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• Talks Submitted for Ann Arbor Day of .NET 2010

  - by PSteele

  Just submitted my session abstracts for Ann Arbor's Day of .NET 2010.   Getting up to speed with .NET 3.5 -- Just in time for 4.0! Yes, C# 4.0 is just around the corner.  But if you haven't had the chance to use C# 3.5 extensively, this session will start from the ground up with the new features of 3.5.  We'll assume everyone is coming from C# 2.0.  This session will show you the details of extension methods, partial methods and more.  We'll also show you how LINQ -- Language Integrated Query -- can help decrease your development time and increase your code's readability.  If time permits, we'll look at some .NET 4.0 features, but the goal is to get you up to speed on .NET 3.5.   Go Ahead and Mock Me! When testing specific parts of your application, there can be a lot of external dependencies required to make your tests work.  Writing fake or mock objects that act as stand-ins for the real dependencies can waste a lot of time.  This is where mocking frameworks come in.  In this session, Patrick Steele will introduce you to Rhino Mocks, a popular mocking framework for .NET.  You'll see how a mocking framework can make writing unit tests easier and leads to less brittle unit tests.   Inversion of Control: Who's got control and why is it being inverted? No doubt you've heard of "Inversion of Control".  If not, maybe you've heard the term "Dependency Injection"?  The two usually go hand-in-hand.  Inversion of Control (IoC) along with Dependency Injection (DI) helps simplify the connections and lifetime of all of the dependent objects in the software you write.  In this session, Patrick Steele will introduce you to the concepts of IoC and DI and will show you how to use a popular IoC container (Castle Windsor) to help simplify the way you build software and how your objects interact with each other. If you're interested in speaking, hurry up and get your submissions in!  The deadline is Monday, April 5th! Technorati Tags: .NET,Ann Arbor,Day of .NET

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• Round Table - Minimum Cost Algorithm

  - by 7Aces

  Problem Link - http://www.iarcs.org.in/zco2013/index.php/problems/ROUNDTABLE It's dinner time in Castle Camelot, and the fearsome Knights of the Round Table are clamouring for dessert. You, the chef, are in a soup. There are N knights, including King Arthur, each with a different preference for dessert, but you cannot afford to make desserts for all of them. You are given the cost of manufacturing each Knight's preferred dessert-since it is a round table, the list starts with the cost of King Arthur's dessert, and goes counter-clockwise. You decide to pick the cheapest desserts to make, such that for every pair of adjacent Knights, at least one gets his dessert. This will ensure that the Knights do not protest. What is the minimum cost of tonight's dinner, given this condition? I used the Dynamic Programming approach, considering the smallest of i-1 & i-2, & came up with the following code - #include<cstdio> #include<algorithm> using namespace std; int main() { int n,i,j,c,f; scanf("%d",&n); int k[n],m[n][2]; for(i=0;i<n;++i) scanf("%d",&k[i]); m[0][0]=k[0]; m[0][1]=0; m[1][0]=k[1]; m[1][1]=1; for(i=2;i<n;++i) { c=1000; for(j=i-2;j<i;++j) { if(m[j][0]<c) { c=m[j][0]; f=m[j][1];} } m[i][0]=c+k[i]; m[i][1]=f; } if(m[n-2][0]<m[n-1][0] && m[n-2][1]==0) printf("%d\n",m[n-2][0]); else printf("%d\n",m[n-1][0]); } I used the second dimension of the m array to store from which knight the given sequence started (1st or 2nd). I had to do this because of the case when m[n-2]<m[n-1] but the sequence started from knight 2, since that would create two adjacent knights without dessert. The problem arises because of the table's round shape. Now an anomaly arises when I consider the case - 2 1 1 2 1 2. The program gives an answer 5 when the answer should be 4, by picking the 1st, 3rd & 5th knight. At this point, I started to doubt my initial algorithm (approach) itself! Where did I go wrong?

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• Best of "The Moth" 2010

  - by Daniel Moth

  It is the time again (like in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) to look back at my blog for the past year and identify areas of interest that seem to be more prominent than others. After doing so, representative posts follow in my top 5 list (in random order). 1. This was the year where I had to move for the first time since 2004 my blog engine (blogger.com –> dasBlog), host provider (zen –> godaddy), web server technology and OS (apache on Linux –> IIS on Windows Server). My goal was not to break any permalinks or the look and feel of this website. A series of posts covered how I achieved that goal, culminating in a tool for others to use if they wanted to do the same: Tool to convert blogger.com content to dasBlog. Going forward I aim to be sharing more small code utilities like that one… 2. At work I am known for being fairly responsive on email, and more importantly never dropping email balls on the floor. This is due to my email processing system, which I shared here: Processing Email in Outlook. I will be sharing more tips with regards to making the best of the Office products. 3. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the year people will remember as the one where Microsoft finally fights back in the mobile space. Even though the new platform means my Windows Mobile book sales will dwindle :-), I am ecstatic about Windows Phone 7 both as a consumer and as a developer. On the release day, to get you started I shared the top 10 Windows Phone 7 developer resources. I will be sharing my tips from my experience in writing code for and consuming this new platform… 4. For my HPC developer friends using Visual Studio, I shared Slides and code for MPI Cluster Debugger and also gave you all the links you need for getting started with Dryad and DryadLINQ from MSR. Expect more from me on cluster development in the coming year… 5. Still in the HPC space, but actually also in the game and even mainstream development, the big disruption and opportunity comes in the form of GPGPU and, on the Microsoft platform, (currently) DirectCompute. Expect more from me on gpgpu development in the coming year… Subscribe via the link on the left to stay tuned for 2011… I wish you a very Happy New Year (with whatever definition of happiness works for you)! Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• Limiting DOPs &ndash; Who rules over whom?

  - by jean-pierre.dijcks

  I've gotten a couple of questions from Dan Morgan and figured I start to answer them in this way. While Dan is running on a big system he is running with Database Resource Manager and he is trying to make sure the system doesn't go crazy (remember end user are never, ever crazy!) on very high DOPs. Q: How do I control statements with very high DOPs driven from user hints in queries? A: The best way to do this is to work with DBRM and impose limits on consumer groups. The Max DOP setting you can set in DBRM allows you to overwrite the hint. Now let's go into some more detail here. Assume my object (and for simplicity we assume there is a single object - and do remember that we always pick the highest DOP when in doubt and when conflicting DOPs are available in a query) has PARALLEL 64 as its setting. Assume that the query that selects something cool from that table lives in a consumer group with a max DOP of 32. Assume no goofy things (like running out of parallel_max_servers) are happening. A query selecting from this table will run at DOP 32 because DBRM caps the DOP. As of 11.2.0.1 we also use the DBRM cap to create the original plan (at compile time) and not just enforce the cap at runtime. Now, my user is smart and writes a query with a parallel hint requesting DOP 128. This query is still capped by DBRM and DBRM overrules the hint in the statement. The statement, despite the hint, runs at DOP 32. Note that in the hinted scenario we do compile the statement with DOP 128 (the optimizer obeys the hint). This is another reason to use table decoration rather than hints. Q: What happens if I set parallel_max_servers higher than processes (e.g. the max number of processes allowed to run on my machine)? A: Processes rules. It is important to understand that processes are fixed at startup time. If you increase parallel_max_servers above the number of processes in the processes parameter you should get a warning in the alert log stating it can not take effect. As a follow up, a hinted query requesting more parallel processes than either parallel_max_servers or processes will not be able to acquire the requested number. Parallel_max_processes will prevent this. And since parallel_max_servers should be lower than max processes you can never go over either...

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• How to get over “Did I lock the door?” syndrome

  - by Boonei

  I am person who always asks myself  ”Did I lock the house door?”,  And I do ask that question when I have almost reached office. I don’t have a bad memory or I am not a “forget it all after a min person”. Infact I have a fantastic memory of things. This problem has been haunting me for a very long time. My wife used to always have a angry face after we had get down from the car. Because after we have walked for about 20 yards I would run back to the car to check if I had locked the car, you see this problem exists for all locked objects. This happens everyday all round the year. Now a days I don’t have the problem ! I did not get the solution from any doctor or any book that that talks about my inner mind. It was a practical advice given by my aunt….. When I told her that I had this problem, she smiled and said its very very easy to get around this. I was stunned. The solution she gave me was simple. After I had locked the door, should hold the lock and look at it for 5 sec and say to myself   “I have locked the door”. Believe me it works like a charm. The reason why it works is my aunt goes to explain, that your mind always thinks twice of important things that we do on our daily life and raises doubts after sometime. The only way to stop is it by looking at it, holding it and telling yourself that its ok and its done. This holds good for all the things that you generally doubt like, did I turn off the AC?, did I turn off the lights in the house when I left?. Just look at it for 5 sec, hold it tell yourself its done. You will not look back. Image credit [Håkan Dahlström]   This article titled,How to get over “Did I lock the door?” syndrome, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Is Python Interpreted or Compiled?

  - by crodjer

  This is just a wondering I had while reading about interpreted and compiled languages. Ruby is no doubt an interpreted language, since source code is compiled by an interpreter at the point of execution. On the contrary C is a compiled language, as one have to compile the source code first according to the machine and then execute. This results is much faster execution. Now coming to Python: A python code (somefile.py) when imported creates a file (somefile.pyc) in the same directory. Let us say the import is done in a python shell or django module. After the import I change the code a bit and execute the imported functions again to find that it is still running the old code. This suggests that *.pyc files are compiled python files similar to executable created after compilation of a C file, though I can't execute *.pyc file directly. When the python file (somefile.py) is executed directly ( ./somefile.py or python somefile.py ) no .pyc file is created and the code is executed as is indicating interpreted behavior. These suggest that a python code is compiled every time it is imported in a new process to crate a .pyc while it is interpreted when directly executed. So which type of language should I consider it as? Interpreted or Compiled? And how does its efficiency compare to interpreted and compiled languages? According to wiki's Interpreted Languages page it is listed as a language compiled to Virtual Machine Code, what is meant by that? Update Looking at the answers it seems that there cannot be a perfect answer to my questions. Languages are not only interpreted or only compiled, but there is a spectrum of possibilities between interpreting and compiling. From the answers by aufather, mipadi, Lenny222, ykombinator, comments and wiki I found out that in python's major implementations it is compiled to bytecode, which is a highly compressed and optimized representation and is machine code for a virtual machine, which is implemented not in hardware, but in the bytecode interpreter. Also the the languages are not interpreted or compiled, but rather language implementations either interpret or compile code. I also found out about Just in time compilation As far as execution speed is concerned the various benchmarks cannot be perfect and depend on context and the task which is being performed. Please tell if I am wrong in my interpretations.

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• Anticipating JavaOne 2012 – Number 17!

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  As I write this, JavaOne 2012 (September 30-October 4 in San Francisco, CA) is just over a week away -- the seventeenth JavaOne! I’ll resist the impulse to travel in memory back to the early days of JavaOne. But I will say that JavaOne is a little like your birthday or New Year’s in that it invites reflection, evaluation, and comparison. It’s a time when we take the temperature of Java and assess the world of information technology generally. At JavaOne, insight and information flow amongst Java developers like no other time of the year.This year, the status of Java seems more secure in the eyes of most Java developers who agree that Oracle is doing an acceptable job of stewarding the platform, and while the story is still in progress, few doubt that Oracle is engaging strongly with the Java community and wants to see Java thrive. From my perspective, the biggest news about Java is the growth of some 250 alternative languages for the JVM – from Groovy to Jython to JRuby to Scala to Clojure and on and on – offering both new opportunities and challenges. The JVM has proven itself to be unusually flexible, resulting in an embarrassment of riches in which, more and more, developers are challenged to find ways to optimally mix together several different languages on projects.    To the matter at hand -- I can say with confidence that Oracle is working hard to make each JavaOne better than the last – more interesting, more stimulating, more networking, and more fun! A great deal of thought and attention is being devoted to the task. To free up time for the 475 technical sessions/Birds of feather/Hands-on-Labs slots, the Java Strategy, Partner, and Technical keynotes will be held on Sunday September 30, beginning at 4:00 p.m.   Let’s not forget Java Embedded@JavaOne which is being held Wednesday, Oct. 3rd and Thursday, Oct. 4th at the Hotel Nikko. It will provide business decision makers, technical leaders, and ecosystem partners important information about Java Embedded technologies and new business opportunities.   This year's JavaOne theme is “Make the Future Java”. So come to JavaOne and make your future better by:--Choosing from 475 sessions given by the experts to improve your working knowledge and coding expertise --Networking with fellow developers in both casual and formal settings--Enjoying world-class entertainment--Delighting in one of the world’s great cities (my home town) Hope to see you there!

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• SQL Developer: Why Do You Require Semicolons When Executing SQL in the Worksheet?

  - by thatjeffsmith

  There are many database tools out there that support Oracle database. Oracle SQL Developer just happens to be the one that is produced and shipped by the same folks that bring you the database product. Several other 3rd party tools out there allow you to have a collection of SQL statements in their editor and execute them without requiring a statement delimiter (usually a semicolon.) Let’s look at a quick example: select * from scott.emp select * from hr.employees delete from HR_COPY.BEER where HR_COPY.BEER.STATE like '%West Virginia% In some tools, you can simply place your cursor on say the 2nd statement and ask to execute that statement. The tool assumes that the blank line between it and the next statement, a DELETE, serves as a statement delimiter. This is not bad in and of itself. However, it is very important to understand how your tools work. If you were to try the same trick by running the delete statement, it would empty my entire BEER table instead of just trimming out the breweries from my home state. SQL Developer only executes what you ask it to execute You can paste this same code into SQL Developer and run it without problems and without having to add semicolons to your statements. Highlight what you want executed, and hit Ctrl-Enter If you don’t highlight the text, here’s what you’ll see: See the statement at the cursor vs what SQL Developer actually executed? The parser looks for a query and keeps going until the statement is terminated with a semicolon – UNLESS it’s highlighted, then it assumes you only want to execute what is highlighted. In both cases you are being explicit with what is being sent to the database. Again, there’s not necessarily a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ debate here. What you need to be aware of is the differences and to learn new workflows if you are moving from other database tools to Oracle SQL Developer. I say, when in doubt, back away from the tool, especially if you’re in production. Oh, and to answer the original question… Because we’re trying to emulate SQL*Plus behavior. You end statements in SQL*Plus with delimiters, and the default delimiter is a semicolon.

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• You do not need a separate SQL Server license for a Standby or Passive server - this Microsoft White Paper explains all

  - by tonyrogerson

  If you were in any doubt at all that you need to license Standby / Passive Failover servers then the White Paper “Do Not Pay Too Much for Your Database Licensing” will settle those doubts. I’ve had debate before people thinking you can only have a single instance as a standby machine, that’s just wrong; it would mean you could have a scenario where you had a 2 node active/passive cluster with database mirroring and log shipping (a total of 4 SQL Server instances) – in that set up you only need to buy one physical license so long as the standby nodes have the same or less physical processors (cores are irrelevant). So next time your supplier suggests you need a license for your standby box tell them you don’t and educate them by pointing them to the white paper. For clarity I’ve copied the extract below from the White Paper. Extract from “Do Not Pay Too Much for Your Database Licensing” Standby Server Customers often implement standby server to make sure the application continues to function in case primary server fails. Standby server continuously receives updates from the primary server and will take over the role of primary server in case of failure in the primary server. Following are comparisons of how each vendor supports standby server licensing. SQL Server Customers does not need to license standby (or passive) server provided that the number of processors in the standby server is equal or less than those in the active server. Oracle DB Oracle requires customer to fully license both active and standby servers even though the standby server is essentially idle most of the time. IBM DB2 IBM licensing on standby server is quite complicated and is different for every editions of DB2. For Enterprise Edition, a minimum of 100 PVUs or 25 Authorized User is needed to license standby server.   The following graph compares prices based on a database application with two processors (dual-core) and 25 users with one standby server. [chart snipped]  Note   All prices are based on newest Intel Xeon Nehalem processor database pricing for purchases within the United States and are in United States dollars. Pricing is based on information available on vendor Web sites for Enterprise Edition. Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Edition 25 users (CALs) x $164 / CAL + $8,592 / Server = $12,692 (no need to license standby server) Oracle Enterprise Edition (base license without options) Named User Plus minimum (25 Named Users Plus per Core) = 25 x 2 = 50 Named Users Plus x $950 / Named Users Plus x 2 servers = $95,000 IBM DB2 Enterprise Edition (base license without feature pack) Need to purchase 125 Authorized User (400 PVUs/100 PVUs = 4 X 25 = 100 Authorized User + 25 Authorized Users for standby server) = 125 Authorized Users x $1,040 / Authorized Users = $130,000  

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• The Niantic Project: Ingress by Felicia Hajra-Lee

  Despite the current fact that the augmented reality game for Android is still in beta phase, it is amazing to see that the world of literature is already taking momentum on this 'real-life' universe. After reading 'The Alignment: Ingress' by Thomas Greanias it took only a blink of the eye to go for 'The Niantic Project: Ingress' by Felicia Hajra-Lee, too. Here is the review I posted on Amazon.com: Ingress, a parallel universe to our reality, is here. There is no doubt about this anymore... The Niantic Project, originated at the CERN collider in Geneva, Switzerland, got into focus of global players. And the game is hard; fair-play is only for the fainted ones. Felicia understands to drag the audience directly into the action of the Niantic Project and its protagonists. The novella is heavily based on the investigations posted daily on the website of Ingress. She really understands how to interweave the various clues and creates an atmosphere where it sometimes feels challenging to differentiate between fiction and reality. It all starts with 'Epiphany Night' at the Niantic Labs, the high exposure of Exotic Matter (XM) and the escape of scientist Dr. Devra Bogdanovich and 'sentinel' Roland Jarvis. Of course, a new research, or should we name it technology, like the Niantic Project has to be protected and there are multiple parties on the hunt. Throughout the various chapters Felicia introduces new potential buyers from all over the globe, gives us detailed insights on the hunters and their brutal effectiveness to finish an assignment, and manages to keep the reader in high-pitched mode thanks to a couple of turn-arounds in the overall story. Personally, I have to say that I really enjoyed reading this title. Felicia's love to details is absolutely amazing, and sometimes I was really wondering whether she would be one of the assassins. But unfortunately I also have to say that I'm not a great fan of the structural organization of the (title-less) chapters. It is fascinating to follow the ventures of Devra, Farlowe and 855 but occasionally I had to go back to previous paragraphs in order to keep track of the individual plots. Overall a great title, captivating and rich in details but simply too short. Please Fecilia, gives us more to read. As an owner of an Android smartphone or tablet, you should get yourself into the world of Ingress. Check out the Play Store to install the app. Now. ;-)

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• Oracle Announces Availability of Oracle Exaskeleton with Extreme Scale

  - by J Swaroop

  Re-posting Bruce Tierney's original post - albeit a day late: I reckon this is Oracle's most interesting launch this year. Enjoy! The World’s First Human Scale Body Surface (HSBS) Designed to Toughen Spineless Wimps April 1, 2012 Building on the success of Oracle Exalogic, Oracle Exadata, and Oracle Exalytics, Oracle today announced the general availability of Oracle Exaskeleton, toughening up spineless wimps across the globe through the introduction of extreme scalability over the human body leveraging a revolutionary new technology called Human Scale Body Surface (HSBS). First Customer Ship (FCS) was received by the little known and mostly unsuccessful superhero Awkwardman. After applying Oracle Exaskeleton with extreme scale, he has since rebranded himself as Aquaman. Said Aquaman, “I used to feel so helpless in my skin…now I feel like…well…a highly scaled Engineered System thanks to Oracle!” Thousand of meek and mild individuals eagerly lined up outside Oracle Corporation’s Redwood Shores office to purchase the new Oracle Exaskeleton, with the hope of finally gaining the spine they never had. Unfortunately for the individuals, a bully was spotted allegedly kicking the sand covering the beaches of Redwood Shores into the still spineless Exaskeleton hopefuls. Supporting Quotes “Industry analysts are inquiring if Oracle Exaskeleton is a radical departure from Oracle’s traditional enterprise focus into new markets”, said Oracle representative Sabrina Twich, “Oracle has extensive expertise in unified backbone solutions for application infrastructures…this is simply a new port to the human body combining our Business Intelligence (BI) and RDBC (Remote Direct Brain Cell) technologies.” “With this release of Oracle Exaskeleton, Oracle has redefined scalability. Software and hardware vendors had it all wrong” said the Director of Oracle Exaskeleton, “Scalability for hardware is like…um…you know…so scale-ful. No, wait…can I say that again? I didn’t get that right…Scalability is hardware-on-demand with public and private…hybrid clouds, no…<long pause>…Scalability for… nevermind, I don’t want to be in this stupid press release anyway” Releases An upcoming Oracle Exaskeleton service pack release will include a new datasheet with an extensive library of three-letter acronyms (TLAs) as well as the introduction of more four-letter acronyms (FLAs) since technologies vendors have used up almost all of the 17,576 TLA permutations (TLAPs). About Oracle Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. It would be an amazing coincidence if any of this is true in some secret Oracle lab, but I doubt it. Trademarks Really…you’re still reading this? Cool! Aquaman - First Customer Ship (FCS) - Oracle Exaskeleton

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• Analysis Services Tabular books #ssas #tabular

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  Many people are looking for books about Analysis Services Tabular. Today there are two books available and they complement each other: Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: The BISM Tabular Model by Marco Russo, Alberto Ferrari and Chris Webb Applied Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: Tabular Modeling by Teo Lachev The book I wrote with Alberto and Chris is a complete guide to create tabular models and has a good coverage about DAX, including how to use it for enriching a semantic model with calculated columns and measures and how to use it for querying a Tabular model. In my experience, DAX as a query language is a very interesting option for custom analytical applications that requires a fast calculation engine, or simply for standard reports running in Reporting Services and accessing a Tabular model. You can freely preview the table of content and read some excerpts from the book on Safari Books Online. The book is in printing and should be shipped within mid-July, so finally it will be very soon on the shelf of all the people already preordered it! The Teo Lachev’s book, covers the full spectrum of Tabular models provided by Microsoft: starting with self-service BI, you have users creating a model with PowerPivot for Excel, publishing it to PowerPivot for SharePoint and exploring data by using Power View; then, the PowerPivot for Excel model can be imported in a Tabular model and published in Analysis Services, adding more control on the model through row-level security and partitioning, for example. Teo’s book follows a step-by-step approach describing each feature that is very good for a beginner that is new to PowerPivot and/or to BISM Tabular. If you need to get the big picture and to start using the products that are part of the new Microsoft wave of BI products, the Teo’s book is for you. After you read the book from Teo, or if you already have a certain confidence with PowerPivot or BISM Tabular and you want to go deeper about internals, best practices, design patterns in just BISM Tabular, then our book is a suggested read: it contains several chapters about DAX, includes discussions about new opportunities in data model design offered by Tabular models, and also provides examples of optimizations you can obtain in DAX and best practices in data modeling and queries. It might seem strange that an author write a review of a book that might seem to compete with his one, but in reality these two books complement each other and are not alternatives. If you have any doubt, buy both: you will be not disappointed! Moreover, Amazon usually offers you a deal to buy three books, including the Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power View, another good choice for getting all the details about Power View.

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• When should complexity be removed?

  - by ElGringoGrande

  Prematurely introducing complexity by implementing design patterns before they are needed is not good practice. But if you follow all (or even most of) the SOLID principles and use common design patterns you will introduce some complexity as features and requirements are added or changed to keep your design as maintainable and flexible as needed. However once that complexity is introduced and working like a champ when do you removed it? Example. I have an application written for a client. When originally created there where several ways to give raises to employees. I used the strategy pattern and factory to keep the whole process nice and clean. Over time certain raise methods where added or removed by the application owner. Time passes and new owner takes over. This new owner is hard nosed, keeps everything simple and only has one single way to give a raise. The complexity needed by the strategy pattern is no longer needed. If I where to code this from the requirements as they are now I would not introduce this extra complexity (but make sure I could introduce it with little or no work should the need arise). So do I remove the strategy implementation now? I don't think this new owner will ever change how raises are given. But the application itself has demonstrated that this could happen. Of course this is just one example in an application where a new owner takes over and has simplified many processes. I could remove dozens of classes, interfaces and factories and make the whole application much more simple. Note that the current implementation does works just fine and the owner is happy with it (and surprised and even happier that I was able to implement her changes so quickly because of the discussed complexity). I admit that a small part of this doubt is because it is highly likely the new owner isn't going to use me any longer. I don't really care that somebody else will take this over since it has not been a big income generator. But I do care about 2 (related) things I care a bit that the new maintainer will have to think a bit harder when trying to understand the code. Complexity is complexity and I don't want to anger the psycho maniac coming after me. But even more I worry about a competitor seeing this complexity and thinking I just implement design patterns to pad my hours on jobs. Then spreading this rumor to hurt my other business. (I have heard this mentioned.) So... In general should previously needed complexity be removed even though it works and there has been a historically demonstrated need for the complexity but you have no indication that it will be needed in the future? Even if the question above is generally answered "no" is it wise to remove this "un-needed" complexity if handing off the project to a competitor (or stranger)?

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• Can you Trust Search?

  - by David Dorf

  An awful lot of referrals to e-commerce sites come from web searches. Retailers rely on search engine optimization (SEO) to correctly position their website so they can be found. Search on "blue jeans" and the results are determined by a semi-secret algorithm -- in my case Levi.com, Banana Republic, and ShopStyle show up. The NY Times recently uncovered a situation where JCPenney, via third-parties hired to help with SEO, was caught manipulating search results so they were erroneously higher in page rankings. No doubt this helped drive additional sales during this part Christmas. The article, The Dirty Little Secrets of Search, is well worth reading. My friend Ron Kleinman started an interesting discussion at the ARTS Linkedin forum. He posed the question: The ability of a single company to "punish" any retailer (by significantly impacting their on-line sales volume) who does not play by their rules ... is this a good thing or a bad thing? Clearly JCP was in the wrong and needed to be punished, but should that decision lie with Google alone? Don't get me wrong -- I'm certainly not advocating we create a Department of Search where bureaucrats think of ways to spend money, but Google wields an awful lot of power in this situation, and it makes me feel uncomfortable. Now Google is incorporating more social aspects into their search results. For example, when Google knows its me (i.e. I'm logged in when using Google) search results will be influenced by my Twitter network. In an effort to increase relevance, the blogs and re-tweeted articles from my network will be higher in the search results than they otherwise would be. So in the case of product searches, things discussed in my network will rise to the top. Continuing my blue jean example, if someone in my network had been discussing Macy's perhaps they would now be higher in the result set. soapbox: I already have lots of spammers posting bogus comments to this blog in an effort to create additional links to their sites and thus increase their search ranking. Should I expect a similar situation in Twitter and eventually Facebook? Now retailers need to expand their SEO efforts to incorporate social media as well, but do us all a favor and please don't cheat.

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• Oracle Announces Availability of Oracle Exaskeleton with Extreme Scale

  - by Bruce Tierney

  The World’s First Human Scale Body Surface (HSBS) Designed to Toughen Spineless Wimps April 1, 2012 Building on the success of Oracle Exalogic, Oracle Exadata, and Oracle Exalytics, Oracle today announced the general availability of Oracle Exaskeleton, toughening up spineless wimps across the globe through the introduction of extreme scalability over the human body leveraging a revolutionary new technology called Human Scale Body Surface (HSBS). First Customer Ship (FCS) was received by the little known and mostly unsuccessful superhero Awkwardman. After applying Oracle Exaskeleton with extreme scale, he has since rebranded himself as Aquaman. Said Aquaman, “I used to feel so helpless in my skin…now I feel like…well…a highly scaled Engineered System thanks to Oracle!” Thousand of meek and mild individuals eagerly lined up outside Oracle Corporation’s Redwood Shores office to purchase the new Oracle Exaskeleton, with the hope of finally gaining the spine they never had. Unfortunately for the individuals, a bully was spotted allegedly kicking the sand covering the beaches of Redwood Shores into the still spineless Exaskeleton hopefuls. Supporting Quotes “Industry analysts are inquiring if Oracle Exaskeleton is a radical departure from Oracle’s traditional enterprise focus into new markets”, said Oracle representative Sabrina Twich, “Oracle has extensive expertise in unified backbone solutions for application infrastructures…this is simply a new port to the human body combining our Business Intelligence (BI) and RDBC (Remote Direct Brain Cell) technologies.” “With this release of Oracle Exaskeleton, Oracle has redefined scalability. Software and hardware vendors had it all wrong” said the Director of Oracle Exaskeleton, “Scalability for hardware is like…um…you know…so scale-ful. No, wait…can I say that again? I didn’t get that right…Scalability is hardware-on-demand with public and private…hybrid clouds, no…<long pause>…Scalability for… nevermind, I don’t want to be in this stupid press release anyway” Releases An upcoming Oracle Exaskeleton service pack release will include a new datasheet with an extensive library of three-letter acronyms (TLAs) as well as the introduction of more four-letter acronyms (FLAs) since technologies vendors have used up almost all of the 17,576 TLA permutations (TLAPs). About Oracle Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. It would be an amazing coincidence if any of this is true in some secret Oracle lab, but I doubt it. Trademarks Really…you’re still reading this? Cool! Aquaman - First Customer Ship (FCS) - Oracle Exaskeleton

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• iPad: How To Soft Reset, Restore Factory Settings And Erase All Content

  - by Gopinath

  iPad is an amazing gadget from Apple and everyone of us loves to own it. If you are a lucky one to own an iPad here are some basic troubleshooting features that you should be aware. There is no doubt that iPad is an amazing gadget, but similar to other electronic gadgets it refuses to work now and then. When your iPad hangs or refuses to respond you can soft reset it by holding the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time for at least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears. This just reset your iPad and it’s similar to force rebooting your PC. All your settings and data are untouched during this process. The embedded video below shows how to turn off and soft reset an iPad. If iPad Doesn’t Work After Soft Reset – Restore Factory Settings Soft reset should resolve most of the iPad issues like hanging, not responding properly, etc. In case even if your iPad does not work properly after soft reset you can try reset all the setting to factory defaults by navigating through the Home screen > Settings > General > Reset > Reset All Settings.  This will reset all your settings and other iPad customizations to factory defaults but your data(images, documents, apps, etc.) are left untouched. How To Erase All Content Of iPad You may ask why should I erase all the content of iPad? Well may be you are willing to sell it off on eBay by erasing all the content or you want start afresh or some other reason. It is easy to reset all the settings of iPad as well as wipe out all content by navigating through Home screen > General > Reset >  “Erase All Content and Settings.” CC Image credit flickr/korosirego This article titled,iPad: How To Soft Reset, Restore Factory Settings And Erase All Content, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Newbie worried about CASE tool.

  - by Jason Evans

  Hi there. I'm looking for some guidance on CASE tools and whether my concerns are valid. Recently I was in a meeting between my employer and an external software company which have a CASE tool currently in beta. They demonstrated this tool to us, showing how you build a UML model in Enterprise Architect (or something like it) and then, through their tool, that UML model is transformed into a Visual Studio project, with C# files, stored procedures for SQL Server, code for the data layer, WCF stuff, logging code and allsorts. Now, admittedly, I don't see the point in this, as in I'm not convinced it will save that much time (plus it feels like overkill). The tool authors said that a trial of the tool at another company had saved a team there 5 weeks of development time (from 6 weeks down to about 1 week) using this tool. I find the accuracy of that estimate hard to believe. My main concern is whether using this tool is going slow down my productivity. For example - Say I have a UML model which I built a VS solution from. Now, I want to rename a class method to something else; will this mean having to update the UML model first and then rebuilding the code? Is this how case tools normally work? Something I will need to check with the authors is the structure of the generated VS solution. I like the Domain Driven Design way of project structure - Infrstructure, Services, Model, etc. I doubt very much this tool will do that. Also, I've been playing around with Entity Framework Code First and think it's a great way to build the data model. I have nice repositories, unit of work classes and other design patterns that work well with EF. I have data anootations and stuff like that working great. By not having EF (the CASE tool uses it's own data layer code) I'm concerned that this tool's data layer code might not be a nice to integrate in the UoW pattern, repositories, etc. This I will need to verify when I get a closer look at the generated code. What are other people's experiences with CASE tools? Am I being paranoid about nothing? Am I being unfair - are my negativities unfounded? EDIT: I like to use TDD/BDD for building my code, and using a CASE tool looks like it will make this difficult. Again, any feedback on this would be great. Cheers. Jas.

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• Go Big or Go Special

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  Watching Shark Tank tonight and the first presentation was by Mango Mango Preserves and it highlighted an interesting contrast in business trends today and how to capitalize on opportunities.  <Spoiler Alert> Even though every one of the sharks was raving about the product samples they tried, with two of them going for second and third servings, none of them made a deal to invest in the company.</Spoiler>  In fact, one of the sharks, Kevin O’Leary, kept ripping into the owners with statements to the effect that he thinks they are headed over a financial cliff because he felt their costs were way out of line and would be their downfall if they didn’t take action to radically cut costs. He said that he had previously owned a jams and jellies business and knew the cost ratios that you had to have to make it work.  I don’t doubt he knows exactly what he’s talking about and is 100% accurate…for doing business his way, which I’ll call “Go Big”.  But there’s a whole other way to do business today that would be ideal for these ladies to pursue. As I understand it, based on his level of success in various businesses and the fact that he is even in a position to be investing in other companies, Kevin’s approach is to go mass market (Go Big) and make hundreds of millions of dollars in sales (or something along that scale) while squeezing out every ounce of cost that you can to produce an acceptable margin.  But there is a very different way of making a very successful business these days, which is all about building a passionate and loyal community of customers that are rooting for your success and even actively trying to help you succeed by promoting your product or company (Go Special).  This capitalizes on the power of social media, niche marketing, and The Long Tail.  One of the most prolific writers about capitalizing on this trend is Seth Godin, and I hope that the founders of Mango Mango pick up a couple of his books (probably Purple Cow and Tribes would be good starts) or at least read his blog.  I think the adoration expressed by all of the sharks for the product is the biggest hint that they have a remarkable product and that they are perfect for this type of business approach. Both are completely valid business models, and it may certainly be that the scale at which Kevin O’Leary wants to conduct business where he invests his money is well beyond the long tail, but that doesn’t mean that there is not still a lot of money to be made there.  I wish them the best of luck with their endeavors!

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• How to deal with a boss who is extremely competitive [closed]

  - by user72101

  Okay, so I recently joined this group. My boss who I reported to, left a while ago and my colleague was made the team lead. We both now report to the same head, but she heads the team I work in. I am not sure on how to deal with various situations. I would imagine a team lead who motivates the rest of the team, and not someone who would take credit for what others do. I am the only one who works at the same geographic location. She is very smart, no doubt about it. Things get to me, for example I work on an issue and email a dev team, she would respond on top of my emails and as she is the lead, people respond to her rather than to me. If there is an email addressed with the head on it, she would get it to faster than I do, even when she knew I am looking into it. The rest of the team keeps asking me questions or help. I find it hard to say no, and I try to help them as i feel I might need their help someday as well. I slack in my own work or I could have used the time to learn things. I feel that she should be the go to person and not me. If one gets the benefits of being a lead, why not the work that goes with it? I feel I am stuck in a very unfortunate situation and am totally helpless about it. Everyday it is something or the other. I work on a project for months and finally when it is about to go live and there was a minor issue and the head started asking questions, she completely stole my thunder on a call. She would not let me speak and I have to actually cut her off to speak up. The ideal would be not to give it a thought and just do the best I can,but I feel I am capable of much more and not able to give my best because of this constant war at work. Neetu

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• const vs. readonly for a singleton

  - by GlenH7

  First off, I understand there are folk who oppose the use of singletons. I think it's an appropriate use in this case as it's constant state information, but I'm open to differing opinions / solutions. (See The singleton pattern and When should the singleton pattern not be used?) Second, for a broader audience: C++/CLI has a similar keyword to readonly with initonly, so this isn't strictly a C# type question. (Literal field versus constant variable in C++/CLI) Sidenote: A discussion of some of the nuances on using const or readonly. My Question: I have a singleton that anchors together some different data structures. Part of what I expose through that singleton are some lists and other objects, which represent the necessary keys or columns in order to connect the linked data structures. I doubt that anyone would try to change these objects through a different module, but I want to explicitly protect them from that risk. So I'm currently using a "readonly" modifier on those objects*. I'm using readonly instead of const with the lists as I read that using const will embed those items in the referencing assemblies and will therefore trigger a rebuild of those referencing assemblies if / when the list(s) is/are modified. This seems like a tighter coupling than I would want between the modules, but I wonder if I'm obsessing over a moot point. (This is question #2 below) The alternative I see to using "readonly" is to make the variables private and then wrap them with a public get. I'm struggling to see the advantage of this approach as it seems like wrapper code that doesn't provide much additional benefit. (This is question #1 below) It's highly unlikely that we'll change the contents or format of the lists - they're a compilation of things to avoid using magic strings all over the place. Unfortunately, not all the code has converted over to using this singleton's presentation of those strings. Likewise, I don't know that we'd change the containers / classes for the lists. So while I normally argue for the encapsulations advantages a get wrapper provides, I'm just not feeling it in this case. A representative sample of my singleton public sealed class mySingl { private static volatile mySingl sngl; private static object lockObject = new Object(); public readonly Dictionary<string, string> myDict = new Dictionary<string, string>() { {"I", "index"}, {"D", "display"}, }; public enum parms { ABC = 10, DEF = 20, FGH = 30 }; public readonly List<parms> specParms = new List<parms>() { parms.ABC, parms.FGH }; public static mySingl Instance { get { if(sngl == null) { lock(lockObject) { if(sngl == null) sngl = new mySingl(); } } return sngl; } } private mySingl() { doSomething(); } } Questions: Am I taking the most reasonable approach in this case? Should I be worrying about const vs. readonly? is there a better way of providing this information?

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• Such thing as a free lunch

  - by red@work

  There is a lot of hard work goes on in Red Gate, no doubt. And then there are things we're asked to get involved with, that aren't hard and don't feel much like work. What? Give up our free lunch at Red Gate for. a free lunch in a pub? Within an hour, myself and a colleague are at the Railway Vue pub in nearby Impington. This is all part of Red Gate's aim to hire more Software Engineers and Test Engineers, to help Red Gate grow into one of the greatest software companies in the world (it's already the best small software development company in the UK). Phase one then - buy lunch for Cambridge. Seriously, not just the targeted engineers, but for anyone who could print the voucher and make it to the nearest of the venues, two of which happen to be pubs. We're here to watch people happily eat a free pub lunch at Red Gate's expense. We also get involved and I swear I didn't order a beer with the food but the landlord says I clearly did and I'm not one to argue. Red Gate are offering a free iPad to anyone that comes to interview for a Software Engineer or Test Engineer role. We speak to a few engineers who are genuinely interested. We speak to a couple of DBA's too, and encourage them to make speculative applications - no free iPad on offer for them, but that's not really the point. The point is, everyone should apply to work here! It's that good. We overhear someone ask if 'these vouchers really work?' They do. There's no catch. The free IPad? Again, no catch. If that's what it takes to get talented engineers through our doors for an interview, then that's all good. Once they see where we work and how we work, we think they'll want to come and work with us. The following day, Red Gate decides to repeat the offer, and that means more hard work, this time at The Castle pub. Another landlord that mishears 'mineral water' and serves me a beer. There are many more people clutching the printed vouchers and they all seem very happy to be getting a free lunch from Red Gate. "Come and work for us" we suggest, "lunch is always free!" So if you're a talented engineer, like free lunches and want a free iPad, you know what to do.

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• Overload Avoidance

  - by mikef

  A little under a year ago, Matt Simmons wrote a rather reflective article about his terrifying brush with stress-induced ill health. SysAdmins and DBAs have always been prime victims of work-related stress, but I wonder if that predilection is perhaps getting worse, despite the best efforts of Matt and his trusty side-kick, HR. The constant pressure from share-holders and CFOs to 'streamline' the workforce is partially to blame, but the more recent culprit is technology itself. I can't deny that the rise of technologies like virtualization, PowerCLI, PowerShell, and a host of others has been a tremendous boon. As a result, individual IT professionals are now able to handle more and more tasks and manage increasingly large and complex environments. But, without a doubt, this is a two-edged sword; The reward for competence is invariably more work. Unfortunately, SysAdmins play such a pivotal role in modern business that it's easy to see how they can very quickly become swamped in conflicting demands coming from different directions. However, that doesn't justify the ridiculous hours many are asked (or volunteer) to devote to their work. Admirably though their commitment is, it isn't healthy for them, it sets a dangerous expectation, and eventually something will snap. There are times when everyone needs to step up to the plate outside of 'normal' work hours, but that time isn't all the time. Naturally, with all that lovely technology, you can automate more and more of those tricky tasks to keep on top of the workload, but you are still only human. Clever though you may be, there is a very real limit to how far technology can take you. I'm not suggesting that you avoid these technologies, or deliberately aim for mediocrity; I'm just saying that you need to be more than just technically skilled (and Wesley Nonapeptide riffs on and around this topic in his excellent 'Telepathic Robot Drones' blog post). You need to be able to manage expectations, not just Exchange. Specifically, that means your own expectations of what you are capable of, because those come before everyone else's. After all, how can you keep your work-life balance under control, if you're the one setting the bar way too high? Talking to your manager, or discussing issues with your users, is only going to be productive if you have some facts to work with. "Know Thyself" is the first law of managing work overload, and this is obviously a skill which people develop over time; the fact that veteran Sysadmins exist at all is testament to this. I'd just love to know how you get to that point. Personally, I'm using RescueTime to keep myself honest, but I'm open to recommendations for better methods. Do you track your own time, do you have an intuitive sense of what is possible, or do you just rely on someone else to handle that all for you? Cheers, Michael

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• Developing add-ins for multiple versions of Office

  - by Pranav

  Do you want to develop an add-in targeting multiple versions of Office? And you have basic questions like “Is it possible to do? ” and “How to do it?” ? Then you came to the right place. Few months back, I got a requirement to developed add-ins for Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007. The functionality for both the versions is same. A doubt stroked… when the functionality is same, why would I develop two add-ins separately? Why don’t I make a single build for both the versions of Office? Then I started searching for techniques to develop add-ins which works in both (2003 and 2007) and read many articles written by VSTO Experts in their blogs, Official VSTO Blog, MSDN, Forums and what not. Misha Says: Theoretically, you can develop an add-in for multiple versions of Microsoft Office by catering to the lowest common denominator. This means if you use an Excel 2003 add-in template in Visual Studio 2008, you would be able to develop and debug this with Excel 2007. However if you try this, you may meet these error messages: “You cannot debug or run this project, because the required version of the Microsoft Office application is not installed.”, followed by “Unable to start debugging.” You can develop Office 2003 add-in in a system where Office 2007 is installed. The following is the procedure that demonstrates how to update your Visual Studio debugging options to use Microsoft Outlook 2007 to debug an add-in targeting Microsoft Outlook 2003. On the Project menu, click on ProjectName Properties Click on the Debug tab In the Start Action pane, click the Start external program radio button Click the file browser button and navigate to %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office12 Choose Outlook.exe and click Open Press F5 to debug your add-in For more details. Go through this article in Misha Shneerson’s Blog. There are some tips and tricks to be followed and the things that one needs to take care while developing add-ins targeting multiple versions of Office in Andrew’s Blog. Have a look at this too. You might find it interesting and useful. http://blogs.msdn.com/andreww/archive/2007/06/15/can-you-build-one-add-in-for-multiple-versions-of-office.aspx Here is an MSDN article on Running Solutions in Different Versions of Microsoft Office http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb772080.aspx Hope this helps!

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• WinMo&rsquo;s Demise: Notifying Next of &ldquo;Kin&rdquo;

  - by andrewbrust

  This past Monday, April 12th, Visual Studio 2010 was launched.  And on that same day, Microsoft also launched a new line of  mobile phone handsets, called Kin.  The two product launches are actually connected, but only by what they do not have in common, and what they commonly lack. On the former point: VS 2010 had released to manufacturing a couple weeks prior to its launch.  The Kin phones, meanwhile are not yet available.  We don’t even know what they will cost.  (And I think cost will be a major factor in Kin’s success…I told ChannelWeb’s Yara Souza so in this article). What do the two products both lack? Simple: Windows Mobile 6.x. For example, Kin seems to be based on the same platform as Windows Phone 7 (albeit a subset).  And VS 2010 does not support .NET Compact Framework development, which means no .NET development support for WinMo 6.x and earlier. So I guess April 12th marks Windows Phone “clean slate day.”  If you want to develop for the old phone platform, you will need to use the old version of Visual Studio (i.e. 2008).  Luckily VS 2010 and 2008 can be installed side-by-side.  But I doubt that’s much consolation to developers who still target WinMo 6.5 and earlier. Remember, WinMo isn’t just about the phone.  There are all sorts of non-telephony mobile devices, including ruggedized Pocket PC-style instruments, bar code readers and shop-floor-deployed units that don’t run Windows Phone 7 and couldn’t, even if they wanted to. Where will developers in these markets go?  I would guess some will stick with WinMo 6.x and earlier, until Windows Phone 7 can handle their workloads, assuming that does indeed happen.  Others will likely go to Google’s Android platform. For OEMs and developers who need a customizable mobile software stack, Android is turning out to be out-WinMo-ing WinMo.  As I wrote in this post, Google took Microsoft’s model (minus the licensing fees) and combined it with a modern SmartPhone feature set (rather than a late 90s/early oughts PDA paradigm), to great success.  You might say Google embraced and extended. You might also say Microsoft shunned and withdrew.

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• What&rsquo;s new in RadChart for 2010 Q1 (Silverlight / WPF)

  Greetings, RadChart fans! It is with great pleasure that I present this short highlight of our accomplishments for the Q1 release :). Weve worked very hard to make the best silverlight and WPF charting product even better. Here is some of what we did during the past few months.   1) Zooming&Scrolling and the new sampling engine: Without a doubt one of the most important things we did. This new feature allows you to bind your chart to a very large set of data with blazing performance. Dont take my word for it give it a try!   2) New Smart Label Positioning and Spider-like labels feature: This new feature really helps with very busy graphs. You can play with the different settings we offer in this example.   3) Sorting and Filtering. Much like our RadGridview control the chart now allows you to sort and filter your data out of the box with a single line of code!   4) Legend improvements Weve also been paying attention to those of you who wanted a much improved legend. It is now possible to customize the look and feel of legend items and legend position with a single click.   5) Custom palette brushes. You have told us that you want to easily customize all palette colors using a single clean API from both XAML and code behind. The new custom palette brushes API does exactly that.   There are numerous other improvements as well, as much improved themes, performance optimizations and other features that we did. If you want to dig in further check the release notes and changes and backwards compatibility topics.   Feel free to share the pains and gains of working with RadChart. Our team is always open to receiving constructive feedback and beer :-)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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