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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 15, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 15, 2010New ProjectsBizTalk EDI Guidance: BizTalk EDI Guidance is intended to simplify the delivery of EDI solutions by leveraging the ESB Toolkit. This project is currently Alpha and sh...Continues Integration Sample: I'm providing a series of blog post to show a complete CI process using CruiseControl.Net and msbuild. The source code for this series is hosted here.DioM2D: My Dragons in our Midst RPG. Runs on my custom Starlight Engine.Ethical Hacking ASP.NET: Security tools and guidelines for white-hat hacking and protecting ASP.NET web applications.Farseer Engine with XNATouch: Farseer is great engine for game physics. This implementation uses XNATouch framework.Feature Builder Guidance Extensions: Feature Builder Guidance Extensions are Feature Extensions which extend the guidance for the Feature Building experience. Each FBGX will be suppli...Microsoft Office Document Security: MODS is a plugin for office 2007 thats includes Hash Encryption, Hex Convertion and more. Plugins: MODS For Word still working on (MODS for Excel ...Minimize Engine (XNA): The Minimize Engine is a basic 3D Games Engine created using XNA, with its primary focus around Grid Based games.MSForge TownCrier: This project is meant to build a notification and calling system for MSForge.net User Groups.NatureProtector: Silverlight 4 project.OutSync: OutSync is a free Windows desktop application that syncs photos of your Facebook friends with matching contacts in Microsoft Outlook. It allows you...Quick Save Images, Clipboard save to file, Quick save, bmp, png, jpeg, Image: ClipSa is a very small tool for very quick picture saving. You put some picture into the clipboard (PrintScrn/Alt-PrintScrn/Ctrl-C), ClipSa saves ...ResHelper Manager: Resource strings management tool that creates localization files for any type of localization target (asp.net, wpf and so on...)SecureCookieHttpModule: Secure your session cookie (and other session-based) cookies for replay attacks using this easy to use ASP.NET HttpModule.simpleChMS: A Church Management System (ChMS) designed for churches or ministries like youth groups that want to facilitate better care or theie membership. Fo...sMAPtool: -SPDomainObject: mapping strong type objects to sp listsSQL Trim: This project aims at developing a universal trim function for Microsoft SQL Server. It trims: 1) pre spaces 2) post spaces 3) double spaces 3) subs...TurretGunner: mt-experienceNew ReleasesBeanProxy: BeanProxy 3.0: BeanProxy is a C# (.NET 3.5) library housing classes that facilitates unit testing. Any non-static, public interface/class or abstract class can be...Blueset Studio Opensource Projects: 蓝色之风记事本 0.2 Alpha: 一个超级Bug版本……CSharp Intellisense: V2.1: - Bug fix (Pascal Casing)DioM2D: DioM2D0.01: http://www.dragonsinourmidst.com/forums/showthread.php?p=690058#post690058Ethical Hacking ASP.NET: Version 1.0.0.1: This is the initial release of the project. Read more about the available tests and features on the Documentation tab. You need the full .NET Frame...Event Scavenger: Collector service update - version 3.2.4: Added check if the database connection string is set up in the config file.Feature Builder Guidance Extensions: FBGX-Binaries: This release consists of a zip file containing all the VSIXs resulting from building each of the FBGX packages found here as source. This will mak...Floe IRC Client: Floe IRC Client 2010-05 R2: - Detaching windows (right click on the tabs to detach them) - Highlight lines with your nick or other patterns - Fixed several bugs - Tabs can now...Free language translator and file converter: Free Language Translator 1.96: Fixed some minor bugs and improved the UI a bit. If you can not install the msi file you might be missing some prerequisites. You can try running t...Geocache Downloader: release 1.0: This is the first release.kp.net: Alpha release is avalable: The goal of this alpha release is to try the code in some production scenarios and find out what features should be tuned.Live-Exchange Calendar Sync: Live-Exchange Calendar Sync: Live-Exchange Calendar Sync Beta May 14, 2010 release of Live-Exchange Calendar Sync 1.0 BETA. (Version 45334) Getting StartedInfo about installat...MAPILab Explorer for SharePoint: MAPILab Explorer for SharePoint ver 2.1.1: 1) Small bug fixed that appears on first start (when earliers versions wasn't installed). How to install:Download ZIP file and extract it on Sha...Microsoft Office Document Security: MODS 4 WORD (SOURCE INCLUDED): Includes Source CodeMoonyDesk (windows desktop widgets): MoonyDesk Alpha: MoonyDesk Alpha (some memory improvements)OnTopReplica: Release 2.9.3: Some bugfixes and improvements. Czech translation added (thanks René Mihula).OutSync: OutSync v1.0.100.0: OutSync v1.0.100.0 is the final release by Mel before the move to CodePlex. I have tested it on Windows 7 32bit and 64bit with Office 2007 and it ...Quick Save Images, Clipboard save to file, Quick save, bmp, png, jpeg, Image: Clipsa v 0.1: Download and extract to any place 2 files - clipSa.exe and clipSa.exe.config Run clipSa.exe. That's all.ResHelper Manager: ResHelperManager: List of changes applied to this version of ResHelper is included in main download zip package. Example sourcesIn Source Code tab are sources of De...Rx Contrib: V1.3: - Bug Fix - BufferWithTimeOrCount with flexible time period setting when ever the time period elapsed...SharePoint DVK Integration: SharePoint 2007 DVK integration v1.0.3: Fixes Fixed default field bindings. I rebound too many fields on every page load. Fixed extension replacing on creating target url (threw it out)...ShoutcastStast for DotNetNuke: DNN_ShoutcastStats alpha 05.00.495: First Alpha release of ShoutcastStats Module for DotNetNuke This first alpha version of the ShoutcastStats Module for DotNetNuke is still in devel...SilverPart 2.1: SilverPart 2.1: SilverPart 2.1 This interim release fixes some major bugs related to Firefox and anonymous access. - Fix for Issue ID 4005 - SilverPart does not w...sMAPtool: sMAPedit v0.7c (Base Release with Maps): Fixed: force a gargabe collection update to prevent pictureBox's memory leak Added: essential map pack with all basic maps in jpg format Added:...SQL Trim: Trim: Initial releaseSSIS Multiple Hash: Multiple Hash V1.2.1: This is version 1.2.1 of the Multiple Hash SSIS Component. It supports SQL 2005 and SQL 2008, although you have to download the correct install pa...StreamInsight Yahoo Finance input adapter example: StockTicker_v1_0_RTM: Updated for StreamInsight RTM.Update Controls .NET: 2.1.0.0: Automatic dependency management for WPF and Silverlight data binding. This release combines both the WPF and Silverlight assemblies into one insta...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30514.0: Automatic drop of latest buildMost Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX 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 SystemRawrPHPExcelBlogEngine.NETMicrosoft Biology FoundationCustomer Portal Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRMWindows Azure Command-line Tools for PHP DevelopersShake - C# MakeStyleCop

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 02, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 02, 2010New ProjectsAdventureWorks in Access: AdventureWorks database in Access format. Data has been ported in Access starting from Adventure Works database for SQL Server 2008.amplifi: This project is still under construction. We will add more information here as soon as it is available.ASP.NET MVC Bug Tracker: Bug Track written in C# ASP.NET MVC 2BigDecimal: BigDecimal is an attempt to create a number class that can have large precision. It is developed in vb.net (.net 4).CBM-Command: Coming soon....Chuyou: ChuyouCMinus: A C Minus Compiler!Complex and advanced mathematical functions: Mathematics toolkit is a Class Library Project which help Programmers to Calculate Mathematics Functions easily.Confuser: Confuser is a obfuscator for .NET. It is developed in C# and using Mono.Cecil for assembly manipulation.easypos: Micro punto de venta que permite ventas express de ropa, que se acopla fácil y transaparente con el ERP Click OneElmech Address Book: Web based Address Book for maintaining details of your business clients. This project targets Suppliers - Traders - Manufacturers - users. Applicat...Feed Viewer: Feed Viewer is able to synchronize subscribed feed and red news among all computers you are using. It understands both RSS and Atom format. It can ...Google URL Shortener, C#: Implementation in C# of generating short URLs by Goo.gl service (Google URL Shortener)MARS - Medical Assistant Record System: MARS - Medical Assistant Record SystemRx Contrib: Rx Contrib is a library which contain extensions for the Rx frameworkSimple Service Administration Tool: A simple tool to start/stop/restart a service of a WinNT based system. The tool is placed in the task bar as a notify icon, so the specified servic...Vis3D: Visual 3D controls for Silverlight.VisContent: XML content controls for ASP.NET.Windows Phone 7 database: This project implements a Isolated Storage (IsolatedStorage) based database for Windows Phone 7. The database consists of table object, each one s...New Releases$log$ / Keyword Substitution / Expansion Check-In Policy (TFS - LogSubstPol): LogSubstPol_v1.2010.0.4 (VS2010): LogSubstPol is a TFS check-in policy which insertes the check-in comments and other keywords into your source code, so you can keep track of the ch...Bojinx: Bojinx Core V4.5.1: The following new features were added: You can now use either BojinxMXMLContext or ContextModule to configure your application or module context. ...CBM-Command: Initial Public Demonstration: Initial public demonstration version. Can browse attached drives and display directory of any attached drive. A common question is "How does it w...Confuser: Confuser v1.0: It is the Confuser v1.0 that used to confuse the reverse-engineers :)Font Family Name Retrieval: 2nd Release: Added New MKV Font Extractor application to showcase the library. MKV Font Extractor depends on MKVToolnix to be installed before it will work. R...Google URL Shortener, C#: Goo.gl-CS v1 Beta: Extract the ZIP file to any location. Two files have to be in the same folder!HouseFly controls: HouseFly controls alpha 0.9.6.1: HouseFly controls release 0.9.6.1 alphaIsWiX: IsWiX 1.0.261.0: Build 1.0.261.0 - built against Fireworks 1.0.264.0. Adds support for VS2010 Integration to support WiX 3.5 beta releases.Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) Contrib: MefContrib 0.9.2.0: Added conventions based catalog (read more at http://www.thecodejunkie.com/2010/03/bringing-convention-based-registration.html) MEF + Unity integ...MARS - Medical Assistant Record System: license: licenseNSIS Autorun: NSIS Autorun 0.1.5: This release includes source code, executable binary, files and example materials.PHP.net: Release 0.0.0.1: This is the first release of PHP.Net. The features available in this release are: new File Save File Save As Open File In the rar file is th...Rx Contrib: V1: Rx Contrib is ongoing effort for community additions for Rx. Current features are: ReactiveQueue: ISubject that does not loose values if there are ...Silverlight 4.0 Popup Menu: Context Menu for Silverlight 4 v1.0: - Added a margin for icon display. - Added the PopupMenuItem class which is a derivative of the DockPanel. - Find* methods can now drill down the v...Silverlight 4.0 Popup Menu: Context Menu for Silverlight 4 v1.1 Beta: - Added a margin for icon display. - Added the PopupMenuItem class which is a derivative of the DockPanel. - Added a AddSeperator method. - The Fin...Simple Service Administration Tool: SSATool 0.1.3: New Simple Service Administration Tool Version 0.1.3 compiled with Visual Studio .NET 2010.sMAPedit: sMAPedit v0.7a + Map-Pack: Required Additional Map-Pack Added: height setting by color picker (shift+leftclick)sMAPedit: sMAPedit v0.7b: Fixed: force a gargabe collection update to prevent pictureBox's memory leaksqwarea: Sqwarea 0.0.228.0 (alpha): This release corrects a critical bug in ConnexityNotifier service. We strongly recommend you to upgrade to this version. Known bugs : if you open...StackOverflow Desktop Client in C# and WPF: StackOverflow Client 0.1: Source code for the sample.TortoiseHg: TortoiseHg 1.0.2: This is a bug fix release, we recommend all users upgrade to 1.0.2VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30501.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVidCoder: 0.4.0: Changes: Added ability to queue up multiple video files or titles at once. These queued jobs will use the currently selected encoding settings. Mul...WabbitStudio Z80 Software Tools: Wabbitemu 32-bit Test Release: Wabbitemu Visual Studio build for testing purposesWindows Phone 7 database: Initial Release v1.0: This project implements a Isolated Storage (IsolatedStorage) based database for Windows Phone 7. The usage of this software is very simple. You cre...YouTubeEmbeddedVideo WebControl for ASP.NET: VideoControls version 1: This zip file contains the VideoControls.dll, version 1.Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control Toolkitpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)iTuner - The iTunes CompanionASP.NETDotNetNuke® Community EditionMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterHydroServer - CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System Serverpatterns & practices: Azure Security GuidanceTinyProjectNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleBlogEngine.NETDambach Linear Algebra FrameworkFacebook Developer Toolkit

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• Robotic Arm &ndash; Hardware

  - by Szymon Kobalczyk

  This is first in series of articles about project I've been building  in my spare time since last Summer. Actually it all began when I was researching a topic of modeling human motion kinematics in order to create gesture recognition library for Kinect. This ties heavily into motion theory of robotic manipulators so I also glanced at some designs of robotic arms. Somehow I stumbled upon this cool looking open source robotic arm: It was featured on Thingiverse and published by user jjshortcut (Jan-Jaap). Since for some time I got hooked on toying with microcontrollers, robots and other electronics, I decided to give it a try and build it myself. In this post I will describe the hardware build of the arm and in later posts I will be writing about the software to control it. Another reason to build the arm myself was the cost factor. Even small commercial robotic arms are quite expensive – products from Lynxmotion and Dagu look great but both cost around USD $300 (actually there is one cheap arm available but it looks more like a toy to me). In comparison this design is quite cheap. It uses seven hobby grade servos and even the cheapest ones should work fine. The structure is build from a set of laser cut parts connected with few metal spacers (15mm and 47mm) and lots of M3 screws. Other than that you’d only need a microcontroller board to drive the servos. So in total it comes a lot cheaper to build it yourself than buy an of the shelf robotic arm. Oh, and if you don’t like this one there are few more robotic arm projects at Thingiverse (including one by oomlout). Laser cut parts Some time ago I’ve build another robot using laser cut parts so I knew the process already. You can grab the design files in both DXF and EPS format from Thingiverse, and there are also 3D models of each part in STL. Actually the design is split into a second project for the mini servo gripper (there is also a standard servo version available but it won’t fit this arm).  I wanted to make some small adjustments, layout, and add measurements to the parts before sending it for cutting. I’ve looked at some free 2D CAD programs, and finally did all this work using QCad 3 Beta with worked great for me (I also tried LibreCAD but it didn’t work that well). All parts are cut from 4 mm thick material. Because I was worried that acrylic is too fragile and might break, I also ordered another set cut from plywood. In the end I build it from plywood because it was easier to glue (I was told acrylic requires a special glue). Btw. I found a great laser cutter service in Kraków and highly recommend it (www.ebbox.com.pl). It cost me only USD $26 for both sets ($16 acrylic + $10 plywood). Metal parts I bought all the M3 screws and nuts at local hardware store. Make sure to look for nylon lock (nyloc) nuts for the gripper because otherwise it unscrews and comes apart quickly. I couldn’t find local store with metal spacers and had to order them online (you’d need 11 x 47mm and 3 x 15mm). I think I paid less than USD $10 for all metal parts. Servos This arm uses five standards size servos to drive the arm itself, and two micro servos are used on the gripper. Author of the project used Modelcraft RS-2 Servo and Modelcraft ES-05 HT Servo. I had two Futaba S3001 servos laying around, and ordered additional TowerPro SG-5010 standard size servos and TowerPro SG90 micro servos. However it turned out that the SG90 won’t fit in the gripper so I had to replace it with a slightly smaller E-Sky EK2-0508 micro servo. Later it also turned out that Futaba servos make some strange noise while working so I swapped one with TowerPro SG-5010 which has higher torque (8kg / cm). I’ve also bought three servo extension cables. All servos cost me USD $45. Assembly The build process is not difficult but you need to think carefully about order of assembling it. You can do the base and upper arm first. Because two servos in the base are close together you need to put first with one piece of lower arm already connected before you put the second servo. Then you connect the upper arm and finally put the second piece of lower arm to hold it together. Gripper and base require some gluing so think it through too. Make sure to look closely at all the photos on Thingiverse (also other people copies) and read additional posts on jjshortcust’s blog: My mini servo grippers and completed robotic arm  Multiply the robotic arm and electronics Here is also Rob’s copy cut from aluminum My assembled arm looks like this – I think it turned out really nice: Servo controller board The last piece of hardware I needed was an electronic board that would take command from PC and drive all seven servos. I could probably use Arduino for this task, and in fact there are several Arduino servo shields available (for example from Adafruit or Renbotics).  However one problem is that most support only up to six servos, and second that their accuracy is limited by Arduino’s timer frequency. So instead I looked for dedicated servo controller and found a series of Maestro boards from Pololu. I picked the Pololu Mini Maestro 12-Channel USB Servo Controller. It has many nice features including native USB connection, high resolution pulses (0.25µs) with no jitter, built-in speed and acceleration control, and even scripting capability. Another cool feature is that besides servo control, each channel can be configured as either general input or output. So far I’m using seven channels so I still have five available to connect some sensors (for example distance sensor mounted on gripper might be useful). And last but important factor was that they have SDK in .NET – what more I could wish for! The board itself is very small – half of the size of Tic-Tac box. I picked one for about USD $35 in this store. Perhaps another good alternative would be the Phidgets Advanced Servo 8-Motor – but it is significantly more expensive at USD $87.30. The Maestro Controller Driver and Software package includes Maestro Control Center program with lets you immediately configure the board. For each servo I first figured out their move range and set the min/max limits. I played with setting the speed an acceleration values as well. Big issue for me was that there are two servos that control position of lower arm (shoulder joint), and both have to be moved at the same time. This is where the scripting feature of Pololu board turned out very helpful. I wrote a script that synchronizes position of second servo with first one – so now I only need to move one servo and other will follow automatically. This turned out tricky because I couldn’t find simple offset mapping of the move range for each servo – I had to divide it into several sub-ranges and map each individually. The scripting language is bit assembler-like but gets the job done. And there is even a runtime debugging and stack view available. Altogether I’m very happy with the Pololu Mini Maestro Servo Controller, and with this final piece I completed the build and was able to move my arm from the Meastro Control program.   The total cost of my robotic arm was: $10 laser cut parts $10 metal parts $45 servos $35 servo controller ----------------------- $100 total So here you have all the information about the hardware. In next post I’ll start talking about the software that I wrote in Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4. Stay tuned!

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• Building extensions for Expression Blend 4 using MEF

  - by Timmy Kokke

  Introduction Although it was possible to write extensions for Expression Blend and Expression Design, it wasn’t very easy and out of the box only one addin could be used. With Expression Blend 4 it is possible to write extensions using MEF, the Managed Extensibility Framework. Until today there’s no documentation on how to build these extensions, so look thru the code with Reflector is something you’ll have to do very often. Because Blend and Design are build using WPF searching the visual tree with Snoop and Mole belong to the tools you’ll be using a lot exploring the possibilities.  Configuring the extension project Extensions are regular .NET class libraries. To create one, load up Visual Studio 2010 and start a new project. Because Blend is build using WPF, choose a WPF User Control Library from the Windows section and give it a name and location. I named mine DemoExtension1. Because Blend looks for addins named *.extension.dll  you’ll have to tell Visual Studio to use that in the Assembly Name. To change the Assembly Name right click your project and go to Properties. On the Application tab, add .Extension to name already in the Assembly name text field. To be able to debug this extension, I prefer to set the output path on the Build tab to the extensions folder of Expression Blend. This means that everything that used to go into the Debug folder is placed in the extensions folder. Including all referenced assemblies that have the copy local property set to false. One last setting. To be able to debug your extension you could start Blend and attach the debugger by hand. I like it to be able to just hit F5. Go to the Debug tab and add the the full path to Blend.exe in the Start external program text field. Extension Class Add a new class to the project.  This class needs to be inherited from the IPackage interface. The IPackage interface can be found in the Microsoft.Expression.Extensibility namespace. To get access to this namespace add Microsoft.Expression.Extensibility.dll to your references. This file can be found in the same folder as the (Expression Blend 4 Beta) Blend.exe file. Make sure the Copy Local property is set to false in this reference. After implementing the interface the class would look something like: using Microsoft.Expression.Extensibility; namespace DemoExtension1 { public class DemoExtension1:IPackage { public void Load(IServices services) { } public void Unload() { } } } These two methods are called when your addin is loaded and unloaded. The parameter passed to the Load method, IServices services, is your main entry point into Blend. The IServices interface exposes the GetService<T> method. You will be using this method a lot. Almost every part of Blend can be accessed thru a service. For example, you can use to get to the commanding services of Blend by calling GetService<ICommandService>() or to get to the Windowing services by calling GetService<IWindowService>(). To get Blend to load the extension we have to implement MEF. (You can get up to speed on MEF on the community site or read the blog of Mr. MEF, Glenn Block.)  In the case of Blend extensions, all that needs to be done is mark the class with an Export attribute and pass it the type of IPackage. The Export attribute can be found in the System.ComponentModel.Composition namespace which is part of the .NET 4 framework. You need to add this to your references. using System.ComponentModel.Composition; using Microsoft.Expression.Extensibility;   namespace DemoExtension1 { [Export(typeof(IPackage))] public class DemoExtension1:IPackage { Blend is able to find your addin now. Adding UI The addin doesn’t do very much at this point. The WPF User Control Library came with a UserControl so lets use that in this example. I just drop a Button and a TextBlock onto the surface of the control to have something to show in the demo. To get the UserControl to work in Blend it has to be registered with the WindowService.  Call GetService<IWindowService>() on the IServices interface to get access to the windowing services. The UserControl will be used in Blend on a Palette and has to be registered to enable it. This is done by calling the RegisterPalette on the IWindowService interface and passing it an identifier, an instance of the UserControl and a caption for the palette. public void Load(IServices services) { IWindowService windowService = services.GetService<IWindowService>(); UserControl1 uc = new UserControl1(); windowService.RegisterPalette("DemoExtension", uc, "Demo Extension"); } After hitting F5 to start debugging Expression Blend will start. You should be able to find the addin in the Window menu now. Activating this window will show the “Demo Extension” palette with the UserControl, style according to the settings of Blend. Now what? Because little is publicly known about how to access different parts of Blend adding breakpoints in Debug mode and browsing thru objects using the Quick Watch feature of Visual Studio is something you have to do very often. This demo extension can be used for that purpose very easily. Add the click event handler to the button on the UserControl. Change the contructor to take the IServices interface and store this in a field. Set a breakpoint in the Button_Click method. public partial class UserControl1 : UserControl { private readonly IServices _services;   public UserControl1(IServices services) { _services = services; InitializeComponent(); }   private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { } } Change the call to the constructor in the load method and pass it the services property. public void Load(IServices services) { IWindowService service = services.GetService<IWindowService>(); UserControl1 uc = new UserControl1(services); service.RegisterPalette("DemoExtension", uc, "Demo Extension"); } Hit F5 to compile and start Blend. Got to the window menu and start show the addin. Click on  the button to hit the breakpoint. Now place the carrot text _services text in the code window and hit Shift+F9 to show the Quick Watch window. Now start exploring and discovering where to find everything you need.  More Information The are no official resources available yet. Microsoft has released one extension for expression Blend that is very useful as a reference, the Microsoft Expression Blend® Add-in Preview for Windows® Phone. This will install a .extension.dll file in the extension folder of Blend. You can load this file with Reflector and have a peek at how Microsoft is building his addins. Conclusion I hope this gives you something to get started building extensions for Expression Blend. Until Microsoft releases the final version, which hopefully includes more information about building extensions, we’ll have to work on documenting it in the community.

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• MSCC: Scripting - Administrator's­ toolbox of magic...

  Finally, we made it to have our April meetup - in May. The most obvious explanation is the increased amount of open source and IT activities that either the MSCC, the Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM), or the University of Mauritius Student's Computer Club is organising. It's absolutely incredible to see the recent hype of events here on the island. And I'm loving it! Unfortunately, we also had to deal with arranging for a location this time. It was kind of an odyssey as my requests (and phone calls) haven't been answered, even though I tried it several times - well, kind of disappointing and I have to look into that for future gatherings. In my opinion, it is essential that two parameters of a community meeting are fixed as early as possible: Location, and Date and time You can't just change one or both on the very last minute. Well, this time we had to do it due to unforeseen reasons, and I apologise to any MSCC member which couldn't make it to our April meetup. Okay, lesson learned but now back to the actual meetup report ... Shortly after the meeting I placed the following statement as my first impression: "Spontaneous and improvised :) No, seriously, Ish and Dan had well prepared presentations on shell scripting, mainly focused towards Bourne Again Shell (bash), and the pros and cons of scripting versus actually writing something in a decent programming language. I thought that I could cut myself out of the equation but the demand for information about PowerShell was higher than expected..." Well, it turned out that the interest in Windows PowerShell was high, as I even got a couple of questions on it via social media networks during the evening. I also like to mention that the number of attendees went back to what I would call a "standard" number of participation. This time there were 12 craftsmen, but again a good number of First Timers. Reactions of other attendees Here are some impressions and feedback from our participants: "Enjoyed the bash and powershell (linux / windows) presentations ..." -- Nadim on event comments "He [Daniel] also showed us some syntax loopholes in Bash that could leave someone with bad code." -- Ish on MSCC – Let's talk about Scripting   Glad to see a couple of first time attendees, especially students from the university itself. Some details on the presentations MSCC: First time visit at the University of Mauritius - Phase II Engineering Tower, room 2.9 Gimme some love ... bash and other shells Ish gave a great introduction into shell scripting as he spoke about existing shell environments and a little bit about their history. Furthermore, he talked about various built-in commands, the use of coreutils, the ability to daisy-chain multiple commands using pipes, the importance of the standard I/O streams and their file descriptors in advanced scripting techniques. Combined with a couple of sample statements in the Linux terminal on Ubuntu 14.04 machine it was a solid presentation. Have a closer look at his slides - published on his blog on MSCC – Let's talk about Scripting. Oddities of scripting After the brief introduction into bash it was Daniel's turn to highlight a good number of oddities when working with shell scripts. First of all, it should be clear that scripting is not supposed for any kind of implementations in terms of software but simply to automate administrative procedures and to simplify routine jobs on a system. One of the cool oddities that he mentioned is that everything (!) in a shell is represented by strings; there are no other types like integer, float, date-time, etc. that you'd like to use in a full-fledged programming language. Let's have a look at his sample:  more to come... What's the output? As a conclusion, Daniel suggests that shell scripting should be limited but not restricted to automatic repetitive command stacks and batch jobs, startup wrapper for applications in order to set up the execution environment, and other not too sophisticated jobs. But as soon as it might involve a little bit more logic or you might rely on performance it's better to write an application in Ruby, Python, or Perl (among others of course). This is also enables the possibility to test your code properly. MSCC: Ish talking about Bourne Again Shell (bash) and shell scripting to automate regular tasks MSCC: Daniel gives an overview about the pros and cons of shell scripting versus programming MSCC: PowerShell as your scripting solution on Windows operating systems The path of the Enlightened is long ... and tough. Honestly, even though PowerShell was mentioned without any further details on the meetup's agenda, I didn't expect that there would be demand to give a presentation on Microsoft PowerShell after all. I already took this topic out of the announcement but the audience wanted to have some information. Okay, then let's see what I could do - improvised style. While my machine booted and got hooked up to the projector, I started to talk about the beginnings of PowerShell from back in 2006, and its predecessors MS DOS and Command Prompt. A throwback in history... always good for young people. As usual, Microsoft didn't get it at that time. Instead of listening to their client's needs and demands they ignored the feasibility to administrate Windows server farms without any UI tools. PowerShell is actually a result of this, and seeing that shell scripting is a common, reliable and fast way in an administrator's toolbox for decades, Microsoft had to adapt from their Microsoft Management Console (MMC) to a broader approach. It's not like shell scripting was something new; it is in daily use by alternative operating systems like AIX, HP UX, Solaris, and last but not least Linux. Most interestingly, Microsoft is very good at renovating existing architectures, and over the years PowerShell not only replaced their own combination of Command Prompt and Scripting Hosts (VBScript and CScript) but really turned into a challenging competitor on the market. The shell is easy to extend with cmdlets, and open to other Microsoft products like SQL Server, SharePoint, as well as Third-party software applications. Similar to MMC PowerShell also offers the ability to administer other machine remotely - only without a graphical user interface and therefore it's easier to automate and schedule regular tasks. Following is a sample of a PowerShell script file (extension .ps1): $strComputer = "." $colItems = get-wmiobject -class Win32_BIOS -namespace root\CIMV2 -comp $strComputer foreach ($objItem in $colItems) {write-host "BIOS Characteristics: " $objItem.BiosCharacteristicswrite-host "BIOS Version: " $objItem.BIOSVersionwrite-host "Build Number: " $objItem.BuildNumberwrite-host "Caption: " $objItem.Captionwrite-host "Code Set: " $objItem.CodeSetwrite-host "Current Language: " $objItem.CurrentLanguagewrite-host "Description: " $objItem.Descriptionwrite-host "Identification Code: " $objItem.IdentificationCodewrite-host "Installable Languages: " $objItem.InstallableLanguageswrite-host "Installation Date: " $objItem.InstallDatewrite-host "Language Edition: " $objItem.LanguageEditionwrite-host "List Of Languages: " $objItem.ListOfLanguageswrite-host "Manufacturer: " $objItem.Manufacturerwrite-host "Name: " $objItem.Namewrite-host "Other Target Operating System: " $objItem.OtherTargetOSwrite-host "Primary BIOS: " $objItem.PrimaryBIOSwrite-host "Release Date: " $objItem.ReleaseDatewrite-host "Serial Number: " $objItem.SerialNumberwrite-host "SMBIOS BIOS Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSBIOSVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Major Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSMajorVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Minor Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSMinorVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Present: " $objItem.SMBIOSPresentwrite-host "Software Element ID: " $objItem.SoftwareElementIDwrite-host "Software Element State: " $objItem.SoftwareElementStatewrite-host "Status: " $objItem.Statuswrite-host "Target Operating System: " $objItem.TargetOperatingSystemwrite-host "Version: " $objItem.Versionwrite-host} Which gives you information about your BIOS and Windows OS. Then change the computer name to another one on your network (NetBIOS based) and run the script again. There lots of samples and tutorials at the Microsoft Script Center, and I would advise you to pay a visit over there if you are more interested in PowerShell. The Script Center provides the download links, too. Upcoming Events What are the upcoming events here in Mauritius? So far, we have the following ones (incomplete list as usual) in chronological order: Hacking Defence (14. May 2014) WebCup Maurice (7. & 8. June 2014) Developers Conference (TBA ~ July 2014) Linuxfest 2014 (TBA ~ November 2014) Hopefully, there will be more announcements during the next couple of weeks and months. If you know about any other event, like a bootcamp, a code challenge or hackathon here in Mauritius, please drop me a note in the comment section below this article. Thanks! My resume of the day Spontaneous and improvised :) The new location at the University of Mauritius turned out very well, there is plenty of space, and it could be a good choice for future meetings. Especially, having the ability to get more and more students into our IT community sounds like a great opportunity. Later during the day, I got some promising mails from Nadim regarding future sessions at the local branch of the Middlesex University. Well, we will see in the future... But for now this will be on hold until approximately October when students resume their regular studies. Anyway, it was a good experience at the university, and thanks again to the UoM Student's Computer Club that made the necessary arrangements for the MSCC!

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• Computer crashes on resume from standby almost every time

  - by Los Frijoles

  I am running Ubuntu 12.04 on a Core i5 2500K and ASRock Z68 Pro3-M motherboard (no graphics card, hd is a WD Green 1TB, and cd drive is some cheap lite-on drive). Since installing 12.04, my computer has been freezing after resume, but not every time. When I start to resume, it starts going normally with a blinking cursor on the screen and then sometimes it will continue on to the gnome 3 unlock screen. Most of the time, however, it will blink for a little bit and then the monitor will flip modes and shut off due to no signal. Pressing keys on the keyboard gets no response (num lock light doesn't respond, Ctrl-Alt-F1 fails to drop it into a terminal, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace doesn't work) and so I assume the computer is crashed. The worst part is, the logs look entirely normal. Here is my system log during one of these crashes and my subsequent hard poweroff and restart: Jun 6 21:54:43 kcuzner-desktop udevd[10448]: inotify_add_watch(6, /dev/dm-2, 10) failed: No such file or directory Jun 6 21:54:43 kcuzner-desktop udevd[10448]: inotify_add_watch(6, /dev/dm-2, 10) failed: No such file or directory Jun 6 21:54:43 kcuzner-desktop udevd[10448]: inotify_add_watch(6, /dev/dm-1, 10) failed: No such file or directory Jun 6 21:54:43 kcuzner-desktop udevd[12419]: inotify_add_watch(6, /dev/dm-0, 10) failed: No such file or directory Jun 6 21:54:43 kcuzner-desktop udevd[10448]: inotify_add_watch(6, /dev/dm-0, 10) failed: No such file or directory Jun 6 22:09:01 kcuzner-desktop CRON[9061]: (root) CMD ( [ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -depth -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) ! -execdir fuser -s {} 2>/dev/null \; -delete) Jun 6 22:17:01 kcuzner-desktop CRON[22142]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) Jun 6 22:39:01 kcuzner-desktop CRON[26909]: (root) CMD ( [ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -depth -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) ! -execdir fuser -s {} 2>/dev/null \; -delete) Jun 6 22:54:21 kcuzner-desktop kernel: [57905.560822] show_signal_msg: 36 callbacks suppressed Jun 6 22:54:21 kcuzner-desktop kernel: [57905.560828] chromium-browse[9139]: segfault at 0 ip 00007f3a78efade0 sp 00007fff7e2d2c18 error 4 in chromium-browser[7f3a76604000+412b000] Jun 6 23:05:43 kcuzner-desktop kernel: [58586.415158] chromium-browse[21025]: segfault at 0 ip 00007f3a78efade0 sp 00007fff7e2d2c18 error 4 in chromium-browser[7f3a76604000+412b000] Jun 6 23:09:01 kcuzner-desktop CRON[13542]: (root) CMD ( [ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -depth -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) ! -execdir fuser -s {} 2>/dev/null \; -delete) Jun 6 23:12:43 kcuzner-desktop kernel: [59006.317590] usb 2-1.7: USB disconnect, device number 8 Jun 6 23:12:43 kcuzner-desktop kernel: [59006.319672] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdg] Synchronizing SCSI cache Jun 6 23:12:43 kcuzner-desktop kernel: [59006.319737] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdg] Result: hostbyte=DID_NO_CONNECT driverbyte=DRIVER_OK Jun 6 23:17:01 kcuzner-desktop CRON[26580]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) Jun 6 23:19:04 kcuzner-desktop acpid: client connected from 29925[0:0] Jun 6 23:19:04 kcuzner-desktop acpid: 1 client rule loaded Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop rtkit-daemon[1835]: Successfully made thread 30131 of process 30131 (n/a) owned by '104' high priority at nice level -11. Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop rtkit-daemon[1835]: Supervising 1 threads of 1 processes of 1 users. Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop rtkit-daemon[1835]: Successfully made thread 30162 of process 30131 (n/a) owned by '104' RT at priority 5. Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop rtkit-daemon[1835]: Supervising 2 threads of 1 processes of 1 users. Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop rtkit-daemon[1835]: Successfully made thread 30163 of process 30131 (n/a) owned by '104' RT at priority 5. Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop rtkit-daemon[1835]: Supervising 3 threads of 1 processes of 1 users. Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop bluetoothd[1140]: Endpoint registered: sender=:1.239 path=/MediaEndpoint/HFPAG Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop bluetoothd[1140]: Endpoint registered: sender=:1.239 path=/MediaEndpoint/A2DPSource Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop bluetoothd[1140]: Endpoint registered: sender=:1.239 path=/MediaEndpoint/A2DPSink Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop rtkit-daemon[1835]: Successfully made thread 30166 of process 30166 (n/a) owned by '104' high priority at nice level -11. Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop rtkit-daemon[1835]: Supervising 4 threads of 2 processes of 1 users. Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop pulseaudio[30166]: [pulseaudio] pid.c: Daemon already running. Jun 6 23:19:10 kcuzner-desktop acpid: client 2942[0:0] has disconnected Jun 6 23:19:10 kcuzner-desktop acpid: client 29925[0:0] has disconnected Jun 6 23:19:10 kcuzner-desktop acpid: client connected from 1286[0:0] Jun 6 23:19:10 kcuzner-desktop acpid: 1 client rule loaded Jun 6 23:19:31 kcuzner-desktop bluetoothd[1140]: Endpoint unregistered: sender=:1.239 path=/MediaEndpoint/HFPAG Jun 6 23:19:31 kcuzner-desktop bluetoothd[1140]: Endpoint unregistered: sender=:1.239 path=/MediaEndpoint/A2DPSource Jun 6 23:19:31 kcuzner-desktop bluetoothd[1140]: Endpoint unregistered: sender=:1.239 path=/MediaEndpoint/A2DPSink Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop kernel: imklog 5.8.6, log source = /proc/kmsg started. Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="5.8.6" x-pid="1053" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] start Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop rsyslogd: rsyslogd's groupid changed to 103 Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop rsyslogd: rsyslogd's userid changed to 101 Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop rsyslogd-2039: Could not open output pipe '/dev/xconsole' [try http://www.rsyslog.com/e/2039 ] Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop modem-manager[1070]: <info> Loaded plugin Ericsson MBM Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop modem-manager[1070]: <info> Loaded plugin Sierra Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop modem-manager[1070]: <info> Loaded plugin Generic Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop modem-manager[1070]: <info> Loaded plugin Huawei Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop modem-manager[1070]: <info> Loaded plugin Linktop Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop bluetoothd[1072]: Failed to init gatt_example plugin Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop bluetoothd[1072]: Listening for HCI events on hci0 Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop NetworkManager[1080]: <info> NetworkManager (version 0.9.4.0) is starting... Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop NetworkManager[1080]: <info> Read config file /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop NetworkManager[1080]: <info> VPN: loaded org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.pptp Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop NetworkManager[1080]: <info> DNS: loaded plugin dnsmasq Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop kernel: [ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop kernel: [ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu Sorry it's so huge; the restart happens at 23:28:12 I believe and all I see is that chromium segfaulted a few times. I wouldn't think a segfault from an individual program on the computer would crash it, but could that be the issue?

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• Using SQL Source Control with Fortress or Vault &ndash; Part 2

  - by AjarnMark

  In Part 1, I started talking about using Red-Gate’s newest version of SQL Source Control and how I really like it as a viable method to source control your database development.  It looks like this is going to turn into a little series where I will explain how we have done things in the past, and how life is different with SQL Source Control.  I will also explain some of my philosophy and methodology around deployment with these tools.  But for now, let’s talk about some of the good and the bad of the tool itself. More Kudos and Features I mentioned previously how impressed I was with the responsiveness of Red-Gate’s team.  I have been having an ongoing email conversation with Gyorgy Pocsi, and as I have run into problems or requested things behave a little differently, it has not been more than a day or two before a new Build is ready for me to download and test.  Quite impressive! I’m sure much of the requests I put in were already in the plans, so I can’t really take credit for them, but throughout this conversation, Red-Gate has implemented several features that were not in the first Early Access version.  Those include: Honoring the Fortress configuration option to require Work Item (Bug) IDs on check-ins. Adding the check-in comment text as a comment to the Work Item. Adding the list of checked-in files, along with the Fortress links for automatic History and DIFF view Updating the status of a Work Item on check-in (e.g. setting the item to Complete or, in our case “Dev-Complete”) Support for the Fortress 2.0 API, and not just the Vault Pro 5.1 API.  (See later notes regarding support for Fortress 2.0). These were all features that I felt we really needed to have in-place before I could honestly consider converting my team to using SQL Source Control on a regular basis.  Now that I have those, my only excuse is not wanting to switch boats on the team mid-stream.  So when we wrap up our current release in a few weeks, we will make the jump.  In the meantime, I will continue to bang on it to make sure it is stable.  It passed one test for stability when I did a test load of one of our larger database schemas into Fortress with SQL Source Control.  That database has about 150 tables, 200 User-Defined Functions and nearly 900 Stored Procedures.  The initial load to source control went smoothly and took just a brief amount of time. Warnings Remember that this IS still in pre-release stage and while I have not had any problems after that first hiccup I wrote about last time, you still need to treat it with a healthy respect.  As I understand it, the RTM is targeted for February.  There are a couple more features that I hope make it into the final release version, but if not, they’ll probably be coming soon thereafter.  Those are: A Browse feature to let me lookup the Work Item ID instead of having to remember it or look back in my Item details.  This is just a matter of convenience. I normally have my Work Item list open anyway, so I can easily look it up, but hey, why not make it even easier. A multi-line comment area.  The current space for writing check-in comments is a single-line text box.  I would like to have a multi-line space as I sometimes write lengthy commentary.  But I recognize that it is a struggle to get most developers to put in more than the word “fixed” as their comment, so this meets the need of the majority as-is, and it’s not a show-stopper for us. Merge.  SQL Source Control currently does not have a Merge feature.  If two or more people make changes to the same database object, you will get a warning of the conflict and have to choose which one wins (and then manually edit to include the others’ changes).  I think it unlikely you will run into actual conflicts in Stored Procedures and Functions, but you might with Views or Tables.  This will be nice to have, but I’m not losing any sleep over it.  And I have multiple tools at my disposal to do merges manually, so really not a show-stopper for us. Automation has its limits.  As cool as this automation is, it has its limits and there are some changes that you will be better off scripting yourself.  For example, if you are refactoring table definitions, and want to change a column name, you can write that as a quick sp_rename command and preserve the data within that column.  But because this tool is looking just at a before and after picture, it cannot tell that you just renamed a column.  To the tool, it looks like you dropped one column and added another.  This is not a knock against Red-Gate.  All automated scripting tools have this issue, unless the are actively monitoring your every step to know exactly what you are doing.  This means that when you go to Deploy your changes, SQL Compare will script the change as a column drop and add, or will attempt to rebuild the entire table.  Unfortunately, neither of these approaches will preserve the existing data in that column the way an sp_rename will, and so you are better off scripting that change yourself.  Thankfully, SQL Compare will produce warnings about the potential loss of data before it does the actual synchronization and give you a chance to intercept the script and do it yourself. Also, please note that the current official word is that SQL Source Control supports Vault Professional 5.1 and later.  Vault Professional is the new name for what was previously known as Fortress.  (You can read about the name change on SourceGear’s site.)  The last version of Fortress was 2.x, and the API for Fortress 2.x is different from the API for Vault Pro.  At my company, we are currently running Fortress 2.0, with plans to upgrade to Vault Pro early next year.  Gyorgy was able to come up with a work-around for me to be able to use SQL Source Control with Fortress 2.0, even though it is not officially supported.  If you are using Fortress 2.0 and want to use SQL Source Control, be aware that this is not officially supported, but it is working for us, and you can probably get the work-around instructions from Red-Gate if you’re really, really nice to them. Upcoming Topics Some of the other topics I will likely cover in this series over the next few weeks are: How we used to do source control back in the old days (a few weeks ago) before SQL Source Control was available to Vault users What happens when you restore a database that is linked to source control Handling multiple development branches of source code Concurrent Development practices and handling Conflicts Deployment Tips and Best Practices A recap after using the tool for a while

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• Fragmented Log files could be slowing down your database

  - by Fatherjack

  Something that is sometimes forgotten by a lot of DBAs is the fact that database log files get fragmented in the same way that you get fragmentation in a data file. The cause is very different but the effect is the same – too much effort reading and writing data. Data files get fragmented as data is changed through normal system activity, INSERTs, UPDATEs and DELETEs cause fragmentation and most experienced DBAs are monitoring their indexes for fragmentation and dealing with it accordingly. However, you don’t hear about so many working on their log files. How can a log file get fragmented? I’m glad you asked. When you create a database there are at least two files created on the disk storage; an mdf for the data and an ldf for the log file (you can also have ndf files for extra data storage but that’s off topic for now). It is wholly possible to have more than one log file but in most cases there is little point in creating more than one as the log file is written to in a ‘wrap-around’ method (more on that later). When a log file is created at the time that a database is created the file is actually sub divided into a number of virtual log files (VLFs). The number and size of these VLFs depends on the size chosen for the log file. VLFs are also created in the space added to a log file when a log file growth event takes place. Do you have your log files set to auto grow? Then you have potentially been introducing many VLFs into your log file. Let’s get to see how many VLFs we have in a brand new database. USE master GO CREATE DATABASE VLF_Test ON ( NAME = VLF_Test, FILENAME = 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.ROCK_2008\MSSQL\DATA\VLF_Test.mdf', SIZE = 100, MAXSIZE = 500, FILEGROWTH = 50 ) LOG ON ( NAME = VLF_Test_Log, FILENAME = 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.ROCK_2008\MSSQL\DATA\VLF_Test_log.ldf', SIZE = 5MB, MAXSIZE = 250MB, FILEGROWTH = 5MB ); go USE VLF_Test go DBCC LOGINFO; The results of this are firstly a new database is created with specified files sizes and the the DBCC LOGINFO results are returned to the script editor. The DBCC LOGINFO results have plenty of interesting information in them but lets first note there are 4 rows of information, this relates to the fact that 4 VLFs have been created in the log file. The values in the FileSize column are the sizes of each VLF in bytes, you will see that the last one to be created is slightly larger than the others. So, a 5MB log file has 4 VLFs of roughly 1.25 MB. Lets alter the CREATE DATABASE script to create a log file that’s a bit bigger and see what happens. Alter the code above so that the log file details are replaced by LOG ON ( NAME = VLF_Test_Log, FILENAME = 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.ROCK_2008\MSSQL\DATA\VLF_Test_log.ldf', SIZE = 1GB, MAXSIZE = 25GB, FILEGROWTH = 1GB ); With a bigger log file specified we get more VLFs What if we make it bigger again? LOG ON ( NAME = VLF_Test_Log, FILENAME = 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.ROCK_2008\MSSQL\DATA\VLF_Test_log.ldf', SIZE = 5GB, MAXSIZE = 250GB, FILEGROWTH = 5GB ); This time we see more VLFs are created within our log file. We now have our 5GB log file comprised of 16 files of 320MB each. In fact these sizes fall into all the ranges that control the VLF creation criteria – what a coincidence! The rules that are followed when a log file is created or has it’s size increased are pretty basic. If the file growth is lower than 64MB then 4 VLFs are created If the growth is between 64MB and 1GB then 8 VLFs are created If the growth is greater than 1GB then 16 VLFs are created. Now the potential for chaos comes if the default values and settings for log file growth are used. By default a database log file gets a 1MB log file with unlimited growth in steps of 10%. The database we just created is 6 MB, let’s add some data and see what happens. USE vlf_test go -- we need somewhere to put the data so, a table is in order IF OBJECT_ID('A_Table') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE A_Table go CREATE TABLE A_Table ( Col_A int IDENTITY, Col_B CHAR(8000) ) GO -- Let's check the state of the log file -- 4 VLFs found EXECUTE ('DBCC LOGINFO'); go -- We can go ahead and insert some data and then check the state of the log file again INSERT A_Table (col_b) SELECT TOP 500 REPLICATE('a',2000) FROM sys.columns AS sc, sys.columns AS sc2 GO -- insert 500 rows and we get 22 VLFs EXECUTE ('DBCC LOGINFO'); go -- Let's insert more rows INSERT A_Table (col_b) SELECT TOP 2000 REPLICATE('a',2000) FROM sys.columns AS sc, sys.columns AS sc2 GO 10 -- insert 2000 rows, in 10 batches and we suddenly have 107 VLFs EXECUTE ('DBCC LOGINFO'); Well, that escalated quickly! Our log file is split, internally, into 107 fragments after a few thousand inserts. The same happens with any logged transactions, I just chose to illustrate this with INSERTs. Having too many VLFs can cause performance degradation at times of database start up, log backup and log restore operations so it’s well worth keeping a check on this property. How do we prevent excessive VLF creation? Creating the database with larger files and also with larger growth steps and actively choosing to grow your databases rather than leaving it to the Auto Grow event can make sure that the growths are made with a size that is optimal. How do we resolve a situation of a database with too many VLFs? This process needs to be done when the database is under little or no stress so that you don’t affect system users. The steps are: BACKUP LOG YourDBName TO YourBackupDestinationOfChoice Shrink the log file to its smallest possible size DBCC SHRINKFILE(FileNameOfTLogHere, TRUNCATEONLY) * Re-size the log file to the size you want it to, taking in to account your expected needs for the coming months or year. ALTER DATABASE YourDBName MODIFY FILE ( NAME = FileNameOfTLogHere, SIZE = TheSizeYouWantItToBeIn_MB) * – If you don’t know the file name of your log file then run sp_helpfile while you are connected to the database that you want to work on and you will get the details you need. The resize step can take quite a while This is already detailed far better than I can explain it by Kimberley Tripp in her blog 8-Steps-to-better-Transaction-Log-throughput.aspx. The result of this will be a log file with a VLF count according to the bullet list above. Knowing when VLFs are being created By complete coincidence while I have been writing this blog (it’s been quite some time from it’s inception to going live) Jonathan Kehayias from SQLSkills.com has written a great article on how to track database file growth using Event Notifications and Service Broker. I strongly recommend taking a look at it as this is going to catch any sneaky auto grows that take place and let you know about them right away. Hassle free monitoring of VLFs If you are lucky or wise enough to be using SQL Monitor or another monitoring tool that let’s you write your own custom metrics then you can keep an eye on this very easily. There is a custom metric for VLFs (written by Stuart Ainsworth) already on the site and there are some others there are very useful so take a moment or two to look around while you are there. Resources MSDN – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms179355(v=sql.105).aspx Kimberly Tripp from SQLSkills.com – http://www.sqlskills.com/BLOGS/KIMBERLY/post/8-Steps-to-better-Transaction-Log-throughput.aspx Thomas LaRock at Simple-Talk.com – http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/database-administration/monitoring-sql-server-virtual-log-file-fragmentation/ Disclosure I am a Friend of Red Gate. This means that I am more than likely to say good things about Red Gate DBA and Developer tools. No matter how awesome I make them sound, take the time to compare them with other products before you contact the Red Gate sales team to make your order.

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• A pseudo-listener for AlwaysOn Availability Groups for SQL Server virtual machines running in Azure

  - by MikeD

  I am involved in a project that is implementing SharePoint 2013 on virtual machines hosted in Azure. The back end data tier consists of two Azure VMs running SQL Server 2012, with the SharePoint databases contained in an AlwaysOn Availability Group. I used this "Tutorial: AlwaysOn Availability Groups in Windows Azure (GUI)" to help me implement this setup.Because Azure DHCP will not assign multiple unique IP addresses to the same VM, having an AG Listener in Azure is not currently supported.  I wanted to figure out another mechanism to support a "pseudo listener" of some sort. First, I created a CNAME (alias) record in the DNS zone with a short TTL (time to live) of 5 minutes (I may yet make this even shorter). The record represents a logical name (let's say the alias is SPSQL) of the server to connect to for the databases in the availability group (AG). When Server1 was hosting the primary replica of the AG, I would set the CNAME of SPSQL to be SERVER1. When the AG failed over to Server1, I wanted to set the CNAME to SERVER2. Seemed simple enough.(It's important to point out that the connection strings for my SharePoint services should use the CNAME alias, and not the actual server name. This whole thing falls apart otherwise.)To accomplish this, I created identical SQL Agent Jobs on Server1 and Server2, with two steps:1. Step 1: Determine if this server is hosting the primary replica.This is a TSQL step using this script:declare @agName sysname = 'AGTest'set nocount on declare @primaryReplica sysnameselect @primaryReplica = agState.primary_replicafrom sys.dm_hadr_availability_group_states agState   join sys.availability_groups ag on agstate.group_id = ag.group_id   where ag.name = @AGname if not exists(   select *    from sys.dm_hadr_availability_group_states agState   join sys.availability_groups ag on agstate.group_id = ag.group_id   where @@Servername = agstate.primary_replica    and ag.name = @AGname)begin   raiserror ('Primary replica of %s is not hosted on %s, it is hosted on %s',17,1,@Agname, @@Servername, @primaryReplica) endThis script determines if the primary replica value of the AG group is the same as the server name, which means that our server is hosting the current AG (you should update the value of the @AgName variable to the name of your AG). If this is true, I want the DNS alias to point to this server. If the current server is not hosting the primary replica, then the script raises an error. Also, if the script can't be executed because it cannot connect to the server, that also will generate an error. For the job step settings, I set the On Failure option to "Quit the job reporting success". The next step in the job will set the DNS alias to this server name, and I only want to do that if I know that it is the current primary replica, otherwise I don't want to do anything. I also include the step output in the job history so I can see the error message.Job Step 2: Update the CNAME entry in DNS with this server's name.I used a PowerShell script to accomplish this:$cname = "SPSQL.contoso.com"$query = "Select * from MicrosoftDNS_CNAMEType"$dns1 = "dc01.contoso.com"$dns2 = "dc02.contoso.com"if ((Test-Connection -ComputerName $dns1 -Count 1 -Quiet) -eq $true){    $dnsServer = $dns1}elseif ((Test-Connection -ComputerName $dns2 -Count 1 -Quiet) -eq $true) {   $dnsServer = $dns2}else{  $msg = "Unable to connect to DNS servers: " + $dns1 + ", " + $dns2   Throw $msg}$record = Get-WmiObject -Namespace "root\microsoftdns" -Query $query -ComputerName $dnsServer  | ? { $_.Ownername -match $cname }$thisServer = [System.Net.Dns]::GetHostEntry("LocalHost").HostName + "."$currentServer = $record.RecordData if ($currentServer -eq $thisServer ) {     $cname + " CNAME is up to date: " + $currentServer}else{    $cname + " CNAME is being updated to " + $thisServer + ". It was " + $currentServer    $record.RecordData = $thisServer    $record.put()}This script does a few things:finds a responsive domain controller (Test-Connection does a ping and returns a Boolean value if you specify the -Quiet parameter)makes a WMI call to the domain controller to get the current CNAME record value (Get-WmiObject)gets the FQDN of this server (GetHostEntry)checks if the CNAME record is correct and updates it if necessary(You should update the values of the variables $cname, $dns1 and $dns2 for your environment.)Since my domain controllers are also hosted in Azure VMs, either one of them could be down at any point in time, so I need to find a DC that is responsive before attempting the DNS call. The other little thing here is that the CNAME record contains the FQDN of a machine, plus it ends with a period. So the comparison of the CNAME record has to take the trailing period into account. When I tested this step, I was getting ACCESS DENIED responses from PowerShell for the Get-WmiObject cmdlet that does a remote lookup on the DC. This occurred because the SQL Agent service account was not a member of the Domain Admins group, so I decided to create a SQL Credential to store the credentials for a domain administrator account and use it as a PowerShell proxy (rather than give the service account Domain Admins membership).In SQL Management Studio, right click on the Credentials node (under the server's Security node), and choose New Credential...Then, under SQL Agent-->Proxies, right click on the PowerShell node and choose New Proxy...Finally, in the job step properties for the PowerShell step, select the new proxy in the Run As drop down.I created this two step Job on both nodes of the Availability Group, but if you had more than two nodes, just create the same job on all the servers. I set the schedule for the job to execute every minute.When the server that is hosting the primary replica is running the job, the job history looks like this:The job history on the secondary server looks like this: When a failover occurs, the SQL Agent job on the new primary replica will detect that the CNAME needs to be updated within a minute. Based on the TTL of the CNAME (which I said at the beginning was 5 minutes), the SharePoint servers will get the new alias within five minutes and should be able to reconnect. I may want to shorten up the TTL to reduce the time it takes for the client connections to use the new alias. Using a DNS CNAME and a SQL Agent Job on all servers hosting AG replicas, I was able to create a pseudo-listener to automatically change the name of the server that was hosting the primary replica, for a scenario where I cannot use a regular AG listener (in this case, because the servers are all hosted in Azure).    

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 29, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 29, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET MVC Time Planner: ASP.NET MVC based time planner is example solution that introduces ASP.NET MVC, MSSQL AJAX and jQuery development.Blit Scripting Engine: Blit Scripting Engine provides developers using Microsofts XNA Framework the ability to implement a scripting solution to their games and other pro...Expression Evaluator: This is an article on how to build a basic expression evaluator. It can evaluate any numerical expression combined with trigonometric functions for...Log Analyzer: This project has the aim to help developers to see live log/trace from their application applying visual styles to the grabbed text.LParse: LParse is a monadic parser combinator library, similar to Haskell’s Parsec. It allows you create parsers on C# language. All parsers are first-clas...NeatHtml: NeatHtml™ is a highly-portable open source website component that displays untrusted content securely, efficiently, and accessibly. Untrusted conte...NeatUpload: The NeatUpload ™ ASP.NET component allows developers to stream uploaded files to storage (filesystem or database) and allows users to monitor uplo...NSoup: NSoup is a .NET port of the jsoup (http://jsoup.org) HTML parser and sanitizer originally written in Java. jsoup originally written by Jonathan He...Ordering: c# farm softwarephone7: Project for Windows Phone 7RestCall: A very simple library to make a simple REST call and deserialize to an object. It uses WCF REST Starter Kit and the .net serializer in: System.Runt...SCSM CSV Connector: CSV Connector allows you to specify a data file and mapping location and a scheuled interval in minutes. At each scheduled interval Service Manage...Silverlight Adorner Control: An Adorner is a custom FrameworkElement that is bound to a FrameworkElement and displays information about that element 'above' the element without...Simple Stupid Tools: Simple Stupid ToolsSQScriptRunner: Simple Quick Script Runner allows an administrator to run T-SQL Scripts against one or more servers with common characteristics. For example, an m...ssisassembly: ssisassemblySSRS Report RoboCopy: a tools used to pass a report from a server to anotherTeam Foundation Server Explorer: A standalone Team Foundation Server explorer that can be used to view and manage source files.New Releases(SocketCoder) Full Silverlight Web Video/Voice Conferencing: SocketCoderWebConferencingSystem_Compiled: Installing The Server: 1- before you start you should allow the SocketCoderWCService.MainService.exe service to use the TCP ports from 4528 to 4532...ASP.NET MVC Time Planner: MVC Time Planner - v0.0.1.0: First public alpha of MVC Time Planner is now available. I got a lot of letters from my ASP.NET blog readers who are interested in this example sol...AvalonDock: AvalonDock 1.3.3384: Welcome to AvalonDock 1.3 This is the new version of AvalonDock targetting .NET 4 These are the main features that are included: - Target Microso...Blit Scripting Engine: Blit Scripting Engine 1.0: This marks the initial release of the Blit Scripting Engine. It provides the ability to compile scripts to an assembly, load pre-compiled assemblie...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V12: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has add...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V13: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has add...CSharp Intellisense: V2.4: bug fix: Pascal Casing, Single Selection and other selection errorsExpression Evaluator: Expression Evaluator - Visual Studio 2010: Visual Studio 2010 VersionFacebook Graph Toolkit: Preview 2: Preview 2 updates the source to be much more like the Facebook PHP-SDK. Additionally, the code has been updated to follow StyleCop framework rules....Facebook Graph Toolkit: Preview 3: Rest API now working although not fully tested. Removed JsonObject and JsonArray custom dynamic objects in favor of standard ExpandoObject and List...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.1.1 beta Released: Hi, Today we are releasing the two most awaited features i.e, Logarithmic axis and auto update of y-axis while Scrolling and Zooming. * Logar...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.5.4 beta Released: Hi, Today we are releasing the two most awaited features i.e, Logarithmic axis and auto update of y-axis while Scrolling and Zooming. Logarithmic...Fulcrum: Fulcrum 1.0: Initial release.Git Source Control Provider: V 0.3: V 0.3 Add automatic status refresh when files in solution folder changedIBCSharp: IBCSharp 1.04: What IBCSharp 1.04.zip unzips to: http://i50.tinypic.com/205qofl.png IBCSharp Change Log 1.04 - 5/28/2010 Updated IBClient.dll to IB API version...MapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 May 28 2010: This shifts the projection library to System.Spatial.Projections instead of MWProj4. This also fixes a meter/feet conversion error.Microsoft Health Common User Interface: Release 8.2.51.000: This is version 8.2 of the Microsoft® Health Common User Interface Control Toolkit. This release includes code updates to controls as listed below....NeatHtml: NeatHtml-trunk.221: Adds support for Internet Explorer Mobile 6.NeatUpload: NeatUpload-1.3.25: Fixes the following bugs: SWFUpload.swf could not be served by a CDN because it was embedded without setting allowScriptAccess="always". NeatUpl...NSoup: NSoup 0.1: Initial port release. Corresponds to jsoup version 0.3.1.Numina Application/Security Framework: Numina.Framework Core 53265: Visit http://framework.numina.net to help get you started.Nuntio Content: Nuntio Content 4.2.0: This upgrades MagicContent instances to the latest version that is now called NuntioContent. While this release is quite stable it is still marked ...patterns & practices: Composite WPF and Silverlight: ProjectLinker Source for VS2010 - May 2010: The ProjectLinker helps keep the source for two projects in sync by automatically creating a linked file in one project as files are added in anoth...phone7: Prism for WP7: This the first version of prism for wp7SCSM CSV Connector: SCSM CSV Connector Version 0.1: Release Notes This is the first release of the SCSM CSV Connector solution. It is an 'alpha' release and has only been tested by the developers on ...Silverlight Adorner Control: 1.0: Initial releaseSilverlight Web Comic: Comic 1.1.1: Comic Beta with functionality to button newSilverlight Web Comic: Web Comic 1.1: This version has a little implementation no visible about the future versions, options to new, save, and load. The next version has a better review...Simple.NET: Simple.Mocking 1.0.0.6: Initial version of a new mocking framework for .NET Revision 1: Expect.AnyInocationOn<T>(T target) changed to Expect.AnyInocationOn(object target...Sonic.Net: Sonic.Net v1.0.1 For Unity 2.0: This Version is a port to VS2010 of the codebase with support for unity 2.0. note: currently follows the xsd schema of the previous unity Configur...Squiggle - A Free open source Lan Messenger: Squiggle 1.0.2: v1.0 Release.Team Foundation Server Explorer: Beta 1: The first public beta release of the TFS Explorer.thinktecture WSCF.blue: WSCF.blue V1 Update (1.0.8): Bug fix release with the following fix: When an XmlArrayAttribute decorated member has IsNullable=false, and the List<T> or Collection option is s...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30528.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio 2010 AutoScroller Extension: AutoScroller v0.4: A Visual studio 2010 auto-scroller extension. Simply hold down your middle mouse button and drag the mouse in the direction you wish to scroll, fu...WatchersNET CKEditor™ Provider for DotNetNuke: CKEditor Provider 1.10.03: !!Whats New Added CKEditor 3.3 Revision 5542 changes Options: Default Toolbar Set to Full for Administrators Browser Window: Increased Size of ...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelASP.NETMost Active ProjectsAStar.netpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryBlogEngine.NETGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeRawrSqlServerExtensionsCustomer Portal Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRMPAPpatterns & practices: Windows Azure Security Guidance

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, April 06, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, April 06, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET MVC | SCAFFOLD: Add-in para Visual Studio 2008 que adiciona um poderoso scaffold para o ASP.NET MVC, com suporte ao Entity Framework.ASP.Net Permission Manager: This is an extension of ASP.Net Permission Manager that permission to roles.Babelfish.NET: Babelfish was created as a common framework for navigating several different node-to-node structured data sources, such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, X...CollaSuite: Collaboration Suite, Chat Client ServerdnyFramework: Denny FrameWorkDocxToHtml: DocxToHtmlDomain Driven Design and ASP.NET MVC 2 sample: It's a simple application ASP.NET MVC 2 with DDD modeling approach. It's about how to build maintainable applications applying DDD, IoC and infrast...DRP Address Book: A web based address book implementation using SQL Server 2008, ASP.NET, C#, and CSLA.NETFileSystemHelper SQL Server CLR: FileSystemHelper SQL Server CLR provides a collection of CLR stored procedures and functions for interacting with the file system. Using these sto...Foothill: This is an asp.net Web AppHouseFly controls: Controls for my upcomming app: HouseFlyiTunes Artwork App: This project is related to my iTunes Artwork App blog series. The application will automate the process of collecting album art for music tracks i...Logwiz - Automate the collection of Performance monitor logs using logman.exe: This tool is used to automate the process of collecting Performance monitoring data using the logman.exe on Windows Vista/Windows 7/Windows 2008 an...MailSharp - Beyond MailMessage: An easy-to-use library for .NET developers to send HTML formatted emails using templates with merge tags and embedded images instead of pointing at...MSTests.Fluently: MSTests.Fluently makes it easier for developers and testers to read and write tests with the Visual Studio Unit-Testing Framework. The Sentence-lik...openSIS dot net - Open Source SIS written in C#, built on dotnet 3.5 framework: openSIS dotnet is the dot net version of the popular openSIS Student Information System from OS4ED. This openSIS version is written in C# and is ba...PHP.net: PHP.net is a PHP IDE written in C# for Windows. The IDE will eventually be a complete standalone PHP development enviroment, including a developmen...Recommender System for Optus Website: <Recommender System for Optus Website>This project is trying to apply some recommeder system techniques to telecom company websites. This project ...Sendkeys: This is a tool for remote controlling any Windows Application.Shamil: Shamil WorkSite Directory for SharePoint 2010 (from Microsoft Consulting Services, UK): A solution which provides 'site directory' functionality for SharePoint 2010. Refer to [file:Solution Description|Microsoft.MCSUK.SPSiteDirectory...SPD Workflow action to add user to a security group: This is a custom SPD workflow step developed to facilitate the process of adding users from a list to the security group. Keep in mind this is run...Star Trooper for XNA 2D Tutorial: Source for the Star Trooper XNA 2d Tutorial on XNA-UK (www.XNA-UK.co.uk), including the full set of code and each phase of the tutorial. Additio...TFS WitAdminUI: Team Foundation Server 2010 RC WitAdmin simple application with UIWindows Phone 7 Panorama control: The Windows Phone 7 Panorama control is a sample implementation of a Silverlight control that allows to create "Hub" applications on Windows Phone ...Yulu: Yulu helps you maintain short quotations or your thoughts with your Windows Mobile phones.New ReleasesASP .NET MVC CMS (Content Management System): Atomic CMS 2.0: Atomic CMS 2.0 was released. Please visit http://atomiccms.com/ for download documentation, last release and get more information about Atomic CMS ...ASP.Net Permission Manager: Mal.Web.Security.dll v1.0.2.0: Mal.Web.Security.dll Relealse v1.0.2.0CycleMania Starter Kit EAP - ASP.NET 4 Problem - Design - Solution: Cyclemania 0.08.48: The application now uses Windows Communication Foundation services. See Source Code tab for other recent changes.dotNetInstaller: setup bootstrapper for Windows: 1.10 (Development): Build 1.10.6588.0. Features - Added support for .exe setup components with an optional response file. - Added has_value_disabled option to user-de...Examine: RC 1: This is Examine RC1 release. It includes: Examine UmbracoExamine Lucene.Net 2.9.2Extend SmallBasic: Teaching Extensions v.010: Improved the pentagone crazy quizFileSystemHelper SQL Server CLR: FileSystemHelper CLR Project: Source code for FileSystemHelper CLR assembly.GameStore League Manager: League Manager 1.0.5-Logging: Added Logging functionality to track down bugs.iSun Shut - PC Auto Shutdown: iSun Shut 2.5: Relase Notes: -To properly view the source code please install DotNetBar 8.3 (http://www.devcomponents.com) -The Shutdown after firefox download f...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.10: New items added since v1.1 include: Support for OAuth (via DotNetOpenAuth), secure communication via https, VB language support, serialization of ...MIC Pattern: !MIC Pattern DAL: Data Access Layer Este arquivo contem a DLL que faz acesso a dados e simplifica as operações de INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE e SELECT em bases de dados ...MVC Foolproof Validation: Alpha 0.1: Server side validation is stable. Client side validation is fairly stable aside from some border cases I hope to address soon. I’m actually using t...OpenGL ES 2.0 Compact Framework Wrapper: First binary release: CAB-installer for installing the sample application provided with the solution. Demonstrates a simple quad with rotation animation. Changes from l...patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance: SPG2010 Drop8: SharePoint Guidance Drop Notes Microsoft patterns and practices ****************************************** ***************************************...PROGRAMMABLE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT: PROGRAMMABLE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT - V3: The Beta Version 3 of the Programmable Software Development Environment features the random generator, longitudinal and cryptographic commands whi...RoTwee: RoTwee (9.0.0.0): New feature in this version : 17102 Tweet rotated count.SharePhone: SharePhone v.1.0.3: Added search functionality. Use clientContext.SearchProvider.Search(..) or clientContext.SearchProvider.KeywordSearch(..) A few examples here: ht...SharePoint Outlook Connector: Version 1.2.4.3: UI has been improved. Some bugs have been resolved.SPD Workflow action to add user to a security group: Version 1 custom workflow action: A custom SPD workflow step that automatically adds user to the correct security group, the user name can be driven from a list item or document li...SQL Server Metadata Toolkit 2008: SQL Server Metadata Toolkit Alpha 5: This release addresses the Issue 10567, which was a recursive view recursing more than 100 times. This was caused by the addition of SQL Parsing in...TFS WitAdminUI: WitAdminUI ver1.0: Download zip file and unzip to TFS2010 RC. And Excute WitAdminUI.exe. Because WitAdmin is made by .net v4.0 so I can't my application with MSI.TFTP Server: TFTP Server 1.0 Installer: Installer for the binary release of TFTP server v 1.0VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.1.0: Version 7.1.0 of VivoSocial has been released. If you experienced any issues with the previous version, please update your modules to the 7.1.0 rel...WAFFLE: Windows Authentication Functional Framework (LE): 1.3 (Development): Build 1.3.9740.0. Features Added waffle-jna-auth.jar, native Java with JNA port. Misc Project upgraded to Visual Studio 2008.Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerASP.NET Ajax LibraryImage Resizer Powertoy Clone for WindowsSkype Voice ChangerAll-In-One Code FrameworkWindows Live Calendar GadgetMDownloaderWindows 7 USB/DVD Download ToolDroid ExplorerEnhSimMost Active ProjectsGraffiti CMSnopCommerce. Open Source online shop e-commerce solution.Facebook Developer ToolkitRawrpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesShweet: SharePoint 2010 Team Messaging built with PexFarseer Physics EngineNcqrs Framework - The CQRS framework for .NETIonics Isapi Rewrite Filter

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• Software Engineering Practices &ndash; Different Projects should have different maturity levels

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve had a lot of discussions at the office lately about the drastically different sets of software engineering practices used on our various projects, if what we are doing is appropriate, and what factors should you be considering when determining what practices are most appropriate in a given context. I wanted to write up my thoughts in a little more detail on this subject, so here we go: If you compare any two software projects (specifically comparing their codebases) you’ll often see very different levels of maturity in the software engineering practices employed. By software engineering practices, I’m specifically referring to the quality of the code and the amount of technical debt present in the project. Things such as Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Behavior Driven Development, proper adherence to the SOLID principles, etc. are all practices that you would expect at the mature end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum would be the quick-and-dirty solutions that are done using something like an Access Database, Excel Spreadsheet, or maybe some quick “drag-and-drop coding”. For this blog post I’m going to refer to this as the Software Engineering Maturity Spectrum (SEMS). I believe there is a time and a place for projects at every part of that SEMS. The risks and costs associated with under-engineering solutions have been written about a million times over so I won’t bother going into them again here, but there are also (unnecessary) costs with over-engineering a solution. Sometimes putting multiple layers, and IoC containers, and abstracting out the persistence, etc is complete overkill if a one-time use Access database could solve the problem perfectly well. A lot of software developers I talk to seem to automatically jump to the very right-hand side of this SEMS in everything they do. A common rationalization I hear is that it may seem like a small trivial application today, but these things always grow and stick around for many years, then you’re stuck maintaining a big ball of mud. I think this is a cop-out. Sure you can’t always anticipate how an application will be used or grow over its lifetime (can you ever??), but that doesn’t mean you can’t manage it and evolve the underlying software architecture as necessary (even if that means having to toss the code out and re-write it at some point…maybe even multiple times). My thoughts are that we should be making a conscious decision around the start of each project approximately where on the SEMS we want the project to exist. I believe this decision should be based on 3 factors: 1. Importance - How important to the business is this application? What is the impact if the application were to suddenly stop working? 2. Complexity - How complex is the application functionality? 3. Life-Expectancy - How long is this application expected to be in use? Is this a one-time use application, does it fill a short-term need, or is it more strategic and is expected to be in-use for many years to come? Of course this isn’t an exact science. You can’t say that Project X should be at the 73% mark on the SEMS and expect that to be helpful. My point is not that you need to precisely figure out what point on the SEMS the project should be at then translate that into some prescriptive set of practices and techniques you should be using. Rather my point is that we need to be aware that there is a spectrum, and that not everything is going to be (or should be) at the edges of that spectrum, indeed a large number of projects should probably fall somewhere within the middle; and different projects should adopt a different level of software engineering practices and maturity levels based on the needs of that project. To give an example of this way of thinking from my day job: Every couple of years my company plans and hosts a large event where ~400 of our customers all fly in to one location for a multi-day event with various activities. We have some staff whose job it is to organize the logistics of this event, which includes tracking which flights everybody is booked on, arranging for transportation to/from airports, arranging for hotel rooms, name tags, etc The last time we arranged this event all these various pieces of data were tracked in separate spreadsheets and reconciliation and cross-referencing of all the data was literally done by hand using printed copies of the spreadsheets and several people sitting around a table going down each list row by row. Obviously there is some room for improvement in how we are using software to manage the event’s logistics. The next time this event occurs we plan to provide the event planning staff with a more intelligent tool (either an Excel spreadsheet or probably an Access database) that can track all the information in one location and make sure that the various pieces of data are properly linked together (so for example if a person cancels you only need to delete them from one place, and not a dozen separate lists). This solution would fall at or near the very left end of the SEMS meaning that we will just quickly create something with very little attention paid to using mature software engineering practices. If we examine this project against the 3 criteria I listed above for determining it’s place within the SEMS we can see why: Importance – If this application were to stop working the business doesn’t grind to a halt, revenue doesn’t stop, and in fact our customers wouldn’t even notice since it isn’t a customer facing application. The impact would simply be more work for our event planning staff as they revert back to the previous way of doing things (assuming we don’t have any data loss). Complexity – The use cases for this project are pretty straightforward. It simply needs to manage several lists of data, and link them together appropriately. Precisely the task that access (and/or Excel) can do with minimal custom development required. Life-Expectancy – For this specific project we’re only planning to create something to be used for the one event (we only hold these events every 2 years). If it works well this may change (see below). Let’s assume we hack something out quickly and it works great when we plan the next event. We may decide that we want to make some tweaks to the tool and adopt it for planning all future events of this nature. In that case we should examine where the current application is on the SEMS, and make a conscious decision whether something needs to be done to move it further to the right based on the new objectives and goals for this application. This may mean scrapping the access database and re-writing it as an actual web or windows application. In this case, the life-expectancy changed, but let’s assume the importance and complexity didn’t change all that much. We can still probably get away with not adopting a lot of the so-called “best practices”. For example, we can probably still use some of the RAD tooling available and might have an Autonomous View style design that connects directly to the database and binds to typed datasets (we might even choose to simply leave it as an access database and continue using it; this is a decision that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis). At Anvil Digital we have aspirations to become a primarily product-based company. So let’s say we use this tool to plan a handful of events internally, and everybody loves it. Maybe a couple years down the road we decide we want to package the tool up and sell it as a product to some of our customers. In this case the project objectives/goals change quite drastically. Now the tool becomes a source of revenue, and the impact of it suddenly stopping working is significantly less acceptable. Also as we hold focus groups, and gather feedback from customers and potential customers there’s a pretty good chance the feature-set and complexity will have to grow considerably from when we were using it only internally for planning a small handful of events for one company. In this fictional scenario I would expect the target on the SEMS to jump to the far right. Depending on how we implemented the previous release we may be able to refactor and evolve the existing codebase to introduce a more layered architecture, a robust set of automated tests, introduce a proper ORM and IoC container, etc. More likely in this example the jump along the SEMS would be so large we’d probably end up scrapping the current code and re-writing. Although, if it was a slow phased roll-out to only a handful of customers, where we collected feedback, made some tweaks, and then rolled out to a couple more customers, we may be able to slowly refactor and evolve the code over time rather than tossing it out and starting from scratch. The key point I’m trying to get across is not that you should be throwing out your code and starting from scratch all the time. But rather that you should be aware of when and how the context and objectives around a project changes and periodically re-assess where the project currently falls on the SEMS and whether that needs to be adjusted based on changing needs. Note: There is also the idea of “spectrum decay”. Since our industry is rapidly evolving, what we currently accept as mature software engineering practices (the right end of the SEMS) probably won’t be the same 3 years from now. If you have a project that you were to assess at somewhere around the 80% mark on the SEMS today, but don’t touch the code for 3 years and come back and re-assess its position, it will almost certainly have changed since the right end of the SEMS will have moved farther out (maybe the project is now only around 60% due to decay). Developer Skills Another important aspect to this whole discussion is around the skill sets of your architects and lead developers. When talking about the progression of a developers skills from junior->intermediate->senior->… they generally start by only being able to write code that belongs on the left side of the SEMS and as they gain more knowledge and skill they become capable of working at a higher and higher level along the SEMS. We all realize that the learning never stops, but eventually you’ll get to the point where you can comfortably develop at the right-end of the SEMS (the exact practices and techniques that translates to is constantly changing, but that’s not the point here). A critical skill that I’d love to see more evidence of in our industry is the most senior guys not only being able to work at the right-end of the SEMS, but more importantly be able to consciously work at any point along the SEMS as project needs dictate. An even more valuable skill would be if you could make the conscious decision to move a projects code further right on the SEMS (based on changing needs) and do so in an incremental manner without having to start from scratch. An exercise that I’m planning to go through with all of our projects here at Anvil in the near future is to map out where I believe each project currently falls within this SEMS, where I believe the project *should* be on the SEMS based on the business needs, and for those that don’t match up (i.e. most of them) come up with a plan to improve the situation.

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• Clarity is important, both in question and in answer.

  - by gerrylowry

  clarity is important ... i'm often reminded of the Clouseau movie in which Peter Sellers as Chief Inspector Clouseau asks a hotel clerk "Does your dog bite?" ... the clerk answers "no" ... after Clouseau has been bitten by the dog, he looks at the hotel clerk who says "That's not my dog".  Clarity is important, both in question and in answer. i've been a member of forums.asp.net since 2008 ... like many of my peers at forums.asp.net, i've answered my fair share of questions. FWIW, the purpose of this, my first web log post to http://weblogs.asp.net/gerrylowry is to help new members ask better questions and in turn get better answers. TIMTOWTDI  =.  there is more than one way to do it imho, the best way to ask a question in any forum, or even person to person, is to first formulate your question and then ask yourself to answer your own question. Things to consider when asking (the more complete your question, the more likely you'll get the answer you require): -- have you searched Google and/or your favourite search engine(s) before posting your question to forums.asp.net; examples: site:msdn.microsoft.com entity framework 5.0 c#http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Amsdn.microsoft.com+entity+framework+5.0+c%23 site:forums.asp.net MVC tutorial c#http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Aforums.asp.net+MVC+tutorial+c%23 -- are you asking your question in the correct forum?  look at the forums' descriptions at http://forums.asp.net/; examples: Getting Started If you have a general ASP.NET question on a topic that's not covered by one of the other more specific forums - ask it here. MVC Discussions regarding ASP.NET Model-View-Controller (MVC) C# Questions about using C# for ASP.NET development Note:  if your question pertains more to c# than to MVC, choosing the C# forum is likely to be more appropriate. -- is your post subject clear and concise, yet not too vague? compare these three subjects (all three had something to do with GridView):     (1)    please help     (2)    gridview      (3)    How to show newline in GridView  -- have you clearly explained your scenario? compare:  my leg hurts   with   when i walk too much, my right knee hurts in the knee joint  compare:  my code does not work    with    when i enter a date as 2012-11-8, i get a FormatException -- have you checked your spelling, your grammar, and your English? for better or worse, English is the language of forums.asp.net ... many of the currently 170000++ forums.asp.net are not native speakers of English; that's okay ... however, there are times when choosing the more appropriate words will likely get one a better answer; fortunately, there are web tools to help you formulate your question, for example, http://translate.google.com/.  -- have you provided relevant information about your environment? here are a few examples ... feel free to include other items to your question ... rule of thumb:  if you think a given detail is relevant, it likely is -- what technology are you using?    ASP.NET MVC 4, ASP.NET MVC 3, WebForms, ...  -- what version of Visual Studio are you using?  vs2012 (ultimate, professional, express), vs2010, vs2008 ... -- are you hosting your own website?  are you using a shared hosting service? -- are you experience difficulties in just one browser? more than one browser? -- what browser version(s) are you using?   ie8? ie9? ... -- what is your operating system?     win8, win7, vista, XP, server 2008 R2 ... -- what is your database?   SQL Server 2008 R2, ss2005, MySQL, Oracle, ... -- what is your web server?  iis 7.5, iis 6, .... -- have you provided enough information for someone to be able to answer your question? Here's an actual example from an O.P. that i hope is self-explanatory: I'm trying to make a simple calculator when i write the code in windows application it worked when i tried it in web application it doesn't work and there are no errors what should i do ??!! -- have you included unnecessary information? more than once, i've seen the O.P. (original post, original poster) include many extra lines of code that were not relevant to the actual question; the more unnecessary code that you include, the less likely your volunteer peers will be motivated to donate their time to help you. -- have you asked the question that you want answered? "Does this dog bite?" -- are your expectations reasonable? -- generally, persons who are going to answer your questions are your peers ... they are unpaid volunteers ... -- are you looking for help with your homework, work assignment, or hobby? or, are you expecting someone else to do your work for you?  -- do you expect a complete solution or are you simply looking for guidance and direction? -- you are likely to get more help by first making a reasonable effort to help yourself first Clarity is important, both in question and in answer. if you are answering someone else's question, please remember that clear answers are just as important as clear questions; would you understand your own answer? Things to consider when answering: -- have you tested your code example?  if you have, say so; if you've not tested your code example, also say so -- imho, it's okay to guess as long as you clearly state that you're guessing ... sometimes a wrong guess can still help the O.P. find her/his way to the right answer -- meanness does not contribute to being helpful; sometimes one may become frustrated with the O.P. and/or others participating in a thread, if that happens to you, be kind regardless; speaking from my own experience, at least once i've allowed myself to be frustrated into writing something inappropriate that i've regretted later ... being a meany does not feel good ... being kind and helpful feels fantastic! Tip:  before asking your question, read more than a few existing questions and answers to get a sense of how your peers ask and answer questions. Gerry P.S.:  try to avoid necroposting and piggy backing. necroposting is adding to an old post, especially one that was resolved months ago. piggy backing is adding your own question to someone else's thread.

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• Using Lightbox with _Screen

  Although, I have to admit that I discovered Bernard Bout's ideas and concepts about implementing a lightbox in Visual FoxPro quite a while ago, there was no "spare" time in active projects that allowed me to have a closer look into his solution(s). Luckily, these days I received a demand to focus a little bit more on this. This article describes the steps about how to integrate and make use of Bernard's lightbox class in combination with _Screen in Visual FoxPro. The requirement in this project was to be able to visually lock the whole application (_Screen area) and guide the user to an information that should not be ignored easily. Depending on the importance any current user activity should be interrupted and focus put onto the notification. Getting the "meat", eh, source code Please check out Bernard's blog on Foxite directly in order to get the latest and greatest version. As time of writing this article I use version 6.0 as described in this blog entry: The Fastest Lightbox Ever The Lightbox class is sub-classed from the imgCanvas class from the GdiPlusX project on VFPx and therefore you need to have the source code of GdiPlusX as well, and integrate it into your development environment. The version I use is available here: Release GDIPlusX 1.20 As soon as you open the bbGdiLightbox class the first it, VFP might ask you to update the reference to the gdiplusx.vcx. As we have the sources, no problem and you have access to Bernard's code. The class itself is pretty easy to understand, some properties that you do not need to change and three methods: Setup(), ShowLightbox() and BeforeDraw() The challenge - _Screen or not? Reading Bernard's article about the fastest lightbox ever, he states the following: "The class will only work on a form. It will not support any other containers" Really? And what about _Screen? Isn't that a form class, too? Yes, of course it is but nonetheless trying to use _Screen directly will fail. Well, let's have look at the code to see why: WITH This .Left = 0 .Top = 0 .Height = ThisForm.Height .Width = ThisForm.Width .ZOrder(0) .Visible = .F.ENDWITH During the setup of the lightbox as well as while capturing the image as replacement for your forms and controls, the object reference Thisform is used. Which is a little bit restrictive to my opinion but let's continue. The second issue lies in the method ShowLightbox() and introduced by the call of .Bitmap.FromScreen(): Lparameters tlVisiblilty* tlVisiblilty - show or hide (T/F)* grab a screen dump with controlsIF tlVisiblilty Local loCaptureBmp As xfcBitmap Local lnTitleHeight, lnLeftBorder, lnTopBorder, lcImage, loImage lnTitleHeight = IIF(ThisForm.TitleBar = 1,Sysmetric(9),0) lnLeftBorder = IIF(ThisForm.BorderStyle < 2,0,Sysmetric(3)) lnTopBorder = IIF(ThisForm.BorderStyle < 2,0,Sysmetric(4)) With _Screen.System.Drawing loCaptureBmp = .Bitmap.FromScreen(ThisForm.HWnd,; lnLeftBorder,; lnTopBorder+lnTitleHeight,; ThisForm.Width ,; ThisForm.Height) ENDWITH * save it to a property This.capturebmp = loCaptureBmp ThisForm.SetAll("Visible",.F.) This.DraW() This.Visible = .T.ELSE ThisForm.SetAll("Visible",.T.) This.Visible = .F.ENDIF My first trials in using the class ended in an exception - GdiPlusError:OutOfMemory - thrown by the Bitmap object. Frankly speaking, this happened mainly because of my lack of knowledge about GdiPlusX. After reading some documentation, especially about the FromScreen() method I experimented a little bit. Capturing the visible area of _Screen actually was not the real problem but the dimensions I specified for the bitmap. The modifications - step by step First of all, it is to get rid of restrictive object references on Thisform and to change them into either This.Parent or more generic into This.oForm (even better: This.oControl). The Lightbox.Setup() method now sets the necessary object reference like so: *====================================================================* Initial setup* Default value: This.oControl = "This.Parent"* Alternative: This.oControl = "_Screen"*====================================================================With This .oControl = Evaluate(.oControl) If Vartype(.oControl) == T_OBJECT .Anchor = 0 .Left = 0 .Top = 0 .Width = .oControl.Width .Height = .oControl.Height .Anchor = 15 .ZOrder(0) .Visible = .F. EndIfEndwith Also, based on other developers' comments in Bernard articles on his lightbox concept and evolution I found the source code to handle the differences between a form and _Screen and goes into Lightbox.ShowLightbox() like this: *====================================================================* tlVisibility - show or hide (T/F)* grab a screen dump with controls*====================================================================Lparameters tlVisibility Local loControl m.loControl = This.oControl If m.tlVisibility Local loCaptureBmp As xfcBitmap Local lnTitleHeight, lnLeftBorder, lnTopBorder, lcImage, loImage lnTitleHeight = Iif(m.loControl.TitleBar = 1,Sysmetric(9),0) lnLeftBorder = Iif(m.loControl.BorderStyle < 2,0,Sysmetric(3)) lnTopBorder = Iif(m.loControl.BorderStyle < 2,0,Sysmetric(4)) With _Screen.System.Drawing If Upper(m.loControl.Name) == Upper("Screen") loCaptureBmp = .Bitmap.FromScreen(m.loControl.HWnd) Else loCaptureBmp = .Bitmap.FromScreen(m.loControl.HWnd,; lnLeftBorder,; lnTopBorder+lnTitleHeight,; m.loControl.Width ,; m.loControl.Height) EndIf Endwith * save it to a property This.CaptureBmp = loCaptureBmp m.loControl.SetAll("Visible",.F.) This.Draw() This.Visible = .T. Else This.CaptureBmp = .Null. m.loControl.SetAll("Visible",.T.) This.Visible = .F. Endif {loadposition content_adsense} Are we done? Almost... Although, Bernard says it clearly in his article: "Just drop the class on a form and call it as shown." It did not come clear to my mind in the first place with _Screen, but, yeah, he is right. Dropping the class on a form provides a permanent link between those two classes, it creates a valid This.Parent object reference. Bearing in mind that the lightbox class can not be "dropped" on the _Screen, we have to create the same type of binding during runtime execution like so: *====================================================================* Create global lightbox component*==================================================================== Local llOk, loException As Exception m.llOk = .F. m.loException = .Null. If Not Vartype(_Screen.Lightbox) == "O" Try _Screen.AddObject("Lightbox", "bbGdiLightbox") Catch To m.loException Assert .F. Message m.loException.Message EndTry EndIf m.llOk = (Vartype(_Screen.Lightbox) == "O")Return m.llOk Through runtime instantiation we create a valid binding to This.Parent in the lightbox object and the code works as expected with _Screen. Ease your life: Use properties instead of constants Having a closer look at the BeforeDraw() method might wet your appetite to simplify the code a little bit. Looking at the sample screenshots in Bernard's article you see several forms in different colors. This got me to modify the code like so: *====================================================================* Apply the actual lightbox effect on the captured bitmap.*====================================================================If Vartype(This.CaptureBmp) == T_OBJECT Local loGfx As xfcGraphics loGfx = This.oGfx With _Screen.System.Drawing loGfx.DrawImage(This.CaptureBmp,This.Rectangle,This.Rectangle,.GraphicsUnit.Pixel) * change the colours as needed here * possible colours are (220,128,0,0),(220,0,0,128) etc. loBrush = .SolidBrush.New(.Color.FromArgb( ; This.Opacity, .Color.FromRGB(This.BorderColor))) loGfx.FillRectangle(loBrush,This.Rectangle) EndwithEndif Create an additional property Opacity to specify the grade of translucency you would like to have without the need to change the code in each instance of the class. This way you only need to change the values of Opacity and BorderColor to tweak the appearance of your lightbox. This could be quite helpful to signalize different levels of importance (ie. green, yellow, orange, red, etc...) of notifications to the users of the application. Final thoughts Using the lightbox concept in combination with _Screen instead of forms is possible. Already Jim Wiggins comments in Bernard's article to loop through the _Screen.Forms collection in order to cascade the lightbox visibility to all active forms. Good idea. But honestly, I believe that instead of looping all forms one could use _Screen.SetAll("ShowLightbox", .T./.F., "Form") with Form.ShowLightbox_Access method to gain more speed. The modifications described above might provide even more features to your applications while consuming less resources and performance. Additionally, the restrictions to capture only forms does not exist anymore. Using _Screen you are able to capture and cover anything. The captured area of _Screen does not include any toolbars, docked windows, or menus. Therefore, it is advised to take this concept on a higher level and to combine it with additional classes that handle the state of toolbars, docked windows and menus. Which I did for the customer's project.

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• Using SQL Execution Plans to discover the Swedish alphabet

  - by Rob Farley

  SQL Server is quite remarkable in a bunch of ways. In this post, I’m using the way that the Query Optimizer handles LIKE to keep it SARGable, the Execution Plans that result, Collations, and PowerShell to come up with the Swedish alphabet. SARGability is the ability to seek for items in an index according to a particular set of criteria. If you don’t have SARGability in play, you need to scan the whole index (or table if you don’t have an index). For example, I can find myself in the phonebook easily, because it’s sorted by LastName and I can find Farley in there by moving to the Fs, and so on. I can’t find everyone in my suburb easily, because the phonebook isn’t sorted that way. I can’t even find people who have six letters in their last name, because also the book is sorted by LastName, it’s not sorted by LEN(LastName). This is all stuff I’ve looked at before, including in the talk I gave at SQLBits in October 2010. If I try to find everyone who’s names start with F, I can do that using a query a bit like: SELECT LastName FROM dbo.PhoneBook WHERE LEFT(LastName,1) = 'F'; Unfortunately, the Query Optimizer doesn’t realise that all the entries that satisfy LEFT(LastName,1) = 'F' will be together, and it has to scan the whole table to find them. But if I write: SELECT LastName FROM dbo.PhoneBook WHERE LastName LIKE 'F%'; then SQL is smart enough to understand this, and performs an Index Seek instead. To see why, I look further into the plan, in particular, the properties of the Index Seek operator. The ToolTip shows me what I’m after: You’ll see that it does a Seek to find any entries that are at least F, but not yet G. There’s an extra Predicate in there (a Residual Predicate if you like), which checks that each LastName is really LIKE F% – I suppose it doesn’t consider that the Seek Predicate is quite enough – but most of the benefit is seen by its working out the Seek Predicate, filtering to just the “at least F but not yet G” section of the data. This got me curious though, particularly about where the G comes from, and whether I could leverage it to create the Swedish alphabet. I know that in the Swedish language, there are three extra letters that appear at the end of the alphabet. One of them is ä that appears in the word Västerås. It turns out that Västerås is quite hard to find in an index when you’re looking it up in a Swedish map. I talked about this briefly in my five-minute talk on Collation from SQLPASS (the one which was slightly less than serious). So by looking at the plan, I can work out what the next letter is in the alphabet of the collation used by the column. In other words, if my alphabet were Swedish, I’d be able to tell what the next letter after F is – just in case it’s not G. It turns out it is… Yes, the Swedish letter after F is G. But I worked this out by using a copy of my PhoneBook table that used the Finnish_Swedish_CI_AI collation. I couldn’t find how the Query Optimizer calculates the G, and my friend Paul White (@SQL_Kiwi) tells me that it’s frustratingly internal to the QO. He’s particularly smart, even if he is from New Zealand. To investigate further, I decided to do some PowerShell, leveraging the Get-SqlPlan function that I blogged about recently (make sure you also have the SqlServerCmdletSnapin100 snap-in added). I started by indicating that I was going to use Finnish_Swedish_CI_AI as my collation of choice, and that I’d start whichever letter cam straight after the number 9. I figure that this is a cheat’s way of guessing the first letter of the alphabet (but it doesn’t actually work in Unicode – luckily I’m using varchar not nvarchar. Actually, there are a few aspects of this code that only work using ASCII, so apologies if you were wanting to apply it to Greek, Japanese, etc). I also initialised my $alphabet variable. $collation = 'Finnish_Swedish_CI_AI'; $firstletter = '9'; $alphabet = ''; Now I created the table for my test. A single field would do, and putting a Clustered Index on it would suffice for the Seeks. Invoke-Sqlcmd -server . -data tempdb -query "create table dbo.collation_test (col varchar(10) collate $collation primary key);" Now I get into the looping. $c = $firstletter; $stillgoing = $true; while ($stillgoing) { I construct the query I want, seeking for entries which start with whatever $c has reached, and get the plan for it: $query = "select col from dbo.collation_test where col like '$($c)%';"; [xml] $pl = get-sqlplan $query "." "tempdb"; At this point, my $pl variable is a scary piece of XML, representing the execution plan. A bit of hunting through it showed me that the EndRange element contained what I was after, and that if it contained NULL, then I was done. $stillgoing = ($pl.ShowPlanXML.BatchSequence.Batch.Statements.StmtSimple.QueryPlan.RelOp.IndexScan.SeekPredicates.SeekPredicateNew.SeekKeys.EndRange -ne $null); Now I could grab the value out of it (which came with apostrophes that needed stripping), and append that to my $alphabet variable.   if ($stillgoing)   {  $c=$pl.ShowPlanXML.BatchSequence.Batch.Statements.StmtSimple.QueryPlan.RelOp.IndexScan.SeekPredicates.SeekPredicateNew.SeekKeys.EndRange.RangeExpressions.ScalarOperator.ScalarString.Replace("'","");     $alphabet += $c;   } Finally, finishing the loop, dropping the table, and showing my alphabet! } Invoke-Sqlcmd -server . -data tempdb -query "drop table dbo.collation_test;"; $alphabet; When I run all this, I see that the Swedish alphabet is ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVXYZÅÄÖ, which matches what I see at Wikipedia. Interesting to see that the letters on the end are still there, even with Case Insensitivity. Turns out they’re not just “letters with accents”, they’re letters in their own right. I’m sure you gave up reading long ago, and really aren’t that fazed about the idea of doing this using PowerShell. I chose PowerShell because I’d already come up with an easy way of grabbing the estimated plan for a query, and PowerShell does allow for easy navigation of XML. I find the most interesting aspect of this as the fact that the Query Optimizer uses the next letter of the alphabet to maintain the SARGability of LIKE. I’m hoping they do something similar for a whole bunch of operations. Oh, and the fact that you know how to find stuff in the IKEA catalogue. Footnote: If you are interested in whether this works in other languages, you might want to consider the following screenshot, which shows that in principle, it should work with Japanese. It might be a bit harder to run this in PowerShell though, as I’m not sure how it translates. In Hiragana, the Japanese alphabet starts ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ...

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, September 18, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, September 18, 2012Popular ReleasesfastJSON: v2.0.5: 2.0.5 - fixed number parsing for invariant format - added a test for German locale number testing (,. problems)????????API for .Net SDK: SDK for .Net ??? Release 4: 2012?9?17??? ?????，???????????????。 ?????Release 3??????，???????，???，??? ??????????????????SDK，????????。 ??，??????? That's all.VidCoder: 1.4.0 Beta: First Beta release! Catches up to HandBrake nightlies with SVN 4937. Added PGS (Blu-ray) subtitle support. Additional framerates available: 30, 50, 59.94, 60 Additional sample rates available: 8, 11.025, 12 and 16 kHz Additional higher bitrates available for audio. Same as Source Constant Framerate available. Added Apple TV 3 preset. Added new Bob deinterlacing option. Introduced process isolation for encodes. Now if HandBrake crashes, VidCoder will keep running and continue pro...DNN Metro7 style Skin package: Metro7 style Skin for DotNetNuke 06.02.01: Stabilization release fixed this issues: Links not worked on FF, Chrome and Safari Modified packaging with own manifest file for install and source package. Moved the user Image on the Login to the left side. Moved h2 font-size to 24px. Note : This release Comes w/o source package about we still work an a solution. Who Needs the Visual Studio source files please go to source and download it from there. Known 16 CSS issues that related to the skin.css. All others are DNN default o...Visual Studio Icon Patcher: Version 1.5.1: This fixes a bug in the 1.5 release where it would crash when no language packs were installed for VS2010.sheetengine - Isometric HTML5 JavaScript Display Engine: sheetengine v1.1.0: This release of sheetengine introduces major drawing optimizations. A background canvas is created with the full drawn scenery onto which only the changed parts are redrawn. For example a moving object will cause only its bounding box to be redrawn instead of the full scene. This background canvas is copied to the main canvas in each iteration. For this reason the size of the bounding box of every object needs to be defined and also the width and height of the background canvas. The example...VFPX: Desktop Alerts 1.0.2: This update for the Desktop Alerts contains changes to behavior for setting custom sounds for alerts. I have removed ALERTWAV.TXT from the project, and also removed DA_DEFAULTSOUND from the VFPALERT.H file. The AlertManager class and Alert class both have a "default" cSound of ADDBS(JUSTPATH(_VFP.ServerName))+"alert.wav" --- so, as long as you distribute a sound file with the file name "alert.wav" along with the EXE, that file will be used. You can set your own sound file globally by setti...MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.2.15: Changelog for 2.2.15 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Added support for %originalfilepath% to get the source file full path. Used for custom commands only. 2. Added support for better parsing of Media Portal XML files to extract ShowName and Episode Name and download additional details from TVDB (like Season No, Episode No etc). 3. Added support for TVDB seriesID in metadata 4. Added support for eMail non blocking UI testCrashReporter.NET : Exception reporting library for C# and VB.NET: CrashReporter.NET 1.2: *Added html mail format which shows hierarchical exception report for better understanding.PDF Viewer Web part: PDF Viewer Web Part: PDF Viewer Web PartMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.67: Fix issue #18629 - incorrectly handling null characters in string literals and not throwing an error when outside string literals. update for Issue #18600 - forgot to make the ///#DEBUG= directive also set a known-global for the given debug namespace. removed the kill-switch for disregarding preprocessor define-comments (///#IF and the like) and created a separate CodeSettings.IgnorePreprocessorDefines property for those who really need to turn that off. Some people had been setting -kil...MPC-BE: Media Player Classic BE 1.0.1.0 build 1122: MPC-BE is a free and open source audio and video player for Windows. MPC-BE is based on the original "Media Player Classic" project (Gabest) and "Media Player Classic Home Cinema" project (Casimir666), contains additional features and bug fixes. Supported Operating Systems: Windows XP SP2, Vista, 7 32bit/64bit System Requirements: An SSE capable CPU The latest DirectX 9.0c runtime (June 2010). Install it regardless of the operating system, they all need it. Web installer: http://www.micro...Preactor Object Model: Visual Studio Template .NET 3.5: Visual Studio Template with all the necessary files to get started with POM. You will still need to Get the Preactor.ObjectModel and Preactor.ObjectModleExtensions libraries from Nuget though. You will also need to sign with assembly with a strong name key.Lakana - WPF Framework: Lakana V2: Lakana V2 contains : - Lakana WPF Forms (with sample project) - Lakana WPF Navigation (with sample project)myCollections: Version 2.3.0.0: New in this version : Added TheGamesDB.net API for games and nds Added Fast search options Added order by Artist/Album for music Fixed several provider Performance improvement New Splash Screen BugFixingMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: OData QueryFeed workflow activity: The OData QueryFeed sample activity shows how to create a workflow activity that consumes an OData resource, and renders entity properties in a Microsoft Excel 2010 worksheet or Microsoft Word 2010 document. Using the sample QueryFeed activity, you can consume any OData resource. The sample activity uses LINQ to project OData metadata into activity designer expression items. By setting activity expressions, a fully qualified OData query string is constructed consisting of Resource, Filter, Or...F# 3.0 Sample Pack: FSharp 3.0 Sample Pack for Visual Studio 2012 RTM: F# 3.0 Sample Pack for Visual Studio 2012 RTMANPR MX: ANPR_MX Release 1: ANPR MX Release 1 Features: Correctly detects plate area for the average North American plate. (It won't work for the "European" plate size.) Provides potential values for the recognized plate. Allows images 800x600 and below (.jpg / .png). The example requires the VC 10 runtime & .NET 4 Framework to be already installed. The Source code project was made on Visual Studio 2010.Cocktail: Cocktail v1.0.1: PrerequisitesVisual Studio 2010 with SP1 (any edition but Express) Optional: Silverlight 4 or 5 Note: Install Silverlight 4 Tools and then the Silverlight 4 Toolkit. Likewise for Silverlight 5 Tools and the Silverlight 5 Toolkit DevForce Express 6.1.8.1 Included in the Cocktail download, DevForce Express requires registration) Important: Install DevForce after all other components. Download contentsDebug and release assemblies API documentation Source code License.txt Re...weber: weber v0.1: first release, creates a basic browser shell and allows user to navigate to web sites.New Projects.NET Code Editor & Compiler Component: .Net compiler component with integrated advanced text box, VisualStudio like highlightning, ability to intercept and show StandardOutput strings.NET Plugin Manager: Provides agnostic functionality for tiered plugin loading, unloading, and plugin collection management.Amazon Control Panel v2: Amazon Control Panel is a application that lets you control you Amazon Seller Central account using the Amazon MWS (Merchant Web Service) API.AutoSPSourceBuilder: AutoSPSourceBuilder: a utility for automatically building a SharePoint 2010 or 2013 install source including service packs, language packs & cumulative updates.CAOS: RBAC acess controllChat Forum: An Internet  forum,  or message  board,  is  an online discussion  site conversations  in  the  form  of  posted  messages.CRM 2011 - Many-To-Many Relationship Entity View: This Silverlight Web Resource for CRM 2011 will allow user to see N:N relationship entity data from single place.dardasim: dardasim gil and lior Tel Cabir DolphinsDBAManage: ???????ERP??，????！DimDate Generator: A SSIS project for generation a data dimansion table and data.DNL: eine grße .net bibliothek für entwicklerDouban FM for Metro: A music radio client for http://douban.fm running on Windows 8 / WinRTExtended WPF Control: Extended WPF Control for research and learning.FizzBuzzDaveC: Implements the classic FizzBuzz programmine exercise.HamStart: Nothing for now...Infopath XSN Modifier: A tool for editing the dataconnections of Infopath.KH Picture Resizer: Picture Resizer ermöglicht es Bilder per Drag and Dop zu verkleinern. Das Program wurde in C# geschrieben und nutzt Windows Forms.Korean String Extension for .NET: ?? ??? ??? ????? ???? string??? ??? ????? Extension library for "string" class that enhances "Hangul Jamo system" features Lucky Loot - Tattoo Shop Management Application: Lucky Loot - Tattoo Shop Management Application Por: Eric Gabriel Rodrigues Castoldi Objetivo: Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso de Sistemas de InformaçãoMagnOS - C# Cosmos Operating System: MagnOS is an Open Source operating system, made to learn how to make operating systems with Cosmos.Móa mày: Project m?iOData Samples: A collection of samples demonstrating solutions and functionality in WCF Data Services, ODataLib and EdmLib.Online Image Editor: Online Photo CanvasOptimuss Administración: La mejor aplicación de Gestión y Control EscolarOptimuss Obelix: La mejor aplicación de Gestión y Control EscolarPersonal Website: My personal websitePlanisoft: Proyecto de Planilla para clinica los fresnosPROYECTODT: ..................................................................................................................PtLibrary: PtLibrary stands for Peter Thönell's Delphi library. PtSettings and PtSettingsGUI make the management and use of settings extremely easy and powerful.RTS WebServer: A small lightweight, modern and fast webserver (template). with in the feature the newest technologies like SPDY and websocketsStandards: Standards is an Intranet application (using Windows authentication) designed to document and manage company standards. It is written in C#/MVC 4.Truttle OS: This is an OS I made with CosmosWfp System: zdgdsfgdsfgzpo: projekt na zaliczenie zpo???: ???

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 10, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 10, 2010New ProjectsAzure Publish-Subscribe: Infrastructure implementing the publish-subscribe pattern in a Windows Azure context. The unit of publishing is an XML document with an optional l...Bakalarska prace SCSF: This work dealing with the technology of Microsoft Software Factories which makes possible an efficient development of applications under MS Windows.Begtostudy-Test: NoteExpress User Tool (NEUT) is a opensource project for NoteExpress user developpers to share their tools and ideas using secondary development. N...CodeReview: Code Review is an open source development tool based on the same approach than FxCop - check the compiled assemblies to enforce good practices rule...CommonFilter: CommonFilter is a subset of the CommonData project, containing just the functions and unit tests for filtering user input.Custom SharepointDesigner Actions: These are a couple of custom actions that i use in sharepoint designer to ease workflow creation.Customer Portal Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM: The Customer Portal accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides businesses the ability to deliver portal capabilities to their customers while ...Danzica Asset Management System: Danzica is an asset management system written in C# that can ingest all of your hardware management systems into a single cohesive portal, giving y...Dot2Silverlight: Dot2Silverlight is a project thats enables to render graphs (written in Dot format) in Silverlight. dot2silverlight, dot, silverlight, C#, graphviz...eGrid_Windows7: This project will include a new platform independent version of the eGrid project. The new version will run on windows 7, using WPF 4 and the Surfa...Game project JAMK: game project on jamkHamcast for multi station coordination: Amateur Radio multiple station operation tends to have loggers and operators striving to get particular information from each other, like what IP a...Headspring Labs: Headspring Labs showcases presentations, samples, and starter kits developed by Headspring.Hongrui Software Development Management Platform: Hongrui Software Development Management Platform 鸿瑞软件开发管理平台(HrSDMP) LinkField: 带有链接的多列 Field migre.me plugin for Seesmic Desktop Platform: migre.me is a brazilian service created to reduces the size of URLs and provides tracking data for shortened links. migre.me plugin for Seesmic ...MISAO: MISAO is a presentation tool.Mongodb Management Studio: Mongodb Management Studio makes it easier for mongodb users (including DBA/Developers/Administrators) to use mongodb. It's developed in ASP.NET 4.0...MS Build for DotNetNuke module development: Automate the task of creating DotNetNuke module PA packs easily using MS Build. Create manifest files, include version #'s automatically and more.Rubyish: C# extensions providing a rubyish syntax to C#SharePoint 2007 Web Parts: The goal of this project is to develop a set of web parts for SharePoint 2007.SharePoint 2010 Web Parts: The goal of this project is to develop a set of web parts for SharePoint 2010.Taxomatic: Taxomatic adds the ability to bulk create Content Types and Columns to a SharePoint site collection. It also caters for the export of the Content T...trackuda: trackuda - track the motion!Web Camera Shooter: Small tool for taking screenshots from web camera and saving them to disk with few image filters as options.Windows API Code Pack Contrib: Extensions to Windows API Code PackNew ReleasesAlan Platform: Technical Preview 1: В центре данного релиза интерфейс, точнее не сам интерфейс, а принцип, по которому он построен. Используя парочку предоставленных свойств, можно со...Begtostudy-Test: Test: Don't Download.BFBC2 PRoCon: PRoCon 0.3.5.1: Release Notes ComingCBM-Command: 2010-05-09: Release Notes - 2010-05-09New Features FILE COPYING Changes Removed the Swap Panels functionality to make room for file copying. It's still in th...CBM-Command: 2010-05-10: Release Notes - 2010-05-10New Features Launching PRG Files New color schemes to better match the C128 and C64 platforms Function Keys Changes ...CommonFilter: CommonFilter0.3D: This initial release of CommonFilter 0.3D is a subset of the CommonData solution that contains just the filter functions.Custom SharepointDesigner Actions: Custom SPD Actions v1.0: This is the first version of the actions library, it includes: Calling a Webservice. Convert a string to a double. Convert a string to an integ...Customer Portal Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Customer Portal Accelerator for Dynamics CRM: The Customer Portal accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides businesses the ability to deliver portal capabilities to their customers while ...EPiMVC - EPiServer CMS with ASP.NET MVC: EPiMVC CTP1: First release that mainly addresses routing. The release is described in greater detail here.Helium Frog Animator: Helium Frog 2_06SW3: This is a first release (not for end users as it is not packaged) of mods intended to make the program run easier on netbooks and customised for us...HouseFly controls: HouseFly controls alpha 0.9.8.0: HouseFly controls release 0.9.8.0 alphaID3Tag.Net: ID3TagLib.Net 1.1: The ID3Tag team is proud to release a new version of the ID3tag lib! New features: Removing of ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags Logging operations ( if enab...IT Tycoon: IT Tycoon 0.2.1: Switched to .NET Framework 4 and implemented some Parallel.ForEach calls.MeaMod Playme: MeaMod Playme 0.9.6.5 Bucking Bunny: MeaMod Playme 0.9.6.5 Bucking Bunny Version 0.9.6.5 | Change Set: 48050 -- Added Playme Store -- Added Buy Album -- Added OCDS/Core system -- Adde...migre.me plugin for Seesmic Desktop Platform: migre.me plugin 0.7.0.1: Initial release. Compatible with Seesmic Desktop Platform 0.7.0.772.MISAO: Ver. 5 Alpha(2010-05-10): Alpha versionMultiwfn: multiwfn1.3.2_source: multiwfn1.3.2_sourcePocket Wiki: Desktop Wiki (in dev): Full screen wiki for the PC - supports the same parsers that Pocket Wiki does. Currently in development but usable. Left side shows listbox of all ...Rubyish: alpha: intial buildSevenZipLib Library: v9.13 beta: New release to match 7-zip 9.13 betaShake - C# Make: Shake v0.1.11: Initial version of Shake's services (API), command line parameters (dynamic) now available via ShakeServices class. Introducing interfaces and bas...SharpNotes: SharpNotes (New): This is the release of SharpNotes.SharpNotes: SharpNotes Source (New): This is the source release of SharpNotes.StackOverflow Desktop Client in C# and WPF: StackOverflow Client 1.0: Improved UI Showing votes/answers/views on popups. Bug fixesTaxomatic: Design_0: Design documentThe Movie DB API: TMDB API v1.2: Updated to reflect changes in The Movie DB API.Web Camera Shooter: 1.0.0.0: Initial release. Unstable. Often exception AccessViolation from Touchless SDK.WF Personalplaner: Personalplaner v1.7.29.10127: - Drag und Drop wurde beim Plan und in der Maske unter Plan\Plan-Layout anpassen in die Grids eingefügt - Weitere kleine bugfixesWindows Phone 7 Panorama & Pivot controls: panorama + pivot controls v0.7 (samples included): Panorama and Pivot Controls source code + sample projects. - Phone.Controls.Samples : source code for the PanoramaControl and PivotControl. - Pic...XmlCodeEditor: Release 0.9 Alpha: Release 0.9 AlphaMost Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NETPHPExcelMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrThe Information Literacy Education Learning Environment (ILE)Mirror Testing SystemCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightjQuery Library for SharePoint Web Serviceswhitepatterns & practices - UnityTweetSharpBlogEngine.NET

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• Microsoft Channel 9 Interviews Mei Liang to Introduce Sample Browser Extension for Visual Studio 2012 and 2010

  - by Jialiang

  This morning, Microsoft Channel 9 interviewed Mei Liang - Group Manager of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - to introduce the newest Sample Browser extension for Visual Studio 2012 &2010.   This extension provides a way for developers to search and download more than 4500 code samples from within Visual Studio, including over 700 Windows 8 samples and more than 1000 All-In-One Code Framework customer-driven code samples. Mei shows us not only the extension, but also the standalone version of the Sample Browser.   http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Visual-Studio-Toolbox/Sample-Browser-Visual-Studio-Extension   Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, working in close partnership with the Visual Studio product team and MSDN Samples Gallery, developed the Sample Browser extension for both Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2010.  As an effort to evolve the code sample use experience and improve developers' productivity, the Sample Browser allows programmers to search, download and open over 4500 code samples from within Visual Studio with just a few simple clicks.  If no existing code sample can meet the needs, developers can even request a code sample easily from Microsoft thanks to the free “Sample Request Service” offered by Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework.  Through innovations, the teams hope to put the power of tens of thousands of code samples at developers’ fingertips. In short 3 months, the Sample Browser Visual Studio Extension has been installed by 100K global users.  It is also selected as one of the six most highly regarded and commonly used tools for Visual Studio that will make your programming experience feel like never before.   Got to love the All-In-One Code Framework team! You guys know this is THE go to source for code samples. Get this extension and you'll never need to leave VS2012 (well except for bathroom trips, but that's TMI anyway... ;) Read More... From: Greg Duncan (Author of CoolThingOfTheDay) 9/6/2011 12:00 AM The one software design pattern that I have used in just about every application I’ve written is “cut-and-paste,” so the new “Sample Browser” – read sample as a noun not an adjective – is a great boon to my productivity. Read More... From: Jim O'Neil (Microsoft Developer Evangelist) 9/28/2011 12:00 AM Install: http://aka.ms/samplebrowservsx Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework also offers the standalone version of Sample Browser.   The standalone version is particularly useful to Visual Studio Express edition or Visual Studio 2008 users, who cannot install the Sample Browser Visual Studio extension.   From Grassroots’ Passion for Developers to the Innovation of Sample Browser This Sample Browser has come a very long way improving the code sample use experience.  The history can be traced back to a grass-root innovation three years ago.   In early 2009, a few MSDN forum support engineers observed that lots of developers were struggling to work in Visual Studio without adequate code samples. Programming tasks seem harder than they should be when you only read through the documentation.  Just a couple of lines of sample code could answer a lot of questions.   They had a brilliant idea: What if we produce code samples based on developers’ frequently asked programming tasks in forums, social networks and support incidents, and then aggregate all our sample code in a one-stop library to benefit developers?  And what if developers can request code samples directly from Microsoft, free of charge?  This small group of grassroots at Microsoft devoted their nights and weekends to prototyping such a customer-driven code sample library.  This simple idea eventually turned into “Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework”, aka. OneCode.  With the support from more and more passionate developers at Microsoft and the leaders in the Community and Online Support team and Microsoft Commercial Technical Services (CTS), the idea has become a continually growing library with over 1000 customer-driven code samples covering almost all Microsoft development technologies.  These code samples originated from developers’ common pains and needs should be able to help many developers.  However, if developers cannot easily discover the code samples, the effort would still be in vain.  So in early 2010, the team started the idea of Sample Browser to ease the discovery and access of these samples.  In just two months, the first version of Sample Browser was finished and released by a passionate developer.  It was a very simple application, only supporting the basic sample offline search.  Users had to download the whole 100MB sample package containing all samples first, and run the Sample Browser to search locally.   Though developers could not search and download samples on-demand, this simple application laid a solid foundation for the team’s continuous innovations of Sample Browsing experience. In 2011, MSDN Samples Gallery had a big refresh.  The online sample experience was brought to a new level thanks to its PM Steven Wilssens and the gallery team’s effort.  Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework Team saw the opportunity to realize the “on-demand” sample search and download feature with the new gallery.  The two teams formed a strong partnership to upload all the customer-driven code samples to MSDN Samples Gallery, and released the new version of Sample Browser to support “on-demand” sample downloading in April, 2011.  Mei Liang, the Group Manager of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, was interviewed by Channel 9 to demo the Sample Browser.  Customers love the effort and the innovation!!  This can be clearly seen from the user comments in the publishing page.   It was very encouraging to the team of All-In-One Code Framework. The team continues innovating and evolving the Sample Browser.  They found the Visual Studio product team this time, and integrated the Sample Browsing experience into the latest Visual Studio 2012.  The newly released Sample Browser Visual Studio extension makes good use of Visual Studio 2012 IDE such as the new Quick Launch bar, the code editor, the toolbar and menus to offer easy access to thousands of code samples from within the development environment.   The Visual Studio Senior Program Manager Lead - Anthony Cangialosi, the Program Manager - Murali Krishna Hosabettu Kamalesha, the MSDN Samples Gallery PM – Steven Wilssens, and the Visual Studio Senior Escalation Engineer - Ed Dore shared lots of insightful suggestions with the team.  Thanks to the brilliant cross-group collaboration inside Microsoft, tens of new features including “Local Language Support” and “Favorite Samples”, as well as a face-lifted user interface, were added to further enhance the user experience. Since the new Sample Browser Visual Studio extension was released, it has received over 100 thousand downloads and five-star ratings.  A customer told the team that he officially falls in LOVE with Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework.   The Sample Browser Innovation for Developers Never Stops! The teams would never stop improving the Sample Browser for developers’ easier lives.   The Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, Visual Studio and MSDN Samples Gallery teams are working closely to develop the next version of Sample Browser.  Here are the key functions in development or in discussion.  We hope to learn your feedback of the effort.  You can submit your suggestions to the official Visual Studio UserVoice site.  We look forward to hearing from you! 1) Offline Sample Search This is one of the top feature requests that we have received for Sample Browser.   The Sample Browser will support the offline search mode so that developers can search downloaded code samples when they do not have internet access.  This is particularly useful to developers in Enterprises with strict proxy settings. 2) Code Snippet Support and Visual Studio Editor Integration Today, the Sample Browser supports downloading and opening sample project.   However, when developers are searching for code samples, a better user experience would be to see the code snippets in the search result first.  Developers can quickly decide if the code snippet is relevant.   They can also drag and drop the code snippet into the Visual Studio Editor to solve some simple programming tasks.  If developers want to learn more about the sample, they can then choose to download the sample project and open it in Visual Studio. 3) Enterprise Sample Sharing and Searching Large enterprises have many code samples for their own internal tools and APIs that are not appropriate to be shared publicly in MSDN Samples Gallery.   In that case, today’s Sample Browser and MSDN Samples Gallery cannot help these Enterprise developers.  The idea is to create a Code Sample Repository in TFS, and provide an additional Visual Studio extension for Enterprise developers to quickly share code samples to TFS.  The Sample Browser can be configured to connect to the TFS Code Sample Repository to search for and download code samples.  This would potentially enable the Enterprise developers to be more productive. 4) Windows Store Sample Browser With the upcoming release of Windows RT and Microsoft Surface, developers are facing a completely new world of application platform.   Not like laptop, people would often use Microsoft Surface in commute and in travel.  Internet may not be available.  Today’s Visual Studio cannot be installed and run on Windows RT, however, our enthusiastic developers would hope to spend every minute on code.  They love code!   The idea is to create a Windows Store version of Sample Browser. Search and download samples from the online Samples Gallery when the user has internet access. Browse the sample code files and learn the sample documentation of downloaded samples with or without internet access.   In addition to the "browse” function, the Sample Browser could further support “bookmark”, “learning notes”, “code review”, and “quick social sharing". Make full use of the new touch and Windows Store App UI to give developers a new “relaxing” code browsing and learning experience, anytime, anywhere. With Windows Store Sample Browser, developers can enjoy A new relaxing and enjoyable experience for developers to learn code samples You do not have to sit in front of desk and formally open Visual Studio to read code samples.  Many developers get sub-health due to staying in front of desk for a very long time.  With Windows RT, Microsoft Surface and this Windows Store Sample Browser combining with the online MSDN Samples Gallery, developers can sit in a sofa, relaxingly hold the tablet and enjoy to learn their beloved sample code with detailed documentation. Anytime, anywhere Whether you have internet access or not, whether you are at home, in office, or in commute/airplane, developers can always easily access and browse the sample code. Lightweight and fast Particularly for learning a small sample project, the Windows Store Sample Browser would be more lightweight and faster to open and browse the sample code. Please submit your feedback and suggestion to Visual Studio UserVoice.  We look forward to hearing from you and deliver a better and better sample use experience.  Happy Coding!   Special Thanks to People working behind the latest release of Sample Browser Visual Studio Extension and the great partnerships!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 16, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 16, 2010New Projects3D Calculator: 3D Calc is a simple calculator application for Windows Phone 7, the purpose of this project is to demo the 3D animations capabilities of WP7 and sh...azaleas: AzaleasBlueset Studio Opensource Projects: Only for Opensource projects form Blueset Studio.Breck: A Phoenix and Jumper Moneky Production: Breck is a first person non-violent shooter developed in C++ and Dark GDK. After the main game is developed we are looking into making a sequel or...Discuz! Forum SDK: This project is use to login in and post or reply topic on discuz forum.Dominion.NET: Evolving Dominion source code originally written in VB6 and posted by "jatill" on Collectible Card Game Headquarters. Migration of the design and s...EkspSys2010-ITR: A mini project for the course Experimental System devolopment in spring 2010Facebook Graph Toolkit: This project is a .Net implementation of the Facebook Graph API. The aim of this project is to be a replacement to the existing Facebook Toolkit (h...iFree: This is a solution for Vietnamese network socialInfoPath Editor for Developer: InfoPath Editor for developer allows user to modify the html text directly inside InfoPath designer or filler and push the change back to InfoPath ...iZeit: Run your own online calendar, with blog integration, recurrence, todo list and categories.machgos dotNet Tests: Just some little test-projects for learningmim: TBAMinePost: MinePost is a game made for the first 48 hour Reddit Game Jam.Mockina: Mockina is a mock framework. Expression tree syntax is used to specify which members to mock, both public and non-public. The code is easy to under...MSBuild Launch Pad (mPad): This is just another shell extension for MSBuild to enable quick execution of MSBuild scripts via Windows Explorer context menu. (C) 2010 Lex LiPeacock: A browser like tabbed applicationPrimeCalculation: PrimeCalculation is a .NET app to calculate primes in a given range. Speed on Core2Duo 2,4GHZ: Found all primes from 0 to 1 billion in 35 seconds (...Slightly Silverlight: A Framework that leverages Silverlight for processing, business logic but standard HTML for the presentation layer.Stopwatch: Stopwatch is a tool for measuring the time. To start and pause stopwatch you only need to press a key on the keyboard. An additional context menu a...YAXLib: Yet Another XML Serialization Library for the .NET Framework: YAXLib is an XML Serialization library which helps you structure freely the XML result, choose among private and public fields to be serialized, an...New ReleasesActivate Your Glutes: v1.0.3.0: This release is a migration to VS2010, .Net 4, MVC2 and Entity Framework 4. The code has also been considerably cleaned up - taking advantage of E...AnyCAD: AnyCAD.Free.ENU.v1.1: http://www.anycad.net Modeling •2D: Line, Rectangle, Arc, Arch, Circle, Spline, Polygon •Feature: Extrude, Loft, Chamfer, Sweep, Revol •Boolean: ...Blueset Studio Opensource Projects: 多功能计算器 3.5: 稳定版本。Code for Rapid C# Windows Development eBook: LLBLGen LINQPad Data Context Driver Ver 1.0.0.0: First release of a Static LLBLGen Pro Data Context Driver for LINQPad I recommend LINQPad 4 as it seems more stable with this driver than LINQPad 2.DSQLT - Dynamic SQL Templates: Release 1.2. Some behaviour has changed!!: Attention. Some behaviour has changed! Now its necessary to use WildCards in the pattern-parameter for DSQLT.AllSourceContains DSQLT.Databases DSQ...FDS AutoCAD plug-in: FDS to AutoCAD plug-in: Basic functionality was implemented. Some routines like setting fds executable location are still not automated.Feature Builder Guidance Extensions: FBGX 2 - Standalone FX: Background: The Feature Builder Guidance is extensible and displays guidance content supplied by all the Feature Builder Guidance Extensions (FBGX...Floe IRC Client: Floe IRC Client 2010-05 R3: - You can now right click on the input box to get options for toggling bold, underline, colors, etc. - The size of the nickname column is now saved...Floe IRC Client: Floe IRC Client 2010-05 R4: - A user's channel status now appears next to their nick when they talk (e.g. @Nick or +Nick) - Fixed an error where certain kinds of network probl...HD-Trailers.NET Downloader: HD-Trailers.NET Downloader v1.0: Version 1.0 Thanks to Wolfgang for all his help. I let this project languish for too long while focusing on other things, but his involvement has ...InfoPath Editor for Developer: InfoPath Editor Beta 1: Intial Release: Can load InfoPath inner html. Can edit InfoPath inner html. InfoPath 2007 only.LinkSharp: LinkSharp 0.1.0: First release of LinkSharp. Set up iis, and use the sql script to create a new database.PowerAuras: PowerAuras V3.0.0F: This version adds better integration with GTFO New Flags Added PvP flag In 5-Man Instance In Raid Instance In Battleground In ArenaRx Contrib: V1.4: Add the ability to catch internal exception and the ability to publish error by queue adaptersSEO SiteMap: SEO SiteMap RC1: -SevenZipLib Library: v9.13.2: Stable release associated with 7z.dll 9.13 beta. Ability to create and update archives not implemente yet.Silverlight / WPF Controls: Upload, FlipPanel, DeepZoom, Animation, Encryption: Code Camp Demonstration: This code example demonstrates MVVM/MEF with WPF with attached properties,security and custom ICommand class.SQL Data Capture - Black Box Application Testing: SQLDataCapture V1.2: Added Entity Framework Support to CRUD generator (Insert Stored Procedure) and switched to VS 2010 for development.Stopwatch: Stopwatch 0.1: Stopwatch Release 0.1VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30515.0: Automatic drop of latest buildYet another developer blog - Examples: Asynchronous TreeView in ASP.NET MVC: This sample application shows how to use jQuery TreeView plugin for creating an asynchronous TreeView in ASP.NET MVC. This application is accompani...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelASP.NETMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrPHPExcelBlogEngine.NETMicrosoft Biology FoundationCustomer Portal Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRMWindows Azure Command-line Tools for PHP DevelopersMirror Testing SystemN2 CMSStyleCop

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• SQL Server Split() Function

  - by HighAltitudeCoder

  Title goes here   Ever wanted a dbo.Split() function, but not had the time to debug it completely?  Let me guess - you are probably working on a stored procedure with 50 or more parameters; two or three of them are parameters of differing types, while the other 47 or so all of the same type (id1, id2, id3, id4, id5...).  Worse, you've found several other similar stored procedures with the ONLY DIFFERENCE being the number of like parameters taped to the end of the parameter list. If this is the situation you find yourself in now, you may be wondering, "why am I working with three different copies of what is basically the same stored procedure, and why am I having to maintain changes in three different places?  Can't I have one stored procedure that accomplishes the job of all three? My answer to you: YES!  Here is the Split() function I've created.    /******************************************************************************                                       Split.sql   ******************************************************************************/ /******************************************************************************   Split a delimited string into sub-components and return them as a table.   Parameter 1: Input string which is to be split into parts. Parameter 2: Delimiter which determines the split points in input string. Works with space or spaces as delimiter. Split() is apostrophe-safe.   SYNTAX: SELECT * FROM Split('Dvorak,Debussy,Chopin,Holst', ',') SELECT * FROM Split('Denver|Seattle|San Diego|New York', '|') SELECT * FROM Split('Denver is the super-awesomest city of them all.', ' ')   ******************************************************************************/ USE AdventureWorks GO   IF EXISTS       (SELECT *       FROM sysobjects       WHERE xtype = 'TF'       AND name = 'Split'       ) BEGIN       DROP FUNCTION Split END GO   CREATE FUNCTION Split (       @InputString                  VARCHAR(8000),       @Delimiter                    VARCHAR(50) )   RETURNS @Items TABLE (       Item                          VARCHAR(8000) )   AS BEGIN       IF @Delimiter = ' '       BEGIN             SET @Delimiter = ','             SET @InputString = REPLACE(@InputString, ' ', @Delimiter)       END         IF (@Delimiter IS NULL OR @Delimiter = '')             SET @Delimiter = ','   --INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@Delimiter) -- Diagnostic --INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@InputString) -- Diagnostic         DECLARE @Item                 VARCHAR(8000)       DECLARE @ItemList       VARCHAR(8000)       DECLARE @DelimIndex     INT         SET @ItemList = @InputString       SET @DelimIndex = CHARINDEX(@Delimiter, @ItemList, 0)       WHILE (@DelimIndex != 0)       BEGIN             SET @Item = SUBSTRING(@ItemList, 0, @DelimIndex)             INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@Item)               -- Set @ItemList = @ItemList minus one less item             SET @ItemList = SUBSTRING(@ItemList, @DelimIndex+1, LEN(@ItemList)-@DelimIndex)             SET @DelimIndex = CHARINDEX(@Delimiter, @ItemList, 0)       END -- End WHILE         IF @Item IS NOT NULL -- At least one delimiter was encountered in @InputString       BEGIN             SET @Item = @ItemList             INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@Item)       END         -- No delimiters were encountered in @InputString, so just return @InputString       ELSE INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@InputString)         RETURN   END -- End Function GO   ---- Set Permissions --GRANT SELECT ON Split TO UserRole1 --GRANT SELECT ON Split TO UserRole2 --GO   The syntax is basically as follows: SELECT <fields> FROM Table 1 JOIN Table 2 ON ... JOIN Table 3 ON ... WHERE LOGICAL CONDITION A AND LOGICAL CONDITION B AND LOGICAL CONDITION C AND TABLE2.Id IN (SELECT * FROM Split(@IdList, ',')) @IdList is a parameter passed into the stored procedure, and the comma (',') is the delimiter you have chosen to split the parameter list on. You can also use it like this: SELECT <fields> FROM Table 1 JOIN Table 2 ON ... JOIN Table 3 ON ... WHERE LOGICAL CONDITION A AND LOGICAL CONDITION B AND LOGICAL CONDITION C HAVING COUNT(SELECT * FROM Split(@IdList, ',') Similarly, it can be used in other aggregate functions at run-time: SELECT MIN(SELECT * FROM Split(@IdList, ','), <fields> FROM Table 1 JOIN Table 2 ON ... JOIN Table 3 ON ... WHERE LOGICAL CONDITION A AND LOGICAL CONDITION B AND LOGICAL CONDITION C GROUP BY <fields> Now that I've (hopefully effectively) explained the benefits to using this function and implementing it in one or more of your database objects, let me warn you of a caveat that you are likely to encounter.  You may have a team member who waits until the right moment to ask you a pointed question: "Doesn't this function just do the same thing as using the IN function?  Why didn't you just use that instead?  In other words, why bother with this function?" What's happening is, one or more team members has failed to understand the reason for implementing this kind of function in the first place.  (Note: this is THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF THIS POST). Allow me to outline a few pros to implementing this function, so you may effectively parry this question.  Touche. 1) Code consolidation.  You don't have to maintain what is basically the same code and logic, but with varying numbers of the same parameter in several SQL objects.  I'm not going to go into the cons related to using this function, because the afore mentioned team member is probably more than adept at pointing these out.  Remember, the real positive contribution is ou are decreasing the liklihood that your team fails to update all (x) duplicate copies of what are basically the same stored procedure, and so on...  This is the classic downside to duplicate code.  It is a virus, and you should kill it. You might be better off rejecting your team member's question, and responding with your own: "Would you rather maintain the same logic in multiple different stored procedures, and hope that the team doesn't forget to always update all of them at the same time?".  In his head, he might be thinking "yes, I would like to maintain several different copies of the same stored procedure", although you probably will not get such a direct response.  2) Added flexibility - you can use the Split function elsewhere, and for splitting your data in different ways.  Plus, you can use any kind of delimiter you wish.  How can you know today the ways in which you might want to examine your data tomorrow?  Segue to my next point. 3) Because the function takes a delimiter parameter, you can split the data in any number of ways.  This greatly increases the utility of such a function and enables your team to work with the data in a variety of different ways in the future.  You can split on a single char, symbol, word, or group of words.  You can split on spaces.  (The list goes on... test it out). Finally, you can dynamically define the behavior of a stored procedure (or other SQL object) at run time, through the use of this function.  Rather than have several objects that accomplish almost the same thing, why not have only one instead?

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• User Guide to Dropbox Shared Folders

  - by Matthew Guay

  Dropbox is an incredibly useful tool for keeping all your files synced between your computers and the cloud.  Here we’re going to look at how you can keep all of your team on the same page with Dropbox shared folders. Creating a Shared Folder Setting up a shared folder in Dropbox is easy.  Add the files you want to share to a folder in Dropbox on your computer, then right-click in the folder, select Dropbox, and then choose Share This Folder.   Alternately, log into your Dropbox account online, click the drop-down menu beside the folder you want to share, and click Share this folder. Now, enter the email addresses of the people you want to share the folder with, and optionally enter a message explaining why you’re sharing the folder. The people you invite will receive an email inviting them to view and join the shared folder.  If they haven’t signed up for Dropbox, they can directly signup; otherwise, they can simply log into their Dropbox account and start adding or editing files. Shared folders have a slightly different icon in your Dropbox.  Notice the shared folder on the left has an icon with 2 people, while the folder on the right that is not shared, shows previews of its contents. See Your Shared Folder’s History Whenever your collaborators with your shared folders add or change files, you will see a tooltip notification telling you what changed. You can also view the changes online.  Log into your Dropbox account in your browser and select the Events tab.  This shows all changes to your Dropbox, but you can view only the changes in your shared folder by selecting its name on the left sidebar. Now you can see all recent changes to your folder, and can also see who added or removed each file.   On the bottom of the page, you can even add a comment that all the collaborators will see. If someone deleted a file you still need, you can restore it by clicking its link in this online history.  Or, you can view any deleted files by right-clicking in your Dropbox folder in Explorer.  Select Dropbox, and then click Show Deleted Files.   Get Notified When a Change is Made You’re not always in front of your computer; you’ve got a life beyond your projects, after all (at least hopefully).  If you really want to stay connected to what’s happening with your project, though, you can easily do that no matter where you are. Your shared Dropbox folder’s history page offers an RSS feed of all changes to the folder.  Click  the Subscribe to this feed hyperlink. Now, in the popup that opens, click “Copy to clipboard” so you can use this RSS feed. You can subscribe to RSS feeds through many web browsers, email clients, dedicated feed readers, and more.  In Firefox, Internet Explorer 7/8, or Opera, you can paste the feed address into your address bar and subscribe to the feed directly in your browser.   However, subscribing to the feed in a desktop application won’t help you much when you’re away from your computer.  One great option is to subscribe in the popular Google Reader.  Then you can check your feed from any browser, on any computer or mobile device. To add your Dropbox feed to Google Reader, log into Google Reader (link below), click Add a subscription on the top left, paste your RSS feed from Dropbox, and click Add.   Now you can see any changes to files or folders in Google Reader. You can even add your feed to your iGoogle homepage.  Click the Add it Now button on the right in the front page of Google Reader to add your feeds to iGoogle.   Now you can see updates on your files from your homepage.  If you’re using a different computer, just login to your Google account to see what’s happening. You can also access your Google Reader feeds from many programs and apps for most major Smartphones including iPhone, Windows Phone, and Blackberry. Receive a Tweet or Text When Changes are Made If you’re a hyper-connected individual, chances are you send and receive tweets on the go.  If so, this might be the best way for you to get notified when changes are made to your Dropbox shared folder.  To do this, first create a new Twitter account to publish your changes through.  If you don’t want the whole world to see your updates, click Settings and set your new Twitter account to Private. Once the new account is created, follow it with your normal Twitter account so you’ll see updates. Now, let’s publish our Dropbox RSS feed to Twitter.  Create an account with Twitterfeed (link below). Once your account is setup, add your feed to it.  Name your feed, and enter your Feed address from Dropbox.  Click Advanced Settings to make your feed work just like you want. In Advanced Settings, change the frequency to “Every 30 mins” to make sure you’re updated on changes as quick as possible.  You can also change other settings if you like. Click “Continue to Step 2”, and then click Twitter under the available services to add your account. Make sure your signed into your new Twitter account, and then click Authenticate Twitter. Allow the application. Now, finally, click Create Service. Whenever a change is made, you will receive a tweet via your new Twitter account.  And since you can receive tweets via text message or many mobile applications, you’ll never be very far away from your Dropbox changes!   Conclusion Dropbox shared folders are a great way to keep your whole team working together on the same files in a project.  And with these handy tricks, you can keep up with your shared files wherever you are! There are a lot of cool things you can do with Dropbox make sure to check out our posts on adding Dropbox to the Windows 7 Start menu, Accessing Dropbox files from Chrome, and Syncing your Pidgin Profile Across Multiple PCs. Links Signup or access your Dropbox account Google Reader Tweet your feed with Twitterfeed Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Add and Manage Shared Folders on Windows Home ServerManage User Accounts in Windows Home ServerAdd "My Dropbox" to Your Windows 7 Start MenuComplete Guide to Networking Windows 7 with XP and VistaMoving Your Personal Data Folders in Windows Vista the Easy Way TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, August 16, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, August 16, 2014Popular ReleasesTEBookConverter: 1.5: Added: Turkish and French translations Added: A few interface changes Removed: SkinDynamulet: Dynamulet v0.1: DynamoDB Transaction Server v0.1Console parallel nunit tests runner: ConsoleUnitTestsRunner 1.03: bugfixingFluentx: Fluentx v1.5.3: Added few more extension methods.fastBinaryJSON: v1.4.2: v1.4.2 - bug fix circular referencesfastJSON: v2.1.2: 2.1.2 - bug fix circular referencesJPush.NET: JPush Server SDK 1.2.1 (For JPush V3): Assembly: 1.2.1.24728 JPush REST API Version: v3 JPush Documentation Reference .NET framework: v4.0 or above. Sample: class: JPushClientV3 2014 Augest 15th.SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.043.008 Release 1: Changed ship/station names to use new DisplayName instead of Beacon/Antenna. Fixed issue with updated SE binaries 01.043.018 using new Voxel Material definitions.Google .Net API: Drive.Sample: Google .NET Client API – Drive.SampleInstructions for the Google .NET Client API – Drive.Sample</h2> http://code.google.com/p/google-api-dotnet-client/source/browse/?repo=samples#hg%2FDrive.SampleBrowse Source, or main file http://code.google.com/p/google-api-dotnet-client/source/browse/Drive.Sample/Program.cs?repo=samplesProgram.cs <h3>1. Checkout Instructions</h3> <p><b>Prerequisites:</b> Install Visual Studio, and <a href="http://mercurial.selenic.com/">Mercurial</a>.</p> ...FineUI - jQuery / ExtJS based ASP.NET Controls: FineUI v4.1.1: -??Form??????????????（???-5929）。 -?TemplateField??ExpandOnDoubleClick、ExpandOnEnter、ExpandToSelectRow????（LZOM-5932）。 -BodyPadding???????，??“5”“5 10”，???????????“5px”“5px 10px”。 -??TriggerBox?EnableEdit=false????，??????????????（Jango_Jing-5450）。 -???????????DataKeyNames???????????（yygy-6002）。 -????????????????????????（Gnid-6018）。 -??PageManager???AutoSizePanelID????，??????????????????（yygy-6008）。 -?FState???????????????，????????????????（????-5925）。 -??????OnClientClick???return?????????（FineU...DNN CMS Platform: 07.03.02: Major Highlights Fixed backwards compatibility issue with 3rd party control panels Fixed issue in the drag and drop functionality of the File Uploader in IE 11 and Safari Fixed issue where users were able to create pages with the same name Fixed issue that affected older versions of DNN that do not include the maxAllowedContentLength during upgrade Fixed issue that stopped some skins from being upgraded to newer versions Fixed issue that randomly showed an unexpected error during us...WordMat: WordMat for Mac: WordMat for Mac has a few limitations compared to the Windows version - Graph is not supported (Gnuplot, GeoGebra and Excel works) - Units are not supported yet (Coming up) The Mac version is yet as tested as the windows version.HP OneView PowerShell Library: HP OneView PowerShell Library 1.10.1193: [NOTE]: The installer has been updated, only to allow the user to display What's New at the completion of the install. The contents are the same as the original installer. Branch to HP OneView 1.10 Release. NOTE: This library version does not support older appliance versions. Fixed New-HPOVProfile to check for Firmware and BIOS management for supported platforms. Would erroneously error when neither -firmware or -bios were passed. Fixed Remove-HPOV* cmdlets which did not handle -forc...MFCMAPI: August 2014 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1042 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 2010/2013 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeEWSEditor: EwsEditor 1.10 Release: • Export and import of items as a full fidelity steam works - without proxy classes! - I used raw EWS POSTs. • Turned off word wrap for EWS request field in EWS POST windows. • Several windows with scrolling texts boxes were limiting content to 32k - I removed this restriction. • Split server timezone info off to separate menu item from the timezone info windows so that the timezone info window could be used without logging into a mailbox. • Lots of updates to the TimeZone window. • UserAgen...Python Tools for Visual Studio: 2.1 RC: Release notes for PTVS 2.1 RC We’re pleased to announce the release candidate for Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.1. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, editing, IntelliSense, interactive debugging, profiling, Microsoft Azure, IPython, and cross-platform debugging support. PTVS 2.1 RC is available for: Visual Studio Expre...Sense/Net ECM - Enterprise CMS: SenseNet 6.3.1 Community Edition: Sense/Net 6.3.1 Community EditionSense/Net 6.3.1 is an important step toward a more modular infrastructure, robustness and maintainability. With this release we finally introduce a packaging and a task management framework, and the Image Editor that will surely make the job of content editors more fun. Please review the changes and new features since Sense/Net 6.3 and give a feedback on our forum! Main new featuresSnAdmin (packaging framework) Task Management Image Editor OData REST A...Touchmote: Touchmote 1.0 beta 13: Changes Less GPU usage Works together with other Xbox 360 controls Bug fixesModern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.6: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. BREAKING CHANGE LinkGroup.GroupName renamed to GroupKey NEW FEATURES Improved rendering on high DPI screens, including support for per-monitor DPI awareness available in Windows 8.1 (see also Per-monitor DPI awareness) New ModernProgressRing control with 8 builtin styles New LinkCommands.NavigateLink routed command New Visual Studio project templates 'Modern UI WPF App' and 'Modern UI W...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.74.0: Multiple thread safe improvements including AdjustToContents XLHelper XLColor_Static IntergerExtensions.ToStringLookup Exception now thrown when saving a workbook with no sheets, instead of creating a corrupt workbook Fix for hyperlinks with non-ASCII Characters Added basic workbook protection Fix for error thrown, when a spreadsheet contained comments and images Fix to Trim function Fix Invalid operation Exception thrown when the formula functions MAX, MIN, and AVG referenc...New Projects2113110030: name: pham van long code: 2113110030 subject: oop2113110033: Name: Nguyen Hoang Minh Class: CCQ1311LA Object: OOP2113110284: name: Vuong Thành Ðô id:2113110284 class: CCQ1311LA2113110286_OOP_kiemtra: Mon:OOP Tên: Lê Th? Ng?c Huy?nCRM Queue Monitor: A small tool to monitor queues in Microsoft dynamics CRM 2011 and following versions. It displays the number of items in the queues and the latest item.Dice Bag: A D20 Role Playing Game Dice Bag - A selection of dice for use in the D20 RPG System that can be rolled to any quantity with an applied modifier.DM.Dual-coloredBall: DM.Dual-coloredBallFB Account Data Miner by Bipul Raman: A software which can be use to extract basic metadata of a Facebook profile without logging in to Facebook.huynhtanphat-2113170373: Mon: OPP Name: Huynh Tan Phatkieuquanghuy_OOP: Suject: OOP Name: kieuquanghuy Class: CCQ1311LAMySale: A simple home point-of-sale application, designed for garage sales, and lemonade stalls alike.nguyennhubaongan_OOP: MON: OOP NAME: NGUY?N-NHU-B?O-NGÂNOPP-2113110288: Mon: OOP Ten: Bui Dinh Hoai Nam Pequeño RAE: Una aplicación Windows para utilizar los Web services del Diccionario de la Real Academia Española en línea.phungthiphuonglien_OOP: MONHOC: OOP NAME: PHUNG THI PHUONG LIEN MSSV: 2113110287sharpFlipWall: This is a simple executive toy for Unity that leverages Kinect v2 and Shaders to generate a wall of blocks that move based on player informaitonTranThanhDanh-2113110282: Mon: OPP Name: Tran Thanh DanhWsSequence: Run a number of WS in a sequence?????: ??????????: ???????????: gdsg?????: ???????????: fds??????: gdr??????: gfdg?????: ???????????: ???????????: ???????????: ggerger?????: htryhrt??????: trjty?????: ???????????: sdf?????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。??????????????????????。???????????，????????，????????????????????????????。???????，??????????????。????????????,????????，?????????????: ????????????: ertyer?????: ???????????: gsdrfgds??????: fds?????: ??????????: vcdfxgdsf??????: fdgher??????: fdsf?????: ??????????: ??????????: ???????????: hiuhui?????: ??????????: ??????????: ???????????: fdsfs?????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ???????????: ???????????: ??????????: ??????????: fgsdf??????: vdsfd?????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。??????????1998?????????。????????????，???????????????，?????????????，???????????，?2003?????????????，????????????????????????????????: ???????????: ???????????: hfdg?????: ???????????: gfdgfd??????: fdsfd?????: fdsf??????: fghdt?????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: gfdgfd????????: gfjhtf??????: ????????????: vdcf??????: fvgdfg??????: ???????????: ??????????: ???????????: jvbhvhv?????: ??????????: ???????????: ???????????: ??????????: ???????????: ????????????: ????????????: ???????????: ???????????: ????????????: fdsfds?????: ???????????: ???????????: ??????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。???????????????????，??????????????，????，?????????????????????，??????。 　　??，??????????????????????。????????，????????????，??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。??????????????，??????、????、?????????????????????????，???????????? ??。???????????，??????????，???????????，????2000?，??????????，?????: ???????????: ????????????: ???????????: ???????????: ytryrt??????: ???????????: ???????????: ???????????: ??????????: ???????????: gdfgfd?????: ???????????: gfd??????: ???????????: ???????????: fdsf??????: ????????????: ????????????: gfdtgdr?????: ???????????: fdsfd?????: ??????????: ???????????: ????????????: ????????????: ???????????: ???????????: terwtq?????: ??????????: gdfg??????: ????????????: gfdg?????: ??????????: ??????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。?????????????，????????????????、??????、???????、???????、?????、???、??????。 ??????????????，???????????，??????，???????，?????????????????: gdfsg?????: fdsf??????: hdfhdf?????: ???????????: ????????????: fgherh?????: ??????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。?????????，????????????????????，???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????、?????????、??????、????????、?????????????: ???????????: ???????????: ???????????: ????????????: fgdstf??????: ???????????: gfdgfd??????: fdsfd??????: ????????????: ???????????: ???????????: fdsfd?????: ???????????: gfdgfdg?????: ??????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。????????????????，???????，???QQ;??2008?8??????????????????，????????，?????????，?????????????，?????????????????. ?????????，??????????: ??????????: ???????????: ????????????: fgnhgf??????: gredg?????: ??????????: ??????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。?????????????，???????????????????、?????????????。?????????????????，?????????????，????????????，?????，????????????????，?????，?????????: ????????????: ???????????: ???????????: ????????????: ???????????: gdfgedf??????: fdsf??????: ?????????????: ?????????????: fdsf??????: ???????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。??????????????，?????????????????????，???????????????????????!?????????????????????????????????????????????、?????????、??????、??????: fdsf?????: ???????????: fdsf??????: fdsf?????: ???????????: vuv?????: ???????????: grfgfd?????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: fdsf??????: ghrd?????: ????????????: ?????????????: sgdfg?????: ???????????: grfgdf?????: ???????????: hftghj?????: ???????????: ??????????????: gdfgfd?????: ???????????: fdsf?????: ???????????: fdsf??????: htgrfh?????: ??????????: ??????????: fds??????: sdfds??????: hgfh?????: ??????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。??????????????，??????、????、?????????????????????????，???????????? ??。???????????，??????????，???????????，????2000?，??????????，??????: ????????????: ???????????: fdsfds????????????: fdsf?????: ??????????: ???????????: gfdgfd?????: ??????????: ??????????: ??????????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。??????????????，?????????????????????，???????????????????????!?????????????????????????????????????????????、?????????、??????、??????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。????????2002?，????????，???????????????，??，?????????。????98?????????????，?????????????，?????????????????，???????，????，?????????????: ??????????: ???????????: ????????????: fd??????: fds?????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。??????????、??、?????????,???????????,?????????????!???????、??、?????、???.????、???、???、???、???、???、?????、?????、???????、????。?????????: ??????????: fdsfds???????: fdsfdsf?????: ???????????: ???????????: ??????????: ???????????: ????????????: fdsf?????: ???????????: ????????????: gdfsgds?????: gttrey??????: cxzc???????: ?????????????: ???????????: ???????????: gdfgfd?????: ??????????: ???????????: ????????????: ????????????: ????????????: gfdgdf?????: ???????????: ytu?????: ???????????: yytry???????: ghmkuygk??????: ????????????: ????????????: ????????????: ???????????: ???????????: ????????????: vuhgvu??????: ??????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。?????????，????????????????????，????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????、?????????、??????、????????、???????????: ???????????: hfgh??????: hgfh?????: ?????QQ：2281595668，?????，????，????。??????????????，???????????。??????????????。??、??、????????????。????：????，??????!??????????????，?????，???，???，??，???，???，???，?????????: ????????????: ttgers??????: iui

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• General monitoring for SQL Server Analysis Services using Performance Monitor

  - by Testas

  A recent customer engagement required a setup of a monitoring solution for SSAS, due to the time restrictions placed upon this, native Windows Performance Monitor (Perfmon) and SQL Server Profiler Monitoring Tools was used as using a third party tool would have meant the customer providing an additional monitoring server that was not available.I wanted to outline the performance monitoring counters that was used to monitor the system on which SSAS was running. Due to the slow query performance that was occurring during certain scenarios, perfmon was used to establish if any pressure was being placed on the Disk, CPU or Memory subsystem when concurrent connections access the same query, and Profiler to pinpoint how the query was being managed within SSAS, profiler I will leave for another blogThis guide is not designed to provide a definitive list of what should be used when monitoring SSAS, different situations may require the addition or removal of counters as presented by the situation. However I hope that it serves as a good basis for starting your monitoring of SSAS. I would also like to acknowledge Chris Webb’s awesome chapters from “Expert Cube Development” that also helped shape my monitoring strategy:http://cwebbbi.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!7B84B0F2C239489A!6657.entrySimulating ConnectionsTo simulate the additional connections to the SSAS server whilst monitoring, I used ascmd to simulate multiple connections to the typical and worse performing queries that were identified by the customer. A similar sript can be downloaded from codeplex at http://www.codeplex.com/SQLSrvAnalysisSrvcs.     File name: ASCMD_StressTestingScripts.zip. Performance MonitorWithin performance monitor,  a counter log was created that contained the list of counters below. The important point to note when running the counter log is that the RUN AS property within the counter log properties should be changed to an account that has rights to the SSAS instance when monitoring MSAS counters. Failure to do so means that the counter log runs under the system account, no errors or warning are given while running the counter log, and it is not until you need to view the MSAS counters that they will not be displayed if run under the default account that has no right to SSAS. If your connection simulation takes hours, this could prove quite frustrating if not done beforehand JThe counters used……  Object Counter Instance Justification System Processor Queue legnth N/A Indicates how many threads are waiting for execution against the processor. If this counter is consistently higher than around 5 when processor utilization approaches 100%, then this is a good indication that there is more work (active threads) available (ready for execution) than the machine's processors are able to handle. System Context Switches/sec N/A Measures how frequently the processor has to switch from user- to kernel-mode to handle a request from a thread running in user mode. The heavier the workload running on your machine, the higher this counter will generally be, but over long term the value of this counter should remain fairly constant. If this counter suddenly starts increasing however, it may be an indicating of a malfunctioning device, especially if the Processor\Interrupts/sec\(_Total) counter on your machine shows a similar unexplained increase Process % Processor Time sqlservr Definately should be used if Processor\% Processor Time\(_Total) is maxing at 100% to assess the effect of the SQL Server process on the processor Process % Processor Time msmdsrv Definately should be used if Processor\% Processor Time\(_Total) is maxing at 100% to assess the effect of the SQL Server process on the processor Process Working Set sqlservr If the Memory\Available bytes counter is decreaing this counter can be run to indicate if the process is consuming larger and larger amounts of RAM. Process(instance)\Working Set measures the size of the working set for each process, which indicates the number of allocated pages the process can address without generating a page fault. Process Working Set msmdsrv If the Memory\Available bytes counter is decreaing this counter can be run to indicate if the process is consuming larger and larger amounts of RAM. Process(instance)\Working Set measures the size of the working set for each process, which indicates the number of allocated pages the process can address without generating a page fault. Processor % Processor Time _Total and individual cores measures the total utilization of your processor by all running processes. If multi-proc then be mindful only an average is provided Processor % Privileged Time _Total To see how the OS is handling basic IO requests. If kernel mode utilization is high, your machine is likely underpowered as it's too busy handling basic OS housekeeping functions to be able to effectively run other applications. Processor % User Time _Total To see how the applications is interacting from a processor perspective, a high percentage utilisation determine that the server is dealing with too many apps and may require increasing thje hardware or scaling out Processor Interrupts/sec _Total  The average rate, in incidents per second, at which the processor received and serviced hardware interrupts. Shoulr be consistant over time but a sudden unexplained increase could indicate a device malfunction which can be confirmed using the System\Context Switches/sec counter Memory Pages/sec N/A Indicates the rate at which pages are read from or written to disk to resolve hard page faults. This counter is a primary indicator of the kinds of faults that cause system-wide delays, this is the primary counter to watch for indication of possible insufficient RAM to meet your server's needs. A good idea here is to configure a perfmon alert that triggers when the number of pages per second exceeds 50 per paging disk on your system. May also want to see the configuration of the page file on the Server Memory Available Mbytes N/A is the amount of physical memory, in bytes, available to processes running on the computer. if this counter is greater than 10% of the actual RAM in your machine then you probably have more than enough RAM. monitor it regularly to see if any downward trend develops, and set an alert to trigger if it drops below 2% of the installed RAM. Physical Disk Disk Transfers/sec for each physical disk If it goes above 10 disk I/Os per second then you've got poor response time for your disk. Physical Disk Idle Time _total If Disk Transfers/sec is above  25 disk I/Os per second use this counter. which measures the percent time that your hard disk is idle during the measurement interval, and if you see this counter fall below 20% then you've likely got read/write requests queuing up for your disk which is unable to service these requests in a timely fashion. Physical Disk Disk queue legnth For the OLAP and SQL physical disk A value that is consistently less than 2 means that the disk system is handling the IO requests against the physical disk Network Interface Bytes Total/sec For the NIC Should be monitored over a period of time to see if there is anb increase/decrease in network utilisation Network Interface Current Bandwidth For the NIC is an estimate of the current bandwidth of the network interface in bits per second (BPS). MSAS 2005: Memory Memory Limit High KB N/A Shows (as a percentage) the high memory limit configured for SSAS in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSAS10.MSSQLSERVER\OLAP\Config\msmdsrv.ini MSAS 2005: Memory Memory Limit Low KB N/A Shows (as a percentage) the low memory limit configured for SSAS in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSAS10.MSSQLSERVER\OLAP\Config\msmdsrv.ini MSAS 2005: Memory Memory Usage KB N/A Displays the memory usage of the server process. MSAS 2005: Memory File Store KB N/A Displays the amount of memory that is reserved for the Cache. Note if total memory limit in the msmdsrv.ini is set to 0, no memory is reserved for the cache MSAS 2005: Storage Engine Query Queries from Cache Direct / sec N/A Displays the rate of queries answered from the cache directly MSAS 2005: Storage Engine Query Queries from Cache Filtered / Sec N/A Displays the Rate of queries answered by filtering existing cache entry. MSAS 2005: Storage Engine Query Queries from File / Sec N/A Displays the Rate of queries answered from files. MSAS 2005: Storage Engine Query Average time /query N/A Displays the average time of a query MSAS 2005: Connection Current connections N/A Displays the number of connections against the SSAS instance MSAS 2005: Connection Requests / sec N/A Displays the rate of query requests per second MSAS 2005: Locks Current Lock Waits N/A Displays thhe number of connections waiting on a lock MSAS 2005: Threads Query Pool job queue Length N/A The number of queries in the job queue MSAS 2005:Proc Aggregations Temp file bytes written/sec N/A Shows the number of bytes of data processed in a temporary file MSAS 2005:Proc Aggregations Temp file rows written/sec N/A Shows the number of bytes of data processed in a temporary file 

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 08, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 08, 2010New ProjectsBizSpark Camp Sample Code: This sample project demonstrates best practices when developing Windows Phone 7 appliactions with Azure. **This code is meant only as a sample f...CLB Article Module: The CLB Article Module is a simple DotNetNuke Module for Article writers. This module is designed to provide a simple location for article/screenc...cvplus: a computer vision libraryDemina: Demina is a simple keyframe based 2d skeletal animation system. It's developed in C# using XNA.Expo Live: Expo LiveFeedMonster: FeedMonster is a Cross platform Really Simple Syndication reader made to allow you to easily follow updates to your favorite sites. Its made using ...GamePad to KeyBoard: GamePad to KeyBoard (GP2KB) is a small app that lets you define an associated keyboard key for each button in your XBox 360 controller. This way, y...huanhuan's project: moajfiodsafasLazyNet: Lazynet Allows users to save the proxy settings and IP addresses of wireless networks. This makes it easier for users that move a lot between diffe...mfcfetionapi: mfcfetionapiMocking BizTalk: Mocking BizTalk is a set of tools aimed at bringing Mock Object concepts in BizTalk solution testing. Actually it consists in a set of MockPipelin...nkSWFControl: nkSWFControl is a ASP.NET control that provides numberous ways for publishing SWF movies in your pages. The project goal is to become defacto ...Property Pack for EPiServer CMS: With EPiServer CMS 6 it's possible to create a wide variety of custom property types that have customized settings in each usage. This Property Pac...SPRoleAssignment: SPRoleAssignment makes it easier for programmers to assign custom item level permissions. You can now easily grant or remove permissions to certain...Thats-Me Dot Net API: Thats-Me Dot Net API is a library which implements the Thats-Me.ch API for the Dot Net Framework.The Information Literacy Education Learning Environment (ILE): Written in C# utilizing the .net framework the Information Literacy Education (ILE) learning environment is designed to deliver information litera...tinytian: Tools, shared.Unidecode Sharp: UnidecodeSharp is a C# port of Python and Perl Unidecode module. Intended to transliterate an Unicode object into an ASCII string, no matter what l...Wave 4: Wave 4 is a platform for professional bloggers, integrated with many social networking services.New ReleasesµManager for MaNGOS: 0.8.6: Improvements: Supports up to MaNGOS revision 9692 (may support higher revisions, this is dependent on any changes made to the database structure b...BFBC2 PRoCon: PRoCon 0.3.5.0: Release Notes CommingBizSpark Camp Sample Code: Initial Check-in: There are two downloads available for this project. There is a windows phone 7 application that calls webservices hosted in Azure. And there is a...Bojinx: Bojinx Core V4.5.11: Minor release that fixes several minor bugs and adds more error prevention logic. Fixed: You will no longer get a null pointer error when loading ...CuttingEdge.Logging: CuttingEdge.Logging v1.2.2: CuttingEdge.Logging is a library that helps the programmer output log statements to a variety of output targets in .NET applications. The design is...DotNetNuke® Events: 05.01.00 Beta 1: Please take note: this is a Beta releaseThis is a not a formal Release of DNN Events 05.01.00. This is a beta version, which is not extensively te...dylan.NET: dylan.NET v. 9.8: This is the latest version of dylan.NET features the new locimport statement, improved error handling and other new stuff and bug fixes.Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.0.9 beta 2 Released: Hi, This release contains the following enhancements: * New Property named ClosestPlotDistance has been implemented in Axis. It defines the d...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.5.2 beta 2 Released: Hi, This release contains the following enhancements: * New Property named ClosestPlotDistance has been implemented in Axis. It defines the d...GamePad to KeyBoard: GP2KB v0.1: First public version of GamePad to KeyBoard.Global: Version 0.1: This is the first beta stable release of this assembly. Check out the Test console app to see how some of the stuff works. EnjoyHtml Agility Pack: 1.4.0 Stable: 1.4.0 Adds some serious new features to Html Agility Pack to make it work nicer in a LINQ driven .NET World. The HtmlNodeCollection and HtmlAttribu...LazyNet: Beta Release: This is the Beta Version, All functionality has been implemented but needs further testing for bugs.Mercury Particle Engine: Mercury Particle Engine 3.1.0.0: Long overdue release of the latest version of Mercury Particle Engine, this release is changeset #66009NazTek.Extension.Clr4: NazTek.Extension.Clr4 Binary Cab: Includes bin, config, and chm filesnetDumbster: netDumbster 1.0: netDumbster release 1.0Opalis Community Releases: Workflow Examples (May 7, 2010): The Opalis team is providing some sample Workflows (policies) for customers and partners to help you get started in creating your own workflows in ...patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance: SPG2010 Drop10: SharePoint Guidance Drop Notes Microsoft patterns and practices ****************************************** ***************************************...Shake - C# Make: Shake v0.1.9: First public release including samples. Basic tasks: - MSBuild task (msbuild command line with parameters) - SVN command line client with checkout...SPRoleAssignment: Role Assigment Project [Eng]: SPRoleAssignment makes it easier for programmers to assign custom item level permissions. You can now easily grant or remove permissions to certain...SQL Server Metadata Toolkit 2008: Alpha 7 SQL Server Metadata Toolkit: The changes in this are to the Parser, and a change to handle WITH CTE's within the Analyzers. The Parser now handles CAST better, EXEC, EXECUTE, ...StackOverflow Desktop Client in C# and WPF: StackOverflow Client 0.5: Made the popup thinner, removed the extra icon and title. The questions on the popup automatically change every 5 seconds.TimeSpanExt: TimeSpanExt 1.0: This had been stuck in beta for a long time, so I'm glad to finally make the full release.Transcriber: Transcriber V0.2.0: First alpha release. See Issue Tracker for known bugs and incomplete features.Unidecode Sharp: UnidecodeSharp 0.04: First release. Tested and stable. Versions duplicates Perl and Python ones.Visual Studio 2010 AutoScroller Extension: AutoScroller v0.3: A Visual studio 2010 auto-scroller extension. Simply hold down your middle mouse button and drag the mouse in the direction you wish to scroll, fu...Visual Studio 2010 Test Case Import Utilities: V 1.0 (RC2): Work Item Migrator With the prior releases of Test Case Migrator ( Beta and RC1), it was possible to: migrate test cases (along with test steps) ...Word Add-in For Ontology Recognition: Technology Preview, Beta 2 - May 2010: This is a technology preview release of the Word Add-in for Ontology Recognition for Word. These are some of the updates included in this version:...Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight Toolkitpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)Microsoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NETPHPExcelMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryAJAX Control FrameworkRawrThe Information Literacy Education Learning Environment (ILE)Caliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightBlogEngine.NETpatterns & practices - UnityjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleTweetSharp

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• My View on ASP.NET Web Forms versus MVC

  - by Ricardo Peres

  Introduction A lot has been said on Web Forms and MVC, but since I was recently asked about my opinion on the subject, here it is. First, I have to say that I really like both technologies and I don’t think any is going away – just remember SharePoint, which is built on top of Web Forms. I see them as complementary, targeting different needs and leveraging different skills. Let’s go through some of their differences. Rapid Application Development Rapid Application Development (RAD) is the development process by which you have an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), a visual design surface and a toolbox, and you drag components from the toolbox to the design surface and set their properties through a property inspector. It was introduced with some of the earliest Windows graphical IDEs such as Visual Basic and Delphi. With Web Forms you have RAD out of the box. Visual Studio offers a generally good (and extensible) designer for the layout of pages and web user controls. Designing a page may simply be about dragging controls from the toolbox, setting their properties and wiring up some events to event handlers, which are implemented in code behind .NET classes. Most people will be familiar with this kind of development and enjoy it. You can see what you are doing from the beginning. MVC also has designable pages – called views in MVC terminology – the problem is that they can be built using different technologies, some of which, at the moment (MVC 4) do not support RAD – Razor, for example. I believe it is just a matter of time for that to be implemented in Visual Studio, but it will mostly consist on HTML editing, and until that day comes, you have to live with source editing. Development Model Web Forms features the same development model that you are used to from Windows Forms and other similar technologies: events fired by controls and automatic persistence of their properties between postbacks. For that, it uses concepts such as view state, which some may love and others may hate, because it may be misused quite easily, but otherwise does its job well. Another fundamental concept is data binding, by which a collection of data can be fed to a control and have it render that data somehow – just thing of the GridView control. The focus is on the page, that’s where it all starts, and you can place everything in the same code behind class: data access, business logic, layout, etc. The controls take care of generating a great part of the HTML and JavaScript for you. With MVC there is no free lunch when it comes to data persistence between requests, you have to implement it yourself. As for event handling, that is at the core of MVC, in the form of controllers and action methods, you just don’t think of them as event handlers. In MVC you need to think more in HTTP terms, so action methods such as POST and GET are relevant to you, and may write actions to handle one or the other. Also of crucial importance is model binding: the way by which MVC converts your posted data into a .NET class. This is something that ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms has introduced as well, but it is a cornerstone in MVC. MVC also has built-in validation of these .NET classes, which out of the box uses the Data Annotations API. You have full control of the generated HTML - except for that coming from the helper methods, usually small fragments - which requires a greater familiarity with the specifications. You normally rely much more on JavaScript APIs, they are even included in the Visual Studio template, that is because much less is done for you. Reuse It is difficult to accept a professional company/project that does not employ reuse. It can save a lot of time thus cutting costs significantly. Code reused in several projects matures as time goes by and helps developers learn from past experiences. ASP.NET Web Forms was built with reuse in mind, in the form of controls. Controls encapsulate functionality and are generally portable from project to project (with the notable exception of web user controls, those with an associated .ASCX markup file). ASP.NET has dozens of controls and it is very easy to develop new ones, so I believe this is a great advantage. A control can inject JavaScript code and external references as well as generate HTML an CSS. MVC on the other hand does not use controls – it is possible to use them, with some view engines like ASPX, but it is just not advisable because it breaks the flow – where do Init, Load, PreRender, etc, fit? The most similar to controls is extension methods, or helpers. They serve the same purpose – generating HTML, CSS or JavaScript – and can be reused between different projects. What differentiates them from controls is that there is no inheritance and no context – an extension method is just a static method which doesn’t know where it is being called. You also have partial views, which you can reuse in the same project, but there is no inheritance as well. This, in my view, is a weakness of MVC. Architecture Both technologies are highly extensible. I have writtenstarted writing a series of posts on ASP.NET Web Forms extensibility and will probably write another series on MVC extensibility as well. A number of scenarios are covered in any of these models, and some extensibility points apply to both, because, of course both stand upon ASP.NET. With Web Forms, if you’re like me, you start by defining you master pages, pages and controls, with some helper classes to glue everything. You may as well throw in some JavaScript, but probably you’re main work will be with plain old .NET code. The controls you define have the chance to inject JavaScript code and references, through either the ScriptManager or the page’s ClientScript object, as well as generating HTML and CSS code. The master page and page model with code behind classes offer a number of “hooks” by which you can change the normal way of things, for example, in a page you can access any control on the master page, add script or stylesheet references to its head and even change the page’s title. Also, with Web Forms, you typically have URLs in the form “/SomePath/SomePage.aspx?SomeParameter=SomeValue”, which isn’t really SEO friendly, no to mention the HTML that some controls produce, far from standards, optimization and best practices. In MVC, you also normally start by defining the master page (or layout) and views, which are the visible parts, and then define controllers on separate files. These controllers do not know anything about the views, except the names and types of the parameters that will be passed to and from them. The controller will be responsible for the data access and business logic, eventually relying on additional classes for this purpose. On a controller you only receive parameters and return a result, which may be a request for the rendering of a view, a redirection to another URL or a JSON object, to name just a few. The controller class does not know anything about the web, so you can effectively reuse it in a non-web project. This separation and the lack of programmatic access to the UI elements, makes it very difficult to implement, for example, something like SharePoint with MVC. OK, I know about Orchard, but it isn’t really a general purpose development framework, but instead, a CMS that happens to use MVC. Not having controls render HTML for you gives you in turn much more control over it – it is your responsibility to create it, which you can either consider a blessing or a curse, in the later case, you probably shouldn’t be using MVC at all. Also MVC URLs tend to be much more SEO-oriented, if you design your controllers and actions properly. Testing In a well defined architecture, you should separate business logic, data access logic and presentation logic, because these are all different things and it might even be the need to switch one implementation for another: for example, you might design a system which includes a data access layer, a business logic layer and two presentation layers, one on top of ASP.NET and the other with WPF; and the data access layer might be implemented first using NHibernate and later on switched for Entity Framework Code First. These changes are not that rare, so care should be taken in designing the system to make them possible. Web Forms are difficult to test, because it relies on event handlers which are only fired in web contexts, when a form is submitted or a page is requested. You can call them with reflection, but you have to set up a number of mocking objects first, HttpContext.Current first coming to my mind. MVC, on the other hand, makes testing controllers a breeze, so much that it even includes a template option for generating boilerplate unit test classes up from start. A well designed – from the unit test point of view - controller will receive everything it needs to work as parameters to its action methods, so you can pass whatever values you need very easily. That doesn’t mean, of course, that everything can be tested: views, for instance, are difficult to test without actually accessing the site, but MVC offers the possibility to compile views at build time, so that, at least, you know you don’t have syntax errors beforehand. Myths Some popular but unfounded myths around MVC include: You cannot use controls in MVC: not true, actually, you can, at least with the Web Forms (ASPX) view engine; the declaration and usage is exactly the same as with Web Forms; You cannot specify a base class for a view: with the ASPX view engine you can use the Inherits Page directive, with this and all the others you can use the pageBaseType and userControlBaseType attributes of the <page> element; MVC shields you from doing “bad things” on your views: well, you can place any code on a code block, at least with the ASPX view engine (you may be starting to see a pattern here), even data access code; The model is the entity model, tied to an O/RM: the model is actually any class that you use to pass values to a view, including (but generally not recommended) an entity model; Unit tests come with no cost: unit tests generally don’t cover the UI, although there are frameworks just for that (see WatiN, for example); also, for some tests, you will have to mock or replace either the HttpContext.Current property or the HttpContextBase class yourself; Everything is testable: views aren’t, without accessing the site; MVC relies on HTML5/some_cool_new_javascript_framework: there is no relation whatsoever, MVC renders whatever you want it to render and does not require any framework to be present. The thing is, the subsequent releases of MVC happened in a time when Microsoft has become much more involved in standards, so the files and technologies included in the Visual Studio templates reflect this, and it just happens to work well with jQuery, for example. Conclusion Well, this is how I see it. Some folks may think that I am being too rude on MVC, probably because I don’t like it, but that’s not true: like I said, I do like MVC and I am starting my new projects with it. I just don’t want to go along with that those that say that MVC is much superior to Web Forms, in fact, some things you can do much more easily with Web Forms than with MVC. I will be more than happy to hear what you think on this!

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