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  • It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice

    - by BuckWoody
    I’ve been a little “preachy” lately, telling you that you should let people finish their sentences, and always check a problem out before you tell a user that their issue is “impossible”. Well, I’ll round that out with one more tip today. Keep in mind that all of these things are actions I’ve been guilty of, hopefully in the past. I’m kind of a “work in progress”. And yes, I know these tips are coming from someone who picks on people in presentations, but that is of course done in fun, and (hopefully) with the audience’s knowledge.   (No, this isn’t aimed at any one person or event in particular – I just see it happen a lot)   I’ve seen, unfortunately over and over, someone in authority react badly to someone who is incorrect, or at least perceived to be incorrect. This might manifest itself in a comment, post, question or whatever, but the point is that I’ve seen really intelligent people literally attack someone they view as getting something wrong. Don’t misunderstand me; if someone posts that you should always drop a production database in the middle of the day I think you should certainly speak up and mention that this might be a bad idea!  No, I’m talking about generalizations or even incorrect statements done in good faith. Let me explain with an example.   Suppose someone makes the statement: “If you don’t have enough space on your system, you can just use a DBCC command to shrink the database”. Let’s take two responses to this statement.   Response One: “That’s insane. Everyone knows that shrinking a database is a stupid idea, you’re just going to fragment your indexes all over the place.” Response Two: “That’s an interesting take – in my experience and from what I’ve read here (someurl.com) I think this might not be a universal best practice.”   Of course, both responses let the person making the statement and those reading it know that you don’t agree, and that it’s probably wrong. But the person you responded to and the general audience hearing you (or reading your response) might form two different opinions of you.   The first response says to me “this person really needs to be right, and takes arguments personally. They aren’t thinking of the other person at all, or the folks reading or hearing the exchange. They turned an incorrect technical statement into a personal attack. They haven’t left the other party any room to ‘save face’, and they have potentially turned what could be a positive learning experience for everyone into a negative. Also, they sound more than just a little arrogant.”   The second response says to me “this person has left room for everyone to save face, has presented evidence to the contrary and is thinking about moving the ball forward and getting it right rather than attacking someone for getting it wrong.” It’s the idea of questioning a statement rather than attacking a person.   Perhaps you have a different take. Maybe you think the “direct” approach is best – and maybe that’s worked for you. Something to consider is what you’ve really accomplished while using that first method. Sure, the info you provide is correct, and perhaps someone out there won’t shrink a database because of your response – but perhaps you’ve turned a lot more people off, and now they won’t listen to your other valuable information. You’ll be an expert, but another one of the nameless, arrogant jerks in technology. And I don’t think anyone likes to be thought of that way.   OK, I’ll get down off of the high-horse now. And I’ll keep the title of this entry (said to me by my grandmother when I was a little kid) in mind when I dismount. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice

    - by BuckWoody
    I’ve been a little “preachy” lately, telling you that you should let people finish their sentences, and always check a problem out before you tell a user that their issue is “impossible”. Well, I’ll round that out with one more tip today. Keep in mind that all of these things are actions I’ve been guilty of, hopefully in the past. I’m kind of a “work in progress”. And yes, I know these tips are coming from someone who picks on people in presentations, but that is of course done in fun, and (hopefully) with the audience’s knowledge.   (No, this isn’t aimed at any one person or event in particular – I just see it happen a lot)   I’ve seen, unfortunately over and over, someone in authority react badly to someone who is incorrect, or at least perceived to be incorrect. This might manifest itself in a comment, post, question or whatever, but the point is that I’ve seen really intelligent people literally attack someone they view as getting something wrong. Don’t misunderstand me; if someone posts that you should always drop a production database in the middle of the day I think you should certainly speak up and mention that this might be a bad idea!  No, I’m talking about generalizations or even incorrect statements done in good faith. Let me explain with an example.   Suppose someone makes the statement: “If you don’t have enough space on your system, you can just use a DBCC command to shrink the database”. Let’s take two responses to this statement.   Response One: “That’s insane. Everyone knows that shrinking a database is a stupid idea, you’re just going to fragment your indexes all over the place.” Response Two: “That’s an interesting take – in my experience and from what I’ve read here (someurl.com) I think this might not be a universal best practice.”   Of course, both responses let the person making the statement and those reading it know that you don’t agree, and that it’s probably wrong. But the person you responded to and the general audience hearing you (or reading your response) might form two different opinions of you.   The first response says to me “this person really needs to be right, and takes arguments personally. They aren’t thinking of the other person at all, or the folks reading or hearing the exchange. They turned an incorrect technical statement into a personal attack. They haven’t left the other party any room to ‘save face’, and they have potentially turned what could be a positive learning experience for everyone into a negative. Also, they sound more than just a little arrogant.”   The second response says to me “this person has left room for everyone to save face, has presented evidence to the contrary and is thinking about moving the ball forward and getting it right rather than attacking someone for getting it wrong.” It’s the idea of questioning a statement rather than attacking a person.   Perhaps you have a different take. Maybe you think the “direct” approach is best – and maybe that’s worked for you. Something to consider is what you’ve really accomplished while using that first method. Sure, the info you provide is correct, and perhaps someone out there won’t shrink a database because of your response – but perhaps you’ve turned a lot more people off, and now they won’t listen to your other valuable information. You’ll be an expert, but another one of the nameless, arrogant jerks in technology. And I don’t think anyone likes to be thought of that way.   OK, I’ll get down off of the high-horse now. And I’ll keep the title of this entry (said to me by my grandmother when I was a little kid) in mind when I dismount. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • How I use schemas.

    - by Alexander Kuznetsov
    I use schemas to simplify granting permissions. For tables and views, I have three schemas: Data, the actual data my customers need. Can only be modified via sprocs. Staging, only visible to data loaders and devs. Full privileges on INSERT?UPDATE/DELETE for those who see it. Config, the configuration data used in loads, only visible to data loaders and devs. Can only be modified via sprocs. For sprocs/UDFs I have the following schemas: Readers Writers ETL ConfigReaders ConfigWriters Also I have dbo...(read more)

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  • Unit testing a database connection and general questions on database-dependent code and unit testing

    - by dotnetdev
    Hi, If I have a method which establishes a database connection, how could this method be tested? Returning a bool in the event of a successful connection is one way, but is that the best way? From a testability method, is it best to have the connection method as one method and the method to get data back a seperate method? Also, how would I test methods which get back data from a database? I may do an assert against expected data but the actual data can change and still be the right resultset. EDIT: For the last point, to check data, if it's supposed to be a list of cars, then I can check they are real car models. Or if they are a bunch of web servers, I can have a list of existant web servers on the system, return that from the code under test, and get the test result. If the results are different, the data is the issue but the query not? THnaks

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  • FileNameColumnName property, Flat File Source Adapter : SSIS Nugget

    - by jamiet
    I saw a question on MSDN’s SSIS forum the other day that went something like this: I’m loading data into a table from a flat file but I want to be able to store the name of that file as well. Is there a way of doing that? I don’t want to come across as disrespecting those who took the time to reply but there was a few answers along the lines of “loop over the files using a For Each, store the file name in a variable yadda yadda yadda” when in fact there is a much much simpler way of accomplishing this; it just happens to be a little hidden away as I shall now explain! The Flat File Source Adapter has a property called FileNameColumnName which for some reason it isn’t exposed through the Flat File Source editor, it is however exposed via the Advanced Properties: You’ll see in the screenshot above that I have set FileNameColumnName=“Filename” (it doesn’t matter what name you use, anything except a non-zero string will work). What this will do is create a new column in our dataflow called “Filename” that contains, unsurprisingly, the name of the file from which the row was sourced. All very simple. This is particularly useful if you are extracting data from multiple files using the MultiFlatFile Connection Manager as it allows you to differentiate between data from each of the files as you can see in the following screenshot: So there you have it, the FileNameColumnName property; a little known secret of SSIS. I hope it proves to be useful to someone out there. @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Windows and SQL Azure Best Practices: Affinity Groups

    - by BuckWoody
    When you create a Windows Azure application, you’ll pick a subscription to put it under. This is a billing container - underneath that, you’ll deploy a Hosted Service. That holds the Web and Worker Roles that you’ll deploy for your applications. along side that, you use the Storage Account to create storage for the application. (In some cases, you might choose to use only storage or Roles - the info here applies anyway) As you are setting up your environment, you’re asked to pick a “region” where your application will run. If you choose a Region, you’ll be asked where to put the Roles. You’re given choices like Asia, North America and so on. This is where the hardware that physically runs your code lives. We have lots of fault domains, power considerations and so on to keep that set of datacenters running, but keep in mind that this is where the application lives. You also get this selection for Storage Accounts. When you make new storage, it’s a best practice to put it where your computing is. This makes the shortest path from the code to the data, and then back out to the user. One of the selections for the location is “Anywhere U.S.”. This selection might be interpreted to mean that we will bias towards keeping the data and the code together, but that may not be the case. There is a specific abstraction we created for just that purpose: Affinity Groups. An Affinity Group is simply a name you can use to tie together resources. You can do this in two places - when you’re creating the Hosted Service (shown above) and on it’s own tree item on the left, called “Affinity Groups”. When you select either of those actions, You’re presented with a dialog box that allows you to specify a name, and then the Region that  names ties the resources to. Now you can select that Affinity Group just as if it were a Region, and your code and data will stay together. That helps with keeping the performance high. Official Documentation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh531560.aspx

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  • Enforce SSIS naming conventions using BI-xPress

    - by jamiet
    A long long long time ago (in 2006 in fact) I published a blog post entitled Suggested Best Practises and naming conventions in which I suggested a bunch of acronyms that folks could use to prefix object names in their SSIS packages, thus allowing easier identification of those objects in log records, here is a sample of some of those suggestions: If you have adopted these naming conventions (and I am led to believe that a bunch of people have) then you might like to know that you can now check for adherence to these conventions using a tool called BI-xPress from Pragmatic Works. BI-xPress includes a feature called the Best Practices Analyzer that scans your packages and assess them according to some rules that you specify. In addition Pragmatic Works have made available a collection of these rules that adhere to the naming conventions I specified in 2006 You can download this collection however I recommend you first read the accompanying article that demonstrates the capabilities of the Best Practices Analyzer. Pretty cool stuff. @Jamiet

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  • Getting It Right The First Time

    - by andyleonard
    Introduction This post is the seventeenth part of a ramble-rant about the software business. The current posts in this series are: Goodwill, Negative and Positive Visions, Quests, Missions Right, Wrong, and Style Follow Me Balance, Part 1 Balance, Part 2 Definition of a Great Team The 15-Minute Meeting Metaproblems: Drama The Right Question Software is Organic, Part 1 Metaproblem: Terror I Don't Work On My Car A Turning Point Human Doings Everything Changes This post is about getting software right...(read more)

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  • Object Oriented Design Questions

    - by Robert
    Hello there. I am going to develop a Tic-Tac-Toe game using Java(or maybe other OO Languages).Now I have a picture in my mind about the general design. Interface: Player ,then I will be able to implement a couple of Player classes,based on how I want the opponent to be,for example,random player,intelligent player. Classes: Board class,with a two-dimensional array of integers,0 indicates open,1 indicates me,-1 indicates opponent.The evaluation function will be in here as well,to return the next best move based on the current board arrangement and whose turn it is. Refree class,which will create instance of the Board and two player instances,then get the game begin. This is a rough idea of my OO design,could anybody give me any critiques please,I find this is really beneficial,thank you very much.

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  • A couple of questions on exceptions/flow control and the application of custom exceptions

    - by dotnetdev
    1) Custom exceptions can help make your intentions clear. How can this be? The intention is to handle or log the exception, regardless of whether the type is built-in or custom. The main reason I use custom exceptions is to not use one exception type to cover the same problem in different contexts (eg parameter is null in system code which may be effect by an external factor and an empty shopping basket). However, the partition between system and business-domain code and using different exception types seems very obvious and not making the most of custom exceptions. Related to this, if custom exceptions cover the business exceptions, I could also get all the places which are sources for exceptions at the business domain level using "Find all references". Is it worth adding exceptions if you check the arguments in a method for being null, use them a few times, and then add the catch? Is it a realistic risk that an external factor or some other freak cause could cause the argument to be null after being checked anyway? 2) What does it mean when exceptions should not be used to control the flow of programs and why not? I assume this is like: if (exceptionVariable != null) { } Is it generally good practise to fill every variable in an exception object? As a developer, do you expect every possible variable to be filled by another coder?

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  • Python: some newbie questions on sys.stderr and using function as argument

    - by Cawas
    I'm just starting on Python and maybe I'm worrying too much too soon, but anyways... log = "/tmp/trefnoc.log" def logThis (text, display=""): msg = str(now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M")) + " TREfNOC: " + text if display != None: print msg + display logfile = open(log, "a") logfile.write(msg + "\n") logfile.close() return msg def logThisAndExit (text, display=""): msg = logThis(text, display=None) sys.exit(msg + display) That is working, but I don't like how it looks. Is there a better way to write this (maybe with just 1 function) and is there any other thing I should be concerned under exiting? Now to some background... Sometimes I will call logThis just to log and display. Other times I want to call it and exit. Initially I was doing this: logThis ("ERROR. EXITING") sys.exit() Then I figured that wouldn't properly set the stderr, thus the current code shown on the top. My first idea was actually passing "sys.exit" as an argument, and defining just logThis ("ERROR. EXITING", call=sys.exit) defined as following (showing just the relevant differenced part): def logThis (text, display="", call=print): msg = str(now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M")) + " TREfNOC: " + text call msg + display But that obviously didn't work. I think Python doesn't store functions inside variables. I couldn't (quickly) find anywhere if Python can have variables taking functions or not! Maybe using an eval function? I really always try to avoid them, tho. Sure I thought of using if instead of another def, but that wouldn't be any better or worst. Anyway, any thoughts?

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  • Speaking at PASS 2012… Exciting and Scary… As usual…

    - by drsql
    Edit: As I reread this, I felt I should clarify.. As usual refers mostly to the "Scary" part. I have a lot of stage fright that I have to work through. And it is always exciting to be picked. I have been selected this year at the PASS Summit 2012 to do two sessions, and they are both going to be interesting. Pre-Con: Relational Database Design Workshop - Abstract Triggers: Born Evil or Misunderstood? - Abstract The pre-con session entitled Relational Database Design Workshop will be (at least) the...(read more)

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  • Database Change Management - Setup for Initial Create Scripts, Subsequent Migration Scripts

    - by Martin Aatmaa
    I've got a database change management workflow in place. It's based on SQL scripts (so, it's not a managed code-based solution). The basic setup looks like this: Initial/ Generate Initial Schema.sql Generate Initial Required Data.sql Generate Initial Test Data.sql Migration 0001_MigrationScriptForChangeOne.sql 0002_MigrationScriptForChangeTwo.sql ... The process to spin up a database is to then run all the Initlal scripts, and then run the sequential Migration scripts. A tool takes case of the versioning requirements, etc. My question is, in this kind of setup, is it useful to also maintain this: Current/ Stored Procedures/ dbo.MyStoredProcedureCreateScript.sql ... Tables/ dbo.MyTableCreateScript.sql ... ... By "this" I mean a directory of scripts (separated by object type) that represents the create scripts for spinning up the current/latest version of the database. For some reason, I really like the idea, but I can't concretely justify it's need. Am I missing something? The advantages would be: For dev and source control, we would have the same object-per-file setup that we're used to For deployment, we can spin up a new DB instance to the latest version either by running the Initial+Migrate, or by running the scripts from Current/ For dev, we do not need a DB instance running in order to do development. We can do "offline" development on the Current/ folder. The disadvantages would be: For each change, we need to update the scripts in the Current/ folder, as well as create a Migration script (in the Migration/ folder) Thanks in advance for any input!

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  • Book Review: Pro SQL Server 2008 Relational Database Design and Implementation

    - by Alexander Kuznetsov
    Investing in proper database design is a very efficient way to cut maintenance costs. If we expect a system to last, we need to make sure it has a good solid foundation - high quality database design. Surely we can and sometimes do cut corners and save on database design to get things done faster. Unfortunately, such cutting corners frequently comes back and bites us: we may end up spending a lot of time solving issues caused by poor design. So, solid understanding of relational database design is...(read more)

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  • Introducing SQLPeople - the Blog Series!

    - by andyleonard
    Introduction The first 50.5 weeks of 2010 have been interesting, to say the least. My experiences in 2010 can best be summed up in a single word: educational. I've learned a lot this year! One important thread wove its way through my 2010 experiences... Relationships Are Everything How we interact defines community. Relationships define community. Our community is more than the sum of our members. Trust and respect are the capital of community. And just like money, this capital can be invested, exchanged,...(read more)

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  • Lots of questions about file I/O (reading/writing message strings)

    - by Nazgulled
    Hi, For this university project I'm doing (for which I've made a couple of posts in the past), which is some sort of social network, it's required the ability for the users to exchange messages. At first, I designed my data structures to hold ALL messages in a linked list, limiting the message size to 256 chars. However, I think my instructors will prefer if I save the messages on disk and read them only when I need them. Of course, they won't say what they prefer, I need to make a choice and justify the best I can why I went that route. One thing to keep in mind is that I only need to save the latest 20 messages from each user, no more. Right now I have an Hash Table that will act as inbox, this will be inside the user profile. This Hash Table will be indexed by name (the user that sent the message). The value for each element will be a data structure holding an array of size_t with 20 elements (20 messages like I said above). The idea is to keep track of the disk file offsets and bytes written. Then, when I need to read a message, I just need to use fseek() and read the necessary bytes. I think this could work nicely... I could use just one single file to hold all messages from all users in the network. I'm saying one single file because a colleague asked an instructor about saving the messages from each user independently which he replied that it might not be the best approach cause the file system has it's limits. That's why I'm thinking of going the single file route. However, this presents a problem... Since I only need to save the latest 20 messages, I need to discard the older ones when I reach this limit. I have no idea how to do this... All I know is about fread() and fwrite() to read/write bytes from/to files. How can I go to a file offset and say "hey, delete the following X bytes"? Even if I could do that, there's another problem... All offsets below that one will be completely different and I would have to process all users mailboxes to fix the problem. Which would be a pain... So, any suggestions to solve my problems? What do you suggest?

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  • Microsoft : « Nous ne sommes plus en guerre contre l'open-source », interview de Alfonso Castro, Directeur de la Stratégie Interopérabilité

    Microsoft : « Nous ne sommes plus en guerre contre l'open-source » Interview de Alfonso Castro, Directeur de la Stratégie Interopérabilité chez Microsoft France Sponsor Platinium d'un des plus importants événement Java sur Paris (le What's Next), présent au Salon Solutions Linux du mois dernier, soutien à Node.js annoncé aujourd'hui, Microsoft multiplie les signes d'apaisement et de bonne volonté auprès des communautés open-sources. Ces deux évènements et cette annonce étaient l'occasion de faire le point sur les relations, historiquement assez tendues, entre l'entreprise commerciale Microsoft et les communautés bénévoles de développeurs...

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  • The penultimate audit trigger framework

    - by Piotr Rodak
    So, it’s time to see what I came up with after some time of playing with COLUMNS_UPDATED() and bitmasks. The first part of this miniseries describes the mechanics of the encoding which columns are updated within DML operation. The task I was faced with was to prepare an audit framework that will be fairly easy to use. The audited tables were to be the ones directly modified by user applications, not the ones heavily used by batch or ETL processes. The framework consists of several tables and procedures...(read more)

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 22 (sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats Dynamic Management Function is used to return information about the fragmentation levels, page counts, depth, number of levels, record counts, etc. about the indexes on your database instance. One row is returned for each level in a given index, which we will discuss more later. The function takes a total of 5 input parameters which are (1) database_id, (2) object_id, (3) index_id, (4) partition_number, and (5) the mode of the scan level that you would like to run. Let’s use this function with our AdventureWorks2012 database to better illustrate the information it provides. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(db_id('AdventureWorks2012'), NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL) As you can see from the result set, there is a lot of beneficial information returned from this DMF. The first couple of columns in the result set (database_id, object_id, index_id, partition_number, index_type_desc, alloc_unit_type_desc) are either self-explanatory or have been explained in our previous blog sessions so I will not go into detail about these at this time. The next column in the result set is the index_depth which represents how deep the index goes. For example, If we have a large index that contains 1 root page, 3 intermediate levels, and 1 leaf level, our index depth would be 5. The next column is the index_level which refers to what level (of the depth) a particular row is referring to. Next is probably one of the most beneficial columns in this result set, which is the avg_fragmentation_in_percent. This column shows you how fragmented a particular level of an index may be. Many people use this column within their index maintenance jobs to dynamically determine whether they should do REORG’s or full REBUILD’s of a given index. The fragment count represents the number of fragments in a leaf level while the avg_fragment_size_in_pages represents the number of pages in a fragment. The page_count column tells you how many pages are in a particular index level. From my result set above, you see the the remaining columns all have NULL values. This is because I did not specify a ‘mode’ in my query and as a result it used the ‘LIMITED’ mode by default. The LIMITED mode is meant to be lightweight so it does collect information for every column in the result set. I will re-run my query again using the ‘DETAILED’ mode and you will see we now have results for these rows. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(db_id('AdventureWorks2012'), NULL, NULL, NULL, ‘DETAILED’)   From the remaining columns, you see we get even more detailed information such as how many records are in a particular index level (record_count). We have a column for ghost_record_count which represents the number of records that have been marked for deletion, but have not physically been removed by the background ghost cleanup process. We later see information on the MIN, MAX, and AVG record size in bytes. The forwarded_record_count column refers to records that have been updated and now no longer fit within the row on the page anymore and thus have to be moved. A forwarded record is left in the original location with a pointer to the new location. The last column in the result set is the compressed_page_count column which tells you how many pages in your index have been compressed. This is a very powerful DMF that returns good information about the current indexes in your system. However, based on the mode you select, it could be a very resource intensive function so be careful with how you use it. For more information on this Dynamic Management Function, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188917.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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  • nMoq basic questions

    - by devoured elysium
    I made the following test for my class: var mock = new Mock<IRandomNumberGenerator>(); mock.Setup(framework => framework.Generate(0, 50)) .Returns(7.0) var rnac = new RandomNumberAverageCounter(mock.Object, 1, 100); rnac.Run(); double result = rnac.GetAverage(); Assert.AreEqual(result, 7.0, 0.1); The problem here was that I changed my mind about what range of values Generate(int min, int max) would use. I ran the test and it failed. I know that that is what it's supposed to happen but I was left wondering if isn't there a way to launch an exception or throw in a message when trying to run the method params. Also, if I want to run this Generate() method 10 times with different values (let's say, from 1 to 10), will I have to make 10 mock setups or something, or is there a special method for it? The best I could think of is this (which isn't bad, I'm just asking if there is other better way): for (int i = 1; i < 10; ++i) { mock.Setup(framework => framework.Generate(1, 100)) .Returns((double)i); } Thanks

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  • Visualising data a different way with Pivot collections

    - by Rob Farley
    Roger’s been doing a great job extending PivotViewer recently, and you can find the list of LobsterPot pivots at http://pivot.lobsterpot.com.au Many months back, the TED Talk that Gary Flake did about Pivot caught my imagination, and I did some research into it. At the time, most of what we did with Pivot was geared towards what we could do for clients, including making Pivot collections based on students at a school, and using it to browse PDF invoices by their various properties. We had actual commercial work based on Pivot collections back then, and it was all kinds of fun. Later, we made some collections for events that were happening, and even got featured in the TechEd Australia keynote. But I’m getting ahead of myself... let me explain the concept. A Pivot collection is an XML file (with .cxml extension) which lists Items, each linking to an image that’s stored in a Deep Zoom format (this means that it contains tiles like Bing Maps, so that the browser can request only the ones of interest according to the zoom level). This collection can be shown in a Silverlight application that uses the PivotViewer control, or in the Pivot Browser that’s available from getpivot.com. Filtering and sorting the items according to their facets (attributes, such as size, age, category, etc), the PivotViewer rearranges the way that these are shown in a very dynamic way. To quote Gary Flake, this lets us “see patterns which are otherwise hidden”. This browsing mechanism is very suited to a number of different methods, because it’s just that – browsing. It’s not searching, it’s more akin to window-shopping than doing an internet search. When we decided to put something together for the conferences such as TechEd Australia 2010 and the PASS Summit 2010, we did some screen-scraping to provide a different view of data that was already available online. Nick Hodge and Michael Kordahi from Microsoft liked the idea a lot, and after a bit of tweaking, we produced one that Michael used in the TechEd Australia keynote to show the variety of talks on offer. It’s interesting to see a pattern in this data: The Office track has the most sessions, but if the Interactive Sessions and Instructor-Led Labs are removed, it drops down to only the sixth most popular track, with Cloud Computing taking over. This is something which just isn’t obvious when you look an ordinary search tool. You get a much better feel for the data when moving around it like this. The more observant amongst you will have noticed some difference in the collection that Michael is demonstrating in the picture above with the screenshots I’ve shown. That’s because it’s been extended some more. At the SQLBits conference in the UK this year, I had some interesting discussions with the guys from Xpert360, particularly Phil Carter, who I’d met in 2009 at an earlier SQLBits conference. They had got around to producing a Pivot collection based on the SQLBits data, which we had been planning to do but ran out of time. We discussed some of ways that Pivot could be used, including the ways that my old friend Howard Dierking had extended it for the MSDN Magazine. I’m not suggesting I influenced Xpert360 at all, but they certainly inspired us with some of their posts on the matter So with LobsterPot guys David Gardiner and Roger Noble both having dabbled in Pivot collections (and Dave doing some for clients), I set Roger to work on extending it some more. He’s used various events and so on to be able to make an environment that allows us to do quick deployment of new collections, as well as showing the data in a grid view which behaves as if it were simply a third view of the data (the other two being the array of images and the ‘histogram’ view). I see PivotViewer as being a significant step in data visualisation – so much so that I feature it when I deliver talks on Spatial Data Visualisation methods. Any time when there is information that can be conveyed through an image, you have to ask yourself how best to show that image, and whether that image is the focal point. For Spatial data, the image is most often a map, and the map becomes the central mode for navigation. I show Pivot with postcode areas, since I can browse the postcodes based on their data, and many of the images are recognisable (to locals of South Australia). Naturally, the images could link through to the map itself, and so on, but generally people think of Spatial data in terms of navigating a map, which doesn’t always gel with the information you’re trying to extract. Roger’s even looking into ways to hook PivotViewer into the Bing Maps API, in a similar way to the Deep Earth project, displaying different levels of map detail according to how ‘zoomed in’ the images are. Some of the work that Dave did with one of the schools was generating the Deep Zoom tiles “on the fly”, based on images stored in a database, and Roger has produced a collection which uses images from flickr, that lets you move from one search term to another. Pulling the images down from flickr.com isn’t particularly ideal from a performance aspect, and flickr doesn’t store images in a small-enough format to really lend itself to this use, but you might agree that it’s an interesting concept which compares nicely to using Maps. I’m looking forward to future versions of the PivotViewer control, and hope they provide many more events that can be used, and even more hooks into it. Naturally, LobsterPot could help provide your business with a PivotViewer experience, but you can probably do a lot of it yourself too. There’s a thorough guide at getpivot.com, which is how we got into it. For some examples of what we’ve done, have a look at http://pivot.lobsterpot.com.au. I’d like to see PivotViewer really catch on a data visualisation tool.

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  • Drupal: View with exposed Taxonomy filter.. 3 questions

    - by Patrick
    Hi, I'm using Views module and an exposed taxonomy based filter, to allow users to select a subselection of articles. I need to further customize my filter: 1) I want the user able to order the tags alphabetically by clicking a checkbox (if this checkbox is unchecked the default order is reset. 2) I want all tags selected in the beginning to show my user all the articles. (Additional tags can be added by the user later, so I cannot just select all the tags in Views settings, because the new ones would be uncovered). thanks

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  • Geek City: SQL Server 2014 In-Memory OLTP (“Hekaton”) Whitepaper for CTP2

    - by Kalen Delaney
    Last week at the PASS Summit in Charlotte, NC, the update of my whitepaper for CTP2 was released. The manager supervising the paper at Microsoft told me that David DeWitt himself said some very nice things about the technical quality of the paper, which was one of the most ego enhancing compliments I have ever gotten! Unfortunately, Dr. DeWitt said those things at his “After-the-keynote” session, not in the keynote that was recorded, so I only have my manager’s word for it. But I’ll take what I can...(read more)

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