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• NDepend tool – Why every developer working with Visual Studio.NET must try it!

  - by hajan

  In the past two months, I have had a chance to test the capabilities and features of the amazing NDepend tool designed to help you make your .NET code better, more beautiful and achieve high code quality. In other words, this tool will definitely help you harmonize your code. I mean, you’ve probably heard about Chaos Theory. Experienced developers and architects are already advocates of the programming chaos that happens when working with complex project architecture, the matrix of relationships between objects which simply even if you are the one who have written all that code, you know how hard is to visualize everything what does the code do. When the application get more and more complex, you will start missing a lot of details in your code… NDepend will help you visualize all the details on a clever way that will help you make smart moves to make your code better. The NDepend tool supports many features, such as: Code Query Language – which will help you write custom rules and query your own code! Imagine, you want to find all your methods which have more than 100 lines of code :)! That’s something simple! However, I will dig much deeper in one of my next blogs which I’m going to dedicate to the NDepend’s CQL (Code Query Language) Architecture Visualization – You are an architect and want to visualize your application’s architecture? I’m thinking how many architects will be really surprised from their architectures since NDepend shows your whole architecture showing each piece of it. NDepend will show you how your code is structured. It shows the architecture in graphs, but if you have very complex architecture, you can see it in Dependency Matrix which is more suited to display large architecture Code Metrics – Using NDepend’s panel, you can see the code base according to Code Metrics. You can do some additional filtering, like selecting the top code elements ordered by their current code metric value. You can use the CQL language for this purpose too. Smart Search – NDepend has great searching ability, which is again based on the CQL (Code Query Language). However, you have some options to search using dropdown lists and text boxes and it will generate the appropriate CQL code on fly. Moreover, you can modify the CQL code if you want it to fit some more advanced searching tasks. Compare Builds and Code Difference – NDepend will also help you compare previous versions of your code with the current one at one of the most clever ways I’ve seen till now. Create Custom Rules – using CQL you can create custom rules and let NDepend warn you on each build if you break a rule Reporting – NDepend can automatically generate reports with detailed stats, graph representation, dependency matrixes and some additional advanced reporting features that will simply explain you everything related to your application’s code, architecture and what you’ve done. And that’s not all. As I’ve seen, there are many other features that NDepend supports. I will dig more in the upcoming days and will blog more about it. The team who built the NDepend have also created good documentation, which you can find on the NDepend website. On their website, you can also find some good videos that will help you get started quite fast. It’s easy to install and what is very important it is fully integrated with Visual Studio. To get you started, you can watch the following Getting Started Online Demo and Tutorial with explanations and screenshots. If you are interested to know more about how to use the features of this tool, either visit their website or wait for my next blogs where I will show some real examples of using the tool and how it helps make your code better. And the last thing for this blog, I would like to copy one sentence from the NDepend’s home page which says: ‘Hence the software design becomes concrete, code reviews are effective, large refactoring are easy and evolution is mastered.’ Website: www.ndepend.com Getting Started: http://www.ndepend.com/GettingStarted.aspx Features: http://www.ndepend.com/Features.aspx Download: http://www.ndepend.com/NDependDownload.aspx Hope you like it! Please do let me know your feedback by providing comments to my blog post. Kind Regards, Hajan

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• Parallelism in .NET – Part 20, Using Task with Existing APIs

  - by Reed

  Although the Task class provides a huge amount of flexibility for handling asynchronous actions, the .NET Framework still contains a large number of APIs that are based on the previous asynchronous programming model.  While Task and Task<T> provide a much nicer syntax as well as extending the flexibility, allowing features such as continuations based on multiple tasks, the existing APIs don’t directly support this workflow. There is a method in the TaskFactory class which can be used to adapt the existing APIs to the new Task class: TaskFactory.FromAsync.  This method provides a way to convert from the BeginOperation/EndOperation method pair syntax common through .NET Framework directly to a Task<T> containing the results of the operation in the task’s Result parameter. While this method does exist, it unfortunately comes at a cost – the method overloads are far from simple to decipher, and the resulting code is not always as easily understood as newer code based directly on the Task class.  For example, a single call to handle WebRequest.BeginGetResponse/EndGetReponse, one of the easiest “pairs” of methods to use, looks like the following: var task = Task.Factory.FromAsync<WebResponse>( request.BeginGetResponse, request.EndGetResponse, null); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The compiler is unfortunately unable to infer the correct type, and, as a result, the WebReponse must be explicitly mentioned in the method call.  As a result, I typically recommend wrapping this into an extension method to ease use.  For example, I would place the above in an extension method like: public static class WebRequestExtensions { public static Task<WebResponse> GetReponseAsync(this WebRequest request) { return Task.Factory.FromAsync<WebResponse>( request.BeginGetResponse, request.EndGetResponse, null); } } This dramatically simplifies usage.  For example, if we wanted to asynchronously check to see if this blog supported XHTML 1.0, and report that in a text box to the user, we could do: var webRequest = WebRequest.Create("http://www.reedcopsey.com"); webRequest.GetReponseAsync().ContinueWith(t => { using (var sr = new StreamReader(t.Result.GetResponseStream())) { string str = sr.ReadLine();; this.textBox1.Text = string.Format("Page at {0} supports XHTML 1.0: {1}", t.Result.ResponseUri, str.Contains("XHTML 1.0")); } }, TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext());   By using a continuation with a TaskScheduler based on the current synchronization context, we can keep this request asynchronous, check based on the first line of the response string, and report the results back on our UI directly.

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• Automatic Properties, Collection Initializers, and Implicit Line Continuation support with VB 2010

  - by ScottGu

  [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] This is the eighteenth in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release. A few days ago I blogged about two new language features coming with C# 4.0: optional parameters and named arguments.  Today I’m going to post about a few of my favorite new features being added to VB with VS 2010: Auto-Implemented Properties, Collection Initializers, and Implicit Line Continuation support. Auto-Implemented Properties Prior to VB 2010, implementing properties within a class using VB required you to explicitly declare the property as well as implement a backing field variable to store its value.  For example, the code below demonstrates how to implement a “Person” class using VB 2008 that exposes two public properties - “Name” and “Age”:   While explicitly declaring properties like above provides maximum flexibility, I’ve always found writing this type of boiler-plate get/set code tedious when you are simply storing/retrieving the value from a field.  You can use VS code snippets to help automate the generation of it – but it still generates a lot of code that feels redundant.  C# 2008 introduced a cool new feature called automatic properties that helps cut down the code quite a bit for the common case where properties are simply backed by a field.  VB 2010 also now supports this same feature.  Using the auto-implemented properties feature of VB 2010 we can now implement our Person class using just the code below: When you declare an auto-implemented property, the VB compiler automatically creates a private field to store the property value as well as generates the associated Get/Set methods for you.  As you can see above – the code is much more concise and easier to read. The syntax supports optionally initializing the properties with default values as well if you want to: You can learn more about VB 2010’s automatic property support from this MSDN page. Collection Initializers VB 2010 also now supports using collection initializers to easily create a collection and populate it with an initial set of values.  You identify a collection initializer by declaring a collection variable and then use the From keyword followed by braces { } that contain the list of initial values to add to the collection.  Below is a code example where I am using the new collection initializer feature to populate a “Friends” list of Person objects with two people, and then bind it to a GridView control to display on a page: You can learn more about VB 2010’s collection initializer support from this MSDN page. Implicit Line Continuation Support Traditionally, when a statement in VB has been split up across multiple lines, you had to use a line-continuation underscore character (_) to indicate that the statement wasn’t complete.  For example, with VB 2008 the below LINQ query needs to append a “_” at the end of each line to indicate that the query is not complete yet: The VB 2010 compiler and code editor now adds support for what is called “implicit line continuation support” – which means that it is smarter about auto-detecting line continuation scenarios, and as a result no longer needs you to explicitly indicate that the statement continues in many, many scenarios.  This means that with VB 2010 we can now write the above code with no “_” at all: The implicit line continuation feature also works well when editing XML Literals within VB (which is pretty cool). You can learn more about VB 2010’s Implicit Line Continuation support and many of the scenarios it supports from this MSDN page (scroll down to the “Implicit Line Continuation” section to find details). Summary The above three VB language features are but a few of the new language and code editor features coming with VB 2010.  Visit this site to learn more about some of the other VB language features coming with the release.  Also subscribe to the VB team’s blog to learn more and stay up-to-date with the posts they the team regularly publishes. Hope this helps, Scott

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• List of blogs - year 2010

  - by hajan

  This is the last day of year 2010 and I would like to add links to all blogs I have posted in this year. First, I would like to mention that I started blogging in ASP.NET Community in May / June 2010 and have really enjoyed writing for my favorite technologies, such as: ASP.NET, jQuery/JavaScript, C#, LINQ, Web Services etc. I also had great feedback either through comments on my blogs or in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn where I met many new experts just as a result of my blog posts. Thanks to the interesting topics I have in my blog, I became DZone MVB. Here is the list of blogs I made in 2010 in my ASP.NET Community Weblog: (newest to oldest) Great library of ASP.NET videos – Pluralsight! NDepend – Code Query Language (CQL) NDepend tool – Why every developer working with Visual Studio.NET must try it! jQuery Templates in ASP.NET - Blogs Series jQuery Templates - XHTML Validation jQuery Templates with ASP.NET MVC jQuery Templates - {Supported Tags} jQuery Templates – tmpl(), template() and tmplItem() Introduction to jQuery Templates ViewBag dynamic in ASP.NET MVC 3 - RC 2 Today I had a presentation on "Deep Dive into jQuery Templates in ASP.NET" jQuery Data Linking in ASP.NET How do you prefer getting bundles of technologies?? Case-insensitive XPath query search on XML Document in ASP.NET jQuery UI Accordion in ASP.NET MVC - feed with data from database (Part 3) jQuery UI Accordion in ASP.NET WebForms - feed with data from database (Part 2) jQuery UI Accordion in ASP.NET – Client side implementation (Part 1) Using Images embedded in Project’s Assembly Macedonian Code Camp 2010 event has finished successfully Tips and Tricks: Deferred execution using LINQ Using System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch class to measure the elapsed time Speaking at Macedonian Code Camp 2010 URL Routing in ASP.NET 4.0 Web Forms Conflicts between ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanels & jQuery functions Integration of jQuery DatePicker in ASP.NET Website – Localization (part 3) Why not to use HttpResponse.Close and HttpResponse.End Calculate Business Days using LINQ Get Distinct values of an Array using LINQ Using CodeRun browser-based IDE to create ASP.NET Web Applications Using params keyword – Methods with variable number of parameters Working with Code Snippets in VS.NET  Working with System.IO.Path static class Calculating GridView total using JavaScript/JQuery The new SortedSet<T> Collection in .NET 4.0 JavaScriptSerializer – Dictionary to JSON Serialization and Deserialization Integration of jQuery DatePicker in ASP.NET Website – JS Validation Script (part 2) Integration of jQuery DatePicker in ASP.NET Website (part 1) Transferring large data when using Web Services Forums dedicated to WebMatrix Microsoft WebMatrix – Short overview & installation Working with embedded resources in Project's assembly Debugging ASP.NET Web Services Save and Display YouTube Videos on ASP.NET Website Hello ASP.NET World... In addition, I would like to mention that I have big list of blog posts in CodeASP.NET Community (total 60 blogs) and the local MKDOT.NET Community (total 61 blogs). You may find most of my weblogs.asp.net/hajan blogs posted there too, but there you can find many others. In my blog on MKDOT.NET Community you can find most of my ASP.NET Weblog posts translated in Macedonian language, some of them posted in English and some other blogs that were posted only there. By reading my blogs, I hope you have learnt something new or at least have confirmed your knowledge. And also, if you haven't, I encourage you to start blogging and share your Microsoft Tech. thoughts with all of us... Sharing and spreading knowledge is definitely one of the noblest things which we can do in our life. "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime" HAPPY NEW 2011 YEAR!!! Best Regards, Hajan

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• Windows Presentation Foundation 4.5 Cookbook Review

  - by Ricardo Peres

  As promised, here’s my review of Windows Presentation Foundation 4.5 Cookbook, that Packt Publishing kindly made available to me. It is an introductory book, targeted at WPF newcomers or users with few experience, following the typical recipes or cookbook style. Like all Packt Publishing books on development, each recipe comes with sample code that is self-sufficient for understanding the concepts it tries to illustrate. It starts on chapter 1 by introducing the most important concepts, the XAML language itself, what can be declared in XAML and how to do it, what are dependency and attached properties as well as markup extensions and events, which should give readers a most required introduction to how WPF works and how to do basic stuff. It moves on to resources on chapter 2, which also makes since, since it’s such an important concept in WPF. Next, chapter 3, come the panels used for laying controls on the screen, all of the out of the box panels are described with typical use cases. Controls come next in chapter 4; the difference between elements and controls is introduced, as well as content controls, headered controls and items controls, and all standard controls are introduced. The book shows how to change the way they look by using templates. The next chapter, 5, talks about top level windows and the WPF application object: how to access startup arguments, how to set the main window, using standard dialogs and there’s even a sample on how to have a irregularly-shaped window. This is one of the most important concepts in WPF: data binding, which is the theme for the following chapter, 6. All common scenarios are introduced, the binding modes, directions, triggers, etc. It talks about the INotifyPropertyChanged interface and how to use it for notifying data binding subscribers of changes in data sources. Data templates and selectors are also covered, as are value converters and data triggers. Examples include master-detail and sorting, grouping and filtering collections and binding trees and grids. Last it covers validation rules and error templates. Chapter 7 talks about the current trend in WPF development, the Model View View-Model (MVVM) framework. This is a well known pattern for connecting things interface to actions, and it is explained competently. A typical implementation is presented which also presents the command pattern used throughout WPF. A complete application using MVVM is presented from start to finish, including typical features such as undo. Style and layout is covered on chapter 8. Why/how to use styles, applying them automatically,  using the many types of triggers to change styles automatically, using Expression Blend behaviors and templates are all covered. Next chapter, 9, is about graphics and animations programming. It explains how to create shapes, transform common UI elements, apply special effects and perform simple animations. The following chapter, 10, is about creating custom controls, either by deriving from UserControl or from an existing control or framework element class, applying custom templates for changing the way the control looks. One useful example is a custom layout panel that arranges its children along a circumference. The final chapter, 11, is about multi-threading programming and how one can integrate it with WPF. Includes how to invoke methods and properties on WPF classes from threads other than the main UI, using background tasks and timers and even using the new C# 5.0 asynchronous operations. It’s an interesting book, like I said, mostly for newcomers. It provides a competent introduction to WPF, with examples that cover the most common scenarios and also give directions to more complex ones. I recommend it to everyone wishing to learn WPF.

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• JavaScript: this

  - by bdukes

  JavaScript is a language steeped in juxtaposition.  It was made to “look like Java,” yet is dynamic and classless.  From this origin, we get the new operator and the this keyword.  You are probably used to this referring to the current instance of a class, so what could it mean in a language without classes? In JavaScript, this refers to the object off of which a function is referenced when it is invoked (unless it is invoked via call or apply). What this means is that this is not bound to your function, and can change depending on how your function is invoked. It also means that this changes when declaring a function inside another function (i.e. each function has its own this), such as when writing a callback. Let's see some of this in action: var obj = { count: 0, increment: function () { this.count += 1; }, logAfterTimeout = function () { setTimeout(function () { console.log(this.count); }, 1); } }; obj.increment(); console.log(obj.count); // 1 var increment = obj.increment; window.count = 'global count value: '; increment(); console.log(obj.count); // 1 console.log(window.count); // global count value: 1 var newObj = {count:50}; increment.call(newObj); console.log(newObj.count); // 51 obj.logAfterTimeout();// global count value: 1 obj.logAfterTimeout = function () { var proxiedFunction = $.proxy(function () { console.log(this.count); }, this); setTimeout(proxiedFunction, 1); }; obj.logAfterTimeout(); // 1 obj.logAfterTimeout = function () { var that = this; setTimeout(function () { console.log(that.count); }, 1); }; obj.logAfterTimeout(); // 1 The last couple of examples here demonstrate some methods for making sure you get the values you expect.  The first time logAfterTimeout is redefined, we use jQuery.proxy to create a new function which has its this permanently set to the passed in value (in this case, the current this).  The second time logAfterTimeout is redefined, we save the value of this in a variable (named that in this case, also often named self) and use the new variable in place of this. Now, all of this is to clarify what’s going on when you use this.  However, it’s pretty easy to avoid using this altogether in your code (especially in the way I’ve demonstrated above).  Instead of using this.count all over the place, it would have been much easier if I’d made count a variable instead of a property, and then I wouldn’t have to use this to refer to it.  var obj = (function () { var count = 0; return { increment: function () { count += 1; }, logAfterTimeout = function () { setTimeout(function () { console.log(count); }, 1); }, getCount: function () { return count; } }; }()); If you’re writing your code in this way, the main place you’ll run into issues with this is when handling DOM events (where this is the element on which the event occurred).  In that case, just be careful when using a callback within that event handler, that you’re not expecting this to still refer to the element (and use proxy or that/self if you need to refer to it). Finally, as demonstrated in the example, you can use call or apply on a function to set its this value.  This isn’t often needed, but you may also want to know that you can use apply to pass in an array of arguments to a function (e.g. console.log.apply(console, [1, 2, 3, 4])).

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• UPK 3.6.1 (is Coming)

  - by marc.santosusso

  In anticipation of the release of UPK 3.6.1, I'd like to briefly describe some of the features that will be available in this new version. Topic Editor in Tabs Topic Editors now open in tabs instead of separate Developer windows. This offers several improvements: First, the bubble editor can be docked and resized in the same way as other editor panes. That's right, you can resize the bubble editor! The second enhancement that this changes brings is an improved undo and redo which allows each action to be undone and redone in the Topic Editor. New Sound Editor The topic and web page editors include a new sound editor with all the bells and whistles necessary to record, edit, import, and export, sound. Sound can be captured during topic recording--which is great for a Subject Matter Expert (SME) to narrate what they're recording--or after the topic has been recorded. Sound can also be added to web pages and played on the concept panes of modules, sections and topics. Turn off bubbles in Topics Authors may opt to hide bubbles either per frame or for an entire topic. When you want to draw a user's attention to the content on the screen instead of the bubble. This feature works extremely well in conjunction with the new sound capabilities. For instance, consider recording conceptual information with narration and no bubbles. Presentation Output UPK content can be published as a Presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint format. Publishing for Presentation will create a presentation for each topic published. The presentation template can be customized Using the same methods offered for the UPK document outputs, allowing your UPK-generated presentations to match your corporate branding. Autosave and Recovery The Developer will automatically save your work as often as you would like. This affords authors the ability to recover these automatically saved documents if their system or UPK were to close unexpectedly. The Developer defaults to save open documents every ten minutes. Package Editor Enhancement Files in packages will now open in the associated application when double-clicked. Authors can also choose to "Open with..." from the context menu (AKA right click menu.) See It! Window See It! mode may now be launched in a non-fullscreen window. This is available from the kp.html file in any Player package. This version of See It! mode offers on-screen navigation controls including previous frame, next frame, pause etc. Firefox Enhancments The UPK Player will now offer both Do It! mode and sound playback when viewed using Firefox web browser. Player Support for Safari The UPK Player is now fully supported on the Safari web browser for both Mac OS and Windows platforms. Keep document checked out Authors may choose to keep a document checked out when performing a check in. This allows an author to have a new version created on the server and continue editing. Close button on individual tabs A close button has been added to the tabs making it easier to close a specific tab. Outline Editor Enhancements Authors will have the option to prevent concepts from immediately displaying in the Developer when an outline item is selected. This makes it faster to move around in the outline editor. Tell us which feature you're most excited to use in the comments.

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• Installer Reboots at "Detecting hardware" (disks and other hardware) on all recent Server Installs

  - by Ryan Rosario

  I have a very frustrating problem with my PC. I cannot install any recent version of Ubuntu Server (or even Desktop) since 9.04 even using the text-based installer. I boot from a USB stick created by Unetbootin (I also tried other methods such as startup disk creator with no difference). On the Server installer, it gets to "Detecting Hardware" (the second one about disks and all other hardware, not network hardware) and then either hangs at 0% (waited 24 hours), or reboots after a minute or two. My system (late 2007): ASUS P5NSLI motherboard Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4Ghz 2 x 1GB Corsair 667MHz RAM nVidia GeForce 6600 I have unplugged everything (including the only hard disk, CD-ROMs and floppy). I have only one stick of RAM (tried each one to no avail) and am booting the installer from a USB stick (booting from CD-ROM yields the same problem). I also tried several of the boot options (nomodeset, nousb, acpi=off, noapic, i915.modeset=1/0, xforcevesa) in all combinations) to no avail. The only active parts of my system are the video card, mouse, keyboard and USB stick. I have also updated the BIOS to the most recent version. (FWIW, on the Desktop installer, I get a black screen after hitting the Install option.) Even after removing "quiet" I am unable to see what kernel panic is occurring (or not occurring) to cause the install to crash. I am only able to save the debug logs via a simple webserver in the installer. After the last line (I repeatedly refreshed), the server stops responding and the installer hangs or reboots: Jan 2 01:04:03 main-menu[302]: INFO: Menu item 'disk-detect' selected Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.154372] sata_nv 0000:00:0e.0: version 3.5 Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.154409] sata_nv 0000:00:0e.0: Using SWNCQ mode Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.154531] sata_nv 0000:00:0e.0: setting latency timer to 64 Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.164442] scsi0 : sata_nv Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.167610] scsi1 : sata_nv Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.167762] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x9f0 ctl 0xbf0 bmdma 0xd400 irq 10 Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.167774] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x970 ctl 0xb70 bmdma 0xd408 irq 10 Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.167948] sata_nv 0000:00:0f.0: Using SWNCQ mode Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.168071] sata_nv 0000:00:0f.0: setting latency timer to 64 Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.171931] scsi2 : sata_nv Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.173793] scsi3 : sata_nv Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.173943] ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x9e0 ctl 0xbe0 bmdma 0xe800 irq 11 Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.173954] ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x960 ctl 0xb60 bmdma 0xe808 irq 11 Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.174061] pata_amd 0000:00:0d.0: version 0.4.1 Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.174160] pata_amd 0000:00:0d.0: setting latency timer to 64 Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.177045] scsi4 : pata_amd Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.178628] scsi5 : pata_amd Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.178801] ata5: PATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x1f0 ctl 0x3f6 bmdma 0xf000 irq 14 Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.178811] ata6: PATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x170 ctl 0x376 bmdma 0xf008 irq 15 Jan 2 01:04:04 net/hw-detect.hotplug: Detected hotpluggable network interface eth0 Jan 2 01:04:04 net/hw-detect.hotplug: Detected hotpluggable network interface lo Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.485062] ata3: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.633094] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300) Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.641647] ata1.00: ATA-8: ST31000528AS, CC38, max UDMA/133 Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.641658] ata1.00: 1953525168 sectors, multi 1: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32) Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.657614] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.657969] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA ST31000528AS CC38 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.658482] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0 Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.658588] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 1953525168 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/931 GiB) Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.658812] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.658823] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.658918] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.675630] sda: sda1 sda2 Jan 2 01:04:04 kernel: [ 309.676440] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk Jan 2 01:04:05 kernel: [ 309.969102] ata2: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) Jan 2 01:04:05 kernel: [ 310.281137] ata4: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) Anybody have any additional ideas I could try? I am getting ready to just toss the motherboard.

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• Inequality joins, Asynchronous transformations and Lookups : SSIS

  - by jamiet

  It is pretty much accepted by SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) developers that synchronous transformations are generally quicker than asynchronous transformations (for a description of synchronous and asynchronous transformations go read Asynchronous and synchronous data flow components). Notice I said “generally” and not “always”; there are circumstances where using asynchronous transformations can be beneficial and in this blog post I’ll demonstrate such a scenario, one that is pretty common when building data warehouses. Imagine I have a [Customer] dimension table that manages information about all of my customers as a slowly-changing dimension. If that is a type 2 slowly changing dimension then you will likely have multiple rows per customer in that table. Furthermore you might also have datetime fields that indicate the effective time period of each member record. Here is such a table that contains data for four dimension members {Terry, Max, Henry, Horace}: Notice that we have multiple records per customer and that the [SCDStartDate] of a record is equivalent to the [SCDEndDate] of the record that preceded it (if there was one). (Note that I am on record as saying I am not a fan of this technique of storing an [SCDEndDate] but for the purposes of clarity I have included it here.) Anyway, the idea here is that we will have some incoming data containing [CustomerName] & [EffectiveDate] and we need to use those values to lookup [Customer].[CustomerId]. The logic will be: Lookup a [CustomerId] WHERE [CustomerName]=[CustomerName] AND [SCDStartDate] <= [EffectiveDate] AND [EffectiveDate] <= [SCDEndDate] The conventional approach to this would be to use a full cached lookup but that isn’t an option here because we are using inequality conditions. The obvious next step then is to use a non-cached lookup which enables us to change the SQL statement to use inequality operators: Let’s take a look at the dataflow: Notice these are all synchronous components. This approach works just fine however it does have the limitation that it has to issue a SQL statement against your lookup set for every row thus we can expect the execution time of our dataflow to increase linearly in line with the number of rows in our dataflow; that’s not good. OK, that’s the obvious method. Let’s now look at a different way of achieving this using an asynchronous Merge Join transform coupled with a Conditional Split. I’ve shown it post-execution so that I can include the row counts which help to illustrate what is going on here: Notice that there are more rows output from our Merge Join component than on the input. That is because we are joining on [CustomerName] and, as we know, we have multiple records per [CustomerName] in our lookup set. Notice also that there are two asynchronous components in here (the Sort and the Merge Join). I have embedded a video below that compares the execution times for each of these two methods. The video is just over 8minutes long. View on Vimeo  For those that can’t be bothered watching the video I’ll tell you the results here. The dataflow that used the Lookup transform took 36 seconds whereas the dataflow that used the Merge Join took less than two seconds. An illustration in case it is needed: Pretty conclusive proof that in some scenarios it may be quicker to use an asynchronous component than a synchronous one. Your mileage may of course vary. The scenario outlined here is analogous to performance tuning procedural SQL that uses cursors. It is common to eliminate cursors by converting them to set-based operations and that is effectively what we have done here. Our non-cached lookup is performing a discrete operation for every single row of data, exactly like a cursor does. By eliminating this cursor-in-disguise we have dramatically sped up our dataflow. I hope all of that proves useful. You can download the package that I demonstrated in the video from my SkyDrive at http://cid-550f681dad532637.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/BlogShare/20100514/20100514%20Lookups%20and%20Merge%20Joins.zip Comments are welcome as always. @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Error Handling Examples(C#)

  “The purpose of reviewing the Error Handling code is to assure that the application fails safely under all possible error conditions, expected and unexpected. No sensitive information is presented to the user when an error occurs.” (OWASP, 2011) No Error Handling The absence of error handling is still a form of error handling. Based on the code in Figure 1, if an error occurred and was not handled within either the ReadXml or BuildRequest methods the error would bubble up to the Search method. Since this method does not handle any acceptations the error will then bubble up the stack trace. If this continues and the error is not handled within the application then the environment in which the application is running will notify the user running the application that an error occurred based on what type of application. Figure 1: No Error Handling public DataSet Search(string searchTerm, int resultCount) { DataSet dt = new DataSet(); dt.ReadXml(BuildRequest(searchTerm, resultCount)); return dt; } Generic Error Handling One simple way to add error handling is to catch all errors by default. If you examine the code in Figure 2, you will see a try-catch block. On April 6th 2010 Louis Lazaris clearly describes a Try Catch statement by defining both the Try and Catch aspects of the statement. “The try portion is where you would put any code that might throw an error. In other words, all significant code should go in the try section. The catch section will also hold code, but that section is not vital to the running of the application. So, if you removed the try-catch statement altogether, the section of code inside the try part would still be the same, but all the code inside the catch would be removed.” (Lazaris, 2010) He also states that all errors that occur in the try section cause it to stops the execution of the try section and redirects all execution to the catch section. The catch section receives an object containing information about the error that occurred so that they system can gracefully handle the error properly. When errors occur they commonly log them in some form. This form could be an email, database entry, web service call, log file, or just an error massage displayed to the user.  Depending on the error sometimes applications can recover, while others force an application to close. Figure 2: Generic Error Handling public DataSet Search(string searchTerm, int resultCount) { DataSet dt = new DataSet(); try { dt.ReadXml(BuildRequest(searchTerm, resultCount)); } catch (Exception ex) { // Handle all Exceptions } return dt; } Error Specific Error Handling Like the Generic Error Handling, Error Specific error handling allows for the catching of specific known errors that may occur. For example wrapping a try catch statement around a soap web service call would allow the application to handle any error that was generated by the soap web service. Now, if the systems wanted to send a message to the web service provider every time a soap error occurred but did not want to notify them if any other type of error occurred like a network time out issue. This would be varying tedious to accomplish using the General Error Handling methodology. This brings us to the use case for using the Error Specific error handling methodology.  The Error Specific Error handling methodology allows for the TryCatch statement to catch various types of errors depending on the type of error that occurred. In Figure 3, the code attempts to handle DataException differently compared to how it potentially handles all other errors. This allows for specific error handling for each type of known error, and still allows for error handling of any unknown error that my occur during the execution of the TryCatch statement. Figure 5: Error Specific Error Handling public DataSet Search(string searchTerm, int resultCount) { DataSet dt = new DataSet(); try { dt.ReadXml(BuildRequest(searchTerm, resultCount)); } catch (TimeoutException ex) { // Handle Timeout TimeoutException Only } catch (Exception) { // Handle all Exceptions } return dt; }

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• FluentPath: a fluent wrapper around System.IO

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  .NET is now more than eight years old, and some of its APIs got old with more grace than others. System.IO in particular has always been a little awkward. It’s mostly static method calls (Path.*, Directory.*, etc.) and some stateful classes (DirectoryInfo, FileInfo). In these APIs, paths are plain strings. Since .NET v1, lots of good things happened to C#: lambda expressions, extension methods, optional parameters to name just a few. Outside of .NET, other interesting things happened as well. For example, you might have heard about this JavaScript library that had some success introducing a fluent API to handle the hierarchical structure of the HTML DOM. You know? jQuery. Knowing all that, every time I need to use the stuff in System.IO, I cringe. So I thought I’d just build a more modern wrapper around it. I used a fluent API based on an essentially immutable Path type and an enumeration of such path objects. To achieve the fluent style, a healthy dose of lambda expressions is being used to act on the objects. Without further ado, here’s an example of what you can do with the new API. In that example, I’m using a Media Center extension that wants all video files to be in their own folder. For that, I need a small tool that creates directories for each video file and moves the files in there. Here’s the code for it: Path.Get(args[0]) .Select(p => p.Extension == ".avi" || p.Extension == ".m4v" || p.Extension == ".wmv" || p.Extension == ".mp4" || p.Extension == ".dvr-ms" || p.Extension == ".mpg" || p.Extension == ".mkv") .CreateDirectory(p => p.Parent .Combine(p.FileNameWithoutExtension)) .Previous() .Move(p => p.Parent .Combine(p.FileNameWithoutExtension) .Combine(p.FileName)); This code creates a Path object pointing at the path pointed to by the first command line argument of my executable. It then selects all video files. After that, it creates directories that have the same names as each of the files, but without their extension. The result of that operation is the set of created directories. We can now get back to the previous set using the Previous method, and finally we can move each of the files in the set to the corresponding freshly created directory, whose name is the combination of the parent directory and the filename without extension. The new fluent path library covers a fair part of what’s in System.IO in a single, convenient API. Check it out, I hope you’ll enjoy it. Suggestions are more than welcome. For example, should I make this its own project on CodePlex or is this informal style just OK? Anything missing that you’d like to see? Is there a specific example you’d like to see expressed with the new API? Bugs? The code can be downloaded from here (this is under a new BSD license): http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bleroy/Samples/FluentPath.zip

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• Localization with ASP.NET MVC ModelMetadata

  - by kazimanzurrashid

  When using the DisplayFor/EditorFor there has been built-in support in ASP.NET MVC to show localized validation messages, but no support to show the associate label in localized text, unless you are using the .NET 4.0 with Mvc Future. Lets a say you are creating a create form for Product where you have support both English and German like the following. English German I have recently added few helpers for localization in the MvcExtensions, lets see how we can use it to localize the form. As mentioned in the past that I am not a big fan when it comes to decorate class with attributes which is the recommended way in ASP.NET MVC. Instead, we will use the fluent configuration (Similar to FluentNHibernate or EF CodeFirst) of MvcExtensions to configure our View Models. For example for the above we will using: public class ProductEditModelConfiguration : ModelMetadataConfiguration<ProductEditModel> { public ProductEditModelConfiguration() { Configure(model => model.Id).Hide(); Configure(model => model.Name).DisplayName(() => LocalizedTexts.Name) .Required(() => LocalizedTexts.NameCannotBeBlank) .MaximumLength(64, () => LocalizedTexts.NameCannotBeMoreThanSixtyFourCharacters); Configure(model => model.Category).DisplayName(() => LocalizedTexts.Category) .Required(() => LocalizedTexts.CategoryMustBeSelected) .AsDropDownList("categories", () => LocalizedTexts.SelectCategory); Configure(model => model.Supplier).DisplayName(() => LocalizedTexts.Supplier) .Required(() => LocalizedTexts.SupplierMustBeSelected) .AsListBox("suppliers"); Configure(model => model.Price).DisplayName(() => LocalizedTexts.Price) .FormatAsCurrency() .Required(() => LocalizedTexts.PriceCannotBeBlank) .Range(10.00m, 1000.00m, () => LocalizedTexts.PriceMustBeBetweenTenToThousand); } } As you can we are using Func<string> to set the localized text, this is just an overload with the regular string method. There are few more methods in the ModelMetadata which accepts this Func<string> where localization can applied like Description, Watermark, ShortDisplayName etc. The LocalizedTexts is just a regular resource, we have both English and German:   Now lets see the view markup: <%@ Page Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<Demo.Web.ProductEditModel>" %> <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="TitleContent" runat="server"> <%= LocalizedTexts.Create %> </asp:Content> <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server"> <h2><%= LocalizedTexts.Create %></h2> <%= Html.ValidationSummary(false, LocalizedTexts.CreateValidationSummary)%> <% Html.EnableClientValidation(); %> <% using (Html.BeginForm()) {%> <fieldset> <%= Html.EditorForModel() %> <p> <input type="submit" value="<%= LocalizedTexts.Create %>" /> </p> </fieldset> <% } %> <div> <%= Html.ActionLink(LocalizedTexts.BackToList, "Index")%> </div> </asp:Content> As we can see that we are using the same LocalizedTexts for the other parts of the view which is not included in the ModelMetadata like the Page title, button text etc. We are also using EditorForModel instead of EditorFor for individual field and both are supported. One of the added benefit of the fluent syntax based configuration is that we will get full compile type checking for our resource as we are not depending upon the string based resource name like the ASP.NET MVC. You will find the complete localized CRUD example in the MvcExtensions sample folder. That’s it for today.

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• The “Customer” Experience Revolution is Here

  - by Natalia Rachelson

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A guest post by Anthony Lye, SVP, Oracle Development The Experience Revolution is here, and we are going to explore and celebrate our new customer experience ventures and strategy in an extraordinary way. In true Oracle fashion, we are hosting an exceptional event, bringing together customer experience advocates, visionaries and practitioners to discover and define Oracle’s Customer Experience vision. The Experience Revolution is best described as today’s era of the empowered consumer. For those of us who work with customers on a daily basis, we know that the modern consumer demands fast, accurate, consistent information across all communication channels. And if they don’t like the services received can easily take to social channels to voice disapproval. For this reason, organizations today operate in an environment where traditional methods of differentiation are less effective and customer experience has become the primary driver of business value. Here’s some food for thought, according to the 2011 Customer Experience Impact (CEI) Report, a full 89 percent of consumers will switch brands for a better customer experience. In short, in today’s era of the empowered consumer, delivering excellent customer experiences is what will, and is, defining the next great brands. At The Experience Revolution, Oracle President Mark Hurd will detail the vision of where customer experience is going and how Oracle will help you get there. He will introduce for the first time Oracle Customer Experience, a cross stack suite of customer experience products that enable organizations to: Engage customers with a consistent, connected and personalized brand experience across all channels and devices Deliver exceptional cross-channel order fulfillment and customer service through web, call centers and social networks Connect and analyze data from all interactions to better personalize experiences and identify hidden opportunities The Experience Revolution will also include an interactive gallery of customer experience interactions, featuring videos, touch screens and near field communication technology that will guide each attendee through an individualized event experience. We hope you will join us for an incredible evening on June 25, from 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. at Gotham Hall in New York City. You can register for The Experience Revolution here. And if you haven’t already joined the conversation on Twitter, please do: #OracleCX, #ExperienceRevolution

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• ODI 11g – Insight to the SDK

  - by David Allan

  This post is a useful index into the ODI SDK that cross references the type names from the user interface with the SDK class and also the finder for how to get a handle on the object or objects. The volume of content in the SDK might seem a little ominous, there is a lot there, but there is a general pattern to the SDK that I will describe here. Also I will illustrate some basic CRUD operations so you can see how the SDK usage pattern works. The examples are written in groovy, you can simply run from the groovy console in ODI 11.1.1.6. Entry to the Platform   Object Finder SDK odiInstance odiInstance (groovy variable for console) OdiInstance Topology Objects Object Finder SDK Technology IOdiTechnologyFinder OdiTechnology Context IOdiContextFinder OdiContext Logical Schema IOdiLogicalSchemaFinder OdiLogicalSchema Data Server IOdiDataServerFinder OdiDataServer Physical Schema IOdiPhysicalSchemaFinder OdiPhysicalSchema Logical Schema to Physical Mapping IOdiContextualSchemaMappingFinder OdiContextualSchemaMapping Logical Agent IOdiLogicalAgentFinder OdiLogicalAgent Physical Agent IOdiPhysicalAgentFinder OdiPhysicalAgent Logical Agent to Physical Mapping IOdiContextualAgentMappingFinder OdiContextualAgentMapping Master Repository IOdiMasterRepositoryInfoFinder OdiMasterRepositoryInfo Work Repository IOdiWorkRepositoryInfoFinder OdiWorkRepositoryInfo Project Objects Object Finder SDK Project IOdiProjectFinder OdiProject Folder IOdiFolderFinder OdiFolder Interface IOdiInterfaceFinder OdiInterface Package IOdiPackageFinder OdiPackage Procedure IOdiUserProcedureFinder OdiUserProcedure User Function IOdiUserFunctionFinder OdiUserFunction Variable IOdiVariableFinder OdiVariable Sequence IOdiSequenceFinder OdiSequence KM IOdiKMFinder OdiKM Load Plans and Scenarios   Object Finder SDK Load Plan IOdiLoadPlanFinder OdiLoadPlan Load Plan and Scenario Folder IOdiScenarioFolderFinder OdiScenarioFolder Model Objects Object Finder SDK Model IOdiModelFinder OdiModel Sub Model IOdiSubModel OdiSubModel DataStore IOdiDataStoreFinder OdiDataStore Column IOdiColumnFinder OdiColumn Key IOdiKeyFinder OdiKey Condition IOdiConditionFinder OdiCondition Operator Objects   Object Finder SDK Session Folder IOdiSessionFolderFinder OdiSessionFolder Session IOdiSessionFinder OdiSession Schedule OdiSchedule How to Create an Object? Here is a simple example to create a project, it uses IOdiEntityManager.persist to persist the object. import oracle.odi.domain.project.OdiProject; import oracle.odi.core.persistence.transaction.support.DefaultTransactionDefinition; txnDef = new DefaultTransactionDefinition(); tm = odiInstance.getTransactionManager() txnStatus = tm.getTransaction(txnDef) project = new OdiProject("Project For Demo", "PROJECT_DEMO") odiInstance.getTransactionalEntityManager().persist(project) tm.commit(txnStatus) How to Update an Object? This update example uses the methods on the OdiProject object to change the project’s name that was created above, it is then persisted. import oracle.odi.domain.project.OdiProject; import oracle.odi.domain.project.finder.IOdiProjectFinder; import oracle.odi.core.persistence.transaction.support.DefaultTransactionDefinition; txnDef = new DefaultTransactionDefinition(); tm = odiInstance.getTransactionManager() txnStatus = tm.getTransaction(txnDef) prjFinder = (IOdiProjectFinder)odiInstance.getTransactionalEntityManager().getFinder(OdiProject.class); project = prjFinder.findByCode("PROJECT_DEMO"); project.setName("A Demo Project"); odiInstance.getTransactionalEntityManager().persist(project) tm.commit(txnStatus) How to Delete an Object? Here is a simple example to delete all of the sessions, it uses IOdiEntityManager.remove to delete the object. import oracle.odi.domain.runtime.session.finder.IOdiSessionFinder; import oracle.odi.domain.runtime.session.OdiSession; import oracle.odi.core.persistence.transaction.support.DefaultTransactionDefinition; txnDef = new DefaultTransactionDefinition(); tm = odiInstance.getTransactionManager() txnStatus = tm.getTransaction(txnDef) sessFinder = (IOdiSessionFinder)odiInstance.getTransactionalEntityManager().getFinder(OdiSession.class); sessc = sessFinder.findAll(); sessItr = sessc.iterator() while (sessItr.hasNext()) {   sess = (OdiSession) sessItr.next()   odiInstance.getTransactionalEntityManager().remove(sess) } tm.commit(txnStatus) This isn't an all encompassing summary of the SDK, but covers a lot of the content to give you a good handle on the objects and how they work. For details of how specific complex objects are created via the SDK, its best to look at postings such as the interface builder posting here. Have fun, happy coding!

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• Databases in Source Control

  - by Grant Fritchey

  I’ve been working as a database professional for quite a long time. But originally, I was a developer. And I loved being a developer. There was this constant feedback loop of a job well done, your code compiled and it ran. Every time this happened successfully, you’d check it into source control. These days you have to add another step; the code passed all the tests, unit, line, regression, qa, whatever, then into source control it goes. As a matter of fact, when I first made the jump from developer to DBA/database developer/database professional, source control was the one thing I couldn’t believe was missing from the DBA toolbox. Come to find out, source control was only the beginning of what was missing from your standard DBAs set of skills. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not disrespecting the DBA. They’re focused where they should be, on your production data. But there has to be a method for developing applications that include databases and the database side of that development and deployment process has long been lacking. This lack of development and deployment methodologies is a part of what has given rise to some of the wackier implementations of Object Relational Mapping tools, the NoSQL movement, and some of the other foul cursing that is directed towards databases, DBAs, and database development by application developers. Some of that is well earned. A lot isn’t. But it is a fact that database professionals, in general, do not have as sophisticated a model for managing development and deployment as application developers do. We could charge out and start trying to come up with our own standards and methods. I’m sure people have done exactly that. However, I’m lazy, and not terribly bright. Rather than try to invent a whole new process, I’m going to look to my developer roots and choose instead to emulate the developers. They’re sitting over there across the hall from me working with SCRUM/Agile/Waterfall/Object Driven/Feature Driven/Test Driven development processes that they’ve been polishing for years. What if I just started working on database development the same way they work on code development? Win! Ah, but now I have to have a mechanism for treating my database like application code. First, I need a method for getting it into source control. That’s where Red Gate’s SQL Source Control comes into the picture. SQL Source Control works within SQL Server Management Studio to connect your database objects up to the source control system of your choice. Right out of the box SQL Source Control can link to TFS, SVN or Vault. With a little work you can connect it to Git or just about any other source control system. With the ability to get my database into source control, a lot of possibilities for more direct integration with the application development teams open up.

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• MongoDB usage best practices

  - by andresv

  The project I'm working on uses MongoDB for some stuff so I'm creating some documents to help developers speedup the learning curve and also avoid mistakes and help them write clean & reliable code. This is my first version of it, so I'm pretty sure I will be adding more stuff to it, so stay tuned! C# Official driver notes The 10gen official MongoDB driver should always be referenced in projects by using NUGET. Do not manually download and reference assemblies in any project. C# driver quickstart guide: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Driver+Quickstart Reference links C# Language Center: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Language+Center MongoDB Server Documentation: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Home MongoDB Server Downloads: http://www.mongodb.org/downloads MongoDB client drivers download: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Drivers MongoDB Community content: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Community+Projects Tutorials Tutorial MongoDB con ASP.NET MVC - Ejemplo Práctico (Spanish):http://geeks.ms/blogs/gperez/archive/2011/12/02/tutorial-mongodb-con-asp-net-mvc-ejemplo-pr-225-ctico.aspx MongoDB and C#:http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/87757/MongoDB-and-C C# driver LINQ tutorial:http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Driver+LINQ+Tutorial C# driver reference: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Driver+Tutorial Safe Mode Connection The C# driver supports two connection modes: safe and unsafe. Safe connection mode (only applies to methods that modify data in a database like Inserts, Deletes and Updates. While the current driver defaults to unsafe mode (safeMode == false) it's recommended to always enable safe mode, and force unsafe mode on specific things we know aren't critical. When safe mode is enabled, the driver internal code calls the MongoDB "getLastError" function to ensure the last operation is completed before returning control the the caller. For more information on using safe mode and their implicancies on performance and data reliability see: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/getLastError+Command If safe mode is not enabled, all data modification calls to the database are executed asynchronously (fire & forget) without waiting for the result of the operation. This mode could be useful for creating / updating non-critical data like performance counters, usage logging and so on. It's important to know that not using safe mode implies that data loss can occur without any notification to the caller. As with any wait operation, enabling safe mode also implies dealing with timeouts. For more information about C# driver safe mode configuration see: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+getLastError+and+SafeMode The safe mode configuration can be specified at different levels: Connection string: mongodb://hostname/?safe=true Database: when obtaining a database instance using the server.GetDatabase(name, safeMode) method Collection: when obtaining a collection instance using the database.GetCollection(name, safeMode) method Operation: for example, when executing the collection.Insert(document, safeMode) method Some useful SafeMode article: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4604868/mongodb-c-sharp-safemode-official-driver Exception Handling The driver ensures that an exception will be thrown in case of something going wrong, in case of using safe mode (as said above, when not using safe mode no exception will be thrown no matter what the outcome of the operation is). As explained here https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/mongodb-user/mS6jIq5FUiM there is no need to check for any returned value from a driver method inserting data. With updates the situation is similar to any other relational database: if an update command doesn't affect any records, the call will suceed anyway (no exception thrown) and you manually have to check for something like "records affected". For MongoDB, an Update operation will return an instance of the "SafeModeResult" class, and you can verify the "DocumentsAffected" property to ensure the intended document was indeed updated. Note: Please remember that an Update method might return a null instance instead of an "SafeModeResult" instance when safe mode is not enabled. Useful Community Articles Comments about how MongoDB works and how that might affect your application: http://ethangunderson.com/blog/two-reasons-to-not-use-mongodb/ FourSquare using MongoDB had serious scalability problems: http://mashable.com/2010/10/07/mongodb-foursquare/ Is MongoDB a replacement for Memcached? http://www.quora.com/Is-MongoDB-a-good-replacement-for-Memcached/answer/Rick-Branson MongoDB Introduction, shell, when not to use, maintenance, upgrade, backups, memory, sharding, etc: http://www.markus-gattol.name/ws/mongodb.html MongoDB Collection level locking support: https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-1240 MongoDB performance tips: http://www.quora.com/MongoDB/What-are-some-best-practices-for-optimal-performance-of-MongoDB-particularly-for-queries-that-involve-multiple-documents Lessons learned migrating from SQL Server to MongoDB: http://www.wireclub.com/development/TqnkQwQ8CxUYTVT90/read MongoDB replication performance: http://benshepheard.blogspot.com.ar/2011/01/mongodb-replication-performance.html

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

  - by Chris Skardon

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

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• SQL SERVER – 3 Challenges for DBA and Smart Solutions

  - by Pinal Dave

  Developer’s life is never easy. DBA’s life is even crazier. DBA’s Life When a developer wakes up in the morning, most of the time have no idea what different challenges they are going to face that day. Of course, most of the developers know the project and roadmap, which they are working on. However, developers have no clue what coding challenges which they are going face for that day. DBA’s life is even crazier. When DBA wakes up in the morning – they often thank that they were not disturbed during the night due to server issues. The very next thing they wish is that they do not want to challenge which they can’t solve for that day. The problems DBA face every single day are mostly unpredictable and they just have to solve them as they come during the day. Though the life of DBA is not always bad. There are always ways and methods how one can overcome various challenges. Let us see three of the challenges and how a DBA can use various tools to overcome them. Challenge #1 Synchronize Data Across Server A Very common challenge DBA receive is that they have to synchronize the data across the servers. If you try to manually write that up, it may take forever to accomplish the task. It is nearly impossible to do the same with the help of the T-SQL. However, thankfully there are tools like dbForge Studio which can save a day and synchronize data across servers. Read my detailed blog post about the same over here: SQL SERVER – Synchronize Data Exclusively with T-SQL. Challenge #2 SQL Report Builder DBA’s are often asked to build reports on the go. It really annoys DBA’s, but hardly people care about it. No matter how busy a DBA is, they are just called upon to build reports on things on very short notice. I personally like to avoid any task which is given to me accidently and personally building report can be boring. I rather spend time with High Availability, disaster recovery, performance tuning rather than building report. I use SQL third party tool when I have to work with SQL Report. Others have extended reporting capabilities. The latter group of products includes the SQL report builder built-in todbForge Studio for SQL Server. I have blogged about this earlier over here: SQL SERVER – SQL Report Builder in dbForge Studio for SQL Server. Challenge #3 Work with the OTHER Database The manager does not understand that MySQL is different from SQL Server and SQL Server is different from Oracle. For them everything is same. In my career hundreds of times I have faced a situation that I am given a database to manage or do some task when their regular DBA is on vacation or leave. When I try to explain I do not understand the underlying the technology, I have been usually told that my manager has trust on me and I can do anything. Honestly, I can’t but I hardly dare to argue. I fall back on the third party tool to manage database when it is not in my comfort zone. For example, I was once given MySQL performance tuning task (at that time I did not know MySQL so well). To simplify search for a problem query let us use MySQL Profiler in dbForge Studio for MySQL. It provides such commands as a Query Profiling Mode and Generate Execution Plan. Here is the blog post discussing about the same: MySQL – Profiler : A Simple and Convenient Tool for Profiling SQL Queries. Well, that’s it! There were many different such occasions when I have been saved by the tool. May be some other day I will write part 2 of this blog post. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL Tagged: Devart, SQL Tool

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• Where’s my MD.050?

  - by Dave Burke

  A question that I’m sometimes asked is “where’s my MD.050 in OUM?” For those not familiar with an MD.050, it serves the purpose of being a Functional Design Document (FDD) in one of Oracle’s legacy Methods. Functional Design Documents have existed for many years with their primary purpose being to describe the functional aspects of one or more components of an IT system, typically, a Custom Extension of some sort. So why don’t we have a direct replacement for the MD.050/FDD in OUM? In simple terms, the disadvantage of the MD.050/FDD approach is that it tends to lead practitioners into “Design mode” too early in the process. Whereas OUM encourages more emphasis on gathering, and describing the functional requirements of a system ahead of the formal Analysis and Design process. So that just means more work up front for the Business Analyst or Functional Consultants right? Well no…..the design of a solution, particularly when it involves a complex custom extension, does not necessarily take longer just because you put more thought into the functional requirements. In fact, one could argue the complete opposite, in that by putting more emphasis on clearly understanding the nuances of functionality requirements early in the process, then the overall time and cost incurred during the Analysis to Design process should be less. In short, as your understanding of requirements matures over time, it is far easier (and more cost effective) to update a document or a diagram, than to change lines of code. So how does that translate into Tasks and Work Products in OUM? Let us assume you have reached a point on a project where a Custom Extension is needed. One of the first things you should consider doing is creating a Use Case, and remember, a Use Case could be as simple as a few lines of text reflecting a “User Story”, or it could be what Cockburn1 describes a “fully dressed Use Case”. It is worth mentioned at this point the highly scalable nature of OUM in the sense that “documents” should not be produced just because that is the way we have always done things. Some projects may well be predicated upon a base of electronic documents, whilst other projects may take a much more Agile approach to describing functional requirements; through “User Stories” perhaps. In any event, it is quite common for a Custom Extension to involve the creation of several “components”, i.e. some new screens, an interface, a report etc. Therefore several Use Cases might be required, which in turn can then be assembled into a Use Case Package. Once you have the Use Cases attributed to an appropriate (fit-for-purpose) level of detail, and assembled into a Package, you can now create an Analysis Model for the Package. An Analysis Model is conceptual in nature, and depending on the solution being developing, would involve the creation of one or more diagrams (i.e. Sequence Diagrams, Collaboration Diagrams etc.) which collectively describe the Data, Behavior and Use Interface requirements of the solution. If required, the various elements of the Analysis Model may be indexed via an Analysis Specification. For Custom Extension projects that follow a pure Object Orientated approach, then the Analysis Model will naturally support the development of the Design Model without any further artifacts. However, for projects that are transitioning to this approach, then the various elements of the Analysis Model may be represented within the Analysis Specification. If we now return to the original question of “Where’s my MD.050”. The full answer would be: Capture the functional requirements within a Use Case Group related Use Cases into a Package Create an Analysis Model for each Package Consider creating an Analysis Specification (AN.100) as a index to each Analysis Model artifact An alternative answer for a relatively simple Custom Extension would be: Capture the functional requirements within a Use Case Optionally, group related Use Cases into a Package Create an Analysis Specification (AN.100) for each package 1 Cockburn, A, 2000, Writing Effective Use Case, Addison-Wesley Professional; Edition 1

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• Download YouTube Videos the Easy Way

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  You can’t be online all the time, and despite the majority of YouTube videos being nut-shots and Lady Gaga parodies, there is a lot of great content that you might want to download and watch offline. There are some programs and browser extensions to do this, but we’ve found that the easiest and quickest method is a bookmarklet that was originally posted on the Google Operating System blog (it’s since been removed). It will let you download standard quality and high-definition movies as MP4 files. Also, because it’s a bookmarklet, it will work on any modern web browser, and on any operating system! Installing the bookmarket is easy – just drag and drop the Get YouTube video link below to the bookmarks bar of your browser of choice. If you’ve hidden the bookmark bar, in most browsers you can right-click on the link and save it to your bookmarks. Get YouTube video   With the bookmarklet available in your browser, go to the YouTube video that you’d like to download. Click on the Get YouTube video link in your bookmarks bar, or in the bookmarks menu, wherever you saved it earlier. You will notice some new links appear below the description of the video. If you download the standard definition file, it will save as “video.mp4” by default. However, if you download the high definition file, it will save with the same name as the title of the video. There are many methods of downloading YouTube videos…but we think this is the easiest and quickest method. You don’t have to install anything or use up resources, but you can still get a link to download an MP4 with one click. Do you use a different method to download Youtube videos? Let us know about it in the comments! javascript:(function(){if(document.getElementById(’download-youtube-video’))return;var args=null,video_title=null,video_id=null,video_hash=null;var download_code=new Array();var fmt_labels={‘18′:’standard%20MP4′,’22′:’HD%20720p’,'37′:’HD%201080p’};try{args=yt.getConfig(’SWF_ARGS’);video_title=yt.getConfig(’VIDEO_TITLE’)}catch(e){}if(args){var fmt_url_map=unescape(args['fmt_url_map']);if(fmt_url_map==”)return;video_id=args['video_id'];video_hash=args['t'];video_title=video_title.replace(/[%22\'\?\\\/\:\*%3C%3E]/g,”);var fmt=new Array();var formats=fmt_url_map.split(’,');var format;for(var i=0;i%3Cformats.length;i++){var format_elems=formats[i].split(’|');fmt[format_elems[0]]=unescape(format_elems[1])}for(format in fmt_labels){if(fmt[format]!=null){download_code.push(’%3Ca%20href=\”+(fmt[format]+’&title=’+video_title)+’\'%3E’+fmt_labels[format]+’%3C/a%3E’)}elseif(format==’18′){download_code.push(’%3Ca%20href=\’http://www.youtube.com/get_video?fmt=18&video_id=’+video_id+’&t=’+video_hash+’\'%3E’+fmt_labels[format]+’%3C/a%3E’)}}}if(video_id==null||video_hash==null)return;var div_embed=document.getElementById(’watch-embed-div’);if(div_embed){var div_download=document.createElement(’div’);div_download.innerHTML=’%3Cbr%20/%3E%3Cspan%20id=\’download-youtube-video\’%3EDownload:%20′+download_code.join(’%20|%20′)+’%3C/span%3E’;div_embed.appendChild(div_download)}})() Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Watch YouTube Videos in Cinema Style in FirefoxDownload YouTube Videos with Cheetah YouTube DownloaderStop YouTube Videos from Automatically Playing in FirefoxImprove YouTube Video Viewing in Google ChromeConvert YouTube Videos to MP3 with YouTube Downloader 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox) OldTvShows.org – Find episodes of Hitchcock, Soaps, Game Shows and more Download Microsoft Office Help tab

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• Rotate a Video 90 degrees with VLC or Windows Live Movie Maker

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Have you ever captured video with your cell phone or camcorder only to discover when you play it back on your computer that the video is rotated 90 degrees? Or maybe you shot it that way on purpose because you preferred portrait style to a landscape view? Before you go straining your neck or flipping your monitor on it’s side to watch your video, we’ll show you a few easier methods. If you simply want to rotate the video while you watch it, we’ll show you how to accomplish that with VLC Media Player. If you want to convert the video so it is rotated permanently, we’ll show you how to do that with Windows Live Movie Maker and output your video as a WMV file. Rotate and Watch a Video in VLC Download, install, and run VLC Media Player. (See download link below)   Open your video file by going to Media  > Open File… and browsing for your file. Or, by just dragging and dropping your video onto the VLC player.   Choose Tools from the Menu bar and select Effects and Filters. On the Video Effects tab, tick the Transform checkbox and choose your degrees of rotation. The video is rotated counter-clockwise, so to rotate clockwise 90 degrees you’ll want to choose Rotate by 270 degrees.   Now you can enjoy your video the way it was intended to be viewed. Rotate and Convert the Video with Windows Live Movie Maker Starting with Windows 7, Windows Movie Maker no longer comes pre-installed with the OS. It’s now part of the Windows Live suite that is available as a separate, free download for Windows 7 and Vista. (Windows XP is not supported) You can find the link to our detailed instruction on how to install Windows Live at the end of the article. To add your video files to Windows Movie Maker, click on Add videos and photos on the Home tab, or drag and drop the video into the blank area on the right side of the application. Next, you’ll need to rotate the video. Staying on the Home tab, click on the Rotate right 90° or Rotate left 90°.   You’ll see your video is now oriented properly on the left.   To save and convert your video to WMV format, click the Movie Maker tab just to the left of the Home tab. Hover your cursor over Save movie, and then select your output settings. You also have the option to burn directly to DVD. Browse for a location to save it and rename the output file if you’d like. Click Save. You’ll be notified when the file is complete. Now you’ll have your video properly oriented in WMV file format.   These are two rather easy ways to accomplish rotating your video. Unfortunately, Windows Live Movie Maker doesn’t give you a lot of  options for output. If you want to output to a file, your only choice is WMV format or DVD. However, previous versions will also allow you to export to AVI. How-To Geek’s Install Windows Live Essentials In Windows 7 Article. Download Windows Live Download VLC Media Player Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Make/Edit a movie with Windows Movie Maker in Windows VistaCreate and Author DVDs in Windows 7Family Fun: Share Photos with Photo Gallery and Windows Live SpacesInstall Windows Live Essentials In Windows 7Add Network Support to Windows Live MovieMaker 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 Awesome Lyrics Finder for Winamp & Windows Media Player Download Videos from Hulu Pixels invade Manhattan Convert PDF files to ePub to read on your iPad Hide Your Confidential Files Inside Images Get Wildlife Photography Tips at BBC’s PhotoMasterClasses

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• Adding Fake Build Information in TFS 2010

  - by Jakob Ehn

  We have been using TFS 2010 build for distributing a build in parallel on several agents, but where the actual compilation is done by a bunch of external tools and compilers, e.g. no MSBuild involved. We are using the ParallelTemplate.xaml template that Jim Lamb blogged about previously, which distributes each configuration to a different agent. We developed custom activities for running these external compilers and collecting the information and errors by reading standard out/error and pushing it back to the build log. But since we aren’t using MSBuild we don’t the get nice configuration summary section on the build summary page that we are used to. We would like to show the result of each configuration with any errors/warnings as usual, together with a link to the log file. TFS 2010 API to the rescue! What we need to do is adding information to the InformationNode structure that is associated with every TFS build. The log that you normally see in the Log view is built up as a tree structure of IBuildInformationNode objects. This structure can we accessed by using the InformationNodeConverters class. This class also contain some helper methods for creating BuildProjectNode, which contain the information about each project that was build, for example which configuration, number of errors and warnings and link to the log file. Here is a code snippet that first creates a “fake” build from scratch and the add two BuildProjectNodes, one for Debug|x86 and one for Release|x86 with some release information:   TfsTeamProjectCollection collection = TfsTeamProjectCollectionFactory.GetTeamProjectCollection(new Uri("http://lt-jakob2010:8080/tfs")); IBuildServer buildServer = collection.GetService<IBuildServer>(); var buildDef = buildServer.GetBuildDefinition("TeamProject", "BuildDefinition"); //Create fake build with random build number var detail = buildDef.CreateManualBuild(new Random().Next().ToString()); // Create Debug|x86 project summary IBuildProjectNode buildProjectNode = detail.Information.AddBuildProjectNode(DateTime.Now, "Debug", "MySolution.sln", "x86", "$/project/MySolution.sln", DateTime.Now, "Default"); buildProjectNode.CompilationErrors = 1; buildProjectNode.CompilationWarnings = 1; buildProjectNode.Node.Children.AddBuildError("Compilation", "File1.cs", 12, 5, "", "Syntax error", DateTime.Now); buildProjectNode.Node.Children.AddBuildWarning("File2.cs", 3, 1, "", "Some warning", DateTime.Now, "Compilation"); buildProjectNode.Node.Children.AddExternalLink("Log File", new Uri(@"\\server\share\logfiledebug.txt")); buildProjectNode.Save(); // Create Releaes|x86 project summary buildProjectNode = detail.Information.AddBuildProjectNode(DateTime.Now, "Release", "MySolution.sln", "x86", "$/project/MySolution.sln", DateTime.Now, "Default"); buildProjectNode.CompilationErrors = 0; buildProjectNode.CompilationWarnings = 0; buildProjectNode.Node.Children.AddExternalLink("Log File", new Uri(@"\\server\share\logfilerelease.txt")); buildProjectNode.Save(); detail.Information.Save(); detail.FinalizeStatus(BuildStatus.Failed); When running this code, it will a create a build that looks like this: As you can see, it created two configurations with error and warning information and a link to a log file. Just like a regular MSBuild would have done. This is very useful when using TFS 2010 Build in heterogeneous environments. It would also be possible to do this when running compilations completely outside TFS build, but then push the results of the into TFS for easy access. You can push all information, including the compilation summary, drop location, test results etc using the API.

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• From NaN to Infinity...and Beyond!

  - by Tony Davis

  It is hard to believe that it was once possible to corrupt a SQL Server Database by storing perfectly normal data values into a table; but it is true. In SQL Server 2000 and before, one could inadvertently load invalid data values into certain data types via RPC calls or bulk insert methods rather than DML. In the particular case of the FLOAT data type, this meant that common 'special values' for this type, namely NaN (not-a-number) and +/- infinity, could be quite happily plugged into the database from an application and stored as 'out-of-range' values. This was like a time-bomb. When one then tried to query this data; the values were unsupported and so data pages containing them were flagged as being corrupt. Any query that needed to read a column containing the special value could fail or return unpredictable results. Microsoft even had to issue a hotfix to deal with failures in the automatic recovery process, caused by the presence of these NaN values, which rendered the whole database inaccessible! This problem is history for those of us on more current versions of SQL Server, but its ghost still haunts us. Recently, for example, a developer on Red Gate’s SQL Response team reported a strange problem when attempting to load historical monitoring data into a SQL Server 2005 database via the C# ADO.NET provider. The ratios used in some of their reporting calculations occasionally threw out NaN or infinity values, and the subsequent attempts to load these values resulted in a nasty error. It turns out to be a different manifestation of the same problem. SQL Server 2005 still does not fully support the IEEE 754 standard for floating point numbers, in that the FLOAT data type still cannot handle NaN or infinity values. Instead, they just added validation checks that prevent the 'invalid' values from being loaded in the first place. For people migrating from SQL Server 2000 databases that contained out-of-range FLOAT (or DATETIME etc.) data, to SQL Server 2005, Microsoft have added to the latter's version of the DBCC CHECKDB (or CHECKTABLE) command a DATA_PURITY clause. When enabled, this will seek out the corrupt data, but won’t fix it. You have to do this yourself in what can often be a slow, painful manual process. Our development team, after a quizzical shrug of the shoulders, simply decided to represent NaN and infinity values as NULL, and move on, accepting the minor inconvenience of not being able to tell them apart. However, what of scientific, engineering and other applications that really would like the luxury of being able to both store and access these perfectly-reasonable floating point data values? The sticking point seems to be the stipulation in the IEEE 754 standard that, when NaN is compared to any other value including itself, the answer is "unequal" (i.e. FALSE). This is clearly different from normal number comparisons and has repercussions for such things as indexing operations. Even so, this hardly applies to infinity values, which are single definite values. In fact, there is some encouraging talk in the Connect note on this issue that they might be supported 'in the SQL Server 2008 timeframe'. If didn't happen; SQL 2008 doesn't support NaN or infinity values, though one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, based on the MSDN documentation for the FLOAT type, which states that "The behavior of float and real follows the IEEE 754 specification on approximate numeric data types". However, the truth is revealed in the XPath documentation, which states that "…float (53) is not exactly IEEE 754. For example, neither NaN (Not-a-Number) nor infinity is used…". Is it really so hard to fix this problem the right way, and properly support in SQL Server the IEEE 754 standard for the floating point data type, NaNs, infinities and all? Oracle seems to have managed it quite nicely with its BINARY_FLOAT and BINARY_DOUBLE types, so it is technically possible. We have an enterprise-class database that is marketed as being part of an 'integrated' Windows platform. Absurdly, we have .NET and XPath libraries that fully support the standard for floating point numbers, and we can't even properly store these values, let alone query them, in the SQL Server database! Cheers, Tony.

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• Instant Rename and Rename Refactoring

  - by Petr

  During the last weeks I have got  a few questions about rename refactoring and some users also complain to me that the refactoring in NetBeans 6.x was much faster. So I would like to explain the situation. For some people, who don't know, Instant Rename action and Rename Refactoring  can look like one action. But it's not true, even if  both actions use the same shortcut (CTRL + R). NetBeans 6.x contained only Instant Rename action (speaking about PHP support), which we can mark as very simple rename refactoring through one file. From NetBeans 7.0 the Instant Rename action works only in "non public" context. It means that this action is used for fast renaming variables that has local context like inside a method, or for renaming private methods and fields that can not be used outside of the scope, where they are declared. From user point of view these two action can be simply recognized. When is after CTRL+R called Instant Rename action, then the identifier is surrounded with rectangle and you can rename it directly in the file. It's fast and simple, also the usages of this identifier are renamed in the same time as you write. The picture below shows Instant Rename action for $message identifier, that is visible only in the print_test method and due this after CTRL+R is called Instant Rename. In NetBeans 7.0, there was added Rename Refactoring that is called for public identifiers. It means for identifiers that could be used in other files. If you press CTRL+R shortcut when the caret is inside $hello identifier from the picture above, NetBeans recognizes that $hello is declared / used in a global context and calls the Rename Refactoring that brings a dialog to change the name of the identifier. From this dialog you have to preview suggested changes, through pressing Preview button and then execute the refactoring through Do Refactoring button. Yes, it's more complicated from user point of view than Instant Rename, but in Rename Refactoring NetBeans can change more files at once. It should be  the developer responsibility to decide whether the suggested changes are right and the refactoring can be executed or in some files original name should be kept. Someone can argue that he doesn't use $hello variable in any other file so Instant Rename could be used in such case. Yes it's true, but in such case NetBeans has to know all usages of all identifiers and keep this informations up to date during editing a file. I'm sure that this is not possible due to the performance problems, mainly for big projects. So the usages are computed after pressing the Preview button. And why is the Refactor button always disabled in the Rename dialog and user has to always go through the preview phase? NetBeans has API and SPI for implementing refactoring actions and this dialog is a part of this infrastructure. If you rename an identifier for example in Java, the Refactor buttons is enabled, but Java is strongly type language and you can be almost in 99% sure that the IDE will suggest the right results. In PHP as a dynamic language, we can not be sure, what NetBeans finds is only a "guess". This is why NetBeans pushes developers to preview the changes for PHP rename. I hope that I have explain it clearly. I'm open to any discussion. What I have described above is situation in NetBeans 7.0, 7.0.1 and probably it will be also in NetBeans 7.1, because there is no plan to change it. Please write your opinion here.

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• Challenges and Opportunities to Drive Change in the Healthcare System Explored at America’s Health Insurance Plans Exchange Conference and Institute 2013

  - by elaine blog

  The program theme at the June America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Exchange Conference and AHIP’s Institute 2013 was Transforming Our Health Care System: Navigating and Succeeding in the New Marketplace.  Topics included care delivery transformation, innovation for a new healthcare eco system, Health Insurance Exchanges, the nexus of consumerism, retail and healthcare, driving value through improved operations and leveraging technology, data and innovation to transform care. Oracle participated as a sponsor of both conferences, signaling the significant investment and activity Oracle continues to make in helping health plans, providers and government agencies become more efficient and more relevant in the healthcare market place. AHIP is a national trade association representing the health insurance industry. AHIP’s members provide health and supplemental benefits to more than 200 million Americans through employer-sponsored coverage, the individual insurance market and public programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.   AHIP advocates for public policies that expand access to affordable health care. Health plans are focusing on the Health Insurance Exchanges and the opportunities they offer to provide better access and higher quality healthcare.  With the opportunities come operational challenges to implementation and innovative technology solutions to consider.   At the Exchange Conference, Oracle hosted a breakfast symposium on “Strategies for Success:  Driving Business Transformation in the Growing Health Insurance Exchange Market”. With Health Insurance Exchanges as catalysts for change, attendees learned about how to achieve integration within an Exchange and deploy new business strategies to support health reform initiatives. Discussion covered steps and processes to successfully establish and implement enrollment systems, quote to card activities, program pricing, claims billing, automated claims processing and new customer service tools. Piyush Pushkar, COO of Benefitalign, an Oracle partner that provides solutions to adopt innovative business models for retail, HIX, consumer-centric health plan and benefits administration, spoke on the state of the Exchanges in the U.S. and the activities health plans are engaged in to support individuals entering the healthcare system, including sales automation, member enrollment automation/portals and integration strategies with the Exchanges. The Oracle and Benefitalign partnership allows seamless integration between a health plan enrollment solution with the HIX individual market and allows for the health plan to customize and characterize the offerings available to the HIX that may or may not be available through other channels.  This approach can benefit the health plan through separation of interests, but also because some state-run HIXs require such separation. Janice W. Young, Program Director, Payer IT Strategies, IDC Health Insights, reviewed a survey of health plans on their investment priorities for this last year as well as this year.  She also identified the 2013-2015 strategies of go/get to market with front end and compliance investments; leveraging existing business processes and internal technologies; and establishing best practices.  Of key interest to the audience was a reform era payer solutions platform overview mapping technologies to support the business operations. David Bonham of the Oracle Health Insurance organization moderated the panel and spoke on Oracle’s presence in healthcare and products for payers to help them drive efficiencies and gain a competitive advantage in an ever changing market. Oracle serves healthcare stakeholders with applications such as billing, rating and underwriting, analytics, CRM, enrollment, and products for processing of health insurance claims including pricing and benefits administration, as well as payment of providers through alternative, non-fee for service reimbursement methods. Oracle in Healthcare….Did you know? More than 80 healthcare payers run Oracle applications. More than 300 leading healthcare providers run Oracle applications. 10 out of the top 12 fortune Global 500 healthcare organizations run Oracle applications. For more information on Oracle solutions for healthcare payers, please visit oracle.com/insurance or these individual solution pages: Oracle Health Insurance Components Oracle Insurance Insbridge Rating and Underwriting Oracle Insurance Revenue Management and Billing Oracle Documaker Oracle Healthcare Oracle CRM Related Resources Webcast On Demand: Strategies for Success: Driving Business Transformation in the Growing Health Insurance Exchange Market Strategy Brief: Executing on the Individual Mandate: Opportunities and Challenges for Healthcare Payers White Paper: White paper: Navigating Alternative Provider Reimbursement Models of the Future Strategy Brief: Enterprise Rating Agility Improves Payer Response to Healthcare Reform Podcast: Technology Implications of Healthcare Reform Don’t forget to keep up with us year-round: Facebook: www.facebook.com/oracleinsurance Twitter: www.twitter.com/oracleinsurance YouTube: www.youtube.com/oracleinsurance

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