new developer - Page 477

10 Best Programming Podcast 2010 Edition

- by mbcrump

This list is in no particular order. Just the 10 best programming podcast that I have found so far. Stack Overflow Podcast - Jeff Atwood (of codinghorror.com) and Joel Spolsky (of joelonsoftware.com) discuss the development of their new programming community, StackOverflow.com. [This Podcast hasn’t been updated in a while, but its always great to hear more from Jeff Atwood] Hanselminutes - Hanselminutes is a weekly audio talk show with noted web developer and technologist Scott Hanselman and hosted by Carl Franklin. Scott discusses utilities and tools, gives practical how-to advice, and discusses ASP.NET or Windows issues and workarounds. [This Podcast has recently started talking about random topics like diabetes, plane travel and geek relationship tips. I am not sure if Scott is trying to move to a more mainstream audience or not] Herding Code - A weekly discussion featuring K. Scott Allen (odetocode.com), Kevin Dente, Scott Koon (lazycoder.com), and Jon Galloway. [Great all all-around podcast that I would recommend to all] Deep Fried Bytes - Deep Fried Bytes is an audio talk show with a Southern flavor hosted by technologists and developers Keith Elder and Chris Woodruff. The show discusses a wide range of topics including application development, operating systems and technology in general. Anything is fair game if it plugs into the wall or takes a battery. [This is one that just keeps getting better] Dot Net Rocks - .NET Rocks! is an Internet Audio Talk Show for Microsoft .NET Developers. [One of the first and usually very high quality content] Connected Show - Connected Show Podcast! A podcast covering new Microsoft technology for the developer community. The show is hosted by Dmitry Lyalin and Peter Laudati. [This and Polymorphic are one of my favorite podcast – Dmitry is a great host and would recommend this to all] Polymorphic Podcast - Object oriented development, architecture and best practices in .NET [Craig is a ASP.NET MVP and a great presenter. His podcast is great and it could only be better if he recorded it more often] ASP.NET Podcast - Wallace B. (Wally) McClure presents interviews and short technical talks on .NET Technologies. [Has great information on ASP.NET of course as well as iPhone Dev] Ruby on Rails Podcast - News and interviews about the Ruby language and the Rails website framework. [Even though I am not a Ruby programmer, I’ve found this podcast very interesting] Software Engineering Radio - Software Engineering Radio is a podcast targeted at the professional software developer. The goal is to be a lasting educational resource, not a newscast. Every ten days, a new episode is published that covers all topics software engineering. Episodes are either tutorials on a specific topic, or an interview with a well-known character from the software engineering world. All SE Radio episodes are original content ? we do not record conferences or talks given in other venues. Each episode comprises two speakers to ensure a lively listening experience. SE Radio is an independent and non-commercial organization. [Another excellent podcast – I would recommend any programmer add this to his/her drive home] If I have missed something, please feel free to email me and it might make the 2011 list. =)

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Announcement: Employee Info Starter Kit (v5.0) is Released

- by Mohammad Ashraful Alam

Ever wanted to have a simple jQuery menu bound with ASP.NET web site map file? Ever wanted to have cool css design stuffs implemented on your ASP.NET data bound controls? Ever wanted to let Visual Studio generate logical layers for you, which can be easily tested, customized and bound with ASP.NET data controls? If your answers with respect to above questions are ‘yes’, then you will probably happy to try out latest release (v5.0) of Employee Starter Kit, which is intended to address different types of real world challenges faced by web application developers when performing common CRUD operations. Using a single database table ‘Employee’, the current release illustrates how to utilize Microsoft ASP.NET 4.0 Web Form Data Controls, Entity Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 effectively in that context. Employee Info Starter Kit is an open source ASP.NET project template that is highly influenced by the concept ‘Pareto Principle’ or 80-20 rule, where it is targeted to enable a web developer to gain 80% productivity with 20% of effort with respect to learning curve and production. This project template is titled as “Employee Info Starter Kit”, which was initially hosted on Microsoft Code Gallery and been downloaded 1, 50,000+ of copies afterword. The latest version of this starter kit is hosted in Codeplex. Release Highlights User End Functional Specification The user end functionalities of this starter kit are pretty simple and straight forward that are focused in to perform CRUD operation on employee records as described below. Creating a new employee record Read existing employee records Update an existing employee record Delete existing employee records Architectural Overview Simple 3 layer architecture (presentation, business logic and data access layer) ASP.NET web form based user interface Built-in code generators for logical layers, implemented in Visual Studio default template engine (T4) Built-in Entity Framework entities as business entities (aka: data containers) Data Mapper design pattern based Data Access Layer, implemented in C# and Entity Framework Domain Model design pattern based Business Logic Layer, implemented in C# Object Model for Cross Cutting Concerns (such as validation, logging, exception management) Minimum System Requirements Visual Studio 2010 (Web Developer Express Edition) or higher Sql Server 2005 (Express Edition) or higher Technology Utilized Programming Languages/Scripts Browser side: JavaScript Web server side: C# Code Generation Template: T-4 Template Frameworks .NET Framework 4.0 JavaScript Framework: jQuery 1.5.1 CSS Framework: 960 grid system .NET Framework Components .NET Entity Framework .NET Optional/Named Parameters (new in .net 4.0) .NET Tuple (new in .net 4.0) .NET Extension Method .NET Lambda Expressions .NET Anonymous Type .NET Query Expressions .NET Automatically Implemented Properties .NET LINQ .NET Partial Classes and Methods .NET Generic Type .NET Nullable Type ASP.NET Meta Description and Keyword Support (new in .net 4.0) ASP.NET Routing (new in .net 4.0) ASP.NET Grid View (CSS support for sorting - (new in .net 4.0)) ASP.NET Repeater ASP.NET Form View ASP.NET Login View ASP.NET Site Map Path ASP.NET Skin ASP.NET Theme ASP.NET Master Page ASP.NET Object Data Source ASP.NET Role Based Security Getting Started Guide To see Employee Info Starter Kit in action is pretty easy! Download the latest version. Extract the file. From the extracted folder click the C# project file (Eisk.Web.csproj) to open it in Visual Studio 2010 Hit Ctrl+F5! The current release (v5.0) of Employee Info Starter Kit is properly packaged, fully documented and well tested. If you want to learn more about it in details, just check the following links: Release Home Page Installation Walkthrough Hand on Coding Walkthrough Technical Reference Enjoy!

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How the "migrations" approach makes database continuous integration possible

- by David Atkinson

Testing a database upgrade script as part of a continuous integration process will only work if there is an easy way to automate the generation of the upgrade scripts. There are two common approaches to managing upgrade scripts. The first is to maintain a set of scripts as-you-go-along. Many SQL developers I've encountered will store these in a folder prefixed numerically to ensure they are ordered as they are intended to be run. Occasionally there is an accompanying document or a batch file that ensures that the scripts are run in the defined order. Writing these scripts during the course of development requires discipline. It's all too easy to load up the table designer and to make a change directly to the development database, rather than to save off the ALTER statement that is required when the same change is made to production. This discipline can add considerable overhead to the development process. However, come the end of the project, everything is ready for final testing and deployment. The second development paradigm is to not do the above. Changes are made to the development database without considering the incremental update scripts required to effect the changes. At the end of the project, the SQL developer or DBA, is tasked to work out what changes have been made, and to hand-craft the upgrade scripts retrospectively. The end of the project is the wrong time to be doing this, as the pressure is mounting to ship the product. And where data deployment is involved, it is prudent not to feel rushed. Schema comparison tools such as SQL Compare have made this latter technique more bearable. These tools work by analyzing the before and after states of a database schema, and calculating the SQL required to transition the database. Problem solved? Not entirely. Schema comparison tools are huge time savers, but they have their limitations. There are certain changes that can be made to a database that can't be determined purely from observing the static schema states. If a column is split, how do we determine the algorithm required to copy the data into the new columns? If a NOT NULL column is added without a default, how do we populate the new field for existing records in the target? If we rename a table, how do we know we've done a rename, as we could equally have dropped a table and created a new one? All the above are examples of situations where developer intent is required to supplement the script generation engine. SQL Source Control 3 and SQL Compare 10 introduced a new feature, migration scripts, allowing developers to add custom scripts to replace the default script generation behavior. These scripts are committed to source control alongside the schema changes, and are associated with one or more changesets. Before this capability was introduced, any schema change that required additional developer intent would break any attempt at auto-generation of the upgrade script, rendering deployment testing as part of continuous integration useless. SQL Compare will now generate upgrade scripts not only using its diffing engine, but also using the knowledge supplied by developers in the guise of migration scripts. In future posts I will describe the necessary command line syntax to leverage this feature as part of an automated build process such as continuous integration.

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Employee Info Starter Kit: Project Mission

- by Mohammad Ashraful Alam

Employee Info Starter Kit is an open source ASP.NET project template that is intended to address different types of real world challenges faced by web application developers when performing common CRUD operations. Using a single database table ‘Employee’, it illustrates how to utilize Microsoft ASP.NET 4.0, Entity Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 effectively in that context. Employee Info Starter Kit is highly influenced by the concept ‘Pareto Principle’ or 80-20 rule. where it is targeted to enable a web developer to gain 80% productivity with 20% of effort with respect to learning curve and production. User Stories The user end functionalities of this starter kit are pretty simple and straight forward that are focused in to perform CRUD operation on employee records as described below. Creating a new employee record Read existing employee record Update an existing employee record Delete existing employee records Key Technology Areas ASP.NET 4.0 Entity Framework 4.0 T-4 Template Visual Studio 2010 Architectural Objective There is no universal architecture which can be considered as the best for all sorts of applications around the world. Based on requirements, constraints, environment, application architecture can differ from one to another. Trade-off factors are one of the important considerations while deciding a particular architectural solution. Employee Info Starter Kit is highly influenced by the concept ‘Pareto Principle’ or 80-20 rule, where it is targeted to enable a web developer to gain 80% productivity with 20% of effort with respect to learning curve and production. “Productivity” as the architectural objective typically also includes other trade-off factors as well as, such as testability, flexibility, performance etc. Fortunately Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 includes lots of great features that have been implemented cleverly in this project to reduce these trade-off factors in the minimum level. Why Employee Info Starter Kit is Not a Framework? Application frameworks are really great for productivity, some of which are really unavoidable in this modern age. However relying too many frameworks may overkill a project, as frameworks are typically designed to serve wide range of different usage and are less customizable or editable. On the other hand having implementation patterns can be useful for developers, as it enables them to adjust application on demand. Employee Info Starter Kit provides hundreds of “connected” snippets and implementation patterns to demonstrate problem solutions in actual production environment. It also includes Visual Studio T-4 templates that generate thousands lines of data access and business logic layer repetitive codes in literally few seconds on the fly, which are fully mock testable due to language support for partial methods and latest support for mock testing in Entity Framework. Why Employee Info Starter Kit is Different than Other Open-source Web Applications? Software development is one of the rapid growing industries around the globe, where the technology is being updated very frequently to adapt greater challenges over time. There are literally thousands of community web sites, blogs and forums that are dedicated to provide support to adapt new technologies. While some are really great to enable learning new technologies quickly, in most cases they are either too “simple and brief” to be used in real world scenarios or too “complex and detailed” which are typically focused to achieve a product goal (such as CMS, e-Commerce etc) from "end user" perspective and have a long duration learning curve with respect to the corresponding technology. Employee Info Starter Kit, as a web project, is basically "developer" oriented which actually considers a hybrid approach as “simple and detailed”, where a simple domain has been considered to intentionally illustrate most of the architectural and implementation challenges faced by web application developers so that anyone can dive into deep into the corresponding new technology or concept quickly. Roadmap Since its first release by 2008 in MSDN Code Gallery, Employee Info Starter Kit gained a huge popularity in ASP.NET community and had 1, 50,000+ downloads afterwards. Being encouraged with this great response, we have a strong commitment for the community to provide support for it with respect to latest technologies continuously. Currently hosted in Codeplex, this community driven project is planned to have a wide range of individual editions, each of which will be focused on a selected application architecture, framework or platform, such as ASP.NET Webform, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ASP.NET MVC, jQuery Ajax (RIA), Silverlight (RIA), Azure Service Platform (Cloud), Visual Studio Automated Test etc. See here for full list of current and future editions.

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Copy TFS Build Definitions between Projects and Collections

- by Jakob Ehn

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/jakob/archive/2014/06/05/copy-tfs-build-definitions-between-projects-and-collections.aspxThe last couple of years it has become apparent that using multiple team projects in TFS is generally a bad idea. There are of course exceptions to this, but there are a lot ot things that becomes much easier to do when you put all of your projects and team in the same team project. Fellow ALM MVP Martin Hinshelwood has blogged about this several times, as well as other people in the community. In particular, using the backlog and portfolio management tools makes much more sense when everything is located in the same team project. Consolidating multiple team projects into one is not that easy unfortunately, it involves migrating source code, work items, reports etc. Another thing that also need to be migrated is build definitions. It is possible to clone build definitions within the same team project using the TFS power tools. The Community TFS Build Manager also lets you clone build definitions to other team projects. But there is no tool that allows you to clone/copy a build definition to another collection. So, I whipped up a simple console application that let you do this. The tool can be downloaded from https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=EE034C9F620CD58D!8162&authkey=!ACTr56v1QVowzuE&ithint=file%2c.zip Using CopyTFSBuildDefinitions You use the tool like this: CopyTFSBuildDefinitions SourceCollectionUrl SourceTeamProject BuildDefinitionName DestinationCollectionUrl DestinationTeamProject [NewDefinitionName] Arguments SourceCollectionUrl The URL to the TFS collection that contains the team project with the build definition that you want to copy SourceTeamProject The name of the team project that contains the build definition BuildDefinitionName Name of the build definition DestinationCollectionUrl The URL to the TFS collection that contains the team project that you want to copy your build definition to DestinationTeamProject The name of the team project in the destination collection NewDefinitionName (Optional) Use this to override the name of the new build definition. If you don’t specify this, the name will the same as the original one Example: CopyTFSBuildDefinitions https://jakob.visualstudio.com DemoProject WebApplication.CI https://anotheraccount.visualstudio.com Notes Since we are (potentially) create a build definition in a new collection, there is no guarantee that the various paths that are defined in the build definition exist in the new collection. For example, a build definition refers to server paths in TFVC or repos + branches in TFGit. It also refers to build controllers that definitely don’t exist in the new collection. So there will be some cleanup to do after you copy your build definitions. You can fix some of these using the Community TFS Build Manager, for example it is very easy to apply the correct build controller to a set of build definitions The problem stated above also applies to build process templates. However, the tool tries to find a build process template in the new team project with the same file name as the one that existed in the old team project. If it finds one, it will be used for the new build definition. Otherwise is will use the default build template If you want to run the tool for many build definitions, you can use this SQL scripts, compliments of Mr. Scrum/ALM MVP Richard Hundhausen to generate the necessary commands: USE Tfs_Collection GO SELECT 'CopyTFSBuildDefinitions.exe http://SERVER:8080/tfs/collection "' + P.ProjectName + '" "' + REPLACE(BD.DefinitionName,'\','') + '" http://NEWSERVER:8080/tfs/COLLECTION TEAMPROJECT' FROM tbl_Project P INNER JOIN tbl_BuildGroup BG on BG.TeamProject = P.ProjectUri INNER JOIN tbl_BuildDefinition BD on BD.GroupId = BG.GroupId ORDER BY P.ProjectName, BD.DefinitionName Hope that helps, let me know if you have any problems with the tool or if you find it useful

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Oracle WebCenter: Extending Oracle Applications & Oracle Fusion Applications

- by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} -- Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";}We’ve talked in previous weeks about the key goals of the new release of WebCenter are providing a Modern User Experience, unparalleled Application Integration, converging all the best of the existing portal platforms into WebCenter and delivering a Common User Experience Architecture. We’ve provided an overview of Oracle WebCenter and discussed some of the other key goals in previous weeks, and this week, we’ll focus on how the new release of Oracle WebCenter extends Oracle Applications and Fusion Applications.When we talk about the new release of Oracle WebCenter, we really emphasize to customers that they can leverage their existing investments and benefit from WebCenter’s Complete, Open and Integrated platform. To summarize what we mean here, Oracle WebCenter is:COMPLETEComprehensive platform for Portals/Websites, Composite Applications with integrated Social/Collaboration services and Content Management infrastructureOPENStandards support improves reuse of existing resources and extends the value of existing systemsINTEGRATEDImplicit integration with Oracle Applications, Oracle Fusion Applications & other enterprise applicationsWith all the existing enterprise applications in Oracle’s application portfolio, in the new release of WebCenter we’ve got a set of pre-built catalogs that customers can use directly to get at all the portlet resources certified and available from Oracle. It provides customers with a ready-to-use view of their application resources. And since WebCenter provides seamless support for building these portlets/components in a professional IDE like JDeveloper or from within a Browser, developers and business analysts can quickly assemble the information they require for their existing application investment. In addition, we’ve taken all the user flows and patterns that we’ve learned in building Fusion Applications and focused on making it dramatically easier to use tools to create reusable application UI components. In this way, one team in the organization using an application can share their components with other teams. And more importantly, the new team can make changes to the component without breaking the original component. When tied to enterprise applications, this capability is extremely powerful. This is what Oracle means when they talk about Enterprise Mashups. And finally, we’ve provided an innovative way to go well beyond traditional “on the glass” integration by enabling business transactions for the existing applications direct integration using activity streams. This delivers aggregated and “on time” delivery of information to the business users based on what‘s happening in the enterprise that is relevant to their particular job function. Most importantly, it ties into the personalization interactions discussed earlier so that it can help target information to you directly based on past interactions. Application integration is key to making businesses function more efficiently with these new Enterprise 2.0 technologies.Keep checking back this week as we share more information on how WebCenter is the most complete, open and integrated modern user experience platform and show key ways WebCenter can extend Oracle Applications & Oracle Fusion Applications.

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Oracle Social Network and the Flying Monkey Smart Target

- by kellsey.ruppel

Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. I teased this before OpenWorld, and for those of you who didn’t make it to the show or didn’t come by the Office Hours to take the Oracle Social Network Technical Tour Noel (@noelportugal) ran, I give you the Flying Monkey Smart Target. In brief, Noel built a target, about two feet tall, which when struck, played monkey sounds and posted a comment to an Oracle Social Network Conversation, all controlled by a Raspberry Pi. He also connected a Dropcam to record the winner just prior to the strike. I’m not sure how it all works, but maybe Noel can post the technical specifics. Here’s Noel describing the Challenge, the Target and a few other tidbit in an interview with Friend of the ‘Lab, Bob Rhubart (@brhubart). The monkey target bits are 2:12-2:54 if you’re into brevity, but watch the whole thing. Here are some screen grabs from the Oracle Social Network Conversation, including the Conversation itself, where you can see all the strikes documented, the picture captured, and the annotation capabilities: #gallery-1 { margin: auto;? } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } That’s Diego in one shot, looking very focused, and Ernst in the other, who kindly annotated himself, two of the development team members. You might have seen them in the Oracle Social Network Hands-On Lab during the show. There’s a trend here. Not by accident, fun stuff like this has becoming our calling card, e.g. the Kscope 12 WebCenter Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots. Not only are these entertaining demonstrations, but they showcase what’s possible with RESTful APIs and get developers noodling on how easy it is to connect real objects to cloud services to fix pain points. I spoke to some great folks from the City of Atlanta about extending the concepts of the flying monkey target to physical asset monitoring. Just take an internet-connected camera with REST APIs like the Dropcam, wire it up to Oracle Social Netwok, and you can hack together a monitoring device for a datacenter or a warehouse. Sure, it’s easier said than done, but we’re a lot closer to that reality than we were even two years ago. Another noteworthy bit from Noel’s interview, beginning at 2:55, is the evolution of social developer. Speaking of, make sure to check out the Oracle Social Developer Community. Look for more on the social developer in the coming months. Noel has become quite the Raspberry Pi evangelist, and why not, it’s a great tool, a low-power Linux machine, cheap ($35!) and highly extensible, perfect for makers and students alike. He attended a meetup on Saturday before OpenWorld, and during the show, I heard him evangelizing the Pi and its capabilities to many people. There is some fantastic innovation forming in that ecosystem, much of it with Java. The OTN gang raffled off five Pis, and I expect to see lots of great stuff in the very near future. Stay tuned this week for posts on all our Challenge entrants. There’s some great innovation you won’t want to miss. Find the comments. Update: I forgot to mention that Noel used Twilio, one of his favorite services, during the show to send out Challenge updates and information to all the contestants.

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St. Louis ALT.NET

- by Brian Schroer

I’m a huge fan of the St. Louis .NET User Group and a regular attendee of their meetings, but always wished there was a local group that discussed more advanced .NET topics. (That’s not a criticism of the group - I appreciate that they want to server developers with a broad range of skill levels). That’s why I was thrilled when Nicholas Cloud started a St. Louis ALT.NET group in 2010. Here’s the “about us” statement from the group’s web site: The ALT.NET community is a loosely coupled, highly cohesive group of like-minded individuals who believe that the best developers do not align themselves with platforms and languages, but with principles and ideas. In 2007, David Laribee created the term "ALT.NET" to explain this "alternative" view of the Microsoft development universe--a view that challenged the "Microsoft-only" approach to software development. He distilled his thoughts into four key developer characteristics which form the basis of the ALT.NET philosophy: You're the type of developer who uses what works while keeping an eye out for a better way. You reach outside the mainstream to adopt the best of any community: Open Source, Agile, Java, Ruby, etc. You're not content with the status quo. Things can always be better expressed, more elegant and simple, more mutable, higher quality, etc. You know tools are great, but they only take you so far. It's the principles and knowledge that really matter. The best tools are those that embed the knowledge and encourage the principles (e.g. Resharper.) The St. Louis ALT.NET meetup group is a place where .NET developers can learn, share, and critique approaches to software development on the .NET stack. We cater to the highest common denominator, not the lowest, and want to help all St. Louis .NET developers achieve a superior level of software craftsmanship. I don’t see a lot of ALT.NET talk in blogs these days. The movement was harmed early on by the negative attitudes of some of its early leaders, including jerk moves like the Entity Framework “vote of no confidence”, but I do see occasional mentions of local groups like the St. Louis one. I think ALT.NET has been successful at bringing some of its ideas into the .NET world, including heavily influencing ASP.NET MVC and raising the general level of software craftsmanship for developers working on the Microsoft stack. The ideas and ideals live on, they’re just not branded as “this is ALT.NET!” In the past 18 months, St. Louis ALT.NET meetups have discussed topics like: NHibernate F# and other functional languages AOP CoffeeScript “How Ruby Is Making Me a Stronger C# Developer” Using rake for builds CQRS .NET dynamic programming micro web frameworks – Nancy & Jessica Git ALT.NET doesn’t mean (to me, anyway) “alternatives to .NET”, but “alternatives for .NET”. We look at how things are done in Ruby and other languages/platforms, but always with the idea “What can I learn from this to take back to my “day job” with .NET?”. Meetings are held at 7PM on the fourth Wednesday of each month at the offices of Professional Employment Group. PEG is located at 999 Executive Parkway (Suite 100 – lower level) in Creve Coeur (South of Olive off of Mason Road - Here's a map). Food is not supplied (sorry if you’re a big fan of the Papa John’s Crust-Lovers’ Pizza that’s a staple of user group meetings), but attendees are encouraged to come early and bring/share beer, so that’s cool. Thanks to Nick for organizing, and to Professional Employment Group for lending their offices. Please visit the meetup site for more information.

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Tablet design guide, Endeca patterns now available

- by JuergenKress

UX Direct, an Oracle program that offers consultants, partners, and customers the same scientifically proven and reusable user experience best practices that Oracle uses to build Oracle Applications, recently added links to a new design guide for creating tablet-based solutions for enterprise applications, and to the recently published Endeca User Interface Design Pattern Library. The tablet design guide is available from the UX Direct Home page. Tap the button under “Latest patterns & tools” for “Oracle Applications UX Tablet Guide.” It provides basic help for designers, developers, and project managers trying to approach tablet design and testing from an enterprise point of view. To hear what developers are saying about it, follow the links from this post on the User Experience Assistance blog. The newly released Endeca User Interface Design Pattern Library is also available from the UX Direct Home page and from a post on the User Experience Assistance blog. It describes principled ways to solve common user interface (UI) design problems related to search, faceted navigation, and discovery. The link between Simplified UI and Oracle UX strategy, plus content you can share on the cloud, ADf, tailoring, and more Simplified User Interface in Oracle Fusion Applications Fronts Oracle Cloud Offerings This new article on Simplified UI has just been posted on Usable Apps. Learn about the three themes - simplicity, mobility, and extensibility – that Simplified UI embodies. These same principles are guiding the development of the next generation of the Oracle user experience. Oracle's Applications User Experience Strategy: One Cloud User Experience, with Optimized UIs Where and How You Want This podcast from Misha Vaughan, Director, User Experience, is now available on the Oracle University Knowledge Center. It is available for partners and Oracle employees at this iLearning Link. Oracle Partner Builds User Experience That Hits Right Note for New Employees This new article on the Usable Apps website explores the experience of consultants at IntraSee as they implement a PeopleSoft onboarding process for Invesco, a global asset management company. The Feng Shui of Fusion This article in Oracle Scene is from Grant Ronald, Director of Product Management, on the Tools of Fusion: Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF. Hands-On Workshop with Fusion Applications and ADF UX Desktop Design Patterns This post on the Voice of User Experience, or VoX, blog from Misha Vaughan describes a new kind of workshop for partners and a handful of internal Oracle sales folks on extending Oracle Fusion Applications and building custom applications with Application Development Framework (ADF) while maintaining the Oracle user experience. To learn more about the content that was delivered during this three-day workshop, visit the Usable Apps blog. Recent posts from a new blog series take a look at several of the topics discussed during the workshop. Applications User Experience Fundamentals Visual Design for any Enterprise User Interface / Art School in a Box Wireframing / Blueprinting Usable Applications Concepts. Tailoring videos This blog post from Richard Bingham, Applications Architect, on the Fusion Applications Developer Relations blog provides links to several videos that show many customization and development tasks using the Oracle Fusion Applications platform. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: UX,Architecture,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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Siebel CRM: Alive and Jamming at OpenWorld

- by Tony Berk

Yes, a rock 'n roll reference in a CRM/Customer Experience blog entry! Sorry, but we are getting excited about OpenWorld and all of the great CRM and Customer Experience sessions we've been planning for the past 6 months (yes, we really do start planning in March!). I also heard that some band named Pearl Jam is making an appearance. Who's tried the Rock Band guitar solo for Alive? Way too difficult for an amateur like me. Anyhow, we are supposed to be highlighting Siebel CRM at OpenWorld. Yes, Siebel will once again have a major presence at OpenWorld and there is a lot of new things to tell you about. If you search the OpenWorld Content Catalog with the tag "siebel", you'll find over 75 sessions. That's over 75 hours of opportunity to hear from Siebel customers, product managers, and implementers. While I invite you to read through the descriptions of all 75+ sessions or check out the OpenWorld Focus On Siebel document, I'd like to try and help with some highlights. The roadmap and strategy session was mentioned in my previous post, but it is important enough to mention again. Siebel CRM Overview, Strategy, and Roadmap (CON9700) - Oct 1, 12:15PM. Come to this session to learn about the Siebel product roadmap and how Oracle is committed to accelerating the pace of innovation and value for its customers on this platform. Additionally, the session covers how Siebel customers can leverage many Oracle assets such as Oracle WebCenter Sites; InQuira, RightNow, and ATG/Endeca applications, and Oracle Policy Automation in conjunction with their current Siebel investments. This session was FULL last year, so I strongly suggest you pre-register via the OpenWorld Schedule Builder. Every year, my favorites are the customer panels, where you get hear 2, 3 or even 4 customers talk about their implementations and often share best practices and lessons learned. Customer Panel: Business Benefits of Deploying Siebel CRM (Session ID: CON9717) - Oct 1, 10:45AM featuring GlaxoSmithKline, PNC Bank and Southwest Airlines. Maximizing User Adoption Rates for Siebel Sales and Siebel Partner Relationship Management (CON9690) Oct 1, 12:15PM featuring CSL Behring, Intuit and McKesson. Best Practices for Upgrading Your Siebel CRM Implementations: Customer Successes (CON9715) - Oct 1, 3:15PM featuring Citrix, Sunlife Financial and Oracle experts. Driving Great Customer Experiences with Siebel Service Applications (CON9604) - Oct 1, 4:45 featuring Farmers Insurance, US Department of Homeland Security and Waste Management There are also a number of customer case study sessions including: Lowe's (CON9740), American Red Cross (CON6535), Ontario Lottery & Gaming's Siebel Marketing and Loyalty (CON4114), and LexisNexis (CON9551). Also, an interesting session on optimizing Siebel on Oracle with ACCOR (CON4289). Have you heard about the new Open UI for Siebel? If you haven't, you should! There are sessions focused on introducing you to the new functionality and how you can unleash the power of the new user interface: User Interface Innovations with the New Siebel “Open UI” (CON9703) Oct 2, 10:15AM and Unleash the Power of “Open UI” (CON9705) - Oct 3, 11:45AM. Other Siebel-related topics you might want to check out: Knowledge Management: Increasing Return on Your CRM Investments with Knowledge (CON9779) - Oct 1, 3:15PM Mobile: Mobile Solutions for Siebel CRM (CON9697) - Oct 2, 5:00PM Siebel Loyalty: Best Practices for Maximizing the Success of Your Loyalty Program with Siebel Loyalty (CON9588) - Oct 2, 5:00PM Siebel Marketing: Next-Generation Cross-Channel Insight-Driven Customer Dialogue with Siebel Marketing (CON9600) - Oct 3, 10:15AM Integrating with Oracle Commerce: Administer Once and Deploy Everywhere: Integrating the Siebel, ATG, and Endeca Platforms (CON9761) - Oct 2 5:00PM Finally, don't forget the Oracle Applications User Group (OAUG) Special Interest Group for Siebel on Sunday, September 30 at 2:15PM. And of course, the Demogrounds in Moscone West will be full of Oracle and partner demos and information on new solutions. Wow! I told you there was a lot! Good luck finding the best sessions for you and have a great time at OpenWorld. Don't forget to sing along with Pearl Jam!

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LINQ to Twitter Queries with LINQPad

- by Joe Mayo

LINQPad is a popular utility for .NET developers who use LINQ a lot. In addition to standard SQL queries, LINQPad also supports other types of LINQ providers, including LINQ to Twitter. The following sections explain how to set up LINQPad for making queries with LINQ to Twitter. LINQPad comes in a couple versions and this example uses LINQPad4, which runs on the .NET Framework 4.0. 1. The first thing you'll need to do is set up a reference to the LinqToTwitter.dll. From the Query menu, select query properties. Click the Browse button and find the LinqToTwitter.dll binary. You should see something similar to the Query Properties window below. 2. While you have the query properties window open, add the namespace for the LINQ to Twitter types. Click the Additional Namespace Imports tab and type in LinqToTwitter. The results are shown below: 3. The default query type, when you first start LINQPad, is C# Expression, but you'll need to change this to support multiple statements. Change the Language dropdown, on the Main window, to C# Statements. 4. To query LINQ to Twitter, instantiate a TwitterContext, by typing the following into the LINQPad Query window: var ctx = new TwitterContext(); Note: If you're getting syntax errors, go back and make sure you did steps #2 and #3 properly. 5. Next, add a query, but don't materialize it, like this: var tweets = from tweet in ctx.Status where tweet.Type == StatusType.Public select new { tweet.Text, tweet.Geo, tweet.User }; 6. Next, you want the output to be displayed in the LINQPad grid, so do a Dump, like this: tweets.Dump(); The following image shows the final results: That was an unauthenticated query, but you can also perform authenticated queries with LINQ to Twitter's support of OAuth. Here's an example that uses the PinAuthorizer (type this into the LINQPad Query window): var auth = new PinAuthorizer { Credentials = new InMemoryCredentials { ConsumerKey = "", ConsumerSecret = "" }, UseCompression = true, GoToTwitterAuthorization = pageLink => Process.Start(pageLink), GetPin = () => { // this executes after user authorizes, which begins with the call to auth.Authorize() below. Console.WriteLine("\nAfter you authorize this application, Twitter will give you a 7-digit PIN Number.\n"); Console.Write("Enter the PIN number here: "); return Console.ReadLine(); } }; // start the authorization process (launches Twitter authorization page). auth.Authorize(); var ctx = new TwitterContext(auth, "https://api.twitter.com/1/", "https://search.twitter.com/"); var tweets = from tweet in ctx.Status where tweet.Type == StatusType.Public select new { tweet.Text, tweet.Geo, tweet.User }; tweets.Dump(); This code is very similar to what you'll find in the LINQ to Twitter downloadable source code solution, in the LinqToTwitterDemo project. For obvious reasons, I changed the value assigned to ConsumerKey and ConsumerSecret, which you'll have to obtain by visiting http://dev.twitter.com and registering your application. One tip, you'll probably want to make this easier on yourself by creating your own DLL that encapsulates all of the OAuth logic and then call a method or property on you custom class that returns a fully functioning TwitterContext. This will help avoid adding all this code every time you want to make a query. Now, you know how to set up LINQPad for LINQ to Twitter, perform unauthenticated queries, and perform queries with OAuth. Joe

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Evaluating Oracle Data Mining Has Never Been Easier - Evaluation "Kit" Available

- by chberger

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Now you can quickly and easily get set up to starting using Oracle Data Mining for evaluation purposes. Just go to the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) and follow these simple steps. Oracle Data Mining Evaluation "Kit" Instructions Step 1: Download and Install the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Anyone can download and install the Oracle Database for free for evaluation purposes. Read OTN web site for details. 11.2.0.1.0 DB is the minimum, 11.2.0.2 is better and naturally 11.2.0.3 is best if you are a current customer and on active support. Either 32-bit or 64-bit is fine. 4GB of RAM or more works fine for SQL Developer and the Oracle Data Miner GUI extension. Downloading the database and installing it should take just about an hour or so, depending on your network and computer. For more instructions on setting up Oracle Data Mining see: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/options/odm/dataminerworkflow-168677.html When you install the Oracle Database, the Sample Examples data should also be installed e.g.:Release 2 Examples win32_11gR2_examples.zip (565,154,740 bytes). Contains examples of how to use the Oracle Database. Download if you are new to Oracle and want to try some of the examples presented in the Documentation Step 2: Install SQL Developer 3.1 (the Oracle Data Mining Extension installs automatically) Step 3. Follow the four free step-by-step Oracle-by-Examples e-training lessons: Setting Up Oracle Data Miner 11g Release 2 This tutorial covers the process of setting up Oracle Data Miner 11g Release 2 for use within Oracle SQL Developer 3.0. Using Oracle Data Miner 11g Release 2 This tutorial covers the use of Oracle Data Miner to perform data mining against Oracle Database 11g Release 2. In this lesson, you examine and solve a data mining business problem by using the Oracle Data Miner graphical user interface (GUI). Star Schema Mining Using Oracle Data Miner This tutorial covers the use of Oracle Data Miner to perform star schema mining against Oracle Database 11g Release 2. Text Mining Using Oracle Data Miner This tutorial covers the use of Oracle Data Miner to perform text mining against Oracle Database 11g Release 2. That’s it! Easy, fun and the fastest way to get started evaluating Oracle Data Mining. Enjoy! Charlie

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UPK Hands-on Labs at OHUG

- by Karen Rihs

Going to OHUG, June 18-22? Be sure to attend one or more UPK hands-on labs! Choose from Basic, Advanced, What's New, and Prebuilt Content! Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.1 Workshop – Basic Stephen Armbruster, Oracle Corporation June 19, 2012, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. June 20, 2012, 4:30 – 5:30 p.m. The User Productivity Kit (UPK) is a comprehensive, cost-effective, customizable solution that helps your organization quickly create the critical documentation, training, and support materials needed to drive project team and user productivity throughout the lifecycle of your software. The User Productivity Kit provides system process documentation, user acceptance test scripts, comprehensive instructor-led training materials, web-based training materials, role-based performance support, and complete documentation. Also provided is the UPK Developer, which serves as a single-source development and customization tool to enable rapid content creation and customization. The User Productivity Kit delivers: Business process documentation for fit-gap analysis - providing time and cost savings that jump-start your implementation or upgrade User Acceptance test scripts to help test applications prior to go-live State-of-the-art instructional design tools to rapidly build and tailor documentation, instructor-led training materials, and web-based training to fit organizational needs Live-application performance support with transactional and procedural information to maximize user efficiency. By registering for this hands-on UPK workshop, participants will use UPK to build an application job aid and simulation that can be used as performance support for the application. But hurry, space is limited! Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.1 Workshop – Advanced Stephen Armbruster, Oracle Corporation June 20, 2012, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. This special workshop is for those already familiar with UPK and will cover advanced concepts. In this workshop, you will gain an in-depth knowledge of working with the UPK Developer. Following this workshop, you will be able to: Create publishing categories Add a logo to a publishing project Publish using the newly created category Configure your own library view Manage topic history in a multi-user environment Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.1 Workshop – What’s NEW! Stephen Armbruster, Oracle Corporation June 19, 2012, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. June 21, 2012, 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. This special workshop is for those already familiar with UPK and will focus on the new features included in the latest version 11.1. In this workshop, you will review most of the new features included in the UPK Developer. Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.1 Workshop – Prebuilt Content Stephen Armbruster, Oracle Corporation June 19, 2012, 4:30 – 5:30 p.m. June 21, 2012, 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. This special workshop is for those already familiar with UPK and will focus on the latest version 11.1. At the end of this workshop, you will be able to demonstrate how to: Import prebuilt content Modify content frames Add a decision frame Translate a topic into Spanish Stephen Armbruster is a principal sales consultant, specializing in HCM and UPK applications for Oracle over the past twelve years. In addition to his current role, he serves as an ambassador for the Fusion User Experience (UX) team and is tasked with evangelizing the UX for end users across all Oracle brands (Fusion, PSFT, JDE, and EBS). He is also a trusted advisor to Oracle’s Product Management teams related to Learning Management Systems (LMS). Prior to joining Oracle, he was an instructor as well as an instructional technologist working in the medical diagnostics, high tech, and information management industries. As an expert in both LMS and UPK, he regularly speaks at Oracle conferences including Oracle OpenWorld and OHUG on topics that span using Oracle solutions to accomplish employee training, certification, and user adoption. His presentations are both entertaining and engaging.

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Securing Flexfield Value Sets in EBS 12.2

- by Sara Woodhull

Release 12.2 includes a new feature: flexfield value set security. This new feature gives you additional options for ensuring that different administrators have non-overlapping responsibilities, which in turn provides checks and balances for sensitive activities. Separation of Duties (SoD) is one of the key concepts of internal controls and is a requirement for many regulations including: Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) European Union Data Protection Directive. Its primary intent is to put barriers in place to prevent fraud or theft by an individual acting alone. Implementing Separation of Duties requires minimizing the possibility that users could modify data across application functions where the users should not normally have access. For flexfields and report parameters in Oracle E-Business Suite, values in value sets can affect functionality such as the rollup of accounting data, job grades used at a company, and so on. Controlling access to the creation or modification of value set values can be an important piece of implementing Separation of Duties in an organization. New Flexfield Value Set Security feature Flexfield value set security allows system administrators to restrict users from viewing, adding or updating values in specific value sets. Value set security enables role-based separation of duties for key flexfields, descriptive flexfields, and report parameters. For example, you can set up value set security such that certain users can view or insert values for any value set used by the Accounting Flexfield but no other value sets, while other users can view and update values for value sets used for any flexfields in Oracle HRMS. You can also segregate access by Operating Unit as well as by role or responsibility.Value set security uses a combination of data security and role-based access control in Oracle User Management. Flexfield value set security provides a level of security that is different from the previously-existing and similarly-named features in Oracle E-Business Suite: Function security controls whether a user has access to a specific page or form, as well as what operations the user can do in that screen. Flexfield value security controls what values a user can enter into a flexfield segment or report parameter (by responsibility) during routine data entry in many transaction screens across Oracle E-Business Suite. Flexfield value set security (this feature, new in Release 12.2) controls who can view, insert, or update values for a particular value set (by flexfield, report, or value set) in the Segment Values form (FNDFFMSV). The effect of flexfield value set security is that a user of the Segment Values form will only be able to view those value sets for which the user has been granted access. Further, the user will be able to insert or update/disable values in that value set if the user has been granted privileges to do so. Flexfield value set security affects independent, dependent, and certain table-validated value sets for flexfields and report parameters. Initial State of the Feature upon Upgrade Because this is a new security feature, it is turned on by default. When you initially install or upgrade to Release 12.2.2, no users are allowed to view, insert or update any value set values (users may even think that their values are missing or invalid because they cannot see the values). You must explicitly set up access for specific users by enabling appropriate grants and roles for those users.We recommend using flexfield value set security as part of a comprehensive Separation of Duties strategy. However, if you choose not to implement flexfield value set security upon upgrading to or installing Release 12.2, you can enable backwards compatibility--users can access any value sets if they have access to the Values form--after you upgrade. The feature does not affect day-to-day transactions that use flexfields. However, you must either set up specific grants and roles or enable backwards compatibility before users can create new values or update or disable existing values. For more information, see: Release 12.2 Flexfield Value Set Security Documentation Update for Patch 17305947:R12.FND.C (Document 1589204.1) R12.2 TOI: Implement and Use Application Object Library (AOL) - Flexfields Security and Separation of Duties for Value Sets (recorded training)

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Everything You Need to Know About Monitoring Oracle GoldenGate

- by Irem Radzik

By Joe deBuzna Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Having over 16 years of database replication experience with 6 of those split between complex Oracle GoldenGate installations across three continents and researching monitoring requirements for both GoldenGate core replication and the GoldenGate monitoring GUIs, I've seen GoldenGate used and monitored in every way conceivable. And definite patterns have emerged. Next week at OpenWorld, on Tuesday Oct 2nd at 5pm please come by to Mascone West-3005 for "Everything you need to know about Monitoring Oracle GoldenGate"session to hear me discuss how GoldenGate customers are monitoring their implementations today, common methods and tricks, what's new in the GUIs, and a what's on the roadmap ahead. As you may have seen in previous blog posts and in our launch webcast we have now Plug-in for Oracle Enterprise Manager in addition to the new Oracle GoldenGate Monitor product. For those of you who won't be at OpenWorld, please check out our Management Pack for Oracle GoldenGate data sheet and Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2 New Features white paper to learn more about the new Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2 release. In this latest release we also have enhanced conflict detection and resolution. It is a cornerstone of any Active-Active database replication solution. And in the latest release we just took ours to the next level with built in optimized resolution routines (no more dependency on sqlexec!). At OpenWorld we have a session CON8557 - Best Practice for Conflict Detection & resolution 3:30-4:30 on Wed Oct 3rd at Mascone West- 3005. Oracle Development Manager Bharath Aleti and I will highlight the most commonly used options and best practices gained from our interaction with numerous customers and consultants. Hope you can join us next week. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

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MEB: Taking Incremental Backup using last successful backup

- by Sagar Jauhari

Introduction In MySQL Enterprise Backup v3.7.0 (MEB 3.7.0) a new option '–incremental-base' was introduced. Using this option a user can take in incremental backup without specifying the '–start-lsn' option. Description of this option can be found here. Instead of '–start-lsn' the user can provide the location of the last full backup or incremental backup using the 'dir:' prefix. MEB would extract the end LSN of this backup from the mysql.backup_history table as well as the backup_variables.txt file (for verification) to use it as the start LSN of the incremental backup. Because of popular demand, in MEB 3.7.1 the option '-incremental-base' has been extended further. The idea is to allow the user to take an incremental backup as easily as possible using the '–incremental-base' option. With the new option MEB queries the backup_history table for the last successful backup and uses its end LSN as the start LSN for the new incremental backup. It should be noted that the last successful backup is used irrespective of the location of the backup. Details A new prefix 'history:' has been introduced for the –incremental-base option and currently the only permissible value is the string "last_backup". So using the new option an incremental backup can be taken with the following command: $ mysqlbackup --incremental --incremental-backup-dir=/media/mysqlbackup-repo/ --incremental-base=history:last_backup backup When MEB attempts to extract the end LSN of the last successful backup from the mysql.backup_history table, it also scans the corresponding backup destination for the old backup and tries to read the meta files at this backup destination. If a valid backup still exists at the backup destination and the meta files can be read, MEB compares the end LSN found in the mysql.backup_history table with the end LSN found in the backup meta files of the old backup. Assuming that the host MySQL server is alive and mysql.backup_history can be accessed by MEB, the behaviour of MEB with respect to verification of the old end LSN can be summarized as follows: If 'BD' is the backup destination of the last successful backup in mysql.backup_history table and 'BHT' is the mysql.backup_history table if can_read_files_at_BD: if end_lsn_found_at_BD == end_lsn_of_last_backup_in_BHT: continue_with_backup() else return_with_error() else continue_with_backup() Advantages Apart from ease of usability an important advantage of this option is that the user can do repeated incremental backups without changing the command line. This is possible using the '–with-timestamp' option along with this new option. For example, the following command $ mysqlbackup --with-timestamp --incremental --incremental-backup-dir=/media/mysqlbackup-repo/ --incremental-base=history:last_backup backup can be used to perform successive incremental backups in the directory /media/mysqlbackup-repo . Limitations The option '--incremental-base=history:last_backup' should not be used when the user takes different kinds of concurrent backups on the same MySQL server (say different partial backups at multiple locations). should not be used after any temporary or experimental backups performed on the server (which where successful!). needs to be used with precaution since any intermediate successful backup without the –no-connection will be used as the base backup for the next incremental backup. will give an error in case a valid backup exists at the location of the last successful backup and whose end LSN is different from that of the last successful backup found in the backup_history table. Date: 2012-06-19 HTML generated by org-mode 6.33x in emacs 23

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Copying A Slide From One Presentation To Another

- by Tim Murphy

There are many ways to generate a PowerPoint presentation using Open XML. The first way is to build it by hand strictly using the SDK. Alternately you can modify a copy of a base presentation in place. The third approach to generate a presentation is to build a new presentation from the parts of an existing presentation by copying slides as needed. This post will focus on the third option. In order to make this solution a little more elegant I am going to create a VSTO add-in as I did in my previous post. This one is going to insert Tags to identify slides instead of NonVisualDrawingProperties which I used to identify charts, tables and images. The code itself is fairly short. SlideNameForm dialog = new SlideNameForm(); Selection selection = Globals.ThisAddIn.Application.ActiveWindow.Selection; if(dialog.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK) { selection.SlideRange.Tags.Add(dialog.slideName,dialog.slideName); } Zeyad Rajabi has a good post here on combining slides from two presentations. The example he gives is great if you are doing a straight merge. But what if you want to use your source file as almost a supermarket where you pick and chose slides and may even insert them repeatedly? The following code uses the tags we created in the previous step to pick a particular slide an copy it to a destination file. using (PresentationDocument newDocument = PresentationDocument.Open(OutputFileText.Text,true)) { PresentationDocument templateDocument = PresentationDocument.Open(FileNameText.Text, false); uniqueId = GetMaxIdFromChild(newDocument.PresentationPart.Presentation.SlideMasterIdList); uint maxId = GetMaxIdFromChild(newDocument.PresentationPart.Presentation.SlideIdList); SlidePart oldPart = GetSlidePartByTagName(templateDocument, SlideToCopyText.Text); SlidePart newPart = newDocument.PresentationPart.AddPart<SlidePart>(oldPart, "sourceId1"); SlideMasterPart newMasterPart = newDocument.PresentationPart.AddPart(newPart.SlideLayoutPart.SlideMasterPart); SlideIdList idList = newDocument.PresentationPart.Presentation.SlideIdList; // create new slide ID maxId++; SlideId newId = new SlideId(); newId.Id = maxId; newId.RelationshipId = "sourceId1"; idList.Append(newId); // Create new master slide ID uniqueId++; SlideMasterId newMasterId = new SlideMasterId(); newMasterId.Id = uniqueId; newMasterId.RelationshipId = newDocument.PresentationPart.GetIdOfPart(newMasterPart); newDocument.PresentationPart.Presentation.SlideMasterIdList.Append(newMasterId); // change slide layout ID FixSlideLayoutIds(newDocument.PresentationPart); //newPart.Slide.Save(); newDocument.PresentationPart.Presentation.Save(); } The GetMaxIDFromChild and FixSlideLayoutID methods are barrowed from Zeyad’s article. The GetSlidePartByTagName method is listed below. It is really one LINQ query that finds SlideParts with child Tags that have the requested Name. private SlidePart GetSlidePartByTagName(PresentationDocument templateDocument, string tagName) { return (from p in templateDocument.PresentationPart.SlideParts where p.UserDefinedTagsParts.First().TagList.Descendants <DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Presentation.Tag>().First().Name == tagName.ToUpper() select p).First(); } This is what really makes the difference from what Zeyad posted. The most powerful thing you can have when generating documents from templates is a consistent way of naming items to be manipulated. I will be show more approaches like this in upcoming posts. del.icio.us Tags: Office Open XML,Presentation,PowerPoint,VSTO,TagList

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Automated SSRS deployment with the RS utility

- by Stacy Vicknair

If you’re familiar with SSRS and development you are probably aware of the SSRS web services. The RS utility is a tool that comes with SSRS that allows for scripts to be executed against against the SSRS web service without needing to create an application to consume the service. One of the better benefits of using this format rather than writing an application is that the script can be modified by others who might be involved in the creation and addition of scripts or management of the SSRS environment. Reporting Services Scripter Jasper Smith from http://www.sqldbatips.com created Reporting Services Scripter to assist with the created of a batch process to deploy an entire SSRS environment. The helper scripts below were created through the modification of his generated scripts. Why not just use this tool? You certainly can. For me, the volume of scripts generated seems less maintainable than just using some common methods extracted from these scripts and creating a deployment in a single script file. I would, however, recommend this as a product if you do not think that your environment will change drastically or if you do not need to deploy with a higher level of control over the deployment. If you just need to replicate, this tool works great. Executing with RS.exe Executing a script against rs.exe is fairly simple. The Script Half the battle is having a starting point. For the scripting I needed to do the below is the starter script. A few notes: This script assumes integrated security. This script assumes your reports have one data source each. Both of the above are just what made sense for my scenario and are definitely modifiable to accommodate your needs. If you are unsure how to change the scripts to your needs, I recommend Reporting Services Scripter to help you understand how the differences. The script has three main methods: CreateFolder, CreateDataSource and CreateReport. Scripting the server deployment is just a process of recreating all of the elements that you need through calls to these methods. If there are additional elements that you need to deploy that aren’t covered by these methods, again I suggest using Reporting Services Scripter to get the code you would need, convert it to a repeatable method and add it to this script! Public Sub Main() CreateFolder("/", "Data Sources") CreateFolder("/", "My Reports") CreateDataSource("/Data Sources", "myDataSource", _ "Data Source=server\instance;Initial Catalog=myDatabase") CreateReport("/My Reports", _ "MyReport", _ "C:\myreport.rdl", _ True, _ "/Data Sources", _ "myDataSource") End Sub Public Sub CreateFolder(parent As String, name As String) Dim fullpath As String = GetFullPath(parent, name) Try RS.CreateFolder(name, parent, GetCommonProperties()) Console.WriteLine("Folder created: {0}", name) Catch e As SoapException If e.Detail.Item("ErrorCode").InnerText = "rsItemAlreadyExists" Then Console.WriteLine("Folder {0} already exists and cannot be overwritten", fullpath) Else Console.WriteLine("Error : " + e.Detail.Item("ErrorCode").InnerText + " (" + e.Detail.Item("Message").InnerText + ")") End If End Try End Sub Public Sub CreateDataSource(parent As String, name As String, connectionString As String) Try RS.CreateDataSource(name, parent,False, GetDataSourceDefinition(connectionString), GetCommonProperties()) Console.WriteLine("DataSource {0} created successfully", name) Catch e As SoapException Console.WriteLine("Error : " + e.Detail.Item("ErrorCode").InnerText + " (" + e.Detail.Item("Message").InnerText + ")") End Try End Sub Public Sub CreateReport(parent As String, name As String, location As String, overwrite As Boolean, dataSourcePath As String, dataSourceName As String) Dim reportContents As Byte() = Nothing Dim warnings As Warning() = Nothing Dim fullpath As String = GetFullPath(parent, name) 'Read RDL definition from disk Try Dim stream As FileStream = File.OpenRead(location) reportContents = New [Byte](stream.Length-1) {} stream.Read(reportContents, 0, CInt(stream.Length)) stream.Close() warnings = RS.CreateReport(name, parent, overwrite, reportContents, GetCommonProperties()) If Not (warnings Is Nothing) Then Dim warning As Warning For Each warning In warnings Console.WriteLine(Warning.Message) Next warning Else Console.WriteLine("Report: {0} published successfully with no warnings", name) End If 'Set report DataSource references Dim dataSources(0) As DataSource Dim dsr0 As New DataSourceReference dsr0.Reference = dataSourcePath Dim ds0 As New DataSource ds0.Item = CType(dsr0, DataSourceDefinitionOrReference) ds0.Name=dataSourceName dataSources(0) = ds0 RS.SetItemDataSources(fullpath, dataSources) Console.Writeline("Report DataSources set successfully") Catch e As IOException Console.WriteLine(e.Message) Catch e As SoapException Console.WriteLine("Error : " + e.Detail.Item("ErrorCode").InnerText + " (" + e.Detail.Item("Message").InnerText + ")") End Try End Sub Public Function GetCommonProperties() As [Property]() 'Common CatalogItem properties Dim descprop As New [Property] descprop.Name = "Description" descprop.Value = "" Dim hiddenprop As New [Property] hiddenprop.Name = "Hidden" hiddenprop.Value = "False" Dim props(1) As [Property] props(0) = descprop props(1) = hiddenprop Return props End Function Public Function GetDataSourceDefinition(connectionString as String) Dim definition As New DataSourceDefinition definition.CredentialRetrieval = CredentialRetrievalEnum.Integrated definition.ConnectString = connectionString definition.Enabled = True definition.EnabledSpecified = True definition.Extension = "SQL" definition.ImpersonateUser = False definition.ImpersonateUserSpecified = True definition.Prompt = "Enter a user name and password to access the data source:" definition.WindowsCredentials = False definition.OriginalConnectStringExpressionBased = False definition.UseOriginalConnectString = False Return definition End Function Private Function GetFullPath(parent As String, name As String) As String If parent = "/" Then Return parent + name Else Return parent + "/" + name End If End Function

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[Silverlight] How to watermark a WriteableBitmap with a text

- by Benjamin Roux

Hello, In my current project, I needed to watermark a WriteableBitmap with a text. As I couldn’t find anything I decided to create a small extension method to do so. public static class WriteableBitmapEx { /// <summary> /// Creates a watermark on the specified image /// </summary> /// <param name="input">The image to create the watermark from</param> /// <param name="watermark">The text to watermark</param> /// <param name="color">The color - default is White</param> /// <param name="fontSize">The font size - default is 50</param> /// <param name="opacity">The opacity - default is 0.25</param> /// <param name="hasDropShadow">Specifies if a drop shadow effect must be added - default is true</param> /// <returns>The watermarked image</returns> public static WriteableBitmap Watermark(this WriteableBitmap input, string watermark, Color color = default(Color), double fontSize = 50, double opacity = 0.25, bool hasDropShadow = true) { var watermarked = GetTextBitmap(watermark, fontSize, color == default(Color) ? Colors.White : color, opacity, hasDropShadow); var width = watermarked.PixelWidth; var height = watermarked.PixelHeight; var result = input.Clone(); var position = new Rect(input.PixelWidth - width - 20 /* right margin */, input.PixelHeight - height, width, height); result.Blit(position, watermarked, new Rect(0, 0, width, height)); return result; } /// <summary> /// Creates a WriteableBitmap from a text /// </summary> /// <param name="text"></param> /// <param name="fontSize"></param> /// <param name="color"></param> /// <param name="opacity"></param> /// <param name="hasDropShadow"></param> /// <returns></returns> private static WriteableBitmap GetTextBitmap(string text, double fontSize, Color color, double opacity, bool hasDropShadow) { TextBlock txt = new TextBlock(); txt.Text = text; txt.FontSize = fontSize; txt.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(color); txt.Opacity = opacity; if (hasDropShadow) txt.Effect = new DropShadowEffect(); WriteableBitmap bitmap = new WriteableBitmap((int)txt.ActualWidth, (int)txt.ActualHeight); bitmap.Render(txt, null); bitmap.Invalidate(); return bitmap; } } For this code to run, you need the WritableBitmapEx library. As you can see, it’s quite simple. You just need to call the Watermark method and pass it the text you want to add in your image. You can also pass optional parameters like the color, the opacity, the fontsize or if you want a drop shadow effect. I could have specify other parameters like the position or the the font family but you can change the code if you need to. Here’s what it can give Hope this helps.

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My Experience at Oracle !!! By Ayush Gupta

- by Nadiya

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Hi! My name is Ayush, a Gratuate from BITS Pilani and now working and living in Bangalore. I joined Oracle in August 2013 as a Senior Consultant (SC) and would like to share my experiences over the first couple of months with you.It has been a wonderful journey so far. The last two months have been very exciting for me. First of all I would like to mention that the training program at Oracle that we went through really prepared us well. It matured us and allowed us to go from developing small applications in college to big enterprise products. Two months of initial training has had a lasting impact for me. I am also really enjoying the knowledge I have gained so far and also learning new things in the form of product training. It's really fun to work here. We are treated like adults and we are responsible for our own workloads.With that I can't keep from mentioning the fun times we as a team have in the form of Young Leadership programme in Hotel Fortune Trinity which included Luxurious buffet lunch too. Wishing it could happen more frequently. Oracle provides one of the best opportunities to learn various technologies across different platforms. What I like best about working at Oracle is the work life balance. With the option of flexible timings, one can easily enjoy planned evenings with friends or maybe working out at the fitness centre in your building. Be it the birthday celebrations at office or the day long team outing at a resort, It’s all together a different experience. Overall, you get to take full ownership of your project and they give you a free leash on how you design your enhancements/changes.As one of the largest international companies, Oracle is obviously an expert on exploring the potential and possibility of inexperienced new hires. We were taught how to make an outstanding team work in a group training session at the first few weeks. From this experience I realized that perfect cooperation is not about where you come from or what your study background is, everyone can find his or her own role to support the team. Even though I am not that skilled in technology, my background has significantly helped me in learning new technologies in Oracle.My idea and suggestion is: for new joiners, the will to learn is be more important than what you have learnt before. Colleagues here at Oracle are professionals in their field, always friendly and glad to help. So don’t worry, all you need to do is just be confident, and have a nice attitude, Oracle will let you fully display your talent. Come and join us, here you can always find a tailor made role for you! /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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javascript complex recurrsion [on hold]

- by Achilles

Given Below is my data in data array. What i am doing in code below is that from that given data i have to construct json in a special format which i also gave below. //code start here var hierarchy={}; hierarchy.name="Hierarchy"; hierarchy.children=[{"name":"","children":[{"name":"","children":[]}]}]; var countryindex; var flagExist=false; var data = [ {country :"America", city:"Kansas", employe:'Jacob'}, {country :"Pakistan", city:"Lahore", employe:'tahir'}, {country :"Pakistan", city:"Islamabad", employe:'fakhar'} , {country :"Pakistan", city:"Lahore", employe:'bilal'}, {country :"India", city:"d", employe:'ali'} , {country :"Pakistan", city:"Karachi", employe:'eden'}, {country :"America", city:"Kansas", employe:'Jeen'} , {country :"India", city:"Banglore", employe:'PP'} , {country :"India", city:"Banglore", employe:'JJ'} , ]; for(var i=0;i<data.length;i++) { for(var j=0;j<hierarchy.children.length;j++) { //for checking country match if(hierarchy.children[j].name==data[i].country) { countryindex=j; flagExist=true; break; } } if(flagExist)//country match now no need to add new country just add city in it { var cityindex; var cityflag=false; //hierarchy.children[countryindex].children.push({"name":data[i].city,"children":[]}) //if(hierarchy.children[index].children!=undefined) for(var k=0;k< hierarchy.children[countryindex].children.length;k++) { //for checking city match if(hierarchy.children[countryindex].children[k].name==data[i].city) { // hierarchy.children[countryindex].children[k].children.push({"name":data[i].employe}) cityflag=true; cityindex=k; break; } } if(cityflag)//city match now add just empolye at that city index { hierarchy.children[countryindex].children[cityindex].children.push({"name":data[i].employe}); cityflag=false; } else//no city match so add new with employe also as this is new city so its emplye will be 1st { hierarchy.children[countryindex].children.push({"name":data[i].city,children:[{"name":data[i].employe}]}); //same as above //hierarchy.children[countryindex].children[length-1].children.push({"name":data[i].employe}); } flagExist=false; } else{ //no country match adding new country //with city also as this is new city of new country console.log("sparta"); hierarchy.children.push({"name":data[i].country,"children":[{"name":data[i].city,"children":[{"name":data[i].employe}]}]}); // hierarchy.children.children.push({"name":data[i].city,"children":[]}); } //console.log(hierarchy); } hierarchy.children.shift(); var j=JSON.stringify(hierarchy); //code ends here //here is the json which i seccessfully formed from the code { "name":"Hierarchy", "children":[ { "name":"America", "children":[ { "name":"Kansas", "children":[{"name":"Jacob"},{"name":"Jeen"}]}]}, { "name":"Pakistan", "children":[ { "name":"Lahore", "children": [ {"name":"tahir"},{"name":"bilal"}]}, { "name":"Islamabad", "children":[{"name":"fakhar"}]}, { "name":"Karachi", "children":[{"name":"eden"}]}]}, { "name":"India", "children": [ { "name":"d", "children": [ {"name":"ali"}]}, { "name":"Banglore", "children":[{"name":"PP"},{"name":"JJ"}]}]}]} Now the orignal problem is that currently i am solving this problem for data of array of three keys and i have to go for 3 nested loops now i want to optimize this solution so that if data array of object has more than 3 key say 5 {country :"America", state:"NewYork",city:"newYOrk",street:"elm", employe:'Jacob'}, or more than my solution will not work and i cannot decide before how many keys will come so i thought recursion may suit best here. But i am horrible in writing recurrsion and the case is also complex. Can some awesome programmer help me writing recurrsion or suggest some other solution.

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The theory of evolution applied to software

- by Michel Grootjans

I recently realized the many parallels you can draw between the theory of evolution and evolving software. Evolution is not the proverbial million monkeys typing on a million typewriters, where one of them comes up with the complete works of Shakespeare. We would have noticed by now, since the proverbial monkeys are now blogging on the Internet ;-) One of the main ideas of the theory of evolution is the balance between random mutations and natural selection. Random mutations happen all the time: millions of mutations over millions of years. Most of them are totally useless. Some of them are beneficial to the evolved species. Natural selection favors the beneficially mutated species. Less beneficial mutations die off. The mutated rabbit doesn't have to be faster than the fox. It just has to be faster than the other rabbits. Theory of evolution Evolving software Random mutations happen all the time. Most of these mutations are so bad, the new species dies off, or cannot reproduce. Developers write new code all the time. New ideas come up during the act of writing software. The really bad ones don't get past the stage of idea. The bad ones don't get committed to source control. Natural selection favors the beneficial mutated species Good ideas and new code gets discussed in group during informal peer review. Less than good code gets refactored. Enhanced code makes it more readable, maintainable... A good set of traits makes the species superior to others. It becomes widespread A good design tends to make it easier to add new features, easier to understand the current implementations, easier to optimize for performance...thus superior. The best designs get carried over from project to project. They appear in blogs, articles and books about principles, patterns and practices. Of course the act of writing software is deliberate. This can hardly be called random mutations. Though it sometimes might seem that code evolves through a will of its own ;-) Does this mean that evolving software (evolution) is better than a big design up front (creationism)? Not necessarily. It's a false idea to think that a project starts from scratch and everything evolves from there. Everyone carries his experience of what works and what doesn't. Up front design is necessary, but is best kept simple and minimal, just enough to get you started. Let the good experiences and ideas help to drive the process, whether they come from you or from others, from past experience or from the most junior developer on your team. Once again, balance is the keyword. Balance design up front with evolution on a daily basis. How do you know what balance is right? Through your own experience of what worked and what didn't (here's evolution again). Notes: The evolution of software can quickly degenerate without discipline. TDD is a discipline that leaves little to chance on that part. Write your test to describe the new behavior. Write just enough code to make it behave as specified. Refactor to evolve the code to a higher standard. The responsibility of good design rests continuously on each developers' shoulders. Promiscuous pair programming helps quickly spreading the design to the whole team.

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Have you ever wondered...?

- by diana.gray

I've often wondered why folks do the same thing over and over. For some of us, it's because we "don't get it" and there's an abundance of TV talk shows that will help us analyze the why of it. Dr. Phil is all too eager to ask "...and how's that working for you?". But I'm not referring to being stuck in a destructive pattern or denial. I'm really talking about doing something over and over because you have found a joy, a comfort, a boost of energy from an activity or event. For example, how many times have I planted bulbs in November or December only to be amazed by their reach, colors, and fragrance in early spring? Or baked fresh cookies and allowed the aroma to fill the house? Or kissed a sleeping baby held gently in my arms and being reminded of how tiny and fragile we all are. I've often wondered why it is that I get so much out of something I've done so many times. I think it's because I've changed. The activity may be the same but in the preceding days, months and years I've had new experiences, challenges, joys and sorrows that have shaped me. I'm different. The same is true about attending the Professional Businesswomen of California (PBWC) conference. Although the conference is an annual event held at San Francisco's Moscone Center, I still enjoy being with 3,000 other women like me. Yes, we work at different companies and in different industries, have different lifestyles and are at different stages in our professional careers and personal lives; but we are all alike in that we bring the NEW me each year that we attend. This year I can cheer when Safra Catz, President of Oracle, encourages us to trust our intuition; that "if something doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense". And I can warmly introduce myself to Lisa Askins, Cheryl Melching's business partner at Center Stage Group, when I would have been too intimated to do so last year. This year I can commit to new challenges such as "no whining, no excuses and no gossip" as suggested by Roxanne Emmerich, a goal that I would have wavered on last year. I can also embrace the suggestion given by Dr. Ian Smith to "spend one hour each day" on me - giving myself time to rejuvenate. A friend, when asked if she was attending PBWC this year, said "I've attended the conference several times and there's nothing new!" My perspective is that WE are what makes PBWC's annual conference new. We are far different in 2010 than we were in 2009. We are learning, growing, developing and shedding and that's what makes the conference fresh, vibrant, rewarding, and lasting. It is the diversity of women coming together that makes it new. By sharing our experiences, we discover. By meeting with one another professionally and personally, we connect. And by applying the wisdom learned, we shine. We are reNEW-ed. It shows in our fresh ideas, confident interactions, strategic decisions and successful businesses. This refreshed approach is what our companies want and need, our families depend on, our communities and nation look to for creative solutions to pressing concerns. Thanks Oracle for your continued support and thanks PBWC for providing an annual day to be reNEW-ed.

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C#: A "Dumbed-Down" C++?

- by James Michael Hare

I was spending a lovely day this last weekend watching my sons play outside in one of the better weekends we've had here in Saint Louis for quite some time, and whilst watching them and making sure no limbs were broken or eyes poked out with sticks and other various potential injuries, I was perusing (in the correct sense of the word) this month's MSDN magazine to get a sense of the latest VS2010 features in both IDE and in languages. When I got to the back pages, I saw a wonderful article by David S. Platt entitled, "In Praise of Dumbing Down" (msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee336129.aspx). The title captivated me and I read it and found myself agreeing with it completely especially as it related to my first post on divorcing C++ as my favorite language. Unfortunately, as Mr. Platt mentions, the term dumbing-down has negative connotations, but is really and truly a good thing. You are, in essence, taking something that is extremely complex and reducing it to something that is much easier to use and far less error prone. Adding safeties to power tools and anti-kick mechanisms to chainsaws are in some sense "dumbing them down" to the common user -- but that also makes them safer and more accessible for the common user. This was exactly my point with C++ and C#. I did not mean to infer that C++ was not a useful or good language, but that in a very high percentage of cases, is too complex and error prone for the job at hand. Choosing the correct programming language for a job is a lot like choosing any other tool for a task. For example: if I want to dig a French drain in my lawn, I can attempt to use a huge tractor-like backhoe and the job would be done far quicker than if I would dig it by hand. I can't deny that the backhoe has the raw power and speed to perform. But you also cannot deny that my chances of injury or chances of severing utility lines or other resources climb at an exponential rate inverse to the amount of training I may have on that machinery. Is C++ a powerful tool? Oh yes, and it's great for those tasks where speed and performance are paramount. But for most of us, it's the wrong tool. And keep in mind, I say this even though I have 17 years of experience in using it and feel myself highly adept in utilizing its features both in the standard libraries, the STL, and in supplemental libraries such as BOOST. Which, although greatly help with adding powerful features quickly, do very little to curb the relative dangers of the language. So, you may say, the fault is in the developer, that if the developer had some higher skills or if we only hired C++ experts this would not be an issue. Now, I will concede there is some truth to this. Obviously, the higher skilled C++ developers you hire the better the chance they will produce highly performant and error-free code. However, what good is that to the average developer who cannot afford a full stable of C++ experts? That's my point with C#: It's like a kinder, gentler C++. It gives you nearly the same speed, and in many ways even more power than C++, and it gives you a much softer cushion for novices to fall against if they code less-than-optimally. A bug is a bug, of course, in any language, but C# does a good job of hiding and taking on the task of handling almost all of the resource issues that make C++ so tricky. For my money, C# is much more maintainable, more feature-rich, second only slightly in performance, faster to market, and -- last but not least -- safer and easier to use. That's why, where I work, I much prefer to see the developers moving to C#. The quantity of bugs is much lower, and we don't need to hire "experts" to achieve the same results since the language itself handles those resource pitfalls so prevalent in poorly written C++ code. C++ will still have its place in the world, and I'm sure I'll still use it now and again where it is truly the correct tool for the job, but for nearly every other project C# is a wonderfully "dumbed-down" version of C++ -- in the very best sense -- and to me, that's the smart choice.

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C# 5 Async, Part 2: Asynchrony Today

- by Reed

The .NET Framework has always supported asynchronous operations. However, different mechanisms for supporting exist throughout the framework. While there are at least three separate asynchronous patterns used through the framework, only the latest is directly usable with the new Visual Studio Async CTP. Before delving into details on the new features, I will talk about existing asynchronous code, and demonstrate how to adapt it for use with the new pattern. The first asynchronous pattern used in the .NET framework was the Asynchronous Programming Model (APM). This pattern was based around callbacks. A method is used to start the operation. It typically is named as BeginSomeOperation. This method is passed a callback defined as an AsyncCallback, and returns an object that implements IAsyncResult. Later, the IAsyncResult is used in a call to a method named EndSomeOperation, which blocks until completion and returns the value normally directly returned from the synchronous version of the operation. Often, the EndSomeOperation call would be called from the callback function passed, which allows you to write code that never blocks. While this pattern works perfectly to prevent blocking, it can make quite confusing code, and be difficult to implement. For example, the sample code provided for FileStream’s BeginRead/EndRead methods is not simple to understand. In addition, implementing your own asynchronous methods requires creating an entire class just to implement the IAsyncResult. Given the complexity of the APM, other options have been introduced in later versions of the framework. The next major pattern introduced was the Event-based Asynchronous Pattern (EAP). This provides a simpler pattern for asynchronous operations. It works by providing a method typically named SomeOperationAsync, which signals its completion via an event typically named SomeOperationCompleted. The EAP provides a simpler model for asynchronous programming. It is much easier to understand and use, and far simpler to implement. Instead of requiring a custom class and callbacks, the standard event mechanism in C# is used directly. For example, the WebClient class uses this extensively. A method is used, such as DownloadDataAsync, and the results are returned via the DownloadDataCompleted event. While the EAP is far simpler to understand and use than the APM, it is still not ideal. By separating your code into method calls and event handlers, the logic of your program gets more complex. It also typically loses the ability to block until the result is received, which is often useful. Blocking often requires writing the code to block by hand, which is error prone and adds complexity. As a result, .NET 4 introduced a third major pattern for asynchronous programming. The Task<T> class introduced a new, simpler concept for asynchrony. Task and Task<T> effectively represent an operation that will complete at some point in the future. This is a perfect model for thinking about asynchronous code, and is the preferred model for all new code going forward. Task and Task<T> provide all of the advantages of both the APM and the EAP models – you have the ability to block on results (via Task.Wait() or Task<T>.Result), and you can stay completely asynchronous via the use of Task Continuations. In addition, the Task class provides a new model for task composition and error and cancelation handling. This is a far superior option to the previous asynchronous patterns. The Visual Studio Async CTP extends the Task based asynchronous model, allowing it to be used in a much simpler manner. However, it requires the use of Task and Task<T> for all operations.

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