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• Availability Best Practices on Oracle VM Server for SPARC

  - by jsavit

  This is the first of a series of blog posts on configuring Oracle VM Server for SPARC (also called Logical Domains) for availability. This series will show how to how to plan for availability, improve serviceability, avoid single points of failure, and provide resiliency against hardware and software failures. Availability is a broad topic that has filled entire books, so these posts will focus on aspects specifically related to Oracle VM Server for SPARC. The goal is to improve Reliability, Availability and Serviceability (RAS): An article defining RAS can be found here. Oracle VM Server for SPARC Principles for Availability Let's state some guiding principles for availability that apply to Oracle VM Server for SPARC: Avoid Single Points Of Failure (SPOFs). Systems should be configured so a component failure does not result in a loss of application service. The general method to avoid SPOFs is to provide redundancy so service can continue without interruption if a component fails. For a critical application there may be multiple levels of redundancy so multiple failures can be tolerated. Oracle VM Server for SPARC makes it possible to configure systems that avoid SPOFs. Configure for availability at a level of resource and effort consistent with business needs. Effort and resource should be consistent with business requirements. Production has different availability requirements than test/development, so it's worth expending resources to provide higher availability. Even within the category of production there may be different levels of criticality, outage tolerances, recovery and repair time requirements. Keep in mind that a simple design may be more understandable and effective than a complex design that attempts to "do everything". Design for availability at the appropriate tier or level of the platform stack. Availability can be provided in the application, in the database, or in the virtualization, hardware and network layers they depend on - or using a combination of all of them. It may not be necessary to engineer resilient virtualization for stateless web applications applications where availability is provided by a network load balancer, or for enterprise applications like Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) and WebLogic that provide their own resiliency. It's (often) the same architecture whether virtual or not: For example, providing resiliency against a lost device path or failing disk media is done for the same reasons and may use the same design whether in a domain or not. It's (often) the same technique whether using domains or not: Many configuration steps are the same. For example, configuring IPMP or creating a redundant ZFS pool is pretty much the same within the guest whether you're in a guest domain or not. There are configuration steps and choices for provisioning the guest with the virtual network and disk devices, which we will discuss. Sometimes it is different using domains: There are new resources to configure. Most notable is the use of alternate service domains, which provides resiliency in case of a domain failure, and also permits improved serviceability via "rolling upgrades". This is an important differentiator between Oracle VM Server for SPARC and traditional virtual machine environments where all virtual I/O is provided by a monolithic infrastructure that itself is a SPOF. Alternate service domains are widely used to provide resiliency in production logical domains environments. Some things are done via logical domains commands, and some are done in the guest: For example, with Oracle VM Server for SPARC we provide multiple network connections to the guest, and then configure network resiliency in the guest via IP Multi Pathing (IPMP) - essentially the same as for non-virtual systems. On the other hand, we configure virtual disk availability in the virtualization layer, and the guest sees an already-resilient disk without being aware of the details. These blogs will discuss configuration details like this. Live migration is not "high availability" in the sense of "continuous availability": If the server is down, then you don't live migrate from it! (A cluster or VM restart elsewhere would be used). However, live migration can be part of the RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability) picture by improving Serviceability - you can move running domains off of a box before planned service or maintenance. The blog Best Practices - Live Migration on Oracle VM Server for SPARC discusses this. Topics Here are some of the topics that will be covered: Network availability using IP Multipathing and aggregates Disk path availability using virtual disks defined with multipath groups ("mpgroup") Disk media resiliency configuring for redundant disks that can tolerate media loss Multiple service domains - this is probably the most significant item and the one most specific to Oracle VM Server for SPARC. It is very widely deployed in production environments as the means to provide network and disk availability, but it can be confusing. Subsequent articles will describe why and how to configure multiple service domains. Note, for the sake of precision: an I/O domain is any domain that has a physical I/O resource (such as a PCIe bus root complex). A service domain is a domain providing virtual device services to other domains; it is almost always an I/O domain too (so it can have something to serve). Resources Here are some important links; we'll be drawing on their content in the next several articles: Oracle VM Server for SPARC Documentation Maximizing Application Reliability and Availability with SPARC T5 Servers whitepaper by Gary Combs Maximizing Application Reliability and Availability with the SPARC M5-32 Server whitepaper by Gary Combs Summary Oracle VM Server for SPARC offers features that can be used to provide highly-available environments. This and the following blog entries will describe how to plan and deploy them.

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• Adventures in Lab Management Configuration: Part 2 of 3

  - by Enrique Lima

  The first post was the high level overview. Now it is time for the details on what was done to the existing CMMI Project based on CMMI v 4.2. The first step was to go into Visual Studio, then from the Team Project Collection Settings and then to the Process Template Manager.  Once there, it was a matter of selecting the appropriate template (MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0) and download to a point I could reference later (for example C:\Templates). Then on to using the steps from the guidance post. Since I was using an x64 deployment, I will make reference to the path as <toolpath>, however the actual path to reference in a 64-bit environment is “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE”. As I mentioned on the previous post, make sure to first perform a backup of the Configuration, Collection and Warehouse DBs.  If you did not apply any changes to the names and such, then you will find those as tfs_Configuration, tfs_DefaultCollection and tfs_Warehouse. Now, the work needed with the witadmin tool: That includes the uploading of the structures that differ from v4.2 to v5.0 There is likely going to be an issue with the naming of some fields. For example, TFS 2010 likes something along the lines of “Area ID”, whereas TFS 2008 would have had it as “AreaID”.  So, this will need to be corrected.  Some posts will have you go through this after the errors pop up.  I would recommend doing this process prior to executing the importwitd process.  witadmin listfields /collection:<path to collection> > c:\ListFields.txt Review the following fields: AreaID, review the Name property and validate if it states “AreaID”, the you will need to rename the Name field to reflect “Area ID”. ExternalLinkCount, RelatedLinkCount, HyperLinkCount, AttachedFileCount and IterationID would be the other fields to check. To correct the issue, then execute the following: witadmin changefield /collection:<path to collection> /n:"System.ExternalLinkCount" /name:"External Link Count" Repeat for Area ID, Related Link Count, Hyperlink Count, Attached File Count and Iteration ID.  Once this is done, proceed with the commands below. witadmin importwitd /collection:<path to collection> /p:<project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\WorkItem Tracking\TypeDefinitions\TestCase.xml" witadmin importwitd /collection:<path to collection> /p:<project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\WorkItem Tracking\TypeDefinitions\SharedStep.xml" witadmin importcategories /collection:<path to collection> /p:<project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\WorkItem Tracking\categories.xml" Modifications to the Bug Definition: First step is to export the existing definition. witadmin exportwitd /collection<path to collection> /p:<project> /n:bug /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\MyBug.xml" Make modifications to recently exported MyBug.xml file.  Details for the modification are here:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff452591.aspx#ModifyTask Once the changes are done, proceed with the import command witadmin importwitd /collection:<path to collection> /p: <project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\MyBug.xml" Repeat the process for the the Scenario or Requirement Type Definition witadmin exportwitd /collection<path to collection> /p:<project> /n:requirement /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\MyRequirement.xml" Make modifications to recently exported MyRequirement.xml file.  Details for the modification are here:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff452591.aspx#ModifyTask Once the changes are done, proceed with the import command witadmin importwitd /collection:<path to collection> /p: <project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\MyRequirement.xml" Provide the Bug Field Mapping definition, after creating the file as specified here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff452591.aspx#TCMBugFieldMapping tcm bugfieldmapping /import /mappingfile:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\bugfieldmappings.xml" /collection:<path to collection> /teamproject:<project name>

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• Subterranean IL: Generics and array covariance

  - by Simon Cooper

  Arrays in .NET are curious beasts. They are the only built-in collection types in the CLR, and SZ-arrays (single dimension, zero-indexed) have their own commands and IL syntax. One of their stranger properties is they have a kind of built-in covariance long before generic variance was added in .NET 4. However, this causes a subtle but important problem with generics. First of all, we need to briefly recap on array covariance. SZ-array covariance To demonstrate, I'll tweak the classes I introduced in my previous posts: public class IncrementableClass { public int Value; public virtual void Increment(int incrementBy) { Value += incrementBy; } } public class IncrementableClassx2 : IncrementableClass { public override void Increment(int incrementBy) { base.Increment(incrementBy); base.Increment(incrementBy); } } In the CLR, SZ-arrays of reference types are implicitly convertible to arrays of the element's supertypes, all the way up to object (note that this does not apply to value types). That is, an instance of IncrementableClassx2[] can be used wherever a IncrementableClass[] or object[] is required. When an SZ-array could be used in this fashion, a run-time type check is performed when you try to insert an object into the array to make sure you're not trying to insert an instance of IncrementableClass into an IncrementableClassx2[]. This check means that the following code will compile fine but will fail at run-time: IncrementableClass[] array = new IncrementableClassx2[1]; array[0] = new IncrementableClass(); // throws ArrayTypeMismatchException These checks are enforced by the various stelem* and ldelem* il instructions in such a way as to ensure you can't insert a IncrementableClass into a IncrementableClassx2[]. For the rest of this post, however, I'm going to concentrate on the ldelema instruction. ldelema This instruction pops the array index (int32) and array reference (O) off the stack, and pushes a pointer (&) to the corresponding array element. However, unlike the ldelem instruction, the instruction's type argument must match the run-time array type exactly. This is because, once you've got a managed pointer, you can use that pointer to both load and store values in that array element using the ldind* and stind* (load/store indirect) instructions. As the same pointer can be used for both input and output to the array, the type argument to ldelema must be invariant. At the time, this was a perfectly reasonable restriction, and maintained array type-safety within managed code. However, along came generics, and with it the constrained callvirt instruction. So, what happens when we combine array covariance and constrained callvirt? .method public static void CallIncrementArrayValue() { // IncrementableClassx2[] arr = new IncrementableClassx2[1] ldc.i4.1 newarr IncrementableClassx2 // arr[0] = new IncrementableClassx2(); dup newobj instance void IncrementableClassx2::.ctor() ldc.i4.0 stelem.ref // IncrementArrayValue<IncrementableClass>(arr, 0) // here, we're treating an IncrementableClassx2[] as IncrementableClass[] dup ldc.i4.0 call void IncrementArrayValue<class IncrementableClass>(!!0[],int32) // ... ret } .method public static void IncrementArrayValue<(IncrementableClass) T>( !!T[] arr, int32 index) { // arr[index].Increment(1) ldarg.0 ldarg.1 ldelema !!T ldc.i4.1 constrained. !!T callvirt instance void IIncrementable::Increment(int32) ret } And the result: Unhandled Exception: System.ArrayTypeMismatchException: Attempted to access an element as a type incompatible with the array. at IncrementArrayValue[T](T[] arr, Int32 index) at CallIncrementArrayValue() Hmm. We're instantiating the generic method as IncrementArrayValue<IncrementableClass>, but passing in an IncrementableClassx2[], hence the ldelema instruction is failing as it's expecting an IncrementableClass[]. On features and feature conflicts What we've got here is a conflict between existing behaviour (ldelema ensuring type safety on covariant arrays) and new behaviour (managed pointers to object references used for every constrained callvirt on generic type instances). And, although this is an edge case, there is no general workaround. The generic method could be hidden behind several layers of assemblies, wrappers and interfaces that make it a requirement to use array covariance when calling the generic method. Furthermore, this will only fail at runtime, whereas compile-time safety is what generics were designed for! The solution is the readonly. prefix instruction. This modifies the ldelema instruction to ignore the exact type check for arrays of reference types, and so it lets us take the address of array elements using a covariant type to the actual run-time type of the array: .method public static void IncrementArrayValue<(IncrementableClass) T>( !!T[] arr, int32 index) { // arr[index].Increment(1) ldarg.0 ldarg.1 readonly. ldelema !!T ldc.i4.1 constrained. !!T callvirt instance void IIncrementable::Increment(int32) ret } But what about type safety? In return for ignoring the type check, the resulting controlled mutability pointer can only be used in the following situations: As the object parameter to ldfld, ldflda, stfld, call and constrained callvirt instructions As the pointer parameter to ldobj or ldind* As the source parameter to cpobj In other words, the only operations allowed are those that read from the pointer; stind* and similar that alter the pointer itself are banned. This ensures that the array element we're pointing to won't be changed to anything untoward, and so type safety within the array is maintained. This is a typical example of the maxim that whenever you add a feature to a program, you have to consider how that feature interacts with every single one of the existing features. Although an edge case, the readonly. prefix instruction ensures that generics and array covariance work together and that compile-time type safety is maintained. Tune in next time for a look at the .ctor generic type constraint, and what it means.

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• HP Pavilion tx2000 - Wifi adapter no longer works after moving from 12.04 to a 12.10 clean install

  - by Marek L.

  I have a HP Pavilion tx2000 that I have been running Ubuntu 12.04 on for a couple of months without any problems (wifi worked great) until yesterday when my hard drive failed. I replaced the hard drive and decided to install Ubuntu 12.10. Unlike 12.04, the wifi did not work after the installation finished and all the updates where installed (over Ethernet). The network drop down in the top right didn't even show a wireless option. I Googled about for a bit and found some solutions that seemed like they might work. Unfortunately they did not. Here is what I tried: sudo apt-get remove bcmwl-kernel-source sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-lpphy-installer Restart the computer. And the wifi still didn't work. At which point I panicked a bit and tried to undo the previous commands by running: sudo apt-get remove b43-fwcutter firmware-b43-lpphy-installer sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source Restart the computer. The wifi still doesn't work. This is where I stopped because I have no idea what I am doing and don't want to mess something up. The network drop down still doesn't show a wireless option and the hardware wifi switch on the laptop is amber (it turns blue when the wifi is on). Using the hardware switch does not change the color. Output from: sudo lspci ... 08:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01) ... Output from: sudo lshw -class network *-network UNCLAIMED description: Network controller product: BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:08:00.0 version: 01 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list configuration: latency=0 resources: memory:d1100000-d1103fff ... Output from: sudo rfkill list all 0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: yes UPDATE: After writing up this question tried the following command: sudo rfkill unblock all At first it didn't do anything but after running it about four times, sudo rfkill list all now returns: 0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no But the network menu still does not have a wireless option and the hardware switch still glows amber. Pushing the hardware switch turns the hard block back on and I have to run sudo rfkill unblock all multiple times again to turn it off. Any help is appreciated! Update 2: Full output from sudo lspci -nn: 00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 Host Bridge [1022:9600] 00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780/RS880 PCI to PCI bridge (int gfx) [1022:9602] 00:04.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780/RS880 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 0) [1022:9604] 00:05.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780/RS880 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 1) [1022:9605] 00:06.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 2) [1022:9606] 00:11.0 SATA controller [0106]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 SATA Controller [AHCI mode] [1002:4391] 00:12.0 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller [1002:4397] 00:12.1 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0 USB OHCI1 Controller [1002:4398] 00:12.2 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller [1002:4396] 00:13.0 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller [1002:4397] 00:13.1 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0 USB OHCI1 Controller [1002:4398] 00:13.2 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller [1002:4396] 00:14.0 SMBus [0c05]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 SMBus Controller [1002:4385] (rev 3a) 00:14.1 IDE interface [0101]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 IDE Controller [1002:439c] 00:14.2 Audio device [0403]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) [1002:4383] 00:14.3 ISA bridge [0601]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 LPC host controller [1002:439d] 00:14.4 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge [1002:4384] 00:14.5 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI2 Controller [1002:4399] 00:18.0 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor HyperTransport Configuration [1022:1300] (rev 40) 00:18.1 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor Address Map [1022:1301] 00:18.2 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor DRAM Controller [1022:1302] 00:18.3 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor Miscellaneous Control [1022:1303] 00:18.4 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor Link Control [1022:1304] 01:05.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RS780M/RS780MN [Mobility Radeon HD 3200 Graphics] [1002:9612] 08:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:432b] (rev 01) 09:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller [10ec:8168] (rev 02)

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• Quicktips 1: Windows 7 Libraries; New website

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  I’m working on several large posts right now. So in the interim, I’ve decided to do shorter posts that contain something I find very helpful. This is the first. I’ve been using Windows 7 since April 2010. It’s the first OS I’ve ever worked with that I actually enjoy. I’ve used many over the years (KERNAL; PC DOS; MS-DOS 3.x+; Windows 3.0, 3.11, 95, 98, 98 SE, Me, NT 3.51, NT 4, 2000, XP, Vista, 7; various GNU/Linux distros starting with Debian 1.2 – most recently Ubuntu 10.04; ProDOS, Mac OS 9.X, Mac OS X (through 10.4); SunOS, Solaris; AIX, z/OS; OpenVMS). Some were frustrating. Some tolerable. Some were “nice except for…”. OS X actually started out as seemingly “nice” until every single release contained a breaking change to some major API and they then decided to flip-off everyone who had bought a Mac as little as two years earlier with the release of Snow Leopard without PPC support. Windows 7 is the first one that’s just “nice” without any qualifiers. There are so many little features that add up to make it nice. Today’s Quicktip is one of them. Quicktip 1: Create a Library for your Code One thing I particularly like about Windows 7 is the Libraries feature in Explorer. Specifically the fact that you can create custom ones. I used to spend a lot of time opening new Explorer windows and navigating my various Visual Studio projects folders. Custom libraries allowed me to simplify that whole process. I now simply go to my “Code” library and there it all is. Adding a new library is easy. Open an Explorer window. If you aren’t in your Libraries when it opens, navigate to Libraries. Click the “New library” button. Give it a name. Then right click on the new library you created and go to “Properties”. Click the “Include a folder…” button. Choose the folder you want and press “Include folder”. Voilà! If you wish to add more, simply click “Include a folder…” again and repeat. It’s true that this is just a small time saver. But it’s one of those things that just adds a really nice touch. ------------------------ In a separate note, just before Christmas I finally finished and published my new website: http://www.bobtacoindustries.com/ . I waited to post here about it until I found time to incorporate a few things I hadn’t had the time to do when I pushed it out for its “soft open”. Most of them are now done and so my site is now formally open. I have no plans or intentions of moving my blog ( http://blog.bobtacoindustries.com/ points here). I quite like it here, both in terms of the interface and also in terms of the concept (and realization thereof) of pooling geek bloggers to create a pool of knowledge and helpful tips, tricks, techniques, and advice. I created it simply because I felt that it was time to have a website as I venture further into my return to the land of software development. The “For Devs” section should hopefully be useful to developers, particularly the links section. It’s my curated list of sites that I regularly visit to solve problems, to help answer questions on Twitter and the AppHub forums, and to learn new things. I’ll be adding links to it periodically and will be including topic areas as I become acquainted with them enough to form a proper list. WPF will likely be the first topic area added. If there are any links you think I should add to the existing topics, let me know! I warn in advance that I’m less inclined to add blogs; there are simply too many good blogs and I do not want to have hundreds per topic area. So blogs are limited primarily, though not exclusively, to acknowledged experts in the subject area who generally blog regularly about it and who usually are part of the team that develops the product or technology in question. I’m much more amenable to including individual blogs posts in the techniques subcategory in the appropriate topic area. Ultimately, it’s a collection of things I find interesting and helpful. So please no hard feelings if I don’t add a link you think is awesome. I may well think it’s awesome too, but conclude that it doesn’t fit with my goals for the dev links area.

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• [Windows 8] An application bar toggle button

  - by Benjamin Roux

  To stay in the application bar stuff, here’s another useful control which enable to create an application bar button that can be toggled between two different contents/styles/commands (used to create a favorite/unfavorite or a play/pause button for example). namespace Indeed.Controls { public class AppBarToggleButton : Button { public bool IsChecked { get { return (bool)GetValue(IsCheckedProperty); } set { SetValue(IsCheckedProperty, value); } } public static readonly DependencyProperty IsCheckedProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("IsChecked", typeof(bool), typeof(AppBarToggleButton), new PropertyMetadata(false, (o, e) => (o as AppBarToggleButton).IsCheckedChanged())); public string CheckedContent { get { return (string)GetValue(CheckedContentProperty); } set { SetValue(CheckedContentProperty, value); } } public static readonly DependencyProperty CheckedContentProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("CheckedContent", typeof(string), typeof(AppBarToggleButton), null); public ICommand CheckedCommand { get { return (ICommand)GetValue(CheckedCommandProperty); } set { SetValue(CheckedCommandProperty, value); } } public static readonly DependencyProperty CheckedCommandProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("CheckedCommand", typeof(ICommand), typeof(AppBarToggleButton), null); public Style CheckedStyle { get { return (Style)GetValue(CheckedStyleProperty); } set { SetValue(CheckedStyleProperty, value); } } public static readonly DependencyProperty CheckedStyleProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("CheckedStyle", typeof(Style), typeof(AppBarToggleButton), null); public bool AutoToggle { get { return (bool)GetValue(AutoToggleProperty); } set { SetValue(AutoToggleProperty, value); } } public static readonly DependencyProperty AutoToggleProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("AutoToggle", typeof(bool), typeof(AppBarToggleButton), null); private object content; private ICommand command; private Style style; private void IsCheckedChanged() { if (IsChecked) { // backup the current content and command content = Content; command = Command; style = Style; if (CheckedStyle == null) Content = CheckedContent; else Style = CheckedStyle; Command = CheckedCommand; } else { if (CheckedStyle == null) Content = content; else Style = style; Command = command; } } protected override void OnTapped(Windows.UI.Xaml.Input.TappedRoutedEventArgs e) { base.OnTapped(e); if (AutoToggle) IsChecked = !IsChecked; } } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } To use it, it’s very simple. <ic:AppBarToggleButton Style="{StaticResource PlayAppBarButtonStyle}" CheckedStyle="{StaticResource PauseAppBarButtonStyle}" Command="{Binding Path=PlayCommand}" CheckedCommand="{Binding Path=PauseCommand}" IsChecked="{Binding Path=IsPlaying}" /> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } When the IsPlaying property (in my ViewModel) is true the button becomes a Pause button, when it’s false it becomes a Play button. Warning: Just make sure that the IsChecked property is set in last in your control !! If you don’t use style you can alternatively use Content and CheckedContent. Furthermore you can set the AutoToggle to true if you don’t want to control is IsChecked property through binding. With this control and the AppBarPopupButton, you can now create awesome application bar for your apps ! Stay tuned for more awesome Windows 8 tricks !

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• Composing Silverlight Applications With MEF

  - by PeterTweed

  Anyone who has written an application with complexity enough to warrant multiple controls on multiple pages/forms should understand the benefit of composite application development.  That is defining your application architecture that can be separated into separate pieces each with it’s own distinct purpose that can then be “composed” together into the solution. Composition can be useful in any layer of the application, from the presentation layer, the business layer, common services or data access.  Historically people have had different options to achieve composing applications from distinct well known pieces – their own version of dependency injection, containers to aid with composition like Unity, the composite application guidance for WPF and Silverlight and before that the composite application block. Microsoft has been working on another mechanism to aid composition and extension of applications for some time now – the Managed Extensibility Framework or MEF for short.  With Silverlight 4 it is part of the Silverlight environment.  MEF allows a much simplified mechanism for composition and extensibility compared to other mechanisms – which has always been the primary issue for adoption of the earlier mechanisms/frameworks. This post will guide you through the simple use of MEF for the scenario of composition of an application – using exports, imports and composition.  Steps: 1.     Create a new Silverlight 4 application. 2.     Add references to the following assemblies: System.ComponentModel.Composition.dll System.ComponentModel.Composition.Initialization.dll 3.     Add a new user control called LeftControl. 4.     Replace the LayoutRoot Grid with the following xaml:     <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Beige" Margin="40" >         <Button Content="Left Content" Margin="30"></Button>     </Grid> 5.     Add the following statement to the top of the LeftControl.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 6.     Add the following attribute to the LeftControl class     [Export(typeof(LeftControl))]   This attribute tells MEF that the type LeftControl will be exported – i.e. made available for other applications to import and compose into the application. 7.     Add a new user control called RightControl. 8.     Replace the LayoutRoot Grid with the following xaml:     <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Green" Margin="40"  >         <TextBlock Margin="40" Foreground="White" Text="Right Control" FontSize="16" VerticalAlignment="Center" HorizontalAlignment="Center" ></TextBlock>     </Grid> 9.     Add the following statement to the top of the RightControl.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 10.   Add the following attribute to the RightControl class     [Export(typeof(RightControl))] 11.   Add the following xaml to the LayoutRoot Grid in MainPage.xaml:         <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Center">             <Border Name="LeftContent" Background="Red" BorderBrush="Gray" CornerRadius="20"></Border>             <Border Name="RightContent" Background="Red" BorderBrush="Gray" CornerRadius="20"></Border>         </StackPanel>   The borders will hold the controls that will be imported and composed via MEF. 12.   Add the following statement to the top of the MainPage.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 13.   Add the following properties to the MainPage class:         [Import(typeof(LeftControl))]         public LeftControl LeftUserControl { get; set; }         [Import(typeof(RightControl))]         public RightControl RightUserControl { get; set; }   This defines properties accepting LeftControl and RightControl types.  The attrributes are used to tell MEF the discovered type that should be applied to the property when composition occurs. 14.   Replace the MainPage constructore with the following code:         public MainPage()         {             InitializeComponent();             CompositionInitializer.SatisfyImports(this);             LeftContent.Child = LeftUserControl;             RightContent.Child = RightUserControl;         }   The CompositionInitializer.SatisfyImports(this) function call tells MEF to discover types related to the declared imports for this object (the MainPage object).  At that point, types matching those specified in the import defintions are discovered in the executing assembly location of the application and instantiated and assigned to the matching properties of the current object. 15.   Run the application and you will see the left control and right control types displayed in the MainPage:   Congratulations!  You have used MEF to dynamically compose user controls into a parent control in a composite application model. In the next post we will build on this topic to cover using MEF to compose Silverlight applications dynamically in download on demand scenarios – so .xap packages can be downloaded only when needed, avoiding large initial download for the main application xap. Take the Slalom Challenge at www.slalomchallenge.com!

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• SQL ADO.NET shortcut extensions (old school!)

  - by Jeff

  As much as I love me some ORM's (I've used LINQ to SQL quite a bit, and for the MSDN/TechNet Profile and Forums we're using NHibernate more and more), there are times when it's appropriate, and in some ways more simple, to just throw up so old school ADO.NET connections, commands, readers and such. It still feels like a pain though to new up all the stuff, make sure it's closed, blah blah blah. It's pretty much the least favorite task of writing data access code. To minimize the pain, I have a set of extension methods that I like to use that drastically reduce the code you have to write. Here they are... public static void Using(this SqlConnection connection, Action<SqlConnection> action) {     connection.Open();     action(connection);     connection.Close(); } public static SqlCommand Command(this SqlConnection connection, string sql){    var command = new SqlCommand(sql, connection);    return command;}public static SqlCommand AddParameter(this SqlCommand command, string parameterName, object value){    command.Parameters.AddWithValue(parameterName, value);    return command;}public static object ExecuteAndReturnIdentity(this SqlCommand command){    if (command.Connection == null)        throw new Exception("SqlCommand has no connection.");    command.ExecuteNonQuery();    command.Parameters.Clear();    command.CommandText = "SELECT @@IDENTITY";    var result = command.ExecuteScalar();    return result;}public static SqlDataReader ReadOne(this SqlDataReader reader, Action<SqlDataReader> action){    if (reader.Read())        action(reader);    reader.Close();    return reader;}public static SqlDataReader ReadAll(this SqlDataReader reader, Action<SqlDataReader> action){    while (reader.Read())        action(reader);    reader.Close();    return reader;} It has been awhile since I've really revisited these, so you will likely find opportunity for further optimization. The bottom line here is that you can chain together a bunch of these methods to make a much more concise database call, in terms of the code on your screen, anyway. Here are some examples: public Dictionary<string, string> Get(){    var dictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>();    _sqlHelper.GetConnection().Using(connection =>        connection.Command("SELECT Setting, [Value] FROM Settings")            .ExecuteReader()            .ReadAll(r => dictionary.Add(r.GetString(0), r.GetString(1))));    return dictionary;} or... public void ChangeName(User user, string newName){    _sqlHelper.GetConnection().Using(connection =>         connection.Command("UPDATE Users SET Name = @Name WHERE UserID = @UserID")            .AddParameter("@Name", newName)            .AddParameter("@UserID", user.UserID)            .ExecuteNonQuery());} The _sqlHelper.GetConnection() is just some other code that gets a connection object for you. You might have an even cleaner way to take that step out entirely. This looks more fluent, and the real magic sauce for me is the reader bits where you can put any kind of arbitrary method in there to iterate over the results.

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• Atheros Wireless card shows up as two different models?

  - by geermc4

  Hi I've been fighting these wireless drivers for a few days and just recently i noticed that the model the Wireless controller appears in lspci is different sometimes. This is the data i have after installing Ubuntu Server 64 bit ~# lspci -k .... 04:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01) Subsystem: AzureWave Device 1d89 Kernel driver in use: ath9k Kernel modules: ath9k ran some updates, restarted, all was good, all though it did say that linux-headers-server linux-image-server linux-server where beeing kept back. After that i installed ubuntu-desktop (aptitude install ubuntu-desktop --without-recommends) restarted and not only is the wireless not working anymore, but the hardware is listed as a different card ~# lspci -k .... 04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5008 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01) has no available drivers for it, still i tried to modprobe ath9k, they show up in lsmod as loaded, but still iw list shows nothing. this is what it looked like before the ubuntu-desktop instalation Wiphy phy0 Band 1: Capabilities: 0x11ce HT20/HT40 SM Power Save disabled RX HT40 SGI TX STBC RX STBC 1-stream Max AMSDU length: 3839 bytes DSSS/CCK HT40 Maximum RX AMPDU length 65535 bytes (exponent: 0x003) Minimum RX AMPDU time spacing: 8 usec (0x06) HT TX/RX MCS rate indexes supported: 0-7 Frequencies: * 2412 MHz [1] (14.0 dBm) * 2417 MHz [2] (15.0 dBm) * 2422 MHz [3] (15.0 dBm) * 2427 MHz [4] (15.0 dBm) * 2432 MHz [5] (15.0 dBm) * 2437 MHz [6] (15.0 dBm) * 2442 MHz [7] (15.0 dBm) * 2447 MHz [8] (15.0 dBm) * 2452 MHz [9] (15.0 dBm) * 2457 MHz [10] (15.0 dBm) * 2462 MHz [11] (15.0 dBm) * 2467 MHz [12] (15.0 dBm) (passive scanning) * 2472 MHz [13] (14.0 dBm) (passive scanning) * 2484 MHz [14] (17.0 dBm) (passive scanning) Bitrates (non-HT): * 1.0 Mbps * 2.0 Mbps (short preamble supported) * 5.5 Mbps (short preamble supported) * 11.0 Mbps (short preamble supported) * 6.0 Mbps * 9.0 Mbps * 12.0 Mbps * 18.0 Mbps * 24.0 Mbps * 36.0 Mbps * 48.0 Mbps * 54.0 Mbps max # scan SSIDs: 4 max scan IEs length: 2257 bytes Coverage class: 0 (up to 0m) Supported Ciphers: * WEP40 (00-0f-ac:1) * WEP104 (00-0f-ac:5) * TKIP (00-0f-ac:2) * CCMP (00-0f-ac:4) * CMAC (00-0f-ac:6) Available Antennas: TX 0x1 RX 0x3 Configured Antennas: TX 0x1 RX 0x3 Supported interface modes: * IBSS * managed * AP * AP/VLAN * WDS * monitor * mesh point * P2P-client * P2P-GO software interface modes (can always be added): * AP/VLAN * monitor interface combinations are not supported Supported commands: * new_interface * set_interface * new_key * new_beacon * new_station * new_mpath * set_mesh_params * set_bss * authenticate * associate * deauthenticate * disassociate * join_ibss * join_mesh * remain_on_channel * set_tx_bitrate_mask * action * frame_wait_cancel * set_wiphy_netns * set_channel * set_wds_peer * connect * disconnect Supported TX frame types: * IBSS: 0x0000 0x0010 0x0020 0x0030 0x0040 0x0050 0x0060 0x0070 0x0080 0x0090 0x00a0 0x00b0 0x00c0 0x00d0 0x00e0 0x00f0 * managed: 0x0000 0x0010 0x0020 0x0030 0x0040 0x0050 0x0060 0x0070 0x0080 0x0090 0x00a0 0x00b0 0x00c0 0x00d0 0x00e0 0x00f0 * AP: 0x0000 0x0010 0x0020 0x0030 0x0040 0x0050 0x0060 0x0070 0x0080 0x0090 0x00a0 0x00b0 0x00c0 0x00d0 0x00e0 0x00f0 * AP/VLAN: 0x0000 0x0010 0x0020 0x0030 0x0040 0x0050 0x0060 0x0070 0x0080 0x0090 0x00a0 0x00b0 0x00c0 0x00d0 0x00e0 0x00f0 * mesh point: 0x0000 0x0010 0x0020 0x0030 0x0040 0x0050 0x0060 0x0070 0x0080 0x0090 0x00a0 0x00b0 0x00c0 0x00d0 0x00e0 0x00f0 * P2P-client: 0x0000 0x0010 0x0020 0x0030 0x0040 0x0050 0x0060 0x0070 0x0080 0x0090 0x00a0 0x00b0 0x00c0 0x00d0 0x00e0 0x00f0 * P2P-GO: 0x0000 0x0010 0x0020 0x0030 0x0040 0x0050 0x0060 0x0070 0x0080 0x0090 0x00a0 0x00b0 0x00c0 0x00d0 0x00e0 0x00f0 Supported RX frame types: * IBSS: 0x00d0 * managed: 0x0040 0x00d0 * AP: 0x0000 0x0020 0x0040 0x00a0 0x00b0 0x00c0 0x00d0 * AP/VLAN: 0x0000 0x0020 0x0040 0x00a0 0x00b0 0x00c0 0x00d0 * mesh point: 0x00b0 0x00c0 0x00d0 * P2P-client: 0x0040 0x00d0 * P2P-GO: 0x0000 0x0020 0x0040 0x00a0 0x00b0 0x00c0 0x00d0 Device supports RSN-IBSS. What's with the hardware change? If it has 2, how can i make the AR9285 always load and disable AR5008, or, is it the same and it's just showing it different? :| Oh and I've tried this on Ubuntu 10.04 server, xubuntu 12.04, ubuntu 12.04 desktop and server. Thanks in advanced. -- Here's some more info, i have it setup in 2 hard drives, 1 works and the other one i'm using to figure it out The one that works... # lshw -class network *-network description: Ethernet interface product: RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 06 serial: 54:04:a6:a3:3b:96 size: 1Gbit/s capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full firmware=rtl_nic/rtl8168e-2.fw ip=192.168.2.147 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=1Gbit/s resources: irq:43 ioport:e000(size=256) memory:d0004000-d0004fff memory:d0000000-d0003fff *-network description: Wireless interface product: AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) vendor: Atheros Communications Inc. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 01 serial: 74:2f:68:4a:26:73 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k driverversion=3.2.0-18-generic-pae firmware=N/A latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn resources: irq:18 memory:fea00000-fea0ffff Here's where it doesn't # lshw -class network *-network description: Ethernet interface product: RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 06 serial: 54:04:a6:a3:3b:96 size: 1Gbit/s capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full firmware=rtl_nic/rtl8168e-2.fw ip=192.168.2.160 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=1Gbit/s resources: irq:43 ioport:e000(size=256) memory:d0004000-d0004fff memory:d0000000-d0003fff *-network UNCLAIMED description: Ethernet controller product: AR5008 Wireless Network Adapter vendor: Atheros Communications Inc. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0 version: 01 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list configuration: latency=0 resources: memory:fea00000-fea0ffff Update I've noticed that if i blacklist the ath9k and ath9k_common modules lspci gives me the AR9285, but then I need to modprobe ath9k for it to work, does this make any sense? If so, why?

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• ReSharper C# Live Template for Read-Only Dependency Property and Routed Event Boilerplate

  - by Bart Read

  Following on from my previous post, where I shared a Live Template for quickly declaring a normal read-write dependency property and its associated property change event boilerplate, here's an unsurprisingly similar template for creating a read-only dependency property.        #region $PROPNAME$ Read-Only Property and Property Change Routed Event        private static readonly DependencyPropertyKey $PROPNAME$PropertyKey =                                             DependencyProperty.RegisterReadOnly(             "$PROPNAME$", typeof ( $PROPTYPE$ ), typeof ( $DECLARING_TYPE$ ),             new PropertyMetadata( $DEF_VALUE$ , On$PROPNAME$Changed ) );       public static readonly DependencyProperty $PROPNAME$Property =                                           $PROPNAME$PropertyKey.DependencyProperty;        public $PROPTYPE$ $PROPNAME$         {             get { return ( $PROPTYPE$ ) GetValue( $PROPNAME$Property ); }             private set { SetValue( $PROPNAME$PropertyKey, value ); }         }       public static readonly RoutedEvent $PROPNAME$ChangedEvent   =                                           EventManager.RegisterRoutedEvent(           "$PROPNAME$Changed",           RoutingStrategy.$ROUTINGSTRATEGY$,           typeof( RoutedPropertyChangedEventHandler< $PROPTYPE$ > ),           typeof( $DECLARING_TYPE$ ) );       public event RoutedPropertyChangedEventHandler< $PROPTYPE$ > $PROPNAME$Changed       {           add { AddHandler( $PROPNAME$ChangedEvent, value ); }           remove { RemoveHandler( $PROPNAME$ChangedEvent, value ); }       }        private static void On$PROPNAME$Changed(           DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)         {             var $DECLARING_TYPE_var$ = d as $DECLARING_TYPE$;            var args = new RoutedPropertyChangedEventArgs< $PROPTYPE$ >(               ( $PROPTYPE$ ) e.OldValue,               ( $PROPTYPE$ ) e.NewValue );           args.RoutedEvent    = $DECLARING_TYPE$.$PROPNAME$ChangedEvent;           $DECLARING_TYPE_var$.RaiseEvent( args );$END$        }        #endregion The only real difference here is the addition of the DependencyPropertyKey, which allows your implementation to set the value of the dependency property without exposing the setter code to consumers of your type. You'll probably find that you create read-only dependency properties much less often than read-write properties, but this should still save you some typing when you do need to do so. Technorati Tags: resharper,live template,c#,dependency property,read-only,routed events,property change,boilerplate,wpf

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• Stumbling Through: Visual Studio 2010 (Part II)

  I would now like to expand a little on what I stumbled through in part I of my Visual Studio 2010 post and touch on a few other features of VS 2010.  Specifically, I want to generate some code based off of an Entity Framework model and tie it up to an actual data source.  Im not going to take the easy way and tie to a SQL Server data source, though, I will tie it to an XML data file instead.  Why?  Well, why not?  This is purely for learning, there are probably much better ways to get strongly-typed classes around XML but it will force us to go down a path less travelled and maybe learn a few things along the way.  Once we get this XML data and the means to interact with it, I will revisit data binding to this data in a WPF form and see if I cant get reading, adding, deleting, and updating working smoothly with minimal code.  To begin, I will use what was learned in the first part of this blog topic and draw out a data model for the MFL (My Football League) - I dont want the NFL to come down and sue me for using their name in this totally football-related article.  The data model looks as follows, with Teams having Players, and Players having a position and statistics for each season they played: Note that when making the associations between these entities, I was given the option to create the foreign key but I only chose to select this option for the association between Player and Position.  The reason for this is that I am picturing the XML that will contain this data to look somewhat like this: <MFL> <Position/> <Position/> <Position/> <Team>     <Player>         <Statistic/>     </Player> </Team> </MFL> Statistic will be under its associated Player node, and Player will be under its associated Team node no need to have an Id to reference it if we know it will always fall under its parent.  Position, however, is more of a lookup value that will not have any hierarchical relationship to the player.  In fact, the Position data itself may be in a completely different xml file (something Id like to play around with), so in any case, a player will need to reference the position by its Id. So now that we have a simple data model laid out, I would like to generate two things based on it:  A class for each entity with properties corresponding to each entity property An IO class with methods to get data for each entity, either all instances, by Id or by parent. Now my experience with code generation in the past has consisted of writing up little apps that use the code dom directly to regenerate code on demand (or using tools like CodeSmith).  Surely, there has got to be a more fun way to do this given that we are using the Entity Framework which already has built-in code generation for SQL Server support.  Lets start with that built-in stuff to give us a base to work off of.  Right click anywhere in the canvas of our model and select Add Code Generation Item: So just adding that code item seemed to do quite a bit towards what I was intending: It apparently generated a class for each entity, but also a whole ton more.  I mean a TON more.  Way too much complicated code was generated now that code is likely to be a black box anyway so it shouldnt matter, but we need to understand how to make this work the way we want it to work, so lets get ready to do some stumbling through that text template (tt) file. When I open the .tt file that was generated, right off the bat I realize there is going to be trouble there is no color coding, no intellisense no nothing!  That is going to make stumbling through more like groping blindly in the dark while handcuffed and hopping on one foot, which was one of the alternate titles I was considering for this blog.  Thankfully, the community comes to my rescue and I wont have to cast my mind back to the glory days of coding in VI (look it up, kids).  Using the Extension Manager (Available under the Tools menu), I did a quick search for tt editor in the Online Gallery and quickly found the Tangible T4 Editor: Downloading and installing this was a breeze, and after doing so I got some color coding and intellisense while editing the tt files.  If you will be doing any customizing of tt files, I highly recommend installing this extension.  Next, well see if that is enough help for us to tweak that tt file to do the kind of code generation that we wantDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Microsoft BUILD 2013 Day 1&ndash;Keynote

  - by Tim Murphy

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/27/microsoft-build-2013-day-1ndashkeynote.aspx This one is going to be a little long because the keynote was jam-packed so bare with me. The keynote for the first day of BUILD 2013 was kicked off by Steve Balmer.  He made it very clear that Microsoft’s focus is on accelerating its time to market with products and product updates.  His quote was that “Rapid release” is the new norm.  He continued by showing off several new Lumias that have been buzzing around the internet for a while and announce that Sprint will now be carrying the HTC 8XT and Samsung ATIV. Balmer is known for repeating words or phrase for affect.  This time it was “Rapid release, rapid release” and “Touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, …”.  This was fun, but even more fun was when he announce that all attendees would receive an Acer Iconia 8” tablet. SCORE! The next subject Balmer focused on is new apps.  The three new ones were Flipboard, Facebook and NFL Fantasy Football.  I liked the first two because these are ones that people coming from other platforms are missing.  The NFL app is great just because it targets a demographic that can be fanatical.  If these types of apps keep coming than the missing app argument goes away. While many Negative Nancy’s are describing Windows 8.1 as Windows 180 Steve Balmer chose to call it a “refined blend” as in a coffee that has been improved with a new mix.  This includes more multi-tasking options and leveraging Bing straight throughout the entire ecosystem. He ended this first section by explaining that this will also bring more Bing development opportunities to the community. Steve Balmer was followed by Julie Larson-Green who spent her time on stage selling us on Windows 8 all over again from my point of view.  Something that I would not have thought was needed until I had listened to some other attendees who had a number of concerns and complaints.  She showed a number of new gestures that will come with Windows 8.1, and while they were cool I was left wondering if they really improved the experience.  I guess only time will tell. I did like the fact that it the UI implementation to bring up “All Apps” now mirrors that of Windows Phone.  The consistency is a big step forward that I hope to see continue.  The cool factor went up from there as she swiped content from a desktop (mega-tablet) to the XBox One.  This seamless experience I believe is what is really needed for any future platform to be relevant. I was much more enthused by the presentation of Antoine Leblond who humbled us by letting us know that there are 5k new API.  How that can be or how anyone would ever use all of them is another question.  His announcement was that the Visual Studio 2013 preview would be available today along with the Windows 8.1 bits.  One of the features of VS2013 that he demonstrated is the power consumption profiler.  With battery life being a key factor with consumer consumption devices this is a welcome addition. He didn’t limit his presentation to VS2013 features though.  He showed how the Store has been redesigned to enable better search and discoverability of apps and how Win 8.1 can perform multiple screen scales depending on the resolution of the device automatically.  The last feature he demoed was the real time video streaming API which he made sure we understood by attaching a Surface to a little robot.  Oh, but there was one more thing.  Antoine and Julie announce that all attendees would also be getting Surface Pros.  BONUS! How much more could there be?  Gurdeep Singh Pall was about to pile on.  He introduced us to Bing as a platform (BaaP?).  He said if they (Microsoft) could do something with and API that is good 3rd party developers can do something that is dynamite and showed us some of the tools they had produced.  These included natural user interface improvements such as voice commands that looked to put Siri to shame.  Add to that 3D, OCR and translation capabilities and the future looks to be full of opportunities. Balmer then came out to show us one last thing.  Project Spark is a game design environment that will be available for Windows 8.1, XBox 360 and XBox One.  All I can say is that if my kids get their hands on this they are going to be able to learn some of what dad does in a much more enjoyable way. At the end of it all I was both exhausted and energized by what I saw.  What could they have possibly left for the day 2 keynote?  I hear it will feature Scott Hanselman.  If that is right we are in for a treat.  See you there. del.icio.us Tags: BUILD 2013,Windows 8.1,Winodws Phone,XAML,Keynote,Bing,Visual Studio 2013,Project Spark

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• Visual Tree Enumeration

  - by codingbloke

  I feel compelled to post this blog because I find I’m repeatedly posting this same code in silverlight and windows-phone-7 answers in Stackoverflow. One common task that we feel we need to do is burrow into the visual tree in a Silverlight or Windows Phone 7 application (actually more recently I found myself doing this in WPF as well).  This allows access to details that aren’t exposed directly by some controls.  A good example of this sort of requirement is found in the “Restoring exact scroll position of a listbox in Windows Phone 7”  question on stackoverflow.  This required that the scroll position of the scroll viewer internal to a listbox be accessed. A caveat One caveat here is that we should seriously challenge the need for this burrowing since it may indicate that there is a design problem.  Burrowing into the visual tree or indeed burrowing out to containing ancestors could represent significant coupling between module boundaries and that generally isn’t a good idea. Why isn’t this idea just not cast aside as a no-no?  Well the whole concept of a “Templated Control”, which are in extensive use in these applications, opens the coupling between the content of the visual tree and the internal code of a control.   For example, I can completely change the appearance and positioning of elements that make up a ComboBox.  The ComboBox control relies on specific template parts having set names of a specified type being present in my template.  Rightly or wrongly this does kind of give license to writing code that has similar coupling. Hasn’t this been done already? Yes it has.  There are number of blogs already out there with similar solutions.  In fact if you are using Silverlight toolkit the VisualTreeExtensions class already provides this feature.  However I prefer my specific code because of the simplicity principle I hold to.  Only write the minimum code necessary to give all the features needed.  In this case I add just two extension methods Ancestors and Descendents, note I don’t bother with “Get” or “Visual” prefixes.  Also I haven’t added Parent or Children methods nor additional “AndSelf” methods because all but Children is achievable with the addition of some other Linq methods.  I decided to give Descendents an additional overload for depth hence a depth of 1 is equivalent to Children but this overload is a little more flexible than simply Children. So here is the code:- VisualTreeEnumeration public static class VisualTreeEnumeration {     public static IEnumerable<DependencyObject> Descendents(this DependencyObject root, int depth)     {         int count = VisualTreeHelper.GetChildrenCount(root);         for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)         {             var child = VisualTreeHelper.GetChild(root, i);             yield return child;             if (depth > 0)             {                 foreach (var descendent in Descendents(child, --depth))                     yield return descendent;             }         }     }     public static IEnumerable<DependencyObject> Descendents(this DependencyObject root)     {         return Descendents(root, Int32.MaxValue);     }     public static IEnumerable<DependencyObject> Ancestors(this DependencyObject root)     {         DependencyObject current = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(root);         while (current != null)         {             yield return current;             current = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(current);         }     } }   Usage examples The following are some examples of how to combine the above extension methods with Linq to generate the other axis scenarios that tree traversal code might require. Missing Axis Scenarios var parent = control.Ancestors().Take(1).FirstOrDefault(); var children = control.Descendents(1); var previousSiblings = control.Ancestors().Take(1)     .SelectMany(p => p.Descendents(1).TakeWhile(c => c != control)); var followingSiblings = control.Ancestors().Take(1)     .SelectMany(p => p.Descendents(1).SkipWhile(c => c != control).Skip(1)); var ancestorsAndSelf = Enumerable.Repeat((DependencyObject)control, 1)     .Concat(control.Ancestors()); var descendentsAndSelf = Enumerable.Repeat((DependencyObject)control, 1)     .Concat(control.Descendents()); You might ask why I don’t just include these in the VisualTreeEnumerator.  I don’t on the principle of only including code that is actually needed.  If you find that one or more of the above  is needed in your code then go ahead and create additional methods.  One of the downsides to Extension methods is that they can make finding the method you actually want in intellisense harder. Here are some real world usage scenarios for these methods:- Real World Scenarios //Gets the internal scrollviewer of a ListBox ScrollViewer sv = someListBox.Descendents().OfType<ScrollViewer>().FirstOrDefault(); // Get all text boxes in current UserControl:- var textBoxes = this.Descendents().OfType<TextBox>(); // All UIElement direct children of the layout root grid:- var topLevelElements = LayoutRoot.Descendents(0).OfType<UIElement>(); // Find the containing `ListBoxItem` for a UIElement:- var container = elem.Ancestors().OfType<ListBoxItem>().FirstOrDefault(); // Seek a button with the name "PinkElephants" even if outside of the current Namescope:- var pinkElephantsButton = this.Descendents()     .OfType<Button>()     .FirstOrDefault(b => b.Name == "PinkElephants"); //Clear all checkboxes with the name "Selector" in a Treeview foreach (CheckBox checkBox in elem.Descendents()     .OfType<CheckBox>().Where(c => c.Name == "Selector")) {     checkBox.IsChecked = false; }   The last couple of examples above demonstrate a common requirement of finding controls that have a specific name.  FindName will often not find these controls because they exist in a different namescope. Hope you find this useful, if not I’m just glad to be able to link to this blog in future stackoverflow answers.

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• Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1000 Again ! Ubuntu 13.04 x64

  - by vafa

  First I have to say that I tried everything written about this concept. The problem is that it stops working randomly in 3 main forms : 1 - sometimes it disconnect from wireless network and reconnect automatically 2 - sometimes it disconnect and wont connect no matter what (needs reboot) 3 - some times it's still connected but cannot ping or surf or whatever. I already tried disabling N mod using these commands : sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi modprobe iwlwifi 11n_disable=1 (or 0, whatever) it didn't help . these are the results of lspci, sudo lshw -C network, ifconfig, iwconfig, rfkill list when it disconnected and didn't connect till reboot : ifconfig : eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr c8:0a:a9:34:65:77 UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:1563213476557380 errors:9379306629148050 dropped:3126435543049350 overruns:1563217771524675 frame:7816088857623375 TX packets:1563217771524675 errors:6252871086098700 dropped:0 overruns:1563217771524675 carrier:3126435543049350 collisions:7816088857623375 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:1563217771524675 (1.5 PB) TX bytes:1563217771524675 (1.5 PB) ham0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 7a:79:19:a5:e4:93 inet addr:25.165.228.147 Bcast:25.255.255.255 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: fe80::7879:19ff:fea5:e493/64 Scope:Link inet6 addr: 2620:9b::19a5:e493/96 Scope:Global UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1404 Metric:1 RX packets:7743 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:1250 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:500 RX bytes:665642 (665.6 KB) TX bytes:204056 (204.0 KB) lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:65536 Metric:1 RX packets:41138 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:41138 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:6420962 (6.4 MB) TX bytes:6420962 (6.4 MB) wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1e:64:45:fb:70 inet6 addr: fe80::21e:64ff:fe45:fb70/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:286999 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:226966 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:324386887 (324.3 MB) TX bytes:30674804 (30.6 MB) iwconfig : ham0 no wireless extensions. eth0 no wireless extensions. lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=14 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off sudo lshw -C network: *-network description: Wireless interface product: Centrino Wireless-N 1000 [Condor Peak] vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:07:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 00 serial: 00:1e:64:45:fb:70 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=3.8.0-30-generic firmware=39.31.5.1 build 35138 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg resources: irq:46 memory:c0400000-c0401fff *-network description: Ethernet interface product: AR8131 Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Qualcomm Atheros physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:09:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: c0 serial: c8:0a:a9:34:65:77 capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vpd cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=atl1c driverversion=1.0.1.1-NAPI latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair resources: irq:47 memory:c0900000-c093ffff ioport:5000(size=128) *-network description: Ethernet interface physical id: 2 logical name: ham0 serial: 7a:79:19:a5:e4:93 size: 10Mbit/s capabilities: ethernet physical configuration: autonegotiation=off broadcast=yes driver=tun driverversion=1.6 duplex=full ip=25.165.228.147 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=10Mbit/s lspci: 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 07) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Graphics Port (rev 07) 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03) 00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03) 00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 03) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03) 00:1d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 03) 00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M LPC Interface Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801IBM/IEM (ICH9M/ICH9M-E) 4 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 03) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G98M [GeForce G 105M] (rev a1) 07:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N 1000 [Condor Peak] 09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR8131 Gigabit Ethernet (rev c0) rfkill list : 1: acer-wireless: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 2: acer-bluetooth: Bluetooth Soft blocked: yes Hard blocked: no 9: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no any help will be REALLLYYYY appreciated

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• MERGE gives better OUTPUT options

  - by Rob Farley

  MERGE is very cool. There are a ton of useful things about it – mostly around the fact that you can implement a ton of change against a table all at once. This is great for data warehousing, handling changes made to relational databases by applications, all kinds of things. One of the more subtle things about MERGE is the power of the OUTPUT clause. Useful for logging.   If you’re not familiar with the OUTPUT clause, you really should be – it basically makes your DML (INSERT/DELETE/UPDATE/MERGE) statement return data back to you. This is a great way of returning identity values from INSERT commands (so much better than SCOPE_IDENTITY() or the older (and worse) @@IDENTITY, because you can get lots of rows back). You can even use it to grab default values that are set using non-deterministic functions like NEWID() – things you couldn’t normally get back without running another query (or with a trigger, I guess, but that’s not pretty). That inserted table I referenced – that’s part of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ work that goes on with all DML changes. When you insert data, this internal table called inserted gets populated with rows, and then used to inflict the appropriate inserts on the various structures that store data (HoBTs – the Heaps or B-Trees used to store data as tables and indexes). When deleting, the deleted table gets populated. Updates get a matching row in both tables (although this doesn’t mean that an update is a delete followed by an inserted, it’s just the way it’s handled with these tables). These tables can be referenced by the OUTPUT clause, which can show you the before and after for any DML statement. Useful stuff. MERGE is slightly different though. With MERGE, you get a mix of entries. Your MERGE statement might be doing some INSERTs, some UPDATEs and some DELETEs. One of the most common examples of MERGE is to perform an UPSERT command, where data is updated if it already exists, or inserted if it’s new. And in a single operation too. Here, you can see the usefulness of the deleted and inserted tables, which clearly reflect the type of operation (but then again, MERGE lets you use an extra column called $action to show this). (Don’t worry about the fact that I turned on IDENTITY_INSERT, that’s just so that I could insert the values) One of the things I love about MERGE is that it feels almost cursor-like – the UPDATE bit feels like “WHERE CURRENT OF …”, and the INSERT bit feels like a single-row insert. And it is – but into the inserted and deleted tables. The operations to maintain the HoBTs are still done using the whole set of changes, which is very cool. And $action – very convenient. But as cool as $action is, that’s not the point of my post. If it were, I hope you’d all be disappointed, as you can’t really go near the MERGE statement without learning about it. The subtle thing that I love about MERGE with OUTPUT is that you can hook into more than just inserted and deleted. Did you notice in my earlier query that my source table had a ‘src’ field, that wasn’t used in the insert? Normally, this would be somewhat pointless to include in my source query. But with MERGE, I can put that in the OUTPUT clause. This is useful stuff, particularly when you’re needing to audit the changes. Suppose your query involved consolidating data from a number of sources, but you didn’t need to insert that into the actual table, just into a table for audit. This is now very doable, either using the INTO clause of OUTPUT, or surrounding the whole MERGE statement in brackets (parentheses if you’re American) and using a regular INSERT statement. This is also doable if you’re using MERGE to just do INSERTs. In case you hadn’t realised, you can use MERGE in place of an INSERT statement. It’s just like the UPSERT-style statement we’ve just seen, except that we want nothing to match. That’s easy to do, we just use ON 1=2. This is obviously more convoluted than a straight INSERT. And it’s slightly more effort for the database engine too. But, if you want the extra audit capabilities, the ability to hook into the other source columns is definitely useful. Oh, and before people ask if you can also hook into the target table’s columns... Yes, of course. That’s what deleted and inserted give you.

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• On Reflector Pricing

  - by Nick Harrison

  I have heard a lot of outrage over Red Gate's decision to charge for Reflector. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a fan of Red Gate. I have worked with them on several usability tests. They also sponsor Simple Talk where I publish articles. They are a good company. I am also a BIG fan of Reflector. I have used it since Lutz originally released it. I have written my own add-ins. I have written code to host reflector and use its object model in my own code. Reflector is a beautiful tool. The care that Lutz took to incorporate extensibility is amazing. I have never had difficulty convincing my fellow developers that it is a wonderful tool. Almost always, once anyone sees it in action, it becomes their favorite tool. This wide spread adoption and usability has made it an icon and pivotal pillar in the DotNet community. Even folks with the attitude that if it did not come out of Redmond then it must not be any good, still love it. It is ironic to hear everyone clamoring for it to be released as open source. Reflector was never open source, it was free, but you never were able to peruse the source code and contribute your own changes. You could not even use Reflector to view the source code. From the very beginning, it was never anyone's intention for just anyone to examine the source code and make their own contributions aside from the add-in model. Lutz chose to hand over the reins to Red Gate because he believed that they would be able to build on his original vision and keep the product viable and effective. He did not choose to make it open source, hoping that the community would be up to the challenge. The simplicity and elegance may well have been lost with the "design by committee" nature of open source. Despite being a wonderful and beloved tool, Reflector cannot be an easy tool to maintain. Maybe because it is so wonderful and beloved, it is even more difficult to maintain. At any rate, we have high expectations. Reflector must continue to be able to reasonably disassemble every language construct that the framework and core languages dream up. We want it to be fast, and we also want it to continue to be simple to use. No small order. Red Gate tried to keep the core product free. Sadly there was not enough interest in the Pro version to subsidize the rest of the expenses. $35 is a reasonable cost, more than reasonable. I have read the blog posts and forum posts complaining about the time associated with getting the expense approved. I have heard people complain about the cost being unreasonable if you are a developer from certain countries. Let's do the math. How much of a productivity boost is Reflector? How many hours do you think it saves you in a typical project? The next question is a little easier if you are a contractor or a consultant, but what is your hourly rate? If you are not a contractor, you can probably figure out an hourly rate. How long does it take to get a return on your investment? The value added proposition is not a difficult one to make. I have read people clamoring that Red Gate sucks and is evil. They complain about broken promises and conflicts of interest. Relax! Red Gate is not evil. The world is not coming to an end. The sun will come up tomorrow. I am sure that Red Gate will come up with options for volume licensing or site licensing for companies that want to get a licensed copy for their entire team. Don't panic, and I am sure that many great improvements are on the horizon. Switching the UI to WPF and including a tabbed interface opens up lots of possibilities.

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• Think before you animate

  - by David Paquette

  Animations are becoming more and more common in our applications.  With technologies like WPF, Silverlight and jQuery, animations are becoming easier for developers to use (and abuse).  When used properly, animation can augment the user experience.  When used improperly, animation can degrade the user experience.  Sometimes, the differences can be very subtle. I have recently made use of animations in a few projects and I very quickly realized how easy it is to abuse animation techniques.  Here are a few things I have learned along the way. 1) Don’t animate for the sake of animating We’ve all seen the PowerPoint slides with annoying slide transitions that animate 20 different ways.  It’s distracting and tacky.  The same holds true for your application.  While animations are fun and becoming easy to implement, resist the urge to use the technology just because you think the technology is amazing.   2) Animations should (and do) have meaning I recently built a simple Windows Phone 7 (WP7) application, Steeped (download it here).  The application has 2 pages.  The first page lists a number of tea types.  When the user taps on one of the tea types, the application navigates to the second page with information about that tea type and some options for the user to choose from.       One of the last things I did before submitting Steeped to the marketplace was add a page transition between the 2 pages.  I choose the Slide / Fade Out transition.  When the user selects a tea type, the main page slides to the left and fades out.  At the same time, the details page slides in from the right and fades in.  I tested it and thought it looked great so I submitted the app.  A few days later, I asked a friend to try the app.  He selected a tea type, and I was a little surprised by how he used the app.  When he wanted to navigate back to the main page, instead of pressing the back button on the phone, he tried to use a swiping gesture.  Of course, the swiping gesture did nothing because I had not implemented that feature.  After thinking about it for a while, I realized that the page transition I had chosen implied a particular behaviour.  As a user, if an action I perform causes an item (in this case the page) to move, then my expectation is that I should be able to move it back.  I have since added logic to handle the swipe gesture and I think the app flows much better now. When using animation, it pays to ask yourself:  What story does this animation tell my users?   3) Watch the replay Some animations might seem great initially but can get annoying over time.  When you use an animation in your application, make sure you try using it over and over again to make sure it doesn’t get annoying.  When I add an animation, I try watch it at least 25 times in a row.  After watching the animation repeatedly, I can make a more informed decision whether or not I should keep the animation.  Often, I end up shortening the length of the animations.   4) Don’t get in the users way An animation should never slow the user down.  When implemented properly, an animation can give a perceived bump in performance.  A good example of this is a the page transitions in most of the built in apps on WP7.  Obviously, these page animations don’t make the phone any faster, but they do provide a more responsive user experience.  Why?  Because most of the animations begin as soon as the user has performed some action.  The destination page might not be fully loaded yet, but the system responded immediately to user action, giving the impression that the system is more responsive.  If the user did not see anything happen until after the destination page was fully loaded, the application would feel clumsy and slow.  Also, it is important to make sure the animation does not degrade the performance (or perceived performance) of the application.   Jut a few things to consider when using animations.  As is the case with many technologies, we often learn how to misuse it before we learn how to use it effectively.

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• EM CLI, diving in and beyond!

  - by Maureen Byrne

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Doing more in less time… Isn’t that what we all strive to do? With this in mind, I put together two screen watches on Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c command line interface, or EM CLI as it is also known. There is a wealth of information on any topic that you choose to read about, from manual pages to coding documents…might I even say blog posts? In our busy lives it is so nice to just sit back with a short video, watch and learn enough to dive in. Doing more in less time, is the essence of EM CLI. It enables you to script fundamental and complex administrative tasks in an elegant way, thanks to the Jython scripting language. Repetitive tasks can be scripted and reused again and again. Sure, a Graphical User Interface provides a more intuitive step by step approach to tasks, and it provides a way of quickly becoming familiar with a product and its many features, and it is definitely the way to go when viewing performance data and historical trending…but for repetitive and complex tasks, scripting is the way to go! Lets us take the everyday task of creating an administrator. Using EM CLI in interactive mode the command could look like this.. emcli>create_user(name='jan.doe', type='EXTERNAL_USER') This command creates an administrator called jan.doe which is an externally authenticated user, possibly LDAP or SSO, defined by the EXTERNAL_USER tag. The create_user procedure takes many arguments; see the documentation for more information. Now, where EM CLI really shines and shows power is in creating multiple users. Regardless of the number, tens or thousands, the effort is the same. With the use of a standard programming construct, a loop, you can place your create_user() procedure within it. Using a loop allows you to iterate through a previously created list, creating new users until the list is complete. Using EM CLI in Script mode, your Jython loop would look something like this… for user in list_of_users:       create_user(name=user, expire=’true’, password=’welcome123’) This Jython code snippet iterates through a previously defined list of names, list_of_users, and iterates through the list, taking each name, user in this case, and creates an administrator sets the password to welcome123, but forces the user to reset it when they first login. This is only one of over four hundred procedures created to expose Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c functionality in a powerful and programmatic way. It is a few months since we released EM CLI with scripting option. We are seeing many users adapt to this fun and powerful way of using Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. What are the first steps? Watch these screen watches, and dive in. The first screen watch steps you through where and how to download and install and how to run your first few commands. The Second screen watch steps you through a few scripts. Next time, I am going to show you the basic building blocks to writing a Jython script to perform Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c administrative tasks. Join this growing group of EM CLI users…. Dive in! Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Upgrading to Code Based Migrations EF 4.3.1 with Connector/Net 6.6

  - by GABMARTINEZ

  Entity Framework 4.3.1 includes a new feature called code first migrations.  We are adding support for this feature in our upcoming 6.6 release of Connector/Net.  In this walk-through we'll see the workflow of code-based migrations when you have an existing application and you would like to upgrade to this EF 4.3.1 version and use this approach, so you can keep track of the changes that you do to your database.   The first thing we need to do is add the new Entity Framework 4.3.1 package to our application. This should via the NuGet package manager.  You can read more about why EF is not part of the .NET framework here. Adding EF 4.3.1 to our existing application  Inside VS 2010 go to Tools -> Library Package Manager -> Package Manager Console, this will open the Power Shell Host Window where we can work with all the EF commands. In order to install this library to your existing application you should type Install-Package EntityFramework This will make some changes to your application. So Let's check them. In your .config file you'll see a  <configSections> which contains the version you have from EntityFramework and also was added the <entityFramework> section as shown below. This section is by default configured to use SQL Express which won't be necesary for this case. So you can comment it out or leave it empty. Also please make sure you're using the Connector/Net 6.6.x version which is the one that has this support as is shown in the previous image. At this point we face one issue; in order to be able to work with Migrations we need the __MigrationHistory table that we don't have yet since our Database was created with an older version. This table is used to keep track of the changes in our model. So we need to get it in our existing Database. Getting a Migration-History table into an existing database First thing we need to do to enable migrations in our existing application is to create our configuration class which will set up the MySqlClient Provider as our SQL Generator. So we have to add it with the following code: using System.Data.Entity.Migrations;     //add this at the top of your cs file public class Configuration : DbMigrationsConfiguration<NameOfYourDbContext>  //Make sure to use the name of your existing DBContext { public Configuration() { this.AutomaticMigrationsEnabled = false; //Set Automatic migrations to false since we'll be applying the migrations manually for this case. SetSqlGenerator("MySql.Data.MySqlClient", new MySql.Data.Entity.MySqlMigrationSqlGenerator());     }   }  This code will set up our configuration that we'll be using when executing all the migrations for our application. Once we have done this we can Build our application so we can check that everything is fine. Creating our Initial Migration Now let's add our Initial Migration. In Package Manager Console, execute "add-migration InitialCreate", you can use any other name but I like to set this as our initial create for future reference. After we run this command, some changes were done in our application: A new Migrations Folder was created. A new class migration call InitialCreate which in most of the cases should have empty Up and Down methods as long as your database is up to date with your Model. Since all your entities already exists, delete all duplicated code to create any entity which exists already in your Database if there is any. I found this easier when you don't have any pending updates to do to your database. Now we have our empty migration that will make no changes in our database and represents how are all the things at the begining of our migrations.  Finally, let's create our MigrationsHistory table. Optionally you can add SQL code to delete the edmdata table which is not needed anymore. public override void Up() { // Just make sure that you used 4.1 or later version         Sql("DROP TABLE EdmMetadata"); } From our Package Manager Console let's type: Update-database; If you like to see the operations made on each Update-database command you can use the flag -verbose after the Update-database. This will make two important changes.  It will execute the Up method in the initial migration which has no changes in the database. And second, and very important,  it will create the __MigrationHistory table necessary to keep track of your changes. And next time you make a change to your database it will compare the current model to the one stored in the Model Column of this table. Conclusion The important thing of this walk through is that we must create our initial migration before we start doing any changes to our model. This way we'll be adding the necessary __MigrationsHistory table to our existing database, so we can keep our database up to date with all the changes we do in our context model using migrations. Hope you have found this information useful. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments, also please check our forums here where we keep answering questions in general for the community.  Happy MySQL/Net Coding!

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• NDepend Evaluation: Part 3

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  NDepend is a Visual Studio add-in designed for intense code analysis with the goal of high code quality. NDepend uses a number of metrics and aggregates the data in pleasing static and active visual reports. My evaluation of NDepend will be broken up into several different parts. In the first part of the evaluation I looked at installing the add-in.  And in the last part I went over my first impressions including an overview of the features.  In this installment I provide a little more detail on a few of the features that I really like. Dependency Matrix The dependency matrix is one of the rich visual components provided with NDepend.  At a glance it lets you know where you have coupling problems including cycles.  It does this with number indicating the weight of the dependency and a color-coding that indicates the nature of the dependency. Green and blue cells are direct dependencies (with the difference being whether the relationship is from row-to-column or column-to-row).  Black cells are the ones that you really want to know about.  These indicate that you have a cycle.  That is, type A refers to type B and type B also refers to Type A. But, that’s not the end of the story.  A handy pop-up appears when you hover over the cell in question.  It explains the color, the dependency, and provides several interesting links that will teach you more than you want to know about the dependency. You can double-click the problem cells to explode the dependency.  That will show the dependencies on a method-by-method basis allowing you to more easily target and fix the problem.  When you’re done you can click the back button on the toolbar. Dependency Graph The dependency graph is another component provided.  It’s complementary to the dependency matrix, but it isn’t as easy to identify dependency issues using the window. On a positive note, it does provide more information than the matrix. My biggest issue with the dependency graph is determining what is shown.  This was not readily obvious.  I ended up using the navigation buttons to get an acceptable view.  I would have liked to choose what I see. Once you see the types you want you can get a decent idea of coupling strength based on the width of the dependency lines.  Double-arrowed lines are problematic and are shown in red.  The size of the boxes will be related to the metric being displayed.  This is controlled using the Box Size drop-down in the toolbar.  Personally, I don’t find the size of the box to be helpful, so I change it to Constant Font. One nice thing about the display is that you can see the entire path of dependencies when you hover over a type.  This is done by color-coding the dependencies and dependants.  It would be nice if selecting the box for the type would lock the highlighting in place. I did find a perhaps unintended work-around to the color-coding.  You can lock the color-coding in by hovering over the type, right-clicking, and then clicking on the canvas area to clear the pop-up menu.  You can then do whatever with it including saving it to an image file with the color-coding. CQL NDepend uses a code query language (CQL) to work with your code just like it was a database.  CQL cannot be confused with the robustness of T-SQL or even LINQ, but it represents an impressive attempt at providing an expressive way to enumerate and interrogate your code. There are two main windows you’ll use when working with CQL.  The CQL Query Explorer allows you to define what queries (rules) are run as part of a report – I immediately unselected rules that I don’t want in my results.  The CQL Query Edit window is where you can view or author your own rules.  The explorer window is pretty self-explanatory, so I won’t mention it further other than to say that any queries you author will appear in the custom group. Authoring your own queries is really hard to screw-up.  The Intellisense-like pop-ups tell you what you can do while making composition easy.  I was able to create a query within two minutes of playing with the editor.  My query warns if any types that are interfaces don’t start with an “I”. WARN IF Count > 0 IN SELECT TYPES WHERE IsInterface AND !NameLike “I” The results from the CQL Query Edit window are immediate. That fact makes it useful for ad hoc querying.  It’s worth mentioning two things that could make the experience smoother.  First, out of habit from using Visual Studio I expect to be able to scroll and press Tab to select an item in the list (like Intellisense).  You have to press Enter when you scroll to the item you want.  Second, the commands are case-sensitive.  I don’t see a really good reason to enforce that. CQL has a lot of potential not just in enforcing code quality, but also enforcing architectural constraints that your enterprise has defined. Up Next My next update will be the final part of the evaluation.  I will summarize my experience and provide my conclusions on the NDepend add-in. ** View Part 1 of the Evaluation ** ** View Part 2 of the Evaluation ** Disclaimer: Patrick Smacchia contacted me about reviewing NDepend. I received a free license in return for sharing my experiences and talking about the capabilities of the add-in on this site. There is no expectation of a positive review elicited from the author of NDepend.

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• Data Binding to Attached Properties

  - by Chris Gardner

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2013/06/14/data-binding-to-attached-properties.aspx When I was working on my C#/XAML game framework, I discovered I wanted to try to data bind my sprites to background objects. That way, I could update my objects and the draw functionality would take care of the work for me. After a little experimenting and web searching, it appeared this concept was an impossible dream. Of course, when has that ever stopped me? In my typical way, I started to massively dive down the rabbit hole. I created a sprite on a canvas, and I bound it to a background object. <Canvas Name="GameField" Background="Black"> <Image Name="PlayerStrite" Source="Assets/Ship.png" Width="50" Height="50" Canvas.Left="{Binding X}" Canvas.Top="{Binding Y}"/> </Canvas> Now, we wire the UI item to the background item. public MainPage() { this.InitializeComponent(); this.Loaded += StartGame; }   void StartGame( object sender, RoutedEventArgs e ) { BindingPlayer _Player = new BindingPlayer(); _Player.X = Window.Current.Bounds.Height - PlayerSprite.Height; _Player.X = ( Window.Current.Bounds.Width - PlayerSprite.Width ) / 2.0; } Of course, now we need to actually have our background object. public class BindingPlayer : INotifyPropertyChanged { private double m_X; public double X { get { return m_X; } set { m_X = value; NotifyPropertyChanged(); } }   private double m_Y; public double Y { get { return m_Y; } set { m_Y = value; NotifyPropertyChanged(); } }   public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; protected void NotifyPropertyChanged( [CallerMemberName] string p_PropertyName = null ) { if( PropertyChanged != null ) PropertyChanged( this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs( p_PropertyName ) ); } } I fired this baby up, and my sprite was correctly positioned on the screen. Maybe the sky wasn't falling after all. Wouldn't it be great if that was the case? I created some code to allow me to move the sprite, but nothing happened. This seems odd. So, I start debugging the application and stepping through code. Everything appears to be working. Time to dig a little deeper. After much profanity was spewed, I stumbled upon a breakthrough. The code only looked like it was working. What was really happening is that there was an exception being thrown in the background thread that I never saw. Apparently, the key call was the one to PropertyChanged. If PropertyChanged is not called on the UI thread, the UI thread ignores the call. Actually, it throws an exception and the background thread silently crashes. Of course, you'll never see this unless you're looking REALLY carefully. This seemed to be a simple problem. I just need to marshal this to the UI thread. Unfortunately, this object has no knowledge of this mythical UI Thread in which we speak. So, I had to pull the UI Thread out of thin air. Let's change our PropertyChanged call to look this. public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; protected void NotifyPropertyChanged( [CallerMemberName] string p_PropertyName = null ) { if( PropertyChanged != null ) Windows.ApplicationModel.Core.CoreApplication.MainView.CoreWindow.Dispatcher.RunAsync( Windows.UI.Core.CoreDispatcherPriority.Normal, new Windows.UI.Core.DispatchedHandler( () => { PropertyChanged( this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs( p_PropertyName ) ); } ) ); } Now, we raised our notification on the UI thread. Everything is fine, people are happy, and the world moves on. You may have noticed that I didn't await my call to the dispatcher. This was intentional. If I am trying to update a slew of sprites, I don't want thread being hung while I wait my turn. Thus, I send the message and move on. It is worth nothing that this is NOT the most efficient way to do this for game programming. We'll get to that in another blog post. However, it is perfectly acceptable for a business app that is running a background task that would like to notify the UI thread of progress on a periodic basis. It is worth noting that this code was written for a Windows Store App. You can do the same thing with WP8 and WPF. The call to the marshaler changes, but it is the same idea.

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• Soft lockup after upgrade - cannot install from live CD

  - by nbm

  I dual-boot MacIntel Core 2 duo. nVidia graphics. Ran upgrade from ubuntu 13.10 to 14.04 (64 bit). On restart ran into {numbers} Bug: soft lockup - CPU#0 stuck for 22s! [swapper/0:1] Tried loading earlier kernel: same problem Tried re-installing ubuntu from a liveCD that has worked in the past: version 13.04. Same problem. Tried re-partitioning hard drive using Mac OS X disk utility and then installing ubuntu 14.04LTS from liveCD. Same problem. Not possible to verify liveCD disk (creates same "soft lockup" bug.) Tried installing from the liveCD with version 13.04 that I know works (that's how I got Ubuntu on this machine in the first place.) Same problem. I know this is not a hardware problem as OS X works just fine, I am using it right now on the same machine. I have been using various versions of Ubuntu for 2 years. Things I cannot do: Open a terminal Verify CD image Start ubuntu from CD (same soft lockup problem) This problem is similar to some other questions, none of which have been satisfactorily answered: Ubuntu 14.04 soft lockup on Vostro 3500 Cannot do fresh install of Ubuntu 13.04 while booting from DVD: "soft lockup" bug Live CD stalls when installing Ubuntu 13.10 UPDATE 6/11/14: Following some much-appreciated advice from bain (see below) I burned a 12.04LTS disk and started with kernel parameters: noapic, no1apic, acpi=off, nomodeset, elevator=deadline, and clocksource=jiffies. With all of these parameters I was able to load the 12.04LTS CD ("Try without installing"). It worked fine. However, as soon as I tried to install Ubuntu from the CD, my wired ethernet (eth0) connection would hang. There are already various askubuntu questions and bug reports about this problem, none of which had answers for me. (E.g., dhclient eth0 does nothing, none of the various reset commands does anything, manually setting IP &etc does nothing. I could reliably kill the ethernet connection by clicking "install ubuntu" every single time.) I could go ahead and install 12.04 without an internet connection, but the install would freeze after mostly completing (I tried several times.) There were some relevant error messages in the details of the install output script that, IIRC, had to do with searching for missing files and not being able to access eth0 (internet) to get them. To be honest I gave up at that point and I'm not sure I wrote those down. If I find some notes I will post them. At this point I no longer have Ubuntu on my system. I wiped the partitions and am using exclusively OS X. I am leaving this question in case it helps anyone else with similar problems. I love open source and I love Linux, and the next machine I get I will probably just build from Arch. At the moment I miss repositories and a lot of other things about Ubuntu, but the OS X terminal is 'nix, I can pretty much use all the open source apps I like, and while I am not a fan of the Apple software it gets the job done for me. Unlike Ubuntu, which can't even install. I realize this isn't necessarily a place for a soapbox speech, but when I first installed 12.04 several years ago there were already people in the community complaining that Canonical was going too "commercial". But I loved it. Several years later and all I've seen is Canonical adding more not-so-useful bells and whistles to Ubuntu while continually failing to fix basic problems on upgrades. With a dual-boot (and sometimes triple-boot) system it always took me some tweaking to get an upgrade to work, and to some extent that is okay. But at this point I feel like Canonical ought to just put a price tag on Ubuntu. All I see is more commercialism and advertising and product tie-ins, and ongoing problems do not get fixed. I am a big fan of open-source, not-for profit enterprise. I am also a big fan of for-profit enterprise, which certainly has its place and usefulness. I am not a fan of companies who pretend to be in favor of open source but really are just out to make a buck, and IMNSHO that is what Canonical has become. This is a great community and I wish you all the best, but my next install of Linux will not be Ubuntu.

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• Why bother writing an Windows 8 app?

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  So you want to know more about development for Window 8. Great! There are lots of reasons you should be excited about this. Since I don’t know why YOU are interested in this, I’ll make a list of reasons people can choose from. (as a side note: whenever I talk about Win8 development I am referring to the Metro Style / WinRt side of things. Apps for the ‘classic’ desktop side of Win8 on Intel are business as usual…) So… Why would you care about making an app for Windows 8? 1. It’s cool. Let’s not beat around the bush: if you like development for a hobby then you’ll love to work on this new platform. You can create apps in a relative short time (short time as in compared to writing a new CRM system) and that makes it great for a hobby product. 2. You’ll stand out. Hey, we all need an ego boost every now and then. We all need to feel special. So if you can manage to be one of the first to have you app in the Store then you’ll likely to be noticed. Just close your eyes for a moment and image you standing in a bar. It’s crowded, and then you casually say “Oh yeah, I just had my app certified and it’s in the Win8 store now”. People will stop talking, will offer you drinks and beautiful women / gorgeous man / furry creatures from Alpha Centauri (whatever your preferences are) will propose. Or maybe not. Anyway…. 3. Make some cash! IDC predicts there will be about 350,000,000 Windows 8 licenses sold in the next year. Think about that number. 350,000,000. And they all have access to the Store. Where you’re app will be. With one little click they can select it, download and somehow magically $1.00 or $2.00 from their bank account is transferred to yours. Now, I am not saying that all of those people will download and buy your app but what if only 1% of them did? Remember: there aren’t that many apps available yet….. 4. Learn. Creating new small apps is a great way to learn new stuff. Yes, you could read about it (on this blog for instance) but the only way to learn something is to do it. So be prepared for the future and learn something new by doing it.Write an app! Now! 5. The biggie (for me at least): it’s fun. Even if you remove the points above it’s still fun to write for these devices and this platform. Now some of you will say : “But why not write a great app for IOS or Android?” I think this is a valid question. Of course the novelty of the platform wears out and points 2 and 3 from above list will not be as relevant as it is today. But still 1 4 and 5 remain. And don’t forget: if you already work on the Microsoft platform it’s not that hard to learn this new Win8 stuff. If you have done some XAML development (be it WPF or Silverlight) you are almost there in becoming a good Win8 developer. So you’ll be more productive much sooner than when you have to learn Objective C or Java. Even if you’re a HTML / Javascript developer (I say developer here, not designer) you’ll be up to speed on Win8 development pretty soon. Yes, you, that funky Web Developer who lives and breathes HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript / Node.Js / JQuery: you too can be a Win8 developer. A first class Win8 developer! So.. Download the stuff you need from http://dev.windows.com install Windows 8 and Visual Studio 12 and by the time you’re ready I’ll be working on the next article: how to do all this? Happy coding!

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• How to fix Ubuntu 12.04.3 boot to black screen full of errors in white text, after upgrading on dell inspiron 1501

  - by Ibuntu

  I am running a Dell Inspiron 1501 I use Linux only. No Microsoft or Apple operating systems (or really anything closed-source). I've only been using Linux for a little over a year but I'm starting to gain a comfortable level of familiarity with the system and terminology. I've been having some issues with Quantel Quetzal and Raring Ringtail, especially with older hardware, so I opted to install Ubuntu 12.04.3 Precise Pangolin on the Inspiron 1501. I checked my MD5 sum after downloading my ISO and all was good. I have in fact used this iso/dvd to install Precise Pangolin successfully on a few other systems (some of which are even older than this laptop). Install goes fine. The wireless card doesn't work out of the box but this is a known issue which is fairly easy to fix. So, first thing I did was open up a terminal and run sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade which, part way through, crashed (I assume lightdm and possibly X) and took me to a black screen filled with white lines of text that were either errors or just the ouputs of commands. The reason I say that is because I was unable to gleam any useful information from the output on the screen. I did take a picture however and will post a link. After that, every time I boot the system it goes right to that black screen posting all the error messages or output in white text. I never get a purple Ubuntu splash, so from what I can tell after reading this wiki article: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/BlankScreen That means that after the kernel is selected, it is unable to correctly implement the settings it needs. If the purple splash never shows, the frame buffer was never set correctly right? This leads me to believe that it could be a kernel issue? The wiki suggested to try and pinpoint the issue by rolling back kernels until I find one that works. Is this my best option? I think I'm going to give it a try anyways and will let everyone know if I am able to solve the issue this way. I have since done a few reinstalls and some trouble-shooting including a couple hours scouring the net for anyone with any kind of similar issue. Most of the issues I could find involved getting a black screen after login and none of them said anything about any information output on this black screen. My reinstalls have taught me that there is no issue updating, but as soon as I run sudo apt-get upgrade my system goes to the black screen and every time I boot it up it does the same thing. The only way to fix is by reinstall. I never get any ability to log in. After a hard power off to the laptop (because I cannot use ctrl+alt+del to reboot) when it boots again it goes to the grub boot menu and I can select between regular boot, recovery mode and the two memtest options. I never tried the memtest options but the other two both lead to the same black screen. Some people having a black/blank screen issue claim to have fixed it by using 12.10 or 13.04 but I believe they were having a different issue where they got a black/blank screen after logging in. I think I will still give these images a try, but mostly figured I would just wait another day or two for 13.10. Other things I figured I would try from the following three articles: After logging in, there's a black screen and my cursor, nothing else! in Ubuntu 12.10 Black Screen on Login After Upgrading to 12.04 I can't get to the login screen include opening a terminal using ctrl+alt+f1 and trying a variety of reseting unity, x settings, lightdm (or switching to gdm); but I doubt this will work or that I will even be able to access a terminal. I'm pretty sure the whole system is stuck after it loads the last line on the black screen. I will try these things and post more information when I have. Hopefully someone has an idea in the meantime and I will keep checking back trying to find a solution. Thank you. Here are 3 different pictures of the error message. I had to take with my phone: http://ubuntuone.com/album/0TBBkxmVajJIQQtoN9mVdN

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• Building a Repository Pattern against an EF 5 EDMX Model - Part 1

  - by Juan

  I am part of a year long plus project that is re-writing an existing application for a client.  We have decided to develop the project using Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5.  The project will be using a number of technologies and patterns to include Entity Framework 5, WCF Services, and WPF for the client UI.This is my attempt at documenting some of the successes and failures that I will be coming across in the development of the application.In building the data access layer we have to access a database that has already been designed by a dedicated dba. The dba insists on using Stored Procedures which has made the use of EF a little more difficult.  He will not allow direct table access but we did manage to get him to allow us to use Views.  Since EF 5 does not have good support to do Code First with Stored Procedures, my option was to create a model (EDMX) against the existing database views.   I then had to go select each entity and map the Insert/Update/Delete functions to their respective stored procedure. The next step after I had completed mapping the stored procedures to the entities in the EDMX model was to figure out how to build a generic repository that would work well with Entity Framework 5.  After reading the blog posts below, I adopted much of their code with some changes to allow for the use of Ninject for dependency injection.http://www.tcscblog.com/2012/06/22/entity-framework-generic-repository/ http://www.tugberkugurlu.com/archive/generic-repository-pattern-entity-framework-asp-net-mvc-and-unit-testing-triangle IRepository.cs public interface IRepository : IDisposable where T : class { void Add(T entity); void Update(T entity, int id); T GetById(object key); IQueryable Query(Expression> predicate); IQueryable GetAll(); int SaveChanges(); int SaveChanges(bool validateEntities); } GenericRepository.cs public abstract class GenericRepository : IRepository where T : class { public abstract void Add(T entity); public abstract void Update(T entity, int id); public abstract T GetById(object key); public abstract IQueryable Query(Expression> predicate); public abstract IQueryable GetAll(); public int SaveChanges() { return SaveChanges(true); } public abstract int SaveChanges(bool validateEntities); public abstract void Dispose(); } One of the issues I ran into was trying to do an update. I kept receiving errors so I posted a question on Stack Overflow http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12585664/an-object-with-the-same-key-already-exists-in-the-objectstatemanager-the-object and came up with the following hack. If someone has a better way, please let me know. DbContextRepository.cs public class DbContextRepository : GenericRepository where T : class { protected DbContext Context; protected DbSet DbSet; public DbContextRepository(DbContext context) { if (context == null) throw new ArgumentException("context"); Context = context; DbSet = Context.Set(); } public override void Add(T entity) { if (entity == null) throw new ArgumentException("Cannot add a null entity."); DbSet.Add(entity); } public override void Update(T entity, int id) { if (entity == null) throw new ArgumentException("Cannot update a null entity."); var entry = Context.Entry(entity); if (entry.State == EntityState.Detached) { var attachedEntity = DbSet.Find(id); // Need to have access to key if (attachedEntity != null) { var attachedEntry = Context.Entry(attachedEntity); attachedEntry.CurrentValues.SetValues(entity); } else { entry.State = EntityState.Modified; // This should attach entity } } } public override T GetById(object key) { return DbSet.Find(key); } public override IQueryable Query(Expression> predicate) { return DbSet.Where(predicate); } public override IQueryable GetAll() { return Context.Set(); } public override int SaveChanges(bool validateEntities) { Context.Configuration.ValidateOnSaveEnabled = validateEntities; return Context.SaveChanges(); } #region IDisposable implementation public override void Dispose() { if (Context != null) { Context.Dispose(); GC.SuppressFinalize(this); } } #endregion IDisposable implementation } At this point I am able to start creating individual repositories that are needed and add a Unit of Work.  Stay tuned for the next installment in my path to creating a Repository Pattern against EF5.

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