Search Results

Search found 9501 results on 381 pages for 'word 2007'.

Page 374/381 | < Previous Page | 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381  | Next Page >

• PASS Summit Feedback

  - by Rob Farley

  PASS Feedback came in last week. I also saw my dentist for some fillings... At the PASS Summit this year, I delivered a couple of regular sessions and a Lightning Talk. People told me they enjoyed it, but when the rankings came out, they showed that I didn’t score particularly well. Brent Ozar was keen to discuss it with me. Brent: PASS speaker feedback is out. You did two sessions and a Lightning Talk. How did you go? Rob: Not so well actually, thanks for asking. Brent: Ha! Sorry. Of course you know that's why I wanted to discuss this with you. I was in one of your sessions at SQLBits in the UK a month before PASS, and I thought you rocked. You've got a really good and distinctive delivery style.  Then I noticed your talks were ranked in the bottom quarter of the Summit ratings and wanted to discuss it. Rob: Yeah, I know. You did ask me if we could do this...  I should explain – my presentation style is not the stereotypical IT conference one. I throw in jokes, and try to engage the audience thoroughly. I find many talks amazingly dry, and I guess I try to buck that trend. I also run training courses, and find that I get a lot of feedback from people thanking me for keeping things interesting. That said, I also get feedback criticising me for my style, and that’s basically what’s happened here. For the rest of this discussion, let’s focus on my talk about the Incredible Shrinking Execution Plan, which I considered to be my main talk. Brent: I thought that session title was the very best one at the entire Summit, and I had it on my recommended sessions list.  In four words, you managed to sum up the topic and your sense of humor.  I read that and immediately thought, "People need to be in this session," and then it didn't score well.  Tell me about your scores. Rob: The questions on the feedback form covered the usefulness of the information, the speaker’s presentation skills, their knowledge of the subject, how well the session was described, the amount of time allocated, and the quality of the presentation materials. Brent: Presentation materials? But you don’t do slides.  Did they rate your thong? Rob: No-one saw my flip-flops in this talk, Brent. I created a script in Management Studio, and published that afterwards, but I think people will have scored that question based on the lack of slides. I wasn’t expecting to do particularly well on that one. That was the only section that didn’t have 5/5 as the most popular score. Brent: See, that sucks, because cookbook-style scripts are often some of my favorites.  Adam Machanic's Service Broker workbench series helped me immensely when I was prepping for the MCM.  As an attendee, I'd rather have a commented script than a slide deck.  So how did you rank so low? Rob: When I look at the scores that you got (based on your blog post), you got very few scores below 3 – people that felt strong enough about your talk to post a negative score. In my scores, between 5% and 10% were below 3 (except on the question about whether I knew my stuff – I guess I came as knowledgeable). Brent: Wow – so quite a few people really didn’t like your talk then? Rob: Yeah. Mind you, based on the comments, some people really loved it. I’d like to think that there would be a certain portion of the room who may have rated the talk as one of the best of the conference. Some of my comments included “amazing!”, “Best presentation so far!”, “Wow, best session yet”, “fantastic” and “Outstanding!”. I think lots of talks can be “Great”, but not so many talks can be “Outstanding” without the word losing its meaning. One wrote “Pretty amazing presentation, considering it was completely extemporaneous.” Brent: Extemporaneous, eh? Rob: Yeah. I guess they don’t realise how much preparation goes into coming across as unprepared. In many ways it’s much easier to give a written speech than to deliver a presentation without slides as a prompt. Brent: That delivery style, the really relaxed, casual, college-professor approach was one of the things I really liked about your presentation at SQLbits.  As somebody who presents a lot, I "get" it - I know how hard it is to come off as relaxed and comfortable with your own material.  It's like improv done by jazz players and comedians - if you've never tried it, you don't realize how hard it is.  People also don't realize how hard it is to make a tough subject fun. Rob: Yeah well... There will be people writing comments on this post that say I wasn't trying to make the subject fun, and that I was making it all about me. Sometimes the style works, sometimes it doesn't. Most of the comments mentioned the fact that I tell jokes, some in a nice way, but some not so much (and it wasn't just a PASS thing - that's the mix of feedback I generally get). One comment at PASS was: “great stand up comedian - not what I'm looking for at pass”, and there were certainly a few that said “too many jokes”. I’m not trying to do stand-up – jokes are my way of engaging with the audience while I demonstrate some of the amazing things that the Query Optimizer can do if you write your queries the right way. Some people didn’t think it was technical enough, but I’ve also had some people tell me that the concepts I’m explaining are deep and profound. Brent: To me, that's a hallmark of a great explanation - when someone says, "But of course it has to work that way - how could it work any other way?  It seems so simple and logical."  Well, sure it does when it's explained correctly, but now pick up any number of thick SQL Server books and try to understand the Redundant Joins concept.  I guarantee it'll take more than 45 minutes. Rob: Some people in my audiences realise that, but definitely not everyone. There's only so much you can tell someone that something is profound. Generally it's something that they either have an epiphany on or not. I like to lull my audience into knowing what's going on, and do something that surprises them. Gain their trust, build a rapport, and then show them the deeper truth of what just happened. Brent: So you've learned your lesson about presentation scores, right?  From here on out, you're going to be dry, humorless, and all your presentations will consist of you reading bullet points off the screen. Rob: No Brent, I’m not. I'm also not going to suggest that most presentations at PASS are like that. No-one tries to present like that. There's a big space to occupy between what "dry and humourless" and me. My difference is to focus on the relationship I have with the crowd, rather than focussing on delivering the perfect session. I want to see people smiling and know they're relaxed. I think most presenters focus on the material, which is completely reasonable and safe. I remember once hearing someone talking about product creation. They talked about mediocrity. They said that one of the worst things that people can ever say about your product is that it’s “good”. What you want is for 10% of the world to love it enough to want to buy it. If 10% the world gave me a dollar, I’d have more money than I could ever use (assuming it wasn’t the SAME dollar they were giving me I guess). Brent: It's the Raving Fans theory.  It's better to have a small number of raving customers than a large number of almost-but-not-really customers who don't care that much about your product or service.  I know exactly how you feel - when I got survey feedback from my Quest video presentation when I was dressed up in a Richard Simmons costume, some of the attendees said I was unprofessional and distracting.  Some of the attendees couldn't get enough and Photoshopped all kinds of stuff into the screen captures.  On a whole, I probably didn't score that well, and I'm fine with that.  It sucks to look at the scores though - do those lower scores bother you? Rob: Of course they do. It hurts deeply. I open myself up and give presentations in a very personal way. All presenters do that, and we all feel the pain of negative feedback. I hate coming 146th & 162nd out of 185, but have to acknowledge that many sessions did worse still. Plus, once I feel the wounds have healed, I’ll be able to remember that there are people in the world that rave about my presentation style, and figure that people will hopefully talk about me. One day maybe those people that don’t like my presentation style will stay away and I might be able to score better. You don’t pay to hear country music if you prefer western... Lots of people find chili too spicy, but it’s still a popular food. Brent: But don’t you want to appeal to everyone? Rob: I do, but I don’t want to be lukewarm as in Revelation 3:16. I’d rather disgust and be discussed. Well, maybe not ‘disgust’, but I don’t want to conform. Conformity just isn’t the same any more. I’m not sure I’ve ever been one to do that. I try not to offend, but definitely like to be different. Brent: Count me among your raving fans, sir.  Where can we see you next? Rob: Considering I live in Adelaide in Australia, I’m not about to appear at anyone’s local SQL Saturday. I’m still trying to plan which events I’ll get to in 2011. I’ve submitted abstracts for TechEd North America, but won’t hold my breath. I’m also considering the SQLBits conferences in the UK in April, PASS in October, and I’m sure I’ll do some LiveMeeting presentations for user groups. Online, people download some of my recent SQLBits presentations at http://bit.ly/RFSarg and http://bit.ly/Simplification though. And they can download a 5-minute MP3 of my Lightning Talk at http://www.lobsterpot.com.au/files/Collation.mp3, in which I try to explain the idea behind collation, using thongs as an example. Brent: I was in the audience for http://bit.ly/RFSarg. That was a great presentation. Rob: Thanks, Brent. Now where’s my dollar?

  Read the article

• Demystifying Silverlight Dependency Properties

  - by dwahlin

  I have the opportunity to teach a lot of people about Silverlight (amongst other technologies) and one of the topics that definitely confuses people initially is the concept of dependency properties. I confess that when I first heard about them my initial thought was “Why do we need a specialized type of property?” While you can certainly use standard CLR properties in Silverlight applications, Silverlight relies heavily on dependency properties for just about everything it does behind the scenes. In fact, dependency properties are an essential part of the data binding, template, style and animation functionality available in Silverlight. They simply back standard CLR properties. In this post I wanted to put together a (hopefully) simple explanation of dependency properties and why you should care about them if you’re currently working with Silverlight or looking to move to it.   What are Dependency Properties? XAML provides a great way to define layout controls, user input controls, shapes, colors and data binding expressions in a declarative manner. There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes in order to make XAML work and an important part of that magic is the use of dependency properties. If you want to bind data to a property, style it, animate it or transform it in XAML then the property involved has to be a dependency property to work properly. If you’ve ever positioned a control in a Canvas using Canvas.Left or placed a control in a specific Grid row using Grid.Row then you’ve used an attached property which is a specialized type of dependency property. Dependency properties play a key role in XAML and the overall Silverlight framework. Any property that you bind, style, template, animate or transform must be a dependency property in Silverlight applications. You can programmatically bind values to controls and work with standard CLR properties, but if you want to use the built-in binding expressions available in XAML (one of my favorite features) or the Binding class available through code then dependency properties are a necessity. Dependency properties aren’t needed in every situation, but if you want to customize your application very much you’ll eventually end up needing them. For example, if you create a custom user control and want to expose a property that consumers can use to change the background color, you have to define it as a dependency property if you want bindings, styles and other features to be available for use. Now that the overall purpose of dependency properties has been discussed let’s take a look at how you can create them. Creating Dependency Properties When .NET first came out you had to write backing fields for each property that you defined as shown next: Brush _ScheduleBackground; public Brush ScheduleBackground { get { return _ScheduleBackground; } set { _ScheduleBackground = value; } } Although .NET 2.0 added auto-implemented properties (for example: public Brush ScheduleBackground { get; set; }) where the compiler would automatically generate the backing field used by get and set blocks, the concept is still the same as shown in the above code; a property acts as a wrapper around a field. Silverlight dependency properties replace the _ScheduleBackground field shown in the previous code and act as the backing store for a standard CLR property. The following code shows an example of defining a dependency property named ScheduleBackgroundProperty: public static readonly DependencyProperty ScheduleBackgroundProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("ScheduleBackground", typeof(Brush), typeof(Scheduler), null);   Looking through the code the first thing that may stand out is that the definition for ScheduleBackgroundProperty is marked as static and readonly and that the property appears to be of type DependencyProperty. This is a standard pattern that you’ll use when working with dependency properties. You’ll also notice that the property explicitly adds the word “Property” to the name which is another standard you’ll see followed. In addition to defining the property, the code also makes a call to the static DependencyProperty.Register method and passes the name of the property to register (ScheduleBackground in this case) as a string. The type of the property, the type of the class that owns the property and a null value (more on the null value later) are also passed. In this example a class named Scheduler acts as the owner. The code handles registering the property as a dependency property with the call to Register(), but there’s a little more work that has to be done to allow a value to be assigned to and retrieved from the dependency property. The following code shows the complete code that you’ll typically use when creating a dependency property. You can find code snippets that greatly simplify the process of creating dependency properties out on the web. The MVVM Light download available from http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com comes with built-in dependency properties snippets as well. public static readonly DependencyProperty ScheduleBackgroundProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("ScheduleBackground", typeof(Brush), typeof(Scheduler), null); public Brush ScheduleBackground { get { return (Brush)GetValue(ScheduleBackgroundProperty); } set { SetValue(ScheduleBackgroundProperty, value); } } The standard CLR property code shown above should look familiar since it simply wraps the dependency property. However, you’ll notice that the get and set blocks call GetValue and SetValue methods respectively to perform the appropriate operation on the dependency property. GetValue and SetValue are members of the DependencyObject class which is another key component of the Silverlight framework. Silverlight controls and classes (TextBox, UserControl, CompositeTransform, DataGrid, etc.) ultimately derive from DependencyObject in their inheritance hierarchy so that they can support dependency properties. Dependency properties defined in Silverlight controls and other classes tend to follow the pattern of registering the property by calling Register() and then wrapping the dependency property in a standard CLR property (as shown above). They have a standard property that wraps a registered dependency property and allows a value to be assigned and retrieved. If you need to expose a new property on a custom control that supports data binding expressions in XAML then you’ll follow this same pattern. Dependency properties are extremely useful once you understand why they’re needed and how they’re defined. Detecting Changes and Setting Defaults When working with dependency properties there will be times when you want to assign a default value or detect when a property changes so that you can keep the user interface in-sync with the property value. Silverlight’s DependencyProperty.Register() method provides a fourth parameter that accepts a PropertyMetadata object instance. PropertyMetadata can be used to hook a callback method to a dependency property. The callback method is called when the property value changes. PropertyMetadata can also be used to assign a default value to the dependency property. By assigning a value of null for the final parameter passed to Register() you’re telling the property that you don’t care about any changes and don’t have a default value to apply. Here are the different constructor overloads available on the PropertyMetadata class: PropertyMetadata Constructor Overload Description PropertyMetadata(Object) Used to assign a default value to a dependency property. PropertyMetadata(PropertyChangedCallback) Used to assign a property changed callback method. PropertyMetadata(Object, PropertyChangedCalback) Used to assign a default property value and a property changed callback.   There are many situations where you need to know when a dependency property changes or where you want to apply a default. Performing either task is easily accomplished by creating a new instance of the PropertyMetadata class and passing the appropriate values to its constructor. The following code shows an enhanced version of the initial dependency property code shown earlier that demonstrates these concepts: public Brush ScheduleBackground { get { return (Brush)GetValue(ScheduleBackgroundProperty); } set { SetValue(ScheduleBackgroundProperty, value); } } public static readonly DependencyProperty ScheduleBackgroundProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("ScheduleBackground", typeof(Brush), typeof(Scheduler), new PropertyMetadata(new SolidColorBrush(Colors.LightGray), ScheduleBackgroundChanged)); private static void ScheduleBackgroundChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e) { var scheduler = d as Scheduler; scheduler.Background = e.NewValue as Brush; } The code wires ScheduleBackgroundProperty to a property change callback method named ScheduleBackgroundChanged. What’s interesting is that this callback method is static (as is the dependency property) so it gets passed the instance of the object that owns the property that has changed (otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get to the object instance). In this example the dependency object is cast to a Scheduler object and its Background property is assigned to the new value of the dependency property. The code also handles assigning a default value of LightGray to the dependency property by creating a new instance of a SolidColorBrush. To Sum Up In this post you’ve seen the role of dependency properties and how they can be defined in code. They play a big role in XAML and the overall Silverlight framework. You can think of dependency properties as being replacements for fields that you’d normally use with standard CLR properties. In addition to a discussion on how dependency properties are created, you also saw how to use the PropertyMetadata class to define default dependency property values and hook a dependency property to a callback method. The most important thing to understand with dependency properties (especially if you’re new to Silverlight) is that they’re needed if you want a property to support data binding, animations, transformations and styles properly. Any time you create a property on a custom control or user control that has these types of requirements you’ll want to pick a dependency property over of a standard CLR property with a backing field. There’s more that can be covered with dependency properties including a related property called an attached property….more to come.

  Read the article

• Dotfuscator Deep Dive with WP7

  - by Bil Simser

  I thought I would share some experience with code obfuscation (specifically the Dotfuscator product) and Windows Phone 7 apps. These days twitter is a buzz with black hat and white operations coming out about how the marketplace is insecure and Microsoft failed, blah, blah, blah. So it’s that much more important to protect your intellectual property. You should protect it no matter what when releasing apps into the wild but more so when someone is paying for them. You want to protect the time and effort that went into your code and have some comfort that the casual hacker isn’t going to usurp your next best thing. Enter code obfuscation. Code obfuscation is one tool that can help protect your IP. Basically it goes into your compiled assemblies, rewrites things at an IL level (like renaming methods and classes and hiding logic flow) and rewrites it back so that the assembly or executable is still fully functional but prying eyes using a tool like ILDASM or Reflector can’t see what’s going on.  You can read more about code obfuscation here on Wikipedia. A word to the wise. Code obfuscation isn’t 100% secure. More so on the WP7 platform where the OS expects certain things to be as they were meant to be. So don’t expect 100% obfuscation of every class and every method and every property. It’s just not going to happen. What this does do is give you some level of protection but don’t put all your eggs in one basket and call it done. Like I said, this is just one step in the process. There are a few tools out there that provide code obfuscation and support the Windows Phone 7 platform (see links to other tools at the end of this post). One such tool is Dotfuscator from PreEmptive solutions. The thing about Dotfuscator is that they’ve struck a deal with Microsoft to provide a *free* copy of their commercial product for Windows Phone 7. The only drawback is that it only runs until March 31, 2010. However it’s a good place to start and the focus of this article. Getting Started When you fire up Dotfuscator you’re presented with a dialog to start a new project or load a previous one. We’ll start with a new project. You’re then looking at a somewhat blank screen that shows an Input tab (among others) and you’re probably wondering what to do? Click on the folder icon (first one) and browse to where your xap file is. At this point you can save the project and click on the arrow to start the process. Bam! You’re done. Right? Think again. The program did indeed run and create a new version of your xap (doing it’s thing and rewriting back your *obfuscated* assemblies) but let’s take a look at the assembly in Reflector to see the end result. Remember a xap file is really just a glorified zip file (or cab file if you prefer). When you ran Dotfuscator for the first time with the default settings you’ll see it created a new version of your xap in a folder under “My Documents” called “Dotfuscated” (you can configure the output directory in settings). Here’s the new xap file. Since a xap is just a zip, rename it to .cab or .zip or something and open it with your favorite unarchive program (I use WinRar but it doesn’t matter as long as it can unzip files). If you already have the xap file associated with your unarchive tool the rename isn’t needed. Once renamed extract the contents of the xap to your hard drive: Now you’ll have a folder with the contents of the xap file extracted: Double click or load up your assembly (WindowsPhoneDataBoundApplication1.dll in the example) in Reflector and let’s see the results: Hmm. That doesn’t look right. I can see all the methods and the code is all there for my LoadData method I wanted to protect. Product failure. Let’s return it for a refund. Hold your horses. We need to check out the settings in the program first. Remember when we loaded up our xap file. It started us on the Input tab but there was a settings tab before that. Wonder what it does? Here’s the default settings: Renaming Taking a closer look, all of the settings in Feature are disabled. WTF? Yeah, it leaves me scratching my head why an obfuscator by default doesn’t obfuscate. However it’s a simple fix to change these settings. Let’s enable Renaming as it sounds like a good start. Renaming obscures code by renaming methods and fields to names that are not understandable. Great. Run the tool again and go through the process of unzipping the updated xap and let’s take a look in Reflector again at our project. This looks a lot better. Lots of methods named a, b, c, d, etc. That’ll help slow hackers down a bit. What about our logic that we spent days weeks on? Let’s take a look at the LoadData method: What gives? We have renaming enabled but all of our code is still there. If you look through all your methods you’ll find it’s still sitting there out in the open. Control Flow Back to the settings page again. Let’s enable Control Flow now. Control Flow obfuscation synthesizes branching, conditional, and iterative constructs (such as if, for, and while) that produce valid executable logic, but yield non-deterministic semantic results when decompilation is attempted. In other words, the code runs as before, but decompilers cannot reproduce the original code. Do the dance again and let’s see the results in Reflector. Ahh, that’s better. Methods renamed *and* nobody can look at our LoadData method now. Life is good. More than Minimum This is the bare minimum to obfuscate your xap to at least a somewhat comfortable level. However I did find that while this worked in my Hello World demo, it didn’t work on one of my real world apps. I had to do some extra tweaking with that. Below are the screens that I used on one app that worked. I’m not sure what it was about the app that the approach above didn’t work with (maybe the extra assembly?) but it works and I’m happy with it. YMMV. Remember to test your obfuscated app on your device first before submitting to ensure you haven’t obfuscated the obfuscator. settings tab: rename tab: string encryption tab: premark tab: A few final notes Play with the settings and keep bumping up the bar to try to get as much obfuscation as you can. The more the better but remember you can overdo it. Always (always, always, always) deploy your obfuscated xap to your device and test it before submitting to the marketplace. I didn’t and got rejected because I had gone overboard with the obfuscation so the app wouldn’t launch at all. Not everything is going to be obfuscated. Specifically I don’t see a way to obfuscate auto properties and a few other language features. Again, if you crank the settings up you might hide these but I haven’t spent a lot of time optimizing the process. Some people might say to obfuscate your xaml using string encryption but again, test, test, test. Xaml is picky so too much obfuscation (or any) might disable your app or produce odd rendering effets. Remember, obfuscation is not 100% secure! Don’t rely on it as a sole way of protecting your assets. Other Tools Dotfuscator is one just product and isn’t the end-all be-all to obfuscation so check out others below. For example, Crypto can make it so Reflector doesn’t even recognize the app as a .NET one and won’t open it. Others can encrypt resources and Xaml markup files. Here are some other obfuscators that support the Windows Phone 7 platform. Feel free to give them a try and let people know your experience with them! Dotfuscator Windows Phone Edition Crypto Obfuscator for .NET DeepSea Obfuscation

  Read the article

• Looking Back at MIX10

  - by WeigeltRo

  It’s the sad truth of my life that even though I’m fascinated by airplanes and flight in general since my childhood days, my body doesn’t like flying. Even the ridiculously short flights inside Germany are taking their toll on me each time. Now combine this with sitting in the cramped space of economy class for many hours on a transatlantic flight from Germany to Las Vegas and back, and factor in some heavy dose of jet lag (especially on my way eastwards), and you get an idea why after coming back home I had this question on my mind: Was it really worth it to attend MIX10? This of course is a question that will also be asked by my boss at Comma Soft (for other reasons, obviously), who decided to send me and my colleague Jens Schaller, to the MIX10 conference. (A note to my German readers: An dieser Stelle der Hinweis, dass Comma Soft noch Silverlight-Entwickler und/oder UI-Designer für den Standort Bonn sucht – aussagekräftige Bewerbungen bitte an [email protected]) Too keep things short: My answer is yes. Before I’ll go into detail, let me ask the heretical questions whether tech conferences in general still make sense. There was a time, where actually being at a tech conference gave you a head-start in regard to learning about new technologies. Nowadays this is no longer true, where every bit of information and every detail is immediately twittered, blogged and whatevered to death. In the case of MIX10 you even can download the video-taped sessions shortly after. So: Does visiting a conference still make sense? It depends on what you expect from a conference. It should be clear to everybody that you’ll neither get exclusive information, nor receive training in a small group. What a conference does offer that sitting in front of your computer does not can be summarized as follows: Focus Being away from work and home will help you to focus on the presented information. Of course there are always the poor guys who are haunted by their work (with mails and short text messages reporting the latest showstopper problem), but in general being out of your office makes a huge difference. Inspiration With the focus comes the emotional involvement. I find it much easier to absorb information if I feel that certain vibe when sitting in a session. This still means that I have put work into reviewing the information later, but it’s a better starting point. And all the impressions collected at a (good) conference combined lead to a higher motivation – be it by the buzz (“this is gonna be sooo cool!”) or by the fear to fall behind (“man, we’ll have work on this, or else…”). People At a conference it’s pretty easy to get into contact with other people during breakfast, lunch and other breaks. This is a good opportunity to get a feel for what other development teams are doing (on a very general level of course, nobody will tell you about their secret formula) and what they are thinking about specific technologies. So MIX10 did offer focus, inspiration and people, but that would have meant nothing without valuable content. When I (being a frontend developer with a strong interest in UI/UX) planned my visit to MIX10, I made the decision to focus on the "soft" topics of design, interaction and user experience. I figured that I would be bombarded with all the technical details about Silverlight 4 anyway in the weeks and months to come. Actually, I would have liked to catch a few technical sessions, but the agenda wasn’t exactly in favor of people interested in any kind of Silverlight and UI/UX/Design topics. That’s one of my few complaints about the conference – I would have liked one more day and/or more sessions per day. Overall, the quality of the workshops and sessions was pretty high. In fact, looking back at my collection of conferences I’ve visited in the past I’d say that MIX10 ranks somewhere near the top spot. Here’s an overview of the workshops/sessions I attended (I’ll leave out the keynotes): Day 0 (Workshops on Sunday) Design Fundamentals for Developers Robby Ingebretsen is the man! Great workshop in three parts with the perfect mix of examples, well-structured definition of terminology and the right dose of humor. Robby was part of the WPF team before founding his own company so he not only has a strong interest in design (and the skillz!) but also the technical background.   Design Tools and Techniques Originally announced to be held by Arturo Toledo, the Rosso brothers from ArcheType filled in for the first two parts, and Corrina Black had a pretty general part about the Windows Phone UI. The first two thirds were a mixed bag; the two guys definitely knew what they were talking about, and the demos were great, but the talk lacked the preparation and polish of a truly great presentation. Corrina was not allowed to go into too much detail before the keynote on Monday, but the session was still very interesting as it showed how much thought went into the Windows Phone UI (and there’s always a lot to learn when people talk about their thought process). Day 1 (Monday) Designing Rich Experiences for Data-Centric Applications I wonder whether there was ever a test-run for this session, but what Ken Azuma and Yoshihiro Saito delivered in the first 15 minutes of a 30-minutes-session made me walk out. A commercial for a product (just great: a video showing a SharePoint plug-in in an all-Japanese UI) combined with the most generic blah blah one could imagine. EPIC FAIL.   Great User Experiences: Seamlessly Blending Technology & Design I switched to this session from the one above but I guess I missed the interesting part – what I did catch was what looked like a “look at the cool stuff we did” without being helpful. Or maybe I was just in a bad mood after the other session.   The Art, Technology and Science of Reading This talk by Kevin Larson was very interesting, but was more a presentation of what Microsoft is doing in research (pretty impressive) and in the end lacked a bit the helpful advice one could have hoped for.   10 Ways to Attack a Design Problem and Come Out Winning Robby Ingebretsen again, and again a great mix of theory and practice. The clean and simple, yet effective, UI of the reader app resulted in a simultaneous “wow” of Jens and me. If you’d watch only one session video, this should be it. Microsoft has to bring Robby back next year! Day 2 (Tuesday) Touch in Public: Multi-touch Interaction Design for Kiosks & Architectural Experiences Very interesting session by Jason Brush, a great inspiration with many details to look out for in the examples. Exactly what I was hoping for – and then some!   Designing Bing: Heart and Science How hard can it be to design the UI for a search engine? An input field and a list of results, that should be it, right? Well, not so fast! The talk by Paul Ray showed the many iterations to finally get it right (up to the choice of a specific blue for the links). And yes, I want an eye-tracking device to play around with!   The Elephant in the Room When Nishant Kothary presented a long list of what his session was not about, I told to myself (not having the description text present) “Am I in the wrong talk? Should I leave?”. Boy, was I wrong. A great talk about human factors in the process of designing stuff.   An Hour with Bill Buxton Having seen Bill Buxton’s presentation in the keynote, I just had to see this man again – even though I didn’t know what to expect. Being more or less unplanned and intended to be more of a conversation, the session didn’t provide a wealth of immediately useful information. Nevertheless Bill Buxton was impressive with his huge knowledge of seemingly everything. But this could/should have been a session some when in the evening and not in parallel to at least two other interesting talks. Day 3 (Wednesday) Design the Ordinary, Like the Fixie This session by DL Byron and Kevin Tamura started really well and brought across the message to keep things simple. But towards the end the talk lost some of its steam. And, as a member of the audience pointed out, they kind of ignored their own advice when they used a fancy presentation software other then PowerPoint that sometimes got in the way of showing things.   Developing Natural User Interfaces Speaking of alternative presentation software, Joshua Blake definitely had the most remarkable alternative to PowerPoint, a self-written program called NaturalShow that was controlled using multi-touch on a touch screen. Not a PowerPoint-killer, but impressive nevertheless. The (excellent) talk itself was kind of eye-opening in regard to what “multi-touch support” on various platforms (WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone) actually means.   Treat your Content Right The talk by Tiffani Jones Brown wasn’t even on my planned schedule, but somehow I ended up in that session – and it was great. And even for people who don’t necessarily have to write content for websites, some points made by Tiffani are valid in many places, notably wherever you put texts with more than a single word into your UI. Creating Effective Info Viz in Microsoft Silverlight The last session of MIX10 I attended was kind of disappointing. At first things were very promising, with Matthias Shapiro giving a brief but well-structured introduction to info graphics and interactive visualizations. Then the live-coding began and while the result was interesting, too much time was spend on wrestling to get the code working. Ending earlier than planned, the talk was a bit light on actual content, but at least it included a nice list of resources. Conclusion It could be felt all across MIX10, UIs will take a huge leap forward; in fact, there are enough examples that have already. People who both have the technical know-how and at least a basic understanding of design (“literacy” as Bill Buxton called it) are in high demand. The concept of the MIX conference and initiatives like design.toolbox shows that Microsoft understands very well that frontend developers have to acquire new knowledge besides knowing how to hack code and putting buttons on a form. There are extremely exciting times before us, with lots of opportunity for those who are eager to develop their skills, that is for sure.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, April 09, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, April 09, 2010New Projects(SocketCoder) Free Silverlight Voice/Video Conferencing Modules: The Goal of this project is to provide complete Open Source Voice/Video Chatting Client/Server Modules Using Silverlight techniques, this project i...AJAX Control Framework: Do PageMethods and the UpdatePanel make you feel dirty? Think making AJAX enabled custom ASP.NET controls should WAY easier than it is? Wish ASP.NE...Bluetooth Radar: WPF 4.0 Application working with The final release of 32feet.net (v2.2) to Discover Bluetooth devices, send files and more cool stuff for Bluetooth...Bomberman: Bomberman c++ Project Code Library: This is just a personal storage place for a utility library containing extension methods, new classes, and/or improvements to existing classes.DianPing.com MogileFS Client: MogileFS Client for .Net 2.0Dirty City Hearts Website: Dirty City Hearts WebsiteDocGen - SharePoint 2010 Bulk Document Loader: DocGen is a SharePoint 2010 multithreaded console application for bulk loading sample documents into SharePoint. This program generates Microsoft ...dou24: WebSite for DOUExplora: Explora es un navegador de archivos que no pretende ser un sustituto del explorador de Windows, sino un experimento de codificación que compartir c...HobbyBrew Mobile: This project is basic beer brewing software for Windows Mobile able to read HobbyBrew xml files. Developed in C# and Windows FormsjLight: Interop between Silverlight and the javascript based on jQuery. The syntax used in Silverlight is as close as posible to the jQuery syntax.johandekoning.nl samples: Sample code project which are discussed on johandekoning.nl / johandekoning.com. Most examples are / will be developed with C#Kanban: this is a agile paroject managementMETAR.NET Decoder: Project libraries used to decode airport METAR weather information into adequate data types, change them and back, create resulting METAR informati...Micro Framework: MFDeploy with Set/Get mote SKU ID: This is a modification to the Micro Framework's MFDeploy utility that lets the user set and get the mote's ID (aka SKU). It can be done via the GUI...MobySharp: MobySharp is a implementation of the Mobypicture.com API written in C#NGilead: NGilead permits you to use your NHibernate POCO (and especially the partially loaded ones) outside the .NET Virtual Machine (to Silverlight for exa...OpenIdPortableArea: OpenIdPortableArea is an MvcContrib powered Portable Area that encapsulates logic for implementing OpenId encapsulation (using DotNetOpenAuth).OrderToList Extension for IEnumerable: An extension method for IEnumerable<T> that will sort the IEnumerable based on a list of keys. Suppose you have a list of IDs {10, 5, 12} and wa...project3140.org: Code repository for project3140.org.Prometheus Backup Solution: The Prometheus Backup Solution is a free and small Backup Utility for personal use and for small businesses.Roids: an asteroids clone for Silverlight and XNA: An example of a simple game cross-compiling for both Silverlight and XNA using SilverSprite.SemanticAnalyzer: 3rd phase of Compiler Design ProjectSSRS SDK for PHP: SQL Server Reporting Service SDK for PHPWorking Memory Workout: Working Memory Workout is a working memory training game based on the N-back, a task researchers say may improve fluid intelligence. It greatly ex...Wouters Code Samples: This Project will host some of my sample projects I created. I'm a professional SharePoint/BizTalk developer so most of the provided samples will ...New Releases(SocketCoder) Free Silverlight Voice/Video Conferencing Modules: Silverlight Voice Video Chat Modules: Client/Server Silverlight Voice Video Chat ModulesAccessibilityChecker: Accessibility Checker V0.2: Accessibility Checker V0.2 - Direct url´s input functionality added - XHTML, WAI validation modules, easy to extend. (W3C and Achecker modules incl...AStar.net: AStar.net 1.1 downloads: AStar.net 1.1 Version detailsGreatly improved path finding speed and memory usage from version 1.0. Avalaible downloads:AStar.net 1.1 dll - Runtim...AutoPoco: AutoPoco 0.2: This release will bring some non-generic alternatives to configuration + some more automatic configuration options such as assembly scanningBluetooth Radar: Version 1: Basic version only with the ability to discover Bluetooth devices around you.Convert-Media PowerShell Module for Expression Encoder: Release 1.0.0.2: This is a build that incorporates the latest change sets including perform publish. No other changesDevTreks -social budgeting that improves lives and livelihoods: Social Budgeting Web Software, DevTreks alpha 3e: Alpha 3e is a general debug. It also upgrades the software's family budgeting capabilities, including the addition of a new 'Food Nutrition Input'...dV2t Enterprise Library: dV2tEntLib 1.0.0.3: dV2tEntLib 1.0.0.3EnhSim: Release v1.9.8.3: Release v1.9.8.3 Change Armour Penetration calcs to apply the "Rouncer fix" (current version displays debug info to assist users in testing that th...HouseFly controls: HouseFly controls alpha 0.9: HouseFly controls 0.9 alpha binaries (Includes HouseFly.Classes and HouseFly.Controls).Jitbit WYSWYG BBCode Editor: Release: ReleaseMicro Framework: MFDeploy with Set/Get mote SKU ID: MFDeploy with get, set mote ID: The Micro Framework 4.0 MFDeploy, modified to let the user get & set the mote IDMobySharp: MobySharp 1.0: Initial ReleaseOpenIdPortableArea: OpenIdPortableArea: OpenIdPortableArea.Release: DotNetOpenAuth.dll DotNetOpenAuth.xml MvcContrib.dll MvcContrib.xml OpenIdPortableArea.dll OpenIdPortableAre...OrderToList Extension for IEnumerable: Release 0.9b: I'm calling this 0.9 because I came up with it yesterday and there's little real word use so there's probably something that needs fixing or improv...Prometheus Backup Solution: Prometheus BETA: Actual BETA Release. Restore Functions are not available...Reusable Library: V1.0.6: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developer.Reusable Library Demo: V1.0.4: A demonstration of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developerSharePoint Labs: SPLab4005A-FRA-Level100: SPLab4005A-FRA-Level100 This SharePoint Lab will teach you the 5th best practice you should apply when writing code with the SharePoint API. Lab La...SharePoint Labs: SPLab6001A-FRA-Level200: SPLab6001A-FRA-Level200 This SharePoint Lab will teach you how to create a generic Feature Receiver within Visual Studio. Creating a Feature Receiv...SharePoint LogViewer: SharePoint LogViewer 2.0: Supports live Farm monitoring. Many bug fixes.Simple Savant: Simple Savant v0.5: Added support for custom constraint/validation logic (See Versioning and Consistency) Added support for reliable cross-domain writes (See Version...SQL Server Extended Properties Quick Editor: Release 1.6.1: Whats new in 1.6.1: Add an edit form to support long text editing. double click to open editor. Add an ORM extended properties initializer to creat...SSRS SDK for PHP: SSRS SDK for PHP: Current release includes the SSRSReport library to connect to SQL Server Reporting Services and a sample application to show the basic steps needed...Table Storage Backup & Restore for Windows Azure: Table Storage Backup 1.0.3751: Bug fix: Crash when creating a table if the existing table had not finished deleting. Bug fix: Incorrect batch URI if the storage account ended in ...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30408.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: Audio Player (Visual C++ 2008): An audio player that can play wav files.Working Memory Workout: Working Memory Workout 1.0: Working Memory Workout is a working memory trainer based on the N-back memory task.Wouters Code Samples: XMLReceiveCBR: This is a Custom Pipeline component. It will help you create a Content Based Routing solution in combination of a WCF Requst/Response service. Gene...Xen: Graphics API for XNA: Xen 1.8: Version 1.8 (XNA 3.1) This update fixes a number of bugs in several areas of the API and introduces a large new Tutorial. [Added] L2 Spherical Ha...Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseASP.NET Ajax LibrarySilverlight ToolkitAJAX Control ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesFacebook Developer ToolkitMost Active ProjectsnopCommerce. Open Source online shop e-commerce solution.Shweet: SharePoint 2010 Team Messaging built with PexRawrAutoPocopatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleFacebook Developer ToolkitFarseer Physics EngineNcqrs Framework - The CQRS framework for .NET

  Read the article

• When Your Boss Doesn't Want you to Succeed

  - by Phil Factor

  You're working hard to get an application finished. You are programming long into the evenings sometimes, and eating sandwiches at your desk instead of taking a lunch break. Then one day you glance up at the IT manager, serene in his mysterious round of meetings, and think 'Does he actually care whether this project succeeds or not?'. The question may seem absurd. Of course the project must succeed. The truth, as always, is often far more complex. Your manager may even be doing his best to make sure you don't succeed. Why? There have always been rich pickings for the unscrupulous in IT.  In extreme cases, where administrators struggle with scarcely-comprehended technical issues, huge sums of money can be lost and gained without any perceptible results. In a very few cases can fraud be proven: most of the time, the intricacies of the 'game' are such that one can do little more than harbor suspicion.  Where does over-enthusiastic salesmanship end and fraud begin? The Business of Information Technology provides rich opportunities for White-collar crime. The poor developer has his, or her, hands full with the task of wrestling with the sheer complexity of building an application. He, or she, has no time for following the complexities of the chicanery of the management that is directing affairs.  Most likely, the developers wouldn't even suspect that their company management had ulterior motives. I'll illustrate what I mean with an entirely fictional, hypothetical, example. The Opportunist and the Aged Charities often do good, unexciting work that is funded by the income from a bequest that dates back maybe hundreds of years.  In our example, it isn't exciting work, for it involves the welfare of elderly people who have fallen on hard times.  Volunteers visit, giving a smile and a chat, and check that they are all right, but are able to spend a little money on their discretion to ameliorate any pressing needs for these old folk.  The money is made to work very hard and the charity averts a great deal of suffering and eases the burden on the state. Daisy hears the garden gate creak as Mrs Rainer comes up the path. She looks forward to her twice-weekly visit from the nice lady from the trust. She always asked ‘is everything all right, Love’. Cheeky but nice. She likes her cheery manner. She seems interested in hearing her memories, and talking about her far-away family. She helps her with those chores in the house that she couldn’t manage and once even paid to fill the back-shed with coke, the other year. Nice, Mrs. Rainer is, she thought as she goes to open the door. The trustees are getting on in years themselves, and worry about the long-term future of the charity: is it relevant to modern society? Is it likely to attract a new generation of workers to take it on. They are instantly attracted by the arrival to the board of a smartly dressed University lecturer with the ear of the present Government. Alain 'Stalin' Jones is earnest, persuasive and energetic. The trustees welcome him to the board and quickly forgive his humorless political-correctness. He talks of 'diversity', 'relevance', 'social change', 'equality' and 'communities', but his eye is on that huge bequest. Alain first came to notice as a Trotskyite union official, who insinuated himself into one of the duller Trades Unions and turned it, through his passionate leadership, into a radical, headline-grabbing organization.  Middle age, and the rise of European federal socialism, had brought him quiet prosperity and charcoal suits, an ear in the current government, and a wide influence as a member of various Quangos (government bodies staffed by well-paid unelected courtiers).  He was employed as a 'consultant' by several organizations that relied on government contracts. After gaining the confidence of the trustees, and showing a surprising knowledge of mundane processes and the regulatory framework of charities, Alain launches his plan.  The trust will expand their work by means of a bold IT initiative that will coordinate the interventions of several 'caring agencies', and provide  emergency cover, a special Website so anxious relatives can see how their elderly charges are doing, and a vastly more efficient way of coordinating the work of the volunteer carers. It will also provide a special-purpose site that gives 'social networking' facilities, rather like Facebook, to the few elderly folk on the lists with access to the internet. The trustees perk up. Their own experience of the internet is restricted to the occasional scanning of railway timetables, but they can see that it is 'relevant'. In his next report to the other trustees, Alain proudly announces that all this glamorous and exciting technology can be paid for by a grant from the government. He admits darkly that he has influence. True to his word, the government promises a grant of a size that is an order of magnitude greater than any budget that the trustees had ever handled. There was the understandable proviso that the company that would actually do the IT work would have to be one of the government's preferred suppliers and the work would need to be tendered under EU competition rules. The only company that tenders, a multinational IT company with a long track record of government work, quotes ten million pounds for the work. A trustee questions the figure as it seems enormous for the reasonably trivial internet facilities being built, but the IT Salesmen dazzle them with presentations and three-letter acronyms until they subside into quiescent acceptance. After all, they can’t stay locked in the Twentieth century practices can they? The work is put in hand with a large project team, in a splendid glass building near west London. The trustees see rooms of programmers working diligently at screens, and who talk with enthusiasm of the project. Paul, the project manager, looked through his resource schedule with growing unease. His initial excitement at being given his first major project hadn’t lasted. He’d been allocated a lackluster team of developers whose skills didn’t seem right, and he was allowed only a couple of contractors to make good the deficit. Strangely, the presentation he’d given to his management, where he’d saved time and resources with a OTS solution to a great deal of the development work, and a sound conservative architecture, hadn’t gone down nearly as big as he’d hoped. He almost got the feeling they wanted a more radical and ambitious solution. The project starts slipping its dates. The costs build rapidly. There are certain uncomfortable extra charges that appear, such as the £600-a-day charge by the 'Business Manager' appointed to act as a point of liaison between the charity and the IT Company.  When he appeared, his face permanently split by a 'Mr Sincerity' smile, they'd thought he was provided at the cost of the IT Company. Derek, the DBA, didn’t have to go to the server room quite some much as he did: but It got him away from the poisonous despair of the development group. Wave after wave of events had conspired to delay the project.  Why the management had imposed hideous extra bureaucracy to cover ISO 9000 and 9001:2008 accreditation just as the project was struggling to get back on-schedule was  beyond belief.  Then  the Business manager was coming back with endless changes in scope, sorrowing saying that the Trustees were very insistent, though hopelessly out in touch with the reality of technical challenges. Suddenly, the costs mount to the point of consuming the government grant in its entirety. The project remains tantalizingly just out of reach. Alain Jones gives an emotional rallying speech at the trustees review meeting, urging them not to lose their nerve. Sadly, the trustees dip into the accumulated capital of the trust, the seed-corn of all their revenues, in order to save the IT project. A few months later it is all over. The IT project is never delivered, even though it had seemed so incredibly close.  With the trust's capital all gone, the activities it funded have to be terminated and the trust becomes just a shell. There aren't even the funds to mount a legal challenge against the IT company, even had the trust's solicitor advised such a foolish thing. Alain leaves as suddenly as he had arrived, only to pop up a few months later, bronzed and rested, at another charity. The IT workers who were permanent employees are dispersed to other projects, and the contractors leave to other contracts. Within months the entire project is but a vague memory. One or two developers remain  puzzled that their managers had been so obstructive when they should have welcomed progress toward completion of the project, but they put it down to incompetence and testosterone. Few suspected that they were actively preventing the project from getting finished. The relationships between the IT consultancy, and the government of the day are intricate, and made more complex by the Private Finance initiatives and political patronage.  The losers in this case were the taxpayers, and the beneficiaries of the trust, and, perhaps the soul of the original benefactor of the trust, whose bid to give his name some immortality had been scuppered by smooth-talking white-collar political apparatniks.  Even now, nobody is certain whether a crime was ever committed. The perfect heist, I guess. Where’s the victim? "I hear that Daisy’s cottage is up for sale. She’s had to go into a care home.  She didn’t want to at all, but then there is nobody to keep an eye on her since she had that minor stroke a while back.  A charity used to help out. The ‘social’ don’t have the funding, evidently for community care. Yes, her old cat was put down. There was a good clearout, and now the house is all scrubbed and cleared ready for sale. The skip was full of old photos and letters, memories. No room in her new ‘home’."

  Read the article

• How to Avoid Your Next 12-Month Science Project

  - by constant

  While most customers immediately understand how the magic of Oracle's Hybrid Columnar Compression, intelligent storage servers and flash memory make Exadata uniquely powerful against home-grown database systems, some people think that Exalogic is nothing more than a bunch of x86 servers, a storage appliance and an InfiniBand (IB) network, built into a single rack. After all, isn't this exactly what the High Performance Computing (HPC) world has been doing for decades? On the surface, this may be true. And some people tried exactly that: They tried to put together their own version of Exalogic, but then they discover there's a lot more to building a system than buying hardware and assembling it together. IT is not Ikea. Why is that so? Could it be there's more going on behind the scenes than merely putting together a bunch of servers, a storage array and an InfiniBand network into a rack? Let's explore some of the special sauce that makes Exalogic unique and un-copyable, so you can save yourself from your next 6- to 12-month science project that distracts you from doing real work that adds value to your company. Engineering Systems is Hard Work! The backbone of Exalogic is its InfiniBand network: 4 times better bandwidth than even 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and only about a tenth of its latency. What a potential for increased scalability and throughput across the middleware and database layers! But InfiniBand is a beast that needs to be tamed: It is true that Exalogic uses a standard, open-source Open Fabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) InfiniBand driver stack. Unfortunately, this software has been developed by the HPC community with fastest speed in mind (which is good) but, despite the name, not many other enterprise-class requirements are included (which is less good). Here are some of the improvements that Oracle's InfiniBand development team had to add to the OFED stack to make it enterprise-ready, simply because typical HPC users didn't have the need to implement them: More than 100 bug fixes in the pieces that were not related to the Message Passing Interface Protocol (MPI), which is the protocol that HPC users use most of the time, but which is less useful in the enterprise. Performance optimizations and tuning across the whole IB stack: From Switches, Host Channel Adapters (HCAs) and drivers to low-level protocols, middleware and applications. Yes, even the standard HPC IB stack could be improved in terms of performance. Ethernet over IB (EoIB): Exalogic uses InfiniBand internally to reach high performance, but it needs to play nicely with datacenters around it. That's why Oracle added Ethernet over InfiniBand technology to it that allows for creating many virtual 10GBE adapters inside Exalogic's nodes that are aggregated and connected to Exalogic's IB gateway switches. While this is an open standard, it's up to the vendor to implement it. In this case, Oracle integrated the EoIB stack with Oracle's own IB to 10GBE gateway switches, and made it fully virtualized from the beginning. This means that Exalogic customers can completely rewire their server infrastructure inside the rack without having to physically pull or plug a single cable - a must-have for every cloud deployment. Anybody who wants to match this level of integration would need to add an InfiniBand switch development team to their project. Or just buy Oracle's gateway switches, which are conveniently shipped with a whole server infrastructure attached! IPv6 support for InfiniBand's Sockets Direct Protocol (SDP), Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS), TCP/IP over IB (IPoIB) and EoIB protocols. Because no IPv6 = not very enterprise-class. HA capability for SDP. High Availability is not a big requirement for HPC, but for enterprise-class application servers it is. Every node in Exalogic's InfiniBand network is connected twice for redundancy. If any cable or port or HCA fails, there's always a replacement link ready to take over. This requires extra magic at the protocol level to work. So in addition to Weblogic's failover capabilities, Oracle implemented IB automatic path migration at the SDP level to avoid unnecessary failover operations at the middleware level. Security, for example spoof-protection. Another feature that is less important for traditional users of InfiniBand, but very important for enterprise customers. InfiniBand Partitioning and Quality-of-Service (QoS): One of the first questions we get from customers about Exalogic is: “How can we implement multi-tenancy?” The answer is to partition your IB network, which effectively creates many networks that work independently and that are protected at the lowest networking layer possible. In addition to that, QoS allows administrators to prioritize traffic flow in multi-tenancy environments so they can keep their service levels where it matters most. Resilient IB Fabric Management: InfiniBand is a self-managing network, so a lot of the magic lies in coming up with the right topology and in teaching the subnet manager how to properly discover and manage the network. Oracle's Infiniband switches come with pre-integrated, highly available fabric management with seamless integration into Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center. In short: Oracle elevated the OFED InfiniBand stack into an enterprise-class networking infrastructure. Many years and multiple teams of manpower went into the above improvements - this is something you can only get from Oracle, because no other InfiniBand vendor can give you these features across the whole stack! Exabus: Because it's not About the Size of Your Network, it's How You Use it! So let's assume that you somehow were able to get your hands on an enterprise-class IB driver stack. Or maybe you don't care and are just happy with the standard OFED one? Anyway, the next step is to actually leverage that InfiniBand performance. Here are the choices: Use traditional TCP/IP on top of the InfiniBand stack, Develop your own integration between your middleware and the lower-level (but faster) InfiniBand protocols. While more bandwidth is always a good thing, it's actually the low latency that enables superior performance for your applications when running on any networking infrastructure: The lower the latency, the faster the response travels through the network and the more transactions you can close per second. The reason why InfiniBand is such a low latency technology is that it gets rid of most if not all of your traditional networking protocol stack: Data is literally beamed from one region of RAM in one server into another region of RAM in another server with no kernel/drivers/UDP/TCP or other networking stack overhead involved! Which makes option 1 a no-go: Adding TCP/IP on top of InfiniBand is like adding training wheels to your racing bike. It may be ok in the beginning and for development, but it's not quite the performance IB was meant to deliver. Which only leaves option 2: Integrating your middleware with fast, low-level InfiniBand protocols. And this is what Exalogic's "Exabus" technology is all about. Here are a few Exabus features that help applications leverage the performance of InfiniBand in Exalogic: RDMA and SDP integration at the JDBC driver level (SDP), for Oracle Weblogic (SDP), Oracle Coherence (RDMA), Oracle Tuxedo (RDMA) and the new Oracle Traffic Director (RDMA) on Exalogic. Using these protocols, middleware can communicate a lot faster with each other and the Oracle database than by using standard networking protocols, Seamless Integration of Ethernet over InfiniBand from Exalogic's Gateway switches into the OS, Oracle Weblogic optimizations for handling massive amounts of parallel transactions. Because if you have an 8-lane Autobahn, you also need to improve your ramps so you can feed it with many cars in parallel. Integration of Weblogic with Oracle Exadata for faster performance, optimized session management and failover. As you see, “Exabus” is Oracle's word for describing all the InfiniBand enhancements Oracle put into Exalogic: OFED stack enhancements, protocols for faster IB access, and InfiniBand support and optimizations at the virtualization and middleware level. All working together to deliver the full potential of InfiniBand performance. Who else has 100% control over their middleware so they can develop their own low-level protocol integration with InfiniBand? Even if you take an open source approach, you're looking at years of development work to create, test and support a whole new networking technology in your middleware! The Extras: Less Hassle, More Productivity, Faster Time to Market And then there are the other advantages of Engineered Systems that are true for Exalogic the same as they are for every other Engineered System: One simple purchasing process: No headaches due to endless RFPs and no “Will X work with Y?” uncertainties. Everything has been engineered together: All kinds of bugs and problems have been already fixed at the design level that would have only manifested themselves after you have built the system from scratch. Everything is built, tested and integrated at the factory level . Less integration pain for you, faster time to market. Every Exalogic machine world-wide is identical to Oracle's own machines in the lab: Instant replication of any problems you may encounter, faster time to resolution. Simplified patching, management and operations. One throat to choke: Imagine finger-pointing hell for systems that have been put together using several different vendors. Oracle's Engineered Systems have a single phone number that customers can call to get their problems solved. For more business-centric values, read The Business Value of Engineered Systems. Conclusion: Buy Exalogic, or get ready for a 6-12 Month Science Project And here's the reason why it's not easy to "build your own Exalogic": There's a lot of work required to make such a system fly. In fact, anybody who is starting to "just put together a bunch of servers and an InfiniBand network" is really looking at a 6-12 month science project. And the outcome is likely to not be very enterprise-class. And it won't have Exalogic's performance either. Because building an Engineered System is literally rocket science: It takes a lot of time, effort, resources and many iterations of design/test/analyze/fix to build such a system. That's why InfiniBand has been reserved for HPC scientists for such a long time. And only Oracle can bring the power of InfiniBand in an enterprise-class, ready-to use, pre-integrated version to customers, without the develop/integrate/support pain. For more details, check the new Exalogic overview white paper which was updated only recently. P.S.: Thanks to my colleagues Ola, Paul, Don and Andy for helping me put together this article! var flattr_uid = '26528'; var flattr_tle = 'How to Avoid Your Next 12-Month Science Project'; var flattr_dsc = 'While most customers immediately understand how the magic of Oracle's Hybrid Columnar Compression, intelligent storage servers and flash memory make Exadata uniquely powerful against home-grown database systems, some people think that Exalogic is nothing more than a bunch of x86 servers, a storage appliance and an InfiniBand (IB) network, built into a single rack.After all, isn't this exactly what the High Performance Computing (HPC) world has been doing for decades?On the surface, this may be true. And some people tried exactly that: They tried to put together their own version of Exalogic, but then they discover there's a lot more to building a system than buying hardware and assembling it together. IT is not Ikea.Why is that so? Could it be there's more going on behind the scenes than merely putting together a bunch of servers, a storage array and an InfiniBand network into a rack? Let's explore some of the special sauce that makes Exalogic unique and un-copyable, so you can save yourself from your next 6- to 12-month science project that distracts you from doing real work that adds value to your company.'; var flattr_tag = 'Engineered Systems,Engineered Systems,Infiniband,Integration,latency,Oracle,performance'; var flattr_cat = 'text'; var flattr_url = 'http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2012/04/how-avoid-your-next-12-month-science-project'; var flattr_lng = 'en_GB'

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, April 23, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, April 23, 2010New Projects3D TagCloud for SharePoint 2010: 3D Flash TagCloud WebPart for SharePoint 2010AnyCAD.Net: AnyCAD.NetCassandraemon: Cassandraemon is LINQ Provider for Apache Cassandra.CCLI SongSelect Importer for PowerPoint: CCLI SongSelect Importer for PowerPoint ® is an Add-in for Microsoft ® PowerPoint ® that allows CCLI SongSelect (USR) files to be turned into slide...Compactar Arquivo Txt, Flat File, em Pipeline Decoder Customizado: Objetivo do projeto: Desenvolver um componente do tipo Pipeline Receiver Decoder, onde compacta o conteúdo, cria uma mensagem em XML e transforma ...Console Calculator: Console calculator is a simple, yet useful, mathematical expression calculator, supporting functions and variables. It was created to demonstrate ...CRM Dynamics Excel Importer: CRM Dynamics Excel Importercubace: The standard audio composer software with just single difference: this is CLR compilation.deneb: deneb projectDrive Backup: Drive Backup is an easy to use, automatic backup program. Simply insert a USB drive, and the program will backup either files on the drive to your ...eWebMVCCMS: this is the start of eWeb MVC CMS.Fix.ly: Small app that allows for URL rewriting before passing to the browser. Accepts MEF plugins that make themselves available by informing the applicat...GArphics: GArphics uses a genetic algorithm to produce graphics and animation with the assitance of the user.JDS Toolkit: An experimental toolkit geared to make richer applications with less effort. It will include controls such as the cubeoid and the serializedmenu. ...KrashSRC - MapleStory v.75 Emulator: KrashSRC - MapleStory v.75 EmulatorLast.fm Api: Last.fm api writen in Visaul Basic 2010.MIX 10 DVR and Downloader: A Silverlight application that will manage downloading the sessions and slide decks from the MIX '10 Conference utilizing the MIX OData feed for in...NSIS Autorun: This is a graphical CD/DVD/USB autorun engine that launches installers made with NSIS. Non-rectangular windows and animation are supported. Can be ...Pillbox: Windows Phone 7 sample application for tracking medications.PowerSharp: Very simple application that executes a snippet of PowerShell against C#. This will eventually be used with Live@EDU.Project Halosis: mmorpgProyecto Cero: Proyecto CeroSharePoint XSL Templates: This project is a place to share useful XSL templates that can be reused in SharePoint CQWPs and DVWPs.Silverlight 4.0 Popup Menu: Silverlight 4.0 Popup Menu spsearch: This project provides useful enhancements to Search using the SharePoint platform.StereoVision: StereVision es un proyecto que estudia un algoritmo de visión estereocopicaThe Stoffenmanager: The Stoffenmanager is a tool for prioritizing worker health risks to dangerous substances. But also a quantitative inhalation exposure tool and a ...Transcriber: Transcribe text from one character set to another. Extensible, plug-in based architecture. Default plug-in uses XML rules files with regular expres...Wavelets experiments: эксперименты с вейвлетамиWindows Phone 7 World of Warcraft Armory Browser: A test project to learn a little about Windows Phone development and do a decent armory browserXAML Based Chat: Xaml based chat. A simple chat systemNew Releases#Nose: SharpNose v1.1: Configuration is now done by updating SharpNose.exe.config MEF support added - you can also add your favorite test framework discovery Two tes...Baml Localizer: Version 0.1 (alpha): This is the first release which should show the capabilities of Baml Localizer. The code might still change a lot, but the file formats should be q...BibWord : Microsoft Word Citation and Bibliography styles: APA with DOI - Proof of Concept: IntroductionThis release is a proof of concept (POC) demonstrating a possible way of adding a digital object identifier (DOI) field to the APA styl...Chargify.NET: Chargify.NET v0.685: Releasing Version 0.685 - Changed customer reference ID from Guid to String for systems that don't use Guid as the unique key. - Added method for g...Compactar Arquivo Txt, Flat File, em Pipeline Decoder Customizado: SampleZipDecodePipeline: Solution contem Projeto com o Decoder Pipeline. Projeto para usar o Componente. Classes SharpZipLib para compactar e descompactar arquivosConsole Calculator: Console Calculator: Initial source code release.CSharp Intellisense: V1.6: UPDATE: 2010/04/05: description was added 2010/04/07: single selection + reset filter 20010/04/15: source code available at http://csharpintellis...Drive Backup: Drive Backup: Drive Backup allows you to automatically backup a USB device to your computer, or backup files/directories on your computer to a USB. Once you have...Event Scavenger: Thread recycling changes - Version 3.1: Change the location of where the settings for thread recycling is stored - Moved from config file to database for easier management. Version of dat...Extend SmallBasic: Teaching Extensions v.013: Added Houses QuizExtend SmallBasic: Teaching Extensions v.014: fixed a bug in Tortoise.approve rearranged the Houses Quiz to be more funFix.ly: Fix.ly 0.1: Initial test releaseFix.ly: Fix.ly 0.11: Fixed a couple bugs, including missing files in the previous releaseGArphics: Beta: This is the beta-version of the program. Version 1.0 shall be relased soon and will include a lot of improvements.HouseFly: HouseFly alpha 0.2.0.5: HouseFly alpha release 0.2.0.5HouseFly controls: HouseFly controls alpha 0.9.4: Version 0.9.4 alpha release of HouseFly controlsHTML Ruby: 6.21.8: Change Math.floor to round for text spacingHTML Shot: 0.1: Solved problems with some URLsJDS Toolkit: JDS Toolkit 0.1: Beta 0.1 version. Almost nothing in these librariesManaged Extensibility Framework: WebForms and MEF Sample: This sample demonstrates the use of these two technologies together in a non-invasive way. Information on how to use it on your own projects is inc...Microsoft - Domain Oriented N-Layered .NET 4.0 App Sample (Microsoft Spain): V0.7 - N-Layer DDD Sample App (VS.2010 RTM compat): Required Software (Microsoft Base Software needed for Development environment) Visual Studio 2010 RTM & .NET 4.0 RTM (Final Versions) Unity Applic...MvcContrib Portable Areas: Portable Areas: First Release of some portable areasNSIS Autorun: NSIS Autorun: Initial release.OgmoXNA: OgmoXNA Alpha Source Tree: Zipped version of the source tree in case you don't want to go through the SVN!Particle Plot Pivot: Particle Plot Pivot v1.0.0: Generates a Pivot collection of unpublished plots from the particle physics exeriments DZERO, CDF, ATLAS, and CMS. It can be found at http://deepta...patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance: SPG2010 Drop9: SharePoint Guidance Drop Notes Microsoft patterns and practices ****************************************** ***************************************...Rich Ajax empowered Web/Cloud Applications: 6.3.15: New Visual WebGui rich applications platform versionSilverlight 4.0 Popup Menu: PopupMenu for Silverlight 4: This is the first release of the popup menu class for Silverlight 4.0Silverlight Flow Layouts library: SL and WPF Flow Layouts library April 2010: This release introduces WPF 4.0 RTM and Silverlight 4 RTM support, as well as an additional layout algorithm and some minor bug fixes. Some changes...Spackle.NET: 3.0.0.0 Release: In this release: Spackle.dll now targets the 4.0 version of the .NET Framework SecureRandom implements IDisposable ActionExtensions have been ...Splinger FrameXi: Splinger 1.1: Welcome to a whole new way of learning! Go to release 1.0 for the non .zip packaged files.SQL Server Metadata Toolkit 2008: SQL Server Metadata Toolkit Alpha 6: This release addresses issues 10665, 10678 and 10679. The SQL Parser now understands CAST functions (the AS was causing issues), and is installed ...Star Trooper for XNA 2D Tutorial: Lesson four content: Here is Lesson four original content for the StarTrooper 2D XNA tutorial. It also includes the XNA version of Lesson four source. The blog tutori...Thales Simulator Library: Version 0.8.6: The Thales Simulator Library is an implementation of a software emulation of the Thales (formerly Zaxus & Racal) Hardware Security Module cryptogra...Transcriber: Transcriber v0.1: Initial alpha release. Very nearly useful. :-) This version includes rules files for Mode of Beleriand, Sindarin Tehtar, Quenya, and Black Speech. ...Visual Studio DSite: Picture Box Viewer (Visual F sharp 2008): A simple picturebox viewer made in visual f sharp 2008.Web/Cloud Applications Development Framework | Visual WebGui: 6.4 Beta 2d: Further stabilization of the cutting-edge web applications frameworkWebAssert: WebAssert 0.1: Initial release. Supports HTML & CSS validation using MSTest/Visual Studio testing.XAML Based Chat: Test release: A test releaseすとれおじさん(仮): すとれおじさん β 0.02: ・デザインを大幅に変更 ・まだかなり動作が重いです ・機能も少ないですMost Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerSilverlight ToolkitAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: Databasepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrParticle Plot PivotBlogEngine.NETNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationFarseer Physics EngineDotNetZip LibraryFluent Ribbon Control SuiteN2 CMS

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, September 18, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, September 18, 2012Popular ReleasesfastJSON: v2.0.5: 2.0.5 - fixed number parsing for invariant format - added a test for German locale number testing (,. problems)????????API for .Net SDK: SDK for .Net ??? Release 4: 2012?9?17??? ?????，???????????????。 ?????Release 3??????，???????，???，??? ??????????????????SDK，????????。 ??，??????? That's all.VidCoder: 1.4.0 Beta: First Beta release! Catches up to HandBrake nightlies with SVN 4937. Added PGS (Blu-ray) subtitle support. Additional framerates available: 30, 50, 59.94, 60 Additional sample rates available: 8, 11.025, 12 and 16 kHz Additional higher bitrates available for audio. Same as Source Constant Framerate available. Added Apple TV 3 preset. Added new Bob deinterlacing option. Introduced process isolation for encodes. Now if HandBrake crashes, VidCoder will keep running and continue pro...DNN Metro7 style Skin package: Metro7 style Skin for DotNetNuke 06.02.01: Stabilization release fixed this issues: Links not worked on FF, Chrome and Safari Modified packaging with own manifest file for install and source package. Moved the user Image on the Login to the left side. Moved h2 font-size to 24px. Note : This release Comes w/o source package about we still work an a solution. Who Needs the Visual Studio source files please go to source and download it from there. Known 16 CSS issues that related to the skin.css. All others are DNN default o...Visual Studio Icon Patcher: Version 1.5.1: This fixes a bug in the 1.5 release where it would crash when no language packs were installed for VS2010.sheetengine - Isometric HTML5 JavaScript Display Engine: sheetengine v1.1.0: This release of sheetengine introduces major drawing optimizations. A background canvas is created with the full drawn scenery onto which only the changed parts are redrawn. For example a moving object will cause only its bounding box to be redrawn instead of the full scene. This background canvas is copied to the main canvas in each iteration. For this reason the size of the bounding box of every object needs to be defined and also the width and height of the background canvas. The example...VFPX: Desktop Alerts 1.0.2: This update for the Desktop Alerts contains changes to behavior for setting custom sounds for alerts. I have removed ALERTWAV.TXT from the project, and also removed DA_DEFAULTSOUND from the VFPALERT.H file. The AlertManager class and Alert class both have a "default" cSound of ADDBS(JUSTPATH(_VFP.ServerName))+"alert.wav" --- so, as long as you distribute a sound file with the file name "alert.wav" along with the EXE, that file will be used. You can set your own sound file globally by setti...MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.2.15: Changelog for 2.2.15 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Added support for %originalfilepath% to get the source file full path. Used for custom commands only. 2. Added support for better parsing of Media Portal XML files to extract ShowName and Episode Name and download additional details from TVDB (like Season No, Episode No etc). 3. Added support for TVDB seriesID in metadata 4. Added support for eMail non blocking UI testCrashReporter.NET : Exception reporting library for C# and VB.NET: CrashReporter.NET 1.2: *Added html mail format which shows hierarchical exception report for better understanding.PDF Viewer Web part: PDF Viewer Web Part: PDF Viewer Web PartMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.67: Fix issue #18629 - incorrectly handling null characters in string literals and not throwing an error when outside string literals. update for Issue #18600 - forgot to make the ///#DEBUG= directive also set a known-global for the given debug namespace. removed the kill-switch for disregarding preprocessor define-comments (///#IF and the like) and created a separate CodeSettings.IgnorePreprocessorDefines property for those who really need to turn that off. Some people had been setting -kil...MPC-BE: Media Player Classic BE 1.0.1.0 build 1122: MPC-BE is a free and open source audio and video player for Windows. MPC-BE is based on the original "Media Player Classic" project (Gabest) and "Media Player Classic Home Cinema" project (Casimir666), contains additional features and bug fixes. Supported Operating Systems: Windows XP SP2, Vista, 7 32bit/64bit System Requirements: An SSE capable CPU The latest DirectX 9.0c runtime (June 2010). Install it regardless of the operating system, they all need it. Web installer: http://www.micro...Preactor Object Model: Visual Studio Template .NET 3.5: Visual Studio Template with all the necessary files to get started with POM. You will still need to Get the Preactor.ObjectModel and Preactor.ObjectModleExtensions libraries from Nuget though. You will also need to sign with assembly with a strong name key.Lakana - WPF Framework: Lakana V2: Lakana V2 contains : - Lakana WPF Forms (with sample project) - Lakana WPF Navigation (with sample project)myCollections: Version 2.3.0.0: New in this version : Added TheGamesDB.net API for games and nds Added Fast search options Added order by Artist/Album for music Fixed several provider Performance improvement New Splash Screen BugFixingMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: OData QueryFeed workflow activity: The OData QueryFeed sample activity shows how to create a workflow activity that consumes an OData resource, and renders entity properties in a Microsoft Excel 2010 worksheet or Microsoft Word 2010 document. Using the sample QueryFeed activity, you can consume any OData resource. The sample activity uses LINQ to project OData metadata into activity designer expression items. By setting activity expressions, a fully qualified OData query string is constructed consisting of Resource, Filter, Or...F# 3.0 Sample Pack: FSharp 3.0 Sample Pack for Visual Studio 2012 RTM: F# 3.0 Sample Pack for Visual Studio 2012 RTMANPR MX: ANPR_MX Release 1: ANPR MX Release 1 Features: Correctly detects plate area for the average North American plate. (It won't work for the "European" plate size.) Provides potential values for the recognized plate. Allows images 800x600 and below (.jpg / .png). The example requires the VC 10 runtime & .NET 4 Framework to be already installed. The Source code project was made on Visual Studio 2010.Cocktail: Cocktail v1.0.1: PrerequisitesVisual Studio 2010 with SP1 (any edition but Express) Optional: Silverlight 4 or 5 Note: Install Silverlight 4 Tools and then the Silverlight 4 Toolkit. Likewise for Silverlight 5 Tools and the Silverlight 5 Toolkit DevForce Express 6.1.8.1 Included in the Cocktail download, DevForce Express requires registration) Important: Install DevForce after all other components. Download contentsDebug and release assemblies API documentation Source code License.txt Re...weber: weber v0.1: first release, creates a basic browser shell and allows user to navigate to web sites.New Projects.NET Code Editor & Compiler Component: .Net compiler component with integrated advanced text box, VisualStudio like highlightning, ability to intercept and show StandardOutput strings.NET Plugin Manager: Provides agnostic functionality for tiered plugin loading, unloading, and plugin collection management.Amazon Control Panel v2: Amazon Control Panel is a application that lets you control you Amazon Seller Central account using the Amazon MWS (Merchant Web Service) API.AutoSPSourceBuilder: AutoSPSourceBuilder: a utility for automatically building a SharePoint 2010 or 2013 install source including service packs, language packs & cumulative updates.CAOS: RBAC acess controllChat Forum: An Internet  forum,  or message  board,  is  an online discussion  site conversations  in  the  form  of  posted  messages.CRM 2011 - Many-To-Many Relationship Entity View: This Silverlight Web Resource for CRM 2011 will allow user to see N:N relationship entity data from single place.dardasim: dardasim gil and lior Tel Cabir DolphinsDBAManage: ???????ERP??，????！DimDate Generator: A SSIS project for generation a data dimansion table and data.DNL: eine grße .net bibliothek für entwicklerDouban FM for Metro: A music radio client for http://douban.fm running on Windows 8 / WinRTExtended WPF Control: Extended WPF Control for research and learning.FizzBuzzDaveC: Implements the classic FizzBuzz programmine exercise.HamStart: Nothing for now...Infopath XSN Modifier: A tool for editing the dataconnections of Infopath.KH Picture Resizer: Picture Resizer ermöglicht es Bilder per Drag and Dop zu verkleinern. Das Program wurde in C# geschrieben und nutzt Windows Forms.Korean String Extension for .NET: ?? ??? ??? ????? ???? string??? ??? ????? Extension library for "string" class that enhances "Hangul Jamo system" features Lucky Loot - Tattoo Shop Management Application: Lucky Loot - Tattoo Shop Management Application Por: Eric Gabriel Rodrigues Castoldi Objetivo: Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso de Sistemas de InformaçãoMagnOS - C# Cosmos Operating System: MagnOS is an Open Source operating system, made to learn how to make operating systems with Cosmos.Móa mày: Project m?iOData Samples: A collection of samples demonstrating solutions and functionality in WCF Data Services, ODataLib and EdmLib.Online Image Editor: Online Photo CanvasOptimuss Administración: La mejor aplicación de Gestión y Control EscolarOptimuss Obelix: La mejor aplicación de Gestión y Control EscolarPersonal Website: My personal websitePlanisoft: Proyecto de Planilla para clinica los fresnosPROYECTODT: ..................................................................................................................PtLibrary: PtLibrary stands for Peter Thönell's Delphi library. PtSettings and PtSettingsGUI make the management and use of settings extremely easy and powerful.RTS WebServer: A small lightweight, modern and fast webserver (template). with in the feature the newest technologies like SPDY and websocketsStandards: Standards is an Intranet application (using Windows authentication) designed to document and manage company standards. It is written in C#/MVC 4.Truttle OS: This is an OS I made with CosmosWfp System: zdgdsfgdsfgzpo: projekt na zaliczenie zpo???: ???

  Read the article

• HTG Explains: Do Non-Windows Platforms Like Mac, Android, iOS, and Linux Get Viruses?

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Viruses and other types of malware seem largely confined to Windows in the real world. Even on a Windows 8 PC, you can still get infected with malware. But how vulnerable are other operating systems to malware? When we say “viruses,” we’re actually talking about malware in general. There’s more to malware than just viruses, although the word virus is often used to talk about malware in general. Why Are All the Viruses For Windows? Not all of the malware out there is for Windows, but most of it is. We’ve tried to cover why Windows has the most viruses in the past. Windows’ popularity is definitely a big factor, but there are other reasons, too. Historically, Windows was never designed for security in the way that UNIX-like platforms were — and every popular operating system that’s not Windows is based on UNIX. Windows also has a culture of installing software by searching the web and downloading it from websites, whereas other platforms have app stores and Linux has centralized software installation from a secure source in the form of its package managers. Do Macs Get Viruses? The vast majority of malware is designed for Windows systems and Macs don’t get Windows malware. While Mac malware is much more rare, Macs are definitely not immune to malware. They can be infected by malware written specifically for Macs, and such malware does exist. At one point, over 650,000 Macs were infected with the Flashback Trojan. [Source] It infected Macs through the Java browser plugin, which is a security nightmare on every platform. Macs no longer include Java by default. Apple also has locked down Macs in other ways. Three things in particular help: Mac App Store: Rather than getting desktop programs from the web and possibly downloading malware, as inexperienced users might on Windows, they can get their applications from a secure place. It’s similar to a smartphone app store or even a Linux package manager. Gatekeeper: Current releases of Mac OS X use Gatekeeper, which only allows programs to run if they’re signed by an approved developer or if they’re from the Mac App Store. This can be disabled by geeks who need to run unsigned software, but it acts as additional protection for typical users. XProtect: Macs also have a built-in technology known as XProtect, or File Quarantine. This feature acts as a blacklist, preventing known-malicious programs from running. It functions similarly to Windows antivirus programs, but works in the background and checks applications you download. Mac malware isn’t coming out nearly as quick as Windows malware, so it’s easier for Apple to keep up. Macs are certainly not immune to all malware, and someone going out of their way to download pirated applications and disable security features may find themselves infected. But Macs are much less at risk of malware in the real world. Android is Vulnerable to Malware, Right? Android malware does exist and companies that produce Android security software would love to sell you their Android antivirus apps. But that isn’t the full picture. By default, Android devices are configured to only install apps from Google Play. They also benefit from antimalware scanning — Google Play itself scans apps for malware. You could disable this protection and go outside Google Play, getting apps from elsewhere (“sideloading”). Google will still help you if you do this, asking if you want to scan your sideloaded apps for malware when you try to install them. In China, where many, many Android devices are in use, there is no Google Play Store. Chinese Android users don’t benefit from Google’s antimalware scanning and have to get their apps from third-party app stores, which may contain infected copies of apps. The majority of Android malware comes from outside Google Play. The scary malware statistics you see primarily include users who get apps from outside Google Play, whether it’s pirating infected apps or acquiring them from untrustworthy app stores. As long as you get your apps from Google Play — or even another secure source, like the Amazon App Store — your Android phone or tablet should be secure. What About iPads and iPhones? Apple’s iOS operating system, used on its iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches, is more locked down than even Macs and Android devices. iPad and iPhone users are forced to get their apps from Apple’s App Store. Apple is more demanding of developers than Google is — while anyone can upload an app to Google Play and have it available instantly while Google does some automated scanning, getting an app onto Apple’s App Store involves a manual review of that app by an Apple employee. The locked-down environment makes it much more difficult for malware to exist. Even if a malicious application could be installed, it wouldn’t be able to monitor what you typed into your browser and capture your online-banking information without exploiting a deeper system vulnerability. Of course, iOS devices aren’t perfect either. Researchers have proven it’s possible to create malicious apps and sneak them past the app store review process. [Source] However, if a malicious app was discovered, Apple could pull it from the store and immediately uninstall it from all devices. Google and Microsoft have this same ability with Android’s Google Play and Windows Store for new Windows 8-style apps. Does Linux Get Viruses? Malware authors don’t tend to target Linux desktops, as so few average users use them. Linux desktop users are more likely to be geeks that won’t fall for obvious tricks. As with Macs, Linux users get most of their programs from a single place — the package manager — rather than downloading them from websites. Linux also can’t run Windows software natively, so Windows viruses just can’t run. Linux desktop malware is extremely rare, but it does exist. The recent “Hand of Thief” Trojan supports a variety of Linux distributions and desktop environments, running in the background and stealing online banking information. It doesn’t have a good way if infecting Linux systems, though — you’d have to download it from a website or receive it as an email attachment and run the Trojan. [Source] This just confirms how important it is to only run trusted software on any platform, even supposedly secure ones. What About Chromebooks? Chromebooks are locked down laptops that only run the Chrome web browser and some bits around it. We’re not really aware of any form of Chrome OS malware. A Chromebook’s sandbox helps protect it against malware, but it also helps that Chromebooks aren’t very common yet. It would still be possible to infect a Chromebook, if only by tricking a user into installing a malicious browser extension from outside the Chrome web store. The malicious browser extension could run in the background, steal your passwords and online banking credentials, and send it over the web. Such malware could even run on Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of Chrome, but it would appear in the Extensions list, would require the appropriate permissions, and you’d have to agree to install it manually. And Windows RT? Microsoft’s Windows RT only runs desktop programs written by Microsoft. Users can only install “Windows 8-style apps” from the Windows Store. This means that Windows RT devices are as locked down as an iPad — an attacker would have to get a malicious app into the store and trick users into installing it or possibly find a security vulnerability that allowed them to bypass the protection. Malware is definitely at its worst on Windows. This would probably be true even if Windows had a shining security record and a history of being as secure as other operating systems, but you can definitely avoid a lot of malware just by not using Windows. Of course, no platform is a perfect malware-free environment. You should exercise some basic precautions everywhere. Even if malware was eliminated, we’d have to deal with social-engineering attacks like phishing emails asking for credit card numbers. Image Credit: stuartpilbrow on Flickr, Kansir on Flickr     

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, August 16, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, August 16, 2014Popular ReleasesTEBookConverter: 1.5: Added: Turkish and French translations Added: A few interface changes Removed: SkinDynamulet: Dynamulet v0.1: DynamoDB Transaction Server v0.1Console parallel nunit tests runner: ConsoleUnitTestsRunner 1.03: bugfixingFluentx: Fluentx v1.5.3: Added few more extension methods.fastBinaryJSON: v1.4.2: v1.4.2 - bug fix circular referencesfastJSON: v2.1.2: 2.1.2 - bug fix circular referencesJPush.NET: JPush Server SDK 1.2.1 (For JPush V3): Assembly: 1.2.1.24728 JPush REST API Version: v3 JPush Documentation Reference .NET framework: v4.0 or above. Sample: class: JPushClientV3 2014 Augest 15th.SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.043.008 Release 1: Changed ship/station names to use new DisplayName instead of Beacon/Antenna. Fixed issue with updated SE binaries 01.043.018 using new Voxel Material definitions.Google .Net API: Drive.Sample: Google .NET Client API – Drive.SampleInstructions for the Google .NET Client API – Drive.Sample</h2> http://code.google.com/p/google-api-dotnet-client/source/browse/?repo=samples#hg%2FDrive.SampleBrowse Source, or main file http://code.google.com/p/google-api-dotnet-client/source/browse/Drive.Sample/Program.cs?repo=samplesProgram.cs <h3>1. Checkout Instructions</h3> <p><b>Prerequisites:</b> Install Visual Studio, and <a href="http://mercurial.selenic.com/">Mercurial</a>.</p> ...FineUI - jQuery / ExtJS based ASP.NET Controls: FineUI v4.1.1: -??Form??????????????（???-5929）。 -?TemplateField??ExpandOnDoubleClick、ExpandOnEnter、ExpandToSelectRow????（LZOM-5932）。 -BodyPadding???????，??“5”“5 10”，???????????“5px”“5px 10px”。 -??TriggerBox?EnableEdit=false????，??????????????（Jango_Jing-5450）。 -???????????DataKeyNames???????????（yygy-6002）。 -????????????????????????（Gnid-6018）。 -??PageManager???AutoSizePanelID????，??????????????????（yygy-6008）。 -?FState???????????????，????????????????（????-5925）。 -??????OnClientClick???return?????????（FineU...DNN CMS Platform: 07.03.02: Major Highlights Fixed backwards compatibility issue with 3rd party control panels Fixed issue in the drag and drop functionality of the File Uploader in IE 11 and Safari Fixed issue where users were able to create pages with the same name Fixed issue that affected older versions of DNN that do not include the maxAllowedContentLength during upgrade Fixed issue that stopped some skins from being upgraded to newer versions Fixed issue that randomly showed an unexpected error during us...WordMat: WordMat for Mac: WordMat for Mac has a few limitations compared to the Windows version - Graph is not supported (Gnuplot, GeoGebra and Excel works) - Units are not supported yet (Coming up) The Mac version is yet as tested as the windows version.HP OneView PowerShell Library: HP OneView PowerShell Library 1.10.1193: [NOTE]: The installer has been updated, only to allow the user to display What's New at the completion of the install. The contents are the same as the original installer. Branch to HP OneView 1.10 Release. NOTE: This library version does not support older appliance versions. Fixed New-HPOVProfile to check for Firmware and BIOS management for supported platforms. Would erroneously error when neither -firmware or -bios were passed. Fixed Remove-HPOV* cmdlets which did not handle -forc...MFCMAPI: August 2014 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1042 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010/2013 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeEWSEditor: EwsEditor 1.10 Release: • Export and import of items as a full fidelity steam works - without proxy classes! - I used raw EWS POSTs. • Turned off word wrap for EWS request field in EWS POST windows. • Several windows with scrolling texts boxes were limiting content to 32k - I removed this restriction. • Split server timezone info off to separate menu item from the timezone info windows so that the timezone info window could be used without logging into a mailbox. • Lots of updates to the TimeZone window. • UserAgen...Python Tools for Visual Studio: 2.1 RC: Release notes for PTVS 2.1 RC We’re pleased to announce the release candidate for Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.1. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, editing, IntelliSense, interactive debugging, profiling, Microsoft Azure, IPython, and cross-platform debugging support. PTVS 2.1 RC is available for: Visual Studio Expre...Sense/Net ECM - Enterprise CMS: SenseNet 6.3.1 Community Edition: Sense/Net 6.3.1 Community EditionSense/Net 6.3.1 is an important step toward a more modular infrastructure, robustness and maintainability. With this release we finally introduce a packaging and a task management framework, and the Image Editor that will surely make the job of content editors more fun. Please review the changes and new features since Sense/Net 6.3 and give a feedback on our forum! Main new featuresSnAdmin (packaging framework) Task Management Image Editor OData REST A...Touchmote: Touchmote 1.0 beta 13: Changes Less GPU usage Works together with other Xbox 360 controls Bug fixesModern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.6: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. BREAKING CHANGE LinkGroup.GroupName renamed to GroupKey NEW FEATURES Improved rendering on high DPI screens, including support for per-monitor DPI awareness available in Windows 8.1 (see also Per-monitor DPI awareness) New ModernProgressRing control with 8 builtin styles New LinkCommands.NavigateLink routed command New Visual Studio project templates 'Modern UI WPF App' and 'Modern UI W...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.74.0: Multiple thread safe improvements including AdjustToContents XLHelper XLColor_Static IntergerExtensions.ToStringLookup Exception now thrown when saving a workbook with no sheets, instead of creating a corrupt workbook Fix for hyperlinks with non-ASCII Characters Added basic workbook protection Fix for error thrown, when a spreadsheet contained comments and images Fix to Trim function Fix Invalid operation Exception thrown when the formula functions MAX, MIN, and AVG referenc...New Projects2113110030: name: pham van long code: 2113110030 subject: oop2113110033: Name: Nguyen Hoang Minh Class: CCQ1311LA Object: OOP2113110284: name: Vuong Thành Ðô id:2113110284 class: CCQ1311LA2113110286_OOP_kiemtra: Mon:OOP Tên: Lê Th? Ng?c Huy?nCRM Queue Monitor: A small tool to monitor queues in Microsoft dynamics CRM 2011 and following versions. It displays the number of items in the queues and the latest item.Dice Bag: A D20 Role Playing Game Dice Bag - A selection of dice for use in the D20 RPG System that can be rolled to any quantity with an applied modifier.DM.Dual-coloredBall: DM.Dual-coloredBallFB Account Data Miner by Bipul Raman: A software which can be use to extract basic metadata of a Facebook profile without logging in to Facebook.huynhtanphat-2113170373: Mon: OPP Name: Huynh Tan Phatkieuquanghuy_OOP: Suject: OOP Name: kieuquanghuy Class: CCQ1311LAMySale: A simple home point-of-sale application, designed for garage sales, and lemonade stalls alike.nguyennhubaongan_OOP: MON: OOP NAME: NGUY?N-NHU-B?O-NGÂNOPP-2113110288: Mon: OOP Ten: Bui Dinh Hoai Nam Pequeño RAE: Una aplicación Windows para utilizar los Web services del Diccionario de la Real Academia Española en línea.phungthiphuonglien_OOP: MONHOC: OOP NAME: PHUNG THI PHUONG LIEN MSSV: 2113110287sharpFlipWall: This is a simple executive toy for Unity that leverages Kinect v2 and Shaders to generate a wall of blocks that move based on player informaitonTranThanhDanh-2113110282: Mon: OPP Name: Tran Thanh DanhWsSequence: Run a number of WS in a sequence?????: ??????????: ???????????: gdsg?????: ???????????: fds??????: gdr??????: gfdg?????: ???????????: ???????????: ???????????: ggerger?????: htryhrt??????: trjty?????: ???????????: sdf?????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。??????????????????????。???????????，????????，????????????????????????????。???????，??????????????。????????????,????????，?????????????: ????????????: ertyer?????: ???????????: gsdrfgds??????: fds?????: ??????????: vcdfxgdsf??????: fdgher??????: fdsf?????: ??????????: ??????????: ???????????: hiuhui?????: ??????????: ??????????: ???????????: fdsfs?????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ???????????: ???????????: ??????????: ??????????: fgsdf??????: vdsfd?????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。??????????1998?????????。????????????，???????????????，?????????????，???????????，?2003?????????????，????????????????????????????????: ???????????: ???????????: hfdg?????: ???????????: gfdgfd??????: fdsfd?????: fdsf??????: fghdt?????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: gfdgfd????????: gfjhtf??????: ????????????: vdcf??????: fvgdfg??????: ???????????: ??????????: ???????????: jvbhvhv?????: ??????????: ???????????: ???????????: ??????????: ???????????: ????????????: ????????????: ???????????: ???????????: ????????????: fdsfds?????: ???????????: ???????????: ??????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。???????????????????，??????????????，????，?????????????????????，??????。 　　??，??????????????????????。????????，????????????，??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。??????????????，??????、????、?????????????????????????，???????????? ??。???????????，??????????，???????????，????2000?，??????????，?????: ???????????: ????????????: ???????????: ???????????: ytryrt??????: ???????????: ???????????: ???????????: ??????????: ???????????: gdfgfd?????: ???????????: gfd??????: ???????????: ???????????: fdsf??????: ????????????: ????????????: gfdtgdr?????: ???????????: fdsfd?????: ??????????: ???????????: ????????????: ????????????: ???????????: ???????????: terwtq?????: ??????????: gdfg??????: ????????????: gfdg?????: ??????????: ??????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。?????????????，????????????????、??????、???????、???????、?????、???、??????。 ??????????????，???????????，??????，???????，?????????????????: gdfsg?????: fdsf??????: hdfhdf?????: ???????????: ????????????: fgherh?????: ??????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。?????????，????????????????????，???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????、?????????、??????、????????、?????????????: ???????????: ???????????: ???????????: ????????????: fgdstf??????: ???????????: gfdgfd??????: fdsfd??????: ????????????: ???????????: ???????????: fdsfd?????: ???????????: gfdgfdg?????: ??????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。????????????????，???????，???QQ;??2008?8??????????????????，????????，?????????，?????????????，?????????????????. ?????????，??????????: ??????????: ???????????: ????????????: fgnhgf??????: gredg?????: ??????????: ??????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。?????????????，???????????????????、?????????????。?????????????????，?????????????，????????????，?????，????????????????，?????，?????????: ????????????: ???????????: ???????????: ????????????: ???????????: gdfgedf??????: fdsf??????: ?????????????: ?????????????: fdsf??????: ???????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。??????????????，?????????????????????，???????????????????????!?????????????????????????????????????????????、?????????、??????、??????: fdsf?????: ???????????: fdsf??????: fdsf?????: ???????????: vuv?????: ???????????: grfgfd?????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: fdsf??????: ghrd?????: ????????????: ?????????????: sgdfg?????: ???????????: grfgdf?????: ???????????: hftghj?????: ???????????: ??????????????: gdfgfd?????: ???????????: fdsf?????: ???????????: fdsf??????: htgrfh?????: ??????????: ??????????: fds??????: sdfds??????: hgfh?????: ??????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。??????????????，??????、????、?????????????????????????，???????????? ??。???????????，??????????，???????????，????2000?，??????????，??????: ????????????: ???????????: fdsfds????????????: fdsf?????: ??????????: ???????????: gfdgfd?????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。??????????????，?????????????????????，???????????????????????!?????????????????????????????????????????????、?????????、??????、??????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。????????2002?，????????，???????????????，??，?????????。????98?????????????，?????????????，?????????????????，???????，????，?????????????: ??????????: ???????????: ????????????: fd??????: fds?????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。??????????、??、?????????,???????????,?????????????!???????、??、?????、???.????、???、???、???、???、???、?????、?????、???????、????。?????????: ??????????: fdsfds???????: fdsfdsf?????: ???????????: ???????????: ??????????: ???????????: ????????????: fdsf?????: ???????????: ????????????: gdfsgds?????: gttrey??????: cxzc???????: ?????????????: ???????????: ???????????: gdfgfd?????: ??????????: ???????????: ????????????: ????????????: ????????????: gfdgdf?????: ???????????: ytu?????: ???????????: yytry???????: ghmkuygk??????: ????????????: ????????????: ????????????: ???????????: ???????????: ????????????: vuhgvu??????: ??????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。?????????，????????????????????，????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????、?????????、??????、????????、???????????: ???????????: hfgh??????: hgfh?????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。??????????????，???????????。??????????????。??、??、????????????。????：????，??????!??????????????，?????，???，???，??，???，???，???，?????????: ????????????: ttgers??????: iui

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 25, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 25, 2010New Projects281slides: 281slides is a project to demonstrate how one could go about implementing something similar to http://280slides.com in Silverlight3.Alex.XP's ARMA2 Chinese Language Pack Tools: Alex.XP's ARMA2 Chinese Language ToolsAuto Version Web Assets: The AVWA project is an HTTP Module written in C# that is designed to allow for versioning of various web assets such as .CSS and .JS files. This a...CAECE Twitter Clon: Proyecto para hacer un clon de twitter alumnos CAECE 2010DNSExchanger: Provides users to switch their PC's DNSs with pre-defined DNS with one click. Fluent ViewModel Configuration for WPF (MVVM): Fluent MVVM Configuration for WPF. A powerful yet simple interface for configuring view models for WPF. Eliminates INotifyPropertyChanged duplic...Genetic Algorithm N-Queens Solver: Genetic Algorithm N-Queens Solver with Multithreaded GUI.Hangmanondotnet: Just a starterHelium Frog Animator: Here is the Source code for the Helium Frog Animator. It is released under the GNU General Public Licence. The software enables stop motion animati...LISCH Collision Resolution, AVL Trees: LISCH Collision Resolution, AVL Trees Last Insertion Standart Colesced HashingNetPE: NetPE is a Portable Executable(PE) editor with full Metadata support. It is developed in pure C#.Proyecto Nilo: nada por ahoraSQL Schema Source Control: Track database schema changes automatically C# application that you can run against your SQL Databases (supports SQL 2008 right now, but you cou...uTorrent-Net-Client: A network client for uTorrent over the uTorrent-WebAPI. The Client use the API implementation from "uTorrent Web Client API Wrapper Library" (http:...Visual Leak Detector for Visual C++ 2008/2010: Enhanced Memory Leak Detection for Visual C++Visual Studio 2010 AutoScroller Extension: This is an extension to provide auto-scrolling to the Visual Studio 2010 environment. Simply middle click and drag the mouse in the direction yo...Vje: Vje projectVs2010-TipSite - Enter Island: This project is a visual studio 2010 project created in Silverligt. The project used to give using tips about visual studio 2010 by movies clips an...WKURM: Research Methods project @ western kentucky universityYupsky: yupsky webNew Releases.NET DiscUtils: Version 0.8: This is the 0.8 release of DiscUtils. New in this release are: An NFS client, supporting access to virtual disks held on an NFS server. A PowerS...Bluetooth Radar: Version 2.2: Add Settings window Get installed services on the deveice Check if Object Exchange is installed and changed properties. Add Windows Bluetooth...CSharp Intellisense: V1.7: major improvements: - Select best suggestion - on going changes filters (the filters will changed according to the current typing) - remember last ...DNSExchanger: DNSExchanger Beta v0.1: First release of the project, DNSExchanger. It requires, 32-bit Operating System (XP, Vista, 7) and need to be runned with administration credent...DotNetNuke® Form and List (formerly User Defined Table): 05.01.03: Form and List 05.01.03What's New: This release, Form and List 05.01.03, will be a stabilization release. It requires at least DotNetNuke 5.1.3 for...Enki Char 2 BIN: Enki Char 2 Bin: This program converts Characters to Binary and vice versaFluent ViewModel Configuration for WPF (MVVM): FluentViewModel Alpha1: This is a debug build of the FluentViewModel library. This has been provided to get feed back on the API and to look for bugs. For an example on h...Hangmanondotnet: Hangman: Just a previewHelium Frog Animator: Helium Frog 2.06 Documentation: Complete User Guide documentation in html formatHelium Frog Animator: Helium Frog 2.06 Source Code: Zip file contains all Visual Basic 6 source code, Artwork, sound files etc.Helium Frog Animator: Helium Frog Version 2.06: This file is the released version on Helium Frog 2.06. It contains binary files and required runtime libraries.Helium Frog Animator: Motion Jpeg Handling 10: Source code , module and debugging application in C# a) Module concatenates .jpg files to motion jpeg .avi file. b) Module retrieves any required ...Helium Frog Animator: Sample Grabber 03: Source code and debug program in C# a) Module lists all the available DirextX source devices b) Sets up video streaming to a picturebox by creating...Henge3D Physics Library for XNA: Henge3D Source (2010-04): The biggest change in this release was the addition of the OnCollision and OnSeparation "events" in the RigidBody class. An attached handler will r...HouseFly controls: HouseFly controls alpha 0.9.4.1: HouseFly controls release 0.9.4.1 alphaHTML Ruby: 6.22.0: Added new options for adjusting ruby line height and text line height Live preview for options Adjusted applied styles Added option to report...HTML Ruby: 6.22.1: space by word if ASCII character improved handling of unclosed ruby tagMultiwfn: Multiwfn1.3_binary: Multiwfn1.3_binaryMultiwfn: multiwfn1.3_source: multiwfn1.3_sourceRapid Dictionary: Rapid Dictionary Alpha 1.0: Try auto updatable version: http://install.rapiddict.com/index.html Rapid Dictionary Alpha 1.0 includes such functionality:you can run translation...Silverlight Input Keyboard: Version 1.5 for Silverlight 4: Dependency System.Windows.Interactivity.dll from Blend 4 RC http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=88484825-1b3c-4e8c-8b14-b05d02...SQL Schema Source Control: 1.0: Initial ReleaseUDC indexes parser: UDC indexex parser Beta: LALR(1): 1) Невозможно использовать знак распространения на общие и специальные определители, за исключением определителей в скобках (), (0), (=), ...uTorrent-Net-Client: uTorrent-Net-Client: This download contains the uTorrentNetClient and the 7Zip Windows-Service. Before you can use both, you must configuration some points in the App.C...VidCoder: 0.3.0: Changes: Added customizable columns on the Queue. Right click->Customize columns, then drag and drop to choose and reorder. Column sizes will also...Visual Leak Detector for Visual C++ 2008/2010: v2.0: New version of VLD. This adds support for x64 applications and VS 2010.Visual Studio 2010 AutoScroller Extension: AutoScroller v0.1: Initial release of Visual studio 2010 auto-scroller extension. Simply middle click and drag the mouse in the direction you wish to scroll, further...Yasbg: It's Static GUI: Many changes have been made from the previous release. Read the README! This release adds a GUI and RSS support. From now on, this program is only...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitSilverlight ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: Databasepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationBlogEngine.NETParticle Plot PivotNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleDotNetZip LibraryN2 CMSFarseer Physics Enginepatterns & practices: Composite WPF and Silverlight

  Read the article

• A Simple Approach For Presenting With Code Samples

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2013/07/31/a-simple-approach-for-presenting-with-code-samples.aspxI’ve been getting ready for a presentation and have been struggling a bit with the best way to show and execute code samples. I don’t present often (hardly ever), but when I do I like the presentation to have a lot of succinct and executable code snippets to help illustrate the points that I’m making. Depending on what the presentation is about, I might just want to build an entire sample application that I would run during the presentation. In other cases, however, building a full-blown application might not really be the best way to present the code. The presentation I’m working on now is for an open source utility library for dealing with dates and times. I could have probably cooked up a sample app for accepting date and time input and then contrived ways in which it could put the library through its paces, but I had trouble coming up with one app that would illustrate all of the various features of the library that I wanted to highlight. I finally decided that what I really needed was an approach that met the following criteria: Simple: I didn’t want the user interface or overall architecture of a sample application to serve as a distraction from the demonstration of the syntax of the library that the presentation is about. I want to be able to present small bits of code that are focused on accomplishing a single task. Several of these examples will look similar, and that’s OK. I want each sample to “stand on its own” and not rely much on external classes or methods (other than the library that is being presented, of course). “Debuggable” (not really a word, I know): I want to be able to easily run the sample with the debugger attached in Visual Studio should I want to step through any bits of code and show what certain values might be at run time. As far as I know this rules out something like LinqPad, though using LinqPad to present code samples like this is actually a very interesting idea that I might explore another time. Flexible and Selectable: I’m going to have lots of code samples to show, and I want to be able to just package them all up into a single project or module and have an easy way to just run the sample that I want on-demand. Since I’m presenting on a .NET framework library, one of the simplest ways in which I could execute some code samples would be to just create a Console application and use Console.WriteLine to output the pertinent info at run time. This gives me a “no frills” harness from which to run my code samples, and I just hit ‘F5’ to run it with the debugger. This satisfies numbers 1 and 2 from my list of criteria above, but item 3 is a little harder. By default, just running a console application is going to execute the ‘main’ method, and then terminate the program after all code is executed. If I want to have several different code samples and run them one at a time, it would be cumbersome to keep swapping the code I want in and out of the ‘main’ method of the console application. What I really want is an easy way to keep the console app running throughout the whole presentation and just have it run the samples I want when I want. I could setup a simple Windows Forms or WPF desktop application with buttons for the different samples, but then I’m getting away from my first criteria of keeping things as simple as possible. Infinite Loops To The Rescue I found a way to have a simple console application satisfy all three of my requirements above, and it involves using an infinite loop and some Console.ReadLine calls that will give the user an opportunity to break out and exit the program. (All programs that need to run until they are closed explicitly (or crash!) likely use similar constructs behind the scenes. Create a new Windows Forms project, look in the ‘Program.cs’ that gets generated, and then check out the docs for the Application.Run method that it calls.). Here’s how the main method might look: 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: do 4: { 5: Console.Write("Enter command or 'exit' to quit: > "); 6: var command = Console.ReadLine(); 7: if ((command ?? string.Empty).Equals("exit", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) 8: { 9: Console.WriteLine("Quitting."); 10: break; 11: } 12: 13: } while (true); 14: } The idea here is the app prompts me for the command I want to run, or I can type in ‘exit’ to break out of the loop and let the application close. The only trick now is to create a set of commands that map to each of the code samples that I’m going to want to run. Each sample is already encapsulated in a single public method in a separate class, so I could just write a big switch statement or create a hashtable/dictionary that maps command text to an Action that will invoke the proper method, but why re-invent the wheel? CLAP For Your Own Presentation I’ve blogged about the CLAP library before, and it turns out that it’s a great fit for satisfying criteria #3 from my list above. CLAP lets you decorate methods in a class with an attribute and then easily invoke those methods from within a console application. CLAP was designed to take the arguments passed into the console app from the command line and parse them to determine which method to run and what arguments to pass to that method, but there’s no reason you can’t re-purpose it to accept command input from within the infinite loop defined above and invoke the corresponding method. Here’s how you might define a couple of different methods to contain two different code samples that you want to run during your presentation: 1: public static class CodeSamples 2: { 3: [Verb(Aliases="one")] 4: public static void SampleOne() 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("This is sample 1"); 7: } 8:   9: [Verb(Aliases="two")] 10: public static void SampleTwo() 11: { 12: Console.WriteLine("This is sample 2"); 13: } 14: } A couple of things to note about the sample above: I’m using static methods. You don’t actually need to use static methods with CLAP, but the syntax ends up being a bit simpler and static methods happen to lend themselves well to the “one self-contained method per code sample” approach that I want to use. The methods are decorated with a ‘Verb’ attribute. This tells CLAP that they are eligible targets for commands. The “Aliases” argument lets me give them short and easy-to-remember aliases that can be used to invoke them. By default, CLAP just uses the full method name as the command name, but with aliases you can simply the usage a bit. I’m not using any parameters. CLAP’s main feature is its ability to parse out arguments from a command line invocation of a console application and automatically pass them in as parameters to the target methods. My code samples don’t need parameters ,and honestly having them would complicate giving the presentation, so this is a good thing. You could use this same approach to invoke methods with parameters, but you’d have a couple of things to figure out. When you invoke a .NET application from the command line, Windows will parse the arguments and pass them in as a string array (called ‘args’ in the boilerplate console project Program.cs). The parsing that gets done here is smart enough to deal with things like treating strings in double quotes as one argument, and you’d have to re-create that within your infinite loop if you wanted to use parameters. I plan on either submitting a pull request to CLAP to add this capability or maybe just making a small utility class/extension method to do it and posting that here in the future. So I now have a simple class with static methods to contain my code samples, and an infinite loop in my ‘main’ method that can accept text commands. Wiring this all up together is pretty easy: 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: do 4: { 5: try 6: { 7: Console.Write("Enter command or 'exit' to quit: > "); 8: var command = Console.ReadLine(); 9: if ((command ?? string.Empty).Equals("exit", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("Quitting."); 12: break; 13: } 14:   15: Parser.Run<CodeSamples>(new[] { command }); 16: Console.WriteLine("---------------------------------------------------------"); 17: } 18: catch (Exception ex) 19: { 20: Console.Error.WriteLine("Error: " + ex.Message); 21: } 22:   23: } while (true); 24: } Note that I’m now passing the ‘CodeSamples’ class into the CLAP ‘Parser.Run’ as a type argument. This tells CLAP to inspect that class for methods that might be able to handle the commands passed in. I’m also throwing in a little “----“ style line separator and some basic error handling (because I happen to know that some of the samples are going to throw exceptions for demonstration purposes) and I’m good to go. Now during my presentation I can just have the console application running the whole time with the debugger attached and just type in the alias of the code sample method that I want to run when I want to run it.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 27, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 27, 2011Popular ReleasesTerminals: Version 2 - Beta 4 Release: Beta 4 Refresh Build Dont forget to backup your config files BEFORE upgrading! As usual, please take time to use and abuse this release. We left logging in place, and this is a debug build so be sure to submit your logs on each bug reported, and please do report all bugs! Updated the About form to include the date and time of the build. Useful for CI builds to ensure we have the correct version "Favourites" and "History" save their expanded states after app restarts Code cleanup, secu...MiniTwitter: 1.76: MiniTwitter 1.76 ???? ?? ?????????? User Streams ???????????? User Streams ???????????、??????????????? REST ?????????? ?????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????????????Media Companion: MC 3.424b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Movie Show Resolutions... Resolved issue when reverting multiselection of movies to "-none-" Added movie rename support for subtitle files '.srt' & '.sub' Finalised code for '-1' fix - radiobutton to choose either filename or title Fixed issue with Movie Batch Wizard Fanart - ...Advanced Windows Phone Enginering Tool: WPE Downloads: This version of WPE gives you basic updating, restoring, and, erasing for your Windows Phone device.Anno 2070 Assistant: Beta v1.0 (STABLE): Anno 2070 Assistant Beta v1.0 Released! Features Included: Complete Building Layouts for Ecos, Tycoons & Techs Complete Production Chains for Ecos, Tycoons & Techs Completed Credits Screen Known Issues: Not all production chains and building layouts may be on the lists because they have not yet been discovered. However, data is still 99.9% complete. Currently the Supply & Demand, including Calculator screen are disabled until version 1.1.Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.7: Including updated Minecraft Biome Extractor and mcmap to support the new Minecraft 1.0.0 release (new block types, etc).Visual Leak Detector for Visual C++ 2008/2010: v2.2.1: Enhancements: * strdup and _wcsdup functions support added. * Preliminary support for VS 11 added. Bugs Fixed: * Low performance after upgrading from VLD v2.1. * Memory leaks with static linking fixed (disabled calloc support). * Runtime error R6002 fixed because of wrong memory dump format. * version.h fixed in installer. * Some PVS studio warning fixed.NetSqlAzMan - .NET SQL Authorization Manager: 3.6.0.10: 3.6.0.10 22-Nov-2011 Update: Removed PreEmptive Platform integration (PreEmptive analytics) Removed all PreEmptive attributes Removed PreEmptive.dll assembly references from all projects Added first support to ADAM/AD LDS Thanks to PatBea. Work Item 9775: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/9775VideoLan DotNet for WinForm, WPF & Silverlight 5: VideoLan DotNet for WinForm, WPF, SL5 - 2011.11.22: The new version contains Silverlight 5 library: Vlc.DotNet.Silverlight. A sample could be tested here The new version add and correct many features : Correction : Reinitialize some variables Deprecate : Logging API, since VLC 1.2 (08/20/2011) Add subitem in LocationMedia (for Youtube videos, ...) Update Wpf sample to use Youtube videos Many others correctionsEZ-NFC: Alpha 1: THIS IS AN ALPHA RELEASE. STILL UNSTABLE AND SUBJECT TO ARCHITECTURE CHANGE What is implemented (In alpha) : ACR122L Device Mifare 1K tag Windows frontend#liveDB: liveDB 0.3.2: New featuresNew abstract storage scheme enabling future cloud support New file system structure and naming scheme for snapshots and journal files based on sequence numbers Journal files are never deleted Automatic snapshots during load or shutdown Renamed/added hooks to Model JournalRestored, SnapshotRestored Created an extensible logging facade Journal gets split into 1MB segments (configurable) Integrity checks before during load/create Commands are cloned by default before ...ReactiveMVVM: ReactiveMVVM v1.0: Example 1 property change: public class Example1 : ViewModelBase{ string _Userid; /// <summary> /// person infomation of owner. /// </summary> public string Userid { get { return _Userid; } set { this.RaiseAndSetIfChanged(x => x.Userid, ref _Userid, value, *true*); } // true, broadcast property change message. } //if the property changed to do...... this.ObservableProperty(x => x.Useid) ...IoCWrap: Initial: Initial release of the source code.Code for Rapid C# Windows Development eBook + LINQPad and Data Tools: LinqPad Custom Visualizer Version 1.0: First release of my LinqPad Custom Visualizer. It is compiled against the Any-CPU build of LINQPad v4.36.6 so it can only be used with the LINQPad Beta: v4.36.x. To install unzip to the LinqPad plugins folder.Distributed replay GUI: Distributed Replay Snapin: This is the dll for registering the snapin in mmc.FaST-LMM: FActored Spectrally Transformed Linear Mixed Models: FaSTLMM v1.03 Binaries for Windows and Linux: These files contain the files necessary to run FaSTLMM on Windows or Linux along with the license and users manual. To download FaSTLMM source code, please follow the changeset link located above to the Source Code tab. The FaSTLMM.Win.zip download contains both C++ and CSharp executable versions of FaSTLMM. No installer is required, just UnZip the file into a directory and run from there. Or put the installation directory on your path and run it from anywhere. The C++ version included r...SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack: SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack 1.2.0: Web parts are now fully customizable via html templates (Issue #323) FBA Pack is now completely localizable using resource files. Thank you David Chen for submitting the code as well as Chinese translations of the FBA Pack! The membership request web part now gives the option of having the user enter the password and removing the captcha (Issue # 447) The FBA Pack will now work in a zone that does not have FBA enabled (Another zone must have FBA enabled, and the zone must contain the me...SharePoint 2010 Education Demo Project: Release SharePoint SP1 for Education Solutions: This release includes updates to the Content Packs for SharePoint SP1. All Content Packs have been updated to install successfully under SharePoint SP1SQL Monitor - managing sql server performance: SQLMon 4.1 alpha 6: 1. improved support for schema 2. added find reference when right click on object list 3. added object rename supportBugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 0.9.126: First stable release of version 0.9. Upgrades from 0.8 are fully supported and upgrades to future releases will also be supported. This release is now compiled against the .NET 4.0 framework and is a requirement. Because of this the web.config has significantly changed. After upgrading, you will need to configure the authentication settings for user registration and anonymous access again. Please see our installation / upgrade instructions for more details: http://wiki.bugnetproject.c...New Projectsandrewtatham.robocode: Andrew Tatham's Robocode botsClear SharePoint Lists: This project contains the tools used to clear the items from the one or more Lists.Clipboard Editor: How many times have you pasted something in Notepad and then copied the plain text again? We do it all the time to strip formatting from the clipboard. This utility lets you pick which format from the clipboard to keep.CS New Rus: ?? ????? ??????????? ??????. ??? ??? - CS New. ?? ???? ????? ?? ????? ??????????? ??? ? ?????????? ? ???????. ElfDoc: ElfDoc enables you to create word documents from templates, using open xml.HTC RUU .NET: HTC's legendary RUU goes .NET and Open Source.................. You can browse for .nbh file, not locked at current directory and, you can update your device's rom in .NET wayMobileGamePrototype: For now just a skeleton of the architecture.NopCommerce 23 Multi Store Support: NopCommerce 23 Multi Store Support novel: fetch novelOrchard Custom Shapes: Ready to use custom orchard shapes like a table shape.Philosophy Gadget: This gadget helps people associate known works of philosophy with their known authors.ReefTracker: A controller agnostic logging and reporting application for reef aquarium controllers. SQLQuery: SQL QueryWindows Phone Marketplace Viewer: Windows Phone Marketplace Viewer is a single aspx page for asp.net 3+ with no additional dependencies. It will show the top 2000 apps in one of the 3 categories: paid and free together, only paid or only free, for all the marketplace languages.

  Read the article

• Glassfish alive or dead? WebLogic SE cost is less than Glassfish!

  - by JuergenKress

  Is a hot discussion in the community in the last few days! Send us your opinion on tiwtter @wlscommunity #Glassfish #WebLogicCommunity We posted theGlassFishStrategy.pptx at our WebLogic Community Workspace (WebLogic Community membership required). Please read also the Java EE and GlassFish Server Roadmap Update Bruno Borges ?Another great article covering story about #GlassFish. Comments starting to be reasonable ;-) 6 facts helped a lot http://adtmag.com/articles/2013/11/08/oracle-drops-glassfish.aspx … Adam Bien ?What Oracle Could Do For GlassFish Now: Move the sources to GitHub (GitHub is the most popular collaboration p... http://bit.ly/1d1uo24 JAXenter.com ?Oracle evangelist: “GlassFish Open Source Edition is not dead” http://jaxenter.com/oracle-evangelist-glassfish-open-source-edition-is-not-dead-48830.html … GlassFish 6 Facts About #GlassFish Announcement and the Future of #JavaEE http://bit.ly/1bbSVPf via @brunoborges David Blevins ?In support of our #GlassFish friends and open source in general: Feed the Fish http://www.tomitribe.com/blog/2013/11/feed-the-fish/ … #JavaEE #opensource #manifesto GlassFish ?GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.1 is scheduled for 2014. Version 5.0 as impl for #JavaEE8 https://blogs.oracle.com/theaquarium/entry/java_ee_and_glassfish_server … #Community focused C2B2 Consulting ?C2B2 continues to offer support for your operational #JEE applications running on #GlassFish http://blog.c2b2.co.uk/2013/11/oracle-dropping-commercial-support-of.html … #Java Markus Eisele ?RT @InfoQ: #GlassFish Commercial Edition is Dead http://bit.ly/17eFB0Z < at least they agree to my points... Adam Bien suggests: Move the sources to GitHub (GitHub is the most popular collaboration platform). It is more likely for an individual to contribute via GitHub, than the current infrastructure. Introduce a business friendlier license like e.g. the Apache license. Companies interesting in providing added value (and commercial support) on top of existing sources would appreciate it. Implement GitHub-based, open source, CI system with nightly builds. Introduce a transparent voting process / pull-request acceptance process. Release more frequently. Keep https://glassfish.java.net as the main hub. C2B2 offers Glassfish support by Steve Millidge Oracle have just announced that commercial support for GlassFish 4 will not be available from Oracle. In light of this announcement I thought I would put together some thoughts about how I see this development. I think the key word in this announcement is "commercial", nowhere does Oracle announce the "death of GlassFish" in contrary Oracle reaffirm; GlassFish Server Open Source Edition continues to be the strategic foundation for Java EE reference implementation going forward. And for developers, updates will be delivered as needed to continue to deliver a great developer experience for GlassFish Server Open Source Edition so GlassFish is not about to go away soon. In a similar fashion RedHat do not provide commercial support for WildFly and only provide commercial support for JBoss EAP. Admittedly JBoss EAP and WildFly are much closer together than GlassFish and WebLogic but WildFly and JBoss EAP are absolutely NOT the same thing. The key going forward to the viability of GlassFish as a production platform is how the GlassFish community develops; How often does the community release binary builds? How open is the community to bug fixes? How much engineering resource does Oracle commit to GlassFish? At this stage we just don't know the answers to these questions. If the GlassFish open source project continues on it's current trajectory without a commercial support offering then I don't see much of a problem. Oracle just have to work harder to sell migration paths to WebLogic in the same way as RedHat have to sell migration paths from WildFly to JBoss EAP. In the meantime C2B2 continues to offer support for your operational JEE applications running on GlassFish and we will endeavour to work with the community to get any bugs fixed. The key difference is we can no longer back our Expert Support with a support contract from Oracle for patches and fixes for any release greater than 3.x. Read the complete article here. 6 Facts About GlassFish Announcement By Bruno.Borges Fact #1 - GlassFish Open Source Edition is not dead GlassFish Server Open Source Edition will remain the reference implementation of Java EE. The current trunk is where an implementation for Java EE 8 will flourish, and this will become the future GlassFish 5.0. Calling "GlassFish is dead" does no good to the Java EE ecosystem. The GlassFish Community will remain strong towards the future of Java EE. Without revenue-focused mind, this might actually help the GlassFish community to shape the next version, and set free from any ties with commercial decisions. Fact #2 - OGS support is not over As I said before, GlassFish Server Open Source Edition will continue. Main change is that there will be no more future commercial releases of Oracle GlassFish Server. New and existing OGS 2.1.x and 3.1.x commercial customers will continue to be supported according to the Oracle Lifetime Support Policy. In parallel, I believe there's no other company in the Java EE business that offers commercial support to more than one build of a Java EE application server. This new direction can actually help customers and partners, simplifying decision through commercial negotiations. Fact #3 - WebLogic is not always more expensive than OGS Oracle GlassFish Server ("OGS") is a build of GlassFish Server Open Source Edition bundled with a set of commercial features called GlassFish Server Control and license bundles such as Java SE Support. OGS has at the moment of this writing the pricelist of U$ 5,000 / processor. One information that some bloggers are mentioning is that WebLogic is more expensive than this. Fact 3.1: it is not necessarily the case. The initial edition of WebLogic is called "Standard Edition" and falls into a policy where some “Standard Edition” products are licensed on a per socket basis. As of current pricelist, US$ 10,000 / socket. If you do the math, you will realize that WebLogic SE can actually be significantly more cost effective than OGS, and a customer can save money if running on a CPU with 4 cores or more for example. Quote from the price list: “When licensing Oracle programs with Standard Edition One or Standard Edition in the product name (with the exception of Java SE Support, Java SE Advanced, and Java SE Suite), a processor is counted equivalent to an occupied socket; however, in the case of multi-chip modules, each chip in the multi-chip module is counted as one occupied socket.” For more details speak to your Oracle sales representative - this is clearly at list price and every customer typically has a relationship with Oracle (like they do with other vendors) and different contractual details may apply. And although OGS has always been production-ready for Java EE applications, it is no secret that WebLogic has always been more enterprise, mission critical application server than OGS since BEA. Different editions of WLS provide features and upgrade irons like the WebLogic Diagnostic Framework, Work Managers, Side by Side Deployment, ADF and TopLink bundled license, Web Tier (Oracle HTTP Server) bundled licensed, Fusion Middleware stack support, Oracle DB integration features, Oracle RAC features (such as GridLink), Coherence Management capabilities, Advanced HA (Whole Service Migration and Server Migration), Java Mission Control, Flight Recorder, Oracle JDK support, etc. Fact #4 - There’s no major vendor supporting community builds of Java EE app servers There are no major vendors providing support for community builds of any Open Source application server. For example, IBM used to provide community support for builds of Apache Geronimo, not anymore. Red Hat does not commercially support builds of WildFly and if I remember correctly, never supported community builds of former JBoss AS. Oracle has never commercially supported GlassFish Server Open Source Edition builds. Tomitribe appears to be the exception to the rule, offering commercial support for Apache TomEE. Fact #5 - WebLogic and GlassFish share several Java EE implementations It has been no secret that although GlassFish and WebLogic share some JSR implementations (as stated in the The Aquarium announcement: JPA, JSF, WebSockets, CDI, Bean Validation, JAX-WS, JAXB, and WS-AT) and WebLogic understands GlassFish deployment descriptors, they are not from the same codebase. Fact #6 - WebLogic is not for GlassFish what JBoss EAP is for WildFly WebLogic is closed-source offering. It is commercialized through a license-based plus support fee model. OGS although from an Open Source code, has had the same commercial model as WebLogic. Still, one cannot compare GlassFish/WebLogic to WildFly/JBoss EAP. It is simply not the same case, since Oracle has had two different products from different codebases. The comparison should be limited to GlassFish Open Source / Oracle GlassFish Server versus WildFly / JBoss EAP. Read the complete article here WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: Glassfish,training,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

  Read the article

• So&hellip; What is a SharePoint Developer?

  - by Mark Rackley

  A few days ago Stacy Draper and I were chatting about what it means to be a SharePoint Developer. That actually turns about to be a conversation with lots of shades of grey. Stacy thought it would make a good blog post… well, I can’t promise this to be a GOOD blog post… So, anyway, I decided to let off a little bomb this morning by posting the following tweet on Twitter: @mrackley: Can someone be considered a SharePoint Developer if all they know how to do is work in SPD? Now, I knew this is a debate that has been going on since the first SharePoint Designer User put SharePoint Developer on their resume. There are probably several blogs out there on the subject, but with the wildfire that is jQuery and a few other new features out there I believe it is an important subject to tackle again. I got a lot of great feedback as well on Twitter. The entire twitter conversation is at the end of this blog posting. Thanks everyone for their opinions. Who cares? Why does it matter? Can’t we all just get along? Yes it matters… everything must be labeled and put in it’s proper place. Pigeon holing is the only way to go!  Just kidding.. I’m not near that anal, but yes! It is important to be able to properly identify the skill set of those people on your team and correctly identify the role you are wanting to hire. Saying you are a “SharePoint Developer” is just too vague and just barely begins to answer the question. Also, knowing who’s on your team and what they can do will ensure you give your clients the best people for the job. A Developer writes code right? So, a Developer uses Visual Studio! Whoa, hold on there Sparky. Even if I concede that to be a developer you have to write code then you still can’t say a SharePoint Developer has to use Visual Studio.  So, you can spell C#, how well can you write XSLT? How’s your jQuery? Sorry bud, that’s code whether you like it or not. There are many ways to write code in SharePoint that have nothing to do with cracking open Visual Studio. So, what are the different ways to develop in SharePoint then? How many different ways can you “develop” in SharePoint?? A lot… Out of the box features In SharePoint you can create a site, create a custom list on that site, do basic calculations in a calculated column, set up alerts, and add all sorts of web parts to a page. Let’s face it.. that IS development! javaScript/jQuery Perhaps you’ve heard by now about this thing called jQuery? It’s all over the place and the answer to a lot of people’s prayers. However be careful, with great power comes great responsibility. Remember, javaScript is executed on the client side and if you abuse it your performance could be affected. Also, Marc Anderson (@sympmarc) wrote a pretty awesome javaScript library called SPServices.  This allows you to access SharePoint’s Web Services using jQuery. How freakin cool is that? With these tools at your disposal the number of things you CAN’T do without Visual Studio grows smaller and smaller. This is definitely development no matter what anyone else says and there is no Visual Studio involved. SharePoint Designer Ahhh.. The cause of and the answer to all of your SharePoint development problems. With SharePoint Designer you can use DataView Web Parts, develop (there’s that word again) your branding, and even connect to external datasources.  There’s a lot you can do in SharePoint Designer. It’s got it’s shortcomings, but it is an invaluable tool in the SharePoint developers toolbox. InfoPath So, can InfoPath development really be considered SharePoint development? I would say yes. You can connect to SharePoint lists, populate fields in a SharePoint list, and even write code in InfoPath. Sounds like SharePoint development to me. Visual Studio – Web Services/WCF So, get this. You can write code for SharePoint and not have a clue what the 12 hive is, what “site actions” means, or know how to do ANYTHING in SharePoint? Poppycock! You say? SharePoint Web Services I say… With SharePoint Web Services you can totally interact with SharePoint without knowing anything about SharePoint. I don’t recommend it of course, but it’s possible. What can you write using SharePoint Web Services? How about a little application called SharePoint Designer? Visual Studio – Object Model And here we are finally:  the SharePoint Object Model.  When you hear “SharePoint Developer” most people think of someone opening Visual Studio and creating a custom web part, workflow, event receiver, etc.. etc.. but I hope that by now I have made the point that this is NOT the only form of SharePoint Development! Again… Who cares? Just crack open Visual Studio for everything! Problem solved! Let’s ponder for a moment, shall we? The business comes to you with a requirement that involves some pretty fancy business calculations, and a complicated view that they do NOT want to look like SharePoint. “No Problem” you proclaim you mighty SharePoint Developer. You go back to your cube, chuckle at the latest Dilbert comic, and crack open Visual Studio. Then you build your custom web part… fight with all the deployment, migration, and UAT that you must go through and proclaim victory two weeks later!!!! Well done my good sir/ma’am! Oh wait… it turns out Sally who is not a “developer” did the exact same thing with a Dataview web part and some jQuery and it’s been in production for two weeks? #CockinessFail I know there are many ASP.NET developers out there that can create a custom control and wrap it to be a SharePoint Web Part.  That does NOT mean they are SharePoint Developers though as far as I’m concerned and I personally would much rather have someone on my team that can manipulate the heck (yes, I said ‘heck’) out of SharePoint using Dataview Web Parts, jQuery, and a roll of duct tape. Just because you know how to write code in Visual Studio does not mean you are a SharePoint Developer. What’s the conclusion here? How do we define ‘it’ and what ‘it’ is called? Fortunately, this is MY blog. I don’t have to give answers, I can stir the pot, laugh and leave you to ponder what it means! There is obviously no right or wrong answer here (unless you disagree with me,then you are flat out wrong). Anyway, there are many opinions.  Here’s mine.  If you put SharePoint Developer on your resume make sure to clearly specify HOW you develop in SharePoint and what tools you use. If we must label these gurus of jQuery and SPD, how about “SharePoint Client Developer” or “SharePoint Front End Developer”? Just throwing out an idea. Whatever we call them, to say they are not developers is short-sighted, arrogant, and unfair. Of course, then we need to figure out what to call all those other SharePoint development types.  Twitter Conversation @next_connect: RT @mrackley: Can someone be considered a SharePoint Developer if all they know how to do is work in SPD? | I say no.... @mikegil:  @mrackley re: yr Developer question: SPD expert <> SP Developer. Can be "sous-developer," though. #SharePoint #SPD @WonderLaura:  Rt @mrackley Can someone be considered a SharePoint Dev if all they know how to do is work in SPD? -- My opinion is that devs write code. @exnav29:  Rt @mrackley Can someone be considered a SharePoint Dev if all they know how to do is work in SPD? => I think devs would use VS as well @ssKevin:  @WonderLaura @mrackley does that mean strictly vb and c# when it comes to #SharePoint ? @jimmywim:  @exnav29 @mrackley nah, I'd say they were a power user. Devs know their way around the 12 hive ;) @sympmarc:  RT @mrackley: Can someone be considered a SharePoint Developer if all they know how to do is work in SPD? -> Fighting words. @sympmarc:  @next_connect @mrackley Besides, we prefer to be called "hacks". ;+) @next_connect:  @sympmarc The important thing is that you don't have to develop code to solve problems and create solutions. @mrackley @mrackley:  @sympmarc @next_connect not tryin to pick fight.. just try and find consensus on definition @usher:  @mrackley I'd still argue that you have a DevLite title that's out there for the collaboration engineers (@sympmarc @next_connect) @next_connect: @usher I agree. I've called it Light Dev/ Configuration before. @sympmarc @mrackley @usher:  @next_connect I like DevLite, low calorie but still same great taste :) @mrackley @sympmarc @mrackley:  @next_connect @usher @sympmarc I don't think there's any "lite" to someone who can bend jQuery and XSLT to their will. @usher:  @mrackley okay, so would you refer to someone that writes user controls and assemblies something different (@next_connect @sympmarc) @usher:  @mrackley when looking for a developer that can write .net code, it's a bit different than an XSLT/jQuery designer. @sympmarc @next_connect @jimmywim:  @mrackley @sympmarc @next_connect I reckon a "dev" does managed code and works in the 12 hive @sympmarc:  @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect We had a similar debate a few days ago @toddbleeker et al @sympmarc:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @toddbleeker @stevenmfowler More abt my Middle Tier term, but still connected. Meet bus need. @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect I used "No Assembly Required" in the past. I also suggested "Supplimenting the SharePoint DOM" @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect Others suggested Information Worker Solutions/Enhancements @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler I also like "SharePoint Scripting Solutions". All the technologies are script. @jimmywim:  @toddbleeker @sympmarc @mrackley @next_connect I like the IW solutions one... @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler This is like the debate that never ends: it is definitely not called Middle Tier. @jimmywim:  @toddbleeker @sympmarc @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler "Scripting" these days makes me think PowerShell... @sympmarc:  @toddbleeker @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler If it forces a debate on h2 best solve bus probs, I'll keep sayin Middle Tier. @usher:  @sympmarc so we know what we're looking for, we just can't define a name? @toddbleeker @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevemfowler @sympmarc:  @usher @sympmarc @toddbleeker @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevemfowler The naming seems to matter more than the substance. :-( @jimmywim:  @sympmarc @usher @toddbleeker @mrackley @next_connect @stevemfowler work brkdn defines tasks, defines tools needed, can then b grp'd by user @WonderLaura:  @mrackley @toddbleeker @jimmywim @sympmarc @usher @next_connect Funny you're asking. @johnrossjr and I spent hours this week on the subject. @stevenmfowler:  RT @toddbleeker: @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler it is definitely not called Middle Tier. < I'm with Todd

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 13, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 13, 2011Popular ReleasesCommunity TFS Build Extensions: Alpha 1.0.0.4: Please see the Source Control change sets for updates in this release This is a minor release to wrap up the BuildReport activity This release contains signed assemblies and a CHM file. Effort is now going into improving the documentation. Note the help on the Guid activity. We plan to provide Actions and a self contained Sequence sample whenever possible. This should address most peoples needs. You can expect frequent updates over the next month as we add more activities and improve the ...Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 1.0.4.1: Stable Release 51 Degrees.mobi Foundation is the best way to detect and redirect mobile devices and their capabilities on ASP.NET and is being used on thousands of websites worldwide. We’re highly confident in our software and we recommend all users update to this version. Changes to Version 1.0.4.1Changed the BlackberryHandler and BlackberryVersion6Handler to have equal CONFIDENCE values to ensure they both get a chance at detecting BlackBerry version 4&5 and version 6 devices. Prior to thi...Rawr: Rawr 4.1.06: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta6: ??AcDown?????????????，?????????????，????、????。?????Acfun????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??v3.0 Beta6 ?????(imanhua.com)????? ???? ?? ??"????","?????","?????","????"?????? "????"?????"????????"?? ??????????? ?????????????? ?????????????/???? ?? ????Windows 7???????????? ????????? ?? ????????????? ???????/??????????? ???????????? ?? ?? ?????(imanh...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.22: Added lots of optimizations related to expression optimization. Combining adjacent expression statements into a single statement means more if-, for-, and while-statements can get rid of the curly-braces. Then more if-statements can be converted to expressions, and more expressions can be combined with return- and for-statements. Moving functions to the top of their scopes, followed by var-statements, provides more opportunities for expression-combination. Added command-line option to remove ...Pulse: Pulse Beta 2: - Added new wallpapers provider http://wallbase.cc. Supports english search, multiple keywords* - Improved font rendering in Options window - Added "Set wallpaper as logon background" option* - Fixed crashes if there is no internet connection - Fixed: Rewalls downloads empty images sometimes - Added filters* Note 1: wallbase provider supports only english search. Rewalls provider supports only russian search but Pulse automatically translates your english keyword into russian using Google Tr...SizeOnDisk: 1.0.8.4: Fix: Contextual menu failures. Switch to ShellExecuteEx of Win32Api.Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.1 (June 2011) for .NET 4.0: Release of Phalanger 2.1 - the opensource PHP compiler for .NET framework 4.0. Installation package also includes basic version of Phalanger Tools for Visual Studio 2010. This allows you to easily create, build and debug Phalanger web or application inside this ultimate integrated development environment. You can even install the tools into the free Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Integrated). To improve the performance of your application using MySQL, please use Managed MySQL Extension for Phala...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.7: Version: 2.0.0.7 (Milestone 7): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...SimplePlanner: v2.0b: For 2011-2012 Sem 1 ???2011-2012 ????Visual Studio 2010 Help Downloader: 1.0.0.3: Domain name support for proxy Cleanup old packages bug Writing to EventLog with UAC enabled bug Small fixes & RefactoringMedia Companion: MC 3.406b weekly: With this version change a movie rebuild is required when first run -else MC will lock up on exit. Extract the entire archive to a folder which has user access rights, eg desktop, documents etc. Refer to the documentation on this site for the Installation & Setup Guide Important! If you find MC not displaying movie data properly, please try a 'movie rebuild' to reload the data from the nfo's into MC's cache. Fixes Movies Readded movie preference to rename invalid or scene nfo's to info ext...Windows Azure VM Assistant: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5 (Debug) - Test Release VersionNetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.9: Changes: - fix examples (include issue 16026) - add new examples - 32Bit/64Bit Walkthrough is now available in technical Documentation. Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:..............................................................COM Proxy Management, Events, etc. - Examples in C# and VB.Net:............................................................Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access - COMAddi...Reusable Library: V1.1.3: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developerClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.54.0: New on this release: 1) Mayor performance improvements. 2) AdjustToContents now take into account the text rotation. 3) Fixed issues 6782, 6784, 6788HTML-IDEx: HTML-IDEx .15 ALPHA: This release fixes line counting a little bit and adds the masshighlight() sub, which highlights pasted and inserted code.AutoLoL: AutoLoL v2.0.3: - Improved summoner spells are now displayed - Fixed some of the startup errors people got - Double clicking an item selects it - Some usability changes that make using AutoLoL just a little easier - Bug fixes AutoLoL v2 is not an update, but an entirely new version! Please install to a different directory than AutoLoL v1Host Profiles: Host Profiles 1.0: Host Profiles 1.0 Release Quickly modify host file Automatically flush dnsVidCoder: 0.9.2: Updated to HandBrake 4024svn. This fixes problems with mpeg2 sources: corrupted previews, incorrect progress indicators and encodes that incorrectly report as failed. Fixed a problem that prevented target sizes above 2048 MB.New ProjectsAFS - Application Foundation System: application foundation system,including organization structure,rights management,user management,event subscription etc.AuctionWorks: AuctionWorks 1.0Commander: CMD VB6 GUI a CMD application written in Visual Studio 2010 ultimate (VB6). Simple GUI interface, more functions to be addedCotizador de Serigrafia: Cotizador para Industrias SerigráficasESPGame: ESPGame renders a wonderful picture label game environment. It's developed in Python with web framework django.ETRoboCon Race Tracking System: The race tracking system of Embedded Technology Robot Contest in Japan.HNI2: get me at x.InkML JavaScript Library: The InkML JavaScript library allows InkML digital ink to be refernced within web pages and rendered directly into HTML5 <canvas> tags. Ink Markup Language (InkML) is a W3C standard for encoding digital ink (www.w3.org/tr/inkml). Ionut's C++ Programs: Ionut's C++ Programs Are you wondering were you can find software that suports any windows platform and the source code mai be compiled also for a NON-WINDOWS platforms. The Programs are Developed in C++ Mano Machine Emulator: Mano Machine Emulator makes it easier for Computer Science students to learn how the machine works in low level layers. You'll no longer have to imagine how the computer works, instead you will see how it works. It's developed in C#. MSMQ Client Library: MSMQ client library is a client for MSMQ server. It provides easy usage of MSMQ server, and can be used in any type of NET framework projects. It is developed in C#, Framework 4.0MVC Photos: ASP.NET MVC???????????。 mvcConf @:Japan???????????????。MvcPractice: learn the asp.net mvc3 source.Of Shared Points - Blog Demos and Samples: Blog samples and demonstration source code for "Of Shared Points" SharePoint blogPresentation Abstraction Control for Silverlight - PAC4SL: PAC4SL is a delivery framework used for developing Silverlight applications that uses the Presentation Abstraction Control delivery pattern. This delivery pattern is centered on team development with Silverlight. The focus of the pattern is spreading out of application logic into focused delivery tiers. The framework was developed in C# on the 4.0 framework and Silverlight 4.0 The framework is designed to be used with C# and Silverlight 4.0 or higher. queryexecutor: A generic database browserSilVM: MVVM, Silverlight, Arquitetura, ArchitectureSimple Dot Net Grapher: Demo project for drawing graphs based on a equation E.g F(x) = 5x^2 + 10x - 1 Just a math grapher I made to test the DynamicDataDisplay library and dynamic string evaluationSPEvolution: Migration for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 data - Content Types, List, Columns, ListItems and many other - in Rails-style. Write small evolution's steps which help to deploy and synchronize data schema beetween production and development environment. SQLDeploy.Net: SQLDeploy.Net is a utility to deploy [run] a set of SQL Scripts on SQL Server. The utility can be integrated with any deployment manager like Marimba , Hudson etc to automate database deployment. The project is developed on .Net Framework 4.0 but it is equally backward compatible. For a list of known issues and enhancements which are being worked upon, refer to Issue Tracker.webget: webgetwhoami: ip address resolverWPFGenie: about WPF, .Net, framework

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 29, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 29, 2012Popular ReleasesDotNetNuke Azure Accelerator: DotNetNuke Azure Accelerator 6.2: Windows Azure deployments of DotNetNuke Community using virtual hard drive (cloud-drive) image that is created dynamically on the cloud. Enables the creation of new DotNetNuke host instances from on-premise to the cloud using a wizard that guides you on this process, creating the SQL Azure database, uploading the solution engine and associated service configurations. New features in this releaseModified the web roles endpoints to allow traffic on port 443 Changed the package unzip operati...Thales Simulator Library: Version 0.9.6: The Thales Simulator Library is an implementation of a software emulation of the Thales (formerly Zaxus & Racal) Hardware Security Module cryptographic device. This release fixes a problem with the FK command and a bug in the implementation of PIN block 05 format deconstruction. A new 0.9.6.Binaries file has been posted. This includes executable programs without an installer, including the GUI and console simulators, the key manager and the PVV clashing demo. Please note that you will need ...myManga: myManga v1.0.0.2: Fixed the 'Lost+Brain' error on MangaReader. The main download has this update. The second download is for those who have already downloaded the old v1.0.0.2. DELETE OLD EXE and DLLs before you copy the new files over.To update from v1.0.0.1:Extract new myManga EXE and DLLs from Zip to folder of choosing. Copy MangaInfo and MangaArchives folder from old myManga folder to new folder from step 1. ORDelete: The new myManga.exe contains the CoreMangaClasses.dll and Manga.dll internally. Delet...????: ????2.0.1: 1、?????。WiX Toolset: WiX v3.6 RC: WiX v3.6 RC (3.6.2928.0) provides feature complete Burn with VS11 support. For more information see Rob's blog post about the release: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2012/5/28/WiX-v3.6-Release-Candidate-availableJavascript .NET: Javascript .NET v0.7: SetParameter() reverts to its old behaviour of allowing JavaScript code to add new properties to wrapped C# objects. The behavior added briefly in 0.6 (throws an exception) can be had via the new SetParameterOptions.RejectUnknownProperties. TerminateExecution now uses its isolate to terminate the correct context automatically. Added support for converting all C# integral types, decimal and enums to JavaScript numbers. (Previously only the common types were handled properly.) Bug fixe...Indent Guides for Visual Studio: Indent Guides v12: Version History Changed in v12: background document analysis new options dialog with Quick Set selections for behavior new "glow" style for guides new menu icon in VS 11 preview control now uses editor theming highlighting can be customised on each line fixed issues with collapsed code blocks improved behaviour around left-aligned pragma/preprocessor commands (C#/C++) new settings for controlling guides in empty lines restructured settings storage (should be more reliable) ...callisto: callisto 2.0.29: Added DNS functionality to scripting. See documentation section for details of how to incorporate this into your scripts.ZXMAK2: Version 2.6.2.2: - implemented read port #7FFD glitch for ULA128 (fusetest) - fix unhandled exception inside open dialog - fix Z80 format serializer (support 55 bytes header & non compressed 128 blocks - thanks to Ralf) This release include SPRINTER emulation, but boot system disk image was removed.Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0 (May 2012): Fixes: unserialize() of negative float numbers fix pcre possesive quantifiers and character class containing ()[] array deserilization when the array contains a reference to ISerializable parsing lambda function fix round() reimplemented as it is in PHP to avoid .NET rounding errors filesize bypass for FileInfo.Length bug in Mono New features: Time zones reimplemented, uses Windows/Linux databaseSharePoint Euro 2012 - UEFA European Football Predictor: havivi.euro2012.wsp (1.1): New fetures:Admin enable / disable match Hide/Show Euro 2012 SharePoint lists (3 lists) Installing SharePoint Euro 2012 PredictorSharePoint Euro 2012 Predictor has been developed as a SharePoint Sandbox solution to support SharePoint Online (Office 365) Download the solution havivi.euro2012.wsp from the download page: Downloads Upload this solution to your Site Collection via the solutions area. Click on Activate to make the web parts in the solution available for use in the Site C...ScreenShot: InstallScreenShot: This is the current stable release.????SDK for .Net 4.0+(OAuth2.0+??V2?API): ??V2?SDK???: ????SDK for .Net 4.X???????PHP?SDK???OAuth??API???Client???。 ??????API?? ???????OAuth2.0???? ???：????????，DEMO??AppKey????????????????，?????AppKey，????AppKey???????????，?????“????>????>????>??????”.Net Code Samples: Code Samples: Code samples (SLNs).LINQ_Koans: LinqKoans v.02: Cleaned up a bitExpression Tree Visualizer for VS 2010: Expression Tree Visualizer Beta: This is a beta release, in this release some expression types are not handled and use a default visualization behavior. The first release will be published soon. Wait for it...Ulfi: Ulfi source: Build with Visual Studio 2010 Express C# or betterJayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.0 RC1 Refresh 2: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript developers to query and update data from different sources like webSQL, indexedDB, OData, Facebook or YQL. See it in action in this 6 minutes video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlJHgj1y0CU RC1 R2 Release highlights Knockout.js integrationUsing the Knockout.js module, your UI can be automatically refreshed when the data model changes, so you can develop the front-end of your data manager app even faster. Querying 1:N relations in W...Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: 00.00.08 for DNN6: BEFORE USE YOU need to install the MSBuild Community Tasks available from http://msbuildtasks.tigris.org For best results you should configure your development environment as described in this blog post Then read this latest blog post about customizing and using these custom templates. Installation is simple To use this template place the ZIP (not extracted) file in your My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#\Web OR for VB My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Te...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.53: fix issue #18106, where member operators on numeric literals caused the member part to be duplicated when not minifying numeric literals ADD NEW FEATURE: ability to create source map files! The first mapfile format to be supported is the Script# format. Use the new -map filename switch to create map files when building your sources.New ProjectsActive Log Reader: The active log reader provides the ability for a client to subscribe to specific changes in a set of files in a directory. For example, it allows you to actively monitor all .log files in your C:\Windows directory (and sub-directories) and callback whenever the word "ERROR" shows up (or any regular expression you can come up with). The accompanying test project outlines example usage.ADO.NET light wrapper: ADO.NET light wrapper is thin IEnumerable layer about ADO.NET for provide easy way to access data with strong typing support. Allen Neighborhood Center: Allen Neighborhood Center data interactionsCildads: The first attempt at centryCMT: Course Management Tool ProjectCode Builder: this is the Builder project.Connect: this is the Connect project.Craig's Framework: A basic framework that is used to speed up building MVC applications and make certain things simpler.CRM 2011 Fetch XML Execute Tool: This is a dev tool used to execute fetch xml to get the results from the connected CRM 2011 instanceDallasDB: A struct based database. DallasDB will have no full functionality until at least version 0.0.1, and won't be ready for professional use until version 1.0.0. EasyMvc: It provides a trainning sample to develop a web application base on MVC3 EF4.0 SQL Compact 4. Besides, a common business permission, logging, configration have been applied simply. Share with some implement idea about web, mvc, jquery,orm. Appreciate your advice.Entity: this is the Entity project.FogLampz: FogLampz is a .NET wrapper around around the FogBugz API.Geeba: Geeba Forum for Students in BGU UniversityHibernate: this is the Hibernate project.JSense - IntelliSense for JavaScript: JSense provides JavaScript IntelliSense meta-automation for Visual Studio 2010 projectsMichael: this is Michael's project.ModAdder: Minecraft Mod InstallerMVVM ORM: The purpose of MVVM ORM is to create models and their interactions as defined in some database for WPF applications Models are derived from tables, views and stored procedures. Interactions include insert/update/delete, with FK relationships taken into account. nihao: The summary is required.Report: this is the Report project.REST Start Kit for BizTalk: This project enables BizTalk Server to expose RESTFul services through the WCF-Custom adapter. The library supports both receive and send, both XML and JSON with all HTTP verbs (GET, POST, PUT and DELETE). The solution is based on two custom WCF behaviors, one to be used on Receive Locations and one on Send Ports. Hopeully you'll find them easy to use, but if you have any issues, please use the discussions forum.RovignetaWinPhone7: bla bla blaScreenShot: A simple utility that enhances the experience of taking screenshots and annotating them. And all of it happens with the screenshot key that you are most used to. PrintScreen. Give it a try. You will forget the traditional tedious screenshot mechanism.SDM Exam 2012: This is an exam project for 4th semester.Struts: this is the Struts project.TheStoreDepot: depot for the StoreTibiaBot: TibiaBot is an open source application dedicated to extend your gaming experience in MMORPG game called Tibia. Besides of very many built-in functions, TibiaBot has implemented IronRuby script engine, which allows You to creating new functionality to base program.TopicInterDisciplinary: Topic inter-disciplinary owner: sherry, chen1984yangWebAppMatrix: ??WebApp??，?????！

  Read the article

• Organizations &amp; Architecture UNISA Studies &ndash; Chap 7

  - by MarkPearl

  Learning Outcomes Name different device categories Discuss the functions and structure of I/.O modules Describe the principles of Programmed I/O Describe the principles of Interrupt-driven I/O Describe the principles of DMA Discuss the evolution characteristic of I/O channels Describe different types of I/O interface Explain the principles of point-to-point and multipoint configurations Discuss the way in which a FireWire serial bus functions Discuss the principles of InfiniBand architecture External Devices An external device attaches to the computer by a link to an I/O module. The link is used to exchange control, status, and data between the I/O module and the external device. External devices can be classified into 3 categories… Human readable – e.g. video display Machine readable – e.g. magnetic disk Communications – e.g. wifi card I/O Modules An I/O module has two major functions… Interface to the processor and memory via the system bus or central switch Interface to one or more peripheral devices by tailored data links Module Functions The major functions or requirements for an I/O module fall into the following categories… Control and timing Processor communication Device communication Data buffering Error detection I/O function includes a control and timing requirement, to coordinate the flow of traffic between internal resources and external devices. Processor communication involves the following… Command decoding Data Status reporting Address recognition The I/O device must be able to perform device communication. This communication involves commands, status information, and data. An essential task of an I/O module is data buffering due to the relative slow speeds of most external devices. An I/O module is often responsible for error detection and for subsequently reporting errors to the processor. I/O Module Structure An I/O module functions to allow the processor to view a wide range of devices in a simple minded way. The I/O module may hide the details of timing, formats, and the electro mechanics of an external device so that the processor can function in terms of simple reads and write commands. An I/O channel/processor is an I/O module that takes on most of the detailed processing burden, presenting a high-level interface to the processor. There are 3 techniques are possible for I/O operations Programmed I/O Interrupt[t I/O DMA Access Programmed I/O When a processor is executing a program and encounters an instruction relating to I/O it executes that instruction by issuing a command to the appropriate I/O module. With programmed I/O, the I/O module will perform the requested action and then set the appropriate bits in the I/O status register. The I/O module takes no further actions to alert the processor. I/O Commands To execute an I/O related instruction, the processor issues an address, specifying the particular I/O module and external device, and an I/O command. There are four types of I/O commands that an I/O module may receive when it is addressed by a processor… Control – used to activate a peripheral and tell it what to do Test – Used to test various status conditions associated with an I/O module and its peripherals Read – Causes the I/O module to obtain an item of data from the peripheral and place it in an internal buffer Write – Causes the I/O module to take an item of data form the data bus and subsequently transmit that data item to the peripheral The main disadvantage of this technique is it is a time consuming process that keeps the processor busy needlessly I/O Instructions With programmed I/O there is a close correspondence between the I/O related instructions that the processor fetches from memory and the I/O commands that the processor issues to an I/O module to execute the instructions. Typically there will be many I/O devices connected through I/O modules to the system – each device is given a unique identifier or address – when the processor issues an I/O command, the command contains the address of the address of the desired device, thus each I/O module must interpret the address lines to determine if the command is for itself. When the processor, main memory and I/O share a common bus, two modes of addressing are possible… Memory mapped I/O Isolated I/O (for a detailed explanation read page 245 of book) The advantage of memory mapped I/O over isolated I/O is that it has a large repertoire of instructions that can be used, allowing more efficient programming. The disadvantage of memory mapped I/O over isolated I/O is that valuable memory address space is sued up. Interrupts driven I/O Interrupt driven I/O works as follows… The processor issues an I/O command to a module and then goes on to do some other useful work The I/O module will then interrupts the processor to request service when is is ready to exchange data with the processor The processor then executes the data transfer and then resumes its former processing Interrupt Processing The occurrence of an interrupt triggers a number of events, both in the processor hardware and in software. When an I/O device completes an I/O operations the following sequence of hardware events occurs… The device issues an interrupt signal to the processor The processor finishes execution of the current instruction before responding to the interrupt The processor tests for an interrupt – determines that there is one – and sends an acknowledgement signal to the device that issues the interrupt. The acknowledgement allows the device to remove its interrupt signal The processor now needs to prepare to transfer control to the interrupt routine. To begin, it needs to save information needed to resume the current program at the point of interrupt. The minimum information required is the status of the processor and the location of the next instruction to be executed. The processor now loads the program counter with the entry location of the interrupt-handling program that will respond to this interrupt. It also saves the values of the process registers because the Interrupt operation may modify these The interrupt handler processes the interrupt – this includes examination of status information relating to the I/O operation or other event that caused an interrupt When interrupt processing is complete, the saved register values are retrieved from the stack and restored to the registers Finally, the PSW and program counter values from the stack are restored. Design Issues Two design issues arise in implementing interrupt I/O Because there will be multiple I/O modules, how does the processor determine which device issued the interrupt? If multiple interrupts have occurred, how does the processor decide which one to process? Addressing device recognition, 4 general categories of techniques are in common use… Multiple interrupt lines Software poll Daisy chain Bus arbitration For a detailed explanation of these approaches read page 250 of the textbook. Interrupt driven I/O while more efficient than simple programmed I/O still requires the active intervention of the processor to transfer data between memory and an I/O module, and any data transfer must traverse a path through the processor. Thus is suffers from two inherent drawbacks… The I/O transfer rate is limited by the speed with which the processor can test and service a device The processor is tied up in managing an I/O transfer; a number of instructions must be executed for each I/O transfer Direct Memory Access When large volumes of data are to be moved, an efficient technique is direct memory access (DMA) DMA Function DMA involves an additional module on the system bus. The DMA module is capable of mimicking the processor and taking over control of the system from the processor. It needs to do this to transfer data to and from memory over the system bus. DMA must the bus only when the processor does not need it, or it must force the processor to suspend operation temporarily (most common – referred to as cycle stealing). When the processor wishes to read or write a block of data, it issues a command to the DMA module by sending to the DMA module the following information… Whether a read or write is requested using the read or write control line between the processor and the DMA module The address of the I/O device involved, communicated on the data lines The starting location in memory to read from or write to, communicated on the data lines and stored by the DMA module in its address register The number of words to be read or written, communicated via the data lines and stored in the data count register The processor then continues with other work, it delegates the I/O operation to the DMA module which transfers the entire block of data, one word at a time, directly to or from memory without going through the processor. When the transfer is complete, the DMA module sends an interrupt signal to the processor, this the processor is involved only at the beginning and end of the transfer. I/O Channels and Processors Characteristics of I/O Channels As one proceeds along the evolutionary path, more and more of the I/O function is performed without CPU involvement. The I/O channel represents an extension of the DMA concept. An I/O channel ahs the ability to execute I/O instructions, which gives it complete control over I/O operations. In a computer system with such devices, the CPU does not execute I/O instructions – such instructions are stored in main memory to be executed by a special purpose processor in the I/O channel itself. Two types of I/O channels are common A selector channel controls multiple high-speed devices. A multiplexor channel can handle I/O with multiple characters as fast as possible to multiple devices. The external interface: FireWire and InfiniBand Types of Interfaces One major characteristic of the interface is whether it is serial or parallel parallel interface – there are multiple lines connecting the I/O module and the peripheral, and multiple bits are transferred simultaneously serial interface – there is only one line used to transmit data, and bits must be transmitted one at a time With new generation serial interfaces, parallel interfaces are becoming less common. In either case, the I/O module must engage in a dialogue with the peripheral. In general terms the dialog may look as follows… The I/O module sends a control signal requesting permission to send data The peripheral acknowledges the request The I/O module transfers data The peripheral acknowledges receipt of data For a detailed explanation of FireWire and InfiniBand technology read page 264 – 270 of the textbook

  Read the article

• I thought everyone did it like this – Training Session Code Management

  - by Fatherjack

  One of an occasional series of blogs about things that I do that perhaps others don’t. From very early on in my dealings with SQL Server Management Studio I started using Solutions and Projects. This means that I started using them when writing sessions and it wasn’t until speaking with someone at PASS Summit 2013 that I found out that this was a process that was unheard of by some people. So, here we go, a run through how I create and manage code and other documents that I use in presentations. For people unsure what solutions and projects are; • Solution – a container for one or more projects. • Project – a container for files, .sql files are grouped as Queries, all other files are stored as Misc. How do I start? Open Management Studio as normal, and then click File | New and select Project This will bring up the New Project dialog box and you can select/add details as necessary in the places indicated. If this is the first project you are creating then be sure to select the Create directory for solution check box (4). If know in advance that you are going to have more than one project in the solution then you may want to edit the Solution name (3) as by default it will take the name of the project that you enter at (2). This will lead you to the following folder structure (depending on the location that you chose in 3) above. In SSMS you need to turn on the Solution Explorer, either via the View menu or pressing Ctrl + Alt + L                   This will bring up a dockable window that will let you quickly access the files that you choose to include in the Solution.                     Can we get to work and write some code yet please? Yes, we can. As with many Microsoft products there are several ways to go about this, let’s look at the easiest way when creating new code. When writing a presentation I usually start from the position we are currently in – a brand new solution and project with no code. Later on we will look at incorporating existing code files into the Project where we need it. Right-click on the Project name and choose Add New Query           As soon as you click this you will be prompted to select the sql server that you want to connect to and once you have done that you will have your new query open in the text editor and the Solution Explorer will now look like this, showing your server connection and your new query.               And the Project folder will look like this         Now once you have written your code don’t press save, choose Save As and give the code a better name than QueryX.sql. SSMS will interpret this as a request to rename Query1 and your Project and the Project folder will show that SQLQuery1.sql no longer exists but there is now a file named as you requested. If you happen to click save in error then right-click the query in the project and choose rename.               You can then alter the name as you like, even when open in the SSMS text editor, and the file will be renamed. When creating a set of scripts for a presentation I name files with a numeric prefix so that when they are sorted by name they are in the order that I need to use them during the session. I love this idea but I’ve got loads of existing scripts I want to put in Projects Excellent, adding existing files to a project is easy, let’s consider that you have query files in your My Documents folder and you want to bring them into the Project we have just created. Right-click on the Project and choose Add | Existing Item           Navigate to the location of your chosen file and select it. The file will open in SSMS text editor and the Project will be updated to show that the selected query is now part of your project. If you look in Windows Explorer you will see that the query file has been copied into the Project folder, the original file still remains in your My Documents (or wherever it existed). I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to explore creating further Projects within a solution but will happily answer questions if you get into difficulties. What other advantages do I get from this? Well, as all your code is neatly in one Solution folder and the folder contains only files that are pertinent to the session you are presenting then it makes it very easy to share this code, simply copy the whole folder onto a USB stick, Blog, FTP location, wherever you choose and it’s all there in one self-contained parcel. You don’t have to limit yourself to .sql query files, you can add any sort of document via the Add Existing Item method, just try it out. Right-click on the protect and choose Add | Existing Item           Change the file type filter.                       You can multi select items here using Ctrl as you click each item you want. When you are done, click the Add button and the items will be brought into your project.                 Again, using this process means the files are copied into the project folder, leaving you original files untouched in their original location. Once they are here you can double click them in the SSMS Solution Explorer to open them, for files with a specific file type then the appropriate application will be launched – ie Word, Excel etc. However, if the files are something that the SSMS Text editor can display then they will open in a tab in SSMS. Try it out with a text file or even a PS1 file … This sounds excellent but what do I need to watch out for? One big thing to consider when working like this is the version of SSMS that you are using. There is something fundamentally different between the different versions in the way that the project (.ssmssqlproj) and solution (.sqlsuo and .ssmssln) files are formatted. If you create a solution in an older version of SSMS and then open it in a newer version you will be given the option to upgrade it. Once you do this upgrade then the older version of SSMS will not be able to open the solution any more. Now this ranks as more of an annoyance than disaster as the files within the projects are not affected in any way, you would just have to delete the files mentioned and recreate the solution in the older version again. Summary So, here we have seen how using SSMS Projects and Solutions can help keep related code files (and other document types) together in a neat structure so that they can be quickly navigated during a presentation and it also makes it incredibly simple to distribute your code and share it with others. I hope this is of use to you and helps you bring more order into your sql files, whether you are a person that does technical presentations or not, having your code grouped and managed can make for a lot of advantages as your code library expands.  

  Read the article

• HTML5-MVC application using VS2010 SP1

  - by nmarun

  This is my first attempt at creating HTML5 pages. VS 2010 allows working with HTML5 now (you just need to make a small change after installing SP1). So my Razor view is now a HTML5 page. I call this application - 5Commerce – (an over-simplified) HTML5 ECommerce site. So here’s the flow of the application: home page renders user enters first and last name, chooses a product and the quantity can enter additional instructions for the order place the order user is then taken to another page showing the order details Off to the details. This is what my page looks in Google Chrome 10 beta (or later) soon after it renders. Here are some of the things to observe on this. Look a little closer and you’ll see a border around the first name textbox – this is ‘autofocus’ in action. I’ve set the autofocus attribute on this textbox. So as soon as the page loads, this control gets focus. 1: <input type="text" autofocus id="firstName" class="inputWidth" data_minlength="" 2: data_maxlength="" placeholder="first name" /> See a partially grayed out ‘last name’ text in the second textbox. This is set using a placeholder attribute (see above). It gets wiped out on-focus and improves the UI visuals in general. The quantity textbox is actually a numerical-only textbox. 1: <input type="number" id="quantity" data_mincount="" class="inputWidth" /> The last line is for additional instructions. This looks like a label but it’s content is editable. Just adding the ‘contenteditable’ attribute to the span allow the user to edit the text inside. 1: <span contenteditable id="additionalInstructions" data_texttype="" class="editableContent">select text and edit </span> All of the above is just plain HTML (no lurking javascript acting in here). Makes it real clean and simple. Going more into the HTML, I see that the _Layout.cshtml already is using some HTML5 content. I created my project before installing SP1, so that was the reason for my surprise. 1: <!DOCTYPE html> This is the doctype declaration in HTML5 and this is supported even by IE6 (just take my word on IE6 now, don’t go install it to test it, especially when MS is doing an IE6 countdown). That’s just amazing and extremely easy to read remember and talk about a few less bytes on every call! I modified the rest of my _Layout.cshtml to the below: 1: <!DOCTYPE html> 2: <html> 3: <head> 4: <title>5Commerce - HTML 5 Ecommerce site</title> 5: <link href="@Url.Content("~/Content/Site.css")" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> 6: <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery-1.4.4.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> 7: <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/CustomScripts.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> 8: <script type="text/javascript"> 9: $(document).ready(function () { 10: WireupEvents(); 11: }); 12:</script> 13:  14: </head> 15:  16: <body role="document" class="bodybackground"> 17: <header role="heading"> 18: <h2>5Commerce - HTML 5 Ecommerce site!</h2> 19: </header> 20: <section id="mainForm"> 21: @RenderBody() 22: </section> 23: <footer id="page_footer" role="siteBaseInfo"> 24: <p>&copy; 2011 5Commerce Inc!</p> 25: </footer> 26: </body> 27: </html> I’m sure you’re seeing some of the new tags here. To give a brief intro about them: <header>, <footer>: Marks the header/footer region of a page or section. <section>: A logical grouping of content role attribute: Identifies the responsibility of an element. This attribute can be used by screen readers and can also be filtered through jQuery. SP1 also allows for some intellisense in HTML5. You see the other types of input fields – email, date, datetime, month, url and there are others as well. So once my page loads, i.e., ‘on document ready’, I’m wiring up the events following the principles of unobtrusive javascript. In the snippet below, I’m controlling the behavior of the input controls for specific events. 1: $("#productList").bind('change blur', function () { 2: IsSelectedProductValid(); 3: }); 4:  5: $("#quantity").bind('blur', function () { 6: IsQuantityValid(); 7: }); 8:  9: $("#placeOrderButton").click( 10: function () { 11: if (IsPageValid()) { 12: LoadProducts(); 13: } 14: }); This enables some client-side validation to occur before the data is sent to the server. These validation constraints are obtained through a JSON call to the WCF service and are set to the ‘data_’ attributes of the input controls. Have a look at the ‘GetValidators()’ function below: 1: function GetValidators() { 2: // the post to your webservice or page 3: $.ajax({ 4: type: "GET", //GET or POST or PUT or DELETE verb 5: url: "http://localhost:14805/OrderService.svc/GetValidators", // Location of the service 6: data: "{}", //Data sent to server 7: contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", // content type sent to server 8: dataType: "json", //Expected data format from server 9: processdata: true, //True or False 10: success: function (result) {//On Successfull service call 11: if (result.length > 0) { 12: for (i = 0; i < result.length; i++) { 13: if (result[i].PropertyName == "FirstName") { 14: if (result[i].MinLength > 0) { 15: $("#firstName").attr("data_minLength", result[i].MinLength); 16: } 17: if (result[i].MaxLength > 0) { 18: $("#firstName").attr("data_maxLength", result[i].MaxLength); 19: } 20: } 21: else if (result[i].PropertyName == "LastName") { 22: if (result[i].MinLength > 0) { 23: $("#lastName").attr("data_minLength", result[i].MinLength); 24: } 25: if (result[i].MaxLength > 0) { 26: $("#lastName").attr("data_maxLength", result[i].MaxLength); 27: } 28: } 29: else if (result[i].PropertyName == "Quantity") { 30: if (result[i].MinCount > 0) { 31: $("#quantity").attr("data_minCount", result[i].MinCount); 32: } 33: } 34: else if (result[i].PropertyName == "AdditionalInstructions") { 35: if (result[i].TextType.length > 0) { 36: $("#additionalInstructions").attr("data_textType", result[i].TextType); 37: } 38: } 39: } 40: } 41: }, 42: error: function (result) {// When Service call fails 43: alert('Service call failed: ' + result.status + ' ' + result.statusText); 44: } 45: }); 46:  47: //.... 48: } Just before the GetValidators() function runs and sets the validation constraints, this is what the html looks like (seen through the Dev tools of Chrome): After the function executes, you see the values in the ‘data_’  attributes. As and when we enter valid data into these fields, the error messages disappear, since the validation is bound to the blur event of the control. There you see… no error messages (well, the catch here is that once you enter THAT name, all errors disappear automatically). Clicking on ‘Place Order!’ runs the SaveOrder function. You can see the JSON for the order object that is getting constructed and passed to the WCF Service. 1: function SaveOrder() { 2: var addlInstructionsDefaultText = "select text and edit"; 3: var addlInstructions = $("span:first").text(); 4: if(addlInstructions == addlInstructionsDefaultText) 5: { 6: addlInstructions = ''; 7: } 8: var orderJson = { 9: AdditionalInstructions: addlInstructions, 10: Customer: { 11: FirstName: $("#firstName").val(), 12: LastName: $("#lastName").val() 13: }, 14: OrderedProduct: { 15: Id: $("#productList").val(), 16: Quantity: $("#quantity").val() 17: } 18: }; 19:  20: // the post to your webservice or page 21: $.ajax({ 22: type: "POST", //GET or POST or PUT or DELETE verb 23: url: "http://localhost:14805/OrderService.svc/SaveOrder", // Location of the service 24: data: JSON.stringify(orderJson), //Data sent to server 25: contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", // content type sent to server 26: dataType: "json", //Expected data format from server 27: processdata: false, //True or False 28: success: function (result) {//On Successfull service call 29: window.location.href = "http://localhost:14805/home/ShowOrderDetail/" + result; 30: }, 31: error: function (request, error) {// When Service call fails 32: alert('Service call failed: ' + request.status + ' ' + request.statusText); 33: } 34: }); 35: } The service saves this order into an XML file and returns the order id (a guid). On success, I redirect to the ShowOrderDetail action method passing the guid. This page will show all the details of the order. Although the back-end weightlifting is done by WCF, I did not show any of that plumbing-work as I wanted to concentrate more on the HTML5 and its associates. However, you can see it all in the source here. I do have one issue with HTML5 and this is an existing issue with HTML4 as well. If you see the snippet above where I’ve declared a textbox for first name, you’ll see the autofocus attribute just dangling by itself. It doesn’t follow the xml syntax of ‘key="value"’ allowing users to continue writing badly-formatted html even in the new version. You’ll see the same issue with the ‘contenteditable’ attribute as well. The work-around is that you can do ‘autofocus=”true”’ and it’ll work fine plus make it well-formatted. But unless the standards enforce this, there will be people (me included) who’ll get by, by just typing the bare minimum! Hoping this will get fixed in the coming version-updates. Source code here. Verdict: I think it’s time for us to embrace the new HTML5. Thank you HTML4 and Welcome HTML5.

  Read the article

• Table Variables: an empirical approach.

  - by Phil Factor

  It isn’t entirely a pleasant experience to publish an article only to have it described on Twitter as ‘Horrible’, and to have it criticized on the MVP forum. When this happened to me in the aftermath of publishing my article on Temporary tables recently, I was taken aback, because these critics were experts whose views I respect. What was my crime? It was, I think, to suggest that, despite the obvious quirks, it was best to use Table Variables as a first choice, and to use local Temporary Tables if you hit problems due to these quirks, or if you were doing complex joins using a large number of rows. What are these quirks? Well, table variables have advantages if they are used sensibly, but this requires some awareness by the developer about the potential hazards and how to avoid them. You can be hit by a badly-performing join involving a table variable. Table Variables are a compromise, and this compromise doesn’t always work out well. Explicit indexes aren’t allowed on Table Variables, so one cannot use covering indexes or non-unique indexes. The query optimizer has to make assumptions about the data rather than using column distribution statistics when a table variable is involved in a join, because there aren’t any column-based distribution statistics on a table variable. It assumes a reasonably even distribution of data, and is likely to have little idea of the number of rows in the table variables that are involved in queries. However complex the heuristics that are used might be in determining the best way of executing a SQL query, and they most certainly are, the Query Optimizer is likely to fail occasionally with table variables, under certain circumstances, and produce a Query Execution Plan that is frightful. The experienced developer or DBA will be on the lookout for this sort of problem. In this blog, I’ll be expanding on some of the tests I used when writing my article to illustrate the quirks, and include a subsequent example supplied by Kevin Boles. A simplified example. We’ll start out by illustrating a simple example that shows some of these characteristics. We’ll create two tables filled with random numbers and then see how many matches we get between the two tables. We’ll forget indexes altogether for this example, and use heaps. We’ll try the same Join with two table variables, two table variables with OPTION (RECOMPILE) in the JOIN clause, and with two temporary tables. It is all a bit jerky because of the granularity of the timing that isn’t actually happening at the millisecond level (I used DATETIME). However, you’ll see that the table variable is outperforming the local temporary table up to 10,000 rows. Actually, even without a use of the OPTION (RECOMPILE) hint, it is doing well. What happens when your table size increases? The table variable is, from around 30,000 rows, locked into a very bad execution plan unless you use OPTION (RECOMPILE) to provide the Query Analyser with a decent estimation of the size of the table. However, if it has the OPTION (RECOMPILE), then it is smokin’. Well, up to 120,000 rows, at least. It is performing better than a Temporary table, and in a good linear fashion. What about mixed table joins, where you are joining a temporary table to a table variable? You’d probably expect that the query analyzer would throw up its hands and produce a bad execution plan as if it were a table variable. After all, it knows nothing about the statistics in one of the tables so how could it do any better? Well, it behaves as if it were doing a recompile. And an explicit recompile adds no value at all. (we just go up to 45000 rows since we know the bigger picture now)   Now, if you were new to this, you might be tempted to start drawing conclusions. Beware! We’re dealing with a very complex beast: the Query Optimizer. It can come up with surprises What if we change the query very slightly to insert the results into a Table Variable? We change nothing else and just measure the execution time of the statement as before. Suddenly, the table variable isn’t looking so much better, even taking into account the time involved in doing the table insert. OK, if you haven’t used OPTION (RECOMPILE) then you’re toast. Otherwise, there isn’t much in it between the Table variable and the temporary table. The table variable is faster up to 8000 rows and then not much in it up to 100,000 rows. Past the 8000 row mark, we’ve lost the advantage of the table variable’s speed. Any general rule you may be formulating has just gone for a walk. What we can conclude from this experiment is that if you join two table variables, and can’t use constraints, you’re going to need that Option (RECOMPILE) hint. Count Dracula and the Horror Join. These tables of integers provide a rather unreal example, so let’s try a rather different example, and get stuck into some implicit indexing, by using constraints. What unusual words are contained in the book ‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker? Here we get a table of all the common words in the English language (60,387 of them) and put them in a table. We put them in a Table Variable with the word as a primary key, a Table Variable Heap and a Table Variable with a primary key. We then take all the distinct words used in the book ‘Dracula’ (7,558 of them). We then create a table variable and insert into it all those uncommon words that are in ‘Dracula’. i.e. all the words in Dracula that aren’t matched in the list of common words. To do this we use a left outer join, where the right-hand value is null. The results show a huge variation, between the sublime and the gorblimey. If both tables contain a Primary Key on the columns we join on, and both are Table Variables, it took 33 Ms. If one table contains a Primary Key, and the other is a heap, and both are Table Variables, it took 46 Ms. If both Table Variables use a unique constraint, then the query takes 36 Ms. If neither table contains a Primary Key and both are Table Variables, it took 116383 Ms. Yes, nearly two minutes!! If both tables contain a Primary Key, one is a Table Variables and the other is a temporary table, it took 113 Ms. If one table contains a Primary Key, and both are Temporary Tables, it took 56 Ms.If both tables are temporary tables and both have primary keys, it took 46 Ms. Here we see table variables which are joined on their primary key again enjoying a  slight performance advantage over temporary tables. Where both tables are table variables and both are heaps, the query suddenly takes nearly two minutes! So what if you have two heaps and you use option Recompile? If you take the rogue query and add the hint, then suddenly, the query drops its time down to 76 Ms. If you add unique indexes, then you've done even better, down to half that time. Here are the text execution plans.So where have we got to? Without drilling down into the minutiae of the execution plans we can begin to create a hypothesis. If you are using table variables, and your tables are relatively small, they are faster than temporary tables, but as the number of rows increases you need to do one of two things: either you need to have a primary key on the column you are using to join on, or else you need to use option (RECOMPILE) If you try to execute a query that is a join, and both tables are table variable heaps, you are asking for trouble, well- slow queries, unless you give the table hint once the number of rows has risen past a point (30,000 in our first example, but this varies considerably according to context). Kevin’s Skew In describing the table-size, I used the term ‘relatively small’. Kevin Boles produced an interesting case where a single-row table variable produces a very poor execution plan when joined to a very, very skewed table. In the original, pasted into my article as a comment, a column consisted of 100000 rows in which the key column was one number (1) . To this was added eight rows with sequential numbers up to 9. When this was joined to a single-tow Table Variable with a key of 2 it produced a bad plan. This problem is unlikely to occur in real usage, and the Query Optimiser team probably never set up a test for it. Actually, the skew can be slightly less extreme than Kevin made it. The following test showed that once the table had 54 sequential rows in the table, then it adopted exactly the same execution plan as for the temporary table and then all was well. Undeniably, real data does occasionally cause problems to the performance of joins in Table Variables due to the extreme skew of the distribution. We've all experienced Perfectly Poisonous Table Variables in real live data. As in Kevin’s example, indexes merely make matters worse, and the OPTION (RECOMPILE) trick does nothing to help. In this case, there is no option but to use a temporary table. However, one has to note that once the slight de-skew had taken place, then the plans were identical across a huge range. Conclusions Where you need to hold intermediate results as part of a process, Table Variables offer a good alternative to temporary tables when used wisely. They can perform faster than a temporary table when the number of rows is not great. For some processing with huge tables, they can perform well when only a clustered index is required, and when the nature of the processing makes an index seek very effective. Table Variables are scoped to the batch or procedure and are unlikely to hang about in the TempDB when they are no longer required. They require no explicit cleanup. Where the number of rows in the table is moderate, you can even use them in joins as ‘Heaps’, unindexed. Beware, however, since, as the number of rows increase, joins on Table Variable heaps can easily become saddled by very poor execution plans, and this must be cured either by adding constraints (UNIQUE or PRIMARY KEY) or by adding the OPTION (RECOMPILE) hint if this is impossible. Occasionally, the way that the data is distributed prevents the efficient use of Table Variables, and this will require using a temporary table instead. Tables Variables require some awareness by the developer about the potential hazards and how to avoid them. If you are not prepared to do any performance monitoring of your code or fine-tuning, and just want to pummel out stuff that ‘just runs’ without considering namby-pamby stuff such as indexes, then stick to Temporary tables. If you are likely to slosh about large numbers of rows in temporary tables without considering the niceties of processing just what is required and no more, then temporary tables provide a safer and less fragile means-to-an-end for you.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, August 14, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, August 14, 2014Popular ReleasesWordMat: WordMat for Mac: WordMat for Mac has a few limitations compared to the Windows version - Graph is not supported (Gnuplot, GeoGebra and Excel works) - Units are not supported yet (Coming up) The Mac version is yet as tested as the windows version.Awake: Awake v1.4.0 (Stand-Alone-Exe): Awake is a tool, that resides in system tray and prevents the computer from entering the idle state, thus successfully preventing it from entering sleep/hibernation/the lock screen. It does not change any system settings, therefore it does not require administrative privileges. This tool is designed for those who cannot change the timings in their power settings, because of some corporate policy.Node.js Tools for Visual Studio: Latest dev build: An intermediate release with the latest changes and bug fixes.HP OneView PowerShell Library: HP OneView PowerShell Library 1.10.1193: Branch to HP OneView 1.10 Release. NOTE: This library version does not support older appliance versions. Fixed New-HPOVProfile to check for Firmware and BIOS management for supported platforms. Would erroneously error when neither -firmware or -bios were passed. Fixed Remove-HPOV* cmdlets which did not handle -force switch parameter correctly Fixed New-HPOVUplinkSet and New-HPOVNetwork Fixed Download-File where HTTP stream compression was not handled, resulting in incorrectly writt...Linq 4 Javascript: Version 2.3: Minor Changes Made In Queryable - don't check for collection length with >=. Use === (In The Next Method) TypeScript Change Only - Remove collection source and other inherit properties from all the chainables. Also in typescript add private - public to all properties. This should cleanup the typescript namespace a bit TypeScript Change Only - Change return type of ToDictionary to TKey, T instead of T, TKey Changed the unit test to Typescript so I can test how the caller experience is in...NeoLua (Lua for .net dynamic language runtime): NeoLua-0.8.17: Fix: table.insert Fix: table auto convert Fix: Runtime-functions were defined as private it should be internal. Fix: min,max MichaelSenko release.Azure Maching Learning Excel Add-In: Beta: Download the zip file and extract into your local directory. Then watch the video tutorials for installation steps.MFCMAPI: August 2014 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1042 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010/2013 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeOooPlayer: 1.1: Added: Support for speex, TAK and OptimFrog files Added: An option to not to load cover art Added: Smaller package size Fixed: Unable to drag&drop audio files to playlist Updated: FLAC, WacPack and Opus playback libraries Updated: ID3v1 and ID3v2 tag librariesEWSEditor: EwsEditor 1.10 Release: • Export and import of items as a full fidelity steam works - without proxy classes! - I used raw EWS POSTs. • Turned off word wrap for EWS request field in EWS POST windows. • Several windows with scrolling texts boxes were limiting content to 32k - I removed this restriction. • Split server timezone info off to separate menu item from the timezone info windows so that the timezone info window could be used without logging into a mailbox. • Lots of updates to the TimeZone window. • UserAgen...Python Tools for Visual Studio: 2.1 RC: Release notes for PTVS 2.1 RC We’re pleased to announce the release candidate for Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.1. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, editing, IntelliSense, interactive debugging, profiling, Microsoft Azure, IPython, and cross-platform debugging support. PTVS 2.1 RC is available for: Visual Studio Expre...Sense/Net ECM - Enterprise CMS: SenseNet 6.3.1 Community Edition: Sense/Net 6.3.1 Community EditionSense/Net 6.3.1 is an important step toward a more modular infrastructure, robustness and maintainability. With this release we finally introduce a packaging and a task management framework, and the Image Editor that will surely make the job of content editors more fun. Please review the changes and new features since Sense/Net 6.3 and give a feedback on our forum! Main new featuresSnAdmin (packaging framework) Task Management Image Editor OData REST A...Aspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI SS - v 1.2: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI SS SDK in comparison with Aspose.Cells What's New ? Following Examples: Create Pivot Charts Detect Merged Cells Sort Data Printing Workbooks Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are available at Aspose Docs. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.MFCBDAINF: MFCBDAINF: Added recognition of TBS, Hauppauge, DVBWorld and FireDTV proprietary GUID'sFluffy: Fluffy 0.3.35.4: Change log: Text editorSKGL - Serial Key Generating Library: SKGL Extension Methods 4 (1.0.5.1): This library contains methods for: Time change check (make sure the time has not been changed on the client computer) Key Validation (this will use http://serialkeymanager.com/ to validate keys against the database) Key Activation (this will, depending on the settings, activate a key with a specific machine code) Key Activation Trial (allows you to update a key if it is a trial key) Get Machine Code (calculates a machine code given any hash function) Get Eight Byte Hash (returns an...Touchmote: Touchmote 1.0 beta 13: Changes Less GPU usage Works together with other Xbox 360 controls Bug fixesModern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.6: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. BREAKING CHANGE LinkGroup.GroupName renamed to GroupKey NEW FEATURES Improved rendering on high DPI screens, including support for per-monitor DPI awareness available in Windows 8.1 (see also Per-monitor DPI awareness) New ModernProgressRing control with 8 builtin styles New LinkCommands.NavigateLink routed command New Visual Studio project templates 'Modern UI WPF App' and 'Modern UI W...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.74.0: Multiple thread safe improvements including AdjustToContents XLHelper XLColor_Static IntergerExtensions.ToStringLookup Exception now thrown when saving a workbook with no sheets, instead of creating a corrupt workbook Fix for hyperlinks with non-ASCII Characters Added basic workbook protection Fix for error thrown, when a spreadsheet contained comments and images Fix to Trim function Fix Invalid operation Exception thrown when the formula functions MAX, MIN, and AVG referenc...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.042.019 Release 1: Added RadioAntenna broadcast name to ship name detail. Added two additional columns for Asteroid material generation for Asteroid Fields. Added Mass and Block number columns to main display. Added Ellipsis to some columns on main display to reduce name confusion. Added correct SE version number in file when saving. Re-added in reattaching Motor when drag/dropping or importing ships (KeenSH have added RotorEntityId back in after removing it months ago). Added option to export and r...New ProjectsAndroid PCM Audio Recording: Android PCM Audio Recording The source code records the PCM audio in android device.Azure Maching Learning Excel Add-In: The Azure ML Excel Add-In enables you to interact with Microsoft Azure Machine Learning WebServices through excel by adding the scoring endpoint as a function.bitboxx bbcontact: The bitboxx bbcontact module is a DNN module for providing a simple configurable contact form with easy setup and email notificationJD eSurvey Java Open Source Online Survey Application: JD eSurvey is an open source enterprise survey web application written in Java and based on the Spring Framework and Hibernate ORM developed by JD Software.Kobayashi Royale: A tactical space combat turn based game.OneApp Framework: Framework for building true cross platform application.Raspberry Pi Control Center: A GTK+ based Raspberry Pi Control Center. Made to be simple and fastSharePoint Farm's Logs Collector: Get Farm Logs from a centralized place. Sonar Snitch: Ferramenta para filtrar e monitorar aplicações no Sonar. Indica o quanto cada aplicação foi alterada em uma série de indicadores conhecidos.

  Read the article

• HTG Explains: Just How Bad Are Android Tablet Apps?

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Apple loves to criticize the state of Android tablet apps when pushing its own iPad tablets. But just how bad is the Android tablet app situation? Should you avoid Android tablets like the Nexus 7 because of the apps? It’s clear that Apple’s iPad is way ahead when it comes to the sheer quantity of tablet-optimized apps. It’s also clear that some popular apps — particularly touch-optimized games — only show up on iPad. But that’s not the whole story. The Basics First, let’s get an idea of the basic stuff that will work well for you on Android. An excellent web browser. Chrome has struggled with performance on Android, but hits its stride on the Nexus 7 (2013). Great, tablet-optimized apps for all of Google’s services, from YouTube to Gmail and Google Maps. Everything you need for reading, from Amazon’s Kindle app for eBooks, Flipboard and Feedly for new articles from websites, and other services like the popular Pocket read-it-later service. Apps for most popular media services, from Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube for videos to Pandora, Spotify, and Rdio for music. A few things aren’t available — you won’t find Apple’s iTunes and Amazon still doesn’t offer an Amazon Instant Video app for Android, while they do for iPad and even their own Android-based Kindle Fire devices. Android has very good app coverage when it comes to consuming content, whether you’re reading websites and ebooks or watching videos and listening to music. You can play almost any Android smartphone game, too. For content consumption, Android is better than something like Windows 8, which lacks apps for Google services like YouTube and still doesn’t have apps for popular media services like Spotify and Rdio. How Android Scales Smartphone Apps Let’s look at how Android scales smartphone apps. Now, bear with us here — we know “scaling” is a dirty word considering how poorly Apple’s iPad scales iPhone apps, but it’s not as bad on Android. When an iPad runs an iPhone app, it simply doubles the pixels and effectively zooms in. For example, if you had  Twitter app with five tweets visible at once on an iPhone and ran the same app on an iPad, the iPad would simply “zoom in” and enlarge the same screen — you’d still see five tweets, but each tweet would appear larger. This is why developers create optimized iPad apps with their own interfaces. It’s especially important on Apple’s iOS. Android devices come in all shapes and sizes, so Android apps have a smarter, more intelligent way to adapt to different screen sizes. Let’s say you have a Twitter app designed for smartphones and it only shows five tweets at once when run on a phone. If you ran the same app on a tablet, you wouldn’t see the same five tweets — you’d see ten or more tweets. Rather than simply zooming in, the app can show more content at the same time on a tablet, even if it was never optimized for tablet-size screens. While apps designed for smartphones aren’t generally ideal, they adapt much better on Android than they do on an iPad. This is particularly true when it comes to games. You’re capable of playing almost any Android smartphone game on an Android tablet, and games generally adapt very well to the larger screen. This gives you access to a huge catalog of games. It’s a great option to have, especially when you look at Microsoft’s Window 8 and consider how much better the touch-based app and game selection would be if Microsoft allowed its users to run Windows Phone games on Windows 8. 7-inch vs 10-inch Tablets The Twitter example above wasn’t just an example. The official Twitter app for Android still doesn’t have a tablet-optimized interface, so this is the sort of situation you’d have to deal with on an Android tablet. On the popular Nexus 7, Twitter is an example of a smartphone app that actually works fairly well — in portrait mode, you can see many more tweets on screen at the same time and none of the space really feels all that wasted. This is important to consider — smartphone apps like Twitter often scale quite well to 7-inch screens because a 7-inch screen is much closer in form factor to a smartphone than a 10-inch screen is. When you begin to look at 10-inch Android tablets that are the same size as an iPad, the situation changes. While the Twitter app works well enough on a Nexus 7, it looks horrible on a Nexus 10 or other 10-inch tablet. Running many smartphone-designed apps — possible with the exception of games — on a 10-inch tablet is a frustrating, poor experience. There’s much more white, empty space in the interface. It feels like you’re using a smartphone app on a large screen, and what’s the point of that? A tablet-optimized Twitter app for Android is finally on its way, but this same situation will repeat with many other types of apps. For example, Facebook doesn’t offer a tablet-optimized interface, but it’s okay on a Nexus 7 anyway. On a 10-inch screen, it probably wouldn’t be anywhere near as nice an experience. It goes without saying that Facebook and Twitter both offer iPad apps with interfaces designed for a tablet-size screen. Here’s another problematic app — the official Yelp app for Android. Even just using it on a 7-inch Nexus 7 will be a poor experience, while it would be much worse on a larger 10-inch tablet app. Now, it’s true that many — maybe even most — of the popular apps you might want to run today are optimized for Android tablets. But, when you look at the situation when it comes to popular apps like Twitter, Facebook, and Yelp, it’s clear Android is still behind in a meaningful way. Price Let’s be honest. The thing that really makes Android tablets compelling — and the only reason Android tablets started seeing real traction after years of almost complete dominance by Apple’s iPads — is that Android tablets are available for so much cheaper than iPads. Google’s latest Nexus 7 (2013) is available for only $230. Apple’s non-retina iPad Mini is available at $300, which is already $70 more. In spite of that, the iPad Mini has much older, slower internals and a much lower resolution screen. It’s not as nice to look at when it comes to reading or watching movies, and the iPad Mini reportedly struggles to run Apple’s latest iOS 7. In contrast, the new Nexus 7 has a very high resolution screen, speedy internals, and runs Android very well with little-to-no lag in real use. We haven’t had any problems with it, unlike all the problems we unfortunately encountered with the first Nexus 7. For a really comparable experience to the current Nexus 7, you’d want to get one of Apple’s new retina iPad Minis. That would cost you $400, another $170 over the Nexus 7. In fact, it’s possible to regularly find sales on the Nexus 7, so if you waited you could get it for just $200 — half the price of the iPad mini with a comparable screen and internals. (In fairness, the iPad certainly has better hardware — but you won’t feel if it you’re just using your tablet to browse the web, watch videos, and do other typical tablet things.) This makes a tablet like the popular Nexus 7 a very good option for budget-conscious users who just want a high-quality device they can use to browse the web, watch videos, play games, and generally do light computing. There’s a reason we’re focusing on the Nexus 7 here. The combination of price and size brings it to a very good place. It’s awfully cheap for the high-quality experience you get, and the 7-inch screen means that even the non-tablet-optimized apps you may stumble across will often work fairly well. On the other hand, more expensive 10-inch Android tablets are still a tougher sell. For $400-$500, you’re getting awfully close to Apple’s full-size iPad price range and Android tablets don’t have as good an app ecosystem as an iPad. It’s hard to recommend an expensive, 10-inch Android tablet over a full-size iPad to average users. In summary, the Android app tablet app situation is nowhere near as bad as it was a few years ago. The success of the Nexus 7 proves that Android tablets can be compelling experiences, and there are a wide variety of strong apps. That said, more expensive 10-inch Android tablets that compete directly with the full-size iPad on price still don’t make much sense for most people.  Unless you have a specific reason for preferring an Android tablet, it’s tough not to recommend an iPad if you’re looking at spending $400+ on a 10-inch tablet. Image Credit: Christian Ghanime on Flickr, Christian Ghanime on Flickr     

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, October 21, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, October 21, 2011Popular ReleasesCodekicker.BBCode: CodeKicker.BBCode-Parser-5.0: This is the best and newest version.Self-Tracking Entity Generator for WPF and Silverlight: Self-Tracking Entity Generator v 0.9.9: Self-Tracking Entity Generator v 0.9.9 for Entity Framework 4.0Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 5.0 CMS Alpha 3: Umbraco 5 Alpha 3Umbraco 5 (aka Jupiter) will be the next version of everyone's favourite, friendly ASP.NET CMS that already powers over 100,000 websites worldwide. Try out the Alpha of v5 today! If you're new to Umbraco and would like to get a low-down on our popular and easy-to-learn approach to content management, check out our intro video. What's Alpha 3?This is our third Alpha release. It's intended for developers looking to become familiar with the codebase & architecture, or for thos...thinktecture IdentityServer: IdentityServer RC: This is the RC of Thinktecture.IdentityServerWebForms.ControlExtender: WebForms.ControlExtender 1.0.0.0 (binary): Initial release.Windows Phone 7 Skydrive Library: Skydrive WP7 rel. 1: Till the Rest Api gets out of beta you can use this release You can: - browse the folders -download files It uses WebDAVVkontakte WP: Vkontakte: source codeDotNet.Framework.Common: DotNetFramework.Common?????: DotNetFramework.Common?????Way2Sms Applications for Android, Desktop/Laptop & Java enabled phones: Way2SMS Desktop App v2.0: 1. Fixed issue with sending messages due to changes to Way2Sms site 2. Updated the character limit to 160 from 140GART - Geo Augmented Reality Toolkit: 1.0.1: About Release 1.0.1 Release 1.0.1 is a service release that addresses several issues and improves performance. As always, check the Documentation tab for instructions on how to get started. If you don't have the Windows Phone SDK yet, grab it here. Breaking Change Please note: There is a breaking change in this release. As noted below, the WorldCalculationMode property of ARItem has been replaced by a user-definable function. ARItem is now automatically wired up with a function that perform...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.32: Fix for issue #16710 - string literals in "constant literal operations" which contain ASP.NET substitutions should not be considered "constant." Move the JS1284 error (Misplaced Function Declaration) so it only fires when in strict mode. I got a couple complaints that people didn't like that error popping up in their existing code when they could verify that the location of that function, although not strict JS, still functions as expected cross-browser.Naked Objects: Naked Objects Release 4.0.110.0: Corresponds to the packaged version 4.0.110.0 available via NuGet. Please note that the easiest way to install and run the Naked Objects Framework is via the NuGet package manager: just search the Official NuGet Package Source for 'nakedobjects'. It is only necessary to download the source code (from here) if you wish to modify or re-build the framework yourself. If you do wish to re-build the framework, consul the file HowToBuild.txt in the release. Documentation Please note that after ...myCollections: Version 1.5: New in this version : Added edit type for selected elements Added clean for selected elements Added Amazon Italia Added Amazon China Added TVDB Italia Added TVDB China Added Turkish language You can now manually add artist Added Order by Rating Improved Add by Media Improved Artist Detail Upgrade Sqlite engine View, Zoom, Grouping, Filter are now saved by category Added group by Artist Added CubeCover View BugFixingFacebook C# SDK: 5.3: This is a BETA release which adds new features and bug fixes to v5.2.1. removed dependency from Code Contracts enabled Task Parallel Support in .NET 4.0+ added support for early preview for .NET 4.5 added additional method overloads for .NET 4.5 to support IProgress<T> for upload progress added new CS-WinForms-AsyncAwait.sln sample demonstrating the use of async/await, upload progress report using IProgress<T> and cancellation support Query/QueryAsync methods uses graph api instead...IronPython: 2.7.1 RC: This is the first release candidate of IronPython 2.7.1. Like IronPython 54498, this release requires .NET 4 or Silverlight 4. This release will replace any existing IronPython installation. If there are no showstopping issues, this will be the only release candidate for 2.7.1, so please speak up if you run into any roadblocks. The highlights of 2.7.1 are: Updated the standard library to match CPython 2.7.2. Add the ast, csv, and unicodedata modules. Fixed several bugs. IronPython To...Rawr: Rawr 4.2.6: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...Home Access Plus+: v7.5: Change Log: New Booking System (out of Beta) New Help Desk (out of Beta) New My Files (Developer Preview) Token now saved into Cookie so the system doesn't TIMEOUT as much File Changes: ~/bin/hap.ad.dll ~/bin/hap.web.dll ~/bin/hap.data.dll ~/bin/hap.web.configuration.dll ~/bookingsystem/admin/default.aspx ~/bookingsystem/default.aspx REMOVED ~/bookingsystem/bookingpopup.ascx REMOVED ~/bookingsystem/daylist.ascx REMOVED ~/bookingsystem/new.aspx ~/helpdesk/default.aspx ...Visual Micro - Arduino for Visual Studio: Arduino for Visual Studio 2008 and 2010: Arduino for Visual Studio 2010 has been extended to support Visual Studio 2008. The same functionality and configuration exists between the two versions. The 2010 addin runs .NET4 and the 2008 addin runs .NET3.5, both are installed using a single msi and both share the same configuration settings. The only known issue in 2008 is that the button and menu icons are missing. Please logon to the visual micro forum and let us know if things are working or not. Read more about this Visual Studio ...DotSpatial: Release: Moved IExtension to a separate assembly.Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.1 (October 2011) for .NET 4.0: October 2011 release of Phalanger - the PHP compiler for .NET 4.0 - introduces following: Performance enhancements several duplicitous runtime checks omitted New functionality 31586 __toString() magic method compile time check hash_update_stream() supports second argument Issue fixes 31455 PCRE named groups addcslashes() with second argument fix 31577 31575, 31567 31566 31484 Note if you need Phalanger running on .NET 2.0, please use Phalanger 2.0. For the full list of cha...New Projects#foo SqlServer: Useful Sql Server extensionsBaufQuery: Material de la presentación que voy a realizar en Baufest sobre jQueryBoringColorPicker: A simple color picker i created on a busy Saturday morning, and i couldn't stress myself calculating color codes. I hope someone finds it useful. Developed in c#, for desktop use.Charity Social Network1: ????? ??? ?????? ??? ?????2 devianARTGallery: <devianART Gallery> makes it easier for <artist, graphic designer, art, web designer, interface design> to<following news images, graphics, vectors and new resouces for your needs at this application in your hands>. It's developing in<C# windows phone 7>Diving: MVC Application for testingDotNet.Framework.Common: .NET ??????????Drama-AddictFeed: Retrieve feed a top siteDuckWorld: Logica architect courseEasy Monitor: ??ASP.NET_MVC4???????????????，????。 Server, Monitoring, ASP.net, mvc, mvc4, svg, vml, KVDB, WebsiteEvent_Manager: Event Manager V 2FETCH! Go Fetch that remote task. Good task doogie!: Email sent, task accomplished. This little task execution agent can be a remote domain support's best friend. Save time on late night and off hours administration tasks. When there is no time to RDP, send Fetch an email and he'll take care of it quick. Secure, reliable. InQuestaRed UTN: Proyecto de UTNInsert from Windows Live Image Search: Allows you to do an image search using Windows Live Search and put the resulting image into a blog entry.ioak: iOakLibertyJournal free diary journal software: LibertyJournal - A freeware personal diary software/journal software/program, could become your personal digital diary and journal software to record your daily events and memories, in your creative words. Runs on Desktop PCs, and Netbooks too.memcachedext - .NET library: A .NET library providing support for advanced caching scenarios, including memcached server.myWebfetion: my web fetionNuMetaheuristics: NuMetaheuristics is a general framework for optimization developed in C#. It is capable of supporting any optimization paradigm (local search, naturally inspired, multi-objective, etc.). It supports extensions to allow for new genotypes, operators, and algorithms.Oil Prices: Application about Thailand's oil pricesOnline Ontology Editor: Online Ontology BuilderOrchard Documentation: Orchard Documentation repository.QuipuxConnector: QuipuxConnector es el primer Addins para word que permite enviar documentos a QuipuxSignature Recognition: An application that authenticates scanned signature images.SmartFramework: SmartFramework là n?n t?ng xây d?ng các h? th?ng l?n connect t?i các ngu?n CSDL khác nhau, d?c bi?t là các h? th?ng online, real-time.smartKin: Studienarbeit TIT 09 - Kinect / Robotik Zum räumlichen Sehen von Robotern mit Kinect: Initiale Experimente für 3D-Szenen Rekonstruktion, Steuerung durch natürliche GestenTAudioPlayer: TAudioPlayer would take more facility in your aural comprehension exercise. It most conspicuous function is comfortably add time-tags to an audio file which is playing and you can jump to the position you defined easily. It also provides various hotkey setting and you can define most of the operation hotkey by yourself. The project is developed in C# with Visual Studio 2010.Watin - TestEasy: WatiN - TestEasy is the idea to make WatiN based test generation and excution easier. Mainly it will provide interface to data driven automation using WatiN.WebForms.ControlExtender: WebForms.ControlExtender simplify the creation of components which extend (or adds) their own properties to other controls or components in the Visual Studio ASP.NET designer.Windows Phone 7 Skydrive Library: Use this library if you need to access Skydrive from Windows PhonezDBA: SQL Server 2008 tookit!

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381  | Next Page >