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• Sql Server Compact 2005 on Visual Studio 2008

  - by Tim

  I'm working on a Windows Forms application that interacts with a Sql Compact database file created by SQL Server 2005. This application was originally developed in Visual Studio 2005 but was recently converted to a Visual Studio 2008 solution. In regards to Sql Compact, we made sure the references were all still set to the assemblies that handle the 2005 version of Sql Compact rather than Sql Compact 3.5. Having done this, the application still runs just as it should - it will still interact with the Compact database, perform synchronization operations, etc. However, I just discovered today that Visual Studio tools such as the DataSet Designer do not play well with a Sql Compact database file of an older version than 3.5. If I go to the New Connection... wizard, the only Sql Compact Data Source / Data Provider are for Sql Compact 3.5. I assume that Visual Studio 2008 just doesn't include the data provider for the older version of Sql Compact by default. Is there a way you can add the old version of Sql Compact to the list of "Data Sources" for the connection wizard? To see exactly what I'm referring to, click on the Tools menu of Visual Studio 2008 and click Connect to Database... In the window that comes up, click Change... next to the Data source setting. From this dialog there is no way I can select the earlier version of Sql Compact - only 3.5 is available. Maybe I need to add an assembly reference somewhere? Or copy some file(s) from my Visual Studio 2005 directory over to 2008? I would think there would have to be a way for Visual Studio 2008 to be able to interact with a Sql Compact database from Sql Server 2005. To provide one more bit of detail, I discovered this problem when I went to my DataSet, right-clicked and tried to add a TableAdapter. The first screen that comes up says, "Choose Your Data Connection". If I leave it set to the Sql Compact connection that we've always used, I now get the following error when clicking the Next button: Failed to open a connection to the database "The selected database was created with an earlier version of SQL Server Compact and needs to be upgraded to SQL Server Compact 3.5 before the connection can be opened or tested. Upgrade the database by creating a new data connection and completing the Add Connection dialog box." Check the connection and try again. The only problem here is that we still use Sql Server 2005, and if my understanding is correct, it does not produce subscription files that are compatible with Sql Compact 3.5. If I am wrong in this assumption, please correct me. Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

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• Design-time failure: WPF, Usercontrols and Namespaces

  - by Simon Woods

  Hi I have a very simple WPF project comprising a Window and Usercontrol. I'm very much in a learning phase. It works fine when I run it. However, I am unable to see the form in design time. The problem, I believe is something to do with namespaces, but I don't understand where. It may well be a simple error Main Window XML <Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:views="clr-namespace:UserLogin" x:Class="UserLogin.MainView" x:Name="MainViewWindow" mc:Ignorable="d" Title="Login" Height="141" Width="347" > <Grid> <views:LoginView /> </Grid> </Window> Main Window CodeBehind Imports Microsoft.VisualBasic Imports System Imports System.Windows Imports UserLogin Namespace UserLogin Partial Public Class MainView Inherits System.Windows.Window Public Sub New() InitializeComponent() End Sub End Class End Namespace Usercontrol XAML <UserControl xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" x:Class="UserLogin.LoginView" x:Name="LoginViewControl" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="96" d:DesignWidth="298"> <Grid Height="96" Width="298"> <Button Command="{Binding OKCommand}" Height="21" Margin="0,0,90,16" Name="btnOK" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Width="76">OK</Button> <Button Command="{Binding CancelCommand}" Height="21" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Margin="0,0,9,16" Name="btnCancel" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Width="75">Cancel</Button> <Label Height="23" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="10,5,0,0" Name="Label1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="85">Name:</Label> <Label HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="10,32,0,0" Name="Label2" Width="85" Height="29" VerticalAlignment="Top">Password:</Label> <TextBox Margin="0,31,6,0" Name="txtPassword" Height="22" VerticalAlignment="Top" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Width="182" /> <ComboBox Height="22" Margin="110,6,6,0" Name="cboNames" VerticalAlignment="Top" /> </Grid> </UserControl> Usercontrol CodeBehind Imports Microsoft.VisualBasic Imports System Imports UserLogin Namespace UserLogin Partial Public Class LoginView Inherits System.Windows.Controls.UserControl Public Sub New() InitializeComponent() End Sub End Class End Namespace I think I'm missing something this namespace xmlns:views="clr-namespace:UserLogin" since intellisense doesn't give me the usercontrol declared within it in the XAML designer but rather reports the error "Unable to load the metadata for the assembly ... etc etc" Thx for any suggestions Simon

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• Django : presenting a form very different from the model and with multiple field values in a Django-

  - by sebpiq

  Hi ! I'm currently doing a firewall management application for Django, here's the (simplified) model : class Port(models.Model): number = models.PositiveIntegerField(primary_key=True) application = models.CharField(max_length=16, blank=True) class Rule(models.Model): port = models.ForeignKey(Port) ip_source = models.IPAddressField() ip_mask = models.IntegerField(validators=[MaxValueValidator(32)]) machine = models.ForeignKey("vmm.machine") What I would like to do, however, is to display to the user a form for entering rules, but with a very different organization than the model : Port 80 O Not open O Everywhere O Specific addresses : --------- delete field --------- delete field + add address field Port 443 ... etc Where Not open means that there is no rule for the given port, Everywhere means that there is only ONE rule (0.0.0.0/0) for the given port, and with specific addresses, you can add as many addresses as you want (I did this with JQuery), which will make as many rules. Now I did a version completely "handmade", meaning that I create the forms entirely in my templates, set input names with a prefix, and parse all the POSTed stuff in my view (which is quite painful, and means that there's no point in using a web framework). I also have a class which aggregates the rules together to easily pre-fill the forms with the informations "not open, everywhere, ...". I'm passing a list of those to the template, therefore it acts as an interface between my model and my "handmade" form : class MachinePort(object): def __init__(self, machine, port): self.machine = machine self.port = port @property def fully_open(self): for rule in self.port.rule_set.filter(machine=self.machine): if ipaddr.IPv4Network("%s/%s" % (rule.ip_source, rule.ip_mask)) == ipaddr.IPv4Network("0.0.0.0/0"): return True else : return False @property def partly_open(self): return bool(self.port.rule_set.filter(machine=self.machine)) and not self.fully_open @property def not_open(self): return not self.partly_open and not self.fully_open But all this is rather ugly ! Do anyone of you know if there is a classy way to do this ? In particular with the form... I don't know how to have a form that can have an undefined number of fields, neither how to transform these fields into Rule objects (because all the rule fields would have to be gathered from the form), neither how to save multiple objects... Well I could try to hack into the Form class, but seems like too much work for such a special case. Is there any nice feature I'm missing ?

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• Silverlight ControlTemplate and F#

  - by akaphenom

  Has anybody had any success incorporating a Silverlight ControlTemplate into an F# Silverlight application. I am trying to add transitions to the Navgiation.Frame element and following along on with a C# example: http://www.davidpoll.com/2009/07/19/silverlight-3-navigation-adding-transitions-to-the-frame-control The downloaded source uses the MSBUILD:Compile option on the template XAML and the file is included as a "Page"... ILDASM doesn't show any object created for the XAML; In my project I incldued it as a "Resource" (same as I have done for my pages) and referenced it in app.xaml: <Application xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" x:Class="Module1.MyApp"> <Application.Resources> <ResourceDictionary> <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> <ResourceDictionary Source="/FSSilverlightApp;component/TransitioningFrame.xaml"/> </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> </ResourceDictionary> </Application.Resources> </Application> the TransitioningFrame.xaml is as follows: <ResourceDictionary xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:navigation="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.Navigation" xmlns:toolkit="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.Layout.Toolkit"> <ControlTemplate x:Key="TransitioningFrame" TargetType="navigation:Frame"> <Border Background="{TemplateBinding Background}" BorderBrush="{TemplateBinding BorderBrush}" BorderThickness="{TemplateBinding BorderThickness}" HorizontalAlignment="{TemplateBinding HorizontalContentAlignment}" VerticalAlignment="{TemplateBinding VerticalContentAlignment}"> <toolkit:TransitioningContentControl Content="{TemplateBinding Content}" Cursor="{TemplateBinding Cursor}" Margin="{TemplateBinding Padding}" HorizontalAlignment="{TemplateBinding HorizontalContentAlignment}" VerticalAlignment="{TemplateBinding VerticalContentAlignment}" HorizontalContentAlignment="{TemplateBinding HorizontalContentAlignment}" VerticalContentAlignment="{TemplateBinding VerticalContentAlignment}" Transition="DefaultTransition" /> </Border> </ControlTemplate> </ResourceDictionary> My page objects all load their respective xaml with the follwoing code: type Page1() as this = inherit UriUserControl("/FSSilverlightApp;component/Page1.xaml") do Application.LoadComponent(this, base.uri) and somewhere in app startup: let p1 = new Page1() I donot have a comparable piece for the ControlTemplate - though I was hoping the application object and App.xaml would pull it in magically (as an aside, the reliance on this magic has made setting up a 100% f# silverlight application rather tricky - as nearly all the published articles I find are based around wizards and short cuts - very little on the acual plumbing - ugh). Any advice or thougts on the subject are appreciated.

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• LinearLayout - How to get text to be on the right of an icon?

  - by RED_

  Hi there, Bit of a newbie when it comes to android, only been working on it properly for a few days but even after all the searching I've done im stumped and nobody seems to know how to help me. I have this so far: http://img263.imageshack.us/i/sellscreen.jpg How can I move the text to be besides each icon rather than underneath it? Hoping the gallery won't be moved either. Here is the code i have: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ScrollView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:id="@+id/scroller" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:fillViewport="true" > <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" > <Gallery xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:id="@+id/gallery" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content"/> <ImageView android:id="@+id/test_image" android:src="@drawable/icon" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"/> <TextView android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="The offcial UK driving theory test application. Over 190 questions." /> <ImageView android:id="@+id/test_image" android:src="@drawable/icon" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"/> <TextView android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="The offcial UK driving theory test application. Over 190 questions."/> <ImageView android:id="@+id/test_image" android:src="@drawable/icon" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"/> <TextView android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="The offcial UK driving theory test application. Over 190 questions."/> <ImageView android:id="@+id/test_image" android:src="@drawable/icon" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"/> <TextView android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="The offcial UK driving theory test application. Over 190 questions."/> <ImageView android:id="@+id/test_image" android:src="@drawable/icon" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" /> <TextView android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="The offcial UK driving theory test application. Over 190 questions." /> </LinearLayout> </ScrollView> Top half of my code doesn't seem to be showing for some reason but it's just the opening of the linear layout. I will be forever grateful to anyone that can help, i've been racking my brains for days and getting nowhere. Really getting stressed out by it. Thanks in advance!!

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• How to create a compiler in vb.net

  - by Cyclone

  Before answering this question, understand that I am not asking how to create my own programming language, I am asking how, using vb.net code, I can create a compiler for a language like vb.net itself. Essentially, the user inputs code, they get a .exe. By NO MEANS do I want to write my own language, as it seems other compiler related questions on here have asked. I also do not want to use the vb.net compiler itself, nor do I wish to duplicate the IDE. The exact purpose of what I wish to do is rather hard to explain, but all I need is a nudge in the right direction for writing a compiler (from scratch if possible) which can simply take input and create a .exe. I have opened .exe files as plain text before (my own programs) to see if I could derive some meaning from what I assumed would be human readable text, yet I was obviously sorely disappointed to see the random ascii, though it is understandable why this is all I found. I know that a .exe file is simply lines of code, being parsed by the computer it is on, but my question here really boils down to this: What code makes up a .exe? How could I go about making one in a plain text editor if I wanted to? (No, I do not want to do that, but if I understand the process my goals will be much easier to achieve.) What makes an executable file an executable file? Where does the logic of the code fit in? This is intended to be a programming question as opposed to a computer question, which is why I did not post it on SuperUser. I know plenty of information about the System.IO namespace, so I know how to create a file and write to it, I simply do not know what exactly I would be placing inside this file to get it to work as an executable file. I am sorry if this question is "confusing", "dumb", or "obvious", but I have not been able to find any information regarding the actual contents of an executable file anywhere. One of my google searches Something that looked promising EDIT: The second link here, while it looked good, was an utter fail. I am not going to waste hours of my time hitting keys and recording the results. "Use the "Alt" and the 3-digit combinations to create symbols that do not appear on the keyboard but that you need in the program." (step 4) How the heck do I know what symbols I need??? Thank you very much for your help, and my apologies if this question is a nooby or "bad" one. To sum this up simply: I want to create a program in vb.net that can compile code in a particular language to a single executable file. What methods exist that can allow me to do this, and if there are none, how can I go about writing my own from scratch?

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• How to use DataContractSerializer to create xml with tag names that match my known types

  - by mezoid

  I have the following data contract: [CollectionDataContract(Name="MyStuff")] public class MyStuff : Collection<object> {} [DataContract(Name = "Type1")] [KnownType(typeof(Type1))] public class Type1 { [DataMember(Name = "memberId")] public int Id { get; set; } } [DataContract(Name = "Type2")] [KnownType(typeof(Type2))] public class Type2 { [DataMember(Name = "memberId")] public int Id { get; set; } } Which I serialize to xml as follows: MyStuff pm = new MyStuff(); Type1 t1 = new Type1 { Id = 111 }; Type2 t2 = new Type2 { Id = 222 }; pm.Add(t1); pm.Add(t2); string xml; StringBuilder serialXML = new StringBuilder(); DataContractSerializer dcSerializer = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(MyStuff)); using (XmlWriter xWriter = XmlWriter.Create(serialXML)) { dcSerializer.WriteObject(xWriter, pm); xWriter.Flush(); xml = serialXML.ToString(); } The resultant xml string looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?> <MyStuff xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/"> <anyType i:type="Type1"> <memberId>111</memberId> </anyType> <anyType i:type="Type2"> <memberId>222</memberId> </anyType> </MyStuff> Does anyone know how I can get it to instead use the name of my known types rather than anyType in the xml tag? I'm wanting it to look like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?> <MyStuff xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/"> <Type1> <memberId>111</memberId> </Type1> <Type2> <memberId>222</memberId> </Type2> </MyStuff>

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• How can I easily maintain a cross-file JavaScript Library Development Environment

  - by John

  I have been developing a new JavaScript application which is rapidly growing in size. My entire JavaScript Application has been encapsulated inside a single function, in a single file, in a way like this: (function(){ var uniqueApplication = window.uniqueApplication = function(opts){ if (opts.featureOne) { this.featureOne = new featureOne(opts.featureOne); } if (opts.featureTwo) { this.featureTwo = new featureTwo(opts.featureTwo); } if (opts.featureThree) { this.featureThree = new featureThree(opts.featureThree); } }; var featureOne = function(options) { this.options = options; }; featureOne.prototype.myFeatureBehavior = function() { //Lots of Behaviors }; var featureTwo = function(options) { this.options = options; }; featureTwo.prototype.myFeatureBehavior = function() { //Lots of Behaviors }; var featureThree = function(options) { this.options = options; }; featureThree.prototype.myFeatureBehavior = function() { //Lots of Behaviors }; })(); In the same file after the anonymous function and execution I do something like this: (function(){ var instanceOfApplication = new uniqueApplication({ featureOne:"dataSource", featureTwo:"drawingCanvas", featureThree:3540 }); })(); Before uploading this software online I pass my JavaScript file, and all it's dependencies, into Google Closure Compiler, using just the default Compression, and then I have one nice JavaScript file ready to go online for production. This technique has worked marvelously for me - as it has created only one global footprint in the DOM and has given me a very flexible framework to grow each additional feature of the application. However - I am reaching the point where I'd really rather not keep this entire application inside one JavaScript file. I'd like to move from having one large uniqueApplication.js file during development to having a separate file for each feature in the application, featureOne.js - featureTwo.js - featureThree.js Once I have completed offline development testing, I would then like to use something, perhaps Google Closure Compiler, to combine all of these files together - however I want these files to all be compiled inside of that scope, as they are when I have them inside one file - and I would like for them to remain in the same scope during offline testing too. I see that Google Closure Compiler supports an argument for passing in modules but I haven't really been able to find a whole lot of information on doing something like this. Anybody have any idea how this could be accomplished - or any suggestions on a development practice for writing a single JavaScript Library across multiple files that still only leaves one footprint on the DOM?

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• How can I highlight empty fields in ASP.NET MVC 2 before model binding has occurred?

  - by Richard Poole

  I'm trying to highlight certain form fields (let's call them important fields) when they're empty. In essence, they should behave a bit like required fields, but they should be highlighted if they are empty when the user first GETs the form, before POST & model validation has occurred. The user can also ignore the warnings and submit the form when these fields are empty (i.e. empty important fields won't cause ModelState.IsValid to be false). Ideally it needs to work server-side (empty important fields are highlighted with warning message on GET) and client-side (highlighted if empty when losing focus). I've thought of a few ways of doing this, but I'm hoping some bright spark can come up with a nice elegant solution... Just use a CSS class to flag important fields Update every view/template to render important fields with an important CSS class. Write some jQuery to highlight empty important fields when the DOM is ready and hook their blur events so highlights & warning messages can be shown/hidden as appropriate. Pros: Quick and easy. Cons: Unnecessary duplication of importance flags and warning messages across views & templates. Clients with JavaScript disabled will never see highlights/warnings. Custom data annotation and client-side validator Create classes similar to RequiredAttribute, RequiredAttributeAdapter and ModelClientValidationRequiredRule, and register the adapter with DataAnnotationsModelValidatorProvider.RegisterAdapter. Create a client-side validator like this that responds to the blur event. Pros: Data annotation follows DRY principle (Html.ValidationMessageFor<T> picks up field importance and warning message from attribute, no duplication). Cons: Must call TryValidateModel from GET actions to ensure empty fields are decorated. Not technically validation (client- & server-side rules don't match) so it's at the mercy of framework changes. Clients with JavaScript disabled will never see highlights/warnings. Clone the entire validation framework It strikes me that I'm trying to achieve exactly the same thing as validation but with warnings rather than errors. It needs to run before model binding (and therefore validation) has occurred. Perhaps it's worth designing a similar framework with annotations like Required, RegularExpression, StringLength, etc. that somehow cause Html.TextBoxFor<T> etc. to render the warning CSS class and Html.ValidationMessageFor<T> to emit the warning message and JSON needed to enable client-side blur checks. Pros: Sounds like something MVC 2 could do with out of the box. Cons: Way too much effort for my current requirement! I'm swaying towards option 1. Can anyone think of a better solution?

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• How do gitignore exclusion rules actually work?

  - by meowsqueak

  I'm trying to solve a gitignore problem on a large directory structure, but to simplify my question I have reduced it to the following. I have the following directory structure of two files (foo, bar) in a brand new git repository (no commits so far): a/b/c/foo a/b/c/bar Obviously, a 'git status -u' shows: # Untracked files: ... # a/b/c/bar # a/b/c/foo What I want to do is create a .gitignore file that ignores everything inside a/b/c but does not ignore the file 'foo'. If I create a .gitignore thus: c/ Then a 'git status -u' shows both foo and bar as ignored: # Untracked files: ... # .gitignore Which is as I expect. Now if I add an exclusion rule for foo, thus: c/ !foo According to the gitignore manpage, I'd expect this to to work. But it doesn't - it still ignores foo: # Untracked files: ... # .gitignore This doesn't work either: c/ !a/b/c/foo Neither does this: c/* !foo Gives: # Untracked files: ... # .gitignore # a/b/c/bar # a/b/c/foo In that case, although foo is no longer ignored, bar is also not ignored. The order of the rules in .gitignore doesn't seem to matter either. This also doesn't do what I'd expect: a/b/c/ !a/b/c/foo That one ignores both foo and bar. One situation that does work is if I create the file a/b/c/.gitignore and put in there: * !foo But the problem with this is that eventually there will be other subdirectories under a/b/c and I don't want to have to put a separate .gitignore into every single one - I was hoping to create 'project-based' .gitignore files that can sit in the top directory of each project, and cover all the 'standard' subdirectory structure. This also seems to be equivalent: a/b/c/* !a/b/c/foo This might be the closest thing to "working" that I can achieve, but the full relative paths and explicit exceptions need to be stated, which is going to be a pain if I have a lot of files of name 'foo' in different levels of the subdirectory tree. Anyway, either I don't quite understand how exclusion rules work, or they don't work at all when directories (rather than wildcards) are ignored - by a rule ending in a / Can anyone please shed some light on this? Is there a way to make gitignore use something sensible like regular expressions instead of this clumsy shell-based syntax? I'm using and observe this with git-1.6.6.1 on Cygwin/bash3 and git-1.7.1 on Ubuntu/bash3.

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• Becoming a professional programmer / software engineer

  - by Matt

  This isn't strictly about programming, more about being a programmer, so I'm sorry if its not the right kind of question to ask on this forum (mod, please delete if it isn't) I'm a computer tech in the US Army, and once I'm out I'll have eight years on the job. I'm about to start a degree through an online school (the only way I can get the army to pay for it while I'm still in), and I'm seriously looking at getting a computer science degree. I'm great with computers. I can take one apart and put it back together with my eyes closed. I'm A+ and Network+ certified and I'm getting a couple other CompTIA certs before I get out. I can work Windows as well as anyone on this planet and I'm not terrible with Linux. A job in computers is something I've always wanted. But, aside from being a computer technician, it seems that every job in the field requires programming ability. I like programming as a hobby. I programmed TI BASIC in high school and I'm teaching myself Python, but that's as far as my experience goes. That sort of brings me to my questions: I've always heard that the first language is the most difficult, and once you learn it well then all the others sort of fall into place for you. Is that true? Like, if I spend the next eight months mastering Python, will I pretty much be able to pick up at least fair proficiency in any other OO language within a month of studying it or whatever? How easy is it to burn out? the biggest thing I'm afraid of is just burning out on programming. I can go all day long if I'm programming strictly for my own personal desire, but I can imagine it being really easy to burn out after a few years of programming to deadlines and certain specifications. Especially if its a big project involving a dozen different designers. From what I told you about myself, would I already be qualified to work as a regular technician (geek squad type or maybe running a computer repair shop). Is Python a good base to learn from? I've heard that it makes you hate other languages because they feel more convoluted when learning, but also that its a great beginner language. If you're a professional programmer, did you have any of the same fears? Would you recommend that I stick to computer repair and Python rather than try to get into corporate programming? (just from what you've read in this thread, anyway) Thanks for taking the time to read all this and answer (if you did)

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• Consuming Web Services requiring Authentication from behind Proxy server

  - by Jan Petersen

  Hi All, I've seen a number of post about Proxy Authentication, but none that seams to address this problem. I'm building a SharePoint Web Service consuming desktop application, using Java, JAX-WS in NetBeans. I have a working prototype, that can query the server for authentication mode, successfully authenticate and retrieve a list of web site. However, if I run the same app from a network that is behind a proxy server (the proxy does not require authentication), then I'm running into trouble. The normal -dhttp.proxyHost ... settings does not seam to help any. But I have found that by creating a ProxySelector class and setting it as default, I can regain access to the authentication web service, but I still can't retrieve the list of web sites from the SharePoint server. It's almost as if the authentication I provide is going to the proxy rather than the SharePoint server. Anyone have any experience on how to make this work? I have put the source text java class files of a demo app up, showing the issue at the following urls (it's a bit to long even in the short demo form to post here). link text When running the code from a network behind a proxy server, I successfully retrieve the Authentication mode from the server, but the request for the Web Site list generates an exception originating at: com.sun.xml.internal.ws.transport.http.client .HttpClientTransport.readResponseCodeAndMessage(HttpClientTransport.java:201) The output from the source when no proxy is on the network is listed below: Successfully retrieved the SharePoint WebService response for Authentication SharePoint authentication method is: WINDOWS Calling Web Service to retrieve list of web site. Web Service call response: -------------- XML START -------------- <Webs xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/"> <Web Title="Collaboration Lab" Url="http://host.domain.com/collaboration"/> <Web Title="Global Data Lists" Url="http://host.domain.com/global_data_lists"/> <Web Title="Landing" Url="http://host.domain.com/Landing"/> <Web Title="SharePoint HelpDesk" Url="http://host.domain.com/helpdesk"/> <Web Title="Program Management" Url="http://host.domain.com/programmanagement"/> <Web Title="Project Site" Url="http://host.domain.com/Project Site"/> <Web Title="SharePoint Administration Tools" Url="http://host.domain.com/admin"/> <Web Title="Space Management Project" Url="http://host.domain.com/spacemgmt"/> </Webs> -------------- XML END -------------- Br Jan

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• Fuzzy Regex, Text Processing, Lexical Analysis?

  - by justinzane

  I'm not quite sure what terminology to search for, so my title is funky... Here is the workflow I've got: Semi-structured documents are scanned to file. The files are OCR'd to text. The text is parsed into Python objects The objects are serialized (to SQL, JSON, whatever) for use. The documents are structures like this: HEADER blah blah, Page ### blah Garbage text... 1. Question Text... continued until now. A. Choice text... adsadsf. B. Another Choice... 2. Another Question... I need to extract the questions and choices. The problem is that, because the text is OCR output, there are occasional strange substitutions like '2' - 'Z' which makes ordinary regular expressions useless. I've tried the Levenshtein module and it helps, but it requires prior knowledge of what edit distance is to be expected. I don't know whether I'm looking to create a parser? a lexer? something else? This has lead me down all kinds of interesting but nonrelevant paths. Guidance would be greatly appreciated. Oh, also, the text is generally from specific technical domains, so general spelling tools are not so helpful. Regarding the structure of the documents, there is no clear visual pattern -- like line breaks or indentation -- with the exception of the fact that "questions" usually begin a line. Crap on the document can cause characters to appear before the actual beginning of the line, which means that something along the lines of r'^[0-9]+' does not reliably work. Though the "questions" always begin with an int, a period and a space; the OCR can substitute other characters or skip characters. This is not so much a problem with Tesseract or Cunieform, rather with the poor quality of the paper documents. # Note: for the project in question, it was decided that having a human prep the OCR'd text was better that spending the time coding a solution. I'd still love good pointers, however.

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• Web P2P video confrence solution

  - by dtroy

  I'm looking for the best possible solution which will allow me to incorporate live video/audio conference between 2 users(only 2 at this point) into a flash gaming platform. The video chat is not just an extra feature, it's the main one. I'm mainly looking at open source implementations or something I'll be able to implement myself, but will consider commercial products if they are exactly what I need. Here are a few things I've looked at, but so far, I didn't find any of them good enough: Flash player 10's P2P capabilities sound promising, but I am aware of the fact that Adobe has not release any information on the RTMFP protocol and that there is no commercial server which supports it at this point. Stream all the video/audio live through a flash server (not p2p), but from my personal experience you don't get a smooth conversation. I think TokBox uses this method Java applets are a possible solution too (to perform p2p), but I don't think it will be a nice and elegant solution to combine them in the game at this point (and requires the user to authorize them). BTW, I couldn't find any useful implementations. So, If you know of any, i'll look into them. Google Gmail Video Chat uses a custom (and proprietary) browser plug-in which does the p2p and streams the video/audio into the flash player. This is a possible solution, but I rather not implement the entire p2p protocol stack + browser plug-in at this stage and concentrate on other aspect of the game itself. I think they are using XMPP based protocol similar to Jingle and they've release a Jingle librarby but without the video confrencing implementation. EDIT: In response to Branden: I am aware of Adobe Stratus. Stratus is a beta, hosted rendezvous service that aids establishing communications between Flash Player endpoints (RTMFP server). This current release of the Stratus is prerelease and is designed for evaluation purposes only. The service is not final. There is no guarantee that the service will continue to exist in the future or any information about the future cost. That's why I don't think it can be used as a commercial solution. At least not yet. I'd appreciate your suggestions and advice. thanks!

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• How do I construct a Django reverse/url using query args?

  - by Andrew Dalke

  I have URLs like http://example.com/depict?smiles=CO&width=200&height=200 (and with several other optional arguments) My urls.py contains: urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'^$', 'cansmi.index'), (r'^cansmi$', 'cansmi.cansmi'), url(r'^depict$', cyclops.django.depict, name="cyclops-depict"), I can go to that URL and get the 200x200 PNG that was constructed, so I know that part works. In my template from the "cansmi.cansmi" response I want to construct a URL for the named template "cyclops-depict" given some query parameters. I thought I could do {% url cyclops-depict smiles=input_smiles width=200 height=200 %} where "input_smiles" is an input to the template via a form submission. In this case it's the string "CO" and I thought it would create a URL like the one at top. This template fails with a TemplateSyntaxError: Caught an exception while rendering: Reverse for 'cyclops-depict' with arguments '()' and keyword arguments '{'smiles': u'CO', 'height': 200, 'width': 200}' not found. This is a rather common error message both here on StackOverflow and elsewhere. In every case I found, people were using them with parameters in the URL path regexp, which is not the case I have where the parameters go into the query. That means I'm doing it wrong. How do I do it right? That is, I want to construct the full URL, including path and query parameters, using something in the template. For reference, % python manage.py shell Python 2.6.1 (r261:67515, Feb 11 2010, 00:51:29) [GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5646)] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. (InteractiveConsole) >>> from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse >>> reverse("cyclops-depict", kwargs=dict()) '/depict' >>> reverse("cyclops-depict", kwargs=dict(smiles="CO")) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<console>", line 1, in <module> File "/Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 356, in reverse *args, **kwargs))) File "/Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 302, in reverse "arguments '%s' not found." % (lookup_view_s, args, kwargs)) NoReverseMatch: Reverse for 'cyclops-depict' with arguments '()' and keyword arguments '{'smiles': 'CO'}' not found.

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• Is O_NONBLOCK being set a property of the file descriptor or underlying file?

  - by Daniel Trebbien

  From what I have been reading on The Open Group website on fcntl, open, read, and write, I get the impression that whether O_NONBLOCK is set on a file descriptor, and hence whether non-blocking I/O is used with the descriptor, should be a property of that file descriptor rather than the underlying file. Being a property of the file descriptor means, for example, that if I duplicate a file descriptor or open another descriptor to the same file, then I can use blocking I/O with one and non-blocking I/O with the other. Experimenting with a FIFO, however, it appears that it is not possible to have a blocking I/O descriptor and non-blocking I/O descriptor to the FIFO simultaneously (so whether O_NONBLOCK is set is a property of the underlying file [the FIFO]): #include <errno.h> #include <fcntl.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <unistd.h> int main(int argc, char **argv) { int fds[2]; if (pipe(fds) == -1) { fprintf(stderr, "`pipe` failed.\n"); return EXIT_FAILURE; } int fd0_dup = dup(fds[0]); if (fd0_dup <= STDERR_FILENO) { fprintf(stderr, "Failed to duplicate the read end\n"); return EXIT_FAILURE; } if (fds[0] == fd0_dup) { fprintf(stderr, "`fds[0]` should not equal `fd0_dup`.\n"); return EXIT_FAILURE; } if ((fcntl(fds[0], F_GETFL) & O_NONBLOCK)) { fprintf(stderr, "`fds[0]` should not have `O_NONBLOCK` set.\n"); return EXIT_FAILURE; } if (fcntl(fd0_dup, F_SETFL, fcntl(fd0_dup, F_GETFL) | O_NONBLOCK) == -1) { fprintf(stderr, "Failed to set `O_NONBLOCK` on `fd0_dup`\n"); return EXIT_FAILURE; } if ((fcntl(fds[0], F_GETFL) & O_NONBLOCK)) { fprintf(stderr, "`fds[0]` should still have `O_NONBLOCK` unset.\n"); return EXIT_FAILURE; // RETURNS HERE } char buf[1]; if (read(fd0_dup, buf, 1) != -1) { fprintf(stderr, "Expected `read` on `fd0_dup` to fail immediately\n"); return EXIT_FAILURE; } else if (errno != EAGAIN) { fprintf(stderr, "Expected `errno` to be `EAGAIN`\n"); return EXIT_FAILURE; } return EXIT_SUCCESS; } This leaves me thinking: is it ever possible to have a non-blocking I/O descriptor and blocking I/O descriptor to the same file and if so, does it depend on the type of file (regular file, FIFO, block special file, character special file, socket, etc.)?

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• Which management tools would you recommend for software development?

  - by Robert Schneider

  What would you generally recommend for software developement? Which combination do you use or would you recommend? I assume that tools are needed for Version control, issues/bugs/task, Release management, Requirement management. Tools for Test management and Project management should be accounted for as well, I guess. Did I forget anything? Maybe tools for Continous Integration. I'm not interested in a halfway combination of one ore two tools like a Subversion + Bugzilla (I know they are good but for a company they might not be sufficient). And also tools like make/ant shouldn't be taken into account. I'd like to know a combination that covers all what is important for professional software development. However, it could be a single tool of course if it covers all the management issues. What do you think would be a good combination? I assume a combination should be regardes as good if the tools itself are good but also if they have good integrations. Udate: Something like Ant is just a script not a management tool. Okay: we do already have Perforce. But this is somehow generic. We have different projects that uses C-, VS/.NET-, Python-, PHP and we will be starting new projects in Java. Plenty of languages and frameworks, though some are going to be legacy. So the tools should be generic. Obviously we don't want to use Bugzilla for one project and Jira for another. The management tools have to be generic. Further thoughts: Think of sourceforge: For each project they offer a version control system, an issue tracker, a wiki, ... totally independent of what the project is about. Those are some management tools that a project usually needs. I would say that most companies need such a set of tools. But I could imagine, if a company has several projects, they need further tools too: for Project management, Quality management, ... And I could imagine there are some recommendable combinations of tools. A not really apropiate comparison to this could be LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). A combination of software that has evolved since they work very well together, and are pretty useful for a lot of applications (or rather web sites). So maybe there are some recommendable management tool combinations that also fit toghether like LAMP. The integration is important. Thank you for the incredibly fast and helpful responses!!!

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• quartz: preventing concurrent instances of a job in jobs.xml

  - by Jason S

  This should be really easy. I'm using Quartz running under Apache Tomcat 6.0.18, and I have a jobs.xml file which sets up my scheduled job that runs every minute. What I would like to do, is if the job is still running when the next trigger time rolls around, I don't want to start a new job, so I can let the old instance complete. Is there a way to specify this in jobs.xml (prevent concurrent instances)? If not, is there a way I can share access to an in-memory singleton within my application's Job implementation (is this through the JobExecutionContext?) so I can handle the concurrency myself? (and detect if a previous instance is running) update: After floundering around in the docs, here's a couple of approaches I am considering, but either don't know how to get them to work, or there are problems. Use StatefulJob. This prevents concurrent access... but I'm not sure what other side-effects would occur if I use it, also I want to avoid the following situation: Suppose trigger times would be every minute, i.e. trigger#0 = at time 0, trigger #1 = 60000msec, #2 = 120000, #3 = 180000, etc. and the trigger#0 at time 0 fires my job which takes 130000msec. With a plain Job, this would execute triggers #1 and #2 while job trigger #0 is still running. With a StatefulJob, this would execute triggers #1 and #2 in order, immediately after #0 finishes at 130000. I don't want that, I want #1 and #2 not to run and the next trigger that runs a job should take place at #3 (180000msec). So I still have to do something else with StatefulJob to get it to work the way I want, so I don't see much of an advantage to using it. Use a TriggerListener to return true from vetoJobExecution(). Although implementing the interface seems straightforward, I have to figure out how to setup one instance of a TriggerListener declaratively. Can't find the docs for the xml file. Use a static shared thread-safe object (e.g. a semaphore or whatever) owned by my class that implements Job. I don't like the idea of using singletons via the static keyword under Tomcat/Quartz, not sure if there are side effects. Also I really don't want them to be true singletons, just something that is associated with a particular job definition. Implement my own Trigger which extends SimpleTrigger and contains shared state that could run its own TriggerListener. Again, I don't know how to setup the XML file to use this trigger rather than the standard <trigger><simple>...</simple></trigger>.

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• Generate reasonable length license key with asymmetric encryption?

  - by starkos

  I've been looking at this all day. I probably should have walked away from it hours ago; I might be missing something obvious at this point. Short version: Is there a way to generate and boil down an asymmetrically encrypted hash to a reasonable number of unambiguous, human readable characters? Long version: I want to generate license keys for my software. I would like these keys to be of a reasonable length (25-36 characters) and easily read and entered by a human (so avoid ambiguous characters like the number 0 and the capital letter O). Finally--and this seems to be the kicker--I'd really like to use asymmetric encryption to make it more difficult to generate new keys. I've got the general approach: concatenate my information (user name, product version, a salt) into a string and generate a SHA1() hash from that, then encrypt the hash with my private key. On the client, build the SHA1() hash from the same information, then decrypt the license with the public key and see if I've got a match. Since this is a Mac app, I looked at AquaticPrime, but that generates a relatively large license file rather than a string. I can work with that if I must, but as a user I really like the convenience of a license key that I can read and print. I also looked at CocoaFob which does generate a key, but it is so long that I'd want to deliver it as a file anyway. I fooled around with OpenSSL for a while but couldn't come up with anything of a reasonable length. So...am I missing something obvious here? Is there a way to generate and boil down an asymmetrically encrypted hash to a reasonable number of unambiguous, human readable characters? I'm open to buying a solution. But I work on a number of different of platforms, so I'd want something portable. Everything I've looked at so far has been platform specific. Many, many thanks for a solution! PS - Yes, I know it will still be cracked. I'm trying to come up with something reasonable that, as a user, I would still find friendly.

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• How to actually use Swing Application Framework?

  - by Joonas Pulakka

  Hello, I'd like to learn how to effectively use Swing Application Framework. Most of the the examples I've found are blog entries that just explain how to great it is to extend SingleFrameApplication and override its startup method, but that's about it. Sun's article is almost two years old, as is the project's own introduction, and there has apparently been some evolution since then. Are there any recent and thorough tutorials/HOWTOs available anywhere? There is JavaDoc of course, but it's hard to get the big picture from there. Any pointers are appreciated. Update: I realized that there's a mailing list archive at the project's site. While somewhat clumsy (compared to StackOverflow ;) it seems to be quite active. Still it's a pity that there are no real tutorials anywhere. The information is scattered here and there. Update 2: Let me clarify - I'm not having trouble using Swing (the widget toolkit) itself, I'm talking about its Application Framework, which is supposed to ease things like application lifecycle (startup, exit and whatever happens between them), action management etc. - that is, things that most Swing applications will need. It's cool to get such framework to be standard part of Java. The only problem is to learn how it's intended to be used. Update 3: For the interested, there was just some discussion at the project's forum regarding the current state and future of JSR 296. Shortly: the current version 1.03 is considered to be quite usable, but the API is not stable and it will change to the final version in Java 7. The package name will also change so Java 7 will not break current applications made on SAF. Update 4: Karsten Lentzsch stated at the above mentioned forum: "I doubt that it can be included in Java 7; and I'll vote against it.". I would rather not question the sincerity of this great guru, and it's certainly wise not to let anything flawed to slip into the core JDK, but frankly it's a strange situation - he is the author of JGoodies Swing Suite which is partly a commercial competitor of JSR 296, and he is sitting in the committee that will decide whether this JSR will be included to standard Java. It was the same thing with JSR 295 Beans Binding which I wrote about earlier. Given the current state of SAF, I think the best solution is to wrap the current implementation into a "homebrew" framework, which can then accommodate possible changes to the existing API.

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• Git/Mercurial (hg) opinion

  - by Richard

  First, let me say I'm not a professional programmer, but an engineer who had a need for it and had to learn. I was always working alone, so it was just me and my seven splitted personalities ... and we worked okey as a team :) Most of my stuff is done in C/Fortran/Matlab and so far I've been learning git to manage it all. However, although I've had no unsolvable problems with it, I've never been "that" happy with it ... for everything I cannot do, I hae to look up a book. And, for some time now I've been hearning a lot of good stuff about hg. Now, a coleague of mine will have to work with me on a project (I almost feel sorry for him) and he's started learning hg (says he likes it more), and I'm considering the switch myself. We work almost exclusivly on Windows platform (although I manage relatively ok using unix tools and things that come from that part of the world). So, I was wondering, in a described scenario, what problems could I expect with the switch. I heard that hg is rather more user friendly towards windows users, regarding the user interfaces. How does it handle repositories ? Does it create them the same way as git does (just one subdirectory in a working directory) and can I just copy the whole project directory (including git repo) and just carry them somewhere with no extra thinking ? (I really liked that when I was choosing over git/svn). Are there any good books on it that you can recommend (something like Pro Git, only for Hg). What are good ways to implement hg into Visual Studio/GVim for Windows, or into Windows Explorer so I can work relatively easily (I would like to avoid using the command line for everything regarding it, like in git shell). Is there something else I should be aware of (please, on this don't point me to other questions ... they just give me a ton of info, and I'm not sure what is it that I should take as important, and what to disregard). I'm trying to cut some time, since I cannot spend all that time relearning hg, like I did for git. I've also heard git is c project, while mercurial is python ... is there any noticeable difference in speed. git was pretty speedy ... will I encounter some waiting while working. Notice: All my projects are of let's say, middle size ... mostly numerical simulations ... 10-15000 lines (medium size?)

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• Linq-to-SQL: How to perform a count on a sub-select

  - by Peter Bridger

  I'm still trying to get my head round how to use LINQ-to-SQL correctly, rather than just writing my own sprocs. In the code belong a userId is passed into the method, then LINQ uses this to get all rows from the GroupTable tables matching the userId. The primary key of the GroupUser table is GroupUserId, which is a foreign key in the Group table. /// <summary> /// Return summary details about the groups a user belongs to /// </summary> /// <param name="userId"></param> /// <returns></returns> public List<Group> GroupsForUser(int userId) { DataAccess.KINv2DataContext db = new DataAccess.KINv2DataContext(); List<Group> groups = new List<Group>(); groups = (from g in db.Groups join gu in db.GroupUsers on g.GroupId equals gu.GroupId where g.Active == true && gu.UserId == userId select new Group { Name = g.Name, CreatedOn = g.CreatedOn }).ToList<Group>(); return groups; } } This works fine, but I'd also like to return the total number of Users who are in a group and also the total number of Contacts that fall under ownership of the group. Pseudo code ahoy! /// <summary> /// Return summary details about the groups a user belongs to /// </summary> /// <param name="userId"></param> /// <returns></returns> public List<Group> GroupsForUser(int userId) { DataAccess.KINv2DataContext db = new DataAccess.KINv2DataContext(); List<Group> groups = new List<Group>(); groups = (from g in db.Groups join gu in db.GroupUsers on g.GroupId equals gu.GroupId where g.Active == true && gu.UserId == userId select new Group { Name = g.Name, CreatedOn = g.CreatedOn, // ### This is the SQL I would write to get the data I want ### MemberCount = ( SELECT COUNT(*) FROM GroupUser AS GU WHERE GU.GroupId = g.GroupId ), ContactCount = ( SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Contact AS C WHERE C.OwnerGroupId = g.GroupId ) // ### End of extra code ### }).ToList<Group>(); return groups; } }

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• Putting update logic in your migrations

  - by Daniel Abrahamsson

  A couple of times I've been in the situation where I've wanted to refactor the design of some model and have ended up putting update logic in migrations. However, as far as I've understood, this is not good practice (especially since you are encouraged to use your schema file for deployment, and not your migrations). How do you deal with these kind of problems? To clearify what I mean, say I have a User model. Since I thought there would only be two kinds of users, namely a "normal" user and an administrator, I chose to use a simple boolean field telling whether the user was an adminstrator or not. However, after I while I figured I needed some third kind of user, perhaps a moderator or something similar. In this case I add a UserType model (and the corresponding migration), and a second migration for removing the "admin" flag from the user table. And here comes the problem. In the "add_user_type_to_users" migration I have to map the admin flag value to a user type. Additionally, in order to do this, the user types have to exist, meaning I can not use the seeds file, but rather create the user types in the migration (also considered bad practice). Here comes some fictional code representing the situation: class CreateUserTypes < ActiveRecord::Migration def self.up create_table :user_types do |t| t.string :name, :nil => false, :unique => true end #Create basic types (can not put in seed, because of future migration dependency) UserType.create!(:name => "BASIC") UserType.create!(:name => "MODERATOR") UserType.create!(:name => "ADMINISTRATOR") end def self.down drop_table :user_types end end class AddTypeIdToUsers < ActiveRecord::Migration def self.up add_column :users, :type_id, :integer #Determine type via the admin flag basic = UserType.find_by_name("BASIC") admin = UserType.find_by_name("ADMINISTRATOR") User.all.each {|u| u.update_attribute(:type_id, (u.admin?) ? admin.id : basic.id)} #Remove the admin flag remove_column :users, :admin #Add foreign key execute "alter table users add constraint fk_user_type_id foreign key (type_id) references user_types (id)" end def self.down #Re-add the admin flag add_column :users, :admin, :boolean, :default => false #Reset the admin flag (this is the problematic update code) admin = UserType.find_by_name("ADMINISTRATOR") execute "update users set admin=true where type_id=#{admin.id}" #Remove foreign key constraint execute "alter table users drop foreign key fk_user_type_id" #Drop the type_id column remove_column :users, :type_id end end As you can see there are two problematic parts. First the row creation part in the first model, which is necessary if I would like to run all migrations in a row, then the "update" part in the second migration that maps the "admin" column to the "type_id" column. Any advice?

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• Creating same-width hit-zones on MenuItems in ASP.NET 2.0 Menus that include MenuItems added at runt

  - by Cary Jensen

  In an ASP.NET 2.0 application, I want to permit a user to select a MenuItem, even if the user does not click the actual text of the MenuItem, but instead only clicks the highlight area that ASP.NET places around the currently selected MenuItem (represented by the DynamicHoverStyle.BackColor property). Since the BackColor is displayed the same width for each MenuItem in a submenu, based on MenuItem with the longest text, I would like to make the hit-zone (clickable area) of each sub-MenuItem the same width (same at the BackColor area), regardless of how much text is displayed in the in each individual sub-MenuItem. Here's the setup. I am using a Menu on a MasterPage to display a similar menu on each of my pages. Some of the pages suppress this menu, and some of them add addition MenuItems, sometimes to the top level, sometimes adding sub-MenuItems to an existing top-level MenuItem, and sometimes both (adding a MenuItem to the top level and then additional MenuItems as submenuitems to that newly added top level. This menu has a horizontal orientation, and it is dynamic, in that only the top level is initially exposed, and the submenus are displayed when selected. During usability testing, we noticed that users would select a top-level menu item to expose the submenu, and then select a submenu item, but not by necessarily clicking on the submenu item text, but instead clicking on the BackColor area of the submenu item. Since the text of some MenuItems are longer than others, MenuItems with short Text have a rather large BackColor area. When the user clicks on the BackColor area, but not directly on the MenuItem Text, nothing happens, since the user didn't actually click on the submenu item hit zone. Although there are visual cues as to what part of the displayed MenuItem is clickable (the mouse pointer changes to a link cursor when the mouse is positioned on the MenuItem Text, but not when it is only hovering over the BackColor), this behavior confused the users. They highlighted a MenuItem, and clicked it, but nothing happened. I would to make clicking a MenuItem successful, even if the user did not click on the actual Text of the MenuItem, but simply click on the BackColor area. It seems like there should be a property somewhere to control the width of the active area of the displayed MenuItems, but I do not see it. Any suggestions, given that I am creating some of these MenuItems at runtime?

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• Is my understanding of "select distinct" correct?

  - by paxdiablo

  We recently discovered a performance problem with one of our systems and I think I have the fix but I'm not certain my understanding is correct. In simplest form, we have a table blah into which we accumulate various values based on a key field. The basic form is: recdate date rectime time system varchar(20) count integer accum1 integer accum2 integer There are a lot more accumulators than that but they're all of the same form. The primary key is made up of recdate, rectime and system. As values are collected to the table, the count for a given recdate/rectime/system is incremented and the values for that key are added to the accumulators. That means the averages can be obtained by using accumN / count. Now we also have a view over that table specified as follows: create view blah_v ( recdate, rectime, system, count, accum1, accum2 ) as select distinct recdate, rectime, system, count, value (case when count > 0 then accum1 / count end, 0), value (case when count > 0 then accum2 / count end, 0) from blah; In other words, the view gives us the average value of the accumulators rather than the sums. It also makes sure we don't get a divide-by-zero in those cases where the count is zero (these records do exist and we are not allowed to remove them so don't bother telling me they're rubbish - you're preaching to the choir). We've noticed that the time difference between doing: select distinct recdate from XX varies greatly depending on whether we use the table or the view. I'm talking about the difference being 1 second for the table and 27 seconds for the view (with 100K rows). We actually tracked it back to the select distinct. What seems to be happening is that the DBMS is actually loading all the rows in and sorting them so as to remove duplicates. That's fair enough, it's what we stupidly told it to do. But I'm pretty sure the fact that the view includes every component of the primary key means that it's impossible to have duplicates anyway. We've validated the problem since, if we create another view without the distinct, it performs at the same speed as the underlying table. I just wanted to confirm my understanding that a select distinct can not have duplicates if it includes all the primary key components. If that's so, then we can simply change the view appropriately.

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