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• SQL SERVER – Why Do We Need Data Quality Services – Importance and Significance of Data Quality Services (DQS)

  - by pinaldave

  Databases are awesome.  I’m sure my readers know my opinion about this – I have made SQL Server my life’s work after all!  I love technology and all things computer-related.  Of course, even with my love for technology, I have to admit that it has its limits.  For example, it takes a human brain to notice that data has been input incorrectly.  Computer “brains” might be faster than humans, but human brains are still better at pattern recognition.  For example, a human brain will notice that “300” is a ridiculous age for a human to be, but to a computer it is just a number.  A human will also notice similarities between “P. Dave” and “Pinal Dave,” but this would stump most computers. In a database, these sorts of anomalies are incredibly important.  Databases are often used by multiple people who rely on this data to be true and accurate, so data quality is key.  That is why the improved SQL Server features Master Data Management talks about Data Quality Services.  This service has the ability to recognize and flag anomalies like out of range numbers and similarities between data.  This allows a human brain with its pattern recognition abilities to double-check and ensure that P. Dave is the same as Pinal Dave. A nice feature of Data Quality Services is that once you set the rules for the program to follow, it will not only keep your data organized in the future, but go to the past and “fix up” any data that has already been entered.  It also allows you do combine data from multiple places and it will apply these rules across the board, so that you don’t have any weird issues that crop up when trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. There are two parts of Data Quality Services that help you accomplish all these neat things.  The first part is DQL Server, which you can think of as the hardware component of the system.  It is installed on the side of (it needs to install separately after SQL Server is installed) SQL Server and runs quietly in the background, performing all its cleanup services. DQS Client is the user interface that you can interact with to set the rules and check over your data.  There are three main aspects of Client: knowledge base management, data quality projects and administration.  Knowledge base management is the part of the system that allows you to set the rules, or program the “knowledge base,” so that your database is clean and consistent. Data Quality projects are what run in the background and clean up the data that is already present.  The administration allows you to check out what DQS Client is doing, change rules, and generally oversee the entire process.  The whole process is user-friendly and a pleasure to use.  I highly recommend implementing Data Quality Services in your database. Here are few of my blog posts which are related to Data Quality Services and I encourage you to try this out. SQL SERVER – Installing Data Quality Services (DQS) on SQL Server 2012 SQL SERVER – Step by Step Guide to Beginning Data Quality Services in SQL Server 2012 – Introduction to DQS SQL SERVER – DQS Error – Cannot connect to server – A .NET Framework error occurred during execution of user-defined routine or aggregate “SetDataQualitySessions” – SetDataQualitySessionPhaseTwo SQL SERVER – Configuring Interactive Cleansing Suggestion Min Score for Suggestions in Data Quality Services (DQS) – Sensitivity of Suggestion SQL SERVER – Unable to DELETE Project in Data Quality Projects (DQS) Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Data Quality Services, DQS

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• 10 Best Programming Podcast 2010 Edition

  - by mbcrump

  This list is in no particular order. Just the 10 best programming podcast that I have found so far. Stack Overflow Podcast -  Jeff Atwood (of codinghorror.com) and Joel Spolsky (of joelonsoftware.com) discuss the development of their new programming community, StackOverflow.com. [This Podcast hasn’t been updated in a while, but its always great to hear more from Jeff Atwood] Hanselminutes - Hanselminutes is a weekly audio talk show with noted web developer and technologist Scott Hanselman and hosted by Carl Franklin. Scott discusses utilities and tools, gives practical how-to advice, and discusses ASP.NET or Windows issues and workarounds. [This Podcast has recently started talking about random topics like diabetes, plane travel and geek relationship tips.  I am not sure if Scott is trying to move to a more mainstream audience or not] Herding Code - A weekly discussion featuring K. Scott Allen (odetocode.com), Kevin Dente, Scott Koon (lazycoder.com), and Jon Galloway. [Great all all-around podcast that I would recommend to all] Deep Fried Bytes - Deep Fried Bytes is an audio talk show with a Southern flavor hosted by technologists and developers Keith Elder and Chris Woodruff. The show discusses a wide range of topics including application development, operating systems and technology in general. Anything is fair game if it plugs into the wall or takes a battery. [This is one that just keeps getting better] Dot Net Rocks - .NET Rocks! is an Internet Audio Talk Show for Microsoft .NET Developers. [One of the first and usually very high quality content] Connected Show - Connected Show Podcast! A podcast covering new Microsoft technology for the developer community. The show is hosted by Dmitry Lyalin and Peter Laudati. [This and Polymorphic are one of my favorite podcast – Dmitry is a great host and would recommend this to all] Polymorphic Podcast - Object oriented development, architecture and best practices in .NET [Craig is a ASP.NET MVP and a great presenter. His podcast is great and it could only be better if he recorded it more often] ASP.NET Podcast - Wallace B. (Wally) McClure presents interviews and short technical talks on .NET Technologies. [Has great information on ASP.NET of course as well as iPhone Dev] Ruby on Rails Podcast - News and interviews about the Ruby language and the Rails website framework. [Even though I am not a Ruby programmer, I’ve found this podcast very interesting] Software Engineering Radio - Software Engineering Radio is a podcast targeted at the professional software developer. The goal is to be a lasting educational resource, not a newscast. Every ten days, a new episode is published that covers all topics software engineering. Episodes are either tutorials on a specific topic, or an interview with a well-known character from the software engineering world. All SE Radio episodes are original content ? we do not record conferences or talks given in other venues. Each episode comprises two speakers to ensure a lively listening experience. SE Radio is an independent and non-commercial organization. [Another excellent podcast – I would recommend any programmer add this to his/her drive home] If I have missed something, please feel free to email me and it might make the 2011 list. =)

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• SQL SERVER – Simple Demo of New Cardinality Estimation Features of SQL Server 2014

  - by Pinal Dave

  SQL Server 2014 has new cardinality estimation logic/algorithm. The cardinality estimation logic is responsible for quality of query plans and majorly responsible for improving performance for any query. This logic was not updated for quite a while, but in the latest version of SQL Server 2104 this logic is re-designed. The new logic now incorporates various assumptions and algorithms of OLTP and warehousing workload. Cardinality estimates are a prediction of the number of rows in the query result. The query optimizer uses these estimates to choose a plan for executing the query. The quality of the query plan has a direct impact on improving query performance. ~ Souce MSDN Let us see a quick example of how cardinality improves performance for a query. I will be using the AdventureWorks database for my example. Before we start with this demonstration, remember that even though you have SQL Server 2014 to see the effect of new cardinality estimates, you will need your database compatibility mode set to 120 which is for SQL Server 2014. If your server instance of SQL Server 2014 but you have set up your database compatibility mode to 110 or any other earlier version, you will get performance from your query like older version of SQL Server. Now we will execute following query in two different compatibility mode and see its performance. (Note that my SQL Server instance is of version 2014). USE AdventureWorks2014 GO -- ------------------------------- -- NEW Cardinality Estimation ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks2014 SET COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL = 120 GO EXEC [dbo].[uspGetManagerEmployees] 44 GO -- ------------------------------- -- Old Cardinality Estimation ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks2014 SET COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL = 110 GO EXEC [dbo].[uspGetManagerEmployees] 44 GO Result of Statistics IO Compatibility level 120 Table ‘Person’. Scan count 0, logical reads 6, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Employee’. Scan count 2, logical reads 7, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Worktable’. Scan count 0, logical reads 0, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Worktable’. Scan count 2, logical reads 7, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Compatibility level 110 Table ‘Worktable’. Scan count 2, logical reads 7, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Person’. Scan count 0, logical reads 137, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Employee’. Scan count 2, logical reads 7, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Worktable’. Scan count 0, logical reads 0, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. You will notice in the case of compatibility level 110 there 137 logical read from table person where as in the case of compatibility level 120 there are only 6 physical reads from table person. This drastically improves the performance of the query. If we enable execution plan, we can see the same as well. I hope you will find this quick example helpful. You can read more about this in my latest Pluralsight Course. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• IIS Logfile Visualization with XNA

  - by BobPalmer

  In my office, I have a wall mounted monitor who's whole purpose in life is to display perfmon stats from our various servers.  And on a fairly regular basis, I have folks walk by asking what the lines mean.    After providing the requisite explaination about CPU utilization, disk I/O bottlenecks, etc. this is usually followed by some blank stares from the user in question, and a distillation of all of our engineering wizardry down to the phrase 'So when the red line goes up that's bad then?'   This of course would not do.  So I talked to my friends and our network admin about an option to show something more eye catching and visual, with which we could catch at a glance a feel for what was up with our site.    He initially pointed me out to a video showing GLTail and Chipmunk done in Ruby.  Realizing this was both awesome, and that I needed an excuse to do something in XNA, I decided to knock out a proof of concept for something very similar, but with a few tweaks.   Here's a link to a video of the current prototype:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM_PWZbtH2I   Essentially this app opens up a log file (even an active one) and begins pulling out the lines of text.  (Here's a good Code Project link that covers how to do tail reading from an active text file: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/files/tail.aspx).   As new data is added, a bubble is generated in the application - a GET statement comes from the left, and a POST from the right.  I then run it through a series of expression checkers, and based on the kind of statement and the pattern, a bubble of an appropriate color is generated.   For example, if I get a 500, a huge red bubble pops out.  Others are based on the part of the system the page is from - i.e. green bubbles are from our claims management subsystem, and blue bubbles are from the pages our scheduling staff use to schedule patients.  Others include the purple bubbles for security and login, and yellow bubbles for some miscellaneous pages.   The little grey bubbles represent things like images, JS, CSS, etc - and their small size makes them work like grease to keep the larger page bubbles moving.   The app is also smart enough that if it is starting to bog down with handling the physics and interactions, it will suspend new bubbles until enough have dropped off that performance can resume (you can see this slight stuttering in the sample video).   The net result is that anyone will be able to look up on the wall monitor, and instantly get a quick feel for how things are going on the floor.  Website slow?  You can get a feel for both volume and utilized modules with one glance.  Website crashing?  Look for a wall of giant red bubbles.  No activity at all?  Maybe the site is down.  Now couple this with utilization within a farm, and cross referenced with a second app showing the same kind of data from your SQL database...   As for the app itself, it's a windows XNA project with the code in C#.   The physics are handled by the Farseer physicis eingine for XNA (http://www.codeplex.com/FarseerPhysics) which is just pure goodness.  The samples are great, and I had the app up and working in two evenings (half of that was fine tuning, and the other was me coding with a kid in my lap).   My next steps include wiring this to SQL (I have some ideas...), and adding a nice configuration module.  For example, you could use polygons, etc to tie to your regex - or more entertaining things like having a little human ragdoll to represent a user login.     Once that's wrapped up and I have a chance to complete some hardening, I will be releasing the whole thing into the wild as opensource.     Feel free to ping me if you have any questions! -Bob

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• How the "migrations" approach makes database continuous integration possible

  - by David Atkinson

  Testing a database upgrade script as part of a continuous integration process will only work if there is an easy way to automate the generation of the upgrade scripts. There are two common approaches to managing upgrade scripts. The first is to maintain a set of scripts as-you-go-along. Many SQL developers I've encountered will store these in a folder prefixed numerically to ensure they are ordered as they are intended to be run. Occasionally there is an accompanying document or a batch file that ensures that the scripts are run in the defined order. Writing these scripts during the course of development requires discipline. It's all too easy to load up the table designer and to make a change directly to the development database, rather than to save off the ALTER statement that is required when the same change is made to production. This discipline can add considerable overhead to the development process. However, come the end of the project, everything is ready for final testing and deployment. The second development paradigm is to not do the above. Changes are made to the development database without considering the incremental update scripts required to effect the changes. At the end of the project, the SQL developer or DBA, is tasked to work out what changes have been made, and to hand-craft the upgrade scripts retrospectively. The end of the project is the wrong time to be doing this, as the pressure is mounting to ship the product. And where data deployment is involved, it is prudent not to feel rushed. Schema comparison tools such as SQL Compare have made this latter technique more bearable. These tools work by analyzing the before and after states of a database schema, and calculating the SQL required to transition the database. Problem solved? Not entirely. Schema comparison tools are huge time savers, but they have their limitations. There are certain changes that can be made to a database that can't be determined purely from observing the static schema states. If a column is split, how do we determine the algorithm required to copy the data into the new columns? If a NOT NULL column is added without a default, how do we populate the new field for existing records in the target? If we rename a table, how do we know we've done a rename, as we could equally have dropped a table and created a new one? All the above are examples of situations where developer intent is required to supplement the script generation engine. SQL Source Control 3 and SQL Compare 10 introduced a new feature, migration scripts, allowing developers to add custom scripts to replace the default script generation behavior. These scripts are committed to source control alongside the schema changes, and are associated with one or more changesets. Before this capability was introduced, any schema change that required additional developer intent would break any attempt at auto-generation of the upgrade script, rendering deployment testing as part of continuous integration useless. SQL Compare will now generate upgrade scripts not only using its diffing engine, but also using the knowledge supplied by developers in the guise of migration scripts. In future posts I will describe the necessary command line syntax to leverage this feature as part of an automated build process such as continuous integration.

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• Build Your Own CE6 Kernel

  - by Kate Moss' Big Fan

  The Share Source Program in Windows CE provides many modules in %_WINCEROOT%\Private\ tree, and the kernel is one of them! Although it is not full source of kernel but it is good enough for tracing it, even tweak the kernel. Tracing the kernel and see how it works is lots of fun, but it is fascinated to modify and verify the change you made. So first comes first, where is the source of kernel? It's in your %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\ And next question will be "How do I build it?", Some of you may say just "build -c" there and it should be good. If you are the owner of kernel and got full source, that is definitely the right answer, but none of them are applied to our case though. So what should I do? Let's dig deeper into the coreos\nk folder, there are a couples of subfolder, CELOG, KDSTUB, KERNEL and etc. KERNEL\ is the main component of kernel.dll, in the other word, most of the modify to kernel is going to happen here. And the good thing is, you could "build -c" in %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel\ with no error at all. But before doing that, remember to backup eveything you are going to modify, including the source and binaries; remember, this is not something belong to you, and if you didn't restore them back later, it could end up confuse the subsequence QFE updates! Here is the steps Backup the source code, I will suggest the whole %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\ Backup the binaries in common\oak\lib\, and again if you are not sure which files, backup the whole %_WINCEROOT%\common\oak\lib\ is the safest way. Do whatever modification you want in %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel\ build -c in %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel If everything went well so far, you should get a new nkmain.lib,nkmain.pdb, nkprmain.lib and nkprmain.pdb in %_WINCEROOT%\public\common\oak\lib\%_TGTCPU%\%WINCEDEBUG%\ Basically, you just rebuild your new kernel, the rest is to "blddemo clean -q" to have your new kernel SYSGEN'd and include in your OS Image. Or just "set WINCEREL=1" then "sysgen -p common nk nkprof" and "makeimg" if you can't wait another minutes for "blddemo clean -q" Tat sounds good, but some of you may not like the idea to alter any code in private folder, and not to mention how annoying to backup/restore files every time. Better idea? Yes, Microsoft provides a tool SYSGEN_CAPTURE (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee504678.aspx for detail and usage) to creates Sources files for public drivers that you want to modify and build in your platform directory. In fact, not only public drivers, virtually anything in the %_WINCEROOT%\public\<project name>\cesysgen\makefile can be captured, and of course including kernel. So I am going to introduce a second way to build your own kernel by using SYSGEN_CAPTURE tool. Again the steps Create a folder in your BSP for building kernel, says %_TARGETPLATROOT%\SRC\Kernel. Use "SYSGEN_CAPTURE -p common nk" and then you will get a SOURCES.KERN, you could also "SYSGEN_CAPTURE -p common nkprof" to generate profiler enabled kernel. rename the SOURCE.KERN to SOURCES and copy one of the sample makefile into your kernel directory. For example the one in PRIVATE\WINCEOS\COREOS\NK\KERNEL\NKNORMAL. Copy the source files you want to modify from private\winceos\coreos\nk\kernel\ into your kernel directory. Modifying the SOURCES= macro to the source files you addes in step 4. For example, if you copied the vm.c, it is going to be SOURCES=vm.c Refer to the private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel\sources.inc and add macro defines and proper include path in your SOURCES file. "set WINCEREL=1", "build -c" in your kernel directory and "makeimg", voila! Here is an example for the MACROS you need to add in x86 Here are the macros for x86 CDEFINES=$(CDEFINES) -DIN_KERNEL -DWINCEMACRO -DKERN_CORE # Machine independent defines CDEFINES=$(CDEFINES) -DDBGSUPPORT _COREOSROOT=$(_WINCEROOT)\private\winceos\coreos INCLUDES=$(_COREOSROOT)\inc;$(_COREOSROOT)\nk\inc !IFDEF DP_SETTINGS CDEFINES=$(CDEFINES) -DDP_SETTINGS=$(DP_SETTINGS) !ENDIF ASM_SAFESEH=1 CDEFINES=$(CDEFINES) -Gs100000 -DENCODE_GS_COOKIE

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• Copy TFS Build Definitions between Projects and Collections

  - by Jakob Ehn

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/jakob/archive/2014/06/05/copy-tfs-build-definitions-between-projects-and-collections.aspxThe last couple of years it has become apparent that using multiple team projects in TFS is generally a bad idea. There are of course exceptions to this, but there are a lot ot things that becomes much easier to do when you put all of your projects and team in the same team project. Fellow ALM MVP Martin Hinshelwood has blogged about this several times, as well as other people in the community. In particular, using the backlog and portfolio management tools makes much more sense when everything is located in the same team project. Consolidating multiple team projects into one is not that easy unfortunately, it involves migrating source code, work items, reports etc.  Another thing that also need to be migrated is build definitions. It is possible to clone build definitions within the same team project using the TFS power tools. The Community TFS Build Manager also lets you clone build definitions to other team projects. But there is no tool that allows you to clone/copy a build definition to another collection. So, I whipped up a simple console application that let you do this. The tool can be downloaded from https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=EE034C9F620CD58D!8162&authkey=!ACTr56v1QVowzuE&ithint=file%2c.zip   Using CopyTFSBuildDefinitions You use the tool like this: CopyTFSBuildDefinitions  SourceCollectionUrl  SourceTeamProject  BuildDefinitionName  DestinationCollectionUrl  DestinationTeamProject [NewDefinitionName] Arguments SourceCollectionUrl The URL to the TFS collection that contains the team project with the build definition that you want to copy SourceTeamProject The name of the team project that contains the build definition BuildDefinitionName Name of the build definition DestinationCollectionUrl The URL to the TFS collection that contains the team project that you want to copy your build definition to DestinationTeamProject The name of the team project in the destination collection NewDefinitionName (Optional) Use this to override the name of the new build definition. If you don’t specify this, the name will the same as the original one Example: CopyTFSBuildDefinitions  https://jakob.visualstudio.com DemoProject  WebApplication.CI https://anotheraccount.visualstudio.com     Notes Since we are (potentially) create a build definition in a new collection, there is no guarantee that the various paths that are defined in the build definition exist in the new collection. For example, a build definition refers to server paths in TFVC or repos + branches in TFGit. It also refers to build controllers that definitely don’t exist in the new collection. So there will be some cleanup to do after you copy your build definitions. You can fix some of these using the Community TFS Build Manager, for example it is very easy to apply the correct build controller to a set of build definitions The problem stated above also applies to build process templates. However, the tool tries to find a build process template in the new team project with the same file name as the one that existed in the old team project. If it finds one, it will be used for the new build definition. Otherwise is will use the default build template If you want to run the tool for many build definitions, you can use this SQL scripts, compliments of Mr. Scrum/ALM MVP Richard Hundhausen to generate the necessary commands: USE Tfs_Collection GO SELECT 'CopyTFSBuildDefinitions.exe http://SERVER:8080/tfs/collection "' + P.ProjectName + '" "' + REPLACE(BD.DefinitionName,'\','') + '" http://NEWSERVER:8080/tfs/COLLECTION TEAMPROJECT'   FROM tbl_Project P        INNER JOIN tbl_BuildGroup BG on BG.TeamProject = P.ProjectUri        INNER JOIN tbl_BuildDefinition BD on BD.GroupId = BG.GroupId   ORDER BY P.ProjectName, BD.DefinitionName   Hope that helps, let me know if you have any problems with the tool or if you find it useful

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• A View from the Top – Jan Ackerman (VP APAC Recruiting)

  - by user769227

  This week, Headhunt Magazine in Singapore, took the opportunity to publish an interview with Jan Ackerman who is Vice President for Recruitment for Asia Pacific here at Oracle. The link to the online interview can be found here. Below is the interview in full that was published in Headhunt Magazine.  A View from the Top – Jan Ackerman Written by HeadHunt on August 16, 2012 · Leave a Comment By Susheela Menon Jan Ackerman is the Vice President for Recruiting in Asia Pacific and Japan at Oracle. Which particular personal trait do you attribute your professional success to? Perseverance has been the most important trait that has attributed to my professional success. Endurance and perseverance combined to win in the end has always been a great credo. I find that this trait carries through in my professional as well as my personal life. I enjoy sport fishing and find that perseverance with a great deal of patience in this hobby is critical to the overall enjoyment and success in this sporting activity. In the same way, this doggedness – steadfastness with persistence – and tenacity toward an unyielding course of action has served me well in reaching goals and thus greater success. What’s the biggest challenge you have faced in your career so far? I have to constantly keep pace with ever changing technology in my career. The industry changes rapidly and requires me to stay on top of the latest trends and advancements. Outside of work, I like to develop software as a hobby and in order to ensure that what I am developing will meet what the business needs, I have to continually innovate and stay current on the latest trends in the industry to deliver a solution that will delight the end- user. Best career advice you have ever received. Always be forthright and honest with your customers and peers; mixed with a “Can Do” attitude, a great and fulfilling career can be yours to have and hold. What makes Oracle a great place to be in? The freedom to innovate and pave new avenues of success is one of the greatest things about working here at Oracle. We are always looking to grow and improve our business for our customers and we are always adapting to present and future industry demands. This means we are always looking to change, to perform better and to do things differently. All these create a culture and spirit of innovation and success. What motivates you to be in the HR sector? I really like working with and helping people. HR is all about “the people” in the organisation, and staying focused every day on making things better for the Oracle team gives me a great deal of happiness. Describe your leadership style. I am very direct and goal- oriented. I provide ideas and guidance and then give the team all the freedom they need to reach a successful outcome. I can also be a very “roll up your sleeves” kind of manager when the task needs a bit of a push. What’s the biggest business challenge you see in your industry right now? The ability to keep pace with all the convergence in the industry and to continue to stay focused on delivering top talent to serve Oracle’s customers well. Our unique Recruiting Model has served us well in meeting these needs. We are well-placed in this goal and look forward to maintain Oracle’s leadership role in the industry.

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• Save the Date - Oracle Partner Community Forum: Exadata, Exalogic and Manageability, Vienna, 23-24 April 2013

  - by Javier Puerta

  Hardware and Software Engineered to Work Together .Ritu { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; } .Ritu { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; } .Ritu { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; } body,td,th { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; } .color { color: #F00; } .c { color: #F00; } .c { color: #F00; } .c { color: #000; font-size: xx-small; } .c a { color: #F00; } .c { color: #F00; } .cl { color: #F00; } .b { color: #000; font-size: xx-small; } .i { font-style: italic; } .i { font-style: italic; } .i { font-style: italic; } .i { font-style: italic; } .i { font-style: italic; } .c { color: #F00; font-size: small; } .b { font-weight: bold; font-size: x-small; } .c { color: #F00; font-size: x-small; } .clr { color: #F00; } .c { color: #F00; } inside the Click Here The order you must follow to make the colored link appear in browsers. If not the default window link will appear 1. Select the word you want to use for the link 2. Select the desired color, Red, Black, etc 3. Select bold if necessary ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Templates use two sizes of fonts and the sans-serif font tag for the email. All Fonts should be (Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif) tags Normal size reading body fonts should be set to the size of 2. Small font sizes should be set to 1 !!!!!!!DO NOT USE ANY OTHER SIZE FONT FOR THE EMAILS!!!!!!!! ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ -- Oracle PartnerNetwork | Account | Feedback SAVE THE DATE ORACLE PARTNER COMMUNITY FORUM: EXADATA, EXALOGIC AND MANAGEABILITY 23-24 APRIL 2013, VIENNA, AUSTRIA The 2013 event expands its scope to cover all the building blocks of the Cloud infrastructure: Exadata, Exalogic and Manageability! Dear partner I am delighted to announce the 2013 edition of the Exadata, Exalogic and Manageability Partner Community Forum for EMEA partners which will take place in Vienna, Austria, on April 23-24, 2013. After the experience of last year where we ran a joint Exadata and Manageability event, we received requests from many of you to add also Exalogic to the scope of the forum, and this way to cover the complete infrastructure architecture on the Exa platform. The continued market adoption of Exadata and Exalogic is being paralleled by a growth in the rate of projects sold and implemented by partners. Sharing customer cases and best-practices presented by other partners constitutes the core of this event. If you want to present an experience of your company around Exadata, Exalogic or Manageability that can be a learning experience for other partners, we still have some slots in the agenda. (Please contact Javier Puerta if you want to present.) Attending the Community Forum you will also have the opportunity to get Oracle’s insight on new products and market trends. And, of course, interact with the Oracle executives responsible for the Exadata, Exalogic and Manageability business. The atmosphere of beautiful Vienna will be the scenario of the event. Detailed venue and hotel booking information will be sent to you in January. Don't miss out on attending this key event! Save the date now - 23 & 24 April 2013, and watch out for your formal invitation coming soon. Kind regards, Javier Puerta Core Technology Partner Programs, Oracle EMEA E-Mail: [email protected] Jürgen Kress SOA Partner Adoption Oracle EMEA E-Mail: [email protected] Copyright © 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Contact PBC | Legal Notices and Terms of Use | Privacy Oracle Corporation - Worldwide Headquarters, 500 Oracle Parkway, OPL - E-mail Services, Redwood Shores, CA 94065, United States

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• Save the Date - Oracle Partner Community Forum: Exadata, Exalogic and Manageability, Vienna, 23-24 April 2013

  - by Javier Puerta

  Hardware and Software Engineered to Work Together .Ritu { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; } .Ritu { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; } .Ritu { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; } body,td,th { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; } .color { color: #F00; } .c { color: #F00; } .c { color: #F00; } .c { color: #000; font-size: xx-small; } .c a { color: #F00; } .c { color: #F00; } .cl { color: #F00; } .b { color: #000; font-size: xx-small; } .i { font-style: italic; } .i { font-style: italic; } .i { font-style: italic; } .i { font-style: italic; } .i { font-style: italic; } .c { color: #F00; font-size: small; } .b { font-weight: bold; font-size: x-small; } .c { color: #F00; font-size: x-small; } .clr { color: #F00; } .c { color: #F00; } inside the Click Here The order you must follow to make the colored link appear in browsers. If not the default window link will appear 1. Select the word you want to use for the link 2. Select the desired color, Red, Black, etc 3. Select bold if necessary ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Templates use two sizes of fonts and the sans-serif font tag for the email. All Fonts should be (Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif) tags Normal size reading body fonts should be set to the size of 2. Small font sizes should be set to 1 !!!!!!!DO NOT USE ANY OTHER SIZE FONT FOR THE EMAILS!!!!!!!! ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ -- Oracle PartnerNetwork | Account | Feedback SAVE THE DATE ORACLE PARTNER COMMUNITY FORUM: EXADATA, EXALOGIC AND MANAGEABILITY 23-24 APRIL 2013, VIENNA, AUSTRIA The 2013 event expands its scope to cover all the building blocks of the Cloud infrastructure: Exadata, Exalogic and Manageability! Dear partner I am delighted to announce the 2013 edition of the Exadata, Exalogic and Manageability Partner Community Forum for EMEA partners which will take place in Vienna, Austria, on April 23-24, 2013. After the experience of last year where we ran a joint Exadata and Manageability event, we received requests from many of you to add also Exalogic to the scope of the forum, and this way to cover the complete infrastructure architecture on the Exa platform. The continued market adoption of Exadata and Exalogic is being paralleled by a growth in the rate of projects sold and implemented by partners. Sharing customer cases and best-practices presented by other partners constitutes the core of this event. If you want to present an experience of your company around Exadata, Exalogic or Manageability that can be a learning experience for other partners, we still have some slots in the agenda. (Please contact Javier Puerta if you want to present.) Attending the Community Forum you will also have the opportunity to get Oracle’s insight on new products and market trends. And, of course, interact with the Oracle executives responsible for the Exadata, Exalogic and Manageability business. The atmosphere of beautiful Vienna will be the scenario of the event. Detailed venue and hotel booking information will be sent to you in January. Don't miss out on attending this key event! Save the date now - 23 & 24 April 2013, and watch out for your formal invitation coming soon. Kind regards, Javier Puerta Core Technology Partner Programs, Oracle EMEA E-Mail: [email protected] Jürgen Kress SOA Partner Adoption Oracle EMEA E-Mail: [email protected] Copyright © 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Contact PBC | Legal Notices and Terms of Use | Privacy Oracle Corporation - Worldwide Headquarters, 500 Oracle Parkway, OPL - E-mail Services, Redwood Shores, CA 94065, United States

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• Silverlight Cream for January 16, 2011 -- #1029

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, Jesse Liberty, Deborah Kurata(-2-, -3-, -4-), Sergey Barskiy(-2-), Miroslav Nedyalkov, Jeff Prosise, and Matthias Shapiro(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Building a Multi-Page Silverlight LOB Application" Deborah Kurata WP7: "Windows Phone 7 [Controls] Project" Sergey Barskiy Sketchflow: "Sketchflow To Final" Michael Washington From SilverlightCream.com: Sketchflow To Final Check out this post by Michael Washington detailing the Sketchflow he did of his app, and how the final result tracks amazingly well. Windows Phone From Scratch #19 – MVVM Light Toolkit Soup To Nuts #4 Continuing to try to catch up to Jesse Liberty is this post, number 19 in the Windows Phone series and the 4th in that series about MVVMLight, and discussing binding a collection in the ViewModel to a ListBox in the view. Building a Multi-Page Silverlight LOB Application Deborah Kurata has the first 4 parts up (in 2 days) in a 6-part tutorial series she's doing on building a Silverlight LOB app. The first post was an intro and link to the rest as they become available. This 2nd post is getting the app newed up and making sure you've got your head wrapped around multiple pages. Theming a Silverlight Application using Existing Themes Deborah Kurata's next part is about getting started with themes in your app using the themes provided in the toolkit specifically. Theming a Silverlight Application using Custom Themes Deborah Kurata's next tutorial in the series is also about themes, but this time it's about custom themes... or rather customized from a 'standard' one in this case. Adding a New Page to a Multi-Page Silverlight Application Deborah Kurata's last available post in the tutorial series is this one on adding a new page to the app. Windows Phone 7 Project Sergey Barskiy has a pair of posts up about a calendar control that he is building and has out on CodePlex... nice-looking control too! Windows Phone 7 Controls Project Update Sergey Barskiy's second post is an update to the calendar... the biggest update being the ability to use the Toolkit context menu. How to Create Ad Rotator with Telerik TransitionControl and CoverFlow control for Silverlight Miroslav Nedyalkov uses the Telerik TransitionControl and CoverFlow controls to produce a great-looking ad rotator using any ContentControl or ListBox... very nice demo on the page.... Building Touch Interfaces for Windows Phones, Part 2 Jeff Prosise has part 2 of his tutorial series on WP7 Touch Interfaces up... and he's processing touch events directly in this one. Fixing the ListPicker / ScrollViewer Problem in Windows Phone 7 Matthias Shapiro has a couple of posts out that I've missed... this one is on an issue with ListPickers in a ScrollViewer where the listpicker gets hit rather than the scroll, and of course he has a work-around... but you'll need the source for the ListPicker to do it. Embedding a Sound File in Windows Phone 7 app (Silverlight) The next post by Matthias Shapiro is an explanation of embedding a sound file in a WP7 app with 2 conditions: 1) it downloads with your app, and 2) it plays no matter what. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Microsoft Silverlight 4 Business Application Development: Beginner's Guide

  Build enterprise-ready business applications with Silverlight An introduction to building enterprise-ready business applications with Silverlight quickly. Get hold of the basic tools and skills needed to get started in Silverlight application development. Integrate different media types, taking the RIA experience further with Silverlight, and much more! Rapidly manage business focused controls, data, and business logic connectivity. A suite of business applications will be built over the course of the book and all examples will be geared around real-world useful application developments, enabling .NET developers to focus on getting started in business application development using Silverlight. In Detail Microsoft Silverlight is a programmable web browser plug-in that enables features including animation, vector graphics, and audio-video playback--features that characterize Rich Internet Applications. Silverlight makes possible the development of RIA applications in familiar .NET languages such as C# and VB.NET. Silverlight is a great (and growing) Line of Business platform and is increasingly being used to build business applications. Silverlight 3 made a big step in LOB; Silverlight 4 builds upon this further. This book will enable .NET developers to feel the pulse of business application development with Silverlight quickly. This book is not a general Silverlight 3/4 overview book. It is uniquely aimed at developers who require an introduction to building business applications with Silverlight. This book will focus on building a suite of real-world, useful business applications in a practical hands-on approach. This book is for .Net developers, providing the answers to many questions that are encountered when creating business applications in Silverlight, ultimately enabling rapid development with ease! This book teaches you how to build business applications with Silverlight 3 and 4. Building a suite of applications, it begins by introducing you to the basic tools and skills needed to get started in Silverlight development. It then dives deeply into the world of business application development, covering all the required concepts needed to build sophisticated business applications and provide a rich user experience. Chapters include: building a public website, adding rich media to the website, incorporating RIA into your website, and among others. By following the practical steps in this book, you will learn what's needed to create rich business applications--from the creation of a Silverlight application, to enhancing your application with rich media and connecting your Silverlight application to various Data Sources. What you will learn from this book Learn the basic tools and skills needed to get started in Silverlight 4 business application development. Discover how to enhance your Silverlight business applications with rich data such as sound and video. Know when and how to customize your data in Silverlight using important data controls. Understand how your Silverlight business applications can connect to various Data Sources. Deliver your Silverlight business application in a variety of forms.   Interesting? Read the chapter 1 Getting Started for free!! 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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• How to Create and Manage Contact Groups in Outlook 2010

  - by Mysticgeek

  If you find you’re sending emails to the same people all the time during the day, it’s tedious entering in their addresses individually. Today we take a look at creating Contact Groups to make the process a lot easier. Create Contact Groups Open Outlook and click on New Items \ More Items \ Contact Group. This opens the Contract Group window. Give your group a name, click on Add Members, and select the people you want to add from your Outlook Contacts, Address Book, or Create new ones. If you select from your address book you can scroll through and add the contacts you want. If you have a large amount of contacts you might want to search for them or use Advanced Find. If you want to add a new email contact to your group, you’ll just need to enter in their display name and email address then click OK. If you want the new member added to your Contacts list then make sure Add to Contacts is checked. After you have the contacts you want in the group, click Save & Close. Now when you compose a message you should be able to type in the name of the Contact Group you created… If you want to make sure you have everyone included in the group, click on the plus icon to expand the contacts. You will get a dialog box telling you the members of the group will be shown and you cannot collapse it again. Check the box not to see the message again then click OK. Then the members of the group will appear in the To field. Of course you can enter a Contact Group into the CC or Bcc fields as well. Add or Remove Members to a Contact Group After expanding the group you might notice some contacts aren’t included, or there is an old contact you don’t want to be in the group anymore. Click on the To button… Right-click on the Contact Group and select Properties. Now you can go ahead and Add Members… Or highlight a member and remove them…when finished click Save & Close. If you need to send emails to several of the same people, creating Contact Groups is a great way to save time by not entering them individually. If you work in for a large company, creating Contact Groups by department is a must! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Schedule Auto Send & Receive in Microsoft OutlookCreate An Electronic Business Card In Outlook 2007Create an Email Template in Outlook 2003Clear the Auto-Complete Email Address Cache in OutlookGet Maps and Directions to Your Contacts in Outlook 2007 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 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor tinysong gives a shortened URL for you to post on Twitter (or anywhere)

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• Silverlight Cream for February 02, 2011 -- #1039

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Tony Champion, Gill Cleeren, Alex van Beek, Michael James, Ollie Riches, Peter Kuhn, Mike Ormond, WindowsPhoneGeek(-2-), Daniel N. Egan, Loek Van Den Ouweland, and Paul Thurott. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Using the AutoCompleteBox" Peter Kuhn WP7: "Windows Phone Image Button" Loek Van Den Ouweland Training: "New WP7 Virtual Labs" Daniel N. Egan Shoutouts: SilverlightShow has their top 5 most popular news articles up: SilverlightShow for Jan 24-30, 2011 Rudi Grobler posted answers he gives to questions about Silverlight - Where do I start? Brian Noyes starts a series of Webinars at SilverlightShow this morning at 10am PDT: Free Silverlight Show Webinar: Querying and Updating Data From Silverlight Clients with WCF RIA Services Join your fellow geeks at Gangplank in Chandler Arizona this Saturday as Scott Cate and AZGroups brings you Azure Boot Camp – Feb 5th 2011 From SilverlightCream.com: Deploying Silverlight with WCF Services Tony Champion takes a step out of his norm (Pivot) and has a post up about deploying WCF Services with your SL app, and how to take the pain out of that without pulling out your hair. Getting ready for Microsoft Silverlight Exam 70-506 (Part 3) Gill Cleeren's part 3 of getting ready for the Silverlight Exam is up at SilverlightShow... with links to the first two parts. There's so much good information linked off these... thanks Gill and 'The Show'! A guide through WCF RIA Services attributes Alex van Beek has a post up you will probably want to bookmark unless you're not using WCF RIA... do you know all the attributes by heart? ... how about an excellent explanation of 10 of them? Using DeferredLoadListBox in a Pivot Control Michael James discusses using the DeferredLoadListBox, and then also using it with the Pivot control... but not without some pain points which he defines and gives the workaround for. WP7: Know your data Ollie Riches' latest is about Data and WP7 ... specifically 'knowing' what data you're needing/using to avoid the 90MB memory limit... He gives a set of steps to follow to measure your data model to avoid getting in trouble. Using the AutoCompleteBox Peter Kuhn takes a great look at the AutoCompleteBox... the basics, and then well beyond with custom data, item templates, custom filters, asynchronous filtering, and a behavior for MVVM async filtering. OData and Windows Phone 7 Part 2 Mike Ormond has part 2 of his OData/WP7 post up... lashing up the images to go along with the code this time out... nice looking app. WP7 RoundToggleButton and RoundButton in depth WindowsPhoneGeek is checking out the RoundToggleButton and RoundButton controls from the Coding4fun Toolkit in detail... of course where to get them, and then the setup, demo project included. All about Dependency Properties in Silverlight for WP7 WindowsPhoneGeek's latest post is a good dependency-property discussion related to WP7 development, but if you're just learning, it's a good place to learn about the subject. New WP7 Virtual Labs Daniel N. Egan posted links to 6 new WP7 Virtual Labs released on 1/25. Windows Phone Image Button Loek Van Den Ouweland has a style up on his blog that gives you an imageButton for your WP7 apps, and a sweet little video showing how it's done in Expression Blend too. Yet another free Windows Phone book for developers Paul Thurott found a link to another Free eBook for WP7 development. This one is by Puja Pramudya and is an English translation of the original, and is an introductory text, but hey... it's free... give it a look! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• MySQL Cluster 7.3: On-Demand Webinar and Q&A Available

  - by Mat Keep

  The on-demand webinar for the MySQL Cluster 7.3 Development Release is now available. You can learn more about the design, implementation and getting started with all of the new MySQL Cluster 7.3 features from the comfort and convenience of your own device, including: - Foreign Key constraints in MySQL Cluster - Node.js NoSQL API  - Auto-installation of higher performance distributed, clusters We received some great questions over the course of the webinar, and I wanted to share those for the benefit of a broader audience. Q. What Foreign Key actions are supported: A. The core referential actions defined in the SQL:2003 standard are implemented: CASCADE RESTRICT NO ACTION SET NULL Q. Where are Foreign Keys implemented, ie data nodes or SQL nodes? A. They are implemented in the data nodes, therefore can be enforced for both the SQL and NoSQL APIs Q. Are they compatible with the InnoDB Foreign Key implementation? A. Yes, with the following exceptions: - InnoDB doesn’t support “No Action” constraints, MySQL Cluster does - You can choose to suspend FK constraint enforcement with InnoDB using the FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS parameter; at the moment, MySQL Cluster ignores that parameter. - You cannot set up FKs between 2 tables where one is stored using MySQL Cluster and the other InnoDB. - You cannot change primary keys through the NDB API which means that the MySQL Server actually has to simulate such operations by deleting and re-adding the row. If the PK in the parent table has a FK constraint on it then this causes non-ideal behaviour. With Restrict or No Action constraints, the change will result in an error. With Cascaded constraints, you’d want the rows in the child table to be updated with the new FK value but, the implicit delete of the row from the parent table would remove the associated rows from the child table and the subsequent implicit insert into the parent wouldn’t reinstate the child rows. For this reason, an attempt to add an ON UPDATE CASCADE where the parent column is a primary key will be rejected. Q. Does adding or dropping Foreign Keys cause downtime due to a schema change? A. Nope, this is an online operation. MySQL Cluster supports a number of on-line schema changes, ie adding and dropping indexes, adding columns, etc. Q. Where can I see an example of node.js with MySQL Cluster? A. Check out the tutorial and download the code from GitHub Q. Can I use the auto-installer to support remote deployments? How about setting up MySQL Cluster 7.2? A. Yes to both! Q. Can I get a demo Check out the tutorial. You can download the code from http://labs.mysql.com/ Go to Select Build drop-down box Q. What is be minimum internet speen required for Geo distributed cluster with synchronous replication? A. if you're splitting you cluster between sites then we recommend a network latency of 20ms or less. Alternatively, use MySQL asynchronous replication where the latency of your WAN doesn't impact the latency of your reads/writes. Q. Where you can one learn more about the PayPal project with MySQL Cluster? A. Take a look at the following - you'll find press coverage, a video and slides from their keynote presentation  So, if you want to learn more, listen to the new MySQL Cluster 7.3 on-demand webinar  MySQL Cluster 7.3 is still in the development phase, so it would be great to get your feedback on these new features, and things you want to see!

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• Getting input from keyboard

  - by SAMIR BHOGAYTA

  When you type on the keyboard the keystrokes go to a particular application, the active application. The active application receives the input from the keyboard. This means the application has input focus. There are two events for a key on a keyboard, when the key is pressed and when it is released. No it's not a single event as you might expect if you have no prior programming experience, in shooter games for example when you keep the forward key pressed (KeyDown) the player goes forward, and when it isn't pressed (KeyUp) the player stays put. The event that occurs when the key is pressed is called KeyPress. It occurs between KeyDown and KeyUp, and therefore acts similar to KeyDown. Similar to the way we handle OnPaint and other events we also handle the OnKeyDown event (because we want the event to occur when the key is pressed and not when it is released) by overriding it. Try the code below and test it. You will understand the role of each property. protected override void OnKeyDown(KeyEventArgs keyEvent) { // Gets the key code lblKeyCode.Text = "KeyCode: " + keyEvent.KeyCode.ToString(); // Gets the key data; recognizes combination of keys lblKeyData.Text = "KeyData: " + keyEvent.KeyData.ToString(); // Integer representation of KeyData lblKeyValue.Text = "KeyValue: " + keyEvent.KeyValue.ToString(); // Returns true if Alt is pressed lblAlt.Text = "Alt: " + keyEvent.Alt.ToString(); // Returns true if Ctrl is pressed lblCtrl.Text = "Ctrl: " + keyEvent.Control.ToString(); // Returns true if Shift is pressed lblShift.Text = "Shift: " + keyEvent.Shift.ToString(); } How do I find out when the user presses a specific key? As you probably imagine, this will be easily accomplished using 'if'. if (keyEvent.KeyCode == Keys.A) { MessageBox.Show("'A' was pressed."); } Probably most beginners would be tempted to do this: if (keyEvent.KeyCode == "A") .... which is definitely incorrect because we can't compare System.Windows.Forms.Keys to a string. Also note that in the example we are using 'keyEvent.KeyCode', that means that even if we have other shift keys pressed (Alt, Ctrl, Shift, Windows...) simultaneous with A, the if condition returns true because it doesn't recognize key combinations. If we want to ignore key combinations (Alt+A, Ctrl+Shift+A), etc. we need to use 'keyEvent.KeyData' of course: if (keyEvent.KeyData == Keys.A) { MessageBox.Show("'A', and only A, was pressed."); } When you right click on a file in Windows Explorer and you have the Shift key pressed you get the additional 'Open with...' item in the menu. This and many others are cases when you need to use the mouse button together with the keyboard. The following code will change the background color of the form only if the form is clicked while the Ctrl key on the keyboard is pressed. If the Ctrl key is unpressed and the form is clicked nothing happens. private void Form1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { Keys modKey = Control.ModifierKeys; if(modKey == Keys.Control) { this.BackColor = Color.Yellow; } } If you have further questions feel free to ask them and also check the following pages at MSDN: KeyUp Event KeyPress Event KeyDown Event

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• Speeding up procedural texture generation

  - by FalconNL

  Recently I've begun working on a game that takes place in a procedurally generated solar system. After a bit of a learning curve (having neither worked with Scala, OpenGL 2 ES or Libgdx before), I have a basic tech demo going where you spin around a single procedurally textured planet: The problem I'm running into is the performance of the texture generation. A quick overview of what I'm doing: a planet is a cube that has been deformed to a sphere. To each side, a n x n (e.g. 256 x 256) texture is applied, which are bundled in one 8n x n texture that is sent to the fragment shader. The last two spaces are not used, they're only there to make sure the width is a power of 2. The texture is currently generated on the CPU, using the updated 2012 version of the simplex noise algorithm linked to in the paper 'Simplex noise demystified'. The scene I'm using to test the algorithm contains two spheres: the planet and the background. Both use a greyscale texture consisting of six octaves of 3D simplex noise, so for example if we choose 128x128 as the texture size there are 128 x 128 x 6 x 2 x 6 = about 1.2 million calls to the noise function. The closest you will get to the planet is about what's shown in the screenshot and since the game's target resolution is 1280x720 that means I'd prefer to use 512x512 textures. Combine that with the fact the actual textures will of course be more complicated than basic noise (There will be a day and night texture, blended in the fragment shader based on sunlight, and a specular mask. I need noise for continents, terrain color variation, clouds, city lights, etc.) and we're looking at something like 512 x 512 x 6 x 3 x 15 = 70 million noise calls for the planet alone. In the final game, there will be activities when traveling between planets, so a wait of 5 or 10 seconds, possibly 20, would be acceptable since I can calculate the texture in the background while traveling, though obviously the faster the better. Getting back to our test scene, performance on my PC isn't too terrible, though still too slow considering the final result is going to be about 60 times worse: 128x128 : 0.1s 256x256 : 0.4s 512x512 : 1.7s This is after I moved all performance-critical code to Java, since trying to do so in Scala was a lot worse. Running this on my phone (a Samsung Galaxy S3), however, produces a more problematic result: 128x128 : 2s 256x256 : 7s 512x512 : 29s Already far too long, and that's not even factoring in the fact that it'll be minutes instead of seconds in the final version. Clearly something needs to be done. Personally, I see a few potential avenues, though I'm not particularly keen on any of them yet: Don't precalculate the textures, but let the fragment shader calculate everything. Probably not feasible, because at one point I had the background as a fullscreen quad with a pixel shader and I got about 1 fps on my phone. Use the GPU to render the texture once, store it and use the stored texture from then on. Upside: might be faster than doing it on the CPU since the GPU is supposed to be faster at floating point calculations. Downside: effects that cannot (easily) be expressed as functions of simplex noise (e.g. gas planet vortices, moon craters, etc.) are a lot more difficult to code in GLSL than in Scala/Java. Calculate a large amount of noise textures and ship them with the application. I'd like to avoid this if at all possible. Lower the resolution. Buys me a 4x performance gain, which isn't really enough plus I lose a lot of quality. Find a faster noise algorithm. If anyone has one I'm all ears, but simplex is already supposed to be faster than perlin. Adopt a pixel art style, allowing for lower resolution textures and fewer noise octaves. While I originally envisioned the game in this style, I've come to prefer the realistic approach. I'm doing something wrong and the performance should already be one or two orders of magnitude better. If this is the case, please let me know. If anyone has any suggestions, tips, workarounds, or other comments regarding this problem I'd love to hear them.

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• MacGyver Moments

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  Denny Cherry tagged me to write about my best MacGyver Moment.  Usually I ignore blogosphere fluff and just use this space to write what I think is important.  However, #MVP10 just ended and I have a stronger sense of community.  Besides, where else would I mention my second best Macgyver moment was making a BIOS jumper out of a soda can.  Aluminum is conductive and I didn't have any real jumpers lying around. My best moment is probably my entire home computer network.  Every system but one is hand-built, usually cobbled together out of spare parts and 'adapted' from its original purpose. My Primary Domain Controller is a Dell 2300.   The Service Tag indicates it was shipped to the original owner in 1999.  Box has a PERC/1 RAID controller.  I acquired this from a previous employer for $50.  It runs Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.  Does DNS, DHCP, and RADIUS services as a bonus.  RADIUS authentication is used for VPN and Wireless access.  It is nice to sign in once and be done with it. The Secondary Domain Controller is an old desktop.  Dual P-III 933 with some extra drives. My VPN box is a P-II 250 with 384MB of RAM and a 21 GB hard drive.  I did a P-to-V to my Hyper-V box a year or so ago and retired the hardware again.  Dynamic DNS lets me connect no matter how often Comcast shuffles my IP. The Hyper-V box is a desktop system with 8GB RAM and an AMD Athlon 5000+ processor.  Cost me less than $500 to put together nearly two years ago.  I reasoned that if Vista and Windows 2008 were the same code then Vista 64-bit certified meant the drivers for Vista would load into Windows 2008.  Turns out I was right. Later I added three 1TB drives but wasn't too happy with how that turned out.  I recovered two of the drives yesterday and am building an iSCSI storage unit. (Much thanks to Starwind.  Great product).  I am using an old AMD 1.1GhZ box with 1.5 GB RAM (cobbled together from three old PCs) as my storave server.  The Hyper-V box is slated for an OS rebuild to 2008 R2 once I get the storage system worked out.  maybe in a week or two. A couple of DLink Gigabit switches ties everything together. Add in the Vonage box, the three PCs, the Wireless-N Access Point, the two notebooks and the XBox and you have gone from MacGyver to darn near Rube Goldberg. The only thing I really spend money on is power supplies and fans.  I buy top-of-the-line for both. I even pull and crimp my own cables. Oh, and if my kids hose up a PC, I have all of their data on a server elsewhere.  Every PC and laptop is pretty much interchangable for email and basic workstation tasks.  That helps a lot too. Of course I will tag SQLVariant.

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• T-SQL Tuesday #005 : SSRS Parameters and MDX Data Sets

  - by blakmk

  Well it this weeks  T-SQL Tuesday #005  topic seems quite fitting. Having spent the past few weeks creating reports and dashboards in SSRS and SSAS 2008, I was frustrated by how difficult it is to use custom datasets to generate parameter drill downs. It also seems Reporting Services can be quite unforgiving when it comes to renaming things like datasets, so I want to share a couple of techniques that I found useful. One of the things I regularly do is to add parameters to the querys. However doing this causes Reporting Services to generate a hidden dataset and parameter name for you. One of the things I like to do is tweak these hidden datasets removing the ‘ALL’ level which is a tip I picked up from Devin Knight in his blog: There are some rules i’ve developed for myself since working with SSRS and MDX, they may not be the best or only way but they work for me. Rule 1 – Never trust the automatically generated hidden datasets Or even ANY, automatically generated MDX queries for that matter.... I’ve previously blogged about this here.   If you examine the MDX generated in the hidden dataset you will see that it generates the MDX in the context of the originiating query by building a subcube, this mean it may NOT be appropriate to use this in a subsequent query which has a different context. Make sure you always understand what is going on. Often when i’m developing a dashboard or a report there are several parameter oriented datasets that I like to manually create. It can be that I have different datasets using the same dimension but in a different context. One example of this, is that I often use a dataset for last month and a dataset for the last 6 months. Both use the same date hierarchy. However Reporting Services seems not to be too smart when it comes to generating unique datasets when working with and renaming parameters and datasets. Very often I have come across this error when it comes to refactoring parameter names and default datasets. "an item with the same key has already been added" The only way I’ve found to reliably avoid this is to obey to rule 2. Rule 2 – Follow this sequence when it comes to working with Parameters and DataSets: 1.    Create Lookup and Default Datasets in advance 2.    Create parameters (set the datasets for available and default values) 3.    Go into query and tick parameter check box 4.    On dataset properties screen, select the parameter defined earlier from the parameter value defined earlier. Rule 3 – Dont tear your hair out when you have just renamed objects and your report doesn’t build Just use XML notepad on the original report file. I found I gained a good understanding of the structure of the underlying XML document just by using XML notepad. From this you can do a search and find references of the missing object. You can also just do a wholesale search and replace (after taking a backup copy of course ;-) So I hope the above help to save the sanity of anyone who regularly works with SSRS and MDX.   @Blakmk

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• Application Performance Episode 2: Announcing the Judges!

  - by Michaela Murray

  The story so far… We’re writing a new book for ASP.NET developers, and we want you to be a part of it! If you work with ASP.NET applications, and have top tips, hard-won lessons, or sage advice for avoiding, finding, and fixing performance problems, we want to hear from you! And if your app uses SQL Server, even better – interaction with the database is critical to application performance, so we’re looking for database top tips too. There’s a Microsoft Surface apiece for the person who comes up with the best tip for SQL Server and the best tip for .NET. Of course, if your suggestion is selected for the book, you’ll get full credit, by name, Twitter handle, GitHub repository, or whatever you like. To get involved, just email your nuggets of performance wisdom to [email protected] – there are examples of what we’re looking for and full competition details at Application Performance: The Best of the Web. Enter the judges… As mentioned in my last blogpost, we have a mystery panel of celebrity judges lined up to select the prize-winning performance pointers. We’re now ready to reveal their secret identities! Judging your ASP.NET  tips will be: Jean-Phillippe Gouigoux, MCTS/MCPD Enterprise Architect and MVP Connected System Developer. He’s a board member at French software company MGDIS, and teaches algorithms, security, software tests, and ALM at the Université de Bretagne Sud. Jean-Philippe also lectures at IT conferences and writes articles for programming magazines. His book Practical Performance Profiling is published by Simple-Talk. Nik Molnar,  a New Yorker, ASP Insider, and co-founder of Glimpse, an open source ASP.NET diagnostics and debugging tool. Originally from Florida, Nik specializes in web development, building scalable, client-centric solutions. In his spare time, Nik can be found cooking up a storm in the kitchen, hanging with his wife, speaking at conferences, and working on other open source projects. Mitchel Sellers, Microsoft C# and DotNetNuke MVP. Mitchel is an experienced software architect, business leader, public speaker, and educator. He works with companies across the globe, as CEO of IowaComputerGurus Inc. Mitchel writes technical articles for online and print publications and is the author of Professional DotNetNuke Module Programming. He frequently answers questions on StackOverflow and MSDN and is an active participant in the .NET and DotNetNuke communities. Clive Tong, Software Engineer at Red Gate. In previous roles, Clive spent a lot of time working with Common LISP and enthusing about functional languages, and he’s worked with managed languages since before his first real job (which was a long time ago). Long convinced of the productivity benefits of managed languages, Clive is very interested in getting good runtime performance to keep managed languages practical for real-world development. And our trio of SQL Server specialists, ready to select your top suggestion, are (drumroll): Rodney Landrum, a SQL Server MVP who writes regularly about Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services. He’s authored SQL Server Tacklebox, three Reporting Services books, and contributes regularly to SQLServerCentral, SQL Server Magazine, and Simple–Talk. His day job involves overseeing a large SQL Server infrastructure in Orlando. Grant Fritchey, Product Evangelist at Red Gate and SQL Server MVP. In an IT career spanning more than 20 years, Grant has written VB, VB.NET, C#, and Java. He’s been working with SQL Server since version 6.0. Grant volunteers with the Editorial Committee at PASS and has written books for Apress and Simple-Talk. Jonathan Allen, leader and founder of the PASS SQL South West user group. He’s been working with SQL Server since 1999 and enjoys performance tuning, development, and using SQL Server for business solutions. He’s spoken at SQLBits and SQL in the City, as well as local user groups across the UK. He’s also a moderator at ask.sqlservercentral.com.

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• Database Mirroring on SQL Server Express Edition

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  Like most SQL Server users I'm rather frustrated by Microsoft's insistence on making the really cool features only available in Enterprise Edition.  And it really doesn't help that they changed the licensing for SQL 2012 to be core-based, so now it's like 4 times as expensive!  It almost makes you want to go with Oracle.  That, and a desire to have Larry Ellison do things to your orifices. And since they've introduced Availability Groups, and marked database mirroring as deprecated, you'd think they'd make make mirroring available in all editions.  Alas…they don't…officially anyway.  Thanks to my constant poking around in places I'm not "supposed" to, I've discovered the low-level code that implements database mirroring, and found that it's available in all editions! It turns out that the query processor in all SQL Server editions prepends a simple check before every edition-specific DDL statement: IF CAST(SERVERPROPERTY('Edition') as nvarchar(max)) NOT LIKE '%e%e%e% Edition%' print 'Lame' else print 'Cool' If that statement returns true, it fails. (the print statements are just placeholders)  Go ahead and test it on Standard, Workgroup, and Express editions compared to an Enterprise or Developer edition instance (which support everything). Once again thanks to Argenis Fernandez (b | t) and his awesome sessions on using Sysinternals, I was able to watch the exact process SQL Server performs when setting up a mirror.  Surprisingly, it's not actually implemented in SQL Server!  Some of it is, but that's something of a smokescreen, the real meat of it is simple filesystem primitives. The NTFS filesystem supports links, both hard links and symbolic, so that you can create two entries for the same file in different directories and/or different names.  You can create them using the MKLINK command in a command prompt: mklink /D D:\SkyDrive\Data D:\Data mklink /D D:\SkyDrive\Log D:\Log This creates a symbolic link from my data and log folders to my Skydrive folder.  Any file saved in either location will instantly appear in the other.  And since my Skydrive will be automatically synchronized with the cloud, any changes I make will be copied instantly (depending on my internet bandwidth of course). So what does this have to do with database mirroring?  Well, it seems that the mirroring endpoint that you have to create between mirror and principal servers is really nothing more than a Skydrive link.  Although it doesn't actually use Skydrive, it performs the same function.  So in effect, the following statement: ALTER DATABASE Mir SET PARTNER='TCP://MyOtherServer.domain.com:5022' Is turned into: mklink /D "D:\Data" "\\MyOtherServer.domain.com\5022$" The 5022$ "port" is actually a hidden system directory on the principal and mirror servers. I haven't quite figured out how the log files are included in this, or why you have to SET PARTNER on both principal and mirror servers, except maybe that mklink has to do something special when linking across servers.  I couldn't get the above statement to work correctly, but found that doing mklink to a local Skydrive folder gave me similar functionality. To wrap this up, all you have to do is the following: Install Skydrive on both SQL Servers (principal and mirror) and set the local Skydrive folder (D:\SkyDrive in these examples) On the principal server, run mklink /D on the data and log folders to point to SkyDrive: mklink /D D:\SkyDrive\Data D:\Data On the mirror server, run the complementary linking: mklink /D D:\Data D:\SkyDrive\Data Create your database and make sure the files map to the principal data and log folders (D:\Data and D:\Log) Viola! Your databases are kept in sync on multiple servers! One wrinkle you will encounter is that the mirror server will show the data and log files, but you won't be able to attach them to the mirror SQL instance while they are attached to the principal. I think this is a bug in the Skydrive, but as it turns out that's fine: you can't access a mirror while it's hosted on the principal either.  So you don't quite get automatic failover, but you can attach the files to the mirror if the principal goes offline.  It's also not exactly synchronous, but it's better than nothing, and easier than either replication or log shipping with a lot less latency. I will end this with the obvious "not supported by Microsoft" and "Don't do this in production without an updated resume" spiel that you should by now assume with every one of my blog posts, especially considering the date.

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• Stuck due to "knowing too much"

  - by Ran Biron

  Note more discussion at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4037794 Welcome Hacker News Visitors! While HN is a fine forum for discussion and debate, Programmers - Stack Exchange is not. From the FAQ: If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ____”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ____ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.) Currently, this question is viewed by the membership of Programmers.SE as more likely to provoke unproductive discussion than constructive answers; while debates on its form and future are conducted, it will be locked to prevent arguments and vandalism. -- Shog9 I have a relatively simple development task, but every time I try to attack it, I end up spiraling in deep thoughts - how could it extending the future, what are the 2nd generation clients going to need, how does it affect "non functional" aspects (e.g. Performance, authorization...), how would it best be architectured to allow change... I remember myself a while ago, younger and, perhaps, more eager. The "me" I was then wouldn't have given a thought about all that - he would've gone ahead and wrote something, then rewrote it, then rewrote it again (and again...). The "me" today is more hesitant, more careful. I find it much easier today to sit and plan and instruct other people on how to do things than to actually go ahead and do them myself - not because I don't like to code - the opposite, I love to! - but because every time I sit at the keyboard, I end up in that same annoying place. Is this wrong? Is this a natural evolution, or did I drive myself into a rut? Fair disclosure - in the past I was a developer, today my job title is a "system architect". Good luck figuring what it means - but that's the title. Wow. I honestly didn't expect this question to generate that many responses. I'll try to sum it up. Reasons: Analysis paralysis / Over engineering / gold plating / (any other "too much thinking up-front can hurt you"). Too much experience for the given task. Not focusing on what's important. Not enough experience (and realizing that). Solutions (not matched to reasons): Testing first. Start coding (+ for fun) One to throw away (+ one API to throw away). Set time constraints. Strip away the fluff, stay with the stuff. Make flexible code (kinda opposite to "one to throw away", no?). Thanks to everyone - I think the major benefit here was to realize that I'm not alone in this experience. I have, actually, already started coding and some of the too-big things have fallen off, naturally. Since this question is closed, I'll accept the answer with most votes as of today. When/if it changes - I'll try to follow.

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• Skewed: a rotating camera in a simple CPU-based voxel raycaster/raytracer

  - by voxelizr

  TL;DR -- in my first simple software voxel raycaster, I cannot get camera rotations to work, seemingly correct matrices notwithstanding. The result is skewed: like a flat rendering, correctly rotated, however distorted and without depth. (While axis-aligned ie. unrotated, depth and parallax are as expected.) I'm trying to write a simple voxel raycaster as a learning exercise. This is purely CPU based for now until I figure out how things work exactly -- fow now, OpenGL is just (ab)used to blit the generated bitmap to the screen as often as possible. Now I have gotten to the point where a perspective-projection camera can move through the world and I can render (mostly, minus some artifacts that need investigation) perspective-correct 3-dimensional views of the "world", which is basically empty but contains a voxel cube of the Stanford Bunny. So I have a camera that I can move up and down, strafe left and right and "walk forward/backward" -- all axis-aligned so far, no camera rotations. Herein lies my problem. Screenshot #1: correct depth when the camera is still strictly axis-aligned, ie. un-rotated. Now I have for a few days been trying to get rotation to work. The basic logic and theory behind matrices and 3D rotations, in theory, is very clear to me. Yet I have only ever achieved a "2.5 rendering" when the camera rotates... fish-eyey, bit like in Google Streetview: even though I have a volumetric world representation, it seems --no matter what I try-- like I would first create a rendering from the "front view", then rotate that flat rendering according to camera rotation. Needless to say, I'm by now aware that rotating rays is not particularly necessary and error-prone. Still, in my most recent setup, with the most simplified raycast ray-position-and-direction algorithm possible, my rotation still produces the same fish-eyey flat-render-rotated style looks: Screenshot #2: camera "rotated to the right by 39 degrees" -- note how the blue-shaded left-hand side of the cube from screen #2 is not visible in this rotation, yet by now "it really should"! Now of course I'm aware of this: in a simple axis-aligned-no-rotation-setup like I had in the beginning, the ray simply traverses in small steps the positive z-direction, diverging to the left or right and top or bottom only depending on pixel position and projection matrix. As I "rotate the camera to the right or left" -- ie I rotate it around the Y-axis -- those very steps should be simply transformed by the proper rotation matrix, right? So for forward-traversal the Z-step gets a bit smaller the more the cam rotates, offset by an "increase" in the X-step. Yet for the pixel-position-based horizontal+vertical-divergence, increasing fractions of the x-step need to be "added" to the z-step. Somehow, none of my many matrices that I experimented with, nor my experiments with matrix-less hardcoded verbose sin/cos calculations really get this part right. Here's my basic per-ray pre-traversal algorithm -- syntax in Go, but take it as pseudocode: fx and fy: pixel positions x and y rayPos: vec3 for the ray starting position in world-space (calculated as below) rayDir: vec3 for the xyz-steps to be added to rayPos in each step during ray traversal rayStep: a temporary vec3 camPos: vec3 for the camera position in world space camRad: vec3 for camera rotation in radians pmat: typical perspective projection matrix The algorithm / pseudocode: // 1: rayPos is for now "this pixel, as a vector on the view plane in 3d, at The Origin" rayPos.X, rayPos.Y, rayPos.Z = ((fx / width) - 0.5), ((fy / height) - 0.5), 0 // 2: rotate around Y axis depending on cam rotation. No prob since view plane still at Origin 0,0,0 rayPos.MultMat(num.NewDmat4RotationY(camRad.Y)) // 3: a temp vec3. planeDist is -0.15 or some such -- fov-based dist of view plane from eye and also the non-normalized, "in axis-aligned world" traversal step size "forward into the screen" rayStep.X, rayStep.Y, rayStep.Z = 0, 0, planeDist // 4: rotate this too -- 0,zstep should become some meaningful xzstep,xzstep rayStep.MultMat(num.NewDmat4RotationY(CamRad.Y)) // set up direction vector from still-origin-based-ray-position-off-rotated-view-plane plus rotated-zstep-vector rayDir.X, rayDir.Y, rayDir.Z = -rayPos.X - me.rayStep.X, -rayPos.Y, rayPos.Z + rayStep.Z // perspective projection rayDir.Normalize() rayDir.MultMat(pmat) // before traversal, the ray starting position has to be transformed from origin-relative to campos-relative rayPos.Add(camPos) I'm skipping the traversal and sampling parts -- as per screens #1 through #3, those are "basically mostly correct" (though not pretty) -- when axis-aligned / unrotated.

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• Silverlight Cream for May 11, 2010 -- #859

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this All Submittal Issue: Colin Eberhardt, Ken Johnson, Alan Beasley, Pencho Popadiyn, Phil Middlemiss, Khawar(-2-), Levente Mihály, Alex van Beek, Bart Czernicki, Michael Washington, and Mark Monster. Shoutout: Not Silverlight necessarily, but definitely VS2010, read what Brett Balmer has to say In Defense of Portrait Mode From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight MultiBinding solution for Silverlight 4 Colin Eberhardt updated his Silverlight Multibinding solution to Silverlight 4. Great article with explanatory graphics, and links to the code... congrats on the use in the FaceBook Client too! Spirograph Shapes: WPF Bezier shapes from math formulae Wow... I haven't seen this much math since my Master's Thesis! ... Check out all the shapes Ken Johnson has built... don't let the math scare you... just use it :) Busy Dizzy Bee-sley Spirographic Animation in Expression Blend and Silverlight This is just fun... I saw Michael Washington playing with this yesterday at the Arizona Day of .NET but didn't have a chance to ask what it was.. Alan Beasley had a good time building this, and is sharing a very detailed tutorial with us. ModalDialogs, IEditableObject and MVVM in Silverlight 4 Pencho Popadiyn said the 'M' word over at SilverlightShow... actually the 'MVVM' word :) ... he's discussing Modal dialogs with no code in the View ... check out how he did it. A Chrome and Glass Theme - Part 6 Phil Middlemiss is up to episode 6 in his Theme-building tutorial... this time out, he's giving the TabControl and TabItem new clothes ... specifically discussing what to change and what to allow to inherit ... good stuff! Silverlight 4 Fonts gotcha Check out Khawar's ATM Machine demo -- there's a link on the page for this post... he had an issue with fonts, ratted it out, and explains it for all of us... thanks Khawar Demystifying Silverlight Obfuscation Khawar also has a good post up on Obfuscating your Silverlight... definitely showing that it's not all that difficult to do. geoGallery, a WinPhone7 sample OK this is interesting... using the geoLocation feature of WP7, Levente Mihály hits Google Picasa to find pictures... good write-up and all the code. Silverlight 4: Digitally signing a XAP with Visual Studio 2010 Alex van Beek has a nice tutorial on Signing your XAP file using Visual Studio 2010... of course you may want to visit Tim Heuer's blog (search at SC) to find the two good deals on certificates that are still in play. Creating Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Expression Blend 4 for Business Intelligence applications In an interesting post, Bart Czernicki describes using the shape assets in Blend 4 to produce a KPI display in Silverlight or WPF. A discussion of the shape's evolution for KPI is included as well as some alternate shape uses. A DotNetNuke Silverlight 4 Drag and Drop File Manager Michael Washington has blogged about his Drag and Drop File Manager using the View Model Style pattern. This is covered in two CodeProject articles listed in the post. The design work was done by Alan Beasely and links to his work is there as well as covered in other SC posts. How to select a ListItem on Hover Mark Monster had a Use Case for Selecting a ListBox entry by hovering ... but he did it with a Behavior and for a ListBox and PathListBox and it works with DataBinding... Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Increasing touch surface (#wp7dev)

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  When you design for Windows Phone 7 (or for any touch device, for that matter, and most especially small screens), you need to be very careful to give enough surface to your users’ fingers. It is easy to miss a touch on such small screens, and that can be horrifyingly frustrating. This is especially true when people are on the move, and trying to hit the control while walking and holding their device in one hand, or when the device is mounted in a car and vibrating with the engine. In my experience, a touch surface should be ideally minimum 60x60 pixels to be easy to activate on the Windows Phone 7 screen (which is, as we know, 800 pixels x 480 pixels). Ideally, I try to make my touch surfaces 80x80 pixels minimum. This causes a few design challenges of course. Using transparent backgrounds However, one thing is helping us tremendously: some surfaces can be made transparent, and yet react to touch. The secret is the following: If you have a panel that has a Null background (i.e. the Background is not set at all), then the empty surface does not react to touch. If however the Background is set to the Transparent color (or any color where the Alpha channel is set to 0), then it will react to touch. Setting a transparent background is easy. For example: <Grid Background="#00000000"> </Grid> or <Grid Background="Transparent"> </Grid> In C#: var grid = new Grid { Background = new SolidColorBrush( Colors.Transparent) }; Using negative margins Having a transparent background reactive to touch is a good start, but in addition, you must make sure that the surface is big enough for my clumsy fingers. One way to achieve that is to increase the transparent, touch-reactive surface, and reposition the element using negative margins. For example, consider the following UI. I changed the transparent background of the HyperlinkButton to Red, in order to visualize the touch surface. In this figure, the Settings HyperlinkButton is 105 pixels x 31 pixels. This is wide enough, but really small in height and easy to miss. To improve this, we can use negative margins, for instance: <HyperlinkButton Content="Settings" HorizontalAlignment="Right" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Height="60" Margin="0,0,0,-15" /> Notice the usage of negative bottom margin to bring the HyperlinkButton back at the bottom of the main Grid’s first row, where it belongs. And the result is: Notice how the touch surface is much bigger than before. This makes the HyperlinkButton easier to reach, and improves the user experience. With the background set back to normal, the UI looks exactly the same, as it should: In summary: Remember to maximize the touch surface for your controls. Plan your design in consequence by reserving enough room around each control to allow their hit surface to be expanded as shown in this article. Do not cram too many controls in one page. If REALLY needed, use an additional page (or even better: use a Pivot control with multiple pivot items) for the controls that don’t fit on the first one. This should ensure a smoother user experience and improved touch behavior. Happy coding! Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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