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• Integrate Google Docs with Outlook the Easy Way

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to use Google Docs and Microsoft office together?  Here’s how you can use Harmony for Google Docs to integrates them seamlessly with Outlook. Harmony for Google Docs is an exciting new plugin for Outlook 2007 (a version for Outlook 2010 is in the works).  It lets you integrate your Google Docs account with Outlook via a sidebar.  From this, you can find any of your Google docs or upload a new document, and then you can open the document to view or edit it in Outlook. Getting Started Download Harmony for Google Docs (link below), and install as normal.  Make sure Outlook is closed before you run the install. Next time you open Outlook, the new Harmony sidebar will automatically open.  Enter your Google Account info, and click Sign In. Now, all of your Google Docs will show up in the sidebar. Double-click any file to open it in Outlook.  You may have to sign-in to Google Docs the first time you open a document. Here’s a Google Doc open in Outlook.  Notice that everything works, including full editing. All Google Docs features worked great in our tests except for the new drawings tool.  When we tried to insert a drawing, Outlook had a script error.  This was the only problem we had with Harmony, and could be due to an interaction between Google Drawings and Outlook’s rendering engine. Harmony makes it easy to find any file in your Google Docs account.  You can search for a file, or sort your files by type, recentness, and more. You can also easily add any document to Google Docs directly from Harmony.  You can drag and drop any document, including one attached to an email, to the Harmony sidebar, and it will directly upload to your Google Docs account. And, when you’re writing a new email or reply, click the Show Documents button to open the Harmony sidebar.  From here, you can add documents as usual and share it with email recipient. Conclusion We previously covered a similar app OffiSync which combines Google doc features with MS Office. However, Harmony makes it much easier to use Google Apps along with Outlook.  This gives you an easy and efficient way to collaborate on documents with coworkers, all without leaving Outlook.  And, if your company uses SharePoint instead of Google Docs, Harmony offers a SharePoint edition that integrates with Outlook just as easily! Link Download Harmony for Google Docs Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Export Documents from Google Docs to Your ComputerView Your Google Calendar in Outlook 2007Sync Your Outlook and Google Calendar with Google Calendar SyncIntegrate Twitter With Microsoft OutlookSlacker Geek: Update Your Facebook Profile from Outlook TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Find That Elusive Icon with FindIcons Looking for Good Windows Media Player 12 Plug-ins? Find Out the Celebrity You Resemble With FaceDouble Whoa ! Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems Icelandic Volcano Webcams

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• OWB 11gR2 &ndash; OLAP and Simba

  - by David Allan

  Oracle Warehouse Builder was the first ETL product to provide a single integrated and complete environment for managing enterprise data warehouse solutions that also incorporate multi-dimensional schemas. The OWB 11gR2 release provides Oracle OLAP 11g deployment for multi-dimensional models (in addition to support for prior releases of OLAP). This means users can easily utilize Simba's MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP (see here for details and cost) which allows you to use the powerful and popular ad hoc query and analysis capabilities of Microsoft Excel PivotTables® and PivotCharts® with your Oracle OLAP business intelligence data. The extensions to the dimensional modeling capabilities have been built on established relational concepts, with the option to seamlessly move from a relational deployment model to a multi-dimensional model at the click of a button. This now means that ETL designers can logically model a complete data warehouse solution using one single tool and control the physical implementation of a logical model at deployment time. As a result data warehouse projects that need to provide a multi-dimensional model as part of the overall solution can be designed and implemented faster and more efficiently. Wizards for dimensions and cubes let you quickly build dimensional models and realize either relationally or as an Oracle database OLAP implementation, both 10g and 11g formats are supported based on a configuration option. The wizard provides a good first cut definition and the objects can be further refined in the editor. Both wizards let you choose the implementation, to deploy to OLAP in the database select MOLAP: multidimensional storage. You will then be asked what levels and attributes are to be defined, by default the wizard creates a level bases hierarchy, parent child hierarchies can be defined in the editor. Once the dimension or cube has been designed there are special mapping operators that make it easy to load data into the objects, below we load a constant value for the total level and the other levels from a source table.   Again when the cube is defined using the wizard we can edit the cube and define a number of analytic calculations by using the 'generate calculated measures' option on the measures panel. This lets you very easily add a lot of rich analytic measures to your cube. For example one of the measures is the percentage difference from a year ago which we can see in detail below. You can also add your own custom calculations to leverage the capabilities of the Oracle OLAP option, either by selecting existing template types such as moving averages to defining true custom expressions. The 11g OLAP option now supports percentage based summarization (the amount of data to precompute and store), this is available from the option 'cost based aggregation' in the cube's configuration. Ensure all measure-dimensions level based aggregation is switched off (on the cube-dimension panel) - previously level based aggregation was the only option. The 11g generated code now uses the new unified API as you see below, to generate the code, OWB needs a valid connection to a real schema, this was not needed before 11gR2 and is a new requirement since the OLAP API which OWB uses is not an offline one. Once all of the objects are deployed and the maps executed then we get to the fun stuff! How can we analyze the data? One option which is powerful and at many users' fingertips is using Microsoft Excel PivotTables® and PivotCharts®, which can be used with your Oracle OLAP business intelligence data by utilizing Simba's MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP (see Simba site for details of cost). I'll leave the exotic reporting illustrations to the experts (see Bud's demonstration here), but with Simba's MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP its very simple to easily access the analytics stored in the database (all built and loaded via the OWB 11gR2 release) and get the regular features of Excel at your fingertips such as using the conditional formatting features for example. That's a very quick run through of the OWB 11gR2 with respect to Oracle 11g OLAP integration and the reporting using Simba's MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP. Not a deep-dive in any way but a quick overview to illustrate the design capabilities and integrations possible.

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• Free SQL Server training? Now you’re talking.

  - by Fatherjack

  SQL Server user groups are everywhere, literally all over the globe there are SQL Server professionals meeting on a regular basis, sharing ideas, solving problems, learning about how to do new stuff and new ways to do old stuff and it’s all for free. I don’t have detailed figures but of all the SQL Server professionals there are only a small number of them attend these user groups. Those people are the people that are taking the time and making then effort to make themselves better at their chosen trade, more employable and having a good time. For free. I don’t know why but there are many people that don’t seem to want to be the best they can be. Some of you enlightened people that do already attend could be doing more though. Have you ever spoken at  your group? Not just in the break while you have a mouthful of pizza and a drink in your hand but had the attention of the whole group listen to you speak. It doesn’t need to be a full hour, it doesn’t need to be some obscure deeply technical demonstration of SQL Server internals, just a few minutes on something that you do that might help other people with their daily work. A neat process that helps you get from Problem A to Solution B. There is no need to get concerned that becoming a speaker means that you suddenly have to know more than anyone else in the room. This is you talking about something that you experienced. What you did, what you would repeat, what you might do differently next time. No one in the audience can pick you up on a technicality. If someone comes out with a great idea that you hadn’t thought of, say “That’s a great idea, I didn’t think of that while we had the problem on our hands. I’ll try to remember that for next time”. If someone is looking to show you up for picking the wrong decision (and this, in my experience, is very uncommon indeed) then you simply give a reply like “Well, at the time we chose that option. Perhaps another time then we would tackle things differently but we were happy with how our solution worked”. It’s sharing things like this that makes user groups have a real value, talking about how you coped with or averted a disaster, a handy little section of code or using a tool in a particular way that you take for granted that might, just might, be something that other people haven’t thought of that solves a problem or saves some time for them. At the next meeting you might get the same benefit from a different person and so it goes on. As individuals benefits so the community benefits. For free. Things I encourage you to do; If you are a chapter or user group leader; encourage someone from your group who has never spoken before to start speaking. If you are a chapter or user group attendee that hasn’t spoken before; speak for at least 5 minutes on something related to SQL Server at any group meeting. If you don’t currently attend a user group; please go along to you nearest one when they are meeting next and invest in yourself and your future. UK user group details are here: http://sqlsouthwest.co.uk/national_ug.htm , PASS chapters outside the UK are found via http://www.sqlpass.org/PASSChapters/LocalChapters.aspx. If you are unsure of how you might achieve any of these things then get in touch with me*, I’ll give you specific advice on getting started on any of the above points and help you prove to yourself what you are capable of. SQL Community – be part of it and make it better. Let me know how you get on in the comments.

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• Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js

  - by shiju

  The Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js is a command-line tool that  allows the Node developers to build and deploy Node.js apps in Windows Azure using Windows PowerShell cmdlets. Using Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js, you can develop, test, deploy and manage Node based hosted service in Windows Azure. For getting the PowerShell for Node.js, click All Programs, Windows Azure SDK Node.js and run  Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js, as Administrator. The followings are the few PowerShell cmdlets that lets you to work with Node.js apps in Windows Azure Create New Hosted Service New-AzureService <HostedServiceName> The below cmdlet will created a Windows Aazure hosted service named NodeOnAzure in the folder C:\nodejs and this will also create ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg, ServiceConfiguration.Local.cscfg and ServiceDefinition.csdef and deploymentSettings.json files for the hosted service. PS C:\nodejs> New-AzureService NodeOnAzure The below picture shows the files after creating the hosted service Create Web Role Add-AzureNodeWebRole <RoleName> The following cmdlet will create a hosted service named MyNodeApp along with web.config file. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure> Add-AzureNodeWebRole MyNodeApp The below picture shows the files after creating the web role app. Install Node Module npm install <NodeModule> The following command will install Node Module Express onto your web role app. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> npm install Express Run Windows Azure Apps Locally in the Emulator Start-AzureEmulator -launch The following cmdlet will create a local package and run Windows Azure app locally in the emulator PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Start-AzureEmulator -launch Stop Windows Azure Emulator Stop-AzureEmulator The following cmdlet will stop your Windows Azure in the emulator. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Stop-AzureEmulator Download Windows Azure Publishing Settings Get-AzurePublishSettings The following cmdlet will redirect to Windows Azure portal where we can download Windows Azure publish settings PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Get-AzurePublishSettings Import Windows Azure Publishing Settings Import-AzurePublishSettings <Location of .publishSettings file> The following cmdlet will import the publish settings file from the location c:\nodejs PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp>  Import-AzurePublishSettings c:\nodejs\shijuvar.publishSettings Publish Apps to Windows Azure Publish-AzureService –name <Name> –location <Location of Data centre> The following cmdlet will publish the app to Windows Azure with name “NodeOnAzure” in the location Southeast Asia. Please keep in mind that the service name should be unique. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Publish-AzureService –name NodeonAzure –location "Southeast Asia” –launch Stop Windows Azure Service Stop-AzureService The following cmdlet will stop your service which you have deployed previously. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Stop-AzureService Remove Windows Azure Service Remove-AzureService The following cmdlet will remove your service from Windows Azure. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Remove-AzureService Quick Summary for PowerShell cmdlets Create  a new Hosted Service New-AzureService <HostedServiceName> Create a Web Role Add-AzureNodeWebRole <RoleName> Install Node Module npm install <NodeModule> Running Windows Azure Apps Locally in Emulator Start-AzureEmulator -launch Stop Windows Azure Emulator Stop-AzureEmulator Download Windows Azure Publishing Settings Get-AzurePublishSettings Import Windows Azure Publishing Settings Import-AzurePublishSettings <Location of .publishSettings file> Publish Apps to Windows Azure Publish-AzureService –name <Name> –location <Location of Data centre> Stop Windows Azure Service Stop-AzureService Remove Windows Azure Service Remove-AzureService

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• Getting Started with Chart control in ASP.Net 4.0

  - by sreejukg

  In this article I am going to demonstrate the Chart control available in ASP.Net 4 and Visual Studio 2010. Most of the web applications need to generate reports for business users. The business users are happy to view the results in a graphical format more that seeing it in numbers. For the purpose of this demonstration, I have created a sales table. I am going to create charts from this sale data. The sale table looks as follows I have created an ASP.Net web application project in Visual Studio 2010. I have a default.aspx page that I am going to use for the demonstration. First I am going to add a chart control to the page. Visual Studio 2010 has a chart control. The Chart Control comes under the Data Tab in the toolbox. Drag and drop the Chart control to the default.aspx page. Visual Studio adds the below markup to the page. <asp:Chart ID="Chart1" runat="server"></asp:Chart> In the designer view, the Chart controls gives the following output. As you can see this is exactly similar to other server controls in ASP.Net, and similar to other controls under the data tab, Chart control is also a data bound control. So I am going to bind this with my sales data. From the design view, right click the chart control and select “show smart tag” Here you need so choose the Data source property and the chart type. From the choose data source drop down, select new data source. In the data source configuration wizard, select the SQL data base and write the query to retrieve the data. At first I am going to show the chart for amount of sales done by each sales person. I am going to use the following query inside sqldatasource select command. “SELECT SUM(SaleAmount) AS Expr1, salesperson FROM SalesData GROUP BY SalesPerson” This query will give me the amount of sales achieved by each sales person. The mark up of SQLDataSource is as follows. <asp:SqlDataSource ID="SqlDataSource1" runat="server" ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:SampleConnectionString %>" SelectCommand="SELECT SUM(SaleAmount) as amount, SalesPerson FROM SalesData GROUP BY SalesPerson"></asp:SqlDataSource> Once you selected the data source for the chart control, you need to select the X and Y values for the columns. I have entered salesperson in the X Value member and amount in the Y value member. After modifications, the Chart control looks as follows Click F5 to run the application. The output of the page is as follows. Using ASP.Net it is much easier to represent your data in graphical format. To show this chart, I didn’t even write any single line of code. The chart control is a great tool that helps the developer to show the business intelligence in their applications without using third party products. I will write another blog that explore further possibilities that shows more reports by using the same sales data. If you want to get the Project in zipped format, post your email below.

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• Beware when using .NET's named pipes in a windows forms application

  - by FransBouma

  Yesterday a user of our .net ORM Profiler tool reported that he couldn't get the snapshot recording from code feature working in a windows forms application. Snapshot recording in code means you start recording profile data from within the profiled application, and after you're done you save the snapshot as a file which you can open in the profiler UI. When using a console application it worked, but when a windows forms application was used, the snapshot was always empty: nothing was recorded. Obviously, I wondered why that was, and debugged a little. Here's an example piece of code to record the snapshot. This piece of code works OK in a console application, but results in an empty snapshot in a windows forms application: var snapshot = new Snapshot(); snapshot.Record(); using(var ctx = new ORMProfilerTestDataContext()) { var customers = ctx.Customers.Where(c => c.Country == "USA").ToList(); } InterceptorCore.Flush(); snapshot.Stop(); string error=string.Empty; if(!snapshot.IsEmpty) { snapshot.SaveToFile(@"c:\temp\generatortest\test2\blaat.opsnapshot", out error); } if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(error)) { Console.WriteLine("Save error: {0}", error); } (the Console.WriteLine doesn't do anything in a windows forms application, but you get the idea). ORM Profiler uses named pipes: the interceptor (referenced and initialized in your application, the application to profile) sends data over the named pipe to a listener, which when receiving a piece of data begins reading it, asynchronically, and when properly read, it will signal observers that new data has arrived so they can store it in a repository. In this case, the snapshot will be the observer and will store the data in its own repository. The reason the above code doesn't work in windows forms is because windows forms is a wrapper around Win32 and its WM_* message based system. Named pipes in .NET are wrappers around Windows named pipes which also work with WM_* messages. Even though we use BeginRead() on the named pipe (which spawns a thread to read the data from the named pipe), nothing is received by the named pipe in the windows forms application, because it doesn't handle the WM_* messages in its message queue till after the method is over, as the message pump of a windows forms application is handled by the only thread of the windows forms application, so it will handle WM_* messages when the application idles. The fix is easy though: add Application.DoEvents(); right before snapshot.Stop(). Application.DoEvents() forces the windows forms application to process all WM_* messages in its message queue at that moment: all messages for the named pipe are then handled, the .NET code of the named pipe wrapper will react on that and the whole process will complete as if nothing happened. It's not that simple to just say 'why didn't you use a worker thread to create the snapshot here?', because a thread doesn't get its own message pump: the messages would still be posted to the window's message pump. A hidden form would create its own message pump, so the additional thread should also create a window to get the WM_* messages of the named pipe posted to a different message pump than the one of the main window. This WM_* messages pain is not something you want to be confronted with when using .NET and its libraries. Unfortunately, the way they're implemented, a lot of APIs are leaky abstractions, they bleed the characteristics of the OS objects they hide away through to the .NET code. Be aware of that fact when using them :)

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• Amazon Product Advertising API SOAP Namespace Changes

  - by Rick Strahl

  About two months ago (twowards the end of February 2012 I think) Amazon decided to change the namespace of the Product Advertising API. The error that would come up was: <ItemSearchResponse > was not expected. If you've used the Amazon Product Advertising API you probably know that Amazon has made it a habit to break the services every few years or so and I guess last month was about the time for another one. Basically the service namespace of the document has been changed and responses from the service just failed outright even though the rest of the schema looks fine. Now I looked around for a while trying to find a recent update to the Product Advertising API - something semi-official looking but everything is dated around 2009. Really??? And it's not just .NET - the newest thing on the sample/APIs is dated early 2011 and a handful of 2010 samples. There are newer full APIs for the 'cloud' offerings, but the Product Advertising API apparently isn't part of that. After searching for quite a bit trying to trace this down myself and trying some of the newer samples (which also failed) I found an obscure forum post that describes the solution of getting past the namespace issue. FWIW, I've been using an old version of the Product Advertising API using the old Microsoft WSE3 services (pre-WCF), which provides some of the WS* security features required by the Amazon service. The fix for this code is to explicitly override the namespace declaration on each of the imported service method signatures. The old service namespace (at least on my build) was: http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2009-03-31 and it should be changed to: http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-08-01 Change it on the class header:[Microsoft.Web.Services3.Messaging.SoapService("http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-08-01")] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(Property[]))] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(BrowseNode[]))] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(TransactionItem[]))] public partial class AWSECommerceService : Microsoft.Web.Services3.Messaging.SoapClient { and on all method signatures:[Microsoft.Web.Services3.Messaging.SoapMethodAttribute("http://soap.amazon.com/ItemSearch")] [return: System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute("ItemSearchResponse", Namespace="http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-08-01")] public ItemSearchResponse ItemSearch(ItemSearch ItemSearch1) { Microsoft.Web.Services3.SoapEnvelope results = base.SendRequestResponse("ItemSearch", ItemSearch1); return ((ItemSearchResponse)(results.GetBodyObject(typeof(ItemSearchResponse), this.SoapServiceAttribute.TargetNamespace))); } It's easy to do with a Search and Replace on the above strings. Amazon Services <rant> FWIW, I've not been impressed by Amazon's service offerings. While the services work well, their documentation and tool support is absolutely horrendous. I was recently working with a customer on an old AWS application and their old API had been completely removed with a new API that wasn't even a close match. One old API call resulted in requiring three different APIs to perform the same functionality. We had to re-write the entire piece from scratch essentially. The documentation was downright wrong, and incomplete and so scattered it was next to impossible to follow. The examples weren't examples at all - they're mockups of real service calls with fake data that didn't even provide everything that was required to make same service calls work. Additionally there appears to be just about no public support from Amazon, only peer support which is sparse at best - and getting a hold of somebody at Amazon, even for pay seems to be mythical task. It's a terrible business model they have going. I can't see why anybody would put themselves through this sort of customer and development experience. Sad really, but an experience we see more and more these days. Nobody puts in the time to document anything anymore, leaving it to devs to figure this stuff out over and over again… </rant>© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in CSharp  Web Services   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Should I upgrade to "Ubuntu 14.04 'Trusty Tahr'" from "Ubuntu 12.04 LTS" and what care do I need to take if I upgrade?

  - by PHPLover

  I'm basically a Web Developer(PHP Developer) by profession. I mainly work on PHP, jQuery, AJAX, Smarty, HTML and CSS, Bootstrap front-end web development framework. I've also installed and using IDEs/editors like Sublime Text, NetBeans. I'm also using Git repository for my website development as a versioning tool. I'm using "Ubuntu 12.04 LTS" on my machine almost since last two years. My machine configuraion is as follows: Memory : 3.7 GiB Processor : Intel® Core™ i3 CPU M 370 @ 2.40GHz × 4 Graphics : Unknown OS type : 64-bit Disk : 64-bit The important softwares present on my machine and which I'm using daily for my work are as follows: PHP : PHP 5.3.10-1ubuntu3.13 with Suhosin-Patch (cli) (built: Jul 7 2014 18:54:55) Copyright (c) 1997-2012 The PHP Group Zend Engine v2.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2012 Zend Technologies Apache web server : /usr/sbin/apachectl: 87: ulimit: error setting limit (Operation not permitted) Server version: Apache/2.2.22 (Ubuntu) Server built: Jul 22 2014 14:35:25 Server's Module Magic Number: 20051115:30 Server loaded: APR 1.4.6, APR-Util 1.3.12 Compiled using: APR 1.4.6, APR-Util 1.3.12 Architecture: 64-bit Server MPM: Prefork threaded: no forked: yes (variable process count) Server compiled with.... -D APACHE_MPM_DIR="server/mpm/prefork" -D APR_HAS_SENDFILE -D APR_HAS_MMAP -D APR_HAVE_IPV6 (IPv4-mapped addresses enabled) -D APR_USE_SYSVSEM_SERIALIZE -D APR_USE_PTHREAD_SERIALIZE -D SINGLE_LISTEN_UNSERIALIZED_ACCEPT -D APR_HAS_OTHER_CHILD -D AP_HAVE_RELIABLE_PIPED_LOGS -D DYNAMIC_MODULE_LIMIT=128 -D HTTPD_ROOT="/etc/apache2" -D SUEXEC_BIN="/usr/lib/apache2/suexec" -D DEFAULT_PIDLOG="/var/run/apache2.pid" -D DEFAULT_SCOREBOARD="logs/apache_runtime_status" -D DEFAULT_LOCKFILE="/var/run/apache2/accept.lock" -D DEFAULT_ERRORLOG="logs/error_log" -D AP_TYPES_CONFIG_FILE="mime.types" -D SERVER_CONFIG_FILE="apache2.conf" MySQL : 5.5.38-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 Smarty : 2.6.18 **NetBeans :** NetBeans IDE 8.0 (Build 201403101706) Sublime Text 2 : Version 2.0.2, Build 2221 Yesterday suddenly a pop-up message appeared on my screen asking me to upgrade to "Ubuntu 14.04 'Trusty Tahr'". I'd also be very happy to upgrade my system to "Ubuntu 14.04 'Trusty Tahr'". Following are the issues about which I'm little bit scared about and I need you all talented people's expert advice/help/suggestions on it: Will upgrading to "Ubuntu 14.04 'Trusty Tahr'" affect the softwares I mentioned above? I mean will I need to re-install/un-install and install these softwares too? Do I really need to and is it really a worth to upgrade to "Ubuntu 14.04 'Trusty Tahr'" from "Ubuntu 12.04 LTS" now? If I upgrade to "Ubuntu 14.04 'Trusty Tahr'" what advantage I'll get from web developer's point of view? Will the upgrade be hassle free and will I be ablr to continue my on-going work without any difficulties? Is "Ubuntu 14.04 'Trusty Tahr'" a LTS version and if yes till when it's going to provide support? These are the five crucial queries I have. If you want any further explanation from me please feel free to ask me. Thanks for spending some of your vaulable time in reading and understanding my issue. Any kind of help/comment/suggestion/answer would be highly appreciated. Though if someone gives canonical, precise and up to the mark answer, it will be of great help to me as well as other web developers using Ubuntu around the world. Once again thank you so much you great people around the globe. Waiting for your precious replies.

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• How to make software development decisions based on facts

  - by Laila

  We love to hear stories about the many and varied ways our customers use the tools that we develop, but in our earnest search for stories and feedback, we'd rather forgotten that some of our keenest users are fellow RedGaters, in the same building. It was almost by chance that we discovered how the SQL Source Control team were using SmartAssembly. As it happens, there is a separate account (here on Simple-Talk) of how SmartAssembly was used to support the Early Access program; by providing answers to specific questions about how the SQL Source Control product was used. But what really got us all grinning was how valuable the SQL Source Control team found the reports that SmartAssembly was quickly and painlessly providing. So gather round, my friends, and I'll tell you the Tale Of The Framework Upgrade . <strange mirage effect to denote a flashback. A subtle background string of music starts playing in minor key> Kevin and his team were undecided. They weren't sure whether they could move their software product from .NET 2 to .NET 3.5 , let alone to .NET 4. You see, they were faced with having to guess what version of .NET was already installed on the average user's machine, which I'm sure you'll agree is no easy task. Upgrading their code to .NET 3.5 might put a barrier to people trying the tool, which was the last thing Kevin wanted: "what if our users have to download X, Y, and Z before being able to open the application?" he asked. That fear of users having to do half an hour of downloads (.followed by at least ten minutes of installation. followed by a five minute restart) meant that Kevin's team couldn't take advantage of WCF (Windows Communication Foundation). This made them sad, because WCF would have allowed them to write their code in a much simpler way, and in hours instead of days (as was the case with .NET 2). Oh sure, they had a gut feeling that this probably wasn't the case, 3.5 had been out for so many years, but they weren't sure. <background music switches to major key> SmartAssembly Feature Usage Reporting gave Kevin and his team exactly what they needed: hard data on their users' systems, both hardware and software. I was there, I saw it happen, and that's not the sort of thing a woman quickly forgets. I'll always remember his last words (before he went to lunch): "You get lots of free information by just checking a box in SmartAssembly" is what he said. For example, they could see how many CPU cores their customers were using, and found out that they should be making use of parallelism to take advantage of available cores. But crucially, (and this is the moral of my tale, dear reader), Kevin saw that 99% of SQL Source Control's users were on .NET 3.5 or above.   So he knew that they could make the switch and that is was safe to do so. With this reassurance, they could use WCF to not only make development easier, but to also give them a really nice way to do inter-process communication between the Source Control and the SQL Compare products. To have done that on .NET 2.0 was certainly possible <knowing chuckle>, but Microsoft have made it a lot easier with WCF. <strange mirage effect to denote end of flashback> So you see, with Feature Usage Reporting, they finally got the hard evidence they needed to safely make the switch to .NET 3.5, knowing it would not inconvenience their users. And that, my friends, is just the sort of thing we like to hear.

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• asynchrony is viral

  - by Daniel Moth

  It is becoming hard to write code today without introducing some form of asynchrony and, if you are using .NET (e.g. for Windows Phone 8 or Windows Store apps), that means sooner or later you have to await something and mark your method as async. My most recent examples included introducing speech recognition in my Translator By Moth phone app where I had to await mySpeechRecognizerUI.RecognizeWithUIAsync() and when moving that code base to a Windows Store project just to show a MessageBox I had to await myMessageDialog.ShowAsync(). Any time you need to invoke an asynchronous method in your code, you have a choice to make: kick off the operation but don’t wait for it to complete (otherwise known as fire-and-forget), synchronously wait for it to complete (which will entail blocking, which can be bad, especially on a UI thread), or asynchronously wait for it to complete before continuing on with the rest of the method’s work. In most cases, you want the latter, and the await keyword makes that trivial to implement.  When you use the magical await keyword in front of an API call, then you typically have to make additional changes to your code: This await usage is within a method of course, and now you have to annotate that method with async. Furthermore, you have to change the return type of the method you just annotated so it returns a Task (if it previously returned void), or Task<myOldReturnType> (if it previously returned myOldReturnType). Note that if it returns void, in some cases you could cheat and stop there. Furthermore, any method that called this method you just annotated with async will now also be invoking an asynchronous operation, so you have to make that change in the body of the caller method to introduce the await keyword before the call to the method. …you guessed it, you now have to change this caller method to be annotated with async and have its return types tweaked... …and it goes on virally… At some point you reach the root of your user code, e.g. a GUI event handler, and whoever calls that void method can already deal with the fact that you marked it as async and the viral introduction of the keywords stops there… This is all wonderful progress and a very powerful mechanism, and I just wish someone had written a refactoring tool to take care of this… anyone? I mentioned earlier that you have a choice when invoking an asynchronous operation. If the first time you encounter this you wish to localize the impact of all these changes and essentially try to turn the asynchronous behavior into synchronous by blocking - don't! For reasons why you don't want to do that, read Toub's excellent blog post (and check out the rest of his blog with gems on async programming starting with the Async FAQ). Just embrace the pattern knowing that when you use one instance of an await, you'll propagate the change all the way to the root user code method, e.g. typically an event handler. Related aside: I just finished re-writing my MessageBox wrapper class for Phone projects, including making it work in Windows Store projects, and it does expect you to use it with an await :-). I'll share that in an upcoming post for those of you that have the same need… Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Book &ldquo;Team Foundation Server 2012 Starter&rdquo; published!

  - by Jakob Ehn

  During the summer and fall this year, me and my colleague Terje Sandstrøm has worked together on a book project that has now finally hit the stores! The title of the book is Team Foundation Server 2012 Starter and is published by Packt Publishing. You can find it at http://www.packtpub.com/team-foundation-server-2012-starter/book or from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/1849688389                          The book is part of a concept that Packt have with starter-books, intended for people new to Team Foundation Server 2012 and who want a quick guideline to get it up and working. It covers the fundamentals, from installing and configuring it, and how to use it with source control, work items and builds. It is done as a step-by-step guide, but also includes best practices advice in the different areas. It covers the use of both the on-premises and the TFS Services version. It also has a list of links and references in the end to the most relevant Visual Studio 2012 ALM sites. Our good friend and fellow ALM MVP Mathias Olausson have done the review of the book, thanks again Mathias! We hope the book fills the gap between the different online guide sites and the more advanced books that are out. Check it out and please let us know what you think of the book! Book Description Your quick start guide to TFS 2012, top features, and best practices with hands on examples Overview Install TFS 2012 from scratch Get up and running with your first project Streamline release cycles for maximum productivity In Detail Team Foundation Server 2012 is Microsoft's leading ALM tool, integrating source control, work item and process handling, build automation, and testing. This practical "Team Foundation Server 2012 Starter Guide" will provide you with clear step-by-step exercises covering all major aspects of the product. This is essential reading for anyone wishing to set up, organize, and use TFS server. This hands-on guide looks at the top features in Team Foundation Server 2012, starting with a quick installation guide and then moving into using it for your software development projects. Manage your team projects with Team Explorer, one of the many new features for 2012. Covering all the main features in source control to help you work more efficiently, including tools for branching and merging, we will delve into the Agile Planning Tools for planning your product and sprint backlogs. Learn to set up build automation, allowing your team to become faster, more streamlined, and ultimately more productive with this "Team Foundation Server 2012 Starter Guide". What you will learn from this book Install TFS 2012 on premise Access TFS Services in the cloud Quickly get started with a new project with product backlogs, source control, and build automation Work efficiently with source control using the top features Understand how the tools for branching and merging in TFS 2012 help you isolate work and teams Learn about the existing process templates, such as Visual Studio Scrum 2.0 Manage your product and sprint backlogs using the Agile planning tools Approach This Starter guide is a short, sharp introduction to Team Foundation Server 2012, covering everything you need to get up and running. Who this book is written for If you are a developer, project lead, tester, or IT administrator working with Team Foundation Server 2012 this guide will get you up to speed quickly and with minimal effort.

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• Rendering Linear Gradients using the HTML5 Canvas

  - by dwahlin

  Related HTML5 Canvas Posts: Getting Started with the HTML5 Canvas Rendering Text with the HTML5 Canvas Creating a Line Chart using the HTML5 Canvas New Pluralsight Course: HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals Gradients are everywhere. They’re used to enhance toolbars or buttons and help add additional flare to a web page when used appropriately. In the past we’ve always had to rely on images to render gradients which works well, but isn’t necessarily the most efficient (although 1 pixel wide images do work well). CSS3 provides a great way to render gradients in modern browsers (see http://www.colorzilla.com/gradient-editor for a nice online gradient generator tool) but it’s not the only option. If you’re working with charts, games, multimedia or other HTML5 Canvas applications you can also use gradients and render them on the client-side without relying on images. In this post I’ll introduce how to use linear gradients and discuss the different functions that can be used to create them.   Creating Linear Gradients Linear gradients can be created using the 2D context’s createLinearGradient function. The function takes the starting x,y coordinates and ending x,y coordinates of the gradient:   createLinearGradient(x1, y1, x2, y2);   By changing the start and end coordinates you can control the direction that the gradient renders. For example, adding the following coordinates causes the gradient to render from left to right since the y value stays at 0 for both points while the x value changes from 0 to 200. var lgrad = ctx.createLinearGradient(0, 0, 200, 0); Here’s an example of how changing the coordinates affects the gradient direction:   Once a linear gradient object has been created you can set color stops using the addColorStop() function. It takes the location where the color should appear in the gradient with 0 being the beginning and 1 being at the end (0.5 would be in the middle) as well as the color to display in the gradient. lgrad.addColorStop(0, 'white'); lgrad.addColorStop(1, 'gray');   An example of combining createLinearGradient() with addColorStop() is shown next:   Using createLinearGradient() var canvas = document.getElementById('myCanvas'); var ctx = canvas.getContext('2d'); var lgrad = ctx.createLinearGradient(0, 0, 200, 0); lgrad.addColorStop(0, 'white'); lgrad.addColorStop(1, 'gray'); ctx.fillStyle = lgrad; ctx.fillRect(0, 0, 200, 200); ctx.strokeRect(0, 0, 200, 200); This code renders a white to gray gradient as shown next: A live example of using createLinearGradient() is shown next. Click the Result tab to see the code in action.   In the next post on the HTML5 Canvas I’ll take a look at radial gradients and how they can be used. In the meantime, if you’re interested in learning more about the HTML5 Canvas and how it can be used in your Web or Windows 8 applications, check out my HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals course from Pluralsight. It has over 4 1/2 hours of canvas goodness packed in it.

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• Clustering for Mere Mortals (Pt2)

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  Planning. I could stop there and let that be the entirety post #2 in this series.  Planning is the single most important element in building a cluster and the Laptop Demo Cluster is no exception.  One of the more awkward parts of actually creating a cluster is coordinating information between Windows Clustering and SQL Clustering.  The dialog boxes show up hours apart, but still have to have matching and consistent information. Excel seems to be a good tool for tracking these settings.  My workbook has four pages: Systems, Storage, Network, and Service Accounts.  The systems page looks like this:   Name Role Software Location East Physical Cluster Node 1 Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Laptop VM West Physical Cluster Node 2 Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Laptop VM North Physical Cluster Node 3 (Future Reserved) Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Laptop VM MicroCluster Cluster Management Interface N/A Laptop VM SQL01 High-Performance High-Security Instance SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition x64 SP1 Laptop VM SQL02 High-Performance Standard-Security Instance SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition x64 SP1 Laptop VM SQL03 Standard-Performance High-Security Instance SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition x64 SP1 Laptop VM Note that everything that has a computer name is listed here, whether physical or virtual. Storage looks like this: Storage Name Instance Purpose Volume Path Size (GB) LUN ID Speed Quorum MicroCluster Cluster Quorum Quorum Q: 2     SQL01Anchor SQL01 Instance Anchor SQL01Anchor L: 2     SQL02Anchor SQL02 Instance Anchor SQL02Anchor M: 2     SQL01Data1 SQL01 SQL Data SQL01Data1 L:\MountPoints\SQL01Data1 2     SQL02Data1 SQL02 SQL Data SQL02Data1 M:\MountPoints\SQL02Data1       Starting at the left is the name used in the storage array.  It is important to rename resources at each level, whether it is Storage, LUN, Volume, or disk folder.  Otherwise, troubleshooting things gets complex and difficult.  You want to be able to glance at a resource at any level and see where it comes from and what it is connected to. Networking is the same way:   System Network VLAN  IP Subnet Mask Gateway DNS1 DNS2 East Public Cluster1 10.97.230.x(DHCP) 255.255.255.0 10.97.230.1 10.97.230.1 10.97.230.1 East Heartbeat Cluster2   255.255.255.0       West Public Cluster1 10.97.230.x(DHCP) 255.255.255.0 10.97.230.1 10.97.230.1 10.97.230.1 West Heartbeat Cluster2   255.255.255.0       North Public Cluster1 10.97.230.x(DHCP) 255.255.255.0 10.97.230.1 10.97.230.1 10.97.230.1 North Heartbeat Cluster2   255.255.255.0       SQL01 Public Cluster1 10.97.230.x(DHCP) 255.255.255.0       SQL02 Public Cluster1 10.97.230.x(DHCP) 255.255.255.0       One hallmark of a poorly planned and implemented cluster is a bunch of "Local Network Connection #n" entries in the network settings page.  That lets me know that somebody didn't care about the long-term supportabaility of the cluster.  This can be critically important with Hyper-V Clusters and their high NIC counts.  Final page:   Instance Service Name Account Password Domain OU SQL01 SQL Server SVCSQL01 Baseline22 MicroAD Service Accounts SQL01 SQL Agent SVCSQL01 Baseline22 MicroAD Service Accounts SQL02 SQL Server SVC_SQL02 Baseline22 MicroAD Service Accounts SQL02 SQL Agent SVC_SQL02 Baseline22 MicroAD Service Accounts SQL03 (Future) SQL Server SVC_SQL03 Baseline22 MicroAD Service Accounts SQL03 (Future) SQL Agent SVC_SQL03 Baseline22 MicroAD Service Accounts             Installation Account           administrator            Yes.  I write down the account information.  I secure the file via NTFS, but I don't want to fumble around looking for passwords when it comes time to rebuild a node. Always fill out the workbook COMPLETELY before installing anything.  The whole point is to have everything you need at your fingertips before you begin.  The install experience is so much better and more productive with this information in place.

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• Oracle Fusion Procurement Designed for User Productivity

  - by Applications User Experience

  Sean Rice, Manager, Applications User Experience Oracle Fusion Procurement Design Goals In Oracle Fusion Procurement, we set out to create a streamlined user experience based on the way users do their jobs. Oracle has spent hundreds of hours with customers to get to the heart of what users need to do their jobs. By designing a procurement application around user needs, Oracle has crafted a user experience that puts the tools that people need at their fingertips. In Oracle Fusion Procurement, the user experience is designed to provide the user with information that will drive navigation rather than requiring the user to find information. One of our design goals for Oracle Fusion Procurement was to reduce the number of screens and clicks that a user must go through to complete frequently performed tasks. The requisition process in Oracle Fusion Procurement (Figure 1) illustrates how we have streamlined workflows. Oracle Fusion Self-Service Procurement brings together billing metrics, descriptions of the order, justification for the order, a breakdown of the components of the order, and the amount—all in one place. Previous generations of procurement software required the user to navigate to several different pages to gather all of this information. With Oracle Fusion, everything is presented on one page. The result is that users can complete their tasks in less time. The focus is on completing the work, not finding the work. Figure 1. Creating a requisition in Oracle Fusion Self-Service Procurement is a consumer-like shopping experience. Will Oracle Fusion Procurement Increase Productivity? To answer this question, Oracle sought to model how two experts working head to head—one in an existing enterprise application and another in Oracle Fusion Procurement—would perform the same task. We compared Oracle Fusion designs to corresponding existing applications using the keystroke-level modeling (KLM) method. This method is based on years of research at universities such as Carnegie Mellon and research labs like Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. The KLM method breaks tasks into a sequence of operations and uses standardized models to evaluate all of the physical and cognitive actions that a person must take to complete a task: what a user would have to click, how long each click would take (not only the physical action of the click or typing of a letter, but also how long someone would have to think about the page when taking the action), and user interface changes that result from the click. By applying standard time estimates for all of the operators in the task, an estimate of the overall task time is calculated. Task times from the model enable researchers to predict end-user productivity. For the study, we focused on modeling procurement business process task flows that were considered business or mission critical: high-frequency tasks and high-value tasks. The designs evaluated encompassed tasks that are currently performed by employees, professional buyers, suppliers, and sourcing professionals in advanced procurement applications. For each of these flows, we created detailed task scenarios that provided the context for each task, conducted task walk-throughs in both the Oracle Fusion design and the existing application, analyzed and documented the steps and actions required to complete each task, and applied standard time estimates to the operators in each task to estimate overall task completion times. The Results The KLM method predicted that the Oracle Fusion Procurement designs would result in productivity gains in each task, ranging from 13 percent to 38 percent, with an overall productivity gain of 22.5 percent. These performance gains can be attributed to a reduction in the number of clicks and screens needed to complete the tasks. For example, creating a requisition in Oracle Fusion Procurement takes a user through only two screens, while ordering the same item in a previous version requires six screens to complete the task. Modeling user productivity has resulted not only in advances in Oracle Fusion applications, but also in advances in other areas. We leveraged lessons learned from the KLM studies to establish products like Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS). New user experience features in EBS 12.1.3, such as navigational improvements to the main menu, a Google-type search using auto-suggest, embedded analytics, and an in-context list of values tool help to reduce clicks and improve efficiency. For more information about KLM, refer to the Measuring User Productivity blog.

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• How to Crop Pictures in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2010

  - by DigitalGeekery

  When you add pictures to your Office documents you might need to crop them to remove unwanted areas, or isolate a specific part. Today we’ll take a look at how to crop images in Office 2010. Note: We will show you examples in Word, but you can crop images in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. To insert a picture into your Office document, click the Picture button on the Insert tab. The Picture Tools format ribbon should now be active. If not, click on the image. New in Office 2010 is the ability to see the area of the photo that you are keeping in addition to what will be cropped out. On the Format tab, click Crop. Click and drag inward any of the four corners to crop from any one side. Notice you can still see the area to be cropped out is show in translucent gray. Press and hold the CTRL key while you drag a corner cropping handle inward to crop equally on all four sides. To crop equally on right and left or the top and bottom, press and hold down the CTRL key while you drag the center cropping handle on either side inward. You can further adjust the cropping area by clicking and dragging the picture behind the cropping area. To accept the current dimensions and crop the photo, press escape or click anywhere outside the cropping area. You can manually crop the image to exact dimensions. This can be done by right clicking on the image and entering the dimensions in the Width and Height boxes, or in the Size group on the Format tab.   Crop to a Shape Select your photo and click Crop from the Size group on the Format tab. Select Crop to Shape and choose any of the available shapes. You photo will be cropped into that shape. Using Fit and Fill If you wish to crop a photo but fill the shape, select Fill. When you choose this option, some edges of the picture might not display but the original picture aspect ratio is maintained. If you wish to have all of the picture fit within a shape, choose Fit. The original picture aspect ratio will be maintained.   Conclusion Users moving from previous versions of Microsoft Office are sure to appreciate the improved cropping abilities in Office 2010, especially the ability to see what will and won’t be kept when you crop a photo. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Import Microsoft Access Data Into ExcelEmbed an Excel Worksheet Into PowerPoint or Word 2007Add Artistic Effects to Your Pictures in Office 2010Embed True Type Fonts in Word and PowerPoint 2007 DocumentsChange The Default Color Scheme In Office 2007 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 TimeToMeet is a Simple Online Meeting Planning Tool Easily Create More Bookmark Toolbars in Firefox Filevo is a Cool File Hosting & Sharing Site Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate

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• #MIX Day 2 Keynote: Put the Phone Down and Listen

  - by andrewbrust

  MIX day 1’s keynote was all about Windows Phone 7 (WP7).  MIX day 2’s was a reminder that Microsoft has much more going on than a new mobile platform.  Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie, Doug Purdy and others showed us lots of other good things coming from Microsoft, mostly in the developer stack, that we certainly shouldn’t overlook.  These included the forthcoming IE9, its new JavaScript compiling engine and support for HTML 5 that takes full advantage of the local PC resources, including the Graphics Processing Unit.  The announcements also included important additions to ASP.NET (and one subtraction, in the form of lighter-weight ViewState technology) including almost-obsessive jQuery support.  That support is so good that John Resig, creator of the jQuery project, came on stage to tell us so.  Then Scott Guthrie told us that Microsoft would be contributing code to Open Source jQuery project. This is not your father’s Microsoft, it would seem. But to me, the crown jewel in today’s keynote were the numerous announcements around the Open Data Protocol (OData).  OData is nothing more than the protocol side of “Astoria” (now known as WCF Data Services, and until recently called ADO.NET Data Services) separated out and opened up as a platform-neutral standard.  The 2009 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) was Microsoft’s vehicle for first announcing OData, as well as project “Dallas,” an Azure-based cloud platform for publishing commercial OData feeds.  And we had already known about “bridges” for Astoria (and thus OData) for PHP and Java.  We also knew that PowerPivot, Microsoft’s forthcoming self-service BI plug-in for Excel 2010, will consume OData feeds and then facilitate drill-down analysis of their data.  And we recently found out that SQL Reporting Services reports (in the forthcoming SQL Server 2008 R2) and SharePoint 2010 lists will be consumable in OData format as well. So what was left to announce?  How about OData clients for Palm webOS and Apple iPhone/Objective C?  How about the release to Open Source of .NET’s OData client?  Or the ability to publish any SQL Azure database as an OData service by simply checking a checkbox at deployment?  Maybe even a Silverlight tool (code-named “Houston”) to create SQL Azure databases (and then publish them as OData) right in the browser?  And what if you you could get at NetFlix’s entire catalog in OData format?  You can – just go to http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/ and see for yourself.  Douglas Purdy, who made these announcements said “we want OData to work on as many devices and platforms as possible.”  After all the cross-platform OData announcements made in about a half year’s time, it’s hard to dispute this. When Microsoft plays the data card, and plays it well, watch out, because data programmability is the company’s heritage.  I’ll be discussing OData at length in my April Redmond Review column.  I wrote that column two weeks ago, and was convinced then that OData was a big deal. Today upped the ante even more.  And following the Windows Phone 7 euphoria of yesterday was, I think, smart timing.  The phone, if it’s successful, will be because it’s a good developer platform play.  And developer platforms (as well as their creators) are most successful when they have a good data strategy.  OData is very Silverlight-friendly, and that means it’s WP7-friendly too.  Phone plus service-oriented data is a one-two punch.  A phone platform without data would have been a phone with no signal.

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• The New Social Developer Community: a Q&A

  - by Mike Stiles

  In our last blog, we introduced the opportunities that lie ahead for social developers as social applications reach across every aspect and function of the enterprise. Leading the upcoming JavaOne Social Developer Program October 2 at the San Francisco Hilton is Roland Smart, VP of Social Marketing at Oracle. I got to ask Roland a few of the questions an existing or budding social developer might want to know as social extends beyond interacting with friends and marketing and into the enterprise. Why is it smart for developers to specialize as social developers? What opportunities lie in the immediate future that’s making this a critical, in-demand position? Social has changed the way we interact with brands and with each other across the web. As we acclimate to a new social paradigm we also look to extend its benefits into new areas of our lives. The workplace is a logical next step, and we're starting to see social interactions more and more in this context. But unlocking the value of social interactions requires technical expertise and knowledge of developing social apps that tap into the social graph. Developers focused on integrating social experiences into enterprise applications must be familiar with popular social APIs and must understand how to build enterprise social graphs of their own. These developers are part of an emerging community of social developers and are key to socially enabling the enterprise. Facebook rebranded their Preferred Developer Consultant Group (PDC) and the Preferred Marketing Developers (PMD) to underscore the fact developers are required inside marketing organizations to unlock the full potential of their platform. While this trend is starting on the marketing side with marketing developers, this is just an extension of the social developer concept that will ultimately drive social across the enterprise. What are some of the various ways social will be making its way into every area of enterprise organizations? How will it be utilized and what kinds of applications are going to be needed to facilitate and maximize these changes? Check out Oracle’s vision for the social-enabled enterprise. It’s a high-level overview of how social will impact across the enterprise. For example: HR can leverage social in recruiting and retentionSales can leverage social as a prospecting toolMarketing can use social to gain market insightCustomer support can use social to leverage community support to improve customer satisfaction while reducing service costOperations can leverage social improve systems That’s only the beginning. Once sleeves get rolled up and social developers and innovators get to work, still more social functions will no doubt emerge. What makes Java one of, if not the most viable platform on which to build these new enterprise social applications? Java is certainly one of the best platforms on which to build social experiences because there’s such a large existing community of Java developers. This means you can affordably recruit talent, and it's possible to effectively solicit advice from the community through various means, including our new Social Developer Community. Beyond that, there are already some great proof points Java is the best platform for creating social experiences at scale. Consider LinkedIn and Twitter. Tell us more about the benefits of collaboration and more about what the Oracle Social Developer Community is. What opportunities does that offer up and what are some of the ways developers can actively participate in and benefit from that community? Much has been written about the overall benefits of collaborating with other developers. Those include an opportunity to introduce yourself to the community of social developers, foster a reputation, establish an expertise, contribute to the advancement of the space, get feedback, experiment with the latest concepts, and gain inspiration. In short, collaboration is a tool that must be applied properly within a framework to get the most value out of it. The OSDC is a place where social developers can congregate to discuss the opportunities/challenges of building social integrations into their applications. What “needs” will this community have? We don't know yet. But we wanted to create a forum where we can engage and understand what social developers are thinking about, excited about, struggling with, etc. The OSDL can then step in if we can help remove barriers and add value in a serious and committed way so Oracle can help drive practice development.

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• Add Social Elements to Your Gmail Contacts with Rapportive

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to discover more about your contacts?  Xobni is a great tool for this in Outlook, and thanks to a small plugin for Gmail, you can get similar functionality right from your favorite webmail app. Setup Rapportive on Your Gmail Browse to the Rapportive site (link below), and click install to add it to your browser.  Rapportive currently only supports Firefox and Google Chrome.  In this test, we installed it on Google Chrome.  Notice that Chrome warns Rapportive may access your private data from Gmail, though Rapportive says that they only use this data securely on your computer or their servers. Next time you log into Gmail, open a message to see the new Rapportive sidebar.  Click Log in to get started. Choose if you want to let Rapportive to access your data. Finally, choose whether to stay logged into Rapportive or to log out when you log out of Gmail.   Using Rapportive Now, when you open an email, you should see more information about your contact on the right side of the message where you usually see Google AdSense ads. You may see an avatar, short bio, and links to their social networks.  You can add notes about a contact also, which lets you use Rapportive as a CRM. You may see more information on some contacts.  Here we see a contact that shows recent Tweets and links to several social networks. Take Rapportive Further You can add more features to Rapportive with Raplets, which are small extensions that add more information or CRM functionality.  To add these, click the Rapportive button on the top of Gmail, and select Add Raplets to Rapportive. Find a Raplet you want, and click Add This. A popup will open to give you more information about the Raplet; click the Add button at the bottom if you still want it. And, if you’re wish to close Rapportive without logging out of Gmail, click the Rapportive link in Gmail and select Log out. Conclusion Whether you want to find out more about your contacts or keep track of notes about them, Rapportive is a great way to do this from Gmail.  With tools like this, Gmail gets a bit more powerful and feels more like a desktop application. If you would like this type of functionality in Outlook, check out our article on how to power up Outlook’s search and contacts with Xobni. Add Rapportive to Gmail Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Import Gmail Contacts Into Outlook 2007Enhance Your Gmail Account in ChromeFigure out which Online accounts are selling your email to spammersAdd Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogFix for New Contact Group Button Not Displaying in Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Easily Search Food Recipes With Recipe Chimp Tech Fanboys Field Guide Check these Awesome Chrome Add-ons iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools

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• Adobe Photoshop CS5 vs Photoshop CS5 extended

  - by Edward

  Adobe Photoshop has been an industry standard for most web designers & photographers worldwide. Photoshop CS5 has made photography editing much more refined and the composition process has become much easier than ever before.  To study the advantage of Photoshop CS5 extended over Photoshop CS5 we have written this comparison article, with both a Designer’s & Photographer’s perspective. Hopefully it shall help you in your buying/upgrade decision. Photoshop CS5 Photoshop CS5 has refining feature with powerful photography tools. It made editing process easy as fewer steps are involved to remove noise, add grain, create vignettes, correct lens distortions, sharpen, and create HDR images. It has quick image correction and color and tone control for professional purpose. Intelligent image editing and enhancement , extraordinary advanced compositing has made it a better tool than earlier versions for photographers. It allows users to accelerate workflow with fast performance on 64-bit Windows® and Mac hardware systems and smoother interactions due to more GPU-accelerated features. It also boasts of a state-of-the-art processing with Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw 6 and helps to maximize creative impact. It provides for tremendous precision and freedom. It allows user to easily select intricate image elements, such as hair and create realistic painting effects. It also allows to remove any image element and see the space fill in almost magically. It has easy access to core editing and streamlined work flow and flexible work ambience. It has creative tools and contents. Photoshop CS5 Extended Photoshop CS5 extended is quite innovative and has incorporated 3D elements to 2D artwork directly within digital imaging application, which enables user to do an easy on-ramp to 3D image creation. It also provides for 3D editing. It has intelligent image editing and enhancement. It offers advance composing and has extraordinary painting and drawing toolset. It provides for video and animation designing. It helps to work with specialized images for architecture, manufacturing, engineering, science, and medicine. Where CS5 extended scores over CS5 CS5 extended has many features, which were not included in CS5. These features make it score more over CS5. These features are: Technology for creating 3D extrusion 3D material library and picker Field depth for 3D 3D merging and scene composition improvements 3D workflow improvement Customization of 3D features Image based light source Shadow catcher for shadow creation Enhanced ray tracer Context sensitive widgets, which allows easy control of objects, lights and cameras. Overlays for materials and mesh boundaries Photoshop CS5 extended is far better than CS5 as it incorporates all the features of CS5 and have more advanced features. It allows 3D creation and editing and has other advanced tools to make it better. Redefining the Image-Editing Experience  : A Photographer’s point of View Photoshop CS5 delivers amazing features and creative options so even new users can perform advanced image manipulations and compositions. Breath taking image intelligence behind Content-Aware Fill magically removes any image detail or object, examines the surroundings and seamlessly fills in the space left behind. Lighting, tone and noise of the surrounding area can be matched. New Refine Edge makes nearly-impossible image selections possible. Masking was never easier, the toughest types of edges, such as hair and foliage seem easier to fix. To sum up following are few advantages of CS5 extended over previous versions 64-bit processing Content Aware Fill Refine Edge, “makes nearly-impossible image selections impossible” HDR Pro, including ghost artifact removal and HDR toning, which gives the look of HDR with a single exposure New brush options Improved image management with enhanced Adobe Bridge Lens corrections Improved black-and-white conversions Puppet Warp: Precisely reposition or warp any image element Adobe Camera Raw 6 Upgrade Buy Online Pricing and Availability Adobe Photoshop CS5 and CS5 Extended are available through Adobe Authorized Resellers & the Adobe Store. Estimated street price for Adobe Photoshop CS5 is US$699 and US$999 for Photoshop CS5 Extended. Upgrade pricing and volume licensing are also available. Related posts:10 Free Alternatives for Adobe Photoshop Software Web based Alternatives to Photoshop 15 Useful Adobe Illustrator Tutorials For Designers

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• SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Glenn Berry – Wait Type – Day 26 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  Glenn Berry works as a Database Architect at NewsGator Technologies in Denver, CO. He is a SQL Server MVP, and has a whole collection of Microsoft certifications, including MCITP, MCDBA, MCSE, MCSD, MCAD, and MCTS. He is also an Adjunct Faculty member at University College – University of Denver, where he has been teaching since 2000. He is one wonderful blogger and often blogs at here. I am big fan of the Dynamic Management Views (DMV) scripts of Glenn. His script are extremely popular and the reality is that he has inspired me to start this series with his famous DMV which I have mentioned in very first  wait stats blog post (I had forgot to request his permission to re-use the script but when asked later on his whole hearty approved it). Here is is his excellent blog post on this subject of wait stats: Analyzing cumulative wait stats in SQL Server 2005 and above has become a popular and effective technique for diagnosing performance issues and further focusing your troubleshooting and diagnostic  efforts.  Rather than just guessing about what resource(s) that SQL Server is waiting on, you can actually find out by running a relatively simple DMV query. Once you know what resources that SQL Server is spending the most time waiting on, you can run more specific queries that focus on that resource to get a better idea what is causing the problem. I do want to throw out a few caveats about using wait stats as a diagnostic tool. First, they are most useful when your SQL Server instance is experiencing performance problems. If your instance is running well, with no indication of any resource pressure from other sources, then you should not worry that much about what the top wait types are. SQL Server will always be waiting on some resource, but many wait types are quite benign, and can be safely ignored. In spite of this, I quite often see experienced DBAs obsessing over the top wait type, even when their SQL Server instance is running extremely well. Second, I often see DBAs jump to the wrong conclusion based on seeing a particular well-known wait type. A good example is CXPACKET waits. People typically jump to the conclusion that high CXPACKET waits means that they should immediately change their instance-level MADOP setting to 1. This is not always the best solution. You need to consider your workload type, and look carefully for any important “missing” indexes that might be causing the query optimizer to use a parallel plan to compensate for the missing index. In this case, correcting the index problem is usually a better solution than changing MAXDOP, since you are curing the disease rather than just treating the symptom. Finally, you should get in the habit of clearing out your cumulative wait stats with the  DBCC SQLPERF(‘sys.dm_os_wait_stats’, CLEAR); command. This is especially important if you have made an configuration or index changes, or if your workload has changed recently. Otherwise, your cumulative wait stats will be polluted with the old stats from weeks or months ago (since the last time SQL Server was started or the stats were cleared).  If you make a change to your SQL Server instance, or add an index, you should clear out your wait stats, and then wait a while to see what your new top wait stats are. At any rate, enjoy Pinal Dave’s series on Wait Stats. This blog post has been written by Glenn Berry (Twitter | Blog) Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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• Anatomy of a serialization killer

  - by Brian Donahue

  As I had mentioned last month, I have been working on a project to create an easy-to-use managed debugger. It's still an internal tool that we use at Red Gate as part of product support to analyze application errors on customer's computers, and as such, should be easy to use and not require installation. Since the project has got rather large and important, I had decided to use SmartAssembly to protect all of my hard work. This was trivial for the most part, but the loading and saving of results was broken by SA after using the obfuscation, rendering the loading and saving of XML results basically useless, although the merging and error reporting was an absolute godsend and definitely worth the price of admission. (Well, I get my Red Gate licenses for free, but you know what I mean!)My initial reaction was to simply exclude the serializable results class and all of its' members from obfuscation, and that was just dandy, but a few weeks on I decided to look into exactly why serialization had broken and change the code to work with SA so I could write any new code to be compatible with SmartAssembly and save me some additional testing and changes to the SA project.In simple terms, SA does all that it can to prevent serialization problems, for instance, it will not obfuscate public members of a DLL and it will exclude any types with the Serializable attribute from obfuscation. This prevents public members and properties from being made private and having the name changed. If the serialization is done inside the executable, however, public members have the access changed to private and are renamed. That was my first problem, because my types were in the executable assembly and implemented ISerializable, but did not have the Serializable attribute set on them!public class RedFlagResults : ISerializable        {        }The second problem caused by the pruning feature. Although RedFlagResults had public members, they were not truly properties, and used the GetObjectData() method of ISerializable to serialize the members. For that reason, SA could not exclude these members from pruning and further broke the serialization. public class RedFlagResults : ISerializable        {                public List<RedFlag.Exception> Exceptions;                 #region ISerializable Members                 public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)                {                                info.AddValue("Exceptions", Exceptions);                }                 #endregionSo to fix this, it was necessary to make Exceptions a proper property by implementing get and set on it. Also, I added the Serializable attribute so that I don't have to exclude the class from obfuscation in the SA project any more. The DoNotPrune attribute means I do not need to exclude the class from pruning.[Serializable, SmartAssembly.Attributes.DoNotPrune]        public class RedFlagResults        {                public List<RedFlag.Exception> Exceptions {get;set;}        }Similarly, the Exception class gets the Serializable and DoNotPrune attributes applied so all of its' properties are excluded from obfuscation.Now my project has some protection from prying eyes by scrambling up the code so it's harder to reverse-engineer, without breaking anything. SmartAssembly has also provided the benefit of merging so that the end-user doesn't need to extract all of the DLL files needed by RedFlag into a directory, and can be run directly from the .zip archive. When an error occurs (hey, I'm only human!), an exception report can be sent to me so I can see what went wrong without having to, er, debug the debugger.

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• OOW 2013 Summary for Fusion Middleware Architects & Administrators by Simon Haslam

  - by JuergenKress

  OOW 2013 Summary for Fusion Middleware Architects & Administrators by Simon Haslam This September during Oracle OpenWorld 2013 the weather in San Francisco, as you see can from the photo, was exceptionally sunny. The dramatic final few days of the Americas Cup sailing competition, being held every day in the bay, coincided with the conference and meant that there was almost a holiday feel to the whole event. Here's my annual round-up of what I think was most interesting at OpenWorld 2013 for Fusion Middleware architects and administrators; I hope you find it useful and if you think I've missed something please add a comment! WebLogic and Cloud Application Foundation (CAF) The big WebLogic release of the year has already happened a few months ago with 12.1.2 so I won't duplicate that here. Will Lyons discussed the WebLogic and Coherence roadmap which essentially is that 12.1.3 will probably be released to coincide with SOA 12c next year and that 12.1.4, the next feature-rich WebLogic release, is more likely to be in 2015. This latter release will probably include full Java EE 7 support, have enhancements for multi-tenancy and further auto-scaling features to support increased density (i.e. more WebLogic usage for the same amount of hardware). There's a new Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder (OVAB) out already and an Oracle Traffic Director (OTD) 12c release round the corner too. Also of relevance to administrators is that Oracle has increased the support lifetime for Fusion Middleware 11g (e.g. WebLogic 10.3.6) so that Premier Support will now run to the end of 2018 and Extended Support until 2021 - this should remove any Oracle-driven pressure to upgrade at least. Java Mission Control Java Mission Control (JMC) is the HotSpot Java 7 version of JRockit 6 Mission Control, a very nice performance monitoring tool from Oracle's BEA acquisition. Flight Recorder is a feature built into the JVM which records diagnostic events into, typically, a circular buffer which can then be used for historical analysis, particularly in the case of a JVM crash or hang. It's been available separately for WebLogic only for perhaps a year now but, more significantly, it now includes JVM events and was bundled in with JDK7 Update 40 a few weeks ago. I attended a couple of interesting Java One sessions on JMC/Flight Recorder and have to say it's looking really good - it has all the previous JRMC features except for memory leak detector, plus some enhancements around operative sets and ECID filtering I think. Marcus also showed how you could add your own events into flight recorder by building your own event class - they are then available for graphing alongside all the other events in JMC. This uses a currently an unsupported/undocumented API, but it's also the same one that WebLogic uses for WLDF events so I imagine it is stable. I'm not sure quite whether this would be useful to custom applications, as opposed to infrastructure services or ISV packaged applications, but it was a very nice demonstration. I've been testing JMC / FR enabling on several environments recently and my confidence is growing - it feels robust and I think could very soon be part of my standard builds. Read the full article here. WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: OOW,Simon Haslam,Oracle OpenWorld,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• SQLAuthority News – Follow up on – Replace a Column Name in Multiple Stored Procedure all together

  - by pinaldave

  Last month I had a fantastic time with lots of puzzles and brain teasers, the amount of participation which I have received on the blog is indeed inspiring to write more. One of the blog post was about how to replace a column name in all the stored procedures. The article had very interesting conversation as a follow up. Please read the original article Replace a Column Name in Multiple Stored Procedure all together before reading this blog further as they are connected. Let us start few of the interesting comments. SQL Server Expert Imran Mohammed had a wonderful first and excellent note. I suggest all of you to read it. Imran stresses on the Data Modelling and Logical as well as Physical Design. Developers must create a logical design and get approval on naming convention, data types, references, constraints, indexes etc. He further suggested that one should not cut steps but must follow all the industry standards and guidelines. Here extended my blog post with following note – “Extending Pinal’s answer, what you can do is go to database properties, all tasks, scripts objects, in scripting wizard select all the stored procedure for which you want to change column name, export the query to a new window and then do find and replace, all in once window and execute the script. But make sure you check what you are replacing, sometimes column names are also used in table names, for ex:Table Name: Product and Column Name: ProductId, ProductName”. Thanks Imran Great Points!  Gatej Alexandru suggested that it is not good idea to DROP or CREATE but rather use ALTER as quite possible there may be permissions issue as well. Very good point let me see if I can write blog post over it. Vinay Kumar and SQLStudent144 have proposed another method to achieve the same. I am combining their solution and writing them here. Step 1. Press Ctrl+T or change “Result to Text” mode. Step 2. Execute below commands.SELECT 'EXEC sp_helptext [' + referencing_schema_name + '.' + referencing_entity_name + ']' FROM sys.dm_sql_referencing_entities('schema.objectname','OBJECT') Where schema.objectname is the object or table you are searching for. Step 3. Now copy the result and paste in new window. Again Press Ctrl+T or change “Result to Text” mode. Step 4. Copy the result and paste in new window. Execute the query. Step 5. Copy the result and paste in new window. Step 6. Now find your searching text in the script, make necessary changes and execute this script. Do not forget to remove the code which is generated in resultset which are not relevant to the T-SQL Script. Digitqr suggest we can do this for other objects besides Stored Procedure as well. Iosif suggests to use tool SQL Search from RedGate. I guess this sums it well. We have an alternative perspective to our original issue of replacing the column name in multiple stored procedure. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Integrate Your Data with Skyvia – Cloud ETL Solution

  - by Pinal Dave

  In our days data integration often becomes a key aspect of business success. For business analysts it’s very important to get integrated data from various sources, such as relational databases, cloud CRMs, etc. to make correct and successful decisions. There are various data integration solutions on market, and today I will tell about one of them – Skyvia. Skyvia is a cloud data integration service, which allows integrating data in cloud CRMs and different relational databases. It is a completely online solution and does not require anything except for a browser. Skyvia provides powerful etl tools for data import, export, replication, and synchronization for SQL Server and other databases and cloud CRMs. You can use Skyvia data import tools to load data from various sources to SQL Server (and SQL Azure). Skyvia supports such cloud CRMs as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics CRM and such databases as MySQL and PostgreSQL. You even can migrate data from SQL Server to SQL Server, or from SQL Server to other databases and cloud CRMs. Additionally Skyvia supports import of CSV files, either uploaded manually or stored on cloud file storage services, such as Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, or FTP servers. When data import is not enough, Skyvia offers bidirectional data synchronization. With this tool, you can synchronize SQL Server data with other databases and cloud CRMs. After performing the first synchronization, Skyvia tracks data changes in the synchronized data storages. In SQL Server databases (and other relational databases) it creates additional tracking tables and triggers. This allows synchronizing only the changed data. Skyvia also maps records by their primary key values to each other, so it does not require different sources to have the same primary key structure. It still can match the corresponding records without having to add any additional columns or changing data structure. The only requirement for synchronization is that primary keys must be autogenerated. With Skyvia it’s not necessary for data to have the same structure in integrated data storages. Skyvia supports powerful mapping mechanisms that allow synchronizing data with completely different structure. It provides support for complex mathematical and string expressions when mapping data, using lookups, etc. You may use data splitting – loading data from a single CSV file or source table to multiple related target tables. Or you may load data from several source CSV files or tables to several related target tables. In each case Skyvia preserves data relations. It builds corresponding relations between the target data automatically. When you often work with cloud CRM data, native CRM data reporting and analysis tools may be not enough for you. And there is a vast set of professional data analysis and reporting tools available for SQL Server. With Skyvia you can quickly copy your cloud CRM data to an SQL Server database and apply corresponding SQL Server tools to the data. In such case you can use Skyvia data replication tools. It allows you to quickly copy cloud CRM data to SQL Server or other databases without customizing any mapping. You need just to specify columns to copy data from. Target database tables will be created automatically. Skyvia offers powerful filtering settings to replicate only the records you need. Skyvia also provides capability to export data from SQL Server (including SQL Azure) and other databases and cloud CRMs to CSV files. These files can be either downloadable manually or loaded to cloud file storages or FTP server. You can use export, for example, to backup SQL Azure data to Dropbox. Any data integration operation can be scheduled for automatic execution. Thus, you can automate your SQL Azure data backup or data synchronization – just configure it once, then schedule it, and benefit from automatic data integration with Skyvia. Currently registration and using Skyvia is completely free, so you can try it yourself and find out whether its data migration and integration tools suits for you. Visit this link to register on Skyvia: https://app.skyvia.com/register Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Cloud Computing

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• Exploring packages in code

  In my previous post Searching for tasks with code you can see how to explore the control flow side of packages, drilling down through containers, task, and event handlers, but it didn’t cover the data flow. I recently saw a post on the MSDN forum asking how to edit an existing package programmatically, and the sticking point was how to find the the data flow and the components inside. This post builds on some of the previous code and shows how you can explore all objects inside a package. I took the sample Task Search application I’d written previously, and came up with a totally pointless little console application that just walks through the package and writes out the basic type and name of every object it finds, starting with the package itself e.g. Package – MyPackage . The sample package we used last time showed nested objects as well an event handler; a OnPreExecute event tucked away on the task SQL In FEL. The output of this sample tool would look like this: PackageObjects v1.0.0.0 (1.0.0.26627) Copyright (C) 2009 Konesans Ltd Processing File - Z:\Users\Darren Green\Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\SSISTestProject\EventsAndContainersWithExe cSQLForSearch.dtsx Package - EventsAndContainersWithExecSQLForSearch For Loop - FOR Counter Loop Task - SQL In Counter Loop Sequence Container - SEQ For Each Loop Wrapper For Each Loop - FEL Simple Loop Task - SQL In FEL Task - SQL On Pre Execute for FEL SQL Task Sequence Container - SEQ Top Level Sequence Container - SEQ Nested Lvl 1 Sequence Container - SEQ Nested Lvl 2 Task - SQL In Nested Lvl 2 Task - SQL In Nested Lvl 1 #1 Task - SQL In Nested Lvl 1 #2 Connection Manager – LocalHost The code is very similar to what we had previously, but there are a couple of extra bits to deal with connections and to look more closely at a task and see if it is a Data Flow task. For connections your just examine the package's Connections collection as shown in the abridged snippets below. First you can see the call to the ProcessConnections method, followed by the method itself. // Load the package file Application application = new Application(); using (Package package = application.LoadPackage(filename, null)) { // Write out the package name Console.WriteLine("Package - {0}", package.Name); ... More ... // Look and the connections ProcessConnections(package.Connections); } private static void ProcessConnections(Connections connections) { foreach (ConnectionManager connectionManager in connections) { Console.WriteLine("Connection Manager - {0}", connectionManager.Name); } } What we didn’t see in the sample output above was anything to do with the Data Flow, but rest assured the code now handles it too. The following snippet shows how each task is examined to see if it is a Data Flow task, and if so we can then loop through all of the components inside the data flow. private static void ProcessTaskHost(TaskHost taskHost) { if (taskHost == null) { return; } Console.WriteLine("Task - {0}", taskHost.Name); // Check if the task is a Data Flow task MainPipe pipeline = taskHost.InnerObject as MainPipe; if (pipeline != null) { ProcessPipeline(pipeline); } } private static void ProcessPipeline(MainPipe pipeline) { foreach (IDTSComponentMetaData90 componentMetadata in pipeline.ComponentMetaDataCollection) { Console.WriteLine("Pipeline Component - {0}", componentMetadata.Name); // If you wish to make changes to the component then you should really use the managed wrapper. // CManagedComponentWrapper wrapper = componentMetadata.Instantiate(); // wrapper.SetComponentProperty("PropertyName", "Value"); } } Hopefully you can see how we get a reference to the Data Flow task, and then use the ComponentMetaDataCollection to find out what components we have inside the pipeline. If you wanted to know more about the component you could look at the ObjectType or ComponentClassID properties. After that it gets a bit harder and you should get a reference to the wrapper object as the comment suggest and start using the properties, just like you would in the create packages samples, see our Code Development category for some for these examples. Download Sample code project PackageObjects.zip (5KB)

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