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• What type of interview questions should you ask for "legacy" programmers?

  - by Marcus Swope

  We have recently been receiving lots of applicants for our open developer positions from people who I like to refer to as "legacy" programmers. I don't like the term "old" because it seems a little prejudiced (especially to HR!) and it doesn't accurately reflect what I mean. We are a company that does primarily .NET development using TDD in an Agile environment, we use Git as a source control system, we make heavy use of OSS tools and projects and we contribute to them as well, we have a strong bias towards adhering to strong Object-Oriented principles, SOLID, etc, etc, etc... Now, the normal list of questions that we ask doesn't really seem to apply to applicants that are fresh out of school, nor does it seem to apply to these "legacy" programmers. Here is how I (loosely) define a "legacy" programmer. Spent a significant amount of their career working almost exclusively with Assembly/Machine Languages. Primary accomplishments include work done with TANDEM systems. Has extensive experience with technologies like FoxPro and ColdFusion It's not that we somehow think that what we do is "better" than what they do, on the contrary, we respect these types of applicants and we are scared that we may be missing a good candidate. It is just very difficult to get a good read on someone who is essentially speaking a different language than you. To someone like this, it seems a little strange to ask a question like: What is the difference between an abstract class and an interface? Because, I would think that they would almost never know the answer or even what I'm talking about. However, I don't want to eliminate someone who could be a very good candidate in their own right and could be able to eventually learn the stuff that we do. But, I also don't want to just ask a bunch of behavioral questions, because I want to know about their technical background as well. Am I being too naive? Should "legacy" programmers like this already know about things like TDD, source control strategies, and best practices for object-oriented programming? If not, what questions should we ask to get a good representation about whether or not they are still able to learn them and be able to keep up in our fast-paced environment? EDIT: I'm not concerned with whether or not applicants that meet these criteria are in general capable or incapable, as I have already stated that I believe that they can be 100% capable. I am more interested in figuring out how to evaluate their talents, as I am having a hard time figuring out how to determine if they are an A+ "legacy" programmer or if they are a D- "legacy" programmer. I've worked with both.

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• How do I fix postfix TLS?

  - by Savanni D'Gerinel

  STARTTLS was working with my system earlier today. Without me altering the system in any way, it spontaneously broke. I've now been trying to fix it for a couple of hours, to no success. When I connect to the server, this is what I get: savanni@Orolo:~$ telnet apps.savannidgerinel.com 25 Trying 129.121.182.135... Connected to apps.sasavanni@Orolo:~$ telnet apps.savannidgerinel.com 25 Trying 129.121.182.135... Connected to apps.savannidgerinel.com. Escape character is '^]'. 220 *********************************************** ehlo dude 250-apps.savannidgerinel.com 250-PIPELINING 250-SIZE 10240000 250-VRFY 250-ETRN 250-XXXXXXXA 250-AUTH PLAIN 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES 250-8BITMIME 250 DSN ^]close telnet> close Connection closed. Okay, obviously STARTTLS isn't present in this list. So I've been digging through my configuration files and working through the tutorials again, and that has done me no good at all. Here's my tls-related configuration: smtp_tls_CAfile = /etc/ssl/certs/savannidgerinel_com_CA.pem smtp_tls_cert_file = /etc/ssl/certs/apps.savannidgerinel.com.pem smtp_tls_key_file = /etc/ssl/private/apps.savannidgerinel.com.key.pem smtp_tls_security_level = may smtp_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtp_scache smtpd_tls_CAfile = /etc/ssl/certs/savannidgerinel_com_CA.pem smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/ssl/certs/apps.savannidgerinel.com.pem smtpd_tls_key_file = /etc/ssl/private/apps.savannidgerinel.com.key.pem smtpd_tls_loglevel = 3 smtpd_tls_received_header = yes smtpd_tls_security_level = may smtpd_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtpd_scache tls_random_source = dev:/dev/urandom All of the certificate files are present, the server private key is present, the server CA is present, and the smtpd_scache.db and smtp_scache.db files are both present. All are accessible to the postfix user. Speaking of which, here are the processes running: savanni@apps:/var/lib/postfix$ ps aux | grep postfix root 3525 0.0 0.1 25112 1680 ? Ss 20:19 0:00 /usr/lib/postfix/master postfix 3526 0.0 0.1 27176 1524 ? S 20:19 0:00 pickup -l -t fifo -u -c -o content_filter= -o receive_override_options=no_header_body_checks postfix 3527 0.0 0.1 27228 1552 ? S 20:19 0:00 qmgr -l -t fifo -u postfix 3528 0.0 0.4 46948 4144 ? S 20:19 0:00 smtpd -n smtp -t inet -u -c -o stress= -s 2 postfix 3529 0.0 0.1 27176 1628 ? S 20:19 0:00 proxymap -t unix -u postfix 3530 0.0 0.3 38212 3176 ? S 20:19 0:00 tlsmgr -l -t unix -u -c postfix 3531 0.0 0.1 27176 1516 ? S 20:19 0:00 anvil -l -t unix -u -c postfix 3535 0.0 0.1 27188 1544 ? S 20:20 0:00 trivial-rewrite -n rewrite -t unix -u -c The log files say absolutely nothing related to TLS except for this: Nov 6 02:19:45 apps postfix/master[3525]: daemon started -- version 2.9.6, configuration /etc/postfix Nov 6 02:19:49 apps postfix/smtpd[3528]: initializing the server-side TLS engine Nov 6 02:19:49 apps postfix/tlsmgr[3530]: open smtpd TLS cache btree:/var/lib/postfix/smtpd_scache Nov 6 02:19:49 apps postfix/tlsmgr[3530]: tlsmgr_cache_run_event: start TLS smtpd session cache cleanup Nov 6 02:19:49 apps postfix/smtpd[3528]: connect from unknown[204.16.68.108] Neither syslog nor mail.err shows any indication of a problem. As far as the whole system is concerned, all is well. But there is no STARTTLS and so I suddenly can't send any email at all. Help???

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• Issues with ILMerge, Lambda Expressions and VS2010 merging?

  - by John Blumenauer

  A little Background For quite some time now, it’s been possible to merge multiple .NET assemblies into a single assembly using ILMerge in Visual Studio 2008.  This is especially helpful when writing wrapper assemblies for 3rd-party libraries where it’s desirable to minimize the number of assemblies for distribution.  During the merge process, ILMerge will take a set of assemblies and merge them into a single assembly.  The resulting assembly can be either an executable or a DLL and is identified as the primary assembly. Issue During a recent project, I discovered using ILMerge to merge assemblies containing lambda expressions in Visual Studio 2010 is resulting in invalid primary assemblies.  The code below is not where the initial issue was identified, I will merely use it to illustrate the problem at hand. In order to describe the issue, I created a console application and a class library for calculating a few math functions utilizing lambda expressions.  The code is available for download at the bottom of this blog entry. MathLib.cs using System; namespace MathLib { public static class MathHelpers { public static Func<double, double, double> Hypotenuse = (x, y) => Math.Sqrt(x * x + y * y); static readonly Func<int, int, bool> divisibleBy = (int a, int b) => a % b == 0; public static bool IsPrimeNumber(int x) { { for (int i = 2; i <= x / 2; i++) if (divisibleBy(x, i)) return false; return true; }; } } } Program.cs using System; using MathLib; namespace ILMergeLambdasConsole { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { int n = 19; if (MathHelpers.IsPrimeNumber(n)) { Console.WriteLine(n + " is prime"); } else { Console.WriteLine(n + " is not prime"); } Console.ReadLine(); } } } Not surprisingly, the preceding code compiles, builds and executes without error prior to running the ILMerge tool.   ILMerge Setup In order to utilize ILMerge, the following changes were made to the project. The MathLib.dll assembly was built in release configuration and copied to the MathLib folder.  The following folder hierarchy was used for this example:   The project file for ILMergeLambdasConsole project file was edited to add the ILMerge post-build configuration.  The following lines were added near the bottom of the project file:  <Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Release'"> <Exec Command="&quot;..\..\lib\ILMerge\Ilmerge.exe&quot; /ndebug /out:@(MainAssembly) &quot;@(IntermediateAssembly)&quot; @(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths->'&quot;%(FullPath)&quot;', ' ')" /> <Delete Files="@(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths->'$(OutDir)%(DestinationSubDirectory)%(Filename)%(Extension)')" /> </Target> The ILMergeLambdasConsole project was modified to reference the MathLib.dll located in the MathLib folder above. ILMerge and ILMerge.exe.config was copied into the ILMerge folder shown above.  The contents of ILMerge.exe.config are: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true"> <requiredRuntime safemode="true" imageVersion="v4.0.30319" version="v4.0.30319"/> </startup> </configuration> Post-ILMerge After compiling and building, the MathLib.dll assembly will be merged into the ILMergeLambdasConsole executable.  Unfortunately, executing ILMergeLambdasConsole.exe now results in a crash.  The ILMerge documentation recommends using PEVerify.exe to validate assemblies after merging.  Executing PEVerify.exe against the ILMergeLambdasConsole.exe assembly results in the following error:    Further investigation by using Reflector reveals the divisibleBy method in the MathHelpers class looks a bit questionable after the merge.     Prior to using ILMerge, the same divisibleBy method appeared as the following in Reflector: It’s pretty obvious something has gone awry during the merge process.  However, this is only occurring when building within the Visual Studio 2010 environment.  The same code and configuration built within Visual Studio 2008 executes fine.  I’m still investigating the issue.  If anyone has already experienced this situation and solved it, I would love to hear from you.  However, as of right now, it looks like something has gone terribly wrong when executing ILMerge against assemblies containing Lambdas in Visual Studio 2010. Solution Files ILMergeLambdaExpression

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• Extending Blend for Visual Studio 2013

  - by Chris Skardon

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/cskardon/archive/2013/11/01/extending-blend-for-visual-studio-2013.aspxSo, I got a comment yesterday on my post about Extending Blend 4 and Blend for Visual Studio 2012 asking if I knew how to get it working for Blend for Visual Studio 2013.. My initial thoughts were, just change the location to get the blend dlls from Visual Studio 11.0 to 12.0 and you’re all set, so I went to do that, only to discover that the dlls I normally reference, well – they don’t exist. So… I’ve made a presumption that the actual process of using MEF etc is still the same. I was wrong. So, the route to discovery – required DotPeek and opening a few of blends dlls.. Browsing through the Blend install directory (./Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0/Blend/) I notice the .addin files: So I decide to peek into the SketchFlow dll, then promptly remember SketchFlow is quite a big thing, and hunting through there is not ideal, luckily there is another dll using an .addin file, ‘Microsoft.Expression.Importers.Host’, so we’ll go for that instead. We can see it’s still using the ‘IPackage’ formula, but where is that sucker? Well, we just press F12 on the ‘IPackage’ bit and DotPeek takes us there, with a very handy comment at the top: // Type: Microsoft.Expression.Framework.IPackage // Assembly: Microsoft.Expression.Framework, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a // MVID: E092EA54-4941-463C-BD74-283FD36478E2 // Assembly location: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Blend\Microsoft.Expression.Framework.dll Now we know where the IPackage interface is defined, so let’s just try writing a control. Last time I did a separate dll for the control, this time I’m not, but it still works if you want to do it that way. Let’s build a control! STEP 1 Create a new WPF application Naming doesn’t matter any more! I have gone with ‘Hello2013’ (see what I did there?) STEP 2 Delete: App.Config App.xaml MainWindow.xaml We won’t be needing them STEP 3 Change your application to be a Class Library instead. (You might also want to delete the ‘vshost’ stuff in your output directory now, as they only exist for hosting the WPF app, and just cause clutter) STEP 4 Add a reference to the ‘Microsoft.Expression.Framework.dll’ (which you can find in ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Blend’ – that’s Program Files (x86) if you’re on an x64 machine!). STEP 5 Add a User Control, I’m going with ‘Hello2013Control’, and following from last time, it’s just a TextBlock in a Grid: <UserControl x:Class="Hello2013.Hello2013Control" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="300"> <Grid> <TextBlock>Hello Blend for VS 2013</TextBlock> </Grid> </UserControl> STEP 6 Add a class to load the package – I’ve called it – yes you guessed – Hello2013Package, which will look like this: namespace Hello2013 { using Microsoft.Expression.Framework; using Microsoft.Expression.Framework.UserInterface; public class Hello2013Package : IPackage { private Hello2013Control _hello2013Control; private IWindowService _windowService; public void Load(IServices services) { _windowService = services.GetService<IWindowService>(); Initialize(); } private void Initialize() { _hello2013Control = new Hello2013Control(); if (_windowService.PaletteRegistry["HelloPanel"] == null) _windowService.RegisterPalette("HelloPanel", _hello2013Control, "Hello Window"); } public void Unload(){} } } You might note that compared to the 2012 version we’re no longer [Exporting(typeof(IPackage))]. The file you create in STEP 7 covers this for us. STEP 7 Add a new file called: ‘<PROJECT_OUTPUT_NAME>.addin’ – in reality you can call it anything and it’ll still read it in just fine, it’s just nicer if it all matches up, so I have ‘Hello2013.addin’. Content wise, we need to have: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <AddIn AssemblyFile="Hello2013.dll" /> obviously, replacing ‘Hello2013.dll’ with whatever your dll is called. STEP 8 We set the ‘addin’ file to be copied to the output directory: STEP 9 Build! STEP 10 Go to your output directory (./bin/debug) and copy the 3 files (Hello2013.dll, Hello2013.pdb, Hello2013.addin) and then paste into the ‘Addins’ folder in your Blend directory (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Blend\Addins) STEP 11 Start Blend for Visual Studio 2013 STEP 12 Go to the ‘Window’ menu and select ‘Hello Window’ STEP 13 Marvel at your new control! Feel free to email me / comment with any problems!

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• Java Spotlight Episode 56: Stephan Jenssen, Java Champion, on Devoxx and Parleys

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Tweet Interview with Stephan Janssen, Java Champion, on Devoxx and Parleys Joining us this week on the Java All Star Developer Panel are Dalibor Topic, Java Free and Open Source Software Ambassador and Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine, Java EE Developer Advocate. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link: Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News Devoxx Live Recording of the Java Spotlight Podcast. Come be part of the live recording. November 18, 10:45am in BOF 1 room next to the info desk Wanted: Java Code Brainteasers Adopt a JSR Flash to Focus on PC Browsing and Mobile Apps; Adobe to More Aggressively Contribute to HTML5 First binary snapshots of Project Lambda are available JSF 2.2 recent progress - Early Draft Latest OEPE (11.1.1.8) - Eclipse 3.7.1-based  Events Nov 14-18 Devoxx, Antwerp Nov 15-17, DOAG, Nuremberg, Germany Nov 22-25, OTN Developer Days in the Nordics Nov 22-23, Goto Conference, Prague Dec 6-8, Java One Brazil, Sao Paulo Feature interview Stephan Janssen is a serial entrepreneur that has founded several successful organizations such as the Belgian Java User Group (BeJUG) in 1996, JCS Int. in 1998, JavaPolis in 2002 and now Parleys.com in 2006. He has been using Java since its early releases in 1995 with experience of developing and implementing real world Java solutions in the finance and manufacturing industries. Today Stephan is the CTO of the Java Competence Center at RealDolmen. He was selected by BEA Systems as the first European (independent) BEA Technical Director. He has also been recognized by the Server Side as one of the 54 Who is Who in Enterprise Java 2004. Sun has recognized in 2005 his efforts for the Java Community and has engaged him in the Java Champion project. He has spoken at numerous Java and JUG conferences around the world. Mail Bag What's Cool Increased interest in Mobile and Embedded topics, on the heels of the JavaOne announcements. Speaking engagements, etc PodFodder: John Duimovich on IBM & OpenJDK at JavaOne 2011 Oracle Releases Oracle Solaris 11, the First Cloud OS Show Transcripts Transcript for this show is available here when available.

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• Composing Silverlight Applications With MEF

  - by PeterTweed

  Anyone who has written an application with complexity enough to warrant multiple controls on multiple pages/forms should understand the benefit of composite application development.  That is defining your application architecture that can be separated into separate pieces each with it’s own distinct purpose that can then be “composed” together into the solution. Composition can be useful in any layer of the application, from the presentation layer, the business layer, common services or data access.  Historically people have had different options to achieve composing applications from distinct well known pieces – their own version of dependency injection, containers to aid with composition like Unity, the composite application guidance for WPF and Silverlight and before that the composite application block. Microsoft has been working on another mechanism to aid composition and extension of applications for some time now – the Managed Extensibility Framework or MEF for short.  With Silverlight 4 it is part of the Silverlight environment.  MEF allows a much simplified mechanism for composition and extensibility compared to other mechanisms – which has always been the primary issue for adoption of the earlier mechanisms/frameworks. This post will guide you through the simple use of MEF for the scenario of composition of an application – using exports, imports and composition.  Steps: 1.     Create a new Silverlight 4 application. 2.     Add references to the following assemblies: System.ComponentModel.Composition.dll System.ComponentModel.Composition.Initialization.dll 3.     Add a new user control called LeftControl. 4.     Replace the LayoutRoot Grid with the following xaml:     <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Beige" Margin="40" >         <Button Content="Left Content" Margin="30"></Button>     </Grid> 5.     Add the following statement to the top of the LeftControl.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 6.     Add the following attribute to the LeftControl class     [Export(typeof(LeftControl))]   This attribute tells MEF that the type LeftControl will be exported – i.e. made available for other applications to import and compose into the application. 7.     Add a new user control called RightControl. 8.     Replace the LayoutRoot Grid with the following xaml:     <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Green" Margin="40"  >         <TextBlock Margin="40" Foreground="White" Text="Right Control" FontSize="16" VerticalAlignment="Center" HorizontalAlignment="Center" ></TextBlock>     </Grid> 9.     Add the following statement to the top of the RightControl.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 10.   Add the following attribute to the RightControl class     [Export(typeof(RightControl))] 11.   Add the following xaml to the LayoutRoot Grid in MainPage.xaml:         <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Center">             <Border Name="LeftContent" Background="Red" BorderBrush="Gray" CornerRadius="20"></Border>             <Border Name="RightContent" Background="Red" BorderBrush="Gray" CornerRadius="20"></Border>         </StackPanel>   The borders will hold the controls that will be imported and composed via MEF. 12.   Add the following statement to the top of the MainPage.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 13.   Add the following properties to the MainPage class:         [Import(typeof(LeftControl))]         public LeftControl LeftUserControl { get; set; }         [Import(typeof(RightControl))]         public RightControl RightUserControl { get; set; }   This defines properties accepting LeftControl and RightControl types.  The attrributes are used to tell MEF the discovered type that should be applied to the property when composition occurs. 14.   Replace the MainPage constructore with the following code:         public MainPage()         {             InitializeComponent();             CompositionInitializer.SatisfyImports(this);             LeftContent.Child = LeftUserControl;             RightContent.Child = RightUserControl;         }   The CompositionInitializer.SatisfyImports(this) function call tells MEF to discover types related to the declared imports for this object (the MainPage object).  At that point, types matching those specified in the import defintions are discovered in the executing assembly location of the application and instantiated and assigned to the matching properties of the current object. 15.   Run the application and you will see the left control and right control types displayed in the MainPage:   Congratulations!  You have used MEF to dynamically compose user controls into a parent control in a composite application model. In the next post we will build on this topic to cover using MEF to compose Silverlight applications dynamically in download on demand scenarios – so .xap packages can be downloaded only when needed, avoiding large initial download for the main application xap. Take the Slalom Challenge at www.slalomchallenge.com!

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• Building a plug-in for Windows Live Writer

  - by mbcrump

  This tutorial will show you how to build a plug-in for Windows Live Writer. Windows Live Writer is a blogging tool that Microsoft provides for free. It includes an open API for .NET developers to create custom plug-ins. In this tutorial, I will show you how easy it is to build one. Open VS2008 or VS2010 and create a new project. Set the target framework to 2.0, Application Type to Class Library and give it a name. In this tutorial, we are going to create a plug-in that generates a twitter message with your blog post name and a TinyUrl link to the blog post.  It will do all of this automatically after you publish your post. Once, we have a new projected created. We need to setup the references. Add a reference to the WindowsLive.Writer.Api.dll located in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Live\Writer\ folder, if you are using X64 version of Windows. You will also need to add a reference to System.Windows.Forms System.Web from the .NET tab as well. Once that is complete, add your “using” statements so that it looks like whats shown below: Live Writer Plug-In "Using" using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using WindowsLive.Writer.Api; using System.Web; Now, we are going to setup some build events to make it easier to test our custom class. Go into the Properties of your project and select Build Events, click edit the Post-build and copy/paste the following line: XCOPY /D /Y /R "$(TargetPath)" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Live\Writer\Plugins\" Your screen should look like the one pictured below: Next, we are going to launch an external program on debug. Click the debug tab and enter C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Live\Writer\WindowsLiveWriter.exe Your screen should look like the one pictured below:   Now we have a blank project and we need to add some code. We start with adding the attributes for the Live Writer Plugin. Before we get started creating the Attributes, we need to create a GUID. This GUID will uniquely identity our plug-in. So, to create a GUID follow the steps in VS2008/2010. Click Tools from the VS Menu ->Create GUID It will generate a GUID like the one listed below: GUID <Guid("56ED8A2C-F216-420D-91A1-F7541495DBDA")> We only want what’s inside the quotes, so your final product should be: "56ED8A2C-F216-420D-91A1-F7541495DBDA". Go ahead and paste this snipped into your class just above the public class. Live Writer Plug-In Attributes [WriterPlugin("56ED8A2C-F216-420D-91A1-F7541495DBDA",    "Generate Twitter Message",    Description = "After your new post has been published, this plug-in will attempt to generate a Twitter status messsage with the Title and TinyUrl link.",    HasEditableOptions = false,    Name = "Generate Twitter Message",    PublisherUrl = "http://michaelcrump.net")] [InsertableContentSource("Generate Twitter Message")] So far, it should look like the following: Next, we need to implement the PublishNotifcationHook class and override the OnPostPublish. I’m not going to dive into what the code is doing as you should be able to follow pretty easily. The code below is the entire code used in the project. PublishNotificationHook public class Class1 :  PublishNotificationHook  {      public override void OnPostPublish(System.Windows.Forms.IWin32Window dialogOwner, IProperties properties, IPublishingContext publishingContext, bool publish)      {          if (!publish) return;          if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(publishingContext.PostInfo.Permalink))          {              PluginDiagnostics.LogError("Live Tweet didn't execute, due to blank permalink");          }          else          {                var strBlogName = HttpUtility.UrlEncode("#blogged : " + publishingContext.PostInfo.Title);  //Blog Post Title              var strUrlFinal = getTinyUrl(publishingContext.PostInfo.Permalink); //Blog Permalink URL Converted to TinyURL              System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("http://twitter.com/home?status=" + strBlogName + strUrlFinal);            }      } We are going to go ahead and create a method to create the short url (tinyurl). TinyURL Helper Method private static string getTinyUrl(string url) {     var cmpUrl = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture.CompareInfo;     if (!cmpUrl.IsPrefix(url, "http://tinyurl.com"))     {         var address = "http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=" + url;         var client = new System.Net.WebClient();         return (client.DownloadString(address));     }     return (url); } Go ahead and build your project, it should have copied the .DLL into the Windows Live Writer Plugin Directory. If it did not, then you will want to check your configuration. Once that is complete, open Windows Live Writer and select Tools-> Options-> Plug-ins and enable your plug-in that you just created. Your screen should look like the one pictured below: Go ahead and click OK and publish your blog post. You should get a pop-up with the following: Hit OK and It should open a Twitter and either ask for a login or fill in your status as shown below:   That should do it, you can do so many other things with the API. I suggest that if you want to build something really useful consult the MSDN pages. This plug-in that I created was perfect for what I needed and I hope someone finds it useful.

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• How to get tens of millions of pages indexed by Google bot?

  - by Chris Adragna

  We are currently developing a site that currently has 8 million unique pages that will grow to about 20 million right away, and eventually to about 50 million or more. Before you criticize... Yes, it provides unique, useful content. We continually process raw data from public records and by doing some data scrubbing, entity rollups, and relationship mapping, we've been able to generate quality content, developing a site that's quite useful and also unique, in part due to the breadth of the data. It's PR is 0 (new domain, no links), and we're getting spidered at a rate of about 500 pages per day, putting us at about 30,000 pages indexed thus far. At this rate, it would take over 400 years to index all of our data. I have two questions: Is the rate of the indexing directly correlated to PR, and by that I mean is it correlated enough that by purchasing an old domain with good PR will get us to a workable indexing rate (in the neighborhood of 100,000 pages per day). Are there any SEO consultants who specialize in aiding the indexing process itself. We're otherwise doing very well with SEO, on-page especially, besides, the competition for our "long-tail" keyword phrases is pretty low, so our success hinges mostly on the number of pages indexed. Our main competitor has achieved approx 20MM pages indexed in just over one year's time, along with an Alexa 2000-ish ranking. Noteworthy qualities we have in place: page download speed is pretty good (250-500 ms) no errors (no 404 or 500 errors when getting spidered) we use Google webmaster tools and login daily friendly URLs in place I'm afraid to submit sitemaps. Some SEO community postings suggest a new site with millions of pages and no PR is suspicious. There is a Google video of Matt Cutts speaking of a staged on-boarding of large sites, too, in order to avoid increased scrutiny (at approx 2:30 in the video). Clickable site links deliver all pages, no more than four pages deep and typically no more than 250(-ish) internal links on a page. Anchor text for internal links is logical and adds relevance hierarchically to the data on the detail pages. We had previously set the crawl rate to the highest on webmaster tools (only about a page every two seconds, max). I recently turned it back to "let Google decide" which is what is advised.

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• Part 1 - Load Testing In The Cloud

  - by Tarun Arora

  Azure is fascinating, but even more fascinating is the marriage of Azure and TFS! Introduction Recently a client I worked for had 2 major business critical applications being delivered, with very little time budgeted for Performance testing, we immediately hit a bottleneck when the performance testing phase started, the in house infrastructure team could not support the hardware requirements in the short notice. It was suggested that the performance testing be performed on one of the QA environments which was a fraction of the production environment. This didn’t seem right, the team decided to turn to the cloud. The team took advantage of the elasticity offered by Azure, starting with a single test agent which was provisioned and ready for use with in 30 minutes the team scaled up to 17 test agents to perform a very comprehensive performance testing cycle. Issues were identified and resolved but the highlight was that the cost of running the ‘test rig’ proved to be less than if hosted on premise by the infrastructure team. Thank you for taking the time out to read this blog post, in the series of posts, I’ll try and cover the start to end of everything you need to know to use Azure to build your Test Rig in the cloud. But Why Azure? I have my own Data Centre… If the environment is provisioned in your own datacentre, - No matter what level of service agreement you may have with your infrastructure team there will be down time when the environment is patched - How fast can you scale up or down the environments (keeping the enterprise processes in mind) Administration, Cost, Flexibility and Scalability are the areas you would want to think around when taking the decision between your own Data Centre and Azure! How is Microsoft's Public Cloud Offering different from Amazon’s Public Cloud Offering? Microsoft's offering of the Cloud is a hybrid of Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) which distinguishes Microsoft's offering from other providers such as Amazon (Amazon only offers IaaS). PaaS – Platform as a Service IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service Fills the needs of those who want to build and run custom applications as services. Similar to traditional hosting, where a business will use the hosted environment as a logical extension of the on-premises datacentre. A service provider offers a pre-configured, virtualized application server environment to which applications can be deployed by the development staff. Since the service providers manage the hardware (patching, upgrades and so forth), as well as application server uptime, the involvement of IT pros is minimized. On-demand scalability combined with hardware and application server management relieves developers from infrastructure concerns and allows them to focus on building applications. The servers (physical and virtual) are rented on an as-needed basis, and the IT professionals who manage the infrastructure have full control of the software configuration. This kind of flexibility increases the complexity of the IT environment, as customer IT professionals need to maintain the servers as though they are on-premises. The maintenance activities may include patching and upgrades of the OS and the application server, load balancing, failover clustering of database servers, backup and restoration, and any other activities that mitigate the risks of hardware and software failures.   The biggest advantage with PaaS is that you do not have to worry about maintaining the environment, you can focus all your time in solving the business problems with your solution rather than worrying about maintaining the environment. If you decide to use a VM Role on Azure, you are asking for IaaS, more on this later. A nice blog post here on the difference between Saas, PaaS and IaaS. Now that we are convinced why we should be turning to the cloud and why in specific Azure, let’s discuss about the Test Rig. The Load Test Rig – Topology Now the moment of truth, Of course a big part of getting value from cloud computing is identifying the most adequate workloads to take to the cloud, so I’ve decided to try to make a Load Testing rig where the Agents are running on Windows Azure.   I’ll talk you through the above Topology, - User: User kick starts the load test run from the developer workstation on premise. This passes the request to the Test Controller. - Test Controller: The Test Controller is on premise connected to the same domain as the developer workstation. As soon as the Test Controller receives the request it makes use of the Windows Azure Connect service to orchestrate the test responsibilities to all the Test Agents. The Windows Azure Connect endpoint software must be active on all Azure instances and on the Controller machine as well. This allows IP connectivity between them and, given that the firewall is properly configured, allows the Controller to send work loads to the agents. In parallel, the Controller will collect the performance data from the agents, using the traditional WMI mechanisms. - Test Agents: The Test Agents are on the Windows Azure Public Cloud, as soon as the test controller issues instructions to the test agents, the test agents start executing the load tests. The HTTP requests are issued against the web server on premise, the results are captured by the test agents. And finally the results are passed over to the controller. - Servers: The Web Server and DB Server are hosted on premise in the datacentre, this is usually the case with business critical applications, you probably want to manage them your self. Recap and What’s next? So, in the introduction in the series of blog posts on Load Testing in the cloud I highlighted why creating a test rig in the cloud is a good idea, what advantages does Windows Azure offer and the Test Rig topology that I will be using. I would also like to mention that i stumbled upon this [Video] on Azure in a nutshell, great watch if you are new to Windows Azure. In the next post I intend to start setting up the Load Test Environment and discuss pricing with respect to test agent machine types that will be used in the test rig. Hope you enjoyed this post, If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to add to this blog post. Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora.  See you in Part II.   Share this post : CodeProject

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• Software Architecture and MEF composition location

  - by Leonardo

  Introduction My software (a bunch of webapi's) consist of 4 projects: Core, FrontWebApi, Library and Administration. Library is a code library project that consists of only interfaces and enumerators. All my classes in other projects inherit from at least one interface, and this interface is in the library. Generally speaking, my interfaces define either Entities, Repositories or Controllers. This project references no other project or any special dlls... just the regular .Net stuff... Core is a class-library project where concrete implementation of Entities and Repositories. In some cases i have more than 1 implementation for a Repository (ex: one for azure table storage and one for regular Sql). This project handles the intelligence (business rules mostly) and persistence, and it references only the Library. FrontWebApi is a ASP.NET MVC 4 WebApi project that implements the controllers interfaces to handle web-requests (from a mobile native app)... It references the Core and the Library. Administration is a code-library project that represents a "optional-module", meaning: if it is present, it provides extra-features (such as Access Control Lists) to the application, but if its not, no problem. Administration is also only referencing the Library and implementing concrete classes of a few interfaces such as "IAccessControlEntry"... I intend to make this available with a "setup" that will create any required database table or anything like that. But it is important to notice that the Core has no reference to this project... Development Now, in order to have a decoupled code I decide to use IoC and because this is a small project, I decided to do it using MEF, specially because of its advertised "composition" capabilities. I arranged all the imports/exports and constructors and everything, but something is quite not perfect in my "mental-visualisation": Main Question Where should I "Compose" the objects? I mean: Technically, the only place where real implementation access is required is in the Repositories, because in order to retrieve data from wherever, entities instances will be necessary, and in all other places. The repositories could also provide a public "GetCleanInstanceOf()" right? Then all other places will be just fine working with the interfaces instead of concrete classes... Secondary Question Should "Administration" implement the concrete object for "IAccessControlGeneralRepository" or the Core should?

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• Example: Controlling randomizer using code contracts

  - by DigiMortal

  One cool addition to Visual Studio 2010 is support for code contracts. Code contracts make sure that all conditions under what method is supposed to run correctly are met. Those who are familiar with unit tests will find code contracts easy to use. In this posting I will show you simple example about static contract checking (example solution is included). To try out code contracts you need at least Visual Studio 2010 Standard Edition. Also you need code contracts package. You can download package from DevLabs Code Contracts page. NB! Speakers, you can use the example solution in your presentations as long as you mention me and this blog in your sessions. Solution has readme.txt file that gives you steps to go through when presenting solution in sessions. This blog posting is companion posting for Visual Studio solution referred below. As an example let’s look at the following class. public class Randomizer {     public static int GetRandomFromRange(int min, int max)     {         var rnd = new Random();         return rnd.Next(min, max);     }       public static int GetRandomFromRangeContracted(int min, int max)     {         Contract.Requires(min < max, "Min must be less than max");           var rnd = new Random();         return rnd.Next(min, max);     } } GetRandomFromRange() method returns results without any checking. GetRandomFromRangeContracted() uses one code contract that makes sure that minimum value is less than maximum value. Now let’s run the following code. class Program {     static void Main(string[] args)     {         var random1 = Randomizer.GetRandomFromRange(0, 9);         Console.WriteLine("Random 1: " + random1);           var random2 = Randomizer.GetRandomFromRange(1, 1);         Console.WriteLine("Random 2: " + random2);           var random3 = Randomizer.GetRandomFromRangeContracted(5, 5);         Console.WriteLine("Random 3: " + random3);           Console.WriteLine(" ");         Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit ...");         Console.ReadKey();     } } As we have not turned on support for code contracts the code runs without any problems and we get no warnings by Visual Studio that something is wrong. Now let’s turn on static checking for code contracts. As you can see then code still compiles without any errors but Visual Studio warns you about possible problems with contracts. Click on image to see it at original size.  When we open Error list and run our application we get the following output to errors list. Note that these messages are not shown immediately. There is little delay between application starting and appearance of these messages. So wait couple of seconds before going out of your mind. Click on image to see it at original size.  If you look at these warnings you can see that warnings show you illegal calls and also contracts against what they are going. Third warning points to GetRandomFromRange() method and shows that there should be also problem that can be detected by contract. Download Code Contracts example VS2010 solution | 30KB

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• SOA, Cloud & Service Technology Symposium 2012 London

  - by JuergenKress

  Registration Is Now Open With Special Pricing For Oracle Promotional Discount For Exclusive Oracle Discount, Enter Promo Code: Djmxz370 OVERVIEW The International SOA, Cloud + Service Technology Symposium is a yearly event that features the top experts and authors from around the world, providing a series of keynotes, talks, demonstrations, and panels, as well as training and certification workshops - all dedicated to empowering IT professionals to realize modern service technologies and practices in the real world. Click here for a two-page printable conference overview (PDF). KEYNOTES & SPEAKERS More than 80 international subject matter experts will be speaking at the Symposium. Below are confirmed keynotes and speakers so far. Over 50% of the agenda has not yet been finalized. Many more speakers to come. View the partial program calendars on the Conference Agenda page. Keynotes and Speakers Thomas Erl Arcitura Education "SOA, Cloud Computing & Semantic Web Technology: The Sequel - The Era of Intelligent Service Technology" Markus Zirn Oracle "Big Data with CEP and SOA" Clemens Utschig Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma Manas Deb Oracle "The Successful Execution of the SOA and BPM Vision Tim E. Hall Oracle "Community Management: The Next Wave of SOA Governance and API Management" Registration is Now Open with Special Pricing for Oracle Promotional discount for exclusive Oracle discount, Enter Promo Code: DJMXZ370. SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES The Symposium provides an excellent opportunity to promote your organization in the lead-up to the event, to delegates during the Symposium, and after when the proceedings are made available on the Symposium web site. There are a limited number of premier sponsorship packages available, and a package can be tailored to your needs and budget. Download the Symposium Sponsorship Guide. 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 Mix Forum Technorati Tags: SOA Symposium,SOA Cloud Service Technology Symposium,Thomas Erl,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,BPM Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Is anyone doing "real" TDD with Visual-C++, and if yes, how do they do it?

  - by Martin

  Test Driven Development implies writing the test before the code and following a certain cycle: Write Test Check Test (run) Write Production Code Check Test (run) Clean up Production Code Check test (run) As far as I'm concerned, this is only possible if your development solution allows you to very quickly switch between the production and test code, and to execute the test for a certain production code part extremely quickly. Now, while there exist lots of Unit Testing Frameworks for C++ (I'm using Bost.Test atm.) it does seem that there doesn't really exist any decent (for native C++) Visual Studio (Plugin) solution that makes the TDD cycle bearable regardless of framework used. "Bearable" means that it's a one-click action to run a test for a certain cpp file without having to manually set up a separate testing project etc. "Bearable" also means that a simple test starts (linking!) and runs very quickly. So, what tools (plugins) and techniques are out there that make the TDD cycle possible for native C++ development with Visual Studio? Note: I'm fine with free or "commercial" tools. Please: No framework recommendations. (Unless the framework has a dedicated Visual Studio plugin and you want to recommend the plugin.) Edit Note: The answers so far have provided links on how to integrate a Unit Testing framework into Visual Studio. The resources more or less describe how to get the UT framework to compile and get your first Tests running. This is not what this question is about. I'm of the opinion that to really work productively, having the Unit Tests in a manually maintained(!), separate vcproj from your production classes will add so much overhead that TDD "isn't possible". As far as I am aware, you do not add extra "projects" to a Java or C# thing to enable Unit Tests and TDD, and for a good reason. This should be possible with C++ given the right tools, but it seems (this question is about) that there are very little tools for TDD/C++/VS. Googling around, I've found one tool, VisualAssert, that seems to aim in the right direction. However, afaiks, it doesn't seem to be in widespread use (compared to CppUnit, Boost.Test etc.). Edit: I would like to add a comment to the context for this question. I think it does a good summary of outlining (part of) the problem: (comment by Billy ONeal) Visual Studio does not use "build scripts" that are reasonably editable by the user. One project produces one binary. Moreover, Java has the property that Java never builds a complete binary -- the binary you build is just a ZIP of the class files. Therefore it's possible to compile separately then JAR together manually (using e.g. 7z). C++ and C# both actually link their binaries, so generally speaking you can't write a script like that. The closest you can get is to compile everything separately and then do two linkings (one for production, one for testing).

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• OPN Specialized Partner Activities at Collaborate 2012

  - by Get_Specialized!

  If your a Partner planning to attend the Collaborate 2012 event, April 22-26th in Las Vegas, Oracle Partner Network (OPN) team members attending welcome meeting you onsite. Whether you are interested in being a new Partner, or you are a long standing Partner seeking an update on OPN programs or Partner Specialization, we welcome meeting with you 1 on 1. In fact, we might drop by your booth or session to further recognize you for your OPN Specialization accomplishments! If you are also  participating in Social Media while at the event, let us know that as well. In addition, we are also seeking to meet Partners, while at Collaborate 2012, who may be interested in speaking at Oracle OpenWorld on their OPN Specialization program accomplishments and customer successes. Understanding that Partners can be busy staffing their own booths, we welcome meeting you when the exhibit hall is closed. Or if you want a break away from your booth, we are glad to meet  on the exhibit hall floor Oracle Validated Integration Lounge - OAUG & Quest member Booth 1679. To learn more or to schedule a meeting on site Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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;} contact us

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• OpenWorld in Small Bites

  - by Kathryn Perry

  Fifty thousand attendees -- that's bigger than the cities some of us live in. Monday morning it took 20 minutes to get from Hall D in Moscone North to a conference room in Moscone South -- the crowds were crushing! A great start to a great week! Larry is as big a name as ever on the program schedule and on the Moscone stage. People were packed in Hall D and clustered around every big screen TV. He stayed on script as he laid out Oracle's SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS strategies. Every seat in Chris Leone's Fusion Apps Cloud Overview was filled on Monday morning. Oracle employees who wanted to get in were turned away. And the same thing happened in the repeat session on Wednesday. Our newest suite of apps is hot! Speaking of hot, the weather was made to order. Then it turned very San Francisco-like on Wednesday afternoon. Downright cold for those who trusted SF temps to hold in the 80's. Who did you follow on Twitter during the conference? So many voices, opinions, and convos! Great combo of social media and sharp minds. Be sure to follow @larryellison, @stevenrmiranda, and @Oracle for updates and MyPOVs. Keywords for the Apps customers at the conference were cloud, mobile, and social. Every day, every session, every speaker. Wednesday afternoon, 4 pm at the Four Seasons hotel. A large roomful of analysts and influencers firing questions at a panel of eight Fusion customers. Steve Miranda moderating. Good energy and a great exchange of information and confidence. Word on the street is that OpenWorld has outgrown San Francisco -- but moving it seems unthinkable. The city isn't just a backdrop for an industry conference - it's a headliner right up there with Larry Ellison and Pearl Jam. As you can imagine, electrical outlets were in high demand at every venue. The most popular hotels and bars near Moscone designed their interiors around accessible electrical power strips. People are plenty willing to buy a drink while they grab a charge. Wednesday afternoon, 4 pm at the Four Seasons hotel. A large roomful of analysts and influencers firing questions at a panel of eight Fusion customers. Steve Miranda moderating. Good energy and a great exchange of information and confidence. Treasure Island in the dark. Eddy Vedder has an amazing voice! And Kings of Leon over delivered on people's expectations. It was cold. It was windy. It was very fun. One analyst said it's the best customer appreciation party in the industry. 

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• Upgrading to Code Based Migrations EF 4.3.1 with Connector/Net 6.6

  - by GABMARTINEZ

  Entity Framework 4.3.1 includes a new feature called code first migrations.  We are adding support for this feature in our upcoming 6.6 release of Connector/Net.  In this walk-through we'll see the workflow of code-based migrations when you have an existing application and you would like to upgrade to this EF 4.3.1 version and use this approach, so you can keep track of the changes that you do to your database.   The first thing we need to do is add the new Entity Framework 4.3.1 package to our application. This should via the NuGet package manager.  You can read more about why EF is not part of the .NET framework here. Adding EF 4.3.1 to our existing application  Inside VS 2010 go to Tools -> Library Package Manager -> Package Manager Console, this will open the Power Shell Host Window where we can work with all the EF commands. In order to install this library to your existing application you should type Install-Package EntityFramework This will make some changes to your application. So Let's check them. In your .config file you'll see a  <configSections> which contains the version you have from EntityFramework and also was added the <entityFramework> section as shown below. This section is by default configured to use SQL Express which won't be necesary for this case. So you can comment it out or leave it empty. Also please make sure you're using the Connector/Net 6.6.x version which is the one that has this support as is shown in the previous image. At this point we face one issue; in order to be able to work with Migrations we need the __MigrationHistory table that we don't have yet since our Database was created with an older version. This table is used to keep track of the changes in our model. So we need to get it in our existing Database. Getting a Migration-History table into an existing database First thing we need to do to enable migrations in our existing application is to create our configuration class which will set up the MySqlClient Provider as our SQL Generator. So we have to add it with the following code: using System.Data.Entity.Migrations;     //add this at the top of your cs file public class Configuration : DbMigrationsConfiguration<NameOfYourDbContext>  //Make sure to use the name of your existing DBContext { public Configuration() { this.AutomaticMigrationsEnabled = false; //Set Automatic migrations to false since we'll be applying the migrations manually for this case. SetSqlGenerator("MySql.Data.MySqlClient", new MySql.Data.Entity.MySqlMigrationSqlGenerator());     }   }  This code will set up our configuration that we'll be using when executing all the migrations for our application. Once we have done this we can Build our application so we can check that everything is fine. Creating our Initial Migration Now let's add our Initial Migration. In Package Manager Console, execute "add-migration InitialCreate", you can use any other name but I like to set this as our initial create for future reference. After we run this command, some changes were done in our application: A new Migrations Folder was created. A new class migration call InitialCreate which in most of the cases should have empty Up and Down methods as long as your database is up to date with your Model. Since all your entities already exists, delete all duplicated code to create any entity which exists already in your Database if there is any. I found this easier when you don't have any pending updates to do to your database. Now we have our empty migration that will make no changes in our database and represents how are all the things at the begining of our migrations.  Finally, let's create our MigrationsHistory table. Optionally you can add SQL code to delete the edmdata table which is not needed anymore. public override void Up() { // Just make sure that you used 4.1 or later version         Sql("DROP TABLE EdmMetadata"); } From our Package Manager Console let's type: Update-database; If you like to see the operations made on each Update-database command you can use the flag -verbose after the Update-database. This will make two important changes.  It will execute the Up method in the initial migration which has no changes in the database. And second, and very important,  it will create the __MigrationHistory table necessary to keep track of your changes. And next time you make a change to your database it will compare the current model to the one stored in the Model Column of this table. Conclusion The important thing of this walk through is that we must create our initial migration before we start doing any changes to our model. This way we'll be adding the necessary __MigrationsHistory table to our existing database, so we can keep our database up to date with all the changes we do in our context model using migrations. Hope you have found this information useful. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments, also please check our forums here where we keep answering questions in general for the community.  Happy MySQL/Net Coding!

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• Multiple country-specific domains or one global domain [closed]

  - by CJM

  Possible Duplicate: How should I structure my urls for both SEO and localization? My company currently has its main (English) site on a .com domain with a .co.uk alias. In addition, we have separate sites for certain other countries - these are also hosted in the UK but are distinct sites with a country-specific domain names (.de, .fr, .se, .es), and the sites have differing amounts of distinct but overlapping content, For example, the .es site is entirely in Spanish and has a page for every section of the UK site but little else. Whereas the .de site has much more content (but still less than the UK site), in German, and geared towards our business focus in that country. The main point is that the content in the additional sites is a subset of the UK, is translated into the local language, and although sometimes is simply only a translated version of UK content, it is usually 'tweaked' for the local market, and in certain areas, contains unique content. The other sites get a fraction of the traffic of the UK site. This is perfectly understandable since the biggest chunk of work comes from the UK, and we've been established here for over 30 years. However, we are wanting to build up our overseas business and part of that is building up our websites to support this. The Question: I posed a suggestion to the business that we might consider consolidating all our websites onto the .com domain but with /en/de/fr/se/etc sections, as plenty of other companies seem to do. The theory was that the non-english sites would benefit from the greater reputation of the parent .com domain, and that all the content would be mutually supporting - my fear is that the child domains on their own are too small to compete on their own compared to competitors who are established in these countries. Speaking to an SEO consultant from my hosting company, he feels that this move would have some benefit (for the reasons mentioned), but they would likely be significantly outweighed by the loss of the benefits of localised domains. Specifically, he said that since the Panda update, and particularly the two sets of changes this year, that we would lose more than we would gain. Having done some Panda research since, I've had my eyes opened on many issues, but curiously I haven't come across much that mentions localised domain names, though I do question whether Google would see it as duplicated content. It's not that I disagree with the consultant, I just want to know more before I make recommendations to my company. What is the prevailing opinion in this case? Would I gain anything from consolidating country-specific content onto one domain? Would Google see this as duplicate content? Would there be an even greater penalty from the loss of country-specific domains? And is there anything else I can do to help support the smaller, country-specific domains?

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• WIF, ADFS 2 and WCF&ndash;Part 1: Overview

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  A lot has been written already about passive federation and integration of WIF and ADFS 2 into web apps. The whole active/WS-Trust feature area is much less documented or covered in articles and blogs. Over the next few posts I will try to compile all relevant information about the above topics – but let’s start with an overview. ADFS 2 has a number of endpoints under the /services/trust base address that implement the WS-Trust protocol. They are grouped by the WS-Trust version they support (/13 and /2005), the client credential type (/windows*, /username*, /certificate*) and the security mode (*transport, *mixed and message). You can see the endpoints in the MMC console under the Service/Endpoints page. So in other words, you use one of these endpoints (which exactly depends on your configuration / system setup) to request tokens from ADFS 2. The bindings behind the endpoints are more or less standard WCF bindings, but with SecureConversation (establishSecurityContext) disabled. That means that whenever you need to programmatically talk to these endpoints – you can (easily) create client bindings that are compatible. Another option is to use the special bindings that come with WIF (in the Microsoft.IdentityModel.Protocols.WSTrust.Bindings namespace). They are already pre-configured to be compatible with the ADFS endpoints. The downside of these bindings is, that you can’t use them in configuration. That’s definitely a feature request of mine for the next version of WIF. The next important piece of information is the so called Federation Service Identifier. This is the value that you (at least by default) have to use as a realm/appliesTo whenever you are requesting a token for ADFS (e.g. in  IdP –> RSTS scenario). Or (even more) technically speaking, ADFS 2 checks for this value in the audience URI restriction in SAML tokens. You can get to this value by clicking the “Edit Federation Service Properties” in the MMC when the Service tree-node is selected. OK – I will come back to this basic information in the following posts. Basically I want to go through the following scenarios: ADFS in the IdP role ADFS in the R-STS role (with a chained claims provider) Using the WCF bindings for automatic token issuance Using WSTrustChannelFactory for manual token handling Stay tuned…

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• Rebuilding CoasterBuzz, Part IV: Dependency injection, it's what's for breakfast

  - by Jeff

  (Repost from my personal blog.) This is another post in a series about rebuilding one of my Web sites, which has been around for 12 years. I hope to relaunch soon. More: Part I: Evolution, and death to WCF Part II: Hot data objects Part III: The architecture using the "Web stack of love" If anything generally good for the craft has come out of the rise of ASP.NET MVC, it's that people are more likely to use dependency injection, and loosely couple the pieces parts of their applications. A lot of the emphasis on coding this way has been to facilitate unit testing, and that's awesome. Unit testing makes me feel a lot less like a hack, and a lot more confident in what I'm doing. Dependency injection is pretty straight forward. It says, "Given an instance of this class, I need instances of other classes, defined not by their concrete implementations, but their interfaces." Probably the first place a developer exercises this in when having a class talk to some kind of data repository. For a very simple example, pretend the FooService has to get some Foo. It looks like this: public class FooService {    public FooService(IFooRepository fooRepo)    {       _fooRepo = fooRepo;    }    private readonly IFooRepository _fooRepo;    public Foo GetMeFoo()    {       return _fooRepo.FooFromDatabase();    } } When we need the FooService, we ask the dependency container to get it for us. It says, "You'll need an IFooRepository in that, so let me see what that's mapped to, and put it in there for you." Why is this good for you? It's good because your FooService doesn't know or care about how you get some foo. You can stub out what the methods and properties on a fake IFooRepository might return, and test just the FooService. I don't want to get too far into unit testing, but it's the most commonly cited reason to use DI containers in MVC. What I wanted to mention is how there's another benefit in a project like mine, where I have to glue together a bunch of stuff. For example, when I have someone sign up for a new account on CoasterBuzz, I'm actually using POP Forums' new account mailer, which composes a bunch of text that includes a link to verify your account. The thing is, I want to use custom text and some other logic that's specific to CoasterBuzz. To accomplish this, I make a new class that inherits from the forum's NewAccountMailer, and override some stuff. Easy enough. Then I use Ninject, the DI container I'm using, to unbind the forum's implementation, and substitute my own. Ninject uses something called a NinjectModule to bind interfaces to concrete implementations. The forum has its own module, and then the CoasterBuzz module is loaded second. The CB module has two lines of code to swap out the mailer implementation: Unbind<PopForums.Email.INewAccountMailer>(); Bind<PopForums.Email.INewAccountMailer>().To<CbNewAccountMailer>(); Piece of cake! Now, when code asks the DI container for an INewAccountMailer, it gets my custom implementation instead. This is a lot easier to deal with than some of the alternatives. I could do some copy-paste, but then I'm not using well-tested code from the forum. I could write stuff from scratch, but then I'm throwing away a bunch of logic I've already written (in this case, stuff around e-mail, e-mail settings, mail delivery failures). There are other places where the DI container comes in handy. For example, CoasterBuzz does a number of custom things with user profiles, and special content for paid members. It uses the forum as the core piece to managing users, so I can ask the container to get me instances of classes that do user lookups, for example, and have zero care about how the forum handles database calls, configuration, etc. What a great world to live in, compared to ten years ago. Sure, the primary interest in DI is around the "separation of concerns" and facilitating unit testing, but as your library grows and you use more open source, it starts to be the glue that pulls everything together.

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• How do you test an ICF based connector using Connector Facade Standalone?

  - by Shashidhar Malyala

  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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The following code helps in writing a standalone java program to test an ICF based connector. The sample code in this example takes into account an ICF based flatfile connector. It is possible to test various operations like create, update, delete, search etc... It is also possible to set values to the connector configuration parameters, add/remove attributes and their values. public class FlatFile { private static final java.lang.String BUNDLE_NAME = "<PACKAGE_NAME>"; //Ex: org.info.icf.flatfile private static final java.lang.String BUNDLE_VERSION = "1.0.0"; private static final java.lang.String CONNECTOR_NAME = "org.info.icf.flatfile.FlatFileConnector"; // Name of connector class i.e. the class implemting the connector SPI operations public ConnectorFacade getFacade() throws IOException { ConnectorInfoManagerFactory fact = ConnectorInfoManagerFactory .getInstance(); File bundleDirectory = new File("<BUNDLE_LOCATION>"); //Ex: /usr/oracle/connector_bundles/ URL url = IOUtil.makeURL(bundleDirectory, "org.info.icf.flatfile-1.0.0.jar"); ConnectorInfoManager manager = fact.getLocalManager(url); ConnectorKey key = new ConnectorKey(BUNDLE_NAME, BUNDLE_VERSION, CONNECTOR_NAME); ConnectorInfo info = manager.findConnectorInfo(key); // From the ConnectorInfo object, create the default APIConfiguration. APIConfiguration apiConfig = info.createDefaultAPIConfiguration(); // From the default APIConfiguration, retrieve the // ConfigurationProperties. ConfigurationProperties properties = apiConfig .getConfigurationProperties(); // Print out what the properties are (not necessary) List propertyNames = properties.getPropertyNames(); for (String propName : propertyNames) { ConfigurationProperty prop = properties.getProperty(propName); System.out.println("Property Name: " + prop.getName() + "\tProperty Type: " + prop.getType()); } properties .setPropertyValue("fileLocation", "/usr/oracle/accounts.csv"); // Set all of the ConfigurationProperties needed by the connector. // properties.setPropertyValue("host", FOOBAR_HOST); // properties.setPropertyValue("adminName", FOOBAR_ADMIN); // properties.setPropertyValue("adminPassword", FOOBAR_PASSWORD); // properties.setPropertyValue("useSSL", false); // Use the ConnectorFacadeFactory's newInstance() method to get a new // connector. ConnectorFacade connFacade = ConnectorFacadeFactory.getInstance() .newInstance(apiConfig); // Make sure we have set up the Configuration properly connFacade.validate(); return connFacade; } public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException { FlatFile file = new FlatFile(); ConnectorFacade cfac = file.getFacade(); Set attrSet = new HashSet(); attrSet.add(AttributeBuilder.build(Name.NAME, "Test01")); attrSet.add(AttributeBuilder.build("FIRST_NAME", "Test_First")); attrSet.add(AttributeBuilder.build("LAST_NAME", "Test_Last")); //Create Uid uid = cfac.create(ObjectClass.ACCOUNT, attrSet, null); //Delete Uid uidP = new Uid("Test01"); cfac.delete(ObjectClass.ACCOUNT, uidP, null); } }

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• 5 ways to stop code thrashing&hellip;

  - by MarkPearl

  A few days ago I was programming on a personal project and hit a roadblock. I was applying the MVVM pattern and for some reason my view model was not updating the view when the state changed??? I had applied this pattern many times before and had never had this problem. It just didn’t make sense. So what did I do… I did what anyone would have done in my situation and looked to pass the blame to someone or something else. I tried to blame one of the inherited base classes, but it looked fine, then to Visual Studio, but it seemed to be fine and eventually to any random segment of code I came across. My elementary problem had now mushroomed into one that had lost any logical basis and I was in thrashing mode! So what to do when you begin to thrash? 1) Do a general code cleanup – Now there is a difference between cleaning code and changing code . When you thrash you change code and you want to avoid this. What you really want to do is things like rename variables to have better meaning and go over your comments. 2) Do a proof of concept – if cleaning code doesn’t help. The  you want to isolate the problem and identify the key concepts. When you isolate code you ideally want it to be in a totally separate project with as little complexity as possible. Make the building blocks and try and replicate the functionality that you are getting in your current application. 3) Phone a friend – I have found speaking to someone else about the problem generally helps me solve any thrashing issues I am having. Usually they don’t even have to say anything to solve the problem, just you talking them through the problem helps you get clarity of mind. 4) Let the dust settle – Sometimes time is the best solution. I have had a few problems that no matter who I discussed them with and no matter how much code cleaning I had done I just couldn’t seem to fix it. My brain just seemed to be going in circles. A good nights rest has always helped and often just the break away from the problem has helped me find a solution. 5) Stack overflow it – So similar to phone a friend. I am really surprised to see what a melting pot stack overflow has been and what a help it has been in solving technology specific problems. Just be considerate to those using the site and explain clearly exactly what problem you are having and the technologies you are using or else you will probably not get any useful help…

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• How do you automate a SharePoint 2010 deployment?

  - by Enrique Lima

  In the last couple of months SharePoint traffic (consulting, training and speaking) has picked up.  And with that also the requests for deployments.  There are good, great, bad and really bad things around this. But that is for another topic.  However part of the good and great has been the fact of organizations wanting to do a proof of concept deployment (even when WSS or MOSS has been deployed). We can go through a session (Microsoft has the SDPS concept, SharePoint Deployment Planning Services) of discovering what the customer wants to achieve from their investment in the platform and then also proceed to model the solution that would fit their needs.  But it should not stop there.  The next step should be a POC (as many have requested) to test out. Now, on to the meat of this post.  How do I deploy?  While it is a good process to watch and see all of it take place, not many have the time to sit through that.  Even more so, when that has been part of the description of deploying the platform in the sessions mentioned above. I will, though, break it into a deployment for development purposes and a deployment of a farm. Two tools (or scripts) for those two different types of deployment. First, let me address the development environment.  Around the last week in October, Chris Johnson (SharePoint Product Team) announced a SharePoint Easy Setup for Developers.  The kit itself will assist you in installing SharePoint Server (in standalone mode), the tools that go around Visual Studio, Expression Studio and the Office 2010 tools. Here is the link to Chris’ post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cjohnson/archive/2010/10/28/announcing-sharepoint-easy-setup-for-developers.aspx The other scenario is the use of a script in assisting you through the deployment of a farm. Now, this is not to override planning.  It should highlight the need for planning even more.  How?  Having your service accounts planned, the structure of the sites and the scale of your deployment.  Enter AutoSPInstaller.  This is a CodePlex project, and the intent behind this is not only to automate the installation but to give some meaning and get some sense out of what goes on during a SharePoint deployment. How?  Take for example the creation of the databases, when we do the initial OOB deployment by using the wizard, more times than not, we leave the names as they are.  How is that a “bad thing”?  Let’s make it a better practice to rename those Databases, and have them take on a name that is not “GUID-ized”. Having a better naming convention will not hurt, on the other hand will allow for consistency. Here is the link to AutoSPInstaller’s site on CodePlex: http://autospinstaller.codeplex.com/

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• Bubble shooter search alghoritm

  - by Fofole

  So I have a Matrix of NxM. At a given position (for ex. [2][5]) I have a value which represents a color. If there is nothing at that point the value is -1. What I need to do is after I add a new point, to check all his neighbours with the same color value and if there are more than 2, set them all to -1. If what I said doesn't make sense what I'm trying to do is an alghoritm which I use to destroy all the same color bubbles from my screen, where the bubbles are memorized in a matrix where -1 means no bubble and {0,1,2,...} represent that there is a bubble with a specific color. This is what I tried and failed: public class Testing { static private int[][] gameMatrix= {{3, 3, 4, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 0, 0}, {1, 4, 1, 4, 2, 2, 1, 3, 0, 0}, {2, 2, 4, 4, 3, 1, 2, 4, 0, 0}, {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, }; static int Rows=6; static int Cols=10; static int count; static boolean[][] visited=new boolean[15][15]; static int NOCOLOR = -1; static int color = 1; public static void dfs(int r, int c, int color, boolean set) { for(int dr = -1; dr <= 1; dr++) for(int dc = -1; dc <= 1; dc++) if(!(dr == 0 && dc == 0) && ok(r+dr, c+dc)) { int nr = r+dr; int nc = c+dc; // if it is the same color and we haven't visited this location before if(gameMatrix[nr][nc] == color && !visited[nr][nc]) { visited[nr][nc] = true; count++; dfs(nr, nc, color, set); if(set) { gameMatrix[nr][nc] = NOCOLOR; } } } } static boolean ok(int r, int c) { return r >= 0 && r < Rows && c >= 0 && c < Cols; } static void showMatrix(){ for(int i = 0; i < gameMatrix.length; i++) { System.out.print("["); for(int j = 0; j < gameMatrix[0].length; j++) { System.out.print(" " + gameMatrix[i][j]); } System.out.println(" ]"); } System.out.println(); } static void putValue(int value,int row,int col){ gameMatrix[row][col]=value; } public static void main(String[] args){ System.out.println("Initial Matrix:"); putValue(1, 4, 1); putValue(1, 5, 1); showMatrix(); for(int n = 0; n < 15; n++) for(int m = 0; m < 15; m++) visited[n][m] = false; //reset count count = 0; //dfs(bubbles.get(i).getRow(), bubbles.get(i).getCol(), color, false); // get the contiguous count dfs(5,1,color,false); //if there are more than 2 set the color to NOCOLOR for(int n = 0; n < 15; n++) for(int m = 0; m < 15; m++) visited[n][m] = false; if(count > 2) { //dfs(bubbles.get(i).getRow(), bubbles.get(i).getCol(), color, true); dfs(5,1,color,true); } System.out.println("Matrix after dfs:"); showMatrix(); } }

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• Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in NetBeans IDE

  - by Geertjan

  When you need to connect to Amazon Web Services, NetBeans IDE gives you a nice start. You can drag and drop the "itemSearch" service into a Java source file and then various Amazon files are generated for you. From there, you need to do a little bit of work because the request to Amazon needs to be signed before it can be used. Here are some references and places that got me started: http://associates-amazon.s3.amazonaws.com/signed-requests/helper/index.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSSimpleQueueService/latest/SQSGettingStartedGuide/AWSCredentials.html https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/flex/advertising/api/sign-in.html You definitely need to sign up to the Amazon Associates program and also register/create an Access Key ID, which will also get you a Secret Key, as well. Here's a simple Main class that I created that hooks into the generated RestConnection/RestResponse code created by NetBeans IDE: public static void main(String[] args) {    try {        String searchIndex = "Books";        String keywords = "Romeo and Juliet";        RestResponse result = AmazonAssociatesService.itemSearch(searchIndex, keywords);        String dataAsString = result.getDataAsString();        int start = dataAsString.indexOf("<Author>")+8;        int end = dataAsString.indexOf("</Author>");        System.out.println(dataAsString.substring(start,end));    } catch (Exception ex) {        ex.printStackTrace();    }} Then I deleted the generated properties file and the authenticator and changed the generated AmazonAssociatesService.java file to the following: public class AmazonAssociatesService {    private static void sleep(long millis) {        try {            Thread.sleep(millis);        } catch (Throwable th) {        }    }    public static RestResponse itemSearch(String searchIndex, String keywords) throws IOException {        SignedRequestsHelper helper;        RestConnection conn = null;        Map queryMap = new HashMap();        queryMap.put("Service", "AWSECommerceService");        queryMap.put("AssociateTag", "myAssociateTag");        queryMap.put("AWSAccessKeyId", "myAccessKeyId");        queryMap.put("Operation", "ItemSearch");        queryMap.put("SearchIndex", searchIndex);        queryMap.put("Keywords", keywords);        try {            helper = SignedRequestsHelper.getInstance(                    "ecs.amazonaws.com",                    "myAccessKeyId",                    "mySecretKey");            String sign = helper.sign(queryMap);            conn = new RestConnection(sign);        } catch (IllegalArgumentException | UnsupportedEncodingException | NoSuchAlgorithmException | InvalidKeyException ex) {        }        sleep(1000);        return conn.get(null);    }} Finally, I copied this class into my application, which you can see is referred to above: http://code.google.com/p/amazon-product-advertising-api-sample/source/browse/src/com/amazon/advertising/api/sample/SignedRequestsHelper.java Here's the completed app, mostly generated via the drag/drop shown at the start, but slightly edited as shown above: That's all, now everything works as you'd expect.

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• Trouble with AABB collision response and physics

  - by WCM

  I have been racking my brain trying to figure out a problem I am having with physics and basic AABB collision response. I am fairly close as the physics are mostly right. Gravity feels good and movement is solid. The issue I am running into is that when I land on the test block in my project, I can jump off of it most of the time. If I repeatedly jump in place, I will eventually get stuck one or two pixels below the surface of the test block. If I try to jump, I can become free of the other block, but it will happen again a few jumps later. I feel like I am missing something really obvious with this. I have two functions that support the detection and function to return a vector for the overlap of the two rectangle bounding boxes. I have a single update method that is processing the physics and collision for the entity. I feel like I am missing something very simple, like an ordering of the physics vs. collision response handling. Any thoughts or help can be appreciated. I apologize for the format of the code, tis prototype code mostly. The collision detection function: public static bool Collides(Rectangle source, Rectangle target) { if (source.Right < target.Left || source.Bottom < target.Top || source.Left > target.Right || source.Top > target.Bottom) { return false; } return true; } The overlap function: public static Vector2 GetMinimumTranslation(Rectangle source, Rectangle target) { Vector2 mtd = new Vector2(); Vector2 amin = source.Min(); Vector2 amax = source.Max(); Vector2 bmin = target.Min(); Vector2 bmax = target.Max(); float left = (bmin.X - amax.X); float right = (bmax.X - amin.X); float top = (bmin.Y - amax.Y); float bottom = (bmax.Y - amin.Y); if (left > 0 || right < 0) return Vector2.Zero; if (top > 0 || bottom < 0) return Vector2.Zero; if (Math.Abs(left) < right) mtd.X = left; else mtd.X = right; if (Math.Abs(top) < bottom) mtd.Y = top; else mtd.Y = bottom; // 0 the axis with the largest mtd value. if (Math.Abs(mtd.X) < Math.Abs(mtd.Y)) mtd.Y = 0; else mtd.X = 0; return mtd; } The update routine (gravity = 0.001f, jumpHeight = 0.35f, moveAmount = 0.15f): public void Update(GameTime gameTime) { Acceleration.Y = gravity; Position += new Vector2((float)(movement * moveAmount * gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds), (float)(Velocity.Y * gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds)); Velocity.Y += Acceleration.Y; Vector2 previousPosition = new Vector2((int)Position.X, (int)Position.Y); KeyboardState keyboard = Keyboard.GetState(); movement = 0; if (keyboard.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) { movement -= 1; } if (keyboard.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right)) { movement += 1; } if (Position.Y + 16 > GameClass.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height) { Velocity.Y = 0; Position = new Vector2(Position.X, GameClass.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height - 16); IsOnSurface = true; } if (Collision.Collides(BoundingBox, GameClass.Instance.block.BoundingBox)) { Vector2 mtd = Collision.GetMinimumTranslation(BoundingBox, GameClass.Instance.block.BoundingBox); Position += mtd; Velocity.Y = 0; IsOnSurface = true; } if (keyboard.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space) && !previousKeyboard.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space)) { if (IsOnSurface) { Velocity.Y = -jumpHeight; IsOnSurface = false; } } previousKeyboard = keyboard; } This is also a full download to the project. https://www.box.com/s/3rkdtbso3xgfgc2asawy P.S. I know that I could do this with the XNA Platformer Starter Kit algo, but it has some deep flaws that I am going to try to live without. I'd rather go the route of collision response via an overlay function. Thanks for any and all insight!

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