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• Displaying JSON in your Browser

  - by Rick Strahl

  Do you work with AJAX requests a lot and need to quickly check URLs for JSON results? Then you probably know that it’s a fairly big hassle to examine JSON results directly in the browser. Yes, you can use FireBug or Fiddler which work pretty well for actual AJAX requests, but if you just fire off a URL for quick testing in the browser you usually get hit by the Save As dialog and the download manager, followed by having to open the saved document in a text editor in FireFox. Enter JSONView which allows you to simply display JSON results directly in the browser. For example, imagine I have a URL like this: http://localhost/westwindwebtoolkitweb/RestService.ashx?Method=ReturnObject&format=json&Name1=Rick&Name2=John&date=12/30/2010 typed directly into the browser and that that returns a complex JSON object. With JSONView the result looks like this: No fuss, no muss. It just works. Here the result is an array of Person objects that contain additional address child objects displayed right in the browser. JSONView basically adds content type checking for application/json results and when it finds a JSON result takes over the rendering and formats the display in the browser. Note that it re-formats the raw JSON as well for a nicer display view along with collapsible regions for objects. You can still use View Source to see the raw JSON string returned. For me this is a huge time-saver. As I work with AJAX result data using GET and REST style URLs quite a bit it’s a big timesaver. To quickly and easily display JSON is a key feature in my development day and JSONView for all its simplicity fits that bill for me. If you’re doing AJAX development and you often review URL based JSON results do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of JSONView. Other Browsers JSONView works only with FireFox – what about other browsers? Chrome Chrome actually displays raw JSON responses as plain text without any plug-ins. There’s no plug-in or configuration needed, it just works, although you won’t get any fancy formatting. [updated from comments] There’s also a port of JSONView available for Chrome from here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chklaanhfefbnpoihckbnefhakgolnmc It looks like it works just about the same as the JSONView plug-in for FireFox. Thanks for all that pointed this out… Internet Explorer Internet Explorer probably has the worst response to JSON encoded content: It displays an error page as it apparently tries to render JSON as XML: Yeah that seems real smart – rendering JSON as an XML document. WTF? To get at the actual JSON output, you can use View Source. To get IE to display JSON directly as text you can add a Mime type mapping in the registry:   Create a new application/json key in: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\ContentType\application/json Add a string value of CLSID with a value of {25336920-03F9-11cf-8FD0-00AA00686F13} Add a DWORD value of Encoding with a value of 80000 I can’t take credit for this tip – found it here first on Sky Sander’s Blog. Note that the CLSID can be used for just about any type of text data you want to display as plain text in the IE. It’s the in-place display mechanism and it should work for most text content. For example it might also be useful for looking at CSS and JS files inside of the browser instead of downloading those documents as well. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET  AJAX  

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• “Query cost (relative to the batch)” <> Query cost relative to batch

  - by Dave Ballantyne

  OK, so that is quite a contradictory title, but unfortunately it is true that a common misconception is that the query with the highest percentage relative to batch is the worst performing.  Simply put, it is a lie, or more accurately we dont understand what these figures mean. Consider the two below simple queries: SELECT * FROM Person.BusinessEntity JOIN Person.BusinessEntityAddress ON Person.BusinessEntity.BusinessEntityID = Person.BusinessEntityAddress.BusinessEntityID go SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail JOIN Sales.SalesOrderHeader ON Sales.SalesOrderDetail.SalesOrderID = Sales.SalesOrderHeader.SalesOrderID After executing these and looking at the plans, I see this : So, a 13% / 87% split ,  but 13% / 87% of WHAT ? CPU ? Duration ? Reads ? Writes ? or some magical weighted algorithm ?  In a Profiler trace of the two we can find the metrics we are interested in. CPU and duration are well out but what about reads (210 and 1935)? To save you doing the maths, though you are more than welcome to, that’s a 90.2% / 9.8% split.  Close, but no cigar. Lets try a different tact.  Looking at the execution plan the “Estimated Subtree cost” of query 1 is 0.29449 and query 2 its 1.96596.  Again to save you the maths that works out to 13.03% and 86.97%, round those and thats the figures we are after.  But, what is the worrying word there ? “Estimated”.  So these are not “actual”  execution costs,  but what’s the problem in comparing the estimated costs to derive a meaning of “Most Costly”.  Well, in the case of simple queries such as the above , probably not a lot.  In more complicated queries , a fair bit. By modifying the second query to also show the total number of lines on each order SELECT *,COUNT(*) OVER (PARTITION BY Sales.SalesOrderDetail.SalesOrderID) FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail JOIN Sales.SalesOrderHeader ON Sales.SalesOrderDetail.SalesOrderID = Sales.SalesOrderHeader.SalesOrderID The split in percentages is now 6% / 94% and the profiler metrics are : Even more of a discrepancy. Estimates can be out with actuals for a whole host of reasons,  scalar UDF’s are a particular bug bear of mine and in-fact the cost of a udf call is entirely hidden inside the execution plan.  It always estimates to 0 (well, a very small number). Take for instance the following udf Create Function dbo.udfSumSalesForCustomer(@CustomerId integer) returns money as begin Declare @Sum money Select @Sum= SUM(SalesOrderHeader.TotalDue) from Sales.SalesOrderHeader where CustomerID = @CustomerId return @Sum end If we have two statements , one that fires the udf and another that doesn't: Select CustomerID from Sales.Customer order by CustomerID go Select CustomerID,dbo.udfSumSalesForCustomer(Customer.CustomerID) from Sales.Customer order by CustomerID The costs relative to batch is a 50/50 split, but the has to be an actual cost of firing the udf. Indeed profiler shows us : No where even remotely near 50/50!!!! Moving forward to window framing functionality in SQL Server 2012 the optimizer sees ROWS and RANGE ( see here for their functional differences) as the same ‘cost’ too SELECT SalesOrderDetailID,SalesOrderId, SUM(LineTotal) OVER(PARTITION BY salesorderid ORDER BY Salesorderdetailid RANGE unbounded preceding) from Sales.SalesOrderdetail go SELECT SalesOrderDetailID,SalesOrderId, SUM(LineTotal) OVER(PARTITION BY salesorderid ORDER BY Salesorderdetailid Rows unbounded preceding) from Sales.SalesOrderdetail By now it wont be a great display to show you the Profiler trace reads a *tiny* bit different. So moral of the story, Percentage relative to batch can give a rough ‘finger in the air’ measurement, but dont rely on it as fact.

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• Endless terrain in jMonkey using TerrainGrid fails to render

  - by nightcrawler23

  I have started to learn game development using jMonkey engine. I am able to create single tile of terrain using TerrainQuad but as the next step I'm stuck at making it infinite. I have gone through the wiki and want to use the TerrainGrid class but my code does not seem to work. I have looked around on the web and searched other forums but cannot find any other code example to help. I believe in the below code, ImageTileLoader returns an image which is the heightmap for that tile. I have modified it to return the same image every time. But all I see is a black window. The Namer method is not even called. terrain = new TerrainGrid("terrain", patchSize, 513, new ImageTileLoader(assetManager, new Namer() { public String getName(int x, int y) { //return "Scenes/TerrainMountains/terrain_" + x + "_" + y + ".png"; System.out.println("X = " + x + ", Y = " + y); return "Textures/heightmap.png"; } })); These are my sources: jMonkeyEngine 3 Tutorial (10) - Hello Terrain TerrainGridTest.java ImageTileLoader This is the result when i use TerrainQuad: , My full code: // Sample 10 - How to create fast-rendering terrains from heightmaps, and how to // use texture splatting to make the terrain look good. public class HelloTerrain extends SimpleApplication { private TerrainQuad terrain; Material mat_terrain; private float grassScale = 64; private float dirtScale = 32; private float rockScale = 64; public static void main(String[] args) { HelloTerrain app = new HelloTerrain(); app.start(); } private FractalSum base; private PerturbFilter perturb; private OptimizedErode therm; private SmoothFilter smooth; private IterativeFilter iterate; @Override public void simpleInitApp() { flyCam.setMoveSpeed(200); initMaterial(); AbstractHeightMap heightmap = null; Texture heightMapImage = assetManager.loadTexture("Textures/heightmap.png"); heightmap = new ImageBasedHeightMap(heightMapImage.getImage()); heightmap.load(); int patchSize = 65; //terrain = new TerrainQuad("my terrain", patchSize, 513, heightmap.getHeightMap()); // * This Works but below doesnt work* terrain = new TerrainGrid("terrain", patchSize, 513, new ImageTileLoader(assetManager, new Namer() { public String getName(int x, int y) { //return "Scenes/TerrainMountains/terrain_" + x + "_" + y + ".png"; System.out.println("X = " + x + ", Y = " + y); return "Textures/heightmap.png"; // set to return the sme hieghtmap image. } })); terrain.setMaterial(mat_terrain); terrain.setLocalTranslation(0,-100, 0); terrain.setLocalScale(2f, 1f, 2f); rootNode.attachChild(terrain); TerrainLodControl control = new TerrainLodControl(terrain, getCamera()); terrain.addControl(control); } public void initMaterial() { // TERRAIN TEXTURE material this.mat_terrain = new Material(this.assetManager, "Common/MatDefs/Terrain/HeightBasedTerrain.j3md"); // GRASS texture Texture grass = this.assetManager.loadTexture("Textures/white.png"); grass.setWrap(WrapMode.Repeat); this.mat_terrain.setTexture("region1ColorMap", grass); this.mat_terrain.setVector3("region1", new Vector3f(-10, 0, this.grassScale)); // DIRT texture Texture dirt = this.assetManager.loadTexture("Textures/white.png"); dirt.setWrap(WrapMode.Repeat); this.mat_terrain.setTexture("region2ColorMap", dirt); this.mat_terrain.setVector3("region2", new Vector3f(0, 900, this.dirtScale)); Texture building = this.assetManager.loadTexture("Textures/building.png"); building.setWrap(WrapMode.Repeat); this.mat_terrain.setTexture("slopeColorMap", building); this.mat_terrain.setFloat("slopeTileFactor", 32); this.mat_terrain.setFloat("terrainSize", 513); } }

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• Web Services for Info Explorer Zones

  - by Anthony Shorten

  One of the most interesting uses for XAI and Configurable objects is the exposure of a query portal as a Web Service. Let me illustrate this with an example. Say you have an interface that requires a list of data from a number of product tables. In the past you would have to build a java program to do this with SQL then use an application service but it is now possible with just configuration. The first step in the process is to create the SQL you want to use for the interface. It can be any valid static SQL or use host variables for the WHERE clause (we call that filtered). Once you are happy with the SQL (and it performs acceptably) you can incorporate that SQL into a Info-Explorer Zone. You can use any of the explorer zone types but I typically recommend F1-DE-SINGLE as it supports a single SQL statement with multiple filters (up to 15) as well as hidden filters (up to 5). Hidden filters are typically not displayed in the UI for criteria (remember explorer zones can be used on the user Interface as well) but for web services they can be used as normal filters (this means you can use up to 20 filters all up). Once you are happy with the zone, you now need to define it as a Business Service. We have a generic service called FWLZDEXP which allows a explorer zone to be defined as a Business Service. If you open any Business Service based upon FWLZDEXP you will see some examples. The schema is standard and pretty self explanatory in terms of the structure. The schema pattern looks like this: Zone element - maps to the ZONE_CD element and the default value is the zone name you just created. This links the business service to the zone. Filter elements - You name the filters as you like but the mapField is set to Fx_VALUE where x is the filter number corresponding to the filter element in the zone definition. Hidden filter elements - You name the filters as you like but the mapField is set to Hx_VALUE where x is the filter number corresponding to the hidden filter element in the zone definition. results group - this holds the elements of the result set. Each element in your result set has a tagname and is linked to the COL_VALUE mapField and the row element is lists the SEQNO of the column. This corresponds to the column number in the results set in the zone. An example schema is shown below for the F1-USGRACML zone, which returns the access modes for a user group and application service filters. In the example, the userGroup and applicationService elements are the filters and the rows would contain a list of accessModeDescr. This is just a simple example to illustrate the point. There are lots of examples in the product that you can investigate. One recommendation, to save time, is that you copy the schema from one of the examples to save you typing it from scratch. You can simply modify the tags and other elements to suit your needs. Once the Business Service is defined it can simply be defined as a Web Service by registering an XAI Inbound Service using the Business Service definition as a basis. You now have a Web Service based upon a Info Explorer Zone. This is one of my favorite components as it allows interfaces to be simplified. This will be my last blog entry for this year. I hope you all have a great and safe Christmas and an even greater new year. Next year promises to be an exciting year and I look forward to communicating exciting developments we are working on at the moment as they are released.

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• Where Next for Google Translate? And What of Information Quality?

  - by ultan o'broin

  Fascinating article in the UK Guardian newspaper called Can Google break the computer language barrier? In it, Andreas Zollman, who works on Google Translate, comments that the quality of Google Translate's output relative to the amount of data required to create that output is clearly now falling foul of the law of diminishing returns. He says: "Each doubling of the amount of translated data input led to about a 0.5% improvement in the quality of the output," he suggests, but the doublings are not infinite. "We are now at this limit where there isn't that much more data in the world that we can use," he admits. "So now it is much more important again to add on different approaches and rules-based models." The Translation Guy has a further discussion on this, called Google Translate is Finished. He says: "And there aren't that many doublings left, if any. I can't say how much text Google has assimilated into their machine translation databases, but it's been reported that they have scanned about 11% of all printed content ever published. So double that, and double it again, and once more, shoveling all that into the translation hopper, and pretty soon you get the sum of all human knowledge, which means a whopping 1.5% improvement in the quality of the engines when everything has been analyzed. That's what we've got to look forward to, at best, since Google spiders regularly surf the Web, which in its vastness dwarfs all previously published content. So to all intents and purposes, the statistical machine translation tools of Google are done. Outstanding job, Googlers. Thanks." Surprisingly, all this analysis hasn't raised that much comment from the fans of machine translation, or its detractors either for that matter. Perhaps, it's the season of goodwill? What is clear to me, however, of course is that Google Translate isn't really finished (in any sense of the word). I am sure Google will investigate and come up with new rule-based translation models to enhance what they have already and that will also scale effectively where others didn't. So too, will they harness human input, which really is the way to go to train MT in the quality direction. But that aside, what does it say about the quality of the data that is being used for statistical machine translation in the first place? From the Guardian article it's clear that a huge humanly translated corpus drove the gains for Google Translate and now what's left is the dregs of badly translated and poorly created source materials that just can't deliver quality translations. There's a message about information quality there, surely. In the enterprise applications space, where we have some control over content this whole debate reinforces the relationship between information quality at source and translation efficiency, regardless of the technology used to do the translation. But as more automation comes to the fore, that information quality is even more critical if you want anything approaching a scalable solution. This is important for user experience professionals. Issues like user generated content translation, multilingual personalization, and scalable language quality are central to a superior global UX; it's a competitive issue we cannot ignore.

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• It&rsquo;s ok to throw System.Exception&hellip;

  - by Chris Skardon

  No. No it’s not. It’s not just me saying that, it’s the Microsoft guidelines: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229007.aspx  Do not throw System.Exception or System.SystemException. Also – as important: Do not catch System.Exception or System.SystemException in framework code, unless you intend to re-throw.. Throwing: Always, always try to pick the most specific exception type you can, if the parameter you have received in your method is null, throw an ArgumentNullException, value received greater than expected? ArgumentOutOfRangeException. For example: public void ArgChecker(int theInt, string theString) { if (theInt < 0) throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("theInt", theInt, "theInt needs to be greater than zero."); if (theString == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("theString"); if (theString.Length == 0) throw new ArgumentException("theString needs to have content.", "theString"); } Why do we want to do this? It’s a lot of extra code when compared with a simple: public void ArgChecker(int theInt, string theString) { if (theInt < 0 || string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(theString)) throw new Exception("The parameters were invalid."); } It all comes down to a couple of things; the catching of the exceptions, and the information you are passing back to the calling code. Catching: Ok, so let’s go with introduction level Exception handling, taught by many-a-university: You do all your work in a try clause, and catch anything wrong in the catch clause. So this tends to give us code like this: try { /* All the shizzle */ } catch { /* Deal with errors */ } But of course, we can improve on that by catching the exception so we can report on it: try { } catch(Exception ex) { /* Log that 'ex' occurred? */ } Now we’re at the point where people tend to go: Brilliant, I’ve got exception handling nailed, what next??? and code gets littered with the catch(Exception ex) nastiness. Why is it nasty? Let’s imagine for a moment our code is throwing an ArgumentNullException which we’re catching in the catch block and logging. Ok, the log entry has been made, so we can debug the code right? We’ve got all the info… What about an OutOfMemoryException – what can we do with that? That’s right, not a lot, chances are you can’t even log it (you are out of memory after all), but you’ve caught it – and as such - have hidden it. So, as part of this, there are two things you can do one, is the rethrow method: try { /* code */ } catch (Exception ex) { //Log throw; } Note, it’s not catch (Exception ex) { throw ex; } as that will wipe all your important stack trace information. This does get your exception to continue, and is the only reason you would catch Exception (anywhere other than a global catch-all) in your code. The other preferred method is to catch the exceptions you can deal with. It may not matter that the string I’m passing in is null, and I can cope with it like this: try{ DoSomething(myString); } catch(ArgumentNullException){} And that’s fine, it means that any exceptions I can’t deal with (OutOfMemory for example) will be propagated out to other code that can deal with it. Of course, this is horribly messy, no one wants try / catch blocks everywhere and that’s why Microsoft added the ‘Try’ methods to the framework, and it’s a strategy we should continue. If I try: int i = (int) "one"; I will get an InvalidCastException which means I need the try / catch block, but I could mitigate this using the ‘TryParse’ method: int i; if(!Int32.TryParse("one", out i)) return; Similarly, in the ‘DoSomething’ example, it might be beneficial to have a ‘TryDoSomething’ that returns a boolean value indicating the success of continuing. Obviously this isn’t practical in every case, so use the ol’ common sense approach. Onwards Yer thanks Chris, I’m looking forward to writing tonnes of new code. Fear not, that is where helpers come into it… (but that’s the next post)

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• Restricting Input in HTML Textboxes to Numeric Values

  - by Rick Strahl

  Ok, here’s a fairly basic one – how to force a textbox to accept only numeric input. Somebody asked me this today on a support call so I did a few quick lookups online and found the solutions listed rather unsatisfying. The main problem with most of the examples I could dig up was that they only include numeric values, but that provides a rather lame user experience. You need to still allow basic operational keys for a textbox – navigation keys, backspace and delete, tab/shift tab and the Enter key - to work or else the textbox will feel very different than a standard text box. Yes there are plug-ins that allow masked input easily enough but most are fixed width which is difficult to do with plain number input. So I took a few minutes to write a small reusable plug-in that handles this scenario. Imagine you have a couple of textboxes on a form like this: <div class="containercontent"> <div class="label">Enter a number:</div> <input type="text" name="txtNumber1" id="txtNumber1" value="" class="numberinput" /> <div class="label">Enter a number:</div> <input type="text" name="txtNumber2" id="txtNumber2" value="" class="numberinput" /> </div> and you want to restrict input to numbers. Here’s a small .forceNumeric() jQuery plug-in that does what I like to see in this case: [Updated thanks to Elijah Manor for a couple of small tweaks for additional keys to check for] <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function () { $(".numberinput").forceNumeric(); }); // forceNumeric() plug-in implementation jQuery.fn.forceNumeric = function () { return this.each(function () { $(this).keydown(function (e) { var key = e.which || e.keyCode; if (!e.shiftKey && !e.altKey && !e.ctrlKey && // numbers key >= 48 && key <= 57 || // Numeric keypad key >= 96 && key <= 105 || // comma, period and minus key == 190 || key == 188 || key == 109 || // Backspace and Tab and Enter key == 8 || key == 9 || key == 13 || // Home and End key == 35 || key == 36 || // left and right arrows key == 37 || key == 39 || // Del and Ins key == 46 || key == 45) return true; return false; }); }); } </script> With the plug-in in place in your page or an external .js file you can now simply use a selector to apply it: $(".numberinput").forceNumeric(); The plug-in basically goes through each selected element and hooks up a keydown() event handler. When a key is pressed the handler is fired and the keyCode of the event object is sent. Recall that jQuery normalizes the JavaScript Event object between browsers. The code basically white-lists a few key codes and rejects all others. It returns true to indicate the keypress is to go through or false to eat the keystroke and not process it which effectively removes it. Simple and low tech, and it works without too much change of typical text box behavior.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in JavaScript  jQuery  HTML  

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• July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 22 (sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats)

  - by Tamarick Hill

  The sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats Dynamic Management Function is used to return information about the fragmentation levels, page counts, depth, number of levels, record counts, etc. about the indexes on your database instance. One row is returned for each level in a given index, which we will discuss more later. The function takes a total of 5 input parameters which are (1) database_id, (2) object_id, (3) index_id, (4) partition_number, and (5) the mode of the scan level that you would like to run. Let’s use this function with our AdventureWorks2012 database to better illustrate the information it provides. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(db_id('AdventureWorks2012'), NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL) As you can see from the result set, there is a lot of beneficial information returned from this DMF. The first couple of columns in the result set (database_id, object_id, index_id, partition_number, index_type_desc, alloc_unit_type_desc) are either self-explanatory or have been explained in our previous blog sessions so I will not go into detail about these at this time. The next column in the result set is the index_depth which represents how deep the index goes. For example, If we have a large index that contains 1 root page, 3 intermediate levels, and 1 leaf level, our index depth would be 5. The next column is the index_level which refers to what level (of the depth) a particular row is referring to. Next is probably one of the most beneficial columns in this result set, which is the avg_fragmentation_in_percent. This column shows you how fragmented a particular level of an index may be. Many people use this column within their index maintenance jobs to dynamically determine whether they should do REORG’s or full REBUILD’s of a given index. The fragment count represents the number of fragments in a leaf level while the avg_fragment_size_in_pages represents the number of pages in a fragment. The page_count column tells you how many pages are in a particular index level. From my result set above, you see the the remaining columns all have NULL values. This is because I did not specify a ‘mode’ in my query and as a result it used the ‘LIMITED’ mode by default. The LIMITED mode is meant to be lightweight so it does collect information for every column in the result set. I will re-run my query again using the ‘DETAILED’ mode and you will see we now have results for these rows. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(db_id('AdventureWorks2012'), NULL, NULL, NULL, ‘DETAILED’)   From the remaining columns, you see we get even more detailed information such as how many records are in a particular index level (record_count). We have a column for ghost_record_count which represents the number of records that have been marked for deletion, but have not physically been removed by the background ghost cleanup process. We later see information on the MIN, MAX, and AVG record size in bytes. The forwarded_record_count column refers to records that have been updated and now no longer fit within the row on the page anymore and thus have to be moved. A forwarded record is left in the original location with a pointer to the new location. The last column in the result set is the compressed_page_count column which tells you how many pages in your index have been compressed. This is a very powerful DMF that returns good information about the current indexes in your system. However, based on the mode you select, it could be a very resource intensive function so be careful with how you use it. For more information on this Dynamic Management Function, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188917.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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• Intel I217LM ethernet controller not detected by Ubuntu 12.04LTS

  - by Alexandr Kurilin

  My last installation of Ubuntu 12.04 on a machine using an ASUS Q87M-E motherboard with an Intel I217LM Ethernet controller has failed to detect the ethernet card. The only thing displayed by ifconfig -a is the loopback. I double-checked in the BIOS, and the controller should be online. $ rfkill list all 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no $ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Haswell DRAM Controller (rev 06) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Haswell PCI Express x16 Controller (rev 06) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06) 00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Haswell HD Audio Controller (rev 06) 00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Lynx Point USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Lynx Point MEI Controller #1 (rev 04) 00:16.3 Serial controller: Intel Corporation Lynx Point KT Controller (rev 04) 00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Device 153a (rev 04) 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Lynx Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Lynx Point HD Audio Controller (rev 04) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Lynx Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Lynx Point LPC Controller (rev 04) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Lynx Point 6-Port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 04) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Lynx Point SMBus Controller (rev 04) $ lsmod Module Size Used by vesafb 13844 1 snd_hda_codec_realtek 224173 1 arc4 12529 2 joydev 17693 0 usbhid 47238 0 hid 99636 1 usbhid rfcomm 47604 0 rt73usb 31735 0 crc_itu_t 12707 1 rt73usb rt2x00usb 20808 1 rt73usb rt2x00lib 55326 2 rt73usb,rt2x00usb mac80211 506862 2 rt2x00usb,rt2x00lib cfg80211 205774 2 rt2x00lib,mac80211 eeepc_wmi 13109 0 bnep 18281 2 asus_wmi 24456 1 eeepc_wmi sparse_keymap 13890 1 asus_wmi psmouse 97485 0 bluetooth 180153 10 rfcomm,bnep ppdev 17113 0 snd_hda_intel 33719 6 snd_hda_codec 127706 2 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel snd_seq_midi 13324 0 snd_hwdep 17764 1 snd_hda_codec snd_rawmidi 30748 1 snd_seq_midi serio_raw 13211 0 snd_pcm 97275 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec snd_seq_midi_event 14899 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq 61929 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event snd_timer 29990 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq snd_seq_device 14540 3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq parport_pc 32866 1 snd 79041 21 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_rawmidi,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device video 19651 0 soundcore 15091 1 snd wmi 19256 1 asus_wmi snd_page_alloc 18529 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm mac_hid 13253 0 lp 17799 0 parport 46562 3 ppdev,parport_pc,lp $ ifconfig lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:1091 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:1091 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:80048 (80.0 KB) TX bytes:80048 (80.0 KB) wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:fd:07:91:a8:b9 inet addr:172.16.42.4 Bcast:172.16.42.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::2fd:7ff:fe91:a8b9/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:56644 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:36417 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:85270918 (85.2 MB) TX bytes:3413849 (3.4 MB) additionally, running sudo lshw -C network returns: *-network UNCLAIMED description: Ethernet Controller [...] I'm pretty stumped at this point. This doesn't sound like a very uncommon ethernet controller and I figured it would be picked up by the system. Does anybody have advice for how to deal with this? Anything specific I should look into to figure out what could be causing this? Edit: It seems that following the guide on the Intel e1000e drivers page allowed the card to start working. Is this a real fix or is there a better way?

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• C# 4.0: COM Interop Improvements

  - by Paulo Morgado

  Dynamic resolution as well as named and optional arguments greatly improve the experience of interoperating with COM APIs such as Office Automation Primary Interop Assemblies (PIAs). But, in order to alleviate even more COM Interop development, a few COM-specific features were also added to C# 4.0. Ommiting ref Because of a different programming model, many COM APIs contain a lot of reference parameters. These parameters are typically not meant to mutate a passed-in argument, but are simply another way of passing value parameters. Specifically for COM methods, the compiler allows to declare the method call passing the arguments by value and will automatically generate the necessary temporary variables to hold the values in order to pass them by reference and will discard their values after the call returns. From the point of view of the programmer, the arguments are being passed by value. This method call: object fileName = "Test.docx"; object missing = Missing.Value; document.SaveAs(ref fileName, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing); can now be written like this: document.SaveAs("Test.docx", Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value); And because all parameters that are receiving the Missing.Value value have that value as its default value, the declaration of the method call can even be reduced to this: document.SaveAs("Test.docx"); Dynamic Import Many COM methods accept and return variant types, which are represented in the PIAs as object. In the vast majority of cases, a programmer calling these methods already knows the static type of a returned object form the context of the call, but has to explicitly perform a cast on the returned values to make use of that knowledge. These casts are so common that they constitute a major nuisance. To make the developer’s life easier, it is now possible to import the COM APIs in such a way that variants are instead represented using the type dynamic which means that COM signatures have now occurrences of dynamic instead of object. This means that members of a returned object can now be easily accessed or assigned into a strongly typed variable without having to cast. Instead of this code: ((Excel.Range)(excel.Cells[1, 1])).Value2 = "Hello World!"; this code can now be used: excel.Cells[1, 1] = "Hello World!"; And instead of this: Excel.Range range = (Excel.Range)(excel.Cells[1, 1]); this can be used: Excel.Range range = excel.Cells[1, 1]; Indexed And Default Properties A few COM interface features are still not available in C#. On the top of the list are indexed properties and default properties. As mentioned above, these will be possible if the COM interface is accessed dynamically, but will not be recognized by statically typed C# code. No PIAs – Type Equivalence And Type Embedding For assemblies indentified with PrimaryInteropAssemblyAttribute, the compiler will create equivalent types (interfaces, structs, enumerations and delegates) and embed them in the generated assembly. To reduce the final size of the generated assembly, only the used types and their used members will be generated and embedded. Although this makes development and deployment of applications using the COM components easier because there’s no need to deploy the PIAs, COM component developers are still required to build the PIAs.

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• Using Lambdas for return values in Rhino.Mocks

  - by PSteele

  In a recent StackOverflow question, someone showed some sample code they’d like to be able to use.  The particular syntax they used isn’t supported by Rhino.Mocks, but it was an interesting idea that I thought could be easily implemented with an extension method. Background When stubbing a method return value, Rhino.Mocks supports the following syntax: dependency.Stub(s => s.GetSomething()).Return(new Order()); The method signature is generic and therefore you get compile-time type checking that the object you’re returning matches the return value defined by the “GetSomething” method. You could also have Rhino.Mocks execute arbitrary code using the “Do” method: dependency.Stub(s => s.GetSomething()).Do((Func<Order>) (() => new Order())); This requires the cast though.  It works, but isn’t as clean as the original poster wanted.  They showed a simple example of something they’d like to see: dependency.Stub(s => s.GetSomething()).Return(() => new Order()); Very clean, simple and no casting required.  While Rhino.Mocks doesn’t support this syntax, it’s easy to add it via an extension method. The Rhino.Mocks “Stub” method returns an IMethodOptions<T>.  We just need to accept a Func<T> and use that as the return value.  At first, this would seem straightforward: public static IMethodOptions<T> Return<T>(this IMethodOptions<T> opts, Func<T> factory) { opts.Return(factory()); return opts; } And this would work and would provide the syntax the user was looking for.  But the problem with this is that you loose the late-bound semantics of a lambda.  The Func<T> is executed immediately and stored as the return value.  At the point you’re setting up your mocks and stubs (the “Arrange” part of “Arrange, Act, Assert”), you may not want the lambda executing – you probably want it delayed until the method is actually executed and Rhino.Mocks plugs in your return value. So let’s make a few small tweaks: public static IMethodOptions<T> Return<T>(this IMethodOptions<T> opts, Func<T> factory) { opts.Return(default(T)); // required for Rhino.Mocks on non-void methods opts.WhenCalled(mi => mi.ReturnValue = factory()); return opts; } As you can see, we still need to set up some kind of return value or Rhino.Mocks will complain as soon as it intercepts a call to our stubbed method.  We use the “WhenCalled” method to set the return value equal to the execution of our lambda.  This gives us the delayed execution we’re looking for and a nice syntax for lambda-based return values in Rhino.Mocks. Technorati Tags: .NET,Rhino.Mocks,Mocking,Extension Methods

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• Am I right about the differences between Floyd-Warshall, Dijkstra's and Bellman-Ford algorithms?

  - by Programming Noob

  I've been studying the three and I'm stating my inferences from them below. Could someone tell me if I have understood them accurately enough or not? Thank you. Dijkstra's algorithm is used only when you have a single source and you want to know the smallest path from one node to another, but fails in cases like this Floyd-Warshall's algorithm is used when any of all the nodes can be a source, so you want the shortest distance to reach any destination node from any source node. This only fails when there are negative cycles (this is the most important one. I mean, this is the one I'm least sure about:) 3.Bellman-Ford is used like Dijkstra's, when there is only one source. This can handle negative weights and its working is the same as Floyd-Warshall's except for one source, right? If you need to have a look, the corresponding algorithms are (courtesy Wikipedia): Bellman-Ford: procedure BellmanFord(list vertices, list edges, vertex source) // This implementation takes in a graph, represented as lists of vertices // and edges, and modifies the vertices so that their distance and // predecessor attributes store the shortest paths. // Step 1: initialize graph for each vertex v in vertices: if v is source then v.distance := 0 else v.distance := infinity v.predecessor := null // Step 2: relax edges repeatedly for i from 1 to size(vertices)-1: for each edge uv in edges: // uv is the edge from u to v u := uv.source v := uv.destination if u.distance + uv.weight < v.distance: v.distance := u.distance + uv.weight v.predecessor := u // Step 3: check for negative-weight cycles for each edge uv in edges: u := uv.source v := uv.destination if u.distance + uv.weight < v.distance: error "Graph contains a negative-weight cycle" Dijkstra: 1 function Dijkstra(Graph, source): 2 for each vertex v in Graph: // Initializations 3 dist[v] := infinity ; // Unknown distance function from 4 // source to v 5 previous[v] := undefined ; // Previous node in optimal path 6 // from source 7 8 dist[source] := 0 ; // Distance from source to source 9 Q := the set of all nodes in Graph ; // All nodes in the graph are 10 // unoptimized - thus are in Q 11 while Q is not empty: // The main loop 12 u := vertex in Q with smallest distance in dist[] ; // Start node in first case 13 if dist[u] = infinity: 14 break ; // all remaining vertices are 15 // inaccessible from source 16 17 remove u from Q ; 18 for each neighbor v of u: // where v has not yet been 19 removed from Q. 20 alt := dist[u] + dist_between(u, v) ; 21 if alt < dist[v]: // Relax (u,v,a) 22 dist[v] := alt ; 23 previous[v] := u ; 24 decrease-key v in Q; // Reorder v in the Queue 25 return dist; Floyd-Warshall: 1 /* Assume a function edgeCost(i,j) which returns the cost of the edge from i to j 2 (infinity if there is none). 3 Also assume that n is the number of vertices and edgeCost(i,i) = 0 4 */ 5 6 int path[][]; 7 /* A 2-dimensional matrix. At each step in the algorithm, path[i][j] is the shortest path 8 from i to j using intermediate vertices (1..k-1). Each path[i][j] is initialized to 9 edgeCost(i,j). 10 */ 11 12 procedure FloydWarshall () 13 for k := 1 to n 14 for i := 1 to n 15 for j := 1 to n 16 path[i][j] = min ( path[i][j], path[i][k]+path[k][j] );

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• Monitoring the Application alongside SQL Server

  - by Tony Davis

  Sometimes, on Simple-Talk, it takes a while to spot strange and unexpected patterns of user activity, or small bugs. For example, one morning we spotted that an article’s comment count had leapt to 1485, but that only four were displayed. With some rooting around in Google Analytics, and the endlessly annoying Community Server admin-interface, we were able to work out that a few days previously the article had been subject to a spam attack and that the comment count was for some reason including both accepted and unaccepted comments (which in turn uncovered a bug in the SQL). This sort of incident made us a lot keener on monitoring Simple-talk website usage more effectively. However, the metrics we wanted are troublesome, because they are far too specific for Google Analytics to measure, and the SQL Server backend doesn’t keep sufficient information to enable us to plot trends. The latter could provide, for example, the total number of comments made on, or votes cast for, articles, over all time, but not the number that occur by hour over a set time. We lacked a baseline, in other words. We couldn’t alter the database, as it is a bought-in package. We had neither the resources nor inclination to build-in dedicated application monitoring. Possibly, we could investigate a third-party tool to do the job; but then it occurred to us that we were already using a monitoring tool (SQL Monitor) to keep an eye on the database. It stored data, made graphs and sent alerts. Could we get it to monitor some aspects of the application as well? Of course, SQL Monitor’s single purpose is to check and monitor SQL Server, over time, rather than to monitor applications that use SQL Server. However, how different is the business of gathering and plotting SQL Server Wait Stats, from gathering and plotting various aspects of user activity on the site? Not a lot, it turns out. The latest version allows us to write our own custom monitoring scripts, meaning that we could now monitor any metric in the application that returns an integer. It took little time to write a simple SQL Query that collects basic metrics of the total number of subscribers, votes cast, comments made, or views of articles, over time. The SQL Monitor database polls Simple-Talk every second or so in order to get the latest totals, and can then store and plot this information, or even correlate SQL Server usage to application usage. You can see the live data by visiting monitor.red-gate.com. Click the "Analysis" tab, and select one of the "Simple-talk:" entries in the "Show" box and an appropriate data range (e.g. last 30 days). It’s nascent, and we’re still working on it, but it’s already given us more confidence that we’ll spot quickly trends, bugs, or bursts of ‘abnormal’ activity. If there is a sudden rise in comments, we get an alert, and if it’s due to a spam attack, we can moderate or ban the perpetrator very quickly. We’ve often argued that a tool should perform a single job well rather than turn into a Swiss-army knife, but ironically we’ve rather appreciated being able to make best use of what’s there anyway for a slightly different purpose. Is this a good or common practice? What do you think? Cheers, Tony.

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• How to detect and configure an output with xrandr?

  - by ysap

  I have a DELL U2410 monitor connected to a Compaq 100B desktop equipped with an integrated AMD/ATI graphics card (AMD E-350). The installed O/S is Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. The computer is connected to the monitor via the DVI connection. The problem is that I cannot set the desktop resolution to the native 1920x1200. The maximum allowed resolution is 1600x1200. Doing some research I found about the xrandr utility. Unfortunately, when trying to use it I cannot configure it to the required resolution. First, it does not report the output name (which supposed to be DVI-0), saying default instead. Without it I cannot use the --fb option. The EDID utility seems to identify the monitor well. Here's the output from get-edid: # EDID version 1 revision 3 Section "Monitor" # Block type: 2:0 3:ff # Block type: 2:0 3:fc Identifier "DELL U2410" VendorName "DEL" ModelName "DELL U2410" # Block type: 2:0 3:ff # Block type: 2:0 3:fc # Block type: 2:0 3:fd HorizSync 30-81 VertRefresh 56-76 # Max dot clock (video bandwidth) 170 MHz # DPMS capabilities: Active off:yes Suspend:yes Standby:yes Mode "1920x1200" # vfreq 59.950Hz, hfreq 74.038kHz DotClock 154.000000 HTimings 1920 1968 2000 2080 VTimings 1200 1203 1209 1235 Flags "-HSync" "+VSync" EndMode # Block type: 2:0 3:ff # Block type: 2:0 3:fc # Block type: 2:0 3:fd EndSection but the xrandr -q command returns: Screen 0: minimum 640 x 400, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200 default connected 1600x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm 1600x1200 0.0* 1280x1024 0.0 1152x864 0.0 1024x768 0.0 800x600 0.0 640x480 0.0 720x400 0.0 When I try to set the resolution, I get: $ xrandr --fb 1920x1200 xrandr: screen cannot be larger than 1600x1200 (desired size 1920x1200) $ xrandr --output DVI-0 --auto warning: output DVI-0 not found; ignoring How can I set the screen resolution to 1920x1200? Why doesn't xrandr identify the DVI-0 output? Note that the same computer running Ubuntu version higher than 10.04 detects the correct resolution with no problems. On this machine I cannot upgrade due to some legacy hardware compatibility problems. Also, I don't see any optional screen drivers available in the Hardware Drivers dialog. ---- UPDATE: following the answer to this question, I got some advance. Now the required mode is listed in the xrandr -q list, but I can't switch to that mode. Using the Monitors applet (which now shows the new mode), I get the response that: The selected configuration for displays could not be applied. Could not set the configuration to CRTC 262. From the command line it looks like this: $ cvt 1920 1200 60 # 1920x1200 59.88 Hz (CVT 2.30MA) hsync: 74.56 kHz; pclk: 193.25 MHz Modeline "1920x1200_60.00" 193.25 1920 2056 2256 2592 1200 1203 1209 1245 -hsync +vsync $ xrandr --newmode "1920x1200_60.00" 193.25 1920 2056 2256 2592 1200 1203 1209 1245 -hsync +vsync $ xrandr -q Screen 0: minimum 640 x 400, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200 default connected 1600x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm 1600x1200 0.0* 1280x1024 0.0 1152x864 0.0 1024x768 0.0 800x600 0.0 640x480 0.0 720x400 0.0 1920x1200_60.00 (0x120) 193.0MHz h: width 1920 start 2056 end 2256 total 2592 skew 0 clock 74.5KHz v: height 1200 start 1203 end 1209 total 1245 clock 59.8Hz $ xrandr --addmode default 1920x1200_60.00 $ xrandr -q Screen 0: minimum 640 x 400, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200 default connected 1600x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm 1600x1200 0.0* 1280x1024 0.0 1152x864 0.0 1024x768 0.0 800x600 0.0 640x480 0.0 720x400 0.0 1920x1200_60.00 59.8 $ xrandr --output default --mode 1920x1200_60.00 xrandr: Configure crtc 0 failed Another piece of info (if it helps anyone): $ sudo lshw -c video *-display UNCLAIMED description: VGA compatible controller product: ATI Technologies Inc vendor: ATI Technologies Inc physical id: 1 bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0 version: 00 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm pciexpress msi bus_master cap_list configuration: latency=0 resources: memory:c0000000-cfffffff(prefetchable) ioport:f000(size=256) memory:feb00000-feb3ffff

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• RTL (Arabic and Hebrew) Support for Windows Phone 7

  - by Daniel Moth

  Problem and Background Currently there is no support for Right-To-Left rendering in Windows Phone 7, when developing with Silverlight (itself built on .NET Compact Framework). When I encountered that limitation, I had a flashback to 2005 when I complained about the luck of RTL on NETCF. Unfortunately, the partial solution I proposed back then requires PInvoke and there is no such support on Windows Phone today. Fortunately, my RTL requirements this time were more modest: all I wanted to do was display correctly a translation (of Hebrew or Arabic) in my FREE WP7 translator app. For v1.0 of the app, the code received a string from the service and just put it up on the screen as the translated text. In Arabic and Hebrew, that string (incorrectly) appeared reversed. I knew that, but decided that since it is a platform limitation, I could live with it and so could the users. Yuval P, a colleague at Microsoft, pushed me to offer support for Hebrew (something that I wasn't motivated to pursue if I am honest). After many back and forths, we landed on some code that works. It is certainly not the most efficient code (quite the opposite), but it works and met the bar of minimum effort for v1.1. Thanks Yuval for insisting and contributing most of the code! After Hebrew support was there, I thought the same solution would work for Arabic. Apparently, reversing the Arabic text is not enough: Arabic characters render themselves differently dependent on what preceded/succeeds them(!). So I needed some kind of utility that takes a reversed Arabic string and returns the same string but with the relevant characters "fixed". Luckily, another MS colleague has put out such a library (thanks Bashar): http://arabic4wp7.codeplex.com/. RTL Solution So you have a reversed RTL string and want to make it "right" before displaying on the screen. This is what worked for me (ymmv). Need to split the string into "lines". Not doing this and just reversing the string and sticking it a wrapping text control means that the user not only has to read right to left, they also have to read bottom up. The previous step must take into account a line length that works for both portrait and landscape modes, and of course, not break words in the middle, i.e. find natural breaks. For each line, break it up into words and reverse the order of the words and the order of the letters within each word On the previous step, do not reverse words that should be preserved, e.g. Windows and other such English words that are mixed in with the Arabic or Hebrew words. The same exclusion from reversal applies to numbers. Specifically, for Arabic, once there is a word that is reversed also change its characters. For some code paths, the above has to take into account whether the translation is "from" an RTL language or if it is "to" an RTL language. I packaged the solution in a single code file containing a static class (see the 'Background" section above for… background and credits). Download RTL.cs for your Windows Phone app (to see its usage in action download for FREE "The best translator app") Enjoy, and if you decide to improve on the code, feel free to share back with me… Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• SQL SERVER – Discard Results After Query Execution – SSMS

  - by pinaldave

  The first thing I do any day is to turn on the computer. Today I woke up and as soon as I turned on the computer I saw a chat message from a friend. He was a bit confused and wanted me to help him. Just as usual I am keeping the relevant conversation in focus and documenting our conversation as chat. Let us call him Ajit. Ajit: Pinal, every time I run a query there is no result displayed in the SSMS but when I run the query in my application it works and returns an appropriate result. Pinal:  Have you tried with different parameters? Ajit: Same thing. However, it works from another computer when I connect to the same server with the same query parameters? Pinal: What? That is new and I believe it is something to do with SSMS and not with the server. Send me screenshot please. Ajit: I believe so, let me send you a screenshot, Pinal: (looking at the screenshot) Oh man, there is no result-tab at all. Ajit: That is what the problem is. It does not have the tab which displays the result. This works just fine from another computer. Pinal: Have you referred Nakul’s blog post – SSMS – Query result options – Discard result after query executes, that talks about setting which can discard the query results after execution. (After a while) Ajit: I think it seems like on the computer where I am running the query my SSMS seems to have the option enabled related to discarding results. I fixed it by following Nakul’s blog post. Pinal: Great! Quite often I get the question what is the importance of the feature. Let us first see how to turn on or turn off this feature in SQL Server Management Studio 2012. In SSMS 2012 go to Tools >> Options >> Query Results > SQL Server >> Results to Grid >> Discard Results After Query Execution. When enabled this option will discard results after the execution. The advantage of disabling the option is that it will improve the performance by using less memory. However the real question is why would someone enable or disable the option. What are the cases when someone wants to run the query but do not care about the result? Matter of the fact, it does not make sense at all to run query and not care about the result. The matter of the fact, I can see quite a few reasons for using this option. I often enable this option when I am doing performance tuning exercise. During performance tuning exercise when I am working with execution plans and do not need results to verify every time or when I am tuning Indexes and its effect on execution plan I do not need the results. In this kind of situations I do keep this option on and discard the results. It always helps me big time as in most of the performance tuning exercise I am dealing with huge amount of the data and dealing with this data can be expensive. Nakul’s has done the experiment here already but I am going to repeat the same again using AdventureWorks Database. Run following T-SQL Script with and without enabling the option to discard the results. USE AdventureWorks2012 GO SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail GO 10 After enabling Discard Results After Query Execution After disabling Discard Results After Query Execution Well, this is indeed a good option when someone is debugging the execution plan or does not want the result to be displayed. Please note that this option does not reduce IO or CPU usage for SQL Server. It just discards the results after execution and a good help for debugging on the development server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Integration Patterns with Azure Service Bus Relay, Part 3.5: Node.js relay

  - by Elton Stoneman

  This is an extension to Part 3 in the IPASBR series, see also: Integration Patterns with Azure Service Bus Relay, Part 1: Exposing the on-premise service Integration Patterns with Azure Service Bus Relay, Part 2: Anonymous full-trust .NET consumer Integration Patterns with Azure Service Bus Relay, Part 3: Anonymous partial-trust consumer In Part 3 I said “there isn't actually a .NET requirement here”, and this post just follows up on that statement. In Part 3 we had an ASP.NET MVC Website making a REST call to an Azure Service Bus service; to show that the REST stuff is really interoperable, in this version we use Node.js to make the secure service call. The code is on GitHub here: IPASBR Part 3.5. The sample code is simpler than Part 3 - rather than code up a UI in Node.js, the sample just relays the REST service call out to Azure. The steps are the same as Part 3: REST call to ACS with the service identity credentials, which returns an SWT; REST call to Azure Service Bus Relay, presenting the SWT; request gets relayed to the on-premise service. In Node.js the authentication step looks like this: var options = { host: acs.namespace() + '-sb.accesscontrol.windows.net', path: '/WRAPv0.9/', method: 'POST' }; var values = { wrap_name: acs.issuerName(), wrap_password: acs.issuerSecret(), wrap_scope: 'http://' + acs.namespace() + '.servicebus.windows.net/' }; var req = https.request(options, function (res) { console.log("statusCode: ", res.statusCode); console.log("headers: ", res.headers); res.on('data', function (d) { var token = qs.parse(d.toString('utf8')); callback(token.wrap_access_token); }); }); req.write(qs.stringify(values)); req.end(); Once we have the token, we can wrap it up into an Authorization header and pass it to the Service Bus call: token = 'WRAP access_token=\"' + swt + '\"'; //... var reqHeaders = { Authorization: token }; var options = { host: acs.namespace() + '.servicebus.windows.net', path: '/rest/reverse?string=' + requestUrl.query.string, headers: reqHeaders }; var req = https.request(options, function (res) { console.log("statusCode: ", res.statusCode); console.log("headers: ", res.headers); response.writeHead(res.statusCode, res.headers); res.on('data', function (d) { var reversed = d.toString('utf8') console.log('svc returned: ' + d.toString('utf8')); response.end(reversed); }); }); req.end(); Running the sample Usual routine to add your own Azure details into Solution Items\AzureConnectionDetails.xml and “Run Custom Tool” on the .tt files. Build and you should be able to navigate to the on-premise service at http://localhost/Sixeyed.Ipasbr.Services/FormatService.svc/rest/reverse?string=abc123 and get a string response, going to the service direct. Install Node.js (v0.8.14 at time of writing), run FormatServiceRelay.cmd, navigate to http://localhost:8013/reverse?string=abc123, and you should get exactly the same response but through Node.js, via Azure Service Bus Relay to your on-premise service. The console logs the WRAP token returned from ACS and the response from Azure Service Bus Relay which it forwards:

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• Using the RSSBus Salesforce Excel Add-In From Excel Macros (VBA)

  - by dataintegration

  The RSSBus Salesforce Excel Add-In makes it easy to retrieve and update data from Salesforce from within Microsoft Excel. In addition to the built-in wizards that make data manipulation possible without code, the full functionality of the RSSBus Excel Add-Ins is available programmatically with Excel Macros (VBA) and Excel Functions. This article shows how to write an Excel macro that can be used to perform bulk inserts into Salesforce. Although this article uses the Salesforce Excel Add-In as an example, the same process can be applied to any of the Excel Add-Ins available on our website. Step 1: Download and install the RSSBus Excel Add-In available on our website. Step 2: Open Excel and create place holder cells for the connection details that are needed from the macro. In this article, a spreadsheet will be created for batch inserts, and these cells will store the connection details, and will be used to report the job Id, the batch Id, and the batch status. Step 3: Switch to the Developer tab in Excel. Add a new button on the spreadsheet, and create a new macro associated with it. This macro will contain the code needed to insert a batch of rows into Salesforce. Step 4: Add a reference to the Excel Add-In by selecting Tools --> References --> RSSBus Excel Add-In. The macro functions of the Excel Add-In will be available once the reference has been added. The following code shows how to call a Stored Procedure. In this example, a job is created to insert Leads by calling the CreateJob stored procedure. CreateJob returns a jobId that can be used to upload a large number of Leads in one transaction. Note the use of cells B1, B2, B3, and B4 that were created in Step 2 to read the connection settings from the Excel SpreadSheet and to write out the status of the procedure. methodName = "CreateJob" module.SetProviderName ("Salesforce") nameArray = Array("ObjectName", "Action", "ConcurrencyMode") valueArray = Array("Lead", "insert", "Serial") user = Range("B1").value pass = Range("B2").value atoken = Range("B3").value If (Not user = "" And Not pass = "" And Not atoken = "") Then module.SetConnectionString ("User=" + user + ";Password=" + pass + ";Access Token=" + atoken + ";") If module.CallSP(methodName, nameArray, valueArray) Then Dim ColumnCount As Integer ColumnCount = module.GetColumnCount Dim idIndex As Integer For Count = 0 To ColumnCount - 1 Dim colName As String colName = module.GetColumnName(Count) If module.GetColumnName(Count) = "id" Then idIndex = Count End If Next While (Not module.EOF) Range("B4").value = module.GetValue(idIndex) module.MoveNext Wend Else MsgBox "The CreateJob query failed." End If Exit Sub Else MsgBox "Please specify the connection details." Exit Sub End If Error: MsgBox "ERROR: " & Err.Description Step 5: Add the code to your macro. If you use the code above, you can check the results at Salesforce.com. They can be seen at Administration Setup -> Monitoring -> Bulk Data Load Jobs. Download the attached sample file for a more complete demo. Distributing an Excel File With Macros An Excel file with macros is saved using the .xlms extension. The code for the macro remains in the Excel file, and you can distribute your Excel file to any machine where the RSSBus Salesforce Excel Add-In is already installed. Macro Sample File Please download the fully functional sample excel file that includes the code referenced here. You will also need the RSSBus Excel Add-In to make the connection. You can download a free trial here. Note: You may get an error message stating: "Can't find project or library." in Excel 2007, since this example is made using Excel 2010. To resolve this, navigate to Tools -> References and uncheck the "MISSING: RSSBus Excel Add-In", then scroll down and check the "RSSBus Excel Add-In" listed below it.

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• How to inhibit suspend temporarily?

  - by Zorn

  I have searched around a bit for this and can't seem to find anything helpful. I have my PC running Ubuntu 12.10 set up to suspend after 30 minutes of inactivity. I don't want to change that, it works great most of the time. What I do want to do is disable the automatic suspend if a particular application is running. How can I do this? The closest thing I've found so far is to add a shell script in /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d which checks if the application is running and returns 1 to indicate that suspend should be prevented. But it looks like the system then gives up on suspending automatically, instead of trying again after another 30 minutes. (As far as I can tell, if I move the mouse, that restarts the timer again.) It's quite likely the application will finish after a couple of hours, and I'd rather my PC then suspended automatically if I'm not using it at that point. (So I don't want to add a call to pm-suspend when the application finishes.) Is this possible? Any advice would be appreciated. Cheers. EDIT: As I noted in one of the comments below, what I actually wanted was to inhibit suspend when my PC was serving files over NFS; I just wanted to focus on the "suspend" part of the question because I already had an idea how to solve the NFS part. Using the 'xdotool' idea given in one of the answers, I have come up with the following script which I run from cron every few minutes. It's not ideal because it stops the screensaver kicking in as well, but it does work. I need to have a look at why 'caffeine' doesn't correctly re-enable suspend later on, then I could probably do better. Anyway, this does seem to work, so I'm including it here in case anyone else is interested. #!/bin/bash # If the output of this function changes between two successive runs of this # script, we inhibit auto-suspend. function check_activity() { /usr/sbin/nfsstat --server --list } # Prevent the automatic suspend from kicking in. function inhibit_suspend() { # Slightly jiggle the mouse pointer about; we do a small step and # reverse step to try to stop this being annoying to anyone using the # PC. TODO: This isn't ideal, apart from being a bit hacky it stops # the screensaver kicking in as well, when all we want is to stop # the PC suspending. Can 'caffeine' help? export DISPLAY=:0.0 xdotool mousemove_relative --sync -- 1 1 xdotool mousemove_relative --sync -- -1 -1 } LOG="$HOME/log/nfs-suspend-blocker.log" ACTIVITYFILE1="$HOME/tmp/nfs-suspend-blocker.current" ACTIVITYFILE2="$HOME/tmp/nfs-suspend-blocker.previous" echo "Started run at $(date)" >> "$LOG" if [ ! -f "$ACTIVITYFILE1" ]; then check_activity > "$ACTIVITYFILE1" exit 0; fi /bin/mv "$ACTIVITYFILE1" "$ACTIVITYFILE2" check_activity > "$ACTIVITYFILE1" if cmp --quiet "$ACTIVITYFILE1" "$ACTIVITYFILE2"; then echo "No activity detected since last run" >> "$LOG" else echo "Activity detected since last run; inhibiting suspend" >> "$LOG" inhibit_suspend fi

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• HSSFS Part 2.1 - Parsing @@VERSION

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  For Part 2 of the Handy SQL Server Function Series I decided to tackle parsing useful information from the @@VERSION function, because I am an idiot.  It turns out I was confused about CHARINDEX() vs. PATINDEX() and it pretty much invalidated my original solution.  All is not lost though, this mistake turned out to be informative for me, and hopefully for you. Referring back to the "Version" view in the prelude I started with the following query to extract the version number: SELECT DISTINCT SQLVersion, SUBSTRING(VersionString,PATINDEX('%-%',VersionString)+2, 12) VerNum FROM VERSION I used PATINDEX() to find the first hyphen "-" character in the string, since the version number appears 2 positions after it, and got these results: SQLVersion VerNum ----------- ------------ 2000 8.00.2055 (I 2005 9.00.3080.00 2005 9.00.4053.00 2008 10.50.1600.1 As you can see it was good enough for most of the values, but not for the SQL 2000 @@VERSION.  You'll notice it has only 3 version sections/octets where the others have 4, and the SUBSTRING() grabbed the non-numeric characters after.  To properly parse the version number will require a non-fixed value for the 3rd parameter of SUBSTRING(), which is the number of characters to extract. The best value is the position of the first space to occur after the version number (VN), the trick is to figure out how to find it.  Here's where my confusion about PATINDEX() came about.  The CHARINDEX() function has a handy optional 3rd parameter: CHARINDEX (expression1 ,expression2 [ ,start_location ] ) While PATINDEX(): PATINDEX ('%pattern%',expression ) Does not.  I had expected to use PATINDEX() to start searching for a space AFTER the position of the VN, but it doesn't work that way.  Since there are plenty of spaces before the VN, I thought I'd try PATINDEX() on another character that doesn't appear before, and tried "(": SELECT SQLVersion, SUBSTRING(VersionString,PATINDEX('%-%',VersionString)+2, PATINDEX('%(%',VersionString)) FROM VERSION Unfortunately this messes up the length calculation and yields: SQLVersion VerNum ----------- --------------------------- 2000 8.00.2055 (Intel X86) Dec 16 2008 19:4 2005 9.00.3080.00 (Intel X86) Sep 6 2009 01: 2005 9.00.4053.00 (Intel X86) May 26 2009 14: 2008 10.50.1600.1 (Intel X86) Apr 2008 10.50.1600.1 (X64) Apr 2 20 Yuck.  The problem is that PATINDEX() returns position, and SUBSTRING() needs length, so I have to subtract the VN starting position: SELECT SQLVersion, SUBSTRING(VersionString,PATINDEX('%-%',VersionString)+2, PATINDEX('%(%',VersionString)-PATINDEX('%-%',VersionString)) VerNum FROM VERSION And the results are: SQLVersion VerNum ----------- -------------------------------------------------------- 2000 8.00.2055 (I 2005 9.00.4053.00 (I Msg 537, Level 16, State 2, Line 1 Invalid length parameter passed to the LEFT or SUBSTRING function. Ummmm, whoops.  Turns out SQL Server 2008 R2 includes "(RTM)" before the VN, and that causes the length to turn negative. So now that that blew up, I started to think about matching digit and dot (.) patterns.  Sadly, a quick look at the first set of results will quickly scuttle that idea, since different versions have different digit patterns and lengths. At this point (which took far longer than I wanted) I decided to cut my losses and redo the query using CHARINDEX(), which I'll cover in Part 2.2.  So to do a little post-mortem on this technique: PATINDEX() doesn't have the flexibility to match the digit pattern of the version number; PATINDEX() doesn't have a "start" parameter like CHARINDEX(), that allows us to skip over parts of the string; The SUBSTRING() expression is getting pretty complicated for this relatively simple task! This doesn't mean that PATINDEX() isn't useful, it's just not a good fit for this particular problem.  I'll include a version in the next post that extracts the version number properly. UPDATE: Sorry if you saw the unformatted version of this earlier, I'm on a quest to find blog software that ACTUALLY WORKS.

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• Where is the value of OEA

  - by [email protected]

  In a room full of architects, if you were to ask for the definition of enterprise architecture, or the importance thereof,  you are likely to get a number of varying view points ranging from,  a complete analysis of the digital assets of an organization,  to, a strategic alignment of business goals/objectives to IT initiatives.  Similiarily in a room full of senior business executives,  if you asked them how they see their IT groups and their effectiveness to align to business strategy,  you would get a myriad of responses,  ranging from, “a huge drain on our bottom line”, “always more expensive than budgeted”, “lack of agility,  by the time IT is ready,  my business strategy has changed”, and on the rare occurrence, “ a leader of innovation,  that is lock step with my business strategy”. However does this necessarily demonstrate the overall value of enterprise architecture.  Having a framework, and process is of critical importance to help produce a number of the artefacts that ultimately align technology goals and initiatives to business strategy,  however,  is that really where the value is?  I believe that first we need to understand the concept of value.  Value typically is a measure of sorts,  when we purchase a product it’s value is equivalent to the maximum amount that someone is willing to pay for the product,  however,  is the same equation valid in terms of the business value of enterprise architecture? Is the library of artefacts generated through a process/framework, inclusive of a strategic roadmap to realize the enterprise architecture where the value is? If we agree that enterprise architecture is the alignment of IT and IT assets to support business strategy, and by achieving our business strategy, we have we have increased the business value of the enterprise then;  it seems that, in order to really identify the true value of an enterprise architecture,  we need to understand how we measure business value .  A number of formal measurement methodologies exist for this purpose, business models, balanced scorecards, etc   After we have an understanding on how to measure the business value of each of the organizational units within an enterprise, then we understand how the enterprise architecture contributes to the success of business strategy,  and EXECUTE on the roadmap to implement, and deliver the IT initiatives that provide MEASUREABLE returns, As we analyse the value chain of each of the individual organizational units within the enterprise we may identify how that unit has performed by quantitatively measuring it proximity to achieving the goals defined by the business for each unit. However, It would appear that true business value (the aggregate of all of the business units in the value chain), is to some degree subjectively measured  as for public companies this lies in shareholder value,  as the true value, or be it, the maximum amount that someone would pay for shares of an organization.

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• SQL SERVER – UNION ALL and ORDER BY – How to Order Table Separately While Using UNION ALL

  - by pinaldave

  I often see developers trying following syntax while using ORDER BY. SELECT Columns FROM TABLE1 ORDER BY Columns UNION ALL SELECT Columns FROM TABLE2 ORDER BY Columns However the above query will return following error. Msg 156, Level 15, State 1, Line 5 Incorrect syntax near the keyword ‘ORDER’. It is not possible to use two different ORDER BY in the UNION statement. UNION returns single resultsetand as per the Logical Query Processing Phases. However, if your requirement is such that you want your top and bottom query of the UNION resultset independently sorted but in the same resultset you can add an additional static column and order by that column. Let us re-create the same scenario. First create two tables and populated with sample data. USE tempdb GO -- Create table CREATE TABLE t1 (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(100)); CREATE TABLE t2 (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(100)); GO -- Sample Data Build INSERT INTO t1 (ID, Col1) SELECT 1, 'Col1-t1' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'Col2-t1' UNION ALL SELECT 3, 'Col3-t1'; INSERT INTO t2 (ID, Col1) SELECT 3, 'Col1-t2' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'Col2-t2' UNION ALL SELECT 1, 'Col3-t2'; GO If we SELECT the data from both the table using UNION ALL . -- SELECT without ORDER BY SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t2 GO We will get the data in following order. However, our requirement is to get data in following order. If we need data ordered by Column1 we can ORDER the resultset ordered by Column1. -- SELECT with ORDER BY SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t2 ORDER BY ID GO Now to get the data in independently sorted in UNION ALL let us add additional column OrderKey and use ORDER BY  on that column. I think the description does not do proper justice let us see the example here. -- SELECT with ORDER BY - with ORDER KEY SELECT ID, Col1, 'id1' OrderKey FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1, 'id2' OrderKey FROM t2 ORDER BY OrderKey, ID GO The above query will give the desired result. Now do not forget to clean up the database by running the following script. -- Clean up DROP TABLE t1; DROP TABLE t2; GO Here is the complete script used in this example. USE tempdb GO -- Create table CREATE TABLE t1 (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(100)); CREATE TABLE t2 (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(100)); GO -- Sample Data Build INSERT INTO t1 (ID, Col1) SELECT 1, 'Col1-t1' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'Col2-t1' UNION ALL SELECT 3, 'Col3-t1'; INSERT INTO t2 (ID, Col1) SELECT 3, 'Col1-t2' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'Col2-t2' UNION ALL SELECT 1, 'Col3-t2'; GO -- SELECT without ORDER BY SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t2 GO -- SELECT with ORDER BY SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t2 ORDER BY ID GO -- SELECT with ORDER BY - with ORDER KEY SELECT ID, Col1, 'id1' OrderKey FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1, 'id2' OrderKey FROM t2 ORDER BY OrderKey, ID GO -- Clean up DROP TABLE t1; DROP TABLE t2; GO I am sure there are many more ways to achieve this, what method would you use if you have to face the similar situation? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)   Filed under: Best Practices, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Basic Calculation and PEMDAS Order of Operation

  - by pinaldave

  After thinking a long time, I have decided to write about this blog post. I had no plan to create a blog post about this subject but the amount of conversation this one has created on my Facebook page, I decided to bring up a few of the question and concerns discussed on the Facebook page. There are more than 10,000 comments here so far. There are lots of discussion about what should be the answer. Well, as far as I can tell there is a big debate going on on Facebook, for educational purpose you should go ahead and read some of the comments. They are very interesting and for sure teach some new stuff. Even though some of the comments are clearly wrong they have made some good points and I believe it for sure develops some logic. Here is my take on this subject. I believe the answer is 9 as I follow PEMDAS  Order of Operation. PEMDAS stands for  parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction. PEMDAS is commonly known as BODMAS in India. BODMAS stands for Brackets, Orders (ie Powers and Square Roots, etc), Division, Multiplication,  Addition and Subtraction. PEMDAS and BODMAS are almost same and both of them follow the operation order from LEFT to RIGHT. Let us try to simplify above statement using the PEMDAS or BODMAS (whatever you prefer to call). Step 1: 6 ÷ 2 (1+2) (parentheses first) Step 2: = 6 ÷ 2 * (1+2) (adding multiplication sign for further clarification) Step 3: = 6 ÷ 2* (3) (single digit in parentheses – simplify using operator) Step 4: = 6 ÷ 2 * 3 (Remember next Operation should be LEFT to RIGHT) Step 5: = 3 * 3 (because 6 ÷ 2 = 3; remember LEFT to RIGHT) Step 6: = 9 (final answer) Some often find Step 4 confusing and often ended up multiplying 2 and 3 resulting Step 5 to be 6 ÷ 6, this is incorrect because in this case we did not follow the order of LEFT to RIGHT. When we do not follow the order of operation from LEFT to RIGHT we end up with the answer 1 which is incorrect. Let us see what SQL Server returns as a result. I executed following statement in SQL Server Management Studio SELECT 6/2*(1+2) It is clear that SQL Server also thinks that the answer should be 9. Let us go ahead and ask Google what will be the answer of above question in Google I have searched for the following term: 6/2(1+2) The result also says the answer should be 9. If you want a further reference here is a great video which describes why the answer should be 9 and not 1. And here is a fantastic conversation on Google Groups. Well, now what is your take on this subject? You are welcome to share constructive feedback and your answer may be different from my answer. NOTE: A healthy conversation about this subject is indeed encouraged but if there is a single bad word or comment is flaming it will be deleted without any notification (it does not matter how valuable information it contains). Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Database Mirroring on SQL Server Express Edition

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

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

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• SQL SERVER – Puzzle to Win Print Book – Functions FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE with OVER clause and ORDER BY

  - by pinaldave

  Some time an interesting feature and smart audience makes total difference at places. From last two days, I have been writing on SQL Server 2012 feature FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE. Please read following post before I continue today as this question is based on the same. Introduction to FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE Introduction to FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE with OVER clause As a comment of the second post I received excellent question from Nilesh Molankar. He asks what will happen if we change few things in the T-SQL. I really like this question as this kind of questions will make us sharp and help us perform in critical situation in need. We recently publish SQL Server Interview Questions book. I promise that in future version of this book, we will for sure include this question. Instead of repeating his question, I am going to ask something very similar to his question. Let us first run following query (read yesterday’s blog post for more detail): USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty, FIRST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) FstValue, LAST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) LstValue FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail s WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty GO Here is the resultset of the above query. Now let us change the ORDER BY clause of OVER clause in above query and see what is the new result. USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty, FIRST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY OrderQty ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) FstValue, LAST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY OrderQty ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) LstValue FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail s WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty GO Now let us see the result and ready for interesting question: Puzzle You can see that row number 2, 3, 4, and 5 has same SalesOrderID = 43667. The FIRST_VALUE is 78 and LAST_VALUE is 77. Now if these function was working on maximum and minimum value they should have given answer as 77 and 80 respectively instead of 78 and 77. Also the value of FIRST_VALUE is greater than LAST_VALUE 77. Why? Explain in detail. Hint Let me give you a simple hint. Just for simplicity I have changed the order of columns selected in the SELECT and ORDER BY (at the end). This will not change resultset but just order of the columns as well order of the rows. However, the data remains the same. USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT s.OrderQty,s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID, FIRST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY OrderQty ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) FstValue, LAST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY OrderQty ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) LstValue FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail s WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY s.OrderQty,s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID GO Above query returns following result: Now I am very sure all of you have figured out the solution. Here is the second hint – pay attention to row 2, 3, 4, and 10. Hint2 T-SQL Enhancements: FIRST_VALUE() and LAST_VALUE() MSDN: FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE Rules Leave a comment with your detailed answer by Nov 15′s blog post. Open world-wide (where Amazon ships books) If you blog about puzzle’s solution and if you win, you win additional surprise gift as well. Prizes Print copy of my new book SQL Server Interview Questions Amazon|Flipkart If you already have this book, you can opt for any of my other books SQL Wait Stats [Amazon|Flipkart|Kindle] and SQL Programming [Amazon|Flipkart|Kindle]. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Function, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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