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Letter to Ballmer: Making Better Consumer Devices

- by andrewbrust

Last year, I wrote Steve Ballmer an email, and he was kind enough to write me back. The email contained a scan of a column I wrote praising Microsoft’s BI strategy. His reply contained three simple words: “Super nice thanks.” Well, now I’d like to write to Steve again, in an open letter format, and this time the love may be a bit tougher. But I’m still super earnest. The past two days have been eventful ones for Microsoft: The company announced the departure of company veterans Robbie Bach and J Allard and the market announced Apple is now besting Microsoft in market capitalization. Plus, announcements were made that make it plain that Ballmer will, in effect, be running Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division himself. With that in mind, I’d like to offer my list of a dozen things I think Microsoft’s CEO should do to improve that division’s offerings and, hopefully, its bottom line. So here goes: 1. On Windows Phone 7, Stay the Course The press is teeming with headlines and reader comments proclaiming the death-before-arrival of Windows Phone 7. That’s plain silly. You’ve got the makings of a great and unique SmartPhone platform, and you’re the only company (even considering RIM) that can offer full fidelity Exchange integration, not to mention implementing Office on the device. Let the existing team finish this puppy and ship it. And then have them pump out a few updates, over-the-air, quickly. Show them that Google Android’s not the only product that can do good, rapid dot releases. And another thing: make sure your OEMs’ devices have flawless touch screens. If they don’t, then you shouldn’t certify them for delivery to customers. Period. Oh, and kill the Kin, quietly. It was DOA, and you know it. 2. Move Media Center to the Xbox Platform Media Center is, at its core, a good product. But delivering a media distribution and DVR platform on a sophisticated PC operating system like Windows 7 just creates too many moving parts. Xbox already functions as the best Media Center extender device – it should actually be the hub as well. Media Center is mostly based on .NET code – and XNA is a .NET environment for Xbox – find a way to bridge that small gap and make Media Center a joy to work with instead of a frustration. Beating Apple TV out of this sub-market is the lowest hanging fruit on the tree (goofy pun, but it’s true). 3. Integrate Media Center with Mediaroom, or Kill the Latter You have two media products with almost identical names. One is for standalone DVRs and the other is for IPTV cable set tops with DVR capabilities. Can we merge these please? My previous request of putting Media Center on Xbox would seem to tie into this nicely, since you’ve announced plans to do that with Mediaroom already. 4. Fix the Red Ring of Death People love the Xbox, but they really don’t love sending their consoles back every 18-24 months, when they get a bunch of red lights flashing on power up. You’ve handled this defect about as gracefully as possible, but it’s been around for a long time now and it doesn’t seem to be fixed yet. You can do better. In fact, you must do better, or you insult your customers. 5. Add Blu Ray to Xbox I know, streaming movies are the future; physical media is legacy technology. So if that’s true, why did you back HD DVD so hard? You know why: for now, the film studios won’t allow a large selection of new release, HD, surround sound content be distributed on any medium other than Blu Ray or cable pay per view/on-demand. Don’t you want home theater buffs to see the Xbox as a fantastic device for their rigs? Don’t you want to put PlayStation 3 out of its misery? And if you follow my suggestions above (move Media Center to the Xbox and fix the Red Ring problem), you’d have it all sewn up. Do I think Blu Ray functionality will move a lot of units? No. Do I think that it would move more units with desperately needed influential home theater consumers? You bet. And you might sell more ZunePass subscriptions in the process. But while you’re at it, make the fan quieter, please. 6. Make More of Windows Home Server Home Server is a fantastic product. And for reasons unknown to me, it seems like you’re letting it languish. Development of the add-in ecosystem seems underfunded. WHS’ unparalleled ease of use and reliability for home PC backup (and emergency restores) goes unsung. Product cycles are slow. Support for your OEMs, who are doing great work, especially in the green space with Atom CPUs, seems lacking. You’ve married a trophy girl and you keep her cloistered at home! That’s cruel, unusual and, um, incredibly ill-advised. Make use of this ace card, and while you’re at it, give it real integration with Media Center. The integration thus far proof-of-concept quality. You should go way past that – both products will benefit immeasurably. 7. Set Up a Partner Platform for Custom Installers There’s a whole sub-industry of companies that install, integrate and configure home theater, security and connected home products. They have an industry group. They are influential in the high-end of the consumer electronics industry, and so are their customers. They love Media Center and they love Windows Home Server. But I have talked to several of them at the Consumer Electronics Show and they tell me you don’t love them. They find it very difficult to do business with Microsoft, even though they want nothing more than to sell and evangelize your platform. This is a travesty. Please fix it. Get Allison Watson and the Microsoft Partner Network on board and have her hire someone who knows how to run a channel program for consumer electronics companies. Problem solved. Markets expanded. 8. Make Your Own Hardware In other areas, I know you love your partners. I help run one, so I appreciate that. But when it came to Xbox and Zune you built them it yourself (albeit on a contract basis, which is fine). Windows Phone 7 has a chance to work as an OEM play, but it would work better if you produced the devices. At least consider building a reference device that sells alongside your OEMs’ offerings. That’s what Google did with the Nexxus One. And while that phone was not itself a big seller, it catalyzed two wonderful things : (1) a quality bar was set and (2) partners exceeded it. Before the Nexxus One, the best Android handset out there was the Motorola Droid. The Nexxus One was better, and the HTC Droid Incredible and Evo 4G are now even better than Google’s phone, which is why Verizon and Sprint decided not to carry it. Imagine if all Windows Phone 6.x devices were on par with the HTC HD2. I tend to believe you’d have a lot bigger market share than you do now. 9. Continue with Your Retail Initiative From what I hear, it sounds like it’s going well. And this goes right along with making your own hardware. When you build it, they will come. And then it makes the likes of Best Buy and Staples do better. 10. Make an Acquisition (or Two) TiVo and/or Moxi look ripe for the picking. With their ability to build stuff people love and your ability to run a business, you might just have something. But do a better job than you did when you bought Danger. Buy the ideas, not just the customers, eh? 11. Make Beautiful Stuff You’ve heard this one before, I know. But I have some head-shrinking advice on this one. You know that Apple obsesses over its industrial design. You know that appeals to consumers. But it seems you think doing so is Apple’s game exclusively and so you shouldn’t even try. Bull dinky. Come to New York and visit the Museum of Modern Art’s Architecture and Design gallery. You’ll see that lots of companies and product categories have had very high design value well before Apple existed. You can do this, and the Zune HD was a great start. Now run with that. Find those negative voices in your head that are telling you that you can’t and shut them up. For good. 12. Burst the Bubble Some of the products you’ve built seem like they were conceived in a bizarro world. That would appear to be the result of groupthink. You must do better. And there’s lots of people willing to advise you. This includes just about everyone in the Regional Director program, and probably a bunch of MVPs. Heck, I bet the guys at Engadget could help out too. Imagine if you let them see the Kin before it shipped. Talk to high-end gear consumers. Talk to Best Buy and CostCo customers too. Signing Off I hope this was of value to you. As I wrote this I kept telling myself how obvious, even trite, some of these pieces of advice were and then, because of that, doubting they’d really help. But I decided that they must not be obvious to Microsoft. Sometimes when you get wrapped up in stuff, it’s hard to clear your head. I think my head’s pretty clear here though (I’m wrapped up in other stuff), so maybe my perspective can help. If not, well, then, I guess they all can’t be super nice.

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Fitting it together, database, reporting, applications in C#

- by alvonellos

Introduction Preamble I was hesitant to post this, since it's an application whose intricate details are defined elsewhere, and answers may not be helpful to others. Within the past few weeks (I was actually going to write a blog post about this after I finished) I've discovered that the barrier I'm encountering is one that's actually quite common for newer developers. This question is not so much about a specific thing as it is about piecing those things together. I've searched the internet far and wide, and found many tutorials on how to create applications that are kind of similar to what I'm looking for. I've also looked at hiring another, more experienced, developer to help me along, but all I've gotten are unqualified candidates that don't have the experience necessary and won't take care of the client or project like I will. I'd rather have the project never transpire than to release a solution that is half-baked. I've asked professors at my school, but they've not turned up answers to my question. I'm an experienced developer, and I've written many applications that are -- very abstractly -- close to what I'm doing, but my experiences from those applications aren't giving me enough leverage to solve this particular problem. I just hope that posting this article isn't a mistake for me to write. Project Description I have a project I'm working on for a client that is a rewrite of an application, originally written in Foxpro 2.6 by someone before me, that performs some analysis (which, sadly, I'm not allowed to disclose as per of my employment contract) on financial data. One day, after a long talk between the client and I -- where he intimately described his frustrations with all the bugs I've been hacking out of this code for 6 months now -- he told me to just rewrite it and gave me a month to write a good 1/8 of this 65k LOC Foxpro monstrosity. this 65k line of code foxpro monstrosity. It'll take me a good 3 - 6 months to rewrite this software (I know things the original programmer did not, like inheritance) going as I am right now, but I'm quickly discovering that I'm going to need to use databases. Prior to this contract I didn't even know about foxpro, and so I've had to learn foxpro on the fly, write procedures and make modifications to the database. I've actually come to like it, and this project would be rewritten in Foxpro if it were still a supported language, because over the past few months, I've come to like the features of Foxpro that make it so easy to develop data-driven applications. I once perfomed an experiment, comparing C# to Foxpro. What took me 45 minutes in C# took me two in Foxpro, and I knew C# prior to Foxpro. I was hoping to leverage the power of C#, but it intimidates me that in foxpro, you can have one line of code and be using a database. Prior to this, I have never written any serious database development from scratch. All the applications that I've written are in a different league. They are either completely data-naive or data-naive enough that I can get away with not using a database through serialization or by designing algorithms that work with the data in a manner that is stateless, so there is no need to worry about databases. I've come to realize, very quickly, that serialization and my efficacy with data structures has been my crutch all these years that's prevented me from adventuring into databases, and has consequently hindered my success in real-world programming. Sure, I've written some database stuff in Perl and Python, and I've done forms and worked with relational databases and tables, I'm a wizard in Access and Excel (seriously) and can do just about anything, but it just feels unnatural writing SQL code in another language... I don't mind writing SQL, and I don't It's that bridge between the database and the program code that drives me absolutely bonkers. I hope I'm not the only one to think this, but it bothers me that I have to create statements like the following string sSql = "SELECT * from tablename" When there's really no reason for that kind of unchecked language binding between two languages and two API's. Don't get my wrong, SQL is great, but I don't like the idea that, when executing commands on a SQL database, that one must intermix database and application software, and there's no database independence, which means that different versions of different databases can break code. This isn't very nice. The nicest thing about Foxpro is the cohesiveness between programming language and database. It's so easy, and Foxpro makes it easy, because the tool just fits the task. I can see why so many developers have created a career with this language, because it lowered the barrier of entry to data-driven applications that so many businesses need. It was wonderful. For my purposes today, with the demands and need for community support, extensibility, and language features, Foxpro isn't a solution that I feel would be the right tool for the job. I'm also worried about working too heavy with the database, because I've seen data-driven .NET applications have issues with database caches, running out of memory, and objects in the database not being collected. (Memory leaks) And OH the queries. Which one, how, and why? There are a plethora of different ways that a database can be setup, I think I counted 5 or 6 different kinds of database applications alone that I can chose from. That is a great mountain for me to climb when I don't even know where to begin when it comes to writing data-driven applications. The problem isn't that I don't know SQL or that I don't know C#. I know both and have worked with both extensively. It's making them work together that's the problem, and it's something I've never done in C# before. Reports The client likes paper. The data needs to be printed out in a format that is extensible, layered, and easy to use. I have never done reporting before, and so this is a bit of a problem. From the data source comes crystal reports, and so there's a dependency on the database, from what I understand. Code reuse A large part of the design decision that I've gone through so far is to break the task of writing a piece of this software into routines and modular DLL's and so forth such that much of the code can be reused. For example, when I setup this database, I want to be able to reuse the same database code over and over again. I also want to make sure that when the day comes that another developer is here, that he/she will be able to pick up just where I left off. The quicker I develop these applications, the better off I am. Tasks & Goals In my project, I need to write routines that apply algorithms and look for predefined patterns in financial data. Additionally, I need to simulate trading based on predefined algorithms and data. Then I need to prepare reports on that data. Additionally, I need to have a way to change the code base for this application quickly and effectively, without hacking together some band-aid solution for a problem that really needs a trauma ward. Special Considerations The solution must be fast, run quickly on existing hardware, and not be too much of a pain to maintain and write. I understand that anything I write I'm married to -- I'm responsible for the things that I write because my reputation and livelihood is dependent on it. Do I really need a database? What about performance? Performance was such a big issue that I hand wrote a data structure that is capable of performing 2 billion operations, using a total of 4 gigs of memory in under 1/4 of a second using the standard core two duo processor. I could not find a similar, pre-written data structure in C# to perform this task. What setup do I use in terms of database? What about reporting? I'd prefer to have PDF's generated, but I'd like to be able to visually sketch those reports and then just have a ReportFactory of some sort, that when I pass some variables in, it just does that data. About Me I'm a lone developer for a small business in this area. This is the first time I've done this and I've never had the breadth and depth of my knowledge tested. I'm incredibly frustrated with this project because I feel incredibly overwhelmed with the task at hand. I'm looking for that entry level point where I can draw a line and say "this is what I need to do" Conclusion I may have not been clear enough on my post. I'm still new to this whole thing, and I've been doing my best to contribute back to the community that I've leached so much knowledge from. I'd be glad to edit my post and add more information if possible. I'm looking for a big-picture solution or design process that helps me get off the ground in this world of data-driven applications, because I have a feeling that it's going to be concentric to my entire career as a programmer for some time. Specifically, if you didn't get it from the rest of the post (I may not have been clear enough) I really need some guidance as to where to go in terms of the design decisions for this project. Some things that'll be useful will be a pro/con list for the different kinds of database projects available in VS2010. I've tried, but generating that list has been as hard as solving the problem itself... If you could walk a developer writing a data-driven application for the first time in C#, how would you do that? Where would you point them to?

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 02, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 02, 2010New ProjectsAcceptance Test Excel Addin: Acceptance Test Excel Addin is a tool to author, execute and analyze acceptance tests in Excel. The tester write tests using Given-When-Then (Gherk...Adrastus: Related to manage Issue/Item of any type. To be defined later TBDAn opportunity of upgrading Linux operating system: Want to add a new software in Linux operating system? Here is an opportunity. UFS (User Friendly Scheduler) has been designed to make the operating...AspNetPager: AspNetPager is a free custom paging control for ASP.NET web form application. It's one of the most popular ASP.NET third party controls used by chi...AzureRunMe: Run Java, Ruby, Python, [insert language of your choice] applications in Windows Azure. You provide a self contained ZIP file with a runme.bat f...DiffPlex - a .NET Diff Generator: DiffPlex is a combination of a .NET Diffing Library with both a Silverlight and HTML diff viewer.GPA WebClient: GPA project web client.Maintenance Service: A lot of projects need to have a windows service that execute different tasks. If am tired of creating the same service for all this project, so He...Marager Component Framework: Marager Component Framework (mcf)Pod Thrower: An application that gives a simple way to create podcast rss feeds from local computer folders.Rapidshare Episode Downloader: Rapidshare Episode Downloader is a software that enables you (yes, you!) to organize your many episodes of different TV shows in a nice list, prese...Resxus - Total .net string resource management tool: RESXUS is a resource file management tool which is being created under my job-experience of managing multilingual resx files. The first goal of th...SLFX: SLFXTheWhiteAmbit: Hybrid Scanline-Raytracing Engine. VisitorPattern based Scenegraph written in C++. DirectX9 or DirectX10 rendering is used for PrimaryRays and CUDA...TSqlMigrations: Yet another migrations platform right? This is purely sql based (tsql as it is only for Sql Server at this time). This tool is meant to help mana...WAFFLE: Windows Authentication Functional Framework (LE): WAFFLE - Windows Authentication Functional Framework (Light Edition) is a .NET library with a COM interface and a Java bridge that provides a worki...web lib api: This project aim, to pull together the major, web api/webservices for each relervant categorie.WSDLGenerator: A tool to generate a WSDL file from a c# dll which contains one more Microsoft WebServices. The project is build using VS2010RC and uses .net Fram...XNA Re-usable UI Components: The aim of this project is to create a re-usable set of UI game components helping reduce production time for your game. More information can be...YUI Compressor Custom Tool for Visual Studio: This EXTREMELY simple custom tool is used to automatically generate a *.min.css file from your existing code on save. It is merely a packaged versi...New ReleasesAcceptance Test Excel Addin: 1.0.0.0: How to Use Extract AcceptanceTestExcelAddIn-1.0.0.0.zip Run setup.exe Extract PasswordSample.zip Open Excel, your will see a new tab, "QA To...An opportunity of upgrading Linux operating system: UFS: The software provided by me is just a basic one that will run in the terminal through gcc compiler. The developers are therefore requested to make ...AspNetPager: Demo project: AspNetPager version 7.3.2 demo web site projectBusiness Framework: Formula Samples: A sample demonstrating textual language - Formula. It can be used is many business scenarios allowing end-user to configure or interact with the sy...Deblector: Deblector 1.1: This build fixes compatibility with .NET Reflector 6.Desktop Dimmer: March 2010: First release, March 2010EasyDump: EasyDump 1.0.1: Easy Dump 1.0.1 fix duplicate output when execute twiceExtensia: Extensia: Extensia is a very large list of extension methods and a few helper types. Many methods have practical utility (e.g. console parsing) whilst some ...Fluent Assertions: Fluent Assertions release 1.0: The first release of the Fluent Assertions. It contains assertions for the most common types and has several extension points.FolderSize: FolderSize.Win32.1.0.6.0: FolderSize.Win32.1.0.6.0 A simple utility intended to be used to scan harddrives for the folders that take most place and display this to the user...GamerShots.com Screenshot Capture: GamerShots.com Screenshot Capture: Windows Form application written in C# ASP.Net. Allows the user to capture a screen by pressing the "Print Scrn" key or by user input. Then uses ...Jet Login Tool (JetLoginTool): Stopped - 1.5.3713.17328: Fixed: Engine will now actually stop when the "Stop" button is hitJolt Environment - RuneScape Emulator: Jolt Environment 1.0.6000 GOLD: Features since 1.0.3200: - Account Creation via client - Character Saving/Loading (via MySQL serialization) - Ground Objects - Ground Items (with m...jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services: SPServices 0.5.2: NOTE: While I work on new releases, I post alpha versions. Usually the alpha versions are here to address a particular need. I DO NOT recommend us...LINQ to XSD: 1.0.0: The LINQ to XSD technology provides .NET developers with support for typed XML programming. LINQ to XSD contributes to the LINQ project (.NET Langu...Maintenance Service: Alpha Release: Alpha Release of the SoftwareMDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.5.56206: Fixed many gathered bugs;MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.6.56217: Fixed retrieving hotfile data using registered accounts.MRDS Services for HiTechnic: HiTechnic Controllers: The HiTechnic Controllers package contains services for MRDS that work with the LEGO NXT and TETRIX Servo and Motor Controllers. Initial ReleaseCo...Open NFe: DANFE 1.9.2: Correções do DANFE que serão incluídas na versão 1.9.2PROGRAMMABLE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT: PROGRAMMABLE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT-2.4: While testing a standard software parts kit library for strict portability, The following error condition occurred when using the Windows version ...Rapidshare Episode Downloader: RED 0.8: This is an almost fully working version of the software. What DOESN'T work: Showing the list of rapidshare search results (but query is being made...Reusable Library: V1.0.4: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developer.SharePoint LogViewer: SharePointLogViewer 1.5.1: Follwoing bugs are fixed Bookmarks deleted on refresh/reload Bookmarks not properly navigated on filtered list. Disabled toolbar buttons did n...SharePoint Taxonomy Extensions: SharePoint Taxonomy Extensions 1.1-1: - Some bugfixes - Possibility to switch between alphanummeric und manual sortingSilverSynth - Digital Audio Synthesis for Silverlight: SilverSynth 1.1: SilverSynth 1.1 is a zip file of the source code and includes an updated version of the demo application including presets.SQL Server Reporting Services MSBuild Tasks: Release 1.1.14669: New Features New Task added for Integrated and Native mode: DeleteReportUser Task ReportUserExists TaskTellago DevLabs: BizTalk Data Services v0.2: This release is the first version of the BizTalk Data Services API, a RESTful API for BizTalk Server based on the Open Data (OData) Protocol. The ...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30301.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWAFFLE: Windows Authentication Functional Framework (LE): 1.2: Build 1.2.4217.0, initial open-source release. - Account lookup locally and in Active Directory. - Enumerating Active Directory domains. - Returns...Watermarker: 0.87: 01.03.2010: • FIXED: some stability fixes • ADDED: ability to choose any number of pictures and folder to save them after the operation completesWSDLGenerator: WSDLGenerator 0.0.0.1: Initial versionXNA Re-usable UI Components: Re-usable Game Components V1.0: First public release of the source codeYUI Compressor Custom Tool for Visual Studio: YUI Compressor Custom Tool with Installer v0.1a: Initial release with alpha installer - documentation to follow.Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)Microsoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NETImage Resizer Powertoy Clone for WindowsMost Active ProjectsRawrBlogEngine.NETMapWindow GISpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesSharpMap - Geospatial Application Framework for the CLRRapid Entity Framework (ORM). CTP 2DiffPlex - a .NET Diff GeneratorMDT Web FrontEndWPF Dialogs

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Transactional Messaging in the Windows Azure Service Bus

- by Alan Smith

Introduction I’m currently working on broadening the content in the Windows Azure Service Bus Developer Guide. One of the features I have been looking at over the past week is the support for transactional messaging. When using the direct programming model and the WCF interface some, but not all, messaging operations can participate in transactions. This allows developers to improve the reliability of messaging systems. There are some limitations in the transactional model, transactions can only include one top level messaging entity (such as a queue or topic, subscriptions are no top level entities), and transactions cannot include other systems, such as databases. As the transaction model is currently not well documented I have had to figure out how things work through experimentation, with some help from the development team to confirm any questions I had. Hopefully I’ve got the content mostly correct, I will update the content in the e-book if I find any errors or improvements that can be made (any feedback would be very welcome). I’ve not had a chance to look into the code for transactions and asynchronous operations, maybe that would make a nice challenge lab for my Windows Azure Service Bus course. Transactional Messaging Messaging entities in the Windows Azure Service Bus provide support for participation in transactions. This allows developers to perform several messaging operations within a transactional scope, and ensure that all the actions are committed or, if there is a failure, none of the actions are committed. There are a number of scenarios where the use of transactions can increase the reliability of messaging systems. Using TransactionScope In .NET the TransactionScope class can be used to perform a series of actions in a transaction. The using declaration is typically used de define the scope of the transaction. Any transactional operations that are contained within the scope can be committed by calling the Complete method. If the Complete method is not called, any transactional methods in the scope will not commit. // Create a transactional scope. using (TransactionScope scope = new TransactionScope()) { // Do something. // Do something else. // Commit the transaction. scope.Complete(); } In order for methods to participate in the transaction, they must provide support for transactional operations. Database and message queue operations typically provide support for transactions. Transactions in Brokered Messaging Transaction support in Service Bus Brokered Messaging allows message operations to be performed within a transactional scope; however there are some limitations around what operations can be performed within the transaction. In the current release, only one top level messaging entity, such as a queue or topic can participate in a transaction, and the transaction cannot include any other transaction resource managers, making transactions spanning a messaging entity and a database not possible. When sending messages, the send operations can participate in a transaction allowing multiple messages to be sent within a transactional scope. This allows for “all or nothing” delivery of a series of messages to a single queue or topic. When receiving messages, messages that are received in the peek-lock receive mode can be completed, deadlettered or deferred within a transactional scope. In the current release the Abandon method will not participate in a transaction. The same restrictions of only one top level messaging entity applies here, so the Complete method can be called transitionally on messages received from the same queue, or messages received from one or more subscriptions in the same topic. Sending Multiple Messages in a Transaction A transactional scope can be used to send multiple messages to a queue or topic. This will ensure that all the messages will be enqueued or, if the transaction fails to commit, no messages will be enqueued. An example of the code used to send 10 messages to a queue as a single transaction from a console application is shown below. QueueClient queueClient = messagingFactory.CreateQueueClient(Queue1); Console.Write("Sending"); // Create a transaction scope. using (TransactionScope scope = new TransactionScope()) { for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { // Send a message BrokeredMessage msg = new BrokeredMessage("Message: " + i); queueClient.Send(msg); Console.Write("."); } Console.WriteLine("Done!"); Console.WriteLine(); // Should we commit the transaction? Console.WriteLine("Commit send 10 messages? (yes or no)"); string reply = Console.ReadLine(); if (reply.ToLower().Equals("yes")) { // Commit the transaction. scope.Complete(); } } Console.WriteLine(); messagingFactory.Close(); The transaction scope is used to wrap the sending of 10 messages. Once the messages have been sent the user has the option to either commit the transaction or abandon the transaction. If the user enters “yes”, the Complete method is called on the scope, which will commit the transaction and result in the messages being enqueued. If the user enters anything other than “yes”, the transaction will not commit, and the messages will not be enqueued. Receiving Multiple Messages in a Transaction The receiving of multiple messages is another scenario where the use of transactions can improve reliability. When receiving a group of messages that are related together, maybe in the same message session, it is possible to receive the messages in the peek-lock receive mode, and then complete, defer, or deadletter the messages in one transaction. (In the current version of Service Bus, abandon is not transactional.) The following code shows how this can be achieved. using (TransactionScope scope = new TransactionScope()) { while (true) { // Receive a message. BrokeredMessage msg = q1Client.Receive(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1)); if (msg != null) { // Wrote message body and complete message. string text = msg.GetBody<string>(); Console.WriteLine("Received: " + text); msg.Complete(); } else { break; } } Console.WriteLine(); // Should we commit? Console.WriteLine("Commit receive? (yes or no)"); string reply = Console.ReadLine(); if (reply.ToLower().Equals("yes")) { // Commit the transaction. scope.Complete(); } Console.WriteLine(); } Note that if there are a large number of messages to be received, there will be a chance that the transaction may time out before it can be committed. It is possible to specify a longer timeout when the transaction is created, but It may be better to receive and commit smaller amounts of messages within the transaction. It is also possible to complete, defer, or deadletter messages received from more than one subscription, as long as all the subscriptions are contained in the same topic. As subscriptions are not top level messaging entities this scenarios will work. The following code shows how this can be achieved. try { using (TransactionScope scope = new TransactionScope()) { // Receive one message from each subscription. BrokeredMessage msg1 = subscriptionClient1.Receive(); BrokeredMessage msg2 = subscriptionClient2.Receive(); // Complete the message receives. msg1.Complete(); msg2.Complete(); Console.WriteLine("Msg1: " + msg1.GetBody<string>()); Console.WriteLine("Msg2: " + msg2.GetBody<string>()); // Commit the transaction. scope.Complete(); } } catch (Exception ex) { Console.WriteLine(ex.Message); } Unsupported Scenarios The restriction of only one top level messaging entity being able to participate in a transaction makes some useful scenarios unsupported. As the Windows Azure Service Bus is under continuous development and new releases are expected to be frequent it is possible that this restriction may not be present in future releases. The first is the scenario where messages are to be routed to two different systems. The following code attempts to do this. try { // Create a transaction scope. using (TransactionScope scope = new TransactionScope()) { BrokeredMessage msg1 = new BrokeredMessage("Message1"); BrokeredMessage msg2 = new BrokeredMessage("Message2"); // Send a message to Queue1 Console.WriteLine("Sending Message1"); queue1Client.Send(msg1); // Send a message to Queue2 Console.WriteLine("Sending Message2"); queue2Client.Send(msg2); // Commit the transaction. Console.WriteLine("Committing transaction..."); scope.Complete(); } } catch (Exception ex) { Console.WriteLine(ex.Message); } The results of running the code are shown below. When attempting to send a message to the second queue the following exception is thrown: No active Transaction was found for ID '35ad2495-ee8a-4956-bbad-eb4fedf4a96e:1'. The Transaction may have timed out or attempted to span multiple top-level entities such as Queue or Topic. The server Transaction timeout is: 00:01:00..TrackingId:947b8c4b-7754-4044-b91b-4a959c3f9192_3_3,TimeStamp:3/29/2012 7:47:32 AM. Another scenario where transactional support could be useful is when forwarding messages from one queue to another queue. This would also involve more than one top level messaging entity, and is therefore not supported. Another scenario that developers may wish to implement is performing transactions across messaging entities and other transactional systems, such as an on-premise database. In the current release this is not supported. Workarounds for Unsupported Scenarios There are some techniques that developers can use to work around the one top level entity limitation of transactions. When sending two messages to two systems, topics and subscriptions can be used. If the same message is to be sent to two destinations then the subscriptions would have the default subscriptions, and the client would only send one message. If two different messages are to be sent, then filters on the subscriptions can route the messages to the appropriate destination. The client can then send the two messages to the topic in the same transaction. In scenarios where a message needs to be received and then forwarded to another system within the same transaction topics and subscriptions can also be used. A message can be received from a subscription, and then sent to a topic within the same transaction. As a topic is a top level messaging entity, and a subscription is not, this scenario will work.

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Azure Grid Computing - Worker Roles as HPC Compute Nodes

- by JoshReuben

Overview · With HPC 2008 R2 SP1 You can add Azure worker roles as compute nodes in a local Windows HPC Server cluster. · The subscription for Windows Azure like any other Azure Service - charged for the time that the role instances are available, as well as for the compute and storage services that are used on the nodes. · Win-Win ? - Azure charges the computer hour cost (according to vm size) amortized over a month – so you save on purchasing compute node hardware. Microsoft wins because you need to purchase HPC to have a local head node for managing this compute cluster grid distributed in the cloud. · Blob storage is used to hold input & output files of each job. I can see how Parametric Sweep HPC jobs can be supported (where the same job is run multiple times on each node against different input units), but not MPI.NET (where different HPC Job instances function as coordinated agents and conduct master-slave inter-process communication), unless Azure is somehow tunneling MPI communication through inter-WorkerRole Azure Queues. · this is not the end of the story for Azure Grid Computing. If MS requires you to purchase a local HPC license (and administrate it), what's to stop a 3rd party from doing this and encapsulating exposing HPC WCF Broker Service to you for managing compute nodes? If MS doesn’t provide head node as a service, someone else will! Process · requires creation of a worker node template that specifies a connection to an existing subscription for Windows Azure + an availability policy for the worker nodes. · After worker nodes are added to the cluster, you can start them, which provisions the Windows Azure role instances, and then bring them online to run HPC cluster jobs. · A Windows Azure worker role instance runs a HPC compatible Azure guest operating system which runs on the VMs that host your service. The guest operating system is updated monthly. You can choose to upgrade the guest OS for your service automatically each time an update is released - All role instances defined by your service will run on the guest operating system version that you specify. see Windows Azure Guest OS Releases and SDK Compatibility Matrix (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=190549). · use the hpcpack command to upload file packages and install files to run on the worker nodes. see hpcpack (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=205514). Requirements · assuming you have an azure subscription account and the HPC head node installed and configured. · Install HPC Pack 2008 R2 SP 1 - see Microsoft HPC Pack 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 Release Notes (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=202812). · Configure the head node to connect to the Internet - connectivity is provided by the connection of the head node to the enterprise network. You may need to configure a proxy client on the head node. Any cluster network topology (1-5) is supported). · Configure the firewall - allow outbound TCP traffic on the following ports: 80, 443, 5901, 5902, 7998, 7999 · Note: HPC Server uses Admin Mode (Elevated Privileges) in Windows Azure to give the service administrator of the subscription the necessary privileges to initialize HPC cluster services on the worker nodes. · Obtain a Windows Azure subscription certificate - the Windows Azure subscription must be configured with a public subscription (API) certificate -a valid X.509 certificate with a key size of at least 2048 bits. Generate a self-sign certificate & upload a .cer file to the Windows Azure Portal Account page > Manage my API Certificates link. see Using the Windows Azure Service Management API (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=205526). · import the certificate with an associated private key on the HPC cluster head node - into the trusted root store of the local computer account. Obtain Windows Azure Connection Information for HPC Server · required for each worker node template · copy from azure portal - Get from: navigation pane > Hosted Services > Storage Accounts & CDN · Subscription ID - a 32-char hex string in the form xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx. In Properties pane. · Subscription certificate thumbprint - a 40-char hex string (you need to remove spaces). In Management Certificates > Properties pane. · Service name - the value of <ServiceName> configured in the public URL of the service (http://<ServiceName>.cloudapp.net). In Hosted Services > Properties pane. · Blob Storage account name - the value of <StorageAccountName> configured in the public URL of the account (http://<StorageAccountName>.blob.core.windows.net). In Storage Accounts > Properties pane. Import the Azure Subscription Certificate on the HPC Head Node · enable the services for Windows HPC Server to authenticate properly with the Windows Azure subscription. · use the Certificates MMC snap-in to import the certificate to the Trusted Root Certification Authorities store of the local computer account. The certificate must be in PFX format (.pfx or .p12 file) with a private key that is protected by a password. · see Certificates (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=163918). · To open the certificates snapin: Run > mmc. File > Add/Remove Snap-in > certificates > Computer account > Local Computer · To import the certificate via wizard - Certificates > Trusted Root Certification Authorities > Certificates > All Tasks > Import · After the certificate is imported, it appears in the details pane in the Certificates snap-in. You can open the certificate to check its status. Configure a Proxy Client on the HPC Head Node · the following Windows HPC Server services must be able to communicate over the Internet (through the firewall) with the services for Windows Azure: HPCManagement, HPCScheduler, HPCBrokerWorker. · Create a Windows Azure Worker Node Template · Edit HPC node templates in HPC Node Template Editor. · Specify: 1) Windows Azure subscription connection info (unique service name) for adding a set of worker nodes to the cluster + 2)worker node availability policy – rules for deploying / removing worker role instances in Windows Azure o HPC Cluster Manager > Configuration > Navigation Pane > Node Templates > Actions pane > New à Create Node Template Wizard or Edit à Node Template Editor o Choose Node Template Type page - Windows Azure worker node template o Specify Template Name page – template name & description o Provide Connection Information page – Azure Subscription ID (text) & Subscription certificate (browse) o Provide Service Information page - Azure service name + blob storage account name (optionally click Retrieve Connection Information to get list of available from azure – possible LRT). o Configure Azure Availability Policy page - how Windows Azure worker nodes start / stop (online / offline the worker role instance - add / remove) – manual / automatic o for automatic - In the Configure Windows Azure Worker Availability Policy dialog -select days and hours for worker nodes to start / stop. · To validate the Windows Azure connection information, on the template's Connection Information tab > Validate connection information. · You can upload a file package to the storage account that is specified in the template - eg upload application or service files that will run on the worker nodes. see hpcpack (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=205514). Add Azure Worker Nodes to the HPC Cluster · Use the Add Node Wizard – specify: 1) the worker node template, 2) The number of worker nodes (within the quota of role instances in the azure subscription), and 3) The VM size of the worker nodes : ExtraSmall, Small, Medium, Large, or ExtraLarge. · to add worker nodes of different sizes, must run the Add Node Wizard separately for each size. · All worker nodes that are added to the cluster by using a specific worker node template define a set of worker nodes that will be deployed and managed together in Windows Azure when you start the nodes. This includes worker nodes that you add later by using the worker node template and, if you choose, worker nodes of different sizes. You cannot start, stop, or delete individual worker nodes. · To add Windows Azure worker nodes o In HPC Cluster Manager: Node Management > Actions pane > Add Node à Add Node Wizard o Select Deployment Method page - Add Azure Worker nodes o Specify New Nodes page - select a worker node template, specify the number and size of the worker nodes · After you add worker nodes to the cluster, they are in the Not-Deployed state, and they have a health state of Unapproved. Before you can use the worker nodes to run jobs, you must start them and then bring them online. · Worker nodes are numbered consecutively in a naming series that begins with the root name AzureCN – this is non-configurable. Deploying Windows Azure Worker Nodes · To deploy the role instances in Windows Azure - start the worker nodes added to the HPC cluster and bring the nodes online so that they are available to run cluster jobs. This can be configured in the HPC Azure Worker Node Template – Azure Availability Policy - to be automatic or manual. · The Start, Stop, and Delete actions take place on the set of worker nodes that are configured by a specific worker node template. You cannot perform one of these actions on a single worker node in a set. You also cannot perform a single action on two sets of worker nodes (specified by two different worker node templates). · · Starting a set of worker nodes deploys a set of worker role instances in Windows Azure, which can take some time to complete, depending on the number of worker nodes and the performance of Windows Azure. · To start worker nodes manually and bring them online o In HPC Node Management > Navigation Pane > Nodes > List / Heat Map view - select one or more worker nodes. o Actions pane > Start – in the Start Azure Worker Nodes dialog, select a node template. o the state of the worker nodes changes from Not Deployed to track the provisioning progress – worker node Details Pane > Provisioning Log tab. o If there were errors during the provisioning of one or more worker nodes, the state of those nodes is set to Unknown and the node health is set to Unapproved. To determine the reason for the failure, review the provisioning logs for the nodes. o After a worker node starts successfully, the node state changes to Offline. To bring the nodes online, select the nodes that are in the Offline state > Bring Online. · Troubleshooting o check node template. o use telnet to test connectivity: telnet <ServiceName>.cloudapp.net 7999 o check node status - Deployment status information appears in the service account information in the Windows Azure Portal - HPC queries this - see node status information for any failed nodes in HPC Node Management. · When role instances are deployed, file packages that were previously uploaded to the storage account using the hpcpack command are automatically installed. You can also upload file packages to storage after the worker nodes are started, and then manually install them on the worker nodes. see hpcpack (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=205514). · to remove a set of role instances in Windows Azure - stop the nodes by using HPC Cluster Manager (apply the Stop action). This deletes the role instances from the service and changes the state of the worker nodes in the HPC cluster to Not Deployed. · Each time that you start a set of worker nodes, two proxy role instances (size Small) are configured in Windows Azure to facilitate communication between HPC Cluster Manager and the worker nodes. The proxy role instances are not listed in HPC Cluster Manager after the worker nodes are added. However, the instances appear in the Windows Azure Portal. The proxy role instances incur charges in Windows Azure along with the worker node instances, and they count toward the quota of role instances in the subscription.

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First round playing with Memcached

- by Shaun

To be honest I have not been very interested in the caching before I’m going to a project which would be using the multi-site deployment and high connection and concurrency and very sensitive to the user experience. That means we must cache the output data for better performance. After looked for the Internet I finally focused on the Memcached. What’s the Memcached? I think the description on its main site gives us a very good and simple explanation. Free & open source, high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load. Memcached is an in-memory key-value store for small chunks of arbitrary data (strings, objects) from results of database calls, API calls, or page rendering. Memcached is simple yet powerful. Its simple design promotes quick deployment, ease of development, and solves many problems facing large data caches. Its API is available for most popular languages. The original Memcached was built on *nix system are is being widely used in the PHP world. Although it’s not a problem to use the Memcached installed on *nix system there are some windows version available fortunately. Since we are WISC (Windows – IIS – SQL Server – C#, which on the opposite of LAMP) it would be much easier for us to use the Memcached on Windows rather than *nix. I’m using the Memcached Win X64 version provided by NorthScale. There are also the x86 version and other operation system version. Install Memcached Unpack the Memcached file to a folder on the machine you want it to be installed, we can see that there are only 3 files and the main file should be the “memcached.exe”. Memcached would be run on the server as a service. To install the service just open a command windows and navigate to the folder which contains the “memcached.exe”, let’s say “C:\Memcached\”, and then type “memcached.exe -d install”. If you are using Windows Vista and Windows 7 system please be execute the command through the administrator role. Right-click the command item in the start menu and use “Run as Administrator”, otherwise the Memcached would not be able to be installed successfully. Once installed successful we can type “memcached.exe -d start” to launch the service. Now it’s ready to be used. The default port of Memcached is 11211 but you can change it through the command argument. You can find the help by typing “memcached -h”. Using Memcached Memcahed has many good and ready-to-use providers for vary program language. After compared and reviewed I chose the Memcached Providers. It’s built based on another 3rd party Memcached client named enyim.com Memcached Client. The Memcached Providers is very simple to set/get the cached objects through the Memcached servers and easy to be configured through the application configuration file (aka web.config and app.config). Let’s create a console application for the demonstration and add the 3 DLL files from the package of the Memcached Providers to the project reference. Then we need to add the configuration for the Memcached server. Create an App.config file and firstly add the section on top of it. Here we need three sections: the section for Memcached Providers, for enyim.com Memcached client and the log4net. 1: <configSections> 2: <section name="cacheProvider" 3: type="MemcachedProviders.Cache.CacheProviderSection, MemcachedProviders" 4: allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" 5: restartOnExternalChanges="true"/> 6: <sectionGroup name="enyim.com"> 7: <section name="memcached" 8: type="Enyim.Caching.Configuration.MemcachedClientSection, Enyim.Caching"/> 9: </sectionGroup> 10: <section name="log4net" 11: type="log4net.Config.Log4NetConfigurationSectionHandler,log4net"/> 12: </configSections> Then we will add the configuration for 3 of them in the App.config file. The Memcached server information would be defined under the enyim.com section since it will be responsible for connect to the Memcached server. Assuming I installed the Memcached on two servers with the default port, the configuration would be like this. 1: <enyim.com> 2: <memcached> 3: <servers> 4:  5: <add address="192.168.0.149" port="11211"/> 6: <add address="10.10.20.67" port="11211"/> 7: </servers> 8: <socketPool minPoolSize="10" maxPoolSize="100" connectionTimeout="00:00:10" deadTimeout="00:02:00"/> 9: </memcached> 10: </enyim.com> Memcached supports the multi-deployment which means you can install the Memcached on the servers as many as you need. The protocol of the Memcached responsible for routing the cached objects into the proper server. So it’s very easy to scale-out your system by Memcached. And then define the Memcached Providers configuration. The defaultExpireTime indicates how long the objected cached in the Memcached would be expired, the default value is 2000 ms. 1: <cacheProvider defaultProvider="MemcachedCacheProvider"> 2: <providers> 3: <add name="MemcachedCacheProvider" 4: type="MemcachedProviders.Cache.MemcachedCacheProvider, MemcachedProviders" 5: keySuffix="_MySuffix_" 6: defaultExpireTime="2000"/> 7: </providers> 8: </cacheProvider> The last configuration would be the log4net. 1: <log4net> 2:  3: <appender name="ConsoleAppender" type="log4net.Appender.ConsoleAppender"> 4: <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout"> 5: <conversionPattern value="%date [%thread] %-5level %logger [%property{NDC}] - %message%newline"/> 6: </layout> 7: </appender> 8:  9:  10: <root> 11: <priority value="WARN"/> 12: <appender-ref ref="ConsoleAppender"> 13: <filter type="log4net.Filter.LevelRangeFilter"> 14: <levelMin value="WARN"/> 15: <levelMax value="FATAL"/> 16: </filter> 17: </appender-ref> 18: </root> 19: </log4net> Get, Set and Remove the Cached Objects Once we finished the configuration it would be very simple to consume the Memcached servers. The Memcached Providers gives us a static class named DistCache that can be used to operate the Memcached servers. Get<T>: Retrieve the cached object from the Memcached servers. If failed it will return null or the default value. Add: Add an object with a unique key into the Memcached servers. Assuming that we have an operation that retrieve the email from the name which is time consuming. This is the operation that should be cached. The method would be like this. I utilized Thread.Sleep to simulate the long-time operation. 1: static string GetEmailByNameSlowly(string name) 2: { 3: Thread.Sleep(2000); 4: return name + "@ethos.com.cn"; 5: } Then in the real retrieving method we will firstly check whether the name, email information had been searched previously and cached. If yes we will just return them from the Memcached, otherwise we will invoke the slowly method to retrieve it and then cached. 1: static string GetEmailByName(string name) 2: { 3: var email = DistCache.Get<string>(name); 4: if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(email)) 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("==> The name/email not be in memcached so need slow loading. (name = {0})==>", name); 7: email = GetEmailByNameSlowly(name); 8: DistCache.Add(name, email); 9: } 10: else 11: { 12: Console.WriteLine("==> The name/email had been in memcached. (name = {0})==>", name); 13: } 14: return email; 15: } Finally let’s finished the calling method and execute. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: var name = string.Empty; 4: while (name != "q") 5: { 6: Console.Write("==> Please enter the name to find the email: "); 7: name = Console.ReadLine(); 8: 9: var email = GetEmailByName(name); 10: Console.WriteLine("==> The email of {0} is {1}.", name, email); 11: } 12: } The first time I entered “ziyanxu” it takes about 2 seconds to get the email since there’s nothing cached. But the next time I entered “ziyanxu” it returned very quickly from the Memcached. Summary In this post I explained a bit on why we need cache, what’s Memcached and how to use it through the C# application. The example is fairly simple but hopefully demonstrated on how to use it. Memcached is very easy and simple to be used since it gives you the full opportunity to consider what, when and how to cache the objects. And when using Memcached you don’t need to consider the cache servers. The Memcached would be like a huge object pool in front of you. The next step I’m thinking now are: What kind of data should be cached? And how to determined the key? How to implement the cache as a layer on top of the business layer so that the application will not notice that the cache is there. How to implement the cache by AOP so that the business logic no need to consider the cache. I will investigate on them in the future and will share my thoughts and results. Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 10, 2012

CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 10, 2012Popular ReleasesPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 Metro (BETA): Player Framework for HTML/JavaScript and XAML/C# Metro Style Applications.WPF Application Framework (WAF): WAF for .NET 4.5 (Experimental): Version: 2.5.0.440 (Experimental): This is an experimental release! It can be used to investigate the new .NET Framework 4.5 features. The ideas shown in this release might come in a future release (after 2.5) of the WPF Application Framework (WAF). More information can be found in this dicussion post. Requirements .NET Framework 4.5 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 11) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 11 Professional Changelog All: Upgrade all proje...SSH.NET Library: 2012.3.9: There are still few outstanding issues I wanted to include in this release but since its been a while and there are few new features already I decided to create a new release now. New Features Add SOCKS4, SOCKS5 and HTTP Proxy support when connecting to remote server. For silverlight only IP address can be used for server address when using proxy. Add dynamic port forwarding support using ForwardedPortDynamic class. Add new ShellStream class to work with SSH Shell. Add supports for mu...Test Case Import Utilities for Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 11 Beta: V1.2 RTM: This release (V1.2 RTM) includes: Support for connecting to Hosted Team Foundation Server Preview. Support for connecting to Team Foundation Server 11 Beta. Fix to issue with read-only attribute being set for LinksMapping-ReportFile which may have led to problems when saving the report file. Fix to issue with “related links” not being set properly in certain conditions. Fix to ensure that tool works fine when the Excel file contained rich text data. Note: Data is still imported in pl...Audio Pitch & Shift: Audio Pitch And Shift 3.5.0: Modules (mod, xm, it, etc..) supportcallisto: callisto 2.0.19: BUG FIX: Autorun.load() function in scripting now has sandboxed path (Thanks Mikey!) BUG FIX: UserObject.Name property now allows full 20 byte string replacements. FEATURE REQUEST: File.* script functions now allow file extensions.EntitiesToDTOs - Entity Framework DTO Generator: EntitiesToDTOs.v2.1: Changelog Fixed template file access issue on Win7. Fix on configuration load when target project was not found and "Use project default namespace" was checked. Minor fix on loading latest configuration at startup. Minor fix in VisualStudioHelper class. DTO's properties accessors are now in one line. Improvements in PropertyHelper to get a cleaner and more performant code. Added Website project type as a not supported project type. Using Error List pane from VS IDE to show Enti...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.01.04: Major Highlights Fixed issue with loading the splash page skin in the login, privacy and terms of use pages Fixed issue when searching for words with special characters in them Fixed redirection issue when the user does not have permissions to access a resource Fixed issue when clearing the cache using the ClearHostCache() function Fixed issue when displaying the site structure in the link to page feature Fixed issue when inline editing the title of modules Fixed issue with ...Mayhem: Mayhem Developer Preview: This is the developer preview of Mayhem. Enjoy!Team Foundation Server Process Template Customization Guidance: v1 - For Visual Studio 11: Welcome to the BETA release of the Team Foundation Server Process Template Customization preview. As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has not been through an independent technical review Documentation has not been rev...Magelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 1.2: Medium trust compliant lot of small change for medium trust compliance full refactoring of user management refactoring of Client Refactoring of user management Magelia.WebStore.Client no longer reference Magelia.WebStore.Services.Contract Refactoring page category multi parent category added copy category feature added Refactoring page catalog copy catalog feature added variant management improvement ability to define a default variant for a variable product ability to ord...PDFsharp - A .NET library for processing PDF: PDFsharp and MigraDoc Foundation 1.32: PDFsharp and MigraDoc Foundation 1.32 is a stable version that fixes a few bugs that were found with version 1.31. Version 1.32 includes solutions for Visual Studio 2010 only (but it should be possible to add the project files to existing solutions for VS 2005 or VS 2008). Users of VS 2005 or VS 2008 can still download version 1.31 with the solutions for those versions that allow them to easily try the samples that are included. While it may create smaller PDF files than version 1.30 because...Terminals: Version 2.0 - Release: Changes since version 1.9a:New art works New usability in Organize favorites window Improved usability of imports/exports and scans Large number of fixes Improvements in single instance mode Comparing November beta 4, this corrects: New application icons Doesn't show Logon error codes Fixed command line arguments exception for single instance mode Fixed detaching of tabs improved usability in detached window Fixed option settings for Capture manager Fixed system tray noti...MFCMAPI: March 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1032 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeTortoiseHg: TortoiseHg 2.3.1: bugfix releaseSimple Injector: Simple Injector v1.4.1: This release adds two small improvements to the SimpleInjector.Extensions.dll. No changes have been made to the core library. New features and improvements in this release for the SimpleInjector.Extensions.dll The RegisterManyForOpenGeneric extension methods now accept non-generic decorator, as long as they implement the given open generic service type. GetTypesToRegister methods added to the OpenGenericBatchRegistrationExtensions class which allows to customize the behavior. Note that the...CommonLibrary: Code: CodeVidCoder: 1.3.1: Updated HandBrake core to 0.9.6 release (svn 4472). Removed erroneous "None" container choice. Change some logic and help text to stop assuming you have to pick the VIDEO_TS folder for a DVD scan. This should make previewing DVD titles on the Queue Multiple Titles window possible when you've picked the root DVD directory.Google Books Downloader for Windows: Google Books Downloader: Google Books Downloader 1.8ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.0: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-03-04 v3.1.0 -??Hidden???????（〓?〓）。 -?PageManager??...New ProjectsAres Backup: Ares Backup is a Backup software which can save bytediffs and provides several storage plugins.BackItUp: Backup-Tool für Visual Studio Projektebinbin domain: binbin domain Blexus Service Plattform: Some cool stuff about Wcf Services. - can communicate files - can communicate xaml objects (generate dynamically Gui) CardPlay - a Solitaire Framework for .Net: CardPlay is a C# framework for developing Solitaire card games. The solution includes a sample WPF client along with over 100 games.Cloud Files Upload: Windows application to script cloud file uploads.Code First API Library, Scaffolding & Guidance for Coded UI Tests: Code first Coded UI Tests for web apps. Library, Scaffolding and Guidance.CPEBook by FMUG & TPAY: CPEBook by MUG & TPAY Projet dot NET CPEBookDot Net Application String Resources Viewer: Dot Net Application String Resources ViewerFilter for SharePoint Web Settings Page: This solution show a simple way to integrate a filter box by using jquery, a global farm feature and a simple delegate control for AdditionalPageHead.Google Books Downloader for Windows: Save Google books in PDF, JPEG or PNG format.GUIToolkit: C++ Windowless GUI，DirectUIHarvest Sports: Harvest SportsInfoPath Analyzer: InfoPath Analyzer makes InfoPath form development and troubleshooting much easier. You're easy to find the relationship between controls and data fields, search data fields or controls by name, edit InfoPath inner html directly.Kinectsignlanguage project: This project will help kinect be used for sign language to speech so that sign language people can be understood while talking to important people. LotteryVote: ????manager123: Trying out CodePlexMcRegister: McRegister is an asp.net mvc 3 razor website that enables you to register users on your minecraft server it works in conjunction with a minecraft mod called EasyAuth.MetroTipi: HelloTipi Sous l'interface Metro de Windows 8Microsoft AppFactory: AppFactory is a powerful data-driven build system for Windows Phone (and soon Windows 8) projects. Its purpose is to help developers start with template projects and turn them into suites of applications.MiniStock: MiniStock is an experimental reference architecture for scalable cloud-based architectures. Implemented in .net.online book shopping: online book shoppingScopa: Carousel Team Scopa per WP7 XNA testtom03092012tfs01: testtom03092012tfs01UsingLib: A library of automatically removed utilities: 1.Changing cursor to hourglass in Windows Forms 2.Logging It's developed in C#WHMCS Library: WHMCS is an all-in-one client management, billing & support solution for online businesses. Handling everything from signup to termination, WHMCS is a powerful business automation tool that puts you firmly in control. The WHMCS Library is a .NET wrapper for the WHMCS API. Written entirely in C# but really easy to port over to VB.NET. Coming from a VB.NET background we tried hard to make sure porting would be simple for VB.NET community members. ZoneEditService: Windows service to update ZoneEdit for dynamic dns.

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SQLAuthority Book Review – DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA

- by pinaldave

DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA – Thomas LaRock Link to Amazon Link to Flipkart First of all, I thank all my readers when I wrote that I could not get this book in any local book stores, because they offered me to send a copy of this good book. A very special mention goes to Sripada and Jayesh for they gave so much effort in finding my home address and sending me the hard copy. Before, I did not have the copy of the book, but now I have two of it already! It surprises me how my readers were able to find my home address, which I have not publicly shared. Quick Review: This is indeed a one easy-to-read and fun book. We all work day and night with technology yet we should not forget to show our love and care for our family at home. For our souls that starve for peace and guidance, this one book is the “it” book for all the technology enthusiasts. Though this book was specifically written for DBAs, the reach is not limited to DBAs only because the lessons incorporated in it actually applies to all. This is one of the most motivating technical books I have read. Detailed Review: Let us go over a few questions first: Who wants to be as famous as rockstars in the field of Database Administration? How can one learn what it takes to become a top notch software developer? If you are a beginner in your field, how will you go to next level? Your boss may be very kind or like Dilbert’s Boss, what will you do? How do you keep growing when Eco-system around you does not support you? You are almost at top but there is someone else at the TOP, what do you do and how do you avoid office politics? As a database developer what should be your basic responsibility? and many more… I was able to completely read book in one sitting and I loved it. Before I continue with my opinion, I want to echo the opinion of Kevin Kline who has written the Forward of the book. He has truly suggested that “You hold in your hands a collection of insights and wisdom on the topic of database administration gained through many years of hard-won experience, long nights of study, and direct mentorship under some of the industry’s most talented database professionals and information technology (IT) experts.” Today, IT field is getting bigger and better, while talking about terabytes of the database becomes “more” normal every single day. The gods and demigods of database professionals are taking care of these large scale databases and are carefully maintaining them. In this world, there are only a few beginnings on the first step. There are many experts in different technology fields who are asked to address the issues with databases. There is YOU and ME, who is just new to this work. So we ask ourselves WHERE to begin and HOW to begin. We adore and follow the religion of our rockstars, but oftentimes we really have no idea about their background and their struggles. Every rockstar has his success story which needs to be digested before learning his tricks and tips. This book starts with the same note and teaches the two most important lessons for anybody who wants to be a DBA Rockstar – to focus on their single goal of learning and to excel the technology. The story starts with three simple guidelines – Get Prepared, Get Trained, Get Certified. Once a person learns the skills, and then, it would be about time that he needs to enrich or to improve those skills you have learned. I am sure that the right opportunity will come finding themselves and they will not have to go run behind it. However, the real challenge for any person is the first day or first week. A new employee, no matter how much experienced he is, sometimes has no clue about what should one do at new job. Chapter 2 and chapter 3 precisely talk about what one should do as soon as the new job begins. It is also written with keeping the fact in focus that each job can be very much different but there are few infrastructure setups and programming concepts are the same. Learning basics of database was really interesting. I like to focus on the roots of any technology. It is important to understand the structure of the database before suggesting what indexes needs to be created, the same way this book covers the most essential knowledge one must learn by most database developers. I think the title of the fourth chapter is my favorite sentence in this book. I can see that I will be saying this again and again in the future – “A Development Server Is a Production Server to a Developer“. I have worked in the software industry for almost 8 years now and I have seen so many developers sitting on their chairs and waiting for instructions from their lead about how to improve the code or what to do the next. When I talk to them, I suggest that the experiment with their server and try various techniques. I think they all should understand that for them, a development server is their production server and needs to pay proper attention to the code from the beginning. There should be NO any inappropriate code from the beginning. One has to fully focus and give their best, if they are not sure they should ask but should do something and stay active. Chapter 5 and 6 talks about two essential skills for any developer and database administration – what are the ethics of developers when they are working with production server and how to support software which is running on the production server. I have met many people who know the theory by heart but when put in front of keyboard they do not know where to start. The first thing they do opening the browser and searching online, instead of opening SQL Server Management Studio. This can very well happen to anybody who is experienced as well. Chapter 5 and 6 addresses that situation as well includes the handy scripts which can solve almost all the basic trouble shooting issues. “Where’s the Buffet?” By far, this is the best chapter in this book. If you have ever met me, you would know that I love food. I think after reading this chapter, I felt Thomas has written this just keeping me in mind. I think there will be many other people who feel the same way, too. Even my wife who read this chapter thought this was specifically written for me. I will not talk any more about this chapter as this is one must read chapter. And of course this is about real ‘FOOD‘. I am an SQL Server Trainer and Consultant and I totally agree with the point made in the chapter 8 of this book. Yes, it says here that what is necessary to train employees and people. Millions of dollars worth the labor is continuously done in the world which has faults and incorrect. Once something goes wrong, very expensive consultant comes in and fixes the problem. This whole cycle which can be stopped and improved if proper training is done. There is plenty of free trainings available as well, if one cannot afford paid training. “Connect. Learn. Share” – I think this is a great summary and bird’s eye view of this book. Networking is the key. Everything which is discussed in this book can be taken to next level if one properly uses this tips and continuously grow with it. Connecting with others, helping learn each other and building the good knowledge sharing environment should be the goal of everyone. Before I end the review I want to share a real experience. I have personally met one DBA who has worked in a single department in a company for so long that when he was put in a different department in his company due to closing that department, he could not adjust and quit the job despite the same people and company around him. Adjusting in the new environment gets much tougher as one person gets more and more experienced. This book precisely addresses the same issue along with their solutions. I just cannot stop comparing the book with my personal journey. I found so many things which are coincidently in the book is written as how we developer and DBA think. I must express special thanks to Thomas for taking time in his personal life and write this book for us. This book is indeed a book for everybody who wants to grow healthy in the tough and competitive environment. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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Anti-Forgery Request Recipes For ASP.NET MVC And AJAX

- by Dixin

Background To secure websites from cross-site request forgery (CSRF, or XSRF) attack, ASP.NET MVC provides an excellent mechanism: The server prints tokens to cookie and inside the form; When the form is submitted to server, token in cookie and token inside the form are sent in the HTTP request; Server validates the tokens. To print tokens to browser, just invoke HtmlHelper.AntiForgeryToken():<% using (Html.BeginForm()) { %> <%: this.Html.AntiForgeryToken(Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)%> <%-- Other fields. --%> <input type="submit" value="Submit" /> <% } %> This invocation generates a token then writes inside the form:<form action="..." method="post"> <input name="__RequestVerificationToken" type="hidden" value="J56khgCvbE3bVcsCSZkNVuH9Cclm9SSIT/ywruFsXEgmV8CL2eW5C/gGsQUf/YuP" />  <input type="submit" value="Submit" /> </form> and also writes into the cookie: __RequestVerificationToken_Lw__= J56khgCvbE3bVcsCSZkNVuH9Cclm9SSIT/ywruFsXEgmV8CL2eW5C/gGsQUf/YuP When the above form is submitted, they are both sent to server. In the server side, [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attribute is used to specify the controllers or actions to validate them:[HttpPost] [ValidateAntiForgeryToken(Salt = Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)] public ActionResult Action(/* ... */) { // ... } This is very productive for form scenarios. But recently, when resolving security vulnerabilities for Web products, some problems are encountered. Specify validation on controller (not on each action) The server side problem is, It is expected to declare [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] on controller, but actually it has be to declared on each POST actions. Because POST actions are usually much more then controllers, the work would be a little crazy. Problem Usually a controller contains actions for HTTP GET and actions for HTTP POST requests, and usually validations are expected for HTTP POST requests. So, if the [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] is declared on the controller, the HTTP GET requests become invalid:[ValidateAntiForgeryToken(Salt = Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)] public class SomeController : Controller // One [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attribute. { [HttpGet] public ActionResult Index() // Index() cannot work. { // ... } [HttpPost] public ActionResult PostAction1(/* ... */) { // ... } [HttpPost] public ActionResult PostAction2(/* ... */) { // ... } // ... } If browser sends an HTTP GET request by clicking a link: http://Site/Some/Index, validation definitely fails, because no token is provided. So the result is, [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attribute must be distributed to each POST action:public class SomeController : Controller // Many [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attributes. { [HttpGet] public ActionResult Index() // Works. { // ... } [HttpPost] [ValidateAntiForgeryToken(Salt = Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)] public ActionResult PostAction1(/* ... */) { // ... } [HttpPost] [ValidateAntiForgeryToken(Salt = Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)] public ActionResult PostAction2(/* ... */) { // ... } // ... } This is a little bit crazy, because one application can have a lot of POST actions. Solution To avoid a large number of [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attributes (one for each POST action), the following ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute wrapper class can be helpful, where HTTP verbs can be specified:[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Class | AttributeTargets.Method, AllowMultiple = false, Inherited = true)] public class ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute : FilterAttribute, IAuthorizationFilter { private readonly ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute _validator; private readonly AcceptVerbsAttribute _verbs; public ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute(HttpVerbs verbs) : this(verbs, null) { } public ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute(HttpVerbs verbs, string salt) { this._verbs = new AcceptVerbsAttribute(verbs); this._validator = new ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute() { Salt = salt }; } public void OnAuthorization(AuthorizationContext filterContext) { string httpMethodOverride = filterContext.HttpContext.Request.GetHttpMethodOverride(); if (this._verbs.Verbs.Contains(httpMethodOverride, StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) { this._validator.OnAuthorization(filterContext); } } } When this attribute is declared on controller, only HTTP requests with the specified verbs are validated:[ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapper(HttpVerbs.Post, Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)] public class SomeController : Controller { // GET actions are not affected. // Only HTTP POST requests are validated. } Now one single attribute on controller turns on validation for all POST actions. Maybe it would be nice if HTTP verbs can be specified on the built-in [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attribute, which is easy to implemented. Specify Non-constant salt in runtime By default, the salt should be a compile time constant, so it can be used for the [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] or [ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapper] attribute. Problem One Web product might be sold to many clients. If a constant salt is evaluated in compile time, after the product is built and deployed to many clients, they all have the same salt. Of course, clients do not like this. Even some clients might want to specify a custom salt in configuration. In these scenarios, salt is required to be a runtime value. Solution In the above [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] and [ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapper] attribute, the salt is passed through constructor. So one solution is to remove this parameter:public class ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute : FilterAttribute, IAuthorizationFilter { public ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute(HttpVerbs verbs) { this._verbs = new AcceptVerbsAttribute(verbs); this._validator = new ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute() { Salt = AntiForgeryToken.Value }; } // Other members. } But here the injected dependency becomes a hard dependency. So the other solution is moving validation code into controller to work around the limitation of attributes:public abstract class AntiForgeryControllerBase : Controller { private readonly ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute _validator; private readonly AcceptVerbsAttribute _verbs; protected AntiForgeryControllerBase(HttpVerbs verbs, string salt) { this._verbs = new AcceptVerbsAttribute(verbs); this._validator = new ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute() { Salt = salt }; } protected override void OnAuthorization(AuthorizationContext filterContext) { base.OnAuthorization(filterContext); string httpMethodOverride = filterContext.HttpContext.Request.GetHttpMethodOverride(); if (this._verbs.Verbs.Contains(httpMethodOverride, StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) { this._validator.OnAuthorization(filterContext); } } } Then make controller classes inheriting from this AntiForgeryControllerBase class. Now the salt is no long required to be a compile time constant. Submit token via AJAX For browser side, once server side turns on anti-forgery validation for HTTP POST, all AJAX POST requests will fail by default. Problem In AJAX scenarios, the HTTP POST request is not sent by form. Take jQuery as an example:$.post(url, { productName: "Tofu", categoryId: 1 // Token is not posted. }, callback); This kind of AJAX POST requests will always be invalid, because server side code cannot see the token in the posted data. Solution Basically, the tokens must be printed to browser then sent back to server. So first of all, HtmlHelper.AntiForgeryToken() need to be called somewhere. Now the browser has token in both HTML and cookie. Then jQuery must find the printed token in the HTML, and append token to the data before sending:$.post(url, { productName: "Tofu", categoryId: 1, __RequestVerificationToken: getToken() // Token is posted. }, callback); To be reusable, this can be encapsulated into a tiny jQuery plugin:/// <reference path="jquery-1.4.2.js" /> (function ($) { $.getAntiForgeryToken = function (tokenWindow, appPath) { // HtmlHelper.AntiForgeryToken() must be invoked to print the token. tokenWindow = tokenWindow && typeof tokenWindow === typeof window ? tokenWindow : window; appPath = appPath && typeof appPath === "string" ? "_" + appPath.toString() : ""; // The name attribute is either __RequestVerificationToken, // or __RequestVerificationToken_{appPath}. tokenName = "__RequestVerificationToken" + appPath; // Finds the <input type="hidden" name={tokenName} value="..." /> from the specified. // var inputElements = $("input[type='hidden'][name='__RequestVerificationToken" + appPath + "']"); var inputElements = tokenWindow.document.getElementsByTagName("input"); for (var i = 0; i < inputElements.length; i++) { var inputElement = inputElements[i]; if (inputElement.type === "hidden" && inputElement.name === tokenName) { return { name: tokenName, value: inputElement.value }; } } return null; }; $.appendAntiForgeryToken = function (data, token) { // Converts data if not already a string. if (data && typeof data !== "string") { data = $.param(data); } // Gets token from current window by default. token = token ? token : $.getAntiForgeryToken(); // $.getAntiForgeryToken(window). data = data ? data + "&" : ""; // If token exists, appends {token.name}={token.value} to data. return token ? data + encodeURIComponent(token.name) + "=" + encodeURIComponent(token.value) : data; }; // Wraps $.post(url, data, callback, type). $.postAntiForgery = function (url, data, callback, type) { return $.post(url, $.appendAntiForgeryToken(data), callback, type); }; // Wraps $.ajax(settings). $.ajaxAntiForgery = function (settings) { settings.data = $.appendAntiForgeryToken(settings.data); return $.ajax(settings); }; })(jQuery); In most of the scenarios, it is Ok to just replace $.post() invocation with $.postAntiForgery(), and replace $.ajax() with $.ajaxAntiForgery():$.postAntiForgery(url, { productName: "Tofu", categoryId: 1 }, callback); // Token is posted. There might be some scenarios of custom token, where $.appendAntiForgeryToken() is useful:data = $.appendAntiForgeryToken(data, token); // Token is already in data. No need to invoke $.postAntiForgery(). $.post(url, data, callback); And there are scenarios that the token is not in the current window. For example, an HTTP POST request can be sent by an iframe, while the token is in the parent window. Here, token's container window can be specified for $.getAntiForgeryToken():data = $.appendAntiForgeryToken(data, $.getAntiForgeryToken(window.parent)); // Token is already in data. No need to invoke $.postAntiForgery(). $.post(url, data, callback); If you have better solution, please do tell me.

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Heaps of Trouble?

- by Paul White NZ

If you’re not already a regular reader of Brad Schulz’s blog, you’re missing out on some great material. In his latest entry, he is tasked with optimizing a query run against tables that have no indexes at all. The problem is, predictably, that performance is not very good. The catch is that we are not allowed to create any indexes (or even new statistics) as part of our optimization efforts. In this post, I’m going to look at the problem from a slightly different angle, and present an alternative solution to the one Brad found. Inevitably, there’s going to be some overlap between our entries, and while you don’t necessarily need to read Brad’s post before this one, I do strongly recommend that you read it at some stage; he covers some important points that I won’t cover again here. The Example We’ll use data from the AdventureWorks database, copied to temporary unindexed tables. A script to create these structures is shown below: CREATE TABLE #Custs ( CustomerID INTEGER NOT NULL, TerritoryID INTEGER NULL, CustomerType NCHAR(1) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NOT NULL, ); GO CREATE TABLE #Prods ( ProductMainID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, Name NVARCHAR(50) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NOT NULL, ); GO CREATE TABLE #OrdHeader ( SalesOrderID INTEGER NOT NULL, OrderDate DATETIME NOT NULL, SalesOrderNumber NVARCHAR(25) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NOT NULL, CustomerID INTEGER NOT NULL, ); GO CREATE TABLE #OrdDetail ( SalesOrderID INTEGER NOT NULL, OrderQty SMALLINT NOT NULL, LineTotal NUMERIC(38,6) NOT NULL, ProductMainID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, ); GO INSERT #Custs ( CustomerID, TerritoryID, CustomerType ) SELECT C.CustomerID, C.TerritoryID, C.CustomerType FROM AdventureWorks.Sales.Customer C WITH (TABLOCK); GO INSERT #Prods ( ProductMainID, ProductSubID, ProductSubSubID, Name ) SELECT P.ProductID, P.ProductID, P.ProductID, P.Name FROM AdventureWorks.Production.Product P WITH (TABLOCK); GO INSERT #OrdHeader ( SalesOrderID, OrderDate, SalesOrderNumber, CustomerID ) SELECT H.SalesOrderID, H.OrderDate, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.CustomerID FROM AdventureWorks.Sales.SalesOrderHeader H WITH (TABLOCK); GO INSERT #OrdDetail ( SalesOrderID, OrderQty, LineTotal, ProductMainID, ProductSubID, ProductSubSubID ) SELECT D.SalesOrderID, D.OrderQty, D.LineTotal, D.ProductID, D.ProductID, D.ProductID FROM AdventureWorks.Sales.SalesOrderDetail D WITH (TABLOCK); The query itself is a simple join of the four tables: SELECT P.ProductMainID AS PID, P.Name, D.OrderQty, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.OrderDate, C.TerritoryID FROM #Prods P JOIN #OrdDetail D ON P.ProductMainID = D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductSubID = D.ProductSubID AND P.ProductSubSubID = D.ProductSubSubID JOIN #OrdHeader H ON D.SalesOrderID = H.SalesOrderID JOIN #Custs C ON H.CustomerID = C.CustomerID ORDER BY P.ProductMainID ASC OPTION (RECOMPILE, MAXDOP 1); Remember that these tables have no indexes at all, and only the single-column sampled statistics SQL Server automatically creates (assuming default settings). The estimated query plan produced for the test query looks like this (click to enlarge): The Problem The problem here is one of cardinality estimation – the number of rows SQL Server expects to find at each step of the plan. The lack of indexes and useful statistical information means that SQL Server does not have the information it needs to make a good estimate. Every join in the plan shown above estimates that it will produce just a single row as output. Brad covers the factors that lead to the low estimates in his post. In reality, the join between the #Prods and #OrdDetail tables will produce 121,317 rows. It should not surprise you that this has rather dire consequences for the remainder of the query plan. In particular, it makes a nonsense of the optimizer’s decision to use Nested Loops to join to the two remaining tables. Instead of scanning the #OrdHeader and #Custs tables once (as it expected), it has to perform 121,317 full scans of each. The query takes somewhere in the region of twenty minutes to run to completion on my development machine. A Solution At this point, you may be thinking the same thing I was: if we really are stuck with no indexes, the best we can do is to use hash joins everywhere. We can force the exclusive use of hash joins in several ways, the two most common being join and query hints. A join hint means writing the query using the INNER HASH JOIN syntax; using a query hint involves adding OPTION (HASH JOIN) at the bottom of the query. The difference is that using join hints also forces the order of the join, whereas the query hint gives the optimizer freedom to reorder the joins at its discretion. Adding the OPTION (HASH JOIN) hint results in this estimated plan: That produces the correct output in around seven seconds, which is quite an improvement! As a purely practical matter, and given the rigid rules of the environment we find ourselves in, we might leave things there. (We can improve the hashing solution a bit – I’ll come back to that later on). Faster Nested Loops It might surprise you to hear that we can beat the performance of the hash join solution shown above using nested loops joins exclusively, and without breaking the rules we have been set. The key to this part is to realize that a condition like (A = B) can be expressed as (A <= B) AND (A >= B). Armed with this tremendous new insight, we can rewrite the join predicates like so: SELECT P.ProductMainID AS PID, P.Name, D.OrderQty, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.OrderDate, C.TerritoryID FROM #OrdDetail D JOIN #OrdHeader H ON D.SalesOrderID >= H.SalesOrderID AND D.SalesOrderID <= H.SalesOrderID JOIN #Custs C ON H.CustomerID >= C.CustomerID AND H.CustomerID <= C.CustomerID JOIN #Prods P ON P.ProductMainID >= D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductMainID <= D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductSubID = D.ProductSubID AND P.ProductSubSubID = D.ProductSubSubID ORDER BY D.ProductMainID OPTION (RECOMPILE, LOOP JOIN, MAXDOP 1, FORCE ORDER); I’ve also added LOOP JOIN and FORCE ORDER query hints to ensure that only nested loops joins are used, and that the tables are joined in the order they appear. The new estimated execution plan is: This new query runs in under 2 seconds. Why Is It Faster? The main reason for the improvement is the appearance of the eager Index Spools, which are also known as index-on-the-fly spools. If you read my Inside The Optimiser series you might be interested to know that the rule responsible is called JoinToIndexOnTheFly. An eager index spool consumes all rows from the table it sits above, and builds a index suitable for the join to seek on. Taking the index spool above the #Custs table as an example, it reads all the CustomerID and TerritoryID values with a single scan of the table, and builds an index keyed on CustomerID. The term ‘eager’ means that the spool consumes all of its input rows when it starts up. The index is built in a work table in tempdb, has no associated statistics, and only exists until the query finishes executing. The result is that each unindexed table is only scanned once, and just for the columns necessary to build the temporary index. From that point on, every execution of the inner side of the join is answered by a seek on the temporary index – not the base table. A second optimization is that the sort on ProductMainID (required by the ORDER BY clause) is performed early, on just the rows coming from the #OrdDetail table. The optimizer has a good estimate for the number of rows it needs to sort at that stage – it is just the cardinality of the table itself. The accuracy of the estimate there is important because it helps determine the memory grant given to the sort operation. Nested loops join preserves the order of rows on its outer input, so sorting early is safe. (Hash joins do not preserve order in this way, of course). The extra lazy spool on the #Prods branch is a further optimization that avoids executing the seek on the temporary index if the value being joined (the ‘outer reference’) hasn’t changed from the last row received on the outer input. It takes advantage of the fact that rows are still sorted on ProductMainID, so if duplicates exist, they will arrive at the join operator one after the other. The optimizer is quite conservative about introducing index spools into a plan, because creating and dropping a temporary index is a relatively expensive operation. It’s presence in a plan is often an indication that a useful index is missing. I want to stress that I rewrote the query in this way primarily as an educational exercise – I can’t imagine having to do something so horrible to a production system. Improving the Hash Join I promised I would return to the solution that uses hash joins. You might be puzzled that SQL Server can create three new indexes (and perform all those nested loops iterations) faster than it can perform three hash joins. The answer, again, is down to the poor information available to the optimizer. Let’s look at the hash join plan again: Two of the hash joins have single-row estimates on their build inputs. SQL Server fixes the amount of memory available for the hash table based on this cardinality estimate, so at run time the hash join very quickly runs out of memory. This results in the join spilling hash buckets to disk, and any rows from the probe input that hash to the spilled buckets also get written to disk. The join process then continues, and may again run out of memory. This is a recursive process, which may eventually result in SQL Server resorting to a bailout join algorithm, which is guaranteed to complete eventually, but may be very slow. The data sizes in the example tables are not large enough to force a hash bailout, but it does result in multiple levels of hash recursion. You can see this for yourself by tracing the Hash Warning event using the Profiler tool. The final sort in the plan also suffers from a similar problem: it receives very little memory and has to perform multiple sort passes, saving intermediate runs to disk (the Sort Warnings Profiler event can be used to confirm this). Notice also that because hash joins don’t preserve sort order, the sort cannot be pushed down the plan toward the #OrdDetail table, as in the nested loops plan. Ok, so now we understand the problems, what can we do to fix it? We can address the hash spilling by forcing a different order for the joins: SELECT P.ProductMainID AS PID, P.Name, D.OrderQty, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.OrderDate, C.TerritoryID FROM #Prods P JOIN #Custs C JOIN #OrdHeader H ON H.CustomerID = C.CustomerID JOIN #OrdDetail D ON D.SalesOrderID = H.SalesOrderID ON P.ProductMainID = D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductSubID = D.ProductSubID AND P.ProductSubSubID = D.ProductSubSubID ORDER BY D.ProductMainID OPTION (MAXDOP 1, HASH JOIN, FORCE ORDER); With this plan, each of the inputs to the hash joins has a good estimate, and no hash recursion occurs. The final sort still suffers from the one-row estimate problem, and we get a single-pass sort warning as it writes rows to disk. Even so, the query runs to completion in three or four seconds. That’s around half the time of the previous hashing solution, but still not as fast as the nested loops trickery. Final Thoughts SQL Server’s optimizer makes cost-based decisions, so it is vital to provide it with accurate information. We can’t really blame the performance problems highlighted here on anything other than the decision to use completely unindexed tables, and not to allow the creation of additional statistics. I should probably stress that the nested loops solution shown above is not one I would normally contemplate in the real world. It’s there primarily for its educational and entertainment value. I might perhaps use it to demonstrate to the sceptical that SQL Server itself is crying out for an index. Be sure to read Brad’s original post for more details. My grateful thanks to him for granting permission to reuse some of his material. Paul White Email: [email protected] Twitter: @PaulWhiteNZ

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Back to Basics: When does a .NET Assembly Dependency get loaded

- by Rick Strahl

When we work on typical day to day applications, it's easy to forget some of the core features of the .NET framework. For me personally it's been a long time since I've learned about some of the underlying CLR system level services even though I rely on them on a daily basis. I often think only about high level application constructs and/or high level framework functionality, but the low level stuff is often just taken for granted. Over the last week at DevConnections I had all sorts of low level discussions with other developers about the inner workings of this or that technology (especially in light of my Low Level ASP.NET Architecture talk and the Razor Hosting talk). One topic that came up a couple of times and ended up a point of confusion even amongst some seasoned developers (including some folks from Microsoft <snicker>) is when assemblies actually load into a .NET process. There are a number of different ways that assemblies are loaded in .NET. When you create a typical project assemblies usually come from: The Assembly reference list of the top level 'executable' project The Assembly references of referenced projects Dynamically loaded at runtime via AppDomain/Reflection loading In addition .NET automatically loads mscorlib (most of the System namespace) the boot process that hosts the .NET runtime in EXE apps, or some other kind of runtime hosting environment (runtime hosting in servers like IIS, SQL Server or COM Interop). In hosting environments the runtime host may also pre-load a bunch of assemblies on its own (for example the ASP.NET host requires all sorts of assemblies just to run itself, before ever routing into your user specific code). Assembly Loading The most obvious source of loaded assemblies is the top level application's assembly reference list. You can add assembly references to a top level application and those assembly references are then available to the application. In a nutshell, referenced assemblies are not immediately loaded - they are loaded on the fly as needed. So regardless of whether you have an assembly reference in a top level project, or a dependent assembly assemblies typically load on an as needed basis, unless explicitly loaded by user code. The same is true of dependent assemblies. To check this out I ran a simple test: I have a utility assembly Westwind.Utilities which is a general purpose library that can work in any type of project. Due to a couple of small requirements for encoding and a logging piece that allows logging Web content (dependency on HttpContext.Current) this utility library has a dependency on System.Web. Now System.Web is a pretty large assembly and generally you'd want to avoid adding it to a non-Web project if it can be helped. So I created a Console Application that loads my utility library: You can see that the top level Console app a reference to Westwind.Utilities and System.Data (beyond the core .NET libs). The Westwind.Utilities project on the other hand has quite a few dependencies including System.Web. I then add a main program that accesses only a simple utillity method in the Westwind.Utilities library that doesn't require any of the classes that access System.Web: static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(StringUtils.NewStringId()); Console.ReadLine(); } StringUtils.NewStringId() calls into Westwind.Utilities, but it doesn't rely on System.Web. Any guesses what the assembly list looks like when I stop the code on the ReadLine() command? I'll wait here while you think about it… … … So, when I stop on ReadLine() and then fire up Process Explorer and check the assembly list I get: We can see here that .NET has not actually loaded any of the dependencies of the Westwind.Utilities assembly. Also not loaded is the top level System.Data reference even though it's in the dependent assembly list of the top level project. Since this particular function I called only uses core System functionality (contained in mscorlib) there's in fact nothing else loaded beyond the main application and my Westwind.Utilities assembly that contains the method accessed. None of the dependencies of Westwind.Utilities loaded. If you were to open the assembly in a disassembler like Reflector or ILSpy, you would however see all the compiled in dependencies. The referenced assemblies are in the dependency list and they are loadable, but they are not immediately loaded by the application. In other words the C# compiler and .NET linker are smart enough to figure out the dependencies based on the code that actually is referenced from your application and any dependencies cascading down into the dependencies from your top level application into the referenced assemblies. In the example above the usage requirement is pretty obvious since I'm only calling a single static method and then exiting the app, but in more complex applications these dependency relationships become very complicated - however it's all taken care of by the compiler and linker figuring out what types and members are actually referenced and including only those assemblies that are in fact referenced in your code or required by any of your dependencies. The good news here is: That if you are referencing an assembly that has a dependency on something like System.Web in a few places that are not actually accessed by any of your code or any dependent assembly code that you are calling, that assembly is never loaded into memory! Some Hosting Environments pre-load Assemblies The load behavior can vary however. In Console and desktop applications we have full control over assembly loading so we see the core CLR behavior. However other environments like ASP.NET for example will preload referenced assemblies explicitly as part of the startup process - primarily to minimize load conflicts. Specifically ASP.NET pre-loads all assemblies referenced in the assembly list and the /bin folder. So in Web applications it definitely pays to minimize your top level assemblies if they are not used. Understanding when Assemblies Load To clarify and see it actually happen what I described in the first example , let's look at a couple of other scenarios. To see assemblies loading at runtime in real time lets create a utility function to print out loaded assemblies to the console: public static void PrintAssemblies() { var assemblies = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies(); foreach (var assembly in assemblies) { Console.WriteLine(assembly.GetName()); } } Now let's look at the first scenario where I have class method that references internally uses System.Web. In the first scenario lets add a method to my main program like this: static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(StringUtils.NewStringId()); Console.ReadLine(); PrintAssemblies(); } public static void WebLogEntry() { var entry = new WebLogEntry(); entry.UpdateFromRequest(); Console.WriteLine(entry.QueryString); } UpdateFromWebRequest() internally accesses HttpContext.Current to read some information of the ASP.NET Request object so it clearly needs a reference System.Web to work. In this first example, the method that holds the calling code is never called, but exists as a static method that can potentially be called externally at some point. What do you think will happen here with the assembly loading? Will System.Web load in this example? No - it doesn't. Because the WebLogEntry() method is never called by the mainline application (or anywhere else) System.Web is not loaded. .NET dynamically loads assemblies as code that needs it is called. No code references the WebLogEntry() method and so System.Web is never loaded. Next, let's add the call to this method, which should trigger System.Web to be loaded because a dependency exists. Let's change the code to: static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(StringUtils.NewStringId()); Console.WriteLine("--- Before:"); PrintAssemblies(); WebLogEntry(); Console.WriteLine("--- After:"); PrintAssemblies(); Console.ReadLine(); } public static void WebLogEntry() { var entry = new WebLogEntry(); entry.UpdateFromRequest(); Console.WriteLine(entry.QueryString); } Looking at the code now, when do you think System.Web will be loaded? Will the before list include it? Yup System.Web gets loaded, but only after it's actually referenced. In fact, just until before the call to UpdateFromRequest() System.Web is not loaded - it only loads when the method is actually called and requires the reference in the executing code. Moral of the Story So what have we learned - or maybe remembered again? Dependent Assembly References are not pre-loaded when an application starts (by default) Dependent Assemblies that are not referenced by executing code are never loaded Dependent Assemblies are just in time loaded when first referenced in code All of this is nothing new - .NET has always worked like this. But it's good to have a refresher now and then and go through the exercise of seeing it work in action. It's not one of those things we think about everyday, and as I found out last week, I couldn't remember exactly how it worked since it's been so long since I've learned about this. And apparently I'm not the only one as several other people I had discussions with in relation to loaded assemblies also didn't recall exactly what should happen or assumed incorrectly that just having a reference automatically loads the assembly. The moral of the story for me is: Trying at all costs to eliminate an assembly reference from a component is not quite as important as it's often made out to be. For example, the Westwind.Utilities module described above has a logging component, including a Web specific logging entry that supports pulling information from the active HTTP Context. Adding that feature requires a reference to System.Web. Should I worry about this in the scope of this library? Probably not, because if I don't use that one class of nearly a hundred, System.Web never gets pulled into the parent process. IOW, System.Web only loads when I use that specific feature and if I am, well I clearly have to be running in a Web environment anyway to use it realistically. The alternative would be considerably uglier: Pulling out the WebLogEntry class and sticking it into another assembly and breaking up the logging code. In this case - definitely not worth it. So, .NET definitely goes through some pretty nifty optimizations to ensure that it loads only what it needs and in most cases you can just rely on .NET to do the right thing. Sometimes though assembly loading can go wrong (especially when signed and versioned local assemblies are involved), but that's subject for a whole other post…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET CSharp Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Jonathan Kehayias – Wait Type – Day 16 of 28

- by pinaldave

Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter) is a MCITP Database Administrator and Developer, who got started in SQL Server in 2004 as a database developer and report writer in the natural gas industry. After spending two and a half years working in TSQL, in late 2006, he transitioned to the role of SQL Database Administrator. His primary passion is performance tuning, where he frequently rewrites queries for better performance and performs in depth analysis of index implementation and usage. Jonathan blogs regularly on SQLBlog, and was a coauthor of Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting. On a personal note, I think Jonathan is extremely positive person. In every conversation with him I have found that he is always eager to help and encourage. Every time he finds something needs to be approved, he has contacted me without hesitation and guided me to improve, change and learn. During all the time, he has not lost his focus to help larger community. I am honored that he has accepted to provide his views on complex subject of Wait Types and Queues. Currently I am reading his series on Extended Events. Here is the guest blog post by Jonathan: SQL Server troubleshooting is all about correlating related pieces of information together to indentify where exactly the root cause of a problem lies. In my daily work as a DBA, I generally get phone calls like, “So and so application is slow, what’s wrong with the SQL Server.” One of the funny things about the letters DBA is that they go so well with Default Blame Acceptor, and I really wish that I knew exactly who the first person was that pointed that out to me, because it really fits at times. A lot of times when I get this call, the problem isn’t related to SQL Server at all, but every now and then in my initial quick checks, something pops up that makes me start looking at things further. The SQL Server is slow, we see a number of tasks waiting on ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION, IO_COMPLETION, or PAGEIOLATCH_* waits in sys.dm_exec_requests and sys.dm_exec_waiting_tasks. These are also some of the highest wait types in sys.dm_os_wait_stats for the server, so it would appear that we have a disk I/O bottleneck on the machine. A quick check of sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats() and tempdb shows a high write stall rate, while our user databases show high read stall rates on the data files. A quick check of some performance counters and Page Life Expectancy on the server is bouncing up and down in the 50-150 range, the Free Page counter consistently hits zero, and the Free List Stalls/sec counter keeps jumping over 10, but Buffer Cache Hit Ratio is 98-99%. Where exactly is the problem? In this case, which happens to be based on a real scenario I faced a few years back, the problem may not be a disk bottleneck at all; it may very well be a memory pressure issue on the server. A quick check of the system spec’s and it is a dual duo core server with 8GB RAM running SQL Server 2005 SP1 x64 on Windows Server 2003 R2 x64. Max Server memory is configured at 6GB and we think that this should be enough to handle the workload; or is it? This is a unique scenario because there are a couple of things happening inside of this system, and they all relate to what the root cause of the performance problem is on the system. If we were to query sys.dm_exec_query_stats for the TOP 10 queries, by max_physical_reads, max_logical_reads, and max_worker_time, we may be able to find some queries that were using excessive I/O and possibly CPU against the system in their worst single execution. We can also CROSS APPLY to sys.dm_exec_sql_text() and see the statement text, and also CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan() to get the execution plan stored in cache. Ok, quick check, the plans are pretty big, I see some large index seeks, that estimate 2.8GB of data movement between operators, but everything looks like it is optimized the best it can be. Nothing really stands out in the code, and the indexing looks correct, and I should have enough memory to handle this in cache, so it must be a disk I/O problem right? Not exactly! If we were to look at how much memory the plan cache is taking by querying sys.dm_os_memory_clerks for the CACHESTORE_SQLCP and CACHESTORE_OBJCP clerks we might be surprised at what we find. In SQL Server 2005 RTM and SP1, the plan cache was allowed to take up to 75% of the memory under 8GB. I’ll give you a second to go back and read that again. Yes, you read it correctly, it says 75% of the memory under 8GB, but you don’t have to take my word for it, you can validate this by reading Changes in Caching Behavior between SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 RTM and SQL Server 2005 SP2. In this scenario the application uses an entirely adhoc workload against SQL Server and this leads to plan cache bloat, and up to 4.5GB of our 6GB of memory for SQL can be consumed by the plan cache in SQL Server 2005 SP1. This in turn reduces the size of the buffer cache to just 1.5GB, causing our 2.8GB of data movement in this expensive plan to cause complete flushing of the buffer cache, not just once initially, but then another time during the queries execution, resulting in excessive physical I/O from disk. Keep in mind that this is not the only query executing at the time this occurs. Remember the output of sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats() showed high read stalls on the data files for our user databases versus higher write stalls for tempdb? The memory pressure is also forcing heavier use of tempdb to handle sorting and hashing in the environment as well. The real clue here is the Memory counters for the instance; Page Life Expectancy, Free List Pages, and Free List Stalls/sec. The fact that Page Life Expectancy is fluctuating between 50 and 150 constantly is a sign that the buffer cache is experiencing constant churn of data, once every minute to two and a half minutes. If you add to the Page Life Expectancy counter, the consistent bottoming out of Free List Pages along with Free List Stalls/sec consistently spiking over 10, and you have the perfect memory pressure scenario. All of sudden it may not be that our disk subsystem is the problem, but is instead an innocent bystander and victim. Side Note: The Page Life Expectancy counter dropping briefly and then returning to normal operating values intermittently is not necessarily a sign that the server is under memory pressure. The Books Online and a number of other references will tell you that this counter should remain on average above 300 which is the time in seconds a page will remain in cache before being flushed or aged out. This number, which equates to just five minutes, is incredibly low for modern systems and most published documents pre-date the predominance of 64 bit computing and easy availability to larger amounts of memory in SQL Servers. As food for thought, consider that my personal laptop has more memory in it than most SQL Servers did at the time those numbers were posted. I would argue that today, a system churning the buffer cache every five minutes is in need of some serious tuning or a hardware upgrade. Back to our problem and its investigation: There are two things really wrong with this server; first the plan cache is excessively consuming memory and bloated in size and we need to look at that and second we need to evaluate upgrading the memory to accommodate the workload being performed. In the case of the server I was working on there were a lot of single use plans found in sys.dm_exec_cached_plans (where usecounts=1). Single use plans waste space in the plan cache, especially when they are adhoc plans for statements that had concatenated filter criteria that is not likely to reoccur with any frequency. SQL Server 2005 doesn’t natively have a way to evict a single plan from cache like SQL Server 2008 does, but MVP Kalen Delaney, showed a hack to evict a single plan by creating a plan guide for the statement and then dropping that plan guide in her blog post Geek City: Clearing a Single Plan from Cache. We could put that hack in place in a job to automate cleaning out all the single use plans periodically, minimizing the size of the plan cache, but a better solution would be to fix the application so that it uses proper parameterized calls to the database. You didn’t write the app, and you can’t change its design? Ok, well you could try to force parameterization to occur by creating and keeping plan guides in place, or we can try forcing parameterization at the database level by using ALTER DATABASE <dbname> SET PARAMETERIZATION FORCED and that might help. If neither of these help, we could periodically dump the plan cache for that database, as discussed as being a problem in Kalen’s blog post referenced above; not an ideal scenario. The other option is to increase the memory on the server to 16GB or 32GB, if the hardware allows it, which will increase the size of the plan cache as well as the buffer cache. In SQL Server 2005 SP1, on a system with 16GB of memory, if we set max server memory to 14GB the plan cache could use at most 9GB [(8GB*.75)+(6GB*.5)=(6+3)=9GB], leaving 5GB for the buffer cache. If we went to 32GB of memory and set max server memory to 28GB, the plan cache could use at most 16GB [(8*.75)+(20*.5)=(6+10)=16GB], leaving 12GB for the buffer cache. Thankfully we have SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2, 3, and 4 these days which include the changes in plan cache sizing discussed in the Changes to Caching Behavior between SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 RTM and SQL Server 2005 SP2 blog post. In real life, when I was troubleshooting this problem, I spent a week trying to chase down the cause of the disk I/O bottleneck with our Server Admin and SAN Admin, and there wasn’t much that could be done immediately there, so I finally asked if we could increase the memory on the server to 16GB, which did fix the problem. It wasn’t until I had this same problem occur on another system that I actually figured out how to really troubleshoot this down to the root cause. I couldn’t believe the size of the plan cache on the server with 16GB of memory when I actually learned about this and went back to look at it. SQL Server is constantly telling a story to anyone that will listen. As the DBA, you have to sit back and listen to all that it’s telling you and then evaluate the big picture and how all the data you can gather from SQL about performance relate to each other. One of the greatest tools out there is actually a free in the form of Diagnostic Scripts for SQL Server 2005 and 2008, created by MVP Glenn Alan Berry. Glenn’s scripts collect a majority of the information that SQL has to offer for rapid troubleshooting of problems, and he includes a lot of notes about what the outputs of each individual query might be telling you. When I read Pinal’s blog post SQL SERVER – ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 11 of 28, I noticed that he referenced Checking Memory Related Performance Counters in his post, but there was no real explanation about why checking memory counters is so important when looking at an I/O related wait type. I thought I’d chat with him briefly on Google Talk/Twitter DM and point this out, and offer a couple of other points I noted, so that he could add the information to his blog post if he found it useful. Instead he asked that I write a guest blog for this. I am honored to be a guest blogger, and to be able to share this kind of information with the community. The information contained in this blog post is a glimpse at how I do troubleshooting almost every day of the week in my own environment. SQL Server provides us with a lot of information about how it is running, and where it may be having problems, it is up to us to play detective and find out how all that information comes together to tell us what’s really the problem. This blog post is written by Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter). Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: MVP, Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, May 12, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, May 12, 2010New ProjectsAMP (Adamo Media Player): AMP is a custom media player that specializes in large media collections! Change the way you manage your media!BoogiePartners: BoogiePartners provides a loose collection of utilities or extensions for Boogie and SpecSharp developers.C# Developer Utility Library: Collection of helpful code functions including zero-config rolling file logging, parameter validation, reflection & object construction, I18N count...Commerce Server 2009 Orders using Pipelines in a Console Application: Using Commerce Server 2009 outside of a Web Application this project show how to create dummy Orders using Pipelines in a NON WEB CONTEXT, an examp...CRM Queue Manager C#: CRM 4 Queue Manager written in C#. Based on the original VB.Net CRM Queue Manager with some changes, additions and feature changes. Converts emai...DbBuilder: This is a tool indended for creation of MS SQL database from scratch, incremental updates, management of redeployable objects, etc. using scripted ...DbNetData: A collection of cross vendor database interface classes for .NET written in C# providing a consistent and simplified way of accessing SQL Server,Or...Deploy Workflow Manager: Kick off a workflow associated with a SharePoint List on all list items at once. SharePoint Designer Workflows will also be included. This projec...DigiLini - digital on screen ruler: Handy desktop tool for everyone who does ever do something graphical on his computer. There is an sizable horizontal and vertial ruler. You can pos...Dynamic Grid Data Type for Umbraco: The Dynamic Grid Data Type for Umbraco is a custom ASCX/C# control that was created to store tabular data as an Umbraco "Data Type". There's an abi...FlashPlus: An extension for Google Chrome and a bookmarklet for Internet Explorer and Firefox, this project makes media content on browsers more usable. This...Flat Database: Simple project making it really quick and easy, to implement a simple flat-file database for an application.Flood Watch Spam Control: Flood watch is a C# based application meant to help prevent site black listings. This application monitors outbound smtp streams, if a stream excee...Gamebox: gameboxKill Bill: Kill Bill covers the areas of customers, suppliers, products, sales and administration divided into modules which together form the system for the ...KND Decoder: Der KND Decoder konvertiert die lästigen Zahlenwerte, in den Java Dateien vom Knuddels Applet, zu lesbaren Strings. Die neue dekodier Methode wurde...Moonbeam: D3D11 FrameworkSite Defender: Add-on for blogs or anywhere else there could be people spamming your website.sMODfix: -Stringzilla: A string formatting classes designed for .NET 4 to enable named string formatting and conditional string formatting options based upon bound data c...The CQRS Kitchen: The CQRS Kitchen is an example application build with Silverlight 4 that demonstrates how to implement a CQRS / Event Sourcing application with the...XELF Framework for XNA / .NET: XELF Framework for XNA / .NET 　XNA Game Studioおよび.NET Framework用のライブラリ・フレームワークとしてXELFが開発したC#ソースコードを含むプロジェクトです。　現在は、「XELF.Framework」のWindows用XNA G...xxxxxxxxx: xxxxxxxNew ReleasesASP.NET MVC 2 - CommonLibrary.CMS: CommonLibrary CMS - Alpha: CommonLibrary CMSA simple yet powerful CMS system in ASP.NET MVC 2 using C# 3.5. ActiveRecord based support for Blogs, Widgets, Pages, Parts, Ev...ASP.NET MVC Extensions: v1.0 RTM: v1.0 RTMAWS SimpleDB Browser: Release 2: Miscellaneous fixes from the Alpha release. Built to work with the released version of the .Net Framework 4.0.BIDS Helper: 1.4.3.0: This release addresses the following issues: For some people the BIDS Helper extensions to the Project Properties page for the SSIS Deploy plugin w...Bojinx: Bojinx Core V4.5.13: Fixes / Enhancements: Sequencer now accepts Commands directly without using events. Command queue now accepts both events and commands EventBu...CF-Soft: TestCases_DROP1: TestCases_DROP1CodePlex Runtime Intelligence Integration: PreEmptive.Attributes distributable: Contains a signed redistributable version of the PreEmptive.Attributes.dll library that non .NET 4 applications can use support in-code instrumenta...Convection Game Engine (Basic Edition): Convection Basic (44772): Compiled version of Convection Basic change set 44772.CRM Queue Manager C#: Initial release: Initial release of the CRM Queue Manager in C#. Release includes both the installer as well as the latest source code in zippped format. Running...DbNetData: DbNetData.1.0: Initial releaseDigiLini - digital on screen ruler: DigiLini 1.0: First stable version.Facturator - Create invoices easy and fast: Facturator.zip: current stable versionFlat Database: Initial Release: This is the working initial release of FlatDBKharaPOS: MSDN Magazine Sample: This is the release that supports the MSDN magazine article "Enterprise Patterns with WCF RIA Services. Some of the project was affected by the upg...Let's Up: 1.1 (Build 100511): - Add short and long break feature.Mesopotamia Experiment: Mesopotamia 1.2.88: Primarly bug fixes... Bug Fixes - fixed bug in synapse mutating whereby new ones were of one side only eg, source or target - fixed bug in screen ...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Class Libraries, version 1.0.1.123: The NodeXL class libraries can be used to display network graphs in .NET applications. To include a NodeXL network graph in a WPF desktop or Windo...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel 2007 Template, version 1.0.1.123: The NodeXL Excel 2007 template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 workbook. What's NewThis version makes...Over Store: OverStore 1.18.0.0: Version number is increased. New callback events added: Persisting and Persisted, which are raised on actually writing object data into the stora...Reusable Library: V1.0.7: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developerReusable Library Demo: V1.0.5: A demonstration of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developerRuntime Intelligence Endpoint Starter Kit: Runtime Intelligence Endpoint Starter Kit 20100511: Added crossdomain policy files so Silverlight applications can send usage data from anywhere.Scorm2CC: SCORM2CC Release 0.12.0.58711 net-2.0 Alpha: SCORM2CC Release 0.12.0.58711 net-2.0 AlphaShake - C# Make: Shake v0.1.14: Updated API to match with the current documentation.SharePoint LogViewer: SharePoint Log Viewer 2.6: This is a maintenance release. It has bug several fixes.Site Directory for SharePoint 2010 (from Microsoft Consulting Services, UK): v1.4: As 1.3 with the following changes Addition of a 'Site Data' webpart Site Directory can now be a site collection root or sub-site Scan job now ...sMODfix: sMODfix v1.0: Basic Versionsmtp4dev: smtp4dev 2.0: Smtp4dev 2.0 is powered by a completely re-written server component and now offers SSL/TLS and AUTH support.SocialScapes: SocialScapes Sidebar 1.0: The SocialScapes Sidebar is the first release of the new SocialScapes suite. There will be more modules to come along with a complete data aggrega...SSIS Multiple Hash: Multiple Hash V1.2: This is version 1.2 of the Multiple Hash SSIS Component. It supports SQL 2005 and SQL 2008, although you have to download the correct install pack...Surfium: Beta build: Somehow testedTerminals: Terminals 1.9a - RDP6 Support: The major change in this release is that Terminals has been upgraded to require RDP Client 6 to be installed for creating RDP connections. Backward...TFS Compare: Release 3.0: This release provides a new feature - the ability to navigate back and forth between document differences. Also, this release provides support for...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30511.0: Automatic drop of latest buildyoutubeFisher: youtubeFisher v2.0: What's new new method of youtube parameters capturing HD 720p video support full-HD 1080p video support add Cancel option to stop file downl...Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelASP.NETMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMirror Testing SystemRawrThe Information Literacy Education Learning Environment (ILE)Caliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightwhiteBlogEngine.NETPHPExceljQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesTweetSharp

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Ajax Control Toolkit November 2011 Release

- by Stephen Walther

I’m happy to announce the November 2011 Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit. This release introduces a new Balloon Popup control and several enhancements to the existing Tabs control including support for on-demand loading of tab content, support for vertical tabs, and support for keyboard tab navigation. We also fixed the top-voted bugs associated with the Tabs control reported at CodePlex.com. You can download the new release by visiting the CodePlex website: http://AjaxControlToolkit.CodePlex.com Alternatively, the fast and easy way to get the latest release of the Ajax Control Toolkit is to use NuGet. Open your Library Package Manager console in Visual Studio 2010 and type: After you install the Ajax Control Toolkit through NuGet, please do a Rebuild of your project (the menu option Build, Rebuild). After you do a Rebuild, the ajaxToolkit prefix will appear in Intellisense: Using the Balloon Popup Control Why a new Balloon Popup control? The Balloon Popup control is the second most requested new feature for the Ajax Control Toolkit according to CodePlex votes: The Balloon Popup displays a message in a balloon when you shift focus to a control, click a control, or hover over a control. You can use the Balloon Popup, for example, to display instructions for TextBoxes which appear in a form: Here’s the code used to create the Balloon Popup: <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm1" runat="server" /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtFirstName" Runat="server" /> <asp:Panel ID="pnlFirstNameHelp" runat="server"> Please enter your first name </asp:Panel> <ajaxToolkit:BalloonPopupExtender TargetControlID="txtFirstName" BalloonPopupControlID="pnlFirstNameHelp" BalloonSize="Small" UseShadow="true" runat="server" /> You also can use the Balloon Popup to explain hard to understand words in a text document: Here’s how you display the Balloon Popup when you hover over the link: The point of the conversation was <asp:HyperLink ID="lnkObfuscate" Text="obfuscated" CssClass="hardWord" runat="server" /> by his incessant coughing. <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm1" runat="server" /> <asp:Panel id="pnlObfuscate" Runat="server"> To bewilder or render something obscure </asp:Panel> <ajaxToolkit:BalloonPopupExtender TargetControlID="lnkObfuscate" BalloonPopupControlID="pnlObfuscate" BalloonStyle="Cloud" UseShadow="true" DisplayOnMouseOver="true" Runat="server" /> There are four important properties which you need to know about when using the Balloon Popup control: BalloonSize – The three balloon sizes are Small, Medium, and Large. BalloonStyle -- The two built-in styles are Rectangle and Cloud. UseShadow – When true, a drop shadow appears behind the popup. Position – Can have the values Auto, BottomLeft, BottomRight, TopLeft, TopRight. When set to Auto, which is the default, the Balloon Popup will appear where it has the most screen real estate. The following screenshots illustrates how these settings affect the appearance of the Balloon Popup: Customizing the Balloon Popup You can customize the appearance of the Balloon Popup by creating your own Cascading Style Sheet and Sprite. The Ajax Control Toolkit sample site includes a sample of a custom Oval Balloon Popup style: This custom style was created by using a custom Cascading Style Sheet and image. You point the Balloon Popup at a custom Cascading Style Sheet and Cascading Style Sheet class by using the CustomCssUrl and CustomClassName properties like this: <asp:TextBox ID="txtCustom" autocomplete="off" runat="server" /> <br /> <asp:Panel ID="Panel3" runat="server"> This is a custom BalloonPopupExtender style created with a custom Cascading Style Sheet. </asp:Panel> <ajaxToolkit:BalloonPopupExtender ID="bpe1" TargetControlID="txtCustom" BalloonPopupControlID="Panel3" BalloonStyle="Custom" CustomCssUrl="CustomStyle/BalloonPopupOvalStyle.css" CustomClassName="oval" UseShadow="true" runat="server" /> Learn More about the Balloon Popup To learn more about the Balloon Popup control, visit the sample page for the Balloon Popup at the Ajax Control Toolkit sample site: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/BalloonPopup/BalloonPopupExtender.aspx Improvements to the Tabs Control In this release, we introduced several important new features for the existing Tabs control. We also fixed all of the top-voted bugs for the Tabs control. On-Demand Loading of Tab Content Here is the scenario. Imagine that you are using the Tabs control in a Web Forms page. The Tabs control displays two tabs: Customers and Products. When you click the Customers tab then you want to see a list of customers and when you click on the Products tab then you want to see a list of products. In this scenario, you don’t want the list of customers and products to be retrieved from the database when the page is initially opened. The user might never click on the Products tab and all of the work to load the list of products from the database would be wasted. In this scenario, you want the content of a tab panel to be loaded on demand. The products should only be loaded from the database and rendered to the browser when you click the Products tab and not before. The Tabs control in the November 2011 Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit includes a new property named OnDemand. When OnDemand is set to the value True, a tab panel won’t be loaded until you click its associated tab. Here is the code for the aspx page: <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm1" runat="server" /> <ajaxToolkit:TabContainer ID="tabs" OnDemand="false" runat="server"> <ajaxToolkit:TabPanel HeaderText="Customers" runat="server"> <ContentTemplate> <h2>Customers</h2> <asp:GridView ID="grdCustomers" DataSourceID="srcCustomers" runat="server" /> <asp:SqlDataSource ID="srcCustomers" SelectCommand="SELECT * FROM Customers" ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:StoreDB %>" runat="server" /> </ContentTemplate> </ajaxToolkit:TabPanel> <ajaxToolkit:TabPanel HeaderText="Products" runat="server"> <ContentTemplate> <h2>Products</h2> <asp:GridView ID="grdProducts" DataSourceID="srcProducts" runat="server" /> <asp:SqlDataSource ID="srcProducts" SelectCommand="SELECT * FROM Products" ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:StoreDB %>" runat="server" /> </ContentTemplate> </ajaxToolkit:TabPanel> </ajaxToolkit:TabContainer> Notice that the TabContainer includes an OnDemand=”True” property. The Tabs control contains two Tab Panels. The first tab panel uses a DataGrid and SqlDataSource to display a list of customers and the second tab panel uses a DataGrid and SqlDataSource to display a list of products. And here is the code-behind for the page: using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; namespace ACTSamples { public partial class TabsOnDemand : System.Web.UI.Page { protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { srcProducts.Selecting += new SqlDataSourceSelectingEventHandler(srcProducts_Selecting); } void srcProducts_Selecting(object sender, SqlDataSourceSelectingEventArgs e) { Debugger.Break(); } } } The code-behind file includes an event handler for the Products SqlDataSource Selecting event. The handler breaks into the debugger by calling the Debugger.Break() method. That way, we can know when the Products SqlDataSource actually retrieves the list of products. When the OnDemand property has the value False then the Selecting event handler is called immediately when the page is first loaded. The contents of all of the tabs are loaded (and the contents of the unselected tabs are hidden) when the page is first loaded. When the OnDemand property has the value True then the Selecting event handler is not called when the page is first loaded. The event handler is not called until you click on the Products tab. If you never click on the Products tab then the list of products is never retrieved from the database. If you want even more control over when the contents of a tab panel gets loaded then you can use the TabPanel OnDemandMode property. This property accepts the following three values: None – Never load the contents of the tab panel again after the page is first loaded. Once – Wait until the tab is selected to load the contents of the tab panel Always – Load the contents of the tab panel each and every time you select the tab. There is a live demonstration of the OnDemandMode property here in the sample page for the Tabs control: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/Tabs/Tabs.aspx Displaying Vertical Tabs With the November 2011 Release, the Tabs control now supports vertical tabs. To create vertical tabs, just set the TabContainer UserVerticalStripPlacement property to the value True like this: <ajaxToolkit:TabContainer ID="tabs" OnDemand="false" UseVerticalStripPlacement="true" runat="server"> <ajaxToolkit:TabPanel ID="TabPanel1" HeaderText="First Tab" runat="server"> <ContentTemplate> <p> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. </p> </ContentTemplate> </ajaxToolkit:TabPanel> <ajaxToolkit:TabPanel ID="TabPanel2" HeaderText="Second Tab" runat="server"> <ContentTemplate> <p> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. </p> </ContentTemplate> </ajaxToolkit:TabPanel> </ajaxToolkit:TabContainer> In addition, you can use the TabStripPlacement property to control whether the tab strip appears at the left or right or top or bottom of the tab panels: Tab Keyboard Navigation Another highly requested feature for the Tabs control is support for keyboard navigation. The Tabs control now supports the arrow keys and the Home and End keys. In order for the arrow keys to work, you must first move focus to the tab control on the page by either clicking on a tab with your mouse or repeatedly hitting the Tab key. You can try out the new keyboard navigation support by trying any of the demos included in the Tabs sample page: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/Tabs/Tabs.aspx Summary I hope that you take advantage of the new Balloon Popup control and the new features which we introduced for the Tabs control. We added a lot of new features to the Tabs control in this release including support for on-demand tabs, support for vertical tabs, and support for tab keyboard navigation. I want to thank the developers on the Superexpert team for all of the hard work which they put into this release.

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Issuing Current Time Increments in StreamInsight (A Practical Example)

The issuing of a Current Time Increment, Cti, in StreamInsight is very definitely one of the most important concepts to learn if you want your Streams to be responsive. A full discussion of how to issue Ctis is beyond the scope of this article but a very good explanation in addition to Books Online can be found in these three articles by a member of the StreamInsight team at Microsoft, Ciprian Gerea. Time in StreamInsight Series http://blogs.msdn.com/b/streaminsight/archive/2010/07/23/time-in-streaminsight-i.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/streaminsight/archive/2010/07/30/time-in-streaminsight-ii.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/streaminsight/archive/2010/08/03/time-in-streaminsight-iii.aspx A lot of the problems I see with unresponsive or stuck streams on the MSDN Forums are to do with how Ctis are enqueued or in a lot of cases not enqueued. If you enqueue events and never enqueue a Cti then StreamInsight will be perfectly happy. You, on the other hand, will never see data on the output as you have not told StreamInsight to flush the stream. This article deals with a specific implementation problem I had recently whilst working on a StreamInsight project. I look at some possible options and discuss why they would not work before showing the way I solved the problem. The stream of data I was dealing with on this project was very bursty that is to say when events were flowing they came through very quickly and in large numbers (1000 events/sec), but when the stream calmed down it could be a few seconds between each event. When enqueuing events into the StreamInsight engne it is best practice to do so with a StartTime that is given to you by the system producing the event . StreamInsight processes events and it doesn't matter whether those events are being pushed into the engine by a source system or the events are being read from something like a flat file in a directory somewhere. You can apply the same logic and temporal algebra to both situations. Reading from a file is an excellent example of where the time of the event on the source itself is very important. We could be reading that file a long time after it was written. Being able to read the StartTime from the events allows us to define windows that will hold the correct sets of events. I was able to do this with my stream but this is where my problems started. Below is a very simple script to create a SQL Server table and populate it with sample data that will show exactly the problem I had. CREATE TABLE [dbo].[t] ( [c1] [int] PRIMARY KEY, [c2] [datetime] NULL ) INSERT t VALUES (1,'20100810'),(2,'20100810'),(3,'20100810') Column c2 defines the StartTime of the event on the source and as you can see the values in all 3 rows of data is the same. If we read Ciprian’s articles we know that we can define how Ctis get injected into the stream in 3 different places The Stream Definition The Input Factory The Input Adapter I personally have always been a fan of enqueing Ctis through the factory. Below is code typical of what I would use to do this On the class itself I do some inheriting public class SimpleInputFactory : ITypedInputAdapterFactory<SimpleInputConfig>, ITypedDeclareAdvanceTimeProperties<SimpleInputConfig> And then I implement the following function public AdapterAdvanceTimeSettings DeclareAdvanceTimeProperties<TPayload>(SimpleInputConfig configInfo, EventShape eventShape) { return new AdapterAdvanceTimeSettings( new AdvanceTimeGenerationSettings(configInfo.CtiFrequency, TimeSpan.FromTicks(-1)), AdvanceTimePolicy.Adjust); } The configInfo .CtiFrequency property is a value I pass through to define after how many events I want a Cti to be injected and this in turn will flush through the stream of data. I usually pass a value of 1 for this setting. The second parameter determines the CTI timestamp in terms of a delay relative to the events. -1 ticks in the past results in 1 tick in the future, i.e., ahead of the event. The problem with this method though is that if consecutive events have the same StartTime then only one of those events will be enqueued. In this example I use the following to define how I assign the StartTime of my events currEvent.StartTime = (DateTimeOffset)dt.c2; If I go ahead and run my StreamInsight process with this configuration i can see on the output adapter that two events have been removed To see this in a little more depth I can use the StreamInsight Debugger and see what happens internally. What is happening here is that the first event arrives and a Cti is injected with a time of 1 tick after the StartTime of that event (Also the EndTime of the event). The second event arrives and it has a StartTime of before the Cti and even though we specified AdvanceTimePolicy.Adjust on the factory we know that a point event can never be adjusted like this and the event is dropped. The same happens for the third event as well (The second and third events get trumped by the Cti). For a more detailed discussion of why this happens look here http://www.sqlis.com/sqlis/post/AdvanceTimePolicy-and-Point-Event-Streams-In-StreamInsight.aspx We end up with a single event being pushed into the output adapter and our result now makes sense. The next way I tried to solve this problem by changing the value of the second parameter to TimeSpan.Zero Here is how my factory code now looks public AdapterAdvanceTimeSettings DeclareAdvanceTimeProperties<TPayload>(SimpleInputConfig configInfo, EventShape eventShape) { return new AdapterAdvanceTimeSettings( new AdvanceTimeGenerationSettings(configInfo.CtiFrequency, TimeSpan.Zero), AdvanceTimePolicy.Adjust); } What I am doing here is declaring a policy that says inject a Cti together with every event and stamp it with a StartTime that is equal to the start time of the event itself (TimeSpan.Zero). This method has plus points as well as a downside. The upside is that no events will be lost by having the same StartTime as previous events. The Downside is that because the Cti is declared with the StartTime of the event itself then it does not actually flush that particular event because in the StreamInsight algebra, a Cti commits only those events that occurred strictly before them. To flush the events we need a Cti to be enqueued with a greater StartTime than the events themselves. Here is what happened when I ran this configuration As you can see all we got through was the Cti and none of the events. The debugger output shows the stamps on the Cti and the events themselves. Because the Cti issued has the same timestamp (StartTime) as the events then none of the events get flushed. I was nearly there but not quite. Because my stream was bursty it was possible that the next event would not come along for a few seconds and this was far too long for an event to be enqueued and not be flushed to the output adapter. I needed another solution. Two possible solutions crossed my mind although only one of them made sense when I explored it some more. Where multiple events have the same StartTime I could add 1 tick to the first event, two to the second, three to third etc thereby giving them unique StartTime values. Add a timer to manually inject Ctis The problem with the first implementation is that I would be giving the events a new StartTime. This would cause me the following problems If I want to define windows over the stream then some events may not be captured in the right windows and therefore any calculations on those windows I did would be wrong What would happen if we had 10,000 events with the same StartTime? I would enqueue them with StartTime + n ticks. Along comes a genuine event with a StartTime of the very first event + 1 tick. It is now too far in the past as far as my stream is concerned and it would be dropped. Not what I would want to do at all. I decided then to look at the Timer based solution I created a timer on my input adapter that elapsed every 200ms. private Timer tmr; public SimpleInputAdapter(SimpleInputConfig configInfo) { ctx = new SimpleTimeExtractDataContext(configInfo.ConnectionString); this.configInfo = configInfo; tmr = new Timer(200); tmr.Elapsed += new ElapsedEventHandler(t_Elapsed); tmr.Enabled = true; } void t_Elapsed(object sender, ElapsedEventArgs e) { ts = DateTime.Now - dtCtiIssued; if (ts.TotalMilliseconds >= 200 && TimerIssuedCti == false) { EnqueueCtiEvent(System.DateTime.Now.AddTicks(-100)); TimerIssuedCti = true; } } In the t_Elapsed event handler I find out the difference in time between now and when the last event was processed (dtCtiIssued). I then check to see if that is greater than or equal to 200ms and if the last issuing of a Cti was done by the timer or by a genuine event (TimerIssuedCti). If I didn’t do this check then I would enqueue a Cti every time the timer elapsed which is not something I wanted. If the difference between the two times is greater than or equal to 500ms and the last event enqueued was by a real event then I issue a Cti through the timer to flush the event Queue, otherwise I do nothing. When I enqueue the Ctis into my stream in my ProduceEvents method I also set the values of dtCtiIssued and TimerIssuedCti currEvent = CreateInsertEvent(); currEvent.StartTime = (DateTimeOffset)dt.c2; TimerIssuedCti = false; dtCtiIssued = currEvent.StartTime; If I go ahead and run this configuration I see the following in my output. As we can see the first Cti gets enqueued as before but then another is enqueued by the timer and because this has a later timestamp it flushes the enqueued events through the engine. Conclusion Hopefully this has shown how the enqueuing of Ctis can have a dramatic effect on the responsiveness of your output in StreamInsight. Understanding the temporal nature of the product is for me one of the most important things you can learn. I have attached my solution for the demos. It is all in one project and testing each variation is a simple matter of commenting and un-commenting the parts in the code we have been dealing with here.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 04, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 04, 2010New ProjectsAcPrac: A educational program designed to run on Windows. It is fully customizable. It is developed in C# 2008.argo: Linguistic Tool Camelot: A simple utility for testing cross site data queries in SharePointdelta: Delta is a difference tool for large files. Delta will have several clients, including AJAX and Silverlight. You can view differences in a scroll...EF Dorsal: A dorsal spine for Entity Framework based project. This code generator provides a powerfull Business Layer with almost all high important best p...Excel formatting: Excel formatting projectEyes Recognition: eye recognitionGameOfLife: The Game of Life is a the best example of a cellular automaton. It's developed in C#, SilverLight.GKO Libraries: .NET tool libraries written in C# that we have used in our projectsHello Demo: A simple Hello World application, used to demonstrate access to CodePlex using Team Explorerjog.Portal: jogportal lays the foundation for an extensible portal solution leveraging the latest technology including linq and silver lightKM Brasil: k-meleon, km, gecko, brasil, browser, web, web browser, navegador, navegação, kmeleon, k meleonLost in Translation: Ever find yourself in a foreign country eager (or clueless) to what is written on a shop sign or restaurant menu? With your trusty phone, its came...Machine Learning for .NET: Machine Learning Library for .NET. Initial inclusions will be binary and multi-class classification as well as standard clustering algorithms.Maito: Iron Kingdoms Name GeneratorManPowerEngine: ManPowerEngine is a Silverlight 2D Game Engine. It has an game application framework and supports game object hierarchy management, 2D physics simu...Marvin's Arena: Marvin's Arena is a free and entertaining programming game. The game is designed to easily learn programming in any .NET compatible language. It is...MultiMediaPlayer: 整合我们的内容NCacheD - A Simple Distributed .NET Cache using the TPL and WCF: NCacheD is a simple distributed cache system written in .NET. NCacheD offers functionality similar to that of MemcacheD but scaled back. NCacheD ...NDAP: OPeNDAP is a client/server system for making local scientific data accessible to remote locations without regard to the local or remote storage for...Open Guide CMS: Open Guide makes your traveling through city more adventurous, mode educational and more funny. You can support us by lines of code, by interesti...Rollback - A social backup tool.: Rollback is a simple and intuitive social backup application. You can create multiple backup jobs with a few mouse clicks and even schedule it to ...sELedit: An editor for elements.data file of the popular MMORPG Perfect World.SharePoint Theme Applicator: SharePoint Theme Applicator will give SharePoint administrators the ability to apply a theme accross a whole web application (i.e. apply a theme to...sPATCH: ! sPATCH - Perfect World Client Autopatcher This beta patcher is an alternative to the default perfect world patcher. It offers easy client patc...Wiggle: A-life investigation. Let's make little squirmies!WPFSLBlendModeFx: A blend mode library for WPF & Silverlight.休息提醒: 程序员们，尤其是像我这样对程序痴狂的程序员们。一旦研究起自己感兴趣的程序时，觉得上厕所都是浪费时间。这个程序是在设定的时间后锁定计算机或关闭显示器，从而从某种程度强迫程序员们去休息New ReleasesAMFParser: 1.1.0: Add handling of DSK object when using BlazeDS Add handling of string references Add handling of DateTime values Correct handling of Double values B...Camelot: Camelot 0.1 Alpha: Early release: 1) Query by content type, optionally list or base template 2) Query by list or base templateDictionary Translator for Umbraco: Dictionary Translator 1.1: This is a minor release that fixes a bug that Thomas Hohler found on the first day of release This package is to be used with the ASP.NET open sou...Dynamic Configuration: Sample Application Release 1: These binaries demonstrate the effect of using DynamicConfigurationManager. The source-code for these binaries is available in the 'Source Code' t...EF Dorsal: EFDorsal v0.3b: Second real version. This version add suport to types and entity sets in tree-view.Enterprise Library Extensions: Release 1.0: This is the initial release of the package. The release will contain one feature only, as being able to deploy the project itself it the milestone ...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.0.4 beta 2 Released: Hi, Today’s release contains fix for the following issues: * In WPF application chart was throwing exception as VisualStateGroup was not foun...GameOfLife: Game of life: First release of the game. PublishedGameStore League Manager: League Manager 1.0 release 2.: Fixes crashing bugs from the first release. To use: 1. Install SQL Server Express 2005 http://www.microsoft.com/Sqlserver/2005/en/us/express-down....Marvin's Arena: Version 0.0.5.0: Code Editor (development of robots without Visual Studio - no debugging) * Rounds * 3D Battle Engine: Skybox * 3D Battle Engine: Robot...Morphfolia - ASP.NET CMS and Framework: Morphfolia v2.4.1.1: Morphfolia v2.4.1.1 - New Release Includes: Better support for browsers other than IE (Chrome, Firefox, Safari - all tested on Windows) Supports ...NCacheD - A Simple Distributed .NET Cache using the TPL and WCF: NCacheD Version 1: Getting Started To get up and running, open two instances of Visual Studio 2010. In one window open the NCacheD client solution and then open the ...Papercut: Papercut 2010-3-3: This release includes a few bug fixes and updates, several of which were contributed patches (thanks!). Feature: Added support for embedded images...PE-file Reader Writer API (PERWAPI): PERWAPI-1.1.4: Perwapi version 1.1.4 is the complete distribution package. It contains Binary files, pdb files and xml files for the PERWAPI and SymbolRW compone...Prolog.NET: Prolog.NET 1.0 Beta 1.2: Installer includes: primary Prolog.NET assembly Prolog.NET Workbench PrologTest console application all required dependencies Beta 1.2 in...Protoforma | Tactica Adversa: Skilful 0.2.4.320: BetaRoTwee: RoTwee 6.1.0.0: 16604 "Post playing tune feature" is added. Using this new feature, you can tweet tune playing in iTunes. 16625 Error processing for network error...sELedit: sELedit v1.0: -SharePoint 2007 Deployment Wizard: Support for SharePoint Server and Foundation 2010: This release encompasses the supported install paths for the default install of SPS 2010 (the 14 hive). All three versions are now supported (60 h...SharePoint Theme Applicator: SharePoint Theme Applicator: SharePoint Theme Applicator was built using C# and WPF, it includes the following features: Provides the total number of site collections in the g...Shinkansen: compress, crunch, combine, and cache JavaScript and CSS: Shinkansen 1.0.0.030310: Build 1.0.0.030310, binaries onlysPATCH: sPatcher v0.8: sPatch - Server Example *Contains a sample Patch that "downgrades" PWI 1.4.2 Client to an 1.3.6 ClientTFS Code Comment Checking Policy (CCCP): CCCP 3.0 for VSTS 2008 SP1: This release includes NRefactory 3.2.0.5571 and is built against VSTS 2008 SP1 (.NET 3.5 is required). New: horizontal scrollbar in listboxes for ...TortoiseHg: Beta for TortoiseHg 1.0 (0.9.31254): Please backup your user Mercurial.ini file and then uninstall any 0.9.X release before installing Use the x86 msi file for 32 bit platforms and th...TwitEclipseAPI: TwitEclipseAPI 0.9: 0.9 Release of TwitEclipseAPI Moved API calls to the api.Twitter.com URL. Moved API calls to the versioning API. Now uses the increased Rate Limit...TwitterVB - A .NET Twitter Library: TwitterVB-2.3: Patch 5151: Added BlockedUsers function to get a page other then the first Patch 5420: The ListMembers function will now return more then just th...休息提醒: 初始版本: 初始版本Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)Microsoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NETLiveUpload to FacebookMost Active ProjectsRawrBlogEngine.NETMapWindow GISpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesMDT Web FrontEndsvn2tfsDiffPlex - a .NET Diff GeneratorIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterFarseer Physics Engine

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Oracle WebCenter Partner Program

- by kellsey.ruppel

In competitive marketplaces, your company needs to quickly respond to changes and new trends, in order to open opportunities and build long-term growth. Oracle has a variety of next-generation services, solutions and resources that will leverage the differentiators in your offerings. Name your partnering needs: Oracle has the answer. This week we’d like to focus on Partners and the value your organization can gain from working with the Oracle PartnerNetwork. The Oracle PartnerNetwork will empower your company with exceptional resources to distinguish your offerings from the competition, seize opportunities, and increase your sales. We’re happy to welcome Christine Kungl, and Brian Buzzell, from Oracle’s World Wide Alliances & Channels (WWA&C) WebCenter Partner Enablement team, as today’s guests on the Oracle WebCenter blog. Q: What is the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN)?A: Christine: Oracle’s PartnerNetwork (OPN) is a collaborative partnership which allows registered companies specific added value resources to help differentiate themselves from their competition. Through OPN programs it provides companies the ability to seize and target opportunities, educate and train their teams, and leverage unparalleled opportunity given Oracle’s large market footprint. OPN’s multi-level programs are targeted at different levels allowing companies to grow and evolve with Oracle based on their business needs. As part of their OPN memberships partners are encouraged to become OPN Specialized allowing those partners additional differentiation in Oracle’s Partner Network Community. Q: What is an OPN Specialization and what resources are available for Specialized Partners?A: Brian: Oracle wanted a better way for our partners to differentiate their special skills and expertise, as well a more effective way to communicate that difference to customers. Oracle’s expanding product portfolio demanded that we be able to identify partners with significant product knowledge—those who had made an investment in Oracle and a continuing commitment to deliver Oracle solutions. And with more than 30,000 Oracle partners around the world, Oracle needed a way for our customers to choose the right partner for their business. So how did Oracle meet this need? With the new partner program: Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized. In this new program, Oracle partners are: Specialized : Differentiating themselves from the competition with expertise that set them apart Recognized: Being acknowledged for investing in becoming Oracle experts in specialized areas. Preferred : Connecting with potential customers who are seeking value-added solutions for their business OPN Specialized provides all partners with educational opportunities, training, and tools specially designed to build competency and grow business. Partners can serve their customers better through key resources:OPN Specialized Knowledge Zones – Located on the updated and enhanced OPN portal— provide a single point of entry for all education and training information for Oracle partners. Enablement 2.0 Resources —Enablement 2.0 helps Oracle partners build their competencies and skills through a variety of educational opportunities and expanded training choices. These resources include: Enablement 2.0 “Boot camps” provide three-tiered learning levels that help jump-start partner training The role-based training covers Oracle’s application and technology products and offers a combination of classroom lectures, hands-on lab exercises, and case studies. Enablement 2.0 Interactive guided learning paths (GLPs) with recommendations on how to achieve specialization Upgraded partner solution kits Enhanced, specialized business centers available 24/7 around the globe on the OPN portal OPN Competency Center—Tracking ProgressThe OPN Competency Center keeps track as a partner applies for and achieves specialization in selected areas. You start with an assessment that compares your organization’s current skills and experience with the requirements for specialization in the area you have chosen. The OPN Competency Center then provides a roadmap that itemizes the skills and the knowledge you need to earn specialized status. In summary, OPN Specialization not only includes key training resources but a way to track and show progression for your partner organization. Q: What is are the OPN Membership Levels and what are the benefits?A: Christine: The base OPN membership levels are: Remarketer: At the Remarketer level, retailers can choose to resell select Oracle products with the backing of authorized, regionally located, value-added distributors (VADs). The Remarketer level has no fees and no partner agreement with Oracle, but does offer online training and sales tools through the OPN portal.Program Details: RemarketerSilver Level: The Silver level is for Oracle partners who are focused on reselling and developing business with products ordered through the Oracle 1-Click Ordering Program. The Silver level provides a cost-effective, yet scalable way for partners to start an OPN Specialized membership and offers a substantial set of benefits that lets partners increase their competitive positioning. Program Details: SilverGold Level: Gold-level partners have the ability to specialize, helping them grow their business and create differentiation in the marketplace. Oracle partners at the Gold level can develop, sell, or implement the full stack of Oracle solutions and can apply to resell Oracle Applications.Program Details: GoldPlatinum Level: The Platinum level is for Oracle partners who want the highest level of benefits and are committed to reaching a minimum of five specializations. Platinum partners are recognized for their expertise in a broad range of products and technology, and receive dedicated support from Oracle.Program Details: PlatinumIn addition we recently introduced a new level:Diamond Level: This level is the most prestigious level of OPN Specialized. It allows companies to differentiate further because of their focused depth and breadth of their expertise. Program Details: DiamondSo as you can see there are various levels cost effective ways that Partners can get assistance, differentiation through OPN membership. Q: What role does the Oracle's World Wide Alliances & Channels (WWA&C), Partner Enablement teams and the WebCenter Community play? A: Brian: Oracle’s WWA&C teams are responsible for manage relationships, educating their teams, creating go-to-market solutions and fostering communities for Oracle partners worldwide. The WebCenter Partner Enablement Middleware Team is tasked to create, manage and distribute Specialization resources for the WebCenter Partner community. Q: What WebCenter Specializations are currently available?A: Christine: As of now here are the following WebCenter Specializations and their availability: Oracle WebCenter Portal Specialization (Oracle WebCenter Portal): Available NowThe Oracle WebCenter Specialization provides insight into the following products: WebCenter Services, WebCenter Spaces, and WebLogic Portal.Oracle WebCenter Specialized Partners can efficiently use Oracle WebCenter products to create social applications, enterprise portals, communities, composite applications, and Internet or intranet Web sites on a standards-based, service-oriented architecture (SOA). The suite combines the development of rich internet applications; a multi-channel portal framework; and a suite of horizontal WebCenter applications, which provide content, presence, and social networking capabilities to create a highly interactive user experience. Oracle WebCenter Content Specialization: Available NowThe Oracle WebCenter Content Specialization provides insight into the following products; Universal Content Management, WebCenter Records Management, WebCenter Imaging, WebCenter Distributed Capture, and WebCenter Capture.Oracle WebCenter Content Specialized Partners can efficiently build content-rich business applications, reuse content, and integrate hundreds of content services with other business applications. This allows our customers to decrease costs, automate processes, reduce resource bottlenecks, share content effectively, minimize the number of lost documents, and better manage risk. Oracle WebCenter Sites Specialization: Available Q1 2012Oracle WebCenter Sites is part of the broader Oracle WebCenter platform that provides organizations with a complete customer experience management solution. Partners that align with the new Oracle WebCenter Sites platform allow their customers organizations to: Leverage customer information from all channels and systems Manage interactions across all channels Unify commerce, merchandising, marketing, and service across all channels Provide personalized, choreographed consumer journeys across all channels Integrate order orchestration, supply chain management and order fulfillment Q: What criteria does the Partner organization need to achieve Specialization? What about individual Sales, PreSales & Implementation Specialist/Technical consultants?A: Brian: Each Oracle WebCenter Specialization has unique Business Criteria that must be met in order to achieve that Specialization. This includes a unique number of transactions (co-sell, re-sell, and referral), customer references and then unique number of specialists as part of a partner team (Sales, Pre-Sales, Implementation, and Support). Each WebCenter Specialization provides training resources (GLPs, BootCamps, Assessments and Exams for individuals on a partner’s staff to fulfill those requirements. That criterion can be found for each Specialization on the Specialize tab for each WebCenter Knowledge Zone. Here are the sample criteria, recommended courses, exams for the WebCenter Portal Specialization: WebCenter Portal Specialization Criteria Q: Do you have any suggestions on the best way for partners to get started if they would like to know more?A: Christine: The best way to start is for partners is look at their business and core Oracle team focus and then look to become specialized in one or more areas. Once you have selected the Specializations that are right for your business, you need to follow the first 3 key steps described below. The fourth step outlines the additional process to follow if you meet the criteria to be Advanced Specialized. Note that Step 4 may not be done without first following Steps 1-3.1. Join the Knowledge Zone(s) where you want to achieve Specialized status Go to the Knowledge Zone lick on the "Why Partner" tab Click on the "Join Knowledge Zone" link 2. Meet the Specialization criteria - Define and implement plans in your organization to achieve the competency and business criteria targets of the Specialization. (Note: Worldwide OPN members at the Gold, Platinum, or Diamond level and their Associates at the Gold, Platinum, or Diamond level may count their collective resources to meet the business and competency criteria required for specialization in this area.) 3. Apply for Specialization – when you have met the business and competency criteria required, inform Oracle by completing the following steps: Click on the "Specialize" tab in the Knowledge Zone Click on the "Apply Now" button Complete the online application form Oracle will validate the information provided, and once approved, you will receive notification from Oracle of your awarded Specialized status. Need more information? Access our Step by Step Guide (PDF) 4. Apply for Advanced Specialization (Optional) – If your company has on staff 50 unique Certified Implementation Specialists in your company's approved Specialization's product set, let Oracle know by following these steps: Ensure that you have 50 or more unique individuals that are Certified Implementation Specialists in the specific Specialization awarded to your company If you are pooling resources from another Associate or Worldwide entity, ensure you know that company’s name and country Have your Oracle PRM Administrator complete the online Advanced Specialization Application Oracle will validate the information provided, and once approved, you will receive notification from Oracle of your awarded Advanced Specialized status. There are additional resources on OPN as well as the broader WebCenter Community: v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; 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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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The Low Down Dirty Azure Blues

- by SGWellens

Remember the SETI screen savers that used to be on everyone's computer? As far I as know, it was the first bona-fide use of "Cloud" computing…albeit an ad hoc cloud. I still think it was a brilliant leveraging of computing power. My interest in clouds was re-piqued when I went to a technical seminar at the local .Net User Group. The speaker was Mike Benkovitch and he expounded magnificently on the virtues of the Azure platform. Mike always does a good job. One killer reason he gave for cloud computing is instant scalability. Not applicable for most applications, but it is there if needed. I have a bunch of files stored on Microsoft's SkyDrive platform which is cloud storage. It is painfully slow. Accessing a file means going through layers and layers of software, redirections and security. Am I complaining? Hell no! It's free! So my opinions of Cloud Computing are both skeptical and appreciative. What intrigued me at the seminar, in addition to its other features, is that Azure can serve as a web hosting platform. I have a client with an Asp.Net web site I developed who is not happy with the performance of their current hosting service. I checked the cost of Azure and since the site has low bandwidth/space requirements the cost would be competitive with the existing host provider: Azure Pricing Calculator. And, Azure has a three month free trial. Perfect! I could try moving the website and see how it works for free. I went through the signup process. Everything was proceeding fine until I went to the MS SQL database management screen. A popup window informed me that I needed to install Silverlight on my machine. Silverlight? No thanks. Buh-Bye. I half-heartedly found the Azure support button and logged a ticket telling them I didn't want Silverlight on my machine. Within 4 to 6 hours (and a myriad (5) of automated support emails) they sent me a link to a database management page that did not require Silverlight. Thanks! I was able to create a database immediately. One really nice feature was that after creating the database, I was given a list of connection strings. I went to the current host provider, made a backup of the database and saved it to my machine. I attached to the remote database using SQL Server Studio 2012 and looked for the Restore menu item. It was missing. So I tried using the SQL command: RESTORE DATABASE MyDatabase FROM DISK ='C:\temp\MyBackup.bak' Msg 40510, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Statement 'RESTORE DATABASE' is not supported in this version of SQL Server. Are you kidding me? Why on earth…? This can't be happening! I opened both the source database and destination database in SQL Management Studio. I right clicked the source database, selected "Tasks" and noticed a menu selection called "Deploy Database to SQL Azure" Are you kidding me? Could it be? Oh yes, it be! There was a small problem because the database already existed on the Azure machine, I deployed to a new name, deleted the existing database and renamed the deployed database to what I needed. It was ridiculously easy. Being able to attach SQL Management Studio to remote databases is an awesome but scary feature. You can limit the IP addresses that can access the database which enhances security but when you give people, any people, me included, that much power, one errant mouse click could bring a live system down. My Advice: Tread softly and carry a large backup thumb-drive. Then I created a web site, the URL it returned look something like this: http://MyWebSite.azurewebsites.net/ Azure supports FTP, but I couldn't figure out the settings until I downloaded the publishing profile. It was an XML file that contained the needed information. I still couldn't connect with my FTP client (FileZilla). After about an hour of messing around, I deleted the port number from the FileZilla setup page….and voila, I was in like Flynn. There are other options of deploying directly from Visual Studio, TFS, etc. but I do not like integrated tools that do things without my asking: It's usually hard to figure out what they did and how to undo it. I uploaded the aspx , cs , webconfig, etc. files. Bu it didn't run. The site I ported was in .NET 3.5. The Azure website configuration page gave me a choice between .NET 2.0 and 4.0. So, I switched to Visual Studio 2010, chose .NET 4.0 and upgraded the site. Of course I have the original version completely backed up and stored in a granite cave beneath the Nevada desert. And I have a backup CD under my pillow. The site uses ReportViewer to generate PDF documents. Of course it was the wrong version. I removed the old references to version 9 and added new references to version 10 (*see note below). Since the DLLs were not on the Azure Server, I uploaded them to the bin directory, crossed my fingers, burned some incense and gave it a try. After some fiddling around it ran. I don't know if I did anything particular to make it work or it just needed time to sort things out. However, one critical feature didn't work: ReportViewer could not programmatically generate PDF documents. I was getting this exception: "An error occurred during local report processing. Parameter is not valid." Rats. I did some searching and found other people were having the same problem, so I added a post saying I was having the same problem: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsazurewebsitespreview/thread/b4a6eb43-0013-435f-9d11-00ee26a8d017 Currently they are looking into this problem and I am waiting for the results. Hence I had the time to write this BLOG entry. How lucky you are. This was the last message I got from the Microsoft person: Hi Steve, Windows Azure Web Sites is a multi-tenant environment. For security issue, we limited some API calls. Unfortunately, some GDI APIS required by the PDF converting function are in this list. We have noticed this issue, and still investigation the best way to go. At this moment, there is no news to share. Sorry about this. Will keep you posted. If I had to guess, I would say they are concerned with people uploading images and doing intensive graphics programming which would hog CPU time. But that is just a guess. Another problem. While trying to resolve the ReportViewer problem, I tried to write a file to the PDF directory to see if there was a permissions problem with some test code: String MyPath = MapPath(@"~\PDFs\Test.txt"); File.WriteAllText(MyPath, "Hello Azure"); I got this message: Access to the path <my path> is denied. After some research, I understood that since Azure is a cloud based platform, it can't allow web applications to save files to local directories. The application could be moved or replicated as scaling occurs and trying to manage local files would be problematic to say the least. There are other options: Use the Azure APIs to get a path. That way the location of the storage is separated from the application. However, the web site is then tied Azure and can't be moved to another hosting platform. Use the ApplicationData folder (not recommended). Write to BLOB storage. Or, I could try and stream the PDF output directly to the email and not save a file. I'm not going to work on a final solution until the ReportViewer is fixed. I am just sharing some of the things you need to be aware of if you decide to use Azure. I got this information from here. (Note the author of the BLOG added a comment saying he has updated his entry). Is my memory faulty? While getting this BLOG ready, I tried to write the test file again. And it worked. My memory is incorrect, or much more likely, something changed on the server…perhaps while they are trying to get ReportViewer to work. (Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it). *Note: Since Visual Studio 2010 Express doesn't include a Report Editor, I downloaded and installed SQL Server Report Builder 2.0. It is a standalone Report Editor to replace the one not in Visual Studio 2010 Express. I hope someone finds this useful. Steve Wellens CodeProject

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Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g: Server installation

- by Simon Thorpe

Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g index This is the first of a set of articles designed to assist with the successful installation, configuration and deployment of a document security solution using Oracle IRM. This article goes through a set of simple instructions which detail how to download, install and configure the IRM server, the starting point for building a document security solution. This article contains a subset of information from the official documentation and is focused on installing the server on Oracle Enterprise Linux. If you are planning to deploy on a non-Linux platform, you will need to reference the documentation for platform specific information. Contents Introduction Downloading the software Preparing a database Creating the schema WebLogic Server installation Installing Oracle IRM Introduction Because we are using Oracle Enterprise Linux in this guide, and before we get into the detail of IRM, i'd like to share some tips with Linux to make life a bit easier.Use a 64bit platform, IRM 11g runs just fine on a 32bit server but with 64bit you will build a more future proof service. Download and install the latest Java JDK package. Make sure you get the 64bit version if you are on a 64bit server. Configure Linux to use a good Yum server to simplify installing packages. For Oracle Enterprise Linux we maintain a great public Yum here. Have at least 20GB of free disk space on the partition you intend to install the IRM server. The downloads are big, then you extract them and then install. This quickly consumes disk space which you can easily recover by deleting the downloaded and extracted files after wards. But it's nice to have the disk space spare to keep these around in case you need to restart any part of the installation process again. Downloading the software OK, so before you can do anything, you need the software install kits. Luckily Oracle allows you to freely download every technology we create. You'll need to get the following; Oracle WebLogic Server Oracle Database Oracle Repository Creation Utility (rcu) Oracle IRM server You can use Microsoft SQL server 2005 or 2008, in this guide i've used Oracle RDBMS 11gR2 for Linux. Preparing the database I'm not going to go through the finer points of installing the database. There are many very good guides on installing the Oracle Database. However one thing I would suggest you think about is enabling TDE, network encryption and using Database Vault. These Oracle database security technologies are excellent for creating a complete end to end security solution. No point in going to all the effort to secure document access with IRM when someone can go directly to the database and assign themselves rights to documents. To understand this further, you can see a video of the IRM service using these database security technologies here. With a database up and running we need to create a schema to hold the IRM data. This schema contains the rights model, cryptographic keys, user account id's and associated rights etc. Creating the IRM database schema Oracle uses the Repository Creation Tool which builds your schema, extract the files from the rcu zip. Then in a terminal window; cd /oracle/install/rcu/bin ./rcu This will launch the Repository Creation Tool and you will be presented with the image to the right. Hit next and continue onto the next dialog. You are asked if you are going to be creating a new schema or wish to drop an existing one, you obviously just need to click next at this point to create a new schema. The RCU next needs to know where your database is so you'll need the following details of your database instance. Below, for reference, is the information for my installation. Hostname: irm.oracle.demo Port: 1521 (This is the default TCP port for the Oracle Database) Service Name: irm.oracle.demo. Note this is not the SID, but the service name. Username: sys Password: ******** Role: SYSDBA And then select next. Because the RCU contains schemas for many of the Oracle Technologies, you now need to select to just deploy the Oracle IRM schema. Open the section under "Enterprise Content Management" and tick the "Oracle Information Rights Management" component. Note that you also get the chance to select a prefix which defaults to "DEV" (for development). I usually change this to something that reflects my own install. PROD for a production system, INT for internal only etc. The next step asks for the passwords for the schema users. We are only creating one schema here so you just enter one password. Some brave souls store this password in an Excel spreadsheet which is then secure against the IRM server you're about to install in this guide. Nearing the end of the schema creation is the mapping of the tablespaces to the schema. Note I had setup a table space already that was encrypted using TDE and at this point I was able to select that tablespace by clicking in the "Default Tablespace" column. The next dialog confirms your actions and clicking on next causes it to create the schema and default data. After this you are presented with the completion summary. WebLogic Server installation The database is now ready and the next step is to install the application server. Oracle IRM 11g is a JEE application and currently only supported in Oracle WebLogic Server. So the next step is get WebLogic Server installed, which is pretty easy. Depending on the version you download, you either run the binary or for a 64 bit platform (like mine) run the following command. java -d64 -jar wls1033_generic.jar And in the resulting dialog hit next to start walking through the install. Next choose a directory into which you will install WebLogic Server. I like to change from the default and install into /oracle/. Then all my software goes into this one folder, all owned by the "oracle" user. The next dialog asks for your Oracle support information to ensure you are kept up to date. If you have an Oracle support account, enter your details but for most evaluation systems I leave these fields blank. Again, for evaluation or development systems, I usually stick with the "Typical" install type which you are next asked for. Next you are asked for the JDK which will be used for the server. When installing from the generic jar on a 64bit platform like in this guide, no JDK is bundled with the installer. But as you can see in the image on the right, that it does a good job of detecting the one you've got installed. Defaults for the install directories are usually taken, no changes here, just click next. And finally we are ready to install, hit next, sit back and relax. Typically this takes about 10 minutes. After the install, do not run the quick start, we need to deploy the IRM install itself from which we will create a new WebLogic domain. For now just hit done and lets move to the final step of the installation process. Installing Oracle IRM The last piece of the puzzle to getting your environment ready is to deploy the IRM files themselves. Unzip the Oracle Enterprise Content Management 11g zip file and it will create a Disk1 directory. Switch to this folder and in the console run ./runInstaller. This will launch the installer which will also ask for the location of the JDK. Look at the image on the right for the detail. You should now see the first stage of the IRM installation. The dialog warns you need to have a WebLogic server installed and have created the schema's, but you've just done all that above (I hope) so we are ready to go. The installer now checks that you have all the required libraries installed and other system parameters are correct. Because nearly all of my development and evaluation installations have the database server on the same system, the installer passes these checks without issue... Next... Now chose where to install the IRM files, you must install into the same Middleware Home as the WebLogic Server installation you just performed. Usually the installer already defaults to this location anyway. I also tend to change the Oracle Home Directory to Oracle_IRM so it's clear this is just an IRM install. The summary page tells you about space needed to deploy the files. Unfortunately the IRM install comes with all of the other Oracle ECM software, you can't just select the IRM files, everything gets deployed to disk and uses 1.6GB of space! Not fun, but Oracle has to package up similar technologies otherwise we would have a very large number of installers to QA and manage, again, not fun. Hit Install, time for another drink, maybe a piece of cake or a donut... on a half decent system this part of the install took under 10 minutes. Finally the installation of your IRM server is complete, click on finish and the next phase is to create the WebLogic domain and start configuring your server. Now move onto the next article in this guide... configuring your IRM server ready to seal your first document.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, April 19, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, April 19, 2010New Projects8085 Microprocessor simulator: This program allows you to write 8085 programs in assembly and run those programs on your PC. It comes with lots of help, plus you can put breakpo...Additional.NET framework: The Additional.Net framework extends the functionality of the .NET framework for easier application development. It is developed in C#.Astoria Contrib: A contrib project for filling the gaps in WCF Data Services, providing missing functionality or augmenting with T4 templates, helpers, etc.ClipoWeb: ClipoWeb is a web clipboard that allows you to copy text and files between computers. Users access a web page on the source and destination compute...elearning Center: Đây là một ứng dụng web viết hoàn toàn bằng Sliverlight. Ứng dụng này là một dạng elearning với đầy đủ chức năng và có khả năng tương tác tối đa v...Excel VSTO SQL Server Browser: Get Data from SQL Server and put it in Excel directly. The objective is to get more control about what do you need to pull and create automatic pro...Generic Tree Structure: Generic Base Classes that helps you to create complex tree structures without writing it again and again. Simply to use Like "var Node<Folder> fold...LAN Lordz LAN Party System: The LAN Lordz LAN Party System makes it easier for medium and large size events to track their attendance, sponsors, door prizes, tournaments, and...LiteFx: O LiteFx é um framework que ajuda na implementação de DDD (anêmico ou rico) ele foi desenvolvido por Douglas Aguiar (http://twitter.com/DouglasAgui...Managed UI Flow for ASP.NET MVC Framework: If your web application getting more complex, understanding and managing of complex UI flows(pageflow of application) getting harder and harder, If...Meus Exemplos: Meus ExemplosOrchard Blueprint Theme: Orchard BluePrint is a project that provides a WYSIWYG reference implementation of a Orchard theme to help designers get started with theme design....Outlook Social Network Connector - Avatar: Avatar 是一个开源的MS Outlook的插件，豆瓣用户可以在Outlook 2010中使用豆瓣。查看一封邮件中相关的收件人、发件人的用户广播、同城活动以及豆邮。不用上豆瓣也能方便了解好友动态。这个插件使用C#， .NET 4.0 开发。API 请求认证使用OAuth 认证。 (Avat...Quadro Tree: This is Quadri tree library.Sharepoint 2010 Alert Controller: In MOSS 2007 or Sharepoint Server 2010 if you want to see your alerts by list name you should use this tool.SharePoint Web Parts: The goal of this project is to develop a set of web parts for SharePoint.Silverlight Image Cropper: This is a silverlight 4 util that makes it easy to crop out a number images of a specific resolution screen or screens. ie. an easy way to crop ...SilverlightFTP: Silverlight ftp clientsplibex: libraries for sharepoint lists manipulationStardustExtensions: Official Extensions for StardustSwim Team Manager: Swim Team Manager is designed for managing and tracking administrative and performance information for your club, school, or swim team. Swim Tea...ToDoListWpf: A To Do List, I used it to manage my work items. I am sorry for my poor English.Trance Layer: TranceLayer is a fast and flexible logging or diagnostics framework for .Net. It allows you to plug it into an existing or new application with m...Unoficcial NeoFM.hu NowPlaying: A little windows tray program. Shows what's on neofm.hu right now.WabbitStudio Z80 Software Tools: The software suite provides all of the tools you need to create high quality Z80 software in Z80 assembly language, with a focus on TI calculators....WinToolbar: Windows.Toolbar is Silverlight library that implements common widgets that allows us to build a rich toolbar control in our applications, it incor...XP-More: XP-More is a tool that helps manage Windows 7 Virtual Machines (XP Mode and any other). Specifically, it makes duplication of VMs a no brainer - no...Yodelay .NET Framework Extensions: The Yodelay .NET Framework Extensions project provides a library of components that make many kinds of programming tasks simpler. These include bas...New ReleasesClipoWeb: ClipoWeb 1.0: First Beta release of the ClipoWeb web applicationDDDSample.Net: 0.8: This release contains all four versions of DDDSample.Net available in previous, 0.7 and a brand new one: Layered Model version. Layered Model demon...DotNetNuke Blueprint: 00.00.02: Added to this version CSS Reset Skin version including Grids This version will soon be updated with corresponding HTML version and DNN templateEsferatec.Text.RegularExpressions: 3.5.1003.1001: first stable release of the class; the assembly file is ready to use, the documentation is complete;Excel VSTO SQL Server Browser: Sample Only: Sample without Ribbon UI, if you close the TaskPane you will no longer able to open it without restart ExcelFolder Bookmarks: Folder Bookmarks 1.5.5: This is the latest version of Folder Bookmarks (1.5.5), with the new Archive Manager and Archive Viewer. It has an installer - it will create a dir...Gardens Point LEX: Gardens Point LEX, Version 1.1.3: The main distribution is a zip file. This contains the binary executable, documentation, source code and the examples. ChangesVersion 1.1.3 corre...Gardens Point Parser Generator: Gardens Point Parser Generator V1.4.0: The distribution is a zip archive which contains the binary executables, documentation, source code and examples. ChangesVersion 1.4.0 of GPPG has...HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201004181455): New features: Added rating of each topic. (Note: This feature is availabe since Build 201004172120) Bug fix: Handle invalid XML character in XML...Home Access Plus+: v4.0.0.0 Beta: v4.0.0.0 Beta Change Log: Moved to using .net 4.0 New Silverlight Uploader Various .net 4 fixes and tweaks File Changes: All fixes have changedHTML Ruby: 6.21.6: Reduced performance hit on pages with heavy DOM manipulations Fixed issue where empty tags caused it to apply invalid spacing values Stop spaci...LINQ to VFP: LinqToVfp (v1.0.17.2): Modified to allow using RecNo as a primary key. This build requires IQToolkit v0.17b.Managed UI Flow for ASP.NET MVC Framework: Preview 1: The source available on this site, does not reflect the final state of the project, it is a preview of what will be shipping in the framework in th...MVVM Light Toolkit: MVVM Light Toolkit V3 SP1 (2): Super minor update to accommodate the new Blend 4 RC. Only changes: The path to the Blend 4 templates changed to be "My Documents\Expression\Blend...N2 CMS: 2.0 rc: N2 is a lightweight CMS framework for ASP.NET. It helps you build great web sites that anyone can update. Major Changes (1.5 -> 2.0 release candid...OpenGL ES 2.0 Compact Framework Wrapper: Sample application CAB with texturing: This took some time as it was pretty hard to get the texture loaded and setup so that it would bind to the sampler2D in the fragment shader. Featu...Orchard Blueprint Theme: 00.00.01: This is the first release of this project, still in a very alpha version. Very soon this release is to be updated with the HTML version of the them...RoughJs: RoughJsSL: This is Silverlight library's CompilerSharepoint 2010 Alert Controller: Sharepoint 2010 Alert Controller: After you download WSP file you can get help from Home PageSharePoint LogViewer: SharePoint LogViewer 2.5: Minimize log viewer to tray Get popup notification of SharePoint log events from tray Redirect log entries to event log Send email notifications on...Site Directory for SharePoint 2010 (from Microsoft Consulting Services, UK): v1.1: This is a minor update which includes the following changes: Code consolidation across the whole project Additional site data captured. See solut...Stardust: Stardust 1.0: First stable version of Stardust (Build 172)StardustExtensions: Facebook Extension: Extension for stardust to upload and post images on Facebook.StardustExtensions: Facebook Extension (Source): The source code of an extension for Stardust used to post images on facebook.StardustExtensions: WPF Example: This is an example extension. Uses WPF to create a Window and say "Hello World!" Is a perfect download if want to start writing Stardust ExtensionsStardustExtensions: WPF Example Source: This is the source code of an extension that creates a Window using WPF & displays a simple text. Is great as an example of creating Stardust Exten...TFTP Server: TFTP Server 1.1 Beta installer: New MSI based installer Installs a TFTP service Supports multiple servers on different endpoints, with every server pointing to its own root di...TiledLib: TiledLib 1.1: This download is for prebuilt DLLs and a demo project. For the full source code, use the Source Code tab. Changes: Bug fixes in a few methods Ad...Trance Layer: TranceLayer Digger: Digger version is a beta. It is intended to be used as a demonstration of muscles while lacking a set of features that are in the docs. The set of ...uManage - Active Directory Self-Service Portal: uManage v1.2 (.NET 4.0 RTM): New Releasev1.2 Adds the Administrative Portal as well as the requirement of a MSSQL database (2005+). The Setup Wizard has also been updated to i...Unoficcial NeoFM.hu NowPlaying: NeoNotifier: First release. Aplha, but usable.VidCoder: 0.2.1: Changes: Added 2-pass encoding Fixed x264 options getting mangled during p-invoke Fixed intermittent crash with logging window open due to thre...WCF RIA Services Contrib: WCF RIA Services Contrib RC2 Release: This version is for the WCF RIA Services RC2 (SL4 RTM) release. The ApplyState has been modifed in this version to disable validation during proces...WiiCIS.NET: WiiCIS.NET v0.2: Changes... - Removal of WiimoteManager, connection must be done manually - Accelerometer orientation was originally in degrees, is now in radians -...WinToolbar: WinToolbar Source code plus sample: This zip file contains the current version source code and libraries plus a testrunner (sample app).XP-More: 0.9 (Beta): Most of the functionality is in place, final polishing will be done soon.Most Popular ProjectsFacebook Developer ToolkitWSPBuilder (SharePoint WSP tool)QuickGraph, Graph Data Structures And Algorithms for .NetPerformance Analysis of Logs (PAL) Toolpatterns & practices: Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation ServerTFS Integration Platformpatterns & practices: Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applicationspatterns & practices: Enterprise Library ContribJSON ViewerManaged Wifi APIMost Active ProjectsRawrpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryIndustrial DashboardIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterFarseer Physics EngineMVVM Light ToolkitjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesN2 CMSCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightBlogEngine.NET

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, December 18, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, December 18, 2010Popular ReleasesHacker Passwords: HackerPasswords.zip: Source code, executable and documentationWatchersNET.SiteMap: WatchersNET.SiteMap 01.03.03: Whats NewSkin Object: You can now filter by Terms for Example use: <object id="dnnSITEMAPSL" codetype="dotnetnuke/server" codebase="SITEMAPSL"> <param name="TaxMode" value="terms" /> <param name="TaxTerms" value="TermName1,TermName2" /> </object> changes Tax Term Filter should work correct nowSubtitleTools: SubtitleTools 1.3: - Added .srt FileAssociation & Win7 ShowRecentCategory feature. - Applied UnifiedYeKe to fix Persian search problems. - Reduced file size of Persian subtitles for uploading @OSDB.EnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.3 ALPHA: 2.2.3 ALPHAThis release adds in the changes for 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in th...Facebook C# SDK: 4.1.0: - Lots of bug fixes - Removed Dynamic Runtime Language dependencies from non-dynamic platforms. - Samples included in release for ASP.NET, MVC, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, WPF, WinForms, and one Visual Basic Sample - Updated to Json.net - BREAKING CHANGE: Some renames and changes with Authorizer, CanvasAuthorizer, and Authorization action filters - BREAKING CHANGE: Renamed ApiSecret to AppSecret to be consistent with Facbeook's rename of the property - Added additional authentication helper...WCF Community Site: WCF Web APIs 10.12.17: Welcome to the second release of WCF Web APIs on codeplex Here is what is new in this release. WCF Support for jQuery - create WCF web services that are easy to consume from JavaScript clients, in particular jQuery. Better support for using JsonValue as dynamic Support for JsonValue change notification events for databinding and other purposes Support for going between JsonValue and CLR types WCF HTTP - create HTTP / REST based web services. This is a minor release which contains fixe...LiveChat Starter Kit: LCSK v1.0: This is a working version of the LCSK for Visual Studio 2010, ASP.NET MVC 3 (using Razor View Engine). this is still provider based (with 1 provider Sql) and this is still using WebService and Windows Forms operator console. The solution is cleaner, with an installer to create tables etc. Let me know your feedbackOrchard Project: Orchard 0.9: Orchard Release Notes Build: 0.9.253 Published: 12/16/2010 How to Install OrchardTo install the Orchard tech preview using Web PI, follow these instructions: http://www.orchardproject.net/docs/Installing-Orchard-Using-Web-PI.ashx Web PI will detect your hardware environment and install the application. --OR-- Alternatively, to install the release manually, download the Orchard.Web.0.9.253.zip file. The zip contents are pre-built and ready-to-run. Simply extract the contents of the Orch...SplendidCRM: SplendidCRM 5.0 Community Edition: SplendidCRM Software has adopted the GNU Affero General Public License Version 3 (AGPLv3) for its Community Edition. This release includes the full set of SQL source code in the Community Edition, something that was previously only available in the Professional and Enterprise Editions. An article on the subject of Commercial Open-Source licensing has been posted at http://www.codeproject.com/KB/architecture/splendid-guide-article6.aspx.DotSpatial: DotSpatial 12-15-2010: This release contains a few minor bug fixes and hopefully the GDAL libraries for the 3.5 x86 build actually built to the correct directory this time.DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.01 Beta: This is the initial Beta of DotNetNuke 5.6.1. See the DotNetNuke Roadmap a full list of changes in this release.MSBuild Extension Pack: December 2010: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack December 2010 release provides a collection of over 380 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GU...Access Control Service Samples and Documentation (Labs): Samples-R3: Contains latest ACS samples (corresponding to R3 release) that show how to integrate ACS with web services, ASP.NET websites (Web Forms and MVC) and on how to interact with the ACS Management Service. The Readmes for these samples are available here.TweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 5: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 5 ChangesMaintenance release with user reported fixes Preview 4 ChangesReintroduced fluent interface support via satellite assembly Added entities support, entity segmentation, and ITweetable/ITweeter interfaces for client development Numerous fixes reported by preview users Preview 3 ChangesNumerous ...Silverlight Contrib: Silverlight Contrib 2010.1.0: 2010.1.0 New FeaturesCompatibility Release for Silverlight 4 and Visual Studio 2010FlickrNet API Library: 3.1.4000: Newest release. Now contains dedicated Windows Phone 7 DLL as well as all previous DLLs. Also contains Windows Help file documentation now as standard.mojoPortal: 2.3.5.8: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2358-released.aspx Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code. To download the source code see the Source Code Tab I recommend getting the latest source code using TortoiseHG, you can get the source code corresponding to this release here.Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2010 Code Samples 2010-12-13: Code samples for Visual Studio 2010Wii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 0.9 Beta: - Aqua or brushed metal style for Mac OS X - Shows selection count beside ID - Game list selection mode via settings - Compare Files <-> WBFS game lists - Verify game images/DVD/WBFS - WIT command line for log (via settings) - Cancel possibility for loading games process - Progress infos while loading games - Localization for dates - UTF-8 support - Shortcuts added - View game infos in browser - Transfer infos for log - All transfer routines rewritten - Extract image from image/WBFS - Support....NETTER Code Starter Pack: v1.0.beta: '.NETTER Code Starter Pack ' contains a gallery of Visual Studio 2010 solutions leveraging latest and new technologies and frameworks based on Microsoft .NET Framework. Each Visual Studio solution included here is focused to provide a very simple starting point for cutting edge development technologies and framework, using well known Northwind database (for database driven scenarios). The current release of this project includes starter samples for the following technologies: ASP.NET Dynamic...New ProjectsAsyncSimpleDB: Async access via .Net to Amazon's SimpleDB.BCS Tester Man - The BCS Test Client: BCS Tester Man is a BCS Test Client that makes it easier for SharePoint BCS Model Developers to test Models and External Content Types. You'll no longer have to create and configure Business Data Web Parts or External Lists. It's developed in C#. UI is WPF with MVVM.Client-side Templated Script Control: Allows a developer to add a repeater-style templated list control to a web page that will be data bound client-side, and may respond to client events. The control may be data bound by a web service call on initialization, and may also have it's data source set via client code.Conquer Online Emulation: Project Emulation is a set of tools and libraries to use for creating your own 'emulation' of the servers used by Conquer Online.CSV Report Generator for SQL: C# application for exporting SQL queries into a CSV file for easy importing into Excel, Access, and any other programs that support CSV file importing. This application is handy for extraordinarily large query results that typically cause stability issues for other programs.DFTSPAB: For info see [url:http://creativx.net/forums/general-software/20760-take-ownership-set-permissions-back-up-file-all-one-utillity.html]Directories Creater: <dirCreater> create lots of directories in simple way! <c#> <vs2010>DNN Rad Tag Cloud: A module that uses Telerik's Tag Cloud control to display tags applied in a DotNetNuke install. dotFB : Facebook Graph API client library for .NET: dotFB is a facebook Graph API client library for Windows, Web and Phone Client.Ganaderia Santa Fe: RevisiónsdfsdGoogle Translate .NET: A .NET class library for the Google Translate API v2.I Wanna Make A Game: Fun project to make a 2D platformer written in C#. Written by students from the University of Waterloo, the project explores several computer science topics; from implementing a scripting language to efficient spatial computation.Neddle: Neddle is an open source, SCORM compliant learning management system (LMS) built on the .NET platform using C#.Przetwarzanie sygnalów: Program zaliczeniowy z przedmiotu "Wstep do przetwarzania obrazów i sygnalów"Quickfix message wrapper: Quickfix message strongly typed wrapper generator (T4 template) Reading List: Simple ASP .NET MVC application to manage a list of books scheduled to be read. The application queries Amazon web services for book titles to add to the list.reservierung: Project for the university for applied sciences DeggendorfRTP HTML Newsletter: This DotNetNuke module allows you to create templated HTML newsletters, and email to a specific DNN role. Newsletters are automatically archived for later access.SQL Server Master Data Services Utilities: A set of useful add-ons for SQL Server Master Data Services, including utilities for generating an MDS model, loading the model, writing a custom UI for model data and integrating the model with SharePoint BCS.testerekproject: bla bla blaTools for social network VKontakte: Tools for developing desktop applications for social network VKontakte.Virtualegis: Control de código para Virtualegis.

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PASS Summit Feedback

- by Rob Farley

PASS Feedback came in last week. I also saw my dentist for some fillings... At the PASS Summit this year, I delivered a couple of regular sessions and a Lightning Talk. People told me they enjoyed it, but when the rankings came out, they showed that I didn’t score particularly well. Brent Ozar was keen to discuss it with me. Brent: PASS speaker feedback is out. You did two sessions and a Lightning Talk. How did you go? Rob: Not so well actually, thanks for asking. Brent: Ha! Sorry. Of course you know that's why I wanted to discuss this with you. I was in one of your sessions at SQLBits in the UK a month before PASS, and I thought you rocked. You've got a really good and distinctive delivery style. Then I noticed your talks were ranked in the bottom quarter of the Summit ratings and wanted to discuss it. Rob: Yeah, I know. You did ask me if we could do this... I should explain – my presentation style is not the stereotypical IT conference one. I throw in jokes, and try to engage the audience thoroughly. I find many talks amazingly dry, and I guess I try to buck that trend. I also run training courses, and find that I get a lot of feedback from people thanking me for keeping things interesting. That said, I also get feedback criticising me for my style, and that’s basically what’s happened here. For the rest of this discussion, let’s focus on my talk about the Incredible Shrinking Execution Plan, which I considered to be my main talk. Brent: I thought that session title was the very best one at the entire Summit, and I had it on my recommended sessions list. In four words, you managed to sum up the topic and your sense of humor. I read that and immediately thought, "People need to be in this session," and then it didn't score well. Tell me about your scores. Rob: The questions on the feedback form covered the usefulness of the information, the speaker’s presentation skills, their knowledge of the subject, how well the session was described, the amount of time allocated, and the quality of the presentation materials. Brent: Presentation materials? But you don’t do slides. Did they rate your thong? Rob: No-one saw my flip-flops in this talk, Brent. I created a script in Management Studio, and published that afterwards, but I think people will have scored that question based on the lack of slides. I wasn’t expecting to do particularly well on that one. That was the only section that didn’t have 5/5 as the most popular score. Brent: See, that sucks, because cookbook-style scripts are often some of my favorites. Adam Machanic's Service Broker workbench series helped me immensely when I was prepping for the MCM. As an attendee, I'd rather have a commented script than a slide deck. So how did you rank so low? Rob: When I look at the scores that you got (based on your blog post), you got very few scores below 3 – people that felt strong enough about your talk to post a negative score. In my scores, between 5% and 10% were below 3 (except on the question about whether I knew my stuff – I guess I came as knowledgeable). Brent: Wow – so quite a few people really didn’t like your talk then? Rob: Yeah. Mind you, based on the comments, some people really loved it. I’d like to think that there would be a certain portion of the room who may have rated the talk as one of the best of the conference. Some of my comments included “amazing!”, “Best presentation so far!”, “Wow, best session yet”, “fantastic” and “Outstanding!”. I think lots of talks can be “Great”, but not so many talks can be “Outstanding” without the word losing its meaning. One wrote “Pretty amazing presentation, considering it was completely extemporaneous.” Brent: Extemporaneous, eh? Rob: Yeah. I guess they don’t realise how much preparation goes into coming across as unprepared. In many ways it’s much easier to give a written speech than to deliver a presentation without slides as a prompt. Brent: That delivery style, the really relaxed, casual, college-professor approach was one of the things I really liked about your presentation at SQLbits. As somebody who presents a lot, I "get" it - I know how hard it is to come off as relaxed and comfortable with your own material. It's like improv done by jazz players and comedians - if you've never tried it, you don't realize how hard it is. People also don't realize how hard it is to make a tough subject fun. Rob: Yeah well... There will be people writing comments on this post that say I wasn't trying to make the subject fun, and that I was making it all about me. Sometimes the style works, sometimes it doesn't. Most of the comments mentioned the fact that I tell jokes, some in a nice way, but some not so much (and it wasn't just a PASS thing - that's the mix of feedback I generally get). One comment at PASS was: “great stand up comedian - not what I'm looking for at pass”, and there were certainly a few that said “too many jokes”. I’m not trying to do stand-up – jokes are my way of engaging with the audience while I demonstrate some of the amazing things that the Query Optimizer can do if you write your queries the right way. Some people didn’t think it was technical enough, but I’ve also had some people tell me that the concepts I’m explaining are deep and profound. Brent: To me, that's a hallmark of a great explanation - when someone says, "But of course it has to work that way - how could it work any other way? It seems so simple and logical." Well, sure it does when it's explained correctly, but now pick up any number of thick SQL Server books and try to understand the Redundant Joins concept. I guarantee it'll take more than 45 minutes. Rob: Some people in my audiences realise that, but definitely not everyone. There's only so much you can tell someone that something is profound. Generally it's something that they either have an epiphany on or not. I like to lull my audience into knowing what's going on, and do something that surprises them. Gain their trust, build a rapport, and then show them the deeper truth of what just happened. Brent: So you've learned your lesson about presentation scores, right? From here on out, you're going to be dry, humorless, and all your presentations will consist of you reading bullet points off the screen. Rob: No Brent, I’m not. I'm also not going to suggest that most presentations at PASS are like that. No-one tries to present like that. There's a big space to occupy between what "dry and humourless" and me. My difference is to focus on the relationship I have with the crowd, rather than focussing on delivering the perfect session. I want to see people smiling and know they're relaxed. I think most presenters focus on the material, which is completely reasonable and safe. I remember once hearing someone talking about product creation. They talked about mediocrity. They said that one of the worst things that people can ever say about your product is that it’s “good”. What you want is for 10% of the world to love it enough to want to buy it. If 10% the world gave me a dollar, I’d have more money than I could ever use (assuming it wasn’t the SAME dollar they were giving me I guess). Brent: It's the Raving Fans theory. It's better to have a small number of raving customers than a large number of almost-but-not-really customers who don't care that much about your product or service. I know exactly how you feel - when I got survey feedback from my Quest video presentation when I was dressed up in a Richard Simmons costume, some of the attendees said I was unprofessional and distracting. Some of the attendees couldn't get enough and Photoshopped all kinds of stuff into the screen captures. On a whole, I probably didn't score that well, and I'm fine with that. It sucks to look at the scores though - do those lower scores bother you? Rob: Of course they do. It hurts deeply. I open myself up and give presentations in a very personal way. All presenters do that, and we all feel the pain of negative feedback. I hate coming 146th & 162nd out of 185, but have to acknowledge that many sessions did worse still. Plus, once I feel the wounds have healed, I’ll be able to remember that there are people in the world that rave about my presentation style, and figure that people will hopefully talk about me. One day maybe those people that don’t like my presentation style will stay away and I might be able to score better. You don’t pay to hear country music if you prefer western... Lots of people find chili too spicy, but it’s still a popular food. Brent: But don’t you want to appeal to everyone? Rob: I do, but I don’t want to be lukewarm as in Revelation 3:16. I’d rather disgust and be discussed. Well, maybe not ‘disgust’, but I don’t want to conform. Conformity just isn’t the same any more. I’m not sure I’ve ever been one to do that. I try not to offend, but definitely like to be different. Brent: Count me among your raving fans, sir. Where can we see you next? Rob: Considering I live in Adelaide in Australia, I’m not about to appear at anyone’s local SQL Saturday. I’m still trying to plan which events I’ll get to in 2011. I’ve submitted abstracts for TechEd North America, but won’t hold my breath. I’m also considering the SQLBits conferences in the UK in April, PASS in October, and I’m sure I’ll do some LiveMeeting presentations for user groups. Online, people download some of my recent SQLBits presentations at http://bit.ly/RFSarg and http://bit.ly/Simplification though. And they can download a 5-minute MP3 of my Lightning Talk at http://www.lobsterpot.com.au/files/Collation.mp3, in which I try to explain the idea behind collation, using thongs as an example. Brent: I was in the audience for http://bit.ly/RFSarg. That was a great presentation. Rob: Thanks, Brent. Now where’s my dollar?

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, February 23, 2011

CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, February 23, 2011Popular ReleasesSQL Server CLR Function for Address Correction and Geocoding: Release 2.1: Adds support for the User Key argument in Process function calls.ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.45.2: New on this release: 1) Added data validation. See Data Validation 2) Deleting or clearing cells deletes the hyperlinks too. New on v0.45.1 1) Fixed issues 6237, 6240 New on v0.45.2 1) Fixed issues 6257, 6266 New Examples Data ValidationCrystalbyte Equinox (LINQ to IMAP): Equinox Alpha Release v0.3.0.0: Fixed bugsFixed issue introduced in last release; No connection could be established since the client did not read the welcome message during the initial connection attempt. Contact names are now being properly parsed into the envelope Introduced featuresImplemented SMTP support, the client is contained inside the Crystalbyte.Equinox.Smtp.dll which was added to the current release.OMEGA CMS: OMEGA CMA - Alpha 0.2: A few fixes for OMEGA Framework (DLL) A few tweeks for OMEGA CMSJSLint for Visual Studio 2010: 1.2.4: Bug Fix release.Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.2: New control, Toast Prompt! Removed progress bar since Silverlight Toolkit Feb 2010 has it.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.7: Service release fixing 31 issues. A full changelog will be available with the final stable release of 4.7 Important when upgradingUpgrade as if it was a patch release (update /bin, /umbraco and /umbraco_client). For general upgrade information follow the guide found at http://our.umbraco.org/wiki/install-and-setup/upgrading-an-umbraco-installation 4.7 requires the .NET 4.0 framework Web.Config changes Update the web web.config to include the 4 changes found in (they're clearly marked in...HubbleDotNet - Open source full-text search engine: V1.1.0.0: Add Sqlite3 DBAdapter Add App Report when Query Cache is Collecting. Improve the performance of index through Synchronize. Add top 0 feature so that we can only get count of the result. Improve the score calculating algorithm of match. Let the score of the record that match all items large then others. Add MySql DBAdapter Improve performance for multi-fields sort . Using hash table to access the Payload data. The version before used bin search. Using heap sort instead of qui...Silverlight????[???]: silverlight????[???]2.0: ???????，?????，????????silverlight????。DBSourceTools: DBSourceTools_1.3.0.0: Release 1.3.0.0 Changed editors from FireEdit to ICSharpCode.TextEditor. Complete re-vamp of Intellisense ( further testing needed). Hightlight Field and Table Names in sql scripts. Added field dropdown on all tables and views in DBExplorer. Added data option for viewing data in Tables. Fixed comment / uncomment bug as reported by tareq. Included Synonyms in scripting engine ( nickt_ch ).IronPython: 2.7 Release Candidate 1: We are pleased to announce the first Release Candidate for IronPython 2.7. This release contains over two dozen bugs fixed in preparation for 2.7 Final. See the release notes for 60193 for details and what has already been fixed in the earlier 2.7 prereleases. - IronPython TeamCaliburn Micro: A Micro-Framework for WPF, Silverlight and WP7: Caliburn.Micro 1.0 RC: This is the official Release Candicate for Caliburn.Micro 1.0. The download contains the binaries, samples and VS templates. VS Templates The templates included are designed for situations where the Caliburn.Micro source needs to be embedded within a single project solution. This was targeted at government and other organizations that expressed specific requirements around using an open source project like this. NuGet This release does not have a corresponding NuGet package. The NuGet pack...Caliburn: A Client Framework for WPF and Silverlight: Caliburn 2.0 RC: This is the official Release Candidate for Caliburn 2.0. It contains all binaries, samples and generated code docs.Chiave File Encryption: Chiave 0.9: Application for file encryption and decryption using 512 Bit rijndael encyrption algorithm with simple to use UI. Its written in C# and compiled in .Net version 3.5. It incorporates features of Windows 7 like Jumplists, Taskbar progress and Aero Glass. Feedbacks are Welcome!....Rawr: Rawr 4.0.20 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Trac...PowerGUI Visual Studio Extension: PowerGUI VSX 1.3.2: New FeaturesPowerGUI Console Tool Window PowerShell Project Type PowerGUI 2.4 SupportMiniTwitter: 1.66: MiniTwitter 1.66 ???? ?? ?????????? 2 ??????????????????? User Streams ?????????Windows Phone 7 Isolated Storage Explorer: WP7 Isolated Storage Explorer v1.0 Beta: Current release features:WPF desktop explorer client Visual Studio integrated tool window explorer client (Visual Studio 2010 Professional and above) Supported operations: Refresh (isolated storage information), Add Folder, Add Existing Item, Download File, Delete Folder, Delete File Explorer supports operations running on multiple remote applications at the same time Explorer detects application disconnect (1-2 second delay) Explorer confirms operation completed status Explorer d...Image.Viewer: 2011: First version of 2011Silverlight Toolkit: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit - Feb 2011: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit OverviewSilverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit offers developers additional controls for Windows Phone application development, designed to match the rich user experience of the Windows Phone 7. Suggestions? Features? Questions? Ask questions in the Create.msdn.com forum. Add bugs or feature requests to the Issue Tracker. Help us shape the Silverlight Toolkit with your feedback! Please clearly indicate that the work items and issues are for the phone t...New Projects.Net Dating & Social Software Suite: A free, open source dating and social software suite. Dot Net Dating Suite uses the latest features in .Net combined with experienced developers efforts. This allows us to deliver professional public SEO websites with the support of an enterprise enabled administration suite.AllegroSharp: Biblioteka zapewniajaca obsluge serwisu aukcyjnego Allegro.pl w oparciu o udostepniona publicznie usluge Allegro Web API.asdfasdfasdf: asdfasdfasdfauto: auto siteAWS Monitor: A web app utilizing the Amazon Web Services API with a focus on browsing through and analyzing data graphically, mostly from CloudWatch - the API providing metrics about the usage of all the Amazon Web Services such as EC2 (Cloud Computing) and ELB (Elastic Load Balancing).Calculation of FEM using DirectX Libraries: Calculation of FEM using DirectX LibrariesCART: System CART (Creative Application to Remedy Traffics) poprawi przepustowosc infrastruktury drogowej i plynnosci ruchu pojazdów w aglomeracjach miejskich. Chaining Assertion for MSTest: Chaining Assertion for MSTest. Simpleness Assert Extension Method on Object. This provides only one .cs file.CodeFirst Membership Provider: Custom Membership Provider based on SimpleMembershipProvider using Entity Framework Code-First, intended for use in ASP.NET MVC 3. Thanks to ASP.NET Web Pages team for building a simple membership provider :PFourSquareSharp: Simple OAuth2 Implementation of FourSquare API in .NETHelix Engine: The Helix Engine is an Isometric Rendering Engine for SilverlightLighthouse - Versatile Unit Test Runner for Silverlight: Lighthouse provides you with set of simple but powerful tools to run Silverlight Unit Tests from Command Line, Windows Test Runner Application and from Resharper plugin for Visual Studio.MISCE: Designs for a Minimal Instruction Set Computer for Education along with a simulator/compiler written in Excel. A computer "from first principles" that utilises a minimal instruction set and can be built for demonstration purposes as part of a technology or computing course. Oh My Log: Oh My Log inventorises eventlog files from Windows Servers in a network. Clean and simple sysadmin tool. OSIS Interop Tests: These are the tests created for use by the OSIS working group (http://osis.idcommons.net) to test interoperability features of user-centric solutions during interop events.Program Options: Parse command line optionsSearchable Property Updater for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Searchable Property Updater makes it easier for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 customizers to bulk change the "Active for advanced find" property of entities attributesSilverlight Bolo: silverlight bolo cloneSimulacia a vizualizacia vlasov: simulacia a vizualizacia vlasov pomocou GPUSmartkernel: Smartkernel:Framework,Example,Platform,Tool,AppSusuCMS: SusuCMSSwimlanes for Scrum: Swimlanes Taskboard for Scrum Team Projects with TFS setup using SfTS (Scrum for Team System) V3 templateteamdoer: These are the actual source codes that power teamdoer.com - a simple collaborative task/project management software apptiencd: Tiencd projectVG Current Item Display Web Part: VG Current Item Display Web Part allows to display current SharePoint item metadata. For example if you put it on to the Web Part page or list item form it will display the custom view of the current item properties. Output is easily customized with XSLT file.Virtual Interactive Shopper: Addin for SeeMe Rehabilitation System. More information about the SeeMe system can be found at http://www.brontesprocessing.com/health/SeeMeVisual Studio Strategy Manager: Provide a way to create code generation strategies and to manage them in Visual Studio 2010. Strategies can interact with Visual Studio events like document events (saved, closed, opened), building event or DSL Tools events (model element created, deleted, modified..).VMarket: <project name>VMarket</project name> <programming language>asp.net</programming language> <project description> VMarket is virtual market systems which allow users to act as seller or buyer and manage their property online </project description>webclerk: webclerk's project based on microsoft techWebTest: Just Test!Work efficiency (WE) ????????: Work efficiency ???????? ????： ???? ????zrift: nothing here, move along

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NRF Online Merchandising Workshop: Where Online Retailers Are Focusing for Holiday and Beyond

- by Rose Spicer-Oracle

0 0 1 1204 6863 Oracle Corporation 57 16 8051 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Last month we attended the NRF Online Merchandising Workshop in LA, and it was a great opportunity to catch up with our customers, meet new retailers, and hear some great presentations from VF Corporation, Zazzle, Julep Beauty, Backcountry, eBags and more. The one-on-one conversations with Merchants and the keynote presentations carry the same themes across companies of all sizes and across verticals. With only 125 days left (and counting) until Black Friday, these conversations provided some great insight in to what’s top of mind for retailers during the most stressful time of their year, and a sneak peek in to what they will deliver this holiday season. Some of the most popular topics were: When to start promoting for holiday: seems like a funny conversation to have in July, but a number of retailers said they already had their holiday shopping gift guides live on their site, and it was attracting a significant portion of their onsite traffic. When it comes to timing, most retailers were questioning when to begin their holiday promotions -- carefully balancing when to release pricing and specials, and knowing that customers are holding out for last-minute deals and price drops. Many retailers noted the frustrations around transparent pricing by Amazon and a few other mega-retailers last year, publishing their “lowest prices of the season” as early as October – ensuring shoppers that those prices were the best they could get all season long. Many retailers felt their hands were forced to drop prices. Others kept their set pricing with negative customer reaction, causing some to miss their holiday goals. The pressure is on, and most retailers identified November 1 as their target start date for the holiday promotions blitz. Some are even waiting for the big guys to release their “lowest prices of the season” guides and will then follow suit. Attribution is tough – and a huge focus: understanding the path to conversion is a tough nut to crack, especially in the new omnichannel world where consumers use multiple touchpoints to make a single purchase, and internal management wants to know hard data. This has lead many retailers to invest in attribution; carefully tracking their online marketing efforts to determine what gets “credit” for the sale, instead of giving credit to the “last click.” Retailers noted that it is very difficult to determine the numbers when online and offline worlds collide – like when a shopper uses digital channels for research and then makes a purchase in a store. As one of the presenters from The North Face mentioned in her keynote, a key to enabling better customer service and satisfaction when it comes to converged online and offline sales is training the in-store staff, and creating a culture where it eventually “doesn’t matter what group gets the credit” if they all add to the sale. No doubt, the area of attribution will be a big area of retail investment in the coming years. How to plan for the converged world: planning to ensure inventory gets where it needs to be was another concern. In conversations with retailers, we advised them to analyze customer patterns: where shoppers purchase items, where the items were sourced from and even where items are returned. This analysis is very valuable in determining inventory plans. From there, retailers can more accurately plan and allocate inventory to support both the online and offline customer behavior. As we head into the holiday season, the need for accurate enterprise-wide inventory visibility, and providing that information to associates, is even more critical to the brand-wide customer experience. Improving the search / navigation / usability of the site(s): Aside from some of the big ideas and standard holiday pricing pressure, most conversations we had centered around continuing to improve the basics of the site. Reinvesting in search and navigation came up time and time again (FitForCommerce blogged about what a big topic it was at the event as well). Obviously getting shoppers on their path quickly and allowing them to find what they need fast is critical, but it was definitely interesting to hear just how much effort is still going in to honing the search and navigation experience. Adding new elements to search and navigation like typeahed, inventive navigation refinements, and new navigation categories like gift guides, specialized boutiques and flash sales were top of mind, in addition to searchandising and making search-driven product recommendations. (Oracle can help!) Reducing cart abandonment: always a hot topic that is top of mind for every online retailer. Getting shoppers to the cart is often less then half the battle; getting them to click “buy” and complete the transaction is much more difficult. While retailers carefully study the checkout process and where shoppers tend to bounce, they know that how they design their checkout page is critical. We’re all online shoppers in our personal lives and we know how frustrating it can be when total prices are not transparent (i.e. shipping, processing, taxes is not included until the very last possible screen before clicking that buy button). Online retailers are struggling with where in the checkout process to surface the total price to be charged to reduce cart abandonment, while not showing the total figure too early in the process that it keeps shoppers from getting to checkout altogether. Recent research shows that providing total pricing prior to the checkout process dramatically reduces cart abandonment – as it serves as a filter to those shopping within a specific price band. Much of the cart abandonment discussion leads us to… The free shipping / free returns question: it’s no secret that because of Amazon and programs like Prime, consumers expect free shipping, much to the chagrin of the smaller retailer. The reality is that if you’re not a mega-retailer, shipping is an expensive part of doing business that doesn’t allow most retailers to keep their prices low and offer free shipping. This has many retailers venturing out on the “free returns” path, especially in apparel. A number of retailers we spoke with are testing a flat rate shipping fee with free returns to see if they can crack the price threshold where shoppers are willing to pay for shipping with an added service. But, free shipping remains king. Social ads and retargeting: they are working, but do they turn off consumers? That’s the big question. Every retailer we spoke with during a roundtable on the topic said that social ads and retargeting (where that pair of boots you’re been eyeing on a site magically follows you around the Internet) work and are meeting campaign goals. The larger question many retailers are asking is if this type of tactic is turning off a large number of shoppers, even if these campaigns are meeting their early goals. Retailers also mentioned that Facebook ads are working very well for them, especially when it comes to new customer acquisition, serving as a complimentary a channel to SEO when it comes to engaging new customers. While there are always new things to experiment with in retail, standard challenges are top of mind as retailers scramble to get ready for holiday. It will undoubtedly be another record-breaking online shopping season, but as retailers get more and more advanced with each Black Friday, expect some exciting things. This excitement needs to be backed by sound solutions and optimized operations. Then again, consumers are expecting more than ever, so I don’t doubt that retailers are already thinking about the possibilities of holiday 2015… and beyond. Customers who read this article, also found value in the following stories: Personalization for Retail: http://blogs.oracle.com/retail/entry/personalization_for_retailShop Direct User Experience Focus Drives Sales:https://blogs.oracle.com/retail/entry/shop_direct_user_experience_focusMaking Waves: Australian Online Retailer SurfStitch: https://blogs.oracle.com/oracleretail/entry/surf_stitchWhat’s new in Oracle Commerce v11.1 for RetailWhat the Content+Commerce Equation is Missing

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Move Files from a Failing PC with an Ubuntu Live CD

- by Trevor Bekolay

You’ve loaded the Ubuntu Live CD to salvage files from a failing system, but where do you store the recovered files? We’ll show you how to store them on external drives, drives on the same PC, a Windows home network, and other locations. We’ve shown you how to recover data like a forensics expert, but you can’t store recovered files back on your failed hard drive! There are lots of ways to transfer the files you access from an Ubuntu Live CD to a place that a stable Windows machine can access them. We’ll go through several methods, starting each section from the Ubuntu desktop – if you don’t yet have an Ubuntu Live CD, follow our guide to creating a bootable USB flash drive, and then our instructions for booting into Ubuntu. If your BIOS doesn’t let you boot using a USB flash drive, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! Use a Healthy Hard Drive If your computer has more than one hard drive, or your hard drive is healthy and you’re in Ubuntu for non-recovery reasons, then accessing your hard drive is easy as pie, even if the hard drive is formatted for Windows. To access a hard drive, it must first be mounted. To mount a healthy hard drive, you just have to select it from the Places menu at the top-left of the screen. You will have to identify your hard drive by its size. Clicking on the appropriate hard drive mounts it, and opens it in a file browser. You can now move files to this hard drive by drag-and-drop or copy-and-paste, both of which are done the same way they’re done in Windows. Once a hard drive, or other external storage device, is mounted, it will show up in the /media directory. To see a list of currently mounted storage devices, navigate to /media by clicking on File System in a File Browser window, and then double-clicking on the media folder. Right now, our media folder contains links to the hard drive, which Ubuntu has assigned a terribly uninformative label, and the PLoP Boot Manager CD that is currently in the CD-ROM drive. Connect a USB Hard Drive or Flash Drive An external USB hard drive gives you the advantage of portability, and is still large enough to store an entire hard disk dump, if need be. Flash drives are also very quick and easy to connect, though they are limited in how much they can store. When you plug a USB hard drive or flash drive in, Ubuntu should automatically detect it and mount it. It may even open it in a File Browser automatically. Since it’s been mounted, you will also see it show up on the desktop, and in the /media folder. Once it’s been mounted, you can access it and store files on it like you would any other folder in Ubuntu. If, for whatever reason, it doesn’t mount automatically, click on Places in the top-left of your screen and select your USB device. If it does not show up in the Places list, then you may need to format your USB drive. To properly remove the USB drive when you’re done moving files, right click on the desktop icon or the folder in /media and select Safely Remove Drive. If you’re not given that option, then Eject or Unmount will effectively do the same thing. Connect to a Windows PC on your Local Network If you have another PC or a laptop connected through the same router (wired or wireless) then you can transfer files over the network relatively quickly. To do this, we will share one or more folders from the machine booted up with the Ubuntu Live CD over the network, letting our Windows PC grab the files contained in that folder. As an example, we’re going to share a folder on the desktop called ToShare. Right-click on the folder you want to share, and click Sharing Options. A Folder Sharing window will pop up. Check the box labeled Share this folder. A window will pop up about the sharing service. Click the Install service button. Some files will be downloaded, and then installed. When they’re done installing, you’ll be appropriately notified. You will be prompted to restart your session. Don’t worry, this won’t actually log you out, so go ahead and press the Restart session button. The Folder Sharing window returns, with Share this folder now checked. Edit the Share name if you’d like, and add checkmarks in the two checkboxes below the text fields. Click Create Share. Nautilus will ask your permission to add some permissions to the folder you want to share. Allow it to Add the permissions automatically. The folder is now shared, as evidenced by the new arrows above the folder’s icon. At this point, you are done with the Ubuntu machine. Head to your Windows PC, and open up Windows Explorer. Click on Network in the list on the left, and you should see a machine called UBUNTU in the right pane. Note: This example is shown in Windows 7; the same steps should work for Windows XP and Vista, but we have not tested them. Double-click on UBUNTU, and you will see the folder you shared earlier! As well as any other folders you’ve shared from Ubuntu. Double click on the folder you want to access, and from there, you can move the files from the machine booted with Ubuntu to your Windows PC. Upload to an Online Service There are many services online that will allow you to upload files, either temporarily or permanently. As long as you aren’t transferring an entire hard drive, these services should allow you to transfer your important files from the Ubuntu environment to any other machine with Internet access. We recommend compressing the files that you want to move, both to save a little bit of bandwidth, and to save time clicking on files, as uploading a single file will be much less work than a ton of little files. To compress one or more files or folders, select them, and then right-click on one of the members of the group. Click Compress…. Give the compressed file a suitable name, and then select a compression format. We’re using .zip because we can open it anywhere, and the compression rate is acceptable. Click Create and the compressed file will show up in the location selected in the Compress window. Dropbox If you have a Dropbox account, then you can easily upload files from the Ubuntu environment to Dropbox. There is no explicit limit on the size of file that can be uploaded to Dropbox, though a free account begins with a total limit of 2 GB of files in total. Access your account through Firefox, which can be opened by clicking on the Firefox logo to the right of the System menu at the top of the screen. Once into your account, press the Upload button on top of the main file list. Because Flash is not installed in the Live CD environment, you will have to switch to the basic uploader. Click Browse…find your compressed file, and then click Upload file. Depending on the size of the file, this could take some time. However, once the file has been uploaded, it should show up on any computer connected through Dropbox in a matter of minutes. Google Docs Google Docs allows the upload of any type of file – making it an ideal place to upload files that we want to access from another computer. While your total allocation of space varies (mine is around 7.5 GB), there is a per-file maximum of 1 GB. Log into Google Docs, and click on the Upload button at the top left of the page. Click Select files to upload and select your compressed file. For safety’s sake, uncheck the checkbox concerning converting files to Google Docs format, and then click Start upload. Go Online – Through FTP If you have access to an FTP server – perhaps through your web hosting company, or you’ve set up an FTP server on a different machine – you can easily access the FTP server in Ubuntu and transfer files. Just make sure you don’t go over your quota if you have one. You will need to know the address of the FTP server, as well as the login information. Click on Places > Connect to Server… Choose the FTP (with login) Service type, and fill in your information. Adding a bookmark is optional, but recommended. You will be asked for your password. You can choose to remember it until you logout, or indefinitely. You can now browse your FTP server just like any other folder. Drop files into the FTP server and you can retrieve them from any computer with an Internet connection and an FTP client. Conclusion While at first the Ubuntu Live CD environment may seem claustrophobic, it has a wealth of options for connecting to peripheral devices, local computers, and machines on the Internet – and this article has only scratched the surface. Whatever the storage medium, Ubuntu’s got an interface for it! 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