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Matrix Multiplication with C++ AMP

- by Daniel Moth

As part of our API tour of C++ AMP, we looked recently at parallel_for_each. I ended that post by saying we would revisit parallel_for_each after introducing array and array_view. Now is the time, so this is part 2 of parallel_for_each, and also a post that brings together everything we've seen until now. The code for serial and accelerated Consider a naïve (or brute force) serial implementation of matrix multiplication 0: void MatrixMultiplySerial(std::vector<float>& vC, const std::vector<float>& vA, const std::vector<float>& vB, int M, int N, int W) 1: { 2: for (int row = 0; row < M; row++) 3: { 4: for (int col = 0; col < N; col++) 5: { 6: float sum = 0.0f; 7: for(int i = 0; i < W; i++) 8: sum += vA[row * W + i] * vB[i * N + col]; 9: vC[row * N + col] = sum; 10: } 11: } 12: } We notice that each loop iteration is independent from each other and so can be parallelized. If in addition we have really large amounts of data, then this is a good candidate to offload to an accelerator. First, I'll just show you an example of what that code may look like with C++ AMP, and then we'll analyze it. It is assumed that you included at the top of your file #include <amp.h> 13: void MatrixMultiplySimple(std::vector<float>& vC, const std::vector<float>& vA, const std::vector<float>& vB, int M, int N, int W) 14: { 15: concurrency::array_view<const float,2> a(M, W, vA); 16: concurrency::array_view<const float,2> b(W, N, vB); 17: concurrency::array_view<concurrency::writeonly<float>,2> c(M, N, vC); 18: concurrency::parallel_for_each(c.grid, 19: [=](concurrency::index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d) { 20: int row = idx[0]; int col = idx[1]; 21: float sum = 0.0f; 22: for(int i = 0; i < W; i++) 23: sum += a(row, i) * b(i, col); 24: c[idx] = sum; 25: }); 26: } First a visual comparison, just for fun: The beginning and end is the same, i.e. lines 0,1,12 are identical to lines 13,14,26. The double nested loop (lines 2,3,4,5 and 10,11) has been transformed into a parallel_for_each call (18,19,20 and 25). The core algorithm (lines 6,7,8,9) is essentially the same (lines 21,22,23,24). We have extra lines in the C++ AMP version (15,16,17). Now let's dig in deeper. Using array_view and extent When we decided to convert this function to run on an accelerator, we knew we couldn't use the std::vector objects in the restrict(direct3d) function. So we had a choice of copying the data to the the concurrency::array<T,N> object, or wrapping the vector container (and hence its data) with a concurrency::array_view<T,N> object from amp.h – here we used the latter (lines 15,16,17). Now we can access the same data through the array_view objects (a and b) instead of the vector objects (vA and vB), and the added benefit is that we can capture the array_view objects in the lambda (lines 19-25) that we pass to the parallel_for_each call (line 18) and the data will get copied on demand for us to the accelerator. Note that line 15 (and ditto for 16 and 17) could have been written as two lines instead of one: extent<2> e(M, W); array_view<const float, 2> a(e, vA); In other words, we could have explicitly created the extent object instead of letting the array_view create it for us under the covers through the constructor overload we chose. The benefit of the extent object in this instance is that we can express that the data is indeed two dimensional, i.e a matrix. When we were using a vector object we could not do that, and instead we had to track via additional unrelated variables the dimensions of the matrix (i.e. with the integers M and W) – aren't you loving C++ AMP already? Note that the const before the float when creating a and b, will result in the underling data only being copied to the accelerator and not be copied back – a nice optimization. A similar thing is happening on line 17 when creating array_view c, where we have indicated that we do not need to copy the data to the accelerator, only copy it back. The kernel dispatch On line 18 we make the call to the C++ AMP entry point (parallel_for_each) to invoke our parallel loop or, as some may say, dispatch our kernel. The first argument we need to pass describes how many threads we want for this computation. For this algorithm we decided that we want exactly the same number of threads as the number of elements in the output matrix, i.e. in array_view c which will eventually update the vector vC. So each thread will compute exactly one result. Since the elements in c are organized in a 2-dimensional manner we can organize our threads in a two-dimensional manner too. We don't have to think too much about how to create the first argument (a grid) since the array_view object helpfully exposes that as a property. Note that instead of c.grid we could have written grid<2>(c.extent) or grid<2>(extent<2>(M, N)) – the result is the same in that we have specified M*N threads to execute our lambda. The second argument is a restrict(direct3d) lambda that accepts an index object. Since we elected to use a two-dimensional extent as the first argument of parallel_for_each, the index will also be two-dimensional and as covered in the previous posts it represents the thread ID, which in our case maps perfectly to the index of each element in the resulting array_view. The kernel itself The lambda body (lines 20-24), or as some may say, the kernel, is the code that will actually execute on the accelerator. It will be called by M*N threads and we can use those threads to index into the two input array_views (a,b) and write results into the output array_view ( c ). The four lines (21-24) are essentially identical to the four lines of the serial algorithm (6-9). The only difference is how we index into a,b,c versus how we index into vA,vB,vC. The code we wrote with C++ AMP is much nicer in its indexing, because the dimensionality is a first class concept, so you don't have to do funny arithmetic calculating the index of where the next row starts, which you have to do when working with vectors directly (since they store all the data in a flat manner). I skipped over describing line 20. Note that we didn't really need to read the two components of the index into temporary local variables. This mostly reflects my personal choice, in some algorithms to break down the index into local variables with names that make sense for the algorithm, i.e. in this case row and col. In other cases it may i,j,k or x,y,z, or M,N or whatever. Also note that we could have written line 24 as: c(idx[0], idx[1])=sum or c(row, col)=sum instead of the simpler c[idx]=sum Targeting a specific accelerator Imagine that we had more than one hardware accelerator on a system and we wanted to pick a specific one to execute this parallel loop on. So there would be some code like this anywhere before line 18: vector<accelerator> accs = MyFunctionThatChoosesSuitableAccelerators(); accelerator acc = accs[0]; …and then we would modify line 18 so we would be calling another overload of parallel_for_each that accepts an accelerator_view as the first argument, so it would become: concurrency::parallel_for_each(acc.default_view, c.grid, ...and the rest of your code remains the same… how simple is that? Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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Recursing data into a 2 dimensional array in PHP 5

- by user315699

I'm getting bamboozled by "for each" loops and two dimensional arrays, and I'm a php newb so please bear with me (and ignore any variables with the word "image" - it's all about the mp3s, I just didn't change it from the xml tutorial) I found a php function on the net that list files in a directory, the output of which is: Array ( [0] = audio/1.mp3 [1] = audio/2.mp3 [2] = audio/3.mp3 [3] = audio/4.mp3 [4] = audio/5.mp3 ) As expected. And another that lists some info about mp3 files. $mp3datafile = 'audio/1.mp3'; $m = new mp3file($mp3datafile); $mp3dataArray = $m-get_metadata(); print_r($mp3dataArray); unset($mp3dataArray); The output of which is Array ( [Filesize] = 31972 [Encoding] = CBR [etc] ) In order to automatically build RSS for a podcast, I need to generate XML for each item. So far so good. This is how I'm making the xml foreach ($imagearray as $key = $val) { $tnsoundfile = $xml_generator-addChild('item'); $tnsoundfile-addChild('title', $podcasttitle); $enclosure = $tnsoundfile-addChild('enclosure'); $enclosure-addAttribute('url', $val); // that's the filename $enclosure-addAttribute('length', $mp3dataArray[Filesize]); // << Length is file length, not time. But later I also need $mp3dataArray[Length mm:ss] for duration tag. $enclosure-addAttribute('type', 'audio/mpeg'); $tnsoundfile-addChild('guid', $path_to_image_dir.'/'.$val); } (The above has been truncated, I realise it's not proper xml right now, but it was just to show what was going on). Perfect. But I need to do it for as many files as there are in the directory. So, I have an array of the names of the files in the directory in $mp3data And, I have an array of mp3 data in $mp3dataArray from one iteration of the get_metadata() function. If I do the following, then I get a nice list of the mp3 data of the 5 files in the directory: foreach ($mp3data as $key = $val) { $mp3datafile = $val; $m = new mp3file($mp3datafile); $mp3dataArray = $m-get_metadata(); print_r($mp3dataArray); unset($mp3dataArray); } As expected. Where I'm struggling, and have been for most of the day in spite of reading many forums and tutorials, is how to populate the "second dimension" of the array, so that it goes through 1,2,3,4 and 5.mp3 (or however many there are), extracts the metadata, then allows me to use it in the xml section above. Here's what I have foreach ($mp3data as $key = $val) { $mp3datafile = $val; $m = new mp3file($mp3datafile); $mp3dataArray = $m-get_metadata(); $mp3testarray = array($mp3dataArray); } print_r($mp3dataArray); Shouldn't that line print_r($mp3dataArray); give me a nice list of 5 lots of mp3 data, in the way it did when I recursed through the loop as before? Cos this is driving me nuts! It must be something so simple, and any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

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Using GA in GUI

- by AlexT

Sorry if this isn't clear as I'm writing this on a mobile device and I'm trying to make it quick. I've written a basic Genetic Algorithm with a binary encoding (genes) that builds a fitness value and evolves through several iterations using tournament selection, mutation and crossover. As a basic command-line example it seems to work. The problem I've got is with applying a genetic algorithm within a GUI as I am writing a maze-solving program that uses the GA to find a method through a maze. How do I turn my random binary encoded genes and fitness function (add all the binary values together) into a method to control a bot around a maze? I have built a basic GUI in Java consisting of a maze of labels (like a grid) with the available routes being in blue and the walls being in black. To reiterate my GA performs well and contains what any typical GA would (fitness method, get and set population, selection, crossover, etc) but now I need to plug it into a GUI to get my maze running. What needs to go where in order to get a bot that can move in different directions depending on what the GA says? Rough pseudocode would be great if possible As requested, an Individual is built using a separate class (Indiv), with all the main work being done in a Pop class. When a new individual is instantiated an array of ints represent the genes of said individual, with the genes being picked at random from a number between 0 and 1. The fitness function merely adds together the value of these genes and in the Pop class handles selection, mutation and crossover of two selected individuals. There's not much else to it, the command line program just shows evolution over n generations with the total fitness improving over each iteration. EDIT: It's starting to make a bit more sense now, although there are a few things that are bugging me... As Adamski has suggested I want to create an "Agent" with the options shown below. The problem I have is where the random bit string comes into play here. The agent knows where the walls are and has it laid out in a 4 bit string (i.e. 0111), but how does this affect the random 32 bit string? (i.e. 10001011011001001010011011010101) If I have the following maze (x is the start place, 2 is the goal, 1 is the wall): x 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 2 If I turn left I'm facing the wrong way and the agent will move completely off the maze if it moves forward. I assume that the first generation of the string will be completely random and it will evolve as the fitness grows but I don't get how the string will work within a maze. So, to get this straight... The fitness is the result of when the agent is able to move and is by a wall. The genes are a string of 32 bits, split into 16 sets of 2 bits to show the available actions and for the robot to move the two bits need to be passed with four bits from the agent showings its position near the walls. If the move is to go past a wall the move isn't made and it is deemed invalid and if the move is made and if a new wall is found then the fitness goes up. Is that right?

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[C#][XNA] Draw() 20,000 32 by 32 Textures or 1 Large Texture 20,000 Times

- by Rudi

The title may be confusing - sorry about that, it's a poor summary. Here's my dilemma. I'm programming in C# using the .NET Framework 4, and aiming to make a tile-based game with XNA. I have one large texture (256 pixels by 4096 pixels). Remember this is a tile-based game, so this texture is so massive only because it contains many tiles, which are each 32 pixels by 32 pixels. I think the experts will definitely know what a tile-based game is like. The orientation is orthogonal (like a chess board), not isometric. In the Game.Draw() method, I have two choices, one of which will be incredibly more efficient than the other. Choice/Method #1: Semi-Pseudocode: public void Draw() { // map tiles are drawn left-to-right, top-to-bottom for (int x = 0; x < mapWidth; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < mapHeight; y++) { SpriteBatch.Draw( MyLargeTexture, // One large 256 x 4096 texture new Rectangle(x, y, 32, 32), // Destination rectangle - ignore this, its ok new Rectangle(x, y, 32, 32), // Notice the source rectangle 'cuts out' 32 by 32 squares from the texture corresponding to the loop Color.White); // No tint - ignore this, its ok } } } Caption: So, effectively, the first method is referencing one large texture many many times, each time using a small rectangle of this large texture to draw the appropriate tile image. Choice/Method #2: Semi-Pseudocode: public void Draw() { // map tiles are drawn left-to-right, top-to-bottom for (int x = 0; x < mapWidth; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < mapHeight; y++) { Texture2D tileTexture = map.GetTileTexture(x, y); // Getting a small 32 by 32 texture (different each iteration of the loop) SpriteBatch.Draw( tileTexture, new Rectangle(x, y, 32, 32), // Destination rectangle - ignore this, its ok new Rectangle(0, 0, tileTexture.Width, tileTexture.Height), // Notice the source rectangle uses the entire texture, because the entire texture IS 32 by 32 Color.White); // No tint - ignore this, its ok } } } Caption: So, effectively, the second method is drawing many small textures many times. The Question: Which method and why? Personally, I would think it would be incredibly more efficient to use the first method. If you think about what that means for the tile array in a map (think of a large map with 2000 by 2000 tiles, let's say), each Tile object would only have to contain 2 integers, for the X and Y positions of the source rectangle in the one large texture - 8 bytes. If you use method #2, however, each Tile object in the tile array of the map would have to store a 32by32 Texture - an image - which has to allocate memory for the R G B A pixels 32 by 32 times - is that 4096 bytes per tile then? So, which method and why? First priority is speed, then memory-load, then efficiency or whatever you experts believe.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, August 07, 2014

CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, August 07, 2014Popular ReleasesSharePoint 2013 Lync Presence using jQuery: jQuery Lync Presence: I have fixed the same user multiple times on page issue in this release (Issue # 1506)Dynamics AX IEIDE Project Explorer: IEIDE.1.1.40803.1: Installing the project: 1. Install the ax model file; do this by running the following commands on the machine having the AX Management Tools: 1.a. cmd (depending if you have UAC enabled, you may want to Run as administrator); 1.b. net stop aos60$01 (wait until you have your AOS stopped); 1.c. cd "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics AX\60\ManagementUtili ties\" 1.d. axutil import /file:c:\IEIDE.1.1.40806.1.axmodel /verbose 1.e. net start aos60$01 1.f. start the client and select Skip 2. 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This means you can point it to Fiddler and see more details on the requests and responses. The default is 127.0.0.8 and port 8888 – which is what Fiddler’s proxy defaults to. •There is limited ability for the application to lookup helpful information on the first status code in the response – you will see it displayed in the lowest text box of the Conversation window. This will make the Conversation window a lot easi...Lexisnexis directory of corporate affiliates Text Analyzer: Lexisnexis Text Analyzer: This version has functions below.Standards to analyze, columns, keywords editing Import of document Export to CSV and Microsoft Excel fileWix# (WixSharp) - managed interface for WiX: Release 1.0.0.0: Release 1.0.0.0 Custom UI Custom MSI Dialog Custom CLR Dialog External UIRecaptcha for .NET: Recaptcha for .NET v1.6.0: What's New?Bug fixes Optimized codeMath.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v3.2.0: Linear Algebra: Vector.Map2 (map2 in F#), storage-optimized Linear Algebra: fix RemoveColumn/Row early index bound check (was not strict enough) Statistics: Entropy ~Jeff Mastry Interpolation: use Array.BinarySearch instead of local implementation ~Candy Chiu Resources: fix a corrupted exception message string Portable Build: support .Net 4.0 as well by using profile 328 instead of 344. .Net 3.5: F# extensions now support .Net 3.5 as well .Net 3.5: NuGet package now contains pro...Virto Commerce Enterprise Open Source eCommerce Platform (asp.net mvc): Virto Commerce 1.11: Virto Commerce Community Edition version 1.11. 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Written in javascript.MicroJSON - Lightweight JSON library: MicroJSON is a lightweight JSON library that provides methods to create and read JSON objects and strings. It is useful for .Net Micro Framework.Ollies MSCRM Tools: Useful tools for your working life with MSCRMOnline: This is a demo appPESS2: nothing particularPrivateScriptLanguage: PSL is a simple Script-Language which can be used for custom shell-development or low-level scripting in applications. You can easily integrate it in any app!QuickDAL: QDAL provides a simple and efficient Data Access Layer between business entities and a T-SQL compatible database.Regular delaunay triangulation: Initial releaseSimpleWebService: This application should provide a simple platform to simulate all kinds of Web-API and/or network services, to provide a good testing environment for developersThe Mario Kart 8 App: Well hello there people! 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CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, August 13, 2014

CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, August 13, 2014Popular ReleasesLozzi's SharePoint 2013 Scripts: Lozzi.Fields (without Site Col Admin): This file is the same as the primary download, however I've removed the override allowing Site Collection Administrators access regardless of groups. This applies to the disableWithAllowance and hideWithAllowance functions.bitboxx bbcontact: 01.00.00: Release Notes bitboxx bbcontact 01.00.00bbcontact 01.00.00 will work for any DNN version 6.1.0 and up. - Initial releaseAD4 Application Designer for flow based .NET applications: AD4.AppDesigner.23.27: AD4.Iteration.23.27(Advanced Rendering Features) Refacturing: RenderStepPinsCaptions simplified by extending FlowChartStepPinDecoratorExtensions RenderFlowChartPinsCaptions simplified by FlowChartFlowPinDecoratorExtensions RenderWiresCaptions simplified by FlowChartWireDecoratorExtensions Design of tutorial samples updated Next tutorial finished: ThreadAsynchronizer Pattern (Version V7) ToDo: Some tutorials are unfinished but coming soon ... Note: The gluing code of the AD4.AppDesig...OooPlayer: 1.1: Added: Support for speex, TAK and OptimFrog files Added: An option to not to load cover art Added: Smaller package size Fixed: Unable to drag&drop audio files to playlist Updated: FLAC, WacPack and Opus playback libraries Updated: ID3v1 and ID3v2 tag librariesEWSEditor: EwsEditor 1.10 Release: • Export and import of items as a full fidelity steam works - without proxy classes! - I used raw EWS POSTs. • Turned off word wrap for EWS request field in EWS POST windows. • Several windows with scrolling texts boxes were limiting content to 32k - I removed this restriction. • Split server timezone info off to separate menu item from the timezone info windows so that the timezone info window could be used without logging into a mailbox. • Lots of updates to the TimeZone window. • UserAgen...Python Tools for Visual Studio: 2.1 RC: Release notes for PTVS 2.1 RC We’re pleased to announce the release candidate for Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.1. 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I appreciate that you like it (2000 downloads over past 6 months), but may be you have to say something? What do you dislike in the module? Maybe you would love to see some new functionality? Tell, what you think! Installation guide:Use default installation path to install this module for current user only. To install this module for all users — enable "Install for all users" check-box in installation UI ...Modern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.6: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. BREAKING CHANGE LinkGroup.GroupName renamed to GroupKey NEW FEATURES Improved rendering on high DPI screens, including support for per-monitor DPI awareness available in Windows 8.1 (see also Per-monitor DPI awareness) New ModernProgressRing control with 8 builtin styles New LinkCommands.NavigateLink routed command New Visual Studio project templates 'Modern UI WPF App' and 'Modern UI W...Roll20 Custom Power Card Macro Generator: R20CPCMG 0.2.0.0 Public Beta: This is the beta release for version 0.2.0.0. Its still very much a work in progress, but I'd rather get this out now before another lapse in updates so we can solicit feedback from the community. The two main updates for this version is that you can now import macros and you can customize the tag buttons and group them by game system. The Import Macro function turns the raw text, like the following, into something you can easily edit inside the program. !power --name|Whirling Assault --us...Utility Database: UtilityDB.2.0: Release Notes: Version 2.0 This is the second release of the UtilityDB, it builds on top of and includes the Version 1.8 of code. This release focus on performance metrics in particular Disk I/O. The deployment scripts have been rewritten to utilize transactions to insure completeness of script execution. This project releases the source code as a SQL Server 2012 project file. The intended way to deliver the scripts to the database is through the execution of the @BuildScript.sql in the ...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.74.0: Multiple thread safe improvements including AdjustToContents XLHelper XLColor_Static IntergerExtensions.ToStringLookup Exception now thrown when saving a workbook with no sheets, instead of creating a corrupt workbook Fix for hyperlinks with non-ASCII Characters Added basic workbook protection Fix for error thrown, when a spreadsheet contained comments and images Fix to Trim function Fix Invalid operation Exception thrown when the formula functions MAX, MIN, and AVG referenc...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.042.019 Release 1: Added RadioAntenna broadcast name to ship name detail. Added two additional columns for Asteroid material generation for Asteroid Fields. Added Mass and Block number columns to main display. Added Ellipsis to some columns on main display to reduce name confusion. Added correct SE version number in file when saving. Re-added in reattaching Motor when drag/dropping or importing ships (KeenSH have added RotorEntityId back in after removing it months ago). Added option to export and r...jQuery List DragSort: jQuery List DragSort 0.5.2: Fixed scrollContainer removing deprecated use of $.browser so should now work with latest version of jQuery. Added the ability to return false in dragEnd to revert sort order Project changes Added nuget package for dragsort https://www.nuget.org/packages/dragsort Converted repository from SVN to MercurialNew Projectsangle.works: Sample AngularJS projectArtezio spTree for SharePoint 2013: spTree is a jQuery plugin to display SharePoint websites and lists in a tree view. It uses jsTree plugin to display data, expand and complement its settings.DigitalProject: no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no project ,no popenelecmedicrec: its an open source emrPetriFlow: A new solution for workflow using Petri NetReflexive .Net: Stream transformation over durable and transient channelsrunner-prototype: Small game prototype for self-practicing, likely no use at all for anyone else.Spizzi PowerShell Module: This project provides different PowerShell CmdLet's combined into one module to extend the built-in PowerShell Modules.Testill: Test Web Fabricator: A highly composable web fabricwingate log parser: wingate log parser

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Termite colony simulator using java

- by ashii

hi everyone, i hve to design a simulator that will maintain an environment, which consists of a collection of patches arranged in a rectangular grid of arbitrary size. Each patch contains zero or more wood chips. A patch may be occupied by one or more termites or predators, which are mobile entities that live within the world and behave according to simple rules. A TERMITE can pick up a wood chip from the patch that it is currently on, or drop a wood chip that it is carrying. Termites travel around the grid by moving randomly from their current patch to a neighbouring patch, in one of four possible directions. New termites may hatch from eggs, and this is simulated by the appearance of a new termite at a random patch within the environment. A PREDATOR moves in a similar way to termites, and if a predator moves onto a patch that is occupied by a termite, then the predator eats the termite. At initialization, the termites, predators, and wood chips are distributed randomly in the environment. Simulation then proceeds in a loop, and the new state of the environment is obtained at each iteration. i have designed the arena using jpanel but im not able to randomnly place wood,termite and predator in that arena. can any one help me out?? my code for the arena is as following: 01 import java.awt.*; 02 import javax.swing.*; 03 04 public class Arena extends JPanel 05 { 06 private static final int Rows = 8; 07 private static final int Cols = 8; 08 public void paint(Graphics g) 09 { 10 Dimension d = this.getSize(); 11 // don't draw both sets of squares, when you can draw one 12 // fill in the entire thing with one color 13 g.setColor(Color.WHITE); 14 // make the background 15 g.fillRect(0,0,d.width,d.height); 16 // draw only black 17 g.setColor(Color.BLACK); 18 // pick a square size based on the smallest dimension 19 int sqsize = ((d.width<d.height) ? d.width/Cols : d.height/Rows); 20 // loop for rows 21 for (int row=0; row<Rows; row++) 22 { 23 int y = row*sqsize; // y stays same for entire row, set here 24 int x = (row%2)*sqsize; // x starts at 0 or one square in 25 for (int i=0; i<Cols/2; i++) 26 { 27 // you will only be drawing half the squares per row 28 // draw square 29 g.fillRect(x,y,sqsize,sqsize); 30 // move two square sizes over 31 x += sqsize*2; 32 } 33 } 34 35 } 36 37 38 39 public void update(Graphics g) { paint(g); } 40 41 42 43 public static void main (String[] args) 44 { 45 46 JFrame frame = new JFrame("Arena"); 47 frame.setSize(600,400); 48 frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); 49 frame.setContentPane(new Arena()); 50 frame.setVisible(true); 51 } 52 53 }

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Is there a library available which easily can record and replay results of API calls?

- by Billy ONeal

I'm working on writing various things that call relatively complicated Win32 API functions. Here's an example: //Encapsulates calling NtQuerySystemInformation buffer management. WindowsApi::AutoArray NtDll::NtQuerySystemInformation( SystemInformationClass toGet ) const { AutoArray result; ULONG allocationSize = 1024; ULONG previousSize; NTSTATUS errorCheck; do { previousSize = allocationSize; result.Allocate(allocationSize); errorCheck = WinQuerySystemInformation(toGet, result.GetAs<void>(), allocationSize, &allocationSize); if (allocationSize <= previousSize) allocationSize = previousSize * 2; } while (errorCheck == 0xC0000004L); if (errorCheck != 0) { THROW_MANUAL_WINDOWS_ERROR(WinRtlNtStatusToDosError(errorCheck)); } return result; } //Client of the above. ProcessSnapshot::ProcessSnapshot() { using Dll::NtDll; NtDll ntdll; AutoArray systemInfoBuffer = ntdll.NtQuerySystemInformation( NtDll::SystemProcessInformation); BYTE * currentPtr = systemInfoBuffer.GetAs<BYTE>(); //Loop through the results, creating Process objects. SYSTEM_PROCESSES * asSysInfo; do { // Loop book keeping asSysInfo = reinterpret_cast<SYSTEM_PROCESSES *>(currentPtr); currentPtr += asSysInfo->NextEntryDelta; //Create the process for the current iteration and fill it with data. std::auto_ptr<ProcImpl> currentProc(ProcFactory( static_cast<unsigned __int32>(asSysInfo->ProcessId), this)); NormalProcess* nptr = dynamic_cast<NormalProcess*>(currentProc.get()); if (nptr) { nptr->SetProcessName(asSysInfo->ProcessName); } // Populate process threads for(ULONG idx = 0; idx < asSysInfo->ThreadCount; ++idx) { SYSTEM_THREADS& sysThread = asSysInfo->Threads[idx]; Thread thread( currentProc.get(), static_cast<unsigned __int32>(sysThread.ClientId.UniqueThread), sysThread.StartAddress); currentProc->AddThread(thread); } processes.push_back(currentProc); } while(asSysInfo->NextEntryDelta != 0); } My problem is in mocking out the NtDll::NtQuerySystemInformation method -- namely, that the data structure returned is complicated (Well, here it's actually relatively simple but it can be complicated), and writing a test which builds the data structure like the API call does can take 5-6 times as long as writing the code that uses the API. What I'd like to do is take a call to the API, and record it somehow, so that I can return that recorded value to the code under test without actually calling the API. The returned structures cannot simply be memcpy'd, because they often contain inner pointers (pointers to other locations in the same buffer). The library in question would need to check for these kinds of things, and be able to restore pointer values to a similar buffer upon replay. (i.e. check each pointer sized value if it could be interpreted as a pointer within the buffer, change that to an offset, and remember to change it back to a pointer on replay -- a false positive rate here is acceptable) Is there anything out there that does anything like this?

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Trying to create an image list based on what is defined as the order, and loosing

- by user1691463

I have a custom created module for Joomla 2.5 and within the params of the module, and have a loop that is not outputting as expected. I have the following parameters (fields) int he module: Order Thumb image Image Title Full-size image Now there are 10 sets of these group of 4 params. What I am trying to do is loop through each of the object sets, 10 of them, and on each iteration, build an HTML image list structure. The if statement is building the HTML structure for the sets that have an order value that is greater than 0, and the else is creating the html for those sets that do not have a value greater that 0. The goal is to create two variables and then concatenate the the strings together; the leading set are the sets that have an order defined. This is not happening and every thrid loop seems like it is missing. Here is the order as it is set in the 10 sets Set 1 = 0 Set 2 = 4 Set 3 = 1 Set 4 = 0 Set 5 = 5 Set 6 = 0 Set 7 = 0 Set 8 = 6 Set 9 = 3 Set 10 = 9 However, the outcomes is: 9 5 1 4 6 7 10 Instead of the expected: 3 9 2 5 8 1 (below here are those sets that were not greater than 0 in order of appearance) 4 6 7 whats wrong here that I can not see <?php for ($i = 1; $i <= 10; $i++) { $order = $params->get('order'.$i);#get order for main loop of 10 $active = ""; if ($order > 0) {#Check if greater than 0 for ($n = 1; $n <= 10; $n++) {#loop through all order fields looking and build html lowest to highest; $ordercheck =$params->get('order'.$n); if ($ordercheck == $i) { $img = $params->get('image'.$n); $fimage = $params->get('image'.$n.'fullimage'); $title = $params->get('image'.$n.'alttext'); $active = ""; $active = $active . '<li>'; $active = $active . '<a href="'.$fimage.'" rel="prettyPhoto[gallery1]" title="'.$title.'">'; $active = $active . '<img src="'.$img.'" alt="'.$title.'" />'; $active = $active . '</a>'; $active = $active . '</li>'; $leading = $leading . $active; } } } else { #if the itteration $order was not greater than 0, build in order of accourance $img = $params->get('image'.$i); $fimage = $params->get('image'.$i.'fullimage'); $title = $params->get('image'.$i.'alttext'); $active = $active . '<li>'; $active = $active . '<a href="'.$fimage.'" rel="prettyPhoto[gallery1]" title="'.$title.'">'; $active = $active . '<img src="'.$img.'" alt="'.$title.'" />'; $active = $active . '</a></li>'; $unordered = $unordered . $active; } $imagesList = $leading . $unordered; } ?>

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String Sharing/Reference issue with objects in Delphi

- by jenakai123

My application builds many objects in memory based on filenames (among other string based information). I was hoping to optimise memory usage by storing the path and filename separately, and then sharing the path between objects in the same path. I wasn't trying to look at using a string pool or anything, basically my objects are sorted so if I have 10 objects with the same path I want objects 2-10 to have their path "pointed" at object 1's path (eg object[2].Path=object[1].Path); I have a problem though, I don't believe that my objects are in fact sharing a reference to the same string after I think I am telling them to (by the object[2].Path=object[1].Path assignment). When I do an experiment with a string list and set all the values to point to the first value in the list I can see the "memory conservation" in action, but when I use objects I see absolutely no change at all, admittedly I am only using task manager (private working set) to watch for memory use changes. Here's a contrived example, I hope this makes sense. I have an object: TfileObject=class(Tobject) FpathPart: string; FfilePart: string; end; Now I create 1,000,000 instances of the object, using a new string for each one: var x: integer; MyFilePath: string; fo: TfileObject; begin for x := 1 to 1000000 do begin // create a new string for every iteration of the loop MyFilePath:=ExtractFilePath(Application.ExeName); fo:=TfileObject.Create; fo.FpathPart:=MyFilePath; FobjectList.Add(fo); end; end; Run this up and task manager says I am using 68MB of memory or something. (Note that if I allocated MyFilePath outside of the loop then I do save memory because of 1 instance of the string, but this is a contrived example and not actually how it would happen in the app). Now I want to "optimise" my memory usage by making all objects share the same instance of the path string, since it's the same value: var x: integer; begin for x:=1 to FobjectList.Count-1 do begin TfileObject(FobjectList[x]).FpathPart:=TfileObject(FobjectList[0]).FpathPart; end; end; Task Manager shows absouletly no change. However if I do something similar with a TstringList: var x: integer; begin for x := 1 to 1000000 do begin FstringList.Add(ExtractFilePath(Application.ExeName)); end; end; Task Manager says 60MB memory use. Now optimise with: var x: integer; begin for x := 1 to FstringList.Count - 1 do FstringList[x]:=FstringList[0]; end; Task Manager shows the drop in memory usage that I would expect, now 10MB. So I seem to be able to share strings in a string list, but not in objects. I am obviously missing something conceptually, in code or both! I hope this makes sense, I can really see the ability to conserve memory using this technique as I have a lot of objects all with lots of string information, that data is sorted in many different ways and I would like to be able to iterate over this data once it is loaded into memory and free some of that memory back up again by sharing strings in this way. Thanks in advance for any assistance you can offer.

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Query a recordset

- by Dion

I'm trying to work out how to move the $sql_pay_det query outside of the $sql_pay loop (so in effect query on $rs_pay_det rather than creating a new $rs_pay_det for each iteration of the loop) At the moment my code looks like: //Get payroll transactions $sql_pay = 'SELECT Field1, DescriptionandURLlink, Field5, Amount, Field4, PeriodName FROM tblgltransactionspayroll WHERE CostCentreCode = "'.$cc.'" AND SubjectiveCode = "'.$subj.'" AND PeriodNo = "'.$month.'"'; $rs_pay = mysql_query($sql_pay); $row_pay = mysql_fetch_assoc($rs_pay); while($row_pay = mysql_fetch_array($rs_pay)) { $employee_name = $row_pay['Field1']; $assign_no = $row_pay['DescriptionandURLlink']; $pay_period = $row_pay['Field5']; $mth_name = $row_pay['PeriodName']; $amount = $row_pay['Amount']; $total_amount = $total_amount + $amount; $amount = my_number_format($amount, 2, ".", ","); $sql_pay_det = 'SELECT ElementDesc, Amount, WTEWorked, WTEPaid, WTEContract, Payscale FROM tblpayrolldetail WHERE CostCentreCode = "'.$cc.'" AND SubjectiveCode = "'.$subj.'" AND AccountingPeriod = "'.$mth_name.'" AND EmployeeRef = "'.$assign_no.'"'; $rs_pay_det = mysql_query($sql_pay_det); $row_pay_det = mysql_fetch_assoc($rs_pay_det); while($row_pay_det = mysql_fetch_array($rs_pay_det)) { $element_det = $row_pay_det['ElementDesc']; $amount_det = $row_pay_det['Amount']; $wte_worked = $row_pay_det['WTEWorked']; $wte_paid = $row_pay_det['WTEPaid']; $wte_cont = $row_pay_det['WTEContract']; $payscale = $row_pay_det['Payscale']; //Get band/point and annual salary where element is basic pay if ($element_det =="3959#Basic Pay"){ $sql_payscale = 'SELECT txtPayscaleName, Salary FROM tblpayscalemapping WHERE txtPayscale = "'.$payscale.'"'; $rs_payscale = mysql_query($sql_payscale); $row_payscale = mysql_fetch_assoc($rs_payscale); $grade = $row_payscale['txtPayscaleName']; $salary = "£" . my_number_format($row_payscale['Salary'], 0, ".", ","); } } } I've tried doing this: //Get payroll transactions $sql_pay = 'SELECT Field1, DescriptionandURLlink, Field5, Amount, Field4, PeriodName FROM tblgltransactionspayroll WHERE CostCentreCode = "'.$cc.'" AND SubjectiveCode = "'.$subj.'" AND PeriodNo = "'.$month.'"'; $rs_pay = mysql_query($sql_pay); $row_pay = mysql_fetch_assoc($rs_pay); //Get payroll detail recordset $sql_pay_det = 'SELECT ElementDesc, Amount, WTEWorked, WTEPaid, WTEContract, Payscale, EmployeeRef FROM tblpayrolldetail WHERE CostCentreCode = "'.$cc.'" AND SubjectiveCode = "'.$subj.'" AND AccountingPeriod = "'.$mth_name.'"'; $rs_pay_det = mysql_query($sql_pay_det); while($row_pay = mysql_fetch_array($rs_pay)) { $employee_name = $row_pay['Field1']; $assign_no = $row_pay['DescriptionandURLlink']; $pay_period = $row_pay['Field5']; $mth_name = $row_pay['PeriodName']; $amount = $row_pay['Amount']; $total_amount = $total_amount + $amount; $amount = my_number_format($amount, 2, ".", ","); //Query $rs_pay_det $sql_pay_det2 = 'SELECT ElementDesc, Amount, WTEWorked, WTEPaid, WTEContract, Payscale FROM "'.$rs_pay_det.'" WHERE EmployeeRef = "'.$assign_no.'"'; $rs_pay_det2 = mysql_query($sql_pay_det2); $row_pay_det2 = mysql_fetch_assoc($rs_pay_det2); while($row_pay_det = mysql_fetch_array($rs_pay_det)) { $element_det = $row_pay_det['ElementDesc']; $amount_det = $row_pay_det['Amount']; $wte_worked = $row_pay_det['WTEWorked']; $wte_paid = $row_pay_det['WTEPaid']; $wte_cont = $row_pay_det['WTEContract']; $payscale = $row_pay_det['Payscale']; //Get band/point and annual salary where element is basic pay if ($element_det =="3959#Basic Pay"){ $sql_payscale = 'SELECT txtPayscaleName, Salary FROM tblpayscalemapping WHERE txtPayscale = "'.$payscale.'"'; $rs_payscale = mysql_query($sql_payscale); $row_payscale = mysql_fetch_assoc($rs_payscale); $grade = $row_payscale['txtPayscaleName']; $salary = "£" . my_number_format($row_payscale['Salary'], 0, ".", ","); } } } But I get an error on $row_pay_det2 saying that "mysql_fetch_assoc(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource"

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Java curious Loop Performance

- by user1680583

I have a big problem while evaluate my java code. To simplify the problem I wrote the following code which produce the same curious behavior. Important is the method run() and given double value rate. For my runtime test (in the main method) I set the rate to 0.5 one times and 1.0 the other time. With the value 1.0 the if-statement will be executed in each loop iteration and with the value 0.5 the if-statement will be executed half as much. For this reason I expected longer runtime by the first case but opposite is true. Can anybody explain me this phenomenon?? The result of main: Test mit rate = 0.5 Length: 50000000, IF executions: 25000856 Execution time was 4329 ms. Length: 50000000, IF executions: 24999141 Execution time was 4307 ms. Length: 50000000, IF executions: 25001582 Execution time was 4223 ms. Length: 50000000, IF executions: 25000694 Execution time was 4328 ms. Length: 50000000, IF executions: 25004766 Execution time was 4346 ms. ================================= Test mit rate = 1.0 Length: 50000000, IF executions: 50000000 Execution time was 3482 ms. Length: 50000000, IF executions: 50000000 Execution time was 3572 ms. Length: 50000000, IF executions: 50000000 Execution time was 3529 ms. Length: 50000000, IF executions: 50000000 Execution time was 3479 ms. Length: 50000000, IF executions: 50000000 Execution time was 3473 ms. The Code public ArrayList<Byte> list = new ArrayList<Byte>(); public final int LENGTH = 50000000; public PerformanceTest(){ byte[]arr = new byte[LENGTH]; Random random = new Random(); random.nextBytes(arr); for(byte b : arr) list.add(b); } public void run(double rate){ byte b = 0; int count = 0; for (int i = 0; i < LENGTH; i++) { if(getRate(rate)){ list.set(i, b); count++; } } System.out.println("Length: " + LENGTH + ", IF executions: " + count); } public boolean getRate(double rate){ return Math.random() < rate; } public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException { PerformanceTest test = new PerformanceTest(); long start, end; System.out.println("Test mit rate = 0.5"); for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) { start=System.currentTimeMillis(); test.run(0.5); end = System.currentTimeMillis(); System.out.println("Execution time was "+(end-start)+" ms."); Thread.sleep(500); } System.out.println("================================="); System.out.println("Test mit rate = 1.0"); for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) { start=System.currentTimeMillis(); test.run(1.0); end = System.currentTimeMillis(); System.out.println("Execution time was "+(end-start)+" ms."); Thread.sleep(500); } }

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Generating strongly biased radom numbers for tests

- by nobody

I want to run tests with randomized inputs and need to generate 'sensible' random numbers, that is, numbers that match good enough to pass the tested function's preconditions, but hopefully wreak havoc deeper inside its code. math.random() (I'm using Lua) produces uniformly distributed random numbers. Scaling these up will give far more big numbers than small numbers, and there will be very few integers. I would like to skew the random numbers (or generate new ones using the old function as a randomness source) in a way that strongly favors 'simple' numbers, but will still cover the whole range, I.e. extending up to positive/negative infinity (or ±1e309 for double). This means: numbers up to, say, ten should be most common, integers should be more common than fractions, numbers ending in 0.5 should be the most common fractions, followed by 0.25 and 0.75; then 0.125, and so on. A different description: Fix a base probability x such that probabilities will sum to one and define the probability of a number n as xk where k is the generation in which n is constructed as a surreal number1. That assigns x to 0, x2 to -1 and +1, x3 to -2, -1/2, +1/2 and +2, and so on. This gives a nice description of something close to what I want (it skews a bit too much), but is near-unusable for computing random numbers. The resulting distribution is nowhere continuous (it's fractal!), I'm not sure how to determine the base probability x (I think for infinite precision it would be zero), and computing numbers based on this by iteration is awfully slow (spending near-infinite time to construct large numbers). Does anyone know of a simple approximation that, given a uniformly distributed randomness source, produces random numbers very roughly distributed as described above? I would like to run thousands of randomized tests, quantity/speed is more important than quality. Still, better numbers mean less inputs get rejected. Lua has a JIT, so performance can't be reasonably predicted. Jumps based on randomness will break every prediction, and many calls to math.random() will be slow, too. This means a closed formula will be better than an iterative or recursive one. 1 Wikipedia has an article on surreal numbers, with a nice picture. A surreal number is a pair of two surreal numbers, i.e. x := {n|m}, and its value is the number in the middle of the pair, i.e. (for finite numbers) {n|m} = (n+m)/2 (as rational). If one side of the pair is empty, that's interpreted as increment (or decrement, if right is empty) by one. If both sides are empty, that's zero. Initially, there are no numbers, so the only number one can build is 0 := { | }. In generation two one can build numbers {0| } =: 1 and { |0} =: -1, in three we get {1| } =: 2, {|1} =: -2, {0|1} =: 1/2 and {-1|0} =: -1/2 (plus some more complex representations of known numbers, e.g. {-1|1} ? 0). Note that e.g. 1/3 is never generated by finite numbers because it is an infinite fraction – the same goes for floats, 1/3 is never represented exactly.

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XMLNodes being appended to an XMLNode are "undefined"? Actionscript 2.0 is being unkind

- by DigitalMercenary

If anyone can offer an explanation for this one, I'd LOVE to see it! I was required to append a legacy application to display 20 random questions from an XML data source, as opposed to the total of 70 questions that are part of the original XML. No big deal, right? WRONG! I got it to work just fine in the end, but it's a total HACK! For some reason, some of the nodes that I am appending to a dynamically generated XML document are being returned as "undefined". I kept getting between 16 and 20 questions to render until I modified my iteration from a 'for' loop to a 'do while' loop with the appropriate number of XMLNodes as the condition of the 'do while' loop. Can anyone offer an explanation? Below is the code, with some notes for the reader : function editXML(xml:XML):XML { var node:XMLNode = xml.firstChild; var newNode:XMLNode = new XMLNode(); var nodeArray:Array = new Array(); var usedNodes:Array = new Array(); var totalNodes:Number = node.lastChild.childNodes.length - 1; var nextNode:Number; var returnNode:XMLNode = new XMLNode(); var tempNode:XMLNode; var buildNode:XMLNode; var addNode:Boolean = true; var tempXML:XML = new XML(); var pagesNode:XMLNode = tempXML.createElement("pages"); tempXML.appendChild(pagesNode); tempXML.appendChild(node.childNodes[0]); tempXML.appendChild(node.childNodes[1]); tempXML.appendChild(node.childNodes[2]); var questionsNode:XMLNode = tempXML.createElement("pages"); tempXML.firstChild.appendChild(questionsNode); do { nextNode = Math.floor(Math.random()*totalNodes); **//random number to represent random node** //trace(nextNode + " nextNode"); **//check usedNodes Array to look for node.childNodes[nextNode]. If it already exists, skip and reloop.** trace(node.childNodes[1].childNodes[nextNode] + " : pre building Node " + totalNodes); if(usedNodes.length == 0) { buildNode = new XMLNode(); buildNode.nodeName = node.childNodes[1].childNodes[nextNode].nodeName; buildNode.nodeValue = node.childNodes[1].childNodes[nextNode].nodeValue; tempXML.firstChild.lastChild.appendChild(node.childNodes[1].childNodes[nextNode]) usedNodes.push(node.childNodes[1].childNodes[nextNode]); nodeArray.push(node.childNodes[1].childNodes[nextNode]); trace("adding first node : " + nodeArray.length); addNode = false; } else { for(var j:Number = 0; j < usedNodes.length; j++) { if(usedNodes[j] == node.childNodes[1].childNodes[nextNode]) { addNode = false; trace("skipping node : " + nodeArray.length); } } } **//if node not in usedNodes, add node to XML** if(addNode) { trace(node.childNodes[1].childNodes[nextNode] + " : building Node"); **//This trace statement produced a valid node** tempXML.firstChild.lastChild.appendChild(node.childNodes[1].childNodes[nextNode]); **//Before modifying the code from adding nodes to the xml from an Array called 'nodeArray' in a for loop to adding nodes directly to the xml in a do while loop with the length of the xml node used to retrieve data for the questions as the condition, I was not always getting 20 questions. Some of the nodes were being rendered as 'undefined' and not appended to the xml, even though they were traced and proven valid before the attemp to append them to the xml was made** usedNodes.push(node.childNodes[1].childNodes[nextNode]); } addNode = true; } while(tempXML.firstChild.lastChild.childNodes.length <= 19); trace(tempXML.firstChild.lastChild.childNodes.length + " final nodes Length"); courseXML = tempXML; //removes the old question list of 70 and replaces it with the new question list of 20. Question list is the last node. return tempXML; } If I had my choice, I would have rebuilt the whole application in Flex with AS3. I didn't have that choice. If anyone can explain this mystery, PLEASE DO! Thank you in advance!

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Function for counting characters/words not working

- by user1742729

<!DOCTYPE HTML> <html> <head> <title> Javascript - stuff </title> <script type="text/javascript">  </script> </head> <body> <div id="Text"> It is important to remember that XHTML is a markup language; it is not a programming language. The language only describes the placement and visual appearance of elements arranged on a page; it does not permit users to manipulate these elements to change their placement or appearance, or to perform any "processing" on the text or graphics to change their content in response to user needs. For many Web pages this lack of processing capability is not a great drawback; the pages are simply displays of static, unchanging, information for which no manipulation by the user is required. Still, there are cases where the ability to respond to user actions and the availability of processing methods can be a great asset. This is where JavaScript enters the picture. </div> <input type = "button" value = "Get Counts" class = "btnstyle" onclick = "GetCountsAll()"/> <br/> <span id= "Charactercount"> </span> Characters <br/> <span id= "Wordcount"> </span> Words <br/> <span id= "Sentancecount"> </span> Sentences <br/> <span id= "ClauseCount"> </span> Clauses <br/> </body> </html> I am a student and still learning JavaScript, so excuse any horrible mistakes. The script is meant to calculate the number of characters, words, sentences, and clauses in the passage. It's, plainly put, just not working. I have tried a multitude of things to get it to work for me and have gotten a plethora of different errors but no matter what I can NOT get this to work. Please help! (btw i know i misspelled sentence)

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 01, 2012

CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 01, 2012Popular ReleasesMetodología General Ajustada - MGA: 01.09.08: Cambios John: Cambios en el MDI: Habilitación del menú e ícono de Imprimir. Deshabilitación de menú Ayuda y opciones de Importar y Exportar del menú Proyectos temporalmente. Integración con código de Crystal Report. Validaciones con Try-Catch al generar los reportes, personalización de los formularios en estilos y botones y validación de selección de tipo de reporte. Creación de instalador con TODOS los cambios y la creación de las carpetas asociadas a los RPT.WatchersNET CKEditor™ Provider for DotNetNuke®: CKEditor Provider 1.14.01: Whats NewAdded New Plugin "Ventrian News Articles Link Selector" to select an Article Link from the News Article Module (This Plugin is not visible by default in your Toolbar, you need to manually add the 'newsarticleslinks' to your toolbarset) http://www.watchersnet.de/Portals/0/screenshots/dnn/CKEditorNewsArticlesLinks.png File-Browser: Added Paging to the Files List. You can define the Page Size in the Options (Default Value: 20) http://www.watchersnet.de/Portals/0/screenshots/dnn/CKEdito...MyRouter (Virtual WiFi Router): MyRouter 1.0 (Beta): A friendlier User Interface. A logger file to catch exceptions so you may send it to use to improve and fix any bugs that may occur. A feedback form because we always love hearing what you guy's think of MyRouter. Check for update menu item for you to stay up to date will the latest changes. Facebook fan page so you may spread the word and share MyRouter with friends and family And Many other exciting features were sure your going to love!WPF Sound Visualization Library: WPF SVL 0.3 (Source, Binaries, Examples, Help): Version 0.3 of WPFSVL. This includes three new controls: an equalizer, a digital clock, and a time editor.Thai Flood Watch: Thai Flood Watch - Source: non commercial use only ** This project supported by Department of Computer Science KhonKaen University Thailand.ZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.4.0.0: sync with rev. 2196 of the java version important fix for RGBLuminanceSource generating barcode bitmaps Windows Phone demo client (only tested with emulator, because I don't have a Windows Phone) Barcode generation support for Windows Forms demo client Webcam support for Windows Forms demo clientOrchard Project: Orchard 1.4: Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.4: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-4-Release-Notes.NET Assembly Information: Assembly Information 2.1.0.1: - Fixed the issue in which AnyCPU binaries were shown as 32bit - Added support to show the errors in-case if some dlls failed to load.FluentData -Micro ORM with a fluent API that makes it simple to query a database: FluentData version 1.2: New features: - QueryValues method - Added support for automapping to enumerations (both int and string are supported). Fixed 2 reported issues.NetSqlAzMan - .NET SQL Authorization Manager: 3.6.0.15: 3.6.0.15 28-Feb-2012 • Fix: The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel, cannot be used for communication because it is in the Faulted state. Work Item 10435: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/10435 • Fix: Made StorageCache thread safe. Thanks to tangrl. • Fix: Members property of SqlAzManApplicationGroup is not functioning. Thanks to tangrl. Work Item 10267: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/10267 • Fix: Indexer are making database calls. Thanks to t...SCCM Client Actions Tool: Client Actions Tool v1.1: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.1 is the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Added stop button to stop the ongoing process. Added action "Query update status". Added option "saveOnlineComputers" in config.ini to enable saving list of online computers from last session. Default value for "LatestClientVersion" set to SP2 R3 (4.00.6487.2157). Wuauserv service manual startup mode is considered healthy on Windows 7. Errors are now suppressed in checkReleases...Kinect PowerPoint Control: Kinect PowerPoint Control v1.1: Updated for Kinect SDK 1.0.SharpCompress - a fully native C# library for RAR, 7Zip, Zip, Tar, GZip, BZip2: SharpCompress 0.8: API Updates: SOLID Extract Method for Archives (7Zip and RAR). ExtractAllEntries method on Archive classes will extract archives as a streaming file. This can offer better 7Zip extraction performance if any of the entries are solid. The IsSolid method on 7Zip archives will return true if any are solid. Removed IExtractionListener was removed in favor of events. Unit tests show example. Bug fixes: PPMd passes tests plus other fixes (Thanks Pavel) Zip used to always write a Post Descri...Social Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.3): This new version includes: - Download new networks for Facebook fan pages. - New options for downloading more posts - Bug fixes To use the new graph data provider, do the following: Unzip the Zip file into the "PlugIns" folder that can be found in the NodeXL installation folder (i.e "C:\Program Files\Social Media Research Foundation\NodeXL Excel Template\PlugIns") Open NodeXL template and you can access the new importer from the "Import" menuASP.NET REST Services Framework: Release 1.1 - Standard version: Beginning from v1.1 the REST-services Framework is compatible with ASP.NET Routing model as well with CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) principle. These two are often important when building REST API functionality within your application. It also includes ability to apply Filters to a class to target all WebRest methods, as well as some performance enhancements. New version includes Metadata Explorer providing ability exploring the existing services that becomes essential as the number ...SQL Live Monitor: SQL Live Monitor 1.31: A quick fix to make it this version work with SQL 2012. Version 2 already has 2012 working, but am still developing the UI in version 2, so this is just an interim fix to allow user to monitor SQL 2012.Content Slider Module for DotNetNuke: 01.02.00: This release has the following updates and new features: Feature: One-Click Enabling of Pager Setting Feature: Cache Sliders for Performance Feature: Configurable Cache Setting Enhancement: Transitions can be Selected Bug: Secure Folder Images not Viewable Bug: Sliders Disappear on Postback Bug: Remote Images Cause Error Bug: Deleted Images Cause Error System Requirements DotNetNuke v06.00.00 or newer .Net Framework v3.5 SP1 or newer SQL Server 2005 or newerImage Resizer for Windows: Image Resizer 3 Preview 3: Here is yet another iteration toward what will eventually become Image Resizer 3. This release is stable. However, I'm calling it a preview since there are still many features I'd still like to add before calling it complete. Updated on February 28 to fix an issue with installing on multi-user machines. As usual, here is my progress report. Done Preview 3 Fix: 3206 3076 3077 5688 Fix: 7420 Fix: 7527 Fix: 7576 7612 Preview 2 6308 6309 Fix: 7339 Fix: 7357 Preview 1 UI...Finestra Virtual Desktops: 2.5.4500: This is a bug fix release for version 2.5. It fixes several things and adds a couple of minor features. See the 2.5 release notes for more information on the major new features in that version. Important - If Finestra crashes on startup for you, you must install the Visual C++ 2010 runtime from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5555. Fixes a bug with window animations not refreshing the screen on XP and with DWM off Fixes a bug with with crashing on XP due to a bug in t...Media Companion: MC 3.432b Release: General Now remembers window location. Catching a few more exceptions when an image is blank TV A couple of UI tweaks Movies Fixed the actor name displaying HTML Fixed crash when using Save files as "movie.nfo", "movie.tbn", & "fanart.jpg" New CSV template for HTML output function Added <createdate> tag for HTML output A couple of UI tweaks Known Issues Multiepisodes are not handled correctly in MC. The created nfo is valid, but they are not displayed in MC correctly & saving the...New Projectsabac: abac cn websiteAION Launcher: simple aion launcher...just edit the background image of your choosing inside the code and other things such as the links for the buttons and the ip adress and port of the serverAXTFSTool: Dynamics AX tool that connects to your project's TFS and lists the objects your colleagues have changed. Written in C#, still under development and improvements. Useful for team leaders, deployment managers, etc.cookieTopo: Topo map viewerCrmFetchKit.js: Simple Library at allows the execution of fetchxml queries via JavaScript for Dynamics CRM 2011 (using the new WCF endpoints). Like the CrmRestKit this framework uses the promise/A capacities of jQuery. The code and the idea for this framework bases on the CrmServiceToolkit (http://crmtoolkit.codeplex.com/) developed by Daniel Cai. cy univerX engine: ????????DNSAPI.NET: A common API for managing DNS servers on Windows. This project is based on the work I started back in 2002 when I needed to create a web front-end for Windows' DNS server using the .Net framework. The plan is to expand on the project and include support for the BIND server on Windows too. ego.net: ego.netfdTFS: Team Foundation Server Source Control Plugin for FlashDevelopGeoWPS: GeoWPS is an implementation of the OGC WPS. It will be developed in C#. IThink: A new project.King Garden: Boy King's .net practical projects.King Garret: Boy King's .net learning projects.LottoCheck: Follow LottoNot-Terraria: This is a like terraria game but NOT terrariaPassword Protector: Password Protector SharePoint 2010 BlobCache Manager: Manage your web application's blobcache settings directly in the central administration.SharePoint 2010 SilverLight Multiple File Uploader: SharePoint 2010 SilverLight Multiple File Uploader for Documents Libraries with MetaData.Sharepoint Tool Collection: I want to Integrate Various Utilities of Sharepoint at one place. It is for easy working of user or developer. Ex-1. A utility which takes some params & csv file and upload 100s of items on the sharepoint list easily. Ex-2 A utility to upload documents in a library. etc.SQLCLR Cmd Exec Framework Example: For users of MS SQL Server, xp_cmdshell is a utility that we usually want to have disabled. However there are still cases where calling a command line is needed. This project provides an framework/example to make command line calls. It is not meant as an xp_cmdshell replacement but as a workaround.Symmetric Designs Python 3.2: Symmetric Designs for Python 3.2 helps graphical artists to design and develop their own designs freestyle. It uses the pygame module for Python 3.2. It can also be analysed in order to get a grasp of graphics programming in Python.Terminsoft open CLR libraries: Terminsoft open CLR libraries. The first is Terminsoft.Intervals, intended for modeling the sets of intervals with elements, the comparison operation is defined for. The second is Terminsoft.Syntax, intended for text parsing and transformation and built upon regular expressions.Thai Flood Watch: Thai Flood Watch provides useful information, up-to-date and visual access to the major canal in Bangkok, Thailand using data from department of drainage and sewerage. Easily monitor river and canal flow information in Bangkok area, right from your hand.TheNerd: Sample video game source code. Using Sunburn.Unity.WebAPI: A library that allows simple Integration of Microsoft's Unity IoC container with ASP.NET's WebAPI. This project includes a bespoke DependencyResolver that creates a child container per HTTP request and disposes of all registered IDisposable instances at the end of the request.Wholemy.RemoteTouch: The project is a remote touch-sensitive keyboard with a customizable interface which allows to supplement control of another computer, regardless of the wires. For example, if you have not so fast Tablet PC - a client and a fast desktop computer - the server using the network.WindowPlace: WindowPlace makes it possible to save Window positions and sizes to a profile. Switching between profiles will effortlessly move and resize your windows. Help improve productivity - especially for multi-monitor systems. Developed in C# using WPF and a few Windows API calls in the background. WP Error Manager (Devv.Core.WPErrorManager): Library to log, handle and report errors on Windows Phone 7 apps. Fully customizable and extremely easy to implement. Works with any WP7 app. Tested with the emulator, Nokia Lumia 800 and Samsung Focus Flash.WPMatic: Windows Phone7 App to manage Homematic (eQ-3) Devices. The App is like the Homematic Central Configuration Unit (CCU) in German.www.Nabaza.com Freeware and Ebooks: www.Nabaza.com Freeware and Ebooks by William R. NabazaZap: Zap is a light weight .NET communication framework. It is designed for programs running in local area network. Zap provides code generation tool that enables user to call remote methods, add/remote event listener to remote objects, while hides the lower details.

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Working with PivotTables in Excel

- by Mark Virtue

PivotTables are one of the most powerful features of Microsoft Excel. They allow large amounts of data to be analyzed and summarized in just a few mouse clicks. In this article, we explore PivotTables, understand what they are, and learn how to create and customize them. Note: This article is written using Excel 2010 (Beta). The concept of a PivotTable has changed little over the years, but the method of creating one has changed in nearly every iteration of Excel. If you are using a version of Excel that is not 2010, expect different screens from the ones you see in this article. A Little History In the early days of spreadsheet programs, Lotus 1-2-3 ruled the roost. Its dominance was so complete that people thought it was a waste of time for Microsoft to bother developing their own spreadsheet software (Excel) to compete with Lotus. Flash-forward to 2010, and Excel’s dominance of the spreadsheet market is greater than Lotus’s ever was, while the number of users still running Lotus 1-2-3 is approaching zero. How did this happen? What caused such a dramatic reversal of fortunes? Industry analysts put it down to two factors: Firstly, Lotus decided that this fancy new GUI platform called “Windows” was a passing fad that would never take off. They declined to create a Windows version of Lotus 1-2-3 (for a few years, anyway), predicting that their DOS version of the software was all anyone would ever need. Microsoft, naturally, developed Excel exclusively for Windows. Secondly, Microsoft developed a feature for Excel that Lotus didn’t provide in 1-2-3, namely PivotTables. The PivotTables feature, exclusive to Excel, was deemed so staggeringly useful that people were willing to learn an entire new software package (Excel) rather than stick with a program (1-2-3) that didn’t have it. This one feature, along with the misjudgment of the success of Windows, was the death-knell for Lotus 1-2-3, and the beginning of the success of Microsoft Excel. Understanding PivotTables So what is a PivotTable, exactly? Put simply, a PivotTable is a summary of some data, created to allow easy analysis of said data. But unlike a manually created summary, Excel PivotTables are interactive. Once you have created one, you can easily change it if it doesn’t offer the exact insights into your data that you were hoping for. In a couple of clicks the summary can be “pivoted” – rotated in such a way that the column headings become row headings, and vice versa. There’s a lot more that can be done, too. Rather than try to describe all the features of PivotTables, we’ll simply demonstrate them… The data that you analyze using a PivotTable can’t be just any data – it has to be raw data, previously unprocessed (unsummarized) – typically a list of some sort. An example of this might be the list of sales transactions in a company for the past six months. Examine the data shown below: Notice that this is not raw data. In fact, it is already a summary of some sort. In cell B3 we can see $30,000, which apparently is the total of James Cook’s sales for the month of January. So where is the raw data? How did we arrive at the figure of $30,000? Where is the original list of sales transactions that this figure was generated from? It’s clear that somewhere, someone must have gone to the trouble of collating all of the sales transactions for the past six months into the summary we see above. How long do you suppose this took? An hour? Ten? Probably. If we were to track down the original list of sales transactions, it might look something like this: You may be surprised to learn that, using the PivotTable feature of Excel, we can create a monthly sales summary similar to the one above in a few seconds, with only a few mouse clicks. We can do this – and a lot more too! How to Create a PivotTable First, ensure that you have some raw data in a worksheet in Excel. A list of financial transactions is typical, but it can be a list of just about anything: Employee contact details, your CD collection, or fuel consumption figures for your company’s fleet of cars. So we start Excel… …and we load such a list… Once we have the list open in Excel, we’re ready to start creating the PivotTable. Click on any one single cell within the list: Then, from the Insert tab, click the PivotTable icon: The Create PivotTable box appears, asking you two questions: What data should your new PivotTable be based on, and where should it be created? Because we already clicked on a cell within the list (in the step above), the entire list surrounding that cell is already selected for us ($A$1:$G$88 on the Payments sheet, in this example). Note that we could select a list in any other region of any other worksheet, or even some external data source, such as an Access database table, or even a MS-SQL Server database table. We also need to select whether we want our new PivotTable to be created on a new worksheet, or on an existing one. In this example we will select a new one: The new worksheet is created for us, and a blank PivotTable is created on that worksheet: Another box also appears: The PivotTable Field List. This field list will be shown whenever we click on any cell within the PivotTable (above): The list of fields in the top part of the box is actually the collection of column headings from the original raw data worksheet. The four blank boxes in the lower part of the screen allow us to choose the way we would like our PivotTable to summarize the raw data. So far, there is nothing in those boxes, so the PivotTable is blank. All we need to do is drag fields down from the list above and drop them in the lower boxes. A PivotTable is then automatically created to match our instructions. If we get it wrong, we only need to drag the fields back to where they came from and/or drag new fields down to replace them. The Values box is arguably the most important of the four. The field that is dragged into this box represents the data that needs to be summarized in some way (by summing, averaging, finding the maximum, minimum, etc). It is almost always numerical data. A perfect candidate for this box in our sample data is the “Amount” field/column. Let’s drag that field into the Values box: Notice that (a) the “Amount” field in the list of fields is now ticked, and “Sum of Amount” has been added to the Values box, indicating that the amount column has been summed. If we examine the PivotTable itself, we indeed find the sum of all the “Amount” values from the raw data worksheet: We’ve created our first PivotTable! Handy, but not particularly impressive. It’s likely that we need a little more insight into our data than that. Referring to our sample data, we need to identify one or more column headings that we could conceivably use to split this total. For example, we may decide that we would like to see a summary of our data where we have a row heading for each of the different salespersons in our company, and a total for each. To achieve this, all we need to do is to drag the “Salesperson” field into the Row Labels box: Now, finally, things start to get interesting! Our PivotTable starts to take shape…. With a couple of clicks we have created a table that would have taken a long time to do manually. So what else can we do? Well, in one sense our PivotTable is complete. We’ve created a useful summary of our source data. The important stuff is already learned! For the rest of the article, we will examine some ways that more complex PivotTables can be created, and ways that those PivotTables can be customized. First, we can create a two-dimensional table. Let’s do that by using “Payment Method” as a column heading. Simply drag the “Payment Method” heading to the Column Labels box: Which looks like this: Starting to get very cool! Let’s make it a three-dimensional table. What could such a table possibly look like? Well, let’s see… Drag the “Package” column/heading to the Report Filter box: Notice where it ends up…. This allows us to filter our report based on which “holiday package” was being purchased. For example, we can see the breakdown of salesperson vs payment method for all packages, or, with a couple of clicks, change it to show the same breakdown for the “Sunseekers” package: And so, if you think about it the right way, our PivotTable is now three-dimensional. Let’s keep customizing… If it turns out, say, that we only want to see cheque and credit card transactions (i.e. no cash transactions), then we can deselect the “Cash” item from the column headings. Click the drop-down arrow next to Column Labels, and untick “Cash”: Let’s see what that looks like…As you can see, “Cash” is gone. Formatting This is obviously a very powerful system, but so far the results look very plain and boring. For a start, the numbers that we’re summing do not look like dollar amounts – just plain old numbers. Let’s rectify that. A temptation might be to do what we’re used to doing in such circumstances and simply select the whole table (or the whole worksheet) and use the standard number formatting buttons on the toolbar to complete the formatting. The problem with that approach is that if you ever change the structure of the PivotTable in the future (which is 99% likely), then those number formats will be lost. We need a way that will make them (semi-)permanent. First, we locate the “Sum of Amount” entry in the Values box, and click on it. A menu appears. We select Value Field Settings… from the menu: The Value Field Settings box appears. Click the Number Format button, and the standard Format Cells box appears: From the Category list, select (say) Accounting, and drop the number of decimal places to 0. Click OK a few times to get back to the PivotTable… As you can see, the numbers have been correctly formatted as dollar amounts. While we’re on the subject of formatting, let’s format the entire PivotTable. There are a few ways to do this. Let’s use a simple one… Click the PivotTable Tools/Design tab: Then drop down the arrow in the bottom-right of the PivotTable Styles list to see a vast collection of built-in styles: Choose any one that appeals, and look at the result in your PivotTable: Other Options We can work with dates as well. Now usually, there are many, many dates in a transaction list such as the one we started with. But Excel provides the option to group data items together by day, week, month, year, etc. Let’s see how this is done. First, let’s remove the “Payment Method” column from the Column Labels box (simply drag it back up to the field list), and replace it with the “Date Booked” column: As you can see, this makes our PivotTable instantly useless, giving us one column for each date that a transaction occurred on – a very wide table! To fix this, right-click on any date and select Group… from the context-menu: The grouping box appears. We select Months and click OK: Voila! A much more useful table: (Incidentally, this table is virtually identical to the one shown at the beginning of this article – the original sales summary that was created manually.) Another cool thing to be aware of is that you can have more than one set of row headings (or column headings): …which looks like this…. You can do a similar thing with column headings (or even report filters). Keeping things simple again, let’s see how to plot averaged values, rather than summed values. First, click on “Sum of Amount”, and select Value Field Settings… from the context-menu that appears: In the Summarize value field by list in the Value Field Settings box, select Average: While we’re here, let’s change the Custom Name, from “Average of Amount” to something a little more concise. Type in something like “Avg”: Click OK, and see what it looks like. Notice that all the values change from summed totals to averages, and the table title (top-left cell) has changed to “Avg”: If we like, we can even have sums, averages and counts (counts = how many sales there were) all on the same PivotTable! Here are the steps to get something like that in place (starting from a blank PivotTable): Drag “Salesperson” into the Column Labels Drag “Amount” field down into the Values box three times For the first “Amount” field, change its custom name to “Total” and it’s number format to Accounting (0 decimal places) For the second “Amount” field, change its custom name to “Average”, its function to Average and it’s number format to Accounting (0 decimal places) For the third “Amount” field, change its name to “Count” and its function to Count Drag the automatically created field from Column Labels to Row Labels Here’s what we end up with: Total, average and count on the same PivotTable! Conclusion There are many, many more features and options for PivotTables created by Microsoft Excel – far too many to list in an article like this. To fully cover the potential of PivotTables, a small book (or a large website) would be required. Brave and/or geeky readers can explore PivotTables further quite easily: Simply right-click on just about everything, and see what options become available to you. There are also the two ribbon-tabs: PivotTable Tools/Options and Design. It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake – it’s easy to delete the PivotTable and start again – a possibility old DOS users of Lotus 1-2-3 never had. We’ve included an Excel that should work with most versions of Excel, so you can download to practice your PivotTable skills. 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CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 16, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 16, 2010New ProjectsAAPL-MySQL (a MySql implementation of the Agile ADO.Net Persistence Layer): Using the code conventions and code of the Agile ADO.Net Persistence Layer to build a MySql implementationAddress Book: Address Book is simple and easy to use application for storing and editing contacts. It has many features like search and grouping. It's developed ...Airplanes: Airplanes GameAJAX Fax document viewer: The AJAX Fax document viewer is an ASP.net 4.0 project which uses a Seadragon control to display Tiff/Tif files inside the browser. Since it's base...AxeFrog Core: This project contains the foundational code used in several other projects.Bolão: O objetivo deste projeto é estimular a troca de informações e experiências sobre arquitetura e desenvolvimento de software na prática, através do d...Caramel Engine: This is designed to be a logic engine for developing a wide variety of games. To include card logic, dice logic, territories, players, and even man...DotNetNuke® Skin BrandWorks: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Business" category by M Perakakis & M Siganou (e-bilab). A very minimal look sk...DotNetNuke® Skin Reasonable: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Ralph Williams of Architech Solutions. A clean, classy, professi...DotNetNuke® Skin Seasons: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Atul Handa and Kevin McCusker of Mercer. This skin is a generic ...File Eraser: File Eraser make it esasier for IT Administrator or Advanced Users to administer files and eliminate long addresses, even UNC. It's developed in VB...GreenEyes: My project for IT personalHulu Launcher: Hulu Launcher is a simple Windows Media Center add-in that attempts to launch Hulu Desktop and manage the windows as seamlessly as possible.Imenik: Imenik makes it easier for users to organise their contacts!KharaPOS: KharaPOS is an Exemplar application for Silverlight 4, WCF RIA Services and .NET Framework 4.Mantas Cryptography: Pequena biblioteca de criptografia com suporte aos algorítmos DES, RC2, Rexor e TripleDES. Gera hashes HMAC-MD5, HMAC-RIPEMD160, HMAC-SHA (SHA1, S...MapWindow3D: A C# DirectX library that extends the MapWindow 6.0 geospatial software library by adding an external map. The map supports rotation and tilting i...Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework: Extensible Web Analytics Framework for Microsoft Silverlight Applications.Moq Examples: Unit tests demonstrating Moq features.Ncqrs: Framework that helps you to create Command-Query Responsibility Segregation based applications easily.NoLedge - Notetaking and knowledge database: NoLedge is an easy knowledge gathering and notetaking freeware with a simple interface. You can link a note with different titles and can retrieve ...Numina Application Framework: The framework is a set of tools that help facilitate authentication, authorization, and access control. It is much more than a SSO. It is a central...OData SDK for PHP: OData SDK for PHP is a library to facilitate the connection with OData Services.patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: p&p site for Windows Azure related guidance.projecteuler.net: Exploring projecteuler.net using F#ResumeTracker: Small and easy to use tool that helps to track your job applications. To report bugs or for suggestions please email kirunchik@gmail.com.Selection Maker: Have you ever create a collection of music files? Imagine you just want to pick best of them by your choice. you should go to several folder,play...ShureValidation: Multilingual model validation library. Supports fluent validations, attribute validations and own custom validations.Simple Phonebook: Simple phonebook allows you to store contacts. It also allows you to export the contacts to .txt or .csv. This application is written in C#, but it...SoftUpd: A usefull library which provides an Update feature to any .Net software.sTASKedit: This program can modify and export Perfect World tasks.data files...Tigie: Tigie is a simple CMS system for basic website. It's simple, easy to customize. you'll have a very basic cms to start with and expand for it. All c...toapp: ap hwUltiLogger: UltiLogger is a fast, lightweight logging library programmed in C#. It is meant as a fast, easy, and efficient way for developers to access a relia...Unnme: UnnmeVisual Studio 2008 NUnit snippets: A simple set of useful NUnit snippets, for Visual studio 2008.webdama: italian checkers game c#XBrowser - Headless Browser for .Net: XBrowser is a "headless" web browser written for .Net applications using C#. It is designed to allow automated, remote controlled and test-based br...XML Integrator: XML integration, collaborative toolNew ReleasesAddress Book: Address Book: Address BookAddress Book: Address Book - Source: Address Book source code.AJAX Fax document viewer: AJAXTiff_Source 1.0: Source project for the AJAX Tiff viewer v1.0. Written in Visual Studio 2010 RC using ASP.net 4.0ASP.Net Routing Configuration: mal.Web.Routing v1.0.0.0: mal.Web.Routing v1.0.0.0ASP.NET Wiki Control: Release 1.0: Includes VS2010 Solution and Project files but targets the 3.5 framework so can still be used with VS2008 if new project files are created.BingPaper: Beta: BingPaper Beta Release This Beta release contains quite a few improvements: This Beta release contains a complate overhaul of the replacement tok...Bolão: teste: testeDotNetNuke® Skin Reasonable: Reasonable Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Ralph Williams of Architech Solutions. A clean, classy, professi...DotNetNuke® Skin Seasons: Seasons Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Atul Handa and Kevin McCusker of Mercer. This skin is a generic ...dylan.NET: dylan.NET v. 9.2: In TFS Serverdylan.NET Apps: dylan.NET Apps v. 1.1: First version of dnu.dll together with v.9.2 of dylan.NETFamily Tree Analyzer: Version 1.1.0.0: Version 1.1.0.0 Census report now shows in bold those individuals you KNOW to be alive at the date of the census. Direct Ancestors on census repor...GLB Virtual Player Builder: 0.4.1: Minor change to reset non-major/minor attr to 8.Hulu Launcher: HuluLauncher Release 1.0.1.1: HuluLauncher Release 1.0.1.1 is the initial, barely-tested release of this Windows Media Center add-in. It should work in Vista Media Center and 7 ...Imenik: Imenik: Imenik is now available!jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services: SPServices 0.5.3: NOTE: While I work on new releases, I post alpha versions. Usually the alpha versions are here to address a particular need. I DO NOT recommend usi...KeelKit: KeelKit 1.0.3800: 更新内容如下: 优化了DBHelper的一些机制修正一些BUG 支持Mysql PHP代理，使得能通过Web代理的方式远程访问数据库服务器添加Model实例化方法，支持所有非自动计算字段的参数实例化、支持所有非空字段实例化添加Model中的常量，使用这些常量可以获得表名称。添加了自...Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) Contrib: MefContrib 0.9.0.0: Updated to MEF Preview 9 Moved MefContrib.Extensions.Generics to MefContrib.Hosting.Generics Moved MefContrib.Extensions.Generics.Tests to MefC...MooiNooi MVC2LINQ2SQL Web Databinder: MooiNooi MVC2LINQ2SQL Web Databinder v0.1.1: Repaired a problem with collections... only index number under 10 were allowed... Please send me your comments and rate the project. Sorry.Mouse Gestures for .NET: Mouse Gestures 1.0: Improved version of the component + sample application. Version 1.0 is not backward compatible.MoviesForMyBlog: MoviesForMyBlog V1.0: This is version 1.0Nito.KitchenSink: Version 1: The first release of Nito.KitchenSink, which uses Nito.Linq 0.1. Please report any issues via the Issue Tracker.Nito.LINQ: Beta (v0.1): This is the first official public release of Nito.Linq. This release only supports .NET 3.5 SP1 with the Microsoft Rx libraries. The documentation...Nito.LINQ: Beta (v0.2): Added ListSource.Generate overloads that take a delegate for counting the list elements.OData SDK for PHP: OData SDK for PHP: This is an updated version of the ADO.NET Data Services toolkit for PHP. It includes full support for OData Protocol V2.0 specification, better pro...Orchard Project: Orchard Latest Build (0.1.2010.0312): This is a technical preview release of Orchard. Our intent with this release is to demonstrate representative experiences for our audiences (end-us...patterns & practices – Enterprise Library: Enterprise Library 5.0 - Beta2: This is a preliminary release of the code and documentation that may potentially be incomplete, and may change prior to the final release of Enterp...patterns & practices - Unity: Unity 2.0 - Beta2: This is a preliminary release of the code and documentation that may potentially be incomplete, and may change prior to the final release of Unity ...patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: Code drop - 1: This initial version is the before the cloud baseline application, so you won’t find anything related to Windows Azure here. Next iteration, we'l...Rawr: Rawr 2.3.12: - First, a note about Rawr3. Rawr3 has been in development for quite a while now, and we know that everyone's eager to get it. It's been held back ...ResumeTracker: Resume Tracker v1.0: First release.Selection Maker: Selection Maker 1.0: This is just the first release of this programSevenZipSharp: SevenZipSharp 0.61: Added: Windows Mobile support bool Check() method for Extractor to test archives integrity FileExtractionFinished now returns FileInfoEventArgs...Silverlight 3.0 Advanced ToolTipService: Advanced ToolTipService v2.0.1: This release is compiled against the Silverlight 3.0 runtime. A demonstration on how to set the ToolTip content to a property of the DataContext o...Silverlight Flow Layouts library: SL and WPF Flow Layouts library March 2010: This release indtroduces some bug fixes, performance improvements, Silverlight 4 RC and WPF 4.0 RC support. Flow Layouts Library is a control libra...Simple Phonebook: SimplePhonebook Visual Studio 2010 Solution: Ovo je cijeli projekt u kojem se nalaze svi source fileovi koje sam koristio u izradi ove aplikacije. Za pokretanje je potreban Visual Studio 2010....Simple Phonebook: SimplePhonebook.rar: U ovoj .rar datoteci nalaze se izvršni fileovi. _ In this .rar file you can find .exe file needed for executing the application.SLARToolkit - Silverlight Augmented Reality Toolkit: SLARToolkit 1.0.1.0: Updated to Silverlight 4 Release Candidate. Introduces the new GenericMarkerDetector which uses the IXrgbReader interface. See the Marker Detecto...sPWadmin: pwAdmin v1.0: Fixed: Templates can now be saved server restart persistant (wait at least 60 seconds between saving and restarting)SQL Director for Dependencies & Indexes: SDD CTP 1.0: SQL Director for Dependencies allows you to view dependencies between tables, views, function, stored procedures and jobs. Newest Testing build, f...SqlCeViewer: SeasonStar Database Management 0.7.0.2: Update the user interface to help user understand clearly how to use .UltiLogger: Initial alpha release: Important! This is not a feature-complete release! It contains the logging priorities, and an interface for building logging systems from. THERE IS...Visual Studio 2008 NUnit snippets: Version 1.0: First stable release.Zeta Resource Editor: Source Code Release 2010-03-16: New source code. Binary setup is also available.Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETLiveUpload to FacebookMost Active ProjectsLINQ to TwitterOData SDK for PHPRawrN2 CMSpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryDirectQBlogEngine.NETMapWindow6SharePoint Team-MailerNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, April 01, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, April 01, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET Bing Maps: Extensible and easy to use, this is ASP.NET Bing Maps Control. Drag & Drop and is ready to go. You can configure map mode, map style, add a PushPin...Bricks' Bane: Bricks' Bane is a brick breaker game developed using XNA and published on XBox Live Indy Games. Source code includes a C# library useful for game d...cURL for dotnet: Another dotnet binding for libcurl see http://curl.haxx.se for more info about cURL/libcurlCustom Functoid que acessa o banco de dados SQL: Functoid para Biztalk Server 2006 utilizando dados do SQL Server 2005FEI STU Pharmacy e-shop: Elektronicky obchod s liekmi Vytvorte jednoduchú klient-server aplikáciu, ktorá bude realizovať elektronický obchod s liekmi. Moduly: 1. e-shop f...Flavours of Wix: Investigating building DSL's to create installers based on WIXFulcrum: Fulcrum is a code generation framework built on top of the T4 technology in Visual Studio. GreviousAngel: New team projectHabanero Inferno: Habanero Inferno coming soon.Kawo Pounga !: A useless game !!!LetsXNA!!: This is a project created by members of Linked In group Lets XNA!! to build a XNA game and have fun in the process. The goal is to build a simple ...Linq To Naver , Custom Linq Provider for Naver searchengine OpenAPI: <project name>Linq to Naver </project name> <programming language>C#, CSharp</programming language>LocoSync: LocoSync is a file Syncronization/Backup/Archiver program, which is easily extendable. It is easy to add new syncronization methods using C# code.Natural Language Processing: Natural Language ProcessingNop Commerce Azure: Ce projet vous permet de mettre en place rapidement et simplement votre site d'e-commerce en ligne en bénéficiant de tous les avantages de la plate...Nwinsock: Nwinsock is a component for network , Object Transfer, Pocket Compression, Support TCP,UDP Protocol, Thread Base OnTime: OnTime is a simple program from that matching game back in the day just to bring light to programming techniques. It's developed in C#.?OpenGL ES 2.0 Compact Framework Wrapper: OpenGL ES 2.0 wrapper for .NET Compact Framework. Developed on HTC HD 2 device but should run on any Windows Mobile device that has the correct lib...ortaknokta: bu proje: birkaç kişinin bir araya gelip, istedikleri konularda tartışma yapmalarına olanak saglamak icin hazırlanmaya çalışıl maktadır. P-Data: P-Data es una herramienta que permite obtener información procedente de archivos de datos (Data Profiling) a través de consultas SQL, automatizando...PowerAuras: Addon for World of Warcraft - Displays effects on screen at different conditionsPowerShell ToodleDo Module: PowerShell Module for interacting with toodledo.com online To-Do list site. RSS Reader for Windows Phone 7: This RSS Reader application for windows 7Streamlet Containers: This is my implement of STL-style containers, including a dynamic array, a double-linked list and an r-b-tree. Just for practice. Please feel free...Troav: Social encyclopedia built using c# and the Orchard frameworkUmbraco App_Code/Usercontrol Editor: Package for Umbraco to add App_Code and usercontrol editing to the Developer section of the Umbraco administration system. Will support GeSHi editi...Vczh Reactive Programming Library: Reactive programming library provide a stream or state machine view to use .NET eventsWhoIs XML API: The project uses the public WhoIs XML API service (http://www.whoisxmlapi.com/) to obtain detailed details. The project is written in C# and serial...WPF FlowDocument Examples for VS2008 and VS2010: WPF Text Samples (especially FlowDocument) on the various possible effects: sub- and super-script, ruby (a.k.a. furigana), and various others...You are here (for Windows Mobile): This sample shows you how to play a *.wav file on your device with Compact Framework 2.0. There is better support for playing music on Compact F...New Releases( λunula ): Lunula 0.4.0: Changelog Implemented a virtual machine. Implemented a compiler for the virtual machine. Added first-class continuations (call/cc) Removed co...Alter gear SQL index Management: Setup 1.0.1: Changes Test connection - successful message Connection string timeout property added Setup Project added to project source code Possible issu...ASP.NET Bing Maps: ASP.NET Bing Maps 0.1b: Project Description Extensible and easy to use, this is ASP.NET Bing Maps Control. Drag & Drop and is ready to go. You can configure map mode, map ...ASP.NET MVC Validation Library: ASP.NET MVC Validation Library 1.3: Changes since 1.2: - Support remote validation - Support custom server-side validation - The design of validation attribute is improved Note: test...BigDays 2010: HelfenHelfen - v1: PLEASE NOTE: This project is published under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL). http://bigdays10.codeplex.com/license IT IS A DEMO SOLUTION FOR...Caps - Manage your collection!: Caps Console 0.1.4.0 Alpha: This is preview release (Alpha quality). This release contains only limited amount of fixes and new features from user point of view. Major focus f...CSharpQuery: Version 1.0: This version is stable. Please report any possible bugs. The next release will include a sample project and index management tools. Until then pl...Custom Functoid que acessa o banco de dados SQL: Custom Functoid SQL Server: Solução do Visual Studio com código fonte e script SQL do functoid em BiztalkDawf: Dual Audio Workflow: Beta 3: Suppose if two good audio events overlap in time with a videoevent of interest. (This can only happen if PluralEyes isn't used on everything). Befo...Dirac codec user interface: Dirac User Interface (checkin 37132): Same as 36795 version, but done with the last source code.DotNetNuke® Blog: 04.00.00 RC 3: PLEASE NOTE: You may upgrade an RC 2 install. But please do not upgrade previous version of the Beta releases - please start from RC 2 or 03.05.0...DotNetNuke® Skinning Extensions: SimpleTitle Skin Object: This is an example skin object that only renders the "page name" if used in a skin and the "module title" if used in a container. No extra spans, c...Fulcrum: Fulcrum v0.9: Initial release of FulcrumHelloTipi Photos Uploader: Version 2010.03.31: De toute petites corrections : - Correction du bouton envoyer - Impossible d'interagir avec l'application quand on uploadkdar: KDAR 0.0.18: KDAR - Kernel Debugger Anti Rootkit - dispacth table's signature bases updated ( many driver's) - scripts refactored - some bug fixedLegend: Legend Libraries: The latest release.Linq To Naver , Custom Linq Provider for Naver searchengine OpenAPI: Linq to Naver: Linq to NaverLive at Education Meta Web-Service: Live at Education Meta Web Service v. 1.0: We're happy to publish final version of Live at Education Meta Web Serivce (LAEMWS). In this release: Huge list of Windows Live ID enabled servic...Live@edu SSO WebPart for MOSS 2007: WebPart 2.0: This release is based on Live@edu Meta Web Service (laemws - http://laemws.codeplex.com). It is highly recomended to use laemws version of webpart,...LocoSync: LocoSync v0.1r2010.03.31 installer: This is the first public release. Unzip and run setup. Or if you have .net 3.5 runtime available download the exetutable and try...Natural Language Processing: test1: testNop Commerce Azure: Nop Commerce Azure: Nop Commerce Full Sources with additionnals Azure Projects.Nwinsock: NWinsock: Nwinsock version 1.0 is hereOpen NFe: DANFe v1.9.8: Correção CSTOpenGL ES 2.0 Compact Framework Wrapper: v0.1 Sources: First rough release. It has a working sample application which renders a triangle with rotation. Don't expect anything great. Just a very early ...patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: Code Drop 3: Second iteration of a-Expense on Azure. This release builds on the previous one and mainly focuses on replacing SQL Azure by Table Storage. We hav...Posh4DNN: Posh4DNN Scripts 2.0: This release greatly increases the speed of installation and incorporates the use of IIS and SQL Server Snap-ins for managing those services. Inst...Process Enactment Tool Framework: PET 1.1: PET Core new intermediate model with arbitrary "clean" relations among objects and several updates of the object fields (see DependencyInterfacesA...Project Tru Tiên: Elements-test V1-fix (v1): Là Elements-test V1 đã được fix các vấn đề sau: - Fix lỗi hiển thị thú cưỡi Hổ Kỳ Lân - Fix hiển thị tab tiếng trung --> sang tiếng việt - Fix hiể...Sentinel - Log Viewer: Sentinel 0.8.1 (nLog support): Build of the 0.8.1 code (svn revision 36823) which included support for both nLog and log4net that has been in SVN for a while but didn't have a bi...sgMotion Animation Library: SgMotion v1.1 (For Sunburn 1.3.1): SgMotion v1.1 (For Sunburn 1.3.1) This release includes both a Windows & Xbox sample. The sample is set to default at Forward rendering, but can e...sTASKedit: sTASKedit 44538 (Developer Alpha): + nearly all fields are viewed in this release for task verification and identifying of unknownsTest Project (ignore): asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf sadf sdf asdf a: ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ...Test Project (ignore): cdscs: csdcacacTroav: Traov20100331 Source Pre-Alpah: This is some experiements with implementing custom modules with Microsoft's Orchard frame work. This is very preliminary, and subject to change.Weather Report WebControls: WebWeatherReport: 主要文件的源代码WhoIs XML API: Initial Release: Initial ReleaseYou are here (for Windows Mobile): CAB file and Source Code: You can find more Controls and samples for Windows Mobile developers at: http://www.beemobile4.netMost Popular ProjectshmrEngineRawrWBFS ManagerASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitAJAX Control ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETLiveUpload to FacebookMost Active ProjectsRawrGraffiti CMSBase Class LibrariesjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETMicrosoft Biology FoundationN2 CMSLINQ to TwitterManaged Extensibility FrameworkFarseer Physics Engine

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Microsoft Declares the Future of ASP.NET is Web API

- by sbwalker

Sitting on a plane on my way home from Tech Ed 2012 in Orlando, I thought it would be a good time to jot down some key takeaways from this year’s conference. Some of these items I have known since the Microsoft MVP Summit which occurred in Redmond in late February ( but due to NDA restrictions I could not share them with the developer community at large ) and some of them are a result of insightful conversations with a wide variety of industry insiders and Microsoft employees at the conference. First, let’s travel back in time 4 years to the Microsoft MVP Summit in 2008. Microsoft was facing some heat from market newcomer Ruby on Rails and responded with a new web development framework of its own, ASP.NET MVC. At the Summit they estimated that MVC would only be applicable for ~10% of all new web development projects. Based on that prediction I questioned why they were investing such considerable resources for such a relative edge case, but my guess is that they felt it was an important edge case at the time as some of the more vocal .NET evangelists as well as some very high profile start-ups ( ie. Twitter ) had publicly announced their intent to use Rails. Microsoft made a lot of noise about MVC. In fact, they focused so much of their messaging and marketing hype around MVC that it appeared that WebForms was essentially dead. Yes, it may have been true that Microsoft continued to invest in WebForms, but from an outside perspective it really appeared that MVC was the only framework getting any real attention. As a result, MVC started to gain market share. An inside source at Microsoft told me that MVC usage has grown at a rate of about 5% per year and now sits at ~30%. Essentially by focusing so much marketing effort on MVC, Microsoft actually created a larger market demand for it. This is because in the Microsoft ecosystem there is somewhat of a bandwagon mentality amongst developers. If Microsoft spends a lot of time talking about a specific technology, developers get the perception that it must be really important. So rather than choosing the right tool for the job, they often choose the tool with the most marketing hype and then try to sell it to the customer. In 2010, I blogged about the fact that MVC did not make any business sense for the DotNetNuke platform. This was because our ecosystem relied on third party extensions which were dependent on the WebForms model. If we migrated the core to MVC it would mean that all of the third party extensions would no longer be compatible, which would be an irresponsible business decision for us to make at the expense of our users and customers. However, this did not stop the debate from continuing to occur in our ecosystem. Clearly some developers had drunk Microsoft’s Kool-Aid about MVC and were of the mindset, to paraphrase an old Scottish saying, “If its not MVC, it’s crap”. Now, this is a rather ignorant position to take as most of the benefits of MVC can be achieved in WebForms with solid architecture and responsible coding practices. Clean separation of concerns, unit testing, and direct control over page output are all possible in the WebForms model – it just requires diligence and discipline. So over the past few years some horror stories have begun to bubble to the surface of software development projects focused on ground-up rewrites of web applications for the sole purpose of migrating from WebForms to MVC. These large scale rewrites were typically initiated by engineering teams with only a single argument driving the business decision, that Microsoft was promoting MVC as “the future”. These ill-fated rewrites offered no benefit to end users or customers and in fact resulted in a less stable, less scalable and more complicated systems – basically taking one step forward and two full steps back. A case in point is the announcement earlier this week that a popular open source .NET CMS provider has decided to pull the plug on their new MVC product which has been under active development for more than 18 months and revert back to WebForms. The availability of multiple server-side development models has deeply fragmented the Microsoft developer community. Some folks like to compare it to the age-old VB vs. C# language debate. However, the VB vs. C# language debate was ultimately more of a religious war because at least the two dominant programming languages were compatible with one another and could be used interchangeably. The issue with WebForms vs. MVC is much more challenging. This is because the messaging from Microsoft has positioned the two solutions as being incompatible with one another and as a result web developers feel like they are forced to choose one path or another. Yes, it is true that it has always been technically possible to use WebForms and MVC in the same project, but the tooling support has always made this feel “dirty”. The fragmentation has also made it difficult to attract newcomers as the perceived barrier to entry for learning ASP.NET has become higher. As a result many new software developers entering the market are gravitating to environments where the development model seems more simple and intuitive ( ie. PHP or Ruby ). At the same time that the Web Platform team was busy promoting ASP.NET MVC, the Microsoft Office team has been promoting Sharepoint as a platform for building internal enterprise web applications. Sharepoint has great penetration in the enterprise and over time has been enhanced with improved extensibility capabilities for software developers. But, like many other mature enterprise ASP.NET web applications, it is built on the WebForms development model. Similar to DotNetNuke, Sharepoint leverages a rich third party ecosystem for both generic web controls and more specialized WebParts – both of which rely on WebForms. So basically this resulted in a situation where the Web Platform group had headed off in one direction and the Office team had gone in another direction, and the end customer was stuck in the middle trying to figure out what to do with their existing investments in Microsoft technology. It really emphasized the perception that the left hand was not speaking to the right hand, as strategically speaking there did not seem to be any high level plan from Microsoft to ensure consistency and continuity across the different product lines. With the introduction of ASP.NET MVC, it also made some of the third party control vendors scratch their heads, and wonder what the heck Microsoft was thinking. The original value proposition of ASP.NET over Classic ASP was the ability for web developers to emulate the highly productive desktop development model by using abstract components for creating rich, interactive web interfaces. Web control vendors like Telerik, Infragistics, DevExpress, and ComponentArt had all built sizable businesses offering powerful user interface components to WebForms developers. And even after MVC was introduced these vendors continued to improve their products, offering greater productivity and a superior user experience via AJAX to what was possible in MVC. And since many developers were comfortable and satisfied with these third party solutions, the demand remained strong and the third party web control market continued to prosper despite the availability of MVC. While all of this was going on in the Microsoft ecosystem, there has also been a fundamental shift in the general software development industry. Driven by the explosion of Internet-enabled devices, the focus has now centered on service-oriented architecture (SOA). Service-oriented architecture is all about defining a public API for your product that any client can consume; whether it’s a native application running on a smart phone or tablet, a web browser taking advantage of HTML5 and Javascript, or a rich desktop application running on a PC. REST-based services which utilize the less verbose characteristics of JSON as a transport mechanism, have become the preferred approach over older, more bloated SOAP-based techniques. SOA also has the benefit of producing a cross-platform API, as every major technology stack is able to interact with standard REST-based web services. And for web applications, more and more developers are turning to robust Javascript libraries like JQuery and Knockout for browser-based client-side development techniques for calling web services and rendering content to end users. In fact, traditional server-side page rendering has largely fallen out of favor, resulting in decreased demand for server-side frameworks like Ruby on Rails, WebForms, and (gasp) MVC. In response to these new industry trends, Microsoft did what it always does – it immediately poured some resources into developing a solution which will ensure they remain relevant and competitive in the web space. This work culminated in a new framework which was branded as Web API. It is convention-based and designed to embrace native HTTP standards without copious layers of abstraction. This framework is designed to be the ultimate replacement for both the REST aspects of WCF and ASP.NET MVC Web Services. And since it was developed out of band with a dependency only on ASP.NET 4.0, it means that it can be used immediately in a variety of production scenarios. So at Tech Ed 2012 it was made abundantly clear in numerous sessions that Microsoft views Web API as the “Future of ASP.NET”. In fact, one Microsoft PM even went as far as to say that if we look 3-4 years into the future, that all ASP.NET web applications will be developed using the Web API approach. This is a fairly bold prediction and clearly telegraphs where Microsoft plans to allocate its resources going forward. Currently Web API is being delivered as part of the MVC4 package, but this is only temporary for the sake of convenience. It also sounds like there are still internal discussions going on in terms of how to brand the various aspects of ASP.NET going forward – perhaps the moniker of “ASP.NET Web Stack” coined a couple years ago by Scott Hanselman and utilized as part of the open source release of ASP.NET bits on Codeplex a few months back will eventually stick. Web API is being positioned as the unification of ASP.NET – the glue that is able to pull this fragmented mess back together again. The “One ASP.NET” strategy will promote the use of all frameworks - WebForms, MVC, and Web API, even within the same web project. Basically the message is utilize the appropriate aspects of each framework to solve your business problems. Instead of navigating developers to a fork in the road, the plan is to educate them that “hybrid” applications are a great strategy for delivering solutions to customers. In addition, the service-oriented approach coupled with client-side development promoted by Web API can effectively be used in both WebForms and MVC applications. So this means it is also relevant to application platforms like DotNetNuke and Sharepoint, which means that it starts to create a unified development strategy across all ASP.NET product lines once again. And so what about MVC? There have actually been rumors floated that MVC has reached a stage of maturity where, similar to WebForms, it will be treated more as a maintenance product line going forward ( MVC4 may in fact be the last significant iteration of this framework ). This may sound alarming to some folks who have recently adopted MVC but it really shouldn’t, as both WebForms and MVC will continue to play a vital role in delivering solutions to customers. They will just not be the primary area where Microsoft is spending the majority of its R&D resources. That distinction will obviously go to Web API. And when the question comes up of why not enhance MVC to make it work with Web API, you must take a step back and look at this from the higher level to see that it really makes no sense. MVC is a server-side page compositing framework; whereas, Web API promotes client-side page compositing with a heavy focus on web services. In order to make MVC work well with Web API, would require a complete rewrite of MVC and at the end of the day, there would be no upgrade path for existing MVC applications. So it really does not make much business sense. So what does this have to do with DotNetNuke? Well, around 8-12 months ago we recognized the software industry trends towards web services and client-side development. We decided to utilize a “hybrid” model which would provide compatibility for existing modules while at the same time provide a bridge for developers who wanted to utilize more modern web techniques. Customers who like the productivity and familiarity of WebForms can continue to build custom modules using the traditional approach. However, in DotNetNuke 6.2 we also introduced a new Service Framework which is actually built on top of MVC2 ( we chose to leverage MVC because it had the most intuitive, light-weight REST implementation in the .NET stack ). The Services Framework allowed us to build some rich interactive features in DotNetNuke 6.2, including the Messaging and Notification Center and Activity Feed. But based on where we know Microsoft is heading, it makes sense for the next major version of DotNetNuke ( which is expected to be released in Q4 2012 ) to migrate from MVC2 to Web API. This will likely result in some breaking changes in the Services Framework but we feel it is the best approach for ensuring the platform remains highly modern and relevant. The fact that our development strategy is perfectly aligned with the “One ASP.NET” strategy from Microsoft means that our customers and developer community can be confident in their current and future investments in the DotNetNuke platform.

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VS 2012 Code Review – Before Check In OR After Check In?

- by Tarun Arora

“Is Code Review Important and Effective?” There is a consensus across the industry that code review is an effective and practical way to collar code inconsistency and possible defects early in the software development life cycle. Among others some of the advantages of code reviews are, Bugs are found faster Forces developers to write readable code (code that can be read without explanation or introduction!) Optimization methods/tricks/productive programs spread faster Programmers as specialists "evolve" faster It's fun “Code review is systematic examination (often known as peer review) of computer source code. It is intended to find and fix mistakes overlooked in the initial development phase, improving both the overall quality of software and the developers' skills. Reviews are done in various forms such as pair programming, informal walkthroughs, and formal inspections.” Wikipedia No where does the definition mention whether its better to review code before the code has been committed to version control or after the commit has been performed. No matter which side you favour, Visual Studio 2012 allows you to request for a code review both before check in and also request for a review after check in. Let’s weigh the pros and cons of the approaches independently. Code Review Before Check In or Code Review After Check In? Approach 1 – Code Review before Check in Developer completes the code and feels the code quality is appropriate for check in to TFS. The developer raises a code review request to have a second pair of eyes validate if the code abides to the recommended best practices, will not result in any defects due to common coding mistakes and whether any optimizations can be made to improve the code quality. Image 1 – code review before check in Pros Everything that gets committed to source control is reviewed. Minimizes the chances of smelly code making its way into the code base. Decreases the cost of fixing bugs, remember, the earlier you find them, the lesser the pain in fixing them. Cons Development Code Freeze – Since the changes aren’t in the source control yet. Further development can only be done off-line. The changes have not been through a CI build, hard to say whether the code abides to all build quality standards. Inconsistent! Cumbersome to track the actual code review process. Not every change to the code base is worth reviewing, a lot of effort is invested for very little gain. Approach 2 – Code Review after Check in Developer checks in, random code reviews are performed on the checked in code. Image 2 – Code review after check in Pros The code has already passed the CI build and run through any code analysis plug ins you may have running on the build server. Instruct the developer to ensure ZERO fx cop, style cop and static code analysis before check in. Code is cleaner and smell free even before the code review. No Offline development, developers can continue to develop against the source control. Cons Bad code can easily make its way into the code base. Since the review take place much later in the cycle, the cost of fixing issues can prove to be much higher. Approach 3 – Hybrid Approach The community advocates a more hybrid approach, a blend of tooling and human accountability quotient. Image 3 – Hybrid Approach 1. Code review high impact check ins. It is not possible to review everything, by setting up code review check in policies you can end up slowing your team. More over, the code that you are reviewing before check in hasn't even been through a green CI build either. 2. Tooling. Let the tooling work for you. By running static analysis, fx cop, style cop and other plug ins on the build agent, you can identify the real issues that in my opinion can't possibly be identified using human reviews. Configure the tooling to report back top 10 issues every day. Mandate the manual code review of individuals who keep making it to this list of shame more often. 3. During Merge. I would prefer eliminating some of the other code issues during merge from Main branch to the release branch. In a scrum project this is still easier because cheery picking the merges is a possibility and the size of code being reviewed is still limited. Let the tooling work for you, if some one breaks the CI build often, put them on a gated check in build course until you see improvement. If some one appears on the top 10 list of shame generated via the build then ensure that all their code is reviewed till you see improvement. At the end of the day, the goal is to ensure that the code being delivered is top quality. By enforcing a code review before any check in, you force the developer to work offline or stay put till the review is complete. What do the experts say? So I asked a few expects what they thought of “Code Review quality gate before Checking in code?" Terje Sandstrom | Microsoft ALM MVP You mean a review quality gate BEFORE checking in code????? That would mean a lot of code staying either local or in shelvesets, and not even been through a CI build, and a green CI build being the main criteria for going further, f.e. to the review state. I would not like code laying around with no checkin’s. Having a requirement that code is checked in small pieces, 4-8 hours work max, and AT LEAST daily checkins, a manual code review comes second down the lane. I would expect review quality gates to happen before merging back to main, or before merging to release. But that would all be on checked-in code. Branching is absolutely one way to ease the pain. Another way we are using is automatic quality builds, running metrics, coverage, static code analysis. Unfortunately it takes some time, would be great to be on CI’s – but…., so it’s done scheduled every night. Based on this we get, among other stuff, top 10 lists of suspicious code, which is then subjected to reviews. If a person seems to be very popular on these top 10 lists, we subject every check in from that person to a review for a period. That normally helps. None of the clients I have can afford to have every checkin reviewed, so we need to find ways around it. I don’t disagree with the nicety of having all the code reviewed, but I find it hard to find those resources in today’s enterprises. David V. Corbin | Visual Studio ALM Ranger I tend to agree with both sides. I hate having code that is not checked in, but at the same time hate having “bad” code in the repository. I have found that branching is one approach to solving this dilemma. Code is checked into the private/feature branch before the review, but is not merged over to the “official” branch until after the review. I advocate both, depending on circumstance (especially team dynamics) - The “pre-checkin” is usually for elements that may impact the project as a whole. Think of it as another “gate” along with passing unit tests. - The “post-checkin” may very well not be at the changeset level, but correlates to a review at the “user story” level. Again, this depends on team dynamics in play…. Robert MacLean | Microsoft ALM MVP I do not think there is no right answer for the industry as a whole. In short the question is why do you do reviews? Your question implies risk mitigation, so in low risk areas you can get away with it after check in while in high risk you need to do it before check in. An example is those new to a team or juniors need it much earlier (maybe that is before checkin, maybe that is soon after) than seniors who have shipped twenty sprints on the team. Abhimanyu Singhal | Visual Studio ALM Ranger Depends on per scenario basis. We recommend post check-in reviews when: 1. We don't want to block other checks and processes on manual code reviews. Manual reviews take time, and some pieces may not require manual reviews at all. 2. We need to trace all changes and track history. 3. We have a code promotion strategy/process in place. For risk mitigation, post checkin code can be promoted to Accepted branches. Or can be rejected. Pre Checkin Reviews are used when 1. There is a high risk factor associated 2. Reviewers are generally (most of times) have immediate availability. 3. Team does not have strict tracking needs. Simply speaking, no single process fits all scenarios. You need to select what works best for your team/project. Thomas Schissler | Visual Studio ALM Ranger This is an interesting discussion, I’m right now discussing details about executing code reviews with my teams. I see and understand the aspects you brought in, but there is another side as well, I’d like to point out. 1.) If you do reviews per check in this is not very practical as a hard rule because this will disturb the flow of the team very often or it will lead to reduce the checkin frequency of the devs which I would not accept. 2.) If you do later reviews, for example if you review PBIs, it is not easy to find out which code you should review. Either you review all changesets associate with the PBI, but then you might review code which has been changed with a later checkin and the dev maybe has already fixed the issue. Or you review the diff of the latest changeset of the PBI with the first but then you might also review changes of other PBIs. Jakob Leander | Sr. Director, Avanade In my experience, manual code review: 1. Does not get done and at the very least does not get redone after changes (regardless of intentions at start of project) 2. When a project actually do it, they often do not do it right away = errors pile up 3. Requires a lot of time discussing/defining the standard and for the team to learn it However code review is very important since e.g. even small memory leaks in a high volume web solution have big consequences In the last years I have advocated following approach for code review - Architects up front do “at least one best practice example” of each type of component and tell the team. Copy from this one. This should include error handling, logging, security etc. - Dev lead on project continuously browse code to validate that the best practices are used. Especially that patterns etc. are not broken. You can do this formally after each sprint/iteration if you want. Once this is validated it is unlikely to “go bad” even during later code changes Agree with customer to rely on static code analysis from Visual Studio as the one and only coding standard. This has HUUGE benefits - You can easily tweak to reach the level you desire together with customer - It is easy to measure for both developers/management - It is 100% consistent across code base - It gets validated all the time so you never end up getting hammered by a customer review in the end - It is easy to tell the developer that you do not want code back unless it has zero errors = minimize communication You need to track this at least during nightly builds and make sure team sees total # issues. Do not allow #issues it to grow uncontrolled. On the project I run I require code analysis to have run on code before checkin (checkin rule). This means - You have to have clean compile (or CA wont run) so this is extra benefit = very few broken builds - You can change a few of the rules to compile as errors instead of warnings. I often do this for “missing dispose” issues which you REALLY do not want in your app Tip: Place your custom CA rules files as part of solution. That way it works when you do branching etc. (path to CA file is relative in VS) Some may argue that CA is not as good as manual inspection. But since manual inspection in reality suffers from the 3 issues in start it is IMO a MUCH better (and much cheaper) approach from helicopter perspective Tirthankar Dutta | Director, Avanade I think code review should be run both before and after check ins. There are some code metrics that are meant to be run on the entire codebase … Also, especially on multi-site projects, one should strive to architect in a way that lets men manage the framework while boys write the repetitive code… scales very well with the need to review less by containment and imposing architectural restrictions to emphasise the design. Bruno Capuano | Microsoft ALM MVP For code reviews (means peer reviews) in distributed team I use http://www.vsanywhere.com/default.aspx David Jobling | Global Sr. Director, Avanade Peer review is the only way to scale and its a great practice for all in the team to learn to perform and accept. In my experience you soon learn who's code to watch more than others and tune the attention. Mikkel Toudal Kristiansen | Manager, Avanade If you have several branches in your code base, you will need to merge often. This requires manual merging, when a file has been changed in both branches. It offers a good opportunity to actually review to changed code. So my advice is: Merging between branches should be done as often as possible, it should be done by a senior developer, and he/she should perform a full code review of the code being merged. As for detecting architectural smells and code smells creeping into the code base, one really good third party tools exist: Ndepend (http://www.ndepend.com/, for static code analysis of the current state of the code base). You could also consider adding StyleCop to the solution. Jesse Houwing | Visual Studio ALM Ranger I gave a presentation on this subject on the TechDays conference in NL last year. See my presentation and slides here (talk in Dutch, but English presentation): http://blog.jessehouwing.nl/2012/03/did-you-miss-my-techdaysnl-talk-on-code.html I’d like to add a few more points: - Before/After checking is mostly a trust issue. If you have a team that does diligent peer reviews and regularly talk/sit together or peer review, there’s no need to enforce a before-checkin policy. The peer peer-programming and regular feedback during development can take care of most of the review requirements as long as the team isn’t under stress. - Under stress, enforce pre-checkin reviews, it might sound strange, if you’re already under time or budgetary constraints, but it is under such conditions most real issues start to be created or pile up. - Use tools to catch most common errors, Code Analysis/FxCop was already mentioned. HP Fortify, Resharper, Coderush etc can help you there. There are also a lot of 3rd party rules you can add to Code Analysis. I’ve written a few myself (http://fccopcontrib.codeplex.com) and various teams from Microsoft have added their own rules (MSOCAF for SharePoint, WSSF for WCF). For common errors that keep cropping up, see if you can define a rule. It’s much easier. But more importantly make sure you have a good help page explaining *WHY* it's wrong. If you have small feature or developer branches/shelvesets, you might want to review pre-merge. It’s still better to do peer reviews and peer programming, but the most important thing is that bad quality code doesn’t make it into the important branch. So my philosophy: - Use tooling as much as possible. - Make sure the team understands the tooling and the importance of the things it flags. It’s too easy to just click suppress all to ignore the warnings. - Under stress, tighten process, it’s under stress that the problems of late reviews will really surface - Most importantly if you do reviews do them as early as possible, but never later than needed. In other words, pre-checkin/post checking doesn’t really matter, as long as the review is done before the code is released. It’ll just be much more expensive to fix any review outcomes the later you find them. --- I would love to hear what you think!

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SQL Server – Undelete a Table and Restore a Single Table from Backup

- by Mladen Prajdic

This post is part of the monthly community event called T-SQL Tuesday started by Adam Machanic (blog|twitter) and hosted by someone else each month. This month the host is Sankar Reddy (blog|twitter) and the topic is Misconceptions in SQL Server. You can follow posts for this theme on Twitter by looking at #TSQL2sDay hashtag. Let me start by saying: This code is a crazy hack that is to never be used unless you really, really have to. Really! And I don’t think there’s a time when you would really have to use it for real. Because it’s a hack there are number of things that can go wrong so play with it knowing that. I’ve managed to totally corrupt one database. :) Oh… and for those saying: yeah yeah.. you have a single table in a file group and you’re restoring that, I say “nay nay” to you. As we all know SQL Server can’t do single table restores from backup. This is kind of a obvious thing due to different relational integrity (RI) concerns. Since we have to maintain that we have to restore all tables represented in a RI graph. For this exercise i say BAH! to those concerns. Note that this method “works” only for simple tables that don’t have LOB and off rows data. The code can be expanded to include those but I’ve tried to leave things “simple”. Note that for this to work our table needs to be relatively static data-wise. This doesn’t work for OLTP table. Products are a perfect example of static data. They don’t change much between backups, pretty much everything depends on them and their table is one of those tables that are relatively easy to accidentally delete everything from. This only works if the database is in Full or Bulk-Logged recovery mode for tables where the contents have been deleted or truncated but NOT when a table was dropped. Everything we’ll talk about has to be done before the data pages are reused for other purposes. After deletion or truncation the pages are marked as reusable so you have to act fast. The best thing probably is to put the database into single user mode ASAP while you’re performing this procedure and return it to multi user after you’re done. How do we do it? We will be using an undocumented but known DBCC commands: DBCC PAGE, an undocumented function sys.fn_dblog and a little known DATABASE RESTORE PAGE option. All tests will be on a copy of Production.Product table in AdventureWorks database called Production.Product1 because the original table has FK constraints that prevent us from truncating it for testing. -- create a duplicate table. This doesn't preserve indexes!SELECT *INTO AdventureWorks.Production.Product1FROM AdventureWorks.Production.Product After we run this code take a full back to perform further testing. First let’s see what the difference between DELETE and TRUNCATE is when it comes to logging. With DELETE every row deletion is logged in the transaction log. With TRUNCATE only whole data page deallocations are logged in the transaction log. Getting deleted data pages is simple. All we have to look for is row delete entry in the sys.fn_dblog output. But getting data pages that were truncated from the transaction log presents a bit of an interesting problem. I will not go into depths of IAM(Index Allocation Map) and PFS (Page Free Space) pages but suffice to say that every IAM page has intervals that tell us which data pages are allocated for a table and which aren’t. If we deep dive into the sys.fn_dblog output we can see that once you truncate a table all the pages in all the intervals are deallocated and this is shown in the PFS page transaction log entry as deallocation of pages. For every 8 pages in the same extent there is one PFS page row in the transaction log. This row holds information about all 8 pages in CSV format which means we can get to this data with some parsing. A great help for parsing this stuff is Peter Debetta’s handy function dbo.HexStrToVarBin that converts hexadecimal string into a varbinary value that can be easily converted to integer tus giving us a readable page number. The shortened (columns removed) sys.fn_dblog output for a PFS page with CSV data for 1 extent (8 data pages) looks like this: -- [Page ID] is displayed in hex format. -- To convert it to readable int we'll use dbo.HexStrToVarBin function found at -- http://sqlblog.com/blogs/peter_debetta/archive/2007/03/09/t-sql-convert-hex-string-to-varbinary.aspx -- This function must be installed in the master databaseSELECT Context, AllocUnitName, [Page ID], DescriptionFROM sys.fn_dblog(NULL, NULL)WHERE [Current LSN] = '00000031:00000a46:007d' The pages at the end marked with 0x00—> are pages that are allocated in the extent but are not part of a table. We can inspect the raw content of each data page with a DBCC PAGE command: -- we need this trace flag to redirect output to the query window.DBCC TRACEON (3604); -- WITH TABLERESULTS gives us data in table format instead of message format-- we use format option 3 because it's the easiest to read and manipulate further onDBCC PAGE (AdventureWorks, 1, 613, 3) WITH TABLERESULTS Since the DBACC PAGE output can be quite extensive I won’t put it here. You can see an example of it in the link at the beginning of this section. Getting deleted data back When we run a delete statement every row to be deleted is marked as a ghost record. A background process periodically cleans up those rows. A huge misconception is that the data is actually removed. It’s not. Only the pointers to the rows are removed while the data itself is still on the data page. We just can’t access it with normal means. To get those pointers back we need to restore every deleted page using the RESTORE PAGE option mentioned above. This restore must be done from a full backup, followed by any differential and log backups that you may have. This is necessary to bring the pages up to the same point in time as the rest of the data. However the restore doesn’t magically connect the restored page back to the original table. It simply replaces the current page with the one from the backup. After the restore we use the DBCC PAGE to read data directly from all data pages and insert that data into a temporary table. To finish the RESTORE PAGE procedure we finally have to take a tail log backup (simple backup of the transaction log) and restore it back. We can now insert data from the temporary table to our original table by hand. Getting truncated data back When we run a truncate the truncated data pages aren’t touched at all. Even the pointers to rows stay unchanged. Because of this getting data back from truncated table is simple. we just have to find out which pages belonged to our table and use DBCC PAGE to read data off of them. No restore is necessary. Turns out that the problems we had with finding the data pages is alleviated by not having to do a RESTORE PAGE procedure. Stop stalling… show me The Code! This is the code for getting back deleted and truncated data back. It’s commented in all the right places so don’t be afraid to take a closer look. Make sure you have a full backup before trying this out. Also I suggest that the last step of backing and restoring the tail log is performed by hand. USE masterGOIF OBJECT_ID('dbo.HexStrToVarBin') IS NULL RAISERROR ('No dbo.HexStrToVarBin installed. Go to http://sqlblog.com/blogs/peter_debetta/archive/2007/03/09/t-sql-convert-hex-string-to-varbinary.aspx and install it in master database' , 18, 1) SET NOCOUNT ONBEGIN TRY DECLARE @dbName VARCHAR(1000), @schemaName VARCHAR(1000), @tableName VARCHAR(1000), @fullBackupName VARCHAR(1000), @undeletedTableName VARCHAR(1000), @sql VARCHAR(MAX), @tableWasTruncated bit; /* THE FIRST LINE ARE OUR INPUT PARAMETERS In this case we're trying to recover Production.Product1 table in AdventureWorks database. My full backup of AdventureWorks database is at e:\AW.bak */ SELECT @dbName = 'AdventureWorks', @schemaName = 'Production', @tableName = 'Product1', @fullBackupName = 'e:\AW.bak', @undeletedTableName = '##' + @tableName + '_Undeleted', @tableWasTruncated = 0, -- copy the structure from original table to a temp table that we'll fill with restored data @sql = 'IF OBJECT_ID(''tempdb..' + @undeletedTableName + ''') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE ' + @undeletedTableName + ' SELECT *' + ' INTO ' + @undeletedTableName + ' FROM [' + @dbName + '].[' + @schemaName + '].[' + @tableName + ']' + ' WHERE 1 = 0' EXEC (@sql) IF OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#PagesToRestore') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE #PagesToRestore /* FIND DATA PAGES WE NEED TO RESTORE*/ CREATE TABLE #PagesToRestore ([ID] INT IDENTITY(1,1), [FileID] INT, [PageID] INT, [SQLtoExec] VARCHAR(1000)) -- DBCC PACE statement to run later RAISERROR ('Looking for deleted pages...', 10, 1) -- use T-LOG direct read to get deleted data pages INSERT INTO #PagesToRestore([FileID], [PageID], [SQLtoExec]) EXEC('USE [' + @dbName + '];SELECT FileID, PageID, ''DBCC TRACEON (3604); DBCC PAGE ([' + @dbName + '], '' + FileID + '', '' + PageID + '', 3) WITH TABLERESULTS'' as SQLToExecFROM (SELECT DISTINCT LEFT([Page ID], 4) AS FileID, CONVERT(VARCHAR(100), ' + 'CONVERT(INT, master.dbo.HexStrToVarBin(SUBSTRING([Page ID], 6, 20)))) AS PageIDFROM sys.fn_dblog(NULL, NULL)WHERE AllocUnitName LIKE ''%' + @schemaName + '.' + @tableName + '%'' ' + 'AND Context IN (''LCX_MARK_AS_GHOST'', ''LCX_HEAP'') AND Operation in (''LOP_DELETE_ROWS''))t');SELECT *FROM #PagesToRestore -- if upper EXEC returns 0 rows it means the table was truncated so find truncated pages IF (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM #PagesToRestore) = 0 BEGIN RAISERROR ('No deleted pages found. Looking for truncated pages...', 10, 1) -- use T-LOG read to get truncated data pages INSERT INTO #PagesToRestore([FileID], [PageID], [SQLtoExec]) -- dark magic happens here -- because truncation simply deallocates pages we have to find out which pages were deallocated. -- we can find this out by looking at the PFS page row's Description column. -- for every deallocated extent the Description has a CSV of 8 pages in that extent. -- then it's just a matter of parsing it. -- we also remove the pages in the extent that weren't allocated to the table itself -- marked with '0x00-->00' EXEC ('USE [' + @dbName + '];DECLARE @truncatedPages TABLE(DeallocatedPages VARCHAR(8000), IsMultipleDeallocs BIT);INSERT INTO @truncatedPagesSELECT REPLACE(REPLACE(Description, ''Deallocated '', ''Y''), ''0x00-->00 '', ''N'') + '';'' AS DeallocatedPages, CHARINDEX('';'', Description) AS IsMultipleDeallocsFROM (SELECT DISTINCT LEFT([Page ID], 4) AS FileID, CONVERT(VARCHAR(100), CONVERT(INT, master.dbo.HexStrToVarBin(SUBSTRING([Page ID], 6, 20)))) AS PageID, DescriptionFROM sys.fn_dblog(NULL, NULL)WHERE Context IN (''LCX_PFS'') AND Description LIKE ''Deallocated%'' AND AllocUnitName LIKE ''%' + @schemaName + '.' + @tableName + '%'') t;SELECT FileID, PageID , ''DBCC TRACEON (3604); DBCC PAGE ([' + @dbName + '], '' + FileID + '', '' + PageID + '', 3) WITH TABLERESULTS'' as SQLToExecFROM (SELECT LEFT(PageAndFile, 1) as WasPageAllocatedToTable , SUBSTRING(PageAndFile, 2, CHARINDEX('':'', PageAndFile) - 2 ) as FileID , CONVERT(VARCHAR(100), CONVERT(INT, master.dbo.HexStrToVarBin(SUBSTRING(PageAndFile, CHARINDEX('':'', PageAndFile) + 1, LEN(PageAndFile))))) as PageIDFROM ( SELECT SUBSTRING(DeallocatedPages, delimPosStart, delimPosEnd - delimPosStart) as PageAndFile, IsMultipleDeallocs FROM ( SELECT *, CHARINDEX('';'', DeallocatedPages)*(N-1) + 1 AS delimPosStart, CHARINDEX('';'', DeallocatedPages)*N AS delimPosEnd FROM @truncatedPages t1 CROSS APPLY (SELECT TOP (case when t1.IsMultipleDeallocs = 1 then 8 else 1 end) ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY number) as N FROM master..spt_values) t2 )t)t)tWHERE WasPageAllocatedToTable = ''Y''') SELECT @tableWasTruncated = 1 END DECLARE @lastID INT, @pagesCount INT SELECT @lastID = 1, @pagesCount = COUNT(*) FROM #PagesToRestore SELECT @sql = 'Number of pages to restore: ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), @pagesCount) IF @pagesCount = 0 RAISERROR ('No data pages to restore.', 18, 1) ELSE RAISERROR (@sql, 10, 1) -- If the table was truncated we'll read the data directly from data pages without restoring from backup IF @tableWasTruncated = 0 BEGIN -- RESTORE DATA PAGES FROM FULL BACKUP IN BATCHES OF 200 WHILE @lastID <= @pagesCount BEGIN -- create CSV string of pages to restore SELECT @sql = STUFF((SELECT ',' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(100), FileID) + ':' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(100), PageID) FROM #PagesToRestore WHERE ID BETWEEN @lastID AND @lastID + 200 ORDER BY ID FOR XML PATH('')), 1, 1, '') SELECT @sql = 'RESTORE DATABASE [' + @dbName + '] PAGE = ''' + @sql + ''' FROM DISK = ''' + @fullBackupName + '''' RAISERROR ('Starting RESTORE command:' , 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; RAISERROR (@sql , 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; EXEC(@sql); RAISERROR ('Restore DONE' , 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; SELECT @lastID = @lastID + 200 END /* If you have any differential or transaction log backups you should restore them here to bring the previously restored data pages up to date */ END DECLARE @dbccSinglePage TABLE ( [ParentObject] NVARCHAR(500), [Object] NVARCHAR(500), [Field] NVARCHAR(500), [VALUE] NVARCHAR(MAX) ) DECLARE @cols NVARCHAR(MAX), @paramDefinition NVARCHAR(500), @SQLtoExec VARCHAR(1000), @FileID VARCHAR(100), @PageID VARCHAR(100), @i INT = 1 -- Get deleted table columns from information_schema view -- Need sp_executeSQL because database name can't be passed in as variable SELECT @cols = 'select @cols = STUFF((SELECT '', ['' + COLUMN_NAME + '']''FROM ' + @dbName + '.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNSWHERE TABLE_NAME = ''' + @tableName + ''' AND TABLE_SCHEMA = ''' + @schemaName + '''ORDER BY ORDINAL_POSITIONFOR XML PATH('''')), 1, 2, '''')', @paramDefinition = N'@cols nvarchar(max) OUTPUT' EXECUTE sp_executesql @cols, @paramDefinition, @cols = @cols OUTPUT -- Loop through all the restored data pages, -- read data from them and insert them into temp table -- which you can then insert into the orignial deleted table DECLARE dbccPageCursor CURSOR GLOBAL FORWARD_ONLY FOR SELECT [FileID], [PageID], [SQLtoExec] FROM #PagesToRestore ORDER BY [FileID], [PageID] OPEN dbccPageCursor; FETCH NEXT FROM dbccPageCursor INTO @FileID, @PageID, @SQLtoExec; WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0 BEGIN RAISERROR ('---------------------------------------------', 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; SELECT @sql = 'Loop iteration: ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), @i); RAISERROR (@sql, 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; SELECT @sql = 'Running: ' + @SQLtoExec RAISERROR (@sql, 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; -- if something goes wrong with DBCC execution or data gathering, skip it but print error BEGIN TRY INSERT INTO @dbccSinglePage EXEC (@SQLtoExec) -- make the data insert magic happen here IF (SELECT CONVERT(BIGINT, [VALUE]) FROM @dbccSinglePage WHERE [Field] LIKE '%Metadata: ObjectId%') = OBJECT_ID('['+@dbName+'].['+@schemaName +'].['+@tableName+']') BEGIN DELETE @dbccSinglePage WHERE NOT ([ParentObject] LIKE 'Slot % Offset %' AND [Object] LIKE 'Slot % Column %') SELECT @sql = 'USE tempdb; ' + 'IF (OBJECTPROPERTY(object_id(''' + @undeletedTableName + '''), ''TableHasIdentity'') = 1) ' + 'SET IDENTITY_INSERT ' + @undeletedTableName + ' ON; ' + 'INSERT INTO ' + @undeletedTableName + '(' + @cols + ') ' + STUFF((SELECT ' UNION ALL SELECT ' + STUFF((SELECT ', ' + CASE WHEN VALUE = '[NULL]' THEN 'NULL' ELSE '''' + [VALUE] + '''' END FROM ( -- the unicorn help here to correctly set ordinal numbers of columns in a data page -- it's turning STRING order into INT order (1,10,11,2,21 into 1,2,..10,11...21) SELECT [ParentObject], [Object], Field, VALUE, RIGHT('00000' + O1, 6) AS ParentObjectOrder, RIGHT('00000' + REVERSE(LEFT(O2, CHARINDEX(' ', O2)-1)), 6) AS ObjectOrder FROM ( SELECT [ParentObject], [Object], Field, VALUE, REPLACE(LEFT([ParentObject], CHARINDEX('Offset', [ParentObject])-1), 'Slot ', '') AS O1, REVERSE(LEFT([Object], CHARINDEX('Offset ', [Object])-2)) AS O2 FROM @dbccSinglePage WHERE t.ParentObject = ParentObject )t)t ORDER BY ParentObjectOrder, ObjectOrder FOR XML PATH('')), 1, 2, '') FROM @dbccSinglePage t GROUP BY ParentObject FOR XML PATH('') ), 1, 11, '') + ';' RAISERROR (@sql, 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; EXEC (@sql) END END TRY BEGIN CATCH SELECT @sql = 'ERROR!!!' + CHAR(10) + CHAR(13) + 'ErrorNumber: ' + ERROR_NUMBER() + '; ErrorMessage' + ERROR_MESSAGE() + CHAR(10) + CHAR(13) + 'FileID: ' + @FileID + '; PageID: ' + @PageID RAISERROR (@sql, 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; END CATCH DELETE @dbccSinglePage SELECT @sql = 'Pages left to process: ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), @pagesCount - @i) + CHAR(10) + CHAR(13) + CHAR(10) + CHAR(13) + CHAR(10) + CHAR(13), @i = @i+1 RAISERROR (@sql, 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; FETCH NEXT FROM dbccPageCursor INTO @FileID, @PageID, @SQLtoExec; END CLOSE dbccPageCursor; DEALLOCATE dbccPageCursor; EXEC ('SELECT ''' + @undeletedTableName + ''' as TableName; SELECT * FROM ' + @undeletedTableName)END TRYBEGIN CATCH SELECT ERROR_NUMBER() AS ErrorNumber, ERROR_MESSAGE() AS ErrorMessage IF CURSOR_STATUS ('global', 'dbccPageCursor') >= 0 BEGIN CLOSE dbccPageCursor; DEALLOCATE dbccPageCursor; ENDEND CATCH-- if the table was deleted we need to finish the restore page sequenceIF @tableWasTruncated = 0BEGIN -- take a log tail backup and then restore it to complete page restore process DECLARE @currentDate VARCHAR(30) SELECT @currentDate = CONVERT(VARCHAR(30), GETDATE(), 112) RAISERROR ('Starting Log Tail backup to c:\Temp ...', 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; PRINT ('BACKUP LOG [' + @dbName + '] TO DISK = ''c:\Temp\' + @dbName + '_TailLogBackup_' + @currentDate + '.trn''') EXEC ('BACKUP LOG [' + @dbName + '] TO DISK = ''c:\Temp\' + @dbName + '_TailLogBackup_' + @currentDate + '.trn''') RAISERROR ('Log Tail backup done.', 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; RAISERROR ('Starting Log Tail restore from c:\Temp ...', 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; PRINT ('RESTORE LOG [' + @dbName + '] FROM DISK = ''c:\Temp\' + @dbName + '_TailLogBackup_' + @currentDate + '.trn''') EXEC ('RESTORE LOG [' + @dbName + '] FROM DISK = ''c:\Temp\' + @dbName + '_TailLogBackup_' + @currentDate + '.trn''') RAISERROR ('Log Tail restore done.', 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT;END-- The last step is manual. Insert data from our temporary table to the original deleted table The misconception here is that you can do a single table restore properly in SQL Server. You can't. But with little experimentation you can get pretty close to it. One way to possible remove a dependency on a backup to retrieve deleted pages is to quickly run a similar script to the upper one that gets data directly from data pages while the rows are still marked as ghost records. It could be done if we could beat the ghost record cleanup task.

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C#/.NET Little Wonders: ConcurrentBag and BlockingCollection

- by James Michael Hare

In the first week of concurrent collections, began with a general introduction and discussed the ConcurrentStack<T> and ConcurrentQueue<T>. The last post discussed the ConcurrentDictionary<T> . Finally this week, we shall close with a discussion of the ConcurrentBag<T> and BlockingCollection<T>. For more of the "Little Wonders" posts, see C#/.NET Little Wonders: A Redux. Recap As you'll recall from the previous posts, the original collections were object-based containers that accomplished synchronization through a Synchronized member. With the advent of .NET 2.0, the original collections were succeeded by the generic collections which are fully type-safe, but eschew automatic synchronization. With .NET 4.0, a new breed of collections was born in the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace. Of these, the final concurrent collection we will examine is the ConcurrentBag and a very useful wrapper class called the BlockingCollection. For some excellent information on the performance of the concurrent collections and how they perform compared to a traditional brute-force locking strategy, see this informative whitepaper by the Microsoft Parallel Computing Platform team here. ConcurrentBag<T> – Thread-safe unordered collection. Unlike the other concurrent collections, the ConcurrentBag<T> has no non-concurrent counterpart in the .NET collections libraries. Items can be added and removed from a bag just like any other collection, but unlike the other collections, the items are not maintained in any order. This makes the bag handy for those cases when all you care about is that the data be consumed eventually, without regard for order of consumption or even fairness – that is, it’s possible new items could be consumed before older items given the right circumstances for a period of time. So why would you ever want a container that can be unfair? Well, to look at it another way, you can use a ConcurrentQueue and get the fairness, but it comes at a cost in that the ordering rules and synchronization required to maintain that ordering can affect scalability a bit. Thus sometimes the bag is great when you want the fastest way to get the next item to process, and don’t care what item it is or how long its been waiting. The way that the ConcurrentBag works is to take advantage of the new ThreadLocal<T> type (new in System.Threading for .NET 4.0) so that each thread using the bag has a list local to just that thread. This means that adding or removing to a thread-local list requires very low synchronization. The problem comes in where a thread goes to consume an item but it’s local list is empty. In this case the bag performs “work-stealing” where it will rob an item from another thread that has items in its list. This requires a higher level of synchronization which adds a bit of overhead to the take operation. So, as you can imagine, this makes the ConcurrentBag good for situations where each thread both produces and consumes items from the bag, but it would be less-than-idea in situations where some threads are dedicated producers and the other threads are dedicated consumers because the work-stealing synchronization would outweigh the thread-local optimization for a thread taking its own items. Like the other concurrent collections, there are some curiosities to keep in mind: IsEmpty(), Count, ToArray(), and GetEnumerator() lock collection Each of these needs to take a snapshot of whole bag to determine if empty, thus they tend to be more expensive and cause Add() and Take() operations to block. ToArray() and GetEnumerator() are static snapshots Because it is based on a snapshot, will not show subsequent updates after snapshot. Add() is lightweight Since adding to the thread-local list, there is very little overhead on Add. TryTake() is lightweight if items in thread-local list As long as items are in the thread-local list, TryTake() is very lightweight, much more so than ConcurrentStack() and ConcurrentQueue(), however if the local thread list is empty, it must steal work from another thread, which is more expensive. Remember, a bag is not ideal for all situations, it is mainly ideal for situations where a process consumes an item and either decomposes it into more items to be processed, or handles the item partially and places it back to be processed again until some point when it will complete. The main point is that the bag works best when each thread both takes and adds items. For example, we could create a totally contrived example where perhaps we want to see the largest power of a number before it crosses a certain threshold. Yes, obviously we could easily do this with a log function, but bare with me while I use this contrived example for simplicity. So let’s say we have a work function that will take a Tuple out of a bag, this Tuple will contain two ints. The first int is the original number, and the second int is the last multiple of that number. So we could load our bag with the initial values (let’s say we want to know the last multiple of each of 2, 3, 5, and 7 under 100. 1: var bag = new ConcurrentBag<Tuple<int, int>> 2: { 3: Tuple.Create(2, 1), 4: Tuple.Create(3, 1), 5: Tuple.Create(5, 1), 6: Tuple.Create(7, 1) 7: }; Then we can create a method that given the bag, will take out an item, apply the multiplier again, 1: public static void FindHighestPowerUnder(ConcurrentBag<Tuple<int,int>> bag, int threshold) 2: { 3: Tuple<int,int> pair; 4: 5: // while there are items to take, this will prefer local first, then steal if no local 6: while (bag.TryTake(out pair)) 7: { 8: // look at next power 9: var result = Math.Pow(pair.Item1, pair.Item2 + 1); 10: 11: if (result < threshold) 12: { 13: // if smaller than threshold bump power by 1 14: bag.Add(Tuple.Create(pair.Item1, pair.Item2 + 1)); 15: } 16: else 17: { 18: // otherwise, we're done 19: Console.WriteLine("Highest power of {0} under {3} is {0}^{1} = {2}.", 20: pair.Item1, pair.Item2, Math.Pow(pair.Item1, pair.Item2), threshold); 21: } 22: } 23: } Now that we have this, we can load up this method as an Action into our Tasks and run it: 1: // create array of tasks, start all, wait for all 2: var tasks = new[] 3: { 4: new Task(() => FindHighestPowerUnder(bag, 100)), 5: new Task(() => FindHighestPowerUnder(bag, 100)), 6: }; 7: 8: Array.ForEach(tasks, t => t.Start()); 9: 10: Task.WaitAll(tasks); Totally contrived, I know, but keep in mind the main point! When you have a thread or task that operates on an item, and then puts it back for further consumption – or decomposes an item into further sub-items to be processed – you should consider a ConcurrentBag as the thread-local lists will allow for quick processing. However, if you need ordering or if your processes are dedicated producers or consumers, this collection is not ideal. As with anything, you should performance test as your mileage will vary depending on your situation! BlockingCollection<T> – A producers & consumers pattern collection The BlockingCollection<T> can be treated like a collection in its own right, but in reality it adds a producers and consumers paradigm to any collection that implements the interface IProducerConsumerCollection<T>. If you don’t specify one at the time of construction, it will use a ConcurrentQueue<T> as its underlying store. If you don’t want to use the ConcurrentQueue, the ConcurrentStack and ConcurrentBag also implement the interface (though ConcurrentDictionary does not). In addition, you are of course free to create your own implementation of the interface. So, for those who don’t remember the producers and consumers classical computer-science problem, the gist of it is that you have one (or more) processes that are creating items (producers) and one (or more) processes that are consuming these items (consumers). Now, the crux of the problem is that there is a bin (queue) where the produced items are placed, and typically that bin has a limited size. Thus if a producer creates an item, but there is no space to store it, it must wait until an item is consumed. Also if a consumer goes to consume an item and none exists, it must wait until an item is produced. The BlockingCollection makes it trivial to implement any standard producers/consumers process set by providing that “bin” where the items can be produced into and consumed from with the appropriate blocking operations. In addition, you can specify whether the bin should have a limited size or can be (theoretically) unbounded, and you can specify timeouts on the blocking operations. As far as your choice of “bin”, for the most part the ConcurrentQueue is the right choice because it is fairly light and maximizes fairness by ordering items so that they are consumed in the same order they are produced. You can use the concurrent bag or stack, of course, but your ordering would be random-ish in the case of the former and LIFO in the case of the latter. So let’s look at some of the methods of note in BlockingCollection: BoundedCapacity returns capacity of the “bin” If the bin is unbounded, the capacity is int.MaxValue. Count returns an internally-kept count of items This makes it O(1), but if you modify underlying collection directly (not recommended) it is unreliable. CompleteAdding() is used to cut off further adds. This sets IsAddingCompleted and begins to wind down consumers once empty. IsAddingCompleted is true when producers are “done”. Once you are done producing, should complete the add process to alert consumers. IsCompleted is true when producers are “done” and “bin” is empty. Once you mark the producers done, and all items removed, this will be true. Add() is a blocking add to collection. If bin is full, will wait till space frees up Take() is a blocking remove from collection. If bin is empty, will wait until item is produced or adding is completed. GetConsumingEnumerable() is used to iterate and consume items. Unlike the standard enumerator, this one consumes the items instead of iteration. TryAdd() attempts add but does not block completely If adding would block, returns false instead, can specify TimeSpan to wait before stopping. TryTake() attempts to take but does not block completely Like TryAdd(), if taking would block, returns false instead, can specify TimeSpan to wait. Note the use of CompleteAdding() to signal the BlockingCollection that nothing else should be added. This means that any attempts to TryAdd() or Add() after marked completed will throw an InvalidOperationException. In addition, once adding is complete you can still continue to TryTake() and Take() until the bin is empty, and then Take() will throw the InvalidOperationException and TryTake() will return false. So let’s create a simple program to try this out. Let’s say that you have one process that will be producing items, but a slower consumer process that handles them. This gives us a chance to peek inside what happens when the bin is bounded (by default, the bin is NOT bounded). 1: var bin = new BlockingCollection<int>(5); Now, we create a method to produce items: 1: public static void ProduceItems(BlockingCollection<int> bin, int numToProduce) 2: { 3: for (int i = 0; i < numToProduce; i++) 4: { 5: // try for 10 ms to add an item 6: while (!bin.TryAdd(i, TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(10))) 7: { 8: Console.WriteLine("Bin is full, retrying..."); 9: } 10: } 11: 12: // once done producing, call CompleteAdding() 13: Console.WriteLine("Adding is completed."); 14: bin.CompleteAdding(); 15: } And one to consume them: 1: public static void ConsumeItems(BlockingCollection<int> bin) 2: { 3: // This will only be true if CompleteAdding() was called AND the bin is empty. 4: while (!bin.IsCompleted) 5: { 6: int item; 7: 8: if (!bin.TryTake(out item, TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(10))) 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("Bin is empty, retrying..."); 11: } 12: else 13: { 14: Console.WriteLine("Consuming item {0}.", item); 15: Thread.Sleep(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(20)); 16: } 17: } 18: } Then we can fire them off: 1: // create one producer and two consumers 2: var tasks = new[] 3: { 4: new Task(() => ProduceItems(bin, 20)), 5: new Task(() => ConsumeItems(bin)), 6: new Task(() => ConsumeItems(bin)), 7: }; 8: 9: Array.ForEach(tasks, t => t.Start()); 10: 11: Task.WaitAll(tasks); Notice that the producer is faster than the consumer, thus it should be hitting a full bin often and displaying the message after it times out on TryAdd(). 1: Consuming item 0. 2: Consuming item 1. 3: Bin is full, retrying... 4: Bin is full, retrying... 5: Consuming item 3. 6: Consuming item 2. 7: Bin is full, retrying... 8: Consuming item 4. 9: Consuming item 5. 10: Bin is full, retrying... 11: Consuming item 6. 12: Consuming item 7. 13: Bin is full, retrying... 14: Consuming item 8. 15: Consuming item 9. 16: Bin is full, retrying... 17: Consuming item 10. 18: Consuming item 11. 19: Bin is full, retrying... 20: Consuming item 12. 21: Consuming item 13. 22: Bin is full, retrying... 23: Bin is full, retrying... 24: Consuming item 14. 25: Adding is completed. 26: Consuming item 15. 27: Consuming item 16. 28: Consuming item 17. 29: Consuming item 19. 30: Consuming item 18. Also notice that once CompleteAdding() is called and the bin is empty, the IsCompleted property returns true, and the consumers will exit. Summary The ConcurrentBag is an interesting collection that can be used to optimize concurrency scenarios where tasks or threads both produce and consume items. In this way, it will choose to consume its own work if available, and then steal if not. However, in situations where you want fair consumption or ordering, or in situations where the producers and consumers are distinct processes, the bag is not optimal. The BlockingCollection is a great wrapper around all of the concurrent queue, stack, and bag that allows you to add producer and consumer semantics easily including waiting when the bin is full or empty. That’s the end of my dive into the concurrent collections. I’d also strongly recommend, once again, you read this excellent Microsoft white paper that goes into much greater detail on the efficiencies you can gain using these collections judiciously (here). Tweet Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Concurrent Collections,Little Wonders

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Another Marketing Conference, part one – the best morning sessions.

- by Roger Hart

Yesterday I went to Another Marketing Conference. I honestly can’t tell if the title is just tipping over into smug, but in the balance of things that doesn’t matter, because it was a good conference. There was an enjoyable blend of theoretical and practical, and enough inter-disciplinary spread to keep my inner dilettante grinning from ear to ear. Sure, there was a bumpy bit in the middle, with two back-to-back sales pitches and a rather thin overview of the state of the web. But the signal:noise ratio at AMC2012 was impressively high. Here’s the first part of my write-up of the sessions. It’s a bit of a mammoth. It’s also a bit of a mash-up of what was said and what I thought about it. I’ll add links to the videos and slides from the sessions as they become available. Although it was in the morning session, I’ve not included Vanessa Northam’s session on the power of internal comms to build brand ambassadors. It’ll be in the next roundup, as this is already pushing 2.5k words. First, the important stuff. I was keeping a tally, and nobody said “synergy” or “leverage”. I did, however, hear the term “marketeers” six times. Shame on you – you know who you are. 1 – Branding in a post-digital world, Graham Hales This initially looked like being a sales presentation for Interbrand, but Graham pulled it out of the bag a few minutes in. He introduced a model for brand management that was essentially Plan >> Do >> Check >> Act, with Do and Check rolled up together, and went on to stress that this looks like on overall business management model for a reason. Brand has to be part of your overall business strategy and metrics if you’re going to care about it at all. This was the first iteration of what proved to be one of the event’s emergent themes: do it throughout the stack or don’t bother. Graham went on to remind us that brands, in so far as they are owned at all, are owned by and co-created with our customers. Advertising can offer a message to customers, but they provide the expression of a brand. This was a preface to talking about an increasingly chaotic marketplace, with increasingly hard-to-manage purchase processes. Services like Amazon reviews and TripAdvisor (four presenters would make this point) saturate customers with information, and give them a kind of vigilante power to comment on and define brands. Consequentially, they experience a number of “moments of deflection” in our sales funnels. Our control is lessened, and failure to engage can negatively-impact buying decisions increasingly poorly. The clearest example given was the failure of NatWest’s “caring bank” campaign, where staff in branches, customer support, and online presences didn’t align. A discontinuity of experience basically made the campaign worthless, and disgruntled customers talked about it loudly on social media. This in turn presented an opportunity to engage and show caring, but that wasn’t taken. What I took away was that brand (co)creation is ongoing and needs monitoring and metrics. But reciprocally, given you get what you measure, strategy and metrics must include brand if any kind of branding is to work at all. Campaigns and messages must permeate product and service design. What that doesn’t mean (and Graham didn’t say it did) is putting Marketing at the top of the pyramid, and having them bawl demands at Product Management, Support, and Development like an entitled toddler. It’s going to have to be collaborative, and session 6 on internal comms handled this really well. The main thing missing here was substantiating data, and the main question I found myself chewing on was: if we’re building brands collaboratively and in the open, what about the cultural politics of trolling? 2 – Challenging our core beliefs about human behaviour, Mark Earls This was definitely the best show of the day. It was also some of the best content. Mark talked us through nudging, behavioural economics, and some key misconceptions around decision making. Basically, people aren’t rational, they’re petty, reactive, emotional sacks of meat, and they’ll go where they’re led. Comforting stuff. Examples given were the spread of the London Riots and the “discovery” of the mountains of Kong, and the popularity of Susan Boyle, which, in turn made me think about Per Mollerup’s concept of “social wayshowing”. Mark boiled his thoughts down into four key points which I completely failed to write down word for word: People do, then think – Changing minds to change behaviour doesn’t work. Post-rationalization rules the day. See also: mere exposure effects. Spock < Kirk - Emotional/intuitive comes first, then we rationalize impulses. The non-thinking, emotive, reactive processes run much faster than the deliberative ones. People are not really rational decision makers, so intervening with information may not be appropriate. Maximisers or satisficers? – Related to the last point. People do not consistently, rationally, maximise. When faced with an abundance of choice, they prefer to satisfice than evaluate, and will often follow social leads rather than think. Things tend to converge – Behaviour trends to a consensus normal. When faced with choices people overwhelmingly just do what they see others doing. Humans are extraordinarily good at mirroring behaviours and receiving influence. People “outsource the cognitive load” of choices to the crowd. Mark’s headline quote was probably “the real influence happens at the table next to you”. Reference examples, word of mouth, and social influence are tremendously important, and so talking about product experiences may be more important than talking about products. This reminded me of Kathy Sierra’s “creating bad-ass users” concept of designing to make people more awesome rather than products they like. If we can expose user-awesome, and make sharing easy, we can normalise the behaviours we want. If we normalize the behaviours we want, people should make and post-rationalize the buying decisions we want. Where we need to be: “A bigger boy made me do it” Where we are: “a wizard did it and ran away” However, it’s worth bearing in mind that some purchasing decisions are personal and informed rather than social and reactive. There’s a quadrant diagram, in fact. What was really interesting, though, towards the end of the talk, was some advice for working out how social your products might be. The standard technology adoption lifecycle graph is essentially about social product diffusion. So this idea isn’t really new. Geoffrey Moore’s “chasm” idea may not strictly apply. However, his concepts of beachheads and reference segments are exactly what is required to normalize and thus enable purchase decisions (behaviour change). The final thing is that in only very few categories does a better product actually affect purchase decision. Where the choice is personal and informed, this is true. But where it’s personal and impulsive, or in any way social, “better” is trumped by popularity, endorsement, or “point of sale salience”. UX, UCD, and e-commerce know this to be true. A better (and easier) experience will always beat “more features”. Easy to use, and easy to observe being used will beat “what the user says they want”. This made me think about the astounding stickiness of rational fallacies, “common sense” and the pathological willful simplifications of the media. Rational fallacies seem like they’re basically the heuristics we use for post-rationalization. If I were profoundly grimy and cynical, I’d suggest deploying a boat-load in our messaging, to see if they’re really as sticky and appealing as they look. 4 – Changing behaviour through communication, Stephen Donajgrodzki This was a fantastic follow up to Mark’s session. Stephen basically talked us through some tactics used in public information/health comms that implement the kind of behavioural theory Mark introduced. The session was largely about how to get people to do (good) things they’re predisposed not to do, and how communication can (and can’t) make positive interventions. A couple of things stood out, in particular “implementation intentions” and how they can be linked to goals. For example, in order to get people to check and test their smoke alarms (a goal intention, rarely actualized an information campaign will attempt to link this activity to the clocks going back or forward (a strong implementation intention, well-actualized). The talk reinforced the idea that making behaviour changes easy and visible normalizes them and makes them more likely to succeed. To do this, they have to be embodied throughout a product and service cycle. Experiential disconnects undermine the normalization. So campaigns, products, and customer interactions must be aligned. This is underscored by the second section of the presentation, which talked about interventions and pre-conditions for change. Taking the examples of drug addiction and stopping smoking, Stephen showed us a framework for attempting (and succeeding or failing in) behaviour change. He noted that when the change is something people fundamentally want to do, and that is easy, this gets a to simpler. Coordinated, easily-observed environmental pressures create preconditions for change and build motivation. (price, pub smoking ban, ad campaigns, friend quitting, declining social acceptability) A triggering even leads to a change attempt. (getting a cold and panicking about how bad the cough is) Interventions can be made to enable an attempt (NHS services, public information, nicotine patches) If it succeeds – yay. If it fails, there’s strong negative enforcement. Triggering events seem largely personal, but messaging can intervene in the creation of preconditions and in supporting decisions. Stephen talked more about systems of thinking and “bounded rationality”. The idea being that to enable change you need to break through “automatic” thinking into “reflective” thinking. Disruption and emotion are great tools for this, but that is only the start of the process. It occurs to me that a great deal of market research is focused on determining triggers rather than analysing necessary preconditions. Although they are presumably related. The final section talked about setting goals. Marketing goals are often seen as deriving directly from business goals. However, marketing may be unable to deliver on these directly where decision and behaviour-change processes are involved. In those cases, marketing and communication goals should be to create preconditions. They should also consider priming and norms. Content marketing and brand awareness are good first steps here, as brands can be heuristics in decision making for choice-saturated consumers, or those seeking education. 5 – The power of engaged communities and how to build them, Harriet Minter (the Guardian) The meat of this was that you need to let communities define and establish themselves, and be quick to react to their needs. Harriet had been in charge of building the Guardian’s community sites, and learned a lot about how they come together, stabilize grow, and react. Crucially, they can’t be about sales or push messaging. A community is not just an audience. It’s essential to start with what this particular segment or tribe are interested in, then what they want to hear. Eventually you can consider – in light of this – what they might want to buy, but you can’t start with the product. A community won’t cohere around one you’re pushing. Her tips for community building were (again, sorry, not verbatim): Set goals Have some targets. Community building sounds vague and fluffy, but you can have (and adjust) concrete goals. Think like a start-up This is the “lean” stuff. Try things, fail quickly, respond. Don’t restrict platforms Let the audience choose them, and be aware of their differences. For example, LinkedIn is very different to Twitter. Track your stats Related to the first point. Keeping an eye on the numbers lets you respond. They should be qualified, however. If you want a community of enterprise decision makers, headcount alone may be a bad metric – have you got CIOs, or just people who want to get jobs by mingling with CIOs? Build brand advocates Do things to involve people and make them awesome, and they’ll cheer-lead for you. The last part really got my attention. Little bits of drive-by kindness go a long way. But more than that, genuinely helping people turns them into powerful advocates. Harriet gave an example of the Guardian engaging with an aspiring journalist on its Q&A forums. Through a series of serendipitous encounters he became a BBC producer, and now enthusiastically speaks up for the Guardian community sites. Cultivating many small, authentic, influential voices may have a better pay-off than schmoozing the big guys. This could be particularly important in the context of Mark and Stephen’s models of social, endorsement-led, and example-led decision making. There’s a lot here I haven’t covered, and it may be worth some follow-up on community building. Thoughts I was quite sceptical of nudge theory and behavioural economics. First off it sounds too good to be true, and second it sounds too sinister to permit. But I haven’t done the background reading. So I’m going to, and if it seems to hold real water, and if it’s possible to do it ethically (Stephen’s presentations suggests it may be) then it’s probably worth exploring. The message seemed to be: change what people do, and they’ll work out why afterwards. Moreover, the people around them will do it too. Make the things you want them to do extraordinarily easy and very, very visible. Normalize and support the decisions you want them to make, and they’ll make them. In practice this means not talking about the thing, but showing the user-awesome. Glib? Perhaps. But it feels worth considering. Also, if I ever run a marketing conference, I’m going to ban speakers from using examples from Apple. Quite apart from not being consistently generalizable, it’s becoming an irritating cliché.

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File Watcher Task

The task will detect changes to existing files as well as new files, both actions will cause the file to be found when available. A file is available when the task can open it exclusively. This is important for files that take a long time to be written, such as large files, or those that are just written slowly or delivered via a slow network link. It can also be set to look for existing files first (1.2.4.55). The full path of the found file is returned in up to three ways: The ExecValueVariable of the task. This can be set to any String variable. The OutputVariableName when specified. This can be set to any String variable. The FullPath variable within OnFileFoundEvent. This is a File Watcher Task specific event. Advanced warning of a file having been detected, but not yet available is returned through the OnFileWatcherEvent. This event does not always coincide with the completion of the task, as completion and the OnFileFoundEvent is delayed until the file is ready for use. This event indicates that a file has been detected, and that file will now be monitored until it becomes available. The task will only detect and report on the first file that is created or changes, any subsequent changes will be ignored. Task properties and there usages are documented below: Property Data Type Description Filter String Default filter *.* will watch all files. Standard windows wildcards and patterns can be used to restrict the files monitored. FindExistingFiles Boolean Indicates whether the task should check for any existing files that match the path and filter criteria, before starting the file watcher. IncludeSubdirectories Boolean Indicates whether changes in subdirectories are accepted or ignored. OutputVariableName String The name of the variable into which the full file path found will be written on completion of the task. The variable specified should be of type string. Path String Path to watch for new files or changes to existing files. The path is a directory, not a full filename. For a specific file, enter the file name in the Filter property and the directory in the Path property. PathInputType FileWatcherTask.InputType Three input types are supported for the path: Connection - File connection manager, of type existing folder. Direct Input - Type the path directly into the UI or set on the property as a literal string. Variable – The name of the variable which contains the path. Timeout Integer Time in minutes to wait for a file. If no files are detected within the timeout period the task will fail. The default value of 0 means infinite, and will not expire. TimeoutAsWarning Boolean The default behaviour is to raise an error and fail the task on timeout. This property allows you to suppress the error on timeout, a warning event is raised instead, and the task succeeds. The default value is false. Installation The task is provided as an MSI file which you can download and run to install it. This simply places the files on disk in the correct locations and also installs the assemblies in the Global Assembly Cache as per Microsoft’s recommendations. You may need to restart the SQL Server Integration Services service, as this caches information about what components are installed, as well as restarting any open instances of Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) / Visual Studio that you may be using to build your SSIS packages. For 2005/2008 Only - Finally you will have to add the task to the Visual Studio toolbox manually. Right-click the toolbox, and select Choose Items.... Select the SSIS Control Flow Items tab, and then check the File Watcher Task in the Choose Toolbox Items window. This process has been described in detail in the related FAQ entry for How do I install a task or transform component? We recommend you follow best practice and apply the current Microsoft SQL Server Service pack to your SQL Server servers and workstations. Downloads The File Watcher Task is available for SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008 (includes R2) and SQL Server 2012. Please choose the version to match your SQL Server version, or you can install multiple versions and use them side by side if you have more than one version of SQL Server installed. File Watcher Task for SQL Server 2005 File Watcher Task for SQL Server 2008 File Watcher Task for SQL Server 2012 Version History SQL Server 2012 Version 3.0.0.16 - SQL Server 2012 release. Includes upgrade support for both 2005 and 2008 packages to 2012. (5 Jun 2012) SQL Server 2008 Version 2.0.0.14 - Fixed user interface bug. A migration problem caused the UI type editors to reference an old SQL 2005 assembly. (17 Nov 2008) Version 2.0.0.7 - SQL Server 2008 release. (20 Oct 2008) SQL Server 2005 Version 1.2.6.100 - Fixed UI bug with TimeoutAsWarning property not saving correctly. Improved expression support in UI. File availability detection changed to use read-only lock, allowing reduced permissions to be used. Corrected installed issue which prevented installation on 64-bit machines with SSIS runtime only components. (18 Mar 2007) Version 1.2.5.73 - Added TimeoutAsWarning property. Gives the ability to suppress the error on timeout, a warning event is raised instead, and the task succeeds. (Task Version 3) (27 Sep 2006) Version 1.2.4.61 - Fixed a bug which could cause a loop condition with an unexpected exception such as incorrect file permissions. (20 Sep 2006) Version 1.2.4.55 - Added FindExistingFiles property. When true the task will check for an existing file before the file watcher itself actually starts. (Task Version 2) (8 Sep 2006) Version 1.2.3.39 - SQL Server 2005 RTM Refresh. SP1 Compatibility Testing. Property type validation improved. (12 Jun 2006) Version 1.2.1.0 - SQL Server 2005 IDW 16 Sept CTP. Futher UI enhancements, including expression indicator. Fixed bug caused by execution within loop Subsequent iterations detected the same file as the first iteration. Added IncludeSubdirectories property. Fixed bug when changes made in subdirectories, and folder change was detected, causing task failure. (Task Version 1) (6 Oct 2005) Version 1.2.0.0 - SQL Server 2005 IDW 15 June CTP. Changes made include an enhanced UI, the PathInputType property for greater flexibility with path input, the OutputVariableName property, and the new OnFileFoundEvent event. (7 Sep 2005) Version 1.1.2 - Public Release (16 Nov 2004) Screenshots Troubleshooting Make sure you have downloaded the version that matches your version of SQL Server. We offer separate downloads for SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008. If you an error when you try and use the task along the lines of The task with the name "File Watcher Task" and the creation name ... is not registered for use on this computer, this usually indicates that the internal cache of SSIS components needs to be updated. This cache is held by the SSIS service, so you need restart the the SQL Server Integration Services service. You can do this from the Services applet in Control Panel or Administrative Tools in Windows. You can also restart the computer if you prefer. You may also need to restart any current instances of Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) / Visual Studio that you may be using to build your SSIS packages. The full error message is shown below for reference: TITLE: Microsoft Visual Studio ------------------------------ The task with the name "File Watcher Task" and the creation name "Konesans.Dts.Tasks.FileWatcherTask.FileWatcherTask, Konesans.Dts.Tasks.FileWatcherTask, Version=1.2.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b2ab4a111192992b" is not registered for use on this computer. Contact Information: File Watcher Task A similar error message can be shown when trying to edit the task if the Microsoft Exception Message Box is not installed. This useful component is installed as part of the SQL Server Management Studio tools but occasionally due to the custom options chosen during SQL Server 2005 setup it may be absent. If you get an error like Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.ExceptionMessageBox.. you can manually download and install the missing component. It is available as part of the Feature Pack for SQL Server 2005 release. The feature packs are occasionally updated by Microsoft so you may like to check for a more recent edition, but you can find the Microsoft Exception Message Box download links here - Feature Pack for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - April 2006 If you encounter this problem on SQL Server 2008, please check that you have installed the SQL Server client components. The component is no longer available as a separate download for SQL Server 2008 as noted in the Microsoft documentation for Deploying an Exception Message Box Application The full error message is shown below for reference, although note that the Version will change between SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008: TITLE: Microsoft Visual Studio ------------------------------ Cannot show the editor for this task. ------------------------------ ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.ExceptionMessageBox, Version=9.0.242.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. (Konesans.Dts.Tasks.FileWatcherTask) Once installation is complete you need to manually add the task to the toolbox before you will see it and to be able add it to packages - How do I install a task or transform component? If you are still having issues then contact us, but please provide as much detail as possible about error, as well as which version of the the task you are using and details of the SSIS tools installed. Sample Code If you wanted to use the task programmatically then here is some sample code for creating a basic package and configuring the task. It uses a variable to supply the path to watch, and also sets a variable for the OutputVariableName. Once execution is complete it writes out the file found to the console. /// <summary> /// Create a package with an File Watcher Task /// </summary> public void FileWatcherTaskBasic() { // Create the package Package package = new Package(); package.Name = "FileWatcherTaskBasic"; // Add variable for input path, the folder to look in package.Variables.Add("InputPath", false, "User", @"C:\Temp\"); // Add variable for the file found, to be used on OutputVariableName property package.Variables.Add("FileFound", false, "User", "EMPTY"); // Add the Task package.Executables.Add("Konesans.Dts.Tasks.FileWatcherTask.FileWatcherTask, " + "Konesans.Dts.Tasks.FileWatcherTask, Version=1.2.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b2ab4a111192992b"); // Get the task host wrapper TaskHost taskHost = package.Executables[0] as TaskHost; // Set basic properties taskHost.Properties["PathInputType"].SetValue(taskHost, 1); // InputType.Variable taskHost.Properties["Path"].SetValue(taskHost, "User::InputPath"); taskHost.Properties["OutputVariableName"].SetValue(taskHost, "User::FileFound"); #if DEBUG // Save package to disk, DEBUG only new Application().SaveToXml(String.Format(@"C:\Temp\{0}.dtsx", package.Name), package, null); #endif // Display variable value before execution to check EMPTY Console.WriteLine("Result Variable: {0}", package.Variables["User::FileFound"].Value); // Execute package package.Execute(); // Display variable value after execution, e.g. C:\Temp\File.txt Console.WriteLine("Result Variable: {0}", package.Variables["User::FileFound"].Value); // Perform simple check for execution errors if (package.Errors.Count > 0) foreach (DtsError error in package.Errors) { Console.WriteLine("ErrorCode : {0}", error.ErrorCode); Console.WriteLine(" SubComponent : {0}", error.SubComponent); Console.WriteLine(" Description : {0}", error.Description); } else Console.WriteLine("Success - {0}", package.Name); // Clean-up package.Dispose(); } (Updated installation and troubleshooting sections, and added sample code July 2009)

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