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  • PHP crashing (seg-fault) under mod_fcgi, apache

    - by Andras Gyomrey
    I've been programming a site using: Zend Framework 1.11.5 (complete MVC) PHP 5.3.6 Apache 2.2.19 CentOS 5.6 i686 virtuozzo on vps cPanel WHM 11.30.1 (build 4) Mysql 5.1.56-log Mysqli API 5.1.56 The issue started here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6769515/php-programming-seg-fault. In brief, php is giving me random segmentation-faults. [Wed Jul 20 17:45:34 2011] [error] mod_fcgid: process /usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/php5(11562) exit(communication error), get unexpected signal 11 [Wed Jul 20 17:45:34 2011] [warn] [client 190.78.208.30] (104)Connection reset by peer: mod_fcgid: error reading data from FastCGI server [Wed Jul 20 17:45:34 2011] [error] [client 190.78.208.30] Premature end of script headers: index.php About extensions. When i compile php with "--enable-debug" flag, i have to disable this line: zend_extension="/usr/local/IonCube/ioncube_loader_lin_5.3.so" Otherwise, the server doesn't accept requests and i get a "The connection with the server was reset". It is possible that i have to disable eaccelerator too because of the same reason. I still don't get why apache gets running it some times and some others not: extension="eaccelerator.so" Anyway, after i get httpd running, seg-faults can occurr randomly. If i don't compile php with "--enable-debug" flag, i can get DETERMINISTICALLY a php crash: <?php class Admin_DbController extends Controller_BaseController { public function updateSqlDefinitionsAction() { $db = Zend_Registry::get('db'); $row = $db->fetchRow("SHOW CREATE TABLE 222AFI"); } } ?> BUT if i compile php with "--enable-debug" flag, it's really hard to get this error. I must add some complexity to make it crash. I have to be doing many paralell requests for a few seconds to get a crash: <?php class Admin_DbController extends Controller_BaseController { public function updateSqlDefinitionsAction() { $db = Zend_Registry::get('db'); $tableList = $db->listTables(); foreach ($tableList as $tableName){ $row = $db->fetchRow("SHOW CREATE TABLE " . $db->quoteIdentifier($tableName)); file_put_contents( DB_DEFINITIONS_PATH . '/' . $tableName . '.sql', $row['Create Table'] . ';' ); } } } ?> Please notice this is the same script, but creating DDL for all tables in database rather than for one. It seems that if php is heavy loaded (with extensions and me doing many paralell requests) it's when i get php to crash. About starting httpd with "-X": i've tried. The thing is, it is already hard to make php crash with --enable-debug. With "-X" option (which only enables one child process) i can't do parallel requests. So i haven't been able to create to proper debug backtrace: https://bugs.php.net/bugs-generating-backtrace.php My concrete question is, what do i do to get a coredump? root@GWT4 [~]# httpd -V Server version: Apache/2.2.19 (Unix) Server built: Jul 20 2011 19:18:58 Cpanel::Easy::Apache v3.4.2 rev9999 Server's Module Magic Number: 20051115:28 Server loaded: APR 1.4.5, APR-Util 1.3.12 Compiled using: APR 1.4.5, APR-Util 1.3.12 Architecture: 32-bit Server MPM: Prefork threaded: no forked: yes (variable process count) Server compiled with.... -D APACHE_MPM_DIR="server/mpm/prefork" -D APR_HAS_SENDFILE -D APR_HAS_MMAP -D APR_HAVE_IPV6 (IPv4-mapped addresses enabled) -D APR_USE_SYSVSEM_SERIALIZE -D APR_USE_PTHREAD_SERIALIZE -D SINGLE_LISTEN_UNSERIALIZED_ACCEPT -D APR_HAS_OTHER_CHILD -D AP_HAVE_RELIABLE_PIPED_LOGS -D DYNAMIC_MODULE_LIMIT=128 -D HTTPD_ROOT="/usr/local/apache" -D SUEXEC_BIN="/usr/local/apache/bin/suexec" -D DEFAULT_PIDLOG="logs/httpd.pid" -D DEFAULT_SCOREBOARD="logs/apache_runtime_status" -D DEFAULT_LOCKFILE="logs/accept.lock" -D DEFAULT_ERRORLOG="logs/error_log" -D AP_TYPES_CONFIG_FILE="conf/mime.types" -D SERVER_CONFIG_FILE="conf/httpd.conf"

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  • Setting up a minimalist linux environment

    - by Nate
    All right, I've been messing around with various linux distros and a variety of window managers (I seem to change operating systems like most people change their pants), and I've gotten to the point where I know what I want but I'm not sure the best way to set it up. Here's what I want out of my programming machine: I don't want a status bar. I don't want a menu bar. When there are no windows open, the screen should show my desktop background and nothing else. I'll use alt+f2 to run things, and my shell prompt will tell me my battery life and the time. I'll open network controls and volume controls when I need them, no need for them to pollute the screen all the time. I want a good, simple terminal emulator. I'll be using it with tmux. It should have no title bar and, if possible, no app frame. It's ok if I have to run it in full screen mode to remove the app frame, but only if it still plays nicely with alt-tab and workspaces. I want a dirt-simple window manager. It needs to support transparency: I don't have a lot of screen real-estate and I often overlay the terminal on the browser and type out commands. I don't want a tiling-only system, for the above reason. Bonus points for tiling and overlaying. I'd like multiple workspaces. I prefer to have one gui per workspace. If I could 'pin' the terminal emulator to always show up in each workspace, that's bonus points. If not, I can have a terminal emulator in each workspace attached to the same tmux instance. I'd like a way to set up a keypress that always takes me to the current open terminal emulator. Currently, 90% of the time I only have two windows open: the terminal emulator and something else. In this scenario, alt-tab works like a toggle between the two. If I have another gui open (like a developer window with a web browser), this throws a wrench in my workflow. I'd like a way to assign, for example, 'super-T' to switch to the first open terminal emulator. Bonus points if I can also assign 'super-B' (or whatever) to switch to the first open browser. So far I've been messing around with gnome and tweaking it heavily to match my preferences, but that seems like overkill and I can never get it quite right. I've toyed with xmonad, but it's more for handling many windows, and I usually only have the two. and am considering fluxbox, but I was wondering if any of your minimalists out there had suggestions that might better match my workflow. I'm sick of fighting the window manager, I just want it to get out of my way. Edit: To make things clear, I am not considering switching to a mac/windows environment. I find programming in windows to be a bore, and I have no interest in buying new (read: mac) hardware. Thanks! -Nate

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  • Open-source and client-side IRC-Client

    - by user125197
    I'm administrating a homepage with an IRC-Webclient. At the moment, it uses a Java-client, modified to be SSL-compatible and compatible with whatever design I want to use. The usual PJIRC thing, with users wishes and concerns implemented (I'll give you SSL-PJIRC if you want - no problem. The login-script will be improved for IE6-support this weekend, means write the object tag if an old IE is found, that's it. Rest runs perfectly well). But still, the better user experience would be a client that only requires the user to enable JavaScript. So, before I go into rewriting and customizing a complete Java-IRC-solution, I'd like to ask some other people - after researching for half a year of time. The requirements are: a) Free hosting, no cgi-bin is acceptable. A lot of hosters also have CGI supported, but it doesn't allow IRC-access. So, seems you are limited to x10-hosting for CGI:IRC. b) Solution must be open source (not free as in free beer, but free as in free speech - I want to be able to read every line of the code). c) Hosting cannot be limited to Windows-hosting. Free operation systems (anything with Linux, BSD, whatever - I think you get what I mean) must be possible. d) No server-side technology. I'm limited to everything that runs client-side only. (Well, a Java-Applet does...). d) Solution must support SSL. e) The side must be able to move. Means, you register to a new free hoster, load your things up via FileZilla and the thing simply runs. No server-concerning implementations needed. f) Old browsers must be supported. From all my research, there are two ways a) Java-Applet b) Use HTML5-Websockets (it is impossible to use the JavaScript-library I found, as it depends on ActiveX - means, Windows hosting). b) means "you are going to enter very unstable content". I worked with HTML5 for month, and, well ... Though, HTML5 also is not suitable for older browsers (old browser support is an absolutely necessary requirement). PHP by the way is a server side solution ... so no line of PHP. My idea now was a Java Applet, and a fallback which again is embedded and proprietary, but only requieres JavaScript (wsirc or Mibbit are great here, whilst I prefer wsirc ... and zooming fonts that are plainly to small, but worse, cannot read the code). So my question is - with free hosting, not installation on server, plain upload - do you see and open source, complelety client-side, ssl-compatible way to use or write a client? This wouldn't be my first programming project, I'm not afraid of the code. If there was a way and I had to write it, even from scratch, I'd do. From all I know, there sadly is none. But maybe some experienced admin has an idea? Best Wishes, yetanotheruser Sry my English isn't perfect. It's enough for programming at least.

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  • Consume WCF Service InProcess using Agatha and WCF

    - by REA_ANDREW
    I have been looking into this lately for a specific reason.  Some integration tests I want to write I want to control the types of instances which are used inside the service layer but I want that control from the test class instance.  One of the problems with just referencing the service is that a lot of the time this will by default be done inside a different process.  I am using StructureMap as my DI of choice and one of the tools which I am using inline with RhinoMocks is StructureMap.AutoMocking.  With StructureMap the main entry point is the ObjectFactory.  This will be process specific so if I decide that the I want a certain instance of a type to be used inside the ServiceLayer I cannot configure the ObjectFactory from my test class as that will only apply to the process which it belongs to. This is were I started thinking about two things: Running a WCF in process Being able to share mocked instances across processes A colleague in work pointed me to a project which is for the latter but I thought that it would be a better solution if I could run the WCF Service in process.  One of the projects which I use when I think about WCF Services is AGATHA, and the one which I have to used to try and get my head around doing this. Another asset I have is a book called Programming WCF Services by Juval Lowy and if you have not heard of it or read it I would definately recommend it.  One of the many topics that is inside this book is the type of configuration you need to communicate with a service in the same process, and it turns out to be quite simple from a config point of view. <system.serviceModel> <services> <service name="Agatha.ServiceLayer.WCF.WcfRequestProcessor"> <endpoint address ="net.pipe://localhost/MyPipe" binding="netNamedPipeBinding" contract="Agatha.Common.WCF.IWcfRequestProcessor"/> </service> </services> <client> <endpoint name="MyEndpoint" address="net.pipe://localhost/MyPipe" binding="netNamedPipeBinding" contract="Agatha.Common.WCF.IWcfRequestProcessor"/> </client> </system.serviceModel>   You can see here that I am referencing the Agatha object and contract here, but also that my binding and the address is something called Named Pipes.  THis is sort of the “Magic” which makes it happen in the same process. Next I need to open the service prior to calling the methods on a proxy which I also need.  My initial attempt at the proxy did not use any Agatha specific coding and one of the pains I found was that you obviously need to give your proxy the known types which the serializer can be aware of.  So we need to add to the known types of the proxy programmatically.  I came across the following blog post which showed me how easy it was http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/vagif/archive/2009/05/18/how-to-programmatically-define-known-types-in-wcf.aspx. First Pass So with this in mind, and inside a console app this was my first pass at consuming a service in process.  First here is the proxy which I made making use of the Agatha IWcfRequestProcessor contract. public class InProcProxy : ClientBase<Agatha.Common.WCF.IWcfRequestProcessor>, Agatha.Common.WCF.IWcfRequestProcessor { public InProcProxy() { } public InProcProxy(string configurationName) : base(configurationName) { } public Agatha.Common.Response[] Process(params Agatha.Common.Request[] requests) { return Channel.Process(requests); } public void ProcessOneWayRequests(params Agatha.Common.OneWayRequest[] requests) { Channel.ProcessOneWayRequests(requests); } } So with the proxy in place I could then use this after opening the service so here is the code which I use inside the console app make the request. static void Main(string[] args) { ComponentRegistration.Register(); ServiceHost serviceHost = new ServiceHost(typeof(Agatha.ServiceLayer.WCF.WcfRequestProcessor)); serviceHost.Open(); Console.WriteLine("Service is running...."); using (var proxy = new InProcProxy()) { foreach (var operation in proxy.Endpoint.Contract.Operations) { foreach (var t in KnownTypeProvider.GetKnownTypes(null)) { operation.KnownTypes.Add(t); } } var request = new GetProductsRequest(); var responses = proxy.Process(new[] { request }); var response = (GetProductsResponse)responses[0]; Console.WriteLine("{0} Products have been retrieved", response.Products.Count); } serviceHost.Close(); Console.WriteLine("Finished"); Console.ReadLine(); } So what I used here is the KnownTypeProvider of Agatha to easily get all the types I need for the service/proxy and add them to the proxy.  My Request handler for this was just a test one which always returned 2 products. public class GetProductsHandler : RequestHandler<GetProductsRequest,GetProductsResponse> { public override Agatha.Common.Response Handle(GetProductsRequest request) { return new GetProductsResponse { Products = new List<ProductDto> { new ProductDto{}, new ProductDto{} } }; } } Second Pass Now after I did this I started reading up some more on some resources including more by Davy Brion and others on Agatha.  Now it turns out that the work I did above to create a derived class of the ClientBase implementing Agatha.Common.WCF.IWcfRequestProcessor was not necessary due to a nice class which is present inside the Agatha code base, RequestProcessorProxy which takes care of this for you! :-) So disregarding that class I made for the proxy and changing my code to use it I am now left with the following: static void Main(string[] args) { ComponentRegistration.Register(); ServiceHost serviceHost = new ServiceHost(typeof(Agatha.ServiceLayer.WCF.WcfRequestProcessor)); serviceHost.Open(); Console.WriteLine("Service is running...."); using (var proxy = new RequestProcessorProxy()) { var request = new GetProductsRequest(); var responses = proxy.Process(new[] { request }); var response = (GetProductsResponse)responses[0]; Console.WriteLine("{0} Products have been retrieved", response.Products.Count); } serviceHost.Close(); Console.WriteLine("Finished"); Console.ReadLine(); }   Cheers for now, Andy References Agatha WCF InProcess Without WCF StructureMap.AutoMocking Cross Process Mocking Agatha Programming WCF Services by Juval Lowy

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  • Parallelism in .NET – Part 5, Partitioning of Work

    - by Reed
    When parallelizing any routine, we start by decomposing the problem.  Once the problem is understood, we need to break our work into separate tasks, so each task can be run on a different processing element.  This process is called partitioning. Partitioning our tasks is a challenging feat.  There are opposing forces at work here: too many partitions adds overhead, too few partitions leaves processors idle.  Trying to work the perfect balance between the two extremes is the goal for which we should aim.  Luckily, the Task Parallel Library automatically handles much of this process.  However, there are situations where the default partitioning may not be appropriate, and knowledge of our routines may allow us to guide the framework to making better decisions. First off, I’d like to say that this is a more advanced topic.  It is perfectly acceptable to use the parallel constructs in the framework without considering the partitioning taking place.  The default behavior in the Task Parallel Library is very well-behaved, even for unusual work loads, and should rarely be adjusted.  I have found few situations where the default partitioning behavior in the TPL is not as good or better than my own hand-written partitioning routines, and recommend using the defaults unless there is a strong, measured, and profiled reason to avoid using them.  However, understanding partitioning, and how the TPL partitions your data, helps in understanding the proper usage of the TPL. I indirectly mentioned partitioning while discussing aggregation.  Typically, our systems will have a limited number of Processing Elements (PE), which is the terminology used for hardware capable of processing a stream of instructions.  For example, in a standard Intel i7 system, there are four processor cores, each of which has two potential hardware threads due to Hyperthreading.  This gives us a total of 8 PEs – theoretically, we can have up to eight operations occurring concurrently within our system. In order to fully exploit this power, we need to partition our work into Tasks.  A task is a simple set of instructions that can be run on a PE.  Ideally, we want to have at least one task per PE in the system, since fewer tasks means that some of our processing power will be sitting idle.  A naive implementation would be to just take our data, and partition it with one element in our collection being treated as one task.  When we loop through our collection in parallel, using this approach, we’d just process one item at a time, then reuse that thread to process the next, etc.  There’s a flaw in this approach, however.  It will tend to be slower than necessary, often slower than processing the data serially. The problem is that there is overhead associated with each task.  When we take a simple foreach loop body and implement it using the TPL, we add overhead.  First, we change the body from a simple statement to a delegate, which must be invoked.  In order to invoke the delegate on a separate thread, the delegate gets added to the ThreadPool’s current work queue, and the ThreadPool must pull this off the queue, assign it to a free thread, then execute it.  If our collection had one million elements, the overhead of trying to spawn one million tasks would destroy our performance. The answer, here, is to partition our collection into groups, and have each group of elements treated as a single task.  By adding a partitioning step, we can break our total work into small enough tasks to keep our processors busy, but large enough tasks to avoid overburdening the ThreadPool.  There are two clear, opposing goals here: Always try to keep each processor working, but also try to keep the individual partitions as large as possible. When using Parallel.For, the partitioning is always handled automatically.  At first, partitioning here seems simple.  A naive implementation would merely split the total element count up by the number of PEs in the system, and assign a chunk of data to each processor.  Many hand-written partitioning schemes work in this exactly manner.  This perfectly balanced, static partitioning scheme works very well if the amount of work is constant for each element.  However, this is rarely the case.  Often, the length of time required to process an element grows as we progress through the collection, especially if we’re doing numerical computations.  In this case, the first PEs will finish early, and sit idle waiting on the last chunks to finish.  Sometimes, work can decrease as we progress, since previous computations may be used to speed up later computations.  In this situation, the first chunks will be working far longer than the last chunks.  In order to balance the workload, many implementations create many small chunks, and reuse threads.  This adds overhead, but does provide better load balancing, which in turn improves performance. The Task Parallel Library handles this more elaborately.  Chunks are determined at runtime, and start small.  They grow slowly over time, getting larger and larger.  This tends to lead to a near optimum load balancing, even in odd cases such as increasing or decreasing workloads.  Parallel.ForEach is a bit more complicated, however. When working with a generic IEnumerable<T>, the number of items required for processing is not known in advance, and must be discovered at runtime.  In addition, since we don’t have direct access to each element, the scheduler must enumerate the collection to process it.  Since IEnumerable<T> is not thread safe, it must lock on elements as it enumerates, create temporary collections for each chunk to process, and schedule this out.  By default, it uses a partitioning method similar to the one described above.  We can see this directly by looking at the Visual Partitioning sample shipped by the Task Parallel Library team, and available as part of the Samples for Parallel Programming.  When we run the sample, with four cores and the default, Load Balancing partitioning scheme, we see this: The colored bands represent each processing core.  You can see that, when we started (at the top), we begin with very small bands of color.  As the routine progresses through the Parallel.ForEach, the chunks get larger and larger (seen by larger and larger stripes). Most of the time, this is fantastic behavior, and most likely will out perform any custom written partitioning.  However, if your routine is not scaling well, it may be due to a failure in the default partitioning to handle your specific case.  With prior knowledge about your work, it may be possible to partition data more meaningfully than the default Partitioner. There is the option to use an overload of Parallel.ForEach which takes a Partitioner<T> instance.  The Partitioner<T> class is an abstract class which allows for both static and dynamic partitioning.  By overriding Partitioner<T>.SupportsDynamicPartitions, you can specify whether a dynamic approach is available.  If not, your custom Partitioner<T> subclass would override GetPartitions(int), which returns a list of IEnumerator<T> instances.  These are then used by the Parallel class to split work up amongst processors.  When dynamic partitioning is available, GetDynamicPartitions() is used, which returns an IEnumerable<T> for each partition.  If you do decide to implement your own Partitioner<T>, keep in mind the goals and tradeoffs of different partitioning strategies, and design appropriately. The Samples for Parallel Programming project includes a ChunkPartitioner class in the ParallelExtensionsExtras project.  This provides example code for implementing your own, custom allocation strategies, including a static allocator of a given chunk size.  Although implementing your own Partitioner<T> is possible, as I mentioned above, this is rarely required or useful in practice.  The default behavior of the TPL is very good, often better than any hand written partitioning strategy.

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  • Displaying an image on a LED matrix with a Netduino

    - by Bertrand Le Roy
    In the previous post, we’ve been flipping bits manually on three ports of the Netduino to simulate the data, clock and latch pins that a shift register expected. We did all that in order to control one line of a LED matrix and create a simple Knight Rider effect. It was rightly pointed out in the comments that the Netduino has built-in knowledge of the sort of serial protocol that this shift register understands through a feature called SPI. That will of course make our code a whole lot simpler, but it will also make it a whole lot faster: writing to the Netduino ports is actually not that fast, whereas SPI is very, very fast. Unfortunately, the Netduino documentation for SPI is severely lacking. Instead, we’ve been reliably using the documentation for the Fez, another .NET microcontroller. To send data through SPI, we’ll just need  to move a few wires around and update the code. SPI uses pin D11 for writing, pin D12 for reading (which we won’t do) and pin D13 for the clock. The latch pin is a parameter that can be set by the user. This is very close to the wiring we had before (data on D11, clock on D12 and latch on D13). We just have to move the latch from D13 to D10, and the clock from D12 to D13. The code that controls the shift register has slimmed down considerably with that change. Here is the new version, which I invite you to compare with what we had before: public class ShiftRegister74HC595 { protected SPI Spi; public ShiftRegister74HC595(Cpu.Pin latchPin) : this(latchPin, SPI.SPI_module.SPI1) { } public ShiftRegister74HC595(Cpu.Pin latchPin, SPI.SPI_module spiModule) { var spiConfig = new SPI.Configuration( SPI_mod: spiModule, ChipSelect_Port: latchPin, ChipSelect_ActiveState: false, ChipSelect_SetupTime: 0, ChipSelect_HoldTime: 0, Clock_IdleState: false, Clock_Edge: true, Clock_RateKHz: 1000 ); Spi = new SPI(spiConfig); } public void Write(byte buffer) { Spi.Write(new[] {buffer}); } } All we have to do here is configure SPI. The write method couldn’t be any simpler. Everything is now handled in hardware by the Netduino. We set the frequency to 1MHz, which is largely sufficient for what we’ll be doing, but it could potentially go much higher. The shift register addresses the columns of the matrix. The rows are directly wired to ports D0 to D7 of the Netduino. The code writes to only one of those eight lines at a time, which will make it fast enough. The way an image is displayed is that we light the lines one after the other so fast that persistence of vision will give the illusion of a stable image: foreach (var bitmap in matrix.MatrixBitmap) { matrix.OnRow(row, bitmap, true); matrix.OnRow(row, bitmap, false); row++; } Now there is a twist here: we need to run this code as fast as possible in order to display the image with as little flicker as possible, but we’ll eventually have other things to do. In other words, we need the code driving the display to run in the background, except when we want to change what’s being displayed. Fortunately, the .NET Micro Framework supports multithreading. In our implementation, we’ve added an Initialize method that spins a new thread that is tied to the specific instance of the matrix it’s being called on. public LedMatrix Initialize() { DisplayThread = new Thread(() => DoDisplay(this)); DisplayThread.Start(); return this; } I quite like this way to spin a thread. As you may know, there is another, built-in way to contextualize a thread by passing an object into the Start method. For the method to work, the thread must have been constructed with a ParameterizedThreadStart delegate, which takes one parameter of type object. I like to use object as little as possible, so instead I’m constructing a closure with a Lambda, currying it with the current instance. This way, everything remains strongly-typed and there’s no casting to do. Note that this method would extend perfectly to several parameters. Of note as well is the return value of Initialize, a common technique to add some fluency to the API and enabling the matrix to be instantiated and initialized in a single line: using (var matrix = new LedMS88SR74HC595().Initialize()) The “using” in the previous line is because we have implemented IDisposable so that the matrix kills the thread and clears the display when the user code is done with it: public void Dispose() { Clear(); DisplayThread.Abort(); } Thanks to the multi-threaded version of the matrix driver class, we can treat the display as a simple bitmap with a very synchronous programming model: matrix.Set(someimage); while (button.Read()) { Thread.Sleep(10); } Here, the call into Set returns immediately and from the moment the bitmap is set, the background display thread will constantly continue refreshing no matter what happens in the main thread. That enables us to wait or read a button’s port on the main thread knowing that the current image will continue displaying unperturbed and without requiring manual refreshing. We’ve effectively hidden the implementation of the display behind a convenient, synchronous-looking API. Pretty neat, eh? Before I wrap up this post, I want to talk about one small caveat of using SPI rather than driving the shift register directly: when we got to the point where we could actually display images, we noticed that they were a mirror image of what we were sending in. Oh noes! Well, the reason for it is that SPI is sending the bits in a big-endian fashion, in other words backwards. Now sure you could fix that in software by writing some bit-level code to reverse the bits we’re sending in, but there is a far more efficient solution than that. We are doing hardware here, so we can simply reverse the order in which the outputs of the shift register are connected to the columns of the matrix. That’s switching 8 wires around once, as compared to doing bit operations every time we send a line to display. All right, so bringing it all together, here is the code we need to write to display two images in succession, separated by a press on the board’s button: var button = new InputPort(Pins.ONBOARD_SW1, false, Port.ResistorMode.Disabled); using (var matrix = new LedMS88SR74HC595().Initialize()) { // Oh, prototype is so sad! var sad = new byte[] { 0x66, 0x24, 0x00, 0x18, 0x00, 0x3C, 0x42, 0x81 }; DisplayAndWait(sad, matrix, button); // Let's make it smile! var smile = new byte[] { 0x42, 0x18, 0x18, 0x81, 0x7E, 0x3C, 0x18, 0x00 }; DisplayAndWait(smile, matrix, button); } And here is a video of the prototype running: The prototype in action I’ve added an artificial delay between the display of each row of the matrix to clearly show what’s otherwise happening very fast. This way, you can clearly see each of the two images being displayed line by line. Next time, we’ll do no hardware changes, focusing instead on building a nice programming model for the matrix, with sprites, text and hardware scrolling. Fun stuff. By the way, can any of my reader guess where we’re going with all that? The code for this prototype can be downloaded here: http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bleroy/Samples/NetduinoLedMatrixDriver.zip

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  • SQL SERVER – Developer Training Kit for SQL Server 2012

    - by pinaldave
    Developer Training Kit is my favorite part of any product. The reason behind is very simple because it give the single resource which gives complete overview of the product in nutshell. A developer can learn from many places – books, webcasts, tutorials, blogs, etc. However, I have found that developer training kits are the best starting point for any product. Start with them first, see what are the new features as well what is the new message a product is coming up with. Once it is learned the very next step should be to identify the right learning material to explore the preferred topic. The SQL Server 2012 Developer Training Kit includes technical content including labs, demos and presentations designed to help you learn how to develop SQL Server 2012 database and BI solutions. New and updated content will be released periodically and can be downloaded on-demand using the Web Installer. Download SQL Server 2012 Developer Training Kit Web Installer. This training kit was available earlier this year but it is never late to explore it if you have not referred it earlier. Additionally, if you do not want to download complete kit all together I suggest you refer to Wiki here. This wiki contains all the same presentations and demo notes which web installer contains. Refer to SQL Server 2012 Developer Training Kit Wiki Wiki contains following module and details about Hands On Labs Module 1: Introduction to SQL Server 2012 Module 2: Introduction to SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Module 3: Exploring and Managing SQL Server 2012 Database Engine Improvements Module 4: SQL Server 2012 Database Server Programmability Module 5: SQL Server 2012 Application Development Module 6: SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Information Management Module 7: SQL Server 2012 Business Intelligence Hands-On Labs: SQL Server 2012 Database Engine Hands-On Labs: Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 Hands-On Labs: SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Information Management Hands-On Labs: SQL Server 2012 Business Intelligence Hands-On LabsHands-On Labs: Windows Azure and SQL Azure As I said, if you have not downloaded this so far, it is never late to explore it. Trust me you will atleast learn one thing if you just explore the content. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Developer Training, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Documentation, SQL Download, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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  • What’s new in IIS8, Perf, Indexing Service-Week 49

    - by OWScott
    You can find this week’s video here. After some delays in the publishing process week 49 is finally live.  This week I'm taking Q&A from viewers, starting with what's new in IIS8, a question on enable32BitAppOnWin64, performance settings for asp.net, the ARR Helper, and Indexing Services. Starting this week for the remaining four weeks of the 52 week series I'll be taking questions and answers from the viewers. Already a number of questions have come in. This week we look at five topics. Pre-topic: We take a look at the new features in IIS8. Last week Internet Information Services (IIS) 8 Beta was released to the public. This week's video touches on the upcoming features in the next version of IIS. Here’s a link to the blog post which was mentioned in the video Question 1: In a number of places (http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/201/32-bit-mode-worker-processes/, http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MIX/MIX08/T06), I've saw that enable32BitAppOnWin64 is recommended for performance reasons. I'm guessing it has to do with memory usage... but I never could find detailed explanation on why this is recommended (even Microsoft books are vague on this topic - they just say - do it, but provide no reason why it should be done). Do you have any insight into this? (Predrag Tomasevic) Question 2: Do you have any recommendations on modifying aspnet.config and machine.config to deliver better performance when it comes to "high number of concurrent connections"? I've implemented recommendations for modifying machine.config from this article (http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/10ASPNetPerformance.aspx - ASP.NET Process Configuration Optimization section)... but I would gladly listen to more recommendations if you have them. (Predrag Tomasevic) Question 3: Could you share more of your experience with ARR Helper? I'm specifically interested in configuring ARR Helper (for example - how to only accept only X-Forwards-For from certain IPs (proxies you trust)). (Predrag Tomasevic) Question 4: What is the replacement for indexing service to use in coding web search pages on a Windows 2008R2 server? (Susan Williams) Here’s the link that was mentioned: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692804.aspx This is now week 49 of a 52 week series for the web pro. You can view past and future weeks here: http://dotnetslackers.com/projects/LearnIIS7/ You can find this week’s video here.

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  • Post-Purchase Social Media

    - by David Dorf
    When you make a particularly good purchase, the natural tendency is to share the experience with friends. You show them your cool new toy or garment, then explain how you discovered such a great deal, all the while implying you are the world's most savvy shopper. My wife does it with clothes, housewares, and books, and I do it with wiz-bang techie stuff. Post-purchase euphoria or Buyer's remorse are associated with most purchases beyond day-to-day needs. So now let's add social media to the mix. Haul videos are a YouTube phenomenon where a shopper describes their latest haul on video. Blair Fowler, aka juicystar07, is an excellent example. She and her older sister's haul videos have been viewed 75,000,000 times, at times causing particular items to sell out after being showcased. If you're not already on this bandwagon, checkout Blair's haul video from her trip to Forever21. There are a couple good articles on this trend from ABC's GMA, Slate, and NPR. Some retailers are already sending free products to these fashionistas in the hopes they'll be reviewed on camera. For those less willing to exert themselves, there's Blippy, a service that automatically tweets your purchases. Similar to Twitter, your purchases are tweeted so your friends can see what you've purchased and your network can make comments. In the example to the right, co-founder Philip Kaplan purchased a gift for his wife from the store Does Your Mother Know, proving the point that the need for privacy is overblown. Blippy has partnerships with selected merchants like Apple, Amazon, and Netflix and can also get purchases from the credit cards you've registered. When you register, you can configure whether to automatically tweet each purchase, or approve them first. No sense in broadcasting my need for Rogaine, right? This is a good thing for retailers, as it helps spread the word about purchases and gives other people ideas. Rick just bought an ooma from Amazon. What the heck is ooma? Oh, its like Vonage but no monthly bills. I'm there.

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  • Suggestions on switching from lamp based web design-development to game design-development

    - by Sandeepan Nath
    I have around 2.5 years of experience as a web developer cum designer working mainly on the LAMP platform. Now, I want to try out game development (of the likes of First Person Shooter games like Call of Duty (COD)). It is one of my dreams to some day succeed in making a profitable, popular, commercial game of this type. However, I have never done any kind of business nor even freelancing yet even in the web domain. Okay, first things first, I am just starting and I don't yet have any idea about the technologies, languages, engines (game engines) etc involved in that. I would like this question to be a complete guide for people with similar interests. Best resources for getting hold really fast What would be the best approach to get the basic hold of the domain really fast? Any resource(s) for programmers coming from other domains/experienced in other domains would be the ideal ones for me. E.g., if anybody would ask me some good resource for quickly learning PHP/Mysql, I would suggest books like "How to do everything with PHP & MySql" - because - it introduces all the basics of the domain (not the advanced things which can be later learnt by practice and also a lot by searching in stackoverflow questions) it contains some very nice working projects in the end, which help in applying the skills learnt in the chapters of the book. This is the best way for self learners, I feel. I would appreciate some similar resource which connects all concepts together to get the bigger picture. I have read about C, C++, C#, JAVA being used in game programming but not sure which language to go for (I have previously learnt a little of C and JAVA). I have also read about game engines but there would be various other concepts. Commonly accepted ways of learning Should 3D games like these be tried after 2D games? Are there some commonly accepted ways of learning such kind of games? Like in web development, we should go for frameworks after practising well with basic language, AJAX after getting properly done with simple page-reload processing etc. Apart from these, any useful tips (like language choices etc.) would be much appreciated. Like it is highly recommended to contribute to open source web projects for getting recognition, are there similar open source game projects? Thanks, Sandeepan

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  • SQL SERVER – Dedicated Access Control for SQL Server Express Edition – An error occurred while obtaining the dedicated administrator connection (DAC) port.

    - by pinaldave
    Recently I had faced very interesting situation. Due to some reason we were not able to login into the production server for one of client. The reason for the same was that server was very busy, we had to login into the system and bring server to normal situation. When all the attempts failed, I decided to login using Dedicated Administrator Connection (DAC). However when I attempted to connect using DAC it threw following error for me. C:\Users\pinald>sqlcmd -A -d master -S .\SQLEXPRESS Sqlcmd: Error: Microsoft SQL Server Native Client 11.0 : SQL Server Network Interfaces: An error occurred while obtaining the dedicated administrator connection (DAC) port. Make sure that SQL Browser is running, or check the error log for t he port number [xFFFFFFFF]. .Sqlcmd: Error: Microsoft SQL Server Native Client 11.0 : Login timeout expired.Sqlcmd: Error: Microsoft SQL Server Native Client 11.0 : A network-related or instance-specific error has occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. Server is not found or not accessible. Check if instance name is correct and if SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. For more information see SQL Server Books Online. I was bit taken a back as I knew that my commands are correct to login and if DAC does not work, there should be some serious reason for it. When inquired further about the SQL Server version I learned that it was SQL Server Express version deployed. To conserve resources, SQL Server Express does not listen on the DAC port. There is an additional step to be done if SQL Server Express has to be used with DAC. Enable TRACEFLAG on SQL Server Express will enable the connection by DAC possible. Here is the quick methods how one can enable DAC on SQL Server Express. Go to Start >> All Program >>Microsoft SQL Server (your version) >> Configuration Tools >> SQL Server Configuration Manager. Click on SQL Server Services >> Select your SQL Server Express version >> Right Click Properties >> select Startup Parameters Once on the Startup Parameter add the Startup parameter which is TRACEFLAG -T7806. Click on OK and RESTART SQL Server Express edition. Now once again try to connect to SQL Server Express edition and it will work just fine. This is absolutely documented method on BOL and SQL Server Express needs to be restarted. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Error Messages, SQL Interview Questions and Answers, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology Tagged: SQL Server Express

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  • Need to Know

    - by Tony Davis
    Sometimes, I wonder whether writers of documentation, tutorials and articles stop to ask themselves one very important question: Does the reader really need to know this? I recently took on the task of writing a concise series of articles about the transaction log, what is it, how it works and why it's important. It was an enjoyable task; rather like peering inside a giant, complex clock mechanism. Initially, one sees only the basic components, which work to guarantee the integrity of database transactions, and preserve these transactions so that data can be restored to a previous point in time. On closer inspection, one notices all of small, arcane mechanisms that are necessary to make this happen; LSNs, virtual log files, log chains, database checkpoints, and so on. It was engrossing, escapist, stuff; what I'd written looked weighty and steeped in mysterious significance. Suddenly, however, I jolted myself back to reality with the awful thought "does anyone really need to know all this?" The driver of a car needs only to be dimly aware of what goes on under the hood, however exciting the mechanism is to the engineer. Similarly, while everyone who uses SQL Server ought to be aware of the transaction log, its role in guaranteeing the ACID properties, and how to control its growth, the intricate mechanisms ticking away under its clock face are a world away from the daily work of the harassed developer. The DBA needs to know more, such as the correct rituals for ensuring optimal performance and data integrity, setting the appropriate growth characteristics, backup routines, restore procedures, and so on. However, even then, the average DBA only needs to understand enough about the arcane processes to spot problems and react appropriately, or to know how to Google for the best way of dealing with it. The art of technical writing is tied up in intimate knowledge of your audience and what they need to know at any point. It means serving up just enough at each point to help the reader in a practical way, but not to overcook it, or stuff the reader with information that does them no good. When I think of the books and articles that have helped me the most, they have been full of brief, practical, and well-informed guidance, based on experience. This seems far-removed from the 900-page "beginner's guides" that one now sees everywhere. The more I write and edit, the more I become convinced that the real art of technical communication lies in knowing what to leave out. In what areas do the SQL Server technical materials suffer from "information overload"? Where else does it seem that concise, practical advice is drowned out by endless discussion of the "clock mechanisms"? Cheers, Tony.

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  • Silverlight Cream for March 11, 2010 -- #812

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Walter Ferrari, Viktor Larsson, Bill Reiss(-2-, -3-, -4-), Jonathan van de Veen, Walt Ritscher, Jobi Joy, Pete Brown, Mike Taulty, and Mark Miller. Shoutouts: Going to MIX10? John Papa announced Got Questions? Ask the Experts at MIX10 Pete Brown listed The Essential WPF/Silverlight/XNA Developer and Designer Toolbox From SilverlightCream.com: How to extend Bing Maps Silverlight with an elevation profile graph - Part 2 In this second and final tutorial, Walter Ferrari adds elevation to his previous BingMaps post. I'm glad someone else worked this out for me :) Navigating AWAY from your Silverlight page Viktor Larsson has a post up on how to navigate to something other than your Silverlight page like maybe a mailto ... SilverSprite: Not just for XNA games any more Bill Reiss has a new version of SilverSprite up on CodePlex and if you're planning on doing any game development, you should check this out for sure Space Rocks game step 1: The game loop Bill Reiss has a tutorial series on Game development that he's beginning ... looks like a good thing to jump in on and play along. This first one is all about the game loop. Space Rocks game step 2: Sprites (part 1) In Part 2, Bill Reiss begins a series on Sprites in game development and positioning it. Space Rocks game step 3: Sprites (part 2) Bill Reiss's Part 3 is a follow-on tutorial on Sprites and moving according to velocity... fun stuff :) Adventures while building a Silverlight Enterprise application part No. 32 Jonathan van de Veen is discussing debugging and the evil you can get yourself wrapped up in... his scenario is definitely one to remember. Streaming Silverlight media from a Dropbox.com account Read the comments and the agreements, but I think Walt Ritscher's idea of using DropBox to serve up Streaming media is pretty cool! UniformGrid for Silverlight Jobi Joy wanted a UniformGrid like he's familiar with in WPF. Not finding one in the SDK or Toolkit, he converted the WPF one to Silverlight .. all good for you and me :) How to Get Started in WPF or Silverlight: A Learning Path for New Developers Pete Brown has a nice post up describing resources, tutorials, blogs, and books for devs just getting into Silveright or WPF, and thanks for the shoutout, Pete! Silverlight 4, MEF and the DeploymentCatalog ( again :-) ) Mike Taulty is revisiting the DeploymentCatalog to wrap it up in a class like he did the PackageCatalog previously MVVM with Prism 101 – Part 6b: Wrapping IClientChannel Mark Miller is back with a Part 6b on MVVM with Prism, and is answering some questions from the previous post and states his case against the client service proxy. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    MIX10

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  • So it comes to PASS…

    - by Tony Davis
    How does your company gauge the benefit of attending a technical conference? What's the best change you made as a direct result of attendance? It's time again for the PASS Summit and I, like most people go with a set of general goals for enhancing technical knowledge; to learn more about PowerShell, to drill into SQL Server performance tuning techniques, and so on. Most will write up a brief report on the event for the rest of the team. Ideally, however, it will go a bit further than that; each conference should result in a specific improvement to one of your systems, or in the way you do your job. As co-editor of Simple-talk.com, and responsible for the majority of our SQL books, my “high level” goals don't vary much from conference to conference. I'm always on the lookout for good new authors. I target interesting new technologies and tools and try to learn more. I return with a list of actions, new articles to commission, and potential new authors. Three years ago, however, I started setting myself the goal of implementing “one new thing” after each conference. After one, I adopted Kanban for managing my workload, a technique that places strict limits on “work in progress” and makes the overall workload, and backlog, highly visible. After another I trialled a community book project. At PASS 2010, one of my general goals was to delve deeper into SQL Server transaction log mechanics, but on top of that, I set a specific goal of writing something useful on the topic. I started a Stairway series and, ultimately, it's turned into a book! If you're attending the PASS Summit this year, take some time to consider what specific improvement or change you'll implement as a result. Also, try to drop by the Red Gate booth (#101). During the Vendor event on Wednesday evening, Gail Shaw and I will be there to discuss, and hand out copies of the book. Cheers, Tony.  

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  • Code Camp 2011 – Summary

    - by hajan
    Waiting whole twelve months to come this year’s Code Camp 2011 event was something which all Microsoft technologies (and even non-Microsoft techs.) developers were doing in the past year. Last year’s success was enough big to be heard and to influence everything around our developer community and beyond. Code Camp 2011 was nothing else but a invincible success which will remain in our memory for a long time from now. Darko Milevski (president of MKDOT.NET UG and SharePoint MVP) said something interesting at the event keynote that up to now we were looking at the past by saying what we did… now we will focus on the future and how to develop our community more and more in the future days, weeks, months and I hope so for many years… Even though it was held only two days ago (26th of November 2011), I already feel the nostalgia for everything that happened there and for the excellent time we have spent all together. ORGANIZED BY ENTHUSIASTS AND EXPERTS Code Camp 2011 was organized by number of community enthusiasts and experts who have unselfishly contributed with all their free time to make the best of this event. The event was organized by a known community group called MKDOT.NET User Group, name of a user group which is known not only in Macedonia, but also in many countries abroad. Organization mainly consists of software developers, technical leaders, team leaders in several known companies in Macedonia, as well as Microsoft MVPs. SPEAKERS There were 24 speakers at five parallel tracks. At Code Camp 2011 we had two groups of speakers: Professional Experts in various technologies and Student Speakers. The new interesting thing here is the Student Speakers, which draw attention a lot, especially to other students who were interested to see what their colleagues are going to speak about and how do they use Microsoft technologies in different coding scenarios and practices, in different topics. From the rest of the professional speakers, there were 7 Microsoft MVPs: Two ASP.NET/IIS MVPs, Two C# MVPs, and One MVP in SharePoint, SQL Server and Exchange Server. I must say that besides the MVP Speakers, who definitely did a great job as always… there were other excellent speakers as well, which were speaking on various technologies, such as: Web Development, Windows Phone Development, XNA, Windows 8, Games Development, Entity Framework, Event-driven programming, SOLID, SQLCLR, T-SQL, e.t.c. SESSIONS There were 25 sessions mainly all related to Microsoft technologies, but ranging from Windows 8, WP7, ASP.NET till Games Development, XNA and Event-driven programming. Sessions were going in five parallel tracks named as Red, Yellow, Green, Blue and Student track. Five presentations in each track, each with level 300 or 400. More info MY SESSION (ASP.NET MVC Best Practices) I must say that from the big number of speaking engagements I have had, this was one of my best performances and definitely I have set new records of attendees at my sessions and probably overall. I spoke on topic ASP.NET MVC Best Practices, where I have shown tips, tricks, guidelines and best practices on what to use and what to avoid by developing with one of the best web development frameworks nowadays, ASP.NET MVC. I had approximately 350+ attendees, the hall was full so that there was no room for staying at feet. Besides .NET developers, there were a lot of other technology oriented developers, who has also received the presentation very well and I really hope I gave them reason to think about ASP.NET as one of the best options for web development nowadays (if you ask me, it’s the best one ;-)). I have included 10 tips in using ASP.NET MVC each of them followed by a demo. Besides these 10 tips, I have briefly introduced the concept of ASP.NET MVC for those that haven’t been working with the framework and at the end some bonus tips. I must say there was lot of laugh for some funny sentences I have stated, like “If you code ASP.NET MVC, girls will love you more” – same goes for girls, only replace girls with boys :). [LINK TO SESSION WILL GO HERE, ONCE SESSIONS ARE AVAILABLE ON MK CODECAMP WEBSITE] VOLUNTEERS Without strong organization, such events wouldn’t be able to gather hundreds of attendees at one place and still stay perfectly organized to the smallest details, without dedicated organization and volunteers. I would like to dedicate this space in my blog to them and to say one big THANK YOU for supporting us before the event and during the whole day in the event. With such young and dedicated volunteers, we couldn’t achieve anything but great results. THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTION! NETWORKING One of the main reasons why we do such events is to gather all professionals in one place. Networking is what everyone wants because through this way of networking, we can meet incredible people in one place. It is amazing feeling to share your knowledge with others and exchange thoughts on various topics. Meet and talk to interesting people. I have had very special moments with many attendees especially after my presentation. Special Thank You to all of them who come to meet me in person, whether to ask a question, say congrats for my session or simply meet me and just smile :)… everything counts! Thank You! TWITTER During the event, twitter was one of the most useful event-wide communication tool where everyone could tweet with hash tag #mkcodecamp or #mkdotnet and say what he/she wants to say about the current state and happenings at that moment… In my next blog post I will list the top craziest tweets that were posted at this event… FUTURE OF MKDOT.NET Having such strong community around MKDOT.NET, the future seems very bright. The initial plans are to have sub-groups in several technologies, however all these sub-groups will belong to the MKDOT.NET UG which will be, somehow, the HEAD of these sub-groups. We are doing this to provide better divisions by technologies and organize ourselves better since our community is very big, around 500 members in MKDOT.NET.We will have five sub-groups:- Web User Group (Lead:Hajan Selmani - me)- Mobile User Group (Lead: Filip Kerazovski)- Visual C# User Group (Lead: Vekoslav Stefanovski)- SharePoint User Group (Lead: Darko Milevski)- Dynamics User Group (Lead: Vladimir Senih) SUMMARY Online registered attendees: ~1.200 Event attendees: ~800 Number of members in organization: 40+ Organized by: MKDOT.NET User Group Number of tracks: 5 Number of speakers: 24 Number of sessions: 25 Event official website: http://codecamp.mkdot.net Total number of sponsors: 20 Platinum Sponsors: Microsoft, INETA, Telerik Place held: FON University City and Country: Skopje, Macedonia THANK YOU FOR BEING PART OF THE BEST EVENT IN MACEDONIA, CODE CAMP 2011. Regards, Hajan

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  • On Turning 30&hellip;

    - by MOSSLover
    I know I am not a wise old sage like some people in the community.  I just turned 30 however I feel like all my years looking back have changed me.  My collective experiences and thoughts have given me a different perspective on life recently.  Seven months ago my head was in a gutter and since then a lot of things have happened.  I was always the weird kid in the corner reading Star Trek books.  When I was in elementary school I thought that kids would throw me birthday parties out of pity because I was the poor kid who everyone hated.  I am no longer that person.  I realized that during the worst possible period between my 29th and 30th year when I hit rock bottom.  You all know the insane story as I’ve told it two billion times over.  Honestly it was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life time, because many things would not have happened.  My friends came through for me at every given moment people from all over were checking up on me all over the world.  I fell and I landed on a bunch of people it was awesome.  I landed on family and friends who I thought I was never close enough to talk about these things.  They helped me realize I had a ton of unfulfilled dreams.  I got to move to New York City one of the greatest cities in the universe.  I got to do whatever I wanted without judgment from anyone.  I got to meet some great people at a few meetup groups in the past few months.  I got to meet an awesome person that I have been dating for 3 months.  I am trying to run for the 8 billionth time and keep up with it.  I got to go to Europe and next week for the first time New Orleans.  I got renewed for MVP for 2012.  I am grateful for all the people and things in my life.  I understand that sometimes when things seem bad you can always seek friends and family.  They will always help me.  I have to learn to lean on people sometimes just how they occasionally lean on me.  That is the biggest thing I have learned from the decade of 20 to 30.  I hope that 30 to 40 will be the best decade.  I hope that I can continue to grow.  I will catch you all later. Technorati Tags: Turning 30,Wisdom

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  • A simple Dynamic Proxy

    - by Abhijeet Patel
    Frameworks such as EF4 and MOQ do what most developers consider "dark magic". For instance in EF4, when you use a POCO for an entity you can opt-in to get behaviors such as "lazy-loading" and "change tracking" at runtime merely by ensuring that your type has the following characteristics: The class must be public and not sealed. The class must have a public or protected parameter-less constructor. The class must have public or protected properties Adhere to this and your type is magically endowed with these behaviors without any additional programming on your part. Behind the scenes the framework subclasses your type at runtime and creates a "dynamic proxy" which has these additional behaviors and when you navigate properties of your POCO, the framework replaces the POCO type with derived type instances. The MOQ framework does simlar magic. Let's say you have a simple interface:   public interface IFoo      {          int GetNum();      }   We can verify that the GetNum() was invoked on a mock like so:   var mock = new Mock<IFoo>(MockBehavior.Default);   mock.Setup(f => f.GetNum());   var num = mock.Object.GetNum();   mock.Verify(f => f.GetNum());   Beind the scenes the MOQ framework is generating a dynamic proxy by implementing IFoo at runtime. the call to moq.Object returns the dynamic proxy on which we then call "GetNum" and then verify that this method was invoked. No dark magic at all, just clever programming is what's going on here, just not visible and hence appears magical! Let's create a simple dynamic proxy generator which accepts an interface type and dynamically creates a proxy implementing the interface type specified at runtime.     public static class DynamicProxyGenerator   {       public static T GetInstanceFor<T>()       {           Type typeOfT = typeof(T);           var methodInfos = typeOfT.GetMethods();           AssemblyName assName = new AssemblyName("testAssembly");           var assBuilder = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.DefineDynamicAssembly(assName, AssemblyBuilderAccess.RunAndSave);           var moduleBuilder = assBuilder.DefineDynamicModule("testModule", "test.dll");           var typeBuilder = moduleBuilder.DefineType(typeOfT.Name + "Proxy", TypeAttributes.Public);              typeBuilder.AddInterfaceImplementation(typeOfT);           var ctorBuilder = typeBuilder.DefineConstructor(                     MethodAttributes.Public,                     CallingConventions.Standard,                     new Type[] { });           var ilGenerator = ctorBuilder.GetILGenerator();           ilGenerator.EmitWriteLine("Creating Proxy instance");           ilGenerator.Emit(OpCodes.Ret);           foreach (var methodInfo in methodInfos)           {               var methodBuilder = typeBuilder.DefineMethod(                   methodInfo.Name,                   MethodAttributes.Public | MethodAttributes.Virtual,                   methodInfo.ReturnType,                   methodInfo.GetParameters().Select(p => p.GetType()).ToArray()                   );               var methodILGen = methodBuilder.GetILGenerator();               methodILGen.EmitWriteLine("I'm a proxy");               if (methodInfo.ReturnType == typeof(void))               {                   methodILGen.Emit(OpCodes.Ret);               }               else               {                   if (methodInfo.ReturnType.IsValueType || methodInfo.ReturnType.IsEnum)                   {                       MethodInfo getMethod = typeof(Activator).GetMethod(/span>"CreateInstance",new Type[]{typeof((Type)});                                               LocalBuilder lb = methodILGen.DeclareLocal(methodInfo.ReturnType);                       methodILGen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldtoken, lb.LocalType);                       methodILGen.Emit(OpCodes.Call, typeofype).GetMethod("GetTypeFromHandle"));  ));                       methodILGen.Emit(OpCodes.Callvirt, getMethod);                       methodILGen.Emit(OpCodes.Unbox_Any, lb.LocalType);                                                              }                 else                   {                       methodILGen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldnull);                   }                   methodILGen.Emit(OpCodes.Ret);               }               typeBuilder.DefineMethodOverride(methodBuilder, methodInfo);           }                     Type constructedType = typeBuilder.CreateType();           var instance = Activator.CreateInstance(constructedType);           return (T)instance;       }   }   Dynamic proxies are created by calling into the following main types: AssemblyBuilder, TypeBuilder, Modulebuilder and ILGenerator. These types enable dynamically creating an assembly and emitting .NET modules and types in that assembly, all using IL instructions. Let's break down the code above a bit and examine it piece by piece                Type typeOfT = typeof(T);              var methodInfos = typeOfT.GetMethods();              AssemblyName assName = new AssemblyName("testAssembly");              var assBuilder = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.DefineDynamicAssembly(assName, AssemblyBuilderAccess.RunAndSave);              var moduleBuilder = assBuilder.DefineDynamicModule("testModule", "test.dll");              var typeBuilder = moduleBuilder.DefineType(typeOfT.Name + "Proxy", TypeAttributes.Public);   We are instructing the runtime to create an assembly caled "test.dll"and in this assembly we then emit a new module called "testModule". We then emit a new type definition of name "typeName"Proxy into this new module. This is the definition for the "dynamic proxy" for type T                 typeBuilder.AddInterfaceImplementation(typeOfT);               var ctorBuilder = typeBuilder.DefineConstructor(                         MethodAttributes.Public,                         CallingConventions.Standard,                         new Type[] { });               var ilGenerator = ctorBuilder.GetILGenerator();               ilGenerator.EmitWriteLine("Creating Proxy instance");               ilGenerator.Emit(OpCodes.Ret);   The newly created type implements type T and defines a default parameterless constructor in which we emit a call to Console.WriteLine. This call is not necessary but we do this so that we can see first hand that when the proxy is constructed, when our default constructor is invoked.   var methodBuilder = typeBuilder.DefineMethod(                      methodInfo.Name,                      MethodAttributes.Public | MethodAttributes.Virtual,                      methodInfo.ReturnType,                      methodInfo.GetParameters().Select(p => p.GetType()).ToArray()                      );   We then iterate over each method declared on type T and add a method definition of the same name into our "dynamic proxy" definition     if (methodInfo.ReturnType == typeof(void))   {       methodILGen.Emit(OpCodes.Ret);   }   If the return type specified in the method declaration of T is void we simply return.     if (methodInfo.ReturnType.IsValueType || methodInfo.ReturnType.IsEnum)   {                               MethodInfo getMethod = typeof(Activator).GetMethod("CreateInstance",                                                         new Type[]{typeof(Type)});                               LocalBuilder lb = methodILGen.DeclareLocal(methodInfo.ReturnType);                                                     methodILGen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldtoken, lb.LocalType);       methodILGen.Emit(OpCodes.Call, typeof(Type).GetMethod("GetTypeFromHandle"));       methodILGen.Emit(OpCodes.Callvirt, getMethod);       methodILGen.Emit(OpCodes.Unbox_Any, lb.LocalType);   }   If the return type in the method declaration of T is either a value type or an enum, then we need to create an instance of the value type and return that instance the caller. In order to accomplish that we need to do the following: 1) Get a handle to the Activator.CreateInstance method 2) Declare a local variable which represents the Type of the return type(i.e the type object of the return type) specified on the method declaration of T(obtained from the MethodInfo) and push this Type object onto the evaluation stack. In reality a RuntimeTypeHandle is what is pushed onto the stack. 3) Invoke the "GetTypeFromHandle" method(a static method in the Type class) passing in the RuntimeTypeHandle pushed onto the stack previously as an argument, the result of this invocation is a Type object (representing the method's return type) which is pushed onto the top of the evaluation stack. 4) Invoke Activator.CreateInstance passing in the Type object from step 3, the result of this invocation is an instance of the value type boxed as a reference type and pushed onto the top of the evaluation stack. 5) Unbox the result and place it into the local variable of the return type defined in step 2   methodILGen.Emit(OpCodes.Ldnull);   If the return type is a reference type then we just load a null onto the evaluation stack   methodILGen.Emit(OpCodes.Ret);   Emit a a return statement to return whatever is on top of the evaluation stack(null or an instance of a value type) back to the caller     Type constructedType = typeBuilder.CreateType();   var instance = Activator.CreateInstance(constructedType);   return (T)instance;   Now that we have a definition of the "dynamic proxy" implementing all the methods declared on T, we can now create an instance of the proxy type and return that out typed as T. The caller can now invoke the generator and request a dynamic proxy for any type T. In our example when the client invokes GetNum() we get back "0". Lets add a new method on the interface called DayOfWeek GetDay()   public interface IFoo      {          int GetNum();          DayOfWeek GetDay();      }   When GetDay() is invoked, the "dynamic proxy" returns "Sunday" since that is the default value for the DayOfWeek enum This is a very trivial example of dynammic proxies, frameworks like MOQ have a way more sophisticated implementation of this paradigm where in you can instruct the framework to create proxies which return specified values for a method implementation.

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  • Java Spotlight Episode 138: Paul Perrone on Life Saving Embedded Java

    - by Roger Brinkley
    Interview with Paul Perrone, founder and CEO of Perrone Robotics, on using Java Embedded to test autonomous vehicle operations for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that will save lives. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link: Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News JDK 8 is Feature Complete Java SE 7 Update 25 Released What should the JCP be doing? 2013 Duke's Choice Award Nominations Another Quick update to Code Signing Article on OTN Events June 24, Austin JUG, Austin, TX June 25, Virtual Developer Day - Java, EMEA, 10AM CEST Jul 16-19, Uberconf, Denver, USA Jul 22-24, JavaOne Shanghai, China Jul 29-31, JVM Summit Language, Santa Clara Sep 11-12, JavaZone, Oslo, Norway Sep 19-20, Strange Loop, St. Louis Sep 22-26 JavaOne San Francisco 2013, USA Feature Interview Paul J. Perrone is founder/CEO of Perrone Robotics. Paul architected the Java-based general-purpose robotics and automation software platform known as “MAX”. Paul has overseen MAX’s application to rapidly field self-driving robotic cars, unmanned air vehicles, factory and road-side automation applications, and a wide range of advanced robots and automaton applications. He fielded a self-driving autonomous robotic dune buggy in the historic 2005 Grand Challenge race across the Mojave desert and a self-driving autonomous car in the 2007 Urban Challenge through a city landscape. His work has been featured in numerous televised and print media including the Discovery Channel, a theatrical documentary, scientific journals, trade magazines, and international press. Since 2008, Paul has also been working as the chief software engineer, CTO, and roboticist automating rock star Neil Young’s LincVolt, a 1959 Lincoln Continental retro-fitted as a fully autonomous extended range electric vehicle. Paul has been an engineer, author of books and articles on Java, frequent speaker on Java, and entrepreneur in the robotics and software space for over 20 years. He is a member of the Java Champions program, recipient of three Duke Awards including a Gold Duke and Lifetime Achievement Award, has showcased Java-based robots at five JavaOne keynotes, and is a frequent JavaOne speaker and show floor participant. He holds a B.S.E.E. from Rutgers University and an M.S.E.E. from the University of Virginia. What’s Cool Shenandoah: A pauseless GC for OpenJDK

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  • Book Review: Inside Windows Communicat?ion Foundation by Justin Smith

    - by Sam Abraham
    In gearing up for a new major project, I have taken it upon myself to research and review various aspects of our Microsoft stack of choice seeking new creative ways for us to leverage in our upcoming state-of-the-art solution projected to position us ahead of the competition. While I am a big supporter of search engines and online articles as a quick and usually reliable source of information, I have opted in my investigative quest to actually “hit the books”.  I have also made it a habit to provide quick reviews for material I go over hoping this can be of help to someone who may be looking for items others may have had success using for reference. I have started a few months ago by investigating better ways to implementing, profiling and troubleshooting SQL Server 2008. My reference of choice was Itzik Ben-Gan et al’s “Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008” series. While it has been a month since my last book review, this by no means meant that I have been sitting idle. It has been pretty challenging to balance research with the continuous flow of projects and deadlines all while balancing that with my family duties which, of course, always comes first. In this post, I will be providing a quick review of my latest reading: Inside Windows Communication Foundation by Justin Smith. This book has been on my reading list for a very long time and I am proud to have finally tackled it. Justin’s book presents a great coverage of WCF internals. His simple, concise and well-worded style has simplified the relatively complex internals of WCF and made it comprehensible. Justin opted to organize the book into three parts: an introduction to WCF, coverage of the Channel Layer and a look at WCF internals at the ServiceModel layer. Part I introduced the concepts and made the case behind WCF while covering a simplified version of WCF’s message patterns, endpoints and contracts. In Part II, Justin provided a thorough coverage of the internals of Messages, Channels and Channel Managers. Part III concluded this nice reading with coverage of Bindings, Contracts, Dispatchers and Clients. While one would not likely need to extend WCF at that low level of the API, an understanding of the inner-workings of WCF is a must to avoid pitfalls mainly caused by misinformation or erroneous assumptions. Problems can quickly arise in high-traffic hosted solutions, but most can be easily avoided with some minimal time investment and education. My next goal is to pay a closer look at WCF from the programmer’s API perspective now that I have acquired a better understanding of its inner working.   Many thanks to the O’Reilly User Group Program and its support of our West Palm Beach Developers’ Group.   Stay tuned for more… All the best, --Sam

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  • Data Modeling Resources

    - by Dejan Sarka
    You can find many different data modeling resources. It is impossible to list all of them. I selected only the most valuable ones for me, and, of course, the ones I contributed to. Books Chris J. Date: An Introduction to Database Systems – IMO a “must” to understand the relational model correctly. Terry Halpin, Tony Morgan: Information Modeling and Relational Databases – meet the object-role modeling leaders. Chris J. Date, Nikos Lorentzos and Hugh Darwen: Time and Relational Theory, Second Edition: Temporal Databases in the Relational Model and SQL – all theory needed to manage temporal data. Louis Davidson, Jessica M. Moss: Pro SQL Server 2012 Relational Database Design and Implementation – the best SQL Server focused data modeling book I know by two of my friends. Dejan Sarka, et al.: MCITP Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-441): Designing Database Solutions by Using Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 – SQL Server 2005 data modeling training kit. Most of the text is still valid for SQL Server 2008, 2008 R2, 2012 and 2014. Itzik Ben-Gan, Lubor Kollar, Dejan Sarka, Steve Kass: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008 T-SQL Querying – Steve wrote a chapter with mathematical background, and I added a chapter with theoretical introduction to the relational model. Itzik Ben-Gan, Dejan Sarka, Roger Wolter, Greg Low, Ed Katibah, Isaac Kunen: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008 T-SQL Programming – I added three chapters with theoretical introduction and practical solutions for the user-defined data types, dynamic schema and temporal data. Dejan Sarka, Matija Lah, Grega Jerkic: Training Kit (Exam 70-463): Implementing a Data Warehouse with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 – my first two chapters are about data warehouse design and implementation. Courses Data Modeling Essentials – I wrote a 3-day course for SolidQ. If you are interested in this course, which I could also deliver in a shorter seminar way, you can contact your closes SolidQ subsidiary, or, of course, me directly on addresses [email protected] or [email protected]. This course could also complement the existing courseware portfolio of training providers, which are welcome to contact me as well. Logical and Physical Modeling for Analytical Applications – online course I wrote for Pluralsight. Working with Temporal data in SQL Server – my latest Pluralsight course, where besides theory and implementation I introduce many original ways how to optimize temporal queries. Forthcoming presentations SQL Bits 12, July 17th – 19th, Telford, UK – I have a full-day pre-conference seminar Advanced Data Modeling Topics there.

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  • SQLAuthority News – Online Webcast How to Identify Resource Bottlenecks – Wait Types and Queues

    - by pinaldave
    As all of you know I have been working a recently on the subject SQL Server Wait Statistics, the reason is since I have published book on this subject SQL Wait Stats Joes 2 Pros: SQL Performance Tuning Techniques Using Wait Statistics, Types & Queues [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle], lots of question and answers I am encountering. When I was writing the book, I kept version 1 of the book in front of me. I wanted to write something which one can use right away. I wanted to create an primer for everybody who have not explored wait stats method of performance tuning. Well, the books have been very well received and in fact we ran out of huge stock 2 times in India so far and once in USA during SQLPASS. I have received so many questions on this subject that I feel I can write one more book of the same size. I have been asked if I can create videos which can go along with this book. Personally I am working with SQL Server 2012 CTP3 and there are so many new wait types, I feel the subject of wait stats is going to be very very crucial in next version of SQL Server. If you have not started learning about this subject, I suggest you at least start exploring this right now. Learn how to begin on this subject atleast as when the next version comes in, you know how to read DMVs. I will be presenting on the same subject of performance tuning by wait stats in webcast embarcadero SQL Server Community Webinar. Here are few topics which we will be covering during the webinar. Beginning with SQL Wait Stats Understanding various aspect of SQL Wait Stats Understanding Query Life Cycle Identifying three TOP wait Stats Resolution of the common 3 wait types and queues Details of the webcast: How to Identify Resource Bottlenecks – Wait Types and Queues Date and Time: Wednesday, November 2, 11:00 AM PDT Registration Link I thank embarcadero for organizing opportunity for me to share my experience on subject of wait stats and connecting me with community to further take this subject to next level. One more interesting thing, I will ask one question at the end of the webinar and I will be giving away 5 copy of my SQL Wait Stats print book to first five correct answers. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 21 (sys.dm_db_partition_stats)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_db_partition_stats DMV returns page count and row count information for each table or index within your database. Lets have a quick look at this DMV so we can review some of the results. **NOTE: I am going to create an ‘ObjectName’ column in our result set so that we can more easily identify tables. SELECT object_name(object_id) ObjectName, * FROM sys.dm_db_partition_stats As stated above, the first column in our result set is an Object name based on the object_id column of this result set. The partition_id column refers to the partition_id of the index in question. Each index will have at least 1 unique partition_id and will have more depending on if the object has been partitioned. The index_id column relates back to the sys.indexes table and uniquely identifies an index on a given object. A value of 0 (zero) in this column would indicate the object is a HEAP and a value of 1 (one) would signify the Clustered Index. Next is the partition_number which would signify the number of the partition for a particular object_id. Since none of my tables in my result set have been partitioned, they all display 1 for the partition_number. Next we have the in_row_data_page_count which tells us the number of data pages used to store in-row data for a given index. The in_row_used_page_count is the number of pages used to store and manage the in-row data. If we look at the first row in the result set, we will see we have 700 for this column and 680 for the previous. This means that just to manage the data (not store it) is requiring 20 pages. The next column in_row_reserved_page_count is how many pages have been reserved, regardless if they are being used or not. The next 2 columns are used for storing LOB (Large Object) data which could be text, image, varchar(max), or varbinary(max) columns. The next two columns, row_overflow, represent pages used for data that exceed the 8,060 byte row size limit for the in-row data pages. The next columns used_page_count and reserved_page_count represent the sum of the in_row, lob, and row_overflow columns discussed earlier. Lastly is a row_count column which displays the number of rows that are in a particular index. This DMV is a very powerful resource for identifying page and row count information. By knowing the page counts for indexes within your database, you are able to easily calculate the size of indexes. For more information on this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187737.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 24 (sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats Dynamic Management Function returns information about the IO, locking, and access methods for the indexes that you currently have on your SQL Server Instance. This function takes four input parameters which are (1) database_id, (2) object_id, (3) index_id, and (4) partition_number. Let’s have a look at the results from this function against our AdventureWorks2012 database. This function returns a ton of columns, so not only will I not attempt to describe each of the columns, I wont even attempt to display all of them here. My query below will give you a subset of the columns returned from this function. SELECT database_id, object_id, index_id, partition_number, leaf_insert_count, leaf_delete_count, leaf_update_count, leaf_ghost_count, nonleaf_insert_count, nonleaf_delete_count, nonleaf_update_count, range_scan_count, forwarded_fetch_count, row_lock_count, row_lock_wait_count, page_lock_count, page_lock_wait_count, Index_lock_promotion_attempt_count, index_lock_promotion_count, page_compression_attempt_count, page_compression_success_count FROM sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats(db_id('AdventureWorks2012'), NULL, NULL, NULL) The first four columns in the result set represent the values that we passed in as our input parameters. If you use NULL’s as I did, then you will see results for every index on your system. I specified a database_id so my result set only shows those records pertaining to my AdventureWorks2012 database. The next columns in the result set provide you with information on how may inserts, deletes, or updates that have taken place on your leaf and nonleaf index levels. The nonleaf levels would refer to the intermediate and root index levels. In the middle of these you see a leaf_ghost_count column, which represents the number of records that have been logically deleted and marked as “ghosted”  and are waiting on the background ghost cleanup process to physically remove them. The range_scan_count column represents the number of range or table scans that have been performed against an index. The forwarded_fetch_count column represents the number of rows that were returned from a forwarding row pointer. The row_lock_count and row_lock_wait_count represent the number of row locks that have been requested for an index and the number of times SQL has had to wait on a row lock respectively. The page_lock_count and page_lock_wait_count represent the number of page locks that have been requested for an index and the number of times SQL has had to wait on a page lock respectively. The index_lock_promotion_attempt_count represents the number of times the database engine has attempted to promote a lock to the index level. The index_lock_promotion_count column displays how many times that index lock promotion was successful. Lastly the page_compression_attempt_count and page_compression_success_count represents how many times a page was attempted to be compressed and how many times the attempt was successful. As you can see there is a ton of information returned from this DMV. The DMV we reviewed on yesterday (sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats) provided you with good information on when and how indexes have been used, but this DMF takes an even deeper dive into these statistics. If you are interested in performing a very detailed analysis on the operational stats of your indexes, this is not only a good place to start, but more than likely the best place. For more information on this Dynamic Management Function, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174281.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 25 (sys.dm_db_missing_index_details)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_db_missing_index_details Dynamic Management View is used to return information about missing indexes on your SQL Server instances. These indexes are ones that the optimizer has identified as indexes it would like to use but did not have. You may also see these same indexes indicated in other tools such as query execution plans or the Database tuning advisor. Let’s execute this DMV so we can review the information it provides us. I do not have any missing index information for my AdventureWorks2012 database, but for the purposes of illustrating the result set of this DMV, I will present the results from my msdb database. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_missing_index_details The first column presented is the index_handle which uniquely identifies a particular missing index. The next two columns represent the database_id and the object_id for the particular table in question. Next is the ‘equality_columns’ column which gives you a list of columns (comma separated) that would be beneficial to the optimizer for equality operations. By equality operation I mean for any queries that would use a filter or join condition such as WHERE A = B. The next column, ‘inequality_columns’, gives you a comma separated list of columns that would be beneficial to the optimizer for inequality operations. An inequality operation is anything other than A = B. For example, “WHERE A != B”, “WHERE A > B”, “WHERE A < B”, and “WHERE A <> B” would all qualify as inequality. Next is the ‘included_columns’ column which list all columns that would be beneficial to the optimizer for purposes of providing a covering index and preventing key/bookmark lookups. Lastly is the ‘statement’ column which lists the name of the table where the index is missing. This DMV can help you identify potential indexes that could be added to improve the performance of your system. However, I will advise you not to just take the output of this DMV and create an index for everything you see. Everything listed here should be analyzed and then tested on a Development or Test system before implementing into a Production environment. For more information on this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345434.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 29 (sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors Dynamic Management View gives you a look into the data pages that are currently in your SQL Server buffer pool. Just in case you are not familiar with some of the internals to SQL Server and how the engine works, SQL Server only works with objects that are in memory (buffer pool). When an object such as a table needs to be read and it does not exist in the buffer pool, SQL Server will read (copy) the necessary data page(s) from disk into the buffer pool and cache it. Caching takes place so that it can be reused again and prevents the need of expensive physical reads. To better illustrate this DMV, lets query it against our AdventureWorks2012 database and view the result set. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors WHERE database_id = db_id('AdventureWorks2012') The first column returned from this result set is the database_id column which identifies the specific database for a given row. The file_id column represents the file that a particular buffer descriptor belongs to. The page_id column represents the ID for the data page within the buffer. The page_level column represents the index level of the data page. Next we have the allocation_unit_id column which identifies a unique allocation unit. An allocation unit is basically a set of data pages. The page_type column tells us exactly what type of page is in the buffer pool. From my screen shot above you see I have 3 distinct type of Pages in my buffer pool, Index, Data, and IAM pages. Index pages are pages that are used to build the Root and Intermediate levels of a B-Tree. A Data page would represent the actual leaf pages of a clustered index which contain the actual data for the table. Without getting into too much detail, an IAM page is Index Allocation Map page which track GAM (Global Allocation Map) pages which in turn track extents on your system. The row_count column details how many data rows are present on a given page. The free_space_in_bytes tells you how much of a given data page is still available, remember pages are 8K in size. The is_modified signifies whether or not a page has been changed since it has been read into memory, .ie a dirty page. The numa_node column represents the Nonuniform memory access node for the buffer. Lastly is the read_microsec column which tells you how many microseconds it took for a data page to be read (copied) into the buffer pool. This is a great DMV for use when you are tracking down a memory issue or if you just want to have a look at what type of pages are currently in your buffer pool. For more information about this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms173442.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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