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Windows Phone Developer Spotlight: Nikolai Joukov

- by Lori Lalonde

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/lorilalonde/archive/2014/06/04/windows-phone-developer-spotlight-nikolai-joukov.aspxAs part of an ongoing series, I plan to include a spotlight post on people within the community that are stars in their field and area of expertise. For my first spotlight post, I interviewed Nikolai Joukov, who is a regular attendee at my local area .NET User Group (CTTDNUG), and has also participated in many of the Mobile and Cloud workshops we have hosted over the past few years. Nikolai stood out immediately, because of his passion for developing mobile apps, his interest in continuous learning, and his drive to publish quality apps that people will find useful and entertaining. Background: Nikolai immigrated to Canada in 1995, and has been working in IT since 1997. He moved on to become an independent contractor in 2005, and has worked at various large scale organizations over the course of his career, including BMO, Enbridge, Economical Insurance, Equitable Life, Manulife and Sun Life. Nikolai is an accomplished Windows Phone and Windows Store publisher, with 11 published Windows Phone apps, and 8 published Windows Store apps. He has almost 6000 downloads and favourable reviews. Q & A with Nikolai How many years have you been developing Windows Phone apps? 2 years When did you develop your very first Windows Phone app, and what was it about? Actually, the very first app I wrote was for the Microsoft “Smart Phone” back in 2004. This phone was given to me by Microsoft during the Developers Days Conference in Toronto. It was some kind of experimental model named Smart Phone, but you had to use VB 3 to develop the applications. Needless to say, this was not very successful at that time. My app was a Stock Trades Calculator. Very primitive, but it was working for me. The phone was heavy and the battery barely lasted 4 hours. Microsoft stopped supporting it few months later and the phone stopped working shortly after, but I still have it as a souvenir. For Windows Phone, my first app was “Trip Packing Assistant”. This is a simple trip packing check list that allows you to list items by category, set required quantity of items, and mark off the item in the list when it is packed. I designed it for me and my wife Galina, since we love to travel and this program helps manage our list for us. How did you get started in Windows Phone development? I have to say thanks to our .NET User Group for introducing me to Windows Phone development. I was intrigued and decided to give it a try. In October 2012 during a 2 day training event that ObjectSharp hosted in London, I met Bruce Johnson. On his advice, I registered for Developer Movement, and it is was a good push to actually complete the apps that I started. You have a great series of travel guide apps both for Windows Phone and Windows Store. Tell us about how you came up with the idea to develop those apps and what process you went through to put it all together. Like I said earlier, my wife and I love to travel. Before I created Trip Packing Assistant, every time we were planning to travel somewhere new, Galina would spend 3-4 weeks doing research. She would create a Word document with all of the information. We didn’t want to have to carry our laptop with us all the time, so we printed out the Word document she created, and would take it with us. After we returned from the trip, we would bring back tons of pictures and materials. Then our friends started to ask us about our materials before they planned their trips to the same places we had visited. So I decided to give it a try and started making apps for Windows Phone and for Windows 8. I hope these applications will help people who are planning to travel. So, all of the pictures used in the travel apps you created were actually taken by you during these amazing trips? Yes Do you have another Windows Store/Windows Phone project in development right now? If so, can you give us a hint at what it will be about? I want to stay with travel apps for now. But this time I will try to write an app for us (Galina and I). Usually we go on the trip, then I write the apps after we have all this beautiful pictures in our hands. We are planning a trip to Rome. This app will not have the pictures, but I want to add a map with points of interest and all information that can be useful for us. Then we will go on our trip and test it on location. As well I am planning to work on my existing apps to make them better. What learning resources would you recommend for other developers that want to get started in Window Store and Windows Phone development? I would start with dev.windowsphone.com to get all tools and samples, also links to training materials. I like MVA (Microsoft Virtual Academy). Their videos are really useful and it is free. Pluralsight is good too but it is not free and I do not have a subscription anymore. Our .NET User Group meetings give good insights too. I went to all meetings and full day training events. When you start to develop your app, you need to do research for specific questions that arise during development. The Developer Portal and Nokia Developer are good resources too. Wrap Up Thanks Nikolai for participating in my first Spotlight blog post! Shown below is Nikolai’s publisher page in the Windows Phone Store and his publisher page in the Windows Store. Simply click on it to be taken to there to check out his portfolio of apps. Be sure to download his apps and try them out! They are all free! Nikolai’s Windows Phone apps Nikolai’s Windows Store Apps

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How to use ULS in SharePoint 2010 for Custom Code Exception Logging?

- by venkatx5

What is ULS in SharePoint 2010? ULS stands for Unified Logging Service which captures and writes Exceptions/Logs in Log File(A Plain Text File with .log extension). SharePoint logs Each and every exceptions with ULS. SharePoint Administrators should know ULS and it's very useful when anything goes wrong. but when you ask any SharePoint 2007 Administrator to check log file then most of them will Kill you. Because read and understand the log file is not so easy. Imagine open a plain text file of 20 MB in NotePad and go thru line by line. Now Microsoft developed a tool "ULS Viewer" to view those Log files in easily readable format. This tools also helps to filter events based on exception priority. You can read on this blog to know in details about ULS Viewer . Where to get ULS Viewer? ULS Viewer is developed by Microsoft and available to download for free. URL : http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ULSViewer/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=3308 Note: Eventhought this tool developed by Microsoft, it's not supported by Microsoft. Means you can't support for this tool from Microsoft and use it on your own Risk. By the way what's the risk in viewing Log Files?! How to use ULS in SharePoint 2010 Custom Code? ULS can be extended to use in user solutions to log exceptions. In Detail, Developer can use ULS to log his own application errors and exceptions on SharePoint Log files. So now all in Single Place (That's why it's called "Unified Logging"). Well in this article I am going to use Waldek's Code (Reference Link). However the article is core and am writing container for that (Basically how to implement the code in Detail). Let's see the steps. Open Visual Studio 2010 -> File -> New Project -> Visual C# -> Windows -> Class Library -> Name : ULSLogger (Make sure you've selected .net Framework 3.5) In Solution Explorer Panel, Rename the Class1.cs to LoggingService.cs Right Click on References -> Add Reference -> Under .Net tab select "Microsoft.SharePoint" Right Click on the Project -> Properties. Select "Signing" Tab -> Check "Sign the Assembly". In the below drop down select <New> and enter "ULSLogger", uncheck the "Protect my key with a Password" option. Now copy the below code and paste. (Or Just refer.. :-) ) using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.SharePoint; using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration; using System.Runtime.InteropServices; namespace ULSLogger { public class LoggingService : SPDiagnosticsServiceBase { public static string vsDiagnosticAreaName = "Venkats SharePoint Logging Service"; public static string CategoryName = "vsProject"; public static uint uintEventID = 700; // Event ID private static LoggingService _Current; public static LoggingService Current { get { if (_Current == null) { _Current = new LoggingService(); } return _Current; } }private LoggingService() : base("Venkats SharePoint Logging Service", SPFarm.Local) {}protected override IEnumerable<SPDiagnosticsArea> ProvideAreas() { List<SPDiagnosticsArea> areas = new List<SPDiagnosticsArea> { new SPDiagnosticsArea(vsDiagnosticAreaName, new List<SPDiagnosticsCategory> { new SPDiagnosticsCategory(CategoryName, TraceSeverity.Medium, EventSeverity.Error) }) }; return areas; }public static string LogErrorInULS(string errorMessage) { string strExecutionResult = "Message Not Logged in ULS. "; try { SPDiagnosticsCategory category = LoggingService.Current.Areas[vsDiagnosticAreaName].Categories[CategoryName]; LoggingService.Current.WriteTrace(uintEventID, category, TraceSeverity.Unexpected, errorMessage); strExecutionResult = "Message Logged"; } catch (Exception ex) { strExecutionResult += ex.Message; } return strExecutionResult; }public static string LogErrorInULS(string errorMessage, TraceSeverity tsSeverity) { string strExecutionResult = "Message Not Logged in ULS. "; try { SPDiagnosticsCategory category = LoggingService.Current.Areas[vsDiagnosticAreaName].Categories[CategoryName]; LoggingService.Current.WriteTrace(uintEventID, category, tsSeverity, errorMessage); strExecutionResult = "Message Logged"; } catch (Exception ex) { strExecutionResult += ex.Message; } return strExecutionResult; } } } Just build the solution and it's ready to use now. This ULS solution can be used in SharePoint Webparts or Console Application. Lets see how to use it in a Console Application. SharePoint Server 2010 must be installed in the same Server or the application must be hosted in SharPoint Server 2010 environment. The console application must be set to "x64" Platform target. Create a New Console Application. (Visual Studio -> File -> New Project -> C# -> Windows -> Console Application) Right Click on References -> Add Reference -> Under .Net tab select "Microsoft.SharePoint" Open Program.cs add "using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration;" Right Click on References -> Add Reference -> Under "Browse" tab select the "ULSLogger.dll" which we created first. (Path : ULSLogger\ULSLogger\bin\Debug\) Right Click on Project -> Properties -> Select "Build" Tab -> Under "Platform Target" option select "x64". Open the Program.cs and paste the below code. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration; using ULSLogger; namespace ULSLoggerClient { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine("ULS Logging Started."); string strResult = LoggingService.LogErrorInULS("My Application is Working Fine."); Console.WriteLine("ULS Logging Info. Result : " + strResult); string strResult = LoggingService.LogErrorInULS("My Application got an Exception.", TraceSeverity.High); Console.WriteLine("ULS Logging Waring Result : " + strResult); Console.WriteLine("ULS Logging Completed."); Console.ReadLine(); } } } Just build the solution and execute. It'll log the message on the log file. Make sure you are using Farm Administrator User ID. You can play with Message and TraceSeverity as required. Now Open ULS Viewer -> File -> Open From -> ULS -> Select First Option to open the default ULS Log. It's Uls RealTime and will show all log entries in readable table format. Right Click on a row and select "Filter By This Item". Select "Event ID" and enter value "700" that we used in the application. Click Ok and now you'll see the Exceptions/Logs which logged by our application. If you want to see High Priority Messages only then Click Icons except Red Cross Icon on the Toolbar. The tooltip will tell what's the icons used for.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 29, 2013

CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 29, 2013Popular ReleasesCrowd CMS: Crowd CMS FREE - Official Release: This is the original source files for Crowd CMS Free (v1.0.0) and is the latest stable release which has been bug-tested and fixed.Event-Based Components AppBuilder: AB3.AppDesigner.57.12: Iteration 57.12 (Redesign): I'm still not satisfied with the WireDecorator because of it's complexity. Therefore I need some iterations to simplify this class. In this iteration I introduced a new WireArrowDecorator which contains everything that's needed to act with the arrow of a wire. Coming soon: Iteration 58: Add a new wire by mouse (without text editing) Iteration 59: Add a wire segment (without text editing) Iteration 60: Edit existing wire definition (without text editing) ...HandJS: Hand.js v1.1.3: New configuration: HANDJS.doNotProcessCSS to disable CSS scanning.Layered Architecture Solution Guidance (LASG): LASG 1.0.1.0 for Visual Studio 2012: PRE-REQUISITES Open GAX (Please install Oct 4, 2012 version) Microsoft® System CLR Types for Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 Shared Management Objects Microsoft Enterprise Library 6.0 (for the generated code) Windows Azure SDK (for layered cloud applications) Silverlight 5 SDK (for Silverlight applications) THE RELEASE This release only works on Visual Studio 2012. Known Issue If you choose the Database project, the solution unfolding time will be slow....DirectX Tool Kit: October 2013: October 28, 2013 Updated for Visual Studio 2013 and Windows 8.1 SDK RTM Added DGSLEffect, DGSLEffectFactory, VertexPositionNormalTangentColorTexture, and VertexPositionNormalTangentColorTextureSkinning Model loading and effect factories support loading skinned models MakeSpriteFont now has a smooth vs. sharp antialiasing option: /sharp Model loading from CMOs now handles UV transforms for texture coordinates A number of small fixes for EffectFactory Minor code and project cleanup ...WPF Extended DataGrid: WPF Extended DataGrid 2.0.0.8 binaries: Fixed issue with auto filter select all checkbox was getting checked automatically after reopening the filter.ExtJS based ASP.NET Controls: FineUI v4.0beta1: +2013-10-28 v4.0 beta1 +?????Collapsed???????????????。 -????：window/group_panel.aspx??，???????，???????，?????????。 +??????SelectedNodeIDArray???????????????。 -????：tree/checkbox/tree_checkall.aspx??，?????，?????，????????????。 -??TimerPicker???????（????、????ing）。 -??????????????????????（???）。 -?????????????，??type=text/css（??~`）。 -MsgTarget???MessageTarget，???None。 -FormOffsetRight?????20px??5px。 -?Web.config?PageManager??FormLabelAlign???。 -ToolbarPosition??Left/Right。 -??Web.conf...CODE Framework: 4.0.31028.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new. Note: If you download the class reference help file with, you have to right-click the file, pick "Properties", and then unblock the file, as many browsers flag the file as blocked during download (for security reasons) and thus hides all content.ResX Resource Manager: 1.0.0.26: 1.0.0.26 WI1141: Improve message when an XML file fails to load. Ignore projects that fail to load. 1.0.0.25 WI1133: Improve error message 1.0.0.24 WI1121: Improve error messages 1.0.0.23 WI1098: VS Crash after changing filter 1.0.0.22 WI1091: Context menu for copy resource key. WI1090: Enable multi-line paste. 1.0.0.21 WI1060: ResX Manager crashes after update. 1.0.0.20 WI958: Reference something in DGX, so we don't need to load the assembly dynamically. WI1055: Add the possibility to ma...VidCoder: 1.5.10 Beta: Broke out all the encoder-specific passthrough options into their own dropdown. This should make what they do a bit more clear and clean up the codec list a bit. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5855.Indent Guides for Visual Studio: Indent Guides v14: ImportantThis release has a separate download for Visual Studio 2010. The first link is for VS 2012 and later. Version History Changed in v14 Improved performance when scrolling and editing Fixed potential crash when Resharper is installed Fixed highlight of guides split around pragmas in C++/C# Restored VS 2010 support as a separate download Changed in v13 Added page width guide lines Added guide highlighting options Fixed guides appearing over collapsed blocks Fixed guides not...ASP.net MVC Awesome - jQuery Ajax Helpers: 3.5.3 (mvc5): version 3.5.3 - support for mvc5 version 3.5.2 - fix for setting single value to multivalue controls - datepicker min max date offset fix - html encoding for keys fix - enable Column.ClientFormatFunc to be a function call that will return a function version 3.5.1 ========================== - fixed html attributes rendering - fixed loading animation rendering - css improvements version 3.5 ========================== - autosize for all popups ( can be turned off by calling in js...Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.585b: IMDB plot scraping Fixed. New* Movie - Rename Folder using Movie Set, option to move ignored articles to end of Movie Set, only for folder renaming. Fixed* Media Companion - Fixed if using profiles, config files would blown up in size due to some settings duplicating. * Ignore Article of An was cutting of last character of movie title. * If Rescraping title, sort title changed depending on 'Move article to end of Sort Title' setting. * Movie - If changing Poster source order, list would beco...MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.4: Release 1.11.4 =========== = Compatibility = =========== Updated to add the new tiles/walls in 1.2.1PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit: PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit v3.0.7: This is a bug fix release, containing some important fixes! Fixed issue where Session 0 was not detected correctly, resulting in issues when attempting to display a UI when none was allowed Fixed Installation Prompt and Installation Restart Prompt appearing when deploy mode was non-interactive or silent Fixed issue where defer prompt is displayed after force closing multiple applications Fixed issue executing blocked app execution dialog from UNC path (executed instead from local tempo...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.7: 2013.10.24 Ver5.9.7 (1)FTP???????、２?????????????shift-jis????????????? (2)????HTTP????、???????POST??????????????????CtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.1.0.34322 Alpha 4: This experimental release of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer includes the following significant features: Oculus Rift support. Stereoscopic 3D display support. Based on Firestorm viewer 4.4.2 codebase. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-1-0-34322-alpha-4 Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/privacy Disclaimer: This software is not provided or sup...VsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 32 Beta: Note: This release does not work with custom VsTortoise toolbars. These get removed every time when you shutdown Visual Studio. (#7940) This release has been tested with Visual Studio 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2013, using TortoiseSVN 1.6, 1.7 and 1.8. It should also still work with Visual Studio 2005, but I couldn't find anyone to test it in VS2005. Build 32 (beta) changelogNew: Added Visual Studio 2013 support New: Added Visual Studio 2012 support New: Added SVN 1.8 support New: Added 'Ch...ABCat: ABCat v.2.0.1a: ?????????? ???????? ? ?????????? ?????? ???? ??? Win7. ????????? ?????? ????????? ?? ???????. ????? ?????, ???? ????? ???????? ????????? ?????????? ????????? "?? ??????? ????? ???????????? ?????????? ??????...", ?? ?????????? ??????? ? ?????????? ?????? Microsoft SQL Ce ?? ????????? ??????: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17876. ???????? ?????? x64 ??? x86 ? ??????????? ?? ?????? ???????????? ???????. ??? ??????? ????????? ?? ?????????? ?????? Entity Framework, ? ???? ...patterns & practices: Data Access Guidance: Data Access Guidance 2013: This is the 2013 release of Data Access Guidance. The documentation for this RI is also available on MSDN: Data Access for Highly-Scalable Solutions: Using SQL, NoSQL, and Polyglot Persistence: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn271399.aspxNew Projects7COM0152 - Web 2.0 Community Website: This is a project to create a User Content Cenerated community website for the Web Application Development module at the University of Hertfordshire.Airport System: Telerik Academy Teamwork - Airport SystemAppointments and ToDo Manager: Javascript Single Page ApplicationBlack NBT: A library to manage NBT (Named Binary Tag) files at format 19133. This project inclue a test client for the library. It's written en C# for .Net 4.5browser4gp: Applicazione che consente agli sviluppatori di pagine web di comunicare con il sistema operativo sottostante.BS Flow: It's a web project that using bootstrap to show instagram image flow.coLearning .NET Class - Team 3 v.2: .NET CRM tool. Grow your business one contact at a time with an expertly crafted API for generating leads and a simple web interface for managing contacts.Collections2: The Collection2 library allows you to create 2 way dictionaries. Ex: mydictionary[1] == "One", mydictionary["One"] == 1. Database Application: Load MySQL DB to SQL Server Unzip and import excel sales reports to SQL Server Generate PDF from SQL ServerDesign Pattern in C#: design pattern implementations in C#DropLogin&DropUser: Mass drop logins and users from many sql servers ??????? ??????? ?????? ????? SQL Server ? ????????????? ?? ???? ???? ??????.ElencySolutions.MultiProperty.CMS7: This project is simply a EPiServer CMS 7 re-write of the original code found here: https://episerveresmp.codeplex.com/File System Explorer: This application will drill into the Windows File System like Windows File Explorer but is more geared to working with multiple directories at a time. GriffinTeam: GriffinTeamjean1028jabbrchang: dfaLibDxp: Set of libraries for manipulating document-oriented databases for FSharp (F#)Library System: Telerik ASP.NET Web Forms Exam - Library SystemMaruko Toolbox: A Video-prosessing GUIMugen MVVM Toolkit ReSharper plugin: ReSharper plugin for Mugen MVVM Toolkit.RESX Utils: This is a tool to aid RESX resources management. It can detect and remove unused resources, compare RESX files and detect duplicates and discrepancies.Scorpicore2: follows banknotes and understanding their historySharePoint Logs Viewer: Develop & Maintain your SharePoint application quickly by using "SharePoint Logs Viewer"SPCloudMigrator: This project aims to simplify the migration from on-premise sharepoint version to sharepoint online.SSIS Connector for Sharepoint Online: SharePoint Online Source & Destination DataFlow Components to fetch data from SPOnline & push data in SPOnline.Transfer data from SP Online List to DBMS or FileTMS - Testing Management System: Una empresa de desarrollo de software, desea contar con una aplicación Web que le permita manejar los errores de sus productos. Esta aplicación permitirá a losWMI Inventory Client: WMI Inventory Client ?????????????? ?????????????? ?? WMIWPF MDI Metro: Metro Dark Theme for WPF MDI Project on codeplex.Zigbee playground: This is a project for experimenting with Zigbee wireless mesh networking.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 20, 2012

CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 20, 2012Popular ReleasesApex: Apex 1.4: Apex 1.4Apex 1.4 provides a framework for rapid MVVM development. Download Apex 1.4 to get the core binaries, Visual Studio Extensions, Project Templates, Samples and Documentation. The 1.4 Release provides a vast number of enhancements via the Apex Broker. The Apex Broker is an object that can be used to retrieve models, get the view for a view model and more, much like an IoC container. The new Zune Style application templates for WPF and Silverlight give a great starting point for makin...Auto Proxy Configuration: V 1.0: This tool consists of a windows application that allows you to define a proxy server for each DNSDomain and a windows service that matches the DNSDomain to the database and set the proxy accordingly.51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.6.11: One Click Install from NuGet Changes to Version 2.1.6.111. Altered the GetIsCrawler method in MobileCapabilities.cs to return null if no value for IsCrawler is provided. Previously the method returned false breaking values provided via the BrowserCap file. 2. Enhanced Xml/Reader.cs to reduce the number of byte objects created when decompressing zipped XML files. 3. Altered Location.cs GetUrl method to remove replacement string tags {0} from the new url if no values were found to replace them...NShader - HLSL - GLSL - CG - Shader Syntax Highlighter AddIn for Visual Studio: NShader 1.3 - VS2010 + VS2012: This is a small maintenance release to support new VS2012 as well as VS2010. This release is also fixing the issue The "Comment Selection" include the first line after the selection If the new NShader version doesn't highlight your shader, you can try to: Remove the registry entry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\FontAndColors\Cache Remove all lines using "fx" or "hlsl" in file C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Micr...asp.net membership: v1.0 Membership Management: Abmemunit is a Membership Management Project where developer can use their learning purposes of various issues related to ASP.NET, MVC, ASP.NET membership, Entity Framework, Code First, Ajax, Unit Test, IOC Container, Repository, and Service etc. Though it is a very simple project and all of these topics are used in an easy manner gathering from various big projects, it can easily understand. User End Functional Specification The functionalities of this project are very simple and straight...JSON Toolkit: JSON Toolkit 4.0: Up to 2.5x performance improvement in stringify operations Up to 1.7x performance improvement in parse operations Improved error messages when parsing invalid JSON strings Extended support to .Net 2.0, .Net 3.5, .Net 4.0, Silverlight 4, Windows Phone, Windows 8 metro apps and Xbox JSON namespace changed to ComputerBeacon.Json namespaceXenta Framework - extensible enterprise n-tier application framework: Xenta Framework 1.8.0: System Requirements OS Windows 7 Windows Vista Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 R2 Web Server Internet Information Service 7.0 or above .NET Framework .NET Framework 4.0 WCF Activation feature HTTP Activation Non-HTTP Activation for net.pipe/net.tcp WCF bindings ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC 3.0 Database Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Additional Deployment Configuration Started Windows Process Activation service Start...ASP.NET REST Services Framework: Release 1.3 - Standard version: The REST-services Framework v1.3 has important functional changes allowing to use complex data types as service call parameters. Such can be mapped to form or query string variables or the HTTP Message Body. This is especially useful when REST-style service URLs with POST or PUT HTTP method is used. Beginning from v1.1 the REST-services Framework is compatible with ASP.NET Routing model as well with CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) principle. These two are often important when buildin...NanoMVVM: a lightweight wpf MVVM framework: v0.10 stable beta: v0.10 Minor fixes to ui and code, added error example to async commands, separated project into various releases (mainly into logical wholes), removed expression blend satellite assembliesCrashReporter.NET : Exception reporting library for C# and VB.NET: CrashReporter.NET 1.1: Added screenshot support that takes screenshot of user's desktop on application crash and provides option to include screenshot with crash report. Added Windows version in crash reports. Added email field and exception type field in crash report dialog. Added exception type in crash reports. Added screenshot tab that shows crash screenshot.MFCMAPI: June 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1034 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeMonoGame - Write Once, Play Everywhere: MonoGame 2.5.1: Release Notes The MonoGame team are pleased to announce that MonoGame v2.5.1 has been released. This release contains important bug fixes and minor updates. Recent additions include project templates for iOS and MacOS. The MonoDevelop.MonoGame AddIn also works on Linux. We have removed the dependency on the thirdparty GamePad library to allow MonoGame to be included in the debian/ubuntu repositories. There have been a major bug fix to ensure textures are disposed of correctly as well as some ...????: ????2.0.2: 1、???????????。 2、DJ???????10?，?????????10?。 3、??.NET 4.5(Windows 8)????????????。 4、???????????。 5、??????????????。 6、???Windows 8????。 7、?????2.0.1???????????????。 8、??DJ?????????。Azure Storage Explorer: Azure Storage Explorer 5 Preview 1 (6.17.2012): Azure Storage Explorer verison 5 is in development, and Preview 1 provides an early look at the new user interface and some of the new features. Here's what's new in v5 Preview 1: New UI, similar to the new Windows Azure HTML5 portal Support for configuring and viewing storage account logging Support for configuring and viewing storage account monitoring Uses the Windows Azure 1.7 SDK libraries Bug fixesCodename 'Chrometro': Developer Preview: Welcome to the Codename 'Chrometro' Developer Preview! This is the very first public preview of the app. Please note that this is a highly primitive build and the app is not even half of what it is meant to be. The Developer Preview sports the following: 1) An easy to use application setup. 2) The Assistant which simplifies your task of customization. 3) The partially complete Metro UI. 4) A variety of settings 5) A partially complete web browsing experience To get started, download the Ins...Cosmos (C# Open Source Managed Operating System): Release 92560: Prerequisites Visual Studio 2010 - Any version including Express. Express users must also install Visual Studio 2010 Integrated Shell runtime VMWare - Cosmos can run on real hardware as well as other virtualization environments but our default debug setup is configured for VMWare. VMWare Player (Free). or Workstation VMWare VIX API 1.11AutoUpdaterdotNET : Autoupdate for VB.NET and C# Developer: AutoUpdater.NET 1.1: Release Notes New feature added that allows user to select remind later interval.Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks 2008 OLTP Script: Install AdventureWorks2008 OLTP database from script The AdventureWorks database can be created by running the instawdb.sql DDL script contained in the AdventureWorks 2008 OLTP Script.zip file. The instawdb.sql script depends on two path environment variables: SqlSamplesDatabasePath and SqlSamplesSourceDataPath. The SqlSamplesDatabasePath environment variable is set to the default Microsoft ® SQL Server 2008 path. You will need to change the SqlSamplesSourceDataPath environment variable to th...WipeTouch, a jQuery touch plugin: 1.2.0: Changes since 1.1.0: New: wipeMove event, triggered while moving the mouse/finger. New: added "source" to the result object. Bug fix: sometimes vertical wipe events would not trigger correctly. Bug fix: improved tapToClick handler. General code refactoring. Windows Phone 7 is not supported, yet! Its behaviour is completely broken and would require some special tricks to make it work. Maybe in the future...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0.0.3026 (June 2012): Fixes: round( 0.0 ) local TimeZone name TimeZone search compiling multi-script-assemblies PhpString serialization DocDocument::loadHTMLFile() token_get_all() parse_url()New ProjectsAMPlebrot: Sample code for Microsoft AMP including a auto-zooming Mandlebrot set browser and various random number generator implementations.Aquasoft ISZR web services Proxy: Knihovna pro pripojení k Informacnímu Systému Základních Registru (ISZR).Article Authoring Add-in for Word (NLM JATS): Use Microsoft Word to create, edit, save, and upload journal articles in the NLM Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) DTDBetter Calculator: Scientific calculator with support for user variables and full expression evaluation.Cosmos Image Converter (CIC) GUI: CIC Gui is a program developed for COSMOS (http://cosmos.codeplex.com/) that processes an image and creates code compatible with COSMOS for you.CSNN: ?????? ?????? ????????? ???????????? ???????????? ????????? ????, ??????????? ????????? ????????? ? ??????????? ???????? ?? ????????.Cuddy Chat Server Client: Small Chat Server & Client - basierend auf C# mit SocketsdemoASP: asp.net mvcEspera: Espera is a portable music player, specialized for partys. It is written in C# with WPF as frontend technology.ExamEvaluator: Utility to create excelspreadsheets that can be used to evaluate the results of an exam. (Dutch only for now)FTToolkit for WinRT: FTToolkit for WinRT is the Windows RT Version of FTToolkit. The framework is designed for using in Metro Style Apps on Windows 8HydroServer Lite: HydroServer Lite is a lightweight version of the CUAHSI HydroServer written in PHP. It can be run on any webhosting service that supports PHP and MySQL. ImmunityBusterWP7: We will let you know about this soon...JavaVM for small microcontrollers: uJavaVM is a Java virtual machine for small microcontrollers written in portable C. The project is organized to support multiple microcontroller platforms. Jaw-Breaker: Hello,JIMS: Jangids Inventory Management SystemLee's Simple HTA Template: A SIMPLE HTA that can be used in various scripts and OSD. Very Minimal, intended to be used a starting template.Log4netExtensions: Log4net extensions for none static classMedical information Management System: The Medical Information Management System (MIMS) is a comprehensive solution for the various stakeholders in Medical Industry in the Nigeria.Minimap XNA game component for TemporalWars Indie Game Engine: This Minimap XNA Component is designed to show unit movement, structures placed in the game world, and take direct orders (Windows Platform). MusicCreator: This is a program that make sounds. Just open a sound and add into the program. then press the record button and the sound will be recorded.Osnova CMS: Osnova CMS, content management frameworkPicBin: PicBin is like PasteBin only that it is for pics. The Project uses .NET 4.5, ASP.NET MVC 4 and HTML5.PowerShell scripts to enable and disable tracing for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: These are PowerShell scripts (files). There are 2 scripts in the zip file "CRM2011EnableDisableTrace.zip".PrepareQuery for MVC: ??????????? ??? ASP.NET MVC. Central.Linq.Mvc ?????? ?????????? ??? Central.Linq, ??????? ????????? ??????????? ???????????? ??????? ?? ?????? ?? ??????.Proggy: This will be a code-driven CMS for .NET developers. If I ever get the time to finish it.QuickSL: SL????， ??：??????、??????。 ?UI???????Temporal-Wars XNA Indie Game Engine: Temporal Wars 3D Engine includes a full suite of WYSIWG tools designed for rapid creation of your game world. Created for myself (Ben), now available for FREE.VIPER: VIPER RuntimeWeibo API library: Sina Weibo API library is NOT based on OAuth, but it is much more powerful in operating weibo activities via program. Major usage: 1. Rebot 2. Archive content

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Thoughts on Build 2013

- by D'Arcy Lussier

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/dlussier/archive/2013/06/30/153294.aspxAnd so another Build conference has come to an end. Below are my thoughts/perspectives on various aspects of the event. I’ll do a separate blog post on my thoughts of the Build message for developers. The Good Moscone center was a great venue for Build! Easy to get around, easy to get to, and well maintained, it was a very comfortable conference venue. Yeah, the free swag was nice. Build has built up an expectation that attendees will always get something; it’ll be interesting to see how Microsoft maintains this expectation over the next few Build events. I still maintain that free swag should never be the main reason one attends an event, and for me this was definitely just an added bonus. I’m planning on trying to use the Surface as a dedicated 2nd device at work for meetings, I’ll share my experiences over the next few months. The hackathon event was a great idea, although personally I couldn’t justify spending the money on a conference registration just to spend the entire conference coding. Still, the apps that were created were really great and there was a lot of passion and excitement around the hackathon. I wonder if they couldn’t have had the hackathon on the Monday/Tuesday for those that wanted to participate so they didn’t miss any of the actual conference over Wed/Thurs. San Francisco was a great city to host Build. Getting from hotels to the conference center was very easy (well especially for me, I was only 3 blocks away) and the city itself felt very safe. However, if I never have to fly into SFO again I’ll be alright with that! Delays going into and out of SFO and both apparently were due to the airport itself. The Bad Build is one of those oddities on the conference landscape where people will pay to commit to attending an event without knowing anything about the sessions. We got our list of conference sessions when we registered on Tuesday, not before. And even then, we only got titles and not descriptions (those were eventually made available via the conference’s mobile application). I get it…they’re going to make announcements and they don’t want to give anything away through the session titles. But honestly, there wasn’t anything in the session titles that I would have considered a surprise. Breakfasts were brutal. High-carb pastries, donuts, and muffins with fruit and hard boiled eggs does not a conference breakfast make. I can’t believe that the difference between a continental breakfast per person and a hot breakfast buffet would have been a huge impact to a conference fee that was already around $2000. The vendor area was anemic. I don’t know why Microsoft forces the vendors into cookie-cutter booth areas (this year they were all made of plywood material). WPC, TechEd – booth areas there allow the vendors to be creative with their displays. Not so much for Build. Really odd was the lack of Microsoft’s own representation around Bing. In the day 1 keynote Microsoft made a big deal about Bing as an API. Yet there was nobody in the vendor area set up to provide more information or have discussions with about the Bing API. The Ugly Our name badges were NFC enabled. The purpose of this, beyond the vendors being able to scan your info, wasn’t really made clear. An attendee I talked to showed how you could get a reader app on your phone so you can scan other members cards and collect their contact info – which is a kewl idea; business cards are so 1990’s. But I was *shocked* at the amount of information that was on our name badges! Here’s what’s displayed on our name badge: - Name - Company - Twitter Handle I’m ok with that. But here’s what actually gets read: - Name - Company - Address Used for Registration - Phone Number Used for Registration So sharing that info with another attendee, they get way more of my info than just how to find me on Twitter! Microsoft, you need to fix this for the future. If vendors want to collect information on attendees, they should be able to collect an ID from the badge, then get a report with corresponding records afterwards. My personal information should not be so readily available, and without my knowledge! Final Verdict Maybe its my older age, maybe its where I’m at in life with family, maybe its where I’m at in my career, but when I consider whether a conference experience was valuable I get to the core reason I attend: opportunities to learn, opportunities to network, opportunities to engage with Microsoft. Opportunities to Learn: Sessions I attended were generally OK, with some really stand out ones on Day 2. I would love to see Microsoft adopt the Dojo format for a portion of their sessions. Hands On Labs are dull, lecture style sessions are great for information sharing. But a guided hands-on coding session (Read: Dojo) provides the best of both worlds. Being that all content is publically available online to everyone (Build attendee or not), the value of attending the conference sessions is decreased. The value though is in the discussions that take part in person afterwards, which leads to… Opportunities to Network: I enjoyed getting together with old friends and connecting with Twitter friends in person for the first time. I also had an opportunity to meet total strangers. So from a networking perspective, Build was fantastic! I still think it would have been great to have an area for ad-hoc discussions – where speakers could announce they’d be available for more questions after their sessions, or attendees who wanted to discuss more in depth on a topic with other attendees could arrange space. Some people have no problems being outgoing and making these things happen, but others are not and a structured model is more attractive. Opportunities to Engage with Microsoft: Hit and miss on this one. Outside of the vendor area, unless you cornered or reached out to a speaker, there wasn’t any defined way to connect with blue badges. And as I mentioned above, Microsoft didn’t have full representation in the vendor area (no Bing). All in all, Build was a fun party where I was informed about some new stuff and got some free swag. Was it worth the time away from home and the hit to my PD budget? I’d say Somewhat. Build is a great informational conference, but I wouldn’t call it a learning conference. Considering that TechEd seems to be moving to more of an IT Pro focus, independent developer conferences seem to be the best value for those looking to learn and not just be informed. With the rapid development cycle Microsoft is embracing, we’re already seeing Build happening twice within a 12 month period. If that continues, the value of attending Build in person starts to diminish – especially with so much content available online. If Microsoft wants Build to be a must-attend event in the future, they need to start incorporating aspects of Tech Ed, past PDCs, and other conferences so those that want to leave with more than free swag have something to attract them.

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Developing Mobile Applications: Web, Native, or Hybrid?

- by Michelle Kimihira

Authors: Joe Huang, Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle Mobile Application Development Framework and Carlos Chang, Senior Principal Product Director The proliferation of mobile devices and platforms represents a game-changing technology shift on a number of levels. Companies must decide not only the best strategic use of mobile platforms, but also how to most efficiently implement them. Inevitably, this conversation devolves to the developers, who face the task of developing and supporting mobile applications—not a simple task in light of the number of devices and platforms. Essentially, developers can choose from the following three different application approaches, each with its own set of pros and cons. Native Applications: This refers to apps built for and installed on a specific platform, such as iOS or Android, using a platform-specific software development kit (SDK). For example, apps for Apple’s iPhone and iPad are designed to run specifically on iOS and are written in Xcode/Objective-C. Android has its own variation of Java, Windows uses C#, and so on. Native apps written for one platform cannot be deployed on another. Native apps offer fast performance and access to native-device services but require additional resources to develop and maintain each platform, which can be expensive and time consuming. Mobile Web Applications: Unlike native apps, mobile web apps are not installed on the device; rather, they are accessed via a Web browser. These are server-side applications that render HTML, typically adjusting the design depending on the type of device making the request. There are no program coding constraints for writing server-side apps—they can be written in Java, C, PHP, etc., it doesn’t matter. Instead, the server detects what type of mobile browser is pinging the server and adjusts accordingly. For example, it can deliver fully JavaScript and CSS-enabled content to smartphone browsers, while downgrading gracefully to basic HTML for feature phone browsers. Mobile apps work across platforms, but are limited to what you can do through a browser and require Internet connectivity. For certain types of applications, these constraints may not be an issue. Oracle supports mobile web applications via ADF Faces (for tablets) and ADF Mobile browser (Trinidad) for smartphone and feature phones. Hybrid Applications: As the name implies, hybrid apps combine technologies from native and mobile Web apps to gain the benefits each. For example, these apps are installed on a device, like their pure native app counterparts, while the user interface (UI) is based on HTML5. This UI runs locally within the native container, which usually leverages the device’s browser engine. The advantage of using HTML5 is a consistent, cross-platform UI that works well on most devices. Combining this with the native container, which is installed on-device, provides mobile users with access to local device services, such as camera, GPS, and local device storage. Native apps may offer greater flexibility in integrating with device native services. However, since hybrid applications already provide device integrations that typical enterprise applications need, this is typically less of an issue. The new Oracle ADF Mobile release is an HTML5 and Java hybrid framework that targets mobile app development to iOS and Android from one code base. So, Which is the Best Approach? The short answer is – the best choice depends on the type of application you are developing. For instance, animation-intensive apps such as games would favor native apps, while hybrid applications may be better suited for enterprise mobile apps because they provide multi-platform support. Just for starters, the following issues must be considered when choosing a development path. Application Complexity: How complex is the application? A quick app that accesses a database or Web service for some data to display? You can keep it simple, and a mobile Web app may suffice. However, for a mobile/field worker type of applications that supports mission critical functionality, hybrid or native applications are typically needed. Richness of User Interactivity: What type of user experience is required for the application? Mobile browser-based app that’s optimized for mobile UI may suffice for quick lookup or productivity type of applications. However, hybrid/native application would typically be required to deliver highly interactive user experiences needed for field-worker type of applications. For example, interactive BI charts/graphs, maps, voice/email integration, etc. In the most extreme case like gaming applications, native applications may be necessary to deliver the highly animated and graphically intensive user experience. Performance: What type of performance is required by the application functionality? For instance, for real-time look up of data over the network, mobile app performance depends on network latency and server infrastructure capabilities. If consistent performance is required, data would typically need to be cached, which is supported on hybrid or native applications only. Connectivity and Availability: What sort of connectivity will your application require? Does the app require Web access all the time in order to always retrieve the latest data from the server? Or do the requirements dictate offline support? While native and hybrid apps can be built to operate offline, Web mobile apps require Web connectivity. Multi-platform Requirements: The terms “consumerization of IT” and BYOD (bring your own device) effectively mean that the line between the consumer and the enterprise devices have become blurred. Employees are bringing their personal mobile devices to work and are often expecting that they work in the corporate network and access back-office applications. Even if companies restrict access to the big dogs: (iPad, iPhone, Android phones and tablets, possibly Windows Phone and tablets), trying to support each platform natively will require increasing resources and domain expertise with each new language/platform. And let’s not forget the maintenance costs, involved in upgrading new versions of each platform. Where multi-platform support is needed, Web mobile or hybrid apps probably have the advantage. Going native, and trying to support multiple operating systems may be cost prohibitive with existing resources and developer skills. Device-Services Access: If your app needs to access local device services, such as the camera, contacts app, accelerometer, etc., then your choices are limited to native or hybrid applications. Fragmentation: Apple controls Apple iOS and the only concern is what version iOS is running on any given device. Not so Android, which is open source. There are many, many versions and variants of Android running on different devices, which can be a nightmare for app developers trying to support different devices running different flavors of Android. (Is it an Amazon Kindle Fire? a Samsung Galaxy? A Barnes & Noble Nook?) This is a nightmare scenario for native apps—on the other hand, a mobile Web or hybrid app, when properly designed, can shield you from these complexities because they are based on common frameworks. Resources: How many developers can you dedicate to building and supporting mobile application development? What are their existing skills sets? If you’re considering native application development due to the complexity of the application under development, factor the costs of becoming proficient on a each platform’s OS and programming language. Add another platform, and that’s another language, another SDK. On the other side of the equation, Web mobile or hybrid applications are simpler to make, and readily support more platforms, but there may be performance trade-offs. Conclusion This only scratches the surface. However, I hope to have suggested some food for thought in choosing your mobile development strategy. Do your due diligence, search the Web, read up on mobile, talk to peers, attend events. The development team at Oracle is working hard on mobile technologies to help customers extend enterprise applications to mobile faster and effectively. To learn more on what Oracle has to offer, check out the Oracle ADF Mobile (hybrid) and ADF Faces/ADF Mobile browser (Web Mobile) solutions from Oracle. Additional Information Blog: ADF Blog Product Information on OTN: ADF Mobile Product Information on Oracle.com: Oracle Fusion Middleware Follow us on Twitter and Facebook Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, August 21, 2012

CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, August 21, 2012Popular ReleasesResX Resource Manager: 1.0.0.1 Visual Studio Extension: Fix: truncated version in VSIX manifest leads to permanent update notifications.MFCMAPI: August 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1035 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeDocument.Editor: 2013.2: Whats new for Document.Editor 2013.2: New save as Html document Improved Traslate support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsSharePoint Dynamic Forms: Version 1.0: Version 1.0 of SharePoint Dynamic Forms Includes 1. List Based Rendering 2. Template Based Rendering 2.1 Supports extensive field validation types including String, Date, Comparison, Content Length, regex etc. 2.2 Support for cross field comparison validation. 2.3 Data entry option for a user who doesn’t have write permission to a list. 2.4 Option to extend the web part by overriding form submission event. 2.5 Option to cancel the form submission and provide custom notification message. 2.6 ...Pulse: Pulse Beta 5: Whats new in this release? Well to start with we now have Wallbase.cc Authentication! so you can access favorites or NSFW. This version requires .NET 4.0, you probably already have it, but if you don't it's a free and easy download from Microsoft. Pulse can bet set to start on Windows startup now too. The Wallpaper setter has settings now, so you can change the background color of the desktop and the Picture Position (Tile/Center/Fill/etc...) I've switched to Windows Forms instead of WPF...HydroDesktop - CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System Desktop Application: 1.5.5 Experimental Release: This is HydroDesktop 1.5.5 Experimental Release We are targeting for a 1.5 Stable Release in August 2012. This experimental version has been published for testing. New Features in 1.5 Time Series Data Import Improved performance of table, graph and edit views Support for online sample project packages (sharing data and analyses) More detailed display of time series metadata Improved extension manager (uninstall extensions, choose extension source) Improved attribute table editor (supports fi...Metro Paint: Metro Paint: Download it now , don't forget to give feedback to me at maitreyavyas@live.com or at my facebook page fb.com/maitreyavyas , Hope you enjoy it.MiniTwitter: 1.80: MiniTwitter 1.80 ???? ?? .NET Framework 4.5 ?????? ?? .NET Framework 4.5 ????????????? "&" ??????????????????? ???????????????????????? 2 ??????????? ReTweet ?????????????????、In reply to ?????????????? URL ???????????? ??????????????????????????????Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.6 Beta: Device images are now pulled from DroidExplorer Cloud Service refined some issues with the usage statistics Added a method to get the first available value from a list of property names DroidExplorer.Configuration no longer depends on DroidExplorer.Core.UI (it is actually the other way now) fix to the bootstraper to only try to delete the SDK if it is a "local" sdk, not an existing. no longer support the "local" sdk, you must now select an existing SDK checks for sdk if it was ins...Path Copy Copy: 11.0.1: Bugfix release that corrects the following issue: 11365 If you are using Path Copy Copy in a network environment and use the UNC path commands, it is recommended that you upgrade to this version.ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.9: +2012-08-18 v3.1.9 -??other/addtab.aspx???JS???BoundField??Tooltip???（Dennis_Liu）。 +??Window?GetShowReference???????????????（︶????、????、???、??~）。 -?????JavaScript?????，??????HTML????????。 -??HtmlNodeBuilder????????????????JavaScript??。 -??????WindowField、LinkButton、HyperLink????????????????????????????。 -???????????grid/griddynamiccolumns2.aspx（?????）。 -?????Type??Reset?????，??????????????????（e??）。 -?????????????????????。 -?????????int,short,double??????????（???）。 +?Window????Ge...AcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v4.0.1: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDown?????"????????? ...Fluent Validation for .NET: 3.4: Changes since 3.3: Make ValidationResut.IsValid virtual Add private no-arg ctor to ValidationFailure to help with serialization Add Turkish error messages Work-around for reflection bug in .NET 4.5 that caused VerificationExceptions Assemblies are now unsigned to ease with versioning/upgrades (especially where other frameworks depend on FV) (Note if you need signed assemblies then you can use the following NuGet packages: FluentValidation-signed, FluentValidation.MVC3-signed, FluentV...DotNetNuke® Feedback: 06.02.01: Official Release - 17th August 2012 Please look at the Release Notes file included in the module packages or available on this page as a separate download for a listing of the bug fixes and enhancements found in this version. NOTE: Feedback v 06.02.00 REQUIRES a minimum DotNetNuke framework version of 06.02.00 as well as ASP.Net 3.5 SP1 and MS SQL Server 2005 or 2008 (Express or standard versions). This release brings some enhancements to the module as well as fixing all known bugs. Bug Fi...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.3 Unnamed Fixed: If you are using deltas, download 2.5.2 first, then overwrite with the delta packages. Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we try to package for those OSes. Try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your ...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.6.1: Bug Fix release Bug Fixes Better support for transparent images IsFrozen respected if not bound to corrected deadlock stateWPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.7: Version: 2.5.0.7 (Milestone 7): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete WAF: Add CollectionHelper.GetNextElementOrDefault method. InfoMan: Support creating a new email and saving it in the Send b...myCollections: Version 2.2.3.0: New in this version : Added setup package. Added Amazon Spain for Apps, Books, Games, Movie, Music, Nds and Tvshow. Added TVDB Spain for Tvshow. Added TMDB Spain for Movies. Added Auto rename files from title. Added more filters when adding files (vob,mpls,ifo...) Improve Books author and Music Artist Credits. Rewrite find duplicates for better performance. You can now add Custom link to items. You can now add type directly from the type list using right mouse button. Bug ...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 Preview 5 (Refresh): Support for Windows 8 and Visual Studio RTM Support for Smooth Streaming SDK beta 2 Support for live playback New bitrate meter and SD/HD indicators Auto smooth streaming track restriction for snapped mode to conserve bandwidth New "Go Live" button and SeekToLive API Support for offset start times Support for Live position unique from end time Support for multiple audio streams (smooth and progressive content) Improved intellisense in JS version NEW TO PREVIEW 5 REFRESH:Req...TFS Workbench: TFS Workbench v2.2.0.10: Compiled installers for TFS Workbench 2.2.0.10 Bug Fix Fixed bug that stopped the change workspace action from working.New ProjectsAdaptive modeling interface: Ami will be a framework to simplify scientific model development. Keywords: Modeling, C#AlphaDogDemo: A simple XNA gameDnf: Dnf??eProjectSem3: beginFluentGUI: A Silverlight library that enables composition of a type safe Graphical User Interface.Frontrader-IB: Financial test applicationHART Analyzer: HART Analyzer is a tool to monitor the HART protocol between field devices and your PC. It used Hart Communication Protocol Lite for the communication.Hybrid.Net - Light-weight GPU Computing for .NET: Hybrid.Net enables .NET developers to harness the power of GPUs for data- and compute-intense applications using the simple well-known construct: Parallel.ForLoggerz- A .Net Error Logging framework: A new and hopefully exciting error logging framework that will integrate nicely into any windows/web application. MakersEngine: World of Warcraft Emulator Compiling SoftwareMetro Paint: This is Metro Paint app which is a modern ui app for Windows 8 . To test it in your system you will need Visual Studio Express for Windows 8. Hope you love it.mojomo, a modular design framework for mojoPortal CMS: Mojomo is a modular, front end design framework for mojoPortal CMS. My CSharp reminders: Several simple code examples in C #, used as reminders for my future development in C #.MYCoding Codes: anyone can tell me about this?MyExample: testMyGit: my git source libraryNWebsec: NWebsec is a security library for ASP.NET applications. It's built on the philosophy that security should be simple and maintainable.Private cloud DMS: Cloud document management system with workflow support. Free essential version is destined for small companies or any user groups.proEx: just a testQuantoSharp: A Financial Quant library implemented in C# completely to showcase the power of mathematics and its application, aimed for educational purposes only.SharePoint SlideShow: Sharepoint SlideShow customizable webpart in sharepoint 2010. Slideshow from SP 2010 picture library using jquery. Please leave comments about the project.Tool army building for battle: Helper application to build army list for Warhammer BattleWinRT XAML Calendar: WinRT XAML Calendar control ported from the Silverlight Toolkit's Calendar control for Silverlight 4.????: ????? ??? ???? ??? ?????? ?????. ???? so.cl? ???? API? ???? ????? ????! ? ????? ???? ???? ????. ???? ????!..

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, August 18, 2012

CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, August 18, 2012Popular ReleasesExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.9: +2012-08-18 v3.1.9 -??other/addtab.aspx???JS???BoundField??Tooltip???（Dennis_Liu）。 +??Window?GetShowReference???????????????（︶????、????、???、??~）。 -?????JavaScript?????，??????HTML????????。 -??HtmlNodeBuilder????????????????JavaScript??。 -??????WindowField、LinkButton、HyperLink????????????????????????????。 -???????????grid/griddynamiccolumns2.aspx（?????）。 -?????Type??Reset?????，??????????????????（e??）。 -?????????????????????。 -?????????int,short,double??????????（???）。 +?Window????Ge...XDA ROM HUB: Release v0.9.3: ChangelogAdded a new UI Removed unnecessary features Fixed a lot of bugs Adding new firmwares (Please help me) Added a new app for Android Ability to backup apps to the SD Card Ability to create Nandroid backups without a PC Ability to backup apps and restore from CWM Improved download manager Now supporting pause and resume Converting Bytes to MegaBytes Improved dialogs Removed support for 7z files Changed installer Known BugsDialog message will always appear when clic...Task Card Creator 2010: TaskCardCreator2010 4.0.2.0: What's New: UI/UX improved using a contextual ribbon tab for reports Finishing the "new 4.0 UI" Report template help improved New project branch to support TFS 2012: http://taskcardcreator2012.codeplex.com User interface made more modern (4.0.1.0) Smarter algorithm used for report generation (4.0.1.0) Quality setting added (4.0.1.0) Terms harmonized (4.0.1.0) Miscellaneous optimizations (4.0.1.0) Fixed critical issue introduced in 4.0.0.0 (4.0.1.0)AcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v4.0.1: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDown?????"????????? ...Fluent Validation for .NET: 3.4: Changes since 3.3: Make ValidationResut.IsValid virtual Add private no-arg ctor to ValidationFailure to help with serialization Add Turkish error messages Work-around for reflection bug in .NET 4.5 that caused VerificationExceptions Assemblies are now unsigned to ease with versioning/upgrades (especially where other frameworks depend on FV) (Note if you need signed assemblies then you can use the following NuGet packages: FluentValidation-signed, FluentValidation.MVC3-signed, FluentV...fastJSON: v2.0.2: - bug fix $types and arraysAssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.3 Unnamed Fixed: If you are using deltas, download 2.5.2 first, then overwrite with the delta packages. Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we try to package for those OSes. Try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your ...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.6.1: Bug Fix release Bug Fixes Better support for transparent images IsFrozen respected if not bound to corrected deadlock stateWPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.7: Version: 2.5.0.7 (Milestone 7): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete WAF: Add CollectionHelper.GetNextElementOrDefault method. InfoMan: Support creating a new email and saving it in the Send b...Diablo III Drop Statistics Service: D3DSS 1.0.1: ??????IP??。 ??????????，??????????。myCollections: Version 2.2.3.0: New in this version : Added setup package. Added Amazon Spain for Apps, Books, Games, Movie, Music, Nds and Tvshow. Added TVDB Spain for Tvshow. Added TMDB Spain for Movies. Added Auto rename files from title. Added more filters when adding files (vob,mpls,ifo...) Improve Books author and Music Artist Credits. Rewrite find duplicates for better performance. You can now add Custom link to items. You can now add type directly from the type list using right mouse button. Bug ...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 Preview 5 (Refresh): Support for Windows 8 and Visual Studio RTM Support for Smooth Streaming SDK beta 2 Support for live playback New bitrate meter and SD/HD indicators Auto smooth streaming track restriction for snapped mode to conserve bandwidth New "Go Live" button and SeekToLive API Support for offset start times Support for Live position unique from end time Support for multiple audio streams (smooth and progressive content) Improved intellisense in JS version NEW TO PREVIEW 5 REFRESH:Req...TFS Workbench: TFS Workbench v2.2.0.10: Compiled installers for TFS Workbench 2.2.0.10 Bug Fix Fixed bug that stopped the change workspace action from working.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.60: Allow for CSS3 grid-column and grid-row repeat syntax. Provide option for -analyze scope-report output to be in XML for easier programmatic processing; also allow for report to be saved to a separate output file.ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.67.2: v0.67.2 Fix when copying conditional formats with relative formulas v0.67.1 Misc fixes to the conditional formats v0.67.0 Conditional formats now accept formulas. Major performance improvement when opening files with merged ranges. Misc fixes.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.8.1: Whats newBug fixes: Fixed: When upgrading to 4.8.0, the database upgrade didn't run Update: unfortunately, upgrading with SQLCE is problematic, there's a workaround here: http://bit.ly/TEmMJN The changes to the <imaging> section in umbracoSettings.config caused errors when you didn't apply them during the upgrade. Defaults will now be used if any keys are missing Scheduled unpublishes now only unpublishes nodes set to published rather than newest Work item: 30937 - Fixed problem with Fi...patterns & practices - Unity: Unity 3.0 for .NET 4.5 and WinRT - Preview: The Unity 3.0.1208.0 Preview enables Unity to work on .NET 4.5 with both the WinRT and desktop profiles. This is an updated version of the port after the .NET Framework 4.5 and Windows 8 have RTM'ed. Please see the Release Notes Providing feedback Post your feedback on the Unity forum Submit and vote on new features for Unity on our Uservoice site.Self-Tracking Entity Generator for WPF and Silverlight: Self-Tracking Entity Generator v 2.0.0 for VS11: Self-Tracking Entity Generator for WPF and Silverlight v 2.0.0 for Entity Framework 5.0 and Visual Studio 2012NPOI: NPOI 2.0: New features a. Implement OpenXml4Net (same as System.Packaging from Microsoft). It supports both .NET 2.0 and .NET 4.0 b. Excel 2007 read/write library (NPOI.XSSF) c. Word 2007 read/write library(NPOI.XWPF) d. NPOI.SS namespace becomes the interface shared between XSSF and HSSF e. Load xlsx template and save as new xlsx file (partially supported) f. Diagonal line in cell both in xls and xlsx g. Support isRightToLeft and setRightToLeft on the common spreadsheet Sheet interface, as per existin...BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 1.1: This release includes bug fixes from the 1.0 release for email notifications, RSS feeds, and several other issues. Please see the change log for a full list of changes. http://support.bugnetproject.com/Projects/ReleaseNotes.aspx?pid=1&m=76 Upgrade Notes The following changes to the web.config in the profile section have occurred: Removed <add name="NotificationTypes" type="String" defaultValue="Email" customProviderData="NotificationTypes;nvarchar;255" />Added <add name="ReceiveEmailNotifi...New Projectscocos2d simpledemo: simple demo cocos2dDiscuzViet: Discuz Vi?t Nam - discuz.vnEaseSettings: EaseSettings is a library designed to allow easy usage of settings with a highly structured in treenode-form.Face Detection & Recognition: Face Detection & Recognition project. It provide an interface for face detection and recognition FIM 2010 GoogleApps MA: Forefront Identity Manager 2010 Management Agent for Google Apps. You can synchronize users between Google Apps and Forefront Identity Manager 2010.Get System Info: Get System Information is an open source project licensed under the GNU Public License v2. This project allows you to view information about your system.go launcher: Go launchergrOOvy language (the spec): A formal specification of what the Groovy Language does.JavaScript Prototype Extension: It is a standalone JavaScript extension based on JavaScript prototype directly, to make developers use JS like C# or Java.Jump N Roll Windows Phone 7: Jump n Roll is a remake of the classic amiga game for windows phone 7, using vb.net and XNA. Version 1 is in a working but unfinished state.KingOfHorses: This is a Capstone Project from FPT University.Lan House Manager: Trabalho de conclusão de curso da faculdade de Ciências da Computação 2009 UNISANTA. -.NET -C# -WPF -ASP.NET MVC -Entity Framework -SQL ServerMy source code: This project contains my source code.MySimpleProjectForKudu: Cool stuffNWP INTRANET: NWP Intranet, a complete and useful intranet application for a wide cainds of companies.P.O.W. - PowerShell on the Web - DevOps Automation Portal: The PowerShell DevOps Portal provides a SharePoint like experience but centralized around the execution of PowerShell scripts to automate DevOps oriented tasks.Piwik for Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework: Piwik for Micorsoft Silverlight Analytics adds Piwik support to the MSAFPlaygroundSite: pluralsight tutSkewboid Approach to Pareto Relaxation and Filtering: For multi-objective decision-making and optimization - an adjustment parameter, alpha, is added to the conventional determination of Pareto optimality.Software Factories: Software Factory Generatorsspaceship cocos2dx demo: testing onlySpring_DWR: Present day I had a requirement where using Spring and Direct web remoting. testgit08172012git01: yuitesttom08172012tfs01: ytryytrtouchdragdemo: touch drag demoVirtual Pilot Client: An open-source pilot client for the VATSIM network. See discussions at http://forums.vatsim.net/viewforum.php?f=124 Visual Studio IDE Service - DTE: Visual Studio ServicesWCF AOP Sample: This project contains a simple implementation of AOP for WCF. It illustrates how to do simple logging and param masking using basic WCF extensions and Unity.WeatherApp: Aplicación para ver el clima????: ??????????，????

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, February 21, 2011

CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, February 21, 2011Popular ReleasesA2Command: 2011-02-21 - Version 1.0: IntroductionThis is the full release version of A2Command 1.0, dated February 21, 2011. These notes supersede any prior version's notes. All prior releases may be found on the project's website at http://a2command.codeplex.com/releases/ where you can read the release notes for older versions as well as download them. This version of A2Command is intended to replace any previous version you may have downloaded in the past. There were several bug fixes made after Release Candidate 2 and all...Chiave File Encryption: Chiave 0.9: Application for file encryption and decryption using 512 Bit rijndael encyrption algorithm with simple to use UI. Its written in C# and compiled in .Net version 3.5. It incorporates features of Windows 7 like Jumplists, Taskbar progress and Aero Glass. Feedbacks are Welcome!....Rawr: Rawr 4.0.20 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Trac...Azure Storage Samples: Version 1.0 (February 2011): These downloads contain source code. Each is a complete sample that fully exercises Windows Azure Storage across blobs, queues, and tables. The difference between the downloads is implementation approach. Storage DotNet CS.zip is a .NET StorageClient library implementation in the C# language. This library come with the Windows Azure SDK. Contains helper classes for accessing blobs, queues, and tables. Storage REST CS.zip is a REST implementation in the C# language. The code to implement R...MiniTwitter: 1.66: MiniTwitter 1.66 ???? ?? ?????????? 2 ??????????????????? User Streams ?????????View Layout Replicator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: View Layout Replicator (1.0.119.18): Initial releaseWindows Phone 7 Isolated Storage Explorer: WP7 Isolated Storage Explorer v1.0 Beta: Current release features:WPF desktop explorer client Visual Studio integrated tool window explorer client (Visual Studio 2010 Professional and above) Supported operations: Refresh (isolated storage information), Add Folder, Add Existing Item, Download File, Delete Folder, Delete File Explorer supports operations running on multiple remote applications at the same time Explorer detects application disconnect (1-2 second delay) Explorer confirms operation completed status Explorer d...Advanced Explorer for Wp7: Advanced Explorer for Wp7 Version 1.4 Test8: Added option to run under Lockscreen. Fixed a bug when you open a pdf/mobi file without starting adobe reader/amazon kindle first boost loading time for folders added \Windows directory (all devices) you can now interact with the filesystem while it is loading!Game Files Open - Map Editor: Game Files Open - Map Editor Beta 2 v1.0.0.0: The 2° beta release of the Map Editor, we have fixed a big bug of the files regen.Document.Editor: 2011.6: Whats new for Document.Editor 2011.6: New Left to Right and Left to Right support New Indent more/less support Improved Home tab Improved Tooltips/shortcut keys Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsCatel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.2: Catel history ============= (+) Added (*) Changed (-) Removed (x) Error / bug (fix) For more information about issues or new feature requests, please visit: http://catel.codeplex.com =========== Version 1.2 =========== Release date: ============= 2011/02/17 Added/fixed: ============ (+) DataObjectBase now supports Isolated Storage out of the box: Person.Save(myStream) stores a whole object graph in Silverlight (+) DataObjectBase can now be converted to Json via Person.ToJson(); (+)...??????????: All-In-One Code Framework ??? 2011-02-18: ?????All-In-One Code Framework?2011??????????！！http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=128165 ?????，?????AzureBingMaps??????，??Azure，WCF, Silverlight, Window Phone????????，????????????????????????。 ???： Windows Azure SQL Azure Windows Azure AppFabric Windows Live Messenger Connect Bing Maps ?????： ??????HTML??? ??Windows PC?Mac?Silverlight??? ??Windows Phone?Silverlight??? ?????：http://blog.csdn.net/sjb5201/archive/2011...Image.Viewer: 2011: First version of 2011Silverlight Toolkit: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit - Feb 2011: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit OverviewSilverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit offers developers additional controls for Windows Phone application development, designed to match the rich user experience of the Windows Phone 7. Suggestions? Features? Questions? Ask questions in the Create.msdn.com forum. Add bugs or feature requests to the Issue Tracker. Help us shape the Silverlight Toolkit with your feedback! Please clearly indicate that the work items and issues are for the phone t...VsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 29 Beta: Note: This release does not work with custom VsTortoise toolbars. These get removed every time when you shutdown Visual Studio. (#7940) Build 29 (beta)New: Added VsTortoise Solution Explorer integration for Web Project Folder, Web Folder and Web Item. Fix: TortoiseProc was called with invalid parameters, when using TSVN 1.4.x or older #7338 (thanks psifive) Fix: Add-in does not work, when "TortoiseSVN/bin" is not added to PATH environment variable #7357 Fix: Missing error message when ...Sense/Net CMS - Enterprise Content Management: SenseNet 6.0.3 Community Edition: Sense/Net 6.0.3 Community Edition We are happy to introduce you the latest version of Sense/Net with integrated ECM Workflow capabilities! In the past weeks we have been working hard to migrate the product to .Net 4 and include a workflow framework in Sense/Net built upon Windows Workflow Foundation 4. This brand new feature enables developers to define and develop workflows, and supports users when building and setting up complicated business processes involving content creation and response...thinktecture WSCF.blue: WSCF.blue V1 Update (1.0.11): Features Added a new option that allows properties on data contract types to be marked as virtual. Bug Fixes Fixed a bug caused by certain project properties not being available on Web Service Software Factory projects. Fixed a bug that could result in the WrapperName value of the MessageContractAttribute being incorrect when the Adjust Casing option is used. The menu item code now caters for CommandBar instances that are not available. For example the Web Item CommandBar does not exist ...AllNewsManager.NET: AllNewsManager.NET 1.3: AllNewsManager.NET 1.3. This new version provide several new features, improvements and bug fixes. Some new features: Online Users. Avatars. Copy function (to create a new article from another one). SEO improvements (friendly urls). New admin buttons. And more...Facebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 0.8: Version 0.8 (15 Feb 2011)moved to Beta stage publish photo feature "email" field of User object added new Graph Api object: Group, Event new Graph Api connection: likes, groups, eventsDJME - The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC: DJME2 -The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC beta2: The source code and runtime library for DJME2. For more product info you can goto http://www.dotnetage.com/djme.html What is new ?The Grid extension added The ModelBinder added which helping you create Bindable data Action. The DnaFor() control factory added that enabled Model bindable extensions. Enhance the ListBox , ComboBox data binding.New ProjectsAuto-mobile Forum: Automobileforum is a website regarding cars where users can share their ideas about cars and whatever information they want about a car they can get that from this website. The language used for development of this website is ASP.NET Azure Storage Samples: Azure Storage Samples are Windows Azure Storage code samples. They show how to perform every Windows Azure Storage operation for blobs, queues, and tables. There are 2 identical implementations, one using REST and the other using the .NET Storage Client Library (both in C#).b1234: b1234 is b1234betrayal: bahothBungee Jumper: This is a community website for a sport known as Bungee Jumping which is one of the most dangerous adventure sport. Chiave File Encryption: Application for file encryption and decryption using 512 Bit Rijndael encryption algorithm with simple UI to use. Its written in C# and compiled in .Net version 3.5, it incorporates features of Windows 7 like Jumplists, Taskbar progress and Aero Glass.DecEncIT: DecEncIT rend l’expérience de l’utilisateur commun avec la cryptographie (cryptage) plus aisée. Pas de soucies pour les réglages et les termes techniques, vagues et difficiles à comprendre ; inclus également une option pour automatiser toutes les tâches recommandées. VB.Net/3.5ELearningTutorial: A list of tutorialsExtjs Practice - Open our extj journey: ????extjs 1.demo ?? 2.partice ?? 3.work ??Functional: This class library for .NET 3.5 and 4.0 provides extension methods for delegates, to help with functional style programming.HauntedNetworking: HauntedNetworking is a site where people can share their paranormal experiences and related photographs. They can also share pictures of haunted and scary places across the world.KharaSoft Nexus: Nexus is the last inbox you'll ever need.Kojax: kojax projectLEAD - Learn Execute And Develop: It’s a portal to share your knowledge, learn from blogs, wikis, post your questions in query board, learn new things under video training, Execute and develop these, helping gaining knowledge.Luac For 5.1 ????: luac??????? Lunar Lander: Simple WPF Lunar Lander simulator, with reactive intelligent agent autopilot.MasterSchool: Tworzenie swiadectwmovies blogspot: The Movies blog- spot is an interactive site for the information related to movies, actors, personnel and fictional characters features. MvcTemplates: MvcTemplates is a project devoted to creating a complete suite of Razor Editor and Display templates that utilize attributes, built in models, and jQuery. It is developed in C# and packages the templates into an easy to use dll.MySearcher: Quickly and easily search the major search engines with MySearcher. No clicking around, no switching windows; No matter how many windows you have open, or what you're doing, Searching the major search engines is as simple as moving your mouse to the side of the screen!Photography in Kerala: Photography in Kerala's a website which makes easier for people who are into naturistic Photography to share their photos and other Info of Kerala(also called God's own country).You'll no longer have to search about Kerala,Or share your own info/pics here.Developed in ASP.Net.Pixels(Storage Engine): Pixels(Storage Engine)PortsManager: C# Project to Simplify working with Ports Currnetly it's working with COMs in Receive only and soon it'll be updated to work in send and expand the library to handle send informations even in network.Public Web Browser: Public Web Browser is a webbrowser client with alot of featuresRealStatus - MS Communicator 2007 & A Traffic Light Indicator Hardware: A demonstration of a traffic light indicator hardware corresponding to status events of MS Communicator in real-time. A demo video can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwgfSVeXVksSABnzbdNet: A SABnzbd monitor and administrator. Built in C# WPF.Sendill: Kerfi fyrir sendibílastöðvarT4 Metadata and Data Annotations Template: This T4 template handles generating metadata classes from an Entity Framework 4 model and decorates primitive and navigation properties with data annotation attributes such as [Required] and [StringLength]. The [DataType] attribute is also applied when appropriate.urlshorten service: urlshorten service need storoom @ http://storoom.codeplex.com/ developed in vb.netuVersionClientCache: uVersionClientCache is a custom macro to always automatically version (URL querstring parameter) your files based on a MD5 hash of the file contents or file last modified date to prevent issues with client browsers caching an old file after you have changed it.Video Game Network Library: A lightweight network library written in C++ for video games.View Layout Replicator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: View Layout Replicator make it easier for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 customizers to copying the layout of a view and paste it to the layout of other views in the same entityVLC MakeIT: This is virtual learning center yogaasana4you: The website is on Yoga Asana for the community who want to feel the amazing experience of Yoga asana - Yoga Exercises and Postures.

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SQL Sentry First Impressions

- by AjarnMark

After struggling to defend my SQL Servers from a political attack recently, I realized that I needed better tools to back me up, and SQL Sentry is the leading candidate. A couple of weeks ago, seemingly from out of nowhere, complaints from the business users started coming in that one of the core internal applications was running dramatically slower than normal, and fingers were being pointed at the SQL Server. Unfortunately, we don’t have a production DBA whose entire job is to monitor and maintain our SQL Servers. The responsibility falls to me to do the best I can, investing only a small portion of my time, because there are so many other responsibilities to take care of, and our industry is still deep in recession. I inherited these SQL Servers and have made significant improvements in process and procedure, but I had not yet made the time to take real baseline measurements or keep a really close eye on the performance. Like many DBAs, I wrote several of my own tools and used the “built-in tools” like Profiler, PerfMon, and sp_who2 (did I mention most of our instances are SQL Server 2000?). These have all served me well for in-the-moment troubleshooting and maintenance, but they really fell down on the job when I was called upon to “prove” that SQL Server performance was acceptable and more importantly had not degraded recently (i.e. historical comparisons). I really didn’t have anything from a historical comparison perspective, but I was able to show that current performance was acceptable, and deflect attention back onto other components (which in fact turned out to be the real culprit). That experience dramatically illustrated the need for better monitoring tools. Coincidentally, I had been talking recently to my boss about the mini nightmare of monitoring several critical and interdependent overnight jobs that operate on separate instances of SQL Server. Among other tools, I had been using Idera’s SQL Job Manager which is a free tool and did a nice job of showing me job schedules and histories in a nice calendar view. This worked fairly well, and for the money (did I mention it was free?) it couldn’t be beat. But it is based on the stored job history in MSDB, and there were other performance problems that we ran into when we started changing the settings for how much job history to retain, in order to be able to look back a month or more in the calendar view. Another coincidence (if you believe in such things) was that when we had some of those performance challenges, I posted a couple of questions to the #sqlhelp hashtag on Twitter and Greg Gonzalez (@SQLSensei) suggested I check out SQL Sentry’s Event Manager. At the time, I just thought he worked there, but later found out that he founded the company. When I took a quick look at the features & benefits, the one that really jumped out at me is Chaining and Queueing which sounded like it would really help with our “interdependent jobs on different servers” issue. I know that is a lot of background story and coincidences, but hopefully you have stuck with me so far, and now we have arrived at the point where last week I downloaded and installed the 30-day trial of the SQL Sentry Power Suite, which is Event Manager plus Performance Advisor. And I must say that I really like what I see so far. Here are a few highlights: Great Support. I had two issues getting the trial setup and monitoring a handful of our servers. One of which was entirely my fault (missed a security setting in SQL 2008) and the other was mostly my fault (late change to some config settings that were apparently cached and did not get refreshed properly). In both cases, the support staff at SQL Sentry were very responsive and rather quickly figured out what the cause and fix was for each of them. This left me with a great impression of the company. Kudos to them! Chaining and Queueing. While I have not yet activated this feature, I am very excited about the possibilities. We have jobs on three different instances of SQL Server that have to be run in a certain order, and each has to finish before the next can successfully begin, and I believe this feature will ensure just that. It has been a real pain in the backside when one of those jobs runs just a little too long and does not finish before the job on another instance starts, thus triggering a chain reaction of either outright job failures, or worse, successful completion of completely invalid processing. Calendar View. I really, really like the Event Manager calendar view where I can see all jobs and events across all instances and identify potential resource contention as well as windows of opportunity for maintenance activity. Very well done, and based on Event Manager’s own database of accumulated historical information rather than querying the source instances every time. Performance Advisor Dashboard History View. This view let’s me quickly select a date and time range and it displays graphs of key SQL Server and Windows metrics. This is exactly the thing I needed to answer the “has performance changed recently” question at the beginning of this post. Reporting Services Subscription Jobs with Report Name. This was a big and VERY pleasant surprise. If you have ever looked at the list of SQL Server jobs that SQL Server Reporting Services creates when you make a Subscription, you will notice that they all have some sort of GUID as the name of the job. This is really ugly, and really annoying because when you are just looking at the SQL Agent and Job Activity Monitor, if you see that Job X failed, you really do not have any indication in the name or the properties of the Job itself, as to what Report that was for. But with SQL Sentry Event Manager you do. The Jobs list in the Navigator pane in SQL Sentry, amazingly, displays the name of the Report that the Subscription Job is for. And when you open it to see more details, it shows you the full Reporting Services path to that Report, so you can immediately track it down in the Report Manager in case you want to identify/notify the owner or edit the Subscription information. I did not expect this at all, but I sure do like it. HOORAY! That is just my first impressions from using the tools for a few days. And I haven’t even gotten into how it showed me where I was completely mistaken about one aspect of my SQL Server disk configurations. I’ll share that lesson in another blog entry. But I have to say it again, the combination of Event Manager and Performance Advisor working together have really made me a fan.

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5 Best Practices - Laying the Foundation for WebCenter Projects

- by Kellsey Ruppel

Today’s guest post comes from Oracle WebCenter expert John Brunswick. John specializes in enterprise portal and content management solutions and actively contributes to the enterprise software business community and has authored a series of articles about optimal business involvement in portal, business process management and SOA development, examining ways of helping organizations move away from monolithic application development. We’re happy to have John join us today! Maximizing success with Oracle WebCenter portal requires a strategic understanding of Oracle WebCenter capabilities. The following best practices enable the creation of portal solutions with minimal resource overhead, while offering the greatest flexibility for progressive elaboration. They are inherently project agnostic, enabling a strong foundation for future growth and an expedient return on your investment in the platform. If you are able to embrace even only a few of these practices, you will materially improve your deployment capability with WebCenter. 1. Segment Duties Around 3Cs - Content, Collaboration and Contextual Data "Agility" is one of the most common business benefits touted by modern web platforms. It sounds good - who doesn't want to be Agile, right? How exactly IT organizations go about supplying agility to their business counterparts often lacks definition - hamstrung by ambiguity. Ultimately, businesses want to benefit from reduced development time to deliver a solution to a particular constituent, which is augmented by as much self-service as possible to develop and manage the solution directly. All done in the absence of direct IT involvement. With Oracle WebCenter's depth in the areas of content management, pallet of native collaborative services, enterprise mashup capability and delegated administration, it is very possible to execute on this business vision at a technical level. To realize the benefits of the platform depth we can think of Oracle WebCenter's segmentation of duties along the lines of the 3 Cs - Content, Collaboration and Contextual Data. All three of which can have their foundations developed by IT, then provisioned to the business on a per role basis. Content – Oracle WebCenter benefits from an extremely mature content repository. Work flow, audit, notification, office integration and conversion capabilities for documents (HTML & PDF) make this a haven for business users to take control of content within external and internal portals, custom applications and web sites. When deploying WebCenter portal take time to think of areas in which IT can provide the "harness" for content to reside, then allow the business to manage any content items within the site, using the content foundation to ensure compliance with business rules and process. This frees IT to work on more mission critical challenges and allows the business to respond in short order to emerging market needs. Collaboration – Native collaborative services and WebCenter spaces are a perfect match for business users who are looking to enable document sharing, discussions and social networking. The ability to deploy the services is granular and on the basis of roles scoped to given areas of the system - much like the first C “content”. This enables business analysts to design the roles required and IT to provision with peace of mind that users leveraging the collaborative services are only able to do so in explicitly designated areas of a site. Bottom line - business will not need to wait for IT, but cannot go outside of the scope that has been defined based on their roles. Contextual Data – Collaborative capabilities are most powerful when included within the context of business data. The ability to supply business users with decision shaping data that they can include in various parts of a portal or portals, just as they would with content items, is one of the most powerful aspects of Oracle WebCenter. Imagine a discussion about new store selection for a retail chain that re-purposes existing information from business intelligence services about various potential locations and or custom backend systems - presenting it directly in the context of the discussion. If there are some data sources that are preexisting in your enterprise take a look at how they can be made into discrete offerings within the portal, then scoped to given business user roles for inclusion within collaborative activities. 2. Think Generically, Execute Specifically Constructs. Anyone who has spent much time around me knows that I am obsessed with this word. Why? Because Constructs offer immense power - more than APIs, Web Services or other technical capability. Constructs offer organizations the ability to leverage a platform's native characteristics to offer substantial business functionality - without writing code. This concept becomes more powerful with the additional understanding of the concepts from the platform that an organization learns over time. Let's take a look at an example of where an Oracle WebCenter construct can substantially reduce the time to get a subscription-based site out the door and into the hands of the end consumer. Imagine a site that allows members to subscribe to specific disciplines to access information and application data around that various discipline. A space is a collection of secured pages within Oracle WebCenter. Spaces are not only secured, but also default content stored within it to be scoped automatically to that space. Taking this a step further, Oracle WebCenter’s Activity Stream surfaces events, discussions and other activities that are scoped to the given user on the basis of their space affiliations. In order to have a portal that would allow users to "subscribe" to information around various disciplines - spaces could be used out of the box to achieve this capability and without using any APIs or low level technical work to achieve this. 3. Make Governance Work for You Imagine driving down the street without the painted lines on the road. The rules of the road are so ingrained in our minds, we often do not think about the process, but seemingly mundane lane markers are critical enablers. Lane markers allow us to travel at speeds that would be impossible if not for the agreed upon direction of flow. Additionally and more importantly, it allows people to act autonomously - going where they please at any given time. The return on the investment for mobility is high enough for people to buy into globally agreed up governance processes. In Oracle WebCenter we can use similar enablers to lane markers. Our goal should be to enable the flow of information and provide end users with the ability to arrive at business solutions as needed, not on the basis of cumbersome processes that cannot meet the business needs in a timely fashion. How do we do this? Just as with "Segmentation of Duties" Oracle WebCenter technologies offer the opportunity to compartmentalize various business initiatives from each other within the system due to constructs and security that are available to use within the platform. For instance, when a WebCenter space is created, any content added within that space by default will be secured to that particular space and inherits meta data that is associated with a folder created for the space. Oracle WebCenter content uses meta data to support a broad range of rich ECM functionality and can automatically impart retention, workflow and other policies automatically on the basis of what has been defaulted for that space. Depending on your business needs, this paradigm will also extend to sub sections of a space, offering some interesting possibilities to enable automated management around content. An example may be press releases within a particular area of an extranet that require a five year retention period and need to the reviewed by marketing and legal before release. The underlying content system will transparently take care of this process on the basis of the above rules, enabling peace of mind over unstructured data - which could otherwise become overwhelming. 4. Make Your First Project Your Second Imagine if Michael Phelps was competing in a swimming championship, but told right before his race that he had to use a brand new stroke. There is no doubt that Michael is an outstanding swimmer, but chances are that he would like to have some time to get acquainted with the new stroke. New technologies should not be treated any differently. Before jumping into the deep end it helps to take time to get to know the new approach - even though you may have been swimming thousands of times before. To quickly get a handle on Oracle WebCenter capabilities it can be helpful to deploy a sandbox for the team to use to share project documents, discussions and announcements in an effort to help the actual deployment get under way, while increasing everyone’s knowledge of the platform and its functionality that may be helpful down the road. Oracle Technology Network has made a pre-configured virtual machine available for download that can be a great starting point for this exercise. 5. Get to Know the Community If you are reading this blog post you have most certainly faced a software decision or challenge that was solved on the basis of a small piece of missing critical information - which took substantial research to discover. Chances were also good that somewhere, someone had already come across this information and would have been excited to share it. There is no denying the power of passionate, connected users, sharing key tips around technology. The Oracle WebCenter brand has a rich heritage that includes industry-leading technology and practitioners. With the new Oracle WebCenter brand, opportunities to connect with these experts has become easier. Oracle WebCenter Blog Oracle Social Enterprise LinkedIn WebCenter Group Oracle WebCenter Twitter Oracle WebCenter Facebook Oracle User Groups Additionally, there are various Oracle WebCenter related blogs by an excellent grouping of services partners.

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Spacewalk 2.0 provided to manage Oracle Linux systems

- by wcoekaer

Oracle Linux customers have a few options to manage and provision their servers. We provide a license to use Oracle Enterprise Manager's Linux OS management, monitoring and provisioning features without additional cost for every server that has an Oracle Linux support subscription. So there is no additional pack to license and no additional per server cost, it's all included in our Basic, Premier and Systems support subscriptions. The nice thing with Oracle Enterprise Manager is that you end up with a single management product that can manage all aspects of your software stack. You have complete insight into the applications running, you have roles and responsibilities, you have third party connectors for storage or other products and it makes it very easy and convenient to correlate data and events when something happens. If you use Oracle VM as well, you end up with a complete cloud portal with selfservice, chargeback, etc... Another, much simpler option, is just using yum. It is very easy to take a server and create directories and expose these through apache as repositories. You can have a simple yum config on each server pointing to a few specific repositories. It requires some manual effort in terms of creating directories, downloading packages and creating local repo files but it's easy to do and for many people a preferred solution. There are also a good number of customers that just connect their servers directly to ULN or to our free update server public-yum. Just to re-iterate, our public-yum servers have all the errata and updates available for free. Now we added another option. Many of our customers have switched from a competing Linux vendor and they had familiarity with their management tools. Switching to Oracle for support is very easy since we don't require changes to the installed servers but we also want to make sure there is a very easy and almost transparent switch for the management tools as well. While Oracle Enterprise Manager is our preferred way of managing systems, we now are offering Spacewalk 2.0 to our customers. The community project can be found here. We have made a few changes to ensure easy and complete support for Oracle Linux, tested it with public-yum, etc.. You can find the rpms in our public-yum repos at http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/. There are repositories for spacewalk server and then for each version (OL5,OL6) and architecture (x86 and x86-64) we have the client repositories as well. Spacewalk itself is only made available for OL6 x86-64. Documentation can be found here. I set it up myself and here are some quick steps on how you can get going in just a matter of minutes: Spacewalk Server Installation : 1) Installing an Oracle Database Use an existing Oracle Database or install a new Oracle Database (Standard or Enterprise Edition) [at this time use 11g, we will add support for 12c in the near future]. This database can be installed on the spacewalk server or on a separate remote server. While Oracle XE might work to create a small sample POC, we do not support the use of Oracle XE, spacewalk repositories can become large and create a significant database workload. Customers can use their existing database licenses, they can download the database with a trial licence from http://edelivery.oracle.com or Oracle Linux subscribers (customers) will be allowed to use the Oracle Database as a spacewalk repository as part of their Oracle Linux subscription at no additional cost. |NOTE : spacewalk requires the database to be configured with the UTF8 characterset. |Installation will fail if your database does not use UTF8. |To verify if your database is configured correctly, run the following command in sqlplus: | |select value from nls_database_parameters where parameter='NLS_CHARACTERSET'; |This should return 'AL32UTF8' 2) Configure the database schema for spacewalk Ideally, create a tablespace in the database to hold the spacewalk schema tables/data; create tablespace spacewalk datafile '/u01/app/oracle/oradata/orcl/spacewalk.dbf' size 10G autoextend on; Create the database user spacewalk (or use some other schema name) in sqlplus. example : create user spacewalk identified by spacewalk; grant connect, resource to spacewalk; grant create table, create trigger, create synonym, create view, alter session to spacewalk; grant unlimited tablespace to spacewalk; alter user spacewalk default tablespace spacewalk; 4) Spacewalk installation and configuration Spacewalk server requires an Oracle Linux 6 x86-64 system. Clients can be Oracle Linux 5 or 6, both 32- and 64bit. The server is only supported on OL6/64bit. The easiest way to get started is to do a 'Minimal' install of Oracle Linux on a server and configure the yum repository to include the spacewalk repo from public-yum. Once you have a system with a minimal install, modify your yum repo to include the spacewalk repo. Example : edit /etc/yum.repos.d/public-yum-ol.repo and add the following lines at the end of the file : [spacewalk] name=spacewalk baseurl=http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/spacewalk20/server/$basearch/ gpgkey=http://public-yum.oracle.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle-ol6 gpgcheck=1 enabled=1 Install the following pre-requisite packages on your spacewalk server : oracle-instantclient11.2-basic-11.2.0.3.0-1.x86_64 oracle-instantclient11.2-sqlplus-11.2.0.3.0-1.x86_64 rpm -ivh oracle-instantclient11.2-basic-11.2.0.3.0-1.x86_64 rpm -ivh oracle-instantclient11.2-sqlplus-11.2.0.3.0-1.x86_64 The above RPMs can be found on the Oracle Technology Network website : http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/linuxx86-64soft-092277.html As the root user, configure the library path to include the Oracle Instant Client libraries : cd /etc/ld.so.conf.d echo /usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client64/lib oracle-instantclient11.2.conf ldconfig Install spacewalk : # yum install spacewalk-oracle The above yum command should download and install all required packages to run spacewalk on your local server. | NOTE : if you did a full, desktop or workstation installation, | you have to remove the JTA package | BEFORE installing spacewalk-oracle (rpm -e --nodeps jta) Once the installation completes, simply run the spacewalk configuration tool and you are all set. (make sure to run the command with the 2 arguments) spacewalk-setup --disconnected --external-db Answer the questions during the setup, ensure you provide the current database user (example : spacewalk) and password (example : spacewalk) and database server hostname (the standard hostname of the server on which you have deployed the Oracle database) At the end of the setup script, your spacewalk server should be fully configured and you can log into the web portal. Use your favorite browser to connect to the website : http://[spacewalkserverhostname] The very first action will be to create the main admin account.

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DevConnections Spring 2010 Speaker Evals and Tips

As a conference speaker, I always look forward to hearing from attendees whether they felt my sessions were valuable and worth their time. Its always gratifying get a high score, but of course its the (preferably constructive) criticism thats key to continued improvement. Im by no means the best technical presenter around, and Im always looking for ways to improve. Ive recently spoken at a few events, including TechEd and an Ohio event called Stir Trek. DevConnections was actually back in April, but theyre just getting their final evals out to speakers. TechEd, of course, does online evals so immediately after your talks you can see what people think. Ill try and post my TechEd evals in the next week or so. I gave 3 talks at DevConnections Spring 2010 / VS2010 Launch which I discussed in this previous blog post. In this follow-up, Im just going to share some eval info and my thoughts on it, albeit a couple of months later. Pragmatic ASP.NET Tips, Tricks, and Tools Evals Turned In: 27 Overall Eval: 3.74 Average Score: 3.47 89% found the technical level Just Right. 7.4% thought it was too basic (3.6% did not respond). Since nobody thought the content was Too complex, I could perhaps have added some more complex material, but having about 90% say its Just Right is pretty good. 92% said at least 50% of the material was new to them. 36% said 75% or more was new. Thats also pretty good, I think. 77.8% can use the information immediately; 15% can use it within 2-6 months (7.2 % no response). Overall 78% rated the session Excellent, 18% Good, 4% Fair. All comments (9): Steve did a great job Excellent session! It was good. Im now super excited to attend Steves other sessions later today. Very useful. One of the best speakers here. Bring him back to future conferences please. Continue to have this session with new and old stuff. I always find something I did not know about. Excellent! This was the best session Ive seen all week. Did not increase font on all pages could not see. For Steve to have had more sessions. Note to self make the fonts bigger across the board. Otherwise, this is all good for my ego. :) This is always a very popular session and one I really enjoy giving. Tips and Tricks talks are pretty easy because you dont have to go in depth with any particular thing, and theyre almost always with existing technology so youre not dealing with betas, lack of documentation, and other issues. Its an easy session to do well, in my experience, and one which I think attendees definitely appreciate. Whats New in ASP.NET MVC 2 Evals Turned In: 23 Overall Eval: 3.77 Average Score: 3.47 (wow, I cant believe I scored better on this talk than the tips and tricks talk, which Ive given many times and was more excited about) 96% found the technical level Just Right. 90% found 50% or more of the material to be new. 43% can use the info immediately, and another 43% can use it within 2-6 months I guess that speaks to adoption rates of MVC 2 among my attendees Overall 74% said the session was Excellent, 22% Good. 4% No Response. All Comments (6): Great job, thank you. Great speaker! Really good, a little lost in the code at some points, but great information. Speaker needs to repeat questions from audience for everyone to hear. Exceeded my expectations. Great speaker, very informative. I really do try to religiously repeat questions from the audience for everyone to hear, but obviously I didnt do it 100% of the time. Note to self remember to repeat questions. That and making fonts big are really basic speaker best practices, which just goes to prove that fundamentals are always something that can be perfected. SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC 2 Application Evals Turned In: 8 (!) Overall Eval: 3.63 Average Score: 3.47 As I recall this was one of the last talks of the day / show, which might account for the low number of evals turned in. I dont recall speaking to an empty room for this talk, although it certainly wasnt as crowded as the tips and tricks talk. 100% found the technical level Just Right. 100% found at least half the material new. 62.5% can use it at once and 37.5% within 2-6 months. 62.5% rated the session Excellent overall; 37.5% Good. Im thinking there were 5 evals with all 4s checked and 3 with all 3s checked (4 = Excellent, 3 = Good) All Comments (3): This covered many topics Ive read about recently, and it helped reinforce them. It was a nice overview of the solid principle, but I thought there might be specifics for MVC2. I am glad there is not. Move a little slower. Ok, so another fundamental dont go too fast. Looks like I got one fundamental tip from the comments of each talk. My Take-Aways Remember the fundamentals. Its worth going through a checklist prior to presenting to make sure these things are fresh in your mind. Increase all font sizes. Repeat all questions from audience members without microphones (this is also a great way to stall for time, btw). Resist the urge to move too quickly especially if youre nervous or short of time. Writing this up in a blog post also further reinforces these fundamentals for me, which is one of the main reasons why I do it I retain things better when I write them, and even moreso when I write them for public consumption since I have to really think about what Im saying. And maybe a few of you find this interesting or helpful, which is a bonus. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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Orchestrating the Virtual Enterprise

- by John Murphy

During the American Industrial Revolution, the Ford Motor Company did it all. It turned raw materials into a showroom full of Model Ts. It owned a steel mill, a glass factory, and an automobile assembly line. The company was both self-sufficient and innovative and went on to become one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world. Nowadays, it's unusual for any business to follow this vertical integration model because its much harder to be best in class across such a wide a range of capabilities and services. Instead, businesses focus on their core competencies and outsource other business functions to specialized suppliers. They exchange vertical integration for collaboration. When done well, all parties benefit from this arrangement and the collaboration leads to the creation of an agile, lean and successful "virtual enterprise." Case in point: For Sun hardware, Oracle outsources most of its manufacturing and all of its logistics to third parties. These are vital activities, but ones where Oracle doesn't have a core competency, so we shift them to business partners who do. Within our enterprise, we always retain the core functions of product development, support, and most of the sales function, because that's what constitutes our core value to our customers. This is a perfect example of a virtual enterprise. What are the implications of this? It means that we must exchange direct internal control for indirect external collaboration. This fundamentally changes the relative importance of different business processes, the boundaries of security and information sharing, and the relationship of the supply chain systems to the ERP. The challenge is that the systems required to support this virtual paradigm are still mired in "island enterprise" thinking. But help is at hand. Developments such as the Web, social networks, collaboration, and rules-based orchestration offer great potential to fundamentally re-architect supply chain systems to better support the virtual enterprise. Supply Chain Management Systems in a Virtual Enterprise Historically enterprise software was constructed to automate the ERP - and then the supply chain systems extended the ERP. They were joined at the hip. In virtual enterprises, the supply chain system needs to be ERP agnostic, sitting above each of the ERPs that are distributed across the virtual enterprise - most of which are operating in other businesses. This is vital so that the supply chain system can manage the flow of material and the related information through the multiple enterprises. It has to have strong collaboration tools. It needs to be highly flexible. Users need to be able to see information that's coming from multiple sources and be able to react and respond to events across those sources. Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO) is a perfect example of a supply chain system designed to operate in this virtual way. DOO embraces the idea that a company's fulfillment challenge is a distributed, multi-enterprise problem. It enables users to manage the process and the trading partners in a uniform way and deliver a consistent user experience while operating over a heterogeneous, virtual enterprise. This is a fundamental shift at the core of managing supply chains. It forces virtual enterprises to think architecturally about how best to construct their supply chain systems. Case in point, almost everyone has ordered from Amazon.com at one time or another. Our orders are as likely to be fulfilled by third parties as they are by Amazon itself. To deliver the order promptly and efficiently, Amazon has to send it to the right fulfillment location and know the availability in that location. It needs to be able to track status of the fulfillment and deal with exceptions. As a virtual enterprise, Amazon's operations, using thousands of trading partners, requires a very different approach to fulfillment than the traditional 'take an order and ship it from your own warehouse' model. Amazon had no choice but to develop a complex, expensive and custom solution to tackle this problem as there used to be no product solution available. Now, other companies who want to follow similar models have a better off-the-shelf choice -- Oracle Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO). Consider how another of our customers is using our distributed orchestration solution. This major airplane manufacturer has a highly complex business and interacts regularly with the U.S. Government and major airlines. It sits in the middle of an intricate supply chain and needed to improve visibility across its many different entities. Oracle Fusion DOO gives the company an orchestration mechanism so it could improve quality, speed, flexibility, and consistency without requiring an organ transplant of these highly complex legacy systems. Many retailers face the challenge of dealing with brick and mortar, Web, and reseller channels. They all need to be knitted together into a virtual enterprise experience that is consistent for their customers. When a large U.K. grocer with a strong brick and mortar retail operation added an online business, they turned to Oracle Fusion DOO to bring these entities together. Disturbing the Peace with Acquisitions Quite often a company's ERP system is disrupted when it acquires a new company. An acquisition can inject a new set of processes and systems -- or even introduce an entirely new business like Sun's hardware did at Oracle. This challenge has been a driver for some of our DOO customers. A large power management company is using Oracle Fusion DOO to provide the flexibility to rapidly integrate additional products and services into its central fulfillment operation. The Flip Side of Fulfillment Meanwhile, we haven't ignored similar challenges on the supply side of the equation. Specifically, how to manage complex supply in a flexible way when there are multiple trading parties involved? How to manage the supply to suppliers? How to manage critical components that need to merge in a tier two or tier three supply chain? By investing in supply orchestration solutions for the virtual enterprise, we plan to give users better visibility into their network of suppliers to help them drive down costs. We also think this technology and full orchestration process can be applied to the financial side of organizations. An example is transactions that flow through complex internal structures to minimize tax exposure. We can help companies manage those transactions effectively by thinking about the internal organization as a virtual enterprise and bringing the same solution set to this internal challenge. The Clear Front Runner No other company is investing in solving the virtual enterprise supply chain issues like Oracle is. Oracle is in a unique position to become the gold standard in this market space. We have the infrastructure of Oracle technology. We already have an Oracle Fusion DOO application which embraces the best of what's required in this area. And we're absolutely committed to extending our Fusion solution to other use cases and delivering even more business value.

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HTML5 CSS3 layout not working

- by John.Weland

I have been asked by a local MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) School to help them develop a website. For the life of me I CANNOT get the layout to work correctly. When I get one section set where it should be another moves out of place! here is a pic of the layout: here The header should be a set height as should the footer the entire site at its widest point should be 1250px with the header/content area/footer and the like being 1240px the black in the picture is a scaling background to expand wider as larger resolution systems are viewing them. The full site should be a minimum-height of 100% but scale virtually as content in the target area deems necessary. My biggest issue currently is that my "sticky" footer doesn't stick once the content has stretched the content target area virtually. the Code is not pretty but here it is: HTML5 <!doctype html> <html> <head> <link rel="stylesheet" href="menu.css" type="text/css" media="screen"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="master.css" type="text/css" media="screen"> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Untitled Document</title> </head> <body bottommargin="0" leftmargin="0" rightmargin="0" topmargin="0"> <div id="wrap" class="wrap"><div id="logo" class="logo"><img src="images/comalogo.png" width="100" height="150"></div> <div id="header" class="header">College of Martial Arts</div> <div id="nav" class="nav"> <ul id="menu"><b> <li><a href="#">News</a></li> <li>·</li> <li><a href="#">About Us</a> <ul> <li><a href="#">The Instructors</a></li> <li><a href="#">Our Arts</a></li> </li> </ul> <li>·</li> <li><a href="#">Location</a></li> <li>·</li> <li><a href="#">Gallery</a></li> <li>·</li> <li><a href="#">MMA.tv</a></li> <li>·</li> <li><a href="#">Schedule</a></li> <li>·</li> <li><a href="#">Fight Gear</a></li></b> </div> <div id="social" class="social"> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Canyon-Lake-College-of-Martial-Arts/189432551104674"><img src="images/soc/facebook.png"></a> <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/CanyonLakeMMA"><img src="images/soc/twitter.png"></a> <a href="https://plus.google.com/108252414577423199314/"><img src="images/soc/google+.png"></a> <a href="http://youtube.com/user/clmmatv"><img src="images/soc/youtube.png"></a></div> <div id="mid" class="mid">test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br>test <br></div> <div id="footer" class="footer"> <div id="contact" style="left:0px;">tel: (830) 214-4591<br /> e: [email protected]<br /> add: 1273 FM 2673, Sattler, TX 78133<br /> </div> <div id="affiliates" style="right:0px;">Hwa Rang World Tang soo Do</div> <div id="copyright">Copyright © College of Martial Arts</div> </div> </body> </html> CSS3 -Dropdown Menu- @charset "utf-8"; /* CSS Document */ /* Main */ #menu { width: 100%; margin: 0; padding: 10px 0 0 0; list-style: none; background: #444; background: -moz-linear-gradient(#000, #333); background: -webkit-gradient(linear,left bottom,left top,color-stop(0, #444),color-stop(1, #000)); background: -webkit-linear-gradient(#000, #333); background: -o-linear-gradient(#000, #333); background: -ms-linear-gradient(#000, #333); background: linear-gradient(#000, #333); -moz-border-radius: 5px; border-radius: 5px; -moz-box-shadow: 0 2px 1px #9c9c9c; -webkit-box-shadow: 0 2px 1px #9c9c9c; box-shadow: 0 8px 8px #9c9c9c; /* outline:#000 solid thin; */ } #menu li { left:150px; float: left; padding: 0 0 10px 0; position:relative; color: #FC0; font-size:15px; font-family:'freshman' cursive; line-height:15px; } #menu a { float: left; height: 15px; line-height:15px; padding: 0 10px; color: #FC0; font-size:15px; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: 1 1px 0 #000; text-align:center; } #menu li:hover > a { color: #fafafa; } *html #menu li a:hover /* IE6 */ { color: #fafafa; } #menu li:hover > ul { display: block; } /* Sub-menu */ #menu ul { list-style: none; margin: 0; padding: 0; display: none; position: absolute; top: 25px; left: 0; z-index: 99999; background: #444; background: -moz-linear-gradient(#000, #333); background: -webkit-gradient(linear,left bottom,left top,color-stop(0, #111),color-stop(1, #444)); background: -webkit-linear-gradient(#000, #333); background: -o-linear-gradient(#000, #333); background: -ms-linear-gradient(#000, #333); background: linear-gradient(#000, #333); -moz-border-radius: 5px; border-radius: 5px; /* outline:#000 solid thin; */ } #menu ul li { left:0; -moz-box-shadow: none; -webkit-box-shadow: none; box-shadow: none; } #menu ul a { padding: 10px; height: auto; line-height: 1; display: block; white-space: nowrap; float: none; text-transform: none; } *html #menu ul a /* IE6 */ { height: 10px; width: 200px; } *:first-child+html #menu ul a /* IE7 */ { height: 10px; width: 200px; } /*#menu ul a:hover { background: #000; background: -moz-linear-gradient(#000, #333); background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#04acec), to(#0186ba)); background: -webkit-linear-gradient(#000, #333); background: -o-linear-gradient(#000, #333); background: -ms-linear-gradient(#000, #333); background: linear-gradient(#000, #333); }*/ /* Clear floated elements */ #menu:after { visibility: hidden; display: block; font-size: 0; content: " "; clear: both; height: 0; } * html #menu { zoom: 1; } /* IE6 */ *:first-child+html #menu { zoom: 1; } /* IE7 */ CSS3 -Master Style Sheet- @charset "utf-8"; /* CSS Document */ a:link {color:#FC0; text-decoration:none;} /* unvisited link */ a:visited {color:#FC0; text-decoration:none;} /* visited link */ a:hover {color:#FFF; text-decoration:none;} /* mouse over link */ a:active {color:#FC0; text-decoration:none;} /* selected link */ ul.a {list-style-type:none;} ul.b {list-style-type:inherit} html { } body { /*background-image:url(images/cagebg.jpg);*/ background-repeat:repeat; background-position:top; } div.wrap { margin: 0 auto; min-height: 100%; position: relative; width: 1250px; } div.logo{ top:25px; left:20px; position:absolute; float:top; height:150px; } /*Freshman FONT is on my computer needs to be uploaded to the webhost and rendered host side like a webfont*/ div.header{ background-color:#999; color:#FC0; margin-left:5px; height:80px; width:1240px; line-height:70px; font-family:'freshman' cursive; font-size:50px; text-shadow:8px 8px #9c9c9c; text-outline:1px 1px #000; text-align:center; background-color:#999; clear: both; } div.social{ height:50px; margin-left:5px; width:1240px; font-family:'freshman' cursive; font-size:50px; text-align:right; color:#000; background-color:#999; line-height:30px; box-sizing: border-box; ms-box-sizing: border-box; webkit-box-sizing: border-box; moz-box-sizing: border-box; padding-right:5px; } div.mid{ position:absolute; min-height:100%; margin-left:5px; width:1240px; font-family:'freshman' cursive; font-size:50px; text-align:center; color:#000; background-color:#999; } /*SIDE left and right should be 40px wide and a minimum height (100% the area from nav-footer) to fill between the NAV and the footer yet stretch as displayed content streatches the page longer (scrollable)*/ div #side.sright{ top:96px; right:0; position:absolute; float:right; height:100%; min-height:100%; width:40px; background-image:url(images/border.png); } /*Container should vary in height in acordance to content displayed*/ div #content.container{ } /*Footer should stick at ABSOLUTE BOTTOM of the page*/ div #footer{ font-family:'freshman' cursive; position:fixed; bottom:0; background-color:#000000; margin-left:5px; width:1240px; color:#FC0; clear: both; /*this clear property forces the .container to understand where the columns end and contain them*/ } /*HTML 5 support - Sets new HTML 5 tags to display:block so browsers know how to render the tags properly.*/ header, section, footer, aside, nav, article, figure { display: block; } Eventually once the layout is correct I have to use PHP to make calls for where data should be displayed from what database. If anyone can help me to fix this layout and clean up the crap code, I'd be much appreciated.. I've spent weeks trying to figure this out.

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PASS: The Budget Process

- by Bill Graziano

Every fiscal year PASS creates a detailed budget. This helps us set priorities and communicate to our members what we’re going to do in the upcoming year. You can review the current budget on the PASS Governance page. That page currently requires you to login but I’m talking with HQ to see if there are any legal issues with opening that up. The Accounting Team The PASS accounting team is two people. The Executive Vice-President of Finance (“EVP”) and the PASS Accounting Manager. Sandy Cherry is the accounting manager and works at PASS HQ. Sandy has been with PASS since we switched management companies in 2007. Throughout this document when I talk about any actual work related to the budget that’s all Sandy :) She’s the glue that gets us through this process. Last year we went through 32 iterations of the budget before the Board approved so it’s a pretty busy time for her us – well, mostly her. Fiscal Year The PASS fiscal year runs from July 1st through June 30th the following year. Right now we’re in fiscal year 2011. Our 2010 Summit actually occurred in FY2011. We switched to this schedule from a calendar year in 2006. Our goal was to have the Summit occur early in our fiscal year. That gives us the rest of the year to handle any significant financial impact from the Summit. If registrations are down we can reduce spending. If registrations are up we can decide how much to increase our reserves and how much to spend. Keep in mind that the Summit is budgeted to generate 82% of our revenue this year. How it performs has a significant impact on our financials. The other benefit of this fiscal year is that it matches the Microsoft fiscal year. We sign an annual sponsorship agreement with Microsoft and it’s very helpful that our fiscal years match. This year our budget process will probably start in earnest in March or April. I’d like to be done in early June so we can publish before July 1st. I was late publishing it this year and I’m trying not to repeat that. Our Budget Our actual budget is an Excel spreadsheet with 36 sheets. We remove some of those when we publish it since they include salary information. The budget is broken up into various portfolios or departments. We have 20 portfolios. They include chapters, marketing, virtual chapters, marketing, etc. Ideally each portfolio is assigned to a Board member. Each portfolio also typically has a staff person assigned to it. Portfolios that aren’t assigned to a Board member are monitored by HQ and the ExecVP-Finance (me). These are typically smaller portfolios such as deferred membership or Summit futures. (More on those in a later post.) All portfolios are reviewed by all Board members during the budget approval process, when interim financials are released internally and at year-end. The Process Our first step is to budget revenues. The Board determines a target attendee number. We have formulas based on historical performance that convert that to an overall attendee revenue number. Other revenue projections (such as vendor sponsorships) come from different parts of the organization. I hope to have another post with more details on how we project revenues. The next step is to budget expenses. Board members fill out a sample spreadsheet with their budget for the year. They can add line items and notes describing what the amounts are for. Each Board portfolio typically has from 10 to 30 line items. Any new initiatives they want to pursue needs to be budgeted. The Summit operations budget is managed by HQ. It includes the cost for food, electrical, internet, etc. Most of these come from our estimate of attendees and our contract with the convention center. During this process the Board can ask for more or less to be spent on various line items. For example, if we weren’t happy with the Internet at the last Summit we can ask them to look into different options and/or increasing the budget. HQ will also make adjustments to these numbers based on what they see at the events and the feedback we receive on the surveys. After we have all the initial estimates we start reviewing the entire budget. It is sent out to the Board and we can see what each portfolio requested and what the overall profit and loss number is. We usually start with too much in expenses and need to cut. In years past the Board started haggling over these numbers as a group. This past year they decided I should take a first cut and present them with a reasonable budget and a list of what I changed. That worked well and I think we’ll continue to do that in the future. We go through a number of iterations on the budget. If I remember correctly, we went through 32 iterations before we passed the budget. At each iteration various revenue and expense numbers can change. Keep in mind that the PASS budget has 200+ line items spread over 20 portfolios. Many of these depend on other numbers. For example, if we decide increase the projected attendees that cascades through our budget. At each iteration we list what changed and the impact. Ideally these discussions will take place at a face-to-face Board meeting. Many of them also take place over the phone. Board members explain any increase they are asking for while performing due diligence on other budget requests. Eventually a budget emerges and is passed. Publishing After the budget is passed we create a version without the formulas and salaries for posting on the web site. Sandy also creates some charts to help our members understand the budget. The EVP writes a nice little letter describing some of the changes from last year’s budget. You can see my letter and our budget on the PASS Governance page. And then, eight months later, we start all over again.

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Creating a Document Library with Content Type in code

- by David Jacobus

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/djacobus/archive/2013/10/15/154360.aspxIn the past, I have shown how to create a list content type and add the content type to a list in code. As a Developer, many of the artifacts which we create are widgets which have a List or Document Library as the back end. We need to be able to create our applications (Web Part, etc.) without having the user involved except to enter the list item data. Today, I will show you how to do the same with a document library. A summary of what we will do is as follows: 1. Create an Empty SharePoint Project in Visual Studio 2. Add a Code Folder in the solution and Drag and Drop Utilities and Extensions Libraries to the solution 3. Create a new Feature and add and event receiver all the code will be in the event receiver 4. Add the fields which will extend the built-in Document content type 5. If the Content Type does not exist, Create it 6. If the Document Library does not exist, Create it with the new Content Type inherited from the Document Content Type 7. Delete the Document Content Type from the Library (as we have a new one which inherited from it) 8. Add the fields which we want to be visible from the fields added to the new Content Type Here we go: Create an Empty SharePoint Project in Visual Studio Add a Code Folder in the solution and Drag and Drop Utilities and Extensions Libraries to the solution The Utilities and Extensions Library will be part of this project which I will provide a download link at the end of this post. Drag and drop them into your project. If Dragged and Dropped from windows explorer you will need to show all files and then include them in your project. Change the Namespace to agree with your project. Create a new Feature and add and event receiver all the code will be in the event receiver. Here We added a new Feature called “CreateDocLib” and then right click to add an Event Receiver All of our code will be in this Event Receiver. For this Demo I will only be using the Feature Activated Event. From this point on we will be looking at code! We are adding two constants for use columGroup (How we want SharePoint to Group them, usually Company Name) and ctName(ContentType Name) using System; using System.Runtime.InteropServices; using System.Security.Permissions; using Microsoft.SharePoint; namespace CreateDocLib.Features.CreateDocLib { /// <summary> /// This class handles events raised during feature activation, deactivation, installation, uninstallation, and upgrade. /// </summary> /// <remarks> /// The GUID attached to this class may be used during packaging and should not be modified. /// </remarks> [Guid("56e6897c-97c4-41ac-bc5b-5cd2c04f2dd1")] public class CreateDocLibEventReceiver : SPFeatureReceiver { const string columnGroup = "DJ"; const string ctName = "DJDocLib"; } } Here we are creating the Feature Activated event. Adding the new fields (Site Columns) , Testing if the Content Type Exists, if not adding it. Testing if the document Library exists, if not adding it. #region DocLib public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) { using (SPWeb spWeb = properties.GetWeb() as SPWeb) { //add the fields addFields(spWeb); //add content type SPContentType testCT = spWeb.ContentTypes[ctName]; // we will not create the content type if it exists if (testCT == null) { //the content type does not exist add it addContentType(spWeb, ctName); } if ((spWeb.Lists.TryGetList("MyDocuments") == null)) { //create the list if it dosen't to exist CreateDocLib(spWeb); } } } #endregion The addFields method uses the utilities library to add site columns to the site. We can add as many fields within this method as we like. Here we are adding one for demonstration purposes. Icon as a Url type. public void addFields(SPWeb spWeb) { Utilities.addField(spWeb, "Icon", SPFieldType.URL, false, columnGroup); }The addContentType method add the new Content Type to the site Content Types. We have already checked to see that it does not exist. In addition, here is where we add the linkages from our site columns previously created to our new Content Type private static void addContentType(SPWeb spWeb, string name) { SPContentType myContentType = new SPContentType(spWeb.ContentTypes["Document"], spWeb.ContentTypes, name) { Group = columnGroup }; spWeb.ContentTypes.Add(myContentType); addContentTypeLinkages(spWeb, myContentType); myContentType.Update(); } Here we are adding just one linkage as we only have one additional field in our Content Type public static void addContentTypeLinkages(SPWeb spWeb, SPContentType ct) { Utilities.addContentTypeLink(spWeb, "Icon", ct); } Next we add the logic to create our new Document Library, which we have already checked to see if it exists. We create the document library and turn on content types. Add the new content type and then delete the old “Document” content types. private void CreateDocLib(SPWeb web) { using (var site = new SPSite(web.Url)) { var web1 = site.RootWeb; var listId = web1.Lists.Add("MyDocuments", string.Empty, SPListTemplateType.DocumentLibrary); var lib = web1.Lists[listId] as SPDocumentLibrary; lib.ContentTypesEnabled = true; var docType = web.ContentTypes[ctName]; lib.ContentTypes.Add(docType); lib.ContentTypes.Delete(lib.ContentTypes["Document"].Id); lib.Update(); AddLibrarySettings(web1, lib); } } Finally, we set some document library settings on our new document library with the AddLibrarySettings method. We then ensure that the new site column is visible when viewed in the browser. private void AddLibrarySettings(SPWeb web, SPDocumentLibrary lib) { lib.OnQuickLaunch = true; lib.ForceCheckout = true; lib.EnableVersioning = true; lib.MajorVersionLimit = 5; lib.EnableMinorVersions = true; lib.MajorWithMinorVersionsLimit = 5; lib.Update(); var view = lib.DefaultView; view.ViewFields.Add("Icon"); view.Update(); } Okay, what's cool here: In a few lines of code, we have created site columns, A content Type, a document library. As a developer, I use this functionality all the time. For instance, I could now just add a web part to this same solutionwhich uses this document Library. I love SharePoint! Here is the complete solution: Create Document Library Code

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Disaster, or Migration?

- by Rob Farley

This post is in two parts – technical and personal. And I should point out that it’s prompted in part by this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Allen Kinsel. First, the technical: I’ve had a few conversations with people recently about migration – moving a SQL Server database from one box to another (sometimes, but not primarily, involving an upgrade). One question that tends to come up is that of downtime. Obviously there will be some period of time between the old server being available and the new one. The way that most people seem to think of migration is this: Build a new server. Stop people from using the old server. Take a backup of the old server Restore it on the new server. Reconfigure the client applications (or alternatively, configure the new server to use the same address as the old) Make the new server online. There are other things involved, such as testing, of course. But this is essentially the process that people tell me they’re planning to follow. The bit that I want to look at today (as you’ve probably guessed from my title) is the “backup and restore” section. If a SQL database is using the Simple Recovery Model, then the only restore option is the last database backup. This backup could be full or differential. The transaction log never gets backed up in the Simple Recovery Model. Instead, it truncates regularly to stay small. One that’s using the Full Recovery Model (or Bulk-Logged) won’t truncate its log – the log must be backed up regularly. This provides the benefit of having a lot more option available for restores. It’s a requirement for most systems of High Availability, because if you’re making sure that a spare box is up-and-running, ready to take over, then you have to be interested in the logs that are happening on the current box, rather than truncating them all the time. A High Availability system such as Mirroring, Replication or Log Shipping will initialise the spare machine by restoring a full database backup (and maybe a differential backup if available), and then any subsequent log backups. Once the secondary copy is close, transactions can be applied to keep the two in sync. The main aspect of any High Availability system is to have a redundant system that is ready to take over. So the similarity for migration should be obvious. If you need to move a database from one box to another, then introducing a High Availability mechanism can help. By turning on the Full Recovery Model and then taking a backup (so that the now-interesting logs have some context), logs start being kept, and are therefore available for getting the new box ready (even if it’s an upgraded version). When the migration is ready to occur, a failover can be done, letting the new server take over the responsibility of the old, just as if a disaster had happened. Except that this is a planned failover, not a disaster at all. There’s a fine line between a disaster and a migration. Failovers can be useful in patching, upgrading, maintenance, and more. Hopefully, even an unexpected disaster can be seen as just another failover, and there can be an opportunity there – perhaps to get some work done on the principal server to increase robustness. And if I’ve just set up a High Availability system for even the simplest of databases, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. :) So now the personal: It’s been an interesting time recently... June has been somewhat odd. A court case with which I was involved got resolved (through mediation). I can’t go into details, but my lawyers tell me that I’m allowed to say how I feel about it. The answer is ‘lousy’. I don’t regret pursuing it as long as I did – but in the end I had to make a decision regarding the commerciality of letting it continue, and I’m going to look forward to the days when the kind of money I spent on my lawyers is small change. Mind you, if I had a similar situation with an employer, I’d do the same again, but that doesn’t really stop me feeling frustrated about it. The following day I had to fly to country Victoria to see my grandmother, who wasn’t expected to last the weekend. She’s still around a week later as I write this, but her 92-year-old body has basically given up on her. She’s been a Christian all her life, and is looking forward to eternity. We’ll all miss her though, and it’s hard to see my family grieving. Then on Tuesday, I was driving back to the airport with my family to come home, when something really bizarre happened. We were travelling down the freeway, just pulled out to go past a truck (farm-truck sized, not a semi-trailer), when a car-sized mass of metal fell off it. It was something like an industrial air-conditioner, but from where I was sitting, it was just a mass of spinning metal, like something out of a movie (one friend described it as “holidays by Michael Bay”). Somehow, and I’m really don’t know how, the part of it nearest us bounced high enough to clear the car, and there wasn’t even a scratch. We pulled over the check, and I was just thanking God that we’d changed lanes when we had, and that we remained unharmed. I had all kinds of thoughts about what could’ve happened if we’d had something that size land on the windscreen... All this has drilled home that while I feel that I haven’t provided as well for the family as I could’ve done (like by pursuing an expensive legal case), I shouldn’t even consider that I have proper control over things. I get to live life, and make decisions based on what I feel is right at the time. But I’m not going to get everything right, and there will be things that feel like disasters, some which could’ve been in my control and some which are very much beyond my control. The case feels like something I could’ve pursued differently, a disaster that could’ve been avoided in some way. Gran dying is lousy of course. An accident on the freeway would have been awful. I need to recognise that the worst disasters are ones that I can’t affect, and that I need to look at things in context – perhaps seeing everything that happens as a migration instead. Life is never the same from one day to the next. Every event has a before and an after – sometimes it’s clearly positive, sometimes it’s not. I remember good events in my life (such as my wedding), and bad (such as the loss of my father when I was ten, or the back injury I had eight years ago). I’m not suggesting that I know how to view everything from the “God works all things for good” perspective, but I am trying to look at last week as a migration of sorts. Those things are behind me now, and the future is in God’s hands. Hopefully I’ve learned things, and will be able to live accordingly. I’ve come through this time now, and even though I’ll miss Gran, I’ll see her again one day, and the future is bright.

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Windows Azure – Write, Run or Use Software

- by BuckWoody

Windows Azure is a platform that has you covered, whether you need to write software, run software that is already written, or Install and use “canned” software whether you or someone else wrote it. Like any platform, it’s a set of tools you can use where it makes sense to solve a problem. The primary location for Windows Azure information is located at http://windowsazure.com. You can find everything there from the development kits for writing software to pricing, licensing and tutorials on all of that. I have a few links here for learning to use Windows Azure – although it’s best if you focus not on the tools, but what you want to solve. I’ve got it broken down here into various sections, so you can quickly locate things you want to know. I’ll include resources here from Microsoft and elsewhere – I use these same resources in the Architectural Design Sessions (ADS) I do with my clients worldwide. Write Software Also called “Platform as a Service” (PaaS), Windows Azure has lots of components you can use together or separately that allow you to write software in .NET or various Open Source languages to work completely online, or in partnership with code you have on-premises or both – even if you’re using other cloud providers. Keep in mind that all of the features you see here can be used together, or independently. For instance, you might only use a Web Site, or use Storage, but you can use both together. You can access all of these components through standard REST API calls, or using our Software Development Kit’s API’s, which are a lot easier. In any case, you simply use Visual Studio, Eclipse, Cloud9 IDE, or even a text editor to write your code from a Mac, PC or Linux. Components you can use: Azure Web Sites: Windows Azure Web Sites allow you to quickly write an deploy websites, without setting a Virtual Machine, installing a web server or configuring complex settings. They work alone, with other Windows Azure Web Sites, or with other parts of Windows Azure. Web and Worker Roles: Windows Azure Web Roles give you a full stateless computing instance with Internet Information Services (IIS) installed and configured. Windows Azure Worker Roles give you a full stateless computing instance without Information Services (IIS) installed, often used in a "Services" mode. Scale-out is achieved either manually or programmatically under your control. Storage: Windows Azure Storage types include Blobs to store raw binary data, Tables to use key/value pair data (like NoSQL data structures), Queues that allow interaction between stateless roles, and a relational SQL Server database. Other Services: Windows Azure has many other services such as a security mechanism, a Cache (memcacheD compliant), a Service Bus, a Traffic Manager and more. Once again, these features can be used with a Windows Azure project, or alone based on your needs. Various Languages: Windows Azure supports the .NET stack of languages, as well as many Open-Source languages like Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, NodeJS, C++ and more. Use Software Also called “Software as a Service” (SaaS) this often means consumer or business-level software like Hotmail or Office 365. In other words, you simply log on, use the software, and log off – there’s nothing to install, and little to even configure. For the Information Technology professional, however, It’s not quite the same. We want software that provides services, but in a platform. That means we want things like Hadoop or other software we don’t want to have to install and configure. Components you can use: Kits: Various software “kits” or packages are supported with just a few clicks, such as Umbraco, Wordpress, and others. Windows Azure Media Services: Windows Azure Media Services is a suite of services that allows you to upload media for encoding, processing and even streaming – or even one or more of those functions. We can add DRM and even commercials to your media if you like. Windows Azure Media Services is used to stream large events all the way down to small training videos. High Performance Computing and “Big Data”: Windows Azure allows you to scale to huge workloads using a few clicks to deploy Hadoop Clusters or the High Performance Computing (HPC) nodes, accepting HPC Jobs, Pig and Hive Jobs, and even interfacing with Microsoft Excel. Windows Azure Marketplace: Windows Azure Marketplace offers data and programs you can quickly implement and use – some free, some for-fee. Run Software Also known as “Infrastructure as a Service” (IaaS), this offering allows you to build or simply choose a Virtual Machine to run server-based software. Components you can use: Persistent Virtual Machines: You can choose to install Windows Server, Windows Server with Active Directory, with SQL Server, or even SharePoint from a pre-configured gallery. You can configure your own server images with standard Hyper-V technology and load them yourselves – and even bring them back when you’re done. As a new offering, we also even allow you to select various distributions of Linux – a first for Microsoft. Windows Azure Connect: You can connect your on-premises networks to Windows Azure Instances. Storage: Windows Azure Storage can be used as a remote backup, a hybrid storage location and more using software or even hardware appliances. Decision Matrix With all of these options, you can use Windows Azure to solve just about any computing problem. It’s often hard to know when to use something on-premises, in the cloud, and what kind of service to use. I’ve used a decision matrix in the last couple of years to take a particular problem and choose the proper technology to solve it. It’s all about options – there is no “silver bullet”, whether that’s Windows Azure or any other set of functions. I take the problem, decide which particular component I want to own and control – and choose the column that has that box darkened. For instance, if I have to control the wiring for a solution (a requirement in some military and government installations), that means the “Networking” component needs to be dark, and so I select the “On Premises” column for that particular solution. If I just need the solution provided and I want no control at all, I can look as “Software as a Service” solutions. Security, Pricing, and Other Info Security: Security is one of the first questions you should ask in any distributed computing environment. We have certification info, coding guidelines and more, even a general “Request for Information” RFI Response already created for you. Pricing: Are there licenses? How much does this cost? Is there a way to estimate the costs in this new environment? New Features: Many new features were added to Windows Azure - a good roundup of those changes can be found here. Support: Software Support on Virtual Machines, general support.

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D2K to OA Framework Transition

- by PRajkumar

What is the difference between D2K form and OA Framework? It is a very innocent but important question for someone that desires to make transition from D2K to OA Framework. I hope you have already read and implemented OA Framework Getting Started. I will re-visit my own experience of implementing HelloWorld program in "OA Framework". When I implemented HelloWorld a year ago, I had no clue as to what I was doing & why I was doing those steps. I merely copied the steps from Oracle Tutorial without understanding them. Hence in this blog, I will try to explain in simple manner the meaning of OA Framework HelloWorld Program and compare the steps to D2K form [where possible]. To keep things simple, only basics will be discussed. Following key Steps were needed for HelloWorld Step 1 Create a new Workspace and a new Project as dictated by Oracle's tutorial. When defining project, you will specify a default package, which in this case was oracle.apps.ak.hello This means the following: - ak is the short name of the Application in Oracle [means fnd_applications.short_name] hello is the name of your project Step 2 Next, you will create a OA Page within hello project Think OA Page as the fmx file itself in D2K. I am saying so because this page gets attached to the form function. This page will be created within hello project, hence the package name oracle.apps.ak.hello.webui Note the webui, it is a convention to have page in webui, means this page represents the Web User Interface You will assign the default AM [OAApplicationModule]. Think of AM "Connection Manager" and "Transaction State Manager" for your page I can't co-relate this to anything in D2k, as there is no concept of Connection Pooling and that D2k is not stateless. Reason being that as soon as you kick off a D2K Form, it connects to a single session of Oracle and sticks to that single Oracle database session. So is not the case in OAF, hence AM is needed. Step 3 You create Region within the Page. · Region is what will store your fields. Text input fields will be of type messageTextInput. Think of Canvas in D2K. You can have nested regions. Stacked Canvas in D2K comes the closest to this component of OA Framework Step 4 Add a button to one of the nested regions The itemStyle should be submitButton, in case you want the page to be submitted when this button is clicked There is no WHEN-BUTTON-PRESSED trigger in OAF. In Framework, you will add a controller java code to handle events like Form Submit button clicks. JDeveloper generates the default code for you. Primarily two functions [should I call methods] will be created processRequest [for UI Rendering Handling] and processFormRequest Think of processRequest as WHEN-NEW-FORM-INSTANCE, though processRequest is very restrictive. Note What is the difference between processRequest and processFormRequest? These two methods are available in the Default Controller class that gets created. processFormRequest This method is commonly used to react/respond to the event that has taken place, for example click of a button. Some examples are if(oapagecontext.getParameter("Cancel") != null) (Do your processing for Cancellation/ Rollback) if(oapagecontext.getParameter("Submit") != null) (Do your validations and commit here) if(oapagecontext.getParameter("Update") != null) (Do your validations and commit here) In the above three examples, you could be calling oapagecontext.forwardImmediately to re-direct the page navigation to some other page if needed. processRequest In this method, usually page rendering related code is written. Effectively, each GUI component is a bean that gets initialised during processRequest. Those who are familiar with D2K forms, something like pre-query may be written in this method. Step 5 In the controller to access the value in field "HelloName" the command is String userContent = pageContext.getParameter("HelloName"); In D2k, we used :block.field. In OAFramework, at submission of page, all the field values get passed into to OAPageContext object. Use getParameter to access the field value To set the value of the field, use OAMessageTextInputBean field HelloName = (OAMessageTextInputBean)webBean.findChildRecursive("HelloName"); fieldHelloName.setText(pageContext,"Setting the default value" ); Note when setting field value in controller: Note 1. Do not set the value in processFormRequest Note 2. If the field comes from View Object, then do not use setText in controller Note 3. For control fields [that are not based on View Objects], you can use setText to assign values in processRequest method Lets take some notes to expand beyond the HelloWorld Project Note 1 In D2K-forms we sort of created a Window, attached to Canvas, and then fields within that Canvas. However in OA Framework, think of Page being fmx/Window, think of Region being a Canvas, and fields being within Regions. This is not a formal/accurate understanding of analogy between D2k and Framework, but is close to being logical. Note 2 In D2k, your Forms fmb file was compiled to fmx. It was fmx file that was deployed on mid-tier. In case of OAF, your OA Page is nothing but a XML file. We call this MDS [meta data]. Whatever name you give to "Page" in OAF, an XML file of the same name gets created. This xml file must then be loaded into database by using XML Importer command. Note 3 Apart from MDS XML file, almost everything else is merely deployed to your mid-tier. Usually this is underneath $JAVA_TOP/oracle/apps/../.. All java files will go underneath java top/oracle/apps/../.. etc. Note 4 When building tutorial, ignore the steps for setting "Attribute Sets". These are not mandatory. Oracle might just have developed their tutorials without including these. Think of these like Visual Attributes of D2K forms Note 5 Controller is where you will write any java code in OA Framework. You can create a Controller per Page or have a different Controller for each of the Regions with the same Page. Note 6 In the method processFormRequest of the Controller, you can access the values of the page by using notation pageContext.getParameter("<fieldname here>"). This method processFormRequest is executed when the OAF Screen/Page is submitted by click of a button. Note 7 Inside the controller, all the Database Related interactions for example interaction with View Objects happen via Application Module. But why so? Because Application Module Manages the transaction state of the Application. OAApplicationModuleImpl oaapplicationmoduleimpl = OAApplicationModuleImpl)oapagecontext.getApplicationModule(oawebbean); OADBTransaction oadbtransaction = OADBTransaction)oaapplicationmoduleimpl.getDBTransaction(); Note 8 In D2K, we have control block or a block based on database view. Similarly, in OA Framework, if the field does not have view Object attached, then it is like a control field. Hence in HelloWorld example, field HelloName is a control field [in D2K terminology]. A view Object can either be based on a view/table, synonym or on a SQL statement. Note 9 I wish to access the fields in multi record block that is based on view Object. Can I do this in Controller? Sure you can. To traverse through those records, do the below · Get the reference to the View Object using (OAViewObject)oapagecontext.getApplicationModule(oawebbean).findViewObject("VO Name Here") · Loop through the records in View Objects using count returned from oaviewobject.getFetchedRowCount() · For each record, fetch the value of the fields within the loop as oracle.jbo.Row row = oaviewobject.getRowAtRangeIndex(loop index here); (String)row.getAttribute("Column name of VO here ");

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Tips for XNA WP7 Developers

- by Michael B. McLaughlin

There are several things any XNA developer should know/consider when coming to the Windows Phone 7 platform. This post assumes you are familiar with the XNA Framework and with the changes between XNA 3.1 and XNA 4.0. It’s not exhaustive; it’s simply a list of things I’ve gathered over time. I may come back and add to it over time, and I’m happy to add anything anyone else has experienced or learned as well. Display · The screen is either 800x480 or 480x800. · But you aren’t required to use only those resolutions. · The hardware scaler on the phone will scale up from 240x240. · One dimension will be capped at 800 and the other at 480; which depends on your code, but you cannot have, e.g., an 800x600 back buffer – that will be created as 800x480. · The hardware scaler will not normally change aspect ratio, though, so no unintended stretching. · Any dimension (width, height, or both) below 240 will be adjusted to 240 (without any aspect ratio adjustment such that, e.g. 200x240 will be treated as 240x240). · Dimensions below 240 will be honored in terms of calculating whether to use portrait or landscape. · If dimensions are exactly equal or if height is greater than width then game will be in portrait. · If width is greater than height, the game will be in landscape. · Landscape games will automatically flip if the user turns the phone 180°; no code required. · Default landscape is top = left. In other words a user holding a phone who starts a landscape game will see the first image presented so that the “top” of the screen is along the right edge of his/her phone, such that the natural behavior would be to turn the phone 90° so that the top of the phone will be held in the user’s left hand and the bottom would be held in the user’s right hand. · The status bar (where the clock, battery power, etc., are found) is hidden when the Game-derived class sets GraphicsDeviceManager.IsFullScreen = true. It is shown when IsFullScreen = false. The default value is false (i.e. the status bar is shown). · You should have a good reason for hiding the status bar. Users find it helpful to know what time it is, how much charge their battery has left, and whether or not their phone is in service range. This is especially true for casual games that you expect someone to play for a few minutes at a time, e.g. while waiting for some event to start, for a phone call to come in, or for a train, bus, or subway to arrive. · In portrait mode, the status bar occupies 32 pixels of space. This means that a game with a back buffer of 480x800 will be scaled down to occupy approximately 461x768 screen pixels. Setting the back buffer to 480x768 (or some resolution with the same 0.625 aspect ratio) will avoid this scaling. · In landscape mode, the status bar occupies 72 pixels of space. This means that a game with a back buffer of 800x480 will be scaled down to occupy approximately 728x437 screen pixels. Setting the back buffer to 728x480 (or some resolution with the same 1.51666667 aspect ratio) will avoid this scaling. Input · Touch input is scaled with screen size. · So if your back buffer is 600x360, a tap in the bottom right corner will come in as (599,359). You don’t need to do anything special to get this automatic scaling of touch behavior. · If you do not use full area of the screen, any touch input outside the area you use will still register as a touch input. For example, if you set a portrait resolution of 240x240, it would be scaled up to occupy a 480x480 area, centered in the screen. If you touch anywhere above this area, you will get a touch input of (X,0) where X is a number from 0 to 239 (in accordance with your 240 pixel wide back buffer). Any touch below this area will give a touch input of (X,239). · If you keep the status bar visible, touches within its area will not be passed to your game. · In general, a screen measurement is the diagonal. So a 3.5” screen is 3.5” long from the bottom right corner to the top left corner. With an aspect ratio of 0.6 (480/800 = 0.6), this means that a phone with a 3.5” screen is only approximately 1.8” wide by 3” tall. So there are approximately 267 pixels in an inch on a 3.5” screen. · Again, this time in metric! 3.5 inches is approximately 8.89 cm. So an 8.89 cm screen is 8.89 cm long from the bottom right corner to the top left corner. With an aspect ratio of 0.6, this means that a phone with an 8.89 cm screen is only approximately 4.57 cm wide by 7.62 cm tall. So there are approximately 105 pixels in a centimeter on an 8.89 cm screen. · Think about the size of your finger tip. If you do not have large hands, think about the size of the fingertip of someone with large hands. Consider that when you are sizing your touch input. Especially consider that when you are spacing two touch targets near one another. You need to judge it for yourself, but items that are next to each other and are each 100x100 should be fine when it comes to selecting items individually. Smaller targets than that are ok provided that you leave space between them. · You want your users to have a pleasant experience. Making touch controls too small or too close to one another will make them nervous about whether they will touch the right target. Take this into account when you plan out your game initially. If possible, do some quick size mockups on an actual phone using colored rectangles that you position and size where you plan to have your game controls. Adjust as necessary. · People do not have transparent hands! Nor are their hands the size of a mouse pointer icon. Consider leaving a dedicated space for input rather than forcing the user to cover up to one-third of the screen with a finger just to play the game. · Another benefit of designing your controls to use a dedicated area is that you’re less likely to have players moving their finger(s) so frantically that they accidentally hit the back button, start button, or search button (many phones have one or more of these on the screen itself – it’s easy to hit one by accident and really annoying if you hit, e.g., the search button and then quickly tap back only to find out that the game didn’t save your progress such that you just wasted all the time you spent playing). · People do not like doing somersaults in order to move something forward with accelerometer-based controls. Test your accelerometer-based controls extensively and get a lot of feedback. Very well-known games from noted publishers have created really bad accelerometer controls and been virtually unplayable as a result. Also be wary of exceptions and other possible failures that the documentation warns about. · When done properly, the accelerometer can add a nice touch to your game (see, e.g. ilomilo where the accelerometer was used to move the background; it added a nice touch without frustrating the user; I also think CarniVale does direct accelerometer controls very well). However, if done poorly, it will make your game an abomination unto the Marketplace. Days, weeks, perhaps even months of development time that you will never get back. I won’t name names; you can search the marketplace for games with terrible reviews and you’ll find them. Graphics · The maximum frame rate is 30 frames per second. This was set as a compromise between battery life and quality. · At least one model of phone is known to have a screen refresh rate that is between 59 and 60 hertz. Because of this, using a fixed time step with a target frame rate of 30 will cause a slight internal delay to build up as the framework is forced to wait slightly for the next refresh. Eventually the delay will get to the point where a draw is skipped in order to recover from the delay. (See Nick's comment below for clarification.) · To deal with that delay, you can either stay with a fixed time step and set the frame rate slightly lower or else you can go to a variable time step and make sure to adjust all of your update data (e.g. player movement distance) to take into account the elapsed time from the last update. A variable time step makes your update logic slightly more complicated but will avoid frame skips entirely. · Currently there are no custom shaders. This might change in the future (there is no hardware limitation preventing it; it simply wasn’t a feature that could be implemented in the time available before launch). · There are five built-in shaders. You can create a lot of nice effects with the built-in shaders. · There is more power on the CPU than there is on the GPU so things you might typically off-load to the GPU will instead make sense to do on the CPU side. · This is a phone. It is not a PC. It is not an Xbox 360. The emulator runs on a PC and uses the full power of your PC. It is very good for testing your code for bugs and doing early prototyping and layout. You should not use it to measure performance. Use actual phone hardware instead. · There are many phone models, each of which has slightly different performance levels for I/O, screen blitting, CPU performance, etc. Do not take your game right to the performance limit on your phone since for some other phones you might be crossing their limits and leaving players with a bad experience. Leave a cushion to account for hardware differences. · Smaller screened phones will have slightly more dots per inch (dpi). Larger screened phones will have slightly less. Either way, the dpi will be much higher than the typical 96 found on most computer screens. Make sure that whoever is doing art for your game takes this into account. · Screens are only required to have 16 bit color (65,536 colors). This is common among smart phones. Using gradients on a 16 bit display can produce an ugly artifact known as banding. Banding is when, rather than a smooth transition from one color to another, you instead see distinct lines. Be careful to avoid this when possible. Banding can be avoided through careful art creation. Its effects can be minimized and even unnoticeable when the texture in question is always moving. You should be careful not to rely on “looks good on my phone” since some phones do have 32-bit displays and thus you’ll find yourself wondering why you’re getting bad reviews that complain about the graphics. Avoid gradients; if you can’t, make sure they are 16-bit safe. Audio · Never rely on sounds as your sole signal to the player that something is happening in the game. They might have the sound off. They might be playing somewhere loud. Etc. · You have to provide controls to disable sound & music. These should be separate. · On at least one model of phone, the volume control API currently has no effect. Players can adjust sound with their hardware volume buttons, but in game selectors simply won’t work. As such, it may not be worth the effort of providing anything beyond on/off switches for sound and music. · MediaPlayer.GameHasControl will return true when a game is hooked up to a PC running Zune. When Zune is running, any attempts to do anything (beyond check GameHasControl) with MediaPlayer will cause an exception to be thrown. If this exception is thrown, catch it and disable music. Exceptions take time to propagate; you don’t want one popping up in every single run of your game’s Update method. · Remember that players can already be listening to music or using the FM radio. In this case GameHasControl will be false and you should handle this appropriately. You can, alternately, ask the player for permission to stop their current music and play your music instead, but the (current) requirement that you restore their music when done is very hard (if not impossible) to deal with. · You can still play sound effects even when the game doesn’t have control of the music, but don’t think this is a backdoor to playing music. Your game will fail certification if your “sound effect” seems to be more like music in scope and length.

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Blogging locally and globally–my experience

- by DigiMortal

In Baltic MVP Summit 2011 there was discussion about having two blogs - one for local and another for global audience – and how to publish once written information in these blogs. There are many ways how to optimize your blogging activities if you have more than one audience and here you can find my experiences, best practices and advices about this topic. My two blogs I have to working blogs: this one here technology and programming blog for local market My local blog is almost five years old and it makes it one of the oldest company blogs in Estonia. It is still active and I write there as much as I have time for it. This blog here is active since September 2007, so it is about 3.5 years old right now. Both of these blogs are my major hits in my MVP carrier and they have very good web statistics too. My local blog My local blog is about programming, web and technology. It has way wider target audience then this blog here has. By example, in my local blog I blog also about local events, cool new concept phones, different webs providing some interesting services etc. But local guys can find there also my postings about how to solve one or another programming problem and postings about Microsoft technologies I am playing with. This far my local blog has a lot of readers for such a small country that Estonia is. This blog has made me a lot of cool contacts and I have had there a lot of interesting discussions about different technical topics. Why I started this blog? Living in small country is different than living in big country. In small country you have less people and therefore smaller audience so you have to target more than one technical topic to find enough readers. In a same time you are still interested in your main topics and you want to reach to more people who are sharing same interests with you. Practically one day y will grow out from local market and you go global. This is how this blog was born. Was it worth to create, promote and mess with it? Every second I have put on my time to this blog has been worth of it. Thanks to this blog I have found new good friends and without them I think it is more boring to work on different problems and solutions. Defining target audiences One thing you should always do when having more than one blog is defining target audiences. If you are just technomaniac interested in sharing your stuff and make some new friends and have something to write to your MVP nomination form then you don’t have to go through complex targeting process. You can do it simple way and same effectively. Here is how I defined target audiences to my blogs: local blog – reader of my local blog is IT professional, software developer, technology innovator or just some guy who is interested in technology, this blog – reader of this blog is experienced professional software developer who works on Microsoft technologies or software developer who is open minded and open to new technologies and interesting solutions to development problems. You can see how local blog – due to small market with less people – has wider definition for audience while this blog is heavily targeted to Microsoft technologies and specially to software development. On practical side these decisions are also made well I think because it is very hard to build up popular common IT blog. On global level it is better to target some specific niche and find readers who are professionals on your favorite topics. Thanks to this blog I have found new friends who are professional developers and I am very happy about all the discussions I have had with them. Publishing content to different blogs My local blog and this blog have some overlapping topics like .NET, databases and SEO. Due to this overlapping there is question: when I write posting to my local blog then should I have to publish same thing in my global blog? And if I write something to my global blog then should I publish same thing also in my local blog? Well, it really depends on the definition of your target audiences. If they match then of course it is good idea to translate you post and publish it also to another blog. But if you have different audiences then you may need to modify your posting before publishing it. The questions you have to answer are: is target audience interested in this topic? is target audience expecting more specific and deeper handling of this topic or are they expecting more general handling of topic? is the problem you are discussing actual for target audience or not? You have to answer these questions and after that make your decision. If you need to modify your original posting then take some time and do it. Provide quality to all your readers because they will respect you if you respect them. Cross-posting and referencing It is tempting to save time that preparing some blog post takes and if you have are done with posting in one blog it may seem like good idea to make short posting to another blog and add reference to first one where topic is discussed longer. Well, don’t do it – all your readers expect good quality content from you and jumping from one blog post to another is disturbing for them. Of course, there is problem with differences between target audiences. You may have wider target audience and some people may be interested in more specific handling of topic. In this case feel free to refer your blog you are writing in english. This is not working very well in opposite direction because almost all my global blog readers understand english but not estonian. By example, estonian language is complex one and online translating tools make very poor translations from estonian language. This is why I don’t even plan to publish postings here that refer to my local blog for more information. I am keeping these two blogs as two different worlds and if there is posting that fits well to both blogs I will write my posting to one blog and then answer previous three questions before posting same thing to another blog. Conclusion Growing out of your local market is not anything mysterious if you are living in small country. As it is harder to find people there who are interested in same topics with you then sooner or later you will start finding these new contacts from global audience. Global audience is bigger and to be visible there you must provide high quality content to your audience. It is something you will learn over time and you will learn every day something new when you are posting to your global blog. You may ask: if global blog is much more complex thing to do then is it worth to do at all? My answer is: yes, do it for sure. It is not easy thing to do when you start but if you work on your global blog and improve it over time you will get over all obstacles pretty soon. Just don’t forget one thing – content is king and your readers expect high quality from you.

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ANTS CLR and Memory Profiler In Depth Review (Part 2 of 2 – Memory Profiler)

- by ToStringTheory

One of the things that people might not know about me, is my obsession to make my code as efficient as possible. Many people might not realize how much of a task or undertaking that this might be, but it is surely a task as monumental as climbing Mount Everest, except this time it is a challenge for the mind… In trying to make code efficient, there are many different factors that play a part – size of project or solution, tiers, language used, experience and training of the programmer, technologies used, maintainability of the code – the list can go on for quite some time. I spend quite a bit of time when developing trying to determine what is the best way to implement a feature to accomplish the efficiency that I look to achieve. One program that I have recently come to learn about – Red Gate ANTS Performance (CLR) and Memory profiler gives me tools to accomplish that job more efficiently as well. In this review, I am going to cover some of the features of the ANTS memory profiler set by compiling some hideous example code to test against. Notice As a member of the Geeks With Blogs Influencers program, one of the perks is the ability to review products, in exchange for a free license to the program. I have not let this affect my opinions of the product in any way, and Red Gate nor Geeks With Blogs has tried to influence my opinion regarding this product in any way. Introduction – Part 2 In my last post, I reviewed the feature packed Red Gate ANTS Performance Profiler. Separate from the Red Gate Performance Profiler is the Red Gate ANTS Memory Profiler – a simple, easy to use utility for checking how your application is handling memory management… A tool that I wish I had had many times in the past. This post will be focusing on the ANTS Memory Profiler and its tool set. The memory profiler has a large assortment of features just like the Performance Profiler, with the new session looking nearly exactly alike: ANTS Memory Profiler Memory profiling is not something that I have to do very often… In the past, the few cases I’ve had to find a memory leak in an application I have usually just had to trace the code of the operations being performed to look for oddities… Sadly, I have come across more undisposed/non-using’ed IDisposable objects, usually from ADO.Net than I would like to ever see. Support is not fun, however using ANTS Memory Profiler makes this task easier. For this round of testing, I am going to use the same code from my previous example, using the WPF application. This time, I will choose the ‘Profile Memory’ option from the ANTS menu in Visual Studio, which launches the solution in its currently configured state/start-up project, and then launches the ANTS Memory Profiler to help. It prepopulates all of the fields with the current project information, and all I have to do is select the ‘Start Profiling’ option. When the window comes up, it is actually quite barren, just giving ideas on how to work the profiler. You start by getting to the point in your application that you want to profile, and then taking a ‘Memory Snapshot’. This performs a full garbage collection, and snapshots the managed heap. Using the same WPF app as before, I will go ahead and take a snapshot now. As you can see, ANTS is already giving me lots of information regarding the snapshot, however this is just a snapshot. The whole point of the profiler is to perform an action, usually one where a memory problem is being noticed, and then take another snapshot and perform a diff between them to see what has changed. I am going to go ahead and generate 5000 primes, and then take another snapshot: As you can see, ANTS is already giving me a lot of new information about this snapshot compared to the last. Information such as difference in memory usage, fragmentation, class usage, etc… If you take more snapshots, you can use the dropdown at the top to set your actual comparison snapshots. If you beneath the timeline, you will see a breadcrumb trail showing how best to approach profiling memory using ANTS. When you first do the comparison, you start on the Summary screen. You can either use the charts at the bottom, or switch to the class list screen to get to the next step. Here is the class list screen: As you can see, it lists information about all of the instances between the snapshots, as well as at the bottom giving you a way to filter by telling ANTS what your problem is. I am going to go ahead and select the Int16[] to look at the Instance Categorizer Using the instance categorizer, you can travel backwards to see where all of the instances are coming from. It may be hard to see in this image, but hopefully the lightbox (click on it) will help: I can see that all of these instances are rooted to the application through the UI TextBlock control. This image will probably be even harder to see, however using the ‘Instance Retention Graph’, you can trace an objects memory inheritance up the chain to see its roots as well. This is a simple example, as this is simply a known element. Usually you would be profiling an actual problem, and comparing those differences. I know in the past, I have spotted a problem where a new context was created per page load, and it was rooted into the application through an event. As the application began to grow, performance and reliability problems started to emerge. A tool like this would have been a great way to identify the problem quickly. Overview Overall, I think that the Red Gate ANTS Memory Profiler is a great utility for debugging those pesky leaks. 3 Biggest Pros: Easy to use interface with lots of options for configuring profiling session Intuitive and helpful interface for drilling down from summary, to instance, to root graphs ANTS provides an API for controlling the profiler. Not many options, but still helpful. 2 Biggest Cons: Inability to automatically snapshot the memory by interval Lack of complete integration with Visual Studio via an extension panel Ratings Ease of Use (9/10) – I really do believe that they have brought simplicity to the once difficult task of memory profiling. I especially liked how it stepped you further into the drilldown by directing you towards the best options. Effectiveness (10/10) – I believe that the profiler does EXACTLY what it purports to do. Features (7/10) – A really great set of features all around in the application, however, I would like to see some ability for automatically triggering snapshots based on intervals or framework level items such as events. Customer Service (10/10) – My entire experience with Red Gate personnel has been nothing but good. their people are friendly, helpful, and happy! UI / UX (9/10) – The interface is very easy to get around, and all of the options are easy to find. With a little bit of poking around, you’ll be optimizing Hello World in no time flat! Overall (9/10) – Overall, I am happy with the Memory Profiler and its features, as well as with the service I received when working with the Red Gate personnel. Thank you for reading up to here, or skipping ahead – I told you it would be shorter! Please, if you do try the product, drop me a message and let me know what you think! I would love to hear any opinions you may have on the product. Code Feel free to download the code I used above – download via DropBox

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Google and Bing Map APIs Compared

- by SGWellens

At one of the local golf courses I frequent, there is an open grass field next to the course. It is about eight acres in size and mowed regularly. It is permissible to hit golf balls there—you bring and shag our own balls. My golf colleagues and I spend hours there practicing, chatting and in general just wasting time. One of the guys brings Ginger, the amazing, incredible, wonder dog. Ginger is a Portuguese Pointer. She chases squirrels, begs for snacks and supervises us closely to make sure we don't misbehave. Anyway, I decided to make a dedicated web page to measure distances on the field in yards using online mapping services. I started with Google maps and then did the same application with Bing maps. It is a good way to become familiar with the APIs. Here are images of the final two maps: Google: Bing: To start with online mapping services, you need to visit the respective websites and get a developers key. I pared the code down to the minimum to make it easier to compare the APIs. Google maps required this CSS (or it wouldn't work): <style type="text/css"> html { height: 100%; } body { height: 100%; margin: 0; padding: 0; } Here is how the map scripts are included. Google requires the developer Key when loading the JavaScript, Bing requires it when the map object is created: Google: <script type="text/javascript" src="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?key=XXXXXXX&libraries=geometry&sensor=false" > </script> Bing: <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ecn.dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=7.0"> </script> Note: I use jQuery to manipulate the DOM elements which may be overkill, but I may add more stuff to this application and I didn't want to have to add it later. Plus, I really like jQuery. Here is how the maps are created: Common Code (the same for both Google and Bing Maps): <script type="text/javascript"> var gTheMap; var gMarker1; var gMarker2; $(document).ready(DocLoaded); function DocLoaded() { // golf course coordinates var StartLat = 44.924254; var StartLng = -93.366859; // what element to display the map in var mapdiv = $("#map_div")[0]; Google: // where on earth the map should display var StartPoint = new google.maps.LatLng(StartLat, StartLng); // create the map gTheMap = new google.maps.Map(mapdiv, { center: StartPoint, zoom: 18, mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.SATELLITE }); // place two markers marker1 = PlaceMarker(new google.maps.LatLng(StartLat, StartLng + .0001)); marker2 = PlaceMarker(new google.maps.LatLng(StartLat, StartLng - .0001)); DragEnd(null); } Bing: // where on earth the map should display var StartPoint = new Microsoft.Maps.Location(StartLat, StartLng); // create the map gTheMap = new Microsoft.Maps.Map(mapdiv, { credentials: 'Asbsa_hzfHl69XF3wxBd_WbW0dLNTRUH3ZHQG9qcV5EFRLuWEaOP1hjWdZ0A0P17', center: StartPoint, zoom: 18, mapTypeId: Microsoft.Maps.MapTypeId.aerial }); // place two markers marker1 = PlaceMarker(new Microsoft.Maps.Location(StartLat, StartLng + .0001)); marker2 = PlaceMarker(new Microsoft.Maps.Location(StartLat, StartLng - .0001)); DragEnd(null); } Note: In the Bing documentation, mapTypeId: was missing from the list of options even though the sample code included it. Note: When creating the Bing map, use the developer Key for the credentials property. I immediately place two markers/pins on the map which is simpler that creating them on the fly with mouse clicks (as I first tried). The markers/pins are draggable and I capture the DragEnd event to calculate and display the distance in yards and draw a line when the user finishes dragging. Here is the code to place a marker: Google: // ---- PlaceMarker ------------------------------------ function PlaceMarker(location) { var marker = new google.maps.Marker( { position: location, map: gTheMap, draggable: true }); marker.addListener('dragend', DragEnd); return marker; } Bing: // ---- PlaceMarker ------------------------------------ function PlaceMarker(location) { var marker = new Microsoft.Maps.Pushpin(location, { draggable : true }); Microsoft.Maps.Events.addHandler(marker, 'dragend', DragEnd); gTheMap.entities.push(marker); return marker; } Here is the code than runs when the user stops dragging a marker: Google: // ---- DragEnd ------------------------------------------- var gLine = null; function DragEnd(Event) { var meters = google.maps.geometry.spherical.computeDistanceBetween(marker1.position, marker2.position); var yards = meters * 1.0936133; $("#message").text(yards.toFixed(1) + ' yards'); // draw a line connecting the points var Endpoints = [marker1.position, marker2.position]; if (gLine == null) { gLine = new google.maps.Polyline({ path: Endpoints, strokeColor: "#FFFF00", strokeOpacity: 1.0, strokeWeight: 2, map: gTheMap }); } else gLine.setPath(Endpoints); } Bing: // ---- DragEnd ------------------------------------------- var gLine = null; function DragEnd(Args) { var Distance = CalculateDistance(marker1._location, marker2._location); $("#message").text(Distance.toFixed(1) + ' yards'); // draw a line connecting the points var Endpoints = [marker1._location, marker2._location]; if (gLine == null) { gLine = new Microsoft.Maps.Polyline(Endpoints, { strokeColor: new Microsoft.Maps.Color(0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0), // aRGB strokeThickness : 2 }); gTheMap.entities.push(gLine); } else gLine.setLocations(Endpoints); } Note: I couldn't find a function to calculate the distance between points in the Bing API, so I wrote my own (CalculateDistance). If you want to see the source for it, you can pick it off the web page. Note: I was able to verify the accuracy of the measurements by using the golf hole next to the field. I put a pin/marker on the center of the green, and then by zooming in, I was able to see the 150 markers on the fairway and put the other pin/marker on one of them. Final Notes: All in all, the APIs are very similar. Both made it easy to accomplish a lot with a minimum amount of code. In one aerial view, there are leaves on the tree, in the other, the trees are bare. I don't know which service has the newer data. Here are links to working pages: Bing Map Demo Google Map Demo I hope someone finds this useful. Steve Wellens CodeProject

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Google and Bing Map APIs Compared

- by SGWellens

At one of the local golf courses I frequent, there is an open grass field next to the course. It is about eight acres in size and mowed regularly. It is permissible to hit golf balls there—you bring and shag our own balls. My golf colleagues and I spend hours there practicing, chatting and in general just wasting time. One of the guys brings Ginger, the amazing, incredible, wonder dog. Ginger is a Hungarian Vizlas (or Hungarian pointer). She chases squirrels, begs for snacks and supervises us closely to make sure we don't misbehave. Anyway, I decided to make a dedicated web page to measure distances on the field in yards using online mapping services. I started with Google maps and then did the same application with Bing maps. It is a good way to become familiar with the APIs. Here are images of the final two maps: Google: Bing: To start with online mapping services, you need to visit the respective websites and get a developers key. I pared the code down to the minimum to make it easier to compare the APIs. Google maps required this CSS (or it wouldn't work): <style type="text/css"> html { height: 100%; } body { height: 100%; margin: 0; padding: 0; } Here is how the map scripts are included. Google requires the developer Key when loading the JavaScript, Bing requires it when the map object is created: Google: <script type="text/javascript" src="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?key=XXXXXXX&libraries=geometry&sensor=false" > </script> Bing: <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ecn.dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=7.0"> </script> Note: I use jQuery to manipulate the DOM elements which may be overkill, but I may add more stuff to this application and I didn't want to have to add it later. Plus, I really like jQuery. Here is how the maps are created: Common Code (the same for both Google and Bing Maps): <script type="text/javascript"> var gTheMap; var gMarker1; var gMarker2; $(document).ready(DocLoaded); function DocLoaded() { // golf course coordinates var StartLat = 44.924254; var StartLng = -93.366859; // what element to display the map in var mapdiv = $("#map_div")[0]; Google: // where on earth the map should display var StartPoint = new google.maps.LatLng(StartLat, StartLng); // create the map gTheMap = new google.maps.Map(mapdiv, { center: StartPoint, zoom: 18, mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.SATELLITE }); // place two markers marker1 = PlaceMarker(new google.maps.LatLng(StartLat, StartLng + .0001)); marker2 = PlaceMarker(new google.maps.LatLng(StartLat, StartLng - .0001)); DragEnd(null); } Bing: // where on earth the map should display var StartPoint = new Microsoft.Maps.Location(StartLat, StartLng); // create the map gTheMap = new Microsoft.Maps.Map(mapdiv, { credentials: 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX', center: StartPoint, zoom: 18, mapTypeId: Microsoft.Maps.MapTypeId.aerial }); // place two markers marker1 = PlaceMarker(new Microsoft.Maps.Location(StartLat, StartLng + .0001)); marker2 = PlaceMarker(new Microsoft.Maps.Location(StartLat, StartLng - .0001)); DragEnd(null); } Note: In the Bing documentation, mapTypeId: was missing from the list of options even though the sample code included it. Note: When creating the Bing map, use the developer Key for the credentials property. I immediately place two markers/pins on the map which is simpler that creating them on the fly with mouse clicks (as I first tried). The markers/pins are draggable and I capture the DragEnd event to calculate and display the distance in yards and draw a line when the user finishes dragging. Here is the code to place a marker: Google: // ---- PlaceMarker ------------------------------------ function PlaceMarker(location) { var marker = new google.maps.Marker( { position: location, map: gTheMap, draggable: true }); marker.addListener('dragend', DragEnd); return marker; } Bing: // ---- PlaceMarker ------------------------------------ function PlaceMarker(location) { var marker = new Microsoft.Maps.Pushpin(location, { draggable : true }); Microsoft.Maps.Events.addHandler(marker, 'dragend', DragEnd); gTheMap.entities.push(marker); return marker; } Here is the code than runs when the user stops dragging a marker: Google: // ---- DragEnd ------------------------------------------- var gLine = null; function DragEnd(Event) { var meters = google.maps.geometry.spherical.computeDistanceBetween(marker1.position, marker2.position); var yards = meters * 1.0936133; $("#message").text(yards.toFixed(1) + ' yards'); // draw a line connecting the points var Endpoints = [marker1.position, marker2.position]; if (gLine == null) { gLine = new google.maps.Polyline({ path: Endpoints, strokeColor: "#FFFF00", strokeOpacity: 1.0, strokeWeight: 2, map: gTheMap }); } else gLine.setPath(Endpoints); } Bing: // ---- DragEnd ------------------------------------------- var gLine = null; function DragEnd(Args) { var Distance = CalculateDistance(marker1._location, marker2._location); $("#message").text(Distance.toFixed(1) + ' yards'); // draw a line connecting the points var Endpoints = [marker1._location, marker2._location]; if (gLine == null) { gLine = new Microsoft.Maps.Polyline(Endpoints, { strokeColor: new Microsoft.Maps.Color(0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0), // aRGB strokeThickness : 2 }); gTheMap.entities.push(gLine); } else gLine.setLocations(Endpoints); } Note: I couldn't find a function to calculate the distance between points in the Bing API, so I wrote my own (CalculateDistance). If you want to see the source for it, you can pick it off the web page. Note: I was able to verify the accuracy of the measurements by using the golf hole next to the field. I put a pin/marker on the center of the green, and then by zooming in, I was able to see the 150 markers on the fairway and put the other pin/marker on one of them. Final Notes: All in all, the APIs are very similar. Both made it easy to accomplish a lot with a minimum amount of code. In one aerial view, there are leaves on the tree, in the other, the trees are bare. I don't know which service has the newer data. Here are links to working pages: Bing Map Demo Google Map Demo I hope someone finds this useful. Steve Wellens CodeProject

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