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• Ternary operator in VB.NET

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  We all know about Ternary operator in C#.NET. I am a big fan of ternary operator and I like to use it instead of using IF..Else. Those who don’t know about ternary operator please go through below link. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ty67wk28(v=vs.80).aspx Here you can see ternary operator returns one of the two values based on the condition. See following example. bool value = false;string output=string.Empty;//using If conditionif (value==true) output ="True";else output="False";//using tenary operatoroutput = value == true ? "True" : "False"; In the above example you can see how we produce same output with the ternary operator without using If..Else statement. Recently in one of the project I was working with VB.NET language and I was eager to know if there is a ternary operator equivalent there or not. After searching on internet I have found two ways to do it. IF operator which works for VB.NET 2008 and higher version and IIF operator which is there since VB 6.0. So let’s check same above example with both of this operators. So let’s create a console application which has following code. Module Module1 Sub Main() Dim value As Boolean = False Dim output As String = String.Empty ''Output using if else statement If value = True Then output = "True" Else output = "False" Console.WriteLine("Output Using If Loop") Console.WriteLine(output) output = If(value = True, "True", "False") Console.WriteLine("Output using If operator") Console.WriteLine(output) output = IIf(value = True, "True", "False") Console.WriteLine("Output using IIF Operator") Console.WriteLine(output) Console.ReadKey() End If End SubEnd Module As you can see in the above code I have written all three-way to condition check using If.Else statement and If operator and IIf operator. You can see that both IIF and If operator has three parameter first parameter is the condition which you need to check and then another parameter is true part of you need to put thing which you need as output when condition is ‘true’. Same way third parameter is for the false part where you need to put things which you need as output when condition as ‘false’. Now let’s run that application and following is the output as expected. That’s it. You can see all three ways are producing same output. Hope you like it. Stay tuned for more..Till then Happy Programming.

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• SQLAuthority News – Monthly Roundup of Best SQL Posts

  - by pinaldave

  After receiving lots of requests from different readers for long time I have decided to write first monthly round up. If all of you like it I will continue writing the same every month. In fact, I really like the idea as I was able to go back and read all of my posts written in this month. This month was started with answering one of the most common question asked me to about What is Adventureworks? Many of you know the answer but to the surprise more number of the reader did not know the answer. There were few extra blog post which were in the same line as following. SQL SERVER – The Difference between Dual Core vs. Core 2 Duo SQLAuthority News – Wireless Router Security and Attached Devices – Complex Password SQL SERVER – DATE and TIME in SQL Server 2008 DMVs are also one of the most handy tools available in SQL Server, I have written following blog post where I have used DMV in scripts. SQL SERVER – Get Latest SQL Query for Sessions – DMV SQL SERVER – Find Most Expensive Queries Using DMV SQL SERVER – List All the DMV and DMF on Server I was able to write two follow-up of my earlier series where I was finding the size of the indexes using different SQL Scripts. And in fact one of the article Powershell is used as well. This was my very first attempt to use Powershell. SQL SERVER – Size of Index Table for Each Index – Solution 2 SQL SERVER – Size of Index Table for Each Index – Solution 3 – Powershell SQL SERVER – Four Posts on Removing the Bookmark Lookup – Key Lookup Without realizing I wrote series of the blog post on disabled index here is its complete list. I plan to write one more follow-up list on the same. SQL SERVER – Disable Clustered Index and Data Insert SQL SERVER – Understanding ALTER INDEX ALL REBUILD with Disabled Clustered Index SQL SERVER – Disabled Index and Update Statistics Two special post which I found very interesting to write are as following. SQL SERVER – SHRINKFILE and TRUNCATE Log File in SQL Server 2008 SQL SERVER – Simple Example of Snapshot Isolation – Reduce the Blocking Transactions In personal adventures, I won the Community Impact Award for Last Year from Microsoft. Please leave your comment about how can I improve this round up or what more details I should include in the same. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Multiple Monitors

  - by mroberts

  At my workplace .Net developers get pretty much the same equipment. A decent Dell workstation / Desktop, mine is a Dell Precision 390. One dual core 2.40 GHz. Eight GB RAM. Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit. Two Dell 20.1 Monitors. I'm happy with this.  The machine is about 3 years old but still runs with some decent speed. New developers are getting a Dell workstation with dual quad processors. I just put in a request for myself and three other developers for an upgraded video card and two additional monitors, for a total of four monitors per person.  We suggested this card, BTW, mainly for the cost.  The move from one monitor to two was fantastic (one might even say life (or work) changing) and truly did increase productivity. Now what about going from 2 monitors to 4?  I'm sure the change is not as dramatic as one to two, but I can't help but to think four monitors is better than two.  But if four is better than two, should we have asked for six?!? Also what about mixing monitor types?  Right now my monitors are the older square type vs. wide-screen.  It's been rumored that we will be getting monitors out of current stock and they will be 22 inch wide-screens.  I understand this, recession and all.  2-20 inch square monitors with 2-22 inch wide-screen monitors...hmmmmm.  I'm thinking I'd rather get 2 additional 17 inch square monitors to put on each side of my 20's. Also, a question was raised about the layout of four monitors. By default, my thought was I'll just put them all on my desk, kinda in a line. I've heard others say they want to stack them in a 2 x 2 square. BTW, loving multi monitor support in Visual studio 2010! I’d love some comments on your experience with one, two, four, or however many monitors from a developers perspective.

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• SQL SERVER – 2012 – All Download Links in Single Page – SQL Server 2012

  - by pinaldave

  SQL Server 2012 RTM is just announced and recently I wrote about all the SQL Server 2012 Certification on single page. As a feedback, I received suggestions to have a single page where everything about SQL Server 2012 is listed. I will keep this page updated as new updates are announced. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Evaluation Microsoft SQL Server 2012 enables a cloud-ready information platform that will help organizations unlock breakthrough insights across the organization. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Express Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Express is a powerful and reliable free data management system that delivers a rich and reliable data store for lightweight Web Sites and desktop applications. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Feature Pack The Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Feature Pack is a collection of stand-alone packages which provide additional value for Microsoft SQL Server 2012. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Report Builder Report Builder provides a productive report-authoring environment for IT professionals and power users. It supports the full capabilities of SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Master Data Services Add-in For Microsoft Excel The Master Data Services Add-in for Excel gives multiple users the ability to update master data in a familiar tool without compromising the data’s integrity in Master Data Services. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Performance Dashboard Reports The SQL Server 2012 Performance Dashboard Reports are Reporting Services report files designed to be used with the Custom Reports feature of SQL Server Management Studio. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel® 2010 Microsoft PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel 2010 provides ground-breaking technology; fast manipulation of large data sets, streamlined integration of data, and the ability to effortlessly share your analysis through Microsoft SharePoint. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint Technologies 2010 The SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 technologies allows you to integrate your reporting environment with the collaborative SharePoint 2010 experience. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Semantic Language Statistics The Semantic Language Statistics Database is a required component for the Statistical Semantic Search feature in Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Semantic Language Statistics. Microsoft ®SQL Server 2012 FileStream Driver – Windows Logo Certification Catalog file for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 FileStream Driver that is certified for WindowsServer 2008 R2. It meets Microsoft standards for compatibility and recommended practices with the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems. Microsoft SQL Server StreamInsight 2.0 Microsoft StreamInsight is Microsoft’s Complex Event Processing technology to help businesses create event-driven applications and derive better insights by correlating event streams from multiple sources with near-zero latency. Microsoft JDBC Driver 4.0 for SQL Server Download the Microsoft JDBC Driver 4.0 for SQL Server, a Type 4 JDBC driver that provides database connectivity through the standard JDBC application program interfaces (APIs) available in Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 and 6. Data Quality Services Performance Best Practices Guide This guide focuses on a set of best practices for optimizing performance of Data Quality Services (DQS). Microsoft Drivers 3.0 for SQL Server for PHP The Microsoft Drivers 3.0 for SQL Server for PHP provide connectivity to Microsoft SQLServer from PHP applications. Product Documentation for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 for firewall and proxy restricted environments The Microsoft SQL Server 2012 setup installs only the Help Viewer…install any documentation. All of the SQL Server documentation is available online. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• MVC Portable Areas &ndash; Web Application Projects

  - by Steve Michelotti

  This is the first post in a series related to build and deployment considerations as I’ve been exploring MVC Portable Areas: #1 – Using Web Application Project to build portable areas #2 – Conventions for deploying portable area static files #3 – Portable area static files as embedded resources Portable Areas is a relatively new feature available in MvcContrib that builds upon the new feature called Areas that was introduced in MVC 2. In short, portable areas provide a way to distribute MVC binary components as simple .NET assemblies rather than an assembly along with all the physical files for the views. At the heart of portable areas is a custom view engine that delivers the *.aspx pages by pulling them from embedded resources rather than from the physical file system. A portable area can be something as small as a tiny snippet of html that eventually gets rendered on a page, to something as large as an entire MVC web application. You should read this 4-part series to get up to speed on what portable areas are. Web Application Project In most of the posts to date, portable areas are shown being created with a simple C# class library. This is cool and it serves as an effective way to illustrate the simplicity of portable areas. However, the problem with that is that the developer loses out on the normal developer experience with the various tooling/scaffolding options that we’ve come to expect in visual studio like the ability to add controllers, views, etc. easily: I’ve had good results just using a normal web application project (rather than a class library) to develop portable areas and get the normal vs.net benefits. However, one gotcha that comes as a result is that it’s easy to forget to set the file to “Embedded Resource” every time you add a new aspx page. To mitigate this, simply add this MSBuild snippet shown below to your *.csproj file and all *.aspx, *ascx will automatically be set as embedded resources when your project compiles: 1: <Target Name="BeforeBuild"> 2: <ItemGroup> 3: <EmbeddedResource Include="**\*.aspx;**\*.ascx" /> 4: </ItemGroup> 5: </Target> Also, you should remove the Global.asax from this web application as it is not the host. Being able to have the normal tooling experience we’ve come to expect from Visual Studio makes creating portable areas quite simple. This even allows us to do things like creating a project template such as “MVC Portable Area Web Application” that would come pre-configured with routes set up in the PortableAreaRegistration and no Global.asax file.

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• default xna 4.0 gametime don´t works well for 2D physics

  - by EusKoder

  I am developing a game using Visual Studio 2010 and XNA 4.0, after advancing to some extent with the project (a platform based 2d platformer msdn starter kit) I got to test it on different computers with different hardware (CPU, graphics, etc.) and I found that the speed of movement object of the game is quite different, I implemented the PSK physics msdn that are based on time, /// <summary> /// Updates the player's velocity and position based on input, gravity, etc. /// </summary> public void ApplyPhysics(GameTime gameTime) { float elapsed = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; Vector2 previousPosition = Position; // Base velocity is a combination of horizontal movement control and // acceleration downward due to gravity. velocity.X += movement * MoveAcceleration * elapsed; velocity.Y = MathHelper.Clamp(velocity.Y + GravityAcceleration * elapsed, -MaxFallSpeed, MaxFallSpeed); velocity.Y = DoJump(velocity.Y, gameTime); // Apply pseudo-drag horizontally. if (IsOnGround) velocity.X *= GroundDragFactor; else velocity.X *= GroundDragFactor; //velocity.X *= AirDragFactor; // Prevent the player from running faster than his top speed. velocity.X = MathHelper.Clamp(velocity.X, -MaxMoveSpeed, MaxMoveSpeed); // Apply velocity. Position += velocity *elapsed; Position = new Vector2((float)Math.Round(Position.X), (float)Math.Round(Position.Y)); // If the player is now colliding with the level, separate them. HandleCollisions(gameTime); // If the collision stopped us from moving, reset the velocity to zero. if (Position.X == previousPosition.X) velocity.X = 0; if (Position.Y == previousPosition.Y) { velocity.Y = 0; jumpTime = 0.0f; } } tested eg with a PC (PC1) 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 6400 / ATI Radeon HD 4670 and another one: (pc2) 3.00GHz Intel Pentium D / Intel 82945G Express Chipset Family by displacement difference (moving x axis at supossed (position = velocity * gametime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds) constant velocity, for example) is 3 seconds in a total of 20 (example: moving pc1 player sprite 6000 pixels in the x-axis at 20 seconds and pc 2 runs the same distance in 17 ). Tested on a 3rd PC: i72700k / Gigabyte GTX 560 TI the results are even worse, after some time after starting the game gets like 3 times slower and showing the number of pixels in each frame moved in a debug window in the game (counting updatespersecond with counter variable for updates cuantity and gametime for counting a second show 63fps), it appears as if the number is always constant ( refreshments lose the Update method?). In this pc if I put the game in fullscreen during the course of the game, the effect of "go slow" is immediate and restore window mode sometimes yield returns to "normal" and sometimes not. Eventually I began to try a new project to test whether the movement is constant in different pc loading only one sprite and its position value in screen printing. Occur The same. I even tried moving a constant amount of pixels explicitly (position + = 5) and different speeds in different pc quantities of pixels moved in x time. I have the game loop as the default (fixedTimeStep=true;SynchronizeWithVerticalRetrace=true;). I've also tried turning off and creating another timestep as discussed in different post (eg http://gafferongames.com/game-physics/fix-your-timestep/ but i can´t achieve the desired result, move the same number of pixels in X seconds on different computers with windows. All pc used for tests use windows 7 enterprise pc1 == x86 the others are x64. The weirdest thing is that I find information about people describing the same problem and that I wear long nights of searches. Thanks for your help.

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• TFS Auto Shelve - New Visual Studio 2010 / TFS 2010 Extension

  - by MikeParks

  We've been working with the Visual Studio 2010 SDK and the TFS 2010 SDK a lot recently to create new Visual Studio Extensions. You can find these extensions in the Visual Studio Gallery. If you're a developer/programmer, you should check it out, they have some pretty cool tools out there. I'd be surprised if you told me you went there and couldn't find any tools that could help you. One of the new extensions Cory and I made is called TFS Auto Shelve. Check out the description and read about it below. If you're interested and you have VS 2010 w/TFS 2010, feel free to try it out and let us know what you think. You can download it here: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/080540cb-e35f-4651-b71c-86c73e4a633d   Here's a description and screenshots of what it does: Automatically shelves the latest version of all pending changes from local TFS workspaces to the TFS Server every "x" number of minutes when solutions are opened.   ·         Purpose o    Created for Team Foundation Server 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 o    This tool is mainly aimed at the Programmer/Developer audience so they can always have the latest copy of their pending changes backed up to the TFS Server while coding ·         Functionality o    Menu options become active and automatic shelving begins when a solution that mapped to a TFS Workspace is opened in Visual Studio o    In Tools > TFS Auto Shelve (Running/NotRunning):  Automatic shelving can be turned on/off o    In Tools > TFS Auto Shelve Now : Shelve all code can be manually triggered o    Each TFS workspace has its own shelveset which is re-used to save the latest version of pending changes o    Shelvesets are named as Base Name + Workspace Name o    Shelveset comment contains item count o    If there are no pending changes, no shelvesets will be created/updated o    If a solution is opened that is not mapped to a TFS Workspace, menu options are disabled since shelving only works for mapped workspaces. ·         Configuration o    In Tools > Options > TFS Auto Shelve Options: Base Name is configurable o    In Tools > Options > TFS Auto Shelve Options: "x" number of minutes is configurable in options ·         Logging o    Custom Visual Studio Activity Logging is implemented. If you run into any errors, please startup Visual Studio with the /log switch, re-create the error, then close Visual Studio. You can browse to “%AppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\ActivityLog.XML” to view the log. Please feel free to inform us of any errors you see and we can work it out via email. ·         Other Helpful Information o    To view shelvesets, open Source Control Explorer, click on File > Source Control > Unshelve Pending Changes o    Workspaces can be modified by opening the Source Control Explorer > Clicking on Workspaces drop down > Click Workspaces… > Click Add / Edit / Removed   Thanks! - Mike

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• Romanian parter Omnilogic Delivers “No Limits” Scalability, Performance, Security, and Affordability through Next-Generation, Enterprise-Grade Engineered Systems

  - by swalker

  Omnilogic SRL is a leading technology and information systems provider in Romania and central and Eastern Europe. An Oracle Value-Added Distributor Partner, Omnilogic resells Oracle software, hardware, and engineered systems to Oracle Partner Network members and provides specialized training, support, and testing facilities. Independent software vendors (ISVs) also use Omnilogic’s demonstration and testing facilities to upgrade the performance and efficiency of their solutions and those of their customers by migrating them from competitor technologies to Oracle platforms. Omnilogic also has a dedicated offering for ISV solutions, based on Oracle technology in a hosting service provider model. Omnilogic wanted to help Oracle Partners and ISVs migrate solutions to Oracle Exadata and sell Oracle Exadata to end-customers. It installed Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 Quarter Rack at its data center to create a demonstration and testing environment. Demonstrations proved that Oracle Exadata achieved processing speeds up to 100 times faster than competitor systems, cut typical back-up times from 6 hours to 20 minutes, and stored 10 times more data. Oracle Partners and ISVs learned that migrating solutions to Oracle Exadata’s preconfigured, pre-integrated hardware and software can be completed rapidly, at low cost, without business disruption, and with reduced ongoing operating costs. Challenges A word from Omnilogic “Oracle Exadata is the new killer application—the smartest solution on the market. There is no competition.” – Sorin Dragomir, Chief Operating Officer, Omnilogic SRL Enable Oracle Partners in Romania and central and eastern Europe to achieve Oracle Exadata Ready status by providing facilities to test and optimize existing applications and build real-life proofs of concept (POCs) for new solutions on Oracle Exadata Database Machine Provide technical support and demonstration facilities for ISVs migrating their customers’ solutions from competitor technologies to Oracle Exadata to maximize performance, scalability, and security; optimize hardware and datacenter space; cut maintenance costs; and improve return on investment Demonstrate power of Oracle Exadata’s high-performance, high-capacity engineered systems for customer-facing businesses, such as government organizations, telecommunications, banking and insurance, and utility companies, which typically require continuous availability to support very large data volumes Showcase Oracle Exadata’s unchallenged online transaction processing (OLTP) capabilities that cut application run times to provide unrivalled query turnaround and user response speeds while significantly reducing back-up times and eliminating risk of unplanned outages Capitalize on providing a world-class training and demonstration environment for Oracle Exadata to accelerate sales with Oracle Partners Solutions Created a testing environment to enable Oracle Partners and ISVs to test their own solutions and those of their customers on Oracle Exadata running on Oracle Enterprise Linux or Oracle Solaris Express to benchmark performance prior to migration Leveraged expertise on Oracle Exadata to offer Oracle Exadata training, migration, support seminars and to showcase live demonstrations for Oracle Partners Proved how Oracle Exadata’s pre-engineered systems, that come assembled, configured, and ready to run, reduce deployment time and cost, minimize risk, and help customers achieve the full performance potential immediately after go live Increased processing speeds 10-fold and with zero data loss for a telecommunications provider’s client-facing customer relationship management solution Achieved performance improvements of between 6 and 100 times faster for financial and utility company applications currently running on IBM, Microsoft, or SAP HANA platforms Showed how daily closure procedures carried out overnight by banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions to analyze each day’s business, can typically be cut from around six hours to 20 minutes, some 18 times faster, when running on Oracle Exadata Simulated concurrent back-ups while running applications under normal working conditions to prove that Oracle Exadata-based solutions can be backed up during business hours without causing bottlenecks or impacting the end-user experience Demonstrated that Oracle Exadata’s built-in analytics, data mining and OLTP capabilities make it the highest-performance, lowest-cost choice for large data warehousing operations Showed how Oracle Exadata’s columnar compression and intelligent storage architecture allows 10 times more data to be stored than on competitor platforms Demonstrated how Oracle Exadata cuts hardware requirements significantly by consolidating workloads on to fewer servers which delivers greater power efficiency and lower operating costs that competing systems from IBM and other manufacturers Proved to ISVs that migrating solutions to Oracle Exadata’s preconfigured, pre-integrated hardware and software can be completed rapidly, at low cost, and with minimal business disruption Demonstrated how storage servers, database servers, and network switches can be added incrementally and inexpensively to the Oracle Exadata platform to support business expansion On track to grow revenues by 10% in year one and by 15% annually thereafter through increased business generated from Oracle Partners and ISVs

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• My Mother Bought a Droid

  - by Ben Griswold

  I converted to iPhone two years ago when I left my former employer and my Blackberry behind. The truth is I half-heartedly purchased my iPhone. It was a great looking device, but as far as I was concerned, it was a mere toy compared to my Blackberry.  I remember hiding the toy in my briefcase when attending business meetings because I didn’t consider it to be professional enough.  I’ve since owned all three generations of the iPhone and, well, iPhone seems to have caught on. I still miss the click of the Blackberry keyboard and the blinking red light letting me know that someone/something requires my attention, but I’m officially an iPhone fanboy now.  My mom called last weekend and asked if she should buy an iPhone. I talked her ear off about everything I love about iPhone. I went on for about twenty minutes. I couldn’t help myself. I mentioned everything from my podcast subscriptions to the application which manages my workouts.  I went as far as to say that someday all smart phones will be referred to as iPhones just like all tissues are referred to as Kleenex and all sodas are referred to as Cokes.  I was really on a roll and then I stopped. I had to…the call dropped.  There I was, strategically standing in the far corner of my backyard where I get the most reliable AT&T reception and the call drops in middle of my iPhone pitch.  Folks, I don’t care how good a salesperson you are, it’s tough to recover from a situation like this.   I dialed my mom back and jokingly asked if she was planning to make calls with her new phone. I explained that AT&T is bound to provide better service eventually but I’m not sure she should wait. After all, I have troubles with the network in San Diego and I can only image how bad it would be for her in Western Massachusetts. Mom called back a few days later exclaiming, “I bought a Droid! I love this phone! I haven’t done anything with it but make phone calls, but I love it.”  I had to laugh.  My mom made the right call (pun intended.)  The iPhone is an amazing device, but owners are constantly reminded that its core function (it’s a phone, remember?) is subpar.  If you love gadgets, you’re probably enthralled by iPhone’s many bells and whistles and, relatively speaking, the terrible phone service might not amount to much.  (Maybe it amounts to a rant on your blog.) The overall iPhone offering is so attractive that consumers are willing to wait for AT&T to straighten up their act or wait until Apple grants a choice of carriers.  But I don’t see either of these remedies coming soon. In the interim, I’m willing to take my iPhone for what it is and just continue to enjoy my favorite features while pretending that poor coverage isn’t a big deal. With any luck, more and more reasonable folks will recognize that Android Phones are legitimate players in the smart phone space, they will buy loads of them and there will become plenty of functional phones to borrow when my “phone” is showing zero bars.  Heck, I’m already covered when I visit my mom.

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• Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff

  - by The Geek

  Yesterday Microsoft announced the release candidate of Internet Explorer 9, which is very close to the final product. Here’s a screenshot tour of the most interesting new stuff, as well as answers to your questions. The most important question is should you install this version? And the answer is absolutely yes. Even if you don’t use IE, it’s better to have a newer, more secure version on your PC. What’s New Under the Hood in Release Candidate vs Beta? If you want to see the full list of changes with all the original marketing detail, you can read Microsoft’s Beauty of the Web page, but here’s the highlights that you might be interested in. Improved Performance – they’ve made a lot of changes, and it really feels faster, especially when using more intensive web apps like Gmail. Power Consumption Settings – since the JavaScript engine in any browser uses a lot of CPU power, they’ve now integrated it into the power settings, so if you’re on battery it will use less CPU, and save battery life. This is really a great change. UI Changes – The tab bar can now be moved below the address bar (see below for more), they’ve shaved some pixels off the design to save space, and now you can toggle the Menu bar to be always on. Pinned Sites – now you can pin multiple pages to a single taskbar button. Very useful if you always use a couple web apps together. You can also pin a site in InPrivate mode. FlashBlock and AdBlock are Integrated (sorta) – there’s a new ActiveX filtering that lets you enable plug-ins only for sites you trust. There’s also a tracking protection list that can block certain content (which can obviously be used to block ads). Geolocation – while a lot of privacy conscious people might complain about this, if you use your laptop while traveling, it’s really useful to have geo-located features when using Google Maps, etc. Don’t worry, it won’t leak your privacy by default. WebM Video – Yeah, Google recently removed H.264 from Chrome, but Microsoft has added Google’s WebM video format to Internet Explorer. Keep reading for more about using the new features Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines The 50 Faces of Mario Death [Infographic] Clean Up Google Calendar’s Interface in Chrome and Iron The Rise and Fall of Kramerica? [Seinfeld Video] GNOME Shell 3 Live CDs for OpenSUSE and Fedora Available for Testing Picplz Offers Special FX, Sharing, and Backup of Your Smartphone Pics BUILD! An Epic LEGO Stop Motion Film [VIDEO]

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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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• DevConnections jQuery Session Slides and Samples posted

  - by Rick Strahl

  I’ve posted all of my slides and samples from the DevConnections VS 2010 Launch event last week in Vegas. All three sessions are contained in a single zip file which contains all slide decks and samples in one place: www.west-wind.com/files/conferences/jquery.zip There were 3 separate sessions: Using jQuery with ASP.NET Starting with an overview of jQuery client features via many short and fun examples, you'll find out about core features like the power of selectors to select document elements, manipulate these elements with jQuery's wrapped set methods in a browser independent way, how to hook up and handle events easily and generally apply concepts of unobtrusive JavaScript principles to client scripting. The session also covers AJAX interaction between jQuery and the .NET server side code using several different approaches including sending HTML and JSON data and how to avoid user interface duplication by using client side templating. This session relies heavily on live examples and walk-throughs. jQuery Extensibility and Integration with ASP.NET Server Controls One of the great strengths of the jQuery Javascript framework is its simple, yet powerful extensibility model that has resulted in an explosion of plug-ins available for jQuery. You need it - chances are there's a plug-in for it! In this session we'll look at a few plug-ins to demonstrate the power of the jQuery plug-in model before diving in and creating our own custom jQuery plug-ins. We'll look at how to create a plug-in from scratch as well as discussing when it makes sense to do so. Once you have a plug-in it can also be useful to integrate it more seamlessly with ASP.NET by creating server controls that coordinate both server side and jQuery client side behavior. I'll demonstrate a host of custom components that utilize a combination of client side jQuery functionality and server side ASP.NET server controls that provide smooth integration in the user interface development process. This topic focuses on component development both for pure client side plug-ins and mixed mode controls. jQuery Tips and Tricks This session was kind of a last minute substitution for an ASP.NET AJAX talk. Nothing too radical here :-), but I focused on things that have been most productive for myself. Look at the slide deck for individual points and some of the specific samples.   It was interesting to see that unlike in previous conferences this time around all the session were fairly packed – interest in jQuery is definitely getting more pronounced especially with microsoft’s recent announcement of focusing on jQuery integration rather than continuing on the path of ASP.NET AJAX – which is a welcome change. Most of the samples also use the West Wind Web & Ajax Toolkit and the support tools contained within it – a snapshot version of the toolkit is included in the samples download. Specicifically a number of the samples use functionality in the ww.jquery.js support file which contains a fairly large set of plug-ins and helper functionality – most of these pieces while contained in the single file are self-contained and can be lifted out of this file (several people asked). Hopefully you'll find something useful in these slides and samples.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  jQuery  

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• Adding an expression based image in a client report definition file (RDLC)

  - by rajbk

  In previous posts, I showed you how to create a report using Visual Studio 2010 and how to add a hyperlink to the report.  In this post, I show you how to add an expression based image to each row of the report. This similar to displaying a checkbox column for Boolean values.  A sample project is attached to the bottom of this post. To start off, download the project we created earlier from here.  The report we created had a “Discontinued” column of type Boolean. We are going to change it to display an “available” icon or “unavailable” icon based on the “Discontinued” row value.    Load the project and double click on Products.rdlc. With the report design surface active, you will see the “Report Data” tool window. Right click on the Images folder and select “Add Image..”   Add the available_icon.png and discontinued_icon.png images (the sample project at the end of this post has the icon png files)    You can see the images we added in the “Report Data” tool window.   Drag and drop the available_icon into the “Discontinued” column row (not the header) We get a dialog box which allows us to set the image properties. We will add an expression that specifies the image to display based the “Discontinued” value from the Product table. Click on the expression (fx) button.   Add the following expression : = IIf(Fields!Discontinued.Value = True, “discontinued_icon”, “available_icon”)   Save and exit all dialog boxes. In the report design surface, resize the column header and change the text from “Discontinued” to “In Production”.   (Optional) Right click on the image cell (not header) , go to “Image Properties..” and offset it by 5pt from the left. (Optional) Change the border color since it is not set by default for image columns. We are done adding our image column! Compile the application and run it. You will see that the “In Production” column has red ‘x’ icons for discontinued products. Download the VS 2010 sample project NorthwindReportsImage.zip Other Posts Adding a hyperlink in a client report definition file (RDLC) Rendering an RDLC directly to the Response stream in ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC Paging/Sorting/Filtering using the MVCContrib Grid and Pager Localization in ASP.NET MVC 2 using ModelMetadata Setting up Visual Studio 2010 to step into Microsoft .NET Source Code Running ASP.NET Webforms and ASP.NET MVC side by side Pre-filtering and shaping OData feeds using WCF Data Services and the Entity Framework

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• Redirect all access requests to a domain and subdomain(s) except from specific IP address? [closed]

  - by Christopher

  This is a self-answered question... After much wrangling I found the magic combination of mod_rewrite rules so I'm posting here. My scenario is that I have two domains - domain1.com and domain2.com - both of which are currently serving identical content (by way of a global 301 redirect from domain1 to domain2). Domain1 was then chosen to be repurposed to be a 'portal' domain - with a corporate CMS-based site leading off from the front page, and the existing 'retail' domain (domain2) left to serve the main web site. In addition, a staging subdomain was created on domain1 in order to prepare the new corporate site without impinging on the root domain's existing operation. I contemplated just rewriting all requests to domain2 and setting up the new corporate site 'behind the scenes' without using a staging domain, but I usually use subdomains when setting up new sites. Finally, I required access to the 'actual' contents of the domains and subdomains - i.e., to not be redirected like all other visitors - in order that I can develop the new site and test it in the staging environment on the live server, as I'm not using a separate development webserver in this case. I also have another test subdomain on domain1 which needed to be preserved. The way I eventually set it up was as follows: (10.2.2.1 would be my home WAN IP) .htaccess in root of domain1 RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^10\.2\.2\.1 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^staging.domain1.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^staging2.domain1.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain2.com/$1 [R=301] .htaccess in staging subdomain on domain1: RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^10\.2\.2\.1 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^staging.revolver.coop$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain2.com/$1 [R=301,L] The multiple .htaccess files and multiple rulesets require more processing overhead and longer iteration as the visitor is potentially redirected twice, however I find it to be a more granular method of control as I can selectively allow more than one IP address access to individual staging subdomain(s) without automatically granting them access to everything else. It also keeps the rulesets fairly simple and easy to read. (or re-interpret, because I'm always forgetting how I put rules together!) If anybody can suggest a more efficient way of merging all these rules and conditions into just one main ruleset in the root of domain1, please post! I'm always keen to learn, this post is more my attempt to preserve this information for those who are looking to redirect entire domains for all visitors except themselves (for design/testing purposes) and not just denying specific file access for maintenance mode (there are many good examples of simple mod_rewrite rules for 'maintenance mode' style operation easily findable via Google). You can also extend the IP address detection - firstly by using wildcards ^10\.2\.2\..*: the last octet's \..* denotes the usual "." and then "zero or more arbitrary characters", signified by the .* - so you can specify specific ranges of IPs in a subnet or entire subnets if you wish. You can also use square brackets: ^10\.2\.[1-255]\.[120-140]; ^10\.2\.[1-9]?[0-9]\.; ^10\.2\.1[0-1][0-9]\. etc. The third way, if you wish to specify multiple discrete IP addresses, is to bracket them in the style of ^(1.1.1.1|2.2.2.2|3.3.3.3)$, and you can of course use square brackets to substitute octets or single digits again. NB: if you're using individual RewriteCond lines to specify multiple IPs / ranges, make sure to put [OR] at the end of each one otherwise mod_rewrite will interpret as "if IP address matches 1.1.1.1 AND if IP address matches 2.2.2.2... which is of course impossible! However as far as I'm aware this isn't necessary if you're using the ! negator to specify "and is not...". Kudos also to SE: this older question also came in useful when I was verifying my own knowledge prior to my futzing around with code. This page was helpful, as were the various other links posted below (can't hyperlink them all due to spam protection... other regex checkers are available). The AddedBytes cheat sheet's useful to pin up on your wall. Other referenced URLs: internetofficer.com/seo-tool/regex-tester/ fantomaster.com/faarticles/rewritingurls.txt internetofficer.com/seo-tool/regex-tester/ addedbytes.com/cheat-sheets/mod_rewrite-cheat-sheet/

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• HPC Server Dynamic Job Scheduling: when jobs spawn jobs

  - by JoshReuben

  HPC Job Types HPC has 3 types of jobs http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc972750(v=ws.10).aspx · Task Flow – vanilla sequence · Parametric Sweep – concurrently run multiple instances of the same program, each with a different work unit input · MPI – message passing between master & slave tasks But when you try go outside the box – job tasks that spawn jobs, blocking the parent task – you run the risk of resource starvation, deadlocks, and recursive, non-converging or exponential blow-up. The solution to this is to write some performance monitoring and job scheduling code. You can do this in 2 ways: manually control scheduling - allocate/ de-allocate resources, change job priorities, pause & resume tasks , restrict long running tasks to specific compute clusters Semi-automatically - set threshold params for scheduling. How – Control Job Scheduling In order to manage the tasks and resources that are associated with a job, you will need to access the ISchedulerJob interface - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.hpc.scheduler.ischedulerjob_members(v=vs.85).aspx This really allows you to control how a job is run – you can access & tweak the following features: max / min resource values whether job resources can grow / shrink, and whether jobs can be pre-empted, whether the job is exclusive per node the creator process id & the job pool timestamp of job creation & completion job priority, hold time & run time limit Re-queue count Job progress Max/ min Number of cores, nodes, sockets, RAM Dynamic task list – can add / cancel jobs on the fly Job counters When – poll perf counters Tweaking the job scheduler should be done on the basis of resource utilization according to PerfMon counters – HPC exposes 2 Perf objects: Compute Clusters, Compute Nodes http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc720058(v=ws.10).aspx You can monitor running jobs according to dynamic thresholds – use your own discretion: Percentage processor time Number of running jobs Number of running tasks Total number of processors Number of processors in use Number of processors idle Number of serial tasks Number of parallel tasks Design Your algorithms correctly Finally , don’t assume you have unlimited compute resources in your cluster – design your algorithms with the following factors in mind: · Branching factor - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branching_factor - dynamically optimize the number of children per node · cutoffs to prevent explosions - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_of_a_sequence - not all functions converge after n attempts. You also need a threshold of good enough, diminishing returns · heuristic shortcuts - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic - sometimes an exhaustive search is impractical and short cuts are suitable · Pruning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruning_(algorithm) – remove / de-prioritize unnecessary tree branches · avoid local minima / maxima - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_minima - sometimes an algorithm cant converge because it gets stuck in a local saddle – try simulated annealing, hill climbing or genetic algorithms to get out of these ruts   watch out for rounding errors – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-off_error - multiple iterations can in parallel can quickly amplify & blow up your algo ! Use an epsilon, avoid floating point errors,  truncations, approximations Happy Coding !

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• Silverlight Death Trolls Dancing on XAML&rsquo;s Grave

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I’m starting to see a whole bunch of tweets and blog posts on how Silverlight/WPF is dead, or how the XAML team has been disbanded at Microsoft, or how someone predicted Silverlight would die, blah blah blah. They all have a similar ring to it though: “Told ya so!” “They were stupid ideas anyway!” “Serves Microsoft right, boy are they dumb!” Let me tell you something, all those that are gleefully raving about Silverlight/WPF’s demise are nothing more than death trolls. Let’s assume that everything out there is true. Microsoft is obviously moving towards HTML 5 in a huge way (TechCrunch pointed out that SkyDrive has replaced its Silverlight based version with an HTML 5 one), and not just on the web as we’ve seen with recent announcements about how HTML 5 apps will be natively supported on Windows 8. WPF never caught on in the marketplace, regardless of its superior technology offering to Winforms. And Silverlight…well, it gave Flash a good run for its money, but plug-in based web applications are becoming passé in light of HTML 5. (It’s interesting that at a developer conference I put on just a few weeks ago, only 1 out of 60+ sessions included Silverlight. 5 focussed on HTML 5.) So what does this *death* of Silverlight/WPF/XAML mean then in the grand scheme of things (again, assuming that they truly *are* dying/dead)? Well, nothing really…at least nothing bad. Silverlight has given us some fantastic applications and experiences (Vancouver Olympics anyone?), and WP7 couldn’t have launched without Silverlight as its development platform. And WPF, although it had putrid adoption, has had some great success stories. A Canadian company that I talked to recently showed me how they re-wrote their point-of-sale application entirely in WPF, and the product is a huge success providing features their competitors aren’t. Arguably (and I say that only because I know I’m going to get WTF comments for this), VS.NET 2010 is a great example of what a WPF app can provide over previous C++ based applications. Technologies evolve. In a decade we’ve had 5 versions of the .NET framework, seen languages like J# come and go, seen F# appear, see communications layers change with WCF, seen EF go through multiple evolutions and traditional ADO.NET Datasets go extinct (from actual use anyway), and ASP.NET Webforms be replaced with ASP.NET MVC as a preferred web platform. Is Silverlight and WPF done? Maybe…probably?…thing is, it doesn’t really affect me personally in any way, or you…so why would we care if its gets replaced with something better and more robust that we can build better solutions with? Just remember the golden rule: don’t feed the trolls.

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• Auto-cancel reason not found (6, 13906)

  - by Rajesh Sharma

  There are many errors in the application which are never invoked because of appropriate application configuration done at the time of implementation by the solution architects. So typically, as an application end user you would never stumble upon such errors. But what if the application administrator inadvertently changes the configuration/setup in the development, test, QA, or production environment? This is the time when you as an end user are introduced to a brand-new error for which you may not have a clue or understanding to what it means and neither the access/privilege to rectify it.    In this post we'll focus on one such error '6, 13906 - Auto-cancel reason not found'.   You get this error if you have not defined a Bill (Segment) Cancel Reason (Admin Menu, B, Bill Cancel Reason) code with System Default value of Turn off auto-cancel.   Consider a scenario when you are about to final bill an 'Account' for which the bill period's cut-off date you selected is falling on or after the Service Agreement's (SA) end/stop date (basically SA is Stopped with a date earlier than it was billed previously). And for the same 'Account' either: Bill segments exists that end after the SA's end date OR Non-closing bill segments exists that end on the SA's end date (OR closing bill segments that do not end on SA's end date or do not exist at all - remember closing/final bill segment is generated if the SA is in Stopped status).   CC&B detects such scenario and attempts to cancel all such violating bill segments automatically, but NOT if you are generating the bill Online. If online, the system assumes that you know what you are doing, and prompts you with error 2, 13716 - Bill segments that violate the SA (%1) End Date (%2) exist to take necessary action.   If in batch, system automatically cancels these kinds of bill segment(s).   Since this happens in the background, you have to define within the application which System Default Bill (Segment) cancellation reason code identified as Turn off auto-cancel, should be used by the process when it attempts to cancel any such violating bill segments (You already know that you cannot cancel a bill segment without giving a reason for cancellation).   So what exactly happens during batch billing?   Bill Segment generation routine at first determines billing eligibility of the service agreement being billed. One of the billing eligibility criteria is to check the SA's previous bill segments which have end dates greater than the current cut-off date/end date. Technically, the routine retrieves a count of such violating bill segments.     SELECT COUNT (*) FROM CI_BSEG WHERE SA_ID = :SA-ID AND BSEG_STAT_FLG = '50' -- Frozen AND END_DT IS NOT NULL AND (END_DT > '03-JUN-2010' -- Bill segment greater than SA's End Date OR OR (END_DT = '03-JUN-2010' AND CLOSING_BSEG_SW = 'N')) -- Non-closing bill segment ending on SA's end date   If the count is greater than zero, Bill segment generation routine executes another program to auto-cancel such bill segments. Auto-cancel program retrieves the 'Bill Cancel Reason' code which is identified as Turn off auto-cancel. Retrieved cancel reason code is then placed on the bill segments that are being cancelled automatically.   During this process if the routine fails to determine the bill cancel reason code having System Default Turn off auto-cancel because it was not been configured, you get a bill exception 6, 13906 - Auto-cancel reason not found.   Also note that duplicate or multiple System Default codes identified as Turn off auto-cancel are not allowed. CC&B would complain with an error 2, 54201.   Duplicate validation/check is also performed within Auto-cancel routine, if suppose for test purposes you executed a DML statement updating CI_BILL_CAN_RSN.BSCAN_SYS_DFLT_FLG with a value 'T'.

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• Silverlight Cream for March 06, 2010 -- #808

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: András Velvárt, felix corke, Colin Eberhardt, Christopher Bennage, Gergely Orosz, Entity Spaces Team Blog, Mike Taulty(-2-), Jit Ghosh, and Jesse Liberty. Shoutouts: Jeremy Likness expands on the Silverlight Team's post Vancouver Olympics - How'd We Do That? Gavin Wignall has a post up Creating a 360 photograph of an object with Silverlight Photosynth From SilverlightCream.com: Transforming an Ugly Duckling into a Graceful Swan With Expression Blend and Silverlight - Part 2 Intro Animation András Velvárt has part 2 of his Transformation series up at SilverlightShow... he's taking the initro animation to a new length, allowing playback even... cool video tutorial! Free Silverlight 4 beta skin! felix corke has a Silerlight 4 theme up for us all to use. If you like a dark theme like Blend, you'll like this... I like it! Linq to Visual Tree Colin Eberhardt has a great tutorial up for using LINQ to query the WPF or Silverlight Visual Tree while retaining the tree structure. He also has links out to other techniques. XAML Attributes on Separate Lines Christopher Bennage has a post up showing how to easily get all your XAML attributes on separate lines using a VS menu option... I didn't know that! Using built-in, embedded and streamed fonts in Silverlight Gergely Orosz has a post up at ScottLogic going over Fonts in Silverlight -- built-in, embedded, or streamed, and examples with code. EntitySpaces 2010 Two Part Series on Silverlight and WCF Entity Spaces Team Blog has a pair of videos up on Entity Spaces 2010, WCF, and Silverlight. Part 1 is the intro and explanation, part 2 is a full-up app demonstrating it. MEF, Silverlight and the DeploymentCatalog In an attempt to respond fully to a query, Mike Taulty literally pushed the record button and took off on what became a tutorial video on building a real Silverlight app utilizing MEF. Silverlight 4, Experiment with Pluggable Navigation and a WCF Data Service Mike Taulty has an experiment detailed on his blog about pluggable navigation and Silverlight 4. He walks through the history of how we got to this point then takes on in an example... good external links too Enhancing Silverlight Video Experiences with Contextual Data This is a post on the MSDN Magazine site where Jit Ghosh has a great long post about not only Smooth Streaming with Silverlight, but also adding context data to your video. When Is It OK To Hack? Read what all Jesse Liberty gets involved in when he's trying to get something out the door and has to work around a problem. Just about as interesting are the comments ... check it out and leave your own! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    MIX10

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• Another sound not working post

  - by Thomas Smart

  Tried all the other "sound not working" posts i think, lost count. purge/reinstall alsa and pulse, reboot, add user to audio group, various lines in the alsa config file such as "options snd-hda-intel model=" then tried different options like generic, auto, basic, default, etc. tried pulseaudio -k && sudo alsa force-reload a few times, with and without rebooting. Hardware: 16gb ram, core I7-4790, Intel Haswell mboard with onboard sound and graphics Multimedia: Audio Adapter: HDA-Intel-HDA Intel HDMI OS: Ubuntu server 14.04 with ubuntu-desktop installed. GUI sound settings lists only the dummy sound card alsamixer -c 0 ¦ Card: HDA Intel HDMI F1: Help ¦ ¦ Chip: Intel Haswell HDMI F2: System information ¦ ¦ View: F3:[Playback] F4: Capture F5: All F6: Select sound card ¦ ¦ Item: S/PDIF ¦ ¦ +--+ ¦ ¦ ¦OO¦ ¦ ¦ +--+ ¦ ¦ < S/PDIF > ¦ aplay -l **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices **** card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 aplay -L default Playback/recording through the PulseAudio sound server null Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture) pulse PulseAudio Sound Server hdmi:CARD=HDMI,DEV=0 HDA Intel HDMI, HDMI 0 HDMI Audio Output dmix:CARD=HDMI,DEV=3 HDA Intel HDMI, HDMI 0 Direct sample mixing device dsnoop:CARD=HDMI,DEV=3 HDA Intel HDMI, HDMI 0 Direct sample snooping device hw:CARD=HDMI,DEV=3 HDA Intel HDMI, HDMI 0 Direct hardware device without any conversions plughw:CARD=HDMI,DEV=3 HDA Intel HDMI, HDMI 0 Hardware device with all software conversions cat /proc/asound/cards 0 [HDMI ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel HDMI HDA Intel HDMI at 0xf7d14000 irq 46 cat /proc/asound/devices 1: : sequencer 2: [ 0- 3]: digital audio playback 3: [ 0- 0]: hardware dependent 4: [ 0] : control 33: : timer mplayer -ao alsa:device=hdmi /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/system-ready.ogg MPlayer 1.1-4.8 (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team mplayer: could not connect to socket mplayer: No such file or directory Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control. Playing /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/system-ready.ogg. libavformat version 54.20.4 (external) Mismatching header version 54.20.3 libavformat file format detected. [lavf] stream 0: audio (vorbis), -aid 0 Load subtitles in /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/ ========================================================================== Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders libavcodec version 54.35.0 (external) AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 1 ch, floatle, 80.0 kbit/5.67% (ratio: 10000->176400) Selected audio codec: [ffvorbis] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg Vorbis) ========================================================================== [AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '1' [AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory [AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings [AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory [AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name [AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory [AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4727:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory [AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM hdmi [AO_ALSA] Playback open error: No such file or directory Failed to initialize audio driver 'alsa:device=hdmi' Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound. Audio: no sound Video: no video Exiting... (End of file) mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=0.3 /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/system-ready.ogg MPlayer 1.1-4.8 (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team mplayer: could not connect to socket mplayer: No such file or directory Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control. Playing /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/system-ready.ogg. libavformat version 54.20.4 (external) Mismatching header version 54.20.3 libavformat file format detected. [lavf] stream 0: audio (vorbis), -aid 0 Load subtitles in /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/ ========================================================================== Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders libavcodec version 54.35.0 (external) AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 1 ch, floatle, 80.0 kbit/5.67% (ratio: 10000->176400) Selected audio codec: [ffvorbis] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg Vorbis) ========================================================================== [AO_ALSA] Format floatle is not supported by hardware, trying default. AO: [alsa] 44100Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample) Video: no video Starting playback... A: 0.4 (00.4) of 0.8 (00.7) 0.1% Exiting... (End of file) Thank you for your time and help :)

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• The Minimalist Approach to Content Governance - Retire Phase

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

   Originally posted by John Brunswick. Good news - the Retire Phase is actually more fun than the Manage Phase. During the Retire Phase our content management team should not have to track down content creators if the Request Phase of this process was completed successfully. The ownership meta data, success criteria and time stamp that was applied to the original content submission will help to manage content at the end of the content life cycle. The Retire Phase will provide the opportunity for us to prune irrelevant content items through archiving or deletion, keeping the content system clear of irrelevant information, streamlining users ability to browse and search for content.   1. Act on Metrics Established during the Request Phase Why - Some information is only relevant for a given amount of time. In Content Platform Migration Strategy - Artifacts vs Perishable Content we examined two content types - Artifacts and Perishable content. Understanding the differences between Artifacts and Perishable content will allow us to explicitly respect their various lifespans. Additionally, some content may have been part of a project that failed to meet the success criteria outlined in the Request Phase. Any content that did not meet the metrics outlined in the Request Phase should be considered for deletion. How - Thankfully by adhering to to The Minimalist Approach to Content Governance our content should have some level of meta data associated with it that will allow us to quickly sort and understand how to deal with it. Content Management Systems like Oracle's Universal Content Management (UCM) natively allow you to create and save advanced searches that can use content meta data like folders, author, expiration date, security settings and custom meta data to pull back listings of content for examination. Additionally, analytics are available for all content items that allow us to determine if the usage is meeting success criteria that may have been previously outlined during the request phase. The lists that are produced from these approaches can be quickly reviewed for each project with the content owners and based on the nature of the content and success criteria undergo archiving or deletion. Impact - Retiring content that is no longer relevant will allow end users to have fast and relevant access to information across your enterprise. As we mentioned in our first post in this series - it is easy to quickly start producing content, but the challenge is ensuring that the environment is easy to navigate and use on the third week and during the third year. The light level of effort that was placed into the Request Phase of this process will set us up to keep content clean and relevant for a long time to come. With an up-to-date content repository users will be able to quickly find access to the information that is critical to their work processes. You might not get a holiday named in your honor managing the content system, but will appreciate their quick access to quality information.

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• First impressions of Scala

  - by Scott Weinstein

  I have an idea that it may be possible to predict build success/failure based on commit data. Why Scala? It’s a JVM language, has lots of powerful type features, and it has a linear algebra library which I’ll need later. Project definition and build Neither maven or the scala build tool (sbt) are completely satisfactory. This maven **archetype** (what .Net folks would call a VS project template) mvn archetype:generate `-DarchetypeGroupId=org.scala-tools.archetypes `-DarchetypeArtifactId=scala-archetype-simple `-DremoteRepositories=http://scala-tools.org/repo-releases `-DgroupId=org.SW -DartifactId=BuildBreakPredictor gets you started right away with “hello world” code, unit tests demonstrating a number of different testing approaches, and even a ready made `.gitignore` file - nice! But the Scala version is behind at v2.8, and more seriously, compiling and testing was painfully slow. So much that a rapid edit – test – edit cycle was not practical. So Lab49 colleague Steve Levine tells me that I can either adjust my pom to use fsc – the fast scala compiler, or use sbt. Sbt has some nice features It’s fast – it uses fsc by default It has a continuous mode, so  `> ~test` will compile and run your unit test each time you save a file It’s can consume (and produce) Maven 2 dependencies the build definition file can be much shorter than the equivalent pom (about 1/5 the size, as repos and dependencies can be declared on a single line) And some real limitations Limited support for 3rd party integration – for instance out of the box, TeamCity doesn’t speak sbt, nor does IntelliJ IDEA Steeper learning curve for build steps outside the default Side note: If a language has a fast compiler, why keep the slow compiler around? Even worse, why make it the default? I choose sbt, for the faster development speed it offers. Syntax Scala APIs really like to use punctuation – sometimes this works well, as in the following map1 |+| map2 The `|+|` defines a merge operator which does addition on the `values` of the maps. It’s less useful here: http(baseUrl / url >- parseJson[BuildStatus] sure you can probably guess what `>-` does from the context, but how about `>~` or `>+`? Language features I’m still learning, so not much to say just yet. However case classes are quite usefull, implicits scare me, and type constructors have lots of power. Community A number of projects, such as https://github.com/scalala and https://github.com/scalaz/scalaz are split between github and google code – github for the src, and google code for the docs. Not sure I understand the motivation here.

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• A SharePoint Developer&rsquo;s Toolchest

  - by Sahil Malik

  Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). When we develop for SharePoint, we end up using many tools, third party or Microsoft, to facilitate our development. What are some of your favorite tools? Mine are as below - 1. Reflector: When I saw reflector, I was pretty convinced that a tool better and more useful than it doesn’t exist. Well I was wrong! Redgate took over reflector and they still offer it as a free version, but they have a paid version called reflector pro. It lets you debug third party source code, as if you had the source code. Brilliant! Who needs documentation anymore when you have real code? 2. ULS Viewer: It is no secret, reading ULS logs is a pain in the rear. Well, not so with ULS Viewer, which does work with SharePoint 2007 as well. But it’s just way cooler with SharePoint 2010. You know when you get an error in SharePoint 2010 it shows you an error like as below: Well, the ULS Viewer will allow you to set filtering critereon, allowing you to immediately zero in, into an error, across multiple WFEs even. Also there are numerous other facilities built into the tool, such as advanced filtering, critical error notifications, etc. A must have! You can read the documentation of the ULSViewer here. 3. SPDisposeCheck: Did you know that the MySite object is strange? What is strange about it? That you have to dispose it even if you didn’t create it!? Well who the hell remembers all that! Honestly I do! And you should too. But there is a tool to help you sanitize your code. And that is SPDisposeCheck. You run it against your DLL or EXE, and it will give you suggestions on where you might have missed calling dispose on an object. You still have to use your head, but having this tool helps. 4. DebugView: Debugging for SharePoint can be difficult sometimes. Sometimes your breakpoints don’t get hit. And while you can try and make them hit, it is sometimes easier to just write a bunch of Debug.WriteLines, and catch them from an external application such as DebugView. You simply use your code, and DebugView will catch all the Debug.WriteLine’s in your code like this - 5. BGInfo: One annoying thing about SharePoint projects, it causes the number of servers to multiply like bunnies. As I’m RDP’ing into many computers trying to diagnose a crazy issue, sometimes it becomes hard to remember which machine is which. BGInfo puts all that on the wallpaper, alongwith a bunch of other useful info. A bit like this - 5. WSPBuilder: SharePoint 2007 only, but I think there maybe a version for SP2010 coming later. I think the VS2010 tools for SP2010 development are quite nice, so WSPBuilder, well so far I don’t miss it. But lets see what WSPBuilder for 2010 brings – I haven’t seen it yet. However, I want to confidently assert that WSPBuilder for SP2007 is simply awesome. 6. SharePoint Manager: The SharePoint Manager 2010 is a SharePoint object model explorer. It enables you to browse every site on the local farm and view every property. It also enables you to change the properties. The VS2010 dev tools now include a server explorer, which show you a subset of properties in read-only. I would LOVE to see SharePoint manager like functionality built into VS2010. SharePoint Manager, a total must-have. Comment on the article ....

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• Best Practices for Handing over Legacy Code

  - by PersonalNexus

  In a couple of months a colleague will be moving on to a new project and I will be inheriting one of his projects. To prepare, I have already ordered Michael Feathers' Working Effectively with Legacy Code. But this books as well as most questions on legacy code I found so far are concerned with the case of inheriting code as-is. But in this case I actually have access to the original developer and we do have some time for an orderly hand-over. Some background on the piece of code I will be inheriting: It's functioning: There are no known bugs, but as performance requirements keep going up, some optimizations will become necessary in the not too distant future. Undocumented: There is pretty much zero documentation at the method and class level. What the code is supposed to do at a higher level, though, is well-understood, because I have been writing against its API (as a black-box) for years. Only higher-level integration tests: There are only integration tests testing proper interaction with other components via the API (again, black-box). Very low-level, optimized for speed: Because this code is central to an entire system of applications, a lot of it has been optimized several times over the years and is extremely low-level (one part has its own memory manager for certain structs/records). Concurrent and lock-free: While I am very familiar with concurrent and lock-free programming and have actually contributed a few pieces to this code, this adds another layer of complexity. Large codebase: This particular project is more than ten thousand lines of code, so there is no way I will be able to have everything explained to me. Written in Delphi: I'm just going to put this out there, although I don't believe the language to be germane to the question, as I believe this type of problem to be language-agnostic. I was wondering how the time until his departure would best be spent. Here are a couple of ideas: Get everything to build on my machine: Even though everything should be checked into source code control, who hasn't forgotten to check in a file once in a while, so this should probably be the first order of business. More tests: While I would like more class-level unit tests so that when I will be making changes, any bugs I introduce can be caught early on, the code as it is now is not testable (huge classes, long methods, too many mutual dependencies). What to document: I think for starters it would be best to focus documentation on those areas in the code that would otherwise be difficult to understand e.g. because of their low-level/highly optimized nature. I am afraid there are a couple of things in there that might look ugly and in need of refactoring/rewriting, but are actually optimizations that have been out in there for a good reason that I might miss (cf. Joel Spolsky, Things You Should Never Do, Part I) How to document: I think some class diagrams of the architecture and sequence diagrams of critical functions accompanied by some prose would be best. Who to document: I was wondering what would be better, to have him write the documentation or have him explain it to me, so I can write the documentation. I am afraid, that things that are obvious to him but not me would otherwise not be covered properly. Refactoring using pair-programming: This might not be possible to do due to time constraints, but maybe I could refactor some of his code to make it more maintainable while he was still around to provide input on why things are the way they are. Please comment on and add to this. Since there isn't enough time to do all of this, I am particularly interested in how you would prioritize.

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• Why Cornell University Chose Oracle Data Masking

  - by Troy Kitch

  One of the eight Ivy League schools, Cornell University found itself in the unfortunate position of having to inform over 45,000 University community members that their personal information had been breached when a laptop was stolen. To ensure this wouldn’t happen again, Cornell took steps to ensure that data used for non-production purposes is de-identified with Oracle Data Masking. A recent podcast highlights why organizations like Cornell are choosing Oracle Data Masking to irreversibly de-identify production data for use in non-production environments. Organizations often copy production data, that contains sensitive information, into non-production environments so they can test applications and systems using “real world” information. Data in non-production has increasingly become a target of cyber criminals and can be lost or stolen due to weak security controls and unmonitored access. Similar to production environments, data breaches in non-production environments can cost millions of dollars to remediate and cause irreparable harm to reputation and brand. Cornell’s applications and databases help carry out the administrative and academic mission of the university. They are running Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions that include highly sensitive faculty, student, alumni, and prospective student data. This data is supported and accessed by a diverse set of developers and functional staff distributed across the university. Several years ago, Cornell experienced a data breach when an employee’s laptop was stolen.  Centrally stored backup information indicated there was sensitive data on the laptop. With no way of knowing what the criminal intended, the university had to spend significant resources reviewing data, setting up service centers to handle constituent concerns, and provide free credit checks and identity theft protection services—all of which cost money and took time away from other projects. To avoid this issue in the future Cornell came up with several options; one of which was to sanitize the testing and training environments. “The project management team was brought in and they developed a project plan and implementation schedule; part of which was to evaluate competing products in the market-space and figure out which one would work best for us.  In the end we chose Oracle’s solution based on its architecture and its functionality.” – Tony Damiani, Database Administration and Business Intelligence, Cornell University The key goals of the project were to mask the elements that were identifiable as sensitive in a consistent and efficient manner, but still support all the previous activities in the non-production environments. Tony concludes,  “What we saw was a very minimal impact on performance. The masking process added an additional three hours to our refresh window, but it was well worth that time to secure the environment and remove the sensitive data. I think some other key points you can keep in mind here is that there was zero impact on the production environment. Oracle Data Masking works in non-production environments only. Additionally, the risk of exposure has been significantly reduced and the impact to business was minimal.” With Oracle Data Masking organizations like Cornell can: Make application data securely available in non-production environments Prevent application developers and testers from seeing production data Use an extensible template library and policies for data masking automation Gain the benefits of referential integrity so that applications continue to work Listen to the podcast to hear the complete interview.  Learn more about Oracle Data Masking by registering to watch this SANS Institute Webcast and view this short demo.

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

  - by thatjeffsmith

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

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