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• Querying Networking Statistics: dlstat(1M)

  - by user12612042

  Oracle Solaris 11 took another big leap forward in networking technologies providing a reliable, secure and scalable infrastructure to meet the growing needs of today's datacenter implementations. Oracle Solaris 11 introduced a new and powerful network stack architecture, also known as Project Crossbow. From Solaris 11 onwards, we introduced a command line tool viz. dlstat(1M) to query network statistics. dlstat (for datalink statistics) is a statistics querying counterpart for dladm(1M) - the datalink administration tool. The tool is very easy to get started. Just type dlstat on a shell prompt on Solaris 11 (or later). For example,: # dlstat LINK IPKTS RBYTES OPKTS OBYTES net0 834.11K 145.91M 575.19K 104.24M net1 7.87K 2.04M 0 0 In this example, the system has two datalinks net0 and net1. The output columns denote input packets/bytes as well as output packets/bytes. The numbers are abbreviated in xxx.xxUnit format. However, one could get the actual counts by simply running dlstat -u R (R for raw): # dlstat -u R LINK IPKTS RBYTES OPKTS OBYTES net0 834271 145931244 575246 104242934 net1 7869 2036958 0 0 In addition, dlstat also supports various subcommands dlstat help The following subcommands are supported: Stats : show-aggr show-ether show-link show-phys show-bridge For more info, run: dlstat help {default|} I will only describe couple of interesting subcommands/options here. For a comprehensive description of all the dlstat subcommands refer dlstat's official manual . For NICs that support multiple rings (e.g. ixgbe), dlstat show-phys -r allows us to query per Rx ring statistics. For example: dlstat show-phys -r net4 LINK TYPE INDEX IPKTS RBYTES net4 rx 0 0 0 net4 rx 1 0 0 net4 rx 2 0 0 net4 rx 3 0 0 net4 rx 4 0 0 net4 rx 5 0 0 net4 rx 6 0 0 net4 rx 7 0 0 In this case, net4 is just a vanity name for an ixgbe datalink. This view is especially useful if one wants to look at the network traffic spread across all the available rings. Furthermore, any of the dlstat commands could be run with -i option to periodically query and display stats. For example, running dlstat show-phys -r net4 -i 5 will emit per Rx ring stats every 5 seconds. This is especially useful while analyzing a live system. Similarly, dlstat show-phys -t could be used to query per Tx ring stats. -r and -t could also be combined as dlstat show-phys -rt to query both Rx as well as Tx stats at the same time. Finally, there is also a quick way to dump ALL the stats. Just run dlstat -A. You probably want to redirect this output to a file because you are going to get a whole load of stats :-).

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• How to perform feature upgrade in SharePoint2010 part2

  - by ybbest

  In my last post, I showed you how to perform feature upgrade and upgrade my feature from 0.0.0.0 to 1.0.0.1. In this post, I’d like to continue on this topic and upgrade the feature again. For the first version of my solution, I deploy a document library with a custom document set content type and then upgrade the solution so I index the application number column. Now , I will create a new version of the solution so that it will remove the threshold of the list. You can download the solution here. Once you extract your solution, the first version is in the original folder. In order to deploy the original solution, you need to run the sitecreation.ps1 in the script folder. The version 1.1 will be in the Upgrade folder and version 1.2 will be in the Upgrade2 folder. You need to make the following changes to the existing solution. 1. Modify the ApplicationLibrary.Template.xml as highlighted below: 2. Adding the following code into the feature event receiver. </pre> public override void FeatureUpgrading(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties, string upgradeActionName, System.Collections.Generic.IDictionary<string, string> parameters) { base.FeatureUpgrading(properties, upgradeActionName, parameters); SPWeb web = GetFeatureWeb(properties); SPList applicationLibrary = web.Lists.TryGetList(ApplicationLibraryNamesConstant.ApplicationLibraryName); switch (upgradeActionName) { case "IndexApplicationNumber": if (applicationLibrary != null) { SPField queueField = applicationLibrary.Fields["ApplicationNumber"]; queueField.Indexed = true; queueField.Update(); } break; case "RemoveListThreshold": applicationLibrary.EnableThrottling = false; applicationLibrary.Update(); break; } } <pre> 3. Package your solution and run the feature upgrade PowerShell script. $wspFolder ="v1.2" $scriptPath=Split-Path $myInvocation.MyCommand.Path $siteUrl = "http://ybbest" $featureToCheckGuid="1b9d84cd-227d-45f1-92d4-a43008aa8fe7" $requiredFeatureVersion="1.0.0.1" $siteUrlOfFeatureToBeChecked="http://ybbest" AppendLog "Starting Solution UpgradeSolutionAndFeatures.ps1" Magenta & "$scriptPath\UpgradeSolutionAndFeatures.ps1" $siteUrl $wspFolder $featureToCheckGuid $requiredFeatureVersion $siteUrlOfFeatureToBeChecked Write-Host AppendLog "All features updated" "Green" References: Feature upgrade.

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• ASP.NET Frameworks and Raw Throughput Performance

  - by Rick Strahl

  A few days ago I had a curious thought: With all these different technologies that the ASP.NET stack has to offer, what's the most efficient technology overall to return data for a server request? When I started this it was mere curiosity rather than a real practical need or result. Different tools are used for different problems and so performance differences are to be expected. But still I was curious to see how the various technologies performed relative to each just for raw throughput of the request getting to the endpoint and back out to the client with as little processing in the actual endpoint logic as possible (aka Hello World!). I want to clarify that this is merely an informal test for my own curiosity and I'm sharing the results and process here because I thought it was interesting. It's been a long while since I've done any sort of perf testing on ASP.NET, mainly because I've not had extremely heavy load requirements and because overall ASP.NET performs very well even for fairly high loads so that often it's not that critical to test load performance. This post is not meant to make a point  or even come to a conclusion which tech is better, but just to act as a reference to help understand some of the differences in perf and give a starting point to play around with this yourself. I've included the code for this simple project, so you can play with it and maybe add a few additional tests for different things if you like. Source Code on GitHub I looked at this data for these technologies: ASP.NET Web API ASP.NET MVC WebForms ASP.NET WebPages ASMX AJAX Services  (couldn't get AJAX/JSON to run on IIS8 ) WCF Rest Raw ASP.NET HttpHandlers It's quite a mixed bag, of course and the technologies target different types of development. What started out as mere curiosity turned into a bit of a head scratcher as the results were sometimes surprising. What I describe here is more to satisfy my curiosity more than anything and I thought it interesting enough to discuss on the blog :-) First test: Raw Throughput The first thing I did is test raw throughput for the various technologies. This is the least practical test of course since you're unlikely to ever create the equivalent of a 'Hello World' request in a real life application. The idea here is to measure how much time a 'NOP' request takes to return data to the client. So for this request I create the simplest Hello World request that I could come up for each tech. Http Handler The first is the lowest level approach which is an HTTP handler. public class Handler : IHttpHandler { public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) { context.Response.ContentType = "text/plain"; context.Response.Write("Hello World. Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString()); } public bool IsReusable { get { return true; } } } WebForms Next I added a couple of ASPX pages - one using CodeBehind and one using only a markup page. The CodeBehind page simple does this in CodeBehind without any markup in the ASPX page: public partial class HelloWorld_CodeBehind : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { Response.Write("Hello World. Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString() ); Response.End(); } } while the Markup page only contains some static output via an expression:<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="false" CodeBehind="HelloWorld_Markup.aspx.cs" Inherits="AspNetFrameworksPerformance.HelloWorld_Markup" %> Hello World. Time is <%= DateTime.Now %> ASP.NET WebPages WebPages is the freestanding Razor implementation of ASP.NET. Here's the simple HelloWorld.cshtml page:Hello World @DateTime.Now WCF REST WCF REST was the token REST implementation for ASP.NET before WebAPI and the inbetween step from ASP.NET AJAX. I'd like to forget that this technology was ever considered for production use, but I'll include it here. Here's an OperationContract class: [ServiceContract(Namespace = "")] [AspNetCompatibilityRequirements(RequirementsMode = AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode.Allowed)] public class WcfService { [OperationContract] [WebGet] public Stream HelloWorld() { var data = Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes("Hello World" + DateTime.Now.ToString()); var ms = new MemoryStream(data); // Add your operation implementation here return ms; } } WCF REST can return arbitrary results by returning a Stream object and a content type. The code above turns the string result into a stream and returns that back to the client. ASP.NET AJAX (ASMX Services) I also wanted to test ASP.NET AJAX services because prior to WebAPI this is probably still the most widely used AJAX technology for the ASP.NET stack today. Unfortunately I was completely unable to get this running on my Windows 8 machine. Visual Studio 2012  removed adding of ASP.NET AJAX services, and when I tried to manually add the service and configure the script handler references it simply did not work - I always got a SOAP response for GET and POST operations. No matter what I tried I always ended up getting XML results even when explicitly adding the ScriptHandler. So, I didn't test this (but the code is there - you might be able to test this on a Windows 7 box). ASP.NET MVC Next up is probably the most popular ASP.NET technology at the moment: MVC. Here's the small controller: public class MvcPerformanceController : Controller { public ActionResult Index() { return View(); } public ActionResult HelloWorldCode() { return new ContentResult() { Content = "Hello World. Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString() }; } } ASP.NET WebAPI Next up is WebAPI which looks kind of similar to MVC. Except here I have to use a StringContent result to return the response: public class WebApiPerformanceController : ApiController { [HttpGet] public HttpResponseMessage HelloWorldCode() { return new HttpResponseMessage() { Content = new StringContent("Hello World. Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString(), Encoding.UTF8, "text/plain") }; } } Testing Take a minute to think about each of the technologies… and take a guess which you think is most efficient in raw throughput. The fastest should be pretty obvious, but the others - maybe not so much. The testing I did is pretty informal since it was mainly to satisfy my curiosity - here's how I did this: I used Apache Bench (ab.exe) from a full Apache HTTP installation to run and log the test results of hitting the server. ab.exe is a small executable that lets you hit a URL repeatedly and provides counter information about the number of requests, requests per second etc. ab.exe and the batch file are located in the \LoadTests folder of the project. An ab.exe command line  looks like this: ab.exe -n100000 -c20 http://localhost/aspnetperf/api/HelloWorld which hits the specified URL 100,000 times with a load factor of 20 concurrent requests. This results in output like this:   It's a great way to get a quick and dirty performance summary. Run it a few times to make sure there's not a large amount of varience. You might also want to do an IISRESET to clear the Web Server. Just make sure you do a short test run to warm up the server first - otherwise your first run is likely to be skewed downwards. ab.exe also allows you to specify headers and provide POST data and many other things if you want to get a little more fancy. Here all tests are GET requests to keep it simple. I ran each test: 100,000 iterations Load factor of 20 concurrent connections IISReset before starting A short warm up run for API and MVC to make sure startup cost is mitigated Here is the batch file I used for the test: IISRESET REM make sure you add REM C:\Program Files (x86)\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\bin REM to your path so ab.exe can be found REM Warm up ab.exe -n100 -c20 http://localhost/aspnetperf/MvcPerformance/HelloWorldJsonab.exe -n100 -c20 http://localhost/aspnetperf/api/HelloWorldJson ab.exe -n100 -c20 http://localhost/AspNetPerf/WcfService.svc/HelloWorld ab.exe -n100000 -c20 http://localhost/aspnetperf/handler.ashx > handler.txt ab.exe -n100000 -c20 http://localhost/aspnetperf/HelloWorld_CodeBehind.aspx > AspxCodeBehind.txt ab.exe -n100000 -c20 http://localhost/aspnetperf/HelloWorld_Markup.aspx > AspxMarkup.txt ab.exe -n100000 -c20 http://localhost/AspNetPerf/WcfService.svc/HelloWorld > Wcf.txt ab.exe -n100000 -c20 http://localhost/aspnetperf/MvcPerformance/HelloWorldCode > Mvc.txt ab.exe -n100000 -c20 http://localhost/aspnetperf/api/HelloWorld > WebApi.txt I ran each of these tests 3 times and took the average score for Requests/second, with the machine otherwise idle. I did see a bit of variance when running many tests but the values used here are the medians. Part of this has to do with the fact I ran the tests on my local machine - result would probably more consistent running the load test on a separate machine hitting across the network. I ran these tests locally on my laptop which is a Dell XPS with quad core Sandibridge I7-2720QM @ 2.20ghz and a fast SSD drive on Windows 8. CPU load during tests ran to about 70% max across all 4 cores (IOW, it wasn't overloading the machine). Ideally you can try running these tests on a separate machine hitting the local machine. If I remember correctly IIS 7 and 8 on client OSs don't throttle so the performance here should be Results Ok, let's cut straight to the chase. Below are the results from the tests… It's not surprising that the handler was fastest. But it was a bit surprising to me that the next fastest was WebForms and especially Web Forms with markup over a CodeBehind page. WebPages also fared fairly well. MVC and WebAPI are a little slower and the slowest by far is WCF REST (which again I find surprising). As mentioned at the start the raw throughput tests are not overly practical as they don't test scripting performance for the HTML generation engines or serialization performances of the data engines. All it really does is give you an idea of the raw throughput for the technology from time of request to reaching the endpoint and returning minimal text data back to the client which indicates full round trip performance. But it's still interesting to see that Web Forms performs better in throughput than either MVC, WebAPI or WebPages. It'd be interesting to try this with a few pages that actually have some parsing logic on it, but that's beyond the scope of this throughput test. But what's also amazing about this test is the sheer amount of traffic that a laptop computer is handling. Even the slowest tech managed 5700 requests a second, which is one hell of a lot of requests if you extrapolate that out over a 24 hour period. Remember these are not static pages, but dynamic requests that are being served. Another test - JSON Data Service Results The second test I used a JSON result from several of the technologies. I didn't bother running WebForms and WebPages through this test since that doesn't make a ton of sense to return data from the them (OTOH, returning text from the APIs didn't make a ton of sense either :-) In these tests I have a small Person class that gets serialized and then returned to the client. The Person class looks like this: public class Person { public Person() { Id = 10; Name = "Rick"; Entered = DateTime.Now; } public int Id { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public DateTime Entered { get; set; } } Here are the updated handler classes that use Person: Handler public class Handler : IHttpHandler { public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) { var action = context.Request.QueryString["action"]; if (action == "json") JsonRequest(context); else TextRequest(context); } public void TextRequest(HttpContext context) { context.Response.ContentType = "text/plain"; context.Response.Write("Hello World. Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString()); } public void JsonRequest(HttpContext context) { var json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(new Person(), Formatting.None); context.Response.ContentType = "application/json"; context.Response.Write(json); } public bool IsReusable { get { return true; } } } This code adds a little logic to check for a action query string and route the request to an optional JSON result method. To generate JSON, I'm using the same JSON.NET serializer (JsonConvert.SerializeObject) used in Web API to create the JSON response. WCF REST   [ServiceContract(Namespace = "")] [AspNetCompatibilityRequirements(RequirementsMode = AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode.Allowed)] public class WcfService { [OperationContract] [WebGet] public Stream HelloWorld() { var data = Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes("Hello World " + DateTime.Now.ToString()); var ms = new MemoryStream(data); // Add your operation implementation here return ms; } [OperationContract] [WebGet(ResponseFormat=WebMessageFormat.Json,BodyStyle=WebMessageBodyStyle.WrappedRequest)] public Person HelloWorldJson() { // Add your operation implementation here return new Person(); } } For WCF REST all I have to do is add a method with the Person result type.   ASP.NET MVC public class MvcPerformanceController : Controller { // // GET: /MvcPerformance/ public ActionResult Index() { return View(); } public ActionResult HelloWorldCode() { return new ContentResult() { Content = "Hello World. Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString() }; } public JsonResult HelloWorldJson() { return Json(new Person(), JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet); } } For MVC all I have to do for a JSON response is return a JSON result. ASP.NET internally uses JavaScriptSerializer. ASP.NET WebAPI public class WebApiPerformanceController : ApiController { [HttpGet] public HttpResponseMessage HelloWorldCode() { return new HttpResponseMessage() { Content = new StringContent("Hello World. Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString(), Encoding.UTF8, "text/plain") }; } [HttpGet] public Person HelloWorldJson() { return new Person(); } [HttpGet] public HttpResponseMessage HelloWorldJson2() { var response = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.OK); response.Content = new ObjectContent<Person>(new Person(), GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters.JsonFormatter); return response; } } Testing and Results To run these data requests I used the following ab.exe commands:REM JSON RESPONSES ab.exe -n100000 -c20 http://localhost/aspnetperf/Handler.ashx?action=json > HandlerJson.txt ab.exe -n100000 -c20 http://localhost/aspnetperf/MvcPerformance/HelloWorldJson > MvcJson.txt ab.exe -n100000 -c20 http://localhost/aspnetperf/api/HelloWorldJson > WebApiJson.txt ab.exe -n100000 -c20 http://localhost/AspNetPerf/WcfService.svc/HelloWorldJson > WcfJson.txt The results from this test run are a bit interesting in that the WebAPI test improved performance significantly over returning plain string content. Here are the results:   The performance for each technology drops a little bit except for WebAPI which is up quite a bit! From this test it appears that WebAPI is actually significantly better performing returning a JSON response, rather than a plain string response. Snag with Apache Benchmark and 'Length Failures' I ran into a little snag with Apache Benchmark, which was reporting failures for my Web API requests when serializing. As the graph shows performance improved significantly from with JSON results from 5580 to 6530 or so which is a 15% improvement (while all others slowed down by 3-8%). However, I was skeptical at first because the WebAPI test reports showed a bunch of errors on about 10% of the requests. Check out this report: Notice the Failed Request count. What the hey? Is WebAPI failing on roughly 10% of requests when sending JSON? Turns out: No it's not! But it took some sleuthing to figure out why it reports these failures. At first I thought that Web API was failing, and so to make sure I re-ran the test with Fiddler attached and runiisning the ab.exe test by using the -X switch: ab.exe -n100 -c10 -X localhost:8888 http://localhost/aspnetperf/api/HelloWorldJson which showed that indeed all requests where returning proper HTTP 200 results with full content. However ab.exe was reporting the errors. After some closer inspection it turned out that the dates varying in size altered the response length in dynamic output. For example: these two results: {"Id":10,"Name":"Rick","Entered":"2012-09-04T10:57:24.841926-10:00"} {"Id":10,"Name":"Rick","Entered":"2012-09-04T10:57:24.8519262-10:00"} are different in length for the number which results in 68 and 69 bytes respectively. The same URL produces different result lengths which is what ab.exe reports. I didn't notice at first bit the same is happening when running the ASHX handler with JSON.NET result since it uses the same serializer that varies the milliseconds. Moral: You can typically ignore Length failures in Apache Benchmark and when in doubt check the actual output with Fiddler. Note that the other failure values are accurate though. Another interesting Side Note: Perf drops over Time As I was running these tests repeatedly I was finding that performance steadily dropped from a startup peak to a 10-15% lower stable level. IOW, with Web API I'd start out with around 6500 req/sec and in subsequent runs it keeps dropping until it would stabalize somewhere around 5900 req/sec occasionally jumping lower. For these tests this is why I did the IIS RESET and warm up for individual tests. This is a little puzzling. Looking at Process Monitor while the test are running memory very quickly levels out as do handles and threads, on the first test run. Subsequent runs everything stays stable, but the performance starts going downwards. This applies to all the technologies - Handlers, Web Forms, MVC, Web API - curious to see if others test this and see similar results. Doing an IISRESET then resets everything and performance starts off at peak again… Summary As I stated at the outset, these were informal to satiate my curiosity not to prove that any technology is better or even faster than another. While there clearly are differences in performance the differences (other than WCF REST which was by far the slowest and the raw handler which was by far the highest) are relatively minor, so there is no need to feel that any one technology is a runaway standout in raw performance. Choosing a technology is about more than pure performance but also about the adequateness for the job and the easy of implementation. The strengths of each technology will make for any minor performance difference we see in these tests. However, to me it's important to get an occasional reality check and compare where new technologies are heading. Often times old stuff that's been optimized and designed for a time of less horse power can utterly blow the doors off newer tech and simple checks like this let you compare. Luckily we're seeing that much of the new stuff performs well even in V1.0 which is great. To me it was very interesting to see Web API perform relatively badly with plain string content, which originally led me to think that Web API might not be properly optimized just yet. For those that caught my Tweets late last week regarding WebAPI's slow responses was with String content which is in fact considerably slower. Luckily where it counts with serialized JSON and XML WebAPI actually performs better. But I do wonder what would make generic string content slower than serialized code? This stresses another point: Don't take a single test as the final gospel and don't extrapolate out from a single set of tests. Certainly Twitter can make you feel like a fool when you post something immediate that hasn't been fleshed out a little more <blush>. Egg on my face. As a result I ended up screwing around with this for a few hours today to compare different scenarios. Well worth the time… I hope you found this useful, if not for the results, maybe for the process of quickly testing a few requests for performance and charting out a comparison. Now onwards with more serious stuff… Resources Source Code on GitHub Apache HTTP Server Project (ab.exe is part of the binary distribution)© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in ASP.NET  Web Api   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• JRockit R28/JRockit Mission Control 4.0 is out!

  - by Marcus Hirt

  The next major release of JRockit is finally out! Here are some highlights: Includes the all new JRockit Flight Recorder – supersedes the old JRockit Runtime Analyser. The new flight recorder is inspired by the “black box” in airplanes. It uses a highly efficient recording engine and thread local buffers to capture data about the runtime and the application running in the JVM. It can be configured to always be on, so that whenever anything “interesting” happens, data can be dumped for some time back. Think of it as your own personal profiling time machine. Automatic shortest path calculation in Memleak – no longer any need for running around in circles when trying to find your way back to a thread root from an instance. Memleak can now show class loader related information and split graphs on a per class loader basis. More easily configured JMX agent – default port for both RMI Registry and RMI Server can be configured, and is by default the same, allowing easier configuration of firewalls. Up to 64 GB (was 4GB) compressed references. Per thread allocation profiling in the Management Console. Native Memory Tracking – it is now possible to track native memory allocations with very high resolution. The information can either be accessed using JRCMD, or the dedicated Native Memory Tracking experimental plug-in for the Management Console (alas only available for the upcoming 4.0.1 release). JRockit can now produce heap dumps in HPROF format. Cooperative suspension – JRockit is no longer using system signals for stopping threads, which could lead to hangs if signals were lost or blocked (for example bad NFS shares). Now threads check periodically to see if they are suspended. VPAT/Section 508 compliant JRMC – greatly improved keyboard navigation and screen reader support. See New and Noteworthy for more information. JRockit Mission Control 4.0.0 can be downloaded from here: http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/jrockit/index.html <shameless ad> There is even a book to go with JRMC 4.0.0/JRockit R28! http://www.packtpub.com/oracle-jrockit-the-definitive-guide/book/ </shameless ad>

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• LLBLGen Pro feature highlights: grouping model elements

  - by FransBouma

  (This post is part of a series of posts about features of the LLBLGen Pro system) When working with an entity model which has more than a few entities, it's often convenient to be able to group entities together if they belong to a semantic sub-model. For example, if your entity model has several entities which are about 'security', it would be practical to group them together under the 'security' moniker. This way, you could easily find them back, yet they can be left inside the complete entity model altogether so their relationships with entities outside the group are kept. In other situations your domain consists of semi-separate entity models which all target tables/views which are located in the same database. It then might be convenient to have a single project to manage the complete target database, yet have the entity models separate of each other and have them result in separate code bases. LLBLGen Pro can do both for you. This blog post will illustrate both situations. The feature is called group usage and is controllable through the project settings. This setting is supported on all supported O/R mapper frameworks. Situation one: grouping entities in a single model. This situation is common for entity models which are dense, so many relationships exist between all sub-models: you can't split them up easily into separate models (nor do you likely want to), however it's convenient to have them grouped together into groups inside the entity model at the project level. A typical example for this is the AdventureWorks example database for SQL Server. This database, which is a single catalog, has for each sub-group a schema, however most of these schemas are tightly connected with each other: adding all schemas together will give a model with entities which indirectly are related to all other entities. LLBLGen Pro's default setting for group usage is AsVisualGroupingMechanism which is what this situation is all about: we group the elements for visual purposes, it has no real meaning for the model nor the code generated. Let's reverse engineer AdventureWorks to an entity model. By default, LLBLGen Pro uses the target schema an element is in which is being reverse engineered, as the group it will be in. This is convenient if you already have categorized tables/views in schemas, like which is the case in AdventureWorks. Of course this can be switched off, or corrected on the fly. When reverse engineering, we'll walk through a wizard which will guide us with the selection of the elements which relational model data should be retrieved, which we can later on use to reverse engineer to an entity model. The first step after specifying which database server connect to is to select these elements. below we can see the AdventureWorks catalog as well as the different schemas it contains. We'll include all of them. After the wizard completes, we have all relational model data nicely in our catalog data, with schemas. So let's reverse engineer entities from the tables in these schemas. We select in the catalog explorer the schemas 'HumanResources', 'Person', 'Production', 'Purchasing' and 'Sales', then right-click one of them and from the context menu, we select Reverse engineer Tables to Entity Definitions.... This will bring up the dialog below. We check all checkboxes in one go by checking the checkbox at the top to mark them all to be added to the project. As you can see LLBLGen Pro has already filled in the group name based on the schema name, as this is the default and we didn't change the setting. If you want, you can select multiple rows at once and set the group name to something else using the controls on the dialog. We're fine with the group names chosen so we'll simply click Add to Project. This gives the following result:   (I collapsed the other groups to keep the picture small ;)). As you can see, the entities are now grouped. Just to see how dense this model is, I've expanded the relationships of Employee: As you can see, it has relationships with entities from three other groups than HumanResources. It's not doable to cut up this project into sub-models without duplicating the Employee entity in all those groups, so this model is better suited to be used as a single model resulting in a single code base, however it benefits greatly from having its entities grouped into separate groups at the project level, to make work done on the model easier. Now let's look at another situation, namely where we work with a single database while we want to have multiple models and for each model a separate code base. Situation two: grouping entities in separate models within the same project. To get rid of the entities to see the second situation in action, simply undo the reverse engineering action in the project. We still have the AdventureWorks relational model data in the catalog. To switch LLBLGen Pro to see each group in the project as a separate project, open the Project Settings, navigate to General and set Group usage to AsSeparateProjects. In the catalog explorer, select Person and Production, right-click them and select again Reverse engineer Tables to Entities.... Again check the checkbox at the top to mark all entities to be added and click Add to Project. We get two groups, as expected, however this time the groups are seen as separate projects. This means that the validation logic inside LLBLGen Pro will see it as an error if there's e.g. a relationship or an inheritance edge linking two groups together, as that would lead to a cyclic reference in the code bases. To see this variant of the grouping feature, seeing the groups as separate projects, in action, we'll generate code from the project with the two groups we just created: select from the main menu: Project -> Generate Source-code... (or press F7 ;)). In the dialog popping up, select the target .NET framework you want to use, the template preset, fill in a destination folder and click Start Generator (normal). This will start the code generator process. As expected the code generator has simply generated two code bases, one for Person and one for Production: The group name is used inside the namespace for the different elements. This allows you to add both code bases to a single solution and use them together in a different project without problems. Below is a snippet from the code file of a generated entity class. //... using System.Xml.Serialization; using AdventureWorks.Person; using AdventureWorks.Person.HelperClasses; using AdventureWorks.Person.FactoryClasses; using AdventureWorks.Person.RelationClasses; using SD.LLBLGen.Pro.ORMSupportClasses; namespace AdventureWorks.Person.EntityClasses { //... /// <summary>Entity class which represents the entity 'Address'.<br/><br/></summary> [Serializable] public partial class AddressEntity : CommonEntityBase //... The advantage of this is that you can have two code bases and work with them separately, yet have a single target database and maintain everything in a single location. If you decide to move to a single code base, you can do so with a change of one setting. It's also useful if you want to keep the groups as separate models (and code bases) yet want to add relationships to elements from another group using a copy of the entity: you can simply reverse engineer the target table to a new entity into a different group, effectively making a copy of the entity. As there's a single target database, changes made to that database are reflected in both models which makes maintenance easier than when you'd have a separate project for each group, with its own relational model data. Conclusion LLBLGen Pro offers a flexible way to work with entities in sub-models and control how the sub-models end up in the generated code.

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• How to deal with a poor team leader and a tester manager from hell? [closed]

  - by Google

  Let me begin by explaining my situation and give a little context to the situation. My company has around 15 developers but we're split up on two different areas. We have a fresh product team and the old product team. The old product team does mostly bug fixes/maintenance and a feature here and there. The fresh product had never been released and was new from the ground up. I am on the fresh product team. The team consists of three developers (myself, another developer and a senior developer). The senior is also our team leader. Our roles are as follows: Myself: building the administration client as well as build/release stuff Other dev: building the primary client Team lead: building the server In addition to the dev team, we interact with the test manager often. By "we" I mean me since I do the build stuff and give him the builds to test. Trial 1: The other developer on my team and I have both tried to talk to our manager about our team leader. About two weeks before release we went in his office and had a closed door meeting before our team lead got to work. We expressed our concerns about the product, its release date and our team leader. We expressed our team leader had a "rosey" image of the product's state. Our manager seemed to listen to what we said and thanked us for taking the initiative to speak with him about it. He got us an extra two weeks before release. The situation with the leader didn't change. In fact, it got a little worse. While we were using the two weeks to fix issues he was slacking off quite a bit. Just to name a few things, he installed Windows 8 on his dev machine during this time (claimed him machine was broke), he wrote a plugin for our office messenger that turned turned messages into speech, and one time when I went in his office he was making a 3D model in Blender (for "fun"). He felt the product was "pretty good" and ready for release. During this time I dealt with the test manager on a daily basis. Every bug or issue that popped up he would pretty much attack me personally (regardless of which component the bug was in). The test manager would often push his "views" of what needed to be done with the product. He virtually ordered me to change text on our installer and to add features to the installer and administration client. I tried to express how his suggestions were "valid ideas" but it was too close to release to do those kinds of things and to make matters worse, our technical writer had already finished documentation and such a change would not only affect the dev team but would affect the technical writer and marketing as well. I expressed I wasn't going to make those changes without marketing's consent as well as the technical writer and my manager's. He pretty much said I don't care about the product and said I don't do my job. I would like to take a moment to say I take my job seriously and I do my best. I am the kind of person that goes to work 30-40 mins early and usually leaves 30 minutes later than everyone else. Saying I don't care or do my job is just insulting. His "attacks" on me grew from day to day. Every bug that popped up he would usually comment on in some manner that jabbed me and the other developer. "Oh that bug! Yeah that should have been fixed by now, figures! If someone would do their job!" and other similar kinds of comments. Keep in mind 8 out of 10 bugs were in the server and had nothing to do with me and the other developer. That didn't seem to matter.. On one occasion they got pretty bad and we almost got into a yelling match so I decided to stop talking to him all together. I carried all communication through office email (with my manager cc'd). He never attacked me via email. He still attempted to get aggressive with me in person but I completely ignore him and my only response to any question is, "Ask my team leader." or "Ask a product manager." The product launched after our two week extension. Trial 2: The day after the product launch our team leader went on vacation (thanks....). At this time we got a lot of questions from the tech support... major issues with the product. All of these issues were bugs marked "resolved" by our lovely team leader (a typical situation that often popped up). This is where we currently are. The other developer has been with the company for about three years (I've been there only five months) and told me he was going to speak with our manager alone and hoped it would help get our concerns across a little better in a one-on-one. He spoke with the manager and directly addressed all of our concerns regarding our team leader and the test manager giving us (mostly me) hell. Our manager basically said he understood how hard we work and said he noticed it and there's no doubt about it. He said he spoke with the test manager about his temper. Regarding the team leader, he didn't say a whole lot. He suggested we sit down with the team leader and address our concerns (isn't that the manager's job?). We're still waiting to see if anything has changed but we doubt it. What can we do next? 1) Talk to the team leader (may stress relationship and make work awkward) I admit the team leader is generally a nice guy. He is just a horrible leader and working closely with him is painful. I still don't believe bringing this directly to the team leader would help at all and may negatively impact the situation. 2) I could quit. Other than this situation the job is pretty fantastic. I really like my other coworkers and we have quite a bit of freedom. 3) I could take the situation with the team leader to one of the owners. I would then be throwing my manager under the bus. 4) I could take the situation with the test manager to HR. Any suggestions? Comments?

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• Windows Azure VMs - New "Stopped" VM Options Provide Cost-effective Flexibility for On-Demand Workloads

  - by KeithMayer

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/KeithMayer/archive/2013/06/22/windows-azure-vms---new-stopped-vm-options-provide-cost-effective.aspxDidn’t make it to TechEd this year? Don’t worry!  This month, we’ll be releasing a new article series that highlights the Best of TechEd announcements and technical information for IT Pros.  Today’s article focuses on a new, much-heralded enhancement to Windows Azure Infrastructure Services to make it more cost-effective for spinning VMs up and down on-demand on the Windows Azure cloud platform. NEW! VMs that are shutdown from the Windows Azure Management Portal will no longer continue to accumulate compute charges while stopped! Previous to this enhancement being available, the Azure platform maintained fabric resource reservations for VMs, even in a shutdown state, to ensure consistent resource availability when starting those VMs in the future.  And, this meant that VMs had to be exported and completely deprovisioned when not in use to avoid compute charges. In this article, I'll provide more details on the scenarios that this enhancement best fits, and I'll also review the new options and considerations that we now have for performing safe shutdowns of Windows Azure VMs. Which scenarios does the new enhancement best fit? Being able to easily shutdown VMs from the Windows Azure Management Portal without continued compute charges is a great enhancement for certain cloud use cases, such as: On-demand dev/test/lab environments - Freely start and stop lab VMs so that they are only accumulating compute charges when being actively used.  "Bursting" load-balanced web applications - Provision a number of load-balanced VMs, but keep the minimum number of VMs running to support "normal" loads. Easily start-up the remaining VMs only when needed to support peak loads. Disaster Recovery - Start-up "cold" VMs when needed to recover from disaster scenarios. BUT ... there is a consideration to keep in mind when using the Windows Azure Management Portal to shutdown VMs: although performing a VM shutdown via the Windows Azure Management Portal causes that VM to no longer accumulate compute charges, it also deallocates the VM from fabric resources to which it was previously assigned.  These fabric resources include compute resources such as virtual CPU cores and memory, as well as network resources, such as IP addresses.  This means that when the VM is later started after being shutdown from the portal, the VM could be assigned a different IP address or placed on a different compute node within the fabric. In some cases, you may want to shutdown VMs using the old approach, where fabric resource assignments are maintained while the VM is in a shutdown state.  Specifically, you may wish to do this when temporarily shutting down or restarting a "7x24" VM as part of a maintenance activity.  Good news - you can still revert back to the old VM shutdown behavior when necessary by using the alternate VM shutdown approaches listed below.  Let's walk through each approach for performing a VM Shutdown action on Windows Azure so that we can understand the benefits and considerations of each... How many ways can I shutdown a VM? In Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, there's three general ways that can be used to safely shutdown VMs: Shutdown VM via Windows Azure Management Portal Shutdown Guest Operating System inside the VM Stop VM via Windows PowerShell using Windows Azure PowerShell Module Although each of these options performs a safe shutdown of the guest operation system and the VM itself, each option handles the VM shutdown end state differently. Shutdown VM via Windows Azure Management Portal When clicking the Shutdown button at the bottom of the Virtual Machines page in the Windows Azure Management Portal, the VM is safely shutdown and "deallocated" from fabric resources.  Shutdown button on Virtual Machines page in Windows Azure Management Portal  When the shutdown process completes, the VM will be shown on the Virtual Machines page with a "Stopped ( Deallocated )" status as shown in the figure below. Virtual Machine in a "Stopped (Deallocated)" Status "Deallocated" means that the VM configuration is no longer being actively associated with fabric resources, such as virtual CPUs, memory and networks. In this state, the VM will not continue to allocate compute charges, but since fabric resources are deallocated, the VM could receive a different internal IP address ( called "Dynamic IPs" or "DIPs" in Windows Azure ) the next time it is started.  TIP: If you are leveraging this shutdown option and consistency of DIPs is important to applications running inside your VMs, you should consider using virtual networks with your VMs.  Virtual networks permit you to assign a specific IP Address Space for use with VMs that are assigned to that virtual network.  As long as you start VMs in the same order in which they were originally provisioned, each VM should be reassigned the same DIP that it was previously using. What about consistency of External IP Addresses? Great question! External IP addresses ( called "Virtual IPs" or "VIPs" in Windows Azure ) are associated with the cloud service in which one or more Windows Azure VMs are running.  As long as at least 1 VM inside a cloud service remains in a "Running" state, the VIP assigned to a cloud service will be preserved.  If all VMs inside a cloud service are in a "Stopped ( Deallocated )" status, then the cloud service may receive a different VIP when VMs are next restarted. TIP: If consistency of VIPs is important for the cloud services in which you are running VMs, consider keeping one VM inside each cloud service in the alternate VM shutdown state listed below to preserve the VIP associated with the cloud service. Shutdown Guest Operating System inside the VM When performing a Guest OS shutdown or restart ( ie., a shutdown or restart operation initiated from the Guest OS running inside the VM ), the VM configuration will not be deallocated from fabric resources. In the figure below, the VM has been shutdown from within the Guest OS and is shown with a "Stopped" VM status rather than the "Stopped ( Deallocated )" VM status that was shown in the previous figure. Note that it may require a few minutes for the Windows Azure Management Portal to reflect that the VM is in a "Stopped" state in this scenario, because we are performing an OS shutdown inside the VM rather than through an Azure management endpoint. Virtual Machine in a "Stopped" Status VMs shown in a "Stopped" status will continue to accumulate compute charges, because fabric resources are still being reserved for these VMs.  However, this also means that DIPs and VIPs are preserved for VMs in this state, so you don't have to worry about VMs and cloud services getting different IP addresses when they are started in the future. Stop VM via Windows PowerShell In the latest version of the Windows Azure PowerShell Module, a new -StayProvisioned parameter has been added to the Stop-AzureVM cmdlet. This new parameter provides the flexibility to choose the VM configuration end result when stopping VMs using PowerShell: When running the Stop-AzureVM cmdlet without the -StayProvisioned parameter specified, the VM will be safely stopped and deallocated; that is, the VM will be left in a "Stopped ( Deallocated )" status just like the end result when a VM Shutdown operation is performed via the Windows Azure Management Portal.  When running the Stop-AzureVM cmdlet with the -StayProvisioned parameter specified, the VM will be safely stopped but fabric resource reservations will be preserved; that is the VM will be left in a "Stopped" status just like the end result when performing a Guest OS shutdown operation. So, with PowerShell, you can choose how Windows Azure should handle VM configuration and fabric resource reservations when stopping VMs on a case-by-case basis. TIP: It's important to note that the -StayProvisioned parameter is only available in the latest version of the Windows Azure PowerShell Module.  So, if you've previously downloaded this module, be sure to download and install the latest version to get this new functionality. Want to Learn More about Windows Azure Infrastructure Services? To learn more about Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, be sure to check-out these additional FREE resources: Become our next "Early Expert"! Complete the Early Experts "Cloud Quest" and build a multi-VM lab network in the cloud for FREE!  Build some cool scenarios! Check out our list of over 20+ Step-by-Step Lab Guides based on key scenarios that IT Pros are implementing on Windows Azure Infrastructure Services TODAY!  Looking forward to seeing you in the Cloud! - Keith Build Your Lab! Download Windows Server 2012 Don’t Have a Lab? Build Your Lab in the Cloud with Windows Azure Virtual Machines Want to Get Certified? Join our Windows Server 2012 "Early Experts" Study Group

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• Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP Certified with Oracle Data Integrator EE

  - by denis.gray

  Two days ago Oracle announced the release of Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP.  With the amount of press this has garnered in the past two days, there's a key detail that can't be missed.  This release is certified with Oracle Data Integrator EE - now making the combination of Data Integration and Business Intelligence a force to contend with.  Within the Oracle Press Release there were two important bullets: ·         Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP includes a pre-packaged ABAP code compliant adapter and is certified with Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition to integrate SAP Financial Accounting data directly with the analytic application.  ·         Helping to integrate SAP financial data and disparate third-party data sources is Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition which delivers fast, efficient loading and transformation of timely data into a data warehouse environment through its high-performance Extract Load and Transform (E-LT) technology. This is very exciting news, demonstrating Oracle's overall commitment to Oracle Data Integrator EE.   This is a great way to start off the new year and we look forward to building on this momentum throughout 2011.   The following links contain additional information and media responses about the Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP release. IDG News Service (Also appeared in PC World, Computer World, CIO: "Oracle is moving further into rival SAP's turf with Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP, a new BI (business intelligence) application that can crunch ERP (enterprise resource planning) system financial data for insights." Information Week: "Oracle talks a good game about the appeal of an optimized, all-Oracle stack. But the company also recognizes that we live in a predominantly heterogeneous IT world" CRN: "While some businesses with SAP Financial Accounting already use Oracle BI, those integrations had to be custom developed. The new offering provides pre-built integration capabilities." ECRM Guide:  "Among other features, Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP helps front-line managers improve financial performance and decision-making with what the company says is comprehensive, timely and role-based information on their departments' expenses and revenue contributions."   SAP Getting Started Guide for ODI on OTN: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/data-integrator/learnmore/index.html For more information on the ODI and its SAP connectivity please review the Oracle® Fusion Middleware Application Adapters Guide for Oracle Data Integrator11g Release 1 (11.1.1)

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• Skinny controller in ASP.NET MVC 4

  - by thangchung

  Rails community are always inspire a lot of best ideas. I really love this community by the time. One of these is "Fat models and skinny controllers". I have spent a lot of time on ASP.NET MVC, and really I did some miss-takes, because I made the controller so fat. That make controller is really dirty and very hard to maintain in the future. It is violate seriously SRP principle and KISS as well. But how can we achieve that in ASP.NET MVC? That question is really clear after I read "Manning ASP.NET MVC 4 in Action". It is simple that we can separate it into ActionResult, and try to implementing logic and persistence data inside this. In last 2 years, I have read this from Jimmy Bogard blog, but in that time I never had a consideration about it. That's enough for talking now. I just published a sample on ASP.NET MVC 4, implemented on Visual Studio 2012 RC at here. I used EF framework at here for implementing persistence layer, and also use 2 free templates from internet to make the UI for this sample. In this sample, I try to implementing the simple magazine website that managing all articles, categories and news. It is not finished at all in this time, but no problems, because I just show you about how can we make the controller skinny. And I wanna hear more about your ideas. The first thing, I am abstract the base ActionResult class like this:    public abstract class MyActionResult : ActionResult, IEnsureNotNull     {         public abstract void EnsureAllInjectInstanceNotNull();     }     public abstract class ActionResultBase<TController> : MyActionResult where TController : Controller     {         protected readonly Expression<Func<TController, ActionResult>> ViewNameExpression;         protected readonly IExConfigurationManager ConfigurationManager;         protected ActionResultBase (Expression<Func<TController, ActionResult>> expr)             : this(DependencyResolver.Current.GetService<IExConfigurationManager>(), expr)         {         }         protected ActionResultBase(             IExConfigurationManager configurationManager,             Expression<Func<TController, ActionResult>> expr)         {             Guard.ArgumentNotNull(expr, "ViewNameExpression");             Guard.ArgumentNotNull(configurationManager, "ConfigurationManager");             ViewNameExpression = expr;             ConfigurationManager = configurationManager;         }         protected ViewResult GetViewResult<TViewModel>(TViewModel viewModel)         {             var m = (MethodCallExpression)ViewNameExpression.Body;             if (m.Method.ReturnType != typeof(ActionResult))             {                 throw new ArgumentException("ControllerAction method '" + m.Method.Name + "' does not return type ActionResult");             }             var result = new ViewResult             {                 ViewName = m.Method.Name             };             result.ViewData.Model = viewModel;             return result;         }         public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)         {             EnsureAllInjectInstanceNotNull();         }     } I also have an interface for validation all inject objects. This interface make sure all inject objects that I inject using Autofac container are not null. The implementation of this as below public interface IEnsureNotNull     {         void EnsureAllInjectInstanceNotNull();     } Afterwards, I am just simple implementing the HomePageViewModelActionResult class like this public class HomePageViewModelActionResult<TController> : ActionResultBase<TController> where TController : Controller     {         #region variables & ctors         private readonly ICategoryRepository _categoryRepository;         private readonly IItemRepository _itemRepository;         private readonly int _numOfPage;         public HomePageViewModelActionResult(Expression<Func<TController, ActionResult>> viewNameExpression)             : this(viewNameExpression,                    DependencyResolver.Current.GetService<ICategoryRepository>(),                    DependencyResolver.Current.GetService<IItemRepository>())         {         }         public HomePageViewModelActionResult(             Expression<Func<TController, ActionResult>> viewNameExpression,             ICategoryRepository categoryRepository,             IItemRepository itemRepository)             : base(viewNameExpression)         {             _categoryRepository = categoryRepository;             _itemRepository = itemRepository;             _numOfPage = ConfigurationManager.GetAppConfigBy("NumOfPage").ToInteger();         }         #endregion         #region implementation         public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)         {             base.ExecuteResult(context);             var cats = _categoryRepository.GetCategories();             var mainViewModel = new HomePageViewModel();             var headerViewModel = new HeaderViewModel();             var footerViewModel = new FooterViewModel();             var mainPageViewModel = new MainPageViewModel();             headerViewModel.SiteTitle = "Magazine Website";             if (cats != null && cats.Any())             {                 headerViewModel.Categories = cats.ToList();                 footerViewModel.Categories = cats.ToList();             }             mainPageViewModel.LeftColumn = BindingDataForMainPageLeftColumnViewModel();             mainPageViewModel.RightColumn = BindingDataForMainPageRightColumnViewModel();             mainViewModel.Header = headerViewModel;             mainViewModel.DashBoard = new DashboardViewModel();             mainViewModel.Footer = footerViewModel;             mainViewModel.MainPage = mainPageViewModel;             GetViewResult(mainViewModel).ExecuteResult(context);         }         public override void EnsureAllInjectInstanceNotNull()         {             Guard.ArgumentNotNull(_categoryRepository, "CategoryRepository");             Guard.ArgumentNotNull(_itemRepository, "ItemRepository");             Guard.ArgumentMustMoreThanZero(_numOfPage, "NumOfPage");         }         #endregion         #region private functions         private MainPageRightColumnViewModel BindingDataForMainPageRightColumnViewModel()         {             var mainPageRightCol = new MainPageRightColumnViewModel();             mainPageRightCol.LatestNews = _itemRepository.GetNewestItem(_numOfPage).ToList();             mainPageRightCol.MostViews = _itemRepository.GetMostViews(_numOfPage).ToList();             return mainPageRightCol;         }         private MainPageLeftColumnViewModel BindingDataForMainPageLeftColumnViewModel()         {             var mainPageLeftCol = new MainPageLeftColumnViewModel();             var items = _itemRepository.GetNewestItem(_numOfPage);             if (items != null && items.Any())             {                 var firstItem = items.First();                 if (firstItem == null)                     throw new NoNullAllowedException("First Item".ToNotNullErrorMessage());                 if (firstItem.ItemContent == null)                     throw new NoNullAllowedException("First ItemContent".ToNotNullErrorMessage());                 mainPageLeftCol.FirstItem = firstItem;                 if (items.Count() > 1)                 {                     mainPageLeftCol.RemainItems = items.Where(x => x.ItemContent != null && x.Id != mainPageLeftCol.FirstItem.Id).ToList();                 }             }             return mainPageLeftCol;         }         #endregion     }  Final step, I get into HomeController and add some line of codes like this [Authorize]     public class HomeController : BaseController     {         [AllowAnonymous]         public ActionResult Index()         {             return new HomePageViewModelActionResult<HomeController>(x=>x.Index());         }         [AllowAnonymous]         public ActionResult Details(int id)         {             return new DetailsViewModelActionResult<HomeController>(x => x.Details(id), id);         }         [AllowAnonymous]         public ActionResult Category(int id)         {             return new CategoryViewModelActionResult<HomeController>(x => x.Category(id), id);         }     } As you see, the code in controller is really skinny, and all the logic I move to the custom ActionResult class. Some people said, it just move the code out of controller and put it to another class, so it is still hard to maintain. Look like it just move the complicate codes from one place to another place. But if you have a look and think it in details, you have to find out if you have code for processing all logic that related to HttpContext or something like this. You can do it on Controller, and try to delegating another logic  (such as processing business requirement, persistence data,...) to custom ActionResult class. Tell me more your thinking, I am really willing to hear all of its from you guys. All source codes can be find out at here. Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="http://weblogs.asp.net//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs");

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• Video on Architecture and Code Quality using Visual Studio 2012&ndash;interview with Marcel de Vries and Terje Sandstrom by Adam Cogan

  - by terje

  Find the video HERE. Adam Cogan did a great Web TV interview with Marcel de Vries and myself on the topics of architecture and code quality.  It was real fun participating in this session.  Although we know each other from the MVP ALM community,  Marcel, Adam and I haven’t worked together before. It was very interesting to see how we agreed on so many terms, and how alike we where thinking.  The basics of ensuring you have a good architecture and how you could document it is one thing.  Also, the same agreement on the importance of having a high quality code base, and how we used the Visual Studio 2012 tools, and some others (NDepend for example)  to measure and ensure that the code quality was where it should be.  As the tools, methods and thinking popped up during the interview it was a lot of “Hey !  I do that too!”.  The tools are not only for “after the fact” work, but we use them during the coding.  That way the tools becomes an integrated part of our coding work, and helps us to find issues we may have overlooked.  The video has a bunch of call outs, pinpointing important things to remember. These are also listed on the corresponding web page. I haven’t seen that touch before, but really liked this way of doing it – it makes it much easier to spot the highlights.  Titus Maclaren and Raj Dhatt from SSW have done a terrific job producing this video.  And thanks to Lei Xu for doing the camera and recording job.  Thanks guys ! Also, if you are at TechEd Amsterdam 2012, go and listen to Adam Cogan in his session on “A modern architecture review: Using the new code review tools” Friday 29th, 10.15-11.30 and Marcel de Vries session on “Intellitrace, what is it and how can I use it to my benefit” Wednesday 27th, 5-6.15 The highlights points out some important practices.  I’ll elaborate on a few of them here: Add instructions on how to compile the solution.  You do this by adding a text file with instructions to the solution, and keep it under source control.  These instructions should contain what is needed on top of a standard install of Visual Studio.  I do a lot of code reviews, and more often that not, I am not even able to compile the program, because they have used some tool or library that needs to be installed.  The same applies to any new developer who enters into the team, so do this to increase your productivity when the team changes, or a team member switches computer. Don’t forget to document what you have to configure on the computer, the IIS being a common one. The more automatic you can do this, the better.  Use NuGet to get down libraries. When the text document gets more than say, half a page, with a bunch of different things to do, convert it into a powershell script instead.  The metrics warning levels.  These are very conservatively set by Microsoft.  You rarely see anything but green, and besides, you should have color scales for each of the metrics.  I have a blog post describing a more appropriate set of levels, based on both research work and industry “best practices”.  The essential limits are: Cyclomatic complexity and coupling:  Higher numbers are worse On method levels: Green :  From 0 to 10 Yellow:  From 10 to 20  (some say 15).   Acceptable, but have a look to see if there is something unneeded here. Red: From 20 to 40:   Action required, get these down. Bleeding Red: Above 40   This is the real red alert.  Immediate action!  (My invention, as people have asked what do I do when I have cyclomatic complexity of 150.  The only answer I could think of was: RUN! ) Maintainability index:  Lower numbers are worse, scale from 0 to 100. On method levels: Green:  60 to 100 Yellow:  40 – 60.    You will always have methods here too, accept the higher ones, take a look at those who are down to the lower limit.  Check up against the other metrics.) Red:  20 – 40:  Action required, fix these. Bleeding red:  Below 20.  Immediate action required. When doing metrics analysis, you should leave the generated code out.  You do this by adding attributes, unfortunately Microsoft has “forgotten” to add these to all their stuff, so you might have to add them to some of the code.  It most cases it can be done so that it is not overwritten by a new round of code generation.  Take a look a my blog post here for details on how to do that. Class level metrics might also be useful, at least for coupling and maintenance.  But it is much more difficult to set any fixed limits on those.  Any metric aggregations on higher level tend to be pretty useless, as the number of methods vary pretty much, and there are little science on what number of methods can be regarded as good or bad.  NDepend have a recommendation, but they say it may vary too.  And in these days of data binding, the number might be pretty high, as properties counts as methods.  However, if you take the worst case situations, classes with more than 20 methods are suspicious, and coupling and cyclomatic complexity go red above 20, so any classes with more than 20x20 = 400 for these measures should be checked over. In the video we mention the SOLID principles, coined by “Uncle Bob” (Richard Martin). One of them, the Dependency Inversion principle we discuss in the video.  It is important to note that this principle is NOT on whether you should use a Dependency Inversion Container or not, it is about how you design the interfaces and interactions between your classes.  The Dependency Inversion Container is just one technique which is based on this principle, but which main purpose is to isolate things you would like to change at runtime, for example if you implement a plug in architecture.  Overuse of a Dependency Inversion Container is however, NOT a good thing.  It should be used for a purpose and not as a general DI solution.  The general DI solution and thinking however is useful far beyond the DIC.   You should always “program to an abstraction”, and not to the concreteness.  We also talk a bit about the GRASP patterns, a term coined by Craig Larman in his book Applying UML and design patterns. GRASP patterns stand for General Responsibility Assignment Software Patterns and describe fundamental principles of object design and responsibility assignment.  What I find great with these patterns is that they is another way to focus on the responsibility of a class.  One of the things I most often found that is broken in software designs, is that the class lack responsibility, and as a result there are a lot of classes mucking around in the internals of the other classes.  We also discuss the term “Code Smells”.  This term was invented by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler when they worked with Fowler’s “Refactoring” book. A code smell is a set of “bad” coding practices, which are the drivers behind a corresponding set of refactorings.  Here is a good list of the smells, and their corresponding refactor patterns. See also this.

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• How to perform feature upgrade in SharePoint2010 part1

  - by ybbest

  Once your custom SharePoint solution went into production. Any changes made to it require you to perform feature upgrade. Today, I’d like to show you how to perform feature upgrade. For the first version of my solution, I deploy a document library with a custom document set content type. You can download the solution here. Once you extract your solution, the first version is in the original folder. In order to deploy the original solution, you need to run the sitecreation.ps1 in the script folder. Next, I will modify the solution so that I will index the application number in the document library I just created in my original solution. 1. Modify the ApplicationLibrary.Template.xml as highlighted below: 2. Adding the following code into the feature event receiver. public override void FeatureUpgrading(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties, string upgradeActionName, System.Collections.Generic.IDictionary<string, string> parameters) { base.FeatureUpgrading(properties, upgradeActionName, parameters); SPWeb web = GetFeatureWeb(properties); switch (upgradeActionName) { case "IndexApplicationNumber": SPList applicationLibrary = web.Lists.TryGetList(ApplicationLibraryNamesConstant.ApplicationLibraryName); if (applicationLibrary != null) { SPField queueField = applicationLibrary.Fields["ApplicationNumber"]; queueField.Indexed = true; queueField.Update(); } break; } } 3. Package your solution and run the feature upgrade PowerShell script. $wspFolder ="v1.1" $scriptPath=Split-Path $myInvocation.MyCommand.Path $siteUrl = "http://ybbest" $featureToCheckGuid="1b9d84cd-227d-45f1-92d4-a43008aa8fe7" $requiredFeatureVersion="0.0.0.0" $siteUrlOfFeatureToBeChecked="http://ybbest" AppendLog "Starting Solution UpgradeSolutionAndFeatures.ps1" Magenta & "$scriptPath\UpgradeSolutionAndFeatures.ps1" $siteUrl $wspFolder $featureToCheckGuid $requiredFeatureVersion $siteUrlOfFeatureToBeChecked Write-Host AppendLog "All features updated" "Green" Note: If you have not version your feature explicitly , your feature version will be 0.0.0.0 . References: Feature upgrade.

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• Getting Started With Sinatra

  - by Liam McLennan

  Sinatra is a Ruby DSL for building web applications. It is distinguished from its peers by its minimalism. Here is hello world in Sinatra: require 'rubygems' require 'sinatra' get '/hi' do "Hello World!" end A haml view is rendered by: def '/' haml :name_of_your_view end Haml is also new to me. It is a ruby-based view engine that uses significant white space to avoid having to close tags. A hello world web page in haml might look like: %html %head %title Hello World %body %div Hello World You see how the structure is communicated using indentation instead of opening and closing tags. It makes views more concise and easier to read. Based on my syntax highlighter for Gherkin I have started to build a sinatra web application that publishes syntax highlighted gherkin feature files. I have found that there is a need to have features online so that customers can access them, and so that they can be linked to project management tools like Jira, Mingle, trac etc. The first thing I want my application to be able to do is display a list of the features that it knows about. This will happen when a user requests the root of the application. Here is my sinatra handler: get '/' do feature_service = Finding::FeatureService.new(Finding::FeatureFileFinder.new, Finding::FeatureReader.new) @features = feature_service.features(settings.feature_path, settings.feature_extensions) haml :index end The handler and the view are in the same scope so the @features variable will be available in the view. This is the same way that rails passes data between actions and views. The view to render the result is: %h2 Features %ul - @features.each do |feature| %li %a{:href => "/feature/#{feature.name}"}= feature.name Clearly this is not a complete web page. I am using a layout to provide the basic html page structure. This view renders an <li> for each feature, with a link to /feature/#{feature.name}. Here is what the page looks like: When the user clicks on one of the links I want to display the contents of that feature file. The required handler is: get '/feature/:feature' do @feature_name = params[:feature] feature_service = Finding::FeatureService.new(Finding::FeatureFileFinder.new, Finding::FeatureReader.new) # TODO replace with feature_service.feature(name) @feature = feature_service.features(settings.feature_path, settings.feature_extensions).find do |feature| feature.name == @feature_name end haml :feature end and the view: %h2= @feature.name %pre{:class => "brush: gherkin"}= @feature.description %div= partial :_back_to_index %script{:type => "text/javascript", :src => "/scripts/shCore.js"} %script{:type => "text/javascript", :src => "/scripts/shBrushGherkin.js"} %script{:type => "text/javascript" } SyntaxHighlighter.all(); Now when I click on the Search link I get a nicely formatted feature file: If you would like see the full source it is available on bitbucket.

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• Chunking a List - .NET vs Python

  - by Abhijeet Patel

  Chunking a List As I mentioned last time, I'm knee deep in python these days. I come from a statically typed background so it's definitely a mental adjustment. List comprehensions is BIG in Python and having worked with a few of them I can see why. Let's say we need to chunk a list into sublists of a specified size. Here is how we'd do it in C#  static class Extensions   {       public static IEnumerable<List<T>> Chunk<T>(this List<T> l, int chunkSize)       {           if (chunkSize <0)           {               throw new ArgumentException("chunkSize cannot be negative", "chunkSize");           }           for (int i = 0; i < l.Count; i += chunkSize)           {               yield return new List<T>(l.Skip(i).Take(chunkSize));           }       }    }    static void Main(string[] args)  {           var l = new List<string> { "a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f","g" };             foreach (var list in l.Chunk(7))           {               string str = list.Aggregate((s1, s2) => s1 + "," + s2);               Console.WriteLine(str);           }   }   A little wordy but still pretty concise thanks to LINQ.We skip the iteration number plus chunkSize elements and yield out a new List of chunkSize elements on each iteration. The python implementation is a bit more terse. def chunkIterable(iter, chunkSize):      '''Chunks an iterable         object into a list of the specified chunkSize     '''        assert hasattr(iter, "__iter__"), "iter is not an iterable"      for i in xrange(0, len(iter), chunkSize):          yield iter[i:i + chunkSize]    if __name__ == '__main__':      l = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f']      generator = chunkIterable(l,2)      try:          while(1):              print generator.next()      except StopIteration:          pass   xrange generates elements in the specified range taking in a seed and returning a generator. which can be used in a for loop(much like using a C# iterator in a foreach loop) Since chunkIterable has a yield statement, it turns this method into a generator as well. iter[i:i + chunkSize] essentially slices the list based on the current iteration index and chunksize and creates a new list that we yield out to the caller one at a time. A generator much like an iterator is a state machine and each subsequent call to it remembers the state at which the last call left off and resumes execution from that point. The caveat to keep in mind is that since variables are not explicitly typed we need to ensure that the object passed in is iterable using hasattr(iter, "__iter__").This way we can perform chunking on any object which is an "iterable", very similar to accepting an IEnumerable in the .NET land

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• Build an Organization Chart In Visio 2010

  - by Mysticgeek

  With trying to manage a business these days, it’s very important to have an Organization Chart to keep everything manageable. Here we’ll show you how to build one in Visio 2010. This Guest Article was written by our friends over at Office 2010 Club. Need for Organization Charts The need of creating Organization Charts are becoming indispensable these days, as companies start focusing on extensive hiring for far reach availability, increase in productivity and targeting diverse markets. Considering this rigorous change, creating an organization chart can help stakeholders in comprehending the ever growing organization structure & hierarchy with an ease. It shows the basic structure of organization along with defining the relationships between employees working in different departments. Opportunely, Microsoft Visio 2010 offers an easy way to create Organization chart. As before now, orthodox ways of listing organization hierarchy have been used for defining the structure of departments along with communication possible including; horizontal and vertical communications. To transform these lists which defines organizational structure, into a detailed chart, Visio 2010 includes an add-in for importing Excel spreadsheet, which comes in handy for pulling out data from spreadsheet to create an organization chart. Importantly, you don’t need to indulge yourself in maze of defining organizational hierarchies and chalking-out structure, as you just need to specify the column & row headers, along with data you need to import and it will automatically create out chart defining; organizational hierarchies with specified credentials of each employee, categorized in their corresponding departments. Creating Organization Charts in Visio 2010 To start off with, we have created an Excel spreadsheet having fields, Name, Supervisor, Designation, Department and Phone. The Name field contains name of all the employees working in different departments, whereas Supervisor field contains name of supervisors or team leads. This field is vital for creating Organization Chart, as it defines the basic structure & hierarchy in chart. Now launch Visio 2010, head over to View tab, under Add-Ons menu, from Business options, click Organization Chart Wizard. This will start Organization Chart Wizard, in the first step, enable Information that’s already stored in a file or database option, and click Next. As we are importing Excel sheet, select the second option for importing Excel spreadsheet. Specify the Excel file path and click Next to continue. In this step, you need to specify the fields which actually defines the structure of an organization. In our case, these are Name & Supervisor fields. After specifying fields, click Next to Proceed further. As organization chart is primarily for showing the hierarchy of departments/employees working in organization along with how they are linked together, and who supervises whom. Considering this, in this step we will leave out Supervisor field, because it’s inclusion wouldn’t be necessary as Visio automatically chalks-out the basic structure defined in Excel sheet. Add the rest of the fields under Displayed fields category, and click Next. Now choose the fields which you want to include in Organization Chart’s shapes and click Next. This step is about breaking the chart into multiple pages, if you are dealing with 100+ employees, you may want to specify numbers of pages on which Organization Chart will be displayed. But in our case, we are dealing with much less amount of data, so we will enable I want the wizard to automatically break my organization chart across pages option. Specify the name you need to show on the top of the page. If you are having less than 20 hierarchies, enter the name of the highest ranked employee in organization and click Finish to end the wizard. It will instantly create an Organization chart out of specified Excel spreadsheet. Highest ranked employee will be shown on top of the organization chart, supervising various employees from different departments. As shown below, his immediate subordinates further manages other employees and so on. For advance customizations, head over to Org Chart tab, here you will find different groups for setting up the Org Chart’s hierarchy and manage other employees’ positions. Under Arrange group, shapes’ arrangements can be changed and it provides easy navigation through the chart. You can also change the type of the position and hide subordinates of selected employee. From Picture group, you can insert a picture of the employees, departments, etc. From synchronization group, you have the option of creating a synced copy and expanding subordinates of selected employee. Under Organization Data group, you can change whole layout of Organization chart from Display Options including; shape display, show divider, enable/disable imported fields, change block position, and fill colors, etc. If at any point of time, you need to insert new position or announce vacancy, Organization Chart stencil is always available on the left sidebar. Drag the desired Organization Chart shape into main diagram page, to maintain the structure integrity, i.e, for inserting subordinates for a specific employee, drag the position shape over the existing employee shape box. For instance, We have added a consultant in organization, who is directly under CEO, for maintaining this, we have dragged the Consultant box and just dropped it over the CEO box to make the immediate subordinate position. Adding details to new position is a cinch, just right-click new position box and click Properties. This will open up Shape Data dialog, start filling in all the relevant information and click OK. Here you can see the newly created position is easily populated with all the specified information. Now expanding an Organization Chart doesn’t require maintenance of long lists any more. Under Design tab, you can also try out different designs & layouts over organization chart to make it look more flamboyant and professional.  Conclusion An Organization Chart is a great way of showing detailed organizational hierarchies; with defined credentials of employees, departments structure, new vacancies, newly hired employees, recently added departments, and importantly shows most convenient way of interaction between different departments & employees, etc. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Geek Reviews: Using Dia as a Free Replacement for Microsoft VisioMysticgeek Blog: Create Appealing Charts In Excel 2007Create Charts in Excel 2007 the Easy Way with Chart AdvisorCreate a Hyperlink in a Word 2007 Flow Chart and Hide Annoying ScreenTipsCreate A Flow Chart In Word 2007 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Know if Someone Accessed Your Facebook Account Shop for Music with Windows Media Player 12 Access Free Documentaries at BBC Documentaries Rent Cameras In Bulk At CameraRenter Download Songs From MySpace Steve Jobs’ iPhone 4 Keynote Video

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• Managing access to multiple linux system

  - by Swartz

  A searched for answers but have found nothing on here... Long story short: a non-profit organization is in dire need of modernizing its infrastructure. First thing is to find an alternatives to managing user accounts on a number of Linux hosts. We have 12 servers (both physical and virtual) and about 50 workstations. We have 500 potential users for these systems. The individual who built and maintained the systems over the years has retired. He wrote his own scripts to manage it all. It still works. No complaints there. However, a lot of the stuff is very manual and error-prone. Code is messy and after updates often needs to be tweaked. Worst part is there is little to no docs written. There are just a few ReadMe's and random notes which may or may not be relevant anymore. So maintenance has become a difficult task. Currently accounts are managed via /etc/passwd on each system. Updates are distributed via cron scripts to correct systems as accounts are added on the "main" server. Some users have to have access to all systems (like a sysadmin account), others need access to shared servers, while others may need access to workstations or only a subset of those. Is there a tool that can help us manage accounts that meets the following requirements? Preferably open source (i.e. free as budget is VERY limited) mainstream (i.e. maintained) preferably has LDAP integration or could be made to interface with LDAP or AD service for user authentication (will be needed in the near future to integrate accounts with other offices) user management (adding, expiring, removing, lockout, etc) allows to manage what systems (or group of systems) each user has access to - not all users are allowed on all systems support for user accounts that could have different homedirs and mounts available depending on what system they are logged into. For example sysadmin logged into "main" server has main://home/sysadmin/ as homedir and has all shared mounts sysadmin logged into staff workstations would have nas://user/s/sysadmin as homedir(different from above) and potentially limited set of mounts, a logged in client would have his/her homedir at different location and no shared mounts. If there is an easy management interface that would be awesome. And if this tool is cross-platform (Linux / MacOS / *nix), that will be a miracle! I have searched the web and so have found nothing suitable. We are open to any suggestions. Thank you. EDIT: This question has been incorrectly marked as a duplicate. The linked to answer only talks about having same homedirs on all systems, whereas we need to have different homedirs based on what system user is currently logged into(MULTIPLE homedirs). Also access needs to be granted only to some machinees not the whole lot. Mods, please understand the full extent of the problem instead of merely marking it as duplicate for points...

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• Silverlight Recruiting Application Part 4 - Navigation and Modules

  After our brief intermission (and the craziness of Q1 2010 release week), we're back on track here and today we get to dive into how we are going to navigate through our applications as well as how to set up our modules. That way, as I start adding the functionality- adding Jobs and Applicants, Interview Scheduling, and finally a handy Dashboard- you'll see how everything is communicating back and forth. This is all leading up to an eventual webinar, in which I'll dive into this process and give a honest look at the current story for MVVM vs. Code-Behind applications. (For a look at the future with SL4 and a little thing called MEF, check out what Ross is doing over at his blog!) Preamble... Before getting into really talking about this app, I've done a little bit of work ahead of time to create a ton of files that I'll need. Since the webinar is going to cover the Dashboard, it's not here, but otherwise this is a look at what the project layout looks like (and remember, this is both projects since they share the .Web): So as you can see, from an architecture perspective, the code-behind app is much smaller and more streamlined- aka a better fit for the one man shop that is me. Each module in the MVVM app has the same setup, which is the Module class and corresponding Views and ViewModels. Since the code-behind app doesn't need a go-between project like Infrastructure, each MVVM module is instead replaced by a single Silverlight UserControl which will contain all the logic for each respective bit of functionality. My Very First Module Navigation is going to be key to my application, so I figured the first thing I would setup is my MenuModule. First step here is creating a Silverlight Class Library named MenuModule, creatingthe View and ViewModel folders, and adding the MenuModule.cs class to handle module loading. The most important thing here is that my MenuModule inherits from IModule, which runs an Initialize on each module as it is created that, in my case, adds the views to the correct regions. Here's the MenuModule.cs code: public class MenuModule : IModule { private readonly IRegionManager regionManager; private readonly IUnityContainer container; public MenuModule(IUnityContainer container, IRegionManager regionmanager) { this.container = container; this.regionManager = regionmanager; } public void Initialize() { var addMenuView = container.Resolve<MenuView>(); regionManager.Regions["MenuRegion"].Add(addMenuView); } } Pretty straightforward here... We inject a container and region manager from Prism/Unity, then upon initialization we grab the view (out of our Views folder) and add it to the region it needs to live in. Simple, right? When the MenuView is created, the only thing in the code-behind is a reference to the set the MenuViewModel as the DataContext. I'd like to achieve MVVM nirvana and have zero code-behind by placing the viewmodel in the XAML, but for the reasons listed further below I can't. Navigation - MVVM Since navigation isn't the biggest concern in putting this whole thing together, I'm using the Button control to handle different options for loading up views/modules. There is another reason for this- out of the box, Prism has command support for buttons, which is one less custom command I had to work up for the functionality I would need. This comes from the Microsoft.Practices.Composite.Presentation assembly and looks as follows when put in code: <Button x:Name="xGoToJobs" Style="{StaticResource menuStyle}" Content="Jobs" cal:Click.Command="{Binding GoModule}" cal:Click.CommandParameter="JobPostingsView" /> For quick reference, 'menuStyle' is just taking care of margins and spacing, otherwise it looks, feels, and functions like everyone's favorite Button. What MVVM's this up is that the Click.Command is tying to a DelegateCommand (also coming fromPrism) on the backend. This setup allows you to tie user interaction to a command you setup in your viewmodel, which replaces the standard event-based setup you'd see in the code-behind app. Due to databinding magic, it all just works. When we get looking at the DelegateCommand in code, it ends up like this: public class MenuViewModel : ViewModelBase { private readonly IRegionManager regionManager; public DelegateCommand<object> GoModule { get; set; } public MenuViewModel(IRegionManager regionmanager) { this.regionManager = regionmanager; this.GoModule = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.goToView); } public void goToView(object obj) { MakeMeActive(this.regionManager, "MainRegion", obj.ToString()); } } Another for reference, ViewModelBase takes care of iNotifyPropertyChanged and MakeMeActive, which switches views in the MainRegion based on the parameters. So our public DelegateCommand GoModule ties to our command on the view, that in turn calls goToView, and the parameter on the button is the name of the view (which we pass with obj.ToString()) to activate. And how do the views get the names I can pass as a string? When I called regionManager.Regions[regionname].Add(view), there is an overload that allows for .Add(view, "viewname"), with viewname being what I use to activate views. You'll see that in action next installment, just wanted to clarify how that works. With this setup, I create two more buttons in my MenuView and the MenuModule is good to go. Last step is to make sure my MenuModule loads in my Bootstrapper: protected override IModuleCatalog GetModuleCatalog() { ModuleCatalog catalog = new ModuleCatalog(); // add modules here catalog.AddModule(typeof(MenuModule.MenuModule)); return catalog; } Clean, simple, MVVM-delicious. Navigation - Code-Behind Keeping with the history of significantly shorter code-behind sections of this series, Navigation will be no different. I promise. As I explained in a prior post, due to the one-project setup I don't have to worry about the same concerns so my menu is part of MainPage.xaml. So I can cheese-it a bit, though, since I've already got three buttons all set I'm just copying that code and adding three click-events instead of the command/commandparameter setup: <!-- Menu Region --> <StackPanel Grid.Row="1" Orientation="Vertical"> <Button x:Name="xJobsButton" Content="Jobs" Style="{StaticResource menuStyleCB}" Click="xJobsButton_Click" /> <Button x:Name="xApplicantsButton" Content="Applicants" Style="{StaticResource menuStyleCB}" Click="xApplicantsButton_Click" /> <Button x:Name="xSchedulingModule" Content="Scheduling" Style="{StaticResource menuStyleCB}" Click="xSchedulingModule_Click" /> </StackPanel> Simple, easy to use events, and no extra assemblies required! Since the code for loading each view will be similar, we'll focus on JobsView for now.The code-behind with this setup looks something like... private JobsView _jobsView; public MainPage() { InitializeComponent(); } private void xJobsButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (MainRegion.Content.GetType() != typeof(JobsView)) { if (_jobsView == null) _jobsView = new JobsView(); MainRegion.Content = _jobsView; } } What am I doing here? First, for each 'view' I create a private reference which MainPage will hold on to. This allows for a little bit of state-maintenance when switching views. When a button is clicked, first we make sure the 'view' typeisn't active (why load it again if it is already at center stage?), then we check if the view has been created and create if necessary, then load it up. Three steps to switching views and is easy as pie. Part 4 Results The end result of all this is that I now have a menu module (MVVM) and a menu section (code-behind) that load their respective views. Since I'm using the same exact XAML (except with commands/events depending on the project), the end result for both is again exactly the same and I'll show a slightly larger image to show it off: Next time, we add the Jobs Module and wire up RadGridView and a separate edit page to handle adding and editing new jobs. That's when things get fun. And somewhere down the line, I'll make the menu look slicker. :) Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• .NET development on a “Retina” MacBook Pro

  - by Jeff

  The rumor that Apple would release a super high resolution version of its 15” laptop has been around for quite awhile, and one I watched closely. After more than three years with a 17” MacBook Pro, and all of the screen real estate it offered, I was ready to replace it with something much lighter. It was a fantastic machine, still doing 6 or 7 hours after 460 charge cycles, but I wanted lighter and faster. With the SSD I put in it, I was able to sell it for $750. The appeal of higher resolution goes way back, when I would plug into a projector and scale up. Consolas, as it turns out, is a nice looking font for code when it’s bigger. While I have mostly indifference for iOS, I have to admit that a higher dot pitch on the iPhone and iPad is pretty to look at. So I ordered the new 15” “Retina” model as soon as the Apple Store went live with it, and got it seven days later. I’ve been primarily using Parallels as my VM of choice from OS X for about five years. They recently put out an update for compatibility with the display, though I’m not entirely sure what that means. I figured there would have to be some messing around to get the VM to look right. The combination that seems to work best is this: Set the display in OS X to “more room,” which is roughly the equivalent of the 1920x1200 that my 17” did. It’s not as stunning as the text at the default 1440x900 equivalent (in OS X), but it’s still quite readable. Parallels still doesn’t entirely know what to do with the high resolution, though what it should do is somehow treat it as native. That flaw aside, I set the Windows 7 scaling to 125%, and it generally looks pretty good. It’s not really taking advantage of the display for sharpness, but hopefully that’s something that Parallels will figure out. Screen tweaking aside, I got the base model with 16 gigs of RAM, so I give the VM 8. I can boot a Windows 7 VM in 9 seconds. Nine seconds! The Windows Experience Index scores are all 7 and above, except for graphics, which are both at 6. Again, that’s in a VM. It’s hard to believe there’s something so fast in a little slim package like that. Hopefully this one gets me at least three years, like the last one.

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• Quickie Guide Getting Java Embedded Running on Raspberry Pi

  - by hinkmond

  Gary C. and I did a Bay Area Java User Group presentation of how to get Java Embedded running on a RPi. See: here. But, if you want the Quickie Guide on how to get Java up and running on the RPi, then follow these steps (which I'm doing right now as we speak, since I got my RPi in the mail on Monday. Woo-hoo!!!). So, follow along at home as I do the same steps here on my board... 1. Download the Win32DiskImager if you are on Windows, or use dd on a Linux PC: https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer/0.6/0.6/+download/win32diskimager-binary.zip 2. Download the RPi Debian Wheezy image from here: http://files.velocix.com/c1410/images/debian/7/2012-08-08-wheezy-armel/2012-08-08-wheezy-armel.zip 3. Insert a blank 4GB SD Card into your Windows or Linux PC. 4. Use either Win32DiskImager or Linux dd to burn the unzipped image from #2 to the SD Card. 5. Insert the SD Card into your RPi. Connect an Ethernet cable to your RPi to your network. Connect the RPi Power Adapter. 6. The RPi will boot onto your network. Find its IP address using Windows Wireshark or Linux: sudo tcpdump -vv -ieth0 port 67 and port 68 7. ssh to your RPi: ssh <ip_addr_rpi> -l pi <Password: "raspberry"> 8. Download Java SE Embedded: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/embedded/downloads/javase/index.html NOTE: First click accept, then choose the first bundle in the list: ARMv6/7 Linux - Headless EABI, VFP, SoftFP ABI, Little Endian - ejre-7u6-fcs-b24-linux-arm-vfp-client_headless-10_aug_2012.tar.gz 9. scp the bundle from #8 to your RPi: scp <ejre-bundle> pi@<ip_addr_rpi> 10. mkdir /usr/local, untar the bundle from #9 and rename (move) the ejre1.7.0_06 directory to /usr/local/java That's it! You are ready to roll with Java Embedded on your RPi. Hinkmond

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• Oracle Coherence 3.5 : Create Internet-scale applications using Oracle's high-performance data grid

  - by frederic.michiara

  Oracle Coherence Coherence provides replicated and distributed (partitioned) data management and caching services on top of a reliable, highly scalable peer-to-peer clustering protocol. Coherence has no single points of failure; it automatically and transparently fails over and redistributes its clustered data management services when a server becomes inoperative or is disconnected from the network. When a new server is added, or when a failed server is restarted, it automatically joins the cluster and Coherence fails back services to it, transparently redistributing the cluster load. Coherence includes network-level fault tolerance features and transparent soft re-start capability to enable servers to self-heal. For the ones looking at an easy reading and first good approach to Oracle Coherence, I would recommend reading the following book : Overview of Oracle Coherence 3.5 Build scalable web sites and Enterprise applications using a market-leading data grid product Design and implement your domain objects to work most effectively with Coherence and apply Domain Driven Designs (DDD) to Coherence applications Leverage Coherence events and continuous queries to provide real-time updates to client applications Successfully integrate various persistence technologies, such as JDBC, Hibernate, or TopLink, with Coherence Filled with numerous examples that provide best practice guidance, and a number of classes you can readily reuse within your own applications This book is targeted to Architects and developers, and as in our team we're more about Solutions Architects than developers I found interest in this book as it help to understand better Oracle Coherence and its value. The only point I may not agree with the authors is that Oracle Coherence is not an alternative to Oracle RAC in providing High Availability, but combining both Oracle RAC and Oracle Coherence will help Architects and Customers to reach higher level of service and high-availability. This book is available on https://www.packtpub.com/oracle-coherence-3-5/book Need to find out about Table of contents : https://www.packtpub.com/toc/oracle-coherence-35-table-contents Discover a sample chapter : https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/6125_Oracle%20Coherence_SampleChapter.pdf Read also articles from the Authors on http://www.packtpub.com/ : Working with Aggregators in Oracle Coherence 3.5 Working with Value Extractors and Simplifying Queries in Oracle Coherence 3.5 Querying the Data Grid in Coherence 3.5: Obtaining Query Results and Using Indexes Installing Coherence 3.5 and Accessing the Data Grid: Part 1 Installing Coherence 3.5 and Accessing the Data Grid: Part 2 For more information on Oracle Coherence : What Oracle Coherence Can Do for You... : http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/coherence/coherencedatagrid/coherence_solutions.html Oracle Coherence on OTN : http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/coherence/index.html Oracle Coherence Knowledge Base : http://coherence.oracle.com/display/COH/Oracle+Coherence+Knowledge+Base+Home

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• SPARC T4-4 Beats 8-CPU IBM POWER7 on TPC-H @3000GB Benchmark

  - by Brian

  Oracle's SPARC T4-4 server delivered a world record TPC-H @3000GB benchmark result for systems with four processors. This result beats eight processor results from IBM (POWER7) and HP (x86). The SPARC T4-4 server also delivered better performance per core than these eight processor systems from IBM and HP. Comparisons below are based upon system to system comparisons, highlighting Oracle's complete software and hardware solution. This database world record result used Oracle's Sun Storage 2540-M2 arrays (rotating disk) connected to a SPARC T4-4 server running Oracle Solaris 11 and Oracle Database 11g Release 2 demonstrating the power of Oracle's integrated hardware and software solution. The SPARC T4-4 server based configuration achieved a TPC-H scale factor 3000 world record for four processor systems of 205,792 QphH@3000GB with price/performance of $4.10/QphH@3000GB. The SPARC T4-4 server with four SPARC T4 processors (total of 32 cores) is 7% faster than the IBM Power 780 server with eight POWER7 processors (total of 32 cores) on the TPC-H @3000GB benchmark. The SPARC T4-4 server is 36% better in price performance compared to the IBM Power 780 server on the TPC-H @3000GB Benchmark. The SPARC T4-4 server is 29% faster than the IBM Power 780 for data loading. The SPARC T4-4 server is up to 3.4 times faster than the IBM Power 780 server for the Refresh Function. The SPARC T4-4 server with four SPARC T4 processors is 27% faster than the HP ProLiant DL980 G7 server with eight x86 processors on the TPC-H @3000GB benchmark. The SPARC T4-4 server is 52% faster than the HP ProLiant DL980 G7 server for data loading. The SPARC T4-4 server is up to 3.2 times faster than the HP ProLiant DL980 G7 for the Refresh Function. The SPARC T4-4 server achieved a peak IO rate from the Oracle database of 17 GB/sec. This rate was independent of the storage used, as demonstrated by the TPC-H @3000TB benchmark which used twelve Sun Storage 2540-M2 arrays (rotating disk) and the TPC-H @1000TB benchmark which used four Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array devices (flash storage). [*] The SPARC T4-4 server showed linear scaling from TPC-H @1000GB to TPC-H @3000GB. This demonstrates that the SPARC T4-4 server can handle the increasingly larger databases required of DSS systems. [*] The SPARC T4-4 server benchmark results demonstrate a complete solution of building Decision Support Systems including data loading, business questions and refreshing data. Each phase usually has a time constraint and the SPARC T4-4 server shows superior performance during each phase. [*] The TPC believes that comparisons of results published with different scale factors are misleading and discourages such comparisons. Performance Landscape The table lists the leading TPC-H @3000GB results for non-clustered systems. TPC-H @3000GB, Non-Clustered Systems System Processor P/C/T – Memory Composite(QphH) $/perf($/QphH) Power(QppH) Throughput(QthH) Database Available SPARC Enterprise M9000 3.0 GHz SPARC64 VII+ 64/256/256 – 1024 GB 386,478.3 $18.19 316,835.8 471,428.6 Oracle 11g R2 09/22/11 SPARC T4-4 3.0 GHz SPARC T4 4/32/256 – 1024 GB 205,792.0 $4.10 190,325.1 222,515.9 Oracle 11g R2 05/31/12 SPARC Enterprise M9000 2.88 GHz SPARC64 VII 32/128/256 – 512 GB 198,907.5 $15.27 182,350.7 216,967.7 Oracle 11g R2 12/09/10 IBM Power 780 4.1 GHz POWER7 8/32/128 – 1024 GB 192,001.1 $6.37 210,368.4 175,237.4 Sybase 15.4 11/30/11 HP ProLiant DL980 G7 2.27 GHz Intel Xeon X7560 8/64/128 – 512 GB 162,601.7 $2.68 185,297.7 142,685.6 SQL Server 2008 10/13/10 P/C/T = Processors, Cores, Threads QphH = the Composite Metric (bigger is better) $/QphH = the Price/Performance metric in USD (smaller is better) QppH = the Power Numerical Quantity QthH = the Throughput Numerical Quantity The following table lists data load times and refresh function times during the power run. TPC-H @3000GB, Non-Clustered Systems Database Load & Database Refresh System Processor Data Loading(h:m:s) T4Advan RF1(sec) T4Advan RF2(sec) T4Advan SPARC T4-4 3.0 GHz SPARC T4 04:08:29 1.0x 67.1 1.0x 39.5 1.0x IBM Power 780 4.1 GHz POWER7 05:51:50 1.5x 147.3 2.2x 133.2 3.4x HP ProLiant DL980 G7 2.27 GHz Intel Xeon X7560 08:35:17 2.1x 173.0 2.6x 126.3 3.2x Data Loading = database load time RF1 = power test first refresh transaction RF2 = power test second refresh transaction T4 Advan = the ratio of time to T4 time Complete benchmark results found at the TPC benchmark website http://www.tpc.org. Configuration Summary and Results Hardware Configuration: SPARC T4-4 server 4 x SPARC T4 3.0 GHz processors (total of 32 cores, 128 threads) 1024 GB memory 8 x internal SAS (8 x 300 GB) disk drives External Storage: 12 x Sun Storage 2540-M2 array storage, each with 12 x 15K RPM 300 GB drives, 2 controllers, 2 GB cache Software Configuration: Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition Audited Results: Database Size: 3000 GB (Scale Factor 3000) TPC-H Composite: 205,792.0 QphH@3000GB Price/performance: $4.10/QphH@3000GB Available: 05/31/2012 Total 3 year Cost: $843,656 TPC-H Power: 190,325.1 TPC-H Throughput: 222,515.9 Database Load Time: 4:08:29 Benchmark Description The TPC-H benchmark is a performance benchmark established by the Transaction Processing Council (TPC) to demonstrate Data Warehousing/Decision Support Systems (DSS). TPC-H measurements are produced for customers to evaluate the performance of various DSS systems. These queries and updates are executed against a standard database under controlled conditions. Performance projections and comparisons between different TPC-H Database sizes (100GB, 300GB, 1000GB, 3000GB, 10000GB, 30000GB and 100000GB) are not allowed by the TPC. TPC-H is a data warehousing-oriented, non-industry-specific benchmark that consists of a large number of complex queries typical of decision support applications. It also includes some insert and delete activity that is intended to simulate loading and purging data from a warehouse. TPC-H measures the combined performance of a particular database manager on a specific computer system. The main performance metric reported by TPC-H is called the TPC-H Composite Query-per-Hour Performance Metric (QphH@SF, where SF is the number of GB of raw data, referred to as the scale factor). QphH@SF is intended to summarize the ability of the system to process queries in both single and multiple user modes. The benchmark requires reporting of price/performance, which is the ratio of the total HW/SW cost plus 3 years maintenance to the QphH. A secondary metric is the storage efficiency, which is the ratio of total configured disk space in GB to the scale factor. Key Points and Best Practices Twelve Sun Storage 2540-M2 arrays were used for the benchmark. Each Sun Storage 2540-M2 array contains 12 15K RPM drives and is connected to a single dual port 8Gb FC HBA using 2 ports. Each Sun Storage 2540-M2 array showed 1.5 GB/sec for sequential read operations and showed linear scaling, achieving 18 GB/sec with twelve Sun Storage 2540-M2 arrays. These were stand alone IO tests. The peak IO rate measured from the Oracle database was 17 GB/sec. Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 required very little system tuning. Some vendors try to make the point that storage ratios are of customer concern. However, storage ratio size has more to do with disk layout and the increasing capacities of disks – so this is not an important metric in which to compare systems. The SPARC T4-4 server and Oracle Solaris efficiently managed the system load of over one thousand Oracle Database parallel processes. Six Sun Storage 2540-M2 arrays were mirrored to another six Sun Storage 2540-M2 arrays on which all of the Oracle database files were placed. IO performance was high and balanced across all the arrays. The TPC-H Refresh Function (RF) simulates periodical refresh portion of Data Warehouse by adding new sales and deleting old sales data. Parallel DML (parallel insert and delete in this case) and database log performance are a key for this function and the SPARC T4-4 server outperformed both the IBM POWER7 server and HP ProLiant DL980 G7 server. (See the RF columns above.) See Also Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) Home Page Ideas International Benchmark Page SPARC T4-4 Server oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN Sun Storage 2540-M2 Array oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement TPC-H, QphH, $/QphH are trademarks of Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). For more information, see www.tpc.org. SPARC T4-4 205,792.0 QphH@3000GB, $4.10/QphH@3000GB, available 5/31/12, 4 processors, 32 cores, 256 threads; IBM Power 780 QphH@3000GB, 192,001.1 QphH@3000GB, $6.37/QphH@3000GB, available 11/30/11, 8 processors, 32 cores, 128 threads; HP ProLiant DL980 G7 162,601.7 QphH@3000GB, $2.68/QphH@3000GB available 10/13/10, 8 processors, 64 cores, 128 threads.

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• Azure, don't give me multiple VMs, give me one elastic VM

  - by FransBouma

  Yesterday, Microsoft revealed new major features for Windows Azure (see ScottGu's post). It all looks shiny and great, but after reading most of the material describing the new features, I still find the overall idea behind all of it flawed: why should I care on how much VMs my web app runs? Isn't that a problem to solve for the Windows Azure engineers / software? And what if I need the file system, why can't I simply get a virtual filesystem ? To illustrate my point, let's use a real example: a product website with a customer system/database and next to it a support site with accompanying database. Both are written in .NET, using ASP.NET and use a SQL Server database each. The product website offers files to download by customers, very simple. You have a couple of options to host these websites: Buy a server, place it in a rack at an ISP and run the sites on that server Use 'shared hosting' with an ISP, which means your sites' appdomains are running on the same machine, as well as the files stored, and the databases are hosted in the same server as the other shared databases. Hire a VM, install your OS of choice at an ISP, and host the sites on that VM, basically the same as the first option, except you don't have a physical server At some cloud-vendor, either host the sites 'shared' or in a VM. See above. With all of those options, scalability is a problem, even the cloud-based ones, though not due to the same reasons: The physical server solution has the obvious problem that if you need more power, you need to buy a bigger server or more servers which requires you to add replication and other overhead Shared hosting solutions are almost always capped on memory usage / traffic and database size: if your sites get too big, you have to move out of the shared hosting environment and start over with one of the other solutions The VM solution, be it a VM at an ISP or 'in the cloud' at e.g. Windows Azure or Amazon, in theory allows scaling out by simply instantiating more VMs, however that too introduces the same overhead problems as with the physical servers: suddenly more than 1 instance runs your sites. If a cloud vendor offers its services in the form of VMs, you won't gain much over having a VM at some ISP: the main problems you have to work around are still there: when you spin up more than one VM, your application must be completely stateless at any moment, including the DB sub system, because what's in memory in instance 1 might not be in memory in instance 2. This might sounds trivial but it's not. A lot of the websites out there started rather small: they were perfectly runnable on a single machine with normal memory and CPU power. After all, you don't need a big machine to run a website with even thousands of users a day. Moving these sites to a multi-VM environment will cause a problem: all the in-memory state they use, all the multi-page transitions they use while keeping state across the transition, they can't do that anymore like they did that on a single machine: state is something of the past, you have to store every byte of state in either a DB or in a viewstate or in a cookie somewhere so with the next request, all state information is available through the request, as nothing is kept in-memory. Our example uses a bunch of files in a file system. Using multiple VMs will require that these files move to a cloud storage system which is mounted in each VM so we don't have to store the files on each VM. This might require different file paths, but this change should be minor. What's perhaps less minor is the maintenance procedure in place on the new type of cloud storage used: instead of ftp-ing into a VM, you might have to update the files using different ways / tools. All in all this makes moving an existing website which was written for an environment that's based around a VM (namely .NET with its CLR) overly cumbersome and problematic: it forces you to refactor your website system to be able to be used 'in the cloud', which is caused by the limited way how e.g. Windows Azure offers its cloud services: in blocks of VMs. Offer a scalable, flexible VM which extends with my needs Instead, cloud vendors should offer simply one VM to me. On that VM I run the websites, store my DB and my files. As it's a virtual machine, how this machine is actually ran on physical hardware (e.g. partitioned), I don't care, as that's the problem for the cloud vendor to solve. If I need more resources, e.g. I have more traffic to my server, way more visitors per day, the VM stretches, like I bought a bigger box. This frees me from the problem which comes with multiple VMs: I don't have any refactoring to do at all: I can simply build my website as if it runs on my local hardware server, upload it to the VM offered by the cloud vendor, install it on the VM and I'm done. "But that might require changes to windows!" Yes, but Microsoft is Windows. Windows Azure is their service, they can make whatever change to what they offer to make it look like it's windows. Yet, they're stuck, like Amazon, in thinking in VMs, which forces developers to 'think ahead' and gamble whether they would need to migrate to a cloud with multiple VMs in the future or not. Which comes down to: gamble whether they should invest time in code / architecture which they might never need. (YAGNI anyone?) So the VM we're talking about, is that a low-level VM which runs a guest OS, or is that VM a different kind of VM? The flexible VM: .NET's CLR ? My example websites are ASP.NET based, which means they run inside a .NET appdomain, on the .NET CLR, which is a VM. The only physical OS resource the sites need is the file system, however this too is accessed through .NET. In short: all the websites see is what .NET allows the websites to see, the world as the websites know it is what .NET shows them and lets them access. How the .NET appdomain is run physically, that's the concern of .NET, not mine. This begs the question why Windows Azure doesn't offer virtual appdomains? Or better: .NET environments which look like one machine but could be physically multiple machines. In such an environment, no change has to be made to the websites to migrate them from a local machine or own server to the cloud to get proper scaling: the .NET VM will simply scale with the need: more memory needed, more CPU power needed, it stretches. What it offers to the application running inside the appdomain is simply increasing, but not fragmented: all resources are available to the application: this means that the problem of how to scale is back to where it should be: with the cloud vendor. "Yeah, great, but what about the databases?" The .NET application communicates with the database server through a .NET ADO.NET provider. Where the database is located is not a problem of the appdomain: the ADO.NET provider has to solve that. I.o.w.: we can host the databases in an environment which offers itself as a single resource and is accessible through one connection string without replication overhead on the outside, and use that environment inside the .NET VM as if it was a single DB. But what about memory replication and other problems? This environment isn't simple, at least not for the cloud vendor. But it is simple for the customer who wants to run his sites in that cloud: no work needed. No refactoring needed of existing code. Upload it, run it. Perhaps I'm dreaming and what I described above isn't possible. Yet, I think if cloud vendors don't move into that direction, what they're offering isn't interesting: it doesn't solve a problem at all, it simply offers a way to instantiate more VMs with the guest OS of choice at the cost of me needing to refactor my website code so it can run in the straight jacket form factor dictated by the cloud vendor. Let's not kid ourselves here: most of us developers will never build a website which needs a truck load of VMs to run it: almost all websites created by developers can run on just a few VMs at most. Yet, the most expensive change is right at the start: moving from one to two VMs. As soon as you have refactored your website code to run across multiple VMs, adding another one is just as easy as clicking a mouse button. But that first step, that's the problem here and as it's right there at the beginning of scaling the website, it's particularly strange that cloud vendors refuse to solve that problem and leave it to the developers to solve that. Which makes migrating 'to the cloud' particularly expensive.

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• NoSQL is not about object databases

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  NoSQL as a movement is an interesting beast. I kinda like that it’s negatively defined (I happen to belong myself to at least one other such a-community). It’s not in its roots about proposing one specific new silver bullet to kill an old problem. it’s about challenging the consensus. Actually, blindly and systematically replacing relational databases with object databases would just replace one set of issues with another. No, the point is to recognize that relational databases are not a universal answer -although they have been used as one for so long- and recognize instead that there’s a whole spectrum of data storage solutions out there. Why is it so hard to recognize, by the way? You are already using some of those other data storage solutions every day. Let me cite a few: The file system Active Directory XML / JSON documents The Web e-mail Logs Excel files EXIF blobs in your photos Relational databases And yes, object databases It’s just a fact of modern life. Notice by the way that most of the data that you use every day is unstructured and thus mostly unsuitable for relational storage. It really is more a matter of recognizing it: you are already doing NoSQL. So what happens when for any reason you need to simultaneously query two or more of these heterogeneous data stores? Well, you build an index of sorts combining them, and that’s what you query instead. Of course, there’s not much distance to travel from that to realizing that querying is better done when completely separated from storage. So why am I writing about this today? Well, that’s something I’ve been giving lots of thought, on and off, over the last ten years. When I built my first CMS all that time ago, one of the main problems my customers were facing was to manage and make sense of the mountain of unstructured data that was constituting most of their business. The central entity of that system was the file system because we were dealing with lots of Word documents, PDFs, OCR’d articles, photos and static web pages. We could have stored all that in SQL Server. It would have worked. Ew. I’m so glad we didn’t. Today, I’m working on Orchard (another CMS ;). It’s a pretty young project but already one of the questions we get the most is how to integrate existing data. One of the ideas I’ll be trying hard to sell to the rest of the team in the next few months is to completely split the querying from the storage. Not only does this provide great opportunities for performance optimizations, it gives you homogeneous access to heterogeneous and existing data sources. For free.

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• Plan Operator Tuesday round-up

  - by Rob Farley

  Eighteen posts for T-SQL Tuesday #43 this month, discussing Plan Operators. I put them together and made the following clickable plan. It’s 1000px wide, so I hope you have a monitor wide enough. Let me explain this plan for you (people’s names are the links to the articles on their blogs – the same links as in the plan above). It was clearly a SELECT statement. Wayne Sheffield (@dbawayne) wrote about that, so we start with a SELECT physical operator, leveraging the logical operator Wayne Sheffield. The SELECT operator calls the Paul White operator, discussed by Jason Brimhall (@sqlrnnr) in his post. The Paul White operator is quite remarkable, and can consume three streams of data. Let’s look at those streams. The first pulls data from a Table Scan – Boris Hristov (@borishristov)’s post – using parallel threads (Bradley Ball – @sqlballs) that pull the data eagerly through a Table Spool (Oliver Asmus – @oliverasmus). A scalar operation is also performed on it, thanks to Jeffrey Verheul (@devjef)’s Compute Scalar operator. The second stream of data applies Evil (I figured that must mean a procedural TVF, but could’ve been anything), courtesy of Jason Strate (@stratesql). It performs this Evil on the merging of parallel streams (Steve Jones – @way0utwest), which suck data out of a Switch (Paul White – @sql_kiwi). This Switch operator is consuming data from up to four lookups, thanks to Kalen Delaney (@sqlqueen), Rick Krueger (@dataogre), Mickey Stuewe (@sqlmickey) and Kathi Kellenberger (@auntkathi). Unfortunately Kathi’s name is a bit long and has been truncated, just like in real plans. The last stream performs a join of two others via a Nested Loop (Matan Yungman – @matanyungman). One pulls data from a Spool (my post – @rob_farley) populated from a Table Scan (Jon Morisi). The other applies a catchall operator (the catchall is because Tamera Clark (@tameraclark) didn’t specify any particular operator, and a catchall is what gets shown when SSMS doesn’t know what to show. Surprisingly, it’s showing the yellow one, which is about cursors. Hopefully that’s not what Tamera planned, but anyway...) to the output from an Index Seek operator (Sebastian Meine – @sqlity). Lastly, I think everyone put in 110% effort, so that’s what all the operators cost. That didn’t leave anything for me, unfortunately, but that’s okay. Also, because he decided to use the Paul White operator, Jason Brimhall gets 0%, and his 110% was given to Paul’s Switch operator post. I hope you’ve enjoyed this T-SQL Tuesday, and have learned something extra about Plan Operators. Keep your eye out for next month’s one by watching the Twitter Hashtag #tsql2sday, and why not contribute a post to the party? Big thanks to Adam Machanic as usual for starting all this. @rob_farley

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• Music before bells and whistles

  - by Tony Davis

  Why is it that Windows has so much difficulty in finding content on its file system? This is not an insurmountable technical problem; on my laptop, I have a database within which I can instantly find text or names within millions of records, within 300 milliseconds. I have a copy of Google Desktop that can find phrases within emails or documents, almost as quickly. It is an important, though mundane, part of an operating system to be able to find files. The first thing I notice within Windows is that the facility to find files or text within files is called 'search' rather than 'find'. Hmm. This doesn’t bode well. What’s this? It does a brute-force search for file names? Here we are in an age when we can breed mice that glow in the dark, and manufacture computers that fit in our shirt pockets, and we find an operating system that is still entirely innocent of managing and indexing content in hierarchical data. I can actually read the files of my PC into a database, mimic the directory/folder hierarchies and then find files in a flash; but when I do the same with Windows Vista, we are suddenly back in a 1960s time warp. Finding files based on their name is bad enough, but finding files based on the content that they contain is more or less asking for an opportunity to wait 20 minutes in order to see a "file not found" message. Sadly, with Windows 7, Microsoft seems to have fallen into the familiar trap of adding bells and whistles before finishing the song. It's certainly true that Microsoft has added new features and a certain polish to Windows Search 4.0, the latest incarnation. It works more like a web search and offers a new search syntax, called Advanced Query Syntax, which allows you to search on file author, file size, date ranges (e.g. date:=7/4/09still does not work reliably. I've experienced first-hand its stubborn refusal, despite a full index, to acknowledge the existence of a file I know exists, based on a search for a specific term within that file that I know is in there somewhere; a file that Google Desktop search, or old wingrep, finds in seconds. When users hark back to the halcyon days of Windows XP search, you know something is seriously amiss. Shouldn't applications get the functionality right before applying animated menus and Teletubby graphics, or is advancing age making me grumpy? I’d be pleased to hear your views, as always. Cheers, Tony.

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• Unable to install Konstruktor program

  - by George Barnick

  I've recently switched to Linux, having a good knowledge of how it works before switching, since I've had experience working with Ubuntu-based servers for several months. I've been trying to install a LEGO CAD program that I have found based on an open source library. Information on that is here. The program I'm looking at is called Konstruktor, and for the most part it should be working. One dependency however does not seem to be able to install. The missing dependency is "kdelibs5", which I know what it is and what it's for, but can't get it to install. When trying to install, I get this error: george@GEORGE-PC:~$ sudo apt-get install kdelibs5 Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Package kdelibs5 is not available, but is referred to by another package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source E: Package 'kdelibs5' has no installation candidate When trying to install the proper package of Konstruktor for my system, I get this error: george@GEORGE-PC:~$ sudo dpkg -i '/home/george/Downloads/konstruktor_0.9-beta1-2_amd64.deb' Selecting previously unselected package konstruktor. (Reading database ... 224684 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking konstruktor (from .../konstruktor_0.9-beta1-2_amd64.deb) ... dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of konstruktor: konstruktor depends on kdelibs5 (>= 4:4.4.5); however: Package kdelibs5 is not installed. dpkg: error processing konstruktor (--install): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ... Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf-2.index... Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ... Processing triggers for gnome-menus ... Processing triggers for mime-support ... Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ... Processing triggers for shared-mime-info ... Unknown media type in type 'all/all' Unknown media type in type 'all/allfiles' Unknown media type in type 'uri/mms' Unknown media type in type 'uri/mmst' Unknown media type in type 'uri/mmsu' Unknown media type in type 'uri/pnm' Unknown media type in type 'uri/rtspt' Unknown media type in type 'uri/rtspu' Errors were encountered while processing: konstruktor I have tried updating and adding apt repositories for KDE packages, but I continuously get the same error. I tried the package "kdelibs5-dev", which installed fine, but "kdelibs5" won't, and Konstruktor still won't install. I am on Ubuntu 13.10 with GNOME shell on amd64 architecture. Any help would be much appreciated. (originally posted my issue here) Thanks ahead of time.

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