed up for some reason. public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; SpriteBatch spriteBatch; int x; int y; float z = 250f; Texture2D Overlay; Texture2D RotatingBackground; Rectangle? sourceRectangle; Color color; float rotation; Vector2 ScreenCenter; Vector2 Origin; Vector2 scale; Vector2 Direction; SpriteEffects effects; float layerDepth; public Game1() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; } protected override void Initialize() { graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth = 1024; graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight = 768; graphics.ApplyChanges(); Direction = Vector2.Zero; IsMouseVisible = true; ScreenCenter = new Vector2(graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth / 2, graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight / 2); Mouse.SetPosition((int)graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth / 2, (int)graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight / 2); sourceRectangle = null; color = Color.White; rotation = 0.0f; scale = new Vector2(1.0f, 1.0f); effects = SpriteEffects.None; layerDepth = 1.0f; base.Initialize(); } protected override void LoadContent() { spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); Overlay = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Overlay"); RotatingBackground = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Background"); Origin = new Vector2((int)RotatingBackground.Width / 2, (int)RotatingBackground.Height / 2); } protected override void UnloadContent() { } protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { float timePassed = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; MouseState ms = Mouse.GetState(); Vector2 MousePosition = new Vector2(ms.X, ms.Y); Direction = ScreenCenter - MousePosition; if (Direction != Vector2.Zero) { Direction.Normalize(); } x += (int)(Direction.X * z * timePassed); y += (int)(Direction.Y * z * timePassed); //No rotation = texture scrolls as intended, With rotation = texture no longer scrolls in the direction of the mouse. My update method needs to somehow compensate for this. //rotation += 0.01f; base.Update(gameTime); } protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Deferred, null, SamplerState.LinearWrap, null, null); spriteBatch.Draw(RotatingBackground, ScreenCenter, new Rectangle(x, y, RotatingBackground.Width, RotatingBackground.Height), color, rotation, Origin, scale, effects, layerDepth); spriteBatch.Draw(Overlay, Vector2.Zero, Color.White); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } }

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• "Guiding" a Domain Expert to Retire from Programming

  - by James Kolpack

  I've got a friend who does IT at a local non-profit where they're using a custom web application which is no longer supported by the company who built it. (out of business, support was too expensive, I'm not sure...) Development on this app started around 10+ years ago so the technologies being harnessed are pretty out of date now - classic asp using vbscript and SQL Server 2000. The application domain is in the realm of government bookkeeping - so even though the development team is long gone, there are often new requirements of this software. Enter the... The domain expert. This is an middle aged accounting whiz without much (or any?) prior development experience. He studied the pages, code and queries and learned how to ape the style of the original team which, believe me, is mediocre at best. He's very clever and very tenacious but has no experience in software beyond what he's picked up from this app. Otherwise, he's a pleasant guy to talk to and definitely knows his domain. My friend in IT, and probably his superiors in the company, want him out of the code. They view him as wasting his expertise on coding tasks he shouldn't be doing. My friend got me involved with a few small contracts which I handled without much problem - other than somewhat of a communication barrier with the domain expert. He explained the requirements very quickly, assuming prior knowledge of the domain which I do not have. This is partially his normal style, and I think maybe a bit of resentment from my involvement. So, I think he feels like the owner of the code and has entrenched himself in a development position. So... his coding technique. One of his latest endeavors was to make a page that only he could reach (theoretically - the security model for the system is wretched) where he can enter a raw SQL query, run it, and save the query to run again later. A report that I worked on had been originally implemented by him using 6 distinct queries, 3 or 4 temp tables to coordinate the data between the queries, and the final result obtained by importing the data from the final query into Access and doing a pivot and some formatting. It worked - well, some of the results were incorrect - but at what a cost! (I implemented the report in a single query with at least 1/10th the amount of code.) He edits code in notepad. He doesn't seem to know about online reference material for the languages. I recently read an article on Dr. Dobbs titled "What Makes Bad Programmers Different" - and instantly thought of our domain expert. From the article: Their code is large, messy, and bug laden. They have very superficial knowledge of their problem domain and their tools. Their code has a lot of copy/paste and they have very little interest in techniques that reduce it. The fail to account for edge cases, while inefficiently dealing with the general case. They never have time to comment their code or break it into smaller pieces. Empirical evidence plays no little role in their decisions. 5.5 out of 6. My friend is wanting me to argue the case to their management - specifically, I got this email from their manager to respond to: ...Also, I need to talk to you about what effect there is from Domain Expert continuing to make edits to the live environment. If that is a problem for you I need to know so I can have his access blocked. Some examples would help. In my opinion, from a technical standpoint, it's dangerous to have him making changes without any oversight. On the other hand, I'm just doing one-off contracts at this point and don't have much desire to get involved deeply enough that I'm essentially arguing as one of the Bobs from Office Space. I'd like to help my friend out - but I feel like I'm getting in the middle of a political battle. More importantly - if I do get involved and suggest that his editing privileges be removed, it needs to be handled carefully so that doesn't feel belittled. He is beyond a doubt the foremost expert on this system. I'm hoping this is familiar territory for some other stackechangers, because I'm feeling a little bewildered. How should I respond? Should I argue that he shouldn't be allowed to touch the code? Should I phrase it as "no single developer, no matter how experienced, should be working on production code unchecked"? Should I argue to keep him involved with the code, but with a review process? Should I say "glad I could help, but uh, I'm busy now!" Other options? Thanks a bunch!

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• Lessons learnt in implementing Scrum in a Large Organization that has traditional values

  - by MarkPearl

  I recently had the experience of being involved in a “test” scrum implementation in a large organization that was used to a traditional project management approach. Here are some lessons that I learnt from it. Don’t let the Project Manager be the Product Owner First lesson learnt is to identify the correct product owner – in this instance the product manager assumed the role of the product owner which was a mistake. The product owner is the one who has the most to loose if the project fails. With a methodology that advocates removing the role of the project manager from the process then it is not in the interests of the person who is employed as a project manager to be the product owner – in fact they have the most to gain should the project fail. Know the time commitments of team members to the Project Second lesson learnt is to get a firm time commitment of the members on a team for the sprint and to hold them to it. In this project instance many of the issues we faced were with team members having to double up on supporting existing projects/systems and the scrum project. In many situations they just didn’t get round to doing any work on the scrum project for several days while they tried to meet other commitments. Initially this was not made transparent to the team – in stand up team members would say that had done some work but would be very vague on how much time they had actually spent using the blackhole of their other legacy projects as an excuse – putting up a time burn down chart made time allocations transparent and easy to hold the team to. In addition, how can you plan for a sprint without knowing the actual time available of the members – when I mean actual time, the exercise of getting them to go through all their appointments and lunch times and breaks and removing them from their time commitment helps get you to a realistic time that they can dedicate. Make sure you meet your minimum team sizes In a recent post I wrote about the difference between a partnership and a team. If you are going to do scrum in a large organization make sure you have a minimum team size of at least 3 developers. My experience with larger organizations is that people have a tendency to be sick more, take more leave and generally not be around – if you have a team size of two it is so easy to loose momentum on the project – the more people you have in the team (up to about 9) the more the momentum the project will have when people are not around. Swapping from one methodology to another can seem as waste to the customer It sounds bad, but most customers don’t care what methodology you use. Often they have bought into the “big plan upfront”. If you can, avoid taking a project on midstream from a traditional approach unless the customer has not bought into the process – with this particular project they had a detailed upfront planning breakaway with the customer using the traditional approach and then before the project started we moved onto a scrum implementation – this seemed as waste to the customer. We should have managed the customers expectation properly. Don’t play the role of the scrum master if you can’t be the scrum master With this particular implementation I was the “scrum master”. But all I did was go through the process of the formal meetings of scrum – I attended stand up, retrospectives and planning – but I was not hands on the ground. I was not performing the most important role of removing blockages – and by the end of the project there were a number of blockages “cropping up”. What could have been a better approach was to take someone on the team and train them to be the scrum master and be present to coach them. Alternatively actually be on the team on a fulltime basis and be the scrum master. By just going through the meetings of scrum didn’t mean we were doing scrum. So we failed with this one, if you fail look at it from an agile perspective As this particular project drew to a close and it became more and more apparent that it was not going to succeed the failure of it became depressing. Emotions were expressed by various people on the team that we not encouraging and enforced the failure. Embracing the failure and looking at it for what it is instead of taking it as the end of the world can change how you grow from the experience. Acknowledging that it failed and then focussing on learning from why and how to avoid the failure in the future can change how you feel emotionally about the team, the project and the organization.

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• Reading the tea leaves from Windows Azure support

  - by jamiet

  A few idle thoughts… Three months ago I had an issue regarding Windows Azure where I was unable to login to the management portal. At the time I contacted Azure support, the issue was soon resolved and I thought no more about it. Until today that is when I received an email from Azure support providing a detailed analysis of the root cause, the fix and moreover precise details about when and where things occurred. The email itself is interesting and I have included the entirety of it below. A few things were interesting to me: The level of detail and the diligence in investigating and reporting the issue I found really rather impressive. They even outline the number of users that were affected (127 in case you can’t be bothered reading). Compare this to the quite pathetic support that another division within Microsoft, Skype, provided to Greg Low recently: Skype support and dead parrot sketches   This line: “Windows Azure performed a planned change from using the Microsoft account service (formerly Windows Live ID) to the Azure Active Directory (AAD) as its primary authentication mechanism on August 24th. This change was made to enable future innovation in the area of authentication – particularly for organizationally owned identities, identity federation, stronger authentication methods and compliance certification. ” I also found to be particularly interesting. I have long thought that one of the reasons Microsoft has proved to be such a money-making machine in the enterprise is because they provide the infrastructure and then upsell on top of that – and nothing is more infrastructural than Active Directory. It has struck me of late that they are trying to make the same play of late in the cloud by tying all their services into Azure Active Directory and here we see a clear indication of that by making AAD the authentication mechanism for anyone using Windows Azure. I get the feeling that we’re going to hear much much more about AAD in the future; isn’t it about time we could log on to SQL Azure Windows Azure SQL Database without resorting to SQL authentication, for example? And why do Microsoft have two identity providers – Microsoft Account (aka Windows Live ID) and AAD – isn’t it about time those things were combined? As I said, just some idle thoughts. Below is the transcript of the email if you are interested. @Jamiet  This is regarding the support request <redacted> where in you were not able to login into the windows azure management portal with live id. We are providing you with the summary, root cause analysis and information about permanent fix: Incident Title: You were unable to access Windows Azure Portal after Microsoft Account to Azure Active Directory account Migration. Service Impacted: Management Portal Incident Start Date and Time: 8/24/2012 4:30:00 PM Date and Time Service was Restored: 10/17/2012 12:00:00 AM Summary: Windows Azure performed a planned change from using the Microsoft account service (formerly Windows Live ID) to the Azure Active Directory (AAD) as its primary authentication mechanism on August 24th.   This change was made to enable future innovation in the area of authentication – particularly for organizationally owned identities, identity federation, stronger authentication methods and compliance certification.   While this migration was largely transparent to Windows Azure users, a small number of users whose sign-in names were part of a Windows Live Custom Domain were unable to login.   This incompatibility was not discovered during the Quality Assurance testing phase prior to the migration. Customer Impact: Customers whose sign-in names were part of a Windows Live Custom Domain were unable to sign-in the Management Portal after ~4:00 p.m. PST on August 24th, 2012.   We determined that the issue did impact at least 127 users in 98 of these Windows Live Custom Domains and had a maximum potential impact of 1,110 users in total. Root Cause: The root cause of the issue was an incompatibility in the AAD authentication service to handle logins from Microsoft accounts whose sign-in names were part of a Windows Live Custom Domains.  This issue was not discovered during the Quality Assurance testing phase prior to the migration from Microsoft Account (MSA) to AAD. Mitigations: The issue was mitigated for the majority of affected users by 8:20 a.m. PST on August 25th, 2012 by running some internal scripts to correct many known Windows Live Custom Domains.   The remaining affected domains fell into two categories: Windows Live Custom Domains that were not corrected by 8/25/2012. An additional 48 Windows Live Custom Domains were fixed in the weeks following the incident within 2 business days after the AAD team received an escalation from product support regarding those accounts. Windows Live Custom domains that were also provisioned in Office365. Some of the affected Windows Live Custom Domains had already been provisioned in AAD because their owners signed up for Office365 which is a service that also uses AAD.   In these cases the Azure customers had to work around the issue by renaming their Microsoft Account or using a different Microsoft Account to administer their Azure subscription. Permanent Fix: The Azure Active Directory team permanently fixed the issue for all customers on 10/17/2012 in an upgraded release of the AAD service.

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• Waiting for Windows 8: A Long, Hot Summer

  - by andrewbrust

  Microsoft has revealed some things about Windows 8, and revealed a part of the developer story for new Windows 8 “tailored,” “immersive” applications.  In retrospect, very little was shared.  The bit that was revealed to us is that those applications can be developed using a combination of HTML 5 and JavaScript.  Not much else was said, except that additional details would be revealed at Microsoft’s //Build/ conference in Anaheim, California in September. This has left a lot of people in suspense, and it seems that suspended state is going to last all summer.  The problem, of course, is that in the absence of hard information, people fill the void with Speculation, Rumor and Gloom.  That’s a bit like Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, except that it’s self-imposed by the Microsoft community and not planted by Microsoft’s competitors. This is a less-than-perfect situation.  Not only is it causing developers to worry about the value of their skill sets, but I am already hearing from consulting shops that customers are getting nervous too and, in extreme cases, opting for non-Microsoft tools for their projects as a result.  I’m also hearing from dev tool ISVs that sales have suffered as a result. It’s quite possible that the customers moving off .NET wanted to do so anyway and it’s also possible that dev tool ISVs are suffering slower sales this year due a slowed rate of economic recovery. Without hard information, tend to people interpret things negatively.  Actually, that’s the major point in all of this. While there is multitude of opinions about what the Windows 8 development platform will look like once fully revealed, there is an emerging consensus around one thing: it sure would help if Microsoft revealed more of its strategy…just enough to quash absurd rumors, stabilize the .NET ecosystem and get people to stay calm. We’ve had some reassurances thus far: there will be a Windows desktop mode; we’ll still have Windows Explorer, we’ll still run Office, we’ll still have a task bar, and all the skills and tools we use now will still work there.  But with reassurances like that…people still feel insecure.  Because telling us that Windows 8 will have what is essentially a “classic” mode sure makes it sound like today’s skill sets will soon be “classic” too…and then maybe they’ll just become obsolete. Humans find change scary; it’s natural.  And when left alone with their fears – because no one is saying anything to dispel them – people can go from frightened to paranoid, and can start to viewing things in a downright conspiratorial light.  It would be great if Microsoft stepped into the void now and told us what is coming – especially because whatever they tell us is bound to be at least a little better than what people think they are going to hear. I don’t know what the announcements will be, but I do have it on authority, from a number of sources, that Microsoft isn’t gong to talk until //Build/.  That means no news until September September 13th.  Nothing until after Labor Day.  You get zippo until after the Back-to-School sales are done. What to do?  Try not to let the dark voices of gloom and doom fill your head.  Even in the absence of answers, we still have some important facts: The .NET developer community is huge. Microsoft’s customers have major investments in .NET, and in .NET skills. Political infighting in Redmond might make for irrational decisions, but ultimately public companies can’t just alienate their advocates and piss off their customers.  Spite doesn’t trump fiduciary responsibility. The computing device markets are changing, software is changing, software business models are changing and developers are changing.  Microsoft has to keep up. The HTML + JavaScript community is huge too, and it includes many of the “changed” developers. Public companies can’t ignore new markets nor the popular standards that can help them enter those new markets.  Loyalty doesn’t trump fiduciary responsibility either. If Microsoft can appeal to new developers, then it should. If Microsoft can keep catering to its existing developers and customers -- not just through legacy support, but also through empowering futures -- then it probably will. You don’t have to shove your old friends out into the rain to make room for new ones; you can bring those new constituents in under a bigger tent.  I hope Microsoft will enlarge the tent, and I have trouble imagining why it would not.

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• Efficient way to render tile-based map in Java

  - by Lucius

  Some time ago I posted here because I was having some memory issues with a game I'm working on. That has been pretty much solved thanks to some suggestions here, so I decided to come back with another problem I'm having. Basically, I feel that too much of the CPU is being used when rendering the map. I have a Core i5-2500 processor and when running the game, the CPU usage is about 35% - and I can't accept that that's just how it has to be. This is how I'm going about rendering the map: I have the X and Y coordinates of the player, so I'm not drawing the whole map, just the visible portion of it; The number of visible tiles on screen varies according to the resolution chosen by the player (the CPU usage is 35% here when playing at a resolution of 1440x900); If the tile is "empty", I just skip drawing it (this didn't visibly lower the CPU usage, but reduced the drawing time in about 20ms); The map is composed of 5 layers - for more details; The tiles are 32x32 pixels; And just to be on the safe side, I'll post the code for drawing the game here, although it's as messy and unreadable as it can be T_T (I'll try to make it a little readable) private void drawGame(Graphics2D g2d){ //Width and Height of the visible portion of the map (not of the screen) int visionWidht = visibleCols * TILE_SIZE; int visionHeight = visibleRows * TILE_SIZE; //Since the map can be smaller than the screen, I center it just to be sure int xAdjust = (getWidth() - visionWidht) / 2; int yAdjust = (getHeight() - visionHeight) / 2; //This "deducedX" thing is to move the map a few pixels horizontally, since the player moves by pixels and not full tiles int playerDrawX = listOfCharacters.get(0).getX(); int deducedX = 0; if (listOfCharacters.get(0).currentCol() - visibleCols / 2 >= 0) { playerDrawX = visibleCols / 2 * TILE_SIZE; map_draw_col = listOfCharacters.get(0).currentCol() - visibleCols / 2; deducedX = listOfCharacters.get(0).getXCol(); } //"deducedY" is the same deal as "deducedX", but vertically int playerDrawY = listOfCharacters.get(0).getY(); int deducedY = 0; if (listOfCharacters.get(0).currentRow() - visibleRows / 2 >= 0) { playerDrawY = visibleRows / 2 * TILE_SIZE; map_draw_row = listOfCharacters.get(0).currentRow() - visibleRows / 2; deducedY = listOfCharacters.get(0).getYRow(); } int max_cols = visibleCols + map_draw_col; if (max_cols >= map.getCols()) { max_cols = map.getCols() - 1; deducedX = 0; map_draw_col = max_cols - visibleCols + 1; playerDrawX = listOfCharacters.get(0).getX() - map_draw_col * TILE_SIZE; } int max_rows = visibleRows + map_draw_row; if (max_rows >= map.getRows()) { max_rows = map.getRows() - 1; deducedY = 0; map_draw_row = max_rows - visibleRows + 1; playerDrawY = listOfCharacters.get(0).getY() - map_draw_row * TILE_SIZE; } //map_draw_row and map_draw_col representes the coordinate of the upper left tile on the screen //iterate through all the tiles on screen and draw them - this is what consumes most of the CPU for (int col = map_draw_col; col <= max_cols; col++) { for (int row = map_draw_row; row <= max_rows; row++) { Tile[] tiles = map.getTiles(col, row); for(int layer = 0; layer < tiles.length; layer++){ Tile currentTile = tiles[layer]; boolean shouldDraw = true; //I only draw the tile if it exists and is not empty (id=-1) if(currentTile != null && currentTile.getId() >= 0){ //The layers above 1 can be draw behing or infront of the player according to where it's standing if(layer > 1 && currentTile.getId() >= 0){ if(playerBehind(col, row, layer, listOfCharacters.get(0))){ behinds.get(0).add(new int[]{col, row}); //the tiles that are infront of the player wont be draw right now shouldDraw = false; } } if(shouldDraw){ g2d.drawImage( tiles[layer].getImage(), (col-map_draw_col)*TILE_SIZE - deducedX + xAdjust, (row-map_draw_row)*TILE_SIZE - deducedY + yAdjust, null); } } } } } } There's some more code in this method but nothing relevant to this question. Basically, the biggest problem is that I iterate over around 5000 tiles (in this specific resolution) 60 times each second. I thought about rendering the visible portion of the map once and storing it into a BufferedImage and when the player moved move the whole image the same amount but to the opposite side and then drawn the tiles that appeared on the screen, but if I do it like that, I wont be able to have animated tiles (at least I think). That being said, any suggestions?

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• Tip #19 Module Private Visibility in OSGi

  - by ByronNevins

  I hate public and protected methods and classes.  It requires so much work to change them in a huge project like GlassFish.  Not to mention that you may well have to support those APIs forever.  They are highly overused in GlassFish.  In fact I'd bet that > 95% of classes are marked as public for no good reason.  It's just (bad) habit is my guess. private and default visibility (I call it package-private) is easier to maintain.  It is much much easier to change such classes and methods around.  If you have ANY public method or public class in GlassFish you'll need to grep through a tremendous amount of source code to find all callers.  But even that won't be theoretically reliable.  What if a caller is using reflection to access public methods?  You may never find such usages. If you have package private methods, it's easy.  Simply grep through all the code in that one package.  As long as that package compiles ok you're all set.  There can' be any compile errors anywhere else.  It's a waste of time to even look around or build the "outside" world.  So you may be thinking: "Aha!  I'll just make my module have one giant package with all the java files.  Then I can use the default visibility and maintenance will be much easier.  But there's a problem.  You are wasting a very nice feature of java -- organizing code into separate packages.  It also makes the code much more encapsulated.  Unfortunately to share code between the packages you have no choice but to declare public visibility. What happens in practice is that a module ends up having tons of public classes and methods that are used exclusively inside the module.  Which finally brings me to the point of this blog:  If Only There Was A Module-Private Visibility Available Well, surprise!  There is such a mechanism.  If your project is running under OSGi that is.  Like GlassFish does!  With this mechanism you can easily add another level of visibility by telling OSGi exactly which public you want to be exposed outside of the module.  You get the best of both worlds: Better encapsulation of your code so that maintenance is easier and productivity is increased. Usage of public visibility inside the module so that you can encapsulate intra-module better with packages. How I do this in GlassFish: Carefully plan out at least one package that will contain "true" publics.  This is the package that will be exported by OSGi.  I recommend just one package. Here is how to tell OSGi to use it in GlassFish -- edit osgi.bundle like so:-exportcontents:     org.glassfish.mymodule.truepublics;  version=${project.osgi.version} Now all publics declared in any other packages will be visible module-wide but not outside the module. There is one caveat: Accessing "module-private" items outside of the module is controlled at run-time, not compile-time.  The compiler has no clue that a public in a dependent module isn't really public.  it will happily compile it.  At runtime you will definitely see fireworks.  The good news is that you don't have to wait for the code path that tries to use the "module-private" items to fire.  OSGi will complain loudly when that module gets loaded.  OSGi will refuse to load it.  You will see an error like this: remote failure: Error while loading FOO: Exception while adding the new configuration : Error occurred during deployment: Exception while loading the app : org.osgi.framework.BundleException: Unresolved constraint in bundle com.oracle.glassfish.miscreant.code [115]: Unable to resolve 115.0: missing requirement [115.0] osgi.wiring.package; (osgi.wiring.package=org.glassfish.mymodule.unexported). Please see server.log for more details. That is if you accidentally change code in module B to use a public that is really a "module-private" in module A, then you will see the error immediately when you try to test whatever you were changing in module B.

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• Battery life starts at 2:30 hrs (99%), but less than 1 minute later is only 1:30 hrs (99%)

  - by zondu

  After searching this and other forums, I haven't seen this same issue listed anywhere for Ubuntu 12. Prior to installing Ubuntu 12.10, my Netbook (Acer AspireOne D250, SATA HDD) was consistently getting 2:30-3 hrs battery life under Windows XP Home, SP3. However, immediately after installing Ubuntu 12.10, the battery life starts out at 2:30 hrs (99%), but less than 1 minute later suddenly drops to 1:30 hrs (99%), which seems very odd. It could be a complete coincidence that the battery is suddenly flaky at the exact same moment that Ubuntu 12.10 was installed, but that doesn't seem likely. I'm a newbie to Ubuntu, so I don't have much experience tweaking/trouble-shooting yet. Here's what I've tried so far: enabled laptop mode (sudo su, then echo 5 /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode) and checked that it is running when the A/C adapter is unplugged, but it doesn't seem to have made any noticeable difference in battery life, installed Jupiter, but it didn't work and messed up the system, so I had to uninstall it, disabled bluetooth (wifi is still on b/c it is necessary), set the screen to lowest brightness, etc., run through at least 1 full power cycle (running until the netbook shut itself off due to critical battery) and have been using it normally (sometimes plugged in, often unplugged until the battery gets very low) for a week since installing Ubuntu 12.10. installed powertop, but have no idea how to interpret its results. Here are the results of acpi -b: w/ A/C adapter: Battery 0: Full, 100% immediately after unplugging: Battery 0: Discharging, 99%, 02:30:20 remaining 1 minute after unplugging: Battery 0: Discharging, 99%, 01:37:49 remaining 2-3 minutes after unplugging: Battery 0: Discharging, 95%, 01:33:01 remaining 10 minutes after unplugging: Battery 0: Discharging, 85%, 01:13:38 remaining Results of cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/uevent: w/ A/C adapter: POWER_SUPPLY_NAME=BAT0 POWER_SUPPLY_STATUS=Full POWER_SUPPLY_PRESENT=1 POWER_SUPPLY_TECHNOLOGY=Li-ion POWER_SUPPLY_CYCLE_COUNT=0 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_MIN_DESIGN=10800000 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_NOW=12136000 POWER_SUPPLY_CURRENT_NOW=773000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL_DESIGN=4500000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL=1956000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_NOW=1956000 POWER_SUPPLY_MODEL_NAME=UM08B32 POWER_SUPPLY_MANUFACTURER=SANYO POWER_SUPPLY_SERIAL_NUMBER= immediately after unplugging: POWER_SUPPLY_NAME=BAT0 POWER_SUPPLY_STATUS=Discharging POWER_SUPPLY_PRESENT=1 POWER_SUPPLY_TECHNOLOGY=Li-ion POWER_SUPPLY_CYCLE_COUNT=0 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_MIN_DESIGN=10800000 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_NOW=11886000 POWER_SUPPLY_CURRENT_NOW=773000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL_DESIGN=4500000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL=1956000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_NOW=1937000 POWER_SUPPLY_MODEL_NAME=UM08B32 POWER_SUPPLY_MANUFACTURER=SANYO POWER_SUPPLY_SERIAL_NUMBER= 1 minute later: POWER_SUPPLY_NAME=BAT0 POWER_SUPPLY_STATUS=Discharging POWER_SUPPLY_PRESENT=1 POWER_SUPPLY_TECHNOLOGY=Li-ion POWER_SUPPLY_CYCLE_COUNT=0 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_MIN_DESIGN=10800000 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_NOW=11728000 POWER_SUPPLY_CURRENT_NOW=1174000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL_DESIGN=4500000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL=1956000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_NOW=1937000 POWER_SUPPLY_MODEL_NAME=UM08B32 POWER_SUPPLY_MANUFACTURER=SANYO POWER_SUPPLY_SERIAL_NUMBER= 2-3 minutes later: POWER_SUPPLY_NAME=BAT0 POWER_SUPPLY_STATUS=Discharging POWER_SUPPLY_PRESENT=1 POWER_SUPPLY_TECHNOLOGY=Li-ion POWER_SUPPLY_CYCLE_COUNT=0 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_MIN_DESIGN=10800000 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_NOW=11583000 POWER_SUPPLY_CURRENT_NOW=1209000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL_DESIGN=4500000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL=1956000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_NOW=1878000 POWER_SUPPLY_MODEL_NAME=UM08B32 POWER_SUPPLY_MANUFACTURER=SANYO POWER_SUPPLY_SERIAL_NUMBER= 10 minutes later: POWER_SUPPLY_NAME=BAT0 POWER_SUPPLY_STATUS=Discharging POWER_SUPPLY_PRESENT=1 POWER_SUPPLY_TECHNOLOGY=Li-ion POWER_SUPPLY_CYCLE_COUNT=0 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_MIN_DESIGN=10800000 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_NOW=11230000 POWER_SUPPLY_CURRENT_NOW=1239000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL_DESIGN=4500000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL=1956000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_NOW=1644000 POWER_SUPPLY_MODEL_NAME=UM08B32 POWER_SUPPLY_MANUFACTURER=SANYO POWER_SUPPLY_SERIAL_NUMBER= Results of upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0: w/ A/C adapter: native-path: /sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:02/PNP0C0A:00/power_supply/BAT0 vendor: SANYO model: UM08B32 power supply: yes updated: Tue Nov 27 15:24:58 2012 (823 seconds ago) has history: yes has statistics: yes battery present: yes rechargeable: yes state: fully-charged energy: 21.1248 Wh energy-empty: 0 Wh energy-full: 21.1248 Wh energy-full-design: 48.6 Wh energy-rate: 8.3484 W voltage: 12.173 V percentage: 100% capacity: 43.4667% technology: lithium-ion immediately after unplugging: native-path: /sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:02/PNP0C0A:00/power_supply/BAT0 vendor: SANYO model: UM08B32 power supply: yes updated: Tue Nov 27 15:41:25 2012 (1 seconds ago) has history: yes has statistics: yes battery present: yes rechargeable: yes state: discharging energy: 20.9196 Wh energy-empty: 0 Wh energy-full: 21.1248 Wh energy-full-design: 48.6 Wh energy-rate: 8.3484 W voltage: 11.86 V time to empty: 2.5 hours percentage: 99.0286% capacity: 43.4667% technology: lithium-ion History (charge): 1354023683 99.029 discharging 1 minute later: native-path: /sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:02/PNP0C0A:00/power_supply/BAT0 vendor: SANYO model: UM08B32 power supply: yes updated: Tue Nov 27 15:42:31 2012 (17 seconds ago) has history: yes has statistics: yes battery present: yes rechargeable: yes state: discharging energy: 20.9196 Wh energy-empty: 0 Wh energy-full: 21.1248 Wh energy-full-design: 48.6 Wh energy-rate: 13.5432 W voltage: 11.753 V time to empty: 1.5 hours percentage: 99.0286% capacity: 43.4667% technology: lithium-ion History (charge): 1354023683 99.029 discharging History (rate): 1354023751 13.543 discharging 2-3 minutes later: native-path: /sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:02/PNP0C0A:00/power_supply/BAT0 vendor: SANYO model: UM08B32 power supply: yes updated: Tue Nov 27 15:45:06 2012 (20 seconds ago) has history: yes has statistics: yes battery present: yes rechargeable: yes state: discharging energy: 20.2824 Wh energy-empty: 0 Wh energy-full: 21.1248 Wh energy-full-design: 48.6 Wh energy-rate: 13.7484 W voltage: 11.545 V time to empty: 1.5 hours percentage: 96.0123% capacity: 43.4667% technology: lithium-ion History (charge): 1354023906 96.012 discharging 1354023844 97.035 discharging History (rate): 1354023906 13.748 discharging 1354023875 12.992 discharging 1354023844 13.284 discharging 10 minutes later: native-path: /sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:02/PNP0C0A:00/power_supply/BAT0 vendor: SANYO model: UM08B32 power supply: yes updated: Tue Nov 27 15:54:24 2012 (28 seconds ago) has history: yes has statistics: yes battery present: yes rechargeable: yes state: discharging energy: 18.1764 Wh energy-empty: 0 Wh energy-full: 21.1248 Wh energy-full-design: 48.6 Wh energy-rate: 13.2948 W voltage: 11.268 V time to empty: 1.4 hours percentage: 86.0429% capacity: 43.4667% technology: lithium-ion History (charge): 1354024433 86.043 discharging History (rate): 1354024464 13.295 discharging 1354024433 13.662 discharging 1354024402 13.781 discharging I noticed that between #2 and #3 (0 and 1 minutes after unplugging), while the battery still reports 99% charge and drops from 2:30 hr to 1:30 hr, the energy usage goes from 8.34 W to 13.54 W and the current_now increases, but shouldn't it be using less energy in battery mode since the screen is much dimmer and it's in power saving mode? (or is that normal behavior?) It also seems to drain more quickly than what it predicts, especially with the 1-1.25 hour drop in the first minute of being unplugged, which seems odd. What really concerns me is that Ubuntu 12.10 may not be properly managing the battery (with the sudden change in charge/life from 2:30 to 1:30 or 1:15 within a minute of unplugging), and that a new battery may quickly die under Ubuntu 12.10. I'd greatly appreciate any advice/suggestions on what to do, and especially whether there's a way to get back the 1-1.5 hrs of battery life that were suddenly lost when changing from WinXp to Ubuntu 12.10. Thanks :)

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• No More NCrunch For Me

  - by Steve Wilkes

  When I opened up Visual Studio this morning, I was greeted with this little popup: NCrunch is a Visual Studio add-in which runs your tests while you work so you know if and when you've broken anything, as well as providing coverage indicators in the IDE and coverage metrics on demand. It recently went commercial (which I thought was fair enough), and time is running out for the free version I've been using for the last couple of months. From my experiences using NCrunch I'm going to let it expire, and go about my business without it. Here's why. Before I start, let me say that I think NCrunch is a good product, which is to say it's had a positive impact on my programming. I've used it to help test-drive a library I'm making right from the start of the project, and especially at the beginning it was very useful to have it run all my tests whenever I made a change. The first problem is that while that was cool to start with, it’s recently become a bit of a chore. Problems Running Tests NCrunch has two 'engine modes' in which it can run tests for you - it can run all your tests when you make a change, or it can figure out which tests were impacted and only run those. Unfortunately, it became clear pretty early on that that second option (which is marked as 'experimental') wasn't really working for me, so I had to have it run everything. With a smallish number of tests and while I was adding new features that was great, but I've now got 445 tests (still not exactly loads) and am more in a 'clean and tidy' mode where I know that a change I'm making will probably only affect a particular subset of the tests. With that in mind it's a bit of a drag sitting there after I make a change and having to wait for NCrunch to run everything. I could disable it and manually run the tests I know are impacted, but then what's the point of having NCrunch? If the 'impacted only' engine mode worked well this problem would go away, but that's not what I found. Secondly, what's wrong with this picture? I've got 445 tests, and NCrunch has queued 455 tests to run. So it's queued duplicate tests - in this quickly-screenshotted case 10, but I've seen the total queue get up over 600. If I'm already itchy waiting for it to run all my tests against a change I know only affects a few, I'm even itchier waiting for it to run a lot of them twice. Problems With Code Coverage NCrunch marks each line of code with a dot to say if it's covered by tests - a black dot says the line isn't covered, a red dot says it's covered but at least one of the covering tests is failing, and a green dot means all the covering tests pass. It also calculates coverage statistics for you. Unfortunately, there's a couple of flaws in the coverage. Firstly, it doesn't support ExcludeFromCodeCoverage attributes. This feature has been requested and I expect will be included in a later release, but right now it doesn't. So this: ...is counted as a non-covered line, and drags your coverage statistics down. Hmph. As well as that, coverage of certain types of code is missed. This: ...is definitely covered. I am 100% absolutely certain it is, by several tests. NCrunch doesn't pick it up, down go my coverage statistics. I've had NCrunch find genuinely uncovered code which I've been able to remove, and that's great, but what's the coverage percentage on this project? Umm... I don't know. Conclusion None of these are major, tool-crippling problems, and I expect NCrunch to get much better in future releases. The current version has some great features, like this: ...that's a line of code with a failing test covering it, and NCrunch can run that failing test and take me to that line exquisitely easily. That's awesome! I'd happily pay for a tool that can do that. But here's the thing: NCrunch (currently) costs $159 (about £100) for a personal licence and $289 (about £180) for a commercial one. I'm not sure which one I'd need as my project is a personal one which I'm intending to open-source, but I'm a professional, self-employed developer, but in any case - that seems like a lot of money for an imperfect tool. If it did everything it's advertised to do more or less perfectly I'd consider it, but it doesn't. So no more NCrunch for me.

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