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• Chicago Architects Group &ndash; Document Generation Architectures

  - by Tim Murphy

  Thank you to everyone who came out to the Chicago Architects Group presentation last night.  It seemed like the weather has a way of keeping a large portion of the people who registered from making the meeting.  There was some lively networking going on before and after the meeting.  I enjoyed the questions that people had during the presentation.  It helped to bring out some of the challenges with dealing with the OOXML and ODF standards from an architecture perspective. I have posted the Slides and Code.  Feel free to contact me with any questions. For those of you who missed the presentation I will be giving a similar one at the Lake County .NET Users Group on June 24th. The next CAG presentation will be July 20th.  The presentation will be Architecting A BI Installation by David Leininger.  Look for the registration to open in the next day or so. del.icio.us Tags: Chicago architects Group,OOXML,ODF,BI,LCNUG,slides,code

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• Hash Sum mismatch on python-keyring

  - by Gearoid Murphy

  I came in to my workstation this morning to find an apt error notification relating to a hash sum mismatch on the python keyring password storage mechanism, given the sensitive nature of this package, this gives me some cause for concern. Has anyone else seen this error?, how can I ensure that my system has not been compromised? Failed to fetch http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/p/python-keyring/python-keyring_0.9.2-0ubuntu0.12.04.2_all.deb Hash Sum mismatch Xubuntu 11.04 AMD64

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• February 2011 Chicago Information Technology Architects Group Meeting

  - by Tim Murphy

  We are back! After the holidays and a false start in January we are ready to get 2011 rolling.  We are going to kick things off with Chris Geraghty giving us an overview of Enterpirse Architecture.  He will be covering EA methods, its role in technology and business change as well as a number of tips for implementing EA. We are looking at mobile architectures for a future topic.  If there are any topics you would like to see or would like to present feel free to contact me. Please join us by registering at the link below. http://citag.eventbrite.com del.icio.us Tags: CITAG,Chicago Information Technology Architects Group,Enterpirse Architecture,Chris Geraghty

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• June LCNUG Presentation

  - by Tim Murphy

  Office Open XML has been my focus for the last 8 months.  We are creating  solutions that generate data and business rule heavy presentations and document.  On June 24th I will be covering the how to use OOXML to generate documents that can be used as sales and marketing collateral.  Register below and come out and join the discussion. http://www.eventbrite.com/event/722041646 del.icio.us Tags: Office Open XML,OOXML PSC Group,LCNUG,Document Generation

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• Value Chain Execution E-Book

  - by John Murphy

  Taking a smart approach to logistics – from streamlining transport networks and global trade management, to optimizing everyday warehouse operations – can simultaneously reduce costs and maximize competitive advantage.Download your exclusive Oracle e-book, Oracle Value Chain Execution: Reinventing Logistics Excellence, to learn why our world-leading, unified solution is relied on by market-leading companies across the planet.Discover how it can help you: Drive business agility, scalability and innovation Reduce costs and increase efficiency Enhance visibility, productivity and inventory accuracy Simplify compliance and mitigate risk Measure and boost customer satisfaction See what reinventing logistics excellence could mean for your organization.

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• Update Since Microsoft/PSC Office Open XML Case Study

  - by Tim Murphy

  In 2009 Microsoft released a case study about a project that we had done using the OOXML SDK 1.0 for Research Directors Inc.  Since that time Microsoft has released version 2.0 of the SDK and PSC has done significant development with it.  Below are some of the mile stones we have reached since the original case study. At the time of the original case study two report types had been automated to output as PowerPoint presentations.  Now that the all the main products have been delivered we have added three reports with Word document outputs and five more reports with PowerPoint outputs. One improvement we made over the original application was to create a PowerPoint Add-In which allows the users to tag a slide.  These tags along with the strongly typed SDK 2.0 allows for the code to use LINQ to easily search for slides in the template files.  This allows for a more flexible architecture base on assembling a presentation from copied slide extracted from the template. The new library we created also enabled us to create two new Word based reports in two weeks.  The library we created abstracts the generation of the documents from the business logic and the data retrieval.  The key to this is the mark up.  Content Controls are a good method for identifying sections of a template to be modified or replaced.  Join this with the concept of all data being generically either scalar or two dimensional and the code becomes more generic. In the end we found the OOXML SDK 2.0 to be a great tool for accelerating document generation development and creating happy clients.  del.icio.us Tags: PSC Group,OOXML,Case Study,Office Open XML,Word,PowerPoint

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• October 2012 Chicago IT Architects Group Meeting Recap

  - by Tim Murphy

  It seemed very ironic that the day we have a presentation on the architecture of building applications for Windows 8 the Surface tablet is opened for pre-order.  Tom Benton started the evening enlightening the attendees on the user experience for those who had not seen it yet.  He even passed around his table from last year’s Build conference for everyone to play with.  This was followed with a tour of the capabilities and structures that make up a Windows Store App on Windows 8.  Taking it to its conclusion, he rounded out the discussion by covering the certification and deployment process. As usual it was great to see a lot of familiar faces last night.  We are always looking for more people to join in our discussions.  Stay tuned here for announcements up upcoming meetings and topics.  Also, if you have a topic you would like to present or see presented feel free to contact me through this blog. del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Information Technology Architects Group,CITAG,Winodws 8,Windows Store,Tom Benton

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• New Procurement Report for Transportation Sourcing

  - by John Murphy

  Welcome to our fourth annual transportation procurement benchmark report. American Shipper, in partnership with the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) and the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), surveyed roughly 275 transportation buyers and sellers on procurement practices, processes, technologies and results. Some key findings: • Manual, spreadsheet-based procurement processes remain the most prevalent among transportation buyers, with 42 percent of the total • Another 25 percent of respondents use a hybrid platform, which presumably means these buyers are using spreadsheets for at least one mode and/or geography • Only 23 percent of buyers are using a completely systems-based approach of some kind • Shippers were in a holding pattern with regards to investment in procurement systems the past year • Roughly three-quarters of survey respondents report that transportation spend has increased in 2012, although the pace has declined slightly from last year’s increases • Nearly every survey respondent purchases multiple modes of transportation • The number of respondents with plans to address technology to support the procurement process has increased in 2012. About one quarter of respondents who do not have a system report they have a budget for this investment in the next two years.

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• Microsoft BUILD 2013 Day 1&ndash;Keynote

  - by Tim Murphy

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/27/microsoft-build-2013-day-1ndashkeynote.aspx This one is going to be a little long because the keynote was jam-packed so bare with me. The keynote for the first day of BUILD 2013 was kicked off by Steve Balmer.  He made it very clear that Microsoft’s focus is on accelerating its time to market with products and product updates.  His quote was that “Rapid release” is the new norm.  He continued by showing off several new Lumias that have been buzzing around the internet for a while and announce that Sprint will now be carrying the HTC 8XT and Samsung ATIV. Balmer is known for repeating words or phrase for affect.  This time it was “Rapid release, rapid release” and “Touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, …”.  This was fun, but even more fun was when he announce that all attendees would receive an Acer Iconia 8” tablet. SCORE! The next subject Balmer focused on is new apps.  The three new ones were Flipboard, Facebook and NFL Fantasy Football.  I liked the first two because these are ones that people coming from other platforms are missing.  The NFL app is great just because it targets a demographic that can be fanatical.  If these types of apps keep coming than the missing app argument goes away. While many Negative Nancy’s are describing Windows 8.1 as Windows 180 Steve Balmer chose to call it a “refined blend” as in a coffee that has been improved with a new mix.  This includes more multi-tasking options and leveraging Bing straight throughout the entire ecosystem. He ended this first section by explaining that this will also bring more Bing development opportunities to the community. Steve Balmer was followed by Julie Larson-Green who spent her time on stage selling us on Windows 8 all over again from my point of view.  Something that I would not have thought was needed until I had listened to some other attendees who had a number of concerns and complaints.  She showed a number of new gestures that will come with Windows 8.1, and while they were cool I was left wondering if they really improved the experience.  I guess only time will tell. I did like the fact that it the UI implementation to bring up “All Apps” now mirrors that of Windows Phone.  The consistency is a big step forward that I hope to see continue.  The cool factor went up from there as she swiped content from a desktop (mega-tablet) to the XBox One.  This seamless experience I believe is what is really needed for any future platform to be relevant. I was much more enthused by the presentation of Antoine Leblond who humbled us by letting us know that there are 5k new API.  How that can be or how anyone would ever use all of them is another question.  His announcement was that the Visual Studio 2013 preview would be available today along with the Windows 8.1 bits.  One of the features of VS2013 that he demonstrated is the power consumption profiler.  With battery life being a key factor with consumer consumption devices this is a welcome addition. He didn’t limit his presentation to VS2013 features though.  He showed how the Store has been redesigned to enable better search and discoverability of apps and how Win 8.1 can perform multiple screen scales depending on the resolution of the device automatically.  The last feature he demoed was the real time video streaming API which he made sure we understood by attaching a Surface to a little robot.  Oh, but there was one more thing.  Antoine and Julie announce that all attendees would also be getting Surface Pros.  BONUS! How much more could there be?  Gurdeep Singh Pall was about to pile on.  He introduced us to Bing as a platform (BaaP?).  He said if they (Microsoft) could do something with and API that is good 3rd party developers can do something that is dynamite and showed us some of the tools they had produced.  These included natural user interface improvements such as voice commands that looked to put Siri to shame.  Add to that 3D, OCR and translation capabilities and the future looks to be full of opportunities. Balmer then came out to show us one last thing.  Project Spark is a game design environment that will be available for Windows 8.1, XBox 360 and XBox One.  All I can say is that if my kids get their hands on this they are going to be able to learn some of what dad does in a much more enjoyable way. At the end of it all I was both exhausted and energized by what I saw.  What could they have possibly left for the day 2 keynote?  I hear it will feature Scott Hanselman.  If that is right we are in for a treat.  See you there. del.icio.us Tags: BUILD 2013,Windows 8.1,Winodws Phone,XAML,Keynote,Bing,Visual Studio 2013,Project Spark

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• Oracle Named to Top 100 Logistics Companies

  - by [email protected]

  Every April for the past 15 years, Inbound Logistics editors have recognized 100 logistics IT companies that support and enable logistics and supply chain excellence. Oracle was recognized by Inbound Logistics editors for leading the way in 2010. Editors sought to match readers' fast-changing needs to the capabilities of those companies selected. Oracle excels at providing solutions that drive supply chain excellence and answer IL readers' need for simplicity, ROI, and efficient implementation. Inbound Logistics is proud to honor Oracle for innovative solutions empowering logistics and supply chain excellence.

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• Misaligned Display on Resume

  - by Shaun Killingbeck

  I have an odd issue with my laptop display when resuming from suspend. When I have an additional monitor connected there is no issue. However without an additional monitor connected, after resuming only the left 10% of the laptop screen (just enough to show the Unity Launcher and a bit more) is visibly working, although strangely in a screenshot this same 10% is shown on the right hand side of the screenshot: I ran xrandr --verbose before and after resume, and the only difference (using diff) was: 2c2 < LVDS connected 1366x768+0+0 (0x98) normal (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 194mm --- > LVDS connected 1366x768+1280+0 (0x98) normal (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 194mm This seems to suggest the screen position has been shifted by 1280 horizontally, the width of the second monitor I use. Indeed, running the command xrandr --output LVDS --pos 0x0 does bring the screen back to normal. However, I don't want to have to run this command every time, I'd prefer to cure the source of the problem than just correct the symptoms. Any ideas on how to get Ubuntu to keep the display configuration settings from before suspend when it resumes? or why it changes at all? Heres some technical details that might be pertinent: HP Pavilion DV6 Laptop Ubuntu 13.04 AMD Radeon HD 6400M Series AMD Radeon HD 6520G Using proprietary flgrx-updates driver and amdcccle (Catalyst Control Center) (Unfortunately the open source driver causes my laptop to run even hotter than it already does, otherwise I'd use that) The contents of Xorg.conf: Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "amdcccle Layout" Screen 0 "amdcccle-Screen[0]-0" 0 0 EndSection Section "Module" Load "glx" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "0-LVDS" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" Option "PreferredMode" "1280x768" Option "TargetRefresh" "60" Option "Position" "0 0" Option "Rotate" "normal" Option "Disable" "false" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "0-CRT1" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" Option "PreferredMode" "1280x768" Option "TargetRefresh" "60" Option "Position" "0 0" Option "Rotate" "normal" Option "Disable" "false" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "1-LVDS" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" Option "TargetRefresh" "60" Option "Position" "1280 0" Option "Rotate" "normal" Option "Disable" "false" Option "PreferredMode" "1366x768" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "1-CRT1" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" Option "TargetRefresh" "60" Option "Position" "0 0" Option "Rotate" "normal" Option "Disable" "false" Option "PreferredMode" "1280x1024" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "amdcccle-Device[0]-0" Driver "fglrx" Option "Monitor-LVDS" "1-LVDS" Option "Monitor-CRT1" "1-CRT1" BusID "PCI:0:1:0" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "amdcccle-Device[0]-1" Driver "fglrx" Option "Monitor-LVDS" "1-LVDS" BusID "PCI:0:1:0" Screen 1 EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" DefaultDepth 24 EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "amdcccle-Screen[0]-0" Device "amdcccle-Device[0]-0" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Viewport 0 0 Virtual 2646 2646 Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "amdcccle-Screen[0]-1" Device "amdcccle-Device[0]-1" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection

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• Creating Parent-Child Relationships in SSRS

  - by Tim Murphy

  As I have been working on SQL Server Reporting Services reports the last couple of weeks I ran into a scenario where I needed to present a parent-child data layout.  It is rare that I have seen a report that was a simple tabular or matrix format and this report continued that trend.  I found that the processes for developing complex SSRS reports aren’t as commonly described as I would have thought.  Below I will layout the process that I went through to create a solution. I started with a List control which will contain the layout of the master (parent) information.  This allows for a main repeating report part.  The dataset for this report should include the data elements needed to be passed to the subreport as parameters.  As you can see the layout is simply text boxes that are bound to the dataset. The next step is to set a row group on the List row.  When the dialog appears select the field that you wish to group your report by.  A good example in this case would be the employee name or ID. Create a second report which becomes the subreport.  The example below has a matrix control.  Create the report as you would any parameter driven document by parameterizing the dataset. Add the subreport to the main report inside the row of the List control.  This can be accomplished by either dragging the report from the solution explorer or inserting a Subreport control and then setting the report name property. The last step is to set the parameters on the subreport.  In this case the subreport has EmpId and ReportYear as parameters.  While some of the documentation on this states that the dialog will automatically detect the child parameters, but this has not been my experience.  You must make sure that the names match exactly.  Tie the name of the parameter to either a field in the dataset or a parameter of the parent report. del.icio.us Tags: SQL Server Reporting Services,SSRS,SQL Server,Subreports

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• Live CD has black screen HP DV6

  - by Shaun Killingbeck

  Attempting to install/try ubuntu (11.10, 12.04) on my new laptop, using a liveCD (and tried USB). I get the purple screen (with the man/keyboard at the bottom) and after that the screen flashes bright white before going black. Ubuntu continues to load in the background, with login sound etc but the screen is off. I have tried as many different solutions as I could find including: using nomodestep, xforcevesa, i915.modeset=0, and also now i915.modeset=1 in boot options (seperately): varying consequences, but either I end up at a blinking cursor with no prompt, a command line (startx fails: no screen found), or the original blank screen again Tried booting from VirtualBox - it crashes at the same place the screen would go blank when using a CD/USB tried 11.04: I don't have this problem BUT when trying to install, I get a ubi-partman error 141 (possibly down to the three partitions that came on my laptop... not sure why HP needed there own separate partition for HP Tools...) Model: HP Pavillion DV6 6B08SA Processor: AMD Quad-Core A6-3410MX APU with Radeon HD 6545G2 Dual Graphics (1.6 GHZ 4 MB L2 cache ) Chipset: AMD RS880M Any help would be greatly appreciated. I just want to be able to partition the drive and install Ubuntu. I'm assuming the issue is graphics card related, although I have no confirmation of that. Update: Tried the ?orkarounds on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/BlankScreen - set gfxpayload=text changed nothing, removing splash did nothing and setting vesafb.nonsense=1 did nothing either. I'd like to be able to collect some log information somehow, but I can't get to a command line from the liveCD. tried using the latest 12.04 beta, same issue tried nomodeset without splash or quiet. get the following (tail of) output before it freezes on that screen: * Starting configure network device security [OK] * Starting configure network device [OK] [ 25.720899] ieee80211 phy0: w1_ops_config: change monitor mode: false (implement) [ 25.720923] ieee80211 phy0: w1_ops_config: change power-save mode: false (implement) * Starting restore sound card(s') mixer state(s) [fail] [ 25.721849] ieee80211 phy0: w1_ops_bss_info_changed: qos enabled: false (implement) * Stopping save kernel messages [OK] * Starting bluetooth [OK] * PulseAudio configured for per-user sessions saned disabled; edit /etc/default/saned [ 25.988016] hci_cmd_timer: hci0 command tx timeout [ 26.207225] bad LUN (0:1) [ 26.223735] bad target number (1:0) [ 26.252111] bad target number (2:0) [ 26.272170] bad target number (3:0) [ 26.300154] bad target number (4:0) [ 26.328162] bad target number (5:0) [ 26.344180] bad target number (6:0) [ 26.368142] bad target number (7:0) * Checking battery state... [OK] * Stopping System V runlevel capability [OK] Does this give any indication of the problem? the false (implement) messages also reappear when I press the power button to ask it to shutdown, followed by a [fail] status for killing remaining processes.

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• Learning PHP OOP

  - by Ryan Murphy

  I have been coding PHP for about 2 years now and I THINK that I have a very good grasps of the fundamental parts of PHP, i.e. Functions foreach/IF statements sessions/cookies POST/GET Amongst a few others. I want to move on to learning OOP PHP now, so learning how to use classes and making it a really valuable skill. I have 1 requirement, the source must be a respected source that doesn't teach developers bad habits. I have the book: PHP and MySQL Web Development However, as useful as that is I would like an online source. I would like to know from people with experience in OOP PHP, how and where did they learn OOP PHP. Obviously by doing, but I would really appreciate some great resources which help me along the way.

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• VCE at the VCS!?!?

  - by John Murphy

  VCE stands for Value Chain Execution, VCS stands for Value Chain Summit and in February in San Francisco, VCE will be fully represented at the VCS. The Value Chain Summit is Oracle's first large scale Supply Chain Management event specifically aimed at both current and prospective users of Oracle Supply Chain Management applications. This inaugural event is Feb 4-6, 2013 in downtown San Francisco.  Over 1000 attendees will meet to discuss and see what's new in product releases, what recent business trends are impacting supply chains, how technology is evolving, where supply chains are headed, and what companies are doing about it.  As the market leader in Value Chain Execution applications, VCE sessions and demonstrations will provide attendees direct access to the most sophisticated logistics applications in the world.  Already a user of VCE applications?   That's all the more reason to attend as sessions are specifically designed to address the latest features in the upcoming 6.3 release.  Detailed content will be shared by development and strategy personnel so you can get all the answers you need to improve your use of the VCE applications you currently have deployed.   Please join us in San Francisco in February!  

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• XNA texture stretching at extreme coordinates

  - by Shaun Hamman

  I was toying around with infinitely scrolling 2D textures using the XNA framework and came across a rather strange observation. Using the basic draw code: spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Deferred, null, SamplerState.PointWrap, null, null); spriteBatch.Draw(texture, Vector2.Zero, sourceRect, Color.White, 0.0f, Vector2.Zero, 2.0f, SpriteEffects.None, 1.0f); spriteBatch.End(); with a small 32x32 texture and a sourceRect defined as: sourceRect = new Rectangle(0, 0, Window.ClientBounds.Width, Window.ClientBounds.Height); I was able to scroll the texture across the window infinitely by changing the X and Y coordinates of the sourceRect. Playing with different coordinate locations, I noticed that if I made either of the coordinates too large, the texture no longer drew and was instead replaced by either a flat color or alternating bands of color. Tracing the coordinates back down, I found the following at around (0, -16,777,000): As you can see, the texture in the top half of the image is stretched vertically. My question is why is this occurring? Certainly I can do things like bind the x/y position to some low multiple of 32 to give the same effect without this occurring, so fixing it isn't an issue, but I'm curious about why this happens. My initial thought was perhaps it was overflowing the coordinate value or some such thing, but looking at a data type size chart, the next closest below is an unsigned short with a range of about 32,000, and above is an unsigned int with a range of around 2,000,000,000 so that isn't likely the cause.

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• Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 Announcement

  - by Tim Murphy

  Today Nokia and Microsoft had an event to officially introduce the Lumia 920.  Below is a rundown of some of the things I found interesting. As a person who likes photography there was a lot to drool over.  The main feature that caught my attention was PureView with its optical stabilization.  This alone should improve the majority of you pictures.  Add to that the SmartShoot Object remover that uses multiple images to remove unwanted people or objects that move through your picture and you never have to accept reality again. For the most part the lenses concept introduced in Windows Phone 8 just makes the usability of leveraging camera better.  Of course that is Microsoft’s selling point.  One lens that caught my attention was the Bing lens.  I have to say it is about time that we can take pictures and use them to search for answers using Bing. There were a couple of features shown that involved augmented reality.  One was similar to the yapf application that is already in the market which overlays restaurants and other destination over live camera views.  The other was using the navigation directions with a live view. Then you get down to some of the physical features of the Lumia 920.  The one that got the most stage time is that it has a great 2000mah battery which can be charged wirelessly.  They also pointed out the improved glare reduction of the 4.5 in. curved glass screen.  This hardware improvement is improved further with software that detects glare conditions and adjusts the display attributes to enhance viewing ease. Adding to the wireless cool factor of the Lumia 920 is the general NFC capabilities.  This was demonstrated with NFC docking stations as well as JBL speakers and headphones. There was one more hardware feature that I applauded.  The super sensitive touch screen did away with one of my pet peeves with capacitive touch screens.  You will never have to remove you gloves to operate your phone again.  The mittens that they did the demo with looked more like boxing gloves. I was disappointed with Joe Belfiore said that they were only going to show a couple of new features of the Windows Phone 8 and would hear more at future events.  One of the things he did show is the ability to customize which buttons you preferred as defaults in IE10.  For example you could have the folders button where the refresh button normally is.  He also showed that at long last you can natively take screenshots on your phone.  Hopefully he will be back quickly to give us the rest of the features. The most disappointing part of the event was that we never found out when they would be released or how much they would cost.  Let’s hope this comes soon.  Even with these couple of items still left on my wish list I can’t wait to get my hands on a Lumia 920.  del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone,Windows Phone 8,Nokia,Lumia,Lumia 920,Microsoft

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• TechEd 2012: Recap

  - by Tim Murphy

  TechEd this week was a great experience and I wanted to wrap it up with a summary post. First let me say a thank you to John and Jeff from GWB for supplying power, connectivity and a place to work in between sessions.  The blogging hub was a great experience in itself.  Getting to talk with other bloggers and other conference goers turned into a series of interesting conversations.  And where else can you almost end up in the day 1 highlights video? The sessions at TechEd were a mixed bag of value.  The Keynotes rocked, both figuratively and literally and most of the sessions that I want to were a good experience and had gems of information to take away.  There were a few exceptions though.  A couple of the sessions turned out to be sales jobs.  Nothing turns me off more than that (there will be some really honest comments on those surveys). TechEd re-enforced for me that much of the value is not in the sessions, but in the networking opportunities. I got to talk with several Microsoft team members and MVPs as well as some of the vendor representative for companies like Inrule and ComponentOne. Also got to expand both my local and extended community with discussions at meal times and waiting for sessions to start. I think this is one of the benefits that a lot of people don’t take advantage of in these conferences that should be a bigger part of the advertising. Exposure to a wide variety of topics, many of which I had not been able to make time for up to this point was envigorating.  The list of topic includes: Office 365, Windows Server 2012, Windows 8, Metro, Azure.  I can’t wait to get back to work and dig into these subjects in more depth. The one complaint that I had and heard from other attendees was that there weren’t enough sessions that were actually about development.  I realize that TechEd started as an event for IT Pros, but there needs to be more value for the Devs.  It all went by too fast and it will take a couple more days to digest the material, but the batteries are and I’m ready to leverage what I’ve learned.  Hopefully we will do it again next year. del.icio.us Tags: TechEd,TechEd 2012

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• TechEd 2012: Windows 8 And Metro

  - by Tim Murphy

  Windows 8 is here (or at least very close) and that was the main feature of this morning’s key note.  Antoine LeBlond started off by apologizing to the IT professionals since he planned on showing code.  I’m not sure if IT Pros are that easily confused or why you would need such a disclaimer.  Developers do real work, IT Pros just play with toys (just kidding). The highlights of the Windows 8 keynote for me started with some of the UI design elements that I had not seen when I was shown one of the Build tablets.  Specifically I liked the AppBar features that we have become used to with Windows Phone and some of the gesture features.  Even though they have been available on other platforms before I think Microsoft really got them right. Two other great features of Windows 8 that they demonstrated were the Hyper-V capabilities and the ability to run Windows 8 anywhere from a USB key.  My jaw dropped through the floor seeing a feature rich OS boot off of a thumb drive. WOW!  I also can’t wait to get rid of dual booting just to run Hyper-V images when developing. The morning continued with a session on Metro XAML development with Tim Heuer.  While included a lot of great XAML Metro demos, I was pleasantly surprised by some of the things I found out about Visual Studio 2012.  Finding out that Blend is now integrated with VS2012 was a nice addition after working with them as separate applications was an encouraging start. Moving on to Metro he introduced the nugget that WinRT is Async everywhere.  How deep this model goes will be an interesting thing to find out as I learn more about developing for the platform.  Thankfully he followed that up with a couple of new keywords, await and async, that eliminates a lot of plumbing that has been required in the past for asynchronous transactions. Tim also related that since the Metro framework is relatively small and most apps will use a significant amount of it the entire surface is referenced by default.  This is a contrast to adding namespace and assemblies one after another as we normally do. This was such a power packed session that I can’t detail it all here so here is the teaser list. New icons in VS2012 for extension methods Emulator/simulator testing features for gestures Portable class libraries XAML no longer managed code And so much more …   del.icio.us Tags: Windows 8,Metro,Tim Heuer,XAML,Widows Phone,Hyper-V,Antoine LeBlond,TechEd,TechEd 2012,Visual Studio 2012,Visual Studio

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• Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 4: Application Development Considerations

  - by Tim Murphy

  This is the final part in a series of posts based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. Application Development Considerations Now we get to the actual building of your solutions.  What are the skills and resources that will be needed in order to develop a smartphone application in the enterprise? Language Knowledge One of the first things you need to consider when you are deciding which platform language do you either have the most in house skill base or can you easily acquire.  If you already have developers who know Java or C# you may want to use either Android or Windows Phone.  You should also take into consideration the market availability of developers.  If your key developer leaves how easy is it to find a knowledgeable replacement? A second consideration when it comes to programming languages is the qualities exposed by the languages of a particular platform.  How well does that development language and its associated frameworks support things like security and access to the features of the smartphone hardware?  This will play into your overall cost of ownership if you have to create this infrastructure on your own. Manage Limited Resources Everything is limited on a smartphone: battery, memory, processing power, network bandwidth.  When developing your applications you will have to keep your footprint as small as possible in every way.  This means not running unnecessary processes in the background that will drain the battery or pulling more data over the airwaves than you have to.  You also want to keep your on device in as compact a format as possible. Mobile Design Patterns There are a number of design patterns that have either come to life because of smartphone development or have been adapted for this use.  The main pattern in the Windows Phone environment is the MVVM (Model-View-View-Model).  This is great for overall application structure and separation of concerns.  The fun part is trying to keep that separation as pure as possible.  Many of the other patterns may or may not have strict definitions, but some that you need to be concerned with are push notification, asynchronous communication and offline data storage. Real estate is limited on smartphones and even tablets. You are also limited in the type of controls that can be represented in the UI. This means rethinking how you modularize your application. Typing is also much harder to do so you want to reduce this as much as possible.  This leads to UI patterns.  While not what we would traditionally think of as design patterns the guidance each platform has for UI design is critical to the success of your application.  If user find the application difficult navigate they will not use it. Development Process Because of the differences in development tools required, test devices and certification and deployment processes your teams will need to learn new way of working together.  This will include the need to integrate service contracts of back-end systems with mobile applications.  You will also want to make sure that you present consistency across different access points to corporate data.  Your web site may have more functionality than your smartphone application, but it should have a consistent core set of functionality.  This all requires greater communication between sub-teams of your developers. Testing Process Testing of smartphone apps has a lot more to do with what happens when you lose connectivity or if the user navigates away from your application. There are a lot more opportunities for the user or the device to perform disruptive acts.  This should be your main testing concentration aside from the main business requirements.  You will need to do things like setting the phone to airplane mode and seeing what the application does in order to weed out any gaps in your handling communication interruptions. Need For Outside Experts Since this is a development area that is new to most companies the need for experts is a lot greater. Whether these are consultants, vendor representatives or just development community forums you will need to establish expert contacts. Nothing is more dangerous for your project timelines than a lack of knowledge.  Make sure you know who to call to avoid lengthy delays in your project because of knowledge gaps. Security Security has to be a major concern for enterprise applications. You aren't dealing with just someone's game standings. You are dealing with a companies intellectual property and competitive advantage. As such you need to start by limiting access to the application itself.  Once the user is in the app you need to ensure that the data is secure at all times.  This includes both local storage and across the wire.  This means if a platform doesn’t natively support encryption for these functions you will need to find alternatives to secure your data.  You also need to keep secret (encryption) keys obfuscated or locked away outside of the application. People can disassemble the code otherwise and break your encryption. Offline Capabilities As we discussed earlier one your biggest concerns is not having connectivity.  Because of this a good portion of your code may be dedicated to handling loss of connection and reconnection situations.  What do you do if you lose the network?  Back up all your transactions and store of any supporting data so that operations can continue off line. In order to support this you will need to determine the available flat file or local data base capabilities of the platform.  Any failed transactions will need to support a retry mechanism whether it is automatic or user initiated.  This also includes your services since they will need to be able to roll back partially completed transactions.  What ever you do, don’t ignore this area when you are designing your system. Deployment Each platform has different deployment capabilities. Some are more suited to enterprise situations than others. Apple's approach is probably the most mature at the moment. Prior to the current generation of smartphone platforms it would have been Windows CE. Windows Phone 7 has the limitation that the app has to be distributed through the same network as public facing applications. You mark them as private which means that they are only accessible by a direct URL. Unfortunately this does not make them undiscoverable (although it is very difficult). This will change with Windows Phone 8 where companies will be able to certify their own applications and distribute them.  Given this Windows Phone applications need to be more diligent with application access in order to keep them restricted to the company's employees. My understanding of the Android deployment schemes is that it is much less standardized then either iOS or Windows Phone. Someone would have to confirm or deny that for me though since I have not yet put the time into researching this platform further. Given my limited exposure to the iOS and Android platforms I have not been able to confirm this, but there are varying degrees of user involvement to install and keep applications updated. At one extreme the user just goes to a website to do the install and in other case they may need to download files and perform steps to install them. Future Bluetooth Today we use Bluetooth for keyboards, mice and headsets.  In the future it could be used to interrogate car computers or manufacturing systems or possibly retail machines by service techs.  This would open smartphones to greater use as a almost a Star Trek Tricorder.  You would get you all your data as well as being able to use it as a universal remote for just about any device or machine. Better corporation controlled deployment At least in the Windows Phone world the upcoming release of Windows Phone 8 will include a private certification and deployment option that is currently not available with Windows Phone 7 (Mango). We currently have to run the apps through the Marketplace certification process and use a targeted distribution method. Platform independent approaches HTML5 and JavaScript with Web Service has become a popular topic lately for not only creating flexible web site, but also creating cross platform mobile applications.  I’m not yet convinced that this lowest common denominator approach is viable in most cases, but it does have it’s place and seems to be growing.  Be sure to keep an eye on it. Summary From my perspective enterprise smartphone applications can offer a great competitive advantage to many companies.  They are not cheap to build and should be approached cautiously.  Understand the factors I have outlined in this series, do you due diligence and see if there is a portion of your business that can benefit from the mobile experience. del.icio.us Tags: Architecture,Smartphones,Windows Phone,iOS,Android

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• How to resolve concurrent ramp collisions in 2d platformer?

  - by Shaun Inman

  A bit about the physics engine: Bodies are all rectangles. Bodies are sorted at the beginning of every update loop based on the body-in-motion's horizontal and vertical velocity (to avoid sticky walls/floors). Solid bodies are resolved by testing the body-in-motion's new X with the old Y and adjusting if necessary before testing the new X with the new Y, again adjusting if necessary. Works great. Ramps (rectangles with a flag set indicating bottom-left, bottom-right, etc) are resolved by calculating the ratio of penetration along the x-axis and setting a new Y accordingly (with some checks to make sure the body-in-motion isn't attacking from the tall or flat side, in which case the ramp is treated as a normal rectangle). This also works great. Side-by-side ramps, eg. \/ and /\, work fine but things get jittery and unpredictable when a top-down ramp is directly above a bottom-up ramp, eg. < or > or when a bottom-up ramp runs right up to the ceiling/top-down ramp runs right down to the floor. I've been able to lock it down somewhat by detecting whether the body-in-motion hadFloor when also colliding with a top-down ramp or hadCeiling when also colliding with a bottom-up ramp then resolving by calculating the ratio of penetration along the y-axis and setting the new X accordingly (the opposite of the normal behavior). But as soon as the body-in-motion jumps the hasFloor flag becomes false, the first ramp resolution pushes the body into collision with the second ramp and collision resolution becomes jittery again for a few frames. I'm sure I'm making this more complicated than it needs to be. Can anyone recommend a good resource that outlines the best way to address this problem? (Please don't recommend I use something like Box2d or Chipmunk. Also, "redesign your levels" isn't an answer; the body-in-motion may at times be riding another body-in-motion, eg. a platform, that pushes it into a ramp so I'd like to be able to resolve this properly.) Thanks!

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• SharePoint Thoughts

  - by Tim Murphy

  I was listening to .NET Rocks episode #713 and it got me thinking about a number of SharePoint related topics. I have been working with SharePoint since the 2001 product came out and have watched it evolve over the years.  Today SharePoint is one of the most powerful and flexible products in the market.  Of course that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement (a lot of improvement in fact) and with much power comes much responsibility. My main gripe these days is that you have to develop on a server instance.  This adds a real barrier to entry for developers.  You either have to run VMWare or Hyper-V on your developer machine or actually develop on your dev server for most tasks.  Yes, there is a way to setup a Windows 7 machine with the SharePoint components but it is very hackish. Beyond that the tools in VS2010 are a great leap forward from past generations.  Not requiring a separate package creation tool is not the least of the improvements.  Better workflow and web part development have also eased the burden of many developers. The other thing the show brought up in my thoughts was more around usage.  Users want to be able to self server everything without regard to what affect that has on leveraging their data from a corporate perspective.  My coworkers who work on Lotus Notes ask why the user can’t just do what ever they want? Part of the reason is that those features have not been built, but the other part is that giving them those features is often like giving an infant a loaded hand gun.  You can do it but it doesn’t make it the smart thing to do. As with any tool that is going to be used in the enterprise it should be subject to governance.  If controls are not in place as they said in the episode of DNR the document libraries and I believe SharePoint in general starts to look as disarrayed and unusable as a shared drive.  Consider these factors before giving into every whim of the users.  You should be able to explain to them the tradeoffs of giving them full control versus being able to leverage the information they collect to the benefit of the organization. These are just a couple of the thoughts that were triggered by the show.  I’m sure there are more discussions that can be had.  Feel free to leave your comments about the pros and cons of SharePoint. del.icio.us Tags: .NET Rocks,SharePoint,software development

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• May 2010 Chicago Architects Group Wrap Up

  - by Tim Murphy

  Scott Seely did a wonderful job this evening of explaining how cloud services fit into our application architectures and specifically how Azure is organized.  He covered everything from Table Storage to code name Dallas (OData).  The discussion continued well beyond the end of the meeting which was attended by members of all sectors of IT and multiple platforms. Be sure to join us in the upcoming months as we cover the following topics: June – Document Generation Architecture July – Architecting a BI Installation August - MVVM – the What, Why and When Stay tuned. del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Architects Group,Azure,Cloud Computing,Dallas,Scott Seely,MVVM,Business Intelligence

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• 3 Reasons You Need To Know Something About Every Technology

  - by Tim Murphy

  I make my living as a consultant and a general technologist.  I credit my success to the fact that I have never been afraid to pick up any product, language or platform needed to get the job done.  While Microsoft technologies I my mainstay, I have done work on mainframe and UNIX platforms and have worked with a wide variety of database engines.  Each one has it’s use and most times it is less expensive to find a way to communicate with an existing system than to replace it. So what are the main benefits of expending the effort to learn a new technology? New ways to solve problems Accelerate development Advise clients and get new business opportunities By new technology I mean ones that you haven’t had experience with before.  They don’t have to be the the one that just came out yesterday.  As they say, those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.  If you can learn something from an older technology it can be just as valuable as the shiny new one.  Either way, when you add another tool to your kit you get a new view on each problem you face.  This makes it easier to create a sound solution. The next thing you can learn from working with different products and techniques is how to more efficiently develop solve problems.  Many times if you are working with a new language you will find that there are specific design patterns that are used with it in normal use.  These can usually be applied with most languages.  You just needed to be exposed to them. The last point is about helping your clients and helping yourself.  If you can get in on technologies early you will have advantage over your competition in the market.  You will also be able to honestly advise you client on why they should or should not go with a new product.  Being able to compare products and their features is always an ability that stake holders appreciate. You don’t need to learn every detail of a product.  Learn enough to function and get an idea of how to use the technology.  Keep eating those technology Wheaties and you will be ready to go the distance in any project. del.icio.us Tags: Technology,technologists,technology generalist,Software Architecture

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• Discovering Your Project

  - by Tim Murphy

  The discovery phase of any project is both exciting and critical to the project’s success.  There are several key points that you need to keep in mind as you navigate this process. The first thing you need to understand is who the players in the project are and what their motivations are for the project.  Leaving out a key stakeholder in the resulting product is one of the easiest ways to doom your project to fail.  The better the quality of the input you have at this early phase the better chance you will have of creating a well accepted deliverable. The next task you should tackle is to gather the goals for the project.  Specifically, what does the company expect to get for the money they are about to layout.  This seems like a common sense task, but you would be surprised how many teams to straight to building the system.  Even if you are following an agile methodology I believe that this is critical. Inventorying the resources that already exists gives you an idea what you are going to have to build and what you can leverage at lower risk.  This list should include documentation, servers, code repositories, databases, languages, security systems and supporting teams.  All of these are “resources” that can effect the cost and delivery schedule of your project. Finally, you need to verify what you have found and documented with the stakeholders and subject matter experts.  Documentation that has not been reviewed is actually a list of assumptions and we all know that assumptions are the mother of all screw ups. If you give the discovery phase of your project the attention that it deserves your project has a much better chance of success. I would love to hear what other people find important for this phase.  Please leave comments on this post so we can share the knowledge. del.icio.us Tags: Project discovery,documentation,business analysis,architecture

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