Search Results

Search found 1141 results on 46 pages for 'josh anderson'.

Page 45/46 | < Previous Page | 41 42 43 44 45 46  | Next Page >

• Python Twitter library: which one?

  - by Parand

  I realize this is a bit of a lazyweb question, but I wanted to see which python library for Twitter people have had good experiences with. I've used Python Twitter Tools and like its brevity and beauty of interface, but it doesn't seem to be one of the popular ones - it's not even listed on the Twitter Libraries page. There are, however, plenty of others listed: oauth-python-twitter2 by Konpaku Kogasa. Combines python-twitter and oauth-python-twitter to create an evolved OAuth Pokemon. python-twitter by DeWitt Clinton. This library provides a pure Python interface for the Twitter API. python-twyt by Andrew Price. BSD licensed Twitter API interface library and command line client. twitty-twister by Dustin Sallings. A Twisted interface to Twitter. twython by Ryan McGrath. REST and Search library inspired by python-twitter. Tweepy by Josh Roesslein. Supports OAuth, Search API, Streaming API. My requirements are fairly simple: Be able to use OAuth Be able to follow a user Be able to send a direct message Be able to post Streaming API would be nice Twisted one aside (I'm not using twisted in this case), have you used any of the others, and if so, do you recommend them? [Update] FWIW, I ended up going with Python Twitter Tools again. The new version supported OAuth nicely, and it's a very clever API, so I stuck to it.

  Read the article

• Is there an MVVM-friendly way to swap views without value converters firing unnecessarily?

  - by DanM

  I thought what I was doing was right out of the Josh Smith MVVM handbook, but I seem to be having a lot of problems with value converters firing when no data in the view-model has changed. So, I have a ContentControl defined in XAML like this: <ContentControl Grid.Row="0" Content="{Binding CurrentViewModel}" /> The Window containing this ContentControl references a resource dictionary that looks something like this: <ResourceDictionary ...> <DataTemplate DataType="{x:Type lib_vm:SetupPanelViewModel}"> <lib_v:SetupPanel /> </DataTemplate> <DataTemplate DataType="{x:Type lib_vm:InstructionsPanelViewModel}"> <lib_v:InstructionsPanel /> </DataTemplate> </ResourceDictionary> So, basically, the two data templates specify which view to show with which view-model. This switches the views as expected whenever the CurrentViewModel property on my window's view-model changes, but it also seems to cause value converters on the views to fire even when no data has changed. It's a particular problem with IMultiValueConverter classes, because the values in the value array get set to DependencyProperty.UnsetValue, which causes exceptions unless I specifically check for that. But I'm getting other weird side effects too. This has me wondering if I shouldn't just do everything manually, like this: Instantiate each view. Set the DataContext of each view to the appropriate view-model. Give the ContentControl a name and make it public. Handle the PropertyChanged event for the window. In the event handler, manually set the Content property of the ContentControl to the appropriate view, based the CurrentViewModel (using if statements). This seems to work, but it also seems very inelegant. I'm hoping there's a better way. Could you please advise me the best way to handle view switching so that value converters don't fire unnecessarily?

  Read the article

• How do I stop ValueConverters from firing when swapping the content of a ContentControl

  - by DanM

  I thought what I was doing was right out of the Josh Smith MVVM handbook, but I seem to be having a lot of problems with value converters firing when no data in the view-model has changed. So, I have a ContentControl defined in XAML like this: <ContentControl Grid.Row="0" Content="{Binding CurrentViewModel}" /> The Window containing this ContentControl references a resource dictionary that looks something like this: <ResourceDictionary ...> <DataTemplate DataType="{x:Type lib_vm:SetupPanelViewModel}"> <lib_v:SetupPanel /> </DataTemplate> <DataTemplate DataType="{x:Type lib_vm:InstructionsPanelViewModel}"> <lib_v:InstructionsPanel /> </DataTemplate> </ResourceDictionary> So, basically, the two data templates specify which view to show with which view-model. This switches the views as expected whenever the CurrentViewModel property on my window's view-model changes, but it also seems to cause value converters on the views to fire even when no data has changed. It's a particular problem with IMultiValueConverter classes, because the values in the value array get set to DependencyProperty.UnsetValue, which causes exceptions unless I specifically check for that. But I'm getting other weird side effects too. This has me wondering if I shouldn't just do everything manually, like this: Instantiate each view. Set the DataContext of each view to the appropriate view-model. Give the ContentControl a name and make it public. Handle the PropertyChanged event for the window. In the event handler, manually set the Content property of the ContentControl to the appropriate view, based the CurrentViewModel (using if statements). This seems to work, but it also seems very inelegant. I'm hoping there's a better way. Could you please advise me the best way to handle view switching so that value converters don't fire unnecessarily?

  Read the article

• Is it bad practice to make a setter return "this"?

  - by Ken Liu

  Is it a good or bad idea to make setters in java return "this"? public Employee setName(String name){ this.name = name; return this; } This pattern can be useful because then you can chain setters like this: list.add(new Employee().setName("Jack Sparrow").setId(1).setFoo("bacon!")); instead of this: Employee e = new Employee(); e.setName("Jack Sparrow"); ...and so on... list.add(e); ...but it sort of goes against standard convention. I suppose it might be worthwhile just because it can make that setter do something else useful. I've seen this pattern used some places (e.g. JMock, JPA), but it seems uncommon, and only generally used for very well defined APIs where this pattern is used everywhere. Update: What I've described is obviously valid, but what I am really looking for is some thoughts on whether this is generally acceptable, and if there are any pitfalls or related best practices. I know about the Builder pattern but it is a little more involved then what I am describing - as Josh Bloch describes it there is an associated static Builder class for object creation.

  Read the article

• Serializing and deserializing a map with key as string

  - by Grace K

  Hi! I am intending to serialize and deserialize a hashmap whose key is a string. From Josh Bloch's Effective Java, I understand the following. P.222 "For example, consider the case of a harsh table. The physical representation is a sequence of hash buckets containing key-value entries. Which bucket an entry is placed in is a function of the hash code of the key, which is not, in general guaranteed to be the same from JVM implementation to JVM implementation. In fact, it isn't even guranteed to be the same from run to run on the same JVM implementation. Therefore accepting the default serialized form for a hash table would constitute a serious bug. Serializing and deserializing the hash table could yield an object whose invariants were seriously corrupt." My questions are: 1) In general, would overriding the equals and hashcode of the key class of the map resolve this issue and the map can be correctly restored? 2) If my key is a String and the String class is already overriding the hashCode() method, would I still have problem described above. (I am seeing a bug which makes me think this is probably still a problem even though the key is String with overriding hashCode.) 3)Previously, I get around this issue by serializing an array of entries (key, value) and when deserializing I would reconstruct the map. I am wondering if there is a better approach. 4) If the answers to question 1 and 2 are that I still can't be guaranteed. Could someone explain why? If the hashCodes are the same would they go to the same buckets across JVMs? Thanks, Grace

  Read the article

• Binding update on adds news series to WPF Toolkit chart (instead of replacing/updating series)

  - by Mal Ross

  I'm currently recoding a bar chart in my app to make use of the Chart class in the WPF Toolkit. Using MVVM, I'm binding the ItemsSource of a ColumnSeries in my chart to a property on my viewmodel. Here's the relevant XAML: <charting:Chart> <charting:ColumnSeries ItemsSource="{Binding ScoreDistribution.ClassScores}" IndependentValuePath="ClassName" DependentValuePath="Score"/> </charting:Chart> And the property on the viewmodel: // NB: viewmodel derived from Josh Smith's BindableObject public class ExamResultsViewModel : BindableObject { // ... private ScoreDistributionByClass _scoreDistribution; public ScoreDistributionByClass ScoreDistribution { get { return _scoreDistribution; } set { if (_scoreDistribution == value) { return; } _scoreDistribution = value; RaisePropertyChanged(() => ScoreDistribution); } } However, when I update the ScoreDistribution property (by setting it to a new ScoreDistribution object), the chart gets an additional series (based on the new ScoreDistribution) as well as keeping the original series (based on the previous ScoreDistribution). To illustrate this, here are a couple of screenshots showing the chart before an update (with a single data point in ScoreDistribution.ClassScores) and after it (now with 3 data points in ScoreDistribution.ClassScores): Now, I realise there are other ways I could be doing this (e.g. changing the contents of the original ScoreDistribution object rather than replacing it entirely), but I don't understand why it's going wrong in its current form. Can anyone help?

  Read the article

• Code promotion: Enforcing the rules

  - by jbarker7

  So here is our problem: We have a small team of developers with their own ways of doing things-- I am trying to formalize a process in which we are required to promote our code in the following order: Local sandbox Dev UAT Staging Live Developers develop/test as they go on their own sandbox, Dev is its own box that we would use for continuous integration, UAT is another site in IIS on the dev box, which uses our dev database. We then promote to staging, which is a site in IIS on the Live box and using live data (just like the live, hence staging). Then, finally, we promote to live. Here are a few of my questions: 1.) Does this seem to be best practice? If not, what needs to be done differently? 2.) How do I enforce the rules to the developers? Often developers skip steps in order to save time... this should not be tolerated and would be great if it could be physically enforced. 3.) How do I enforce these rules to the business group? The business group just wants to get features out FAST. Do we promote only on certain days? Thanks! Josh

  Read the article

• How to use MySQL geospatial extensions with spherical geometries

  - by Joshua

  Hi Everyone, I would like to store thousands of latitude/longitude points in a MySQL db. I was successful at setting up the tables and adding the data using the geospatial extensions where the column 'coord' is a Point(lat, lng). Problem: I want to quickly find the 'N' closest entries to latitude 'X' degrees and longitude 'Y' degrees. Since the Distance() function has not yet been implemented, I used GLength() function to calculate the distance between (X,Y) and each of the entries, sorting by ascending distance, and limiting to 'N' results. The problem is that this is not calculating shortest distance with spherical geometry. Which means if Y = 179.9 degrees, the list of closest entries will only include longitudes of starting at 179.9 and decreasing even though closer entries exist with longitudes increasing from -179.9. How does one typically handle the discontinuity in longitude when working with spherical geometries in databases? There has to be an easy solution to this, but I must just be searching for the wrong thing because I have not found anything helpful. Should I just forget the GLength() function and create my own function for calculating angular separation? If I do this, will it still be fast and take advantage of the geospatial extensions? Thanks! josh UPDATE: This is exactly what I am describing above. However, it is only for SQL Server. Apparently SQL Server has a Geometry and Geography datatypes. The geography does exactly what I need. Is there something similar in MySQL?

  Read the article

• Locking database edit by key name

  - by Will Glass

  I need to prevent simultaneous edits to a database field. Users are executing a push operation on a structured data field, so I want to sequence the operations, not simply ignore one edit and take the second. Essentially I want to do synchronized(key name) { push value onto the database field } and set up the synchronized item so that only one operation on "key name" will occur at a time. (note: I'm simplifying, it's not always a simple push). A crude way to do this would be a global synchronization, but that bottlenecks the entire app. All I need to do is sequence two simultaneous writes with the same key, which is rare but annoying occurrence. This is a web-based java app, written with Spring (and using JPA/MySQL). The operation is triggered by a user web service call. (the root cause is when a user sends two simultaneous http requests with the same key). I've glanced through the Doug Lea/Josh Bloch/et al Concurrency in Action, but don't see an obvious solution. Still, this seems simple enough I feel there must be an elegant way to do this.

  Read the article

• Predicate usually used for array/list how about here?

  - by amit kohan

  In following code (Josh Smith's article on MVVM), can somebody give me some insight about return _canExecute == null ? true : _canExecute(parameter); ? it is a normal if/else statement but I'm not getting the last part of it. public class RelayCommand : ICommand { #region Fields readonly Action<object> _execute; readonly Predicate<object> _canExecute; #endregion // Fields #region Constructors public RelayCommand(Action<object> execute) : this(execute, null) { } public RelayCommand(Action<object> execute, Predicate<object> canExecute) { if (execute == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("execute"); _execute = execute; _canExecute = canExecute; } #endregion // Constructors #region ICommand Members [DebuggerStepThrough] public bool CanExecute(object parameter) { return _canExecute == null ? true : _canExecute(parameter); } public event EventHandler CanExecuteChanged { add { CommandManager.RequerySuggested += value; } remove { CommandManager.RequerySuggested -= value; } } public void Execute(object parameter) { _execute(parameter); } #endregion // ICommand Members } Thanks.

  Read the article

• mysql php problem: no error message despite error_reporting(E_ALL) line

  - by herrturtur

  index.php <html> <head> <title>Josh's Online Playground</title> </head> <body> <form method="POST" action="action.php"> <table> <tr> <td>"data for stuff"</td> <td><input type="text" ?></td> </tr> <tr> <td><input type="submit"></td> </tr> </table> </form> </body> </html> action.php <?php error_reporting(E_ALL); ini_sit("display_errors", 1); $mysqli = new mysqli('localhost', 'root', 'password', 'website'); $result = $mysqli->query("insert into stuff (data) values (' .$_POST['data'] ."'); echo $mysqli->error(); if($result = $mysqli->query("select data from stuff")){ echo 'There are '.$result->num_rows.' results.'; } while ($row = $result->fetch_object()){ echo 'stuff' . $row->data; } ?> Despite the first two lines in action.php, I get no error or warning messages. Instead I get a blank page after clicking the submit button. Do I have to do something differently to insert data?

  Read the article

• Exchange 2010 OWA - a few questions about using multiple mailboxes

  - by Alexey Smolik

  We have an Exchange 2010 SP2 deployment and we need that our users could access multiple mailboxes in OWA. The problem is that a user (eg John Smith) needs to access not just somebody else's (eg Tom Anderson) mailboxes, but his OWN mailboxes, e.g. in different domains: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], etc. Of course it is preferable for the user to work with all of his mailboxes from a single window. Such mailboxes can be added as multiple Exchange accounts in Outlook, that works almost fine. But in OWA, there are problems: 1) In the left pane - as I've learned - we can open only Inbox folders from other mailboxes. No way to view all folders like in Outlook? 2) With Send-As permissions set, when trying to send a message from another address, that message is saved in the Sent Items folder of the mailbox that is opened in OWA, and not in the mailbox the message is sent from. The same thing with the trash can. Is there a way to fix that? Also, this problem exists in desktop Outlook when mailboxes are added automatically via the Auto Mapping feature, so that we need to turn it off and add the accounts manually. Is there a simpler workaround? 3) Okay, suppose we only open Inbox folders in the left pane. The problem is that the mailbox names shown there are formed from Display Name attributes. But those names are all identical! All the mailboxes are owned by John Smith, so they should be all named John Smith - so that letter recepient sees "John Smith" in the "from" field, no matter what mailbox it is sent from. Also, the user knows what's his name - no need to tell him. He wants to know what mailbox he works with. So we need a way to either: a) customize OWA to show mailbox email address instead of user Display Name, or b) make Exchange use another attribute to put in the "from" field when sending letters 4) Okay, we can switch between mailboxes using "Open Other Mailbox" in the upper-right corner menu. But: a) To select a mailbox we need to enter its name (or first letters). It there a way to show a list of links to mailboxes the user has full access to? Eg in the page header... b) If we start entering the first letters, we see a popup list with possible mailboxes to be opened. But there are all mailboxes (apparently from GAL), not only mailboxes the user has permission to open! How to filter that popup list? c) The same problem as in (3) with mailbox naming. We can see the opened mailbox email address ONLY in the page URL, which is insufficient for many users. In the left pane we see "John Smith" which is useless. 5) Each mailbox is tied with a separate user in AD. If one has several mailboxes, we need to have additional dummy AD accounts, create additional OUs to store them, etc. That's not very nice, is there any standartized, optimal way to build such a structure? We would really appreciate any answers or additional info for any of these questions. Thank you in advance.

  Read the article

• Using jQuery and SPServices to Display List Items

  - by Bil Simser

  I had an interesting challenge recently that I turned to Marc Anderson’s wonderful SPServices project for. If you haven’t already seen or used SPServices, please do. It’s a jQuery library that does primarily two things. First, it wraps up all of the SharePoint web services in a nice little AJAX wrapper for use in JavaScript. Second, it enhances the form editing of items in SharePoint so you’re not hacking up your List Form pages. My challenge was simple but interesting. The user wanted to display a SharePoint item page (DispForm.aspx, which already had some customization on it to display related items via this blog post from Codeless Solutions for SharePoint) but launch from an external application using the value of one of the fields in the SharePoint list. For simplicity let’s say my list is a list of customers and the related list is a list of orders for that customer. It would look something like this (click on the item to see the full image): Your first thought might be, that’s easy! Display the customer information using a DataView Web Part and filter the item using a query string to match the customer number. However there are a few problems with this idea: You’ll need to build a custom page and then attach that related orders view to it. This is a bit of a problem because the solution from Codeless Solutions relies on the Title field on the page to be displayed. On a custom page you would have to recreate all of the elements found on the DispForm.aspx page so the related view would work. The DataView Web Part doesn’t look *exactly* like what the out of the box display form page does. Not a huge problem and can be overcome with some CSS style overrides but still, more work. A DVWP showing a single record doesn’t have the same toolbar that you would using the DispForm.aspx. Not a show-stopper and you can rebuild the toolbar but it’s going to potentially require code and then there’s the security trimming, etc. that you have to get right. DVWPs are not automatically updated if you add a column to the list like DispForm.aspx is. Work, work, work. For these reasons I thought it would be easier to take the already existing (modified) DispForm.aspx page and just add some jQuery magic to the page to find the item. Why do we need to find it? DispForm.aspx relies on a querystring parameter called “ID” which then displays whatever that item ID number is in the list. Trouble is, when you’re coming in from an external app via a link, you don’t know what that internal ID is (and frankly shouldn’t). I don’t like exposing internal SharePoint IDs to the outside world for the same reason I don’t do it with database IDs. They’re internal and while it’s find to use on the site itself you don’t want external links using it. It’s volatile and can change (delete one item then re-add it back with the same data and watch any ID references break). The next thought might be to call a SharePoint web service with a CAML query to get the item ID number using some criteria (in this case, the customer number). That’s great if you have that ability but again we had an existing application we were just adding a link to. The last thing I wanted to do was to crack open the code on that sucker and start calling web services (primarily because it’s Java, but really I’m a lazy geek). However if you’re doing this and have access to call a web service that would be an option. Back to this problem, how do I a) find a SharePoint List Item based on some field value other than ID and b) make it low impact so I can just construct a URL to it? That’s where jQuery and SPServices came to the rescue. After spending a few hours of emails back and forth with Marc and a couple of phone calls (and updating jQuery to the latest version, duh!) it was a simple answer. First we need a reference to a) jQuery b) SPServices and c) our script. I just dropped a Content Editor Web Part, the Swiss Army Knives of Web Parts, onto the DispForm.aspx page and added these lines: <script type="text/javascript" src="http://intranet/JavaScript/jquery-1.4.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://intranet/JavaScript/jquery.SPServices-0.5.3.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://intranet/JavaScript/RedirectToID.js"> </script> Update it to point to where you keep your scripts located. I prefer to keep them all in Document Libraries as I can make changes to them without having to remote into the server (and on a multiple web front end, that’s just a PITA), it provides me with version control of sorts, and it’s quick to add new plugins and scripts. Now we can look at our RedirectToID.js script. This invokes the SPServices Library to call the GetListItems method of the Lists web service and then rewrites the URL to DispForm.aspx to use the correct SharePoint ID (the internal one). $(document).ready(function(){ var queryStringValues = $().SPServices.SPGetQueryString(); var id = queryStringValues["ID"]; if(id == "0") { var customer = queryStringValues["CustomerNumber"]; var query = "<Query><Where><Eq><FieldRef Name='CustomerNumber'/><Value Type='Text'>" + customer + "</Value></Eq></Where></Query>"; var url = window.location; $().SPServices({ operation: "GetListItems", listName: "Customers", async: false, CAMLQuery: query, completefunc: function (xData, Status) { $(xData.responseXML).find("[nodeName=z:row]").each(function(){ id = $(this).attr("ows_ID"); url = $().SPServices.SPGetCurrentSite() + "/Lists/Customers/DispForm.aspx?ID=" + id; window.location = url; }); } }); } }); What’s happening here? Line 3: We call SPServices.SPGetQueryString to get an array of query string values (a handy function in the library as I had 15 lines of code to do this which is now gone). Line 4: Extract the ID value from the query string Line 6: If we pass in “0” it means we’re looking up a field value. This allows DispForm.aspx to work like normal with SharePoint lists but lookup our values when invoked. Why ID at all? DispForm.aspx doesn’t work unless you pass in something and “0” is a *magic* number that will invoke the page but not lookup a value in the database. Line 8-15: Extract the CustomerNumber query string value, build a CAML query to find it then call the GetListitems method using SPServices Line 16: Process the results in our completefunc to iterate over all the rows (there should only be one) and extract the real ID of the item Line 17-20: Build a new URL based on the site (using a call to SPGetCurrentSite) and append our real ID to redirect to the DispForm.aspx page As you can see, it dynamically creates a CAML query for the call to the web service using the passed in value. You could even make this generic to take in different query strings, one for the field name to search for and the other for the value to find. That way it could be used for any field you want. For example you could bring up the correct item on the DispForm.aspx page based on customer name with something like this: http://myserver/Lists/Customers/DispForm.aspx?ID=0&FilterId=CustomerName&FilterValue=Sony Use your imagination. Some people would opt for building a custom page with a DVWP but if you want to leverage all the functionality of DispForm.aspx this might come in handy if you don’t want to rely on internal SharePoint IDs.

  Read the article

• Solaris 11 Launch Blog Carnival Roundup

  - by constant

  Solaris 11 is here! And together with the official launch activities, a lot of Oracle and non-Oracle bloggers contributed helpful and informative blog articles to help your datacenter go to eleven. Here are some notable blog postings, sorted by category for your Solaris 11 blog-reading pleasure: Getting Started/Overview A lot of people speculated that the official launch of Solaris 11 would be on 11/11 (whatever way you want to turn it), but it actually happened two days earlier. Larry Wake himself offers 11 Reasons Why Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Isn't Being Released on 11/11/11. Then, Larry goes on with a summary: Oracle Solaris 11: The First Cloud OS gives you a short and sweet rundown of what the major new features of Solaris 11 are. Jeff Victor has his own list of What's New in Oracle Solaris 11. A popular Solaris 11 meme is to write a blog post about 11 favourite features: Jim Laurent's 11 Reasons to Love Solaris 11, Darren Moffat's 11 Favourite Solaris 11 Features, Mike Gerdt's 11 of My Favourite Things! are just three examples of "11 Favourite Things..." type blog posts, I'm sure many more will follow... More official overview content for Solaris 11 is available from the Oracle Tech Network Solaris 11 Portal. Also, check out Rick Ramsey's blog post Solaris 11 Resources for System Administrators on the OTN Blog and his secret 5 Commands That Make Solaris Administration Easier post from the OTN Garage. (Automatic) Installation and the Image Packaging System (IPS) The brand new Image Packaging System (IPS) and the Automatic Installer (IPS), together with numerous other install/packaging/boot/patching features are among the most significant improvements in Solaris 11. But before installing, you may wonder whether Solaris 11 will support your particular set of hardware devices. Again, the OTN Garage comes to the rescue with Rick Ramsey's post How to Find Out Which Devices Are Supported By Solaris 11. Included is a useful guide to all the first steps to get your Solaris 11 system up and running. Tim Foster had a whole handful of blog posts lined up for the launch, teaching you everything you need to know about IPS but didn't dare to ask: The IPS System Repository, IPS Self-assembly - Part 1: Overlays and Part 2: Multiple Packages Delivering Configuration. Watch out for more IPS posts from Tim! If installing packages or upgrading your system from the net makes you uneasy, then you're not alone: Jim Laurent will tech you how Building a Solaris 11 Repository Without Network Connection will make your life easier. Many of you have already peeked into the future by installing Solaris 11 Express. If you're now wondering whether you can upgrade or whether a fresh install is necessary, then check out Alan Hargreaves's post Upgrading Solaris 11 Express b151a with support to Solaris 11. The trick is in upgrading your pkg(1M) first. Networking One of the first things to do after installing Solaris 11 (or any operating system for that matter), is to set it up for networking. Solaris 11 comes with the brand new "Network Auto-Magic" feature which can figure out everything by itself. For those cases where you want to exercise a little more control, Solaris 11 left a few people scratching their heads. Fortunately, Tschokko wrote up this cool blog post: Solaris 11 manual IPv4 & IPv6 configuration right after the launch ceremony. Thanks, Tschokko! And Milek points out a long awaited networking feature in Solaris 11 called Solaris 11 - hostmodel, which I know for a fact that many customers have looked forward to: How to "bind" a Solaris 11 system to a specific gateway for specific IP address it is using. Steffen Weiberle teaches us how to tune the Solaris 11 networking stack the proper way: ipadm(1M). No more fiddling with ndd(1M)! Check out his tutorial on Solaris 11 Network Tunables. And if you want to get even deeper into the networking stack, there's nothing better than DTrace. Alan Maguire teaches you in: DTracing TCP Congestion Control how to probe deeply into the Solaris 11 TCP/IP stack, the TCP congestion control part in particular. Don't miss his other DTrace and TCP related blog posts! DTrace And there we are: DTrace, the king of all observability tools. Long time DTrace veteran and co-author of The DTrace book*, Brendan Gregg blogged about Solaris 11 DTrace syscall provider changes. BTW, after you install Solaris 11, check out the DTrace toolkit which is installed by default in /usr/dtrace/DTT. It is chock full of handy DTrace scripts, many of which contributed by Brendan himself! Security Another big theme in Solaris 11, and one that is crucial for the success of any operating system in the Cloud is Security. Here are some notable posts in this category: Darren Moffat starts by showing us how to completely get rid of root: Completely Disabling Root Logins on Solaris 11. With no root user, there's one major entry point less to worry about. But that's only the start. In Immutable Zones on Encrypted ZFS, Darren shows us how to double the security of your services: First by locking them into the new Immutable Zones feature, then by encrypting their data using the new ZFS encryption feature. And if you're still missing sudo from your Linux days, Darren again has a solution: Password (PAM) caching for Solaris su - "a la sudo". If you're wondering how much compute power all this encryption will cost you, you're in luck: The Solaris X86 AESNI OpenSSL Engine will make sure you'll use your Intel's embedded crypto support to its fullest. And if you own a brand new SPARC T4 machine you're even luckier: It comes with its own SPARC T4 OpenSSL Engine. Dan Anderson's posts show how there really is now excuse not to encrypt any more... Developers Solaris 11 has a lot to offer to developers as well. Ali Bahrami has a series of blog posts that cover diverse developer topics: elffile: ELF Specific File Identification Utility, Using Stub Objects and The Stub Proto: Not Just For Stub Objects Anymore to name a few. BTW, if you're a developer and want to shape the future of Solaris 11, then Vijay Tatkar has a hint for you: Oracle (Sun Systems Group) is hiring! Desktop and Graphics Yes, Solaris 11 is a 100% server OS, but it can also offer a decent desktop environment, especially if you are a developer. Alan Coopersmith starts by discussing S11 X11: ye olde window system in today's new operating system, then Calum Benson shows us around What's new on the Solaris 11 Desktop. Even accessibility is a first-class citizen in the Solaris 11 user interface. Peter Korn celebrates: Accessible Oracle Solaris 11 - released! Performance Gone are the days of "Slowaris", when Solaris was among the few OSes that "did the right thing" while others cut corners just to win benchmarks. Today, Solaris continues doing the right thing, and it delivers the right performance at the same time. Need proof? Check out Brian's BestPerf blog with continuous updates from the benchmarking lab, including Recent Benchmarks Using Oracle Solaris 11! Send Me More Solaris 11 Launch Articles! These are just a few of the more interesting blog articles that came out around the Solaris 11 launch, I'm sure there are many more! Feel free to post a comment below if you find a particularly interesting blog post that hasn't been listed so far and share your enthusiasm for Solaris 11! *Affiliate link: Buy cool stuff and support this blog at no extra cost. We both win! var flattr_uid = '26528'; var flattr_tle = 'Solaris 11 Launch Blog Carnival Roundup'; var flattr_dsc = '<strong>Solaris 11 is here!</strong>And together with the official launch activities, a lot of Oracle and non-Oracle bloggers contributed helpful and informative blog articles to help your datacenter <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_to_eleven">go to eleven</a>.Here are some notable blog postings, sorted by category for your Solaris 11 blog-reading pleasure:'; var flattr_tag = 'blogging,digest,Oracle,Solaris,solaris,solaris 11'; var flattr_cat = 'text'; var flattr_url = 'http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2011/11/solaris-11-launch-blog-carnival-roundup'; var flattr_lng = 'en_GB'

  Read the article

• Interesting articles and blogs on SPARC T4

  - by mv

  Interesting articles and blogs on SPARC T4 processor   I have consolidated all the interesting information I could get on SPARC T4 processor and its hardware cryptographic capabilities.  Hope its useful. 1. Advantages of SPARC T4 processor  Most important points in this T4 announcement are : "The SPARC T4 processor was designed from the ground up for high speed security and has a cryptographic stream processing unit (SPU) integrated directly into each processor core. These accelerators support 16 industry standard security ciphers and enable high speed encryption at rates 3 to 5 times that of competing processors. By integrating encryption capabilities directly inside the instruction pipeline, the SPARC T4 processor eliminates the performance and cost barriers typically associated with secure computing and makes it possible to deliver high security levels without impacting the user experience." Data Sheet has more details on these  : "New on-chip Encryption Instruction Accelerators with direct non-privileged support for 16 industry-standard cryptographic algorithms plus random number generation in each of the eight cores: AES, Camellia, CRC32c, DES, 3DES, DH, DSA, ECC, Kasumi, MD5, RSA, SHA-1, SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512" I ran "isainfo -v" command on Solaris 11 Sparc T4-1 system. It shows the new instructions as expected  : $ isainfo -v 64-bit sparcv9 applications crc32c cbcond pause mont mpmul sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 camellia kasumi des aes ima hpc vis3 fmaf asi_blk_init vis2 vis popc 32-bit sparc applications crc32c cbcond pause mont mpmul sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 camellia kasumi des aes ima hpc vis3 fmaf asi_blk_init vis2 vis popc v8plus div32 mul32  2.  Dan Anderson's Blog have some interesting points about how these can be used : "New T4 crypto instructions include: aes_kexpand0, aes_kexpand1, aes_kexpand2,         aes_eround01, aes_eround23, aes_eround01_l, aes_eround_23_l, aes_dround01, aes_dround23, aes_dround01_l, aes_dround_23_l.       Having SPARC T4 hardware crypto instructions is all well and good, but how do we access it ?      The software is available with Solaris 11 and is used automatically if you are running Solaris a SPARC T4.  It is used internally in the kernel through kernel crypto modules.  It is available in user space through the PKCS#11 library." 3.   Dans' Blog on Where's the Crypto Libraries? Although this was written in 2009 but still is very useful  "Here's a brief tour of the major crypto libraries shown in the digraph:   The libpkcs11 library contains the PKCS#11 API (C_\*() functions, such as C_Initialize()). That in turn calls library pkcs11_softtoken or pkcs11_kernel, for userland or kernel crypto providers. The latter is used mostly for hardware-assisted cryptography (such as n2cp for Niagara2 SPARC processors), as that is performed more efficiently in kernel space with the "kCF" module (Kernel Crypto Framework). Additionally, for Solaris 10, strong crypto algorithms were split off in separate libraries, pkcs11_softtoken_extra libcryptoutil contains low-level utility functions to help implement cryptography. libsoftcrypto (OpenSolaris and Solaris Nevada only) implements several symmetric-key crypto algorithms in software, such as AES, RC4, and DES3, and the bignum library (used for RSA). libmd implements MD5, SHA, and SHA2 message digest algorithms" 4. Difference in T3 and T4 Diagram in this blog is good and self explanatory. Jeff's blog also highlights the differences  "The T4 servers have improved crypto acceleration, described at https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/sparc_t4_openssl_engine. It is "just built in" so administrators no longer have to assign crypto accelerator units to domains - it "just happens". Every physical or virtual CPU on a SPARC-T4 has full access to hardware based crypto acceleration at all times. .... For completeness sake, it's worth noting that the T4 adds more crypto algorithms, and accelerates Camelia, CRC32c, and more SHA-x." 5. About performance counters In this blog, performance counters are explained : "Note that unlike T3 and before, T4 crypto doesn't require kernel modules like ncp or n2cp, there is no visibility of crypto hardware with kstats or cryptoadm. T4 does provide hardware counters for crypto operations.  You can see these using cpustat: cpustat -c pic0=Instr_FGU_crypto 5 You can check the general crypto support of the hardware and OS with the command "isainfo -v". Since T4 crypto's implementation now allows direct userland access, there are no "crypto units" visible to cryptoadm.  " For more details refer Martin's blog as well. 6. How to turn off  SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration  I found this interesting blog from Darren about how to turn off  SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration. "One of the new Solaris 11 features of the linker/loader is the ability to have a single ELF object that has multiple different implementations of the same functions that are selected at runtime based on the capabilities of the machine.   The alternate to this is having the application coded to call getisax(2) system call and make the choice itself.  We use this functionality of the linker/loader when we build the userland libraries for the Solaris Cryptographic Framework (specifically libmd.so and libsoftcrypto.so) The Solaris linker/loader allows control of a lot of its functionality via environment variables, we can use that to control the version of the cryptographic functions we run.  To do this we simply export the LD_HWCAP environment variable with values that tell ld.so.1 to not select the HWCAP section matching certain features even if isainfo says they are present.  This will work for consumers of the Solaris Cryptographic Framework that use the Solaris PKCS#11 libraries or use libmd.so interfaces directly.  For SPARC T4 : export LD_HWCAP="-aes -des -md5 -sha256 -sha512 -mont -mpul" .. For Intel systems with AES-NI support: export LD_HWCAP="-aes"" Note that LD_HWCAP is explained in  http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23823_01/html/816-5165/ld.so.1-1.html "LD_HWCAP, LD_HWCAP_32, and LD_HWCAP_64 -  Identifies an alternative hardware capabilities value... A “-” prefix results in the capabilities that follow being removed from the alternative capabilities." 7. Whitepaper on SPARC T4 Servers—Optimized for End-to-End Data Center Computing This Whitepaper on SPARC T4 Servers—Optimized for End-to-End Data Center Computing explains more details.  It has DTrace scripts which may come in handy : "To ensure the hardware-assisted cryptographic acceleration is configured to use and working with the security scenarios, it is recommended to use the following Solaris DTrace script. #!/usr/sbin/dtrace -s pid$1:libsoftcrypto:yf*:entry, pid$target:libsoftcrypto:rsa*:entry, pid$1:libmd:yf*:entry { @[probefunc] = count(); } tick-1sec { printa(@ops); trunc(@ops); }" Note that I have slightly modified the D Script to have RSA "libsoftcrypto:rsa*:entry" as well as per recommendations from Chi-Chang Lin. 8. References http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/sparc-t4-announcement-494846.html http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/t-series/sparc-t4-1-ds-487858.pdf https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/sparc_t4_openssl_engine https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/where_s_the_crypto_libraries https://blogs.oracle.com/darren/entry/howto_turn_off_sparc_t4 http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23823_01/html/816-5165/ld.so.1-1.html   https://blogs.oracle.com/hardware/entry/unleash_the_power_of_cryptography https://blogs.oracle.com/cmt/entry/t4_crypto_cheat_sheet https://blogs.oracle.com/martinm/entry/t4_performance_counters_explained  https://blogs.oracle.com/jsavit/entry/no_mau_required_on_a http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/t-series/sparc-t4-business-wp-524472.pdf

  Read the article

• What is SharePoint Out of the Box?

  - by Bil Simser

  It’s always fun in the blog-o-sphere and SharePoint bloggers always keep the pot boiling. Bjorn Furuknap recently posted a blog entry titled Why Out-of-the-Box Makes No Sense in SharePoint, quickly followed up by a rebuttal by Marc Anderson on his blog. Okay, now that we have all the players and the stage what’s the big deal? Bjorn started his post saying that you don’t use “out-of-the-box” (OOTB) SharePoint because it makes no sense. I have to disagree with his premise because what he calls OOTB is basically installing SharePoint and admiring it, but not using it. In his post he lays claim that modifying say the OOTB contacts list by removing (or I suppose adding) a column, now puts you in a situation where you’re no longer using the OOTB functionality. Really? Side note. Dear Internet, please stop comparing building software to building houses. Or comparing software architecture to building architecture. Or comparing web sites to making dinner. Are you trying to dumb down something so the general masses understand it? Comparing a technical skill to a construction operation isn’t the way to do this. Last time I checked, most people don’t know how to build houses and last time I checked people reading technical SharePoint blogs are generally technical people that understand the terms you use. Putting metaphors around software development to make it easy to understand is detrimental to the goal. </rant> Okay, where were we? Right, adding columns to lists means you are no longer using the OOTB functionality. Yeah, I still don’t get it. Another statement Bjorn makes is that using the OOTB functionality kills the flexibility SharePoint has in creating exactly what you want. IMHO this really flies in the absolute face of *where* SharePoint *really* shines. For the past year or so I’ve been leaning more and more towards OOTB solutions over custom development for the simple reason that its expensive to maintain systems and code and assets. SharePoint has enabled me to do this simply by providing the tools where I can give users what they need without cracking open up Visual Studio. This might be the fact that my day job is with a regulated company and there’s more scrutiny with spending money on anything new, but frankly that should be the position of any responsible developer, architect, manager, or PM. Do you really want to throw money away because some developer tells you that you need a custom web part when perhaps with some creative thinking or expectation setting with customers you can meet the need with what you already have. The way I read Bjorn’s terminology of “out-of-the-box” is install the software and tell people to go to a website and admire the OOTB system, but don’t change it! For those that know things like WordPress, DotNetNuke, SubText, Drupal or any of those content management/blogging systems, its akin to installing the software and setting up the “Hello World” blog post or page, then staring at it like it’s useful. “Yes, we are using WordPress!”. Then not adding a new post, creating a new category, or adding an About page. Perhaps I’m wrong in my interpretation. This leads us to what is OOTB SharePoint? To many people I’ve talked to the last few hours on twitter, email, etc. it is *not* just installing software but actually using it as it was fit for purpose. What’s the purpose of SharePoint then? It has many purposes, but using the OOTB templates Microsoft has given you the ability to collaborate on projects, author/share/publish documents, create pages, track items/contacts/tasks/etc. in a multi-user web based interface, and so on. Microsoft has pretty clear definitions of these different levels of SharePoint we’re talking about and I think it’s important for everyone to know what they are and what they mean. Personalization and Administration To me, this is the OOTB experience. You install the product and then are able to do things like create new lists, sites, edit and personalize pages, create new views, etc. Basically use the platform services available to you with Windows SharePoint Services (or SharePoint Foundation in 2010) to your full advantage. No code, no special tools needed, and very little user training required. Could you take someone who has never done anything in a website or piece of software and unleash them onto a site? Probably not. However I would argue that anyone who’s configured the Outlook reading layout or applied styles to a Word document probably won’t have too much difficulty in using SharePoint OUT OF THE BOX. Customization Here’s where things might get a bit murky but to me this is where you start looking at HTML/ASPX page code through SharePoint Designer, using jQuery scripts and plugging them into Web Part Pages via a Content Editor Web Part, and generally enhancing the site. The JavaScript debate might kick in here claiming it’s no different than C#, and frankly you can totally screw a site up with jQuery on a CEWP just as easily as you can with a C# delegate control deployed to the server file system. However (again, my blog, my opinion) the customization label comes in when I need to access the server (for example creating a custom theme) or have some kind of net-new element I add to the system that wasn’t there OOTB. It’s not content (like a new list or site), it’s code and does something functional. Development Here’s were the propeller hats come on and we’re talking algorithms and unit tests and compilers oh my. Software is deployed to the server, people are writing solutions after some kind of training (perhaps), there might be some specialized tools they use to craft and deploy the solutions, there’s the possibility of exceptions being thrown, etc. There are a lot of definitions here and just like customization it might get murky (do you let non-developers build solutions using development, i.e. jQuery/C#?). In my experience, it’s much more cost effective keeping solutions under the first two umbrellas than leaping into the third one. Arguably you could say that you can’t build useful solutions without *some* kind of code (even just some simple jQuery). I think you can get a *lot* of value just from using the OOTB experience and I don’t think you’re constraining your users that much. I’m not saying Marc or Bjorn are wrong. Like Obi-Wan stated, they’re both correct “from a certain point of view”. To me, SharePoint Out of the Box makes total sense and should not be dismissed. I just don’t agree with the premise that Bjorn is basing his statements on but that’s just my opinion and his is different and never the twain shall meet.

  Read the article

• iOS Support with Windows Azure Mobile Services – now with Push Notifications

  - by ScottGu

  A few weeks ago I posted about a number of improvements to Windows Azure Mobile Services. One of these was the addition of an Objective-C client SDK that allows iOS developers to easily use Mobile Services for data and authentication.  Today I'm excited to announce a number of improvement to our iOS SDK and, most significantly, our new support for Push Notifications via APNS (Apple Push Notification Services).  This makes it incredibly easy to fire push notifications to your iOS users from Windows Azure Mobile Service scripts. Push Notifications via APNS We've provided two complete tutorials that take you step-by-step through the provisioning and setup process to enable your Windows Azure Mobile Service application with APNS (Apple Push Notification Services), including all of the steps required to configure your application for push in the Apple iOS provisioning portal: Getting started with Push Notifications - iOS Push notifications to users by using Mobile Services - iOS Once you've configured your application in the Apple iOS provisioning portal and uploaded the APNS push certificate to the Apple provisioning portal, it's just a matter of uploading your APNS push certificate to Mobile Services using the Windows Azure admin portal: Clicking the “upload” within the “Push” tab of your Mobile Service allows you to browse your local file-system and locate/upload your exported certificate.  As part of this you can also select whether you want to use the sandbox (dev) or production (prod) Apple service: Now, the code to send a push notification to your clients from within a Windows Azure Mobile Service is as easy as the code below: push.apns.send(deviceToken, {      alert: 'Toast: A new Mobile Services task.',      sound: 'default' }); This will cause Windows Azure Mobile Services to connect to APNS (Apple Push Notification Service) and send a notification to the iOS device you specified via the deviceToken: Check out our reference documentation for full details on how to use the new Windows Azure Mobile Services apns object to send your push notifications. Feedback Scripts An important part of working with any PNS (Push Notification Service) is handling feedback for expired device tokens and channels. This typically happens when your application is uninstalled from a particular device and can no longer receive your notifications. With Windows Notification Services you get an instant response from the HTTP server.  Apple’s Notification Services works in a slightly different way and provides an additional endpoint you can connect to poll for a list of expired tokens. As with all of the capabilities we integrate with Mobile Services, our goal is to allow developers to focus more on building their app and less on building infrastructure to support their ideas. Therefore we knew we had to provide a simple way for developers to integrate feedback from APNS on a regular basis.  This week’s update now includes a new screen in the portal that allows you to optionally provide a script to process your APNS feedback – and it will be executed by Mobile Services on an ongoing basis: This script is invoked periodically while your service is active. To poll the feedback endpoint you can simply call the apns object's getFeedback method from within this script: push.apns.getFeedback({       success: function(results) {           // results is an array of objects with a deviceToken and time properties      } }); This returns you a list of invalid tokens that can now be removed from your database. iOS Client SDK improvements Over the last month we've continued to work with a number of iOS advisors to make improvements to our Objective-C SDK. The SDK is being developed under an open source license (Apache 2.0) and is available on github. Many of the improvements are behind the scenes to improve performance and memory usage. However, one of the biggest improvements to our iOS Client API is the addition of an even easier login method.  Below is the Objective-C code you can now write to invoke it: [client loginWithProvider:@"twitter"                     onController:self                        animated:YES                      completion:^(MSUser *user, NSError *error) {      // if no error, you are now logged in via twitter }]; This code will automatically present and dismiss our login view controller as a modal dialog on the specified controller.  This does all the hard work for you and makes login via Twitter, Google, Facebook and Microsoft Account identities just a single line of code. My colleague Josh just posted a short video demonstrating these new features which I'd recommend checking out: Summary The above features are all now live in production and are available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using Mobile Services today. Visit the Windows Azure Mobile Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with Mobile Services. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

  Read the article

• c# Properties.Settings.Default Doesn't work as expected

  - by Jack

  I've been working on a program to automate my backup checks with LogMeIn backup (a windows forms based program). I now need a way to store user settings, to save information easily. I've never worked with the Application/User settings that is somewhat "built-in" - and decided to try it, but ran into problems. I added four settings for now: IncludeCriteria (Specialized.StringCollection) ExcludeCriteria (Specialized.StringCollection) ReportPath (string) ReportType (int) But the behavior doesn't act as expected (go figure). After saving some values in my program, I go back into edit/view my settings values using the VS 2008 settings editor. None of my values are stored. While I think this may be because those values are just default values, wouldn't that be where they can be stored/read/changed? Here is my load form code (still very unrefined): private void setupForm() { txtPath.Text = BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ReportPath == null ? "" : BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ReportPath; if (BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ReportType == 0) { radioHTML.Checked = true; } else radioExcel.Checked = true; if (BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.IncludeCriteria.Count > 0) { listIncludeCriteria.DataSource = Properties.Settings.Default.IncludeCriteria; //foreach (string s in Properties.Settings.Default.IncludeCriteria) // listIncludeCriteria.Items.Add(s); } if (BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ExcludeCriteria.Count > 0) { listExcludeCriteria.DataSource = BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ExcludeCriteria; //foreach (string s in Properties.Settings.Default.ExcludeCriteria) // listExcludeCriteria.Items.Add(s); } } listIncludeCriteria is just a listbox. When the user saves I call this method: private void saveSettings() { //var settings = BackupReport.Properties.Settings; if (txtPath.Text != "") { BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ReportPath = txtPath.Text; } if (listIncludeCriteria.Items.Count > 0) { //BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.IncludeCriteria = (StringCollection)listIncludeCriteria.Items.AsQueryable(); foreach (var i in listIncludeCriteria.Items) { if (!isIncludeDuplicate(i.ToString())) BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.IncludeCriteria.Add(i.ToString()); } } if (listExcludeCriteria.Items.Count > 0) { //BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ExcludeCriteria = (StringCollection)listExcludeCriteria.Items.AsQueryable(); foreach (var i in listExcludeCriteria.Items) { if (!isExcludeDuplicate(i.ToString())) Properties.Settings.Default.ExcludeCriteria.Add(i.ToString()); } } if (radioExcel.Checked == true) BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ReportType = 1; else BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ReportType = 0; BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.Save(); //Properties.Settings.Default.Save(); this.DialogResult = DialogResult.OK; this.Close(); } The wierd thing is when the form loads, the path I put in the first time seems to come up (ReportPath) - even the listBoxes are populated with a bunch of crap I put in - yet I cant find these values anywhere. Any help would be appreciated! Josh

  Read the article

• WPF MVVM: Convention over Configuration for ResourceDictionary ?

  - by Jeffrey Knight

  Update In the wiki spirit of StackOverflow, here's an update: I spiked Joe White's IValueConverter suggestion below. It works like a charm. I've written a "quickstart" example of this that automates the mapping of ViewModels-Views using some cheap string replacement. If no View is found to represent the ViewModel, it defaults to an "Under Construction" page. I'm dubbing this approach "WPF MVVM White" since it was Joe White's idea. Here are a couple screenshots. The first image is a case of "[SomeControlName]ViewModel" has a corresponding "[SomeControlName]View", based on pure naming convention. The second is a case where the ModelView doesn't have any views to represent it. No more ResourceDictionaries with long ViewModel to View mappings. It's pure naming convention now. I'm hosting a download of the project here: http://rootsilver.com/files/Mvvm.White.Quickstart.zip I'll follow up with a longer blog post walk through. Original Post I read Josh Smith's fantastic MSDN article on WPF MVVM over the weekend. It's destined to be a cult classic. It took me a while to wrap my head around the magic of asking WPF to render the ViewModel. It's like saying "Here's a class, WPF. Go figure out which UI to use to present it." For those who missed this magic, WPF can do this by looking up the View for ModelView in the ResourceDictionary mapping and pulling out the corresponding View. (Scroll down to Figure 10 Supplying a View ). The first thing that jumps out at me immediately is that there's already a strong naming convention of: classNameView ("View" suffix) classNameViewModel ("ViewModel" suffix) My question is: Since the ResourceDictionary can be manipulated programatically, I"m wondering if anyone has managed to Regex.Replace the whole thing away, so the lookup is automatic, and any new View/ViewModels get resolved by virtue of their naming convention? [Edit] What I'm imagining is a hook/interception into ResourceDictionary. ... Also considering a method at startup that uses interop to pull out *View$ and *ViewModel$ class names to build the DataTemplate dictionary in code: //build list foreach .... String.Format("<DataTemplate DataType=\"{x:Type vm:{0} }\"><v:{1} /></DataTemplate>", ...)

  Read the article

• SQLite3 table not accepting INSERT INTO statements. The table is created, and so is the database, but nothing is passed into it

  - by user1460029

  <?php try { //open the database $db = new PDO('sqlite:music.db'); $db->exec("DELETE from Music;"); $db->exec("INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Whatd I Say', 'Ray Charles', '1956');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Smells Like Teen Spirit.', 'Nirvana', '1991');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Hey Jude', 'The Beatles', '1968');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Johnny B. Goode', 'Chuck Berry', '1958');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Good Vibrations', 'The Beach Boys', '1966');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Respect', 'Aretha Franklin', '1967');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Whats Going On', 'Marvin Gaye', '1971');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Imagine', 'John Lennon', '1971');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('(I Cant Get No) Satisfaction', 'Rolling Stones', '1965');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Like A Rolling Stone', 'Bob Dylan', '1965');"); //now output the data to a simple html table... //example of specifier --> WHERE First=\'Josh\'; <-- print "<table border=1>"; print "<tr><td>Title</td><td>Author</td><td>Y.O.P.</td></tr>"; $result = $db->query('SELECT * FROM Music '); foreach($result as $row) { print "<td>".$row['Title']."</td>"; print "<td>".$row['Author']."</td>"; print "<td>".$row['ReleaseDate']."</td></tr>"; } print "</table>"; $db = NULL; } catch(PDOException $e) { print 'Exception : '.$e->getMessage(); } ?> I am not sure why nothing is being inserted into the table. The file 'music.db' exists in the right path. For the record, I can only use SQlite3, no SQL allowed. PHP is allowed, so is SQLite3.

  Read the article

• Graph Tour with Uniform Cost Search in Java

  - by user324817

  Hi. I'm new to this site, so hopefully you guys don't mind helping a nub. Anyway, I've been asked to write code to find the shortest cost of a graph tour on a particular graph, whose details are read in from file. The graph is shown below: http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/8907/graphr.jpg This is for an Artificial Intelligence class, so I'm expected to use a decent enough search method (brute force has been allowed, but not for full marks). I've been reading, and I think that what I'm looking for is an A* search with constant heuristic value, which I believe is a uniform cost search. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around how to apply this in Java. Basically, here's what I have: Vertex class - ArrayList<Edge> adjacencies; String name; int costToThis; Edge class - final Vertex target; public final int weight; Now at the moment, I'm struggling to work out how to apply the uniform cost notion to my desired goal path. Basically I have to start on a particular node, visit all other nodes, and end on that same node, with the lowest cost. As I understand it, I could use a PriorityQueue to store all of my travelled paths, but I can't wrap my head around how I show the goal state as the starting node with all other nodes visited. Here's what I have so far, which is pretty far off the mark: public static void visitNode(Vertex vertex) { ArrayList<Edge> firstEdges = vertex.getAdjacencies(); for(Edge e : firstEdges) { e.target.costToThis = e.weight + vertex.costToThis; queue.add(e.target); } Vertex next = queue.remove(); visitNode(next); } Initially this takes the starting node, then recursively visits the first node in the PriorityQueue (the path with the next lowest cost). My problem is basically, how do I stop my program from following a path specified in the queue if that path is at the goal state? The queue currently stores Vertex objects, but in my mind this isn't going to work as I can't store whether other vertices have been visited inside a Vertex object. Help is much appreciated! Josh

  Read the article

• Why is this mod_rewrite RewriteRule directive not working in the .htaccess file?

  - by morgant

  I've got a site that was hosted on a linux el cheapo hosting service that I'm migrating to my Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Server server running Apache 2.2.8 & PHP 5.2.5 w/rewrite_module enabled and AllowOverride All, but I'm running into an issue with the following lines in the .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On #RewriteRule ^view/([^/\.]+)/?$ /view.php?item=$1 [L] #RewriteRule ^order/([^/\.]+)/?$ /order.php?item=$1 [L] RewriteRule ^category/([^/\.]+)/?$ /category.php?category=$1 [L] As you can see, I've commented out the RewriteRule directives for /view/ and /order/, so I'm only dealing with /category/. When I attempt to load http://domain.tld/category/2/ it runs category.php (I've added debug code to confirm), but $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] comes through as /category/2/ and $_GET['category'] comes through as empty. I'm usually fine with troubleshooting .htaccess files and mod_rewrite directives, but this one's got me stumped for some reason. Update: I followed Josh's suggestion and here's the what's dumped to mod_rewrite.log when I try to access http://domain.tld/category/2/: 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (2) init rewrite engine with requested uri /category/13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (3) applying pattern '.*' to uri '/category/13' 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (1) pass through /category/13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6aa98/subreq] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] add path info postfix: /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php -> /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php/13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6aa98/subreq] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] strip per-dir prefix: /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php/13 -> category.php/13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6aa98/subreq] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] applying pattern '^category/([^/\.]+)/?$' to uri 'category.php/13' 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6aa98/subreq] (1) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] pass through /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] add path info postfix: /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php -> /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php/13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] strip per-dir prefix: /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php/13 -> category.php/13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] applying pattern '^category/([^/\.]+)/?$' to uri 'category.php/13' 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (1) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] pass through /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (2) init rewrite engine with requested uri /13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (3) applying pattern '.*' to uri '/13' 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (1) pass through /13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] strip per-dir prefix: /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/13 -> 13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] applying pattern '^category/([^/\.]+)/?$' to uri '13' 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (1) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] pass through /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/13

  Read the article

• Why is this mod_rewrite RewriteRule directive not working in the .htaccess file?

  - by morgant

  I've got a site that was hosted on a linux el cheapo hosting service that I'm migrating to my Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Server server running Apache 2.2.8 & PHP 5.2.5 w/rewrite_module enabled and AllowOverride All, but I'm running into an issue with the following lines in the .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On #RewriteRule ^view/([^/\.]+)/?$ /view.php?item=$1 [L] #RewriteRule ^order/([^/\.]+)/?$ /order.php?item=$1 [L] RewriteRule ^category/([^/\.]+)/?$ /category.php?category=$1 [L] As you can see, I've commented out the RewriteRule directives for /view/ and /order/, so I'm only dealing with /category/. When I attempt to load http://domain.tld/category/2/ it runs category.php (I've added debug code to confirm), but $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] comes through as /category/2/ and $_GET['category'] comes through as empty. I'm usually fine with troubleshooting .htaccess files and mod_rewrite directives, but this one's got me stumped for some reason. Update: I followed Josh's suggestion and here's the what's dumped to mod_rewrite.log when I try to access http://domain.tld/category/2/: 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (2) init rewrite engine with requested uri /category/13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (3) applying pattern '.*' to uri '/category/13' 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (1) pass through /category/13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6aa98/subreq] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] add path info postfix: /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php -> /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php/13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6aa98/subreq] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] strip per-dir prefix: /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php/13 -> category.php/13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6aa98/subreq] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] applying pattern '^category/([^/\.]+)/?$' to uri 'category.php/13' 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6aa98/subreq] (1) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] pass through /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] add path info postfix: /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php -> /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php/13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] strip per-dir prefix: /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php/13 -> category.php/13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] applying pattern '^category/([^/\.]+)/?$' to uri 'category.php/13' 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b5ea98/initial] (1) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] pass through /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/category.php 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (2) init rewrite engine with requested uri /13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (3) applying pattern '.*' to uri '/13' 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (1) pass through /13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] strip per-dir prefix: /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/13 -> 13 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (3) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] applying pattern '^category/([^/\.]+)/?$' to uri '13' 65.19.81.253 - - [22/Oct/2009:17:31:53 --0400] [domain.tld/sid#100aae0b0][rid#100b6ea98/subreq] (1) [perdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/] pass through /Library/WebServer/Documents/tld.domain.www/13

  Read the article

• Adding an Admin user to an ASP.NET MVC 4 application using a single drop-in file

  - by Jon Galloway

  I'm working on an ASP.NET MVC 4 tutorial and wanted to set it up so just dropping a file in App_Start would create a user named "Owner" and assign them to the "Administrator" role (more explanation at the end if you're interested). There are reasons why this wouldn't fit into most application scenarios: It's not efficient, as it checks for (and creates, if necessary) the user every time the app starts up The username, password, and role name are hardcoded in the app (although they could be pulled from config) Automatically creating an administrative account in code (without user interaction) could lead to obvious security issues if the user isn't informed However, with some modifications it might be more broadly useful - e.g. creating a test user with limited privileges, ensuring a required account isn't accidentally deleted, or - as in my case - setting up an account for demonstration or tutorial purposes. Challenge #1: Running on startup without requiring the user to install or configure anything I wanted to see if this could be done just by having the user drop a file into the App_Start folder and go. No copying code into Global.asax.cs, no installing addition NuGet packages, etc. That may not be the best approach - perhaps a NuGet package with a dependency on WebActivator would be better - but I wanted to see if this was possible and see if it offered the best experience. Fortunately ASP.NET 4 and later provide a PreApplicationStartMethod attribute which allows you to register a method which will run when the application starts up. You drop this attribute in your application and give it two parameters: a method name and the type that contains it. I created a static class named PreApplicationTasks with a static method named, then dropped this attribute in it: [assembly: PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(PreApplicationTasks), "Initializer")] That's it. One small gotcha: the namespace can be a problem with assembly attributes. I decided my class didn't need a namespace. Challenge #2: Only one PreApplicationStartMethod per assembly In .NET 4, the PreApplicationStartMethod is marked as AllMultiple=false, so you can only have one PreApplicationStartMethod per assembly. This was fixed in .NET 4.5, as noted by Jon Skeet, so you can have as many PreApplicationStartMethods as you want (allowing you to keep your users waiting for the application to start indefinitely!). The WebActivator NuGet package solves the multiple instance problem if you're in .NET 4 - it registers as a PreApplicationStartMethod, then calls any methods you've indicated using [assembly: WebActivator.PreApplicationStartMethod(type, method)]. David Ebbo blogged about that here:  Light up your NuGets with startup code and WebActivator. In my scenario (bootstrapping a beginner level tutorial) I decided not to worry about this and stick with PreApplicationStartMethod. Challenge #3: PreApplicationStartMethod kicks in before configuration has been read This is by design, as Phil explains. It allows you to make changes that need to happen very early in the pipeline, well before Application_Start. That's fine in some cases, but it caused me problems when trying to add users, since the Membership Provider configuration hadn't yet been read - I got an exception stating that "Default Membership Provider could not be found." The solution here is to run code that requires configuration in a PostApplicationStart method. But how to do that? Challenge #4: Getting PostApplicationStartMethod without requiring WebActivator The WebActivator NuGet package, among other things, provides a PostApplicationStartMethod attribute. That's generally how I'd recommend running code that needs to happen after Application_Start: [assembly: WebActivator.PostApplicationStartMethod(typeof(TestLibrary.MyStartupCode), "CallMeAfterAppStart")] This works well, but I wanted to see if this would be possible without WebActivator. Hmm. Well, wait a minute - WebActivator works in .NET 4, so clearly it's registering and calling PostApplicationStartup tasks somehow. Off to the source code! Sure enough, there's even a handy comment in ActivationManager.cs which shows where PostApplicationStartup tasks are being registered: public static void Run() { if (!_hasInited) { RunPreStartMethods(); // Register our module to handle any Post Start methods. But outside of ASP.NET, just run them now if (HostingEnvironment.IsHosted) { Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper.DynamicModuleUtility.RegisterModule(typeof(StartMethodCallingModule)); } else { RunPostStartMethods(); } _hasInited = true; } } Excellent. Hey, that DynamicModuleUtility seems familiar... Sure enough, K. Scott Allen mentioned it on his blog last year. This is really slick - a PreApplicationStartMethod can register a new HttpModule in code. Modules are run right after application startup, so that's a perfect time to do any startup stuff that requires configuration to be read. As K. Scott says, it's this easy: using System; using System.Web; using Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper; [assembly:PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(MyAppStart), "Start")] public class CoolModule : IHttpModule { // implementation not important // imagine something cool here } public static class MyAppStart { public static void Start() { DynamicModuleUtility.RegisterModule(typeof(CoolModule)); } } Challenge #5: Cooperating with SimpleMembership The ASP.NET MVC Internet template includes SimpleMembership. SimpleMembership is a big improvement over traditional ASP.NET Membership. For one thing, rather than forcing a database schema, it can work with your database schema. In the MVC 4 Internet template case, it uses Entity Framework Code First to define the user model. SimpleMembership bootstrap includes a call to InitializeDatabaseConnection, and I want to play nice with that. There's a new [InitializeSimpleMembership] attribute on the AccountController, which calls \Filters\InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute.cs::OnActionExecuting(). That comment in that method that says "Ensure ASP.NET Simple Membership is initialized only once per app start" which sounds like good advice. I figured the best thing would be to call that directly: new Mvc4SampleApplication.Filters.InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute().OnActionExecuting(null); I'm not 100% happy with this - in fact, it's my least favorite part of this solution. There are two problems - first, directly calling a method on a filter, while legal, seems odd. Worse, though, the Filter lives in the application's namespace, which means that this code no longer works well as a generic drop-in. The simplest workaround would be to duplicate the relevant SimpleMembership initialization code into my startup code, but I'd rather not. I'm interested in your suggestions here. Challenge #6: Module Init methods are called more than once When debugging, I noticed (and remembered) that the Init method may be called more than once per page request - it's run once per instance in the app pool, and an individual page request can cause multiple resource requests to the server. While SimpleMembership does have internal checks to prevent duplicate user or role entries, I'd rather not cause or handle those exceptions. So here's the standard single-use lock in the Module's init method: void IHttpModule.Init(HttpApplication context) { lock (lockObject) { if (!initialized) { //Do stuff } initialized = true; } } Putting it all together With all of that out of the way, here's the code I came up with: using Mvc4SampleApplication.Filters; using System.Web; using System.Web.Security; using WebMatrix.WebData; [assembly: PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(PreApplicationTasks), "Initializer")] public static class PreApplicationTasks { public static void Initializer() { Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper.DynamicModuleUtility .RegisterModule(typeof(UserInitializationModule)); } } public class UserInitializationModule : IHttpModule { private static bool initialized; private static object lockObject = new object(); private const string _username = "Owner"; private const string _password = "p@ssword123"; private const string _role = "Administrator"; void IHttpModule.Init(HttpApplication context) { lock (lockObject) { if (!initialized) { new InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute().OnActionExecuting(null); if (!WebSecurity.UserExists(_username)) WebSecurity.CreateUserAndAccount(_username, _password); if (!Roles.RoleExists(_role)) Roles.CreateRole(_role); if (!Roles.IsUserInRole(_username, _role)) Roles.AddUserToRole(_username, _role); } initialized = true; } } void IHttpModule.Dispose() { } } The Verdict: Is this a good thing? Maybe. I think you'll agree that the journey was undoubtedly worthwhile, as it took us through some of the finer points of hooking into application startup, integrating with membership, and understanding why the WebActivator NuGet package is so useful Will I use this in the tutorial? I'm leaning towards no - I think a NuGet package with a dependency on WebActivator might work better: It's a little more clear what's going on Installing a NuGet package might be a little less error prone than copying a file A novice user could uninstall the package when complete It's a good introduction to NuGet, which is a good thing for beginners to see This code either requires either duplicating a little code from that filter or modifying the file to use the namespace Honestly I'm undecided at this point, but I'm glad that I can weigh the options. If you're interested: Why are you doing this? I'm updating the MVC Music Store tutorial to ASP.NET MVC 4, taking advantage of a lot of new ASP.NET MVC 4 features and trying to simplify areas that are giving people trouble. One change that addresses both needs us using the new OAuth support for membership as much as possible - it's a great new feature from an application perspective, and we get a fair amount of beginners struggling with setting up membership on a variety of database and development setups, which is a distraction from the focus of the tutorial - learning ASP.NET MVC. Side note: Thanks to some great help from Rick Anderson, we had a draft of the tutorial that was looking pretty good earlier this summer, but there were enough changes in ASP.NET MVC 4 all the way up to RTM that there's still some work to be done. It's high priority and should be out very soon. The one issue I ran into with OAuth is that we still need an Administrative user who can edit the store's inventory. I thought about a number of solutions for that - making the first user to register the admin, or the first user to use the username "Administrator" is assigned to the Administrator role - but they both ended up requiring extra code; also, I worried that people would use that code without understanding it or thinking about whether it was a good fit.

  Read the article

• So&hellip; What is a SharePoint Developer?

  - by Mark Rackley

  A few days ago Stacy Draper and I were chatting about what it means to be a SharePoint Developer. That actually turns about to be a conversation with lots of shades of grey. Stacy thought it would make a good blog post… well, I can’t promise this to be a GOOD blog post… So, anyway, I decided to let off a little bomb this morning by posting the following tweet on Twitter: @mrackley: Can someone be considered a SharePoint Developer if all they know how to do is work in SPD? Now, I knew this is a debate that has been going on since the first SharePoint Designer User put SharePoint Developer on their resume. There are probably several blogs out there on the subject, but with the wildfire that is jQuery and a few other new features out there I believe it is an important subject to tackle again. I got a lot of great feedback as well on Twitter. The entire twitter conversation is at the end of this blog posting. Thanks everyone for their opinions. Who cares? Why does it matter? Can’t we all just get along? Yes it matters… everything must be labeled and put in it’s proper place. Pigeon holing is the only way to go!  Just kidding.. I’m not near that anal, but yes! It is important to be able to properly identify the skill set of those people on your team and correctly identify the role you are wanting to hire. Saying you are a “SharePoint Developer” is just too vague and just barely begins to answer the question. Also, knowing who’s on your team and what they can do will ensure you give your clients the best people for the job. A Developer writes code right? So, a Developer uses Visual Studio! Whoa, hold on there Sparky. Even if I concede that to be a developer you have to write code then you still can’t say a SharePoint Developer has to use Visual Studio.  So, you can spell C#, how well can you write XSLT? How’s your jQuery? Sorry bud, that’s code whether you like it or not. There are many ways to write code in SharePoint that have nothing to do with cracking open Visual Studio. So, what are the different ways to develop in SharePoint then? How many different ways can you “develop” in SharePoint?? A lot… Out of the box features In SharePoint you can create a site, create a custom list on that site, do basic calculations in a calculated column, set up alerts, and add all sorts of web parts to a page. Let’s face it.. that IS development! javaScript/jQuery Perhaps you’ve heard by now about this thing called jQuery? It’s all over the place and the answer to a lot of people’s prayers. However be careful, with great power comes great responsibility. Remember, javaScript is executed on the client side and if you abuse it your performance could be affected. Also, Marc Anderson (@sympmarc) wrote a pretty awesome javaScript library called SPServices.  This allows you to access SharePoint’s Web Services using jQuery. How freakin cool is that? With these tools at your disposal the number of things you CAN’T do without Visual Studio grows smaller and smaller. This is definitely development no matter what anyone else says and there is no Visual Studio involved. SharePoint Designer Ahhh.. The cause of and the answer to all of your SharePoint development problems. With SharePoint Designer you can use DataView Web Parts, develop (there’s that word again) your branding, and even connect to external datasources.  There’s a lot you can do in SharePoint Designer. It’s got it’s shortcomings, but it is an invaluable tool in the SharePoint developers toolbox. InfoPath So, can InfoPath development really be considered SharePoint development? I would say yes. You can connect to SharePoint lists, populate fields in a SharePoint list, and even write code in InfoPath. Sounds like SharePoint development to me. Visual Studio – Web Services/WCF So, get this. You can write code for SharePoint and not have a clue what the 12 hive is, what “site actions” means, or know how to do ANYTHING in SharePoint? Poppycock! You say? SharePoint Web Services I say… With SharePoint Web Services you can totally interact with SharePoint without knowing anything about SharePoint. I don’t recommend it of course, but it’s possible. What can you write using SharePoint Web Services? How about a little application called SharePoint Designer? Visual Studio – Object Model And here we are finally:  the SharePoint Object Model.  When you hear “SharePoint Developer” most people think of someone opening Visual Studio and creating a custom web part, workflow, event receiver, etc.. etc.. but I hope that by now I have made the point that this is NOT the only form of SharePoint Development! Again… Who cares? Just crack open Visual Studio for everything! Problem solved! Let’s ponder for a moment, shall we? The business comes to you with a requirement that involves some pretty fancy business calculations, and a complicated view that they do NOT want to look like SharePoint. “No Problem” you proclaim you mighty SharePoint Developer. You go back to your cube, chuckle at the latest Dilbert comic, and crack open Visual Studio. Then you build your custom web part… fight with all the deployment, migration, and UAT that you must go through and proclaim victory two weeks later!!!! Well done my good sir/ma’am! Oh wait… it turns out Sally who is not a “developer” did the exact same thing with a Dataview web part and some jQuery and it’s been in production for two weeks? #CockinessFail I know there are many ASP.NET developers out there that can create a custom control and wrap it to be a SharePoint Web Part.  That does NOT mean they are SharePoint Developers though as far as I’m concerned and I personally would much rather have someone on my team that can manipulate the heck (yes, I said ‘heck’) out of SharePoint using Dataview Web Parts, jQuery, and a roll of duct tape. Just because you know how to write code in Visual Studio does not mean you are a SharePoint Developer. What’s the conclusion here? How do we define ‘it’ and what ‘it’ is called? Fortunately, this is MY blog. I don’t have to give answers, I can stir the pot, laugh and leave you to ponder what it means! There is obviously no right or wrong answer here (unless you disagree with me,then you are flat out wrong). Anyway, there are many opinions.  Here’s mine.  If you put SharePoint Developer on your resume make sure to clearly specify HOW you develop in SharePoint and what tools you use. If we must label these gurus of jQuery and SPD, how about “SharePoint Client Developer” or “SharePoint Front End Developer”? Just throwing out an idea. Whatever we call them, to say they are not developers is short-sighted, arrogant, and unfair. Of course, then we need to figure out what to call all those other SharePoint development types.  Twitter Conversation @next_connect: RT @mrackley: Can someone be considered a SharePoint Developer if all they know how to do is work in SPD? | I say no.... @mikegil:  @mrackley re: yr Developer question: SPD expert <> SP Developer. Can be "sous-developer," though. #SharePoint #SPD @WonderLaura:  Rt @mrackley Can someone be considered a SharePoint Dev if all they know how to do is work in SPD? -- My opinion is that devs write code. @exnav29:  Rt @mrackley Can someone be considered a SharePoint Dev if all they know how to do is work in SPD? => I think devs would use VS as well @ssKevin:  @WonderLaura @mrackley does that mean strictly vb and c# when it comes to #SharePoint ? @jimmywim:  @exnav29 @mrackley nah, I'd say they were a power user. Devs know their way around the 12 hive ;) @sympmarc:  RT @mrackley: Can someone be considered a SharePoint Developer if all they know how to do is work in SPD? -> Fighting words. @sympmarc:  @next_connect @mrackley Besides, we prefer to be called "hacks". ;+) @next_connect:  @sympmarc The important thing is that you don't have to develop code to solve problems and create solutions. @mrackley @mrackley:  @sympmarc @next_connect not tryin to pick fight.. just try and find consensus on definition @usher:  @mrackley I'd still argue that you have a DevLite title that's out there for the collaboration engineers (@sympmarc @next_connect) @next_connect: @usher I agree. I've called it Light Dev/ Configuration before. @sympmarc @mrackley @usher:  @next_connect I like DevLite, low calorie but still same great taste :) @mrackley @sympmarc @mrackley:  @next_connect @usher @sympmarc I don't think there's any "lite" to someone who can bend jQuery and XSLT to their will. @usher:  @mrackley okay, so would you refer to someone that writes user controls and assemblies something different (@next_connect @sympmarc) @usher:  @mrackley when looking for a developer that can write .net code, it's a bit different than an XSLT/jQuery designer. @sympmarc @next_connect @jimmywim:  @mrackley @sympmarc @next_connect I reckon a "dev" does managed code and works in the 12 hive @sympmarc:  @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect We had a similar debate a few days ago @toddbleeker et al @sympmarc:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @toddbleeker @stevenmfowler More abt my Middle Tier term, but still connected. Meet bus need. @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect I used "No Assembly Required" in the past. I also suggested "Supplimenting the SharePoint DOM" @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect Others suggested Information Worker Solutions/Enhancements @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler I also like "SharePoint Scripting Solutions". All the technologies are script. @jimmywim:  @toddbleeker @sympmarc @mrackley @next_connect I like the IW solutions one... @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler This is like the debate that never ends: it is definitely not called Middle Tier. @jimmywim:  @toddbleeker @sympmarc @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler "Scripting" these days makes me think PowerShell... @sympmarc:  @toddbleeker @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler If it forces a debate on h2 best solve bus probs, I'll keep sayin Middle Tier. @usher:  @sympmarc so we know what we're looking for, we just can't define a name? @toddbleeker @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevemfowler @sympmarc:  @usher @sympmarc @toddbleeker @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevemfowler The naming seems to matter more than the substance. :-( @jimmywim:  @sympmarc @usher @toddbleeker @mrackley @next_connect @stevemfowler work brkdn defines tasks, defines tools needed, can then b grp'd by user @WonderLaura:  @mrackley @toddbleeker @jimmywim @sympmarc @usher @next_connect Funny you're asking. @johnrossjr and I spent hours this week on the subject. @stevenmfowler:  RT @toddbleeker: @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler it is definitely not called Middle Tier. < I'm with Todd

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 41 42 43 44 45 46  | Next Page >