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Internet Pings but Does Not Load

- by t3techcom18

From what I've been seeing and been doing my research for the past two days, many people have been having the same issues throughout the years, however, this is the first time I've encountered this issue and many of the specific workarounds or fixes have not worked for me. I've been trying to work through this for 24 hours straight now, but to no avail so many thanks to those that can help. On Monday night, got home from work; surfing the internet for half an hour, everything was fine as always. Just after half an hour, my Internet got very sluggish and then it died completely. I thought it might have been the an update I just put through in terms of Windows Update that said was a critical update for MSE, as the same thing happened a few years ago. I did a System Restore to two different dates that were in the past two weeks, nothing. Uninstalled MSE and disabled Windows Defender and the Windows Firewall: Nothing. Reset IE Options, Reset Winsock, Dumping DNS, many of the other command prompt screens to reset items: Nothing. Reset the modem: Nothing. What DID work, however, was a ping test to Yahoo. The ping test worked, saying all four packets was recieved, yet nothing else popped up. LAN and CenturyLink said everything worked on their end and that everything was connected properly, as well as the speeds working fine. CenturyLink said in their notes that they thought Port 80 was blocked. I went and put in the Firewall to allow Port 80 but it didn't make any difference whatsoever. I remembered I had a spare modem laying around and I switched them up, both modem and the cords - nothing. I then hooked it up to my netbook to see if that would work, as it usually does - connection didn't work there either. Like I said, it's been about 24 hours now and this is increasingly frustrating, as I've tried all solutions (While browsing through 10 search results pages on my phone) suggested and still nothing. Any suggestions and tricks would be greatly appreciated! Here's my specs: Windows 7 32-bit Home Premium Intel Core 2 Duo 3.14 Ghz 4 GB Kingston DDR2 RAM eVGA nForce 750i SLI eVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti FPB ISP: CenturyLink No router Modem: CenturyLink 660 Series Hardwired connection PLEASE NOTE: This is the only computer I have (Like I said, the netbook solution didn't work), so downloading programs and such is not an option til I get to other computers somewhere else, like right now. Unless someone knows of a way of copying/pasting a file in Windows and then transferring said info to an Android smartphone, this is gunna take a while haha. Patience is requested.

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C# HashSet<T>

- by Ben Griswold

I hadn’t done much (read: anything) with the C# generic HashSet until I recently needed to produce a distinct collection. As it turns out, HashSet<T> was the perfect tool. As the following snippet demonstrates, this collection type offers a lot: // Using HashSet<T>: // http://www.albahari.com/nutshell/ch07.aspx var letters = new HashSet<char>("the quick brown fox"); Console.WriteLine(letters.Contains('t')); // true Console.WriteLine(letters.Contains('j')); // false foreach (char c in letters) Console.Write(c); // the quickbrownfx Console.WriteLine(); letters = new HashSet<char>("the quick brown fox"); letters.IntersectWith("aeiou"); foreach (char c in letters) Console.Write(c); // euio Console.WriteLine(); letters = new HashSet<char>("the quick brown fox"); letters.ExceptWith("aeiou"); foreach (char c in letters) Console.Write(c); // th qckbrwnfx Console.WriteLine(); letters = new HashSet<char>("the quick brown fox"); letters.SymmetricExceptWith("the lazy brown fox"); foreach (char c in letters) Console.Write(c); // quicklazy Console.WriteLine(); The MSDN documentation is a bit light on HashSet<T> documentation but if you search hard enough you can find some interesting information and benchmarks. But back to that distinct list I needed… // MSDN Add // http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb353005.aspx var employeeA = new Employee {Id = 1, Name = "Employee A"}; var employeeB = new Employee {Id = 2, Name = "Employee B"}; var employeeC = new Employee {Id = 3, Name = "Employee C"}; var employeeD = new Employee {Id = 4, Name = "Employee D"}; var naughty = new List<Employee> {employeeA}; var nice = new List<Employee> {employeeB, employeeC}; var employees = new HashSet<Employee>(); naughty.ForEach(x => employees.Add(x)); nice.ForEach(x => employees.Add(x)); foreach (Employee e in employees) Console.WriteLine(e); // Returns Employee A Employee B Employee C The Add Method returns true on success and, you guessed it, false if the item couldn’t be added to the collection. I’m using the Linq ForEach syntax to add all valid items to the employees HashSet. It works really great. This is just a rough sample, but you may have noticed I’m using Employee, a reference type. Most samples demonstrate the power of the HashSet with a collection of integers which is kind of cheating. With value types you don’t have to worry about defining your own equality members. With reference types, you do. internal class Employee { public int Id { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public override string ToString() { return Name; } public bool Equals(Employee other) { if (ReferenceEquals(null, other)) return false; if (ReferenceEquals(this, other)) return true; return other.Id == Id; } public override bool Equals(object obj) { if (ReferenceEquals(null, obj)) return false; if (ReferenceEquals(this, obj)) return true; if (obj.GetType() != typeof (Employee)) return false; return Equals((Employee) obj); } public override int GetHashCode() { return Id; } public static bool operator ==(Employee left, Employee right) { return Equals(left, right); } public static bool operator !=(Employee left, Employee right) { return !Equals(left, right); } } Fortunately, with Resharper, it’s a snap. Click on the class name, ALT+INS and then follow with the handy dialogues. That’s it. Try out the HashSet<T>. It’s good stuff.

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Top 20 Daily Deal Sites In India

- by Damodhar

If you have never heard of Groupon recently, you probably are not working in the tech industry because it is all over the blogosphere. After all, growing from zero to US$1.35 billion valuation in 18 months is pretty AMAZING. Inspired by this, the following bunch of Groupon clone’s are already rising in India. Definitely this business model is emerging and changes the way online shopping happens in India. SnapDeal SnapDeal features a Best deals Coupons at an unbeatable price on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in our city. It provides vouchers and discounts in all the major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore. KhojGuru Exclusive Discount coupons from hundreds of brands and retailers. These discounts can be easily downloaded as an SMS on to the mobile phone or their print out can be taken. MyDala A platform which gets us great deals in our city.Leveraging the “power of group buying”. Group buying happens when like minded people come together to get deals that we can never get on our own as individuals. SoSasta Great place which would not only tell us about the hidden treasures of our city — but also made them affordable to us at the end of the month. DealsAndYou Deals and You is a group buying portal that features a daily deal on the best stuff in some of India’s leading cities. AajKaCatch Its concept is to provide you the most unique, useful and qualitative product at a very low price. So you can now shop without the hassles of clustered products. BindassBargain Bindaas Bargain offers a new deal every day! Great stuff ranging from cool gadgets, home theatres, luxury watches, smash games. MasthiDeals It get you a great deal on a great stuff to do, eat, buy or see in your city. They have a team of about 25 wonderful people working in Chennai office working side by side with folks in MasthiDeal’s other cities. Koovs Founded by a team of IIT alumni who have brought in their expertise from the internet industry. Koovs is a Bangalore based start up and one point solution for all your desires. Taggle It brings you a variety of offers from some of the most respected brands in the country.This website uses collective buying to create a win-win for local businesses and their customers. BuzzInTown Buzzintown.com is a portal owned by Wortal Inc. There are a US headquartered company, with a presence pan-India through their India subsidiary, managed by a vastly experienced set of global leaders from the media, entertainment and technology industries. BuyThePrice It lines up the best win – win deals for both consumers and vendors and also ensures that each of the orders are dispatched in the shortest time possible. 24HoursLoot 24hoursLoot is an online store for selling a new t-shirt (sometime other products) everyday at deep discounted price in limited quantity/stock. DealMagic Customers get exposure to the best their city has to offer, at unbeatable prices (50-90% off). We never feature more than one business on our website on any given day, so we have to be very very selective on who gets featured. Dealivore ICUMI Technologies Pvt Ltd is the company operating the Dealivore service. Founded in December 2009, ICUMI is privately owned and funded. LootMore An online store that exclusively focuses on selling cool quality stuff at cheap prices. Here you’ll always find the latest and greatest brands at prices you can afford. Foodome The deals features the best coupons at an unbeatable price on restaurants, fine dining on where to spend your birthday party.They provide coupon only in Chennai as of now. Top Online Shopping Sites- Nation Wide ebay.in eBay is The World’s Online Marketplace, enabling trade on a local, national and international basis. With a diverse and passionate community of individuals and small businesses, eBay offers an online platform where millions of items are traded each day. FutureBazzar Future Group, led by its founder and Group CEO, Mr. Kishore Biyani, is one of India’s leading business houses with multiple businesses spanning across the consumption space. TradeUs Launched in July 2009 and in a short span of time it has turned into one of India’s foremost shopping portals setting the Indian e-commerce abode aflame. BigShoeBazzar (BSB) is the largest online authorized shoe store in South Asia. Croma Promoted by Infiniti Retail Ltd, a 100% subsidiary of Tata Sons.One of the world’s leading retailers, ensuring that you buy nothing but the best. This article titled,Top 20 Daily Deal Sites In India, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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Getting TF215097 error after modifying a build process template in TFS Team Build 2010

- by Jakob Ehn

When embracing Team Build 2010, you typically want to define several different build process templates for different scenarios. Common examples here are CI builds, QA builds and release builds. For example, in a contiuous build you often have no interest in publishing to the symbol store, you might or might not want to associate changesets and work items etc. The build server is often heavily occupied as it is, so you don’t want to have it doing more that necessary. Try to define a set of build process templates that are used across your company. In previous versions of TFS Team Build, there was no easy way to do this. But in TFS 2010 it is very easy so there is no excuse to not do it! :-) I ran into a scenario today where I had an existing build definition that was based on our release build process template. In this template, we have defined several different build process parameters that control the release build. These are placed into its own sectionin the Build Process Parameters editor. This is done using the ProcessParameterMetadataCollection element, I will explain how this works in a future post. I won’t go into details on these parametes, the issue for this blog post is what happens when you modify a build process template so that it is no longer compatible with the build definition, i.e. a breaking change. In this case, I removed a parameter that was no longer necessary. After merging the new build process template to one of the projects and queued a new release build, I got this error: TF215097: An error occurred while initializing a build for build definition <Build Definition Name>: The values provided for the root activity's arguments did not satisfy the root activity's requirements: 'DynamicActivity': The following keys from the input dictionary do not map to arguments and must be removed: <Parameter Name>. Please note that argument names are case sensitive. Parameter name: rootArgumentValues <Parameter Name> was the parameter that I removed so it was pretty easy to understand why the error had occurred. However, it is not entirely obvious how to fix the problem. When open the build definition everything looks OK, the removed build process parameter is not there, and I can open the build process template without any validation warnings. The problem here is that all settings specific to a particular build definition is stored in the TFS database. In TFS 2005, everything that was related to a build was stored in TFS source control in files (TFSBuild.proj, WorkspaceMapping.xml..). In TFS 2008, many of these settings were moved into the database. Still, lots of things were stored in TFSBuild.proj, such as the solution and configuration to build, wether to execute tests or not. In TFS 2010, all settings for a build definition is stored in the database. If we look inside the database we can see what this looks like. The table tbl_BuildDefinition contains all information for a build definition. One of the columns is called ProcessParameters and contains a serialized representation of a Dictionary that is the underlying object where these settings are stoded. Here is an example: <Dictionary x:TypeArguments="x:String, x:Object" xmlns="clr-namespace:System.Collections.Generic;assembly=mscorlib" xmlns:mtbwa="clr-namespace:Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Workflow.Activities;assembly=Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Workflow" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"> <mtbwa:BuildSettings x:Key="BuildSettings" ProjectsToBuild="$/PathToProject.sln"> <mtbwa:BuildSettings.PlatformConfigurations> <mtbwa:PlatformConfigurationList Capacity="4"> <mtbwa:PlatformConfiguration Configuration="Release" Platform="Any CPU" /> </mtbwa:PlatformConfigurationList> </mtbwa:BuildSettings.PlatformConfigurations> </mtbwa:BuildSettings> <mtbwa:AgentSettings x:Key="AgentSettings" Tags="Agent1" /> <x:Boolean x:Key="DisableTests">True</x:Boolean> <x:String x:Key="ReleaseRepositorySolution">ERP</x:String> <x:Int32 x:Key="Major">2</x:Int32> <x:Int32 x:Key="Minor">3</x:Int32> </Dictionary> Here we can see that it is really only the non-default values that are persisted into the databasen. So, the problem in my case was that I removed one of the parameteres from the build process template, but the parameter and its value still existed in the build definition database. The solution to the problem is to refresh the build definition and save it. In the process tab, there is a Refresh button that will reload the build definition and the process template and synchronize them: After refreshing the build definition and saving it, the build was running successfully again.

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Blending the Sketchflow Action

- by GeekAgilistMercenary

Started a new Sketchflow Prototype in Expression Blend recently and documented each of the steps. This blog entry covers some of those steps, which are the basic elements of any prototype. I will have more information regarding design, prototype creation, and the process of the initial phases for development in the future. For now, I hope you enjoy this short walk through. Also, be sure to check out my last quick entry on Sketchflow. I started off with a Sketchflow Project, just like I did in my previous entry (more specifics in that entry about how to manipulate and build out the Sketchflow Map). Once I created the project I setup the following Sketchflow Map. The CoreNavigation is a ComponentScreen setup solely for the page navigation at the top of the screen. The XAML markup in case you want to create a Component Screen with the same design is included below. <UserControl xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d" xmlns:i="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Interactivity;assembly=System.Windows.Interactivity" xmlns:pb="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Expression.Prototyping.Behavior;assembly=Microsoft.Expression.Prototyping.Interactivity" x:Class="RapidPrototypeSketchScreens.CoreNavigation" d:DesignWidth="624" d:DesignHeight="49" Height="49" Width="624"> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Margin="307,3,0,0" Style="{StaticResource TitleCenter-Sketch}" Text="Aütøchart Scorecards" TextWrapping="Wrap"> <i:Interaction.Triggers> <i:EventTrigger EventName="MouseLeftButtonDown"> <pb:NavigateToScreenAction TargetScreen="RapidPrototypeSketchScreens.Screen_1"/> </i:EventTrigger> </i:Interaction.Triggers> </TextBlock> <Button HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="164,8,0,11" Style="{StaticResource Button-Sketch}" Width="144" Content="Scorecard"> <i:Interaction.Triggers> <i:EventTrigger EventName="Click"> <pb:NavigateToScreenAction TargetScreen="RapidPrototypeSketchScreens.Screen_1_2"/> </i:EventTrigger> </i:Interaction.Triggers> </Button> <Button HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="8,8,0,11" Style="{StaticResource Button-Sketch}" Width="152" Content="Standard Reports"> <i:Interaction.Triggers> <i:EventTrigger EventName="Click"> <pb:NavigateToScreenAction TargetScreen="RapidPrototypeSketchScreens.Screen_1_1"/> </i:EventTrigger> </i:Interaction.Triggers> </Button> </Grid> </UserControl> Now that the CoreNavigation Component Screen is done I built out each of the others. In each of those screens I included the CoreNavigation Screen (all those little green lines in the image) as the top navigation. In order to do that, as I created each of the pages I would hover over the CoreNavigation Object in the Sketchflow Map. When the utilities drawer (the small menu that pops down under a node when you hover over it) shows click on the third little icon and drag it onto the page node you want a navigation screen on. Once I created all the screens I setup the navigation by opening up each screen and right clicking on the objects that needed to point to somewhere else in the prototype. Once I was done with the main page, my Home Navigation Page, it looked something like this in the Expression Blend Designer. I fleshed out each of the additional screens. Once I was done I wanted to try out the deployment package. The way to deploy a Sketchflow Prototype is to merely click on File –> Package SketchFlow Project and a prompt will appear. In the prompt enter what you want the package to be called. I like to see the files generated afterwards too, so I checked the box to see that. When Expression Blend is done generating everything you’ll have a directory like the one shown below, with all the needed files for deployment. Now these files can be copied or moved to any location for viewing. One can even copy them (such as via FTP) to a server location to share with others. Once they are deployed and you run the "TestPage.html" the other features of the Sketchflow Package are available. In the image below I have tagged a few sections to show the Sketchflow Player Features. To the top left is the navigation, which provides a clearly defined area of movement in a list. To the center right is the actual prototype application. I have placed lists of things and made edits. On the left hand side is the highlight feature, which is available in the Feedback section of the lower left. On the right hand list I underlined the Autochart with an orange marker, and marked out two list items with a red marker. In the lower left hand side in the Feedback section is also an area to type in your feedback. This can be useful for time based feedback, when you post this somewhere and want people to provide subsequent follow up feedback. Overall lots of great features, that enable some fairly rapid prototyping with customers. Once one is familiar with the steps and parts of this Sketchflow Prototype Capabilities it is easy to step through an application without even stopping. It really is that easy. So get hold of Expression Blend 3 and get ramped up on Sketchflow, it will pay off in the design phases to do so! Original Entry

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XNA Notes 006

- by George Clingerman

If you used to think the XNA community was small and inactive, hopefully these XNA Notes are opening your eyes. And I honestly feel like I’m still only catching the tail end of everything that’s going on. It’s a large and active community and you can be so mired down in one part of it you miss all sorts of cool stuff another part is doing. XNA is many things to a lot of people and that makes for a lot of really awesome things going on. So here’s what I saw going on this last week! Time Critical XNA New: XNA Team - Peer Review now closes for XNA 3.1 games http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/02/08/peer-review-pipeline-closed-for-new-xna-gs-3-1-games-or-updates-on-app-hub.aspx http://twitter.com/XNACommunity/statuses/34649816529256448 The XNA Team posts about a meet up with Microsoft for Creator’s going to be at GDC, March 3rd at the Lobby Bar http://on.fb.me/fZungJ XNA Team: @mklucher is busying playing the the bubblegum on WP7 made by a member of the XNA team (although reportedly made in Silverlight? Crazy! ;) ) http://twitter.com/mklucher/statuses/34645662737895426 http://bubblegum.me Shawn Hargreaves posts multiple posts (is this a sign that something new is coming from the XNA team? Usually when Shawn has time to post, something has just wrapped up…) Random Shuffle http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/02/09/random-shuffle.aspx Doing the right thing: resume, rewind or skip ahead http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/02/10/doing-the-right-thing-resume-rewind-or-skip-ahead.aspx XNA Developers: Andrew Russel was on .NET Rocks recently talking with Carl and Richard about developing games for Xbox, iPhone and Android http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?ShowNum=635 Eric W. releases the Fishing Girl source code into the wild http://ericw.ca/blog/posts/fishing-girl-now-open-source/ http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/74642/454512.aspx#454512 BinaryTweedDeej reminds that XNA community that Indie City wants you involved http://twitter.com/BinaryTweedDeej/statuses/34596114028044288 http://www.indiecity.com Mike McLaughlin (@mikebmcl) releases his first two XNA articles on the TechNet wiki http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/xna-framework-overview.aspx http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/content-pipeline-overview.aspx John Watte plays around with the Content Pipeline and Music Visualization exploring just what can be done. http://www.enchantedage.com/xna-content-pipeline-fft-song-analysis http://www.enchantedage.com/fft-in-xna-content-pipeline-for-beat-detection-for-the-win Simon Stevens writes up his talk on Vector Collision Physics http://www.simonpstevens.com/News/VectorCollisionPhysics @domipheus puts together an XNA Task Manager http://www.flickr.com/photos/domipheus/5405603197/ MadNinjaSkillz releases his fork of Nick's Easy Storage component on CodePlex http://twitter.com/MadNinjaSkillz/statuses/34739039068229634 http://ezstorage.codeplex.com @ActiveNick was interviewed by Rob Cameron and discusses Windows Phone 7, Bing Maps and XNA http://twitter.com/ActiveNick/statuses/35348548526546944 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/cc537546 Radiangames (Luke Schneider) posts about converting his games from XNA to Unity http://radiangames.com/?p=592 UberMonkey (@ElementCy) posts about a new project in the works, CubeTest a Minecraft style terrain http://www.ubergamermonkey.com/personal-projects/new-project-in-the-works/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Ubergamermonkey+%28UberGamerMonkey%29 Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): VideoGamer Rob review Bonded Realities http://videogamerrob.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/xblig-review-bonded-realities/ XBLIG Round Up on Gamergeddon http://www.gamergeddon.com/2011/02/06/xbox-indie-game-round-up-february-6th/ Are gamers still rating Indie Games after the Xbox Dashboard update? http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/06/are-gamers-still-rating-indie-games-after-the-xbox-dashboard-update.aspx Joystiq - Xbox Live Indie Gems: Corrupted http://www.joystiq.com/2011/02/04/xbox-live-indie-gems-corrupted/ Raymond Matthews of DarkStarMatryx reviews (Almost) Total Mayhem and Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=225 http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=229 8 Bit Horse reviews Aban Hawkins & the 1000 spikes http://8bithorse.blogspot.com/2011/01/aban-hawkins-1000-spikes-xbl-indie.html 2010 wrap-up for FunInfused Games http://www.krissteele.net/blogdetails.aspx?id=245 NeoGaf roundup of January's XBLIGs http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=420528 Armless Ocotopus interviews Michael Ventnor creator of Bonded Realities http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/02/07/interview-michael-ventnor-of-red-crest-studios/ @recharge_media posts about the new city music for Woodvale in Sin Rising http://rechargemedia.com/2011/02/08/new-city-theme-woodvale/ @DrMisty posts some footage of YoYoYo in action http://www.mstargames.co.uk/mistryblogmain/54-yoyoyoblogs/184-video-update.html Xona Games - Decimation X3 on Reviews on the Run http://video.citytv.com/video/detail/782443063001.000000/reviews-on-the-run--february-8-2011/g4/ @benkane gives an early peek at his action RPG coming to XBLIG http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDF_PrvtwU8 Rock, Paper Shotgun talks to Zeboyd games about bringing Cthulhu Saves the World to PC http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/02/11/summoning-cthulhu-natter-with-zeboyd/ Xbox LIVE Indieverse interviews the creator of Bonded Realities http://xbl-indieverse.blogspot.com/2011/02/xbl-indieverse-interview-red-crest.html XNA Game Development: Dream-In-Code posts about an upcoming XNA Challenge/Coding contest http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/blog/1385/entry-3192-xna-challengecontest/ Sgt.Conker covers Fishing Girl and IndieFreaks Game Framework release http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/02/fishing-girl-did-not-sell-a-single-copy/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/02/indiefreaks-game-framework-v0-2-0-0/ @slyprid releases Transmute v0.40a with lots of new features and fixes http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/34125423067533312 http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/35326876243337216 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/ Jeff Brown writes an XNA 4.0 tutorial on Saving/Loading on the Xbox 360 http://www.robotfootgames.com/xna-tutorials/92-xna-tutorial-savingloading-on-xbox-360-40 XNA for Silverlight Developers: Part 3- Animation http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-3-Animation-transforms.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+xna-connection-twitter-specific-stream+%28XNA+Connection%27s+Twitter+specific+stream%29 The news from Nokia is definitely something XNA developers will want to keep their eye on http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/nokia-developer-news/2011/02/11/letter-to-developers?sf1066337=1

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Create an iTunes Account without a credit card

- by Matthew Guay

iTunes Store offers a large variety of free content, but to download it you have to have an account. Usually you have to enter your credit card information to sign up, but here’s an easy way to get an iTunes account for free downloads without entering any payment info. Although iTunes Store is known for paid downloads of movies, music, and more, it also has a treasure trove of free media. Some of it, including Podcasts and iTunes U educational content do not require an account to download. However, any other free content, including free iPhone/iPod Touch apps and free or promotional music, videos, and TV Shows all require an account to download. If you try to download a free movie or music download, you will be required to enter payment information. Even though your card will not be charged, it will be kept on file so you can be charged if you download a for-pay item. However, if you only plan to download free items, it may be preferable to not have your account linked to a credit card. The following steps will get you an account without entering your credit card info. Getting Started First, make sure you have iTunes installed. If you don’t already have it, download and install it (link below) with the default settings. Now open iTunes, and click the iTunes Store link on the left. Click the App Store link on the top of this page. Select a free app to download. A simple way to do this is to scroll down to the Top Free Apps box on the right side, hover your mouse over the first item, and click on the Free button that appears when you hover over it. A popup will open asking you to sign in with your Apple ID. Click “Create New Account”. Click Continue to create your account. Check the box to accept the Store Terms and Conditions, and click Continue. Enter your email address, password, security question, and date of birth, and uncheck the boxes to get email if you don’t want it…then click Continue. Now, you will be asked to provide a payment method. Notice now that the last option says None! Click that bullet option… Then enter your billing address. Simply enter your normal billing address, even though you are not entering a payment method. Click Continue and your account will be created! If you get the Address Verification screen just verify your county and click Done. An email will be sent to you to verify your account… Click on the link in your email to verify your account, iTunes will launch and you’re prompted to enter in the Apple ID and Password you just created. Your account is successfully created! Now you can easily download any free media from iTunes. Keep an eye on the Free on iTunes box on the bottom of the iTunes Store page for interesting downloads, or if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, watch the popular Free downloads on the Apps page. And of course there is always great content on iTunes U to grab free as well. Purchasing for-pay media If you want to purchase an item on the iTunes store later, simply click on the item to download as normal. Click Buy to proceed with the purchase. iTunes will prompt you that you need to enter payment information to complete the purchase. Enter your Apple ID email and password, and then add the payment information as prompted. Remove Payment Information from an iTunes Account If you’ve already entered payment information into your iTunes account, and would like to remove it, click Store in the top iTunes menu, and select View My Account. Enter your Apple ID email and password, and click View Account. This will open your account information. Click the Edit Payment Information button. Now, click the None button to remove your payment information. Click Done to save the changes. Your account will now prompt you to enter payment information if you try to make a purchase. You could repeat these steps after making a purchase if you do not want iTunes to keep your payment info on file. Conclusion This is a great way to make an iTunes account without entering your credit card, or to remove your credit card info from your account. Parents may especially enjoy this tip, as they can have an iTunes account on their kids computer or iPod Touch without worrying about them spending money with it. Links Download iTunes Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Quick Tip: Switch Between Signatures in Outlook 2007 the Easy WayRedeem Pre-paid Zune Card Points for Zune Marketplace MediaCreate An Electronic Business Card In Outlook 2007Understanding Windows Vista Aero Glass RequirementsSpeed up Your Windows Vista Computer with ReadyBoost TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Draw Online using Harmony How to Browse Privately in Firefox Kill Processes Quickly with Process Assassin Need to Come Up with a Good Name? Try Wordoid StockFox puts a Lightweight Stock Ticker in your Statusbar Explore Google Public Data Visually

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Oracle Open World 2012: SQL Developer Recap

- by thatjeffsmith

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

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Pure Server-Side Filtering with RadGridView and WCF RIA Services

Those of you who are familiar with WCF RIA Services know that the DomainDataSource control provides a FilterDescriptors collection that enables you to filter data returned by the query on the server. We have been using this DomainDataSource feature in our RIA Services with DomainDataSource online example for almost an year now. In the example, we are listening for RadGridViews Filtering event in order to intercept any filtering that is performed on the client and translate it to something that the DomainDataSource will understand, in this case a System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor being added or removed from its FilterDescriptors collection. Think of RadGridView.FilterDescriptors as client-side filtering and of DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors as server-side filtering. We no longer need the client-side one. With the introduction of the Custom Filtering Controls feature many new possibilities have opened. With these custom controls we no longer need to do any filtering on the client. I have prepared a very small project that demonstrates how to filter solely on the server by using a custom filtering control. As I have already mentioned filtering on the server is done through the FilterDescriptors collection of the DomainDataSource control. This collection holds instances of type System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor. The FilterDescriptor has three important properties: PropertyPath: Specifies the name of the property that we want to filter on (the left operand). Operator: Specifies the type of comparison to use when filtering. An instance of FilterOperator Enumeration. Value: The value to compare with (the right operand). An instance of the Parameter Class. By adding filters, you can specify that only entities which meet the condition in the filter are loaded from the domain context. In case you are not familiar with these concepts you might find Brad Abrams blog interesting. Now, our requirements are to create some kind of UI that will manipulate the DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors collection. When it comes to collections, my first choice of course would be RadGridView. If you are not familiar with the Custom Filtering Controls concept I would strongly recommend getting acquainted with my step-by-step tutorial Custom Filtering with RadGridView for Silverlight and checking the online example out. I have created a simple custom filtering control that contains a RadGridView and several buttons. This control is aware of the DomainDataSource instance, since it is operating on its FilterDescriptors collection. In fact, the RadGridView that is inside it is bound to this collection. In order to display filters that are relevant for the current column only, I have applied a filter to the grid. This filter is a Telerik.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor and is used to filter the little grid inside the custom control. It should not be confused with the DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors collection that RadGridView is actually bound to. These are the RIA filters. Additionally, I have added several other features. For example, if you have specified a DataFormatString on your original column, the Value column inside the custom control will pick it up and format the filter values accordingly. Also, I have transferred the data type of the column that you are filtering to the Value column of the custom control. This will help the little RadGridView determine what kind of editor to show up when you begin edit, for example a date picker for DateTime columns. Finally, I have added four buttons two of them can be used to add or remove filters and the other two will communicate the changes you have made to the server. Here is the full source code of the DomainDataSourceFilteringControl. The XAML: <UserControl x:Class="PureServerSideFiltering.DomainDataSourceFilteringControl" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:telerikGrid="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls.GridView" xmlns:telerik="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls" Width="300"> <Border x:Name="LayoutRoot" BorderThickness="1" BorderBrush="#FF8A929E" Padding="5" Background="#FFDFE2E5"> <Grid> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/> <RowDefinition Height="150"/> <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <StackPanel Grid.Row="0" Margin="2" Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Center"> <telerik:RadButton Name="addFilterButton" Click="OnAddFilterButtonClick" Content="Add Filter" Margin="2" Width="96"/> <telerik:RadButton Name="removeFilterButton" Click="OnRemoveFilterButtonClick" Content="Remove Filter" Margin="2" Width="96"/> </StackPanel> <telerikGrid:RadGridView Name="filtersGrid" Grid.Row="1" Margin="2" ItemsSource="{Binding FilterDescriptors}" AddingNewDataItem="OnFilterGridAddingNewDataItem" ColumnWidth="*" ShowGroupPanel="False" AutoGenerateColumns="False" CanUserResizeColumns="False" CanUserReorderColumns="False" CanUserFreezeColumns="False" RowIndicatorVisibility="Collapsed" IsFilteringAllowed="False" CanUserSortColumns="False"> <telerikGrid:RadGridView.Columns> <telerikGrid:GridViewComboBoxColumn DataMemberBinding="{Binding Operator}" UniqueName="Operator"/> <telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Value" DataMemberBinding="{Binding Value.Value}" UniqueName="Value"/> </telerikGrid:RadGridView.Columns> </telerikGrid:RadGridView> <StackPanel Grid.Row="2" Margin="2" Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Center"> <telerik:RadButton Name="filterButton" Click="OnApplyFiltersButtonClick" Content="Apply Filters" Margin="2" Width="96"/> <telerik:RadButton Name="clearButton" Click="OnClearFiltersButtonClick" Content="Clear Filters" Margin="2" Width="96"/> </StackPanel> </Grid> </Border> </UserControl> And the code-behind: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows.Documents; using System.Windows.Input; using System.Windows.Media; using System.Windows.Media.Animation; using System.Windows.Shapes; using Telerik.Windows.Controls.GridView; using System.Windows.Data; using Telerik.Windows.Controls; using Telerik.Windows.Data; namespace PureServerSideFiltering { /// <summary> /// A custom filtering control capable of filtering purely server-side. /// </summary> public partial class DomainDataSourceFilteringControl : UserControl, IFilteringControl { // The main player here. DomainDataSource domainDataSource; // This is the name of the property that this column displays. private string dataMemberName; // This is the type of the property that this column displays. private Type dataMemberType; /// <summary> /// Identifies the <see cref="IsActive"/> dependency property. /// </summary> /// <remarks> /// The state of the filtering funnel (i.e. full or empty) is bound to this property. /// </remarks> public static readonly DependencyProperty IsActiveProperty = DependencyProperty.Register( "IsActive", typeof(bool), typeof(DomainDataSourceFilteringControl), new PropertyMetadata(false)); /// <summary> /// Gets or sets a value indicating whether the filtering is active. /// </summary> /// <remarks> /// Set this to true if you want to lit-up the filtering funnel. /// </remarks> public bool IsActive { get { return (bool)GetValue(IsActiveProperty); } set { SetValue(IsActiveProperty, value); } } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the domain data source. /// We need this in order to work on its FilterDescriptors collection. /// </summary> /// <value>The domain data source.</value> public DomainDataSource DomainDataSource { get { return this.domainDataSource; } set { this.domainDataSource = value; } } public System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptorCollection FilterDescriptors { get { return this.DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors; } } public DomainDataSourceFilteringControl() { InitializeComponent(); } public void Prepare(GridViewBoundColumnBase column) { this.LayoutRoot.DataContext = this; if (this.DomainDataSource == null) { // Sorry, but we need a DomainDataSource. Can't do anything without it. return; } // This is the name of the property that this column displays. this.dataMemberName = column.GetDataMemberName(); // This is the type of the property that this column displays. // We need this in order to see which FilterOperators to feed to the combo-box column. this.dataMemberType = column.DataType; // We will use our magic Type extension method to see which operators are applicable for // this data type. You can go to the extension method body and see what it does. ((GridViewComboBoxColumn)this.filtersGrid.Columns["Operator"]).ItemsSource = this.dataMemberType.ApplicableFilterOperators(); // This is very nice as well. We will tell the Value column its data type. In this way // RadGridView will pick up the best editor according to the data type. For example, // if the data type of the value is DateTime, you will be editing it with a DatePicker. // Nice! ((GridViewDataColumn)this.filtersGrid.Columns["Value"]).DataType = this.dataMemberType; // Yet another nice feature. We will transfer the original DataFormatString (if any) to // the Value column. In this way if you have specified a DataFormatString for the original // column, you will see all filter values formatted accordingly. ((GridViewDataColumn)this.filtersGrid.Columns["Value"]).DataFormatString = column.DataFormatString; // This is important. Since our little filtersGrid will be bound to the entire collection // of this.domainDataSource.FilterDescriptors, we need to set a Telerik filter on the // grid so that it will display FilterDescriptor which are relevane to this column ONLY! Telerik.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor columnFilter = new Telerik.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor("PropertyPath" , Telerik.Windows.Data.FilterOperator.IsEqualTo , this.dataMemberName); this.filtersGrid.FilterDescriptors.Add(columnFilter); // We want to listen for this in order to activate and de-activate the UI funnel. this.filtersGrid.Items.CollectionChanged += this.OnFilterGridItemsCollectionChanged; } /// <summary> // Since the DomainDataSource is a little bit picky about adding uninitialized FilterDescriptors // to its collection, we will prepare each new instance with some default values and then // the user can change them later. Go to the event handler to see how we do this. /// </summary> void OnFilterGridAddingNewDataItem(object sender, GridViewAddingNewEventArgs e) { // We need to initialize the new instance with some values and let the user go on from here. System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor newFilter = new System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor(); // This is a must. It should know what member it is filtering on. newFilter.PropertyPath = this.dataMemberName; // Initialize it with one of the allowed operators. // TypeExtensions.ApplicableFilterOperators method for more info. newFilter.Operator = this.dataMemberType.ApplicableFilterOperators().First(); if (this.dataMemberType == typeof(DateTime)) { newFilter.Value.Value = DateTime.Now; } else if (this.dataMemberType == typeof(string)) { newFilter.Value.Value = "<enter text>"; } else if (this.dataMemberType.IsValueType) { // We need something non-null for all value types. newFilter.Value.Value = Activator.CreateInstance(this.dataMemberType); } // Let the user edit the new filter any way he/she likes. e.NewObject = newFilter; } void OnFilterGridItemsCollectionChanged(object sender, System.Collections.Specialized.NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs e) { // We are active only if we have any filters define. In this case the filtering funnel will lit-up. this.IsActive = this.filtersGrid.Items.Count > 0; } private void OnApplyFiltersButtonClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (this.DomainDataSource.IsLoadingData) { return; } // Comment this if you want the popup to stay open after the button is clicked. this.ClosePopup(); // Since this.domainDataSource.AutoLoad is false, this will take into // account all filtering changes that the user has made since the last // Load() and pull the new data to the client. this.DomainDataSource.Load(); } private void OnClearFiltersButtonClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (this.DomainDataSource.IsLoadingData) { return; } // We want to remove ONLY those filters from the DomainDataSource // that this control is responsible for. this.DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors .Where(fd => fd.PropertyPath == this.dataMemberName) // Only "our" filters. .ToList() .ForEach(fd => this.DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Remove(fd)); // Bye-bye! // Comment this if you want the popup to stay open after the button is clicked. this.ClosePopup(); // After we did our housekeeping, get the new data to the client. this.DomainDataSource.Load(); } private void OnAddFilterButtonClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (this.DomainDataSource.IsLoadingData) { return; } // Let the user enter his/or her requirements for a new filter. this.filtersGrid.BeginInsert(); this.filtersGrid.UpdateLayout(); } private void OnRemoveFilterButtonClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (this.DomainDataSource.IsLoadingData) { return; } // Find the currently selected filter and destroy it. System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor filterToRemove = this.filtersGrid.SelectedItem as System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor; if (filterToRemove != null && this.DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Contains(filterToRemove)) { this.DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Remove(filterToRemove); } } private void ClosePopup() { System.Windows.Controls.Primitives.Popup popup = this.ParentOfType<System.Windows.Controls.Primitives.Popup>(); if (popup != null) { popup.IsOpen = false; } } } } Finally, we need to tell RadGridViews Columns to use this custom control instead of the default one. Here is how to do it: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows.Documents; using System.Windows.Input; using System.Windows.Media; using System.Windows.Media.Animation; using System.Windows.Shapes; using System.Windows.Data; using Telerik.Windows.Data; using Telerik.Windows.Controls; using Telerik.Windows.Controls.GridView; namespace PureServerSideFiltering { public partial class MainPage : UserControl { public MainPage() { InitializeComponent(); this.grid.AutoGeneratingColumn += this.OnGridAutoGeneratingColumn; // Uncomment this if you want the DomainDataSource to start pre-filtered. // You will notice how our custom filtering controls will correctly read this information, // populate their UI with the respective filters and lit-up the funnel to indicate that // filtering is active. Go ahead and try it. this.employeesDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Add(new System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor("Title", System.Windows.Data.FilterOperator.Contains, "Assistant")); this.employeesDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Add(new System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor("HireDate", System.Windows.Data.FilterOperator.IsGreaterThan, new DateTime(1998, 12, 31))); this.employeesDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Add(new System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor("HireDate", System.Windows.Data.FilterOperator.IsLessThanOrEqualTo, new DateTime(1999, 12, 31))); this.employeesDataSource.Load(); } /// <summary> /// First of all, we will need to replace the default filtering control /// of each column with out custom filtering control DomainDataSourceFilteringControl /// </summary> private void OnGridAutoGeneratingColumn(object sender, GridViewAutoGeneratingColumnEventArgs e) { GridViewBoundColumnBase dataColumn = e.Column as GridViewBoundColumnBase; if (dataColumn != null) { // We do not like ugly dates. if (dataColumn.DataType == typeof(DateTime)) { dataColumn.DataFormatString = "{0:d}"; // Short date pattern. // Notice how this format will be later transferred to the Value column // of the grid that we have inside the DomainDataSourceFilteringControl. } // Replace the default filtering control with our. dataColumn.FilteringControl = new DomainDataSourceFilteringControl() { // Let the control know about the DDS, after all it will work directly on it. DomainDataSource = this.employeesDataSource }; // Finally, lit-up the filtering funnel through the IsActive dependency property // in case there are some filters on the DDS that match our column member. string dataMemberName = dataColumn.GetDataMemberName(); dataColumn.FilteringControl.IsActive = this.employeesDataSource.FilterDescriptors .Where(fd => fd.PropertyPath == dataMemberName) .Count() > 0; } } } } The best part is that we are not only writing filters for the DomainDataSource we can read and load them. If the DomainDataSource has some pre-existing filters (like I have created in the code above), our control will read them and will populate its UI accordingly. Even the filtering funnel will light-up! Remember, the funnel is controlled by the IsActive property of our control. While this is just a basic implementation, the source code is absolutely yours and you can take it from here and extend it to match your specific business requirements. Below the main grid there is another debug grid. With its help you can monitor what filter descriptors are added and removed to the domain data source. Download Source Code. (You will have to have the AdventureWorks sample database installed on the default SQLExpress instance in order to run it.) Enjoy!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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My Interview with Microsoft

- by Victor Hurdugaci

This post is for those who want to apply or have already applied (but not finished the interview) for a Microsoft Job. The recruitment process is quite similar for everyone and consists of a few steps. Application E-Mail Interview Phone Interview On Site Interview I will tell you my story and how I went through the four phases. 1. Application My blog's title (Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit) means "Nothing Comes Out of Nothing". You can't get a job at Microsoft by not doing anything - this is true for anything else. The first step you need to complete is the application process. For this, many options are available. You can... ... apply online on Microsoft's Careers website as I did ... send your CV to different e-mail addresses (there are some dedicated e-mails for different positions) ... apply through some 3rd party organization (job shop, campus recruitment, job agency, etc) On MS Careers you just have to post your CV and choose the job you want. That's all! No recommendation letter, no cover letter, no nothing. Of course, not every CV passes the selection process. Here are some tips for improving your resume (worked for me): Don't write it just before applying! Write a draft version, wait a few days and then review it. This way you will find a lot of mistakes and stupid things you wrote initially. If you review it immediately after writing, your mind will not be criticism oriented and will just ignore mistakes. Repeat the write-wait-review process as many times as necessary, until you find that the review revealed no mistakes. After you did the final review and the CV is bullet-proof, ask others to review it. They will definitely find inconsistencies and mistakes and this will make you feel stupid. This is good because will open your eyes will make you go into an 'I want to improve' mode. You'll try to correct everything. After you come up with a modified version go again through steps 1 and 2. Repeat this as many times as necessary. [Special thanks to Lucian Sasu, Nadia Comanici, Andrei Ciobanu, Monica Balan and Lavinia Tanase for reviewing my CV!] Make it short and give only relevant facts. Initially, I come up with a 5 pages CV because I wrote every single technology with which I worked. There were a lot irrelevant things, I wrote Windows Workflow Foundation just because I played with it for a few days. I added extensive descriptions for every project, made a personal details section (name, birth date, address, etc) of 1/2 page. Others suggested to cut everything that was not necessary. You don't need to give extensive descriptions, just add a few words. For example, I wrote "VS Image Visualizer - Visual Studio 2008 debug visualizer for images" and added a link to the project's page - you submit formatted andcan embed links. Add something that makes it different. I don't know if this makes a difference, but I added some lines to separate items just like in the picture below. Definitely Microsoft gets thousands of CVs per day. You need something special. Don't lie! Tell exactly what you did and what is the proficiency level of your skills. For example, don't write "Advanced" for UML if you don't know the difference between composition and aggregation. Be realistic and don't under/over estimate yourself. Use the spell chick. Make sure everything is written in correct English and there are no grammar/spelling mistakes. Noddy likes a WC with grammar mi takes. You mght fail just because of that. Once you completed your CV, choose the job that suits best your needs, apply and wait... The waiting is a problem because all these big companies like Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Apple, etc. will contact you only if they find something interesting in your application. If you're not suitable, then no rejection is sent. I applied for an Intern Software Development Engineer position at Microsoft Redmond. I cannot apply for a full time position because I want to finish the master program on time, in the next summer - an internship is just what I need. 2. E-Mail Interview January 20, 2010. Two months since I submitted the CV. I wasn't hoping anymore that MS will contact me, when I got an e-mail titled: "Victor Hurdugaci ES DK" from Holly Peterson saying: Read more >>

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Building the Elusive Windows Phone Panorama Control

When the Windows Phone 7 Developer SDK was released a couple of weeks ago at MIX10 many people noticed the SDK doesnt include a template for a Panorama control. Here at Clarity we decided to build our own Panorama control for use in some of our prototypes and I figured I would share what we came up with. There have been a couple of implementations of the Panorama control making their way through the interwebs, but I didnt think any of them really nailed the experience that is shown in the simulation videos. One of the key design principals in the UX Guide for Windows Phone 7 is the use of motion. The WP7 OS is fairly stripped of extraneous design elements and makes heavy use of typography and motion to give users the necessary visual cues. Subtle animations and wide layouts help give the user a sense of fluidity and consistency across the phone experience. When building the panorama control I was fairly meticulous in recreating the motion as shown in the videos. The effect that is shown in the application hubs of the phone is known as a Parallax Scrolling effect. This this pseudo-3D technique has been around in the computer graphics world for quite some time. In essence, the background images move slower than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth in 2D. Here is an example of the traditional use: http://www.mauriciostudio.com/. One of the animation gems I've learned while building interactive software is the follow animation. The premise is straightforward: instead of translating content 1:1 with the interaction point, let the content catch up to the mouse or finger. The difference is subtle, but the impact on the smoothness of the interaction is huge. That said, it became the foundation of how I achieved the effect shown below. Source Code Available HERE Before I briefly describe the approach I took in creating this control..and Ill add some **asterisks ** to the code below as my coding skills arent up to snuff with the rest of my colleagues. This code is meant to be an interpretation of the WP7 panorama control and is not intended to be used in a production application. 1. Layout the XAML The UI consists of three main components : The background image, the Title, and the Content. You can imagine each these UI Elements existing on their own plane with a corresponding Translate Transform to create the Parallax effect. 2. Storyboards + Procedural Animations = Sexy As I mentioned above, creating a fluid experience was at the top of my priorities while building this control. To recreate the smooth scroll effect shown in the video we need to add some place holder storyboards that we can manipulate in code to simulate the inertia and snapping. Using the easing functions built into Silverlight helps create a very pleasant interaction. 3. Handle the Manipulation Events With Silverlight 3 we have some new touch event handlers. The new Manipulation events makes handling the interactivity pretty straight forward. There are two event handlers that need to be hooked up to enable the dragging and motion effects: the ManipulationDelta event : (the most relevant code is highlighted in pink) Here we are doing some simple math with the Manipulation Deltas and setting the TO values of the animations appropriately. Modifying the storyboards dynamically in code helps to create a natural feel.something that cant easily be done with storyboards alone. And secondly, the ManipulationCompleted event: Here we take the Final Velocities from the Manipulation Completed Event and apply them to the Storyboards to create the snapping and scrolling effects. Most of this code is determining what the next position of the viewport will be. The interesting part (shown in pink) is determining the duration of the animation based on the calculated velocity of the flick gesture. By using velocity as a variable in determining the duration of the animation we can produce a slow animation for a soft flick and a fast animation for a strong flick. Challenges to the Reader There are a couple of things I didnt have time to implement into this control. And I would love to see other WPF/Silverlight approaches. 1. A good mechanism for deciphering when the user is manipulating the content within the panorama control and the panorama itself. In other words, being able to accurately determine what is a flick and what is click. 2. Dynamically Sizing the panorama control based on the width of its content. Right now each control panel is 400px, ideally the Panel items would be measured and then panorama control would update its size accordingly. 3. Background and content wrapping. The WP7 UX guidelines specify that the content and background should wrap at the end of the list. In my code I restrict the drag at the ends of the list (like the iPhone). It would be interesting to see how this would effect the scroll experience. Well, Its been fun building this control and if you use it Id love to know what you think. You can download the Source HERE or from the Expression Gallery Erik Klimczak | [email protected] | twitter.com/eklimczDid 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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Taking advantage of Windows Azure CDN and Dynamic Pages in ASP.NET - Caching content from hosted services

- by Shawn Cicoria

With the updates to Windows Azure CDN announced this week [1] I wanted to help illustrate the capability with a working sample that will serve up dynamic content from an ASP.NET site hosted in a WebRole. First, to get a good overview of the capability you can read the Overview of the Windows Azure CDN [2] content on MSDN. When you setup the ability to cache content from a hosted service, the requirement is to provide a path to your role’s DNS endpoint that ends in the path “/cdn”. Additionally, you then map CDN to that service. What WAZ CDN does, is allow you to then map that through the CDN to your host. The CDN will then make a request to your host on your client’s behalf. The requirement is still that your client, and any Url’s that are to be serviced through the CDN and this capability have to use the CDN DNS name and not your host – no different than what CDN does for Blog storage. The following 2 URL’s are samples of how the client needs to issue the requests. Windows Azure hosted service URL: http: //myHostedService.cloudapp.net/cdn/music.aspx - for regular “dynamic” content Windows Azure CDN URL: http: //<identifier>.vo.msecnd.net/music.aspx - for CDN “cachable” content. The first URL path’s the request direct to your host into the Azure datacenter. The 2nd URL paths the request through the CDN infrastructure, where CDN will make the determination to request the content on behalf of the client to the Azure datacenter and your host on the /cdn path. The big advantage here is you can apply logic to your content creation. What’s important is emitting the CDN friendly headers that allow CDN to request and re-request only when you designate based upon it’s rules of “staleness” as described in the overview page. With IIS7.5 there is an underlying issue when the Managed Module “OutputCache” is enabled that in order to emit a good header for your content, you’ll need to remove, and in my sample, helps provide CDN friendly headers. You get IIS 7.5 when running under OS Family “2” in your service configuration. By default, and when the OutputCache managed module is loaded, if you use the HttpResponse.CachePolicy to set the Http Headers for “max-age” when the HttpCacheability is “Public”, you will NOT get the “max-age” emitted as part of the “Cache-control:” header. Instead, the OutputCache module will remove “max-age” and just emit “public”. It works ok when Cacheability is set to “private”. To work around the issue and ensure your code as follows emits the full max-age along with the public option, you need to remove as follows: <system.webServer> <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true"> <remove name="OutputCache"/> </modules> </system.webServer> Response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.Public); Response.Cache.SetMaxAge(TimeSpan.FromMinutes(rv)); In the attached solution, the way I approached it was to have a VirtualApplication under the root site that has it’s own web.config - this VirtualApplication is the /cdn of the site and when deployed to Azure as a Web Role will surface as a distinct IIS Application – along with a separate AppDomain. The CDN Sample is a simple Web Forms site that the /default landing page contains 3 IFrames to host: 1. Content direct from the host @ http://xxxx.cloudapp.net/cdn 2. Content via the CDN @ http://azxxx.vo.msecnd.net 3. Simple list of recent requests – showing where the request came from. When you run the sample the first time you hit the page, both the Host and the CDN will cause 2 initial requests to hit the host. You won’t see the first requests in the list because of timing – but if you refresh, you’ll see that the list will show that you have 2 requests initially. 1. sourced direct from the Browser to the HOST 2. sourced via the CDN The picture above shows the call-outs of each of those requests – green rows showing requests coming direct to the HOST, yellow showing the CDN request. The IP addresses of the green items are direct from the client, where the CDN is from the CDN data center. As you refresh the page (hit Ctrl+F5 to force a full refresh and avoid “304 – not changed”) you’ll see that the request to the HOST get’s processed direct; but the request to the CDN endpoint is serviced direct from the CDN and doesn’t incur any additional request back to the HOST. The following is the Headers from the CDN response (Status-Line) HTTP/1.1 200 OK Age 13 Cache-Control public, max-age=300 Connection keep-alive Content-Length 6212 Content-Type image/jpeg; charset=utf-8 Date Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:47:14 GMT Expires Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:52:01 GMT Last-Modified Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:47:02 GMT Server Microsoft-IIS/7.5 X-AspNet-Version 4.0.30319 X-Powered-By ASP.NET The following are the Headers from the HOST response (Status-Line) HTTP/1.1 200 OK Cache-Control public, max-age=300 Content-Length 6189 Content-Type image/jpeg; charset=utf-8 Date Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:47:15 GMT Last-Modified Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:47:02 GMT Server Microsoft-IIS/7.5 X-AspNet-Version 4.0.30319 X-Powered-By ASP.NET You can see that with the CDN request, the countdown (age) starts for aging the content. The full sample is located here: CDNSampleSite.zip [1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2011/03/09/now-available-updated-windows-azure-sdk-and-windows-azure-management-portal.aspx [2] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff919703.aspx

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XNA Notes 011

- by George Clingerman

Even with a lot of the XNA community working on Dream Build Play entries ( I swear I’m going to finish mine this year!) people are still finding time to do side projects and be amazingly active in the XNA and XBLIG community. With my one eye on my code and one eye on the community, here’s what I noticed these over achievers doing this past week! Time Critical XNA News: Xbox LIVE Indie Games sales data will be delayed March 17-20th due to some schedule maintenance http://create.msdn.com/en-us/news/indie_games_data_delay_march2011 GameMarx is releasing a series of videos to help raise donations for victims of the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan. Help out if you can! http://www.gamemarx.com/video/special/29/help-japan-sushido.aspx XNA MVPs: Catalin Zima shares his thoughts on the MVP summit and my book! http://www.catalinzima.com/2011/03/mvp-summit-2011/ Glenn Wilson (@mykre) helps the XNA team announce some new educational content that you don’t want to miss if you’re porting your app or game to Windows Phone 7 http://www.virtualrealm.com.au/Blog/tabid/62/EntryId/653/Porting-your-App-or-Game-to-Windows-Phone-7.aspx and Windows Phone 7 from scratch http://www.virtualrealm.com.au/Blog/tabid/62/EntryId/654/Windows-Phone-from-Scratch.aspx and shares a link to some free architectural models and textures http://twitter.com/#!/Mykre/status/46410160784158720 George (that’s me!) shares his MVP Summit 2011 summary and XBLIG thoughts http://geekswithblogs.net/clingermangw/archive/2011/03/15/144366.aspx XNA Developers: @SmallCaveGames shares a Code of Ethics for Xbox LIVE Indie Game Developers http://smallcavegames.blogspot.com/2011/03/unofficial-xblig-developers-code-of.html Derek S adds more Xbox LIVE Indie Game studios to his master list of XBLIG links http://twitter.com/#!/Mr_Deeke/status/46140996056125440 http://xbl-indieverse.blogspot.com/p/xblig-links.html Making games and want to help kids? Then share your story with GameFace: America! http://gameitupinitiative.com/about-the-initiative/programs/gameface-america/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): XonaGames shares some video footage of their booth from GDC 2011 Video 1: http://youtu.be/lxIV9nk3Gq4 Video 2: http://youtu.be/GgfrjqkxR_o Video 3: http://youtu.be/yVcpXrTX7SQ Joystiq on Mommy’s Best Games Serious Sam Double D http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/16/the-most-important-thing-about-serious-sam-double-d/ And The Escapist recommends that gamers start learning to avoid cleavage now http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108543-Boobie-Bomber-Makes-First-Appearance-in-Serious-Sam-Double-D Magiko Gaming started a blog on the XBLIG dashboard daily Top 10 games in the US. Good way to go back in time and look at the history of which games were in the the Top 10. http://dailytop10indiegames.wordpress.com/ Where are they going now? XBLIG developers at a crossroads.. http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2011/03/where_are_they_going_now_xblig.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/33527/InDepth_Where_Are_They_Going_Now_XBLIG_Developers_At_A_Crossroads_.php BinaryTweed’s Clover: A Curious Tail is Xbox LIVE’s Deal of the Week! http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/03/15/what-luck-clover-a-curious-tale-is-half-price-this-week/ Looking for an Xbox LIVE Indie Game to buy? Writings of Mass Deduction has over 125 suggestions at this point! http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/ SkaStudios shares Vampire Smile Achievements AND their PAX East 2011 Both Setup video http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/03/14/vampire-smile-achievement/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/03/15/pax-booth-setup-time-lapse/ MasterBlud and VVGTV starts a new community for XBLIG developers and gamers to join http://vvgtv.forumotion.com/ Raymond Matthews (@DrakstarMatryx) covers Mommy’s Best Games getting Serious http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=286 XNA Development: Dave Henry (@mort8088) posts the 4th tutorial in his series XNA 4.0 SpriteBatch extended http://mort8088.com/2011/03/11/xna-4-0-tutorial-4-spritebatch-extended/ Tutorial 5 - Creating a manual blank texture http://mort8088.com/2011/03/13/xna-4-tutorial-5-manual-blank-texture/ XNA 4.0 Tutorial 6 - Spritesheet Object http://mort8088.com/2011/03/18/xna-4-0-tutorial-6-spritesheet-object/ Jason Mitchell shares a tutorial on setting the alpha value for spritebatch in XNA 4.0 http://www.jason-mitchell.com/index.php/2011/03/13/setting-alpha-value-for-spritebatch-draw-in-xna-4/ XNA for Silverlight Developers: Part 7 - Collision Detection http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-7-Collision-detection.aspx Markus Ewald (@Cygon4) shares the full Ninject 2.0 binding for XNA and Sunburn http://twitter.com/#!/Cygon4/status/48330203826622464 Michael B. McLaughlin shares an AccelerometerInput XNA GameComponent he created (which I’m probably going to snag for a game I’m working on...) http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/03/17/accelerometerinput-xna-gamecomponent.aspx Extra Credit tackles the building of a good tutorial. Must watch for all Indie game devs (thanks for pointing it out Evan Johnson!) http://twitter.com/#!/johnsonevan/status/48452115680604160 http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2921-Tutorials-101 ExEn is fully funded at this point so definitely something for XBLIG developers to keep an eye on as they consider releasing their games on other platforms http://rockethub.com/projects/752-exen-xna-for-iphone-android-and-silverlight Channel 9 and Greg Duncan post Mixing the Game State Management and Platformer XNA Recipes http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Mixing-the-Game-State-Management-and-Platformer-XNA-Recipes Sgt. Conker has noticed Mike McLaughlin has been crazy productive and has done a recap of his recent posts http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/03/recap-of-mikebmcls-posts/

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Backup options in SharePoint 2007

- by sreejukg

It is very important to make sure the server farm backup is taking properly, making sure that in case of any disaster, the administrator has the latest backup that can be used to restore. This articles addresses some of the options available for backup/restore in SharePoint 2007 Backup There are two options that can be utilized to take backup of SharePoint sites. Using SharePoint Central Administration website Using SharePoint central administration website, you can do backup/restore from user interface. Using central administration website you can back up the following · Server farm · Web application · Content databases Follow these steps to take backup of the server farm using central administration 1. Open Central administration website 2. Navigate to Operations -> Backup and Restore -> Perform a backup 3. Here you will have options to choose the item to back up. Select Farm (the top most item in the list) 4. Once you select the items to backup, click on “Continue to backup options” 5. Select “Full” as type of backup. 6. In the backup file location, enter the path where you need to store the backup. The path should be according to the UNC, for e.g. for c drive you may use \\server\c$\mybackupFolder 7. Click ok 8. Now you will be redirected to Backup and Restore Status page. This page shows the progress for the backup operation. You can use the refresh button to update the status of backup(this page will automatically refresh in every 30 seconds). Once completed you can find the files in the specified folder. Using STSADM website SharePoint comes with a STSADM command line tool. STSADM provides lot of administrative operations that can be performed on SharePoint 2007 sites. You can find STSADM command from the following location C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin (You may change the drive letter according to your installation) STSADM provides a method for performing the Office SharePoint Server 2007 administration tasks at the command line or by using batch files or scripts. STSADM provides access to operations not available by using the Central Administration site The general syntax for STSADM is as follows STSADM -operation Operation Name –parameter1 value1 –parameter2 value2 ……….. Using STSADM you can back up the following · Server farm · Web application · Content databases To perform any STSADM, operation you need to be a member of administrators group. Follow these steps to take backup of SharePoint server farm using STSADM tool. Note: make sure you are logged in to the computer where central administration website is installed. 1. Open the Command prompt (You should run command prompt with administrator privileges) 2. Change the working directory to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin 3. Enter the command, then press enter Stsadm –o backup -directory <UNC path> -backupmethod full 4. You will get success / failure message once the command finishes. How to schedule the backup There is no option to schedule a backup using central administration site. Also there is no operation provided by STSADM to automate the backup. The farm administrators need to take backup in regular intervals. To achieve this, you can write a batch file that includes STSADM command to take full backup of the server. This batch file can be scheduled using windows task scheduler to execute in certain intervals. Sample of the batch file 1. Open notepad(or any other text editor) 2. Enter the following commands @echo off echo =============================================================== echo Back up the farm to <C:\backup> echo =============================================================== cd %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN @echo off stsadm.exe -o backup -directory "<\backup>" -backupmethod full echo completed 3. Save the file with .bat extension You can schedule this batch file as you require. Other Options Using STSADM tool, you will be able to take backup for individual site collection. The syntax for this is stsadm -o backup -url <URL name for site collection> -filename <file name> [-overwrite] The explanations for the parameters are as follows. -url The url of the site collection you need to backup -filename The name of the backup file. E.g. c:\backup.bak -overwrite optional. Indicates if the filename specified exists, whether to overwrite or not. If you are creating the batch file for scheduling the backup for a site collection, you may need to specify the backup filename automatically created. It is an option that you can generate the filename with date so that you can keep backup for each day. e.g. The following commands can be utilized create a site collection backup. @echo off echo =============================================================== echo Back up the farm to <C:\backup> echo =============================================================== echo =============================================================== echo getting todays date to a variable echo =============================================================== @For /F "tokens=1,2,3 delims=/ " %%A in (‘Date /t’) do @( Set Day=%%A Set Month=%%B Set Year=%%C Set todayDate=%%C%%B%%A ) cd %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN @echo off stsadm -o backup -url <sitecollection url> -filename \\ServerName\ShareName\Backup_%todayDate%.bak -overwrite echo completed To read more about backup STSADM operation, read this http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263441.aspx

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Part 14: Execute a PowerShell script

In the series the following parts have been published Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Add arguments and variables Part 3: Use more complex arguments Part 4: Create your own activity Part 5: Increase AssemblyVersion Part 6: Use custom type for an argument Part 7: How is the custom assembly found Part 8: Send information to the build log Part 9: Impersonate activities (run under other credentials) Part 10: Include Version Number in the Build Number Part 11: Speed up opening my build process template Part 12: How to debug my custom activities Part 13: Get control over the Build Output Part 14: Execute a PowerShell script Part 15: Fail a build based on the exit code of a console application With PowerShell you can add powerful scripting to your build to for example execute a deployment. If you want more information on PowerShell, please refer to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa973757.aspx For this example we will create a simple PowerShell script that prints “Hello world!”. To create the script, create a new text file and name it “HelloWorld.ps1”. Add to the contents of the script: Write-Host “Hello World!” To test the script do the following: Open the command prompt To run the script you must change the execution policy. To do this execute in the command prompt: powershell set-executionpolicy remotesigned Now go to the directory where you have saved the PowerShell script Execute the following command powershell .\HelloWorld.ps1 In this example I use a relative path, but when the path to the PowerShell script contains spaces, you need to change the syntax to powershell "& '<full path to script>' " for example: powershell "& ‘C:\sources\Build Customization\SolutionToBuild\PowerShell Scripts\HellloWorld.ps1’ " In this blog post, I create a new solution and that solution includes also this PowerShell script. I want to create an argument on the Build Process Template that holds the path to the PowerShell script. In the Build Process Template I will add an InvokeProcess activity to execute the PowerShell command. This InvokeProcess activity needs the location of the script as an argument for the PowerShell command. Since you don’t know the full path at the build server of this script, you can either specify in the argument the relative path of the script, but it is hard to find out what the relative path is. I prefer to specify the location of the script in source control and then convert that server path to a local path. To do this conversion you can use the ConvertWorkspaceItem activity. So to complete the task, open the Build Process Template CustomTemplate.xaml that we created in earlier parts, follow the following steps Add a new argument called “DeploymentScript” and set the appropriate settings in the metadata. See Part 2: Add arguments and variables for more information. Scroll down beneath the TryCatch activity called “Try Compile, Test, and Associate Changesets and Work Items” Add a new If activity and set the condition to "Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(DeploymentScript)" to ensure it will only run when the argument is passed. Add in the Then branch of the If activity a new Sequence activity and rename it to “Start deployment” Click on the activity and add a new variable called DeploymentScriptFilename (scoped to the “Start deployment” Sequence Add a ConvertWorkspaceItem activity on the “Start deployment” Sequence Add a InvokeProcess activity beneath the ConvertWorkspaceItem activity in the “Start deployment” Sequence Click on the ConvertWorkspaceItem activity and change the properties DisplayName = Convert deployment script filename Input = DeploymentScript Result = DeploymentScriptFilename Workspace = Workspace Click on the InvokeProcess activity and change the properties Arguments = String.Format(" ""& '{0}' "" ", DeploymentScriptFilename) DisplayName = Execute deployment script FileName = "PowerShell" To see results from the powershell command drop a WriteBuildMessage activity on the "Handle Standard Output" and pass the stdOutput variable to the Message property. Do the same for a WriteBuildError activity on the "Handle Error Output" To publish it, check in the Build Process Template This leads to the following result We now go to the build definition that depends on the template and set the path of the deployment script to the server path to the HelloWorld.ps1. (If you want to see the result of the PowerShell script, change the Logging verbosity to Detailed or Diagnostic). Save and run the build. A lot of the deployment scripts you have will have some kind of arguments (like username / password or environment variables) that you want to define in the Build Definition. To make the PowerShell configurable, you can follow the following steps. Create a new script and give it the name "HelloWho.ps1". In the contents of the file add the following lines: param ( $person ) $message = [System.String]::Format(“Hello {0}!", $person) Write-Host $message When you now run the script on the command prompt, you will see the following So lets change the Build Process Template to accept one parameter for the deployment script. You can of course make it configurable to add a for-loop that reads through a collection of parameters but that is out of scope of this blog post. Add a new Argument called DeploymentScriptParameter In the InvokeProcess activity where the PowerShell command is executed, modify the Arguments property to String.Format(" ""& '{0}' '{1}' "" ", DeploymentScriptFilename, DeploymentScriptParameter) Check in the Build Process Template Now modify the build definition and set the Parameter of the deployment to any value and run the build. You can download the full solution at BuildProcess.zip. It will include the sources of every part and will continue to evolve.

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ASP.NET MVC 3 Hosting :: ASP.NET MVC 3 First Look

- by mbridge

MVC 3 View Enhancements MVC 3 introduces two improvements to the MVC view engine: - Ability to select the view engine to use. MVC 3 allows you to select from any of your installed view engines from Visual Studio by selecting Add > View (including the newly introduced ASP.NET “Razor” engine”): - Support for the next ASP.NET “Razor” syntax. The newly previewed Razor syntax is a concise lightweight syntax. MVC 3 Control Enhancements - Global Filters: ASP.NET MVC 3 allows you to specify that a filter which applies globally to all Controllers within an app by adding it to the GlobalFilters collection. The RegisterGlobalFilters() method is now included in the default Global.asax class template and so provides a convenient place to do this since is will then be called by the Application_Start() method: void RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilterCollection filters) { filters.Add(new HandleLoggingAttribute()); filters.Add(new HandleErrorAttribute()); } void Application_Start() { RegisterGlobalFilters (GlobalFilters.Filters); } - Dynamic ViewModel Property : MVC 3 augments the ViewData API with a new “ViewModel” property on Controller which is of type “dynamic” – and therefore enables you to use the new dynamic language support in C# and VB pass ViewData items using a cleaner syntax than the current dictionary API. Public ActionResult Index() { ViewModel.Message = "Hello World"; return View(); } - New ActionResult Types : MVC 3 includes three new ActionResult types and helper methods: 1. HttpNotFoundResult – indicates that a resource which was requested by the current URL was not found. HttpNotFoundResult will return a 404 HTTP status code to the calling client. 2. PermanentRedirects – The HttpRedirectResult class contains a new Boolean “Permanent” property which is used to indicate that a permanent redirect should be done. Permanent redirects use a HTTP 301 status code. The Controller class includes three new methods for performing these permanent redirects: RedirectPermanent(), RedirectToRoutePermanent(), andRedirectToActionPermanent(). All of these methods will return an instance of the HttpRedirectResult object with the Permanent property set to true. 3. HttpStatusCodeResult – used for setting an explicit response status code and its associated description. MVC 3 AJAX and JavaScript Enhancements MVC 3 ships with built-in JSON binding support which enables action methods to receive JSON-encoded data and then model-bind it to action method parameters. For example a jQuery client-side JavaScript could define a “save” event handler which will be invoked when the save button is clicked on the client. The code in the event handler then constructs a client-side JavaScript “product” object with 3 fields with their values retrieved from HTML input elements. Finally, it uses jQuery’s .ajax() method to POST a JSON based request which contains the product to a /theStore/UpdateProduct URL on the server: $('#save').click(function () { var product = { ProdName: $('#Name').val() Price: $('#Price').val(), } $.ajax({ url: '/theStore/UpdateProduct', type: "POST"; data: JSON.stringify(widget), datatype: "json", contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", success: function () { $('#message').html('Saved').fadeIn(), }, error: function () { $('#message').html('Error').fadeIn(), } }); return false; }); MVC will allow you to implement the /theStore/UpdateProduct URL on the server by using an action method as below. The UpdateProduct() action method will accept a strongly-typed Product object for a parameter. MVC 3 can now automatically bind an incoming JSON post value to the .NET Product type on the server without having to write any custom binding. [HttpPost] public ActionResult UpdateProduct(Product product) { // save logic here return null } MVC 3 Model Validation Enhancements MVC 3 builds on the MVC 2 model validation improvements by adding support for several of the new validation features within the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace in .NET 4.0: - Support for the new DataAnnotations metadata attributes like DisplayAttribute. - Support for the improvements made to the ValidationAttribute class which now supports a new IsValid overload that provides more info on the current validation context, like what object is being validated. - Support for the new IValidatableObject interface which enables you to perform model-level validation and also provide validation error messages which are specific to the state of the overall model. MVC 3 Dependency Injection Enhancements MVC 3 includes better support for applying Dependency Injection (DI) and also integrating with Dependency Injection/IOC containers. Currently MVC 3 Preview 1 has support for DI in the below places: - Controllers (registering & injecting controller factories and injecting controllers) - Views (registering & injecting view engines, also for injecting dependencies into view pages) - Action Filters (locating and injecting filters) And this is another important blog about Microsoft .NET and technology: - Windows 2008 Blog - SharePoint 2010 Blog - .NET 4 Blog And you can visit here if you're looking for ASP.NET MVC 3 hosting

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The Complementary Roles of PLM and PIM

- by Ulf Köster

Oracle Product Value Chain Solutions (aka Enterprise PLM Solutions) are a comprehensive set of product management solutions that work together to provide Oracle customers with a broad array of capabilities to manage all aspects of product life: innovation, design, launch, and supply chain / commercialization processes beyond the capabilities and boundaries of traditional engineering-focused Product Lifecycle Management applications. They support companies with an integrated managed view across the product value chain: From Lab to Launch, From Farm to Fork, From Concept to Product to Customer, From Product Innovation to Product Design and Product Commercialization. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) represents a broad suite of software solutions to improve product-oriented business processes and data. PLM success stories prove that PLM helps companies improve time to market, increase product-related revenue, reduce product costs, reduce internal costs and improve product quality. As a maturing suite of enterprise solutions, PLM is still evolving to realize the promise it can provide across all facets of a business and all phases of the product lifecycle. The vision for PLM includes everything from gathering early requirements for a product through multiple stages of the product lifecycle from product design, through commercialization and eventual product retirement or replacement. In discrete or process industries, PLM is typically more focused on Product Definition as items with respect to the technical view of a material or part, including specifications, bills of material and manufacturing data. With Agile PLM, this is specifically related to capabilities addressing Product Collaboration, Governance and Compliance, Product Quality Management, Product Cost Management and Engineering Collaboration. PLM today is mainly addressing key requirements in the early product lifecycle, in engineering changes or in the “innovation cycle”, and primarily adds value related to product design, development, launch and engineering change process. In short, PLM is the master for Product Definition, wherever manufacturing takes place. Product Information Management (PIM) is a product suite that has evolved in parallel to PLM. Product Information Management (PIM) can extend the value of PLM implementations by providing complementary tools and capabilities. More relevant in the area of Product Commercialization, the vision for PIM is to manage product information throughout an enterprise and supply chain to improve product-related knowledge management, information sharing and synchronization from multiple data sources. PIM success stories have shown the ability to provide multiple benefits, with particular emphasis on reducing information complexity and information management costs. Product Information in PIM is typically treated as the commercial view of a material or part, including sales and marketing information and categorization. PIM collects information from multiple manufacturing sites and multiple suppliers into its repository, but also provides integration tools to push the information back out to the other systems, serving as an active central repository with the aim to provide a holistic view on any product sold by a company (hence the name “Product Hub”). In short, PIM is the master of commercial Product Information. So PIM is quickly becoming mandatory because of its value in optimizing multichannel selling processes and relationships with customers, as you can see from the following table: Viewpoint PLM Current State PIM Key Benefits PIM adds to PLM Product Lifecycle Primarily R&D Front end Innovation Cycle Change process Primarily commercial / transactional state of lifecycle Provides a seamless information flow from design and manufacturing through the ultimate selling and servicing of products Data Primarily focused on “item” vs. “product” data Product structures Specifications Technical information Repository for all product information. Reaches out to entire enterprise and its various silos of product information and descriptions Provides a “trusted source” of accurate product information to the internal organization and trading partners Data Lifecycle Repository for all design iterations Historical information Released, current information, with version management and time stamping Provides a single location to track and audit historical product information Communication PLM release finished product to ERP PLM is the master for Product Definition Captures information from disparate sources, including in-house data stores Recognizes the reality of today’s data “mess” across information silos Provides the ability to package product information to its audience in the desired, relevant format to meet their exacting business requirements Departmental R&D Manufacturing Quality Compliance Procurement Strategic Marketing Focus on Marketing and Sales Gathering information from other Departments, multiple sites, multiple suppliers A singular enterprise solution that leverages existing information silos and data stores Supply Chain Multi-site internal collaboration Supplier collaboration Customer collaboration Works with customers, exchanges / data pools, and trading partners to provide relevant product information packaged the way the customer desires Provides ability to provide trading partners and internal customers with information in a manner they desire, continuously Tools Data Management Collaboration Innovation Management Cleansing Synchronization Hub functions Consistent, clean and complete commercial product information The goals of both PLM and PIM, put simply, are to help companies make more profit from their products. PLM and PIM solutions can be easily added as they share some of the same goals, while coming from two different perspectives: the definition of the product and the commercialization of the product. Both can serve as a form of product “system of record”, but take different approaches to delivering value. Oracle Product Value Chain solutions offer rich new strategies for executives to collectively leverage Agile PLM, Product Data Hub, together with Enterprise Data Quality for Products, and other industry leading Oracle applications to achieve further incremental value, like Oracle Innovation Management. This is unique on the market today.

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Some New .NET Toys (Repost)

- by Kevin Grossnicklaus

Last week I was fortunate enough to spend time in Redmond on Microsoft’s campus for the 2011 Microsoft MVP Summit. It was great to hang out with a number of old friends and get the opportunity to talk tech with the various product teams up at Microsoft. The weather wasn’t exactly sunny but Microsoft always does a great job with the Summit and everyone had a blast (heck, I even got to run the bases at SafeCo field) While much of what we saw is covered under NDA, there a ton of great things in the pipeline from Microsoft and many things that are already available (or just became so) that I wasn’t necessarily aware of. The purpose of this post is to share some of the info I learned on resources and tools available to .NET developers today. Please let me know if you have any questions (or if you know of something else cool which might benefit others). Enjoy! Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Microsoft has issued the RTM release of Visual Studio 2010 SP1. You can download the full SP1 on MSDN as of today (March 10th to the general public) and take advantage of such things as: Silverlight 4 is included in the box (as opposed to a separate install) Silverlight 4 Profiling WCF RIA Services SP1 Intellitrace for 64-bit and SharePoint ASP.NET now easily supports IIS Express and SQL CE Want a description of all that’s new beyond the above biased list (which arguably only contains items I think are important)? Check out this KB article. Portable Library Tools CTP Without much fanfare Microsoft has released a CTP of a new add-in to Visual Studio 2010 which simplifies code sharing between projects targeting different runtimes (i.e. Silverlight, WPF, Win7 Phone, XBox). With this Add-In installed you can add a new project of type “Portable Library” and specify which platforms you wish to target. Once that is done, any code added to this library will be limited to use only features which are common to all selected frameworks. Other projects can now reference this portable library and be provided assemblies custom built to their environment. This greatly simplifies the current process of sharing linked files between platforms like WPF and Silverlight. You can find out more about this CTP and how it works on this great blog post. Visual Studio Async CTP Microsoft has also released a CTP of a set of language and framework enhancements to provide a much more powerful asynchronous programming model. Due to the focus on async programming in all types of platforms (and it being the ONLY option in Silverlight and Win7 phone) a move towards a simpler and more understandable model is always a good thing. This CTP (called Visual Studio Async CTP) can be downloaded here. You can read more about this CTP on this blog post. MSDN Code Samples Gallery Microsoft has also launched new code samples gallery on their MSDN site: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/. This site allows you to easily search for small samples of code related to a particular technology or platform. If a sample of code you are looking for is not found, you can request one via the site and other developers can see your request and provide a sample to the site to suit your needs. You can also peruse requested samples and, if you find a scenario where you can provide value, upload your own sample for the benefit of others. Samples are packaged into the VS .vsix format and include any necessary references/dependencies. By using .vsix as the deployment mechanism, as samples are installed from the site they are kept in your Visual Studio 2010 Samples Gallery and kept for your future reference. If you get a chance, check out the site and see how it is done. Although a somewhat simple concept, I was very impressed with their implementation and the way they went about trying to suit a need. I’ll definitely be looking there in the future as need something or want to share something. MSDN Search Capabilities Another item I learned recently and was not aware of (that might seem trivial to some) is the power of the MSDN site’s search capabilities. Between the Code Samples Gallery described above and the search enhancements on MSDN, Microsoft is definitely investing in their platform to help provide developers of all skill levels the tools and resources they need to be successful. What do I mean by the MSDN search capability and why should you care? If you go to the MSDN home page (http://msdn.microsoft.com) and use the “Search MSDN with Big” box at the very top of the page you will see some very interesting results. First, the search actually doesn’t just search the MSDN library it searches: MSDN Library All Microsoft Blogs CodePlex StackOverflow Downloads MSDN Magazine Support Knowledgebase (I’m not sure it even ends there but the above are all I know of) Beyond just searching all the above locations, the results are formatted very nicely to give some contextual information based on where the result came from. For example, if a keyword search returned results from CodePlex, each row in the search results screen would include a large amount of information specific to CodePlex such as: Looking at the above results immediately tells you everything from the page views to the CodePlex ratings. All in all, knowing that this much information is indexed and available from a single search location will lead me to utilize this as one of my initial searches for development information.

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WordPress SEO Plugins to make your Blog Search Engine Friendly

- by Vaibhav

WordPress is the most common blogging system in use today and its use as a CMS is also wide spread. With hundreds of millions of sites using wordpress, getting correct SEO for your WordPress based Blog or Site is very important. We get regular queries from people who want Search Engine Optimisation for their site or blog which is made using wordpress. Here is a list of 16 of the best WordPress Plug-ins That can help you achieve better rankings: All in one SEO Pack This is most popular plugin among all SEO plugins for WordPress. It is easy to use and is compatible with most of the WordPress plugins. It works as a complete package of SEO plugin – automatically generating META tags and optimizing search engines for your titles and avoiding duplicate content. You can also include META tags manually (Met title, Meta description and Met keywords) for all pages and post in your website. HeadSpace2 HeasSpace2 is available in different languages , you can manage a wide range of SEO Tasks related with meta data, you can tag your posts, Custom descriptions and titles. So your page can rank the created relevancy on Search engines and you can load different settings for different pages. Platinum SEO plugin Automatic 301 redirects permalink changes, META tags generation, avoids duplicate content, and does SEO optimization of post and page titles and a lots of other features. TGFI.net SEO WordPress Plugin It’s a modified version of all-in-one SEO Pack. It has some unique feature over All-in-one SEO plugin, It generate titles, meta descriptions and meta keywords automatically when overrides are not present. Google XML Sitemaps Sitemaps Generated by this tool are supported by Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask. We all know Sitemaps make indexing of web pages easier for web crawlers. Crawlers can retrieve complete structure of site and more information by sitemaps. They notify all major search engines about new posts every time you create a new post. Sitemap Generator You can generate highly customizable sitemap for your WordPress page. You can choose what to show and what not to show, you can list the items in your choice of orde. It supports pages and permalinks and multi-level categories. SEO Slugs They can generate more search engine friendly URLs for your site. Slugs are filename assigned to your post , this plugin removes all common words like ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘in’, ‘what’, ‘you’ from slug which are assigned automatically to your post. SEO Post Links This is a similar plugin to SEO Slug, it removes unnecessary keywords from slug to make it short and SEO friendly and you can fix the number of characters in your post. Automatic SEO links With this tool you can create auto linking in your post. You can use this tool for inter linking or external linking too. Just select your words, anchor text target URL nature of links ( Do fallow / No follow ). This plugin will replace the matches found in post, WP Backlinks A helpful plugin for link exchange , whenever any webmaster submits a link for link exchange, the plugin will spider webmasters site for reciprocal link, and if everything is found good , your link will be exchanged. SEO Title Tag You can optimize your Title tags of Word press blog through this plugin . You can also override the title tag with custom titles , mass editing and title tags for 404 pages which are the main feature of this plugin. 404 SEO plugin With this Plugin you can customize 404 page of your site; you can give customized error message and links to relevant pages of your site. Redirection A powerful plugins to manage 301 redirection and logs related with redirection, with this plugin you can track 404 errors and track the log of all redirected URLs , this plugin can redirect post automatically when URL changes for that post. AddToAny This plugin helps your readers to share, save, email and bookmark your posts and pages. It supports more than a hundred social bookmarking , networking and sharing sites. SEO Friendly Images You can make SEO friendly images available on your site with the help of this tool. It updates images with proper titles and ALT tags. Robots Meta A plugin which prevents Search engines to index comments on your post, login and admin pages. It also allows to add tags for individual pages.

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Building the Elusive Windows Phone Panorama Control

When the Windows Phone 7 Developer SDK was released a couple of weeks ago at MIX10 many people noticed the SDK doesnt include a template for a Panorama control. Here at Clarity we decided to build our own Panorama control for use in some of our prototypes and I figured I would share what we came up with. There have been a couple of implementations of the Panorama control making their way through the interwebs, but I didnt think any of them really nailed the experience that is shown in the simulation videos. One of the key design principals in the UX Guide for Windows Phone 7 is the use of motion. The WP7 OS is fairly stripped of extraneous design elements and makes heavy use of typography and motion to give users the necessary visual cues. Subtle animations and wide layouts help give the user a sense of fluidity and consistency across the phone experience. When building the panorama control I was fairly meticulous in recreating the motion as shown in the videos. The effect that is shown in the application hubs of the phone is known as a Parallax Scrolling effect. This this pseudo-3D technique has been around in the computer graphics world for quite some time. In essence, the background images move slower than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth in 2D. Here is an example of the traditional use: http://www.mauriciostudio.com/. One of the animation gems I've learned while building interactive software is the follow animation. The premise is straightforward: instead of translating content 1:1 with the interaction point, let the content catch up to the mouse or finger. The difference is subtle, but the impact on the smoothness of the interaction is huge. That said, it became the foundation of how I achieved the effect shown below. Source Code Available HERE Before I briefly describe the approach I took in creating this control..and Ill add some **asterisks ** to the code below as my coding skills arent up to snuff with the rest of my colleagues. This code is meant to be an interpretation of the WP7 panorama control and is not intended to be used in a production application. 1. Layout the XAML The UI consists of three main components : The background image, the Title, and the Content. You can imagine each these UI Elements existing on their own plane with a corresponding Translate Transform to create the Parallax effect. 2. Storyboards + Procedural Animations = Sexy As I mentioned above, creating a fluid experience was at the top of my priorities while building this control. To recreate the smooth scroll effect shown in the video we need to add some place holder storyboards that we can manipulate in code to simulate the inertia and snapping. Using the easing functions built into Silverlight helps create a very pleasant interaction. 3. Handle the Manipulation Events With Silverlight 3 we have some new touch event handlers. The new Manipulation events makes handling the interactivity pretty straight forward. There are two event handlers that need to be hooked up to enable the dragging and motion effects: the ManipulationDelta event : (the most relevant code is highlighted in pink) Here we are doing some simple math with the Manipulation Deltas and setting the TO values of the animations appropriately. Modifying the storyboards dynamically in code helps to create a natural feel.something that cant easily be done with storyboards alone. And secondly, the ManipulationCompleted event: Here we take the Final Velocities from the Manipulation Completed Event and apply them to the Storyboards to create the snapping and scrolling effects. Most of this code is determining what the next position of the viewport will be. The interesting part (shown in pink) is determining the duration of the animation based on the calculated velocity of the flick gesture. By using velocity as a variable in determining the duration of the animation we can produce a slow animation for a soft flick and a fast animation for a strong flick. Challenges to the Reader There are a couple of things I didnt have time to implement into this control. And I would love to see other WPF/Silverlight approaches. 1. A good mechanism for deciphering when the user is manipulating the content within the panorama control and the panorama itself. In other words, being able to accurately determine what is a flick and what is click. 2. Dynamically Sizing the panorama control based on the width of its content. Right now each control panel is 400px, ideally the Panel items would be measured and then panorama control would update its size accordingly. 3. Background and content wrapping. The WP7 UX guidelines specify that the content and background should wrap at the end of the list. In my code I restrict the drag at the ends of the list (like the iPhone). It would be interesting to see how this would effect the scroll experience. Well, Its been fun building this control and if you use it Id love to know what you think. You can download the Source HERE or from the Expression Gallery Erik Klimczak | [email protected] | twitter.com/eklimczDid 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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SQL SERVER – Solution – Puzzle – SELECT * vs SELECT COUNT(*)

- by pinaldave

Earlier I have published Puzzle Why SELECT * throws an error but SELECT COUNT(*) does not. This question have received many interesting comments. Let us go over few of the answers, which are valid. Before I start the same, let me acknowledge Rob Farley who has not only answered correctly very first but also started interesting conversation in the same thread. The usual question will be what is the right answer. I would like to point to official Microsoft Connect Items which discusses the same. RGarvao https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/671475/select-test-where-exists-select tiberiu utan http://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/338532/count-returns-a-value-1 Rob Farley count(*) is about counting rows, not a particular column. It doesn’t even look to see what columns are available, it’ll just count the rows, which in the case of a missing FROM clause, is 1. “select *” is designed to return columns, and therefore barfs if there are none available. Even more odd is this one: select ‘blah’ where exists (select *) You might be surprised at the results… Koushik The engine performs a “Constant scan” for Count(*) where as in the case of “SELECT *” the engine is trying to perform either Index/Cluster/Table scans. amikolaj When you query ‘select * from sometable’, SQL replaces * with the current schema of that table. With out a source for the schema, SQL throws an error. so when you query ‘select count(*)’, you are counting the one row. * is just a constant to SQL here. Check out the execution plan. Like the description states – ‘Scan an internal table of constants.’ You could do ‘select COUNT(‘my name is adam and this is my answer’)’ and get the same answer. Netra Acharya SELECT * Here, * represents all columns from a table. So it always looks for a table (As we know, there should be FROM clause before specifying table name). So, it throws an error whenever this condition is not satisfied. SELECT COUNT(*) Here, COUNT is a Function. So it is not mandetory to provide a table. Check it out this: DECLARE @cnt INT SET @cnt = COUNT(*) SELECT @cnt SET @cnt = COUNT(‘x’) SELECT @cnt Naveen Select 1 / Select ‘*’ will return 1/* as expected. Select Count(1)/Count(*) will return the count of result set of select statement. Count(1)/Count(*) will have one 1/* for each row in the result set of select statement. Select 1 or Select ‘*’ result set will contain only 1 result. so count is 1. Where as “Select *” is a sysntax which expects the table or equauivalent to table (table functions, etc..). It is like compilation error for that query. Ramesh Hi Friends, Count is an aggregate function and it expects the rows (list of records) for a specified single column or whole rows for *. So, when we use ‘select *’ it definitely give and error because ‘*’ is meant to have all the fields but there is not any table and without table it can only raise an error. So, in the case of ‘Select Count(*)’, there will be an error as a record in the count function so you will get the result as ’1'. Try using : Select COUNT(‘RAMESH’) and think there is an error ‘Must specify table to select from.’ in place of ‘RAMESH’ Pinal : If i am wrong then please clarify this. Sachin Nandanwar Any aggregate function expects a constant or a column name as an expression. DO NOT be confused with * in an aggregate function.The aggregate function does not treat it as a column name or a set of column names but a constant value, as * is a key word in SQL. You can replace any value instead of * for the COUNT function.Ex Select COUNT(5) will result as 1. The error resulting from select * is obvious it expects an object where it can extract the result set. I sincerely thank you all for wonderful conversation, I personally enjoyed it and I am sure all of you have the same feeling. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: CodeProject, Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, Readers Question, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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FireFox 6 Super Slow? Cache Settings Corruption

- by Rick Strahl

For those of you that follow me on Twitter, you've probably seen some of my tweets regarding major performance problems I've seen with the install of FireFox 6.0. FireFox 6.0 was released a couple of weeks ago and is treated as a 'force feed' update for FireFox 5.0. I'm not sure what the deal is with this braindead versioning that Mozilla is doing with major version releases coming out, what now every other month? Seriously that's retarded especially given the limited number of new features these releases bring, and the upgrade pain for plug-ins that the major version release causes. Anyway, after the FireFox updater bugged me long enough I finally gave in last week and updated to FireFox 6. Immediately after install I noticed terrible performance. Everything was running at a snail's pace with Web pages loading slowly and most content actually slowly 'painting' the page. A typical sign of content downloading slowly. However these are pages that should be mostly cached on my system and even repeated accesses ran just as slow. Just for a reality check I ran the same sites in Chrome (blazing fast) and IE (fast enough :-)) but FireFox - dog on a stick. Why so slow Boss? While complaining lots of people recommended to ditch FireFox - use Chrome, yada yada yada. Yeah, Chrome is fast and getting better but I have a number of plug-ins that I use in FF that I can't easily give up. So I suffered and started looking around more closely at what was happening. The first thing I noticed when accessing pages was that I continually saw accesses to the Google CDN downloading jQuery and jQuery UI. UI especially is pretty heavy in size and currently I'm in a location with a fairly slow IP connection where large files are a bit of an issue. However, seeing the CDN urls pop up repeatedly raised a flag with me. That stuff should be caching and it looked like each and every hit was reloading these scripts and various images over and over again. Fired up FireBug and sure enough I saw something like this on a repeated hit to my blog: Those two highlights are jquery and the main CSS file for the site and both are being loaded fully and taking a while to load. However, since this page had been loaded before, these items should be cached and show 304 requests instead of the full HTTP requests returning 200 result codes. In short it looked like FireFox was not caching ANY content at all and constantly reloading all page resources. No wonder things were running dog slow. Once I realized what the problem was I took a look in the about:config settings and lo and behold a bunch of the cache settings were set to not cache: In my case ALL the main cache flags were set to false for some reason that I can't figure out. It appears that after the FireFox 6 update these flags somehow mysteriously changed and performance took a nose dive. Switching the .enable flags back to true and resetting all the cache settings tote default reverted performance back to the way it's supposed to be: reasonably fast and snappy as soon as content is cached and accessed again from cache. I try not to muck with the about:config settings much (other than turning off the IPV6 option) but when there are problems access to these features can be really nice. However, I treat this as a last resort so it took me quite some time before I started looking through ALL the settings. This takes a while, not knowing what I was looking for exactly. If Web load performance is slow it's a good idea to check the cache settings. I have no idea what hosed these settings for me - I certainly didn't explicitly set them in about:config and while in FireFox's Options dialog I didn't see any option that would affect global caching like this, so this remains a mystery to me. Anyway, I hope that this is helpful to some, in case some of you end up running into a similar issue.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in FireFox Tweet (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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Recover that Photo, Picture or File You Deleted Accidentally

- by The Geek

Have you ever accidentally deleted a photo on your camera, computer, USB drive, or anywhere else? What you might not know is that you can usually restore those pictures—even from your camera’s memory stick. Windows tries to prevent you from making a big mistake by providing the Recycle Bin, where deleted files hang around for a while—but unfortunately it doesn’t work for external USB drives, USB flash drives, memory sticks, or mapped drives. The great news is that this technique also works if you accidentally deleted the photo… from the camera itself. That’s what happened to me, and prompted writing this article. Restore that File or Photo using Recuva The first piece of software that you’ll want to try is called Recuva, and it’s extremely easy to use—just make sure when you are installing it, that you don’t accidentally install that stupid Yahoo! toolbar that nobody wants. Now that you’ve installed the software, and avoided an awful toolbar installation, launch the Recuva wizard and let’s start through the process of recovering those pictures you shouldn’t have deleted. The first step on the wizard page will let you tell Recuva to only search for a specific type of file, which can save a lot of time while searching, and make it easier to find what you are looking for. Next you’ll need to specify where the file was, which will obviously be up to wherever you deleted it from. Since I deleted mine from my camera’s SD card, that’s where I’m looking for it. The next page will ask you whether you want to do a Deep Scan. My recommendation is to not select this for the first scan, because usually the quick scan can find it. You can always go back and run a deep scan a second time. And now, you’ll see all of the pictures deleted from your drive, memory stick, SD card, or wherever you searched. Looks like what happened in Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas after all… If there are a really large number of results, and you know exactly when the file was created or modified, you can switch to the advanced view, where you can sort by the last modified time. This can help speed up the process quite a bit, so you don’t have to look through quite as many files. At this point, you can right-click on any filename, and choose to Recover it, and then save the files elsewhere on your drive. Awesome! Restore that File or Photo using DiskDigger If you don’t have any luck with Recuva, you can always try out DiskDigger, another excellent piece of software. I’ve tested both of these applications very thoroughly, and found that neither of them will always find the same files, so it’s best to have both of them in your toolkit. Note that DiskDigger doesn’t require installation, making it a really great tool to throw on your PC repair Flash drive. Start off by choosing the drive you want to recover from… Now you can choose whether to do a deep scan, or a really deep scan. Just like with Recuva, you’ll probably want to select the first one first. I’ve also had much better luck with the regular scan, rather than the “dig deeper” one. If you do choose the “dig deeper” one, you’ll be able to select exactly which types of files you are looking for, though again, you should use the regular scan first. Once you’ve come up with the results, you can click on the items on the left-hand side, and see a preview on the right. You can select one or more files, and choose to restore them. It’s pretty simple! Download DiskDigger from dmitrybrant.com Download Recuva from piriform.com Good luck recovering your deleted files! And keep in mind, DiskDigger is a totally free donationware software from a single, helpful guy… so if his software helps you recover a photo you never thought you’d see again, you might want to think about throwing him a dollar or two. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Stupid Geek Tricks: Undo an Accidental Move or Delete With a Keyboard ShortcutRestore Accidentally Deleted Files with RecuvaCustomize Your Welcome Picture Choices in Windows VistaAutomatically Resize Picture Attachments in Outlook 2007Resize Your Photos with Easy Thumbnails TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Icelandic Volcano Webcams Open Multiple Links At One Go NachoFoto Searches Images in Real-time Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs Monitor Applications With Kiwi

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Passing the CAML thru the EY of the NEEDL

- by PointsToShare

© 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved Passing the CAML thru the EY of the NEEDL Definitions: CAML (Collaborative Application Markup Language) is an XML based markup language used in Microsoft SharePoint technologies Anonymous: A camel is a horse designed by committee Dov Trietsch: A CAML is a HORS designed by Microsoft I was advised against putting any Camel and Sphinx rhymes in here. Look it up in Google! _____ Now that we have dispensed with the dromedary jokes (BTW, I have many more, but they are not fit to print!), here is an interesting problem and its solution. We have built a list where the title must be kept unique so I needed to verify the existence (or absence) of a list item with a particular title. Two methods came to mind: 1: Span the list until the title is found (result = found) or until the list ends (result = not found). This is an algorithm of complexity O(N) and for long lists it is a performance sucker. 2: Use a CAML query instead. Here, for short list we’ll encounter some overhead, but because the query results in an SQL query on the content database, it is of complexity O(LogN), which is significantly better and scales perfectly. Obviously I decided to go with the latter and this is where the CAML s--t hit the fan. A CAML query returns a SPListItemCollection and I simply checked its Count. If it was 0, the item did not already exist and it was safe to add a new item with the given title. Otherwise I cancelled the operation and warned the user. The trouble was that I always got a positive. Most of the time a false positive. The count was greater than 0 regardles of the title I checked (except when the list was empty, which happens only once). This was very disturbing indeed. To solve my immediate problem which was speedy delivery, I reverted to the “Span the list” approach, but the problem bugged me, so I wrote a little console app by which I tested and tweaked and tested, time and again, until I found the solution. Yes, one can pass the proverbial CAML thru the ey of the needle (e’s missing on purpose). So here are my conclusions: CAML that does not work: Note: QT is my quote: char QT = Convert.ToChar((int)34); string titleQuery = "<Query>><Where><Eq>"; titleQuery += "<FieldRef Name=" + QT + "Title" + QT + "/>"; titleQuery += "<Value Type=" + QT + "Text" + QT + ">" + uniqueID + "</Value></Eq></Where></Query>"; titleQuery += "<ViewFields><FieldRef Name=" + QT + "Title" + QT + "/></ViewFields>"; Why? Even though U2U generates it, the <Query> and </Query> tags do not belong in the query that you pass. Start your query with the <Where> clause. Also the <ViewFiels> clause does not belong. I used this clause to limit the returned collection to a single column, and I still wish to do it. I’ll show how this is done a bit later. When you use the <Query> </Query> tags in you query, it’s as if you did not specify the query at all. What you get is the all inclusive default query for the list. It returns evey column and every item. It is expensive for both server and network because it does all the extra processing and eats plenty of bandwidth. Now, here is the CAML that works string titleQuery = "<Where><Eq>"; titleQuery += "<FieldRef Name=" + QT + "Title" + QT + "/>"; titleQuery += "<Value Type=" + QT + "Text" + QT + ">" + uniqueID + "</Value></Eq></Where>"; You’ll also notice that inside the unusable <ViewFields> clause above, we have a <FieldRef> clause. This is what we pass to the SPQuery object. Here is how: SPQuery query = new SPQuery(); query.Query = titleQuery; query.ViewFields = "<FieldRef Name=" + QT + "Title" + QT + "/>"; query.RowLimit = 1; SPListItemCollection col = masterList.GetItems(query); Two thing to note: we enter the view fields into the SPQuery object and we also limited the number of rows that the query returns. The latter is not always done, but in an existence test, there is no point in returning hundreds of rows. The query will now return one item or none, which is all we need in order to verify the existence (or non-existence) of items. Limiting the number of columns and the number of rows is a great performance enhancer. That’s all folks!!

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Get your content off Blogger.com

- by Daniel Moth

Due to blogger.com deprecating FTP users I've decided to move my blog. When I think of the content of a blog, 4 items come to mind: blog posts, comments, binary files that the blog posts linked to (e.g. images, ZIP files) and the CSS+structure of the blog. 1. Binaries The binary files you used in your blog posts are sitting on your own web space, so really blogger.com is not involved with that. Nothing for you to do at this stage, I'll come back to these in another post. 2. CSS and structure In the best case this exists as a separate CSS file on your web space (so no action for now) or in a worst case, like me, your CSS is embedded with the HTML. In the latter case, simply navigate from you dashboard to "Template" then "Edit HTML" and copy paste the contents of the box. Save that locally in a txt file and we'll come back to that in another post. 3. Blog posts and Comments The blog posts and comments exist in all the HTML files on your own web space. Parsing HTML files to extract that can be painful, so it is easier to download the XML files from blogger's servers that contain all your blog posts and comments. 3.1 Single XML file, but incomplete The obvious thing to do is go into your dashboard "Settings" and under the "Basic" tab look at the top next to "Blog Tools". There is a link there to "Export blog" which downloads an XML file with both comments and posts. The problem with that is that it only contains 200 comments - if you have more than that, you will lose the surplus. Also, this XML file has a lot of noise, compared to the better solution described next. (note that a tool I will refer to in a future post deals with either kind of XML file) 3.2 Multiple XML files First you need to find your blog ID. In case you don't know what that is, navigate to the "Template" as described in section 2 above. You will find references to the blog id in the HTML there, but you can also see it as part of the URL in your browser: blogger.com/template-edit.g?blogID=YOUR_NUMERIC_ID. Mine is 7 digits. You can now navigate to these URLs to download the XML for your posts and comments respectively: blogger.com/feeds/YOUR_NUMERIC_ID/posts/default?max-results=500&start-index=1 blogger.com/feeds/YOUR_NUMERIC_ID/comments/default?max-results=200&start-index=1 Note that you can only get 500 posts at a time and only 200 comments at a time. To get more than that you have to change the URL and download the next batch. To get you started, to get the XML for the next 500 posts and next 200 comments respectively you’d have to use these URLs: blogger.com/feeds/YOUR_NUMERIC_ID/posts/default?max-results=500&start-index=501 blogger.com/feeds/YOUR_NUMERIC_ID/comments/default?max-results=200&start-index=201 ...and so on and so forth. Keep all the XML files in the same folder on your local machine (with nothing else in there). 4. Validating the XML aka editing older blog posts The XML files you just downloaded really contain HTML fragments inside for all your blog posts. If you are like me, your blog posts did not conform to XHTML so passing them to an XML parser (which is what we will want to do) will result in the XML parser choking. So the next step is to fix that. This can be no work at all for you, or a huge time sink or just a couple hours of pain (which was my case). The process I followed was to attempt to load the XML files using XmlDocument.Load and wait for the exception to be thrown from my code. The exception would point to the exact offending line and column which would help me fix the issue. Rather than fix it in the XML itself, I would go back and edit the offending blog post and fix it there - recommended! Then I'd repeat the cycle until the XML could be loaded in the XmlDocument. To give you an idea, some of the issues I encountered are: extra or missing quotes in img and href elements, direct usage of chevrons instead of encoding them as <, missing closing tags, mismatched nested pairs of elements and capitalization of html elements. For a full list of things that may go wrong see this. 5. Opportunity for other changes I also found a few posts that did not have a category assigned so I fixed those too. I took the further opportunity to create new categories and tag some of my blog posts with that. Note that I did not remove/change categories of existing posts, but only added. In an another post we'll see how to use the XML files you stored in the local folder… Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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