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• How to resize / enlarge / grow a non-LVM ext4 partition

  - by Mischa

  I have already searched the forums, but couldnt find a good suitable answer: I have an Ubuntu Server 10.04 as KVM Host and a guest system, that also runs 10.04. The host system uses LVM and there are three logical volumes, which are provided to the guest as virtual block devices - one for /, one for /home and one for swap. The guest had been partitioned without LVM. I have already enlarged the logical volume in the host system - the guest successfully sees the bigger virtual disk. However, this virtual disk contains one "good old" partition, which still has the old small size. The output of fdisk -l is me@produktion:/$ LC_ALL=en_US sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/vda: 32.2 GB, 32212254720 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3916 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000c8ce7 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/vda1 * 1 3917 31455232 83 Linux Disk /dev/vdb: 2147 MB, 2147483648 bytes 244 heads, 47 sectors/track, 365 cylinders Units = cylinders of 11468 * 512 = 5871616 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000f2bf7 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/vdb1 1 366 2095104 82 Linux swap / Solaris Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?): phys=(0, 32, 33) logical=(0, 43, 28) Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings: phys=(260, 243, 47) logical=(365, 136, 44) Disk /dev/vdc: 225.5 GB, 225485783040 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 27413 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00027f25 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/vdc1 1 9138 73398272 83 Linux The output of parted print all is Model: Virtio Block Device (virtblk) Disk /dev/vda: 32.2GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 1049kB 32.2GB 32.2GB primary ext4 boot Model: Virtio Block Device (virtblk) Disk /dev/vdb: 2147MB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 1049kB 2146MB 2145MB primary linux-swap(v1) Model: Virtio Block Device (virtblk) Disk /dev/vdc: 225GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 1049kB 75.2GB 75.2GB primary ext4 What I want to achieve is to simply grow or resize the partition /dev/vdc1 so that it uses the whole space provided by the virtual block device /dev/vdc. The problem is, that when I try to do that with parted, it complains: (parted) select /dev/vdc Using /dev/vdc (parted) print Model: Virtio Block Device (virtblk) Disk /dev/vdc: 225GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 1049kB 75.2GB 75.2GB primary ext4 (parted) resize 1 WARNING: you are attempting to use parted to operate on (resize) a file system. parted's file system manipulation code is not as robust as what you'll find in dedicated, file-system-specific packages like e2fsprogs. We recommend you use parted only to manipulate partition tables, whenever possible. Support for performing most operations on most types of file systems will be removed in an upcoming release. Start? [1049kB]? End? [75.2GB]? 224GB Error: File system has an incompatible feature enabled. Compatible features are has_journal, dir_index, filetype, sparse_super and large_file. Use tune2fs or debugfs to remove features. So what can I do? This is a headless production system. What is a safe way to grow this partition? I CAN unmount it, though - so this is not the problem.

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• What DX level does my graphics card support? Does it go to 11?

  - by Daniel Moth

  Recently I run into a situation that I have run into quite a few times. Someone encounters a machine and the question arises: "Is there a DirectX 11 card in this machine?". Typically the reason you are interested in that is because cards with DirectX 11 drivers fully support DirectCompute (and by extension C++ AMP) for GPGPU programming. The driver specifically is WDDM (1.1 on Windows 7 and Windows 8 introduces WDDM 1.2 with cool new capabilities). There are many ways for figuring out if you have a DirectX11 card, so here are the approaches that you can use, with a bonus right at the end of the post. Run DxDiag WindowsKey + R, type DxDiag and hit Enter. That is the DirectX diagnostic tool, which unfortunately, only tells you on the "System" tab what is the highest version of DirectX installed on your machine. So if it reports DirectX 11, that doesn't mean you have a DX11 driver! The "Display" tab has a promising "DDI version" label, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be accurate on the machines I've tested it with (or I may be misinterpreting its use). Either way, this tool is not the one you want for this purpose, although it is good for telling you the WDDM version among other things. Use the Microsoft hardware page There is a Microsoft Windows 7 compatibility center, that lists all hardware (tip: use the advanced search) and you could try and locate your device there… good luck. Use Wikipedia or the hardware vendor's website Use the Wikipedia page for the vendor cards, for both nvidia and amd. Often this information will also be in the specifications for the cards on the IHV site, but is is nice that wikipedia has a single page per vendor that you can search etc. There is a column in the tables for API support where you can see the DirectX version. Check if it is one of these recommended DX11 cards You may not have a DirectX 11 card and are interested in purchasing one. While I am in no position to make recommendations, I will list here some cards from two big IHVs that we know are DirectX 11 capable. Some AMD (aka ATI) cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: Radeon 5450, 5550, 6450, 6570 Mid range (decent perf, single precision): Radeon 5750, 5770, 6770, 6790 High end (capable of double precision): Radeon 5850, 5870, 6950, 6970 Single precision APUs: AMD E-Series APUs AMD A-Series APUs Some NVIDIA cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: GeForce GT430, GT 440, GT520, GTS 450 Quadro 400, 600 Mid-range (decent perf, single precision): GeForce GTX 460, GTX 550 Ti, GTX 560, GTX 560 Ti Quadro 2000 High end (capable of double precision): GeForce GTX 480, GTX 570, GTX 580, GTX 590, GTX 595 Quadro 4000, 5000, 6000 Tesla C2050, C2070, C2075 Get the DirectX SDK and run DirectX Caps Viewer Download and install the June 2010 DirectX SDK. As part of that you now have the DirectX Capabilities Viewer utility (find it in your start menu by searching for "DirectX Caps Viewer", the filename is DXCapsViewer.exe). It will list all your devices (emulated, and real hardware ones) under the first node. Expand the hardware entries and then expand again the Direct3D 11 folder. If you see D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_11_ under that, then your card supports feature level 11 which means it supports DirectCompute and C++ AMP. In the following screenshot of one of my old laptops, the card only goes to feature level 10. Run a utility from the web that just tells you! Of course, writing some C++ AMP code that enumerates accelerators and lists the ones that are capable is trivial. However that requires that you have redistributed the runtime, so a more broadly applicable approach is to use the DX APIs directly to enumerate the DX11 capable cards. That is exactly what the development lead for C++ AMP has done and he describes and shares that utility at this post. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• PASS: International Travels

  - by Bill Graziano

  Nihao!  One of the largest changes PASS is going through is the the expansion outside the US and Canada.  We’ve had international chapters and events in Europe since the early 2000’s.  But nothing on the scale we’re seeing now.  Since January 1st there have been 18 SQL Saturday events outside North America and 19 events in North America.  We hope to have three international SQLRally events outside the US in FY13 (budget willing).  I don’t know the exact percentage of chapters outside the US but it’s got be 50% or higher. We recently started an effort to remake the Board to better reflect the growing global face of PASS.  This involves assigning some Board seats to geographic regions.  You can ask questions about this in our feedback forum, participate in a Twitter chat or ask questions directly of Board members.  You can email me at if you’d like to ask a question directly.  We’re doing this very slowly and deliberately in hopes that a long communication cycle gives us a chance to address all the issues that our members will raise. After the Summit we passed a budget exception allocating an extra $20,000 for Board members to travel to local events.  I think it’s important for Board members to visit new areas and talk to more of our members.  I sent out an email asking where people had attended events outside their home city.  Here’s the list I got back: Albuquerque, Amsterdam, Boston, Brisbane, Chicago, Colorado Springs, Columbus, Dallas, Houston, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, London, Louisville, Minneapolis, New York City, Orange County, Orlando, Pensacola, Perth, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Redmond, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Sydney, Tampa Bay, Vancouver, Washington DC and Wellington.  (Disclaimer: Some of this travel was paid for by employers or Board members themselves.  Some of this travel may have been completed before the Summit.  That’s still one heck of a list!) The last SQL Saturday event this fiscal year is SQL Saturday Shanghai.  And that’s one I’m attending.  This is our first event in China and is being put on in cooperation with the local Microsoft office.  Hopefully this event will be the start of a growing community in China that includes chapters, SQL Saturdays and maybe a SQLRally or two in the future.  I’m excited to speak with people that are just starting down this path and watching this community grow. I encourage you to visit the PASS Global Growth site and read through the material there.  This is the biggest change we’ve made to our governance since I’ve been on the Board.  You need to understand how it affects you and how it affects the organization. And wish me luck on the 15 hour flight to Shanghai on Friday afternoon.  Rob Farley flies from Australia to the US for PASS events multiple times per year and I don’t know how he does it so often.  I think one of these is going to wipe me out.  (And Nihao (knee-how) is Chinese for Hello.)

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• SQL Authority News – Secret Tool Box of Successful Bloggers: 52 Tips to Build a High Traffic Top Ranking Blog

  - by Pinal Dave

  When I started this blog, it was meant as a bookmark for myself for helpful tips and tricks.  Gradually, it grew into a blog that others were reading and commenting on.  While SQL and databases are my first love and the reason I started this blog, the side effect was that I discovered I loved writing.  I discovered a secret goal I didn’t even know I wanted – I wanted to become an author.  For a long time, writing this blog satisfied that urge.  Gradually, though, I wanted to see my name in print. 12th Book Over the past few years I have authored and co-authored a number of books – they are all based on my knowledge of SQL Server, and were meant to spread my years of experience into the world, to share what I have learned with my community.  I currently have elevan of these “manuals” available for sale.  As exciting as it was to see my name in print, I still felt that there was more I could do as an author. That is when I realized that I am more than just a SQL expert.  I have been writing this blog now for more than 10 years, and it grew from a personal bookmark to a thriving website with over 2 million views per month.  I thought to myself “I could write a book about how to create a successful blog!”  And that is exactly what I did.  I am extremely excited to share with all of you my new book – “Secret Toolbox of Successful Bloggers.” A Labor of Love This project has been a labor of love for me.  It started out as a series for this blog – I would post one article a week until I felt the topic had been covered.  I found that as I wrote, new topics kept popping up in my mind, and eventually this small blog series grew into a full book.  The blog series was large enough to last a whole year, so I definitely thought that it could be a full book.  Ideas on how to become a successful blogger were so frequent that, I will admit, I feel like there is so much I left out of this book.  I had a lot more to say than I originally thought! I am so excited to be sharing this book with all of you.  I am so passionate about this topic, and I feel like there are so many people who can benefit from this book.  I know that when I started this blog, I did not know what I was doing, and I would have loved a “helping hand” to tell what to do and what not to do.  If this book can act that way to any of my readers, I feel it is a success. Rules of Thumb If you are interested in the topic of becoming a blogger, as you read this book, keep in mind that it is suggestions only.  Blogging is so new to the world that while there are “rules of thumb” about what to do and what not to do, a map of steps (“first, do x, then do y”) is not going to work for every single blogger.  This book is meant to encourage new bloggers to put their content out there in the world, to be brave and create a community like the one I have here at SQL Authority.  I have gained so much from this community, I wanted to give something back, and this book is just one small part. I hope that everyone who reads this books finds at least one helpful tip, and that everyone can experience the joy of blogging.  That is the whole reason I wrote this book, and what I hope everyone takes away from it. Where Can You Get It? You can get the book from following URL: Kindle eBook | Print Book Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)Filed under: About Me, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, T SQL

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• Design pattern for logging changes in parent/child objects saved to database

  - by andrew

  I’ve got a 2 database tables in parent/child relationship as one-many. I’ve got three classes representing the data in these two tables: Parent Class { Public int ID {get; set;} .. other properties } Child Class { Public int ID {get;set;} Public int ParentID {get; set;} .. other properties } TogetherClass { Public Parent Parent; Public List<Child> ChildList; } Lastly I’ve got a client and server application – I’m in control of both ends so can make changes to both programs as I need to. Client makes a request for ParentID and receives a Together Class for the matching parent, and all of the child records. The client app may make changes to the children – add new children, remove or modify existing ones. Client app then sends the Together Class back to the server app. Server app needs to update the parent and child records in the database. In addition I would like to be able to log the changes – I’m doing this by having 2 separate tables one for Parent, one for child; each containing the same columns as the original plus date time modified, by whom and a list of the changes. I’m unsure as to the best approach to detect the changes in records – new records, records to be deleted, records with no fields changed, records with some fields changed. I figure I need to read the parent & children records and compare those to the ones in the Together Class. Strategy A: If Together class’s child record has an ID of say 0, that indicates a new record; insert. Any deleted child records are no longer in the Together Class; see if any of the comparison child records are not found in the Together class and delete if not found (Compare using ID). Check each child record for changes and if changed log. Strategy B: Make a new Updated TogetherClass UpdatedClass { Public Parent Parent {get; set} Public List<Child> ListNewChild {get;set;} Public List<Child> DeletedChild {get;set;} Public List<Child> ExistingChild {get;set;} // used for no changes and modified rows } And then process as per the list. The reason why I’m asking for ideas is that both of these solutions don’t seem optimal to me and I suspect this problem has been solved already – some kind of design pattern ? I am aware of one potential problem in this general approach – that where Client App A requests a record; App B requests same record; A then saves changes; B then saves changes which may overwrite changes A made. This is a separate locking issue which I’ll raise a separate question for if I’ve got trouble implementing. The actual implementation is c#, SQL Server and WCF between client and server - sharing a library containing the class implementations. Apologies if this is a duplicate post – I tried searching various terms without finding a match though.

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• Ask HTG: How Can I Check the Age of My Windows Installation?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Curious about when you installed Windows and how long you’ve been chugging along without a system refresh? Read on as we show you a simple way to see how long-in-the-tooth your Windows installation is. Dear How-To Geek, It feels like it has been forever since I installed Windows 7 and I’m starting to wonder if some of the performance issues I’m experiencing have something to do with how long ago it was installed. It isn’t crashing or anything horrible, mind you, it just feels slower than it used to and I’m wondering if I should reinstall it to wipe the slate clean. Is there a simple way to determine the original installation date of Windows on its host machine? Sincerely, Worried in Windows Although you only intended to ask one question, you actually asked two. Your direct question is an easy one to answer (how to check the Windows installation date). The indirect question is, however, a little trickier (if you need to reinstall Windows to get a performance boost). Let’s start off with the easy one: how to check your installation date. Windows includes a handy little application just for the purposes of pulling up system information like the installation date, among other things. Open the Start Menu and type cmd in the run box (or, alternatively, press WinKey+R to pull up the run dialog and enter the same command). At the command prompt, type systeminfo.exe Give the application a moment to run; it takes around 15-20 seconds to gather all the data. You’ll most likely need to scroll back up in the console window to find the section at the top that lists operating system stats. What you care about is Original Install Date: We’ve been running the machine we tested the command on since August 23 2009. For the curious, that’s one month and a day after the initial public release of Windows 7 (after we were done playing with early test releases and spent a month mucking around in the guts of Windows 7 to report on features and flaws, we ran a new clean installation and kept on trucking). Now, you might be asking yourself: Why haven’t they reinstalled Windows in all that time? Haven’t things slowed down? Haven’t they upgraded hardware? The truth of the matter is, in most cases there’s no need to completely wipe your computer and start from scratch to resolve issues with Windows and, if you don’t bog your system down with unnecessary and poorly written software, things keep humming along. In fact, we even migrated this machine from a traditional mechanical hard drive to a newer solid-state drive back in 2011. Even though we’ve tested piles of software since then, the machine is still rather clean because 99% of that testing happened in a virtual machine. That’s not just a trick for technology bloggers, either, virtualizing is a handy trick for anyone who wants to run a rock solid base OS and avoid the bog-down-and-then-refresh cycle that can plague a heavily used machine. So while it might be the case that you’ve been running Windows 7 for years and heavy software installation and use has bogged your system down to the point a refresh is in order, we’d strongly suggest reading over the following How-To Geek guides to see if you can’t wrangle the machine into shape without a total wipe (and, if you can’t, at least you’ll be in a better position to keep the refreshed machine light and zippy): HTG Explains: Do You Really Need to Regularly Reinstall Windows? PC Cleaning Apps are a Scam: Here’s Why (and How to Speed Up Your PC) The Best Tips for Speeding Up Your Windows PC Beginner Geek: How to Reinstall Windows on Your Computer Everything You Need to Know About Refreshing and Resetting Your Windows 8 PC Armed with a little knowledge, you too can keep a computer humming along until the next iteration of Windows comes along (and beyond) without the hassle of reinstalling Windows and all your apps.         

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• Best Practices - Core allocation

  - by jsavit

  This post is one of a series of "best practices" notes for Oracle VM Server for SPARC (also called Logical Domains) Introduction SPARC T-series servers currently have up to 4 CPU sockets, each of which has up to 8 or (on SPARC T3) 16 CPU cores, while each CPU core has 8 threads, for a maximum of 512 dispatchable CPUs. The defining feature of Oracle VM Server for SPARC is that each domain is assigned CPU threads or cores for its exclusive use. This avoids the overhead of software-based time-slicing and emulation (or binary rewriting) of system state-changing privileged instructions used in traditional hypervisors. To create a domain, administrators specify either the number of CPU threads or cores that the domain will own, as well as its memory and I/O resources. When CPU resources are assigned at the individual thread level, the logical domains constraint manager attempts to assign threads from the same cores to a domain, and avoid "split core" situations where the same CPU core is used by multiple domains. Sometimes this is unavoidable, especially when domains are allocated and deallocated CPUs in small increments. Why split cores can matter Split core allocations can silenty reduce performance because multiple domains with different address spaces and memory contents are sharing the core's Level 1 cache (L1$). This is called false cache sharing since even identical memory addresses from different domains must point to different locations in RAM. The effect of this is increased contention for the cache, and higher memory latency for each domain using that core. The degree of performance impact can be widely variable. For applications with very small memory working sets, and with I/O bound or low-CPU utilization workloads, it may not matter at all: all machines wait for work at the same speed. If the domains have substantial workloads, or are critical to performance then this can have an important impact: This blog entry was inspired by a customer issue in which one CPU core was split among 3 domains, one of which was the control and service domain. The reported problem was increased I/O latency in guest domains, but the root cause might be higher latency servicing the I/O requests due to the control domain being slowed down. What to do about it Split core situations are easily avoided. In most cases the logical domain constraint manager will avoid it without any administrative action, but it can be entirely prevented by doing one of the several actions: Assign virtual CPUs in multiples of 8 - the number of threads per core. For example: ldm set-vcpu 8 mydomain or ldm add-vcpu 24 mydomain. Each domain will then be allocated on a core boundary. Use the whole core constraint when assigning CPU resources. This allocates CPUs in increments of entire cores instead of virtual CPU threads. The equivalent of the above commands would be ldm set-core 1 mydomain or ldm add-core 3 mydomain. Older syntax does the same thing by adding the -c flag to the add-vcpu, rm-vcpu and set-vcpu commands, but the new syntax is recommended. When whole core allocation is used an attempt to add cores to a domain fails if there aren't enough completely empty cores to satisfy the request. See https://blogs.oracle.com/sharakan/entry/oracle_vm_server_for_sparc4 for an excellent article on this topic by Eric Sharakan. Don't obsess: - if the workloads have minimal CPU requirements and don't need anywhere near a full CPU core, then don't worry about it. If you have low utilization workloads being consolidated from older machines onto a current T-series, then there's no need to worry about this or to assign an entire core to domains that will never use that much capacity. In any case, make sure the most important domains have their own CPU cores, in particular the control domain and any I/O or service domain, and of course any important guests. Summary Split core CPU allocation to domains can potentially have an impact on performance, but the logical domains manager tends to prevent this situation, and it can be completely and simply avoided by allocating virtual CPUs on core boundaries.

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• The Power to Control Power

  - by speakjava

  I'm currently working on a number of projects using embedded Java on the Raspberry Pi and Beagle Board.  These are nice and small, so don't take up much room on my desk as you can see in this picture. As you can also see I have power and network connections emerging from under my desk.  One of the (admittedly very minor) drawbacks of these systems is that they have no on/off switch.  Instead you insert or remove the power connector (USB for the RasPi, a barrel connector for the Beagle).  For the Beagle Board this can potentially be an issue; with the micro-SD card located right next to the connector it has been known for people to eject the card when trying to power off the board, which can be quite serious for the hardware. The alternative is obviously to leave the boards plugged in and then disconnect the power from the outlet.  Simple enough, but a picture of underneath my desk shows that this is not the ideal situation either. This made me think that it would be great if I could have some way of controlling a mains voltage outlet using a remote switch or, even better, from software via a USB connector.  A search revealed not much that fit my requirements, and anything that was close seemed very expensive.  Obviously the only way to solve this was to build my own.Here's my solution.  I decided my system would support both control mechanisms (remote physical switch and USB computer control) and be modular in its design for optimum flexibility.  I did a bit of searching and found a company in Hong Kong that were offering solid state relays for 99p plus shipping (£2.99, but still made the total price very reasonable).  These would handle up to 380V AC on the output side so more than capable of coping with the UK 240V supply.  The other great thing was that being solid state, the input would work with a range of 3-32V and required a very low current of 7.5mA at 12V.  For the USB control an Arduino board seemed the obvious low-cost and simple choice.  Given the current requirments of the relay, the Arduino would not require the additional power supply and could be powered just from the USB.Having secured the relays I popped down to Homebase for a couple of 13A sockets, RS for a box and an Arduino and Maplin for a toggle switch.  The circuit is pretty straightforward, as shown in the diagram (only one output is shown to make it as simple as possible).  Originally I used a 2 pole toggle switch to select the remote switch or USB control by switching the negative connections of the low voltage side.  Unfortunately, the resistance between the digital pins of the Arduino board was not high enough, so when using one of the remote switches it would turn on both of the outlets.  I changed to a 4 pole switch and isolated both positive and negative connections. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you want to follow my design, please be aware that it requires working with mains voltages.  If you are at all concerned with your ability to do this please consult a qualified electrician to help you.It was a tight fit, especially getting the Arduino in, but in the end it all worked.  The completed box is shown in the photos. The remote switch was pretty simple just requiring the squeezing of two rocker switches and a 9V battery into the small RS supplied box.  I repurposed a standard stereo cable with phono plugs to connect the switch box to the mains outlets.  I chopped off one set of plugs and wired it to the rocker switches.  The photo shows the RasPi and the Beagle board now controllable from the switch box on the desk. I've tested the Arduino side of things and this works fine.  Next I need to write some software to provide an interface for control of the outlets.  I'm thinking a JavaFX GUI would be in keeping with the total overkill style of this project.

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• Roles / Profiles / Perspectives in NetBeans IDE 7.1

  - by Geertjan

  With a check out of main-silver from yesterday, I'm able to use the brand new "role" attribute in @TopComponent.Registration, as you can see below, in the bit in bold: @ConvertAsProperties(dtd = "-//org.role.demo.ui//Admin//EN", autostore = false) @TopComponent.Description(preferredID = "AdminTopComponent", //iconBase="SET/PATH/TO/ICON/HERE", persistenceType = TopComponent.PERSISTENCE_ALWAYS) @TopComponent.Registration(mode = "editor", openAtStartup = true, role="admin") public final class AdminTopComponent extends TopComponent { And here's a window for general users of the application, with the "role" attribute set to "user": @ConvertAsProperties(dtd = "-//org.role.demo.ui//User//EN", autostore = false) @TopComponent.Description(preferredID = "UserTopComponent", //iconBase="SET/PATH/TO/ICON/HERE", persistenceType = TopComponent.PERSISTENCE_ALWAYS) @TopComponent.Registration(mode = "explorer", openAtStartup = true, role="user") public final class UserTopComponent extends TopComponent { So, I have two windows. One is assigned to the "admin" role, the other to the "user" role. In the "ModuleInstall" class, I add a "WindowSystemListener" and set "user" as the application's role: public class Installer extends ModuleInstall implements WindowSystemListener { @Override public void restored() { WindowManager.getDefault().addWindowSystemListener(this); } @Override public void beforeLoad(WindowSystemEvent event) { WindowManager.getDefault().setRole("user"); WindowManager.getDefault().removeWindowSystemListener(this); } @Override public void afterLoad(WindowSystemEvent event) { } @Override public void beforeSave(WindowSystemEvent event) { } @Override public void afterSave(WindowSystemEvent event) { } } So, when the application starts, the "UserTopComponent" is shown, not the "AdminTopComponent". Next, I have two Actions, for switching between the two roles, as shown below: @ActionID(category = "Window", id = "org.role.demo.ui.SwitchToAdminAction") @ActionRegistration(displayName = "#CTL_SwitchToAdminAction") @ActionReferences({ @ActionReference(path = "Menu/Window", position = 250) }) @Messages("CTL_SwitchToAdminAction=Switch To Admin") public final class SwitchToAdminAction extends AbstractAction { @Override public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) { WindowManager.getDefault().setRole("admin"); } @Override public boolean isEnabled() { return !WindowManager.getDefault().getRole().equals("admin"); } } @ActionID(category = "Window", id = "org.role.demo.ui.SwitchToUserAction") @ActionRegistration(displayName = "#CTL_SwitchToUserAction") @ActionReferences({ @ActionReference(path = "Menu/Window", position = 250) }) @Messages("CTL_SwitchToUserAction=Switch To User") public final class SwitchToUserAction extends AbstractAction { @Override public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) { WindowManager.getDefault().setRole("user"); } @Override public boolean isEnabled() { return !WindowManager.getDefault().getRole().equals("user"); } } When I select one of the above actions, the role changes, and the other window is shown. I could, of course, add a Login dialog to the "SwitchToAdminAction", so that authentication is required in order to switch to the "admin" role. Now, let's say I am now in the "user" role. So, the "UserTopComponent" shown above is now opened. I decide to also open another window, the Properties window, as below... ...and, when I am in the "admin" role, when the "AdminTopComponent" is open, I decide to also open the Output window, as below... Now, when I switch from one role to the other, the additional window/s I opened will also be opened, together with the explicit members of the currently selected role. And, the main window position and size are also persisted across roles. When I look in the "build" folder of my project in development, I see two different Windows2Local folders, one per role, automatically created by the fact that there is something to be persisted for a particular role, e.g., when a switch to a different role is done: And, with that, we now clearly have roles/profiles/perspectives in NetBeans Platform applications from NetBeans Platform 7.1 onwards.

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• Synchronous Actions

  - by Dan Krasinski-Oracle

  Since the introduction of SMF, svcadm(1M) has had the ability to enable or disable a service instance and wait for that service instance to reach a final state.  With Oracle Solaris 11.2, we’ve expanded the set of administrative actions which can be invoked synchronously. Now all subcommands of svcadm(1M) have synchronous behavior. Let’s take a look at the new usage: Usage: svcadm [-v] [cmd [args ... ]] svcadm enable [-rt] [-s [-T timeout]] <service> ... enable and online service(s) svcadm disable [-t] [-s [-T timeout]] <service> ... disable and offline service(s) svcadm restart [-s [-T timeout]] <service> ... restart specified service(s) svcadm refresh [-s [-T timeout]] <service> ... re-read service configuration svcadm mark [-It] [-s [-T timeout]] <state> <service> ... set maintenance state svcadm clear [-s [-T timeout]] <service> ... clear maintenance state svcadm milestone [-d] [-s [-T timeout]] <milestone> advance to a service milestone svcadm delegate [-s] <restarter> <svc> ... delegate service to a restarter As you can see, each subcommand now has a ‘-s’ flag. That flag tells svcadm(1M) to wait for the subcommand to complete before returning. For enables, that means waiting until the instance is either ‘online’ or in the ‘maintenance’ state. For disable, the instance must reach the ‘disabled’ state. Other subcommands complete when: restart A restart is considered complete once the instance has gone offline after running the ‘stop’ method, and then has either returned to the ‘online’ state or has entered the ‘maintenance’ state. refresh If an instance is in the ‘online’ state, a refresh is considered complete once the ‘refresh’ method for the instance has finished. mark maintenance Marking an instance for maintenance completes when the instance has reached the ‘maintenance’ state. mark degraded Marking an instance as degraded completes when the instance has reached the ‘degraded’ state from the ‘online’ state. milestone A milestone transition can occur in one of two directions. Either the transition moves from a lower milestone to a higher one, or from a higher one to a lower one. When moving to a higher milestone, the transition is considered complete when the instance representing that milestone reaches the ‘online’ state. The transition to a lower milestone, on the other hand, completes only when all instances which are part of higher milestones have reached the ‘disabled’ state. That’s not the whole story. svcadm(1M) will also try to determine if the actions initiated by a particular subcommand cannot complete. Trying to enable an instance which does not have its dependencies satisfied, for example, will cause svcadm(1M) to terminate before that instance reaches the ‘online’ state. You’ll also notice the optional ‘-T’ flag which can be used in conjunction with the ‘-s’ flag. This flag sets a timeout, in seconds, after which svcadm gives up on waiting for the subcommand to complete and terminates. This is useful in many cases, but in particular when the start method for an instance has an infinite timeout but might get stuck waiting for some resource that may never become available. For the C-oriented, each of these administrative actions has a corresponding function in libscf(3SCF), with names like smf_enable_instance_synchronous(3SCF) and smf_restart_instance_synchronous(3SCF).  Take a look at smf_enable_instance_synchronous(3SCF) for details.

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• Book Review (Book 12) - 20 Master Plots

  - by BuckWoody

  This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for a year. You can read my first book review here, and the entire list is here. The book I chose for May 2012 was:20 Master Plots by Ronald B. Tobias. This is my final book review - at least for this year. I'll explain what I've learned in this book in particular, and in the last twelve months in general. Why I chose this book: Stories and themes are part of software, presenting, and working in teams. This book claims there are only 20 plots, ever. I wanted to find out. What I learned: Probably my most favorite read of the year. Deceptively small, amazingly insightful. The premise is that there are only a few "base" themes, and that once you learn them you can put together an interesting set of stories on most any topic. Yes, the author admits that this number has been different throughout history - some have said 50, others 14, and still others claim only one or two basic plots. This doesn't change the fact that you can build very complex stories from a simple set of circumstances and characters. Be warned - if you read this book it takes away much of the wonder from almost every movie or book you'll read from here on! I loved it. My favorite part is that the author gives you exercises to build stories, right from the start. I've actually used these as the start of a meeting to foster creativity. Amazing stuff. One of my favorite sections of the book deals with plot and story. Plot: The king died, and the queen died. Story: The king died, and the queen died of heartbreak. Add one or two words, and you have the essence of storytelling. A highly recommended read, for all folks of all ages. You'll like it, your spouse will like it, and your kids will like it. I learned to be a better storyteller, and it helped me understand that plots and stories are not just things in books - they are a direct reflection of human nature. That makes me a better manager of myself and others.   And this is the last of the reviews - at least for this year. I probably won't post many more book reviews here, but I will keep up the practice. As a reminder, the goal was to select 12 books that will help you reach your career goals. They don't have to be technical, or even apply directly to your job - but they do need to be books that you mindfully select as getting you closer to what you want to be. Each month, jot down what you learned from the work. And see if it doesn't in fact get you closer to your goals. These readings helped me - I got a promotion this year, and I attribute at least some of that to the things I learned.

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• Book Review (Book 12) - 20 Master Plots

  - by BuckWoody

  This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for a year. You can read my first book review here, and the entire list is here. The book I chose for May 2012 was:20 Master Plots by Ronald B. Tobias. This is my final book review - at least for this year. I'll explain what I've learned in this book in particular, and in the last twelve months in general. Why I chose this book: Stories and themes are part of software, presenting, and working in teams. This book claims there are only 20 plots, ever. I wanted to find out. What I learned: Probably my most favorite read of the year. Deceptively small, amazingly insightful. The premise is that there are only a few "base" themes, and that once you learn them you can put together an interesting set of stories on most any topic. Yes, the author admits that this number has been different throughout history - some have said 50, others 14, and still others claim only one or two basic plots. This doesn't change the fact that you can build very complex stories from a simple set of circumstances and characters. Be warned - if you read this book it takes away much of the wonder from almost every movie or book you'll read from here on! I loved it. My favorite part is that the author gives you exercises to build stories, right from the start. I've actually used these as the start of a meeting to foster creativity. Amazing stuff. One of my favorite sections of the book deals with plot and story. Plot: The king died, and the queen died. Story: The king died, and the queen died of heartbreak. Add one or two words, and you have the essence of storytelling. A highly recommended read, for all folks of all ages. You'll like it, your spouse will like it, and your kids will like it. I learned to be a better storyteller, and it helped me understand that plots and stories are not just things in books - they are a direct reflection of human nature. That makes me a better manager of myself and others.   And this is the last of the reviews - at least for this year. I probably won't post many more book reviews here, but I will keep up the practice. As a reminder, the goal was to select 12 books that will help you reach your career goals. They don't have to be technical, or even apply directly to your job - but they do need to be books that you mindfully select as getting you closer to what you want to be. Each month, jot down what you learned from the work. And see if it doesn't in fact get you closer to your goals. These readings helped me - I got a promotion this year, and I attribute at least some of that to the things I learned.

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• Sitting Pretty

  - by Phil Factor

  Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk IT Pro newsletter'DBAs and SysAdmins generally prefer an expression of calmness under adversity. It is a subtle trick, and requires practice in front of a mirror to get it just right. Too much adversity and they think you're not coping; too much calmness and they think you're under-employed' I dislike the term 'avatar', when used to describe a portrait photograph. An avatar, in the sense of a picture, is merely the depiction of one's role-play alter-ego, often a ridiculous bronze-age deity. However, professional image is important. The choice and creation of online photos has an effect on the way your message is received and it is important to get that right. It is fine to use that photo of you after ten lagers on holiday in an Ibiza nightclub, but what works on Facebook looks hilarious on LinkedIn. My splendid photograph that I use online was done by a professional photographer at great expense and I've never had the slightest twinge of regret when I remember how much I paid for it. It is me, but a more pensive and dignified edition, oozing trust and wisdom. One gasps at the magical skill that a professional photographer can conjure up, without digital manipulation, to make the best of a derisory noggin (ed: slang for a head). Even if he had offered to depict me as a semi-naked, muscle-bound, sword-wielding hero, I'd have demurred. No, any professional person needs a carefully cultivated image that looks right. I'd never thought of using that profile shot, though I couldn't help noticing the photographer flinch slightly when he first caught sight of my face. There is a problem with using an avatar. The use of a single image doesn't express the appropriate emotion. At the moment, it is weird to see someone with a laughing portrait writing something solemn. A neutral cast to the face, somewhat like a passport photo, is probably the best compromise. Actually, the same is true of a working life in IT. One of the first skills I learned was not to laugh at managers, but, instead, to develop a facial expression that promoted a sense of keenness, energy and respect. Every profession has its own preferred facial cast. A neighbour of mine has the natural gift of a face that displays barely repressed grief. Though he is characteristically cheerful, he earns a remarkable income as a pallbearer. DBAs and SysAdmins generally prefer an expression of calmness under adversity. It is a subtle trick, and requires practice in front of a mirror to get it just right. Too much adversity and they think you're not coping; too much calmness and they think you're under-employed. With an appropriate avatar, you could do away with a lot of the need for 'smilies' to give clues as to the meaning of what you've written on forums and blogs. If you had a set of avatars, showing the full gamut of human emotions expressible in writing: Rage, fear, reproach, joy, ebullience, apprehension, exasperation, dissembly, irony, pathos, euphoria, remorse and so on. It would be quite a drop-down list on forums, but given the vast prairies of space on the average hard drive, who cares? It would cut down on the number of spats in Forums just as long as one picks the right avatar. As an unreconstructed geek, I find it hard to admit to the value of image in the workplace, but it is true. Just as we use professionals to tidy up and order our CVs and job applications, we should employ experts to enhance our professional image. After all you don't perform surgery or dentistry on yourself do you?

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• Grub Rescue Unknown Filesystem Error. Grub Corrupted or Filesystem?

  - by nightcrawler

  Now it has happened twice & have been pulling my hairs now... I have installed xubuntu on my external hardisk & have been using it for about 3 months. It has three partitions, one of 500 mb mounted at /boot, 2nd one of 48gb mounted at / & the rest (out of 160gb) is ntfs partition....used as normal external storage. The last storage supposedly acts as a buffer b/w Linux distributions & Win platform, buffer in the sense that it provides a universal channel for data transfers. I have constantly used this external hardisk for data transfers b/w win7 laptop & xubuntu (on this external hd) without any hassle. However, on of my desktops where I have ubuntu I (for the first time) attached this external drive which let me do data transfers where all three partitions properly mounted....but then nasty thing occurred the same that occurred before. I (as usual) tried booting via this external hd (one having xubuntu, one having being formerly used under Ubuntu) I got error Now I am totally devastated because similar thing happened ~6months before when I had fedora 17 in my external hd (instead of xubuntu) & after it was used under ubuntu the same happened...i didn't reported it because I already had planned towards debian instead of rpm! The mystery is that as long as I don't attach this external hd under ubuntu the data never** corrupts whereas under win xp/7 I can use it as a normal usb storage of coarse linux partitions aren’t available under win platforms... **From corrupts I mean hd fails to boot with the error mentioned however cant say whether data within remains untouched? It seems that my grub & or MBR is corrupted. Please sir guide me to solve this issue also why I cant attach & use linux external hds under linux platform Disk /dev/sdc: 160.0 GB, 160041884672 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581806 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0004e7d0 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdc1 * 2048 976895 487424 83 Linux /dev/sdc2 978942 96874495 47947777 5 Extended /dev/sdc3 96874496 312575999 107850752 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sdc5 978944 94726143 46873600 83 Linux /dev/sdc6 94728192 96874495 1073152 82 Linux swap / Solaris I can recall for sure that have seen a thread here when a similar problem occurred & in response someone gave solution of how to mount (now invisible) partitions & recover important data in them. I have misplaced that URL so if any can guide me thither because my important documents resides in / partition What I already have done: Without success I have tried this & related solutions What I plan to do: I believe that filesystem has corrupted & would you recommend solution like this provided I cant recall whether my /boot (500mb) partition was ext4 or ext2 though I am sure that my / (48gb) partition was ext4 UPDATE 1 Attached my external hd under Ubuntu ran followinf command as root grub-install /dev/sdc where /dev/sdc was my external hd containing corrupted xubuntu....it reported all done! I re-ran fdisk -l but to my disappointment it reported Disk /dev/sdc: 160.0 GB, 160041884672 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581806 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x1b6b9167 Disk /dev/sdc doesn't contain a valid partition table ...& now I can't even access its ntfs partition (former /dev/sdc3) please help? UPDATE 2 TestDisk (by cgsecurity) failed at founding any partition table :( TestDisk 6.13, Data Recovery Utility, November 2011 Christophe GRENIER <[email protected]> http://www.cgsecurity.org Disk /dev/sdc - 160 GB / 149 GiB - CHS 19457 255 63 Partition Start End Size in sectors

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• Stale statistics on a newly created temporary table in a stored procedure can lead to poor performance

  - by sqlworkshops

  When you create a temporary table you expect a new table with no past history (statistics based on past existence), this is not true if you have less than 6 updates to the temporary table. This might lead to poor performance of queries which are sensitive to the content of temporary tables.I was optimizing SQL Server Performance at one of my customers who provides search functionality on their website. They use stored procedure with temporary table for the search. The performance of the search depended on who searched what in the past, option (recompile) by itself had no effect. Sometimes a simple search led to timeout because of non-optimal plan usage due to this behavior. This is not a plan caching issue rather temporary table statistics caching issue, which was part of the temporary object caching feature that was introduced in SQL Server 2005 and is also present in SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2012. In this customer case we implemented a workaround to avoid this issue (see below for example for workarounds).When temporary tables are cached, the statistics are not newly created rather cached from the past and updated based on automatic update statistics threshold. Caching temporary tables/objects is good for performance, but caching stale statistics from the past is not optimal.We can work around this issue by disabling temporary table caching by explicitly executing a DDL statement on the temporary table. One possibility is to execute an alter table statement, but this can lead to duplicate constraint name error on concurrent stored procedure execution. The other way to work around this is to create an index.I think there might be many customers in such a situation without knowing that stale statistics are being cached along with temporary table leading to poor performance.Ideal solution is to have more aggressive statistics update when the temporary table has less number of rows when temporary table caching is used. I will open a connect item to report this issue.Meanwhile you can mitigate the issue by creating an index on the temporary table. You can monitor active temporary tables using Windows Server Performance Monitor counter: SQL Server: General Statistics->Active Temp Tables. The script to understand the issue and the workaround is listed below:set nocount onset statistics time offset statistics io offdrop table tab7gocreate table tab7 (c1 int primary key clustered, c2 int, c3 char(200))gocreate index test on tab7(c2, c1, c3)gobegin trandeclare @i intset @i = 1while @i <= 50000begininsert into tab7 values (@i, 1, ‘a’)set @i = @i + 1endcommit trangoinsert into tab7 values (50001, 1, ‘a’)gocheckpointgodrop proc test_slowgocreate proc test_slow @i intasbegindeclare @j intcreate table #temp1 (c1 int primary key)insert into #temp1 (c1) select @iselect @j = t7.c1 from tab7 t7 inner join #temp1 t on (t7.c2 = t.c1)endgodbcc dropcleanbuffersset statistics time onset statistics io ongo–high reads as expected for parameter ’1'exec test_slow 1godbcc dropcleanbuffersgo–high reads that are not expected for parameter ’2'exec test_slow 2godrop proc test_with_recompilegocreate proc test_with_recompile @i intasbegindeclare @j intcreate table #temp1 (c1 int primary key)insert into #temp1 (c1) select @iselect @j = t7.c1 from tab7 t7 inner join #temp1 t on (t7.c2 = t.c1)option (recompile)endgodbcc dropcleanbuffersset statistics time onset statistics io ongo–high reads as expected for parameter ’1'exec test_with_recompile 1godbcc dropcleanbuffersgo–high reads that are not expected for parameter ’2'–low reads on 3rd execution as expected for parameter ’2'exec test_with_recompile 2godrop proc test_with_alter_table_recompilegocreate proc test_with_alter_table_recompile @i intasbegindeclare @j intcreate table #temp1 (c1 int primary key)–to avoid caching of temporary tables one can create a constraint–but this might lead to duplicate constraint name error on concurrent usagealter table #temp1 add constraint test123 unique(c1)insert into #temp1 (c1) select @iselect @j = t7.c1 from tab7 t7 inner join #temp1 t on (t7.c2 = t.c1)option (recompile)endgodbcc dropcleanbuffersset statistics time onset statistics io ongo–high reads as expected for parameter ’1'exec test_with_alter_table_recompile 1godbcc dropcleanbuffersgo–low reads as expected for parameter ’2'exec test_with_alter_table_recompile 2godrop proc test_with_index_recompilegocreate proc test_with_index_recompile @i intasbegindeclare @j intcreate table #temp1 (c1 int primary key)–to avoid caching of temporary tables one can create an indexcreate index test on #temp1(c1)insert into #temp1 (c1) select @iselect @j = t7.c1 from tab7 t7 inner join #temp1 t on (t7.c2 = t.c1)option (recompile)endgoset statistics time onset statistics io ondbcc dropcleanbuffersgo–high reads as expected for parameter ’1'exec test_with_index_recompile 1godbcc dropcleanbuffersgo–low reads as expected for parameter ’2'exec test_with_index_recompile 2go

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• Virtualized data centre&ndash;Part three: Architecture

  - by marc dekeyser

  Having the basics (like discussed in the previous articles) is all good and well, but how do we get started on this?! It can be quite daunting after all!   From my own point of view I can absolutely confirm your worries and concerns, but also tell you that it is not as hard as it seems! Deciding on what kind of motherboard to buy, processor and how much memory is an activity you will spend quite some time doing research on. And that is not even mentioning storage! All in all it comes down to setting you expectations and your budget. Probably adjusting your expectations according to your budget :). Processors As a rule of thumb you want VT-D (virtualization) technology built in to the processor allowing you to have 64 bit machines running on your host. Memory The more the better! If you are building a home lab don’t bother with ECC unless you are going to run machines that absolutely should be on all the time and your comfort depends on it! Motherboard Depends on what you are going to do with storage: If you are going the NAS way then the number of SATA port/RAID capabilities do not really matter. If you decide to have a single server with lots of dedicated storage it obviously matters how much SATA ports you will have, alternatively you could use a RAID controller (but these set you back a pretty penny if you want one. DELL 6i’s are usually available for a good bargain if you can find one!). Easiest is to get one with a built-in graphics card (on-board) as you are just adding more heat, power usage and possible points of failure. Networking Just like your choice of motherboard the networking side tends to depend on how you want to go. A single virtualization  host with local storage can usually get away with having a single network card, a cluster or server which uses iSCSI storage tends to have more than one teamed up :). Storage The dreaded beast from the dark! The horror which lives in the forest! The most difficult decision you are going to make in the building of your lab. Why you might ask? Simple my friend, having the right choice of storage can make or break your virtualization solution. The performance of you storage choice will have an important impact on the responsiveness of your virtual machines and the deployment of new machines. It also makes a run with your budget! If you decide to go the NAS route you will be dropping a lot more money than if you would be having just a bunch of disks sitting in a server and manually distributing the virtual machines over the disks. Platform I’m a Microsoftee so Hyper-V is a dead giveaway for me. If you are interested in using VMware I won’t stop you but the rest of my posts will be oriented on Server 2012 Hyper-V (aka 3.0)! What did I use? Before someone asks me this in the comments I’ll give you a quick run down of what I am using. - Intel 2.4 quad core processors (i something something) - 24 GB DDR3 Memory - Single disk in each server (might look at this as I move the servers to 2012) - Synology DS1812+ NAS - 3 network interfaces where possible - HP1800 procurve managed switch I decided to spring for the NAS as I will also be using it for backups and media storage (which is working out quite nicely with my Xbox 360 I must say). At the time of building my 2 boxes (over a year and a half ago) these set me back about 900 euros each so I can image you can build the same or better for a lower price. Next article will be diagramming what I want to achieve and starting a build on the Hyper V 3.0 cluster!

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• Build 2012, the first post

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Yes, I was one of the lucky few who made it to Build. Build, formerly known as the Professional Developers Conference (or PDC) is the place to be if you are a developer on the Microsoft platform. Since I take my job seriously I took out some time on my busy schedule, sighed at the thought of not seeing my family for another week and signed up for it. Now, before I talk about the amazing Surface devices (yes, this posting is written on one of them), the great Lumia 920 we all got, the long deserved love for touch, NUI and other things I have been talking about for years, I need to do some ranting. So if you are anxious to read about the technical goodies you’ll have to wait until the next post. Still here? Good. When I signed up for the Build conference during my holidays this summer it was pretty obvious that demand would be high. Therefor I made sure I was on time. But even though I registered only 7 minutes after the initial opening time the Early Bird discount for the first 500 attendees was already sold out. I later learned that registration actually started 5 minutes before the scheduled time but even though it is still impressive how fast things went. The whole event sold out in 57 minutes Or so they say… A lot of people got put on the waiting list. There was room for about 1500 attendees and I heard that at least 1000 people were on that waiting list, including a lot of people I know. Strangely, all of them got tickets assigned after 2 weeks. Here at the conference I heard from a guy from Nokia that they had shipped 2500 Lumia 920 phones. That number matches the rumors that the organization added 1000 extra tickets. This, of course is no problem. I am not an elitist and I think large crowds have a special atmosphere that I quite like. But…. The Microsoft Campus is not equipped for that sheer volume of visitors. That was painfully obvious during on-site registration where people had to stand in line for over 2 hours. The conference is spread out over 2 buildings, divided by a 15 minute busride (yes, the campus is that big). I have seen queues of over 200 people waiting for the bus and when that arrived it had a capacity of 16. I can assure you: that doesn’t fit. This of course means that travelling from one site to the other might take about 30 minutes. So you arrive at the session room just in time, only to find out it’s full. Since you can’ get into that session you try to find another one but now you’re even more late so you have no chance at all of entering. The doors are closed and you’re told: “Well, you can watch the live stream online”. Mmmm… So I spend thousands of dollars, a week away from home, family and work to be told I can also watch the sessions online? Are you fricking kidding me? I could go on but I won’t. You get the idea. It’s jus badly organized, something I am not really used to in my 20 years of experience at Microsoft events. Yes, I am disappointed. I hope a lot of people here in Redmond will also fill in the evals and that the organization next year will do a better job. Really, Build deserves better. </rantmode>

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• Musings on the launch of SQL Monitor

  - by Phil Factor

  For several years, I was responsible for the smooth running of a large number of enterprise database servers. We ran a network monitoring tool that was primitive by today’s standards but which performed the useful function of polling every system, including all the Servers in my charge. It ran a configurable script for each service that you needed to monitor that was merely required to return one of a number of integer values. These integer values represented the pain level of the service, from 10 (“hurtin’ real bad”) to 1 (“Things is great”). Not only could you program the visual appearance of each server on the network diagram according to the value of the integer, but you could even opt to run a sound file. Very soon, we had a large TFT Screen, high on the wall of the server room, with every server represented by an icon, and a speaker next to it that would give out a series of grunts, groans, snores, shrieks and funeral marches, depending on the problem. One glance at the display, and you could dive in with iSQL/QA/SSMS and check what was going on with your favourite diagnostic tools. If you saw a server icon burst into flames on the screen or droop like a jelly, you dropped your mug of coffee to do it.  It was real fun, but I remember it more for the huge difference it made to have that real-time visibility into how your servers are performing. The management soon stopped making jokes about the real reason we wanted the TFT screen. (It rendered DVDs beautifully they said; particularly flesh-tints). If you are instantly alerted when things start to go wrong, then there was a good chance you could fix it before being alerted to the problem by the users of the system.  There is a world of difference between this sort of tool, one that gives whoever is ‘on watch’ in the server room the first warning of a potential problem on one of any number of servers, and the breed of tool that attempts to provide some sort of prosthetic DBA Brain. I like to get the early warning, to get the right information to help to diagnose a problem: No auto-fix, but just the information. I prefer to leave the task of ascertaining the exact cause of a problem to my own routines, custom code, intuition and forensic instincts. A simulated aircraft cockpit doesn’t do anything for me, especially before I know where I should be flying.  Time has moved on, and that TFT screen is now, with SQL Monitor, an iPad or any other mobile or static device that can support a browser. Rather than trying to reproduce the conceptual topology of the servers, it lists them in their groups so as to give a display that scales with the increasing number of databases you monitor.  It gives the history of the major events and trends for the servers. It gives the icons and colours that you can spot out of the corner of your eye, but goes on to give you just enough information in drill-down to give you a much clearer idea of where to look with your DBA tools and routines. It doesn't swamp you with information.  Whereas a few server and database-level problems are pretty easily fixed, others depend on judgement and experience to sort out.  Although the idea of an application that automates the bulk of a DBA’s skills is attractive to many, I can’t see it happening soon. SQL Server’s complexity increases faster than the panaceas can be created. In the meantime, I believe that the best way of helping  DBAs  is to make the monitoring process as simple and effective as possible,  and provide the right sort of detail and ‘evidence’ to allow them to decide on the fix. In the end, it is still down to the skill of the DBA.

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• Mobile Deals: the Consumer Wants You in Their Pocket

  - by Mike Stiles

  Mobile deals offer something we talk about a lot in social marketing, relevant content. If a consumer is already predisposed to liking your product and gets a timely deal for it that’s easy and convenient to use, not only do you score on the marketing side, it clearly generates some of that precious ROI that’s being demanded of social. First, a quick gut-check on the public’s adoption of mobile. Nielsen figures have 55.5% of US mobile owners using smartphones. If young people are indeed the future, you can count on the move to mobile exploding exponentially. Teens are the fastest growing segment of smartphone users, and 58% of them have one. But the largest demographic of smartphone users is 25-34 at 74%. That tells you a focus on mobile will yield great results now, and even better results straight ahead. So we can tell both from statistics and from all the faces around you that are buried in their smartphones this is where consumers are. But are they looking at you? Do you have a valid reason why they should? Everybody likes a good deal. BIA/Kelsey says US consumers will spend $3.6 billion this year for daily deals (the Groupons and LivingSocials of the world), up 87% from 2011. The report goes on to say over 26% of small businesses are either "very likely" or "extremely likely" to offer up a deal in the next 6 months. Retail Gazette reports 58% of consumers shop with coupons, a 40% increase in 4 years. When you consider that a deal can be the impetus for a real-world transaction, a first-time visit to a store, an online purchase, entry into a loyalty program, a social referral, a new fan or follower, etc., that 26% figure shows us there’s a lot of opportunity being left on the table by brands. The existing and emerging technologies behind mobile devices make the benefits of offering deals listed above possible. Take how mobile payment systems are being tied into deal delivery and loyalty programs. If it’s really easy to use a coupon or deal, it’ll get used. If it’s complicated, it’ll be passed over as “not worth it.” When you can pay with your mobile via technologies that connects store and user, you get the deal, you get the loyalty credit, you pay, and your receipt is uploaded, all in one easy swipe. Nothing to keep track of, nothing to lose or forget about. And the store “knows” you, so future offers will be based on your tastes. Consider the endgame. A customer who’s a fan of your belt buckle store’s Facebook Page is in one of your physical retail locations. They pull up your app, because they’ve gotten used to a loyalty deal being offered when they go to your store. Voila. A 10% discount active for the next 30 minutes. Maybe the app also surfaces social references to your brand made by friends so they can check out a buckle someone’s raving about. If they aren’t a fan of your Page or don’t have your app, perhaps they’ve opted into location-based deal services so you can still get them that 10% deal while they’re in the store. Or maybe they’ve walked in with a pre-purchased Groupon or Living Social voucher. They pay with one swipe, and you’ve learned about their buying preferences, credited their loyalty account and can encourage them to share a pic of their new buckle on social. Happy customer. Happy belt buckle company. All because the brand was willing to use the tech that’s available to meet consumers where they are, incentivize them, and show them how much they’re valued through rewards.

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• Call For Papers Tips and Tricks

  - by speakjava

  This year's JavaOne session review has just been completed and by now everyone who submitted papers should know whether they were successful or not.  I had the pleasure again this year of leading the review of the 'JavaFX and Rich User Experiences' track.  I thought it would be useful to write up a few comments to help people in future when submitting session proposals, not just for JavaOne, but for any of the many developer conferences that run around the world throughout the year.  This also draws on conversations I recently had with various Java User Group leaders at the Oracle User Group summit in Riga.  Many of these leaders run some of the biggest and most successful Java conferences in Europe. Try to think of a title which will sound interesting.  For example, "Experiences of performance tuning embedded Java for an ARM architecture based single board computer" probably isn't going to get as much attention as "Do you like coffee with your dessert? Java on the Raspberry Pi".  When thinking of the subject and title for your talk try to steer clear of sessions that might be too generic (and so get lost in a group of similar sessions).  Introductory talks are great when the audience is new to a subject, but beware of providing sessions that are too basic when the technology has been around for a while and there are lots of tutorials already available on the web. JavaOne, like many other conferences has a number of fields that need to be filled in when submitting a paper.  Many of these are selected from pull-down lists (like which track the session is applicable to).  Check these lists carefully.  A number of sessions we had needed to be shuffled between tracks when it was thought that the one selected was not appropriate.  We didn't count this against any sessions, but it's always a good idea to try and get the right one from the start, just in case. JavaOne, again like many other conferences, has two fields that describe the session being submitted: abstract and summary.  These are the most critical to a successful submission.  The two fields have different names and that is significant; a frequent mistake people make is to write an abstract for a session and then duplicate it for the summary.  The abstract (at least in the case of JavaOne) is what gets printed in the show guide and is typically what will be used by attendees when deciding what sessions to attend.  This is where you need to sell your session, not just to the reviewers, but also the people who you want in your audience.  Submitting a one line abstract (unless it's a really good one line) is not usually enough to decide whether this is worth investing an hour of conference time.  The abstract typically has a limit of a few hundred characters.  Try to use as many of them as possible to get as much information about your session across.  The summary should be different from the abstract (and don't leave it blank as some people do).  This field is where you can give the reviewers more detail about things like the structure of the talk, possible demonstrations and so on.  As a reviewer I look to this section to help me decide whether the hard-sell of the title and abstract will actually be reflected in the final content.  Try to make this comprehensive, but don't make it excessively long.  When you have to review possibly hundreds of sessions a certain level of conciseness can make life easier for reviewers and help the cause of your session. If you've not made many submissions for talks in the past, or if this is your first, try to give reviewers places to find background on you as a presenter.  Having an active blog and Twitter handle can also help reviewers if they're not sure what your level of expertise is.  Many call-for-papers have places for you to include this type of information.  It's always good to have new and original presenters and presentations for conferences.  Hopefully these tips will help you be successful when you answer the next call-for-papers.

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• Why won't my Broadcom BCM4312 LP-PHY work with the STA driver?

  - by Jackson Taylor

  I tried the steps here for a 4312: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx Both of these: sudo modprobe -r b43 ssb wl sudo modprobe wl return: FATAL: Module wl not found. FATAL: Error running install command for wl (this one is only for the second one actually) I tried the broadcom-sta, didn't work. What's confusing is down below in the next steps for STA with internet access it says to use the bcmwl one. So I install that and it succeeds but with some errors: sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required: module-assistant Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove it. The following NEW packages will be installed: bcmwl-kernel-source 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0 B/1,181 kB of archives. After this operation, 3,609 kB of additional disk space will be used. Selecting previously unselected package bcmwl-kernel-source. (Reading database ... 168005 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking bcmwl-kernel-source (from .../bcmwl-kernel-source_5.100.82.112+bdcom-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb) ... Setting up bcmwl-kernel-source (5.100.82.112+bdcom-0ubuntu3) ... Loading new bcmwl-5.100.82.112+bdcom DKMS files... Building only for 3.5.0-21-generic Building for architecture x86_64 Module build for the currently running kernel was skipped since the kernel source for this kernel does not seem to be installed. ERROR: Module b43 does not exist in /proc/modules ERROR: Module b43legacy does not exist in /proc/modules ERROR: Module ssb does not exist in /proc/modules ERROR: Module bcm43xx does not exist in /proc/modules ERROR: Module brcm80211 does not exist in /proc/modules ERROR: Module brcmfmac does not exist in /proc/modules ERROR: Module brcmsmac does not exist in /proc/modules ERROR: Module bcma does not exist in /proc/modules FATAL: Module wl not found. FATAL: Error running install command for wl update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated) Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.5.0-21-generic jtaylor991@jtaylor991-whiteHP:~$ sudo modprobe wl FATAL: Module wl not found. FATAL: Error running install command for wl Then I do the modprobe wl commands listed above and it gives the above listed errors. It didn't work with the broadcom-sta driver either. I installed the b43 ones but nothing happened, and I don't know why so those are still installed. firmware-b43legacy-installer, b43-fwcutter and firmware-b43-lpphy-installer (yes it is a LP-PHY) are currently installed. If I go into System Settings Software Sources Additional Drivers it says "Using Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA wireless driver source from bcmwl-kernel-source (proprietary) But bcmwl-kernel-source isn't installed. I could try again but I remember rebooting and it still said this. What's funny is it found wireless networks during the Ubuntu setup/installation, I don't remember if I got it to connect or not though. I think it kept asking for a password when I put it in (yes it was right I showed password and looked at it) so I just ignored it. But right now the Enable Wireless option in the top right is just gone, it's just Enable Networking and I'm on ethernet on this HP Pavilion dv4-1435dx right here. If I run rfkill list it shows: 0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no It was hard blocked at the beginning but unblocking it makes no change. Also it's a touch sensitive button, and it appears to be always orange no matter if it's enabled or not because when I touch it the hard blocked changes between yes and no in rfkill list. I think it was blue for a minute at one point. What is going on?!?! Help me! Lol, thanks for any and all of your time guys. Oh yeah this is Ubuntu 12.10 fresh install.

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• WiX, MSDeploy and an appealing configuration/deployment paradigm

  - by alexhildyard

  I do a lot of application and server configuration; I've done this for many years and have tended to view the complexity of this strictly in terms of the complexity of the ultimate configuration to be deployed. For example, specific APIs aside, I would tend to regard installing a server certificate as a more complex activity than, say, copying a file or adding a Registry entry.My prejudice revolved around the idea of a sequential deployment script that not only had the explicit prescription to apply a specific server configuration, but also made the implicit presumption that the server in question was in a good known state. Scripts like this fail for hundreds of reasons -- the Default Website didn't exist; the application had already been deployed; the application had already been partially deployed and failed to rollback fully, and so on. And so the problem is that the more complex the configuration activity, the more scope for error in any individual part of that activity, and therefore the greater the chance the server in question will not end up at exactly the desired configuration level.Recently I was introduced to a completely different mindset, which, for want of a better turn of phrase, I will call the "make it so" mindset. It's extremely simple both to explain and to implement. In place of the head-down, imperative script you used to use, you substitute a set of checks -- much like exception handlers -- around each configuration activity, starting with a check of the current system state. Thus the configuration logic becomes: "IF these services aren't started then start them, and IF XYZ website doesn't exist then create it, and IF these shares don't exist then create them, and IF these shares aren't permissioned in some particular way, then permission them so." This works. Really well, in my experience. Scenario 1: You want to get a system into a good known state; it's already in a good known state; you quickly realise there is nothing to do.Scenario 2: You want to get the system into a good known state; your script is flawed or the system is bust; it cannot be put into that state. You know exactly where (at least part of) the problem is and why.Scenario 3: You want to get the system into a good known state; people are fiddling around with the system just now. That's fine. You do what you can, and later you come back and try it againScenario 4: No one wants to deploy anything; they want you to prove that the previous deployment was successful. So you re-run the deployment script with the "-WhatIf" flag. It reports that there was nothing to change. There's your proof.I mentioned two technologies in the title -- MSI and MSDeploy. I am thinking specifically of the conversation that took place here. Having worked with both technologies, I think Rob Mensching's response is appropriately nuanced, and in essence the difference is this: sometimes your target is either to achieve a specific new server state, or to rollback to a known good one. Then again, your target may be to configure what you can, and to understand what you can't. Implicitly MSDeploy's "rollback" is simply to redeploy the previous version, whereas a well-crafted MSI will actively put your system into that state without further intervention. Either way, if all goes well it will leave you with a system in one of two states, whereas MSDeploy could leave your system in one of many states. The key is that MSDeploy and MSI are complementary technologies; which suits you best depends as much on Operational guidance as your Configuration remit.What I wanted to say was that I have always been for atomic, transactional-based configuration, but having worked with the "make it so" paradigm, I have been favourably impressed by the actual results. I'm tempted to put a more technical post up on this in due course.

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• Best approach to depth streaming via existing codec

  - by Kevin

  I'm working on a development system (and game) intended for games set mostly in static third-person views. We produce our scenery by CG and photographic techniques. Our background art is rendered off-line by a production-grade renderer. To allow the runtime imagery to properly interact with the background art, I wrote a program to convert from depth output by Mental Ray into a texture, and a pixel shader to draw a quad such that the Z data comes from the texture. This technique is working out very well, but now we've decided that some of the camera angle changes between scenes should be animated. The animation itself is straightforward to produce from our CG models. We intend to encode it to some HD video codec such as H.264. The problem is that in order to maintain our runtime imagery on the screen, the depth buffer will need to be loaded for each video frame. Due to the bandwidth, the video's depth data will need to be compressed efficiently. I've looked into methods for performing temporal compression of depth info and found an interesting research paper here: http://web4.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/j.kautz/publications/depth-streaming.pdf The method establishes a mapping between 16-bit depth values and YCbCr values. The mapping is tuned to the properties of existing video codecs in order to maximize precision of the decoded depths after the YCbCr has undergone video compression. It allows an existing, unmodified video codec to be used on the backend. I'm looking at how to pull this off with the least possible work. (This design change was unplanned.) Our game engine itself is native C++, presently for Win32 and DirectX, although we've worked hard to keep platform dependence segregated because we intend other ports. We don't have motion video facilities in the engine yet but will ultimately need that anyway for cinematics. I was planning on using some off-the-shelf motion video solution we can plug into our engine, and haven't chosen one yet. This new added requirement makes selecting one harder since, among other things, we'll now need to bypass colourspace conversion on one of the streams, and also will need to be playing two streams simultaneously in lockstep, on top of in some cases audio on one of them (for the cinematics). I'm also wondering if it's possible (or even useful) to do the conversion from YCbCr to depth in a pixel shader, or if it's better to just do it in CPU and separately load the resulting depth values into a locked tex. The conversion unfortunately does involve branching logic per-pixel. (There are more naive mappings that don't need branching, but they produce inferior results.) It could be reduced to a table lookup but the table would be 32MB. Programming is second-nature to me but I'm not that experienced with pix shaders and have zero knowledge of off-the-shelf video solutions. I'd therefore be interested in advice from others who may have dealt more with depth streaming, pixel shaders, and/or off-the-shelf codecs, regarding how feasible the proposed application is and what off-the-shelf video systems out there would best get along with this usage case.

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• Best triple head display setup

  - by dgel

  I'm currently running Ubuntu 12.04 with a darn good triple head display setup. I've got a VisionTek 900530 Radeon HD 5450 512MB DDR3 PCI Express video card that has two DVI outputs and one Mini DisplayPort that I have connected to a HDMI adapter. I'm running three identical Asus 1920x1080 monitors that each have a DVI, VGA, and HDMI input. I'm using the xorg-edgers ppa, so I'm using the open source radeon driver version 6.99.99. I tried using the ATI binary fglrx driver, but I wasn't able to get the three monitors working properly- the monitor connected via HDMI / DisplayPort wouldn't run at full resolution. The setup is almost perfect: Compiz runs fine and is quite snappy. I'm not able to use that great compiz feature where you can drag a window to the side of a display and it will half maximize. I occasionally experience display corruption weirdness with Unity and need to restart it. When I use a dropdown menu in LibreOffice it often pops the menu down in another window. For example, if I'm using the center monitor and click the Insert menu, the menu pulls down on the monitor to my right, forcing me to chase it. If I chase down the menu and choose Manual Break, the dialog appears over on my left monitor. This absurdity is mildly entertaining but has lost its novelty. I've decided to build a new system and have spared no expense- latest i7 processor, SSD, etc. I really like the performance of the Nvidia binary drivers, so I put two ZOTAC ZT-40707-10L GeForce GT 440 in the system, figuring I'd have four DVI outputs and an awesome triple (or even eventually quad) head setup. Unfortunately it appears that I didn't do sufficient research before my purchase. It seems that Nvidia TwinView only supports two monitors on one card (I guess that's why they call it TwinView...). I messed around with running two X servers, but I really don't want that- being able to drag windows to any monitor is critical. It doesn't sound like Xinerama is an option because from what I understand it simply doesn't support Compiz. I've seen a BaseMosaic option that can be used with the Nvidia drivers that appears to support an almost unlimited number of heads- unfortunately me cheap little cards don't support it. I'm also not sure whether you'll still have all nice maximizing and snapping that TwinView provides, or whether Ubuntu will only see it as one massive display. I put my old trusty ATI card into my new system and installed 12.10. I'm using the opensource radeon drivers again because even in 12.10 I can't get the fglrx binary drivers to do triple head. Unfortunately, even with an unbelievably powerful system the experience is extremely sluggish (much more so than my experience in 12.04). The menu scattering problem appears to be fixed, but I get a lot of nasty Unity display corruption. So finally, my question is this: What hardware / drivers should I use? I'm willing to buy (almost) any video card(s). I have two PCI-Express 3.0 slots on my motherboard (which has an integrated Intel HD card). I'm willing to use ATI or Nvidia cards and willing to run Ubuntu 12.04.1 or 12.10. I'm not a gamer, but do want beautiful and snappy Compiz effects. Does anyone out there have the perfect triple head setup in 12.04 or 12.10? What hardware / drivers are you using? I have those two Nvidia cards but will probably be returning them unless someone knows a way to use them together for a triple head setup. Since I'm having pretty good luck with a single ATI card providing three displays, should I just buy a beefier one with the hopes that it will fix the horrible sluggishness I'm experiencing in 12.10?

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• In hindsight, is basing XAML on XML a mistake or a good approach?

  - by romkyns

  XAML is essentially a subset of XML. One of the main benefits of basing XAML on XML is said to be that it can be parsed with existing tools. And it can, to a large degree, although the (syntactically non-trivial) attribute values will stay in text form and require further parsing. There are two major alternatives to describing a GUI in an XML-derived language. One is to do what WinForms did, and describe it in real code. There are numerous problems with this, though it’s not completely advantage-free (a question to compare XAML to this approach). The other major alternative is to design a completely new syntax specifically tailored for the task at hand. This is generally known as a domain-specific language. So, in hindsight, and as a lesson for the future generations, was it a good idea to base XAML on XML, or would it have been better as a custom-designed domain-specific language? If we were designing an even better UI framework, should we pick XML or a custom DSL? Since it’s much easier to think positively about the status quo, especially one that is quite liked by the community, I’ll give some example reasons for why building on top of XML might be considered a mistake. Basing a language off XML has one thing going for it: it’s much easier to parse (the core parser is already available), requires much, much less design work, and alternative parsers are also much easier to write for 3rd party developers. But the resulting language can be unsatisfying in various ways. It is rather verbose. If you change the type of something, you need to change it in the closing tag. It has very poor support for comments; it’s impossible to comment out an attribute. There are limitations placed on the content of attributes by XML. The markup extensions have to be built "on top" of the XML syntax, not integrated deeply and nicely into it. And, my personal favourite, if you set something via an attribute, you use completely different syntax than if you set the exact same thing as a content property. It’s also said that since everyone knows XML, XAML requires less learning. Strictly speaking this is true, but learning the syntax is a tiny fraction of the time spent learning a new UI framework; it’s the framework’s concepts that make the curve steep. Besides, the idiosyncracies of an XML-based language might actually add to the "needs learning" basket. Are these disadvantages outweighted by the ease of parsing? Should the next cool framework continue the tradition, or invest the time to design an awesome DSL that can’t be parsed by existing tools and whose syntax needs to be learned by everyone? P.S. Not everyone confuses XAML and WPF, but some do. XAML is the XML-like thing. WPF is the framework with support for bindings, theming, hardware acceleration and a whole lot of other cool stuff.

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